Lone Star 49

Chapter 1

The paddlewheeler President Grant chugged and frothed its way northward, hugging the coastline. The blue waters of the Gulf of California were smooth as glass before the steamboat; behind it the wake frothed and fanned into a gradually vanishing V.

The steamboat had taken on its cargo at San Felipe, where the schooner La Mesa out of San Diego had off-loaded its cargo of lumber, hardware, and food supplies. The cargo was bound for Fort Yuma, a military outpost virtually isolated by the Apache, Heart.

The Colorado was running high just now. Within weeks, possibly days, the flood stage would be ended and not even a shallow draft boat like the President Grant would be able to negotiate the red river upstream to Yuma.

There’s a vessel coming up fast on the port side, Captain Easley, the helmsman said.

The bulky man in the faded-blue uniform and battered hat turned from his chart table and squinted from the wheelhouse of the steamboat.

A fisher? he asked himself. But he already knew it was no fishing vessel. It was a frigate in full sail, knifing through the water, canvas popping. It was a dark ship, an older one, but quicker than anything Easley had seen in the gulf before. There was virtually no shipping in these waters. The communities along the dun-colored coast were small, poor, not the sort of towns that brought in commodities by sea.

She’s going to cut across our bow if she maintains that tack, the helmsman said. He glanced back worriedly at the captain, who stared in puzzlement at the dark vessel.

Give us twenty degrees to starboard, Easley said, and the helmsman complied. Gradually the ungainly paddlewheeler changed its course enough to let the faster frigate pass safely.

She’s put her wheel over too, Captain, the helmsman said, and the captain of the President Grant nodded with irritation. The damn fool was going to come right across their bow. The frigate was much nearer now, larger. Easley couldn’t see a hand on deck. The dark frigate was like a ghost ship, unmanned, malicious.

Something stirred uneasily in the back of Easley’s mind. He walked to the communications tube, blew into it, and waited impatiently for his mate to answer belowdecks.

Cassidy? Open the armory, arm all hands.

Sir? a sleepy, perplexed voice answered through the tube.

Damn it, do as I say, do it now!

But it was already too late. Easley saw the puff of smoke first and then the dark, rapid form of the cannonball. The report of the cannon finally reached his ears as the ball cut within ten feet of the steamboat’s bow and splashed into the water.

Easley spoke quietly into the tube. Forget it, Cassidy. Helmsman, full stop! We’re about to be boarded.

Fort Yuma sat sweltering in the Arizona heat. The sun beamed down hard and white against the low, jumbled army installation. In the commander’s office three junior officers watched as their CO wiped the sweat from his red face, poured a drink of whiskey without offering any, wiped the sweat from his face again, and leaned back in his squeaking leather-covered chair to glower at his officers as if they were responsible for the Apache war, the damnable sun, and the winds of hell that raced across the desert flats every evening at sunset to cover everything with grit, sting the eyes, and clog the nostrils.

It’s three days overdue, Captain Thaddeus York said. His stubby fingers drummed on his scarred desk top. Beyond his office window an NCO could be heard shouting commands to a group of unhappy soldiers drilling beneath the fierce sun. We’ve lost another shipment, it seems. Damn all! he exploded suddenly, thumping his desk with his fist. Damn Heart, damn these pirates, whoever they are, damn Alfredo Guiterrez!

The last-named man was the governor of the Mexican state of Sonora. York thought the Mexican government ought to be able to put a stop to the piracy, just how he never articulated.

I need ideas, gentlemen. You know how things stand here. If I could get away with it, by God, I’d detach a company of cavalry and send it south.

Two of the younger officers glanced at each other, wondering just what cavalry was supposed to be able to do against a seagoing enemy.

Ideas! Captain York repeated loudly, reaching again for his whiskey bottle.

I know someone who might be able to help, one of York’s lieutenants said quietly. York’s head snapped up and he stared at the junior officer.

Gleason was his name, Ford Gleason, and he was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He was tall, slightly over six foot one, with copper-colored hair, deep-blue eyes, a straight nose, and generous mouth. He was well set up physically and he knew his business when it came to fighting. He took commands well, issued them intelligently, and carried himself like a gentleman. York found that he resented Ford Gleason for most of these attributes.

York himself was overage for his grade, balding, a gradually increasing fold of fat oozing over his beltline. He drank too much, had just been deserted by an unhappy wife, and he held no hope of ever being promoted again— unless he could get those goddamned supplies upriver somehow.

What, he asked with a tinge of sarcasm, are you suggesting, Lieutenant Gleason? Hiring some outsiders to do army work?

If we can’t do it ourselves, and we can‘t—we can’t go south of the line, not without getting our entire officer corps lined up against a wall. Civilians, sir, it will have to be civilians if we hope to stop those gulf pirates.

Civilians, York repeated, wagging his head heavily. He didn’t like the very word. If he’d known then who Ford Gleason had in mind for the job he would have liked it a lot less.

No one else had any suggestion at all and Captain Thaddeus York could close his eyes and see those major’s oak leaves flying away.

The businessmen of Yuma were up in arms. The army couldn’t protect them or guarantee their safety. York looked dismally at his lieutenant and gave a quick nod of his head as if agreeing to some small crime.

Outside it was hotter than sin, the glare off the Colorado and surrounding white sand overwhelming. Lieutenant Ford Gleason used the post telegraph to send a wire. The lines had been up for nearly three days this time, a recent record. Heart knew well enough that the telegraph wires were an enemy of his. The blue soldiers could contact other blue soldiers hundreds of miles away and by means of those communications defeat him. Heart’s solution was simple—defeat the wires themselves.

Excuse me, sir, the red-faced corporal at the key said, is this an authorized wire? It’s not a military address. He examined the yellow pad where Gleason had scribbled his message.

It’s authorized. Route it through with your highest priority.

Yes, sir, the corporal said dubiously. If you say so.

The enlisted man looked again at the destination flag on the telegraph pad. Starbuck Ranch, Texas. And just what in hell business could the lieutenant have contacting that faraway place?

Gleason’s eyes were on the young corporal and so the man turned to his key and began tapping out his Morse. He had just finished his message and received acknowledgment from his relay at Fort Bowie when the wires went dead again.

Ansel Barnes wore a white suit and flat white hat with a wide brim. He was in his fifties, rotund, gray-faced, and grim.

Barnes was taking charge of things personally this time. He was the Fort Yuma sutler among other things, responsible for supplying the soldiers at the post with writing paper, sweets, Indian-crafted goods, beer, and under-the-table whiskey. He also ran a hardware store for civilian Yuma. Neither of these enterprises was doing well at present. Damned army couldn’t do a simple escort job. When the military brass had decided on shipping material from West Coast ports, chiefly San Diego, around the Baja Peninsula to the isolated and besieged town of Yuma, Barnes had been one of the first to applaud the move. There was no way that damned red scoundrel, Heart, could stop a ship from sailing up the Colorado River.

Then these goddamned pirates had appeared. Opportunistic bastards—the world was full of them, Barnes decided miserably. Out to keep him from making a decent living.

This time would be different. This time he was ready.

Barnes had traveled to the Mexican port of San Felipe, waited while his consignment of goods was transferred from the schooner White Horse to the Mexican-registered steamer Mas Mal, and sailed northward toward the mouth of the Colorado with his goods. And his personal army.

Let the bastards try it, Ansel Barnes muttered. He stood at the rail of the Mas Mal as she steamed past the small dun-colored islands in the gulf toward the river. The sidewheeler was heavy with goods: planks and nails and pig iron, trade trinkets, tinned food, and whiskey. The four eight-inch cannon she carried added to the weight.

From the wheelhouse the boat’s captain called out, Vessel on the port side, Mr. Barnes. Closing fast.

Barnes had a pair of binoculars around his neck. Army issue, bartered for a case of beer from a very thirsty and slightly disreputable sergeant at Fort Yuma. The sutler lifted the glasses to his eyes, focused them, and found the dark ship closing from astern. Barnes smiled grimly, feeling a sudden rush of excitement edged with fear creep up his spine to the base of his skull. He turned to the thick-chested man at his right and spoke.

All right, Oscar, this could be it.

I’ll make preparations, Oscar said in his bearlike growl, and Barnes knew that Oscar McCann would do just that, and do it competently. McCann had been a sailing man, had been in the tough ports of Singapore and Shanghai, had fought in the Crimean War as a Turkish artillery officer and spent the last decade in the American West as a soldier, lawman, or outlaw depending on the opportunity.

McCann strode down the deck, calling loudly to his hired warriors. The canvas was whipped from the cannon and they were charged as McCann issued Winchester repeaters, handguns, and sabers.

Barnes repeated his smile. The bastards wouldn’t get this shipment.

The frigate was closing still. Dark and ominous, all it needed was the skull and crossbones on the foremast. Barnes scanned the ship carefully, unable to see a single hand.

He did see the gunports open abruptly, silently, and he swallowed hard. There were eight ports on this side and through them now the flared black-iron muzzles of naval cannon appeared. Barnes looked to the wheelhouse and signaled the captain. There was no sense in trying to outrun the seagoing vessel and at Barnes’s signal the sidewheeler’s power was cut, the boilers sighing to a halt.

Let ‘em come, Barnes said, but the uneasiness he had felt was growing to cold fear. They won’t want to blow us out of the water, he told himself, trying to bolster his flagging confidence. Ruin the goods... they’ll try to board and then we’ll have ’em.

But Barnes was no Commodore Perry, no Shanghai pirate, and the nerve was beginning to drain out of him. He looked with some trepidation to Oscar McCann, who was cool, bull-like, solid, arms crossed over his massive chest, which was encased in a red-and-white-striped shirt, and he felt a little better.

A starboard cannon on board the dark frigate suddenly belched flame and smoke and a ball crossed the bow of the Mas Mal. Barnes backed away and stood trembling with anger and fear, watching as the frigate dropped sail and swung toward them.

Ready, he heard McCann say softly to his band of warriors—thugs, Indians, Mexicans, back-alley toughs. Barnes started to yell something, to order McCann to surrender, but it was too late already. Take her below the waterline, the former sailor said, and three eight-inch cannon opened up in unison from the deck of the Mas Mal, the fourth misfiring with a backflash and a futile cloud of white smoke.

Barnes shifted his eyes to the dark frigate, seeing the cannonballs send up spumes of water, hearing the muffled thud of iron against oak planking.

Barnes was looking that way, slight hope rising, when the gunports of the frigate exploded with flame and smoke and sound and half a dozen cannonballs arced through the air to strike the Mas Mal solidly.

Planking flew into the air, splintered and broken, forming deadly wooden splinters as the boat rocked under the impact of the frigate’s cannonballs. Barnes was hurled to the deck as flame jutted from the wheelhouse and Oscar McCann, hollering furiously, tried to organize his inexperienced gunners.

Two of the Mas Mal’s cannon spoke again, a deep throated threatening sound, but the threat was hollow as the balls sailed through the rigging of the frigate without any damage but a torn shroud line.

The frigate, meanwhile, masterfully captained, had come nearly parallel with the Mas Mal, its gunports open, cannon primed. It hovered twenty yards off the port side of the steamer and then drifted nearer yet as Oscar’s men rushed for their firearms.

Surrender, surrender! the captain of the Mas Mal was shouting from the wheelhouse, but no one seemed to hear him above the clamor of shot, of men screaming, timbers breaking, shouts, and panicked commands.

The gunners on the Mas Mal’s decks had retreated in blind panic, leaving their unloaded cannon, noses down, harmless. The frigate swung to and now with sharp panic Barnes did see her crew. Men appeared from behind the rails and in the rigging. Grappling hooks swung overhead and whined through the air to bite into the wood of the Mas Mal’s rails.

Stand ready to repel boarders! Oscar McCann said, and a bullet from aboard the frigate ripped his throat out. The big man staggered backward and then toppled into the clear blue waters of the Gulf of California, a strangled command or curse or prayer bubbling up.

Barnes’s crew was in full flight now. Some went over the side and swam toward the miles-distant shore. Others made for the lifeboats as the crew of the frigate swarmed aboard the motionless steamboat.

Barnes drew a little-used derringer from his vest pocket and backed away, hand on the rail. Fifty feet from him a raider swung a saber with violent skill and lopped the head from a McCann thug. The body fell flopping to the deck, neck pumping crimson arterial blood.

Rifles fired close by Barnes as a few of his men tried to battle back. A flash of heat washed over Barnes and he heard the dreadful thud of lead against flesh as a charge of grapeshot ripped through the bodies of his defenders.

From the deck of the frigate a tall dark man wearing a red bandanna over his head gestured and a single round was fired from a brass swivel cannon. This one carried an incendiary load of some sort and as it impacted against the wheelhouse the upper deck of the Mas Mal burst into flame.

That was the last thing Ansel Barnes saw. A white-hot pain erupted inside his skull and blood flooded his eyes. He was blown back over the rail of the steamer as dozens of gun-bearing pirates charged down the decks of the Mas Mal, war cries or curses rising from their throats.

Barnes hit the water so hard that it knocked the wind from him. At this time of year the gulf waters should have been warm, but they seemed very cold. Icy fingers reached out and grasped him, tugging him down, and in minutes the fighting seemed very faraway and unimportant. The sky was a white, swirling thing and the distant shore a brown blur. Somewhere far distant a boat was burning on the water, but it seemed meaningless. There was some reason Ansel Barnes was trying to stay alive, trying desperately to swim, but at that moment he couldn’t recall what it was, and he let the darkness of the water tug him down into the mermaid depths.

Chapter 2

Her name was Jessica Starbuck and behind those sea-green eyes was a knowledge of many battles. She stood waiting for the stage driver and the shotgun rider with the adoring eyes to throw down her luggage.

It was hot, dry. People walked numbed with the sun through the streets of Yuma, Arizona as if nothing could stun