The fallon legacy, p.26
The Fallon Legacy, page 26
James swallowed, uncertain of what to say, or why the story had been told. Don Tomás seemed to be studying his drink. “There are always excesses, Coronel, in battle.”
“Excesses? There were no excesses, Señor Fallon. What is it that you want here in Mexico?”
“To raise a family, build a home, and breed horses, Coronel.”
“Breed horses. This stallion of yours, is he as magnificent as Don Tomás says?”
“Magnificent is the word. Part Arab, part Barb, and as fast as his name.”
“Bring him to Mexico City. A man could make a fortune racing a horse such as you describe.”
“Money made racing horses goes as fast as it comes. I want to build something for the future.” He wondered why Don Tomás was so silent.
“I have heard, Señor Fallon, that you have had trouble with a lady of Texas. Señora Cordelia Applegate?” The colonel’s smile was unreadable.
“Señora Applegate,” James said carefully, “is a strange woman.”
“She is,” Santa Anna agreed. “Yes, Señor Fallon, I know the lady. She says you are a murderer.”
“I killed no one. Except a man she paid to kill me.” Don Tomás made an unobtrusive gesture, and he swallowed the rest of his angry reply.
Santa Anna was watching James carefully. At last he nodded. “I prefer to trust my old friend. You will need a great deal of land for these horses, no?”
“A league should be more than enough, Coronel.”
Santa Anna made a gesture of dismissal. “A league. A trifle. It is land good for little, this Texas. Still, it would be good to have friends there, when there are so many who cannot be trusted.”
What in hell, James wondered, was the man talking about now? “I hope you consider me a friend, Coronel.”
The colonel rose abruptly. James and Don Tomás scrambled to their feet. “Senor Fallon, you may expect word tomorrow. Now, perhaps you would like to return downstairs? The festivities should be progressing nicely.”
Don Tomás spoke at last. “I think we had better be going, Coronel, if you will forgive us.”
Santa Anna nodded. “Until tomorrow then, señores.”
James waited until the carriage was leaving the palacio grounds. “What was all that about wanting me for a friend? His opinion of yanquis is plain.”
Don Tomás sighed. “Like the politics of my country, el coronel has as many layers as an onion. In truth he does not like norteamericanos, nor does he trust the colony of Señor Austin. He opposed the grant to Austin. He believes that by giving you his favor he will gain your loyalty, that you will keep him informed of what happens in the Austin colony in order to retain that favor.”
“Be damned to him, then! I’m no man’s spy. Let him keep his favors. I’ll get my land some other way.”
“No te se un menso!” the older man snapped. “If you insult Santa Anna now, you will not get one vara of land if you remain the rest of your life.”
“Then how did Austin get his? You said Santa Anna opposed him.”
“He began by not insulting the most powerful man in the army. And how long did he remain here? A year? More?” Don Tomás shook his head. “Could you put up with a year of running from one bureaucrat to another? You are young, and hot of blood. In six months, in three, you would challenge one of them. My daughter has no need of un esposo who is dead or sought for murder. That is why I arranged this meeting, though I believed beforehand Santa Anna would expect some such bargain.”
“You believed …” He ground his teeth to stifle angry words. “I won’t do it. I won’t spy on my friends.”
“A bargain made on one side is no bargain. Listen to me, my young friend. You will be given raw land, wilderness, not a rancho. Whatever you have, rude cabin or hacienda, you will build. Deer and mustangs will see your crops as forage. Pumas, wolves, and bears will savage your horses. Indians will try to kill you. You will earn every stone of it with your sweat and your blood.”
Before James could reply, he was thrown forward by the carriage stopping suddenly. The horses screamed, harness jangling as they reared, and a shot rang out. The driver cried out once and was silent.
“Bandidos!” Don Tomás hissed. Quickly he produced pistols from a compartment beneath his seat, handing two to James. “You to the left, I to the right.”
James checked the primings, kicked open the carriage door, and dove out. Then he was tucking his shoulder under to roll across the pavement and come up in the shadows against a building front. The horses stamped and snorted. The driver’s arm hung over the side of his perch.
A pistol cracked on the far side of the coach. At the same instant men appeared on his side of the equipage, running at him out of the darkness. Pistols flashed in their hands. A ball spat past his cheek; another tugged at his coat. He steadied his pistol and squeezed the trigger. One of the men shouted and fell; he fired again, and another went down, but then they were on him. A knife flashed, and pain burned down his side. He twisted aside; his fist crunched into a man’s face.
Suddenly there were riders among them, horses rearing. Guns barked. A man with an upraised knife collapsed against James. Another screamed and fell. The rest melted into the night.
James pushed aside the body. Now that the confusion was over, he could see there were only two horses.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Haden Edwards growled. A man like enough to be his brother glowered from the other horse.
“Bandits,” James ran to the other side of the coach. Don Tomás lay propped against the carriage step, a bleeding slash across his forehead, an ugly wet patch on his coat. He made a feeble effort to rise as James knelt beside him. “Rest easy, sir.” He gently pulled open the other’s coat. There were no bubbles around the wound; the lung hadn’t been punctured. He tore his shirt and wadded it against the wound, binding it with his sash.
“How’s the old man?” Haden asked. The two men had ridden around the coach.
“What’s been going on here?” the other asked. Neither dismounted.
“We were set on by bandits.” James lifted Don Tomás and laid him in the carriage. “He’ll be all right. You’ll be all right, sir.” The old man nodded. James scrambled up to the driver’s perch and saw that the driver was dead.
“Damn it, Fallon,” Haden shouted, “we hear all the shouting and shooting, and instead of minding our own business we come and pull you out of trouble. The least we deserve is an explanation. I never heard of bandits attacking carriages in the city.”
“Edwards, I’ll thank you later; right now I have to get Don Tomás to help.” He whipped up the horses, and the carriage lurched into the night.
33
At the house servants raced to fetch a doctor, maids rushed around with bandages and hot water. James kept vigil outside Don Tomás’s room with Henry and José, pacing the carpet in silence. Drusilla had collapsed in tears and the doctor had given her laudanum to make her sleep. As light began to peek through the hall windows, the doctor finally came out of the bedroom, rolling down his shirtsleeves. His plump face was damp with sweat.
James hurried to meet him. “How is he?”
“He will live, señor, but he will need time to heal. A younger man might be up and around in a few days, but Don Tomás has seen sixty years.” He shrugged into his coat, held by a maid. “La venda must be changed every day. I have left laúdano in case he feels pain.
“Is he conscious? Can I talk to him?”
“So long as he is not overtaxed, señor.” The stout doctor hid a yawn behind his hand. “I am going to bed, señor. I suggest you do the same. You need the rest also.”
James saw the doctor out and returned to Henry and José. “You two go on,” he said.
“And you, señor?” José said.
Henry nodded. “You need rest worse than us. What did that doctor say about that slash you took?”
“He put a plaster on it,” James said. “I can’t sleep. You—”
One of the maids touched his arm. “Señor, there is a man to see you. Un norteamericano.”
“One of the Edwardses?” James asked. “I know I owe them my life, but after the way they wanted to stand around talking last night, it’s hard to feel gratitude.”
“What them Edwardses do best is talk,” Henry said.
“His name is not Edwards, señor,” the maid said. “He said he was Señor John Lafflin.”
“Lafflin? I don’t know any Lafflin. I’d better see what he wants. Where is he?”
“In the vestibulo, señor.”
Lafflin was a dark-eyed man with a full black beard, an athlete gone to fat with advancing years. He stared at James, coming down the stairs, as if seeing a ghost. “By damn, you are the spitting image of … Forgive a strange question, but you are the son of Robert Fallon? I heard your name in the city, and it is hardly of the most common.”
“Robert Fallon was my father,” James said. “You knew him?”
Lafflin spoke slowly. “You speak as if he were dead.”
“When I was an infant. Barbary pirates. Forgive me, Mr. Lafflin. I’m forgetting my manners. Won’t you step into my study?” Lafflin nodded mutely and followed him. “Brandy? Wine? Perhaps coffee or tea, considering the hour.”
“Brandy. I know … knew your father, yes. In New Orleans. Many years ago.”
James abruptly realized he was taking the man at face value. With Cordelia in the city, after the incident last night—had that been her doing?—he should be more suspicious. “Mr. Lafflin, there aren’t many foreigners in Mexico City.”
“I have business interests on the coast.” Lafflin chuckled. “Shipping, by damn.”
“Is that how you knew my father?”
“Not exactly. We spied on the French before the United States bought Louisiana. I tell you true, I do not think they would have bought it if not for your father and me. By damn, that is true.”
He’d never heard that story before, but it fit with the kind of man his mother had told him of. Still … “Have you ever heard of Cordelia Applegate, Mr. Lafflin?”
Lafflin half rose from his chair. “Where you hear that name?”
“So you know the lady.”
“Lady! That chienne was no lady the best day she live. That putain!” He spat. “She try to kill your father. She try to kill me. And she did kill one very good friend of us both. Esteban Lopes.”
“Lopes? In New Orleans? I remember his death, a few years back now. There was something odd about it, but no one talked of it much.”
“They believe it was voodoo,” Lafflin snorted. “But it was Cordelia. And Esteban was not the first man she has killed. How do you know her? It is important you tell me. Believe me when I say she will try to do you harm for your father’s sake.”
“I met her soon after I arrived in Texas.” He hesitated. “She accused me of murder.”
“It sounds like her, this trying to kill a man and blacken his name at the same time. Where is she in Texas?”
“She has a rancho near the San Jacinto, below the forks.” James decided against mentioning that she was in the city. If Lafflin was her man, his knowledge of that was best kept to himself.
“Campeche,” Lafflin muttered. “By damn, just the place for her! Just the place nobody think to look.”
“Lafitte’s place? I asked her once if she was part of that. She denied it.”
“No, she is no friend of Jean Lafitte, by damn. But you don’t believe her about nothing else. Not if you want to stay alive.”
“I won’t.” James frowned, full of questions. “Why did she hate my father enough to try to kill him? You did say that, didn’t you?”
“She was always on the other side from your papa, and she always lose. A woman like her, she don’t like to lose, maybe more so because he shared her bed. I tell you, that woman is a viper.”
He could agree on that, James thought. There were still more questions, but he didn’t trust this man who called himself Lafflin. Perhaps he could find out something in a roundabout way. “Tell me about my father, Mr. Lafflin. I’m afraid I don’t remember him at all.”
Lafflin threw his arms wide and laughed expansively.
“By le bon Dieu, he is a man. I am sorry. I mean ‘was.’ I am proud to have a man like him for a friend … .”
For over an hour Lafflin talked, and James found that though his suspicion didn’t fade, he believed the picture of Robert Fallon that Lafflin drew. Or perhaps, he thought, he simply wanted to. Lafflin’s Robert Fallon was a man to be admired, a lusty adventurer, a courageous sea captain, a man with dreams. It was the last, the drive to build, that impressed James most. It seemed as if he shared something with the father he couldn’t remember.
Lafflin interspersed his stories of Robert Fallon with many attempts to find out about James. James was careful to tell him no more than Cordelia already knew: that he had grown up on Thomas Martin’s sugar plantation in Louisiana, that he’d always dreamed of Texas, that he’d spent an interlude at Cordelia’s rancho after his arrival at San Felipe de Austin. He let slip that he was married—he had no idea whether Cordelia knew that—but he concealed Drusilla’s maiden name, leaving the impression she was just a girl he had met in San Antonio.
As Lafflin left, a Mexican Army lieutenant came to the door.
“Senor Fallon? Senor James Fallon?” His dragoon’s boots were brightly polished, fawn trousers spotless, high-collared blue coat immaculate, gold braid gleaming. A staff officer, James thought.
“I’m James Fallon.”
The lieutenant inclined his head an eighth of an inch. “Teniente Jorge Serra, on the staff of Coronel Antonio López de Santa Anna. I am instructed to deliver this to you.” He thrust an oilskin packet into James’s hands, made another minuscule inclination of his head, and stalked down the steps to mount his horse.
James fumbled the door closed, staring at the packet in his hands. He felt like a boy on Christmas. But there was always the chance it was something other than what he expected. Hurriedly he found a knife and ripped the packet open. Four layers of oilskin surrounded a parchment document. Laboriously he worked his way through the ornate script, so elaborately scrolled and curlicued as to be almost unreadable.
Almost, but not quite. With a sudden grunt he dropped into the closest chair. In the name of the Republic of Mexico, before God and the Holy Mother Church, James Christopher Fallon was granted one hundred leagues of land in the state of Texas. There had to be a mistake. A hundred leagues! Over four hundred and sixty thousand acres. A clerk’s error. A mistake adding zeros where none were intended.
He started to thrust the grant back into its oilskin covering and something in the covering rustled. He pulled out a note, so badly scrawled he could barely read it.
Horses need a great deal of land. Mexico needs loyal men.
Santa Anna
The signature was little more than an S and an A, with something else scribbled there, but he knew it could be no other. There was no mistake, then.
Slowly he made his way up to Don Tomás’s room and put his head in. The curtains were drawn, a single candle lighting the dim room. A maid sat in one corner, black shawl drawn over her dark hair, swift fingers telling her beads. Her black eyes swiveled to James, but she made no sound except for the clicking of the beads.
Don Tomás was awake, his face drawn and sunken. He turned his head on the pillow. “James, my son. Come in.” His voice was faint. James hesitated. The old man caught sight of the packet in his hands. “The grant! Tell me of it.”
There was nothing to do but go in and shut the door. “I’ve been given a hundred leagues, sir.” There was a pause in the clicking of the beads. “And a note from Coronel Santa Anna. He says Mexico needs loyal men.”
“So much,” Don Tomás murmured. “I had not expected so much.”
“Neither did I. Good God! There’ll be a scandal if this gets out. Even governments don’t give that much land to one man.”
“Governments are the only ones who can, my son. A caballo dado no se le mira el colmillo.”
“You can talk about gift horses. I’m the one who’s being bribed! And for a bribe this size, Santa Anna is going to be damned sure I carry out my side.”
“A bargain made on one side—”
“I know, sir, but—”
“James, do you intend to commit an act of rebellion?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Do you believe that Stephen Austin intends such?”
“Of course not. He’s an honorable man.”
“Then accept the land, man. Do you not see there is no side of el coronel’s bargain for you to carry out? Accept the land.” His chest heaved with the effort of saying so much.
James had to agree that there really wasn’t anything for him to spy on. And what couldn’t he do with that much land? His father had had dreams. He could carry them out. His enthusiasm faded. “It’s still so damned much, though. There are whole parishes in Louisiana that aren’t as big.”
“There is land, and there is land. Where is this land located? In the fertile country near the Austin grant?”
He unfolded the parchment and pored over it. “I am not certain of all the landmarks, sir, but it seems to be on the Rio Trinidad, well to the north.”
“Comanche country. And the Apache not so far to the west. Not of the best land, either, though for horses it might do. Remember what I said of your earning the land, James.”
“I remember.” Blood and sweat. That would make the land his, if he could avoid another price. But … a hundred leagues. He turned to the woman, who was still telling her beads. “Consuela, fetch Señor Cameron and Senor Escobar. Quickly. I will watch Don Tomás.”
The dark woman darted a glance at Don Tomás, then scuttled from the room. “What do you intend?” the old man asked.
