Free Sword of Vengeance by Kerry Newcomb

bless you, Sergeant,” the priest said.
    “Sí,” the sergeant replied. “God had better bless me. Maybe the Yankee’s friend hides somewhere in these woods and he comes back and sees the red-haired one is my prisoner. And this friend, he attempts to rescue Red Hair.” Morales brought his face close to Kit’s. “You will be my bait this night. I watch and wait. And if no one comes, I shoot you at sunup.” Morales whirled on the priest, who had started to protest. “No! Keep silent, old priest, or on my oath you join him!”
    And so the afternoon hours crawled past and Kit McQueen endured in silence as the moist, heavy heat settled from the stark blue sky in invisible layers. It clogged a man’s lungs and made each breath a labor; he felt as if he were drowning. Kit whiled away the hours, once he realized escape was impossible, by imagining himself an osprey or any kind of falcon, one of those illustrious hunters who ride the wind’s slipstream or hang poised above the ancient land and callously observe the foolish antics, the sufferings and joys of earthbound humankind, then rise airborne to reach with feathery fingertips and brush the cheek of God.
    The priest brought Kit food and water and waited with him while he ate, under guard. As soon as he was finished, his hands were quickly bound to the wheel of the cart once more.
    For a long time Father Ramon had very little to say. Responsibility for the deaths weighed heavy on him; he counted Kit’s imminent demise among those burdens that bowed his shoulders and shackled his spirit. Solace was beyond his reach, locked away behind doors for which he had no key. Kit assumed the priest would not wish another death on his conscience and so might find some way, under cover of night, to set the prisoner free.
    Kit found a few brief seconds of privacy when the dragoon guard walked around the cart to relieve himself, and in a soft voice, audible only to the old priest, Kit suggested Father Ramon was his last chance and only hope.
    The priest returned to his own bedroll by another campfire he had built for himself and settled down with his thoughts and misgivings into a troubled sleep. Sergeant Morales placed one man beneath the cart. He pitched his own blanket in the cart. He trusted no one but himself to watch the prisoner and apprehend the Yankee’s partner, should the man be foolish enough to return.
    The remaining men of his command settled by twos and threes around their cook fires. One by one the Spaniards succumbed to weariness. With the onset of night, the soldiers in their blankets drifted off to sleep, and their snores mingled with the night sounds of the forest and distant bayous.
    Kit leaned against the wheel listening to the rush of night wings overhead and heard, somewhere beyond the black woods, the deep, bloodcurdling bellow of a bull alligator and the startled, pitiful screech of some animal turned prey. Kit noticed several of the soldiers, startled from their rest, bless themselves.
    “Lord strengthen us against our enemies and deliver us from the hungry jaws of predators,” Kit muttered to himself.
    “And false friends,” Sergeant Morales added from his bedroll in the cart. The sergeant laughed softly at his cleverness.
    Kit, however, was not amused. He stretched his legs and worked the kinks out of them. His shoulders ached, and he tried to relax despite his bound hands. His wrists were securely tied to the wheel’s wooden rim. Its construction wasn’t all that sound, but any attempt to free himself or dislodge the rim from the spokes was bound to alert the soldier nodding off to sleep beneath the cart, not to mention Sergeant Morales, he of the immense gut and quick wit whose snores rivaled the alligators in the night. Some sentries, Kit thought. Some guards. A lumbering sot could stumble through camp and cut him loose, much less a man with skills like Bill Tibbs.
    But Bill Tibbs wasn’t coming. Neither was any benevolent drunkard. Kit sighed