Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter (8 page)

Two days later, Luke was forced to admit that he had lost the trail. There had been too many rocky stretches where the ground was too hard to take hoofprints.

But as he had told Hobie, he knew which way Kelly and Dog Eater were going, and he was confident that he could find them. For all its vastness, the frontier was a small place in many ways. Someone, somewhere, would have seen the two outlaws and would be willing to tell Luke how long ago they had been there and which direction they'd been going when they left.

The landscape was mostly flat and arid, broken up by ranges of small but rugged mountains running north and south. Luke had no trouble going around those mountains or finding passes through them, so they didn't slow him down much. Some of the valleys between the ranges were barren salt flats, while others had small streams running through them at least part of the year, resulting in enough vegetation to support small ranches. Those spreads had to have some sort of supply point, so Luke wasn't surprised when he spotted a few tendrils of chimney smoke rising in the pale blue sky. He followed them until he saw the scattered adobe buildings of a small settlement in the distance.

He didn't recall ever being in that exact spot before and didn't know the name of the place, if it even had one. But there would be at least one saloon or cantina, he thought, and he could ask there about the men he was pursuing. The same would be true at the general store. Kelly and Dog Eater might have stopped for supplies.

He could use a few things himself. No telling how long the chase might go on. There was bound to be a public well where he could fill up all four of his canteens. Anybody traveling in the dry country had to take on water wherever it was possible.

The town, if you could call it that, consisted of only a dozen buildings. The place seemed to be dozing in the afternoon sun. A few horses stood at the hitch rails, their heads down and their tails flicking lazily. A couple dogs were sprawled out sleeping. A gray and white cat sat on the seat of a parked wagon, giving itself a bath.

Luke didn't see any people moving around.

A faint prickle of unease stirred the skin on the back of his neck. He told himself he was worrying over nothing. It wasn't a ghost town, the horses and the wagon proved that, and it really wasn't that unusual for the street to be deserted at that time of day. It was siesta, after all.

He spotted a building with the word
Cantina
painted on it and was reminded of Rio Rojo and Magdalena. He didn't expect to be that fortunate again, but would settle for confirmation that Kelly and Dog Eater had come through there.

A couple horses were tied at the hitch rack in front of the building. As Luke rode up and dismounted, he took a good look at the hoofprints left by those animals, just on the off chance they were the two horses Kelly and Dog Eater had used to escape from Rio Rojo after the bank robbery. Nothing about the prints distinguished them. It was what Luke expected, but he was in the habit of being careful.

He went into the cantina and was immediately grateful for the relative coolness of its dim interior behind the thick adobe walls. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust after being in the bright sunshine outside.

Tables were scattered around the room. The bar was in the back. To the right was a big fireplace where an iron pot of something that smelled spicy and delicious simmered over a small fire. A couple vaqueros sat at one of the tables, playing cards without seeming all that interested in the game. Two more men stood at the bar passing a bottle of pulque back and forth. The short, fat bartender stood with his hands resting on the broad, thick planks laid across barrels that formed the bar.

Luke didn't see a woman anywhere in the place, let alone one as attractive as Magdalena.

He walked through the room to the bar. The card players didn't look up at him. The two men at the bar didn't pay any attention to him, either. One of them looked like a blacksmith, judging by muscular arms as thick as the trunks of young trees. The other could have been a stableman or even a clerk in the general store.

None of them carried a gun, Luke noted. In the case of the two townsmen that wasn't really a surprise, but he would have expected the vaqueros to be armed. You never knew when you might need to shoot a snake or something when you were out riding the range.

The bartender shifted over to face Luke across the planks and asked, “What can I get you, señor?”

“Beer will be fine,” Luke told him.

The man seemed uneasy, and beads of greasy-looking sweat covered his face.

Luke went on. “Are you all right, amigo?”

“
Sí
, of course. What could be wrong?”

“I don't know. You tell me.”

The bartender filled a mug from one of the barrels and set it on the planks in front of Luke. “Four bits. You should drink up and then ride on out of town, señor.”

Immediately, Luke knew for sure that something was wrong. The cantina wasn't doing much business. Its proprietor wouldn't be anxious to chase away customers.

Luke took a sip of the beer. Not surprising, it was warm and not very good, but it cut the trail dust in his throat. He wasn't going to leave until he had asked a few questions, no matter how nervous the bartender was. He started by saying, “Does this place have a name?”

“The cantina, you mean, or the town?”

“The town.”

“This is La Farva, señor. I'm sure you have never heard of it.”

That was true, Luke thought. The name meant nothing to him.

“It doesn't amount to much,” the bartender hurried on. “No reason for anyone to linger here.”

“I could use some supplies,” Luke said. “I'm looking for a couple men, too.”

The bartender shook his head without waiting for Luke to go on. “I have not seen them,” he declared.

“That's odd,” Luke said with a slight frown, “since I haven't even told you what they look like yet.”

“You are the first stranger in La Farva in weeks, señor.”

Luke didn't really believe that, but he supposed it could be true. Even if it was, it didn't explain the bartender's nervousness and the deliberate way the other men in the cantina were ignoring him.

“One of the two men I'm looking for is white and has red hair,” he persisted. “The other is an Apache Indian.”

The bartender shook his head stubbornly. “I told you, señor, I have not seen them.”

Kelly and Dog Eater might be in town, Luke thought suddenly. They could have ridden in and taken over, terrorizing the citizens until everyone was afraid to cross them. That would explain things, even though it seemed like a big job for only two men to run roughshod over an entire settlement. Someone was bound to have stood up to them.

And then Kelly and Dog Eater would have killed whoever was brave enough—or foolish enough—to do that. More than likely, they would make an example of that poor soul so everyone else would be too scared to do anything except cooperate with them. It was certainly possible, Luke told himself.

“All right,” he told the bartender. “I'm obliged to you for your help.” He dropped a coin on the bar to pay for the unfinished beer.

“You are leaving La Farva, señor?”

“There's no reason for me to stay, is there?”

The bartender shook his head. “No reason, señor, no reason at all.”

Luke turned away from the bar. He planned to ride out, wait until it was dark, and then return to La Farva under the cover of nightfall. He didn't think it would take him long to find out if the two bank robbers really were there.

He didn't make it out of the cantina. Several figures suddenly loomed in the doorway when he was halfway across the room. They were silhouetted against the light outside, so he couldn't tell much about them except that they wore broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned sombreros.

An air of menace came from them just as strongly as the smell of stewing chiles came from the pot in the fireplace.

Luke stopped where he was, since the doorway was blocked. He heard the bartender saying something under his breath and glanced over his shoulder. The man stood behind the bar crossing himself, which meant his mumbled words were probably a prayer.

That reaction didn't bode well, Luke thought. Maybe he had been wrong about Gunner Kelly and Dog Eater taking over La Farva. Somebody sure had the place spooked, though, and it appeared to be these men.

They came on into the cantina, their spurs clinking. The big, fancy rowels on those spurs told Luke they were Mexican. So did the short gray jackets and the tight gray trousers the men wore. Now that he could see them better, he recognized their garb as the uniform of the
Rurales
, the Mexican police force that patrolled the area along the border.

That didn't make any sense. As far as Luke knew, he was still in New Mexico Territory. He was pretty sure he hadn't crossed the border.

The four newcomers definitely were Rurales, though. They carried rifles and had belted revolvers strapped around their hips. One of the men, a massive, swarthy individual with a thick black mustache, also wore crossed bandoliers of ammunition and had a machete stuck behind his gun belt.

The four of them walked straight toward Luke. The man who seemed to be the leader was short and slender, with such a bristling, animated personality that he was trembling a little, not from fear, but from eagerness. He was ready for trouble. He
wanted
trouble.

As the man came to a stop in front of Luke, he said in English, “Señor, it is not allowed for civilians to be armed in this town.” He gestured toward the Remingtons. “You must hand over your guns.”

“I was just leaving,” Luke said. “It wasn't my intention to break the law, so I'll be moving on.”

The man shook his head. “There are no exceptions to this rule.”

Keeping his voice flat and hard, Luke said, “You can watch me ride out if you want. You'll see that I'm not staying in La Farva.”

“There are no exceptions,” the man said again, “and there must be consequences for those who break the law.”

With an effort, Luke restrained the impatience and irritation he felt inside him. He'd had run-ins with the Rurales before. While some of the force's members were honest and wanted to bring a semblance of law and order to their country's isolated areas, overall, the Rurales were exceedingly corrupt, supplementing their meager wages with all manner of graft and extortion. Bribery was a way of life with them.

Momentarily putting aside the fact that they weren't in Mexico and the Rurales had no jurisdiction in La Farva, Luke knew the simplest thing might be to play along with them. “If there's a fine for this infraction, I'd be glad to pay it—”

The leader suddenly snapped his rifle around and centered the barrel on Luke's chest. His lips twisted in an arrogant sneer as he said, “You think you can come in here and do as you please, gringo? You think you can throw a little money around and everything will be all right?”

Luke fought the urge to reach for his guns. The Rurales had the drop on him. If he pulled the Remingtons, he would get lead in one or two of them, he was sure of that, but at the same time they would shoot him to pieces. He couldn't allow that to happen.

But he couldn't allow them to take his guns, either. He still had a job to do.

“Well?” the leader demanded imperiously. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

Clearly the man fancied himself a little tinpot dictator. He and his men must have crossed the border, ridden into La Farva, and turned it into their own kingdom, at least in their minds. If word got out about what was going on, the American authorities would move in and make short work of their reign, so they couldn't allow anyone to leave for fear of that happening.

Luke knew that if he surrendered, he would have to stay there as a prisoner, or more likely, he would be executed as a threat to the power held by these men.

“I've got something to say.”

The rumbling voice came from the man Luke had taken for the local blacksmith. The man turned away from the bar and regarded the Rurales with a fierce scowl on his bearded face. “I say I'm sick and tired of you varmints lording it over us. You got no right to be here. This is our town, not yours!”

“Silence!” the leader of the Rurales shouted shrilly. “How dare you—”

“I'm an American. That's how come I dare!” the man bellowed back at him. “You can only step on us for so long, you little maggot!”

The Rurale jerked his rifle away from Luke to point it at the blacksmith. His face twisted with hate as he pulled the trigger.

But Luke was already moving, lunging forward to grab the rifle's barrel and wrench it upward even as the weapon roared. Luke shoved the rifle backward, smashing the butt into the leader's narrow chest.

As the man staggered back, he yelped, “Lopez!”

The big Rurale with the crossed bandoliers leaped forward. The machete seemed to spring into his hand and flash toward Luke's throat. The stroke would have lopped Luke's head right off his shoulders if it had landed.

The blacksmith tackled Lopez before that could happen. The Rurale was taller, but the two men weighed about the same. The impact drove the Rurale backward and caused the heavy blade to miss Luke by a couple feet.

The other two Rurales tried to bring their rifles to bear, but the struggling men were in the way. Luke palmed out both Remingtons from his cross-draw rig and had the guns ready when Lopez and the blacksmith staggered to the side as they wrestled desperately with each other.

Luke's left-hand gun barked. A howl of pain instantly followed the report as the slug tore through the shoulder of one of the Rurales. His rifle fell to the floor. The other man got a shot off, but the bullet went wild, causing the bartender to duck frantically as the bullet whined over his head and struck the wall. Luke's right-hand revolver roared. The shot shattered the Rurale's elbow. He screamed, dropped his rifle, and started running around in circles, momentarily driven mad by the pain.