Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter (9 page)

That left the leader, who had gone pale and hunched over when Luke rammed him with the rifle butt, probably breaking one of the man's ribs. Cursing breathlessly in Spanish, the leader clawed at the flap of the holster at his waist, trying to free his revolver. Luke swung the Remington and smacked the barrel against the man's head, sending the gray sombrero flying.

The blacksmith had Lopez down on the floor, hands around his throat, beating his head against the ground. He glanced up at Luke and shouted, “Get out while you can, amigo!”

Luke didn't want to leave his unexpected ally to face the wrath of the Rurales, but he needed to get out of La Farva and back on the trail of Kelly and Dog Eater. The thought that maybe the townspeople could disarm the invaders and lock them up, now that they were starting to fight back flashed through Luke's mind as he took a step toward the cantina's door.

Then he stopped short. More figures poured through the opening. He had hoped there were only four Rurales, but he saw that wasn't the case. At least half a dozen more charged into the building. All of them were armed, and when they saw Luke standing there with a gun in each hand, they opened fire.

With all their compadres on the floor, the Rurales didn't care where their bullets went as they sprayed lead around the cantina. Luke would have been hit if the blacksmith hadn't reached out, grabbed his ankle, and jerked his legs out from under him even as the Rurales started shooting.

Luke hit the floor hard, but managed to hang on to his guns. Both Remingtons blasted in his hands as he rolled onto his belly. His slugs ripped into the cluster of Rurales and caused them to scatter. Everybody scrambled for cover, including Luke and the blacksmith.

They found themselves crouched behind an overturned table. Since both of them were pretty big men, the table wasn't really large enough to shield them, but with all the bullets flying around it wasn't safe to move.

“I'm obliged to you for the help,” Luke told his companion, raising his voice to be heard over the din of gunfire. “Reckon you've got yourself in a bad fix, though.”

“We were already in a bad fix,” the man replied in his gravelly voice. “Have been ever since those blasted deserters rode in and took over a couple days ago.” He stuck out a hamlike hand. “I'm Thomas Sandoval, by the way.”

“Luke Jensen.” He put down his right-hand gun and shook with the man. “You're the local blacksmith, right?”

“That's right. You must be either a lawman or a bounty hunter.”

Luke ducked his head lower as a slug whined close to the crown of his hat. “How do you know that?”

“I heard you asking about those two men. You sounded like you were on their trail, and you ain't their friend.”

“You're right about that.” Luke picked up the gun he had put down a moment earlier. “Was the bartender telling the truth about them not being here?”

“You're the first stranger unlucky enough to ride in since Captain Almanzar and his men showed up,” Sandoval confirmed.

Unlucky was right. Kelly and Dog Eater hadn't even been there, and there was a good chance Luke was going to die in La Farva, anyway.

Clouds of powder smoke clogged the air inside the cantina. The sharp, acrid reek stung Luke's nose and eyes. Outnumbered and outgunned, he knew the odds of him being able to fight his way out of there were pretty slim.

The chances of him surviving if he'd surrendered were even smaller, though. He hated to think that he might have to go down fighting and fail in his mission to bring Kelly and Dog Eater to justice, but he might not have any choice.

“Fill those hoglegs of yours,” Sandoval said. “We're gettin' out of here.”

“How do you figure that?” Luke asked as he followed the blacksmith's suggestion and thumbed fresh rounds into the revolvers until all the chambers were full.

“Just stay behind me and keep moving.”

Before Luke could ask him what he meant by that, Sandoval had grasped the edges of the table. With a roar, he surged to his feet and charged toward the door. Bullets thudded into the table, but the boards were thick enough to stop them, although splinters flew wildly into the air.

Luke was right behind him, snapping shots right and left to make the Rurales duck. He heard Sandoval grunt and thought the blacksmith might have been hit, but Sandoval stayed on his feet and kept moving. A couple Rurales tried to get in his way, but he plowed right into them, using the table as a battering ram.

The collision knocked the Rurales off their feet and sent them flying like ninepins. Sandoval lost his balance, too, however, and went down. Instinct made Luke leap over his sprawled form and avoid the fallen table.

The door was right in front of him, and his horse was only a few feet away. He could be in the saddle in seconds, racing out of La Farva.

But Sandoval was struggling to get up, and as Luke glanced back he saw blood fly from the blacksmith's thigh as a bullet ripped a furrow in it. Sandoval fell again as that leg failed to support his weight.

He looked up at Luke and yelled, “Go! Get out of here!”

Luke knew that leaving Sandoval meant abandoning him to certain death at the hands of the Rurales. He jammed his right-hand gun back in its holster, kept the gun in his left fist roaring and spouting fire, and reached down to offer the blacksmith his other hand. “Come on!” he urged.

Sandoval reached up and clasped his wrist. Luke hauled him to his feet. They turned toward the hitch rack but hadn't even taken another step when a fiery lance burned across Luke's left arm. He stumbled, knowing that a slug had grazed him. The wound made his arm go numb.

A huge form flew through the cantina door in a diving tackle that smashed Luke to the ground. The big Rurale called Lopez was back in the fight. Fists like sledgehammers pounded into Luke as more Rurales bolted out of the cantina and surrounded Sandoval. Booted feet kicked and stomped, and rifle butts rose and fell in brutal blows.

Luke had dropped his left-hand gun when the bullet creased that arm. His other gun was in its holster, and he couldn't reach it with the bull-like Lopez on top of him, pummeling him relentlessly. He managed to throw a punch of his own that landed cleanly on Lopez's jaw, but he might as well have hit a slab of rock. Lopez ignored the blow and wrapped sausage-like fingers around Luke's throat. A red haze floated in front of Luke's eyes as Lopez began strangling him.

Faintly, as if from far away, Luke heard a high-pitched voice screaming in Spanish. He couldn't make out the words and didn't have time to ponder them because the red haze was quickly becoming a black tide. He couldn't hold it back. It swept over him and washed him away into nothingness.

 

 

The pain told Luke he was still alive. It started in his head and radiated all through his body. His throat was sore, and every rasping breath he took made it hurt worse.

He continued drawing air into his lungs anyway, grateful that he still could.

His brain was pretty foggy, but gradually his thoughts began to clear. Instinct had made him keep his eyes closed and lie motionless. He didn't know what was going on around him, and he didn't want to tip off his captors that he had regained consciousness until he had a better idea what the situation was.

He remembered the yelling that had been going on as he'd passed out. Now that he wasn't being choked halfway to death and could think a little straighter, he realized that somebody had been screaming orders not to kill him and the blacksmith. It must have been the little commander of the Rurales. Captain Almanzar was what Sandoval had called him, Luke recalled.

Almanzar hadn't stopped his men from killing them out of the goodness and mercy of his heart. No, Luke thought, the captain had had a lot more sinister reason for sparing them. No doubt he wanted them to die slowly and painfully, probably in full view of the townspeople so their deaths would serve as examples to the citizens of La Farva. Almanzar would want everyone to see what happened to anybody who dared to defy him.

To Luke that meant there was still a chance to turn the tables on the Rurales. As long as he was alive, he wasn't going to give up hope. He was pragmatic enough to realize, however, that the odds against him would be mighty high.

As he'd been thinking, he'd had time to take inventory of his body. He hurt like hell, but was pretty sure everything still worked. He was lying on something hard, either a dirt or stone floor, he guessed. He opened one eye to a narrow slit.

That little slice of vision was enough to show him a rock wall and a man's bloodstained trouser leg. Luke opened his eye a little more and saw Sandoval sitting with his back against that wall. The blacksmith's eyes were closed, but his massive chest rose and fell. He was resting, maybe even sleeping.

“Thomas,” Luke said softly as he lifted his head and opened his other eye. He and Sandoval were inside a room with a small window in one wall and a heavy-looking door in the opposite wall. It wasn't a jail cell, although it might as well have been. Neither of them would be able to fit his shoulders through that tiny window.

It must have been a storage room of some sort, Luke thought.

At the moment, it was empty of everything except the two prisoners.

Sandoval hadn't stirred.

Luke said a little louder, “Thomas.”

The blacksmith's eyes opened. He gave his great, shaggy head a little shake as he sat up straighter. “You're not dead. I didn't think you were, but I wasn't sure.”

“I wasn't sure myself, for a minute there.” With an effort, Luke pushed himself up until he was sitting against the wall opposite Sandoval. He groaned as the movement made the pain in his head worse. “Where are we?”

“Little room in the back of the store,” the blacksmith replied. “Man named Lloyd Halligan owns it.
El Capitan
made him clean it out so the Rurales could use it to lock up anybody who didn't toe the line to suit them.” Sandoval chuckled humorlessly. “We're the first occupants.”

“They rode in a couple days ago, you said?” Luke didn't suppose it really mattered how long the Rurales had been there, but whenever he had a problem, he liked to learn as much about it as he could.

And staying alive in La Farva was definitely going to be a problem, he thought.

“Yeah,” Sandoval said. “When they rode in, Almanzar started spouting a lot of big talk about how the governments of Mexico and the United States had made a deal and moved the border. He claimed the town was across the line now . . . in Mexico. That was bull and we all knew it. The border's a good fifteen miles south of here. There's no way the U.S. would give up that much territory. Even if they did, there would've been so much hoopla we would have heard about it.”

“You're right about that,” Luke said. “I was over in Rio Rojo just a few days ago, and there's a telegraph office there. They would have heard the news.”

Sandoval scratched at his beard. “Yeah, it didn't take us long to figure out that Almanzar and his troop had deserted from the Rurales and crossed the border to turn outlaw. That wouldn't take much. Those Rurales are only a whisker less crooked than the bandidos they chase.”

“Sometimes not even that much,” Luke agreed. “I suppose they took over the town anyway, even though nobody believed their story.”

“That's right. We're peaceful folks here. We weren't any match for a dozen well-armed border scum like that. They beat up a few men, threatened everybody else, and people fell in line. They didn't have any choice. Almanzar has patrols keeping an eye out to make sure nobody leaves.”

“He's not as watchful about people riding in,” Luke commented. “Nobody challenged me. I didn't even see anyone when I rode in, until I went into the cantina.”

“I suspect his men have orders to lie low if anybody shows up. Let them come in, then close the trap behind them to make sure they don't leave. That's what happened to those two vaqueros who were in the cantina. They drifted in this morning. El Capitan's men disarmed them. They didn't put up any fight. They just want to keep their heads down and stay alive as long as they can.”

“Can't blame them for that. This Captain Almanzar, he's the little banty rooster who was haranguing me in the cantina?”

“That's right.”

Luke frowned. “What do you think his plans are in the long run?”

Sandoval shook his head. “I don't know. I'd say he plans to loot the town, but La Farva doesn't exactly have a lot of money in it. Nobody around here has ever gotten rich. From the looks of it, the main thing Almanzar's interested in is strutting around like he's the cock of the walk.”

“A man who would be king,” Luke mused.

“Yeah, that's as good a way as any to put it. He'll stay here and enjoy it as long as he can keep his men in line. If they get too restless, though, he'll have to move on to greener pastures.”

“And he'll wipe out everyone in town when he does,” Luke predicted with a bleak look on his face.

Sandoval nodded gloomily. “I'm afraid you're right.”

“I suppose he has plans for us sooner than that?”

“Oh, yeah. At sundown he's going to have us taken out and shot.”

“Sundown?” Luke repeated. “Isn't it customary to have executions at dawn?”

“El Capitan's too impatient for that. Besides, he wants to make it clear to everyone right away that anybody who crosses him will come to a bad end. After we're dead, it wouldn't surprise me if he hacked our heads off and stuck 'em up on posts for everybody to see.”

“An effective tactic for cowing the populace into submission. It goes all the way back to biblical times.”

“You're an educated man,” Sandoval observed.

“Self-educated, for the most part. Unfortunately, that doesn't do us much good in this situation.” Luke gestured at the blacksmith's bloody leg. “How badly are you hit?”

“A couple deep grazes. This one in my leg, and another that took a chunk of meat out of my side. I lost some blood and they hurt like hell, but I reckon I'd be all right if not for the fact that they're going to shoot us to doll rags in another hour or so. How about your arm?”

Luke flexed his left arm and winced. The feeling had come back to it, so he could move it again. It was stiff and sore from the bullet crease, though. “Like you, I'd be fine under different circumstances. I'm curious. How much damage did we do to the Rurales?”

A wolfish grin spread across Sandoval's bearded face. “You killed a couple of them and wounded three or four others. And from the way Almanzar was moving around so carefully, I figure he's got a cracked rib. He acted like he was in pain every time he took a breath.”

“Good,” Luke said. “I hope he suffers the torments of the damned.”