The Red Sombrero (13 page)

She shook her head.

“So he uses his advantage and speaks to me of dowry.”

“There was no dowry,” Linda said.

“But there is ink on your fingers and the gringo called you the ‘late and rightful owner’ of this rancho Broken Spur. What did you sign?”

She said, “A paper.”

Sierra’s smile turned cold and thin. “I shall take some pleasure in returning it to you, and you need have no further worries about the note. The bank at Columbus has been retired from active business.” He threw back his head and laughed and, abruptly sobering, came toward her, watching her narrowly. “I give you these things as a token of my esteem. From a man who appreciates honesty,” he smiled, “to a woman who has both distinction and charms.”

She felt the heat come into her face and was frightened by the things that looked out of his eyes. He came nearer, boldly sure of himself, and she fought to choke back the scream in her throat, knowing instinctively the need of concealing her panic.

She made her lips smile, answering his smile, and saw desire brighten the coppery glints of his stare. She felt his hand come against her hip and grip it and could not control her trembling. His breathing deepened and quickened. She thought of Reno desperately and prayed for strength to grab the heavy pistol that was sheathed at his groin and, if need be, the courage to use it. Then the ching of spurred boots made a racket in the hall.

Sierra spun away from her, face darkening, hand on gun.

A dust-covered dorado with the red chin strings of Sierra’s cavalry came into the room trailing cold air, and saluted. Sierra said angrily, “Were you not told that I was busy?”

“Yes, my General — a thousand pardons. But I have killed two horses getting here and the news I bring was too urgent to keep. The gringos east of Columbus have raised a large force of riders and are threatening to cut us off from Palomas! Colonel Perron asks for orders and bade me tell you there is street fighting in the town and his artillery has been routed — ”

Sierra shouted. “Tuerto!” and, when his frightened orderly thrust a face in the door: “Tell Pancho to bring that damned Cordray back in here!” He glared at the courier.

“How many guns did that accursed cobbler lose?”

The man swallowed nervously. “He has but the one gun, excellence.”

The place got still as the gut of a cat. Sierra’s eyes took hold of him. They shook the man’s knees. His voice made the man jump inside without moving. “This is all? He said nothing about the levies of horses?”

Tuerto came into the room prodding Cordray. “They have broken the bunkhouse window,” he growled. Cordray, drawing himself up with an affronted stare, said, “This is an outrage!”

Sierra looked at him fishily. “What happened to my rifles?”

Don Luis breathed deeply to keep the tenseness from showing. He was proud that his chest did not reveal the inner pounding. “I am desolated to have to tell you the rifles have not arrived.”

Sierra did not open his mouth for perhaps a dozen heartbeats. Then he said, “Tuerto! Search this man thoroughly.”

Cordray said with darkening cheeks, “You think I am carrying them around in my pockets?”

Sierra said to the courier: “There was no mention of horses?”

The man shook his head.

Sierra’s eyes strayed to the bottle half filled with tequila on the table. “You are holding something back. Speak, man.”

The courier looked frightened. “The Federalistas …” He wet gray lips. “The Federalistas west of Palomas have been reinforced from the garrison at Casas Grandes and were preparing to close with our infantry — ”

“Sainted Christ of the Health!” Sierra shouted. He caught up the bottle and with the same motion hurled it. That the man was not brained was owing only to the dexterity with which he’d dropped to the floor. Sierra jerked his pistol but there was nothing to shoot at but the noise of the man’s flight.

He whirled on Don Luis whose cheeks went the color of ashes. The edge of the dish-cluttered table came against the backs of his thighs. “My rifles!” Sierra’s voice shook him the way wind shakes a willow. “Where? Where? Where?”

Cordray washed his hands in a lather of anguish. “I did everything, excellence — everything possible! I greased palms! I — ”

The hoofs of a horse cut through his words, skidding into a grit-throwing slitherous stop. Boots struck earth with a faint whir of rowels. Sierra got hold of a fistful of shirt. “I ask only
where!”

Cordray’s eyes bulged enormous.

“In Columbus. The government — ”

The door hit the wall with a crash, shifting pictures. Candle flames jumped. Framed in the blackness a disheveled and hatless horseman stood braced against the rush of raw air. “Excellence! The troops — Columbus — fled — cut to pieces!” There was blood dried into the dust on his cheeks. “Angels of Christ! I got to tell you — Perron’s dead! He hangs by the neck for all to see in the plaza at Palomas!”

Sierra pushed Don Luis away from him, straightening. “Palomas? Cut to pieces! The army is demolished?” He clenched his fists.

“There is no army. Federalistas are everyplace. Running them down — ” The man choked on a froth of bright crimson. He sagged against the doorframe, coughing and gasping.

“My army!” Sierra stood motionless, staring. “My beautiful soldiers.” It crippled the fibers of his brain and his mind shrank away from it, frightened.

“These things,” Tuerto said, handing him a paper and a firearm so small it could be hidden in the palm, “are from the pockets of the ranchero.”

Sierra stared at the paper blankly. He crumpled it in a fist and flung it aside and, that moment, caught the look of himself in the sideboard mirror.

The weight of the pistol lay cool and smooth in his hand. The fingers, spasmodically tightening, viciously flung it at that shocked whiteness, smashing the glass.

He caught the same look on those watching faces.

“Out!” he screamed, waving his fist at them. “Get out of here — andale!
ALL OF YOU!”

I
T WAS COLD
in the bunkhouse with the wind coming in through that broken window. Reno pulled up a blanket but he could not sleep. His mind continued endlessly to review Linda’s plight and each time he went over it the knowledge of his own culpability was heightened. He was filled with a loathing he had never before experienced.

He pulled the blanket closer around him but the mother lode of the cold was inside him and he knew it for guilty fear.
What was Sierra doing?
He had no need to ask what the man
would
do; he was too well aware of the bandit’s methods with women. And this was the crux of his own bitter anguish — that he of all people should have brought this on Linda!

But what could he do? He knew Juanito was right in saying that if he stepped outside these four walls he would be shot. He could not help Linda by getting himself killed or crippled. But there must be something he could do, some way of doing it. There had to be!

He ran frantic hands through his hair without finding it. If there had been two windows in this shack he would have tackled the other one and taken his chances. He even thought again of trying the door but the memory of that rifle the guard was hugging dissuaded him. He did not know Felipe, could not recall ever having had any truck with him, but he understood the temper of Sierra’s men and the distrustful resentment in which many of them held him because, by Sierra’s favor, his lot had been easier than theirs.

He scowled through the dark at Juanito. The sleeping fat man snored like a file scraping tin. You would think he would hold the morrow in too much dread. He wished the hell he could feel about death like a Mexican. Tomorrow. God! With the Latins there was always mañana… .

But the snoring got hold of his nerves and at last in a passion he got out of the bunk and went over and shook the fat man awake.

“What passes?”

“You,” Reno growled, “if you don’t quit that racket!”

Juanito shook his head. “What you need is a drink.” He rummaged around in the darkness and held out a flask. “The best. The patron’s. I could do with some myself.”

Reno snatched the flask out of his hand and uncorked it.

• • •

The gaunt shape of the lineshack came up through the darkness and took on dimension. In the light of the stars, Bennie stared at it, shivering, and his eyes raked the roundabout brush, his heart thumping. Where were they? How near were those men Cordray’d used as teeth for this trap?

Tacho’s growled voice jumped at him out of the shadows. “This is the place?”

Bennie nodded.

The Mexican eyed him a moment. “Take the lead. And listen. One mistake and the devil can have you.” He patted the stock of his rifle significantly.

Sweat stuck the cloth of Bennie’s shirt to his back though he saw nothing to alarm him. Maybe Pedrazos hadn’t fetched his vaqueros. Perhaps Cordray’s messenger had not found them. At least, he thought, brightening, he had the advantage, knowing what to expect. The thing to do, he decided, was to keep these dorados between himself and the brush, and at the first hint of danger to make a dive for the cabin. They’d play hell digging him out with Cordray’s guns blasting at them.

He began to feel better. He could almost feel sorry for these damned dumb bastards.

They pulled up before the place and Tacho said curtly: “Bring me the gold, gringo.”

“You think I kin ride this nag under them steps?”

Tacho ordered one of the others to cut him loose and, when the man had done so, Bennie sat there a moment chafing the life back into his rope-numbed ankles. Tacho lifted his rifle. “Get the gold. Pronto!”

Muttering, Bennie slid to the ground. He cursed when the shale bruised his tender feet. One of the Mexicans laughed. Bennie, glowering, turned around and tramped gingerly toward the steps. He could feel Tacho’s eyes and the threat of Tacho’s rifle. And he cursed the man again under his breath.

A couple of the others got down and he could hear them stretching and joking. Tacho called, “Hurry up!”

Bennie bent by the steps and peered into the cache, seeing nothing at all. What if the gold wasn’t hid in this blackness? Or what if he made out to these fools… . He pushed that thought away from him.

“Gringo! For what are you waiting?”

Bennie, snarling, got down on all fours and put his head under the steps, feeling around with his hands and hoping to Christ he didn’t run into a rattler. He found the bags. Both of them. And the thought of all this wealth about to run through his fingers almost set him crazy.

He commenced to back out, dragging one of them after him, his mind working feverishly to polish up the details of the plan he had hit on. When his head cleared the steps he got up, lifting the sack, and limped across the stony ground, grudgingly handing the loot up to Tacho. The Mexican hefted it and grunted. “‘Sta bueno!” he said. “Now bring me the other one.”

The Texican was tempted to make out there wasn’t another but if the man sent someone else to look it might go hard with him. So he went catfooting back and crawled out with the other one; and now a jagged splinter ripped from the back of the steps was concealed underneath his brush jacket. Fools, he thought. Stinking Mexican rabble. Get that clown of a Tacho between the rest of them and the shack. Then, when the time comes, they’ll all go out together. Careful now. Do it right.

He took three steps and stopped suddenly, gasping. He bent over, groaning, letting the sack slip out of his fingers.

“Carai!” Tacho growled. “What trick is this, gringo?”

The Texican caught both his hands to his side as in an access of agony, moaning piteously. Tacho kneed the big horse closer, the others staring curiously but not moving out of their tracks.

This was what Bennie had angled for; now if he could get Tacho’s bronc turned around, pointed toward his men and away from this shack here, a quick jab with the splinter and a loud rebel yell should stampede enough horses to bring on the fireworks.

For himself, Bennie figured to be inside the shack before the lead started flying. After the smoke cleared away he reckoned he could handle the vaqueros. He was not a praying man but he prayed very earnest Cordray’s rifles were loaded and leveled and that when they went off there wouldn’t be enough left to pick up in a basket.

The legs of Tacho’s horse were not two yards from him now. Bennie picked up the sack with a final groan and lurched past the horse like a man gone blind.

“Here — ” Tacho called, “back here, you fool!”

Bennie heard the horse turning and took a couple more strides before he staggered around, ready now to speed these dorados straight into the jaws of Hell. He had only to reach Tacho’s legs, drop the sack with a gasp as though again convulsed, get hold of his splinter and ram it home. Exultation ran through him and he gathered his muscles.

“Enough!” Tacho said — “Stop right there!” and raised his rifle.

Bennie risked it; he had to. With his heart banging wildly he was almost in position to let the bag fall when Tacho’s swung leg crashed a boot into his throat and the next thing he knew he was on his back with two men over him.

“Hand up that gold and put the gringo back in his saddle,” Tacho ordered.

Gagging and choking, hands clawing at his paralyzed throat, the struggling Texican was dragged to his horse and thrown aboard, ankles securely lashed beneath its belly as before. With a jingle of spurs the others went up into creaking leather and looked at the boss dorado for orders.

“We will have no more of this,” Tacho growled. “Put his horse in the lead where we can keep our eyes on him.”

This was done. The wild eyed Bennie, terrified now, tried desperately to warn them but couldn’t get the words beyond the constriction of his throat. He tried to throw himself out of the saddle. They tied his hands to the horn and, at Tacho’s command, struck his horse across the rump. The cavalcade swung into motion.

Bennie knew what was coming but never knew when it hit him… .

With the flask on its way to his mouth Reno stopped. This was how he’d failed her before — how he’d always failed. Back through all the struggles of his life, at every milestone along that swooping downtrail to now, liquor had been the deciding factor. One drink or a dozen, this stuff had been back of every wrong move he’d made. He remembered Descardo’s name for him — jellybean!

Sweat came out across the back of his neck. He needed this drink, needed it to steady him, to quiet the screaming of his nerves. He thought,
Tomorrow I’ll quit
, and sweat cracked through the skin of his face when his mind threw up all the other tomorrows. Every thirst crazed cell of his body hurled its weight into that lifted hand. It began to tremble the way his knees were but his teeth stayed locked. With his face feeling stiff as dried parfleche he passed the flask back to Juanito.

The Mexican looked up at him curiously. “There is something wrong?” he asked, passing the container beneath his nose and sniffing cautiously.

Reno’s hand came against the mozo’s shoulder and squeezed it. “No, amigo, it’s the kind of thing to make a fool feel seven feet tall but I’ve decided to have a try at being a man for a change.”

“Man?” Juanito said. “What kind of man is that?”

“The kind my family could approve of.”

• • •

The wind carried a faint sound of shouting across the yard and the both of them stiffened. Reno, remembering the horses he had heard, bent his head beside the fat man’s, staring through the broken glass into the outside darkness. The guard’s black shape was turned toward the house and from the shadow of the gate a man’s voice called, “What passes?”

“Quien sabe?” answered Felipe, raising up on his toes as though to see better. “Three come from the house.” He said something else which the wind snatched away as he moved out of their sight past the corner of the cabin.

Juanito caught Reno’s arm. “Where do you go?”

Reno pulled away. He got the windows open. The Mexican said, “You have no boots and the ground is covered with glass.” He levered his weight out of the bunk and came into the wind’s raw breath to stand beside the American.

They stared at each other through an interval of complete silence.

A door slammed someplace and the fat man nodded his head, understanding. Dropping a hand, he bent with sundry gruntings and, breathing heavily, came erect. He reached out and found the American’s fist, pressing into it something that was warm, hard and heavy. “The gun of her father. With God, amigo.”

• • •

Cordray, in the general confusion, slipped into his office, quietly closing the door behind him. With an ear against the panel he listened tensely until assured his absence had gone unremarked. Carefully then he felt his way across the room, eyes stabbing the shadows, mind prowling the wreckage of his plans for something stable.

He sank into his chair, trembling and more shaken than he would ever have believed possible. “Damn him — damn him — damn him!” he cried bitterly; and then his head came up to a sudden thought. The signed paper — it was still in the room where the man in the crash of his own schemes had thrown it… .

Cordray’s mind started working. It might not yet be too late to retrieve at least something. And the reward on this bastard was good dead or alive and there was a gun in this desk, the gun he’d taken from Reno. The one with RD stamped into the butt.

The girl was in her room. Tuerto and someone else — the second courier? — had gone clanking and muttering out into the night. Sierra would be alone with his fuming… .

The desk drawer was locked and Tuerto had taken his keys but there was a broad knife above the corner fireplace. He got it and went to work on the lock. A few moments later it snapped. He eased open the drawer and put his hand on the pistol.

His lips peeled back off his teeth in the darkness as he pictured Sierra with five bullet holes through him, a beautiful vision that made his blood race with triumph.

He got out of his chair, crossed the room to the door. But with his hand on the latch he went suddenly still, hearing with caught breath the nearing rumor of horses. Then he smiled again bleakly, remembering the five men Sierra had sent off with Bennie to bring back the gold from the linecamp. Good! He’d have that, too. This would be his vaqueros under Paco Pedrazos.

He chuckled deep in his throat and quietly lifted the latch.

• • •

Reno knew there were more dorados with Sierra than the five he had sent off with Bennie to the linecamp, yet he stood by the corner of the bunkhouse several moments without seeing anyone. The brightening east behind the shapes of the Portrillos warned that dawn was not far off; and he was filled with impatience to come to grips with this thing. But he knew better than to rush in blindly.

There was a shifting blotch of heavier darkness in the gloom near the edge of the light from the windows, and he turned that way for this was where the door was that opened into the dining-room. He was halfway across the yard when the falling wind brought the hoof sound of riders and he stopped a moment, listening. Seven or eight, he guessed. Didn’t seem to be hurrying. He lengthened his stride and got near enough to discover the dark blotch was a ground hitched horse — the same one, likely, that second courier had come on.

Those riders coming up from the south were getting closer; he could catch the blurred murmur of voices now. Probably the dorados who had gone off with Bennie. He had a moment of surprise that he could think of their trip and purpose so completely without interest.

He guessed, feeling desperate, it would be touch and go trying to get the girl out of here; and that was when he saw the shape come out from the shadows of the kitchen wall moving into the yard on a line with the bunkhouse.

He didn’t want to go after the fellow. He wanted to find Linda, put her on a fast horse and get her headed out of this. There was no way of going about the thing cleverly and, even if there were, he hadn’t the time — not with that bunch coming up from the linecamp. He half lifted the pistol and, scowling, brought it down again, knowing that to fire would be to give the show away. Knowing likewise if the fellow reached the bunkhouse what would happen.