The Red Sombrero (3 page)

It was cold standing there in the blackness of the alley and Reno, shivering, scrubbed a hand across his cheeks and scowled at the windrowed dead. If the general’s horse had been killed he could find it but he was afraid of the street’s moonlight brightness. He wanted to find that horse but now he wanted to stay alive, also. He didn’t want the bullet and he didn’t want the capture — particularly he didn’t want the capture.

He shivered again, and with his back skin crawling forced himself to step into the street. Eyes seemed to dig at him from every piece of shadow and he thought of the sentries Descardo had killed and of the poor luckless prisoners, and he hoped if Federalistas were watching him they would give him the bullet.

He moved up to the nearest still shape and felt sick, but he held himself and forced his eyes to look at them. He saw the red chin strings of Descardo’s cavalry and he looked at the horses but none of these had belonged to the general any more than these two-legged hides had belonged to him. It was the black horse he wanted.

He moved along to the, next pile and as he worked through it a hand flapped up and caught hold of his ankle. “Please — water …” a voice gasped, and Reno froze in his tracks. A downward look from the corners of his eyes doubled him, retching; afterwards he found an undamaged canteen and went back with it but the man was dead.

Reno gagged, keeping his mouth shut. He felt the sweat in his hands as he uncapped the tin and tried to rinse the brassy taste out of his throat. He spat and made as though to throw the half filled canteen away from him but with his arm drawn back something stopped him. He sloshed the water around inside the tin, scowling, and screwed on the cap and thrust his head through the strap and again took up his grisly search for the black.

Once he twisted his head, peering up the dark slope toward the guns, and several times he stood motionless, half crouched, frozen, listening. He knew that Perron’s men could see him plainly in this moon glare; not to recognize him, naturally, but plain enough to use their rifles. It bothered him why they didn’t because it sure as hell wasn’t like them.

He found the general’s horse back out of the light by the edge of a building and the bags were still lashed to the saddle. His hands shook like a man who had ague when he put them to work on the fastenings. He cursed the fingers that were suddenly all thumbs and tried to choke back the rasp of his breathing. He would have cut the damned strings except for his need of them. When they finally came loose he was soaked completely through with sweat.

He sank back on his heels, too used up to do anything. But almost at once the fear was at him again and he squirmed round, head cocked, listening into the downdraft of wind off the mountains. He raked the dark slope with his feverish eyes; then he picked up a bag in his shaking hands, growling. It was heavier than he’d expected. He worried off the bit of cord that held it shut and thrust fingers into it. His breath sucked in harshly as he crouched there, staring incredulously. Gold onzas they were, not silver pesos!

He thrust them back in the bag and retied it. Working frantically now he refastened them, one at each end of the whang strings, with enough slack between to give him purchase. Getting up he looked for Descardo and found him ten feet away with his black coat still on, with one leg doubled under him and his face in the mud which his own blood had moistened.

Reno looked at him and spat.

He jerked the quirt from the man’s limp wrist and, shuddering, wrestled him out of the coat. There were six tiny holes where the bullets had ripped into it; the back was torn where these had come out and the front was sticky slippery, but Reno had no puke left in him. He put the coat on. Then he pulled the general’s hat off the corpse and, discarding his own, put that on too, loosening the chin strap a little to get into it.

His head was pounding as bad as his heart now. The excitement. God — a fortune! And right here in the stinking street!

He peered around. Do it right, his head pounded; and he threw away his pistol and picked up Descardo’s. It might make the difference if he were stopped by men who didn’t know the general personally.

He was gone if he got stopped by the Federalistas anyway. He caught up the lashed bags and eased them over a shoulder. A rock clattered somewhere on the slope and he went rigid.

His guts turned over and tried to crawl out of him. They were coming, all right. With Perron’s knowledge or without wouldn’t matter if they found him in this coat and hat. He might explain the money but he couldn’t explain those, and he’d play hell getting out of this country without them.

He crouched there, shaking, trying to make up his mind whether he should run or try to hide from them. Running would make noise but at least he might get into the brush where they’d have their work cut out to catch hold of him. He threw a fast look around, caught up the quirt and got out of there.

He became aware he’d chosen wrong before his eyes ever saw the backs of these places. Perron’s men set up a yell and several rifles racketed viciously. Too late he realized he should have crossed that bright street, not gone diving down this alley; there was nothing in front of him now but the mountain. He would have to run west and the brush he wanted was north, beyond the damned street and that far line of houses.

He dug in his toes and put everything he had into covering ground. This coat and the weight of the money didn’t help. He skidded around the corner and headed west, still swathed in shadow. That helped a little but he knew those soldiers would see him just as soon as they got off the slope. He would be silhouetted against the open range which, yonder, lay as bright as the street he’d fled away from. He knew it had to be now or never and swerved again between two houses, losing more of his precious lead, and coming into the street three doors above where he’d started.

The house now directly in front of him was one of those Perron’s guns had collapsed, and the ground all about it was a chaos of broken adobes. He didn’t dare risk his footing and, forced to swerve once again, struck out to cut behind the next one. He was still six jumps from its corner when they spotted him.

Their shouts were lost in the crash of their rifles. He could hear the bullets slamming into the wall, could see the adobe spatter and the wind whirl away its dust. Something clouted his hat and he could feel the tug through his chin strap. Something plucked at the coat and he stumbled with all that weight on one shoulder and half fell around the corner, crashing into the opposite wall.

He did fall then but fear pulled him erect. He caught up the bags and ran from the rear of the passage into moonlight, swerving to avoid the glinting flash of broken bottles. The dark line of the brush was only fifty yards away but the grunt of his tortured lungs held the rasp of a wind-broken bronc. Every time he drew breath it was like knives turning in him and his heart was banging like the thud of a stamp mill.

He couldn’t rest. He couldn’t stop to catch his breath even. He was staggering now, his legs going wobbly. There was a roaring in his ears and the rifles were in full cry again. He could see little puffs of dust bursting out of the drought-cracked ground where the bullets hit.

But the brush was getting nearer. It was barely thirty feet away when the heel of his left boot went, and he stumbled. He fell heavily, his hands not equal to the weight of those bulging bags he had clung to. Pain splintered through him and he knew when he tried to get his left hand under him the fall had wrenched his shoulder.

Another man might have given up or fooled himself into thinking those others would. They must have seen him go down. They’d quit firing; and on the ground, with all that brush black behind him, it stood to reason they couldn’t see him. Just a little rest, damn it, just a little and you can make it.

With his breath a rattling sob in his throat he got his head around enough to catch the soldiers in his focus. They’d stopped to reload. Now they were coming on again. Not running though, spread out and coming careful lest the wounded quarry flash its teeth.

Reno, groaning, twisted around and, still aiming brush-ward but on a long western tangent to get away from the angle he’d been traveling when the heelless boot had thrown him, started crawling. Every inch was sheer torture in that heavy coat and dragging those bags as he had to. But it was either that or get to his feet and if he got to his feet they would see him. It did not occur to him to jettison the bags.

He’d probably covered ten feet in this wounded dove fashion when he came onto a trough storm waters had dug and, with a desperate hope, rolled into it.

A
T THE
Cordray ranch — which, because of its iron, was known as Tadpole — there was no visible evidence that anyone was home. In the trapped heat of the yard the sun’s white glare was like the breath from a furnace and drought had turned the thin fringe of grass along the south fence into the same dead color as the hoof-tracked dust that stretched unbroken between the dead gray walls of the outfit’s buildings. In the breathless quiet there was no slightest movement. The few scattered leaves still clinging precariously to the cottonwoods’ scabrous branches hung limp and yellow; even the horses, drowsing hip-shot in the plank corral, looked more like samples of the taxidermist’s art than they did replacements for a cow spread’s remuda. Yet in this motionless hush there was a curiously alien feel of watchful waiting, of cross currents stirring underneath the slumbering surface. The girl alone in her room at the back of the ranch house sensed it; the man seated across the desk from Lewis Cor dray in his office felt it and moved broad shoulders restively.

‘Bennie’ this one was called for reasons he had never fetched into the open. Short and broad with dark burnt features that were highboned and solid, he slouched with one leg thrown over the chair arm and regarded his owner with a curious mixture of dislike overlaid with a grudging admiration. He was not on the payroll as foreman and no ranch hand had ever sat down in Cor dray’s barbarically elegant office. Bennie had no official status. His work corresponded to the chores of a trouble-shooter and eight years at Tadpole attested to his efficiency.

From time to time he ducked his head in a nod as he listened to the run of Cordray’s voice, and when the man stopped speaking he sat silent for awhile. Then he got up and spat through an open window. Rocking back on spurred heels he flexed his arms and grinned with sly appreciation.

Don Luis, as Cordray preferred to be called, flicked the ash off his cigar and said, “Well, what do you think of it?”

Bennie took off his battered felt and mopped a hand around the sweatband. “Good stunt, if you kin work it. Boost your stock in these parts handsome and make you a tidy profit besides.” He cocked his head, teeth clamped on chaw, and regarded Lewis Cordray across the paper-littered desk. “Only one thing wrong with it.”

“What?” Cordray said.

“The guy you’re doing business with.”

“Sierra?”

“Sierra.”

“That buffoon!”

Bennie’s lips spread away from his teeth in a grimace. “One thing you’re right about. Like you say, when his mozos don’t show up with them rifles he’ll damn well get riled enough to come snortin’ over here.”

“Exactly what we want.”

“You ain’t speakin’ for me. That hombre ain’t no guy to yell boo at!”

“We can handle him.”

It was plain Bennie did not share Cordray’s assurance. “Speakin’ frank,” he said, “I’d a heap rather play with a hydrophoby skunk. What if he brings his whole bunch down on us — you ever think about that?”

Cordray smiled. His father had been hidalgo born, a stormy petrel who had brought peace into this wild country after killing off the Indios and hiring those of the local gunsmoke breed who had managed to survive his counter raids of retribution. The times had been unsettled and he had certainly made the most of them, grabbing for his own more than 80,000 acres of the best growing land in the region. His riders shot trespassers wherever encountered. In his day the elder Cordray had been the only law in all this region. By common repute his ranch had been a thieves’ paradise, an exchange for stolen cattle. His vaqueros had cheated and plundered until his had been the largest ranch north of the Mexican border. Even Bennie felt it would have been the crudest insult to compare a grand gentleman like Don Timoteo to the ordinary run of contemporary barons. When he’d finally passed to his reward he’d been the most respected rancher in ten counties. He could shoot or throw with either hand and his son, Don Luis, whom the old man had raised like a prince of the blood, was trying hard to walk in his footsteps, refusing to admit that times had undergone a change.

The old gent had believed in the right of everything he did; the only side of any question he’d been able to see was his own and, to this extent, at least, Lewis Cordray was just like him. But there was a thing that undermined the son, that prodded him into gambles in which the odds were all against him. Don Luis was a half-breed, the son of a gringo woman the old man had known before he’d taken her to the priest. She had been, it was said, as wild and arrogant as Cordray, but the two bloods hadn’t mixed well and the fruit of their union chafed under the imagined stigma to the point where it warped all his thinking. He seemed always to be having to prove things, and some of those things were crazy — like this scheme he had evolved of capturing Sierra.

Eyeing him uneasily, Bennie heard Lewis Cordray chuckle. He was not a particularly handsome man for he had too gaunt a face and a shape that was built like a fence post — a between-the-posts posts. He was invariably dressed in the height of fashion and at first glance might have been taken for a dude, a damn Yankee of some kind with more cash than sense. But when you looked at him more carefully you saw the hoods that crouched over his eyes and the bright intensity back of their twinkling and urbane good humor.

With a voice as bland as cream Cordray sighed. “Tano wouldn’t have any reason to bring his pelados — his hairy ones — over here. He’s a man of impulse, which is what we are counting on. When the rifles are not forthcoming he’ll fly into a rage and demand an accounting, but it will not occur to his mind of a bull that what we are after is to make of him a present to the Federalistas. He’ll not fetch along more than three or four — ”

“You don’t know what he’ll do,” Bennie growled.

Cordray laughed. “Have you ever met him personally?”

Bennie said, “I don’t have to kick a rattlesnake to know what’ll happen if it ever gets its fangs into me!”

“Calm your fears,” Don Luis smiled. “Tano and I have done business before. While admittedly there is a certain unpredictability about him he’ll come to heel all right with a gun in his ribs.”

Bennie went to the window and spat out his cud. He cleared his throat raucously and when he turned around his searching look was still disturbed. “What about the girl?”

Cordray’s eyes lost some of their banter but he said calmly enough, “The girl will come to heel.”

“You’ve had her here three months and I ain’t seen no ring on her finger.”

Don Luis shrugged. “These affairs of the heart take a little time. I could not very well press my suit while all her thoughts were taken up with the death of her father.”

“You can’t stop people’s tongues either and the longer she’s here the more they’ll git to clackin’.”

“People always talk,” Cordray said. “Where else could she go after they burned all her buildings? She has no confidence; she has shut herself in behind a high wall which has to be removed brick by brick with circumspection.” Tilting back his chair Don Luis smiled with quiet charm. “She is beginning to look upon her father’s friend with clearer eyes — ”

“If she ever finds out who was back of that business,” Bennie said, and quit when he caught the hard shine of Cordray’s stare.

A cold stillness closed down, out of which Cordray said, “The day she finds out you will need a fast horse.”

Bennie squirmed in his clothing. “Hell, she won’t learn from me! It’s — it’s just that talk’s goin’ around and I figured you better know it.”

Cordray fell back in his chair, again smiling. “Very probably you are right. Engrossed as I’ve been with this affair of Sierra I have doubtless neglected her more than I should have. We will rectify that. You can arrange for Juarez to demonstrate his talents.”

Bennie looked as though he thought the man had taken leave of his senses. His cheeks sucked in. His eyes bugged out. “Juarez!” he said. “For Christ’s sake, Luis — ”

Cordray waved an affable hand. “To create an illusion one has to make it convincing.”

“But that damn studhoss — ”

“Never fear. I shall be there in time to step in when it’s called for.” Don Luis grinned with amusement. “And when her land has been joined to mine I will see that you are fittingly rewarded.” Leaning forward he suggested a few details. “She will receive a note asking her to meet with one who can reveal the names and whereabouts of the men responsible for the death of her father. The abandoned line shack nearest Mimbres will do admirably for the rendezvous. Say two nights hence at eight of the clock. That afternoon you can wonder in Juarez’s hearing what she finds to take so many evenings in that direction.”

Bennie stared thoughtfully at the toe of his boot. After some moments he got out his tobacco and bit off a fresh chaw. “Might be smarter to bring in some outsider. She’s maybe seen Juarez around and — ”

• • •

“The point is well taken,” Don Luis said equably, “but if I remember correctly, of those who took part in her late father’s misfortune none but this Juarez is still around to tell of it. Except, of course, yourself.” With a long bright look at the dark man’s features the owner of Tadpole rubbed the ash off his cigar.

The banker’s wife, Minnie Burlingate, in the not far distant town of Columbus, had once described Linda Farrel as ‘mousy’ but the adjective, compounded as it had been of an old woman’s spiteful envy, lacked considerable of being called for. In a more settled country she would never, perhaps, have caused a turning of heads but no one, with justice, could have called Major Farrel’s only daughter an ugly duckling. Her figure was good, her stride free and light, but she habitually stood in such awkward positions because of the self-consciousness induced by a long bout with some kind of spinal affliction that most people, seeing her, took away an impression of gawkiness.

Her hair was brown, parted in the middle and whipped back above her ears in the prevailing Spanish fashion which made her face seem longer than it actually was. She wasn’t pretty or even mildly handsome but there were depths in her most men had overlooked and, because she was not gifted in the art of aimless chit-chat, none of the local eligibles had ever offered to court her. Left pretty much to her own resources during an unexciting adolescence, she had grown away from people in a world of her own while her father applied his energies to building up the second best ranch in the country — the first, of course, being its adjoining neighbor, Tadpole.

The Farrel ranch, Broken Spur, had been without a mistress while Linda was growing up. Her mother had died in childbirth which was reason enough, according to some sources, for Linda’s peculiarities. “Growing up in that place with all them men,” Mrs. Burlingate had remarked more than once to her circle, “it’s no wonder the poor thing’s so queer in the head. I’m surprised she don’t wear pants like the rest of them. Probably would if old Tom would of let her.”

When Linda received the note she reacted about as Lewis Cordray had imagined she would. It was late afternoon and the ranch was deserted except for the cook when she went to the door and found a ragged boy standing there. “Meez Farrel?” he said, hat in hand. And when she nodded he dug it out of a pocket and handed it to her. She had opened it, read it. When she looked up he was back on his horse and riding out of the yard.

Her first impulse had been to confide in Don Luis. By the time he rode in with the men she’d reconsidered. Lewis Cordray, she was sure, would have advised her to disregard it. She had already, by that time, considered the arguments he would have presented. It might indeed very well be some sort of a hoax — it might even be dangerous to keep such a tryst, but her mind was made up. If there was a chance she might come by the promised information she was of a mind to leave no stone unturned. She and her father had never been particularly close for, in some strange way, he had seemed to regard her as the cause of her mother’s death, but he was still her father and she wanted his killers punished.

She said not a word to anyone. Pleading a headache she had remained in her room until all the rest were at supper. Very quietly then she had slipped around to the stable and quickly saddled the steeldust gelding Don Luis had given her shortly after she had come here.

There was an oddness about his way of giving her that horse. “The animal needs riding,” he had told her one morning after the hands had left for the range. “He is a peculiar horse, a pure strain that was gelded by mistake while I was away. There is a great heritage of fine horses behind him; his father is my proudest stallion, his dam was by the stallion Old Billy who traces to the colonial Quarter stock. My men have no time to understand such a horse. His name is Cuadro — he threw one colt before they took his power away. Permit me, Linda, to give him to you.”

It was the first gift Linda had ever received.

Perceiving her embarrassment Don Luis had said with great charm, “It is nothing. The horse needs riding. And who, in all this country, knows how to ride better than you?”

It had not taken Linda long to discover why no one had wanted the horse. He took the saddle with apparent indifference and was docility itself while she walked him around the yard, but out on the range he’d swiftly shed his bland posture and demonstrated his bag of tricks, the worst of which had been a suicidal impulse to fall over backwards. She had let him know she was a fighter, too — as good a one as he was — and now they were firm friends.

Making sure she was not observed she led him back of the barn and swung into the saddle. She was wearing a divided skirt because she preferred to ride with her legs around his barrel and she left the ranch in the direction of Columbus, not swinging toward Mimbres until she had put a couple of ridges between herself and Tadpole.

She was not at all sure the information would help her if she did find out the names of the men implicated in her father’s killing. The sheriff of Luna County spent the most of his time around Deming and, from all reports, was a pretty frail reed to lean on. For some indefinable reason she felt strangely reluctant to go to Don Luis. For almost three months now she had been living in his house and there was still constraint between them whenever chance conspired to place them alone in each other’s company.