The Red Sombrero (5 page)

A
STORY
which had gained much repute described how on a certain day when the tide of battle had been going against him, a courier on a foam flecked horse had come hellity larrup into Sierra’s headquarters. Before his tale of fresh gains by the Federalistas had been half told the man had been ordered back into the saddle. “Show them the general’s hat!” Tano roared, and that device, according to popular credence, had saved the day.

“A pretty fable,” Lewis Cordray had remarked. But now, with the very hat reposing on his desk between himself and the ubiquitous Bennie, he was not so inclined to believe the account had been greatly stretched. Some aura of the dread inspired by Descardo’s reputation would seem to have attached itself to the hat if one were to judge by the talk in the bunkhouse or the peculiar expression around the gun fighter’s eyes. Plainly Descardo’s headgear was famous in places which had never even seen the general’s face.

Cordray, just returned from conversing with Reno and considering his hired man somewhat solemnly, said bluntly, “Of what are you thinking?”

Bennie grinned sourly. “Reckon I’m thinkin’ about the same thing you are; it was a piece of tough luck he had to barge in right then. He sure walked off with your thunder.”

Cordray frowned. Brushing the words aside with an impatient hand he said, eyeing the red hat’s chin strap, “I mean about him happening along so damn pat.”

“Nothing strange about that — we been expecting him, ain’t we? Sierra wrote you ten days ago he’d be sendin’ someone after them guns.”

“One man?”

“Been a lot of fightin’ off down yonder. Descardo’s bunch might of run into somethin’. He was probably the only one able to get through.”

“But would Sierra send Descardo, send a
general
after rifles?”

“If he needed ’em bad enough he might of sent his whole damn outfit,” Bennie snorted. Eyeing Don Luis slyly, he said, “The little filly seems to be pretty much taken up with him, don’t she?”

“If this fellow’s Tano’s agent where’s the money?”

Bennie munched awhile, ruminating, recrossed his legs and said brightly, “It don’t stand to reason a guy like Descardo would be fool enough to come here by himself with that dough on him. He could of lost it, too — look at the shape he was in. Dead on his feet — ”

“Not too dead to fire that pistol!”

“Bored Juarez plumb center,” Bennie grinned, and then a sudden remembrance dragged him out of the chair and set him to tramping the room, blackly scowling. “I don’t want no trouble with that feller.”

Cordray said in a voice that was cold as a mackerel, “You don’t want any trouble with me, either, do you?”

Bennie, glaring, flung himself back into the abandoned chair. Then he hunched himself forward. “By Christ, I’m fed up with this trained seal act!”

“And are you also fed up with your share of the profits?”

“Share!” Bennie said. “You call them crumbs you throw me a ‘share’? You promised — ”

“At least they’re better than a cell in state’s prison,” Cordray smiled. “And when we’ve bagged Sierra I will keep that promise. Now clear out of here, Bennie, and let me think.”

After the still grumbling gun fighter had taken his departure, Lewis Cordray picked up the red hat, frowning at it, studying that greasy strap more closely. He stared quite a while before he turned the felt over to read the Words stamped into the sweat cracked band. Then he tossed the hat aside and went back to his chair to think again of Linda Farrel.

Whenever he gave time to this pleasant occupation he always saw, projected against the screen of his mind, the possessions her father had left her. Those broad acres of land with their hip-deep grasstops waving in the wind. The fat blocky cattle and those year-round creeks which flowed from the artesians Farrel had gotten during his pipe dream of hitting oil. These were the things he saw when he looked at her. These were the things he wanted to marry. It was time, he guessed, he had a little conversation with Burlingate, the banker.

Bending out from his chair he pushed open the door and called Juan. When the fat Mexican waddled into the office Cordray said, “Have Carablanco saddled. Oh yes, and tomorrow, Juanito, you will permit our guest to make a selection from my wardrobe, and,” he said, gesturing, “you will give him his hat. Under no circumstances, however, is he to get hold of a firearm. He is to remain in the house, and that applies to the señorita, also. Make sure of it.”

Bowing, Juanito took himself off and Don Luis, pulling out a desk drawer, picked up a big pistol whose grips held the shine of much handling. This was not a fancy iron but very practical. He scowled at the letters stamped into its butt and stared again at the chin strap of Descardo’s red hat.

He put the pistol back in the drawer and pushed it shut and locked it, thrusting the key in his pocket as he got up. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” he muttered sententiously and, catching up his own hat, headed for the stables.

• • •

Though Reno was a man not generally given to introspection, the discovery that he had unwittingly blundered into Cordray’s headquarters was of a sufficiently chilling nature that it crowded all extraneous thoughts completely from his mind. Usually he could grin at his troubles, for such was his way of turning aside an unpleasantness; but here was a thing he could not handle so casually. It was monstrous he should have come to the very place he had sought to avoid.

When he had taken those bags from Descardo’s-saddle he had never intended to complete the general’s mission. He had regarded that money as manna from a beneficent providence. Why, he’d risked his life for it!

What he needed was a drink.

God, but he could use one.

He scowled about him irascibly, swearing under his breath at the way things conspired against him. Look at the months he’d put in with Sierra, living like a dog in the hope of a chance to better himself. And now look what happened!

He threw off the blanket and pushed himself up only to discover again his nakedness and duck back under the covers, groaning and cursing at the scurviness of fate. What if the money wasn’t his — he had found it, hadn’t he? Earned it twice over. When Descardo had been killed that had cancelled Tano’s claim to it, if any could be so ignorant as to believe Sierra had one.

Christ, if ever a man was down on his luck — He broke away from this thinking, in a flash of rare clarity seeing himself as he was. He shuddered in revulsion and then began to shake weakly. But abruptly he sat up again, stiffening, startled.
Cordray
didn’t know who he was — Cordray didn’t know him from Adam’s off ox …

He commenced to feel better. All was not yet lost. So long as Cordray didn’t know him, didn’t know he’d come from Sierra, there was a fair to middling chance if he was careful he’d get out of this. They’d probably taken his clothes to clean; they were keeping him in bed because they thought he needed rest.

He wiped the sweat off his face and even managed a parched sort of smile. The money wasn’t his but it wasn’t anybody’s else that you could properly put a tag on. “Finders keepers,” he muttered, sinking back again. If he could just get away from this place now before Sierra or some other of his agents rode up to discover why the promised guns weren’t forthcoming.

Another startling thought rolled him onto an elbow. He thrust his feet to the floor and with the blanket around him went over and had a look through the window. This place wasn’t built in the hidalgo fashion of a square kind of box with a patio in the center; it was sprawled all over after the American manner with its outbuildings scattered like chicks around a hen. There was nothing which he had seen before. Now where in the hell was that shack he’d come up to?

He got back in the bed, worried again, excited, nervous. Be a fine situation if he couldn’t find that shack! Then he remembered the girl and breathed easier. She could tell him.

Where was she now? Why didn’t she come in here? Too embarrassed perhaps, now he’d got back his senses. But there would be time for that; plenty of time to find her after he got himself into his clothes again. He could sure do with a drink, though. His mouth tasted like an old sock had been wadded into it.

The hours dragged by. He fell into a doze and disquieteningly dreamed he saw Sierra bent over Descardo’s corpse. He seemed to be enumerating the things which were missing, the hat and black coat, the quirt and the pistol; and now Tano’s eyes leaped beyond to the horse and Reno heard his snarled curse when he discovered the bags were gone from behind the big black’s saddle. He saw Sierra grab the general’s dead shoulder, shaking it so vigorously Descardo’s head wabbled. “Quick, fool! Where are they? What has happened to my onzas?” To his horror Reno saw the general’s eyes come open. The lips in his dead face began to move and he said, “That borracho — that gringo jellybean took them.” Reno watched Sierra straighten. “Oho,” Tano said with a beautiful smile, “that is all right then. He goes to pay for my rifles.” Descardo laughed harshly. “He goes with your gold to buy a chicken farm at Sante Fe!”

It was the laugh that brought the American, wildly staring, bolt upright. The laugh was still in the room. It was Juanito chucking. “Come, sleepin head,” the fat man spoke to him in English. “I would feex up your peellows. All the morning you have cut the logs. Mira — look, I have come weeth your T-bones.”

Reno sank back, weakly, soaked with sweat, against the pillows. The dream was too vivid and the threat of it stayed in his mind like a burr snarled into the fuzz of a blanket. He stared at the Mexican speechlessly; then spoke in a cracked whisper, “Hombre, what day is this?”

“It is the Wednesday,” Juan smiled; and fear built its cold lump in the American’s belly. Wednesday — Jesucristo! It had been on the night of a Wednesday that Descardo had roared down into Boca Grande and had his Dorados shot to dollrags by the Federalista infantry! Seven days … Reno shuddered.

He tried to pull himself together. “I’ve got to have my clothes.”

“Si
. On the morrow, the patron says, eef you are strong enough.”

Reno scowled at the food the man had placed in his lap. He chewed at his lip. “Tonight,” he said stubbornly. “I will have ten pesos for you when you put them in my hands.”

The fat man hesitated, wanting the money but not Cordray’s anger. “Tomorrow — ”

“Tonight. I will make it twenty pesos, and twenty more if you can find me a drink.”

“The vino?”

“Whisky or tequila.”

Juanito rubbed his jaw, avarice shining in the slants of his eyes. “For thirty pesos I will try, señor.”

“Okay. Thirty pesos.”

“Thirty pesos and twenty are fifty pesos all told.”

Reno, scowling, commenced to eat. Juanito closed the door. The American was chewing the last mouthful of steak when the Mexican came back and, grinning, handed him a cup.

Reno sniffed and loosed a sigh. Tequila, God bless it. He put back his head and let it run down his throat, feeling it chase the coldness out of his belly. “The money, señor,” Juan said, leaning forward.

“Where are the clothes?”

“I could not find them, señor.”

Reno tossed the empty cup in a corner. “I cannot give you your money until I have my clothes. Look again.”

“But, General — ”

“Enough!” Reno said, and then blinked, his eyes contracting until their pupils grew bright as twin slivers of steel.
“What did you say to me?”

The man drew away from him, cheeks gray, his chins quivering. With a sudden frightened bleat he reached the door and scrambled through it.

Reno caught up the tray and hurled it after him, cursing. “The hat — the goddam hat!” he snarled bitterly. The general’s hat had betrayed him. They thought he was Descardo!

• • •

Opening his eyes in the bright glare of sunlight Reno felt more like himself until he recalled the events of the previous evening. Scowling, he threw back the blanket. With some care he flexed his wrenched shoulder and grimaced. There was no help for it now; he would have to play out the hand fate had dealt him.

Last night, after the fat man had gone, he had thought in desperation to depart through the window, but he had found it nailed shut. After adding up his chances he had gone back to bed. Now, getting up, careful to avoid the broken crockery of the cup, he went around to the hand-rolled glass of a tin framed mirror and considered his distorted reflection for some moments without enthusiasm. He’d lost weight. He’d lost a lot of it. But he could see that to a person who had never met Descardo the resemblance might stand up. Especially with that hat and with the quirt and the general’s pistol.

It was not a role he cared for, but if they were bound to put him in it he intended to play it for all it was worth. At least until he found that shack.

He stood a moment thinking.

Hearing someone coming he snatched the blanket off the bed and covered himself.

It was Linda. She said through the door, “Are you awake? I’m leaving some clothes here. When you’re dressed, if you feel hungry, come to the kitchen. Just follow the hall straight back from this door.”

He heard her steps going away. He waited to give her time enough. Then he pulled the door open, scooped up the clothes, and shut it. He carried the things to the bed and, dropping the blanket, began to get into them. The flare-bottomed narrow-legged trousers fit like banana skin across the seat and the lavender shirt was almost too tight to button, but he crammed himself into them. Then he pulled on-the boots, which were his own that had been fixed, and shrugged into the gilt-hung weight of a charro jacket. No underwear had been included, and no hat. It was the lack of his gun which galled him the most.

An old crone who looked about two-thirds Indian was puttering above the stove when he appeared. He could smell frijoles y chile in a skillet and there was chocolate in a graniteware pot and a stack of tortillas in the open oven. He didn’t see anything of Linda.

He pulled out a chair and sat down at the uncovered table. The old woman padded over and put down a cup and a fork and spoon and went back to the stove without saying a word. Despite the two open windows it was hotter than hell’s backlog. After fuming for a couple of moments in silence, Reno banged his cup on the table and in the best style of Descardo roared, “I have the thirst, woman!”