The Red Sombrero (9 page)

“He is probably hunting for it,” Cordray said and, raising his voice, switched back again to Spanish. “Come, hombres! Though the bell may not go to mass it calls others. We will watch the shack and depend on God’s mercy.”

L
INDA
F
ARREL
heard the first horse go and, after a few moments of choked silence, the second. Without knowing who put the steel to either one or where those hammering hoofbeats were bound she was abruptly, forlornly, increasingly afraid. Intuition convinced her one of those men was Reno — probably the first. The other, she suspected, would be Bennie, as cold and deadly a man as she had met. There was something, elusive yet not quite buried, behind the Texican’s bleach eyed stares which both repulsed yet queerly fascinated her. Looks like a watch dog, Reno had said of him, and there was merit in that description. Caught by a sudden wonder she sank down upon the edge of her bed, startled by a new, completely unjustified conception of the man who claimed to have been her father’s friend.

Struggling with the sense of her own obligation she forced herself to thrust aside the veil of surface appearances and, with mouth gone dry, gazed astounded and deeply shaken upon the ugly corridors of thought which now were opening before her. Her mind, recoiling, tried to shut them out, to deny their validity and grope back to firmer ground but was unable. She understood the mocking cynicism she had caught in Reno’s voice when he had said with such callous indifference, “Sure. You go ahead and tell him to round up enough to get the debt paid.” He had seen right away the things she was only now beginning to glimpse.

Watch dog …

In the dark of the room with its piled-up shadows the words had a sinister sound, and she shivered. Why, if this spread was on the level, should there be any need of employing a watch dog? She had nothing but Reno’s word for it that Cordray was dealing with Sierra’s outlaws. But on his own confession this Reno was one of them. And the ring of truth had been in his words. She remembered her own later talk with Don Luis, his sympathetic politeness, his frowns and expressed outrage that the bank should have threatened foreclosure. And the scales fell away and she knew his glib words had been pretexts only, that he had no intention of gathering her cattle. That affair of Juarez assumed a new, dark significance.

A long while she sat until she heard hoofs again, a vast concourse of them, going south at full gallop.

She got up then, taking the combs from her hair, and, lighting the lamp, went across to the bureau. Running the brush through the rich brown crackle of her tresses she studied her face in the wavery glass. She was honest with herself. Leaving love completely out of it, how far could she trust Reno?

Inexperienced though she was, Linda Farrel was no fool. She was not ignorant of life or of the facts of procreation She had been brought up on a ranch surrounded by rough talking men who had not always been careful to hold down their voices. She knew her own capacities, the wild depths of despair and turbulence damned behind the façade of an unwanted woman; and she suspected that Reno had perceived these things too. He had deliberately roused her as though to make sure, and she had hated him for it. And yet … had she really?

She tried to still her pounding heart and evaluate her plight with a man’s detached logic, but her needs had been too long neglected. Reno, with his experiment, had discovered the truth of that also.

Reno. Reno. Reno!

He made a vivid image before her, a not particularly admirable one and yet a vision that still had the power to excite her. If you were a woman, she thought, and had got well into the tag end of your twenties without having had any personal contact with men you were in no position to consider copybook maxims. Or to exercise normal discretion.

She put the brush down and with quick, deft fingers put up her hair with more severity than usual. He either wanted her or he didn’t and only time could provide the answer. He wasn’t after her ranch — that was one thing in his favor. Yet for all his surface toughness there was a weakness in the man. It was in the lines of his wind-burned face, in the tones of his voice, intangible yet evident. She knew a drifter when she saw one. He was a man who had come down in the world. She wondered what he was running from.

• • •

Comic-opera colonel indeed!

When the smell of lifting dust and the hoof sound of departing horses assured him it wouldn’t be heard, Reno struck the saddle with an angry fist. He wasn’t sure which hacked him the most, to be called a buffoon by the likes of Don Luis or to be sold short by a two-faced female who had diarrhea of the jawbone. He saw one thing plain. That brush popping jezebel had gone blabbing to Cordray no more than he was out of the house!

It was so unique in his experience he did not rightly grasp the full significance of what was happening; all he knew for certain was he would like to beat somebody’s face in. Cut him out of his chance, would they? By God, he’d show them!

Then, hard on the heels of this outraged indignation, the gist of Cordray’s remarks suddenly hit him and he sagged, loose jawed and trembly. The deal was washed up. He had no prop to lean on now that Cordray had discovered his true relation to the general’s hat. A bluff was good only so long as —

Reno looked at his shaking hands and swore.

God, what he’d give for a drink right now!

Nobody had to tell him it was time to get out of here. All the signs and signalsmokes indicated he’d be lucky if he was
able
to get out. And all because of a blabber-mouthed spinster!

He grabbed up the reins and sawed Carablanco’s head around with no clear notion of where he was going or how he would get there. But as the horse wheeled and went down the breaking slope toward the wash, slipping and sliding, some vestige of hope returned to check that wild pace and Reno pulled up at the bottom to sit listening.

The sound of Tadpole’s departure, though dim, was still evident and Reno flung the horse back up the trail to the rim. Coming out of the brush he paused to catch their direction, then sent Carablanco at a high lope in pursuit. He could at least learn where that shack was.

With most of the fury drained out of him there was a chance, he saw now, he might have misjudged the girl — not that it made any difference. All he wanted was to get his two hands on those sacks and crack leather. It didn’t matter how Don Luis had found out he wasn’t Descardo; it was his possession of the knowledge that played hob with Reno’s plans. They’d shoot him down without compunction — probably alert the authorities if they failed to come up with him personally. The law in these parts would welcome the chance to cut down on one of Sierra’s lieutenants if for no other reason than the reward it involved.

No one but a chump without all his buttons would go plowing along in their wake like he was doing. He ought to be bored for the simples, he told himself — ought to be laying down tracks to get out of here; but hope died hard. He couldn’t abandon the thought of that gold while there remained the least chance of him getting it back again.

Several times he pulled up the stallion to listen and each time pressed on after hearing the hoofs. It was getting late now. The moon was gone behind clouds that were heavy-banked over him. And they were back in brush country made treacherous by rocks. He stopped again and, this time, no hoofbeats came back. Just the dust smell.

He put his weight on one hip, carefully studying the clouds, figuring how long the moon was like to stay behind him. He got off his horse. Leading Carablanco into a thicket he securely tied him. He took his bearings again and started off through the brush.

Now was the time to discover where that shack was. Depending on opportunity, he hoped to work in close enough to be in a position to lay hands on the gold if he got the right break. If he could take them by surprise … Anyway, it was worth trying. Tomorrow Tano Sierra might put in his bid for that money.

The thought of Sierra was like a drench of cold water. Reno’s teeth ground together so tightly it hurt. The nails of his fingers dug into his palms. He could feel the sweat start at the back of his neck. He broke into a run and then, cursing, slowed down again. His eyes raked the roundabout shadows. He saw the shack unexpectedly and stopped with the breath piling up in his throat.

It was hardly a rope’s throw ahead of him. And a lot less than that he saw the head of a man. He was crouched in a tangle of catclaw and wore the straw hat of a peon. He was watching the shack and as Reno stared at him the moon broke free and he saw that the man held a rifle.

The American melted into the brush. His eyes, raking the gloom, spotted another man and yards away to the right, behind a rock, still another. A little breeze sprang up and the moon disappeared into another bank of clouds.

Reno tactfully retreated. Very gingerly. Disgruntled.

When he got back to Carablanco he was seething with resentment, bitterly cursing the evil plight which so relentlessly had dogged his steps ever since that never-to-be-forgotten night in Montana when, in the roaring grip of uncontrollable passions, he’d shot and killed his best friend. Never had a man so unremittingly been the plaything of the malignant forces which misguided his destiny.

Nothing ever went right!

Jerking the reins from their slipknot, he slammed into the saddle, yanking the horse around, holding him down to a walk through savage pressure on the bit. When he was sure he’d got beyond earshot he used the quirt on Carablanco, driving him like a devil, yanking his head around for the turns, cursing the girl, cursing fate and the God who had made him; shouting, waving his arms like a madman, deriving in the depths of his own private hell a perverse satisfaction by mistreating the horse. It was childish, inexcusably cruel, but in the ecstacy of it he was avenging himself on Don Luis.

Time had no meaning, no direction, no distance. When the fury went out of him Carablanco was covered with lather and trembling. His breath came harsh as the sound of north winds and his eyes showed the white of terror.

Reno, looking at the animal, hated himself. Sick with revulsion he got down and walked the horse until its breath came more normal and its eyes lost their wildness. He rubbed the horse dry with grass tufts, pulled off the saddle and let the roan roll. Then he rubbed him again, if not contrite at least conscious of the stupidity of what he had done to him. “More of your damn craziness!” He shook his fist at the stars.

He walked the horse a while longer; then threw his gear on and mounted. He did not become maudlin as some do after drinking, but he was filled with the luxury of self pity. Must a man pay all his life for one mistake, one instant of temper? Was this the kind of justice meted out by a god who could weep at the fall of a sparrow? What did a man have to do to get right in this life? If it was crawl on his knees like a sniveling brat he’d stay wrong and to hell with you!

He looked around, eyed the sky and scowled, not knowing where he was except that he was someplace south of Tadpole headquarters. The moon was coasting through mackerel clouds leaving the earth shrouded in a kind of blue gloom that neither cheered nor helped much when it came to hunting landmarks. He could see a dim tracery of mountains down below him but he couldn’t gauge whether they were Mexican or gringo. He knew one thing though, he would never get loose of Sierra heading south. Be more like to run into the bastard. He didn’t want to tangle with Don Luis again either. He’d given up the last hope of getting hold of that money. All he wanted now was to get out of the country.

He pointed Carablanco north, going slowly, giving the big roan a chance to get back its strength. He wished the hell he had thought to get one of those rifles. But he wished more he had a drink. He’d been poisoning his system with the stuff for so long it was punishment to be without it. Every nerve in his body twitched and squirmed with the craving.

Abruptly he pulled up, reining into a thicket of cedar, eyes narrowing, hand dropping hipward. The night was filled of a sudden with the bawling of cattle. It was some minutes before he saw them crossing before him, traveling west. It was a pretty big bunch, perhaps a couple of thousand, strung out way to hell and gone. There were men traveling with them, vaqueros in Chihuahua hats like the men of Tano Sierra. They went past very close, hardly a hundred yards away, while Reno kept his left hand on the nose of Carablanco. These were not insurrectos; there was no glitter of gold encrusting their saddles.

Half a mile to the left he watched the men riding point swing the head of the herd into the south; he didn’t actually see the men do this but he saw the front of the drive being bent and he knew that the riders up there were causing it. South, toward the border.

He kept his place till the last of the stragglers and the men riding drag were well past and dissolved into mere blurry shadows. Wheeling the roan out into the open then he turned the horse east on their backtrail, confident at the pace they were traveling he would find what he wanted, and he did. Within minutes.

He swung down beside the fallen shape and, cupping a match under cover of his body, had a look at the brand. Broken Spur. He cursed softly. And then, surprised, wondered why he should care what happened to Spur’s cattle. He told himself he didn’t, but he got back in the saddle and rode bitter-eyed after them. Out of curiosity purely. Certainly not because the cattle belonged to that blabber-mouthed female. He wouldn’t cross the road to bring that dame a hatful of water!

He did not ride in the tracks of the cattle but well off to one side, keeping an eye on the heavens and staying a good mile behind them. If they held to their present direction the Broken Spur beef would soon be over the border.

And that was exactly where they went. There were no markers along here to confirm his suspicions but Reno didn’t need signposts to know when he was in Mexico. It was darker now too as great masses of stars — after the way of the moon — disappeared behind vapor where the clouds were closing ranks, and the wind had got up to buffeting gusts that swept through his clothes like searching fingers of ice.

He was about to pull off and wheel the roan back into the wastes stretching northward when he realized the herd was being turned that way also. He swore again with eyes puzzled. What kind of deal was this that men who’d gained the shelter of another flag would abandon it?