Benedict and Brazos 5, page 8
“Duke.”
“Yes.”
“Must you go?”
Benedict slipped his arms into his broadcloth coat and picked up his hat.
“Afraid so, Soldano. It’s almost midnight.”
The girl swung her bare legs over the side of the bed and bent gracefully to pick up her discarded shift. Benedict watched with regret as the garment covered the loveliness that had been his.
She went to him and slipped her arms around his waist. “Take me with you. After you have gone I will not be able to bear this evil town. Take me somewhere so I may ...”
Benedict pressed his fingers against her lips as a soft footfall sounded in the hallway. His right hand dropped to his gun butt as the porcelain knob turned. But the lock held the door fast.
Hard knuckles rapped on wood. “Señorita Gabriel, open this door immediately.”
“Captain Tarrega!” the girl whispered. “Quickly, Duke, the alcove.”
Tarrega’s angry voice sounded again as Benedict stepped behind the curtains. “Open this door immediately!”
“Coming, Captain,” Soldano called. She pulled on a robe, kicked her dress under the bed. Then she turned up the lamp, hurried to the door and unlocked it. Tarrega strode in, black eyes cutting around the room. Disappointment was naked in his face when he turned to the girl.
“The gringo, Benedict. Where is he?”
Squinting through the chink of curtain over Tarrega’s shoulder, Benedict was impressed by the convincing puzzlement in the girl’s face when she replied:
“Señor Benedict, Captain? The man who attacked Kitty?”
“That is who I mean. Have you seen him? Now answer me truthfully.”
“Captain, I know nothing of this man.”
Tarrega started to speak, stopped. Benedict followed the captain’s gaze and his heart skipped a beat. His string tie was on the bedside table!
Tarrega took a step towards the table, stiffened, reached for his gun. He whirled as Benedict flicked the curtains aside. There was a little two-shot derringer in Benedict’s fist. Tarrega’s eyes bugged wide but he lifted his gun clear of leather.
Benedict realized that nothing would stop Tarrega but hot lead. The captain’s gun was almost to firing level when Benedict rammed the derringer into his stomach and fired both balls.
The cracks of the wicked little sneak gun were muffled by Tarrega’s body. He dropped the six-gun. Then, his eyes bulging in grotesque horror at the face just inches from his own, Tarrega remained standing for an incredible ten seconds before life left his eyes. He slumped to the floor.
Stepping over the corpse, Benedict crossed the room and pressed his ear to the door. No shouts of alarm, no running feet. The untalented Sally was singing again and the paying customers were letting her know what they thought of her efforts.
Only when Benedict put the derringer away did he look at the girl. He expected to see horror and revulsion in her face but Soldano seemed almost composed.
“He was an evil man, Duke. He will surely burn forever for the blood on his soul.”
Benedict went to her, slipped an arm around her shoulders. “This puts a different complexion on things, Soldano. You’d better get dressed.”
“Why, Duke?”
“You’ll have to come with me now—you’re involved in Tarrega’s death.” He patted her back. “Hurry, we can’t waste any time.”
The girl dressed quickly as Benedict dragged Tarrega’s body out of sight in the alcove. “Which way will we be going?” she asked.
“East.”
“There is a ferry slip along the river several miles down. It would be possible for me to get passage there to take me down to Mission ... but I do not have quite enough money.”
“You’ve got it, Soldano.” Benedict smiled. “I owe you that much at least. You know, I would like to take you with us, but ...”
“I know. I understand how it is with men. But I have another idea also. These supplies you spoke of that you must have—it is possible I could get them from the pantry downstairs.”
Benedict frowned. “Wouldn’t that be too risky?”
“I think not. The pantry is separate from the kitchen, and has its own doorway.”
After a moment’s deliberation, he said, “What we need mainly are tinned goods, beans and such. Perhaps an extra water canteen if it’s available—but don’t take any foolish chances.”
“For you, querido mio, I will take any chance,” she assured him. Then, taking a calico sack from a drawer, she hurried out.
During the anxious time she was gone, Benedict stood by the partially open door, listening for the first sound that would indicate the girl had been caught raiding the pantry. But no such sound drifted up and he smiled with relief when he saw Soldano hurrying along the corridor toting the loaded sack.
“I have had yet another good idea while I was downstairs, Duke,” she panted excitedly as she handed him the sack. “Uno momento.”
She was gone again. Puzzled, Benedict waited by the door. A minute passed. He heard two girls go by. talking. Then Soldano returned. Her arms were full of clothing topped by two big sombreros.
“Our disguises,” she said triumphantly, dumping the clothes on the bed. “These belong to Jose and Miguel, the barmen, but I am sure they would not begrudge their loss if they knew the purpose. Do you not agree, Duke?”
“Soldano, you’re amazing.”
She blushed with pleasure, kissed him, then turned to the bed and picked up a gray sombrero.
“Try this on, querido. I think you will make a fine Mexican.”
Two big-hatted Mexicans, one tall and one short, crept down the outside stairs of the Casa Grande Cantina and moved swiftly across the yard, then were swallowed by the black mouth of the alley.
They covered half the distance to the old corral on the southern edge of town without incident, then came to a lighted side street that had to be crossed. They were almost across when three gray-clad Rurales emerged from a building and tramped towards them.
Immediately the taller of the two “Mexicans” dropped his calico sack, tripped over it, fell on his face and mumbled drunkenly. His short companion swiped at him, missed, half-stumbled and swore at him in fluent, high-pitched Spanish.
The Rurales gave them no more than a contemptuous glance. “Drunken pigs!” one snorted, and led the way into the building to search for the gringo Benedict.
Staggering to their feet, the drunken pair stumbled to another gloomy alley, where, instantly sober, they broke into a swift run.
They sighted another searching Rurale half a block from the corral, waited behind the protection of a crumbling old adobe wall until he disappeared, then hurried on to where Benedict’s black waited in a clump of hackberry.
Benedict led the horse into the starry darkness beyond the town before mounting up. Then, his arms around a slim waist, he jabbed the black’s flanks with his heels.
The wind shifted, blowing strongly from the southwest as Duke Benedict and Soldano Gabriel left Martinoro behind them and rode swiftly through the night along the high red bluffs of the Rio Grande.
Yellow water sliced against the dark hull of the keel boat that moved ponderously away from the ferry slip into the current. Disheveled and grumpy at being dragged out of bed before dawn, but softened up by Benedict’s dollars and disciplined by the sharp Benedict tongue, the grizzled boatman worked his rough hands on the tiller and peered through the low river fog.
His solitary passenger stood in the bows looking back, and it wasn’t only the drifting mist tatters that were blurring her vision. As the craft slowly gathered speed, Soldano Gabriel had the strange sensation of being outside herself. It was as if she were an observer looking on at a young girl on a bitter-sweet Texas morning leaving behind all she’d hated and feared for so long ... and saying goodbye to the one man she’d loved for too short a time. Her heart went out to the dark-eyed girl, yet she understood that her life and the years ahead would be richer for the memory of her tall and dashing lover.
The girl lifted her kerchief to wave a final time at the receding shore, and now Soldano was that girl again and her pain was in her own breast.
“Adios, muy amado mio,” she called softly. “Vaya con Dios.”
A dark arm lifted on the shore, then the tall rider on the big black horse shimmered in her sight and was gone.
Adios ...
Eight – Compadres
“Quiet, Bullpup, it’s the Yank.”
The big dog stopped barking at Brazos’ command, but being no admirer of Duke Benedict he growled in annoyance at the interruption to his early morning slumber as the rider came into camp and stepped down.
Brazos set his rifle aside. “You took your sweet time.”
Benedict looked hurt. “Now that’s the sort of welcome a man appreciates after risking his neck a dozen times for a miserable sack of provisions.”
Brazos stood reproved. A long, anxious wait with no other company but a venomous badman and a pack of coyotes that had yipped and howled along Rainbow Canyon all night long had honed his nerves to a fine edge.
“You run into trouble?” he said in a soft tone.
Stretching luxuriously in the first shafts of sunlight peering over the canyon rim, Benedict said, “You could call it that.”
“What happened?”
“A disagreement with Captain Tarrega.”
“That cold-eyed little polecat!”
“Ah!” Benedict waved an admonitory finger. “One must not speak ill of the departed.”
Brazos’ blue eyes widened. “He’s dead?”
“Extremely.”
“You killed him?”
“Yes."
“Well, I’ll be a dirty name.”
“Bullfeathers!” Race Sackett said from the blackjack tree where he’d been tethered all night. “You sayin’ you rode into that nest of Rurales, beefed Tarrega and come sashayin’ back here without so much as a scratch to show for it, Benedict? That’s hogswill if ever I heard it.”
“Riding with Bo Rangle, you’d be a man who has heard plenty,” Benedict replied easily. His fingers traced a thin red line down his cheek where Kitty Flynn’s raking red nails had grazed him. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t exactly escape without a scratch, but that’s another story.”
Brazos put a sharp stare on him. “You got me curious, Benedict. Let’s hear the rest.”
“Reb, you’re a little too young and much too naive to hear it. Besides, it would take a great deal of time to give it due justice, and time is a commodity in rather short supply at the moment. You see, I left Martinoro too hurriedly to take the precaution of covering my tracks. By now Tarrega’s men have discovered his body, have come to certain obvious conclusions, and will soon be hot on our trail.
“Damnation!” Brazos snapped. “Why in hell didn’t you say so right away. What’ll we do?”
“Run,” Benedict smiled.
Camp was struck in record time and the three horsemen kicked the dust of Rainbow Canyon into a cloud and drummed swiftly southeast.
They were at the Rio Grande thirty minutes later and rode a mile along the growling red torrent until reaching a ford. After a brief delay to ensure that the far side was free of Mexican border riders they reined their horses into the stream. The horses grew nervous when the full force of the current hit them, but with trouble behind and long miles ahead, the riders forced them on, and soon hoofs found solid footing in red river sand.
Hank Brazos was the first into Mexico.
Campfire flames fingered the chill air of the Big Bosques with blue smoke when Jose Zacario was disturbed from his solitary musings by his ’breed segundo, Slade Talco.
“Si?” he grunted.
“A signal from below. Rangle comes.”
“Bueno.”
Talco turned away on bowed legs and walked across to the fire where Rangle’s three henchmen were taking turns roasting a haunch of venison on a spit. Firelight sparkled on the tequila bottle in Zacario’s hand as he lifted it to his lips and took a deep swallow.
From the far side of the camp, where Zacario’s bandidos not on lookout or sleeping off tequila were squatting around a roaring fire, came the sounds of a guitar. A man sang an old Andalusian folk song that had been brought across the seas two centuries ago by the Conquistadores.
Zacario, a fat, thick-shouldered man of forty with the bloodiest reputation and shortest temper in Chihuahua, knew the tune well. His head cocked, he hummed along with the music for a minute, beating time on a rock with his high-heeled boot. Then he stopped abruptly with a frown and took another slug of tequila. It was for others to sing and to dance. There were problems and uncertainties for a bandido leader. The time for Jose Zacario to smile and to enjoy music was yet to come.
The music stopped abruptly as a tall, wide shouldered American rode in and stepped off his weary horse. Zacario noted that his big-hatted bandidos watched Bo Rangle with both hope and wariness. Like Zacario, they were still not too sure about the gringo with the fearsome reputation who had only recently become the bandido Chieftain’s partner.
Rangle’s henchmen, Lee Trogg, Ned Cassidy and Pinky Gist greeted their leader boisterously as he swaggered between the campfires with a lunging walk that emphasized the man’s enormous physical power and energy. During Rangle’s three-day absence from the Jaguar Springs stronghold his men had found things dull with little to do but drink tequila and look at ugly Mexes.
“Sackett back?” Zacario heard Rangle ask, and he saw the annoyance and puzzlement in Rangle’s face when the men shook their heads.
“Any message from him?” Rangle’s voice was deep, vibrant.
“Nary a word, Bo,” runty Pinky Gist said. “Looks like he mightn’t be comin’ back.”
“The smell of gold would bring that hombre back from Hades,” Rangle said.
The magic word “gold” lit the faces of the three renegades and the bandits who were listening.
“Everythin’ look all right, Bo?” hulking Cassidy asked eagerly. “About the train I mean.”
“Could be,” Rangle said, looking up to where Zacario sat against the black backdrop of his cave. “Tell you about it after I’ve talked with Zacario.”
Zacario greeted the renegade with a soft, “Welcome back, compadre,” as Rangle walked up to his fire. Zacario offered the bottle. “Something for the dryness?”
Rangle took the bottle wordlessly. He tipped it to his lips and quickly lowered its level by two inches.
“A large dryness,” Zacario commented.
“Yeah.”
Standing tall against the inky blackness of the Mexican night sky with the yellow fire glow splashing over him, Bo Rangle looked every inch the embodiment of the lethal reputation that had preceded him into Mexico. Rangle, the marauder leader whose name had come to be a curse to both North and South during the American Civil War, was about thirty with a long, strong-boned face. His coal-black hair grew over the collar of his buckskin jacket and his prominent green eyes held an almost hypnotic intensity. This man who’d made murder his craft strode through life secure in the knowledge that in his chosen field he had few peers.
“Well?” Zacario was forced to ask after a silence. “You have learned something?”
Rangle gave one jerk of his head. “The gold train to Villa Madera leaves San Cristobal next Friday around midnight and should be at Pierro Pass around ten Saturday mornin’. It’ll be carryin’ fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of gold dust.”
Jose Zacario was impressed. Many times the bandido had considered attacking one of the occasional gold trains that ran the dust from the mining town of San Cristobal to the city of Villa Madera, but shipment details were closely guarded secrets. He’d formed his liaison with Rangle only because the marauder had guaranteed to get the necessary information.
“There can be no doubt?” Zacario said eagerly, climbing to his feet.
“No doubt. But before you get too het up, Zacario, here’s somethin’ else—the train’s gonna be under heavy guard.”
“Why, is it not always so?”
“It’ll be extra heavy this time. Federales.”
“Federalistas!” For a moment Jose Zacario was sober at mention of the tough Mexican soldiers who made life so difficult for simple, church-going cutthroats like himself. But he brightened immediately when he thought of the highly effective plan they had worked out for taking the train. He shrugged. “So, Federalistas, Rurales, mine guards—it is of no consequence. Not at Pierro Pass it is not.”
“You could be right. Here, give me another shot of that bottle, Zacario. I got some catchin’ up to do.”
Puzzlement stole over Zacario’s yellow face as he watched Rangle drink. Although the gringo’s news meant riches for them all, he did not seem pleased.
“Is something amiss, compadre?” he asked. “Your spirit seems heavy.”
“Nothin’ wrong with my spirits,” Rangle growled, and he spoke the truth. When the prospect of blood and carnage was in the air, Bo Rangle grew taut and surly, hungry for the rip and gush of violence that was the stuff of life to him. In San Cristobal he’d tortured a mine employee to learn about the train, and had slit the man’s throat. On the long ride back across the mesquite flats he’d gunned a vulture out of the sky. A jackrabbit had collected a Rangle bullet between alarmed bounds. But these small kills had left him unsatisfied. He would be this way until blood-letting at Pierro Pass had satisfied his lust.
“Perhaps another drink, Señor Rangle?”
“Mebbe later,” Rangle said, turning away. “My boys are waitin’ to hear the news.”
“As you wish.”
Rangle drew his gun and spun it absently on his finger as he went down the slope. His eyes swung south and he wondered what was keeping Sackett. Race was invaluable when lead was flying, but mean as a rabid wolf when things were slack. To keep Sackett from tangling with Zacario or one of his men while Rangle was at San Cristobal, Rangle had sent him up to Martinoro to get his fill of whisky and Mexican girls. But he should have returned by now. Rangle scowled. Sackett was too good a man to lose.
