Adam Steele 34, page 9
‘Simpatico, Adam?’ she said, and then her frown became a smile that was even more fragile than the one he wore as she added: ‘You make another broma pesada, I think. One more of your sick jokes, I think?’
‘Don’t want the feller to get the wrong idea about me, Rosa,’ the Virginian answered. ‘Just because the first time we met I happened to holed his hand.’
Chapter Nine
THE MEXICAN’S NAME was Gregario Garrido and his dead partner had been Miguel Lozano. This much Adam Steele was able to elicit for himself from the opening burst of fast spoken Spanish. But then he picked out just the occasional word and had to trust Rosa Canales was giving him an honest account of what the older of the two knife men told her in response to the translated questions she asked of him.
The interrogation took place in the cramped dining room of Flora Waldorf’s boarding house. While Steele and Rosa ate a late supper of cold cuts and sweet potatoes and the fat woman bathed then dressed the bullet-shattered hand of Garrido.
The wounded man who was too despondent about his own situation to grieve over the death of his partner and the tight lipped woman who tended his injury sat on a sofa in one comer of the cramped room. The Virginian and the Mexican woman were both seated on one side of the table. A fifth occupant of the room was the tall and flabby, late fifties in age Melvin Ivers. Who had been insulted that Steele turned down his invitation to talk, and drink, in the saloon, resented that it was left to him to go rouse the gold grubber who acted as town undertaker and who had gotten drunk in the Post House, to come take care of the corpse, sulked for a while when Flora Waldorf started to tend the Mexican’s wound instead of seeing to his own bruises, then got angry and began to suck from the bottle he had brought with him after nobody wanted to listen to what had happened to him when Adam Steele and Rosa Canales were seen entering Fort Curry. Ivers sat at the end of the long and narrow table.
‘This man is Gregario Garrido and the one who you killed was Miguel Lozano,’ Rosa explained after an exchange of Spanish in the wake of the Virginian’s opening question. ‘They have worked for my father in past years. When it has been necessary for him to hire on extra men at the time of the rodeo … this means something else in your language, I think. The …?’
‘Round up?’ Steele suggested.
‘Sí.’ At the times of the round ups and the driving of the cattle to the market. This man I cannot recall, but I think I remember the other one.’
‘More your age and better looking, I reckon. Ask him if he knows how many other knife throwing vaqueros your pa hired on to round up this extra special maverick?’
‘You liken me to a cow, gringo!’
Steele swallowed a mouthful of food, sighed and answered: ‘Did I say cow, Rosa? Just ask him, uh?’
The woman’s query was short, but the answer was long: Garrido looking anxiously at Rosa Canales several times while his wound was dried and dressed – as if he felt that much he was saying reflected badly upon her. But whenever he seemed on the point of faltering she nodded for him to continue. Merely compressed her lips and caught her breath on occasion. And finally lost her appetite before she was through with the supper and while the nervous Mexican was still talking. Then Garrido shrugged his shoulders a number of times and Rosa sucked in several deep breaths before she began to translate – a look of concentration on her burned and blistered and peeling face as she worked at recalling all the man had said.
‘It seems I was wrong in putting a figure on how much Don Benito Canales values his only child, gringo. Not many times what I offer you to take me home. But precisely five thousand dollars. In dollars American, though. Not in the pesos, which is something, perhaps? Como quiera que – anyhow, Garrido and Lozano are the only two men my father has offered the reward to. Not as the vaquero, of course. But as the manhunters. With the cuchillo – the knife – instead of the gun. Garrido, he tells that he and Lozano are not skilled with the gun. With the knife, they would have beaten you – had you not been so quick with your fusil … your rifle.’
‘It figures,’ Steele growled, continuing to enjoy his supper as Flora Waldorf struggled up from the low sofa and came to the table.
‘I wasn’t friggin’ armed and them guys couldn’t have missed stickin’ their friggin’ stickers in me if I hadn’t done what they told me!’ Melvin Ivers slurred. And offered the bottle to the fat woman. Who took it and, like him, sucked the liquor from the neck.
‘He tries to salvar – to salvage some pride, that is all,’ Rosa said with a pitying glance toward the miserable Garrido. ‘We Mexicans value such a thing.’
‘It’s what comes before a fall, Rosa,’ Steele said, chewing and relishing the final piece of cold roast beef from his plate. ‘And if they hadn’t been so smart ass sure of themselves and used their fancy guns on me, maybe his buddy wouldn’t have taken the worse kind of tumble there is. And this feller wouldn’t have been left single handed.’
‘You want me to tell him how to kill you next time, gringo?’ Rosa asked bitterly, and deriving a brand of perverse satisfaction out of siding with another Mexican – albeit one on the other side in whatever conflict she was a part of.
‘If the situation ever comes up again, I reckon he’ll know, Rosa.’
‘You want a drink, mister?’ the fat woman asked, thrusting the bottle of rye at Steele. ‘Wash down the grub?’
‘He already said he don’t drink hard liquor, Flora,’ the saloonkeeper slurred.
‘Cup of coffee would be good, ma’am.’
‘I ain’t so sure I oughta supply you and the woman with nothin’ more until I seen the color of your money, mister?’
Ivers was the kind of man who was permanently drunk and kept himself in a more or less constant state of contented inebriation by drinking steadily. While the fat woman who ran the boarding house needed just a few fast shots to alter from sober crotchetiness to drunken intransigence.
‘Way this guy might’ve blasted me to Kingdom Come and didn’t do it, Flora, he ain’t gonna need to spend a cent in this town!’ Ivers insisted, and the power of his steady if blood-shot-eyed gaze at the fat woman forced her to remain in docile silence as she rose to her feet and moved unsteadily out of the room to go fix the coffee.
‘Where was I?’ Rosa Canales asked rhetorically, angry at the interruption and demanding to be the center of attention again.
‘You were saying your father sent this feller and his partner looking for you with their fancy knives and promised them five—’
‘To find me and bring me back home,’ Rosa cut in, and her anger faded fast as the threat of tears gave her dark eyes a moist look in the light of the kerosene lamp hung from the ceiling over the table. ‘And to kill Esteban if it was necessary.’
‘Hey, that young feller that was with you last time you come through Curry was called Esteban, wasn’t he?’ Ivers muttered with a frown of perplexity on his fleshy face.
This as Flora Waldorf re-entered the room, carrying a coffee pot and two cups that she set down on the table. And said sourly: ‘It must have been all of a week ago, Mel Ivers. I’m surprised you can remember that far back.’
Then she sat down beside him, snatched the bottle of rye from him, as he made to grab it back, snarled: ‘Part payment of the tab you say you’re gonna pick up for these people.’
The saloonkeeper blinked several times and shook his head vigorously, like he was trying to rid himself of some of the effects of his drinking. Then his mind fastened upon a memory of more recent origin than a week ago. And his voice was insistent as he said – swaying a little but able to keep his liquor-stained eyes fixed upon the Virginian’s face: ‘Wanna get my part told before I can’t remember it, mister. Him and his amigo, they been in my place since they reached Curry. Couple of hours, maybe. One tequila apiece and then they sleep at the damn table. Customers like them I can do without. But I sure as hell wish they’d stayed sleepin’. When they woke up, they start to ask me questions about strangers that been through town. Easy to answer questions on account of we don’t get many strangers through Curry. So I was able to tell the Mexicans that two of their kind were by here the other day. A young guy and his lady friend. Then, just as I was through tellin’ them this, lo and behold, you and the little lady I was talkin’ of come strollin’ up the street.’
He paused, swaying still and needing to concentrate on what he was doing as he switched his gaze from the impassive face of Adam Steele to the etched with anxiety features of Gregario Garrido. Rosa Canales saw an opportunity to continue with her translation of Garrido’s story, but remained in tight lipped silence after the Virginian shook his head as he pushed a brimful cup of coffee at her.
‘His amigo was the boss. Did some fast talkin’ in their lingo and then his amigo holds a knife in my gut while this one puts the friggin’ gag on me and ties my hands behind my back. Just to keep me quiet and outta their way at first, I figure. Then the lamp’s doused and the other guy goes up on the roof of my place.’ He reached out blindly, was given the only quarter full bottle now, and took a swig. Sighed, and swept his gaze over every face as he concluded: ‘Guess you all know the rest of it. When the other one gets his, this one gives me one hell of a bum’s rush for the door. And I’m sure as shit figurin’ I’m about to breathe my last. Did I thank you already for not blastin’ away at me, mister?’
He was on the point of becoming the maudlin, ingratiatingly appreciative drunk as he peered across the table at Steele.
‘Grateful for what you’ve told me, feller,’ the Virginian answered. ‘Which makes us even.’
Ivers punched himself in the center of the chest and protested: ‘My life is worth a hell of a lot more than that, mister!’
Then he took another swig from the bottle and abruptly passed out. One moment was sitting rigidly erect on the chair, then he rocked backwards and fell forward. And, with the smooth skill of long training, Flora Waldorf reached for the bottle and took it before it could fall from his loosened grip. While with her other arm she caught him by the scruff of the neck to break his fall and lower his head and chest gently to the table top.
‘It ain’t worth so much,’ the fat woman allowed with a degree of tenderness in her voice and on her face as she looked at the drunken man. ‘But there’s worse folks than Mel Ivers around in this world.’
Garrido said something and Rosa translated: ‘He wants to know what is going to happen to him?’
‘Finish telling me what he told you, Rosa,’ Steele instructed.
In response to the tacitly anxious query the injured Mexican directed at her, the woman shrugged her shoulders. Then frowned as she thought back to what she had been told and where she had got to before Ivers took over. Then:
‘There is not very much more. My father allowed a week to pass before he sends these men after me. Perhaps hoping I will return of my own accord. Or perhaps taking the time to decide if he really wants me to return.’
‘Garrido say that?’ Steele asked as he finished the cup of coffee and poured himself another.
‘No. He is just a hired killer, is he not? He would hardly—’
‘Best you stick to the facts for now, Rosa.’
‘Seguro. Okay. Garrido and Lozano have little difficulty in following us. And I think they do more of this kind of work than they do with the cattle. But he does not say this, either. What happened in the cantina – the saloon of this man – you have heard. Of course, they know you are not Esteban Chevez. From a distance and in the dark, they could not tell if you were a Mexican. But they know what Esteban looks like from working with him at De Raza Hacienda. They think that maybe I am your prisoner. Or my new lover after I tire of Esteban.’ She over-emphasized a grimace as she spoke this possibility. ‘Or that my father has hired other searchers for me and you are such a man. Whichever is the truth, they cannot believe their good fortune in you bringing me to them here. And they think the easiest way to get me away from you is to kill you. Loco hombres! He tells that they are worried by the way you carry the rifle. But still they must lucirse … show what skill they have with the knives. And look what that got them?’
She stared scornfully at the wretched Garrido. Who managed to inject a degree of pride into his heavily pocked face as he rasped:
‘Punto de honra, Señorita Canales.’
The woman’s voice was as contemptuous as her expression when she snapped: ‘A point of honor is what he says. He does not look so honorable now, uh? Less so for his—’
‘Luck of the draw, Rosa,’ Steele put in evenly. ‘He lost a partner. I just lost a horse.’
‘Loco!’
Flora Waldorf banged the now empty bottle down on the table top and complained: ‘It’s getting to be real late and seein’ Mel Ivers sleepin’ like a baby is startin’ to make me realize how much rest I’m losin’ since you people woke me up.’
‘Your house so I reckon you can go to bed whenever you please, ma’am,’ Steele told her.
‘If you think I’m goin’ to my bed with that murderer loose in my house!’ she snarled, stabbing a shaking finger at Garrido.
‘He won’t be around to cause you any concern,’ Steele assured her – and drew a gasp from each of the women and a low groan of alarm from the black-clad mad when he reached down at the side of his chair and brought the Colt Hartford into view. And when he stood up and clicked back the hammer of the rifle, Garrido begged:
‘Señorita Canales, quiero hablarle—’
‘Holy Mother of God, you can’t …’ Flora Waldorf gasped, suddenly sober.
‘He wants to talk to you, Adam!’ Rosa said.
The Virginian looked at each of them in turn as he canted the rifle to his shoulder, and expressed genuine surprise that what he had said and done had been misconstrued by the trio. And when he looked back at the black-clad, trembling man on the sofa he saw that Garrido had been so terrified he was to be shot down in cold blood that the crotch area of his pants had become darkly and damply stained. Then, as the acrid taint of urine permeated the already fetid with fear, body odor and bad breath atmosphere of the cramped dining room, Steele felt the final dregs of high tension drain out of him and was able to show a good humored smile as he said: ‘Tell him, Rosa.’
‘Adam?’
‘All I’m going to do is run him out of town. And I’m sorry I gave everyone the wrong idea.’
The fat woman was weak with relief that murder was not to be committed in her boarding house.
Rosa Canales gave a staccato voiced translation of what Steele had said and even before she was finished Garrido began to express his effusive gratitude and perhaps to offer obsequious apologies for his part in the trouble. But the Virginian cut in on incomprehensible Spanish to add:
‘Tell him I’m sorry it made him wet his pants. It was never my intention to take the piss out of him.’
Chapter Ten
GREGARIO GARRIDO RODE fast away from the town of Fort Curry. Heading out across the desert on the trail that stretched north-eastwards. Astride his own horse in his own saddle with all his own accoutrements. In the sheath and holster on his gunbelt was his own knife and his own bullet scarred but still serviceable Tranter revolver. He was not a rifleman.
He was in no mood or position to ask questions about what would become of the mount and gear of his late partner. Wanted only to be gone from this town – with just his life and his damaged pride if that was the way the taciturn American wanted it.
He had understood little of what Rosa Canales had said to Adam Steele while they were in the livery stable and the American said only enough to convey his orders – but he could guess from her tone and the scowl on her element ravaged face that she disagreed with giving him his freedom. Especially giving him back his knife and his gun as well. Then out on the street, when he was astride his black stallion and waiting for permission to leave, the woman had snapped a string of venom-dripping obscenities at him. Until a weeping fit choked back the words and she whirled to run across the street and into the boarding house.
Then Steele had said: ‘All right, feller. Move on out.’ And gestured with the rifle along the street toward the open trail beyond the town marker.
‘Muchas gracias; hombre,’ Garrido said with a hand raised to touch the brim of his black hat. ‘Buena fortuna. Otra vez, uh—’
‘I said to move on out,’ Steele replied, and slapped his free hand down on the rump of the stallion.
Which set the animal to galloping fast down the slope of the street: at a pace his rider made no attempt to reduce even though he had control of his mount after just a few yards. Perhaps, the Virginian reflected absently as he moved off at an easy walk through the settling dust billowed up by the pumping hooves of the bolting stallion, because Garrido did not entirely trust him. And was eager to race out of effective rifle range in the fastest possible time. But, once the Mexican was beyond a point where even the most fortunate of handgun shots could find a vital target, Steele ignored the man on the galloping horse.
And when he halted under the town marker and slowly tracked his unblinking gaze over the vastness of the brightly moonlit desert to the north, the west and the east of Fort Curry it was for a sign of the presence out there of another lone rider that he searched – and did not find.
But, he wondered some thirty minutes later, did he hear something that indicated the mystery man was still around: albeit not close by? This while he soaked his naked body in a tub of cooling soapy water in his spartanly furnished and not too clean bedroom on the upper floor of Flora Waldorf’s boarding house. Heard something, just as he was through carefully shaving the bristles off his blistered and peeling face, that sounded too much like a rifle shot to be anything else. Muted by great distance, but heard in the total isolation of the surrounding silence. From what direction the sound came it was not possible to tell. And so, with no supporting evidence upon which to build a theory while he lay on the narrow bed he shared with the Colt Hartford, the Virginian allowed his mind a free rein as he waited for sleep.
