Bandit's Embrace (The Durango Family) (7 page)

“Monterrey? Why in blue blazes would we go to Monterrey? I figured the ranch was close by—”

Romeros gestured toward the brand on the stallion’s flank. “Did I forget to tell you about the small birthmark? It skips every other generation; the grandfather had it, the boy, too.”

Bandit turned in his saddle, looked back at the pinto’s hip. Of course the brand was a flying falcon. He searched his memory for something he couldn’t quite recall. “Where is this birthmark?”

“On the back of the left hand,” Romero said. “I know an expert tattooist who’s recently come to Monterrey, an old sailor.”

A chill went down Bandit’s back. “Oh, my God!”

“Is something the matter, Texas? You look a little pale. Afraid of a tattoo needle?”

“Now wait just a damned minute—”

“There’s no other way, cowboy. If the port-wine stain birthmark on the back of the hand is missing, the family will never accept you as their missing son.” A thought seemed to occur to him. “Since you crossed the border, has anyone noticed your hands, anyone who might recall later that you didn’t always have that birthmark?”

He remembered the beautiful black-haired girl kissing the backs of his knuckles, commenting on his strong, square hands. “No,” he lied. “No one’s been close enough to notice my hands.”

“Bueno!”
The foreman smiled and whipped up his horse. “It was too dark back at the cantina for anyone to get a good look at your hands. I’ll tell the vaqueros it was only when I got you in the light that I saw the mark, realized you must be the missing heir!”

Bandit had severe misgivings as they loped through the darkness toward Monterrey. But he suppressed the doubt that gnawed at him like a prairie dog at a buffalo-grass root.

Hours later, as the pair dismounted before a tumble-down shack in the slums of Monterrey, Bandit still had misgivings. When they entered, he looked over the snaggled-toothed old Cockney. “Are you sure you’re a tattoo expert?”

The old sailor cackled with glee as he ushered them in. “Lord love ye, gov‘nor! Of course old Tim knows what he’s doin’! I’ve tattooed in every port in the world!” He rolled up first one sleeve then the other, displaying a writhing dragon, a heart with a dagger through it.

Romeros sneered as he looked around the cluttered, filthy place. “Someone told me of you. Can you do birds? A falcon?”

“Can I do birds!” He reached down to pull up his worn trousers. “See this? There’s an old sailor’s superstition that a man who has sea gulls tattooed ‘round his ankle need never fear death by drowning!” He peered up at Romeros. “You’d like a nice sea gull for yourself, gov’nor?”

Romeros made a gesture of annoyance, stuck a fresh match in his mouth. “Not me! Him!” He nodded toward Bandit. “And it has to look like a birthmark. Give me a scrap of paper and I’ll try to draw it from memory.”

Bandit watched as Romero took a stub of pencil, then sketched a tiny falcon in full flight while the old man readied his needles, his dyes.

Bandit looked critically at the design. “I think it’d be a little smaller than that, the wing span a little bigger.”

Romeros snorted in annoyance. “How would you know? But now that I think of it, maybe you’re right, Texas. It’s been a long time. . . .”

He began sketching again, and when the old man had his needles ready, Romeros had the design finished. “Old man, if it doesn’t look like a port-wine birthmark when you get through, I’ll not pay you!”

The old man cackled with delight as he bent over Bandit’s big, square hand. “And what, may I ask, is this all about?”

“You may not ask,” Romeros snapped. “Just do the tattoo.”

The old man sketched it out on the back of Bandit’s hand. “Is that it?”

Romeros pursed his lips, thinking. Bandit said, “I think maybe it should be a little more to the right; maybe just above the middle knuckle.”

The half-breed foreman turned his dark gaze toward him. “Did I tell you that?”

“How else would I know?” Bandit ask innocently, and then bit his lip against the sting of the needles. An hour later, a tiny falcon no larger than a Yankee dime flew across the back of his knuckle.

The swarthy Romeros examined it critically, grunted with satisfaction. “Old man, you do good work.”

Bandit suddenly felt very weary, very guilty. “I think I’ll wait outside, smoke a cigar while you pay the man, Romeros.”

“Sí,
I’ll take care of things in here.”

Bandit sauntered outside, took a deep breath of fresh April air to banish the close sourness of the tiny shop. He patted the blue-eyed horse’s silky nose. “Good boy! Looks like we’re both going home after all. I’ll bet you’ll be glad to be back.” He felt a thrill of anticipation.
Home. I’m going home. I’ve never had a real home before.
Somehow, he already felt as if he belonged at Falcon’s Lair.

He adjusted his red satin, sleeve garters, wondered if elegant Spaniards wore those, decided not. He examined the back of his left hand as he reached for a cigar, a match. It was good work, all right. But did it look enough like the real one to fool a grieving father?

He flinched as he remembered, then struck a match to light his slender cigarillo, cupped his hands around the flame. The tiny ring gleamed on his right pinky finger.
Forget-me-not. . . .
He almost seemed to smell the slight scent of wild violets, to see her pale, delicate face with its smoky lavender eyes.

He ought to throw that damned little ring away. It wasn’t very valuable. Yet even as he thought it, he knew he never would. Now that he was going to be Tony Falcon, could he claim her? She wouldn’t want him, that high and mighty miss! But Mexican girls were under the control of their papas and he had a feeling her papa would be very interested in an offer from a rich, powerful man of good family. After all, she was past the age when most Mexican girls had already married.

Bandit shook out the match, tossed it away, and leaned against the rail and smoked. Absently he felt for the little lucky coin. Maybe it would bring him luck after all. He wondered what it had been that his mother was trying to tell him in her last moments, when she’d put it in his hand. “Sokol,” she had gasped. Was it the name of a town, a street . . . his father?

The big pinto nuzzled him affectionately and he scratched it, enjoying the taste of the cigar. “We’re alike, Blue Eyes.” Bandit grinned crookedly at the horse as he rubbed it between the eyes. “Blue eyes on a horse are as out of place, I reckon, as blond hair and blue eyes on a dark, Injun face.” His mother had been Czech and Apache. He didn’t even know who had fathered him, much less his pedigree. Maybe it was ironic that a mongrel like him was moving into a blue-blood’s spot. With a trace of regret, he thought about the real Tony Falcon, and imagined the sad family that was soon to be his own. He turned and looked toward the shop. “What in hell is keepin’ him? They must be arguing over the money.”

Inside, Romeros blinked at the tattooer, who shook his head at the offer of coins. “What do you mean, it isn’t enough?”

The old Cockney cackled, then grinned through his gapped teeth. “You think I didn’t recognize that brand, gov’nor? I don’t know what your game is, but I knows that Falcon cattle brand. I figure there’s money in whatever you and your young
americano
cowboy are planning.”

Romeros struggled to appear casual as he held out the money. “It’s blackmail, is it?”

“Lord love ye!” The old sailor scratched himself. “Now, that ain’t a nice word, is it? I’ll take your money, bloke”—he held out his hand—“but if you don’t drop by regular like and give me more, maybe someone at the big ranch be interested in hearing my story.”

Romeros’s heart seemed to knot up inside him. His one chance at power and money. He’d waited so long for this, no greedy tramp would stop him. “All right then.” He nodded. “I’ll bring more next week.”

As he handed over the coins, he deliberately dropped one and it rolled under a table behind them.

“Gov’nor, I’ll get it!” The tattooist turned, knelt, and fumbled under the table. “I’ll get it!”

Very slowly, Romeros reached down into his boot. There would never be enough money to satisfy the greedy little man, and worse than that, when he got drunk, he might tell the whole world about tonight’s happening. Romeros could not allow that. His hand closed over the hilt of the sharp, narrow blade called a stiletto.

As the Cockney groped under the table, his back to him, Romeros brought the steel blade out of his boot, where the dim light caught it. He shivered with anticipation and excitement, felt his manhood come erect. The dagger is much like a man’s sex, he thought, hard, ready to penetrate soft, warm flesh. But one act is the giving of life; the other, the taking of it.

As quiet as Death itself, he moved behind the little man, his heart pounding in sexual arousal, his breath quickening. If the penetration were not done quickly, carefully, the grimy little man would cry out, alerting the big
Texian
who was just decent enough to try to save the blackmailer’s life. It wouldn’t take much to get that cowboy to back out of this deal altogether.

The grimy little man never even looked up as Romeros approached his back. With one quick movement, the foreman clasped his hand over the startled man’s mouth even as he jammed the slender blade between his ribs, right into his heart. The Cockney gasped once, tumbled over—dead before he hit the littered floor. He lay there, blood welling up warm around the handle. The sea gulls on his dirty ankle looked faded.

“You’re right,” Romeros said softly as he smiled down at the corpse, “you don’t ever have to worry about drowning.” He leaned over, retrieved his dagger, wiped it carefully on the dead man’s ragged shirt, then took the money from his clenched fingers. Romeros was desperate as always to pay his gambling debts, so he took all the money he found in the place. But anyway it was better if this looked like a murder-robbery. Quickly he pulled out a drawer here and there, scattered a few coppers around before he went outside, closed the door behind him.

The Texan frowned, the cleft of his chin shadowy. With a little imagination, maybe he did look a little like the Falcons. “What kept you? Trouble over the fee?”

“A little. But we reached an agreement.”

They mounted up.

The cowboy said, “Suppose he decides to tell someone?”

Romeros shrugged as he spurred his black horse, turned back north. “Don’t worry about it. Now, let’s get out to the Falcon’s Lair. I can hardly wait to see the old man’s face when I bring in the son he’s been searching for these sixteen years!”

Ringo dismounted to squat and stare at the faint tracks crossing the desolate border-country landscape before turning to look up at his two mounted companions. “I swear that bastard is headin’ straight into Mexico just like we thought.”

God, he needed a drink! His hand shook so as he tried to roll a smoke that he spilled most of the tobacco. So this is how old gunfighters end up, he thought bitterly as he lit his smoke. Head of a gang that consists of two idiots.

Petty shifted his plump body in the saddle, the gray jacket no longer buttoned over his paunch. “We been a long time on his trail. You suppose he’s still got the payroll?”

Big ’Un scratched his dirty neck under the old blue Cavalry jacket. “You stupid Reb! Now just what in the hell you think he’d do with it? He struck me as a pretty smart hombre. That blond bastard wouldn’t be loco enough to stop and have hisself a high-heeled time with our money!”

“Nagnab it, don’t call me stupid, you damned Yankee!” Pettigrew ran his fingers through his tangled beard. “I figure maybe he don’t even know he’s carryin’ the payroll!”

Ringo sighed and stuck the cigarette in his mouth, swung up on his horse. “You two stop that arguin’,” he said automatically as he had a million times in the past six years. “That hombre must know. Why would he have taken the Kid’s horse with the saddlebags if he didn’t?”

Big ’Un spat tobacco juice, and it dribbled down his chin. “Well, Pettigrew, I hope to Gawd when we finally get our money back, you buy yourself some new duds. That gray Reb jacket ain’t fit fer a dog to sleep on.”

“Ah might say the same for that blue one of you’n,” Pettigrew drawled acidly. “Looks like you’d be ashamed to advertise that you was one of Sherman’s Bummers.”

Ringo tipped his hat back with shaking fingers. “Stop it, you two,” he growled. “War’s over and best forgot.”

“Spoken like a man who stayed home while better men was killed,” Pettigrew drawled, taking out his gold watch and snapping open the face. “It’s gettin’ late, Ringo. I don’t cotton to crossin’ over. You know what’s on the other side. The money ain’t worth my hair.”

Ringo stared at the river ahead of them. The Rio Grande. A mile wide in spots and an inch deep. Too thick to drink and too wet to plow. He hated his two companions and yet he needed them as they needed him. It was their need that had held them together for more than five years. Like killer wolves, more dangerous because they ran in a pack. “I swear I knew it was a mistake to stop in Bandera the other night. Didn’t I tell the Kid it was a mistake?”

“I think them was your very words.” Big ’Un scratched himself again.

“Well, it was me tried to keep the Kid from buyin’ that damned horse from the Comancheros,” Pettigrew reminded them, slipping the gold watch back in his vest. “Bad choice. Anybody seen that stud would remember it, make us easy to trail.”

“That’s at least in our favor.” Big ‘Un unbuttoned the ragged blue jacket and mopped his sunburned neck with his bandana. “Anybody’s seen that horse’ll remember it. All we gotta do when we cross is keep askin’.”

Pettigrew looked across the river uneasily, then back to Big ’Un. “You loco damned Yankee! Ain’t you heerd the Kickapoo, the Lipan, and the Mescalero is holed up on the other side, safe in Mexico? I ain’t t crazy enough to ride right into that hornet’s nest!”

“Then don’t, Reb.” Big ’Un sneered. “Me’n Ringo’ll do ‘er alone. Twenty-five thousand splits bigger two ways than three! I guess all you got guts for is stealin’ watches off gentlemen.”

A nerve in the short man’s jaw twitched. His dirty hand clenched on the cantle of his saddle, and he defended himself hotly. “That officer probably stole it his own self. And anyway, you damned Yankees did worse than that!”

Ringo sighed loudly. “I swear I get weary of hearin’ you two fight the war over and over again. Don’t you never stop?” He ran his tongue over his cracked lips, thirsting for a drink. He only had two bottles in his saddlebags. He decided to ration it out in case they didn’t find any cantinas in the next day or two.

“You expect me to forget what Sherman’s Bummers did to the South?” Pettigrew drawled.

“You wasn’t exactly no hero your ownself.” Big ’Un laughed, spat tobacco juice in a brown spray. “You was at Fort Pillow, wasn’t you? We all heard what them Tennessee troops did to the nigger soldiers when they overran the place!”

“And would have done more,” Pettigrew flung back, “if a few officers like that uppity Shawn O’Bannion hadn’t stopped us! I reckon we showed them niggers they shouldn’t put on Yankee blue and fight agin their owners.”

“You piece of pore white trash,” Big ’Un said. “You was just an overseer; you never owned no niggers!”

“God dammit, you two!” Ringo felt like pistol-whipping both of them. “I swear if I ever get my share of that payroll, I’m gonna light a shuck and never see neither of you again!”

Big ’Un rolled his chew from one side of his mouth to the other. “Make that double for me, pard,” he said, “I ain’t never been so sick of anyone as I am of Petty. I think we should break up anyways once we get our hands on that payroll.”

Ringo studied the terrain. He needed these two extra guns right now. But once they’d gotten that payroll back, was there a way he could get rid of these two, keep it all for himself?

Petty combed his fingers through his dirty beard absently. “You think there’s any chance the Army’s given up the search?”

Big ’Un laughed. “With a big payroll taken right out from under their noses and the commander’s mother killed? I tol’ the Kid it was 100 risky and not worth it. Didn’t I tell the Kid that?”

“Them was your very words,” Ringo said soothingly, “‘Kid,’ you said, ‘we’ll never get away with it. They’ll have the soldiers from every fort in Texas lookin’ for us.”’

Pettigrew took out his watch again, looked at it. “It won’t be dark for hours. Why don’t we wait so’s the Injuns ain’t as apt to spot us?”

Big ’Un took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his bald head. “‘Cause we can’t follow a trail in the dark, stupid.”

“You’ll think
stupid
if them Injuns get us.” Pettigrew snapped the watch shut, dropped it in his vest.

“Stop it, you two,” Ringo chewed his lip, thinking. “Them Injuns is after bigger game than us. They’re hittin’ all the ranches along this side of the border, sellin’ what they steal to the Mexicans.”

Big ’Un grinned. “What you think, Ringo? We’ll trail him-until we come to a stage station or at least a cantina. Then we rest up, ask about that big blue-eyed pinto. Anybody who’s seen it’ll remember it.”

Ringo’s mouth watered; he was thinking about liquor. And as always, his thoughts went to the red-haired girl he had loved. Because of her scorn, he was a broken-down pistolero now, with hands that shook so badly men laughed at him behind his back, men who would have trembled before him only a few short years ago. “Yeah. A cantina. But we’d be stoppin’ just to get information, of course,” he added quickly.

Big ’Un scratched himself. “And a few purty
señoritas
wouldn’t do me no harm, neither!”

“No woman’s gonna look at a damned Yankee when there’s a Southern gentleman around,” Petty said.

Ringo scowled. Neither of them knew that his drinking had made him impotent. He’d hidden the fact well. “Sure, a lusty gal for each of us!”

He urged his big gray gelding into the muddy waters of the Rio Grande. He’d ridden with this pair six years and hated every minute of it. A few months ago, the Oklahoma Kid had come down from the Territory, set himself up as their leader. Ringo was secretly glad the Kid was dead. “Come on, you two. We don’t get our money back settin’ here jawin’.”

Big ’Un guffawed,. splashed into the water behind him. “When I get my share, I intend to spend it on women—as far as it’ll go. There ain’t anything I crave like I crave women! You remember that little Mescalero squaw? That was about five years ago?”

“How could we forget?” Pettigrew grinned and rode his bay into the water. “Didn’t she put up a fight, though?”

Ringo winced as he urged the gray gelding up the steep bank on the Mexican side. He was secretly ashamed of that episode, wouldn’t have let the other two talk him into it if he hadn’t been drinking.

Big ’Un laughed. “Funny the way you smell the burning when you put coals on a man’s skin.”

“Shut up!” Ringo snapped, leading them out onto the trail. “Just shut up about it!”

“Suppose we run onto Mescaleros, them same Mescaleros?” Petty asked uneasily from behind him.

“We left all three of them dead, remember?” Big ’Un reminded him. “I felt kinda bad about killin’ that boy.”

“Little Injuns grow up to be big Injuns,” Petty said.

“But he wasn’t more’n nine or ten years old,” Big ’Un argued.

“Then the kid shouldn’t have tried to stop us.”

Ringo tried to ignore them. It made his skin crawl to think about that day.

“I guess we can agree on something, Reb,” Big ’Un grumbled. “We’re white men. That means we got a right to enjoy any squaw we want and her men folks should accept a few coins and stand by and let us.”

“I swear, if you two don’t stop talkin’ about it, I’m gonna leave both of you at the next cantina!” Ringo snapped. “We gotta long way to go and I get sick and tired of you two!”

Pettigrew said, “Nagnab it, Ringo, don’t get so upset! What you need is a good drink. Somewhere up ahead, there’ll be a town or a stage relay station and you’ll feel better.”

A drink
. Ringo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in anticipation. How far was it before he could have his fill of whiskey? He spurred his horse, broke into an easy canter across the desolate Mexican landscape.

Colonel Mackenzie looked up from his desk as Sergeant Murphy strode in and saluted.

“Sir, new dispatches.”

Mackenzie gave a half-hearted salute with his maimed hand, took the papers from the old, red-faced Irishman. The two of them had been together since the Civil War and there was only one other man he trusted as completely as his sergeant: Lieutenant Carter. “At ease, Mike.”

The rough-hewn Murphy sat down on the edge of the cluttered desk while Mackenzie stood up, studying the bulletins he’d been handed. “They still haven’t caught the bandits who took the Fort Concho payroll.”

“Aye, but we’ll get ‘em sooner or later, sir,” Murphy declared in his thick brogue. “You know how gossip spreads. All the boys is on the lookout fer any rascal as would kill the colonel’s mother. Besides, we’ve got a good description of the four. They can’t just disappear off the face o’ the earth.”

Mackenzie walked over and looked out at the parade ground of Fort Clark. When he’d been top of his class at West Point, he’d never expected to end up at some desolate, forgotten post on the south Texas plains. Duty. Duty was what guided him, as it had his whole family. “Murphy, you ever wished you’d done something else besides soldiering?”

Murphy laughed, took out a bandana, wiped his red neck. “ ’Tis better than starving in the old country, and with the prejudice agin the Irish, that’s why there’s so many of us in the army. Besides,” he said, “neither one of us would be happy doin’ anything but soldiering, Colonel.”

It was true. Ranald Mackenzie had come from a military family. “Trouble is, with the war over, there’s no place for soldiers except fighting Indians. Somehow, it’s not the same.” He pulled nervously at his muttonchop sideburns.

Medals, yes, and half a dozen war wounds, and here he was buried alive in a forgotten fort near the Rio Grande. At least he was better off than George, who had graduated a year earlier than he. Custer had just passed through court-martial and disgrace. Well, the flamboyant officer had always lacked judgment even if he was noted for bravery. It galled Mackenzie that General Sherman favored the arrogant officer so.

Behind him, the big sergeant cleared his throat, bringing Mackenzie out of his thoughts. “Sir, ain’t you going to finish reading the dispatches?”

The colonel straightened his slight frame, looked again at the forgotten papers in his crippled hand. “Dammit! More raids! And us without orders to do anything!”

The broad, Irish face darkened with anger. “How many defenseless ranch families got to be murdered, sir, before the government lets us move agin ’em?”

“That’s not for us to say,” Mackenzie snapped, coming back to his desk. He tried not to think of the last tortured bodies his troopers had buried at a burned-out ranch. “We follow orders, Murphy, no questions asked.”

“Well, it do seem they’d let us go after them bloodthirsty redskins,” Murphy grumbled. “They come across the Rio Grande, hit the isolated ranches and villages, and ride back, safe as you please, to Mexico.”

Mackenzie scowled at him. “The Indians haven’t been treated too well by the settlers; no wonder they raid and kill all through south Texas.”

Murphy played with a brass button on his blue uniform. “Sir, beggin’ your pardon, but I wouldn’t say that too loudly if I was you. We got enough conflict with these ex-Johnny Rebs without the Texans thinkin’ sure and our Yankee colonel’s soft on savages.”

“I’ll do my duty, Murphy.” Mackenzie nodded crisply, “As I always have. I know the locals look on us as carpetbagger bluebellies. ” He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “The war’s over and we’re here to try to keep order and protect the border.”

The burly man snorted in derision. “Again beggin’ your humble pardon, sir, but me men thinks we’d protect the border best by riding across, and attackin’ them damnable Mexicans who not only encourage the raids and killin’ but buy loot from the Kickapoo and Apache.”

The colonel paced nervously. He was thirty-two years old and felt eighty today as he looked at his old comrade. “You know the tension between the two countries ever since the Mexican-American War. We’d need their government’s permission to cross the Rio Grande and clean out the Indians. Anything else might provoke a full-fledged war.”

“Aye. That may be the way diplomats do things, sir, but it ain’t right,” The sergeant stroked his red face.

Mackenzie sighed. Murphy was right, of course. Many a hardened trooper had ended up sick and vomiting when viewing the remains of one of those Indian raids. On the other hand, he knew the Indians had grievances, too. It was those greedy Mexican businessmen, safe on the other side of the river, who encouraged all the bloodshed by buying the stolen booty. “We are first and foremost soldiers, Sergeant,” he said with crisp reproof. “We don’t make policy decisions; we carry out orders.”