Lawman from Nogales (9781101544747) (10 page)

From the front of the adobe, Ana and the boy watched Hector ride away, back toward Wild Roses. The boy stood at his mother's side, her arm down around his thin shoulders holding him against her leg.

“Why is
Papá
leaving so soon?” the boy asked.

“He goes to attend his job in Wild Roses,” Ana said, waving as Hector looked back from a hundred yards away.

“Will he come back soon?” the boy asked.

“Yes, he will come back,” Ana said. “But we will not be here when he returns.”

“Where are we going,
Madre
?” the boy asked.

“We are going away with your other
papá
,” Ana said with determination, watching Hector ride out of sight over a low rise and disappear in a swirl of trail dust.

“Papá segundo?”
the boy asked, looking up at her.

“Yes, your second papa,” Ana said. “The one I have told you about. He will be your
first
father, your
real
father. He will be your only father from now on—as well he should be.”

“I do not understand,
Madre
,” the boy said.

“Someday you will, my little man,” Ana said, still clutching the coin in her fist, lest it somehow get away from her. “Now, you must help me pack our belongings. We will stop the land coach when it passes here. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

 

On the trail, Hector breathed deep and tapped his heels to his horse's sides. As he rode, he thought about everything he and Ana had talked about in the short time he was home. He looked down at the small straw figure in his hand that his son had made and given to him.

“You will always have an amigo with you,” his son had said, handing it to him.

Hector smiled to himself and gripped the tiny straw figure for a moment. Then he placed it in his shirt pocket.

Now to business
, he told himself.

When he started tending bar, he must make sure to get off on the right foot with everyone, even the
putas—
the doves, he corrected himself. As a bartender, he knew it would be important that people take him seriously. Now that he had earned his position at the Perros Malos Cantina, it was important that people respect him the same as they had respected Freddie Loopy.

He ran the events of the past day and night through his mind, and his thoughts went to Clyde Jilson and Sonora Charlie. Thank the holy saints he would not have to deal with those two anymore—except to serve them whiskey from behind the bar, he told himself. His hands tightened on the reins just thinking about what had happened between himself and Clyde Jilson.

They had stopped in the night to rest their horses, and Hector had stood looking out across the flatlands. Close behind him, Clyde had swished tepid water around in a canteen and sipped from it. Then, suddenly, catching Hector off guard, he'd stepped forward with his finger bent and rounded a wet knuckle into Hector's ear.

By the devil in hell . . . !
Hector still raged just thinking about it. What kind of loco, twisted son-of-a-bitch gringo hombre did such a thing?

No one that he knew of, Hector replied to himself. It was the sort of thing one prisoner did to another in a place like Casa del Andar Muerto—Home of the Walking Dead, or in Yuma Territorial Prison.

It was an act that not only showed disrespect; it was a warning of worse acts to come should a man not react with deadly and deliberate force against such an affront.

Hector's ear still felt sticky as he recalled the incident, although he had dried it immediately on his shirtsleeve and had continued wiping it throughout the night as they'd ridden on.

He should have killed the filthy pig, he told himself. He
would
have killed him had he not been convinced that the two men had set him up and were waiting to strike as soon as he touched the butt of his gun.

When he'd spun toward Clyde, the buckskinned gunman had stood grinning and said, “I can see you're going to have to get used to me.”

Get used to him . . . ?
Hector pictured himself shooting him full of holes.

“Don't get your bark on, Wet Hector,” Sonora Charlie had called out. “Clyde only stuck his finger in his canteen, not his mouth.”

The information helped Hector a little, but
only
a little, he reminded himself, thinking back on it. Still, the idea of the pig thinking he could do such a thing kept Hector smoldering. He was glad to have gotten away from those two. After they rode off searching for the lawman Defoe wanted dead, he wouldn't have to look at their faces again. That suited him, he thought, nudging his horse up into a trot.

 

Inside the Perros Malos Cantina, Hopper Truit was behind the bar slinging mugs of beer and pouring whiskey for the midmorning drinkers. When Hector walked in, he stopped suddenly, taken aback at the sight of her as she pushed a strand of blond hair from her face and reached over and tugged playfully on an older drinker's long-handled gray mustache. She acted as if this was the work she would be doing for a long time to come, Hector thought.

“There he is now,” Defoe said from his spot at the end of the bar where he stood with Sonora Charlie and Clyde Jilson.

The two gunmen looked at Hector over their shoulders and turned back to their shots of whiskey and mugs of foamy beer.

“Get over here,
muchacho
,” Defoe called out, flagging the stunned Hector toward his end of the bar with his left hand. His real right hand rested on the gun behind his swallow-tailed coat.

Hector turned his face slowly to Defoe, seemingly stuck in his tracks at the sight of the dove Hopper doing what he was certain would be his job. But maybe he misunderstood what was going on here, he told himself. Maybe she was only tending bar until he returned to Wild Roses.

Yes, of course, that must be it
, he told himself. He managed to walk toward Defoe's end of the bar, seeing Defoe's lips move, saying something to him, but Hector didn't hear a word of it in his numb, stunned condition.

“You missed a most wonderful breakfast,” Defoe said as Hector approached. “What took you so long anyway?” Defoe gave a knowing grin.

But Hector didn't answer. Instead, he looked down the bar to where Hopper set up fresh mugs of beer for a group of Mexican
camioneros,
whose mule-killer carts sat out front at the hitch irons filled with copper ore en route from the Sierra Madres to Mexico City.

“You said I would be tending bar for you, boss,” Hector said, his voice shaky.

“Forget that,” Defoe said with a toss of his left hand. “As you can see, Hopper has a knack for slinging liquor.” He grinned. “These men have to stand a foot farther back from the bar than they did when they got here, eh?” He chuckled at his own joke. When Hector and the other two didn't get it, he waved it away and said, “Never mind.”

“But you said I would tend—” Hector started before Defoe cut him off.

“I said you would be tending bar
among other things
,” Defoe replied sharply. “Besides, bartending is not a good job. What will you do if people stop drinking? You will be out of work, of course,” he replied to himself.

Hector only stared at him.

“Anyway, I have a better job for you.” Defoe said. He shrugged the matter off and looked Hector up and down. “But if you don't want it . . .”

“
Sí
, I must work,” Hector said submissively, coming to accept his situation. “What will you have me do?”

“I'm sending you out with Sonora Charlie and Clyde,” said Defoe. “Sonora has three twenty-dollar gold pieces I gave him to pay you.”

“What am I to do for them?” Hector asked, keeping his excitement in check. The prospect of putting three twenty-dollar gold coins in his hand forced him to put his ill feelings toward Sonora Charlie and Clyde behind him for the moment. He looked back and forth between Sonora Charlie and Defoe.

“Whatever they say,” Defoe replied.

The two gunmen turned and faced Hector squarely. Clyde, who stood nearest, pulled Hector roughly to the bar beside him.

“Yeah, you're with me now,
Pancho.
” Clyde grinned, sliding his empty shot glass and a bottle of rye in front of Hector. “Right now you're sort of my own
personal
bartender.” He nodded at his empty shot glass. “Fill me up,” he said close to Hector's ear.

Sonora Charlie smiled to himself and looked away. Inside his shirt, he carried a leather pouch filled with gold coins the Frenchman had paid him to kill the Ranger—half in advance, the other half payable when Charlie rolled the Ranger's head out on the ground in front of him.

Let Clyde have his fun with the Mexican, he thought. Reaching into his vest pocket, he took out the three gold coins and dropped them onto the bar in front of the young Mexican. What did he care? If Hector tried to duck out on them, all he had to do was shoot him twice in the head and take the coins back.

“This is for you, Hector,” he said. “Call it payment in advance for doing what you're told.”

Holy Madre!
Hector stared at the coins in disbelief. Let the dove tend bar and shake her bosom in front of the drinkers. This was the kind of money that . . . well,
that men kill for
, he thought.

Chapter 11

At midmorning, Erin stepped back from the fall-away edge of the trail where she'd been perched looking back on the flatlands below. Behind her a few yards away, the Ranger stood up from inspecting the dun's hooves and watched her for a moment, seeing her eyes scan the distant hill line and trails on the other side. He looked away quickly as she turned toward him, her horse's reins in hand.

“Well, I'm glad that's behind us,” she said, walking toward him and leading her horse.

Sam nodded.

“We made good time,” he said.

“What now?” she asked, stopping, looking him up and down, the two of them feeling the cooler air of the partially shaded hillsides.

“Now we rest the horses a couple of hours, then head across this high trail and take it down the other side,” Sam replied.

Erin looked past him toward a knee-high man-made wall of crumbled stone, beyond it a rocky flat courtyard and an ancient crumbling structure standing fifty feet high on the rugged hillside.

“These are the ruins you spoke of?” Erin asked.

A deep, thick blanket of flowering red vines covered much of the structure. The vines spilled over entrance-ways and windows and hung like heavy drapes.

“Yes,” Sam replied, “this part of the country is full of old Spanish missions. Some say they built them this high up so the bell could be heard all the way across the basin.”

Erin took a step forward and stood quietly for a moment, looking all around at the ruins. Ancient piñon, copal and calabash trees lined the short, crumbled wall.

“Is this where you'll be teaching me to shoot the gun?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Yes, if you'd still like to learn,” Sam replied.

“It's so peaceful and lovely here, I'm hesitant to disturb everything,” she said in a lowered tone. Even as she spoke, a pair of doves rose from among the creeper vines in a flurry of batting wings and swooped away, out and around the hillside.

Watching Erin, Sam said in the same lowered tone, “Suit yourself.” He continued watching her, the look of contemplation on her face suggesting that she continued to run the idea back and forth through her mind.

At length she said, “I suppose I should go ahead and learn while I have the chance. Do you think the shooting will be overheard by any of Luis or Teto's men?”

“Hard to say,” Sam replied. “But it's no secret I'm trailing them.”

“I wouldn't want to cause you any trouble,” she said.

“You won't,” Sam said. “I'll get the Starr out of my saddlebags and we'll get started.”

Erin stood staring at the ruins. When Sam returned beside her and held the Starr out on his palm, she took it with both hands and looked it over good.

“Is it loaded and ready to shoot?” she asked.

“Just about,” Sam replied. He took the reins to her horse, led both horses a few feet away and hitched them to a juniper tree.

They walked forward until the stone wall surrounding the ruins lay within fifty feet of them.

“Wait here. I'll set up some targets for you,” he said, walking to a row of calabash trees.

He looked back at where she stood as he gathered an armful of fallen calabash gourds from beneath one of the trees.