Warriors of the Night (8 page)

As the man stepped forward out of the alcove, Esteban sighed with relief. He had not encountered an apparition of his father, after all.

The priest’s happiness was short-lived, however, for the bandit disguised as a humble peon was none other than Jorge Tenorio. If Don Luis Cordero had been El Tigre, Jorge Tenorio had been the claws. A man of striking contradictions, Tenorio could bounce a child on his knee, cooing and playing, and in the next instant shoot the father of the child stone-cold dead. It was not that Tenorio was a brutal man, but years of living with a gun in his hand had taken their toll. To his compadres, no man was more steadfast and loyal, but his enemies called him a ruthless butcher. Somewhere in between was the man who had bounced young Esteban Cordero on his lap and taught him to ride.

“Tenorio…” Esteban said. “
Madre de Dios
, how many more survived the battle with the Rangers?”

The old cutthroat shrugged and smiled as he sauntered forward, his spurs clinking with every step.

“Tomas, Chico, and Miguel, who I sent on to see you and Señorita Cordero. And Miguel’s brother Hector. The man does not live who can outshoot or outride Hector Ybarbo.” Tenorio grinned and patted the bulge of a gun butt beneath his blousy cotton shirt. “Except me.” He scratched at the week-old stubble prickling his jaw. If he’d let his beard grow it would have come in mostly silvery-white, with just a smattering of black. Tenorio was sensitive about his age. He wanted a shave more than anything. He knew a barber across the river in La Villita, the oldest section of town, and was anxious to pay the man a visit.

“What do you want here?” Esteban asked.

“Sanctuary, what else?” Tenorio said, his eyes wide with innocence.

“And you shall have it,” Anabel interjected, entering the church from a side door that opened onto a thatch-covered walk connecting the church to the priest’s house. Anabel was followed by Miguel Ybarbo and his brother Hector, who was older than Miguel by a few years and wiser by twenty, or so it seemed. Where Miguel was headstrong and vengeful and too quick to act, Hector was a calming influence. He wore the loose-fitting cotton shirt and trousers of a field hand, but he kept a pistol tucked in his boot top just to be on the safe side. His black hair was close-cropped though ragged-looking; his mustache was a shaggy black scrawl that hid his upper lip and hung to his chin.

Esteban shifted and looked past his sister, expecting to see the remainder of his father’s stern-faced henchmen file into the church. Sanctuary was one thing, but they were transforming the house of God into a den of thieves and cutthroats.

Anabel told her brother, “Don’t worry, Chico and Tomas are waiting outside of town. No more surprises for you, dear brother.” The young woman patted Esteban’s arm. Then she glanced over her shoulder at Miguel. The vaquero was still angry at being spurned by the daughter of Don Luis Cordero.

“Miguel, bolt the door. We cannot afford interruptions. We have more enemies in San Antonio than friends.”

The vaquero hesitated, and Hector gave him a shove. Miguel turned on his brother with fists clenched.

“Ah, little one, you forget your place. We ride for Cordero. Now do as you are told.”

“Maybe I no longer choose to follow,” Miguel suggested.

“If you are not one of us, then you are our enemy,” Tenorio said. The old one’s lips curled back and his hand reached beneath his shirt for the gun hidden there. “You are my enemy.” Miguel fidgeted nervously. His brash pride drained away with his courage.

“I said maybe,” he clarified, then stepped around Anabel and the priest, gave Tenorio a wide berth, and hurried up the aisle to the front doors.

Jorge Tenorio turned to Anabel. He lifted her hand and looked at the obsidian ring that had belonged to Don Luis. He nodded sagely and cupped her hand in his.

“It is right for you to wear the ring. But it is a heavy responsibility. I wonder, señorita, if your shoulders are strong enough to carry such a burden.” Tenorio lifted his gaze to Father Esteban. “A son’s duty is to avenge his father’s death. But in this case…” He wagged his head in despair.

“Do not seek to pass judgment on me, Jorge,” Esteban said. “I wish Carmelita had buried the damn stone.”

“And I wish Don Luis had never allowed your mother to carry you back to Mexico City to raise in the company of women until you were old enough to be sent off to that seminary in Spain.” Tenorio held his hands up in despair. “But Doña Isabell was determined to have at least one saint in the family. And here you are.”

Father Esteban swallowed his anger, though he trembled from the effort. At last he turned to his sister, but even then he had to struggle to contain himself. Words failed him. His brown robe flared as he turned and headed for the side door.

“Make your plans. I do not want to know anything, not so much as a hint.” He looked around at Tenorio. “And take off those damn… uh… those spurs. The first Ranger you pass will spy that silver work and know immediately you are no poor farmer.” Esteban enjoyed catching Tenorio’s mistake. It enabled him to leave with the last word and a smattering of dignity.

Anabel granted his request: After her brother left, she asked Jorge Tenorio to remove his silver spurs. Alone at last in the serenity of the church, beneath the shadow of the golden cross and the prince of peace, Anabel Cordero gathered the vaqueros to her side and revealed to them her plans for war.

“M
OTHER MCQUEEN,” PETER ABBOT
remarked as Ben took the seat across from him in the Red Bull Cantina. “You found me.”

“It wasn’t difficult,” Ben said. “The clerk at the Alameda told me the name of the girl on the balcony and where she could be found—Cecilia from the Red Bull Cantina.”

“A winsome lass,” Peter sighed, pushing his spectacles up on the bridge of his nose. “We promised to always be faithful. We shared secrets. Then someone came along with a deeper purse.” Peter’s slender hand raised a cup of pulque in salute to his friend. Sheets of scrap paper littered the tabletop. Several of them bore hastily rendered charcoal sketches of patrons who had come and gone through the Red Bull’s swinging doors the night before. Many of the drawings were quite good and revealed the artist’s keen sense of observation, as well as his considerable talent. Peter was seldom without the packet of charcoal sticks he kept in his coat pocket.

Ben reached out and caught Peter’s arm and forced him to set the fired-clay cup back on the table. A short, squat man of Mexican descent entered from a back room and noticed with disapproval that not only had the Anglo with the eyeglasses not left, he had been joined by another, and this one a soldier.

“We are closed.
Comprende
? The women sleep. I must sleep too. Come back in the afternoon.”

“Bring us coffee. Then we will go.”

“No, we are closed. Leave now.”

“Coffee first,” Ben said, and flipped a coin in the air that the barkeep snatched in mid-flight. The Mexican glanced down at the money in his hand. Too much for coffee, but enough for the inconvenience of serving it. He shrugged and disappeared through a back doorway that led into the kitchen. Unlike Military Plaza with its shops and hotels, church and governor’s palace, Main Plaza was home to the noisy underbelly of town life. The Red Bull held a dominant place among the assorted saloons and brothels surrounding the plaza. The cantina was a single-storied adobe building with a roof of red-clay tiles and a deep porch that shaded the front. Within its thick stucco walls, round hardwood tables and hand-hewn, straight-backed chairs were placed around the room for the convenience of the rowdy patrons. The thirty-foot walnut bar ran the length of the south wall. On the north wall, the likeness of an enormous red bull had been painted upon the faded whitewashed surface. The painting was framed by a pair of bullfighter’s capes tacked to the wall and spread like fans.

The cantina smelled of tobacco smoke and stale pulque. Behind the bar were a number of brown glass bottles marked “Whisky,” “Bourbon,” “Rye,” and “Brandy.” Ben suspected they all came out of the same keg beneath the bar.

“Still looking after me, eh?” Peter said, scratching at the brown stubble shading his features. He leaned back and studied his friend. “I figured you’d have tired of the task by now.” He dropped his gaze to the clay cup of milky-white liquid set before him. “It’s awful stuff, really. Bitter as gall, but it packs a wallop like a nine-pounder cannon.”

“Then it’s time you called a truce,” Ben said.

“Well put,” Peter replied. “I’ll make an artist of you yet.”

“No. That’s not my calling.” Ben glanced around the cantina. At a table in the corner, another of last night’s customers sat hunched forward, head resting on folded arms, pouchy face turned toward them. The man was wrapped in a serape and snored in loud, harsh, rumbling tones.

“Too bad. You are cursed with a sense of responsibility. More’s the pity.” Peter reached for the pulque, hoping to catch the lieutenant in a moment of reverie. Ben was not so easily fooled and slid the drink out of reach. “Hmmm… Well, anyway,” Peter added, “it seems I am cursed with your sense of responsibility.” He rubbed his forehead and tried to will away his headache. Maybe McQueen was right, he thought.

The barkeeper returned with a blue-enamel tin coffeepot and two cups. He placed them on the table, poured, and said, “Please, señors. I am tired. Not too long,
por favor
.” He started to leave, then remembered Peter’s outstanding account.

“How will you pay for the last pulque, señor?”

Peter searched through the drawings until he came to a likeness of the barkeeper, who beamed with happiness as the artist handed him the sketch.

“Gracias, Señor Abbot,” the round-faced barkeep said. He noticed a second drawing, this one of the señorita Peter had accompanied from the Alameda Hotel. The buxom young prostitute lay upon a narrow bed, naked, her legs provocatively crossed, her breasts dark and sumptuous. “And maybe one other. Ah, the
puta
. She makes an old man’s blood flow hot.”

“Your pulque is expensive,” Peter dryly noted.

“Yes, it is,” the barkeeper admitted, and licked his lips as he held out a pudgy hand for the second drawing. Peter scrawled his signature and handed it over. As the man hurried off with his two prizes, Ben examined the other sketches. Some were quite hastily rendered and had little detail. Others revealed the artist’s greater interest in his subject.

The backs of posters and irregularly torn fragments of brown wrapping paper were adorned with a variety of faces: four men huddled around a table; a flush-faced German immigrant out for a night on the town; two peons, one of whom wore fancy roweled silver spurs, standing at the bar; a prostitute whose tired, painted features stared back at Ben with sad eyes and an inviting smile; a drunkard propped in the corner whose puzzled countenance looked like a wooden mask; three frock-coated merchants gambling in earnest. A second sketch of the señorita from the Alameda showed her dressed this time and seated upon the lap of a handsome vaquero. They were laughing and the vaquero’s shirt was open and the señorita had her hand on his chest.

“A woman’s fancies,” Peter sighed. He gulped coffee and shuddered. The hammering in his head—too much pulque, too much cheap whisky, and not enough love. He sifted through the sketches and pointed to the drawing of the four men seated at a table. Three of them wore buckskins and formed a grizzled, hard-looking bunch. The fourth figure was older and nattily attired in frock coat and flat-crowned beaver hat. Hook-nosed and with close-set eyes, this was a singularly unattractive man.

“Now here was an intriguing bunch,” Peter said, lifting the sketch into the light. “It was difficult to understand what they were saying, but from what I could discern Mr. Ashworth—the man in the coat—is a gun merchant and has come to San Antonio with a crate of Colt revolvers to sell to whoever meets his price. He also intends to exact retribution against someone in town. The unsavory characters at the table with him are his hirelings.” Peter handed the drawing to Ben, who examined it with interest. Although this was none of his affair, he didn’t like the looks of this Ashworth fellow. The gun merchant meant trouble and ought to be stopped. “I daresay someone is in for quite a thrashing,” Peter added. His hand still trembled. He gulped more of the black coffee.

Ben frowned and tapped the drawing. “A fair fight is one thing, but a merciless beating is quite another. Where is Mr. Ashworth now?”

“Gone on the wings of the wind,” Peter said, shrugging. “Who can say?” He scrutinized his friend. “I see that look again. Ben McQueen, the proud and gallant soldier. I salute you.” Peter unsteadily stood and brought his right hand to his forehead.

“Sit down, you drunken fool,” Ben growled. “And I don’t appreciate your ridicule.”

“No, no,” Peter said, easing down into the chair. “You misjudge me. I do respect you, Ben. No man holds you in higher esteem. You are everything my father wants me to be, everything I am too weak to become.” The general’s son paused, uncertain as to his train of thought.

“Now you’re talking nonsense,” Ben said. “C’mon, I’ll sneak you into the governor’s palace. I left the shutters open to our room. For heaven’s sake, get some rest before you run into the general.”

Peter nodded and managed to stand. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

“You leaving? Good. Gracias, señor. Come again to the Red Bull Cantina,” the barkeeper said from the doorway of his kitchen.

“Tell Cecilia I shall expect to see her tonight, my good man,
all
night,” Peter said with a wave of his hand.

“We’re guests of Señorita Obregon this evening,” Ben reminded his friend.

“Then you are a most fortunate man,” Peter said, and clapped Ben on the shoulder. “For now I am in love with Cecilia: I give the Señorita Obregon to you.”

“You are most kind,” Ben said, leading his friend out into the hazy noonday heat. They skirted Main Plaza and entered Military Plaza, one block over. The vendors were out in force today. Stalls had been erected overnight where men and women hawked their wares. There were baskets for sale, pottery, firewood, spicy enchiladas, and hot tortillas cooked upon flatiron griddles set over open fires. A man offered an assortment of caged birds; a woman arrayed herself in a half dozen brightly stitched shawls and busily haggled with a prospective customer. One enterprising man composed love letters on the spot and for a fee inserted the appropriate name of the beloved. A pair of shy young men lingered near the scribe as if gathering the courage to approach him. Stalls were hung with corn and chili peppers and freshly killed rabbits, squirrels, and chickens.