Tanner's Revenge

by Michael Stewart

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jack Tanner followed the man to the canyon. He saw the man tether his rented mule to the dead tree and enter the mission.

  Jack didn’t see any men or horses, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any there. He tethered his own horse in the shadow of an outcrop of rock and walked around the edge of the canyon in a wide circle so he could approach the mission from the back.

  The mission didn’t have many windows, and they were all high up, with shutters over them. There was a bell tower, and Jack figured if he was Payne, he’d put a member of his gang up there as lookout, but he didn’t see anybody. If there was somebody up in the bell tower, they were sleeping on the job.

  Jack got to the mission about five minutes after the man had entered, maybe a little more. He worked his way around the wall till he’d reached the arched entrance at the front.

  When the mule saw Jack it stared at him but didn’t make any sound. The man had tethered the mule in the sun instead of in the shade, but the animal wasn’t suffering yet.

  Jack could hear a horse, just the one, moving around inside the archway.

  He went through the archway and stood in the darkness, listening. He could hear talking inside the mission. One man talking low, another replying, this second voice sounding high and scared.

  Then there was a noise like liquid spilling, and a thud that sounded like something heavy hitting the ground.

  Virgil Deakin was thirty-five years of age. He’d been a thief since he was ten, and had killed his first man at fourteen. He hadn’t needed to kill that man, the first one. He could have just pistol-whipped him when he didn’t give him the money Deakin wanted, but Deakin had shot him instead, in the gut, because Deakin had never killed anybody before and wanted to know how it felt.

  When Payne and Mulligan and Sims and Deakin and the young pup, Cootes, had arrived at the mission Payne had said, ‘We’ll rest awhile. In the morning I’ll get the money and share it out.’

  Only Payne knew the exact spot the money was hid.

  Payne had been on the alert, wondering if any of the men were going to try a double-cross and take more than their share. These men were thieves after all, and there is no honour among thieves. Only greed.

  And the rest of the gang were also on the alert for a double-cross, knowing that the others wouldn’t hesitate to kill if it meant getting a bigger piece of the money, or even all of it. Maybe Payne himself was planning a double-cross?

  But as it turned out, Payne wasn’t planning a double-cross. And neither was anybody else. Or if they were, they decided not to go through with it.

  Everybody thought Payne had buried the money somewhere, possibly under one of the ruined adobe huts. But he hadn’t. A man could have spent his life digging holes in the hard-baked earth of the canyon and never found a dime. Because Payne hadn’t buried it at all. He’d stashed the money in the bell tower.

  Halfway up the tower there was a space that had been used to store wooden crates full of hymn books. The hymn books were in Spanish because they, like the mission, dated back to the days when Arizona was part of Mexico. If you opened one of the crates and tried to lift out one of the books, the paper would crumble soon as you touched it. The wooden crates themselves still held together all right, though the wood was brittle. Payne had stashed the money in some of the old crates, then placed those crates behind ones that still had hymn books in them.

  When they’d shared out the money Payne said, ‘Me and Mulligan are leaving. Don’t try to follow us. If I think any of you are trying to follow us, I’ll kill you. So you’d better stay here a couple of hours. That way there won’t be any misunderstandings.’

  Payne and Mulligan rode away.

  That left Deakin and Sims and the pup, Cootes, who’d been scarcely more than a boy when the gang had started robbing banks and trains, three years ago.

  Sims and Cootes were partners, they looked out for each other. They made no secret of their plans to buy themselves a saloon or taberna or some such establishment, then settle down and spend the rest of their lives surrounded by booze and women.

  Sims and Cootes were the next to leave the mission. This was Wednesday afternoon. Before they left, Sims said to Deakin, ‘We’d appreciate it if you gave us a couple hours’ head start, like we gave Payne and Mulligan.’

  Virgil Deakin didn’t trust Sims any more than Sims trusted Deakin. They’d never seen eye to eye. It was a wonder they’d got through three years in the same gang without killing each other.

  ‘And I’d sure appreciate it if you two didn’t try to bushwhack me when I leave,’ replied Deakin.

  Sims looked like he had a mind to draw his six-shooter, but Cootes plucked at the older man’s sleeve and said, ‘Don’t be dumb. We got our share of the money. Don’t ruin everything now. Let’s just get out of here.’

  Sims stared at Deakin a little more, just to show he wasn’t scared of him, then nodded and said to Cootes, ‘Let’s go.’

  They left, but they kept watch on Deakin as they rode away, in case he was planning on shooting them in the back.

  But Deakin hadn’t been planning on any such thing. He was happy with his share of the money. And he was happy to stick around in the mission for a while before heading down to Mexico. He wasn’t in any hurry. He had provisions enough for himself and his horse in his saddle-bags. Enough for one night, anyway. And he had a bottle of good whiskey he’d picked up in Tucson, promising himself that as soon as he could he’d get good and drunk. Payne hadn’t let his men get good and drunk in Tucson, in case they talked too much, and if there was one thing Deakin hated, it was limiting how much he drank.

  So now that everybody else had gone, he was going to get crazy drunk, for the first time in months.

  He fed his horse, gave it water from the well in the centre of the abandoned village, and closed the creaking doors of the mission, sealing up the archway so no passing coyotes could get in. Then Deakin lay on one of the wooden pews inside the mission chapel and proceeded to work his way down the bottle.

  In the small hours of the morning he passed out. When he woke up sunlight was showing in the gaps in the shutters across the high windows. He opened up the doors of the mission and fetched more water from the well. It was around noon, the sun straight up above him, his shadow a pool of black at his feet.

  Virgil Deakin was hungover. He couldn’t recall ever having a hangover this bad, not ever.

  He ate biscuits and drank water and wondered how long it would be before he could tolerate crossing the border.

  Mexico was only a few miles south, but the way he felt, it may as well have been as far away as Canada.

  He was still lying on the pew when he heard the mule approach, and the man calling.

  Virgil Deakin believed the man when he said he didn’t know any more than he’d already told. But he scarce believed the man was so foolish as to think he’d get some kind of a reward.

  When Virgil asked the man if anybody knew he’d come out here, and the man said no, Virgil got out his knife and slit the man’s throat. He didn’t want to waste a bullet, and he didn’t want to make any more noise than was necessary, because noise carries in the desert, and you could never be too sure if anybody was around to hear.

  The man’s blood splattered onto the floor of the mission, and he crumpled. It wasn’t more than a few seconds before he was dead.

  Virgil was never going to come back to the mission, and he knew not many people came around here, so he pondered whether to just leave the man’s body right there, where he fell, or drag it out to one of the ruined adobe huts and bury it under a pile of rubble. Then he remembered the mule he’d heard. What should he do about the mule? He went out and studied it.

  It was a mangy-looking beast. If he left it where it was it might get loose from the dead tree it was tethered to. The branches were brittle, they’d snap easy if the mule took a mind to pulling at the rope it was tethered by. And then it would likely walk back to Tucson all on its own,
and then people would know something had happened to the rider, and maybe come looking for him.

  Virgil knew he ought to bury both the man and the mule, but his head ached too much for that kind of hard work. And besides, he was going to be over the border in a day or so, and once he was in Mexico it wouldn’t matter if anybody found the dead man. Still, he reckoned it would be stupid to tempt fate by letting the mule wander back to Tucson, which it could do in three, four hours. It was still another fifty miles to the border, and he didn’t want to risk a posse catching up with him.

  All in all, Virgil figured it would be best to kill the mule, slit its throat like he’d done with the man. Better to bring it inside first, though. So he untethered the mule and tried to lead it into the mission, but it wouldn’t move.

  ‘There’s shade in there, you dumb critter,’ he told the mule. ‘Don’t you want to be where it’s cool?’ He tried pulling it by the rope again, but the mule still wouldn’t budge, just glared at him and bared its teeth.

  ‘If that’s the way you want it, I’ll just kill you out here,’ said Virgil. He got out his knife again and was about to cut into the mule’s neck when there was a gunshot, and it felt like his left leg had been kicked out from under him.

  And now he was lying in the dust, and a man was leaning over him, taking his gun, and then kicking the knife away.

  ‘Roll over, onto your belly,’ said the man.

  ‘You damn near shot my leg off!’ yelled Virgil.

  ‘I know what I did. If you don’t want me to shoot your other leg, you’ll roll over.’

  So Virgil rolled over, and the man used Virgil’s own belt strap to fix his wrists together, and used Virgil’s bandanna to tie him at the ankles.

  ‘You’re going to tell me all about your friends,’ said the man.

  ‘Go to hell,’ said Virgil.

  So the man walked away and was gone for a few minutes, then he came back and kicked Virgil till he rolled on to his back.

  ‘I ain’t telling you nothing,’ said Virgil.

  The man had found a snake under a rock. He shoved it inside Virgil’s shirt.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jack Tanner pulled the snake out from Virgil’s shirt and told him that if he didn’t start talking, he’d put the snake back inside the shirt and leave it there.

  The snake had released a foul-smelling musk inside Virgil’s shirt. The stink of it was enough to make both Virgil and Jack feel sick.

  Virgil was greatly afraid of snakes, and told Jack everything he wanted to know. He told him the names of the rest of the gang, and everything about Amos Payne, and how they’d all been robbing banks and trains for the last three years, Amos hiding the bulk of the money here at the mission.

  ‘What happened at the ranch house two weeks ago?’ asked Jack.

  ‘I didn’t kill ’em,’ said Virgil.

  ‘You were there,’ said Jack. ‘You’ll pay for it, same as the men who shot ’em.’

  Jack had expected Virgil to deny it was him who’d done the actual killing, but he was used to liars, and could usually tell if he was being lied to or not.

  ‘Who killed my ma and pa?’

  ‘Amos Payne shot your pa,’ said Virgil. ‘Jed Sims killed your ma and took her rings. He keeps ’em on a string around his neck.’

  It sounded like the truth.

  ‘Anybody mess with my ma before she was killed?’

  ‘No.’

  That sounded true also.

  ‘Whereabouts in Mexico are they headed?’

  ‘I ain’t supposed to know,’ said Virgil, his eyes fixed on the snake that Jack was now holding a few inches from his face. The snake stared back at Virgil and kept lashing out its tongue, tasting the air. ‘But I heard Payne and Mulligan talking about some place called Meseta de Plata. I don’t know about Sims and Cootes. They want to buy a saloon or something, but I don’t think they’ve settled on where.’

  Meseta de Plata. Silver Plateau. Jack had heard tell of it. A thieves’ town deep in the mountains along the Durango–Sinaloa state border, run and entirely populated by crooks. If you had money you could stay there as long as you liked and never get troubled by lawmen. But anybody who caused trouble had to pay a heavy price.

  Jack figured it made sense, Payne heading down there. ‘Which of them has the scar on his face?’

  ‘Mulligan.’

  ‘And Cootes is the kid?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t know if he’s even twenty yet. . . . You going to kill me?’

  ‘No. I’ll let the good people of Tucson do that.’

  ‘I don’t want to hang. Better to shoot me now, get it done.’

  ‘I’m going to tie you to your horse, and tie the mule and your horse together, maybe the mule will lead your horse back to town. It’s only around fifteen miles or so.’

  ‘What if the mule don’t lead the horse back to town? I could die out here.’

  ‘That could happen,’ said Jack. ‘But I doubt it. Mules ain’t so dumb. They’ll go where they know there’s food and water. I got a pencil and paper in my saddle-bag. I’ll write a letter to the sheriff, tell him what you’ve done. And I won’t forget about the man you killed just now. Maybe I should tie him to the horse too. You can ride into Tucson side by side. Don’t bother making up any lies. The sheriff’s men will recognize you as one of the gang who was there Tuesday night. They’ll know what to do with you.’

  Jack put the snake back under the rock where he’d found it. Jack knew about snakes, Virgil Deakin evidently didn’t. Deakin had thought it was venomous. It wasn’t. The snake, a Rosy Boa, looked mean, with its three rust-coloured stripes running lengthways along its near-three-foot body, and orange blotches. But it was harmless, unless you were a lizard or a rodent. It was a nocturnal animal that slept most of the day under rocks. It didn’t like being disturbed, which was why it had given off the musk. Jack wondered if he’d ever get the stench out of his nostrils.

  When he got back to where he’d left Virgil, he didn’t realize anything was wrong till Virgil threw the knife at him.

  This second knife had been concealed up Virgil’s left sleeve. While Jack’s back was turned, Virgil had managed to reach it with the fingers of his right hand, then he’d twisted the blade around to cut through the belt binding his wrists together.

  When Jack returned, Virgil threw the knife. It was heavy at the blade: a throwing knife, and Virgil practised with it most days. But several minutes with his hands tied behind his back had cut off the blood supply. His arms were numb and heavy, and his aim was off.

  The blade flashed past Jack’s head. Jack acted on instinct, pulled his gun and shot Virgil in the chest.

  Virgil slumped back onto the dirt. The bullet had gone straight through his heart.

  Jack tied Virgil onto the horse and tied the other man, the one Virgil had killed, on to the mule. Then he got on his own horse and led the horse and mule back to Tucson.

  He’d had an idea. There was a newspaper office in Tucson, and he wanted them to do a printing job for him.

  He left the saddle-bags full of money – Virgil’s share – hidden in the mission, planning to come back for them later. He would use the money to buy his way into the thieves’ town of Meseta de Plata.

  The town of Nogales sat on the border between Arizona Territory and Mexico. The border itself ran along the middle of a long, wide, dusty street. If you crossed from the north side of the street to the south side, you left Arizona and entered the Mexican state of Sonora.

  That’s what Sims and Cootes did. They rode their horses from one side of the street to the other, and Jed Sims said, ‘That’s it. We’re in Mexico. American lawmen can’t touch us here. Not legally, anyhow.’

  ‘That’s it?’ said Cootes. ‘That’s all there is to it? We just cross the street? I was expecting a barbed wire fence and a gate or something.’

  Sims reached over, slapped Cootes on the back. ‘Let’s go find ourselves some señoritas.’

  Cootes said, ‘I don’t kno
w. We’re still a little too close to the border for my liking. I want to put a few miles between it and me.’

  But Sims overruled the younger man, and they stayed the night in Nogales after all. They couldn’t put their money into a bank because it was too late, the banks were closed.

  They took their horses to a livery stable and got themselves a room in a nearby rooming house.

  ‘We can’t leave the money here,’ said Cootes when they got to the room. ‘One of us will have to stay and guard it.’

  ‘I’ll go out first,’ said Jed Sims. ‘Then I’ll come back and watch over the money while you go out.’

  Sims knew he could trust Cootes. He knew that Cootes knew that if he tried to run away with all the money, Sims would catch up with him, no matter how long it took, and skin him alive. Like he’d done to a man once in Montana. Or so he claimed.

  So the younger man stayed with the money first, and Sims went out to enjoy himself in Nogales, which was a sizeable town, though nowhere near the size of Tucson.

  Cootes sat on the bed, his six-gun on his lap, and waited for his turn to go out.

  Everything went fine the first night. Sims came back about three hours later, just a little drunk on tequila, and stayed with the money while Cootes went out.

  Cootes came back in the small hours of Saturday morning, and then both men slept till about noon.

  Later that afternoon, Jed Sims said, ‘We’re in no hurry. We could spend one more night in comfort here before hitting the trail again.’

  They discussed where they should buy their saloon. Sims had heard about a port town called Guaymas, about three hundred miles due south, on the Gulf of California coast. ‘They have carnivals there,’ he said. ‘I ain’t never seen a carnival.’

  Cootes didn’t know what a carnival was, and when Sims told him it was like a great big party that lasted for days, the younger man liked the sound of Guaymas, too.

  ‘If we’re going to stay another night,’ said Cootes, ‘we should definitely put the money in a bank.’

  ‘It’s Saturday,’ Sims told him.