Tanner's Revenge

by Michael Stewart

  ‘Did you know about the gun he’d got hid in that dumb-looking hat of his?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You didn’t think to tell me about it?’

  She shrugged. ‘Even I can’t think of everything. Don’t fuss, gringo. It turned out all right, didn’t it?’

  Jack heard a hissing noise. He looked around, expecting to see a rattlesnake or one of the other thousand or so species of snake they had in these parts, but he couldn’t see one.

  The hissing came from Payne’s prone body.

  Jack rushed over to him, rolled him onto his back. Payne had lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite. He gripped the stick tight in his left hand. With his right he lashed out at Jack with a straight razor.

  ‘Damn you and that bitch!’ he snarled. He wasn’t bothering with fancy words now. ‘If I’m bound for perdition, then I’m taking the both of you with me!’

  The fuse was burning down fast. Jack reckoned he had less than ten seconds before the stick blew. He tried to grab the stick, but with his last few ounces of strength, Payne lashed at him again with the razor.

  Five seconds. . . .

  Payne was lying close to the edge of the ravine. Jack kicked at the man, hard as he could. Payne was tall, but skinny. There wasn’t much weight to him. Two powerful kicks sent Payne rolling over the edge.

  Jack threw himself down onto the dirt.

  A second after Payne had disappeared, the dynamite exploded. The force of it shook the ground and sent yet another ton of earth and rock high into the air.

  Jack lay on the ground, clunks of rock and soil hitting the ground all around him. He could see and feel them land, but he couldn’t hear them. All he could hear was a ringing inside his head. He wondered if he’d ever be able to hear again.

  He hauled himself up onto his feet and staggered over to where the Queen lay, knocked to the ground. He knelt down next to her. The Queen’s mouth was moving, forming words, but she didn’t seem to be making any sounds. He shook his head, pointed to his ears. So she put her hand on the back of his neck and brought his ear down to her lips.

  Through the ringing inside his head, he heard her shout, ‘Is it over?’

  Jack nodded. He took off his bandanna and wrapped it around her head. ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed, and kissed him on the cheek.

  After a couple of minutes the wound had stopped bleeding. She got up shakily, went over to the edge and looked down into the ravine.

  The coach was still there. Despite her head wound and the loss of blood, she started down the sharp incline, working around the deep gouge in the side of the ravine that hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier. When she got close up to the coach she shouted in Spanish, ‘Carlos! Gerardo! Are you all right?’

  One of the men inside shouted back, ‘Yes, ma’am!’

  ‘Good. I am glad. Open the door.’

  The door swung open and Carlos and Gerardo jumped out. They looked around, saw that the outriders and the coachman and the man who’d been riding shotgun were all dead.

  ‘We cannot clear the road,’ said the Queen. ‘But the village of Ajoya is only five or six miles from here. Carlos – take my horse and ride there. Tell the people that if they clear the road, the Queen of Meseta de Plata shall pay them well, and they shall have her eternal gratitude and protection. Go now.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Carlos. He touched his hat and scrambled up the incline.

  The Queen turned to Gerardo. ‘You and I shall carry the sacks of money up to the top of the ravine. There is a wagon and mules up there. We shall use that to take the money the rest of the way to San Ignacio.’

  ‘You need any help with that?’ asked Jack, who’d slid and scrambled down the incline after her. He’d been able to hear some of what she’d said, the ringing in his ears having quietened down a little.

  She turned and studied him. ‘You are a lawman,’ she said in English. ‘This is stolen money. I did not think you would wish to help.’

  Jack shrugged. ‘You saved my life up there, shooting Payne before he could shoot me. I figure it’s the least I could do.’

  ‘But you saved my life also, by kicking him over the edge before he blew himself up. We’re even. You owe me nothing.’

  Jack considered this. ‘That’s true, I guess. But I’ll help you anyway. I need the exercise.’

  ‘If you wish. But we had better start now. We only have a few hours before nightfall. There are three sacks of money in all, each weighing over a hundred pounds. You and I shall carry the first sack of money, then. . . .’

  ‘Did you forget about the mules?’ asked Jack.

  ‘No,’ she said severely. ‘I did not. But the incline is too steep for them, and too uneven. A mule could easily break its leg, and then we would not be able to. . . .’

  ‘There’s rope,’ said Jack. ‘In the back of Payne’s wagon. I reckon about two hundred feet of it. That would reach down here. The mules stay on top of the ravine, we tie the other end of the rope to the sacks. . . .’

  The faintest ghost of a smile twitched at the corner of the Queen’s perfect mouth. ‘That is good. We shall do that.’

  Thirty minutes later they’d got the sacks of money to the top of the incline and into the wagon that had belonged to the late Amos Payne.

  The Queen looked around her, searching for something.

  ‘What you looking for?’ asked Jack.

  ‘I did not see it in the ravine,’ she said. ‘If it was not destroyed by the explosion, it might be up here. . . .’

  ‘If I knew what you were talking about, I might be able to help,’ he said.

  She pointed up into one of the pine trees. ‘I see it. Up there, stuck in the branches.’ She began climbing the tree.

  Jack still didn’t know what she’d found. Not till she was about twenty feet up, and she shook a branch, and it came tumbling down. It rolled across the ground and stopped at Jack’s feet.

  The Queen scrambled down from the tree, picked the item up and tossed it into the back of the wagon. ‘I shall stick it on a pole in the town square of Meseta de Plata,’ she said. ‘It will be a warning: This is what happens if you try to steal from the Queen!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jack, ‘I guess that would show ’em, all right.’

  They stood facing each other.

  Jack said, ‘I guess I’d better be heading back up north to Arizona. I’ve done what I set out to do.’

  The Queen stared at him. ‘Or you could stay here. I will make the offer once: the only time I have ever said this to any man. You could stay here in Mexico. With me.’

  Jack scratched his jaw. ‘You mean you want me to be the King of Meseta de Plata?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You would be my – what is the word? My consort. Like Prince Albert to Queen Victoria. You would have no power. Only I would have power. That is how it must be. But at night. . . . Then I shall stop being the Queen of Meseta de Plata. In the darkness, when we are alone, then it shall be different.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. But I’m just not cut out for the life there. I belong back in Arizona.’

  ‘As you wish,’ she said. If she looked heartbroken, she didn’t show it.

  Jack guessed the Queen didn’t indulge much in sentimentality.

  ‘Goodbye, Deputy Jack Tanner.’ She got up on to the wagon, next to Gerardo.

  ‘If you’re ever up Paradise Flats way, stop by and say hello,’ said Jack.

  Without looking at him she said, ‘I think we both know that such a thing will never happen.’ She nodded to Gerardo, and he set the mules trotting.

  Jack watched as the wagon disappeared into the shadows beneath the Pines, heading east towards San Ignacio.

  Then he got on his horse and headed back home, near enough eight hundred miles north.

  FINALE

  When Jack finally made it back to the ranch, Xalvador was out on the range, tending to a newborn calf. When he saw Jack approach, he forgot about what he was doing, gave a whoop of j
oy and threw his sombrero in the air.

  Jack dismounted and the two men embraced.

  ‘How is everything?’ asked Jack.

  The old man had tears in his eyes. ‘Everything is just fine now that you are back,’ he said. ‘And you?’ He scrutinised Jack from head to toe. ‘No bullet holes? No scars?’

  ‘Nothing too serious.’

  Xalvador’s face went grave. ‘And the men who killed your mother and father. . . Did you find them?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jack. ‘I found all of ’em.’

  They went back to the house, and that night they drank a fair amount of whiskey.

  Halfway down the bottle, Xalvador said, ‘Are you staying in Paradise Flats as deputy?’

  Jack said, ‘Didn’t I tell you? I must have forgot. I already been there and quit. I’m staying right here, on the ranch. Together we’ll rebuild the place.’

  Xalvador grinned. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said.

  The next morning they started work.

  Jack and Xalvador worked hard, every day, year on year, till the ranch was the biggest in Arizona.

  And never a day went by when Jack didn’t think about the mysterious woman known as the Queen of Meseta de Plata.