It was dark and the cell was in deep shadow. The only light in the passage came from an oil lantern fixed to the wall by the door that led to the front office. It had been lit about half an hour ago by one of the Rangers and the man had glanced briefly into Yancey’s cell and told him he would be moved out in the morning, back to Del Rio, for trial. Yancey had slumped and cursed briefly but bitterly. It looked like his confiding in Daniels hadn’t done any good at all.
When the Ranger captain had seen the papers of commission, he had merely read them through, twice, then handed them back with a grunt that could have meant anything.
“Never heard of any group of agents called ‘the Enforcers’,” he had said. “And if it did exist, it would sure pay the governor to let us Rangers know if he had any operatives in our area. You ain’t proved a thing to me, Banner.”
And then the man had gone away.
Yancey was fuming with frustration. He had even told Daniels about the report being written in code in his room when they had burst in on him. He had mentioned a couple of the key words, urged Daniels to go and check, but the man had merely kept his face blank and walked out. Now Yancey was wondering if they were going to give him any supper this night. Must be nine, nine-thirty by now, and his belly was growling. He looked up hopefully as the door from the front office opened and he sighed with relief as he saw a Ranger step through, carrying a napkin-covered tray. He was followed by another man as guard and Yancey frowned when he recognized Daniels.
“Get back from them bars!” Daniels snapped, a gun in his hand and covering Yancey as he used his other hand to unlock the cell door. “Move back, I said, Banner! You try to jump my man when he brings your tray in and you won’t be needin’ no more meals.”
There was a strange edge to Daniels’ voice, Yancey thought as he backed up into the cell. A queer sort of tone and he was looking at Yancey in a strange way, too, almost as if he was trying to say something more with his eyes, past the head and shoulders of the man with the tray.
“There’s only us two in the building right now,” Daniels added, gesturing to the other Ranger, but we’re the ones you’ll have to get past if you’re figurin’ on making your break. Not that you could get past the back alley of the Silver Slipper without a horse or a gun …”
By hell! Yancey was sure of it now. Daniels was telling him he would never have a better chance to make his escape and that there was a horse and gun behind the Silver Slipper! At least, it seemed that way to Yancey, just now and there sure wasn’t any more time to waste if he was going to make his play. If he was wrong, he would catch a bullet. If he was right, then it would look pretty good to Cannon to know that Yancey, as ‘Banner’, had busted out of a cell guarded by Rangers and it would be his ticket of acceptance that would get him clear to El Halcon’s stronghold down in Mexico.
The Ranger was setting down the tray on the bunk as usual and Yancey glanced over the man’s head to where Daniels stood. The man nodded slightly and Yancey acted instantly. He suddenly threw out his arms from his sides and let out a screaming Indian war cry. Startled, the Ranger jerked upright and back, cannoning into Daniels and knocking him back against the barred cell door. Yancey charged in, swinging his fists into the Ranger’s midriff, two fast, solid blows. The man gagged and doubled over. Yancey brought up his knee into the Ranger’s face and he straightened abruptly, crashing back into Daniels again. Yancey didn’t pull any of his punches. He wanted this to look real and he was remembering the way Daniels had slammed him in the mouth earlier in the front office as he used his left to smash the captain’s gun hand aside, and hooked his right elbow to the side of the man’s head.
Daniels grunted, staggering, his gun exploding by reflex action, the slug whining off the stone flagged floor not a foot from where the other Ranger lay groaning and bloody-faced. Yancey kicked the man’s legs from under him and, as he went down, kicked him in the middle of the back. Daniels moaned and was half unconscious when he hit the floor. Yancey stamped on his gun hand, wrested the smoking Colt free and raised it to club the Ranger.
“Hell, no, man!” Daniels managed to gasp out in protest, and then Yancey clipped him lightly across the scalp with the gun barrel. It was sufficient to open the skin and draw blood and likely to make the captain see stars. It would look like a pretty good wound afterwards ...
Then Yancey leaped past the groaning Daniels, out into the passage and into the front office. He tossed Daniels’ sugarloaf hat over the oil lantern on the desk, plunging the place into darkness with the high crown, and then he slipped out into the street. He could see people already running across the plaza, wondering where the shot had come from. With the office in darkness behind him they would not see his silhouette as he slipped out into the street. Yancey went down the alley beside the building and now his long walks around the town of Condor paid off.
It seemed to people here that he had merely been killing time strolling the streets and back alleys of the town, but he had been getting the lie of the land, not knowing when some emergency might crop up when the knowledge would help him. Like now. He knew where every alley led and where the turn-offs were and what buildings they passed. He knew which doors were likely to be unlocked and those which weren’t. He also knew where each of the doors led. Like the green one with the rawhide thong on the cedar wood latch that he ran to now. It would take him up a narrow set of stairs to the top floor of a low-class boardinghouse where it was common to find up to ten Mexicans crammed into a room that a gringo would likely turn down as being too small for him.
The place smelt of wine and sweat and chili peppers and tacos, and the rank, strong scent of Mexican tobacco. He padded softly down the narrow passage at the top of the stairs, heard snoring in one of the rooms, low, intimate voices in another. He paused. Down below in the street he could hear men shouting and by the authority in the voices he figured they had to be the Rangers searching for him.
Yancey hurried along the dimly lit passage, his eyes more used to the gloom now, and he stepped out through a raised, arched window onto a long, narrow rear porch. There were no stairs leading down into the alley but it wasn’t a great drop and he rammed the Colt into his belt, swung over the rails, hung by his hands and let go. He fell maybe a dozen feet, hit with a grunt and rolled expertly onto his shoulders, bouncing up to his feet with gun in hand.
A shape loomed up from against the adobe wall of the building and he saw that it was a serape-clad Mexican who had been drinking quietly there. There was the glint of moonlight on steel as the man whipped a knife out and charged in, muttering drunkenly, “Gringo pig!”
Yancey didn’t want to spend time fighting him, but the man was crazed with tequila and clearly had no love for gringos. He slashed and weaved, the knife blade hissing past Yancey’s face with only an inch to spare. He dodged and ducked but couldn’t get past the man. He was blocking Yancey’s way out through the gate. The knife flicked through Yancey’s flying hair as he weaved aside and Yancey figured that was close enough. He couldn’t risk a shot so he struck at the man’s knife arm as hard as he could with the gun barrel. He felt the jar clear up to his shoulder as the metal crunched on bone and the Mexican let out a scream that should have wakened the dead on Boothill. And the man went on screaming, stumbling away across the yard, crashing into stacked crates, knocking over piles of empty bottles, making one hell of a racket. Yancey cursed his luck, decided to hell with it, and slammed out of the gate, cutting diagonally across the narrow alley that he knew would bring him out at the rear of the Silver Slipper.
The Mexican’s screams of drunken agony had alerted the Rangers searching the town and he could hear them shouting to each other as they came in his direction. By hell, if he had read Daniels wrong, if there wasn’t a horse saddled and waiting for him behind the saloon.
But he had made no mistake. There was his claybank standing with trailing reins outside the crude bough fence of the rear yard of the saloon. Even his hat hung from the saddlehorn. Yancey bared his
teeth in a grin as he rammed Daniels’ Colt into his belt and made a vault into the saddle, startling the horse so that it threw up its head and squealed. He jammed his hat on his head, snatched at the reins just as there were loud shouts from men who burst into the alley from the street. As he turned the mount and rammed his heels home, the Rangers’ guns started blazing and he crouched low over the claybank’s neck as he quit Condor, a fugitive, with Ranger lead singing its song of death about his ears.
Eight – Deadly Mistake
Cato never did learn the details of the supposed arms robbery at Presidio but Captain Cougar Hood was true to his word and had them waiting at the part of the Rio known as the Crossing at the appointed time.
There were three wagons with a Mexican driver on each and two hard-faced Americans riding shotgun. Cannon seemed to know everyone there but didn’t introduce Cato. The first thing the giant did was to prise up the lid of a case or two and make a quick examination of the weapons inside. Cato caught a glimpse of new Army Remington revolvers and the latest Winchester saddle carbines with the special rings on the left-hand side of the flat receiver for carrying by cavalry, thus saving the army the cost of leather scabbards, all factors in winning government contracts. Hood had gotten hold of the latest issue weapons, sure enough, and the second wagon contained ten thousand rounds of ammunition.
Once satisfied that the cargo was what he had paid for, Cannon urged the wagons across the Rio where the drivers halted, squatted down in a small group and chewed peyote while waiting for Cannon and Cato to join them. The two hard-faced shotgun guards remained on the Texas side of the Rio with Cato, Cannon and Hood,
“Guess this’ll be the last time we’ll be doin’ business, Cougar,” Cannon told the captain. “El Halcon won’t be wantin’ any more guns and it’ll take a spell for any other rebels to get together after he starts runnin’ the country.”
Hood nodded but his eyes were watching Cato who sat relaxed in the saddle a little behind and off to one side of Cannon. “Guess that’s right, Cannon. But you know where to come if you need any more. Adios.”
He backed his mount a few steps and threw them a casual salute. Once again his eyes were on Cato and the agent frowned slightly. He couldn’t read Hood’s eyes any too well in the wan moonlight. The two armed guards turned their mounts towards the Rio and began walking them slowly in that direction. Cannon nodded to Hood and wheeled his horse, motioning for Cato to do the same. The agent started walking his sorrel towards the river with the others but he had a hunch that there was something wrong and he was tense, right hand riding halfway up his thigh, only inches from the base of the holster carrying his Manstopper.
He froze as there was the unmistakable click of a gun-hammer’s ratchet as it was notched back to full lock. A second later, Hood spoke. “Hold it, Colt!”
Cannon hipped fast in the saddle and the two Americans swung their guns down and covered the big man. Cato was already under the gun of Cougar Hood.
“What’s this, Cougar?” snapped Cannon. “You’ve been paid. You know I don’t carry any extra gold with me.”
“Sure. But he’s carryin’ plenty,” Hood replied, gesturing to Cato with the gun barrel. “He pulled that payroll robbery in Giddings. An army payroll ... I figure I’ve got more use for it than he has.”
“You don’t figure I’d be loco enough to carry it around in my saddlebags?” demanded Cato, hands on his saddlehorn.
Hood shrugged. “No matter. You’ll tell where it is. That is, if you want to die fast and painless.”
Cato said nothing and Cannon looked thoughtfully around at the two shotgun guards. “You fellers sellin’ me out or just buyin’ into this deal for whatever Hood’s payin’?”
Hood answered for them. “They’re helping me out, is all. They’ll still ride shotgun for you after we finish with Colt.”
Cannon nodded. “Fair enough, I reckon. Then this don’t have anythin’ to do with me. I’ll mosey across and see them Mex drivers don’t get nervous.”
Hood hesitated, then nodded, but Cannon was already walking his horse out into the shallow ford and Cato’s lips tightened. Hood’s gaze went to Cannon momentarily and the two guards moved their mounts out of the way a little to let him through. Cato figured he would never have a better chance.
He palmed up the Manstopper smoothly and one of the shotgun guards yelled a warning. Cato fired once from the saddle, then spilled sideways as Hood’s gun roared and a shotgun boomed. Cannon spurred his mount out into the river away from the gunfire, yelling at the startled Mexican drivers on the far side to stay where they were, that it wasn’t an attack by a border patrol.
Cato’s first shot had clipped the ear of Hood’s mount and the animal reared, its bucking and squealing keeping Hood busy. The agent lit on one shoulder, spun onto his back and fired upwards as one of the guards rode in on him swinging his shotgun down. Cato’s bullet found its mark under the man’s jaw and lifted him clear out of the stirrups before blasting the top off his head. Cato rolled away from the hoofs, stayed on his belly, propping both elbows into the ground, drawing a bead on the other shotgun guard who was reloading. The man never got the second shell into the breech. Johnny Cato shot him three times in the chest and, before the man’s body had toppled from the saddle, Cato was rolling again, just as Hood’s bullets kicked up dirt beside his head. As he rolled, he thumbed the toggle on the gun’s hammer, stopped on his left side and slanted the Manstopper’s barrels upwards as Hood rode in with bared teeth, already starting to throw down.
The shot-barrel thundered, the gun leaping high in the air in recoil, and Captain Cougar Hood seemed suspended momentarily in mid-air, his horse apparently running out from under him. Then his chest and face seemed to disintegrate in a shower of bone and gristle and spraying blood, and he fell to the ground, flopping like a piece of discarded laundry in a gale. Cato dodged the wildly running horse and got swiftly to one knee, already punching out the used shells in his gun’s cylinder and reloading expertly.
Across the river, Cannon sat his mount with his jaw sagging and his eyes narrowed. The Mexicans stood in a tight group, faces taut, scared, as they looked back across the river to where the small agent was now catching his mount, still holding his reloaded gun in his right hand. He stepped up into the saddle easily, glanced briefly at the three dead men, and walked his sorrel out into the waters of the river ford.
He stopped a few feet from Cannon and his hard eyes bored into the gun-runner’s smooth-skinned, impassive face. “Thanks!” he said sardonically.
Cannon shrugged. “Wasn’t anything I could do, Colt. But I sure am glad I hired you!”
“Yeah, well it’s gonna cost you exactly double now!”
Cannon’s eyes slitted and his jaw hardened. He held Cato’s cold gaze for a long minute, then finally nodded. “It’s a deal. I need you bad now that you’ve killed my two shotgun guards. But I won’t forget this, Colt. I don’t take none too kindly to hombres pullin’ fast ones on me.”
“Me neither,” Cato retorted and holstered his gun, walking his sorrel around Cannon’s mount and yelling at the Mexicans in Spanish to get the wagons started in case the shooting had been heard by some prowling border patrol. They leaped to obey.
Yancey could never be sure whether he actually threw the Rangers off his trail or Poke Daniels was responsible for his getaway. But, somehow, though the Ranger troop pursued him out of Condor and stayed within rifle range most of the night, he had shaken them by sun-up. He was in the rugged hills a few miles outside of town, so maybe they really had lost his trail amongst the dead-end canyons and snaking arroyos floored with lava rock and dry creeks. He had sure done a heap of twisting and turning in his efforts to throw them off but, because of the darkness, he hadn’t been sure if he had actually covered all his tracks or not. Anyway, the main thing was they weren’t in sight come morning and he had a clear run to the border.
There was hardtack in his saddlebags and ammunition for his rifle and Colt Peacemaker, whi
ch were of the same .44 caliber. Daniels had set things up well, but the hard old captain of the Ranger troop had surely had Yancey fooled there for a spell. The agent had been sure that Daniels wasn’t going to help him out at all and it looked like the whole deal would fall apart.
The Rio was deep and muddy at the point he chose to cross, figuring they would be watching the shallower fords. The current was stronger than he had estimated and he had to slip from the saddle and swim alongside, clinging to the saddlehorn, talking quietly and comfortingly to the anxious claybank. The horse was glad to get into shallow water and heaved out onto Mexican soil with a whicker, muddy river water streaming from its hide. By the time the clothes had dried on him, Yancey was a reddish-yellow color and he figured he would need to find a clear spring where he could wash up. This dried mud would mark him plainly as a man who had taken the river crossing, instead of one of the bridges at the Immigration checkpoints, and he wanted no trouble with the Mexican authorities. In fact, he didn’t even want to see anything that remotely resembled any kind of a uniform.
He rode deep into the cholla and cactus of the barren land before stopping to get his bearings. He was many miles from the trail he had travelled with Cato so long ago, when they had been coming up to Texas from Los Moros, but there were many trails leading to that infamous cantina town.
Cato and Cannon had ridden almost due west when they had quit Condor, but that didn’t necessarily mean they had continued in that direction. Still, by going due west for maybe fifty, fifty-six miles, a man could cut dead south and strike the trail to Los Moros through Jacinto Pass, a narrow, snaking defile that cut through the Cordilleras and slashed a hundred miles off the journey. It was bandido country and was not used much by normal travelers because of this danger, but it was an ideal route for gun-smugglers to take. No doubt El Halcon would have smoothed the way, either with gold or blood, so there would be safe passage for his guns ...
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