Bannerman the Enforcer 8

by Kirk Hamilton

  He was riding the trail south into Mexico, sticking, like Cato, to the well-travelled Monterey trail, when a rifle blasted from a wind-scoured butte ahead. The bullet passed close enough to clip the lobe of his left ear and spray his neck and the shoulder of his shirt with droplets of blood.

  He was caught out in the open, on the wide, flat trail, with no cover within a hundred yards. In fact, the nearest cover was at the base of the same butte being used by the bushwhacker. Yancey didn’t hesitate. He drove home the spurs brutally and the dun whinnied in protest, hind legs momentarily buckling in pain. The movement saved Yancey from the second buffet. It punched through the high crown of his hat and only the fact that the hat was jammed on tight saved it from being whipped off. Yancey put his weight in the stirrups and leaned forward over the animal’s arched neck, dragging his Colt free of the holster as the horse started its run.

  The rifle whiplashed a third time and by then Yancey had the man’s position pinpointed. He was about halfway up the steep side of the butte, on a small ledge that had a half-circle of protecting boulders around its outer edges. A perfect place for an ambusher to hole-up, but he figured it was likely man-built, not a natural feature of the butte.

  Yancey drove the horse forward with curses and raked it with the spurs again. The animal responded, its ears laid back, eyes wide and bulging. Flecks of froth flew from its mouth as the bit sawed mercilessly. Yancey used his knees as well as pressure on the reins to veer the dun first to the left then to the right, and abruptly back to the left again. He rode in an unpredictable zigzag. At one stage, he even hauled rein, skidded the startled animal to a halt, then galloped parallel to the butte.

  The rifleman was shooting desperately now, some of his bullets going wide, others coming within a hair of knocking Yancey out of the saddle. Finally he paused to reload and Yancey immediately drove the dun straight for the base of the butte. Before he reached it, the killer was shooting again but Yancey was so close in to the base now that the man had to stand and lean over his cover to fire downwards.

  So far, Yancey hadn’t fired a shot and he held his fire now as he zigzagged the last few yards, then leapt from the panting, blowing dun amongst the scattered rocks right at the base of the butte. He grabbed at the rifle butt, but the animal was skittish and lunged away and when he dived after it, lead from above ricocheted from a rock only inches from his face. He flattened himself back against the butte and cursed as the dun trotted off amongst some tall rocks.

  Yancey’s cover was adequate enough, but he was unable to return the bushwhacker’s fire and if he stayed here, he would be pinned down. He dived for a line of low rocks to his left. Two fast shots whined off the sandstone as he went over them, landed on the sand beyond and rolled swiftly in against a big black slab of granite. At one end of it, he saw a slope began. It was steep, but looked as if it went up the side of the butte, towards the ledge where the killer was.

  Yancey ran for this slope and a bullet went through the brim of his hat, from almost directly above. He tripped, but twisted as he went down and landed on his back. The breath jarred out of him but his vision was clear and he saw the killer above him, leaning out and levering in another shell. Yancey’s reactions were instinctive. First, he fired a shot upwards and saw it gouge dust from the rock edge, making the killer jerk back. Then he rolled and bounced to his feet, drove himself up a few yards and spun about again, in time to catch the killer as he leaned far out now, in an effort to draw a bead on Yancey.

  The Enforcer fired three swift shots the moment his foresight lined up and, though he saw dust spurt from the soft sandstone, he also saw the killer jerk convulsively and the rifle exploded wildly as it arced out and began its long fall down the face of the butte. The killer was hit but, apparently not fatally, for he was clawing at the rocks desperately, trying to pull himself back past the point of balance. Yancey took deliberate aim and dropped the hammer.

  The gun bucked and powdersmoke obscured the man for a brief moment. Then Yancey saw him again; plummeting down the face of the butte, hitting a projection of rock with a nauseating sound, flailing and cartwheeling, to strike the ground several yards from Yancey’s position.

  Dragging down a deep breath, Yancey paused long enough to reload his gun before walking stiffly towards the killer and using a boot-toe to heave the man over onto his back. He grimaced. It wasn’t a pretty sight and there wasn’t enough of the face left to identify the man. He would never know who he was, but it was a safe bet to assume that he had been yet another enemy of Sundance’s, trying to square a grudge.

  He guessed it meant his masquerade was a success.

  But Brandon, whoever he was, was waiting somewhere to the south, so Yancey holstered his six-gun and walked across to catch the dun and mount up again.

  Buzzards were already gathering around the butte as he rode on along the old Monterey trail.

  Five – The Man Called Brandon

  Acuna Parral. An adobe town, scattered across a low hillside with the business section built around a plaza actually carved out of the same hill. It had been scraped flat by hundreds of peons and Indians in the last days of the Conquistadors, for Acuna Parral was that old. Once there had been silver mines on the other side of the hill and the Spanish overseers had built their houses on this side where the winds blew cooler, straight in from the far distant and unseen Gulf. The mines had slowly petered out but, by that time, Acuna Parral had become a travelers’ stopover on the long haul down to Monterey and it prospered.

  The Indian tribe whose members had worked the mines had been, by this time, entirely obliterated, but that was the way of Spanish colonialism. The houses, at least the more elaborate ones, showed signs of Moorish architecture, modified for the climate up here on the high Mexican plateau and, all in all, Acuna Parral was a picturesque town. It housed government agents who watched over the vast tracts of peon land surrounding the hill that jutted out of the flats like a huge pimple. There was a bullfighting arena, as well as a large plaza and market, where Cato strolled under the curious eyes of the Mexican populace. It wasn’t that there weren’t other gringos around town, but Cato paid fair prices for the fruit, sandals and serapes he bought. He bargained, but unlike most of the gringos, he realized these people had to make a living, too, and that prices were far cheaper than they would be north of the Rio. It won him a lot of attention and after only one day in the town, he was treated as a friend by the stallholders, offered cool lime drinks, and a chair to sit on while he drank.

  Cato had set out deliberately to cultivate the friendship of the market folk, figuring they knew everything that went on, in and around town, and would be able to give him the information he wanted. He hoped, too, that it would be less dangerous asking his questions amongst these smiling people, rather than in a cantina.

  He was staying at a cantina called El Corrientes and had been regarded with suspicion and charged at least five times the normal price for his room. That he didn’t mind: he figured they reckoned he was a gringo on the run from the law and that could only help the image he wished to create. But he had found that the servants there were close-lipped and refused to answer his questions. Most pretended they didn’t savvy English and when he tried his slow Spanish, they merely shook their heads and refused to answer. Some had even shown open fear when he had mentioned the name ‘Brandon’.

  But he hoped to have better luck in the market today and bought some cakes from a stall for a bunch of kids who were following him about. Laughing and chattering with excitement, they surrounded him as he accepted a glass of limejuice from a fat woman behind a stall and sat down on the old wooden stool she gave him. She smiled widely and hugged him, almost smothering him with her massive bosom.

  “A man who likes muchachos is a good man,” she told him.

  “Good and tuckered,” panted Cato, “after playin’ hide and seek with ’em through these stalls!”

  The woman turned to the children who had started to clamber onto Cato’s lap and chas
ed them away with a rapid tirade and by flapping her apron at them. They ran off, grinning and laughing.

  “You are a strange gringo,” she told him, regarding him with her hands on her fat hips. “Most who come here only stay a little while and sometimes they get into fights over the women or amongst themselves, or they try to steal from us. We know they are poor, like us, but we do not steal from each other. They only want to pay us a very few pesos for our wares. But you pay fair prices, buy cakes for our children, have a smile for the señoritas. Ah, do not try to deny it, señor! I have seen you! If I were only ten years younger ...! Aah!”

  Cato grinned and handed back the clay cup. “Mighty fine limejuice, señora.”

  She smiled widely. “Ah ha, you avoid my questions!”

  Cato tried to look innocent. “Were you askin’ me somethin’, ma’am?”

  “Do not try that with me, gringo!” she laughed, punching him lightly, but even so, almost knocking him off the stool. “You are not so innocent! But, if you like. I ask you straight out: Are you staying here or passing through? To Monterey, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps,” Cato said, deliberately enigmatic and the woman shook her head slowly, punching him on the shoulder again and almost unseating him.

  “Ah ha. Now I see. Well, it is not my business. I only wished to help you if you needed it.”

  “Not right now, señora, but muchas gracias.” Then Cato snapped his fingers. “Mebbe there is somethin’ you can help with.”

  “Tell me how?”

  “You know a gringo around these parts named Brandon?”

  The woman frowned, thinking hard for a long minute, but finally thrusting out her fat bottom lip and shaking her head slowly. “I do not, señor. But I could perhaps find out for you from someone else. If it is important.”

  “Important enough, I guess, but 1 wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble, señora. Or bring any danger to you.”

  Her glittering dark eyes searched his face sharply. “I see, señor. Thank you for your concern. And now, I must squeeze more limes.”

  Cato stood and nodded. “Buenos dias, señora,” he said, touching his hat brim and moving on.

  He figured she would spread the word, but he had given just enough warning to ensure it would be done on the quiet.

  With some luck, by sundown he could have a line on Brandon and it might be information that would help Yancey when he showed. And that should be late tomorrow or the next day. Providing he hadn’t run into any trouble along the trail.

  Cato moved around the town for the rest of the day and watched a bullfight in the arena in the afternoon, not understanding how the Mexicans could get so excited over seeing a bull slaughtered that way. In his view, that was all it was: slaughter. Men riding in on horses and wounding the bull with lances and darts, allowing it to bleed, weakening it for the final confrontation with the toreador who dispatched it with a clumsy sword thrust that, most times he had seen it done, anyway, left the bull to die slowly and in agony. And usually someone cut off the poor animal’s ears before it had cashed-in. Cato couldn’t see any sport in this and wondered why he had bothered to spend a couple of hours out at the blood-soaked arena. It passed the time, but that was all that could be said for it.

  However, on the way out, he ran into a slim-waisted señorita with a blood-red rose in her gleaming black hair who flashed a smile in his direction. The next couple of hours were spent far more entertainingly than the time he had put in at the bullfight. She even fed him tacos chili and beans, washed down with a raw red wine, and blew him a kiss as he left and walked back towards his cantina in the cool darkness.

  He was still thinking of the girl when he went up the outside stairway of the white adobe cantina, opened the heavy door and stepped into the dim passage that led to his room. The wine had made his head swim a little and he was clumsy opening the door, which was just as well. When he stumbled, the knife that came out of the darkness missed him by a whisker and the blade thudded into the woodwork beside his ear.

  Instantly, Cato dropped to one knee, palming up the Manstopper, even as the assassin moved forward, cursing in Spanish, the faint light from the window glittering off the blade of a second knife. Cato brought the Manstopper around in a short arc and heard the man moan sickly as the heavy weapon smashed across his ribs. The knife clattered to the floor and the killer gritted:

  “Paco!”

  Cato whirled, realizing there were two of them. Then a man was hitting him in the middle of the back and the weight bore him forward and down. His face rapped hard against the gritty floorboards and a sandaled foot stomped on his gun hand. The Manstopper slipped from his numbed hand and fingers twisted in his hair, yanking his head back. He knew they were doing that to stretch the throat’s tendons so they would sever more easily with the murderous slash of the knife and he convulsed, yanking downwards with his head and feeling the hair slip through the man’s fingers. He tucked his chin down on his chest as he rolled swiftly onto his back and saw the dark shape of the man straddling him. Cato heaved upwards and drove his boot violently into the man’s unprotected crotch.

  The man’s strangled scream curdled Cato’s blood and he rolled away, kicking the man’s buckling legs from under him and hearing the knife clatter to the floor. The first man dived on it, smashing hard knuckles into Cato’s mouth and sending the small Enforcer reeling, tasting blood. He fell back as the man gave a cry of triumph and snatched up the knife. Cato could make out his dark shape as he lurched upright, twisting the knife around so that he could throw it. There was a dull gleam of metal on the floor a yard and a half to Cato’s right. He hurled himself at it as the man drew his arm back, knife held by the point. Cato’s hand closed around the butt of the Manstopper and he rolled half onto his back as the arm snapped forward.

  The Manstopper blasted twice and the man was blown back through the doorway out into the passage, screaming in pain. The knife nicked Cato’s shoulder and it spun him off-balance. By the time he had clambered to his feet, the man he had kicked in the groin had limped outside and disappeared while the other was dying noisily in a pool of blood just beyond the door.

  He heard men running and shouting as they pounded up the stairs to see what had happened but he didn’t go after the one who had staggered away. Instead, he reloaded the spent cartridge in his gun, thinking that maybe this attack was because he had spent some time with the Mexican woman, or perhaps it had something to do with his asking about the gringo called Brandon. It was hard to say right now.

  But, in the morning, he realized it had been because he had asked about Brandon. The fat señora’s limejuice stall was missing from the market and the potter sitting at his kick-powered wheel next door said that she had not shown up this morning.

  He searched the town for most of the day and asked a lot of questions, but no one would—or could—tell him anything. The señora had disappeared off the face of the earth. He felt bad about it, but there wasn’t much time for remorse.

  For, right on sundown, Yancey rode in.

  Cato was sitting in the patio of the cantina, eating his evening meal, when he recognized his pard forking the dust-spattered dun horse. The animal walked wearily into the plaza and Yancey was sagging a little in the saddle, too. He had done some hard riding it seemed. Cato rose from his table, leaving a few pesos beside the plate, and hitched at his gunbelt. Other folk watched, for word had spread fast about how he had tackled the two men who had tried to kill him in his room.

  He took a cheroot from his pocket and walked out into the plaza, pausing to light it, directly in the path of Yancey’s horse. The big Enforcer reined the dun aside with a curse.

  "Watch where the hell you’re walkin’, mister!” he snapped.

  Cato shook out the match and glanced up, puffing smoke. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinkin’.”

  “Next time I’ll ride clear over you!”

  “Said I was sorry. I ain’t sayin’ it again.” He squinted at Yancey. “You look kind of tuckered-out, mister.
Can recommend the cantina yonder. Or, if you want to buy your own grub, you can get a good deal at the market. One down near the potter’s stall has good fresh vegetables and serves a cheap chili that’ll warm you for a week.”

  Yancey nodded curtly and yanked the reins, walking the dun past Cato who strolled on across the plaza, puffing on his cheroot. Yancey stalled the horse in a livery near the cantina, then booked himself a room. As he followed the barefoot boy along the hall upstairs, he wondered which room was Cato’s. The boy chattered about the fight the previous night and pointed out the room where it had taken place. Yancey wanted to ask if it had been Cato who had been involved, but figured he had better not show much interest. After the boy had left, Yancey washed-up, went downstairs and ate a meal in the patio area, watching the evening traffic and folk walking around the plaza. A busy town. He wondered if he would have to ask for Brandon or whether the man already knew he had arrived and would make contact in his own good time.

  Yancey hung around the patio table until well after dark, drinking slowly, smoking, watching and waiting. By that time the cantina barroom was full, mainly with Mexicans but also with a few gringos. He asked the waiter if the market was open at night and the man told him it was open until nine o’clock. Yancey gave him some coins, stood up slowly, stretched to get some of the kinks out of his long frame, then strolled across the plaza and down the dark side street towards the line of lamplit market stalls. He took his time, stopping to look at silk scarves and Spanish combs made from tortoise-shell and mother- of-pearl, colorful serapes, carved wooden boxes, silver trinkets. He bought a few items, intending them for Kate when he returned to Austin, and gradually made his way over to the potter’s stall.

  He watched the man work at the heavy, rock-weighted wheel, fashioning pitchers and plates and cups seemingly effortlessly. While he stood there with the small crowd, Yancey rolled a cigarette and cupped his hands around the vesta flame as he lit up. He used the motion as a cover to glance towards the chili stall next door and the piles of fresh vegetables. He smiled to himself when he recognized Cato laughingly bartering with a Mexican woman for a melon.