Bannerman the Enforcer 8

by Kirk Hamilton

  Yancey edged along and leaned against a stall upright near Cato who was now using his clasp knife to slice and eat the melon.

  “Look like you been ridin’ hard,” Cato opined, without seeming to move his lips or glance in Yancey’s direction.

  “Little trouble. You spread the word good about Sundance. He’s got a lot of enemies.”

  Cato whistled softly, put a slice of dripping melon into his mouth. “Brandon seems a tough hombre. I asked a señora in the limejuice stall that used to be the other side of the potter’s about him. She’s disappeared and two fellers tried to slice me up in my room last night.”

  “I heard. You better drop out of it completely.”

  Cato nodded, still eating. “You get a room at the cantina?”

  “Eleven.”

  “I’m in six. You got to pass my door on the way out.”

  “Okay. We better not be seen around together. Adios, Johnny.”

  “Luck, Yance.”

  The big Enforcer flicked his cigarette away, bought an orange at the stall and strolled away, carrying his parcel. He walked around the town, getting the lie of things, then went back to the cantina. He paused in the barroom for a drink, aiming to have just the one before going up to his room.

  The big room was livelier now. There was guitar music and singing and a wild Spanish dance was being performed by a raven-haired girl in a green-and-red dress. Above her left ear was a red rose. She clicked castanets on her fingers and weaved between the tables, pulling her long, perfumed stole over the laps of yelling, pawing, laughing men. Some of the Mexicans got up and began their own dance. The guitars strummed frantically and Yancey turned, leaning his elbows on the bar top, nursing his drink, watching. The girl finished her dance with a staccato burst on the castanets, a furious stomping of her shoes, and a final “Ole!”

  The crowd clapped and coins were flung onto the floor. She stooped, smiling, and scooping them up. Yancey took some coins from his pocket and threw them to her. It took her a few minutes to gather up all the money and some strands of hair hung down over her face when she straightened, her cheeks flushed. She hurried to the bar and sat on a stool at one end, pouring the money out of her skirt onto the woodwork. She busied herself counting the coins and the barman stood close by, watching. When she had finished she glanced at him, then counted out several of the coins and handed them to him. He took them without acknowledgment or change of facial expression and dropped them into his pocket. The girl brought out a chamois leather bag and scooped the rest of the money into it. She tied the thong around the top tightly, then dropped it down the front of her dress.

  Yancey had been watching all this time, wondering just how much commission the girl paid the barkeeper and he nodded casually now as she glanced up and caught his gaze. She hesitated, then smiled and started down the bar towards him. The men she passed made some remarks in low Spanish but she did not reply. She stopped beside Yancey and looked up into his face.

  “I would like some red wine, gracias, señor.”

  Yancey arched his eyebrows. “That so? Well, guess mebbe I can run to that.” He signaled the barkeep to bring the girl’s drink, then turned back to her. “Hard work, dancin’ the way you do.”

  She shrugged, picked up the glass of ruby red wine and saluted him briefly before sipping. She rolled the wine around her tongue, then drank half the large glass, afterwards sighing. “It is thirsty work, anyway, señor.” She touched the rose in her hair. “I am called Rosita.”

  “Sundance,” Yancey said.

  She flicked one eyebrow. “Is that all?”

  “It’s all I answer to.”

  “A strange name, señor. It is perhaps the name of the town you are from?”

  “Nope. It’s the name of an Indian dance. When the sun comes out after rain, they know its warmth will draw the crops above the ground and there will be a good harvest. So they dance to give thanks to their gods.”

  “Ah! That I understand. But how were you named?”

  Yancey was stymied. The one thing the information from the Dakotas hadn’t revealed, was how Sundance had earned his name. No one had figured it to be important. But he had to be suspicious of every question and it was something like this that could easily trip him up and expose him.

  Then he recalled just a single line from the information the law agency had sent down from the Dakotas: ‘After the war, Sundance led punitive army patrols in the Indian Wars.’

  It wasn’t much, but furnished some kind of clue when he matched it up to another snippet of information: ‘He refused a medal awarded him by the commandant of Fort Bearclaw.’

  “Hard to say when I was first called ‘Sundance’,” Yancey said slowly. “Few fellers labeled me that after some raids we made on Sioux camps. There was a big massacre at one time while the braves were in the middle of their Sundance ... didn’t see us until we opened up with everythin’ we had. They wanted to hang a medal on me for that one.”

  She frowned. “You must have felt highly honored, señor.”

  He scowled. “I threw it back at ’em. I didn’t want medals for killin’ Injuns. They were vermin.”

  She stiffened and he saw the flash of her dark eyes, noticing now that they were intelligent eyes, cool, probing. He was suddenly wary, knowing he’d been right to be suspicious of her seemingly casual questions. This girl was a lot more than a cantina dancer, he figured.

  “What is your opinion of Mexicans, then, señor?”

  He shrugged. “Take ’em as I find ’em. Some good, some muy malo.”

  “You know Spanish?” she asked swiftly and he cursed himself silently for the slip. The real Sundance was not supposed to know even a phrase of Spanish.

  He grimaced. “Picked up the odd word or two. Señorita, adios, muy malo, bueno ...” Then he grinned. “Tequila, pulque, querida ...”

  She laughed with him. “Si, I understand. The ‘helpful’ words, eh? More wine for Rosita?”

  “Why not?” He signaled the barkeep again and gave a small sigh. He had an idea he had just passed some sort of test; maybe not with flying colors, but he had gotten through somehow. Now he had to keep that advantage, increase it if he could. He ran a hand across his forehead. “Phew! Sure ain’t as hot as this where I come from.”

  “And that is where, Señor Sundance?” She sipped her fresh glass of wine and reached across to take a cheroot from Yancey’s pocket. He looked surprised when she held it out for a light but struck a vesta and held the flame against the end of the cylinder of tobacco. She blew smoke into his face, her eyes boring into his.

  “North Dakota, mainly, but both the Dakotas are my stampin’ grounds.”

  “Why do you come to Mexico? Or perhaps I should not ask a gringo that.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t, but I’m only here to meet someone. In this town, matter of fact.”

  “Oh. Perhaps I can help you. I know most people in Acuna Parral, from the toreadors to the governmentistas.”

  Yancey smiled crookedly. “He ain’t either. Far as 1 know he’s a gringo. Leastways, he has a gringo name. Brandon.”

  She sipped her wine without any change of expression on her face. She continued to drink until the glass was empty. Then she puffed at the cigar, straightened and took his right hand in hers. He immediately pulled his hand free and she frowned puzzledly.

  “That’s my gun hand, Rosita. You want to hold hands with me, you’ll have to get used to makin’ it the left one.”

  She nodded soberly, then took his left hand and started to pull him away from the bar. He resisted and she turned towards him, irritably.

  “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “You will see.”

  “I’ll know right now or I don’t move a step from here.”

  Her eyes blazed at him and then she forced a smile, but while the moist, red lips moved invitingly around the white teeth, her eyes remained cool and calculating. “You are not very gallant, Señor Sundance!”

  “I�
��m alive!”

  She nodded slowly. “Si. I have heard you are a careful man. But we have a long way to go. Brandon waits.”

  Yancey showed interest. “So you say.”

  She made an exasperated gesture. “He is waiting! And he is not a man of great patience! Why d’you think I ask so many questions of you?”

  “Thought it was my handsome face.”

  “Do not try to joke with me, Señor Sundance! This may well be only another job to you, but it is a very serious matter for me and my amigos. You have been observed coming down the Monterey trail. We know you killed two men, one in Sabinas, one at a butte along the trail. He was one of our friends, by the way. He must’ve mistaken you for someone else.”

  Or he’d been in Sabinas and heard Becker say he figured I wasn’t really Sundance, Yancey thought. So he figured to play it safe and finish me from bushwhack, but he wasn’t good enough.

  “Well, you seem to’ve been keepin’ tabs on me right enough,” he said aloud.

  “We have indeed, señor,” she said and he wondered if there was innuendo in her tone or whether he’d imagined it. Could be they had noticed him in the market with Cato. “Now,” she said imperiously, “Señor Brandon waits. Come.”

  Yancey picked up his parcel off the bar. “I’ll just put this in my room first.”

  She glanced at him sharply, then spoke past him in rapid Spanish to the barkeeper. “He will look after it for you. No need for you to go up to your room.”

  Yancey kept his face blank. That way, he thought, they made sure he couldn’t leave word where he had gone. Seemed that they might be onto Cato, or perhaps they were simply just playing it safe. He shrugged and pushed the parcel across the bar, giving the barkeep a hard look.

  “That string better not have been untied when I pick it up again, amigo.”

  The man returned his stare levelly and said nothing, but a corner of his mouth curled.

  Yancey turned back to the girl and slipped his left arm through hers, forcing a smile. “Guess we better walk out of here as if we got less serious things on our minds than meetin’ up with Brandon, huh?”

  She laughed easily and leaned her head against his shoulder as they moved out of the cantina and into the plaza. As they walked past the tables, Yancey turned his head slightly and Cato moved a little out of the shadows, where he sat alone at a table against the wall. He didn’t look in Yancey’s direction but touched a hand to his hat brim, pushing it back on his head, then pulling it forward over his eyes again.

  Yancey felt a lot easier. It was the sign that Cato would follow at a safe distance. But he wished he could warn his smaller pard that he might be watched and could be riding into trouble.

  The girl steered him towards the livery and not long afterwards they rode out of town along a trail that took them downhill and into the southwest. There was a moon rising from behind the Sierras but the girl didn’t seem to need its light to see where she was going. Yancey figured they rode the best part of ten miles before he saw the low white buildings of a large rancho lifting out of the flats. There was a wall around the main house and a watchtower above the heavy wooden gates.

  “Looks like a fort,” Yancey opined but the girl said nothing.

  They rode into the shadow of the wall under the watchtower though Yancey couldn’t see any guards up there. Then she cupped a hand around her lips and gave the call of a night bird he had heard in the lime groves behind the cantina.

  Nothing happened for a full three minutes, then he saw that the gates were swinging open soundlessly and there were two men with rifles standing just inside the courtyard, covering them.

  They walked their horses in and Yancey stiffened as he was disarmed. The guards gestured with their guns and they dismounted and walked the rest of the way to the house, where lights were now showing. The ornate, iron-hinged door opened and a man holding a sawn-off shotgun stood in the passage. He moved aside to let them in and the girl led the way to a room beyond another ornately carved door and gestured for Bannerman to take a seat.

  “Wait here. Señor Brandon will be with you directly.”

  They were the first words she had spoken since they had cleared the outskirts of Acuna Parral. Yancey nodded and pushed his hat to the back of his head, crossing the room and dropping into a deep chair upholstered in black and white calfskin. He looked around the richly furnished room and recognized a lot of the articles as being of genuine Spanish origin; not the cheap imitations that were sold in the market-places, but real antiques. He reckoned they must be worth a fortune.

  Then the door opened and Rosita came in followed by a tall gringo.

  “Señor Sundance, this is Señor Brandon,” said the girl.

  Yancey rose and squinted at the man, who then walked forward past the girl and came fully into the lamplight. Yancey stiffened and the man stopped dead in his tracks, staring.

  The big Enforcer felt a moment of unreality as he looked across the room at his own brother, Chuck Bannerman, his smile of greeting frozen on his startled face.

  Six – The Scheme

  Johnny Cato was almost certain there was someone following him. He had made a few stops along the trail to see if anyone else came along, and so far, no one had showed. But he had a hunch someone was back there and he had long ago learned never to disregard his hunches.

  It was simple enough following Yancey and the girl, though they were so far ahead now that he couldn’t see them. That was fine with him; they were following a clearly defined trail and it was easy to see in the moonlight. Which meant that he, too, would be easy to see.

  He turned his mount off the trail into some rocks that threw deep shadows across the land, with the moon still at its low angle. He decided he would wait there for an hour. It would be a mite chancy, but he felt sure he would be able to pick up Yancey’s trail again. He had seen the girl dancing in the cantina last night and hadn’t figured her for anything but what she appeared to be. It was a good cover for a contact, he reckoned, feeling comforted by the smooth metal of the Manstopper’s frame. He held the gun loosely in his lap as he sat the saddle.

  He strained his ears, but could hear only normal night sounds and began to wonder if he had been wrong. But they had sent those two hombres after him last night to knife him. Probably they had been watching him all day and there would still be someone keeping tabs on him. He would bet on it.

  There was. But they didn’t come along the trail as he was expecting. They came in over the rocks behind him. There were two of them and the only way he knew they were coming was because one man scraped his knife on a rock and struck sparks. Cato whirled, bringing up the gun but a hurtling body cannoned into him and carried him clear out of the saddle. The horse whinnied and shied and he rolled away from the panicky hoofs as they thudded down beside him. The knife blade sliced through his shirt. He felt pain sear across his ribs and knew he had been lucky; the point had merely laid open his flesh.

  He drove an elbow backwards into the man he was wrestling with and the second man hurled himself forward, knife upraised. Cato brought up his legs but wasn’t fast enough and the man fell against him. The Manstopper was jammed between their bodies and he notched the hammer back, not knowing whether it was set for the ordinary cartridge or the shot barrel. He dropped the hammer as the man started to rise. There was a sound like muffled thunder and the gun jumped from Cato’s grip with the violent recoil as the shot barrel blasted the man back several feet, his left side torn to shreds by the charge of buckshot.

  The other man was startled and paused with his knife blade touching Cato’s throat. He had been all set to draw the razor edge across when the heavy Manstopper had exploded. Cato chopped desperately at the hand that held the knife and felt a slight sting under his right ear as the point nicked him. He rolled swiftly away, onto all fours, facing the man as he lunged in again. Cato scooped up a handful of dirt and flung it into the killer’s face. He stumbled, coughing, clawing at his eyes.

  Cato followed through
, kicked at the man’s knife hand and heard the weapon clatter amongst the rocks. He snatched out his own Bowie and drove the big blade forward and up in a ripping motion. The Mexican made a gurgling, strangling sound and the force of the blow lifted him clear off the ground so that he kicked and writhed on the end of the blade for a few moments. Then Cato wrenched the knife free and the man fell to the ground, writhing, heels drumming.

  Panting, Cato wiped sweat out of his eyes and cleaned the broad Bowie blade on the dead man’s shirt. He sheathed the knife, felt around and found his smoking Manstopper. He broke it open and replaced the spent shot-shell with a fresh one from his shirt pocket.

  He caught his horse and mounted, still holding the cocked Manstopper. Warily, he rode around the rocks until he found the two mounts belonging to the dead men. Satisfied that there was no one else, he rode away from the rocks and stuffed his kerchief inside his shirt over the cut on his ribs. He didn’t think the sound of the shot had carried far. It had been muffled by the man’s body pressing over the muzzle.

  Now he had to find Yancey and the girl. In that hour while he was waiting amongst the rocks, they could have turned off the main trail at a dozen places and he might not be able to pick up their tracks again until daylight. God alone knew what kind of trouble Yancey might have gotten into by that time.

  Cato drove home the spurs and rode fast through the moonlight.

  ~*~

  The girl hadn’t liked being dismissed by Chuck Bannerman. She had seen that there was something wrong, some mutual recognition between the man she knew as Sundance and the one she knew as Brandon. Yet they were not supposed to know each other. Still, Brandon was an assumed name, she knew that. But, even so, the man who called himself that had many times said he did not know Sundance.

  Chuck had insisted that she leave them alone and Rosita had reluctantly gone from the room and closed the door behind her. Yancey wondered what she would do. She wasn’t the kind to just wait around until she was sent for again, not when she sensed something was not as it should be.