York finished one and turned to the other as Lathrop stepped away, his knife dripping blood. “Won’t need to bother with this one,” he replied.
“Damn, you move fast.”
“Keeps me alive,” Lathrop observed. “Let’s go find some more.”
Smoke Jensen hugged a deeper shadow in the midst of the one cast by the wall. Five of the vaqueros had managed to penetrate the hacienda by simply walking through the small portal built into the main gate. They laughed and talked with the guards, killed them and took their place. Had the entrance been secured, Smoke would have been required to use his lariat and climb the outside wall.
This way made getting in easy. Getting out would be another matter. He edged along the base of the thick stone and mortar palisade toward the front of the enclosed dwelling. One of Martine’s vaqueros stepped outside the portal and lit a cigarette. It was the signal Smoke waited for. He rapidly closed the distance on cat feet.
“All is secure, Señor Smoke,” the vaquero assured him.
“Be ready to leave fast,” Smoke advised.
Silently, he faded into the inner courtyard darkness. The moon, a fatter slice now, shed light in the center of the garden-like patio. It set off silver sparkles from the water that splashed high arcs in a fountain. Good, Smoke thought, small though it might be, that noise would cover his movements. And he would be making quite a few.
He had no way of knowing which room Carvajal used for sleeping. Logic, directed by the man’s mania, dictated that the King of the North would use the grandiose master bedroom. It made sense. Only, could he rely on Carvajal to make any sense at all? He would have to seek the bandit king out, and that meant opening a lot of doors. Smoke’s moccasins made no sound at all on the polished flagstones of a corridor formed by the room overhang above and open archways that gave onto the courtyard.
Smoke had glided past two doors, when the latch of one gave a distinctive click. He froze in mid-stride. “You must be Smoke Jensen,” a voice in English accused.
“No entiende Ingles,” Smoke pulled a bluff. A Yankee here?
A dry chuckle answered him. “Oh, come now, Smoke Jensen. You’re caught fair and square.”
Smoke let his shoulders sag, and he sighed in what he hoped sounded like resignation. “Who is it that’s caught me?”
“The name’s Trent, and I hate you, Smoke Jensen.”
He’d heard that before. Smoke tensed and let his right hand drift toward his belt. Trent spoke again, in a whisper as before.
“Turn around. I want you to get it face-to-face.”
Smoke turned, and in the same smooth movement, swiftly drew his tomahawk. He threw it underhand, an awkward maneuver, but one that proved effective. Trent gasped when the steel edge bit into his chest. It sank into the hollow at the bottom of his throat.
He tried to cry out, his mouth working spasmodically. Nothing came but a hot, wet flow. His knees loosened, and he slumped to the tile walkway. Smoke went to his side, removed the hawk and dragged the body to a niche recessed in the wall. He stuffed the corpse of Trent into the depression and hurried on his way.
Passing the first floor rooms that opened onto the corridor, Smoke went directly to a stairway that gave access to the second level. He had reached the halfway point when his keen hearing brought the crack of bootheels on the stones of the corridor he had just left. Crouched low, and breathing softly through open lips, Smoke waited out the nocturnal wanderer.
Boots grew closer, paused. Smoke heard the scritch of a match and yellow light blossomed around the opening to the stairway. The acrid odor of Mexican blend tobacco reached Smoke’s sensitive nostrils. The matchlight went out. More purposeful and rapidly now, the bootheels clacked on the flagstones, approaching his exposed and vulnerable position.
A man in vaquero costume swung around the bottom end of the stairwell and started upward without looking. Smoke tensed, his leg muscles drawn like coil springs. Any second, the bandit would see the toes of his moccasins. In the last possible instant, the Bowie fitted Smoke’s fist.
He launched himself at the unsuspecting bandido and drove the point of the blade in under the ribs, slanted upward. It pierced the diaphragm and severed the hapless outlaw’s aorta. Shocked motionless by the incredible pain, he died without a sound.
A few twitches and a violent convulsion signaled the departure of life. Smoke eased the corpse to the stairs and withdrew his blade. He wiped it on the dead man’s white shirt and started upward again.
Here the layout was in reverse of downstairs, with the corridor running along the outside wall of the hacienda. Smoke turned to his right and started off to his dangerous task of opening doors. The first knob turned easily. He eased the portal inward, hoping for well-oiled hinges. A guttering candle revealed a sleeping form, much too large to be El Rey del Norte. Smoke closed the door and moved on.
At the next one, he found the handle unmoving. He put an ear to the oak panel and heard the rhythmic creak of leather bed supports and the soft sounds of a woman in passion. A smile creased his grim lips, and he advanced on the next. This one opened entirely too easily, and Smoke found himself face-to-face with one of Carvajal’s lieutenants.
Before Tomas Diaz could raise a shout, Smoke belted him with a hard right to the forehead. The head of Diaz snapped back, and his eyes rolled upward. Only the whites showed when Smoke put a left to the weak spot under the jaw hinge. He caught Diaz on the fall and dragged him back into the room. A little quick work with pre-cut lengths of rope secured the bandit leader to the bed, one of his soiled socks stuffed between unresisting lips for a gag.
Cautiously, Smoke eased out of the room. At the far end of the corridor a large door denoted the master bedroom. It drew Smoke like a longing for the High Lonesome. To his surprise, he found the door unlocked. Heavy rests the crown on the royal head, he thought jokingly to himself. The portal swung as though on a counterbalance.
A huge canopied bed occupied a low platform in the center of the room. The five-foot-six form of Gustavo Carvajal lay sprawled in the center of turned back sheets. He breathed stentoriously through his mouth. The passing wind stirred the stringy wisps of his mustache. Smoke Jensen stood over him, studied his sodden slumber. With the suddeness of lightning, a new idea came to him.
Quietly, Smoke exited. He went first to the room of Tomas Diaz. Hefting the big Mexican bandit over one shoulder, he carried him back to Carvajal’s room. He sat Diaz upright in a Tudor chair, facing the bed. Then he went for the dead bandit on the stairs. He brought him there, also, and placed the corpse in another chair. Pleased with his efforts, Smoke decided on adding to the collection.
At the opposite end of the hall, another corridor intersected. Smoke went along it to the first unlocked door. Inside he found another ranking bandit stacking snores in a wide bed. A young lady, her lips swollen in a love pout, lay sated beside him. Moving with extreme caution, Smoke Jensen went to Pedro Chacon and rammed a wad of cloth into his open mouth.
With care and near silence, Smoke mouthed the words, “Move, make a noise, and you’re dead.”
Chacon went stiff. His eyes, open wide, swiveled from side to side in an attempt to identify his assailant. Smoke obligingly gave him a look. Pedro Chacon swallowed hard in spite of the gag and tried to cringe away from the iron band grip with which Smoke Jensen held him.
“Time to go back to sleep,” Smoke advised as he tapped Chacon solidly with the barrel of his .44 Colt.
Exercising the greatest care not to awaken the passion-sotted young woman, Smoke gathered Chacon onto his shoulder and hurried to the master bedroom. With Chacon also in a chair, Smoke felt he had set the stage well enough. He made a quick inventory of two large chests and came up with a large white sheet. This he draped over his head and arranged it to cover his body. He located the place for eye-holes and cut them with his knife. Now he was ready to awaken the King of the North.
Someone was calling his name. All of his names. Mind numbed beyond ready response, Gustavo C
arvajal struggled to push away the thick, cloying tendrils of stupor that contained him. He had become besotted in drink. And, suffering from the same affliction as his famous predecessor Miguel Antonio de Santa Ana, the smoking of opium, Carvajal’s consciousness returned, although some of the gears didn’t mesh, and a few cogs might be said to be definitely missing.
“El Rey del Norte,” the sepulchral voice intoned. “The Grand Emperor Montezuma. The most famous bandido jefe of them all, Gustavo Carvajal.”
Carvajal opened bloodshot eyes. “What? Who? Wh-where am I?” His bleary focus rested on the corpse of the bandit in the nearest chair.
“You are in the hall of the dead. You have been brought here to be judged.”
“Why, that can’t be. I feel my heart beat, I can breathe, I can feel my skin.”
Smoke Jensen, inside the white sheet, let out a mournful wail. “You were brought here in corporeal form to be weighed in the balance of the Eternal.”
Finally, Gustavo Carvajal fixed his gaze on the white wraith that seemed to float at the end of his bed. Painfully his thoughts began to grind together. He winced and looked to his left. Tomas Diaz slumped in a chair at that side. He, too, could well be dead. Shocked, his superstitious childhood and youth welling up to haunt him, Gustavo Carvajal sought surcease in a fast cut of his eyes to the right. Pedro Chacon lolled in the chair at the edge of a faint candle glow.
“¡Dios mio! Are they dead? Are they all dead?”
“Yes,” the terrible spirit told him. “It is time to decide your fate.”
Carvajal began to regret he had taken that second pipe of the sticky brown happiness. If only he could think clearly. This could not be happening.
The sickening odor of burned opium had given Smoke Jensen his sudden inspiration. Now he wondered how he would break off the charade and get away without Carvajal becoming wise to the whole game. He raised one arm, a finger pointed accusingly at Carvajal.
“Murderer. Thief. Assassin.”
Fortunately, Carvajal solved Smoke’s problem for him. Hearing the list of indictments against him, he sought escape in oblivion. Uttering a tiny gasp, his eyes rolled up under brushy brows, and he fainted.
Smoke Jensen left the unfortunate outlaws, living and dead, in Gustavo Carvajal’s bedroom. The thought crossed his mind that he could have easily killed the mad bandit chief with a quick slash of his knife. But Carvajal was unarmed, helpless and unconscious. To Smoke Jensen, that smacked of cold-blooded murder. The sort of thing that Gustavo Carvajal might do.
Most Easterners, Smoke knew, made light of the so-called Code of the West. Not those who lived by it. Not Smoke Jensen. Killing a man in a gunfight, or at long range in a pitched battle or to escape an ambush was an ordinary occurrence on the frontier. Back-shooting, back-stabbing and other cowardly ways of dispensing with an enemy were hanging offenses, same as stranding a man without horse or gun in the middle of nowhere.
Smoke had put under a number of men guilty of such crimes. He had no desire to join their ranks at the present, no matter how tempting the proposition appeared. No, Gustavo Carvajal would live to fight another day. Only now Smoke believed he had the measure of the man. For all his swarthy complexion, the King of the North had turned a sickly, pasty green-white when his befuddled mind had bought the playacting of Smoke Jensen.
Which meant that Smoke could yank his chain any time, anywhere. That’s the way Smoke wanted it. There would be enough killing tonight to add to Carvajal’s unsteady memories of the midnight encounter. More than likely a few desertions of men newly joined in the ranks of the king’s army. That aspect brought a smile to the lips of Smoke Jensen. It had been easy.
All he had to do was get out of the hacienda undetected. Yeah, that was all. He paused at the top of the stairwell to listen for any sounds of roaming bandits. Relieved when he heard nothing, Smoke started down the stairs.
He’d put the toe of one moccasin on the tenth tread when a voice spoke from behind him. “That, Señor, will be far enough.”
Humberto Regales stood at the banister, an oil lamp in one hand, a big, nasty-looking Mendoza .45 in the other.
Twenty-eight
Humberto Regales produced a cynical smile. With studied casualness he reached up with his left hand and stroked one thick wave of his black mustache. Smoke Jensen felt like a fly on a sticky tape.
“It appears you have the advantage,” Smoke told him in Spanish.
“Ah, you speak our language. Good. It makes it much easier. You will put your pistola down gently. On the step at your feet.”
“Could you speak a little slower? I can’t quite understand you,” Smoke pleaded, playing for time.
“Do as I tell you, or I’ll shoot you where you stand,” Regales ordered cracklingly. Slowly, Smoke bent at the knees. “Use your left hand, so I can see what you are doing,”
Smoke complied. He held the butt of the Colt .44 with forefinger and thumb as he edged lower. His right hand, out of sight of the bandit lieutenant, worked up the cuff of his trouser leg. Carefully, Smoke laid his six-gun on the tread.
“Excellent. Now, walk down the stairs. I’ll be right behind you,” Regales commanded.
Taking the steps one at a time, Smoke Jensen concentrated on appearing casual as he moved his right hand in front of his body. At the bottom of the flight, Regales had more orders for him.
“Over against that wall. Put your nose on it.”
Smoke did as he was told. A moment later he sensed a light touch as Regales relieved him of his second revolver and Bowie. Imperceptively, Smoke tensed. Regales stepped back and chuckled softly.
“You’re not so dangerous after all,” he congratulated himself. “Turn around. I want a good look at the famous Smoke Jensen.”
Smoke spun on one heel, rolled out the small .38-40 Smith, and shot Regales through the heart. “Well, there goes our element of surprise,” he sighed.
“Who’s shooting? What’s happening?” an alarmed, sleepy voice called out.
Thinking fast, Smoke replied, his voice deliberately slurred. “It is nothing. I—I was cleaning my gun and dropped it.” He ended with a hiccough and a belch.
“¡Estupido! You are too drunk to clean your gun. Go to sleep.”
“Sí, sí, I don’ feel so good.” When his interrogator did not come to check on the careless drunk, Smoke breathed easier. No one, apparently, was curious enough.
Wrong, he found out a moment later. The sound of hurried footsteps carried across the courtyard. A slightly-built bandit ran into the moonlight, one hand clutching at his unbelted trousers to keep them up. He darted between two arches and under the overhang, and ran right into Smoke Jensen’s knuckles.
Shock from the impact shot up Smoke’s arm. The nosy bandido went rigid and fell over backward. Smoke dragged him out of sight against the low courtyard wall. He headed for the staircase once more.
Fat chance he would have getting out the front gate. The nastiness the vaqueros had come to do would have been completed by now. They would be gone and no doubt more than one man responded to the gunshot with attention to duty. Smoke took the stairs two at a time, retrieving both of his Colts on the way. He entered the room from which he had taken Tomas Diaz and crossed to the window.
A quick glance showed him it would be a dangerous jump to the ground. Particularly for someone in moccasins. Smoke took quick stock of the contents of the room. True to his former life as a vaquero, Tomas Diaz had a large coil of riata hanging on one wall. Smoke recovered it and slipped the loop around a bed leg. He paid out the rope and dropped it through the window. Now, with a little luck, he might yet get away in one piece.
Smoke climbed through the casement and gripped the rope tightly. He swiveled around and braced his moccasins against the wall. Carefully he began his descent. The scrape of his moccasins sounded thunderous in his ears. Nothing for it, though, but to keep going.
Two-thirds of the way down, the first explosion went off. Shouts of alarm followed, with lights glowing to
life all over the hacienda. Smoke had his moccasins under him on solid ground when the powder magazine blew. It rocked the ground and sent pieces of the roof sailing above the walls. Screams of pain joined the uproar from within.
In all the confusion and damage inside, no one thought to look outside. Smoke had started off at a gentle lope when mounted men came toward him out of the darkness. The one out front led Sidewinder by his reins. Grateful, Smoke swung into the saddle and caught up to Juan Murial.
“I think we just spoiled their day,” the mountain man observed with a chuckle.
Rudolfo Blanco brought the news to Smoke Jensen. “They’re pulling out. Every last one of Carvajal’s bandit scum are riding away from the hacienda as though Satan himself was after them.”
Smoke pondered this a moment. “That’s something we didn’t anticipate. Are they scattering?”
“No. They ride together,” Blanco informed him.
“What direction?”
“To the northwest, Señor Smoke.”
“What’s that direction?”
Rudolfo Blanco shrugged. “If you go far enough, there’s Canñon del Cobre.”
“That makes sense,” Smoke speculated. “Go tell Carbone and Martine. We’re going after them.”
Eyes dancing with excitement, Rudolfo questioned Smoke. “This time we finish it, no?”
“I think you can count on that,” Smoke advised him.
Three days hard riding, through increasingly more rugged mountains, brought Smoke Jensen, Carbone, Martine and Jeff York to the high rim of Canñon del Cobre. Gustavo Carvajal headed unerringly to the sanctuary of the twists and turns of the great canyon. All the way, York and his Rangers and the vaqueros kept up a steady harassing fire, that whittled at Carvajal’s numbers. When the last of the bandit army disappeared down a steep trail, their pursuers reined in.
Fury of the Mountain Man Page 27