“And the other man?”
Downing his second shot of tequila he smiled at her. “Now there is a tale for you, señorita. A criminal I didn’t even have to capture! This hombre done turned himself in.”
Now her interest was piqued, and she leaned back against the edge of Santiago’s desk crossing her arms and invited him to share his story of such an unusual turn of events.
“He had gotten clean away! A year ago, he and his amigos had robbed a stage transporting the payroll of a mining company. Six amigos and a señorita swept down out of the hills with the sun behind them. They had the stage surrounded before they even knew what hit them!”
Cassandra could easily envision a troupe of riders emerging from out of nowhere, hidden behind a blinding sun. The shouts, the pounding of horses’ hooves, and the sound of triggers being thumbed back, and rifles being cocked. Her mind could also picture the desperation of the men entrusted to shepherd the money safely when they were outnumbered and outgunned.
Santiago’s eyes to this point had been mirthful, but they took on a steeliness as he continued. “The two men on that stage were cooperating. Threw down their weapons as ordered. Then one of the robbers went loco accusing one of the prisoners of looking at his woman the wrong way. The surviving man told me how his partner’s head was blown clean off his shoulders before he could even finish protesting that he wasn’t. The woman began screaming loud enough to wake the dead from their siestas, the survivor reported, wailing that this man Pike had promised that no one would be hurt, but he had just laughed.”
She could see why her new friend’s demeanor had changed so abruptly when describing the robbery. There was nothing she detested more than cold-blooded killers taking a life with as little thought as one would give when swatting a fly. The only place in the world for men like that was dangling at the end of noose as far as she was concerned.
Santiago continued to say that the man being held in his jail now was the brother to the murderer and that he had intervened when his brother Orrin Pike was going to kill the second guard saying they had to flee after seeing a wagon approaching in the distance. As they had cleverly planned, the seven would split up. Three of them when they crossed a nearby creek called the San Jacinta would not emerge on the other side but ride down the shallow arroyo with the money leaving no trail. The other four would act as decoys to draw any pursuers away.
“And this plan of theirs worked?”
“Si, the approaching wagon turned out to be an ex-sheriff who was helping his son and daughter move. When they came upon the robbery, he and his son set out after them, but the decoy trail worked because it ended in the rocky terrain and the trail was lost.”
“So how does a year-old robbery result in a man turning himself in?”
The sheriff put the bottle away and began to wipe the glasses as he told her that Lyle Pike had shown up at his jail a week ago to surrender. He said he was dying, and he wanted to do at least one worthwhile thing in his life before he met his Maker. It seems that Señor Pike was in love with his brother’s wife and he wishes to see the charges against her dropped. She was an accessory to the robbery but had no idea her hombre was gonna murder that man. They all got dead or alive posters out on them across Sonora.”
Cassandra smiled as she put the pieces together. “So, let me guess. If the charges are dropped against her, he will return the money? But that would presume that the gang never went back for it. How is that?”
Outside children’s laughter drifted through an open window as Santiago shook his head. “According to Pike, the gang was to reassemble weeks later after the heat died down, and he and his brother would lead the others to where it was buried. Being the ill-tempered cuss that he was though, Orrin Pike got himself on the losing end of a gunfight. Lyle said he himself barely escaped the town. When they told the señorita, it was the last straw. Her man was dead, and she was tired of life on the run. She was going to turn herself in, but Pike, loving her and not wanting to see her swing, instead convinced her that he would hide her away somewhere until he could find a way to clear her name.
The problem was, though his brother may have died in the duel, he hit the other man who lingered for a few days and died. A mob was out looking for justice and hanging Lyle Pike would have to do since Orrin was already in Boot Hill, so he fled Sonora and had been hiding out across the border in Cassandra’s country, in the Arizona Territory.
"So, as you can well imagine, his partners were none too pleased with his disappearance. They turned all of Sonora upside down looking for Pike as he was the only one who could lead them to the money besides his brother who was dead and the señorita who was well hidden away. I heard many stories from other lawmen of the mayhem the Sanchez cousins and the other man, a gringo like the Pike brothers, stirred up in their search for Lyle Pike. Six months back they must have finally given up their search for him as nothing has been heard of them since.”
Cassandra straightened up now and fixed a look on him. “So, have you made a deal with him?”
“I am but a go-between. This Pike is a smart man, and he obtained a lawyer to be paid with the reward money, for coming forward with information to recover the lost payroll. This lawyer negotiated the deal with the municipalities' authorities and the mining company. The finishing touches were just concluded earlier."
“Ah, the man with the carriage that was here.”
Santiago’s eyes conveyed that he was impressed with her deductive abilities. “Si. The deal was in exchange for the woman’s freedom; he would provide a map with landmarks to where the money is buried. Well, make that half a map. One only showing the end of the treasure trail. It is useless without knowing where to start. As said, a clever man. His lawyer just delivered the legal papers from the authorities dropping the charges against his beloved, and now the lawyer is on his way back to the federales with the other part of the map to the money.”
She laughed and whistled. “Now you were right, that is quite a tale! It always amazes me that as bad as some men can be, it sounds like this Lyle Pike you got back there at least had one redeeming quality about him—his love for the señorita.”
“So, it would seem, but there is one last thing I find strange about the whole business, Cassandra. Pike was insisting that he turned himself in on this week for a reason. Exactly one year after the robbery and that the stolen money must be dug up as soon as possible.”
“Why is that?”
“I do not know. It was something privy only to the lawyer, Pike, and the government officials who have pardoned the lady in question. It is no longer my concern now that all papers have been signed and the lawyer has left. What a man he was. I had a pot of coffee waiting for him, but he was all business, and he didn’t touch any of it. I’d offer you some now, but it’s probably stone cold at this point. But enough of that business! You have come here to see the musket that I told you of, and let it not be said that Juan Sancho Santiago is a braggart!” he said jovially before suddenly pausing.
“Before I do though, might I see your twin Colts? I admired them when first I saw them.”
“Absolutely!” She pulled them out and handed them over to him. He smiled at the weight in his hands as he feigned a couple of quickdraws after he brought the guns down to his side.
“These are magnificent and indeed immaculate!” Santiago effused. Turning the silver-plated weapons over in his hands, a gleam shown in Cassandra’s eyes. She’d always taken pride in the twins, and she relayed the story of how they had been gifted to her by her uncle long ago.
“I have often wondered what it would be like to wear two guns. Do you not find it cumbersome, señorita?”
“It’s something you get used to quickly. I don’t even think about it these days.” She unbuckled her duel holster and handed it to him. “Go on give it a try. This belt just might barely fit your waist.”
Santiago set her guns down on his desk and removed his own belt and hung in on a peg on the wall before attempting to p
ut Cassandra’s on, but alas his hips were too broad, and he couldn't even get the buckle's spindle to reach the first belt hole. Laughing he shook his head and set the gun belt down on the desk next to her weapons.
“Enough indulging me, señorita! You came to see my musket, and now you shall!” With his good humor having been reignited, the man had gone about working the combination of the large safe, explaining how he had come by it in the first place. Once he had plucked out the centuries-old Spanish weapon, he lost no time placing it in her hands.
The shine in Cassandra's eyes grew brighter as she clutched the ancient weapon, marveling at the craftsmanship of the long dead gunmaker, resting now in a grave somewhere in the faraway land of Spain. The man may have been long gone, but his work had endured. She had asked him of the gun’s lineage and had listened breathlessly to his story how it could be traced all the way back to the inner circle of Pizzaro himself.
“I assure you, dear Señorita, that this weapon fires just a perfectly as when Pizzaro’s man Valdez carried it into battle. Perhaps you would like to fire it? There is a vacant area on the end of Main Street where the dancehall used to stand before it burned down three years ago.”
"It would be an honor!" she enthused, and he bowed and reached into the safe to retrieve a musket ball and black powder. Standing by his desk, he quickly loaded the weapon and set it down on the desktop, the stock partially hanging over the edge.
“As long as you are going to take a turn at shooting that, perhaps I will use this as an opportunity to practice with my blunderbuss again.”
“Ah, your pirate gun!” Cassandra’s mouth turned upward as she clasped one hand to her chest. Chuckling, Santiago turned and began rummaging in the safe for the ammunition for the blunderbuss. At that moment through the open window, Cassandra heard the barking of a dog and the screeching of a cat. Were they at it again? She stepped behind the open door to the safe and peered out the window to see the tables had turned back to a more familiar sight. The hound was now in hot pursuit of the feline, but it came up short as its claws sunk into one of the wooden legs of the town's water tower and it scurried up out of reach, hissing all the way.
Amused she was just about to turn around and step out from behind the door to the safe when the heretofore peaceful sheriff’s office was rocked by the sound of the front door being kicked open followed by a single gunshot accompanied by Santiago crying out in pain.
Fate had placed her behind the door now, and they couldn't see her, but neither could she see who fired the shot. However, she could hear them all right. It was two men speaking heatedly to each other, their voices strained.
“Hudson! Over there the keys, amigo!”
“Got ‘em. Let’s head back and do what I need to do, Gael!”
“Hold on a second, amigo. Look at this open safe! Look at the guns! You take care of Pike. Let me see if there is anything of value here. Call it a bonus, eh hombre!”
“That ain’t what we’re here for! Now I talked the Sanchez boys into letting you join the gang and share in the loot we’re gonna be diggin’ up before the day is over. Tio had his doubts about you, but I said I’d knowed ya since we wuz kids, and you'd be handy in a gunfight, but you gotta take orders, Herrera, damn you!”
“Think about it for a minute! The cousins don’t even have to know, right, amigo?” There was a long pause before the voice, no longer angry but stimulated responded.
“Damn straight they don’t. See what you can find!”
Her old skills from being a Pinkerton kicked in, and Cassandra’s mind accessed what she could. Two men, one was a native Mexican from his accent. The other pure Arizonan from his, and for that she was thankful as it meant they were speaking in English. The jingle of the keys and the retreating footsteps told her that Hudson was on the move, heading back to the cells. It seemed she had managed to find herself in the middle of a jailbreak.
The question now was what she was going to do about it. There was the smallest of a crack between the safe and its door. As quietly as she could, she moved her head to one side and peered through it and grimaced as she saw Santiago sprawled over his desk, lying on top of her six-guns. However, the old fully loaded flintlock she could see was still lying on the desk.
Out of sight through the crack, unfortunately, was the man called Gael, the sound of his heavy breathing filled her ears, growing louder as he stepped up to the maw of the safe and began pawing through it.
“This tinstar’s a gun collector, but where’s the money at? Someone’s gotta pay those deputies!” the man was grumbling. The idiot, without any thought to the value of Santiago’s weapons, tossed the old pirate pistol over his shoulder followed by another vintage weapon. He only paused when the sound of shouting erupted in the backroom. The commotion abruptly ended when the sound of a shotgun blast punctuated the air!
What the hell was going on? The gunfire had come from the holding area. Had Santiago’s keys not worked, and the other man had resorted to shooting the lock? More hollering suddenly burst from the back area, and a second shot rang out. This time she immediately recognized it as having come from a six-shooter and not a shotgun. She caught herself from letting loose an audible gasp that would have been heard on the other side of the safe doors as clarity suddenly flooded her mind. These men had used the name the Sanchez and had referred to them as cousins. This was no jailbreak; it was some manner of execution!
The woman of action that she was, she knew that she had to do something, it might have been too late to stop the shooting, but she wasn’t going to let men who may have just committed a triple homicide waltz out of the Natchez jail to freedom. Everything seemed to happen at once as she pressed her palms against the door and gave it a might shove smacking it into the body of the man known as Herrera.
The would-be thief grunted as he was slammed between the door and the wall of the safe. On the move, Cassandra bolted from her hiding place and slammed her balled fist down on the stock of the old musket sticking out over the side of the desk. The ancient weapon flipped in the air once before she caught it and swung around just as Gael Herrera was recovering from her ambush. To his credit, he cleared leather fast enough to bring his Smith and Wesson level, but there was no time to discharge the weapon and sling lead Cassandra’s way before she pulled her trigger.
Any day of the week she would have preferred a headshot in a desperate situation like this, but she had no idea what kind of accuracy such an ancient weapon possessed, so despite their close range, she went for center mass when she’d fired. A musket ball, forged hundreds of years before her birth, blasted out of the old Conquistador weapon and directly into Herrera’s heart. Vomiting blood, he pitched forward in his death throes, but Cassandra had already turned her attention away from the dead man.
The gunfire would undoubtedly bring his compadre running, and that left her only seconds to pick her options. Her guns were under Santiago, and by the time she rolled him over, the man called Hudson would likely be already upon her. Across the room, the sheriff's gun hung in its holster from the peg in the wall, but again she’d never reach it because already she heard Hudson shouting and his feet pounding in the short hallway that led from the holding cells.
With those options closed off to her, she stepped back and brought the gun up and poised it like a bat split seconds before Hudson burst from the hallway, his shotgun at the ready. There was a whooshing noise in the air as she swung the butt of the Spanish weapon and smashed into one of his hands sending the weapon flying from the impact.
"You bitch!" the man cried out, his craggy face contorted in pain and anger, but she wasn't looking at it. Instead, she vaulted towards Santiago’s gun and yanked it free of his holster. As she was spinning around, the man knew he would never draw his gun fast enough, but that didn’t mean he was down for that count. Hudson grabbed the closest object he could find which was the pot of coffee sitting on a small table along one wall.
For one terrifying moment, Cassandra expected to be scal
ded as the old tin canister struck her in the chest and the liquid splashed on her as she attempted to shoot Hudson where he stood. Mercifully it was cold, and for a fraction of a second, she remembered what Santiago had said about the attorney not drinking any of it. Scalding or not it made her shot go wild, and the bullet nicked off a piece of Hudson’s ear. The bandit shrieked in a most unmanly way, she thought, but he was no fool as he was already fleeing, but quick thinking enough to yank one of the chairs across her path to slow down her pursuit before disappearing out the door.
Angrily, with one hand still clutching Santiago’s gun, she used the other to grab a leg of the chair and yank it out of the way just as two gunshots exploded beyond the sheriff’s office. Ringing loud and clear were more cries of pain mixed with the terrified screams of townsfolk. Bursting out into the sunlight, she saw both deputies sprawled in the street. One was gripping his bleeding leg, rocking back in pain and the other was slumped on his side grasping his blood-soaked arm.
As shocking as that was, her eyes left them as more gunfire erupted, and she looked down the street to see Hudson fleeing on horseback as Catalina, with a crumpled figure lying near her boots, stood in the middle of the street both arms extended out in front of her in a firing stance blasting away to no avail at the far too distant figure who turned a corner by the livery and vanished.
Cassandra let out a breath she didn’t even realize she had been holding, her mind spinning from the fact that less than ten minutes ago Natchez had been a sleepy little Mexican town and now there were bleeding men everywhere, some wounded and some very dead.
CHAPTER 4
Emerging out in the street from the rooming house side by side, Catalina looked at Natalia. It was true she missed the woman’s long hair that she used to run her fingers through as the then nineteen-year-old lovingly ministered to Catalina’s needs between her legs, but it hadn’t mattered. Her time with her old lover had been a much-needed dose of bliss, and she had been able to take her mind off the two things she had kept fighting for lead position in her thoughts.
The Boot Hill Express: Special Edition HBH Version (Half Breed Haven Book 12) Page 3