“Well, let’s see where they take us,” said Clay. “Pass the word for everyone to keep real quiet. The second squad needs to stay way back.”
Flaco rode up. “This’ll take us to la Hacienda del Rancho Mariposa. Maybe three mile.”
“You two ride ahead, real quiet like.” It was late afternoon.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Flaco was in the lead. He’d been on Rancho Mariposa, but not this part. What little he knew was more than any of us, though. The arroyo led up to a road and curved away from it.
Flaco bent over in his saddle looking at the tracks. “They go left,” he said sounding surprised.
“So?”
“The primo hacienda is right. I thought they take them there, a mile to the right.”
We told Clay.
“I was hoping that old rake wasn’t involved in this. Don Garza Alvarez, he’s a good man.”
“Where’s this road lead?”
“His first son’s casa—house,” said Flaco.
Clay nodded like that was no surprise. “How far.”
Flaco shrugged. “Don’t know.” He looked at me. “Come on. We sneak up there and come back.” We took Dodger along.
The son’s hacienda was only a quarter mile up the left road. The adobe house sat within a stand of scrub oak. There were eight horses in the corral and four mules. Of course, that didn’t give you the number of men there, but it probably told there weren’t no more than that. Ol’ Pancho had taught me. Quicksilver stood in another mesquite corral contently chewing his cud. In a far pasture were about a dozen head of cattle, probably with Dew brands. No one could be seen, but the chimney was smoking. A farm wagon sat beside an outbuilding.
Then we barely heard a girl sobbing from inside. My guts clenched. I wanted to charge straight in there, now.
Flaco gripped my arm, shook his head. It steadied me.
“You hang here. Dodger, keep an eye on things. We’ll head back and tell Clay.”
We took off down the road. I knew Marta and the girls were in there. This would be over soon. I tried not to think about what might be happening in there. I ran harder.
I drew Clay a picture of the layout in the wet sand. We had a sit-down and talked about ways to do this. I chaffed at the bit, wanting to get going.
“The problem is they got the girls,” Clay grumbled. “Whether we call them out or go busting in, they got the upper hand.”
“Some of them bound to come outside,” said Lee. “If nothing else to draw water, feed the horses, pay respects to the shitter. We could maybe grab a couple of them and swap them for the girls.”
“Hell, those banditos jus’ as soon let us shoot ’em ol’ boys,” said Lew. “They don’t give a good damn. I don’t see ’em givin’ up the girls just ’cause we got a couple of their Pedros.”
“That’s true,” said Clay. “You think the old man’s son’s in there?” looking at Flaco.
“Probably. He a crooked sumbitch.”
“What if we go down and tell Don Garza about this? Bring him up to talk some sense into his boy.”
“The banditos only take his son hostage too,” said Flaco. “Tell the old man to give them money for him too. They don’t care.”
“We’re in a fix, boys.”
“Anything we can do to draw most of them out all together?” asked Lee.
“Start a fire,” said Lew. Pointing at the picture in the sand. “In this shed.”
Clay studied it for a piece. “Might work. Anybody think it might not?”
Heads shook. “Best hand we’ll have I think,” said Lee.
“I will have the girls out of there before dark. We surely don’t need any gun play at night.” He didn’t need to say the reason.
We worked out who was going to do what. Lew picked places for men to hide so they could cover all angles. All sides of every building were covered so no one could hide behind them once the shooting and running started. Gent would fire the shed. Clay was taking me, Flaco, and Jerry Twining with his coach gun, right through the front door.
Everyone was filled in on the plan, knew where they were supposed to go, and what they had to do.
“Know your targets, boys,” said Clay. “No wild shooting. Don’t forget the girls.” He slit his eyes and said in a hard tone. “I don’t expect any of those banditos to hear a night owl.”
We all knew what he meant.
»»•««
We were about thirty yards from the house behind a brush pile. I could see a couple of our boys in their places behind trees and brush. Couldn’t see him, but Gent would be crawling up a ditch toward the shed. He had a can of coal oil, rags, and his new-fangled Erie cap-lighter.
Flaco had his two revolvers in his hands as did Clay with two Colts—one new, one good used. I had my Remington in one hand and my pick-ax in the other for busting doors. Jerry stuck two shotgun shells between his teeth for quick reloading. Besides his holstered revolver, he had another tucked in his belt.
“You boys be careful where you shoot.” Clay didn’t take his eyes off the house.
We all nodded.
I glared at the house. It had only a few curtained windows, one door in the front, one in the back. “Chico” Munoz, a crack shot, was covering the back, was told by Lew, “Shoot anyone coming out what ain’t got chichis. A big water trough sat by the windmill. I knew a lot of rifles were pointing at it. We figured that’s where most of the banditos would head when the fire started. Anybody at the trough couldn’t see the house’s front door. A couple of rifles covered the horse corral too. No one was getting away.
We’d seen only one man come out. He’d gone to the outhouse. He was toting his guns, but didn’t even look around. We heard some laughing from inside a couple of times. That didn’t feel good at all.
We needed to be watching the house, but our eyes kept shifting to the shed, watching for smoke. Even when it caught, we knew it would take time for them to smell the smoke or hear it burning. In case they still didn’t come out, Flaco was going to yell, “¡Fuego!”
A pebble rolled on the ground and we turned to look back. Musty was crouched low behind a cactus patch, waved, and started crawling toward us, fast.
Reaching us, he said, “There’s four riders comin’ up the road.”
“Damn!” Clay jerked his head to the left, and the five of us scurried around the brush pile. We still couldn’t be seen from the house. It was just in time.
Clay whispered, “I hope no one gets excited and starts shooting right now.”
We heard a horse snort, could hear hooves, and made out their dark shapes through the tree limbs.
“You gotta to be shitting me,” said Clay all wide-eyed like he recognized someone.
I heard a crackling sound and white smoke was pouring out the shed’s door.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The house’s door flew open and Mexes started running out shouting up a storm. The burning shed’s smoke was blown by El Nortada straight to the house. Our boys’ rifles started cracking.
Clay paid no mind to all that, but to the horses coming up the road. “Aim for the horses, I will have them bastards alive,” whispered Clay as he rose up, Colts in both hands.
He wants who alive? I thought. Then, what about the girls? I wanted to charge the house.
There were two riders in the lead, side by side, and two following. The horses bolted with the first barrage as we opened up with all our pistols. The screaming horses bucked and rolled in the late afternoon shadows. I hate seeing horses shot, hate their screaming. It was bad for these. They ain’t had no say on who’s riding them.
“Take them alive,” yelled Clay. Two of our boys were coming out of the trees, rifles leveled. One horse still kicked. I saw hands going up. Rifle shots rattled like hail on a tin roof back at the house. I turned and saw banditos going down all over and not even making it to the water trough. One turned back to the house and flopped into the mud, back-shot. There was a frantic American voice behind me, c
oming from the gunned down horses. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”
Clay yelled for us to reload. I don’t think no one got more than one gun reloaded, and we were heading for the front door ignoring the gunned down men behind us. Jerry was in front ready to blow the door’s lock apart, but instead his shotgun blew a Mex back through the open door with a spray of blood and stuff. We were in a big room with a fireplace, all smoky and musty smelling, the odors of different food, different air, a different life. No one was there. I headed left through a curtained door into a bedroom shouting, “Marta!” The others were shouting for Agnes and Doris. I could hear the dread in Clay’s voice. The two bedrooms on this side were empty. Three shots banged in another part of the house, and shots were still popping outside.
Going back into the big room, Clay came through a door on the other side. He had a pained expression and blood splattered on his legs.
“Nothing on this side, boss.” I had a bad feeling.
“There’s no one here, Bud. The girls aren’t here.”
I went through all the dark rooms myself, came across the bandito Clay had shot in a corner—two in the chest, one between the eyes.
“I was sure they were here, boss. I was sure.” I raged at myself.
“Hold on, son. It’s not your fault. We all thought that.”
I went through the front door. I needed air. Leaning on the wall, everything was dark. What am I going to do now?
Clay came out the door reloading. “Come on, we don’t have time for that.” He’s as tough as horseshoe iron. “We gotta get to the bottom of this.”
Flaco came out dragging a crying Mex gal with him. “¿Trajeron las chicas americanas aquí?” he kept shouting.
She was yelling, “¡Por la gracia de Dios! ¡No hubo chicas!”
“She says no ’merican girls, jefe.”
“How abouts Mex girls, Flaco?” I shouted.
“¿Alguna chica mexicana?”
“¡No, no! ¡Por favor, protégeme!” she begged.
Flaco looked at me and shook his head.
Smoke swirled around. There were several dead Mexes scattered across the ground and some not so dead. They were wearing yellow scarves. One was trying to get up, and Chico Munoz shot him in the head.
“Lew, save a couple of them,” Clay shouted. “I wanna talk to them.”
We had only one man took a bullet. “Rock” Rockingham got hit in the right foot, broke a lot of little bones. Gent was cutting a teeth-gritting Rock’s boot off.
Clay headed for the shot-down horses. Musty and two others had their rifles on the riders sitting or lying on the ground. One looked real dead.
I shook my head. “What the hell!” I was looking at Pete Weyland tying a bandana around his bleeding leg.
“Weyland, you’re like a bad penny, keep turning up,” said Lee. “I hope you ain’t looking to get your job back.” Lee had an evil sneer.
Weyland didn’t say nothing.
Clay stood over a big man on the ground, goatee and big lamb-chop sideburns. “What the hell’s going on here, Maxwell?” Clay looked like he was about to bend his Colt’s barrel. The look on his face was deadly. “Gentlemen, for those of you haven’t had the pleasure, meet Mr. Theodore K. Maxwell of the V-Bar-M Ranch, my longtime goood neighbor.” He didn’t sound like he meant that last with any sincerity.
Standing over another man, Clay said, “Lay on your face, Mackley. You aren’t shot.” Turning to us, he said, “This is Tom Mackley, Maxwell’s foreman.”
Clay stepped over the dead man, pinned under his horse. He had two holes in his chest, and his right hand was half torn off. “Who’s this?”
“Mario Garza. Don Garza’s son,” Flaco said flatly.
“Well, hell, the old man’s going have a duck fit and a chicken spasm.”
Clay turned on Maxwell. “What the hell are you doing here, Teddy?”
The chunky man looked up at him, plum scart white. “I was simply coming here to look over some stock, Clay. I don’t know what’s going on here. Why’d you start shooting at fellow Texans?” He was starting to sound indignant.
“So Mario Garza was only bringing you out to his spread to show some stock, and it just happens that Xiuhcoatl’s boys brought my bull here. I guess it was only a neighborly stopover on their way to market.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that, Clay.”
Clay lashed his Colt across Maxwell’s face knocking the old man onto his back. He grabbed him by the collar and dragged him up. “You son of a bitch! You had everything to do with this.” Clay shoved him down to his knees and jammed his Colt’s muzzle into Maxwell’s left eye. “Start talking!” He hit him again. Clay’s eyes held a fearfully wild look.
“Clay,” said Lee softly.
Clay looked at him sharply.
“Don’t kill him just yet, boss. I see what’s going on here.”
Clay nodded. “Tie their hands.”
We cut latigos off the dead horses’ saddles and tied their wrists with the leather straps.
Lee yanked Weyland to his feet.
“My leg!”
“You little piece o’ shit. I fired you and you went to Maxwell, got hired on because he was planning to have Clay’s bull stolen.”
“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with this!”
“Bullshit!” Lee shouted. “Your new boss likes you so much he takes a new hire along on his business trips.” He pistol-wacked Weyland on his shot leg.
“It’s all come to me, Clay,” said Lee. “I been trying to figure how the bandidos knew the Dew layout, about the outrider and the house sentry, where the girls’ room was, and where the bull was. You sumbitch, you got Slick and Carmela and two kids killed!” Lee hit Weyland on the leg again, driving him to a knee.
“I wasn’t there. I didn’t kill ’em!” He gripped his leg. “Lord almighty, don’t hit me again!”
“You might as well have pulled the trigger yourself, you cocksucker. And you shot at Bud in Del Rio, coulda killed him. Drawing on a Dew hand, that don’t go! I shoulda stretched hemp on you the first time I had a chance!”
With Lee through, Clay turned on Maxwell. “This is all your doing, Teddy. You wanted that bull, cut a deal with Xiuhcoatl to steal the bull for you. Your amigo here”—pointing at Mario Garza’s body still seeping blood—“was in on it too. They’d bring the bull here. You’d bring breeding cows over and take them back to your spread. Garza could breed the bull too for keeping it here. You thought I’d never look here.”
“That’s not the way it is…” Clay smacked him again.
“Bullshit!” shouted Clay. “What Xiuhcoatl got out of it was stealing my girls for ransom, and he grabbed a couple of our Mexican girls too.” He was all loco-eyed. “I’ve always known you were a crooked son of a bitch, Teddy, but this is beyond anything one white man would do to another.” He turned to Lee. “Pick a tree. Put three ropes over a limb.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Some of the boys fetched our horses from where we’d hid them, and Earnest Sessuns came in with the remuda. Lew sent men down the road in both directions so we’d not be surprised by anyone else.
Gent and Chico tossed ropes over limbs, two in one tree, one on another.
“Maxwell’s going to need his own limb,” said Gent without feeling.
Maxwell and the other two got all wide-eyed.
“I tolt ya not to do this,” shouted the foreman at Maxwell. It was the only thing he said the whole time.
“You can’t do this, Clay. I demand a fair trial. I’m a free white man.”
“Fair like those kids got? Fair like what’s happening to my daughters—?” He cut that off with a break in his voice. “I don’t have time for you. You chose this path.”
This was the sumbitch that put Marta in the cradle of hell. I wanted to gut-shoot him, right now.
Weyland started crying.
Maxwell shouted, “I’m a Texan and an American, dammit, and I demand a fair trial.” He started to so
und panicky and breathing hard.
“You just got one,” barked Clay.
“You arrogant shitkicker,” blared Maxwell. “I always said you tried to rise above your station.” His eyes were filled with hate now, not fear. “Now you go so far as to set yourself up as judge and jury.”
“And executioner. We’re in Mexico, you dumb son of a bitch. You know how it works here.”
“I demand a fair tr—” Clay cut him off with a swipe of his Colt, sending teeth flying.
Looking around at us, he said, “Anybody think they need any more of a trial?”
“Not me, Clay.” “Nope, boss.” “No, jefe.” “Not no, boss, but hell no.” Everyone looked stone cold.
“Anybody think they don’t deserve what’s coming to them?”
Same answers. Even the usually silent Chico said, “Como dos y dos son cuatro.”—As sure as two and two are four.
“Fetch three horses.”
Maxwell looked scart now.
I took Cracker by the reins, but stopped. The bastards deserved what was coming, but I didn’t want Cracker in on it. Damnest thing. There were plenty of other volunteers. Gent and Musty had a short stare-down on whose horse Maxwell was going to be hung from. Gent won the bragging rights.
It took three of us to get the bawling Weyland on a saddle. It didn’t bother me none to put him there, after what he always said about Marta, and causing her kidnapping. I cinched the noose tight around his neck with him blubbering the whole time.
Tom Mackley, the foremen, got on quietly. He was shaking but he had grit.
It took four to get the fat Maxwell up, with him shouting obscenities to bring God’s wrath on us all. I can’t even repeat some of them.
The horses were all skittish. They sense things. Took a man or two to settle each of them down. Clay told Rosey to do Weyland, I guess because he didn’t know him from before.
Clay didn’t ask if they had any final words. He didn’t say nothing.
Weyland was begging and crying something awful. “Please, I don’t wanna die like this. I’m sorry, really sorry, and I won’t never do any—” Clay nodded and Rosey jerked on the horse’s reins. Weyland looked like he was running in the air, then kicked and jerked. The limb creaked, and he swung back and forth.
The Hardest Ride Page 15