Dodger held Mackley’s horse. The foreman looked straight ahead. I wondered what he was thinking, what he was seeing. Then he turned his head toward Maxwell and glared with pure hate. He only kicked a little.
Maxwell had his own tree. He yelled and bellowed. “You can’t do this. You bastards will burn in hell for eternity!”
Clay said, “Then save us places at the head table,” and nodded.
Gent tugged at his horse’s reins, and Maxwell’s screeches were cut off. The limb bent so that I thought it would break. He didn’t kick none, looked like he was trying to reach for the mud. Guess it was his weight.
El Nortada rustled through the oaks. A horse nickered. The windmill made a thin whine pumping water, scarcely heard, water that gave life to the land. No one said nothing; no one moved. Under the clouded sky, among those shadowy trees and the gathering dusk, I guess we looked like dark angels watching over the earth’s sinners hoping to change their ways.
“God forgive them,” Clay said, barely heard.
“Amen,” most everyone said. Some crossed themselves.
Still no one moved for long moments.
“Let’s go get them girls,” said Lee.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“We’ve got things to do,” said Clay. We were outside the house. “Who’s the girl? Mario Garza’s woman?”
“No, jefe. She the cook,” said Flaco. The girl was squatting under a tree crying her eyes out.
“Send her back to the big hacienda to tell Don Garza what happened here, least I can do. He’s going to be as mad as a bottle of bees.” He turned to Lee. “Where’s those two live banditos?”
“One of them ain’t a bandito, jefe. Works for Garza.”
The peon shook so much he could barely talk. Guess he thought he’d be joining the three corpses twisting under the trees. He’d been grazed in the side and the leg, one lucky sumbitch. Flaco questioned him, but he hadn’t seen any American or Mex girls. He had heard them say they had American girls. He had no idea where they were or where they were going.
Clay said, “Well, fine. Take down those three bastards and have this old boy take them in that wagon to Maxwell’s place. Tell him they’ll pay him there, and if I find out he didn’t deliver them, I’ll come back and cut off his balls and feed them to the pigs.” He added under his breath, “If Maxwell’s people don’t shoot him for his trouble.”
I thought that was mighty decent of Clay, letting this Mex go. I wanted to get along, but Clay wasn’t done yet.
We turned to the bandito. Clay had a scary look in his eyes. This Mex was in bad shape; hit three times in the legs and one through the lung. Pink bubbles came out of his mouth, and his chest making sucking noises. He’d not be with us much longer. He still looked defiant and proud with his yellow scarf and silver coins sewed to his jacket. Behind us the shed kept burning.
Clay asked him a lot of questions. The bandito glared at him or looked off into the trees. “Where are they heading, how many men, what are their plans?” He got nothing out of that Mex. The only reaction from him was when Clay asked, “Did anything bad happen to the girls?” The Mex looked him dead in the eye and laughed real nasty, coughing up blood.
Clay, his face pale, looked at Lee and said, “Get me a couple of pieces of broken glass about the size of silver dollars.” He jerked off the yellow scarf and pulled on his riding gloves.
“Hold him down.”
Chico grabbed his head and Gent his arms. Flaco sat on his legs. Clay jammed the pieces of broken Mason’s jar into the Mex’s mouth bringing more blood.
After jerking the scarf tight around his mouth, without even a second’s wait, Clay started lashing with his cuarta ripping gouges across his face. His screams were muffled by the bloody scarf.
“Clay!” shouted Lee. “You’ll get nothing if you kill the sumbitch.”
Clay stopped. He looked at Lee; his eyes had a crazed stare, and he was breathing hard. “Ask him the questions again,” he ordered Flaco.
Flaco pulled off the scarf, and blood ran out followed by red spit and the pieces of glass. For all I could tell, the bandito was blind from the cuarta beating, his face covered with blood and torn shreds of meat.
He talked this time.
El Xiuhcoatl had eighteen men with him. Blood bubbled from his mouth. They were heading for his stronghold. When he hesitated, Clay whacked him again.
Flaco said, “He say El Xiuhcoatl return to his stronghold in little village called San Miguel. His people cannot endure his long absence.”
“Yeah, I bet,” said Clay.
The bandito said there was another place a lot further away they might go to, Las Norias. Flaco knew San Miguel and had heard of Las Norias, both to the west. The bandito said too that Maxwell was in on it all, for the bull. They were going to ransom the American girls. He said the Mex girls were being kept for cooking, washing, and fucking.
My guts rolled, and I eased out my Remington. I knew what I was going to do when Clay had no more use for the sumbitch.
I guess he knew he was already dead because he said, “Todos chingaron a las chicas americana.”—We all fucked the American girls.
I got some of his brains on me when Clay shot him.
Wiping the stuff off with leaves, I knew that had happened to Marta too. Little Marta, I could see her dark eyes and what she’s going through. I walked around behind the house and puked up until I had nothing left.
I turned and Flaco was there. “We get her back, Bud.”
I nodded, felt faint-headed, empty all through.
Clay looked as bad as I felt. “How far to this San Miguel?”
“Seis leguas, six leagues,” said Chico.
“About sixteen miles,” said Lee.
“And Las Norias?”
“Over thirty leagues,” Flaco said as he cut the coins off the bandito’s jacket.
“How far’s that?”
Flaco’s eyes squinted as he figured the sums. “Long ways.”
“Well, we don’t wanna go that far. Let’s start moving before they decide to leave San Miguel.”
“Dusk’s comin’ on,” said Lee. “We ain’t ate since breakfast and been up most of last night.”
Clay knew Lee was right, no matter how much he wanted to get going.
“We need to get away from here. Don’t need a pissed Don Garza showing up,” said Clay. “We don’t have time to kill him too.” He looked around. “Get them three bastards down and toss them in the wagon. Then we’ll go back to the big herd’s trail and coil up for the night.”
We collected up the guns and ammo and loaded them in feed sacks on a mule. Some of the boys picked up another pistol. I found a near new Smith & Wesson double-action. It was only a five-shot, the only good .44-40 I found in the lot. Three of the boys, Gent, Jerry, and the wounded Rock, were taking the bull, other cattle, horses, and guns back to the Dew. Gent and Jerry’d catch up with us tomorrow, following the herd’s trail.
Dodger was holding something. “Boss, found this on that talkative bandito.” It was Slick’s elk watch. He kicked the body.
At the hanging trees, “Well, shit!” said Jerry Twining lowering a still limp Weyland to the ground.
Musty and Rosy were laughing at him. “Ya dummy, ain’t ya never seen a hangin’ before? Ya’d know to watch for steppin’ on turds.”
Two hours later, we bedded down in a hollow near where the mob we had just finished off had left the main gang.
No fires. A whisky bottle was passed around with jerky and hardtack. Lew set a guard, one-hour shifts. Lee figured El Xiuhcoatl had already reached San Miguel. Now that they were in the clear, forted up in their stronghold, maybe they’d send word to the Dew where the ransom meet up would be. I knew Clay wasn’t thinking about forking over a ransom. He was thinking about getting the girls back and killing every one of the bastards.
I laid in my bedroll knowing Clay was going through twice the hell I was.
Chapter Thirty-Six
A misty
gray dawn saw the start of our second day across the Rio. The sun was a pale white shape creeping over the trees. The crew were coughing and hocking snot. Cigarettes were being lit and someone said, “Pass that gut warmer bottle ’round.”
“I’d give my eyeteeth for coffee, even bad coffee.”
“That’s what ya’d get if Bud makes it.”
“Gib me a chaw off that plug tobaccer. What brand is it?”
“Even Change.”
“Hardtack and jerky. That ain’t goin’ to give me no hard pecker.”
“Ya don’t need one today, ’specially if ya ridin’ behind me.”
“Ya got a whore stashed in the big ol’ bedroll of yours, Musty? Y’all the last one crawlin’ out.”
“I shore as hell wouldn’t tell ya if I did.”
“Hell, y’all too tuckered out to use her ifin he did.”
Musty gnawed on a cold strip of jerky. “I shorely could use some of Marta’s frijole beans.”
Me too, I thought.
“Y’all quit jawin’ and put on leather,” ordered Lew.
Even the horses were miserable. They didn’t put up much fight when saddled, but they weren’t partial to it either. I was giving Cracker a break. I was riding a slow, but sturdy dun, expecting a day of plodding along.
The first squad headed out with the second following, and the fussy remuda was on their heels. The muddy trail wormed its way up a low ridge. It started to rain.
The herd’s trail we’d been following was easy to stay on, but with the rain, I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about it. Not only Clay, but all of us wanted to make good time. Rain, mud, and caution slowed us to a crawl. We took a short break for dinner. Musty got a fire going with coal oil under a fly tarp, and we had hot beans, bacon, tortillas, and coffee. We needed that boot in the butt.
“That’ll put some lead in your pecker.”
We were moving again in under an hour. I’d look back, and the ragged line of black and yellow slickers was strung out, heads down against the rain. Most of the boys were wearing Mex sheepskin chaps, real warm and they shed water. “This weather ain’t fit for dogs or injuns.”
We crossed arroyos running with hoof-deep water. Flaco said most of the year its bone dry here. We’d not want for water.
»»•««
Mid-afternoon Flaco came down the trail, crouching low, and signaled quiet. He pulled up beside me. “Granja.”—Farm.
Clay told us to scout it out and had everyone pull back and dismount in the thin mesquite.
Flaco and I looked the place over—an old adobe farmhouse, shed, outhouse, a couple of mesquite corrals with goats and a burro. Scrawny wet chickens pecked in the mud. An adobe pig pen sat off north of the house so it would be downwind in the summer. Flaco changed his slicker for a serape covering his pistols. Then he pulled out a yellow Xiuhcoatl scarf and tied it around his neck. He would bluff the farmer into thinking he was one of the gang what got left behind.
“I go to talk.”
He banged on the door. A man talked to him and let him in.
It was almost quarter an hour before he came out. “Have some coffee, amigo,” handing me a steaming mug.
“Looks like you made an amigo.”
“Sí. Had to eat his frijoles. They shit. We go to talk to Clay.”
Squatting beside Clay, “The man say El Xiuhcoatl come through yesterday, early afternoon. They have one hundred head of cattle, twenty men all together.”
He looked down at the mud. “He say they have two americano girls, two Mexican girls. They are on own horses, hands tied.” He paused. “Jefe, all the girls, they have bruises on the faces, black eyes.”
Clay ground his gloved fist into his hand. I felt sick to my guts. Little innocent and happy Marta, soiled and beaten.
“Did the man mean exactly twenty or was that a thereabouts?” asked Clay.
“There ’bouts. That bandito yesterday, he say nineteen.”
“Gives us a good idea what we’re facing. Can you go back, ask him what the girls were wearing, maybe find out something more?”
“Sí. Have to give his coffee mug back.”
We walked back to the house. Flaco told me to stay outside.
A horse snorted behind the house, Flaco threw his serape back and gripped his pistols. Two men in gray outfits and big sombreros with pistols hanging all over them stepped around the corner. They were as surprised to see an armed Mex and a gringo as we were to see two Rurales.
One of them yelled, bringing up a pistol, “¡Alto! ¡Manos en la pared!” Something about hands and a wall.
Flaco pulled both his pistols first. I got mine up after throwing the mug. All I remember is pointing and pulling the trigger, a lot of noise, and a lot of smoke. The two Rurales lay on their backs bleeding into the mud.
“Shit,” was all I could say.
“You good?” asked Flaco, as calm as a pond in still air.
“Yep. You?”
“They shoot my serape.”
We heard horse hooves pounding on the other side of the house.
“I think we need rifles,” muttered Flaco.
“How about these.” I grabbed one of the Rurales’, an old Spencer .56-50 single-shot. “Won’t do.” I threw it down.
Flaco said, “¡Corre!”
I figured straight off that meant, “Run!”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
A trumpet shrilled.
“What the hell’s that?”
“Embestida—Charge,” said Flaco.
I ran harder.
A dozen mounted Rurales came around both sides of the house with pistols firing. Mud sprayed all over.
The mesquite in front of us erupted with smoke. Looking back, I saw some Rurales knocked off their horses. They pulled up and scattered back. The blaze of fire meeting them took them by full surprise.
“What in hell’s fire did you stir up?” shouted Clay.
“¡Rurales!” hollered Flaco.
“Shit fire. Let’s let’s get the hell outta here!”
“I thought it was Xiuhcoatl coming back,” said Lee.
Bullets cracked through the mesquite from the right. Most of us got in a shallow rocky gully.
Let the bosses decide what to do, I thought. I only cracked off rounds at anything that moved. There wasn’t time to be scared.
“How many ya think there are?” said Lew.
“Twenty, maybe more,” said Flaco.
“We can’t run,” said Lew. “They’ll gun us down in the open with that many rifles.”
“They run us down, use pistols close,” said Flaco.
Bullets came from the left.
Flaco looked around. “They…desbordar el flanco, go around…”
“Outflankin’ us,” said Lew. “They’ll come around on both sides, surround us.”
“Sí, Rurales always do that,” agreed Flaco. “They have the numbers, more than us.”
“Work our way deeper into the brush?” said Clay, looking over his shoulder as a barrage of shots sounded from the left.
Now I was thinking about finding time to get scared.
“No good, we make them come at us and concentrate our fire,” Lew said, darting his eyes around.
“I can tell you got an idea, Lew. Tell me what you want to do.”
“We go to that pig pen,” pointing at the adobe-walled pen about twenty yards away.
“We’ll get trapped in there,” argued Lee.
“Hell, Lee, we’re trapped right here. Over yonder we got good cover,” said Lew. “We’ll be concentrated, can mass our fire in any direction they come at us from.”
Clay looked at Flaco. The fire increased. “Rurales like to ride down the enemy, get in among them and use pistols close-up. They cannot get in that pen with their horses, unless they jump the walls, and then they no got room to fight.”
Clay glared at the low pen. “Let go the horses, most’ll come back when it’s over—if there’s any of us left to come back to.”
�
�We all go at once,” said Lew. “If we go in groups, they’ll concentrate their fire. If we all go as one there’s too many targets.”
“Pass the word, Lee. Everyone bring all their ammo and their canteens and water bags. We all go when I give the word. Start shooting and keep shooting on the run.”
Horses were running back down the trail with a few whoops of encouragement from the boys. I told myself we’d surprise them with us going for the pig pen.
“Go!” shouted Clay.
Boys rose up and began firing in all directions. Dodger and I started running with Flaco behind us. I was shooting right, and Dodger left with our rifles. Flaco kept turning to the back blasting away with both his pistols. I saw somebody go down. The boys leapt over the four-foot wall. Mud splattered all around us, and bullets wanged off the walls.
“Holy shit!” shouted Gent.
“What the hell ya expect to find in a pig pen, ya idgit?”
“Get them porkers outta here,” shouted Lee.
Musty held the gate open. As the half-dozen squealers ran out, a couple of them were hit. Bullets wacked into the walls and buzzed over us like hornets. There was a water trough and a feed trough half-buried in the mud and shit. We wrenched them out and slung them behind the gate to block bullets.
“Anybody hit, anybody not make it?” That from Clay.
“Bastards shot the top of my ear off,” said Musty. Gent was tying a bandana around his head and over the right ear. Sure a lot of blood.
“I got creased across the back,” said Rosy. “Hardly bleedin’.”
“Sumbitches kilt my water bag.” Sessuns was holding up the leather bag pissing two streams of water.
Lee said, “Chico went down.”
We looked back and that vaquero was lying in the mud. His arm moved.
“Don’t move, Chico,” Lee shouted.
Flaco yelled at him in Mex.
Chico raised his head and that drew fire. Mud sprayed all around him. He jerked from hits. We all fired fast as we could, but ol’ Chico was hit time after time until he stopped jerking.
The Hardest Ride Page 16