Only the Lord in Heaven above could answer some things about that land. Perhaps, Pagliotti thought, on his next visit to see his family, kiss his mother, and confess his many sins to his kid brother—the priest in the Mexican village of Yelamos—he would ask him to explain why such things happened.
Billy Hawkin was dead. That much was evident. He had been shot at least once in the head, probably while he lay down where he was right that very moment. His eyes remained open, although the sun had baked them. Yet Billy Hawkin’s body had not been butchered by Apaches, nor picked apart by vultures and coyotes. No flies or bugs even bothered the dead young brother of Alfredo Pagliotti’s boss, Jake Hawkin. His face was becoming like a prune, not the prunes his mother preserved in gringo mason jars, but a dried prune. Like jerky.
That reminded Pagliotti that he had not eaten since yesterday around noon. He dug into his jacket, withdrew the pouch, opened it, dipped his fingers inside and withdrew a long piece. His teeth grabbed hold and he tugged, felt the meat tear, and he began chewing deliberately, feeling the saliva and tasty juices fill his mouth and coat his tongue. His kid brother was not only a fine priest in the village of Yelamos, he was one of the best makers of jerky in many, many kilometers north, south, east, and west. Perhaps Pagliotti would take his brother some cattle to butcher and dry. Young Padre Tomás would like that.
Jake Hawkin, on the other hand . . .
“What the hell was he doing out here?” asked the outlaw with the twin pistols, Colter Vaughn. He pulled off his black hat and slapped it against his thigh.
Alfredo Pagliotti shrugged. “¿Quién sabe?”
“Is he alone?” another of the gringo riders asked.
“Sí.” Pagliotti pointed at the tracks. “Well, there are the dead men over there, but those men I do not know.”
“They’s Mexicans, ain’t they?” Vaughn said.
Alfredo Pagliotti looked up. “Mexico is a big country, amigo. And I know who I want to know.” Pagliotti wished he did not know Colter Vaughn.
Another man began cursing in English and Spanish, and pointed to the smoke. “That’s the second time we’ve seen that sign, Alfredo,” he said in the true language. “I do not like riding in this country with Apaches running free.”
“Nor do I,” Pagliotti said in Spanish.
“Speak English, you turds,” Vaughn said. “You’re in Texas, not Mexico.”
Pagliotti pointed at the smoke. “Eduardo merely points out that we are not alone.”
“Hell’s fire,” another gringo said. “I don’t like this.”
“You like it for fifty thousand bucks,” Vaughn said.
That silenced the gringo, but Pagliotti looked at some of the other riders, those from Mexico and those hot-tempered norteamericanos, and he realized that most of the men believed as Eduardo thought. Pagliotti could not blame them. They would rather be across the Rio Grande, and none of them, as far as he knew, had a brother who was a fine priest and knew how to make the best beef jerky between Denver and Mexico City.
Kneeling again by the corpse, Pagliotti plucked the piece of paper out of Billy Hawkin’s pocket.
“What is that?” the gringo named Colfax asked.
“It is nothing you can spend on . . . whiskey or a puta,” Pagliotti told him. “It is for Señor Hawkin. Señor Jake.” He slipped it inside his jacket next to the pouch of his beloved beef jerky.
He walked to his horse, took the reins from Jacobo, who was holding them, and started to mount his horse.
“What about Billy?” Vaughn shouted. “Ain’t you gonna plant his sorry hide?”
Alfredo Pagliotti turned and stared at the fool gringo. “You may stay and give him his last rites and see to his soul if you must. But I have a better idea.” He nodded at the white smoke rising from the hills. “Let us leave Señor Billy as he is. But we shall tell Señor Jake that we buried him. Vamanos.”
* * *
Since the smoke seemed to be near Culpepper’s Station, Alfredo Pagliotti led his men on a wide loop around those hills and canyons. They rode in a roundabout way toward Sierra Vista. It was about time to meet up with the boss and divide all that money that had been taken from the bank in Sierra Vista. Pagliotti planned to give at least fifty dollars to his kid brother Tomás when he arrived back in Yelamos.
To his surprise, he spotted dust about fifteen miles later. Apaches would not raise dust, and there was not enough dust to belong to a gringo posse or an Army patrol. He handed a spyglass to one of the younger Mexicans who rode for the gringo outlaw and sent him onto a mesa to see what fool or fools would be riding there at that time of day, especially with Apache smoke signals going up everywhere.
Forty minutes later, for it was a very hard climb to reach the top of the mesa and come back down, Rabaso emerged, returned the spyglass to Alfredo Pagliotti, and said, “El Jefe.”
At first, thought that young Rabaso was calling him, Alfredo Pagliotti, the boss, and that made Alfredo Pagliotti beam with pleasure, but then he saw how nervous young Rabaso was, and that caused Alfredo Pagliotti to frown.
“Hawkin?” he asked.
The youngster’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he nodded quickly. “Sí. El Jefe.”
After removing his sombrero and rubbing his long black hair with his gauntlet, Pagliotti let out a very long sigh, looked at young Rabaso, then at Colter Vaughn, and then at the smoke rising off in the distance.
“I’ll be damned,” he said in English, and nodded at young Rabaso and Colter Vaughn. “Ride out. Bring Señor Jake to us. He might like it here. We are at least in the shade.”
* * *
Slowly, after hearing the words from the greaser named Alfredo Pagliotti, Jake Hawkin sat on a boulder and pushed back his hat.
“Was it them greaser banditos you found near him?” Hawkin asked. “Did they kill my brother?”
“No, Señor Jake.” Carefully, the Mexican bandit reached inside his jacket and pulled out the page torn from a book. Hawkin looked at Galloway for help, found none, and reached up and snatched the page from Pagliotti’s hand. He looked at the paper, realized that it came from one of those damned books the Texas Rangers carried, and wondered what the hell the fool Mexican meant by handing him a page about some burglar named Ed Haines who had busted into some homes and businesses in Round Rock, or a killer called Ham Harrelson whom Jake Hawkin knew had been hanged in Childress back in December. Then he turned the page over.
He saw the beginning of the entry for himself, and above that the shorter description and list of crimes attributed to his brother, young Billy. He saw the dried blood on the corner of the page and he read the scribbled note across the margin.
Billy Hawkin. Shot dead by Matt McCulloch while protecting himself.
“Matt McCulloch. That Ranger thimble-rigger. I’ll see him in Hell for this. Nobody kills my brother and gets away with it.” Jake wadded up the paper into a ball and tossed it to the dirt, but the wind caught it and carried it into a cactus.
“Where was he killed?” Hawkin asked.
“South of Culpepper’s Station,” the Mexican answered.
“And you buried him?”
“Sí. What kind of man would leave a poor young norteamericano to rot? Or not put up a cross, if only of cactus skeletons, over his grave?” He crossed himself.
“I appreciate that.” Hawkin hitched up his gunbelt, drew his revolver, opened the loading gate, pulled the hammer to half cock, and rotated the cylinder on his forearm. Satisfied with the bullets, he brought the hammer back and softly down, snapped the gate shut, and shoved the hogleg into the holster.
“All right, boys, we’re going to kill the man who shot my kid brother. Just know this. I kill him. You can shoot him all to pieces, but I want the SOB alive when I put a bullet through his manhood, his gut, his kneecaps, and finally right between his eyes. Make sure you remember that.”
“The Apaches may have taken care of that for you,” Pagliotti told him. “The tracks left by the Ranger headed toward Culpepper�
�s Station. The smoke we saw came from Culpepper’s Station. And there was much fire, much fire, in the night. I think the Apaches have burned the station to the ground.”
“They can’t burn that station,” Hawkin said. “It’s built like a damned fort.”
“There was much fire in the night,” Pagliotti said again.
“Barn maybe. It don’t matter. We’re riding to Culpepper’s. We’ll pick up McCulloch’s trail. If the Apaches killed him, by thunder, I’ll take some Apache scalps. Nobody’s killing that Ranger, boys, but me.”
“He’s not a Ranger no more, Jake,” Colter Vaughn said.
“All the better. Rangers won’t be so hard on our trail if we kill some murdering devil who’s not a Texas Ranger no more.” He nodded at Galloway and moved to his horse.
“Señor Jake?” the Mexican named Alfredo Pagliotti said pleasantly.
Hawkin turned around, frowned, and pointed at the Mexican’s horse. “You ain’t mounted.”
“No. What about the money?”
“What money?” Jake Hawkin said bitterly.
“The money from the bank in Sierra Vista. The money we left with you, your brother Billy, Señor Galloway, and the strange little gringo from the bank. ¿Cuál era su nombre?”
“Henderson,” answered Jacobo.
“Sí.” Pagliotti’s head nodded. “Yes. Henderson. You have the money, Señor Jake? We would like to split it up. I could be in Yelamos in three days.”
“I don’t have the damned money,” Jake Hawkin barked. “That damned skinflint of a cashier, Henderson, he stole it.”
Alfredo Pagliotti moved his right hand beside his revolver. Several of the other men put their hands on the butts of their revolvers or the stocks of their rifles.
“I’m telling you the damned truth,” Hawkin said. “Tell them, Galloway.”
“It’s true,” the gunman said. “We were at this little . . . well . . . in the whorehouse. Just the way we planned. The little cashier was in one of the rooms, too. He had the grips with the money. Nobody figured he’d have the sand to try to get away with it. But he did. Best we figured, he caught the westbound stage. Billy went after him. That’s why you happened to find him shot full of lead. And that’s why we’re going. To get that fifty thousand dollars.”
“The Apaches might have that, too, my friend,” one of the Mexicans said from horseback.
“Then we’ll steal it back from those red devils!” Hawkin roared.
“From Apaches?” Pagliotti asked.
“If they have it, yes,” said Hawkin. “And if they don’t, we’ll get it off that stagecoach. We’ll take it off Matt McCulloch.” He found himself sweating. Saw the distrust and the doubt in the eyes of practically every man who was riding with Alfredo Pagliotti. “Boys, you don’t take fifty thousand dollars sitting on your asses.”
“And,” Pagliotti said, “you don’t lose it laying on your backs . . . in el burdel.”
Some of the Mexicans in the bunch snickered.
“You boys are coming with me,” Jake Hawkin said, and then tried to swallow as several guns were aimed at Galloway and him.
“Jake,” Pagliotti said as he swung onto his horse. “We will leave you with your lives. Anyone here who wants to ride with you against Holy Shirt’s Apaches has our blessing. We will take your saddle bags. And one canteen. And your money.” He snapped his fingers, and four Mexicans moved quickly to the outlaw leader and Galloway, both of whom raised their hands, and let go their wallets, tobacco, watches, dice, and knives—along with saddlebags and Galloway’s canteen, for everyone knew he filled his canteen with whiskey. The wallets were given to Pagliotti, who stuck them into his jacket pocket near his beef jerky.
“Who stays behind?” he asked.
Colter Vaughn nudged his horse out of the group. “Reckon I’ll risk my hide for that much loot.”
“Bueno.” The Mexican bowed and touched the brim of his hat.
Jake Hawkin looked around, hoping someone else would join him. His eyes landed on Mitchum, and he called out his name. “You’ve ridden with me for two years, Buck.”
“Closer to three,” Mitchum said. “But before that, I rode with Cullen Baker. And before that, it was the Reno boys. And before that, it was with Arch Clements. And before that, William Quantrill. I know when it’s time to pull out, boss, so I’m pulling out.”
Pagliotti leaned his head back and laughed. “Que tengas un buen día e ir al infierno,” he called out, spurred his horse, and the men who had been part of the Hawkin Gang left Jake Hawkin, Galloway, and Colter Vaughn turning their heads from the thick, choking dust.
“What did that greaser say?” Jake Hawkin asked when the dust had settled.
“Something along the lines,” Galloway replied, “of have a nice day and go to hell.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“It damned sure took y’all long enough,” Jed Breen snapped.
“You think you could’ve done better?” Matt McCulloch was in no mood for argument.
“Hey!” Sergeant Keegan decided to play peacemaker. “He got here—so did the woman—with two horses. That’s all that matters.”
“We didn’t have to come back,” McCulloch said.
“Yeah,” Keegan said, “but if you’d deserted us, Breen and me would have tracked you both down—even if we were ghosts after the Apaches finished us off.”
The pinto kicked over a bucket.
McCulloch, tired, irritated, hungry, and in general, just ticked off at everyone surrounding him, was about to fire back at the two men who had spent their evening in the relative safety of the stagecoach station. But then he saw Alvin J. Griffin IV. “What the hell is that about?”
Breen drew in a breath and exhaled. It was supposed to help one relax. It wasn’t working. “He wanted to travel some. We wanted him to stay.”
The editor was on a chair, his back to the window, making a pretty easy target for any Indians who wanted to shoot through the cross cutouts. He was gagged, tied to the chair—arms, hands, legs, ankles, and chest—and trussed up like a Christmas goose. His eyes remained wide open in terror.
“Surprised you didn’t nail him up against the shutter like you did Henderson,” McCulloch said.
The sergeant shrugged. “Out of nails.”
“Oh, my God.” Gwen Stanhope didn’t say it desperately. She just stared, her mouth agape, at Sir Theodore Cannon in his medieval suit of armor. “Oh, my God,” she repeated. She even managed to smile.
Keegan, on the other hand, wasn’t smiling. “Heard gunshots. And not all of them was coming from your weapons.”
“Yeah.” McCulloch found the ladle, dipped it into a bucket, and took a couple of swallows. “I don’t know if Holy Shirt’s boys have turned their backs on him or what.”
“If they’re shooting bullets, we’re not getting far at all,” Keegan said.
“Even if they go back to arrows and lances,” Breen said, “if they shoot our horses, we’re not getting far.”
“If they shoot my buckskin,” McCulloch said, “I’ll be right mad.”
“I don’t think they’ll shoot our horses,” Keegan said. “They didn’t shoot the mules. Just stole them.”
“Because they’re hungry,” Breen said.
“And they shot a horse last night,” Gwen Stanhope said.
“But I think that was an accident,” McCulloch said.
Keegan chuckled. “Well, we’ll see. Apaches have peculiar notions, especially this Holy Shirt. He tells his braves they can’t use anything from the whites—no guns, no clothes, nothing along those lines—but they’re free to take horses and mules. They must’ve forgotten that they’d never seen a horse till the Spanish brought them over.”
“We’re wasting time,” McCulloch said.
“Yes,” came the muffled voice of Sir Theodore Cannon before he pulled up his visor. “It is time to play out the final act.”
“Don’t say final, Sir Theo,” Gwen Stanhope whispered.
The newspaperman
muttered behind his gag.
Everyone looked at the two horses, then at the harness. No one spoke for awhile. No one looked excited at the prospects.
“We could wait till night,” the woman said.
Keegan shook his head. “I’ve got cabin fever, ma’am. Time for me to get out of this dark, stinking hellhole.”
“Besides,” Breen said, waving at the actor in the suit of armor, “Sir Theodore Cannon might not want to spend twelve more hours in that tin can.”
“Indeed!” the actor said. “This will be my greatest performance.”
They knew the problem. Daylight meant the Apaches would be ready—with no superstitions about being killed in the night. They would have to hitch the two horses to the actor’s wagon. That would leave them as open targets. It was one impossible job. But how much longer could they survive an assault on Fort Hopeless?
McCulloch nodded at the bound and gagged newspaperman. “Cut him loose. We’ll need him.”
Breen started to protest, but tightened his lips together, and Keegan grabbed a butcher’s knife off the countertop and moved to Griffin.
“I’ll have you all arrested for kidnapping!” the man said as soon as the gag was freed.
“I said we needed you, Griffin,” McCulloch said. “I didn’t say we need your mouth. I can put that gag back in, and I will, if you keep working your jaws, buster.”
The man rubbed his wrists when the bindings were cut loose, trying to return the circulation, and began twisting his feet one way and the other. He sat there, frowning, working the stiffness and numbness out of his body. But at least he did not talk. Keegan threw the knife, which stuck in the floor between the newspaperman’s shoes.
“The buckskin,” McCulloch said, nodding at his horse, “isn’t broke for pulling. But he’ll do it. I still doubt if the pinto’s much of a buggy horse, either, but that’s what we have.”
“We could draw lots,” Breen said. “Two of us ride out. The rest stay.”
“You’d ride for help, I’m sure,” Keegan said.
“If I win,” Breen says.
“I’ve heard how you play cards, Breen,” McCulloch said. “You always win.”
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