“You want to swap?”
“Don’t do me no favors,” Stride snapped, and Six wondered what, suddenly, was eating him. Behind the shell of mock-acid banter between these two, he realized, lay something important but dangerous – something neither one of them seemed willing to say aloud.
Holly went into the cantina ahead of them, marched swaying through the light crowd, stopped to speak to the barkeep and one or two customers, pinched a man’s cheek, and finally paraded through a back door. Six and Stride followed her through the cramped rear office and out into the dusty back yard. By the time they manhandled the bulging valises outside, Holly was half way up the narrow steep flight of stairs that ran up the backside of the building, precariously hung on the wall. The two men jockeyed the luggage upstairs. At the head of the stairs Holly stood, arms propped on hips; she said, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you hauled them up with ropes? I never saw so much grunt and fuss over two little bags.”
“If you re such a God damn expert,” Jericho Stride said, heaving upward, “why in hell don’t you carry your own God damn baggage?”
“You’re taking the Good Lord’s name in vain,” she rebuked him, and disappeared laughing into a low-roofed attic. Before Six reached the top, a lamp bloomed and a yellow swath of light cut across the landing.
Holly was regarding the tiny room with a critical expression. “You haven’t touched a broom to this place in weeks.”
“Maybe I had other things on my mind,” Stride growled. He set the bag down in the middle of the floor.
Six dropped the second bag beside it and said, with a wry attempt at humor, “What’s in these – silver bullion?”
“Lady things,” she snapped. “None of your damn business.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, straight-faced.
It made her grin at him, friendly and unabashed. “So you’re after bein’ a human after all?”
“He’s a law man,” Stride grumbled. “Species marshal.”
“Ah, then, that explains it for sure.”
It was hot and close under the low ceiling. Stride edged past her to the front and threw open a small window. Up the hill across the city, the bright lights of the high Governor’s Palace were visible. Six saw Holly’s glance follow Stride across the room; she watched Stride’s back unwaveringly. After a moment Six felt awkward and unneeded here; he turned and started toward the door. He had to thread a path through a tangle of things. Beside the door on either side stood the accumulated miscellaneous possessions of, evidently, all the successive owners of the ancient cantina, the piles making a tunnel to the door. The rest of the room was cluttered with broken furniture – among it bar chairs, a sagging bed, a tilted commode, a splintered clothes-press.
Six paused in the door, ducking his head to clear the low transom. Holly was facing Jericho Stride across most of the room’s length, her face illuminated dimly by the single flickering lamp. The pose of her body arrested Six’s attention: it was so much like Clarissa’s way of standing, head slightly to one side, hair falling past her cheek. And while he watched, the mask of derisive toughness slipped from Holly’s face and she became a confused, lonely girl; she wept. Jericho Stride crossed the room and let her cry against his chest. She buried her face in his shirt and after a while her voice came, muffled in the cloth:
“He was no good, Jericho.”
“I tried to tell you that,” Stride said gently.
“You didn’t tell me loud enough.”
“Would it have done any good?”
“Probably not.” Her head rocked back. “Mining engineer, hah! He was a cheap crook. The smooth talking son of a bitch. It was all talk and blarney. He didn’t have ten pesos to rub together!”
Jericho Stride smiled raggedly. “You just keep looking, orphan, one day your millionaire will come along.”
Six was curling through the doorway, feeling like an interloper, but Holly’s voice arrested him: She was looking right at him, talking loud in rage:
“I left the bastard in Guaymas at a cockfight. I don’t think he even noticed when I walked out.”
He didn’t know why she was talking to him. Not knowing how to respond, he did nothing; he stood awkward, bent in the doorway, watching her, not speaking. Why did she want him to hear this? To make him take the blame, because he was a man and she hated men for what the fake mining engineer had done?
She said wistfully, “You know, I almost liked the bastard, I think. I had to hock my last string of pearls to get back here. You don’t want to buy a horse and buggy, do you, Marshal Jeremy Six?”
He shook his head. Jericho Stride said, “We’ll peddle it somewhere. You want something to eat?”
She looked at Stride. “You’re ugly,” she told him, “and you need a clean shirt.”
“Yeah.” Stride touched her chin with a forefinger. His smile was soft and gentle.
Six ducked outside, went down the stairs, and walked around the outside of the cantina, back to the plaza where he had left his horse tethered. He hadn’t come down this far to get mixed up in the personal troubles of Stride and Holly Moore. He reached for the reins of his horse, unwrapped them from the hitching post, and stood thinking about getting a place to stay the night. Tomorrow he would head into the mountains and try to find Santana’s camp – and Steve Lament. When he thought about Lament his face turned cold and craggy.
He was turning to put his foot in the stirrup when the soldiers rode into the plaza and picked him up.
Four
There were six of them - soldiers on horseback, armed with rolling-block rifles which they held across their broad flat saddlehorns. The rifles were not exactly aimed at Six.
The corporal in the lead gestured with his rifle and gave Six a gleaming smile in which there was utterly no friendship. “¿Señor, por favor?”
“’Noches ,” Six said politely. “¿Qué quieren?”
In Spanish the corporal said, “The Colonel Sanderos wishes to speak to you.”
“For what purpose?”
The corporal grinned again. “Matters of state, one would suppose.” He shifted the rifle an inch. “The Colonel is waiting, please.”
There did not appear to be a great deal of choice. Six got on his horse and went with them, gigging the horse to an easy singlefoot. The six troopers formed a practiced phalanx around him – they didn’t crowd, but they did it neatly, placing themselves full circle around him so that he would not make a break. The corporal grinned every time Six looked at him.
They turned up a narrow curving street. The town was silent and dark. At the head of the street squatted a long row of barracks, low buildings with corrals and sheds behind them. A light burned in an open doorway. The corporal gestured; Six got down. One of the troopers took his horse; the rest of them rode away. The corporal ushered him inside with an extravagant flourish and an unpleasant toothy grin.
Two doors stood open off the unattended anteroom. Through one of them, Six saw a youth sitting in a chair. Streaks of half-dry blood glistened on the young face, oozing from cuts in his cheeks and over his eyes. A little bantam rooster of a man in the uniform of a militia sergeant stood over the youth, slapping a bloodstained leather quirt against the palm of his open hand.
The scene stopped Six in his tracks; eyes rigid with anger, he took one pace toward that door – and felt the cold touch of the corporal’s rifle muzzle against the small of his back.
A gaunt man came to stand in the other open door, tall in a trim tailored uniform. He had the ungiving triangular eyes of a bird of prey – a beaked, sharp-edged face and long slender hands. He wore a colonel’s epaulets; he gave Six a synthetic smile and said, “I am Pedro Sanderos.”
Six said nothing. He felt the shift of the corporal’s weight behind him, as the corporal went back against the front door and stood there with his rifle in both hands, watching.
Colonel Sanderos addressed Six in English. “The young man’s name is Rafael Sagan. One of Carlos Santana’s bandits. He refuses to dis
close Santana’s hiding place. No matter.” Sanderos turned. Six felt the prod of the corporal’s rifle in his back and followed Sanderos into the big office. They hadn’t taken Six’s gun but there hardly seemed any point in reaching for it. Colonel Sanderos sat down behind a small old desk and picked up a rusty long-bladed scalping knife that rested on top of it, probably some kind of souvenir of Sanderos’ past. The colonel waved a gaunt hand around. “Sit down, Señor Six.”
Six shook his head slightly and stayed put, on his feet, midway between desk and door. Behind him he could hear the creak of leather boots as the grinning corporal stirred. Six said, “If you know who I am then you know you don’t have to point a gun to talk to me.”
Sanderos smiled slightly. He tipped himself back in the chair and toyed with the scalping knife, not looking up from it. “Up there,” he said, “you’re a police officer. Down here you’re just another gringo foreigner. I take no chances with gringo foreigners in these trying times, Señor.” Then his eyes shot up toward Six, as if to try and catch him off guard. “What are you here for?”
“Private business.”
“There is a bandit rebellion – perhaps you have heard?”
“Santana? I’ve heard.”
“The province is under martial law. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Under martial law,” Colonel Sanderos said softly, leaning forward, “there is no private business, Señor.”
“Then let’s just say it’s a personal matter,” Six said.
“Nor are there personal matters.”
“In my country, Colonel—”
Sanderos snapped, “We are not in your country now.”
Six’s jaw crept forward a little. “I’m making an effort not to get annoyed, Colonel.”
“Then I do hope you succeed,” Sanderos said with a synthetic smile. He seemed to relax; he leaned back again and resumed playing with the knife. As it turned back and forth it picked up light that raced along in swift fragmentary reflections. Rust spotted the blade but even from eight feet away Six could see it still held a good cutting edge.
Sanderos said, “You came here in order to make an illegal attempt, in the absence of extradition agreements, to capture a gringo named Steve Lament and either kill him or abduct him to your country for trial. That is correct?”
“You can suit yourself,” Six murmured, trying to figure out exactly how Colonel Sanderos had found out so much. Jericho Stride? No - there had been no time for that; Stride had been with him every moment until he had left the attic.
Without smiling, Colonel Sanderos said, “If you are curious about my sources of information, it might please me to allow you to believe I have a network of spies strung from here to Arizona, but that is hardly the case. You were overheard talking with the black gringo in the plaza – by one of my men. It was, perhaps, an accident.”
“Yes. Perhaps,” Six said, reserving belief.
Sanderos’ lips stretched back in an imitation of a smile. “You wish to go into Carlos Santana’s camp after the Señor Lament.”
“Do I?”
“I want you to do exactly that,” Sanderos said. The colonel’s triangular eyes glittered. “You will do as you intended. You will make your way into Santana’s camp. What you do to, or with, Lament is of no concern to me. But while in the rebel camp you will make careful observations of the number of bandits in the camp, the extent of their arms and equipment, and if possible the nature of their plans. Above all, you will learn the exact location of their camp. You will then report directly to me.”
Six’s lids were draped over his eyes as if he were slightly bemused and bored. “I’m not one of your tin soldiers.”
“Perhaps you do not fully appreciate the situation,” Sanderos purred. “I have sent men to spy on Santana, you see. I have sent Yaqui scouts to find him. None of them has ever come back.” His bony shoulders moved the tunic. “Perhaps they are dead, perhaps imprisoned, perhaps they have defected to Santana. No matter. You are needed, señor, because you are an outsider.”
“Why?”
“You have no side in the revolution. The rebels will have no reason to suspect you are anything but what you pretend to be – a gringo bent on a private vendetta. At any rate most gringos in this country have a stupid romantic tendency to side with the bandit upstarts – all except the rich gringos, of course, because they know on which side their bread is buttered. But you are not rich and I am sure Santana will accept you – as a neutral at least, perhaps even as a friend.”
“What makes you think a stranger like me can find Santana if you can’t find him?”
“Just go into the Sierra. Santana will find you.”
Colonel Sanderos turned his palms up. The knife pointed straight at Six. “I need help, you see. I am not too proud to ask for it.”
“You’ve got a reason to think I’ll do it, haven’t you?”
“¿Como?”
“If this was all you had to say, you wouldn’t have bothered bringing me here. You must think you’ve got a way to persuade me to do what you want.”
Sanderos’ smile was hardly as disarming as he seemed to think. “I was hoping your sense of comradeship – one officer of the law to another, so to speak – would create a bond of friendship between us. A matter of professional cooperation.”
Six yawned. “Anything else?”
“That is not enough?”
“No,” Six said, “it isn’t enough, Colonel.”
“A fellow officer of the law—?”
“Not my brand of law, Colonel. I am not your friend.”
“Then I am very sorry you feel that way.”
“Are you, now.”
“It is no trick to go to Santana,” Sanderos said. “I’m sure I could do it myself. The trick is to get back … alive. That I cannot do. But it is a thing which you can do.”
“What makes you so confident of that? If you know why I’m here, then you also know the man I’m after is a valuable man to Santana. They’re not going to let me walk in and put handcuffs on him and take him out with me – not without a fight.”
“I’m sure you will think of something, Marshal Six. You have the reputation of a resourceful man. Besides, this is a country where pride and personal honor are important things, and I doubt Santana will stand in your way once he learns exactly why you have come to capture Steve Lament. Santana’s reputation would suffer it if became known that he was friendly with a gringo gunman who shot and killed a woman. No, once the truth is known to him, Santana will not stand in your way. He will let you have Steve Lament, and you will bring Lament out with you, and on your way back to Arizona you can stop here and report to me on what you have found in the mountains.”
Six yawned through the last sentence of the colonel’s speech and said, “I’ve had a long dusty ride and if you’re all through talking, I’d like to find a hotel and bed down for the night.”
“I am not quite - how did you put it? - all through talking. First there is the matter of international courtesy and its reverse. If you do not agree to help me, as a fellow officer of the law, then I shall have no choice but to assume you have decided to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the state. That, of course, makes you yourself an enemy of the state. You may get your prisoner away from Santana, señor, but you will not get him—or yourself—out of Mexico. Not without my help.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Set yourself against the duly constituted government of this province, Marshal Six, and you will be treated like any other insurgent rebel. You will be captured and shot.”
Six said bleakly, “I told you in the beginning, my business here is personal. It’s got nothing to do with your local civil war. As a foreigner I’ve got no obligation to pick sides.”
Sanderos merely smiled.
Six turned toward the door. Sanderos said softly, “There is just one other matter … your good friend Jericho Stride.”
It stopped Six. He turned back. “What about h
im?”
“Being a man of good heart I do not trouble Stride, although he is here only by the grace of my tolerance. You know of course that charges are still pending against him in your country – that he faces fifteen years in prison there?”
“That’s no skin off your nose, Colonel.”
“What? Oh, yes. But I need not remind you of the consequences, should Stride be found one morning handcuffed to a federal marshal’s porch in Arizona.”
“I see.”
“Of course you do. It is entirely within my power at any time of my choice to deport Jericho Stride to his homeland. It is quite legal, I assure you – a matter of deportation, not extradition, for which no treaties exist.”
“And if I don’t play the game by your rules, my friend Stride gets shipped back to the States. That’s it?”
“Exactly.”
Six shook his head. “You people love to play at intrigue.”
“And that means—?”
“It means Jericho Stride will have to look out for himself,” Six said. “He knew that when he came here. I’m not his bodyguard.”
“I should have thought friendship might have counted,” Sanderos suggested.
“Stride broke the law in my country. I’m a law man. I’m afraid that won’t work, Colonel – in my country the badge has no friends.” Angry clear through, Six walked back to the desk and leaned over it, putting both fists on the desk. “It won’t work, Colonel. If you’re not good enough to fight your own wars, you’re not going to get rid of your problems by shoving them off on me. Now, you’ve made a lot of wild threats and I’ve had enough.”
Sanderos shrugged and smiled again. He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “You must admit I have tried well.”
“Look, why don’t you just take your army into the hills and run Santana down? You’ve got him outgunned.”
Marshal Jeremy Six #8 Page 3