by Lyle Brandt
If he had not understood before, Rayón saw now that his commander had selected him for sacrifice, surrounded by a ring of firearms that were cocking, aiming at him, all as one. To make things worse, Villa had drawn his own six-gun and held it leveled at his unexpected caller’s face.
“What should I do with a gusano sent here by a liar to insult me, Rafael?”
“No lo sé, señor,” Rayón said, in a hopeless tone.
“You don’t know?” Villa echoed, while his men began to laugh. “Should I accept your life as payment for Zapata’s debt?”
No answer from the young vaquero as he stood before Villa, trembling.
Drawing the torment out, Villa informed Rayón, “Your life means nothing to me, niño. You are less than muck under my boots. You carry no dinero with you, I assume?”
“A few pesos, señor.”
“In other words, nothing,” Pancho retorted. “You come here, insult me to my face, before my men who counted on this sale, and lack the wherewithal to pay your master’s debt.”
Rayón apparently could think of no response to that. His trembling turned into a hopeless shrug.
After another tense protracted moment, Villa put his gun away. “I will not take your worthless life,” he told Rayón. “Instead, you will perform a service for me as the cost of living to behold another sunrise.”
“Anything, jefe! You have only to ask.”
“I ask for nothing, boy. I order you to turn around and ride back to your master. Tell Zapata his so-called apology is worthless. I will not forget this insult or the profit he has cost me. In due time, I shall repay him in another form of currency. You understand me?”
“¡Sí, señor! It will be done, just as you say.”
“And use my words exactly, hijo. Do not sugarcoat them for Emiliano’s pleasure, or I’ll hear of it and hunt you down before I deal with him.”
“You have my word, jefe.”
“Now rest your animal,” said Villa. “Feed and water him. He bears no fault in this. I give you half an hour, then be on your way back to Morelos or wherever your cobarde of a leader goes to hide himself. From this day forward he is marked. There shall be no forgiveness.”
“Gracias, señor. ¡Mil gracias!”
“Now get out of my sight,” Villa commanded. “I sicken of looking at your face.”
His gunmen jostled Rayón out of Villa’s presence, prodding him with gun muzzles as he went off to tend his horse. Villa picked up his metal plate once more but found that he had lost his appetite and dumped the remnants of his supper in the campfire.
Suddenly appearing at his side, Javier Jurado asked, “What now, jefe?”
“Now, nothing,” Villa answered. “In the morning we shall move the horses. Find a safer place to keep the herd.”
Nodding, Jurado moved away to spread the word.
* * *
* * *
Against all odds, Jesús Zarita had retrieved the cutthroat razor from his boot and palmed it, pausing to relax his aching muscles as he lay concealed beneath his saddle blanket, weary from the straining effort.
When his quaking fingers closed around the would-be instrument of freedom from his bonds, Jesús barely restrained himself from sobbing with relief. The razor bore his body’s heat from nestling in his sock all day, since exiting his playmate’s unkempt bedroom in Ascensión, and it was slippery with sweat. Zarita dreaded losing hold of it, then having to recover it from underneath his blankets’ rumpled folds, but concentration helped him hold it fast.
Now, once he’d opened it, how should he liberate his hands without slashing his wrists and bleeding out, an unintended suicide?
“Con mucho cuidado,” Jesús whispered to himself.
Most carefully.
The nail on his right thumb had not been trimmed of late, and now Zarita took advantage of that negligence, prying the blade free of its slotted handle, trusting that its edge—while not stropped recently—should still be sharp enough to cut through rawhide. Slippage in his sweaty grasp would be a danger, working in proximity to arteries and veins, tendons and nerves, beneath the thin skin of his wrists. An accidental gash would not be fatal under normal circumstances, but Zarita could not call for help if that happened to him. Whoever might respond would immediately see his weapon, work out what he had in mind, and likely finish him instead of bandaging his wound.
“Fácil lo hace,” Jesús muttered.
Easy does it.
The first stroke was awkward, working blind and backward, with his manual mobility reduced to nearly zero. Numbness from his hands had spread into his forearms, but within a few more seconds he could feel the razor’s edge rasping on dried leather, its concave sides sliding across the balls of flesh between his thumbs and pinioned wrists. It did not break the skin, however, and Zarita used more force, trying to moderate the rocking of his body underneath the saddle blanket before someone noticed him.
Too late!
A crunch of footsteps treading sand and gravel warned Jesús of someone closing on him from behind. He left off sawing at the rawhide thongs, lay still, and closed his eyes as if he were asleep. With any luck the passing enemy would move on by and he could—
Even as the thought took form, a hand closed on the brim of his sombrero, tugged it from his head, and tossed it to one side. Before Zarita could react, the same hand closed upon his rumpled blanket, whipped it free, and let it drop onto the ground beside his boots. His adversary saw the razor, snarled, and barked something to others in the group.
Not Spanish. Not English.
One of the cursed Mescaleros, then.
Zarita looked up at him, cringing, recognized one of the red men who had guarded him throughout the long ride from Ascensión to the arroyo where his life was now about to end.
Jesús opened his mouth to plead for mercy, but the tomahawk was already descending toward his face.
* * *
* * *
Clint Parnell stood over the dead villista, focused not upon the ruin of Jesús Zarita’s skull but on the razor that Kuruk had lifted from their captive’s lifeless hand.
Chalk up another body to their tally in Chihuahua, and their night was barely getting underway.
The twin Aguirre sisters suddenly arrived on either side of him, Dolores wincing at the sight before her, asking Clint, “What happened?”
Clint showed her the razor. Said, “Whoever searched him after he surrendered missed this. Kuruk found him trying to escape.”
“And had to kill him?” Sonya asked, not quite a challenge.
“He was warned,” Clint said. “If he had gotten loose, he would have tried to grab a horse and maybe hurt or killed some of our people in the process.”
“I understand, but—”
“We’re down three men as it stands,” said Clint. “And if he got away, there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d ride straight back to Villa, squeal on us, and get us all killed.”
“Can we bury him at least?” Sonya inquired.
“No time,” Clint answered her. “The night shift covering your father’s herd should be on duty by this time. We need to get a move on.”
Parnell gave the razor back to Kuruk, thanked him for stopping Zarita’s getaway, and moved off toward his waiting dapple gray. The sisters trailed him by a few yards, neither speaking, and he hardly dared to face Sonya after their brief conversation earlier, afraid of what he might see in her eyes.
Well, if he came off seeming cold and hard to her, so be it. There was bloody work remaining to be done this night, a confrontation they might not survive, and it would all have been for nothing if they failed to transport Alejandro’s herd back home.
One problem at a time, Clint thought. Worry about the rest if we’re alive to see the sunrise.
Their guide, Itza-chu, was already mounted on his skewbald pony, seeming eager to
be off. From what Clint saw, the prospect of more bloodshed worried Great Hawk not at all. The Mescaleros did not laugh at death, exactly, but they did not seem to fear it either, being certain of ascension to an afterlife if they were brave and did their duty in this one.
Parnell envied the stoicism of Apaches, keeping how they really felt about daily calamities hidden from eyes outside their tribe, presenting stony faces to the world at large. It was a quality ingrained over their years of sacrifice, resistance to the seizure of their homeland by invaders, that kept the braves from showing any sign of weakness, even to their families and friends at home.
Not the best way to live, Clint thought, but on the other hand, the Mescaleros did not wear emotion on their sleeves like the majority of white folks he had known, their moods as plain to read as any newspaper. Apaches saved displays of tenderness—or weakness, as it seemed to them—for people whom they loved.
Clint wondered now whether Sonya might fill that role in his own life, but he did not dare to think about that any further yet. If they survived the night, retrieved her father’s herd, and ultimately got it home to Alejandro’s rancho, there would be more time to think about what might be, once the memories of mayhem faded and life settled back to some approximation of the norm.
Their line of march formed up as Parnell’s hunting party took their leave of the arroyo. Kuruk and Nantan Lupan rode point with Itza-chu. Clint followed them, flanked by the two Aguirre sisters, while Ignacio Fuentes and Arturo Lagüera trailed along behind, Fuentes leading their packhorse and Jesús Zarita’s horse, its saddle still in place. If that one missed its former rider, it gave no sign of distress that he was gone.
Great Hawk had told them it would take another hour, more or less, to reach the canyon where Aguirre’s herd was penned up under guard. What happened once they got there, once the battle had been joined, was anybody’s guess.
And if they never saw another day, Clint realized no one in Mexico would care, much less report the news to Alejandro as he waited for them to return.
Clint put that out of mind, remembering something his mother used to read aloud on Sundays, quoting from the Sermon on the Mount, allegedly transcribed two thousand years ago.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
And this day still had hours left to run.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The unofficial posse took its time crossing the desert between their arroyo hideout and the box canyon where Villa had concealed Don Alejandro’s stolen herd.
Although Clint Parnell felt a sense of urgency, he also understood the risks involved with galloping a stretch of unfamiliar ground at night. Horses could break their legs stepping in burrows where small mammals made their homes, or tread upon one of the many rattlesnakes that came out after dark to hunt the burrowers. They might even mistake a gully for a shadow cast by moonlight, plummeting headfirst to crippling injury or snap a rider’s neck.
There was no burning rush now if the guards had changed on time. The next replacements would not reach the canyon until dawn or sometime after, by which point—with any luck—Clint’s people would have made their getaway.
And if they had not . . . well, that meant they’d never leave Old Mexico at all.
Itza-chu, on returning to their camp, had drawn a map in sand, using his hunting knife to sketch the trail. No road was visible to human eyes, but he approximated it, and Clint could only trust his scout. The canyon was portrayed as wedge-shaped. Wavy lines depicted rising hills between the gully where they’d lingered and their final destination, ragged slashes indicating trees along the rising ground’s southeastern slope.
They were already climbing, which Parnell took for a sign that they were on the right track. Up ahead, the Mescaleros did not waver from their course, proceeding without pause toward the location Great Hawk had described. All three had their rifles in hand and ready if they met with opposition on the way, but none seemed tense or agitated from what Clint could see of them by moonlight, from behind.
He wondered what was going through their minds just then, two of the warriors they had started out with dead and buried now, nothing but small mementos from their bodies waiting for delivery to relatives in Doña Ana County. Were Kuruk and his friends oppressed by pondering the prospect of their own deaths far from home? If so, he’d glimpsed no sign of it behind their staid façades.
As for the twins and three hands from the hacienda, Clint surmised their feelings must be much the same as his: considerable tension, tempered by determination to succeed against what felt like overwhelming odds. If they retrieved the stolen herd and managed to escape from Villa’s guards, they still had to negotiate one hundred fifty miles of hostile desert crawling with bandidos, federales, and informers who would happily betray them for a few pesos.
And if, despite all that, they made it home at last, the U.S. Army and the State Department might have punishment in mind for flouting orders sent from Washington.
Well, Uncle Sam would have to get in line. He was the least of Parnell’s problems until Clint was back across the Rio Grande.
Ahead of their procession, dark hills rose across the path now, slopes furred with creosote bushes and viscid acacias, merging with fire-barrel cactus and yuccas, ceding ground to silver maples, scattered Arizona cypress, and scrub oak as they climbed farther. Ten minutes into their ascent, Kuruk signaled a halt, then waved the others forward to confer with them.
They huddled, spoke in whispers, starting with Itza-chu, who had been over this ground before. He told them that the canyon’s entrance lay about two hundred yards ahead, invisible from where they sat astride their mounts. A lip of granite overhung it, where a rifleman was stationed during daylight, possibly with others after nightfall. Anyone approaching it on horseback made an easy target, but afoot, employing stealth, they should be able to outflank the guards and bring them under fire from higher slopes. Some climbing was required, but once they gained the high ground, there should be no problem taking out the guards.
Unless one of us trips and falls while climbing, Parnell thought, or squeezes off an accidental shot.
It could depend, as well, on how many defenders Pancho Villa had in place following sunset. Their late captive had surmised there could be four to six, but if a livestock sale was pending, Villa might have hiked that number up as a precautionary measure.
The bottom line: they would not know what they were up against until they made the climb and counted hostile heads.
One other thing occurred to Clint as well. They needed someone covering their horses, keeping them at ease and quiet while the others made their stealthy climb to launch the raid. Clint chose Joaquín Cantú to stay behind, although his wound was healing well enough so far, and Joaquín swore it would not slow him down. He clearly meant well, but Parnell could not afford to take the risk that he might fall, exacerbate his injury, or altogether ruin their surprise.
With that settled, over Cantú’s protest, the others checked their weapons one last time, confirmed that all were fully loaded, and secured their holsters if they wore any, to stop leather from slapping at their trousers as they scaled the hillside. Mescaleros leading in their silent buckskin moccasins, the posse started moving gingerly uphill through slanting shadows toward their next appointed killing ground.
* * *
* * *
Dolores wore a pair of denim blue jeans over sturdy riding boots. She had removed her warm serape, draping it across her saddle, and was climbing unimpeded now, with both hands free. Across her back, a makeshift sling of rope secured her Winchester. A holster on her right hip held the Colt .38-caliber revolver, while a twelve-inch bowie knife rode on a scabbard to her left. A bandolier of .30-06 ammunition for the rifle looped from her right shoulder down to her left hip, its weight pressing between her breasts.
Whatever lay ahead of her, Dolores reckoned that she was prepared.
She did n
ot glance back at her sister, sixth in line to scale the slope, but she heard Sonya breathing as her fingers clutched at stones and bushes, helping her ascend. Dolores thought about Joaquín Cantú, left with the horses down below, imagining how he must feel at being left out of the fight.
He might be fortunate at that. If anything went wrong, at least he had the option of escape, returning to her father’s hacienda as the bearer of bad news. Or would machismo force his hand if things went badly, forcing him to join the fight and die among his friends?
At that point, she considered, who would even care?
Her father, certainly, but if villistas wiped them out entirely, it might take him months to learn their fate, assuming that he ever did. And in the meantime, he could only watch his hacienda fail, the hard work of a lifetime gone for naught.
Distracted by her private thoughts, Dolores almost missed it when the Mescaleros ceased climbing and waved Clint forward. Following him cautiously, Dolores heard her sister coming after them, glanced back and saw their two vaqueros waiting for someone to signal their approach.
Once they were all together on the upper slope, above the overhanging granite ledge Great Hawk had sketched for them in camp, they fanned out, lying prone, surveying where their enemies were ranged below.
Lying beside Clint on his left, Dolores counted two villistas seated on the stony ledge, accessed by crude steps cut into the canyon wall. Four more were hunched around a small campfire a few yards from the canyon’s narrow entrance, while the bulk of it was filled with horses stolen from her father’s hacienda previously.
Whispering, Clint said, “We need to take them by surprise and drop as many as we can before they start returning fire. I know it sounds cold-blooded, but we’ve got no choice. The longer they fight back and drag it out, the greater chance we stand of being cut off by the rest of Villa’s gang before we get the herd cleared out. Questions?”