by Lyle Brandt
None were forthcoming, so he issued their assignments. They had eight long guns and six live targets. If they nailed all six with their initial fusillade, killing or seriously wounding them, only a single clap of gunfire should result. Whether it carried back to Pancho Villa’s base camp would depend in large part on the desert breeze and the direction it was blowing when they fired. Assuming that it was heard, then their team would have to race against the clock.
They had not glimpsed the base camp riding in. Itza-chu’s briefing had described it as three quarters of a mile due east from the box canyon, tents standing along the west rim of a gully where villista cook fires would be hidden from a rider passing on the open desert flats. There had been no chance for a head count of the men billeted there, which left them with an estimate from their late prisoner of thirty-five to forty men in all.
Dolores worked on the arithmetic in silence. Six from thirty-five left twenty-nine men still encamped with Villa, with perhaps another half a dozen if Jesús Zarita had been wrong. Assuming three or four of those were mounted, keeping watch over the camp by night in shifts, the rest would wait for Villa’s orders when they heard gunfire and then would have to saddle up their horses in a fumbling rush. Once they were organized and riding at a hard gallop, their point men ought to reach the canyon and the stolen herd inside of thirty minutes, more or less.
That gave Clint’s team a half hour to rout her father’s herd from the box canyon—fourteen hundred eighty-seven head in all, if none were lost along the way between their rancho and Chihuahua—and escape before villista reinforcements reached the site. Her spirits fell, Dolores realizing that their task would likely prove impossible.
Instead of brooding over that, she pushed it out of mind and concentrated on the task at hand. They had six men to silence first, no chance to get in close and use their knives. Dolores sighted down the barrel of her Winchester, pinning one of the four bandidos seated near the campfire down below, and slipped her index finger through the rifle’s trigger guard.
* * *
* * *
I tell you, ese,” Saturnino Kahlo said, grinning, “this chica mala was no more than fourteen, maybe fifteen, but the body on her, no lo creerías.”
Facing Kahlo from across the campfire, Rufino Azuela snorted laughter and a spray of coffee. “You are right for once,” he said. “I don’t believe you.”
That brought snickers from their two companions, Geraldo Izquierdo and Miguel Siqueiros, seated one on either side of Kahlo. “What I don’t believe,” Siqueiros said, “is that this woman-child would give a second look to Saturnino.”
“Not for love or money,” Izquierdo added.
“Ah, you’re fools, the lot of you,” Kahlo replied. “If you could just have seen her . . .”
“Then we’d all be in a lunatic asylum,” said Miguel, evoking yet another bray of laughter.
Scowling, Kahlo said, “I need tequila.”
“Bring us each a bottle, eh?” Azuela goaded him. “Then we can all see this delicious beauty you’ve imagined.”
“¡Idiotas!” Saturnino answered, rising on stiff legs from his place beside the fire. “You doubt my word? Next time that we are in Durango, I will show her to you in the flesh.”
Geraldo Izquierdo doubled over laughing at his friend now. Said, “Three hundred pounds of flesh, I’ll wager.”
Muttering a string of curses, Kahlo turned away and started moving slowly toward the spot where they had left their horses hobbled, near a trickling stream with grassy banks. He had proceeded only three steps when a lightning bolt struck him below the brim of his sombrero, shattering his face and pitching Saturnino over backward. Falling, he tripped over one of Miguel’s boots and sprawled across the campfire, stone-cold dead before the flames bit into him.
The other three villistas scrambled to their feet, gaping at Kahlo as his hat and clothes caught fire. He did not scream, and all of them could readily see why. Before the sharp crack of a rifle reached their ears, they recognized the crushing damage of a bullet that had caved in Saturnino’s face, spilling his blood to sizzle on the campfire’s coals.
“¿Quién disparó?” Rufino Azuela blurted out, but none of his companions had a clue who’d fired the fatal shot. Their first impulse turned anxious glances toward the granite ledge over the canyon’s entrance, where Ricardo López and Emilio Vicario presently were stationed. While it seemed impossible, there was an outside chance that one of them had triggered off a gunshot accidentally and slain Kahlo, but when three pairs of frightened eyes picked out their comrades on the high ground, both were turned away and staring farther up the canyon’s wall.
Then who . . .
The second shot plucked López from his perch and hurled him, screaming, to the ground some sixty feet below. The canyon’s mass of horses had begun to seethe as the villistas grouped around the campfire saw a muzzle flash high up, immediately followed by three more in unison.
Miguel Siqueiros had his mouth open to shout a warning when a bullet struck him in the chest and dropped him on his backside, bootheels drumming on the ground in his death throes. Rufino Azuela managed to draw his Colt and fire a shot up range before the wet slap of a rifle slug drilling his abdomen produced a gargling scream and he in turn went down. He was not dead yet, but Geraldo Izquierdo knew he could not help his wounded friend. A bullet through the guts meant slow and agonizing death unless a hemorrhage sped up the process and relieved the victim of his pain.
Geraldo panicked, leapt across the fire, and sprinted toward the hobbled horses. He could free his own, mount up, and ride as if the devil were pursuing him—which, he now imagined, just might be the case. Who else but Satan in the flesh would dare to pick a fight with Pancho Villa’s men this night, at their secluded lair?
Perhaps the federales, he decided, but they were as bad as demons in their own right, and he did not plan to wait around, facing them on his own.
As if to make his nightmare worse, Geraldo heard another rifle shot, immediately followed by a scream, and saw Emilo Vicario diving headfirst into the canyon from his outpost on the granite ledge above. The body landed like a sack of laundry toppled from an upstairs window, pancaked on the stony ground, and settled into dusty death.
Geraldo Izquierdo reached his horse and ripped its hobbles free, swung up into the saddle, snatching at the reins. His spurs were poised to gouge the creature’s ribs, propel it to a headlong gallop, when a hammer stroke from heaven slammed into the right side of his neck and nearly tore his numb skull from his shoulders.
Dead before he hit the ground, Geraldo had no chance to ask Jesucristo for absolution from his countless sins. A black pit seemed to open up below him and he knew no more.
* * *
* * *
Sonya Aguirre had her target lined up near the campfire when Kuruk picked off one of the two villistas stationed on the ledge above the canyon’s mouth. Her mark was rising, turning from his fellows down below and moving toward their horses when she fired.
In darkness, with the firelight at his back, she could not see her bullet strike its target, and the crack of her Winchester covered any sound that might have reached her ears on impact. Nonetheless, the net result was obvious. Her man lurched backward, nearly airborne from the aught-six bullet’s force on entry, landing in the midst of the campfire. His fallen body scattered red-hot embers toward his three companions, all in motion at the ghastly sight before them, even if they did not understand its import.
Any doubt was soon eliminated as the rest of Parnell’s snipers blazed away. Sonya was busy tracking toward another target, but she missed her chance as seven weapons thundered from the wooded slope. The echo of their unified barrage reverberated through the canyon, riling Papa Alejandro’s horses, but the herd had been confined too long to risk a mad rush toward the fire still blazing at the valley’s entrance, corpses scattered all around and nothing but the desert night beyond.
Parnell was on his feet by then, telling the rest of them, “Come on. Quick as you can but watch your footing on the way down. We don’t need a broken leg now.” Leading by example, he called back over his shoulder while descending, “Fuentes, make sure Joaquín is bringing up the horses, ¿comprendes?”
“Sí, señor,” Ignacio replied.
Dolores knew his job should be an easy one. Cantú was under orders to advance, leading their mounts as soon as he heard gunfire from the canyon. If he found the camp’s defenders still alive and in control, he was supposed to cut and run, return to Papa Alejandro’s hacienda any way he could carry word that they had failed.
Hearing Clint issue those instructions to Joaquín, Dolores had been pleased that if their fallback plan came into play she would no longer be alive to see her father’s heart break one more time.
Reaching the mouth of the box canyon, Sonya at her side, Dolores heard Cantú before she saw him, galloping to join them on his brindle gelding, leading the remainder of their animals behind him on a tether line. Clint barely waited until Joaquín had reined in, mounting his dapple gray, telling the rest of them, “We’ve got no time to waste now. Round the others up and start them moving. Once we clear the canyon, turn the herd northwest toward home.”
If we can find it, thought Dolores, but she kept the grim thought to herself.
They all knew where her father’s rancho lay, of course, but it was still one hundred fifty miles away, across the Rio Grande, and for the next few hours they would have to ride through darkness, nine vaqueros herding close to fifteen hundred horses through the desert waste by moonlight, hoping that they would not lose their way or meet a troop of federales on the prowl.
Their greatest danger, though, was that the echoes of their gunfire would be heard in Pancho Villa’s base camp, drawing him and his bandidos to the scene before Clint’s group could bring the herd under control.
Dolores did not want to think about what would befall them if they wound up trapped inside the canyon with her father’s stolen herd. Badly outnumbered and outgunned, without stockpiles of ammunition for protracted battle, they would likely be annihilated. Villa would retain the horses, sell them for a profit at his soonest opportunity, and Papa Alejandro would be left to brood over their unknown fate.
Despite his pain and grief, Dolores guessed—or hoped, at least—that he would not pursue the matter any further, wasting more lives in pursuit of justice that could never be attained. Childless, his fortune dwindling daily as he tried to build another herd and renegotiate his contract with the U.S. Army, he would be a broken man, no future worth imagining.
As for Dolores and her twin, she had already made her mind up that they would not fall alive into the hands of Villa’s men. Dolores knew what would become of them in that case, had discussed it in advance with Sonya, and they’d both agreed. Before they let themselves be captured and abused, they would choose death over dishonor, even if the Holy Mother Church declared that was a mortal sin.
Before taking that last, irrevocable step, though, they would do their best to carry out their promise to Don Alejandro. And if foiled at bringing home the herd, then they would fight, taking as many of their adversaries with them as they could, each twin reserving one shot for herself.
The situation was not hopeless yet, but if compelled to wager on its outcome, she would not have bet five pesos on herself.
* * *
* * *
Pancho Villa’s Base Camp
Villa was snoring, caught up in a dream of two mujeres muy hermosas tending to his every need, one feeding him strawberries from her luscious lips while her companion sat astride his loins, riding him like a Thoroughbred, urging Villa across the finish line.
Before he reached it, someone gripped his shoulder, shook him roughly, calling to him, “¡Despierta, jefe!”
“I’m awake!” snarled Villa, tacking on a curse for emphasis. “Who is that?”
By the time he asked the question, though, Villa already knew the answer. Bending over him, Javier Jurado wore a stark expression of alarm verging on fear.
Before his teniente had a chance to speak, Villa demanded of him, “What is wrong?”
“Gunshots, jefe.”
“In camp?” Now Villa was confused. Even the sweetest dream would have been shattered by gunfire.
“No, jefe,” Javier responded. “From the canyon where—”
“The horses are!” Villa finished the sentence for his aide, threw back his blanket, lunging for his gun belt hanging from a chair beside his cot. Cursing a blue streak as he rose, he pinned Alfonso with a glare. “How many?” he demanded. “When?”
“Just now, jefe. Not many, but to count them, with the echoes . . .”
“Never mind that,” Villa snapped. “Rally the men. Prepare to ride at once.”
“They’re getting ready now, jefe,” Jurado said.
“Make them move faster!” Striding from his small adobe hut, Villa asked Soberon, “This shooting, did it sound like fighting?”
“It’s impossible to say, Pancho. Perhaps, or . . .”
“If I find out they’ve taken liquor with them, getting drunk and raising hell,” Villa declared, “I’ll flay all six of them alive!”
“I doubt that they would be so foolish, jefe.”
“All the same.”
But even as he threatened, Villa knew the situation might be even worse. If someone had discovered where the herd was hidden, if they’d come by night to rob him, Pancho Villa, of the animals he’d stolen fair and square . . .
“My horse!” he bellowed to the night and no one in particular. “Fetch me my horse!”
“It’s being saddled now, jefe,” Jurado promised him.
Jogging toward his black stallion, Villa turned his thoughts toward who might dare try robbing him. At once, his mind offered Zapata as a prime suspect. Suppose the rider he had sent to Villa’s camp, to cancel their arrangement, was a decoy to distract Villa while sly Emiliano made his way around to steal the horses for himself and save the price of sale they had agreed upon?
How would Zapata know where Villa had the herd concealed? Perhaps a traitor in Villa’s own ranks had betrayed the location for money—his own Judas Iscariot, and not the first by any means. If that turned out to be the case, and Villa could identify the wretch, his punishment would be severe, prolonged, and ultimately terminal.
But solving that riddle could wait.
First, Villa must discover if his stolen herd was being threatened and prevent whoever was engaged in robbing him from doing so. He saw no irony in that, believed in fact that once he laid his hands on anything, that thing rightfully belonged to him, because he had the strength and nerve to take it from a prior owner who could not defend himself. If there was any honor among thieves—a proposition Villa personally doubted—it should certainly extend to professional courtesy among bandits.
But, then again, they would not be bandidos if they could be trusted.
“¡Basta!” he muttered to himself as he mounted his stallion. Enough! He was a man of action, and while known for cunning strategy at times, it also pained his head when Villa thought too much.
Most of his men were mounted now, with guns in hand or ready in their saddle scabbards. Villa shouted at the stragglers, “¡Dense prisa, muchachos! Hurry, boys! We have no time to waste!”
Before the last of them had clambered into saddles, Villa wheeled his mount and spurred it, racing out of camp and off to the northwest. Even at top speed, he knew that it would take the better part of half an hour to reach their destination, and a mad rush through the desert night could easily leave men and horses injured, maybe even dead.
No matter.
Villa paid his men to follow where he led and to obey his orders without question. All of them were seasoned thieves, most of them killers, who would ride into the mouth of hell itse
lf at his command.
Tonight they would be tested to the limit, and if Villa learned that it was all a false alarm caused by his lookouts on the night shift swilling down tequila at their posts, he would have thirty volunteers to form a firing squad.
The herd was all that mattered to him now, and anyone who threatened Villa’s profit from it should prepare to drown in blood.
* * *
* * *
Now that Kuruk saw Aguirre’s stolen herd for the first time, he wondered whether it was possible to drive them from the canyon, much less guide them on a three- or four-day journey back across the Rio Grande into New Mexico. With only seven men and two women on hand to even try it, he began to think their task might be a fool’s errand.
Not that he doubted Clint Parnell’s commitment to the scheme, or his vaqueros’ skill at wrangling horses. Even the Aguirre sisters, young as they might be, had proven themselves fighters who, if born as Mescaleros, would have made their parents proud. Bear simply questioned whether any nine individuals could manage to succeed under the given circumstances, much less when pursued across one hundred fifty miles by bloodthirsty villistas and amoral federales.
Even if they had the dozen riders they had originally started with from Aguirre’s hacienda, it would be a challenge, guaranteeing sleepless nights along the trail for all concerned and caballeros who arrived at last—should they arrive at all—close to the point of falling from their horses in exhaustion.
Still, despite those thoughts, he urged Nantan Lupan and Itza-Chu to hurry at their task of moving in among the stolen animals, calming them down as much as possible, working in concert with their gringo leader and his mexicanos to begin shifting the herd out of its hiding place and onto open ground. Once that was done, and if they were not interrupted, waning moonlight ought to guide them on the first leg of their long trek northward.
If they were not interrupted.