by Lyle Brandt
Kuruk personally did not like their chances of succeeding even with that first stage of their task.
He reckoned that their gunfire, taking out six lazy, inattentive guards, must have been audible across the desert flats at Pancho Villa’s base camp. True, most of the outlaw’s men had likely been asleep or busy swilling down liquor, both circumstances that would slow reaction time, but there were bound to be a few guards on alert to rouse the others and their leaders in a sudden panic.
That would help Parnell’s team, inasmuch as drowsy, startled men were clumsy and disorganized. Saddling horses would take fractionally longer than in daylight, when the villistas had been awake for hours. On the other hand, if Pancho Villa was the strategist of local legend, he would have rehearsed his men in preparation for emergencies.
At best, Kuruk supposed that getting thirty-odd bandidos saddled up and mounted might consume ten minutes, possibly fifteen. Hard riding toward the canyon where their nighttime guards lay dead would take another thirty minutes more or less, and Bear hoped Villa might lose horsemen on the way, to accidents.
In any case, Bear reckoned that they had less than an hour to evacuate a herd of mustangs from the box canyon where they were presently confined and turn them back toward home.
Unlikely, Kuruk thought. Maybe impossible. But he kept that opinion to himself.
Their journey had begun as an adventure that would benefit Bear’s village—and himself if he should manage to survive. He’d undertaken it as any young brave might, to test himself and out of honor for his chieftain, Nantan. If he’d thought about his chances for survival at the outset, Kuruk would have called it even money in the white world’s terms.
But now, with Bimisi and Gothalay both slain, Kuruk himself recovering from a flesh wound, those odds had been reduced. That thought did not intimidate him, as it doubtless would have done to most white men, but neither was Kuruk immune to doubt.
Not in his own abilities per se, but in full knowledge that he was not superhuman and the spirits of his ancestors could not protect him on the earthly plane. Whatever lay in store for him was destiny. Kuruk could not avoid it by sheer force of his determination or by trickery.
Come what may, Kuruk would fight on to the end without pleading for mercy from his enemies. The people of his village would expect no less from him, and if his ancestors could see him now, they would congratulate him on an ending that exemplified personal honor and commitment to his tribe.
He joined Itza-chu and Nantan Lupan in urging Don Alejandro’s horses from the canyon, starting at the rear end of the herd, clucking at the animals without alarming them unduly, using his blood bay to nudge them in the general direction that he wished for them to follow, toward the dying campfire at the canyon’s mouth.
If trouble met them there, or found them later on the northbound trail, Bear had his rifle loaded, knew his hunting knife and tomahawk were sharp enough for battling at close quarters.
Only death could stop him now, and if that happened, should the afterlife turn out to be an empty myth, Kuruk would melt into oblivion without another thought.
And anything was better, he believed, than letting the villistas capture him alive.
* * *
* * *
Dolores stayed as near to Clint Parnell as she deemed feasible, at the same time keeping an eye upon her twin. Calming her father’s herd after their ordeal was no easy task, but they were making headway, urging skittish horses into serried ranks as space allowed, heading them all in one direction with a minimum of jostling.
How much time had passed so far?
Dolores did not wear a pocket watch and thought it inadvisable to pester Clint with questions when he obviously had his hands full, giving orders to the other caballeros while he joined in channeling the horses toward their prison’s only exit. Clint had sheathed his Browning Auto-5, kept both hands on his gelding’s reins, using a boot from time to time when nervous mustangs crowded in upon him from one or the other side.
Guessing, Dolores speculated that they had used up approximately half the time allotted for hostile villistas to arrive and head them off, assuming that their gunfire had been heard at Villa’s base camp. There was still an outside chance the shots had failed to register three quarters of a mile across the desert flats—a trick of wind, perhaps, or if most of the rustlers were asleep, even intoxicated—but Dolores knew they could not count on luck alone to let them clear the scene and ride off unmolested.
More likely was the prospect that Villa’s bandidos would arrive before they managed to depart. And for Dolores, the worst-case scenario involved a violent interruption of their efforts when only a portion of her father’s herd had cleared the canyon. In that case, she had no doubt the horses that had managed to escape would scatter far and wide, beyond recall, while the remainder and her party would be trapped inside, cut off and under fire.
There was no need to check her Winchester, which she’d reloaded after joining in the massacre of Pancho Villa’s guards. She had not used her Colt so far tonight, so it had six rounds nestled in its cylinder, prepared to fire as quickly as Dolores could discharge them using double-action fire. Eleven rounds in all before she had to stop, reloading either gun.
And if she made each bullet count, Dolores realized, her party still would be outnumbered.
Never mind, she thought. Beyond the best that she could do lay only speculation and surmise. Dolores would not let herself succumb to pessimism, which to her mind was another label for defeat.
A snorting mare brushed close against her snowflake Appaloosa, and Dolores used a hand to fend it off. She felt herself about to topple from her seat and barely caught herself in time, grabbing the saddle horn with her free hand. A curse rose to her lips, but she swallowed it back, afraid to blaspheme in what might turn out to be the final moments of her life.
Ahead of her, Clint was nearing the box canyon’s exit, trying to lead the mustangs now rather then goading them forward. The animals seemed nervous, passing by the burned-out campfire and the corpses sprawled around it, but they forged along with heads down, scenting freedom on the outside of their rocky holding pen.
The trick, Dolores knew, would be to stop them from stampeding once the leaders of the herd discovered they were free and clear. That impulse would be well-nigh irresistible, and once the leaders started running, it would be nearly impossible to stop them in their flight.
“Un problema a la vez,” Dolores muttered to herself.
One problem at a time.
Before they made it back to Papa Alejandro’s hacienda—if they made it back at all—there would be ample difficulties to preoccupy them over every mile.
As if in answer to her thoughts, Dolores heard a crack of gunfire from somewhere beyond the canyon’s mouth, echoing through the darkness. Trying to decide how far away the gunman must have been, she guessed a mile or more across the desert flats. It could be anyone, of course, firing for any one of countless reasons, but she saw Clint rein up short ahead of her, the other riders doing likewise.
Turning toward her twin, Dolores found Sonya was watching her, a grim frown on her face, already reaching for the Springfield Model 1903 rifle in her saddle boot. She did not draw it yet but kept her right hand resting on its stock, prepared to snatch it from the leather sheath and at need.
Within three seconds, maybe less, a second shot rang out from somewhere to the canyon’s east. No other gunfire followed, but Dolores calculated that two blasts ruled out an accident and probably a solitary rider firing to defend himself against some desert predator. She saw her sister’s lips move silently and caught the warning in her eyes.
A signal.
Which could only mean villistas on their way and likely riding hard.
* * *
* * *
The pistol shot behind him, somewhere in the midst of his advancing riders, startled Pancho Villa. He immediately reined his
jet-black stallion to a halt and wheeled around to face the caballeros trailing him.
“¿Quién disparó?” he demanded, eyes scanning their ranks. When no one answered instantly, he cursed them all as one, repeating it. “Who fired?”
At last, reluctantly, a young man raised his hand, fingers still wrapped around the handle of his smoking Colt. Villa knew him as César Armendáriz, though it might have been an alias. False names were common among bandoleros, and Villa was not concerned with what a man had done before he joined the gang, as long as he was loyal, brought no trouble with him to their family, and followed Villa’s orders to the letter.
César Armendáriz, or whatever his name was, had failed the final test.
Advancing on the young man, heedless of the pistol in his hand, Villa demanded, “What were you thinking? Do you think at all?”
“¡Perdóname, jefe! In the excitement—”
Villa did not wait to hear the rest of the young fool’s halting apology. Instead, he drew his sidearm, aimed and fired it in one fluid motion, saw the bullet punch through César’s forehead. Masked in spurting blood, his straw sombrero airborne, Armendáriz toppled from his mount and landed facedown in the desert sand.
Villa surveyed his other troops, all watching him, waiting to see what happened next. A moment later, he demanded of them all, “Is anybody else excited? Who else wants to warn our enemies that we are coming?”
The illogic of his own statement did not faze Villa. When none of his other riders raised a hand, he picked one nearest to the horse without a rider, barking out, “Jiménez! Bring that idiota’s animal. We ride, and quietly!”
Javier Jurado fell in place beside Villa, keeping his voice pitched low as he advised, “You should have cut his throat, jefe.”
“I know that now,” Villa replied, grinning by moonlight. “But I got excited!”
And in doing so, he realized, had replicated César’s critical mistake. Villa was not blind to the flaws in his own character, but sometimes they still got the better of him. Sudden anger was a case in point, provoking him to sudden violence when he should take a moment to reflect and weigh his options, maybe choose a better course of action.
Oh, well. It was too late now. The best that he could manage was to reach the canyon where his six watchmen should have the horses from New Mexico well guarded and secure. But if those men were dead, as Villa now suspected, there was no course open to him but avenging them—and, more importantly, securing the herd that meant a fortune in his pocket and the pockets of his men.
Whoever had the gall to steal from Pancho Villa, whether that was his false friend Zapata or some other brigand he had never met, that person had a painful lesson coming to him. Although raised Catholic, like virtually everyone in Mexico, Villa had never grasped the concept of forgiveness, in this world or in the next, whatever that might be. Men earned their punishment by word or deed and there was no escaping it.
Some punishment was trivial—a slap across the face for kissing a mujer who was not in the mood, for instance—but in Villa’s world, most penalties were more severe. A prison sentence, possibly the gallows or a military firing squad. Caught in an act of banditry, death was the probable outcome, whether it claimed the thief or one who tried arresting him.
And if Zapata, the alleged “reformer,” tried to steal from Villa after lying to him, his reward for treachery would be apocalyptic.
In another moment, Pancho Villa saw the dark hills rise in front of him and marked a dark notch that must be the tight box canyon’s entryway. If he was wrong about his watchmen being murdered, one of them should soon call out a warning to the body of advancing horsemen. And if they did not . . .
Forgetting caution, Villa half turned in his saddle, shouting to his men, “¡Estén listos, muchachos! Boys, be ready! Spare the horses but kill anyone you do not recognize!”
He was excited now, and no mistake. The lifelong thrill of mortal combat gripped him, urged him on to greater speed, his stallion feeling it and racing forward without any goad from Villa’s silver spurs.
The next few minutes could decide the course of Pancho Villa’s life or end it suddenly, in blinding pain and blood. Whatever happened, he could not turn back, dared not allow his men to see him run away.
And as always in the heat of battle, Villa scarcely cared what happened, either to himself or any of his followers. They had been challenged, and no real man ever scuttled from a fight.
Not if he cared to live another day with anything resembling self-respect.
“¡Adelante!” Villa bellowed as he closed the final hundred yards. “Forward!”
The answer came from rifles, more than half a dozen of them, muzzle flashes winking at him in the night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fall back!” Clint Parnell ordered as the swarm of horsemen closed in on his people in the small box canyon. “Get the horses under cover if you can, and someone take the high ground. Fuentes and Lagüera, how about you two?”
An answer came back from Arturo, “Sí, jefe,” as he started climbing toward the granite lookout post over the canyon’s mouth, Ignacio close on his heels.
That left Parnell and the Aguirre sisters with three Mescaleros to defend the herd at ground level from Villa’s raiders. They had to be villistas, Clint reasoned, since no one else was likely to be prowling near the scene in force, coincidentally responding to the shots that had eliminated Villa’s guards.
There was no time for counting heads among his enemies, and a final tally made no difference in any case. All of the new arrivals carried guns and were presumably proficient in their use. Whether Villa himself was leading them or even present for the confrontation never crossed Clint’s mind. The photos he had seen of Villa, printed next to newspaper accounts of his exploits below the border, had been out of date and blurry. Killing the mounted mob’s leader might prompt some members to retreat, but they were not members of Native tribes that feared to fight past sundown and who quailed if bullets found their war chief on the battlefield.
Eliminating Pancho Villa with a lucky shot—assuming he was even on the scene—might just as easily inspire his men to greater violence, make this a replay of the Alamo minus a crumbling mission and a troop of federales to complete the massacre.
When their enemies had closed the gap to fifty yards, Clint called out to his team, “Conserve your ammunition if you can. Make every bullet count.”
In his case, that meant deer slugs loaded in the Browning Auto-5, with buckshot in reserve for close-in fighting. Once he burned through that stockpile, Clint had his Colt Peacemaker and a hunting knife suspended from his pistol belt in case the showdown wound up hand to hand.
He glanced at the Aguirre twins, crouched side by side with rifles shouldered, aiming toward the first rank of their adversaries, wishing they were anywhere on earth away from what promised to be a slaughter. That hardly mattered now, since their father had reluctantly permitted them to come along, and if he couldn’t keep the girls at home, Clint knew it was beyond his power to restrain them.
Still, the moment that Sonya met his gaze, then turned back to her rifle’s sights, a stab of guilt pierced Parnell’s chest. In other circumstances, minus all the hectic bloodletting, life could have been so sweet.
Now, all he saw on the horizon was a chance to finish it in smoke and fire.
At forty yards Clint chose his target, sighting down the shotgun’s twenty-eight-inch barrel, braced himself, and stroked the Browning’s trigger without jerking it. The twelve gauge bucked against his shoulder, and he saw the man he’d chosen vault backward, thrown from his saddle as if he had ridden underneath a taut clothesline that snagged him underneath his chin and let his mount race on without him. By the time Clint’s human target hit the ground, the pistolero’s animal had hesitated, wheeling back around to seek its lost rider, but the villista was in no shape to rebound.
As soon as Clint triggered his blast, the other members of his team cut loose in unison, their long guns echoing and smoking all across the canyon’s mouth and from the granite ledge above, where Fuentes and Lagüera held the high ground, punching bullets through sombreros. Riders toppled, horses reared, and Clint saw one go down, legs thrashing through a spray of blood. He hated that but knew a spray of lead aimed at mounted bandidos had to strike some of their animals as well.
Precision sighting instantly went out the window, even while the other members of his team kept Clint’s order in mind.
Make each shot count.
Each time a bullet missed its human target, drilling into horseflesh, it still helped to slow the hostile riders down. Where one horse fell, others were forced to veer around or else leap over it, and more of them could fall that way, unseating gunmen, fracturing their skulls, necks, arms, or legs. Clint glimpsed a slim villista trampled under hooves and flattened on the ground to never rise again.
And that was one he would not have to waste a deer slug on.
* * *
* * *
Pancho Villa felt the hot breath of a bullet scorch his cheek in passing, ducked his head too late, but still avoided being slammed into eternity. A rider to his left, not Soberon, cried out in sudden pain, pitched from his saddle, and immediately vanished into roiling dust.
Villa fired his Colt in the direction of the muzzle flashes winking at him from the dark canyon. Between the bullets zipping past him and his stallion’s headlong galloping, he could not aim precisely, but it felt important that he make some noise at least, to goad his pistoleros in their rush toward sudden death.
If Villa’s .45 slug found one of his adversaries, it would be a happy accident, but he would not depend upon it. Every loping yard that he advanced improved his chances for a hit, but at the same time helped the odds that one of his opponents would get lucky, bring him down, and either cripple him or end his life.