A Good Day to Die

by William W. Johnstone

  The macabre trophy, with its elaborate beadwork, fringe, and other trimmings, was a masterpiece of barbaric splendor. His pose of supercilious hauteur temporarily forgotten, Diego stared at it despite himself. Lorena eyed it with awe and unease.

  “If you don’t believe me, ask Vasquez or any of the vaqueros—I’m sure they know the story. They’ll tell you that Black Robe is the lieutenant of Red Hand, the fiercest Comanche war chief in the territory. Red Hand, Mano Rojo. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

  Wide-eyed, lips parted, Lorena nodded in agreement. Diego had a worried look; a little twitch fired off in the corner of his mouth. “I suppose it is better for us to be prepared,” he reluctantly conceded. “Though I find it hard to credit that even Mano Rojo would be so foolish as to try his strength against ours.”

  Gaining confidence as he spoke, he continued. “Let them come! They will break against the stone of our walls and the fire of our guns!”

  “I’m sure,” Sam said. “And now that I’ve said my piece, I’ll be on my way.”

  “You’re leaving? Where will you go?” Diego asked, surprised.

  “I’ve done my bit here. I’m going to town. Hangtree’s got to be warned that Red Hand and his Comanches are coming.”

  “Better to stay, safe behind the walls of the ranchero,” Lorena said.

  “Gracias, but if I don’t spread the word, who will?” Sam said.

  Lorena shrugged. “You are loco, gringo.”

  “Mebbe,” Sam said, grinning. “I’ve kept one step ahead of the braves all day. With any luck, I’ll stay that way. I’d like to ask a favor, though.”

  “With the service you have rendered us, we are hardly in a position to refuse,” Diego said with ill grace.

  “My horse Dusty is plumb worn out. I’d like to borrow a pair of horses, fast ones.”

  “Why two?” Diego asked.

  “If I get chased, a fresh horse might give me that extra burst of speed to get clear.”

  “It shall be done as you wish.”

  “The girl, Lydia ... I can’t take her with me. I’d be much obliged if you’d let her stay here until the danger is over.”

  “Claro, Señor Heller. Of course,” Lorena said quickly. “I will look after her until you return.”

  “Can’t ask more than that. Thanks. I’ve got to warn you, though, she’s a handful.”

  Lorena’s thin smile showed her confidence in managing the girl.

  Diego fidgeted, restless. “I must confer with the segundo to make sure our defenses are in order. Lorena will see to the horses and anything else you might need, Señor Heller. Your service to Rancho Grande is most appreciated and will not be forgotten. Now if you will excuse me, I will take my leave.”

  “Many thanks, señor,” said Sam.

  Diego hurried across the room, into the corridor, and out of sight.

  “I’ll keep this to convince any other Doubting Thomases,” Sam said, rolling up Black Robe’s cape. He picked up his gun case off the drum table, holding it by the suitcase-style handle. “I ain’t had much to eat today. It would be a kindness if the cook could fix me up a cut of beef between two slices of bread.”

  “I think we can do better than that,” Lorena said.

  “That’s all I want. I want to travel light, not be weighed down.”

  “Come with me.”

  They went out into the corridor. “I got to tell the girl I’m going. From what I’ve seen of her, she won’t much care for staying behind,” Sam said.

  “She would like losing that yellow hair of hers to a Comanche scalp hunter even less.” Lorena led Sam to the kitchen, where she gave orders to the cook. “I’ll go tell one of the boys to get the horses ready.” She turned and left the kitchen.

  Lydia sat at a wooden table in a side room of the kitchen, picking idly at her plate. It was loaded with food, but she hadn’t taken more than a few bites. A big glass of milk seemed equally untouched. Sam didn’t blame her, he hated milk. Lydia’s rifle stood propped upright in the corner.

  She looked troubled by Sam’s leave-taking. “I don’t want to stay here, let me go with you.”

  Sam shook his head. “You’ve risked your neck enough for one day.”

  “I don’t want to be alone with strangers—”

  “Lorena—Señora Castillo—will look after you.”

  “She’s a stranger. Anyhow, I don’t need looking after.”

  “I believe it. In that case, you look after her.”

  “Men!” she said scornfully, wise for her age.

  “Now don’t go getting any ideas,” Sam cautioned.

  “You like her, don’t you?”

  “She’s a friendly acquaintance, that’s all.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “I like lots of folks. I like you,” he pointed out.

  “Sure, but not in the same way,” Lydia said.

  The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the cook, a stout moonfaced woman. She handed Sam a brown paper bag with a couple sandwiches inside. He thanked her and she went back to her chores.

  “Got to be moving on, Lydia. I’ll be back for you when the Comanche is whupped,” Sam said.

  Lydia sat with elbows on the table, tight little fists pressed against the side of her head, pouting.

  “Ain’t you gonna say good-bye?” Sam asked lightly. “No? Well, that’s all right. We sure had ourselves some ride, coming off the plateau and across the flat. You done real good. Your folks would be proud of you. I’m proud of you. Proud to know you.

  “See you soon,” he said, starting toward the corridor.

  “Mister Yank!” she called after him. He turned, looking back.

  “Take care of yourself,” Lydia said.

  “I’ll do that,” Sam said, smiling. “And, Lydia—don’t be too hard on the señora. For a great grand lady, she’s ain’t so bad.”

  He went into the corridor. Lorena came into view at the far end of the passageway. He went to her. Rounding a corner, they entered a narrow hallway connecting two corridors. It was empty, with no doors or windows.

  Lorena turned, leaning into him, pressing herself against him. His hands were full, but he wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to him.

  They had an understanding. Soon after they’d first met, they both knew that eventually they’d get together in a physical way. Lorena’s position as honored widow of the beloved dead elder son and the tight supervision under which Don Eduardo kept all females under his roof had thus far prevented Sam and Lorena from consummating their relationship. The wanting heat of desire kept Sam on the boil on the few occasions they were thrown together, but he was careful to hide his true feelings from prying eyes, keeping strong passions hidden behind an easygoing manner.

  Crushing her red-lipped mouth with his, Sam kissed her hard. She kissed him back, putting her whole body into it. Her mouth was warm, moist, and spicy-sweet. He tasted it, tongue probing, demanding.

  Sam’s senses reeled. Reluctantly he disengaged, easing out of the embrace.

  Lorena stepped back, her eyes shining. Moist lips parted, they quirked upward at the corners in a secret smile. “Now you know what you are fighting for,” she murmured. “Stay alive, hombre.”

  “That’s a promise,” he said, somewhat out of breath.

  “Otherwise you will leave two women unhappy.”

  “Two? How so?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Me and your little friend.”

  “Lydia? Don’t be silly,” Sam scoffed. “She’s only a kid!”

  “They grow up fast at that age. I did.”

  “She’s done enough growing up for one day. Look after her, will you? This is a big place and I’d hate to see her get lost. Especially if the Comanches come.”

  “Stay with us. We can use your gun.”

  Sam shook his head. “I’ve got to warn Hangtown.”

  “Why?” Lorena asked.

  “Why? So they can protect themselves.”

  “They’re
Rebels, you’re a Yankee. They hate you, you told me so. Is this not true?”

  “Some of ’em ain’t so bad. Besides, I’ve had my fill of seeing innocent folks massacred today.”

  “Strange hombre!” Lorena marveled, shaking her head in mixed exasperation and wonderment.

  Enterering the opposite corridor, she looked cool and composed. Sam’s forehead was beaded with sweat. He wiped it on his sleeve before entering the corridor.

  They turned left, the corridor taking them to a side door. Lorena opened it and they stepped outside, into the sunlight. The door opened on the east side of the hacienda.

  A vaquero waited patiently nearby, sitting his horse. A lead rope hitched around his saddle horn trailed behind him to a string of three horses, all saddled and ready to go.

  Sam knew him: Latigo, a pistolero with plenty of sand.

  “Latigo will go with you,” Lorena said.

  “Thanks, but I don’t need him. He travels fastest who travels alone,” Sam said.

  “Still, I will feel better if there is another along to watch your back. One gun more or less won’t make any difference to the fortune of the Grande, but it could make a very great difference to you. Latigo is one of mine, loyal first to the Delgados, not the Castillos.”

  Sam nodded. “I’ve seen him at work. A good man.”

  “But bad enough to stay alive,” Lorena said, “like you, amigo.”

  “And you!”

  Sam crossed to Latigo. The pistolero, in his mid-twenties, was of medium height, with a runner’s build. Beneath a sombrero, thick black hair was parted in the middle, the ends reaching down to his jawline. He sported a blue bandana headband. He had almond-shaped eyes and a thin mustache.

  He lifted a hand in greeting, holding it palm-up for a beat before letting it fall to his side. “We meet again.”

  “Sure you want to go along?” Sam asked.

  “Why not? It’s a nice day for a ride,” Latigo said.

  “In that case, I’ll stay here and you go.”

  “I don’t like riding that much, gringo.” Latigo’s gaze dropped to the sawed-off Winchester in its special long holster hanging down Sam’s right thigh. “I see you still have that trick gun, the Kick of the Burro.”

  “Mule’s-leg, podner.”

  “What I said.”

  Sam went up and down the string of three horses, checking them out. The second in line, a piebald brown-and-white cow pony, was dressed with Sam’s own saddle.

  “They’re all good but the pinto is the best. I had them put your saddle on it,” Latigo said.

  “I’ll take your word for it. Thanks,” Sam said, pleased. He liked the pinto’s lines and appreciated being able to ride his own saddle, broken in to his specifications. It wasn’t the same, riding with another man’s leather underneath him.

  He put the brown paper lunch bag into a saddlebag, then secured the rolled-up black robe behind the cantle. A length of rawhide thong helped rig the gun case on the saddle’s left-hand side. Unfastening the lead rope, Sam cut the pinto out of the string.

  Latigo took the rope, trailing the two reserve horses behind him. Sam stepped into the saddle, mounting up on the pinto.

  “Muchos gracias, señora,” he said, nodding to Lorena, touching thumb and forefinger to his hat brim. A tip of the hat, polite and respectful.

  “Vaya con Dios,” she said, lifting a hand in seeming casual salutation and letting it fall. Entirely correct and proper, yet no more than that, for the great lady of the rancho.

  Sam and Latigo walked their horses across the patio into the courtyard. In its center, a knot of vaqueros wrestled with Rancho Grande’s ultimate weapon. The Long Tom, an old Spanish cannon about fourteen feet in length, was mounted on a carrier with four solid wooden wheels. It looked like it belonged on the gun deck of a Spanish galleon or pirate ship. It was very old, but effective. Its punishing firepower had broken more than a few Comanche onslaughts across the long years.

  The handlers struggled to move the Long Tom into place, positioning it so that it anchored the defense of the courtyard and its field of fire encompassed the main gate in case of a breach.

  Diego Castillo was up on a parapet, repositioning the riflemen along the wall. He was oblivious of Sam ... or pretended to be. That suited Sam fine.

  The front gate was in the process of being secured. One massive door was closed, the other stood open. Sam and Latigo exited single file, Sam first, Latigo following with the string of two horses behind.

  Once they were clear of the portal and out in the open, Sam waited for Latigo so they could ride abreast. Behind them, eager hands wrestled with the slab door, pulling it closed with a dull, booming thud that reminded Sam unpleasantly of the closing of a coffin lid.

  Latigo was looking at him. Perhaps they shared similar thoughts.

  “That sounded like the crack of doom,” Sam noted.

  Latigo shrugged his shoulders. “Quien sabe, gringo? Who knows?”

  FOURTEEN

  Sam and Latigo heard the death throes of the doomed stagecoach before they saw it. It was early evening; long shadows were falling.

  From beyond the next ridge came the drum of thundering hoofbeats. A coach jounced on overworked springs, the undercarriage rattling and banging, its iron-rimmed wooden wheels rumbling along a dirt road. Counterpointing the stagecoach’s frantic flight came the clamor of raucous pursuit, more hoofbeats, shots, shrieks, war whoops and yowls, bloodcurdling in their feral intensity.

  The ridge ran east-west. Sam and Latigo rode almost to the top, pausing just below the crest of the rise, showing only enough of their heads to let them see what was happening below without being seen.

  On the far side of the ridge stretched the rutted dirt road of the Hangtree Trail. Sam and Latigo were west of Hangtown, east of the Breaks, and far enough away from both so that neither could be seen.

  The stagecoach hurtled east, chased by a band of Comanches. It was flanked on both sides by a couple lead riders, the rest of the braves closely bringing up the rear. Prey and predators streaked by at a breakneck pace.

  The braves harried the coach like wolves trying to bring down a lumbering bear closing in for the kill. Shots cracked, arrows whizzed. That the moment of truth was near could be seen from the fact the stagecoach was without a driver.

  Two men would normally have occupied the seat up front, the driver and the shotgun messenger. But there was only one, and he was dead. He lay on his side sprawled across the driver’s seat, inert save for the motion imparted by the plunging, bucking, roiling vehicle. Arrows jutted out of him.

  The shotgun guard was nowhere to be seen. He must have fallen off somewhere farther back on the road, out of sight. Other arrows protruded from the coach’s roof, sides, and back. That it was not yet a corpse wagon was told by intermittent shots and shrieks coming from inside it.

  The course lay straight across the flat. Six terrified horses, yoked in tandem to the wagon pole, raced straight ahead, freed of all restraint now that no man’s hand held the reins. The end would be soon. Comanche riders flanking the coach team whipped their mounts with leather quirts, urging them to greater speed to overtake the lead horses.

  Once that was done the braves could grab the animals’ headstalls, turning them and bringing them to a halt. Two were almost there, leaning dangerously far out of their saddles, hands reaching.

  Their fellows were bunched up in a pack coming alongside and behind the vehicle. Copper-red, half naked, sinewy Comanches armed with rifles, lances, and bows and arrows failed to completely obscure the forms of passengers inside the coach.

  A bowman riding abreast of the coach box reached over his shoulder to draw an arrow from the quiver hanging across his back. Fitting it to the bowstring of his curved composite bow fashioned from buffalo bones, he drew the string taut, angling for a shot.

  A man in the coach shot at him with a six-gun, missing, but causing the bowman to slow down and fall back.

  Jamming his hat down tight o
n his head to keep from losing it—the hat that is, not the head—Sam kicked his heels into the pinto’s flanks, urging it forward. It lunged over the crest of the ridge and down the other side, tearing a slanting line across the gentle downhill slope and pounding across the flat.

  Left to his own devices, Latigo would have abandoned the coach and its passengers to their fate. Not out of callousness or indifference, but out of prudence. He’d come up in a hard school and learned early not to take unnecesary risks. The coach folk were strangers, no kin or friends to him.

  But Latigo had been charged to ride with Sam Heller and, having been so charged by Señora Lorena, was faithful to his duty. The gringo was loco, a madman. But ah, what magnificent madness!

  With more than a few sighs and head shakes, Latigo took off after Sam, taking his mount and the two horses strung behind him over the top of the hill and down the other side.

  On the pinto, Sam tore across the flat after the stagecoach and its pursuers. His horse was fresh, the coach was near. Behind, Latigo was coming up fast, leaning far forward in the saddle.

  Comanches are not easily taken unawares, but the band of marauders was intent on its prey. The pinto closed the gap between itself and the rearmost of the braves. Sam drew the mule’s-leg with his right hand, gripping the reins between his teeth.

  Levering the cut-down Winchester, he opened with a fast-crackling volley of lead.

  Three braves in the back of the pack were swept off their mounts and thrown to the ground, never to rise again.

  The others now knew Sam was on their tail.

  The stagecoach was slowing; so were the Comanches. A rider at the head of the team on the left-hand side held the headstall of the lead horse nearest him, trying to turn the animal.

  The stagecoach rumbled to a halt. Sam rode up along the left-hand side of the coach, closing on three braves clustered together.

  The nearest, a bowman with arrow nocked and pointed at a passenger half leaning out of a window and shooting, turned and loosed the arrow at Sam. Narrowly missing his head, it whizzed past so close he could feel the air disturbed by its passage. Sam triggered a burst of rounds, drilling the archer and a rifle-wielding brave riding alongside him.