The Devil's Odds

by Milton T. Burton

  I felt a chill crawl up my spine despite myself. “And you’ve seen her at other times, too, you say?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Recently?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Then see? That doesn’t mean Madeline—”

  “Virgil, you must be careful until this is all over. The inescapable truth is that you are the sole future of this ranch and this family. If anything happened to you, all our years of struggle would be for nothing.”

  I nodded. “I will, dear. I promise. I’m well aware that these are dangerous people she’s involved with. In fact, I’m beginning to wish that I hadn’t brought her here. It may have been poor judgment on my part.”

  “No, you did the right thing,” she said firmly. “La Rosa is your home. We’re safe here.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m not taking things for granted. I told Alonzo to keep watch tonight in the kitchen.”

  “Alonzo? In the kitchen?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I heard him come in a few minutes ago.”

  She shook her head in annoyance at herself. “I’m getting old,” she said, “and I didn’t hear a thing. I’d better go make him a pot of coffee.”

  I knew that Alonzo would tilt one of the kitchen chairs back against the wall and doze lightly all night, stirring only to roll another cigarette or refill his coffee cup from the back of the stove. His sense of hearing was still phenomenal and his mind was like an alarm set to awake at even the faintest noise.

  “I think I’ll turn in,” I said.

  I rose, stretched, and kissed my aunt good night as she headed toward the kitchen, then climbed the stairs and went into my bedroom. Like the kitchen, it was unchanged since the days of my youth. Both my Parker 16-gauge shotgun and the Winchester lever-action .30-30 rifle with which I’d killed my first deer still hung on the gun rack; the bookcase bulged with my collection of Tom Swift and Rover Boys books; and the two cigar boxes full of Indian arrowheads I’d found at various places around the ranch sat atop the chest of drawers. I pulled one of the books from the bookcase and looked at it for a moment. Tom Swift and His Motorcycle. I remembered my father buying it for me in San Antonio amid the armistice celebration that marked the end of the First World War. I’d been ten years old at the time, and motorcycles were still rare enough to be considered the pinnacle of adventure. What was the pinnacle of adventure for me now? I wondered. Bourbon and blondes? No, redheads, I corrected myself.

  “I’d probably be better off with a motorcycle,” I muttered. I pulled off my boots, then opened the door between the two rooms. Madeline lay sprawled atop the covers in a thin nightgown, her tender, milky white body enticing in the moonlight. I tiptoed quietly into the room and carefully covered her against the cool night air. She barely stirred.

  Back in my own room I quickly undressed and slipped between the covers, first carefully placing my .38 Super on the bedside stand.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Hours later, after it was all over, I kicked myself inwardly for being so slow to react. I was dreaming one of those silly dreams I suppose everybody has at one time or another, a dream where you’ve been mistaken for someone else, and no matter how hard you protest, no one believes you. In this dream I was the guest of honor at the banquet hall of some long-ago castle, being feted by all the nobles of the kingdom. But I knew I didn’t belong there. I was nothing but a simple jester from another country who’d been mistaken for a famous knight. At the peak of the festivities there came a pounding at the door to the banquet hall, and I froze, terrified in the certain knowledge that whoever was on the other side of that door had come to expose me as an imposter. Then I was awake in my own room at La Rosa, convinced for a moment that the knock had actually come from my own hall door. Quickly I checked the radium dial on my watch. It was a few minutes after one o’clock. Then my blood ran cold as I realized the noise had been the sound of gunfire from downstairs.

  I slid from bed and grabbed my Colt from the bedside table. Hurrying across the room, I opened the hall door a couple of inches. One of the small but important benefits of having electricity at the ranch was the tiny night-light my aunt always left burning overhead. In its dim glow I could see the silhouette of a man who had just climbed the stairs and now stood on the landing. He held a pistol in one hand, and he was staring so intently at something at the far end of the hallway that he hadn’t noticed that my door had opened.

  I was just raising my automatic when an enormous blast from somewhere behind the door almost deafened me. The man dropped the gun and grabbed for his belly, then fell forward onto his hands and knees. A second later my aunt glided past me in her nightgown, my father’s L.C. Smith double-barrel shotgun held firmly in her hands. The kneeling man looked up with his mouth gaping open and tried to speak. Whatever he had on his mind remained unsaid, because the last thing he ever saw was the tiny, implacable old lady who threw the gun deftly to her shoulder and blew his head to pieces from a distance of no more than three feet.

  This second blast left me almost completely deaf. I stepped out into the hall behind my aunt. Madeline’s door burst open and she was there beside me in her robe, her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide with fear.

  “It’s okay,” I said, my voice tinny and distant in my ears. Then I remembered Alonzo and the gunfire that had come from below. I took my aunt by the shoulders and turned her around. Her eyes were blazing, and she was clearly ready to shoot somebody else if fate gave her the chance.

  “Alonzo,” I told her. “I’ve got to see about Alonzo.”

  She didn’t react.

  “Go in your room and reload,” I ordered. “You and Madeline both. And stay there until I come to get you.”

  The girl understood. Showing more presence of mind than I would have expected from her, she took Aunt Carmen by the arm and began to pull her toward the other end of the hall. My aunt shook herself loose from Madeline’s grip, her eyes still full of fire. “Go in your room and reload,” I said again. “Then stay there.”

  This time she understood. Madeline grabbed her arm once again and the two of them scurried down the hall toward her doorway. I worked my way around the bloody mess on the landing and carefully descended the stairs. I could see the glow of the kerosene lamp coming from the kitchen. Slowly I approached the kitchen door, my automatic ready, its safety off. Step by careful step I entered the silent room. The outside door was shattered beyond repair where the intruders had burst in. Alonzo lay in front of the stove, his belly covered in blood, his old Colt single action still clutched in his hand. On the other side of the room a second gunman lay sprawled on his back. I approached the man carefully, my pistol aimed at the center of his chest. When I got close enough I saw that such a precaution was unnecessary. His mouth was slack and his eyes glazed, and the .45-caliber hole in the center of his forehead told me he was as dead as he was ever going to be.

  I realized my hearing was returning when I heard a faint groan behind me. I turned to see Alonzo trying to pull himself up into a sitting position. Just then a yell came from outside the house. “Señor Virgil! Señor Virgil!” It was Pablo, the one-eyed vaquero.

  “Come on in!” I called out.

  Pablo appeared in the kitchen doorway, his good eye shining bright in the lamplight. “I need your handcuffs, Señor Virgil,” he said in Spanish. “There is a bandito lying on the walk where I clubbed him down, but he is beginning to stir. We must cuff him quickly if we wish to have no further trouble from him.”

  * * *

  Five minutes later the intruder was secured and Alonzo sat in one of the kitchen chairs, utterly mortified that Tía Carmen should see him shirtless. The bullet had cut a six-inch tunnel through the flesh of the lower left side of his chest, missing his ribs completely. We found two bullet holes in the wallpaper just above the sink.

  “I do not know why I fell,” Alonzo said morosely. “I do not believe it was the wound since I did not even feel it until I awakened. But for some reason I fell backwards and
hit my head terribly on the great cookstove. It must have knocked me unconscious.”

  “The dead man upstairs may have knocked you down in his rush,” I said. “He was a big bastard.”

  “Sí. That is possible. I was intent upon the bandito I killed.”

  “Exactly what happened?” I asked.

  “I had just lighted a cigarette when the door seemed to explode inward. I pulled my pistola, and I thought I shot the first man to come through the doorway, but I could have been mistaken. It may have been the second. Then I fell and that is all I remember.”

  “We may never know the precise details,” I said.

  “Sí. It is enough that they were stopped, though I think that if I had been younger I could have done a better job of it.”

  “Who couldn’t?” my aunt asked.

  “Sí, Tía Carmen,” he agreed sadly. “We are all growing older. It is time for Señor Virgil to come home and help us take care of things.”

  “Damn,” I muttered. “What is this? A conspiracy?”

  I went over to the cabinet and rummaged around until I found a bottle of tequila. After I’d pulled the cork and taken a swig myself, I handed it to the old man. He gave me a nod of thanks and then turned the bottle up to his mouth. By then my aunt had filled a wash pan with water she’d heated on the stove. “I’ve got to clean this wound, Alonzo,” she said. “Then I can pack it with sulfa powder.”

  “Sí, Tía Carmen,” he said placidly. “Do whatever you feel is necessary.”

  “Do you want me to send for Helena?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Let her sleep. It would only fret her.”

  Just then Pablo and one of the other vaqueros appeared in the doorway. “What do you wish us to do with the bandito, Señor Virgil?” he asked.

  I thought for a minute. “Take him out to the barn. I’ll want to talk to him.”

  “Sí,” Pablo said.

  “Pablo?” Alonzo called out from where he sat.

  “Sí, Alonzo. What is it?”

  Alonzo’s smile was cold and cruel. “It is a chilly night. Make us a fire in the old metal tub in the barn.”

  * * *

  The inside of the barn was lighted by a pair of kerosene lanterns. Along one wall ranged a half dozen stalls built of rough planking. The intruder was tied to one of these, his arms spread out as though he were being crucified, his mouth securely gagged with a wadded-up bandanna held in place by a short piece of rope. The floor of the barn was dirt, and in its center sat a galvanized tub filled with mesquite knots that burned briskly. A La Rosa branding iron and a long, narrow steel rod lay in the tub, their ends beginning to glow cherry red. The three old men lounged about, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and making jests. Their faces were merry and their eyes bright. One-eyed Pablo seemed particularly full of gleeful malevolence. They spoke in English for the benefit of their captive. I stood for a few moments at the doorway and listened.

  “What will Alonzo do with this man?” one asked.

  “I think he intends to burn his deek off with the branding iron,” said another.

  Pablo shook his head. “No, I think he has other things in mind.”

  “Do you know something?”

  “Sí,” Pablo said with a nod. “I once heard a story of a king who lived long ago. In England, I think it was. For political reasons it became necessary for some of his nobles to murder him. Yet it was also necessary that his body show no signs of violence.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They inserted a hollow reed into his back passage and then ran a red-hot iron through the reed into his inner parts.”

  “Aheee…” one man grimaced mockingly.

  “Sí,” Pablo agreed. “They were ignorant of the position of the various organs of the body, and the rod had to be reheated and passed through the reed many times before he expired.”

  “Did this truly happen?” someone asked.

  “Sí,” Pablo said. “I once asked Padre O’Neal at the church in town, and he said the story was true and this unfortunate king had been named Eduardo.”

  “But why did they kill him? After all, he was their king.”

  “He was a sodomite,” Pablo said. “One who was very careless, and his activities had become a great embarrassment to the realm. Years ago I told this story to Alonzo, and he was very impressed. I think perhaps he has the same treatment in mind for this gentleman. You see? There is a rod heating alongside the branding iron.”

  “Then why is the branding iron being heated also?”

  Pablo shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps he will do both. Burn his deek off first, and then minister to his insides.”

  “That is possible,” one of the others said with a sage nod. “Alonzo is a thorough man.”

  I stepped into the barn.

  “Ahhh,” Pablo exclaimed happily. “Here is Señor Virgil. Perhaps he will have some ideas of his own.”

  “Sí,” one of the others agreed. “He was a mischievous little niño, and everyone knows one’s nature does not change.”

  I smiled and winked at the old men, then walked over to where the intruder struggled against his bonds, his eyes bulging with pure terror. He was a man of medium height and weight, with well-barbered brown hair and what had been a nice gray wool suit just a few hours earlier. I put his age in the neighborhood of forty. On his feet he wore a pair of expensive alligator-skin shoes. A city boy, one who was far out of his element no matter how competent he was in New Orleans or Houston or wherever he’d come from. I stood there for a few silent moments, staring directly into his eyes, then reached up and jerked the gag roughly from his mouth. He began babbling wildly.

  “Shut up!” I ordered and slapped his face.

  My command had no impact on the torrent of gibberish. I slapped him twice more with the same lack of effect. Then I reached down and pulled the branding iron from the bucket and held it a few inches from the man’s nose, its tip glowing fiercely in the barn’s dim light. His eyes riveted instantly on the iron and his chattering gradually ceased.

  “That’s good,” I said with a satisfied nod and tossed the iron back in the bucket.

  “You can’t let them burn my guts out, mister,” he said in a quavering voice, the first truly coherent words he’d uttered.

  I smiled coldly. “Oh, yes, I can.”

  Alonzo appeared in the doorway, then walked on into the barn, moving a little stiffly. He wore one of my flannel shirts, and in his right hand he carried a fresh bottle of tequila. He handed the bottle to Pablo, who drank and then passed it around.

  “What do we do with this man?” Alonzo asked me.

  “That’s up to him,” I said. “I want to know who sent him down here. The more he talks the less he has to suffer.”

  “Then you must tell Señor Virgil what he wishes to know,” Alonzo said, fixing the man firmly with his sad brown eyes.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Lew Ralls.”

  “Where you from, Lew?”

  “South Louisiana.”

  “Who sent you?” I asked.

  The intruder shook his head wildly. “I can’t—”

  Despite his injury, Alonzo reached down with snakelike agility and jerked the branding iron once again from the bucket. Without fanfare he pressed it to the intruder’s thigh a few inches above the knee. It burned through his pants instantly, then there was a faint sizzle as it touched the flesh beneath. The man’s body arched forward, the cords in his neck standing out, his eyes bulging. Then he uttered a high-pitched scream that seemed to go on forever. When it ended at last his head fell forward on his chest.

  “I believe he has fainted,” Pablo said.

  “Sí,” Alonzo replied. “But he will recover.”

  “Somebody get a bucket of water,” I said.

  Pablo took a wooden bucket from the wall where it hung by a peg and stepped outside to the hand pump. A few seconds later he was back.

  “Throw it in his face,” I said. “That always
works in the movies. Maybe it’ll turn the trick here.”

  Pablo doused the man with the water. It proved to be as effective in real life as it was on film. I gave him a few seconds to get his wits back, then I asked, “Are you convinced that we mean business?”

  “You’re crazy,” the intruder gasped. “You can’t get away with this.”

  I slapped him once again then grabbed a huge hank of his hair and twisted his head upward until we were eye to eye. “I can do anything I want to out here, you fool,” I snarled. “My family runs this county. The sheriff wouldn’t even think of setting foot on this ranch without calling first. I could drive into town and tell him I’d fed you to the snapping turtles down in the river, and he wouldn’t give a damn because he knows where his bread gets buttered. Now talk. Who sent you?”

  The man’s eyes were full of terror. “Carlo Tresca,” he finally whispered.

  “Who? Speak up.”

  “Carlo Tresca,” he managed.

  The name was distantly familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it. “Who the hell is Carlo Tresca?” I asked.

  “He works for Angelo Scorpino.”

  Then I remembered where I’d heard Tresca’s name.

  The year before I’d teamed up with a Louisiana State Police lieutenant while investigating an interstate livestock-theft ring. The man had been a sturdy, aging Creole with an impeccable reputation for honesty, and he knew more about the structure of organized crime along the Gulf Coast than anyone I’d ever met. According to him, Scorpino had been the crime syndicate boss of New Orleans since the early days of Prohibition. Short, squat, and ugly, with a vicious temper, Scorpino’s cruelty was noteworthy even in the ruthless criminal world where he lived and reigned. Thus his nickname: the Scorpion Angel. I also remembered that my friend had identified Tresca as one of the junior men in Scorpino’s organization, but he’d pegged him as an up-and-comer, a young fellow full of ambition.