He didn’t mention that the Black Scorpion was no longer a “he.” Carmen could reveal that or not reveal it at the time and place of her choosing.
Tolliver scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “This is all gettin’ too mixed up for me. We’re fightin’ the Rangers, and we’ve got a bunch of Mex bandidos on our side. The whole damn world’s got turned upside down.”
“That happens sometimes when men get too greedy,” Frank said. “Come on. Let’s ride on into your camp and I’ll fill you in on everything that’s happened. There’s still more you don’t know about,” he added, thinking of the impending arrival of Don Felipe Almanzar on the scene.
“Lord help us,” Tolliver muttered as he turned his horse and led the way back to Sand Mountain.
Frank and Doc followed, and the physician said quietly, “You look like you’ve been through the wringer, Frank.”
“Estancia tried to get me to tell him where he could find you fellas.”
“Torture?” Doc asked in a hushed, angry tone.
“Nothing fancy. His sergeant and some of the men tried to beat it out of me.”
Doc looked intently at him and said, “But I’ll bet they didn’t succeed, did they?”
Frank smiled thinly and shook his head. “Nope.”
The three men rode past the springs and into the narrow canyon that cut deeply into Sand Mountain. The canyon made a bend and widened slightly, and Frank saw that that was where the fugitive Texans had made their camp. As he looked around he made a quick head count and came up with thirty men, including himself, Tolliver, and Doc. A few stragglers had shown up after he’d left on his ill-fated mission to Laredo.
That raised Frank’s spirits even more. They probably still couldn’t match the number of men Wedge and Estancia had at their disposal, but at least the Texans were no longer outnumbered by nearly two to one.
Just a fair fight . . . that was all Frank wanted now.
And a chance to settle things with Domingo Estancia and Nathan Wedge.
The men gathered around Frank to hear about what had happened to him. Somewhere they had come up with some coffee, and as Frank sipped a tin cup of the strong black brew, he thought he had never tasted anything better in his life. As the men listened raptly, he told them how he had been caught by the Rurales, taken before Estancia, and tortured.
“When they figured out I wasn’t going to talk, they put me up against a wall in front of a firing squad,” he related. “I thought I was a goner.”
“What happened?” Ben Tolliver asked eagerly. “How’d you get away?”
“I had some help,” Frank said. “That was when the Black Scorpion showed up.” He didn’t mention that in this case, the Black Scorpion was actually Carmen Almanzar, the woman Ben loved. The young fella would have been a mite shocked, Frank thought wryly.
To most of these men, the Black Scorpion was nothing but a bandit. Frank had to explain that he had been with the band of revolutionaries for their first battle with the corrupt Rurales under Captain Estancia, and he added that his own life would have been forfeit without the lightning raid on the ranch just as he was about to be executed.
“I give you my word,” he said forcefully, “the Black Scorpion is no outlaw. All his raids on this side of the border were carried out against people who were part of the smuggling operation set up by Wedge and Estancia.”
“You’re sure about all this, Morgan?” one of the men asked.
Frank nodded. “I’m as certain as I can be. The Black Scorpion is on the same side we are.”
Doc asked, “What happened to these so-called revolutionaries, Frank? Where did they go after they helped you get away from the Rurales?”
Now things got even trickier, Frank thought with a glance at Cecil Tolliver. “They went to get some more help for us,” he said. “A week ago, while I was down in Mexico at the Almanzar hacienda, I decided it was time that all the trouble between Don Felipe and Cecil here got patched up.”
“What?” Tolliver burst out. “You up and decided that on your own, did you?”
Frank reached into his pocket. The letter from Don Felipe was considerably crumpled and creased, but it was still there. He took it out and extended it toward Tolliver.
“Don Felipe agreed to a meeting with you in San Rosa tomorrow,** Frank said. ”He wants to hash everything out, and I reckon he says as much in this letter. But when he agreed to that, it was before we knew that Wedge and Estancia were going to bring everything out in the open and declare war on all the law-abiding folks in the border country. Don Felipe is on his way up here today with some of his vaqueros, and the Black Scorpion has gone to meet them and bring them here.”
“Almanzar’s comin’ here?” Tolliver grated.
“That’s right,” Frank said. “With Don Felipe, the Black Scorpion, and all the men the two of them have added to our numbers, we’ll make up a big enough force to take on Wedge and Estancia.” Frank’s voice rose a little as he went on. “We don’t have to wait for help from outside. We’re strong enough to take on those bastards ourselves . . . and beat them.”
Even though the men were uncertain, Frank saw hope spring to life on their tired, dirty faces in response to his words. Men just naturally liked to have their destinies in their own hands, and these rugged Texans were no exception. Given the chance, they would fight for what was rightfully theirs, would fight to defeat the usurpers and the evildoers, to their last breath and the last drop of their blood.
“Almanzar,” Cecil Tolliver muttered. “I . . . I just don’t know I can bring myself to trust him, to fight alongside him.”
Ben reached out to grasp his father’s arm. “Pa, you can trust him and you can fight beside him.”
“How would you know?” Tolliver demanded with a frown.
“I . . . I just know,” Ben answered, unwilling to reveal the relationship he had with Carmen. His voice strengthened a little, though, as he went on. “If we don’t trust the Mexicans and let them help us, sooner or later we’ll be wiped out, and you know it, Pa.”
Tolliver rubbed his bearded jaw. “A couple dozen good fightin’ men sure would come in handy, that’s for damned sure,” he mused. “And Felipe, blast his eyes, was always a tough hombre.”
Frank tried not to smile as he saw that Tolliver was getting used to the idea. The rest of the men looked to Tolliver as a leader. If he went along with the idea of teaming up with Don Felipe Almanzar and the Black Scorpion, then the others would accept it, too.
“You say they’re comin’ here tonight?” Tolliver said to Frank.
“Unless they run into trouble or something else happens to prevent it.”
“Well, I reckon we can wait and talk it over, at least.” Tolliver’s fingers clenched on the letter from Almanzar he still held in his hand, unread. “If we call a truce, though, it’ll be just that. I ain’t sayin’ that the war between us is over.”
“Let’s take care of Wedge and Estancia first,” Frank said. “One war at a time.”
The afternoon dragged in the Texans’ camp as they waited for the fall of night and the hoped-for arrival of the reinforcements from south of the border. There was another worry that Frank wasn’t aware of until after he had been in the camp for a while. Nick Holmes and one of the other men had ridden out early that morning to scout the ranches around San Rosa and had not returned. Many of the men were worried, naturally enough, about their families. Frank didn’t think Wedge would move against the women and children who had been left behind when their menfolk went to the Rocking T several nights earlier for that fateful meeting. But when a man turned renegade like Wedge, it was hard to be sure just what he might do. Worry about Roanne Williamson still lurked in the back of Frank’s mind. The fact that Nick and the other scout had not returned was just one more concern.
Night finally fell, bringing a chilly wind with it. A short time after darkness settled down, the sound of hoofbeats approaching the camp could be heard. The tiny cook fire had been extinguished before ni
ghtfall, so the canyon was lit only by the stars. Orders were whispered, and the Texans spread out, hunting whatever cover they could find in case they were in for a fight. Frank, Tolliver, Ben, and Doc Ervin went to the mouth of the canyon, all of them holding rifles. The horses were closer now, and Frank could hear the clink and rattle of their harness as well as their hoofbeats. The sounds stopped as the riders came to a halt about fifty yards from the canyon mouth.
A shout came through the darkness. “Señor Morgan! Señor Morgan, are you there?”
Frank felt relief wash through him as he recognized the deep, powerful tones of Don Felipe Almanzar. He glanced over at Tolliver and Doc, and they nodded at him, urging him to answer the call.
“Don Felipe!” Frank said as he stepped forward. “Come ahead! We’ve been waiting for you.”
The riders moved toward the canyon. Don Felipe’s tall figure was in the lead, but someone else rode beside and just behind him. Frank was willing to bet that was Carmen.
As the newcomers moved past him, Frank counted them and came up with twenty-five. The Texans and their allies from below the border were now roughly equal to the combined forces of Wedge and Estancia. And since it was possible that the Rangers and the Rurales might be somewhat split up and scattered, Frank and his friends might actually hold a numerical advantage when it came to a fight. They couldn’t know that for sure yet, however.
A small fire was kindled again, so that the leaders of the groups could see each other. Don Felipe and the Black Scorpion dismounted and came up to the fire. Frank was a little surprised to see that Carmen still had the bandanna over the lower half of her face. He had assumed that her masquerade would be over by now.
Tolliver and Don Felipe regarded each other warily for a moment before Tolliver finally said, “Felipe. It’s good to see you again.”
Don Felipe’s eyes were narrow with distrust, but he nodded and said, “And you, Cecil. It has been a long time.”
“Too long, if you ask me,” Doc Ervin put in. “I’ve been around the border a long time, and I remember when you two were friends.”
“That was a different time, Doctor,” Don Felipe said. “Señor Tolliver and I were different men then.”
“Well, right now we need you to be the men you used to be,” Doc said. “We need you to stand together with the rest of us against the men who are trying to take over this country, lock, stock, and barrel.”
Tolliver took out the letter Frank had given him earlier. “I’m ready to bury the hatchet for a while, Felipe,” he said. “From the sound of this letter, you are, too.”
Almanzar nodded. “For the good of all, I will put aside my honor and stand with you.”
“Your honor never had any reason to be offended,” Tolliver snapped. “If you’d just listened to reason when I tried to talk to you years ago—”
Frank stepped in, saying, “Maybe you two had better save this part of the discussion for later.”
“No!”
The clear, high-pitched voice made most of the men around the campfire stiffen in surprise. Obviously, it belonged to a woman, and none of the Texans except Frank had known that there was a female anywhere around here. But the slender, black-clad figure stepped forward, pulled down the mask, and took off the black, flat-crowned hat to shake her hair free. The long, straight, sable mane tumbled down her back.
“Carmen!” Ben Tolliver yelped like he had just been stuck with a knife.
Don Felipe sighed. “Carmen, you promised me you would not reveal yourself to these men.”
She tossed her head with the defiance that Frank had come to recognize was second nature with her. “If we are to fight side by side, they deserve to know who I am.”
“You will not fight,” Don Felipe insisted. “It was foolish enough of me to allow you to come along with us.”
“You knew if you tried to send me back to the rancho, I would ignore you,” she said.
Ben still stared at her in disbelief as he said, “Carmen, you . . . I never dreamed.... Damn it, this just isn’t possible! You can’t be the Black Scorpion!”
She stepped over to him, holding the black hat in her left hand while she reached up with her right to caress his cheek. “When this is over, I will tell you all about it,” she said quietly. She came up on her toes to brush her lips against his.
“Ben!” Cecil Tolliver exclaimed.
“Carmen!” Don Felipe Almanzar roared.
Frank tried not to grin at the looks of amazement and shock on the weathered faces of the two men as Carmen turned to face them and Ben put his arm around her shoulders. “Papa, Señor Tolliver, you see with your own eyes why the feud between you must end. Ben and I love each other, and when all this trouble is over, we will be married.”
“Hold on,” Ben said. “We were gonna wait until the time was right to say anything—”
“What better time than now?” Carmen asked. “Your father is here, my father is here, and they are about to forge an alliance.” She faced Don Felipe and Tolliver. “Is this not true?”
“We said we’d fight them damned renegades together,” Tolliver said. “I never figured my own son would . . . would go crazy like this—”
Don Felipe cut in. “You mean to say it is crazy for a young man to fall in love with such a wonderful—if headstrong—young woman such as my daughter?”
“Hell, that’s not what I mean, and you know it. I always thought Carmen was a fine young lady.”
“And Benjamin is a fine young man,” Don Felipe snapped back.
Grinning, Doc Ervin stepped forward and said, “Will you two old pelicans just stop and listen to yourselves? Everybody here can tell that you want to shake hands and put the past behind you. You’re just too blasted stubborn to admit it.”
“Stubborn, am I?” Tolliver blazed. “Well, we’ll just see about that!” He took a step toward Almanzar and held out his hand. “Felipe, I tell you this flat out, as square as I can make it: Whatever you thought there might be between me and your wife, you were wrong. I never did anything to insult your honor, and neither did she, God rest her soul. But I know it was a mighty bad time for you, and I reckon I can see why you felt like you did. I’m willing to call it all quits and put it behind us. What do you say?”
For a long moment, Don Felipe didn’t say anything. His face was as hard and unreadable as an Aztec carving.
But then the stern lines softened a little, and slowly, his hand came up. He reached out and clasped Tolliver’s hand. “Men fight together better when they are amigos,” he said hoarsely.
“Damn right . . . pard,” Tolliver said.
Frank felt a surge of satisfaction. Old habits were hard to break, and there might still be some friction between Tolliver and Don Felipe in the future, but Frank was willing to bet that they would work it out and solve any problems as they came up. They would never again be bitter enemies as they had been.
All that assumed, of course, that they would live through the battle to come.
That thought had just gone through Frank’s brain when one of the sentries called from the mouth of the canyon, “Riders comin’! Comin’ fast!”
39
Dirt was quickly thrown over the fire, extinguishing the flames, and the fifty or so men in the canyon spread out, drawing their guns and getting ready for trouble. But a moment later a familiar voice shouted, “Hello to the camp! We’re comin’ in!”
“That’s Nick!” Tolliver exclaimed. “He’s back!” Sure enough, a moment later Nick Holmes and the man who had gone with him on the scouting expedition rode in. Frank and the other leaders of the group gathered around them as they dismounted.
Tolliver clasped Nick’s shoulder and said, “How are you, boy? What did you find out?”
The weariness that Nick felt could be heard in the young man’s voice as he said, “I’m all right, I reckon. And we’ve got a little good news, too. Jack and me have been to all the ranches hereabouts, and they’re all quiet. We didn’t go right up to ‘em, of course,
since there could have been outlaws there waitin’ to set a trap for anybody who came scoutin’, but we checked them out from a distance and didn’t see any signs of trouble, no buildings burned or folks shot up or anything like that.”
“Same thing was true of San Rosa,” the other scout put in. “We looked the settlement over with field glasses, and it seemed peaceful enough.”
Murmurs of relief went through the crowd gathered around the scouts.
“But there’s one place that wasn’t true,” Nick added grimly. “The Rocking T.”
Tolliver stiffened. “What’s going on there?”
“A council of war, looked like. Late this afternoon, Estancia and a bunch of Rurales rode in. Wedge came out to meet them, and him and Estancia were talkin’ when they went back into the bunkhouse.” Nick shook his head regretfully. “The main house is gone, burned down.”
Tolliver sighed and nodded. “I figured as much after that dynamite started such a big fire.”
Nick grew excited again as he went on. “I think the whole bunch is there, Cecil. Could be they’re tryin’ to decide what to do next.” Nick paused and looked around, frowning in the light of the rising moon as he saw all the sombrero-wearing figures. “What in blazes is goin’ on here? Who are all these folks?”
Don Felipe stepped forward. “My men and I have come to help, Señor Holmes.”
“And my followers as well,” Carmen put in.
Nick jumped a little in surprise. Obviously he hadn’t noticed Carmen until now. “What the hell!”
“It’s a long story, Nick,” Ben said. “This is Carmen Almanzar . . . sometimes known as the Black Scorpion, I guess.” Ben shook his head. “It was news to me, too.”
Frank had listened with great interest to the scouts’ report. Now he asked Nick, “Are you sure that most of the Rangers and the Rurales are at the Rocking T?”
“Judging by the number of horses in the corral, I’d say they are,” Nick replied with a nod. “We stayed close by until after dark, just to make sure, and it didn’t look like they were going anywhere.”
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