Lookout Hill (9781101606735)

by Cotton, Ralph W.

  Chapter 2

  Huddled behind the boulder Bellibar had been watching so closely, an old Mexican by the name of Herjico Herrera wrapped his arms around his young granddaughter, Erlina, and her black-and-white-speckled goat, Felipe. He held one thin, weathered hand over the mouth of the girl and the other over the mouth of the goat. As the sound of the horse’s hooves clacked across the rocky gravelly bank and faded out of hearing along the trail, the old man sighed in relief, lowered one hand from the girl’s mouth and crossed himself. Behind him a donkey stood against the rock as quiet as a statue.

  Erlina wiped her hand across her lips in exasperation.

  “Abuelo, I am thirteen years old. You do not have to treat me like a child,” she said.

  “Thirteen is not grown-up. It is only old enough to get you into grown-up trouble,” the old grandfather said in a harsh whisper. He stared warily in the direction the horseman had taken.

  Felipe the goat wiggled his head until he freed himself from the old man’s hand. Then the little goat shook his head and flicked his ears back and forth.

  “And this pampered little devil,” the old man added. “It is only by God’s grace that this hombre did not come up and kill the three of us.” He drew back a threatening hand toward the goat. But the goat lowered its knobby head, bleated out a warning and charged against the old man’s hand. A cheap metal bell held around the goat’s neck by a stripe of rawhide clacked vigorously.

  Erlina giggled childlike behind her cupped hand, seeing the little goat appear to run in place, held in check by her grandfather’s palm.

  “Stop it, you little fool!” Herjico whispered harshly to the goat, knowing that removing his hand from its head would only invite it to charge again. “By the saints, I will have you for dinner!”

  Erlina wrapped her arms around the goat’s thin neck, pulling it back to keep it from charging her grandfather again. She hugged the goat to her lovingly.

  “No, no, little Felipe,” she said to the goat, clasping a hand over its twitching ears, “mi abuelo does not mean it. He would never eat you.” She turned her dark eyes up to the old man. “Do you mean it, Grandfather?”

  “No, I do not mean it,” the old man said, standing, letting out a patient breath. “I would not eat little Felipe…not today anyway.” He dusted the seat of his baggy peasant trousers and stared down at the trail winding out of sight away from the stream. “But tomorrow, who can say?” He reached back and took the donkey’s rope in hand.

  Erlina did not push the matter any further. She stood up, turned the goat loose and stared down at the stream bank.

  “Abuelo,” she asked, “is it now safe for me to take little Felipe down so he can drink?”

  Her grandfather looked down at her and smiled to himself.

  “Always, this worthless little goat is first with you,” he said. He smiled and brushed a strand of raven black hair from her forehead. He noted how he no longer had to stoop down as far as he used to in order to touch her face. His granddaughter was quickly growing into a young woman while the years of his life slipped past him cloaked in inevitable silence.

  “Sí, we can take the goat and the donkey down to drink, but we must be cautious,” he said, putting aside his inner thoughts. “We do not know if the killer will return.”

  “But we must have water,” the girl said. “Little Felipe, that is.” She smiled.

  “We will have water,” said Herjico. “But I must first see to the dead.”

  “What will you do with his body, Grandfather?” she asked.

  “I do not know, Erlina,” he said, leading the surefooted donkey behind him “but we must always respect the dead when they are placed in our hands.”

  They started walking down the rocky hillside, the feisty little goat bounding along in front of them.

  “You have no shovel, no way to bury him,” the young girl said. She walked a few feet in front of the old man. Seeing her walk reminded him so much of her mother, his deceased daughter, Anna, that for a moment he thought that he had stepped back in time. He had to make a conscious effort to bring himself back to the present.

  “I will pull him from the water and lay stones over him,” the old man said.

  “You will say the prayer for the dead over him?” the girl asked, half turning to him, the top of her thin cotton dress hanging loosely off of her bony shoulder.

  “Sí, I will say a prayer over him, but not the prayer for the dead,” the old man replied. “It is only a priest—a sacerdote of the mother church who can recite the prayer for the dead. For me to do so would not be apropiado in the eyes of God.”

  “With you, it is always God who is first,” the girl said, referring to his mention of her and the little goat. “Like me and Felipe…?” She left her question hanging playfully.

  “Sí,” her grandfather said with a tired smile, “for me, God is first.”

  “Like me and Felipe?” she asked again with a playful part smile.

  “All right, if you must hear me say it, ‘like you and Felipe,’” the old man said. He held up a seasoned finger for emphasis. “Except that one day soon you will become a woman, and you will outgrow this little goat. One must never outgrow God.”

  “I will never forget little Felipe,” Erlina said with her child’s laugh, hurrying on down the hillside behind Felipe.

  “I did not say you will forget him, granddaughter,” the old man said, lifting his voice for her to hear as she moved farther away. “I only said that you will outgrow him….” His voice lowered to himself as he added, “As we outgrow so many things in our lives.”

  He smiled, shook his head and walked on down, watching her stop at the water’s edge, the goat already standing in the water, its short tail swishing back and forth.

  “While you drink I will wade downstream and search for the man’s body,” the old man said as he reached the water and turned loose of the donkey’s rope. He stopped to roll up his trouser legs.

  “Oh no, Grandfather! Look! It is him!” the girl cried out, pointing her finger toward the wounded gunman who dragged himself up along the other side of the stream, a hand clutched to his bleeding chest.

  “Stay here!” the old man instructed, hurrying past her into the rushing water. “Keep the goat back out of my way.”

  Erlina watched her grandfather hurry across the stream, pull the man to his feet and loop his arm across his thin shoulders. The goat stood watching, its short tail swinging.

  “Come back, Felipe,” Erlina said, seeing the goat take a charging stance toward her grandfather as the old man helped the wounded gunman toward the stream bank. But the young goat wouldn’t listen. Erlina had to step into the water and grab the animal by its thin neck to keep it from butting her grandfather’s legs.

  “Hel—help me,” the wounded gunman rasped as the old man lowered him to the ground.

  “Yes, we will help you. Now lie still,” said Herjico, seeing the blood flowing from only one bullet hole in the gunman’s chest. He remembered that he had heard the other man shoot three times. He crossed himself quickly, then stooped beside the gunman, ripped his wet shirt off and began tearing it into strips for bandages.

  With the wounded man’s shirt removed, the old Mexican could now see why he had only one bullet hole in his chest. The man wore a large metal medallion strung on a rawhide strip around his neck. One flattened bullet was stuck in an ornately embossed image of Jesus on the cross. The slug had welded itself to Jesus’ feet. The other bullet had hit the cross, sliced off across Jesus’ right hand and left a deep graze along the gunman’s ribs.

  “By witness of the holy saints!” the old man said, crossing himself again. “God has truly saved you from the mouth of hell on this day.”

  Siebert managed to grasp the old Mexican’s forearm with a weak and bloody hand.

  “Old man,” he said in a pained voice, “God’s got nothing to do with this. Get me plugged up…’fore I bleed out.”

  “Sí, of course,” the old Mexican said
. “I will get you bandaged and take you somewhere for help.”

  “A doctor?” Siebert asked as the old man wadded a strip of wet cloth and pressed it to bleeding wound.

  “No, there is not a doctor anywhere in these hills,” the old Mexican said.

  “No towns, then,” Siebert said. “I’ve got men everywhere wanting me dead.”

  What he meant was lawmen who wanted him dead. The old Mexican understood.

  “There is a healing woman nearby. I take you to her,” said the old man.

  “A healing woman?” Siebert asked.

  “Sí,” said the old Mexican, “a healing woman.”

  “I’ve heard of these so-called healing women in the hill country,” Siebert said. “They’re all witches.”

  “Some call them brujas, but it is not true.” The old Mexican shrugged his thin shoulders. “She is a healing woman. She can heal your gunshot wounds, señor.”

  Siebert gave a dark, pained chuckle.

  “Seen to by a witch…?” he said. “Is that…what I’ve come to in life?”

  “A healing woman,” the old man corrected him. “And some say this woman is better than a doctor in matters like these.” The old man added, “She is very quiet afterward about those she heals.”

  “Now you’re…talking,” Siebert said in a fading voice. Even in his weakened state, he managed to pull the hideout Colt from his belt. He brought the gun around and let it flop onto his leg. “Let’s find this woman…get me fixed up.”

  Leaving his partner for dead, Bobby Hugh Bellibar had ridden hard, higher into the rocky Mexican hills. Two hours had passed when he stopped to rest the tired animal. He watched from cover while a patrol of rurales in unmatched uniforms and peasant clothes rode past on the trail below him going in the opposite direction. He waited in silence until they rode out of sight before turning his horse from the cover of sagging pine branches back to the trail.

  But as he turned his eyes to the trail ahead of him, he spotted two horsemen sitting on their horses, staring at him from a distance of thirty feet. Guns drawn and cocked at him, the two hard-looking riders sat grinning lazily.

  “Do you see what I see, Paco?” the Texas gunman Saginaw Sparks said to the Mexican gunman seated beside him.

  “What,” said Paco Reyes, “a man who is hiding from the rurales? A man who has been caught off guard by two tough hombres and is wondering if this is to be his last day on earth?” His grin widened. “Perhaps a man who has not been paying attention to the things going on right under his—”

  “So you do see him,” said Saginaw, cutting a long story short. He was clearly a little put out with the Mexican’s ramblings.

  “Sí, I see him,” Paco summed up. He raised his cocked Starr pistol a little toward Bellibar. “Now I think I kill him.”

  “Hold on, Paco,” said Saginaw, “where’s your manners? Never kill a sumbitch before you introduce yourself. That ain’t the Texas way I was raised.”

  Paco let out a breath and relaxed a little in his saddle.

  “Pay my Mexican pard here no mind, mister,” Saginaw Sparks said to Bobby Bellibar. “He is what I’ve come to regard as violence-prone.”

  Bellibar let his free hand lower a little, hoping to get it nearer to his gun butt without being noticed.

  “I know you, Saginaw Sparks,” he said flatly to the hard-eyed gunman, pointing at Sparks with his left hand.

  “Do you, now?” said Sparks, his grin fading a little. “Because if you do, you’re bound to know I don’t like a finger aimed at me when I don’t know where it’s been.”

  Bellibar lowered his left arm. His right hand had managed to ease a few inches closer to his holstered Colt. He could make a good grab from here when the time came—if the time came.

  “I’m Bobby Hugh Bellibar,” the young gunman said. “I was told by Wilton Marrs I’d be welcome in Lookout Hill, if ever I needed a place to lie low.”

  “It is called Colina de Mirador,” Paco the Mexican corrected him, saying the name in Spanish.

  “Only if I’m speaking Mex,” Bellibar said with a hard stare. “Am I welcome there or not?”

  “Well, now, that all depends, Bobby Hugh Bellibar,” Saginaw Sparks said in a mocking tone.

  “On…?” said Bellibar, almost welcoming the notion that he’d likely have to kill these two any second.

  “On how much money you’ve got, of course,” said Sparks, wagging his big Colt a little.

  “That’s a matter I’ll talk to Marrs about,” Bellibar said. He looked back and forth from one face to the other, judging which man he’d kill first once his hand made its plunge for his holstered Colt. He wished he had time to jerk Siebert’s big Remington from behind his belt, see how it handled at this distance. But this wasn’t the time to get playful, he decided.

  “If you’re going to talk to Marrs, you best talk loud,” said Saginaw. “He’s going to have to hear you all the way from hell.”

  Bellibar just stared.

  “That’s right,” said Sparks. “He broke out with lead poison in a half dozen places—killed him deader than hell.”

  “Who shot him?” Bellibar asked. Get them talking, wait for a slipup, then move quick….

  The Mexican and the Texan looked at each other above their cocked and pointed guns.

  Here it goes! Bellibar thought, seeing their eyes off him for a second. He started to jerk the Colt, but before he made his move Saginaw Sparks looked back at him and shrugged.

  “We all shot him, more or less,” he said. “Nobody liked him much, you might say.”

  “And if you are his amigo,” said Paco, “nobody will like you much either, hombre. You see how that works?” He grinned and flashed a sidelong glance at Saginaw Sparks, the two with their eyes off him again.

  “Yep, I think so,” said Bellibar. This time he didn’t hesitate. His hand went for his Colt as he spoke.

  The two gunmen saw him make his move, but it was too late. Even with their guns drawn and cocked, Bellibar had them cold—so cold he fanned his shots, three shots left to right. The first shot knocked Sparks in a backward flip off his horse’s rump. The second twisted the Mexican up out of his saddle like a corkscrew. The third shot went wild, Bellibar only needing it to keep his quick fanning rhythm going.

  He stared at the two downed gunmen through a haze of rising gun smoke. Both of their spooked horses bolted away a few feet and stopped and stood piqued, ready to bolt again. He kept his left hand cupped above his Colt for a second, ready to fan the hammer again.

  That was foolish, he told himself, but he smiled faintly in any case. He didn’t give a damn. Sometimes foolish was the best hand in the game.

  He saw Saginaw Sparks was still alive. He struggled in the dirt, turning onto his back, sitting up, gun in hand, his legs spread wide.

  What have we here…?

  Blood covered the front of Sparks’ shirt; a wide trickle of it ran down from his lips. He raised the gun and fired. The bullet sliced past Bellibar’s shoulder.

  This will do, Bellibar told himself. He shoved the Colt down into his holster and poised his hand near the big Remington behind his belt. Another bullet exploded toward him from Sparks’ wobbling gun. It whistled past his head as he grabbed the Remington from his belt, raised it and fired.

  The shot knocked Sparks into another backflip. He landed facedown in the dirt, the back of his head blown away, a mist of blood settling above him. The Remington’s loud blast caused Bellibar’s horse to spook and spin a full circle beneath him before he settled the animal with a firm hand on the reins. The other two horses bolted a few more feet, then settled again.

  Bellibar turned the Remington in his hand, appraising it.

  Pretty damn good, he had to admit. Not as smooth on the upswing as his Colt, but then he’d had it stuck down behind his belt—a rough draw to begin with. He twirled the big gun on his trigger finger and caught it with its barrel straight up; smoke still curled from it, leaving a silvery gray circle in the air. He looked
over at the back of Sparks’ open bloody skull.

  Heavy, but hard hitting, he told himself, looking the Remington up and down. All right, then. He shoved the Remington back behind his belt and gigged his horse over to where the other two horses stood staring at him warily. He knew the rurales had to have heard the shooting, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “Easy, fellows,” he said to the horses as he gathered their loose reins. “We’re all friends here.” He turned the animals beside him and led them over to the bodies on the ground.

  Chapter 3

  The Ranger had heard the shots in the distance on the trail ahead of him, but he kept Black Pot and the outlaw’s tired horse at the same pace rather than pushing them any harder on the high, rocky terrain. A half hour had passed before he stopped both horses and looked down from the cover of pines onto the gravelly stream bank. Winchester rifle in hand, he nudged Black Pot forward, leading the outlaw’s abandoned horse by its reins beside him.

  “Keep it easy,” he murmured to the side horse, drawing the reins taut to keep it from hurrying ahead to the water. He stopped a few feet short of some disturbed gravel. Stepping down from the saddle, he led the animals closer and recognized an assortment of foot- and hoofprints. He gave slack on the horses’ reins and allowed them to step into the shallow water and drink while he examined the stream bank.

  A donkey, a goat, he said to himself, his gloved fingertips touching the prints lightly. Then he detected a small human footprint and a larger print, both made by the flat imprint of a sandal. A child and a grown-up, he deduced—both Mexican judging by the flat rectangular sole of the sandal. He followed the prints back and forth with his eyes, trying to decipher what had taken place here. He stopped suddenly when he came upon a watery streak of blood and the imprint of a man lying prone in the pliable loam. He saw the imprint of one lathed riding boot, its heel dug into the bank, the other lying on its side.