McAllister 2

by Matt Chisholm

  When they had eaten briefly, McAllister drew a detailed map in the dust. The Three Soldiers peaks featured prominently. He pointed his stick to the bottom of the map and said: “We’re here. Now where do we head from here?”

  The Mexicans all looked at each other. Cautiously, Ignacio said: “We should head for the center peak of the Three Soldiers.” He looked at Charlie Arbiter and added: “Is that not so, Carlos?”

  Charlie chuckled and said: “That’ll do to be gettin’ along with, Rem.” Which told McAllister pretty plainly that the center peak was only the first landmark. He wasn’t too pleased with the answer, because he thought he could do a better job of avoiding their pursuers if he could plan every move in their journey. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to get at the truth yet. He decided to compromise and hold his peace.

  He rubbed the map out and stood up. He said: “You boys better make up your minds to tell me as soon as you can exactly where we’re headed. The longer you put it off, the less chance I have of getting you there safely.”

  That seemed to trouble them, but not enough for them to let him have their secret.

  Ignacio said with a small, knowing smile: “You will be told in time.”

  There was an ancient trail that would have taken them in a roundabout way but with easy riding almost to the foot of the center peak, but McAllister turned away from this and took a more direct route. This was one he had learned many years back when he had ridden as a guard on a Mexican smuggling train. It looked now as if it had not been used for a long time. The thorn brush had grown over it and made it difficult for them to pass even a single file.

  Although they were high, the heat was considerable until late in the afternoon. There were flies buzzing in their company all the way. When you were not swatting insects, you were wiping away sweat. McAllister could not wait till they reached a really high altitude where the cool air would rid them of the pests.

  ~*~

  They rode this trail for the remainder of the day, climbing gradually all the time, for the most part through brush which stood shoulder-high to a horse. Late in the day they reached the mountains proper and began to climb more steeply.

  McAllister led them to good water and they made camp not far away in a natural fortress of rocks. Above this there was a high tower of rocks balanced precariously one on top of the other. McAllister climbed to the top of this while the evening meal was being prepared and took a careful look around. This time he found a small creeping snake of men riding in Indian file. He reckoned they were a day-and-a-half behind. Which, he thought, was not too bad.

  When he went back to camp, he found the Mexicans cheerful. The trip was going well, they told him. He was a man who obviously knew his job and they were pleased that they had asked him to come along. When they said this, they looked doubtfully towards Jack Clegg. They didn’t take to him. Maybe it was because they knew he regarded them loftily as greasers. McAllister didn’t blame them. After all, who likes to be despised?

  He told them while they ate: “I want a guard above this place here and a guard on the horses.”

  None of them were too eager to give up their sleep, but after a good deal of talk, mostly by the chatterbox Manuel, they agreed. McAllister would take first watch above the camp and Ignacio would watch the horses. Charlie and Manuel would take over at midnight. After dinner, McAllister took his old Henry rifle and climbed to a vantage point above the camp. There was already a good snap in the air, so he put his head through a warm Navaho poncho to keep out the cold.

  Eleven

  The following day, they found the girl.

  Or, as the always suspicious McAllister wondered, did she find them?

  The circumstances would have aroused suspicion in the mind of a saint. Doubly so when he remembered why they were all here in these mountains. If the gold was a fact and not a figment of Charlie Arbiter’s ancient imagination, anything might happen. Humans, as McAllister knew only too well from past experience, would go to fantastical lengths for the sake of the stuff.

  The girl would have stopped any number of men, red, brown or white. She was that kind of girl. McAllister saw it right off, Jack Clegg showed it. Most of the Mexicans showed it. There was no doubt about it, she had universal appeal.

  If her appearance had not been enough to appeal to the men, her circumstances were. They were just right for the situation. And maybe that was what aroused McAllister’s suspicions at once.

  She was high in the rocks above them, calling and waving to them. She looked so lovely that any man could have been forgiven if he had believed her something more than mortal. A sprite of the hills, maybe. Even the projected image of a man’s lustful dreams.

  She cried out for help and she did so in Spanish.

  In a moment all the caution which McAllister had rammed into the Mexican heads of his employers was hurled to the wind, as they say. Those gallant gentlemen, who had sprung from the loins of Old Castile and the Indians of Mexico, left their horses and burros standing in the trail and clambered up to her. McAllister stayed right where he was, behind his horse and with his Henry ready in his hands. He felt maybe just the slightest bit foolish when his companions returned with the lovely girl.

  At first, he could not place her. She had the look of the Latin about her and also an Indian look; but she was too lean for a Mexican. She was the greyhound kind of woman, all fine bones and interesting angles. In spite of the bones showing (and McAllister preferred well-padded women, as did most men of the time) there was something challengingly female about her. Dressed in men’s clothes as she was now, she could not have been anything but a woman. She was, in fact, as McAllister admitted readily to himself, more woman than he had seen in one package in his life.

  Her hair was the darkest brown, bordering on black. Her eyes, in her tanned lean face, were a bright and startling blue. So might the Goths have looked after a generation in old Spain. The nose was not quite straight and was a feature of some character. Her figure, though as fatless as the rest of her, was beautifully proportioned and entirely feminine, from the high firm breasts and the slender waist to the strong hips.

  Amid all the chatter going on, she noticed McAllister. I don’t doubt she saw him as her male equivalent. Two people who thought and acted in the same way recognized each other. It may not have been love at first sight or anything as wishy-washy romantic as all that, but let’s say the sight of each other gave them both some kind of emotional shock and they both knew it. And, what was more, they both knew they both knew it. Do I make myself clear?

  She must have asked the nearest Mexican who he was. Ignacio carried out the formalities with a Mexican’s innate sense of good-manners.

  “Señor Remington McAllister.”

  She strode up to him and offered a long slender hand.

  “Pilar Lopez de Garcia,” she said. “Unmarried, but spoken for.” She said it in Spanish and such boldness in that language sounded odd. Yet it was the Spanish of a woman who had used it from birth. Not his Spanish, that of Sonora, but the softly lisping Spanish of Castilla. It sounded quaint and amusing.

  The hand he accepted was as firm as a man’s but still very much a woman’s hand. Her touch was enough to confirm his first impression. This woman was trouble. She must be or she would not have got to him so quickly.

  “Pleased to know you, ma’am,” he said in English and she at once slipped into the same language, using it too as if she had been born to it.

  “I was telling these gentlemen that you have all saved my life,” she said.

  In Spanish as fluent as hers, he said: “I’m sure it is worth saving, Dona Pilar, and I’m as sure that we are all happy to have done so.”

  The coolness of his greeting did nothing to fool her and he admired her because it did not. She knew that he was shaken to his socks. She gave him one of those little smiles that told him that he was the only one sharing it with her.

  Ignacio said: “There is a dead man up there, Rem. Is there time to bury him?�
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  McAllister said: “There must always be time to bury a dead man.”

  The girl nodded gravely. He turned to Clegg who was standing silent, watching the girl: “Jack, how about you takin’ the glass and havin’ a look at our backtrail?”

  “Sure,” said Clegg and moved away.

  McAllister did not ask about the dead man, because he never liked to ask questions if he could supply the answers himself. His answer might be different from the others anyway. So he climbed the hill and looked at the dead man.

  Beyond doubt he was a Mexican. Aged about forty, strongly made, his face tanned and cracked by years in the sun and wind. Clad in leather and wearing cartwheel spurs. Vaquero was written all over him. His gun holster was empty as was his knife scabbard. There were several knife wounds in his body, all of them jagged and brutal. Whoever had killed him had first perpetrated an obscenity on him. His manhood had been cut away. The face was distorted with pain.

  The Mexicans stood staring down at the sight in horror. McAllister looked around and saw the girl watching him with her face set like stone.

  As his eyes met hers, he said: “Apaches?”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  Apaches? The Mexicans’ horror turned to something else. Manuel went quite pale. Old Charlie Arbiter spat and exclaimed: “Them goddam Apaches.”

  “You had horses?” McAllister asked the girl.

  “Four,” she said. “We were riding change and change about.”

  It looked possible that the dead man had been connected with her. All the little details were right. She was dressed much the same as the dead man except that her shirt was silk and her chaps finely made of a light hide such as doeskin. She wore a small gun in her holster.

  “How did they kill him and not you?” he asked.

  “I ran into the rocks and hid. The Indians were searching for me when you came along.”

  McAllister reckoned he’d been a damned fool to let all these fellows come up here and leave the animals untended below.

  “Charlie,” he said, “you and the rest go back to the animals. Take the lady with you. I’ll finish up here. Move it now. Don’t let’s have a goddam conversation about it.”

  Charlie gobbled a little, then he led the way down. The girl walked away without another glance at McAllister or the body. As soon as they were out of sight, McAllister went through the Mexican’s pockets. Either he traveled with empty pockets or the Indians had been there before him. They contained nothing. McAllister moved the body to a convenient spot and then built a cairn over it. He took his time, stopping every now and then to gaze around him. When the cairn was built, he took a careful look around, circling the spot wider and wider, stopping every now and then to kneel and take a closer look at the ground.

  It was a good thirty minutes before he seemed satisfied. Then, unhurriedly, he climbed down to the others. They were mounted and ready to move. Jack Clegg was back in his saddle. He told McAllister that he had seen nothing.

  Pilar Lopez was mounted on a spare horse, riding bare-back. Ignacio said she had refused a saddle, saying that she had ridden bareback many times and it was no hardship to her. Ignacio started to get rather confidential about her. Did McAllister know who she was? She was the daughter of a very great landowner, a wealthy man who owned land south and north of the Border. What did McAllister think she was doing in wild country like this with no more than one man with her?

  McAllister smiled and said: “Maybe we should ask her, Ignacio.”

  “But she is a rico,” he protested. “When did her kind ever answer questions of folk such as us?”

  McAllister touched the side of his nose and looked wise. Ignacio was quite impressed. He went to ride on ahead, but suddenly turned back and asked: “Did you look for sign where the man was killed, Remington?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Quite a bit.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m not too sure yet. Maybe I should think about it.”

  Ignacio looked suspicious and said: “You are working for us, remember. You are bound to tell us what you know.”

  “Such is the art of reading sign,” McAllister told him, “that man cannot always be sure of what he has seen.”

  Ignacio looked doubtful and said: “Well, tell me this—was it Indians who killed that man?”

  “That’s the question I keep asking myself, Don Ignacio.”

  Ignacio sighed. “When you find an answer, be good enough to inform me. I can only hope that it will not take you too long.” He rode on somewhat in a huff.

  At the rear of the line of riders, McAllister was quietly amused to see the girl falling back with a wonderful play of casualness until finally she was riding at his side. She looked up in surprise as if he were the last person she expected to find there.

  “Why, hello,” she said in English.

  He put the question to her bluntly. “Dona Pilar, how far do you intend to ride with us?”

  She looked faintly surprised. Her neat dark eyebrows were raised, her clear eyes turned on him fully for a brief moment. “Why, as far as you will allow me to stay with you. I am in your hands.”

  “You aren’t at all curious about where we’re going.”

  “Should I be?”

  “Yes, I think you should. We’re heading straight into the mountains, directly for Apache country. Doesn’t that make you nervous?”

  “No more nervous than I was when we were attacked by the Indians. It is a great relief to be in the company of Christians.”

  “What was the name of the man who was killed back there?”

  There was real surprise in her eyes when she turned her head to look at him again. “Why do you ask?”

  “Did you know the man?”

  “What extraordinary questions!”

  “But easy ones to answer surely? And quite natural for me to ask. After all I know nothing about you.”

  She stared ahead for a moment, then said: “His name was Jesus Morales. A common name. Like Joseph Smith. I could be inventing it. But he was a man who rode for my family all his life. A good man.”

  She showed no sorrow. Maybe she wasn’t the kind of woman to show emotion. He hoped that was the explanation for her cold face.

  “Did he fight before they took him?”

  “He killed one of them.”

  That was possible. There had been a lot of blood up there in the rocks and it may not have all come from him. The Indians could have carried their dead away with them.

  “I looked at him carefully. He was vaquero. His hands told me that. He was a fine-looking man. Intelligent.”

  “That’s perceptive of you.”

  “Was he no more than just a vaquero?” She got the point and looked straight at him again.

  “He was a very good vaquero and he was a real hombre del campo. But he was no more than that except a loyal friend who died for me. Does that satisfy you?”

  He didn’t answer, because he didn’t know. There was something wrong here. He reined in so that the girl’s horse would pull ahead and he could watch her. Sometimes he came on the truth by staying still and doing nothing. He had the feeling that eyes watched from the rocks above; every step the gold-seekers took deeper into the mountains was witnessed. Suddenly, the rattle of the hoofs on rocks, the music of the bridle chains and gear, all seemed loud enough to be heard from the peaks themselves.

  The center peak now loomed high. For the first time it was nearer them than either of the other peaks. He remembered what this one was called—Hernando. The others were Pepe to the left and Juan to the right. He never knew why they were called so. They all possessed characters of their own. All three were quite different in close up. Hernando was the grim, dark one. Up there were the mysterious caves. Directly above them now was the great green shelf that gave way higher to the pinyons and then to short grass and rock. High above hung the snowcap beneath a clear azure sky. He wondered with some foreboding if o
ld Charlie Arbiter intended to lead them into the maze of caves up there. McAllister always reckoned the Indian part of him took over in situations like this. Maybe it was the Indian part which discouraged him from going up there into the caves. The Indians always said that the spirits of the slain in battle were up there forever watching the futile antics of the silly humans below.

  Would the Mexicans consent to go up there? There were a great many puzzles here. He knew that there were a number of unknown elements in the problem which lay ahead of him. As he rode he thought through every detail that he could remember of his talk with Jack Clegg through the cell wall. In his mind’s eye, he took a close look at Sheriff Southern again. He combed through all the small details of his meeting with Charlie Arbiter in the saloon. He had a powerful feeling that he had forgotten some essential point. Now the Indian side of his character stood him in good stead. Patience took over; the patience of the hunter who could remain quite motionless beside a mountain water-hole for the wild animal to come, not moving so much as a finger. He smiled when he remembered how many Indians he had out waited in his time.

  They entered a long, narrow canyon in which there was water and good grass. Here he called a halt. He wanted to make a dry camp that night, so he wanted the animals watered and fed here. He would go ahead and check that their tracks could be lost again up ahead. Charlie Arbiter raised an objection this time. Let one of their number go with him. He could have argued about it, but there was no point. It was no skin off his nose if they all came with him. This time cousin Salvador would go with him.