Hart glanced back towards the adobes of Romero. ‘An’ you reckon these folk are ready to hear your word?’
Edwards looked at him, but turned away and carried on talking to Alice. ‘I do jobs in the town, anything, odd things for food. The money I have left I spend on this wood, I bought the hammer and nails. I work on the church when I can. Soon when you ride down into the town you’ll be able to see the Cross of the Lord over the roofs of the buildings.’
He stopped, blushing at the excitement that had stolen into his voice. Embarrassed also, Alice stood up and walked a little way off.
‘Are you staying here,’ asked Edwards, ‘or on your way to somewhere else?’
‘Maybe I’m ridin’ into Rancho Nuevo.’
A frown formed on the preacher’s face. ‘I’ve heard of that place.’ He glanced at Alice, her back towards them. ‘You can’t be going there with her?’ he added quietly.
Hart shook his head. ‘You still sleepin’ out in the open?’
‘No. There’s an old adobe that had been left abandoned. Except by the rats. It’s crumbling slowly away but there’s a roof and it’s better than nothing. Why? If you want somewhere to stay, you’d both be more than welcome.’
‘Not me. Just the girl.’
Alice heard him and turned. ‘No.’ Her hands were clenched at her sides and her head jutted forwards. ‘No, I’m staying with you. Wherever you go.’
Hart went to her and held her by the shoulders, dark eyes staring up at him. ‘You know what I have to do. You know it wouldn’t be safe.’
‘I don’t care!’ she cried.
Hart tightened his grip. ‘I do.’
She resisted, teeth biting down into her lip, then relaxed against him. ‘All right,’ she said softly. ‘All right.’
He held her for a few moments, then released her and turned away. Virgil Edwards had taken up his hammer and was standing watching them.
‘You’d better show us where this place is.’
Edwards nodded, set down the hammer again, and pointed out the direction to go.
None of them noticed the sound of a rider entering town from the north, coming along the same trail that Hart and Alice had traveled. No one noticed him at all, only the one-eyed saloon keeper who had fallen asleep in his chair and was woken abruptly by the touch of a Smith & Wesson .44 being pressed against the side of his head.
Chapter Fourteen
Wes Hart leaned back against the crumbling adobe wall. The sound of a night bird made him look up for an instant. In the stillness he could hear the faint movement of water in the creek, the breathing of Alice and the preacher as they slept. The moon was full and the sky clear; there were patterns in the stars that Hart couldn’t read. He pulled the oiled cloth through the barrel of the Colt for a final time.
When the pistol was ready and back in his holster, he checked the action of the Henry, flicking the extra rear sight up with his thumb and taking careful aim at the brightest of the stars.
Hart broke the 10-gauge Remington and pushed two loads of shot down into the barrels. He clicked it back and gripped the weapon tight in his right hand, the weight and balance fine with the length sawn down to a little over a foot.
The wind that rode from the north-west was keen. Hart got to his feet and walked over to where Clay was standing, already saddled. He unfastened the Indian blanket from behind the saddle and draped it diagonally over his body, over the leather waistcoat and rough wool shirt. He took the Apache knife from the pommel and slipped it down into his right boot.
He was going into Rancho Nuevo and he was going in alone. If the men he was looking for were there then there would be little time for words, events had passed them by. His humiliation at being taken so easily, the attack on the girl, the killing of her father. Hart had been hired to do a job and he had failed. So far. It was time to make amends.
The fingers of his right hand touched, briefly, the mother-of-pearl grip on the Colt .45 and he slipped the safety thong over the hammer.
Again a night bird broke the air.
Hart stood at the doorway to the adobe, looking in. Alice’s small form was huddled against the side wall, her hands clutching the blanket tight in sleep. He could see the fall of dark hair across the top of her pale face. As he watched some memory twitched her body and she pulled the blanket tighter.
Hart turned away and mounted the grey, turning her head towards the border, towards Rancho Nuevo.
The buildings had been set in a curve, facing inwards like a horseshoe. Around them had been built a stockade and inside that, closing the horseshoe, a low adobe wall.
The buildings themselves were flat-roofed, wide and low - a man much over six feet had to stand inside with a stoop. What had been the ranch house was longer than the rest and stood at the center, other, smaller buildings on either side of it. Men came and went and the cots and bunk beds that were lined up inside were used by whoever laid a claim to them. Sometimes they slept alone and sometimes they shared their straw mattresses with one or other of the women who drifted in from Romero or the other small towns around. The women stayed as long as there were men prepared to share a little of the proceeds from whatever robbery they had pulled and as long as the beatings they had to take were not too harsh. When they left their places were soon taken by others.
The population of Rancho Nuevo was never stable, ever-changing. Men could come and go with little question - unless what they did or said drew attention to themselves.
A year ago a United States marshal had ridden into Rancho Nuevo. He had been looking for a man who had robbed a stage of its mail and killed the driver and guard. The marshal had followed his trail to Rancho Nuevo - not out again. When the sun had risen that morning it had shown the marshal’s body folded over the side of the well. There were knife wounds deep into his back and side and along the rear of his left thigh, almost to the bone. The blood from where his throat had been slit had dripped down into the well and stained the water red.
No one had heard a shout or struggle; no one had seen what had happened. Men lifted the marshal from the well and carried him to the stockade and threw him over it and left him laying there. Soon birds of prey and carrion darkened the sky with the dipping of their black wings. Coyotes and wild dogs came down from the hills. Only when the stench grew unbearable did someone bury what was left.
No lawman came in his wake.
The man who sat in the rocker outside the end adobe wasn’t a lawman. At least, not the kind the U.S. government would recognize. Anyone could get to be a detective. All you had to do was prove to the agency that you were good enough. R. G. Fowler had proved it a number of times but most of them were pretty long ago. He thought maybe it needed proving again - and not just to the Didion Detective Agency.
He took the flask from his coat pocket and set it to his lips. Beyond the wall and the stockade the sky was gradually beginning to lighten. He wondered if he’d been right about when Hart would make his play. Thought he likely had. If it had been himself riding in that was how he would have done it.
Ten, twenty minutes and then he heard the sound of a lone rider coming from the direction of the border.
A smile lit Fowler’s eyes; he ran the end of his tongue round his mouth and pushed the fingers of one hand through his dark, thinning hair. He swallowed some bourbon and fastened the flask, dropping it back into his pocket. He was aware of the weight of the Smith & Wesson, holstered over his heart.
Turkey lay on his belly, one arm trapped beneath his hollow rib cage. His fringed coat was stretched on top of his blanket to keep out the cold. These past six or seven years, Turkey had felt the cold more than a little.
He snored as he slept, a broken snort of a snore that jarred his head occasionally with its fierceness. Through his mind passed a succession of times and places, unclear, one merging with the other, the years toppling over one another with a speed that made his heart beat faster even in sleep.
There was no one else in the same building as
Turkey - Little Fats had begun the night on the opposite bunk but the old timer’s snores had been worse than he was used to and had driven him outside and now he lay on a mattress that had been stretched on the floor a few feet away from Lee Sternberg’s bed.
Lee and the woman slept facing one another, her legs still wrapped around his waist and her arms about his chest. After making love they had fallen asleep immediately, already drunk with an evening of laughing and dancing and raw whiskey and wine. The woman had heavy breasts, thick, dark hair which now partly covered her face. A pair of purple marks in a mouth shape showed clearly on the curve of her shoulder.
When she half-awoke and tried to move, Lee shifted uneasily and his fingers caught at her hair, holding her fast. She moved again and his hand found her breast and then she was still.
The stirrings woke Little Fats and there was sweat on his face and in the palms of his hands and he knew that he had been dreaming of his Ute wife. He had not thought of her for a long time. He threw back the blanket and sat round. Through the open window he could see that it was close to dawn. He stood up a little shakily and reached for his pants and gunbelt.
As he was doing that, Hart was tethering his horse to a broken piece of stockade fence. He lifted the sawn-off shotgun from its holster and transferred it to his left hand so that it was covered by the blanket draped over his shoulder. He thumbed the thong away from the hammer of the Colt.
Hart pushed his hat brim an inch higher and looked at the outlines of the buildings of the Rancho Nuevo. Behind them in the corral a horse whinnied and shifted restlessly, another answering its sound. There was no way of knowing where Lee Sternberg and the others were. His eyes passed over a succession of empty doorways and windows. When they reached the last building he saw a rocking chair set outside it, still and empty.
He went quietly towards the nearest door.
There were four beds, four bodies. Hart tried to see enough of their faces to recognize who they might be. The man closest to the door pushed an arm above his blanket and rolled over on to his side. Hart crouched beside him and drew the Colt.
The touch of cold steel brought the man to his senses; a hand tight over his mouth prevented him from crying out.
‘Outside,’ Hart whispered.
The man’s eyes flickered and rolled and he failed to move.
‘Outside or I’ll blow your head all over the wall.’
The head nodded quickly and Hart moved the gun away by six inches. The man got up and glanced at his sleeping companions. Hart motioned him through the door.
Outside he pushed the man back against the wall and pressed the barrel of the Colt into his stomach.
‘Sternberg?’
The man looked back at him without understanding.
‘Silver-grey hair and a scar.’
There was no stopping the sudden sign of recognition in the man’s eyes.
‘Where is he?’
‘I can’t...’ The voice began too loud and Hart jammed the gun hard into the stomach and clapped his left hand across the lower half of the man’s face.
‘Keep it down!’ he hissed. He withdrew his hand. ‘Now tell me where and tell it right.’
The man nodded his head.
‘Past the main buildin’. There’s two close together. He’s in one of them. Him and the two as rode in with him. I don’t know which.’
When the man stopped talking he wondered what Hart would do now he had the information.
‘Turn around.’
Hart swiftly reversed the Colt and struck the man on the back of his skull with the butt. His face ground against the rough wall and as he slid down it Hart caught him and lowered his body noiselessly to the ground.
Straightening, Hart thought he heard footsteps and he set his back to the wall and listened hard but there was nothing other than the wind.
He holstered his gun and moved off in the direction he’d been told.
Again, the suggestion of a sound: again, nothing.
Hart stepped to the first doorway of the two smaller buildings and listened to the snores from inside. He lay his left hand against the door and pushed it carefully back, hesitating when it creaked slightly, but the noise was lost in another snore.
He could see that the man laying there was Turkey and he nodded to himself and let the door swing slowly back. It was Sternberg he wanted first. Sternberg he had to confront.
A ragged curtain hung over the doorway and Hart put his right hand to his Colt and brushed the curtain aside with his left. He went in fast and silent, sufficient light to see the empty mattress with the blanket thrown back, the bed with two bodies entwined.
‘Wake up!’
The woman jerked and threw up an arm and Lee Sternberg came to more slowly, head thick with drink and sleep, shaking himself and peering towards the doorway.
‘Who the fuck?’
‘Just listen.’
‘Jesus! You! Why did you...?’
‘I said listen.’
The woman tried to move her left leg from under the weight of Lee’s body. Panic flooded her dark eyes at the shadowed sight in the doorway - the tall figure with the blanket draped across it and the hat angled down.
‘You’ve got one way out,’ said Hart. ‘I take the silver and I take you along with it.’
The laugh started low in Lee’s belly and emerged rich and loud.
‘You can’t hope to get out of here in one piece. You couldn’t even if you turned and ran now like a scared dog. Never mind takin’ out me nor any silver.’
‘That’s all you got to say?’
Lee laughed again. ‘That’s all.’
‘Then I guess you better get so’s you can use your gun.’
Lee gestured with his left hand, open. ‘You can see I ain’t got no gun here.’
The woman wriggled her leg free and opened her mouth to scream.
‘Get her out of there!’ snapped Hart.
‘Sure.’
Lee shifted his left arm over as if to push her and at the same time his right dived under the pillow for his pistol. Hart could only guess that part of the movement, the bodies shielding it from his sight. He dropped into a crouch and his own right hand began to blur through an arc towards his Colt.
Midway, fingers held it fast.
‘Behind you!’
The call came almost simultaneously.
Hart struggled to free himself and half-turned, recognizing the flat roundness of Little Fats’ face. In the corner of his left eye he saw the lurch of Lee’s body.
‘Kill him!’ Lee screamed at Little Fats.
Hart knew Little Fats had his gun drawn. He shook the blanket clear from the shotgun as he fought to free himself from Little Fats’ grasp.
Another shape moved at the far side of his vision and a shot rang out from less than a dozen feet away. The fingers were torn from his arm and Little Fats was blasted away and his body rammed against the adobe wall.
Hart squeezed the finger of his left hand and loosed off both barrels of the shotgun.
Arm free he finished his draw and covered the bearlike figure of Fowler who moved alongside him, smoke drifting from the barrel of his snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .44.
‘Thanks,’ said Hart.
Fowler nodded: ‘Yeah.’
On either side of them men were beginning to call out and stir.
‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Fowler, staring inside. ‘For the love of Jesus Christ!’
Lee Sternberg had been lifted from the bed and thrown back against the far wall. The front of his chest had been shredded through and the lower part of his face torn away. Bloody fragments of tissue scattered over the floor and the blankets of the bed. Lee was hunched to one side, legs stretched out nakedly in front of him. The silver of his hair was blotched with red. The pistol lay unfired between his legs and the bed.
To the far side of the bed the woman crouched on her knees, breasts hanging down, her back and hair, too, flecked with the dead man’s blood.
&nb
sp; “There’s goin’ to be all hell loose any minute,’ called Fowler, looking round.
Hart was searching through the saddlebags in the far corner of the room. Satisfied, he picked two out and threw one over to where Fowler was standing.
They stepped out into the coming light. The edge of the adobe wall was rimmed with orange. Men to left and right were hurrying towards them.
‘Corral!’ called Hart and ducked into the narrow space between the two adobes, Fowler following fast upon his heels. Several shots sang out behind them, bullets screeching off the adobe walls.
The two men ran hard, Fowler short of breath already and the air pumping harshly from his lungs. As Hart ducked between the rails of the corral fence a tall figure moved out from behind one of the horses with an old Navy Colt in his hand. A tall old man wearing nothing but patched and torn long Johns and holding an old Navy Colt.
Without slowing his run, Hart drew and fired.
Turkey slammed sideways into the rump of the horse and pitched forward on to his face.
‘Reminds me of a time...’
Dust swirled round his head as Hart and Fowler jumped on to a couple of horses and galloped them at the side of the corral fence.
‘Reminds me...’
Blood slivered from the corner of Turkey’s mouth and he was finished.
Bullets followed Hart and Fowler as they jumped the fence and swung the horses wide of the stockade. In a minute’s time, Hart was jumping from the bare back of the mount and freeing the grey mare, setting her in motion with a shout and a slap as he slotted his left boot into the stirrup. He turned in the saddle and emptied his Colt in the direction of the adobe wall and the men beyond.
A couple of miles of hard riding later it was clear that there was to be no pursuit.
‘Damn this,’ said Fowler, leaning his body backwards. ‘I ain’t no Indian to be ridin’ bareback this way. My ass feels like it’s been kicked by an army of mules.’
Hart grinned and slowed Clay to a walk. ‘Better’n bein’ shot full of holes back in Rancho Nuevo.’
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