To the front, four rectangles of yellowish orange light marked the windows and a lantern glowed above the door.
Dupoix, his eyes accustomed to dark places, noted the usual corrals and scattered outbuildings, including what he took to be a long bunkhouse with low walls but a steeply pitched shingle roof.
A man stepped out of the house and looked around as though he’d lost his way. The man saw Dupoix, stuck his hands in his pockets, and sauntered toward him.
Since the passing of the Apaches the land had been at peace, and the rancher, if that’s who he was, carried no firearms. When he was a couple of yards from Dupoix he stopped and said, “Howdy.”
He was a sandy-haired man, showing gray, short and stocky with a horseman’s bowed legs. His ragged cavalry mustache hung over his top lip, and his good-humored eyes held a smile and no hint of suspicion.
“Howdy,” Dupoix said, sitting his saddle as courtesy demanded.
“What can I do for you, mister?” the man said.
“Name’s Baptiste Dupoix and—”
“Good God, boy, who saddled you with a name like that?”
“My ma and pa, I guess.”
“I’m Luke Wright and you’re on my spread.” The rancher grinned. “An’ my handle ain’t near as heavy a burden as your’n.”
“I guess not,” Dupoix said.
“State your business,” Wright said.
“I’m here on the behest of a friend of mine. Texas Ranger Hank Cannan.”
“Heard of him,” Wright said. “All shot up and like to die was what I was told.”
“He’s recovering.”
“Glad to hear it. What can I do fer him?”
“He needs your help, Mr. Wright.”
“Call me Luke. What kind of help?”
“It’s a mite long in the telling.”
“Then light an’ set. My old lady has coffee on the bile.”
Dupoix’s boots squelched in mud as he followed Wright toward the ranch house.
“That’s a nice-looking stud you got there,” the rancher said. “Never much cared for grays myself, got a mighty strong smell about them, a bad thing when the Apaches raided this way.”
Then, before Dupoix could answer, “The barn is out back, plenty of hay and a sack of oats, if you’d like to take care of your hoss first.”
“I reckon not, Luke, I won’t stay long. I have another ranch to visit.”
Wright shrugged. “Suit yourself... uh, Baptist.”
“Baptiste.”
The rancher opened the door.
“Whatever you say.”
Dupoix stepped into a cozy cabin, clean and polished as the plump, middle-aged woman sitting by the fire could make it.
She looked up at Dupoix and smiled.
The two men with her didn’t.
One was a healthy-looking man in his early forties, the other a frowning hard case with a tough face and a gun on his hip.
Wright made the introductions. The woman was his wife Julia; the healthy man was his foreman, Aaron Park, who seemed friendly but wary of strangers.
“And this is—”
“George Cassidy,” the tough-faced man said quickly.
Then, to Dupoix’s surprise, a huge, friendly smile lit up Cassidy’s face.
“Best you know it, Mr. Dupoix, I’m on the scout. I’ve gotten myself as far from the Wyoming Territory as I can.”
“In my younger days I rode some owlhoot trails myself,” the gambler said. “I treat a man as I find him.”
“George was in the train-robbing profession but had a little difficulty,” Wright said. “But he’s headed back to Wyoming in a couple of days and I’ll miss him. He’s a good steady hand.”
Dupoix was surprised. “You came all this way just to go back?”
“Yeah, but I plan to lay low and go straight,” Cassidy said. “A friend of mine has a long-standing offer of a job at his butcher shop in Rock Springs and I reckon I’ll take it.”
It seemed that Cassidy was a talking man, so Dupoix smiled and said, “Glad to hear it, Mr. Cassidy. As far as I know, the butchering business is booming.”
“Folks need meat. My friend told me he’ll call me ‘Butch,’ because I’ll be a butcher, like. He said the lady customers would love it, but I don’t hold with that.”
“No, George is a much better name,” Dupoix said. “George Cassidy has an almost genteel ring to it.”
Wright waved to a chair.
“All right, um... ah...”
“Baptiste,” Dupoix said.
“Yeah. Set and tell me what help the Ranger needs and—”
“Luke Wright, you’ll do nothing of the kind!”
Julia, her gray-streaked brown hair tied back in a bun, rose to her feet, stepped to Dupoix’s side, and wagged a finger at her husband. “Can’t you see the poor man is soaked to the skin? He needs to get out of those wet clothes or he’ll catch his death.”
“I’m just fine, ma’am,” Dupoix said, thoroughly alarmed.
“Nonsense, Mr. Dupoix. You come with me.”
The gambler looked pleadingly at Wright, but the man shook his head and smiled.
“You better do as Julia says. She’s used to getting her own way.”
An affable man, Cassidy said, “I’ll put your horse in the barn, Mr. Dupoix.”
“There’s no need, I’m moving on soon.”
“You’re not going anywhere in wet clothes,” Julia said. “If I let you leave our home in that state, Luke would take a stick to me.”
Privately Dupoix thought that Luke didn’t give a damn one way or the other, but when Cassidy left to put up his horse, he surrendered himself to Julia’s motherly attentions.
“Just disrobe and drop your clothes on the floor,” Julia said.
She laid a folded tan blanket on the bed.
“Wrap that around you when you’re ready to come out, then I’ll put your clothes in front of the fire to dry.”
“Ma’am there’s no need to—”
“But there’s every need,” Julia said. “I declare, Mr. Dupoix, what a singularly odd thing to say.”
After the door closed behind the woman, Dupoix sighed and stripped down to his gambler’s ring. His watch and holstered Colt he left on a dresser. This was obviously a guest room and it smelled musty.
Dupoix wrapped the blanket around him and, his bare feet padding on the wood floor, stepped into the living room.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
George Cassidy was back from the barn, but neither he nor the other two men in the room made any comment or even raised an eyebrow at the strange apparition that suddenly appeared among them.
A well-bred crowd, Dupoix thought as he sat back in his chair.
But this time a steaming cup of coffee was on the table beside him and Wright said, “I sweetened it up with some whiskey... ah...”
“Baptiste.” Julia must have had a hand in this, Dupoix decided. It seemed that she’d reminded her husband of his southern hospitality.
Wright iced the cake when he offered the gambler a cigar and waited until it was drawing well before he spoke.
“All right, what’s going on in Last Chance that I don’t know about?” he said.
“I’ll make it as short in the telling as I can,” Dupoix said.
Using as few words as possible, he told how the millionaire Abe Hacker had come to the Big Bend country in search of gold. “Hacker didn’t find gold, but he plans to claim the land for himself and turn it into an immense cotton plantation,” Dupoix said.
“What about the farms, the town, the people?” Wright said.
“They’ll be swept away by a plague of locusts.”
The rancher gave Aaron Park and Cassidy a puzzled, sidelong look, then said, “We’re not catching your drift.”
Dupoix told him about the thirsty, starving Mexicans amassed across the Rio Grande and Hacker’s plan to drive them across the river on Independence Day.
“A bandit by the name of Sancho Perez—”
Wright was startled and jumped erect in his chair. “Hell, me and Aaron traded shots with Perez three, four years back, the spring of ’86 I reckon, when he and his boys raided into Texas north of here,” he said.
Park said, “Yeah, it was over to Blue Creek. He murdered four Chinese teamsters traveling with a woman, then skedaddled back across the river.”
“We never did find that woman,” Wright said.
“Perez will drive the Mexicans across the Rio Grande tomorrow,” Dupoix said.
Cassidy dropped words into the stunned silence that followed. “On Independence Day? How many Mexicans?”
“A thousand at least. Maybe close to twice that by this time.”
“Hell, it is like a plague of locusts,” Wright said.
“They’ll swarm over the land, drive the Americans away, and pick the fields and orchards clean,” Dupoix said. “Then, when it’s all over, Abe Hacker will use his contacts in Washington to score a deed to some prime real estate for his cotton.”
“No town, no nothing,” Park said. “He’ll get it cheap.”
“Unless we stop him,” Dupoix said.
“How do we stand against thousands?” Wright said.
“Including women and children,” Dupoix said. “Whatever Hank Cannan has in mind it isn’t going to be easy.”
“How many men do you have so far?” Cassidy said.
“At the moment just two. Texas Ranger Hank Cannan and me.”
“It ain’t enough,” Wright said.
Earlier Julia had set up some wrought-iron contraption in front of the fire and now Dupoix stared at the melancholy sight of his patched drawers steaming in the heat.
Finally he said, “That’s why the Ranger sent me to you, Luke.”
“What did the other ranchers say?” Wright asked.
“You’re the first.”
“When will the Mexicans cross the river?”
“I don’t know, but probably when the Independence Day celebrations are at their height and everybody is having a good time.”
“Late afternoon, huh?”
“That would be my take on it.”
Luke Wright thought things through for a spell, then his frowning face cleared as he appeared to come to a decision.
“Up for some night riding, Aaron?” he said to his foreman.
Park’s smile made him appear even healthier. “I’ve done it plenty of times before, boss, back in the day.”
Wright looked at Dupoix and smiled. “It’s always good to have reformed outlaws riding for the brand. Gives the ol’ homestead snap.”
“What do you want me to do?” Park said.
“Give my compliments to Clem Bates and then to Jim Hungerford. Tell them what you’ve heard here and ask them to bring whatever hands they have and meet me here at first light.”
“Anything else, boss?” Park said.
“Yeah, tell them to come ready for a fight.”
Park rose to his feet. “I’d better get going,” he said.
“Aaron, you’ve got some long riding ahead of you,” Wright said. “Take my paint mare. She’s got plenty of bottom to her and she’ll run from sunup to sundown.”
“I’ll be back by dawn,” Park said. “Depend on it.
“I reckon you’ll be tired out, Aaron. Will you be ready for a scrap?”
Park grinned. “Used up or no, I’m always ready for a scrap.”
After the big foreman left, Dupoix said, “How many can you bring, Luke?”
“Me and Aaron. I got two hands out in the range but it would take all night to find them. They’ll be in sometime after noon tomorrow for the celebration.”
Wright read the disappointment on Dupoix’s face. “You can see how it is with me,” he said.
Cassidy stood. He looked as immovable as a granite rock. “You can count me in, Luke,” Cassidy said.
Wright shook his head. “George, you got enough problems of your own. This isn’t your fight.”
“Begging your pardon, Luke, I may not be in good with the law, but I say an attack on my country is my fight.”
“The man has a point,” Dupoix said.
He smiled at Cassidy, removing any possible sting from his words. “How good are you with the iron, George?”
“I get by, I guess. I’ve never killed a white man.”
“I hope you never do,” Dupoix said.
“All right, that makes three,” Wright said. “Clem Bates has a grown son and he keeps on three hands during the summer. I reckon Jim Hungerford can bring himself and another two or three. Jim’s a good man, scouted for the army and fit Apaches.”
Wright did the arithmetic.
“With you and the Ranger... um...”
“Baptiste.”
“... that counts a dozen, near enough.”
“How many men does that Perez feller have?” Cassidy said.
“I don’t rightly know, but a sight more than a dozen,” Dupoix said.
Wright suddenly looked old. “Bandits,” he said. “Pistoleros. And we got cowboys.”
“Will they stand, Luke?” Dupoix said, his eyes suddenly worried.
“Sure, they’ll stand and they’ll die on their own ground if they have to. But punchers aren’t gunfighters.”
“What are you telling me, Luke?” Dupoix said.
“Just don’t expect too much,” Wright said. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Mickey Pauleen left his horse at the livery, then went straight to his room. He seethed with impotent rage and badly wanted to kill somebody.
The little gunman stood in front of the full-length mirror. A printed sign attached to the top of the frame read:
GENTLEMEN should adjust their clothing
Before leaving room
Well, his fly wasn’t unbuttoned, but otherwise his reflection stunned him.
The left side of his face was bright scarlet, the right white from shock. Pauleen figured he looked like a harlequin clown in a circus show.
His shirt was tattered, charred at the edges, as were his pants. Worse, he’d lost half of his mustache and the few wispy strands that were left smelled like scorched wool.
Cursing, Pauleen unbuckled his guns, then stripped to his underwear. He’d never been a drinking man, but he poured himself a whiskey to steady his nerves and threw himself into a chair.
To his surprise his left hand holding the glass trembled, and he seemed to have lost his sense of taste. The Old Crow had no more flavor than water.
Well, the hell with it.
Pauleen got to his feet, smashed the whiskey glass against the wall, and stepped to the window.
Across the street, in the shifting light of the reflector lamps, a couple of men hung red, white, and blue bunting across the front of the Big Bend Hotel. One held the banner like a load of laundry while the other tacked it in place.
A brewery wagon drawn by a matched pair of gray Percherons trundled past, making late deliveries to the saloons, and a towheaded boy sat beside the driver and dangled his legs.
Pauleen turned away scowling. The peaceful scene irritated him.
He was a man who thrived on chaos, violence, upheaval, the roar of gunfire, the shrieks of dying men, blood, darkness, shadow, the sulfur stench of evil.
All those things were bread and butter to Mickey Pauleen.
He looked forward to tomorrow with keen anticipation... eager to see the blood of dead men smoke and gold-banded widows scream and scream and scream...
Feeling marginally better about himself, Pauleen shaved off what remained of his mustache and hated his naked top lip. He dressed hurriedly in a collarless shirt and gray coat and pants.
He’d lost his hat when the lightning struck, but he had another, brand new in a box, a white straw boater with a black and red ribbon that he’d intended to wear when he accompanied Hacker to Washington. But since tomorrow was Independence Day, he decided to break the hat in for the happy occasion. As it happened it fi
t badly as boaters always did.
The hat was a little too large and the brim rested on top of Pauleen’s ears and gave him the look of a particularly poisonous toadstool.
But the little gunman’s vanities rested elsewhere, and he was perfectly satisfied with his appearance.
Now as the moon rose higher in the night sky it was time for Mickey to go a-courtin’... his bizarre, brutal, brothel-bargaining for the sullied dowry of a fallen woman.
“Well, did you kill him?” Hacker said.
Pauleen shook his head.
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
Pauleen’s anger was sudden.
“Damn you, I got hit by lightning!”
“If you’d been hit by lightning you’d be dead.”
“It was close.”
Pauleen turned the left side of his face to Hacker, who sat in his usual chair by the window.
“Look at that,” he said.
The only light in the room came from the dim lamp by the bed, but Nora said, “I see it. You’re bright red.”
“A lightning strike does that to a man,” Pauleen said.
Hacker stirred in his chair. “Where is Dupoix now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the lightning done for him.”
“Or maybe it didn’t,” Hacker said. “There’s something going on here I don’t like, Mickey. Where was Dupoix headed and why?”
Pauleen was irritated. He wanted to discuss Nora, not Dupoix.
The gauzy lamplight was kind to the woman who sat up in bed, her long hair tumbling over her naked shoulders, as she filed her nails. She looked almost beautiful.
No, Pauleen told himself, she was beautiful.
And she was his.
Hacker interrupted the little gunman’s thoughts.
“There are ranches out that way, Mickey. Did the Ranger send Dupoix for help?”
“What kind of help? All the hands were paid off last spring and the ranchers are old men. Perez and me can take care of them.”
“I know, Mickey, I know, but still, it troubles me.”
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