Day of Independence

by William W. Johnstone

  More than that troubled Hacker.

  The derringer was in the breast pocket of his robe, but he couldn’t use it. Dupoix might come looking for him, and, like it or not, for now Mickey was his only protection. The two Mexicans he’d gotten from Perez owed him no loyalty and couldn’t be relied upon to defend him.

  It also annoyed Hacker that Pauleen hadn’t once called him “Boss” since he’d gotten back. The man was too arrogant by half and would have to be slapped down. Put in his bloody place, as the British said.

  But not tonight, Hacker decided. There was no use antagonizing Pauleen when the end was so close.

  “I’m still thinking about what we discussed, Mickey,” he said.

  Pauleen’s cobra head turned to the woman on the bed. He touched his tongue to his top lip.

  “Right now I’ll take her off your hands for nothing.”

  Hacker smiled, like a benign uncle. Right, Mickey, and how long before the blackmail started? “No, a bargain is a bargain. You take legal possession of the woman tomorrow.” Hacker’s smile grew even more sincere. “I’m a man of my word.”

  Nora’s nail file hovered above the fingers of her left hand and she stared at Hacker.

  “Abe, I am not one of your properties to be bought and sold,” she said.

  “Oh really, my dear? I thought you were.”

  “Then you were wrong.”

  “And how do you expect to get out of this place when I’m gone?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  Hacker shrugged, his chins quivering.

  “You could always sell yourself to the Mexicans, I suppose, make a few pesos that way.”

  “You’re going with me, Nora,” Pauleen said. Then, his eyes ugly, “You’ll be my woman for as long as I want you.”

  Nora fixed Mickey with a stony Medusa stare. “You’d last less than a week, little man, before I killed you,” she said.

  “Stop!” Hacker said, slapping a hand on the arm of his chair. “I will not have talk of violence on the eve of our great nation’s birthday.” He turned to the woman. “Nora, I plan to settle a generous dowry on you so that you and Mickey can live the rest of your lives in comfort and happiness.” And if you believe that you’re even more stupid than I thought. “Now,” Hacker said, “let us have no more crossness and ill-chosen words.”

  He made a great show of looking out the window. “Mickey, see how fairly the moon has risen and how brightly it shines.”

  Pauleen and Nora’s eyes were still locked in combat, but without turning away the gunman said, “Yeah, I see it.”

  “Good, because I want you to ride out, and take those two useless Mexicans with you.”

  Now Pauleen directed his full attention to Hacker. “Ride out? I just got struck by lightning.”

  “A near miss, dear boy,” Hacker said. “No real harm done.”

  “Ride out where?”

  “Under the light of the moon you will cross the river and meet with Sancho Perez. Tomorrow you will lead the charge into Last Chance. I want no last-minute slipups.”

  “Damn it, Perez knows what he has to do.”

  “I want you there, Mickey.” Hacker silenced Pauleen’s objection with a raised hand. “This cotton plantation will be my son’s first fiefdom and I will be very generous to the man who ensures he inherits it, Mickey.” The fat man smiled. “Do you understand?”

  “How generous?”

  “We talked five figures for the woman. My boy, we will start our discussion at that price and go up from there.”

  Pauleen glanced at Nora, an odd mix of lust and contempt on his face. “Suppose I don’t plan to keep her for long?” he said.

  “No matter. When we get back to Washington I want your strong arm by my side, Mickey. I have enemies and sometimes enemies need to be... ah, eliminated.”

  Hacker looked out the window again, pleased with himself. It was easy to promise the moon when all he planned to offer was green cheese.

  “Your new hat becomes you, Mickey,” he said. “Very spiffy. Don’t you think so, Nora?... Ah, well, ‘No answer was the loud reply.’”

  Hacker rose to his feet.

  “Go now, Mickey, get it done. By this time tomorrow night you’ll have your woman and more money than you ever dreamed.”

  By this time tomorrow night you’ll be dead.

  Pauleen nodded. “Now we see eye to eye... Abe... make sure you don’t get in the way of a bullet.”

  “And you, too, Mickey. You, too.”

  Abe Hacker didn’t know it then, but by sending Pauleen away he’d made a fatal mistake.

  Unlike the twitching, gibbering Mickey, the fat man slept soundly.

  And throughout the long night he would not hear a thing...

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “Ridin’ late ain’t you, Mr. Pauleen?” Ephraim Slough said.

  “What’s it to you, gimp?” Mickey said.

  “Nothin’. Just askin’.”

  “Don’t ask, or you’ll get my boot in your teeth, old man.”

  “Your hoss is baked, Mr. Pauleen,” Slough said. “That ain’t askin’, jes’ sayin’.”

  “Well, if I’m heading back out, so is he.”

  “Hoss is in no shape fer—”

  An instant later Slough stared cross-eyed at the muzzle of the Colt shoved into the bridge of his nose. “One more word and I’ll blow your damned head off,” Pauleen said. “I ain’t in the mood for sass and backtalk.”

  “Then what happened?” Hank Cannan said.

  “I didn’t say one more word,” Ephraim Slough said.

  “Was he alone?”

  “Naw, he had two Messkins with him. Mean as hell, they looked too, cap’n, lay to that.”

  “They head for the river?”

  “You’re right as ever was.”

  Slough had wakened Cannan from a sound sleep after he’d hotfooted it from the livery, figuring the Ranger would want to know about Pauleen’s second, and very late, night ride.

  According to Slough, Mickey had left the stable shortly after Dupoix and then returned looking as though he’d been dragged through a cactus patch backward. What that portended Cannan could not guess, though as sleep cleared from his head his concern for Dupoix grew.

  But right now he had other, more urgent matters at hand.

  Cannan, who’d never asked help from another man that involved being handled, swallowed his pride. “Ephraim, can you help me out of this damned bed and into my duds?” he said.

  “Surely, cap’n,” Slough said, grinning. “Just like you was one of me old shipmates, like.” The old sailor had only one leg but he’d walked pitching decks and proved nimble enough as he helped the big Ranger get out of bed and dress.

  After Cannan buckled on his gun belt and picked up his rifle, Slough said, “What course are we settin’, cap’n?”

  “The mayor’s office.”

  Cannan looked down at the little sailor from his great height.

  “Hold on to me,” he said.

  “Ranger Cannan, why are you pounding on my door at this time of night?” Frank Curtis demanded. “And what are you doing out of bed?”

  “We have to talk, Mayor,” Cannan said.

  “What about?”

  Curtis wore a long blue-and-white-striped nightgown and held a lit candlestick high.

  “This town and the lives of its citizens are in mortal danger.”

  “Then you’d better come in,” Curtis said.

  “But... but how can we stop that many?” the mayor said.

  “Maybe we won’t have to if we can lure Sancho Perez into a fight,” Cannan said.

  “My God, but it’s thin, Cannan, mighty thin.”

  Polly Curtis, a handsome woman who carried her late forties well, looked frightened.

  “How many Mexicans, Ranger Cannan?” she said.

  “My dear, he’s already told you,” her husband said, his own fear making him irritable.

  “Maybe as many as two thousand, Mrs. Curtis,�
�� Cannan said.

  The woman gasped and touched her throat.

  Ephraim Slough slammed a fist into his open palm.

  “Damn their eyes! Oh, fer a couple of ironclads on the river to give ’em a broadside of canister or two. That would soon settle their hash.”

  “Ephraim, you can’t fire cannons into women and children whose only crime is that they’re starving to death,” Cannan said.

  “Well, then what the hell do we do?” Curtis said. “Welcome them with open arms?”

  “Maybe,” Cannan said.

  Curtis slammed back in his chair. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

  “Yes, Mayor, I probably am,” Cannan said.

  Polly said, “When will this attack happen, Mr. Cannan?”

  “Damn it, Polly, he told you that as well,” Curtis said.

  “When I was still half-asleep, dear,” Polly said.

  “Probably in the mid-afternoon when the Independence Day celebrations are well under way,” Cannan replied.

  “And everybody’s drunk,” Slough said.

  “Only we won’t be drunk,” Cannan said. “We’ll only pretend to be drunk.”

  Curtis let out a frustrated little yelp. “Polly, brandy, if you please,” he said. “The man talks in riddles.”

  “Mayor, I’m not in the best of health and I don’t have much time for any kind of talk,” Cannan said. “But will you answer me one question?”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “Sancho Perez has at least forty bandits, all of them first-rate fighting men. If I can trick him into attacking across the river, will the citizens of this town fight?”

  “What a most extraordinary question,” Polly said, gasping a little.

  “It is indeed, my dear,” her husband said. He stared firmly into Cannan’s eyes. “In defense of their homes, their wives and children, and their nation, of course they’ll fight. Could they do otherwise and still hold their heads high in the company of men?”

  “Did patriots such as we not answer the call to resist Northern aggression for those very reasons my husband has stated?” Polly said. “Sir, I am surprised at your most disrespectful and hurtful inquiry.”

  Cannan had touched a nerve and he found it gratifying.

  “I meant no offense,” he said. “But a great many lives are at stake and I had to be certain.”

  “Then rest assured, Ranger Cannan, that our men will fight and, should the need arise, their womenfolk will stand shoulder to shoulder and die with them,” Polly said.

  At that moment Mrs. Curtis looked as though she could storm the Bastille singlehanded, bare-breasted, flag in hand.

  Curtis poured Cannan a brandy, told him he looked like death warmed over, then added, “I’ll get my rifle.”

  “No, not yet,” the Ranger said. He sipped some brandy, took the makings from his shirt pocket, and held tobacco sack and papers where Polly could see them.

  “May I beg your indulgence, ma’am?”

  “Please do, Mr. Cannan. I am well used to Mr. Curtis’s pipe.”

  The Ranger built a cigarette but before lighting it he said to Slough, “Ephraim, go from house to house. I want every man who can walk to meet the mayor and me on the riverbank.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Curtis said. “This time of night, some might take a little persuading.”

  Slough cackled. “Armed to the teeth, eh, cap’n?”

  “No. Tell them to leave the guns at home for now. Instead each man must bring a shovel. And pickaxes too if they’ve got them.”

  Curtis looked puzzled.

  “What are you up to, Cannan?”

  “I’ll explain it when we’re standing on the bank of the Rio Grande,” the Ranger said.

  He drained his glass and stood.

  “One more thing, step lively, but keep as quiet as you can. There’s a man in this town I don’t want wakened.”

  “Hacker?” Curtis said.

  Cannan nodded. “Hacker.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  A low wail carried through the moonlit desert like a never-ending note on a violin string, the thin cries of Mexican men, women, and children camped hungry and thirsty in an uncaring wilderness.

  As Pauleen rode closer to the distant campfires, his two companions decided to leave him. The bandits spurred their horses, whooped and hollered, and waved their sombreros, glad to be among their own kind again away from the gringo town and its strange sights and smells.

  Pauleen followed at a walk on his tired horse.

  The ride from Last Chance had been a short one and Perez was much closer to the river, which was as it should be.

  The little gunman frowned.

  Sancho must have his hands full keeping the peons from the Rio Grande, unless they were too weak from hunger to make the effort.

  But apparently a few had tried.

  Pauleen passed a sprawled body, shot in the back. Then another. A gray-haired woman, stark in the moonlight, lay dead in a clump of brush. She too had been shot.

  As he rode on, Pauleen glanced at the bodies with all the interest and compassion he would have given shotgunned jackrabbits. Mickey was a man without a conscience and within him his soul had withered and died years before.

  Sancho Perez, flanked by the two pistoleros who had just ridden in, greeted Pauleen like a long-lost brother.

  “Mickey, my good fren’,” he said. “How good to see you again. Come, let Sancho embrace you.”

  Pauleen gave the fat Mexican a perfunctory hug and said, “You’ve changed hats, Sancho.”

  “Ah, sí. This fine sombrero is my hat of war. Sancho only wears such a hat when there’s fighting and killing to be done, no? And you wear a fine new hat, too, my fren’. We are brothers.”

  He waved a hand, grinning.

  “Come, Mickey, sit by the fire and tell me why you are here.”

  Before he sat and accepted a cup of coffee, Pauleen glanced around the encampment. Everyone of Perez’s men stood guard over the sullen, moaning mass of Mexicans. Most of the peons looked more dead than alive.

  “I’m here because Hacker sent me to help you with tomorrow’s attack,” he said.

  Perez beamed and the firelight made the diamonds in his teeth look like rubies. “What a loving, generous fren’ is Señor Hacker. Sancho is touched to his very soul.”

  The bandit dashed away a tear, picked up a bottle, and was about to put it to his lips when a peon wailed and yelled something about his hungry son.

  Perez scowled and made a show of striking out with the bottle. “Ah, shut up!” he yelled.

  He looked at Pauleen and smiled.

  “That’s what I tell them, Mickey. Shut up! They don’t understand it, but it keeps them quiet.”

  “How are they?” Pauleen asked, concerned that Perez might lose too many.

  “Fine. Not so thirsty, but ver’, ver’ hungry.”

  Pauleen looked at the sea of faces hollowed by moonlight. “Starving?” he said.

  “Sí, Mickey.” Perez made slashing claws of his hands. “Hungry like wild animals!”

  “Good,” Pauleen said, grinning. “When they reach the river and get a whiff of the good Independence Day cooking smells they’ll go mad.”

  Perez slapped his thigh and laughed. “You and me, Mickey, my fren’, we will have fun tomorrow. Plenty of bang-bang and whiskey and women.”

  “And food, my friend,” Pauleen said. “If there’s any left after the locusts have passed.”

  Perez patted his huge belly. “Oh, sure. Sancho likes his grub, no?”

  The good humor suddenly drained from Perez’s face. “Mickey, did you tell Señor Hacker about the bank? That it belongs to Sancho?”

  “Of course I did. Because you’re his best friend, Hacker says it’s all yours, every last dime.”

  Perez tilted back his head and yipped like a coyote. “What did poor Sancho ever do to deserve such a wonderful fren’?” he said. “Ah, my heart is broken that I can never repay Señor Hacker for al
l he has given me. Sancho is so very sad.”

  Pauleen spoke to the bottom of a mescal bottle.

  “There is something you can do, Sancho.”

  Perez took the bottle from his mouth so quickly he spilled down the front of his shirt. “Tell me, amigo. Tell poor Sancho what he must do. He gets very confused on the eve of battle.”

  Pauleen’s grin made his face a mask of firelit evil. “Yes, I will tell you, Sancho. Make sure that no living thing, I mean man, woman, child or dog, leaves Last Chance alive.”

  Perez shrugged, disinterested. “That is easy to do.”

  “Survivors would complicate matters, Sancho, understand?”

  “I understand, Mickey.”

  “The town was destroyed by bandits raiding from Mexico. There were no white men involved. Do you understand me, Sancho?”

  “Do you take Sancho for a fool? What does it matter to me to wipe out a gringo town? Mexican rurales and Texas Rangers already want to hang me, but they can only hang Sancho once.”

  “Then we understand each other very well,” Pauleen said. “Mr. Hacker will be pleased.”

  “He is truly a great man. He will be presidente one day.”

  Pauleen glanced at the bone-white moon, but said nothing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Hank Cannan stood on the bank of the Rio Grande tired to the bone.

  The night’s activities had exhausted him more than he first realized and his wounds, though healing, were as yet gaping mouths that fed on his stamina.

  He needed rest, but foresaw little opportunity for it.

  The three Polish brothers, carrying shovels like sloped rifles, were the first to arrive and they came to a heel-clicking halt. The oldest stepped forward, saluted and said, “We await your orders, my general.”

  No one in Last Chance had ever been able to pronounce the brothers’ last name, and even Miss Adams the schoolmistress, who spoke French, German, and a little Chinese, had never been able to make a go of it.

  Cannan didn’t try.

  He stepped back a few yards from the water to where the ground was a mix of shingle and black, irrigated soil, and chopped down with his arms.