by Jake Logan
Slocum chuckled. “You’re right. Let’s shuck this village and find us a place under the stars.”
Standing in the stirrups, they left in a long trot. Eventually, out under the stars and a short distance from the road, they hobbled their horses and each threw down a ground cloth and a blanket. Desert heat evaporated quickly in the night and with a kiss, he rolled over and went to sleep.
The next morning, Cordova told him about a small rancheria at the base of the Madres where they could buy food and feed for their horses. “I would trust this man with my life.”
Slocum nodded. “Let’s make his place by tonight.”
Cordova looked satisfied. “We can do that.”
Midday, Trevino pointed to some dust on the northern horizon. Slocum agreed and thanked him. Might be the general moving things again. He wished he had time to at least see who it was, but they had a course to follow. They’d made good time so far. The horses were holding up, and by afternoon would see the mountain peaks on the horizon.
Let the general alone. Silva was his goal.
Plato Maderia was a short man who lived under a palm-frond-roofed ramada with a young pregnant wife and three small ones. His teeth shone and he removed his sombrero to bow for Willa.
“Welcome to my humble house, Señora,” he said. “We can butcher a goat and have him cooked in a short while.”
“That would be good,” she said. “These men are full of jerky. I can help.”
“But you are—”
“I am no princess. You butcher the goat. I can make tortillas and fix some frijoles.”
“Eva will help you.”
“If she is strong enough.”
“She is a good woman.”
Willa agreed and Plato went off to get the goat.
Two of the men chopped mesquite for the fire; the others put feed bags on the horses and mules. Slocum watched the operation, pleased that Cordova knew of this place. In the morning they’d attack the mountains. The horses were still fresh enough. But then they had to find Dona’s killers. The job would be a tough one. People hid outlaws for money. Others had relatives in the gang and owed loyalty to them.
Willa had mentioned there were ten of them. She obviously knew them well enough from her abduction, and he’d made a mental list of each one she’d told him about.
Ortega, the number two
Tonto, the crazy one
Ferdinand, the fat one
Paulo, the kid
Santos, the knife man
Pedro, the horse man
Frank, the quiet one
Carlos, the redheaded Mexican
Devaca, the short one
His plan was to separate and divide them. As a gang they would be tough. As individuals he could learn what they knew. His plan was to catch them away from the others and one by one eliminate them.
“What are you thinking?” Trevino asked, squatting beside him.
“There are ten main men in that gang. Do you know them?”
“Some of them.”
“They kidnapped Willa, you knew that?”
“Yes, we learned that on the trip to the hacienda.”
“So we need to find them one by one away from the camp and eliminate them.”
“Ferdinand?” Slocum asked the older man.
“He’s the fat one. He has a small rancheria and a young wife. He spends lots of time there when he can.” Cordova and the others had joined them. From their nods it looked like the fat one would be first.
“He is the one that cut my brother’s boy’s throat,” Diego, the youngest, said. “They did it just to be mean. The fat one, he accused Miguel of messing with his wife. The boy, who was younger than me, had never even saw her. He cut his throat in front of Miguel’s poor mother.”
“We will start with him,” Slocum said.
“He shot two vaqueros in the back who were traveling through and then he sold their horses and saddles.”
Slocum had heard enough about this bad one. Before they left, he gave Maderia five dollars for feeding them supper and breakfast plus horse feed.
“Gracias.” He turned his palms up. “I would go with you and help you punish them. But my next one is long overdue, and you see I have children to help her with.”
“No problem. I have some good men to ride with me.” Slocum nodded to the man and rode off after the others.
They entered the Madres undiscovered and made a remote camp. Then Slocum took Cordova and Trevino with him to find the first one. Ferdinand was at home, taking a siesta in a hammock. It was no problem to slip up on him. Several feet away from his hand hung his sidearm and holster. He would regret that mistake, Slocum felt certain.
Cordova put the loop of his lariat on the snoring outlaw’s left leg. And then they ordered the half-awake prisoner on his feet. Ferdinand acted mad when they asked him where his boss was at.
“You sonsabitches ain’t getting nothing out of me. I ain’t afraid to die.”
“Good,” Trevino said and shoved him out of the yard. When Cordova returned with their horses, he took the tail of the rope from Slocum.
“Has he told you yet where his boss is at?” Cordova asked, dallying the rope around the saddle horn.
“No,” Trevino said.
Cordova leaned on the horn and looked hard at their prisoner. “You ready to tell us where he is?”
“I’ll see all of you in hell first!”
With a wary shake of his head, Cordova turned off his horse and then gouged his sides with the spurs. His drag-behind began to scream bloody murder bouncing over brittle sagebrush and through a patch of prickly pear. The small horse dug in hard to sling him on a roll into another cactus bed. At last, in a begging voice, Ferdinand asked for them to stop.
Crying and his face full of spines, he lay on his back moaning when Slocum and the old man walked up. “You’re killing me.”
“Where’s Silva?” Slocum asked, ignoring his pleading. This man never gave others any comfort.
“At—his—ranch.”
Slocum turned to Trevino. “You know where that is?”
The older man tested the edge of his large knife on his thumb. “Yes, we know where he has one.
“You remember a boy named Miguel that you cut his throat in front of his mother?” Trevino bent over and grasped a fist full of the man’s dirty, dry-weed-entangled hair to raise his head up.
“Yeah.”
“Good, then you know how you will die.”
“No!”
Trevino bent over and silenced him with a zip of his super-sharp knife from ear to ear. Cordova nodded in approval, then stepped down, undid his reata, and coiled it getting back on his horse.
“Who is next?” he asked.
“Silva. Without a leader, they will be uncertain,” Trevino said.
Slocum agreed. If any of the others escaped, he wouldn’t worry about them as much as he would if Silva got away from them.
“We better leave the others in camp and get Silva next.” They mounted up and headed for the outlaw leader’s ranch. Trevino led them.
Using field glasses, Slocum scanned the place from the high spot above the ranch house. Three big brindle cur dogs were loose around the house. He counted the curs getting up to go piss on something, then going back to lounge around the front porch, snarling at one another and at the rest of the world.
“Those damn dogs may be a problem,” Slocum said, giving the glasses to Cordova.
“Naw, I can go down there and lure them away and kill them.”
“I’d like to see that.” Slocum had his doubts.
“I’ll show you how.” Cordova grinned big.
“But if Silva gets word—”
“You are right.” Cordova rose and brushed the dirt and twigs off his shirt front. “I know what those dogs need.”
“What’s that?” Slocum asked.
“Some goats to eat.”
“How do we get them?”
“Goats are easy to catch.” Cordova went for his horse.
“He’ll get some,” Trevino said, like it was nothing.
In a short while, Cordova was back and had two young goat carcasses with their throats cut. He nodded and set out on his horse for the house. Cordova stayed out of sight and downwind. The dogs soon caught the goats’ scent and ran to get them. Still under the hill and out of sight from the house, he began to drag his bait behind the horse at a lope. Snarling and fighting with each other, the curs tried to catch his bait and tear a bite off the flying goats.
Slocum heard three muffled shots and then no more dogs snarling. Cordova came back shortly—still no sign of anyone around the place.
“Did you see anyone come out?” Cordova asked, taking a position beside them on his belly.
“No, we watched close. I had the .50-caliber ready.”
“I don’t think anyone is home.”
“Wait,” Trevino said, holding his arm out. The man used the glasses and then handed them to Slocum. “She must have been sleeping through all this.”
Slocum caught a glimpse of a naked tan body standing on the porch. Her lithe figure was one of a young woman and her long black hair swayed like willow tree limbs in the soft wind. He heard her clap her hands—but no dogs came. She went to the edge of the porch, bent over, and peered around the corner for them, giving him a bird’s-eye view of her shapely ass. Then standing straight again, she cupped her pointed breasts and threw her head back as if in a lover’s control. Soon shaking her head, she went back inside.
“I don’t think he is there.”
Slocum saw a rider coming hard from the south on a fine barb horse through the junipers toward the house and corrals.
“That is him. It is Silva,” Trevino said. “That is the horse he stole from Don Carlos.”
Silva dismounted and looked around like he too wondered where his dogs were at. Then his naked lover rushed outside and leaped in his arms.
“I guess she owns no clothes,” Trevino said.
They laughed.
“Give him a few minutes,” Slocum said, getting up on his hands and knees. “And we will take him by surprise.”
“Good,” Cordova said.
“Let’s go. By the time we get there he’ll be plowing her field.” Slocum brushed himself off and then slid the big gun in the scabbard. They went through the timber, down across the grassy ground cut by a spring’s flow, and up the other side to come in from the back side of the house. Moving catlike on foot, they approached the jacal, disturbing a brown setting hen who got mad and wanted to fight them.
They ignored her anger. Trevino missed kicking her to shut her up. All three of them with their cocked six-guns in their fists were looking all around the entire time as they drew closer and closer to the jacal.
Then they heard a scream from inside.
“You bitch! You tricked me! Where are my dogs?”
More screams. “I don’t know. I don’t know. One minute they were here, the next they were gone.”
The sound of someone inside being slapped around and another crying out was louder as Slocum edged himself along the jacal’s wall for a window.
“Who are they?” Silva shouted at her.
Next Slocum heard Cordova order, “Don’t move.”
Slocum rushed to the window on his side and saw inside that the naked Silva had a gun to her ear. “One wrong move and I kill her.”
Terror in her brown eyes. Silva’s left hand was full of her long silky hair and the six-shooter in his other. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her.”
“Easy,” Slocum said to his men.
“You better go easy,” Silva said, backing for the doorway. “Stay right there. Stay there,” he ordered, and then with his hair-hold, he drew her body against his own as a shield.
Suddenly, he was outside beyond the hitch rack, threw her down, and mounted his horse from the right side. Leaning on its neck to get his reins, he urged it on, clinging to the barb’s far side. The horse raced away leaving Slocum and the other two without a target.
Upset over them missing him, Slocum hated worse that Silva knew they were after him.
“How did he know we were here?” Trevino asked.
“He has a guardian angel,” Slocum said. He frowned, looking around. “Where’s Cordova?”
Trevino gave a head toss at the front door. “He took her back inside. She was pretty upset.”
The rascal. Slocum motioned toward the way they came. “We better go get our horses.”
He cast a last glance back at the adobe hovel. They needed to bring more lightning pressure on all the outlaws and Silva. Maybe split the crew, have two attack units, perhaps then even a fortune-telling bandit couldn’t know all about them. The cur dogs being missing must have cued Silva something was wrong. Slocum’d learned a lesson—don’t underestimate Silva again.
They rode back to the hovel with Cordova’s horse to get him. He came out grinning, tucking in his shirt and redoing his pants.
Slocum winked at Trevino. “I guess she’s doing better, huh?”
Stopped, Cordova was ready to mount up. “Oh, sí.”
He swung in the saddle and they left Silva’s ranch. Headed for the others who would be anxious to hear the results, Slocum also planned to move their camp so the outlaws couldn’t surprise them.
Things were a long ways from going smooth, but they had one down and nine to go. He spurred his horse into a lope. He was anxious to share Willa’s company and get his mind off this outlaw problem.
14
“What will you do next?” Willa asked him. Her warm skin, firm breasts, and sensuous body snuggled tightly against him under the bedroll’s canvas cover.
Distant thunder growled at them. The last of the afternoon storms moved on. Only the drip off the pines was left to splatter on their shield.
“We’ll cut out some more of his gang. Unless they den up in a fort, we will pick them off one at a time.”
“What if they flee the Madres?”
He raised her chin and tasted the remains of honey on her lips. “We’ll handle that too.”
Soon they were lost in a sea of passion that swept them from the mountains to new heights in the towering clouds. He felt her firmness, teased her nipple with the pad of his thumb until it hardened, then they kissed until their breath expired. His hand slid over her flat stomach and soon ran over the patch of stiff pubic hair. Her knees raised, she parted them for him and closed her eyes to savor the pleasure of his teasing. Her breathing increased and she squirmed until at last she pulled on him to get on top.
He eased himself over onto her and then he kissed her. Moving hard toward each other, he probed in and out of her to the bottom, and then with her swept up in the whirling spiral of the process, she began to oh and aw aloud. The muscular walls of her vagina began to close in powerful spasms around his shaft. Soon he felt forces crush his testicles. He drove to the bottom of her well, and forced a fountain of his hot cum out of the swollen head of his dick. They collapsed in an exhausted heap and slept.
Dawn and he softened the whisker stubble on his upper lip in the steam off his coffee. Seated on the ground with the rifle over his lap, he listened and watched for anything out of place. A light fog, waist high, shrouded the large meadow where the horses were hobbled and grazing. Nice cool mountain morning. Some camp-robbing magpies were flitting around where Willa was preparing breakfast on the oak wood fire. Sharp-smelling smoke on the breath of the air stirred around her.
“Where will we go today?” Bent over her sizzling bacon, she threw her head up to look in his direction.
“Jimenez thinks Pedro, the horse man, might be at his home rancheria. You recall him?”
She made a cross look at him, then turned back to her cooking. “I will never ever forget a one of those bastards.”
“I figured as much.”
She glanced back at him and gave him a sharp nod. “Every damn one of them.”
He’d not tried to learn much about her day or so spent in their camp. In time,
he felt she would tell him all about them. And he didn’t think being held as a prisoner had been any pleasure for her. But rehashing a real bad experience is not always the best thing to do until the person involved has sorted some of it out with themselves. Sounded like she was about ready to talk about it.
“You better wake up the crew. My gravy is about done.”
He rose and went off to do that. Nudging each man in a bedroll with his boot toe, his crew was soon up yawning and stretching. He’d have to wait until later to hear her version.
“Things look quiet?” Cordova asked, looking about the camp.
Slocum nodded.
“Diego can stay here today and watch over the camp and her.”
“I wants to go along,” Willa said.
“Fine. I thought . . .”
“I know, but I want to see every one of these guys pay for what they did to me.”
“I savvy.”
After breakfast, they left Diego in charge and rode out. On the way, Jimenez explained that Pedro’s place was no hacienda and they should not expect too much.
“I think he is the toughest of the bunch,” the man said. “He has killed many men and done it in a bad way. He hung my brother-in-law by his feet in a well and when he could no longer hold his head up, he drowned.”
Willa nodded that she agreed. “He’s plenty cruel.”
“That was Phillip’s brother Juan,” Cordova said. “That he did that to.”
Jimenez agreed, though Slocum had no idea who Phillip was, but he listened to them.
“Juan was a good man too. He had children and a wife too.”
“Why did he do such a thing?”
“He thought Juan was messing with this wife.”
“Was he?”
“No, he didn’t even know her.”
“Who was messing with his wife?” Slocum twisted in the saddle and looked back over his shoulder—nothing back there.
“Many men—he never caught all of them. But Juan was not one of them. Oh, Pedro’s wife, she was a puta and a bruja too.”
“And she was mean as hell,” Trevino said, sounding like he knew her as well, and then he laughed. “But—I am so sorry, Señora—but she was very good-looking.”