Border Snakes

by Peter Brandvold

  Hawk struggled futilely in the grip of the two men holding him, who only raised his arms higher and tighter against his back every time he moved. He watched Monjosa’s knife-hand moved slowly toward him, the curled tip of the blade level with Hawk’s belly.

  “I show you what I do to uninvited guests,” Monjosa said, stopping two feet in front of Hawk, letting a bizarre half smile pull at the corners of his mustached mouth. “Especially those that can’t behave themselves. . . .”

  Monjosa’s smile transformed instantly into a grimace as he set his left hand on Hawk’s shoulder and drew his knife-hand back, holding his arm tight against his side. “I gut you like a pig, amigo!”

  The knife snapped forward, the blade flashing pink in the dying light. Hawk ground his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, awaiting the last torment.

  “Will-burrrrrrrrr!”

  It was a woman’s yell from far away, but in the heavy silence, it penetrated the canyon like a rifle’s roar. On the heels of the call, Hawk heard Monjosa give a little, surprised grunt.

  He felt a wasp sting of pain just above his belly button. He opened his eyes and glanced down.

  Monjosa’s blade had stopped with its tip poking through Hawk’s vest and his shirt. Hawk felt the blood dribble around the cold steel.

  Monjosa had turned his head to look up toward the house that had turned several shades of darker pink since Hawk had first pulled into the canyon. A slender, blond-haired figure stood at the top of the broad stone steps leading up from the yard. She was a hundred yards away, so it was hard to make her out clearly, but his loins responded with an aching burn.

  No. It couldn’t be her.

  As the blonde started down the steps, puffing a long thin cigar, Monjosa pulled the blade away from Hawk’s belly and turned toward the casa. He threw up his hands, annoyed. “I’m busy here, damnit!”

  Saradee Jones’s musical, faintly mocking voice drifted into the canyon with a sound akin to breeze-nudged wind chimes. “Who you got there, Wilbur?”

  She was dressed as she always dressed—in men’s trail garb, her tan chaps flapping lightly against her delectably curved hips and denim-clad legs, her straight blond hair bouncing on her shoulders. A pearl-gripped Colt jutted from the holster thonged low on her right thigh. As she moved down the steps, her spurs rang faintly, and she removed the cigar from her teeth and blew out a long smoke plume that the light painted salmon.

  Hawk’s brows furrowed. Christ. Where the hell had she come from? What was she doing here? His loathing of her, and his fear, tempered by a liberal dose of uncontrollable excitement, distracted him from the fact that she had just saved him from a miserable fate.

  At least, for now. . . .

  “Who do I got? What do you care?” Monjosa said as Saradee came across the yard, rolling her hips and kicking her boots out with her customary expression of supreme insouciance.

  She drew deep on her black cheroot and walked straight toward Hawk, who was still held by Monjosa’s thugs, and Monjosa himself, who stood in front of Hawk, facing the girl with an expression on his own face like that of a peeved, sheepish schoolboy.

  She stopped ten feet away, kicking out her worn brown boots with undershot heels, and tucked her thumbs behind her cartridge belt, thrusting her breasts out and smiling at Hawk with smoldering delight around the cheroot in her teeth.

  “You’re just in one damn fix after another,” she said.

  Hawk glanced at Monjosa and grunted against the pain in his wrenched arms and shoulders. “Friend of yours?”

  Monjosa was scowling, cutting his eyes suspiciously between Hawk and the beautiful blond border bandita. “I was about to ask the same damn thing!”

  24.

  “THAT’S ONE WAY TO CURE THE PONY DRIP”

  “FRIEND?” flicked her eyes down across Hawk’s broad

  Saradee flicked her eyes down across Hawk’s broad chest bulging out from his hauled-back shoulders.

  “I guess you could call him a friend. And to answer your question, Gideon, yeah, I guess you could call Wilbur a friend.” She hiked a shoulder and stuck the cigar between her large, white teeth. “Friend, business partner, companero . . . Ain’t that right, Wilbur?”

  Monjosa stared at Hawk as he held his savage knife-hand straight down by his right thigh. “Gideon?”

  “Gideon Hawk,” Saradee said. “In some parts he’s known as the Rogue Lawman. The folks back East just love him. I hear they can’t print the yarns about his so-called exploits out here in the lawless frontier fast enough.”

  “Rogue Lawman . . .” Ironside grunted, boxed in by the two Winchesters aimed at his cheeks. “I’ll be goddamned.”

  “Uh, Wilbur,” Kid Reno said, a testy cast flickering across the gunrunner’s gaze, “I believe you were about to kill the son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah, I think you were.” Saradee turned to Monjosa, shaking strands of her hair back from her face. She pitched her voice an octave lower than before as she favored Hawk with her cool, lilac blues. “You were gonna kill him, Wilbur. Gut him ‘like a pig,’ I believe is what I heard from the gallery up yonder.”

  “Sí,” Monjosa said, looking wary, skeptical, vaguely puzzled. “I was going to bury my knife in his guts for his insolence and general annoyance until you interrupted me. How you know this gringo, uh? How you know so much about this Rogue Lawman?”

  “Hawk and me rode together down a few dusty trails.”

  Kid Reno scowled at the blond bandita, incredulous. “So much for him—who are you?” His eyes ran from her blue eyes to her worn, undershot boots in a brazen calculation of the girl’s incredible figure.

  As though she hadn’t heard what the gunrunner had said, she glanced at Monjosa. “But you might have almost killed the wrong man, Wilbur. Hell, a couple months ago I heard Kid Reno roaring drunk and bragging in every cantina and shit-smelly suds hall in Arizona how he’d diddled your girl—cuckolded you—and rode away laughing.”

  Saradee grinned as she stared at Reno, letting cigar smoke trickle out her pretty suntanned nostrils. “Then he was sayin’ as how he was takin’ back his place as the number one gunrunner in the whole Southwest . . . and when he ran into you again, he was gonna gut you with your own knife-hand, scalp all your men, and drag ’em through Apacheria for the wives of the bronco Apaches to finish off and boil up their private parts in their stew pots.”

  Kid Reno staggered back, eyes blazing with exasperation. “Jesus Christ, this woman’s a crazy liar!”

  He glanced at Monjosa, whose glower was now on his former partner.

  “Christ, Wilbur, this girl’s full of lies! I don’t know her from Cleopatra, but I know her kind. She lives to drive wedges between men, mess up their business deals and every kind of damn deal. She gets folks killed.”

  Reno swung toward Hawk, pointing. “He’s the one who came here to kill ya. Orders from some muckety-muck in the federal government. They want you dead, and they sent his crazy ass to do the dirty work. And, believe you me, he was the one to try it!”

  Monjosa’s face was mottled red above his neatly sculpted beard, and his eyes were glassy as he stared at Kid Reno. Sadly, he said, “This is true, Kid? You were bragging about that thing . . . uh . . . that thing with Margaretta? And you think . . . you—you green-livered, white-eyed bastard—that you were going to come back here and kill me?”

  “No. No, Wilbur. She’s lyin’, for chrissakes.”

  “Why would she lie?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you and her got a game goin’ and she’s afraid I’ll buy too many chips. I don’t know. Look at her. You can’t trust a woman with tits like that. She’s the one you gotta kill. Her and Hawk. They’re up to no damn good, I tell ya!”

  Monjosa had walked slowly over to Kid Reno, who’d backed against the aimed rifles of three of Monjosa’s men. Monjosa extended his left hand. “Give me my bacanora, Dawg.”

  Desperation sparked in Reno’s eyes. He glanced at the rifles behind him, then rolled his gaze around as
if searching for a way out of this dire predicament. He let Monjosa take the jug back, and then he said, breathless, “Look, Wilbur, I spoke true. Hawk came here to kill you. Him and Ironside. They threw in together after confiscating the rifles I stole from Fort Bowie. They figured the rifles would get them into your canyon here, and they forced me to come along to show ’em the way.”

  Saradee said with bemusement, “You know, I can always tell when a man’s lyin’.”

  “Oh?” Monjosa said. “How is that?”

  “His eyebrows tighten up, and he sweats. Look at that son of a bitch. His brows are like a goddamn driveshaft, and he’s sweatin’ like a butcher carvin’ meat in a hot shack on the Fourth of July!”

  Reno tossed a desperate glance at Monjosa. “Wilbur, you and me were together for nearly two years. How long have you known this . . . this . . . big-bosomed, evil-eyed, caterwauling temptress?”

  Saradee barked, “I don’t caterwaul, you limp-dicked son of a bitch!”

  Monjosa stood two feet in front of Reno, scowling, holding the savage knife-hand down against his cartridge belt. “Miss Saradee and I have known each other for a week, but some people you get to know in a day, while others, it doesn’t matter how long you know them. You never really get to know them at all. ¿Comprende?”

  The contrabandista shook his head sadly and clucked. “What you say to folks about me—that makes me angry, Kid.”

  He looked at the men behind Reno. Two set down their rifles and grabbed the gunrunner from behind, jerking his arms back. Reno jerked and grunted. He glanced down at Monjosa’s notorious knife, his wide eyes bright with terror.

  “Oh, no! Get that goddamn blade away from me, Wilbur. She’s lyin’, I tell you! She might look like a schoolboy’s wet dream, but damnit, I can get you half the rifles and ammunition in the Southwest. You can sell ’em north, south, east, and west. To Apaches, banditos, cattle rustlers, the goddamn Mexican federales. . . . We can go down to Monterrey and live like kings!”

  Monjosa slid his face up close to Reno’s. “You know what I did to Margaretta, Kid? I did to her what I should have done to you when I found you two humping on my kitchen table! It was only our business considerations that kept me from doing so.”

  “Wilbur, goddamnit, don—!”

  Hawk, still being held by two of Monjosa’s men, winced when he saw Monjosa’s right elbow jerk toward Kid Reno.

  Reno yelped. He tried to bend forward but Monjosa’s men held him upright. Monjosa’s arm twitched and jerked, and then the contrabandista bent his knees slightly and lowered his elbow as he angled the knife blade upward. He turned his head slightly, and Hawk saw a smile pull at the contrabandista’s mustached mouth, saw the man’s tongue flick over his lips.

  Bile filled Hawk, and for a moment he saw Andrew Spurlock standing there in Kid Reno’s stead, the poor defenseless kid being cored like an apple.

  Kid Reno gurgled and sobbed and wheezed, his chin dropping to his chest and his mouth working desperately, eyes nearly popping out of his skull as the razor-edged knife cleaved him all the way to his heart.

  Blood and viscera oozed over his pants and dribbled onto the ground between him and Knife-Hand, splattering both men’s boots.

  Monjosa’s men released Reno’s arms. The gunrunner dropped to his knees, blinking up at Monjosa. He glanced around the contrabandista at Hawk, and then his eyes wobbled around in their sockets. He collapsed over the mound of his own blood and guts, twitched, and lay still.

  Monjosa leaned down to wipe the blood from his blade on Reno’s coat, then stepped back with an air of grave satisfaction.

  “That’s right handy,” Saradee chuckled, regarding the blade. “Might have to get me one sometime.”

  “What about these two?” Monjosa shuttled his gaze between Ironside and Hawk and back again. “I kill them, too, now, huh?”

  “It’s up to you, Wilbur.” Saradee dropped her cheroot on the dirt and ground it out with her boot. “Personally, I’d think it would be right handy to have a man like Hawk on your roll.”

  “You said he’s a lawman. I kill lawmen. Everyone I see. Like flies and rats!”

  “He’s a rogue. Straddles the line.” Saradee cut her mocking gaze at Hawk. “A fence sitter. He thinks he’s more lawman than desperado, but take it from me—I know the man better than he knows himself—he’s an outlaw. One of the most ruthless killers I’ve ever known. And I’ve known my share.”

  Hawk glared at her. His chest felt heavy, and his belly burned. His old revulsion for her hammered him. It bore the sharply filed edge of his physical desire for the crazy witch. The toxic brew made him want to kill her in the worst way possible.

  Monjosa was studying Hawk, lifting one side of his mouth. “He don’t like you, does he?”

  Saradee spread a cool grin. “No, he don’t like me, Wilbur. But he’s loyal. I’ll give him that.”

  Hawk ground his teeth as he glared at her.

  She said, “What do you say you turn these fellas loose, and we all go up to the casa and powwow? I got me a feelin’—knowin’ Hawk like I do—that we could have us a lucrative partnership, make a shitload of money off the bronco Injuns in this neck of the desert, then fog the trail for Monterrey. Like the Kid said, we might could live like kings down there.”

  Monjosa wiped his forehead with his right coat sleeve just up from his knife, leaving a broad smear of Kid Reno’s blood. “I don’t know. How do I know I can trust them?”

  “I’ll vouch for Hawk,” Saradee said. “And you trust me—don’t you, Wilbur?”

  She threw an arm around the contrabandista’s neck and planted a sweltering kiss on his lips. She stepped into him, groaning softly and mashing her breasts against his chest. After a time, she pulled her head away from his, licking her lips and feeding him her soft, womanly gaze.

  “Don’t you, Wilbur?”

  Monjosa grinned at her. “It couldn’t hurt to go up and talk about it, I suppose. I’ll look at the guns in the morning, and we can . . . how you say? . . . haggle.” Still staring at Saradee, who stood with her arm around his neck, he barked, “Release them! But keep a gun on them until I say otherwise! To the casa. Someone, grab a goat!”

  As the men behind Hawk released his arms, he groaned as his shoulders rolled painfully back into place. He stood hunched, trying to work some feeling back into his badly wrenched limbs. A few feet away, Ironside knelt where the other men had left him on his knees, staring up at Hawk skeptically.

  “Someone needs to tend our horses,” he told Monjosa.

  “What? You expect me to do it?” Monjosa looked at several of his men standing around the wagon, peering inside as though to get a look at the guns. “Philipe! Raoul! Tend their horses. Leave the wagon where it is.”

  He glanced at Hawk and Ironside. He still had a dark, suspicious look, but he growled as he used his knife-hand to carefully scratch the back of his neck, “You’ll be joining us for supper in my casa. It is a humble sanctuary, but I like it. Saradee’s men are there, enjoying my wine and my putas .”

  “You’re a most gracious host, Wilbur,” Saradee told him, giving him a peck on his pockmarked cheek.

  Monjosa chuckled and goosed her.

  She chuckled back at him, and then he turned to the casa and stuck out his elbow. Saradee hooked her arm through it, and they headed for the stairs rising whitely to the darkening house. The girl glanced over her shoulder at Hawk and winked.

  Hawk didn’t know what her game was. At the moment, he didn’t care. It was enough to still be alive, to have Reno dead, and to have another shot at Monjosa.

  Ironside must have been thinking of Reno, as well. “That’s one way to cure the pony drip,” he muttered, glancing back at the dead gunrunner.

  “We best get us a weapon,” he added as they followed Knife-Hand and Saradee up the steps. “I got us a feelin’ we’re gonna need to shoot our way out of here, Hawk.”

  Hawk looked over his shoulder. Two of Monjosa’s men were following him and Ironside, st
aying about five steps behind, casually aiming rifles at their backs. Several more men were moving up the steps behind them. All were armed for bear.

  Hawk felt the lightness of his empty holsters.

  He turned his head forward, absently glancing at Saradee’s perfectly formed rump swaying beneath her wide shell belt.

  “What gave you that impression?”

  25.

  KNIFE-HAND’S HUMBLE SANCTUARY

  “JESUS, Joseph, and Mary,” Sergeant Ironside said as he and Hawk gained the top of the steps and stood looking up at Monjosa’s casa, which was completely in shade now that the sun had sunk behind the western ridges.

  It wasn’t that the house was so grand. Likely built long ago by some don who ran a rancho in the canyon, it was a two-story barrack with a large gallery off the bottom floor and a wooden-railed balcony running along the second. What was impressive about the place was the large number of men sitting at tables carelessly arranged around the gallery as well as on the balcony—as hatchet-faced, devil-eyed, and as well armed a gathering of border snakes as Hawk ever seen in one place.

  They were drinking and smoking and laughing, some loudly. There appeared to be white men, black men, half-breeds, Mexicans, and even some full-blood Apaches, two of whom were playing poker with a couple of white men and a black at a table at the gallery’s far right end. The poker players, including Apaches, were smoking cigars.

  A handful of bronco Apaches dressed in deerskins and red bandannas slumped on the gallery’s floor and along the stone steps leading up to it, swilling from wooden cups and pitchers and laughing drunkenly. One was passed out and leaning against a ristra-trimmed adobe pillar, a Winchester repeater resting across his naked thigh.

  At the far left end of the gallery, a couple of rurales—Mexican rural policemen far north of their stomping grounds—sat on a couch with a couple of young, gaudily dressed putas.

  Mandolin chords emanated from inside the casa’s broad open doors and open windows, as did the low hum of conversation, with the occasional roar of male or female laughter. The air was rife with the smell of many different types of liquor, tobacco, wood smoke, and the fresh-cut-hay smell of marijuana.