The Red Sombrero

by Nelson Nye

He scowled hard at his boots, trying his best to ignore her.

  “You’re no coward, Reno.”

  That straightened him up a little. He blinked bleary eyes and slumped back again. “A lot you know about me,” he sneered.

  “I’ve heard quite a few of the stories — ”

  “A pack of lies,” he growled; and she said, “Yes. I think they must be. No man who had the daring to achieve the rank of Descardo — ”

  “O Christ!” he said, writhing out of the chair. He rammed a hand through his hair and glared at her blackly. “I’m not Descardo — ”

  “I was pretty sure you weren’t,” she smiled. “You’ll have to practice harder if you intend to fool Don Luis.”

  SEVEN

  IT WAS NOT until Reno had confessed himself an unheeded advisor on Sierra’s staff that he realized he couldn’t stop there with this girl. He realized something else then, too — that no matter how little he might actually divulge, he’d been a fool for opening his mouth in the first place. It amounted to putting his life in her hands and, if she happened to take the notion, there was no way he could stop her from going straight to Cordray.

  He looked at her narrowly, wondering how far to trust her and knowing he would have to trust her all the way as things stood. Or, at any rate, far enough to make his presence plausible. He told her how Descardo had died, and of the two bags of gold he’d taken off the general’s saddle. He explained how the money had been intended for the purchase of rifles Don Luis was to have procured and had waiting. He said nothing about his own improvisation, his intention of giving this place a wide berth. Nor did he mention the hunt Perron’s men had made for him.

  Perhaps the girl sensed she had not got the whole story. Looking puzzled she said, “But I don’t quite see your reason for trying to look like the General. The Federalistas — ”

  “Would have shot me on sight, regardless. There was nothing I could do about them. It was the people I hoped to fool if I ran into any, the land owning farmers — agrarians. I needed food, a horse and shelter. As Descardo, I figured they would not dare refuse me.”

  She still looked bewildered. He said, “Only the rabble have any love for Sierra; the agrarians are afraid of him, they do not want him to win. They would have turned me over to the government for the reward which has been posted on all of Sierra’s officers.”

  “But surely as Descardo — ”

  “No. He inspired too much dread. They wouldn’t have dared lay hands on El Rojo.”

  “So you became the General and didn’t meet anyone. You must have been relieved to discover you were at Tadpole.” She smiled and then looked baffled again. “But why has Don Luis confined you to the house?”

  “I do not have the gold. I think he is trying to find it.”

  He saw the doubt in her eyes and added quickly, “I don’t say he plans to steal it but he refuses to deal with me until I produce it. Put yourself in my place; I can’t move all those rifles without help. He wants his money, but I want some assurance of getting the rifles when I give it to him. To protect Sierra, and at the same time myself, I have agreed to turn it over when the rifles reach the border.

  “That still does not solve my dilemma,” he scowled, “it simply eases my position until I can get word to Sierra. So he confines me to the house.”

  “And you think he’s searching for it?”

  “What do you think?” Reno asked.

  She looked perplexed. “He might be. It does not seem too likely he would attempt to cheat Sierra. Still, I find it hard to believe he would deal with insurrectos in the first place.”

  “He’s a Mexican, isn’t he?”

  “No. He’s half Spanish. His mother was an American.” She stood silent a moment. “When I showed him the note from the bank he was outraged. He said he had explained when the estate was in probate — he acted for me, you know — that the note would be met as soon as we were able to dispose of my beef. My father hadn’t sold in the spring. The bank extended the note, and now it is fall and the note is coming due and because I’ve had no crew there has been, of course, no roundup.”

  “Well, you asked Cordray to get at it, didn’t you? To get up enough beef to pay off the note?”

  “Yes. But right now, because of other business, he’s short handed. He said he would start next week.”

  “Didn’t you say the note was due on the first? That only gives him ten days if he waits until next week — ”

  “He says he will put his whole crew to work on Spur, except for what he has to have to keep watch over here. You can’t blame him for that, what with all the rustling and Sierra just over the border.” She looked worried.

  Reno, turning over her words, observed again how handsomely she was put together. The lines of her dress cut upward from the hips to show the full promise of what she had to offer, and he reckoned if he were younger she might take quite a hold on his thinking. He glanced at her hands and seeing no rings, said without tact: “If things get too rough you can always get married.”

  Color spread across her cheeks. She stared down at her fingers for perhaps a dozen heartbeats. Then her face came around and her eyes met his. “When I get married it will be for love.”

  The weirdest feeling came over him. He felt almost for the moment as though he were looking at someone else, some enchantress out of a fable. Her skin seemed touched with a tawny glow, a richness and warmth that tipped his head forward. Her eyes grew wide. He caught the quick lift of her startled breathing and could not understand how he had ever thought her plain.

  Her mouth was parted and suddenly he was out of the chair moving toward her, reaching for her. But she drew back, her eyes darkening, her cheeks going ashen as the enormity of their boldness overwhelmed and destroyed the moment. A shaken laugh came out of her that was half sob, half animal whimper.

  In Reno the fires of an awakened hunger climbed high with heat before reluctantly subsiding. He dropped into the chair feeling balked and mean and with the weight of his years and all their lost opportunities resettling his face in a churlish twist. He wouldn’t look at her now but glared into the hoof-tracked dust of the yard, feeling loutish and stuck with the short end of things again.

  Don Luis, with a hard-faced Texican following, presently wheeled across his view coming up from the corrals. Reno’s eyes watched them, scowling, taking in the shotgun chaps, black cotton shirt and the faded blue scarf knotted tight about the neck of the one he didn’t know. Short and broad, this one was, a man of dark burnt features that were highboned and solid, set off by bleached eyes that seemed to hold a calculent slant which almost amounted to insolence as they considered the rail-thin back of Tadpole’s owner.

  Against his will Reno said, “Who’s that?” and Linda said: “Bennie.”

  “Looks like a gun fighter. Bennie what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s he do around here?”

  “He’s a kind of general factotum.”

  “Looks to me like a watch dog.”

  The men passed out of sight. The silence closed in and got thick again. He felt the change in her, the uneasiness and worry; and dissatisfaction with himself fought a losing fight with the creeping threat of Sierra’s arrival.

  He hitched his chair around and cleared his throat. “Tell you what I’ll do,” he said, and stopped, again considering her, wanting to deal with her more fairly yet knowing very well if he would get out of this place with that plunder there could be no time for scruples. He salved his pride by saying, “I can’t promise you a thing, but if you will get me a gun I’ll see what I can do.”

  She stood there considering him an intolerable while without speaking. Reno, inwardly squirming, managed to mask his impatience and put up a fair show of being indifferent to her decision; a not inconsiderable achievement with everything depending on his getting hold of a weapon.

  She smiled at him painfully. “Before I enter into any compact with you there are a number of things I think you should tel
l me.”

  “You’ve got the floor.”

  “Are you proposing to use Sierra’s money to help me?”

  He shook his head. She looked relieved, but then doubt colored her glance and she asked, “You aren’t intending to hold up the bank or anything of that sort?”

  “Do you take me for a fool?”

  “I have the feeling,” she said, “that you’ve got something in your mind you’re afraid I wouldn’t like. Possibly I’m old fashioned but I couldn’t accept your help if it depended on anything dishonorable.”

  Reno got up and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Naturally,” he nodded. “As a matter of fact I don’t know what I’m going to do. I haven’t had time to give any real thought to it. I’d want to look around a bit and see how things shape up.”

  She gave him a dubious smile and her hands smoothed the skirt about the snugness of her hips. “That seems reasonable.” She had her breath under control and her hands had quit their fiddling, but her tongue didn’t seem quite sure of itself and he observed in her face the kind of strain that comes of trying to express objectionable thoughts in a manner not calculated to offend their recipient. He found this flattering yet restrained the impulse to go to her aid.

  “So why,” she said, suddenly giving it up, “are you making the gun so important?”

  “I didn’t say it was important.” He smiled to show it wasn’t, finding her smarter than he’d figured.

  “It’s got to be. You made it the crux, the condition of any help you might give me.”

  She was watching him closely. He took a turn about the room and came back, again stopping before her, hating her stubbornness but forced to accept it. “I didn’t wish to give you any needless alarm. The reason the gun is important,” he said, “is that I can’t get out of this house without one. If I can’t get out I certainly can’t help you.”

  Her look remained confused. “I don’t see how the gun is going to get you out of here unless you plan to do murder.”

  There was strength in her all right. He said, “The thing has other uses. Do you think this bunch would stand against Red Hat with a gun in his fist?”

  “Red Hat’s dead.”

  “Descardo’s dead, but not his reputation.” Reno picked up the quirt and shoved his wrist through its loop and put on the general’s hat. “So long as Lewis Cordray doesn’t know the Butcher’s dead …” His mouth framed Descardo’s wintry grin.

  She didn’t laugh. She shook her head. “It won’t work, Reno.”

  “It will work all right if you get me the gun.”

  “I don’t want any violence. There has been enough blood spilled already over Spur.”

  “And I’ve told you,” he said impatiently, “they won’t try anything when they see I’m armed. I thought you wanted to save your ranch.”

  “I do want to save it. But not at the price of anyone’s life.”

  She was fire and ice. She was like a damned rock, Reno thought, glowering at her. Then he smoothed out his face, knowing he’d get nowhere that way. “Look,” he said in a more reasonable tone, but she shook her head at him.

  “You hold Don Luis too lightly. He is not a fool. I am beginning to believe he is a very clever man. If I was able to see through your imposture — ”

  “Fortunately Cordray doesn’t have your intuition. He has already accepted me as General Descardo.”

  “Perhaps you only think he has. He had nothing to lose by allowing you to assume that. He wants the money he has bargained for but if he wasn’t suspicious you would still have your pistol.”

  Reno felt suddenly cold, considering that, but discounted it, comforted by Descardo’s reputation. “His suspicion is concerned with the money, not my identity. Even if you are right, he can’t be sure. He wouldn’t risk it. Look,” he said, “if I gave you my word …”

  “No,” she shook her head, but more reluctantly now. “If I got you a gun you might have to use it.”

  “Would you blame a man for trying to protect his life?”

  “I’d rather not put you in the position of having to.” But some twist of her mouth, or perhaps some trick of light and shadow, caused him to move closer, to take hold of the hand she put out to stop him. Her fingers were like particles of ice but when brashly he squeezed them they warmed and squeezed back.

  Crowding his luck he slipped his free arm around her, pulling her against him and finding her lips. She did not resist but held still as though waiting. When he did not immediately release her, she stiffened. A trembling ran through her. She must have guessed what a dangerous game they were playing but she was clinging to him now in shaken wonder and in thirst. When she finally pushed him back and flung away from him she was panting.

  Her eyes were enormous and almost black, and they were angry.

  “I think,” she said, still breathless, “you are what my father would have called a ‘bad lot.’”

  He grinned when she rubbed the back of a hand across her mouth. “But you liked it,” he reminded her — ”you liked it as much as I did.”

  “You really are a cur.”

  Reno laughed. “You never imagined I was anything else. Never mind. You can’t put a fire out by waving a blanket. I want the gun before supper.”

  “And if I don’t get it?”

  Reno stepped back with a bow, his eyes mocking. “You may take out the cartridges but you will get me the gun.”

  EIGHT

  THE FAT SERVANT, Juan-called-Juanito, was resting his weight in an old cushioned rocker out back of the stables when the dour-faced Bennie finally ran him to earth. The big Mexican had his sandals off, bare feet ensconced on a sack of whole oats. He had a bottle of vino uncorked beside him and one of Don Luis’ expensive coronas was expanding his comfort in a cloud of blue smoke. Though Bennie, being a Texican, would not have been found caught dead with a ‘greaser,’ he managed with great effort to dissemble his feelings and said with what passed for good will, “What goes, hombre?”

  “Mucho trabajo. Nothing but work,” Juan sighed, offering the bottle. “And how goes it with you?”

  Bennie shook his head, scowling, wiped off the bottle and took a generous swallow. Handing it back he hunkered down on his bootheels, crammed tobacco in his cheek and said in what he reckoned to be a roundabout fashion, “Them soldiers down yonder’s gittin’ all-fired close to the line this last day or two. You ever git a look at this Tano Sierra?”

  “No, señor.” Juan puffed complacently. Soon it would be dusk, the finest hour of the day. He was glad he lived north of the border; in the south things were much different. Many times he had felt the homesickness, and sometimes he thought he could not resist the call of the land but he had stuck it out. He felt sorry for those fellows. For of what good was a revolution which, even if successful, would but swap one group of masters, for another with no benefit to the people? Here at least if things were not to your liking you could pick up your hat and go someplace else… .

  “You figure he’s goin’ to git anywhere?”

  “Quien sabe?” Juan said. “It will be as God directs, no doubt.”

  “To be sure. And God is good,” observed Bennie piously. “And what do you think of this stranger, amigo?”

  Juan put another cloud of smoke about him. “He who holds his tongue avoids much trouble. Besides,” he could not resist pointing out, “I am not being paid to think on this rancho.” He made a business of inspecting the ash of his cigar.

  Bennie, snorting, made a business of getting out his wallet. He disengaged a couple of banknotes and made tents of them on the ground where Juan could see them. “We have a saying in my country, too.”

  They looked at each other and the Mexican grinned. “Dispensame, señor — pardon me, but you are right. Sometimes I think in spite of myself. What was it the friend of the poor would like to know?”

  “I want to know who this bird really is!”

  “Bird?” Juanito blinked. “In the red hat? The General, señor. Assuredly.” He cr
ossed himself. “El Carcinero — the Butcher.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  The fat man stared. “But of course, señor. Who else?”

  “The patron,” Bennie said, tapping Juanito’s knee, “is of the opinion this man is a counterfeit.”

  The Mexican fished a match from his pocket, removed the cigar from his mouth and held it over the flames, twirling it, until it burned with a reasonable evenness. “The patron has great knowledge.”

  “But you don’t think he’s right, eh?”

  “The patron is always right, señor.” Juanito stared at a big toe critically. “But right wears many faces. It is one thing to one man, something else to another. Consider, señor, would a rogue in a mask promise fifty pesos and, when the favor was done, keep the promised money in his pocket?”

  Bennie scowled. “What favor?”

  The Mexican picked up the banknotes. “He was ask for a gun.”

  • • •

  Reno finally got out of his chair in disgust. Two hours he’d sat waiting, and nothing to show for it. “Women!” he snorted, and growled bitterly, stamping off down the hall. Yet when he went into his room to make himself presentable to sit at table with his host, the gun, rolled up in a shell belt and holster, was on the chest of drawers between the crockery pitcher and the basin.

  The belt was his own. Fading light from the window struck up a yellow gleaming from the rims of cartridge cases as he buckled it about his hips. He felt whole again with that weight dragging at him. He slipped the pistol — which was not Descardo’s — out of its leather and loaded it, making a few quick passes with it, a tight grin lengthening the line of his lips. Let them try to hold him now!

  There was a razor beside the basin, a towel, a washcloth and homemade soap. He stripped out of his shirt and washed himself. Lathering his face, he picked up the razor and went over to the mirror. There was a lamp in a bracket but the window had no shade and so he got along without it. He was getting into his shirt when an unnerving possibility occurred to him. Supposing the girl had tampered with those cartridges …