Horn walked over to Newt. “He’s an independent little scamp. Hunts and takes care of himself like an Apache boy. Guess he’s already learned some things living with them.”
Once the rat meat was done, Charlie supervised the distribution of the portions to each child. He was obviously proud of his accomplishment.
Some got legs and some got ribs and back. None of the children seemed to have any qualms about eating rat. The smell of the cooked meat even gave Billy an appetite. Gok and Horn were next, and they attacked their share with equal gusto, sucking the bones after they had stripped the meat off, then sucking the juice from their fingers to savor the flavor as long as they could.
“Only problem with that is there ain’t enough of it,” Horn said.
Charlie held out a fat hind rat leg to Newt.
“You eat it, or give it to one of the other kids,” Newt said.
“Eat,” Charlie said. “It’s good.”
All of the children, as well as Gok and Horn, were watching him. Newt was as hungry as any of them, but there was little to go around. He would rather one of the kids get a little more but knew that he was going to lose face in front of Gok and the Apache children if they saw that he thought he was too good to eat a rat.
He bit into the hot little morsel and then ate some more. Newt had eaten many things during hard times, and once he had lived on nothing but rattlesnake for days. Never had he eaten rat, but it was surprisingly good. The rat leg was reduced to nothing but a slick bone almost as quickly as the children had cleaned up their shares.
“Not bad, huh?” Horn asked.
“Not at all, but I’d guess you’d have to call it something else on the menu if you were ever going to serve it in a restaurant,” Newt replied.
“It’s better if you can boil them in a pot,” Charlie said.
Newt looked at Charlie and nodded at him. “You’ll do to ride the river with, boy. You’ll do.”
After their scanty meal, they gave the children another ration of water, finishing off the last of it. They mounted the children and started up the mountain, as usual with Gok leading the way as if he were half mountain goat.
Two hours later they found water, and at midday they crossed over the mountain and below them lay the valley near the headwaters of the Rio Bavispe. They could see for miles and miles from their vantage point, and of great interest were the adobe walls of a good-size village on the bank of the river. Of even more interest was the sound of a cavalry bugle carrying clear and far in the thin air.
Chapter Seventeen
There was Mexican cavalry down there, but they needed supplies and they needed to turn over the six Mexican children to someone. It was decided that Newt would go down the mountain with those children, while Horn and Gok remained hidden in the mountains and guarded the rest of them.
Gok didn’t especially like the idea. For one, Newt suspected that he would have liked to keep all the children to take back among his Apache friends and family. And the other reason was that Gok feared the children would talk and put the army on the lookout for him. The latter was a concern that Newt had himself.
And Gok wasn’t the only one who was upset about the plan. Although young Billy had shown little interest in Newt to that point, he came and clung to Newt’s leg the instant it became apparent that the big man was leaving.
Newt pried him loose and held him at arm’s length by both shoulders. Charlie had come to help with Billy, but he stopped and stared at them both.
“You boys listen to me,” Newt said. “You stick close to the fire and stay warm, and mind what Mr. Horn tells you.”
“You won’t come back.” Billy sniffled and rubbed at his freckled nose.
Newt was somewhat shocked that the boy had actually spoken and uncomfortable with the way Billy was looking at him. “Don’t you worry, I’ll be back by nightfall.”
Charlie put a hand on Billy’s arm.
“Don’t go,” Billy pleaded.
“Got to,” Newt said. “Now you boys do like I said.”
Charlie pried Billy away and guided him back a few steps. “Don’t worry. We’ll be right here.”
“All right, Charlie. I’m trusting you to kind of look out for Billy.”
“Can I have a gun?”
“No, you get Mr. Horn to do any shooting you need.”
Charlie’s little chin jutted out. “I’m big enough.”
Newt unbuckled his gunbelt and slid his knife scabbard off of it. He handed Charlie the knife. “Might be that you need to skin some more rats. Take care you don’t cut yourself.”
Charlie nodded and his face lit up like a kid at a candy counter.
Uncomfortable with the way both of the boys were looking at him, Newt mounted the Circle Dot horse and rode over to Horn and Gok. “You get gone fast if I’m not back by nightfall.”
He went down off the mountain, with him leading the Circle Dot horse and letting the six Mexican children take turns on its back. They reached the outskirts of the town of Bacerac under a gray sky, with the clouds overhead forming a marble ceiling that made it appear that the sky went no farther than the tops of the mountains. It was nearing the end of the monsoon season, and Newt thought it might rain.
He was met at the edge of the town by a troop of Mexican cavalry, and after a few questions that he struggled to answer he was escorted to the central plaza. Within minutes, it seemed as if half the town had crowded around him. Again, he struggled with his Spanish, but the children told most of the story for him. Women tried to reach up and hug his waist, and the men wanted to shake his hands. The people were especially happy that two of the children belonged to families from that town. The parents of the children were called for, and when they arrived they wept and crossed themselves in the Catholic way and lifted their arms to the sky in thanks. And they hugged their children and smiled teary-eyed smiles at Newt and called him Don Valiente. Others in the crowd took up that name.
“Gracias a Dios por Don Valiente!” they called out.
Thank the Lord for brave gentlemen. Newt grunted and scoffed at that. He tried to slip from the crowd and avoid answering more of the soldiers’ questions, and he was almost out of the plaza when he saw Colonel Herrera leaning against a support post under the ramada of a large adobe building.
“Buenos tardes, Capitán,” the colonel said.
There was no sense in Newt acting like he hadn’t seen or heard the colonel, so Newt went over to him. But he didn’t have the gall to salute the colonel like Horn had back in Janos. “Buenos tardes, Coronel.”
Colonel Herrera pointed over Newt’s shoulder at the crowd in the plaza still celebrating and making over the children. “It appears that you are a hero.”
“Not by a long shot.”
“Ah, such modesty.” The colonel clucked his tongue and shook his head as if he didn’t believe Newt. He bent at the waist slightly in a mock bow, and there was equal mockery in his voice. “Te saludo, Don Valiente.”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
The colonel nodded again, as if that was something he did agree with. “And where did you find these children, if I may ask?”
Newt had already prepared the lie. He gestured vaguely to the southeast. “I ran on to a little camp of Apaches and traded for the children.”
“What did you trade?”
“Huh?”
“I said, what did you trade?”
“Money, horses, some tequila . . .” Newt said. “And a few trinkets and such. You know.”
The colonel clucked his tongue again. “No, I do not know. This is why I ask you. How is this that you bring back these children?”
“Luck, I guess.”
“Yes, much luck you have.” Newt started to leave, but the colonel refused to let it go. “I don’t believe you. These people . . . these silly people may believe you, but I do not.”
“You believe what you want to,” Newt said. “It was you that told me you didn’t have an Apache problem.”
&n
bsp; The colonel’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Newt saw what he had seen before in the colonel—that he was quick to anger and a petty, prideful man. “The Apache are no problem for me, I assure you. Everyone knows this.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
The colonel held up a hand to stop him. “What of your friends, Lieutenant Horn and your Apache scout?”
“Lieutenant Horn was called back to the border, and the scout went with him.” So much lying was beginning to grate on Newt, and he realized that he was holding his breath before he spoke.
“I would ask you more, far more, Capitán Jones, but these people think you are a different man than what we both know,” the colonel said in a lowered voice as a priest and several of the children passed by. “I don’t think you are an officer at all. Comprende? Me entiendas? I think you are . . . how do you say . . . un impostor? Un bandito?”
“You think what you want to think.”
“There is this barman you beat in Janos, and now you bring these children and say how you rescue them and do this miraculous thing all by yourself. Maybe you took these children and bring them back and think the town will pay you some ransom or reward. Maybe you think we all say what a brave and good man you are. Maybe you come down here to make me look bad. No? Maybe this is how you think. Que no? Es verdad? Usted cree que puede hacer esto a mi? Ah, como se dice . . . You think you can do this, and I will not be bothered? You think this is your country to do as you will?”
“Seems like you’re doing all the thinking.”
“This is no gringo country. You do not belong here,” the colonel said. “Some men like you, I always show them that they cannot do these things. Ask the people, they will tell you this is true. Colonel Herrera, he is no man to trifle with.”
Newt had pushed his luck further than he wanted to, and he walked away while he still could. He had noticed several of the colonel’s cavalrymen watching them while he and the colonel talked.
The crowd had mostly moved to the church, and he had no trouble retrieving his horse. He rode it to a low, long adobe building with a sign proclaiming it a general store. He left the Circle Dot horse at a hitching rail and went inside.
The shelves in the store were far from full, and there were few shelves. The only way to bring in supplies was via cart or wagon from El Paso or Juarez, or by a mule train crossing of the mountains from Chihuahua City or up from Hermosillo. The storekeeper had little to offer him beyond the basic staples, a few dry goods and hardware, a small collection of patent medicine, and other trinkets. The rest of the things in the store were from the area: handmade boots, sausages and dried peppers hanging from the rafters, homespun cotton clothing, and knives made from salvaged wagon springs and other cast-off scrap steel. The store even carried a keg of black powder, lead ingots, bullet molds, and percussion caps. The muzzleloaders, breech loaders, and cap-and-ball revolvers and such had long since been a thing of old in the States, but Newt could see how someone in that faraway place would want to be able to roll their own ammunition.
Newt purchased a sack of flour, a sack of beans, half a dozen home-canned jars of hominy, two sides of bacon, some chili peppers, a box of matches, and the last pound of coffee in the store. He considered the pile on the counter before him and then considered how much money he had left in the wallet Matilda Redding had given him.
He paid the storekeeper and took the flour and bean sacks outside while the man bundled some of the smaller items together and wrapped them in brown paper that he tied with twine. Newt lashed the sack tops together and hung them behind his saddle to let them hang down on either side of his horse like mochilas, what the Mexicans called their long saddlebags.
He went back into the store to get the rest of his purchases and was coming back out the door to his horse when he saw the man in the orange glasses riding up the street toward him.
Chapter Eighteen
Newt rolled his package inside his rain slicker and tied it behind his saddle, and he stuffed the jars of hominy in his saddlebags while he watched the Hatchet coming nearer. When the outlaw was close to him, Newt leaned down to pick up the sides of bacon, not so coincidentally causing his horse to block him from the Hatchet’s view as he passed. The Hatchet twisted in the saddle when he had ridden on by, but all he saw was Newt’s back as Newt tied the cured meat to his saddle horn.
The Hatchet stopped some fifty yards up the street and parked his horse in front of a cantina. He was alone, and Newt watched as he disappeared inside.
Newt took off his hat and scratched his head, debating the two things whirling around and around inside his brain like angry bees. One was the smart thing to do, and the other was not so smart.
“To hell with it.” Newt put his hat back on and went up the street to the cantina.
The Hatchet stood at the bar on the left-hand side of the room, already nursing a glass of tequila when Newt stepped through the door. Newt went to the end of the bar nearest the front door. The Hatchet had turned slightly toward him and stayed that way, watching him carefully.
The bar was far better stocked than the store had been, proving, possibly, some of the citizens’ priorities. Newt ordered a glass of whiskey and a beer. He tried to appear nonchalant and make as if he was studying his glass of whiskey. The first time he looked up at the mirror behind the bar he saw the Hatchet looking back at him. The outlaw’s eyes were barely visible behind those orange lenses.
Newt didn’t look away, each man measuring the other in the mirror. The Hatchet was dressed exactly the same as he had been before, only Newt was close enough this time to see the thin, groomed mustache that covered his upper lip, and an equally thin vertical strip of whiskers centered below his mouth. And he saw that the man wore two Model 1878 Colt double-action revolvers, one on each hip, and the buckle on his gunbelt was made of a huge, hammered silver concho. Not near so fancy or shiny as that belt buckle or his tall-topped boots was the rusty hatchet whose long wooden handle was shoved behind his belt in the center of his belly—dull except for the sharpened edge of it, and as rust-brown and blotched as old blood.
The Hatchet took a sip of his tequila and reshaped the tips of his wet mustache, all the while watching Newt.
Newt downed his whiskey in a single pull, then followed with his mug of beer, which he drank almost as quickly. He wiped the beer foam from his mouth with the back of his forearm, and like the Hatchet, he never let his gaze waver from the mirror.
“You are very thirsty,” the Hatchet said.
Newt merely shrugged.
“For a man with such a thirst you must have come far to get here.”
“Not so far. How about you?” Newt wondered why the outlaw kept his peculiar glasses on in the dim light and shadows of the room.
One corner of the Hatchet’s mouth moved upward. “As you say, not so far.”
“Would have thought from the look of you that you’d had a long ride.” The instant Newt said it he was wishing he hadn’t. But something in the way the Hatchet was looking at him made him want to antagonize him, and the thought of the dead squaw with the cracked-open forehead kept coming back. “You look all tuckered out.”
The Hatchet sucked at one of his eyeteeth and played with one of his black braids of hair, obviously annoyed. “Me? I’m fresh as a daisy.”
Newt motioned with his empty beer mug for a refill. “Well, maybe you just had a bad day or something. I’m sure things will be better tomorrow.”
The Hatchet sensed that there was something more to Newt’s banter. And so did the bartender. He found an excuse to go to the back room, leaving the two men in the bar alone.
“Do I know you?” the Hatchet asked.
“Nope.”
The Hatchet sharpened one end of his mustache again. “I don’t recall your face.”
“No, I figure you never saw me.” Newt looked directly at the Hatchet and gave him his most bland and innocent expression. “Reckon you’d forget a face like this?”
“No, I can�
�t say I would.” The Hatchet laughed, but there was no humor in it. He reached for his tequila with his right hand and used that motion to draw attention away from his left hand dropping off the bar to hang by his pistol on that hip.
Newt noticed it but kept that same dumb, lazy look on his face. “Have you been down here long? Mexico, I mean.”
“I get down here from time to time,” the Hatchet said. “How about you?”
“Couple of weeks.”
“Like it?”
“Nope; it’s entirely too rough on a gentleman like me. Can’t even travel the roads without worrying about somebody trying to waylay you,” Newt said. “But I got what I came after, and I’m heading back to the States.”
It was the Hatchet’s turn to quit the mirror and look straight at Newt. He was older than Newt had assumed he would be, but it was hard to tell with that bright red serape and those tall boots covering most of him, and the tinted glasses hiding that much of his face. His nose and jawline suggested a hint of Indian blood, as Horn had claimed, but his accent could have been from Texas.
“I didn’t catch your name.” The Hatchet let go of his tequila glass and tapped the forefinger of that hand on the bar top. His other hand moved to touch the bottom of his holster.
“Newt Jones. And you?”
“Rufus Clagg.” The Hatchet said it like he expected it to have an impact on Newt, and he was ready for it with that hand so close to his pistol.
It was plain to Newt that the Hatchet was worried that he was some kind of lawman. There was probably a price on his head. He also took note that the Hatchet seemed confident with his left hand. There weren’t many two-gun men, and even fewer could use both hands—a tricky thing, and one that bore remembering.
“Are you a woodcutter, Mr. Hag?” Newt lifted a slow hand and pointed at the hatchet in the outlaw’s belt.
Buzzard Bait Page 14