Thunder Over the Superstitions

by Peter Brandvold

  About two hundred yards out on the dark eastern plain, a pinprick of yellow light danced in the velvety darkness. The Kid removed his spyglass from the pocket of his doeskin jacket, and, lying on his belly, propped on his elbows, he stared through the glass, adjusting the focus.

  That he was staring at El Leproso’s camp and small cook fire there was little doubt. The man himself sat under a lean-to canopy, which he’d likely hastily erected for shelter against the storm. From this distance, even through the spyglass the Kid couldn’t see much, but he made out a long shadow stretched out beside the flickering fire, leaning back against what appeared to be a saddle.

  The shadow was capped with a black sombrero. Beneath the sombrero was the gray splotch of the bounty hunter’s mask. As the Kid studied the camp, he watched the slender shadow of El Leproso rise, throw a stick on the flames and then pour a cup of coffee before sitting back down against his saddle and leisurely crossing his legs.

  The Kid stared through the glass. His heartbeat quickened.

  El Leproso . . .

  The old hunter took his time. He had patience. The Kid would give him that.

  “What do you say we finish this, my old friend?” the Kid said under his breath, feeling his pulse throb in his temples. “Right now. Tonight.”

  He collapsed the telescope and returned it to his pocket. Rising, he picked up his Winchester, backed down the ridge a few yards and then turned and made his way along the slope toward the north.

  He walked slowly and quietly, as he’d learned on his boyhood hunts with his Apache cousins along the Rio Bravo and the Rio Concho, which had given the Kid his nickname after he’d killed two US marshals along that tributary of the Rio Grande two years ago, when the lawmen had tried to arrest him and, failing that, tried to shoot him.

  When he’d walked about six hundred feet north, he turned and headed east.

  The Leper’s fire flickered ahead and on his right though the Kid often lost sight of it, for he kept his head low, wending his way through pockets of wet brush and boulders, a flooded arroyo gurgling on his left.

  He paused for a breather between two large boulders. The owl’s winged shadow fluttered over him, whistling softly through the chill, damp air, and lighted on a mesquite. The owl stared at its charge with its superior air, its umber eyes pulsating softly.

  Annoyed, the Kid whispered, “Don’t you have some pocket mice to hunt?”

  The owl continued to stare at him obliquely.

  The Kid sighed and continued walking, angling now almost directly toward the fire flickering ahead about fifty yards away but growing gradually larger as the Kid closed on it.

  When he was forty yards from the fire, he hunkered down behind a boulder, and crouched there, still as stone, all his senses attuned. He did not look at the fire, for the light would compromise his night vision. He peered into the darkness around it, watching for movement, listening for sounds.

  There was only the faint sighing of the wet earth and dripping plants, the yodeling of a distant coyote and the slight rasping of a burrowing creature somewhere off to the Kid’s left—probably a kangaroo rat rebuilding its nest after the storm.

  Very faintly he could hear the snapping of the Leper’s fire. His keen nose did not tell him where the Leper’s horse was tied, and that caused a fingernail of caution to rake the small of his back.

  Usually, on a night as still as this, he could smell a horse from fifty yards away.

  He could smell the fire and the coffee and beans that had been cooked over it, but not the horse.

  The Kid squeezed the neck of his Winchester. He’d already levered a cartridge into the chamber. Now, pressing his tongue against his lower lip, he very slowly and quietly raked the hammer back with his right, gloved thumb. He sat with his back to the boulder between him and the fire.

  Now he doffed his hat and turned his head to peer with his right eye around the side of the boulder. He could see only the low column of flames dancing beneath the tarpaulin erected atop two mesquite poles. The bounty hunter was likely on the other side of it, as he’d been before.

  This was not a fair fight between honorable combatants. This was kill or be killed. The Kid would shoot El Leproso through the fire without warning.

  He leaned hard to his right and gritted his teeth as he snaked the rifle along the right side of the boulder and pressed his cheek to the stock. He steadied the weapon and stared down the barrel, half closing one eye and mentally slowing his heartbeat and leeching every scrap of nervousness from his hands.

  Now he could see the area beneath the tarpaulin clearly.

  He blinked. His heart thudded.

  Beyond the fire lay vacant ground.

  His heart thudded again as the Kid rose slowly to his feet, continuing to aim over the Winchester’s cocked hammer and down the barrel . . . at nothing but sand and gravel.

  The saddle that El Leproso had been reclining against was gone.

  His coffeepot and all the rest of his gear were gone.

  No wonder the Kid hadn’t smelled the man’s horse.

  He’d pulled out.

  In the night’s hushed silence, a girl’s distant scream vaulted toward the stars.

  Somewhere behind the Kid, the owl added its own bitter wail to that of the girl’s.

  To Tomasina’s . . .

  The Kid lowered the Winchester and ran.

  CHAPTER 11

  SAN GEZO

  The Kid reined Antonia to a halt atop a hill and stared down the other side into the village of San Gezo.

  It was a small collection of peasant shacks and stock pens circling a big, brown church. The church and its customary cemetery were the centerpiece of the village’s central plaza, where a stone fountain stood, surrounded by craggy poplars.

  The pale hills that surrounded the village were stippled with green, for the recent rains had nourished the local foliage. But it was not the foliage the Kid was interested in.

  Since the first wash of dawn, he’d been following the tracks of a single shod horse. They’d led him here to the outskirts of San Gezo. The Kid knew why El Leproso hadn’t killed Tomasina when he’d outfoxed the Kid the night before, and circled around and nabbed her.

  The General wanted her alive, to torture and kill her himself, or to watch his men kill her.

  He likely wouldn’t pay for a corpse.

  But why had he brought her here and not directly to the General? Most likely, the Kid decided, he needed supplies and to rest his horse, for it was a three-day ride back to the General’s hacienda. The night before, El Leproso hadn’t taken the time to grab the girl’s horse, so he’d need one of those, too, and the village was the best place around to find one.

  But he wouldn’t need the horse. Because the Kid had no intention of allowing the Leper to bring Tomasina back to the General for killing.

  Carefully sweeping the morning-quiet village with his gaze, the Kid slid his Winchester out of its saddle boot, cocked it one-handed, and rested the barrel across his saddlebow. He brushed his right hand across the walnut-gripped Schofield holstered for the cross draw on his left hip, then nudged Antonia with his heels.

  He started down the hill and into the outskirts of the village, where the humble stone, adobe, or tin-roofed plankboard shacks and stock pens crowded close along the trail.

  Chickens pecked around some of the shacks. A rooster crowed. Goats and pigs foraged. Somewhere on the other side of the village, in the pale hills to the southwest, a lone dog barked as though at something it had trapped under a gallery or in a privy.

  The fresh morning breeze was touched with the aroma of breakfast fires and the winey fragrance of rose blossoms.

  As the Kid continued toward the square, he saw a few people moving about their yards. A boy in peasant pajamas was hauling a wooden bucket of water from a flooded wash. When the boy saw the tall, grim stranger on the blaze-faced sorrel, his eyes widened under a mussed wing of short, black hair, and the boy hurried toward a tumbledown shack on
the right side of the street.

  He went inside and turned a frightened stare on the Kid as he closed the sagging plank door behind him.

  The Kid slowed Antonia down more and, squeezing the neck of his Winchester, followed a slight bend in the street.

  On the far side of the bend lay the plaza and the church ahead and on the right, a row of pale adobe shops and a wooden barn with adjoining blacksmith shop on the left. An old man in a straw sombrero sat on a bench outside one of the shops.

  He was long-faced and reed thin. His skinny legs were crossed, his feet bare. He was smoking a cigarette. As he watched the Kid without expression, he shook his head once and crossed himself.

  At the same time, the Kid heard a gurgling, groaning sobbing. He swept the square with his gaze, the hair under his shirt collar prickling almost painfully.

  Then he saw Tomasina.

  She stood in front of the church’s stout wooden doors, partly concealed by the morning’s cool, blue shadows. She was not alone, for she was standing on the shoulders of an old, gray man in a brown clerical robe and rope-soled sandals. The old padre was groaning and sighing, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he balanced the girl on his shoulders, his gnarled hands wrapped around her ankles.

  Tomasina sobbed as she looked toward the Kid, whose heart turned a cold somersault in his chest when he saw the noose around the girl’s neck. The rope trailed up from the noose to the bell tower where it was tied to the large, cast-iron bell’s clapper.

  The rope was nearly taut. If the padre dropped her, she’d hang. She’d suffocate if her neck didn’t snap first.

  The Kid swung his right boot over his saddle horn, dropped straight down to the ground and, holding the Winchester in one hand, took two lunging steps toward the padre and the girl.

  “Kid, no!” she screamed.

  The echo of her yell hadn’t died before one dust plume rose mere inches in front of the Kid. The crack of a rifle flatted out over the village, echoing dully.

  The Kid’s boots lifted more dust as he skidded to a stop, slinging his arms out for balance and jerking his gaze to his left, the direction from which the lead had been slung.

  The Leper was on one knee in front of the stable, aiming a sixteen-shot Henry rifle with a brass receiver against his shoulder. Gray smoke curled from the barrel.

  The Leper’s double-barreled shotgun poked up from behind his right shoulder.

  The lips behind the mask were spread in a delighted grin as El Leproso ejected a spent shell and pumped a fresh one into the chamber.

  CHAPTER 12

  BOOT HILL SHOOT-OUT

  The Leper canted his masked head toward the girl and the padre. “A wretched way to die—hanging.”

  The old padre continued to grimace and groan, shifting his weight to balance the girl on his shoulders.

  “Let me go, Padre,” Tomasina said. “I’m dead, anyway.”

  “Never, my child!” the old, gray-bearded man said, though the Kid could see that his knees were buckling and he was beginning to stoop forward beneath his burden. The girl probably didn’t weigh much over a hundred pounds, but even that was too much weight for his ancient, spindly frame.

  “Let me cut her down, damn you,” the Kid snarled.

  The Leper straightened slowly, lowering his Henry slightly but keeping it cocked and ready. “Over my dead body.”

  He sidestepped away from the stable, heading toward the fountain and the cottonwoods that stood between the stable and the church. The burlap mask buffeted against his contorted face as he breathed.

  Rage seared through the Kid’s veins like acid. All the years he’d been trying to stay ahead of this man only to confront him now, with the girl’s life in the balance. Once the Leper was dead, both the Kid and the girl would be free . . . if the Kid could kill him fast enough, before the old padre’s back gave out.

  The trouble was, the Kid was well aware that El Leproso was his most formidable foe. What else did the man have except his ability to maim, torture, and kill?

  “That can be arranged!” The Kid took one running step forward and threw himself to the ground, clicking his Winchester’s hammer back and firing.

  The Leper laughed and stepped to his right as the Kid’s bullet plunked into the cottonwood behind him. The Leper aimed his Henry from his right hip and fired three fast rounds, smoke and flames stabbing toward the Kid, who rolled to his left as each bullet blew up dust just inches to his right.

  The Kid rolled onto his belly, jerked his Winchester up and fired his own three rounds quickly, watching in frustration as El Leproso dove behind the fountain. When the Kid’s reports had stopped echoing, he could hear the bounty hunter laughing, taunting him.

  “It is all right, Padre,” Tomasina was saying in a gentle voice as she gazed sympathetically down at the old brown-robe, who was grunting and wheezing shrilly through gritted teeth as his shoulders continued to slump beneath the girl’s weight. “Please . . . just let me go, Padre. Drop to your knees!”

  “Never!”

  The Kid glanced at the fountain. He couldn’t see the Leper crouched behind it though he could hear the killer’s hysterical laughter.

  “Tomasina, look down!” the Kid shouted as he swung toward her, gaining a knee.

  Pumping a fresh round into the Winchester’s chamber, he slammed the stock against his shoulder and lined up his sites on the rope above the girl’s head. He drew his index finger back against the Winchester’s trigger.

  At the same time that his own gun belched, he felt a searing burn in his upper left arm. The blast of the Leper’s own rifle reached his ears as he watched his slug carve a dimple out of the church wall just a hair right of the taut rope above Tomasina’s head.

  The bullet burn across the Kid’s arm punched him backward. He dropped his rifle and threw his right arm out to steady himself. At the same time, El Leproso stepped out to the right of the fountain and walked along it toward the Kid, aiming his rifle straight out from his right hip.

  Smoke and flames lapped from the barrel.

  The Kid sucked a sharp breath as the bullet carved a burning line across the nub of his right cheek and across his right ear before thumping into the street behind him.

  El Leproso threw his head back and laughed. “Look at it this way, Kid, your running days are over. Now you can join that Apache whore you were so fond of. I heard the soldiers really had fun with her . . . really made her howl like a whore . . . before they cut her to ribbons with their Gatling gun!”

  Fury a raging puma in the Kid’s heart, he rolled sideways as El Leproso drilled another round at him. The Kid palmed his Schofield and leaped to his feet, firing once as the Leper threw himself behind a cottonwood. The Kid fired again, tearing bark from the tree, and then wheeled and sprinted toward the church.

  Laughing wildly, El Leproso sent three rounds buzzing like enraged hornets around the Kid’s head.

  All three slugs slammed into the side of the adobe hovel beside the church a half second before the Kid bounded into the break between the casa and the church. He continued running, sprinting hard down the shady, trash-strewn gap. He dashed around the corner and pressed his back to the church’s rear wall, breathing hard, gritting his teeth against his fury and the hot burn in his arm and across his cheek and ear.

  He looked around.

  To his right hunched the casa and a stable flanking it. Inside the casa, a baby was crying. To the Kid’s left, beyond the church, lay open ground rolling off toward the pale, cactus-stippled hills. Straight out behind the church was a small cemetery adorned with shrines.

  Quickly, the Kid tripped the catch and broke the Schofield open to expose the cylinder. He plucked out his spent cartridges, tossing them into the dirt at his boots, and replaced them with fresh from his shell belt. He snapped the gun closed, spun the cylinder, and pressed his back harder against the church’s cool wall, pricking his ears to listen for El Leproso.

  The man was coming.

  But fro
m which side of the church?

  He got his answer a second later.

  El Leproso stepped quickly around the corner to the Kid’s left, aiming his Henry along the rear wall from his shoulder. The rifle’s black maw appeared to open like a lion’s jaws.

  As the rifle thundered, the Kid lurched straight out away from the wall, dove over a tombstone, rolled off a shoulder and came up shooting.

  Bam! Bam!

  He glimpsed El Leproso jerking back behind the corner of the church as the Kid’s bullets chewed adobe from the wall where the hunter had been standing a half second before.

  The Kid heaved himself to his feet, ran back across the graveyard, and lofted himself into the air as the Leper’s rifle barked twice more, one slug nudging the Kid’s left heel as he careened over another stone and slammed into the ground behind it.

  The Kid twisted around, squatted on his heels.

  Stretching his Schofield over the gravestone, he saw El Leproso dashing toward him, crouching, holding his rifle low across his belly in both hands, the shotgun jutting from behind his right shoulder.

  The Kid fired two shots. One slug kissed the nap of the man’s gray duster sleeve; the second slug blew the Leper’s sombrero down his back, where it hung by its thong.

  Fleet as a puma, El Leproso dove to his left behind a shrine bright with fresh flowers and bordered by a rusted wrought-iron fence.

  The crazy killer’s hysterical laughter rose from behind the shrine, vaulting over the pale stones toward the lightening morning sky.

  “I think you’re too late, Kid!” the bounty hunter squealed. “I think I just heard that old fool’s knees pop. Oh, well—there’s an even bigger bounty on you!”

  He edged his hatless, burlap-wrapped head around the side of the shrine.

  The Kid held his breath though his heart was leaping wildly in his chest, and fired the Schofield.

  His slug tore into the shrine’s tall upright stone.

  As El Leproso snaked his Henry around the side of the shrine, the Kid ducked behind his own covering gravestone. In the corner of his eye, the words carved into the stone caught his fleeting attention, and he knew a moment’s vague befuddlement.