“Some things are private,” Santiago said. “They should be kept within the family.”
“I can respect that . . . but not when it brings trouble to my home and endangers people I love. When that happens I’ve got a right to know what’s going on.”
“It was all many years in the past,” Santiago said with a stubborn shake of his head. “It cannot possibly have anything to do with what is happening now.”
“Then how did Carter know the name Becker?”
“There could be many men with that name—”
“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” Slaughter said sharply. “Look, son, I don’t want to pry in your family’s personal business, but we’ve got to figure out what’s going on here so we’ll know what to do next.”
For a moment, Santiago stared at him in stubborn defiance. But then the young man sighed.
“All right,” he said. “I suppose you have a right to know. But I cannot tell you everything, Señor Slaughter, simply because I do not know it myself.”
“Fair enough,” Slaughter said with a nod. “Just tell me what you do know.”
“Many years ago, my father befriended an American named Thaddeus Becker. Becker was in Mexico because he had come there with a man named William Walker, an adventurer who tried to take over the country.”
Slaughter nodded. He had heard of Walker, the notorious filibuster and would-be dictator.
“Becker and Walker had a falling out, but Becker remained in Mexico, selling his services as a military man to the highest bidder. Eventually he fell in with a rebel faction that included my father. When that faction came to power, my father and Becker took advantage of their newfound wealth and power to establish a ranch in northern Sonora.”
“The same ranch your father has now,” Slaughter said.
Santiago nodded.
“They brought their wives with them. High-born ladies from influential families in Mexico City. It was a hard, dangerous time. Bandits roamed the land, and Yaquis from the mountains raided the ranch on numerous occasions. But they were strong and met all the challenges until . . . until Thaddeus Becker’s wife decided that she wanted my father.”
“I can see where that would cause some trouble,” Slaughter said.
Santiago nodded and went on, “My father turned aside her advances, of course, but in her anger at being refused, she told her husband that my father had attacked her. Becker was furious. He wanted to dissolve their partnership. My father and mother both did everything they could to save the friendship. Becker pretended to put all the hurt feelings aside, but really he was planning his revenge. One day, while they were out on the range, Becker shot my father with no warning. I don’t know what he planned. Maybe he intended to say that a bandit ambushed my father. No one would have been able to prove otherwise. He must have believed that my father was dead, because he turned away, no doubt to return to the ranch. But my father regained consciousness and shot him.”
“In the back?” Slaughter asked with a frown.
“You must understand,” Santiago said, “my father believed he was dying. That was the only way he could strike back at the man who had slain him. After he fired, he passed out again. His vaqueros found him lying there later that day. They had gone to look for him after Becker returned to the ranch, mortally wounded. I don’t know what he said to his wife before he died. A pack of lies, though, surely.”
“But you don’t know that’s exactly how things happened,” Slaughter pointed out. “The way you told the story, the two men were out there alone.”
Santiago nodded and said, “That is true. But I believe my father.”
Of course he’d take Don Eduardo’s word for it, thought Slaughter. Just about any son would.
“My father was badly wounded,” Santiago continued. “For many weeks, my mother nursed him back to health.”
“What happened to Becker’s wife?”
“No one knows. She disappeared from the ranch after her husband’s death and took her son with her.”
“You didn’t mention a son,” Slaughter said.
Santiago nodded again.
“His name was Ned. He was several years older than me. I remember him only vaguely.”
“Ned Becker,” Slaughter mused. “You don’t know if he’s still alive?”
“I have no idea,” Santiago said. Slaughter was convinced the young man was telling the truth.
“If he was alive, that might explain some of this. Lord knows what his mother might have told him over the years. She could have blamed his father’s death and anything else that happened on Don Eduardo. She could have filled his head with hate, to the point that by now he’s wanting some revenge.”
“You really think Ned Becker could come back from nowhere and do all this, Señor Slaughter?”
“Stoney Carter said Becker’s name.”
“Not Ned.”
“Can you think of another Becker it might be?”
Santiago shook his head and admitted, “No, what you say makes sense, señor.”
“And Ned Becker wasn’t nowhere all this time,” Slaughter said. “He was somewhere . . . somewhere nursing the resentment he feels toward Don Eduardo.”
Now that Slaughter had put the theory into words, he was convinced that he was on the right trail. If the long-lost Ned Becker was behind the attack on the ranch and the rustling of the herd, then his ultimate goal had to be . . .
Revenge on Don Eduardo.
And Don Eduardo was back at the ranch.
Turning to his men, Slaughter ordered in a curt, grim voice, “Saddle up. We’re heading south.”
“What about the rest of those rustlers, boss?” one of the cowboys asked. “They’ve got to still be up ahead in these mountains somewhere.”
“I know,” Slaughter said, “and I don’t like letting them get away. But if I’m right, the man who put them up to it isn’t with them anymore. The story’s too long and complicated to go into it now.” Slaughter reached for his horse’s reins. “I want to be back at the ranch by nightfall—”
The sinister whine of a bullet slapping past his ear and the sharp crack of a rifle sounded at the same time, and a split-second later more shots blasted, their echoes filling the canyon.
* * *
“Help me up,” Don Eduardo said as he struggled to stand. “Help me up, I say!”
“Eduardo, stop,” Belinda said. Her hands fluttered uselessly in front of her. “Please, you can’t get up. You have to rest—”
“Your wife is right, sir,” Dr. Fredericks said as he stepped forward to rest a firm hand on Rubriz’s shoulder. “You’ve lost a great deal of blood, and if you open that wound again, you’ll lose more. I don’t think you can afford to do that.”
Don Eduardo sank back on the sofa cushions and glared around at them.
“I am to blame for what is happening here,” he insisted. “I should be the one to put an end to it. I will go to this man Becker—”
“Don’t be a blasted fool,” Viola said.
Don Eduardo gave her a shocked, angry look. Clearly, he wasn’t accustomed to anyone speaking to him like that, especially a woman.
Viola Slaughter wasn’t like most of the women he had known, however. She returned his gaze without flinching and went on, “Even if you surrendered to him, do you really think he’s going to let the rest of us live? With all due respect, Don Eduardo, I looked into the man’s eyes, not you. He’s a killer, pure and simple. Whatever he’s got planned, when he’s done with you he’ll come after the rest of us and try to finish us off.”
A frown creased the don’s forehead. He asked, “Do you truly believe that, Señora Slaughter?”
“I have no doubt of it,” Viola said.
Don Eduardo sighed.
“Then I have no choice but to accept your judgment. I have not seen Ned Becker since he was a boy, many years ago. But I can imagine he would grow into a man who hates me enough to do these things.”
“But why?” Belinda
asked. “That makes no sense, Eduardo. What could you possibly have done to make this man hate you so much?”
A stubborn expression came over Don Eduardo’s face as he said, “I will not talk about it. Not here, not now.”
“You don’t think your wife deserves to know the truth?”
He looked up at her and said, “Perhaps if we survive this ordeal, my dear, then I will tell you what you want to know. But for now there are some things I will keep to myself, including Ned Becker’s reasons for wanting to see me dead.”
Viola said, “Whether you explain or not, Don Eduardo, we’re left in the same position—defending this house.”
“Give me a gun and help me to a chair beside a window. I can shoot.”
“It may come to that,” Viola said, “but not yet.”
From the front room, Jess Fisher called, “Rider comin’, Miz Slaughter!”
Viola hurried out of the parlor and joined Jess at the window. She crouched low, not wanting to give that sharpshooter a target, and watched as a man galloped along the lane that ran between the fence and open ground where the party had taken place the previous evening.
“Want me to see if I can knock him off that horse?” Fisher asked as he squinted over the barrel of his Winchester.
“No, hold your fire,” Viola ordered. She raised her voice so the defenders in the other rooms could hear her. “Hold your fire until we see what he wants.”
The rider didn’t slow down as he raced past the fence. As he neared the gate he drew back his arm and threw something that sailed toward the house.
“It’s a bomb!” Jess Fisher yelled in alarm. He snapped his rifle to his shoulder as the thrown object clattered on the porch.
“No!” Viola caught hold of the barrel and kept him from shooting until the rider had galloped on past and gone out of sight, probably to circle around and rejoin his companions. “It looked like a rock or something with a note tied around it.”
“Are you sure about that, ma’am? I’d hate to have the place blow up.”
“You and me both, Jess.” Viola backed away from the window, not standing up until she was clear of it. “We need to find out what it was.”
“Could be a trick to get us to open the door,” the foreman suggested.
“Maybe . . . but I don’t think so. Give me your rifle.”
Reluctantly, Fisher did so.
“Now take the bar off the door and open it,” Viola went on. “Stand back when you do, though, so they won’t have a good shot at you.”
“What about you?”
Viola hefted the rifle and said, “I’ll be ready if they try to charge the house.”
Fisher still looked like he thought this was a bad idea, but he went to the door, took hold of the thick beam that served as a bar, and lifted it from its brackets. He grasped the knob, twisted it, and swung the door wide, standing behind the panel as it opened into the house.
Viola’s heart hammered in her chest. In spite of what she’d told Fisher, she couldn’t be certain this wasn’t a trick of some sort. She had the Winchester pointed toward the door as it opened.
A chunk of rock a little bigger than a man’s fist lay on the porch. A folded piece of paper had been wrapped around it and tied into place with a piece of string.
“I was right,” Viola said. “It’s a message.”
She stepped toward the opening. Fisher said, “Careful, ma’am. I’ll go and get it.”
“No,” Viola said. “No one is going out there.”
She got down on her knees and inched forward. By thrusting the rifle out with one hand, she was able to hook the front sight against the rock and drag it toward the door without exposing herself. When it was close enough, she set the rifle aside, darted a hand out, grabbed the rock, and threw herself backward. Fisher shoved the door closed and dropped the bar across it again.
Viola climbed to her feet, untied the string, and removed the note from the rock. She handed the chunk of stone to Fisher, smiled, and said, “Here you go, Jess. Better hang on to it. You might need to throw it at one of the varmints.”
“If one of ’em gets close enough, I’ll dang sure do it, ma’am,” the foreman promised as he weighed the rock in his hand. “This thing’s heavy enough to bust somebody’s skull open if you hit him just right with it.”
Viola carried the note into the parlor without unfolding it. Everyone in there was waiting tensely. Belinda put what they were all feeling into words by asking, “Well? What was it?”
Viola held up the piece of paper and said, “They sent us a message.” She unfolded the note and read the words printed there in a bold, easy to read hand. Her face grew more solemn as she said, “Becker is giving us until nightfall to turn you over to him, Don Eduardo.”
The don sat forward again and said, “See, it is like I told you. I should surrender—”
“That’s not all,” Viola said. “It’s not just you he wants. Becker says that we have to give him Doña Belinda, too—or he’ll kill everybody on the place and burn it to the ground.”
Chapter 17
Slaughter knew that he and his men were too exposed, standing out in the open this way next to the graves. He grabbed his horse’s reins and said, “Head for the rocks!”
Those boulders had protected them from the stampede. They were the only real cover in the canyon. As Slaughter ran toward them, pulling his horse along with him, he searched for the source of the shots.
Bullets kicked up dirt around the men’s feet as they hurried toward shelter. One of Slaughter’s cowboys suddenly cried out in pain and stumbled.
Slaughter started to turn back to help him, but the man waved him on and said, “Keep goin’, boss, they just nicked my leg!”
The cowboy took only one more step before he rocked back, making a strangling sound as crimson flooded from his throat. A bullet had ripped it open. He let go of his horse and flopped to the ground, writhing and jerking as he bled to death in a matter of a few heartbeats.
Rage filled Slaughter, but he kept moving. He couldn’t do the man any good now except for avenging his death, and getting himself killed wouldn’t accomplish that. In fact, it would just assure that the man had died for nothing.
Bullets ricocheted off the rocks as Slaughter, Santiago, and the remaining ranch hand, a man named Dixon, darted among them. Slaughter handed his reins to Dixon and motioned for Santiago to do likewise.
“Hang on to the horses, Chuck,” Slaughter told the man as he pulled his Winchester from its sheath. “Stay back as close to the canyon wall as you can. Santiago, let’s see if we can figure out where those bushwhackers are.”
Slaughter’s eyes swept the canyon as he crouched behind one of the boulders. The gunfire had stopped a moment earlier, but he figured the ambushers were just waiting for a good shot again.
The shots had come from farther up the canyon, the direction in which Slaughter and his companions had been pursuing the rustlers before the thieves stampeded the herd back at them. Slaughter was convinced the bushwhackers were the other men who had been driving the stolen cattle north. He had no way of knowing how many of them there were.
He could speculate about their motives, however, over and above wanting to avenge their comrades who’d been killed in the aftermath of the stampede. Slaughter had a hunch that Ned Becker had ordered the men to do everything in their power to delay the pursuers and keep them away from the ranch. That fit in with Slaughter’s theory about what Becker was doing.
Becker didn’t want to be disturbed while he went after his twisted revenge on Don Eduardo Rubriz.
“Did you see where the shots came from, Señor Slaughter?” Santiago asked.
“No, but when they start shooting again, I’m hoping I can spot their smoke.”
“Be ready to watch, then,” Santiago said, and with no more warning than that, he stood up and opened fire, spraying bullets wildly up the canyon.
Slaughter yelled, “Get down, you fool!” but Santiago was too far away for him
to do anything else. He would have tackled the young man if he had been closer, but he couldn’t reach Santiago without going out into the open.
A bullet spanged off the boulder in front of Santiago, but the ricochet missed him somehow. Slaughter spotted a puff of smoke from the rimrock on the other side of the canyon about fifty yards north from their position and sent three shots toward it as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever.
At least one of them found the target, although in a case like this, Slaughter was under no illusions that he was a better marksman than the bushwhackers. It was luck or fate that guided his shots.
A man rose sharply to his feet and lurched into view, dropping his rifle as he did so. He pitched forward off the edge of the rim and turned over in midair as he plummeted to the canyon floor.
The thud as he struck the ground made an ugly sound.
Slaughter glanced over and saw that Santiago had dropped back down behind the boulder.
“That was a damn fool stunt you just pulled!” Slaughter told the young man.
“It worked, though,” Santiato said. “And now we have one less enemy.”
Slaughter couldn’t deny that. And a moment later Santiago’s tactic paid an unexpected dividend. Slaughter heard hoofbeats and realized at least two horses were heading north at a fast rate of speed.
From farther back in the rocks, Dixon called, “Sounds like they’re lightin’ a shuck outta here, boss.”
Slaughter agreed, but he said, “Let’s keep our heads down for a few minutes anyway, just in case it’s a trick.”
There were no more shots, and after five minutes, Slaughter risked standing up and moving out into the open. He didn’t draw any fire as he walked over to the dead cowboy, a man named Callan.
Slaughter knelt beside the man just to make sure he was dead, although he didn’t really have any doubt. No one could lose that much blood and survive. Callan’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly at nothing.
Slaughter straightened and let out a grim sigh.
“We’ve got another grave to dig. We’d better get at it.”
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