by John Benteen
Sundance stood up. “Of course not. You need time, like you say.” His voice was gentle now. “I’ll come back later.”
“Yes.” She rubbed her face. “Tonight. Come back tonight.”
“I’ll do that,” Sundance said and went out, leaving her on the sofa with her face buried in her hands.
After he left the hacienda, Sundance swung back toward the Rio, found a grove of cottonwoods, unsaddled Eagle and let him graze, and passed the time putting together all the information he had about the Chester brothers.
Wolves, he had called them to Teresa Sanchez; but that was not an apt comparison. Wolves killed when they were hungry; the Chesters were more like weasels, which killed for the sheer pleasure of it. A weasel was born mean and never changed; and that was how the brothers he was after were.
Joker Bob was the oldest, and Sundance had a picture of him—a tall, handsome man in his early thirties, with an affable, charming smile, a ready laugh. He was witty, they said, always ready with a joke or wisecrack, but that supposed good humor masked the soul of a cold-blooded killer. A two-gun man—which was a rare thing even in Texas—he was, according to rumor, faster with his left hand than most professional gunmen and even swifter with his right. Together, he and his brother had left a trail of dead men, emptied bank vaults, and robbed stages all across the state.
Still, Sundance thought, it was easy to see how a lonesome woman who was ignorant of his reputation could fall head over heels in love with him, let herself be sweet-talked into becoming accomplice to murder, robbery. Bob was a charmer, all right; but his brother, Little Coy, was a different case entirely.
Two or three years younger, Coy was as ugly as a horned toad and not much more graceful. He had the head and body of a big man, but somehow his legs had never reached full length; below the waist, he was almost a dwarf. The face that stared at Sundance from the foggy photograph was homely as a mud fence, with one eye slightly lower than the other and both as cold as stones. Coy, they said, was not quite sane; maybe the same thing that had warped his body had warped his mind, whatever it was. Anyhow, he was noted for a streak of icy cruelty, a lust for killing that matched his brother’s and a desire to hurt the things he killed before they died.
Who the other two with them in the robbery were nobody knew, but chances were that they were cut from the same bolt as the Chesters. This was not, Sundance thought, going to be the easiest money he had ever earned.
Meanwhile, what he needed from Teresa Sanchez was a clue, an indication of some place to start. Mexico was a big country, and in three weeks the Chesters could have covered a lot of ground. Whether or not she would give him what he had to have was something only tonight could answer. Meanwhile, he could use more sleep. Putting the Chesters from his mind, he stretched out in the shade and dozed.
This time when he rang the bell at Hacienda del Carmen, Teresa Sanchez herself answered the door. She was dry-eyed now and wore a different dress, one cut low to bare her shoulders and the upper slopes of her fine breasts. Sundance drew in an involuntary breath of admiration at the sight she made.
“Come in,” she said, voice steady. “You are prompt.”
Sundance entered, and she took his hat, laid it aside. “I think we should go back to the office,” she said, and he followed her there, but not without wariness, his eyes searching the house as they walked through it, his hand swinging close to his gun. She saw his attitude and smiled. “You need not be afraid. I have dismissed even the servants. We are wholly alone.”
In the office, she closed the door tightly. A bottle sat on the desk, with two glasses beside it. “Perhaps,” she said, “you would like a drink. It is American whiskey. I got it in Eagle Pass today.”
“Yes, I’d like one,” Sundance said. “So you went to Eagle Pass, eh?”
“Yes.” She busied herself pouring the drinks. “There were . . . some things I had to see for myself. Things I had refused to believe until now.” Handing Sundance a glass, she took one too, and he saw that it was nearly full; she had made herself a very stiff drink. After a long swallow from it, she went on, pacing the room, clasping the glass between her hands.
“I had heard about the robbery, but only in general terms. I did not want to hear the details, you understand?” She stopped, looked at Sundance, took another swallow. “It was important to me not to hear the details.”
She paused. “Nearly six weeks ago he came riding in with his men. His men frightened me, especially his brother. But he himself was . . . unlike any man I had ever met. So big, so strong, so handsome, and always so gay, so charming. They wanted, they said, only water for their horses. And yet, somehow—” She shook her head, almost dazedly. “Somehow, they wound up staying. As if he had cast a spell on me, bewitched me, like a brujo, a wizard.”
“You were alone,” Sundance said. “Lonely.”
“Yes, I was lonely.” She smiled sardonically. “But I do not need to be. I know that I am a woman men look at and want; and I know that I have a property that men want, too. More than one ranchero of the neighborhood—or fat businessman—has come to me to pay me court. And,” her tone turned brassy, “I despise them, spit on them, the old sour men who think of nothing but money and property. He—Roberto—was different. He told me that he’d had bad luck, was falsely accused of things he had not done, that the law pursued him and that he needed a place to rest, to hide. And I could not refuse it to him.”
“I see,” Sundance murmured, sipping his own drink while she took a deep draught of hers.
“And so I let him stay and fell in love with him, and he said also that he loved me. And when one loves, one does not want to believe the truth.” She drained her glass, turned to the table, poured more whiskey in it. “But today, I saw the truth. After you left, I rode to Eagle Pass. I talked to the president of the bank, and he left no doubt in me as to who it was or what he had done. All the same, I went to see some others, too.” Again she drank. “Two widows with their families.”
Suddenly she turned away. “¡Dios! It tore my heart out, those two young women with their children and no one to turn to. I had a husband whom I loved and who died young, gored by a bull; I know what such grief and desolation is. And … Well, no matter.” She whirled, confronted Sundance, met his eyes. Her breasts heaved beneath the low-cut neckline of her dress. “I have made up my mind. I have decided. What is it you want to know?”
“Whatever you can tell me,” Sundance said. “Any clue as to where I might find them.”
“And when you do?”
“My job is to bring them in, dead or alive.”
Teresa looked down at her glass. “Dead or alive. I do not think you will bring them in alive.”
Sundance said nothing.
“But they deserve to die!” she rasped. “After what I have seen today ...” She raised her head, and her eyes, flaring, were magnificent. “And you—the more I see of you, the more I believe that, indeed, you are one fit to be their executioner. Very well, I’ll tell you all I can remember of what he said, and it is very little. But if it helps you find him—” Her face contorted. “Helps you kill him!” she hissed.
She took another drink and then was in control again. “Once or twice I heard him and his ghastly brother talking. One thing stuck in my mind because it was so curious. They spoke of the ‘old fort.’ And the ugly little one said, ‘We’ll stay at the old fort until the heat is off.’ I did not know what they meant by that, but thought they spoke of the weather. But now—Have you ever heard of a place called Presidio Infierno?”
“No,” Sundance said. “Fort Hell,” he added wryly.
“It lies fully a hundred and twenty-five kilometers southwest of here, in country that truly is an inferno. Once, in the days of the Spanish crown, rebels hid there in the desert and the mountains, and the fort was built as a base from which to hunt them down. They were brought into Presidio Infierno and most cruelly tortured before they were executed.”
“Little Coy Chester ought to feel r
ight at home there,” Sundance said grimly.
“There is also a small town, very remote. Nobody ever goes or comes except an occasional patrol of Rurales.”
“And if they paid off the commander of the Rurales, it would make a fine hiding place, even if they were wanted in Mexico.’’ Sundance stood up, feeling a rising excitement. “It makes sense. It makes good sense.”
“The fort has long been abandoned. But it is still a very strong place and a difficult one to enter. I remember going there once on a hunting trip with my father.” She shivered. “It is truly not a place I would want to see again.”
“Then the chances are good that’s where they are,” Sundance said. “If you could show me on a map …”
“I can show you. Wait.” She drained her glass, went to a bookcase, took from it a leather folder. From it she removed a map, spread it on the desk, bent over it. Sundance joined her; and he could not help being acutely aware of the nearness of her and of the perfume she wore as they looked at it together—nor of how the neckline of her dress fell away to reveal the deep cleft between her breasts.
“Southwest, so, here, and off the main road here … Then across the desert. This dot here; that is it.” Then she turned her head slowly and looked at him, her face very close to his. Something swirled in her eyes. “It is a long, hard journey,” she said. “You will need to prepare well for it and to rest before you set out.” She straightened up, moved back a step. “You may stay at Hacienda del Carmen tonight, and my people will pack supplies for you.” Her gaze on him was bold, and there was no mistaking its meaning.
He smiled faintly. It had been a long time since he had had a woman, and she was tremendously desirable. “I think that would be very kind of you,” he said.
She turned away. “There is no kindness. Only … gratitude. I have been miserable for three weeks. Today you have rid me of a very heavy burden by forcing me to face the truth. I had . . . love in me for Roberto. But today it all burned out. And now, there is a thankfulness that it is gone and that I am myself again. But there is also a loneliness once more as well. And ... I would not like to be by myself with my thoughts tonight.”
“I’m the one who’s grateful,” Sundance said. He went to her and pulled her around gently. She looked up at him with lips slightly parted. Then she pressed her body desperately, savagely against him, flattening the softness of her breasts against his chest, and when he kissed her, her mouth was hungry.
Chapter Five
When he rode the next morning, her perfume still clung to him and the memory of her body was still vivid. He saw her as she had been when he had arisen, dressed—lying on the bed, unashamedly and gloriously naked, watching him as he pulled the buckskin shirt over his head. “You could not stay another day?”
“I wish I could. But, no. I must go after them.”
She nodded gravely. “You must be very careful. They are terribly dangerous.”
Sundance said, without boasting, “So am I.”
She smiled faintly. “Yes, I think so. Very well. I thank you for what you have given me. At least it was not necessary for me to be alone and think last night. You will come back?”
“Yes,” Sundance said. “I’ll have to return to Eagle Pass, no matter what happens. So, if I live, I’ll come back—for a little while.”
“Then I will pray and burn a candle for you.” Suddenly his name broke from her. “Sundance.”
She sat up, held out her arms. He looked at her a moment, then he went to her. She pulled him down on the bed beside her desperately, and he was later getting away from Hacienda del Carmen than he had planned.
After that flare of recollection, Sundance put her from his mind, concentrated his full powers on what lay ahead.
As they had lain in bed and talked, he had squeezed every bit of remembrance of Fort Hell that she possessed from her, had made her tell him in detail just what it looked like, and now he had a picture of it in his mind: the old adobe-stockaded presidio in the very center of a high, bleak mesa, dominating the country around it for miles. “The wall,” she said, “was very high and very thick and there were iron spikes set in its top. The gate had fallen down, but it would be easy to hang a new one. Inside the stockade, there were buildings—barracks, I suppose, and stables and a commandant’s house. All just as they were a century ago, except, of course, the roofs would have to be repaired. But in that dry, hot country, nothing ever rots.”
“And around the fort—was there any cover, any trees or rocks?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Only desert as level as that floor, so that a man on the wall could see anyone approaching for miles.”
“No wonder they picked it as a hideout,” Sundance said bitterly.
“Yes. The town is below it, on a flat by a stream that has water in it only part of the year. A miserable place.”
“And they’ll either have the villagers on their side or scared to death of ’em,” Sundance said. “Either way, I can’t expect help from them.”
So that was the sum of it. Alone against at least four top guns and, for all he knew, maybe a lot more. Well, he’d faced longer odds.
From the beginning, he stayed off the road, traveling cross-country and as warily as if he himself were the hunted. In this land, news drifted on the wind, and he saw no point in letting word blow to the Chesters that a stranger with the look of a fighting man was entering their territory. Taking advantage of every bit of cover, he kept the stallion to terrain that would make it almost impossible for anyone to pick up his trail; Indian-trained as he was, it was not hard to do.
After a day’s journey under a scalding sky, he found a waterhole, where he and the stallion drank their fill. Then he led the horse well away from the spring, into a deep draw, went back to erase his tracks. Water drew travelers in the desert, and he wanted to see anyone who came to drink before they spotted him. Making a fireless camp, he ate tortillas and cooked frijoles Teresa had packed for him. Sitting on his bedroll with his rifle by his knee, he opened the two bull hide panniers that always rode behind his saddle.
They were made of the neckskin of buffalo bull, thick and tough. One was long, cylindrical, the other round and thinner. He had not checked their contents in several days and it was likely that he would need them when he went against the Chester boys. By now it was dark, but the moon was high and full, slanting down into the draw, and there was plenty of light to see by as he began to loosen the fastenings of the longer pannier.
He had just reached inside it when he became aware of something wrong. He had no idea what it was, more a hunch than anything, but he wasted no time, only threw himself aside, out of the moonlight into darkness. Making no sound, he rolled slowly behind a rock. Then, holding his breath, he listened.
At first he heard nothing suspicious. The stallion took a step or two, cropped more of the tough bunch grass that grew sparsely up the draw. It displayed no alarm. Maybe, Sundance thought, he was shying at shadows; still, a kind of sixth sense in him warned of danger, and it was a warning he’d learned to trust. Some sound, some scent, too faint for his conscious mind to identify, must have triggered that warning.
Lying behind the rock, he slowly, silently pulled his gun, but he did not cock it, for fear the click would betray him. What wind there was had died, the night was wholly still; he could almost hear the beating of his own heart.
Then it came again, from the draw’s rim, thirty feet away on the opposite side. No one but a man whose ears were trained from childhood to pick up such a sound would even have noticed it—the tiny rustle of a wand of ocotillo brushing against its neighbor when there was no wind to make it do so. He strained his eyes, watching the spot on the draw’s rim that his hearing had identified as the sound’s source, but that place lay in deep shadow, and he could see nothing.
But he did not move. It was possible, of course, that a jackrabbit had made that sound, or a kit fox, or even a sidewinder. Maybe even a kangaroo or pack rat. But he did not think so, and anyway
, he would take no chance.
Five minutes passed, ten. The horse grazed on, unalarmed. Sundance waited, motionless as the rock that sheltered him, never taking his eyes from the shadowed rim of the arroyo. Then he tensed. He was sure that something even darker than the blackness there moved.
But if it did, it must be a ghost, some spirit of the desert, for now it made absolutely no sound. He kept his eyes on it, slowly raised the gun. Yes ... it was there. And it was edging through the shadow to the puddle of moonlight in which he had chosen to inspect his weapons. In a moment more it would be in the open, visible—
Like a wraith, it floated noiselessly into the light, resolved itself into the figure of a man bent low. Still in utter silence, he ran forward toward Sundance’s spread blanket, stopped there, froze for an instant, looked around. Then, slowly, he came erect, and Sundance carefully lined the Colt on the magnificent target he made and laid his thumb across the hammer. Just before he pulled it back, the man turned in his direction and the moonlight fell full on his face. Sundance stared and cursed soundlessly. Then he spoke. “Whitewolf,” he snapped. “Don’t move. You’re covered! This is Sundance!”
Jesse Whitewolf had taken off his spurs and chaps, discarded his hat lest the crown of it against the sky betray him. His head jerked around as he stared at the rock behind which Sundance was hidden. In the moonlight, his teeth flashed white in a grin.
“Damn, Jim,” he said. “I was sure I had you.”
“No,” Sundance said, no humor in him. “I’ve got you. And you’d better talk damned fast.”
“Relax,” Whitewolf said. “I’m gonna take a step, right into full light. You look close at me, you’ll see I pack no gun, no knife. I wasn’t out to do you harm.” He moved closer to the rock, and Sundance frowned, seeing that he was without weapons. Slowly, carefully, Sundance reared up from behind the boulder, and he kept the Colt leveled.
“You Goddamned idiot,” he said, rage rising in him. “What the devil do you think you’re up to?”