The Border Empire

by Ralph Compton

  “Who says there’s trouble?” Kazman demanded.

  “The boss in Juarez,” said Corbin shortly. “Ignore just one telegram from Juarez, and Wooten’s hide wouldn’t hold shucks. You know it, and he knows it. Now what do you have to say? You had eleven men. Where are the others?”

  “Dead,” Kazman said grimly. “Somebody bushwhacked ’em and took the horses they was bringin’ in.”

  “And you did nothing,” said Corbin in a dangerously low voice.

  “I wasn’t here at the time,” Kazman said desperately, “but Dantzler sent Shatiqua and Boudlin to investigate. They—”

  “Let them tell me what they found,” Corbin said. “I don’t want it secondhand from you.”

  He turned his cold eyes on the unfortunate pair, and they swallowed hard. Shatiqua managed to speak.

  “They was ambushed in an arroyo an’ looked to have been dead near three days ‘fore we found ’em. Buzzards an’ coyotes had been busy. Horses was gone.”

  “Horses leave tracks,” said Corbin with scathing sarcasm.

  “An’ rain washes out them tracks,” Boudlin added. “We hadn’t more’n started trailin’ ’em when it rained for near two hours.”

  “I can’t deny that,” said Corbin. “Before the rain, what direction did the tracks lead?”

  “Toward Chihuahua,” Shatiqua said.

  “There may be some connection between this and the unanswered telegrams to Wooten in Chihuahua,” said Corbin. “I’m going there to see for myself, and I’ll telegraph Juarez as to what I find. Juarez ain’t goin’ to like your holdin’ back word of this ambush, Kazman, especially if it’s got somethin’ to do with the silence from Chihuahua. You’d best be comin’ up with some answers. Damn good ones.”

  Corbin left the cabin, mounted his horse, and rode south. Nothing was said for a long moment as Dantzler, Shatiqua, and Boudlin turned accusing eyes on Kazman. Dantzler was the first to say what his companions were thinking.

  “You just rode back from Chihuahua, an’ you ain’t said a word to us about what you learned. Somethin’ is wrong, an’ when Corbin figures it out, we’ll all catch hell because we didn’t report it. We got the right to know what you learned, and if you don’t tell us, then there’s enough of us to beat it out of you.”

  Each of the three had his hand near the butt of his revolver, and Kazman was careful not to make any foolish moves. When he began speaking, his words had a profound effect on his companions. The implications of what they were hearing hit the three of them like a bolt of lightning.

  “My God,” Dantzler said, “that explains why the horses was turned loose. Somebody’s out to kill us. Every damned one of us.”

  “Looks that way,” said Kazman.

  “Damn you,” Boudlin said. “Instead of keepin’ this under your hat, you should have sent telegrams to Juarez an’ Nogales. If we don’t mount a force an’ go after this bastard, he’ll pick us all off, a few at a time.”

  “He’s got a handle on it,” said Shatiqua. “Wooten and his men are all dead, an’ the pistolero that killed ’em will be headin’ for the next nearest camp. That’s us, sure as hell.”

  “Then we can’t wait for help from Nogales or Juarez,” Dantzler said. “If a killer’s on the way, he’ll be here today or tonight. We got to post a guard, an’ I don’t mean just at night. One of us oughta be on watch right now.”

  “I’ll take the first watch,” said Boudlin.

  He was about to step out with his Winchester when a slug crashed into the door just inches from his head. He fell back inside, slamming the door, while his companions began scrambling for their weapons.

  “That’ll give ’em something to think about,” Wes said, as he and El Lobo hunkered in some brush.

  “Night come,” said El Lobo. “They run like coyotes.”

  “They’ll have to do it afoot,” Wes said. “Soon as it’s dark enough, one of us will slip over yonder to the corral and spook their horses.”

  “Sí,” said El Lobo. “I go.”

  Chihuahua, Mexico. July 15, 1884

  The distance from Namiquipa to Chihuahua was more than sixty miles, and riding a tired horse, Turk Corbin arrived after dark. He would stay the night, but even before he sought food and shelter, he went looking for Wooten and his men. He knew the old house where they roomed, but when he pounded on their individual doors, he got no response. It being well past the supper hour, they could be in the cantinas, he reasoned. But before he could leave the building, a door opened and he was facing a suspicious housekeeper.

  “Quien es?”

  “I look for the Señor Wooten,” said Corbin.

  “Muerto,” she mumbled, crossing herself. “Muerto.”

  “The Señor Wooten’s companeros?”

  “Muerto,” she said, closing the door.

  Turk Corbin shook his head. There had been thirteen men besides Wooten. Fearful of the outlaws, the town had long been buffaloed. Alphonse Renato, the figurehead constable, would have some answers. That is, if he knew what was good for him. But the door to the constable’s office stood open, and Corbin found the pudgy constable in a cantina across the street.

  “Renato,” said Corbin, “I got some questions, and you’d better have some answers.”

  Corbin pointed across the street to the vacant office, and without a word the fearful Mexican left the cantina. Reaching the office, he sat down behind a battered desk. Corbin remained standing, and, his hand resting on the butt of his revolver, he spoke.

  “What happened to Wooten and his bunch?”

  “Muerto,” said the constable. “El Diablo.”

  Corbin spent an hour questioning, threatening, and shouting before eventually learning what the old constable knew. He learned of the cantina where Wes and Maria had shot three of Wooten’s men, and he went there. The Mexican bartender recognized him and tried to escape into a back room, but Corbin stopped him with a word.

  “You got some talkin’ to do, bucko,” Corbin said.

  Corbin learned only that two men had entered the cantina, and that when three of Wooten’s gang had followed, there had been shooting.

  “Two hombres shot the three who followed, then,” said Corbin.

  “Sí,” the Mexican bartender said. “Dos hombres. Pistolas rapido.”

  Turk Corbin stabled his weary horse and took a room for the night. The information he had obtained was sketchy at best. He knew that three of Wooten’s men had been shot in the cantina, and he knew that one of the “hombres” who had done the shooting had been a woman. Having captured her, Wooten had obviously used her to bait a trap for her companion, only to have it blow up in his face, costing him four more men. The killing of Wooten, Selmer, and Coe accounted for a total of ten men. What had become of the rest? All the more puzzling, Wooten and his companions had occupied two separate rooms, but appeared to have been simultaneously gunned down in their beds, an impossible feat for a single gunman.

  “Damn it,” Corbin snarled in the darkness, “who is this phantom killer, and is he one man or two?”

  He lay awake far into the night pondering the problem, and the more he speculated, the less he blamed the Mexicans for being spooked. Of all the unanswered questions weighing on his mind, he narrowed it down to the three that bothered him the most: Who was this devilish killer? What was his motive? And how did he know so much about the Sandlin gang? It seemed he and his companion had ridden unerringly to the arroyo where they had gunned down seven men, and had gone from there directly to Chihuahua. Where might the killer strike next?

  “Namiquipa!” he said aloud as the revelation hit him.

  He kicked back the covers and got up, unable to sleep. Whatever was about to happen in Namiquipa would have happened long before he could return there. He decided the four would deserve whatever they got, for he believed he hadn’t been told everything and that Kazman had known or suspected there was trouble in Chihuahua. Come dawn, he would telegraph to Juarez all he knew or suspected.

  Nam
iquipa, Mexico. July 15, 1884

  After the first slugs from Wes Stone’s Winchester had driven Boudlin back into the cabin, there was only silence.

  “Damn it,” Shatiqua growled, “why don’t they do somethin’?”

  “They?” said Kazman. “There’s just one man.”

  Dantzler laughed. “Hell, one man with a Winchester firin’ from cover is good as an army. He’s just waitin’ for dark an’ givin’ us time to get spooked.”

  “We’re not more than a mile from the village,” Kazman said. “Somebody’s bound to hear the shooting.”

  “Sure they will,” said Dantzler, “but that bunch of Mexes won’t care if we get shot to doll rags.”

  “Come dark,” Shatiqua said, “I’m takin’ my horse an’ gittin’ the hell away from here.”

  “Come dark,” said Dantzler, “none of us will have a horse. If you aim to run for it, now’s the time, but that stable’s sixty yards away. It ain’t likely you can outrun a slug from a Winchester.”

  “We don’t know that he’s still out there,” Shatiqua said.

  He turned the knob enough to release the latch and, with the toe of his boot, eased the door open just a little. Two slugs ripped into the upper half of the door, slamming it open and into the wall.

  “Hell, he can’t watch the front an’ back door at the same time,” said Shatiqua.

  He tried the same tactic with the cabin’s back door and received the same response.

  “Well,” Boudlin said, “now we know there’s at least two hombres out there, and that cuts our chances—if we had any—in half.”

  In the brush, Wes grinned to himself. One of them had tried the back door, and El Lobo had given them something more to think about. They faced not one man, but two. The four men within the cabin were in serious trouble, and they knew it.

  Kazman spoke. “I aim to find out who he is, and why he’s after us.”

  “A lot of good that’ll do,” said Dantzler.

  “You with the long gun,” Kazman bawled. “Who are you, and why are you gunnin’ for us?”

  Just when it seemed there would be no response, the answer came.

  “The name is Wes Stone. The Sandlin gang murdered my father in El Paso.”

  “You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree,” Kazman shouted back. “None of us has ever been in El Paso.”

  “No matter,” said Wes. “You’re part of the Sandlin gang, and since I don’t know the skunk-striped varmints that done the killing, I aim to gun down every last one of you, if I have to flush out every swamp and thicket in Mexico. You’re all dead men.”

  Chihuahua, Mexico. July 16, 1884

  Turk Corbin wrote a lengthy message to Juarez, including his suspicion that the killer or killers might strike next in Namiquipa. He directed the telegram to Rance Stringfield, who had the authority to issue orders to any Sandlin outpost in Mexico. He asked for an immediate reply, waiting until it arrived. The message was brief:Return to Namiquipa and then to Juarez.

  It was unsigned. Corbin mounted and rode north.

  In Namiquipa, El Lobo waited until it was almost dark before making his move toward the stable. The four outlaws watched the gate, for it faced the cabin, and an intruder going after the horses would have to pass through it.

  “Damn the luck,” Boudlin growled, “there’ll be a moon later tonight, but he won’t be waitin’ for that.”

  “I saw somethin’,” said Shatiqua.

  Through the window, he cut loose with his Winchester, and there was an immediate response as Wes fired at the muzzle flash.

  “Oh, God,” Shatiqua groaned, “I’m hit. Help me.”

  “How?” said Boudlin. “He got you, shootin’ at a muzzle flash? What do you reckon he’ll do to the rest of us when we strike a light?”

  Shatiqua said no more.

  “I can at least see how hard he’s hit,” Dantzler said.

  Kneeling beside Shatiqua, he lit a match, shielding it with his hat. Blood soaked the front of the outlaw’s shirt, and there was bloody froth on his lips.

  “Well?” Kazman asked.

  “He’s dead,” said Dantzler.

  “Lord Amighty,” Boudlin said. “He did see somebody. There goes our horses.”

  “That means nobody’s coverin’ the back door,” said Dantzler. “Let’s run for it.”

  “You damn fools,” Kazman said. “Afoot you don’t have a chance. They don’t dare rush us, even in the dark. We ain’t comin’ out, you bastards,” he shouted. “Come and get us.”

  Having spooked the horses, El Lobo had made his way back to Wes.

  “They no run,” said El Lobo. “We go in?”

  “No,” Wes said. “They’re counting on that. I have another way of getting at them.”

  From his shirt, he took two sticks of dynamite, bound together, capped and fused. He lit a match and touched it to the short fuse. He held it only until he was sure the fuse had caught, and then flung it in an arc. There was a blinding flash and the cabin was only a pile of rubble. There wasn’t a sound.

  “Madre de Dios,” El Lobo said. “Dinamita.”

  “There’s more in the pack if we need it later on,” said Wes. “Not quite as satisfying as gut-shootin’ the varmints, but the results are the same. We’ll wait a while and see if any of ’em crawl out of there.”

  The next afternoon, Turk Corbin reached Namiquipa. He reined up on a ridge, looking down at the wreckage that had been the cabin. Distasteful as the task was, he was forced to investigate, for when he reached Juarez, he would be forced to account for the four men. He found Shatiqua’s body first, for he had fallen near the door. There were a few red particles of paper, powder-burned.

  “Dynamite,” Corbin said aloud. “Them that wasn’t shot was blown to hell.”

  He moved enough of the debris to account for the remaining three men, and, there being nothing more he could do, he mounted and rode north. To Juarez.

  Namiquipa, Mexico. July 17, 1884

  “You know for sure there’s outlaw strongholds at Guaymas and Hermosillo?” Wes asked.

  “Sí,” said El Lobo, “and there be others. Where or how many, I do not know.”

  “Which is closest, Guaymas or Hermosillo?”

  “Hermosillo,” said El Lobo. “Per’ap two hundred miles.”

  “A three-day ride,” Wes said, “and we’d better get started. It’s only a matter of time until what we’ve done catches up to us and these other camps are armed and waiting. Then, amigo, we ride with prices on our heads and the danger increases many times.”

  “Sí,” said El Lobo. “You ride to avenge your father, while I ride for a country of my own.”

  Knowing the odds, accepting them, they rode west.

  Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. July 16, 1884

  Taking time only to see that his horse was stabled and cared for, Turk Corbin hurried to an old hacienda occupied by the outlaws. Corbin nodded to men that he knew, but his destination was the quarters of Rance Stringfield. He pounded on the door.

  “Damn it,” Stringfield bawled, “you don’t have to knock it down. Come in.”

  Corbin entered and Stringfield rose from the table where he had been sitting and drinking coffee. He was a head taller than Corbin, and his face was grim. Any good humor that might have existed had vanished with Corbin’s arrival. He said nothing, waiting for Corbin to speak. His manner irritated Corbin, and he began with a very pointed question.

  “Have you alerted the rest of the outposts to the possibility of attack?”

  “Why, hell, no!” Stringfield said irritably. “You know full well our grip on Mexico City and all of Mexico depends on the Mex government believing we are invincible, that we are in control. Anybody with the brains God give a goose ought to know that anything sent by wire can be picked up by anybody with an instrument. That, damn it, includes the Mexican government. Now what did you find in Namiquipa?”

  “Kazman, Dantzler, Shatiqua, and Boudlin all dead,” said Corbin. “Shatiqua had been shot.
The others—along with the cabin—blown to hell with dynamite.”

  The startling news sobered Stringfield, and when he spoke again, his initial anger had abated.

  “Did you look for sign?”

  “Yes,” said Corbin. “Boot tracks of two men. Three horses. One of them probably a packhorse. They rode out headin’ west.”

  “Damn,” Stringfield said. “Hermosillo?”

  “It’s the outpost nearest Namiquipa,” said Corbin.

  “Prepare a telegram to be sent to Packer at Hermosillo,” Stringfield said. “Sign my name to it. Tell them to be ready for a surprise attack.”

  “Want me to tell them there’s two kill-crazy hombres?”

  “Certainly not,” Stringfield roared. “You want all of Mexico knowin’ we’re fighting for our lives against two men? You are telegraphing Hermosillo only because there is no other way of warning them in time.”

  “What about Guaymas and Santa Rosalia? They’re on the coast, south and southwest of Hermosillo. Ain’t it time for that clipper from California, bringin’ in them fancy ladies to them two strongholds?”11

  “Turk, you’re dangerously close to overstepping your authority,” said Stringfield, “but you have some valid points. After you’ve wired Hermosillo, send the same message to both Guaymas and Santa Rosalia. I will contact Nogales, and it’s their responsibility to warn the western outposts at Coahuila, San Felipe, and Catavina.”

  “What about the rest of the outposts, and the chief in Mexico City?”

  “Remember what I said about overstepping your authority,” Stringfield said. “Send the telegrams and leave the rest to me.”

  When Corbin had departed, Stringfield took pen, ink, paper, and an envelope from a desk drawer. He addressed the envelope to Dolan Watts, Nogales. The message he wrote consisted of four pages. Finished, he took the sealed envelope to one of his most trusted men.