Cold Corpse, Hot Trail

by Peter Brandvold

  Holding his voice low, the lawman said, “You’re cavortin’ with a known criminal, soldier. You shoot the son of a bitch, and I might forget about that.”

  “Without him, I have little chance of retrieving the payroll money.”

  “With him, you’re breakin’ the law.”

  “I figure, just being down here, I’m breaking the law. I might as well break it with a man who can help me fulfill my objective.”

  Flagg canted his head to one side. “Let’s say you get the money back. What’re you gonna do then?”

  Primrose didn’t say anything for a moment. He adjusted his hat’s angle, sighed. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. In the meantime, Flagg, I’d appreciate you not complicating matters. When Gideon Hawk has vowed vengeance on someone—like he’s vowed vengeance on the gang we’re after—he’ll let no one stand in his way. Including me . . . and you.”

  “Come along, fellas,” Hawk called. He’d stopped his grulla about thirty yards up trail and turned him sideways—a tall, broad-shouldered rider silhouetted against the towering rocks and shimmering stars. “You don’t want me to start suspecting a mutiny.”

  Primrose glanced at Flagg, who returned the look, snorted wryly, and heeled his horse forward.

  The three rode for another forty-five minutes before the tinkle of a piano and muffled laughter and the smell of wood smoke and latrines rose on the breeze. Hearing whoops and the celebratory reports of several pistol shots, they rode over a pair of rocky hills and descended to the village sprawled across a hillside falling to a round mountain lake, the dark water shimmering in the light of the recently risen moon.

  A wooden sign, broke off at the post and wedged between a piñon tree and a boulder, announced EL MOLINA in sun-faded red letters.

  They rode along the winding main street, whores calling softly from balconies while drunk miners and vaqueros retched or fornicated in dark alleys or—as in one case—on the flat bed of a wagon parked along the street. More pistol fire rose—quickly fired rounds indicating an angry lead swap. A woman screamed.

  Before Hawk, a stout shadow crossed the street, holding a dead chicken, head down, in each hand. The squat man turned his head toward the three newcomers, and stopped before a cement stock trough on the right side of the street. He spread his arms wide, chickens dangling, and puffed a fat stogie.

  “Yanquis, no?”

  Flanked by Flagg and Primrose, Hawk stopped his tired grulla, whose stomach had been grumbling since they’d left the pulperia, and stared down at the man.

  “I have a special rate for Yanquis . . . and a special place,” the man said, grinning beneath his mustache, hub-like cheek nobs rising into his eye sockets.

  “Special place to get our throats cut, no doubt,” growled Flagg.

  “No, no, Señor. Safe place. No other place is safe for gringos. As long as you pay American money, I give you American comforts, such as rye wheeskey, hot baths, and I have one white girl. Quiet place. Not on main street. And I lock my doors at night. You will be safe from bandits.”

  Flagg was about to say something else, but Hawk cut him off. “You have a stable?”

  “A very large, very clean stable, Señor.”

  “Fresh hay and oats, clean water?”

  “The freshest hay and oats, the cleanest water. I haul it myself from the lake.”

  Hawk studied the man for a moment. “Lead the way.”

  “You crazy, Hawk?” Flagg said. “You’re not going to fall for that old trick?”

  “Shut up,” Hawk said, kneeing the grulla down a dark alley on the heels of the squat, bowlegged Mexican.

  They rode downhill, shod hooves clacking on intermittent stretches of cobbled ground, for about fifty yards. The Mexican suddenly threw his head up, singing a Mexican tune about a girl named Maria and a bottle of wine. A half second later, three sombrero-hatted silhouettes rose on the tiled roof to their right.

  Starlight winked off gun barrels.

  Hawk jerked back on the grulla’s reins, reached across his belly for the Russian .44. Thumbing the big pistol’s hammer back, he extended it out and up from his right shoulder. The Russian popped once, twice, three times, smoke and fire jetting from the barrel.

  Because Flagg and Primrose’s horses had kept moving up behind him, nudging the grulla, Hawk missed his third shot. The bushwhacker was startled enough by his gunfire, however, that he hesitated, ducking and fumbling with his rifle. As the other two dry-gulchers fell ass-over-teakettle from the tiled roof, landing with a thumping clatter on the cobbled ground, skulls cracking like dried gourds, Hawk fired again.

  The third man groaned and stepped back from the roof’s lip. He sank to one knee, folding an arm over his belly. Again, the Russian barked. The man flipped straight back against the tiles. From below, only his boot soles were visible, two small arrows pointing toward the stars.

  Flagg cursed and held his jittery mount’s reins taut.

  “What the hell?” said Primrose through clenched teeth.

  Hawk holstered the near-empty Russian and drew his Colt. At the first shot, the Mexican had thrown himself belly-down on the ground. Now he lay on his left hip, propped on his left arm, staring up with black eyes in which the moonlight shone like quicksilver. His body was rigid, mouth opening and closing without saying anything.

  Hawk kneed the grulla forward, turned the horse sideways to the man, and aimed the cocked pistol at his head. “Now that we have that out of the way,” he said levelly, “let’s get back to business. You try anything like that again, I’ll cut your oysters off and feed them to you raw. Do we have an understanding?”

  The man’s mouth opened and closed. His throat made a wet noise as he swallowed. He turned his head to the dark, oblong humps of the two dead men, and he crossed himself. “We have an understanding, Señor.”

  “Now, I hope you really do have a room for us, and a stable for our horses, or I’m going to get downright annoyed.”

  “¡Sí, sí, sí!” the man said, sticking his cigar back into his mouth, standing, and picking up up his chickens. He waddled down the hill. “The very best in El Molina!”

  “Christ,” Flagg growled, his sweated face glistening in the moonlight. “What’d I tell you?”

  Hawk holstered the Colt and spurred his horse ahead. “The devil you know, Flagg. The devil you know . . .”

  They continued following the Mexican down the hill, winding around hillocks and old sod and adobe mining shacks, most of which appeared abandoned, to a large adobe house about fifty yards from the lakeshore. A boat was pulled up on the rocks out front of the place, clothes of all shapes and sizes strung on a line to the left. The house had several sets of narrow, stone stairs, balconies, and patios. Somewhere on the other side of the house, a lusty cat was screeching.

  Someone strummed a guitar, and in several visible windows, lanterns shone.

  They turned the horses into the corral flanking the house, with the squat man’s assurances that he’d tend to the mounts himself as soon as he’d seen Hawk and his two companions to rooms. Hearing voices inside the main part of the house, Hawk insisted the man take them inside through an outside stairs, preferably to an isolated part of the house.

  “Sí, sí, sí,” the man said, sweating now and breathing nervously.

  “And don’t spread it around you have gringos staying here,” Hawk growled as he followed Flagg and the squat man up a narrow, winding staircase at the building’s rear. “That would annoy me too.”

  “Sí, sí, sí.”

  Inside a dark hall, the squat man paused to scratch a lucifer to life on his sandal bottom. He lit a short piece of candle he’d fished from his pocket. He held the sputtering candle high and continued walking in his shambling, heavy-footed gait.

  Muffled voices rose from below, and the guitar had gotten louder. A couple of girls were giggling. The cat had stopped screaming.

  “What about this room here?” Hawk said, pausing at a door on the right side of the hall. A c
rucifix was mounted over the door. On both sides of the door hung blurry tin-types, one of an old woman and one of a gray-bearded, slit-eyed man. On the floor was a straw mat, as if for scraping dirty sandals.

  The squat man turned, cleared his throat. “That . . . is my room, sir.”

  “Open up. We’ll take it.”

  With a sigh, the man produced a key from his pocket and opened the door on a simple but amply furnished room with a small desk and a brass bed, a bureau, washstand, and two shuttered windows. There was a gun rack with three old-model rifles and a shotgun. On the floor were two thick rugs.

  When the squat man, still breathing hard from nerves and the climb up the stairs, had lit a bracket lamp and two candles, Hawk plucked the key from his hand and shoved him toward the door. “Bring up some extra bedding, three plates of food and coffee, and a jug of good whiskey.” He grinned without mirth. “You’ll be sampling each in our presence, so don’t even think about hauling out the rat poison.”

  “Sí, sí, señor,” the squat man said wearily, and ambled toward the open door.

  “And remember . . .” Hawk called to him.

  “I am as silent as the dead Christ, Señor. . . .” The squat man left the room.

  Hawk shoved Flagg down on the bed, unlocked the left handcuff.

  “What now, Hawk?” the lawman asked.

  “Shut up.”

  He jerked Flagg onto his back, closed the cuff around the brass frame at the head of the bed, and locked it. Flagg grunted and cursed. “Goddamn you, Hawk, you can’t—

  Hawk slammed his Russian’s barrel across the lawman’s right temple, knocking him flat on his back. Flagg sputtered and sighed, and his body relaxed. Hawk stood, holstered the Russian, and lifted Flagg’s booted feet onto the bed, tipped the man’s hat over his face.

  “Christ,” Primrose said, staring at Flagg with crumpled brows, “you have to hit him that hard?”

  Hawk tossed the key on the dresser. “That was a love tap.”

  Later, when the food had been brought up, and they’d watched the squat Mexican, whose name was Guadalupe Reyes, take a liberal bite of the beans, corn, chicken, and tortillas, they ate. Then Hawk donned his hat and walked to the door.

  “Where you going?” Primrose said.

  He was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall by the washstand. Flagg had come around, but was wisely keeping his mouth shut.

  “Gonna go out for a while, get the lay of the land.”

  Primrose started to get up. “I’ll go with you.”

  “You stay with Flagg.”

  On one knee, the lieutenant stared up at him.

  “Don’t worry,” Hawk said, opening the door and glancing cautiously up and down the dark hall. “If I find your money, I’ll try to bring it back without any blood on it.”

  He clicked the door shut, and was gone.

  19.

  MOUNTAIN LION TAVERN

  HAWK walked down the stairs in shadowy moonlight, one hand on his Colt’s butt. At the bottom, he stopped and glanced at the lake.

  The moonlight shimmered on its gently rippling surface. The breeze over the water felt cool against his wind- and sunburnt skin. The particular mix of smells—pure water, wet sand, and seaweed—brought back the many afternoons he’d spent fishing with his son along Wolf Creek, which meandered through the prairie grass and cottonwoods not from their house in Crossroads, Dakota Territory.

  Hawk glanced over the dark hulks of the adobe houses and stables and boulders rolling up the hill toward the main part of town, from which the sounds of revelry rose faintly among the occasional snaps of gunfire. He turned and walked down to the lake, and looked around.

  Seeing no one else along the shore, he kicked out of his boots and stripped off his dusty clothes, which he shook out and piled on a boulder. Naked, he walked across the wet sand, the earth feeling good beneath his bare feet, the breeze combing his dry, dusty skin that hadn’t seen a bath in weeks.

  Up the hill in the distance, someone played the guitar faster, and a man sang along, stomping his foot. The sound was nearly covered by the lap of the wavelets against the sand and rocks.

  Hawk waded into the water, the coolness inching up his shins and thighs. He plunged in, his heart wrenched by the refreshing chill closing around him, instantly relieving the burn of the dust, wind, and searing desert sun. He’d never been much of a swimmer—hadn’t swum, in fact, since he was a kid—so his strokes were awkward, but he swam out until, looking back, the shore was a thin black line. Above the line, the lights of Reyes’s adobe winked dully.

  He turned, took a deep breath, and swam back. When his feet touched the sand and small, sharp rocks, he crawled five yards and lay for several minutes, belly down, on the shore, the water lapping around him. He tried to summon the thoughts and feelings of his child self, swimming in a prairie pothole on a warm summer day.

  No cares. Only the moment.

  Then he thought of Jubal, saw a perch burst from a brown-green creek at the end of a fishing line, the cane pole in Jubal’s hands bowing sharply. But the image vanished, replaced in Hawk’s mind by the boy’s body falling, the noose around the boy’s neck drawing taut as the horse galloped out from under him. . . .

  “You have good sweem?” It was a woman’s voice—high-pitched and husky at the same time, buoyant with humor, thick from drink.

  Heart thudding, Hawk looked up sharply, digging his fingers into the sand. She stood silhouetted before him—a curvy young woman in a thin, multicolored skirt cut well above her knees. She wasn’t wearing a blouse, and her breasts, around which several silver necklaces were draped, were pear-shaped and full, jouncing slightly as she breathed.

  Hawk glanced at his gun belt, coiled atop his clothes on the boulder, ten or so feet away.

  “Don’t be alarmed. Guadalupe send me for you. He want you be happy.”

  Hawk released a silent, relieved breath. Seeing no reason to be modest before a whore, he stood, towering over her, looking down. She was brown-skinned, black-eyed, thick hair curling over her shoulders.

  He brushed water from his eyes, the breeze chilling him and drying him at the same time. “Tell Guadalupe I’m happy.”

  “Free of charge. The puta gringa is occupied.”

  “Not interested.”

  He walked around and grabbed his underwear off the boulder.

  “Why not interested? I Guadalupe’s best whore. I please men, even Yanquis, all across Sonora!”

  Hawk was stepping into his underwear. “I’m sure your reputation precedes you, but I’m not interested. Nor in the puta gringa. You might as well go back to the hotel and make ole Guadalupe some money.”

  Fists on her hips, she watched him dress. Finally, as he sat down to pull on his boots, she gave an angry chuff, wheeled, and stomped toward the hotel, her silver necklaces jingling faintly, her feet padding softly across the sand.

  Hawk’s shirt and hair were nearly dry by the time he reached the town’s main thoroughfare. The street twisted between lantern-lit adobes bustling with activity. Men and women laughed loudly or grunted with animal passion in the whores’ cribs clustered here and there about the street.

  Occasional pistol shots resounded. Coins clanked. Roulette wheels ticked. In an alley to Hawk’s right, men were fighting—shadows jostling, knives flashing in stray lamplight. Spanish curses rose on enraged shouts and snarls.

  Hawk walked on, duster thrown back behind his pistols, keeping his eyes peeled for a large group of gringos, his ears pricked for English. Occasionally, he peeked through a cantina’s dust-streaked window, but he saw no groups of Americans larger than three or four.

  He came to the main square and paused near the stone fountain. Somewhere off to his right, a priest was crouched over a prone, writhing figure, offering last rites. A recipient of one of the fired bullets, no doubt. But it wasn’t the dying man who held Hawk’s interest. Standing just right of the fountain’s stone angel, his reflection angling across the shallow, murky, straw-flecke
d water within the large, stone bowl, he stared at a cantina on the left side of the square, alone on a trash-littered lot.

  A shingle hanging beneath the patio’s brush arbor, and flanked by post-mounted torches, announced TABERNA DEL LEÓN MONTAÑA.

  It was a big, sprawling place, busy as an anthill slathered in honey. Amidst the din, Hawk’s ears picked up several bits of shouted English.

  Hawk turned away from the fading sighs of the dying man and the whispered prayers of the priest, and strode toward the cantina. As he passed between the torches, heading for the front door, he raked his gaze across the dimly lit front patio. Seeing only drunk Mexican miners, border banditos, vaqueros, and a couple of near-naked whores, he pushed through the batwings and stepped inside.

  A few steps beyond the door, pushing through the crowd and swinging his gaze around, he stopped suddenly, his heart catching, his eyes narrowing.

  Near the back of the big, wooden-floored room were nearly a dozen well-armed Americans in dusty trail garb. They sat at several tables near the room’s back left wall, not far from a beehive fireplace. They seemed to be associating with the dozen federales spread about the square or round, rough-hewn tables. In fact, five of the Americans, including a honey-haired girl in a calico shirt and overlarge canvas trousers secured with a rope belt, were sitting with three federales. Laughing and drinking and smoking fat cigars, they seemed to be having a good time.

  Anticipation tingling, Hawk pushed on down the pine bar, jostling and being jostled, and found a vacant spot to stand near the far end. It took nearly a minute to catch the harried apron’s eye; he gestured for two tequila shots.

  He threw back one shot and turned sideways, facing the doors across the room but watching, from the corner of his right eye, the American border toughs and the federales they were mixing with. He turned his attention to a curly-headed little Mex who’d leapt onto the counter about ten feet away. Swaying drunkenly, the man acted out a story Hawk couldn’t make out from this distance, triggering finger pistols and laughing.