Cold Corpse, Hot Trail

by Peter Brandvold

  Someone pushed against Hawk’s right shoulder, and he turned to see the girl from the bandits’ table trying to squeeze between him and a bulky Mexican miner, to get to the bar.

  “Move your ass!” she grumbled. Her angry eyes met Hawk’s. They slid away, slid back. Her brows straightened out, and she gave him a quick, female study, a faint flush rising in her cheeks.

  “What do you want?” Hawk said above the noise. “I’ll order for you.”

  She continued to study him. Her hair was lushly tangled about her head, hanging like corn shucks to her shoulders. She was dusty and sunburned, she smelled like leather and horses, and her clothes sagged on her slender frame.

  Still, she was one of the most beautiful women Hawk had ever seen. Beautiful and—judging from what Primrose had told him about the lovely bushwhacker who’d expertly flung lead at his unsuspecting men—deadly.

  She smiled with only her turquoise eyes, keeping her lips straight. “Americano, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  She blinked slowly. “Order me a bottle of wine, and tell the greaser to hurry the hell up. I’m thirsty and tired of their tequila and that sow piss they call whiskey down here.”

  Hawk turned and gestured for the wine. The girl tossed him a coin, and he tossed it to the apron, who set the strawbasketed bottle on the bar. Hawk gave it to her.

  She stared at him, tipping her head back, her straw sombrero dangling between her shoulder blades. The corners of her full mouth rose slightly and her eyes slitted. “Gracias.”

  Hawk pinched his hat brim.

  The girl turned away and pushed through the milling crowd to her table.

  Hawk sipped his shot. It being a weekniqht, the crowd slowly dispersed, tables gradually opening up, the din softening.

  Hawk ordered another shot and sat down at a table near the bar. He angled his back to the northeast corner, half-facing both the door on his left, and the gringos and the federales on his right. The crowd’s roar had softened enough that he could hear the federale commander—a fat major with a flat, pockmarked face and with his leather-billed hat pushed back on his thick, black curls—when he stood and gathered two large money sacks about his shoulders.

  The man lifted a glass to one of the Americans—a tall, steel-eyed hombre with wavy, sandy hair and matching mustache. “To our mutual endeavor, Señor Waylon.”

  The steel-eyed gent, with a slightly skeptical cast to his gaze, raised his glass and nodded. The major tossed back his shot and dropped his empty glass on the table, picked up another full glass amongst the myriad empties, held it up to the girl.

  “And to the beautiful gringa, Señorita Saradee, who has found fit to bless our humble country with her presence.”

  The other federales, bleary-eyed from drink, hair hanging in their eyes, yelled their appreciation as they raised their own shot glasses, and joined the major in tossing back a drink in the pretty bandit’s honor. The girl herself puffed out her cheeks like a bored kid in her teens, and sank down in her chair. She tipped the wine bottle to her lips, taking a liberal swig, scarlet liquid streaming down her chin.

  “And do not worry about your dinero,” the major continued to the steel-eyed gent sitting beside the girl. The major patted the money sacks hanging down his chest from the rope around his shoulders, the U.S. markings clearly visible on the face of each pouch. “I will stow it safely away, to be divided later with the rest. You are in a very dangerous part of Mexico, the hills honeycombed with thieves. We wouldn’t want all your work to come to nothing!”

  Guffawing, the major tugged his hat bill down, gestured to his underlings, and swaggered drunkenly across the room toward the front doors.

  The other federales gained their own feet clumsily, scraping their chairs back and donning their hats, taking up their rifles and adjusting their cartridge belts on their hips. They bent their own drunk-weary legs for the front door, the dozen or so remaining customers suddenly falling silent and watching the staggering, well-armed soldados with expressions of dread and disdain.

  The batwings hadn’t stopped shuddering in the Mexicans’ wake when the other gringos, scattered about the back of the tavern, got up from their own tables and converged on the larger table, where the steel-eyed gent and the girl sat side by side, smoking and scowling down at the scarred planks.

  The group had a private conference, most of which Hawk couldn’t hear. It seemed as though the gang had been double-crossed, but intended to even the score in the near future. When the steel-eyed gent had settled the others down, including the girl, who seemed the most discontent of them all, several of the hard cases made for the stairs at the back of the tavern, yawning and grumbling.

  When the majority of the men had climbed the stairs, no doubt repairing to rooms they’d rented earlier, leaving only five men at the table with the girl and the steel-eyed gent, Hawk felt a sudden quickening of his pulse and an itch in his trigger fingers.

  Five drunk hard cases were manageable. After the shooting, he’d slip out and return for the other men later.

  But what about Primrose’s money?

  Through the fatigue of the long day’s ride, his mind was slow to work through the problem. He was about to throw the rest of his third tequila back when he glanced over at the girl’s and the steel-eyed gent’s table. The pretty bushwhacker was sitting back in her chair, arms crossed on her breasts, staring at Hawk with a faintly coquettish smile.

  The steel-eyed gent was turned toward her, talking quietly but vehemently, gesturing with his hands, his big face flushed with anger.

  Ignoring the man beside her, the girl suddenly reached forward and picked up her wine bottle. She held it out toward Hawk in salute.

  Holding up his shot glass, he returned the salute. At the same time, the steel-eyed gent stopped talking and slitted his eyes at the girl. He followed her gaze to Hawk, and the steel-eyed gent’s face flushed crimson.

  Hawk threw back his tequila, set the glass on the table. He didn’t look directly at the steel-eyed gent, but held the girl’s gaze as she tipped back the wine bottle, taking another long pull, wine dribbling down her chin. She set the bottle on the table, smacking her lips and wiping her chin with her left hand.

  As the steel-eyed gent sat stiffening beside her, staring coldly at Hawk, she said loudly enough for Hawk to hear, “I bet he wouldn’t have let himself get hornswoggled by those greasers.”

  The steel-eyed gent stared at Hawk, lips bunched beneath his mustache. The other five men at the table had turned to regard Hawk as well, frowning.

  Holding his smile, Hawk shuttled his eyes to the steel-eyed gent’s.

  Suddenly, the man stood, his chair flying ten feet out behind him before catching a floor knot and overturning with a wooden bark. As the man wheeled from the table and sauntered toward him, Hawk gained his own feet slowly, sliding his duster flaps behind his revolvers.

  20.

  BUSHWHACKING BEAUTY

  “DON’T you know it ain’t polite,” the steel-eyed gent growled through gritted teeth, stopping ten feet from Hawk’s table, “oglin’ another man’s woman?”

  Hawk shrugged a shoulder. “She was the one looking around.”

  The steel-eyed gent glanced at the girl still sitting at the table behind him, slumped down in her chair. Her arms were still crossed on her breasts, and her eyes were bright with anticipatory glee.

  “He just ordered me a bottle of wine, Waylon,” she said, chuckling. “You can’t blame him for staring at me, can you? All the men stare. I don’t think it was my tits he was staring at, though. At least, not only my tits. That’s why I didn’t take my usual offense.”

  Waylon turned back to Hawk, nostrils flaring. “That a fact?”

  “Besides, he looks like one tough son of a bitch. I can’t help admiring a tough man, when they seem so damn scarce these days.” Brazenly she ran her gaze up and down Hawk’s tall, broad frame.

  “Tough, you say?” Waylon sneered. He flung his frock’s lapels back from h
is matched Remingtons. “Let’s judge by how long it takes him to die with two .44 pills in his gut.”

  Waylon took one step farther back from the table and spread his feet in the gunfighting stance.

  “Will you be comfortable shooting from your position?” he asked Hawk. “Or would you like to move out into the open?” He gestured at a gap between the tables.

  The girl was walking up behind the man called Waylon. “No shooting,” she said poutily, moving between Waylon and Hawk. “I want to see you fight like real men, with your fists.”

  Hands resting on the butts of her own pistols, she stood sideways between the two men, smiling like a schoolgirl awaiting a fresh glass of sarsaparilla.

  “Suits me,” Waylon said, raising his brows at Hawk.

  Hawk’s face was expressionless. “What does the winner get?”

  “Why, me, of course!” Saradee intoned, twirling on one foot and striking a lusty pose, eyes glittering with a beguiling mix of girlish excitement and danger. Cocking a foot and sticking her chest out, hands on her pistol butts, she said, “Would you like to see exactly what the lucky winner shall enjoy?”

  “Keep your shirt on, Saradee!” Waylon snapped, quickly unbuckling his shell belt. “This son of a bitch isn’t going to be enjoying anything but a long, cold snuggle with the snakes.”

  The Mexicans who’d been sitting around Hawk had hustled out of the way but remained nearby, drinks in their hands and drunken grins on their faces. Nothing like watching two gringos going at it. The other hard cases who’d been sitting at Waylon’s and Saradee’s table had gained their own feet and come over, eyes bright with interest.

  Most of the other drinkers remained at their own tables, only vaguely interested. No one came in from the patio, where a slight din still rose. Fights in El Molina were as common as bedbugs in the mattress sacks.

  His eyes holding Waylon’s fixed glare, Hawk unbuckled his own cartridge belt. The girl took Waylon’s belt, then came over and held her hand out for Hawk’s. Hawk turned around and set the belt and both holstered revolvers on the bar behind him.

  Holding his gaze with a sly one of her own, she stepped around him and set Waylon’s coiled gun belt at the end of the bar, several feet from Hawk’s. While Hawk removed his hat and duster, and Kilroy removed his hat and frock, the other men from her table cleared the area around the two challengers.

  Saradee shuttled her glance from Kilroy to Hawk. “Any knives, boys?”

  When Kilroy had removed a knife from each boot well, Hawk removed his own bowie from the sheath between his shoulder blades, and set it with his Colt and his Russian. Waylon handed his own knives to Saradee. When she’d put them up with the hard case’s revolvers, she backed away from the makeshift fighting ring and hopped up onto a table. She crossed her ankles, leaned forward, hands on her knees, and grinned with delight.

  The challengers squared off, circling. Hawk studied his opponent.

  The man had had too much to drink. He could barely stand, much less sidestep and feint. He should have told the girl to go to hell, and used his guns. He might have had a chance. As it was, Hawk was going to make mincemeat of the man’s face, and he couldn’t help smiling at the prospect.

  Waylon stopped suddenly and jabbed his left fist at Hawk. Hawk didn’t bother to dodge; still, the shot glanced off his right cheek, the pain barely noticeable amidst the hate surging in his veins.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw Waylon shooting into the Army detail, as though at ducks on a millpond, and he let the man lunge at him again. Hawk felt Estella Chacon fall slack and dead in his arms. He stepped away from Waylon’s right roundhouse, pivoting on the ball of his foot. Waylon’s roundhouse whistled through the air over Hawk’s left temple, and the hard case staggered from his own momentum.

  Hawk thrust his left fist at the man’s right shoulder, to straighten him, then broke Waylon’s nose with a short, crisp jab.

  The nose lay flat against the man’s hard face, blood gushing like wine from a cut flask. The man grunted and, stumbling backward, limbs akimbo, sucked air into his mouth. When he released it, frothy bubbles sprayed from both his nose and his lips, frothing his mustache and painting his shirt front.

  “Jesus Christ!” exclaimed an observer to Hawk’s right, leaping toward Waylon.

  “Wait!” Saradee shouted, holding up a hand.

  The hand held the man as though by puppet strings; he stopped, retreated to where he’d been standing with his compatriots. Waylon caught himself, straightened, and lowered his hands from his face, spraying blood with each exhalation.

  His gaze found Hawk’s. A faint smile touched his lips, and his eyes narrowed. He flicked his right wrist as though snapping out a handkerchief. Into that hand, a steel stiletto appeared from a sleeve slide, the razor-sharp blade flashing in the room’s torch and lantern light.

  He hadn’t even started to move it toward Hawk before Hawk was on him, lashing out with his right boot. The boot smashed the hand; the blade flew and clattered off a wall. Hawk punched the dumbfounded hard case low in the man’s gut. As Waylon folded, Hawk smashed his right fist into the man’s left ear, and Waylon’s breath whoofed out in a fresh spray of blood and spit.

  He dropped to his knees.

  Hawk lifted him by his shirtfront and, his face a grinning mask of fury, assaulted the man with a combination of brain-numbing blows to his face and temples. The blows didn’t continue long. In less than a minute, Waylon’s back hit the floor with a wooden boom.

  Hawk stood over him, opening and closing his skinned fists at his sides, his chest rising and falling sharply. He silently commanded the man to get up, but in a few seconds, it was obvious Waylon was finished.

  Suddenly, Hawk was aware of the other men moving toward him, enraged snarls reddening their faces. Chairs and tables scraped the floor.

  Hawk turned to face them. He glanced at his cartridge belt on the bar. He started moving forward, but stopped when Saradee yelled, “Fair fight, boys! Don’t get your backs up!”

  Two of the men only slowed their steps, but they kept moving toward Hawk. One slid his long-barreled revolver from his holster. He stopped when Saradee blew a hole in the floor, nipping his right boot sole. The man hopped on the other foot, cursing.

  The girl ordered him and the other more aggressive hombre to haul Waylon up to his room and tend to his injuries. Reluctantly, staring coldly at Hawk, they obeyed. When they were gone, she told the other three men—more closely aligned with her than Waylon, it appeared—that she wanted some privacy. They got a bottle from the bar and headed upstairs, chuckling and glancing back at her and Hawk over their shoulders.

  Saradee bought a fresh bottle of tequila and, balancing two shot glasses in her other palm, turned to Hawk. She gave him the cool up-and-down again, said, “It smells like blood in here. Let’s go outside and have a drink.”

  Adjusting his cartridge belt on his hips, Hawk watched her turn and walk away. He wasn’t sure why, but he followed her. When they sat across from each other at a small table by the square, she splashed tequila into each shot glass and sat back in her chair.

  She dug a cigarillo from her shirt pocket, poked it in her mouth. Hawk held up the candle burning in the middle of the table, and she leaned forward, dipping the cigarillo’s end in the flame. She puffed smoke, sank back in her chair, blew a lungful at him.

  “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

  “I’ve always had a bad temper.”

  The tip of her wet, pink tongue touched the right corner of her mouth, where it found a tobacco crumb. She licked the crumb into her mouth, bit down on it gently, a curious cast to her penetrating gaze. “Where are you from?”

  “Here and there.” Hawk sipped his tequila. From the shadows around the patio, the girl had attracted several lascivious stares. “You?”

  “Here and there. What’re you doing in Mexico?”

  “Look, it’s getting late. If we’re going upstairs, let’s get a move on. If not, I’ll buy another bo
ttle and head back to my pallet.”

  The girl chuckled huskily, blowing smoke. Suddenly, the laughter was gone, and so was her smile. Curling her upper lip angrily, she snarled, “Listen, you uncouth dog, I’m not a whore. If you want me, you’re gonna have to romance me a little. Is that asking so goddamn much?”

  Hawk arched an eyebrow, glanced around at the Mexicans smoking and drinking in the wavering shadows. Several were passed out on the floor. One sprawled across a table. Several more ogled Saradee and whispered.

  “Romance?”

  She leaned forward. “You saw the federales walk out of here earlier?”

  Hawk stared at her.

  “They’ve got something of mine.” Her eyes flicked across his arms and shoulders again, his bloody hands on the table. “You’re gonna help me get it back.”

  “If I don’t?”

  “You’ll stay a poor, wandering bandit, only one step ahead of the law, for the rest of your life.” Saradee sank back in her chair and puffed the cigarillo. “And you’ll never know the sweet bliss of me.”

  Hawk gave her an up-and-down similar to the ones she’d given him. He felt only hatred for the bushwhacking beauty, but he managed a lusty grin. “Mierda.”

  “The night is young,” she said, throwing back the tequila. “Let’s have some fun.” She stood, set her right hand on the rail separating the patio from the street, and leapt as if her feet were springs. A moment later, she was jogging across the square.

  Hawk snorted wryly, threw back his tequila, and followed her.

  Since their own mounts were spent, Hawk and the girl secured two horses from a livery stable near the square—a couple of long-toothed nags typical of the liveries in this neck of the woods—and rigged them out with ancient Mexican saddles with big, dinner-plate horns.

  The poor horses and even poorer tack didn’t matter, Saradee assured him. They didn’t have far to ride, and if they implemented her plan the way she intended, they wouldn’t need speed either.

  Hawk followed her over some dark hills and across a trickling stream. For a short time, they seemed to be following the fresh trail of a full dozen horses. Then they left the road the previous riders had followed, and cut cross-country.