Cold Corpse, Hot Trail

by Peter Brandvold

  About four miles from the village, they drew rein on the shoulder of a low rimrock. Hawk followed the girl’s gaze to several pinpricks of flickering orange light a good mile south, on the low slope of a high, serrated ridge silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Squinting, Hawk made out the pale walls of a fortlike adobe structure sprawled across the base of the slope.

  “Waylon said the federales had taken over an old ranch,” Saradee said.

  Hawk nodded, smiled to himself.

  The girl gigged her gray nag forward, and Hawk followed her across the narrow valley, making a beeline for the lights. They tied the horses to cottonwoods on a wash bottom, and walked over another rise to the base of a low rock wall at the southeast edge of the hacienda. They hunkered down, their backs to the wall.

  The girl opened her mouth to speak, but Hawk cut her off. “My turn to play the leader.”

  She closed her mouth, stared at him, her face nearly invisible against the wall’s shadows. He could feel the crazy, passionate heat of her. “I want only to know where the greasers are keeping the money,” she whispered. “So we can return for it later . . . when the pigs have left the pen.”

  “How do you know they’re going to leave?”

  “They’ll leave. And for the job they and Waylon intend, they’ll need every man they have. I doubt they’ll leave many behind. But I want to be able to get in and out quick, so I need to know the layout of the place. Tonight, they’re all probably drunk, most probably passed out.”

  She grabbed his arm, dug her fingers into the flesh. “You help me get the money, we’ll split it between us.” She smiled, white teeth standing out against the dark oval of her face. “With thirty-six thousand dollars split two ways, we’ll have one hell of a high-stepping time in Juarez!”

  Hawk returned the smile. “I knew I was going to like you.”

  “Later this evening, you’re going to like me even better.” Saradee threw herself forward, ramming her breasts against his chest, and kissed him hungrily. “And tomorrow, when we’re on the trail out of here with more money than you’ve ever made in your life . . . even better!”

  Hawk rose slightly, peered over the top of the stone wall. The hacienda’s torches flickered beyond an old, once-irrigated hay field grown up with piñons, junipers, and greasewood shrubs. At either end of the big casa, the federales had erected two tall, wooden guard towers. The towers were little more than vertical silhouettes against the starry, moonlit sky.

  Hawk couldn’t tell if they were manned. Probably. This was, after all, Yaqui country.

  The towers weren’t the only obstacles. The casa was surrounded by a half-dozen outbuildings of various shapes and sizes, any or all of which could be housing men. True, a good many of the major’s men might be drunk, but probably not all of them.

  To try something like this, Hawk had to be as crazy as the girl. Then again, from her he might get some clues on how to take down the rest of the gang, not to mention the money Primrose was in such a fever about.

  “Come on,” Hawk said, and leapt the wall.

  21.

  FORAY BY MOONLIGHT

  KNOWING the old hay field was visible from the guard towers, Hawk and Saradee crabbed slowly through the tough brown brush and gnarled piñon saplings, making as little noise as possible.

  With the moon bathing the land, it wasn’t a good night for attempting such a feat, and Hawk was surprised when, reaching the overgrown pecan orchard on the other side of the field, they hadn’t been detected from either tower.

  Not only that, but he hadn’t seen any shadows moving beneath the peaked roof of either structure. They were close enough to hear the creak and click of boots on the tower floors—if there had been any. But except for the howls of distant coyotes and the occasional screech of a nighthawk, the night was silent.

  Obviously, no guards stood watch in either tower.

  Hawk and Saradee hunkered down on their haunches, at the edge of the orchard, breathing hard from the crawl across the hay field. Hawk raked his gaze around the yard. Spying no movement, he glanced at the girl.

  At the same time, each holding a revolver, they stood and ran between a long, L-shaped bunkhouse and a stable, paused for another look around, then ran across the hard-packed wagon yard to the base of a broad stone staircase rising to two oak doors recessed in a crumbling adobe wall. Hunkering down in the shadows, Hawk looked once more across the yard, glanced at the top of the torchlit steps.

  Only the torch on the right side of the door burned; the other had gone out. Hawk was about to rise when a soft snore stopped him.

  He frowned, stole slowly forward, and edged a look up the steps. At the top, a blue-uniformed man lay curled up before the doors, one black jackboot resting atop the other, both hands pillowing his face. A billed blue-and-red hat lay upside down before his curly head. A Winchester rifle leaned against the landing’s adobe wall, right of the double doors.

  “Shit,” Saradee muttered in Hawk’s right ear.

  Hawk turned to her, put a finger to his lips. A place this size probably had several entrances, but there was the possibility Hawk and the girl would run into a conscious guard. Rising to a crouch, aiming his pistol toward the doors, he ascended the steps, walking slowly on the balls of his boots.

  At the top, he stepped over the sleeping federale. Holding his cocked pistol on the man, he tried the left door. It opened with a hard pull. He peeked into a dark foyer, hearing and seeing nothing but shadows. Holding the door open, Hawk beckoned to the girl, who ascended the steps quietly, stepped over the sleeping federale, and ducking under Hawk’s arm, slipped through the cracked door.

  Hawk walked inside and let the door close quietly. The girl threw her arms around his neck with a husky chuckle, pressed her breasts against his chest. Her hot body fairly shuddered. “I like your style, killer!” She ground her crotch against his, bounced up and down on her boot toes. “Take me now. Right here!”

  Hawk bunched his lips with fury. He grabbed her shirt in both fists. She laughed with delight. He shook her once, knocking her sombrero off and causing her hair to fly about her head. Before he could shake her a second time, boots clacked on the flagstone to Hawk’s right.

  Releasing the girl, he turned toward a nook. Stone steps dropped away into darkness. In the murk, a dark shape moved. Vagrant light flashed dully off metal, winked off the patent leather of a billed hat.

  The man growled, drunkenly dragging his words. “¿Quién está allí—Ramon?”

  Hawk grabbed the girl and stepped back against the wall on the right side of the nook. The girl snorted, chuckling harder. Hawk slapped his left hand across her mouth, pinning her head to the wall.

  With his right hand, he reached up behind his neck and plucked his bowie from the sheath between his shoulder blades. The approaching man’s steps slowed. Coming on ahead of him was the heavy stench of tequila and sweat.

  As he made the top of the stairs, Hawk saw his shadow, the brown smudge of his face, red trimming his hat. Heard the scrape of metal against leather as the man shucked a pistol from a covered holster. As the man turned toward Hawk and the girl, he expelled air loudly.

  Hawk had rammed the bowie deep into the man’s soft belly. His pistol clattering to the flagstones, the man bent forward over the knife. Hawk removed his left hand from the girl’s mouth. He took a fistful of the Mexican’s tunic and, holding the man steady, twisted the bowie, directing the blade up beneath the sternum and ribs toward the heart.

  Doing so, he whispered in the man’s ear. His Spanish was rough, but he got it across that if the man told him where the U.S. money sacks were, he’d take the pain away. The man hissed and sputtered, finally lifted his head and rolled his eyes to indicate the hall behind him.

  He dropped to his knees. Hot blood surged over Hawk’s right hand and wrist.

  Shoving the knife deep into the man’s chest cavity, finding the heart, Hawk drove the man down until his back was snug against the floor, the man’s legs bent beneath hi
s butt. Hawk held the bowie firm until the body ceased quivering. He pulled the knife from the bloody wound, wiped the blade on the man’s red-striped trousers.

  “So much for not causing a ruckus,” the girl whispered.

  “Grab his feet.”

  Hawk had grabbed the dead federale under his arms and was pulling him into the nook from which he’d appeared. Cursing and chuckling nervously, Saradee grabbed the dead man’s ankles and helped Hawk haul the man down the dark steps.

  In a minute, they were on a lower level of the hacienda. Several torches danced light across a stone corridor. There was the faint smell of gunpowder and wine.

  Hawk left Saradee with the body and went exploring. A few minutes later, he returned, lifted the dead man again, and he and Saradee hauled the man thirty yards down the hall to a pair of stout wooden doors. Both doors had been thrown wide, showing only darkness between them.

  Hawk and Saradee hauled the dead federale down two flights of wooden steps, into stygian blackness in which the smell of gunpowder and wine had grown pungent. At the bottom of the stairs they laid the body on the earthen floor, and Hawk lit a match.

  The flickering flame showed a dusty cellar room lined with old oak wine casks, in some places three rows high. In one corner of the musty room sat a half-dozen crates marked DYNAMITE. A rat scrambled, screeching, over the casks above the boxes, and disappeared into a hole in the stone wall.

  Hawk opened one of the unlocked crates. Neat rows of wine-red dynamite sticks stared up at him. In several other boxes, he found caps and fuses. Looking around at the other boxes, he found two long, rectangular, pine-slatted crates, the words VANNORSDELL BAR-V RANCH, TUCSON, ARIZONA TERRITORY stamped on all sides and on the lids.

  These boxes too were unlocked. When Hawk opened one, a dozen Henry rifles, padded with straw and burlap, glistened up at him in the light of his fourth match. He ran a hand down a smooth, walnut stock. These federales—obviously more bandito than federale, though down here the two words were often synonymous—had intercepted a rifle shipment north of the border. With all this fire-power—two dozen rifles and dynamite—they must have one hell of a job planned.

  Hawk remembered all the salutes and backslaps in the tavern earlier.

  “What the hell are these for?” he asked the girl.

  Saradee ran her own hand down one of the rifle’s brass finish. She glanced up at Hawk suspiciously. Then she smiled. “They’re hitting a train bridge day after tomorrow. Stopping a government train loaded with a million dollars worth of gold bars heading for Mexico City.”

  “You and Waylon throw in with them?”

  “Why not? The bean-eater major took our money to show he wouldn’t be fucked with, but we’re supposedly going to be splitting up the gold evenly. I don’t believe a fucking word of it. He needs all the men he can find to take on the train and the soldiers guarding the gold, but he wants to share that gold with gringos like he wants a burning case of the pony drip.”

  She entwined her hands behind Hawk’s neck and said softly, “That’s why, lover, you and I are going to take the payroll money and hightail it. Thirty-six thousand is enough for us. Too much money would only make us fat and lazy. Besides, I have a feeling Waylon isn’t going to live to see a penny of it. The bean-eaters have us out-gunned.”

  Hawk kissed the crazy woman, nuzzled her neck. “Sounds like the right amount to me.” He slid her hands apart. “We’d better hide that hombre over there. With luck, they won’t miss him, probably think he got cold feet and lit a shuck.”

  Lighting several more matches, Hawk explored the entire cellar, finding a nook thick with spiderwebs and fetid with rat shit far in the back. That was where, in an old feed bin buried under half-rotten horse blankets and cracked leather harness, they hid the federale’s bloody carcass.

  When they’d covered the bin again with the blankets and harness, they retraced their steps upstairs and closed the double doors, then continued down the hall in the direction the dying federale had indicated.

  Ten minutes later, a light glowed in the corridor before them. Voices rose. Coins clinked. A man laughed; another yawned loudly and in Spanish announced it was getting late.

  A chair scraped. As others berated the man for his weakness, boot heels clacked and spurs chinged into the distance.

  Hawk walked along the left wall and stopped beside an open arch through which the wan lamplight flickered. Hawk edged his left eye around the edge of the arch, peered through the open doorway.

  Beyond was the casa’s original kitchen and dining room area. Thirty feet away, a large, heavy table sat surrounded by high-backed chairs. Because of another wall, Hawk couldn’t see the entire table, but in his field of vision were five half-dressed federales. Those he could see looked bleary-eyed, the light from a large, rock fireplace dancing across their swarthy, sweaty, unshaven faces.

  The men were drinking and gambling, tossing coins and cards this way and that. Hawk didn’t see or hear the major. Probably getting his beauty sleep for the big morning after next. Beans and pork bubbled in a big cast-iron pot suspended over the fireplace, sending out a spicy aroma. The smell of the food was tempered by the fetor of the federales ’ rancid perspiration. The bottles on the table were opaque. Probably mescal.

  No wonder security was so lax.

  Hawk raked his gaze around the joined rooms, searching for the payroll pouches. He doubted the major would leave the money in the hands of these glorified banditos. It looked as though the dying federale had duped him.

  He was about to pull his head back from the arched opening when his gaze settled on a tall wooden cabinet standing against the wall behind the gamblers. It was a heavy, ornately carved piece, much scarred and shrouded in dust and cobwebs. At one time, it had probably held expensive dishes. Hawk doubted it held dishes now. If so, why the stout chain through its scrolled iron handles, and the heavy padlock securing both ends of the chain?

  Hawk turned to the girl. “Blackjack.”

  “Let me see.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  She stared up at him, pupils expanding and contracting. She ran her eyes across his chest, lifted her gaze again to his face. “No!” She sidled past him, edged her own look through the arched doorway.

  “The cabinet,” Hawk said.

  He pressed his back to the wall as, to his right, Saradee stared through the doorway. Her right hand fell absently to the butt of her .45 poking up on her right hip. Hawk closed his own hand over hers.

  “You don’t have a chance,” he whispered in her ear.

  She pulled back from the opening, looked at him. Her face was flushed and sweating. “Damn tempting to shoot every last greaser in the place, ain’t it?”

  For a fleeting moment, Hawk felt as though he were staring into his own anguished, kill-crazy eyes. It was an unsettling, dizzying sensation, like falling headfirst down a deep well.

  As quickly as it came, it was gone.

  “Remember the plan. We’ll be back for it.”

  “Together?”

  “Why not?”

  She swallowed, took his hand. Together, they walked back the way they’d come. Outside, the guard was still sleeping, curled up and snoring. Hawk and Saradee stepped gingerly over him and descended the stairs.

  Hand in hand, they walked back across the hay field.

  Back at the horses, Hawk turned out his left stirrup and grabbed the big saddle horn. Saradee tugged his arm.

  She stepped back, removed her hat, and shook out her hair. She began unbuttoning her shirt slowly. Staring up at him, she shrugged out of the shirt, dropped it, and stood before him bare-breasted. In the milky moonlight, her jutting nipples slanted shadows across the full, round orbs.

  “You’re man enough to beat the hell out of Waylon Kilroy, but are you man enough for me?”

  When they’d finished coupling like wolves enraged by the moonlight, they dressed slowly, sweating and fatigued.

  “We meet back here, morning after next,”
Saradee said, breathless. “First light.”

  “I’ll be here. We’d better ride back to town separately, so no one gets suspicious.”

  She kissed him, entangling her tongue with his, then climbed into her saddle and reined her horse toward the main trail. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell Waylon I drilled a bullet through your head.” She laughed. “Later, lover.”

  She ground her spurs into the nag’s ribs and headed off toward town.

  22.

  AN EAR FOR WAYLON

  BACK at Reyes’s hotel, D.W. Flagg was trying to work his right hand free of the handcuff secured to the brass bed frame.

  The deputy marshal gritted his teeth as he twisted and turned the hand while pulling it, careful to keep the cuff from knocking against the brass. He didn’t want to awaken Lieutenant Primrose, who lay on his pallet against the wall to Flagg’s right. A single candle burned atop the dresser near the door, the light flickering across the soldier’s mussed auburn hair and weather-burned skin.

  Chin to his chest, stockinged feet crossed, his upper body covered with a thin wool blanket, Primrose snored softly.

  Flagg held the cuff taut against the frame and applied firm, steady pressure. Try as he might, and as sweaty as his hand had become from the effort of trying to free himself, he could not slip his knuckles through the ungiving metal ring.

  No longer able to contain his fury, he cursed loudly and rapped the cuff against the frame with a shrill metal clang.

  Primrose lifted his head with a start, uncrossing his feet and reaching for the pistol beside him. “What the hell is it?”

  His nervous gaze swept the room, lighting on Flagg, red-faced and grimacing. “It’s this damn cuff, Lieutenant. Get it the hell off of me!” He gave the cuff another loud wrap, the force of the blow causing the bed to bounce with a raucous wooden bark.

  “Be quiet, Flagg. You’re going to awaken the whole place!”