by Jake Logan
Someone screamed, “Apaches! Apaches!” More shots and lots of cussing, but Slocum and company were jogging north-west as fast as their ponies would go and laughing. Soon all the noise and excitement was behind them—they reached Fort Bowie mid-morning. Slocum showed his papers and then had the sergeant in charge of the stables have his men on duty rub down and grain their horses plus her mule.
They walked to the closest café and Slocum bought them breakfast.
“I’ll send the colonel a note on what we found.” Between bites, he explained the future plan. “Maybe he has word on the broncos.”
Chako looked at him over the steaming coffee mug he held in both hands. “What then?”
“Damned if I know. He’ll have a new plan for us.”
The scout shook his head at her. “They always work. These white men. No time to play.”
“He better find some, huh?” She smiled big back at Chako.
“That’s why I didn’t send him a damn telegram yet,” Slocum said.
“Oh,” she said and ducked with a grin to cut her eggs with the fork.
“We’ll meet back here at sunup at the stables,” he said to Chako.
The scout agreed and disappeared when the meal was over. Slocum knew some better places to rest and relax than some bedbug-riddled hotel around the fort’s perimeter. The outpost was high enough in elevation and the mountains that backed it to grow pines. She agreed, and with a blanket roll, canteen of water, bottle of whiskey and some of her food, they set out on foot. In a short while they found a glen and made camp.
They needed nothing to rock them to sleep, and he awoke after sundown when a coyote cut loose. Extracting himself from her arms, he slipped off and emptied his bladder. Back and seated on the ground under the millions of stars, he opened the saddlebags and extracted a cold burrito. Taking a bite, he chewed on it slow-like and considered what lay ahead. Stealing Diaz’s horses he knew wouldn’t make the bandit quit—and any day, Caliche and his bunch might try to bust back across the border to gather up more arms and ammo. Both of them needed to be settled, but he couldn’t take on Diaz or Caliche without the army or a company of scouts, and they were still arguing over that between Washington and Mexico City.
She sat up and stretched in the starlight. “Well, mi amigo, you get rested?”
“Not yet.” He took another bite from his burrito. “I could sleep for a week and not have enough rest.”
“Well, I will be back.” She gathered up her skirt and headed for the bushes. “I too could sleep a long time,” she said over her shoulder
He nodded after her and blinked his gritty eyes. A week might not be enough.
After some lovemaking, they slipped back asleep, and only awoke when the morning doves in the pine boughs heralded the coming dawn. Still bleary-eyed, he rolled up the blankets in the dim light and they headed back.
Chako squatted in the shadows when they reached the stables. He handed Slocum a paper. Slocum traded his bedroll and saddlebags for it. Turned to the coming dawn, he read the message:
Wish I’d been there for the horse raid. No diplomatic news from Washington. If we can catch Diaz on this side of the border, it would be easier. Sergeant Malloy said you needed to know that Thorpe and Slade escaped the Tucson Jail. Nothing on the broncos either.
Colonel Andrew Woolard
“What’s he want us to do next?”
“Keep track of Diaz and Caliche.”
“Same old stuff?”
He nodded to the scout. “We better take her home and then see what we can about the broncos.”
“What about Diaz?” she asked, looking back and forth at them.
“It will take him that long to get new horses.” Slocum chuckled and tied his saddlebags on his saddle.
“Maybe he can buy them back from old man Clanton.” Chako winked at her.
“I doubt it,” Slocum said and finished tightening his girth. “Let’s have one more store-bought breakfast.”
Both of them bobbed their heads.
By nightfall, they’d ridden up to her jacal in Saint Francis. Loaded with food and supplies he’d bought for her, her mule Domino honked loudly at his arrival. In the distance, more answered him. Slocum dropped out of the saddle and surveyed things. Nothing looked out of place. Satisfied—
It was the shrill whistle of a hawk that sent Slocum into action—Chako’s signal that trouble was afoot. A figure stepped out into the dark doorway of her shack with a gun in his hand. Slocum shoved the roan in front of her and ducked, drawing his own gun with his right hand. Shots broke the night. Slocum’s bullets sent the one in the door stumbling backward.
To his left, Chako’s rifle cut down another on the roof, and he pitched headfirst off the jacal to plop on the ground. Slocum turned an ear to someone running away.
“I’ll get him,” Chako said and was gone.
“Good.” Slocum searched the night then knelt down beside her. “You all right?”
“Sure,” she said quick-like and started to get up off her butt. “You shove hard.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want you in the way of his bullets.”
“I know. I’m grateful. Who were they?”
“Banditos,” a voice announced.
Slocum could see the outline of woman with her hands on her hips.
“That is my neighbor Madera,” she said as Slocum pulled her to her feet.
“How many?” Slocum asked her.
“Three was all I see. They came this afternoon all mad about someone stealing their horses they said.”
“How did they get here?”
“On some mules. They cussed them too.”
“I wonder how in the hell they knew to come here.” Slocum, gun ready, stepped to the doorway and heard the soft moans of the man lying on the floor. He struck a match and saw he had no gun in his hands, then went by and lit two candles. Then he squatted on the hard-packed floor beside the outlaw.
“How did you know to come here?”
“I’m . . . dying . . .” The man drew up in fetal position.
“I said who told you to come here?”
“Generale Diaz . . .”
“What did he know?”
“. . .’s woman.”
“What did he say?” he asked the two women standing over him and talking to each other in low voices. He reached over to shake more answers out of the outlaw—but knew it was no use. He was dead.
“There is spy in this village,” Madera said in disgust and glanced at Theresa. “Who is the puta for those worthless bastards?”
Theresa shook her head and turned up her hands in surrender.
“I am going to get Don Jesus and make him find her,” Madera said, pushing her graying hair back from her face. A woman of ample figure and hard eyes, she stomped off into the night to find the mayor.
“She’ll have the place turned upside down to find her,” Theresa said. “When she gets mad, nothing will stop her.”
“Those bandits must have really insulted her,” Slocum said.
“Worse than that—they took turns raping her this afternoon while waiting for us.”
“Sumbitches. Didn’t expect—” He looked up when Chako appeared in the doorway. “Get him?”
The scout nodded.
“Find their mules?”
“Three of them.”
“Let’s haul this one’s carcass out of here.” He indicated the dead one.
“Good,” she said. “I’ll make us some food.”
Slocum and his scout were seated on the floor when Madera and the mayor returned. The snow-headed, small man nodded to Slocum when he came inside.
“Señor, we are sorry to cause your village any trouble,” Slocum said. “We did not know there was a spy here.”
“She will spy no more,” he said with a cold edge in his voice. “Diaz has no spy here now.”
“What can we do?”
“We will bury them so no one can find them. If you will take the mules so they cannot be tr
aced here?”
“We will take them when we leave here.”
“Maybe best if they are shot away from here. They might go home, and then he would know that the bandits died here.”
“Maybe,” Slocum agreed.
The two women talked at the side in whispers. The mayor refused Slocum’s offer to join them to eat—he had things to see about—apologized and left. Madera went with him.
When they were gone, Theresa poured them coffee in mugs and then looked out the doorway into the night. “Madera said they garroted the puta. They take such things very serious here.”
Slocum nodded that he heard her. The process they used was a noose placed around her neck; then with her back to her executioner, she was jerked to death when he bent over. A painful death by strangulation unless her neck was broken in the first jerk.
They ate supper in silence. Slocum broke the quiet. “Perhaps you should go with us. You may not be safe here. Hell only knows what Diaz knows about you.”
She nodded and suppressed a grin. “Oh, I guess I could go along.”
“Be damn good idea,” Chako said, rubbing his belly. “We can use a real cook.”
They laughed, and it broke up the seriousness of the situation.
5
“You want a mule to eat?” Slocum asked the man in sandals and threadbare, once white clothing, who stood straw hat in hand beside his broken-down ox cart. His dark-eyed children peeked around the carreta at this gringo on the roan horse with the mule on a lead rope.
The man wadded the ragged straw sombrero in his hands and nodded. “I would rather ride him.”
“No, they would say you stole him. You savvy?” Slocum looked at the small pregnant woman who stood looking downcast at her swollen belly.
“I savvy,” the man said quickly, lest Slocum changed his mind. “What must I do?”
“I will take him down there by the cottonwoods, shoot him and cut his throat. Do you have a good rope we can string him up with?”
“Sí, señor.”
“I’ll haul him up so you can butcher him, too.”
“Oh, señor, gracias.”
Sitting the roan, Slocum looked in disgust over the makeshift shade they’d set up to simply camp around the disabled cart. “Can you find a wheel or fix that broken one?”
“There is wheel in the next village, but it costs two pesos.”
“Tell me the name of the man who has it.”
“Lopez.”
“I will pay for the wheel when I go through there. You can go get it tomorrow.”
“I will be in your debt forever.” His face lightened with excitement. “We go to a nice rancheria to work. Hear him, my darling? The fine señor will buy us a wheel for the carreta.”
“And a mule to eat,” Slocum said and took his ward down into the bottom under a stout-looking gnarled cottonwood. The man came running with a rope. Slocum dispatched the black mule with a bullet between the eyes and he dropped like a poled steer. Slocum stepped off on the ground and drew the skinning knife from behind his back. Holding the mule’s limp head up, he slashed his throat and stepped back as the blood rushed out of the jugular vein.
His lariat and the man’s rope tied to the hind leg, he used the roan to draw the mule up off the ground. At last, with the man’s rope tied off, the limp mule swung back and forth off the ground.
“I do not know your name, señor, to properly thank you.”
Slocum shook his head as if that was no matter. “Eat the mule. He is a gift and I will pay for the wheel.”
“But . . . but, how can I ever repay you?”
“Do a kind thing to another in need.”
“I will, señor. I will, señor,” he shouted after him.
The awkward woman, on her way with a great knife, stopped to smile up at him. “May Mary, Mother of God, always be with you, señor.”
“And with you.” He booted the roan on to join the other two.
Theresa smiled when he rode up to her and the Apache sitting their horses.
“I figured you’d not waste them on buzzards,” she said and they headed on their way.
“I need to buy a wheel in the next village,” Slocum said with a smile for her. “We should be to Alazar by tomorrow night. That’s the town in the foothills of the Sierra Madres that trades with broncos. I hope to learn something about Caliche there.”
“And the other two mules?” she asked, looking back at the two trailing Domino.
“Oh, we’ll find someone needs them by then.”
“I bet you do. I bet you do.” She laughed aloud.
Slocum found Lopez at his blacksmith shop and dismounted. The man, probably half-black, released the hoof of a horse he was shoeing and straightened to his full six feet tall. “Yes, sah?”
“You Lopez?” Slocum asked.
“Juan Lopez. What you needs?”
“A cart wheel for a friend. He’ll be coming after it.”
The man folded his arms over his broad chest. “I see.”
“He said you wanted two pesos for it.”
“That be enough.”
“How did you get the name Juan Lopez?” Slocum asked, standing in the stirrups to dig out the money.
“I married me a woman lived down here. I didn’t have no name back then, so I took that one.” A smile parted his full lips and his dark brown eyes met Slocum’s.
“I see.” He handed the man the money. “He’ll be after it tomorrow.”
“No, I’s take it out to him and put it on for that much money.”
“Good,” Slocum said and saluted him before he went to join the others. They rode on.
“He’s taking the wheel out and putting it on for them,” Slocum said when they wound through the small enclave of jacals under the rustling cottonwoods along the shallow stream. A few cur black dogs barked at them. Several bare-assed, dust-coated kids of both sexes, wearing only ragged short shirts, stood in a row and stared with awed curiosity in their dark eyes at the strangers passing through their small world.
“Bet they’d eat a mule,” Theresa said.
He looked over the few women around their adobe shacks busy washing clothes in kettles, who cast suspicious looks at them. With a nod to Theresa, he turned the roan out and took the lead to the red mule from her and promised to catch up with them later.
He jogged the roan back and reined up before Lopez’s shed. The big man came outside and put a hand on the post. “You need something else?”
“See this mule?”
“I sees him good. You want to sell him?”
“No.” Slocum shook his head and looked the man in the eye. “You never saw him. He’s to eat. He gets loose and goes home, he could mean a lot of trouble to you and everyone in this village—you savvy?”
“I savvy.” Lopez bobbed his head, then a grin on his full lips showed his white teeth. “We’re having a fiesta ’round here.”
Slocum nodded.
“Mister,” he said with a small grin, “you’s always buy wheels for poor folks and gives mules for free away to eat every day?”
“Just on Tuesdays.”
“Then I sure be glad you come by today.” He laughed and took the mule’s lead. “Folks sure going to celebrate around here.”
Slocum nodded and reined to leave. The red mule brayed huskily for his ex-companions as Slocum trotted the roan away. Two down, one to go. In the distance he could see the outline of the lofty mother mountains in a purple haze. Somewhere up there, Caliche and his broncos hid from their many enemies. He needed to know what they planned to do next.
6
The one finished bell tower of the Catholic church stuck up on a rise and hovered over Estria. The village was spread along the stream that watered the small fields. This formed a serpentine green belt in the canyon and provided a small-plot agriculture industry that supported the town.
“Where will we stay?” Theresa asked as they went up the sycamore- and cottonwood-lined roadway, dodging carettas and small pack
trains of burros bristling with firewood sticks.
“Doña DeLong’s,” Slocum said.
“Who’s she?” Theresa looked at the two them for their answer.
“You’ll like her,” Slocum said and pointed to a two-story house, under a red tile roof on the rise.
“M—What does she do?”
“Her husband once had a gold mine in the Madres.”
“He had?”
“Bandits killed him a few years ago in a pack train robbery.”
She nodded when he indicated for her to take the drive. They turned off the lane and forded the clear stream, hardly over hock deep on their mounts, and wound their way up to the great house. Dismounted at the hitch rail, Slocum looked up and nodded to the silver-haired, graceful, thin woman who came out of the house and smiled down on them.
“Slocum, I declare. And a lovely woman and your fine scout friend Chako.”
“Theresa’s her name,” Slocum said.
“Oh, my dear, welcome to my poor farm.”
“I would hardly call it poor,” Theresa said and started up the stairs to meet the woman, who held out her arms for her.
“Don’t fret over the animals,” the doña said to the two men and hugged Theresa. “My dear, you must be exhausted being drug up here over that horrible desert by those two.”
“I am fine,” Theresa said. “And”—she swung the hair back from her face—“I am so pleased to be here. My, what a lovely farm.”
“It needs much work.”
“No, it looks like a fairy tale to me. I worked at a mine once and saw a book with pictures. It had a house like this in it.”
“My dear, you are delightful. Come along. Estrella has food and that’s all men think about—well, when they arrive here anyway.”
The two of them laughed privately and went inside the front door. Slocum shook his head and exchanged a look with Chako. “All we get here is food.”
“Good food.” Chako laughed and rubbed his belly.
With a last glance across the peaceful countryside, Slocum listened to a scolding mockingbird perched in nearby pine, the large brown thrush that mimicked the rest. He heard him. This may be the Garden of Eden, but it too may have invaders. Deep in thought about the broncos, he shook his head and followed Chako inside.