He and his two visitors sat around a wooden table on high-backed armless wooden chairs with woven wicker seats. “Who’s your friend, Ringo?” Candido asked.
“Matt Bodine.”
Candido’s eyes flashed with lively interest. “So you’re Bodine, eh? I’ve heard of you. Where’s your Indian pard?”
“He’s around,” Matt said. Candido set out two glazed brown ceramic cups on the table, duplicates of the one from which he was drinking. He filled all three and they drank up, Matt repressing a shudder. It was strong stuff. Matt’s face reddened. He broke a fresh sweat, shivering at the same time.
Candido refilled the cups. Matt drank his more slowly, taking small sips.
“I like good talk but I don’t have time to sit around and chew the fat,” Ringo began.
“In a hurry to kill someone, huh?” Candido asked, chuckling.
“Does it show that badly?”
“There’s a kind of look you get when you’re on the prod. Your face and neck swell up like a puff adder about to strike. Who’s the lucky fellow?”
“Angus Jones.”
“Black Angus,” Candido said, nodding. “What’ve you got against him, Ringo?”
“Two of his men killed a friend of mine. Bob Farr—shot him in the back.”
“Why don’t you kill them then?”
“I will. I don’t believe in doing things by halves,” Ringo said. “Seen Jones lately?” Ringo asked.
“No—but I know he’s been around, recent-like,” Candido said.
“When?”
“Yesterday. I didn’t see Jones himself, mind you. Two of his men, Donegan and Porgy Best. They came in here about sundown.”
“What did they want?”
“They was looking to see which of the boys was around, searching for likely prospects, you see. Sax Everly, Nolan Hall, and Ian Pate rode out with them.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Black Angus is a slave hunter, a woman stealer. Everybody knows that. They’re going to the auction in Pago. It figgers he took on Sax and them as extra guns, gringo guns.”
“Much traffic headed that way, Candy?”
“Buyers? None. Sellers? Some. Slavers bypass this town if they can. Too many bad boys here looking for trouble. They’d steal the women from the woman stealers if they could.”
“What else do you hear?
“No buyers come through here, Ringo. The white slave traffic runs north to south, not the other way. The auction in Pago is a big thing. The town’s big man Don Carlos puts on the dog for his guests. Like a fiesta.”
“Except for the girls who get sold,” Matt said.
“Well, yes, there’s that,” Candido conceded.
“Anything else I should know?” Ringo asked.
“Don Carlos is sitting on a powder keg from what I hear,” Candido said. “He’s greedy—well, ain’t we all? But Don Carlos is overdoing it. His men harrow town and countryside for fresh young girls to sell to beef up his quota. A lot of bad feeling there. Not a townsman or peon who hasn’t lost a female to the slavers.
“Don Carlos is safe as long as he’s got Captain Bravo siding him. Bravo heads the Pago presidio, an army fort that’s supposed to guard the roads south into the interior from Apaches, Yaquis, and bandits. Don Carlos cut him in on the slave trade profits, which are considerable.”
“That’s it, Candy?”
“That’s all of it.”
Ringo and Matt pushed back their chairs, rising. “We’ll be moseying then,” Ringo said. He set a couple of gold coins down on the table. Candido rested a meaty hand on them. When he lifted it, the coins were gone, disappeared into his fisted palm. “Gracias.”
“One thing more, Candy. I’d take it poorly if you were to spread word that friend Bodine and I have been asking around about Jones.”
Candido’s shrug said, What can I do? “Information is my stock in trade, Ringo.”
“Killing is mine. Keep your mouth shut, Candy—a word to the wise.”
Candido paled beneath his tan. “Sure, Ringo, sure. You can count on me, you know that.”
“What I thought,” Ringo said. He and Matt went out.
Candido poured a cup of tequila, gulping it quickly. After a while, some of the color came back into his face.
Why won’t they just let Paco Maldonado be?! So Paco asked himself, half-awake, self-pitying. He sat in a corner of the Red Mill cantina in Fronteras at dusk, trying to sleep off this afternoon’s drunk. His arms were folded on the table, pillowing the head which lay on its side atop them. A broad sombrero covered his head to keep out the light, such as it was, the light of dying day.
Someone was tugging at Paco’s sleeve at the elbow—a persistent bastard who wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d slept for a few fitful hours, drifting in and out of wakefulness, trying to stay submerged in sodden slumber. Now, this!
Groaning, mumbling, he was astir. “Go away, pest,” he muttered. The rudo importuning him was not only pulling on his sleeve, but taking hold of his shoulder and giving it a shake. Paco tried to shoo away the pest, but whoever it was was out of the reach of his blindly flailing hand.
Paco’s head raised, upsetting his precariously balanced hat and causing it to fall off the table. Paco cursed, his garblings unintelligible to any but himself. His gummy eyes flickered open.
He was in his early twenties, rawboned, thin faced, with high cheekbones and thick, matte-black hair reaching to his jawline. He wore a holstered gun and bandoliers across his chest, and a machete dangled by a rawhide loop from his belt. A repeating rifle stood near at hand.
Bleary, red-eyed, he peered at his tormentor as if through a smoke-fogged room. The room indeed was smoky with alcohol and tobacco fumes, but they were not the haze that veiled his gaze like drifting clouds; his was the haze of ebbing drunkenness. Paco rubbed his eyes to clear them.
His nemesis was a young boy, a street urchin solemn as an owl. He held Paco’s hat, which he had caught before it fell to the floor, proffering it to Paco, who stuck it on his head at an off-angle.
“What do you want, insect?” Paco asked.
“The señorita,” the boy said.
“Eh? What’s that, what señorita?”
“The lady—her,” the boy said, pointing to the entrance. A fine-looking young woman stood outside the entryway, looking in.
She had shiny, long black hair, bold dark eyes, a sweetly wicked face and shapely figure that was being shown off to best advantage by a low-cut white blouse and tight skirt. She beckoned, motioning Paco to her.
Paco stood up, still clumsy with the alcohol in him, accidentally overturning his chair. It fell back into the corner, which held it up at a tilted angle. He pulled his hat down tightly on his head to keep it from falling off—the hat, that is, not the head. Though, in his present condition, he felt in possible jeopardy of losing them both.
The boy stood in front of him blocking the way, hand held out palm up. “The lady said you would pay me a coin for running the errand,” he said.
Paco stared down at him foggily, swaying slightly. He dug a hand into his vest’s side pocket, fumbling out a few small copper coins. He dropped one in the boy’s palm. The boy darted away through the crowd and disappearred.
Paco glanced at the doorway. It was empty, the girl gone. He picked up his rifle and went to the door, walking heavily.
He stepped outside. Dusky purple shadows pooled at the edges of things. Above low rooftops the sky was dark blue with a handful of twinkling stars. Paco looked around for the girl. She stood on the other side of the small square formed by the intersection of two side streets.
Her back was to him. She looked over her shoulder at him, flashing him a come-hither look, a smooth curve of golden flesh bared by the scooped-out neck of the blouse. Inky black hair glided waterlike across her upper back and shoulders. She stood there waiting.
Paco was suspicious—it smelled like a trap. Who would set a trap for Paco Maldonado? He had many enemies on both sid
es of the law. Whatever else he was, thief, bandit, slayer, he was no coward. He crossed to the woman. “What do you want, chiquita?” he asked.
“From you, nothing.” Her expression was cool, indifferent. She pointed down a side street “He wants to talk to you.”
A lone man sat a horse a half-dozen paces away, beside the wall of a house whose overhanging eaves shadowed his upper body.
“Who is he?” Paco asked. The girl shrugged. Paco’s once-bleary eyes were in focus now, scanning the scene. He saw no sign of lurking ambushers hiding behind corners, in alcoves or recessed doorways. No telltale rifle barrels protruded from the roofline on either side of the street. It was just the lone man, the stranger.
If this was a conspiracy, the girl was not in it. Her massive and total indifference was proof of that.
Now, as to the stranger . . . He wore a broad-brimmed sombrero, the brim decorated with rebozos, little black pom-poms hanging on short strings along the rim of the hat. Generally, it was a somewhat ridiculous affectation on a man’s headgear, clownish, but not on this hombre. He looked like a serious individual. The comical touch was more sinister than laughable.
A patterned blue-and-white serape, a long narrow blanket, was wrapped around his shoulders and upper body. The band of dangling rebozos partly veiled his eyes and the serape folds hid his lower face. A gun in a buscadero rig was holstered on his hip, and a repeating rifle was stowed in his saddle scabbard.
Masked? Well, many men of Paco’s acquaintance had cause to hide their faces. He’d done it himself many a time, but usually only when pulling a job of crime. “What do you want, hombre? Do I know you? Show your face,” Paco demanded.
A lamp was lit in a second-story room above the side street, light shining down on the stranger. Moving easily, carefully, he lifted a hand to lower the serape folds, uncovering his face.
Gila Chacon!
Paco, shook, was neither so drunk nor shocked as to do something stupid like blurting out the other’s name out loud. In outlaw circles, it was considered bad form and worse to be careless in saying another man’s name out loud, for there are many reasons for wishing to go about unrecognized and incognito.
Gila tilted down the hat so that its broad brim once more threw his face into shadow, agitating the little black pom-pom rebozos so they swung back and forth.
Paco went to him. “Do I see truly, is it really you?”
“Where did you think I was, Paco, in a gringo jail?” Gila returned.
“Jefe, chief, I swear, me and some of the muchachos were going to ride north and break you out of jail,” Paco said fervently, abashed.
“Like the gringos say, I’d hate to have to hang by the neck waiting for the likes of you to come to the rescue,” Gila said.
“We had an escape plan, jefe, I swear on my mother—”
“Don’t take your mother’s name in vain—the poor woman already has too many gray hairs on her head from birthing a bad boy like you, Paco. As you can see, I freed myself. Gila Chacon waits on no man, nor needs to.”
“But this is wonderful—!”
“Sí, sí, it’s wonderful, sí. What of the rest of the gang? My Guardsmen, where are they?” The Guardsmen were Gila’s inner circle, his lieutenants. Paco was one of them.
“Octavio, Felipe, and Bronco Duro are all in Fronteras with me,” Paco said, naming the rest of the Guardsmen. “We’re here to make a raid across the border into Tombstone, like I said—”
“Never mind about that now,” Gila said, cutting the other short. “And the rest of the muchachos?”
“Most of them are in town. A few are at the hideout in Pago, hoping to rob some of the buyers of their girls of gold. Not many, though, since it’s the rope or the firing squad if they’re caught down there,” Paco said.
“So much the better. Round up the three Guardsmen and have them round up the muchachos. Tell them to meet me tomorrow night at the hideout in Pago.”
“You’ve got something planned for that pig of a Don Carlos, eh, jefe?”
“Something big, Paco, maybe the biggest job ever—one that will bury our enemies and make us a power in the land. The time is right to deal a death blow to our foes, Don Carlos, Sebastiano, Capitán Bravo, Sancho, Dorado and—Carmen.
“But we—you, me, all of us—must act fast to ensure that this golden opportunity for revenge does not slip through our fingers, nor the prey slip the noose. I know something about the noose, Paco, having lived under its shadow for some time now. Too long.
“You were the first one of the gang I could find. I knew you’d be here in Old Fierro’s cantina making yourself stupid with tequila, as you always do between jobs. He’s the only one who’ll give you credit when your gold’s run out.
“The girl was just another whore picked at random, the first one who came by and fit my purpose. You were never one to resist the lure of a pretty face, and I don’t care to show myself just yet. For now, it suits me to have others think me dead or waiting to swing at the end of a a gringo rope.
“Only you know that I’m alive. Tell the rest of the Guardsmen, but no others. You four have been running the gang in my absence and the muchachos will do what you say when you tell them to ride to Pago. Gather up the most dependable of our men, the tried and true pistoleros and stone killers. Don’t bother with the hangers-on and camp followers. Don’t bother with anybody that hasn’t ridden with us before, only those with a price on their heads. Stay out of town and meet me at the hideout tomorrow night.
“One more thing. Pepe Herrera, is he still in Pago?”
“Sí, jefe, alive and uncaught, when last I heard. Don Carlos thinks he’s loyal.”
“Good. Let’s keep him thinking that way. Don’t try to contact him, Paco. I will get in touch with him myself. Comprende?”
“Sí, jefe, sí!”
“Tomorrow night, then.” Gila turned his horse, riding up the side street and around a corner, making for the edge of town. Once clear of Fronteras, he put his horse to the gallop, the evening star glittering brightly in the west.
SEVENTEEN
South to Espinazo del Diablo, “The Devil’s Backbone”
The jagged peaks of the sierra were like the ridged armor plates along the back of some monstrous thunder lizard from prehistory. Gray-black volcanic rock, spewed up from the bowels of the earth, had formed spiky, gnarly piles of crystalline blocks bristling with needles and pinnacles, throwing out winglike spurs and buttresses on all sides
The main route through the Espinazo was La Garganta, “The Throat,” a long narrow gorge running north to south through the range. To the north, it was the gateway to Fronteras and the border; to the south, it opened on a sandy high desert plateau where Pago lay.
Running through the passage was the Camino Real, the old King’s Highway, the royal road blazed north by the conquistadors three hundred years earlier when they set out from Mexico City into the remote fastnesses of what was now the great American Southwest.
La Garganta was the main route south into Pago, but not the only one. There were other, alternate routes more difficult of access, yet not impossible to traverse. One such was called The Goat Trail, lying east of La Garganta. When long ago they named it “The Goat Trail,” its discoverers meant mountain goat. It was a trail on a narrow ledge winding high along the cliffs of the east face of the Espinazo. Swift death was the reward for a single misstep, for one wrong move would send man and mount plummeting to the rocks hundreds of feet below.
The Tombstone raiders took the Goat Trail the day after their brief stopover outside Fronteras. The line was strung out in single file along a ledge barely wide enough to allow the passage of horse and rider.
In some places it was needful to dismount and go on foot, leading the horses by the reins. Some of the horses who’d showed skittishness in the mountain heights had been blindfolded by strips of cloth tied over their eyes, to prevent them from seeing the vertiginous drop gaping to one side. Packhorses with the added width of supplies tied to si
des and backs made the traverse even more harrowing.
Hundreds of feet above the ground, the rescuers threaded a narrow ledge contouring along rounded, curving limbs of rock cliff. Eagles glided by at eye level.
From time to time, a horse’s hoof dislodged a loose stone, sending it over the edge. A long time passed before that rock hit bottom.
“One thing’s sure: We can’t come back this way, not with the girls along,” Matt Bodine said tightly as his horse picked its way along the ledge.
“No, on the way back we’ll have to take La Garganta,” Sam said.
The grudging, inching, breathless, cautious passage combined tedium and danger in equal measure, yet was finally passed by all without losing man nor beast. The Goat Trail sloped downward, gently descending as the eastern range subsided, its southern end shrinking into the sandy wastes of the Pago plateau. At last, the trail spilled out on flat ground.
“Now we’ll have to be even more watchful,” Sam said. Other people were the peril, not mountain peaks and sheer precipices, with the ever-present threat of Apaches, bandits, soldiers, snitches, and spies.
The Tombstone column angled southwest over a flat lava bed, leaving no tracks. Beyond it, they entered a lonely waste of sandy gray soil, dwarf pines, and scrub brush. No farmers, no human habitations were here.
On they rode, coming to a valley. Pima Joe went on ahead scouting, returning to tell that he’d seen a patrol of about a dozen soldiers camping on the bottom beside a stream.
“They come from the Pago presidio,” Gila Chacon said, after sneaking forward with Sam and Pima Joe for a closer look at the troops, spying on them from behind a screen of brush.
“Some of Capitán Bravo’s doing. Sometimes the peons of the countryside, the campesinos, come to Pago to try to rescue wives and daughters stolen by the slavers. The patrol is there to find and stop them. When they find them, they kill them. That stops them,” Gila said.
Blood Bond 16: A Hundred Ways to Die Page 21