Not much of a town. But a town just the same.
He was surprised the spur line had slithered a tentacle this far out into the godforsaken west Texas desert. Nothing around but sand, rocks, prickly pear, and sotol cactus sending their phallic stalks toward the hot, brassy sky. To the southwest rose the blue crags of the Davis Mountains. Not far south of the Davis Mountains was Old Mexico.
Sundown made San Saba look like a bustling metropolis. But the train station was pretty much a carbon copy of San Saba’s. A little larger than a two-hole privy, it had two sashed windows, a shake-shingled roof, and a tin chimney pipe. A wooden luggage cart sat on the cobbled platform encircling the depot. One of the cart’s wheels was badly bent, and one of the handles was held together with wire.
The U.S. mail pole drew up beside the train as Haskell stepped down from the vestibule, his gear on his shoulder now. The conductor poked his head out of the small express car and hung the U.S. mail pouch on the hook. The pouch flapped in the dry breeze. There wasn’t enough mail in it to hold it down.
The conductor, a tall Mexican with a formal air, looked at Haskell, touched two fingers to the leather bill of his blue wool hat then pulled his head back into the express car and closed the door. The train hiccupped to a brief halt then immediately shuddered into motion again, slowly picking up steam as it headed back north.
It seemed to be in a hurry to get the hell out of here. Haskell couldn’t blame it. He’d been to some out-of-the-way places before, but the sky out here, and the vastness of the desert, threatened to suck not only the air out of his lungs but his lungs out of his chest.
He grew dizzy for a moment, looking around, seeing how the vast vault of the brassy sky dwarfed the earth. The land was inconsequential. The sky was everything.
There was no one around him. He’d been the only passenger on the train down from San Saba. That, too, gave him a hard, empty feeling. He wondered where his golden-haired princess was heading. When he’d risen early that morning and walked past her room, he’d seen through her open door the maid stripping her bed. The princess, whoever she was, had already left. Bear hadn’t seen her in the dining room, either.
Despite his earlier assumption that she was a Midwestern gal, the golden-haired princess must be the daughter of an area rancher, he now speculated. Probably returning home from a finishing school or teacher’s college in the east. Back home to Momma and Poppa, her reputation intact despite her decidedly unladylike hungers.
“Need some help with your bags, amigo?” called a disembodied voice.
Haskell removed the cheroot from his mouth, and tried to follow the voice to its source. Then he saw the man sitting in the deep purple shade cast by a small ramada extending out from above the little depot building’s front door. He was a Mexican in a checked wool shirt and canvas trousers held up with a rope belt. A shabby sombrero sat back off his broad, leathery forehead. He sat in a rickety chair, one sandaled foot hiked on a knee. He was whittling a long stick.
“Gracias, amigo, but I got it,” Haskell said. Balancing his gear on his shoulders, he returned the Indian Kid to his mouth and took a few pensive puffs, studying the little man in the shade. “I didn’t see you there.”
“That is the thing about me,” the Mexican said. “I am most often not seen. Even when I am seen, I am not seen.” He grinned.
“That’s not an altogether bad way to be.”
“I’m the station agent,” the little man said in a thick Spanish accent. “Who are you, if you will not shoot me for asking?”
“Bear Haskell.” He debated whether he should identify himself as a lawman but everyone was going to know who he was and what he was doing here as soon as he started asking questions, anyway. And he couldn’t get much done without asking questions. “Deputy U.S. Marshal out of Denver’s First District.”
“Whew! Senor, that is a long title.” The little Mexican rose from his chair and shuffled, sandals flapping against his brown feet, toward Haskell. He held a bone-handled knife in one hand, the long stick in the other hand. “That is a title long enough for a man in the Mexican government, no?”
He chuckled, grinning up at Haskell, who stood a good foot taller than the stoop-shouldered Mex.
“So, you’re the station agent here,” Haskell said, glancing at the humble dwelling once more, noting a small kitten drinking from a pie pan just inside the building’s open front door.
“The name is Orozco, Senor.” The Mexican doffed his sombrero and held it over his heart, giving a courtly bow. “Orozco La Paz at your service, Senor.”
“I bet you don’t get much business through here, eh, Senor La Paz?”
“Sadly, that is true, Senor. But please, amigo—call me Oro.”
“Only if you’ll call me Bear.”
“Bear?” Oro said, and reached over to finger the bear claw necklace hanging down its wearer’s broad chest. “Oso, eh? Oso!” He chuckled knowingly, showing a mouthful of crooked, tobacco-encrusted teeth.
“Oso, you got it.” Bear smiled down at the obviously simple-minded little man.
“What is your business here, Senor Oso, if you don’t mind me asking? I am a curious man.” Oro La Paz held up his hands and looked around in dismay. “I have so little to occupy my time, since visitors like yourself are so few and far between, that my mind tends to wander. I find myself curious about things that are none of my business. I will no doubt take a bullet for my curiosity one day. I hope not today.” He blinked slowly, glancing down at the big Schofield bristling on the bigger man’s left hip, and smiled.
“At the moment, let’s just say I’m here to see Captain Homer Redfield of the Texas Rangers. If you could direct me his way, Oro, I’d be much obliged.”
“Not only will I direct you his way, Oso,” Oro said, shuffling quickly over to the dilapidated luggage cart, “but I will take you to him.”
He dropped the stick he’d been whittling into the cart and then wheeled the contraption over to Bear. It rattled badly and thumped each time its bent steel wheel touched the cobble platform. “Throw your gear in here. That is too much heaviness for even such a large man as yourself to burden yourself with in this heat. That is what my cart is for!”
Chuckling, Oro shuffled with his stick over to the mail pole, used the stick to remove the mail pouch from the hook, then shuffled back over to set the stick as well as the pouch inside the cart. He gestured at Haskell commandingly, and the lawman set his gear—saddlebags, rifle, war bag, and bedroll—into the cart though he thought he’d have an easier time hauling the gear on his shoulders than the little man would have hauling it in the rickety cart.
“Come, come,” Oro said, grabbing the cart’s handles. “I will take you to Captain Redfield.”
Oro followed the little man and the cart around to the far side of the depot and then along a well-worn path through prickly pear and catclaw. The path skirted a small lean-to stable and a corral built of woven ocotillo branches to a wagon trail that crossed the two silver rails via splintered wooden planks and stretched out into the western nothingness, the two tracks converging into one pale line far out beyond the depot station. The trail stretched eastward to become Sundown’s main street sixty yards beyond the railroad tracks.
Haskell followed Oro toward the town hunched, pale and dusty, to either side of the trail, most of the mud brick or adobe buildings fronted with brush ramadas. What few signs identifying the various roughhewn buildings were badly faded and sun-blistered.
There were only three or four people on the street—all Mexicans in the ragged garb of peons. A few saddle horses stood tied to hitch racks here and there, switching their tails at black flies.
Oro angled his cart toward a cracked adobe that announced simply CANTINA on the street’s right side, roughly midway through the little town. Haskell followed the little man and the thumping cart toward the watering hole crouched beneath a wide brush arbor under which a clay water pot and gourd dipper hung. He saw three men dressed in the colorful garb of
the Mexican vaqueros walk out of another adobe marked CANTINA SAN GABRIEL on the street’s left side and another half a block farther east.
Two young Mexican women also dressed brightly but skimpily were lounging on a wooden-railed balcony above the vaqueros. Both girls were staring down into the street at Haskell and Oro. One was smoking a cornhusk cigarette and blowing the smoke casually over the rail.
The three vaqueros leaned against stout adobe columns fronting the Cantina San Gabriel, crossing their arms, dark eyes beneath the broad brims of their steeple-crowned sombreros riveted on the newcomer.
“Here you are, Senor,” Oro said, stopping his cart before the cantina on the street’s right side. “You will find Captain Redfield in Rosa’s Cantina.” He winked at Haskell, grinning. “He likes Rosa, as do most men in Puesta del Sol,” he added, using Sundown’s original Spanish handle. “He likes Rosa’s beans, as well. You will find him here at noon every day, enjoying Rosa as well as her, uh, beans.”
He winked lasciviously.
“Reckon I’m gonna have to take a look at Rosa and her, uh, beans.” Haskell returned Oro’s wink and reached for his saddlebags. “Much obliged, Senor.”
“If you wish, Senor Oso, I will cart your gear over to the only hotel in town. I am heading that way, anyway, with the mail. The hotel is also the post office.” He canted his head to indicate a three-story, copper-brick building with a high, false, wooden façade up the street and on the left.
Faded letters on the façade read HOTEL DE TEJAS, and there were several men lounging on the broad front porch of the place. “It will be safe there with Senor Shep until you arrive. Senor Shep is a man of great honor. I assume that, for whatever reason you are here, you will be spending the night here in Puesta del Sol ... ?”
“Si,” Bear said, inspecting the big hotel.
He removed only his rifle from the cart, leaving the saddlebags, bedroll, and war bag. Even if he hadn’t instinctively trusted the depot agent, he wouldn’t have insulted his honor by removing his gear from the cart. Besides, Haskell wasn’t carrying much of any value—aside from his guns, that was. And he had all those on his person.
“Thanks again, Senor.” Bear rested his sheathed Henry on his shoulder and rolled the Indian Kid, which had gone out, from one side of his mouth to the other.
“De nada, Senor Oso!” Oro lifted the cart by its handles and shuffled off toward the hotel.
Haskell looked once more toward the three vaqueros standing out front of the Cantina San Gabriel. All three were watching him closely, with sullen interest.
Haskell turned and strode up the three steps of Rosa’s Cantina. He pushed through the batwings and stepped to one side, letting his eyes adjust to the murky shadows while trying not to make too large of a target silhouetted against the outside, midday light.
Rosa’s was a small, earthen-floored place that smelled heavily of peppers and tequila. There were many totems to saints on the walls, and several wooden crucifixes. Two old Mexican men sat to Haskell’s immediate right, playing poker with matchsticks.
Another man sat with his back to the wall beyond the two oldsters. He was seated in a wheel chair, and he was crouched over a board laid across the arms of his chair, serving as a table, spooning beans from a wooden bowl into his mouth. A bottle of tequila and a tin cup sat on the board near the bowl.
A Mexican woman stood behind the ornate mahogany bar at the back of the room. She appeared in her early thirties. Haskell couldn’t see much of her in the dingy light and from his distance of twenty feet, but she appeared pretty in a severe sort of way, with high, Indian-like cheekbones, hawkish nose, and with her black hair pulled back into a chignon behind her head. She wore a red and white calico blouse, which appeared quite well filled out.
Pots steamed and bubbled on a range behind her. She was drying shot glasses and beer mugs with a ragged towel. Her black eyes were on Haskell, but her face was expressionless to the point of ennui.
A black cat sat sphinx-like on the bar to her left, on a small quilted pad. It, too, had its sleepy eyes on Haskell. It blinked those green-copper orbs slowly.
Haskell’s neck hairs bristled when he heard the slow click of a heavy gun hammer. The slow click of another gun hammer followed close on the heels of the first. “Come in slow, keepin’ your hand away from that pistol on your left hip there, and maybe I won’t shred you to bloody bits.”
Haskell looked first at the two old card players. They both had their hands above their table, looking speculatively up at Haskell. The lawman then turned his gaze to the only other gent in the room—the one in the wheelchair.
He appeared a gringo despite the ruddiness of his features. The man’s right hand was under his makeshift table, and his clear blue eyes blazed in the shadows beneath the brim of his badly weathered cream Stetson.
Haskell walked slowly toward the man in the wheel chair. As he made his way through the shadows and around two tables that had been impeding his view of the man, he saw that the man’s left leg was in a plaster cast. It stuck straight out in front of him. His toes were dark blue, the yellow nails as thick as shells.
He wore a silver beard, which accentuated the sky blue of his eyes.
Two small, leather sheaths were strapped to the sides of his chair, pointed straight down to the floor. The walnut stock of a sawed-off shotgun jutted from the left sheath. The twin, round bores of the other sawed-off shotgun glared ominously out from under the board that served as the man’s table.
They were like the eyes of a black cobra staring down the prey that was Haskell.
Chapter Eight
Haskell stopped before the gray-bearded man in the wheelchair, whose blue eyes were rheumy from drink. Maybe from pain, as well. Haskell looked at the man’s purple toes.
“Redfield?”
The Ranger flared a nostril. “Who’re you?”
“Your old pal Henry Dade sent me. I’m Bear Haskell, deputy U.S. marshal out of Denver.”
Redfield frowned, vaguely sheepish. “You don’t say.”
“I didn’t see a badge on your chest.”
“That’s cause there ain’t one there.”
“You can sheath that cannon, Captain.”
Redfield smirked then snaked the shotgun out from under the board table and slid it into the sheath on the right side of the chair. Haskell sat down at a small, square, badly scarred table beside Redfield, and put his back to the wall. He propped an elbow on the table and half-turned to the surly Ranger.
“You expectin’ trouble, are you?”
“I’m always expectin’ trouble,” Redfield said, spooning more beans into his mouth, sucking the juice off his mustache and looking around owlishly. “Ever since a diamondback found its way into my sleepin’ quarters an’ bit my leg—yeah, I been expectin’ trouble. Don’t see no reason to put a shiny target on my chest, to boot!”
Haskell was about to probe the Ranger further, but he stopped when the woman from behind the bar walked up to his table. Haskell opined that she was, indeed, nearly his age, early-to-mid thirties, but she’d worn the years well. Bear could see why the middle-aged Ranger frequented the woman’s cantina.
“Would you like some beans?” she asked Bear. “Tequila?”
“You can’t beat Rosa’s beans,” Redfield told the federal lawman out of the side of his mouth, chewing, looking lustily up at the woman. “You can’t beat her tequila, either. Her family makes it down in Mejico. Ever since I pulled into this backwater, I been livin’ on Rosa’s beans and tequila. Asked her to marry me, but she won’t say one way or another. I think she’s got her another man. Maybe some border bandit who visits her under cover of darkness. That’s the only way I can figure it. A looker like her’s gotta have her a man somewhere. She won’t give me the time of day.”
“I’ll give you the time of day, Captain,” Rosa said, a beguiling half-smile on her wide mouth as she glanced at a clock on the wall behind the bar. “It is a quarter to one in the afternoon.” Her smile widened. �
��There—are you happy?”
“I’d be a whole lot happier if—”
Rosa cut him off by turning to Bear and saying, “I also have whiskey and javelina stew, Senor ... ?”
“Bear.” Haskell smiled up at her.
“Oso.” She leaned across Haskell’s table and fingered the bearclaw necklace hanging down the front of his calico shirt. Her blouse drew away from her chest, offering him a tantalizing glimpse inside a thin chemise. “Hmmm. Did you make this yourself?”
“It wasn’t my idea. The owner of them claws knocked on my door. I didn’t knock on his.”
Rosa released the necklace, and straightened. “Is that how you treat everyone who knocks on your door, Oso?”
“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”
She arched a speculative brow then gave him a cool, slow blink. “Have you made up your mind?”
“Redfield makes the beans and tequila sound so good, I think I’ll have that.”
“Good choice.” Rosa turned sharply, skirt swirling, and strode back behind the bar to her steaming range.
Redfield glowered at Haskell, his juice-dripping spoon raised to his chin. “By God, how in the hell did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make her blush like that. I been workin’ on that pretty Mex for nigh on two years now, and she still looks at me like somethin’ the cat dragged in.” Redfield looked Bear up and down. “Christ, how tall are you, anyway?”
“Six-six.”
“That’s it. She likes big men. I’m only five-ten when I’m standing up. Shit! I could lose some weight, at least. Christ—look at me!” The Ranger grabbed his considerable paunch in disdain.
Rosa brought a steaming bowl and a bottle and a glass over to Haskell’s table. The pinto beans, swimming in juice and speckled with chopped chili peppers and onions, flooded Haskell’s nostrils with their succulent aroma. Rosa smiled at him, ignoring the Ranger, and then strode back toward the bar.
The Jackals of Sundown (A Bear Haskell Western Book 2) Page 6