The Gunhawks (Cutler Western #2)

by John Benteen

  Chapter Four

  With the image of Billy Calhoon standing there furious by the campfire in the desert dawn still etched in his mind, Cutler left the big black stallion at the public corral in the miserable, sunbaked little hamlet of Sonoita on the American side. He gave the livery man ten dollars to pay for the stud’s keep for two weeks and instructions to sell it if no one claimed it in that time. Then he turned south and rode through the desert, around the base of Pinacate Mountain, until he struck the Rio Sonoita.

  When the Devil had finished Hell, this was where he dumped the leftovers. Lava flats, volcanic mountains, sand and creosote, creekbeds that had not known water in years, stark mesas: Cutler, the team and wagon, the saddle horse Apache, and the dog traversed all that. To the untrained eye, it was bleak as the moon. But Cutler was a hunter and a trapper, and he read the signs of wildlife as he went along and occasionally shot a desert bighorn sheep or a tiny desert deer for food. This sandblasted area was not far from the Gulf of California and once in a while, ironically, he saw gulls blown off their course.

  As he traveled, he used all the arts he knew to conceal his trail. Billy Calhoon: he had humiliated the boy and dominated him, but he did not underrate him. He could not; the youth was too much like John Cutler himself at the age of twenty.

  By lonely campfires under the willows along dry washes, Cutler remembered what he had been like then. His father had leased rangeland in Indian Territory, and Cutler had run loose among the Indians, learning their ways. But there had been violence and arrogance in him, too, and that was why, after the death of his parents, he had spurned ranching and become a Marshal for Isaac Parker. As a kid, he had thought that hunting men would be the greatest sport of all; after five years of it, he knew that it was a sickening business. What he had learned was a lesson Calhoon had not yet been taught: that killing and dying were both hard things. But if Calhoon kept after him, he would learn.

  “Damn you!” Calhoon had yelled that morning as Cutler had led the stallion away, leaving him on foot. “You can’t go far enough, there’s no place you can hide . . . You’d better kill me now . . .!”

  But Cutler had ignored him, whipping up the mules and jingling off, the stallion trailing, tied, and the other animals running free; young Billy Calhoon standing there helplessly in the arroyo shaking his fist.

  Now, as Cutler rode on south, angling toward the Gulf, he was not particularly worried about Billy Calhoon. The boy would have to be a master tracker to follow him, and Cutler did not think he was that good. And there was no way Calhoon could guess where he was headed and try to cut him off. The thing was to forget the Calhoons and worry about Hernando Fernandez and whatever it was that threatened him.

  Which, Cutler knew, was something surpassingly serious, or the old brujo would never have gone to the, for him, excruciating labor of writing a letter and reminding a friend of a past favor.

  On the fourth day after leaving Sonoita, Cutler was traveling through jungle. He was deep into Sonora, now; on one side of him, the east, were the outflung spurs of the Cordillera; on the west, the lowland along the Gulf of California. The miserable, muddy cart track he followed through walls of greenery made a trace almost exactly in between, a winding, weed-grown slice through vine-hung cane and towering trees that shaded a forest silent as the grave. Cutler sat his wagon seat alertly, rifle across his knees. This part of Sonora teemed with vultures, human buzzards who preyed on anything and everything that moved. In the hills, there were silver mines; along the shore, small fisheries. Between, the bandits hid in the jungle, contemptuous of the small contingents of soldiers sent to keep the peace here, and struck whenever they saw anything worth taking, from a good horse to a shipment of bullion. Men had been killed by them for far less than a good team, a wagon full of traps, and a fine bay. Cutler kept his eyes open and depended on Big Red, trotting along well ahead, to give the alarm.

  Cutler had quit drinking now. He was working and he never drank when he worked. In the wilderness, every sense was alert and nothing was missed by his searching gaze. He saw butterflies of breathtaking beauty and occasionally an iguana scuttled across his path. Nothing else, though, gave him cause for alarm until, rounding a bend ahead, Big Red suddenly broke into thunderous baying.

  Cutler checked the team with a quick jerk of reins. In the same motion, he clucked to Apache, stepped from the wagon into the saddle as the bay came alongside. He touched the Winchester in the saddle boot to make sure it was seated properly, then galloped around the bend.

  Waiting for him, Big Red stood in the center of the cart track, staring toward the wall of greenery on the right, giving voice. Cutler rode alertly up to him, one hand on the butt of the saddle gun; he scanned the jungle but saw nothing suspicious moving there. Then he swung down. And that was when he saw it, the single track that made him suck in a breath of awe.

  It was one great pad mark in the mud of the road, made not ten minutes before. It was a cat track, the paw print of an animal larger than Cutler had ever dreamed roamed this part of America. And Big Red stood over it, barking and trembling with eagerness to race along the trail.

  Cutler checked him with a touch on the spiked collar that sheathed the Airedale’s neck. “Easy, Red.” He knelt over the track. “El tigre,” he said aloud. “Jaguar.” He raised his head, staring at the jungle, and now he could see it in his mind’s eye, the great spotted cat, bigger than any panther, bigger by far than an African leopard, second in size in the cat family only to the tiger of India, crossing the road in a single bound, vanishing soundlessly into the woods, moving like liquid flame. It might be in there now, watching him from close covert.

  He straightened up, tightening his grip on the straining Airedale’s collar. Much as his hunting blood was stirred, he had no time to chase the jaguar now. Fernandez’s letter had wandered all over the West and he was waiting at Villa Hermosa, still three hours away, and his troubles, whatever they were, took precedence over the giant cat. He spoke to Red, turned around in the road, started back toward the mules.

  And then suddenly the dog bellowed thunderously and wrenched free from Cutler’s grasp and Cutler turned and saw the jaguar coming. Enormous, tawny, black-rosetted, it streaked at him from the scrub with incredible swiftness and launched itself in a great leap. Cutler saw, in one frozen half clock-tick of time the huge, extended claws, the long white fangs. He brought up his gun but knew already that he was too late.

  Then Big Red hit the jaguar. Leaping high himself, the Airedale collided with the animal in midair. His weight was less than half that of the spotted cat’s, but it was enough to knock the animal’s aim off. The jaguar’s outflung left paw missed Cutler with its sweeping rake of talons, and the big cat hit the ground; by then Cutler had the Krag ready and he fired. He knew at once that the wound was not fatal; he saw it burn a slice out of the jaguar’s flank. But the animal growled horribly and with another incredible bound leaped sideways into the scrub. Red was after it instantly despite Cutler’s frantic shout. Dog and cat both disappeared in the wall of greenery; then there was a terrible snarling and a howl from Red. Cutler plunged into the bushes, gun ready. Briars and vines clawed at him, tangled him.

  He was just in time to see a yellow, bounding shape disappear in an almost impenetrable tangle of vines. Cutler sent a fruitless shot after it. Then he turned his attention to the Airedale, which lay whining at his feet.

  It was not often that Red let another creature lay a claw on him, but the quarters had been too close in here. The jaguar had hit the dog with one hard swipe before it turned and fled. A quarter of an inch deeper and the Airedale would have been gutted; as it was, his flank was raked open with four long, streaming wounds.

  Still, dead game, Red was struggling up, ready to continue the chase. Cutler looked at the jungle ahead; pursuit was useless in that tangle. He bent, picked up the bleeding dog, and carried him quickly back to the road. He wanted to be in the clear and fast. That huge cat had no fear of man, it seemed, and it might
make another try at him.

  Cutler lowered the wagon’s tailgate, laid Red on it, looked all around warily. If the animal tried to come again, Red and the mules would scent it, give the alarm. As he reached inside the wagon and took a bottle of whiskey from a case, he was frowning. A hunted jaguar at bay usually had no hesitation in attacking a man and was plenty big enough to do him damage. But for one to attack a man without provocation . . . That meant the creature had gone rogue. It meant, too, that it ought to be hunted down and exterminated. Now he thought he knew why Hernando had written him. Well, if that was what Fernandez wanted him to do, he’d do it. But he couldn’t take up the trail here, not with a wounded dog.

  Red whimpered only slightly as Cutler carefully opened the wounds and poured in whiskey as antiseptic. The claws of any big cat were dangerous sources of infection, far worse than the animal’s fangs. Each retracted into its own separate sheath where whatever meat or blood remaining on it could rot and fester. When he had the wounds cleansed, he went to the roadside, where the webs of enormous spiders were thickly woven in the cane. It took only a minute or so to gather enough fresh spider web to pack Red’s wounds, a folk remedy that really worked. Since the webs were completely germfree and of finest silk, they made splendid dressings. Red was still eager for the chase, and not happy about staying in the wagon, but Cutler made him obey as he mounted to the seat again and, with Apache, still trembling from the close encounter with the great cat, trotting alongside, drove on toward Villa Hermosa.

  Presently he climbed out of the lowlands onto a high, rolling plateau, thickly grassed, behind which the foothills of the Sierras thrust their purple jungled bulk against the distant sky. On the opposite edge of this height of ground lay Villa Hermosa, close by the thick woods at the first lift of hills. Cutler remembered it as a scattering of houses, mostly adobe, some of lumber, all with thatched roofs, and surrounded by the milpas, the cornfields, of its two or three hundred inhabitants. There was also a store owned by Ramon Perez, the richest man of the community, and a couple of cantinas, both also belonging to him. Beyond that, only woods and hills on one side, the land sloping toward the Gulf, a day’s ride away, on the other. Villa Hermosa was, in short, just another sleepy, lost, and bitterly poverty-stricken Sonora village, with Perez and Fernandez the only men of education in it. The town was so remote and isolated it lacked even a church and priest; if there were a spiritual leader, it was Hernando Fernandez, the witch, the magician, the doctor, and counselor to the Indians, whose religion was an eerie mixture of Christianity and ancient pagan ritual.

  Fernandez . . . Ahead, Cutler spotted an isolated grove of cottonwoods on the plateau, well outside of the village. His pulse quickened. That was the site of Hernando’s house, and Cutler was eager to see again the old man who had saved his life. He rippled the ribbons and the mules struck a smarter pace. In a few minutes, Cutler entered the cottonwood grove. Then he pulled up the team abruptly and stared.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said harshly, aloud, in wonder.

  For the adobe house of Hernando Fernandez was nothing but a fire-blackened shell. Only its adobe walls remained; the thatched roof had fallen in and the charred remnant of a burnt door swung on a single hinge; the inside of the place was nothing but a dark, ruined hole.

  Cutler sprang down from the wagon, and with the Krag in hand ran to the house. There was nothing left, nothing; everything had been burned. Poking through the char, Cutler found the remnants of Fernandez’s books, the shattered remains of the jars that had held his herbs and medicines. Cutler cursed softly. Apparently the fire had taken place about a week ago. If only the letter had caught up with him sooner, if only he had not gotten tangled with the Calhoons . . . And where was Hernando? What had happened to him? Cutler went back to the wagon, climbed on the seat, laid the rifle beside him, swung the team around.

  He drove swiftly across the plateau, and presently he reached the rim of a bowl-shaped depression in which the village’s little houses were scattered like toys flung around by an angry child. He pulled up the team, scanned the town below him before he drove down. Then his eyes narrowed. Even from this distance, he could see the four horses at the hitch rack outside the cantina: and he could see, too, that they bore American saddles, not the broad-horned rigs of vaqueros. It was strange that there should be Americans in this lonesome place . . . Not only that, but, save for those mounts, the town looked strangely empty, its dusty streets deserted, which was curious, for it was after siesta and it should have been coming to life. He raised his gaze to the woods beyond the village, and then he tensed.

  There was life over there. A cart track wound down out of the forest, and Cutler stared at the strange procession that marched down it and entered the street of Villa Hermosa.

  The men were on foot, the Mexicans, more than seventy of them, he guessed, nearly all the able-bodied males of the town. In two columns, they trudged wearily down the hill and along the street; as if they were so exhausted they lacked strength even to laugh and joke, they kept their heads down, staring at the ground. What made Cutler’s hand tighten on the Krag, though, was the sight of the riders who accompanied them.

  There were ten on each side of the column, well spaced out; they were Americans and they carried guns across their saddles; and they were guards and the Mexicans were prisoners. There could be no other explanation: those twenty Anglo gun-toters were herding the men like sheep—or slaves.

  Now the column had reached the little plaza, in the middle of which was the village well. There the riders halted. One swung a tall sorrel horse around, yelled an order of some kind. He emphasized it with a swing of the Winchester he held.

  One of the Mexicans in the forefront of the column raised his head, apparently made some protest. The man on the sorrel stared at him a moment. Then, pointing the gun with one hand, he rode up alongside the protester and swung a heavy braided quirt with the other. The whip’s impact jerked the Mexican’s head around; even at that distance, Cutler could see blood trickling from the welt. The man stepped back, covering the wound with his hand, and all fight was gone out of him now.

  After that, the column broke up, its members shuffling through the town as if they had no strength left, entering their houses one by one. The twenty riders waited until the street was clear, then loped toward the cantina, swung down, tied their horses and entered. Once again, nothing moved in Villa Hermosa.

  Cutler’s mouth thinned. Before, the town had been an easygoing farming place; and there had been nothing like that column of weary, seemingly enslaved men. Put that together with Hernando Fernandez’s burnt house and something in Villa Hermosa stank like a dead fish in the noonday sun. Cutler intended to find out what it was—but not by riding straight into town, into the midst of what, if the people in the cantina matched those who had just entered, was two dozen hard-bitten American gunslingers.

  He whirled the wagon, made a wide circle around Villa Hermosa. In a thick clump of mesquite, he left the vehicle cached, tethered the mules and Apache. “Guard,” he told the wounded dog. He checked the loads in his Colt, slung a bandolier of extra ammunition for the Krag across his shoulder. By now, it was growing dark. Crouched low, Cutler worked through the tall grass and brush down toward the town.

  On its outskirts, he lay flat on his belly and waited. Down there, nothing moved, not even the hogs and burros that usually roamed the streets at will. Only from the cantina did there come any sound; he could faintly hear voices and laughter.

  Presently it was dark; lights gleamed faintly behind shuttered windows. Cutler arose, went on, moving silently as a ghost, keeping to every fold of ground or clump of grass that provided protection. He had learned from Indians up in Oklahoma, and he knew his progress was virtually invisible. Presently he reached one of the outlying huts.

  If he remembered correctly—it had been a long time—this was the house of one Jose Mansilla, who was—or had been—a woodcutter. Mansilla had often visited with Fernandez while Cutler lay recuperating i
n the old brujo’s house, and he was a good man, hardworking and intelligent. Cutler eased up to the house’s wall, found the single tiny window tightly shuttered, thin gleams of light visible between the cracks of warped boards. He put his eye to one of those cracks, saw Mansilla, half-naked, lying exhausted on a crude bed, his children asleep on pallets on the floor, the woman wearily pounding corn in a metate for tomorrow’s tortillas.

  Cutler tapped the shutter gently. “Mansilla,” he hissed. “Jose Mansilla. Come to the window. Remember John Cutler? It is he.”

  The woman looked up, startled, frightened. She spoke. Mansilla came stiffly off the bed. “Mansilla, it’s John Cutler,” Cutler hissed again. “Come to the window . . .”

  Warily, with fear, the man edged forward. He peeped through a crack, saw Cutler, but he did not unfasten the shutter.

  “I’m looking for Hernando Fernandez,” Cutler whispered.

  “Go away,” Mansilla said. “Cutler, just go away. This is a bad place for you to be.”

  “Hernando. Where is he?”

  Mansilla backed away. “If you don’t leave,” he husked, “I’ll call Gorman’s men. I don’t want to be caught talking to you. They will whip me, maybe kill me if they find me doing that. Go now, for God’s sake, before you force me to betray you.”

  There was a long silence. Mansilla moved out of Cutler’s vision. Cutler turned, slid off into darkness. He took cover, thought for a moment. Gorman . . . Who the hell was Gorman? Somebody these people were deadly afraid of; that meant he must be the leader of those gunslingers.

  Well, Cutler thought, if Mansilla wouldn’t talk, neither would anyone else. That meant reconnoitering the cantina. Maybe if he were careful, very careful, he could size up those men and overhear what he had to know. Like fog, he drifted through the outskirts of the town, until he was near the saloon.