In the light that came through the open door of Maggie’s house, Matt and Sam exchanged a glance. What Seymour had just described was a pretty slick job of reacting to danger. They were a little surprised he had it in him. It was starting to look like he had a gunfighter’s instincts. A fella with his talent had been wasted as a dry-goods salesman.
He proved that again by saying, “Perhaps we should go inside. I don’t think those scoundrels will be back, but if they were to return, we make awfully tempting targets out here in the light.”
Matt clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re right as rain, Seymour.” He looked at Maggie. “That is, if it’s all right with Miss O’Ryan.”
“Of course, of course,” she said. “Come in. Seymour, you’re sure you’re all right?”
“Indeed I am.” He paused to look around and find his hat, which had flown off his head when he dived to the ground to avoid the bushwhackers’ bullets. As he picked the hat up and looked at it, he suddenly swallowed hard and said, “Oh, my.”
“What is it?” Sam asked.
“Look,” Seymour said. He held up his hat with one hand inside it. A finger poked out through a hole in the crown. “Is that . . .”
“Yep,” Matt said. “That’s a bullet hole. You may not’ve got elected, Seymour, but you came damn close to bein’ nominated.”
Matt waited for Seymour to faint at the realization of how close he had come to dying, but after a moment Seymour just sighed and clapped the Stetson on his head. “I’ll have to get a new hat, I suppose,” he said.
Matt and Sam both chuckled. They couldn’t help it. Seymour the Lily-Livered, he’d been called when he first came to Sweet Apple. Seymour the Icy-Nerved was more like it now.
Once they were all inside Maggie’s house with the door closed and the curtains pulled, Seymour continued his story.
“I suppose they thought they could just walk up and shoot me. They weren’t expecting me to fight back, or at least they didn’t act as if they were expecting it. Once I’d fired a couple of rounds, they turned and ran behind that wagon to continue their assault. Luckily, the light was poor, and I suppose that threw their aim off.”
“The fact that you was throwin’ lead right back at ’em might’ve had something to do with it, too,” Matt suggested.
“Did you get a good look at them?” Sam asked.
Seymour shook his head. “Not at all. They were never anything but two shadowy figures. I couldn’t tell you how tall they were or how they were dressed or anything of that sort.”
“Who’d want to kill you?”
“I have no idea. I don’t have any real enemies that I know of in Sweet Apple.” Seymour frowned in thought. “I had several encounters with various gunmen right after I came to town . . . Cole Halliday, Jack Keller, and Ned Akin all threatened to shoot me at one time or another . . . but those disputes have all been put behind us. If you recall, they fought side by side with us against Mallory and Alcazarrio.”
Matt nodded. “I remember. It’s not likely any of those three would try to ambush you like that. If they decided they wanted to kill you, they’d do it out in the open, where it would help their reputation as gunslingers.”
A surprised smile lit up Seymour’s face for a second. “Really? You really think it would help their reputation as gunslingers to kill me?”
“Well, I didn’t really mean it like that,” Matt said hastily.
“When I first came to Sweet Apple, the only reason they didn’t shoot me was because they worried that it might harm their reputations. I’d say I’ve come up in the world.”
“Land’s sakes, Seymour,” Maggie said, “you sound like you want those men gunning for you.”
“No, no, not at all. It’s just nice to think that I’m not completely an object of scorn and ridicule anymore.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Sam told him. “Let’s get back to those hombres who ambushed you.”
“I’m sorry,” Seymour said with a shrug. “It’s a total mystery to me.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Matt agreed. “But we’ll probably have another chance to figure it out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those fellas wanted you dead. Since you’re still drawin’ breath . . . there’s a pretty good chance that sooner or later they’re gonna try again to kill you.”
Rebecca Jimmerson, wrapped in a silk dressing gown, poured cognac from a crystal decanter into a snifter. On the other side of the hotel room, Cornelius Standish sat in a wing chair smoking a cigar and reading the latest edition of the Sweet Apple Gazette. He rattled the newspaper, snorted in disgust, and said, “What a pitiful excuse for journalism. But then, what else can you expect in a frontier backwater like this?”
Rebecca took a sip of the cognac and said, “Sweet Apple has its advantages. No one knows us out here except Seymour, so you don’t have to sneak around to see me. You don’t have to act as if you’re ashamed of me, the way you do back in New Jersey.”
Standish’s teeth clamped down on the cigar. “I don’t do that,” he said around it.
Rebecca just shrugged and didn’t argue with him. She took another drink of the smooth yet fiery liquor.
A soft knock on the door made Standish turn his head in that direction. “See who that is,” he said. He sat forward expectantly. Rebecca had a pretty good idea what he was thinking.
The three killers who had accompanied them to Texas had done their job already.
Seymour was dead.
And Rebecca felt a sharp pang deep inside as that thought crossed her mind.
She tossed back the rest of the cognac and crossed to the door. When she opened it, she saw the smooth-faced, reptilian-eyed Warren Welch standing there, holding his hat in one hand in front of him. McCracken and Stover weren’t with him. Without waiting for Welch to say anything, Rebecca stepped back and motioned for him to come in. For appearances’ sake, Standish had his own room across the hall—but it was here to Rebecca’s room that Welch had come looking for him.
Everyone knew what she was, Rebecca thought. Even this cold-blooded killer.
Standish came to his feet. “Well?” he snapped.
“McCracken has a bullet hole in his arm,” Welch reported. “Stover’s patching it up now. We didn’t figure it would be a good idea to go to the local doctor, if there even is one in this godforsaken place, with a bullet wound.”
Standish nodded. “That was smart thinking. I suppose McCracken must have been shot by accident while you were taking care of Seymour.”
“No, he was wounded by that gunslinging nephew of yours.”
Standish’s forehead creased in a puzzled frown. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“I thought he was supposed to be an incompetent fool. That’s the way you described him to us.”
“That’s the way he’s always been,” Standish insisted. “He can barely keep from falling over his own feet, and he’s frightened of his own shadow.”
“He’s changed since he came out here, remember?” Rebecca said.
Standish shot an irritated glance at her. She knew he was annoyed not only by what she’d said, but also by the very fact that she had butted into the conversation.
“I don’t believe half of what I read in the newspapers about Seymour,” Standish said. “Reporters make those things up just to sell papers.”
“Well, I’m not making this up,” Welch said. “McCracken and I followed your nephew this evening, as planned, and ambushed him when he was leaving a house on the edge of town. It should have been a simple job. But he spotted us and moved like greased lightning. We missed with our first shots, and he returned our fire.”
“Seymour did that?” Standish sounded like he couldn’t believe it.
Welch jerked his head in a curt nod. “That’s right. We had to take cover behind a wagon that was parked nearby. McCracken was hit while we were doing that. Then, before we could take care of your nephew, somebody else came running up a
nd started shooting at us.”
“Who?” Standish choked out. His face was flushed now from the anger and frustration he felt at the news that Seymour had escaped.
Welch shook his head. “I don’t know. Some cowboy. One of Seymour’s newfound friends, I suppose. Or just somebody who couldn’t resist a fight.”
“Where was Stover while this was going on?”
“He was close by. He was going to circle around and try to get a shot at your nephew from behind. But once that other gunman showed up, we decided it would be better to withdraw and try again at another time.”
Standish smacked a fist into the palm of his other hand. “So all you really succeeded in doing was to warn Seymour that someone is after him!”
“If you had given us an accurate picture of what we were facing, we would have handled the job differently,” Welch said. “This is going to take more planning. Seymour is a dangerous man, and he has friends. But we’ll get him, don’t you worry about that.”
“Seymour? A dangerous man?” Standish sputtered a little as he spoke, as if the words were the most outlandish thing he had ever heard.
For her part, Rebecca found herself both surprised and thrilled to hear that Seymour was still alive. And he hadn’t just survived the ambush attempt by his uncle’s hired killers. He had fought back and wounded one of them. Rebecca never would have dreamed that such a thing was possible.
Why, if Seymour Standish could actually grow a backbone and demonstrate some skill with a gun, then anything was possible!
Even, perhaps, Rebecca turning her back on the money and all the other creature comforts that her relationship with Cornelius Standish provided?
It was something to think about, she told herself as she poured another drink.
Chapter 8
The little farming village some miles south of the border dozed in the predawn hours. Soon, the women would rise and begin preparing breakfast. In most of the huts, the meal would be a meager one, for this was a poor village. The soil in the foothills of the mountains that loomed over the community was rocky, and crops grew there only grudgingly. The men would stumble from their bunks and eat, then trudge to the fields with a step that was already weary, because men who lived this life were never truly rested.
Yet for all its hardships, life still held a few joys. A golden sky at sunset, a breeze to cool the heat of the day, the laugh of a child, the warmth of a woman’s body, an occasional nip from a jug of pulque or tequila . . . these things allowed a man to tolerate all the less-than-pleasant aspects of life.
So their continued existence was precious to the men of the village, and because of that, they did as they were told when the riders came thundering down out of the mountains, galloping into the village with torches blazing in their hands. Guns blasted into the air, and sleepy-eyed men, women, and children hurried out of their homes, only to be herded together and forced to the village plaza by men who appeared to be giants when they were mounted on tall horses. The strangers wore broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned sombreros and carried weapons that gleamed in the flickering torchlight. In the entire village there were only a handful of firearms, most of them ancient shotguns that might not even shoot anymore. The men were farmers, not fighters. Their hands were curved to fit hoes and shovels, not gun butts.
The leader of the invaders was a big, barrel-chested man with a black beard. Just behind him rode a lean, hawk-faced man with a thread of mustache on his thin upper lip. The people of the village recognized both men. The leader was Diego Alcazarrio, the famous revolutionary whose goal was to overthrow the dictatorship of the evil Presidente Diaz. His whippetlike companion was Florio Cruz, Alcazarrio’s second in command.
Of course, everyone in the village also knew that “revolutionary” was really just another word for bandido, and the struggle against El Presidente’s rule was merely an excuse for Alcazarrio and his men to do whatever they pleased and take whatever they wanted. But no one was going to come right out and say that, especially not with Alcazarrio right there to punish anyone unwise enough to do such a foolish thing. Instead, when prodded, they would shout weakly, “Viva Alcazarrio! Viva la revolución!”
Life, with all its hardships, was still better than death, after all. Much better than the sort of slow, agonizing death that Alcazarrio could provide for his enemies if he chose to do so.
For a time, little had been seen or heard of the revolutionaries. It was said that they had ventured across the border into Texas on some sort of quest for modern repeating rifles. If so, they had failed. They had returned to Mexico bloodied and beaten. Even Diego Alcazarrio himself had suffered serious wounds at the hands of the hated gringos. There was talk that he might die.
But obviously, he had not, because here he was, as big and strong as ever, and as the citizens of the village huddled together in the plaza and waited to see what he wanted, Alcazarrio rode his big, beautiful horse back and forth in the torchlight in front of them and bellowed, “Amigos! I have come to help you!”
No one from the village could recall ever asking Diego Alcazarrio for his help, but none of them brought that up.
“In my generosity, I bring you an opportunity for greatness!” Alcazarrio continued. “Join me, and together we will strike a blow for freedom and justice! Join me, and we will throw off the yoke of the oppressor! We will bring fear to the hearts of the wicked gringos, and when that evil bastard Diaz hears of our exploits, he will tremble and take to his bed in Mexico City! Join me in seeking vengeance on all who have wronged us!”
Odd, but the farmers and their wives and children could not recall being wronged by anyone except Alcazarrio and others of his ilk, who in the past had taken their crops and their food and at times even some of the young women of the village . . . but again, no one was going to point that out to Alcazarrio, especially when it began to soak in on them what he really wanted.
He was looking for men to join his band of revolutionaries. His gang of bandidos.
The great Diego Alcazarrio had fallen on hard times indeed.
Now that the people of the village thought about it, the number of riders with Alcazarrio was less than half of what it had been before his foray across the border. Clearly, his losses had indeed been heavy.
“I have guns and horses,” Alcazarrio went on. “I need men to use them, to help in the great struggle against those who would oppress us! Join me in this noble cause, my friends!”
Several of the younger men from the village stepped forward.
That brought wails of dismay from the heavy-set older women who were the mothers of these volunteers. Some of them ran after their sons and clutched at their arms. The young men shook off their mothers. A couple of the women dropped to their knees in the dust and sobbed.
Riderless horses were led forward for the new recruits. They were given rifles—old, single-shot weapons for the most part. They could arm themselves better from the loot of the next raid. Building and equipping an army was a slow process.
Alcazarrio harangued the crowd some more, but the rest of the men shuffled their feet awkwardly and looked down at the ground. Alcazarrio and Florio Cruz exchanged a glance. They could force some of the other men to come with them, but Alcazarrio preferred volunteers. Men fought better when they truly wanted to follow their leaders. General Santa Anna had discovered that when his army of conscripts had allowed those damned Texans to hold them at bay for thirteen days inside the Alamo, and then later when mere hundreds had defeated thousands at San Jacinto. A man had to be fighting for something to be truly effective, even if it was only lust and greed.
With a curt motion of his hand, Alcazarrio signaled for the riders to turn and head back up into the hills. They thundered away, torches bobbing in the predawn gloom, and the villagers who remained behind heaved a sigh of relief, other than the women who were still crying at the loss of their sons.
The bandidos were gone—this time. But they would be back. The villagers were certain of that.
Soon
er or later, evil always came back.
The next morning after the bushwhack attempt on Seymour’s life, Matt and Sam walked around the street opposite Maggie O’Ryan’s house, intently studying the ground as they searched for any sign that might identify the men who had tried to kill the marshal.
It was no use, though. There had been too much traffic, too many men and horses and wagons that had passed by there. The blood brothers couldn’t pick out any footprints that they knew belonged to the bushwhackers.
When they reported as much to Seymour, he shook his head and said, “I simply can’t figure out for the life of me why anyone would do such a thing.”
“For the life of you is just about right,” Matt said. “Next time, they might not miss.”
With his face set in grim lines, Seymour nodded. “I know.” He stood up and reached for his hat. “Well, I have to go over to the hotel and see my uncle. He’ll soon be sending out those new salesmen of his, and I owe it to him to give them as many tips as I can on covering the territory.”
“Your uncle?” Sam repeated. “Your uncle’s here in Sweet Apple?”
“With new salesmen?” Matt added.
Seymour’s face brightened. “That’s right. Didn’t I mention that to you? Uncle Cornelius arrived on the train yesterday afternoon, along with his secretary and three men who’ll be taking over as representatives of the Standish Dry Goods Company here in West Texas.”
Matt smiled. “So it takes three men to replace you, eh, Seymour?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to actually say that. I didn’t set up all that many accounts before I resigned from the company to take the job of marshal. But West Texas is a big sales territory.”
“It’s just big, period,” Sam said.
“So I’m not surprised that Uncle Cornelius has expanded his sales force. What is a little surprising is that he came out here to supervise them himself. He’s not really the sort of man to be comfortable on the frontier.”
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