by Judd Cole
Connie prayed with all her heart that their trap would fail. But the more immediate threat came from Coyote and Willard’s brother, Lorenzo.
At first the two men had been too tired to trouble the women. They took turns sleeping and keeping an eye on their prisoners. But now both men were awake, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly as they cast continual glances toward Connie and Anne.
They’re about to do something, Connie realized, her pulse rapidly increasing.
Dear God, wasn’t it awful enough already? Both women felt filthy and nerve-frazzled. They hadn’t washed in days or had a decent meal, not to mention more than a few moments of stolen rest. And now this heart hammering fear: not just of rape, but of what these sick men might do to hurt them, too.
And God have mercy, both men were walking toward them.
Coyote kicked at the glowing coals until flames illuminated both women.
“Let’s see something nice,” he ordered Connie.
Before she could make any move to stop him, he grabbed hold of her bodice and, showing no mercy, tore it loose. His grip tore the silk chemise away, too, exposing her breasts to the flickering light.
“Put your damn arms down,” Coyote ordered her, for Connie had raised them to cover herself.
When Connie hesitated, Coyote calmly kicked Anne in the stomach. Connie screamed, begging him to stop, and dropped her arms. But she turned her face, crimson with humiliation and anger, away from the men’s hungry, prodding eyes.
“Damn, man,” Lorenzo finally said after swallowing audibly. “Damn. Lookit them nipples, Coyote! Look just like in ‘em French paintings, don’t they? Just like juicy plums.”
“Sure. But I ain’t one to look without having,” Coyote told him. “Let’s match coins. Winner tops her first.”
“You can have her first,” Lorenzo said in a burst of generosity, turning to Anne. She had just managed to get her breath back after Coyote’s kick. “Thissen ain’t no stable filly. But she’ll do just fine.”
“Please,” Connie said. “Leave my sister alone. If you must ... if ... then, please just let it be me.”
Coyote was already unbuckling his wide leather belt. “Spare us the noble blather. This is a two-course meal. Both you bitches look good.”
Both women had spent much of their time praying. And perhaps they were being rewarded now. For suddenly everyone in camp heard the sequence of sounds clearly: a man’s startled shout of warning, followed in a few seconds by a shot, then a bloodcurdling scream. Then they felt the ground tremble as the roaring, crashing din shattered the night.
“Somebody got killed, all right,” Coyote told Lorenzo. “But who?”
He stared at the women. “This will wait. Saddle up, ladies. Now. We’re moving down the trail.”
Chapter Seven
Quick reflexes and superb horses saved Wild Bill and Josh from the tumbling mass of rocks that buried Willard Hanchon. The two riders, warned just in time, escaped down their back trail.
When the dust cleared, they picked their way over the moonlit rock heap and rode down out of the Narrows without further incident. Bill quickly read the signs at the abandoned camp.
“Two of ‘em waited here with the women. They’ve just lit out toward La Cola.”
Bill’s eyes flicked back toward the Narrows. “And one dead. That means one of them is still up there. He might come this way, but he’ll most likely take the long way down the south slope to avoid us.”
Bill started to unsaddle his roan. “Either way, I’m too tired to flush him now. Be sunup soon. Let’s take turns grabbing a little shut-eye. Then, God help us, well ride into La Cola.”
Bill took the first watch. Two hours later, he woke Josh. Then, while the bleary-eyed journalist made notes in a flip-back pad, Bill slept like a dead man.
By the time Josh shook Hickok awake, the desert heat was already so thick it had weight. Ragged parcels of cloud drifted slowly across a deep blue dome of sky.
“God kiss me if I couldn’t wrap my teeth around some hot eggs and scrapple,” Bill said wistfully while he rigged his horse.
“Maybe there’s a place to eat in town,” Josh suggested.
Bill gave a scornful snort. “‘Town’? Kid, I ain’t been there. But I hear La Cola is a place to be the meal, not get one.”
Both men ate a handful of parched corn and drank a few swallows from the last of their tepid water. Then they checked their weapons and swung up and over, reining their mounts southeast toward La Cola.
Now they were down on the flats again, the terrain arid and open. There was nothing but the occasional twisted Yucca tree or tall, narrow cactus called Spanish Bayonets by the locals.
Hickok’s eyes never stopped scanning.
“Listen,” he told Josh. “I know that Quaker ma of yours back in Philly taught you to always be polite. But don’t be when you’re in La Cola. This is Old Mexico. Just look bored and don’t make eye contact with anyone. Down here, a man who smiles and says please and thank you is a weak sister. And weak sisters are killed for sport. Stick close to me.”
“You kidding? I plan to. I ain’t no hero.”
“That’s one reason I like you, kid,” Bill said. “You’re scared, but by God that never keeps you in your tipi when the war whoop sounds, does it? You’re a good man to have along.”
It wasn’t Hickok’s way to lavish praise on a man. Josh knew these simple words came straight from the frontiersman’s heart. They made the youth swell with pride.
But his first glimpse of La Cola deflated him and evoked something very different from pride.
Josh saw a handful of mud-colored adobe hovels, all of them small and wretched. Empty bottles, rusted cans, and various bones—animal and human—dotted the drab, barren sand around the buildings.
“No schools or churches,” Bill said wryly as they rode slowly in, horses’ hooves kicking up yellow plumes of dust.
The street was empty except for a little boy. He squatted in the shade of a building, eating a tortilla. He watched the two norteamericanos ride in, his face inscrutable.
None of the adobe hovels had signs advertising their business. But several included a few wooden cribs out back for whores and their customers.
Most of the hovels appeared empty and abandoned, but quite a few horses were hitched to a tie rail in front of the largest structure. Josh heard a wheezy accordion playing “Una Paloma Blanca.”
“Welcome to your first pulque bar, kid,” Bill said as they swung down. “Cactus liquor doesn’t taste that bad. Just remember: It’s the custom to take the first drink straight down. Don’t pause until the cup is empty, or it’s an insult.”
Bill whistled toward the little kid in the shade. When the boy had trotted over, Bill flipped him two bits.
“Por guardar los caballos, nino. That’s for watching our horses, kid. I’ll give you another when we come out.”
The kid bit the coin, then grinned. “‘Sta bien, senor!”
Bill stepped through the open doorway into the hot, smoky, sweat-stinking dimness within, Josh close on his heels. The young reporter, heart hammering his ribs, received a quick impression of the desert watering hole.
There was no bar, just a raw plank counter supported by several sawhorses. There were no tables or chairs, either, just a few crude three-legged stools, though most of the patrons were standing or leaned against the walls.
And what patrons! Josh felt his scalp break out in sweat at first sight of these raffish toughs in sombreros and serapes. Clay-colored and stoic-faced, not one was unarmed. Those who didn’t carry firearms wore machetes in shoulder scabbards. These were men, Josh realized in a glance, who’d been bone-idle most of their lives except for brief moments of violence.
The music, and all conversation, fell silent as the two gringos entered. Bill strolled straight up to the counter and slapped it.
“Dos copas,” he ordered from a huge bartender with a fat and folded face.
Josh felt every man in the room staring
at the new arrivals. The bar dog filled two chipped clay cups with the milky pulque. Josh remembered Bill’s warning and drank the pungent, but not unpleasant, liquor straight down. It burned and made his eyes water, but he managed not to cough.
After finishing his cup, Hickok made quite a show out of pressing his fist into his stomach until he belched loudly.
“Custom of the country,” he explained quietly to Josh, who followed this example.
That seemed to lessen the tension some, Josh noted gratefully. A few of the patrons were conversing again, ignoring the new arrivals.
“Otra vez,” Wild Bill told the bar dog, who filled their cups again.
“You can drink this one slower,” Bill told Josh. “Well, no sign of the Danford gang in here. Doesn’t mean we won’t hear something about them if we listen in good. Especially since they’ve got two good-looking women with them.”
Josh risked a quick glance around. “Thank God it’s dark in here. I don’t think anybody recognizes who you are.”
But Bill didn’t bother replying, for trouble was indeed heading his way. A big Mexican wearing the leather chaps of a vaquero was swaggering toward the new arrivals. He greeted them in English.
“Welcome to La Cola, hombres! Where every man has a set on him and every woman says yes. I am called Reynaldo!”
Bill nodded. The pulqueria fell silent again. Josh could feel every man in the room watching them with the expectation of patrons at a cockfight.
“As you can see, senors,” Reynaldo said with false unction, mixing English with enough Spanish so the rest could follow him. “La Cola is a quiet and uneventful place, verdad? We like to liven up our little pueblito with some friendly sport.”
Reynaldo suddenly smacked the plank counter. Josh had to catch his cup when it leaped up.
“Que dices, amigo? What do you say to a little arm-wrestling contest?” Without hesitation, Bill nodded again. This evoked laughter and remarks because Reynaldo, Josh estimated, easily had forty pounds on Bill. But Josh knew that Hickok, though lean in the shanks and stomach, carried most of his strength in his chest and arms.
Both men squared off in front of the counter, planting their elbows. The rest all crowded in closer, making Josh squirm. He could feel their collective heat, smell their collective odor.
“Miguel!” Reynaldo called out to the barkeep. “Where are Pinchito and Chispe? We cannot fight without our little friends, huh?”
Josh’s eyes widened in revulsion and fear when Miguel reached under the counter and produced a fruit jar containing two black, squirming objects: scorpions! The barkeep opened the jar and shook one out near each man’s arm.
The legs had been carefully tied together with string so the creatures couldn’t move very far. Miguel lined them up so that whichever man began to win the match would force his opponent’s arm closer and closer to the poisonous stinger at the tip of the scorpion’s upraised tail.
If this dangerous turn of events surprised Hickok, he didn’t show it. The two men gripped hands, and the contest was on.
Reynaldo wasted no time. He loosed a mighty roar, clearly expecting to defeat his man on the spot. And in fact, his first massive exertion did start to swing Hickok’s arm down. Bill stopped it only an inch from the poison stinger. Josh bit his lower lip until he tasted blood.
When his first showy exertion failed, Reynaldo settled in to a determined effort. But that big exertion had cost him. Now Wild Bill’s slow, steady determination was literally gaining the upper hand.
Sweat oozed from Reynaldo’s face, and the veins in his neck bulged fat as night crawlers. Slowly, steadily, Bill muscled him down until only a fraction of an inch separated the Mexican from the stinger. Though usually not fatal for an adult, a scorpion’s sting left a man terribly ill and weak—which, down here, could indeed be a fatal condition.
So this was the moment of truth. Reynaldo could choose his pride and keep struggling—until that stinger would surely inject him. Or the Mexican could just surrender completely, crushing the scorpion when Bill forced him down.
Reynaldo chose surrender. But he was also a poor loser, and a man given to keeping accounts. He watched Miguel brush the dead scorpion off the bar. Then Reynaldo stalked wordlessly off to join his friends again.
A few of the older locals had cheered when the plucky gringo triumphed. Nonetheless, Josh could feel it in the air—the unexpected victory caused a stirring of anger and resentment. Among most of these men, bitter memories of the unjust war caused by the gringos were still too sharp.
Besides all that, this den of thieves and murderers did not require reasons for seeking violence. It was the local form of entertainment.
“Time for us to ride on, Longfellow,” Bill suggested quietly. He flipped four bits American onto the counter to cover their drinks.
But the look Miguel gave them was clear: Payment was not necessary, for he would be taking it from their pockets shortly. Though he clearly respected the stranger in the black hat, Miguel considered him as good as dead already.
“Get beside me, kid,” Bill said, “and don’t look at anybody. You got a story to file. Big byline, all that glory. That’s it, son, eyes front.”
The two men were halfway to the door before at least a half-dozen men moved to block it.
“Two sons of whores!” Reynaldo shouted in English behind them.
Josh felt his throat close with fear. Bill turned and gave Reynaldo the shadow of a smile.
“It is common knowledge,” he announced clearly in Spanish, “that I’m your father.”
No greater insult could be hurled at a Mexican male, for it clearly vilified one’s mother while also insulting the father.
Reynaldo snarled and grabbed for the big dragoon pistol in his belt. Josh saw at least two other side arms coming up to the ready. He himself had his pin-fire revolver halfway out of its holster.
However, he never had to fire it. Quicker than a finger snap, both Hickok’s fists filled with iron. The right-hand gun bucked once, the left gun twice. And before any man present could credit his eyes, three dead men lay on the floor—all drilled dead center in the forehead.
“In a crowd situation like this,” Hickok explained calmly to Josh, as if they were in a classroom, “I always prefer a head shot. Some men are partial to the heart. But I’ve found that some reptiles will still fight from reflex without a brain shot.”
Now that Hickok’s ivory-grip Colts were out from beneath his duster, the shocked patrons took a closer look at this steel-eyed yanqui.
“Virgin de Guadalupe!” exclaimed Miguel, making the sign of the cross. “Wild Bill Hee-kok!”
Bill wagged both smoking guns toward the men blocking the doorway. “Some men never learn. So they die ignorant. Make a hole, boys, or I’ll blast one through you.”
He spoke in English, but no one required a translation. The men fell back, tripping over each other in their haste.
“Just keep moving, kid,” Bill said quietly. “And keep that gun out, that’s the lad. Hold it right out plain. See, the shock will wear off quick. Then these jackals are going to remember that reward.”
Chapter Eight
“It’s all here,” Fargo Danford announced triumphantly. “All thirty bars. Didn’t I tell you boys this was a perfect spot? Sure, there’s a couple Indians know about it, but they’re long gone from here.”
Danford climbed up out of an eight-foot-by-four-foot brick-lined enclosure. Located in the base of a small knoll just south of La Cola, the brick chamber had once served as a secret powder magazine for peasant rebels.
Danford whipped the dust from his hat and took a careful look all around them. This spot was well protected from sight by several abutments of rock. One had to leave the main trail to even suspect it might be here.
“We’ll leave it right where it is,” Danford added, “until we put Hickok with his ancestors. We cover our tracks good when we ride out from here, he’ll never have any good reason to ride up here.”
“When we ride out,” Lorenzo repeated, his tone sarcastic. “Ride out to where?”
“Simmer down, bawl-baby. I got a place in mind. A good spot where Hickok can’t surprise us. A gun hand like him catches us flat-footed, we’re under. Look what he just done to your brother. That fool Willard gave him a one-second target, and Hickok plugged him.”
“So you tell it,” Lorenzo said quietly.
Danford’s fleshy lips formed a scowl. “You wanna spell that out plain?”
“How plain is this? You say Hickok killed Willard, and maybe he did. But with both us Hanchon boys dead, you could split that silver with your favorite, Coyote, now couldn’t you? Two shares steada four.”
“You damned fool!” Danford laughed, harsh and loud. “You heard what Miguel said! Hickok gunned down Reynaldo and two of his gang in Miguel’s place, drilled all three right in the brainpan! You think a man that gun-handy couldn’t drop a simpleton like Willard, who didn’t have the common sense God gave an ant?”
Coyote chimed in, his voice flattened of all emotion, yet menacing. “Lorenzo flaps his mouth too much. That was his brother’s problem, too.”
“Miguel said Hickok’s not alone,” Danford added, sliding the wooden cover back into place atop the cache of silver. “Got some fuzz-faced city kid with him, wears ready-to-wear boots.”
“Prob’ly an ink-slinger,” Lorenzo guessed. “They cover Hickok like flies on cow plop.”
All three men were busy covering up the magazine with sand and rocks. The spot was well sheltered from the force of the wind.
“I know that,” Danford said. “Especially now on account of the women. Don’t forget, boys, when it comes to money, Jacobs is rolling in it. So’s Paxton. Could be a lot more profit in store for us, we play our cards smart.”
All three men finished their task and circled out from behind the knoll. Their captives sat together in the scant shade cast by their tethered horses, miserable in the late-morning heat.