by Ralph Cotton
Beside Doc Murdock, Brayton “Comanche Killer” Cane said under his breath, “God almighty, I want to kill him so bad it’s making my teeth ache.”
“Settle down, Comanche Killer,” Doc Murdock whispered, heeling his horse forward. “Let’s try to enjoy ourselves while we’re here. If you see any scalps that could pass for Apache, don’t forget we’ve still got a good market for them.”
“Let them say what they will about scalp hunting becoming a dying profession,” said Comanche Killer Cane. “I miss it something fierce every day of my life.”
“We all miss it, Comanche Killer,” said Murdock.
They rode on, coming to a point where a large, crumbling sandstone wall crossed the trail. Two wide wooden gates stood open before them, revealing a community of ancient adobe structures, sun-bleached chozas and skeletal lean-tos wrapped in weathered canvas and skins of animals both domestic and wild. “Everybody watch each other’s backs,” said Moses Peltry, stepping his horse through the open gates. The men looked all around cautiously, their hands poised on rifles and pistols across their laps.
Once inside the gates, the riders watched two women shy away from the large well where they had stood drawing water in the early-morning light. A thin old man came limping forward with a cane as the two women hurried their steps, their water crocks resting atop their bare shoulders. Beyond the well lay the empty, criss-crossing dirt streets of Punta Del Sol. Somewhere a rooster crowed as if raising the town from its slumber.
“You gals needn’t rush off on our account,” one of the riders called out to the women. But the two women ignored them in their haste, one offering a trace of a playful giggle as they scurried away. From his saddle, Moses Peltry gazed down at many fresh hoofprints in the dust. But he only looked down for a second before raising his eyes as if not having noticed the prints.
The old man stopped in front of Moses and Goose Peltry and leaned sideways on his cane. “Buenos días, señores,” he said, offering a stiff, uncertain smile. He swept a narrow-brimmed soft felt hat from atop his head and held it to his thin chest.
“Habla inglés?” Moses Peltry asked bluntly.
“Sí,” said the old man. “I speak English ever since I was a small child. I am Hector Roderio. What can I do for you?”
“If you speak English, keep speaking it then, damn it!” said Goose, cutting in. “I hate the way you people always try to talk to us in a foreign language.”
Moses gave his brother a look, silencing him, then turned back to the old man. “Hector,” he said with an air of familiarity, raising one of his big Walker Colts and cocking it, “I’m going to ask you something that I already know the answer to, and if you lie to me, I won’t ever ask you another thing. Are we clear on that?”
“Sí.” Hector shrugged nervously. “Always I pride myself on being an honest man.”
“That’s commendable, Hector,” said Moses, taking aim at the old man’s frail-looking chest. “Have any Federales been through here in the past few hours, heading in either direction?”
“Sí! Yes!” said Hector. “The soldiers came through here three days ago, headed south. Then they came back through last evening, headed north. They go back to the garrison at—”
“That’s all I wanted to know, Hector,” said Moses, interrupting him. “Were they carrying a big machine rifle when they came through last evening?”
Hector seemed to consider it for a second, then shook his head. “No, not that I can recall. I know the kind of gun you are talking about, and I did not see one with the Federales.”
Moses nodded, apparently satisfied as he looked past the old man and along the dirt streets of the hill community. “We’re a Southern military force in exile, Hector. I hope the good folks of Punta Del Sol are prepared to go out of their way to make us feel welcome here. I always said the future of a town like this relies on its hospitality toward armed strangers. Don’t you agree?”
“Sí, of course I agree with you, señor,” said Hector. “We are a town of commerce. For a price, you will find whatever you want here. Owing to my religious beliefs, I cannot condone the drinking of alcohol or consorting with loose women. But I can tell you where such items and activities can be found.”
“We can’t ask for more than that.” Moses grinned. “Now here’s the deal, Hector.” Moses clasped his free hand around his long beard and let it rest there as he gestured with his big Walker Colt toward the waking town. “Instead of us paying for everything now and then robbing the town and taking our money back before we leave, why don’t you just give us everything for free to begin with and save everybody the labor?”
Behind Moses Peltry, the men laughed and hooted.
“Hell, Moses,” said Doc Murdock, “with ideas like that, you could have been a politician!”
Hector Roderio shrugged in resignation and stepped to one side as the riders moved slowly by. “Our town is your town, señores,” he said meekly.
“That’s exactly the kind of talk we like to hear,” Goose Peltry chuckled, heeling his horse up into a trot ahead of the others. He stopped the tired horse in the middle of the dirt street out front of an adobe cantina. Letting out a loud yell, he raised his pistol and fired three shots upward into the closed double doors of a balcony atop the cantina. “Ladies, wake up in there! Get on out here, pronto!” he yelled. “Don’t even bother about dressing. You can come as you are…it’s just us ole rebel boys!”
At first the women approached the balcony doors fearfully, peeping out around the corner of the jamb. Then, as they heard the whistles and catcalls of the men, they became emboldened. Gold coins hit the balcony floor, and they became more emboldened yet. They ventured out, some with blankets clutched around them, some wearing soft cotton robes. “Lord God, don’t let it all be a dream!” a man shouted hoarsely.
Quickly the women’s blankets loosened in the morning sunlight, revealing smooth brown shoulders. Robes became undone, revealing breasts and thighs. Pistols fired wildly in the dirt street. Men flung themselves from their horses, smoking pistols in hand, and crashed through the thick wooden door of the closed cantina. Trampling across the cantina door where it fell, the men left a trail of discarded boots and shirts behind them on their way to the narrow stairway leading to the floor above. “Get the hell out of my way!” one of the scalp hunters shouted, giving the man in front of him a hard shove.
Halfway up the stairs, the man fell and caused a logjam of bodies between the wall and a thin banister that soon broke free of the stairs and swung back and forth as men fell to the floor below.
“Por favor! Please! Please!” shouted the proprietor, running out from his room adjoining the cantina, As he shoved his shirttail into his trousers and hiked his galluses over his shoulders, he pleaded, “Don’t destroy the stairs! There are plenty of women to go around!”
“Not for me there ain’t!” shouted a scalp hunter climbing up the backs of downed men on the congested stairs.
Outside, Moses, Goose and Doc Murdock watched and listened as the adobe cantina shuddered and trembled beneath the stampede of boots and hooves—a few men having elected to remain in their saddles and ride their horses inside. “I like to see my men enjoy themselves,” Moses said to no one in particular. He looked down at Hector Roderio and asked, “Now then, Hector, who lives in the best hacienda around here? I mean somewhere close by but still offering a man some solitude from the back and forth of street traffic?”
“Señor, that would be Juan Richards’ house,” said Hector, pointing with his cane to a large adobe-and-log structure seated atop a steep trail up on the hillside. “His family were Americanos, but they have lived here for many generations, even before the war with Texas and California.”
“That ought to do,” said Moses, gazing up the trail at the big hillside hacienda. “Hector, you go tell Juan Richards to get himself down here. Tell him that I’ll be needing his house for a couple of days while I do some military planning.”
“But he cannot come down here
, señor,” said Hector. “I am sorry.”
“What?” Moses looked taken aback. “Why can’t he come down here, Hector, pray tell?” he asked mockingly.
Because he cannot walk, señor. Juan Richards sits in one of those what-you-call-it, chair with the wheels on it?”
“A wheelchair?” said Moses.
“Sí, a wheelchair.” Hector nodded.
“He’s in a wheelchair, living on a hillside like that?” Moses asked, a dark chuckle starting to creep into his voice. “What kind of man is this Juan Richards anyway?” He looked at Goose and Doc Murdock as if for an answer.
“An adventurous man, I’d say.” Goose grinned.
“On second thought, Hector,” said Moses, “maybe you better wait here with me. Brother Goose, ride up there. Roll Señor Richards down here to me.”
As Goose Peltry galloped off up the steep trail, Moses looked down at the spotted hound that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and stood at Hector’s side. Hector reached his free hand down and scratched the dog’s head.
Moses Peltry cocked his head to one side, giving the dog a curious once-over. “Hector, where’d you get that dog? I’ve seen him before.”
Hector jerked his hand away from the dog as if the animal were diseased. “He is not my dog, señor! No! He just wandered into town last night.”
“Is that so?” asked Moses, starting to remember the dog. “As I recall, I saw that dog a while back in a town the other side of the border.” He recocked the Walker Colt, staring hard at Hector Roderio. “Best I recall, I had a run-in with the man who owned him.” He started to raise the pistol toward Hector, but a voice in the street stopped him.
“A run-in? Your memory’s nearly as long as your beard, Moses,” said Cherokee Rhodes, stepping out from around the corner of the cantina. “What happened was, you shot that poor bastard deader than a pine knot.”
“Cherokee Rhodes,” said Moses, easing his grip on the Walker Colt but keeping it cocked. “The only half-breed I know who can eat a rattlesnake while it’s still trying to crawl away.” He looked Rhodes up and down. “Didn’t I hear some Texas Rangers hanged you a while back?”
“They tried. It didn’t take,” said Rhodes, stopping a few feet back and resting his hand on his pistol butt.
“Tell me, Rhodes,” said Moses. “How come you to know so much about that dog and its owner?”
“Because I met the owner’s partner. We rode together with that posse that was fanning your trail. He vowed to kill you soon as he caught up to you.” Cherokee Rhodes offered Moses and Murdock a guarded smile. “Come to think of it, I vowed the same thing.”
Doc Murdock stepped his horse a couple of feet away from Moses, his hand going to the pistol on his hip.
“Easy, Doc,” said Moses. “If Cherokee was getting ready to throw down on us, he wouldn’t have announced it first. Right, Rhodes? I mean, not if you had a choice between that or a good, clear shot in the back?”
“You know me better than my closest kin,” Cherokee Rhodes chuckled. “Fact is, that’s exactly what happened to the partner of that dog’s owner. He turned his back on me…wanted to have a duel of all things.”
“I bet that was quick and sweet,” said Moses.
“Quick, yes. But sweet? I doubt it.” Rhodes looked up the steep trail at the commotion as Goose Peltry came pushing Juan Richards into sight. “Is Goose going to shove that poor sumbitch down here, steep as this trail is?”
“I’m wondering that myself,” said Moses, watching Richards curse and plead, flailing his arms back and forth wildly. “I bet he does, if I know Goose.”
Cherokee Rhodes shrugged. “Anyway, I threw in with the posse trailing you boys…told them I had personal reasons to want to see you dead. This is where I landed after that row the other night with the Federales over the Gatling gun.”
“You was in on that, eh?” Moses asked, still gazing up the trail at Goose and the hapless Juan Richards.
“Yep, up to my elbows in it, Moses,” said Cherokee Rhodes. “And I’ll tell you truly, that bunch out of Rileyville is not the kind of posse I’d want on my trail. You took their horses and guns, and damned if Will Summers didn’t bankroll them to new ones.”
“Will Summers…. I might have known,” said Moses. “That’s who figured out how I sicced the Federales on them, then turned it all around on us. That sonsabitch.” Moses gritted his teeth. “I bet he’s the one got our machine rifle too.”
“Can’t say on that,” Rhodes replied. “But he’s riding up front with that posse, you can believe that. He’s doing it all for the reward on everybody’s heads.”
“So they’re really nothing but straight-up bounty hunters is what you’re telling me.” Moses shook his head in disgust, thinking about it. “That’s pure evil, Rhodes. It ought to be against the law.”
A long scream of terror resounded from atop the steep trail. Looking up, Cherokee Rhodes, Moses Peltry and Doc Murdock saw the high-backed wooden wheelchair zigzagging crazily as it raced downward toward them, leaving a bellowing wake of dust. “Yep, brother Goose gave him a shove all right,” Moses said, stepping his horse to one side and giving the speeding wheelchair room to streak past him. Juan Richards continued screaming, wide-eyed, his hair swept back by the onrush of air.
“Look at him go!” said Rhodes, turning his head quickly, keeping up with the wheelchair as it shot past them and careened across the dirt street. All three men winced when the wheelchair struck the boardwalk and came to an abrupt halt. “Whooiee,” Moses whispered, seeing Juan Richards hurled from the chair and through the broken door of the cantina. A crash of splintered wood and shattered glass erupted.
“You have to admit,” said Cherokee Rhodes, “the man held on pretty damn good.”
“Yes, he did,” said Moses. Then, dismissing the whole matter, he asked Rhodes, “So, you’re wanting to throw in with us? You’re giving up the gunrunning business?”
“I’ve got to go where the money is,” said Rhodes. “That posse busted the hell out of the gunrunning. If you’ve got a place for me, I’ll jump right in.” As he spoke, Junior the hound sidled up to him and sniffed his trouser leg. Rhodes dropped a hand to the dog’s head and scratched it, looking up at Moses for an answer.
“Yeah, you’re in,” said Moses. He grinned. “Just make sure you don’t shoot none of us in the back. I know it’s a hard habit to break.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Cherokee Rhodes.
“Good,” Moses replied. He nodded at the cantina, where three men had carried Juan Richards out onto the boardwalk and pitched him into the street. “Now go stick that man in his wheelchair and roll him away from here. Tell him as long as we’re still using his house, he better stay out of my sight, or I’ll kill him.”
By noon, the cantina at Punta Del Sol was packed with men, horses and whores. Pistol shots roared above wild laughter and harsh curses. Bottles crashed against walls. A young woman was hurled naked through a front window in a spray of shattered glass. She sprang to her feet like a cat, screaming, cursing and slinging broken glass from her hair. A fire broke out in a corner of the cantina but was soon extinguished, leaving a black streak of soot up the wall and across the ceiling.
At the bar, Cherokee Rhodes produced a leather bag full of dried peyote cactus buttons and passed it along. The men chewed the powerful hallucinogens and washed them down with mescal, tequila and wine. Fistfights soon broke out. Knives were drawn. One of the scalp hunters who’d eaten a handful of the powerful cactus buttons soon stabbed himself in the thigh by accident, thinking he’d stabbed the man standing beside him. The stairway leading up to the brothel had been torn away from the wall and thrown through the broken front window. Drunken patrons had stacked chairs and tables against the wall and begun climbing hand over hand to the waiting arms of the whores who stood half naked on the balcony, taunting and encouraging them upward.
“Maybe it was a bad idea giving them the peyote buttons,” Cherokee Rhodes said to Moses Peltry. He
scratched his jaw, watching the surrounding debacle spin further and further out of control. Goose Peltry threw his head back in a loud shriek of drunken delight as he swung back and forth on a large wagonwheel chandelier. A thick crosstimber in the ceiling sagged a bit and let a stream of dried earth trickle down onto the drinkers at the bar.
“They can handle their festivities,” said Moses, shrugging the matter aside. He picked up two cactus buttons and popped them into his mouth.
“Careful Moses,” Cherokee Rhodes cautioned him. “Somebody’s got to stay sane here…to keep an eye on the rest of this bunch.”
“Oh? You’ve been here long enough you’re going to start telling me how to run my gang?” asked Moses.
“Don’t mind me, Moses. Sometimes I just talk to make sure my jaws are working good.” Cherokee Rhodes backed off, raising his hands chest-high.
Moses Peltry’s eyes followed the trickle of dried earth falling from the ceiling. “If you want to worry about something, worry about this place falling in around us.” He threw back a mouthful of tequila from a large wooden cup. “Where’d Doc Murdock go?”
“He grabbed that whore with the long black hair and carried her out of here over his shoulder,” said Rhodes. “Last I seen, he was headed to the cripple’s house with her.”
“Good for him,” said Moses. “If you’re smart, you’ll drag something away from here yourself. Once we hit the trail, it’ll be a long, dry spell before we find another place like this.”
Chapter 20
In the late afternoon, Sherman Dahl rode back along the trail to the cliff overhang where he’d left the others waiting while he scouted the ridgeline above Punta Del Sol. Webb, Summers and Teasdale stepped forward as Dahl rode into sight. Monk Dupre sat against the wall of the overhang with his tied hands folded on his lap. “The Peltrys are down there all right,” said Dahl, reining in. “From the sound of things, the town will be lucky if it’s still standing when they leave.”