Chaco kept the group moving as quickly as possible through the mountains. They topped the pass at mid-morning, and from there Viola could see the slopes descending to the flats, which stretched for ten or fifteen miles to another range of mountains lower than the Mules. Those mountains, she knew, were across the border in Mexico.
Would John stop when he came to the border? Viola thought about her husband’s personality and decided that was highly unlikely. As long as she was in danger, he would throw away his sheriff’s badge if necessary and come after her. Even if it meant causing an international incident, he wouldn’t stop until they were reunited.
That certainty made her feel warm inside because of the love she knew her husband had for her. At the same time, she didn’t want him getting in trouble with the law.
Although it wouldn’t be the first time, she reminded herself. More than once in his life, John Slaughter had been accused of being a rustler. She never questioned him too much about those incidents. On the frontier, the line between being an outlaw and being a law-abiding man was sometimes razor-thin and a matter of perception more than anything else.
From the top of the pass, Viola could also look back the way they had come. Chaco didn’t slow down, so she had only a glimpse in that direction as Gabriel kept his horse moving, but she thought she saw dust hovering in the air.
That sight made her heart leap a little. It had to be a posse from Tombstone kicking up that dust, she thought. For the first time she had proof that someone was coming to rescue her.
But would they be in time?
* * *
The descent out of the mountains took until early afternoon. Once they reached the flats Chaco pushed the group even harder. He was anxious to reach the border, Viola thought. He probably believed that once he crossed that imaginary line, he would be safe.
That was because he didn’t know Texas John Slaughter.
After a short time, something appeared on the horizon ahead of them. A few more minutes went by, and the dark blotch resolved itself into a cluster of buildings. There was a village there, Viola realized, one whose existence she hadn’t been aware of.
With a frown, she turned to look at Gabriel. “Is that where we’re going? To that village?”
“It’s called La Reata,” he said, which didn’t really answer her question.
“It’s still on the American side of the border, isn’t it?”
“You’ll see, little one.”
She tried to control her impatience and annoyance with him. When she asked a question, she was used to getting an answer. She was, after all, the mistress of the great Slaughter Ranch and the wife of John Slaughter.
But these men didn’t know that, and she didn’t want them to. If Chaco knew who she really was, he might get the idea that he could hold her for ransom and raise money for his so-called revolution.
The village of La Reata had two streets, one running north and south and a smaller one running east and west. At the south end of the main street rose the bell tower of a small mission. It was the highest point for several miles around. The other buildings in the small settlement were all made of adobe, with either thatched or tile roofs. As the outlaws entered the village, Viola saw a stable, a blacksmith shop, a couple general stores, several cantinas, and the biggest building in town other than the church, a two-storied hotel with a covered gallery in front of it.
Chaco reined to a halt in front of one of the cantinas. The rest of the men followed suit.
Viola said to Gabriel, “Since you told me he used to be a priest, I thought he might go to the mission.”
“Don’t mention I told you that,” the big outlaw said with a scowl. “Chaco might not like it. Anyway, none of the rest of us are priests, and we’re thirsty. It’s a hot day.”
“Don’t let me stop you from getting a drink.” Viola smiled in mock sweetness. “I’ll wait here and watch your horse.”
“Haw! You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Chaco swung down from the saddle. His booted feet had barely touched the ground when a woman appeared in the cantina’s doorway and rushed out to put her arms around him and draw him into a hug.
She was beautiful, Viola thought, with a great mass of tightly curled black hair, flashing dark eyes, and a voluptuous body the lines of which were daringly revealed in the tight, low-cut dress she wore.
“Why would you try to interest me in Chaco when he already has a woman like that?” Viola asked Gabriel.
“Mercedes?” He laughed again. “Mercedes is his sister!”
“Really?” Now that Gabriel mentioned it, Viola could see a slight resemblance between Chaco and Mercedes, but they still seemed strikingly different.
“Just because a man is a priest doesn’t mean his sister must be a nun. And believe me, Mercedes Romero is no nun!”
“I believe you,” Viola said. No nun would ever be caught revealing as much cleavage as Mercedes was.
Gabriel dismounted and helped Viola down. The other men got off their horses, as well, and several of them headed into the cantina.
Chaco brought his sister over to Viola and Gabriel. In a formal voice he said, “Mercedes, this is Señorita Viola . . . I don’t know your last name.”
“Smith,” Viola lied. That was the first name she thought of.
“Señorita Viola Smith,” Chaco said. “You will look after her while we are here?”
“Of course,” Mercedes said. “But I am surprised to see you with a woman, mi hermano.”
Chaco gave a curt shake of his head. “It isn’t like that. The señorita came with us from Tombstone.”
“You brought me with you from Tombstone,” Viola said. “You kidnapped me.”
“Don’t worry, Chaco,” Mercedes told her brother. “I will see that this one is taken care of.” She took Viola’s arm and steered her toward the cantina entrance.
“Gracias,” he said.
Into Viola’s ear, still with a smile on her face, Mercedes said in a menacing whisper, “If you do anything to hurt my brother, perra, I will cut your heart out myself and feed it to the hogs!”
Chapter 12
Slaughter and his companions raised their own dust cloud as they crossed the flat, semiarid terrain, so whoever the other riders were, they had to be aware of the posse. The two columns gradually came closer to each other. Slaughter and his men drew even first, so at the sheriff’s signal they reined in and turned their horses to wait.
After a few minutes, Slaughter spotted the guidon hanging limply from a staff in the hot air. The handful of blue-clad riders around it came on, and the lighter splotches of canvas-covered wagons hove into view behind them.
“It’s the cavalry!” Pete Yardley exclaimed.
Slaughter had already come to that conclusion. He told the posse members, “Stay here,” and heeled his horse into motion again. He rode forward to meet the patrol.
As he neared the cavalrymen, one of the riders spurred ahead of the others and stopped when about ten feet separated him from Slaughter. The crossed-sabers insignia on the man’s dark blue Stetson and the shoulder boards with their two pairs of double bars told Slaughter he was a captain in the United States cavalry.
Slaughter nodded. “Hello, Captain. I’m John Slaughter, Sheriff of Cochise County.”
“Captain Brice Donelson, sir,” the officer said with a polite nod. “You’re almost out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”
“No more so than you,” Slaughter replied.
That brought a chuckle from Captain Donelson. “Yes, sir, we’re both almost at the tail-end of our bailiwicks, aren’t we?” He nodded toward the other men sitting on their horses in the distance behind Slaughter. “That looks like a posse to me. Are you out here chasing outlaws or renegade Apaches?”
“Outlaws. A bunch that robbed the bank in Tombstone yesterday morning.”
Donelson took off his hat and mopped his forehead with one end of the dark blue bandanna he wore around his neck. He was around thirty, with
dark, slightly wavy hair and a neatly trimmed mustache.
“I hadn’t heard any rumors about bronco Apaches recently, so I figured it must be owlhoots. Sorry to hear about the bank.” He waved the hat at the wagons behind him. “As you can see, my men and I are escorting a supply train from Fort Bowie to Fort Huachuca. If it weren’t for that, I’d offer to give you a hand running those bank robbers to ground. They haven’t crossed the border yet?”
“I don’t know,” Slaughter answered honestly. “They’re somewhere ahead of us in the Mules, headed south.”
Donelson made a face. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, then.”
“It’s worse than that. We’re outnumbered by more than three to one.”
“Well . . . far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Sheriff, but if it was me I think I might turn around and head back to Tombstone. It’s unlikely you’re going to catch up to them in time anyway, and I’m not sure the bank’s money is worth getting that many good men killed.”
“I might consider it, if the blasted thieves hadn’t also kidnapped my wife.”
Donelson stiffened and sat straighter in the saddle. “What’s that? Kidnapped your wife? My God! I’m sorry, Sheriff. They’re holding her as a hostage?”
“I assume they are. All I know is that they carried her off when they made their getaway from Tombstone. So you can understand, Captain, why I’m not in a hurry to turn back.”
“Yes, of course,” Donelson said solemnly. He put his hat back on. “You have my sympathy, Sheriff. . . .”
As the officer hesitated, Slaughter considered what he ought to do next. In all his life, he had never been the sort of man who begged for help, even when he needed it. He hated the idea of doing it now.
On the other hand, Viola’s safety was much more important than his pride, and if he could persuade this cavalry captain to throw in with him, he could make a dash after the outlaws without having to wait for reinforcements from Tombstone to catch up.
Even if that happened, the odds of them catching up to the gang before the bandidos crossed the border into Mexico were slim. If Slaughter couldn’t ask his posse men to invade another country, he certainly couldn’t expect a U.S. cavalry patrol to do so. But with Viola’s life possibly at stake, he had to do everything in his power to save her.
After a long moment of silence, Donelson said, “You know I’d like to help you, Sheriff, but it would mean going against my orders.”
“I understand.” Slaughter couldn’t keep the bleak tone out of his voice.
Donelson looked like something had just occurred to him. “These bank robbers, did you get a good look at them?”
“Good enough. I killed one of them with a shotgun.”
“Would you say that they were Americans?”
Slaughter leaned forward a little in the saddle. He thought he knew why Donelson had asked that question. “No, Captain, I would not. I believe they were Mexicans.”
Strictly speaking, Slaughter knew that was an assumption on his part. There were plenty of hombres of Mexican descent north of the border, some who had been born and raised in the United States. Those vaqueros were just as American as he was.
From the way the gang had lit a shuck toward Mexico, he had figured that was where they were from, and still believed that was the most likely possibility.
“An armed incursion onto American soil by foreign nationals isn’t something to take lightly, Sheriff,” Donelson said. “They could represent a threat to this supply train, and it’s my duty to protect those wagons any way I see fit. It’ll still take us several days to reach Fort Huachuca. I believe I can see my way clear to leaving a few of my men to guard the wagons while the rest of us accompany you after those invaders.”
It wasn’t like the Mexican army had crossed the border, but if Donelson wanted to rationalize his actions that way, Slaughter wasn’t going to argue with him. The end result was that he now had an outside chance of rescuing Viola, and that was the only thing that mattered to him.
“Thank you, Captain,” Slaughter said. “That would be a great help.”
Donelson smiled tightly. “One thing, Sheriff. Under no circumstances will I lead my men across the border or venture into Mexico myself. I sympathize with your concern over your wife, but that’s out of the question.”
Slaughter nodded. “I understand. We’ll catch up to them before they cross the border.”
He added under his breath, “We have to . . .”
* * *
Captain Donelson had forty men in his patrol. He left fifteen of them with the supply train under the command of a grizzled sergeant and brought twenty-five of them with him as he joined Slaughter’s posse. Combined with the men from Tombstone, that made the odds pretty close to even if they had to do battle with the outlaws.
The cavalry troopers had the look of seasoned fighters, and that made all the difference in the world. Slaughter felt better about their chances than he had since leaving Tombstone.
Luther Gentry rode alongside him as the group started into the mountains. “We was mighty lucky to run into these soldier boys, Sheriff.”
Slaughter agreed. “Yes, we were. I hope that luck stays with us for a while.”
If anything, Donelson pushed his men even harder than Slaughter did with the posse. They kept up the pace all day, stopping only occasionally to let the horses rest. When they reached the top of the pass, Slaughter called a halt, and he and Donelson used field glasses to search for any sign of the bandits ahead of them.
Slaughter’s spirits sank a little when he didn’t spot their quarry, but he refused to let himself lose hope or give up. Surrender just wasn’t part of his personality.
“Are we going to push on?” Donelson asked quietly.
“Damned right we are.”
By late afternoon, they had descended the southern slopes and reached the flats that led to the border. As they rode beside each other at the head of the combined posse and cavalry patrol, Donelson mused, “I wonder if there’s any chance the men you’re after stopped in La Reata.”
Slaughter frowned. “You mean the little village that’s up here a few more miles?”
“That’s right. I went through there with a patrol a year or so ago. There’s not much to it, but a gang of thirsty bandidos might want to stop there and cut the trail dust, maybe fool around with a few of the señoritas in the cantinas.”
Slaughter hadn’t thought about that. He had figured the outlaws would head straight for the border, but as he looked at the tracks they were following, he had to admit that the trail led toward La Reata.
He had tracked some rustlers there once and caught up to them in one of the cantinas. The three men had surrendered immediately when he confronted them, even though he’d been alone. Slaughter hadn’t been a lawman for very long, but he’d already had a reputation. Lawbreakers who resisted arrest when he went after them seldom lived to stand trial.
Like Donelson, he remembered La Reata as being little more than a wide place in the trail, but it might be a good idea to check the village out. The border was close, and since they hadn’t caught up to the bandits yet, Slaughter’s last, best hope might be that they had stopped in La Reata.
“When we get close, I’ll wait until dark and then take a few men to scout the place,” he said. “If the bandits are there, I can send word back to you.”
Donelson nodded. “That’s a good idea. If they are there and have your wife with them, the last thing we want to do is spook them. That might set off a fight before we’re ready.”
“Yes, I’d like to get Viola out of there before any shooting starts if I can. Assuming she’s there.”
“Viola,” Donelson mused. “A lovely name, Sheriff, if you don’t mind me saying so.” In a brisker tone, he went on, “If you can free your wife and signal me, I can lead the rest of the men into the village and hit the bandits hard.”
“The harder the better.” Slaughter’s voice was like flint. “As long as I rescue Mr
s. Slaughter and recover the bank’s money, I don’t care if I have any prisoners to take back to Tombstone.”
Chapter 13
Chaco’s men bellied up to the bar inside the cantina, led by Gabriel, who shouted for tequila. Several young, dusky-skinned women wearing low-cut blouses and long, colorful skirts circulated among them, laughing as the outlaws embraced them and swatted their rumps.
It was a raucous scene, but Viola wasn’t particularly shocked. She had been raised around rough cowboys and knew their ways. These outlaws weren’t much different.
Mercedes led her toward an arched doorway in the rear of the room. A beaded curtain hung over the opening. She pushed it aside and took Viola into a hallway with a door on each side. She inclined her head toward the door on the left. “My office.” She opened the door on the right. “My bedroom. I thought you might like to wash off some of the trail dust.”
After the way Mercedes had threatened her as they entered the cantina, Viola was a little surprised the woman was being nice to her. She wasn’t going to turn down the chance to clean up, though.
For the back of a bordertown cantina, Mercedes’ bedroom was well furnished with a thick woven rug on the floor, a four-poster bed, a dressing table with a chair and mirror, a wardrobe, a rocking chair, and colorful yellow and blue curtains over the single window. A gilt cross was mounted on one wall.
That was probably due to Chaco’s influence, Viola thought, although it was possible Mercedes was religious, too. The fact that she ran a cantina and looked like a trollop might not be an accurate reflection of what was in her heart. Viola tried not to judge people, although sometimes it was difficult not to.
A basin of water and a cloth sat on the dressing table. Mercedes waved toward it. “Help yourself. There may be some clothes in the wardrobe that will fit you, too, if you’d prefer not to dress like a man.”
“I’m fine with what I’m wearing.” Viola realized that answer might have sounded curt, so she added, “Thank you for the offer, though.”
Mercedes shrugged. “Suit yourself, Señorita Smith. If that’s your real name.”
Texas John Slaughter Page 7