by Jake Logan
“Gracias, señora.”
“Angela,” she told him and offered him a selection from a large tray of food.
“Ah, so much to choose from. I don’t know what to eat.”
“Here,” she said and began to fill his plate with fire-grilled meat, ripe fruit ready to eat, and pastries.
“That is plenty,” he protested, trying to get her to stop.
She rose and put some food on Slocum’s plate. “There, now you can talk between bites.”
“You know the Apaches well?” Slocum asked the man.
“I was kidnapped as a young man and lived among them for years in the Madres. I even met Cochise when he was an old man. But one day, my wife and young son were picking berries with some others, and the Mexican army came and shot them. I was very sad, so I came back to my own people.”
“The Apaches will know where we can find this Cockroach. If we can find them.”
“Sí, they will know. I know. I know how sad it is to lose a wife. I will try to find out from them where this bandit is hiding.”
“Good. We’ll ride in the morning for the Madres to find her.”
“Will I need a gun?”
“You better have one. But don’t worry, I’ll have a gun and ammo for you in the morning.”
“Gracias for the food. I will be here then, Slocum,” the man said and quickly exited the kitchen, obviously too upset over something to stay there another minute.
Angela winked at him. “Too important a place for him to be in here.”
Slocum agreed.
Leona rejoined them and looked after the departing Apache. “Cherrycow is a very loyal man.”
“I imagine he is,” Slocum said. “I’ve been thinking. Angela and I need to look less like gringos. Can you find us some mountain clothing?”
“Buckskin, huh? Big, well-used sombrero for you?”
“Fine.”
“How big are you?” she asked Angela and had her stand. Then, as if satisfied with knowing her size, she told her gracias and to sit down. “I’ll have the clothes laid out in your room tonight.”
“Thanks,” Slocum said and turned to Angela. “I’m going down to look over the horses Francisco selected. Not that I don’t trust him—”
“Go,” Angela said, shooing him away. “I better pack my few things today too.”
He nodded and kissed her, then was on his way to the blacksmith shop. Gustoph, the man in charge, showed him the packsaddles and all the horse gear. The gear looked to be in good repair—Slocum also ordered some extra rope and girths for the journey. Gustoph agreed that he might need them.
The short-coupled bulldog horses, as they were called, were lined up in the alleyway being shod two at a time. The air was full of coal smoke from the forge used to heat and form the iron shoes. Mountain horses were small by most men’s calculation, seldom over twelve or thirteen hands, but they were sure-footed and thick muscled. Real leaders, they could climb slopes larger horses would crumble off of. Slocum had great respect for them in the mountains.
“I gave you Baldy,” Gustoph said. “He’s bald-faced, but he is the toughest horse on the ranch.”
“I’ll take good care of him.”
“I hope you can find the patrón’s wife. She is a lovely woman. We all miss her.”
“We’ll try, mi amigo.”
He made it back for lunch with Angela and met her in the great hall. “Leona wants you to try on the clothing she laid out for you in our room.”
After their meal he went back to the bedroom and found the fringed buckskin pants. They fit. Next he tried on the pullover shirt, and it fit as well.
Angela nodded in approval. “I think they belong to Mitch.”
He took off the shirt and agreed. “I figure you’re right.” Then he removed the britches. “I’ll save them for the ride.”
She came across the room and hugged him. “Now we can take a siesta.”
“Siesta, my ass.” And he quickly kissed her. “You can stay here tomorrow if you like.”
She poked him in his rock-hard stomach. “You aren’t leaving me.”
“Oh, all right.”
She used both hands and shoved him backward in the bed and landed on top of him. “You are not getting away that easily.”
His flesh warmed everywhere her fingertips stroked his chest.
Oh, hell, who needed a siesta anyway? Slocum thought.
4
Dawn found Slocum and his pack train and riders headed west of the last orchards on McCarty’s land. Things were going well, and even his bruja, Angela, was surprised they’d managed to get it all together so easily. Slocum knew everyone on the hacienda wanted him off on a successful hunt for their lady—including himself.
The Madres were several days’ ride to the west, though their sturdy mountain horses should make good time. Their group was well armed, carrying lots of supplies and a purse loaded with Mitch’s money that he’d insisted Slocum take with him—Slocum expected to arrive at the base of the mountains with no problems in a few days.
“Where will we enter the Madres?” Angela asked, riding beside him as the day’s heat and dust rose in their faces.
“Maybe Cuervo. There aren’t a lot of people there to report that we are going into the interior, if this Cockroach has any informers.”
“He probably does. Most of those kinds of men offer a generous reward for such information.”
“I’ll tell the men to spread the rumor we are simply going to the Kinsey Mine to see an old friend. If they miss the McCarty brand on our horses, that might help mislead them.”
“You have thought of everything.” She shook her head as if amazed.
He reached over and clapped her leg. “No, not enough. I’m counting on you to help me.”
“If I think of anything, I’ll tell you.”
He nodded, stood in the stirrups to look back and surveyed the line of his riders and pack animals. Deciding that everything looked good, he settled back down. “We’ll water our stock at Coyote Wells tonight and ride on.”
“We won’t camp there?”
He shook his head. “Those desert outposts are usually controlled by trail pirates and are a good place to get killed in your sleep.”
“I guess I had not thought about that.”
“Have you stayed there before?”
“A man in my past and I stayed there one night.”
Slocum nodded. “Maybe you were lucky.”
“Maybe he was a pirate himself.” Then she laughed. “I never heard them called trail pirates before. But the name suits many of them.”
He agreed with a nod.
“I was young and didn’t know about my powers back then. He was older and I thought he was so handsome. He wore a silver-mounted holster and acted so powerful with the black kid gloves he wore all the time.”
“What became of him?”
“They hung him.”
“Oh.”
“The law in a small village arrested him for killing two unarmed men in a card game. There was a trial and the judge sentenced him to hang.
“I stole his horse from the livery and rode off the night before his execution. I cried all night long over losing him. Then when the sun came up, his face appeared before me in the sky and he told me not to cry anymore for him. That he was in peace and the money hidden in his saddlebags would take care of me.”
Slocum nodded. “What did that teach you?”
“That I had powers and was a bruja. Others don’t see and hear such things, only a bruja would. Like I knew when I first saw you talking to people and them scorning you that you needed me to help you.”
“I was lucky then.”
She shook her head and gave him a sly smile. “No, it was my good fortune you came along. That village was full of prejudiced people who hated me. I needed a new place and the real man who came along.”
“How old were you when you rode off with him?”
“Not very old. He came to the village where I lived and I hear
d his silver spurs before I ever saw him ride into the square on a powerful black horse that day. I believed no great man like him would even look upon a skinny girl like me. But later he said he saw me that day and I cast a spell on him. He came back again three more times looking for me.”
“How long before you saw him again and he took you away?”
“Two years, about. He rode in and I was busy washing clothes at the well. He stood by his black horse as the gelding drank deep from the trough. Impatiently he slapped the ends of his reins on his leg. When the horse was through, he walked over, still slapping his leather pants.”
“ ‘What is your name, señorita?’ he said.
“‘Angela,’ I told him.
“ ‘You have a lover in this village?’ he asked me.
“My eyes must have bugged out looking at him. What did he mean, lover? My tongue was glued down. I had no answer.
“‘I thought not,’ he said. ‘Come, I will buy you a new dress and we will be married.’
“ ‘What about this w-wash?’ I stuttered.
“ ‘They will find it,’ he said, dismissing it as nothing. Then he motioned for me to come to him, and he picked me up in his arms like I was a feather. He stepped up in the saddle and, still holding me, asked where my mother was at.
“I pointed over his head at the small church. ‘With the Virgin Mary.’
“And he replied, ‘Then no one here will cry for you.’
“He rode out of the village with me in his arms. Late that night he woke up a priest, who married us. After the short ceremony, he took me to a snug cabin in the mountains. We stayed a week up there on our honeymoon, then he took me to a woman who made three dresses for me. I thought he was rich. No one that I knew had ever owned three good dresses.”
“What did he do next?” Slocum asked.
“I was so awed by him and his whirlwind ways with me in bed, I didn’t know or care. I guess he gambled a lot and maybe even shot men for their money. Later I learned his name was not what he’d told me. But for almost a year, I was his simpleminded bride.”
Slocum laughed. “Some story. What was his name?”
“The one I knew him by was Franco Cruces. But they said he was Juan López and he was wanted in Texas.”
“So you were Mrs. Cruces?”
“I still am. I should wear black, huh?”
“How long have you been in mourning?”
She chewed on her lower lip as if she was counting before she spoke. “Maybe five years.”
“Time to wear what you want to.”
“Good,” she said, and she sparkled in the blazing sun riding beside him.
They arrived in Coyote Wells at twilight. Slocum paid for the water for their animals and also to fill their canteens and two small barrels. The price came to three pesos. The man in the cantina-store stared hard at the silver coins Slocum put on the bar. Then, as if satisfied, the man nodded and picked them up with a muttered, “Gracias.”
The riffraff standing at the bar looked him over and then turned back to a magpie-mouthed puta seated on the bar, who leaned back with her black hair–mounded crotch exposed and her short legs kicking back and forth to entertain them as she chattered nonstop.
One man, chewing on a stick, followed Slocum to the door. “You want some pussy?”
Slocum shook his head.
“No one’s used her today. You could have her for a peso.”
Slocum would rather use his hand to jack off than listen to her mouth the whole time they were in bed. “No, thanks.”
“You may not find any for days going into those mountains.”
“I’ll take my chances.” With that, he was outside under the palm-frond porch, hoping the pimp was gone.
“Anything there?” Angela asked when he rejoined them.
“A puta for a peso.”
She laughed.
He nodded in approval at his men, who went about armed with rifles, just in case. Not showing them off or waving them around, but merely holding them in their hands, ready if they needed them, and they shoved them back inside their scabbards before mounting up. Slocum’s train moved out, and he knew they had drawn more than one curious look from the loafers around the stopover.
Camped an hour later, the three men found dried sticks and dead mesquite branches for Angela to cook over. The coyotes started yapping at the dark. Jesús took a long gun and moved out of the firelight to keep an eye out for anyone or anything that could be a danger. The others sat in the firelight and laughed when Slocum told them about the magpie puta in the store-cantina. Angela fussed with the cooking, busily making flour tortillas with her hands, cooking them on a round metal sheet over the fire and boiling some beans.
Slocum took his lookout, Jesús, a cup of coffee laced with brown sugar. The man nodded politely and set his Winchester aside to take the cup in both hands.
“It is hot,” Slocum warned him.
“Ah, but to have real coffee is a luxury for me.” He blew and then sipped on the tin cup, which he cradled in his kerchief to protect his hands. “And sugar is even better.”
“A pistolero doesn’t have coffee at his casa?”
“I have five children and a wife. Coffee is very costly.”
Slocum nodded that he understood. “You must like this work.”
“It is better than irrigating and hoeing crops. I have been a pistolero since I was sixteen.”
“Were you born on that hacienda?”
“Oh, sí. I would live no other place.”
“Have you been to the Madres before?”
“Sí. I met my wife up there and went back to get her.”
“Does she have relatives up there?”
“Sí.”
“Would they know about this Cockroach?”
“I don’t know—but I will ask them if I see any of them.”
“Angela will be ready to feed us soon. I’ll whistle and you can come eat. I don’t think the bandits up here are that industrious.”
“What does that mean, in—?”
“It means too sorry to get off their asses.”
Jesús laughed aloud. “Sí, I savvy that.”
Another mournful coyote cut loose. “They sure are yapping a lot.”
Jesús shrugged. “What is it anyway?”
“Just a coyote,” Slocum said and went back to the fire.
After the meal, the three men told Slocum they would take turns keeping guard and promised to wake him before dawn. He thanked them, then took his and Angela’s bedroll on his shoulder, and they went out in the desert to be alone. After he had kicked the sticks and rocks out of the way, he rolled the bed out. Then he toed off his boots and shucked off his pants.
She unfastened all the buttons of her dress. Then she took her sandals off. Her breasts gleamed in the moonlight, soft and tempting. She gave a little shimmy, and her dress fell to her ankles. Then she toed the garment to the edge of the bedroll and stood naked before him. He let his gaze feast on those twin mounds of flesh that swayed gently as she took a deep breath. As he stared at her beauty, his rod straightened and she smiled. The nest of darkness nestled at the V of her thighs beckoned to him. He grew even harder. She hurried to get under the covers. He soon joined her, his rolled up gun and holster placed near his head.
They snuggled like lost lovers under the blankets, with him feeling her solid breasts and rubbing her flat belly, kissing her in open-mouthed fashion. Then their hands searched deeper until she helped him on top and he centered on entering her. They were subdued in their efforts and whispering about the finer things as he pumped his iron-hard erection into her, and their efforts heated up. At last deep inside came an eruption, and she raised her butt off the pallet to meet his charge. They collapsed in a heap to spend the night in each other’s arms.
His last thought before he surrendered to sleep was, What a bruja to have for my own. Thank you, Mrs. Cruces.
5
The second day of the trip went uneventfully, and they c
amped that evening at a ranchero owned by a man Slocum knew, Hans Strycker. The tall German met him in the yard and nodded.
“I see you must be going gold hunting,” he said, shaking Slocum’s hand and looking over his pack train. He doffed his felt hat for Angela. “You are so unfortunate, child, to be going up there with this wild man.”
“He’s all right,” she said and smiled at Hans, then bounced out of the saddle to shake his hand.
“Tell your men when they get the horses cared for to come to the back door. The help will feed them. You can come to the house. I am taking this lovely lady inside. Such bad manners you have.”
“Her name is Angela. Mrs. Cruces to you.”
Strycker waved him away and, with Angela on his arm, headed toward the lighted house. The two, busy talking, had no time for Slocum. He told his three men where to water and put up the horses, how to secure their food and where to sleep. They teased him and laughed about the man stealing his woman from him and how he better catch up with them.
“She’ll be fine,” he said with a laugh and started in the starlight for the main casa. Strycker had managed to ranch here, practically unharmed, for many years. Living in the path of the good and the bad that filtered in and out of the mountains was not easy. Perhaps he was tougher than Slocum thought, because the German knew how to survive and profit.
Angela brought Slocum a goblet of wine and led him into the dining room.
“Hans, tell me about this Cockroach,” Slocum said, joining them.
“You don’t know him?” Hans asked, crossing the room with a new bottle of wine.
“Never heard of him before this deal about him kidnapping Martina McCarty.”
“Thinks he’s some kinda damn generalissimo. He’s been sending his men down here like he owns this trail. But so far he wants no war with me.”
Slocum nodded. “Where is he staying?”
Hans shook his head. “I have no idea. I never go up into the mountains very far.”
“Did you know that he had Martina with him when he came back?”
Hans shook his head. “No, but they had lost several men. I saw that many had been injured and shot up. They did not stay long here, only watered their animals and went on. Some were as much as two days behind the main party. They hauled many of the wounded ones back on travois.”