by Jake Logan
“Go back to the house and keep your eyes open for anyone leaving who looks like trouble. Try to hold them, but if they show arms, kill them.”
The riders left for the house.
Francisco said, “I have some horses I keep saddled out in back just in case. Will Angela come with us?”
Slocum nodded. Recovered, Angela nodded and ran with them around the casa. Slocum drew up a cinch for her and tossed her on a horse. She nodded that all was well with her and gathered the reins.
“We don’t know if they left the house. Let’s check there first.” Slocum on his mount led the way under the stars, down the road reflecting the moon between the knee-high irrigated crops beside it.
Two house guards came out back, and their boss asked them if any men without women had left.
“A few left shortly after Señor Slocum left.”
“Which direction?”
“West, when they left here.”
“Did anyone know them?”
“One was Colonel Donovan. Juan said that he used to be in the army.”
“What about a one-eared man?” Slocum asked.
“Sí, I saw him leave too after Donovan left.”
“Maybe they have left the ranchero?” Francisco asked Slocum.
“We won’t know until your guards return.”
Francisco made a pained face in the moonlight. “Why do you think they want to kill the pistoleros?”
“Because they helped me and know much of this Cockroach deal.”
“What is all the commotion about out here?” Mitch asked, coming out the kitchen door.
Slocum held his finger to his lips and lowered his own voice. “We think some assassins were here tonight and may still be on your place.”
In the starlight, Mitch frowned. “On my ranch?”
“There was a man here named Donovan. A suspect who I think is the leader.”
“I know that man. What has he done?”
“You better watch him. He’s connected to the others I don’t trust.”
“What is their purpose?”
“I think to learn if I was going back after Salazar and maybe to kill the three men who helped me.”
“Holy shit. How did you learn all this?”
“Angela saw a man here tonight that was in the village in the mountains, who had lost an ear.”
Mitch nodded. “I saw him once and wondered who had sent him an invitation.”
“La Cucaracha did, is my guess.”
“Oh, damn. What about the pistoleros?”
“I sent four good men to the workers’ village,” Francisco said. “To be sure they were warned and safe.”
“Where did the others who left the party go?” Mitch asked.
“Patrón, the guards here say they rode west.”
Slocum had dismounted. “But they may have circled back.”
“Who do these devils work for anyway?”
“Well, Mitch, I think they all work for the Cockroach. This man Donovan is smarter than his foot soldiers.”
Mitch shook his head in disbelief. “Who can we trust?”
“Us.” Slocum laughed and hugged Angela, who was under his wing.
16
Their naked bodies sent off sparks in the feather bed. Slocum, at last, hunched his throbbing dick through Angela’s wet gates. Hard-to-catch breathing racked out of their throats as the power in his legs and hips drove his shaft deep inside her with each plunge, causing her jaw to drop open as pleasure swallowed her. His eyes half closed in satisfaction, he enjoyed the sheer forces created between them as they soared over the high road of passion.
Her butt lifted off the mattress, she thrust her hips at his swollen erection. Harder and faster, she fought to reach the mountain peak, her mouth open as she moaned with the excitement and pleasure. She at last strained against him and he came deep inside her. They collapsed in a pile, mouth feeding off mouth, snuggled together, still attached as their excitement seeped into flushed relaxation. Her arms wrapped tight around him, she smothered her firm breasts against his chest.
“Let’s stay here forever.” Angela threw her arms aside and snuggled her back in the soft mattress of goose down.
Braced up over her, Slocum smiled down at her sleepy eyes and the relaxed look on her face. “Nothing I’d like better.”
“Whew, this has been as exciting as my honeymoon. A new dress, a great dance and a party. Such a long ways from being practically kidnapped by a man twice my age, who awed me half to death, took me to a priest he woke up to wed us and then took my virginity in a haystack and led me to this fuzzy state of pleasure in a stable. My head spun for days and nights after that—it was so wonderful then for a dumb girl from a small village. I didn’t live in this world then though.”
He used the side of his index finger to lift her chin and took the honey from her mouth. Licking his lips, he shook his head and asked, “What did the hay smell like?”
She laughed. “A very strong, dried grass smell, but who cared? My husband was a strong lover, almost like you, and he lasted long. I thought everyone had sex three or more times a day back then.”
Then with a mischievous smile, she snickered and shook her head in obvious disbelief. “Should we dress and find breakfast—?” A knock on the door made them both frown.
Slocum reached over for his Colt and cocked it. “Yes?”
“Señor, the patrón asks you come at once to the great hall.”
“I’m coming.” He set the gun down and hopped out of bed to dress. He pulled his shirt over his head first. Then he fought the leather britches on and sat down to put on socks and yank on his high-top boots. She tied on the silk kerchief around his neck and looked him in the eye. “What is wrong?”
“I have no idea. Dress and join me.”
She agreed and jumped up to struggle into her silk dress. He buttoned up the back, and she put on her slippers as they headed for the door, reaching down to pull them on. She reset the dress’s waist in the hall, then hurried to keep up with him. At last, trying to tame down her mussed hair, she entered the hall beside him. Slocum gratefully saw his three men there, with sombreros in their hands.
“What is wrong?” Slocum asked when he acknowledged them.
Mitch turned in his high backed chair. “You were right. They did try to kill my men.”
“Who was it?” Slocum looked at the three pistoleros standing aside.
“We don’t know his name. We call him One Ear.”
Slocum narrowed his eyes to look hard at his friend. “The one at the party?”
“Sí.”
“Will he talk?”
Mitch shook his head. “He quit breathing.”
Slocum showed Angela to a chair and took another beside his friend. “How did he die?”
“He tried to kill Cherrycow, but he probably chose the wrong one to start with. He made enough noise to awake Cherrycow, who grabbed his hunting knife and cut his throat when he climbed in his window.”
“Good for him,” Slocum said. “Who do you think he is?”
“I had seen him before on the border, but I don’t know what they called him.”
“That the only one who tried anything?” Slocum searched the others for answers.
“The arrival of the guards scared them off,” Obregón said. “We know now that there were four more riders. We found their tracks, but the guards trailing them must have spooked them.”
Francisco came in from the kitchen.
Mitch waved him over. “What did you learn?”
“Those riders who were at the workers’ village last night, we tracked them back to here and lost them in the dust of all the others.”
McCarty nodded and turned back to Slocum. “You discovered them, but how I don’t know. What do I do now?”
“I believe that Salazar sent them, concerned that I was going to go back to get him. Donovan apparently didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t going to pursue Salazar,” Slocum said.
McCart
y pounded the table. “Is there no end to these bastards?”
Slocum shook his head. “No end till we get Salazar.”
“Bring these men some food,” the patrón said over his shoulder. Someone in the doorway called back, “It is coming.”
“You men sit down.”
The three pistoleros looked at one another.
McCarty slapped the table. “Sit down. These chairs won’t bite you.”
The men moved quickly to take seats.
Soon platters of food and fruit were brought by the kitchen workers. Goblets were filled with wine, and the pistoleros nodded in approval. They began to eat, sharing quiet words. Angela sipped some fresh-squeezed orange juice, listening closely and offering some quiet words to Slocum.
He agreed with her comments. The next trip to the mountains would be fraught with ambushes to stop him. That meant they feared him—good.
After lunch, Slocum shook hands with his men and told them he’d call on them soon to go back, but not to tell anyone. “I want surprise to be on our side—of timing if nothing else—now that he knows we’ll be coming for him.”
“Slocum, when should we leave?” Obregón asked.
“We need to be secret, but within the next two days I think we need to go back.”
“Gracias, we will be ready.”
When they were through eating, Mitch thanked them and told them he would pray for their success. “May God help you.”
The men left, wiping their greasy lips with their kerchiefs. It would be something to tell their coworkers, that they had eaten in the great hall. Like Angela, who had been so impressed with the party and her new dress, these men had touched the aristocracy of their world.
Horses were being shod by the blacksmiths. Supplies loaded into panniers. Packsaddles repaired. Quietly the hacienda worked to get the party ready to return to the Madres. Slocum cleaned his arms and oiled them. He was working at a table in the flower garden under some shade with his pistol parts spread out on newspaper. Angela had gone to take a bath in another room down the hall with two young girls helping her. Slocum looked up when someone approached his work bench.
“Slocum, I came to thank you again.” Martina took a seat across the table from him.
He studied the .44’s bore and, satisfied that it was clean, set it down on the paper. The woman who sat opposite him still looked tired. Her once-bright brown eyes remained dimmed.
“Martina, I hope you can find your way back.”
“I am trying, but it is hard.”
“I can only imagine how hard it is. Do you recall anything about Salazar that would help me?”
“It is all a blur. I can’t even reconstruct it in my mind.”
He nodded. “Do you recall his actions or anything when he first came back to see you each time?”
“I remember he would clap his hands, and then I don’t recall much else after that. I could only recall how sore I was after I regained my mind. I could only imagine what had happened to me.”
“They told you they would murder Reg if you didn’t obey them?”
She nodded. “I couldn’t believe anything else. I believed in my heart that they held him as a prisoner.”
“This Cockroach, he’s a mind twister.” Slocum shook his head. “I recall a surgeon during the war who could control people’s pain when he had to operate without anesthesia. I have been trying to think of what they called that—hypno . . . something. It only came to me yesterday. I was thinking all this time about spells cast by witch doctors.”
“What is it?” She asked and reached over to grasp his forearm. “You mean this is the thing he used on me?”
“It froze your mind, and you did what he commanded you to do.”
“That and I truly believed he held my son and that they would kill him if I left him.”
“I am afraid that is what he is doing to other people.”
“Where could he learn how to do such a thing?”
“Some professor in France maybe taught him this business. I recall hearing they had run the man out of England.”
“Wouldn’t that be very expensive?”
“His father is very rich, so it would be no problem for him. He no doubt traveled overseas and learned how to do that.”
“Will I ever escape his hold?”
“I think in time it wears off, but it is timed with a hand clap, so you will need to be careful.”
“I shall, and thanks. Perhaps now I can return to my family as a wife and mother and not fear that his hold on me will strengthen again.”
“Slocum?” Obregón removed his sombrero and bowed his head when he joined them. “Excuse me, Señora McCarty. I came to tell Slocum something and did not realize you were here.”
“What is wrong? It is all right, she will understand.”
“I talked to some packers today who brought some gold out of the Sierras. They say there is a large party of bandits waiting above the Strycker Hacienda. The packers said they heard the bandits were waiting for you.”
“Good.” Slocum smiled. “They may wish they’d stayed home.”
“Oh, be careful.” Martina’s look registered her alarm.
“Don’t worry. I have a surprise for them.” Slocum stood up and reached over to hug her head. “You will recover. Your whole life is ahead of you.”
“You two and the others are very brave men. May God go with you.”
“Sí,” Slocum agreed. “We will need his help too.”
After Martina left the garden to the two men, Slocum put his cleaned revolver back together and snapped in the cylinder. Then he spun it gently on his sleeve. Satisfied they were alone, he nodded at his man. “We will do something to them. Go find Cherrycow. I want these assassins scouted out. So we will put off leaving for another day.”
“We can do that,” Obregón agreed.
“Maybe we can come around behind them, where they least expect us to be.”
“He and I will know in two days and be back here.”
“Be careful, my amigos. Don’t take any chances. I fear if I go they will get word and ambush us. This way we will have a plan, when you two find them.”
“What else?”
“I have to ask Martina one more question.”
“What is that?”
“I’ll tell you when I get the answer. Talk to you later.” They parted, and Slocum hurried to locate Martina inside the casa. He found her at a writing desk in an alcove, and she looked up from her correspondence.
“What is it?”
“Can you recall how many times Salazar clapped his hands to put you under?”
“I think three times . . . yes, it was three times. Why?”
“I may need it sometime if I get in a tight place.”
“Hmm, that is strange.”
“Why?”
“I had never really thought that was the sign that put me under his spell before we talked today.”
Slocum agreed. “I’m remembering more about that doctor and how he used it on his patients.”
Later, Slocum found Angela, who was sewing new britches and a long-sleeved blouse for the trip back. She and two women were cutting and sewing like mad. When she noticed that Slocum was in the room, she tried to hide her handiwork. “This was to be a surprise for you.”
“Sorry to spoil your plans, but if you get surrounded by the bandits, quickly clap your hands three times.”
She frowned very seriously at him. “What will that do?”
“I hope it will paralyze them. It was how he had control over Martina.”
“Oh. When will we leave here?”
“We’ll be here two days longer.”
“Great, we will have this project completed. Two more days, girls.”
“Good,” the older woman said and smiled at him.
He bent over, kissed Angela’s cheek and then headed out the doorway. There were many more things he needed to do. Who else at the hacienda, besides Cherrycow, could make bows and arrows to deliv
er blasting powder sticks? He better go find Francisco. He’d be the only one who knew that, and Slocum wanted something done along those lines.
He needed several armed and fused half sticks of blasting powder, ready to use. This was a poor man’s cannon fire that would disorient the enemy. They might need several sticks ready to light and fire. This time he was going to take that damn Cockroach down and his organization with him.
17
Two days later, Slocum and his three pistoleros, along with Angela, left the hacienda under the cover of night. Three o’clock in the morning. They rode out as silent as five riders with four packhorses trailing them could. There was no moon; they would have to rely on the stars to guide them. But the desert has much more light at night than the forests of hardwood or pine in the American South where Slocum grew up. Leading the way, he felt pleased about the information his scouts had brought back. The estimated force camped beyond the Strycker Hacienda was a dozen men. Salazar had misjudged his enemy, unless these hombres were bulldogs, and Slocum doubted they were his best men. No way this hombre would expose his toughest men first. Slocum turned in the saddle to look back over his team, the acrid dust tickling his nose, and he decided everything was going fine—so far.
They stopped early the first night since they’d been riding since before dawn. In midafternoon the next day they reached the first water holes. Strycker ran outside to greet them. “Ah, señora, it is so good to see you and Slocum here. Did you have a good trip so far?”
“Oh, yes,” Angela said as she dismounted. “Thank you.”
“Are you and your men going back into the mountains?” Strycker looked upset about it.
Slocum nodded, then swung his chap-clad leg over the cantle and stepped down. “I don’t want Salazar’s men to know we are here. They’re camped close by.”
“I was going to tell you that they are at the crossing.”
“We can handle them.”
“Would you want to use some of my men?”
Slocum shook his head to stop him. “Not till dark. We must be quiet.”
“Whatever you say.” The man turned to Angela. “You look very well rested, my dear.”