There was never a preacher around, or even an executioner. Only the warden and his guards, all wearing their mocking, eager smiles.
Seeing that grin again on the warden’s face as he shuffled up the steps behind Arguello, Cuno knew one last blast of hot fury. He hoped he could return just once to this miserable world after he’d passed to haunt Henry Castle until the man died of a long, slow stroke that blew up his heart like a good portion of Magic Dynamite.
When Cuno and the other condemned prisoners had been released from their chains by the four guards who’d followed them onto the platform, the nooses were placed around their necks and the knots tightened. Cuno felt his pulse throb against the rope digging into his neck. Below him, on the floor of the prison yard, the warden turned and shouted for the singer to stop singing now, or he’d join the condemned on the platform.
The song broke off abruptly, mid-note.
The warden turned toward the condemned, flashed that smile again.
“Anyone have anything they’d like to say?”
Cuno had lots he’d like to have said, but he saw little point in it. Castle was only mocking him and the others again, as always. The other men must have realized that he was only trying to goad them into making fools of themselves. All, including big Mule Zimmerman standing slumped to Cuno’s left, remained silent.
On the other side of Zimmerman, Frank Skinner, who must have been forty or older, stood with bent knees, silver-blond hair blowing around in the dry morning breeze. The Pit had finally almost gotten the train robber who had to be tough as whang leather to have survived as long as he had.
Now, like the others, he was just waiting for the relief of a quick death.
Cuno hoped the sandbags were weighted properly. Otherwise, he and the others would merely hang beneath the scaffold and choke to death, which is probably how Castle had planned it, anyway. Oh, well, the longest it had taken the other men he’d watched die was four minutes. One they had to hang a second time, but Cuno couldn’t be that unlucky, could he?
Castle doffed his hat, twirled it on his finger. “Well, since you’re all gonna be so grim about it, and it’s already starting to get hot, I reckon we might as well get this show on the road.”
Cuno saw a sudden quick movement in the guard tower on the prison’s southeast corner. His mind barely registered the movement. He had other, more important matters at the moment. But then he heard the sudden chirp of a Gatling’s swivel.
As Castle turned toward the man standing at the end of the gallows, whose hand was on the lever that would drop the trapdoors out beneath the condemned men’s feet, there was a short burst of rapid fire that sounded like a hammer hitting an empty steel barrel four or five times very quickly. The bullets tore into the ground like giant raindrops, blowing up dust and horseshit. Cuno slid his glance to the mustached man with his hand on the trapdoor lever, and now he saw a black splotch on the man’s forehead. A thin stream of red sprayed out the back of his skull.
Warden Castle screamed.
Cuno turned his eyes forward to see the warden’s knees buckle as he flung his left hand out behind him to grab the back of his left thigh. His white teeth shone beneath his impeccable mustache in an agonized grimace.
The guard who’d been about to pull the trapdoor lever dropped straight back to hit the ground without breaking his fall, a look of dumb awe making his heavy lower jaw sag. At the same time, all the other guards swung around toward the wounded guard, bringing rifles and shotguns to bear.
Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!
A line of four guards jerked as the bullets ripped through their uniform tunics, spraying blood into the dirt behind them.
The other guards, awestruck, froze. A couple jerked straight back, certain that they would be next to be beefed by the lunatic in the guard tower. Warden Castle, grunting and cursing and clutching the back of his left thigh, twisted around on his knees to peer toward the tower.
So much had happened so quickly that Cuno was still half expecting the trapdoor to open beneath his boots. He hadn’t yet registered what was happening, though the echoes of the Gatling’s rapidly fired shots were still echoing around in his head. Still, he had enough wits about him to be surprised at the girl’s Spanish-accented voice yelling down from the tower, “Kindly have your guards toss their weapons away, Warden Castle, or the next round will blow the top of your head off!”
“How in the hell . . . ?”
The warden stared in agony and disbelief at the guard tower under the roof of which a girl in a red-striped serape and low-crowned straw sombrero crouched over the Gatling gun. Her long, dark brown hair dangled past her shoulders as she held steady aim on the warden. Beside her, a dark gent with long sideburns and a thick brown mustache aimed a Henry repeating rifle from one knee, sliding the rifle about the general vicinity of the warden. He, too, wore a Sonora hat—a black one with elaborate silver stitching.
Cuno’s cheeks bunched, puzzled. “Mexicans?”
The girl grinned over the down-canted brass canister of the Gatling gun. “You shouldn’t put on such an entertaining circus show, Warden!” she mocked. “Your guards become so distracted that they lose track of what’s happening outside the prison walls!”
One of the guards lay on his back, head, shoulders, and arms dangling off the tower’s wooden platform. Blood shone thickly across his paunch.
“In case you’re wondering,” the girl said, lifting her head cockily, “your other towers have also had a changing of the guards!”
Castle looked around from where he slumped on the ground. A spate of fire erupted from the guard tower in the fort’s southwest corner, blowing up dust around the fallen warden. In turn, the other two towers fired several loud, dusty bursts, as well, leaving the warden slumped forward with his head on the ground, arms up as if they could protect him from .45-caliber bullets.
“Now, Warden!” the girl shouted gutturally, as though to further prove she meant business. “Order your guards to drop their guns. The ones on the gallows will please lift the nooses from the prisoners’ heads and free them from their chains. Any foolishness, and me and my amigos in the other towers will turn you and your men into bloody heaps! Now! Quick! My finger is eager to make this wonderful contraption roar so loudly again . . . and kill so easily!”
“You’ll kill us anyway!”
“Maybe,” the girl returned. “But you’ll die in one more second if you don’t give the order, mi amigo!”
The warden stared back at the girl for two more beats then threw an arm up suddenly. “Do as she says! Throw your guns down!” He shook his head, overcome with emotion. His voice turned thick and crackly as he added, “Release the prisoners!”
That seemed to be just the order the two guards flanking Cuno and the other prisoners were waiting for. The platform creaked and clattered as they bolted forward and began loosening the knots and lifting the nooses off Cuno’s and the other condemned men’s heads. When all four were free of the ropes, the guards began unlocking the cuffs and padlocked chains. Their hands were shaking. Cuno could almost smell their fear lacing their rancid sweat, and it lifted his spirits though he still had no idea who in the hell had ordered him freed.
He suspected that Skinner’s men had come to their notorious gang leader’s rescue. Or maybe it was Zimmerman’s men, though Cuno didn’t know what the giant’s profession had been before prison.
No, since they were Mexicans, they were more likely aligned with Arguello, though when he glanced at the wiry Mex beside him, the man looked as befuddled as the others.
When the chains were removed from Arguello’s wrists, he fell hard on his rump to the gallows floor. Cuno turned to him as his own chains fell away, and dropped to one knee beside him.
The Mexican bandit, whose face was long, bony, haggard, and framed by lice-flecked locks of wavy, curly black hair, looked as though he’d have preferred the hanging to the confusion around him now. His cracked and swollen lips moved as he muttered incoherentl
y beneath his breath.
The girl had shouted some new orders though Cuno hadn’t heard them above the clanking of the chains, but now he saw movement near the front gates on his right, fifty yards away. The unarmed, blue-uniformed guards with the red stripes on the legs of their wool slacks were busy removing the locking bar from the steel brackets on either side of the arched, timbered doors.
In moments, the doors were drawn wide and at least a dozen riders charged into the yard on sweat-lathered horses. They dispersed at once to gallop around the yard between the barracks, bearing down on the guards, who threw their hands up and backed quickly against the barrack walls.
The prisoners, too, moved away from the riders, most of whom were Mexicans but with several Anglos in the group, as well. They all wielded Winchesters or Henry repeaters, with sidearms showing in several holsters per man, knives protruding from high-topped, mule-eared boots. They were a rough-looking lot in grubby, dusty trail clothes, and whatever their purpose here was, they went about it with the boldness of seasoned renegades.
Now, Cuno thought as he knelt beside Arguello, they’ll start looking for the man or men they’d come to free, take him, and ride the hell out of here. The reflection had no sooner swept across his brain than he shot his angry gaze toward the warden, slumped in a twisted heap before the gallows, blood dribbling into the dust beneath his bent left leg.
Cuno was free of his chains. He could grab one of the rifles or shotguns the guards had tossed away and kill the man. Blow his savage head off. Then he’d bolt out through the open doors. He doubted he’d make it far in his battered condition, but what the hell? It was worth a shot. Here, he’d die for sure.
His heart thudded with grim purpose. He’d just poised himself to drop over the side of the gallows when a rider galloped toward him from the gaping prison doors. The rider was trailing a saddled horse by its reins. As the rider reached the gallows, he turned his own horse sharply, giving the reins of his second horse a toss.
They landed on the gallows near Cuno, who froze as he stared, lower jaw slack, at the beautiful skewbald paint stallion that had stopped before him in a twisting broil of sand-colored dust. The paint shook its head and twitched its ears, stomping one rear hoof in the dirt and blowing.
Cuno blinked, certain that Zimmerman had given his brain such a pounding he was only seeing what he wanted to see. His own horse, his own prized stallion, couldn’t be standing here before him.
“Renegade . . . ?”
Another horse, a chestnut bay, galloped toward him. This one carried the Mexican girl who’d been in the guard tower. She drew up before the gallows, and dimpled her cheeks in a grin. Wisps of dark-brown hair clung to her tanned, dusty, pretty face.
“You just gonna stare at that horse, gringo?” said Camilla, jerking her shoulders back and thrusting her breasts out as she canted her head toward the open gates. “Or you gonna ride that cayuse the hell out of here?”
4
CUNO SHUTTLED HIS befuddled gaze between the horse and the girl once more, vaguely wondering if the Pit had driven him mad.
But then before he realized it, he’d grabbed the reins and bolted off his heels and into the saddle that felt familiar and comfortable beneath him. His old saddle. His horse . . . the skewbald paint he’d bought after he’d sold his father’s business and lit out on the vengeance trail after Anderson and Spoon.
He and the horse had dusted many trails together, chasing or being chased. The cavalry had confiscated Renegade at Camp Collins, when Cuno had been taken into custody under the watchful eye of Sheriff Dusty Mason, and that had been the last he’d seen of Michelle Trent, the Lassiter children, and Camilla (had she ever told him her last name?) . . . until now.
Cuno reined the horse toward the girl, who watched him a little skeptically, no doubt a little repelled by his swollen and purpled nose and eyes. He blinked, frowned. “You came for me?”
She smiled a little sadly. “I am sorry it took so long.”
Cuno looked around at the men of her gang milling on horseback, dust rising in the morning sunshine around their pintos, bays, mixed Arabians, and paint mustangs, the guards standing against the barracks walls holding their hands high above their heads. Rifles thundered as several of the guards were shot, sent bouncing off the barrack walls or, in one case, flying into the large stone water trough in the center of the yard. A few of the prisoners were killed, as well.
It appeared to be payback time all around for Camilla’s men.
The warden continued to grunt and groan as he stared up at Cuno and Camilla, fury in his eyes.
“You can run,” he seethed through his dusty mustache, pewter-gray hair flopping down above his left eye. He shuttled his glare from Cuno to Camilla. “But the army will hunt you like the Mexican dogs you are.”
Camilla carried a Schofield .44 in a black shoulder holster. As more rifles cracked around her, she drew the big hogleg, rocked the hammer back, and brought it to bear on the warden, whose eyes suddenly lost their bravado.
“Hold on.” Cuno swung gingerly but quickly out of his saddle, walked over, and used his bare right foot to kick the warden onto his back. He stared down at the man, fists tightly clenched at his sides. “I want the honors.”
“No,” the warden mewled, grinding the heels of dusty brogans into the dirt and trying to crawl away backward. “Please, I . . . I’m only doin’ my job.”
“I don’t think so.”
Cuno leaned down, threw the right flap of the man’s gray serge jacket back, and slid the big bowie from its sheath. It was the only weapon he carried, and he didn’t mind using it willy-nilly, his armed men backing his cowardly play.
“Go ahead,” Camilla said when she saw that Cuno was hesitating. “Cut the pig’s throat. Many men have died worse than pigs under his command. Down along the border, he was a scalp hunter under the guise of a cavalry lieutenant.”
“Chiquita’s right. Go ahead, kid.” This from Mule Zimmerman, whose shadow angled across the warden’s shoes as he stood at the edge of the gallows, looking straight-backed and damn near healthy aside from his swollen face. He grinned with menace as he smashed a fist into the palm of his ham-sized other hand. “Less’n you’d like me to do it.”
Frank Skinner sat near Zimmerman, legs hanging down over the front of the gallows, slump-shouldered and weak, but grinning.
A pistol roared close by. Cuno jerked with a start. The warden screamed and raised his right leg, wrapping both hands around his bloody knee.
The pistol roared again and the tip of the warden’s nose disappeared in a blood spray, leaving a blunt, ragged red nub. He released his knee to clutch his face, throwing himself belly down in the dirt and mewling like a gut-shot javelina.
Hooves thudded. Cuno turned to see the dark man he’d seen in the guard tower with Camilla gallop toward him on a tall black Arabian steed with two white front socks and a white star on its face. He had a thick mustache, and his brick-red cheeks were unshaven. It was a broad, savage, thick-lipped face with large, fervid brown eyes.
“How you like that, Warden?” the man intoned as he brought the steed to a dusty halt.
Leaping out of the saddle, he stepped in front of Cuno. He removed his black, salt-stained Sonora hat and crouched in the dirt beside the warden. He pointed at the hairless top of his own head that was so badly knotted with pink and white scars that Cuno felt himself wince as he took a step away from the man. He’d seen healed scalping cuts before, and this man’s looked like a particular nasty job.
“How you like this, uh, Warden?” he shouted in heavily accented Spanish, spittle flying from his broad, dark-pink mouth. “This what your men do to me on the border summer before last. You like, uh?”
The broad-faced Mexican jerked the warden’s own head up by his hair, and with his other hand he slipped a horn-gripped knife from a sheath attached to the double cartridge belts crossed on his waist.
“Maybe you like a haircut like mine, uh?”
Cuno turned
away as the man lowered the knife to the warden’s head. The warden’s scream was high-pitched and long-lived.
“I think I keep this one here,” shouted the Mexican, straightening and holding the bloody scalp aloft. “Think I’ll dry it and hang it from my cartridge belt the way your men did with mine and those of my companeros you corralled in Yaqui Canyon . . . snuck up on us like a bunch of dirty coyotes!”
He twisted his face with yellow fury, holding the bloody scalp high above his head, his eyes and jaws wide as he glared down at the howling warden. “You were after Apaches—oh, but you didn’t care! All Mexicans were half Apache, you said as your men hacked away at me! But I’m no Apache, Warden. Uh-uhhh!” He laughed suddenly—mad laughter that rose to drown out the warden’s howls. “No, I’m Yaqui, and that’s even worse!”
He lowered the scalp but lifted his chin, sending guffaws careening toward the bright blue sky over the prison.
Cuno turned to Camilla. Her face was expressionless, but she was keeping her eyes off the warden, who continued to scream, cry, and curse so shrilly that Cuno thought his eardrums would burst.
Good lord, who were these savage saviors of his, anyway? And why was Camilla riding with them? He’d known her to be a far meeker creature than the one he’d seen manning the Gatling gun—a girl who’d been brought north from Mexico by an American confidence man, then dumped. She’d done what she could to survive, including playing nursemaid to the three children of a Colorado rancher.
“Finish him, Mateo,” the girl said impatiently, reining her horse around in a tight circle, holding the ribbons up close to her chest. “We’ve wasted enough time here with this gringo. Umberto and Xavier have destroyed the Gatling guns. Let’s ride, Brother!”
Cuno looked through the wafting dust at Mateo. Brother?
“I will leave him as he left me,” said Mateo. “Wounded and dying and howling like a gut-shot cur!” He turned to the riders milling around him. “No one kill him! Anyone kills the warden will answer to Mateo de Cava!”
.45-Caliber Desperado Page 3