Lawman from Nogales (9781101544747)

by Cotton, Ralph W.

“Yes, he will come back,” Ana said. “But we will not be here when he returns.”

  “Where are we going, Madre?” the boy asked.

  “We are going away with your other papá,” Ana said with determination, watching Hector ride out of sight over a low rise and disappear in a swirl of trail dust.

  “Papá segundo?” the boy asked, looking up at her.

  “Yes, your second papa,” Ana said. “The one I have told you about. He will be your first father, your real father. He will be your only father from now on—as well he should be.”

  “I do not understand, Madre,” the boy said.

  “Someday you will, my little man,” Ana said, still clutching the coin in her fist, lest it somehow get away from her. “Now, you must help me pack our belongings. We will stop the land coach when it passes here. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  On the trail, Hector breathed deep and tapped his heels to his horse’s sides. As he rode, he thought about everything he and Ana had talked about in the short time he was home. He looked down at the small straw figure in his hand that his son had made and given to him.

  “You will always have an amigo with you,” his son had said, handing it to him.

  Hector smiled to himself and gripped the tiny straw figure for a moment. Then he placed it in his shirt pocket.

  Now to business, he told himself.

  When he started tending bar, he must make sure to get off on the right foot with everyone, even the putas—the doves, he corrected himself. As a bartender, he knew it would be important that people take him seriously. Now that he had earned his position at the Perros Malos Cantina, it was important that people respect him the same as they had respected Freddie Loopy.

  He ran the events of the past day and night through his mind, and his thoughts went to Clyde Jilson and Sonora Charlie. Thank the holy saints he would not have to deal with those two anymore—except to serve them whiskey from behind the bar, he told himself. His hands tightened on the reins just thinking about what had happened between himself and Clyde Jilson.

  They had stopped in the night to rest their horses, and Hector had stood looking out across the flatlands. Close behind him, Clyde had swished tepid water around in a canteen and sipped from it. Then, suddenly, catching Hector off guard, he’d stepped forward with his finger bent and rounded a wet knuckle into Hector’s ear.

  By the devil in hell . . . ! Hector still raged just thinking about it. What kind of loco, twisted son-of-a-bitch gringo hombre did such a thing?

  No one that he knew of, Hector replied to himself. It was the sort of thing one prisoner did to another in a place like Casa del Andar Muerto—Home of the Walking Dead, or in Yuma Territorial Prison.

  It was an act that not only showed disrespect; it was a warning of worse acts to come should a man not react with deadly and deliberate force against such an affront.

  Hector’s ear still felt sticky as he recalled the incident, although he had dried it immediately on his shirtsleeve and had continued wiping it throughout the night as they’d ridden on.

  He should have killed the filthy pig, he told himself. He would have killed him had he not been convinced that the two men had set him up and were waiting to strike as soon as he touched the butt of his gun.

  When he’d spun toward Clyde, the buckskinned gunman had stood grinning and said, “I can see you’re going to have to get used to me.”

  Get used to him . . . ? Hector pictured himself shooting him full of holes.

  “Don’t get your bark on, Wet Hector,” Sonora Charlie had called out. “Clyde only stuck his finger in his canteen, not his mouth.”

  Not his mouth . . .

  The information helped Hector a little, but only a little, he reminded himself, thinking back on it. Still, the idea of the pig thinking he could do such a thing kept Hector smoldering. He was glad to have gotten away from those two. After they rode off searching for the lawman Defoe wanted dead, he wouldn’t have to look at their faces again. That suited him, he thought, nudging his horse up into a trot.

  Inside the Perros Malos Cantina, Hopper Truit was behind the bar slinging mugs of beer and pouring whiskey for the midmorning drinkers. When Hector walked in, he stopped suddenly, taken aback at the sight of her as she pushed a strand of blond hair from her face and reached over and tugged playfully on an older drinker’s long-handled gray mustache. She acted as if this was the work she would be doing for a long time to come, Hector thought.

  “There he is now,” Defoe said from his spot at the end of the bar where he stood with Sonora Charlie and Clyde Jilson.

  The two gunmen looked at Hector over their shoulders and turned back to their shots of whiskey and mugs of foamy beer.

  “Get over here, muchacho,” Defoe called out, flagging the stunned Hector toward his end of the bar with his left hand. His real right hand rested on the gun behind his swallow-tailed coat.

  Again he calls me boy?

  Hector turned his face slowly to Defoe, seemingly stuck in his tracks at the sight of the dove Hopper doing what he was certain would be his job. But maybe he misunderstood what was going on here, he told himself. Maybe she was only tending bar until he returned to Wild Roses.

  Yes, of course, that must be it, he told himself. He managed to walk toward Defoe’s end of the bar, seeing Defoe’s lips move, saying something to him, but Hector didn’t hear a word of it in his numb, stunned condition.

  “You missed a most wonderful breakfast,” Defoe said as Hector approached. “What took you so long anyway?” Defoe gave a knowing grin.

  But Hector didn’t answer. Instead, he looked down the bar to where Hopper set up fresh mugs of beer for a group of Mexican camioneros, whose mule-killer carts sat out front at the hitch irons filled with copper ore en route from the Sierra Madres to Mexico City.

  “You said I would be tending bar for you, boss,” Hector said, his voice shaky.

  “Forget that,” Defoe said with a toss of his left hand. “As you can see, Hopper has a knack for slinging liquor.” He grinned. “These men have to stand a foot farther back from the bar than they did when they got here, eh?” He chuckled at his own joke. When Hector and the other two didn’t get it, he waved it away and said, “Never mind.”

  “But you said I would tend—” Hector started before Defoe cut him off.

  “I said you would be tending bar among other things,” Defoe replied sharply. “Besides, bartending is not a good job. What will you do if people stop drinking? You will be out of work, of course,” he replied to himself.

  Hector only stared at him.

  “Anyway, I have a better job for you.” Defoe said. He shrugged the matter off and looked Hector up and down. “But if you don’t want it . . .”

  “Sí, I must work,” Hector said submissively, coming to accept his situation. “What will you have me do?”

  “I’m sending you out with Sonora Charlie and Clyde,” said Defoe. “Sonora has three twenty-dollar gold pieces I gave him to pay you.”

  Three twenty-dollar gold coins!

  “What am I to do for them?” Hector asked, keeping his excitement in check. The prospect of putting three twenty-dollar gold coins in his hand forced him to put his ill feelings toward Sonora Charlie and Clyde behind him for the moment. He looked back and forth between Sonora Charlie and Defoe.

  “Whatever they say,” Defoe replied.

  The two gunmen turned and faced Hector squarely. Clyde, who stood nearest, pulled Hector roughly to the bar beside him.

  “Yeah, you’re with me now, Pancho.” Clyde grinned, sliding his empty shot glass and a bottle of rye in front of Hector. “Right now you’re sort of my own personal bartender.” He nodded at his empty shot glass. “Fill me up,” he said close to Hector’s ear.

  Sonora Charlie smiled to himself and looked away. Inside his shirt, he carried a leather pouch filled with gold coins the Frenchman had paid him to kill the Ranger—half in advance, the other half payable when Charlie rolled the Ranger’s head out on the g
round in front of him.

  Let Clyde have his fun with the Mexican, he thought. Reaching into his vest pocket, he took out the three gold coins and dropped them onto the bar in front of the young Mexican. What did he care? If Hector tried to duck out on them, all he had to do was shoot him twice in the head and take the coins back.

  “This is for you, Hector,” he said. “Call it payment in advance for doing what you’re told.”

  Holy Madre! Hector stared at the coins in disbelief. Let the dove tend bar and shake her bosom in front of the drinkers. This was the kind of money that . . . well, that men kill for, he thought.

  Chapter 11

  At midmorning, Erin stepped back from the fall-away edge of the trail where she’d been perched looking back on the flatlands below. Behind her a few yards away, the Ranger stood up from inspecting the dun’s hooves and watched her for a moment, seeing her eyes scan the distant hill line and trails on the other side. He looked away quickly as she turned toward him, her horse’s reins in hand.

  “Well, I’m glad that’s behind us,” she said, walking toward him and leading her horse.

  Sam nodded.

  “We made good time,” he said.

  “What now?” she asked, stopping, looking him up and down, the two of them feeling the cooler air of the partially shaded hillsides.

  “Now we rest the horses a couple of hours, then head across this high trail and take it down the other side,” Sam replied.

  Erin looked past him toward a knee-high man-made wall of crumbled stone, beyond it a rocky flat courtyard and an ancient crumbling structure standing fifty feet high on the rugged hillside.

  “These are the ruins you spoke of?” Erin asked.

  A deep, thick blanket of flowering red vines covered much of the structure. The vines spilled over entrance-ways and windows and hung like heavy drapes.

  “Yes,” Sam replied, “this part of the country is full of old Spanish missions. Some say they built them this high up so the bell could be heard all the way across the basin.”

  Erin took a step forward and stood quietly for a moment, looking all around at the ruins. Ancient piñon, copal and calabash trees lined the short, crumbled wall.

  “Is this where you’ll be teaching me to shoot the gun?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder.

  “Yes, if you’d still like to learn,” Sam replied.

  “It’s so peaceful and lovely here, I’m hesitant to disturb everything,” she said in a lowered tone. Even as she spoke, a pair of doves rose from among the creeper vines in a flurry of batting wings and swooped away, out and around the hillside.

  Watching Erin, Sam said in the same lowered tone, “Suit yourself.” He continued watching her, the look of contemplation on her face suggesting that she continued to run the idea back and forth through her mind.

  At length she said, “I suppose I should go ahead and learn while I have the chance. Do you think the shooting will be overheard by any of Luis or Teto’s men?”

  “Hard to say,” Sam replied. “But it’s no secret I’m trailing them.”

  “I wouldn’t want to cause you any trouble,” she said.

  “You won’t,” Sam said. “I’ll get the Starr out of my saddlebags and we’ll get started.”

  Erin stood staring at the ruins. When Sam returned beside her and held the Starr out on his palm, she took it with both hands and looked it over good.

  “Is it loaded and ready to shoot?” she asked.

  “Just about,” Sam replied. He took the reins to her horse, led both horses a few feet away and hitched them to a juniper tree.

  They walked forward until the stone wall surrounding the ruins lay within fifty feet of them.

  “Wait here. I’ll set up some targets for you,” he said, walking to a row of calabash trees.

  He looked back at where she stood as he gathered an armful of fallen calabash gourds from beneath one of the trees.

  “Isn’t this a long way?” she called out as he set the hardened fruit shells up along the knee-high wall. Her raised voice sent a string of small sparrows careening away from within the Mexican creepers. A cloud of black moths rose behind the fleeing birds, then resettled.

  Sam didn’t answer her until he’d set up the last of the calabash gourds. As he walked back toward her, he noted the Starr still lying flat on her palms, its hammer cocked.

  “I thought I’d see if I could pull it back for myself,” she offered, seeing his gaze fall on the Starr’s cocked position.

  “Good idea,” Sam said. He reached out and took the gun from her hand as he stepped around beside her.

  Erin watched him uncock the Starr and recock it, his eyes on hers as she realized he’d left the hammer lying on an empty chamber.

  “Now you’re all set,” he said quietly. He held the gun out in front of her, its barrel pointed toward the row of dried fruit shells.

  Erin smiled and reached both hands out around the butt of the big Starr revolver. She took control of the gun; Sam turned it loose in her hands.

  “How do I aim?” she asked. She looked down the barrel as the weight caused the gun to slump toward the ground.

  Sam reached out and lifted the barrel slightly.

  “First few shots, don’t aim,” he said. “Shoot at the spot where you think the targets are. We’ll see how good or bad your judgment is, then correct it if need be.”

  “Is that the way to learn?” she asked.

  “Today it is,” Sam said. “Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull it,” he added.

  “All right.” She steadied the revolver. Sam watched as she squeezed the trigger and the big gun bucked in her hands. She didn’t flinch as the shot exploded and the distinctive after-clang of the Starr resounded out along the hillsides and basin floor.

  The shot struck the rocky ground ten feet in front of the fruit shells.

  “Oh my,” Erin said quickly. “May I try again?”

  “Go ahead,” Sam said, noting she had already started cocking the Starr’s hammer.

  She fired, missed again and immediately recocked and fired a second time.

  “I’m terrible,” she said quickly. “May I try again?”

  Sam only nodded, seeing her recock the hammer.

  She fired and recocked, once, twice. She pulled the trigger a third time but the hammer landed on an empty chamber. Her shots fell short, but each one hit the ground a little closer to the gourds.

  “I’m afraid I’ll never get this right,” she said, letting the gun slump down in front of her.

  Once, twice, three times . . . , Sam noted silently.

  “You got a little closer with each shot, and all without aiming,” he said. “I can reload you if you like. This time, we’ll teach you to take aim.”

  “I’m afraid I’m a little shaken up just now,” Erin said. “Perhaps another time, farther along the trail?” She raised the smoking gun and pointed it loosely at Sam’s chest.

  “Of course, anytime,” Sam said, reaching out, taking the big Starr from her.

  “May I—” She hesitated, then said, “May I keep Bram’s gun, Sam?”

  Sam looked at the unloaded gun in his hand, then at her.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, handing the big revolver back to her. “And what about some ammunition for it?” he offered.

  She took the gun quickly, as if afraid that Sam might change his mind at any second.

  “Obliged, but I have some bullets in Bram’s saddlebags,” she said. She clutched the gun to her bosom and backed away toward the horses. “I know you’ll be wanting to get under way shortly,” she added. “So I’ll be prepared to ride as soon as you are.”

  In the late afternoon, as the sun sank below the cliffs and rock juts behind them, Sam and Erin pulled off the trail again, this time beneath a sheltering overhang, and made camp for the night. Sam gathered scraps of brush and dried piñon kindling and built a small fire far enough back under the rock ledge that it would not be seen from the surrounding hillsides. He ensured that t
he fire would burn down quickly. As an additional precaution, he banked stones up around the fire to keep its light contained until it reduced itself to a small bed of glowing embers.

  In the circle of waning firelight, the two sat across from each other, sipping hot coffee after a modest meal of jerked elk and hardtack.

  Talk had come easy for them both from the moment they had met, but not tonight, Sam noted, studying Erin’s face as she gazed into the fire. She appeared to be searching for things to say.

  “Will you always want to live this way, Sam?” she asked, glancing around beneath the shadowy overhang. “I mean, outdoors, in the wilderness this way?” she added quickly.

  “It suits me . . . for now anyway,” Sam replied, watching how she carefully kept her eyes away from his for anything longer than a passing glance.

  “But someday you’ll be wanting a wife and family for yourself?” she asked.

  Forcing conversation, Sam thought.

  “Someday,” he replied quietly, “if it works out that way,” he added.

  “Someday . . . ,” she murmured, with almost a sense of regret in her voice. She set her empty cup aside and adjusted her blanket on the rocky ground beneath her. “I bid you a good night, Ranger Burrack,” she said. She pulled half of the blanket over her.

  “Good night, ma’am,” Sam said. He set his cup aside, adjusted his blanket and tipped his sombrero down over his eyes.

  In the night, after the fire had burned out, Sam listened to the quiet sound of the woman stand up into a crouch, lift her saddle from the ground and move away toward the horses. From beneath his lowered sombrero, he watched her shadowy figure move around between the two horses, his black-point dun chuffing, threatening her as she moved close to unhitch him.

  Rather than have the dun raise a fuss, Erin gave up and moved away from it. After a moment, she had quietly saddled her horse and led it away in the dark.

  And that’s that, Sam thought, hearing the click of hoof as somewhere down the trail Erin had climbed atop the horse and put it forward into the black-purple night.