The Good the Bad and the Ugly

by Joe Millard

  CHAPTER 15

  THE new locomotive was officially the BLW Number Nine, but after her trial run the engineer had enthusiastically rechristened her Mighty Maude. She merited the name.

  Mighty Maude was not only the newest locomotive on rails but by far the largest, heaviest, fastest and most powerful. She also possessed the loudest whistle. When she flung her wailing hoot across the sere wasteland the engineer’s boast was that coyotes and jack rabbits ten miles away fled in blind panic. The fireman, whose task was to hurl heavy chunks of hardwood from the tender into the gaping maw of her firebox, had a different and somewhat biased reaction.

  “That damn hooter uses up too much steam. Every time you toot that contraption the steam gauge drops ten points. I got to heave twice as much cordwood to bring her back up again.”

  The engineer dismissed such carping criticism with comments directed at his fireman’s work habits and ancestry.

  He would, however, gradingly admit that Mighty Maude did have one fault, albeit a minor one. This was in the design of her cab. When the man who drove her was properly seated at his controls the forward cab window was just a trifle too high. The engineer could are a great distance along the track ahead but nothing closer than five hundred feet in front of the great boiler.

  On the straightaway this was no great handicap. But on a sharp or blind curve Maude might plough into anything. The obstacle would be a wagon in the act of crossing the track or—even worse for the train—a herd of wandering cattle whose heavy bodies had been responsible for many a disastrous wreck.

  The engineer’s solution to this dilemma was to jerk his whistle cord vigorously and repeatedly at the approach to every curve. This inevitably led to a highly colourful and profane shouting match with the fireman. Since these exchanges had to be carried on over the pounding of the drivers and the thunder of the exausts, both men usually finished their runs too hoarse to communicate above a whisper.

  The engineer peered ahead through the shimmering heat waves to where the track curved out of sight behind a great, wind-sculptured mass of red sandstone. He reached for the dangling cord and Mighty Maude’s hoarse scream racketed ahead.

  On the far side of the sandstone butte, where the tracks emerged from the blind curve, Tuco lifted his head and listened. In a moment the sound came again, louder and nearer—the unmistakable hoot of a locomotives whistle. His eyes glittered with the light of one reborn.

  He scrambled to his feet, took hold of Wallace’s belt and dragged the dead weight up the steep embankment with strength born of desperation. As he dropped the heavy body to the ties and rolled it between the rails the corporal stirred and moaned weakly.

  “Don’t wake up now, Wallace,” Tuco panted. “It’s too late to do any good and what you would see would just make you unhappy. Be a good fellow and lie still.”

  He flung himself face down at the outer side of the track, stretching the chain of the handcuffs taut across the rail. The hoot of the whistle was earsplitting and above it he could now hear the rumble of the speeding train. The rail beside him bummed and quivered.

  Mighty Maude howled into view from behind the sandstone mass, less than five hundred feet away. As the giant locomotive hurtled toward him Tuco flattened himself as much as possible, burrowing his face into the gravel. Beneath him the ground shook and a wave of hot, compressed air buffeted him. Then the speeding engine was upon him.

  The tough steel links of the handcuff chain could resist many forces but they proved no match for the sharp wheel-flanges and enormous weight of Mighty Maude. There was a jerk and Tuco’s hand dropped free. He flung himself away from the track, rolling down the embankment as the locomotive flashed past. Above the thunder of wheels and driven he heard a brief bunt of angry yelling from the cab.

  He sat up in time to glimpse something that resembled a bundle of red rags hanging under the locomotive’s low-slung firebox and bumping against the lies. The spot between the rails where Wallace had lain was empty. Tuco whirled away from the track and ran in the opposite direction.

  A mile or so down the tracks, one of two brakemen standing on the rear platform of the last car suddenly clutched his companion’s arm and yelled, “Goddlemighty, there’s a man, or what’s left of one, lying between the rails. He most have been drug a ways, by the look. Pull the emergency cord.”

  “Not me,” the other said firmly, shaking his head. “You pull the emergency stop when we’re makin’ this speed and that engineer’ll climb your frame clean to your shoulders and chew your damfool head off. Besides, there ain’t nothin’ anybody can do for that poor bastard now that the vultures can’t do quicker and cleaner.”

  The settlement of Marcosito had been a thriving, bustling community until, overnight, the Confederate invasion turned it into a ghost town. By an accident of geography the town happened to stand in the path of Sibley’s advance force. By a more catastrophic accident it was the place where the Texans encountered the first strong Union resistance.

  The Marcositans had retired at night, blissfully unaware that the war was at their doorstep. They awoke in the morning to find the town swarming with enemy troops.

  The Texans had paused only long enough to plunder the shops and saloons and raid hencoops before moving northward. The outraged citizens swarmed out on the heels of their departure to curse and commiserate. They were assessing their losses when the sound of heavy firing broke out to the north.

  Presently the Confederates reappeared, hard-pressed by Union forces and dearly intending to make their stand in the town They were at the outskirts when a battery of Union artillery opened up and shells began falling on the town. The citizens hurriedly snatched a few possessions—piling them into wagons and buggies or hanging them from saddles—and departed on masse for a less hazardous clime.

  Eventually Sibley’s main force caught up to drive the outnumbered Yankees back and the fighting moved on, leaving Marcosito battered and abandoned. None of its citizens ventured to return, nor would they until the war ended or the last Confederate had been driven out of New Mexico Territory.

  The day was waning when Sentenza, his six gun-hands and the Man From Nowhere came to Marcasite. They rode down the cannon-pocked street, the clatter of their hoofbeats echoing from the empty buildings.

  The scars of the fierce bombardment were evident everywhere. They passed a fire-gutted stable, a house with part of its roof blown off, then picked their way around a pile of debris that had been the high false front of a saloon.

  “It looks,” Sentenza remarked, “as though we had the whole town to ourselves.”

  The bounty-hunter glanced at him without replying. White lines etched his mouth and his eyes glittered. Sentenza reined in before a rambling two-storey hotel. Most of it appeared to be intact but a shell had tom off an upper corner, leaving heavy roof beams unsupported. Sentenza studied the structure and shook his head.

  “I don’t like it A jar could bring those timbers crashing down to kill or trap anybody inside.”

  They rode on and halted before the ruins of what seemed to have been a store. Most of the front had been blown off but the structure itself looked sound.

  “I like this better,” Sentenza said. “We’ll bed down here for the night We can are any visitors without being seen and either pick them off or fade out by the back door. Bill, you and Andy take care of the horses. Put them up somewhere out of sight”

  The gunman named Hank had crowded his horse up beside the bounty-hunter’s. As they swung out of the saddles Hank’s right spur jabbed the flank of the hunter’s horse. It shied violently and the hunter, caught in mid-swing, had to make a frantic grab for the cantle to avoid being thrown under the trampling hoofs. He quieted the horse, dropped to the ground and stepped around to confront Sentenza’s man. He was aware of the other five closing in at his back.

  “You’re asking for it, Hank,” he said through set teeth.

  “Aw, it was an accident,” Hank said but his eyes glinted with malice.

&nbs
p; “I had a bellyful of accidents before I ran into you. What happens next won’t be one.”

  Sentenza said, “Cool down, you two. There’ll be time enough to settle scores after we’ve got what we came for.” Suddenly the silence of the street was shattered by a single gunshot. The hunter stilfend, his jaw sagging, his usually impassive face wearing an expression of astonished disbelief.

  Sentenza stared at him. “What is it? What hit you ?”

  “That shot,” the hunter said. “Every guns sings with a different voice and that’s one I have good reason to know.”

  He whirled and strode down the street in the direction of the shot. Sentenza turned.

  “Hank, follow him. Don’t let him out of your sight for one minute.”

  “Don’t worry, boss.”

  Hank hurried after the tall figure, taking cover in doorways and alleys. The hunter suddenly vanished around a corner without looking back. Hank abandoned his cover and sprinted in pursuit.

  He skidded around the corner and almost rammed into the tall figure blocking the sidewalk. The hunter had the poncho thrown back over his right shoulder.

  “I was hoping it would be you, Hank,” be said and shot Sentenza’s man between the eyes.

  The hunter turned and run. The earlier gunshot had sounded from the direction of the ruined hotel He halted on the sidewalk in front of the building. From an open upstairs window came the sound of water splashing and a man’s voice raised in song. There could be no mistaking the owner of that lusty unmelodious baritone.

  He whirled and darted into the hotel an instant before Sentenza and his cohorts ran around the corner and literally stumbled over Hank’s body.

  CHAPTER 16

  FROM the foot of the embankment Tuco looked back at the long train. The last of the freight cars was racketing past. Behind it were two passenger coaches. Coaches meant people who might well see him and stop the train to investigate.

  Tuco dived into a patch of mesquite, throwing himself flat behind the spare cover. Something hard dug into his cheek. He reached up to paw it aside and his hand felt metal. He snatched it out and stared increduously at the pistol that must have been jarred from Wallace’s holster by the fall.

  Slowly it came to him that there was something vaguely familiar about the weapon. He turned it over and gaped at a nick in one of the walnut grips. That nick had come, he well knew, from using the butt to crack the skull of a bounty-seeking deputy.

  It was his own gun, taken from him at the time of their capture. It must have fallen to Wallace in the division of the plunder taken from prisoners. Now, miraculously, it was back where it belonged and he no longer felt naked and defenceless.

  He climbed to his feet, thumbed his nose toward the vanishing train and set off in the direction he knew would take him to the nearest settlement.

  The gun, both protector and provider, served Tuco well. At an outlying ranch it got him a good horse and saddle with a fine rifle in the boot. At the first small settlement it got him a supply of provisions, including a bottle of whisky. At the next town it persuaded a reluctant blacksmith to chisel off the handcuff.

  The one thing it could not provide was a solution to his most urgent problem—the two hundred thousand dollars in gold. He knew where Sad Hill Cemetery was. But only the tall one he called Whitey knew in which grave the money lay waiting.

  But Whitey was, as far as he knew, still a prisoner at Battleville and to be caught anywhere near that prison camp would be putting his own neck back into a tight noose. Yet somehow he had either to engineer his partner’s escape or persuade Whitey to reveal his share of the secret. Neither prospect seemed likely.

  He was still wrestling with the problem when he crested a low ridge and saw a sizeable town ahead. He approached with caution, baffled by the fact that he saw no horses at any of the hitchrails or any sign of human life anywhere. Then he became aware of the extent of the scars of the bombardment and guessed that the town’s occupants had all fled.

  His ride down the main street confirmed his guess. The hotel caught his eye, as did a narrow alley beside it. As he anticipated, the alley led to a small stable in the rear where guests had kept their mounts. He unsaddled, found some hay and grain and left his horse in a box stall.

  Gun in hand he prowled the hotel, finding only empty rooms. He came at last to one larger than the others and much more luxuriously furnished. A large folding screen at one end aroused his curiosity. He tiptoed across and peered over it.

  Behind the screen was a rarity of rarities in that rough frontier land—a tin bathtub. It was narrow and long enough for a man to sit down in with his legs outstretched. One end swept up in a high graceful curve to provide a headrest for a bather. Attesting to the hasty abandonment, the tub was filled with sudsy water from which rose a delicate fragrance.

  It was the first real bathtub Tuco had ever seen. As he goggled at it he realised that he was hot, dusty, sweaty and tired from a long day’s ride. A glint came into his eye and he began to strip.

  The water was luxuriously cold as he sank into it. He soon discovered that splashing increased the foamy suds and sent up fresh waves of perfume to his nostrils. He became so absorbed in revelling in the new sensation that he almost failed to hear the stealthy creak of a floor board in the halt outside.

  He was lolling back against the headrest, his eyes closed, when a harsh voice said, “If that ain’t the damnedest place to finally catch up with you, Tuco.”

  Tuco’s eyes opened and snapped wide. The man standing just inside the door was gaunt, with a tangle of unkempt beard. His right arm was no more than a short stump in an empty sleeve. His left held a cocked pistol that pointed unwaveringly at Tuco.

  The intruder laughed harshly.

  “So you remember me, eh, Tuco? You haven’t forgotten old Elam after all these years. I never forget you, either. I remembered you real good every time I wanted to do something with my right hand and it wasn’t there.” He hawked and spat on the carpeted floor. “I just rode in and was puttin’ up my horse when you come riding down the street, bold as brass. I knowed you in a flash, Tuco, so I follered you here. Remember that day, Tuco? You could have killed me. You was a lot faster on your draw than me. You should have killed me—’stead of bullet-smashing my gun arm so it had to be cut off.”

  Tuco had neither moved nor spoken. He sad rigid in the ridiculous tub, both hands hidden in the foamy suds. His clothing was piled on a chair beside the tub.

  His gunbeit hung from a chairback.

  “A lot of time has passed since then, Tuco, Time enough for me to learn to shoot real good with my left hand. Now I’m gonna show you just how good I learned.” His eyes narrowed as his finger tightened on the trigger.

  Tuco lifted his own gun out of the concealing suds and shot him precisely through the adam’s apple.

  “When you’re going to shoot somebody,” he said coldly to the twitching figure on the floor, “shoot him. Don’t stand around trying to talk a man to death.”

  He carefully wiped the soapsuds from his gun, returned it to its holster and lolled back in the tub, splashing the cold water up over his chest and shoulders. He felt so relaxed and content that presently he yielded to an unprecedented urge to burst into song.

  The sound of his voice drowned out the single gunshot from below.

  The song ended abruptly in a choked gurgle. He sat up, his mouth open, gaping at the tall figure in the poncho who materialised in the doorway.

  “Eh-eh-eh! Whitey? Is that really you or a ghost? It must be you because I don’t believe in ghosts. If there were such things—I would be followed by a crowd.”

  “Get out of that silly bucket of suds and get your pants on. You’d look pretty ridiculous going into a gunfight naked as a jaybird.”

  “A gunfight?” Tuco scrambled out of the tub, skidded on the soapy floor and grabbed wildly fora towel. “What are you doing here, Whitey? How did you get out of that sewer?”

  “Your dear old friend, Sentenza, gave me n
ew clothes and a gun and personally escorted me out of Battleville.”

  “Sentenza?” Tuco howled. “You coward! You traitor! You stinking Judas! You talked. You told him the name. You betrayed your own partner, who loved you like a brother. Who saved you from that awful desert, eh? Who shared his water with you? Who carried you to that mission and stayed by your side, night and day, to help nurse you back to health, eh? And in return you sell me out to that black-hearted scoundrel, Sentenza.

  “Oh, shut up and try using your head for a change. If I’d given Sentenza even a hint of what he wants to know, do you think I’d be alive and standing here now?”

  “Ah—you didn’t talk, then. Your secret is still your secret and no one else’s. Whitey, I could not love my own brother more. Wait a moment until I button my pants and we will go kill that pig, Sentenza, eh?”

  “That might take a little doing, Tuco. Sentenza isn’t alone. He has five gunmen, all pretty good at their trade and every one itching to gun me out,”

  A crafty look came over the bandit’s face.

  “Five, eh? So that’s why you come to Tuco again No matter. Five or five hundred, we’ll kill them all.”

  The hunter stirred the body on the floor with his toe.

  “Who was this? A friend of yours?”

  “An old friend.” Tuco nodded, strapping on his gun. “Now the best kind of friend to have—a dead one. Let’s go.”

  He started toward the door, stopped short. “Wait a minute, Whitey. Sentenza is after the gold—our gold. Right? And you’re the only man alive who knows the name on the grave where it is buried. Right? So Sentenza will never find the gold if you die. Right? So you come to your old friend, Tuco, with a crazy story that Sentenza’s men are trying to kill you. You think Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez is so stupid he will swallow that story and walk into your trap, eh, Judas?”