Braddock rode on. Hernandez and his men had been in a hurry, according to the old-timer, but whether or not that actually meant anything was open to question. Hernandez might easily be the sort of man who always charged ahead aggressively, no matter what, and to hell with anybody who got in his way. Braddock could believe that, even though he had met the man only briefly.
He stopped occasionally to listen, and finally he heard the swift rataplan of hoofbeats ahead of him. Several horses, judging by the sound. Braddock had a strong hunch he had found the men he was looking for.
But then the next time he stopped, he didn’t hear anything. Either Hernandez and his men had increased their speed and gotten out of earshot again...
Or else they had reached their destination and halted.
Braddock reined his mount to a slower speed. His keen eyes scanned the shadowed landscape ahead of him.
There wasn’t much out here in this semi-desert region. An occasional jacal, dark because the peons who lived there were asleep after a hard day of trying to scratch a living out of the land they worked. Clumps of scrubby mesquite trees and stretches of chaparral. Low but rugged mountains looming darkly in the distance like a great, slumbering beast.
And something else squatted a couple of hundred yards off to the left of the road, an irregular pattern of light and shadow against the gray, sandy terrain.
It was a structure of some sort, Braddock realized, but it wasn’t all still standing. The roof was gone, and the walls had partially collapsed. The ruins of some old building.
An abandoned mission, maybe, with an intact cellar suitable for holding captives?
A minute later, Braddock came to a trail that branched off from the main road and led toward the ruins. He rode on past it without slowing. Hernandez might have a man watching the trail.
It wasn’t likely he would have a man watching the back of the place, though. Not this far from town, in such an isolated area.
Braddock rode another half-mile before leaving the road. He struck out across the country, looping wide around the ruins, and finally reined in. He swung down from the saddle and tied the horse’s reins to a mesquite.
From there he went ahead on foot, and after a few minutes he spotted the ruins again. As he worked his way closer, he saw he was right about how the roof and portions of the walls had fallen in. Looming higher at one end of the old building stood the remains of a bell tower. They looked sturdy enough to support a man, and if Hernandez was smart, he’d have a rifleman up there watching the trail from the road.
Braddock crouched in the chaparral and kept an eye on the place for long minutes. Finally he saw the flare of a match in the tower’s remnants. Somebody was up there, all right, and had just lit a cigarette.
Braddock could only hope they weren’t looking in his direction as he began to creep closer. As much as possible, he stuck to the shadows cast by clumps of mesquite.
Off to one side of the old mission stood a hitch rack with three saddled horses tied to it. On the other side of the mission, a corral held several more horses. Braddock would have been willing to bet Hernandez’s men had had to repair the corral before they could use it, maybe even just about rebuild it.
Everything he saw told him he had come to the right place. Hernandez and the two pistoleros had ridden out here from Juarez, and several more men had been here to start with. Maybe the guards were changing shifts. Maybe Hernandez liked to come and check on the prisoners every night. After all, they meant a great deal to him.
If Braddock was right, they represented partial payment for that shipment of Krags.
He hunkered there, ignoring the dull ache in his wounded side, for long minutes. At last three men emerged from the ruins and went to the horses tied at the hitch rack. One of them was Hernandez; Braddock could tell that from his hat. He didn’t know if the others were the men who had accompanied Hernandez from Juarez or two of the men who had already been here at the mission, and it didn’t really matter. All three mounted up and rode off into the night.
That left approximately four men at the old mission—and an outlaw Ranger lurking outside, wondering if those kidnapped women were really here.
He didn’t intend to leave until he had the answer.
Chapter 24
Braddock focused his attention on the bell tower. If anyone was going to discover him as he approached, likely it would be the guard posted there.
Braddock’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so after a while he was able to tell the guard had a routine of sorts. He spent most of his time watching the trail from the main road, but every few minutes he turned in a complete circle, pausing at each compass point to study the surrounding countryside in that direction.
Braddock waited until the guard had just finished that survey before he left the thick shadow where he crouched and quickly catfooted forward. He knew he ought to have several minutes before the guard swung around in his direction again.
He covered half the distance to the ruined mission before he went to ground again in the gloom of another mesquite thicket. He might have had time to reach the nearest wall, but he didn’t want to risk it.
Patiently, he waited for the guard to make another turn. That gave him a chance to spot a small, flickering orange glow somewhere inside the mission. Not surprisingly, Hernandez’s other men had built a campfire in there. Enough of the half-fallen walls still stood upright to keep it from being noticed from the road, and the flames would provide warmth. It got chilly out here on the desert at night, even in the middle of summer.
So Braddock knew where to look for the other men as he slipped up to the crumbling wall a few minutes later. When he listened closely, he could hear the voices of two of them talking quietly to each other.
Like most men, they were complaining about their boss.
“—never know the difference. Hernandez has one of them. Why should we be deprived of the pleasures due us as men?”
“Because he pays our wages, and because if he feels like it, he can have us strung up and lashed within an inch of our lives, and there is not one damned thing we can do about it. Besides, he didn’t have Gonsalvo bring him that girl for his own use. Gonsalvo said Hernandez wanted to put her to work in his place, to see what kind of whores we had brought him.”
Braddock knew they were talking about Carmen. The comments jibed with what she had told him about her experiences.
“It’s still not fair,” the first man said. “Larrizo had her all the way here, now Hernandez—or his customers—have her, and you and I, we have nothing, amigo.”
“Nothing but the promise of an easy life when Martin is the president, you mean.”
The first man snorted. “A promise is like the call of a night bird. Here and then gone, nothing but a pleasant memory that actually accomplishes nothing.”
A third voice spoke up, saying, “Will you two bastards shut up so I can sleep?”
“Bernardo, you cannot think it is fair for us to be around all those women, yet never are we allowed to touch them.”
“When you get to be my age, you dung beetle, women matter very little except for what they can cook.”
Both the other men laughed, and one said, “I hope I never get to be as old as you, Bernando.”
“It is doubtful you will.”
Crouched in the darkness on the other side of the wall, Braddock smiled.
He intended to see to it that none of these men got any older than they already were tonight.
With maybe one exception, he corrected himself as an idea sparked in his mind.
He moved carefully along the wall until he reached a spot where nearly all of it had collapsed. Taking off the sombrero, he eased his head around the ragged edge so he could look toward the fire.
The two men who had been talking sat beside the fire, warming themselves. The third man, Bernardo, stretched out a few yards away in a bedroll. He represented the least threat because it would take him longer to get out of those entangling blankets
.
Braddock eyed the Winchesters leaning against a large chunk of adobe that had toppled into the mission at some point. He carried only his Colt and the spare cartridges in his shell belt. While he believed the revolver would work after he had cleaned it at the Sanchez farm, he would feel better about things if he could get his hands on one of those repeaters and maybe the bandolier of ammunition worn by one of the guards.
Braddock pulled back a little and felt around on the ground until he found a chunk of broken adobe slightly bigger than his hand. He drew back his arm and heaved the chunk in a high arc that carried it across what had been the sanctuary to the other side of the mission. It thudded, bounced, thudded again.
Almost instantly, the two men leaped to their feet with their guns drawn. They wheeled around to face the source of the sound.
“Bernardo!” one of them said in an urgent whisper. “We heard something.”
“Well, go see what it was,” Bernardo said without getting up. Evidently he was in charge of this guard detail. “Probably just a coyote.”
The men left the rifles leaning against the chunk of fallen wall and stalked toward the far side of the mission. They thrust their revolvers out in front of them in a stiff, tense manner, obviously ready to start firing at the least excuse.
Braddock swung his leg over the collapsed wall and stepped into the old mission. Bernardo had his head tucked down with the brim of his sombrero shielding him from the glare of the fire. When Braddock got close enough, the man would be able to see him, but with any luck it would be too late to make a difference.
Only a few feet separated Braddock from the rifles when Bernardo suddenly shifted, muttered, lifted his head, and then ripped out a curse.
“Over here!” the older guard cried as he started trying to throw the blankets aside so he could claw for his gun. “Over here!”
Chapter 25
Braddock’s Colt roared as he shot one of the guards on the other side of the mission. The bullet caught the man in the side as he tried to turn around. He staggered and fell as bloody froth from his punctured lungs spewed from his lips.
“Felipe!” Bernardo shouted. “Felipe, down here!”
So Felipe was the one in the tower. Braddock would get to him in due time—if Felipe didn’t get to him first.
But in the meantime, Braddock fired a round over the head of the second guard across the mission, then turned and shouted toward the front of the ruins, “Wilcox! Get the man in the tower!”
The second guard had ducked away from Braddock’s shot and now scrambled for cover behind the collapsed wall on the other side. Braddock’s next bullet kicked up dirt at his feet an instant before he flung himself over the wall.
As Braddock pivoted, he saw he had almost neglected Bernardo for too long. The man had gotten untangled from his bedroll and started to raise his gun. Firelight glinted off the weapon’s barrel and threw a red glare across the man’s angular, gray-bearded face.
Braddock’s gun roared a fraction of a second before Bernardo’s, but that served to throw off the guard’s aim as Braddock’s slug tore into his chest. Braddock felt the heat of Bernardo’s bullet as it skimmed beside his cheek without touching it.
Bernardo gasped and fell back, but he didn’t drop his gun until Braddock shot him again.
The sombrero flew off Braddock’s head as a rifle cracked from the bell tower. Braddock dived over the big chunk of adobe where the rifles leaned and snagged the barrel of one of the Winchesters. He rolled onto his belly and saw a muzzle flash from the other side of the mission where the second guard had taken cover.
Braddock returned that fire, cranking off three rounds as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever. The bullets struck the top of the ruined wall and sprayed chips of adobe in the second guard’s face. He cried out as he fell back.
The rifle in the tower continued to crack, but the piece of fallen wall protected Braddock. He crawled along on his belly until he reached a spot where he could thrust the Winchester’s barrel around the stone and line up a shot.
He and Felipe must have spotted each other at the same instant, because the man in the tower swung his rifle and fired just as Braddock squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. The sharp reports blended together and sounded like one instead of two.
Felipe’s bullet whined off the adobe a few inches from Braddock, while the outlaw Ranger’s shot made Felipe lurch upright on the part of the tower’s wooden platform that remained intact. Hunched over against the pain, he stumbled forward a step and dropped the rifle.
A second later, he pitched off the platform, turned over once in the air, and smashed down on his back on the ground just inside the mission.
“You got him, Dex!” Braddock yelled. “There’s just one of them left. He can’t stop all of us from getting those women.”
Braddock sprayed four more rounds toward the guard who had taken cover on the far side of the mission. No shots came in return this time.
Instead, as Braddock lowered the rifle and listened, he heard hoofbeats pounding on the desert floor, heading away from the mission. A bleak grin curved his lips.
He waited five minutes after the sound of the hoofbeats faded out before moving from cover, just to make sure the guard wasn’t trying anything tricky. When he was convinced the man had fled, he stood up and moved quickly away from the fire, back into the shadows along the ruined wall. His dangerous life had ingrained such caution in him.
Braddock let a few more minutes go by, then went in search of the entrance to the mission’s cellar.
The elements had taken their toll on the adobe walls of the mission. It might have been a hundred years or more since the priests had abandoned it. But the stone and mortar and thick wooden beams that formed the cellar could still be intact.
After a few minutes, set against what had been one of the mission’s rear walls, Braddock found a heavy wooden door set into the ground at a slant. It looked fairly new and was barred from the outside. Somebody—Hernandez or one of his men, more than likely—had found this old mission, discovered the cellar was still usable, and decided it would make a good place to store contraband.
There was no better way to describe the women and girls who had been kidnapped from Santa Rosalia, at least where Hernandez, Larrizo, and Shadrach Palmer were concerned. Those captives were a commodity to be traded, nothing more.
That thought made anger smolder inside Braddock. He set the rifle aside, removed the bar from the door, and then grasped its handle. With a grunt of effort, he swung it up and to the side. Its hinges creaked from the sand that had gotten into them.
Then he picked up the rifle, stepped back, and called in Spanish, “You can all come out now. You’re safe.”
Chapter 26
It took a couple of minutes before one of the captives gathered enough courage to stick her head up into the silvery light from the moon and stars. That glow shone on her long, sleek dark hair.
“Señor...?” she said.
Without the sombrero, it was more easily discernible that Braddock was a gringo, not one of the guards who worked for Hernandez and Larrizo. He said again, “You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Those other men are either dead or gone. You must have heard the shooting, even down there.”
The young woman swallowed and nodded. “Sí, señor. We did not know what was happening. We were frightened that someone had come to kill us.”
“No. I’m getting you out of here. You’re free to go.”
“Go, señor?” she repeated. “Go where?”
Well, now, that was a problem, Braddock realized. He had been concerned with rescuing the prisoners and at the same time making it seem as if Shadrach Palmer were double-crossing Hernandez and Larrizo and had sent his men to steal the captives away. That was why Braddock had been happy to let the other guard flee.
Probably the man had almost reached Juarez by now, carrying the news of Palmer’s betrayal to Hernandez.
Braddock needed to move quickly hi
mself, but he couldn’t just ride off and leave the women to fend for themselves.
“We’ll find a place for you,” he said. “Right now you need to go back down into the cellar, talk to the others, and tell them we have to get out of here right away.”
“They will be frightened...”
Braddock didn’t have time for this, but he didn’t really have a choice, either.
“You have to convince them. Otherwise it may be too late.”
The woman nodded again and disappeared back down the stone steps visible inside the cellar entrance.
The delay chafed at Braddock as he waited for her to reappear with the other prisoners. He could hear a vague murmur of voices from the darkened cellar. After everything that had happened to the women, he wouldn’t be surprised if some of them believed this was a trick or trap of some sort.
Finally, though, the young woman he had spoken to reappeared. She came up the steps and out into the ruined mission, leading a long line of women and girls, all of them still wearing the nightclothes they’d had on when the raiders took them from their village.
Braddock had been looking around while he waited. Some low hills lay a couple of miles away, splotched with dark stretches that had to be trees and other vegetation.
He pointed to them and told the women, “You can go to those hills and find some place to hide until I come back for you.”
“That is far to walk, and some of us are weak,” the one who spoke for them said. “Larrizo’s men did not feed us well.”
“There are three horses in the corral.” Braddock pointed. “Take them. The weakest among you can ride, two on each horse if necessary.” He nodded toward the sprawled bodies of the three men he had killed. “There are weapons and ammunition. Take them, too, so if anyone tries to hurt you, you can fight.”
“And what if you never come back for us, señor? What if you are dead?”
Gun Devils of the Rio Grande (Outlaw Ranger Book 5) Page 8