“Why the hell would I do that?” Wilcox demanded.
“So I wouldn’t tell Mr. Palmer how you and Hernandez are planning to steal those army rifles for yourselves, so Hernandez won’t have to turn over the women from Santa Rosalia.”
Palmer’s eyes widened, and so did Wilcox’s. Braddock could feel Elise staring at him as well. But after a moment the canny look came back into Palmer’s gaze, replacing the surprise, and he said, “Just because someone shot you doesn’t mean Dex did it.”
“No, but how would I know those things I just told you if I hadn’t heard him and Hernandez plotting together? Hell, I just rode into El Paso a couple of days ago!”
“He’s loco, boss,” Wilcox insisted. “Either that, or he’s lyin’ to save his own hide since you caught him in here with Elise.”
“Wait just a minute,” she said coldly. “You had better not be accusing me of anything.”
“No, no,” Palmer said, waving the idea off as ridiculous. “We all know you’d never do anything to risk your comfortable life, my dear.” He turned his attention back to Braddock. “Just what else do you claim to have overheard?”
“Boss, you’re not gonna listen to this lyin’ son of a bitch, are you?” Wilcox protested.
Palmer ignored him and looked steadily at Braddock, waiting for an answer.
“Wilcox told Hernandez where you’ve got the rifles stashed, and Hernandez told Wilcox about the old mission south of Juarez where the women are being kept. Hernandez is sending two groups of men across the river tonight. One group will go after the rifles. The other will come here and kill you so Wilcox can take over your operation. That’s the other part of their deal.”
“By God, that’s all I’m gonna take!” Wilcox yelled. He started again to claw at his gun, but Palmer swung around sharply and leveled the pistol at him.
“Stop it, Dex!”
Wilcox stared at him. “Boss—”
“I don’t see how George could know everything that’s going on unless he’s telling the truth,” Palmer said. “He knows about the rifles in the warehouse, he knows about the deal with Hernandez...Hell, he even knows where the prisoners are, and that’s something Hernandez never told me! He must have told you, though.”
Wilcox shook his head. “It’s all a pack of lies.”
“There’s one way to sort it out. Gather up all the men you can, and we’ll go to the warehouse and make sure those Krags are safe. If they are—”
Before Palmer could go on, gunfire suddenly roared downstairs. Pistols cracked and a shotgun boomed and women began to scream. It sounded like a war had broken out with no warning.
And so it had.
Chapter 30
Braddock had hoped to stall long enough for Hernandez to make a move. The violent chaos downstairs told him he’d been successful.
Wilcox yanked out his gun. Whether he intended to shoot Braddock or Palmer, Braddock never knew, because Palmer fired before Wilcox could pull the trigger.
Wilcox staggered back, blood welling from the hole in his chest. His revolver had swung wide, but he jerked the trigger in his death spasms and the gun roared.
The slug whipped through the space Elise had occupied a split-second earlier, before Braddock tackled her and knocked her to the floor. Even though Wilcox’s knees had buckled, Palmer shot him again, this time in the face. Wilcox went over backward, a red-rimmed hole in the center of his forehead.
Palmer swung around from the dead gunman and said, “Elise! Are you all right?”
Braddock sprawled on top of her, a position that would have been mighty pleasant under other circumstances. He rolled off her so she could sit up, gasping and wide-eyed.
“My God!” she said. “He...he almost shot me!”
She had dropped Braddock’s gun when he pulled her down. Braddock started to reach for it, then paused and looked back at Palmer.
Palmer jerked his head in a nod and said, “Pick it up. I think Dex showed just whose side he was on when he tried to shoot me.”
If Palmer wanted to believe that, Braddock didn’t mind at all. He scooped his Colt from the rug and stood up. He could have killed Palmer then, but he needed the man alive.
“Get down there and see what’s going on,” Palmer said. “We have to deal with this attack and then stop Hernandez from stealing those rifles.”
Braddock gave him an equally curt nod and hurried out of the suite.
So far, so good, he thought as he ran along the balcony toward the stairs. He paused at the landing to survey the scene below.
Gunsmoke hung in the air in thick clouds. Hernandez’s men must have come in shooting. Palmer’s bartenders and bouncers had returned the fire as the customers scattered, scrambling for cover. Braddock didn’t see the bodies of any innocents lying around, but one of the bartenders lay face-down on the hardwood with a pool of blood around his head. The crimson had spread out enough to start dripping off the front of the bar.
Braddock barely had time to take that in before a bullet sizzled past his ear. The pistolero who had fired it crouched behind an overturned table, but he had lifted himself too high when he triggered the shot, giving Braddock a target. Braddock drilled the man through the throat. He flopped backward with blood spurting from the wound.
Some of Hernandez’s men knelt on the boardwalk in front of the saloon and fired through busted-out windows. Braddock sent a couple of rounds whistling through one of those windows and saw another shape fall.
Hernandez’s men outnumbered Palmer’s, though, and Braddock realized they couldn’t win this fight. He snapped a shot at another pistolero he caught a glimpse of, then turned and raced back to the suite without waiting to see if his bullet had scored.
“There are too many of them,” he reported to Palmer after hurrying into the sitting room. “You need to get out of here while you still can, boss.”
The guard Braddock had knocked out earlier had regained consciousness. He sat up, shaking his head groggily, but at the sight of Braddock he growled and started to get up.
Palmer closed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Forget it, Carson,” he said. “Get downstairs and help hold off Hernandez’s men. George, you come with me and Elise. We have to warn the men who are guarding those rifles. Maybe Hernandez hasn’t gotten to them yet.”
Braddock nodded. He would have suggested the same thing if Palmer hadn’t beaten him to it. He knew now the rifles were hidden in a warehouse somewhere in El Paso, but he didn’t know its exact location.
“If I’m coming with you, I have to get dressed—” Elise began.
“No time.” Palmer grabbed her hand. He still held the pistol in his other hand. “Come on.”
Braddock had been thumbing fresh cartridges into his Colt while Palmer talked. He held it ready as he led the way through the rear corridor toward the stairs. Frightened faces belonging to soiled doves and customers peeked out from doors open a few inches. Braddock figured as soon as he and Palmer and Elise were gone, a stampede would follow them down the rear stairs.
When he threw the door open and stepped out onto the landing, he caught a glimpse of two men wearing sombreros on their way up. Each man carried a shotgun, so Braddock couldn’t give them time to bring the Greeners into play. He fired three times, flame geysering from the Colt’s barrel.
The first two slugs hammered into the chest of the man leading the way up the stairs and knocked him back into his companion. Braddock’s third bullet blew that man’s jaw off. The pistoleros’ legs tangled together, and they both tumbled back down the stairs, leaving splashes of dark blood behind. They landed at the bottom in a welter of dead and dying flesh without firing the shotguns.
Elise screamed, then muffled the sound by clapping both hands over her mouth in horror.
“Get hold of yourself,” Palmer snapped. “You knew I’m in a violent business.”
“I don’t see any more of them,” Braddock said. “We’d better move while we can. There are bound to be more of Hernandez’s
men on the way around here.”
He went down the stairs as fast as he could and stepped over the corpses at the bottom. Palmer and Elise followed close behind him. Palmer had his left hand clamped around Elise’s arm to help her negotiate the grisly obstacle at the bottom of the stairs. She still wore only the dressing gown and slippers, but that couldn’t be helped.
A moment later, the three of them had disappeared into the welcoming darkness of the alley.
Chapter 31
The sound of gunfire continued behind them, but it faded as Palmer took the lead and they wound through the back alleys and side streets of El Paso.
The route actually didn’t cover all that much distance, Braddock realized as they came to a large, darkened building beside the Rio Grande.
“This is it?” Braddock said. “The place where the rifles are hidden?”
“That’s right.” Palmer looked around. “And we’ve beaten Hernandez here.”
Of course they had, Braddock thought, since Hernandez didn’t know where Palmer had hidden the rifles. Braddock had just wanted Palmer to think that so he’d lead the way here.
Palmer took a ring of keys from his pocket. Braddock said, “You don’t have guards posted here?”
“Of course I do, inside and outside both.”
As if to prove that, a couple of dark shapes loomed out of the shadows and turned into a pair of men toting rifles.
“What’s going on, boss?” one of them asked.
“Hernandez is trying to double-cross us,” Palmer said. “He and some of his men may show up here at any minute. Some of them attacked the saloon a little while ago.”
“Son of a bitch!” The guard added hastily, “Sorry, Miss Elise. We thought we heard shots in that direction, boss, but we didn’t figure they came from Casa de Palmer. If we had, we would’ve gone to see what the trouble was.”
“No, you did the right thing by staying here,” Palmer told the men. “Those rifles will set me up for life before I’m through.” He started unlocking the regular-sized door beside the big double entrance. “Stay out here and keep your eyes open. If you see any sign of trouble, come on inside. We’ll fort up in there.” Palmer laughed. “We have enough rifles and ammunition to hold off an army, after all!”
That was true, Braddock supposed. But rifles still needed people to fire them, and he didn’t figure Palmer had more than half a dozen men here.
Even if he was right about that number, he still faced steep odds. He couldn’t do anything except forge ahead with his hastily formed plan, though.
Braddock followed Palmer and Elise into the warehouse. They stopped in a small office next to the big, open storage space. Palmer lit a lamp on the desk and went out into the warehouse’s main room.
Bales of cotton, large tow sacks full of other goods, and stacks of boxes and crates filled about half the space. As a smuggler, Palmer had to have plenty of contraband on hand and in motion across the border.
Braddock had no trouble spotting the particular crates that interested him, however, fifty of them, all long and rectangular and holding twenty Krag-Jorgensen Springfield rifles apiece. Square ammunition boxes rose in stacks next to the crated rifles.
Three men carrying Winchesters emerged from the shadowy recesses of the warehouse’s far corners. They nodded politely to Elise, then one of them asked, “Is there some sort of trouble, Mr. Palmer?”
“Damn right there is. Hernandez is on his way here to steal those Krags from me.”
“Well, that dirty, double-crossin’ greaser! I always figured you couldn’t trust a Mex.”
“Dex Wilcox was in on it with him.”
That shocked the three guards even more. One of them said, “Dex could be a pretty sorry varmint sometimes, but I never thought he’d sell you out.”
“He tried to kill me not long ago, as soon as George here told me about his deal with Hernandez.”
The three men looked suspiciously at Braddock. One of them asked, “Who in blazes is this?”
“His name’s George. He just went to work for me last night, and already he’s saved our bacon by exposing Wilcox’s treachery.”
The guard’s eyes narrowed even more as he stared at Braddock. Then he said, “You’re the hombre who killed Larkin and his boys.”
Palmer looked at him sharply. “How did you know that?”
“Because I was there, boss. I wasn’t on guard duty last night, so I went across the river to Hernandez’s place to see a little chiquita there I like. I watched her dance all evenin’, but I saw Dex and this hombre come in, and then they left a little while later, after the trouble with Larkin.” The man nodded toward Braddock. “George—if that’s his name—went upstairs for a while, but Dex was downstairs drinkin’ and joshin’ with the whores.”
“He didn’t talk to Hernandez?”
“He couldn’t have. I never laid eyes on Hernandez, but Dex was where I could see him the whole time.” The man bared his teeth in a grimace at Braddock. “If you been sayin’ Dex was a traitor, it’s a damn lie!”
Any plan, no matter how meticulously laid out, could be ruined by something unexpected. As haphazard as Braddock’s plan had been, he was a little surprised nothing had gone wrong with it before now.
But now he had reached the end of the trail, so there was only one thing he could do.
He smacked the gun in his hand against the side of Palmer’s head, driving the man to his knees, then darted toward the crates holding the rifles as he triggered the Colt at Palmer’s guards.
Chapter 32
One of the men doubled over as a slug from Braddock’s Colt punched into his guts. The bullet bored on through and smashed his spine, dropping him to the floor like a discarded rag doll.
Another guard dropped his rifle and staggered back as he clutched at a bullet-shattered shoulder.
The third man got his rifle working, though, and hammered shots at Braddock as the outlaw Ranger rolled over the stacked-up crates. The bullets narrowly missed Braddock but chewed splinters from the wood. He felt them sting his hands and face.
As he dropped behind the crates, he heard Palmer yell, “Circle around! Get the bastard!”
Boot soles slapped the floor as the guard still on his feet ran through the shadows in an attempt to flank Braddock. Knowing the man couldn’t draw a bead on him at the same time, Braddock came up on one knee and leveled the Colt at Palmer. He pulled the trigger, but Palmer had already dived aside so the bullet missed him.
Elise was just standing there, too stunned by everything that had happened to move. Palmer ducked behind her and looped his left arm around her neck to yank her against him as a human shield. With his other hand, he shoved the pistol under her arm and triggered a couple of rounds toward Braddock.
The hurried shots missed, but Braddock had to hold his fire because Palmer had Elise in front of him.
That situation didn’t last very long. Elise realized the danger she was in and tried to writhe free from Palmer’s grip. Failing that, she grabbed his arm, forced her head down, and sank her teeth into his flesh.
That loosened his hold on her. Elise slammed an elbow against his chest and knocked him back a step. She dived away from him, out of the line of fire.
Palmer tried a desperate shot, but Braddock’s Colt roared a hair ahead of Palmer’s little revolver. The impact of the slug smashing into him knocked Palmer all the way around so he faced away from Braddock. He fell to his knees, looked back over his shoulder, and opened his mouth.
Blood poured out of it, and then he slumped forward to land on his face.
The third guard’s rifle cracked. Braddock felt the wind-rip of a bullet as it went past his ear. He dived, rolled, and came up just as the guard fired another round. The muzzle flash gave Braddock something to aim at in the gloomy warehouse. The Colt roared and bucked in his hand.
The guard dropped his rifle and stumbled back, gurgling and wheezing. He went to one knee and fought to stay upright and alive as he clawed out the gun on
his hip.
Braddock sent the final round in the Colt through the man’s brain.
He jammed the empty gun back in its holster, vaulted over the crates, and ran over to the man whose shoulder he had broken with his second shot. The guard had collapsed and started writhing in pain. Braddock snatched up the rifle the man had dropped and put him out of his misery temporarily by knocking him out with a stroke of the Winchester’s butt.
Hurried footsteps came toward him again. Braddock swung around and leveled the repeater at the two guards who had rushed in from outside.
The men stopped short, not knowing what was going on. Before they could figure it out, Braddock yelled, “Get out of here! The Rangers are on their way! We’ve been double-crossed!”
The men stared, clearly uncertain what to do, especially now that they had spotted Palmer’s body.
Elise stepped up beside Braddock and said in a voice slightly hoarse from Palmer choking her, “Shad’s dead. George is right. It’s all gone to hell. Save yourselves.”
They knew her as their boss’s mistress and didn’t see any reason why she would lie to them. Braddock could tell when they made up their minds to light a shuck while they still had the chance.
“Son of a bitch,” one man muttered, but that was all either of them said before they got out of there as quickly as they could.
“Thank you,” Braddock told Elise when they were alone.
“Is that what you really are?” she said. “A Texas Ranger?”
“Something like that.”
If the answer confused her, she didn’t bother to show it. Instead she glanced at Palmer’s body and her lip curled.
“He didn’t give a damn about me.”
“Did you really think he did?”
“I didn’t think he’d try to get me killed, just to save himself!”
“And that’s why you helped me?”
Gun Devils of the Rio Grande (Outlaw Ranger Book 5) Page 10