She wore a sleeveless, salmon-colored gown with a very low-cut neck and a bodice edged with gold embroidery. The gown enhanced the ripeness of her figure. A lacy, sheer, cream shawl was drawn around her shoulders.
“¿Qué es?” she asked, befuddled.
The don looked at Prophet then at his daughter and shaped a toothy smile. He blinked once, slowly, then said, “Tell Seville that the corn will suffice, mi hija.”
Marisol continue to stare at the three men, perplexed. She looked at Prophet. There must have been something about his own expression that affected her, for a flush rose into her smooth cheeks. She averted her eyes and, muttering softly under her breath, pulled her head out of the room and drew the door closed with a soft, slow click.
The don turned to Lou, smiling. “Could that other thing be the señoritas, Señor Prophet?”
“It might just be at that, Don. I hope I’m not being impolite by saying your daughter might just be the most beautiful señorita I’ve ever laid eyes on.” Lou smiled. “And I’ve seen a few.”
The old hacendado studied him shrewdly, nodding. “You are a good judge of woman-flesh, Señor Prophet.”
“Call me Lou. I mean, I am sitting in your library, drinking your liquor—which is mighty fine, if I might add.”
“Sí, sí. And you did save my daughter’s life.”
“Sorry about your sister, Don,” Colter said through a slight rasp after taking another small sip of the pulque. “I wish we could have saved her, too.”
“Of course, I am bereaved,” the don said, waving a hand in the air, at once accepting and dismissing the notion. “But mi hermana lived a good, long life. One of great adventure. She has been ill for years, an illness similar to the one that took my wife five years ago, but only after eating away at her slowly for the previous ten, the past six of which she was a mere ghost of her former self. This way was better. A bullet to the head. It was almost a merciful thing Juan Carlos did. I didn’t want to see Aurora linger. Besides . . .” The don turned again to Prophet. “I guess Juan Carlos got his—how do you say? Just deserts?”
“About that,” Prophet said, shifting uneasily in his seat. “Just how mad is . . .”
“Don’t worry about that. You are safe here at Hacienda de la Paz, I assure you. Besides, I ordered Miguel to assure Don Amador that he got what he deserved by a stranger who did not know who he was. I told the don that his son was about to kill my daughter. That he will believe. He knows how Juan Carlos felt about Marisol, and how hot Juan Carlos’s blood ran. No, no. I assure you both that while a few years ago such a happening would have resulted in all-out war between our haciendas, both Don Amador and myself are far too old and worn-out to fight. Or to send others to do our fighting.”
The don paused to take a deep drink of the pulque. “Besides,” he continued, thumbing some of the liquor away from the corner of his mouth, “we both have another problem that has us both badly preoccupied. At least, I’m sure Don Amador is as preoccupied with Ciaran Yeats as I am, for I am told the bloodthirsty devil has done as much damage over at Hacienda del Amador as he has here.”
That was the second time Prophet had heard the name. Now he had an opportunity to voice his curiosity. “Who is Ciaran Yeats, pray tell?”
“He is the, uh, matter I mentioned. The reason I summoned you here for a private conversation.”
“I don’t understand,” Colter said, cutting a quick glance at Lou.
Don de la Paz stared at the redhead. His rheumy brown eyes flickered with emotion. His hands shook, including the one holding the pulque. It shook so badly that the creamy white liquor splashed up over the brim to run down the sides of the cup.
“Easy, Don,” Prophet said when forked veins bulged so severely in the old man’s forehead that Lou was afraid he was about to have a stroke and die right there in his chair.
The don drew a breath as though to calm himself. It didn’t work. His raspy voice quavered as he said, “He is the vile gringo jackal who has kidnapped my youngest daughter. He is the vile son of a wild lobo bitch I am going to pay you both most dearly to kill!”
Chapter 17
Again, Prophet and Colter shared a dubious glance. Scowling deeply, Prophet leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “Wait a second. Your, uh . . . your youngest daughter was kidnapped?” He was having trouble working his mind around the information, wondering why, if such a thing had occurred, he hadn’t learned about it until now.
“And . . . you want us to, uh, kill a man?” Colter asked in the same halting, incredulous manner of Lou.
“Ciaran Yeats!” The name had flown out of the don’s mouth like a choking wail.
He took a calming drink of his pulque and then sank back in his chair, the forked veins in his forehead contracting somewhat, which Prophet was relieved to see. For a minute he’d honestly been worried about the old man’s health. “He took my daughter, Alejandra, in a raid. Six weeks ago. That is why I summoned Marisol home from Mexico City, sending my dearly departed sister as her chaperone.”
He sat there staring across the room as though he himself could not believe the words he’d just spoken. His spindly chest rose and fell heavily. Sweat glistened across his forehead. A single bead ran down the side of his face. “My dear Alejandra . . .” he muttered.
“Ciaran Yeats,” Prophet said, frowning. “I’ve heard that name.”
“He was a major in the Ninth Cavalry stationed in California,” said the don in a soft, raspy voice, still staring across the room at a faded painting of a beautiful, red-haired woman on the wall—probably his dead wife, Lou assumed. “He was court-martialed for . . .”
“Leading a raid on a small Mojave village in southeastern Arizona, murdering mostly old women and children,” Prophet said. “Not long after his court-martial, he was busted out of a guardhouse by a gang of his loyal supporters, including a lieutenant named . . .”
“Will-John Rhodes,” the don finished for him. “They are still together, thick as thieves. Hell, they are thieves. Loco americano bandits riding wild in Baja!”
“So the old coyote is still alive, after all these years.” Prophet nodded slowly in surprise, remembering the tale he’d been told late one night in a Nogales gambling den by the quartermaster from Fort Bowie. “I heard Rhodes is as crazy as Yeats.”
“Sí,” said the don. “Maybe crazier.”
“Still addicted, then . . .”
Colter furled a curious brow at Prophet. “Addicted?”
Lou set his cup on the table and laced his fingers together between his knees. “I heard the major contracted a case of rabies after being bitten by a rabid coyote he tried to chase away from his dog. A medico prescribed a powerful hemp extract to treat the rabies. It takes great doses of the stuff to hold it at bay, and you have to keep taking it or the rabies will come back, even years after you first contracted it. So you can either go mad from the cure or die about as painfully as any man can, from the rabies.”
Colter whistled softly at the prospect of such a miserable death.
“Yeats became obsessed with his medicine, which he could only get from back East somewhere. Tilden’s India Extract, I think it was called. When he became anxious about the reliability of his supplier, the major decided to grow the weed himself and extract it. I heard he had acres and acres of the stuff growing at Fort Davis. He had his men cultivating the crops and formulating a powerful liquid extract. They must have done some sampling, because, as the story goes, many of the enlisted men, noncoms, and even officers at Fort Davis became as addicted as Yeats.
“The major and his men did a lot of loco things before they ever killed those Mojaves. It’s said they’d all turned outlaw and were extorting money from gold mines they’d been assigned to protect from Indian raids and banditos. They took over one mine and ran it themselves. There’s also a story they got involved in a rustling ring and were even kidnapping young Mojave girls and selling them into sex slavery in Mexico. All hearsay, of course. No
one was able to prove anything. When Yeats and his men killed those Mojaves they claimed were holding up stagecoaches, the army finally had the devil locked up for good. Or so they thought.”
“Sí, or so they thought,” said the don. “The major’s loyal, addicted supporters wouldn’t have it.” The old hacendado was still staring at the painting of the red-haired woman who must have been his wife, depicted in her much younger years. Prophet saw where Marisol had gotten her looks. If possible, the señorita’s mother was even more spectacular, unless the painter had added his own romantic touches to the image.
Prophet sipped his pulque then set the cup back on the table. “Yeats’s men busted him out of the guardhouse where he was waiting to be moved to a permanent military pen, and they all ran to Mexico. A good fifty U.S. soldiers armed to the teeth. Deserters, every one. All in allegiance to a crazy son of Satan. The Mad Major, they called him.”
The don turned his head slowly to Prophet. “He is crazier now than ever.”
Prophet’s brows furled tightly, skeptically. “Are you sure it’s him, Don? I mean, Yeats was busted out of the Fort Bowie lockup damn near twenty years ago. Surely, he’s not still alive. Not with the rabies, the addiction. He must have been forty, forty-five years old back then. He’d be in his sixties now. Hell, his youngest men have to be in their forties. Still running off their leashes down here in Baja?”
The don’s eyes glinted wildly. “Most of his original gang is dead from illness or violence. But . . . am I sure it’s him? Madre María, he was here less than a month ago, and him and his men, most of them the lowest of bandidos mexicanos, had the run of the place! Most of my men had gone to the ocean coast to sell beef and produce and to return with supplies. Hacienda de la Paz was undermanned. Yeats and his men rode in under cover of darkness, slipped into the casa”—he pointed a finger like a pistol barrel at the floor—“as silent as ghosts in the night! I woke up to the sharp chill of a knife held to my throat, to the horrible aroma of that ungodly substance the old devil doesn’t stop smoking!”
“You mean Yeats himself stole into your room?” Prophet asked.
“Sí, sí.” The don poked a long, crooked finger to his throat. “He held a big cuchillo to my neck! He pulled my bedcovers away and said, ‘Come downstairs, Don de la Paz. It is time to negotiate for your life and the life of Hacienda de la Paz.’
“He continued his siege throughout the next day and the next night. It was like a celebration for him and his men. They kept my men in their bunkhouses but forced the peons’ women to dance with them—I won’t tell you what else they were forced to do!—while their husbands were forced to play guitars and mandolins. Yeats and that wicked Lieutenant Rhodes forced me to sit out on the patio with them, watching the festivities. They held guns and knives and machetes on us all. They butchered several pigs and a goat and roasted them over big fires, and we sat there on the veranda, drinking pulque and wine together, as though we were old amigos!”
The don placed a hand to his temple then flung that hand toward the ceiling. “¡Mierda! They smoked that evil weed of theirs and sipped their evil drink that has obviously pickled that old gringo devil’s brains. Oh, he is quite mad!”
“What were they here for?” Colter asked. He’d been listening closely, riveted.
“Gold! And guns! And women, of course! That is what Yeats does—he travels around Baja laying siege to villages and ranchos and haciendas, plundering the hard-earned wealth of others, raping women, hoarding the fruits of his pillaging, fostering this demented idea that he is the governor of Baja and that he, in time, will take over all of Sonora and, after a few more years, all of Méjico! Oh, he is quite mad. See? Do you understand now? He is quite mad!”
He turned to Prophet and choked out, “And he took my daughter. My beautiful Alejandra!”
“So you said. Why?” Prophet turned to the painting the don had been gazing at earlier. Lou thought he knew why she’d been taken. At least, if Alejandra looked anything like her mother, he knew why Yeats had taken her.
The don followed Prophet’s gaze to the picture and said nothing for nearly a minute before muttering, “Sí, sí. Now you understand.” He raised a knotted hand slowly to his face and thumbed a tear from his cheek. “Like her mother before her, she is more beautiful than Madre María, and more saintly, more divine. Yeats told me that he was taking my daughter in exchange for my life, for the lives of everyone else at Hacienda de la Paz, and for not burning the hacienda to the ground.”
The old hacendado gritted his teeth, stifling a sob. “Alejandra’s parting words to me were: ‘Do not worry, Papa, my life for yours and Hacienda de la Paz is a sacrifice I am honored to make.’ Then she told me she loved me.” His fingertips fluttered against his cheek as he stared dreamily at the painting. “My dear hija, my youngest, my most ravishing, mi bebé . . . she kissed my cheek most tenderly—it was like an angel’s kiss—and then they took her away, all of them mounting their horses and thundering off into the mountains . . . gone forever with my last-born, my angel. My Alejandra!”
The old don propped his elbow on the arm of his chair, rested his head in his hand, and cried like a baby for several minutes.
When he finally stopped, he looked from Prophet to Colter then back to the bounty hunter again, his eyes swimming in tears. “Por favor. I beg you both. Only you two can get her back for me. Only you two can kill that mad devil, Ciaran Yeats. I have treasure. They didn’t take it all. I have gold. It’s buried, but I will dig it up for you. It is not much, but it is all yours. There is probably enough to equal around five thousand of your American dollars out there. I was saving it for an emergency. If this is not that, I don’t know what is.”
He gave a heavy sigh that was part sob.
* * *
Don de la Paz treated his guests to an opulent, savory meal.
Prophet couldn’t remember enjoying a meal more than he enjoyed the succulent Spanish dishes laid out by Marisol and the tall, gaunt Mexican woman—the wife of the mayordomo, Raoul, it turned out—whose name was Seville. No, he couldn’t say he really enjoyed the meal. The food satisfied him no end, as did the wine from the don’s own vines cultivated by his peons.
But it was hard to enjoy a meal under the cloud of all that had happened that day, starting with the murder of Doña Aurora and ending with the don’s horrible story of Yeats’s siege and the don’s pleas for Prophet and Colter Farrow to find his beloved daughter and bring her back to the hacienda but only after assassinating the mad jackal who’d kidnapped her—the notoriously savage Ciaran Yeats.
The Mad Major, as he was called.
Before leaving the library, having been called to la cena, or supper, by Marisol, Prophet and Colter had told the don they’d sleep on his proposition and give him their response in the morning. There wasn’t much talking during dinner. As could have been predicted, a funereal pall had fallen over the casa. As soon as the don had finished his plate, he wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and excused himself for the evening. He was going to light a candle for his dearly departed hermana and sit with her awhile, in her bedroom upstairs, where Marisol and Seville had washed her and dressed her and laid her out on her bed for visitation.
Before he left the dining room, the crippled old don wished Prophet and Colter a good night’s sleep and announced in his raspy voice that he hoped they would, in the morning, accept his offer for the job he so badly needed them to do.
Prophet and Colter thanked him for the meal. The don gave a formal bow then hobbled on out of the room, his mayordomo in close attendance. Prophet caught Marisol studying him closely from where she sat directly across the heavy wooden table. Her lovely, chocolate-eyed face wore a faintly skeptical expression. An oblique one, as well.
Did she know about her father’s request?
If so, she didn’t offer commentary. Instead, she politely excused herself, as well, announcing that she’d best sit with her father. As Prophet and Colter slid their chairs back and climbed clumsily to the
ir feet, she moved swiftly to the dining room’s broad, arched door. She stopped and glanced back at both men standing at the table, the light from the table’s three candles flickering in her eyes. Light and shadows were shunted this way and that across her beautifully gowned body, the deepest shadows of all lingering in the cleavage of her low-cut bodice.
Prophet flushed when, lifting his eyes from the woman’s bosom, he saw her staring at him, a very faint smile pulling at the corners of her full, wide mouth. He flushed with embarrassment. Prophet, you goatish old devil. You done been caught with your hand in the cookie jar, old son. Leastways, your eyes where they had no business bein’ . . .
Marisol blinked once as she kept her frank, lustrous gaze on Prophet. “I will have Raoul show you to your rooms, señores.”
“Rooms?” Prophet hooked a self-deprecating smile. “The closest pile of hay is all I need.”
“Me, too,” Colter agreed.
“Nonsense,” said the señorita. With that she abruptly turned away and left the room, her high-heeled, side-button shoes clacking off down a stone-paved hall. The clacking dwindled slowly, and Prophet found his ears straining to keep listening, his heart reluctant to let her go . . .
Finally, she was gone. Only the light, intriguing scent of her remained.
Prophet and Colter were now alone in the room lit by only the three candles. They could hear Seville moving around in the kitchen off the dining room, but otherwise they were quite isolated here in the deep recesses of the sprawling, ancient casa.
Colter sat back down in his chair and fingered the handle of his coffee cup. He studied the cup for a time and then looked across the table at Prophet. “What do you think?”
Prophet sank back into his own chair, which creaked beneath his weight. “About the señorita?”
Colter chuffed a laugh and tossed a grape across the table at Lou. They’d been served grapes and coffee for desert. “I already know what you think about the señorita, Proph.” He chuckled again. “That’s more than obvious. I’m talkin’ about the don’s offer.”
The Cost of Dying Page 13