The Cost of Dying

by Peter Brandvold

  The hacendado was yelling at someone in the yard beyond the adobe wall. Several men were yelling back frantically.

  The don was asking what in God’s name was going on out there and the replies seemed garbled—at least to Prophet’s ears. The replies were also somewhat drowned by the clomping of horses and the squawking and rattling of tack.

  Prophet and Colter shared another skeptical look then moved out across the courtyard and through a gate that led out into the compound. All the activity was happening to their right, maybe fifty yards away, between the far end of the adobe wall and a corral on the opposite side of the yard.

  A half-dozen horses were milling around over there, stomping, bucking, and whinnying. Three vaqueros were trying to get the horses stopped while a half-dozen others watched from the side near the end of the adobe wall, the bunkhouse behind them. One of the vaqueros, a bandy-legged old man with a long gray beard, shook his head and crossed himself as he watched the commotion.

  “What the hell . . . ?” Prophet muttered.

  He walked along the adobe wall, frowning as he studied the horses and the three vaqueros running along beside them, grabbing at the reins. The horses were saddled and appeared to be carrying something across their backs. Something else looked odd about the mounts but Prophet couldn’t see what it was until he’d walked another thirty feet.

  Then he slowed his pace, muttering to himself, absently raking a thumb across his chin. “What . . . the . . . hell . . . ?” he repeated.

  “Am I still addled from that Mexican panther juice, or am I seein’ what I think I’m seein’?” Colter asked.

  They both stopped and stared toward where two of the vaqueros finally got two horses settled down. Dust wafted up from the obviously terrified mounts’ hooves, so for a few seconds the horses and men were somewhat obscured. Still, Prophet could see one of the vaqueros cry out and jerk back away from the horse he’d stopped.

  The man wheeled, facing the others gathered near the casa’s patio wall, and fell to his hands and knees. He violently aired out his paunch.

  The other vaquero released his own horse suddenly and stepped back as the horse ran over to the corral, scraping up against the stone fence, wanting whatever was on its saddle removed. The other horses—there were six of them total, each carrying a dead man—were acting similarly, one bouncing on its front hooves and whickering.

  This horse turned so that Prophet could see it more clearly, could clearly see that what lay across its saddle was a man’s body. The body of a vaquero.

  The headless body of a vaquero.

  The head of the body was mounted on the horn of the horse’s saddle, like some grisly trophy of a bloody battle. The head’s eyelids dropped and the lips were stretched back from teeth gritted as though still in the throes of the man’s barbaric demise.

  Prophet hadn’t noticed until now that Don de la Paz and his mayordomo, Raoul, had stepped out of the patio gate to stand where they’d been standing when Prophet had first met them. Slumped over his crutches, the don yelled, “Tomás, lead that horse over here!”

  The vaquero holding the reins of one of the other Arabians, and scowling at the horse’s grisly cargo, turned toward the don and said, “Are you sure you want to see this, patrón?”

  “Lead it over here!” the don yelled in his raspy voice before hacking up a gob of phlegm and spitting it into the dirt.

  Prophet and Colter walked slowly over to the don and Raoul. They stopped near the older men and watched Tomás lead the smoky gray Arabian with white-speckled hindquarters toward the don, a look of extreme distaste twisting the vaquero’s mouth. He was muttering, “Yi, yi, yi . . .” while shaking his head.

  He stopped ten feet away from the don and regarded the old man gravely. “It is Miguel, patrón!”

  Sure enough, the head of the segundo who’d led the contingent returning Juan Carlos’s body to his father was now mounted on the horn of his saddle. That meant the headless body draped belly down over the bowl-like Spanish saddle likely belonged to the segundo, as well.

  “Mierda,” the don raked out, staring in wide-eyed fascination at the grisly spectacle.

  For the first time, Prophet heard Raoul speak. “Good Lord in heaven, what kind of savage is that crazy demon, anyway?” he exclaimed in a voice nearly as raspy as the hacendado’s. The mayordomo crossed himself, muttering.

  The old don sighed and shook his head as he stared at the head of his segundo mounted on the apple of the man’s saddle. “Don Amador, that old lion, took Juan Carlos’s death harder than I thought he would. Hmmm.” Pensively, he drummed his index finger against his whiskered chin.

  Prophet stared at the grisly scene before him, his heart thumping. If Don Amador did this to the men who were merely returning his son’s body, what would he do to the man who’d actually killed him?

  Nah, the bounty hunter decided. Probably best not to think about that.

  “I reckon this means trouble for you, Don,” Prophet said. “I mean more trouble than what Amador sent back with these horses.”

  Amador pursed his lips and shook his head. “I am not worried. Amador is even older than I, in even worse shape. So is his hacienda. We both have been pillaged and plundered by Ciaran Yeats. He doesn’t have the men or the firepower to stand against my small army of vaqueros, which it seems has just grown smaller by six after being culled by seven more only yesterday!” The don gave a dry laugh and shook his head as though in response to his blood enemy’s reply to the package Don de la Paz had sent to Hacienda del Amador. “He still has his sense of humor, though—I’ll give the old lion that much!”

  The don gave quick, sharp orders to bury the bodies then turned to Prophet and Colter Farrow. “Now, then, back to the business of the day. How did you sleep, gentlemen?”

  Prophet and Colter shared uneasy glances. Lou had seen his share of carnage during the war and then over his decade-long hunt for the nastiest owlhoots in the West. Still, the savagery of Old Mexico never ceased to rock him back on his heels.

  Colter gave his head a single wag of amazement.

  “Gentlemen, I am sorry you had to witness such nastiness even before breakfast,” the don said, “but as I was saying, back to the business of the day.”

  “Right, right,” Lou said. “Back to the business of the day.”

  “How did you sleep?” the don asked him, gazing directly into his eyes.

  Prophet scrutinized the don’s regal, weathered features, looking for any indication the old man suspected that his daughter might have paid a visit to the bounty hunter’s room. The old man’s eyes appeared absent of guile, which was a relief. Seeing those dead vaqueros in such grisly states had left Lou feeling a little colicky. He thought he’d seen enough Mexican justice for one morning. He didn’t feel like suffering any himself.

  He smiled broadly. “Slept like a log! Just like a log, sure enough! Both of us did.” He draped a thick arm around Colter’s shoulders. The redhead pulled his mouth corners down. He still appeared a little green around the gills.

  “Did you come to a decision?” the don asked hopefully. “Regarding my offer . . . ?”

  Prophet looked at the don. How could he say no? The old man had few men left on his roll, likely even fewer with the salt to go after a man like Ciaran Yeats. The hacendado was in failing health, of both mind and body. His daughter had been taken from him by one of the evilest men to ever ride the western frontier, north or south of the border.

  Besides, Prophet had just plain taken a liking to the proud old hacendado staring up at him plaintively.

  Prophet looked again at Colter. The redhead looked back at him. He shrugged as if to say, What else we gonna do for entertainment down here in Old Mexico, Lou?

  “We’re gonna get your daughter back to you safe and sound, Don,” Lou said. “And we’re gonna kick Ciaran Yeats out with a cold shovel, which is better than he deserves.”

  The old man gazed from Prophet to Colter and back again. He pursed his lips as thoug
h to check his emotion, but his eyes filled with tears. That forked vein in his temple bulged again, dangerously.

  “I am most happy to hear that, gentlemen. Most happy!” The don looked at Raoul and stifled a sob. The mayordomo smiled at him tenderly. “Come in, come in,” the don said, brushing a tear from his cheek. “Let’s have a gran desayuno and discuss the finer points!”

  Chapter 20

  There were few particulars to discuss.

  The don knew next to nothing about where Prophet and Colter Farrow would find Ciaran Yeats and the hacendado’s kidnapped daughter, Alejandra de la Paz. According to the don, the way Yeats had avoided capture for the nearly twenty years he’d been on the run was to keep moving through Baja’s deserts and mountains, from the Sea of Cortez in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, a wild lobo by day, a ghost in the night.

  All that he knew of Yeats’s current whereabouts had come by rumors from passing strangers—that he was holed up somewhere in east-central Baja, near a fishing village overlooking the sea. It was said that as Yeats had grown older, he’d grown weary of moving around so much and preferred now to remain in one place longer than he’d been known to do in the past.

  “Drift south, amigos. South and east toward the salty sea breezes. Follow the rumors. Eventually, those rumors and whispers on the night wind whistling through the ghostly pueblitos of this ancient land will either lead you to Yeats, or . . .” The old don gave a baleful half smile and a shrug, opening his hands over the remains of his eggs, frijoles, and roasted goat loin drowned in hot cactus syrup spiced with chilis.

  “To a lonely death in a deep barranca,” Prophet finished for him, wistfully, having come to know the sentiment of Old Mexico well enough not to deceive himself of his chances here.

  “You two are right cheerful this morning,” Colter grunted over the rim of his steaming stone coffee mug.

  Again, the don shrugged. “It is Méjico. Go with Madre María, my friend. Travel with the blessings of the ancient ones. I will light a candle for you . . . one for every day that you are gone, beating the rocks and arroyos for my beloved Alejandra. If anyone can bring her back to me and kill the devil who took her . . it is you.”

  Prophet had glanced across the table to see Alejandra’s older sister burning holes through him with her eyes, silently reminding him of her admonition of the night before: “Whatever you do, don’t fall in love with her!”

  * * *

  So, drifting south and east, sniffing the air for the velvety, salty smell of the Sea of Cortez, Prophet and Colter rode, following one trail and then another, forsaking that trail for yet another for little more reason than the two partners’ instincts instructed them to.

  After three days’ hard ride across mostly open desert rippling with small, isolated jogs of buttes and low mesas, they came to a pueblito spread out on a high, rocky plateau. It was late in the day, and the setting sun was a red blush in the western sky, between two towering mountain ridges. As they rode into the little village they passed a small wooden sign announcing the name of the place: LA BACHATA.

  A dry wind blew, lifting dust and bits of moldy hay and goat dung and sweeping it up and over Prophet and Colter from behind and throwing it on down the broad main street of the adobe village laid out before them. The wind moaned and whistled softly between the small adobe structures standing back behind splintering boardwalks and brush ramadas from which the occasional clay water olla hung from a frayed rope.

  A dog ran out from nowhere to bark and nip at Mean’s and Northwest’s hocks though Mean quickly discouraged the hound with a swift kick, which sent the mongrel squealing off through a break between a stock pen and a pepper shop.

  At the far end of the darkling town, which smelled of goats and the spicy ristras hanging from viga poles, the two riders came to a large adobe brick structure, which a sign called LA PRINCESA. Out front a dozen or so horses were tied to three hitchracks.

  Prophet drew rein. From inside the cantina came the low roar of conversation and the strumming of a mandolin. Weak lamplight shone beyond the sashed windows and the rotten chinking between the large adobe blocks comprising the stout, obviously ancient building. “We might hear a rumor or two here. What do you think, Red?”

  “We might get a cuchillo in our backs in this place, too.” Colter swung down from his saddle, drew his Remington, and checked the loads. “On the other hand—no risk, no reward.” He spun the cylinder and returned the piece to the holster on his right hip but did not snap the keeper thong over the hammer.

  “You’re wise for your years.” With a weary sigh, Prophet stepped down from Mean’s back. He walked the mount up to one of the three hitchracks, giving the colicky gelding some room from the others tied there, and looped the reins over the worn cottonwood rail. He grinned ironically at Colter tying his coyote dun beside Mean. “Just please never lose that angelic innocence of yours, will you, Red?”

  Colter grinned back at him. “Never.”

  Prophet looked at the big shotgun hanging by its lanyard from his saddle horn. He fingered his left earlobe, considering whether it would be a good idea to hang the gut-shedder from his shoulder. He might need it in such a place. This was Mexico, after all. On the other hand, the twelve-gauge could be as prone to attracting trouble as solving problems. It marked its owner as a bounty hunter, and more than one or two fellas in a place like this might have good cause to feel peevish around bounty hunters.

  Lou gave a grunt, deciding to leave the Richards with his horse. Mean wouldn’t let anyone steal it or the Winchester ’73 jutting up from the scabbard on the saddle’s right side.

  He and Colter mounted the wooden-floored ramada and stopped just outside the front door—a rickety-looking panel with a rudimentary handle—that was propped open to the fresh night air with a rock. The partners paused, glanced at each other. It was a narrow opening, offering room for only one to pass at a time.

  “Go ahead,” Colter said, waving a gloved hand at the arched opening through which tobacco smoke wafted. “Age before beauty.”

  “Ain’t you respectful of your elders, though?”

  Prophet walked inside and paused to get the lay of the land. Colter walked in behind him and did likewise. Lou was surprised. He’d been expecting to find a smoky little hole with a crude plank bar upon which a couple of clay ollas sat and out of which some little Mexican not unlike One-Eye Acuna ladled sour-smelling tarantula juice spiced with strychnine and gunpowder.

  This place was several rungs above old One-Eye’s bullet-pocked pulque stand. There was whitewash on the walls, an actual wood floor, and a most impressive bar running along the rear wall—a sturdy one of varnished mahogany sporting a leaded back bar mirror. There was even a brass footrail running along the bottom. Brass spittoons were placed here and there about the broad room. The tables were draped with heavy white cloths.

  The clientele—a dozen men or more—were drinking out of heavy glass mugs or cut glass goblets. Some even drank out of long-stemmed wineglasses. A man dressed sort of like a Mexican bullfighter—in a puffy silk shirt, red silk necktie, and tight black pantalones elaborately embroidered in gold—stood on the second-floor balcony overlooking the main drinking hall. He was the one playing the mandolin. He was also singing softly—too softly for Prophet to make out what he was singing beyond gathering it was something typically sad and romantic most likely involving ill-fated love and bloody murder.

  Typical Mexican fare.

  The gent hustling drinks behind the bar was a well-attired middle-aged hombre sporting a very wide, green silk necktie, a green silk sash, and a broad curlicue mustache. His short, coal black hair was combed straight back from a severe widow’s peak, glistening with pomade. There were several serving girls clad in very little, and there were also putas working the tables, chatting and laughing with the clientele. They wore even less than the serving girls. In fact, a couple were wearing nothing above the waist except a few strings of pearls or colored beads.

  Proph
et smiled. Now, this was a watering hole!

  He glanced at Colter. The redhead seemed to share Prophet’s assessment. He was smiling also.

  Prophet clacked his boots together to rid them of any goat dung they might have picked up on the street and then strode into the room, weaving around occupied tables at which various hombres were drinking and palavering and/or playing cards or rolling dice. At one, two men dressed as campesinos in white cotton trousers and tunics, with rope-soled sandals on their dirty feet, were playing a traditional Mexican bone game, betting prerolled cigarettes.

  The clientele was composed of men from several different societal rungs—from businessmen to campesinos, or peasant farmers—and it was only when Prophet was three quarters of the way toward the vacant table he was heading for, near a square-hewn ceiling support post from which several ristras hung, that he saw a table near the front crowded with men clad in the dove gray uniforms of the Mexican rural police force, or rurales, as they were known.

  His gut tightened slightly and he looked away quickly. He’d had run-ins with the rurales before, most of whom were actually just banditos in uniform. In fact, some were shrewder and deadlier than your average bandito, using their governmental power for personal gain.

  Besides, technically, Prophet and Colter were in the country illegally. You couldn’t just slip back and forth across the border at will; you were supposed to have written permission from the Mexican government. Hardly anyone ever sought out such permission, but the laws were on the books and the rurales would enforce them according to whatever state of grace they were in and how much money they thought you might be carrying.

  As he reached the table he’d been heading for, Prophet glanced at his trail partner. Colter returned the look with a direct one of his own, telling Prophet he’d seen them, too.

  Their table was near the wall on the room’s right side. Prophet would have preferred having his back right up against the wall, but the table beyond his was occupied, as were most of them against the wall. Oh well, after nearly fifteen years of bounty hunting, he’d grown eyes in the back of his head. They’d have to suffice.