Ralph Compton Face of a Snake

by Bernard Schaffer

  “So are you Indian or Mexican?” Rena asked.

  “I am Mirta.”

  “When I was your age, I was getting ready to marry my husband, James. He died when we were young, though. After that, I had to look after myself. I guess if I knew how to make arrows, it wouldn’t have been so hard.” Rena handed the arrow to Mirta and said, “This one could use a little antler on it.”

  Mirta took the arrow and ran it back and forth to sharpen it. “I will never marry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because los hombres son estúpidos,” Mirta said. “You understand?”

  Rena smiled and said, “Well enough.”

  “Two years ago, a man took interest in my sister Lupita. He came and courted her. He had money, and his family had a business, and my father wanted her to accept. He seemed so nice and brought her flowers and bought her a dress and wanted to take her on long walks. One day, Lupita ran home and hid in our room. I could hear her crying and I went in and saw her new dress was ripped apart and there was blood on it.” Mirta leaned forward on the arrow to press it down with both hands. “She screamed at me to go away. Instead, I tell my mother. Lots of screaming and crying. My mother wanted my father to go to the sheriff, but he refused. He say that he would go to this man’s family and force the man to marry Lupita, instead.” Mirta picked up the arrow and saw that it was sharp. She put it in her quiver. “My father went, and the man called my sister a liar and a whore and say he would never marry a filthy Mexican peasant like her.”

  “What did your father do?” Rena asked.

  “He did not want to cause trouble, he say. The sheriff would not believe my sister against such a wealthy man anyway, he say. So when he would do nothing, I decided to.”

  “What did you do?” Rena asked.

  “I make my first arrow. Now that man will never bother anyone again.”

  Rena took the sharpened arrow from her and put it back in the quiver. “You know, I sure could use a little help defending this ranch while the others are away. What would you say to staying here with me?”

  “I’d say no.”

  “I can cook for you, get your clothes all nice and clean. I’m sure that with Mr. Ash and your father and Mrs. Jesse, there’s plenty of people going to rescue Mr. Connor. I don’t see why you should have to go along to rescue him too.”

  “I did not come all this way to rescue anyone,” Mirta said, “especially someone stupid enough to get captured.”

  “Well, what did you come for, then?”

  “My father is old and fat now. He needs me to protect him.”

  Mirta finished sharpening the arrow and reached for another.

  * * *

  * * *

  An hour later, the others were gathered in front of the house, preparing to leave. They were standing by their horses, talking about what supplies they needed and what weapons they had, when the front door opened. All of them turned to look up at the porch and stopped speaking. Ashford Sinclair emerged from the house in his new clothes and Miss Rena smiled.

  “You look different,” Jesse said.

  “They’re William’s things. I hope you don’t mind,” Sinclair said.

  “Well, I certainly wasn’t going to wear them,” she said.

  “Fair enough.” Sinclair tipped his hat back on his head and said, “I have to do something before we leave.”

  Jesse rolled her eyes. “We’ve been sitting around here waiting for you long enough, don’t you think? I’d like to go get my son if you don’t mind.”

  He walked past her toward his horse. “It won’t take long.”

  * * *

  * * *

  From the top of the hill, he could see the whole ranch. The sun washed over the fields below in hues of red and gold. He looked down at the cross that bore Edna’s name and took his hat off.

  “Well, here I am,” he said. “Bet you thought I’d never make it. How about that?”

  He coughed into his hand and ran his fingers through his beard to straighten it. “Figured I ought to come up here and say goodbye to you, proper like. Given that I never had a chance to when you passed, on account of me being in prison.”

  He breathed out. The air was cool enough still that he could see it evaporate in front of him. “I realize I wasn’t much of a husband to you. You were a good woman, Edna. Better than I deserved anyhow. You cooked good. You kept a clean house. Everything a man could want. Anyhow. Take care.”

  He put his hat back on and turned to leave, then stopped. He coughed again and looked down at the ranch. He swallowed and took off his hat and turned back to Edna’s grave. “You gave me a good son too. I am sorry to report that I lost him on you. I couldn’t even do that right, I guess. We got us a grandson. His name’s Connor. He’s half Odell. He ran off and got himself in trouble, just like I would have. Stupid damned kid. I come out this way to see if I can’t get him back and bring him home. I don’t expect that’s going to end well, but I’ll do my best. I’d say that I’m going to see you soon, but I think we both know I’ll be going to some other place than wherever you are. I’m all right with that. It makes me happy thinking you and William are somewhere good. You take care, Edna. You always were my sweetheart even if I never showed it.”

  Sinclair took a deep breath and looked over at the second cross on the hill, the one that bore William’s name. He stood before his son’s grave and coughed into his hand. He reached for the cross and felt its surface with the tips of his fingers. He swallowed and his eyes burned. He tried to swallow again and could not do it. He took a heaving breath that put him down on one knee and left him with his face buried in the crook of his arm and he did not come up for a long time.

  * * *

  * * *

  When he rode back down from the hill, Jesse was sitting on her horse, waiting for him. Sinclair immediately turned away from her and wiped his face and coughed. “What are you doing, spying on me?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Come out here to get some laughs?”

  “No one is laughing at you,” she said. “I came to tell you that everyone is ready to go.”

  “Good. Let’s get to it.”

  “There’s one more thing. Follow me.” She turned her horse around and headed back toward the house.

  “Women around here keep telling me to follow them,” Sinclair called out.

  “You should listen. You might wind up somewhere you’re supposed to be for once in your life.”

  Jesse rode around back of the house and went in. She held the door open and said, “Come on.”

  He went into the house and waited for her in the hallway. “The basement door’s on your right there.”

  He opened the door and went down the stairs. There were mason jars of food at the bottom of the staircase and a large case of wine. Jesse lit a lantern and came down the steps behind him. “Keep going,” she said. “If you turn around and look under the staircase, there’s a door there.”

  Sinclair found the door, but when he pulled on it, it was locked.

  Jesse told him to hold the lantern and she produced a key and fitted it into the lock. “I never knew why he kept all this, but he insisted.”

  Sinclair raised the lantern and looked inside the small room built under the staircase. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered.

  His old gun belt was hung from a hook in the wall. Someone had oiled it to keep the leather from drying out and cracking. His best set of field glasses was set down on a cloth so that their brass housing did not touch the floor. Leaning in the corner was his lever-action Spencer rifle custom fitted with a William Malcolm scope. The only other item in the room was a wooden box in the center of the floor.

  Sinclair knelt over the box and lifted its lid. The box was lined with velvet and inside were two black guns with white pearl handles. The guns were engraved in silver alon
g the handles and frames and entwined around the sides of both barrels. He picked up one of the guns and raised it to the lantern. He turned it so the engravings shined with the lantern’s fire and there, reflected in the blued metal of the barrel, he stared into the face of a snake.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Spencer’s action was as smooth as it had been all those years ago. The chamber was free of dust and debris. Lorenzo Escalante raised the rifle to his shoulder and peered through the scope. The lens was clear and uncracked. “This rifle is in perfect condition.”

  “Seems William would go down in the basement and clean them to take his mind off things. He never shot them, though, from what Jesse knows.”

  “I love this rifle. Remember when I shot that—” He glanced at Mirta. She was listening. “Buffalo with it?”

  “Had to be over five hundred yards away and he was running,” Sinclair said.

  Escalante held the rifle toward Sinclair and said, “I’m glad it’s yours again.”

  Sinclair refused to take it. “It’s yours.”

  “I can’t take this, jefe. It’s your rifle. You carried this into battle more times than I can remember.”

  “True and you were always a better shot with it. So it’s yours. I’ve got my guns.” Sinclair tapped the handles of the pistols on his hips. “The snakes are all I need.”

  “How does it feel?” Escalante asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Being whole again after all these years?”

  “It feels older than it used to,” Sinclair said.

  They mounted their horses, and the four of them rode east.

  * * *

  * * *

  An hour later, they encountered a lone rider. The man stopped at a distance when he saw them and Sinclair signaled for the others to stop too.

  “What’s your destination, friend?” the rider called out.

  Sinclair squinted and tried to see if the rider was armed or not. He could not tell. “Just out for a nice ride on a pretty spring day, friend,” Sinclair called back. “How about yourself?”

  “I’m headed toward the Sinclair ranch on behalf of Mr. Nelson Granger. I suggest you clear the road and not interfere with my passage.”

  “Nelson Granger, you say?”

  “That’s correct,” the rider said.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Then you are either lying or not from these parts or you are a man who is both deaf and ignorant, friend.”

  Sinclair looked back at Jesse. “Is that the messenger boy who brought you the envelope?”

  “That’s the bastard,” Jesse said.

  Sinclair scratched his beard and Lorenzo Escalante snatched the Spencer rifle out of its scabbard and cocked the lever.

  The rider down the road laughed at them in disbelief. “You old boys really must be fools. Didn’t you hear me say who I work for?”

  Sinclair and Escalante rode forward to close the distance between them. The rider had a gun holstered on his side, but Escalante kept the rifle steady on him as they rode and the rider did not reach for it. They stopped within twenty feet and Sinclair said, “I believe you said you worked for Nelson Granger.”

  “That’s right. The Nelson Granger. The most powerful man in the state. That’s who you’re pulling a gun on, for when I come in the name of Mr. Granger, it’s like I come as Nelson Granger himself.”

  Sinclair folded his hands on his saddle horn. “What did Granger send you to tell Mrs. Sinclair? You bring her another of them envelopes with her boy’s body parts in it?”

  “No. I come to see if she signed the deed or not.” The rider leaned over to look past Sinclair and said, “That’s her riding with you, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Good. We can all ride back to see Mr. Granger together and she can give him the signed deed herself.”

  “Well,” Sinclair said, “I’m afraid she won’t be doing that.”

  “She better be,” the rider said. “If she don’t, there’s going to be a lot more envelopes with twice the body parts coming her way. Does she know we got her father too? That old fool got captured last night.” He pointed at Escalante and said, “You better stop pointing that rifle at me, friend, and you’d best not even think about using it. Anything happens to me, Mr. Granger will do more than stuff envelopes full of ears. You best believe that!”

  Sinclair looked at Escalante. “What do you think, Lorenzo? Do you believe that?”

  Escalante shook his head. “I do not.”

  “Well, you’d better!” the rider cried. “I’m the one Mr. Granger trusted with his most important assignment and if you two interfere with me in any way, he’ll start cutting on them two like they were baby bulls.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Sinclair said. “How long you been working for Granger?”

  “Just a few weeks, but he trusts me, though. That’s why he gave me what he said was his most important task. I’m the one he sent with the deed and the first envelope and I’m the one he sent to collect. He said this is how I can prove myself to be one of his top men.”

  “Lorenzo, did we ever tell anyone worth a damn they needed to prove themselves?”

  “No, we did not,” Escalante said.

  “Why not?” Sinclair asked.

  “Because their worth was already obvious, jefe,” Escalante said.

  “See where we’re going with this, kid?” Sinclair said.

  “You shut your mouths, you two old bastards,” the rider shouted. “Get that damned gun off me before I get angry! I’ve been tolerant with you long enough! I got ten men coming up behind me any minute and if they see you holding that rifle on me, they’re gonna kill all of you and think nothing of it!”

  “Ten men, is it?” Sinclair smiled. “You know how many times me and Lorenzo here have heard someone say they had men coming? I couldn’t even count how many times. You know how many times it was true?”

  “Not even once,” Escalante said.

  The rider started to argue and Sinclair cut him off. “What we’ve got here is a problem, you see. I let you go, you run right back to Mr. Granger and tell him you saw us on the road. Now, I can’t have that. Another option is, we tie you up to one of those trees there.”

  “Like hell you will,” the rider said.

  “Yeah, I’m not a fan of that option either,” Sinclair said. “We tie you up and next thing you know, those bony little wrists of yours wiggle out and you escape. Or maybe you don’t and some wolves come along and decide to play with you for a bit before they kill you. That doesn’t sound right to me either. What do you think, Lorenzo?”

  “I say we kill him,” Escalante said.

  Sinclair sighed. “Yeah, I reckon we should.”

  “You won’t kill me,” the rider said.

  “Oh, I definitely will,” Sinclair said.

  “You’re a damned yellow coward and a liar. You never killed nothing in your whole life. I can tell just by looking at you.”

  “This man is Ashford Sinclair,” Escalante said, “leader of the Venom Snakes.”

  The rider spit over the side of his horse and said, “Well, I never heard of him or them and I spit on the name Sinclair for being cowards and lowlifes like Mr. Granger says they are.”

  “All right,” Sinclair said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Take off your gun belt and your boots and toss them into the ditch over yonder. Then slide off your horse and start walking west. When you walked far enough that we can’t see you on the road no more, we’ll keep going and take your horse with us. We’ll tie her up a few miles from here along the road. That way, by the time you get back to her, it will be too late for you to bother us anymore. How’s that sound?”

  “It sounds like a joke to me because I damned sure won’t do any of that,” the rider said.

  �
�Then I’m going to shoot you in the foot and take your horse anyway,” Sinclair said.

  “You don’t have the stones to shoot me—”

  Sinclair’s pistol materialized in his right hand and barked before the rider could finish his sentence. The bullet ricocheted off the tip of the rider’s boot and into the fields. The rider looked down in stunned disbelief at the smoking hole in his boot and wiggled his toes through it. He saw they were bloodied but intact. “Son of a bitch!” the rider cried out. “You shot me!”

  “That I did and you’re lucky I’m out of practice. I was aiming for your ankle,” Sinclair said. “Now, do as I said.”

  The rider scrambled to get his gun out of his holster.

  “Don’t,” Sinclair said.

  In pulling the weapon out, the rider fumbled it and dropped it to the ground. He leapt down from the horse as fast as he could and swatted at the ground, desperate to get his weapon.

  Sinclair and Escalante both ordered him not to touch the gun, but the rider ignored them. He grabbed the gun. He turned it toward them and raised it to aim and both Sinclair and Escalante fired at the same time.

  Escalante’s bullet hit the rider in the chest, and it knocked him backward. Sinclair’s hit him in the right shoulder and it spun him around to land facedown in the road.

  Escalante got down and checked the body.

  “Is he dead?” Sinclair called out.

  “Of course he’s dead. I shot him in the chest with a buffalo gun.”

  “Are you sure that’s not where I shot him?”

  “Not unless you put a hole in him big enough to see through.”

  “Damn. Where did I hit him?”

  “In the shoulder, it looks like.”

  “I was aiming for his chest,” Sinclair said.

  Escalante ran his hand through his hair. “Christ, he’s just a kid, jefe. He’s hardly older than Mirta.”