“That I do not know. I did not even know what he was doing.”
“You rode to Antigua with him and didn’t know why?”
“Salazar seldom told me anything of his work. I do know that at many times he has killed many men.”
“Then can you tell me anything about the cattle rustling on the Rancho Antigua?”
The girl shook her raven tresses. “No, I know nothing.”
“You’re not convincing, Chata. I know Salazar was connected with the rustling, and you’ve been living with him. You must know all about it too.”
The girl moved her horse closer to his and looked up into his face intently.
“Hombre, I can say nothing to you. I take a great risk in even being seen with you.”
“Salazar can’t hurt you now.”
“There are others as dangerous as Salazar.”
Benedict wanted to hear more about that but the girl held up her hands. “No, that is all I am prepared to say. Even to talk sometimes is dangerous in Candelaria.”
Benedict let it go at that and they headed for the town. He was growing more sure as time went by, that Chata knew a great deal. He was confident he could get it out of her, but not if he rushed it. He could afford to be patient for a little time at least.
The sinister atmosphere of the town was even more noticeable as they rode across the square. Huddled adobe huts spread away on both sides, squat adobe ovens like a colony of huge beehives. Evil-eyed men watched their passing, slatternly women shrieked at naked children from open windows. They rode around the weed-choked, vacant lot flanking the old church and stopped before a small adobe house with green shutters and a sagging fence.
“My home,” said the girl. “All I have in this world.” She led the way, barefoot, up the path and unlocked the door with a key taken from the pocket of her dress.
The house only boasted two rooms, kitchen and bedroom. It was cramped and gloomy but Benedict was pleased to note, rather cleaner than he might have expected.
The girl hustled about fixing breakfast, seemingly not one whit sorrowful about her recently departed paramour. Benedict smiled to himself as he shucked off his coat and stood at a window looking up towards the square. No, death would mean little here in Candelaria he figured. Either the death of a man like Salazar ... or a gringo like him ...
Weariness overcame him as they ate tortillas and fat back. Yesterday had been a big day, last night long and dangerous. He would need to be fresh before seeing what he could dig up in sunny Candelaria.
“Is there a hotel in town, Chata? I need some sleep.”
“You would be much safer sleeping here, hombre,” she smiled, getting up from her chair and sliding her bare arms about his neck. “This house is quite safe. The windows have catches and the door can be barred from within.”
He bent and kissed her. “All right, I’ll take your word for it. Coming?”
She returned his kiss with hot vigor but then drew back. “No, first there are things I must attend to.”
“What sort of things?”
She spread her hands. “As I told you, Salazar has friends here. If I did not go and at least tell them what happened, they would be suspicious and begin trouble. Already they would be suspicious on seeing you ride in with me.”
Benedict thought about that for a while, then nodded. “Yes, I guess that makes sense. All right, but don’t be too long. I mightn’t be able to keep awake.”
“I will wake you, hombre—be sure of that.”
The girl left the house and made her way down to the plaza. She walked swiftly with a light, swinging stride, and was humming to herself. Far from mourning Salazar, she was relieved to be free of the man who had held her only through fear. By comparison with Salazar, the butcher, Benedict the gringo was almost a godlike man, the like of which she had never hoped to bring to her bed.
She stopped humming and put on a suitably somber expression when she approached the gallery of the store where Salazar’s friends were sitting, silently smoking cornhusk cigarettes. Jaramillo, Ramirez and Lino Estevan watched her with bleak and hostile eyes as she came up the steps. She spoke directly to Estevan, a stocky, vicious-faced man of fifty who was perhaps the closest Salazar had had to a friend.
“Lino, I have bad news. Last night when ...”
“We know what happened last night,” Estevan cut in, getting to his feet.
The girl’s eyes widened. “You know? But how?”
“A rider came in from the Antigua before you rode in with the gringo.”
Estevan’s deep-set eyes glittered with bright malevolence. “We know that the gringo Benedict murdered our companero, and that now he is at your house. You rode out with Salazar, you ride back with his killer. It would seem you do not mourn long, little Chata. It would seem perhaps that you are glad Salazar is dead.”
“No. It was not like that, Lino. You must understand that ...”
Estevan smashed her across the face with the back of his hand with such force that she fell to the ground. Ramirez seized her by the shoulders and lifted her up. With blood trickling from the mouth, the girl’s face showed a brief, primitive fury, then went white as she felt the cold, deadly prick of Jaramillo’s knife against her soft throat.
She rolled her eyes, but dared not move. “Por favor,” she begged. “I have done nothing.”
“Not as yet perhaps,” Estevan murmured coldly. “But you will. You will help us kill the gringo pig, won’t you, little Chata?”
“No, I ...”
Now Estevan also had a knife in his hand and looked ready to use it. “The gringo is to be killed. You will help us or we will cut your heart out. Maybe we will cut your heart out anyhow.”
Chata had turned a sour cream yellow with dark, half-moon shadows beneath her sick eyes. She was trembling like a leaf. She’d always known these three to be vicious scum, but they had never dared menace her because of Salazar. Now Salazar was gone and she was naked. Naked and terribly afraid.
“You will help us,” Estevan repeated.
The girl could hardly breathe, was incapable of thinking beyond the one thought. She didn’t want to die.
“Si,” she whispered at long length, her heart feeling like a cold lump of stone. “Si ... I will do as you say.”
Perhaps it was a bad time to be thinking about vanishing beeves and not concentrating on what he was doing, Hank Brazos realized, as the horse he was breaking pelted him clear over the corral fence he was remembering his old man telling him that it never paid a man ever to think too much. That was how a man got himself into trouble, he used to warn him, and old Joe Brazos had never been guilty of thinking too much in his life.
Yet as Brazos hit the ground like a bale of cotton, bounced, and rolled to a dusty stop against the legs of an alarmed Pancho Pino, he realized that either the thinking or the spill had borne fruit. Suddenly there was the answer to what had been plaguing him right along.
“The other side of the river!” he breathed as the little fat Mexican assisted him to his feet and slapped huge clouds of dust off his clothes. He tweaked the Mexican’s ear. “That’s it, you misbegotten son-of-a-Mexican-whore. It’s got to be the other side of the river ... that’s the only place I haven’t checked out.”
Pancho Pino looked very worried. “Perhaps you should come seet down in the shade, Señor. That was a bad fall. Your head, by jeengs, I theenk you hit it too hard on the ground.”
Brazos shook the man’s hands away impatiently, snapped his fingers at Bullpup, and headed for the stables. He reappeared in no time at all astride the appaloosa, headed for the main gate.
“Señor, where do you go?” Pino called after him. “What of the work?”
Brazos made no response and kicked the horse into a lope. His round, fat face creased with worry and perplexity, Pino watched him out of sight, then shook his head, wonderingly. This Brazos must be a crazy man he thought.
So it was that some thirty minutes later, when Juan Romero rode in from the southern
pastures where he’d been branding calves, he found no work going on at the corrals, and Pancho Pino sitting in the shade, whittling.
“What is going on here?” he demanded, swinging down. “Where is Brazos?”
Pino jumped up and held the ramrod’s horse. “Señor Brazos went off on his horse, Juan.”
“Where did he go?”
“I know not ... but he was saying something strange ... something about the other side of the river.”
Romero paled. “The other side of the river? Which direction did he take?”
Pino pointed. “He was riding towards the Basin I teenk. Ees ... ees something wrong, Juan?”
Juan Romero didn’t answer, and Pino saw that his hands were trembling slightly as he turned away and led his horse across the yard. Reaching the gate, the ramrod stood there for several minutes looking southeast in the direction of the Bucksaws, torn with doubt, indecision and a mounting alarm.
Preoccupied, he didn’t see the rider signaling down to him with his sombrero from the rise a half mile west of the headquarters. Finally the man was obliged to take out his six-gun and fire a shot at the sky. Romero mounted up and rode across the graze to the hill, where he spent some ten minutes listening to the ugly little Mexican who’d ridden over with the news that Duke Benedict had shown up in Candelaria with Chata Escobar.
Romero had been alarmed before, but alarm had been supplanted by a sharp sense of danger, and a realization that perhaps everything was in danger of exploding in his face.
“They know what to do with the gringo of course?” he demanded.
“Si, Juan. Do not worry. Benedict will not leave Candelaria alive.”
That was some comfort to Romero as he dismissed the Mexican and rode slowly back towards the headquarters under a brilliant sun, but not much. It was evil luck, the man brooded bitterly, that Duke Benedict should have come to Antigua. He hadn’t anticipated that. Larsen had been nothing; he’d been easy to get rid of. Benedict was dangerous, a different breed. The messenger from Candelaria had told him the others were preparing to take care of Benedict at Chata Escobar’s house. If only he could be confident they could do it.
They had the numbers. They should succeed.
But if they failed?
The ramrod’s eyes swung up to the great house which had been built by his grandfather fifty years ago. As always, the sight inspired him and he knew that no matter what happened, he could not weaken in his resolve to take Rancho Antigua, as many years before, Nathan Kendrick had taken it from his family.
Things were going bad and he could only hope that they wouldn’t get worse, but if they did, then he would be forced to forget his scheme to drain and weaken Rancho Antigua and ultimately force Kendrick to sell out. Then it would have to become open war and should it come, he comforted himself with the knowledge of the two surprise weapons that could well carry him to victory.
Bo Rangle was one. Kendrick’s own daughter was the other.
Nine – A Hard Man to Kill
Benedict unlocked the door at Chata’s knock. She started when she saw the gun in his hand, then smiled, tightly it seemed to Benedict.
“I expect a kiss, and you welcome me with a gun? Is this how it is to be with us, hombre?”
Benedict’s white smile flashed in the gloom as he thrust the Peacemaker into the waistband of his trousers and rested his hands on her shoulders.
“I’ll take kisses to Colts any old day,” he assured her, then proved it.
The girl, seemingly tense when she’d come in, quickly turned amorous. “Everything is all right in the town,” she assured him, leading him by the hand into the bedroom. “Nobody seems to care that Salazar is dead, which is not surprising.” Reaching the bedside, she slipped her hands around his slim waist and pressed herself against him. Then she suddenly stepped back, frowning down at the gun in his waistband. “Please, put that away, hombre. Chata hates guns.”
Benedict smiled and slipped the Colt into the gunrig hanging around the bedpost. Then he took her in his arms again and murmured, “You were a long time, Chata, I’ve been waiting ...” And drew her down onto the bed.
“Muy hombre ...”
A furtive sound penetrated the fog of sleep. Benedict sat up in bed. Chata was no longer lying beside him. The sound came again.
It was a window being opened!
He left the bed as if fired from a catapult and burst into the kitchen like a scalded wild cat.
Chata was thrusting the window up with one hand, pushing his gunrig out with the other. He flung himself across the room in one gigantic leap and seized the gunbelt the split-second before it would have fallen onto the verandah.
Hell erupted.
Chata screamed, a gun went off, the window burst under the impact of a bullet, and running feet sounded outside.
Benedict had both guns in his hands when a stocky, shouting Mexican appeared at the window, spraying shots into the room. Benedict drove three bullets through his wide open mouth, smashing him off the verandah, across the yard, and into the fence that crashed about him as he fell.
Benedict threw the open-mouthed girl one withering look, then flung himself low as a rear window was smashed open, and to the accompaniment of shouts and curses, somebody applied a shoulder to the flimsy rear door.
Benedict snapped a shot at the window and was rewarded with a yelp of pain. Then he concentrated on the shuddering door, and standing in a wide-legged crouch with lips skinned back from his teeth, emptied both guns through the woodwork, the sheer intensity of the fire blasting out a hat-sized piece of lumber and giving him a glimpse of a man with a crimson smear for a face turning slowly on his heels in a grotesque arabesque of death.
An arm, shoulder and rusty six-gun came through the shattered window and Benedict leapt for the cover of the bedroom doorway as thundering lead came hunting. Fingering fresh shells into his six-guns, he took quick stock of his situation then darted to the bedroom window. Working the clasp, he thrust it silently open and leaned out. There was only one man in sight, and he was standing at the next window yelling and shooting. He saw Benedict and spun. Benedict’s gun coughed and the Mex went reeling back with a bullet in his shoulder. Deliberately Benedict shot him through the elbow, then the knee. The man fell in a screaming heap in the grass and kicked at the earth.
On silent feet Benedict went through to the front and peered out. The yard and the street were empty save for the man with half a head lying in the wreckage of the fence. White faces showed at windows across the street, but nothing else. He went through to the back again, looked out at the dead man by the door, then at the crippled man in the grass. There had only been three of them.
Suddenly he whirled at a sound. Chata, who’d flung herself down when the fierce clash of arms erupted, was now crouched on the floor facing him, her face a white mask of shock and fear.
She was holding the rusty old gun that the bullet-crippled Mexican had dropped through the window. It was pointing at him.
“Drop it, Chata.”
Agonizing indecision twisted the girl’s face. The grisly conflict of the past minute had driven home to her with bloody impact, that she was a Mexican girl in a Mexican town and this handsome gringo was the enemy, as all gringos were. If she did not shoot, the gringo would soon be gone and she would just be little Chata—the girl who had betrayed her own. She wanted to shoot, but it was so hard ... so hard when his arms had held her in a way she had never been held before ...
“Drop the gun or I will kill you, Chata.”
He meant it.
A sob broke from her throat as the rusty old gun thudded to the floor. Benedict crossed the room and picked it up. He stared down at her bowed head, eyes chill and remote. She lifted her eyes, winced when she saw the way he looked at her.
“Please, Señor, I am sorry. They made me do it.”
Benedict thrust the gun into his belt and turned away. He went through to the bedroom, donned coat, boots and hat, then kicked his way through what was le
ft of the back door and went out to the man lying in the grass.
He was as ugly as mortal sin and glared up at the tall American with eyes blurred by tears, pain and hatred.
“What’s your name, scum?”
The man spat at him. Benedict kicked him in the face, then stamped on his bullet-shattered arm.
When the man finished screaming he said, “Your name?”
“Lino Estevan. In the name of the Mother of God ... mercy …”
Benedict hunkered down beside him, keeping his two guns in his hands, not because of Lino Estevan, but in case he had more friends.
“You know everything, don’t you, Estevan,” he said softly. “You know all about Salazar and the rustling on Rancho Antigua and Boyd Larsen and Bo Rangle ... everything, don’t you? And you’re going to tell me all about it.”
Half swooning with pain, the Mexican nodded. “Si ... si ... I know.”
A flicker of triumph touched Benedict’s eyes. “All right, my ugly friend, talk.”
Lino Estevan talked and Duke Benedict listened in growing amazement. Yet he never doubted the man for a moment, for everything he said tied in with everything he had so far learned and guessed about Rancho Antigua.
“All right, Estevan, we are riding back to the Antigua and there you will tell Nathan Kendrick everything you have told me, compre?”
With scant regard for the man’s condition, Benedict loaded him onto a horse that one of his companions had ridden down from the square and tethered in the alley behind the house. Then he saddled up the black and mounted, taking up the lines of the sagging Mexican’s mount.
He looked towards the house.
Chata stood in the bullet-riddled doorway. She no longer looked lusty and desirable, but somehow small and beaten and lost. She lifted a hesitant hand in farewell, but the tall man in black made no response.
Benedict touched his spurs to the black and rode out. He made his way down the staring street with a hundred eyes watching and not one man dared lift a finger against him. He turned out of the street where men had died and crossed the square, passing through the shadows of the tall Spanish church.
Benedict and Brazos 3 Page 9
