“You grab that wood when we get close! You hear!”
“Si! Si!”
Good to his word as they were swept past it, he let go of her waist with one arm and locked his hand in a death grip on a jagged piece of the planking. Quickly, he released his other arm and now had both hands on the planks and began pulling himself up so that he might reach the rock.
Now free of her burden, Catalina found a renewed energy as she reached out and snagged the side of the flat rock by wedging her fingers into a thin vertical crevasse that ran up the side of the rock. Her right hand slapped down on the surface of their hoped-for refuge, and she probed until she found another handhold. At long last, she was not moving anymore but just relieved to hang there and catch her breath. The respite was short lived when Cassandra’s alarmed voice cut through the air, rising above even the roar of the river.
“Get up! Get up! Get up!”
Catalina swept her head back upriver to see what it was Cassandra was pointing to as she was shouting, and if the hairs on the back of her neck weren’t soaking wet then they would have been raised.
The lawyer’s half submerged carriage had become hung up on one the numerous rocks jutting clear of the San Sidero, but the force of the current proved too great to hold it for very long, and it had freed itself. Unfortunately, now it was barreling down the river, and it was for certain going to be swept to her side of the rock where she was clinging.
“Estupendo!” she muttered. If she didn’t get moving, she was going to wind up knocked over like one of those pins she had seen in a game demonstrated when the sisters had gone on ranch business to San Francisco the prior year—what was it called? Bowling! Yes, that was it!
Having no intention of being struck by the swiftly approaching carriage, she called on the last of her energy to wrench her body out of the water and collapse onto the rock next to the lawyer who had also made it to safety and was lying on his back, struggling to recover. Where she had been moments earlier, the now horizontal wheel the man had been tied to struck the side of the rock island and having been already damaged, splintered into pieces.
That had been close Cattie knew—too close.
***
After giving the pair of castaways a chance to rest and regroup, things had moved quickly after that. Cassandra had hurled the rope across the distance between the rock and the shoreline. It had taken three attempts, but Catalina had finally managed to catch it. When Cassandra was ready astride Lily, Catalina secured the rope around both her and the attorney and had raised her hand in a signal.
Neither of the two had relished plunging back into the water, but this time theirs was a brief foray into the San Sidero as Cassie, and her mount quickly pulled them up on the shore. As Catalina trekked back to where the road crossing the bridge now led to nowhere to retrieve her clothes and her horse, Cassandra had done her best to tend to the lawyer.
Using her blanket tied behind her saddle, Catalina rapidly dried off and redressed before riding back to where Cassandra and the man sat huddled downstream. Not more than a second after her boots had touched the ground again after slipping off Pretty Feet, the trio’s attention was drawn back upstream by the ruckus made as the far side of the bridge also gave away and toppled into the river amidst the same cloud of steam that rose up towards the brilliant blue sky above as most of the burning planks were extinguished.
No one had said anything for a long moment as they watched the debris, including that which still managed to burn, began floating down the river in their direction, some bouncing off the rock obstacles, others getting hung up on the great flat rock, and the rest floating free on either side on their journey downstream to perhaps someday end up hundreds of miles away as flotsam in the Gulf of California. The only thing that was certain was the San Sidero bridge was gone, and the murderous Sanchez gang had vanished into the landscape that lay beyond.
Now the time had come to get answers and to get them fast. As the man sat next to her wrapped in the blanket Cassandra had plucked from her horse, she made a final check of his brutalized face telling the man she was sorry they had no type of bandages, and then she began her questions.
“What happened on that bridge?”
***
How could this be happening?
The thought raced through the mind of Angel DeSoto each time the backhand from the snarling lout snapped his head to one side. His mouth had filled with blood after the second blow, and now how many had there been? He was not sure, six maybe. Mercifully, the punishment had stopped when the other bandit called up from where he squatted on the deck of the bridge.
“Mateo, stop! I have it, my cousin!”
With a smile made even more hideous by the fact the swarthy man was missing what seemed like every other tooth, he rose from where he had been rummaging through the briefcase that lay open on the deck of the bridge. In his hand, he clutched the map Pike had finished sketching for DeSoto earlier at the Natchez jail.
The larger of the two men, Mateo turned his back on DeSoto and made his way over to his cousin, and the lawyer used the respite to try and clear his head. He had been living a nightmare from the moment he had drawn his carriage to a stop midway across the bridge in response to a man standing between him and the exit on the other side with a six-shooter leveled directly at his chest. Frantically DeSoto had looked back over his shoulder, prepared to leap from his carriage to try and escape back the way he came, but a sickening dread swept over his body. Standing behind the carriage was another man who he could only guess had been clinging to the side of the bridge, waiting to snare him.
They had demanded he throw down his weapon, but it had been an unnecessary request as he had been traveling unarmed. In retrospect, it had been an unwise decision, but DeSoto had corrected himself. Even if he had a gun, just a look at them told him these were hardened men, and he doubted he would have gotten off one shot before they riddled his body full of more holes than Swiss cheese. He watched helplessly as they undid the horse from its harness before slapping it on its hindquarters, and it charged away off the bridge and out of sight.
With delight, the big man had called out to the other man who went by the name of Tio that he would tie up the now stranded lawyer while Tio searched for what they came for. No sooner had he been bound than he started being laced with the blows. As he was pummeled, the outlaw was gleefully saying something about owing a lawyer for failing to save him from a five-year stretch at the notorious prison near Santa Ynez known as “el parque del diablo” or the devil’s playground.
Now the two cousins were looking at the map shaking their heads, laughing, congratulating themselves on ending the long delay of at long last getting their hands on the stolen payroll.
He knew it was foolhardy to speak, but he opened his mouth anyway.
“You fools. That is only half the map! Without the other it is useless, and you will not be getting your hands on it from the authorities in San Sidero!”
It was Tio this time that walked up to him with a swagger and put his hands on his hips as he addressed his prisoner.
“We already have it.”
The arrogant look, the man’s cocky pose, all the signs of when a man was being truthful, or a liar, were there. To be able to read them was a curse perhaps, from his many years of practicing law, but there was no escaping that his instincts told him the boast was true. Confirmation came as the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a paper. Upon unfolding it he kept a tight grip on it as the wind had been picking up, but he held it out in front of DeSoto.
“I see by the look on your face that you accept this as real,” Tio Sanchez laughed as he spit down towards DeSoto’s feet.
“It, it is a copy. Not the original.”
“It don’t matter, my friend. It was copied from the original. Now I know you are going to want to know who had copied it for me, so I will just tell you. I am sure you know Señor Villenchez, but what you may not know, as no one knows, he is my wife’s brother!”
DeSoto felt a weight pushing down on him so strong that it made him forget all about the pain radiating from his face from the merciless blows. Villenchez was the very definition of a corrupt politician and an important man in San Sidero with many connections. DeSoto had suspected that Villenchez had men in the prosecutor’s office in his pocket, and now he knew it.
“He reached out to my wife to let us know when word had come to the official’s attention that Pike wished to broker a deal. Knowing our involvement in the heist last year, he knew we would want to get a crack at it, and for a healthy cut he was able to get us a copy of the map and tell us all about your trip here to get the other part of it.”
The weight was so heavy now that DeSoto felt he couldn’t breathe. If there was even the remotest chance that he might make it out of this alive, it was now gone. Sanchez would not be telling of his connection to Villenchez if it were otherwise. Tio let loose a final laugh before slamming his fist into DeSoto’s stomach so hard it felt almost as if it would come out the other side.
Sanchez had turned away from DeSoto just as shouting could be heard coming from the Natchez side of the bridge. Both cousins smiled as they turned to see a rider bearing down on them, but just as quickly their mirth seemed to leave them.
“Where is Herrera?” he heard Mateo Sanchez mumble under his breath. The frenzied rider charged across the deck of the bridge and leaped from his horse, charging up to his companions.
“It’s done! I killed Pike!”
“I hope that traitor at least went out like a man,” Tio sneered.
"He did! Pike thought he had it all figured out. He was boasting about turning over the rest of the map and that lawyer on his way to deliver papers getting Luciana's head out of the noose that they'd like to see around all of ours. When I told him, you were going to ambush the lawyer and get the map, he went loco and attacked. I painted the walls of the Natchez jail with his brains, but he did go down fighting!”
“Enough!” Mateo cried out angrily. “I asked you where is Herrera?”
“On his way to Boot Hill!”
“How?!”
“I can’t explain it, but it was a woman. A blonde! She killed him and nearly me as well!” He touched his ear and held out his fingers speckled with blood. “She did this!”
Tio grabbed the man by his vest and pulled him close. “Blonde gringa? Have you gone loco? What are you talking about?”
Hudson pushed the other man away and looked stricken. “I‘m not lying, Tio, or high on peyote! This bitch killed my old friend! I took out the sheriff and his deputies, and then I nearly got shot off from my horse by another woman!”
The Sanchez cousins looked at each other incredulously before turning their attention back to their partner. Tio told him to go on.
“That’s all there is to tell. There may be no lawmen, but there is sure to be a posse on my trail. I wouldn’t be surprised if those women were among them!”
Mateo waved off his hand. "We knew there would likely be a posse, and that’s why we came up with the plan to deal with that. Let’s get about it. We got what we came for.”
“You have the map? Let me see it!” Hudson demanded.
Tio, still clutching the map, held it out to Hudson, and just as it was passing between the two men, a strong gust of wind rolled across the bridge and snatched the paper from Hudson's hand. Mouths fell open, and curses turned the air blue as the paper seemed to dance on the air for several seconds above the bridge before drifting out over the side and slowly pirouetted down into the churning waters of the San Sidero River.
Tio seemed to explode at that moment and launched himself at Hudson knocking him to the ground. Like wildcats, the two men threw punches back and forth as their angry shouts competed with the others to see whose was louder. Finally, the big man, Mateo reached down and grabbed both combatants by their shirt collars behind their necks and yanked them apart.
“You stupid gringo! A year that money has been lost to us, and then a chance comes by that we might get our hands on it, and you go and fuck it up!” Tio was straining to get at Hudson who panted heavily from the fight, but Mateo was holding him in check.
“Me?! You were the one handing it off!” Hudson raged as his hands clenched up into a pair of fists, and he began moving towards the pair of struggling cousins. Still keeping Tio at bay with one hand, Mateo shot out his other scoring a direct hit on Hudson’s chin. The bandit spun around and thudded on the ground next to the still open case.
An even stronger gust of wind suddenly came up and lifted the papers out of Desoto’s case, and the quarreling men ceased their brawling as they all watched them madly spin around. The miniature tornado of paper twirled about until it reached the edge of the bridge and suddenly lost all cohesion, and the documents exploded out into a maelstrom before blowing either into the river or higher into the air.
Mateo’s eyes narrowed as he watched the papers dispersing in all directions. Being the bigger of the two cousins, he was always dismissed as the lesser of the two when it came to smarts. The opposite was very much the case. The day’s events had been his plan when the corrupt Villenchez had come to them saying Pike had at last rematerialized and was ready to deal for the stolen loot. The big man’s gaze suddenly returned to Desoto for the first time since he had stopped beating the man.
Desoto cringed against the wagon wheel as the hulking man stepped in front of him. Behind him, Tio asked what he was doing, but Mateo didn't reply. Instead, his hand snaked out, and DeSoto’s breath became desperate and shallow as Mateo gripped his neck and slowly began to squeeze.
“Two seconds from now I will crush your—what do they call it? Your windpipe! I’ll crush it unless you tell me exactly what I want to know!”
“Anything! Anything!” he managed to choke out as Mateo released the pressure, and the other two mystified bandits stepped up behind him.
“Some of those papers—they were the ones Hudson was talking about setting Luciana free from the wanted posters, yes?”
The lawyer nodded, and the man drew even closer to him. The outlaw's rancid breath repelled him, but he dared not drop the eye contact the two were sharing. He did not wish to give the man any reason to think he was being untruthful or evasive.
“Then you know where the girl is?”
“Hot damn!” Hudson cried out over Mateo’s shoulder as he realized where his fellow bandit was going with his questions. Slowly DeSoto nodded.
“Tell me where!”
When DeSoto hesitated, he felt a flaring, burning pain as the fingers squeezed again. Over Mateo's shoulders, he saw the light suddenly come on in Tio's eyes as he ceased being two steps behind his compadres.
“She knows where it’s buried! Luciana can make us a sketch of the map we lost!”
With no other choice, DeSoto blinked back tears. “St. Inez of the Holy Trinity. There you will find her.”
***
No longer able to make eye contact with the two women, Desoto dropped his eyes staring at the river.
“There is not much more to tell after that. They went about their plan for dealing with a posse. Setting the bridge on fire. Tio Sanchez wanted to kill me on the spot, but Mateo said he would get pleasure from watching me burn alive. These men are monsters. If you hadn’t come along when you did …”
Catalina gripped his shoulder, giving it a squeeze, hoping some show of support would alleviate the guilt the man was clearly wracked with for giving up the location of this Luciana. She didn't blame the man; his situation had been as desperate as they came. The two women rose to their feet and looked at each other. There was no doubt what Cassandra was going to say next.
“We’ve got to get to this St. Inez of the Holy Trinity. Do you know where this church is, Cattie?”
“Hell, yeah! I spent all those summers livin’ in this here valley, so I got a pretty good lay of the land. Two things though. It’s not actually a church, but it’s a convent. Second though, it, it’s close, maybe five miles fro
m here,” she said, vaguely aware that the wind at long last had seemingly blown itself out and was gradually tapering to a gentle breeze.
“Si, I was going to detour there on my way back to San Sidero and give the señorita her papers,” DeSoto said still sitting by their feet, his head hung down.
“Problem is, it’s on that side of the river, Cass …”
“… and our only way across it is gone,” Cassandra finished grimly as she bit her lip, looking across to the other side. “There is no crossing here. We’d never make even if our horses could touch bottom. We’ve got some scouting to do.”
Once more taking command of the situation, Cassandra said that each was to ride in opposite directions along the river bank for a mile. In exactly ten minutes whoever found a place along the river that appeared they would be able to cross safely for San Sidero, they were to fire a single shot. That would be the signal from the shooter to head along the stream to rendezvous, and they would cross. If at the appointed moment neither of them fired, then it would mean they both hadn't found a crossing. If that were the case, then Catalina was instructed to ride downstream to join Cassandra, and they would keep heading along the river bank together until they decisively found a crossing.
Catalina had quickly nodded in agreement with everything. She always loved to watch her sister in action. For so many years she had looked up to her. Cassandra had been everything to her, sister, friend, mother figure, and her instructor. In her presence, she always felt a cloak of safety and security that was hard to explain, and she couldn't imagine life without her big sister in it.
The woman oozed confidence and competence, and there were times Cattie wondered how much more Cassandra could accomplish if she were not held back in many areas for being a woman. It was true their connection to the governor opened doors that would have been closed to most women, but hell, they still didn’t even have the right to vote for who they wanted as president of their own damn country. This was something Catalina knew rankled Cassandra to no end.
The Boot Hill Express: Special Edition HBH Version (Half Breed Haven Book 12) Page 6
