Bandit Gold

by J. R. Roberts

  His head filled with shards of agony, eyes covered by crimson cataracts, Clint stared up to see a nine-foot tall bald-headed monster marching toward him. The Gunsmith knew he couldn’t trade punches with Bruno. He had to take out the big man somehow—fast.

  Clint rose to his feet, the chair in his grasp. He raised the furniture for a shield as Bruno threw another punch. The chair quivered in Clint’s hands and wood cracked. Bruno’s fist had shattered the chair seat. Clint quickly kicked Bruno in the abdomen. The big man grunted and bent slightly. The Gunsmith ripped the chair from Bruno’s arm and swung it with all his might, breaking what remained of the furniture across the brute’s broad back.

  Bruno was knocked across the room by the blow. Clint reached for his shirt, trying to get his New Line Colt out of his belt, but Lloyd had once again returned to the melee. He clasped his hands together and chopped them into the Gunsmith’s back between the shoulder blades. The unexpected blow knocked Clint to the floor. He landed on all fours, his right hand close to a broken chair leg.

  Lloyd drew back a boot, prepared to launch a kick at Clint’s head. The Gunsmith slashed the chair leg into the pistolman’s shin before the foot could connect. Lloyd hopped backward and howled with pain as Clint scrambled to his feet. The Gunsmith quickly rammed one end of his improvised club into the gunman’s belly and followed up with a left hook to the side of his head. Lloyd fell to the floor once more and didn’t get up.

  Clint turned in time to see Bruno charge forward, massive hands arched like the talons of a killer eagle. Desperately, Clint sidestepped the murderous lunge and thrust the chair leg between the brute’s attacking arms. He felt the end of the club stab into something soft. Suddenly, Bruno staggered away from him, both hands clutching his throat. The big man’s eyes swelled in alarm and pain as blood bubbled up from his crushed trachea to spill from his lips. Then he crumbled to the floor and died.

  Stunned by his stroke of luck against the giant, Clint turned slowly to check on Lloyd. The pistolman groaned feebly, but he wasn’t ready to get frisky yet. Then Clint remember Linda Mather . . . too late.

  He sensed someone’s presence behind him and heard the rush of air being cut by a heavy, rapidly moving object. Clint’s skull seemed to explode into a white burst of agony. He didn’t feel the impact when his unconscious body fell to the floor....

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Clint Adams knew he was still alive. He didn’t have firsthand knowledge, but he was pretty sure the dead didn’t feel pain.

  Every inch of his body ached. The Gunsmith’s jaw was painfully swollen and his skull felt as if it was filled with hot coals. Clint’s torso and limbs were sore and his face seemed to be on fire. As memories slowly returned with consciousness, he wondered where he was. Clint realized he was lying on his back in something soft. Surely he couldn’t be on the train.

  Clint tried to open his eyes. The lids seemed to be covered with lead. When they finally parted, a bolt of flame pierced his eyes and Clint groaned hoarsely in response.

  Suddenly, a black shape blotted out most of the glare and a voice declared, “Luis! Éste no es muerto!”

  More figures moved around the Gunsmith as his vision began to clear. They were men, dressed in tattered cotton clothing with bandoliers full of ammunition crisscrossing their chests and straw sombreros on their heads. One of them, a thickly built Mexican with an unkempt beard and a cigar butt in his yellow teeth, bent over to examine Clint more closely.

  “How about it, gringo?” he asked with amusement, his English heavily accented. “Is Raul right for a change? You alive, gringo?”

  “Sort of,” Clint croaked weakly.

  “Sí,” the man puffed his cigar and smiled. “Maybe not for long. We found that bald bastardo Bruno lying over there,” he jerked a dirty thumb to his left. “But he’s dead. You know that?”

  “Yeah,” Clint rasped, his throat felt as if it was filled with sand. “I killed him.”

  “Oh?” the Mexican sounded impressed. “How did you do this, Señor Gringo?”

  “I jabbed a chair leg into his throat,” Clint replied.

  “Muy bien!” the man declared with delight. “I wondered what had happened to him. You must be a tough hombre, no?”

  Clint slowly sat up, his body a mass of aches and needlelike pains. “I sure don’t feel very tough, Señor—?”

  “I am Luis Mendez,” the Mexican stated, his black eyes narrowed. “Maybe you heard me called El Lobo.”

  “The Wolf,” Clint nodded weakly. He glanced at his own shirt front and trousers in the process. His clothes were splattered with mud.

  “So your back wasn’t broken when they threw you off the train, gringo,” Mendez observed. “You and Lloyd have a falling out, eh?”

  “We never really had a falling in to begin with,” Clint reached to the back of his head to rub his throbbing skull and discovered his hair was matted with mud. “Where am I?”

  “You’re in the middle of nowhere.” El Lobo shrugged. “Oh, you gringos call it Arizona and I guess the Apache call it something else, but I think nowhere is good enough for where we are.”

  Clint strained stiff muscles to rise to his feet. He found himself standing in a pool of mud. Apparently, Lloyd and Vargas had thrown him off the train and by an incredible stroke of good fortune, he’d landed in the wet ooze. It was probably the only mud hole for miles in the heart of the desert and it saved Clint from a fall that might otherwise have broken his back in two.

  “Getting up already,” Mendez nodded. “Tough hombre.”

  Clint glanced about. There were nine other men with El Lobo, each as dirty and vicious in appearance as Mendez. All were heavily armed with one or more revolvers, big fighting knives and rifles or shotguns. Bandidos, Clint thought, and probably even meaner than they look.

  Mendez suddenly reached for an ivory-handled pistol on his right hip. Clint’s hand automatically flashed to his right hip, but his gunbelt and modified Colt revolver were gone. El Lobo dragged his gun from leather, aimed it at Clint and thumbed back the hammer.

  “Even a tough hombre like you can be killed, gringo,” Mendez sneered. “You know any reason I shouldn’t shoot you?”

  “Why do the Anglo a favor, Luis?” another bandido remarked, drawing a thick bladed Bowie knife from a belt sheath. “Let’s make the pig squeal.”

  “Sí, Raul,” Mendez smiled. “Maybe you’re right about something else today.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Clint began. “If you want me to answer some questions there’s no need to cut me up while you ask them.”

  “That so?” El Lobo uncocked his pistol and slid it back into its holster. “Maybe, ’cause I don’t think you and Stan Lloyd are friends no more. But you was one of his gang, no?”

  “No,” Clint shook his head. “This is going to take a while to explain. May I have some water?”

  “Polite as well as tough, eh?” Mendez remarked. Then he ordered one of his men to give Clint a canteen.

  The water was alkaline and bitter, but it tasted better than champagne to the Gunsmith. Careful not to gulp, he drank slowly and the water soothed his parched throat. He held the canteen as he explained how he’d been hired by Jacob Mather to escort the rancher’s daughter from Brownsville to Yuma, occasionally taking more sips of water between sentences.

  Before Clint could continue his story, Mendez and several of his men who understood English burst into laughter. El Lobo shook his head and smiled.

  “Senor Gringo,” he began, “you are either a very good liar or you’ve been a very great fool.”

  Clint didn’t care for either title, but he wasn’t in a position to complain about insults. “What do you mean, Mendez?”

  “This Mather, he is a big man with gray hair. Acts like he thinks he’s a general, no?” El Lobo inquired.

  “You could describe him that way,” Clint agreed, recalling the rancher’s authoritative manner.

  “His name isn’t Mather,” Mendez said. “He is Jacob Mannin
g, formerly Colonel Manning in the Confederate Army. That puta Linda is not his daughter. She’s Manning’s mistress. Comprende?”

  “I’m beginning to,” Clint replied, taking another long swallow of water before returning the canteen to its owner. “But it sounds like we should compare notes, Señor Mendez.”

  “Me and my men don’t exactly specialize in taking notes,” El Lobo stated. “We’re better at taking lives.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Clint assured him.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Fortunately, the bandits had some extra mounts—ten horses, in fact. This number seemed significant to Clint, who recalled the eight false peónes and two female assassins he’d encountered on the train. After taking a Henry carbine from the saddle boot, the bandits allowed the Gunsmith to mount one of the spare horses.

  El Lobo clearly didn’t want Clint armed, which meant none of the bandidos had frisked him while he was unconscious because the New Line Colt was still tucked in his belt and hidden under his shirt. The little .22 belly gun wouldn’t be much good against ten heavily armed men, but Mendez and his crew didn’t intend to kill him ... yet. The diminutive Colt was the only ace the Gunsmith had up his sleeve ... or under his shirt.

  Actually, he had one other item of value, one which under the circumstances was more vital than any weapon for his continued survivial. He had firsthand knowledge about Linda, Lloyd and the others on the train and the events that had occurred since they’d left Brownsville. This was probably the only reason Mendez had kept him alive. However, this knowledge could well be a two-edged sword, and if he wasn’t careful, Clint could talk himself into an impromptu execution.

  The Gunsmith and his bandido companions rode along the railroad tracks to the west. They were surrounded by miles of sand, rocks and cactus, yet the terrain wasn’t as formidable as it first appeared to Clint. He saw a number of “desert islands,” raised mounds which usually meant there was water underground. Patches of vegetation and occasional cottonwood trees also reassured him that the environment wasn’t quite as hostile to life after all.

  “Why so many extra horses?” Clint asked Mendez as he rode beside the bandit leader.

  “You ain’t figured that out yet, Senor Gringo?” El Lobo asked.

  “They belong to the eight men who were disguised as peónes who got on the train at El Paso?” Clint pretended to guess what he’d already deducted.

  “Maybe you’re not so stupid after all. What happened to them? Since they didn’t meet me in Las Palomas, I figure something went wrong.”

  “They’re dead,” Clint replied simply. “Lloyd and the others killed them when they tried to storm Linda’s quarters.”

  “You kill any of them, gringo?” Mendez glared at him.

  “I didn’t have any choice,” Clint answered. “They were trying to kill me. What would you have done?”

  “The same,” Mendez admitted. His expression became troubled as he continued. “Two women also got on at El Paso....”

  Clint had expected this and prepared a reply. “A band of Mescalero Apaches attacked the train in New Mexico.”

  “I know,” Mendez nodded. “We’ve been trailing the train since Las Palomas. We came across the dead indios. The savages killed Sofia and Josephia?”

  “I’m sorry,” Clint told him.

  “Sofia was my woman,” Mendez said sadly. “I have two other women and neither of them are as treacherous as my Sofia was. She was a good woman for a puta. I will miss her.

  “Guillermo will be brokenhearted to hear his wife is dead,” Mendez added. “He is Josephia’s husband. She was fat, ugly and vicious, but he loved her. Maybe he liked it when she beat him with a broomstick or a razor strap when she lost her temper at Guillermo.”

  “Maybe your men will have pity on him and treat him to a nice flogging at the funeral,” Clint muttered under his breath.

  “Qué?” Mendez asked.

  “Just cursing out Lloyd for throwing me off that train and cursing myself for agreeing to the job in the first place,” the Gunsmith answered.

  He mentally cursed Lloyd and the rest for something he didn’t bother to mention to Mendez. The two vaqueros they’d killed on the train hadn’t been sent by the bandidos. The gunmen had murdered them just in case they were El Lobo’s men.

  “What’s this about Mather really being an ex-Confederate colonel and Linda being his mistress?” Clint asked.

  “Coronel Manning returned to his home in Georgia to find the Union soldiers—who were called Yankees, I am told. I had always thought all you gringos were Yankees.” Mendez shrugged. “Anyway, the soldiers had taken over everything and Manning turned into an outlaw, but a clever one. He didn’t rob banks and stagecoaches. Not Manning. He made certain the profit would be worth the risk and he always tried to hire the best men possible for any job he planned.”

  “Men like Stansfield Lloyd.”

  “Sí,” Mendez confirmed. “That one is famous for his fast gun. You met Vargas, the mongrel knife artist, no? He is also a very deadly hombre, and although he hates his mejicano blood, he still knows my country and speaks the language like a native.”

  “Vargas seems to hate everybody and everything,” Clint remarked. “Especially himself. How do you know so much about them?”

  “Because they worked with me six months ago in Mexico,” El Lobo answered bitterly. “Vargas knew about me, and Manning used him to contact us to see if we’d be interested in one of his schemes. By pretending to be a wealthy gringo businessman interested in buying coffee from the plantations in southern Mexico, Manning was able to rub shoulders with some influential ricos in Monterrey. One of these was a federale general who talked too much when he got drunk and wound up in bed with the puta Linda. He told her about a shipment of gold being transported from Monterrey to the national treasury in Mexico City.”

  Clint wished El Lobo would tell a story in the order that events happen, but he was able to follow Mendez’s narrative.

  “But the gold was being escorted by soldiers and Manning’s group was too small to take it on alone,” El Lobo continued. “That’s why he contacted me and my men. Since there was a fortune in gold—worth almost a million gringo dollars—we accepted. The agreement was that Manning would split the profit with us fifty-fifty, no? But instead, he helped us set up the ambush and then he and his cutthroats stole the gold and left us to fight the soldiers who had scattered all over the rocks for cover after the shooting started. I once had fifty-six compañeros under my command. More than half of them were killed that day.”

  “And Manning fled across the border to the United States with the gold,” Clint guessed.

  “Sí,” Mendez hissed. “I don’t know how he found out I was trying to track him down, but he must have either known or suspected, because when we arrived in Texas, he had already gone.”

  “And the gold was on board a train bound for Yuma with Linda ‘Mather’ and her escort team.”

  “And Manning left Brownsville too,” Mendez declared. “Probably on horseback, figuring we wouldn’t try to find him since we’re more interested in the gold. As if we need to look for him.” The bandit grinned. “He’ll be waiting for them in Yuma. The train has to stop too often to get fuel, pick up freight and passengers. A man on horseback can move faster if he doesn’t mind pushing a mount. You’ll see. In a couple days we’ll catch up with the train ourselves because horses can go across prairies and hills that don’t have iron rails laid down.”

  “You know a short cut, eh?” the Gunsmith inquired.

  “That’s right,” Mendez nodded. “I’d sent a telegram to my men in Monterrey and told them to get on board the train at El Paso and get the gold, but that didn’t work. So, now, I’ll take care of that cabrón Manning personally and reclaim the gold that is rightfully mine. Don’t you agree?”

  “Sure,” Clint lied. “You stole it. Who else would it belong to?”

  “And my compañeros died fighting to get it,” Mendez said fiercely.
Then he glared at Clint with suspicion. “How come they threw you off the train?”

  Clint formulated a story that contained mostly truth. “It didn’t take long for me to realize they had something that was worth a lot more than her body. I’d just about had things figured out when the others turned on me.”

  “How many men does Lloyd have on the train with him?”

  “Five of us left Brownsville with Linda,” Clint answered. “Bruno and Markham are dead and I was ...fired last night so that leaves Lloyd and Vargas—plus Manning and whoever he might have with him.”

  “That don’t sound like too much of a problem,” El Lobo mused, scratching a match to life on the horn of his saddle. He lit the cigar between his teeth. “I’ve lost a lot of men, not to mention poor Sofia and Josephia. I’ve got a lot of things to make Manning pay for. How about you?”

  “I want Lloyd,” Clint said flatly.

  “He’s very good with a gun, Señor Gringo....”

  “Just let me have Lloyd and get my belongings that are still on that train,” Clint insisted. “You can have the rest.”

  El Lobo smiled slyly. “And you don’t want a share of a million dollars in gold?”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Clint grinned in reply. “But I figure that’ll depend on whether or not you’re feeling generous after we’ve settled scores with those bastards.”

  “I’m being pretty generous just letting you live, gringo,” Mendez commented. “And that’s a condition that can be changed just like that.” El Lobo snapped his fingers to serve as an example.

  “I know,” Clint assured him. What fun traveling companions I’ve been getting lately, he thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  To Clint’s surprise, El Lobo and his men headed across the prairie toward a small collection of adobe huts with half a dozen horses contained in a rope corral.