Terror Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  For once he had no strategy in mind besides attacking, maybe leaping from his horse when he was close enough to fight on foot, hoping that one of his own gunmen did not shoot him by mistake. Or might one of them target him deliberately?

  If Zapata was behind the raid, it meant someone had tipped him to the stolen herd’s location, and that information had to come from a villista who accepted cash or else harbored a grudge against the leader to whom he had pledged loyalty. In that case, Villa could trust no one in his own ranks, might expect a sneak attack from nearly anyone aside from Javier Jurado.

  On the other hand, he had begun to doubt Zapata’s role in the attack as soon as their opponents opened fire. Emiliano would not venture from his stronghold in Morelos with a mere handful of men to drive the stolen herd back home. That notion was irrational, even bizarre.

  But in that case, who was responsible?

  Not federales, clearly, since they also would have come in force, intent on crushing Villa’s company before they took the horses for themselves or for Porfirio Díaz. But if he could not blame Zapata or the army, who remained?

  Before he had a chance to ponder that further, his aide-de-camp pulled up beside Villa’s stampeding stallion, hunched over the neck of his grulla. He turned to flash a grin at Pancho by moonlight, just as a bullet from the canyon slapped into his mare’s neck and the animal went down as if its spine were severed, legs splayed out in all directions. Impact sent Jurado vaulting forward, tumbling like a circus acrobat, obscured by rising dust, and Villa had no choice but to abandon him, race on into the maelstrom as he raised and fired his Colt again.

  Another wasted shot, he realized, and jammed the smoking pistol back into its holster, using both hands on his stallion’s reins. Although it had not saved Jurado, Villa bent forward across his saddle horn, one cheek almost against the stallion’s mane. At least he made a slightly smaller target that way, and if someone shot his horse from under him, there was a chance he would survive the fall, perhaps even rise up and hobble toward the canyon in pursuit of his attacking bandoleros as they closed to killing distance with their unknown enemies.

  If nothing else, he had to find out who the interlopers were before they shot him down. That was imperative to satisfy his curiosity, and if he had a chance to take out even one or two of them, at least he would derive some satisfaction from it as he died.

  Small recompense, but Villa was accustomed to surviving on a razor’s edge between calamity and triumph. He had spent most of his life gambling against long odds, and if it ended here, at least no one could say that he had walked away without making a final bet on victory.

  The canyon’s mouth was less than twenty yards in front of Villa when it happened, as he feared it might. He heard a bullet strike his charger’s skull, a dull sound like a gourd dropped from a height to stony ground, and then his world turned upside down and he was airborne. Anyone who witnessed it, if they were not deafened by gunfire, would have been amazed.

  Incredibly, Villa was laughing as he plunged toward impact with the desert sand.

  * * *

  * * *

  Dolores Aguirre fired the last round from her Model 1895 Winchester and at once began reloading its internal magazine. So far, she had dropped two of Pancho Villa’s riders but could not have sworn that either one was dead, given the darkness, charging adversaries, and the cloud of dust they’d raised.

  Still, two down was not bad, wounded or slain, and she had seen more falling as her sister, Clint Parnell, the Mescaleros, and the caballeros from her father’s hacienda fired from various positions of defense. Behind her, where she crouched against the north side of the canyon’s entryway, Dolores heard her father’s stolen horses neighing frantically, milling about in something close to panic as the battle raged.

  She hoped none of them had been hit so far, but could not spare the time to check—and frankly, could not hope to see if any members of the herd were wounded as they paced around the rocky confines of their prison, some rearing from time to time, none finding any egress from the trap. How many might be lamed or injured by their scuffling was a question no one could address with the gunfire continuing.

  Beside Dolores, sister Sonya dropped a galloping villista with an aught-six round from her bolt-action Springfield, rapidly ejecting the spent cartridge while she lined up on another charging target. This time, while she only grazed the horseman, she still managed to disarm him, forcing him to drop his six-gun as a spurt of blood gushed from his wounded arm. Still, he remained mounted and rushing toward them, whooping high-pitched rebel yells until a blast from Parnell’s shotgun took him down and let his horse run on alone.

  Villa’s bandidos had been whittled down, perhaps one out of five unhorsed during their headlong charge, but some of those were doubtless still alive. In fact, Dolores saw a couple of them moving toward the canyon’s mouth on foot, arms raised to shield their eyes from roiling dust as they advanced. One held a carbine, while the other clutched a pistol in his fist.

  Dolores lined her sights up on one of the bandoleros jogging in. Drew in a breath, released half of it, and then held the rest pent up inside her lungs. A horse rushed past her chosen target, and its passing cleared the dust enough to let her see the adversary’s face, a mustache and goatee below a hooked nose, sunken cheeks, and tangled hair above dark eyes, with a sombrero bouncing on his back, its thong around the gunman’s throat.

  Enough.

  She stroked her rifle’s trigger, watched the young man lurch one final step, then drop. She pumped the weapon’s lever action while she waited to discover whether he rose again, but he lay still, a final tremor passing through his prostrate form.

  How many did that make? How many total strangers had she killed or wounded since the raid upon her father’s hacienda killed Eduardo and cast all their futures into doubt? Dolores had lost count but did not let that trouble her. Right now, her one and only job was to keep firing, killing, until no more threats impeded their return of Papa Alejandro’s stolen horses to New Mexico.

  And failing that, she had already made a private promise to herself that she would die in the attempt. Dolores would not be the one to let her father down, disgrace their family.

  She shifted her position slightly, framed the second horseless pistolero in her rifle’s sights. That one had seen his compañero drop and hesitated for a heartbeat afterward, then forged ahead in the direction that his other friends were riding, clearly more afraid of trying to retreat than facing guns in hostile strangers’ hands.

  Dolores understood his choice, saw it as one that she had made herself. In truth, she felt a kind of grudging admiration for her nameless enemy’s determination.

  Not that turning back and running for his life would have averted her determination.

  In that case, Dolores would have shot him just as quickly in the back.

  This time, she sighted on the target’s face, midway between the drooping brim of his sombrero and a colorful serape draped around his shoulders. She could see his thin lips moving, wondered for a second whether he was praying, cursing, or just talking to himself as in a nightmare, but it made no difference.

  Her bullet struck the bridge of the villista’s nose, his brow and cheeks imploding as the aught-six hollow point hammered through cartilage and sinus cavities at 2,500 feet per second, striking with 3,036 foot-pounds of destructive energy. It did not blow the target’s head clean off but left the upper portion of his cranium flopping against his shoulder blades in back, while his blood-soaked sombrero sailed away.

  Another kill, and now, scanning the field in front of her, Dolores asked herself, How many more to go?

  * * *

  * * *

  Javier Jurado broke no bones while falling from the saddle of his grulla mare but landed with sufficient force to badly sprain his left shoulder. Cursing the pain, he struggled to his feet, regained his bearing as the rest of Pancho
Villa’s riders galloped past them, and slogged after them, grimacing with each step as he advanced.

  At least, being right-handed, he was able to withdraw his sidearm from its holster and continue on to join the fight.

  His pistol was a rare LeMat revolver, manufactured in the 1860s, carried by some Confederate soldiers during America’s Civil War, and later in the Franco-Prussian War between the Second French Empire and Germany. It weighed four pounds and measured thirteen inches overall, its cylinder containing nine .40-caliber rounds, while a separate barrel held a single twenty-gauge shotgun shell, discharged by flipping a lever on the end of the pistol’s hammer. Loaded with birdshot, that cartridge killed only at close range, but it could wound or even blind an enemy at forty yards, perhaps inflicting injury on more than one.

  For now, without Jurado’s horse or rifle, still inside its saddle boot, the ten-shooter would have to be enough.

  Advancing, Javier was pleased to let the mounted riders go in front of him, although the dust raised by their horses nearly choked and blinded him. Despite the throbbing pain in his left shoulder, he kept that hand raised before his face to shield his eyes and nose somewhat, while drawing shallow breaths in through his mouth. Ahead of him, the sounds of gunfire multiplied, seemed louder to his ears, although the muzzle flashes from the canyon’s mouth told him his enemies had no more reinforcements to commit.

  Two of their shooters, maybe three, were stationed on the granite ledge above the canyon’s entrance, where a pair of Villa’s guards were normally assigned. Their vantage point allowed them to fire down upon the galloping villista band while staying out of pistol range from enemies below. A few of Villa’s riders tried to bring them down with rifle shots in passing, but the jolting motion of advancing horses spoiled their aim.

  A sudden flash of inspiration came to Javier. If he could scale that slope and take the snipers by surprise, he might dispose of both before they saw him coming. That in turn would aid his fellow raiders in their bid to breach the canyon and eliminate the rest, whoever they might be.

  The climb was grueling, doubly difficult since Javier was forced to work one-handed, with his pistol holstered, but he slowly gained on his objective yard by yard. As he drew closer to his enemies, Jurado verified that there were only two of them in place. If he got close enough to fire a shotgun blast from his LeMat, then follow with the nine rounds in its cylinder, he could eliminate both men and still survive.

  Unless they saw or heard him coming first.

  When he had nearly reached his destination, thankful that the ground beneath his feet had leveled out a bit, Jurado took a breath, muttered a prayer to long-forgotten saints, and then unholstered his LeMat. He cocked its hammer, pressed the lever to fire his shotgun shell initially, and then began to creep across the final gap that separated him from his intended targets.

  At the final instant, Javier wondered why both their guns had suddenly fallen silent.

  No matter. Possibly they had run out of ammunition, were reloading, or else waiting for the dust below to clear and let them spot more targets. Whatever the case, he must move now or miss his only chance.

  Charging the last few yards, with his LeMat held out in front of him, Jurado found both snipers facing him, their rifles shouldered, aiming straight at him. He could have sworn that they were smiling when they fired as one, their bullets ripping into Javier, propelling him back down the hillside in a clumsy somersault through darkness into everlasting black.

  * * *

  * * *

  Sonya Aguirre fired the last shot from her Springfield rifle’s five-round magazine and saw that she had no time to retrieve another stripper clip to feed it from her bandolier. Instead, she dropped the empty weapon, drew one of her Smith & Wesson Model 1899 revolvers from its holster on her right hip, while she left its twin jammed underneath her belt buckle.

  The pistol had a four-inch barrel and weighed just over two pounds with a full load in its six-shot cylinder. Despite the close proximity of Villa’s men—those who were still alive and mounted—she did not unload the piece in rapid double-action fire, but rather cocked it manually, braced its butt in a two-handed grip, and took the extra time required to aim.

  Her nearest adversary had a pistol in his hand and could have dropped her if his horse had not reared up unbidden, its front hooves pawing the air in front of Sonya. She stood fast and tracked the horseman’s unexpected rise, firing her six-gun as he reached its apogee. Her .38 slug smacked him underneath his chin, hurtling one thousand feet per second, punching through his soft palate and scrambling his brains before his lifeless body tumbled from the saddle, landing in a limp heap on the ground.

  Another rider swept around the first one’s fleeing horse and tried to trample Sonya where she stood. Unyielding, she squeezed off another shot that drilled the stout villista through his chest, an inch or so above the heart, and saw him jerk with the impact. Instead of falling, though, the nearly dead man somehow swung his animal about and galloped out of range while slumping down over his saddle horn.

  Call that another kill, even if he required a few more moments to bleed out internally.

  The action all became a blur for Sonya after that, more horses charging toward her out of darkness while she triggered .38 rounds toward their riders, emptying one pistol, sheathing it, and pulling out the second from her belt. Beside her, on her right, she heard Dolores firing with her Winchester, then switching to the Colt she favored. Off to Sonya’s left, Parnell was emptying his shotgun, following its loud blasts with the echoes of his Peacemaker. Farther along the firing line, their Mescalero volunteers blazed into the villista mob with long guns, Great Hawk switching to a six-gun of his own, while Bear and Gray Wolf whooped and drew their tomahawks for fighting hand to hand.

  Somewhere amid the frenzied killing, horses rearing, riders toppling, bullets humming around Sonya like a swarm of angry yellow jackets, the mayhem began to slacken, then died off entirely. Silence settled on the battlefield, except for hoofbeats in retreat across the desert and the panicked sounds from Papa Alejandro’s herd inside the canyon at her back.

  Could it be over? Had she been cut down during the melee, dying without knowledge of her end? Was she a shade scanning the bloody plain through ghost’s eyes that would quickly fade away?

  The smell of dust and cordite brought Sonya around, back to reality. She stood between her twin and Clint Parnell, both still alive, as were the Mescaleros farther to her left. The three Apache braves were smeared with blood, but in another moment Sonya realized that most of it, at least, was not their own. Before them lay the corpses of a half-dozen villistas they had hacked and stabbed to death during the battle’s last convulsion.

  “Have we won, then?” asked Dolores in a small voice, as if waking from a dream.

  “I think so,” Sonya answered.

  “Hold on a second,” Clint advised them, staring toward the field of combat while reloading his shotgun.

  Sonya followed his gaze and saw a lone figure advancing on them, slowly pacing off the yards. He held a pistol in his right hand with its muzzle pointing toward the ground. Sonya surmised it must be empty, or the lone survivor hoped to close the gap and try a point-blank shot before they cut him down.

  Sonya raised her second Smith & Wesson, sighting down its barrel toward the lone villista. Said to no one in particular, “I have him.”

  “Wait on that,” Clint answered. “Let’s hear if he has something to say.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It seemed impossible to Pancho Villa that his men could be defeated by a smaller force, but he could see the proof before his bleary eyes, bodies lying in twisted attitudes of death, their blood leaching into the desert sand. Some of their horses, also shot during the fruitless charge, lay wheezing now, breathing their last. Villa wished he could put them all out of their misery but knew he must preserve the cartridges in his revolver
for whatever happened next.

  It crossed his mind that he should simply turn and run. Perhaps the gunmen who had slain his bandoleros would take pity on a sole survivor and allow him to escape. More likely, though, he guessed that they would make a clean sweep of their victory, with one or more preferring bullets fired into his back as he retreated.

  No.

  Whatever lay in store for him, despite the grim humiliation of defeat, Villa was determined to confront his final moments like a real man should, no groveling or whining, only sheer contempt for those whom he had tried and failed to kill.

  As for the herd he’d stolen from New Mexico days earlier, it now belonged to others, who had proved that they were big and strong enough to wrest it from his grasp. Hope of a profit from the raid in Doña Ana County had evaporated in a swirl of gun smoke, like Zapata’s worthless vow to take the horses off Villa’s hands.

  As he approached the firing squad before him, he forced a smile of false assurance in his own survival. He could think of no good reason why the strangers should not gun him down immediately, yet they waited, weapons leveled at him, while he closed the gap between them with determined strides.

  As Villa neared his likely executioners, dismay washed over him. Not only were they few in number, but he saw that three of them were Mescalero tribesmen, one a gringo, and the others mexicano. More surprising yet, he realized that two of them were women, clearly twins, and quite attractive if he looked beyond their grim rifles, grim expressions, and the layer of desert dust that covered them.

  In other circumstances—a cantina, say, or even on a sidewalk in Ascensión—he would have found them quite delectable, drawn to the challenge of seducing both together. In his present circumstance, however, Villa guessed it was more likely that the twins would drop him in his tracks as readily as any of their male associates.