Sundance 20

by Peter McCurtin

  Jorge Calderon uncorked the bottle again and drank deeply from it. The singing in the kitchen had stopped and Joe looked uneasy. The big old railroad clock on the wall said it was five minutes to eleven. Outside a mongrel ran yelping down the street, pursued by a gang of children throwing rocks. Dust blew under the batwing doors, carried by the hot wind.

  Jorge Calderon finished the mescal and put the empty bottle on the table. It was a very final gesture, but not done for show. ‘Go with God,’ Jorge said as he stood up.

  ‘God will have to wait,’ Sundance said quietly as two pistoleros came in.

  Two

  They walked into the Esplendor like two men who owned the world. Joe dropped his bar rag and scurried into the kitchen as soon as he saw them. The back door banged as he made for the safety of the alley. Both were dressed like Mexican gunmen. But one was an American, a young, towheaded kid with nickeled Colts in a twin gun rig. Many an old lady had a better looking mustache than the wispy growth he was trying to raise on his upper lip. One of his pale blue eyes had a cast in it. He had wide, womanish hips that didn’t go with the rest of his skinny body.

  The other man was a full-blooded Mexican Indian, taller than most, with lank black hair and a broad brown face. He was chewing a sulphurhead match, grinding it between misshapen teeth. His oiled holster was tied down. The oil had soaked through the leather from the inside and shone dully in the dim light of the cantina. The smell of oil and sweat came from him even at a distance.

  The American did the talking in a slow, easy Texas voice. He jerked his chin toward the door, but kept his hands still. ‘You,’ he said to Sundance, ‘you get up and get out.’

  Sundance stood up slowly, waiting for it to start. ‘I’m up,’ he said.

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ the kid sneered. ‘A few more steps and you’ll be out the door.’

  ‘But suppose I don’t want to go?’

  The Mexican had been sizing up the tall halfbreed with the Bowie knife and the long barreled .44 Colt slung from his belt. He spat out the soggy match and smiled as pleasantly as he could with the ragged teeth.

  ‘Let me esplain somethin’,’ he said. ‘You got nothin’ to do with this man here. Escuse me, it ain’t none a your business. We see you in town an’ ask questions about you. You’re waitin’ to go huntin’ with this General Crook. We don’ want no trouble with you, all right. Our trouble is with the lawyer.’

  Sundance said, ‘Has he been giving you trouble?’

  The Mexican smiled again. ‘Well, you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. You want to tell me?’

  ‘Is a long story. You don’ want to get mixed up in this.’

  The kid wanted to get on with the killing; his crazy blue eyes were wide with anticipation. A born killer, Sundance decided—the Mexican was just earning his pay.

  ‘We’re wasting time,’ the kid said. ‘You get one more chance to walk out, halfbreed.’

  ‘Listen, Jim,’ Jorge Calderon started to say.

  Sundance told him to shut up. ‘This is between me and these two men.’

  The Mexican smiled and his hand streaked for his gun. The kid was a shade slower but still fast enough. The long-barreled Colt was already in Sundance’s hand as the Mexican’s gun came out. It had just cleared leather when the first bullet ripped through his heart. The kid got both guns out together. He fired both barrels into the floor as Sundance, hardly moving the Colt, put two bullets in his chest. Now both gunmen were on the floor—the Mexican was still twitching and Sundance gave him one in the head. There was plenty of time to make it a careful shot. The heavy lead slug shattered his forehead like a hammer hitting an egg.

  ‘¡Dios!’ Jorge Calderon said in a hushed voice. ‘A blink of an eye and two men are dead. My friend, I have got you into big trouble. You better go now. Saddle your horse and ride for the border.’

  Sundance grinned at the soldier turned lawyer. ‘Everybody keeps telling me to leave, even you. You got a gun, Señor Calderon?’

  The lawyer shook his head. ‘I do not like guns, not since we were in the war.’

  Sundance picked up the dead Mexican’s .45 Colt and looked it over. It had a plain walnut grip and was well cared for though not new. The balance was right; everything about it was right. ‘You have a gun now and you better start liking it,’ he said, handing the weapon to Jorge. ‘There are times when the law needs a helping hand.’

  A cautious voice called from the street, ‘What is going on in there? This is the Chief of Police. You will stop that shooting. I warn you my men and I are armed. We are coming in now.’

  ‘That’s Luis Montoya,’ Jorge said, putting the Colt in the waistband of his trousers. ‘I think he was a good man once. Now I don’t know what he is. He is married and with small children.’

  The Chief of Police came in followed by three constables dressed in ill-fitting uniforms. Two were elderly men, the third was very young. Montoya was in his late forties, heavy without being fat, and there were large sweat stains under the armpits of his blue uniform. All four men were armed but their guns were in their holsters. Sundance hoped they remained cautious. He had no intention of sitting in a dirty Mexican jail.

  The smell of gunpowder and blood was heavy in the room. The Chief gulped nervously as he looked at the bodies on the floor. The kid’s eyes were open; the cockeye seemed to have straightened itself in death.

  ‘You killed these men?’ the Chief asked Sundance. ‘You killed Paco Mendez and Kid Ferrill?’

  ‘If that’s who they were—yes,’ Sundance said. ‘Self-defense, Chief. They came in to kill my friend, Señor Calderon. I couldn’t let them do that.’

  ‘That is true, Señor Sundance,’ the Chief said, staring at the long-barreled Colt hanging from the halfbreed’s beaded weapons belt, and at the same time trying to assert his authority. ‘But if these men threatened you, you should have sent for me. Now I must ask you to accompany me to the jail. Two men have been killed and I have only your word.’

  Jorge Calderon came out from behind the bar with a drink of mescal in his hand. ‘You have my word too, Montoya. You know goddamned well these two pistoleros threatened to kill me if I didn’t leave Las Piedras. Why didn’t you do something about it? I’ll tell you something else, you fine upholder of law and order. When you heard the shooting you thought I was already dead. It was safe to come out then.’

  Sundance cut in before Jorge could say thing else. ‘Señor Calderon is understandably upset, Chief Montoya. When a man comes so close to death he says things in anger that he wouldn’t say otherwise.’

  ‘Like hell,’ Jorge said in English, and went back to get another drink.

  The Chief bowed stiffly to Sundance. ‘Perhaps it will not be necessary to arrest you after all, but I must warn you not to get into any more trouble while you are in Las Piedras. I can deputize all the men I need, you understand. It will not be good for you if you get into any more trouble.’ An unexpected note of harshness crept into the Chief’s voice. ‘After all, you are only one man. That is something to think about, is it not.’

  Still speaking Spanish, Sundance agreed that it certainly was something to think about.

  Half an hour later, after the bodies had been carried away, they had moved Sundance’s weapons and other gear to Jorge’s cluttered quarters on one of the narrow streets off the plaza. This was the poorest part of the small city, and the oldest. Jorge had two small rooms on the second floor of a rundown stone and plaster building that smelled of cooking oil and hot peppers. The street itself was noisy, filled all day with Mexican Indians selling their wares. At one end of the street was a whorehouse where the girls sat in the open windows advertising what they had to offer. Only here was Jorge Calderon popular, a white, well-educated man—an abogado—who chose to live among the people without money or power.

  Jorge lived and cooked in one room; the other was used as his office. There was a doubtful look on his face as Sundance began to put away his gear. ‘Are you sure you want t
o move in here?’ he asked. ‘I am a rotten housekeeper, as you can see.’

  ‘As I can see,’ Sundance agreed. ‘But I’ve lived in worse places. I can’t let them sneak up here and kill you in your sleep. I’m in this now. Don’t tell me this isn’t my fight or my country. My country is wherever Indians live.’

  Quickly he told Jorge about his long fight against the corrupt Indian ring in Washington; about how the ring stole millions of dollars from the Indians every year. ‘There is nothing so small that they won’t steal it,’ he said. ‘The money that is supposed to feed the Indians finds its way into their pockets. The meat is usually rotten or it’s horse meat instead of beef. They hold back supplies—blankets, medicine—and sell them over and over. Then they send in the soldiers when hunger and despair drives the Indians to war. Every time there is trouble, the ring gets a tighter hold. They are our slave traders. The missionaries preach peace on earth and cavalrymen back up the sermons with sabers.’

  In the sleeping room there was an iron stove with a pot of stale coffee on top of it. After it was heated to the boiling point, it wasn’t too rank. Jorge accepted a cup of his own bad coffee without enthusiasm. ‘I don’t know about this Indian ring,’ he said, ‘but I have heard talk that important men in Washington are somehow involved in the selling of Indians. A young officer who quit your army in disgust told me that.’

  ‘It figures,’ Sundance said. ‘They can’t buy and sell blacks any more so the Indians are the next best thing. How does Las Piedras fit into all this?’

  Jorge said, ‘This is where they bring the Indian captives before they are taken south to be sold. Colonel Almirante looks the other way while they are brought to Bannerman’s big hacienda five miles outside town.’

  ‘Bannerman is an American?’ The name sounded familiar to Sundance. After the Civil War there was a Confederate brigadier general of that name who had narrowly missed hanging when Union troops occupied Louisiana. During the war he had taken hundreds of Union prisoners from prison camps in Louisiana and Florida and used them to work the big plantation he owned in the bayou country west of New Orleans. Many had died of disease and starvation.

  ‘That’s the same man,’ Jorge said. ‘It must be. Here in Sonora he vows to reclaim the fortune he lost when he had to flee the South. Already he has built a big house with slave labor. Your government has not been able to bring him back to stand trial because he is now a Mexican citizen. The politicians in this state, most of them, think he is a fine man who will do much for his adopted country. I know about this Bannerman because he makes little effort to keep his activities a secret. An arrogant man, a cruel, dangerous man. I am a man of peace, but I would like to see him dead.’

  Sundance decided not to finish his coffee. The pot needed to be washed and scoured with rough sand. After that he would get rid of the empty mescal bottles and bean cans. ‘You mean you were a man of peace,’ he said. ‘If this is Lucas Bannerman from Louisiana, you won’t stop him with law books and petitions. You can try, but it will finally come down to the gun. It usually does.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think after what happened in the cantina, the next move will be up to Bannerman. He sent two of his best men to kill you, but you’re still alive. Bannerman won’t like that, and he’ll want to do something about it. About you or about me, or both of us. How many Indians does he keep at any one time?’

  Jorge rooted around in the clutter of law books and papers and dirty shirts until he found a roll of maps. He spread out a map of Sonora and weighted down the curling ends with law books. He used a broken pencil as a pointer. ‘This,’ he said, tapping the paper, ‘is where we are, Las Piedras. To the east the Sierra Madre, to the west the desert. There are no Indians in the mountains so he sends his raiding parties far out into the desert, beyond the desert where the Indian farmers have their villages. To the east and to the north into the United States. There are still villages beyond the desert that he hasn’t raided yet. They are too far away and the trip too brutal, but that is where he must go next if he is to keep up his supply of captives.’

  Jorge pointed to inked markings on the map. ‘He has raided here and here and here, always at a greater distance from Las Piedras. The country out there is all indicated as desert, as you can see, but there are small fertile valleys where the Indians have lived in peace until now. The government is lazy and does not bother them. Even the conscripting officers for the army do not want to travel so far across such a merciless desert. But I think Bannerman, driven by greed, will send his men there. They will go there and leave nothing but sadness and desolation behind them.’

  ‘How many men does he have?’ Sundance asked.

  ‘As many as he needs,’ Jorge answered. ‘You killed two of them today. There are many more like that. They come from all over northern Mexico and the southwest. From Chihuahua, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico. The worst men in the world, drawn here by the smell of easy money. Gunmen, criminals, deserters.’

  Sundance studied the map. ‘What is that big X?’ he asked.

  ‘That is the biggest village. Bannerman’s men haven’t raided it yet because it is so far away. I think that is where he will strike next. By Indian standards it is a prosperous village of farmers and hunters. Of course I have never been there, but I once talked to a priest who had made his way there from the sea. It is easy to get there from the sea. What are you thinking about, my friend?’

  Sundance said, ‘I’m thinking that somebody ought to be waiting for Bannerman’s raiders when they get there.’

  Three

  ‘I’d like to give them a surprise they I won’t forget,’ Sundance went on. ‘I mean those who survive what I have in mind for them, but we can’t travel all the way to the other side of that desert just in the hope that they’ll raid there next. While we’re there they could be raiding somewhere else. You got any way of pinning it down, Jorge?’

  Jorge said, ‘I have an Indian working on it. He’s out there now with his ear to the ground, listening to every bit of talk he can get close to. He’s a good man, a tough man, but Bannerman has this well organized. I expect him back tonight or tomorrow.’ The lawyer shrugged. ‘If he gets back. Other men have tried to get information on Bannerman. They’re all dead and every time they were killed it was made to look as if hostiles did it. ¡Dios! The way those men died—blinded, castrated, disemboweled, staked out in the sun. Where are you going?’

  Sundance was standing up. ‘After what happened today you won’t be safe,’ he said. ‘I see you have no way of locking the door.’

  ‘There is no need in this street,’ Jorge said. ‘The poor people here are my friends. Nothing will happen to me here.’

  ‘Maybe not, but a couple of dead bolts won’t do any harm. Anyway, if we’re going to spend any time in here we’ll need more than black coffee and canned beans. You’re going to be cutting down on the mescal, I hear.’

  Jorge grinned ruefully. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Just a rumor, I guess. You think it’s true?’

  ‘Could be,’ Jorge answered.

  Sundance went down to the street, but not just for bolts and supplies. A 10-gauge shotgun and a hacksaw was what he really wanted, and double-0 cartridges if they stocked them. Nothing stopped men trying to break down a door like a double blast from a scattergun. You couldn’t dodge it, couldn’t duck it and couldn’t live after it hit you.

  It was cool and dark in the street. The Mexicans lounging in doorways watched silently as he went toward the plaza on the far side of which there was a general store. A fat man with a handlebar mustache and an apron was putting up the shutters when he got there. He spoke Spanish badly and with a heavy foreign accent. Sundance guessed he was a German.

  ‘Come back in the morning,’ he protested.

  Sundance showed him a small wad of greenbacks and he brightened up. ‘You are a stranger in Las Piedras?’ he said.

  The answer he got was, ‘I’ll be wanting a sack o
f Arbuckle’s coffee, bacon, beans, canned peaches and tomatoes. You carry guns? Shotguns?’

  ‘Everything I carry,’ the German said.

  The last thing Sundance spent money on was a double-barreled Greener breechloader, a 10-gauge with 32-inch barrels. He got plenty of cartridges to go with it. The German bundled up everything and he carried the stuff back to Jorge’s quarters.

  When he got there Jorge wasn’t looking so good. It was a cool evening and the windows were open, but his hands shook and he was sweating—that oily sweat that comes after a long drunk. He held up his trembling hands. ‘Here you see a champion of the poor,’ he said bitterly.

  Sundance had been through many bouts with whiskey when he was younger and hadn’t learned yet to leave it alone. ‘Don’t start gnawing on yourself, Jorge,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll be all right. It takes time. I’ll go get you some mescal and beer for your head in the morning.’

  Jorge clenched his hands in an effort to keep them from shaking. Sweat ran down his face as if it had been thrown there from a bucket. He wiped his face with his sleeve. ‘I want it, but I don’t want it. I’ll fight my way through this.’

  Sundance shook his head. ‘If you’re too busy fighting the mescal you won’t be able to fight Bannerman. I know how to get you dry.’ He smiled at his old friend from the revolution. ‘Fairly dry, anyway. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  He had passed a cantina on his way to the plaza and he went there now. Downstairs in the dark street four Mexican Army troopers were drinking from a bottle and laughing a lot. One of them began to sing. They sounded drunk but Sundance wasn’t so sure. It could be they were waiting for him. The Mexicans who were in the street earlier had all gone indoors. Sundance knew he had been right about the brave poor people of Las Piedras—they wouldn’t fight for Jorge if it came to a pinch.

  Sundance walked by slowly, but they didn’t seem to notice him. The cantina was a few hundred feet down the street. When he got to the door he looked back and saw they were coming his way, nice and steady on their feet. There was no more singing, and they didn’t even break the bottle as drunken troopers usually would. Sundance went in.