by Steve Hayes
‘I need shoes,’ she complained as he dragged her back toward the stables. ‘My feet are one big blister.’
‘I’ll try to find you some sandals,’ he promised. ‘But right now you have to get some food in your belly.’
‘So do you.’
He nodded and pointed to The Owl cantina across the street. ‘You go ahead. Order whatever you like and me the same. I’ll join you soon as I take stock of the horse.’
The searing heat had taken its toll on the villagers. The crowd had dwindled and now as Gabriel approached the livery stable, there were only a few curious onlookers gathered outside.
The hostler was waiting for him just inside the doorway with a long-legged blue roan. Gabriel examined it suspiciously.
‘Where’d your uncle get a quality horse like this, amigo?’
The youthful hostler shrugged his scrawny shoulders.
‘I do not know, señor. Though this man is my uncle, he is from my father’s side of the family, a side I am not so friendly with, and he is like a stranger to me.’
‘Well, he knows his horseflesh. This mare looks like she could run all day and night.’
‘This is true,’ the hostler said solemnly. ‘My uncle has told me of this many times. On those occasions when we had reason to talk,’ he added, catching himself.
Gabriel didn’t believe the youth for a second. But he needed a horse, a good horse, and he needed it fast. And by the way the hostler kept fidgeting and glancing uneasily out the door, he sensed the hostler was in as much of a hurry to close the deal as he was.
‘Two hundred pesos,’ Gabriel said. ‘But you gotta throw in a saddle and bridle.’ He knew he was stealing the roan, but he sensed the mare was stolen in the first place and doubted if the hostler would put up much of a fight.
‘You are the trader of all traders,’ the hostler grumbled.
‘Save the gravy for mashed potatoes,’ Gabriel said, cutting him off. ‘Is it a deal or not?’
‘It is, señor. See, I have a fine saddle and bridle hanging in the back there.’
Gabriel could see the saddle and bridle were well-worn but in good shape. He nodded, paid the hostler the money and told him to get the mare saddled while he ate across the street.
He and Ellen were back in ten minutes, still wadding bean-soaked tortillas in their mouths as they entered. The hostler had both horses ready for them. Gabriel mounted quickly and nudged the Morgan out of the stable, into the hot sunlight. Ellen, astride the mare, trotted capably behind him.
‘What’s her name?’ Ellen asked as they cantered through the little town.
‘Whatever you want it to be,’ Gabriel replied. ‘I forgot to ask.’
‘Then I’ll call her Moonlight, after you. Don’t you think it suits her?’
He looked at the mare with its cropped black mane, flowing black tail and silvery-bluish coat, and nodded.
‘Grampa Tate’s going to love her,’ Ellen said, thinking aloud. ‘And of course he’ll pay you back whatever she cost.’
‘Call it a gift, Ellie. I as good as stole her.’
They were approaching the outskirts of the pueblo. Gabriel felt a weight lift from his shoulders. Now all they had to do was make it safely to the border and….
Ahead, Captain Morales and his men rode out of a cross-street and blocked their path.
‘Parare!’ the officer barked at him. Then as Gabriel and Ellen reined up: ‘You are a bigger fool than I thought, gringo. Now I most certainly will hang you.’
‘Just a minute, Captain,’ Ellen said. ‘I’m Ellen Kincaide. And as you can see I am definitely alive.’
‘Silencio, señorita! This is not of your concern.’
‘It most certainly is, sir. If I’m not dead, that means Señor Moonlight cannot be responsible for murdering me … or my driver. Therefore you have no reason to arrest him.’
Captain Morales wrinkled his thin lips back in a wolfish smile.
‘You are mistaken, señorita. Assaulting an officer and resisting arrest – both are most serious offenses.’
‘But not hangin’ offenses,’ Gabriel reminded, hand poised over his six-gun.
‘No, gringo. But horse-stealing is.’
‘Horse-stealin’? If you mean the roan, I didn’t steal her. I bought her from the hostler.’
‘He’s telling you the truth,’ put in Ellen. ‘You can ask the young man. He’ll tell you.’
‘What he tells me or what you say is of no interest to me,’ Captain Morales said smugly. ‘This mare is government property. It belongs to Lieutenant Rodriguez. He reported it stolen less than an hour ago. If you doubt me,’ he added, ‘perhaps you can explain what his initials are doing on your saddle.’
He was talking to Ellen, who now looked down and in front of her left knee saw J. C. R. embossed in the leather.
‘This makes you a horse-thief,’ Captain Morales said to Gabriel. ‘And it will be my pleasure to stretch your neck.’ He signaled to his men. ‘Take him!’
Gabriel drew his six-gun, so fast it was already in his hand and aimed at Captain Morales’ belly before his men could spur their horses forward.
‘I don’t want to kill you,’ he told the officer. ‘But if your men make even the slightest move toward me, your next breath will be your last.’
Captain Morales, to his credit, showed no sign of fear.
‘After I am dead,’ he told his men, ‘hang them both.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘Pay no attention to him,’ Ellen told Gabriel. ‘He’s bluffing.’
Gabriel looked at Captain Morales and knew better. The Mexican officer might look like a toy soldier but under his fancy uniform beat a fearless heart.
If they were going to escape, Gabriel knew he had to make his move now.
‘Reckon it’s time to fold ’em,’ he said glumly. Spinning the Peacemaker on his finger, he offered it butt first to Captain Morales. At the same instant he dug his spurs cruelly into the Morgan’s flanks, causing the startled horse to rear up.
As it did Gabriel spun the Colt in reverse, grasped the butt and fired alongside the stallion’s neck.
The bullet knocked Captain Morales out of the saddle. His mount jumped sideways, crablike, and slammed into the other horses, causing them to panic. Neighing shrilly, they reared up forcing their riders to hang on with both hands.
By now the Morgan was back on its feet, snorting with anger. Gabriel gripped tightly with his knees and emptied his Colt into the helpless Rurales. He deliberately shot high knowing a man could recover from a broken shoulder, and as the way ahead of him cleared he reached back, grasped the roan’s bridle and spurred the stallion forward.
‘Ride, Ellie! Ride!’
Enraged by the pain of Gabriel’s spurs, the stallion charged forward like a battering ram, scattering the soldiers’ horses.
The leggy blue roan gamely followed the Morgan, both horses running flat out along the narrow dusty street that ran between two rows of adobe houses and ended at the desert.
They rode this way for about a mile across the wasteland before Gabriel looked back and saw that no one was pursuing them. He then reined up, Ellen doing the same beside him.
‘Reckon I’ve seen the last of Mexico,’ he said drily.
‘Gabe, I’m so sorry—’
‘Don’t be. Nobody twisted my arm to help you.’
‘No, but I feel responsible. If I hadn’t come here—’
‘Forget it, I said.’
He spoke sharply. Ellen shrugged and let it drop.
They rode on, side by side, across the arid, monotonous, unchanging scrubland.
Presently, he said: ‘I ever tell you my pa was a circuit rider?’
‘H-He was?’
‘Colorado, mostly. Went from one gold camp to another, spreadin’ God’s word to men who prayed on Sunday and spent the rest of the week cuttin’ each others’ throats over a single nugget.’
‘How sad.’
He showed no sign of hearing her.
‘Had this sign he carved on a piece of pine. We carried it everywhere with us. An’ come meetin’ time, Pa made me hang it up in the prayer tent behind him so everyone could read it while he was preachin’.’
He fell silent.
Ellen, seeing how tightly his lips were compressed, his jaw muscles bunched, knew that revealing his past must be hurtful.
Overhead, the sun crawled westward.
‘Know what it said?’ Gabriel said at last. ‘It said: ‘Being a man means being responsible.’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘Know where it hangs now? Over the bar in Fat Sally’s, biggest whorehouse in Denver.’
‘My goodness, how did it end up there?’
‘One of the miners at Salt Creek hung it there. A lunger named Cory Doucett. Said that’s where it belonged.’ Before Ellen could comment, Gabriel added: ‘He was drunk when he stole it an’ later, when they arrested him, he swore on the Bible, Pa’s Bible, that he didn’t recall stealin’ it or even shootin’ off his pistol. But no one believed him, not the judge, jury – not even his own lawyer, he said later.’
‘So what happened – did he go to jail?’
‘Miners lynched him that same night.’
‘For stealing a sign?’
‘For shootin’ Pa.’ He paused and squinted out across the desert. ‘George Freely, the miner who slapped the horse out from under him, said afterwards that it wasn’t so much about Cory bein’ a mean man or evil, though most likely he’d end up in hell anyway, but that, like Pa’s sign said, everyone had to be responsible for his own actions.’
*
Stopping only for occasional sips of water and to rest the weary horses, they rode slowly across the desert until they reached Cohiba, a collection of adobe hovels inhabited by campesinos and their families.
After paying a grubby barefoot boy to look after the horses Gabriel led Ellen to an outdoor cantina. Here, shaded by a tattered awning, they ate double portions of beans, rice and huevos rancheros, sopping up the runny egg-yolks with soft tortillas and washing everything down with the local cerveza.
They said little. Ellen was especially quiet and had been since Gabriel had told her about his father. Sensing she was still troubled by her ordeal with the bandits, Gabriel left her alone and smoked one of the cheroots he’d bought from the cantina owner.
By the time they had cleaned their plates the entire village was taking a siesta. Bellies stuffed and lethargic from the heat, Gabriel and Ellen fell asleep in their chairs.
Two hours later Gabriel, a light sleeper, was wakened by the faint scraping of a chair. Colt already in his hand, he saw it was Ellen.
‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ she promised. Covering her pale wispy hair with her hat, she crossed the plaza and entered the little church.
Wondering how she could find solace in a God that allowed her to be raped and Cerrildo to be cut down in his youth, Gabriel made use of the time by cleaning his Peacemaker. He took the heavy gun apart, blew the sand from the barrel and cylinder then replaced the five, snugly fitting cartridges and put everything together again. This task gave him all the comfort he needed.
Well, maybe not all, he thought thinking of Ellen, but enough. Guns were something a man could rely on. Kept clean and well-oiled, they protected you and never let you down.
Now, as he slid the revolver back into the oiled, worn-smooth holster, he saw Ellie crossing the plaza toward him. Just seeing her lifted his spirits. In her dust-caked Navaho hat, mismatched clothes and with her bare feet tucked into a pair of over-sized huaraches, she looked like a misplaced waif. She no longer walked like a spring colt or a young girl hurrying home from school – the bandits had stolen that from her – but she had recovered some of her verve and there was new life in her smile as she waved to him.
‘What do you think of my sandals?’ she asked, holding up one foot.
‘Interesting.’
‘Can’t you be a little more enthused than that?’
‘I was just thinkin’,’ he said. ‘Most folks make donations when they go to church, not walk out with somethin’.’
She laughed. ‘I didn’t steal them, if that’s what you’re insinuating. The good padre very kindly gave them to me.’
‘Guess he didn’t have need of an extra pair.’
‘They weren’t extra,’ Ellen said. ‘They were his. I told him I couldn’t accept them, but he insisted. Took them right off his feet, God bless him, and put them on mine. That’s why they don’t fit.’
The priest had apparently given Ellen something else, Gabriel realized as they rode slowly out of the village: new hope. She appeared more cheerful and chatted endlessly about her childhood at her grandfather’s horse ranch. Gabriel listened without interrupting her, quietly pleased that she had somehow recovered from her ordeal.
As they crossed the last few miles of desert separating them from the border, the late afternoon sun still hot on their backs, he marveled at the power of prayer and wondered whether, if he had not chosen such a violent path, he would still have lost faith.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
After crossing the border into New Mexico they camped for the night in a remote dry gulch; then, rising early, they rode another half-day until they reached the outskirts of Santa Rosa.
Directly ahead of them stretched the Rio Grande. The river, slowly winding its way south from Las Cruces to El Paso before crossing into Mexico and becoming the Rio Bravo, was less than fifty yards wide here and shallow enough to ford on horseback.
Gabriel and Ellen dismounted beside a thicket of yuccas and let their horses drink while they talked in the shade.
‘I’ll wait here for ’em,’ he told her. ‘You ride on into town. Once you spread the word why you’re there, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours for it to reach the Double SS. Then it’s just a matter of me bracing ’em ’fore they cross the river.’
‘But what if they don’t come this way?’
‘They will. It’s the shortest way into town and knowin’ Slade like I do, once he hears you’re waitin’ for a gunfighter to arrive on the mornin’ train, he’ll want to get to you as soon as possible.’
‘And if they’re already in town – then what?’
She sounded uneasy, and he wondered why.
‘We’ve already discussed that.’
‘I know, I know, but tell me again. I’m so nervous, Gabe, I can barely remember my own name.’
‘You hole up in the Carlisle Hotel and wait for me. Don’t open your door to anyone. If Slade and the Iversons don’t ride in by sundown, I’ll know they’re already in town. Then I’ll come in fast, and force a showdown with them.’
‘No, no,’ she exclaimed, ‘you can’t come into Santa Rosa.’
‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘But someone will recognize you and tell Sheriff Forbes. Then he’ll arrest you.’
‘He’ll try.’
‘More killing? Good God, is that what you want?’
‘What I want,’ he reminded grimly, ‘is what you want: Slade and the Iversons dead.’
But did she? Her growing uneasiness worried him.
‘OK,’ he said, trying to be patient, ‘tell you what: if I do have to come in, I’ll wait till after dark. That way, chances are nobody will see me until the gunplay’s over.’
‘And then what? You think you can just ride out before the sheriff and his deputies show up? After shooting three men in front of the whole town? Why, you wouldn’t have a prayer. You’d be shot to ribbons before you reached your horse.’
‘Simmer down,’ he said, seeing how upset she was. ‘We’ve gone over this a hundred times, Ellie. Trust me. It’s the best way to handle it.’
She was silent a long time. He could tell something was eating at her and he wondered what it was.
‘No,’ she said suddenly, ‘the best way is to call everything off. For us to ride north, straight on up to Las Cruces and stay with Grampa Tate. His spread is way out of town. No one will ever know you’re aro
und.’
He couldn’t believe his ears. ‘’Mean, forget all about Slade an’ the Iversons altogether?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Ellen said. ‘Grampa Tate would love me to stay with him. And I know he’d like to meet you, too.’
‘Kind of late to be changin’ horses.’
‘I know. But Cally would understand, Gabe, I know she would. In fact she’d want me to forget it. She hated killing as much as I do, and … now that I actually think of it, of actually having you kill someone on my account or even Cally’s, I don’t think I can go through with it. In fact I know I can’t. It’s too horrible to even contemplate. Do you understand what I’m saying, Gabe?’
‘No,’ he said after a long pause. ‘I don’t understand any of it. But then I ain’t a woman. An’ it wasn’t my sister who was raped and murdered. So how could I?’
‘Being a woman hasn’t anything to do with it.’
‘It has everythin’ to do with it. I’m not slighting women – most I’ve known were tougher than men in many ways or they couldn’t have stood givin’ birth. But they didn’t know diddly squat about killing. Their men handled it for ’em. That’s not to say men enjoy killing. Most don’t. But we do understand it. It’s taught to us when we’re young’uns an’ it sticks with us all the way through till we’re toes up in the dirt. If you were a man you’d understand that.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘Escalero understood – that’s why he gave his life for you.’
‘Don’t you think I know that?’ she said angrily. ‘Don’t you think I won’t be carrying the guilt of his death – his and Cerrildo’s – for the rest of my days?’
Right now, he wasn’t sure what to think. An Apache on mescal could not have been more confusing.
‘But two wrongs don’t make a right,’ she continued. ‘Miguel would have understood that, too. He was closer to God than I ever was. In fact, during the ride he begged me to turn around and go back to the convent, more times than you can count. Killing Slade and the Iversons was wrong, he kept saying. No matter what they did or how despicable they were, or how much I wanted them dead, I shouldn’t—’
