Desperadoes

by Chris Scott Wilson

  “You saw him?” The question was directed at Sophie.

  “He dressed all in black and he read from the Bible.”

  Emmett scowled, wiping egg yolk from his chin with a finger, which he waved afterward. “This feller, he sing hymns too?”

  “Yes,” Sophie said eagerly. “You know him?”

  Emmett nodded. “I’ve never seen him but I know of him.”

  “You know his name?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I know he’s a bad one. Most of them kill for money ’cause it's easier to bring in a dead one than one still kicking, but him, the stories I’ve heard, he enjoys it.”

  “You bet,” Floyd said quietly, thinking of what he’d been told had happened to Mary.

  “And we’ve still got to find the Kid,” Sophie said miserably.

  “No problem there.”

  Her head came up fast. “You know where he is?”

  “I got me a good idea.”

  Her face sank again. “We thought we had a good idea too, but we turned up nothing. Nobody in town admits to knowing him.”

  Emmett smiled. “That’s ’cause he stays out.”

  “Out of town?”

  “Well, the last time I was down here with him, he had a woman on the east side of town.”

  “I thought you said outside,” Sophie frowned.

  “Yeah, that’s right. She’s a widow woman. Lives on a little rancho with a couple of horses a couple of miles out to the east. The Kid usually stays until she starts making broody noises then he gets the hell out until she’s cooled down.” He sat back in his chair, swilling black coffee around his mouth. “I reckon that’s a good place to start looking.”

  Floyd was impressed. “Sure sounds like it.”

  “Got me some walking to do first,” Emmett said, accepting a light for his cigarette.

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” Sophie queried edgily.

  “Sure, sure, but I came on the railroad. Got to buy me a horse before I go anyplace.”

  “All the time I’ve known you, you’ve been flat busted. Every chance you get you’re sitting in some poker game until the cards take your last buck. Where’d you get all this money for railroad rides and buying horses?” Floyd asked curiously.

  Emmett blew out smoke and pasted on his poker face. “Those Pinkertons are real generous providing you ask them nicely.” He stifled a grin. “And I asked them real polite.”

  CHAPTER 8

  April 12th, 1884

  Rincon, Donna Ana County, New Mexico Territory

  “Looks like we’ll see the Rio Grande soon. Last post I saw said thirty miles to Las Cruces,” Tom Keene said, leaning back into his seat and looking across the railroad car at his partner for the trip.

  Opposite, Mike Gallagher barely grunted as he scanned the crackling pages of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. He was a big ruddy-faced Irishman, given only to social conversation when drink, and plenty of it, had lubricated his vocal chords. Keene didn’t care for Gallagher too much at all. He was a hard man, extremely good at his job, so competent in fact he had been instrumental in setting up the new office in Denver. As the Pinkerton workload expanded westwards, so did their bases of operation. And Gallagher had put most of it together. Now, all the hard groundwork completed, an eastern administrator had been moved in and Gallagher had found himself back out on the street again.

  And he wasn’t too happy about it. Especially when two of his agents had turned up dead in Grama, New Mexico. And what made him less happy was the slick operator from New York asking him to get on down there and take over the case. Before Gallagher knew what he was doing, the easterner’s smooth flattery about his expertise had conned him into going. Now, in the cold light of day after an almost sleepless night, rattling south on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad, he knew he had been used and that made him mad.

  Keene knew Gallagher was mad, and that made him uncomfortable. When you’re mad you don’t think straight and that could be dangerous, especially when in their line of work the job was dangerous enough to begin with. But he could figure out what was in Gallagher’s mind. He would want to clean up this mess double quick which would look good on his record, then use the extra leverage to push out the new Denver administrator and get his own backside firmly ensconced in that prestigious office chair.

  He was certainly moving fast up to now. As the railroad was picking up the tab for the operation, Gallagher had used his muscle to hold up the train in Grama while he talked to the sheriff. Finding out that Emmett Green had left town, riding south after he had killed the two agents, Gallagher had deduced Green was headed for Las Cruces to warn the Sonora Kid. Therefore, the next step was to get on down to Las Cruces as fast as possible. Holding the train had given them an advantage after all. They would have had to stay over in Grama until they could catch the train next day.

  This way they had saved twenty-four hours.

  Gallagher didn’t even look up from his paper when they pulled into a depot.

  “Tonuco,” Keene read aloud from the sign above the ticket office door.

  Gallagher grunted. Irritated, Keene glanced at the Irishman. You’d think by now he would have read all the print off that damn paper, he thought. He’d been reading it for nigh on two days. Why did he always have to pull a job with some ornery son of a bitch? And an Irish son of a bitch at that. He hadn’t even told him how he knew the Sonora Kid was in Las Cruces, but he’d had no hesitation in naming the place. Maybe it was in one of the files back in the office. Gallagher drank on the job, too. And it wasn’t as if he ever handed it around.

  “Keene?” Gallagher’s voice was rough, bog Irish. Tom Keene’s eyes darted to his partner who was screwing the top back on his silver flask after taking a nip. “I don’t need the travelogue. I don’t give a damn where we are. My job, and yours, starts when we hit Las Cruces. You want to be a tour operator, find yourself another job.” With that, the Irishman pocketed the flask and went back to his newspaper.

  Keene stared at him. He was beginning to wish he was back in Denver.

  ***

  Conchita was scrubbing the table when she heard the horses.

  With a frown she dropped the scrubbing brush into the pail of suds and wiped her hands on her apron as she went to the door. It was then she remembered the Kid hadn’t taken his horse when he went. Who was it then? She glanced at the shotgun mounted on the wall above the hearth, loaded and ready as it always was.

  With a hand to her face she went to the narrow window. Outside, two horses were crossing the yard toward the corral. The first was a black stallion and the man who rode it was dressed in black. The second horse, a pinto, carried a body slung over its saddle, head down, legs towards her. She knew those black pants, shiny at the seat, and the worn boots too. It was the Kid.

  Forgetting the shotgun, she flung open the door and hurried out into the yard.

  Creech heard the door and turned in his saddle, hand automatically sliding to the butt of his Colt. He saw the squat Mexican woman waddling toward him, anxiety screwing up her features. His own expression blank, he watched her approach.

  “There has been an accident?” she wailed. “Que pasa? What happen? Is he dead?”

  Creech didn’t answer as she rushed around the packhorse’s flank where the Kid’s head hung toward the ground. She touched the wounded arm and inspected his face, reassuring herself he was still breathing.

  “Who shot him? Why he not ride sitting if he has only a shot in the arm?” she demanded, jerking her head up at the preacher.

  Creech said nothing.

  “Why he not ride? He is not dead,” she stated.

  Creech took a deep breath. “He will be soon.”

  Conchita’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes darted to the Kid’s empty holster and noted the fact his rifle wasn’t on the horse either. When she looked back at the man in black her voice was low, accusing.

  “You shot him.”

  “That’s right.”

&n
bsp; Conchita’s coal-black eyes took on a fire that glinted with evil. Her fingers hooked into talons. Abruptly where there had been a short fat woman looking up at him there was now a wild animal.

  “Matadero! Matadero! Slaughterer! Slaughterer!” she screamed as she threw herself on him.

  ***

  Sophie smiled at Floyd as they waited for Billy to bring the horses from the livery. He smiled back, wondering whether it was the developments of this morning or last night that made her appear radiant. He hoped it was a little of both. He winked at her, then looked at Jody who was pale, eyes bloodshot. By his looks he hadn’t washed or shaved and it had only been a moment before that he had appeared from the direction of the cantina where they had left him the night before.

  “How’d it work out?” Floyd asked with a grin.

  Jody puffed out his cheeks and blew the air out. “Boy, I knew I was on a sure thing but I didn’t figure on her not being saddle broke.”

  “Thought you didn’t cotton to Mexes.”

  Jody raised an eyebrow. Even that seemed to cause him pain. “The men you can keep, but the women, they’re like tequila, hot and raw with plenty of fire…”

  “Well, look who it is.”

  Jody flinched as Emmett came out of the lobby and slapped him hard on the back. He grinned weakly. “Well, by God, Emmett, it’s good to see you, boy, but for God’s sake don’t do that again. My head’s just like to fall right off.”

  Emmett laughed as Floyd made a face behind Jody’s back. Billy appeared at the rail leading their horses and the one Emmett had bought a half-hour earlier.

  “What’s that doing here?” Jody asked, eyes slitted, motioning to his horse.

  “Got to ride us a spell,” Billy answered, grinning at Jody’s state of health.

  “I ain’t riding nowhere. Not today.”

  “You gotta.”

  Jody glanced at Floyd and decided he wasn’t fooling. “Well, not till I’ve had me some breakfast.”

  “You got jerky in your saddlebags. We’re heading out now.”

  Jody slumped down on the boardwalk railing as though his legs could not support him any longer.

  “Quitting already?” Floyd scowled, recalling Jody’s taunts when they’d been cornered during the bank job in San Pedro. “We only just got here, dammit. None of us are quitters,” he said harshly. “Emmett’s got a line on where the Kid is.”

  Jody’s head came up, eyes seeking Emmett’s face. “That so?”

  Emmett winked. “You bet on it and I will.”

  Jody forced a grin. “Well, let’s get to it, then.” He lifted a leg over the rail, wincing at the sudden pain that lanced inside his head. “I just hope this horse has got a smooth action.”

  “Or else what?” Billy said as he swung up into his saddle.

  Jody stopped and looked up at him. “Or else my head is going to fall off.”

  ***

  Outside Las Cruces, traveling east, the land was hard and lean. Although beautiful, it was cruel too. Sagebrush dotted with spiky bunches of jumping cholla, clumps of mesquite, and the huge sentinel saguaros that speared up towards the sky as though stretching their swollen fingers to touch the sun. Without a horse and water, a man with no knowledge could quickly die out there. Everything, plant and animal, fought for survival in that hard school of the desert and those that didn’t succeed withered and died.

  “Where is this place?” Floyd asked, checking the height of the sun and wiping the sweat from his face with a bandanna as his horse plodded wearily on, following the trail.

  Emmett’s hat was pulled way down, shading all of his face but his jaw, and coupled with the long duster coat’s turned-up collar, it gave him a sinister air. “Few miles, that’s all. In the foothills of the Organ Mountains.”

  “How far in’s the rancho?” Sophie asked.

  “Way afore we get into the real peaks.”

  “I’m surprised anyone can live out here,” she said, making a sweep of the desert. “Nothing but things with hooks and spines out here.”

  “Right place for the Kid then, hey?” Jody crowed, his first contribution to the talk since they’d left town. He grinned at his own wit.

  “Wrong place for you then, Jody,” Billy said dryly. “You ain’t got no spine.”

  Emmett ignored them. “Mexican folks. They’re used to living off a hard land. They got the savvy.” He began to fashion a cigarette as he rode, sifting the tobacco from his sack onto a paper and manipulating it without looking. Like all of them in the party, habit had given him restless eyes, continually scouring the land, alert for trouble. A man could get himself killed not watching where he was going.

  “What’s she like?”

  Emmett half smiled. Trust a woman to ask a question like that. “Conchita, you mean? She’s okay.”

  “No, what’s she really like?”

  “Big as a house, cooks the best food I ever tasted, but she has the same faults as most every woman I’ve met.”

  Sophie frowned. “Like what?”

  Emmett looked deadpan at her. “Nosy as a cat…”

  “And?”

  “Tongue as sharp as a razor blade.”

  Sophie swept off her hat and took a swipe at him, laughing. Effortlessly, Emmett swerved his horse aside with his knees so she missed, then he struck a match along his thigh. The sulphur flared and he cupped his hands around the flame as he lit his cigarette.

  Floyd watched Emmett with interest. Even with the long coat on, he still looked cool. And in this heat. Floyd himself was parched to the bone, his armpits and the back of his shirt sodden where the blistering sun had sucked the moisture out of his skin. He wiped his forehead again with the bandanna that was now almost as damp as the crotch of his jeans. He stuffed the bandanna into his gun belt and reached for his canteen. It was light. Frowning, he shook it. Almost empty.

  “We coming to any water soon?”

  “Plenty of water at the rancho,” Emmett replied.

  “How far?”

  “Soon.”

  Thank God, Floyd thought as he pulled out the cork and swilled a mouthful. Jody did the same and Floyd guessed the southern boy still had a bad head. The beating sun wouldn’t do his tequila-soaked brain any good. He hadn’t even bothered to answer Billy’s jibes. They kept on riding, into the heat haze.

  “See that rising ground over there.”

  They all followed Emmett’s sightline,

  “The rancho’s just beyond it.”

  The news seemed to bring everyone out of their reverie. The stranglehold of the heat was broken. Sophie was the first to come alive.

  “All right!” she called, digging in her spurs rowel deep so her sorrel mare shambled into a reluctant canter. “Let’s ride!”

  CHAPTER 9

  April 12th, 1884

  Donna Ana County, New Mexico Territory

  “Matadero! Slaughterer!”

  Creech’s eyes narrowed as Conchita screamed, hurling herself at him. He sawed the reins so the stallion turned face on to her. She found herself going under the horse’s neck, unable to reach Creech. Hands tangling in the reins hanging from the horse’s working mouth, she pushed away, curses rolling from her tongue. As the stallion’s yellow teeth came down, she ducked away, then punching at the animal’s hide she worked around its shoulder towards Creech.

  He saw her coming and slipped his boot from the stirrup. She came up, eyes blazing hatred. Her hands hooked into hawk’s claws as she strained upward. When she came within striking distance, he brought his foot up sharply. The toe of his boot caught her hard under the chin. Only the stallion shifting nervously at the crucial moment saved her neck from snapping like a dry reed. Instead, her head was jerked awry as she was flipped neatly over onto her back.

  Creech nudged the horse forward to trample her.

  She rolled away from the stallion’s advancing hooves. Her black dress was caught between her legs and she fought to free herself. As the horse came alongside she gained her knees. Hands kn
otted into fists, she pounded at the shiny black hide. The horse sidestepped away from her assault and she struggled to her feet.

  Then she was at the rider again, raining blows against his legs. She screamed like an eagle, wailed like a banshee.

  Creech was smiling now. A woman of low repute, a concubine, she was groveling almost as she was repaid for her low ways. Immorality clung to her like a cloak, blinding her eyes and wrapping her in its folds to carry her off to the very portals of the devil’s kingdom. It was then he knew he would have to put her out of her misery. Let her wail and moan at the gates of heaven for mercy before she was turned away to pay the price in full for her evil life.

  But he enjoyed her now. He sneered with contempt at her anger, her helplessness to avert destiny, her wasteful thirst for revenge. He looked down at her hair, whipped into rats’ tails as she flailed uselessly at him. He put his heels to the stallion and it danced away. He took control again and turned it to meet her rush. Calmly, he touched the horse’s flanks and high stepping, head down snorting hot breath, it advanced.

  Again she found herself under its neck, powerful shoulders driving her backward, staggering. Between her curses and screams she could hear the steel bit rattling between its vicious teeth. It snapped at her as it shouldered her effortlessly back, and she felt it grabbing at her clothes and tearing with jerks of its head.

  Screaming, more with frustration than fear, she threw herself aside. She stood, shoulders drooping with fatigue, her heavy body heaving as her lungs fought for breath. Almost blind with tears that filled her eyes and ran down through the dust on her cheeks she heard the hoofbeats again. They were slow, deliberate, advancing towards her.

  For the first time she was frightened. The rush of adrenaline-fed rage had burned out quickly and she knew it was an impossible task to pull the bounty hunter off his horse. And she was tired now, unbearably tired. Suddenly, she despised the weight of her flesh that slowed her down and made her easy meat for him.