The stocky lieutenant backed up another few steps, shifting his rifle between Spurr and Fire Eyes, his eyes shiny now with what appeared to be both fear and exhilaration. His men’s eyes looked the same, the young ones riveted on Fire Eyes, Spurr figured, not only because of her comely figure but because of her notorious status here in Sonora. If he hadn’t realized it before, he realized it now—she was a living legend, albeit a feared one.
And would likely be quite a trophy for the man who could throw a loop around her.
“You first, senorita,” the lieutenant said tensely, his nostrils expanding and contracting anxiously, “throw your weapons down. One at a time. Slowly. I warn you to try none of your Yaqui tricks! I assure you that neither I nor my well-trained platoon will hesitate to blow you off your handsome stallion!”
Spurr said with a defeated air, “Now, look here, Lieutenant…”
“Silence!”
The lieutenant held his rifle between Spurr and Fire Eyes. His men were sweating and shifting their rifles between both their targets.
Fire Eyes sat her saddle stiffly, staring into the far distance even as she let her rifle slide off her shoulder and hit the ground with a rattling thud. Curling her upper lip, she lifted her quiver lanyard up over her head, and let it and her bow drop to the ground near Spurr.
She continued staring into the distance with mute disdain, as if these diseased dogs were not worthy of her gaze.
The lieutenant, staring at her almost fondly, smiled. “The rest!”
Fire Eyes pressed her lips together then lifted her right moccasin and slid her bowie knife out of the sheath sewn into the top. She dropped the knife near her rifle, then sat stiffly, haughtily unmoving once again.
“Let me assure you, Senorita el Diablo, that my men will search you thoroughly, and if you are hiding any more weapons, you will be dragged rather than allowed to ride to our outpost in Cala del Coyote.”
The lieutenant turned to Spurr but said nothing. He was beginning to fully realize whom he’d just captured, and he was feeling smug. He merely flicked his glassy eyes at Spurr’s pistol commandingly. The old lawman, knowing the time for talking was over, that he’d met his match and was badly outnumbered, slipped the Starr from its sheath and let it drop to the ground.
Sliding his bowie knife from the sheath on his left hip, he dropped the knife down beside his pistol. He shucked his Winchester, but rather than drop the old, prized weapon, and possibly break the stock or foul the workings, he tossed it out to the Rurale lieuenant, who caught it with his free hand and lowered the butt to the ground.
The lieutenant smiled, shifting his eyes between his prisoners and thrusting his chin up, shoulders back officially. “I am Lieutenant Carlos Nova, and you are both under arrest—you, sir, for aiding a fugitive of Mexican justice, and you, senorita, for many, many things over the past five years, including burning rail lines, common stock thievery, and the wanton killing of Mexican citizens.”
His smile brightened but somehow also grew more sinister. “Let me assure you that both crimes are punishable by death by firing squad! Sooner rather than later!”
20
“EASY!” SPURR SAID as one of the Rurales grabbed Fire Eyes’s left arm and jerked her out of her saddle. She hit the ground hard on her shoulder and hip but didn’t let out a peep. She merely rolled over and climbed to her knees.
Spurr, who had just stepped down from Cochise’s back, saw the lieutenant’s fist coming toward him too late. The fist slammed into his belly, and he dropped to his knees, sucking air and cursing.
Nova ordered three men to hold their rifles on Spurr, and then he walked over to where two other Rurales pulled Fire Eyes to her feet and prodded her over to the lieutenant, who grinned as he swept the Yaqui queen’s body with his lusty eyes.
“Hold her arms,” he told his men.
Each man grabbed an arm. Fire Eyes stared straight ahead, proud as an eagle, and didn’t make a sound while Nova ran his hands across her breasts and belly and then down her legs, ostensibly looking for more weapons, which he did not find. He ran his hands over her again, grunting, glaring at her, wanting to evoke some response. But Fire Eyes held her jaws taut, eyes cool, ignoring him.
“Did you like that, puta bitch?” the lieutenenat spat out, holding his face six inches from hers. “Did I arouse the whore in you, uh?”
Finally, he evoked a response. She jerked her head to face him, and spit a gob of saliva on his lips. He jerked back, running a tunic sleeve across his mouth, then drew his left arm back over his right shoulder before swinging the back of his hand hard across Fire Eyes’s left cheek. The blow threw her back violently, and her hair danced in her eyes, but the two men holding her arms held her upright.
“That’s enough, goddamn your sorry ass!” Spurr said through gritted teeth, still convulsing against the lieutenant’s blow to his solar plexus and trying to draw a full breath.
The two young corporals in front of him edged their rifles closer to his head, threatening. Spurr cursed them both in Spanish, no longer caring what happened, a younger man’s fury taking over. Fire Eyes was a cold-blooded killer in the Mexican’s eyes, true enough, but in Spurr’s view she had a right to be, just as the American Indians had a right to their own offenses, though Spurr had fought against them in his prime and had killed some, though not without regret. They had been warriors fighting one side of a bloody war, and he’d fought on the other. It was the same in Mexico.
“If he makes another sound,” Lieutenant Nova ordered the men holding their rifles on Spurr, “shoot him.” To the two men holding Fire Eyes, he said, “Put her on her horse. Tie her tight—hands and ankles.”
An older sergeant with long, grizzled gray hair falling down from his sweat-stained straw sombrero walked over, and with the back of his hand slid a wing of Fire Eyes’s black hair away from her face. “What do you say we have a little siesta, Lieutenant?” The sergeant ran his long, hawkish nose against the girl’s neck, sniffing her lustily. “She’s so damn quiet—I bet I could get a scream out of her!”
He and the other men laughed.
Nova shoved the man aside. “No, Pablo. Many a man has died howling from a hideous, burning disease after bedding a Yaqui whore such as this.” He looked at the two younger men holding Fire Eyes. “Tie her now. Tie them both to their horses, and then we head out. If we ride hard, we should reach the outpost by sundown, and I can send a rider to fetch Major Dominguez from Hermosillo. He will be very pleased at our conquest and will invite half the Rurale force in Sonora to the firing squad! Hurry, now! Move, I said!”
“Get your goddamn hands off me,” Spurr said through gritted teeth at the Rurale trying to pull him to his feet. The man stepped back and aimed his rifle at Spurr’s head. Spurr heaved himself up and, as Fire Eyes was literally thrown up onto her cream’s back while one Rurale held the horse’s reins, Spurr grabbed his saddle horn and pulled himself into the leather.
His and Fire Eyes’s hands were tied to their saddle horns. Their ankles were tied to their stirrups. Several Rurales had been sent to fetch the others’ horses, and soon they were all mounted up and heading southwest across the desert, Spurr’s and Fire Eyes’s horses led by their bridle reins.
Spurr ground his teeth in frustration. Likely, this had blown his chance at taking a crack at the gunrunners. Fire Eyes was probably thinking the same thing, though it was impossible to tell anything she was thinking by the stoic set to her features, black hair bouncing on her shoulders. He had a feeling she felt the disgrace of their situation, as well. As did Spurr. How had they ridden so easily into that trap?
Lieutenant Nova set a hectic pace, riding at the head of the ten-man pack. They crossed a low divide and forded a river—probably the same river the gunrunners would be following through Fiero Canyon, Spurr mused, absently watching the water splash up across his stirrups—and then followed a climbing valley floor over another divide. Finally, they turned onto a wagon road finely churned by heavy traffic. Ahead, sp
rawling down the side of a dun, rocky slope, lay a good-sized village of white adobes glowing in the late-day light.
Smoke from cook fires wafted over the slope. Dogs barked. Somewhere, a baby cried. Chickens scattered as the procession entered the town and followed the main street up a hill and curving to the right. Peasants sprawled before cafés and cantinas, indolent in the time between siesta and the rollicking Mexican evening.
Nova reined his grulla mustang to a halt before a sprawling, brush-roofed, three-story adobe. The flags of both Mexico and the state of Sonora flapped from the same wooden pole in the front yard. Wicker chairs sat on an adobe porch mounted on stones, and on the two balconies above.
As Cochise stopped in the street before the Rurale headquarters, Spurr looked around. They’d attracted a growing crowd; brown-faced peasants in their traditional white pajamas or deerskin breeches and serapes were wandering toward the headquarters with murmuring interest. They’d no doubt recognized the legendary Fire Eyes and were coming in for a closer look at the Yaqui demoness.
Again, frustration clawed at Spurr. His only hope was the kid, Cuno Massey, but what could the younker do against nearly a dozen Rurales? Spurr found himself hoping he wouldn’t try. He had a feeling that once word had spread of Fire Eyes’s capture and the ensuing celebration he and she would be stood up against a wall of the Rurale headquarters and shot without further ado.
Death in Mexico. Well, why not Mexico? He’d hoped for a grave where someone could find it and maybe toss a few wild roses on it every now and then and build up the rocks to keep the coyotes from dragging his bones around.
Damned foolish mistake he’d made, riding into that trap. Chief Marshal Henry Brackett should have forced him into retirement several years ago.
As a small crowd continued to gather, the Rurales dismounted, and Spurr and Fire Eyes were cut loose of their saddles. Their cuffs were kept on, and Nova led them up the porch of what appeared an old hotel.
The grizzled Rurale sergeant, Pablo, followed Fire Eyes, pressing an old Remington revolver against the small of her back. Spurr followed the sergeant, himself followed by three other Rurales, all now aiming their own rusty Remingtons at him while the rest of the men milled amongst the crowd, sticking their chests out, gloating, or began leading away the sweaty, dusty horses.
The inside of the Rurale headquarters was an old hotel lobby, with a long desk to the right, flanked by pigeonholes and key rings. There were stairs at the rear of the high-ceilinged room, several tables, desks, and chairs, and four strap-iron cages against the wall to the left.
“Right this way if you please,” said the lieutenant, grinning over his shoulder at the Yaqui queen as he wended his way amongst the desks, stumbling over a sandbox pocked with brown tobacco quids.
One of the men behind Spurr prodded the old lawman painfully with his rifle barrel. “You don’t stop that,” he said, glaring at the younker, “I’m gonna take it away from you and shove it up your ass.”
The long-faced kid looked at him blankly, curling up his mouth corners, from beneath the wide brim of his straw sombrero.
Spurr had just turned his head forward when the sergeant pressed his nose against the back of Fire Eyes’s neck. They were just passing a cluttered desk with, amongst other things, a clear bottle and a glass on it. Fire Eyes wheeled around in a blur of fast motion, grabbed the bottle off the desk with her cuffed hand, broke it over the desk’s edge, and, screaming like a bobcat, rammed the broken bottle into the sergeant’s belly.
The sergeant yowled and doubled over, drawing his hands over his gut. Fire Eyes drove her right knee into his face, and as the man flew back toward Spurr, blood geysering from his broken nose, the old lawman wheeled, shoved the pistol out of his back, and slammed his cuffed fists as hard as he could against the corporal’s face.
He heard the kid’s jaw crack as the kid squealed, dropped the Remy, and staggered sideways. Hearing Fire Eyes raging behind him, furniture breaking, and the lieutenant shouting, Spurr threw himself to the floor, rolling off a shoulder and trying to claw up the corporal’s revolver with his cuffed hands. He’d just gotten the revolver up and was about to cock it when several gray-uniformed bodies barreled onto him. A rifle butt appeared, growing quickly larger as it careened toward his head.
Then a shattering tidal wave of pain washed over him, and the room went dark and silent for he didn’t know how long before a loud clang invaded his tender brain. He opened his eyes slightly, stretching his lips back from his teeth to find himself in one of the cages. The young Rurale who’d been prodding him with the pistol was turning a key in the lock of the cage door, glaring at Spurr.
The kid’s right eye was swelling shut.
Behind him, two men were carrying the sergeant whom Fire Eyes had nearly gutted toward the stone steps at the room’s rear. The sergeant’s face was a bloody mess. His moans echoed loudly off the cavernous adobe walls.
At the same time, Lieutenant Nova was poking a Schofield pistol through the door of the jail cage next to Spurr’s, in which Fire Eyes lay flat on her back on the cracked stone floor, arms and legs akimbo. Her lips were cut and swollen, and she had a nasty bruise and another, deeper cut on her left eyebrow. Her vest was torn, exposing nearly all of one tan breast.
Her chest rose and fell heavily as she breathed.
“I would drill a hole through your worthless Yaqui head right now if I did not want to make a spectacle of you later!” the lieutenant shouted. He depressed the Schofield’s hammer, pulled the pistol out of the door, and holstered it. He turned to Spurr.
“Big Yankee lawman. How big you feel now, uh, Yankee lawman?”
He laughed, turned to the two corporals flanking him, shouted orders at them in Spanish to sit in chairs in front of the cages and to not take their eyes off either one of the prisoners until they were relieved. Then he walked over to the desk from which Fire Eyes had pulled the bottle, sank down in his swivel chair, and laced his hands behind his head with the air of a man most satisfied with his day’s accomplishments.
Spurr sat up, sucking a breath through his teeth. He reached into a shirt pocket, found the little burlap pouch in which he kept his nitroglycerin tablets, and popped one in his mouth. He rolled the pill around on his tongue and looked at Nova staring at him smugly.
“Don’t s’pose I could get a shot of whiskey to wash my pill down with?”
Nova only stared at him.
“Figured as much,” Spurr said and swallowed the pill dry.
21
A LEANING WOODEN sign appeared along the side of the trail, beside a leafless sycamore. Cuno gigged Renegade up closer until he could see it in the failing evening light: cala del coyote.
Cuno looked up the trail at the shimmering yellow lantern lights. The hillside across which the pueblo was sprawled was cloaked in darkness, but he could make out the lights and the pale adobe shacks nestled in rocks and brush. Up higher on the hill was the obligatory church with bulging bell tower.
The smell of a cookfire threaded the still early evening air. He could hear the murmur of a crowd from somewhere up the hill, somewhere in the heart of the town.
Cuno lowered his gaze to the trail freshly pocked with the shod hoofprints of a dozen or so horses—the same horses he’d been following since Spurr and Fire Eyes’s tracks had been absorbed by them. Where the tracks had intersected, there’d been many sets of boot tracks, including Spurr’s and Fire Eyes’s moccasin tracks, and the scuff marks that indicated a tussle.
Cuno had no idea who Spurr and the Yaqui queen had ridden off with, but there was no doubt they hadn’t gone willingly. They hadn’t headed southeast, toward the canyon where they’d intended to attack the gunrunners, but to the southwest. And over the past few hours, they’d likely missed their opportunity to follow through with Fire Eyes’s plan of ambushing the gunrunners with a rockslide.
No, Spurr and Fire Eyes had been taken here, to Cala del Coyote, against their will.
By whom?
Cuno touched spurs to Renegade’s flanks and rode slowly up the gradually curving hill. He looked around for a place to hide his horse, as a gringo riding alone into town on the fine skewbald-paint would draw unwanted attention, and found a nest of rocks around an abandoned brick stable. He gigged Renegade inside the crumbling stone walls, dismounted, and threw the reins over a fallen ceiling beam. He started to slide his Winchester from its saddle boot, then stopped.
The rifle would look conspicuous. He’d scout the town first, try to locate Spurr and Fire Eyes, then return for the rifle later.
He gave Renegade some water out of his hat, then patted the horse’s neck and headed up into the town, staying off the main trail but taking footpaths that zigzagged around buildings. He slipped between two adobes facing what appeared to be the main drag and stopped at the alley mouth.
A wide dirt street opened before him. Adobes of all shapes and sizes, some with broad gaps between them, stood along both sides of the street. There were a few people milling around at this end of the town, but he could see more lights up the street on his right. Voices rose from that direction, as well—the collective, low roar of a celebrating crowd.
Cuno headed in that direction, moving slowly, staying to the intermittent boardwalks and galleries, smelling the astringent liquor brewed in these parts, the pepper strings drying on porch posts, and the spicy menudo emanating from a café on the other side of the street. He passed an alley mouth and heard the grunts of a puta and her jake going at it like dogs beneath some outside stairs.
Cuno walked on, feeling more and more conspicuous in his gringo trail garb when everyone else here was dressed either in peasant pajamas with sandals or the colorful attire of the vaquero, with broad felt sombreros often gaudily stitched in red or silver. He could have used a sweeping black mustache, as well.
Keeping to the shadows, he approached the area teaming with activity—cantinas lit up, women laughing, and men talking loudly. At the center of the activity was a large, barrack-like, brush-roofed structure with a flagpole in the front yard. Men in dove-gray uniforms milled about with women on the front porch as well as on the two upper-story balconies.
.45-Caliber Cross Fire Page 16
