.45-Caliber Cross Fire

by Peter Brandvold

  There was one more man in the saloon car, sitting toward the far end. He sat down low in his chair, chin dipped toward his chest, arms crossed, snoring. He was bearded and dressed in greasy buckskins, and a felt sombrero was tipped low over the top half of his face. Probably a trader of some kind, or maybe a member of the civilian work crew blasting the tunnel through the mountain.

  Cuno let Spurr do the ordering, since the old man’s Spanish was better, and when the puta had set them up and they’d both tossed her some coins, they took their drinks and sat at a table about halfway between the puta, the lieutenant, and the man in buckskins at the far end of the car. Cuno pulled a chair out from the side of the table facing the man in buckskins, and Spurr, looking beyond Cuno, flushed slightly, then sagged down into his own chair.

  Cuno sipped his warm, yeasty beer and looked at Spurr, keeping his voice low. “What?”

  Spurr glanced over his shoulder to make sure the puta and the lieutenant were still involved in their subtle game of slap-and-tickle, then said, “The man behind you. He lifted his head. I know him. Knew him. Mex outlaw I once locked horns with in Wyoming. Horse thief.”

  Cuno kept his eyes on Spurr, feigning a casual expression for the puta at the bar. “How long ago?”

  “Two years. Must have lit out for the border when he busted out of that little jail I threw him in.”

  Cuno scowled. “You sure?”

  “It’s my ticker that’s weak—not my memory.”

  “He still turned this way?”

  Spurr shook his head. “Dropped his chin again. Just lifted it to yawn.”

  Cuno cast a quick glance over his shoulder, then took another sip from his beer mug and hiked a shoulder. “You wanna switch chairs?”

  Spurr shook his head. “Too suspicious.” He canted his head toward the puta at the bar. “Why don’t you see if she has a deck of cards?”

  Cuno went over to the bar and managed to convey to the bartending puta that he wanted a deck of cards. She found one in a drawer behind the bar and handed it over rather snootily. Cuno returned to the table, where Spurr was sitting with his profile to the sleeping hombre at the back of the car. Cuno was more concerned with Fire Eyes’s signal, whatever that would be, and what he and Spurr intended to do afterward, which was to take over at least one of the Gatling guns and give the Yaqui time to storm the train.

  He figured that in the ensuing commotion he and Spurr would manage to wreak a little havoc and keep Fire Eyes alive, but they had a big job ahead of them, and he didn’t mind admitting to himself that it wasn’t only Spurr whose nerves were on edge. The buckskin-wearing gent was only a small fly in the ointment.

  Spurr glanced over Cuno’s shoulder again and lowered his own head to the card deck he was shuffling in his arthritic, age-spotted hands. “You gamble, kid?”

  “Whenever I’ve had money it’s gone into a savings account or my freighting business. Money’s never come easy enough to risk losing it to old cardsharps like you.”

  Spurr shuffled the cards again, and looked across at Cuno incredulously. “How in the hell did a lad like yourself, with such an upright sense of things, land in so much trouble?”

  “I’ve often wondered that myself,” Cuno said, picking up the cards as Spurr shuffled them.

  Spurr had tossed the last card down on Cuno’s side of the table when he flicked a quick look over Cuno’s right shoulder and winced. He bit his lower lip as though biting back a curse.

  “Hey,” came a low voice behind Cuno, who felt himself wince then, too.

  “Shit,” Spurr muttered, keeping his head down while still trying to look casual. “I hate a horse thief with a good memory.”

  “Hey,” came the voice of the buckskin-clad hombre again, louder. There was the squawk of a chair slackening and the trill of a spur.

  “Follow my lead on this one, kid,” Spurr said, tossing a card onto the table.

  “This fella’s gonna bust our little game wide open, Spurr,” Cuno said in a low, accusing singsong, tossing down a pasteboard and plucking one off the top of the deck.

  “I know you,” said the grating, Spanish-accented voice behind Cuno as the man’s boots thumped loudly on the rough wood floor, and his spurs trilled annoyingly. “Don’t I know you, amigo?”

  Cuno glanced over his left shoulder. The buckskin-clad man was strolling toward him and Spurr, his dark eyes on Spurr, one dirty finger pressing the cleft in his jutting chin. He had a big, square head, goatee, and about four days’ worth of beard stubble. He also had two Colt double-action Lightning pistols sheathed on his hips, with two cartridge belts. A Green River knife in a bearded sheath hung from his neck by a leather thong.

  Cuno watched Spurr, wondering how the old lawman was going to handle this fly in their ointment that was growing to ominous proportions. The buckskin-clad gent was casting a bitter pall over Cuno and Spurr’s entire day.

  Cuno didn’t have to wait long for Spurr’s reaction. The old lawman, not one to mince words, hauled his Starr .44 up onto the table with surprising speed, not batting an eye but only arching a brow with dire portent as he said, “All I can tell you, asshole, is that if you don’t go sit back down over there and keep your goddamn mouth shut, I’m gonna blow a hole through your brisket big enough to drive this train through.”

  Still he did not blink as he stared up at the man flanking Cuno.

  “Spurr,” the man said, as though uttering an especially bitter oath.

  “That’s right, Rincon Charlie Robles.”

  The lieutenant behind Spurr suddenly climbed to his feet, scowling toward Spurr and Cuno, who slid his own chair back quickly, rose, and palmed and cocked his .45, aiming it straight out from his shoulder at the lieutenant’s head. “No, no—you sit back down, too,” he ordered. “You fellas are mixin’ in something you shouldn’t be.”

  With his free hand he quickly disarmed Robles, who stood with his hands raised halfheartedly, and tossed both pistols and the knife against the car’s far wall. Spurr stood and pushed Robles back away from his and Cuno’s table, and turned so that he could cover both the lieutenant and Robles, and glanced at the whore backing away from the bar looking angry.

  “You two ladies utter a peep,” he warned, “you’re wolf bait.”

  The one still sitting across from the lieutenant, who’d retaken his seat and was holding his hands above his shoulders, gasped and covered her mouth, staring at the drawn weapons as though she’d never seen one before.

  “That’s right,” Spurr said, “choke it down, senorita, and you’ll live to dance another day.”

  The car fell silent. The lieutenant, Robles, and the two whores stared at Spurr and Cuno.

  “Well,” Cuno said, worrying his .45’s cocked hammer with his sweaty thumb as he glanced at his old partner. “This is a fine turn of events.”

  He’d barely finished the sentence before a shrill, agonized scream from outside rose like the squeal of a dying buzzard.

  26

  THE SCREAM CAME again, shriller this time, stitched with unbearable pain. It was a man’s groaning, wailing expression of godawful misery as well as an urgent plea for help. It was abruptly clipped by two quick, muffled pistol shots.

  Cuno glanced at Spurr. At the same time, Robles made a grab for Spurr’s .44. Spurr pulled the pistol back, then smacked it across Robles’s head, and the big man in buckskins stumbled backward, groaning and clutching his head before he dropped to his knees.

  The lieutenant’s eyes jerked wide as he reached for one of the two Colt Navys on his hips, and Cuno’s .45 roared, causing the whore sitting at the lieutenant’s table to scream and the one standing behind the bar to curse sharply and clap her hands to her ears. The slug tore through the lieutenant’s chest and punched him back against the car’s front wall, and from there he dropped to the floor, knocking over a chair, quivering.

  Spurr had his cocked Starr aimed at the saucy whore behind the bar, who raised her hands above her head and moved her lips as though uttering a qu
ick prayer. Cuno shoved a curtain aside and looked out the nearest front window. Federales were running toward the front of the train, the direction from which the scream had come—the scream that Cuno did not doubt had come from the general and was, in fact, Fire Eyes’s signal to unleash the dogs of war.

  “I reckon it’s time to dance,” he told Spurr.

  The old lawdog slid the Starr from the saucy whore to the one still seated and who looked half in shock as she slid her bright gaze from the still-shivering lieutenant to Spurr’s cocked pistol. “You ladies sit tight and you won’t get hurt. You poke your head or anything else outside, you’re liable to get it shot off.”

  Cuno backed toward the front door, stepping over Robles. He stooped to pick up both the horse thief’s pistols and tossed one to Spurr—they hadn’t dared arm themselves with their rifles and risk drawing unwanted attention.

  “Thanks, kid.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Cuno said, rushing out the front door and onto the platform. A few more yelling Federales were running along the train toward the front. Muffled pistol fire sounded, and Cuno could hear Fire Eyes shouting something in Spanish.

  Cuno grabbed the ladder running up the rear of the car ahead of him while Spurr grabbed the ladder running up the saloon car, and they both climbed. With his head just above the lip of his car’s roof, Cuno stopped and surveyed the situation before him—a corporal crouched tensely over the Gatling gun that he had aimed toward the front of the train and the sound of all the sudden commotion. His back was facing Cuno.

  Cuno glanced behind him. Spurr was on the opposite car’s ladder, and now as the Federale atop that car swung his Gatling gun toward the lawman, Spurr extended his .44 and blew the man back away from the cannon and off the car to land atop the cinder bed with a thud. He shot the Gatling gunner off the car behind the saloon car, then glanced, nodding, toward Cuno as he hauled his old, weary body up over the roof. His face was flushed and sweating, and he seemed to be gasping for air.

  Cuno shot the Federale off the Gatling gun on his own car’s roof, and ran up to man the gun himself. There were three more men with rifles on the three cars ahead of him, but Fire Eyes had done a good job of confounding the three enough that none had gotten their rifles leveled on Cuno before Cuno started turning his Gatling gun’s crank.

  Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

  He’d never fired such a weapon before, and he blew up wood slivers from the three roofs before nudging the barrel up slightly and hammering his lead storm through the three rifle-wielding Federales. He watched all three through his puffing powder smoke lurch to their feet as the bullets shredded their tunics and caused blood to fly out their backs before, screaming, they twisted around and flew over the sides of their respective cars.

  At the same time, Cuno heard the wicked belching of Spurr’s Gatling gun behind him. He glanced around to see several more Federales going down in the same fashion as Cuno’s had. A weird howling sounded, growing quickly louder. Cuno glanced to the east where a line of Yaqui riders, their faces streaked with ochre and their horses all painted for war, as well, galloped wildly toward the train, triggering carbines and flinging arrows.

  Hoping the Yaqui weren’t wild with their shots, Cuno bounded away from the Gatling gun, and, grabbing his .45 and the Colt Lightning he’d taken off Robles, ran forward along the roof of the car. To his right he could see several Federales lying prone against the side of the railroad bed, triggering rifles or pistols toward the general’s private car. Smoke puffed from a rear corner window of the car as, presumably, the Yaqui queen returned fire.

  Cuno leapt the eight-foot gap to the roof of the next car and began triggering lead toward the Federales. He pinked one in the thigh, thumped another slug through another man’s shoulder before several rose to their knees and began firing at Cuno.

  He kept running, bullets curling the air around his head, and returned fire hastily as he leapt two more platforms. As he jumped down to the platform of the general’s car, a bullet seared the top of his shoulder, and he winced as he rammed the opposite shoulder against the car door, triggering his last two bullets toward the Federales.

  Suddenly, the door was gone, and he fell inside the general’s car—not a hard fall due to the soft, wine-red carpet. Fire Eyes was down on one knee, looking tough but harried and holding two smoking, silver-chased, pearl-gripped pistols in her fists. As bullets hammered the car, flinging wood slivers and breaking the glass out of the windows, Cuno blinked at her.

  She was also naked, water beading on every inch of her tan skin.

  “Don’t gringo mothers teach their boys it’s not nice to stare?” she said through gritted teeth as she ran, crouching, to another rear window, and triggered each of her guns in turn at the Mexicans forted up against the railroad bed.

  Cuno closed the door, and two bullets blew the glass out of its top panel. He pulled back against the wall beside the door and saw a long copper bathtub sitting in the middle of the well-appointed car. The general sat in the tub, head thrown back, face turned toward Cuno, his open eyes sightlessly staring. His arms hung down from the sides of the tub. The water around the general was red. A bloody, gold-handled Spanish sword lay on the floor near his sagging left hand.

  “I decided he needed a bath more than I did,” Fire Eyes said, casting a quick glance toward Cuno as she triggered another shot out the window before jerking her head to one side as a bullet slammed into the frame, spraying splinters at her. “If you wouldn’t mind, I could use some help!”

  Cuno quickly reloaded his Colt from his shell belt and glanced out the door’s broken window. The Yaqui were swarming like ants on a beehive, and the Federales were dropping like flies, screaming, some bristling with arrows. A couple threw down their weapons and ran toward the train, intending to leap across the platform. Two wildly howling Yaqui drilled them from horseback before they reached the steps, and they both flew forward to sprawl on the cinder bed just outside the general’s car.

  Cuno stared out the window. Now, the only Federales he could see from his vantage were dead ones cloaked in sifting dust. He and Fire Eyes were attracting no more gunfire though Cuno could hear a veritable battle being waged on down the line, where the surviving Federales were trying to hold back the tide of swarming Yaqui raiders.

  Fire Eyes stood and without a bit of modesty walked over to where her clothes were strewn near the tub in which the general lolled in the bloody water. She picked up her short doeskin skirt and stepped into it, her proud breasts jostling, and spat at the dead Cuesta. “Pig!”

  Cuno stood. “How in the hell did you manage that?”

  “To stab him with his own sword?” Fire Eyes laughed as she picked up her deerskin vest and shook it out in front of her. “The fool had it hanging on the wall. When I had him so aroused he couldn’t think about anything other than what I was doing to him, I climbed out of the tub, took it off the wall, and gutted him like a javelina.” She laughed again, and her dagger eyes flashed. “I took my time, as you might have heard.”

  Spurr’s voice from the car’s front platform said, “We heard, all right.” He was crouched with his face just beyond the door’s broken window. He was staring at Cuesta, then swallowed as he watched Fire Eyes pull her vest on.

  Cuno said, “I figured you’d kicked off.”

  “Nah. When Fire Eyes’s folks came, I hightailed it off the train and went back to pull those two putas out of the saloon car, squirrled ’em away where I figured they’d be safe in one of the stable cars.”

  Spurr cocked an ear to listen for a moment, as did Cuno. The gunfire had waned to only a few sporadic shots. The Yaqui had all but stopped howling.

  To Fire Eyes, Spurr said, “Your people clean up right well.”

  “Of course,” she said, grabbing one of the general’s fancy pistols off the table she’d set it on. A drawer had been pulled out of the table, and from it Fire Eyes plucked shells from an open cartridge box and thumbed them through the Colt’s l
oading gate.

  Cuno opened the door and stepped out onto the platform beside Spurr, who was reloading one of his pistols. “I reckon we’d better jump to the next step in our little fandago, eh?”

  “Yeah, we’d best drag the dead Federales off and get as many of us into their uniforms as we can,” Spurr said. “I can’t wait to shake hands with them gunrunners.” He stepped past Cuno and into the general’s car, where he picked up the general’s wool uniform trousers, and held them down in front of him. “You think they’ll believe I’m Cuesta?”

  “Best work on your accent,” Cuno said.

  An hour later, dressed in a Federale uniform he’d taken off a dead sergeant, hoping the blood wasn’t too obvious, Cuno sat on the roof of the railcar flanking General Cuesta’s private quarters.

  He was dribbling some of Spurr’s chopped tobacco onto the wheat paper he held between the first two fingers of his right hand. He could see Spurr below on his left, sitting on the platform steps of the general’s car, elbows on his knees, smoking. Like Cuno and the Yaqui who had all donned the dead Federales’ uniforms—all except Fire Eyes, that was, who was crouched out of sight in the general’s car—he was waiting for the gunrunners to show. A uniformed Yaqui sat on each of the cars behind Cuno’s, ready to man their respective Gatling guns, while several more, including Red Water, milled like bored Federales along the raised track bed. The others were waiting out of sight inside the saloon car, ready to bolt out at Spurr’s signal, rifles blasting.

  When Cuno had sprinkled enough tobacco on the paper, he pulled on the rawhide thong of the tobacco sack, closing it.

  “How’s it comin’, kid?” Spurr asked raspily below him, not looking up but staring straight off across the desert, where the gunrunners were due to appear any minute.

  When Fire Eyes had sent one of the braves out a half hour ago to scout their position, they were only about a mile away. The old lawman was dressed in General Cuesta’s spotless uniform, and while the pants were a little too long and loose in the waist, they fit him well enough for the few minutes he was going to need them. The general’s leather-billed, gold-embroidered hat hung from his right knee.