High and Wild

by Peter Brandvold

Haskell held his breath tensely as he strode past the young rurale. He spied movement behind him just as he cleared the door, however, and he glanced back to see that the rurale had wrapped an arm around Sonoma’s waist. Sonoma stopped, keeping her hat brim down over her eyes.

  Haskell could sense the tension in the girl, almost hear her heart beating behind those lovely breasts.

  The rurale grinned lustily, expelling two streams of cigar smoke through his broad, pitted nostrils. He slid his brown hand up beneath the bundle of wood she carried. Sonoma lifted her chin so that her hat brim rose to reveal her eyes—two large, oil-brown saucers afire with slowly exploding Yaqui rage.

  The rurale stopped his hand. He frowned up at the strange Indian-featured woman. Just as he began to harden his jaws and open his mouth to say something, Haskell switched his two bundles of wood to one arm, freeing up his right hand, which he wrapped around the man’s throat. That cut off whatever the rurale had been about to say.

  He dug his fingers into the man’s neck, feeling the prickly stubble, and then jerked upward, with nearly every ounce of his considerable muscular weight channeled to his right arm.

  The rurale gave a sharp grunt at the same time that his neck snapped like a branch

  Haskell doubted that either sound would have been heard above the din around him. A quick glance told him that the other rurales on the portico were still directing their attention to the inside of the hotel. None appeared to have noticed anything out of order near the front door.

  Haskell kept his hand wrapped around the rurale’s neck, preventing the man from falling over the ledge to the flagstone-paved ground below and likely making a thud that would be heard by the others.

  Haskell shoved the dead man back against the casement beside the door. When he was sure the rurale was going to stay there, the Pinkerton pulled the man’s palm-leaf sombrero down over his eyes and then folded his arms across his chest so that anyone glancing toward him would think he’d merely passed out from too much bacanora.

  Who wouldn’t forgive him on such a joyous night?

  Haskell, who was armed with only his bowie knife and a LeMat revolver wedged behind the rope belt of his canvas trousers, eyed the rurale’s pistol. Quickly, he grabbed the combination revolver and shotgun and wedged it between his chest and the two bundles of wood he was holding in front of him.

  Before, he didn’t think he’d need much firepower. In fact, he’d thought he wouldn’t need any at all. The LeMat and the knife had only been for insurance. But with Villarreal back in the village, all bets were off.

  Barely fifteen seconds had passed since the rurale had waylaid Sonoma and received a snapped neck for his efforts. Now Haskell glanced back at the Yaqui. She arched a brow at him but said nothing. The tenseness in her eyes told him that she was well aware that they’d both dodged a bullet.

  At least, the first one . . .

  Haskell moved on into the hotel’s large, cavern-like saloon and was immediately assaulted not only by the roar of Villarreal’s strident voice recounting his glorious accomplishment in running down the notorious banditos but also by the heat and the stench of sweat, tobacco, and liquor that filled the room like something vast and palpable.

  From a previous scouting trip, Haskell knew where the fireplace was—at the back of the room on his left. As he edged that way, along the perimeter of the mostly standing crowd, he glanced toward the long, ornate bar running along the room’s right side, beneath a large second-floor balcony.

  He stopped, raised a brow. Stifled a chuckle.

  He had to hand it to old Villarreal, the captain knew how to throw a party.

  The bar ran nearly the length of the room, ending near stairs leading up to the second floor. Above was a stout stone railing running along the edge of the balcony. A wooden winch had been suspended from thick cables above the rail. Ropes dangled from the winch down past the rail to the bar, where their opposite ends formed hangman’s nooses around the necks of the three outlaws standing atop the bar, looking as glum as schoolboys caught peeking through the half-moon cutout in the door of the girls’ privy.

  Villarreal stood to the right of the three doomed men, who were dressed in the traditional leather vests, calico blouses, billowy neckerchiefs, and bell-bottom trousers of the common border bandito. Only these men were no common banditos.

  The one in the middle Haskell recognized as the notorious one-eyed gang leader Pancho “the Snake” Calaveras, who led as bloodthirsty a bunch of thieves, rapists, slave traders, and killers back and forth across the border as northern Sonora and southern Arizona had ever known.

  At the moment, Captain Villarreal—tall and hawk-nosed, his long, horsey face adorned with a trimmed gray beard—was expounding almost poetically on how he and his men had managed to run the gang to ground on the southern banks of the San Pedro. The rurales had killed the entire gang except these three—Calaveras and two of his senior-most lieutenants.

  The crowd was made up mostly of moneyed shopkeepers, whores, and impeccably groomed and tailored hacendados from nearby haciendas, not to mention several padres who seemed to be enjoying the show—along with the liquor and the young putas—as much as everyone else. The men and the gaudily, scantily attired girls sat or stood in rapt attention, sucking on cigars or cigarettes and holding cups of tequila, wineglasses, or brandy snifters in their hands, fingers laden with rings.

  They were all glassy-eyed and beaming, the men occasionally applauding the savage Villarreal’s exaggerated detailing of his exploits.

  Haskell himself silently applauded the old rurale demon for his accomplishment. Lawmen on both sides of the border had been after Calaveras’s bloodthirsty gang for years.

  Haskell continued toward the fire, keeping his chin dipped toward his chest, sidestepping through the crowd, careful not to step on any toes. A peón stepping on the toe of his better would be an insult for which the insulted might try to have him bullwhipped, and that would be another bullet that Haskell and Sonoma would have to dodge.

  Haskell knelt in front of the hearth, which was nearly as large as some peasant hovels. Here, too, a hog was spitted, being tended by a round-bellied, round-faced middle-aged woman in a tattered, green-embroidered apron. She glanced at Haskell and his companion, curiously wrinkled the skin above the bridge of her nose, and then merely pointed at where they could add wood to the fire.

  Haskell and Sonoma did so and laid the rest of the wood to the right of the dancing flames. Haskell then glanced at the broad stone stairs at the far left end of the room. The staircase to the balcony was Haskell’s and Sonoma’s only access to the second story.

  Somehow, they had to get to those stairs.

  The firewood might just be the pass they required. If they climbed the stairs carrying wood, anyone who gave them any thought would likely only assume they were supplying fuel to the upper-story fireplaces, despite it being a relatively mild autumn desert night and the fact that the well-stoked downstairs fire probably provided more than ample heat for the entire building at this time of year.

  Haskell scooped up his second bundle and turned to Sonoma kneeling beside him. But then he heard Villarreal shout in Spanish, “Now for the grand finale, my patient audience!”

  Haskell turned toward the bar. Villarreal looked up at the two burly, bearded rurales manning the winch on the balcony above him, one on each side. El Capitán nodded and winked.

  “Nooo!” screamed Pancho Calaveras, adding a pool of liquid to the other two pools that had formed around the boots of his companions. “Forgive me, and spare my wretched soul, por favor!”

  That last came out strangled as the two burly rurales on the balcony over the bar began cranking the winch in unison, grinning delightedly. The boots of the three banditos rose off the bar, and the owlhoots immediately started kicking wildly. Their screams came out as choking grunts and strangled gurgles, their cheeks immediately puffing u
p and turning red.

  Their hands were tied behind their backs, so all they could do was grunt and perform their grisly death dances about a foot above the bar. Those dances were so violent that Calaveras kicked off one of his boots, which bounced off the bar with a loud ring of its spur and bounded into the crowd. A bare-breasted puta caught it and held it high above her head like a trophy, while the crowd erupted in ribald laughter and loud applause.

  Haskell had gotten so caught up in the spectacle that he’d failed to keep an eye on Villarreal. Now, as he looked at the captain, Villarreal was bent forward at the waist, talking to another rurale standing on the floor in front of the bar. Haskell was tall enough that he could see over most of the heads in the room. The rurale was speaking to the man before him but pointing angrily and narrowing his eyes in their direction.

  There was too much other noise for Haskell to hear what the man was saying. He didn’t have to. As the man Villarreal had been speaking to swung around, drew a revolver, and started pushing through the crowd, the Pinkerton turned to Sonoma.

  She, too, had gotten caught up in the hanging and was smiling and shouting and waving her arms above her head as she watched the three banditos slowly strangle above the bar.

  Haskell elbowed the girl.

  And then he clawed both pistols from behind the waistband of his canvas trousers and shouted, “We got trouble, chiquita! As soon as I start shooting, run to the stairs!”

  Haskell bolted forward, both pistols raised. The man running toward him stopped suddenly, screamed, and raised his own revolver, but not before both of Haskell’s pistols roared above the din.

  One of the Pinkerton’s bullets punched through the nearest rurale’s forehead, and his second shot caused Captain Villarreal, still standing on the bar, to acquire a shocked expression and to look down at his chest, from which a small fountain of dark red blood spurted.

  3

  Haskell shouted, “Run, chiquita!” as everyone in the room screamed and dived for cover.

  As Sonoma gave a wild Yaqui bellow that sounded like the warning of a stalking wildcat and leaped over tables toward the stairs, Haskell extended both his pistols toward the two rurales on the balcony on either side of the executioner’s winch.

  They’d grabbed Springfield rifles and were cocking the weapons as they aimed them over the top of the balcony rail. Haskell shot the one on the left first, then quickly took care of the one on the right.

  The one on the right screamed and fired his rifle into the ceiling above the drinking hall before he went stumbling backward, covering his bloody face with one hand.

  The other rurale lurched a step backward, dropping his rifle, and clutched his chest before stumbling forward and plummeting down over the balcony rail. He landed atop the bar with a loud, cracking bang beside his fallen rifle.

  Haskell let out a savage whoop and jumped onto the table in front of him. He hopscotched tables over the cowering men and whores, paused halfway across the room to trigger shots at the rurales poking their heads in the front door, and then resumed running toward the bar on which Captain Villarreal was still standing in shock beside the men he’d hanged.

  Haskell leaped onto the bar between the captain and the three hanged men. Villarreal was still clutching his hands over the frothy blood bubbling out of his chest, just left of his heart. As he stared in gray-faced, hang-jawed shock at the big, shaggy-headed “peón” standing before him, his eyes appeared about to bulge out of his head.

  “Who . . .” he rasped, barely audible above the incredulous mutters rising from the cowering crowd, “are . . . you?”

  Haskell grinned and lifted his sombrero straight up off his head before stuffing it back down on his dark brown curls. “Pinkerton Detective Bear Haskell, at your service, Captain Villarreal.” He swung around to send another slug hurtling through the front door, where several cowering, shifting rurales were trying to draw a bead on him. “Love to stay an’ chat, but since you’re about dead anyway, and I got the president’s niece to rescue, I reckon I’ll be sayin’ howdy-do!”

  Haskell shoved his pistols behind his waistband and leaped up onto the body of the first bandito on his left hanging about two feet above the bar. Climbing up the dying bandit, he paused to wink at Pancho Calaveras on his right, whose face was paper-white and turning blue, tongue swelling as it jutted out one corner of the killer’s mouth, and continued shimmying on up the rope.

  He reached the balcony rail and hoisted himself over, landing flat-footed. Sonoma was already there, aiming a Colt Dragoon she’d taken off a dead rurale over the balcony rail and yelling, “Just had to take the hard way up, didn’t you, amigo? Or don’t you Texans believe in taking the stairs?”

  She triggered two shots at two rurales in the drinking hall who had been trying to make their way through the panicking crowd toward the stairs, and then she flung another through one of the long, rectangular front windows, evoking an anguished scream from outside.

  “Wanted to pay my respects to Villarreal!”

  Haskell shot a rurale who’d just dived into the hotel through the first window to the right of the door.

  “And yeah, I’m a bit of a show off!” he added.

  “I have to admit, you make me horny as hell! But where’s the girl we’re after, lover?”

  “Follow me, chiquita!”

  The roar had resumed from below as Haskell swung around and ran down the mouth of an intersecting hall that was decorated with broken statues and candle lanterns flickering and smoking in wall brackets. There were doors in both walls—some closed, some open, some nonexistent or cracked or bullet-pocked.

  Vaguely, as he and Sonoma ran, Haskell reflected that the Palais Royal had likely fallen considerably in the years since Villarreal’s gang of outlaw rurales had taken over La Ciudad.

  Guns cracked and popped in the saloon behind him. That was to be expected now that nearly every rurale in the village was storming into the hotel. But Haskell hadn’t expected to hear shots in front of him, sounding as though they were originating from behind one of the hall’s closed doors. The muffled pops seemed to be originating from the last one on the right at the hall’s end—the very door Haskell was heading for.

  Behind that same door, a girl screamed.

  Haskell threw his weight, backed with his running momentum, against the door. The stout walnut panel ruptured. Cracks showed the form of a cross. As Haskell backed up and threw himself against it once more, the door broke all the way through. The Pinkerton went storming into the room, stumbling and piling up on a thick, red rug.

  He rolled and came up on his heels, aiming both pistols straight out in front of him.

  A man was crouched against the wall to his right. A tall rurale—hatless, bearded, middle-aged, his eyes scrunched with pain. He held his left hand to the handle of a knife protruding from his neck. With his right hand, he aimed a .44 Colt at a blond-haired girl poking her head out from behind heavy wine-red drapes covering the large, high-ceilinged room’s far window.

  “Puta!” the wounded rurale bellowed. Showing his teeth, he fired at the girl, his bullet plunking into the adobe wall only inches from her head, which she quickly pulled back behind the drapes with a shrill scream.

  Haskell yelled, “Get down, girl!” and swung his pistols at the rurale piled up at the base of the wall.

  As the rurale swung his own revolver toward Haskell, the Pinkerton put two bullets through the man’s brisket, punching him to the floor, where he lay jerking as he died. The booms of a rifle sounded behind Haskell. He cast a glance over his left shoulder.

  Sonoma was down on one knee, firing around the doorframe toward the front of the hall, where men were yelling and more pistols were popping and rifles were cracking.

  “Better hurry, lover, we got company!” the Yaqui cried, and she triggered another round.

  Haskell ran over to where he could see a
pair of bare feet between the bottom of the drapes and the carpeted floor. To the left of the girl was a large, rumpled bed under a red velvet canopy. He pulled the drapes aside to reveal a slender blond girl dressed in nothing but a sheer cream-colored chemise, one strap hanging down her arm and revealing half of one small, pale breast. She knelt sideways to the wall, cowering under her arms.

  “Miss Johnson?” Haskell said above the crackling of gunfire in the hall.

  She jerked her head up, blue eyes sharp with hope. “Mr. Haskell?”

  “Call me Bear—everyone does. You got the message, I take it, Miss Johnson?”

  “Yes, the old man told me. You’re here to rescue me from these”—she slid her gaze toward the rurale lying against the wall on the room’s far side—“savages?”

  Haskell had sent a message to the girl via an old peasant man who worked odd jobs around the village and at the hotel, letting the girl know when he’d be coming for her and to be as ready as she could be under the circumstances.

  “You got it, sweetheart.” Haskell reached down and gently but quickly pulled the president’s niece to her feet. “We’d best pull our picket pins.”

  “I tried to get ready, to dress, but Villarreal has been keeping a guard on me.” She glanced toward the dead rurale as Haskell led her by both hands around the bed. “He tried to savage me,” she said, with a sob, “but I’d squirreled away a stiletto I’d taken off Villarreal and stuck it in his goddamn neck when he tried to stick his thing in me!”

  She broke loose from Haskell and ran over and buried one of her bare feet in the dead rurale’s belly.

  “You goatish bastard!” the girl screamed. “I happen to be the niece of the president of the United States of America!” Her voice broke, and she sucked a ragged breath. “I am Madeleine Johnson, and I will not be treated like one of your two-peso putas!”

  “Haskell!” Sonoma screamed from the door as several bullets chewed into the frame before her, spraying slivers at her. “Grab that bitch, and let’s break a leg, my sweet!”