Wife Stealer

by F. M. Parker

  "Eat fast," Ben said still thinking about the man who had left the cantina. "I don't like the feel of this place."

  "What's wrong?"

  "No time to talk. Just eat." Ben cut a large bite of lamb and began to chew.

  Ben and Evan had almost finished with their food when four Mexicans—the short man who had been in the cantina earlier was one of them—came in from the street. The man in the lead was tall, with narrow shoulders and a long, sharp face. All the men were bearded. The leader was the hairiest of all, his beard like tangled grapevines and hiding that portion of his face below his eyes. He stopped and as he swept the room with his sight, his comrades came up to stand beside him.

  "Evan, shoot that short man on the right side of the tall one," Ben said in a low, tense voice.

  Evan looked at Ben, not sure he had heard correctly. Ben's eyes gleamed a feline yellow in the lamplight. Then they narrowed to stitches.

  "Shoot!" Ben hissed. He came swiftly to his feet, and his six-gun boomed exploding the silence in the room.

  THIRTY EIGHT

  Ben was on his feet with his pistol pointing and firing, the rapid boom of the shots blending into one continuous roll of thunder.

  Evan, startled by the unexpected eruption of violence, was fixed in his chair. His ears rang with the crash of the gun in the confined space of the cantina, and the air bucked and heaved around him.

  The tall man, the leader of the four Mexicans, staggered back at the punch of the bullet. He caught himself, his face contorted with pain. He began to lean to the side and put out his hand as if trying to get support from the air. He found none and fell full-length to the floor.

  The man on the tall one's right was hit by Ben's second bullet, traveling but a few feet and carrying immense power. He collapsed his bones seeming to melt. The man beside him was struck, went over backward and fell hard to the floor of the cantina.

  The short man Ben had ordered Evan to shoot had his pistol out. His eyes were on Ben and his weapon was coming up. He fired.

  Evan sensed Ben flinch. Had he been shot because Evan hadn't joined in the battle? Four men were too many for Ben to kill by himself.

  Evan jumped to his feet and snatched his pistol from its holster. He cocked the gun and swung it, trying to bring it into quick alignment on the short man. He had to shoot the man and prevent Ben from being killed.

  Before Evan could shoot, Ben fired and the Mexican was hit. He fell heavily. He struggled to sit up, made it halfway erect and hung there with blood spraying out in a fine mist from a hole in his neck. He sank back down to the floor and began to cry out in an unintelligible sound.

  Ben grabbed Evan by the shoulder and turned him to face the rear of the cantina. "Goddamn it Evan, cover those other men back there." Ben's voice came hard and angry. "Keep them off us until I get reloaded."

  Evan's face burned at Ben's sharp rebuke. It was fully earned. He pointed his pistol, swinging it over the crowd of men. The ones at the bar were motionless and still held their drinks. The men at the tables were as rigid as the wooden chairs upon which they sat.

  He hurriedly checked each man's hands, and found not one touching a weapon. All of the men, just like Evan, had been caught by surprise at the outbreak of shooting.

  Ben finished reloading his pistol and snapped it closed. He caught Evan by the shoulder again. "Are you awake now?" Ben's voice still held its harshness.

  "Yes."

  "Then shoot any man that moves, that even twitches. Can you do that?"

  "Yes, damn it," Evan replied, rankled, his own anger rising at Ben's tone.

  "Then see that you do. I'll check outside. Maybe I can find us horses."

  Ben left quickly.

  Evan swept his sight back and forth over the roomful of men. He severely condemned himself for failing to help Ben in the gunfight. He must make up for that. He primed himself to shoot any man who reached for a gun.

  He stood motionless, not wanting any movement of his to precipitate a battle. If one man started to fight him, he was certain most of the others would join in.

  The short Mexican Ben had shot groaned, the sound slicing through the quietness with startling loudness. Evan had forgotten about the man for the moment, and the man was behind him. Evan hastily backed up until the man was in sight. He lay on the floor in blood, whimpering and shuddering. He looked up at Evan with stricken ox eyes. He tried to speak, but no sound came.

  As Evan looked down, the jetting blood slowed to a trickle. The man closed his eyes and became very still.

  Ben came back into the cantina with his pistol drawn. He found Evan threatening the room full of Mexicans with his pistol. Ben recognized that look in Evan's eyes, that he would indeed shoot any man that reached for a weapon. The Mexicans in the cantina also believed it, and every one was in the same position as when Ben had gone outside.

  Evan and he just might be able to leave the cantina without more killing. Ben shed some of his disapproval of Evan's lack of action in the gunfight. He had been caught off guard by the sudden beginning of the gun-fight.

  "Best we go now," Ben said. "Back slow to the door with me."

  Evan began to move backward side by side with Ben.

  "Stay inside!" Ben fiercely ordered the Mexicans in Spanish.

  Ben and Evan went into the darkness on the street.

  "This way. Hurry," Ben said, and led him to four horses tied to the hitch rail directly in front of the cantina. "I kept three fresh horses belonging to those fellows inside and ran off all the others so nobody can chase us for a spell," Ben said in explanation.

  "Now mount up on that one with the saddle and let's get out of here."

  Ben stepped to one of the horses and pulled himself astride.

  Evan could make out the shadowy outline of a saddle on one of the horses. He hastily went to the horse and mounted. There was a lead rope to a spare horse tied around the pommel of the saddle.

  They left Samalayuca running the horses.

  * * *

  Evan was thinking about the gunfight in the cantina. Ben's explosive violence was disturbing. He had drawn his pistol and shot the men before they had given any indication they were there to kill Ben and Evan. The short Mexican had only drawn his gun after Ben had shot his comrades. Perhaps the men had been innocent of intending harm and had come into the cantina for a drink or some food.

  "Ben, did you get hit when that last fellow shot at you?"

  "No, he just came damn close to nailing me."

  "Good," Evan said with relief. "Do you think they really meant to shoot us?"

  "Yep."

  "You sure?"

  Ben breathed deeply and let it out, almost sighing. "I'm sure. When that one fellow left the cantina and then came back with the other three, I knew. And there were other signs."

  "What other signs?"

  "I was deputy sheriff in El Paso for a spell. I was damn young then, but the sheriff took me under his wing and taught me how to read the roughnecks, the gun-hands, both whites and Mexicans, that came up against me in my work. These fellows in the cantina gave signs that told me they were there to shoot us."

  "What did you see? I want to learn."

  "Beards, eyes, and feet."

  "What does that mean?" Evan said.

  "Carlos had rightly figured that I might stop at the freight station for fresh horses, or at that cantina, for it's the only place to buy a meal for miles along the El Camino Real. So he set an ambush to stop me from chasing him, and he hired Mexicans with Spanish blood for they are the best pistoleros, better than mixed Indian and Spanish. Now when I saw all that hair, I was suspicious, for Spanish bloods like to wear beards to show they are above the Indians, who can't grow a face full of hair. Second that tall fellow set his feet solid for a fight, not to buy a drink. And his eyes—did you see his eyes?—they were looking for someone and it wasn't a friend."

  "So you're saying Valdes planned ahead and set a trap for you?"

  "That's the way I figure it. He's s
mart, got his father's blood in him."

  "But you could still be wrong and killed four men for no reason."

  "Maybe. But I don't think so. Would you kill four men to free Rachel?"

  "Yes."

  "Ten men?"

  "Yes."

  "Then the next time, help me kill anybody who stands in our way." Ben would if need be, pave El Camino Real all the way to Chihuahua with dead men to free Maude.

  Evan was silent. Ben and he had grown up within a few miles of each other, but their lives had been totally different. Ben had left home and been on his own at an early age. He'd been deputy sheriff in a tough town and had killed men in the line of duty. Then he had gone off to a bloody war and killed. Yes, they had experienced decidedly different lives.

  * * *

  Ben reined his horse in close to Evan's mount and rode beside him. The man was exhausted and slumped forward in sleep, nodding to the step of his horse. Ben feared he would fall from his horse.

  Evan gradually leaned ever farther out from his horse. Then he snapped awake and his hand darted out to grab hold of the pommel. He straightened in the saddle and looked at Ben close beside him.

  "Almost fell," Evan said.

  "Close, all right," Ben said and reined his horse off a few feet.

  Evan understood that Ben had been prepared to catch him should he start to fall. He made a good friend. But a hell of a vicious enemy.

  "Ben, I've got to rest."

  "Can you hold out until the sun comes up and gets hot? Then we'll find some shade and sleep some."

  "How long before daylight?"

  Ben looked up at the sky. The thin moon of late night had risen. The moon was like a curved silver sail and seemed to be attached to a small cloud and shoving it across the black ocean of the sky. Ben was quiet, watching the unusual joining of the objects, the cloud just above him and the moon such a great distance away.

  "Can you tell how long?" Evan asked again.

  "The sun's not more than an hour away. Then another three or four hours to ride. Can you last that long?"

  "Not much more than that. I haven't slept or rested for two days. But then neither have you."

  "I wasn't lung-shot either," Ben said. Evan had a streak of hard metal in him to have ridden so hard and so long.

  * * *

  Ben came out of his sleep with the sound of a running horse in his ears. He picked up his rifle and spyglass and rolled to look over the boulder behind which he had been sleeping.

  "What is it?" Evan asked. Ben's movement had awakened him.

  "A rider coming fast south on the road."

  The two men had left the El Camino Real at daybreak and hidden their horses behind a rocky hill near the road. They then had crawled back to the crest, from which they could remain out of sight while still being able to see anybody passing by below on the road. There they had spread their blankets for a short rest.

  Ben put aside the spyglass for he could see what he needed to with his naked eye. A small rider, a Mexican lad, was bent forward over the neck of his swiftly running horse. He was bareheaded, with his black hair blowing out behind and his shirttail flapping in the wind created by the horse.

  Ben raised his rifle and aimed it at the rider.

  "You going to shoot the boy?" Evan asked in surprise.

  "Yes."

  "Why, for God's sake?"

  "He's carrying a message to Carlos that their ambush at Samalayuca failed. The Valdes family has a relay system of horses and men, or boys, who ride day and night carrying information up and down their freight line so they can manage their business. They can get a message from one end of their freight line to the other in a couple of days. Carlos would surely use the relay riders to let him know whether or not his men had stopped me."

  "You don't know that. You can't shoot him just on suspicion."

  Ben lowered the rifle and looked at Evan, and Evan could see the uncertainty in his eyes.

  "He could be running the horse for any number of reasons," Evan added.

  Ben turned back to look down on the road. The boy on the racing horse passed below him at an easy rifle shot.

  "I should've shot him for he was carrying a message for Carlos Valdes," Ben said matter-of-factly. He lay down on his blanket and looked up at the sky. "Carlos will know we're still coming and that there are two of us. He'll be calculating the best way to stop us along the Real.”

  "If he's anything as savvy as Ramos, he might succeed. If we get past Carlos, then there's Ramos himself, with his experience at fighting, waiting at the rancho for us. We'd had a much better chance at freeing Rachel if they thought we'd been shot."

  Ben closed his eyes. "We'll be riding in an hour," he said.

  THIRTY NINE

  Maude stood up and craned her neck to see out the window of the stagecoach and past Rafael. The man had dropped back from traveling in front of the stagecoach, and now rode his horse to deliberately block her view. She caught a momentary glance past Rafael, and saw a herd of red cattle and two Mexican cowboys not far off from El Camino Real. The cowboys were watching the stagecoach.

  Rafael looked at Maude and saw her standing. He motioned angrily for her to sit down and out of view of the cowboys. She gave him a hard look and shook her head. He had no right to order her to do anything. She continued to stand holding tightly to the leather hand strap fastened to the side frame of the coach to maintain her footing in the lurching, swaying vehicle.

  Rafael reached out and jerked loose the tie strings that held the curtain in front of Maude. The sheet of leather fell, unrolling to obscure her view.

  Maude took her seat. She didn't want to show it but she was frightened for she was a prisoner and being carried to an unknown fate in a foreign land.

  She turned away from the window and looked down at Rachel, lying on the pallet of blankets on the narrow space of floor between the two seats, one facing forward and the other to the rear. The two women took turns on the blankets and tried to rest during the endless traveling. "Rachel, I'm worried that we will never get a chance to escape," Maude said anxiously.

  "There hasn't been an opportunity yet," Rachel replied, a deeply troubled expression on her face. "But we must be ready to grab it when it does come."

  "If it ever does."

  Maude and Rachel had talked often of being rescued. But how could anybody know what had happened to them, or where they were being taken? They were completely on their own and must escape by using their own wits and strength. They knew that to run into the desert without water, without any knowledge of the land at all, was no escape at all. They had to make their break for freedom while passing through a town where there were people who might help them elude their captors. They had been too closely guarded so far for them to make that attempt.

  Maude heard Emanuel, the driver of the stagecoach, shout a curse at the horses. His bullwhip cracked as he lashed the horses. He was a cruel man and relentlessly used the whip to drive the animals onward. In those few times when Maude was allowed out of the stagecoach, she had observed the backs of the horses were cut and bleeding from the strike of the iron tip of the whip. Emanuel scared Maude almost as much as did the silent, always watchful Rafael. However, it was Leo Valdes, who commanded the two men, who was Rachel's true enemy.

  The iron-rimmed wheels of the stagecoach struck a dusty place on the road and a cloud of brown grit streamed in through the windows. The women's clothing, faces, and hair were covered with the dust that had settled on them during the journey. Maude breathed shallowly until the dust was whipped away by the hot wind.

  The evening of the third day was near. Leo had hurried them through the first day, then the night, and until the middle of the following day. Then they had stopped in the shade of some trees set off from the road far enough that passersby couldn't see them. Leo had allowed them out of the stagecoach to walk about a bit to relieve their tired and cramped muscles and to eat. They had spread blankets on the ground and slept through the few hours when th
e sun was highest in the sky.

  During the race down the El Camino Real, they had stopped several times at freight stations and quickly exchanged the exhausted horses for fresh ones. At the stations and during the passage through the towns, Leo always tied the leather curtains down tightly and warned Maude and Rachel not to try to see outside, or to make their presence known in any manner. Rafael stood guard beside the stagecoach at those times to insure they obeyed the order. Twice he had warned off an inquisitive man who had wanted to look inside the curtained vehicle.

  Maude heard Leo shout at Emanuel, and the stagecoach began to slow and veer to the side. Maude thrust her head out the window to look ahead.

  "What's happening?" Rachel said rising up from the blankets.

  "We're turning off the road and up a lane to a hacienda," Maude said.

  As Maude watched a man came out of the moderate-sized hacienda, made of adobe and whitewashed with lime, and stood and looked in the direction of the approaching stagecoach.

  Leo shouted again at Emanuel, and the stagecoach stopped a couple of hundred feet from the man. Leo rode his horse to the window where Maude sat. He gestured for her to lower the curtains. At the same time he ordered brusquely, "Drop the curtains and don't let anyone here see you. I'll tell you when you can come out. Tonight you'll have good food and a soft bed." He smiled, pleased with himself.

  Leo spoke to Rafael, who had ridden his mount up and was listening. "See that they do as I said."

  "St, patron."

  Leo turned and went toward the man waiting at the hacienda.

  Rafael reined his horse close to the coach and watched Maude and Rachel untie the curtains and let them unroll to completely cover the windows. Satisfied with their actions, he sat alertly in the saddle, watching Leo and the man from the hacienda.

  Maude and Rachel looked at each other. With an unspoken agreement, each woman pulled the edge of a curtain aside a tiny crack and put her eye to it.

  "Looks like he's trying to give the man something," Rachel whispered, seeing Leo take an object from his pocket and offer it to the man.