by F. M. Parker
Evan watched the speeding clouds conquer the moon, and the last of the moonlight left them and ran off to the east. He spoke. "I'm ready to move. If we stay low, the grass will half hide us so maybe we can crawl past them without being seen."
"We take only our guns and shells. And best we go single file. I'll go first, if that's all right with you."
"Lead on."
"I judge Carlos and his men will be out there about a hundred yards or so and ringing us in. We got to see them before they see us."
Ben lay down on his stomach. Cradling his rifle, he crawled off hugging the ground. Evan lay down and snaked his way along behind Ben. A low rasping sound came as they slid through the grass.
They moved the first few yards, and then Ben halted them for a time and both probed the thick darkness, trying to see something that meant danger. Detecting nothing, they went on at a snail's pace, merely inching forward and pressed down into the short grass. The wind increased and the dry grass began to rustle. Good, thought Ben, the sound would help to cover the noise Evan and he were making.
Ben stopped and stared hard into the blackness around them. He saw nothing but the impenetrable murk of the night. Still, he felt the presence of someone or something in front of him. Try as hard as he might, he could not make out a form. Trusting his instincts, he angled off to the side, choosing to go right.
They had gone not more than a few yards when Ben heard a man's voice. He halted instantly and froze. Looking in the direction of the voice, he faintly made out the forms of two men standing on the plain not a long pebble flip distant.
Evan's head bumped into his feet before he too stopped. Ben silently willed Evan not to speak and give them away. Evan remained quiet.
Studying the two men carefully, Ben decided they were facing in the direction from which Evan and he had come. Crawling even more slowly, he led on.
When the men were directly off Ben's left side, one of them spoke. "Fire the grass and give the signal."
Ben recognized Carlos Valdes's voice. The man who had tried to kill him three times was within easy pistol range. Since Carlos had spoken in English, the second man would be Tattersall, or one of his men. Ben felt the hot urge to shoot both men. However, that would give him away to Carlos's men. Maude and Rachel were more important than killing Carlos right now. There would be another time for that, if Evan and he could get away without being spotted.
One of the men bent down and struck a match and lit the grass. Flames leapt, throwing a light over Ben and Evan, penning them with its brightness. They were exposed to their foes should they but only look.
Carlos gave the order for Tattersall to fire the grass as the storm clouds swept across the sky. The clouds held rain and it appeared they would drop it here. Falling rain could provide Hawkins and his comrade with the cover they needed to slip out of the net Carlos had thrown around them. Hawkins must be taken before that.
The crackling sound of the flames consuming the dry grass drew Carlos's eyes back to the earth. The grass burned readily, sending two-foot-high yellow flames flaring brightly in the darkness. A point of fire had appeared nearby on the plain. Another one sprang to life farther off.
As Carlos watched, a dozen more fires showed in the night. Within half a minute, more of the plain had come alive with thirty pools of light from burning grass. The fires were spaced in a circle some three hundred yards in diameter, with Hawkins in the center. Everything was progressing as Carlos had planned.
The plan was simple. Illuminate Hawkins and his comrade with fire so that they could be shot. At the same time keep his own men in darkness and thus protected from the deadly rifles of the Americans.
"Help me put out the fire on the back side," Carlos said to Tattersall.
The men began to stomp the flaming grass, the task easily done for the burning of the fine reeds created mostly light and little heat.
* * *
Ben saw the two men begin to extinguish fire on the side opposite to where Evan and he had lain with the horses. With the men's attention on the fire and their boots thudding on the ground, Ben knew it was time to go, and go quickly. He crawled hurriedly off. Evan followed close behind.
Several yards later, Ben whispered to Evan, "I smell horses."
"Yeah, me too," Evan whispered back.
"Let's go get some. We'll come in from the side opposite the fires. There may be a guard, so watch out."
The two men crawled on, pressed as close to the ground as possible. The scent of the horses grew stronger. The sound of a horse moving came to them.
A couple of body lengths farther along, Ben halted and lay, trying to see into the night. Where was the guard?
* * *
Carlos and Tattersall controlled the spread of the fire they had set, trampling it out as needed to force it to advance in the direction they wanted. The fire left only short-lived coals behind, and within but a minute the area was cool.
Carlos looked out over the plain. The other fires had grown, broadened. The outlines of the fires were no longer circular in shape; rather, each was a bright yellow crescent of advancing flames. His men were performing their task properly, extinguishing half the circumference of the fire they had started.
The fire Carlos and Tattersall tended joined with the fire of his man on the right. Then the fire on the left merged with theirs. In but a handful of minutes, all the fires on the plain had joined together in one huge ring of bright flames.
Carlos looked at the point where he knew Hawkins and the other man were barricaded. The fire front was marching inexorably upon the men's location from all directions. Carlos's pistoleros, hidden in the darkness behind the fire, would be moving in prepared to shoot the moment Hawkins became a visible target.
"Let's go help them kill Hawkins and his friend," Carlos said.
"Once we catch them in the light, it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel," Tattersall said. Hawkins had killed one of his men and wounded another. It was time to make him pay for that.
They moved off in the black ashes left by the quick-burning grass. They held back half a hundred yards to be out of the light of the leaping flames.
FORTY FOUR
"There's only two horses and no guards," Ben said to Evan. He could see the animals silhouetted against the distant fire. They would belong to Carlos and the American with him. Each of Carlos's men must have chosen to keep his personal mount close by him as he fired the grass of the plain in preparation to fight the two Americans.
"Exactly the number we need" Evan said.
The men rose to their feet. Not wanting the horses to become alarmed at unknown men approaching through the darkness, Ben and Evan went the last short distance walking slowly and talking in low voices to calm them.
"Just a saddle and no bedroll on this one," Evan said.
"Same here, except there's a canteen with some water in it," Ben said. "We'll share that."
They untied the animals from their picket ropes, and mounted. They sat looking at the ring of fire from which they had barely escaped. The fire had perhaps two hundred feet to go to be completely closed in upon itself.
"Carlos will soon know we're not caught in his fire trap," Ben said with a pleased chuckle.
"He's going to be damn mad," Evan said.
"Yeah, and I like that."
To the west along a front, jagged incandescent streaks of lightning punched holes in the night, and thunder rumbled across the plain as the storm struggled at creating itself.
"Best we be moving for Carlos will be riding like hell for his hacienda in but a few minutes," Ben said. "It would be best to get there before he warns the others that he's failed and we're still coming."
They shook out the bridle reins and sent the horses galloping into the darkness. Ben led, holding a course southwest and near the base of Sierra Las Tunas. This course would bypass Chihuahua and shorten the distance to the Valdes hacienda by several miles. If they pressed hard they could reach their objective by evening of the coming
day.
As they passed the edge of the plain, the last piece of the sky vanished and the night deepened to pitch-black and hid the land. As if waiting for that event, a mighty burst of lightning bolts burned the Stygian darkness and the storm fell upon the two riders with a sibilant hiss of falling raindrops. The rain rapidly intensified and in a moment huge drops were drumming on the horses' heads and rumps and hammering down the brims of the men's hats.
With shoulders hunched against the cold, wet onslaught, the two men traveled on under the leaking heavens. Ben guided them on by using the location of the lightning and the direction of the wind to choose the course.
* * *
A weak dawn arrived and the land shaped itself out of the night. The rain slackened to a drizzle and soon ceased altogether. Large clouds of mist drifted down the swales on the side of
Sierra Las Tunas two miles off Ben's and Evan's right. Cold and wet from the drenching downpour, the men rode silently on.
The day brightened further, and by mid-morning the sun had burned its way through the clouds and the clothing of the men began to dry. In the early evening, they were hidden on the mountainside a quarter mile away and above the walled hacienda of the Valdes family. Their horses were out of sight in the bottom of a narrow draw a short distance around the side of the mountain.
Ben lay behind a boulder and with his spyglass watched the hacienda and the other buildings that made up the Valdes headquarters. Besides the big main house, there were five smaller homes set off a few hundred feet to the left of the big house. To the right were a corral and two small outbuildings. Ben thought one of the buildings would most likely be a blacksmith shop and the other a place to store harnesses and saddles.
Half a mile farther away, directly in front of the casa and near the river, were three large corrals holding many horses, a huge hay barn, and several buildings used for various purposes in connection with the horse-breeding operation. He knew the area by the river well for it was from there that he had stolen the Valdes horses.
"Two men in the watchtower and four men patrolling the grounds inside the wall," Ben said to Evan.
"That doesn't give us much of a chance of breaking in and getting the girls."
"Do you see those smaller houses near the hacienda?"
"Yes."
"They all have saddled horses tied in front. That means those cowboys haven't gone off to work, but have been kept close to help stop us if we try to break in to take Maude and Rachel. Also, there'll be another half-dozen men down there at the river where the horse breeding takes place."
"Do you think Rachel and Maude are here?"
"They're here. The sons would want to show them off to Ramos and their mother."
"Any idea how we're going to do it?" Evan was worried that even with the best of efforts to rescue the girls, Ben and he would fail.
"Not yet. Let's wait and see what goes on down there. Then maybe we can think of a way to pull it off."
"All right.” Evan started to cough, harsh expulsions of air sending knifelike pains through his damaged lung. He fought to stifle the coughs, for he didn't want Ben to know how bad off he actually was.
Ben looked anxiously at Evan. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Evan said as he choked off a cough.
Ben didn't think so. The last thing they needed was for Evan to become too ill to travel. Ben shouldn't have allowed Evan to come with him. If Evan had stayed in El Paso, he would have been out of danger and had time to rest and heal. Then he could be in fine condition to operate on Ben's face when he returned with the women. Too late to change anything now. He turned back to glass their enemies.
"Four riders coming," Ben said as he tracked horsemen in the field of the spyglass. "It's Carlos and three Americans. There goes our surprise, if we ever had one." He hoped the two missing Americans had been killed by his rifle shots, for that would serve them right. The men rode inside the compound and Ben could no longer see them.
"With Carlos here now, there'll soon be a wedding," Ben said.
He swept the spyglass over the homes of the cowboys. In front of one was a horse and buggy. He focused there as a woman came out of the house and climbed into the vehicle. In the sunlight, her long golden hair shone bright as flame. For a moment he thought it was Maude. However, that couldn't be for the Valdes men wouldn't allow her that kind of freedom. The woman was most probably Ramos's wife, if the stories were true that he had married a Norte Americana. The woman drove the buggy to the hacienda and into the compound.
The blondeness of the woman caused Ben to recall the soft touch of Maude's fingers caressing his scarred face that night in Canutillo. He smiled at the memory, his devil's face twisting ugly and his eyes happy.
"What's so good?" Evan asked, for he was getting better at reading Ben's expressions.
"Just a memory. Just a memory. Let's try to think of a way to get the girls away from the rancho without getting them and us killed.”
FORTY FIVE
"That ugly horse thief has traveled hundreds of miles into our country and in all that time you haven't been able to stop him," Ramos Valdes raged at Carlos. "You had all the fighting men you could ever want and yet you stand there beaten."
Señora Helena Valdes watched the three men of her life, her husband Ramos and sons Carlos and Leo. The four of them were gathered in the big main room of the hacienda. Carlos had finished describing the events of the past several days. Ramos was pacing the floor, his head swiveling as he kept his hard, black eyes on his oldest son. Ramos was a domineering man, quick to anger, and when he rampaged as he did now, he frightened Helena.
Rarely did Helena participate in Ramos's discussions with his sons. She didn't want to know about his methods of doing business, practices that she was certain his sons now followed, for she was afraid of what they were. However, when Leo had returned with the two American girls, and then Carlos had arrived, she had decided to participate. She'd believed the meeting would include much talk about the two girls who were to become her daughters.
"He didn't beat me," Carlos retorted angrily. He began to pace the opposite side of the room. "The four, pistoleros at Samalayuca weren't as tough as they were said to be, not tough enough to kill Hawkins. So I doubled the number I stationed at Terrazas. Hawkins came and took their horses and they never even saw him."
Carlos ceased pacing and fixed his father with a stare. "He was extremely lucky to have escaped the fire trap on Plano de San Augustin. Like a coyote gets lucky and avoids the traps I've seen you set."
Ramos shook his head disdainfully at Carlos. "A coyote's luck is just dumb luck. A man makes his luck."
Ramos knew there was much more to Hawkins than luck. He was a brazen man and hard enough to carry off what he started. He was clever in that he always took the stolen horses to Abilene. This removed the horses far from Valdes's reach. And importantly for Hawkins's safety, that route avoided El Camino Real and denied Valdes the use of fresh horses at his freight stations with which he could run Hawkins down.
Leo moved to stand beside Carlos and spoke. "Father, you said yourself that this Hawkins is the best horse thief who has ever stolen one of your horses. Then the Americans gave away Carlos's plan when they tried to kill Hawkins in El Paso and failed. After that he must have been extra cautious."
"Right," Carlos interjected. "Hawkins hasn't really accomplished anything yet."
Ramos looked at his two sons and nodded. He liked the manner in which Leo had come forward to Carlos's defense. They were becoming tough hombres, and with them working together nobody would be able to defeat them.
"What is done, is done," Ramos said in a forgiving tone. "Hawkins will be someplace close by. It's too late in the day to start a search for him now. Tomorrow we will send every available rider we have out scouring the land for him and the other man."
Ramos spoke directly to Carlos. "Do you think they know about the young women?"
"I believe they do, Father. That is why the second man is here."
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"I agree, for I don't think Hawkins would ask another man to help him fight his personal battles."
"He has one of those new repeating rifles and he is deadly with it. That is how he stopped the charge of twenty-five men and saved himself."
"How many of our men has Hawkins killed?"
"Twelve, and wounded four badly. Two of them will most likely die."
"Give me their names." Ramos's riders remained loyal to him because of the fact that they knew he would take care of their families should something fatal befall them.
Helena had been intently observing her menfolk as they discussed Hawkins. She had previously heard them describe the man and his skill at stealing and pictured him as a horribly gruesome phantom. Now, as Carlos listed the dead she saw an amazing, frightening thing occur. The light immediately surrounding the three men began to weaken. Not elsewhere in the room, just in an envelope surrounding them. Within but a moment, they were enclosed within a dark umbra. They were ghost men barely seen through a murky, vaporous shroud. At the same time, dizziness seized Helena and she swayed in her chair. A terrifying premonition jarred her to the very core of her being. The murderous Hawkins was going to kill her husband and beloved sons. She believed it with heartrending conviction.
Then abruptly, the darkness around her menfolk lifted and they stood fully illuminated. However, the premonition remained cold and heavy in Helena's bosom. She had had a third son, two years younger than Leo. A similar shadow had fallen over him one day while she was looking at him. She had made little of it, thinking that it was merely a temporary condition of her eyesight. Then the very next day, he had been shot from ambush by one of Ramos's enemies. She would not disregard the omen this time.
"Let the young women return to their homes in the north," Helena cried out in a voice that overrode the men's conversation.
They turned as one to look at Helena.
"What? What did you say?" Ramos could not believe what he had heard.
