Renegades

by William W. Johnstone

  They rode down the valley, through shadows that faded as the eastern sky lightened even more. With Esteban leading the way, they topped a couple of hills, galloped along a rocky ridge, and finally came to a point where they could gaze down at the village below them, at the edge of the foothills where the plains started that ran all the way to the Rio Grande.

  Although there had been no doubt in Frank’s mind about the source of the smoke, his jaw tightened as he saw with his own eyes the house that was burning in the village below. Flames leaped from the windows as the adobe dwelling was gutted by fire. A couple of huddled shapes lay in the dirt just outside the entrance. A man and a woman, Frank thought, no doubt the couple who had lived there, cut down by gunfire as they fled from the inferno that their home had become.

  Those weren’t the only bodies he saw. Several others lay sprawled around the village. Most of the little settlement’s inhabitants still seemed to be alive, though. They were being herded into the plaza by armed men on horseback, men who wore the gray uniforms of the Gendarmeria Fiscal, the Rurales.

  A lot of black sombreros down there, Frank thought. They had swept into the village at daybreak, shooting up the place and torching that house, terrifying the people so that they wouldn’t put up much of a fight. The villagers couldn’t make a stand against a gang of such cold-blooded killers.

  And the most cold-blooded of them all sat on his horse at the edge of the plaza and watched the villagers being rounded up. Frank didn’t need a spyglass to tell him that the stiff, erect figure was Captain Domingo Estancia, the man who was trying to make himself lord and master of this entire region.

  Antonio began to curse in a low, shaken voice. “Why is Estancia doing this?” he wanted to know. “Those villagers are no threat to him!”

  “No doubt he seeks to use them against you,” Esteban said. “Perhaps his men lost your trail, but he knows that your hiding place is around here somewhere. Or at least he thinks it may be. He seeks to force the villagers to betray you.” Esteban looked over at Antonio. “Do any of them know where you and your men may be found?”

  Antonio’s head jerked in a nod. “A few of them share our secret. They bring us supplies from time to time, when the people of the village can spare them.”

  Frank rested his hands on the saddle horn and said, “There’s a good chance Estancia will find out what he wants to know from them.”

  “No! The people will not betray us!”

  “A man’s mouth cannot stay closed when he is being tortured,” Esteban said sadly. “He will talk even sooner if it is his loved ones who are being threatened.”

  Frank nodded toward the village. “Looks like that’s what’s about to happen.”

  The Rurales on horseback formed a half circle around the group of frightened villagers in the middle of the plaza. They kept their rifles trained on the prisoners as Captain Estancia and his sergeant slowly rode forward. Estancia pulled his horse to a stop when he was facing the villagers. He spoke in a loud voice, and although the sound of it carried in the thin air to the hilltop where Frank, Antonio, and Esteban watched, they couldn’t make out the words.

  They didn’t really have to understand what Estancia was saying to know what was going on. “He is asking them where to find the Black Scorpion,” Antonio guessed.

  Esteban nodded. “No one wants to speak up. No one wants to be the first to break.”

  The Rurale officer fell silent. The crackling of flames from the burning building could be heard. After a moment, Estancia snapped an order, and the burly sergeant at his side rode forward. Frank recognized the man who had carried out the brutal whipping at the Almanzar rancho.

  The sergeant trotted his horse up to the group of villagers and dismounted. Those in the front cringed away from him as he walked back and forth, studying them. Abruptly, he stepped forward, pulling a revolver from a holster at his waist. One of the women screamed, a terrified wail. The revolver rose and fell. Its barrel slammed against the head of one of the male villagers, knocking him to his knees. The sergeant kicked him aside and reached past him for the smaller figure that had been cowering behind him. It was a young woman in a nightdress, Frank saw. The sergeant clamped the fingers of his free hand around her and jerked her out of the group, dragging her with him as he started back toward Estancia.

  The man who had been knocked down scrambled to his feet, blood running from the cut on his forehead that had been opened up by the slashing gun barrel. He ran after the sergeant, yelling angrily. The woman was either his wife or daughter, Frank guessed, and the villager’s fear for her had overcome his common sense.

  The sergeant stopped, half-turned, lifted the revolver, and shot the man in the face.

  The villager went over backward, his head seeming to crumple like a deflated ball as the bullet tore out the back of his skull and sprayed brains and blood in the dirt. He landed on his back, arms and legs outflung, and spasmed a couple of times as his muscles caught up to the fact that he was dead. The young woman shrieked as she stared horrified over her shoulder at the body.

  “Madre de Dios,” Antonio breathed.

  “It will only get worse,” Esteban said.

  The old man was right. As they watched, the sergeant dragged the young woman in front of Estancia. The captain gestured sharply. The sergeant took hold of the neck of the young woman’s nightdress and ripped it open. He yanked the ruined garment off of her, making her stumble. She stood there naked, shaking and sobbing as she tried to cover her breasts.

  The Rurales laughed and hooted as the sergeant pulled the young woman’s hands down and began to paw her, running his rough, callused hands all over her body. Estancia watched the degrading display impassively. The villagers just stood there, numb, afraid to move. A large pool of blood had formed around the head of the man the sergeant had shot. From this distance, Frank couldn’t see, but he figured flies had already begun to buzz around the crimson puddle.

  Estancia said something else, and the sergeant forced the young woman to her knees. She tried to lower her head, but he wrapped his fingers in her long black hair and cruelly jerked her head so that she had to look up at him. With his other hand, he began to fumble with the buttons of his uniform trousers.

  “That’s just about enough,” Frank said as he pulled his Winchester from the sheath strapped to Stormy’s saddle. “Hell, it’s more than enough.”

  He levered a round into the rifle’s chamber and brought it to his shoulder in one smooth motion. Below in the village, the sergeant had his stiff penis out and was trying to force it into the young woman’s mouth. Laughter rolled from his lips as he twisted her hair.

  The Winchester cracked sharply. The shot was a long one, somewhere between four and five hundred yards, but instinct and experience guided Frank’s aim. The sergeant jerked and stopped laughing as the bullet slammed into the back of his head, bored on through his upper spine, tore out the front of his throat in a shower of gore, and passed over the young woman’s head to bury itself in the dirt behind her. Covered in the man’s blood, she screamed and tore loose from his suddenly nerveless grip. She scuttled away on hands and knees, still screaming, as the echoes of the single shot rolled across the plains and finally faded. The sergeant stood there for a second as if he still lived, and then he pitched forward onto his face.

  Antonio said to Esteban, “Ride back and tell the men to prepare for battle. I think Señor Morgan has just—how do the gringos say it?—opened the ball.”

  23

  As the hoofbeats of Esteban’s racing horse drummed behind him, Frank worked the Winchester’s lever and shifted his aim. If he could drop Estancia, the Rurales would be leaderless and a lot less likely to mount an effective pursuit. But just as Frank pressed the trigger and the rifle cracked and bucked, one of the other Rurales lunged his horse forward. It wasn’t a deliberate move; the previous shot and the sergeant’s unexpected death had plunged the plaza into chaos and men and horses were jumping around all over the place. In this case, t
hough, fate protected Estancia, because the Rurale trooper’s body shielded him. Frank’s bullet struck the other man and tumbled him from the saddle. The Rurale’s black sombrero went sailing through the air.

  “Kill them! Kill them all!” Estancia shrieked. The furious, bloodthirsty command was so loud Frank could make it out even at a distance.

  The Rurales were going to have a hard time carrying it out, however. Already one of the villagers had broken out of his terrified stupor and snatched up the sergeant’s pistol. He emptied it into the milling, uniformed men, knocking down a couple of them. Others of the villagers were fighting back with their bare hands, grabbing the Rurales and dragging them out of their saddles.

  Taking careful aim, Frank sent several more slugs into the plaza. With each shot, another Rurale was wounded, and either fell or sagged in his saddle. Some of the men lost their nerve and fled, galloping out of the village as if the hounds of hell were on their heels.

  Frank looked for Estancia but couldn’t see him anymore. Blinding clouds of dust, kicked up by the hooves of the frantic horses, began to billow in the air. Men, women, and children ran for their homes, guns roared, and the plaza was now utter confusion.

  It wouldn’t take long, though, for Estancia to rally his men, Frank thought. Then the captain would come looking for whoever had killed his sergeant and caused all hell to break loose.

  Frank slid the Winchester back in its sheath. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that,” he said as he looked over at Antonio.

  “I thank El Señor Dios that you did,” Antonio said. “You were the only one among the three of us who could stop that devil.” A bleak smile played over the young man’s lips. “I take it you are now with us, Señor Morgan, rather than against us?”

  “I reckon I was always on your side. I just didn’t know it yet.”

  They wheeled their horses and rode back toward the cave that was the Black Scorpion’s stronghold.

  Frank knew he had forced a showdown. That hadn’t really been his intention. He had simply been unable to stand by any longer and watch the sort of evil that he was witnessing go unpunished. His act had been impulsive, a matter of sheer instinct.

  And yet he didn’t regret it for an instant. Left alone, Captain Estancia might well have slaughtered everyone in that village. No doubt some of the people had died in the fighting, but at least they had died standing up for themselves, not like sheep meekly having their throats cut.

  Side by side, Frank and Antonio galloped into the valley where the cave was located. They saw that the other men were already mounted and ready to ride. Their hands bristled with guns. Esteban and Lupe urged their mounts out ahead of the others, and Lupe said, “What are your orders, Don Antonio? Do we flee ... or do we fight?”

  Antonio clenched his right hand into a fist and thrust it over his head. “We fight!”

  A cheer burst out from the men.

  They were caught up in the emotion of the moment, and to a certain extent, so was Frank. He wanted nothing more than another chance to get Estancia in his gun sights.

  But he also knew that in spite of the damage he and the villagers had inflicted on Estancia’s men, the Rurales still outnumbered Antonio and his friends. They had better rifles and more of them. No matter what the emotions involved or the rightness or wrongness of the cause, battles were usually won with firepower.

  “It might be better to split up and sort of fade away,” Frank said to Antonio. “Regroup again later to strike at the Rurales.”

  Antonio stared at him. “You would say this, Señor Morgan, after you were the one who fired the opening round?”

  “I’m just saying you boys are outnumbered. You need to be sure this is what you want to do.”

  “I have never been more sure of anything in my life.” Antonio swept a hand toward Esteban, Lupe, and the other men. “Look at their faces, Señor. This is the chance they have been waiting for, the chance to finally join in battle with a hated foe. Would you deny them this?”

  Frank looked at the men and saw the anticipation on their faces. Sure, they were scared. But more than that, they were eager to have this showdown with the Rurales and perhaps end the reign of terror that had held the border country in its grip.

  “All right,” Frank said, nodding slowly. “We fight.”

  Again the men cheered. They thrust their rifles over their heads and shook them. They were ready for whatever might come.

  “We will strike them before they can strike us,” Antonio said. “The element of surprise will be on our side.”

  Frank, Esteban, and Lupe all nodded their agreement with the tactic. That would give them their best chance of success. They were outnumbered perhaps two to one, so they had to try to even up those odds as quickly as they could.

  Antonio pulled the mask up over his face so that only his eyes were visible. Then he spurred his horse ahead. Frank and Esteban rode beside him. Lupe was right behind them, and the rest of the men were close on his heels. The band of revolutionaries galloped down the valley, as to the east the sun rose and the sky began to change from pale blue to a darker shade.

  The rolling thunder of hoofbeats rose into the sky as well. Frank knew that as soon as Estancia was able to regroup his men, the Rurales would charge up into the foothills to find whoever had fired on them. Estancia was no fool, however; not knowing how many men he would be facing, he wouldn’t attack blindly. He would probably send out scouts to gauge the opposition.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later as the riders topped a hill, Frank spotted a couple of black-hatted Rurales coming toward them. The Rurales saw the Black Scorpion and his men at the same time and frantically reined in. They turned their horses to gallop away.

  Frank spurred ahead, thinking it might be good to stop those scouts from reporting back to Estancia. He didn’t want the Rurales digging in along a defensive position. They already had the advantage in numbers. They didn’t need to be forted up, too.

  Stormy’s long legs stretched out, muscles working smoothly under the sleek hide. Frank leaned forward over the Appaloosa’s neck as he urged more speed. Surprisingly, from the corner of his eye he saw another rider draw even with him. The big black stallion, El Rey, was running just as easily as Stormy, and if anything, his stride was longer. Esteban looked over and gave Frank a gnomelike grin as he and El Rey pulled slightly ahead of Morgan and Stormy.

  “Damn it, it’s not a race!” Frank called over the pounding of hoofbeats.

  “Sí, Señor!” Esteban replied, but he didn’t slacken his pace any.

  They had pulled out well in front of the rest of the group and were closing in on the two fleeing Rurales. The trail curved around a large boulder. The Rurales swept around the big rock and disappeared. Seconds later, Frank and Esteban flashed around the boulder as well.

  A hundred yards away, the rest of the Rurales under Captain Estancia emerged from a stand of pine trees. They saw their two scouts between them and the pursuers on the Appaloosa and the black stallion. Instead of waiting to hear the scouts’ report, Estancia shouted a command to charge. The company of Rurales surged forward, whooping and shooting.

  Frank hauled back on the reins as bullets whipped around his head. “The damn fools think there’s only two of us!” he shouted.

  “Let them think that!” Esteban replied as he wheeled El Rey back in the direction they had come from.

  Frank and Esteban suddenly found themselves in the position of being bait as they raced back along the trail. The Rurales came after them, howling furiously. If Estancia had changed his mind and tried to stop them so that they could proceed more cautiously, he had failed. The Rurales might have had discipline imposed on them, but at heart they were a bunch of thugs and criminals, given to impulsiveness.

  This time that recklessness might just backfire on them.

  Frank glanced over his shoulder and saw that the Rurales were coming on at a gallop. They were still firing, too, but only a few of their shots came very close. One bullet ripped
through the high crown of Esteban’s sombrero and tipped it forward so that it fell down over his eyes. He cuffed it back off his head and let it dangle on his back, held there by its chin strap. From time to time a slug would kick up dirt and rocks in the trail alongside the running horses. Frank grinned. The shots were coming close enough to keep the Rurales excited and careless.

  As they neared the boulder, Frank called, “We’ll slow them down a little!” Esteban nodded his understanding.

  As they rounded the boulder, Frank pulled back on the reins and slowed Stormy. Drawing the Winchester from its sheath, he dropped out of the saddle while the Appaloosa was still moving, and a slap on the rump sent Stormy galloping ahead. Likewise, Esteban performed a running dismount from El Rey, looking like a young man as he did so. As the horses continued running, the two men hurried into the shelter of the boulder. Frank crouched at the edge of the big, rugged rock next to the trail, while Esteban scrambled up the hillside a short distance to a place where he could fire his revolver over the top of the boulder.

  “Let ’em have it!” Frank ordered.

  He opened fire with the rifle, picking his shots carefully. He hadn’t had a chance to reload, so there were only seven or eight rounds left in the Winchester. Above him and to the right, Esteban’s pistol began to roar. Frank hadn’t really paid much attention to the weapon before, but now he realized from the sound of it that it was an old cap-and-ball revolver. Guns like that might not have the same muzzle velocity as newer weapons, but they fired a heavy ball that packed an incredible amount of punch when it hit something.

  Like the Rurale’s head that seemed almost to explode on his shoulders when one of Esteban’s shots crashed into the middle of his forehead. The corpse flew backward out of the saddle and caused men behind him to shy away from the spray of blood and brains.

  Frank dropped a couple of the Rurales with the Winchester. He wanted a shot at Captain Estancia, but he couldn’t see the officer. Probably hanging back where there wouldn’t be as much danger, Frank thought. Brutal, evil men like Domingo Estancia were often physical cowards, needing flunkies to carry out their ruthless orders.