From Adobe Junction, everyone was to ride back to Prescott to attend a special meeting scheduled two days from now. By then, the other delegates would have arrived, including the Lieutenant-Governor of New Mexico Territory, two Senators, and the Secretary of State from Washington, all of these arriving via the newly completed rail line through Texas and New Mexico.
The purpose of the meeting was grim enough without the kind of mess M’Candliss now faced.
Potentially, it was one of the grimmest since the Mexican-American War had ended in 1848. The meeting had been arranged in an attempt to thwart an international crisis which, if it got out of hand, could plunge both nations into a war neither one desired.
For the past eight months, the Mexican states of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila had been all but paralyzed by the forces of a huge band of guerillas dedicated to the overthrow of General Porfirio Diaz’s government. These revolucionarios were being led by Ramon Esteban, a fanatical follower of the deposed president, Lerdo de Tejada, a politician of great talent and a distinguished liberal who had gained wide popularity through his reforms.
However, Lerdo’s haughty manner and intellectual rectitude had soon created powerful enemies, many among his previous supporters, and ultimately he had been unseated by Diaz after the savage Battle of Tecoac in 1876. Since then, Diaz had proven to be a progressive leader, an able administrator, and a promoter of law and order.
Nevertheless, much of the population, especially the peasants in outlying regions, considered Diaz a usurping dictator hardly any better than the loathed Maximilian. Among the dissatisfied had been an ex-peon named Esteban, who had been promoted to a petty official position under Lerdo, then returned to his patch of rock and cactus, lucky to be alive after the slaughterings common to Mexican civil wars. It was this vengeful man whose rallying cry to free Mexico from its alleged tyrannical oppressor had been answered by thousands of disgruntled natives, swelling his band into an awesome army of marauders which Diaz’s government seemed unable to control.
Although the United States always kept a concerned eye on political situations south of the border, it normally would not have attempted to interfere in, such internal strife. But recent developments, which could not be ignored, had forced the Federal government to act.
Esteban’s guerillas, perhaps not commanded personally by him, but evidently under his orders, had invaded United States territory. Over a dozen small villages, plus numerous remote settlements and ranches, had been pillaged and burned, leaving behind looted banks and stores and three dozen murdered men, women, and children. Each time, the survivors reported, the merciless bandits had shouted repeatedly “Viva Esteban!” And, more recently, the banditos had not fled south, back into Mexico, but north or west into Arizona’s desolate Galiuro Mountains. As hard as it was to believe, the evidence was convincing that these Mexican marauders had made a hideout for themselves in the United States.
All along the southwestern extremities of Arizona and New Mexico, American citizens were up in arms. Already one vigilante committee had been formed and had taken reprisal for the bandito raids, laying waste a Mexican hamlet and killing five peasants. Dark rumors of other vigilante groups hanging innocent Mexican-Americans were circulating, adding to the ferment. If things were left unchecked—or left to hotheads like Arlo Gillette—a chain reaction of hatred and retaliation could be set off, which would eventually embroil the two countries in major conflict.
President Rutherford B. Hayes had been in communication with General Diaz. It had been decided that representatives from the concerned governments should meet to coordinate some type of strategy aimed at stopping the guerillas and the spread of killings on both sides. It had been hoped that mutual cooperation from the two nations would soothe inflamed passions and allow for peace.
But that had been before now—before this.
Now six Mexican officers were dead; the Mexican representative had been kidnapped; the Arizona representative was missing; and a whole bunch of otherwise reasonable folks were riding around out in the night, ready to blast holes in anybody who spoke Spanish.
And M’Candliss had been charged with keeping things in order.
Chapter Three
M’Candliss returned to the lobby, where a different clerk, short, fat, and bespectacled, was now on duty. Vaguely he remembered the clerk as a face in the crowd which had gathered after the shooting, but just on the off chance the man might know something, M’Candliss paused to ask if he’d been anywhere near the hotel prior to the starting of his shift.
“Nope,” the clerk answered, shaking his head. “I was playing pinochle in the Agave up until the gunfight, and then I was out there till the posse left. Fact is, I was dogging your footsteps here, but you were in such a hurry I guess you didn’t see me behind you.”
“Thanks,” M’Candliss said, and went outside. Across the street, in front of the Gilded Possum Casino, Arlo Gillette and his vigilante crew were mounting their horses, preparing to ride. M’Candliss could hear Gillette railing against Mexicans—all Mexicans—and his tirade was frequently punctuated with angry shouts of agreement from his drunken ranch hands. Stonily, M’Candliss kept to his side of the street, ignoring them as he headed for the telegraph office. Before he was halfway there, the riders galloped past him, Gillette in the lead, the image of a righteous avenger.
M’Candliss entered the small office, which was hardly more than a windowless shed adjoining the railway depot. “Sorry I took so long,” he told Cable. “It couldn’t be helped.”
The telegrapher was sitting behind a low, wide desk, looking plainly annoyed. “I was about ready to close up again,” he replied sourly. “A feller can’t be expected to—”
“I’ll make it as quick as possible,” M’Candliss said. He placed a U.S. cartwheel on the desk. “Can you raise Prescott?”
“For this, I’ll raise hell itself,” Cable said. He scooped up the large coin. Then he bent over his key, clicked it with an experienced staccato touch, and a few moments later, the key responded with a rattle of its own. “The line’s clear,” he said to M’Candliss. “What’s your message?”
“It’s confidential.”
“Every message is, and has been since I started pounding brass,” Cable retorted irascibly. “If that ain’t good enough for you, then damn your eyes, you sit here and send it.”
“Mark it confidential,” M’Candliss said. “And urgent. To Governor Shannon, Continental Grand Union Hotel. Gueterma kidnapped, Holmes missing and feared same. Advise. M’Candliss.”
“Governor, eh?” Cable said.
“That’s right. Send it.”
Cable hunched over his key again and pounded out the message.
“Now stay put,” M’Candliss told him. He gave the telegrapher another cartwheel. “There should be a reply soon and I’ll be back for it.”
“You’re asking a lot, feller.”
“I’m paying a lot,” M’Candliss answered. “And it’s damned important to boot.”
He stalked out, went down the street, and stopped at the first saloon he came to. It wasn’t a social call, though with all he’d been through, the notion of a drink was tempting. And that curmudgeon of a brass pounder, Cable, hadn’t helped his disposition any. But M’Candliss wanted something else saloons abound with—information.
He assumed, as did everyone else, that Esteban’s revolucionarios were responsible for the kidnap raid; it was what the leader of the group had claimed. He also believed that they must have come from across the border or from the rumored Galiuro Mountain hideout and that they were strangers to Adobe Junction, since no one had been able to identify the man he’d shot by the mouth of the alley.
However, he was aware of one other fact. When he had studied the dead man’s face, the thick beard and sun-baked features had not hidden the fact that he was a norteamericano, not a Mexican. This bothered M’Candliss, because Esteban sure as hell didn’t need any hired help from the States. Or want any, according to all report
s.
The contradiction was worth asking about.
He discovered little at the first saloon. Nor did he learn anything of importance at the Silver Slipper, the Ace-High, or the Agave. By the time he stepped through the faded batwings of the Buccaneer, he’d talked himself so dry that he ordered a beer.
The bartender was thick-necked and redheaded and spoke with a pronounced Irish brogue. M’Candliss asked him about the raiders as he drew the glass of suds.
“‘Twas a terrible thing that happened,” the bartender said as he placed the stein on the bar. “Blackguards, the lot of ‘em. And some not even Mexicans, but from here on our side of the fence. Or so I’ve heard.”
M’Candliss leaned forward. “Americans?”
The bartender shrugged. “Some, I suspect. Now I’ve lived in Adobe Junction ever since good Doc Renault brought me here from Phoenix when I was down on my luck. He’s not actually a doctor, truth be known, but was given the label when he opened this establishment. Pitched a tent at first and sold whiskey, women, and Doctor Ricardo Renault’s Liniment Balm. That was back before the railroad put its spur in here. I worked as a gandy dancer for a time meself, before—”
M’Candliss waved a hand impatiently. He was in no mood to indulge the garrulous maunderings of the bartender; he wanted information. “About the raiders?” he prompted.
“Aye, the raiders.” The bartender shrugged again and wiped at the bar with his rag. “Most of ‘em are Mexes, y’see, but some ain’t. Come a year this August, I recall Darby Boyle passin’ through on his way to join up with some brigands somewheres east of here.”
“A countryman of yours?”
The bartender flashed M’Candliss an indignant scowl. “Certainly not! Boyle is an Orangeman, and I wouldn’t put anything past the likes o’ him. Damned if he weren’t back within a fortnight, though, sayin’ he wasn’t gettin’ mixed up with no revolutionaries—leastwise, not the Mex kind. The brigands he’d been with was Mexes, y’see. A pack of ‘em holed up back in the hills.”
“Which hills? Part of the Galiuros?”
“That, Boyle was none too clear about. He said he didn’t know where he was most of the time, on account of him being from St. Louis and not at all accustomed to our land. Seems like he was also blindfolded when he showed up, bein’ a stranger—which added to his confusion, no doubt.”
M’Candliss could get nothing more out of the bartender; the episode involving Darby Boyle remained sketchy. Finally, leaving a generous tip, M’Candliss departed the Buccaneer with reservations about the value of what story there was.
Out in the street again, he started up the boardwalk toward the next and last saloon, a drab, mean place called the Bird of Paradise. When he drew abreast of the small alley between the town’s bank and the Bird of Paradise, someone called to him out of the darkness.
“Señor. Come here, quickly.”
M’Candliss paused, peering into the alley. He was unable to see much except a dark figure and, in a random penetration of lantern light, part of a red-checkered shirt.
“Quickly, Señor, please!”
“Who’re you?” M’Candliss demanded warily, not moving, not liking it. The voice didn’t sound particularly Mexican, and though the use of “Señor” in itself meant little, it was a kind of minor paradox which added to his suspicion. “Show yourself, Mister.”
“I can’t!” The voice quavered with what seemed to be fear. “They’ll kill me if they see me! I beg of you—”
M’Candliss rested the palm of his hand on the butt of his .45, still hesitating while he glanced both ways along the street. There were townsmen and punchers walking along, some of them quite close, but none appeared to be taking any special interest in him. Every instinct warned him that the voice’s plea was false, that it was a carefully baited trap.
“Who’ll kill you?” he called into the darkness. “Who’re they?”
“The... ones who took Gueterma. I can help you, Señor, I swear it!”
It was the slight break in the man’s hushed voice, the little catch as his attention was momentarily broken by something else something—somebody—behind M’Candliss. M’Candliss pivoted, saw another man loom over him from out of a concealed side doorway to the bank. That one had his arm raised high, and for an instant the pale moonlight filtering in from the street reflected off what he was gripping.
It was a knife—a straight-pointed, double-edged “Arkansas Toothpick.” And its razor-keen blade was already plunging toward M’Candliss’ chest.
He twisted sharply to his left. He felt the cold steel slide past the corded muscles of his diaphragm, its point nicking his skin as it tore free of his shirt in a wide slashing arc. He brought his left hand hammering up into the man’s unprotected face, knew the sound and feel of nose cartilage splitting. The attacker cried out in pain, stumbling to his knees.
M’Candliss swiveled to meet the first man, at the same time kicking out with one foot and catching the falling man in the face with his boot heel. The falling man straightened, his arms windmilling as he sailed out of the alley to plow headfirst across the boardwalk and against a hitching-rail post.
Still pivoting, drawing his revolver, M’Candliss confronted the man who had tried to draw him into the alley. But already that one was backing off, digging out his own pistol. Both men fired simultaneously. The ambusher staggered, pistol slipping from nerveless fingers, and then bumped against the wall of the Bird of Paradise saloon. Both hands came up to claw at his chest, as if he could somehow extract the lead which had cut through him. Then, coughing, he slumped to the alley floor.
Running footsteps retreated behind M’Candliss. Without turning, he knew the second attacker had fled. He holstered his Colt, moved to where the man he had shot slouched against the wall of the saloon, and bent to examine him.
The sound of other running steps interrupted his study. He straightened, glancing back toward the mouth of the alley. Three townsmen came into view, their faces pallid in the moonlight as they hovered by the entrance.
“What’s going on in there?”
“Yeah, what were those shots?”
“Bushwhackers,” M’Candliss answered grimly as he walked toward the townsmen. “A couple of them; the one lying dead there, and another one who got away. Maybe you spotted him running down the street.”
“Was that him? Hell, he bumped into me! “one of the townsmen said. “His face looked like a wagon had rolled over it.”
“More of them damned greaser bandits,” a second man snapped angrily. A small crowd was gathering now, and there were murmurs of assent. “Something’s got to be done about Esteban and his murdering renegades. Maybe Gillette’s right; maybe we got to start looking out for our own skins, seeing as the gov’ment don’t seem able to do nothing. What do you think, Mister?”
The question was addressed to M’Candliss, the intended victim and therefore the most likely to agree to swift and violent retaliation. And being as he was in nondescript trail garb, he didn’t look any different from the other range riders milling around—certainly not like a “gov’ment” agent. He scrutinized the questioner carefully before answering, setting to memory the man’s scruffy, lantern-jawed appearance. Tempers were frayed, and maybe the man was simply quick in his assumptions; but M’Candliss still couldn’t help wondering how come he was so fast in blaming Esteban and, by extension, Mexicans in general for the attempted ambush.
“I think we’ve got to stop the banditos all right,” M’Candliss replied evenly. “But I also think you’d better go check the man I shot—because he’s no more Mexican than we are.”
M’Candliss brushed his way through the bystanders and started back down the street toward the telegraph office. He realized it would be worse than useless to try arguing with the man or with any of those who sided with Arlo Gillette’s prejudices. The time when mere words could have prevented rash action was now past. Unless something was done, and done soon, to ensure the success of the conference in Prescott, the b
order strip would be whipped into such a fever pitch that there would be no halting further terror and bloodshed. He had to concentrate all his efforts on finding Gueterma and Holmes, and finding them fast.
Entering the small office again, he found the brass pounder playing solitaire on the wide desk. “Your reply came in ten minutes ago,” Cable said as he played a red six on a black seven. Still studying his layout, he picked up a piece of paper and handed it across to M’Candliss, then riffled his deck and turned the next card.
The message had been transcribed with a wide-lead pencil:
U.S. delegation arriving Prescott noon two days hence. Use any method at your disposal to ensure your men there too. Sending rest of your company under command Lieutenant Gordon.
Shannon
Frowning, M’Candliss reread the message and then folded the paper and put it into his vest pocket. “Thanks, Cable.”
The brass pounder was looking for a spot to play. “Sure,” he said absently.
“There’s an opening for a king,” M’Candliss offered.
“I know,” Cable said. “Cept my deck don’t have kings no more. Half the deuces and a tenner are gone too.”
M’Candliss left the telegraph office, thinking solitaire wasn’t the only way Cable was not playing with a full deck. On the other hand, he himself seemed to be facing what amounted to a stacked deck. He had two days—maybe three, if he stretched it—and that included the time it would take to transport Gueterma and Holmes to Prescott. And he had absolutely no idea where they were, or even if they were still alive.
Border Fever Page 3
