by Jake Logan
His nostrils flared, blowing snorts like rollers out of his nose, he was beginning to look like the he-devil that Slocum expected to be for sale in this remote camp. Never mind, he had to use what was available. He swung in the saddle in one fluid leap and checked the spooked young horse, then put his rein hand forward for him to go on. Stumbling over his feet the first few steps, Roan about went to this knees. Recovered, he half reared, then dove forward, kicked at the vacant air behind his rear hooves, and the war was on.
The first few jumps weren’t too bad, but the horse gained some power, soared higher, coming down on all four feet. Then he sucked back and whirled a hard allemande left. Still not rid of his rider, he left out in short-coupled crow-hops. Slocum forced him to run, whipping him from side to side with the reins. The gelding tore down the trail like a racehorse, and finally Slocum reined him to a hard stop.
His shoulders lathered in sweat and gasping for his breath, the horse danced on his toes through the tall pines. And Slocum held him hard in check with the bridle. This pony would be better rode down some. All he needed was for someone to stick to him—but this could have happened at a more convenient time. Thing to do next was find the outlaws and rescue Willa from them.
By midday, he found where they had camped the night before. There he stopped and watered his horse. A good drink from the cool spring for himself and a jaw-bite of tough jerky made his meal. Back in the saddle, he short-loped on the trail that went around the mountain he was traveling on.
Late afternoon, he drew the sorrel down from the ground-scoring trot. Something was ahead beside the road. He pushed Red into the trees and made hobbles for him from some cotton rope he found in his saddlebags. Red secure, he set out on foot using the big trees for cover and occasionally seeing a bright bay horse fretting around a big pine where he was tied.
There could be a lookout for the gang up there. No other reason for anyone to stop. The next water source was over a half mile farther on. Silva might not be taking any chances.
Besides, he could use the guard’s weapons and his horse. With stealth he tried to stay out of sight. Ravens saw him and crowed about it. No way to do anything about them. Squirrels chattered about the invader, and a woodpecker quit beating his bill on the ponderosa bark when he drew closer.
The man, he discovered, was sitting up with his back to the trunk. His sombrero on the ground beside him. Was he asleep? Might be, but Slocum couldn’t take a chance of him warning Silva. Surprise was his best advantage, and the long gun across that boy’s lap would be another if he could get to the rifle and not be discovered.
His concern for Willa’s safety became more pressing as he drew closer to the lookout. Then, pistol in his fist and the hammer cocked back, he bent over and put the muzzle in the guard’s face. With his free hand he lifted the hexagon barrel of the .50-caliber rifle and set it against a tree.
“Silence, amigo. That is how you will live to fuck all the putas in Sonora and the rest of Mexico. Stand up.” The wide-eyed boy scrambled to his feet. Slocum poked the .30 in the youth’s muscle-hard stomach and jerked open his gun belt buckle with his left hand. That undone, he slung the holster set over his shoulder.
“Now why shouldn’t I cut your throat?”
“I-I-did nothing to you.”
“What about stealing my woman?”
The youth shook his head. “I never touched her, Señor.”
“Get on your knees.”
“Don’t kill me. Mother of God, I never touched her.”
He shoved him down, holstered the small revolver in his waistband, cut the rope that the boy wore for a belt, then used the cord and bound his hands behind his back. He wadded the youth’s kerchief for a gag and then shoved him down on the ground. Without the rope belt to hold his britches up, the halves of his brown hatchet ass were exposed.
On the saddle horn of the glossy bay gelding were two bandoliers of .50-caliber ammo. He took his time to lengthen the stirrups and then relace them. The .50-caliber buffalo gun in the scabbard, the Colt and holster hung with the ammo and the boy’s sombrero, he swung into the saddle and went back for Red. Ammunition was no longer a problem. The long gun had a terrific range, and he might pick them off at a great distance with it, if the shots didn’t endanger her.
Silva’s camp, he soon discovered, was set in a green grassy basin with live water splashing through it. Horses and mules grazed down the valley and two small boys tended them. There would be no way get his own horses back.
Women toiled over a large campfire with kettles boiling frijoles or black beans. Some of them squatted beside a skillet making tortillas with their palms. No sign of Willa. But he felt certain this was where they held her. He checked the sun time—siesta time. The men must be napping under the ramada shades of canvas stretched over frames made from ropes tied to large trees.
Good, a few rounds well placed would wake them. He loaded the rifle and took aim at an unattended steaming kettle. The bullet exploded the iron pot. Hot water and beans flew everywhere. Screaming women and children fled the camp and ran toward the horse herd.
He ejected the empty casing and smiled as the six-gun-armed, half-naked man with a black mustache came charging out of the shade looking everywhere.
“Silva!” Slocum shouted.
“Where are you, bastardo?” The hairy-chested one shook his fist in the air.
“Drop you gun, or die.”
The man raised his arms with the gun still in his fingers.
“If you want to live, tell all your men to come out and sit on the ground.”
The six-gun still in Silva’s raised fingers, Slocum figured he was considering his chances of living if he made the wrong move. Obviously, the shot into the kettle had made him cautious. Certainly he was thinking this man could shoot him and others before they could reach him.
Silva dropped his revolver.
“Now tell every man to come out and sit. I only want one thing today. I want my woman back. No one will die. No one will be hurt. But if I don’t get her, I will kill five or six of you before you can get in range of me. Savvy?”
Silva waved at him. “I will tell my men to join me and I will send a woman after her.”
“Don’t be long or try any funny tricks. You’ll die first.” Sweat poured down Slocum’s face, and he dried his hand on his pants every chance he dared. One man came out and quickly sat down, then another. Finally, seven men sat on the ground at Silva’s feet.
“They are all here.”
“No tricks. I can drive nails with this rifle. Send out my woman.”
“No tricks.”
Then Slocum saw a man with a rifle taking aim from the right of the largest shade. Slocum lifted the rifle, took aim, fired, then watched the man throw his arms up and fall over backward. Hit hard. The bullet aimed for Slocum raised dust thirty feet downhill from his position.
“Who else wants to die in your camp?” he shouted, his anger growing by the minute
“It was a mistake. A mistake. The woman she is coming,” Silva shouted from his place on the ground in the cluster of men. He waved his hands in surrender.
There better not be any more of that or Silva would be wearing a coffin. Slocum saw Willa waving and starting for him. He wanted to ride down there, pick her up on horseback, but then he wouldn’t have them held at bay. She’d have to make her way on foot up the steep hillside by herself.
Why was that other woman coming up the hillside with her? They were halfway up when Willa dropped her shoulder and threw her elbow with all of her weight into the woman’s chest. The victim fired off a cocked gun in her left hand before she went ass-over-teakettle in a show of white petticoats tumbling down the mountainside.
“I’m coming, Slocum. I’m coming,” Willa said, out of breath, struggling up the steep face.
“You’re fine. You’re fine.” He watched the men in camp—none moved. Obviously they expected some repercussions over their attempt to send a woman with Willa to shoot him.
/> “I couldn’t signal you that she—she had a gun.” Sucking in wind, Willa looked tired, but appeared relieved to be with him.
“Our horses are in the woods behind me. A sorrel and a bay. Get to them, I’m coming.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Scatter their horses,” he said under his breath. He swung the rifle around and took a shot at the feet of two grazing ponies. The rifle roared and dust flew in the horses’ faces. They wheeled around. The herd heads flew up panicked. And then they stampeded down the valley despite the young tenders on foot trying to turn them back.
He reloaded, making sure that the men had not made any moves. “We will meet again, Silva. Don’t try me unless you have confessed to a padre in a church.”
“You are lucky, amigo. Next time I won’t leave you alive.”
A large earthen jar sat to their left. He took aim upon hearing Willa and the horses coming. The roar of the massive gun echoed down the canyon. Black powder smoke swept his face. The vessel exploded and threw water all over the outlaws’ heads.
Good enough. He shoved the rifle in the scabbard and mounted Red. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“How did you do this?” She rode side by side with him.
“There’s the reason.” He pointed as they swept by the bare-assed guard with his hands still tied behind his back, stumbling along toward the camp.
“Where’s his pants?”
“It’s a long story.”
A real long story—whew.
9
The village of San Tomas sat wedged deep in a canyon watered by a good-sized stream. Small irrigated plots lined the winding road, with patches of alfalfa, corn, and beans plus other garden varieties like onions, chilies, and tomatoes weighing down vines with great red fruit. A place where children, chickens, pigs, sheep, milk goats, and cows had a voice in the noise created between the high walls.
The strumming of a guitar invited Slocum inside a cantina that sat atop a tall flight of stairs. Inside, a blind man sat on a tall stool on the small stage and sang Mexican lost-love songs in a voice with such power that he made the skin crawl on Slocum’s back.
“. . . you will my lover, tonight.” He ended with a hard ringing strum of the guitar strings.
“Did someone come in? I saw a shadow too big to be another fly passing through the doorway.”
“I did.” Slocum stepped over from ordering a beer at the bar to shake his hand. “Slocum’s my name.”
“Joaquin Johnny, they call me. You are a big man, Señor Slocum.”
“Compared to what?”
Joaquin laughed. “An elephant perhaps.”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you come to look for the gold, Señor?”
“No, I came to swap an Indian out of a white girl.”
“An Apache?”
“Yes, do you know any with a white woman captive?”
“Apaches think that I have powerful medicine. They can’t understand I don’t need my eyes to make music. Yes, I know some.”
The man’s mostly white eyes were distracting to look at. Slocum could understand why he disturbed the superstitious Denay. Things that were different or unusual about an individual bothered native people. He knew of a blue-eyed Indian who said his mother hid him from the others until he was four years old. He said that she believed they would have killed him otherwise
“You make good music. Make some more, but if you find an Apache I can talk to, let me know.” He dropped two tencentavo pieces that rang in the cup.
“You are very generous sir, for ten centavos I would sing for a long time. For two, maybe forever.” Joaquin laughed and began to strum his guitar. “I shall look for that one.”
Slocum went back and sipped on the beer, listening to the man sing a love song about a woman who waits for her man. The cerveza wasn’t cold, but it was cool and cut the dust in his throat. The glass empty, he nodded at the bartender and left, going out the open doors and down the long flight of stairs to where Willa sat her horse and held his reins. “You learn anything up there?”
“You hear the singer?” Slocum tossed his head at the music and remounted.
“Yes.”
“He’s blind. He says he is special to the Apaches and will try to find one of them to talk to me.”
“How did you do that in such a few minutes?”
“Our spirits crossed.”
“Something crossed.” She shook her head to show she doubted him. “Where will we stay?”
“Dona Valdez’s place.”
“What is it?”
“A whorehouse.”
Willa looked to the blue skies for help.
He reached over and clapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’ll like her.”
“Slocum, have you ever taken a woman to a whorehouse before?”
“No, don’t guess I have.”
“Silly, you don’t take them to one, you go there to find one.”
“Wait. You have never met Dona Valdez.”
“I guess then I’m going to anyway, like it or not.”
He gave her a you-will sort of look and they rode on.
How could he tell her that these places in such remote country weren’t like the whorehouses in Tucson or Tombstone. There the customer picked out a girl in the parlor, marched upstairs with her, had his privates washed off by hand in some hot soapy water until his pistol was cocked. Then his pecker and balls were dried off briskly, he jumped in bed and bang, it was over. Sorry, no seconds. But she’d learn all about the situation up there while he tried to find Whey or the Chiricahuas that held the Salazar girl.
Thunder close by told him that they needed to get on to the house of ill repute. He set his horse in a trot. Looking upset, she rode beside him.
In the cold rain pelting down on them in the courtyard, a barefoot boy came out to take their horses and Slocum sent Willa ahead. Soaked to the skin, she was not hard to convince to go on. At last, he guided her through the doorway and into the alcove with tile floors and tall ceilings that opened to the large living room.
Two young women, holding up a blanket, were asking her to undress there in the hallway. She frowned at him from behind the blanket’s screen. However, she began to disrobe from her wet clothing. Then they wrapped her in the mountain-woven-cotton blanket and the shortest one hurried her down the hallway.
“Well, look who the rain chased in,” the taller one said, and flipped her shoulder-length black hair back from her face as she held the second blanket up for him.
“Yes, a drowned rat.”
“No, Señor.” The she looked around with a mischievous set to her lips. “Did you think there were no women here and brought your own?”
“No, I rescued her from some bandidos in the mountains,” he said.
“Oh, I only wanted to tease you. Now undress. Already you have drained a lot of water on the floor.”
“I see that.”
He shed his knee-high boots—the hardest part. Then he hung his gun belt over her head and one shoulder. The rest came off quickly, until he hesitated at taking off the bottom half of his underwear. She again laughed out loud at him.
“If I had a big dick like that one of yours, I’d show it off every chance I got. They’re wet, take ’em off.”
“This dick on you? Why, they’d for sure all want to see it.” He hopped around on one foot, then the other, taking the wet sticking bottoms half off.
The young woman holding the blanket up to cover him when he was through was bowed over laughing. “I bet they would.”
She delivered him to a large bedroom, where he found Willa dressing behind a Chinese screen.
“Gracias,” he said to the girl and closed the door. “This is better than being in a stable.”
Willa came out in a fluffy robe and nodded. “I agree. Only what do I charge?”
He swept her up in his arms, then bent over and kissed her. He could taste her mouth—the sweet nectar had not left her, d
espite, no doubt, the outlaws’ attempts to defile her. They finally parted and she buried her head against his chest. “I thought I would be with them forever. That they’d killed you and no one would even know where I was at.”
“I know. I know.” He rocked her in his arms. “I can’t make what happened go away. All I can do is try to make today and tomorrow better.”
“I want a bath before we do a thing. I want every stinking drop of them off my skin.”
“I understand.”
A knock on the door made him realize he was naked. He grabbed the blanket and she cracked the door.
“They have hot water for a bath,” Willa said over her shoulder.
“Let them in. That’s what you ordered.”
“I ordered?”
“Yes, you said—”
She threw open the door and three women marched in with two pails apiece. They looked amused at him wrapped in a blanket. Then they dumped the hot-smelling contents of their containers into the copper tub.
“We can bring rinse water later,” the one in charge said. “Pull that velvet cord when you want some.”
Willa frowned at the rope hanging beside the door against the wall. “Sí, I can do that.”
She bolted the door after them. “Are these people mind readers?”
“Some of them are.”
She undid the robe, slipped out of it, and then put it on a straight-back chair. Her pointed full breasts jiggled as she bent over to test the temperature with her hand. She straightened and sight of her long white shapely derriere brought back tantalizing thoughts of sessions they’d shared connected.
“A little hot, but that might be good. It will erase more of their marks.”
The blanket off her, he stood by holding the long-handled brush.
She laughed at his pose as she cautiously stepped into the tub. “Are you in a hurry?”
“No. You’re setting the time.”
Submerged so her breasts floated, she smiled. “I won’t be long.”
“Good,” he said, and moved in to scrub her back.
She closed her eyes at his attention and acted as if she was in another world, gripping the edge of the tub as he worked the brush hard up and down her spine. Amused, he applied lots of effort to his handiwork. Then he bent over and kissed her mouth.
