Deuces Wild

by Dusty Richards

  “You are new to this place?” she said, and when he nodded, she added, “Beware, there are men here who would kill you for two cents.” Then she snapped her fingers to show him how fast death would be for him.

  He blinked at her soft-spoken words. With a quick check to be certain they were alone, he asked, “Kill me?”

  “Sí, this is not a good place for you to be.”

  “Why?” he asked as if pained.

  She flipped over the large flour tortilla on the grill using her fingertips. Then her brown eyes met his. “I don’t know why—only I know it is dangerous for you to be here. They are like mad dogs.”

  “I will keep my eyes open,” he promised her. This woman, he was satisfied, was a bruja, but her warning sounded sincere. Individuals like her knew many things about spells and the future—her concern made him feel uncomfortable.

  “My name is Flora. I live down by the river. If you need a place, come and find me.”

  “How will I know your place?” he asked, checking again to be sure no one could overhear them.

  “There is a carita in the yard with faded red paint on it.”

  “Can you tell who is after me?” he asked.

  She shook her head, scooping up with a metal blade the steaming browned meat and vegetables to put into the tortilla. Deftly, she wrapped it and handed it to him.

  “Ten centavos.”

  He paid her and watched as she wiped her hands on the apron. When she raised her gaze to meet his, she shook her head in disapproval. “Get on your horse, and ride away. Now, before they kill you.”

  “I can’t. I promised to meet a man here tonight.”

  “It will cause you much pain and suffering, if not your life.”

  Not an unattractive woman, though her lips were too full and her hair swept back so hard it slanted her eyes. Small breasts and a belly from giving multiple births. Still, she was not hard to look at, he decided, savoring bites of her tasty food.

  “You are a good cook. You have no man?”

  “A widow,” she said quickly. “And if you don’t leave now, you are a fool.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, and went back to eating his first food of the day.Was she a good witch or a bad one? Only time would tell, but perhaps he should more seriously consider her warning.

  The sound of horses coming on the run forced him to turn and watch a half dozen men draw up and dismount across the street. Talking and laughing, they barely cast a look his way. Pounding dust off their clothing, they headed for the cantina’s batwing doors and pushed inside. This would be them,Torres and his gang.

  She spit in the dust after them. Then a strong curse left her lips, barely audible to him.

  “You dislike those men?”

  “Banditos. They took my young brother Rafael with them. He never came home.”

  Pedro nodded and took another bite of the wrap he held in his hands. The brother may have been the one who was killed at the patrón’s ranch—he dared not mention it. Grateful she had not read his mind, he wondered about this man Torres. Had he been among the ones who rode in?

  Soon a rider came on a single-footing horse, a blood-red bay stallion that shuffled in a quick gait. The big man reined up before the cantina. Once dismounted, he took off his expensive sombrero and mockingly bowed toward Flora.

  She quickly turned away. The words she muttered under her breath were so fierce and with such hatred they made her face glow even in the shadows, as the sun was far down in the west.

  “A friend of yours?” Pedro asked from behind his handful of food.

  “He’s a killer.”

  He nodded. That must be the outlaw leader. The reality of the moment made his stomach upset. His mission was to learn all about the leader of the gang; the goal would not be that simple. The notion sobered him.

  Chapter 10

  DEPUTY FAUCET STOOD BY HIS HORSE, WAITING AT A driveway for Burt and One-Eye. Burt reined up and nodded to the man. Down the lane sat a weather-gray farm house and some outbuildings. Rows of okra, green beans, and tomatoes lined the two wagon ruts leading to the house. The plants looked floured in the fine dust that horses and rigs on the road churned up.

  “Learn anything?” Burt asked.

  “You were right. Mrs. Henry said she’s been missing a pepper can from her kitchen table ever since the time of his escape.”

  Burt turned to the Apache. “One-Eye, we better take a look around up there.”

  The scout agreed.

  “You read fortunes?” Faucet asked as they rode up the lane.

  “No, but pepper don’t come from the sky. Prisoners don’t carry it. There had to be a source.”

  “Well, I can tell you they never saw or heard him.”

  “If we don’t find any tracks here, we better start checking with folks about other missing things.” Burt booted his dun after the scout for the house.

  “Like what?” Faucet asked.

  “A missing knife or axe, for starters.”

  “Yeah, he would need them things. But no one’s seen him.”

  “Faucet,” Burt said with a sigh. “You don’t see Apaches.

  They’re more like a wisp of smoke, gone on the wind.”

  “I’m beginning to believe that.”

  Burt removed his hat as the slat-shaped woman in the wash-worn dress came out onto the front stoop. Her sun-darkened face looked like a dried apple with a thousand wrinkles.

  “Good day.”

  She narrowed her eyelids against the sun. “Harry says that polecat must’ve stole my pepper.”

  “Could have. Can my man look around your place for tracks?”

  “Guess so.”

  Burt turned to One-Eye and motioned for him to go look around. Then he dismounted.

  “When did you miss it, Mrs. Henry?” he asked.

  “The morning of the big commotion, when all them men was out here. At breakfast that day, Ira went to grumbling where the pepper was for his gravy, and we couldn’t find it nowheres. New tin, too.”

  Burt nodded that he understood. “Where did you keep it?”

  “On the table in there.” She shook her head and then hugged her arms as if cold. “Makes the chills run up my arms to even think that crazy red devil was in my house stealing it and us’n sound asleep. Coulda killed us all.”

  “Anything else missing?”

  She shook her head, then, as if she had discovered something, said, “Might be a knife gone. Come to think of it. There might be a butcher knife missing. You reckon he took that, too?”

  “Probably.”

  “Oh.” She shuddered.

  “Mrs. Henry, I figure he’s long gone,” Burt said to soothe her fears.

  “But my Lord, mister, what if he’s got my knife and kills someone with it?” She stuck out her head to ask him the question.

  Burt shook his head, seeing One-Eye come around the building. “Won’t be your fault, ma’am. Thank you.”

  He remounted, ready to go.

  “Mercy sakes,” she said, still upset.

  The three started up the drive for the road. Burt glanced back and, satisfied the woman couldn’t hear, asked his scout, “You find any sign?”

  One-Eye nodded. “He went in by the back door.”

  “My God.” Faucet swallowed hard. “And he never killed them?”

  One-Eye shook his head and with typical Apache nonchalance said, “He only needed pepper.”

  “And a knife,” Burt added, then raised his gaze. “Wonder what else he’s borrowed in his flight?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Faucet said. “He’s stealing things right off folks’ tables while they’re asleep.No one’s seen him, and they never put two and two together?”

  “That’s it. I don’t think this Apache is a killer. Oh, he’ll kill when he has to, but so far, he’s done a great job of avoiding leaving any sign.” Burt turned to One-Eye as they rode up the road. “What do you think?”

  “He don’t want to be caught,” his scout said.
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  Burt agreed, and they pushed on northward up the dirt road.

  An hour later, they were at Sam Borger’s farm. Sam, a beanpole of a man, was bent over, busy fitting a shoe on a thin saddle pony. He never stopped working, hammering the shoe on the anvil and pounding it into shape, putting it in a pail of water to sizzle, then going back and checking the fit on the horse’s hoof. He spat tobacco with regularity and talked the whole time he worked like a man without enough hours in a day.

  “Yeah, I been missing a good new flat file since he escaped. First I thought I misplaced it, but I tore the damn shed apart looking for it. Somehow, I never figured that crazy Injun had got it till you mentioned it. Dang thing was there that morning, ’cause I used it on a rivet in the harness to replace one; that evening, it was gone.” Bent over again with the pony’s hoof in hand, he spat a big brown gob out in the dust and shook his head warily.

  “That red bastard had to take the file in broad daylight, and me plowing cotton right out there. And I never seed him.” He dropped the hoof and straightened stiff-like. “No wonder they ain’t captured him.”

  “Anything else missing from your shop?” Burt asked.

  “Oh, a hand axe.”

  “By grab, Green, that’s what you said he’d take,” Faucet said aloud.

  “What all’s he got?” the farmer asked with a perplexed frown on his face.

  “A can of pepper, a knife, an axe, your file, and what else?” Faucet asked, adding it all up. “That we know about.”

  “A pearl-handled Colt pistol he took off Marshal Egan,” Burt added, recalling the conversation about Deuces being armed.

  “Where do you figure he’s headed?” Borger asked.

  “As far away as he can get,” Burt said. He thanked the man and gave a head toss.When the three were mounted, he turned to One-Eye, who had scouted around the sheds while they talked. “Was he here?”

  “Came from those woods.” He pointed to the back of the place where the trees started. “Then he hid in those tall weeds until that farmer’s back was turned.”

  Borger took off his weathered straw hat and beat his leg with it. “By damn, he’s slicker than a darn weasel.”

  “He’s an Apache,” Burt said, and they rode on.

  “How we ever going to find the wind?” Faucet asked as they turned to ride up the road.

  “Smelling for it, I guess,” Burt said, looking at the low sun in the west. “We better find us some food or cook some. It won’t be long till dark.”

  “We ain’t done bad for one day,” Faucet said. “We done found out more than all them posses have in a week. How far ahead you reckon he is?”

  “A goodly ways,” Burt said, with his thoughts more on his ranch out in Arizona than on Deuces’s thin trail. Eventually, they would sort out this mess in Texas. But how were Angela and his guards at the ranch getting along?

  Down the road a few miles, Faucet found a farmer’s wife willing to feed them. Mrs. Vanvort was tall, with her gray hair in a bun. In her day, she had been a beautiful woman, Burt decided after he met her. Obviously Dutch; her accent remained, and they learned her husband had gone to search for a missing teenage girl.

  “Been gone for four or five days.” She shook her head in disapproval. “Good girl, that Greta, she took care of the family goat herd.”

  “No sign of her?” Burt asked, taking one of the straightback chairs she showed them.

  “I never heard of no girl missing,” Faucet said with a frown.

  “Well, they figured she might come back.”

  “Come back?” Faucet asked, and looked at Burt and One-Eye with a scowl.

  “Yeah, you see, Hans Schumaker, that’s her stepfatherwell, him and her don’t get along so well.”

  “You saying the girl and her stepfather don’t get along?” Faucet asked.

  At first, Burt wondered if Mrs. Vanvort would answer him. Then, at last, she nodded as if she wasn’t telling the whole story.

  “So when she didn’t return home, they went to searching for her?” Burt asked.

  “Yes, not right away.”

  “You think she ran off?” Burt asked.

  “Who knows about young girls?”

  “How old?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Did she have any boyfriends?”

  “No!”

  Her answer came so fast Burt knew there was more to it than that. Something was left unsaid about the girl’s disappearance and why they had waited so long to take up the search for her. The whole thing did not add up for him. After all, the sheriff had posses all over that could have been looking for her while they searched for Deuces.

  “Really, her stepfather was very strict with her.” The woman looked up from stirring her skillet of sizzling fried potatoes before she continued, “Too strict. They say he disciplined her if she even spoke to a boy her own age.”

  “Maybe he was jealous-” Faucet spouted off, then he wilted at Mrs. Vanvort’s disapproving look at him and tried to take it back.

  Burt kept his own counsel. Outside, someone rode up on horseback, and they all tried to see who it was. She held up her hand for them to stay and went out onto the porch to talk to the visitors.

  “Need to water our horses, ma’am. We’re passing through,” the front rider said. “If we may, ma’am?”

  “Help yourself. Supper’s on the stove,” she said.

  “No, thanks. We, ah-we better get these back to the ranch. Obliged, though.” They spurred their mounts, pulling on their reluctant horses. Burt went to the back door and studied the two youthful-looking wranglers as they hurriedly brought the half dozen ponies past him and circled them around the rock-walled tank. The second rider never turned toward the house; he was either terribly bashful or too backward to look at anyone. In a few minutes, the two were ready to leave. The talker gave a loud thanks going by the house. They rode out in a stiff trot.

  “Didn’t take them long to skedaddle,” Faucet remarked, coming to the doorway.

  “You know them?” Burt asked, wondering about their haste.

  “Nope, never seen them before in my life.”

  “Who owns the Forty-five Slash horse brand?”

  “I sure don’t know. Why?” Faucet paused before sipping his coffee.

  “Just a hunch,” Burt said. “But as nervous as those two were, I’d say those horses were stolen, and they were on the run.”

  “I’ll be dagnapped. I don’t think like a lawman. Had we better go get them?”

  “Horse stealing isn’t a federal law. My badge is for federal offenses.”

  Faucet pulled on his beard. “Guess you’re right.”

  “Food’s ready,” she announced. Then she straightened from putting the big cast-iron skillet of fried potatoes and onions on the table. “You really reckon they stole them?” she asked.

  “I’d bet a couple of your good meals like this that they rustled them,” Burt said, taking his place.

  “Terrible shame. They were such nice-looking young men.” She surveyed the table. “I’ll slice some bread and get butter.”

  Her food melted in Burt’s mouth. Mrs. Vanvort hovered over them, making certain that they had everything, including a glass of buttermilk for him that tasted like dessert to his tongue. How long since he had any fresh buttermilk? Years ago, perhaps back in Missouri during the war. A dark-eyed beautiful girl named Ginny served him some as fresh as Mrs. Vanvort’s. Two bushwhackers later raped and killed her. He made damn sure that they paid for their treachery with their lives. The grimness of his memory came near to spoiling his first good meal since leaving Arizona.

  “Excuse me,” she finally said, and broke into his thoughts. “Is Mr. One-Eye an Apache?” She indicated the Indian busy eating at Burt’s elbow.

  “One-Eye’s a White Mountain Apache. He lives on the San Carlos reservation. He’s a tracker and a deputy U.S. marshal.”

  “He found signs of that escapee,” Faucet said, looking up from his food and shaking his head in disb
elief. “I swear, you’d never seen anything if you’d looked close.”

  “Maybe if he had time, he could find Greta?” the woman said, looking at the three of them.

  “We’ll have to see,” Burt said, not wanting to deny her openly, but they had an escaped federal prisoner to capture. If the girl showed up, they’d return her, of course, to her home. More than likely, she slipped off with some boy she loved, and they were miles away—things like that happened all the time.

  “Marshal, Greta’s mother, Hilda, is my best friend. She is beside herself over the girl’s disappearance. Schumaker, he is a hard man to live with, I think, but he’s a good provider. A little zealous, maybe—”

  The dogs heralded a welcome for the man who rode into the driveway on a jaded horse.

  “Good,” she said. “My Peter is home.”

  When he came through the doorway, she smiled at the lean man in his forties, and before she explained about her company, she asked, “You find her today?”

  “Naw.” Her husband looked defeated. “She disappeared just like smoke.”

  Faucet shot a questioning glance at Burt, who gave the man a mild head shake to cut off any words. If there was anything about the girl’s disappearance and Deuces, they’d better check it out. But he didn’t need to upset the missus—too nice a lady for them to do that to her. But there could be something to this girl’s disappearance and the escapee. Perhaps they should go in the morning and check it out. More detours, probably.

  Chapter 11

  “WHO SENT YOU?” THE DEMAND WAS LOUD IN HIS ears, and a knotted fist hit Pedro in the gut like a mule’s kick. Hanging by his wrists from the rafters, through his hazy vision Pedro studied the members of Torres’s gang crowded around close, with their angry faces, hard eyes peering at him. A couple of them had jumped him when he entered the cantina, then dragged him out the back door, past a screaming half-dressed puta. They’d strung him up to the rafters on this back porch.

  “Wrong man,” he managed to gasp.

  “No!” Torres shouted. “Your name ain’t Gomez, either.”