by W R. Garwood
“Yes.” I was short with Josh. I didn’t take kindly to his language. “I’m going out to saddle up. It’s getting on for noon, and I’m not going to be late for that sidewinder of a diamondback.”
Josh followed me out back to the adobe barn, behind the casa, and pitched in with Abraham to help saddle up my mare.
“Here, take this.” My brother handed me his personal silver-mounted pocket Colt with pearl handles. I stuck it into my sash, along with Powers’s Navy. The gambler’s pistol was a .36 caliber, while Josh’s was only a .31, but two hands were better than one—and maybe two six-shooters.
When I rode down Mason and turned into Calhoun toward the plaza, my eyes really opened up. The entire plaza and the streets around it were decorated fit for a fiesta. Red and blue banners looped across the streets between buildings, bunting drooped from the trees, and a big American flag flapped lazily in the fresh breeze, humming across from the sparkling waters of the bay. The streets were crowded with natives and visitors from out in the country. Peddlers wandered through the chattering crowds selling tortillas and meat pies, and both saloons seemed to be doing a brisk business, from the drunken shouts and catcalls echoing around the plaza. There even was a four-piece band in the plaza itself.
The bells in the old mission, down by the fort, were chiming the noon hour as I pulled up my mare and looked around for Powers, but the first person I recognized was Dulcima. Dressed in a flame-red gown, with a brightly colored mantilla, she stood under one of the pepper trees, both Castañeda sisters at her side. All three fluttered handkerchiefs and called to me, but the off-tune brass band had begun to blare out some Mexican polka. I lifted my sombrero, then turned to find Agostín Haraszthy at the side of my horse, looking more down-in-the-mouth than usual. “Just over there, señor, I’ve had thees next street roped off, from Twiggs to the next corner of thees plaza. Señor Powers awaits you there. Let us go over and get thees thing finished.”
When we got to the other side of the plaza, Diamond Dick, mighty somberly dressed in a coal-black broadcloth suit and dove-gray sombrero, was standing beside his beautiful white stallion, White Lightning.
A pack of his hangers-on were grouped about the roped-off street shouting boasts at all and sundry who’d placed bets with them—and there’d been one devil of a lot of wagers placed, according to Haraszthy.
“Here are the rules, Señor Bean,” Haraszthy began as the uproar grew and the infernal band, squealing and thumping, came marching over to our side of the square, leading more onlookers, including the girls, who must have outtalked Señora Castañeda.
“The rules say,” the deputy doggedly went on, “that when I fire my pistola, you both shall ride to opposite ends of the roped-off street, and, on my second shot, you shall ride toward each other, firing as you please. But only at each other. If anyone else should be struck, and some of these folks seem bound to get in the way, then I must halt the affair and take the one responsible for the shot to our calabozo.”
I nodded and rode back to my end of the street after Haraszthy had lifted the ropes aside. Powers was mounted now and galloping back to his end of Twiggs, for all the world like some funeral director on horseback who was in a big rush to get on with the services.
I made up my mind right there that he wouldn’t be around to attend my services, if I had anything to do with it.
Bang! went the deputy’s six-gun while the crowd whooped, flags fluttered in the freshening sea winds, and the band snarled into some sort of a Mexican bullring serenade, then the second shot cracked out.
I put the spurs to Brown Bess and charged toward Powers on his big white horse, while half a dozen mongrels cavorted along at our heels. Just about when I was halfway to Powers, who still sat with hands on his pommel, I caught the flash of something metallic on the roof of one of the nearby buildings. But I kept on the lope, Navy in my right fist and my reins in my left.
Whack! Whack! Where Powers had gotten those guns so fast I never knew, but he was coming at me like a white-lightning bolt, firing as fast as he could with both pistols, reins in his teeth.
We thundered past each other, cracking away, and were halfway down the street before either could rein up in a cloud of dust and gravel. The ringing air was suddenly jammed with silence, then the crowd whooped, all shrilly meaner than ever, like a bullfight mob on the look-out for blood.
Again we were headed for each other, as fast as we could spur the horses. With just one shot left in the Navy, I rammed it back into my sash and grabbed for Josh’s .31 pea-shooter. It was about all I had left, and I knew I had to get close enough to do any damage. Whack! Bang! And there came Diamond Dick, eyes glaring out of his pokerface. The last of his shots snatched off my sombrero with a blow on the scalp, carrying all the punch of a sledge-hammer. Blood poured down my face as my head whirled, but I still snapped two shots as we flashed past again, and I got him—for he swayed in the saddle, grabbing at his shoulder and dropping a pistol, then made a wild attempt to haul in his mount as both crowd and band shrilled like infernal maniacs.
Wheeling my horse and scattering those blamed curs, who seemed as hot for excitement as anyone in the clamoring crowd, I was headed back to my end of the street when I glimpsed that flash again—a gun barrel on the roof.
That rifle boomed from atop the building and a bullet slammed the pearl-handled Colt from my hand, plowed through the saddle and my mount’s spine. I hit the dirt as Brown Bess rolled over stone dead, and yanked the Navy from my sash. Another rifle ball bored the ground at my feet, throwing grit and stones into my face, but I got off my last shot and saw a man stagger to the roof’s edge and plunge headlong into the roadway.
Before I could wipe the blood and dust from my face, Powers had recovered and was coming full tilt at me, gun in his left hand and aimed straight at my head. But he pulled up short as Josh broke out of the silent crowd with the musketoon Francisco Almada had left me at the Casa de Oro.
“Back off, Powers!” Josh poked the mean little weapon right into the gambler’s face. “This is loaded with fire and brimstone, all set for you.” He jerked his head at the body of Hidalgo Montano where the no-good lay facedown, with that pack of frisky mutts sniffling him over. “You’ve had your duel and you’ve lost the pot . . . including your back-shooter.”
“Yeah, you’ve had your infernal duelo right enough, Mister Diamondback,” I said, rubbing the blood and dirt out of my eyes. “And I guess it’s your own hide nailed to the barn door, ain’t it . . . along with your pet skunk’s?”
I’d have said more, but Agostín Haraszthy took my arm and tugged me through the cheering, hat-tossing crowd. “Come along, Señor Roy. like I tell you, if you shoot each other that’s your business. But anyone else, even such a one as these Montano, then it’s my business.”
I stared at Josh, who was following us, along with a mighty sober-looking Abraham. “What’s this? Are you going to let him pull me in for trying to save my neck?”
“Go along, Roy.” Josh fingered his scrubby goatee, but kept that deadly little blunderbuss at the ready. “I’m sworn to uphold the law, and I’ve got to back up my officers as well as my relatives. Go along and I’ll handle matters.”
“Handle matters?” I stared at him. “I get it. The old politics again. Well, go by your blamed book if you want, but I’m just about fed up with this town and you both.”
I gawked around for Dulcima and the Castañeda sisters but couldn’t spot them in the milling crowd, and guessed the old señora had herded them back to the casa. Powers wasn’t in sight at all, nor any of his big-mouthed gang.
“I’ll be back, Roy, so just sit tight.” Then Josh and Abraham also made themselves scarce—and mighty soon I was sitting tight, right in San Diego’s calabozo!
I was so frazzled from being knocked out of the saddle and from my scalp wound that after I was bandaged up by the jailer, I stretched out on the canvas cot in my cell without even shucking off my boots. So there I lay, tossing and turning and even shiverin
g, for it wasn’t every day that I shot and killed another human, even one so low-down as Hidalgo Montano. At last I drifted into an uneasy sleep.
I don’t know how long I slept, but something jolted me out of a deep slumber—a crash, then another shuddering crash that shook the whole building. Muffled shouts and curses exploded out front, along with the thudding of many feet and jangling of keys. Raising myself up on one elbow, I saw a batch of torches flaring their way toward me down the dark hallway.
“Come on, Bean! Come out of there, you damned killer! Here’s your midnight date with the rope!” And there loomed a knot of figures, bulky and misshapen in white sheets and robes pulled over their heads.
But their hands were free and filled with weapons; one of them unlocked the barred door to my cell. One hooded rascal reached out for me but staggered back, cursing in gasps from a well-placed boot in the bread basket. Then that masked mob fell on me and began to drag me from my cell, muttering muffled threats and curses.
As I was lugged through the echoing hallway, kicking and punching at my faceless captors, their sputtering torches flung a pack of goblin shapes along the walls until it seemed I was hurried hellward by a batch of the devil’s own.
They’d just shoved me headfirst out into the jailer’s office when another bunch of masked men charged through the front door, guns in hand.
Caught flat-footed, my abductors froze in their tracks, dropped weapons and torches, and hoisted hands roofward without a mutter.
“That’s right, you white-sheeted coyotes! Down on your ugly faces and grab yourself some sleep! You’re already in your nightshirts, ain’t you?”
I scrambled up and took a good look at the four masked strangers in the torchlight. All wore range clothes and used bandannas for masks. The one doing all the talking was just over five feet in height—Flea! His taller companion was also definitely Army—Corporal Bates. And the other pair, I recognized at once despite the old clothes: Josh and Abraham.
Chapter Twenty
C“ome on, Roy!” Josh shoved me toward the doorway. “Let’s get out of here, pronto!” But he stopped to bend over one of the figures on the floor, yanking away its hood.
Diamond Dick Powers lay there grinding his teeth with pain and pure rage and clutching his bandaged shoulder, eyes glittering in the torchlight.
“You were so damned curious about the Men of the Night, eh? Well, take yourself a good look at their blamed captain.” Josh gave Powers a boot in the ribs, then signaled Flea and the others to get to work. In less than five minutes each member of the lynch team was hog-tied with their own rope and roughly rolled into a corner of the room.
“What about them there?” Flea indicated the jailer and deputy, where they lay bound and gagged in an opposite corner of the office.
“Use what you call a brain!” Corporal Bates snapped. “They’re th’ law here, and, once loose, they’ll be askin’ questions. like who are you and who am I. then that bunch of killers on th’ floor will have some more scalps to go after.”
“Right,” Josh muttered. “Leave now. We’ll send help later.”
While Abraham stood at the door, with a torch in one hand and a pistol trained on the trussed-up prisoners, we went out to the hitching rail in front of the calabozo. The night was still crisply brittle with stars, while a fitful breeze drifted in from the bay to whisper through the trees. I looked over the line-up of horses, recognizing Jack Dolan’s gray, Carlos Castro’s paint, and even Diamond Dick’s great stallion, White Lightning—all midnight mounts of a lynch mob, made up of the gamblers, plug-uglies, and hangers-on from Powers’s Crossed Muskets.
Bates tossed over a bedroll, while Joshua Quincy unstrapped his six-gun and handed belt and pistol to me. “There’s a change of clothes in that roll, along with a duster and some money.” He peered narrowly at me in the starlight. “I take it you haven’t much of that gold left. or have you?”
“Mighty little.” I strapped the six-shooter on, and then tied the bedroll behind the saddle of Powers’s White Lightning.
“You may not have the hang of stayin’ out of trouble, but you sure know how to judge good horseflesh,” snickered Flea, emerging back from the calabozo with an armload of weapons.
“I figure that diamondback in there owes me one good horse,” I said, adjusting the stirrups and untying the reins before swinging up into the saddle. “What now?”
“You make yourself good and scarce. Light a shuck for Los Angeles or farther north, then we’ll see what happens.” Josh fingered his goatee.
“I don’t want that horned toad of a Powers to think he ran me out of town,” I said, gentling the great horse as it side-stepped nervously with a strange rider on its back.
“It’s not like you haven’t been chased out of a town before,” Josh snorted, but I could see that he was restless for me to take to the tall timber. “If you stay here, it’s right back into the pokey until I can get us a lawyer. my jurisdiction only goes so far. That pea brain of a Haraszthy thinks he’s got an iron-plated charge against you for plugging Powers’s pet coyote, and it’ll take some doing to get it dismissed. And, in spite of catching Diamond Dick red-handed, he can still stir up a heap of trouble for you. and me.”
“That slippery sidewinder’ll go and claim he’s a bona-fide vigilante and wriggle out of it somehow,” volunteered Bates.
“And you and I won’t get out of anythin’ ourselfs if we don’t get our tails back to th’ fort,” Flea said as he dumped the raiders’ weapons into a rain barrel. “They change guards at five and that blue-bellied Brown would just hone to get us on report for bein’ off post.”
Already a pale thread of light was inching out across the eastern mountain gloom as the stars’ luster dimmed.
Josh ordered Abraham from the calabozo. “High time for us all to scatter.” He lit a lucifer on his boot heel and inspected his watch. “Four o’clock.”
Bates and Flea shook hands before forking their nags for the fort, Flea calling out his parting shot: “Next time, plug the right skunk and save us our sleep!”
“My hat’s still in there somewhere,” I told Josh, who motioned Abraham back into the jailhouse. The little Indian returned with his hands full of sombreros, which he handed up to me one by one. After the third try, I settled for a grey Stetson with a fancy silver-mounted band.
“I thought that one would do.” Abraham gave one of his fleeting smiles.
The sombrero was Diamond Dick’s.
“Seems you always know more than you let on,” I said. “Like what’s happening at Fountain Ranch and who’s coming and going.”
While Josh unhitched his black mare from down the rail, Abraham stepped up to my horse’s head. “Señor Roy, I was Captain Almada’s body servant during the war, and am still loyal to Don Francisco and the Señorita, though I have never been faithless, in principle, to your good brother. He has always treated me like a white man.” He unhitched his bay and stood waiting for Josh’s commands.
“Let’s get a move on, Roy. I’ll ride out with you a piece.” Josh guided his mount up beside us. “And you best ride over to Señor Castañeda’s and roust him up, Abraham. Say there’s been a hell of a commotion at the calabozo, then skin for home.”
Abraham sat his saddle for a moment, then, as I nudged my new mount up Wallace after Josh, the little serving man raised his hand in farewell and rode across the shadow-filled streets toward the Casa Castañeda. And it gave me a stab, sharp as a stiletto, to think I was leaving that lovable pair of scapegrace sisters over there—and even more, Dulcima. I knew that I had myself two goals to gain: Kirker’s gold and the tintype girl.
“I’ll go out with you as far as the river ferry,” said Josh as I spurred up on Diamond Dick’s great stallion. Then we clattered down the empty streets headed for the Camino Real.
A night bird or two called sleepily and the breeze, which had been complaining among the trees, began to grow as a storm commenced to crawl in from the ocean. Sheet lightning flashed crooked fi
ngers through the drifting cloud banks, but the thunder’s mumble was lost in the drumming of our horses’ hoofs.
By the time we’d loped out of town and were heading toward the woods, where Sánchez had met his end at the hand of Murieta, the east was daubed with crimson bars and the first shreds of amber were beginning to pour over the fading wall of night.
We reined in the horses at the edge of the timber and sat breathing them for a moment. “Shouldn’t be anyone on your tail for a spell,” said Josh, staring up at the cloud wrack sliding on toward the land. “Fact is, I told Abraham to report you as headed south for the border.”
“He’s a pure wonder,” I said, watching the blazing rim of the sun bulge up over the distant mountains, then suddenly spill a golden flood across the dark horizon as another day was born.
“He’s surely all of that. And it was his idea to get Corporal Bates and that sawed-off pardner of his out of Fort Stockton. How he did it I couldn’t guess. but that’s Abraham for you.”
By now the storm was drifting off to the south as the thunder growled away into a muted mutter, while the lofting sun burned into the wind-driven clouds until they seemed turned into peaks of pure molten gold.
“Looks like the weather’ll be passable,” said Josh, squinting at his watch again. “But this here’s not the best place to be catching a body’s breath.” He stared over at the twisted old tree where Sánchez had dangled in the lonely winds.
“I wouldn’t bother much over Sánchez. or Murieta.”
“And how’d you know?”
“Just a feeling,” I answered, then changed the subject. “How in the world did Sánchez get mixed up with that gang of lynchers?”
