Scratch snorted. “What a load of bull! If Davidson and his bunch come out into the open, those bandidos’ll shoot the hell out of ’em.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Alfred said with a nod. “But Cordoba insisted that I carry the message to Mr. Davidson.” A shudder went through the young man. “I’ve never seen anyone so frightening in all my life. Cordoba’s a huge man, with a bushy black beard and the eyes…the eyes of a madman! The whole time I was talking to him, I was afraid that he’d pull a gun and kill me without any warning.”
Bo nodded. “He might have, if the mood struck him. He had a use for you, though, so he let you live.” With a frown, Bo tugged on his earlobe. “Did he say anything about that machine gun of Lancaster’s?”
“The Gardner gun?” Alfred shook his head. “He didn’t mention it. Why?”
“Because he might not have heard about it. He may not have any idea that Davidson has a weapon like that.”
“What difference does it make? Cordoba has fifty or sixty men, all of them killers!”
“Fella could make short work of sixty men with that devil gun,” Scratch said. “Probably wouldn’t take more’n a minute or two.”
“The problem is, whoever’s manning the gun would have to stay alive to use it,” Bo pointed out. “Cordoba’s men would be doing their best to pick him off.”
Alfred stared at them. “Are you really trying to figure out a way to beat Cordoba? After all you’ve done to try to defeat Mr. Davidson? Why don’t you just ride away and let Cordoba wipe him out?”
“Because Cordoba wouldn’t stop with Davidson,” Bo said. “Innocent folks would die in the fighting, too, and Cordoba won’t treat the people of the valley any better than Davidson has. Plus Davidson is holding some of our friends prisoner. We don’t want to see them in the hands of a man like Cordoba…assuming they even live through the ruckus.”
“After seeing what they did to Clancy…” Alfred shook his head. “I can understand why you feel that way. I…I wouldn’t want them to get Rosalinda in their power.”
“What did happen to this fella Clancy?” Bo asked. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned it.”
“They shot him. But I guess Cordoba wanted to impress upon me how dangerous he is, because he had Clancy tied to the well in the plaza.” Alfred spread his arms and his legs to demonstrate. “Like this, you know. Then the men stood off at a distance and…and tried to see how many times they could shoot him without killing him. They kept just nicking him on his arms or his legs. One man shot off his ears. They…they just shot him to pieces, a little bit at a time, until he finally died. And Cordoba made me watch the whole thing.”
Alfred’s voice sounded like he was staring into some cosmic abyss filled with unnameable horrors as he described what he had witnessed. When he was finished, he shuddered again.
“It takes a plumb hydrophobia skunk to do somethin’ like that,” Scratch said.
Bo nodded. “I’d say you’re right. What are you supposed to do now, Alfred?”
“I have to tell Mr. Davidson what Cordoba said. Cordoba is giving him until dawn to surrender.”
“What if Davidson leaves the canyon tonight?”
“He can’t,” Alfred said. “Cordoba posted men at the mouth of the canyon to keep him bottled up inside. I had to pass under their guns when I rode out. It was terrifying, but I knew they had orders from Cordoba not to kill me…yet.”
“Do you know how many there are?”
“Half a dozen or so. The rest are in San Ramon, celebrating the riches they’re going to have. But if they hear any shooting from the canyon, they can get there in a hurry and finish off Mr. Davidson if he tries to escape.”
Bo thought the situation over for a long moment. While he was thinking, Scratch said, “Seems to me like the only chance is to hit Cordoba before he expects it.”
“That’s right,” Bo agreed. “We’ll have to use the element of surprise…and that machine gun will be the biggest surprise of all.”
Alfred said, “I can’t believe that after everything that’s happened, you’re going to fight on Mr. Davidson’s side again.”
“You’ve heard of the lesser of two evils?”
Alfred nodded.
“Well, I’m not sure there is such a thing here,” Bo said, “but Cordoba is the more pressing threat. I want you to ride back into the canyon and tell Davidson that we’re offering him a truce. We’ll help him take care of Cordoba.”
“How in the world are you going to do that?”
“We’re going to kill the men Cordoba posted at the mouth of the canyon,” Bo said. “Once we’ve done that, Davidson and his men can attack Cordoba’s forces in the village just before dawn. Lancaster will have that Gardner gun, and Scratch is going to be up in the bell tower with a Winchester so he can pick off some of the bandidos from there.”
Scratch grinned. “So all I have to do is sneak through a whole village of hombres who’d like nothin’ better than to kill me?”
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”
“I like it,” Scratch said with a nod.
“That’s not all, though,” Bo went on as he put a hand on Alfred’s shoulder. “Even with the machine gun, Davidson is going to be outnumbered. I’m sure he has plenty of extra guns in there. You’ll have to convince him to turn loose the men who have been working in the mine and arm them so that they can fight against Cordoba, too.”
Alfred started shaking his head even before Bo was finished. “He’ll never do that. He won’t let the villagers go. He can’t trust them, after the way he’s treated them.”
“He’ll have to, and the men will have to realize that they have a bigger enemy now than Davidson. It’ll be up to you, and to Teresa, Rosalinda, and Evangelina, to convince them of that. If he can hit Cordoba with a force of thirty or forty men, plus that machine gun, he’s got a chance of winning.”
Alfred thought it over and finally began to nod slowly, as if realizing that the plan stood at least a chance of working. Anyway, it was better than surrender and certain death.
“If we win…what then?”
“We’ll deal with that once the time comes. Maybe after we’ve been on the same side again, Scratch and I can get Davidson to listen to reason.”
Bo knew that wasn’t true. If they lived through the fight with Cordoba, Davidson would double-cross him and Scratch without hesitation and do his best to kill them.
But knowing that, maybe the two of them could be ready for it.
“First things first,” Bo went on. “Tell us as best you can where Cordoba’s men are hidden around the canyon mouth.”
Alfred did so, reminding them, “I might not have seen all of them when I rode out. There could be more than I think.”
“We’ll keep that in mind. Give us about fifteen minutes to get in position, then you ride through there just like you did before. They’ll be expecting you.”
“All right. But I’m not sure how you can kill six men without raising an alarm and warning Cordoba that something is going on.”
“You leave that to us, young fella,” Scratch said. “Bo and me was practically raised by Injuns. Skulkin’ around comes natural to us.”
“Good,” Alfred said, “because Cordoba told me that a lot of his men are half-breed Yaquis…and they love to torture their prisoners.”
CHAPTER 29
Bo and Scratch knew they were lucky not to have run into some of Cordoba’s men when they rode down into the valley earlier that evening. Their horses’ hoofbeats could have easily attracted the attention of the invading bandidos.
So they dismounted and led the horses into the grove of trees on the creek bank instead. They would leave the animals there for the time being. After the threat of the guards at the canyon mouth had been taken care of, they could retrieve the horses.
Bo had a good sense of time, and had been keeping track of it in his head as he and Scratch approached Cutthroat Canyon on foot. He knew that Alfred would rea
ch the canyon mouth soon. Luckily, Cordoba’s men had no way of knowing exactly when Alfred had left San Ramon, or they might wonder why it had taken him so long to get back to the canyon from the village.
The Texans dropped to their hands and knees and began crawling toward the canyon, so that their light-colored clothing wouldn’t be as noticeable in the darkness. They stayed behind the sparse brush as much as possible.
Bo heard the clopping hoofbeats of Alfred’s horse as the young man rode up. Someone challenged him in Spanish, and Alfred replied, “It…it’s just me. Alfred. I rode to San Ramon before, remember?”
Several of the guards laughed at the sheer terror that was easy to hear in Alfred’s voice. That helped Bo and Scratch locate them. One of the men asked, “You bring Bartolomeo’s message for your boss, no?”
“Th-that’s right.”
“We heard the shots. You got to see our men play their favorite game, gringo?”
More laughter as Alfred nervously bobbed his head.
“Maybe before this is over we play the game with you, eh?”
“Señor Cordoba promised…promised that if we surrendered, we would be allowed to leave peacefully,” Alfred managed to say.
“Oh, sí, sure, that’s what I meant.”
That provoked some hilarity, too. Another man stood up from behind a rock and waved Alfred on.
“Run on back to your boss, gringo,” he commanded.
Alfred hurried, all right, bouncing awkwardly in the saddle as he prodded his horse into a run. As he disappeared into the shadows inside the canyon, Bo reflected that Alfred could have gone around San Ramon and kept riding if he had wanted to, not even pausing to get Cordoba’s so-called surrender terms. Obviously, that option had never entered the young man’s head. He wasn’t going to abandon Rosalinda to whatever fate might await her at the hands of the bandits, which certainly wouldn’t be anything good.
Once Alfred was gone, the guards exchanged a few lewd comments among themselves about his manhood, then settled down to keep watch on the canyon mouth again. By this time, Bo and Scratch had a pretty good idea where all of them were. Using hand signals to communicate, the Texans decided that Bo would take the three men to the left of the canyon, while Scratch handled the trio of guards to the right. They had to do it without making any racket, too, because gunshots would bring Cordoba and the rest of the bandidos charging out from San Ramon.
The night had to remain as quiet and apparently peaceful as it was now. Death, like fog, would come creeping.
Cordoba had given Davidson until dawn to make up his mind about surrendering, so there was no hurry. Bo took his time crawling toward the outermost guard on his side of the canyon. He planned to work his way in toward the opening, one guard at a time.
When he was close enough to the first man to smell sweat and the greasy buckskins the man wore, he slipped his knife from behind his belt noiselessly. The guard shifted and cleared his throat.
That was the last sound he made. Bo came up behind him, clamped his left hand over the man’s mouth and jerked his head back, and used his right hand to draw the blade quickly across the guard’s throat. A hot flood gushed over Bo’s hand as blood sprayed out from the gaping wound. The guard died almost instantly.
Carefully, Bo lowered the corpse to the ground and started toward the next man, moving as quietly as a cat or an Indian. Just as Bo came up behind him, the guard turned his head to spit chewing tobacco on the rocks at his feet. He must have seen a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye as Bo closed in on him, because he tried to twist around and bring up the rifle he held.
Bo struck swiftly, swiping the knife across the man’s throat in a sweeping blow. More blood splashed on him. The guard’s mouth opened as he tried to yell a warning. He wouldn’t be able to force a shout through his ruined throat, but he might manage to gurgle loudly enough to be heard. Bo couldn’t afford that. His free hand shot out and caught hold of the guard’s face, the fingers digging in on either side of the man’s mouth, which formed an O under the pressure of Bo’s grip. The bandit shivered and shook in his death throes, his eyes wide and staring into Bo’s from a distance of less than a foot.
It didn’t take long for life to fade from those eyes. Again, Bo lowered the dead man to the ground without a sound.
That left just one man on his side of the canyon mouth, and Bo hoped that Scratch was having equal success on the other side. Judging by the lack of an uproar, that was probably the case. Bo crept closer to the last man, and was about to strike when the guard suddenly whirled around as if someone had shouted a warning in his ear.
Too late, Bo realized what had alerted the guard to the lurking menace behind him. Bo had spilled a lot of blood in the past few minutes, and quite a bit of it had gotten on him. The sharp, coppery scent of the stuff filled his nostrils—and the guard must have smelled it, too, and recognized it for what it was. He had known that someone coming up behind him covered with fresh blood couldn’t be a good thing.
Bo saw the rifle barrel coming toward him, and lunged at the guard. He didn’t try to grab the weapon and force the barrel skyward or toward the ground. Instead he slapped his left hand down on top of the breech so that when the guard jerked the trigger and the hammer fell, it caught the web of skin and flesh between his thumb and first finger instead of the firing pin striking the cartridge in the chamber. The rifle didn’t go off.
Bo crashed into the guard and knocked him over backward. As the man fell he howled, “Paco! Jorge!”
The two names were all he got out before Bo landed on top of him, drove the knife into his belly, and ripped the blade to the side as hard as he could, first one way and then the other. The wound was so big that Bo’s whole hand plunged into it, and he felt the bandit’s guts writhing around his fingers like snakes.
Bo jerked his hand out of the man’s belly and smashed the handle of the knife into the man’s mouth, feeling teeth shatter under the blow. The guard might not have felt it, though, because he was already close to dying. He shuddered and went the rest of the way over the divide.
Bo didn’t think it was likely that anyone back in San Ramon had heard the shout, although he couldn’t rule it out. He rolled off the body. The rifle’s hammer still pinched the skin of his other hand. He got hold of it and eared the hammer back, freeing his hand. It hurt like blazes where the hammer had dug into it. He shook the hand, trying to ease the pain.
“Bo!” The urgent whisper came from Scratch. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Bo told his old friend as Scratch loomed up out of the shadows. “No real harm done. What about your three?”
“Dead as they can be. I had a little trouble with the last one, but he didn’t raise too much of a ruckus.”
Bo grunted. “Same here. Did you see any more?”
“Nope. I’d say ol’ Alfred was right about there only bein’ six of ’em.”
“Then as long as nobody comes to relieve them before morning, we’re all right,” Bo said.
“As long as Davidson goes along with the plan,” Scratch pointed out.
“I don’t reckon he’s got much choice about that,” Bo said. “Not if he wants even a chance to live.”
To the Texans’ surprise, about a half hour later, a soft call sounded from just inside the canyon mouth as they waited there. “Creel! Morton! Are you out there?”
Bo straightened from the rock where he had been sitting. “Davidson? Is that you?”
“Yeah. We need to parley. Are Cordoba’s men dead?”
“They are,” Bo said. “Come on out here if you want to…alone.”
Davidson stepped out of the shadows into the fading moonlight. He carried a rifle, and even in the dim light Bo could tell that his once-handsome face was haggard from strain.
“You took a chance coming out here,” Bo commented. “Those bandits could have still been lurking.”
“Not that much of a chance,” Davidson said, and from the shadows a grim chuckle confirmed it.
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br /> “We’d have had it out right here and now if we’d had to,” Jim Skinner said. “I’ll still do it. You don’t know how much I want to kill you, Creel.”
“That’s enough,” Davidson snapped. “I hate these two bastards as much as you do, Skinner, but it appears that we need them at the moment.”
“I’d say you need all the fightin’ men you can get,” Scratch drawled. He hadn’t started for the bell tower yet, but he would be leaving soon in order to give himself time to infiltrate the village and climb to the top of the tower before dawn.
“Fightin’ men is one thing,” Skinner said. “Traitorous, murderin’ sons o’ bitches are another.”
“There’s an old sayin’ about the pot and the kettle,” Scratch shot back.
Davidson said, “Take it easy, both of you. If we’re going to deal with Cordoba, we need to work out the plan we’re going to use.”
“Didn’t Alfred tell you what we have in mind?” Bo asked.
“He told me, but he’s so scared I can’t be sure that he’s got all of it right. If we’re going to be fighting side by side, I want to hear it from your own mouth, Creel.”
“Fair enough.” Quickly, Bo sketched in the same plan he had told Alfred to pass along to Davidson.
Skinner objected when Bo came to the part about freeing and arming the men locked up in the barracks. “Boss, you can’t turn those damn dirty greasers loose. They won’t fight for you.”
“They won’t be fighting for Davidson,” Bo said. “They’ll be fighting for themselves. They don’t want to live under Cordoba’s thumb. Let Teresa and Rosalinda and Evangelina talk to them. They’ll make the rest of them see that they’ve got to go along.”
For a moment, Davidson didn’t respond. Then he sighed and said bitterly, “I had things under control here, except for those holdups, until you and Morton came to Cutthroat Canyon. I didn’t realize you’d ruin everything.”
“That’s what happens to little tin-plated dictators,” Scratch said. “Sooner or later, justice comes callin’.”
Sidewinders:#3: Cutthroat Canyon Page 22
