Handing her the wine Buckhorn had brought, Lusita said, “Please take this, Consuela, and place it with the rest of our stock. Then bring a tall glass of beer for our guest and a glass of white wine for me.”
“Yes, señora. Will you be dining soon?”
“I hope so. As soon as my husband is finished with his business discussion.”
“Shall I also set a place at the table for your father?”
A trace of annoyance touched Lusita’s face. “I’ve not been advised about that. Wait for the time being.”
Once Consuela had retreated, Lusita turned back to Buckhorn and made a gesture. “Please be seated wherever you wish. Consuela will be back shortly with our drinks.”
Buckhorn sank into one of the chairs. His hostess seated herself opposite him. There were moments when he caught himself staring, her grace and beauty making it difficult not to.
“I guess I failed to mention,” Lusita said, “that it is my father whom my husband is in such deep discussion with. My father, Don Pedro Olomoso, owns a large ranch directly across the border. Our lands butt against one another. The Flying W and the Rio-O have long been neighbors in this manner. Over the past year and more, the two patrons have become closer than ever, intently involved in some sort of joint business venture.” She gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “When they put their heads together in order to grind out some stubborn detail, they can become frustratingly oblivious to all else.”
“Maybe I should leave and return at another time,” Buckhorn suggested.
Lusita shook her head. “Certainly not. I will put my foot down if their meeting threatens to drag on too long. You have ridden all the way out here and Consuela has gone to great lengths to make a nice meal on short notice. I will not allow their rudeness to prevail.”
Consuela returned with their drinks and then disappeared again after serving them. Buckhorn tasted his beer and found it, not surprisingly, to be very good. As if any further proof than his wife was needed, Wainwright’s tastes were excellent.
“I’m afraid I don’t recall ever hearing your name mentioned prior to a few hours ago when Thomas said you would be joining us for dinner, Mr. Buckhorn,” said Lusita. “Not really knowing anything about you, I’m afraid I must apologize and bluntly say that I will need your help in carrying on a conversation.”
Buckhorn grinned. “We may both be in trouble, then. I’ve never been accused of being a brilliant conversationalist.”
“Ah. The strong, silent type. Is that it?”
“I can do a little better than that. Let’s aim for something somewhere in between.” Buckhorn took another drink. “This beer is excellent, by the way.”
“As I said, you’ll have to thank my husband for that. He seems particularly fond of it. Myself, I never acquired much of a taste for beer.”
“It seems not many ladies do.”
“Speaking of taste, let me tell you what Consuela will be serving for our meal. Naturally, we eat a great deal of beef around here. Even though Consuela has mastered a wide variety of ways to fix it—and all quite delicious, I must say—it nevertheless becomes rather tedious. Tonight, it so happens, she planned something quite different. Roast sage hen on a bed of rice with sweet potatoes as a side. I do hope that sounds appealing.”
“It sounds, and smells, mighty delicious.”
Lusita scowled. “If my husband and father should threaten to ruin the fare by delaying it to the point of growing cold or becoming overcooked in an attempt to keep it warm, I shall be very displeased.” She rose suddenly from her chair. “In fact, I refuse to let that happen. Please excuse me while I go check on the situation in the kitchen. If I have to, I will barge in on the rude men who are keeping everybody waiting. When I return, I will bring you a fresh beer.”
“That’s fine. Don’t go to any special trouble on my account,” Buckhorn told her.
“Make yourself at home, as you Americanos are fond of saying.” Lusita paused long enough to point to a set of glass doors across the room. “Feel free to get some fresh air, if you like. The evening air should be taking on a welcome coolness by now, and you’ll find the early flowers in the garden out there giving off a most pleasant scent.”
Buckhorn remained seated after his hostess was gone. He drank some more of his beer. The spacious house was very quiet.
Whatever he’d expected in coming here, his treatment so far wasn’t it. It was for certain that nowhere in his thoughts had he conjured up anything like Lusita Wainwright. Having been in her presence, however, he told himself sourly it was equally certain she would be visiting there in the future.
Feeling abruptly restless, he shoved himself up and out of the chair and carried his beer over to the glass doors. Peering between the folds of filmy curtains, he could see a garden, just as Lusita had said. Neat rows of flowers and plants cast eerily shaped shadows from the glow of a pulsing lantern hung on a tall pole. He pushed one of the doors gently open and felt the cool air sigh in over him. The scents of the flowers were none he recognized, but they were sweet and pleasant all the same. He wandered out a ways, his feet following a flagstone path, then paused.
Off to his right, a wing of the house extended along the edge of the garden. Lights were on in a room as evidenced by two elongated windows. Seams of illumination showed through the horizontal slats of shutters on the nearest window. The shutters of the window farther down had been folded back. The odor and thin wisps of cigar smoke wafted out through the opening . . . also the sound of voices.
Two men talking.
Drawn by the voices, Buckhorn moved forward a couple more steps, edging off the flagstones and into a pool of shadows. By some quirk of acoustics, the voices of the men carried quite clearly to where he paused once again.
“One of the many quaint sayings you Americanos are so fond of is the caution against looking a gift horse in the mouth. Is it not so? I say the fates have aligned in a sequence that is like a gift. Therefore, we should not waste time looking down its mouth, so to speak, but should hasten to set into motion all of the plotting and planning we have worked on for so long.”
The man spoke with a distinct Spanish accent. Buckhorn had little doubt it belonged to Don Pedro Olomoso.
The man paused, probably to move around a little, then went on. “For weeks now, my scouts have been assuring me that the last of the Yaquis have finally been driven from the Barranca canyon where I know there are rich silver veins. Their maddening ability to elude us yet strike and harass our ability to reach the sweetest spots has at last been overcome. And now, with the news that the rebel forces near Mexico City are ready to begin their overthrow at practically any moment—our time is most surely at hand!”
“Trusting in fate has never been a big thing for me, amigo,” the second man said. “My experience has been that fate mostly comes through only after you’ve worked your tail off to set the stage for it. Still, there’s no denying that you’re right about things appearing to have fallen into place the way we’ve been waiting for.”
When he was behind bars, Buckhorn had heard Wainwright speak from outside the jail. The second voice matched his recollection.
“A lot depends,” Wainwright continued, “on the accuracy of your scouts and spies. We can be sure about the men and guns we each have at our disposal. The timing of the other elements—what is taking place down near Mexico City and in the Barrancas—is critical. A wrong note anywhere along the way puts the whole works at risk. If we tip our hand and fail, we won’t get a second chance.”
“You think I do not know this? I will have as much on the line, to use another of your phrases, as you. Maybe more. Forces of the Mexican government— either old or new—are sure to take a harsh look at an independent endeavor such as we are planning. Especially one aimed at depriving it of riches like the silver to be mined from the Barrancas now that the Yaqui threat is eliminated.”
Buckhorn heard the sound of a finger thumping paper loosely on a solid surface. A map spread out atop
a desk, he surmised in accordance with the line of conversation.
“Clearing the savages from these hills will be welcomed by all . . . except the unfortunate Yaqui, of course. But for us to then claim the Barrancas and all their spoils as our own, for the sake of incorporating them into our independent country of Silverado . . . this would not be so widely welcomed.”
Buckhorn’s eyes widened a little. The plan he was eavesdropping on wasn’t the most daring thing he had ever heard . . . but it came close.
“If the bigger revolution around the capital city keeps the standing government forces and the rebels busy long enough, no matter who wins, Silverado will be firmly established and less likely to be worth their attention and trouble while they’re still licking their wounds after the fighting is over.”
“Sí. That is, of course, our plan. Frankly, I am more concerned by how your country will react to the threat of losing a section of their Arizona Territory—the part you already almost completely control—as the other half of Silverado. They will not, as in my country, have another rebellion to distract them from what we are up to.”
Wainwright emitted a short, gruff laugh. “Trust me, amigo, my soon to be ex-country is still plenty busy licking its own wounds from the much larger rebellion it went through a while back. Plus, what will become the northern portion of Silverado is nothing to them but a sun-scorched stretch of sand and cactus. They’ll hardly think it worth the trouble. By the time they do—if they ever get around to it at all—the wealth from the Yaqui silver and my cattle operation will have financed us an army and established boundaries they’ll pay a high price trying to break down.”
“Sí,” Olomoso agreed solemnly. “A price too high . . . if we have it figured correctly.”
Reluctantly, Buckhorn backed away from the voices and out of the pool of shadows. He wanted badly to stay and keep listening, but outweighing the importance of hearing more was to not risk getting caught before he could pass on what he’d already learned.
He’d heard enough to have his head reeling as it was. Thomas Wainwright’s big plan—and Don Pedro’s too, as it turned out—was to break away bordering slices of northern Mexico and southern Arizona and forge them into a unified country separate from either of their current governing bodies.
Silverado.
It was wild. It was crazy. But was it so wild and crazy and just plain audacious that it might actually have a chance of working?
Wainwright had the existing wealth, not to mention the land and cattle to ensure more, plus the all-important power of an endless water source. Don Pedro also had land and cattle, though limited, but it sounded like—since the savage Yaquis had been dealt with—also wide-open access to increased silver riches.
Everybody knew that great wealth equaled great power, in and of itself. Add to that the combined force of hired guns amounting to a small army that the two driven men already had at their disposal—a force that could quickly be increased with the backing of more money—and they might very well have an entity powerful enough to carve out its own slice of two other wounded countries.
Buckhorn retreated to just within the glass doors that led off the sitting room. He left ajar the door he’d opened earlier and leaned against its frame, draining what was left of the beer he’d been holding. He immediately wished he had another. Where was Lusita? She’d promised to return with a fresh one.
The thought of his hostess triggered the looming prospect of the dinner yet to come. If Buckhorn had any reservations before about sitting through the meal he’d been invited to attend, they had become amplified.
How he would act around the former Yankee general he’d come to kill but who was extending his personal hospitality and probably a job offer suddenly turned into a minor concern. He also faced putting on his act in front of the coconspirator to a mad scheme for carving out their very own country.
Further reverie was interrupted by Lusita reentering the room. She was carrying the promised fresh beer. “We’ll be ready to retire to the dining room in a matter of minutes,” she announced. “It should work out to just about enough time for you to finish your drink.”
Not if I chug it down the way I want to, Buckhorn thought to himself. He accepted the beer silently, smiled his thanks, and took only a restrained sip.
Not even the presence of Lusita was enough to tear his thoughts away from the talk he’d overheard coming from Wainwright’s den. He wanted to focus on his lovely hostess, to savor the unexpectedly pleasant part of his visit to the Flying W, as he’d been doing before . . . but it wouldn’t work. Not anymore. His thoughts kept straying.
Silverado.
What the hell had Andrew Haydon gotten him into?
CHAPTER 28
The much-anticipated dinner with Wainwright turned out to be of little consequence, in and of itself. The lovely Lusita was also present, as well as her father. The food was excellent. The conversation . . . cautious.
It was clear throughout that Wainwright and Don Pedro, exhilarated by the recent developments that seemed on the brink of propelling their plans into motion, wanted to get the meal over with as soon as possible in order to return to their plotting. Discourse was polite but rather terse. Whether she understood the reasons behind it or not, Lusita appeared to sense the hurried approach as much as Buckhorn and therefore kept her own participation in any discussion to an absolute minimum.
As far as the purpose behind Buckhorn’s invitation, it had come down to a job offer for him and his gun. Wainwright claimed to have been impressed by the reports he’d gotten of Buckhorn’s skill, totally glossing over the fact that skill had been largely demonstrated on Flying W men.
When it came to his purpose for putting together the small army of gunmen he was asking Buckhorn to join, Wainwright merely explained that big changes were coming to Whitestone County and, to ensure his vast holdings were not threatened, he was making sure they were well protected. He didn’t bother going into any further details on what the “big changes” might be, and Buckhorn didn’t press it.
He did, however, accept the job offer, with the agreement that he would report for duty by noon of the following day.
When Buckhorn rode away from the Flying W after dinner was over and the terms of the job offer were settled, there was no sign of Sweetwater or anyone else to see him off. That was good. Because he had no intention of returning directly to town. Not quite yet.
He rode as far as the rock outcropping where he’d encountered Sweetwater earlier. There, he stopped and dismounted, ground-reined Sarge in a patch of good graze, and sat down with his back against the face of the rock. It still held some of the warmth of the day’s sun that had sunk deep into it. Buckhorn waited and watched and churned things over in his mind.
The first thing he’d determined was that a patrol was in place to guard the perimeter of the ranch headquarters at night. Two mounted men, one riding clockwise, the other counterclockwise, made wide, slow circles around the fenced-in area.
It wasn’t really a very effective setup. Stretches of approach to the buildings were left out of the sight of either rider for long periods. Plus the numerous longhorns milling outside the fencing made ideal cover for intruders to move in close. And the only irregularity to the timing of the riders’ rounds was when they might stop and briefly converse once in a while as they passed one another.
Buckhorn could have moved dozens of men in past the so-called patrol, he told himself, and hit the heart of the headquarters without the riders knowing anybody was within fifty miles.
But he didn’t want to move in dozens of men. Only one.
When the hour grew late enough for lights to begin blinking out in the various ranch buildings, Buckhorn got up and started walking. A whispered command to Sarge was sufficient to plant him where he was for hours.
The last of the lights to go out in the main house had been the lantern in Wainwright’s den. By then, Buckhorn was crouched in the flower garden only a few yards from the window. Employi
ng the patience instilled by his Indian blood, he waited another half hour without moving.
Then, using the blade of his bowie knife, he silently pried open the shutter and slid the window up to gain entry into the den. He smiled grimly at the ease with which he was able to do it. Wainwright’s foolish arrogance allowed him to believe the sloppy patrol on his perimeter made everything inside it safe. The need for added caution was negligible.
Aided by a carefully shrouded lantern turned very low, Buckhorn spent another half hour poring over the papers and maps spread across the broad surface of Wainwright’s desk. The same desk he’d heard Don Pedro thumping a finger on when he was eavesdropping.
By means of a commandeered pencil and sheet of blank paper, Buckhorn made notes and crude sketches from what he perused. With this paper folded and slipped inside his shirt, he quit the den, using great care to refasten the window and leave everything inside exactly as he’d found it.
Returning in the wee hours to the dark, empty, silent streets of Wagon Wheel, Buckhorn quickly but quietly rousted first Goodwin and then Carl Orndecker, telling them he had urgent new information to share. Wanting to also include Justine, Carl led them a back way to her house and got her to let them in.
In the kitchen of Justine’s house, the four were once again gathered covertly. The blinds were drawn tight. The illumination from a single candle placed in the middle of the table cast the circle of faces in stark patterns of shadow and light.
The three listened to Buckhorn tell what he’d run across at the Flying W while they scanned his corresponding sketches and notes from the sheet of paper spread on Justine’s kitchen table. The dully ticking wall clock hanging above a shelf of display china read three o’clock.
“Such a fantastic scheme!” exclaimed Justine York. “That’s the only way to describe it.”
“And that’s exactly why they’ve been able to get so far along with it. You had all the pieces spotted. You were even talking about ’em over lunch,” Buckhorn reminded her. “All the land Wainwright has taken control of, the small army he’s put together, his chumminess with Don Pedro, and the marriage to Lusita to cement them even closer. You even mentioned the silver in the Barrancas Mountains and the Yaquis standing in the way of it. The reason you could never put it all together into the notion of Wainwright and Don Pedro figuring on starting their own country is because it’s too damn fantastic to conjure.”
Bloodthirsty Page 16
