The Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  “Who’s guiding you?” Cameron asked.

  “Man by the name of Hawkins—Jake Hawkins, I believe it is. Big guy. Well armed. Very capable.”

  “Jake Hawkins, huh?” Cameron said stiffly, rolling a wry look at the bartender, who returned it.

  “He’s a freighter,” Clark said. “He’s come up the trail from Chihuahua over twenty-five times. And he’s done a good bit of guiding, as well.”

  “I know who Hawkins is and what he’s done,” Cameron growled. He drained his beer, wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand, and tossed a coin on the bar.

  Clark was hefting the bag of bottles from the bar, careful not to break them.

  “You get two beers for a nickel, Jack,” Ives said.

  “Give the next one to Hotchkiss,” Cameron replied, heading for the stairs at the back of the room. “I have a feeling he’s going to need a little hair o’ the dog.”

  “Be seein’ you, Jack,” Clark called after him, a little too heartily.

  “Yes, you will,” Cameron replied.

  As Cameron headed up the stairs, Clark gave a puzzled shrug of his shoulders, tipped his hat to the barman, and headed out the door with his bag of bottles clutched carefully before him.

  Upstairs, Cameron passed Dinah Maxwell’s door, feeling sheepish about last night. She probably wasn’t even in her room, however; she usually went to church on Sundays—which no doubt evoked consternation in Ma Jones and others in the congregation.

  Cameron stopped at a door about midway down the hall and tapped. “Anyone seen Hotchkiss?”

  He had to ask several times before an angry female voice, drugged with sleep, said, “Last I seen him he was with Franci. Now git—I’m sleepin’”

  Cameron thought Franci’s room was the last one on the right. He knocked on the door. The only answer was two muffled groans—a man’s and a woman’s, in unison.

  Recognizing Hotchikiss’s groan, Cameron turned the knob and opened the door. A naked man and woman sprawled on the bed with the sheets and blankets tangled about their ankles. The man lay on his back, head tilted back on the pillow, guttural snores rising from his open mouth.

  Cameron had never seen Hotchkiss nude before. It was a stunning sight—a big hairy belly and thin white legs streaked with blue veins and pocked here and there with old wounds from arrows and musket balls. Cameron reflected that it paid to not let oneself go in one’s later years.

  “Up an’ at ’em, Hoss,” he said loudly. “There’s a beer waiting for you downstairs.”

  Hotchkiss grabbed his face as though cold water had been splashed in his eyes. “Oh, Lordy … What the hell is happening!”

  “It’s the dawn of a new day, my man,” Cameron said, as obnoxiously as he could. “The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the dogs are fighting. Let’s go!” He tugged on the man’s horny white foot and Hotchkiss pulled it away.

  The girl stirred, gave a curse, and glanced over her shoulder and across her naked rump at Cameron. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Be gone in just a minute, Franci. Excuse the intrusion.”

  “I done my job for the night … now it’s time to sleep,” she cried, reburying her face in her pillow.

  “Where’s the kid?” Cameron asked Hotchkiss, who was coughing and complaining as he grudgingly came back to wakefulness.

  Coughing, hacking, and grunting, the graybeard scooted up against the headboard and jerked his head at the wall behind Cameron. Cameron turned and saw Jimmy Bronco facedown on the daybed, left arm dangling. There was a half-filled puke bucket on the floor at his side.

  The kid’s face was turned to the side, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut as though against a storm in his head, and his hair was standing up in sweat-stiffened spikes. His face was the pale green of an approaching storm.

  “Good Lord, Bud!” Cameron admonished Hotchkiss.

  Hotchkiss turned his head and spat into the spittoon beside the bed, then wiped his mouth and smacked his lips, blinking as though trying to break whatever was holding his eyelids down.

  “Well … I didn’t pour it down him. I lost track of him after Franci started gettin’ friendly like she does, and I think the kid here started hittin’ up some of the other guys for beer. Fool kid. I told him just one—I really did, Jack.”

  Cameron kicked the daybed on which the kid snored, spittle stringing from his parted lips into the bucket below. The kid gave a grunt and mumbled something unintelligible.

  “Jimmy—haul ass, we’re outta here!”

  The kid frowned against the thunder in his ears.

  The girl stirred, gave a groan.

  Hotchkiss said, “What’s goin’ on? You know I like to sleep on Sundays.”

  “You too, Bud. Haul ass and get the kid cleaned up. There’s a beer waiting for you downstairs, but don’t linger. I’ll meet you two over at the dry-goods.”

  “There’s a beer waitin’ for me, eh?” Hotchkiss said, suddenly coming around. He swung his feet to the floor, then looked at Cameron, who was turning to the door. “What the hell you got goin’, anyway?”

  “We’re goin’ to Mexico.”

  “Mexico? With Clark? What the hell? I thought …”

  Cameron held the door half-open, and half turned to Hotchkiss. “You wanna get Bachelard, Bud?”

  Hotchkiss scowled at Cameron over his shoulder and squinted one blue eye. “For what he did to Pas? You can bet your last pair of calfskin boots, I do.”

  Cameron smiled cunningly. “Then we’re goin’ to Mexico.”

  CLARK WAS STANDING on the loading dock of the dry-goods store with one other man, a medium-sized hardcase with frizzy red hair puffing out of a leather hat, the band of which was the skin of a diamondback rattlesnake. In front of the dock stood a pair of mules harnessed to a buckboard.

  As Cameron walked up to the loading dock, he recognized the redhead as Jake Hawkins. Hawkins and Clark were sharing one of the bottles of brandy Clark had bought in the saloon. By the sapsucker grins on their faces, it appeared they were having a pretty good time. Clark had finally found himself a guide, and Jake Hawkins had found an easy mark.

  “This your guide, Clark?” Cameron asked, smiling.

  “That’s right,” Clark said uneasily.

  Cameron shifted his eyes to the frizzy-haired man. Hawkins’s nose was blunt and his eyes were dull.

  “How you doin’, Jake?”

  “Just fine, Jack. How ’bout yourself?” Hawkins said. His smile was losing its luster.

  “Didn’t know you’d taken up guiding for hire.”

  “Well, I ain’t. Not officially, anyways. But when I heard this man and his lovely wife were looking for a guide to take them to Mexico … well, I didn’t think it’d be right to turn them down.” Hawkins’s smile widened, flashing a silver eyetooth. “Considerin’ my experience and all.”

  “Oh? What experience is that?”

  “Didn’t you know, Jack? I been hauling freight up from Chiwowy for pret’ near two years now. Know the trail like the back of my hand. All the trouble spots and whatnot.” Jake smiled at Clark and reached for the bottle Clark was holding, shifting his gaze uneasily between Clark and Cameron.

  The door of the dry-goods shop opened and Marina appeared, carrying a ten-pound sack of flour. She stopped when she saw Cameron. Their eyes met for a second. Then she continued to the buckboard and set the flour in the box.

  Cameron saw that Hawkins was watching Marina with more than a passing interest. The owner of the dry-goods came out of the building and set a wooden crate containing miscellaneous trail goods in the buckboard. He was dressed in his Sunday best, and he didn’t appear happy about missing church.

  Cameron figured the man had been waylaid on his way to morning services by Clark and his “guide.” Their shopping list had been too much business to turn down, even on Sunday, but it had still soured the man’s demeanor; scowling, he followed Marina back into the store for another load.

  Cameron looked at Haw
kins. “Get lost, Jake. I’m guiding the Clarks to Mexico.”

  Clark looked at Cameron curiously. “I thought—”

  “Never mind what you thought,” Cameron said. “Relieve this no-account of his duties.”

  Hawkins’s eyes blazed with a slow-building fire as he stared down at Cameron, whose head came up to the top of the man’s dusty boots.

  “Why, this man is a professional guide. He told me so himself,” Clark said. “He’s guided miners down to Mexico for years. Told me that himself, didn’t you, Mr. Hawkins?”

  Hawkins didn’t answer. His eyes were glued to Cameron—they appeared carved from flint.

  “This man is a penny-ante crook,” Cameron told Clark. “He and his brother and a small band of other miscreants travel around the territory robbing farmers and stage coaches, and once in a while a bank, when they have the balls. Jake here has spent four years in Yuma Pen for rape, among other things. He has ulterior motives for guiding you and Marina to Mexico.”

  “Shut your goddamn lyin’ mouth, Cameron!” Hawkins exploded.

  Cameron said, “The jig is up, Jake. It was a nice try, but it’s not going to work. So why don’t you and your brother there across the street”—he tipped his head to indicate a man in a shabby derby hat sitting on a loafer’s bench before the Traveler’s Fancy Saloon—“ride on out of here before you get yourselves shot.”

  Clark said, “Jack, how do you know these men intend … ?”

  “To rob you and rape your wife? Because they’ve done it before.”

  Hawkins’s right hand went to the butt of the .45 he wore tied down on his hip. Just as he reached it, Cameron grabbed Hawkins’s feet with both hands and pulled as hard as he could. The man went down just as he got the gun out of its holster.

  The gun barked, the slug flying into the roof over the dock. Cursing, Hawkins hit the floor on his back, gunsmoke and dust puffing around him.

  Cameron held on to the boot and yanked the man off the’ loading dock. Hawkins landed in the street with a thud and a sharp grunt, losing his pistol in the process.

  The “guide” scrambled to his knees and was climbing to his feet when Cameron kicked him hard in the side and he went over again, cursing, spittle flying from his lips.

  Hawkins’s brother, Ed, was standing on the boardwalk across the street, watching the fight. Ed’s hand had drifted to his sidearm. Cameron was grateful for the reluctance on Ed’s face. He didn’t want a firefight. There were too many innocent people around.

  “That’s right, Ed,” Cameron called, “you just keep that hogleg in your holster, or you and your brother are gonna need a ride out to boot hill.”

  Hawkins twisted around on an elbow and looked at his brother, yelling savagely, “Kill him, goddamn it, Ed! Kill this son of a bitch!”

  Silence. Hawkins stared at his brother, breathing heavily through gritted teeth.

  Cameron watched Ed’s gun hand, ready to go for his own Colt the second he saw it move.

  Finally the hand came up with a brief wave of surrender. Ed turned, head down, and drifted into the saloon.

  “Ed, you’re goddamn yellow!” Jake roared.

  Cameron picked Hawkins’s gun out of the dust and stuck it in his belt. “I’ll leave this on the old bridge at the creek south of town,” he told the man.

  “Fuck you, Cameron!” Hawkins yelled hoarsely, thoroughly defeated and unwilling to accept it.

  Cameron looked at him coolly from under the brim of his hat, like a schoolmaster admonishing a belligerent pupil. “But if I catch you trailing us—and believe me, I’ll know if you’re back there—I’m gonna take it away from you again, shove it up your ass, and pull the trigger.”

  The man climbed to his feet, still grumbling, and slapped the dust from his jeans. His face was twisted in anger. He picked up his hat, slapped it on his head, and threw another glare at Cameron. “Fuck you!” he repeated.

  Then he followed his brother into the saloon.

  Cameron turned back to the loading dock. Clark stared at him, speechless. Marina stood before the doors, holding a crate of canned tomatoes.

  Cameron moved to the dock and held out his arms for the crate. She lowered it to him.

  A smile lifted her cheeks and lighted her eyes, and Cameron returned it.

  CHAPTER 17

  GASTON BACHELARD AND his companions splashed across the foot-deep Rio Rincon and climbed the brushy grade that rose beyond it.

  Bachelard halted his horse and surveyed the flat, brushy desert ahead. It rose gradually to the gray-and-blue peaks jutting beyond like enormous thunderheads.

  The Sierra Madre, mother of mountain ranges—a hard, rugged-looking range, with deep-blue shadows around its base. But once you got within its foothills and smelled the grass and wildflowers and pines, saw the herds of elk and deer, the briskly flowing rivers, you felt as though you’d died and been generously rewarded for your travails.

  “My lovely Juanita,” Bachelard said to the girl riding behind his saddle, “I give you the mountains.” He gestured broadly with his hand and grinned back at her.

  The girl said nothing. She did not lift her eyes. She was exhausted, sunburned, sore, and so dirty that her features were barely distinguishable. So fearful was she of the nightmare her life had become, that she had withdrawn, making her mind as blank as the sky on a cloudy night.

  “When we have our power and money, we will have a stone castle in the mountains,” Bachelard said, returning his gaze to the majestic peaks rising above the desert. “We’ll fish and swim in the rivers and take long rides through the canyons. You will love it, Juanita. I promise you that.”

  “I think the cat’s got her tongue,” Jim Bob McGuffy quipped dryly, and spit a stream of tobacco juice on a flat rock.

  “Shut up, Corporal!” Bachelard cowed him. He looked at the two Mexican riders. “You and Rubio ride ahead. We’re close to Sonoita, so we’ll be seeing Montana’s outriders soon. Make sure the fools don’t shoot us.”

  “Sí, jefe,” Jesus said. The Mexicans spurred their mounts off across the plain, kicking up dust as they rode.

  An hour later Bachelard, the girl, and McGuffy had ridden another five miles toward the mountains, tracing the curving course of a dry creekbed. The two Mexicans Bachelard had sent ahead appeared on their left, galloping back toward them.

  In the distance several other riders could be seen looking in Bachelard’s direction. Bachelard could barely make out the round brims and pointed peaks of their sombreros and the barrels of their rifles jutting above their heads.

  “All is well,” Jesus said as he and Rubio approached, then fell in behind McGuffy, riding single file.

  Following the dry riverbed, the party soon raised the little village of Sonoita out of the rocky buttes and rimrocks. The squeals of pigs and clucks of chickens could be heard, and the angry Spanish of a farmer complaining to a woman who apparently thought he was asking too much for the watermelon he was trying to sell out of the back of a two-wheeled cart.

  When the man saw Bachelard, he immediately ceased arguing and stiffened like a soldier coming to attention. The woman followed the man’s gaze and, seeing Bachelard, fell silent as well. A fearful look entered her brown eyes.

  Bachelard tipped his gray Confederate hat at the two and smiled mockingly.

  He and the others followed the dusty road littered with hay carts, pigs, burros, and children, past adobe-and-thatch huts and up a hill. The hill was wooded with olive trees, dusty tamaracks, and oaks, and lit by hazy sunlight. Men in Mexican peasant garb and armed with rifles, pistols, and machetes strolled along the road, talking and smoking.

  The road looped around a dry fountain on which a coppercolored rooster sat preening. Flanking the fountain was a sprawling adobe house with a red-tile roof. An elaborate wrought-iron gate led into the house’s patio, where potted orange trees blossomed and filled the air with the smell of citrus.

  To the right of the house, beyond whitewashed sheds and barns, was a sprawling hay me
adow where small brush huts and tents had been erected, and where milled the men—Mexicans and Texans—Bachelard and Miguel Montana had drafted into their armies.

  This was the vast, elaborate rancho Bachelard and Montana had seized from a prominent Mexican rancher. From here they made forays throughout northern Sonora, wreaking havoc on wealthy landowners and their sympathizers.

  Their goal was to wrest power from the conservative government and establish their own dictatorship, dividing up the land as they did and “returning” it to the peasants who worked it. They would charge the peasants a nominal fee in the form of a yearly tax for their hard work and the danger they’d endured during the revolution—a reasonable requirement, they were certain. Of course, they’d also expect the peons’ utmost loyalty and support. The landless hordes would certainly owe Bachelard and Montana that much!

  Once Sonora was secure and their army was legions large, they’d retake Texas from the United States. Then they would declare northern Sonora and Texas a new and independent republic. Which of the two founding fathers would rule this new country—Bachelard or Montana—hadn’t yet been discussed. Neither had wanted to broach the subject, knowing it was a touchy one, one that could ignite a small civil war among themselves as well as their troops.

  No, it was best to wait and see how things panned out …

  “Buenos días, Señor Bachelard,” said one of the Mexican men guarding the house. He held Bachelard’s horse while the former Confederate dismounted and reached up to lift Juanita down.

  “Buenos dias, Sebastion. Is your fearless leader in?” When speaking of his companero, Miguel Montana, Bachelard could not restrain from injecting a little sarcasm in his tone. He knew it was not good to parade his and Montana’s subtle rivalry before their men, but he couldn’t help himself. Bachelard was a self-educated man who read Shakespeare and the Greeks, whereas Miguel Montana was nothing but a bandito, a simple-minded bean-eater with a penchant for killing. But the peasants loved him. Bachelard knew he could not attain what he wanted to without him.