The Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  “You wait here, señor. I will get the señora for your boy.”

  It was ten minutes before the door of the shack opened and Cameron heard Garza speaking to someone in a low tone. Then Garza and another man approached the cart. The second man, bald, and as short and round as Garza, was pulling on a shirt.

  “Who are you—bandits?” the man said accusingly to Cameron, obviously not happy to have been aroused from a sound sleep. But he did not wait for an answer before peering into the cart.

  In Spanish he told Cameron and Garza to bring the kid inside. He held the door open as Cameron slung Jimmy over his shoulder and carried him into the simply furnished room. A mesquite fire burned on the adobe hearth and a single lamp glowed in the hands of an elderly woman who stood silently before the fire in a night wrapper.

  “There,” the woman said, motioning toward a cot topped by a corn-husk mattress.

  As Cameron lay Jimmy on the cot, the kid came awake. “Jack!” he yelled, fiercely clutching Cameron’s forearm.

  “It’s okay, Jimmy, I’m here. Everything’s all right. This lady here is going to get you all fixed up good as new.”

  The kid slowly lay back as Cameron pushed him gently down. When his head came to rest on the flat pillow, he said in an almost normal tone, “Is ol’ Hotch … Is he dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Jimmy sighed. “I liked ol’ Hotch, even if he teased me more than I liked.”

  “I did, too,” Cameron said, as the woman pushed him aside, moving between him and the boy.

  “You go now,” she said brusquely to Cameron.

  “No, Jack—don’t go,” Jimmy begged.

  “I won’t be far, Jimmy. You just relax now. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  Cameron stepped aside to let the woman take care of the boy. Garza came up beside Cameron, his sombrero in his hands, and whispered, “I must go now, señor, before Ernestine wakes and finds me gone. It is our secret, no?”

  “It’s our secret,” Cameron said, nodding and smiling at the man. He held out his hand and Garza shook it. “I’m much obliged for your help, Porfirio. Muchas gracias.”

  Garza clamped Cameron on the shoulder. “De nada, señor. De nada! Your horse is by the barn.” Then he turned and was gone.

  The second man took him by the arm and led him out a back door. “You can sleep in the barn. There is feed for your horse,” he said.

  Cameron hesitated at the door, not wanting to leave Jimmy alone with these strangers. He was sure the kid was getting tended just fine, and he had no reason to worry. It was just hard to let his defenses down when they’d been up for so long.

  The man disappeared inside and returned with a bottle and a small bowl of tortillas and goat meat. “Go now. Rest. Your boy will be fine.”

  The man shut the thin wooden door. The clatter of a bolt told Cameron he’d locked it.

  In the barn, Cameron sat down with his back to the rough lumber and rolled a cigarette. He needed to unwind. He uncorked the bottle and tipped it back. The raw, metallic taste of mescal flooded his tongue, then burned down his throat. It gave him a pleasing sensation of instant release, and he became very grateful to the man who had offered it.

  He took several more drinks and smoked the quirley down to a stub, staring at the sky and the fading moon, the dark backdrop of mountains that surrounded the village, and thought again about the screams he and Garza had heard on the road. He repressed the urge to ride back out and investigate.

  Whoever had screamed was long since dead, and Cameron’s horse was in no condition for anything but rest. If Jimmy was able, they’d light out of the village tomorrow and try to find the Clarks and Tokente.

  Cameron mashed out his quirley on his boot and corked the mescal. He got up with some effort, feeling pangs of fatigue shoot through his body, and led his horse into the barn. He unsaddled the animal and gave it a cursory rubdown and some water and feed.

  He found a rickety cot and an old wool blanket in a corner, removed his hat and boots, and sat down. Hungrily he ate the goat meat and tortillas, set the bowl under the cot, and fell nearly instantly asleep. His sleep was deep but fitful, constricted by the sensation of constant movement, of following one trail after another and scanning ridges for Apaches.

  At intervals along the trail he’d see Marina, like a ghost behind a thin, dark veil.

  In the midst of this he heard, strangely, a door squeaking open. He saw light through his closed eyelids, felt the warmth of sunlight on his face, sensed movement around him.

  A metallic rasp and clack jerked him awake. He opened his eyes. Three men in gray uniforms stood before the cot, aiming long-barreled rifles directly at his face.

  THE PREVIOUS NIGHT, Ed Hawkins had brought his horse to a halt at the base of a sandy knoll, dismounted, and produced a spyglass from a leather sheath tied to his saddle. He tethered his paint pony, stolen from a rancher near Bisbee, to a dwarf pine, and ran, crouching, up the knoll.

  The light was fading quickly from the canyon below, but there was still enough to make out the single rider Hawkins was following. Jack Cameron.

  Cameron was studying the ground.

  “Give it up, fool,” Hawkins muttered as he watched Cameron through the spyglass. “Don’t you have no sense a‘tall? None a’tall? Why, you’re gonna get us both skinned and hung and greased for the spit, that’s what you’re gonna do.”

  Hawkins considered calling it quits. It was pretty obvious the dumb-ass was following the Apaches who had ambushed the kid and the graybeard several miles back. He was going to try to rescue the kid.

  Anyone in their right mind who’d seen the number of Apache tracks would have written the kid off a long time ago and gone back to the Clarks and the Mex, and continued searching for whatever it was they were searching for. It had to be gold. That was the only thing it could be, the only thing that would lure sane people into such a dangerous area.

  But now this idiot Cameron was tracking Apaches! And right behind Cameron, at the insistence of his brother Jake, was Ed Hawkins.

  But by God, enough was enough, Ed told himself, and spat, lowering the spyglass. Cameron was going to get himself killed, and Ed wanted no part of that. He’d seen what Apaches could do to a healthy body, and he’d rather go back and face his brother than even a single Apache.

  Hell, he’d just tell Jake that Cameron was dead. By the time he got back to where his brother was keeping an eye on the Clarks, it wouldn’t be a lie, either. If Cameron kept heading where he was heading, why, in a half-hour, maybe less, he’d be dead—or worse.

  Ed nodded to himself and walked back to his mount, where he replaced the spyglass in its sheath. Then he began to think.

  What if Cameron wasn’t going after the Apaches, after all? What if he’d found another way to the gold? What if Cameron was following it by himself because he knew Apaches were about and he didn’t want to endanger the others?

  Jeepers creepers, Ed sighed to himself. He mounted up, and with a heavy air of dark resignation, gave a sigh and continued after Cameron.

  Ed followed at a distance. Cameron was a wily guy, with one hell of a reputation. Ed knew he had to give the man a liberal margin of separation not to give himself away, even with Apaches taking up the tracker’s attention. Ed was surprised he and his brother had been able to follow Cameron’s group as far as they had without getting noticed, but he knew that was due mostly to the distance they’d allowed between themselves and the group. Jake’s above-average tracking skills had kept them from losing the trail altogether.

  Cameron’s tracks suddenly disappeared in an old rockslide. Ed’s problem was that the canyon forked at the slide, and by the time he’d picked his way across the bed of talus and flinty shale, it was too dark to pick up the trail again. Ed knew Jake would have been able to do it but, for the life of him, Ed couldn’t pick up much more than the cloven print of a deer … or was it a mountain goat?

  He chose one of the canyon’s forks at random and foll
owed the trail into the high country, coming out on a ledge with pines all around him and the smell of juniper and piñon wafting on the breeze. There was still some light left in the sky, but the ground was dark.

  He fumbled around in the dark, half expecting to ride right into either Cameron or an Apache encampment. A wolf’s howl pierced the gloaming when he was making his way across a meadow, under a ridge built of blocklike chunks of rock. The eerie sound curled the hair on his neck.

  Deciding it was time to get the hell out of here—if his brother wanted to track Cameron after Apaches, he could track him his own damn self—Ed brought the horse around and started back in the direction he’d come from. Fuck this. He was ready to go back to the Territories and try his luck again with stagecoaches and small-town banks.

  The trail Ed was following down into the semi-arid desert did not look at all like the one he’d taken up, and he was starting to get the willies. He knew how easy it was to get good and lost out here. Hell, he’d heard umpteen dozen stories of men—even good trackers—going into the Sierra Madre and never being heard from again.

  Feeling frantic, Ed started riding blind, just letting the horse pick his way, searching for the canyon from which he’d ridden into the high country. If he could get there, he might be able to find his way back to his brother.

  Brother. Oh, how good that word sounded all of a sudden! When he saw Jake again, he was going to kiss him right on the mouth.

  Ed came to an arroyo that did not look like any of the arroyos he’d seen in the past two hours, much less that day. Heart beating wildly in his breast and legs feeling like lead in his stirrups, Ed brought the horse to a halt and gave his sweating brow a scrub with the back of his gloved hand.

  A rock tumbled down from a ridge and clattered against other rocks. A horse whinnied—not his.

  Looking up at the low, stony ridge that practically encircled him, Ed saw about a dozen long-haired riders silhouetted against the star-filled sky. They regarded him almost casually.

  “Oh … Oh, Lord,” Ed mumbled to himself, knowing these men in deerskin leggings could be nothing else but Apaches.

  Tears welled in his eyes.

  “Oh … Oh my … !”

  CHAPTER 27

  IT TOOK CAMERON a good ten seconds to remember where he was, and to realize who these three men aiming guns at him were …

  Rurales.

  The dove-gray uniforms and visored military-style hats were all the identification he needed. He assumed the prefect had ratted on him and Jimmy, something Cameron had been too tired to worry about last night. He should have seen it coming, however. The United States and Mexico were not on good terms these days.

  Cameron had pushed himself onto his elbows when the man on the far right, wearing sergeant’s stripes, grabbed him brusquely by the collar and yanked him to a sitting position. He yelled something in Spanish, too fast for Cameron’s comprehension.

  Holding up his hands placatingly, Cameron swung his stockinged feet to the floor and reached for his moccasins. While he put them on, the sergeant grabbed Cameron’s weapons.

  “Come,” he said in halting English. “Move, gringo. You are wanted man!”

  “Hold on, Charlie, can’t you see I’m movin’ as fast as I can?” Cameron carped, yanking on the moccasins, which had shrunk from sweat and sun.

  “Move, gringo,” one of the other rurales repeated—a reed of a kid with a downy brown mustache barely visible above his mouth. Corporal’s stripes adorned his wool sleeve.

  “Take your fingers off the triggers, boys, I’m comin’,” Cameron said, standing and grabbing his hat.

  “Hands up, hands up!” they yelled as they pushed him past his horse to the rear of the barn and out the door into the bright morning sunlight.

  Cameron stopped in the yard and said, “I’ll go with you in a minute, but let me check on my friend first.” He dipped his head toward the rear of the adobe house overgrown with shrubs.

  “Move, gringo!” the sergeant yelled again, poking him in the side with his rifle.

  Cameron had thought it was worth a try. He’d wanted to know how Jimmy had fared overnight, and he also wanted to make sure the rurales had left him in the house. By the way they hazed Cameron down the street without saying anything about the kid, he assumed they’d left him with the prefect’s wife. He was grateful for that, anyway. A Mexican hoosegow was no place for Jimmy in his condition.

  The rurales ushered Cameron down the street, past jacals and chicken coops and stables made from stones and woven branches. A dog came out from one of the jacals to bark at them fiercely, then turned tail when it saw it was going to be ignored. The woodsmoke hanging in the golden air above the huts smelled of tortillas and spiced meat, causing Cameron’s stomach to grumble.

  He really could have used a cup of strong coffee and a cigarette, followed by a big plate of eggs and ham and a handful of fresh corn tortillas filled with goat cheese and olives. Instead, he was being hazed down the street like a cantankerous bull, his saddle-sore ass and thighs aching with every shove.

  His “morning stroll” ended at a squat, whitewashed adobe that stood alone on the eastern side of the street, separated from the other adobes by about twenty yards. Painted above the door was the word Alcalde, or “Mayor.” Cameron could see a stable out back, and a corral where a good dozen or so horses milled under a cottonwood tree. Half-dressed soldiers lazed there as well, washing at the well and pitching hay to the horses.

  The corporal knocked twice on the hut’s plank door and went in, then stepped aside as the sergeant pushed Cameron through the doorway. The third man, a private, stopped outside and came to attention as he took up a sentinel’s position to the right of the door.

  Cameron blinked as his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness within, then saw a medium-tall man with a soft round paunch, sitting before a small desk on which was a plate of eggs and bacon. Next to the plate sat a covered bowl that Cameron guessed, was keeping tortillas warm. Nearby was a half-empty bottle beside a filmy glass containing one dead fly.

  Cameron stood before the desk as the man forked egg into his mouth, followed it with a bite of tortilla, and chewed. Yolk stained the man’s salt-and-pepper mustache.

  He looked up at Cameron with lazy, colorless eyes. His dove-gray jacket, boasting lieutenant’s bars and silver buttons, was open over a washed-out undershirt.

  Cameron smelled cigar smoke, and turned to see another man sitting in a wing-backed chair behind him, his fat legs crossed. He wore a straw fedora and a stained suitcoat with tattered cuffs. The alcalde, Cameron thought, whose office had been taken over by the rurales. The unshaven man looked almost comatose, and Cameron assumed he was drunk. Life no doubt had been better before the rurales.

  “And who are you?” the lieutenant asked tonelessly as he chewed, as though they were in the middle of a conversation.

  “The name’s Jack Cameron.”

  “American?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Hunting Apaches.”

  The man swabbed his plate with the last of his tortilla and stuck it in his mouth. Cameron’s stomach rumbled. “Why?”

  Cameron shrugged. “Need the money.”

  “You a scalp-hunter?”

  “That’s right.”

  The lieutenant took a slug from the bottle on his desk and sat back in his chair, which creaked with the strain. He studied Cameron suspiciously.

  “What happened to you and the boy?”

  “Had a little bad luck,” Cameron said. “The Apaches we were following started following us, you might say.” He fashioned a smile with only one side of his mouth. “They captured the boy and took him to their rancheria. I snuck in and got him back.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Name’s Jimmy Bronco. I found him along the trail and we threw in together.”

  “He hunts scalps, too, uh?” The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed.

  Cameron shrugged again. “
Why not? We heard you guys down here were paying seven pesos a head. That right?”

  The lieutenant did not answer right away. “That’s right, señor, but by the look of you, I don’t think I have to worry about you breaking my bank, as you say, no?” The man’s mustache lifted a little as he smiled, but only with his mouth. His washed-out eyes remained on Cameron’s.

  Scalp-hunters were about the only Americans welcome in Mexico these days. They were like wolfers, Cameron thought. No one wanted the unsavory breed in their town unless there was a wolf problem.

  Cameron knew the man was suspicious of his story, but he also knew the rurale would probably take him at his word. He was a long way from his superiors in Mexico City, and they did not care anyway. Jailing Cameron and Jimmy would only mean paperwork, and Cameron could tell the lieutenant was not a man who enjoyed paperwork. He had obviously grown used to the indolence and lack of supervision out here.

  He could haul them out in front of the wall around the square and shoot them, but Cameron did not think the man was a cold-blooded killer. He might be a drunkard, and a lout, but not a killer.

  Cameron had an idea.

  “Tell ya what else I heard,” he said, squinting one eye wistfully. “Gaston Bachelard’s out there … somewhere.”

  For the first time, a look of uncertainty came to the lieutenant’s fat, florid face. A blush stretched upward into the widow’s peak cutting into the curly, gray-flecked hair. He tipped his head a little. “Bachelard?”

  “And, no doubt, Miguel Montana.”

  The lieutenant’s voice was furtive, suspicious. “How do you know?”

  “One of my men ran into him up north and east of here.”

  The lieutenant considered this, probing a back tooth with his tongue. “He is heading this way?”

  Cameron raised an eyebrow for dramatic emphasis. “Sí.”

  “What does he want?”

  Cameron almost smiled at the man’s discomfort. “Well, my man said he had quite a contingent with him. Just guessing, I’d say he’s gonna try to take as many villages in this part of Chihuahua as he can. And if what I’ve heard is true, the peons are no doubt gonna welcome him with open arms.” Cameron fashioned a doubtful look and shook his head. “You know how the poor have taken to him and little Miguel.”