by Jake Logan
“Give me the lead on that other one,” Slocum shouted, and Franco rushed in his mount and took it. Then with mule numero dos dallied up to his leg, Slocum shook his boot out of the left stirrup.
“Step up on mine, then drop into your saddle,” Slocum said to Franco in the midst of all the mule honking. “He can’t buck with his nose in my lap.”
The youth was like a cat getting in the saddle. But while Dos couldn’t buck, he kicked a hole in the air behind his heels. Slocum paid his flying hooves no mind. He adjusted the gun in his waistband, held the dally tight and waved to the smiling Cyd on the porch. They left out of the square on two mules walking on eggs.
It was a mile or so of greasewood flats before the mules settled down. Slocum tossed the lead at Franco and Dos spooked back, but the boy made him get right back up beside Slocum in his trot.
“They’ll be broke by the time we get there,” Franco said and laughed. “I didn’t think we’d ever get them so we could ride them.”
“We had no time for nonsense. Man, a damn bunch of wild horses or mules like these just needs to be contained and then ride the fire out of them.”
Slocum twisted in the sorry, mostly wooden Mexican saddle and saw nothing on the heat wave-dazzled flats they’d crossed. Their new mounts still beat burros, but they were stiff-legged trotting. He pushed his shoulder back against the sore muscles in his back. We’re coming, Mary.
22
Late in the afternoon, they reached San Phillipe, another mission on the Kino Trail. Slocum found enough money to buy the mules each a morral of corn. They hooked them over their heads, and the two of them ate with an older street vendor. Squatted there in the day’s still heat, her food was rewarding after the long ride.
The about toothless woman had seen the pistoleros and the white woman pass through with two gringos. Maybe two hours before them, but she shook her head when Slocum asked where they went or if they had stayed in the village.
“We can check around,” he said to Franco when they finished eating. “Be careful. They know you now.”
“Ah, sí, and I know them.”
The mules hobbled at the edge of the village in a dry wash, Slocum and Franco split up to see if they could find the kidnappers, promising to meet in the alley after making a round. In an hour Slocum was back without learning a thing. He heard someone in the dark, hurrying up the alley, and his hand went to the gun butt. Then an out-of-breath Franco hissed at him.
“I found the two—Blanco and the other one. They never saw me. They are with a puta at her jacal. Pretty drunk.”
“Good job. We better get those two. See my horse?”
Franco shook his head. “There are no horses there.”
They hurried down the alley, keeping their profiles low. When they approached the jacal, a dog went to barking. Would that warn the pair? A woman came out and cussed at the dog. He quit barking and they went on. Franco pointed out the adobe building with the light behind the closed curtain. “That’s the place.”
“Find a club. Go by the back door. One runs out, hit him over the head.”
“I savvy. You be careful.”
Slocum nodded that he heard him and moved to reach the front door. Easing his way, he listened.
“Ah, mi amigo,” a drunk voice said. “You screw her like a rabbit. Give her all of it.”
Perhaps if they were that involved in an orgy . . . Beside the open door, smelling the bitter gunsmoke stink from the small pistol near his face, he could hear the fierce grunting and the other one cheering him on.
“Hands high!” he shouted as he swept the curtain aside.
The dark-faced one whirled and his hand went for the pistol. Slocum aimed and shot him in the face. The lights went out. Slocum could see the snowy-bodied one, who was using the screaming whore doggy style when he dove for his gun in the bitter cloud of gunsmoke that boiled up in the room. Slocum fired twice and the albino lay still.
Slocum stepped back, and the sobbing, screaming puta crawfished away from him.
He told her to shut up and light some candles. Coughing on the acrid smoke, he squatted to find the dark-faced one’s gun. It was his own he discovered when he had it in his hand and the candle lighted the room.
She wrapped herself and backed to the wall, looking in horror at him. Franco came in with a club and she sucked in her breath and trembled.
“He’s with me.” Slocum jerked his gun belt off the outlaw. “See how much of my money Whitey has on him and get his gun and holster set.”
Franco nodded.
“Where are the others staying?” Slocum asked her.
“I don’t know.” She clutched her hands and elbows together in prayer fashion, and her lips mumbled, “Hail Mary, Mother of God . . .”
“Where did you find them?”
“They came to me.”
“You know them?”
She shook her head; the limp hair fell in her face and she did nothing about it.
“The men kidnapped a woman. There are two more?”
She shuddered and slid down the wall to a pile on the floor. “I am a poor puta. I kidnap no one.” She began to cry.
“Where did they stay?”
“Maybe in a casa.” She snuffed her nose and sobbed.
“Which one?”
“At the edge of town—a white one beside the road.”
“Can you show us?”
“You can find it.” She pointed south. “You can’t miss it.”
“Who owns this casa?”
She swallowed hard and managed. “Delo Mannas.”
“Who’s that?”
“A big man—many ranches—much money.”
“Franco, you ever hear of him?”
Franco wore the albino’s gun belt and handed Slocum a fistful of gold coins. “I never heard of him. But I travel nowhere.”
“That’s the money they took from me.” Slocum shook his head—most of it was there. “I guess they never shared it with Slade.”
“Slade?” she asked and she looked around like one did for a buzzing rattler.
“You know him?”
“He is malo hombre. He is here?”
“These men worked for him.”
She looked at the two and shook her head. “I didn’t know that.”
“This casa is a short ways from here?” Slocum asked.
She nodded. “It is big white house.”
“They came on foot?”
“Sí, they walked by here. I see them from the door and I say, ‘Are you lonely?’ They say yes. I tell them to come in.” She shrugged.
“You ever see them before?”
“No.”
“We better go see this Mannas. Maybe he can tell us more.”
Franco agreed.
“Here’s ten pesos. They don’t need a fancy funeral.”
“Funeral? Me? I cannot stay here with dead men—alone.” She looked bewildered.
“You can take care of it for that much money. Come on, Franco, we need to see this Mannas.”
“Don’t leave them here!” she shrieked after them, but Slocum and the boy were already running out the door and down the alley. “Come back!”
A block away from her place, Slocum slowed to a jog and tried to see the “big casa” in the starlight.
“It must be down here,” he said, looking through the lacy mesquites.
“Why does rich man live here?” Franco asked. “This town is so poor.”
“He must own some ranches nearby—” Slocum stopped and pointed out the two-story building. Some lights shone in the windows and a lamp was lit out in front. Slocum skirted some tall pancake cactus and Spanish daggers and headed for the front door.
“Keep an eye out,” he said and went on.
His rap on the carved wooden door was loud. He stood back a few feet, hand on his gun butt, expecting anything. The door opened and a dark-eyed woman told him good evening in a smoky voice. She wore a filmy dress and her cleavage caught the refection of light on
her high-rise breasts.
He swept off his hat. “Señor Mannas here?”
She shook her head. “Can I help you, señor?”
“You are his señora?”
She smiled like that was out of the question. “I am his servant.”
Slocum tried to see beyond her. “And Señor Slade, I can speak to him?”
“No, you just missed him. Señor Slade rode away a short time ago.”
“Did the señor ride with him?”
She smiled. “No, he went earlier to a ranch where there has been a death.”
“Why did Señor Slade leave this time of night?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“Did he take Señorita Harbor with him?”
“Who?”
“The woman he kidnapped in Arizona.”
“I must close this door, señor—”
Slocum stepped up and braced it half-open. “He came here to sell her to Mannas, didn’t he?”
“I know nothing.” She backed away and shook her head, looking frightened.
Slocum took on the offense and came in the entryway. “No, you know. He brought the woman here to sell her to Mannas. Where did they go?”
“I don’t know—”
“Yes, you do.” He caught her by the arm and pulled her close to his face. Close enough he could smell her expensive perfume and the musk of her body. “Didn’t he come to sell the woman to him?”
“Y-yes—” She went limp in his hands, knees buckled; she fainted. He was forced to sweep her up in his arms. In the living room he carried her to a couch and laid her down.
“Did Mannas buy her?”
“No—” she managed, holding her wrist over her eyes. “He had left for the ranch before they came.”
“Why did Slade and Thorpe run off?”
“They heard someone was in the village asking questions about them.”
Slocum shook his head and grinned down at her. “You told them that lie, didn’t you?”
“She was very pretty.” Looking pale, she raised up on her elbows.
“Very pretty. Where’re they going?”
“They rode south. Is she yours?”
“My worry. Yes. Did Slade ride a big Morgan horse out of here?”
“I think so. He left some horses in the stables for his men to ride when they came back.”
“They won’t need them. They stole mine.”
She shrugged.
“Good evening. I am sorry I upset you.” He turned and crossed the tile floor.
“Señor,” she called out when he reached the doorway.
He paused and looked back at her.
“I feel very bad for her. I once was kidnapped.”
Slocum nodded and went outside. Franco was there. “We need to get their horses out of the barn, get the mules and head south.”
“How long ago did they leave?” Franco asked.
“A few hours ago.” Slocum looked at the stars. We’re coming, Mary.
23
The dusty road to Guaymos was cluttered with two-wheel carettas loaded with unginned cotton, raw strong-smelling wool, hay, firewood sticks and produce: melons, ear corn and some citrus. Their dry axles squeaked so loud they could be heard for miles, as the thin, white oxen pulled them along at a snail’s pace. Now and then there was a pinto yoke or a black span—but most were white, the color of the dust that boiled up from Slocum and Franco’s horses’ and the two mules’ hooves.
Sparse, mostly dead trees lined the King’s Highway, the Camino Real—turkey buzzards sat like onlookers along the route. Dead draft animals beside the tracks furnished enough nourishment; they spent most of their days on a limb, crapping giant white streaks on everything under them. In early morning and before sundown they hopped down to the nearest source, and after eating the eyes out of the newest one, they jumped around, balanced by their great wings, to the dead one’s belly. There they could easily tear open the thinner hide and expel the sour gases as they feasted on ala viscera. Squawking and quarrelsome they kept the ravens run off, and the mangy coyotes, until they’d had their gastronomic fill. Then, flapping their wings, they went back to their special roosts to preen their black feathers.
If a coyote really challenged them, they vomited enough sour-smelling puke on his head that he fled to escape the horror of it. His eyes and nose on fire, he ran whining to hide, to paw away at the stinging, stinking mess for hours. Only the larger harpy eagles could run the vultures off. More athletic and shorter tempered, they could scream, hold their wings out and look big as horses to send the vultures away. When no live game existed for them, the harpies shared the road carrion.
Broken-down wagons and carettas lined the road. Great wooden wheels splinted and broken, caretta parts, boards, rails—they made the fuel for night fires if they could be hacked off. Or a fire was started in the center and the wheel burned all night to reach the edge; some still smoldered a day later.
Here and there several freight wagons were lashed together and pulled by twenty teams of stout oxen, rolled up the road. Usually they had armed guards on horseback, for their freight was of more value than farm goods and they traveled in trains of several. The teamsters walking beside these long lines of draft animals used bullwhips and loud commands. They were tough and looked hard-eyed from under their high-peaked sombreros, with disgust at the peons and their two-wheeled conveyances.
Burro trains brought cooking wood. Each animal bristling with sticks like a huge pile of dead brush on the move, they stayed in line without halter or lead. Single file, they went beside the tracks. If one broke the formation, the driver commanded a fast dog to rush in, bite its heels and put it back in line. Even a small colt trailing his mother had to obey the road rule or feel the wrath of the dog’s sharp teeth—and quick-like the colt learned the ways.
Men, boys and dogs herded small herds of sheep and goats for the meat market. They too stayed in close-knit formation, flowing like a blanket as they went to meet the butcher. Sometimes a faster moving carriage or buggy pulled by fine horses would be held up by such a flock, and the driver issued many bad words as to the herder’s ancestry for blocking his way.
In mid-afternoon, when such a luxurious conveyance went by Slocum, he noticed the fine-looking señorita behind the black lace fan in the coach window. Her raven black hair was piled on top of her head and spilled down the back in great long curls. Dark eyes, big as saucers, long alluring lashes, a slender nose and lips like fresh rose petals to kiss, she sat up straight-backed as her grandmama had always insisted. Under the black veil she had pulled back to expose her face was one of Mexico’s finest examples of womanhood—he knew it without even speaking a word to her. They were all starved vixens in a fluffy featherbed—torrid lovers that could waste a strong man. Then when it was over they would liquidly squirm on their backs, pointing their rock-hard nipples at the ceiling, turning up the edge of their haughty mouths in a half sneer and challenging him for more. He nodded to her—Mexico’s finest.
Three hard-faced pistoleros rode in the rear of the polished coach. Dressed in buckskin coats and pants, they wore criss-crossed ammo belts and each carried two six-guns, a big knife and a new repeater in his saddle scabbard. Their sombrero’s chin straps drawn under hard-set jaws, they all three rode good barb horses—not mustangs. They trotted forty feet behind the coach as if in military formation. The protectors of her unfractured hymen, they also kept her from harm’s way. They would die before anyone touched her with bad intent. Like the sharp-toothed dog that kept the burros and sheep in line, these men kept the world away from their patron’s daughter.
“You see her?” Franco asked aghast as the coach moved on with the sheep band cleared from the road.
“Pretty young woman,” Slocum said and nodded his head, reining the bay horse around the bleating mass.
“Oh, she looked like an angel. Who was she?”
“Easy, my friend. She’s from a very rich family, the Peraltas—that was the famil
y crest on the coach door. A poor farm boy from the sticks would not stand a chance with the likes of her.”
“I don’t care. I want her.”
“Easy, amigo. You see those three pistoleros riding guard. They’d kill you like an ant if you even spoke to her.”
“I’d die with a smile on my face.”
“Hell, there’s all kinds of pussy in Mexico. Some ain’t that pretty, but it really is all good.”
“I would marry her.”
“Franco. You won’t ever see her again. Thank the good Lord you even had a chance to peek at her today.”
“I want her for my wife.”
“People want icebergs for their beer too and they don’t get them in Mexico.”
“I could show her I was a man.”
“Damn, boy, you got plumb intoxicated with one look.”
Franco nodded his head and booted his roan horse in a trot. “Come on. We need to find this Mary Harbor so I can go find my angel.”
Slocum shook his head and wondered how to bring that boy out of the clouds. Guaymos blushed with business. The streets were clogged, so getting around was like being in a labyrinth, pushing their horses around and then back. Youths hurried alongside their stirrups offering them all the services, including pussy. Franco shook his head as if to clear it.
“Things are very hectic here.”
“Everyone wants your money.” Slocum smiled at him and booted the bay past a stalled caretta.
“I have no money.”
“You have a gun. You ride a horse and lead a mule.”
“But I can barely ride him and could not hit a bull in the ass with this pistol.”
“To them, you are a man of substance. No! No!” Slocum said, sharp enough they could understand as a new wave of these juvenile pimps rushed out to offer them the services of some puta.
“Look,” Franco pointed. “The Morgan horse, no?”
