The Jackals of Sundown (A Bear Haskell Western Book 2)

by Peter Brandvold

  “One of the smaller ranches in the area, I take it,” Haskell said.

  Tifflin nodded as he inhaled and exhaled blue smoke and tossed his spent match into a brass sandbox beside his desk. There was an open bottle on his desk. He took a deep pull from it. “We didn’t know he was leading us into a trap. Silver was waiting for us. He and his men and the whole damn Pool was waiting for us—with their entire payrolls. Must have been near thirty of ’em.”

  “And ... ” Arliss prompted the oldster.

  “And what, little girl? What do you think happened? A small war. Only it wasn’t so small. We gave as good as we got, I’ll tell you that. We didn’t leave one Pool rider standing. Wiped ’em all out ’ceptin’ those few that turned tail and ran. Ha!” Tifflin slapped his desk. “Them yellow dogs that ran are prob’ly in Mexico by now.”

  The rancher paused. He narrowed his eyes pensively as he drew on the cheroot. “Only problem is ... only me and my segundo, Roy Snyder, made it back to the San Rafael alive. I’m a might short-handed.”Tifflin chuffed with wry amusement at the notion that all of his men were dead.

  “Is the Snyder place east of that high ridge just south of here?” Haskell asked.

  “Lucifer’s Anvil, it’s called. Yunque de Lucifer. And yes it is.”

  Haskell looked at Arliss. “That’s the shooting we heard yesterday afternoon.” He turned to Tifflin, studied the man in silent exasperation. “All dead, you say? All of your men? All of the Pool men?”

  “That’s right.” Tifflin gave a wolfish, half-mad grin, his blue lips parting to reveal black gums and rotten teeth. “You got good hearing for a lawman. I reckon I’m hirin’. You’re a big, sound feller. How ’bout turnin’ in your badge and ridin’ for me? I bet I pay better than Uncle Sam. I’ll make you foreman. I need a big son of a bitch to keep my crew in line!”

  He slapped the table and grinned across his desk and through his billowing cigar smoke at Haskell. The old man’s eyes were glazed with drink and dementia.

  Bear felt Arliss’s eyes on him. He turned to her, and she arched a skeptical brow.

  Bear turned back to Tifflin and said, “What about Hyde?”

  “What about him?”

  “You didn’t see him at the Silver place, I’ll bet.”

  “Hell, no. He does his work from a distance with that big Sharps of his, and disappears. What he can’t do without the cannon he don’t do!”

  “In town, Homer Redfield told me that several Pool men had been shot with that Sharps, as well.”

  “That’s what the Pool says.” Tifflin hooded his eyes and curled another devious grin. “They just wanted the Rangers to think that Hyde was workin’ for me, so they had an excuse to ride against me ... to kill my men. Eventually, they’d be swarmin’ around this place, takin’ over the San Rafael. Silver would likely be movin’ into my house, probably fuckin’ my wife, if he could stand ole Hillary.”

  Tifflin rolled a bright, vaguely mocking gaze to Arliss, who regarded him blandly. He was the type of fellow who liked to get a rise out of women by talking dirty in front of them. He didn’t realize there was no getting a rise out of Arliss Posey. Haskell half wanted to inform him he was wasting his time, but he had more important things to think about.

  “Why do you suppose Hyde ambushed us this morning?” he asked Tifflin. “That’s when he shot your son.”

  Tifflin only shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he seen that badge on your shirt, figured the law was on his trail. Maybe he wanted to fuck the little girl.” He slid his challenging gaze back to Arliss, who still gave him nothing.

  “Maybe,” Haskell allowed, nodding. “But maybe Hyde wasn’t riding for the Pool.”

  “He sure as hell wasn’t riding for me!”

  “Maybe he wasn’t riding for either one of you, Mister Tifflin,” Haskell said. “Ever think of that?”

  Arliss jerked a vaguely startled look at Bear.

  “Why else would the Jackal be hauntin’ this range?” Tifflin asked, poking his cheroot into a corner of his mouth and taking a long drag. Suddenly, he frowned. “Unless ... ”

  He shook his head, releasing the thought. “The Pool’s been after me for years, after I started fencin’ in all of the old grant,” he said. “So they brought in the fucking Jackal!”

  Haskell pondered the question. He could feel Arliss studying him again, but he didn’t look at her.

  Finally, he asked Tifflin, “How far is it to the Silver Ranch?”

  “A good twenty, twenty-five miles from here.” The rancher scowled. “Why?”

  Now Bear looked at Arliss. “I’m thinkin’ we might ride over there.”

  “I’ll ask it again—why?” Tifflin repeated, genuinely befuddled.

  “Not sure yet.” Haskell rose from his chair. “Good talkin’ with you, Mister Tifflin. My apologies about your boy.”

  Tifflin stood and the two men shook hands.

  “Gonna be dark soon,” the rancher said. He glanced out a window. “Might even rain again. You won’t make it as far as the Silver Ranch before dark. Best hole up in a line shack at the edge of the San Rafael. It’s on Jack Rabbit Wash. When you leave here, take the trail to the southeast, keep Lucifer’s Anvil ahead and on your right.”

  As Haskell followed Arliss to the door, Tifflin said behind him, “You’re gonna find dead men at the Silver Ranch. A bunch. Mine an’ Silver’s. Me an’ Boyd were in no shape to bury our own.”

  “I’ve seen dead men before,” Haskell grumbled.

  “And don’t go thinkin’ about makin’ a criminal case out o’ none of this, lawman!” Tifflin yelled as Haskell followed Arliss down the stairs. “They’re the ones who started the whole thing!”

  Haskell stopped on the porch. He stared toward a low rise to the west. Grave markers angled here and there about the rise. A cemetery. Likely an old one, predating the Alamo. Many Mexicans who’d populated the Rancho San Rafael over the years, before the British syndicate bought out the land grant, were buried there. Now Jordan Tifflin was about to be planted there, as well.

  His roan stood under an oak atop the rise, grazing and idly tossing its tail. The body was still tied across the saddle. A bulky female figure wearing an apron, which buffeted in the wind, was slowly, methodically digging a hole.

  Hillary.

  Arliss had followed Bear’s gaze to the graveyard. Now she turned to him, one brow arched speculatively.

  Bear gave an ironic chuff then grabbed his reins off the hitch rack and mounted up.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next day, mid-morning, Haskell and Arliss halted their mounts at the west edge of Sundown, just beyond the old depot hut.

  “Something’s wrong,” Arliss said, staring straight ahead along the deserted main street.

  Haskell nodded. “You ever ridden through a mountain valley, far from anywhere, and not seen a single critter? No deer, elk or coyotes? No songbirds? Even the squirrels layin’ low?”

  “Yes. I’ve ridden through such a valley.”

  “Kinda looks an’ sounds like that here, don’t it?”

  “When that happens, it usually means there’s a particularly nasty breed of predator about.” Arliss reached forward and slid her Winchester carbine from its saddle boot. “A rogue grizzly or a stalking wildcat.”

  “Or a jackal.”

  Haskell’s nerves had been on edge since they’d arrived at the line shack on Jack Rabbit Wash just before sundown the previous evening. There’d been no telling for sure, but Haskell had suspected that Jack Hyde had holed up in the shack while he’d been orchestrating his dirty work in the area.

  Hyde hadn’t left behind any identifying markers, but someone had obviously been living in the shack, for the stove had recently been used and there’d been fresh trash—mostly airtight tins—tossed onto the rubble pile in the draw behind the cabin.

  And the cot that Haskell and Arliss had taken turns sleeping on when the other was keeping watch for the Jackal’s possible return, had smelled like fresh sweat.
/>
  Jackal sweat.

  Odd how sweet the sweat had smelled, he’d thought. A vaguely feminine smell.

  Cigarette butts lying about had been of the cheap wheat paper variety. But they’d been deftly, tightly rolled. There had been no liquor bottles. At least none that had appeared recently discarded. Not a one.

  Was the Jackal a teetotaler?

  Also plucking the lawman’s already strained nerves was the sense that he and Arliss had been followed when they’d left the shack and ridden over to the Silver Ranch. And then it was as though the ghost haunting their back trail had suddenly disappeared.

  But the ghost had returned.

  Haskell could sense it again now in Sundown.

  Had the Jackal swung around and ridden ahead of him and Arliss, and beaten them back to town?

  As Arliss quietly racked a cartridge into her Winchester’s action, Haskell shucked his own rifle and cocked it. He stared ahead along the dusty, sunny street. Nothing moved. Not a horse. Not a dog. Not even a tumbleweed.

  Despite the heat that had returned after the storm, a bead of cold sweat rolled down the lawman’s back.

  “All right,” he muttered, half to himself, and touched spurs to his mount’s flanks.

  They rode slowly into town, hooves thudding softly, dust rising.

  None of the shops around them had ‘Closed’ signs in the windows, but the shops looked closed, just the same. Closed and abandoned.

  Soft laughter sounded just ahead. It was coming from Rosa’s Cantina on the right side of the street. A man’s voice rose, buoyant with humor. A familiar voice. Another man spoke with a Spanish accent, and that voice was also familiar to the lawman’s ears.

  The sounds—the only ones anywhere in the town—were coming from Rosa’s Cantina.

  Haskell glanced at Arliss then gestured to the little watering hole with his eyes.

  They turned in. As they did, Haskell spied movement up the street on his left. Three men stepped out of the Cantina San Gabriel and took up positions against the stout adobe columns fronting the place. One was the Mexican-Apache, Hector Valderrama, who’d ridden into Sundown with five other lobos just as Bear and Jordan Tifflin had been riding out.

  The mestizo crossed his arms on his chest and grinned beneath his sweeping black mustache.

  “Ah, shit,” Haskell grumbled.

  “What is it?”

  “I been to this dance once before.”

  Arliss dismounted and turned toward Valderrama and the three others. The other two were Anglos, but all three looked as savage as they came, clad in buckskin and deerskin, pistols and knives bristling on their hips. A silver capped bowie knife was sheathed on Valderrama’s right calf, over his knee-high moccasin with the pointed toe that made it look like an elf shoe.

  That was the only thing one bit elfish about Hector Valderrama.

  “Nice looking bunch,” Arliss said. “Who do you suppose they ride for?”

  “I have a feelin’ we’re gonna find out.”

  Haskell tossed his reins over the hitch rack and walked slowly under the arbor fronting Rosa’s cantina, keeping a cautious eye skinned on the Cantina San Gabriel and the three, hard-eyed men standing in front of it.

  Flanked by Arliss, Bear pushed through the batwings. Rosa looked at him from behind the bar. A smile began to tug at her mouth corners, but then she saw Arliss walk into the cantina behind Haskell, and she arched a skeptical, faintly accusing brow.

  Haskell smiled and pinched his hat brim to the pretty Mexican woman. Then he turned to where Redfield sat in his wheelchair, in his usual place, his back customarily against the wall. He was playing checkers with Orozco La Paz, who sat at a table beside the Ranger captain. La Paz was just then chuckling enthusiastically through his teeth as he jumped several of the Ranger’s checkers, cleaning the board.

  “Goddamn you, Oro, you bean-eatin’ son of a bitch!”

  La Paz lifted his head, laughing girlishly. “No disrespect intended, el Capitan, but I was setting you up for that move since the very start of the game!”

  “Well, you were setting someone up for somethin’, anyway!” Haskell said, planting his fists on his hips and chuckling.

  Both checker players snapped their heads toward the big man standing just inside the doorway, as though they’d been jerked by the same string.

  “Well, look what the coyotes dragged down the wash and into our humble abode!” bellowed Redfield. As appeared to be the custom, his blue eyes were glazed from drink. A nearly empty tequila bottle stood on the table to his left, with two shot glasses. “I see you’re still kickin’, ya big catamount!”

  He might have acted delighted, but there was a vague disappointment in his eyes.

  Redfield turned to Oro La Paz and said, “Henry Dade said he was sendin’ me a catamount, and ole Henry wasn’t whistlin’ ‘Dixie’! We used to ride together—Henry an’ me.” The Ranger’s eyes flicked to Arliss and held on her with goatish male interest. “Sayyy, what you brought home with ya, son?”

  “Si,” said Oro La Paz, grinning, showing all his large, crooked, tobacco-stained teeth, his chocolate eyes fairly devouring Bear’s comely partner. “What you bring home with you, Senor Oso? A girl? Where did you find a girl out there in those rocks? And one so pretty ... ?”

  Haskell glanced at Arliss, who rolled her eyes at the seedy checkers players as she turned to stare out over the batwings. She held her Winchester carbine up high across her chest, ready for action.

  “This here, gentlemen ... and Senora Rosa ... is Miss Arliss Posey of the famed Pinkerton Agency. Arliss is a whole lot smarter than me.”

  “If looks make us smart, she is smarter than us all,” intoned La Paz, then glancing quickly at Rosa and adding, “Except for Senora Rosa, I mean!”

  Rosa beetled her brows at him.

  “What do you mean Miss Posey is smarter than you, Bear?” asked Redfield. “Did she help you run down, the Jackal, did she? Boy, I hope so.” He frowned. “An’ ... what did you mean by your remark about Oro’s remark about him settin’ someone up?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, Cap,” Haskell said, walking over and slacking into a chair near the two checkers players. “He set us all up. You, me, likely the whole town and both shooting factions out there in the rocks. He’s probably gonna kill you—don’t you realize that, or are you too damn drunk? Him an’ the Jackal.”

  Oro frowned, curious. “I do not comprende, Oso. What are you saying? Speak English!”

  Bear said, “You see, we were sitting around talking last night at the old line shack on Jackrabbit Wash, Miss Posey an’ me, and I told her I was wondering if all the killing out here was really about a land war. I told her that in the entire file my boss gave me on Jack Hyde, otherwise known as the Jackal, I didn’t see any mention of the gold bullion that Hyde and his partner Oscar Alvear stole nearly twenty years ago ever being recovered. I told her I was wondering if all the shooting out here wasn’t really about that loot and not about a land war at all!”

  Redfield and Oro shared a dubious look.

  Oro smiled uncertainly as he turned back to Haskell and said, “And what did she say, the bonita Pinkerton?”

  Haskell glanced at Arliss still standing by the door, staring cautiously over toward the Cantina San Gabriel. “I had to prod her a little. She’s a good agent, Arliss is. She plays her hand close to the vest. I reckon she was startin’ to trust ole Bear, though, so she finally explained how the loot hadn’t been found.

  “She also explained how this wasn’t the first time the Pinkertons had been poking around about it. They had a pretty good-sized, open file on that loot, because the government had hired them to recover it way back when it was first stolen. Miss Arliss also explained about how that loot had become somewhat of a poorly kept secret in these parts, and that occasionally men of many stripes, from both sides of the border, passed through here looking for the Jackal’s Bullion, as it was called.”

  Bear shook his head. “As far as anyone knew
, no one had found it. It remained where a much younger Jack Hyde and Oscar Alvear had buried it when they’d passed through this neck of western Texas, with the frontier cavalry hot on their heels.”

  Arliss kept staring over the batwings as she said, “Hyde had been wounded during the holdup. After a couple of days’ hard riding with just himself and Alvear, as the others in their gang had been run down by the cavalry and killed, Hyde started to lapse into unconsciousness. So he was never sure where Alvear had buried the loot before both men had ridden on to Kansas, where Hyde sought medical help. Alvear had hidden the money because he was afraid the cavalry would catch up to them, which they eventually did, but only after a town marshal—one Homer Redfield—took him into custody.”

  Redfield stared, hang-jawed at the pretty Pinkerton.

  So did Oro La Paz.

  “She’s a keeper, that one,” Redfield said, splashing more whiskey into his glass. His right hand shook slightly.

  Haskell dug an Indian Kid out of his shirt pocket and turned to Rosa. “Miss Rosa, I’d have a glass of your delicious tequila, if you wouldn’t mind ... ”

  Rosa had been staring as though in a trance, absorbing the information she was hearing. Bear’s request snapped her out of it. She grabbed a bottle from a shelf beneath the bar then walked over and set the bottle and the glass down on Haskell’s table.

  She looked at Redfield, “So ... you arrested the Jackal and Alvear?” she asked. “All those years ago?”

  “I reckon that’s right,” Redfield drawled, guiltily, his weathered cheek twitching nervously.

  “How come you never said anything?” she asked the aged Ranger. “You brag about everything but not about arresting the Jackal?”

  Redfield just stared down at his shot glass, a faint smile tugging as his silver-bearded face.

  “Because Alvear was due to be released from prison soon,” Arliss said from the batwings. “The Captain knew that. That’s why he had himself transferred here to Sundown, so he’d be in the area when Oscar Alvear was released from prison ... and he and Jack Hyde and Alvear threw in together to retrieve the loot.”