“A conspiracy of old men who needed each other,” Haskell said.
“Why you old diablo!” Rosa said, scowling at Redfield in shock. Redfield winced, raised his glass in a sheepish salute, and threw back the entire shot.
Rosa looked from Haskell to Arliss and then back to Arliss again. “When is Alvear getting out of prison?”
“Oh, he’s done his twenty years,” Arliss said. “His sentence was up nearly a year ago.”
Haskell looked at Oro La Paz. “Right, Alvear?”
Oro La Paz, aka Oscar Alvear, grinned. He let a little air out through the gaps between his teeth.
At the same time, Haskell heard the heavy, ratcheting click of a shotgun hammer being eared back. He turned to see Redfield aiming both his sawed-off shotguns at him, all four bores yawning wide.
Redfield cocked another hammer and smiled icily.
Chapter Nineteen
“Bear,” Arliss said, glancing at him from the doorway.
“What is it?” Haskell turned from the two cocked shotguns that Redfield was aiming at him.
Arliss canted her head to indicate the street outside the cantina. “Company.”
“Oh.” Haskell glanced at Redfield still aiming the shotguns at him. “That just make it a little more cozy in here, that’s all.”
Haskell rose from his table and walked over to the bar. He set his shot glass atop the bar and asked Rosa to refill it. As she did, Bear looked out the cantina’s dusty front windows to see the six border bandits file down the street toward Rosa’s place. They were led by the big mestizo, Hector Valderrama.
“Mierda,” Rosa said softly.
“You can say that again.” Haskell sipped his tequila then said quietly to the pretty cantina owner, “Best be ready to duck down behind the bar.”
“When that bunch is in town,” Rosa said, “I always am.”
Footsteps rose in the street. Arliss glanced at Haskell then backed away from the batwings. She put her back to the wall opposite the wall against which Redfield and Alvear sat. Redfield was still holding his cocked shotguns. Alvear had set an old Bisley revolver on the table before him. It had a thong hanging from its butt. Obviously, the Mexican had worn it around his neck, inside his baggy shirt.
Redfield sipped his tequila, set his glass down, sighed, and brushed his left forearm across his nose.
Haskell glanced at Arliss. She returned it with an edgy one of her own.
The footsteps got louder, spurs ringing. Hector Valderrama stopped just outside the cantina and peered in over the batwings upon which he rested his arms, leaning casually forward as he looked around, grinning. He held a pistol in each hand.
“Shit,” Redfield muttered.
“What’s the matter, Captain?” Valderrama said, pushing through the batwings and sauntering into the cantina. He held his pistols straight down against his sides. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“I’m happy to see you,” Haskell said. “Hell, more the merrier!” He held his drink up in salute, then threw it back.
Arliss gave him a beetle-browed, skeptical look.
Five others filed in behind the half-breed Mexican, forming a ragged semi-circle in the middle of the room, facing Redfield and Alvear but twisting around to regard Haskell standing at the bar to their left and Arliss, who stood behind them. She held her Winchester up high, right finger curled against the trigger, thumb on the hammer.
The newcomers sized up the pretty Pinkerton slowly, feasting their eyes, lusty smiles etched on their sunburned lips.
“Nice,” said Valderrama. “Who does she belong to?”
“Me,” Haskell said without hesitation before Arliss could say anything.
She scowled at him.
“She’s mine,” Haskell said. “And she’s not for sale.”
“Everything is for sale, amigo,” Valderrama said. “Given the right amount of money.” He turned to Redfield and Alvear and said, “Which brings us to why we are here.”
“Why’s that?” the old Ranger snarled.
“We saw the powwow over here,” said Valderrama. “And we suspected that something of great significance had occurred.”
“Senor Alvear just beat Redfield at checkers,” Haskell said. “Is that what you mean?”
Valderrama glanced at him, unsmiling. So did the five other dirty, bearded or mustached jackals in his bunch. As a group, they smelled as bad as some dead thing a mongrel dog might drag around, well-seasoned by the hot sun in some desert arroyo.
“Oh,” Haskell said. “That ain’t what you meant, was it? I bet you meant the gold.”
He thought he heard Redfield groan.
“Si,” Valderrama said, nodding slowly and smiling with one side of his mouth, showing where he’d broken a tooth in half. “I meant the gold.”
“We were just getting to that,” Arliss said.
Valderrama raked his goatish eyes up and down her sweet form again and said, “Senorita, when we’re done here and that big lawman is howling with a bullet in his guts, I’m gonna throw you down on a table right here in this room, and I’m gonna fuck you so good you’ll get my name tattooed in both your pretty ass cheeks!”
His other men all laughed at that. Even Alvear allowed himself a smile.
Redfield’s cheek twitched and he almost smiled, too, but then he remembered what they were all here for, and the trace of humor leeched out of his eyes. He caressed his shotgun’s cocked hammers with his thumbs, aiming both poppers over his black toes at the border jackals.
“What I’d like to know, just to satisfy my own curiosity,” Bear said, splashing more tequila into his glass, “is how many folks are after that loot?”
“A few, amigo,” said Valderrama. “Here and there ... a few. Most who remember the story of the holdup. And those who, remembering, were waiting for Alvear to be released from prison.”
Bear puffed his Indian Kid as he said, “So a lot of them shootings out there were one faction or another out looking for the loot shooting another faction out looking for the loot. And the Jackal was out there, shooting both Tifflin’s men and the Pool’s men to keep them going after each other, so they’d finally wipe each other out.”
“And the Silver ranch house would be empty,” Arliss said, “so that Hyde could go in and retrieve it from where Senor Alvear originally hid it--under the Silver house, which got stoned in when Mister Silver and his family built over his original cabin, turning it into a large, sprawling ranch house.”
“We saw the house,” Bear said, adding grimly, “and all the dead men in the yard, including the Silver family. And we saw where someone had busted in the foundation with a sledgehammer ... and like as not squirreled out the loot that had been just lying there amongst those beams for over twenty years.”
“Si,” said Alvear, nodding slowly. “Jack and I holed up in the Silver barn when we passed through that country over twenty years ago now. No one knew we were there. There was only Silver and his wife and a few kids at the time. Late at night, while Jack slept, I hid the money in some beams under the house, which was propped up on stone pylons.”
“You intended to retrieve it soon after,” Haskell said. “You weren’t counting on having to spend the next twenty years in prison. You didn’t tell Hyde where it was, though, because you didn’t trust him. He broke out of prison on a whim, when he saw a fleeting chance. He probably tried to find the loot right away, but couldn’t.”
“So he waited,” Arliss added. “With the rest of those who remembered and were hungry to have it—over a hundred thousand dollars in gold coins that climbed in value over the years.”
Haskell looked at Alvear. “You and Hyde fell in together after you got out of prison. You knew that after all these years you still needed each other. You were both older, maybe a little infirm, not able to fight all the other men who might be after the loot ... and after you if they found out you had it. So you fell in together with a new understanding. And Ranger Redfield, the man who’d originally arrested you
and had been waiting for the loot all these years, as well, cut himself in.
“He probably recognized you right off, Alvear, when you moved in to the depot yonder as the new station agent. So you had to cut him in.”
“Si,” Alvear said, nodding. “I was fortunate that when I got back to Sundown the spur line was needing an agent. Out here, the job was almost impossible to fill. I was heaven-sent, I guess you could say.” He spread his hands and grinned broadly.
“A great cover,” Haskell said. “While Hyde and his Sharps waged their war out west of town.”
Alvear nudged Redfield with his elbow, “Say, Senor Oso is smarter than he looks, el Capitan!”
“I get that a lot,” Bear said. But I got a question for you, Captain. How did you help? And why did you have your old friend, Henry Dade, send me down here?”
Redfield stared at Haskell, nostrils flared. He seemed to be considering what he should say or not say.
Then he shrugged and said slowly, keeping his shotguns aimed at Valderrama’s men, “From here, I could spread rumors to both ranching factions. Turn ’em against each other. Too bad Hyde felt the need to kill four of my men, but they themselves, having heard about the treasure, had started looking for it, suspecting Hyde might be after it. They were young, sassy. Wouldn’t follow my orders. They had to die, I reckon. I waited a lot of years for that gold. Even a one-third cut will be worth a fortune by now ... down south of the border.”
“But why send for me?” Haskell asked, genuinely perplexed.
“I was afraid I might be suspected. After my Rangers were killed and the loot was found. After I retired and headed to Mexico. I wanted you to come down here and clear me. I expected we’d have the loot and have split it up before you got here, and you’d just think the whole thing was a shootin’ war. So ... you’d clear me in your report, go back home to Denver, and I’d take my cut of the loot, retire, and head south. No one would be after me. I wouldn’t have to spend my last years lookin’ over my shoulder.”
The Ranger sighed. “But, like my friend here said, you’re smarter than you look, gallblastit!”
“Who threw the snake in your sleeping quarters?”
“Maybe one of these scalawags standin’ before me,” snarled Redfield. “Maybe one of young Tifflin’s pards.”
“Why?”
“A few folks around here knew I was the Kansas lawman who arrested Hyde and Alvear. Someone must have suspected we might have thrown in together. That rumor sorta spread, put a target on my back. More an’ more as the years passed and Alvear was due to be released.”
Arliss said, “So, as I suspected, Jordan Tifflin was looking for the loot, as well.”
“Oh, sure he was,” Redfield said. “Along with all the other no-accounts in this country. He didn’t mention none of that to his old man, I ’spect, because he didn’t want his old man gettin’ in his way. He hated his old man so much that he was probably just fine with the idea of the old bastard bein’ at the center of a shootin’ war. Ambrose Tifflin was so wrapped up in his own problems I doubt he gave one thought to the possibility the loot might be at the real center of his trouble. And the smaller ranchers was just plain fools!”
Redfield wheezed a sarcastic laugh.
“All that is very interesting, amigos,” interrupted Valderrama. “But let’s cut to the chase, shall we?”
“Yeah,” Haskell said, slamming his empty shot glass down on the counter by his Henry. “Where’s the galldarned loot?”
There was a tinkling sound, like a breeze-nudged wind chime or breaking window glass.
One of Valderrama’s men hiccupped and stepped forward, nodding his head as though heartily agreeing with what had just been said.
But he hadn’t hiccupped.
That was made plain when an open hand-sized gob of blood and brain and skull bone plopped onto the floor in front of Redfield’s wheelchair and what sounded like the roar of an angry god rose from outside.
Chapter Twenty
The man who’d just had the top of his head blown off, part of it on the floor, part of it splashed over Redfield’s cocked shotguns, dropped to his knees, hitting the floor with a resolute thud.
Redfield stared down at him. He looked at his bloody hands and shotguns, and then, as though he thought the mess had been made by one of the dead fellow’s own pards, he loosed a bellowing cry and triggered both shotguns in turn.
The twin blasts were like a single keg of black powder being detonated in the cantina’s close confines. Two of Valderrama’s men, almost literally cut in half, were lifted three feet straight up in the air and hurled back toward where Arliss stood against the far wall.
Arliss screamed as the bloody bodies hammered into her, taking her to the floor.
Which was a good place for her, as it turned out.
For just then all hell broke loose as Valderrama and his other three men began opening up on Redfield and Alvear as well as on Haskell, who grabbed his Henry off the bar and clicked the hammer back, crouching, aiming, and adding his own rifle blasts to the deafening din.
All Bear could see before him was a lurching cascade of men and gunsmoke, flames lancing the smoke and evoking shrill screams and cries. As Valderrama fired two rounds into Redfield, sending the Ranger jerking back in his chair and sending another volley of ten-gauge buck into the ceiling above his head, the mestizo twisted around toward Bear, snarling, as he leveled his twin Remingtons.
Bear was falling back against the bar as a bullet clipped his left side. Valderrama fired his twin pistols, and one bullet clipped Bear’s right side while the other sailed past Bear’s head, within a hair’s breadth of the ear that had been clipped in the coffin when Haskell had been set sail down the Arkansas.
Haskell dropped the Henry and whipped up his Schofield, the big revolver leaping and roaring in his right hand.
Valderrama screamed as Bear’s two slugs plowed through the man’s red shirt, sending him stumbling backward where two of his other men were also stumbling, having been shot by both Bear and Alvear.
Alvear gave a scream and flew back against the wall behind him as one of Valderrama’s men drilled a bullet through his belly. Haskell bolted forward, continuing to fire his Schofield into Valderrama, who tripped over a chair and hit the floor, screaming.
A man rose to a knee to Valderrama’s right. Wounded, Bear was slow to swing his Schofield toward the man, who snapped off a shot. The bullet was like a branding iron swept across Bear right cheek. Stumbling backward, Bear drilled the man who’d just shot him then got his boots tangled up in an overturned, blood-washed chair and hit the floor, unable to break his fall.
His head struck the floor. A shrill ringing rose in his ears. The room grew gray and fuzzy around him.
He could smell blood and the rotten egg odor of gun smoke.
And then he couldn’t smell anything for a time though in the back of his brain a menacing voice said over and over again, “The Jackal! The Jackal!”
He had to get up.
He swam up out of the soup of semi-consciousness, lifted his head off the floor, and opened his eyes. Thickly wafting smoke burned his eyes and nose. One of his legs was propped atop the chair he’d fallen over.
Dead men lay strewn around him, some in pieces. One was moaning softly. Haskell turned his head to see Redfield’s overturned wheel chair and the Ranger captain’s black toes propped on the side of it, aimed at the ceiling.
Two of those painful-looking black toes twitched as, apparently, the old captain gave up the ghost.
Aside from the low, muffled moaning, an eerie silence had descended on the cantina.
Haskell started to lift his leg off the overturned chair, intending to rise, but then he heard the faint ring of a spur out on the street.
Bear froze. He stared at his boot.
His heart thumped anxiously.
The Jackal!
The spur chings grew gradually louder.
A mother’s voice at bedtime: Say your prayers or the J
ackal will get you!
Haskell fought the instinct to heave himself to his feet and prepare to do battle. He wouldn’t make it from his position, in his condition. The Jackal would have him before he could get to his feet or raise the Schofield, which he’d dropped when he’d fallen.
Play dead ...
Bear closed his eyes as boots thumped on the boardwalk fronting Rosa’s.
His heart thudded heavily. He wondered if the harried organ could be seen thumping against his shirt. He tried to make his breathing shallow, but it was damn hard.
Outside, a breeze rose. It made a whooshing sound against the cantina, briefly pelted the window with dust.
Bear sensed the Jackal peering into the cantina.
He thought that even amidst the copper stench of blood and the fetor of gunsmoke he could smell the man. A cloying sweetness ...
Alvear continued to moan on the floor beyond Redfield.
Hinges creaked as the batwings opened. Boots thudded slowly, softly. Spurs chinged.
Haskell drew a slow, deep breath through his nose, trying to calm himself.
He’s here.
Lie still, you stupid bastard, or he’ll blow your head off.
That Sharps is likely loaded and cocked and ready to fly!
The Jackal moved slowly, stealthily into the room. Haskell kept his eyes lightly shut, but in his mind’s eye he saw the Jackal aiming that big Sharps hybrid with the German scope straight out from his right shoulder, swinging it around the room, looking for any indication that someone here was still alive.
Meanwhile, the breeze rose again. Alvear moaned. The Mexican must have nudged a chair, for there was a slight wooden scraping noise.
The Jackal moved slowly, quietly around the room.
The footsteps grew louder. Haskell could feel a floorboard sag beneath him. The Jackal was near.
The foot thuds stopped.
A smell of sweat and leather and cheap tobacco touched Bear’s nostrils.
The Jackals of Sundown (A Bear Haskell Western Book 2) Page 15
