“Señor,” Yancey said quietly, and felt the officer’s dark gaze swivel in his direction. “We are undercover lawmen, for the governor of Texas, Governor Dukes. You know him and if you allow me to undo my belt, there’s a secret pocket behind the buckle that has papers there identifying me.”
“It would mean nothing to me, gringo. I do not read your language.”
“Well, how about the Seal of Texas? You’d recognize that, wouldn’t you?”
“Si,” the man said slowly. He stared at Yancey for a long minute, then glanced at Cato, and finally down at the Manstopper again. “This is not a lawman’s gun.”
“It’s my gun, and I’m a lawman,” Cato told him. “But it’s the only one around. You won’t find another like it anywhere.” The officer looked at the gun again and then rammed it into his polished leather belt next to his holstered pistol. “I will keep it,” he announced. “You, señor, may very carefully remove these papers from behind your belt.”
Yancey nodded and went through the slow process of unbuckling his belt and then carefully removing the buckle itself. There was a razor-sharp steel blade about four inches long welded to the brass buckle and he hoped the officer wouldn’t think he was about to attack him. The man placed the saber point against Yancey’s throat and held out his hand. Yancey placed the papers in his palm but the man shook his hand again and Yancey gave him the buckle-knife, too.
The Mexican walked his mount backwards a couple of yards, snapped something to his men in Spanish and then struck a vesta. He used its light to examine the buckle-knife carefully. He examined it for so long that the flame died and he had to light another. Then he unfolded the paper and glanced at it briefly before walking his horse back. He handed Yancey the paper.
“I recognize the seal, señor, and perhaps one or two words. You seem as if you are what you say.” He held up the buckle-knife. “I like your weaponry. I will keep this, too.”
He shoved it into his belt behind his holster and Yancey and Cato exchanged glances.
“Listen, señor,” Cato said. “There are eight or ten men behind us somewhere, or maybe ahead of us now, if they took some other trail. They’re the hombres who were aimin’ to raid San Felipe.”
“We were waiting for them. But, as you say, they may know another trail.”
“How did you know about them?” Yancey asked.
The Mexican’s teeth flashed white. “You Norteamericanos are not the only ones concerned about the traffic in slaves, señor. You have your agents and your Rangers at work, both north and south of the Rio. So do we. We have had our eye on Blayne and Collins for a long time, but it was not until very recently that we knew the trails they used. You will ride with me.”
He shouted orders in Spanish and his men began gathering in the middle of the deep sandy floor of the canyon.
“Where are you going?” Cato asked. “Collins and his bunch will still be somewhere in the canyons.”
“Si, but all trails through the canyon country lead to the same exit area, at the bend of the Durango River. We will wait there for them. They must pass that way if they wish to reach San Felipe.”
“Okay, now how about our weapons, señor?” Yancey asked.
The officer patted his belt. “I will keep them. You will be given your rifles before the fighting starts.”
The Enforcers exchanged glances but there was nothing they could do but follow the Mexican soldier’s orders and ride along to the bend of the Durango River.
It was daylight by the time they reached it, and came out of some of the most rugged country Yancey and Cato had ever seen, onto a sandy, tree-fringed bend of the river. Towering above the bend was a canyon wall, the rim a brilliant gold in the early sunlight.
The officer had ten men with him and they were the usual ragged-looking bunch, wearing part uniform and part ordinary clothing. Their horses were the hard, shaggy type favored by Mexicans, the short-stepping little barrel-chested animals that could run a longer stepping mustang from north of the Rio and into the ground on a day-long chase.
The officer, they saw now, in the full light of the sun, was in his mid-thirties and had a livid scar twisting up one side of his face. It cut through the corner of his mouth and gave him a sour, drooping look. His eyes were dark and flashing and he seemed like a man who knew his job; his men jumped when he barked his orders, but that meant little for the Mexican military was notorious for its sadistic punishment of those who failed to obey their officers.
He told Yancey his name was Chavez and he was fiercely proud of his Castilian forebears. He rode at the head of his men with Yancey and Cato either side of him and he explained that he would put his men on the rim and wait for Collins and Blayne to appear.
“There will be a massacre, all right, señors,” he told them with a tight grin. “But it will not be at the village of San Felipe. It will be here, and it will be the gringos’ blood that stains these sands.”
But a rifle shot rang out from the rim as he finished speaking and he flung up an arm, grabbing for the reins with his other hand, coughing blood as the bullet smacked into his chest. Without hesitation, Cato leaned from the saddle and snatched his Manstopper from the officer’s belt even before he had started to tumble out of the saddle. The Mexicans were milling as other guns up on the rim hammered and lead raked their ranks.
Yancey lunged for the man who had his Peacemaker and Winchester, snatched them from him and sent the Mexican reeling from the saddle. Yancey kept his mount racing across the sand, knowing that Collins and Blayne had outsmarted the Federale officer and somehow gotten ahead of him. They were the ambushers instead of the ambushed.
Lead sang past Yancey and burned across the rump of his mount. The animal’s hind legs buckled and it whinnied and swerved drunkenly. Yancey leapt from its back, hit the sand running and threw himself for the shelter of a rock. Cato was still on his horse, running for the canyon wall and the protection it offered. The Mexicans were down, in typical Mexican fashion, using their horses as shields, firing with their bolt-action Mausers cracking across their big, ornate saddles.
Yancey spotted a line of gunsmoke up there on the rim and took a swift sighting along the barrel of the Winchester at a movement beneath it. He fired and saw someone throw up his arms. Then a body arced outwards and plummeted down onto the sand. Cato was standing on his horse’s back and leaping for an overhang of rock, his Manstopper in his holster now. He caught the outcrop, swung his legs up, and clambered up onto the wall itself. They couldn’t shoot down at him from above without exposing themselves and leaning way out. Cato started working his way towards the rim.
Yancey emptied the magazine at the rim, giving him some covering fire, and hastily reloaded from his belt loops. The Mexicans were shouting and shooting but it was a wild sort of resistance and likely if the area hadn’t been so open they would have made a run for it.
Chavez was crawling towards the rocks where Yancey was, holding his bloody chest with one hand, coughing a pink froth. Yancey ran out, grabbed him by his tunic and heaved him behind the rock bodily. The man cursed him in his agony and then subsided. Yancey saw that Cato was over halfway up now. He sent three swift shots at the rim, jumped back as lead kicked sand a scant inch from his boot. A Mexican screamed and thrashed about on the sand, blood spraying from his wound. A horse jerked and whickered in agony.
Another scream, but this time from the rim and a man plummeted into the river, arms and legs flailing all the way down. Yancey saw that Cato was climbing out onto a ledge now that, sloped up onto the rim proper where the raiders were holed-up. He knelt and carefully placed five shots along the edge of the rim where he could see gunsmoke spurting.
It caused a lull up there and gave Cato a chance to clamber onto the ledge and belly across against the rock slope. Gathering himself, making a swift check of the loads in the Manstopper, Cato paused momentarily, then lunged up and ran up the slope, throwing himself over the top, seeing the bunch of gunfighters crouched in their various posit
ions as they fired at the men below.
He brought the heavy gun across his belly, triggering fast. His first bullet took Cash Collins through the neck and the man went down jerking and twitching. A gunfighter next to him jarred backwards with the impact of Cato’s second shot, and beside him another spun away, clapping a hand to his side and cursing savagely. Guns swung around to cover Cato and his thumb flicked the hammer toggle to ‘shot barrel’ and as four men aimed at him he dropped hammer.
The Manstopper roared its thunder up on the rim and the four men went down screaming as the charge of buckshot ripped through them. At the far end of the rim, two other men dropped their guns and ran for the horses, tethered some yards back amongst a growth of brush.
But there was one man left, crouching behind a granite boulder, and he had a rifle whipping up to his shoulder, taking deadly aim at Cato. It was Steve Blayne. The Enforcer saw the movement, threw himself to one side as the rifle blasted and the lead kicked up a handful of stones where he had lain a moment before. Cato spun over onto his belly, flicking the toggle again as he brought the Manstopper around, holding the butt in both hands, jamming his elbows into the soft earth at the base of the small rock in front of him. The rifle lever clashed as another cartridge worked into the chamber and Blayne’s finger tightened on the trigger. Cato dropped hammer and Blayne’s head snapped back.
The bullet smashed in his forehead and took a fist-sized piece out of the back of his skull. The other two men raced away on the horses and Cato loosed off a shot into the air to hurry them along. Then he walked to the edge of the rim and looked down at the men below standing and staring upwards. He picked out Yancey supporting the chest-wounded officer and waved wearily.
It was all over. Now all they had to do was find their way back to Texas.
~*~
“I’m sorry, John. There was nothing we could do to stop her.”
There was genuine regret in Governor Lester Dukes’ voice as he spoke to Cato across his desk. He looked gray and drawn and the fingers of his right hand probed at his left shoulder tip. He glanced from Cato’s stony face to Yancey but the big Enforcer kept his features blank.
“I—I tried to stop her, John,” Kate Dukes said quietly, “but she’d made up her mind.” Then her voice took on a hard edge. “And I must say I sympathized with her. You had no right to put Marnie through such an emotional upset and expect her to be waiting for you.”
Cato looked at her with haunted eyes. But the look swiftly went and they were hard and cool. “No,” he said flatly and then turned and started out of the office.
Dukes looked appealingly at Yancey who strode after Cato and grabbed his arm just as he opened the door. “Hey, pard, where are you goin’? Hold up a spell and—”
Cato looked at him levelly. “I’m goin’ out to get drunk. Really drunk this time. No play-actin’. And I want to do it alone.”
He jerked his arm free and went out into the hall, leaving Yancey to close the door after him. The big Enforcer turned back to face Dukes and Kate. “Can’t blame him.”
“I don’t. Nor do I blame Marnie for pulling out,” Kate said,
“Don’t you know where she might’ve gone?” Dukes asked.
Kate shook her head. “No, Dad. And it wouldn’t do any good.”
Then Kate went out and Yancey and the governor were left to stare unhappily at each other. It looked like Cato and Marnie were the losers in this, and it sure as hell didn’t seem fair to Yancey.
He nodded and left and Governor Dukes sat there, staring at the door, rubbing gently at the nagging pain in his left shoulder.
The BANNERMAN THE ENFORCER Series
By KIRK HAMILTON
Don’t Miss A Single Adventure!
The Enforcer
Ride the Lawless Land
Guns of Texas
A Gun for the Governor
Rogue Gun
… And more to Come!
BANNERMAN 5: ROGUE GUN
By Kirk Hamilton
First Published by The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd
Copyright © Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
First Smashwords Edition: April 2017
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd.
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