“Not on me,” Alcazarrio replied with an ugly grin. “But they, too, are close by.”
“Unharmed? All four of them?” The questions came sharply from Matt.
“What if I told you my men have had their way with them?” Alcazarrio gibed. “What would you do then, gringo? Would you refuse to pay for their lives? Would you turn and ride away with the ransom and tell those gringo hacendados that their daughters are no longer worth paying for?”
Slowly, Matt shook his head. “Nope. I’d kill you where you’re standing first.”
Alcazarrio stiffened. His breath hissed between clenched teeth. He cursed in Spanish and snapped, “A dozen men have rifles trained on you at this very instant, gringo dog! A flick of my hand and you die!”
“In the time it takes you to flick your hand, you die.”
The tense duel of wills continued for a couple of tense, silent seconds; then Alcazarrio threw his head back and laughed. “You are courageous, Bodine. A fool, but a courageous one. Tell me what you want.”
“The ransom’s loaded on pack mules. Give me the prisoners. I’ll take them out of the village and send the mules back in with the chests of gold coins on them.”
Alcazarrio laughed again. “You know that is unacceptable. You bring the ransom to me, and once I have examined it, I will turn over the prisoners to you.”
Matt shook his head. Not for a second had he believed that Alcazarrio would go along with his first suggestion. That was why he’d made it so outrageous. “I don’t have any more reason to trust you than you do to trust me,” he said. “We’ll bring the chest into town—all of us.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We’ll stop at that end of the street. You bring the prisoners out and start them toward us. We’ll start the mules toward you. Everybody gets what they want. Fair enough?”
Alcazarrio thought it over. It was a classic swap between adversaries, rife with possibilities for a double cross on both sides, but still workable if everybody played fair.
Matt didn’t expect Alcazarrio to play fair. He just wanted to get close enough to those girls to grab them and keep them safe when the shooting started.
Finally, Alcazarrio nodded. “It will be as you say, Bodine. But if there are any tricks, you and all the men with you will die—and then those women will know the attentions of my men.”
“Fair enough,” Matt said, “and if you try any tricks, you won’t live to spend any of that ransom.”
Alcazarrio grunted and waved a hand. “Bring the ransom.”
Matt turned his horse and started out of the village. Again, the skin on the back of his neck crawled. Before, it had been an assumption, but now he knew that cold-blooded killers had their rifle sights lined on him.
They wouldn’t fire, though, not while Alcazarrio still didn’t have that loot he wanted so badly. For the moment, the bandit’s greed outweighed his hate.
When that changed . . . that was when all hell would break loose.
“I hope you’re not far off, Sam,” Matt whispered to his blood brother. “Gonna be needin’ you mighty soon now.”
Chapter 23
It had been a long, tense day as the prisoners waited for their fate to be determined. The heat in the little building was stifling, and flies buzzed around them. There was no furniture, so the women had to sit on the hard-packed dirt floor. In fact, the only item in their makeshift prison was the bucket in which they had to relieve themselves, in humiliating fashion right out in the open.
The guards had brought them food and water several times, but not enough to do more than barely stave off hunger and thirst. That was probably deliberate, Maggie thought as she leaned against the adobe wall, which thankfully held a little coolness. Their captors wanted to keep them weak and disoriented, so they would be less likely to cause any trouble or try to escape.
Maggie’s eyes were closed. To help distract herself from her current plight, she thought about her life back in Sweet Apple—the children she taught in school, the friends she had . . . and Seymour Standish. She wished she knew for certain that he was all right. Her instincts told her that he was, but she didn’t know how much she could trust them. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.
She wished she could be with him right now, that was for sure. She wished she could feel his arms around her again . . .
The sound of soft sobbing broke into her reverie. She opened her eyes and looked over to see that Rebecca Jimmerson, who had been sitting with her back against the wall a few feet away, had slumped down until she was lying on the ground. Rebecca’s back shook as she cried from pain and terror and exhaustion. Maggie knew those were the causes of Rebecca’s sobs, because she was experiencing the same things herself. It took a strong effort of will for her not to collapse into tears as the girl from back East had done.
Even though she didn’t like Rebecca, Maggie reached over to touch her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” she said. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
Rebecca jerked away. “N-no, it w-won’t be!” she choked out between sobs. “They’re going to rape us and kill us! You know they are!”
“No, I don’t know that,” Maggie insisted. “I still think someone will come to save us.”
Without looking up, Rebecca flipped a trembling hand toward Jessie and Sandy, who sat on the other side of the single-roomed hut. “Those two maybe, but not us!”
“We won’t leave here without you, ma’am,” Jessie said. “You’ve got my word on that.”
Rebecca finally lifted her head to glare across at the young redhead. “Oh? How are you going to make those bastards go along with what you want?”
Jessie couldn’t answer that. She just frowned and didn’t say anything.
Maggie tried again to comfort Rebecca. “I have faith that Seymour will do something—”
“Seymour!” Rebecca interrupted with a scornful laugh. “Seymour can’t do anything! He’s helpless. He always has been. For God’s sake, he doesn’t even have any idea that his uncle’s been trying to kill him!”
Maggie’s eyes widened in shock. “What?”
Rebecca pushed herself back to a sitting position and wiped the back of her hand across her nose and eyes. “It’s true,” she said. “Cornelius wants Seymour dead because he’s afraid that Seymour will interfere with his plans for the company. It’s more than just a matter of wanting to grab Seymour’s share of the profits for himself. I think Cornelius has something criminal in mind, and he’s worried that Seymour will stop him somehow.”
Maggie could hardly believe what she was hearing. She gasped out, “Are . . . are you sure about this?”
“I heard Cornelius talking about it enough,” Rebecca insisted. “Why do you think he sent Seymour to Sweet Apple in the first place? He knew the town’s reputation as a haven for lawlessness. He thought Seymour would wind up being shot within a week’s time!”
“But instead Seymour became the marshal,” Maggie said.
Rebecca nodded. “Cornelius was furious when he heard about that. He sent two men to kill Seymour. When they failed, too, he decided to come himself, and bring more hired killers with him.”
“Those three men who are supposed to be dry-goods salesmen?”
Again, Rebecca laughed scornfully. “Do they look like dry-goods salesmen to you? They’re murderers. They’ve already tried to kill him a couple of times.”
“Oh, God,” Maggie breathed. “And Seymour doesn’t know about any of this?”
“Not at all. If he’s not dead already, they’ll get rid of him at the first good opportunity. Cornelius even promised a three-thousand-dollar bonus to the man who actually kills Seymour.”
Maggie didn’t want to believe this incredible story, but Rebecca’s voice had the ring of truth to it. She glanced across at Jessie and Sandy, and saw that the younger women seemed to accept what Rebecca was saying, too.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I can’t keep this horrible secret any longer! If we’re all going to die h
ere, I don’t want to die with that on my conscience.” Rebecca’s voice cracked a little from the strain she was feeling. “I . . . I’m fond of Seymour. I think he . . . could be a good man.”
“He’s already a good man,” Maggie said. “You just don’t know him well enough.”
A bleak smile touched Rebecca’s lips. “Not as well as I wish I could have.”
“There was never . . . anything between you?”
Rebecca shook her head. “No. Not from lack of trying on my part. At first, Seymour was just hopelessly innocent. He had no idea what I wanted. And then he met you, and he knew what he wanted . . . and it wasn’t me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Rebecca pushed her tangled hair back from her face. “Anyway, none of it matters any more, does it? We won’t be getting out of here alive, so neither of us will wind up with Seymour. I just wish . . . I wish I could warn him about his uncle.” She looked intently at Maggie. “If you do survive . . . and if Cornelius hasn’t murdered Seymour already . . . you’ll tell him?”
“Of course,” Maggie promised. “But don’t give up. We may all come through this—”
The door of the hut swung open. The tall, brawny form of Diego Alcazarrio loomed there. He grinned at them and said, “Come out of there, Señoritas. You are about to make me a very wealthy man.”
Hector Gallindo was among the guards who surrounded the prisoners as they stumbled out of the squalid shack where they had been confined. The young women squinted against the garish, late afternoon sunlight as their eyes adjusted after being shut up in the shadowy hut all day.
General Alcazarrio prodded them toward the center of the street. “Soon you will be free,” he told them. “The ransom I demanded for Señorita Colton and Señorita Paxton will be paid, and you can return to your homes.” He put a hand under Maggie O’Ryan’s chin and tilted her head up so that he could grin down into her face. “And you and the other señorita will be freed, too, Señorita O’Ryan.”
A chill went through Hector at Alcazarrio’s words. He knew now that the general was lying. He had already promised Maggie and Rebecca to his men, whether the ransom was paid or not. He wasn’t going to let any of them go, Hector realized.
That suspicion was confirmed a moment later when Florio Cruz passed among the guards and ordered in a low voice, “As soon as the mules carrying the ransom have drawn even with the prisoners, kill all the gringos except the women.”
Only a bandit would do such a thing, Hector thought. A true revolutionary would have more honor. He felt himself go hollow inside as he realized that all of Alcazarrio’s bold words about freedom and liberty were lies. As Hector had begun to fear, the general was interested only in power and wealth, not in helping the common people. And Hector had thrown in his lot with such a man. He had killed for such a man.
And now he would have a hand in condemning four innocent young women to a short, miserable existence of pain and degradation. Hector felt physically ill, but he struggled not to show it. He hung on to his composure with every bit of his strength and tried to figure out what to do.
What could he do, except follow orders? It was too late for anything else . . . wasn’t it?
Matt would have felt a lot better about things if Sam had showed up before he and the rest of the men had to take the mules on into Villa Rojo. But the main body of the posse couldn’t be far behind, he told himself. He would stall as long as possible, just to give Sam and Seymour and the others time to get into position, but he was confident that once the shooting started, they would be there.
They had better be, a small voice in the back of his head warned, or else things were liable to get a mite tricky . . .
“All right,” he said to the men who gathered tensely around him. “I don’t trust Alcazarrio as far as I could throw him, and he’s a pretty big hombre. He won’t just exchange the prisoners for the ransom money. He’ll try to pull something.”
Colton grunted. “Hell, we’re pullin’ something. There ain’t a quarter of a million dollars in those chests. Maybe we should’ve paid the money.”
“It’s a little late to be thinking about that now, isn’t it?” Paxton snapped. “If you wanted to pay, you should have said so before we ever left Sweet Apple.”
“I never said I wanted to pay,” Colton shot back at him. “There you go again, puttin’ words in my mouth—”
“I never did that.”
“The hell you didn’t! What about those cows you accused me of wide-loopin’?”
Paxton shook his head. “You were the one who said you were going across the border to rustle some Mexican stock.”
“The hell I did! For God’s sake, Paxton, that was a joke!”
Paxton crossed his arms over his chest and said, “I didn’t think it was funny when you said we ought to restock our ranch with wet cattle after that outbreak of disease cut our herd down . . . and then you went and did it!”
“I never did! I might’ve said it, but I never stole a cow in my life, damn it!”
Matt glanced around. The men from the Double C and Pax had gravitated behind their respective bosses, and they were glaring at each other now as if they were back in Sweet Apple, ready to resume the long-running feud. This was hardly the time or place for such a ruckus.
And yet, raw emotions colored the words tumbling out of the mouths of Colton and Paxton, and Matt decided it might be a good idea to let them spew some of it out before they rode into Villa Rojo. A fight with Alcazarrio was inevitable, and they would stand a better chance if everybody had clear heads.
“Then where did those cattle come from?” Paxton demanded.
“What does it matter? They saved the ranch, didn’t they?”
“I know where they came from,” Paxton said in answer to his own question. “You took some of the men, rode across the border, and stole them. Otherwise, why would you be so damned stubborn about telling me where you got them?”
“They weren’t stolen, blast it! It’s true that me and some of the boys drove ’em up from below the border, but I bought ’em fair and square from one of the Mex ranchers who had a spread down here.”
Paxton obviously didn’t believe it. “How could you afford to buy them? We were almost flat broke at the time from fighting that epidemic, remember?”
“I remember.” Colton looked over at Matt. “We ain’t got time for this, do we? We need to get on into that village.”
“Alcazarrio’s not goin’ anywhere,” Matt said. “You’ve got me a mite curious about all this, Colton. Jessie said everybody always wondered why you and Paxton split up and broke your ranch in half. I think I’d like to know.”
Paxton said, “I can tell you that, Bodine. I insisted on it. I wouldn’t be partners with a rustler!”
“I didn’t rustle them Mexican cows!” Colton said. “I bought ’em with the money Carolyn got when she went off to San Antonio and sold her grandma’s jewelry!”
Immediately, he cursed and rolled his shoulders and looked like he wanted to drag those words back in. It was too late, though. Everyone had heard them.
Paxton stared at Colton for a long moment, then said, “Carolyn . . . sold her grandmother’s jewelry?”
“Yeah.” Colton’s reply was a grudging growl. “She didn’t tell me she was gonna do it. She just did it and came back and gave the money to me, told me to use it to save the ranch. I hated for her to have to make that sacrifice . . . but I didn’t want us to lose the ranch. So I did what she said, and I was damn fool enough to make some joke about buildin’ up our herd with wet cattle from below the border, so you wouldn’t know what was really goin’ on. And then you went and believed that I really was a rustler!”
“But . . . but you could have explained, Shad—”
Colton made a disgusted gesture. “Ah, hell. I ain’t the sort of hombre who goes around explainin’ himself. You oughta know me better’n that by now.”
“Yes. I thought I knew you. I
thought you’d never stoop to stealing, and when I believed that you had, I took it as a betrayal of our friendship. That was why I insisted that we split the ranch. That’s why I refused to take even a single head of the stock you brought out of Mexico.”
Colton shrugged. “You got all the cows we had left from before, I got the new herd from below the border. Seemed fair enough to me, if that was the way you wanted to do it. Now, I don’t want to ever talk about this again.” He started to turn away.
Paxton stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Your pride kept you from telling me the truth about where the money came from. You allowed our partnership to be destroyed rather than admit that you needed your wife’s help.”
“Get your hand off’a me, damn it.” Colton pulled away.
“Shad . . .” Paxton took his hat off and ran his fingers through his thinning hair in sheer frustration. “Shad, you had to have heard the rumors. I wasn’t the only one who thought you had stolen those cattle. And yet you never said anything to clear it up?”
“I never been the sort to worry overmuch about what folks think about me,” Colton snapped. “Carolyn knew the truth. That’s all I really cared about.”
“What about your children?”
“Ah, hell, I figured they knew better. You were the only one who was dumb enough to really believe it, Esau.”
“Dumb!” Paxton’s nostrils flared with anger. “I’m better educated than you are, you big prideful lummox!”
“Book learnin’ don’t mean that a man’s smart. It just means that he spent more time cooped up inside while all the real men were outside workin’!”
Both ranchers clenched their fists and thrust their jaws at each other belligerently. The men who worked for them followed suit.
Matt’s powerful voice cut through the tension of the confrontation. “Before you two go to struttin’ around like banty roosters about to fight, maybe you’d better think about why we’re here. We came to get your daughters and those other two young ladies, remember?”
Ride for Vengeance Page 24
