After that, the kid disappeared.
So Buck followed his original hunch that Renny was making for Mexico to see Rina Diego, the girl he had had all the trouble with months earlier when Enderby had first rescued him.
Renny had said once he wished he had a girl waiting for him somewhere and in one of the lonely night camps up in the woods when he had been learning wilderness survival from Buck, he had confessed that he loved Rina Diego.
‘OK, so I deflowered her. It just happened, Buck. I never had that intention, but I didn’t think it was right she had to marry some old geezer nearly sixty years old just because her father said so. She said she loved me, and well, it happened and then everything blew up. We never got a chance to see each other again. But maybe some day I’ll go back for her.’
‘Be riding into no end of trouble, Renny,’ Enderby had told him.
The kid had nodded, looked pensive, then tapped his gun butt. ‘At least I could defend myself now.’
It had never been mentioned again but Buck had a notion Renny Pardoe just might go back and try to claim Rina for himself. The hidalgo, of course, had rejected her as damaged goods, insulted, and by tradition Rina’s father would have had to make some kind of recompense. He would see his daughter as a liability now, of no use in the Spanish way of arranging marriages so that a union would be beneficial to all parties.
But he would still guard her zealously and would likely set his caballeros on to Renny if he went after the girl. The kid must feel mighty cocky now after those two shootouts on the way down, but if he wasn’t where Enderby had found him the last time, Buck knew he would have to approach Don Diego and the bullets would fly.
But he would get Renny back to the States safely. Somehow.
He had to.
CHAPTER 10
GRINGO’S GUNS
He was forced to keep to the lonely trails, and any trail in that part of Mexico was not only lonely but downright dangerous.
It was loosely called bandido country but there were more dangers than just the bandits who made a brutal and blood-thirsty living there. The loners and outcasts, rejected even by the bandit gangs; army deserters; it was said in one section of the foothills of the Cordillera that there were men who ate other men. There were jaguars and mountain lions and an occasional black bear which was often sought by American hunters for its unusual hide as a trophy.
So the wingless vultures who prowled this dangerous area often had a windfall when a lone, poaching americano came hunting with his big expensive guns.
Buck Enderby was aware of all this. But he had chosen to ride through this land because it would save him many miles of following the normal, safer trail which clung tenuously to the long mountain range, ignoring the high and low passes. He rode with his rifle butt on his knee, a bullet in the chamber, finger on the trigger guard. His head moved constantly and his belly tightened at every movement he saw: a highly coloured bird flitting from branch to branch in a tree-top swaying in the wind; the rustle of some snake or lizard in a patch of chaparral or mesquite; a flash of grey hide as a furred animal slunk away into the deeper shadows.
He had taken the precaution of bringing two big saddle canteens and had filled both before venturing into this country of high danger and high thirst. A man without water here was a dead man. Despite his alertness, when he stopped to drink, without dismounting, his rifle across his thighs, he missed the one movement that almost cost him his life.
It was high up the slope, on a sheer rock wall overlooking the entrance to a narrow pass: a flash of sunlight searing along a rifle barrel.
Once through the pass there would still be plenty of risk, but he would have left the worst area behind. Having slaked his thirst, he corked the canteen and was hanging it over his saddlehorn when the metal bottle was torn from his grasp, exploding water all over him. Hair-trigger instincts working, he plunged the other way out of the saddle. But the horse shied, startled by the cracking echoes of the rifle shot. It threw him wildly and his Winchester hit a rock, jarred from his grip.
He landed in bushes which broke his fall but branches tore at his clothes and he shielded his face. He struck a thick branch and rolled awkwardly. The bushwhacker’s rifle blasted again in several shots, between him and his own Winchester which was lying in loose gravel several yards down the slope, sliding with the eruptions of dirt caused by the bullets landing near it.
Enderby threw himself backwards, palming up his six gun, noting that his horse had had the sense to plunge into the brush for cover. He frowned, looking up at the drifting gunsmoke high up on the pass wall. That hombre up there was using up a lot of lead. Wisely enough, perhaps, but the men who frequented this country seldom had bullets to spare and didn’t waste them. That’s why so many men were found shot in the back around here. And that rifle sounded in good condition. Not a gun that might have belonged to a straying hunter who had fallen foul of the local killers, he thought. It didn’t have that hard snap that the big game cartridges had … No, it sounded like a Winchester in good condition, definitely not a Henry with its poor-velocity rimfire ammunition.
He figured that man up there wasn’t just one of the outcasts, short on brains and long on murderous intent. This might be worth looking into, not that he had much choice. He was out of six gun range here. He would have to get closer if he wanted a shot at his man.
Even while he was silently voicing these thoughts, his brain was a step ahead of him and, on his belly, he worked his way under the brush to where his horse waited. He was tempted to leap into the saddle and make a wild run for heavier timber, but instead, reached up and flipped his coiled lasso off the saddlehorn.
Then he picked up a heavy fallen branch and tossed it into the brush a little below and off to his right. It drew fire and while the man was blasting the chaparral, Buck thrust his left arm through the coils of the rope and slung it over his shoulder. Crouched double, he ran to his left, leaping a log and almost falling, but he righted himself and pounded on.
Heart racing, he didn’t slow down, he went up the slope fast, working under a slight overhang that he hoped would shield him from the man above. The rifle fired a short volley and then was silent and Buck knew the man was looking for him and would be alert for any movements on the periphery of his vision. He bellied down and crawled under the brush, working his way around until he was away from the trail that led into the pass. By now the bushwhacker would be mighty nervous, not knowing where he had gone.
Once he was sure he was in back of the slope where the man was, Buck started climbing in earnest. Sweat darkened his shirt, ran down his neck and face as he clambered over time-riven rocks, slipped in loose scree, going to ground and freezing until the miniature landslides had stopped. They raised a little dust but it would be hard to see through the cloud of powdersmoke that hung around the wall where the killer lurked. He would be watching the rear slope now but would have to divide his attention between that and the area where he had last seen his quarry.
Buck rested, heart hammering, looking out through a gap in the sparse timber over the sun-beaten land. Then he jumped a foot in the air, or it felt like he did, when a rifle blasted only a few feet away, above and off to his right.
He had come higher than he thought! There was a ledge here, jutting out from the wall. It had been unseen from below because it was the same colour rock as the wall and its contours had faded into the bigger area.
Buck slid across carefully, set down the rope so it wouldn’t drag against twigs and warn the man. There, only four feet below, stretched out on the rock on a blanket with an open carton of cartridges beside him, surrounded by empty brass cases, was the bushwhacker. He wore vaquero clothes and a large hat.
Buck dropped down to the ledge and the man started to spin around but the Colt butt smashed in the felt of the big sombrero and cracked against the man’s skull. He slumped unconscious. Buck knelt on one knee, Colt reversed in his grip now, and turned him on to his back. He was staring down into an unfamil
iar but well-fed Mexican face when he heard the gun hammer behind him click as it drew back to full cock.
‘Señor, you should know that the vaqueros of Don Diego never travel alone! Adios, gringo!’
Buck’s legs snapped like springs, hurling him back and across the body of the man he had knocked out. And even as his Colt swept around and blasted a fraction of a second before the Mexican’s rifle, he thought: Hell, there were two of them! No wonder there were so many bullets spraying the countryside!
By then, the man on the rim above had been jarred upright by Buck’s bullet and he stepped forward with shaky steps, his tooled leather boot sliding off the edge. He twisted as he fell, struck the narrow part of the ledge and his body bounced off and over to drop silently three hundred feet into the pass below.
Buck got to his feet, every nerve-end screaming, he had nearly died that time! Don Diego’s vaqueros, the dead man had said.
The Mexican beside him groaned a little and Buck saw there was blood crawling down out of his hairline. He figured that hombre would have one hell of a headache when he came round.
When the man opened his eyes, there were dark veils still to be torn aside before full consciousness would return. His head pounded. His eyeballs felt as if they were being forced out of their sockets. He couldn’t move his hands … or his feet! He jerked his eyes open properly and focused on what lay before him.
Then he screamed.
Several times his scream of pure terror echoed and re-echoed through the pass and over the high crests of the Cordilleras.
He was suspended upside down by the ankles from a branch on a tree whose roots – to him, anyway – didn’t seem to have a very good hold on the parched soil beside the ledge where he had lain in ambush for the gringo. Something prodded him hard in the ribs, making him gag as he dragged down breath for yet another scream. Saliva dribbled upwards from his mouth and into his nostrils. He shook his head violently as he sneezed and saw Buck Enderby sitting casually on the edge of the flat rock nursing a rifle, the Mexican’s own rifle, which he had just used to poke him in the ribs hard enough to tear flesh.
‘Amigo, you are between a rock and a hard place, and if you want to see how hard, just take a look at that red smear down there and see if you recognise your compadre.’
The Mexican felt his gorge rise as he saw the broken corpse far below. His body began to twist against the lay of the rope, It made him even more dizzy.
‘Señor! Please! I only do what I am told!’
‘Sure, I savvy that … Don Diego, right?’
Surprised, the Mexican swallowed and nodded.
‘He told you to lay for me?’ Enderby was puzzled as to how the ranchero could have known he would be coming.
‘He say someone will come after the chuquillo. But, aiyee! He is not the child anymore! He fight like a man, very macho hombre, with his gun—’
Sweat was blinding him and he didn’t really mind its sting, at least he couldn’t clearly see that terrible drop beneath him. Maybe this gringo would let him go if he told him what he wanted to know.
‘Did they kill him?’ Enderby asked grimly.
‘No, señor, we are so shocked how this muchacho fight, that he get away. And he take the Señorita Rina.’
Buck didn’t know whether to feel pleased or not that he had guessed right. The damn kid, way overconfident, had done what he expected! He had come looking for ‘his girl’ and he had taken her by force from a bunch of hardcase Mexes.
‘You know where he went?’
The man was silent and Buck poked him hard in the ribs again, used the rifle to prod his shoulder and set him spinning and swaying violently. The man screamed but his words were incoherent. Buck waited patiently for the swinging to lose momentum and finally reached out and stopped the man. He had vomited and was half choking and spitting.
‘Didn’t hear you, amigo, ‘Enderby said lifting the rifle.
‘No! No! Please! I don’t know where he go, I swear!’ The Mexican croaked. ‘I could very much appreciate a drink of water, señor, por favor?’
‘Let’s finish our talk first. Now where did Don Diego send his men?’
The man was in two minds now, he was obviously afraid of Don Diego, but he was terrified of this gringo so calmly sitting on the edge of eternity, throwing questions at him.
It didn’t take long for terror, and thirst, to win over fear and in the end, Buck had trouble shutting the man up.
Now he was a long way south of the place where he had been ambushed.
He knew where he was going, but still couldn’t be certain how reliable the information was the Mexican bushwhacker had given him. The man, he said his name was ‘Chico’, had almost died of a heart attack and was a true mess by the time Enderby pulled him back to the safety of the ledge and untied his hands. He left Chico’s ankles tied, something to keep him busy after Buck rode out.
Chico had told him how the raging Don Diego had despatched a group of his best gunfighters and trackers to find the fugitives. Rina had left a note for her father, telling him that she wanted to go with Renny Pardoe, to the Estados Unidos where they would be married. With an added edge to the shame she already felt, she confessed that she was pregnant by Renny and hoped that one day she would be able to bring Don Diego’s grandchild to the rancho.
Don Diego’s reaction was a mixed one of rage and sadness. He burned with the shame Rina had brought to his name and family and swore she would never bear the bastard child of this worthless gringo.
‘Kill them both!’ had been his original order but by the time the caballeros were ready to ride on the trail of the fugitives he had changed his mind. ‘Kill only the gringo. Hold the girl somewhere, and I will tend to her personally!’
The strange thing, according to Chico, was that Renny’s trail led in the direction of the high village of Gallatera where Enderby had rescued Renny months earlier from Mexican kidnappers.
It was late afternoon when Buck approached Gallatera again and he could hear the guitar music and drunken singing from the cantinas as he rode down the twisting trail across the face of the mountain. Why would Renny come back here? It wasn’t likely he had made any friends from that other time. No, ‘friends’ in Gallatera were more likely to hold him hostage, especially the girl, and see how much they could squeeze out of Don Diego and Senator Pardoe. Taking gringos hostage was a lucrative business in these hills.
Something had drawn him back here, and it was possible that Buck was arriving too late to be of help. Don Diego’s crew might have already caught up with Renny.
But he had to check, even if it meant placing himself in danger.
He hitched his horse outside a darkened tortilla shop and entered the din and smoke and smells of the cantina next door. By the time he reached the bar, the guitars had stopped playing in mid-note as a swarthy hand slapped the strings tight, smothering them, and the singing ceased as all eyes turned to the lone gringo. Then a faint murmur started up and Buck knew he had been recognized. He lifted a hand.
‘No trouble, amigos, just a little information and if I get it, perhaps I will buy drinks all round.’
That promise didn’t seem to have any effect, they merely stared in blank silence. Figuring he had nothing to lose, and putting his back to a chipped adobe wall, he asked his questions, and right away saw that Don Diego’s name carried more than just weight up here.
Fear was a tangible thing in the smoky room.
‘Come on. Have Don Diego’s men arrived yet?’ Still no answer. ‘How about the young gringo and Don Diego’s daughter?’
There were sharp suckings-in of breath at that and the crowd turned its back on him. And he knew there was too much fear here for his small promise of a free drink to have any effect. He wasn’t loco enough to offer a cash reward of any stature, for he would never walk out of here alive. As it was, he sensed hostility and he decided discretion was the best move, and started around the wall for the batwings.
No one stopped him and he walk
ed with a hand on his Colt to where he had hitched his weary horse. The gun whispered out of leather as a shadow moved in the alley between the tortilla shop and the cantina.
‘Please, señor!’ a man said hoarsely. ‘I can tell you about the young gringo, but you give me the pesos you would have spent buying tequila for those drunks in the cantina, eh?’
Enderby relaxed slightly. A sneak’s greed, well, it wouldn’t cost him much, but he didn’t lower the gun. He used his other hand to reach into his pocket for a silver five-pesos coin. He held it up and a little light glinted from the metal.
‘Talk away, amigo.’
‘You … you pay no matter what I tell you?’ The man was mighty nervous and Buck agreed he would pay. He saw the man look around furtively. ‘The old adobe where you come before … they went there.’
‘Still there?’
The man hesitated. ‘I think … the gringo only … they kill him.’
CHAPTER 11
DOS GRINGOS
The old adobe ruins were in total darkness when Enderby made his way slowly down the slope to the hollow behind them. His Colt was in his holster but he carried the Winchester, loaded, thumb ready to cock the hammer.
Faintly, below and around the other side of the rise now, he could hear guitar music and off-key singing again in the Gallatera cantina. He had made sure no one had followed him up here but he checked again before reaching the rear door which had been battered down since last he was here. The roof hadn’t been fixed very well and allowed starlight to wash faintly over the earthen floor.
He made out the dark, shapeless bulk of someone huddled on his side, facing the wall.
Buck mouthed a curse. Damn! Too late to save the kid.
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