She turned quickly and stepped through the entrance. As usual when coming from midday sunlight into the shadowy coolness of the thick-walled cantina, her eyes had to adjust and for a few seconds she couldn’t see very much.
Then she spotted the massive form lurching through the beaded curtain leading to the rear hallway, and she cried out, “Gabriel!”
With her heart hammering in her bosom, Mercedes rushed across the room toward her lover. The bartender got there first and grabbed Gabriel’s arm to steady him as he swayed drunkenly.
Mercedes knew that Gabriel wasn’t drunk. She had seen him swig down a seemingly endless amount of tequila and show no effect from it. Something else was wrong with him.
Very wrong.
The bartender wasn’t strong enough to keep Gabriel on his feet, but he was able to keep the big outlaw from crashing to the floor. Both of them went down in what seemed like slow motion. As Mercedes dropped to her knees beside them, she saw the large, dark bloodstain on the back of Gabriel’s shirt. He was badly hurt, just as she had suspected the moment she saw him.
She tugged his head and shoulders into her lap and bent over to rain kisses down on his rugged features. His eyes were closed.
“Gabriel!” she said, fearful that he was dead. “Gabriel!”
His eyes fluttered open. He stared around blindly, uncomprehendingly for several seconds before he was able to focus on her. Then a grin broke out on his face and he whispered, “Mercedes, mi amor.”
“Gabriel, what happened? Who did this to you?”
He didn’t answer her questions. “Chaco . . . I have to find Chaco . . . Donelson . . . double-cross . . . going to kill . . .”
He sighed and his eyelids slid closed again. Once more Mercedes felt fear’s cold touch stab through her.
But when she rested her hand on his chest, she felt his great, valiant heart still beating. She looked over at the bartender and ordered, “Find my brother and bring him here! Now!”
Chapter 24
Romero was still checking the rifles in each crate and was about halfway through the job when one of his men ran into the church, went directly to him, and said something so quietly that only Romero could hear.
Slaughter was watching. He knew from the way Romero’s head jerked slightly at the words that the news was unexpected and unwelcome. Romero turned away from the crates and followed his man out of the mission. He was almost running by the time he reached the doors.
Viola saw the same thing and murmured, “John, something’s wrong.”
“I know,” Slaughter said quietly.
Romero had left the lids off the crates as he opened them with his knife. Slaughter assumed they would be hammered on again later, when the bandits were ready to load them back into the wagons. The first rifle Romero had examined, the one he had cleaned off with the packing material, lay diagonally across a corner of that open crate. A box of ammunition was right beside it.
Slaughter wanted that rifle loaded and in his hands. He wanted it very badly. Every instinct in his body told him that all hell was about to break loose.
* * *
Donelson frowned as Romero rushed out. Whatever the other bandit had reported, it had upset Romero. That didn’t bode well. Donelson rolled the unlit cigar to the other side of his mouth, took it out, and sidled closer to Winters. A handful of troopers had lingered inside the church after unloading the crates, and Donelson knew they were the men Winters had selected to wipe out the prisoners . . . with the very important exception of Viola Slaughter.
“Get ready for that special detail of yours, Sergeant,” Donelson said from the corner of his mouth. “I think I may be calling upon you to carry out those orders very soon now.”
“I got the same hunch, Colonel,” Winters drawled.
“You’re sure you killed that bandit who was spying on us early this morning?”
“Mighty sure. Stuck my knife right in his heart, I did. Then I dragged him into a shed and covered him up with sacks full of grain. He was such a big galoot it wasn’t easy, either. Nobody’s gonna find him until he starts to stinkin’, and we oughta be long gone from this greaser hellhole by then.”
Donelson gave a minuscule nod. “I just wanted to be sure no one could tip off Romero to what we have planned.”
“Must be somethin’ else that got him all hot an’ bothered, Colonel.”
“All right. Be ready for trouble anyway, beause one way or another it’s coming.”
Winters stroked his fingertips along the breech of the rifle he held, which was a Springfield like the ones in the crates. “Me and the boys are ready. Whenever you give the word, Colonel, that’s when the killin’ will start.”
* * *
Chaco’s heart plummeted when he ran into the cantina and his sister looked up at him with tears running down her face. She sat on the floor with her colorful skirt spread around her and Gabriel’s head pillowed in her lap. His face was pale and washed out under his permanent tan.
“Is he—” Chaco was unable to go on.
“He’s alive,” Mercedes said, “but I don’t know for how long. He’s badly hurt, Chaco. I think someone stabbed him in the back.”
Chaco went down on one knee beside them. “Whoever did this, I’ll find him and kill him.”
His first thought was that Gabriel might have gotten into an argument with one of the other men. No one in the group would fight him head-on. None of them was that foolish. But someone nursing a grudge might lie in wait and drive a knife into his back.
The likelihood of that was small, Chaco realized. He hadn’t heard of any trouble among them. Gabriel got along well with all the other men. If the clash was bad enough to prompt an attempted murder, surely he would have heard rumblings about it among the men.
That left the residents of La Reata—again a very unlikely possibility in Chaco’s estimation—or the soldiers as suspects in the attack on his old friend.
The troopers, Chaco thought as his jaw tightened. He could easily imagine one of Donelson’s men doing this.
“Where did you find him?” he asked Mercedes.
She shook her head. “I didn’t find him. He came here. He stumbled in from the back and collapsed.”
“Did he tell you anything before he passed out? Did he say who did this to him?”
“All he said”—Mercedes stopped and took a breath before she could go on—“was that Donelson was going to double-cross you and kill someone. Probably you, Chaco. He probably plans to kill you and your men, take the money, and keep the rifles. He can sell them again!”
That theory made sense. It would explain Donelson’s shifty behavior and the instinctive distrust he felt for the man.
He put a hand on the shoulder of the senseless Gabriel and squeezed, even though he knew his friend probably couldn’t feel it. “Can you take care of him?” he asked Mercedes.
“Of course,” she answered without hesitation. “I’ll have some of the men put him in my bed. Then I can see how badly he’s hurt.”
Chaco nodded. He had faith in his sister. La Reata had no doctor, not even a curandero, but in the past Mercedes had patched up enough bullet and knife wounds to become fairly proficient at it. If anyone could save Gabriel, she was the one to do it.
And no doctor would ever fight harder for a patient than she would for her big, ugly brute of a lover.
“I need to get back down to the mission and find out what Donelson’s plan is,” Chaco said as he got to his feet. “Stay here and take care of Gabriel. No matter what you hear outside, Mercedes, stay in the cantina until you’re sure all the trouble is over. These walls are thick enough to stop anything smaller than a cannonball.”
She reached up and clutched at his sleeve. “Be careful, Chaco,” she urged. “That gringo Donelson is a bad man.”
“I know, but I’m afraid the time for being careful may be over.”
* * *
Slaughter continued to edge closer to the crate with the rifle lying across it. While
he wasn’t nearly as familiar with the Springfield as he was with his favorite Henry or his shotgun, he had fired one before and knew how to load and operate the weapon. He figured he could snatch up the rifle, use the butt to smash the top of the ammunition box, grab a handful of cartridges, load the Springfield, and have it ready to fire in a matter of ten seconds or so.
Under normal circumstances, facing an armed enemy meant he would be dead two or three times over—at least—by the time he had the Springfield ready for action.
He was counting on some sort of distraction to give him a chance to arm himself. If trouble erupted between Romero and Donelson, all eyes in the church would be on them for a moment. If gunplay broke out, the bandits would side with Romero and the troopers would join in on Donelson’s side.
Slaughter wanted to be ready to protect himself, Viola, and his posse no matter which of the two groups won the fight.
One by one, he caught the eye of each member of his posse. With each man, he nodded slightly toward the open crates of rifles until he thought they got his drift. He couldn’t be sure how they would react when the time came, but at least maybe they had some idea what he had in mind.
Chaco Romero appeared in the doorway.
From the look of grim anger on his face as he strode into the church, Slaughter knew things were about to break loose.
“Donelson!” Romero cried.
“What the hell is it now?” Donelson snapped back at him, openly displaying his own anger and impatience. “You’ve stalled on giving us our money long enough. I’m starting to think you’re trying to double-cross us.” The last sentence came out in a snarl as the two men faced each other in the aisle between the benches.
A few yards away, Slaughter did a quick head count and saw that Donelson had six men, in addition to himself, while only three of Romero’s men were on hand. Given the history of how Romero’s men had treated Viola while she was their captive, Slaughter would have preferred that those numbers were reversed. He had no sympathy for the bandits, but he trusted them slightly more.
A cold, humorless laugh came from Romero. “Double cross! You are the one trying to pull the double cross, Donelson. You tried to kill my friend Gabriel!”
That brought a gasp from Viola.
“That’s a damned lie,” Donelson rasped. “I never touched the man.”
“Then you ordered one of your lackeys to do it. He condemned you with his own lips.”
Donelson’s eyes flicked toward one of his men.
Slaughter saw the reaction and recognized the man as Corporal Winters, the trooper who had murdered Ross Murdock in cold blood. Winters was capable of trying to kill Gabriel Hernandez, Slaughter had no doubt about that.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Donelson insisted stubbornly, “but you’re not going to weasel out of our deal. You’ve got your rifles”—he waved a hand at the crates—“now hand over our money . . . now!”
Romero stepped back with his hand poised over the butt of his revolver, ready to hook and draw.
Winters exclaimed, “Watch it, Colonel, that greaser’s goin’ for his gun!”
The rifle in Winters’ hands flashed toward Romero and spouted flame as Romero’s gun flickered from its holster and roared in return.
Slaughter shoved Viola to the floor between two of the benches and made a dive for the rifle on the open crate as more gunshots echoed from the adobe walls and stained-glass windows behind him.
Chapter 25
The other prisoners were right behind him, as Slaughter snatched up the Springfield and brought its butt down hard on the top of the ammunition box. The wooden top splintered under the blow. Cartridges scattered from the impact, spinning, bouncing, and rolling across the hardwood floor.
Slaughter bent and scooped up a handful of cartridges and shoved them all in his pocket except one. He fumbled a little as he opened the rifle’s breech, simply because of his unfamiliarity with it. But the mechanism came open, and he slid the cartridge into the firing chamber, and snapped it closed.
He felt as much as heard a bullet burn past his ear. When he glanced up he saw a cavalrymen drawing a bead on him. Slaughter let his instinct guide his aim and got his shot off first.
The .45-70 round bored into the man’s chest, driving him backward as he squeezed the trigger. The bullet went harmlessly into the ceiling as he fell.
Father Fernando rushed into the sanctuary and shouted in Spanish. Slaughter barely heard him over the gun thunder, but he understood enough to know that the padre was pleading with them to stop shooting, to cease spilling blood in the house of the Lord.
It was a shame, Slaughter thought, but that wasn’t going to happen.
Diego Herrara had started to go after one of the rifles like the other posse men, but as Father Fernando started down the aisle, waving his arms frantically, Herrara tackled him. As they fell to the floor, several bullets screamed through the air where the priest had been an instant earlier and smashed into the altar.
Since the crates had been placed in front of the altar, the benches provided a little cover for the posse men as they armed themselves. The shots that came their way were from a couple of Donelson’s men. The other troopers were busy trading slugs with Romero’s men.
Slaughter knelt beside one of the benches as he reloaded. About halfway down the aisle, Chaco Romero crouched and fired his revolver at Donelson as the renegade officer retreated toward the doors. Slaughter saw a bright crimson stain on Romero’s left side. The bandit leader wasn’t giving up the fight, despite being injured.
Slaughter fired again and saw a trooper’s arm jerk as the bullet drilled it. The wounded man stumbled through the open doors and disappeared.
Blood flew from Romero’s right thigh as he was hit again. His leg collapsed underneath him and sent him spilling into the aisle. The impact as he hit the floor knocked the gun out of his hand.
Viola appeared, darting out from between the benches and scooping up Romero’s gun. She fired it one-handed at the deserters while she used her other hand to catch hold of Romero’s shirt and drag him behind a bench. Slaughter knew he couldn’t reach them to help, so he reloaded as fast as he could to give them some covering fire.
More shots began to bark and crack from the front of the sanctuary. Slaughter glanced over his shoulder as he reloaded and saw that Gentry and Harmon, his most experienced men, had gotten rifles from the crates, cleaned them off enough to use them, and loaded the weapons.
To his surprise, Tadrack was already in the fight, as well. A moment later, Yardley joined in. Carlton and Cleaver were trying, but neither man was familiar with firearms and didn’t really have any idea what he was doing.
As Slaughter brought the loaded rifle to his shoulder, he saw that Viola and Romero had reached the relative safety of the narrow space between two benches. The sheriff looked around quickly. Donelson was gone and two of his men were down. He counted heads as he watched a trooper duck through the opening. Two others had obviously reached the doors and fled, leaving only Winters. Slaughter took a quick aim and fired at the killer, just as Winters squeezed off another shot, too.
Both bullets missed. Slaughter saw splinters fly from the doorjamb as his slug chewed into it. At the same time, the bullet from Winters’ rifle whipped past Slaughter’s head. He heard a man grunt in pain and knew that while Winters had missed him, the deserter had scored a hit after all.
Winters ducked through the doorway and was gone.
First things first. Slaughter reloaded. He gathered up several of the cartridges that he had knocked out of the box when he busted it open and slipped them into his pocket. It never hurt to have extra ammunition.
As the guns fell silent and that quiet echoed eerily, he called urgently, “Viola! I say, Viola! Are you all right?”
“I’m not hurt, John,” she replied, “but Chaco was hit a couple times and he’s bleeding a lot.”
“Do what you can for him, but keep your head down,” Slaughter told her.
Without taking his eye off the open doors, in case Donelson’s men attacked again, he went on. “Luther, Grover, what’s the situation back there?”
“That drummer fella’s got a bullet hole in him,” Harmon reported, “but it don’t look fatal to me. Couple creases here and there amongst the rest of us, but nothin’ serious.”
That was a relief. The actual battle had lasted only a couple minutes, although it had seemed longer, but enough lead had been flying around to kill them all. Clearly, luck had been with them, Slaughter thought, although they were a long way from being out of trouble. As far as he could tell, Donelson had lost only one man in the exchange. The captain and the rest of the deserters were still out there. So were the rest of Romero’s men.
Instead of the battle royal between the two groups Slaughter might have expected, an ominous silence reigned. Any hopes Slaughter might have had of both bunches wiping each other out were dashed.
He didn’t know what was going on, but the quiet gave him a strong hunch that it couldn’t be anything good.
* * *
Donelson’s brain worked furiously as he stumbled out of the church and veered to one side so that he would be out of the line of fire from any bullets flying through the open doorway.
There had to be a way to fix it. The rifles were inside the mission with his enemies, and he had no idea where the money was. He and his men could mount up and gallop away from La Reata, but they would do so empty-handed.
That was unacceptable. Donelson was damned if he was going to leave with nothing.
He wanted it all.
Including Viola Slaughter.
“Hold your fire!” he called to the men he had left outside. “Hold your fire and take cover! Get behind those wagons!”
The outburst of gunfire from inside the church had escalated the tension in the street tenfold. The troopers on one side and Romero’s men on the other had their guns pointed at each other, and all it would have taken was a small spark to set off an all-out war between them.
Donelson knew he had to prevent that. An idea was already taking shape in his cunning mind.
Texas John Slaughter Page 14
