.45-Caliber Desperado

by Peter Brandvold

  The girl studied him for a time, then said, “No.” A pregnant pause, a slight arch of her right brow. “You?”

  Spurr shook his head. He looked at the burlap pouch cradled against her side. She looked at it then, too, then again at the badge on Spurr’s chest.

  Her gaze lingered there for a time, and then she swung her attention to the hotel. A thin strand of dark hair fluttered against her cheek, beneath her right eye.

  She swung her body away from Spurr while keeping her cautious, thoughtful eyes on him for two more beats. Hefting the pouch slightly, she dropped down off the boardwalk and strode across the street toward the hotel. She glanced back at him once, turned completely around once as well, as she continued to the hotel.

  Tumbleweeds bounded around her. The faint trills of her spurs faded beneath the wind.

  Spurr watched her climb the hotel’s porch steps, then disappear inside, the door closing soundlessly behind her.

  Spurr gave a dry snort, brushed a gloved fist across his nose, then turned away and headed back toward the Dickinson place.

  Camilla pushed through the hotel’s heavy outside door and into the saloon hall, where Mateo and his men had gathered. The gang was now only half as large as that which had overtaken the Arkansas prison, and they all looked wild-eyed and haggard from the long, harrowing ride.

  The only customers in the place, they sat at several tables left of the bar, not talking or playing cards but only smoking while hunched over their beer glasses and whiskey or tequila shots.

  There were three Yankees and four Mexicans aside from Mateo. The Yankees, including Frank Skinner, sat at a table separate from the Mexicans.

  A Yankee bartender stood with his back to the room, stirring soup in a big pot behind the long oak bar. He’d glanced around when Camilla had entered, but now he kept his eye on the steaming pot.

  The wind howled. It sounded like wolves circling. Dust rattled the cracked panes of the windows that lent the saloon’s shadows a wan, gray light.

  Mateo looked at his sister as he blew out a long plume of cigarillo smoke and grunted, “Any sign of Brouschard?”

  The others looked at her expectantly, hopefully awaiting her answer.

  Camilla shook her head. She remembered the old lawman she’d seen outside, with a face like the eroded desert floor itself.

  A Mexican named Calderon turned to the gang leader and said in Spanish, “We should have waited for him, maybe, huh?”

  “What?” Mateo threw back a half a shot of tequila and refilled his glass from the clear bottle with a white label on the table. “You think he’s lost?”

  Mariano Azuelo squashed a spider on the table with the heel of his hand and said, “They could be. It’s blowing worse now, I think.”

  “Brouschard wouldn’t get lost. He never got lost in Mexico, and we had worse storms in the desert.” Mateo shook his head and stared at the big window flanking Camilla. “He’s dead. All four are dead. Forget them.”

  Frank Skinner was leaning back in his chair, ankles crossed casually in front of him, one hand holding his whiskey glass. He was staring inquiringly at Camilla, and now he jerked his head toward the ceiling. “The kid say what happened? He must have been the last one to see Brouschard and the others.”

  These men were nervous about being so short-handed, Camilla knew. Nervous because of the job they had planned here in Diamondback. Good. Maybe they would forget the job, and they could all head back to Mexico when the wind lifted.

  There’d been too much trouble here in the States. She didn’t like it here anymore. Once, it had seemed her sanctuary from the revolution-torn provinces south of the border. Here, she would find wealth and happiness. Now, she felt as though her heart lay back in Sonora. A little mountain village far south, perhaps.

  She’d wanted for her and Cuno to leave Mateo, because she was frightened of Mateo’s influence on the young freighter she’d once known as a good, strong young man. A young man of integrity. But now she and Cuno must get back to Mexico. The lawman was after them, and there were probably others. Many others.

  She wished she’d never gone back to summon her brother northward to help her free Cuno from the prison. She wished that she’d stayed in Mexico but remained far, far away from Mateo. He was her hermano in name only. Now, she wanted only to be rid of him, and she would be once they were back in Mexico.

  Camilla shook her head as she walked forward, heading for the staircase at the back of the hall.

  “Hey.” Mateo glared at her. “Skinner’s right—the kid would have seen Brouschard last. He must have said something to his senorita?”

  He smiled insultingly and let his gaze flick to his sister’s bosom.

  Camilla felt anger flame in her chest. “He said nothing. What does it matter, anyway? Even with Brouschard, you’ve lost half your men, Mateo. It is time to go home!”

  “Oh, so you have your gringo stallion!” Mateo said. “Now it is time to go home! Why so hasty, mi hermana? I told you—I’ve got some business up here. I didn’t ride this far only to save your gringo boyfriend, you know.”

  “You took revenge on Warden Castle,” Camilla said. “Let that be enough. When the wind dies, let’s go back to Mejico!”

  “I told you!” Mateo pounded the table and stared fiercely at his sister. “One more job! I will not go back to Mejico empty-handed.”

  “Si, si,” said a desperado named Nervo. He sat alone at a nearby table. The only whore in the place was on his right knee—a chubby, Indian-dark girl in fake pearls and a thin black dress. “We are low on money, and American money will take us far in Mexico.”

  Camilla saw a couple of the men look toward the bartender. The man must have heard what Nervo had said, but he did not react. He only kept his back to the room as he slowly, tensely stirred the steaming pot. Neither Mateo nor his men seemed to care whether the apron heard or not.

  “If we ever get back to Mexico!” Camilla hefted the burlap bag of liniments and other concoctions, crossed the room, and mounted the stairs.

  She, Cuno, and the others in the gang had all rented rooms on the hotel’s second story. The room she shared with Cuno was the second one on the right. The door was unlocked.

  Inside, she was surprised to find Cuno sitting on the edge of the bed, looking out the window. He was naked. She’d swabbed his feverish body with cold water before she’d left to see what she could find to doctor a snake bite.

  The room was dusky, so she could see only the silhouette of his thick, sunburned neck, his broad back, and heavy, sloping shoulders. His hair was rumpled. From this angle he looked at once boyish and brawny—quite enticing, in fact.

  “You’re sitting up,” she said, moving into the room.

  He glanced over his shoulder at her then lifted the forearm that the snake had bit. It was swollen almost twice the size of the other one. “I think I’m better.”

  “Really?” She leaned her rifle against the room’s sole dresser, and, carrying the burlap pouch, walked around to his side of the bed. “So soon?”

  Cuno nodded as he stared out the window. “I don’t think I got a full dose of poison. If I did, I don’t think I could have even gotten into town.” He lifted his hand and looked at the swollen forearm again; a large, purple lump sporting the two puncture wounds had risen like a large stone pushing up from beneath the skin. “Oh, I still feel like shit. But I think the worst has passed. That cold water got my fever broke, I think.”

  He looked at the bag, which she’d set on the bed as she dropped to her knees beside him. “I hope you didn’t spend too much on that. I owe you enough the way it is.”

  “Don’t be foolish. You are my gringo stallion”—she slid her hand over his thigh—“and a good senorita takes care of her stallion.”

  She smiled at him, but he’d turned his head to scowl out the window. “Gotta get some dinero. A man who can’t take care of himself . . . who has to be taken care of by his girl . . . ain’t much of a man.” He shook his head and pursed his
lips.

  “Don’t speak about that.” Camilla removed a tin from the bag. All that the mercantile had had on hand for snakebites was paregoric, some powders from crushed roots for tea, and potatoes. The proprietor’s wife was part Pawnee, and she’d said that potato peels would draw the poison from the wound. Red elm worked especially well, but Camilla would find no red elm anywhere around Diamondback. The potato peels and the paregoric would have to suffice. And time for the poison to work its way out of Cuno’s body.

  Camilla set the tin on the bed, opened it, then reached up to clamp her hand across Cuno’s forehead. It was still clammy but not as hot as before. Maybe he was right, and he had indeed gotten only a small dose of the poison. Now that the initial shock was passing, maybe he would be well again soon.

  “You are better.” She dipped two fingers into the liniment and smeared the greasy concoction gently on his forearm. The sweet smell of the opium in the salve filled the room. “I am glad. We will be able to head to Mexico all the sooner.”

  Cuno glanced at her. “When?”

  “Whenever . . .” She looked down as she worked the liniment into his arm. “Whenever Mateo pulls this next job he insists on pulling before he’ll leave.”

  Cuno sounded excited. “Really? He has a job planned here?” He got up, pulling his arm away from Camilla, and looked westward along the dust and sand-blasted street. “I haven’t seen a bank . . .”

  “Oh,” Camilla said, trying to put some levity into her voice though she didn’t feel at all cheerful, “you want to be a bank robber now . . .”

  Cuno hiked a shoulder. “Why not?”

  She stared at his profile as he stared out the window, sort of cradling his arm against his side. A rock fell in her stomach as she took in the hard lines of his face, the cold light in his eyes.

  Somewhere between here and the prison, he’d changed. The change had likely started inside the prison, but now it seemed nearly complete.

  The young man she’d fallen in love with—the young boyman whose inner warmth and easy kindness had been so evident in his eyes, in the subtle, boyish charm that put a jaunty swagger in his thick, hard, muscular body—was gone.

  Now his handsome face and brawny physique seemed carved from stone. The Cuno Massey who had saved her and Michelle Trent and the Lassiter children from the Utes, who had exchanged his own life for theirs, had vanished. He’d been replaced by one of Mateo’s desperadoes—one who would no sooner give his own life to save others than Mateo or Frank Skinner themselves would.

  Loneliness howled inside Camilla. Her life had been a violent one, raised by peasants embroiled in revolucion. She’d grown up fast; she’d learned how to ride and shoot by the time she was twelve and killed a man—a vaquero who’d tried to rape her and her mother—by the time she was thirteen. All the boys and men around her were, understandably, fierce warriors. Camilla herself was a warrior. But a warrior with a soft heart and a desperate yearning for peace and happiness.

  For so long she’d looked for a good, kind man to marry and to raise children with. To work side by side with in a field of watermelons or corn, or herding cattle or horses with. She’d looked for such qualities in nearly every man she’d met. A man she could grow old peacefully with. How ironic that her very act of saving the one man she’d finally found—or thought she’d found—had changed him.

  Camilla jerked slightly with a start. Cuno’s eyes, his strange, dark eyes, were on hers. She was vaguely shocked to see how much a person’s physical features could change in so short a time, but she doubted that she’d recognize him now if she saw him on a crowded street.

  “You all right?”

  “Si.”

  “Don’t worry.” He set a hand against her face, and she could feel the pressure of his fingers against the underside of her jaw. “I haven’t robbed a bank before, but I’ll hold my own in there. I’ll pay you back for the duds and the gear, and we’ll make a fresh start in Mexico.”

  “Fresh start?”

  “Why not?”

  Hope rose in her. “I thought perhaps we’d buy a horse ranch. I know an old man who traps wild horses. He said he would teach me . . .”

  Cuno dropped his hand from her cheek and returned his distracted gaze to the window. “I don’t know—I reckon we’ll see. Hard for a wanted man to settle in one place.” He glanced at her again, trying to encourage her with his stranger’s gaze. “But we’ll see, Camilla. All right?”

  Again, the stone dropped in her belly. She nodded dully.

  He sat back on the bed, lifting his bare legs and tugging on her arm. “Come on. Lay here with me a bit.”

  She lay down beside him, ran a hand across his thick chest and his heavy, sloping shoulder. She closed her eyes and kissed his arm, pressed her hand against his flat belly, feeling desire rise in her, needing him to hold her close to him in his big gentle arms and take her fears away.

  “Cuno . . .” she whispered.

  He said nothing. His chest rose and fell heavily. She looked up at his face. His eyes were closed. A soft snore drifted up from his chest. Feeling a cold tear trickle down her cheek, she pushed up slightly and gently touched her lips to his.

  She rolled away from him and, curled on her side, wondered for a time why she had not told Mateo or even Cuno about the old lawman she’d seen on the windy street.

  Finally, she closed her eyes, emptied her mind, and willed herself asleep.

  24

  HIS MIND HEAVY, his old heart quarrelsome, Spurr walked westward along First Street. There was no one about except for a few dogs braving the wind to sniff around the trash heaps between the buildings. He angled across the street, bent forward against the grit-laced gale, and stepped onto the weather-silvered boardwalk fronting the stone jailhouse.

  He’d thought he might be able to find a lawman here, but the place looked abandoned, weeds growing up between the gray boards at his moccasin-clad feet and between those of the three steps fronting the stout, timbered door. There was a padlock on the door latch. The windows were not shuttered, but they betrayed a cave-like darkness inside.

  To satisfy his curiosity, he pounded on the heavy door twice with his rifle butt, then looked in the window left of the door.

  Abandoned all right. There were three cells comprised of banded steel cages at the back of the place. There were cots in only two of the cells. Aside from a few curled, yellowed wanted posters on one wall, where a desk had apparently once sat, the place was empty of all furnishings.

  Spurr wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t figured on finding a lawman here in Diamondback. Most towns this far off the beaten track couldn’t afford lawmen. They usually relied on the irregular services of a county sheriff or a sheriff’s deputy from the county seat. If the county in which Diamondback lay even had a seat. The courthouse might only be a saloon somewhere, the law enforcement being handled by remote cavalry outposts or by passing deputy U.S. marshals like Spurr himself.

  No, Spurr hadn’t figured on finding any help here, but now that it indeed appeared that Diamondback was without a marshal or even a constable, he felt a twinge of apprehension.

  He stepped down off the boardwalk and into the street, casting his squint-eyed gaze eastward toward the Diamondback Hotel. He’d be alone against the gang—if the de Cava bunch was indeed who the newcomers were. He could no longer rely on the backing of Sheriff Mason. The only help he was likely to get was from Captain Wilson and his troopers at the outpost, but he’d seen no sign as yet of the captain, who might have gotten held up in any number of ways. Spurr knew from past experience that army outposts were not only often small and remote but unreliable. He’d known many that had been wiped out by the desertions of their garrisons.

  Wilson might be waiting for a summons from Spurr. The old marshal knew that Diamondback was equipped with a telegraph, though he’d not yet seen any lines. He’d find the office soon, after he’d checked on Mason, and see about sending a telegram to Wilson. He’d have the man make his way to Diamondback pr
onto with as many troopers as he had in his arsenal.

  Back in his prime, he might have taken on seven or eight men alone. He wasn’t that stupid anymore. Nor capable, he mused dryly, nibbling his mustache as he swung away from the hotel and tramped eastward up First Street, resting his old Winchester on his sagging shoulder and keeping his gloved index finger curled through the triggerguard.

  The Dickinson house came into view behind wavering curtains of tan dust above which he could see the washed-out blue of the sky.

  Hard to tell what time it was, but it was likely getting on in the afternoon. Night soon. Even if the wind lightened, the de Cava bunch would stay here in Diamondback until tomorrow morning. No point riding after dark, though that they were making hard for the border was obvious. If they headed out before help arrived for Spurr, the old lawman would continue to dog their trail and wait for help. Maybe he’d even figure a way to take them down one by one or two by two, until he had the entire gang six feet under.

  Noting a chill adding to the wind’s bite, Spurr walked up to the house’s front door and knocked twice. Since Mrs. Dickinson and the birdlike Mrs. Winters were likely still with Mason, he went ahead and stepped inside.

  “Ah, there you are, Mr. Spurr.” Mrs. Dickinson stood in the open doorway just beyond the foyer, on the left side of the short hall. There was a range and an eating table behind her, and a teakettle was starting to whistle.

  Spurr moved inside and closed the door. “Howdy, ma’am.” Quickly, awkwardly—the neat, little house made him feel big and unwieldy, for some reason—he doffed his hat and looked at the woman regarding him expectantly, long-fingered hands intertwined in front of her slender waist, beneath the high, proud bosom. “I figured you’d be with Mason.”

  “He’s fine. Resting now due to the chloroform.”

  “You work fast.”

  “I have a lot of experience as of a couple years ago. When there were more miners and cowpunchers around, we had a booming business, my husband and me.” She hiked a shoulder. “Besides, the bullet wasn’t deep. It must have been a ricochet, and when it struck the sheriff, it bounced off the side of a rib. Came right out.”