Sonora Charlie shook his head and leaned back onto his saddle, which was lying in the dirt behind him.
“Best leave that little squirrel alone,” he warned under his breath.
Hector walked over to the tub and tried hard to keep the anger out of his voice.
“What do you want, for me to help him bring more water?” he said, barely under control.
“No,” Clyde said. He pitched him the wet rag he had lathered with soap. “I want you to scrub my back real good for me.”
At the fire, Sonora Charlie held back a muffled laugh.
“You are loco,” Hector said flatly. “I wash no man’s back. What do you think I am?”
“Come on now, Pancho,” Clyde said in a mocking tone. “I’d do it for you.”
“I will not do it for you,” Hector said with determination. “I will not do it for any man.”
“Hear that, Sonora?” Clyde called out, letting himself sink down into the tepid water. “Pancho is being plumb unfriendly.”
Sonora Charlie shook his head and sighed under his lowered hat brim. “Pancho, scrub his back. Don’t make us think you’re not going to do as you’re told. You don’t want to see us upset.”
Hector gritted his teeth, his fists clenched at his sides. Across the well, the little man walked in a slow, steady circle, looking back, watching them over his thin shoulder. He had taken off the heavy gun belt and laid it nearby in the dirt.
“Give me the rag,” Hector said, stepping forward.
“That’s a good boy, Pancho,” said Clyde. He handed the rag back to Hector, sat up and leaned slightly forward.
Hector avoided the well tender’s eyes as he gritted his teeth and rubbed the soapy rag back and forth on Clyde’s broad, hairy shoulders.
“Aw, that’s good, Pancho,” Clyde said, grinning to himself at having humiliated Hector. “I just knew you would make a damn fine back-scrubber once I got you started, once you applied yourself.”
Hector swallowed a tight knot in his throat. It was not going to get any better for him with these two, he told himself. Not as long as this man was alive.
“You keep on doing such a good job,” Clyde Jilson said, “I’ll soon have you warming my back, these cool nights in the desert.”
In a moment, Clyde noticed Hector had stopped scrubbing back and forth with the cloth.
“Hey, have you quit on me back there?” he asked over his shoulder.
“No, here I am,” Hector said, stepping around in front of him with the cocked shotgun he’d picked up from against the low stone wall, his hands still soapy.
Clyde’s eyes widened, staring into the deep black gun barrels only inches from his face.
“Oh, hell! Wait, Hector! I’m only jok—”
One shotgun hammer dropped. Clyde’s face disappeared in a red bloody mist of fire, meat and bone matter.
“But I am not joking! What do you think of that, my special friend?” Hector said, leaning in close to the bloody, headless corpse lying slumped back in front of him, gray smoke looming above its chewed-off neck.
“Jesus, Hector! What have you done?” shouted Sonora Charlie. He’d sprung to his feet. In his stunned surprise, he’d left his gun in its holster lying on the ground beside his saddle. “Clyde’s crazy, but he meant no harm! He was just funning you!”
Only when Sonora saw the shotgun swing toward him did he think about his gun on the ground near his feet.
“Oh, I see, just funning,” Hector said. He gave a tight grin that flashed on his face, then vanished. “Did you see me laughing?”
As he spoke, he’d started stepping closer to Sonora Charlie, the second hammer already cocked, aimed and ready on the smoking shotgun.
“No, Hector!” said Sonora Charlie. “It wasn’t funny. Clyde took it too far! But you’re not going to kill me, are you?” He stood ready to leap toward his gun at any second—but his seconds had run out.
“Yes, I think I am,” Hector said calmly, his hands tightening on the shotgun, his finger starting to squeeze the trigger.
Seeing it coming, Sonora shouted, “Hector! Hector—!”
The other hammer fell; the shotgun bucked in Hector’s hands. A blue-orange blast streaked across the seven feet of space between them, picked Sonora Charlie up and slung him backward in a spray of blood.
“Now it’s Hector, eh? You son of a bitch,” Hector said. He stepped forward and looked down at Sonora Charlie’s mangled face and chest. “But I am no longer Hector,” he said. “I am Pancho, remember?”
At the water wheel, the little man had stopped turning the pole and stood staring wide-eyed at Hector, the carnage and the looming gun smoke in the still night air.
“What are you looking at?” Hector asked him as he stepped toward Clyde’s saddlebags lying on the ground.
Seeing Hector reach inside the bag and pull out the leather coin pouch, the little man looked over at Clyde’s bloody, headless body, then back to Hector.
“Are you going to take a bath this night, Señor Pancho?” he asked meekly.
Hector thought about it for a moment as he stepped over and also pulled a coin pouch out of Sonora Charlie’s saddlebags. He hefted the weighty pouch in his and smiled at it.
“Sí,” he said, at length. “Dump this pig out of the tub and refill it.” He tilted his chin up with pride. “Tonight, I will take a bath.”
He looked off in the direction of Wild Roses and thought of his wife awaiting his return.
Tomorrow, I come home to you, Ana, he said silently to the black distant hill lines. He gripped the bag of money tightly. You and my son will not go hungry again.
Chapter 16
Art “Big Chili” Hedden rode his dark bay long and hard throughout the night and most of the next day, stopping only long enough to rest the tired horse and keep it from dying on its hooves. At a settlement along the Rio Verde on the outskirts of the small village of San Felipe, he had stopped at a hitch rail and traded the blown and winded animal for an almost identical dark bay standing in a row of fresh rurales’ horses out in front of a small, loud cantina.
In the cover of darkness and the sound of drunken laughter, guitars and castanets, Hedden traded saddles, bridles and saddlebags at the hitch rail. Atop the fresh horse, riding away, he looked back in time to see his own worn-out animal stagger sidelong against another horse, then collapse to the ground.
“Somebody’s going to be a while thinking this one through.” He chuckled darkly under his breath and rode on. It was not until the following day that he gazed ahead and saw the crumbling rooflines of Pueblo de Ruinas across a stretch of pale wild grass and wavering heat.
At the town of Caminos, Teto Torres sat staring back from a high-backed stuffed chair on the stone porch of a sun-bleached adobe building. Six members of his and his brother Luis’ Gun Killers gang stood gathered around him, all of them watching steely-eyed as the lone rider approached from the northwest.
“The lawman from Nogales?” asked Paco Sterns, a half Mexican, half Arkansan standing near Teto. “If it is, I will go kill him for you.”
“No, it’s not him,” Teto replied without taking his eyes off the single rider. “It is Big Chili.”
“Big Chili? Then where the hell is Bobby Horn?” asked another gunman, this one an Americano, Truman Filo, from one of the tougher street gangs of New York City.
“We will soon know,” Teto said, still staring straight ahead. “If I were to guess, I would say Horn is lying dead somewhere in his own blood.”
“Hell of a thing . . . ,” said Filo, letting his thought trail on the matter.
A blue-black tattoo circled Filo’s left eye and reached out onto his left temple in the form of a bird’s wing. A large T. had been branded onto his forehead years earlier, identifying him as a thief caught in the pursuit of his trade.
Behind the gunmen, in the open doorway of the adobe building, Luis Torres stepped forward and leaned against the doorjamb beneath a faded wooden sign that read TRABAJOS PÚBLICOS. He reac
hed sideways, struck a match and held the flame to the black cigar in his lips.
“I don’t know that you should want the lawman dead just yet, Filo,” he said, letting out a stream of smoke. “He makes money for each of us every time he pulls the trigger.”
“Any lawman offends me, money or no,” Filo replied. He spit to the ground, staring out at the lone rider. “Anyway, I’m getting tired of staying only a step ahead of him. I’m ready to go rob something, else split up our booty and go make a party for a month or two.”
A gunman from New Orleans named Bo Sapp gave a dark chuckle. “I have to admit that I myself am beginning to sway in that same direction. When are we going to fill our saddlebags?”
“Very soon,” said Teto.
“Yeah?” said Sapp. The gunmen’s expressions perked.
“Take it easy, all of you,” said Luis Torres. “We’re circling back to pick up the money we stashed in Wild Roses. Now that we know there’s only been this one lawman dogging us, it’s time we get back to town, split the cake and everybody take their slice.”
“Suits the hell out of me,” said Sapp.
“Damn right,” said Filo, all of the men nodding in agreement.
“I knew that would make all you freebooters happy,” Luis said. He stepped forward from the doorway with a smile, watching Hedden draw closer, up onto the dirt street into town.
From his overstuffed chair, Teto said, “One of you go lead Hedden over here, make him feel impor tant.”
“I’ve got him,” Sapp said, stepping onto the dirt street, walking toward the approaching lone rider.
When Hedden and his tired, stolen horse walked up to him, Sapp took the animal by its bridle and looked up at Heddon as he turned it toward Teto and the others.
“You look like the devil’s run up your back with his spurs on,” he said with a grin.
“It ain’t no laughing matter what I’ve been through, Sapp,” said Hedden.
“Well, now, you just tell ol’ Bo here all about it,” Sapp said in a mock fatherly tone. Looking around he asked, “Where’s that privy-house rat, Horn?”
“Don’t call him names, Bo,” said Hedden. “The poor sumbitch is dead.”
“Damn,” said Sapp.
“Yeah, so grind on that,” Hedden said, jerking his horse away from him and kicking it on toward Teto and the others.
The men stepped to the side as Hedden rode on and stopped out in front of Teto in the overstuffed chair. Teto sat with a long cigar, one leg hiked up over a chair arm, a bottle of rye perched between his thighs.
“Start talking, Big Chili,” Teto said.
“I will,” said Hedden, “soon as you introduce me to your friend there.”
Teto raised the corked bottle and pitched it up to him.
The men watched as Hedden pulled the cork and took a long gurgling drink of rye.
“I remember you now,” Hedden said to the bottle, lowering it, corking it and tossing it back down to Teto. The Mexican outlaw looked at the half-empty bottle.
“We got ourselves lured in hands down by that blasted lawman,” Hedden said in a whiskey-strained voice. “Horn got himself nailed by a Winchester shot before that snake even rode into pistol range.”
Teto just stared at him.
“What did you do?” Sapp asked, walking up from the street and standing beside Teto.
“Hell, I turned and cut out of there, is what I did,” Hedden said grudgingly, answering Teto instead of Sapp. Luis Torres watched and listened from the open doorway.
“You couldn’t turn and shoot him down?” Sapp asked. The rest of the men stared, hanging on every word.
“Who am I answering to, Teto?” Hedden asked harshly. “You, or this scornful prick?”
“Shut up and let him talk, Bo,” Teto said to Sapp.
“I couldn’t shoot back at him,” Hedden said to Teto, tossing Sapp a scorching glance. “He had the Irish gal in front of him. He used her as a shield.”
“Erin?” said Teto, sitting up a little. He looked around at Luis, who now stepped forward with interest.
“Bad as I hated to, I figured I best turn tail while I could, else I’d take a chance on killing her,” Hedden said, lying straight-faced. “Did I do wrong?” He held a fixed stare on Teto.
Teto gave a slight shrug.
“Did Erin look to be this lawman’s prisoner?” Teto asked.
“It didn’t seem like some kind of afternoon frolic,” Hedden said, “if that’s what you’re asking.” He looked at Luis, gauging how well his words were being received by them both.
The two Torres brothers only stared at him.
“Fact is, she looked like she’d been rode hard and beaten to sleep with a bag of rocks.”
“This pig of a lawman,” Teto whispered, gripping the chair arm tightly.
“Did she give you the gun signal?” Luis asked. He raised a cautioning hand toward his brother as if to settle him.
“Yep, she gave us the gunshots, twice, in fact,” said Hedden. “That’s what had us riding her direction in the first place. We made it as far as the well in El Pueblo Fantasma. That’s where he struck us. With Erin in front of him, we never had a chance.”
“Are you saying Erin Donovan might be on this lawman’s side?” Teto asked. As he spoke, he set the bottle of rye on the porch beside his chair and lifted a big Colt lying alongside him.
A worried look came upon Hedden’s sweat-streaked face.
“Huh-uh, Teto,” said Hedden, “I’m not saying any such thing. I’m only saying we got hit in a way that we couldn’t fight back without hurting her. I’m not making any more of it than that.”
“That’s good, Big Chili,” Teto said, the Colt tipping over to rest on his thigh. “For a minute I was concerned that you were saying something ugly about her.” He offered a smug grin. “I am glad we cleared that up.”
“Now that you have cleared it up, let’s get our horses and get out of here,” Luis said.
Hedden looked back and forth between them, a worn-out expression on his face.
“I just got here,” he said.
“You could have saved yourself the trouble and stayed in your saddle,” Teto said. Then he looked at his brother and asked, “You want all of us to finally meet this lawman head-on and kill him?”
“No, we continue the same way with him,” said Luis, “only this time we leave men who have cojones enough to kill him.” He ended his words with a critical stare at Hedden.
“Leave me behind, Luis,” said Hedden. “I’ll kill the lawman this time, else you can nail my cojones to a plank and sell them for a child’s toy.”
“Ouch,” said Teto.
“I mean it,” said Hedden. “Now that I know what kind of sneaky, backstabbing sumbitch this lawman from Nogales is, I’m ready for him.” He looked all around, then added, “Only, leave a good man with me that I can count on.”
“You couldn’t count on Bobby Horn?” Bo Sapp cut in. “Come on, Big Chili,” he said skeptically.
“I won’t answer that, Sapp,” said Hedden. “But if you’ll wager your cojones too, we’ll soon see who’s got the bigger pair.”
Sapp looked at Teto and Luis and said, “Let’s make sure we understand one another, hombres. I’m not wagering my balls to be nailed to a plank, neither as a child’s toy nor for a general conversation piece. But I’ll stay back with Big Chili and kill the lawman, if that’s all we’re talking about.” He gave a Hedden a look. “‘Nailed to a plank for a child’s toy’?” he murmured in disdain.
“I’ve seen it done,” Hedden said in his defense.
“Stay behind and kill him,” Teto cut in. He rose from his chair and walked back inside the seized public building where a hound stood with a leg cocked over a strewn pile of paperwork spilled from atop an overturned desk.
“This Nogales lawman will kill them both,” Luis said matter-of-factly behind him.
“I know,” said Teto, “and our share of the stolen money only continues to grow. Dead gunmen a
re like bank interest to us.” He gave a short grin.
Luis shook his head and said, “You have used that joke too much for it to still be funny, mi hermano.”
“Who said I was joking?” Teto said.
PART 3
Chapter 17
Hector Pasada noticed something was wrong as soon as he reined his horse to a halt and stared across the last fifty yards of sandy flatlands toward the small adobe where he’d left Ana and his son. As he jerked the lead rope and brought Sonora Charlie’s and Clyde Jilson’s horses to a halt beside him, he saw two coyotes race away from the rear of the house.
Uh-oh. . . .
He gave his horse a sharp gig with the Mexican spurs he’d taken from Sonora Charlie’s body and sent it racing forward, the two dead outlaws’ horses running along beside him. At the front porch, he slid his horse to a stop and jumped from its back, shotgun in hand, and bounded across the porch into the empty adobe.
“Ana . . . ?” he called out, looking all around, relieved to see no sign of a struggle, or of any act of violence. Yet, he was disturbed and puzzled that the house stood empty—empty long enough that coyotes had grown bold and wandered inside.
“Ana . . . ?” he called out again as he crossed the floor and looked inside the small, empty bedroom he and his wife shared. On an empty crate beside a straw-filled pallet on the dirt floor, he saw a letter lying beneath a blackened candleholder.
He picked the letter up and read it silently to himself.
“Oh no, Ana . . . ,” he whispered to himself, shaking his head in disbelief. As he continued reading he began repeating over and over, “On no, oh no, oh no,” his words growing louder and more painful with each repetition until they ended in a long, mournful cry.
Outside, across the stretch of flatlands, the old well tender heard Hector’s long, loud plea to heaven. The sound caused the little man to stop in his tracks, roll the tin bathtub off his crouched back and straighten enough to stare toward the weathered adobe.
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