Lawman from Nogales (9781101544747)

by Cotton, Ralph W.

  “We’ve got the sumbitch this time,” he said to Bo Sapp, who stood a few feet away in the shade of an alleyway alongside the public building.

  Standing halfway up from the hot, dusty chair, Hedden levered a round up into the rifle chamber.

  “Stay back out of sight,” he said to Sapp, who had started to take a step forward.

  “You want my help or not?” Sapp asked sharply. Not liking Hedden to begin with, Sapp especially resented taking orders from the big gunman.

  “Your help?” Hedden chuffed. “So far I haven’t seen any help. All I’ve seen you do is hang in the shade like some locked-out house cat.”

  “Keep it up, Big Chili,” Sapp said, calling his nickname with contempt.

  Hedden ignored the warning in Sapp’s tone. He shook his head, spit and looked away toward the two riders drawing closer to town.

  “I’m not needing any of your help from the looks of it,” he said. “Just try to keep yourself out of my way.” He stepped over and kneeled down behind a water barrel sitting on the edge of the porch.

  Sapp gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to raise his Colt and put a bullet in the back of Hedden’s head.

  “Watch how I pick this fool’s eyes out,” Hedden said. “Maybe you’ll learn something.” He laid the rifle down across the barrel top, watching the Ranger and Erin ride closer, a rise of dust billowing up behind them.

  Sighting down along the rifle barrel, Hedden saw the two ride down out of sight on the roll of the land.

  “There went your target,” Sapp said, also watching the two riders from his spot at the corner of the building.

  “Yep,” Hedden said confidently, “and as soon as he rides back up into sight, he’s not going to know what hit him.”

  Sapp stood staring out, his neck craned slightly.

  Hedden relaxed for a moment, his finger still on the trigger of the cocked rifle. As soon as the Ranger and Erin rode back into sight, he would take his shot at a hundred and fifty yards. Not a hard shot at all for him, he reminded himself.

  A few tense moments passed.

  “All right, where is he?” Sapp finally asked. He drew his Colt up out of his holster as if he might need it real soon.

  Damn! Hedden stared out, seeing neither Erin nor the Ranger reappear.

  “Something ain’t right!” he said to Sapp.

  “You’re telling me,” Sapp said, stepping onto the street, edging closer to where their horses stood at a hitch rail. “Hell, he’s no idiot. He knew some of us would be waiting to kill him!”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Hedden asked, seeing Sapp unhitch his horse and start to swing up into his saddle.

  “He’s too bashful to ride in,” said Sapp. “I expect I’d better go out there and get him.”

  “Wait up, I’m going with you!” Hedden said, sounding worried. He looked all around warily as he stood in a crouch and hurried over to his horse.

  “It’s been over fifteen minutes. No sound of hooves—nothing,” he said, unhitching his horse with a nervous hand. “This ain’t normal, I’m telling ya!”

  “Jesus, Big Chili,” said Sapp with the same contempt in his voice. “Don’t wet yourself. He’s out there. He’s just scared, hiding, waiting until he sees us and knows where we are.” He swung his horse toward the far end of town.

  “Hey! You’re going the wrong way,” Hedden said even as he turned his horse beside Sapp.

  “No, I’m not,” Sapp called back over his shoulder, his Colt still in hand, cocked and ready. “I want to meet this sumbitch face-to-face on my terms, not his.”

  Chapter 19

  While Big Chili Hedden and Bo Sapp had waited for the Ranger to ride into Caminos, Sam and Erin had ridden around the small empty town at an easy gait and taken cover beside a half-collapsed plank and adobe shack. Sam stood beside his horse watching the street in the direction of the two gunmen until he heard hooves thundering around a long turn in the street and come galloping into sight.

  “Sam, be careful,” Erin whispered sincerely as she saw him drop the dun’s reins to the dirt and step out into the dusty street.

  Be careful . . .

  Sam looked at her, thinking it odd that she should say such a thing—these being two more of the men she and her brother had allied themselves with here in this badlands desert plane.

  Yet, Sam touched the brim of his sombrero toward her.

  “Obliged, ma’am. I will,” he said, his Winchester hanging in his left hand, his big Colt in his right.

  Less than fifty feet away in the empty street, facing him through a swirl of dust, the two gunmen gave each other a heated glance.

  “On your terms, huh?” Hedden said to Sapp in anger and disgust.

  “Shut up, Big Chili, damn it!” Sapp shouted. “He slipped around on us! I’m not a damn mind reader!”

  The two jerked their horses quarterwise toward the Ranger, rifles coming up from across their laps, ready to charge.

  Sam waited, watching, his feet spread shoulder-width apart.

  “What the hell is it with you, Burrack?” Hedden called out. “You’ve got no damn business down here, butting your nose in! All you’re doing is killing people! It ain’t right! It ain’t fair!”

  The Ranger stood staring in silence.

  Sapp turned to Hedden with a strange bemused look on his face.

  “Jesus, Big Chili, are you through?” he said.

  “Damn it, yes, I am,” Hedden said, staring toward the Ranger in disgust.

  “Good,” said Sapp, “because I don’t think he’s wanting to discuss matters.” He slid down the side of his horse and slapped its rump. “Let’s shoot this sumbitch and get on down the trail.”

  But Hedden wasn’t through talking. He stepped down from his horse and shoved it away. “Get ready,” he whispered sidelong to Sapp. He took one slow step after another toward the Ranger, his rifle in both hands, ready to swing it up to his shoulder and start shooting.

  “I want you to tell me, Burrack, who is it you think really gives a damn what goes on in this bowl of sand? The Mexican government? The American government?”

  “People care,” Sam said flatly.

  “Ha! Don’t make me laugh, Burrack. You two-bit lawman from Nogales!” He gripped the rifle tight. So did Sapp, a few yards to his right. “If people care, where the hell are they?” he shouted. “I don’t see them, I don’t hear them!”

  Sam saw the move coming; he didn’t wait.

  “They’re standing right in front of you, Big Chili,” he said, raising the Colt, firing it on the upswing.

  The Ranger’s shot hit Hedden dead center, picked him up and slung him backward like a rag doll. Sam immediately swung the big Colt toward Bo Sapp, cocking it, pulling the trigger.

  Bo Sapp had managed to get a shot off with his rifle while Sam’s Colt took Hedden down. But the rifle shot went high left and off center, slicing a deep gash across Sam’s left shoulder as Sam’s second shot nailed his chest, dead center.

  The deep bullet graze on Sam’s shoulder nicked the bone and caused the Ranger’s Winchester to fall from his hand. Blood flew.

  “Sam!” Erin cried out. She ran into the street to him and stopped short two feet away, seeing his smoking Colt cocked and pointed toward the badly wounded Bo Sapp, who lay struggling to raise his rifle for another shot.

  Blood ran down the Ranger’s forearm and dripped from his hand holding the Winchester.

  “Drop it,” he called out to the downed outlaw.

  “Or . . . what?” Sap said in a strained, grave voice. “You’ll . . . shoot me?”

  “Count on it,” Sam said.

  The outlaw hesitated; Erin saw the look of determination on the Ranger’s face.

  “For God’s sake, Bo,” she called out, “drop the rifle. It’s all over!”

  “What the hell . . . do you care, woman?” Sapp said to her as the Ranger stalked closer, one slow step at a time, the Colt still raised and ready.

  Sam gave her a questi
oning glance.

  “No, it’s not him,” Erin said, easing along beside him, seeing the downed outlaw’s rifle barrel drop to the ground, then seeing the rifle fall from his grip.

  “Not . . . me?” Sapp said, hearing Erin as the two stopped and looked down at him. “What do you mean . . . not me?”

  Sam kicked the lowered rifle away from Sapp’s bloody hand.

  “It’s nothing, Bo,” Erin said quietly, seeing the gaping hole in his chest, knowing his life was spilling out of him with each beat of his heart.

  Sapp gripped his bleeding chest and gave Erin a harsh look.

  He rasped, “What would . . . Teto say if he . . . knew you were riding with this damn lawman . . .” His words trailed to a whisper and stopped.

  “From Nogales,” Erin said. Ending his words for him.

  Teto . . . Sam repeated the dying outlaw’s words to himself, but he wasn’t going to mention the matter to Erin. If she wanted him to know, she’d have to tell him.

  They stood in silence for a moment. Sam opened his smoking Colt, dropped the empty cartridges to the ground and replaced them with bullets from his belt.

  “Two more down,” he murmured under his breath. Shoving the Colt down into his holster, he turned to the dun. Erin moved along beside him.

  Within moments, they had mounted their horses, directed them to the rocky trail and ridden away.

  As far as Pancho Pasada was concerned, his old self, Hector Pasada, was dead—and good riddance to his stupid pitiful soul, he told himself. He kicked empty tequila bottles away from the edge of the bed with his bare feet.

  He raised a tall bottle of tequila to his lips and drank deeply. Strange, he thought, that for the past three days he had drunk more tequila than ever before in his life, yet it barely fazed him.

  Always before, it seemed that only a small amount of the fiery liquor reduced him to a thoughtless fool. He ran the back of his shirtsleeve across his wet lips and stood up from the dead Frenchman’s dirty bed. Now the tequila, the mescal, the rye whiskey, even the ground cocaine powder that Sidel Tereze had shared with him, seemed to straighten out tangles inside his mind and leave his thoughts clear and deliberate for the first time in his life.

  He looked around at Tereze lying naked and asleep on the Frenchman’s bed—his bed now. His cantina, his bed, his woman . . . one of his women anyway. All of the doves belonged to him now. What money they made, they made for him. Everything was his—the world was his!

  He smiled to himself, corked the bottle and set it down on a small table beside the bed, where, like the naked young dove herself, it would be waiting for him anytime he wanted it.

  This is how a man lives, he told himself, if he is a real man, and not some timid, stupid squirrel, such as he had been. Yes, he had heard them call him a squirrel. But they would not call him that again. They knew better.

  A picture of Ana and the boy came to his mind, but he quickly shut them out. Although, he had to admit, he wished she could see him now, what he had done for himself, how he now lived. But enough of that. He picked up the bottle, took another swig of the tequila and set it back down. That was all in the past, when he must truly have been as stupid as the Frenchman and the rest of the world had thought him to be.

  Not anymore. . . .

  It had been his for the taking all along. Had he only known that the secret to having everything he wanted was to care for nothing, not even his own life. All he had to do to arrive here was to kill three men who were not fit to live anyway. How he wished he had known this sooner, he told himself.

  How simple life could be. He smiled again to himself and looked all around the Frenchman’s living quarters behind the Perros Malos Cantina.

  Want a cantina? Take it! And now it belongs to you. He looked again at the young, naked whore. Before, this beautiful woman would not spit on him. Now she would do for him whatever he told her to do, without question—and she would do it free of charge. Not only was her body free to him, he reminded himself; she would pay him two-thirds of what she charged other men to lie down with her.

  Oh, and the gold! he reminded himself.

  He raised five shiny new gold coins from his trouser pocket and turned them back and forth in his hand, examining them. All of the gold and the American greenbacks he’d found buried in the ground beneath the plank floor—three hundred, four hundred thousand dollars?

  He smiled and closed his eyes toward the ceiling, making a tight fist around the coins. No one knew about the gold but him. In the cover of night, he had moved it to another hiding place.

  Yes, all the gold was his, too.

  In the blink of an eye, his fortune had changed. He looked at himself in a long dusty mirror leaning against the far wall.

  This was what the old padres at the missions must’ve meant when they had talked to him about heaven.

  Chapter 20

  Bud Lowry had ridden hard all night and half the next day before coming upon the Torres brothers and their Gun Killers Gang. He’d first spotted the band of riders from the edge of a cliff on a trail high above them. From there, he’d ridden his tired horse down and met them on a rocky trail leading up into a rugged hill line toward Wild Roses.

  “Lucky for us all I found you heading this way,” he said as soon as he’d turned his horse quarterwise to Teto and Luis Torres.

  At the head of the riders, Teto and Luis stared hard at him.

  “You’d better have a damn good reason for leaving Rosas Salvajes,” said Teto. “Your job was to stay there and keep an eye on things.”

  “Three-Hand Defoe is dead,” said Lowry. “Got his face shotgunned all over the wall.” He paused, looked from one to the other and said, “Is that a damn good enough reason?”

  Teto and Luis stared at him.

  “Shotgunned?” Luis asked in disbelief.

  “At the Perros Malos?” Teto asked.

  “Yep, standing right there at the Bad Dogs on his favorite spot,” said Lowry. “Half his big ole face is stuck there on the wall, ’less somebody has peeled it down by now.” He gave a black-humored chuckle. “I’ve got to say, it looks strange as hell.”

  Neither Teto nor Luis returned his dark smile.

  “Who shotgunned him?” Luis asked as the rest of the men crowed up closer to listen.

  “The Mex who always hung around looking for work,” said Lowry. “The one the whores all called a squirrel.”

  “Hector Pasada killed Three-Hand Defoe?” Luis asked in disbelief.

  “Deader than hell,” said Lowry. “His third hand didn’t help him a bit. He could have had a dozen hands—that shotgun didn’t care.”

  “Hector Pasada . . . ?” Teto said again, having a hard time accepting it. “The squirrel?”

  “He’s not a squirrel now,” said Lowry. “He’s not Hector either. He’s got everybody calling him Pancho. Turns out this Mex is nobody to take lightly. He killed Sonora Charlie and Clyde Jilson too.”

  “Jesus,” said Teto, “the squirrel killed Sonora Charlie and Clyde Jilson? You saw this?”

  “Deader than hell,” Lowry repeated. “No, I didn’t see it. But I heard him tell Defoe he killed them. He’s wearing Sonora’s big Mexican spurs. That’s proof enough for me.”

  “Yeah . . . ,” said Teto, he and Luis both looking a little stunned by the news. “Sonora loved those spurs. I can hear them ringing yet.”

  “You’ll be hearing them ring again in Wild Roses,” said Lowry. “The squir—I mean, the Mex, Pancho,” he corrected himself, “took over the cantina, everything else Defoe has there. Turns out he’s a greedy, pushy little prick. Said anybody wants the Bad Dogs Cantina, they have to kill him to take it.”

  “Who the hell would want to take over the Perros Malos Cantina?” asked Truman Filo, he and Paco Sterns sitting atop their horses close to the Torres brothers.

  Teto and Luis looked at each other.

  “If he is bold enough to kill those three murdering bastardos,” said Teto, “he is bold enough to take over the
Perros Malos and do for us what Defoe has done.”

  “So, I did right coming out here looking for you?” said Lowry.

  “Sí, you did right,” said Teto.

  “Now we deal with this Pancho the same way we dealt with Defoe,” Luis declared.

  “Sí,” Teto said. “If our money is waiting as safely for us as it was with Defoe, I don’t care who runs the Bad Dogs Cantina.” He grinned and added to Luis, “So long as it is not us.”

  The men turned their horses back onto the trail and kicked the animals up into a gallop.

  In the dusty alley on one side of the Perros Malos Cantina, the little well tender from Pueblo Fantasma had set up his tin bathing tub. He had strung a rope from the side of the cantina to the empty adobe next door, twenty feet away, and draped a blanket over it, providing privacy for his more modest bathers.

  A crudely painted sandwich board stood in the dirt near the tub, reading on either side BAÑO, 25 CEN-TAVOS. A few feet away, the little well tender sat on a three-legged stool beside a small fire burning beneath a large kettle of water.

  He stood up quickly as Hector walked up to him in the gray morning light, Sonora Charlie’s big Mexican spurs ringing on his bootheels. A holstered Colt hung butt-forward from his left shoulder. He held his shotgun loosely in his left hand, a half bottle of tequila in his right.

  “Buenos días, mi jefe,” the little well tender said, quickly adjusting the draped blanket on the rope.

  “Good morning to you, little hombre,” Hector replied. From the other side of the blanket, he heard the quiet splash of water on tin and a woman’s voice humming softly in the grainy morning light.

  “It is one of your women, señor,” the well tender said. “When she finishes with the men for the night, she comes here to my tub.”

  “Ah, it is one of my women,” said Hector, liking the sound of it. He gave a short smile of satisfaction. “I have several women, little hombre.” He pulled the blanket aside and looked down at the young dove, Lynette, sitting sprawled back in a bed of white sudsy water.