Lawman from Nogales (9781101544747)

by Cotton, Ralph W.

  “I’m—I’m sorry, Pancho,” Erin said in earnest. She quit trying to cock the Starr. Instead, she stepped over and sat down on the edge of the bed made of money. She laid the Starr beside her and flipped back the ragged blanket.

  “Come sit down, rest a minute,” she said. She patted the money sacks beneath the straw. She felt an urge to reach inside the sacks and make sure all the money was there. But she didn’t. She knew she could trust the squirr—Pancho, she corrected herself.

  Hector seated himself beside her on the edge of the pallet.

  “I’ll tell you a secret, Pancho,” she said. “I am carrying a child.”

  Hector just looked at her.

  “It’s true,” she said. “And I have no father for my child, no home here, no name, nothing. . . .”

  Across from the adobe hovel, the Ranger had jumped up from the ground at the sight the silhouette of the woman holding a gun in the window. But as one tense second overlapped onto the next and no sound of gunshot resounded, and no blast of fire exploded inside the room, he eased back down and waited. He didn’t want to barge into the adobe. He didn’t want to do anything that might alert Teto and the remaining Gun Killers when they rode back looking for the money. And he was certain they would be coming back for the money. He gazed off to the east, where the first silver light of morning wreathed the jagged horizon.

  He hoped it wouldn’t be much longer.

  Teto knew he was being followed. Wade Carrico was a smart Texas outlaw—too smart to let him or anyone else ride away in the night when a large cache of money was at stake. Not without following them, Teto told himself. Carrico was only doing what he himself would do under these same circumstances. But still, the fact remained, Teto had put him in charge and told him to keep the men moving north until he caught up with them. Carrico had disobeyed him. He couldn’t let that go unmentioned.

  Teto had followed the woman close enough that, at times, he feared she would hear his horse’s hooves. But when she had turned onto a winding trail where a light shone in the distance, he’d let his horse fall back a little, knowing there was no way he would lose her now. The light was a signal from someone, he was sure of it. Who? He wasn’t certain. A beautiful woman like Erin, it could be anyone.

  I have questions for you, my Irish princess, he thought, speaking to her in his mind. He might have let things go, had she not run away. But now that she had left him in the middle of the night, he wanted to know why Luis would have thought such a thing—that the baby she carried belonged to him. How could Luis have thought such a thing had he not been sleeping with her?

  His own brother . . . , Teto thought. He shook his head and rode on.

  When the small, shining light in the distance went out, Teto made a mental note of its position and rode on in the pale moonlight until he found a dark dry wash running alongside the trail. He turned the horse down into the wash and sat quietly in his saddle, rifle in hand, until he heard the sound of quiet hooves walking along the trail behind him.

  “There went the light,” Jete Longley said under his breath, riding amid the five Gun Killers. “Suppose that means he’s there already?”

  “No,” Wade Carrico replied in a lowered voice of his own, “he couldn’t have gotten that far ahead without running his horse to death.”

  “We don’t even know that light has anything to do with Teto and the woman,” Blake said. “It might not have been her signaling him at all. It might’ve been just what they call a coincidence.”

  “Look around you, Lud,” said Carrico. “This godforsaken desert, nothing or nobody around for miles. It would be a coincidence if the light wasn’t somebody signaling.”

  “I’m speaking for nobody but myself,” said Paco Sterns, “but Teto and Luis have both always shot straight with me. I feel like a skunk thinking Teto is up to something, trying to beat us out of our money.”

  “Nobody is blaming anybody of anything,” said Carrico, at the head of the riders. “But it hurts nothing to check and see what’s going on. I couldn’t believe we were just going to ride away from all that money to begin with.”

  “Yeah, you heard Teto,” Truman Filo said mockingly, “‘There’s a whole country full of money waiting across the border.’ ”

  The men chuckled.

  “I never saw Teto Torres get so loose when it comes to money,” said Carrico. “That in itself put me on guard—”

  He stopped abruptly, pulling his horse to halt, seeing the dark figure, horse and rider, jump up onto the trail facing them.

  “On guard against me, Carrico?” Teto said, his rifle leveled at Carrico’s chest.

  “Whoa!” Carrico said to his spooked horse, getting it under control. “Damn it, Teto! We were talking, that’s all!”

  His horse settled, his right hand slipped to his holstered Colt. But he didn’t draw it.

  “Talk now,” said Teto, his rifle still leveled on Carrico.

  “Jesus, Teto,” Paco Sterns cut in, “he was just saying how it didn’t add up, you acting like the money was no big deal, talking about how we could get more anytime we wanted it.”

  “Yeah,” said Filo, “tell us you wouldn’t be thinking the same way if it was the other way around.”

  Teto didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at Carrico in the darkness above his cocked and leveled rifle.

  “I told you to take the men and ride on, Wade,” he said. “You didn’t follow my orders.”

  “I did what I thought was best for all of us,” Carrico said, not backing an inch. His hand was firm around the butt on his Colt; his thumb was over the hammer. “If that doesn’t sit well with you, we can settle it up right here and now—”

  Almost before he got the words out of his mouth, a rifle shot exploded to their left, twenty yards off in a shadowy stand of rock and brush—the bullet whistled through the air between him and Teto.

  Even as Teto and Carrico drew away from each other, another shot exploded, then another.

  “Cover up!” Carrico shouted to the men.

  “Get off the trail!” Teto ordered at the same second, he and Carrico both turning their horses as more gunfire streaked and exploded from the brush.

  “Follow me!” Teto shouted, his horse rearing a little before he booted it off the trail, back down into the dark dry wash, Carrico right behind him.

  “Who the hell is out there?” Carrico asked Teto, the two of them dropping from their saddles, hugging the cutbank of the dry wash for cover. Along the wash, the rest of the men did the same.

  “I don’t know,” said Teto with a dark grin. He fired, levered a fresh round and fired again. “Now that you are the big jefe in charge, you tell me.” He turned and fired again as shots resounded from the brush.

  “Damn it, Teto, I wasn’t trying to take over, I was looking out for everybody’s interests,” said Carrico.

  “Forget it,” said Teto. “My guess is, this is what’s left of the rurales back in Rosas Salvajes.” He fired again and levered another round.

  “Makes sense to me,” said Carrico. “I would have thought they’d had enough of us.” He rose and fired six quick shots with his Colt.

  “They’re hardheaded,” said Teto. “I hate a hardheaded pinchazo worse than anything.”

  “What do we do now?” Carrico asked. He reloaded his smoking Colt as he spoke.

  “If it’s the rurales, I make it there’s no more than three or four guns left at most,” said Teto.

  “I wish we knew for sure. We could sit them out until daylight, then shoot them all the way back to Wild Roses if we feel like it,” said Carrico.

  “Huh-uh. We’re going to have to hit hard and fast and keep moving,” said Teto. He gestured away from the gunfire toward the direction where the candlelight had been. “Whoever was signaling has heard all this. They’ll be hightailing on us.”

  “You’re right,” Carrico said. “Still, I wish we knew for sure it’s the rurales.” He clicked his reloaded Colt shut.

  The rifles in the brush
stopped firing. After a second of silence, a strong voice called from the rocks and brush.

  “This is Raul Sanchez, the leader of the posse you men killed in Rosas Salvajes,” said the voice. “We have you pinned and outgunned. You must give yourselves up, if you wish to live.”

  Teto grinned in the moonlight and said to Wade Carrico, who was crouched down beside him, “See? All you had to do is ask.”

  “Did you hear me there, banditos?” the rurale leader called out. “Those of you who give yourselves up will not be killed—except for the bastardo who stole my horse and left his dead horse in its place! Him I will hang by the neck until he is dead.”

  “What’s that about?” Carrico asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Teto replied. “But he sure sounds upset over it.”

  “Think we ought to give up, so we can get going?” Carrico asked.

  Teto thought about it for a second.

  “Why not?” he said. He checked his rifle and said along the cutbank to the others, “Everybody get ready. Paco, gather our horses and get them away from here. Hurry back.”

  “Sí, I will hurry back,” Paco said, crawling away a few feet, then rising into a crouch and running along the wash.

  Teto called out to the rurale leader, “We want to give ourselves up, but we know nothing about your horse, Señor Sanchez.”

  A silence; then the rurale leader called out grudgingly, “All right, then. Give yourselves up. We will discuss my stolen horse later.”

  “That sounds like a hell of a deal,” Carrico said wryly to Teto.

  Teto called out to the rurale leader, “We are coming out with our hands raised. Please do not shoot us.”

  Raul turned to Eduardo and Julio lying spread out alongside him, their rifles pointed toward the Gun Killers.

  “They are not so bold when they are faced by real men, eh, amigos?” he whispered.

  Eduardo and Julio stared grimly ahead.

  Paco Sterns slid back in among the men, having tied the horses to a bush farther down the wash.

  “Ready!” he said in a whisper, even though no one asked.

  As the rurales watched, four of the six Gun Killers stepped up in the purple darkness, their arms clearly raised in the air. Their rifles lay in the dry wash behind them. Their holsters were empty on their hips.

  As the four stepped forward, Teto and Wade Carrico hurried along the wash in opposite directions until they were positioned five yards on either end of the surrendering gunmen.

  “Come,” Raul said quietly to his two men, “let’s take them as prisoners. Once they are in my charge, I will beat out of them which one stole my horse.”

  The two men stood up and flanked Raul as he moved forward, a big French pistol in his hand.

  When the Gun Killers were as close as twenty feet, Filo glanced back and forth in the darkness.

  “Now!” he shouted as his hand reached back around his empty holster and snatched the gun from behind his back.

  On either end of the gunmen, Teto and Carrico opened up with rifle fire. The other three men followed suit with Filo, their hands jerking pistols from behind their backs and firing rapidly into the rurales.

  The three rurales crumpled to rocky ground. Only one of them, the young Julio, even got off a shot. But as his shot exploded wildly, three bullets pounded him backward and to the ground.

  Almost before the ringing after-silence set in, Paco Sterns raced away, got the horses and ran back, leading the animals up from the dry wash and across the rocky ground.

  As he hurried up behind Teto, he saw him looking down at the bloody face of the rurale leader.

  “You—you lied,” the rurale gasped, clutching both hands to his bullet-riddled chest.

  “I know,” said Teto, almost apologetically. He held his smoking rifle pointed down, less than a foot from Raul’s forehead. “It is getting to where you can’t trust anyone, eh?”

  The horses jerked as Teto pulled the trigger, but Paco held them firmly as the men stepped in and took their reins from him.

  Turning to Carrico, Teto, with his smoking rifle still in hand, asked, “Are we square, you and me? Or do we still need to get that way?”

  “We’re square, damn it,” Carrico said. “Don’t be pointing that rifle at me.” He swung up into his saddle and turned his horse beside Teto’s. “Are you coming or what?”

  Chapter 29

  The Ranger heard the gun battle spring up suddenly farther out along the land-wagon trail. When he saw the flash of muzzles explode like flat sheets of lightning across the harsh Mexican terrain, he stood up and stared toward the battle, judging its distance. Was it the Gun Killers? He had little doubt. Against the rurales he’d left behind in Rosas Salvajes?

  Yes, that would be his first guess, he told himself.

  No sooner had the gunshots risen in the near distance than the candlelight came back on in the window of the adobe hovel—but it only burned for a moment. He turned and studied the two silhouettes as they busied themselves inside.

  “I knew I might be followed, but I didn’t think they could be this close,” Erin said as she raked away loose straw and the ragged blanket. She pulled up the two sacks of money and rolled them over onto the dirt floor. “Choose which one you want,” she said, “in case we get split up again.”

  “No, you choose,” Hector said, the cocaine still keeping him up above the pain coursing throughout his battered body. “I will go get the horses.”

  When he left the room, Erin hefted one sack, then the other, finding them to be about equal in size and weight. When he walked back in, leading the two horses, she looked up and saw him staring at her with the rifle from the saddle boot in his hand. She noted the strange look on his face.

  “These feed sacks are a dead giveaway,” she said, noting the coins and stacks of paper money showing through the burlap. “We’ve both got saddlebags, so let’s use them.” She paused, then said, “I see no reason why we can’t ride together . . . for a while anyway. That is, if it’s all right with you.”

  Hector didn’t answer. Instead, he levered a round into the rifle chamber and eased the tip of the barrel toward her.

  Erin reread the look on his face. It wasn’t so strange now that she understood its implication. It was more a look of resolve. She shot a glance toward the big Starr revolver lying on what was left of the straw pallet.

  “Do not reach for the gun,” Hector cautioned her. “It does not fire anyway, remember?”

  He knew? she thought. He’d heard the gun cock? But he’d said nothing? He’d kept it to himself until he got his hands on the rifle?

  “Yes,” he said, as if answering her inner questions. “I know what you want to do. I know what you would have done.”

  She looked at the rifle barrel; she thought about her unborn baby.

  “Hector, listen to me,” she said, struggling to keep her voice cool and steady, even as she realized death stared her in the face. “Yes, it’s true, I was going to kill you and take all the money. If the gun hadn’t misfired, I would have done so, I can’t deny it.”

  “No, you cannot,” Hector said quietly.

  “But I’m glad it misfired, Hector,” she said. “Do you hear me, I’m glad!”

  “Sí, so am I,” Hector said flatly.

  “I want you to understand something,” she said. “My life has been much the same as yours. I have done nothing but struggle to keep myself alive since the day I was born. It’s hard living like that every day. It makes one do things they would never dream of doing otherwise.”

  Hector only stared at her, the rifle tight in his hands.

  Erin reached a toe out and nudged one of the sacks of money.

  “But with this money, things can be different for me now,” she said. “I know they can be different. I don’t have to kill someone else in order for me and my baby to live. With this money, I can live and let live. I can raise my baby in peace, and not have to worry how I will feed and clothe it.”

  Hector found h
imself staring at the sacks of money, realizing how different things would have been for him if he’d had the money sooner, before his wife, Ana, and his son left him.

  “It is true what you say,” he whispered almost to himself. “There are those who would have us believe that money is not everything, and I envy those people. My life would not have been so bad if only I had money to make it better.” He shook his head slightly in regret.

  “But not now, Hector,” she said, stepping forward toward him, the sacks of money lying at their feet.

  Hector’s wary look caused her to stop.

  “You wanted to kill me,” he said, letting her know to keep her distance.

  “Yes, and I am sorry for that,” she said, “deeply sorry. But that was before I knew how you felt—what you’ve been through. I don’t want to kill you, Hector. I want to be your friend, your compañero.” She paused and gave him an intimate look. “I’ll even be your íntimo compañero, if you will have me.”

  His intimate companion . . . ? Hector swallowed the tightness in his throat and looked her up and down. My God, she is beautiful, he told himself.

  This was not the time or the place to judge people hastily or harshly, he thought. Like most creatures here in the brutal desert lands, people did what they had to do for the very moment in which they lived. This was no time to discern what life demanded next from them. There was only this hot, insistent moment that demanded attention in order to stay alive.

  “I—I want to believe you,” Hector said. “I would give anything to believe you. . . .”

  “Then do believe me, Hector,” she said. “All you have to do is let yourself believe me.” She ventured a step closer to him, farther away from the big Starr revolver.