by E. R. Slade
Clint was about to go out and see if Felipe had been washed away when the fat Mexican came waddling through the door and sat down with a splash in the flowing water.
Clint had lit a stump of candle, but the water pouring in through the nearly worthless thatched roof had put it out. Now Clint decided to try again. He thought it might make Felipe feel better. He found a poncho and propped it over the candle, which he’d set in a crook of the brush wall, and lit it again. This time it did not go out.
They were silent for a long time. Clint wasn’t going to disturb Felipe’s thoughts at a time like this. Clint might find a lot of fault with the fat Mexican, and might not trust him, but Felipe had cared about his family, and Clint liked Felipe for that.
The candle had almost burned out, and the storm had quit and the water had stopped running through the hut when Felipe finally spoke.
“I did not think Valenzuela would let out his rage with me upon my family,” he said sadly, broodingly. “I was thinking I was very smart to get away. I wished to celebrate my victory and share it with Adelita. I went to town and bought her a new dress. It is very pretty, Cleent. It would have made her very happy. She would have forgotten her sickness and she would have been full of joy.”
Clint said nothing.
“It passed as you warned me it would,” Felipe went on. “Valenzuela he reads the message and is very angry. He calls me many names, and says I have told Señor Griego that the letter is not the way Pepita really feels. Then he locks me in the small jail building and says I am to die soon. Many days pass. Juan Carlos who is the guard is Adelita’s uncle. I soften his heart and finally he lets me get away, telling the other guards that I am allowed to leave. He leaves with me, because he will die if he stays. I have to leave the burros, but I have my horse and my gun and my money from Señor Griego. I am free and I feel fine. So I am very gay when I come home. I am looking forward to the big smile on Adelita’s face when she sees the present I have brought her. I am imagining how she will laugh and chatter and try the new dress on, and how she will wish to dance and sing and be merry in the way she did many years ago. I am imagining how my house will be bright and full of laughter when I come, and it will be time for Adelita’s Saint’s Day soon and I will go to town and buy more things, and much tequila.”
Felipe paused and looked around the empty hut.
“It is the way the world passes,” Clint said, and then wished he hadn’t because it sounded as though he was mocking Felipe.
“Sí,” Felipe said. “Sí. But it is not right. Señor Valenzuela had no right to kill my family. It is an abomination. It is the act of a scoundrel dog, a cowardly yellow filth.” Felipe’s eyebrows lowered and in the candlelight he looked dangerous, the first time Clint had ever seen this expression on Felipe’s face.
“Not much you can do,” Clint said.
“Do you think I will do nothing? Of all people you should know how I feel, Señor Cleent. My life is full of sadness and emptiness now. And it is all because of the filthy cowardly act of Valenzuela.” Felipe got up and went to the door of the hut, looking out at the blackness. “Señor Cleent, I am going to kill Valenzuela.”
Clint said nothing for quite a while. He had been doing some thinking about his own situation over the past three weeks, and had come to the conclusion that the only way to get Dixon would be to take him by surprise in his own lair. Clint was sure he’d never stand a chance of getting the upper hand otherwise. And since Valenzuela was the only man Clint knew of who might know where Dixon went to ground, it seemed the necessary thing to do was get hold of Valenzuela and make him talk.
“Looky, Felipe,” he said at length. “I had no luck at all getting at Dixon the way I tried. I nearly got myself killed for my trouble. I haven’t shown you, but I’m all over ripped up by thorns from a trip through a cactus bed behind Dixon’s horse. Dixon was too arrogant to make sure I was dead before he and his henchmen rode off and left me, so here I am. But I’m no further ahead than I was before. Leaving word again would only bring me another attack and a repeat of what I just went through. But Valenzuela knows where Dixon hides out. If I can get him in his own lair ...”
Felipe turned to face him, the sputtery candle throwing queer shadows across his face.
“Señor, we are united. We have a common purpose. This time there will be no need to worry that I will abandon you. We both wish something from Valenzuela. First you will ask him where Dixon is, and then I will kill him. Perhaps I will have to begin to kill him before he will tell you the truth, eh?” Felipe’s teeth looked yellow and fierce as he grinned. He was no longer the Felipe of only a few hours ago, calling gaily for his wife.
“The problem we have,” Clint said, “is how to get to Valenzuela.”
Felipe came in and sat down. “Sí, Cleent, that is our problem. It will not be easy.”
“It’ll be damned hard.”
“But we will do it, eh? I wish to see Valenzuela’s blood run freely and to hear his screams as I tear out his eyes.”
Chapter Nineteen
They had not come up with a plan by the time they went to bed. But the reason Clint couldn’t sleep wasn’t that. It was Felipe’s attitude. The image of Felipe’s yellow teeth stayed with him.
In the morning Felipe set off to gather some herbs and Clint hauled more water. They took a siesta at noon which lasted most of the rest of the day while they talked about Valenzuela and worked over many different possible plans to get their hands on him.
By the time they took to their bedrolls that night they had merely begun to realize just how hard it was going to be to get hold of the bandit. For four more days they argued and discussed and suggested and argued some more.
By the end of the fifth day, however, they had come to one clear conclusion: they needed help. The next question to be answered was, what kind of help and who would they try to get it from?
For a couple more days they argued about this. Then, as the sun set on the second day, they stopped talking, and grim determination settled over the hut in the desert. They went to bed silent and each full of his own thoughts. In the morning, exchanging only a few words, they collected their belongings, saddled Felipe’s horse and rode for Crooked Creek to put into action the plan they had hammered out.
~*~
Crooked Creek seemed quieter than usual when they rode in. Maybe the ranks of the impatient and argumentative had been temporarily thinned out and there was a lull until more could ride in from elsewhere to take their places. This wasn’t to say the place was all sweetness and light. There was a brawl going on desultorily in a saloon they passed, and up the street a man was waving his arms and yelling at somebody inside one of the tents about something Clint couldn’t make out.
They used most of the Felipe’s money to buy Clint an indifferent horse and saddle and a couple of burros and some supplies for a trip. As the afternoon began to cool just slightly, they rode south into the desert.
They hadn’t joked or complained about each other since coming to a decision about what they would do. They spoke only when necessary and about practical things. Each was full of his own thoughts. Clint kept watching Felipe and wondering at the change that had come over him. He had turned into a grim, bloodthirsty man, and he was obviously brooding all the time about what he was going to do to Valenzuela when he got his hands on him. Every little while a sort of fierce glare of pleasure would come over Felipe, and Clint figured Felipe had just finished an imagined torture of Valenzuela.
Clint was silent and brooding too, but for a different reason. He kept wondering if he wanted to have any part of Felipe’s plans for Valenzuela. Valenzuela probably deserved whatever he got, but Felipe’s attitude made Clint uneasy.
They rode onto the lush green ranges of the Griego hacienda towards noon of another fine bright day—there’d been no more gully washers since that one back at the hut. The place looked about the same, creamy white buildings etched against the dark green backdrop of the lower slopes of the massive
Sierra Madre, the parades of summer clouds with wind-streaked bottoms going by overhead, the little clumps of healthy fat cattle feeding on the ranges, the somberoed vaqueros working the range.
Felipe had few pleasant words for the man who took their horses and wanted to know how was Felipe and all the family? They went inside and were shown to the old man’s room. He had been asleep and was bleary-eyed when they came in. But when he saw Felipe and Clint he smiled hopefully.
“Ah, I knew my faith was not misplaced,” he said in his clear, well-spoken Spanish. “My friends have come back. You have good news?”
Felipe stood at his bedside like an angry bear, working his sombrero in his hands. Clint unconsciously stuck a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.
“I have news,” Felipe said forebodingly. “My family has been killed.”
Griego looked shocked. “Oh, my good friend Felipe! This is terrible! Who has done this horrible thing?”
“Valenzuela.”
Griego’s brows jutted at that, and thunderclouds formed back in his dark deep-set eyes. “It is to be expected from such a filthy dog.”
“I am going to tear out his eyes and cut him into small pieces,” Felipe said grimly. “I’m going to make him repent his sins many times over and beg for his life and scream in horrible pain. I will have no mercy.”
Griego’s eyes flashed. “I have the same wish, Felipe, I assure you. I wonder if I am not responsible, though, for causing the death of your family. I should not have sent you into the den of that worthless pitiless animal. Even though I did not mention that you told me the truth behind Pepita’s letter, I am sure Valenzuela suspected it, and I feel responsible, Felipe. You have come here with your friend, the señor Evans. Have you come to me for help?”
“That’s right,” Clint said. “We looked at it from every angle, and finally agreed we could not do much alone. You were the only man who had an interest in getting the best of Valenzuela besides us. You have a lot of men, and could afford to supply a small army.”
“What is your need to destroy Valenzuela?” Griego asked.
“I don’t care about Valenzuela. But he is the only man who knows where Blake Dixon hides out. I want Dixon. So we’ve got to work this so I get a chance to make Valenzuela talk before Felipe gets his time with him. Your interest is to get your daughter out safely, so you will not have Felipe’s temptation to destroy Valenzuela’s stronghold without discrimination.”
Griego nodded thoughtfully. He looked stronger now than he had before. Perhaps for the first time he thought he saw light at the end of the tunnel.
“Señor Evans, that is why I wanted to hire you in the first place, because an army, no matter how large, could not rescue my daughter. I am very willing to help you and your friend here, for I have much the same feelings towards that filth Valenzuela. But I do not see what good an army will do. I will supply it however, if you think it is necessary.”
“It is. But this won’t be a simple attack. Felipe and I have worked out a plan. Your force will be mostly a diversion.”
“I am afraid that I do not understand,” Griego said.
So Clint laid it all out for him.
Griego listened carefully, nodding at some points, shaking his head at others, and then afterwards was silent for the space of several minutes.
“It is very brilliant, Señor Evans,” he said softly. “My confidence in you is not misplaced. You have a good brain. However, there are weaknesses. It could go wrong.”
“It could. If you have a better idea, let’s hear it.”
Griego shook his head, smiling wanly. “No, Señor Evans, I have no better plan. I do not like playing games with the life of my daughter, and I do not like risks. But I am not fool enough to believe there is a way out of this situation that does not have risks. I give my blessing. I will order that you have one hundred and forty men, together with all the supplies and ammunition needed. And I will pray that God in His Holy Wrath will be with you to punish this evil coward, and to rescue my innocent daughter from his clutches.”
They remained at the Griego hacienda for three days while the army was put together, supplied and provisioned for the nearly two-week journey north to Oak Creek. Clint and Felipe were given the royal treatment, fed the finest foods and wines and treated to music and dancing. A peculiar kind of atmosphere was on the hacienda. It was a sort of fierce fiesta, like an Indian war dance, grim with determination to kill the enemy and rescue Pepita. Felipe muttered in his sleep and Clint said little, pondering the business.
They set out on another in the long succession of bright mornings, looking like a bunch of revolutionaries. Every man had crossed shoulder belts of ammunition, and pistol and knife handles protruded in profusion everywhere on the sombreroed, hard-faced Mexicans. Their hearts were in this battle, that was clear. It was perhaps as well that they did not know how small a part they were supposed to play, or perhaps they wouldn’t have looked forward so much to what they were riding into. Griego commanded loyalty, Pepita reverence, and Valenzuela the most concentrated and furious hatred.
They rode all day, with only a relatively short stop at the noon siesta time. That night, Clint sat looking at the campfires sprawling over the desert and felt the night breeze on his cheek and listened to the quiet talk. There was no laughter or joviality as usually filled Mexican camps in the evening. This was a grim, determined business, and Clint realized he was part of it. He had a hankering to pull out and back off and think about it, but it was in motion now. He wanted Dixon and this was the way get him. What these Mexicans did to each other was no concern of his.
Later, somebody got out a guitar and played, and soon another man began to sing, the cry lonely and mournful and Clint thought of the rows of empty weathered buildings in Dead Flats, and remembered the Presence stalking the streets. The camp was silent, listening, but way out in the desert somewhere a coyote joined in, howling and yipping. When the singer finally stopped singing about a tragic love affair and the other man put away his guitar, the coyote yipped a few times and quit too.
And all that was left was the tickling of the sand as the wind filled all the tracks of the day and left the avengers alone on a trackless desert.
Chapter Twenty
The ride north was uneventful. Clint thought maybe the Mescaleros were taking a vacation or had moved to better hunting grounds. Oak Creek was reached without anyone seeing a single Indian. Clint and Felipe decided on a spot along the creek under the oak trees to make camp. There was good visibility in all directions and the oaks would make for some cover, if they needed it.
They had arrived in the middle of the day, so Clint and Felipe decided to make use of the afternoon putting the next step of the plan into motion. They rode together the mile into town and cast about for an appropriate saloon. It had to be one they could both go into without setting off any trouble. They found a dingy little place not too far from the wall of the cliff down which the ore from the mines poured. The rumble of it made everybody have to raise his voice to be heard.
Clint and Felipe stood for a moment in the entrance, and then Clint pointed at an old man sitting alone at a table in the corner, watching them with bright eyes. He was dressed like an old-time trapper, but fallen on hard times. They sat down at the table across from him, he watching them all the way, saying nothing.
“You like a drink?” Clint greeted him.
“Why, I reckon.”
“Redeye?”
“Sure.”
When they all had redeye before them, Clint asked, “You been around here a while?”
The old fellow chuckled. “I reckon for just a little while, not more’n fifty or a hundred year though. That long enough for ye?”
“You know these parts?”
The old fellow laughed some more. “I reckon I can find my way home when I have to.”
“Looky,” Clint said, glancing around as though to see if they were being watched, “we hear there’s bighorn sheep around here.”
&
nbsp; The man raised his eyebrows. “Well, there may be. But I cain’t say’s I’ve ever seed one anywheres near this far south.”
“You’re sure? We’re ready to pay a hundred dollars to the man can show us some bighorns. Money in advance.”
“Wal, my memory’s a-goin’, and my eyes isn’t so good no more, but it do seem to me as I’m fairly sure they ain’t sich critters round here.”
“That so,” Clint said, acting disappointed. “Me and my friend here, we had our hearts set on shooting some of them bighorns, you know? But I guess if there aren’t any, then there aren’t any.”
They put down their drinks.
“Much obliged,” Clint said, getting up.
“Sure thing,” the old fellow said genially.
Clint had seen another fellow, this one a man of doubtful profession, bellying to the bar. Clint figured him for the next mark. Clint and Felipe braced the man and told the same story. Joe Lang, as he called himself, offered to show them where there were some sheep up in the mountains not far away, and Clint decided Lang was enough of a possibility to accept the offer. They agreed to meet at the saloon the next morning at daybreak, ready to ride after sheep.
As they rode back to their camp, Felipe said, “Cleent, it is very hard to tell with him, is it not? Perhaps he is one who will betray or perhaps he is not.”
“Well, agreeing to show us sheep we know don’t exist is a good start. We’ll just have to see if he’ll sell us out or not.”
~*~
The following morning at the agreed time Felipe and Clint were waiting at the saloon door. Joe Lang rode up on a shoddy-looking horse, without a rifle but wearing a pistol. There was a bedroll on his cantle.
“Ready, gentlemen?” he asked.
“Let’s go,” Clint said.
“The money?”
Clint passed it over. The man counted it, shoved it into a pocket. Then he swung his horse and led off.
