“Ohh!” the girl cried, instantly lifting her head from her pillow and pulling her bottom away from the don’s mustachioed lips. Flabbergasted by such poor treatment, she blinked at the don through the tangled screen of her chocolate curls, hiked a leg, rubbed the marks of de Castillo’s teeth, and said, “That hurt, patrón!”
“Oh, I hurt you, chiquita?” The don grinned savagely at the girl, though he rolled his words in sugar. “Please forgive me. I just woke feeling frisky, that’s all.”
He leaned forward. The girl jerked away, but he held her supple thigh with one hand and pressed his lips to the bite mark he’d left in her rump. He wasn’t sure why he felt such savage urges toward de Angelo’s simple-minded, full-busted, and round-hipped daughter, but he did. He supposed abusing the poor child was his way of getting back at the female who’d broken his heart, since she was no longer here to take the punishment herself.
Another woman, if only a silly girl, would have to do.
And for now, that “woman” was banker de Angelo’s empty-headed but pretty and voluptuous daughter, Isabel.
“Lie down,” the don said, pushing up onto his knees. “I will make it up to you, chiquita.”
The girl gazed fearfully into the don’s eyes, and he tried to keep his voice pleasant as he said with a little more steel this time, “Lie down, chiquita. I told you—I woke frisky, and I am going to have fun with you now, whether you like it or not.”
“But, Don,” the girl said, crumpling her eyes, “I am only just awake. I was sound asleep!”
“Chiquita!”
“Yes, Don de Castillo,” the girl said with a trill in her voice as she lay belly-down on the silk sheets, placing her hands on either side of her head and resting her cheek against her pillow.
The don rolled onto her. He toiled, though his heart was not in it.
Why did anger and frustration and the compulsion to inflict pain always arouse him more than pure lust ever had?
Sometime later, the girl sobbed, her shoulders jerking. “Don Alonzo, why do you insist on treating me so poorly?” She cried into her hands.
She sounded so pathetic that the don almost knew the strange, unfamiliar feeling of sympathy. Staring down at her, he sighed.
“Sí, why?”
De Castillo leaned forward and placed his mustached lips against the girl’s back. She shuddered at his touch. That rankled him fleetingly, but still, his marginal sympathy remained.
“I swear, sweet Isabel, I am a monster sometimes. To compensate for my savageness, I will send you into San Luis with Jacinta later in my own private carriage. She will be instructed to treat you, on my behalf, to the finest dress that Señor Rincon can sew especially for your beautiful body.”
He leaned forward and whispered in the girl’s ear. “How does that sound, my poor, shabbily treated Isa?”
She rolled her eyes up to his, studying him. For a time, her expression was skeptical, but as she worked his words through her simple head, her mouth corners lifted. They lifted still farther, and then she rose up onto her knees and threw her arms around the don’s neck.
“Muchas gracias, patrón! Oh, muchas gracias! Señor Rincon is the finest tailor in all of northern Sonora . . . and so expensive!”
“Not expensive enough for you, my dear,” the don said, placing his hands on the girl’s own hands on his neck and smiling into her eyes. What was it about her doll-like face with her black eyes and eggshell whites that made him want to smack it?
She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything more, three hard knocks sounded on the stout oak door of the don’s sleeping quarters. The don scowled when he heard his sister say in her low, reproving tone, “Alonzo. Open the door if you’re decent!”
“Mierda,” the don groaned. “What have I done to deserve such a sad start to the day?”
He pecked the still-smiling girl on the forehead and then crawled gingerly down from the bed.
The knocks came again. Four of them, louder.
The don was looking around his sprawling, tile-floored room for his red silk robe with the fur-trimmed collar. “I heard you, Jacinta. I am trying to make myself decent so that I can come to the door!”
His harsh baritone echoed around the cave-like room with its heavy wooden furniture and brocade- or velvet-upholstered armchairs. Sun filtered through the windows, but there was a steel-like mountain chill in the air. He wished he’d instructed one of the maids to build a fire, though Jacinta had privately made his quarters off-limits to the help when the don was “entertaining.”
The bitter old crone.
When de Castillo found his robe on the long leather couch angled in front of the cold fireplace, he wrapped it around his shoulders, tied it at the waist, slipped his feet into a pair of fleece-lined slippers, and scuffed over to the door. He opened the door to find his sister, only a few years younger than he, standing in the hall, scowling at him.
“Yes, yes, what is it, Jacinta?” the don asked, wincing against another dull throb in his head. “You know you don’t need my permission to have the houseboys whipped.”
That was a joke. She was always having the houseboys whipped, and she never consulted the don about it.
“You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell. And I was about to drift back to sleep when you so rudely knocked. Now, what is it?”
The severe-featured Jacinta, her gray-brown hair pulled back into a large, prim bun atop her regal head, leaned a little to one side to peer over the don’s shoulder into his room. When her eyes found the girl on the bed, she set her thin lips together, exhaled through her long, slender, bulb-tipped nose, jerked her head, and flared her nostrils condemningly.
“Scoundrel,” she said, her long, slanted, coffee-brown eyes drawing up severely at the corners. She clenched her arthritic hands in front of her flat belly. “She is young enough to be your granddaughter. You will burn in hell, Alonzo. I promise you.”
“Yes, but it will have been worth every minute,” the don lied, giving his sister a jeering grin. “Now, what is it? Be quick, Jacinta. I had a long night, and I wish to catch a few more winks!”
Jacinta canted her head to one side, indicating three of the don’s men standing at the far end of the hall lit by open, arched windows facing a flagstone-paved courtyard in which a stone fountain chuckled near a cracked statue of Mother Mary. The men were all shifting around uncomfortably, their high-crowned Sonora hats in their gloved hands. The guns on their hips and thonged on their thighs glistened in the saffron light washing over the casa’s tile-roofed east wing.
The don frowned. “What is it?”
His segundo, Ernesto Cruz, took one step toward the don, turning his hat in his hands. His mustaches dangled down the sides of his mouth and chin. “It is Franco, Patrón!” He turned sideways and canted his head in the direction of the main yard. “He rides in! A half mile away . . .”
“Alone?”
“Only two of the vaqueros are with him. They must have seen him as he crossed the hacienda. They sent one man back to alert us. Franco is carrying a bullet. He rides very slowly.”
The don felt his heart lurch in his chest. He scowled. “Alone? Are you sure? Of the six I sent out, only he returns?”
Cruz nodded darkly. “So it appears, Don de Castillo.”
The don threw an arm up. “I’ll meet you in the yard in five minutes!”
As he turned back to the open door of his room, he stopped. Jacinta was staring at him, amused lines crinkling up from her severely slanted eyes and radiating like spokes from the sides of her thin-lipped mouth.
“Six men, and only one returns,” the woman said in jeering disgust. “Now what will you do, mi hermano? Send out an army?”
“Shut up and get away from me, crone!” the don bellowed.
He stomped back into his room and slammed the door.
Chapter Seven
Don de Castillo was still strapping his silver-chased, pearl-gripped Colts around his waist as the high he
els of his polished black boots clacked on the flags of the casa’s front patio. Sycamores danced in the breeze around him, and there was the fragrant smell of early autumn cactus blossoms.
As the don moved through the gate in the six-foot-high, vine-covered adobe wall that ringed the casa, he snapped the keeper thongs over both his fancy Colts and then adjusted the silver-trimmed black felt sombrero that sat level on his head, his thin, wavy hair still wet from combing.
He stopped in the broad, dusty yard just outside the gate, and stared straight down a slight grade toward the barns and bunkhouses that lay a hundred yards from the casa. Sonora Creek angled through oaks and sycamores at the bottom of the grade, behind the outbuildings.
Three riders were just now moving between two of the large stock barns and passing the open blacksmith shop where the burly Rafael Loera was shaping a wheel rim on his anvil. Chickens of every size and color pecked in the dust around the blacksmith shop, and Loera’s old collie dog lay in the shade of the shop, thumping his tail with half-hearted menace at the feeding fowl.
The ringing clangs of Loera’s hammer no longer penetrated as deeply into the don’s tender brain. That was likely due in no small part to the three fingers of brandy he’d downed to quell the barking of the previous evening’s indiscretions.
He waited, staring incredulously at the three riders moving slowly toward him. Two were vaqueros—his range riders, the men he hired to tend his cattle—while the man riding between the two vaqueros was one of the don’s pistoleros. A man with as many enemies and as much land and property—including two gold mines—as Don de Castillo needed many men by his side who knew their way around a six-shooter and a rifle.
Someone was always trying to steal from him, and neighboring landowners often tried to have him assassinated.
The man riding between the two vaqueros, de Castillo could see now as the trio drew within fifty yards of the casa, was Tio-Franco Loza. He could tell this despite that the man was riding with his head down. He was hatless, and his shaggy, dusty, dark-brown hair flopped down over his forehead.
He appeared to be wearing no shirt, only his longhandle top, suspenders, and bell-bottomed charro slacks. His gun belt hung from his saddle horn. As he and the other two men continued riding toward the don, Loza leaned far to one side. He appeared to be about to fall sideways from the beefy sorrel he was riding. The vaquero riding on that side leaned over, planted a hand on the pistolero’s shoulder, and nudged him upright in his saddle.
The trio passed the segundo, Ernesto Cruz, and eight or so other gun-hung pistoleros. And as the three continued toward the don, Cruz and the other men on foot turned and followed the riders, staring skeptically up at Loza, who had obviously taken a bullet.
“Tio-Franco,” the don said when the three riders had drawn to a halt before him. He walked up close beside Loza’s horse. “What happened? Where are the others? Where is the man I sent you for?”
Loza lifted his head slightly, staring over the sorrel’s head at de Castillo. His mustached, sun-blistered, pain-wracked face was mottled floury white. His eyes bulged from their sockets, the whites liberally stitched with red. He was so basted in sweat that he looked as though he’d dunked his head in a stream.
“D-dead, Don de Castillo,” the pistolero said in a pinched voice. “All dead. We . . . we lured him in . . . The Revenger . . . but it was six against one . . . and still, he cut us down . . . one by one! I alone survived, got away to inform you. Please, Don . . . I’m hurt bad. Need . . . water . . . doctor!”
“Yes, Franco,” the don said, placing a hand on the man’s right thigh. He cast his gaze to the man’s right side, where a large circle of blood shone above his hip. Some of the blood was dry and crusty. Some was fresh, glistening brightly in the morning sunlight. “We will get you water and a doctor. But”—the don shook his head, confounded by the turn of events—“I don’t understand. Franco, you and Barreto and McDade . . . you were my best men. The most proficient shooters at Hacienda de la Francesca. How can you tell me this man—this one man, Sartain—beat you all?”
Franco must have realized his mistake. He stared at the don, and his eyes grew shrewd behind the hard glaze of his agony. He licked his lips, smiled sheepishly. “Did I say five against one? No. That was what I remembered. I have lost much blood, Don. Haven’t eaten, had much water—lost my canteen—in two days.
“Sartain brought others. I saw only him, but there were others,” the pistolero lied. “He’s sneaky. Sneaky as a thief in the night, this man, The Revenger. He has quite the reputation in America! He and others—I don’t know how many—shot us through the roadhouse windows while we waited for him to come and make a fair fight of it!”
“Ah, now I understand,” said Don de Castillo. “The Revenger brought others and bushwhacked you. That’s how it happened.”
“Sí, sí! It was not a fair fight.”
“I heard he usually worked alone.”
“That may be so, but this night he brought many others!”
“Thank God you escaped, Franco.”
“Sí, I alone survived. Lived to inform you, Don, that you might want to send more men”—he stretched his lips back painfully and gave a low wail—“if you decide to continue your efforts against this man . This Revenger.”
“I will take that into consideration.”
De Castillo looked away, thinking through his options. Finally, he turned to the segundo. “Ernesto, I want you to pick five more men. Only five. Five should be enough.”
The segundo glanced at Loza, sinking lower in his saddle. “Are you sure only five?”
“Sí, only five. And I want you to make it clear to them that any of those five who return with the head of Mike Sartain—I don’t care if it is attached to his shoulders or not—will be paid one gold ingot from my mines. One ingot in addition to their regular salary! That’s enough pesos for a whole year of drinking, gambling, and whoring in Juarez!”
“An entire ingot?” the segundo asked in a hushed tone, glancing around at the other men flanking him, all of whom had just snapped their eyes a little wider. “Are you sure, patrón?”
“I am quite sure. Any of the five who survives and brings me the head of Mike Sartain will be paid one gold ingot. If all five return, so be it. They will each be paid an ingot from the mines. In addition, they will be given two months off to enjoy themselves in Juarez!”
The men muttered amongst themselves, not sure they believed their ears.
“Don,” wheezed Loza, his chin nearly resting on the pole of his horse. “Por favor, may I be helped down? I need water and a doctor. Por favor!”
Ignoring the wounded rider, de Castillo cast a hard gaze at the men gathered around the horse. “And let there be no mistake,” he yelled. “Any man who fails in his attempt at bringing me the head of Mike Sartain better not ever show his face at Hacienda de la Francesca again. If he does . . .”
The don had pulled one of his fancy Colts. Now he raised the weapon, clicking the hammer back and aiming at the forehead of Tio-Franco Loza. The wounded pistolero snapped his bloodshot eyes wide in horror at the pistol being aimed at him and had just opened his mouth to scream when the don’s Colt belched smoke and flames.
The bullet tore through Loza’s forehead, blowing him straight back off his saddle. The gunman hit the yard in a bloody heap, quivering, dust billowing around him. His horse whinnied and sidled away, trailing its reins. The segundo grabbed the reins and stared in shock at the dead man on the ground and the old don holding his smoking pistol.
“Any man who fails in his attempt at bringing me the head of Mike Sartain, either attached or unattached, and dares to touch his feet down on hacienda soil ever again will be punished most severely.”
De Castillo holstered his Colt, snapped the keeper thong over the hammer. “Comprende?”
The segundo looked at the other men. He turned toward the bunkhouse. Several other gun hands had stepped out onto the brush-roofed front gallery and were staring gravel
y toward the don and the man sprawled bloody in the dirt beside the dancing sorrel.
“Sí, Don de Castillo,” Cruz said, staring down at Loza, whose tongue stuck out the side of his mouth and glassy eyes stared toward the rising morning sun. “Sí, I think you have made it very clear.” He turned to his boss, gave a reassuring nod, his mustaches buffeting in the dry wind. “I will choose five men. Five of the best.” He dipped his chin and narrowed his dark eyes. “Rest assured, patrón—you will soon have the head of Mike Sartain!”
* * *
De Castillo watched two men drag off the bloody corpse of Tio-Franco Loza as the segundo walked over to the bunkhouse gallery and barked the names of five men, who went running for the stables to saddle their horses.
When the pistoleros had disappeared, their dust sifting in the morning sunshine, a voice said behind the don: “Why five men when all you need is one, Papa?”
De Castillo wheeled, heart thumping. He balled his fists at his sides and glowered at the tall, lean man standing before him—a man bearing the don’s own familial features, including the broad, upturned nose and a birthmark under the right eye, above his sweeping black mustaches.
“What are you doing here?” the don grumbled, swelling his nostrils, the ever-present burn of anger stoking like a locomotive’s boiler once more.
“This is my home, Papa,” said Salvador de Castillo, the don’s oldest and only living son, grinning his damnable grin. He tapped ashes from his fat stogie and stuck the cigar between his mustached lips, blinking slowly and continuing to grin at his father.
He was dressed nearly all in black leather, except for the silk shirt he wore under his brush jacket. His string tie was of red silk. He wore two black holsters positioned for the cross draw on his lean hips, the horn grips of his Remingtons angling toward each other across his lean belly. The grips were well worn, each one marked with many notches. The don thought he could see fresh blood crusted under his oldest son’s fingernails, but that must have been his imagination.
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