The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  “She loved you,” the don repeated in that same angry tone, his eyelids fluttering over his rock-hard eyes as he continued to stare right through Sartain. “More than me.”

  “Where is she?”

  “On the southern ridge.” The don waited a few seconds, then his lips stretched in a smile, revealing his expensive teeth. The smile faded quickly, and the man’s lips began to tremble.

  “In New Orleans, I asked her to marry me. She accepted. I brought her here to Hacienda de la Francesca. A priest was traveling from Mexico City to marry us. But during the days we waited, I could see that something was troubling my lovely Phoenix. She grew darker and darker, quieter and quieter, until finally, after I’d prodded her desperately, needing to know what thoughts so haunted her, she told me that she couldn’t marry me after all.”

  Tears dribbled down the don’s pasty cheeks and into the mustache that hid his upper lip. He brushed them away with one hand, took a desperate sip of his brandy, and continued to glare through wet eyes at Sartain. “She loved another.”

  The Henry shook in Sartain’s hands.

  Phoenix . . .

  “She hadn’t realized how much,” the don croaked out. “Until after I asked for her hand. Her love, her devotion.”

  The room pitched around Sartain. He took one step back, spread his feet, resetting himself. He could hear a shrill scream as if from far away, from the bottom of a deep well.

  “What . . . what did you do?” he rasped, gritting his teeth as he stared down the Henry’s shaking barrel.

  The don’s eyes widened. The lids were fluttering. His face acquired a weird sensation, as though he was both laughing and crying at the same time. “She summoned a man to fetch her. He came. His name was Ubek.”

  “Jeff Ubek,” Sartain heard himself say. He could barely hear anything above the pounding of his heart in his head, the rushing of the blood in his veins.

  “I was so heartbroken that I ran down their carriage as they left the hacienda. My men and I. We ran them off the road and into a canyon. Phoenix was still alive, but badly broken. Ubek was dead. I kissed my lovely Phoenix once more, and then I shot her in the head as she lay sobbing in my arms.”

  Tears rolled down the don’s cheeks, soaking his goatee. He was sobbing openly now, shoulders quaking. He tipped his head back as he screamed, “I shot my lovely Phoenix over and over and over again. Goddamn you, Sartain!”

  The man bawled, raked in a breath, and glared at the Cajun once more, his face flushed and swollen as he shouted, pointing his brandy glass, “And I wanted you dead as well! I wanted you dead, as well, you son of a bitch who took her away from me before I even had her!”

  Sartain suddenly heard, beneath the don’s racking sobs and the screaming in his own ears, running footsteps approaching from outside the room’s door and from the patio by which he himself had entered the don’s quarters.

  Sartain swung toward the door as it burst open. A beefy, bearded man in a striped serape bolted into the room, eyes wide beneath the brim of his straw sombrero.

  He fired the carbine in his hands a half-second after Sartain fired the Henry. Sartain’s bullet punched dust from the middle of the man’s billowing serape at the same time it punched the hombre back into the hall, wincing, his own slug screeching over Sartain’s left shoulder and burying itself in a wall.

  A man shouted behind the Cajun. Boots pounded, and spurs jangled wildly.

  Sensing the presence of others entering the room through the open window, Sartain turned full around and threw himself over the liquor cabinet and the sofa on the other side of it. As he hit the floor, two belching rifles momentarily drowned out the loud, racking wails of the don. The bullets plunked into the liquor cabinet and couch.

  One spanged off the hearth.

  Sartain rolled toward the fireplace, rolled off a shoulder and hip, and lurched to a crouch, the Henry crashing and lapping flames toward the two men now standing just off the foot of the don’s bed. One stood before the other, but as Sartain’s bullets punched through each man in turn, they did a bizarre death dance together, one man triggering his rifle into his partner’s right knee. They flew back, screaming, losing their hats and rifles, blood splashing the floor behind them, before piling up in twisted heaps near the window through which they’d entered.

  Another gun barked. It was the hollow pop of a pistol. The bullet burned across Sartain’s upper left arm. He slid his gaze to the left. The don was aiming his smoking pistol at him, lips pulled back from gritted teeth.

  He shouted a Spanish curse as he thumbed back the hammer of the pistol once more but did not get the revolver leveled again before Sartain’s Henry thundered. The don screamed as Sartain’s bullet took the man through his right arm. The bullet hammered him around, his back to Sartain. The Cajun aimed carefully and shot the wailing man through the back of his left arm.

  Blood splashed out the ragged hole on the other side of the man’s arm.

  “You crazy bastard!” Sartain ground out, cocking and firing the rifle again, shooting the man through his left knee.

  The don was on the floor, flopping around, bleeding and wailing.

  “Finish me, you bastard!” he shouted in Spanish. “You promised you’d finish me!”

  Sartain triggered another round through the man’s other knee, and then he shot him in the balls. As he ejected the last smoking cartridge, which clanked off the hearth behind the Cajun, he said through a snarl, “I lied. You don’t deserve a fast death. You die long and hard, Don!”

  More boots hammered in the hall.

  Sartain whipped around, fired three shots through the open door, evoking shouts and barked epithets, and then jumped over the couch and onto the liquor cabinet. He leaped over the don’s writhing body—the man had grown silent and pale now in his unendurable agony—and hit the floor running. He leaped through the window as rifles roared behind him, the bullets hammering the walls and window shutters, making the curtains dance.

  Sartain landed on the stone tiles of the outer gallery, stepped to his right, and pressed his back against the adobe wall, looking around him. Two shadowy figures moved toward him from his left.

  A gun flashed.

  The bullet burned across the Cajun’s left cheek.

  He leveled the Henry from his right hip. The rifle leaped and roared in his hands. The shadow moving toward him screamed and dropped, then Sartain took off running across the courtyard, heading for the dark mouth of a corridor on the other side. Behind him, rifles barked and men shouted shrilly, furiously in Spanish.

  Bullets screamed around and over Sartain, one sparking off the stone fountain, another grinding into a gallery roof support post. They tore into the gravel around his hammering moccasins and then into flagstones as he gained the opposite gallery. They thudded into the adobe wall on either side of the corridor mouth as he threw himself into it, half-losing his balance.

  He dropped to one knee, and with the same motion, heaved himself up and continued sprinting, scissoring his arms and legs.

  He wasn’t sure how he got out of the casa until he was out of it. He wasn’t sure how he got through the wall, either—or over it—until he was beyond it and running through trees and climbing a rocky hill. Half-conscious, he headed north as far as he could, avoiding men and cracking rifles, remembering beneath the hammering in his head and the screaming in his ears that he’d come from that direction.

  “Phoenix,” he heard himself muttering, wheezing, sobbing as he ran into the hills beyond the casa, his bullet-torn left arm and the graze on his cheek feeling only warm and numb. “Oh, Christ, Phoenix!”

  He wasn’t sure how far he’d run and walked and then run again before weakness and nausea overcame him. The ground came up to slam his knees hard. Cactus spines bit into his right knee. He vomited, crawled ahead. Behind him, men screamed and continued to trigger rifles and pistols, but absently, the Cajun opined that they’d lost his trail.

  They couldn’t track a man wearing moccasins in t
he dark.

  Sartain needed to get off the hacienda tonight, under cover of darkness. He needed to find Boss and ride. And he would have done just that, only weakness and sickness washed over him like a wave of warm black tar. Try as he might, he could not regain his feet.

  Vaguely, he noticed a dark, shallow chasm between two rock- and cactus-spiked hills to his left. He flopped onto the ground, rolled, and let the dark mouth of the wash engulf him. And then everything was dark and silent for a long time.

  His arm began to ache and throb, but it was nothing akin to the sorrow that hammered his soul.

  “Phoenix! Oh, Phoenix!” he cried as he slept his pain-racked sleep, blood leaking from his arm.

  Cold was a rough blanket around him. The ground was an even colder bed beneath him—an uneven stone pinching him, poking him. When warmth lay for a long time on his cheek, growing warmer to the point of discomfort, he opened his eyes.

  The sun burned into his skull.

  He could feel a lance penetrating his left arm. He turned to look at it. No lance was there. He knew a moment’s surprise. His black neckerchief was wrapped around the arm, north of the elbow where the throbbing was the most severe. Automatically, before passing out the night before, he must have had sense enough to wrap the wound, knowing that he’d likely bleed to death if he didn’t.

  He looked around. He lay in a crease between low hills. His Henry was across his thighs. His hat was to his left. The wash was only about twice his body’s width. On both sides, a tan-colored slope of rocks, Spanish bayonet, prickly pear, and catclaw climbed away from him.

  A voice sounded to his left. A distant voice speaking Spanish. Sartain couldn’t make out what the man was saying. Then a horse whinnied, and a second man said something, also in Spanish.

  Sartain placed his hands on his rifle. He lifted his head and winced as pain shot through him. He ached all over. His neck and shoulders were as stiff as the ground beneath him. His arm ached and burned and throbbed.

  He grunted and cursed as he hauled himself to a sitting position. Quickly, he checked the rifle. Empty. Not a single shell left in the tube. He couldn’t remember having fired sixteen rounds, but he must have.

  He filled the tube from his cartridge belt, then checked the LeMat. It was fully loaded.

  He wrestled himself to his feet, all of his joints crying out. But after a minute of hard breathing, he realized he wasn’t hurt as badly as he’d thought he was. Mainly stiff and sore, and then, of course, there was the bullet wound, but he thought the slug had gone all the way through, missing the bone.

  If it hadn’t, he’d still be flat on his back.

  He donned his hat, shouldered the Henry, and walked up the slope, following a faint game or cow path. Near the top, he dropped to his knees, doffed his hat, and lifted a look over the bluff’s rocky crest.

  Immediately, he dropped his chin, bringing his head back down beneath the brow of the bluff. Three riders were riding toward him—actually, two were riding, and one man was leading his horse by its reins and picking out Sartain’s trail amongst the rocks. Sartain had merely glimpsed the man leading the horse, but the hombre had looked dark enough to have some Indian blood.

  Maybe Pima or Apache, both especially good trackers.

  He’d found the Cajun’s trail.

  On all fours and staring at the ground, Sartain smiled grimly. Come on, you bastards, he thought. I haven’t exacted enough revenge yet. Not for Phoenix or Jeff or Buffalo McCluskey.

  If you’re fool enough to follow me, with your boss either dead or close to it, you’re fool enough to die foolish deaths.

  The men’s voices grew louder, as did the clacking of their horses’ shod hooves. Occasionally, one of the horses blew. When the men and horses were close enough that the Cajun could hear the men breathing, hear the spurs of the walking man ringing, he walked calmly up to the top of the hill.

  He stared down the other side.

  The two riders saw him first. They both sucked sharp breaths and made faces. The man on foot was too busy inspecting the sign on the ground. When his two compatriots stopped their horses, he glanced at them and then followed their gazes to the crest of the bluff they were climbing.

  He cursed and stepped back, tripping over a rock, then pushing off his horse to regain his footing—a short, squat, fat-faced mestizo in a ratty brown poncho. He wore a brace of pistols on his hips, the serape tucked behind the wooden handles.

  “Oh, shit,” he said, again in Spanish.

  Sartain’s lips formed an icy smile, showing the edges of his teeth. He kept the Henry on his shoulder.

  “Is de Castillo still alive?” he asked in Spanish.

  One of the riders—the man to Sartain’s left—said, “So far.”

  Sartain nodded his grim satisfaction.

  He challenged the three with his eyes and by flexing his fingers around the Henry resting on his left shoulder.

  The one who’d told him the don was still kicking drew first, and thus he was the first to die as Sartain’s pistol belched smoke and flames and flung him from his saddle.

  The other rider was next to roll off the back of his horse, triggering his own pistol into the ground and starting all the horses to fiddle-footing. Sartain’s next shot missed the mestizo by a hair’s breadth when one of the startled horses behind the squat man plowed into him, sent him rolling amongst the rocks.

  As the half-breed lifted his pistol from the ground, Sartain’s LeMat spoke once more, drilling a neat round hole through the middle of the tracker’s forehead.

  Sartain managed to run down one of the three horses. He got his bearings, then rode off in search of Boss.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Claudia Morales rolled the quirley closed as she walked to the open door of her office.

  She leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and poked the quirley into her mouth, sliding her gaze along the main street in the same direction she’d been sliding it for the past two days—south. She worked the quirley back and forth between her lips, moistening it with her tongue, sealing it, and then struck a lucifer to life on the doorframe.

  She touched the flame to the end of the quirley and drew the smoke into her lungs. She released it through her nose, withdrew the cylinder to inspect the coal, and then cast her gaze once more to the south, where the main street became a pale ribbon of trail rising and falling through the desert toward far mountains that jutted in soft gray against the light-green sky of dusk.

  Still nothing. No sign of him for the past two days.

  He should have been back by now. Really, he should have been back that morning if he’d accomplished his task the previous night and had left the hacienda alive.

  If . . .

  Claudia gave a soft snort. A right capable man, Sartain. But could he take on twenty armed men, maybe more if you threw in the don’s peons, and make it back alive? Twenty armed men on their own turf?

  She should have gone with him. But he was on a personal errand. It didn’t officially involve her. She was the town marshal of Sonora Gate. If her jurisdiction didn’t extend beyond the limits of town, it certainly didn’t stretch across the San Pedro and into Old Mexico. She had no dog in Sartain’s fight except Sartain.

  Not that she wouldn’t have loved to see Don de Castillo dead.

  She should have removed her town marshal’s badge, saddled a horse, and gone with him. He hadn’t wanted her to. In fact, he’d forbade her, saying it was his fight, which it was. His fight alone. Still, she should have trailed him and at least holed up on this side of the border to help him shed any of the don’s men who came after him.

  But that was again supposing he would even make it off the hacienda alive.

  She didn’t know what he meant to her, if anything, besides their passionate couplings. But he did mean something, although she wasn’t in the business of getting involved with vigilantes. Even handsome, passionate vigilantes who knew their way around a woman’s body.

  “Forget it,” Claud
ia told herself in Spanish, exhaling another cigarette plume over the office’s front gallery and into the soft, gray-green light of dusk. “It’s not your business to save fools from themselves.”

  Still, she stared along the pale ribbon of trail growing dimmer and dimmer the farther the sun sank behind the western mountains. She widened her eyes with interest when she saw something bobbing along the trail. It was a hatted head. And then she saw a horse’s head. A horse and rider riding on out of the dusky desert toward the outskirts of Sonora Gate . . .

  Claudia stared hard, forgetting her quirley, but then she saw that it was only Owen Gallantly, the lanky, simple-minded, middle-aged son of an old desert rat, Pete Gallantly, whose diggings lay a couple of miles from town. Pete often sent Owen to town after the workday was done for a bottle or two of cheap tequila and maybe a couple of burritos from Doña Flores’s place if Pete didn’t feel like cooking.

  Watching Owen canter into town on his beefy cream mule, Claudia flicked her half-smoked quirley into the street, then swung around and strode purposefully into the office. She passed her cluttered desk, took her Winchester down from the gun rack, and strode back through the door. She drew the door closed, locked it, and then clopped down the gallery steps, stopping abruptly in the street and sliding her gaze back south.

  No.

  There was no point now. If she’d been going to help him, she should have ridden out earlier. Now it was too late. Now, if he was alive, he was likely badly wounded and lying out in the desert somewhere. She’d never be able to find him. Even if she did happen to find him, he’d be dead by the time she reached him.

  Besides, he meant nothing to her. For the love of all the saints in heaven, sister, he was a wanted man! A fugitive from justice! If you had any self-respect, you’d have locked him up and sent for a deputy United States marshal to haul his vigilante ass up to Prescott!

  Instead, you make love with him, and now you’re worried because he might have ridden into Mexico to kill a man for whatever reason and ended up dead himself!