Fog-like gun smoke rolled down the stairs, growing brighter as it reached the rusty lamp hanging from a wire over the table. The rotten-egg odor of the smoke pushed through the open door to tickle The Revenger’s nostrils.
“Puta bitch!” a man shouted on the casa’s second story. “Oh, you are a she-devil for sure!”
Sartain climbed the three steps to the galleria and stopped again as a pair of slender legs clad in tight slacks appeared at the top of the stairs. The black boots descended until Sartain could see a cotton blouse and doeskin vest, and then twin cascades of dark-brown hair dropping down over her shoulders.
Halfway down the stairs, Jasmine Gallant stopped and lifted her chin, the brim of her cream Stetson rising to reveal her pearl eyes glistening in the lamplight. The eyes narrowed, and one of the two pistols she was holding came up, smoke curling from the barrel.
“Sartain?” she called.
He moved into the casa and stopped near the loose pile of bloody bodies. Only one man—the lone gringo in the bunch, a tall man with a hangdog look and buckteeth—was moving. Decker had a black eye from the earlier punch. He rolled from side to side, clamping both hands over the hole in the lower middle of his chest.
“No, no, no!” he wailed. “No, no, no! Ohhhh, you miserable woman!”
“What’d you expect?” Sartain asked him mildly. “When you tangle with a she-lion, you’re bound to get bit.”
Jasmine continued down the stairs. She stopped near the bottom, aimed one of her Colts at the howling gringo, and fired. The bullet slammed into the side of his head, causing the entire top of his head to explode like a ripe cantaloupe.
Lowering the pistol, the Pinkerton looked at Sartain.
“What kept you?”
“I had some errands to run.” The Cajun shrugged as he looked at the bloody carcasses slumped in one widening pool of dark-red blood. “I see I could have run a couple more.”
“Come upstairs,” she said, heading back up the steps.
“Need comforting, do you? It’ll cost you twenty bucks.”
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
Chapter 12
Sartain followed the woman up the stairs, which literally dripped blood.
The second story had such a low ceiling, the Cajun had to remove his hat and crouch as he moved down a short hall. He followed Jasmine into a small room with a brass-framed bed on which a big Mexican, who, naked as the day he was born but a whole lot hairier, lay spread-eagled on his back.
The man’s wrists and ankles had been tied with strips of rawhide to the bedframe. He was in his late middle age. His large, olive-skinned, fleshy body nearly covered the entire bed. The top of his head was almost bald, with long salt-and-pepper hair falling from the sides onto his shoulders. His cheekbones were high, but his face was just about perfectly round.
He sported long mare’s tail mustaches. The rest of his fleshy, pitted face with its close-set, fear-bright, chocolate-brown eyes was carpeted in three-day stubble of beard.
His clothes were strewn around the room. There was a bottle on a small dresser by the bed. It was Jasmine’s Sam Clay. Over the bed, nailed to the adobe-brick whitewashed wall hung an oil painting of the Virgin Mary with a halo over her head. It was a crude painting even to Sartain’s untrained eyes.
Obviously, the room had been the priest’s quarters, though his new quarters were with the saints.
Sartain ducked into the room and said, “You two been bein’ bad together?”
“Mr. Sartain,” Jasmine said, “meet Uncle Hector San Xavier de Tejada. He has a couple of other names in front of ‘Tejada,’ but suffice it to say, he’s Maximilian’s bad uncle.”
Tejada pulled at the straps tying his wrists to the brass frame and gritted his teeth. “Oh, you are a devil! Release me! I demand you release me! You may know my name, but you do not know who I am!” He cast a wary look past his chest and soft, bulging belly. His voice rose several octaves as he said, “Oh, you are a miserable beast to do such an indignity to a man of my position...” His watery eyes found Sartain. “Por favor, señor. One man to another. Please remove the knife!”
Sartain had followed the man’s eyes to the knife whose handle had been embedded in the tightly woven corn-shuck mattress between the man’s spread thighs. The blade was pointed up, the curved tip snugged firmly against the man’s wrinkled brown scrotum. Blood was smeared on the leathery sack.
Sartain scowled, impressed and repelled. “That’s gotta hurt, señor.”
“It does, señor. Please, one man to another...”
“What’s this gent done to deserve such an indignity, Miss Gallant?”
“He brought me up here to rape me. Then he was going to throw me to his savages. Only the fool left his knife and guns lying around. He didn’t have enough respect for me to think I might fight back.”
Sartain turned to the man on the bed. “Guess you been taken to the woodshed, Uncle Hector.”
Jasmine narrowed her eyes threateningly at Sartain. “Let that be a lesson to you, too.”
“One I’ve already learned,” the Cajun told her, grinning. Then he frowned curiously. “Say, where’s Maximilian been keeping himself these days?”
“Oh, go to hell, both of you!”
“I had a hunch I’d learn something from this bunch of morons. That’s why I didn’t try to get away...until this old bastard dragged me up here to, uh, entertain me, as he called it. He is—was, I should say—their fearless leader.”
“Where’s Maximilian?” The Revenger repeated.
“We haven’t gotten that far yet. I wanted some peace and quiet, so I threatened to geld him unless he called his men up here.”
Sartain winced again as the tip of the knife nipped the underside of Uncle Hector’s scrotum. Blood beaded on the razor-sharp tip of the blade. The Cajun spoke in a hushed voice. “Old son, I wouldn’t move around too much if I was you.”
Sweat dribbled down Hector’s pocked and pitted cheeks. “Señor, please...one man to another.”
“One man to another, you’ve tangled with the wrong wildcat.” He moved to the side of the bed and crouched over the sweating Mexican, his hat in his hand. He said conspiratorially, “I might be able to see about making you a little more comfortable if, one man to another, you tell me where your nephew, Maximilian, is keeping himself these days. Himself and his half-sister, Miss Priscilla McDougal.”
“Ha! Your guess is as good as mine, señor.”
“That’s not a very good answer. That knife isn’t going anywhere until you’ve given one that’s more to our satisfaction.”
Jasmine looked at Sartain. “Shall we go downstairs and have a drink while Señor Tejada thinks about your proposal? This squirrel rummaged around in my saddlebags until he found my bourbon.”
“Señorita, por favor, I beg you to release me!” Uncle Hector jerked his wrists again violently. As the tip of the blade disappeared into his scrotum, he threw his head back on the pillow and screamed. “This is no way to treat a man. Especially a man who is telling the truth!”
Suddenly, the painting hanging above the bed swung sharply to the left, where it dangled by that corner before falling down the wall. It smacked the top of the headboard, then tumbled forward onto the howling Hector.
The canvas was large enough that it covered him from his neck to below his knees.
He stopped howling and stared up at the ceiling, mouth, drawn wide in shock.
Sartain felt his own lower jaw hang as he stared up at the wall from which the painting had fallen. The painting had covered an arched, recessed area in the whitewashed stone wall—the sort of niche that normally held a shrine in a Mexican church or casa.
Only this niche did not hold a shrine. It held a cache of what appeared to be two solid-gold candleholders with several small gold statues surrounding it and three or four gold crucifixes hanging from the candleholders by gold chains with links as large as the tips of the Cajun’s little fingers.
�
�Well, I’ll be,” Jasmine said breathlessly as she moved slowly toward the niche.
Sartain was moving toward the display, as well. But it was no display. It had been covered by the painting to hide the secret cache of valuables.
Sartain peered into the niche from the right side while Jasmine peered in from the left side. The cavity was about a foot deep. Beside the candleholders were two gold vases, each standing about a foot tall. In each vase was a gold flower molded into the shape of a rose.
Solid-gold vases outfitted with solid-gold roses.
At the base of each vase was a gold apple a little smaller than Sartain’s clenched fist. Gold snakes were wrapped around each apple, the heads of the vipers rising above the fruit with what appeared enticing expressions in their flat golden eyes. Near the snake-wrapped apples were two small statues of Adam and Eve, both holding leaves over their private parts.
Eve held a small gold apple a little larger than a pebble up to her expressionless face as though about to take a bite.
“Mierda. Maximilian, el bastardo pequeño,” said Uncle Hector in a hushed voice, turning his head awkwardly to stare up at the cache. “For the love of all the saints in Heaven, it’s true! Dios mio!”
Sartain picked up one of the apples and glanced at Jasmine. “Has to weigh a good six, seven pounds.” He hefted it again, his mind swirling, his head feeling light. “Solid gold. Good grade of gold too, I’ll bet.”
Jasmine picked up a candleholder, pulled it out of the niche, and nodded. “My God,” she whispered, hefting the solid-gold object in her hand. Her face was flushed.
“Por el amor de todos los santos en el cielo!” raked out Uncle Hector. “Es verdad!” His eyes fairly glowed in the light flickering from the room’s single lamp. “It’s true! It’s true! No es sólo una leyenda, después de todo!”
Jasmine frowned at him, then flung the canvas onto the floor. “What did you say, you depraved old fool?”
Sartain said, “He’s saying it’s not just a legend after all.” He looked at Hector Tejada. “What’s not a legend?”
The older man studied him warily, then shrewdly. “Nothing, señor. My, uh, discomfort has clouded my brain. What is that up there, anyway? Gold? Imagine that. The old priest must have been squirreling it away for years. Where do you suppose he came upon it, huh?”
Sartain sat down on the edge of the bed, causing the bed to lurch and the knife to prick the older man’s balls. Uncle Hector sucked a sharp breath through his teeth.
“What does it have to do with Maximilian?” The Revenger asked him.
“Huh?” Uncle Hector said. “No lo se, señor.”
Jasmine dropped down on her side of the bed, shaking it. Uncle Hector screamed.
“Does that make it clearer?” asked the Cajun.
“Por favor,” Uncle Hector pleaded, glancing miserably, at each of his tormentors in turn. “Señorita, señor, I know not what you are talking about.”
Sartain grinned devilishly as he shook the bed.
Uncle Hector screamed more shrilly than before, squeezing his eyes closed. More sweat trickled down the sides of his face. It glistened in his mustache and ragged goatee.
“What does the gold have to do with Maximilian?” The Revenger asked him.
“Por que?” Uncle Hector squeezed his eyes closed again and bit his lower lip, knowing what was coming.
He screamed as Jasmine shook the bed.
“Enough!” the older man yelled. “You are an insult to both Mother Mary and her beloved Jesus. You are depraved to treat one of God’s children so poorly!”
Sartain shook the bed. Again, Uncle Hector squeezed his eyes shut and screamed.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to buy time for since your gang is dead. Every one of ’em. They’re all lyin’ piled up at the foot of the stairs. Miss Gallant here made sure of that.” The Revenger chuckled. “Me an’ her—we got all the time in the world to sit here and shake this bed until you got nothin’ left between your legs but cherry jam.”
“No!” Uncle Hector shouted, eyes now wide with horror. “Not again! Por favor! Maximilian is after the gold. He brings it here from time to time, and the old priest was hiding it for him. I knew that much. I just didn’t know where the old devil was squirreling it away.”
“That why you crucified him?” Sartain sneered.
“Sí. I mean no! Señor, por favor, I would never do such a thing to a man of the church. Oh, Dios mio. What a sacrilege. My men committed that atrocity. They are...were...animals. Common border bandidos—vile, mean as bobcats, but with brains the size of raisins. They shot more of each other at the barranca than...well...than you.”
“Quit stallin’!” Sartain warned.
“No! Please! Don’t shake the bed again, señor. Sí, that is why they crucified the old priest. He would not tell us where he was hiding the gold for Maximilian. For some reason, old Padre Sandia threw in with my evil nephew, Maximilian Alfredo San Javier de Tejada. Probably out of greed. Maximilian probably promised the priest a cut of the gold. A stubborn devil, that old fool.
“He would not tell even those demon men of my gang. A nasty bunch if I ever saw one, and I never would have ridden with them if I could have found others who would ride with me and take my orders. But me, an old man who has fallen so far from grace and privilege—what honorable, self-respecting band of desperadoes would ride with me?
“They crucified him, thinking the agony would be so terrible that he would tell them where the gold was and where Maximilian was finding it on the Tejada family’s grant, but the old man outsmarted them. I think he was ready to die. Truly. He was very old. Long ago, the Apaches had burned out one of his eyes and cut off one of his testicles merely for entertainment, —the red devils! No, he was ready to go.”
Jasmine glanced at Sartain.
Then she shuttled her glance back to Uncle Hector. “But Maximilian rides with you, no? What kind of bullcrap are you shoveling us, old man?” She nudged the bed slightly.
“No!” the old man blubbered. “What I have told you is the truth. What man would lie in such a situation, with his cojones half cut off at their roots?”
“That’s right,” Sartain said. “What do you have to lose?”
“No! Por favor, señor, I am telling the truth. Maximilian does not ride with me. He is a bad one, that one. I don’t know where he is. Most likely, he is out looking for more of the gold you see there in the wall.” He frowned at Sartain. “Say, why are you two looking for him, anyway?”
“We have our reasons,” Jasmine said.
Sartain narrowed a suspicious eye at Uncle Hector. “You sure you and your nephew aren’t riding together? That you both don’t have Priscilla McDougal stowed away out here somewhere?”
“Maybe you’re attempting to reclaim your family’s hacienda from McDougal,” Jasmine added. “Since after your sister’s death, it went to him, though you’d been kicked off the place long before because of your bandido ways.”
“No, no, señorita.” Uncle Hector shook his head. “You have it all wrong. I know nothing about Señorita McDougal. I am a desperado, that is true. I am an old outlaw. But one who cannot even put together an honorable gang anymore, but only a cavvy of bone-headed cutthroats who shoot each other in a crossfire and crucify old priests! Oh, the sacrilege!”
He sobbed loudly, closing his mouth, lips quivering while tears ran down his cheeks.
Jasmine said tightly, her nostrils flared, “You forgot about your old man’s penchant for rape. Or at least, for attempted rape.”
“Sí,” said Uncle Hector, nodding again. “I am even a failure at that. You got the upper hand easily enough.” Again, he howled a sob. “Why don’t you just finish me? Go ahead—put an old desperado out of his misery!”
Jasmine gritted her teeth.
“Sure, why not?” Raising her pistols and clicking their hammers back.
Chapter 13
“I can understand why you’d want to send this useless slob to El Diablo
, but it might be counterproductive,” Sartain said mildly.
Jasmine held her pistols on the old Mexican, who lay with his eyes squeezed shut. “It wasn’t you he tried to shove his leathery old noddle into, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t. And I see your point. You go ahead and do what you want.”
Uncle Hector moved his lips, praying quietly and quickly in Spanish.
Jasmine glanced at the Cajun, who was standing on the other side of the bed from her. “What’re you thinking?”
“I’m thinking he knows this country better than we do. Hell, even with McDougal’s maps, we don’t know it at all.”
“Go on.”
“If Maximilian is somewhere in these mountains looking for more gold like that there in the niche, Uncle Hector could probably lead us to him. And hopefully, to Priscilla. Or at least guide us in the right direction.”
“I think we’re close enough, we can sniff out his trail on our own. You’re not much for sniffing out an ambush, Sartain, but I know you can track.”
The Revenger’s ears warmed a little with embarrassment. “Yeah, well, I can usually stay ahead of ambushes...when I’m not riding with a pretty señorita in the wilds of Old Mexico.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Okay, I—”
Uncle Hector broke in with, “Señor, señorita, por favor. I think I can lead you to Maximilian.”
“How come you didn’t just go root him out of these mountains yourself, then?” Jasmine wanted to know.
“I didn’t think I would need to. You see, I know an old desert rat, Tio, who has been prowling these mountains for the past thirty years or more. Tio has been looking for the same hidden treasure as Maximilian, which I thought until now was mere legend. I ran into Tio a month ago in a little watering hole and learned from him while he was drunk—sober, he is as silent as stone, drunk, he blabbers like a schoolgirl—that he believed someone was hauling treasure out of the mountains. He had seen the signs: overlaid tracks, meaning several trips had been made, and concealed campfires. But no one can conceal anything from old Tio. The tracks lead in the direction in which Tio believes can be found the Catedral de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de las Montañas de Sombra.”
The Revenger Page 57
