The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  “The Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Shadow Mountains,” Sartain translated thoughtfully. “Never heard of it.”

  “That’s because it has been lost for over two hundred years. People think an earthquake destroyed it. It is believed to be somewhere on the Tejada family’s old Spanish grant, although for generations, our people looked for it without success. It was built by the Indio slaves of the Franciscan monks, who, so the legends say, decorated the cathedral in gold from their own mines. Millions and millions of pesos worth!

  “Old Tio is the bastard son of my grandfather, although he was never considered part of the family. He’s one-quarter Yaqui, which means to most Mejicanos he is part devil.”

  He chuckled. “Old Tio likes that about himself. Not being accepted by others, and for others to see him as a devil. That is Tio. But he knows this country better than most. And he has always believed in the lost cathedral, always believed that one day he, a devil banished from the Tejada family, would be richer than all of us put together. Than all of the Tejada generations put together! And he would lord it over us from a casa grande on a high hill!”

  “Did he tell you where the trail was?” Jasmine asked. “The one he thinks leads to the cathedral?”

  Uncle Hector made an incredulous face. “Of course not, señorita. Even drunk, Tio is not in the business of giving away any secrets at all, much less the route that might lead to Guadalupe!”

  “How does he know the trail he stumbled on was blazed by Maximilian?” Sartain questioned.

  “Because he saw Maximilian out there in that area from a distance earlier that same week he found the trail.”

  “How many were with the kid?” Sartain asked.

  “Only one other.”

  Sartain and Jasmine shared a look.

  Sartain turned back to the older man. “If you don’t know where the trail is, why shouldn’t I let the señorita blow you to El Diablo?”

  Uncle Hector glanced at Jasmine, who was scowling down at him.

  He smiled, lips twitching nervously. “I may not know where to find the trail, but I know where in these mountains you are most likely to find Tio if he is not out scouting the trail for the treasure himself. When I saw him last, he was suffering from la gota, so he might be holing up until the illness passes. His big toe”—the old Mexican shook his head slowly—“was swollen up to the size of a pistol handle!”

  “Ouch,” Sartain said.

  “Sí. He was in much pain. He said only mescal helped.”

  Jasmine looked at the Cajun. “Even if this old pervert is telling the truth about any of this, and not just making up stories to save his life, or at least prolong it, I doubt that a man like old Tio would give away the trail to the treasure he’s spent most of his life searching for.”

  “No, señorita,” Uncle Hector answered for Sartain. “But Tio is as deaf as a post and as blind as a deer. You could easily follow him from his little stone shack to the trail made by Maximilian.” He added in a whisper, as though the old desert rat were right outside the door, “He wouldn’t even know you were there.”

  He smiled with satisfaction, pressing his thick lips together beneath his mustache.

  Jasmine arched a brow at Sartain.

  He leveled a threatening look at Uncle Hector. “All right, first thing tomorrow, we’ll start out for old Tio’s camp. If you try anything, old man, or if I get the fantods over your story, suspecting you might be leading us into another trap of some kind, I’m turning you back over to Señorita Gallant for swift and decisive punishment.”

  “Sí, señor.” Uncle Hector gave another brittle half-smile. “I would never lie to such a man...with such a weapon. Now, if you will be so kind, would you mind please removing the knife from...down there? I am most, uh, uncomfortable.”

  “No,” Jasmine said resolutely. “The knife stays right where it is.” She headed for the door.

  Sartain followed her, glancing over his shoulder at Uncle Hector. “Sleep tight.”

  He pulled the door closed and followed Jasmine downstairs.

  * * *

  While the lady Pinkerton admired her handiwork at the bottom of the stairs, Sartain stepped over and around the bodies as well as the blood and went outside into the cool mountain night. His breath frosted in the thin air.

  Both fires were nearly out. A pot of what appeared bean stew was still smoking on the fire nearest the priest’s shack, which had suddenly been turned into a morgue as well as a torture chamber. Two rabbits had been roasting over the fire several yards from the church, but they’d turned to black ashes on the sticks upon which they’d been roasting.

  Sartain looked around carefully. He didn’t think there was anyone else around, but it never hurt to play it cautious, which was what he should have been doing in the arroyo just before they’d been ambushed and Jasmine had been kidnapped.

  Never travel in Mexico with a pretty girl...

  He scouted the area carefully and then returned to the front of the shack. Jasmine sat on its front step. She placed a long, black cigarillo between her full lips and scratched a match to life on a roof support post.

  “Didn’t know you smoked,” Sartain remarked as she touched the flame to the long cheroot, which she must have found on one of the dead men.

  She inhaled deeply, blew out the smoke, and stared at the coal. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Mr. Sartain.”

  “I’ll say.” Her efficient, cold-blooded killing of her would-be rapists, as well as her handling of Uncle Hector, had made him more curious about the woman than ever.

  Sartain placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled. He stared toward the northwest where, beyond the hill on which the church and casa perched, about all he could see were the silhouettes of low hills in the winking starlight.

  The moon had angled off behind a western ridge.

  Presently, the thuds of galloping hooves rose. They continued to grow louder, as did the bellow-like chuffing of the horse’s lungs. Finally, a shadow materialized at the edge of the bluff, and Boss leaped off the incline and stood at the edge of the yard, shaking his head and blowing.

  He whickered softly, likely smelling the blood on the night breeze.

  Sartain whistled again, softly. “Come on, boy. It’s all right.”

  When Boss had made his way over to Sartain, the Cajun began to unsaddle the mount.

  “You’ve trained your horse well, Mr. Sartain.” She blew out another plume of smoke. “I bet you’d like to have a woman who’d come when you whistled.”

  As he set his saddle on the ground near the fire, Sartain glanced at her. He could see only her dark silhouette against the flickering light of the open doorway behind her. “Miss Gallant, are you proposing to me?”

  “Hardly!” she declared, turning her head away. “I just know the kind of man you are, that’s all.” Her voice was, as usual, disdainful.

  Sartain set the rest of his gear, including his rifle and bedroll, near his saddle, and began wiping Boss down with a swatch of old burlap. “I’m sorry about the ambush,” he said after a while. “I should have been more careful.”

  “The ambush was my fault, remember? It happened because I’m a beautiful woman, and beautiful women just naturally attract trouble in Mexico.”

  “I’m glad you said it this time.”

  “I could have gotten away from those fools, you know.”

  Sartain looked at her. Her head was turned toward him now. She lifted the cheroot to her lips. The coal glowed as she inhaled.

  “Why didn’t you do it? I mean, earlier than you did?”

  “Because I sensed I’d learn something when we got to where we were going. And I was right. We have learned something.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you think he was lying?”

  “I reckon we’ll find out.”

  When he finished rubbing the horse down thoroughly, Sartain led the stallion over to the corral in which the dead men’s horses milled, most re
garding the new horse and the man warily. A few nickered, and one broke into a contentious run around the corral, the rising dust catching the starlight. Boss whinnied as though to alert the others he wasn’t to be trifled with. Another horse whinnied in kind and ran to the far side of the corral, then ran back to stand about six feet away from Boss.

  It was Jasmine’s thoroughbred recognizing an old friend. The fine horse stretched his head out, sniffing the air between him and Boss.

  Boss whickered and turned away proudly but gave his tail a single affable switch.

  Sartain retrieved a couple of buckets of water from the well behind the casa, and set both inside the corral, near another that had been placed there by the men who were now dead. That one was empty. He carried it back to the well, refilled it, and hauled it over to the fire, which Jasmine was building up with mesquite sticks from a nearby pile of wood and brush.

  Sartain filled his coffee pot and set it on the fire to boil. Then he knelt beside the water bucket, doffed his hat, and dunked his head. The water had come from a deep well, and it was so cold, it made his jaws tighten and his ears ring. It dribbled into his ears, feeling like little spikes penetrating his brain plate.

  He pulled his head out of the bucket and gave a whoop.

  “That’s cold!”

  “Well, it’s a cold night, you fool,” Jasmine said, stirring her kidnappers’ stew with a stick. “You’re likely to catch your death of cold and die in Mexico.”

  “Would that bother you?” he inquired, squeezing the excess water from his thick, curly hair. His heart was fluttering from the chill bath. He felt as though he’d left five pounds of trail grit in the bucket. Refreshed.

  “It will bother me if you’re unable to fulfill your duties.”

  “Duty. I just have one, right? Kill Maximilian.” Sartain scowled at the woman speculatively. “But hell, you could do that yourself. In fact, I’m not sure why McDougal didn’t just send you. Or...maybe he doesn’t know how handy you are with a pair of pistols.”

  Until tonight, he hadn’t seen her brandish a weapon. She’d worn her two .38-caliber, five-shot Smith & Wessons with polished rosewood grips wedged behind the belt on her slender waist, but so far she hadn’t used the fancy weapons.

  They had fluted cylinders and sleek bird-head profiles. He’d begun to think they were just for show, but he saw now he was wrong.

  The two pistols she’d taken from Uncle Hector sat on the same gallery step on which she rested her feet, one pistol to each side of her spurred boots, barrels pointing straight into the yard.

  She didn’t respond to his comment about her shooting but only continued to sit back, knees drawn to her chest, smoking and waiting for the coffee and stew to boil.

  When the coffee water finally began to bubble, she said, “According to the pervert upstairs, Maximilian has someone with him. I guess we should assume that person is Miss Priscilla.”

  “I guess we should hope so, anyway. If he’s as poison-mean as everyone’s been telling us, he might have had his fill of the girl and killed her. If so, I don’t envy you relaying that bit of news to McDougal.”

  Jasmine murmured, “Chicken.”

  Sartain frowned as he tossed a handful of Arbuckle’s into his coffee pot and set the pot back on the coals. He kept the puzzled scowl on his face as he cast another look at the woman. “Where did you learn to shoot like that, Jasmine? Where did you learn to kill like that?”

  She drew another lungful of smoke and blew it toward the stars. “Maybe I came from the same school you did, Mr. Sartain.”

  That was all she said. Sartain could only study her, baffled.

  She tossed the cheroot into the fire and pulled the stewpot off the tripod.

  Chapter 14

  As usual, Sartain was up at first cockcrow, though if there was a cock crowing anywhere in the Montañas de Sombra, he didn’t hear it. What he did hear was the morning breeze nudging the clapper against the bell in the tower looming atop the church.

  It sounded like a wind chime, though one with very deep and sonorous notes.

  He sat up and listened to the quiet sounds as the cool breeze ushered leaves across the yard around him and the curled-up figure of his comely partner. The sounds reminded him of the padre. He should probably take the time to bury the man, but what was the point? The Revenger was not, nor had he ever been, a religious man. Still, he would have taken the time if he’d had it, but he didn’t.

  He had a job to do, and while it was one he hadn’t chosen, he’d see it to its end and get the hell out from under the shadow of the federal government. Not only that, but he’d resume mocking it by doing what he did best—breaking the law for his own good reasons.

  He rose, dressed, took a drink of water, and, as he usually did before he did much of anything else as he started his day—checked on his horse. He was happy that despite yesterday’s ambush, Boss looked fit as a fiddle and ready to hit the trail. To prove it, as Sartain slipped through the corral fence fashioned from woven coachwhip and ocotillo branches, the horse plopped down and rolled, kicking up a large cloud of dust that smelled like horse and manure, which the breeze blew against the Cajun.

  The thoroughbred watched Boss dubiously.

  “Thanks, Boss,” the Cajun choked as the other horses stared in fascination at the stallion’s antics. “’Preciate that.”

  He fed and watered all the horses with fresh water from the padre’s well, and grained them from his own and the dead outlaws’ stores. That first major task accomplished, he returned to the front of the shack where Jasmine was rebuilding the fire in moody silence, her hair tangled, her blankets draped around her shoulders.

  She didn’t seem like a morning person and she didn’t much care for him anyway, so he didn’t bother speaking. He just went on into the casa, stepped over the dead men, who appeared as rigid shadows in the house’s dimness, and climbed the stairs to where Uncle Hector remained spread-eagle on the bed.

  “La alabanza a Maria!” the Mexican intoned raspily as Sartain entered the room. “That was the worst night’s sleep I have ever endured, señor. Please tell me you are here to free me. Free me from that nasty blade!”

  “Shut up, you old rapist.” Sartain snarled and dug the knife out of the mattress. He used the blade to free the man from his rawhide ties.

  Later, after he, Uncle Hector, and Jasmine had eaten a quick breakfast of biscuits, leftover stew, and coffee, they went over to the corral to saddle their horses. Once they’d led their mounts out of the corral, Sartain opened the creaky gate so the other horses could leave when they felt the urge. They all appeared desert-bred so they would be able to survive on the mountains’ slim pickings, although naturally, mountain lions would probably get a few.

  For the time being, however, the lions and any other carrion eaters in the area would have enough to dine on inside the casa.

  Sartain ordered Uncle Hector onto his horse, a skewbald paint with a white ring around its right eye. An odd-looking mustang, it was a sinewy, wild-eyed beast with one ragged ear and short, muscular legs made for fast travel over rugged terrain. Jasmine used her handcuffs to secure Uncle Hector’s ankles to his stirrups. As another precaution against his attempting to flee, Sartain had made him remove his boots and socks and didn’t allow any gear on his horse but his saddle and bridle.

  No saddlebags or bedroll, and of course, no weapons of any kind. Nothing he could even use in place of a weapon. He could steer his horse with its reins, but if he knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t try to flee.

  “Perhaps a-a cushion, señor?” Uncle Hector implored, staring down at Sartain from beneath the brim of his wagon-wheel sombrero.

  “A cushion?” Jasmine replied with a caustic chuff.

  Uncle Hector kept his eyes on Sartain. Knowing the woman had no reason to go easy on him, the Mexican spoke only to the Cajun. “Por favor?” He stretched his lips back from his large yellow teeth, wincing and rising slightly in the stirrups to ease the pressure on his backsi
de. “I am, as you could understand, a little sore in my unmentionable regions.”

  “That’s just too bad,” Jasmine said. “You’re damn lucky I didn’t cut anything off, Tejada. Now just shut up and ride. If you lead us to anywhere but this fellow Tio, I’m going to be very quick to finish the job I only started last night. Let’s call you a work in progress, shall we?”

  With that, she swung up onto her gelding’s back and shook her hair back from her pretty face with its hard, pearl eyes.

  “Sí, sí,” the old man said melodramatically. “Whatever you wish, señorita. I deserve nothing better, I know.”

  “Good,” Jasmine said firmly, adjusting her pistols behind her belt. To Sartain, she said, “Let’s get a move on. Sun’s on the rise.”

  “Sí, sí,” said The Revenger, grabbing Boss’s reins. “Whatever you wish, señorita.”

  * * *

  They followed an old horse trail back to the barranca, which Uncle Hector told Sartain and Jasmine was called Barranca Salvaje, Savage Barranca, for good reason. When he didn’t bother explaining, Jasmine prodded him with, “Why?”

  His only response as they headed on up the Barranca Salvaje was a headshake and a sigh.

  The ancient watercourse followed the steep southern ridge, which turned colors almost by the minute as the sun slid across its face, for many miles. The ridge was still on their right by the late afternoon, when they stopped to wash some jerky and biscuits down with water. They were in a deep canyon formed by another tall outcropping high in the southeast, beyond another brush- and boulder-choked wash.

  The shade was deep and cool.

  Sartain walked down into the wash with three preset rope snares and triggers made of carved cottonwood spikes. He used the snares when he needed food but didn’t want to give his position away with a rifle shot. When the snares were set in brush that looked like good rabbit graze, he returned to the wash.