A straw sombrero hung down his back, flopping to and fro as the oldster moved carefully down the rocks. He wore high-topped, mule-eared boots and baggy deerskin breeches. A tobacco pouch hung down his spindly chest, which was clad in a grimy red-and-black calico shirt. A Schofield revolver sagged in a worn leather holster on his left thigh. Attached to the same belt was a leather-cap box for holding the Sharps’ long brass cartridges. A hide-wrapped waterskin dangled from his right shoulder.
His face was long and bony, upturned nose cleaving it in two. His rheumy brown eyes regarded Sartain curiously as he kept coming down the rocks, moving purposefully, one step at a time. He held a Sharps rifle in his right hand. As he approached, the Cajun could see a thin ribbon of smoke skeining from the barrel.
He dropped off the last rock and came along the lip of the ridge, swerving from Sartain to walk down the back slope where Uncle Hector was still down and crouched over his arrow-pierced calf. The old reprobate was smiling in spite of the pain blanching his cheeks and watering his eyes.
“Tio,” Uncle Hector crowed. “Old Tio. Still handy with a buffalo rifle, I see.”
The old Mexican’s face turned into a mask of badly cracked leather as he grinned, stretching his lips back far enough that Sartain could see he had no front teeth. In Spanish almost too fast for The Revenger to keep up with, old Tio said, “Those Chiricahuas have been hound-dogging my trail for days. I am much grateful and amused that you led them into my trap!”
He stood smiling proudly, cradling the rifle, which appeared to weigh more than he did, in his sinewy arms. He canted his head toward Sartain and Jasmine. “Who are the norteamericanos?”
“Friends of Señor Tejada,” said Sartain.
Old Tio scowled at The Revenger. “No friend of Señor Tejada is a friend of mine!”
“Well, hell, then,” the Cajun said.
“I thought you two were related?” Jasmine inquired.
“We are, we are!” Uncle Hector said ingratiatingly in Spanish. “Family means much to the Tejadas, does it not, Tio?”
“I should finish what the Apaches started,” old Tio said, grinning devilishly down at the wounded Tejada. Anger turned his near-black face even darker. “Why do you bring them here? Did I not tell you that I would kill you if I ever saw you in these mountains again?”
“Perhaps...” Uncle Hector glanced down at the arrow bristling from his calf, “we could continue the conversation after this arrow has been removed from my flesh. It is gravely uncomfortable, I assure you.”
“Yours is the devil’s flesh.” Old Tio glanced at Jasmine and then at Sartain. His shrewd, washed-out eyes returned to the young Pinkerton, his gaze flicking down slightly to admire the woman’s well-filled blouse. “That, however, is the flesh of an angel.”
Jasmine flushed slightly.
Old Tio grinned, then narrowed one eye suspiciously at the female Pinkerton. “Are you really a friend of this thief and killer?”
Despite his ragged, soiled attire and small stature, the old man had a regal air about him. He’d lived the life of an outcast, but there was something in his eyes and his bearing that reminded The Revenger of a hacendado—a man of wealth and respect who had been badly defeated but had still retained his dignity and formal bearing.
“When you put it that way, no. No, we’re not friends at all. Let’s just say, business associates. We’re here looking for you, Señor Tio. We were hoping you could help us find someone,” Jasmine said, cutting her eyes at Sartain.
“And who might that someone be?” asked another voice from somewhere behind the wizened Tio.
Sartain winced when he saw a young Mexican man step out from behind a rock flanking old Tio. He was dressed nearly all in leather, a knotted red neckerchief fluttering in the wind. He wore a broad-brimmed black sombrero low over his eyes. A dust-smudge mustache trimmed his upper lip. He was maybe twenty, with long, straight, dark-brown hair hanging to his shoulders.
“Maximilian San Javier de Tejada?” The young man hardened his voice and pulled a Colt from its holster positioned for a cross draw on his left hip. “If so, you’ve come to the right place. The right place to die, my friend!”
“Stop!” said another voice, this one a girl’s. A petite hazel-eyed blonde moved out from behind a rock to place a hand on the young man’s cocked revolver. “Let’s find out what they want first, mi amor.”
Chapter 18
Sartain stared down at the fire over which a haunch of javelina roasted on an iron spit. Uncle Hector turned the spit slowly, wincing against the pain in his calf, which old Tio had wrapped in a whiskey-soaked cloth after breaking and pulling out the Apache shaft.
“Turn it, old man,” growled the young outlaw, Maximilian San Javier de Tejada, as he basted the meat with grease, tequila, and wild onions and herbs sautéed in a cast-iron skillet over low coals. “Turn it, fool!”
“I am turning it! I am turning it, Maximilian! I apologize if I am not turning it fast enough for you on your order, but in case you have forgotten, my health has been compromised by an arrow of the devilish Apache! A Chiricahua Apache!”
Maximilian tossed a spoon into the cup of seasoned liquid and cursed in Spanish. “I don’t know why he shot you.” He turned to old Tio, sitting back in the shadows of their camp among dark rocks, roughly a mile from the scene of the Indian attack, smoking his pipe. Only the upper right third of his Indian-dark face was lit by the dancing, umber firelight. The rest of its pits and crags were in watery shadow.
The cold of night had fallen quickly. Stars shimmered across the arching vault of the velvet sky.
“He is family,” old Tio said with a bored, tired air, staring at the roasting meat. Maximilian was following Tio’s directions for roasting and basting. “If one Tejada kills another, a hundred years of bad luck will come to the rest of the living family. I learned this not from my father, a Tejada, but from my mother, an India. A very wise India.”
Maximilian stared at the wizened old-timer incredulously. Sartain knew he was wondering how Tio could care about killing a Tejada when none of the Tejadas except Maximilian had ever accepted him as one of their own.
“Well, this big hombre isn’t family.” Priscilla McDougal came around from the far side of the fire to aim a pistol at Sartain, clicking back the hammer and scrunching up her pretty, fire-lit face distastefully. “Let’s get down to business. Who are you? Who sent you? To do what? Hurry, or I’ll kill you now”—she canted her head at Jasmine—“and then her.”
Sartain stared up at her. He’d been trying to free his hands, tied behind his back with rawhide, but he wasn’t having much luck. He stopped the attempt now with the girl’s flashing eyes on him.
“I will repeat the questions only one more time,” she said.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. The name’s Sartain,” the Cajun drawled, crestfallen. He hadn’t bothered to come up with a fake name, as it was doubtful many in Mexico had heard of him. Especially anyone in this remote Mexican backwater.
“Ah, The Revenger.” Maximilian snickered girlishly. “Your father sends only the best, Priss.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the boy, who was sitting by the fire now, legs crossed Indian-style. Maximilian looked up at her. “The Revenger’s reputation is known down here. We Mejicanos respect a man who exacts revenge for those who can’t do it themselves.” He lowered his smoldering, threatening gaze to Sartain. “Only, my respect for such a man will not prevent me from killing him, since he was sent here to kill me.”
He snickered, again girlishly, which was a habit with him. He had several feminine traits, including a higher voice than was usual for a young man.
“Nah, the governor only wants his daughter back, that’s all.”
“Hah!” mocked Maximilian.
Priscilla still aimed the gun at Sartain, bunching her lips malignantly.
Sartain canted his head toward Jasmine, tied up to his right. “Let her go. I’m the one he sent to kill you, Maximilian. She’
s just a tagalong sent to keep me from whoring and drinking when I have more pressing matters to attend to.”
He thought he heard Jasmine draw a deep breath of bridled anger.
“Who’re you?” Priscilla asked the woman.
“Pinkerton agent.”
“Is what he said true?”
“Sure.” Jasmine offered The Revenger a wan smile.
He returned it.
“What are you after out here, Maximilian?” he asked the boy.
Maximilian studied Sartain sidelong and then glanced at old Tio, who merely continued to puff his pipe pensively while Tejada turned the pig every minute or two, desperately trying to keep it from burning, as were his orders. Maximilian glanced at his wayward uncle, who looked quickly down, sheepish.
“Treasure,” Maximilian said.
“Hush!” admonished Priscilla angrily.
“What difference does it make if he knows?” Maximilian glanced at his impoverished bandido uncle. “If they all know. They all must die, even the Pinkerton.” Then the boy turned to Jasmine and added sincerely, “I’m sorry.”
Indignant, Hector said, “You would not kill your blood uncle!”
“You have been no uncle to me!” Maximilian scolded the older man. “Gold! It’s always been the gold you have been after, ever since my mother, your sister, married Priscilla’s father and ruined us. Only the gold.”
“How did the governor ruin the Tejada family?” Sartain was curious to know.
“Our land was a grant from the King of Spain. There was what had always been considered a legend of treasure on it—gold milled by priests and their Indio slaves. Generations of Tejadas looked for the gold but no one ever found it, so it was believed to be a fable. One of many these mountains are known for. When my father died and my mother married our family friend Governor McDougal”—he smiled icily—“she turned the grant over to him, although he assured us the land would remain part of the Tejada domain.
“But when mother died after losing her memory and her wits, McDougal moved in with his own men, rushing the Tejada vaqueros and campesinos off the land some had worked for generations. Now the Tejada hacienda is owned by McDougal, and run by McDougal’s men, all gringos.”
“That won’t be for much longer,” Priscilla said tightly. She’d lowered the gun and gone over and taken a seat beside her stepbrother, throwing one arm around his neck and kissing his cheek. “We found the gold, thanks to Padre Sandia, who put us on the right track after reading some of his old church documents. He’d never been able to explore this deep in the mountains himself...and saw little need, him being a pious man of the cloth and this being part of the old Tejada grant.”
“I knew you found it!” wheezed Uncle Hector as he gave the javelina another turn. He was nearly breathless, eyes gleaming, voice wheedling. “Where? You must share a little bit, if only a tiny bit, with your uncle, whom you must not kill and thus save the family from the wretched curse!”
“We are already cursed, you old fool,” snarled Maximilian, curling his lip.
Sartain gathered that Maximilian knew nothing of Uncle Hector’s men having crucified the priest back at the little cathedral. He decided to keep the nasty news under his hat for now. No need to set off any explosions just yet, when he and the lady Pinkerton might get caught in the blast.
“What’re you going to do with the gold?” Jasmine asked.
Maximilian reached toward the fire and daintily pulled bits of meat from the succulent golden-brown carcass. He blew on the chunks and handed them chivalrously to Priss before tearing some of the meat off for himself, and blowing on it. “We are going to hire a gang of the best pistoleros in Mexico—an entire army—and run McDougal’s men off of the Tejada grant, or kill them all.”
“And ruin the governor,” Priss said, sucking grease from her thumb. “Most of his money is now tied up in the hacienda.” She let a satisfied smile tug at her mouth-corners.
Sartain gave her an ironic smile. “Not a very nice thing to do to your father.”
“My father is a guttersnipe,” Priss said matter-of-factly. “He was never a father to me, only a politician. He killed my mother. Maybe not outright, but with all his orders and restrictions about how a politician’s wife should behave. All the formalities about how to keep a house, throw parties, and be seen in public—they drove her to suicide. She ate a handful of wild mushrooms and died on our dining room table.” She glanced at her young lover. “Pretty much the same thing happened to Max’s mother. He drove her quite mad, though a vein of madness runs through the Tejada family.”
She smiled again, this time with faint irony at her lover, who gave a vague, devilish grin.
“So you ran off together,” Jasmine said. “After falling in love.”
“That’s right,” Priscilla said saucily, keeping her arm around Maximilian. “We fell madly in love, utterly in love, and journeyed down here to find the treasure with help from Uncle Tio and Padre Sandia. Pure luck helped us find it after an earthquake exposed part of it.”
There was a hoarse wheezing sound. Old Tio removed his pipe from between his leathery lips and said, “I searched for that treasure for thirty years—me and the padre—and these two lovebirds found it within two months after coming down here.” He chuckled again ruefully and tapped the dottle from his pipe into his hand. “It was practically right under my nose all those years...”
He sighed.
Maximilian reached over and squeezed the old man’s forearm. “You’ll be rich now, Tio. Richer than your wildest dreams.”
Even with his missing teeth, the old man’s smile was beatific.
“And I will get the hacienda back,” Maximilian said, looking at Priscilla. “And we will raise our family on it.”
Priscilla pecked his cheek and ran her hand through his hair. She turned toward Sartain and Jasmine. “What about them?”
Maximilian regarded them dubiously. “Sí,” he said, nodding. “What about them?” He turned to Tio. “Kill them?”
Old Tio regarded the pair with faint, ironic humor in his old eyes, in which the firelight flickered dully. He hiked a bony shoulder.
“And him?” Maximilian said, turning toward Uncle Hector.
Tejada smiled deviously, wincing as he gave the pig another turn. “You cannot kill one of your own, my nephew.” He clucked. “You must not kill one of your own. Listen to Tio!”
“I told you, you old killer, you are not one of my own. You are a filthy, cowardly killer and rapist. If you had found the treasure first, you would not have hesitated to kill us so that it all could be yours.”
“Enough talking. I say we kill them all now.” Priscilla turned her determined gaze to her young lover. “Why wait?”
Maximilian gazed at Sartain, at Jasmine, and then at his outlaw uncle, who returned his gaze with a fearful one of his own. Maximilian’s throat worked as he swallowed. He rubbed his hands on his leather pants and turned to Priscilla.
“Would you like the honor, mi amor?”
Priscilla smiled. “Sure.” She stood and held her hand out. Maximilian set his Colt pistol in it.
She closed her hand around the gun and turned toward Sartain. She looked at the other two prisoners, brow beetling. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Even in the dim light, Sartain could see some of the color leech out of her cheeks.
She turned to Maximilian. “Maybe tomorrow. Shots tonight might draw trouble.”
“All right, tomorrow.” Maximilian sighed, looking relieved.
Priscilla gave the pistol back to him.
Tejada gave a long sigh. “Por favor, if you must kill me, you must. But first, you must show me the treasure. I want to see it with my own eyes before I die.”
Maximilian looked at old Tio, who said nothing but just kept staring into the fire with that beguiling, sage-like smile lifting his mouth corners.
“We will see,” said Maximilian. “It is more than you deserve, you old bastardo. We will talk about it tomorrow.�
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Sartain glanced at Jasmine, who returned the look. She was nervous. He had to admit he was relieved to hear that his demise would be postponed for a few more hours.
He also had to admit that he felt sorry about the quandary the young lovers were in. He had been sent down here to kill Maximilian, after all. Of course, he’d been told the situation was much different than it had turned out to be.
Still, he’d been sent down here to kill the boy…
He wasn’t sure if it was just wishful thinking, but something told him Maximilian didn’t have cold-blooded murder in his blood. Priscilla acted tough, likely knowing it was the best way to live in such a tough land, but Sartain didn’t think she had it in her either.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t going to tempt fate. Somehow, he had to get himself and Jasmine out of here. He had no intention of killing Maximilian now, even if he got the chance. All he wanted now was to get him and Jasmine back across the border. They’d been sent on a wild goose chase, and McDougal could go to hell.
Learning he wouldn’t be meeting his Maker in the next couple of hours caused him to remember his hollow belly.
“Kind of hard to sit here and look at all that meat without eating some of it. How ’bout you untie me and my colleague here and throw us a bite or two?”
Priscilla wrinkled her nose at him. “The dead don’t need to eat.”
Chapter 19
Sartain didn’t fall asleep after the fire had been kicked out and the others had rolled up in their blankets. He pretended to sleep, but instead, he lay on his side on the blanket Priscilla had grudgingly allowed him—he’d thought she was going to tell him that “dead men don’t need blankets”—and worked on trying to loosen the rawhide strips binding his wrists together behind his back.
He was glad for the loud, semi-measured snores of the two older Mexicans drowning out any sounds he might be making.
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