The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  Dixie turned her mouth corners down in a pout. “Goshdarnit, Mike. Did you even consider my offer?”

  “More than I’ve ever considered any other but one.”

  The Cajun kissed her cheek and headed for the rear door.

  The three well-dressed card players all turned their heads to watch him leave. They rose from their chairs, hitched their pistols higher on their hips, shared conspiratorial glances, and sauntered out the front door.

  Chapter 12

  Sartain removed the feedbag from Boss’s nose.

  “That’s enough oats, old son,” he told the horse, folding the bag and laying it over his saddle in the lean-to stable. “Don’t want you getting the green heaves. We’ll be pullin’ out tomorrow.”

  He’d already checked the stallion’s hooves, making sure all the shoes were set right and the frogs hadn’t picked up any burrs. Now he gave the horse one more pat. As he turned away, the stallion brushed his head against the Cajun’s shoulder.

  Sartain chuckled. “You like that idea, do you?” He scratched the underside of Boss’s snout. “Get some sleep. Mornin’ will be here before...”

  He let his voice trail off. He’d heard something. The crunch of gravel beneath a boot. It seemed to originate from behind the stable.

  Scowling, he moved to the stable door that led out behind the corral. As he flicked the door latch, he released the keeper thong from over the hammer of his pistol. He stepped outside, scanning the darkness relieved by starlight and a moon rising over the Sangre de Cristos in the east.

  He smelled the alcohol stench just before he saw a shadow move on his left. Something glinted brassily in the darkness, and then a long object slashed down toward his head. He smelled the lurker in time and managed to raise his arm and duck his head so that the shell belt filled with brass gave his forehead only a glancing blow.

  A stinging blow, but a full-on blow likely would have laid him out.

  Fury threatened to blow the top of his head off. He lashed out at the shadow before him first with his left fist and then with his right. The left landed solidly on a jaw. The right caught the nub of the man’s chin.

  His attacker grunted and stumbled backward. Another figure moved up behind him—The Revenger could hear the footsteps—and wrapped two arms around his neck. He was dragged backward, the man’s arms pinching off his wind.

  “Hold him, Ray,” said a third man tightly, coming in from Sartain’s right.

  In the moonlight, he recognized the face of one of the three card players. The man bolted toward him, throwing a haymaker toward The Revenger’s face.

  Sartain stomped down on the toe of the boot of the man holding him. Ray instantly released him. Sartain leaned right, and the haymaker skinned off the side of his face to catch the man behind him in the throat.

  Ray made a gurgling strangled sound.

  Sartain head-butted the man who’d thrown the haymaker, knocking his hat off. The man grunted as he rocked back on the heels of his boots, legs wobbling. Sartain punched him twice quickly, stepping into him as he stumbled backward.

  The man who’d swung the cartridge belt came up on his left, cussing. His teeth flashed white in the purple darkness. The moonlight skimmed off the bald dome of his head. He buried his right fist in Sartain’s belly, then jabbed his left into the Cajun’s jaw.

  Sartain stumbled backward, fury dancing a jig in him now.

  When the man came at him again, bringing up his fist from his heels, Sartain ducked. The man’s fist whistled through the air over his head. The man grunted. Sartain straightened and slammed his attacker’s left jaw with his right fist.

  He slammed him again and again in the same place until he had him on the ground.

  He punched him two more times in the nose.

  With the second punch, the man’s nose exploded like a ripe tomato. The blood was warm on the Cajun’s fist.

  A shadow moved to his left. Something glinted in the moonlight.

  “No guns, Clement!” Ray yelled hoarsely. “Keep it quiet.”

  “I ain’t gonna shoot him. I’m just gonna—ach!”

  As Clement whipped the pearl handle of the pistol toward Sartain’s head, the Cajun bounded off his heels and thrust his head into the man’s belly. The pistol slammed against Sartain’s back without heat. The man’s feet left the ground. The Cajun bulled him to the ground so hard, he heard what sounded like every bone in the man’s back crack.

  The Revenger gained his feet and whipped around, crouching, ready for another onslaught. Ray came at him again, weakly swinging his right fist. It was an ill-considered, half-hearted move. Again, the Cajun ducked the blow, and he buried his fist twice into Ray’s solar plexus. The man’s lungs almost literally exploded as he jackknifed.

  As his head went down, Sartain brought his knee up to meet Ray’s head with a solid blow.

  That finished him. He lay still.

  Sartain wheeled, ready for yet another assault. None came. The other two men were down where they’d last fallen, writhing and groaning.

  Something silvery lay on the ground, catching the moonlight. Sartain walked over and picked up the badge and tipped it to the light, brushing his finger across the letters engraved in the nickel-plated star and moon badge.

  DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL.

  He chuckled caustically, tossing the badge into the darkness.

  Then he drew his LeMat and ratcheted back the hammer.

  “Which one of you lame-brained badge-totin’ sonso’bitches wants it first?”

  “Don’t shoot,” said the one lying straight out from Sartain, pushing up heavily onto his elbows. It was dark where his nose should have been in the center of his otherwise pale face. He clamped a hand over the appendage in question. “Don’t shoot us. For Christ’s sake, Sartain.”

  “Give me a reason. Better be a good one.”

  “We’re after the gold, same as you,” said Clement, sitting up and flexing his right arm. “We ain’t here on business.”

  “Oh? Then what was this all about?”

  Dixie’s voice rose from the shadows at the rear of the saloon. “Mike?” The back door was open, spilling wan light from inside. Running footsteps sounded. Her shadow was limned by the moonlight. “What the hell is going on out here?”

  “Hoedown,” Sartain said. “Kind of unexpected, but the best ones always are.”

  Dixie slowed as she stepped around the three men on the ground. The third, Ray, was groaning now. Damn. Sartain had hoped he’d killed him. He had no use for federal badge-toters. He saw them as little better than the federal soldiers who’d raped and murdered a pregnant Jewel and shot her grandfather out in the desert south of Benson.

  Not that he’d known any marshals who’d done anything like that, but they were out to stop him from performing what he considered his destiny to further avenge Jewel, his child, and the old man. To avenge those who were unable to avenge themselves.

  “What’s this all about?” Dixie wanted to know, her voice brittle with anger.

  “Very same question I just posed,” Sartain said.

  The man with the broken nose spat blood and said in a comically nasal voice, “That was our man you shot yesterday, you son of a buck.”

  “The bastard who bushwhacked me?”

  They didn’t respond to that.

  Clement rolled over onto his side and tried to get up but fell back. “Oh, mercy, I think my back is broken.”

  “Shut up, or I’ll give you more of the same,” the Cajun warned him. He turned to the other two. “I didn’t see no badge on him.”

  “You blew his badge off when you shot him!” Ray intoned.

  “Why’d he bushwhack me?”

  Clement got to a knee, breathing hard and grunting. “I don’t know.” He gained his feet, limped over, and scooped his hat up off the ground. He batted it against his leg, which was so covered in dirt it looked brown. “We’d split up. He was alone. Maybe he recognized you. There’s a kill order out on you, Sartain. Shoot fir
st and ask questions later. Unofficial, but there it is.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Dixie.

  The information didn’t surprise The Revenger.

  “Who rode out of here like a bat out of hell, just after I shot your pal?”

  “Didn’t see him,” Clement said, shrugging. “Lots of folks been keeping an eye on the town of late. Thinkin’ the gold’s around here somewhere.”

  “We heard the shooting,” said Ray. “I rode over and dragged Gleason off. We weren’t sure what it was all about till we glassed you over at the well.”

  Sartain stepped back, wagging his gun at the man who’d risen to his feet behind him. “What’re you doing around here?”

  “Federal business.” The lawman with the broken nose, whose name Sartain had not caught, stumbled slowly over to join the others brushing off dust and working the knots out of their muscles, easing bones back into place. “And it don’t involve you.”

  “This did.”

  “This was unofficial,” said the broken-nosed man, tenderly touching his nose, blood dribbling over his lips. His voice was nasal, almost inaudible. “This was for Gleason.”

  “Way to go!” Dixie laughed.

  Broken Nose glowered at her. “Miss, if you’d kindly shut the hell up, I’d really—”

  “Uh-uh,” Sartain said, wagging the LeMat once more. “You talk nice to the lady. I’m still debating whether I want to plug you three uglies right here and be done with you.”

  “No need,” said Ray, holding his hands out in supplication. “We’re out of here.”

  “Yes, you are,” Dixie said.

  “One more question,” Sartain said, narrowing an eye. “Was that you three who bushwhacked me and Beacham’s men yesterday?”

  The three looked at each other, frowning. “Hell, no!” said Clement.

  Sartain was skeptical, but he let it go.

  When they’d mounted up and ridden out, Dixie turned to Sartain. “You’ve had quite a time in my fair city, haven’t you, Mike?”

  “It’s a red-letter kind of place.”

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Fine as frog hair.”

  “The night’s windin’ down. Come on inside. We’ll go up and curl each other’s toes after I check to make sure you haven’t opened your back up again.” Dixie hiked a shoulder. “I guess this will be our last night.”

  Sartain kissed her cheek. “You go on inside. I’ll be a minute. I’m gonna stay out here and have a smoke and make sure those three federals don’t swing back in this direction. I don’t trust any of ’em farther than I could throw all three uphill against a Dakota cyclone.”

  “Don’t blame you.”

  Dixie walked off toward the saloon’s open rear door. Sartain climbed the corral fence, sat on the top rail, and hooked his boot heels over the bottom rail. Deep in thought, he built a smoke and touched a match to it.

  Just after he’d fired the quirley, another match scratched to life nearby. He looked to his right to see the slender, short shadow of a man in a sombrero cupping a lucifer to the cigarette drooping from his mouth. Sartain’s right hand had started to slide toward the LeMat, but he stayed the movement when he recognized the Mexican, who walked toward him slowly.

  The little man’s quirley glowed in the darkness. Smoke billowed around his head, turning pearl in the moonlight.

  “There is much trouble here now.” Those were the first words he’d heard Miguel Otero speak. He’d started to think maybe he was mute or didn’t have a handle on English.

  “You can say that again, señor.”

  Otero leaned back against the corral to Sartain’s right. He stretched one arm out atop the rail and lifted his round face to the moonlight. “Sí, much trouble. Gold trouble. The only other trouble similar to it is woman trouble. ‘Gold and love affairs are difficult to hide.’ It is an old Spanish saying. Very old, and very true.”

  Sartain drew a lungful of smoke and blew it at the moon growing smaller as it rose, touching the velvety darkness around it with lilac. Somewhere, a night bird screeched.

  Sartain turned to the little man. “Señor, I got a feeling you know all about this gold trouble, don’t you?”

  Otero lifted a shoulder and looked away. When he turned his head forward again, he took another draw from his quirley and tapped ashes into the dust.

  After he expelled the smoke from his lungs, he said, “Sí.”

  Chapter 13

  “You gonna tell me about it?” Sartain asked Miguel Otero.

  Otero had a long pocket sewn into his elkskin breeches. From the pocket, he extracted a clear, unlabeled bottle. “First a drink, señor?”

  “Don’t mind if I do, señor.” The Revenger accepted the bottle, pried out the cork, and tipped it back.

  The mescal burned going down, but chilled his belly, leaving a pleasant aftertaste akin to grapefruit. Suddenly, the night had softer edges, and the moonlight was pretty. The fire in his back had kicked up during the skirmish with the three lawmen. Now, it was nearly doused.

  “Gracias,” he rasped, his vocal cords momentarily paralyzed.

  “De nada.” The Mexican tipped the bottle back and then set it down on the ground between them. “I will leave it here. Por favor, help yourself.”

  “All right, I will.”

  Otero took a long drag off his quirley and held it up close to his face as he studied the moon for a time. Exhaling the smoke through his nostrils, he said, “I know where the gold is hidden, Señor Sartain. I also know that you, being who you are, have little use for it. Your life is about other things, no?”

  He didn’t wait for a reply. “I would request that you take it and return it to its rightful owners. It is a sacrilege and a curse. It has brought evil to these mountains. Men have died looking for it. Many more will die until it is far away from here.”

  “How do you know where it is?”

  “Señor Hadley rode wounded out to my rancho. He had the strongbox on a pack mule. He told me to hide the gold and hide it well, that he would be back for it. He told me that if it was not with me when he came for it, that if any of it was missing, he would cut my throat and the throat of my daughter, Celina. She lives with me. She is my only family since her mother passed.”

  “Hadley’s in jail, Señor Ortega. That gold could all be yours if you wanted it to be.”

  “Sí. I am aware of that. But like you, my life is about other things than getting rich. Besides, I have a penance to pay. The boy upstairs, Dewey Dade, worked for me last summer, cutting and chopping wood, wrangling my cattle—work that has become very difficult for me.”

  The wiry Mexican held up a brown hand gnarled with arthritis and shaking slightly. “He became my friend. A good boy, but a boy with little luck. A boy with a difficult past. When I ran out of work for him, he rode on to Taos. I sent word to him there about the gold. I thought that if anyone should have it, he should, and then it would be gone from these mountains. He rode back here, heading for my rancho. He was shot because of the gold.”

  “Who shot him?”

  “I don’t know. One of the men whose horns you filed here tonight, maybe.”

  “The lawmen?”

  “Sí. But they are not here as lawmen.” Otero reached down for the bottle and handed it to Sartain. “They are here for the gold. One of them keeps an eye on the town constantly, knowing that anyone looking for it will be drawn here to the well and to Señorita Dixie’s saloon. I think they will kill anyone they think might be closer to it than they are.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They have been too long in these mountains, riding and riding, searching and searching.” Otero shook his head. “Like everyone else here now, they are here for the gold.”

  Sartain took another pull of the raw mescal.

  More sharp edges were filed off the night, despite his consternation about the gold.

  “If anyone can get the gold out of here before it can cause more bad things to happen, it is you, Se
ñor Sartain. Will you do this for me? I know I am not a friend. But we have shared a bottle here tonight, and we both live for something besides wealth.”

  “What do you live for, Señor Otero?”

  “My daughter, Celina. You see, she is blind from birth.” Otero shrugged. “She has only me. All the gold in the world will not fix her eyes. It would only destroy her soul...and mine.”

  Sartain held out his hand. Otero gave a half-smile as he shook it.

  “Just tell me where and when and I’ll come for it, Señor Otero.” Sartain handed the bottle back to the Mexican. “And I’ll make sure it’s taken back to its rightful owners. Then, maybe, peace will return to your mountains. And to you and Celina.”

  Otero squeezed The Revenger’s hand hard, his smile brightening. “Gracias, Señor.”

  * * *

  “Oh, Mike,” she said, running a hand through his hair. “I wish you didn’t have to leave.”

  “Me, too, darlin’. It’s time, though.”

  “You feel so good.”

  “You, too.”

  They were sitting on the edge of her bed. It was around midnight, and the Cajun had helped her clean up around the saloon after the last customers had left or drifted off to their rooms on the second floor.

  Sartain wrapped his arms around her tenderly and kissed her. She returned the kiss with a tender one of her own.

  “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “I think I’m just gonna give ole Boss his head and see where he takes me.”

  “I thought you were heading for Durango.”

  “Was I? Well, hell, then. Maybe I’ll head to Durango. If I give old Boss his head, he’s liable to ride me right into a whole stable full of fillies.”

  Dixie tugged on his ears as she kissed him. “You’d both enjoy that, you cad.”

  “Got me there, gal.” Sartain caressed her cheek with his thumb, brushing away a tear that had dribbled down from her eye. “But you ain’t gonna be one I’ll ever forget, Dixie.”