by Ray Hogan
The word passed. He took advantage of the break to shift his gear from the bay to Hanover’s black, which had been having an easy time of running with the remuda. The bay had been in almost constant use since the beginning.
When the break was over, he again took his place ahead of the lead wagon. Shortly Angela rode up beside him.
Oddly, he felt no resentment when he looked a her; he actually became aware of a pleasure at having her company.
He grinned, said: “Does all go well with the Steel Angel?”
Annoyance crossed her features. “Please continue to speak in English. I’m tired of being Spanish.”
He brushed his hat to the back of his head again, smiled. “That’s progress. Maybe you’re getting fed up with the whole Mexican problem.”
She stirred, looked off through the trees to where the land rose and fell in an endless carpet of shimmering sand. “It’s hard to give up a way of life.”
“Hard to give up anything that’s part of you.”
She turned her head, studied him soberly. “It sounds as though you had once lost something important … perhaps very dear to you.”
“Who hasn’t? Everybody gives up something. Living is a give and take proposition, and no bed of feathers for any man … or woman. There are the things you want, that you’d like to be … and there’s that which you finally settle for.”
“I never realized you were so bitter.”
He shook his head impatiently. “Not bitter, just everyday practical. Best you learn to face reality early.”
“Reality,” she echoed forlornly. “A poor word. What does it mean? How can you tell when you face it?”
“You are … right now. You just haven’t the guts to admit it.”
“Me? How?” There was genuine surprise in her tone. “In what way?”
“Betting your money … actually your life … on Maximilian. He can’t win. People of Mexico will never hold still for an outsider running their country. They’ll turn the place inside out until they’re rid of him, along with all those backing him.”
“Why? What does it matter who sits on the throne of any country? It’s the men who actually run the government that make the decisions.”
“No doubt, but they reflect the thinking of the man, or woman, at the head. And the Mexicans have had all the kings they can swallow. They’ve had a taste of what’s called representative government and they’ll fight until they get it back. Admitting to yourself that’s true when you don’t want to accept it is reality.”
He glanced at her. She was watching him closely, with an odd, soft light in her eyes, as if she were smiling, but not with her lips.
“You think a lot of the Mexican people, don’t you?”
“Always have. Learned to know and understand them years ago. Someday, when things settle down, I’d like to move to Mexico, build myself a ranch over Chihuahua way … good cattle country in some parts.”
Adam twisted, braced himself with one hand on the cantle, and looked back over the train. It was strung out in an almost perfectly straight line, with the wagons closely bunched under their canopy of thin dust. Bernal, he noticed, was on the seat beside Bill Gannon, evidently taking some relief from the saddle.
“I see why you’re so determined to get your cargo to Juárez,” Angela said. “You might say you have a reason for seeing him regain power.”
“I only said I’d like to have a ranch there,” Adam replied, resuming his position. “Not much prospect of it ever happening. What about you? If Maximilian loses out, what will you do?”
“I’ve not thought that far ahead. We’ll lose our land … our home, of course. The new government will confiscate everything owned by those who support Maximilian.”
“That’s not all they’ll do,” Rait said quietly, “if I’m any judge of how the Mexican people feel.”
“I realize that. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t thought about it … but everything’s a risk. Either you win or you lose … and if you lose your way of life, what’s left?”
“People of the South … the Confederacy … are facing that right now. They’ll go on living, try to make new way of life. What else is there to do?”
“At least they won’t be stood before a wall and shot.”
He grinned at her. “Best way to avoid that is change horses while there’s still time.”
“Like the old saying about rats deserting a sinking ship. Only how can you be sure the ship’s sinking?”
“So we’re back to facing reality. You should be convinced. Juárez gets stronger every day, and when your friend Napoleon pulls out his army, Maximilian’s government will blow sky high.”
She nodded. “It is known that your President Lincoln and Benito Juárez are sympatico. Will he help the Juáristas now that your war is over?”
“I expect he’d like to.”
“I’ve heard it said that Juárez copies everything he does from Lincoln … even to wearing a silk hat.”
“Could be. But I’m afraid Juárez won’t get much help from him. He’s got problems of his own.”
A shout of laughter erupted from the train. Adam looked over his shoulder. Bernal was now riding on the second wagon, sitting atop the cargo. Several teamsters, taking their break from driving, were gathered around him. Gannon’s relief driver, Ben Tipton, had assumed the leathers of the lead team. Where Bill was Rait could not tell.
“Your general seems to be quite a yarn spinner,” Adam said, turning back.
“As are most soldiers.”
Rait cast an eye at the sun. “Known him long?”
“Oh, I’ve seen him around the palace, off and on, for three or four years. He’s a pure-blooded Spaniard, from the San Luis Potosi country.”
“Got connections with the high-ups, I take it.”
“Not really. He’s a professional soldier … and not very happy, I’m afraid, with this particular assignment.”
“It hasn’t prevented his carrying it out,” Adam said dryly. He was thinking of Hanover, and Escobar, and the sentry at Jonesburg.
Angela brushed at her face. “I don’t condone what he did … or didn’t do … and I’m not always aware of his actions. But, as I’ve said, he’s a professional and he does what he must.”
“If I get the chance, I’ll turn him over to the law for murder,” Rait said, again glancing at the sun. Abruptly he turned, cupped his hands to his lips. “Whip up! Getting late!”
“What about me?” Angela asked. “Will you hand me over to your law, too?”
“Why not? You’re a part of it, aren’t you?”
“I guess so. But murder was no part of the bargain. I thought …”
She was far from a woman of steel in that moment, Adam thought, looking at her. The remoteness had vanished and there was a loneliness about her. But for him it changed nothing.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said, “and pays for them. It’s a rule nobody ever gets around. The worst of it is that the mistakes we make never stop haunting us … until something happens to wipe them out.”
“Like being stood up before a firing squad?”
“That’s what I mean. You got into this thing because it all sounded exciting, maybe romantic. It was your big chance to become a hero … heroine … your name on everybody’s lips. A new Joan of Arc and all that.”
As his tone became progressively harsh, she turned to him, frowning. Her lips pulled into a firm line.
“It was all to be a great adventure … only you overlooked the dirty side of it … and you forgot to ask yourself who was right and who was wrong. Now you’re having second thoughts and wishing you were out of it, that you’d never started—”
“No!” she cried, pulling up abruptly, stiff and outraged. “You’re … you’re …”
Whatever she intended to say was left unfinished, for jus
t as suddenly, she whirled and spurred away.
Adam watched her cut back toward the rear of the train. Her unexpected flight had startled him, taken him unawares, and then he guessed he had it coming; he had been rough with her—but then, she deserved it.
Once more he glanced to the sky; the sun would be down within the hour. He was still prodded by a need to keep rolling, put as much land between the train and Zeb Cook as possible, but horseflesh had its limit, and there was harness that needed repairing. He began to look for a suitable campsite, decided on a broad plain a quarter mile to the south.
He rode on ahead, reached the flat, and gave the signal to circle in for the night. Bernal, now riding on the last wagon, dropped to the ground and mounted his trailing horse. Sancho swung the chuck wagon off to one side, climbed down with an old man’s stiffness, shouted something to the driver handling the supply rig.
Adam Rait waited until all had come to a halt, then rode the black to where the wrangler was stringing his rope corral and turned the horse over to him. Moving into the center of the circle formed by the freighters, he stood for a moment enjoying the rank, blending odors of rabbitbrush, dust, and trampled creosote bush, and then called off the names of the four men who were to take the first turn as sentries. He started to move on, paused.
The sentries showed no intention of assuming their positions. Angry, he swung his attention to where the teamsters had gathered around Bill Gannon.
“Cushman … Sims … Fouche … Lester!” he repeated the names. “Get out where you belong!”
Gannon advanced a few paces into the clearing. The crew followed slowly. Sancho hesitated, turned to watch. Farther over Angela and Hernando Bernal, still in their saddles, looked on in silence.
“Simmer down, Rait,” Gannon said. “We’re aiming to talk a bit.”
Rigid, nerves taut as piano wire, Adam waited. He had no idea what the trouble might be, but far back in his mind something told him that Bernal was at the bottom of it.
Bill Gannon came to a stop a wagon length away. “Me and the boys,” he said, his broad face flushed and belligerent, “have been doing some thinking …”
The teamster hesitated. Adam remained silent. Malachi Lee cleared his throat noisily. “Hell’s afire, Bill. Get on with it,” he said in a dry, dissatisfied way. Gannon nodded. He hitched at his gun belt. “Like I told you, we been doing some thinking. We’ve decided to sell out to the general.”
Chapter Twenty
Temper flared through Rait. Now he knew what Hernando Bernal had been up to—riding the wagons, talking to the crew, laughing, persuading them to his way of thinking … and Angela. He flung an angry glance to her. She had been a part of it, keeping him occupied while the Mexican general got himself in solid with the men. Adam saw her turn, say something to the officer, and then lower her head. He cut back to Gannon and the teamsters.
“You’ve decided?” he repeated softly.
“That we have. Took us a count. About every man was for it first time around. Them that wasn’t come over when we done it again.”
Adam restrained himself with difficulty as the urge to rush forward, smash his fists into Gannon’s smirking face surged through him. He stood silent, allowed the anger to pass, his hard gaze raking the men slowly.
“What the hell’s this all about?” he asked finally.
Ed Vernon stepped up beside Gannon. “Maybe Bill here didn’t handle this thing just right, Cap’n. What he was meaning to tell you is that we been listening to General Bernal, and he’s offering us a better deal. We figured it’d be smart to take it.”
Rait’s laugh was a harsh sound. “Better deal! Anything he’d offer you’d come up short.”
“He’s willing to pay fifty thousand for the cargo. Ten thousand more’n we’re getting.”
“And we won’t be freighting it clear to Juárez City,” Gannon added. “All we’ve got to do is head straight for the border. He’s got drivers who’ll take over when we get there.”
Adam stared at the men incredulously. “What kind of damned fools are you?”
“For ten thousand more gold—” Gannon began.
“You’ll never see it … or any part of the rest you’ve been promised.”
“How do you know?” Bill Gannon demanded. “You got some proof Bernal ain’t on the square … and that the Juárez bunch is?”
“I know you can’t trust Bernal. He was sent up here to get our cargo, one way or another. He killed Hanover, or had it done, when he got nowhere with him. Figured it would be easier to deal with me.”
“He told us he never got no chance to talk to you. Said you cooked up a sale with Escobar before he could make an offer. That right?”
“You were there,” Adam said. “But it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d never have sold to him anyway … and neither would Kurt Hanover if he’d been alive.”
“Why wouldn’t you? Got some big reason?”
“The people Bernal represents have no right to be in Mexico. I’ll have nothing to do with keeping them there.”
Bill Gannon laughed. “Hear that, boys? He don’t like the general’s friends … so it costs us ten thousand dollars in gold. And a couple extra weeks on them hard tails.”
“Hell with that!” Red Lester shouted. “I don’t give a hoot who’s running Mexico. I’m just looking to get paid.”
He’d made a mistake taking the men in as partners at the beginning, Adam realized. It would have been better to wait until delivery was made and then divide the payment into equal shares. But at the time it seemed the best thing to do.
“Did you stop to figure what your cut of ten thousand will be … if you get it?” he said, trying to reason. “Less than five hundred apiece.”
“Looks plenty big to me,” Eli Jones said, biting a corner off his tobacco plug. “Man can do a lot with that much cash.”
“And what about the deal we made with Escobar … the Juáristas? We took their money … and we gave Escobar our word … a promise … one they’ll be relying on. You going back on that?”
“You fretting over a piddling two thousand? Hell, we’ll give it back,” Gannon said. “You got most of it left, anyway. Reckon we can afford to make up what’s been spent.”
“What about your word?”
“Ain’t worrying none about that. Nobody’s going to expect us to keep it when we give it to an outlaw … a greaser at that.”
“But you’ll take the word of Bernal. You don’t make sense, Bill. None of you do,” Rait added, looking at the men.
“We was hoping you’d see it our way,” Darby Sims said, shaking his head. “Money means a lot. Most of us ain’t never had much more’n the price of a drink in our pockets … and plenty of times we ain’t had that.”
“Then you’d better listen to me,” Adam broke in. “With Bernal you’ll lose it all. You’ll never get paid a cent! Juárez will pay off. I’ll stake my life on it. And you’re forgetting something else … Zeb Cook.”
Gannon spat, cocked his head to one side. “What about him?”
“Long as we keep going the direction we are, we’re putting distance between us and his outfit. You swing due south and you’ll make it easy for him to catch up.”
Gannon snorted. “What makes you think he’s still trailing us?”
“What makes you think he’s not?”
A long minute of silence followed. Gannon shrugged. “Ain’t afeard of that. We keep rolling we’ll make the border before that can happen.”
“Another fool statement,” Rait snapped. “You think you can outrun a troop of cavalry? Use your head!”
“The big reason we was hoping you’d see things our way,” Rufus Moore said, taking up where Sims had left off, “we need you to keep bossing things.”
“Why should I?”
“’Cause you got a right to be in on it,” Rufus said. “Maybe m
ore’n the rest of us.”
“Why didn’t you think of that earlier and give me a chance to talk with Bernal?”
“Well, you said we was all pardners, sharing equal and all that. And there wasn’t time to do nothing … not with you pushing us hard and the general saying we ought to be turning south if we aimed to take him up. So we voted and agreed. If you want, we’ll do our voting again.”
Adam shook his head wearily. “The way you’ve made up your minds, I don’t figure it would change anything … and I can’t make you see that it’s a mistake.”
“Ain’t nothing changing our minds,” Bill Gannon said. “Now, you aiming to stay with us? We’re willing to let you run things, long as you do what we want.”
“Turn south for the border?”
“That’s it. You’ll get your share when we’re paid off. And we’ll make up the difference so’s you can trot that two thousand back to your friend in Juárez City, when it’s all done. Take it or leave it.”
Adam knew it was hopeless to argue. Teamsters were a hardheaded lot, and all they could see was the extra $10,000 in gold promised them by Hernando Bernal. They’d never see it … or any of the rest, he was certain.
But it was a long way to the border, and perhaps he had an ace in the hole. Gannon and the others seemed to have forgotten Joe Denver and Felipe. And chances were Bernal was totally unaware of their absence. If he could get in touch with Denver—assuming he still lived—before he returned to the train, he could detour him on to Tupelo for help. With luck, they might rescue the wagons and their cargo before Hernando Bernal’s men took over.
“Seems I don’t have much choice,” he said. “It’s a mistake, but I’ll string along.”
Several of the teamsters yelled their approval. Bill Gannon, victorious, smiled broadly, extended his hand. “No hard feelings?”
Adam turned away, faced the teamsters. “All right, we’re doing it your way. It still means the horses need tending and chores done. I want all the wheel hubs checked for grease. We’ll have to roll fast if we aim to keep Cook off our backs.”
