He was grinning, showing his bad teeth, that one eye crossing so severely it appeared fascinated with the tip of his beaklike nose.
“Baja Jack, you old devil!” Yeats called, looking at the most recent newcomers but keeping his Russian aimed at Prophet. “Lookee here what the cat dragged in, fellas! You got somethin’ for us, Jack? We been expectin’ you, you old mestizo!”
Jack chuckled, his toothy smile in place. “Just what the doctor ordered, Major! Just what the doctor ordered! As for that fella there . . .” Jack chuckled again and wagged his head, like a father with a child who’d proven an exercise in frustration. “Don’t mind him. He’s a loco gringo friend of mine. He’s with me. Both of these fellas are!”
Jack stopped his horse just beyond the ragged circle of men bearing down on Lou and Colter with rifles and pistols. Jack’s smile became a glare when he peered down at Prophet but his glowing smile was back when he turned again to Yeats, chuckling nervously.
“He’s with you?” Yeats asked, incredulous.
“Sure enough,” Jack said. “I didn’t have nothin’ to do with him ridin’ in here all blood ’n’ thunder—I’d like to make that clear!”
“What in hell does he think he’s doin’?” asked the dark-haired man standing beside Yeats and who Prophet assumed was Yeats’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Will-John Rhodes. Rhodes looked older than Prophet had imagined. But then, so did Yeats, which was understandable, since all the stories about them were a good twenty years old and more.
They’d been down here a long time.
Prophet glanced down at the girl cowering on her hands and knees, her forehead pressed against the ground, then shot a glare at Yeats. “What the hell were you doin’ to this poor girl here, Yeats? Usin’ her for target practice? I don’t know where you come from, but where I come from . . .”
“Where the hell do you come from?” Yeats slowly lowered the Russian, scowling skeptically at the big gringo. “You tend to go easy on your vowels and roll your consonants. . . like a Southern man.”
He’d said those last two words with none-too-vague accusing.
Chapter 34
Prophet’s heart gave a little hiccup.
According to what he’d heard, the Mad Major had ridden for the Union though he’d taken no part in the Civil War. At least, not back East.
He’d been in Arizona and California during the War of Northern Aggression, but he’d still worn the blue uniform of a federal soldier, all right. Prophet’s having ridden for the Confederacy was likely reason enough for this old devil to kill him.
There was no denying who he was, though.
“I was a reb, born and bred in Georgia. But the war’s over, Yeats. You might not have heard down here.” Prophet glanced at the girl. “I was just lookin’ out for this poor little ole gal here’s, all. I killed those men because it was either them or me, and I reckon I tend to act before I think things through. Been accused of the same more often than I like to admit.”
The girl glanced up at him in bafflement, tears streaming down her plump, coffee-colored cheeks.
“But even if I had thought it through, honey,” Prophet told the girl, “I’d likely have done the same damn thing.”
“The Old Southern gentleman, that it?” asked Yeats.
Prophet shrugged. “Well, I never been accused of bein’ a gentleman before, but I am from the South so I reckon you’re half-right, anyways.”
Yeats studied him skeptically. Then he opened his mouth and threw his head back, laughing. He turned to Baja Jack. “Where in the hell did you find him, Jack? I’ll be damned if I don’t like him, despite his interfering in my little open-air parlor game.”
“Parlor game?” Prophet said, glancing at the terrified girl again and then at the dead men lying beyond her.
“That’s what I call it. A parlor game,” Yeats said with challenge in his Irish brogue. “Folks who rub my fur in the wrong direction become my playthings. They all know it, but they tend to rub my fur in the wrong direction, anyway.
“That dead man over yonder is . . . er, was . . . one of my men. He was caught smoking the magic elixir and frolicking with that whore there, little Elegra, when he was supposed to be on guard duty. That’s what happens to men and whores who cross me. They get to run across the yard, and I get to use them for target practice. If they can make it to the wall, they’re free. If they can’t make it to the wall . . . well”—the Mad Major chuckled diabolically—“then they’re dragged down to the sea and thrown to the sharks off San Luis Point.”
Yeats set his right-hand pistol down on the rail before him. He plucked what appeared to be a cigarette from a tray on the rail and took a puff, drawing it deep into his lungs, his lumpy chest thickening behind his puffy-sleeved white silk tunic split low down his fleshy chest. He tipped his head back and blew the plume out over the yard and said, “Just like men, sharks gotta eat, too. And they don’t mind what they eat, even human trash. And for that I thank them mighty kindly indeed, ’cause there’s plenty of that to feed the seven seas!”
He grinned broadly and turned to Will-John Rhodes standing to his left and laughed exaggeratedly, with bizarre abandon. Prophet hadn’t thought the man’s line about the sharks had been all that funny, but maybe he just didn’t have the sense of humor Ciaran Yeats did.
Or maybe the laughter came from the weed the Mad Major was smoking, wrapped into that fat quirley. Lou glanced at the other men standing around him, and it occurred to him that, judging by the haziness of their eyes and the slackness of their jaws, half of them, too, were fogged up on the stuff.
When Yeats finally stopped laughing, he took another long, pensive puff off his quirley, blew the smoke out into the yard again, and stared coolly down at Prophet. “Tell me again if you already told me, Jack—who’s your friend?”
“His name’s Prophet. Lou Prophet. Right capable fella. Why, he held off nearly an entire bunch of banditos his ownself. You know that big half-Pima, Gato? Bandito?”
“Ah yes, Gato, that scurvy vermin. Yes, I know of him.”
“Lou an’ him went head-to-head, hand-to-hand, face-to-face. Mano a mano!” Jack laughed. “Guess who won?”
Yeats frowned skeptically. “This man? The rebel?”
“You got it.”
Yeats turned to Jack. “Gato is dead.” He said it like a statement he was testing out to hear how it sounded.
“Sure as the summer days is long!” crowed Baja Jack, beaming at Prophet.
A collective mutter arose from the crowd.
The girl still on her knees beside Prophet looked up at him, frowning, and said softly in Spanish, “You killed Gato, señor?”
“I reckon so, señorita, though I didn’t get the import at the time. I was just trying to keep my neck from bein’ broke’s, all.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Yeats said, casting his own marveling gaze at Prophet. “I reckon I can’t very well kill the man who turned Gato toe-down—now, can I? At least, not tonight.”
Prophet gave a weak smile. He sort of felt like a condemned man whose death sentence had been commuted for a day.
Yeats looked at Colter. “Who’s the redhead?” He chuckled. “Good lord, boy, what the hell happened to your face?”
Prophet saw an angry flush rise into the redhead’s face. Colter flared his nostrils and, glaring up at Yeats, snapped, “Your mother—”
“Red!” Lou admonished him out of the side of his mouth.
Colter stopped. He drew a deep breath and said tautly, “An outlaw sheriff stamped me with the brand of his town to keep me out. I kicked him out with a cold shovel.”
“Ahh.” Yeats smiled. “A pair of tough gringos.” He laid the quirley in its tray atop the balcony rail and slowly clapped his hands. “I like that, I like that. I get tired of all the chili-chompers around here. It’s the only bad thing I’ve found so far about Mexico. Most of my original army died from syphilis long ago.”
The few americanos around Prophet chuckled while the M
exicans chuffed their displeasure at their mercurial leader’s slur.
“Tonight, I reckon we’d better celebrate,” Yeats said. “Come on, Jack! Bring that sweet-smellin’ locoweed of yours up here. Our shelves is runnin’ bare! Bring it up here, every last bag. I wanna look it over and have a good sniff. Come on, little man. Bring your frankincense and myrrh . . . and your two tough gringo amigos!”
With that, Yeats collected his two long-barreled pistols, dropped them into the holsters thonged on his thighs, glanced at his second-in-command, Lieutenant Will-John Rhodes, and both men disappeared through the arched doorway flanking the balcony.
Prophet looked at Colter, who said, “So that’s Yeats, eh?”
“He ain’t as big as I figured.”
“He’s big enough.”
“Yeah.”
Prophet glanced around at Yeats’s men. They were all returning to what they’d been doing before Prophet had ridden in, all fire and fury, to save the puta. They appeared content to leave the dead men where they lay. It was hard to tell the Americans from the Mexicans, for Yeats’s original deserters had been here a long time—the few that remained on this side of the sod. Some of the gang members returned to guard duty atop the wall, climbing wooden makeshift steps, while some went back to tending cook fires crackling and smoking here and there around the grounds.
There were also several Apache-like brush jacales along the stout walls, beneath which makeshift chairs sat or hammocks hung. The whole yard of the old bastion appeared to be one big camping party, with many half-dressed Mexican girls like little Elegra here, none looking much over sixteen, serving as Yeats’s men’s entertainment.
Elegra looked around then turned to Prophet. Relief shone in her eyes. “¡Por favor, señor!” She leaned toward him and planted a soft kiss on his cheek. “If you want, I will—”
Prophet pressed two fingers to her lips. “That there was all the thanks I need, little darlin’.”
Elegra rose to her feet and scampered off, running barefoot toward the bastion’s front gate, likely heading back down to the village by the sea. Her little red dress swished enticingly around her cool brown thighs.
Several little boys in white cotton tunics, cotton slacks, and rope-soled sandals had materialized out of seeming nowhere to grab the reins of Prophet’s and Colter’s horses and to lead them away. Other little boys, urchins who must work as swampers and hostlers around the bastion, were leading off the horses of Baja Jack and his men, as well. Pepe was freeing the locoweed-bearing canvas panniers from the tenajas on the burros’ backs, and handing the baskets over to several of Jack’s men.
Jack walked over to Lou and Colter, eyeing the urchins leading away their horses. “Don’t worry,” Jack assured them. “Your horses will be well cared for. Yeats pays the peon niños well to perform such tasks. The stables are outside the walls, to the west—a big mud jacal full of sweet hay and oats from the campesinos’ fields. Yeats knows the value of a well-tended horse. He himself rides only the finest Morgan palominos.”
He jerked his chin toward the big sprawling feat of Spanish masonry into which Ciaran Yeats and Will-John Rhodes had retreated. “Follow me. I don’t know about you two, but I could use a drink.”
He paused and narrowed one eye up at Prophet. “Oh, and, uh, I’d appreciate if you minded your manners, Lou. I’m a sucker for a red dress my ownself, but you damn near got us all shot.”
Colter glanced at Prophet with a wry snort. “Can’t take you anywhere.”
“Ah hell.”
“Come on, come on,” Jack said, ambling toward an open doorway. “I’m purely craving a drink. Yeats has the best mezcal you’ll taste anywhere. I think the peons make it down in the village.”
Prophet followed Jack and Colter, respectively, through the arched doorway, which was low enough that Lou had to remove his hat. Apparently, they’d built doors for men smaller than himself back when the Spaniards threw these digs together.
As they entered a dimly lit portico, Prophet saw white fragments in the pitted walls. Remembering what Jack had told him about how the Spaniards mixed the bones of dead slaves with the mortar, his innards gave a shudder.
He followed Jack and Colter up a narrow stairway, their boot thuds and spur chimes echoing in the cavernlike place. They passed through two large rooms that were barren of all furnishings but which stank from bird and rodent dung. Lou could hear birds flapping overhead, let in by the large open windows, and as they passed through another room with a massive crack in its floor and in one wall, letting in light from outside, he heard the screech and frenetic scuttling of what must have been a startled rat.
As he walked, boots clacking on the rough stones and avoiding the largest cracks, Lou looked around, wondering where Alejandra de la Paz was being housed. If she were still alive, that was. The idea that she might be dead hadn’t occurred to him until just now. The notion had been spawned by Yeats’s obvious savagery as displayed in the yard only a few minutes ago.
If Alejandra were anywhere near as headstrong as her lovely sister, Marisol, she might have done something to incur Yeats’s wrath, and ended up fed to the sharks off San Luis Point.
They dropped down a short stone stairway and turned into another room from which they’d heard voices echoing as they’d approached it. Now Prophet saw that the voices belonged to Yeats and Rhodes, who sat on heavy leather sofas angled before a fireplace in which small flames popped.
Prophet felt the hair on the back of his neck prick as he entered the devil’s lair.
Chapter 35
There were several others in the room—all young Mexican girls, it appeared. Two lay on the sofas on which Yeats and Rhodes sat, each girl curled beneath a thin quilt or a blanket, appearing to be asleep or at least dozing, oblivious as children.
Four other girls were scattered about the big, cavelike room, lounging on furniture—a fainting couch, a wing chair, and a deep brocade-upholstered chair with wooden arms scrolled in the shapes of a lion’s paws. None of the furniture in this parlorlike room appeared to be arranged with any particular strategy in mind.
There were other furnishings—bookcases nearly empty of books and bearing mostly only dust and soot from the fireplace. More leather sofas were shoved back against the walls. There were small tables nearly hidden by various paraphernalia that included food scraps, clay cups and plates, playing cards, coins, and guns of all makes and calibers, as well as knives and ammunition.
One long, heavy table that belonged in a dining room, surrounded by high-backed, hand-carved chairs, was cluttered with more dirty plates and cups, pots and pans, as well as what appeared to be the remains of one large roasted chicken moldering under a swarm of flies.
The room and another beyond it, which appeared to be an extension of it, possibly a makeshift kitchen, served as an apartment, Lou saw. It appeared to be the apartment of a wealthy but extremely lazy and spoiled young royal with a penchant for weaponry and the entertainment of young putas whom he kept pie-eyed on marijuana, the smoke of which hung like fog in the shadowy room.
The furnishings were all heavy and expensive-looking, including several large, gilt-framed oil paintings leaning against the walls or on the fireplace’s stone mantle. Sculptures were mounted on marble pedestals, some carelessly adorned with girls’ frilly underwear, including a pair of pink pantalets hanging from a conquistador’s raised obsidian sword. A camisa was draped around the conquistador’s shoulders, as though against a chill.
A big shaggy cinnamon bear rug sewn against red velvet was thrown over the arm of a sofa, and one of the girls reclined against it, fidgeting as though bored, her bare legs crossed at the ankles. She was puffing a corn-husk cigarette, which was no ordinary cigarette, while staring at the ceiling.
The room was lit by delicate, colored glass lamps arranged haphazardly on the tables, in recessed wall niches, and one on the fireplace mantle. Each owned a good coating of soot and spiderwebs.
None of the furniture was native to Balu
arte Santiago, of course. Whatever original furnishings the bastion had boasted would have long since turned to dust. Prophet had a keen feeling that the room’s current furnishings were the booty that Yeats and Rhodes had hauled out of the haciendas they’d been raiding up and down the Baja peninsula for the past twenty years.
Prophet’s eyes swept the room once more, noting that all the girls—slaves of one form or another, most likely, addicted to the locoweed by now—were Mexican. Again, he wondered where Alejandra might be . . . if not in the sea off San Luis Point.
Baja Jack ambled up to the clutter of furniture on which Yeats and Rhodes slouched, and looked around, scrubbing a thick little fist across his nose and chuckling self-effacingly. “Sure could use a little cuttin’ o’ the trail dust, Major. I was just tellin’ mi amigos Prophet and Farrow that your mezcal—”
Will-John Rhodes cut the little man off with: “Ahh—there it is. I can smell it from here!” He was looking over Baja Jack’s head toward Jack’s men just entering the room behind Lou and Colter, the dozen or so bulging panniers from the aparejos hanging down their chests from ropes looped around their necks.
Jack twisted a disgruntled look up at Prophet, running his hands up and down his shirt, showing his dire need for a drink.
“Come in, come in, gentlemen!” Yeats rose from the sofa, wobbling a little from the spice likely wafting through his head similar to the way its smoke was wafting through the room. “Bring it over to the table and let me have a look at it!”
The big man with a ponderous belly barely contained by the red sash he wore stumbled toward the table, tripping over a wrinkle in the thick rug that carpeted the room and which had probably also been hauled out of a don’s opulently furnished casa. He cursed and glared over his shoulder at the wrinkle. For a second, Lou thought the woolly-brained man was going to actually kick the rug.
Apparently thinking better of it, the Mad Major continued to the table to which Jack’s half-dozen marijuana-laden men carried their cargo. Yeats stood glaring at the mess on the table. He hardened his jaws, and his face swelled and turned red. “I thought I told you putas to clear off this table! What makes you think you can disobey my orders and get away with it when I treat you like princesses? Please tell me! I demand an answer to that very simple question!”
The Cost of Dying Page 26
