Catch a Shooting Star jd edit 03 12 2012 html (37 page)

His friend waved his hand in the air, dismissing his question as he said quickly, “I’ll explain later.  I’ll go back and get the Mexican and meet you in the stable. Can you make it by yourself?”

Nodding, Travis conceded to let Tito recover El Diablo.  He left the house and for the first time, he saw the bodies strewn across the town.  His breath stopped in his throat before he asked anyone who would answer, “What the Hell went on here?”

He weaved through the mangled men and horses and made his way to the stable.  Stumbling to the door, he lifted the heavy bolt and threw open the door.  As the musty odor of the stable assaulted him, he heard her voice and felt her arms encircle his neck where she cried her joy that he had survived.  He kissed her soundly on the lips and then held her with all the strength that he had left.

When Tito returned with the unconscious body of El Diablo, Travis didn’t wait for him to drop it to the ground before he assailed him with question, “Alright, start explaining!”

Tito knew that his friend deserved an answer so he shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets before he drew in a long breath and said, “Well, you see son, there’s something that I haven’t told you about myself.  Something that you’re gonna find hard to believe.”

“I’m finding a lot of things about you hard to believe,” Travis accused, stepping closer to the older man.

Tito nodded in apology as he continued, “I’m sorry for that, Travis.  But, you see, it had to be handled this way.”

“What way?” Travis seethed at his friend.  “By having that Mexican attack me in the alley?  Was that your plan?  To get me out of the way so you can take all the glory of killing El Diablo yourself?”

Tito shook his head and stared at his boots incredulously before he asked, “Martinez?”

“I didn’t get his name, but I did find this on him,” Travis said as he pulled the blood-soaked watch from his shirt pocket.

Tito’s eyes widened when he recognized the watch that he had given the man who was supposed to meet him that afternoon, “What happened?”

“Like I said, he came up behind me and laid a knife to my neck and said that he was taking me out of his way.”

“Damn!” Tito swore.  “Why did he want you dead?”

“That’s what I want to know,” Travis said accusingly.  “He said that you put him up to it.”

“Me?” Tito said disbelievingly.  “I wanted him to keep an eye on you, make sure you didn’t get yourself into a situation where you would get hurt.  He wasn’t supposed to try to kill you.”

“Well, he damn near did just that.  If I hadn’t shot him in the hind leg, he’d have succeeded.”

“I swear, son,” Tito assured his friend.  “I didn’t tell him to do that.  I had no idea that he would turn on me.”

Travis nodded, knowing that Tito was speaking the truth and he clapped the large man’s shoulder before he said, “I know.  I guess he had his own reasons for wanting me dead.”

“I suppose he did,” Tito said as he looked at Savannah, who clutched her son to her breast in the corner of the stable.  Remembering the comments that Martinez had uttered about her, he realized why the man had wanted to rid himself of the man who held her heart.  He did not relay this knowledge to Travis for he knew that the man would hunt Martinez down and kill him and that was not what his friend needed to worry about right now.  Instead, he shuffled his feet before he said to his friend, “I assure you, Travis.  I had only your safety in mind and Martinez was not acting on my orders.”

“I know that, Tito,” Travis said with a wink at his friend.  For the first time, he realized that something was different about his friend, something that he could not figure out until he stared long and hard at Tito’s face and he asked after much pondering on the subject, “What’s different about you?”

With that question from his long-time friend and knowing that he should explain himself further, Tito stuck out his hand as if introducing himself for the first time and announced, “I guess I should tell you my real name.  Alberto Gonzales, at your service.”

“Alberto?” Travis repeated.  “And all this time, I thought your name was Tito Sanders.”

“It is.  Tito is short for Albertito, which is what my mother (rest her soul) used to call me.  And I took her last name.”

“Why did you change your name?” Travis asked while he looked into his friend’s eyes for an answer.

“I didn’t want anyone to know me.  I was under cover, as you know, so I kept my real identity a secret,” he explained with earnest.  When Travis opened his mouth to ask more questions, he waved them away and said in his normal growly voice, “You two stay here for the night while my men clean this town up.  Keep El Diablo out of sight, too.  They think he escaped and if they find out he’s holed up here with you, they’ll think you’re his accomplices and probably kill you first and ask questions later.  It’ll be safe for you to leave tomorrow.”

Agreeing with his argument but not quite understanding his motives, Travis nodded and allowed his friend to leave him alone with Savannah and her son.  Many questions burned in his mind, but they would have to wait until Tito was ready to reveal the answer to them.  He went to her and held her in his arms, chasing away the fears that he knew were haunting her at that moment.

Savannah let him embrace her, but she felt something in his mood that made her question him, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he hugged her again.  “Tito is hiding something and it’s gonna eat me up if I don’t find out what it is.”

She felt his body leave her, replaced by emptiness, but she did not protest.  Knowing that he would investigate further, she allowed him to leave her in the stable while he learned what his friend was keeping from him.

After tying El Diablo in more ropes than necessary to keep the unconscious man from escaping, Travis eased out the door of the stable.  Making sure he was not spotted, he ran across the dirt street to the house where his captive lived.  He slipped inside with no problem, the guards having been rounded up by Tito’s men and those men were too busy celebrating to notice him.  As he rounded the corner of the hallway, he heard Tito’s voice booming from the library and he followed it until he found his way back to the room where he had fought with El Diablo.

He stopped short at the door when he heard a female voice arguing with Tito.  He waited while he listened to the conversation inside the room.

“Diego escaped?” the woman asked, her sultry voice raising an octave when she said the last word.  “He left without me?”

“Afraid so, Maria,” Tito told her with no remorse in his voice.  “It seems he left you behind to take the brunt of the punishment.”

“And what punishment would that be?” her voice sounded seductive and alluring as if she was trying to talk him into letting her go.

“Well,” Tito said before he took a long pause and then continued, “Murder is a very serious offense.”

“Murder?” Maria spat as if the word was distasteful to her.  “Who was murdered and why do you think that I had anything to do with it?”

“Many people were murdered by El Diablo,” he said with a drawl.

“And who is this…El Diablo?”

“Diego Fernandez, that’s who.  Now, don’t tell me that you never knew what people were calling him,” Tito argued, his voice growing angry.

“Never,” she hissed.  “He was a gentle, loving man to me.  I never knew of his deeds beyond this house.”

But outside the room, Travis remembered what she had told him of the dastardly deeds of the man in question while in her drunken stupor and he laughed inwardly at her attempt to persuade Tito of her innocence. 

“What about his wife?” Tito asked suddenly and she caught her breath in surprise.  “What happened to Mrs. Fernandez?”

A pause impregnated the room before she answered defiantly, “She died.  Suddenly and tragically.”

“Is that what he told you or is that the story that you both made up to keep people from asking questions about her disappearance?” Tito accused.

“That is what he told me,” she replied, still standing her ground.

“And I suppose you had nothing to do with keeping her drugged and starved while telling her that her son had died?”

“How did you know about that?” she seethed without thinking of the consequences.

“So you did have a hand in it,” he said as if finding out the truth at that moment.

A defiant Maria barked her answer before her footsteps came toward the door where Travis was standing, “It was the only way, I tell you.  We had to get her out of the way.  To secure her fortune…”  She paused again before she continued as if the last statement had not been said, “And then, she somehow got away and ran out into the desert where she died, or so we thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was here,” Maria said, just beyond the doorway.  “The
gringa
bitch attacked me and then when I came to, the boy was gone.  I went to warn Diego and he was fighting with some strange man right here.  So, I ran to hide and then came back here hoping that he had won the fight.  But he was gone, so I began gathering his things.”

“He won’t need anything from here, I assure you,” Tito’s voice was harsh and unyielding.

“He will come back for me,” she assured him as she started out the door again.

“That is highly unlikely,” Tito said as his footsteps closed the distance between where he sat at the desk and the doorway where she stood.  “And he won’t need these.”

“Keep your hands off of these things, they belong to Diego,” she spat.

Travis could see her hand pop through the doorway and it clutched rolled up papers and what seemed like a bundle of letters.  The hand was violently pulled back into the room and he heard a rustling inside as the two fought for control of the papers. 

Finally, he heard her yelp in pain and Maria’s footsteps hurried out the door as she called back to Tito, “You will pay for this.”

“No, my dear,” Tito argued smoothly.  “You will.”

Travis pressed his back to the wall as she hurried past him and down the hallway, then he heard Tito yell at the empty doorway, “And don’t come back or I’ll have you arrested!”

Travis stepped into the room and saw that Tito was sitting at the desk again, drawing upon a fat cigar and smiling with victory.  He raised his eyes at Travis as if he had been expecting him and said, “There you are, my boy.”

“Just what was going on in here?” Travis asked, seeing the papers spread out on the desk in front of Tito.

“She was stealing,” was his only explanation.

Travis leaned his fists on the desk and looked Tito in the eyes and warned, “This time, I want the truth out of you, Tito.  No putting me off, no half-truths and no white lies.”

Tito chuckled before he sipped on a glass of brandy and then offered one to Travis.  Getting a negative for an answer, he took in a deep breath and said, “I suppose I owe that to you, son.”

He took a long draw on the cigar before he continued, “This house, all of this,” he paused to sip on the glass once more before he continued, “is mine.  It was my father’s until Diego’s father killed him and sent my mother and me away.”

He paused to tap the ashes on a silver tray before he continued again, “You see, my father and Diego’s father were partners.  They had a shipping business a long time ago, a very profitable one, I might add.  But when Señor Fernandez betrayed my father, he took everything that he owned.

“My mother and I had nothing.  We were afraid for our lives so we fled to Texas where she was born raised.  And when she died a few years later, I swore that I would have my revenge on the old man so I came back here to do just that.”

A cough interrupted his speech, and then he said, “But, when I got here, I found that Diego had taken over the operation after his father became ill.  Of course no one knew me ‘cause it had been years since we had fled and I’d grown—a bit.  I didn’t dare confront him at that time though.  I could see that he was surrounded by men who would give their lives for him.  So I went back to Texas and went back to work.”

Tito sipped on the brandy once more and waited while Travis digested all of the information before he finished, “You know the rest of the story.  When I tried to infiltrate his operation, he found out that I was a Ranger and that’s when he hit my house.  I had more than enough reason to come back here with my men and take my home back.  It was just coincidence, I guess, that you and Baby Girl had a notion to get revenge too.”

“You knew about what happened to me, so you used me to make sure the job was done,” Travis accused.

“No, son,” Tito argued.  “I knew that you would want to be the one to take him to stand trial.  If it was up to me, he’d be dead right now.  But, I honored your wishes.  He’s all yours.  Now, take him back with you and you and Baby Girl go have a wonderful life together.”

“It’s not that easy, Tito, and you know it.”

“I knew you’d think of it that way,” Tito said, looking at the cigar as if it was a beautiful woman.  “But, when you see what I have for you and Savannah, you’ll change your mind.”

“And what would that be?”

Tito spread his hands out across the desk and smiled triumphantly as he said, “These.  These are all you will need to find what El Diablo had wanted when he married Savannah.  You see, there was a secret stash of treasure on her father’s plantation and Fernandez wanted it, wanted it badly.  He wanted it so badly that he married her and got a son from her so that the plantation would stay in the family.”