Catlow (1963) (20 page)

"Hell," Bijah said, "he's right! This here's beginnin' the rainy period. Last of July, through August and September, it rains nearly every day. The trouble is, they're just local rains and may not reach us at all. If you've got any influence upstairs, Ben, you'd better pray. We're goin' to need that water before we make the Churupates."

The cloud mounted rapidly, and in the distance thunder rumbled. The far-off cloud was split by a streak of lightning. A faint, cool breeze stirred the desert, and the animals staggered on.

Bijah carried his derringer almost all the time now, ready in his hand so it could be used immediately. Twice Indians had appeared not far off.

Ben was scared, and he admitted it to himself. No gun--only a knife, and the Indians closing in. Once it dawned on the Seris that they were unarmed--and if they got closer they could see that--they would be upon them.

That distant peak of the Churupates seemed no closer. But the wind blew a cooling breath from off the mountains, and the horses perked up, and the mules too.

Thunder rolled continuously now, lightning flashed, and the wind blew harder. And then the rain came. It came with a rush, the dreaded culebra de agua, or water snake, which will flood villages, devastating the countryside. They scrambled across a dry wash and up the other side, and behind them came a rushing turmoil of water that filled the wash.

Holding in a tight bunch, they pushed on. Once they stopped to allow the animals to drink a little at one of the pools on the desert. The animals seemed to have gained new strength, but the lashing rain and roaring thunder wiped out everything but the storm itself and the driving necessity to go on.

For more than an hour the rain came in a veritable cloudburst. Then it eased off, although it continued for almost two hours more. Finally it eased away, leaving the desert drenched and cool. When the clouds cleared, the Churupates were just ahead.

Bijah Catlow had fallen behind, and Ben lagged behind with him. As the outlaws and their mule train crossed the hill that was the beginning of the Churupates, Ben rode out on one flank to push a mule back into the herd. He heard a clatter of hoofs and looked around to see Catlow disappearing up an arroyo, driving several of the mules ahead of him. He hesitated only a moment then wheeled his horse and rode after him.

He could have gone no more than a hundred yards when the arroyo branched, and the light was too dim to see tracks. Catlow and at least four mules had vanished. Cowan hesitated, chose the wrong arroyo and, after riding a short distance, started back. Bijah was waiting for him in the main arroyo when he reached it.

Only when he was abreast of him could Cowan see that Catlow was grinning. "Fooled, weren't you?" He chuckled. "I believe in a little insurance. The way our luck's been runnin', I don't trust that place up there."

They rode over the hill, then around a bluff. There, in a hollow among the hills of the Churupates was a ruined cabin and a small corral. At pasture in the hollow were the mules and horses awaiting them. But there was something more.

The last light of day showed the scene in the hollow, though against the far wall it was dark. In the center were the outlaws,, their hands lifted; around them and all around the hollow there must have been at least two hundred horsemen ... Mexican soldiers.

Instantly, Ben Cowan whipped the cuffs from his belt, and before Bijah could grasp the situation, snapped one around his wrist, the other around the pommel.

"What the hell!" Bijah burst out in a fury. "You damned Judas, you'd--"

"Shut up, you hot-headed fool!" Ben said quickly. "You're my prisoner--unless you'd rather rot in a Mexican jail, which you justly deserve."

Bijah started to open his mouth to speak again, then he closed it tight. After a minute, he said, "You damned fool," but he said it with affection.

Chapter
Twenty-Two.

"You understand, of course," General Armijo said coolly, "we need not let you have these prisoners?"

"I understand," Cowan replied. "Of course, they were my prisoners. I was bringing them in--and the treasure."

"So it seems--and, of course, we do have the treasure. Or most of it. You lost several mules, my scouts report."

"There was no opportunity to recover the treasure," Ben Cowan replied, honestly enough. "And not much of it was lost."

Armijo stood up. "We have much to thank you for," he said quietly, "so the prisoners shall be yours. It was your warning that alerted us, and the treasure was recovered by you. Also, there is the matter of Captain Recalde, whose life you saved."

"It was little enough to do."

Armijo thrust out his hand. "Very well, senor. Vaya con dios!"

Ben Cowan went down the steps and into the street. His prisoners, roped together, stood waiting for him. The two Mexicans stood to one side, under separate guard.

He went to them. To the Mexican who had ridden with Bijah, he said, "I could do nothing for you, although I tried. Nor for you," he said to the other. "You are Mexican nationals, and I had no claim upon you as prisoners."

Pancho shrugged. "It is nothing, senor. It is the way of fortune. The Army or prison, does it matter?" He smiled. "I think it will be the Army. I am a good soldier, and the General, he knows this. He will say much, there will be the guardhouse, but then I shall be a soldier again. You will see."

Ben Cowan checked his pockets for money. Little enough was left. "I'm taking you boys back on the stage," he said to the men, "but all I can do is pay your fare to Tucson. If you eat, you'll have to feed yourselves."

"I'm wearin' a money belt," Bijah said, "an' you might as well help yourself. What's the fare by stage?"

"Ten dollars per head, from here."

"I'll pay my own way. If I'm headin' for jail I might as well go in style."

They could see the church at Fronteras for some time before they reached the town. The church was built on the very brow of a hill, with the town scattered around it, and the houses-- most of them ruined adobes--were built along the side of the hill.

When the stage rolled into town, Ben Cowan stepped down and looked around carefully. The first person he saw was Rosita Calderon.

On this day it was a black horse she rode, an animal as fine as the brown. Her white buckskin skirt was draped over its side. Her yellow silk blouse showed off her olive skin, and her black hair and eyes to striking effect.

"How did you get here?" he asked, startled by her unexpected appearance.

"We have a ranch near Fronteras, and I came north with my father. It is much faster by carriage, and on the main trail."

The cramped prisoners had slowly been unloading from the stagecoach. All wore handcuffs.

"If we can be of assistance, my vaqueros are nearby," Rosita said.

"Thanks, no. All we want to do is eat and keep rolling."

Her eyes were enigmatic. "You leave Mexico, then?"

"I must take them back."

"I--we shall be sorry to see you go. You have many friends in Sonora."

He looked up at her. "It is time for me to go. If I were to remain, I might forget that I am only a man with a horse and a gun."

"My ancestor," she said quietly, "who first came to Mexico, came with Cortez. He was only a man with a horse and a sword ... he founded a family."

Ben hesitated, for he was a man of few words, and unaccustomed to women. "I am a gringo, he said, "and the badge I wear is all I have."

"In New Mexico," Rosita said gently, "I have a cousin, whose name was Drusilla Alvarado. She married a gringo who wore a badge ... she is very happy, senor."

Ben Cowan looked down at his boot toes. He looked up the street and down the street, and then he looked up at her, and thought nobody had ever lived who was so beautiful. He said, "I'll come back."

He turned quickly toward the restaurant, then stopped and looked around. "And I won't be gone long!"

He led them all inside and seated them and ordered bull beef for them, with frijoles and tortillas and plenty of coffee. He had no appetite himself. He just sat there staring out of the window.

Bijah Catlow looked at him. "Ben, I swear I never saw the like. The most beautiful girl in Sonora, an' you almost muffed it! I'd a notion to slug you!"

"Shut up," Ben said, politely.

When he had herded them out to the waiting stage he felt for the derringer. That hideaway gun he had taken from Bijah was the only weapon he had ... but he would need no other for these men as long as he was in Mexico. They all knew what would happen if they escaped in Mexico, and were captured again.

They were handcuffed two by two except for Bijah, and on him Ben had leg irons as well. Bijah was rather proud of them and kept showing them off. "Figures I'm a dangerous man," he would say, grinning. "Either that, or mighty fast afoot."

It might have been the last thing he ever said. He said it to a girl and her mother who were also waiting for the stage, and when he said it he was not looking around. That was why he did not see the man standing on the corner some fifty feet away.

"I told you," the cold voice cut in, "that I'd choose the time."

Bijah turned around and looked at Miller, who was standing there with a gun in his hand, and he was smiling.

If Miller saw the girl on the horse who rode slowly down the street toward them, he paid no attention. She was a stranger, and he had no reason to think of her.

Ben Cowan stepped out on the street, and Miller had reason to think of him, but Ben wore no gun-belt, and there was no gun tucked into his waistband. Ben thought of the derringer in his pocket, useless at the distance, and for the first time he knew what despair was. He had been frightened in his time, but he had never known despair; but he knew the sort of man he faced, and Bijah was in irons and helpless, and so was he, without a gun.

Miller knew it. "You too, Marshal? Well, why not?"

Rosita Calderon had grown up on a cow ranch, and the horse she rode was a good cutting horse that was a fast starter. She touched him with a spur and he lunged into a dead run from a walking start. His powerful haunches seemed to squat and he was off, charging like a bullet.

Miller saw her, but his attention was concentrated on the men before him. If he thought anything, it was only that she was somebody trying to get out of the way.

"Ben!"

At the cry, Miller's eyes turned briefly. Ben reached up and snared the flying, shining object that came spinning toward him. He caught it in mid-air, as he had caught many a gun doing the border shift, and the .44 Colt struck his palm solidly, his fingers closing around it. He saw the startled fear in Miller's eyes, and saw flame burst from the muzzle of Millers gun, and then Ben Cowan was walking in firing. He must, at all costs, keep Miller's gun on him. Not a shot must be fired at Catlow, who could not fight back.

Miller was a cornered wolf. He felt a bullet smash his hip and he went down; felt a bullet whiff past his head. He took dead aim and saw dust leap from Ben Cowan's jacket.

Then he felt a violent blow on the skull and he fell back against the porch post, to which he clung, a blazing light in his brain. Squinting his eye, he lifted the gun and felt something smash into his chest, drawing a clear thread of pain through him. His gun hammered into the dust, and he watched the tiny spurts of dust leap from the street in front of him. He kept on clinging to the post with one arm and holding the gun with the other, and he had no idea that he was dead.

Ben Cowan swayed on his feet, and a curious weakness in his knees made them give way. He fell forward, losing his grip on the silver-plated, ivory-handled gun.

For a long moment there was silence in the street, and then Bijah Catlow shuffled forward and, stooping, went into Ben Cowan's pocket for the keys to his irons. First he unfastened the handcuffs, then the leg irons. Then he took up the silver-mounted gun and holstered it.

When he looked up he looked into a Winchester in the hands of Rosita Calderon. It was aimed right between his eyes, and he knew she would shoot.

"Ma'am," he said, "you don't need that. We're goin' to fix this gent up, you an' me, and then we're all goin' over the border so he can turn us in."

He unpinned the badge from Cowan's chest. "I'll just wear this here and appoint myself deputy, so it'll all be official."

Ben Cowan was looking out of the window for a long time before he realized it. His eyes had opened on a sunlit vista; a lace curtain was stirring gently in the softest of breezes, and he had a feeling of tremendous comfort and complete lassitude such as he had never known before.

The bed was the biggest bed he had ever slept in, and it was the first time he had ever looked out a window with lace curtains.

When he had been lying there for some time watching horses playing on the green field, the oddity of it began to worry him. What could he be doing in such a place? What had happened to him?

Behind him a door opened and when he turned his head he looked into a pair of wide, startled black eyes. He heard an astonished squeal and then the middle-aged Mexican woman was running away, calling to someone.

When he looked around again at the sound of footsteps, he looked into the eyes of Rosita Calderon.