In the Rogue Blood (42 page)

Five blocks east of the prison Edward sat on a bench on the Calle Patoni where it intersected with the Avenida de Perdidos. His horse was hitched to a post and beside it a fully outfitted black stallion he’d readied for John. He wore his Spy Company uniform and had a second uniform in John’s saddlebags. Though the night was hazed with mist he could see the front of the prison from where he sat. He’d been waiting since shortly after nightfall and both street and pedestrian traffic had been light all evening. Finally, just as the street watchman passed him by, calling that it was ten o’clock and all bore well, the Castro woman’s carriage arrived at the prison. She and three associates alighted and crossed the wide sidewalk to the door beside the main gate. An officer appeared and there followed a prolonged discussion and Edward was certain they had been denied admission. Then the door opened wide and the señora’s party went inside and the door closed behind them.

He waited and passed the time thinking of how he and his brother would within the hour be riding hard to the north on the Querétaro road. Since his visit to John he’d thought of little else but their return to the other side of the Rio del Norte. He’d thought about his brother’s long yearning for a portion of timberland to call their own, about his desire to be a man of property, to be settled. And he was determined that John would have what he wanted. It was no more than he deserved. They’d settle in Texas, way up east, a good long ways from this murdering Mexico. Up hard by the Sabine someplace, where the pines grew thick as grass and high as the damn clouds. They’d buy themselves a goodly parcel of woodland and work it for timber and maybe operate their own sawmill as well, and why not? Like John said, it was work they’d been trained to since they were big enough to swing an ax. John was right—he’d always been right. As soon as they got clear of Mexico City and into the north country he’d tell him how much he’d come to favor the idea. Edward grinned in the amber streetlight as he fancied the exchange between them, as he imagined the moment when John would lament that they lacked the money to buy a timber tract of sufficient size. That’s when he’d show him the pokes of gold and silver he’d collected as his portion of the spoils with Dominguez’s company.
Just watch Johnny’s face
then,
by Jesus
.

“Las diez y media y todo sereno!” The watchman’s cry started him from his reverie. They’d been in there now for half-an-hour, which
seemed to him a lot longer than necessary. He was suddenly seized with a sense that something had gone wrong and now they were all of them held prisoner within.

Then the prison door swung open and here they all came out and he knew John was one of the three cloaked men. He stepped up onto his saddle and took up the black’s reins. The carriage was to come down the Calle Patoni and turn onto the Avenida de Perdidos and out of sight of the prison and there discharge John. His horse sensed his excitement and stamped and snorted and he patted its neck and told it to stand fast, Johnny would be here in just a minute, by God.

But now soldiers came running out of the prison and shooting broke out and several soldiers fell down and the others retreated into the prison and then the shooter was running down the Calle Patoni in the other direction as yellow tongues of fire blasted between the soldiers on the ground and the other two cloaked men and now all of them were down and more soldiers ran out and shot the two cloaked men many more times as the third one disappeared around the corner.

Edward put spurs to his mount and led the black behind him as he galloped up to the prison and several of the guards swung their weapons on him as he reined up, yelling, “Scott’s Guard! I’m a Scott’s Guard!”

“Hold fire!” a lieutenant shouted. “It’s one of ours, hold fire!” He turned to a soldier beside him and said, “Check that coach!”

Edward slid out of the saddle and went to the two cloaked men lying in spreading black blood on the sidewalk. One was on his back and was bearded and Edward bent and looked closely and saw that it was not his brother. The other was on his side and he pulled him over to see his face. The man was cleanshaved and showed a hole over one eye and another through his upper lip and neither was he John.

“Aint nobody in here, sir!” the soldier at the carriage called.

“Hufnagel! Reedy!” the lieutenant ordered. “Check that alley across the street! Johnson! Get down to the corner there and see can you spot him. Move!”

Edward looked after the soldier running to the corner. He turned to mount up and there stood the señora with her arm in the grip of a soldier and beside her the carriage driver had his hands up high. She was looking on Edward’s Spy Company uniform as upon some alien horror. She glared at him with a mix of confusion and disbelief and visibly surging fury. The soldier holding her was looking off across the street to where his fellows searched for the third man and Edward put a finger to his lips for the barest instant.

For the moment the cozen worked. The woman followed him with her eyes but held silent as he swung up into the saddle.

“What were you doing, sergeant?” the lieutenant called to him, grinning. “Looking to see did we kill em sufficient?”

Edward smiled back. “They pretty well dead enough, sir,” he said.

“Dont see nothin of him, sir!” the soldier named Johnson yelled from the corner. “Nought but a bunch a Meskins on the sidewalks. He musta run down around the next corner.”

“Shit!”
the lieutenant said through his teeth. “If he’s got friends in town we’ll never find the sonofabitch.”

“Mugroso
condenado?
” the señora suddenly cried out. “Eres de la compañía de traidores! La compañía de Dominguez!” She was struggling in the guard’s grasp as though she would lunge at Edward and batter him with her bare hands. “Maldito mentiroso!” She spat at him.

“Lordy,” a soldier said, “these Meskins sure aint got no love for you Spy Compny boys, do they? Even if you aint no damn Mexican.”

“Por qué?”
the woman shouted. “Why did you liars come to me? What was the purpose?
Tell
me!”

“What the hell she talking about?” the lieutenant said.

“Damn if I know, sir,” Edward said. “Woman’s loony, you ask me. Like the fella there said, this uniform makes lots of the locals crazy to see it.” He took up the black’s reins. “I got to get, sir. Got a report to deliver to General Scott and this here horse to Colonel Hitchcock. I was on my way to do it when I seen you-all shooting.”

“Why”
the señora cried. Her face was bright with tears. “What did you
want?
You and damned Dominguez, the filthy traitor! It was him with you that day, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t
it?”

The lieutenant looked quizzical. “Dominguez is your C.O., aint he?”

“Damn good man,” Edward said. “All these Meskins hate him cause he’s fighting for us. They’ll tell any lie about him.”

He chucked up his horse and rode off down the Calle Patoni and glanced back to see the woman speaking to the lieutenant and then he turned the corner where John had gone.

He ran down the Avenida Dolores with the pistol held under his cloak and wove through the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk and came to a
plaza where a band was playing to a festive crowd and the trees were hung with colorful paper lanterns. He turned onto a side street and strode past brightly lighted shops and cafes and spied now a dark alleyway and he entered it and paused to catch his breath. He listened hard for sounds of pursuit but heard none, only the clopping of horses and the rumble of wheels on the cobbled street and the laughter and song of evening revelers. The beard felt askew on his sweated face and he readjusted it as best he could by feel. He wondered where Edward was, if he knew what had happened, if he’d been close by and seen it.

On the busy street a few feet away the indifferent world passed by. The alley was dark and long, extending about sixty yards to the street bordering its far end. The sole illumination was an oily cast of yellow lamplight spilling from an open door midway down the alley where a line of horses was hitched to a long post and even at this distance he could hear a raucous din from within. Thinking it the wiser course to avoid the bright lights of the streets he made toward the door. Its clamor grew as he approached.

The alley reeked of piss and rot and the cobbles were slippery under his bootsoles. He tucked the pistol into his waistband and closed his cloak over it and stepped to the doorway and peered around the jamb. It was a tavern inside hazed blue-yellow in the smoky lamplight. A raucous crowd of men cheering and cursing and shouting bets was gathered around a small rectangular cockpit enclosed by wooden walls about three feet high. Through gaps between spectators he could see the cocks leaping and coming together again and again in a flurry of feathers and flash of spurs and beaks and flicks of blood. There was a row of tables along the wall to the left and a bar ran the length of the right side of the room and he could see the swinging-door front entrance at the other end of the long cantina. The air of the room touched his face like hot breath and carried on it the smells of smoke and sweat and spirits. He thought to have his first drink in weeks while he pondered his next move.

He eased through the door and skirted the crowd around the cockpit and went to the bar and ordered tequila from a cantinero with wavy hair so heavily pomaded it shone like black satin.

The cantinero poured tequila in a small clay cup and set it before him. “Dos reales,” he said.

Only now did he remember he was penniless. He patted his empty pockets and grinned abashedly at the bartender. “Bedamn if I aint a bit shy here.”

The cantinero sighed and shook his head and reached to retrieve the
cup but John snatched it up and drained it in a gulp and banged the empty vessel on the bar and grinned at him. The tequila burned its way to his belly in a wonderful rush.

The bartender scowled and muttered, “Hijo de la chigada,” and pulled away the cup and made an abrupt backhand gesture for John to remove himself.

“How bout another?” John said. “Otro más. Te lo pago mañana.”

“Quítate de aquí, carajo!” the bartender said, “Andale.”

“Uno más y me voy,” John said. “Por amistad, amigo.”

“Ya no te digo más,” the cantinero said, his face darkening. “Ya, vete!”

“Shit, boy, don’t beg the greasy sonofabitch.” He had not been aware of the American soldier standing a few feet to his right and leaning over a mug of beer on the bar, a sergeant with a white scar angling across one eye. “Aint no greaser gonna give us one on the house,” he said, “and it don’t matter a damn you can speak Mexican.” He snapped his fingers at the cantinero and jerked his thumb at John and said, “Give him one.”

The cantinero rapped his knuckles on the bar and turned his palm up for payment. With his fingertip the sergeant slid two coins away from the pile of specie before him and pushed it across to the cantinero who picked them up and gestured at the cup John had emptied and held his palm out again.

“Son of a bitch,” the sergeant muttered and slid another two reales toward him. The cantinero replaced the cup in front of John and filled it. John raised the drink to the sergeant and said, “Obliged,” and but sipped at it to make it last.

Now the cheering at the cockpit rose to a crescendo and a moment later came a piercing cock crow and the cheering abated amid curses and happy whoops and the crowd began to break up. One grinning gallero cradled his gamecock to his chest while the other disgustedly flung his dead bird against the wall and another man kicked it out the back door into the dark alley. Now John became aware that some of the excited talk was in English and he saw a handful of Yankee soldiers advancing on the bar to join the sergeant, some of them bragging about their winnings on the fight and some cursing the cowardly nature of the losing cock. All of them wore sidearms.

As they pressed in close against the bar one of them jostled John’s arm and some of his cup’s contents slung out and splashed on the countertop and splattered the soldier’s sleeve. The trooper turned a hard face to him and then saw that John was an American and his thick black handlebar
widened over his grin. “Sorry, friend. I’ll buy you another.”

The cantinero poured John’s cup full once again and John smiled and raised it to the handlebar in thanks and saw that the soldier was not grinning now but staring fixedly at his face. “Shitfire,” the handlebar said. “You boys lookee this here.”

The other troopers were joking and laughing and now turned to look at John and their smiles vanished too.

And John knew what they saw. He could feel now the false beard gone awry. He put his hand to his face and his fingers brushed the crusty proud flesh of the exposed brand on his cheek.

Well, hell
. He pulled off the beard and held it up with two fingers like something dead and tossed it and all eyes followed its arc over the bar and out of sight and then swung back to him.

The cantinero’s eyes were on his brand too and now he quickly removed himself from behind the bar and went out the front door. Other of the Mexicans now saw what was happening and hastened for the exits as the soldiers formed a loose half-circle in front of the branded boy.

“What we got here,” the sergeant growled, “is a fucken
deserter
.”

John tossed off the rest of his drink and let the cup fall to the floor and the soldiers flinched back a step as it shattered at his feet. He grinned at the lot of them.
About damn time
, he thought.
About damn time
. He heard Daddyjack’s laughter from somewhere in the outer dark and he pictured for an instant Maggie’s smiling face.

“What you got here, you sonofabitches,” he said, feeling his smile tight and fierce on his face, “is John Little come to give what ye got comin.”

He threw open his cloak and they saw his Mexican uniform and the cocked Colt already in his rising hand and John grinned hugely at the sagging look on the sergeant’s face as he pointed the pistol squarely in his eye and pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell on the empty chamber with a dull tick.

For one long moment the soldiers all stood gaping. Then John lashed the sergeant across the mouth with the pistol and teeth flew in a spray of blood.

And then they were on him.