Lando (1962) (14 page)

There was a place east of Matamoras where it looked like the border swung further south, and so would be nearer to us. We turned the herd that way, skirting a sort of lake or tidewater pool.

It was just shy of noon and we were within five or six miles of the border when they came at us.

It was about that time, just before they hit us, that I had my brain-storm. It came to me of a sudden and, saying nothing to anyone but the Tinker, I rode up to Gin.

"Look, you and pa take those two steers and you move out ahead. If we have to make a fight of it, we'll do it better without having to think of you."

"I can fight," pa said.

His looks shocked me, and he was coughing a lot and his forehead was wet with sweat. His cheeks were a sickly white, but I was sure he was carrying a lot of fever in him.

"Do like I say," I insisted. "You two light out and head for the border. If we have to, we'll make a fight of it and cover for you. With that money, you can help us out if we should get caught."

"If you aren't killed," pa said.

"I'm too durned ornery to die," I said.

"Anyway, we got to go back to Tennessee and talk to Caffrey, you and me together."

Gin convinced him, and they taken those two steers and drove them off ahead of the herd.

They hadn't been gone more than a few minutes when we saw that dust cloud come a-helling up the road after us. The Tinker and me, we just looked at each other, and then the lead began to come our way. I was sort of glad, for I'd not wish to start shooting at folks when I ain't sure of their plans.

That old Henry came up to my shoulder sweet and pretty, and my first shot taken a man right out of the saddle. At least, I think it was my shot.

We both fired, and then we turned tail and got away from there, racing past the herd like Jonas and Miguel were doing.

We started to swing the herd and in no time at all had them turned between us and those men after us. We tried to stampede them back into those fellows, but only a few of them started--the rest were too almighty confused.

All of us were shooting, riding and shooting, and then they cut around both sides of the herd at us and our horses were too blown to run. We made our fight right there.

Dropping off my horse, I swung him around and shot across the saddle. There were guns going off all around me, and I'd no time to be scared. his'Lando!" the Tinker shouted, and grabbed at me. "Ride and run!"

Both of us jumped for the saddle, and as we did so I saw a man wearing a black suit come out of that bunch. He had a shotgun in his hands, and as Jonas turned toward his horse he let him have both barrels.

Miguel was down, and now Jonas, and it needed no sawbones to tell me Jonas was dead. Before I could more than try a shot at that rider in the black suit, he was gone.

But not until I'd seen him.

It was Franklyn Deckrow. The Tinker had seen him, too.

We lit out. We were running all out when I felt my horse bunch up under me, and then he went head over heels into the sand, pitching me wide over his head.

Last I saw was the Tinker giving one wild glance my way, and then he was racing away.

From that look on his face, I was sure he figured me for a dead man.

Reaching out, I grabbed for my Henry, which had fallen from my hand. A boot came down hard on my knuckles, and when I looked up Antonio Herrara was looking down at me. And from the expression of those flat black eyes, I knew I'd bought myself some trouble.

It was going to be a long time before I saw Texas again ... if ever.

Chapter
Eight.

The bitter days edged slowly by, and weeks passed into years, and then the years were gone, and still I remained a prisoner.

By day I worked like the slave I'd become, and was fed like an animal, and by night I slept on a bed of filthy straw and dreamed of a day when I would be free.

Always I was alone, alone within the hollow shell of my mind, for outside the small world in which I lived with labor, sweat, and frightful heat, no one knew that I lived, nor was there anyone about me to whom I could talk.

The others with whom I worked were Indians---

Yaquis brought to this place from Sonora, men self-contained and bitter as I, yet knowing nothing of me, nor trusting anyone beyond their own small group.

A thousand times I planned escape, a thousand times the plans crumbled. Doors that seemed about to open for me remained closed, guards who showed weakness were replaced. My hands became curved to grip the handles of pick, shovel, or mattock. My shoulders bulged with muscle put there by swinging a heavy sledge. Naturally of great strength, each day of work made it greater, building roads, working in the mines, clearing mesquite-covered ground.

Sometimes alone in my rock-walled cell I thought back to that first day when, in a square adobe room, I was questioned by Herrara. My wrists bound cruelly tight, I stood before him.

He stood with his feet apart, his sombrero tipped back, and those flat black eyes looked into mine. He smiled then, showing even white teeth; he was a handsome man in a savage way.

"You put a gun upon me," he said, and struck me across the face with his quirt.

It was the beginning of pain.

"There is gold. Tell me where it is, and you may yet go free."

He lied ... he had no thought to let me go, only to see me suffer and die.

"The gold is gone. They took it with them."

"I think you lie," he said and, almost negligently, he lashed me again across the face with the quirt, and the lash cut deep. I tasted my blood upon my cut lips, and I knew the beginning of hatred.

That was the beginning of questioning, but only the beginning.

There was gold. He knew it and was hungry for it, as the others had been before him. The original commandant, whose name I never knew, had been his uncle. In the telling, the amount of gold supposedly hidden on the shore had grown to a vast amount.

To tell him was to die, and I lived to kill him, so I told him nothing. After each questioning I was taken to a cell and left there, and each time I feared I would die; but deep within me the days tempered a kind of steel I had not known was there.

Herrara I would remember, and another man, too. I would remember Franklyn Deckrow, who had betrayed us to them, and who had killed Jonas, his brother-in-law. It was something to live for.

And I would live. No matter what, I would survive so that these men might die.

No help could come to me, for they believed me dead. Jonas had fallen, and Miguel too, although he might have somehow gotten away. They had forced me to bury Jonas, but Miguel's body was nowhere around. I hoped for him. But the Tinker had looked back and seen me lying there, and I knew he believed me dead.

Suddenly, one night, I was moved. Out of a sound sleep I was shaken awake, jerked to my feet and led away. Herrara rode beside me.

"Your friends do not give up," he said, "and they have powerful friends in Mexico, so we must take you where you will never be found."

The place to which they took me was a ranch owned by an outlaw named Flores, an outlaw who raided Texas ranches for their stock and so was ignored by the law of the province.

Duty called Herrara away to the south, so the beatings ended, but I was put to work among the Yaqui slaves. Most of the Yaqui prisoners had been sent away to work in the humid south where they soon died. Only a few were kept in the north.

The work was preferable to the cell, and I gloried in my growing strength. We were fed corn and frijoles and good beef, all of which was cheap enough, and they wanted my strength for the work I could do.

A dozen times I tried to smuggle messages across the border. Twice they were found and I was beaten brutally.

"Tell me," Herrara said to me on one of his sudden visits, "tell me where is the gold and you shall have a horse and your freedom." But I did not tell.

Herrara had become powerful. The outlaws supported him and he protected them and derived income from their raids into Texas. Night after night men rode away from the Flores ranch and raided over the border, returning with cattle, horses, and women.

No other Mexican came to the ranch to visit, and I gathered the outlaws were hated by those who lived nearby, but they were people cut off from authority who could do nothing.

When I looked down at my hands, I saw them calloused and scarred, but powerful. My shoulders and arms were heavy with muscle, and my mind sharpened by endless observation and planning, was cunning as an animal's is cunning.

No day passed without its plan for escape, no possible opportunity went unnoticed by me.

Always my senses were alert for the moment.

Then came another Herrara visit. The heavy oaken door grated against the stone, and he stepped inside. He held a pistol and a heavy whip, the cat-o'-nine-tails which is used aboard ship.

Behind him in the doorway were two men with guns.

"It is the end," he said. "I shall wait no longer. Tonight you will tell me, for if you do not, these"

--he held up the whip--?w take out your eyes."

The cat hung from his hand by its stubby wooden handle, and from its end dangled nine strips of rawhide, each with a tip wrapped in wire. It was a whip that could cut a man to ribbons, or bite at his eyes, cutting them from his head in a bloody mess.

And in that moment I knew that I could no longer wait. I must kill him and be killed.

He moved toward me, and I remained where I was, crouched in the corner with one heel braced against the wall, ready to lunge at him. My thick forearms rested upon my knees, and I waited, watching him like the cornered animal I had become.

We were at a smaller ranch, half a mile from Las Cuevas, the headquarters of Flores. It was November 19, 1875. The date is one I shall never forget.

A mistake was made that night, and upon such mistakes do men's lives depend; by such mistakes are men's lives lost--or saved.

Outside my cell, beyond the walls about the ranch, beyond the border even, events had marched forward, and tonight men rode in darkness, moving along the cactus-lined trails.

As Herrara came toward me, he had his pistol ready, for he was a clever man and knew what must be in my mind. The whip was poised for a blow, but I was hard to get at, for the corner was a partial protection.

My tongue went to my lips. Within me burned a kind of cold fury, welling up from the deep hatreds that had grown within me, until nothing mattered but my hands upon his throat.

He would strike me. His bullet would tear into my flesh, and perhaps the bullets of those others in the doorway, but my hands must reach his throat.

These hands that only a day or so before had bent and twisted an iron horseshoe--^the hands must reach that throat and lock there. Surely, I would be killed, but surely I should kill him first.

He flipped the whip at me, but I did not move. He lifted the whip to strike downward, and he brought it down hard over my head and shoulders, but still I did not move. Suddenly his own anger burst within him, the hatred of me because I kept him from the wealth he wanted and the position it would buy, the hatred of me for holding out so long against him.

His lips curled from his teeth and the whip drew back for a mighty blow at my face. Those wire-twisted whipends would tear at my eyes.

His own hatred had mastered him--I saw it in his face.

Suddenly, from outside there was a crash of gunfire, the race of pounding hoofs, shrill Texas yells.

The men at the door wheeled and ran toward the court. Even Herrara was caught, gripped by shock in the middle of his blow. And in that instant I leaped.

My left hand gripped the gun-wrist, my right seized his throat, not a grip around the neck, but the far more deadly grip of the Adam's apple and the throat itself.

His gun exploded, but the muzzle had been turned aside, and the roar was lost in the concussions of the shots outside. I smashed him back bodily against the stone wall with stunning force. My right hand gripping his throat held him on tip-toes against the stone, and my other hand gripping his gun-wrist ground his knuckles against the roughness of the stone wall.

Brutally, I ground the flesh against the stone, rasping it back and forth until he struggled to scream and his fingers could no longer grip the gun.

I released my hold upon his throat and stepped back. He struck weakly at me with the cat, but then, my feet wide, I hit with my left fist, then with my right, rolling my shoulders for the power it gave. One fist struck his ribs, crushing them; the other his face.

His head bounced against the wall, and glassy-eyed he started to fall toward me. I struck him again, and when he fell forward that time I knew that he was dead.

Quickly, I stripped off his gun belt and picked his pistol from the floor.

The passage outside the door was empty, and I ran along it, turned down another, and was in the living quarters of the ranch house. A door stood open, as it had been left when the shooting called the men out, and I smashed through it.

The room was empty and still. My footsteps padded on the bare floor as I crossed to the gun case. Picking up a chair with one hand, I swung it and smashed the glass. I reached in for a shotgun and filled my pockets with shells.