Longhorn Country (7 page)

Rendell had been hit in the thigh, it seemed, one leg held stiff and straight, bloody rags roughly tied
over the wound. Clem Hardesty was lying in a
half-sitting
position, blood pouring from a bullet gouge across his face, and more blood pumping out of a chest wound.

Both men raised pain-filled and now fear-glazed eyes as Blaine cocked his rifle.

‘Time to pay the fiddler, boys.’

The Winchester blasted and Rendell jarred and screamed as a bullet smashed his good knee and left him huddled and whimpering against his rock.

The Winchester crashed again and Hardesty jerked and cried out as a bullet shattered his right hip.

Blaine climbed down carefully and stood over the sobbing, bloody men. He set his rifle on a rock at his head level, picked up the men’s guns and tossed them away to clatter amongst the boulders.

Then he squatted between the two wounded,
terrified
killers, looking from one to the other as he drew his hunting blade from its fringed sheath.

‘Who’s first?’ he asked grimly.

Morgan O’Day stepped out on to the porch, watching the scene down by the corrals. He sucked on a new cherrywood pipe and would be glad when the bowl had burned-in to his satisfaction.

Through the cloud of aromatic smoke he puffed, he saw Alamo talking animatedly with Lucas who had happened to be down at the corrals, tallying the remuda so the wrangler could decide which mounts would go with the trail herd.

Morgan had noticed from his office that Lucas seemed agitated and he had known Alamo long enough to recognize rising anger in the trail boss by the set of his body. O’Day spat and called for Lucas and Alamo to come up to the porch.

‘Trouble?’ he asked as Alamo Ames stomped into the shade followed more slowly by Lucas, who looked deep in thought, carrying his ever-present notepads.
‘Some high-riders busted the mavericks last night, stampeded ’em through the camp – Blaine’s gone after ’em so I need a couple men to help me
roundup
the steers.’

‘Blaine oughta had more sense,’ Lucas snapped, quick to put another black mark against the breed.

Alamo said quietly, ‘It was Hardesty and Rendell.’

‘Now there’s a pair,’ allowed Morgan, his face tight. ‘You shoulda stopped Blaine – I oughta send someone after him.’ It was just talk and he knew the others knew it: Blaine would do as he pleased, specially with a sighting of the men who had almost killed him. ‘But we’ve just had word that the
meat-packing
houses won’t send their agents down to our railhead from now on.’

Lucas snapped his head up. ‘Damn! I knew it!They were hinting at it last time, sayin’ it was too far to come, just for our longhorns. They don’t think much of ’em.’

‘Longhorn beef’s good enough for the Army,’
bristled
Morgan. ‘But, it’s the distance and our railhead only bein’ on a spur-track: facilities are pretty rough. The new railhead at San Antone’s opened, links directly with the big tracks to the Gulf Coast. They’ll meet us there from now on.’

‘They want us to drive to
San Antone
!’ asked Lucas, outraged. ‘Hell’s teeth, that’s gonna cost a pretty penny….’

‘Which will be reflected in our asking price.’

‘Sure – but will they pay our price?’

‘Reckon so – we’ll take bigger herds, drive just once a year. It’ll work out in the end.’

Alamo shrugged. ‘Ten thousand or thirty thousand won’t make no difference to me long as I have enough men.’

‘You will….’

Lucas suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘Listen, Pa – we can boost our quality and practically guarantee top dollar.’

‘You can’t do that overnight, boy!’

Lucas flushed –
when the hell was the Old Man going to quit calling him ‘boy’? Damnit, he was pushing thirty and still he
…

Aloud he said, ‘We’re pushin’ it some to fill those Army contracts, Pa.’

‘Which is why I sent Alamo after them mavericks.’

‘Yeah, well, when I was in town seeing Calvin Eastbrook about the new timber leases, he told me that Don Miguel Santiago was selling his place down at San Nicolas.’

Morgan frowned. ‘That’s near Monterrey, ain’t it?’

Alamo looked at his boss but Lucas went on quickly.

‘Yeah, Pa – Calvin heard on the quiet the old
hidalgo
is dyin’ and aimed to spread his
rancho
amongst his family, but none of ’em are much
interested
in the workin’ side of things: all they want is cold hard cash. So to spite ’em, he’s sellin’ up at bargain prices…. We could pick us up some prime breeding stock, Pa, as well as some to sell.’

Alamo could see Morgan was almost persuaded, but, as he expected, the rancher said, ‘Long way down to Monterrey – or San Nicolas which is almost as far. Can’t spare the men for the drive back.’

Lucas smiled, winking at Alamo. ‘A good man could dicker so that old Miguel provides the
vaqueros
to get ’em back to the Border…. We can let you know when we’re there and half-a-dozen men’d be enough to drive ’em back here, take just a day or two….’

‘You ain’t goin’,’ Morg said flatly and Lucas’ face fell.

‘Aw, Pa, it’s my idea and I’d sure like to do some horse-trading with that old
ranchero
! After all the sneaky damn tricks he’s pulled on us Texas ranchers in general, over the years….’

‘Alamo can handle it – he’s good at buyin’ cows, better even than sellin’ ’em.’ He flicked his hard old eyes to the trail boss. ‘You could do it, couldn’t you?’

Lucas frowned as Alamo nodded slowly. There was something that passed between his father and the grizzled trail boss … he had no idea what it was, but there was
something
there and it only made Lucas feel more put-out. But he knew once Morgan had made up his mind – well, that was that.

‘All right – I’ll contact the agent down in San Nicolas and tell him Alamo’s on his way…. You’ll need to take a couple men with you.’

‘Reckon I’ll be able to talk Don Miguel into lendin’ us a few
vaqueros
for the drive back to the Border….’

Lucas’ frown deepened as Morgan shot Alamo a quick, piercing look. ‘You reckon you’re that good?’

The trail boss nodded. ‘But just in case Don Miguel won’t give us any trail hands, maybe Blaine could call in a bunch of his cousins or whatever from
the Reservation – that way, you won’t have to bother about sendin’ down anyone from here, Morg, and leave you short-handed.’

‘Injuns!’ exclaimed Lucas. ‘Not working our prime beeves, thanks all the same!’

‘I’ll be there and Blaine knows how to handle ’em.’

‘He ought to! But I don’t like this, Pa. Not Injuns!’

‘No, Blaine doesn’t go – you oughta have more sense than to suggest it, Alamo….’ Morg looked mighty angry.

Lucas was quick to side with his father. ‘None of us can trust that damn breed….’

‘You go send your wire to the cattle agent while Alamo and me fix this between us….’ growled Morgan.

That
didn’t make Lucas feel any more wanted, or even that his father was grateful for his suggestion that would save the ranch money and, in effect, bring in more profit when the herd reached the new
railhead
at San Antonio.

Even after all that had happened, the Old Man still seemed to be favouring that damn ’breed!

And Lucas decided he’d just about had a bellyful.

Alamo left two men gathering up the scattered mavericks and went looking for Blaine. The man’s trail was easy enough to follow. He hadn’t been trying to hide his tracks – had no reason to – and Alamo had no trouble following him up and over the ridge, through Big Sandy canyon and into the eroded gulch country beyond.

There was no breeze here, surrounded as it was by high buttes and walls of large boulders, and Alamo, a man born and bred to the wilderness and who had spent his life there, smelled the gunsmoke still
hovering
in the air. New scars on the rocks showed him where bullets had struck and he saw the loose rocks and fresh, dark patches of earth where Blaine’s boots had found footholds as he climbed up to the boulders above.

He took his rifle with him and climbed quietly, wary, not taking it for granted that Blaine had subdued those two murdering hardcases. He would have expected him to, but a man could never tell and it paid to take precautions.

There were no sounds from above but he smelled tobacco smoke – and something else. Like when tracking a deer that had been shot and you were
closing
in on where it lay, either bleeding to death or simply playing possum.

It was the stench of blood. And death.

‘God almighty!’

Alamo breathed the words reverently, feeling his stomach lurch, and his hands gripped the rifle convulsively as he looked down on the scene below him.

Blaine was sitting with his back to a boulder,
smoking
, knees drawn up, forearms resting on them, head down. If he heard Alamo – and he must have – he didn’t look up. His hands were red.

Ames stared at the dead men lying in a welter of blood that had splashed on some of the rocks like spilled paint. He swallowed, saw the sun glint redly
from a discarded hunting knife near Hardesty’s raw face. It looked as if he had been skinned alive….

Both he and Clint Rendell had been scalped and there were other mutilations that Alamo didn’t care to dwell on.

Then he saw that Blaine was staring at him as he drew on his cigarette, dark face blank – but Alamo thought he saw a little more peace in that single bleak grey-green eye. He thumbed back his hat.

‘Well, I said a little while back that you sure had a deal of Injun blood workin’ in you – I don’t blame you, but – well….’
To hell with Morgan! He couldn’t leave Blaine here with this mess … If Marsh Kilgour got wind of it, no telling what he might do to Blaine.
… ‘We best bury these fellers and then you and me are headin’ down to Mexico. You ask me, it’s the best place for you right now….’

Blaine finished his cigarette and stood, brushing dust off his trousers.

‘I’ll get something to dig with,’ was all he said.

San Nicolas was a well-established Spanish town and Don Miguel’s large holdings were ten miles
southeast
, closer to Monterrey than San Nicolas. The
rancho
was typical of that part of the country, large white
hacienda
and adobe outbuildings, stables and corrals and a couple of windmills, an unusual
innovation
for a Mexican ranch.

It didn’t take Blaine long to figure that Alamo Ames knew Don Miguel, although he could never recall the man mentioning it.

‘Worked for him long ago,’ Alamo told Blaine,
‘before I went to Morgan’s – he kind of took care of me after my folks was wiped out in a wagon train to the north by bandits and renegade Apaches. It was part of the country a
hidalgo
like him was expected to protect – a bit like the old feudal times – and he felt he’d let the folk down. Anyway, we got along well enough and then one day I followed a Mexican gal who was governess to his children back to the States where she had another job.’

He paused and Blaine waited, patient as usual, reading Alamo correctly in thinking the man was hesitant to explain any more. But the trail boss said, with a rush of words, ‘We married – but she was
trampled
by a runaway hoss and crippled. Afterwards, she figured she was a burden to me and one night—’ He shook his head at the black memory clouding his mind. ‘I dunno where she got the poison, but—’

He looked steadily at Blaine who nodded gently, but made no other sign that he understood.

‘Anyway – I reckon I can do a good deal with Don Miguel. We’d parted friends.’

The old
ranchero
was in a great deal of pain from whatever ailment was killing him and he spoke in husky Spanish, gripping Alamo’s hand. The trail boss flicked his eyes at Blaine who took the hint and waited outside in the cool shade of a long tiled patio, sipping lemonade, lime and
tequila
that a servant brought him. It was a mighty satisfying drink for hot weather.

When Alamo emerged from Don Miguel’s
quarters
he was long-faced. ‘Too bad – shame to lose a man like that. He’s done plenty for this country but
seems his family’s let him down – want the bright lights, such as they are, plenty of partyin’ and the high life. Cash is all they want from him so the only way he can get back at ’em now is to sell as cheap as possible.’

‘Could change his will.’

‘Too late – the family’s got the lawyer in their pockets. He’s blockin’ the Don every whichway.’

Blaine nodded: the old Don had been smart enough anyway. ‘You do a deal for Morg?’

‘Yeah – we got five hundred prime beeves to get back to Broken Wheel. Don Miguel will supply riders to help us all the way – I’d thought maybe we could call in some of your Injun friends but this way we won’t need ’em.’

Blaine nodded, making no comment.

‘One favour the Don asks, though – and it’ll have to be you to do it, Blaine.’

This surprised the breed.

‘Yeah, there’s this kind of orphanage or sanctuary just outside Monterrey. Don Miguel has helped them some over the years. He’s got half-a-dozen Jersey milkers he thinks they can use – called Mission
Seguridad
, by the way. Some Sisters from the big Mission run it.’

‘Nuns?’

‘No-ooo – I dunno. Maybe novices … Anyway, you’re elected to drive the Jerseys up there. You can take one of Don Miguel’s men or
muchachos
along….’

‘Never driven milkers before.’

‘They’re docile. Won’t give you no trouble – he
wants you to give one of the Fathers a note, too. Think he’s gonna ask that one of ’em stays down here on the
rancho
with him till he – passes away. Be sure of the Last Rites I guess.’

The
muchacho’s
name was Pancho and he spoke no American. His Spanish was too rapid for Blaine. So while the kid ran around with his stick, whacking the cows if they strayed too far or stopped too long, browsing on the scanty grass, Blaine let his sorrel make its own pace and he smoked as they moved along lazily through the early afternoon.

The orphanage was set behind adobe walls and he could see the small tower of a chapel above, but had to wait until they were inside to see the buildings. There were several, mostly adobe, though a long one which he figured for a dormitory, was clapboard with a thatched roof. All seemed in good repair and he noticed several women working with bunches of
children
who all wore flour-sack, dress-like garments, whether boy or girl. The latter were distinguishable by their longer hair, although several had it cropped – no doubt as part of a treatment for head lice.

One of the women came across as Pancho,
obviously
having been here before, drove the Jerseys towards a small corral. A bunch of yelling, excited children ran on ahead and lowered the rails for him.

‘
Señor
?’ queried the woman in nun-like garments and Blaine said,

‘A gift from Don Miguel Santiago – I was told to ask for Sister Maria de Gracia.’