Ten Grand (16 page)

Then he remounted and set off southwards again, not looking over his shoulder as a great flapping of wings told him of the return of the scavengers.  The white stallion was strong and willing, experienced in the long, tough rides which are a part of bandit life.  He carried his new rider into Montijo just as afternoon was lengthening into evening, the appearance of the big horse with its tall, hard-faced rider giving rise to many curious and suspicious glances.  For the town was deep into Mexico, near the boundary between the Sonora and Sinaloa regions, far beyond the area where Americans normally ventured.

It was quite a large town, dependent for industry upon a sawmill and a silver mine, but inhabited mostly by peons who worked in the cane fields spread out to the south and east.  There was little sign of activity on the fringe of the town, but as Edge rode down one of the two parallel main streets he could see lights and hear music and singing ahead.  He ignored all who turned their suspicious eyes upon him, his own hooded and watching for signs of danger.  But then he reined in his horse as a small boy of some ten years ran out in front of him, grinned at him with broken teeth.

“You an Americano?” the waif asked.

Edge looked at his dirt-streaked face, his tattered shirt and pants, guessing the boy’s intention.  He nodded and the grin broadened.

“I have a sister, señor,” he said and cupped his hands over his narrow chest, brought them forward in an explanatory movement. “Very big here señor. She like Americanos. Very good with the love, señor.”

Edge injected some warmth into his expression, nodded along the street. “What’s going on?”

“Fiesta, señor.  It is the mayor’s birthday.  He not a very good mayor, but everybody like him on his birthday cause he makes it a time for fiesta.  Many girls in the cantina, señor.  But expensive and not big here, like my sister.” Again the gesture with the hands.

Edge dipped into his pants pocket and brought out one of the dollars Gail had given him back in Peaceville.  He dropped it to the feet of the boy who snatched it up with a filthy hand, suddenly wealthy by Mexican peon standards.

“Esteban!” a shrewish voice called from the shadow of a building and the boy suddenly laughed and bolted for the opposite side of the street.

The woman came out into the open to give chase for the dollar and Edge grinned. She was big there.  Also everywhere else and Edge heeled his horse into motion as the two hundred and fifty pound woman waddled in the wake of her agile young brother.

Both streets emerged into a plaza and exited on the far side, and here was the center of the activities.  Light, from torches and oil lamps, shone down upon a raised platform upon which a group of six guitar players provided music for fifty or more dancing couples. The plaza was fringed by ten cantinas from some of which emitted competing music from others merely the shouts and screams of men and women making merry to honor the birthday of the mayor. Drunken figures of both sexes emerged from the swinging doors of the bars to either go into another cantina or join the dancers in the plaza.  Grinning, dirty-faced youngsters who might have been cast in the same mold as Esteban, lit and threw firecrackers into the throng, bolting for safety whenever anybody threatened to give chase.

Here, the appearance of a stranger, whether he be a foreigner or Mexican, caused no reaction.   Minds, made dull or benevolent by countless draughts of mezcal, tequila and pulque, considered that all was right in world and wanted nothing more than to be allowed to continue with the merry-making.  Edge eyed the scene impassively as he tied his horse to the rail fronting the Montijo Hotel, the big white animal looking incongruous among the mangy burros who shared the tether.  But those who were most drunk in the throng probably considered the horse a figment of their imagination. Others cared nothing for the sight.  Still more noted the expression on Edge’s mean face and knew it would be unwise to question him. 

Edge went into the cantina immediately adjacent to the hotel, found the tables packed with drinking men and women, many of them joining in with the song which a pretty young girl was wailing out from one end of the bar, accompanied by a leering young man on a guitar.  Edge went to the other end of the bar, which was acting as a support for a line of swaying peons.  One of the two sweating barmen came wearily towards Edge, face set in a questioning stare.

“Señor?”

“Beer.”

The barman picked up a dirty glass, smashed the top from a bottle of beer and half poured it, muttered the price in pesos.  Edge slapped a dollar bill on the bartop without attempting to touch the drink.  A greasy hand covered the dollar and Edge brought the heel of his palm down on top. The barman looked up, fear leaping into his eyes, and found Edge grinning at him.  He used his free hand to point at the ring on his little finger.

“That ought to mean something to someone in this town,” he said softly. “The dollar’s yours.  If some guy don’t come to see me at the hotel next door before midnight, I come back for my dollar. I also take something else.”

“Señor?” The man’s eyes were wide.

“I ain’t hearing so good with one ear,” Edge said, still grinning.  “Yours look healthy enough.”

The man swallowed hard and looked down at the hand which had trapped his, examined the ring.

“I do not know, señor,” he said. 

“You better,” Edge told him and released his hand, turned from the bar and headed for the door. “Name’s Edge.”

The peon who had been standing next to him grasped the untouched beer and lifted it, tipped it down his throat.

“One tough hombre,”
he
said to the barman. “I think he mean it.”

“I know
he means it,” the barman muttered as he watched the doors swinging behind the departing Edge.

The tall American unhitched his horse and led him off the plaza, found a livery stable in charge of a sleeping stableman.  A boot in the ribs woke him and the sight of a dollar bill got him working.  He promised Edge that even if El Presidente himself were to visit Montijo, the royal horse would receive no better treatment.  Edge nodded his satisfaction and returned to the plaza, entered the hotel.  The clerk announced he was fully booked, but a show of five dollars backed up by a narrow-eyed expression of determination enabled him to offer a single at the rear of the building, away from the noise of the fiesta.  Edge had left his gear at the stable, and carried only the Spencer repeater he had stolen from one of El Matador’s men.  He signed the register and made the clerk repeat his name three times. 

“I’m expecting company,” he said. “Unless somebody comes in and asks for me, I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Certainly señor,” the clerk said, nervously, afraid of this tall, lean man with the evil face, knowing he would rather do without the five dollars than have the American in the hotel.

Edge started up the stairs with the rifle his only baggage, his lips pursed as if to whistle, but releasing no sound.  He had been given room twenty-three and as he used the key on the lock a church bell tolled six times, far off and melancholy.  He guessed it signified the time and wondered if he would have to wait the full six hours until deadline.  He hoped not, especially when he lit the spluttering, foul-smelling kerosene lamp and looked at the room.  It was little bigger than a closet, furnished with a narrow bed and a dresser with no mirror and two of its three drawers missing.  There was one small window which looked out on to the blank face of the building behind the hotel.  The floor was bare boards and as Edge crossed to the window two large cockroaches scuttled for the cover of the bureau.  When Edge punched the blanket-covered mattress a cloud of dust lifted, raising with it the stink of a hundred bodies which had rested there since the bedcover had last been washed or aired.

Edge grimaced and dragged the whole lot on to the floor, sending more cockroaches scuttling.  Then he blew out the lamp and lay on the bare springs, which creaked with his weight.  He used his hat for a pillow and did not close his eyes as he relaxed, content that he could see both the square of the moonlit window and the strip of light at the foot of the door.  The sounds from the plaza came to him as a muted hum, only occasionally pierced by a loud shriek or burst of laughter.  But he had gone too long without proper sleep and the distant, hypnotic sounds of the festivities, aided by the comforting feel of the rifle in his two hands, nudged Edge into a doze, pushed him down the slope into exhausted slumber. 

“Señor, move one muscle and death will be your reward.”

Edge’s eyes snapped open and he looked up at the trapdoor in the ceiling he had not noticed before, saw it open to the sky, moonlight glinting on two revolver barrels.

“That ain’t no kind of a deal,” he said and rolled off the bed, came up short and dropped his rifle as the door burst open to show another man holding two pistols on him.

“I am the guarantee, señor,” the second man announced.

“It’s a deal,” Edge said, and froze.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE one who dropped lightly from the trapdoor in the ceiling was young—no more than twenty—with an innocent-looking, clean-shaven face in which soft brown eyes and a gentle mouth line suggested he was unused to the way of the gun.  But the easy way he handled the two double-trigger Tranter revolvers spoke of many years of experience.  He was not a peon, for he was smartly turned out in a white shirt and grey pants and wore an expensive gunbelt with heavily ornamented buckle and holsters.

“I am Ramon Armendariz,” he introduced, stretching a foot to slide Edge’s rifle under the bed. “This is my uncle, Manuel Armendariz. We are the son and brother of the mayor of Montijo.”

He spoke
excellent English, in the manner of one proud to air his knowledge.

“Two guys who like the first citizen every day of the year,” Edge answered. 

The older man gave a short laugh. “Señor Edge, even the mayor’s mother does not like the mayor.  She least of all, perhaps, because she can recall the pain she suffered in bringing such an animal into the world.”

Edge looked at him and could detect a vague family resemblance.  Manuel was at least seventy, smaller by six inches than his nephew and wearing a full set of moustachio and beard, stained as white as his hair by the passing years.  His eyes, too, were of a soft brown coloring, but shone with the bitterness of a harsh life instead of the anticipation of youth.  His pistols were Colts.

“You must excuse our mode of entry,” Ramon said, smiling. “But we heard that the manner of your approach lacked finesse.  It suggested to us a man overanxious to find that which he is seeking.  Such a man can be dangerous.”

Edge grinned. “I was sleeping like a baby.”

Ramon continued to smile. “A baby with a lethal rattle in his hands,” he said, waving one of the Tranters towards the rifle.

“I cut my teeth on one like it,” Edge answered with a shrug.

“Did not we all,” Manuel said philosophically. “We have all lived through violent times.”

“And now we are wasting time,” Ramon put in, dropping the smile. “You have a ring, señor?”

“It means something to you?”

“How will I know until I see it?”

Edge brought his hands together, slid the ring from his finger and held it out.  Ramon had to holster one of his revolvers to take the ring and as he did so, looking down at his side, Edge moved.  He went on to the balls of his feet and side-stepped, spinning Ramon around and drawing a gun as his arm encircled the young man’s throat.  One of El Matador’s Colts thudded into Ramon’s back.  Uncle and nephew looked across the room in horror as they realized they were facing each other with guns leveled.

“Drop them,” Edge demanded. “Or after the fiesta Montijo will have a funeral.”

The younger man stiffened and Edge knew he was prepared to take his chances.  But Manuel was much older and considerably more wise.  He sighed and his revolvers clattered to the floor.

“You are too young to die, Ramon,” he said softly.  “And I am too old to want to.”

The fight went out of Ramon and his gun fell to the floor.  Edge let go of his throat and used his free hand to hook the second gun from the young man’s holster, let it fall.  He pushed Ramon away from him, slid his own Colt back into its holster, grinned at the men’s surprise.

“I didn’t bring the mayor a present for his birthday,” he said. “Instead, I give him the lives of two of his relations. It may not be much, but it’s all I have at the moment.”

“It is not a trick, señor?” Manuel asked.

“You already told me I don’t have any finesse,” Edge answered.  “Look at the ring and tell me what it means to you.”

Ramon had to ignite the lamp for Manuel to find the fallen ring,  and when he did retrieve it the old man carried it close to the light, bent his head close to examine it. 

“What made you interested?” Edge asked, sitting on the bare springs of the bed, reaching below and picking up his rifle.  He placed the weapon across his thighs, pointing at nothing.

Ramon leaned against the dresser. “I am not,” he answered.  “My uncle, he became excited when he heard the story of your ring.  He asked me to come to help him.  Some help.”