The Red Sombrero (10 page)

The bawling of steers came more plain to him now — even occasional voice sounds — along with the dust the wind snatched from their tracks. He reckoned there was upwards of fifteen men in that bunch and every one of them loco by the way they were acting. Why go into Mexico at all if their purpose had been to push these cattle north in the first place?

They could have changed their minds. Something could have frightened them — the thought, perhaps, of Sierra. Or they could have crossed the line as a ruse to throw pursuit off, to make it appear to the owners that this was a raid made by Tano’s dorados. The more he thought the darker became Reno’s suspicions.

They were getting back into rough country again. Reno cut down the distance between himself and the herd, redoubling his vigilance. When the herd turned into a chutelike gulch he turned up the nearest rise and followed its progress along the rimrock, keeping far enough back to avoid being seen.

He was beginning to get anxious, knowing dawn was not far off. Common sense told him this was about as dangerous a pastime as a man in his position could indulge in, yet he kept on, eyes bleak, mouth tightening, determined to learn what he had come to find out.

The stallion snorted, trembling, and stopped. Reno could see nothing but deeper blackness ahead of them. Impatient, he was about to sink spur when a weird inexplicable feeling took him out of the saddle and sent him cautiously forward.

He sucked in his breath, shivering with the picture of where that steel would have taken him. There was no ground ahead there — nothing but space. The gulch wall had twisted, thrown back on itself, presumably opening into some kind of hidden valley. Cattle sounds reached him strangely muted, coming out of those black unfathomable depths like leaden pellets being jostled in a skillet. He drew back from the brink wiping sweat off his face and, catching up the stallion’s reins, led him into some rocks where he knotted the reins without slack to a juniper.

He went forward on foot, worming his way through a low growth of brush flanking the rim in its eastward swing, being quiet as he could lest even through the sounds of wind and cattle some sharp ear below detect and translate his movements. He came out on smooth ledgerock where gales in past times had howled away earth’s thin covering. He got down on his belly, removed his hat and inched nearer.

Bits of talk came unintelligibly up to him through the clack of horns and bawling of displaced cow brutes. But as the herd settled down a number of these voices became plainer, though never clear enough for him to make out what they were saying. Then someone down there cupped a match to his face and he caught the words
vaya con Dios
and guessed some of those boys were getting ready to shove off.

He was tempted to follow in spite of obvious risk, but lack of time ruled against this. Dawn was too close. Better chance of learning something down below if he could get there.

A smarter notion crossed his mind. He didn’t have to go down, and it was too late already for him to pull his freight now. Better to hole up until the daylight hours were past. Why not stay where he was? Bed down in the brush and take things easy. Sometime in these hours he was bound to see a few horses. One look at those brands would tell him all he wanted to know.

He wriggled back from the rim and put on the red hat. He could always send the girl a note when he got out of this country, putting her wise to anything he might discover. He guessed likely he owed her that much.

The wind quit abruptly, as border winds have a habit of doing, and in the relative quiet he caught the soft clop-clop of hoof sound. But it wasn’t from where the departing rustlers should be traveling. It was around there back of him someplace.

At that moment Carablanco nickered.

I
N A STAND
of scrub oak whose leaves kept out most of the light from the moon Bennie, grown tired of continuously watching the line shack, said to the boss who was also watching, “About that dame. If she didn’t give him the gun where do you reckon our friend got hold of it?”

Juan, between them, almost visibly stiffened. Cordray considered. “And if she did?”

“She musta had some reason.”

Cordray showed a superior smile. “Women, especially the chaste ones, usually find adventurers attractive.” He shrugged, but Bennie said, “That’s what I been thinkin’. Suppose they got it fixed up for her to meet him someplace?”

“She won’t run out with that mortgage over her.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Bennie said. “Suppose this deal was figured ahead of time. Suppose he pulled us away deliberate. Why couldn’t the girl, while we been combin’ the range for him, have slipped over here and dug that dough up?”

Cordray studied him. He said, “Get your horse, Juan, and ride to the ranch. If she’s there you stick with her. If she’s not, come back pronto.”

He waited until they heard the big mozo ride off, then he remarked with a smile, “We will both hold down this bit of earth, Bennie. Not that I imagine you’ve made a deal with that red hat but I think you might if the cards fell right.” He said softly, “When that gold is dug up I intend to have all of it.”

• • •

The stillness built and fed on itself. An excited whickering came suddenly out of it from the direction of the rustlers’ stopped horses. No shouts or quick questions, no voice sounds at all.

Even with the breath hung up in his throat Reno came off the ground, determined to reach Carablanco, knowing that he was finished if he got trapped here without a mount.

It was the thought of Linda that stopped him from hurling his shape headlong into that brush. In that moment he wasn’t kidding himself. He wanted, and was bleakly aware that he wanted, desperately to help her. But recklessness here wasn’t going to help anyone. All he’d get would be bullets acting like a scared bull.

It took guts to do what Reno did then. He’d seen already by their acceptance of the stallion’s presence these were not the kind to be easily stampeded. “Quien es?” he called brusquely, “Benito! Juan!” and strode into the brush like a man who had rights there. It was the sheerest kind of a bluff but it held their guns quiet as he worked his way toward them through the dark bitter sound of that breaking brush.

He was working a hunch now, a long-odds gamble, swinging directly toward the horse with a preposterous confidence as spurious as the lies he’d told, furious with the tornillo thorns that tore scratching across his borrowed clothes and made every foot of this trip exquisite torture, deviled as he was by the increasing probability he might not quite bring it off.

And then, midway through the thicket, he saw off ahead of him the flare of a match and in its raveling flame the white ringed eyes of Carablanco beyond the shoulder of the man whose cupped hand held up the lucifer. Even as the light spluttered and died the man was turning, showing the shadow-caverned half of a face that was scraggly with whiskers. There was no sign of the others.

“Patron!” the fellow cried as Reno broke through the last of the brush. “Qué le parece?” the man said with a chuckle. “I think our friend is on her last legs.”

Reno swung with the gun in his fist, striking with all the bitter venom that was in him. The blow was too high, smashing into the forehead, breaking through the bone structure. He saw the loosening shape go lurching back, half twisting with a grunting cry, and struck again to silence it.

“Que hay?” a voice said from beyond the rocks. Reno heard the skreak of leather, a jingle of bit chains, and sprang over the man, jerking loose the roan’s reins. He was tempted to fling some remark through the gloom — to say he was sending this fellow to investigate, but he knew with them alerted his voice would not fool them. He grabbed the horn and swung into the saddle and Carablanco, excited by the smell of fresh blood, lunged away through the shadows.

The bullets came then — Mary and Jesus how they shrieked! Reno used Descardo’s quirt.

• • •

He rode into Cordray’s headquarters an hour short of noon with the clouds stretched like sheep’s wool from drab horizon to drab horizon. The ranch looked deserted, quiet as with the hush that broods in the trackless street of a ghost town. He rode in at a shambling walk from northeast. All the fire and dash had been worked out of Carablanco and Reno’s brush-clawed pants were hanging in shreds about his shanks. He had rubbed the dried lather off the horse but its coat showed the wear of hard usage.

He went directly to the stables and staggered when he got out of the saddle. He gave the reins to a wide-eyed and ragged Mex chore boy, telling him in Spanish to give the horse a good bath and walk him dry with a blanket before feeding. He went to the house then, still seeing no one but aware of the dust coming up from the south. He pulled open the kitchen door and limped in.

Linda’s eyes were like coals against the pallor of her cheeks.

“What happened?”

Reno grimaced.

“Where are the rest of them? Don Luis?”

He gestured wearily toward the window. “Your legs,” she said — ”what in the world have you done to them?”

“If there’s a change of pants in this place get them. We’ll talk later.”

She wheeled away through the door that let into the hall. Reno stared out the window at the dust in the south. It had not grown appreciably nearer. “Taking their time to it,” he told himself, scowling, and checked the loads in his pistol. He was sliding it into leather when the girl returned, handing the pants to him. He saw the way her eyes went to the gun. His mouth hardened.

“Don’t bother heating anything, but if you can dig me up something I could munch on I can use it.” He peered again through the window and limped off to his room.

There was an angry blue mark on his ankle. His lower legs were a sight. He didn’t stop to wash them though. He peeled off what was left of the pants he’d been wearing and pulled on the clean ones. They were tight like the others, flaring out at the bottoms and having a stripe of embroidery up the sides of the legs. He went back to the kitchen.

She had fixed him a sandwich by wrapping a flour tortilla around two cuts of fiery mutton. He proceeded to eat it, leaning with a hip against the table, watching the dust cloud. It was near enough now that he could see individual horsemen although unable to make out their faces. If this was some of the bunch that had chased him their numbers appeared to have shrunk by considerable. He raked a glance across the girl and it was still there, that feeling.

“Been working on your problem,” he said around the food being chewed in his mouth. “Been a heap easier to handle if you’d left his lordship in the dark about me.”

She came away from the wall. “If you’re implying I’ve discussed you with Don Luis you’re mistaken.”

Reno stopped chewing, then said, “No matter,” and filled his mouth again, staring out of the window.

“I wish,” she said, “you’d tell me what you’ve found out.”

“Cordray’s getting your cattle.”

“You mean he’s rounding them up?”

“He’s been doing that, too.”

She stood silent a moment. “You mean he’s stealing them, then.” She didn’t sound too surprised. “What shall I do?”

He looked at her, gauging her. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly.

Reno finished his sandwich. “Tonight, when we’re eating, ask him what he’s done about getting your beef ready.”

Her eyes looked a question. “I think,” Reno said, “he’ll claim too much has been rustled, that there’s not enough time to comb out what you’ve got left. He’ll offer to take over the note.”

“You think he’s after the ranch?”

“He could use that water. This range is drier than parfleche.” He pushed away from the table. “If you want to hang onto that spread I’ll help you.”

He went off down the hall and came back a moment later buckling the shell belt around him. He’d left the quirt in the room but he had Descardo’s hat on. He looked surprised to see the fat man but grinned and got out his wallet. “Here you are, hombre. Here’s your money,” he said, handing over the pesos.

Juanito put them in his pocket. “Mil gracias, excelencia.” He showed the look of a man who wanted to say more but the arrival of horsemen rang across the packed ground of the parada and, with his cheeks turning wooden, he clapped on his hat and departed.

Reno’s narrowing stare picked him up outside. The girl was watching Reno’s face. She said, “If I were to let him assume the note — ”

“You don’t have to let him.”

“That ranch killed my father! Do you think I want — ”

“Not the ranch,” Reno said, “The hired guns of this grass pirate. I’ve seen his range; the man’s got to have water. He’s put the screws on that banker. Whether your Dad borrowed money or didn’t, it’s dollars to doughnuts Cordray’s holding the note. If he can’t marry that water he’ll take it away from you. Either way he gets what he’s after because he’s thinned down your beef to where nobody else can pull Spur out of this now. If that don’t make you see red, what about your father?”

“Getting yourself killed won’t bring Dad back.”

He pulled his stare off the group beyond the glass and turned, seeing the truth in her eyes, feeling the breath jerk in his throat with the shock of what she was holding out to him.

He was acutely uncomfortable, face to face with himself for the first time in years, contrite and humbled by her honesty and suddenly filled with an exultation which threatened to sweep everything before it — even the trap his own duplicity had fashioned — until he saw how anxiously she was watching him; then he dropped his lifting arms and locked clenched fists behind him:

He heard Don Luis’ voice and the sound of spurred boots grown muffled behind the slam of a door and he wheeled, not trusting himself to speak, and went blindly into the hall toward his room.

W
HEN
J
UANITO
came into the yard from the kitchen he was a man sorely tried and confounded. His duty — regardless of what he thought of it — was plain. His palm still tingled from the coins the strange hidalgo had put into it and they groaned upon his conscience with the guilty weight of lead. Not because he had come by them dishonestly — confession or a couple of candles would put him in the right of that matter. It was the significance of the pesos which put him on the horns and he approached Don Luis in a sweat of indecision. He disliked being put in the Judas position of tossing a donor of alms to the wolves, but a man could not temporize with loyalty. Putting the best face he could on the matter he was Cordray’s man or nothing.

“The delight of your eyes is still here, patron,” he said with his triple chins quivering.

Don Luis swung down, giving his reins to one of the paisanos, glancing shrewdly at Juan before resuming his interrupted talk with the Tejano who had also quit saddle. The rest of the party, after leaning their long-barreled weapons against a cottonwood, went off toward the stables with the horses.

Juan stood twisting his hat, too much at odds with the ethics brought to light by the pesos to bother his head with the conversation his employer was conducting in English. He was put out besides by the prospect of having to clean all those rifles.

But at last they were finished. Just as Bennie, looking sullen, was about to head for his quarters the boss hostler, Pablo, came from the stables propelling a protesting and reluctant chore boy by the ear, cuffing and jawing at him all the way over. “Con permiso,” Pablo said, again cuffing the urchin, “the Sombrero Colorado has returned. Speak, thou son of a goat,” he growled, shaking the sniveling youth.

“It is true, Patron,” the boy squirmed, rolling brown eyes and crossing himself. “Within the hour. Your honor’s stallion looks like a work horse.”

Don Luis’ cheeks darkened but there was a wicked pleasure in the gleam of the stare that pinned Juanito in his tracks. “You did right to inform me,” he said, dismissing them. He licked his chops like a lion while his eyes rummaged the fat man. “Well, uncle! And where is this red hat?”

“In the house, Patron, with the señorita — Dios, no!” he cried suddenly affrighted — “in the cocina, the kitchen only. She feeds the starved look from his body. And,” he said, twisting all shape from his hat, “I have a confession to make.”

“Very well. In five minutes. I will hear it in my office,” Cordray conceded, going into the house with the gun fighter following.

Left alone in the yard, Juanito scowled for several moments, then put on his hat and bent his steps toward a door to the west of the kitchen. He looked in both directions before he opened this and came out almost at once with a conspicuous bulge in the front of his jacket. He slipped into the hall by way of the ranch living room. Listening briefly to the mumble of voices from the kitchen, he produced the bottle he’d been concealing and set it on the floor just inside Reno’s door. With his conscience thus having been placed in good order he presented himself outside Cordray’s office and virtuously entered when told to come in.

The patron, as usual, sat behind his big desk. He was clipping the end from one of his coronas and the Texican, Bennie, had his chair tipped back against the wall at one side.

“Close the door,” Don Luis said. And after privacy was assured and the big Mexican was again reduced to something bordering on proper humility, Cordray asked what he had on his mind.

“It is about this Red Hat, señor,” Juanito explained, looking penitent. “The second or perhaps the third day of his visit, while he was yet in bed, he asked for his clothes and a bottle of the tequila. The clothes I of course could not bring him. But since he offered thirty pesos for the tequila I imagined your hospitality might at least condone one cup. This I fetched him, understanding you would wish him to be comfortable. But since I failed to provide the clothes the man refused to pay me the pesos. By this I made sure he was muy caballero — a great personality.”

Juanito puffed to a stop. “Descardo, no less,” he said shaking his head. He looked at them sideways. “But I have cared for him, you understand, and in his sleep this one talks like a Yanqui. There is no hair on his chest. Under his shirt his skin is white like a baby.

“I ask myself how can this be? The sparrow has to live by his wits but of whom is the eagle afraid, señors? No one! So I use my cabeza. This matter of the unpaid pesos is the true key, I think. Only a man of importance can refuse to pay his just debts.”

The Texican showed an I-told-you-so-grin. Don Luis stirred restively. “There is a point about this?”

“Assuredly,” Juanito scowled. His chins quivered. “This man wears the hat but he is not the General. Valgame Dios — he has paid me the pesos!”

• • •

Don Luis put the cigar in his mouth and fired up, thinly smiling as the door shut behind the big Mexican. “The essence of logic,” he said, scattering smoke. “Even you, my stubborn friend, should be convinced now. Had the man been truly Red Hat he would have made greater noise when we sat talking about his business; he would have insisted the rifles be produced and delivered immediately. All his worry was for the money which Descardo would not have cared about.”

“I don’t see how him bein’ this Reno puts you any nearer to — ”

“It all but places it in my pockets,” Cordray said with satisfaction. “The man is plainly out to decamp with that gold. Being one of Sierra’s officers he must know Sierra will look into this business of the nonforthcoming rifles. He has had bad luck, this gringo, and time will be making him desperate so that now with a gun which he imagines we are afraid of he will soon face the risk. Tonight, I should think.”

“We could be more reasonably sure of it,” Bennie nodded, “by providing him with a little Dutch courage. Accordin’ to your Mexican he’s pretty fond of the bottle.”

“The bottle, certainly. And a prod from me to force his hand.” Cordray put back his head and the seams of his conquistadore’s face bulged with mirth. “Be assured, my good Bennie, he will know the game is up. I am so confident he will leave tonight I shall send one of the paisanos with a message to the cowboys.”

The man of guns, following the thought, reflectively nodded. There was an emotional rapport between these two so that in moments of stress a single word or a sign was often enough to release or control violence; this was built upon their relationship as patron and trigger finger and complicated by the intimate knowledge each had of the other. So that now, envisioning the possibilities, Bennie said briskly, “That’s a right slick notion. I’ll take it to them for you.”

“One of the mozos will do well enough: a trusted one,” Don Luis answered. “By dark my vaqueros will be all around that shack and the only order I shall give them will be to kill any person who attempts to come away from it.” He sat back with a smile coldly wrapping itself around the Texican.

Reno heard the door open but it had already been shut by the time he got squared around. He saw the bottle which someone had pushed into the room and he scowled at it, still thinking, and then began to pace the floor. He was not in that moment the drunken sot facetiously elevated by Sierra to a post of mock importance, but the man he could have been had fate not stepped in to load the dice against him.

He’d known what chance he took returning. He had not forgotten Cordray’s conversation with Bennie while he’d hung onto the stallion’s nostrils in the dark of that cattle runway. He’d come back prepared to brazen things out, hoping to wring from the situation and the ranch owner’s greed enough concessions to make sure the girl got clear.

He was convinced by now Cordray never had intended to deliver any rifles. Having no real acquaintance with the violence of Sierra, Cordray, Reno believed, had perpetrated a hoax designed to fleece an ignorant and impotent guerrilla. He had not foreseen that there might be repercussions, that Sierra was one who would demand an accounting. Having first seized their money he very probably had planned to turn the Liberator’s envoys over to the authorities as hostiles he’d caught invading sovereign soil. A slick scheme brought to naught unless he could deal with the man he must have felt had outfoxed him. Only Reno — and Cordray would know this — now could tell him where the gold was.

This was Reno’s trump, the power he figured to bargain with.

Whether Cordray truly believed Sierra’s agent to be Reno or Descardo he could not afford to harm him until he got his hands on the money. This was the picture as Reno saw it, and he was not yet convinced he could not strengthen his position by forcing the crooked ranchman to believe he had Red Hat to deal with. So long as he could keep his wits about him Reno reckoned he could prod up enough doubt to keep the man careful. And he relished the thought of getting back a few licks for his own blighted prospects.

But it was mostly the girl with whom his mind was concerned. That girl — he could now admit this — had got under his hide and aroused in him needs he had imagined long since swapped for the anodyne bottled in bond. Or grown out of. It was something of a shock to learn how badly he’d misjudged himself, and even more of a jolt to find he still had some scruples.

This was why he had turned away from her. She was clean and sweet and good and true, and in an access of anguish Reno swept up the bottle and broke off its neck on the back of the chair. What did he, a damned ne’er-do-well derelict drifter, have to offer such a girl? A man who in a fit of drunken anger had killed his own best friend, and the most of himself in the process!

He swept the bottle to his lips, yet before it touched them stopped himself. “That’s it,” he growled at himself, “go on and drink it — swill it down! Get yourself blind drunk and forget it!”

In self revulsion he almost hurled the damned thing through the window. It was what he wanted to do, but he didn’t. He put it on the chest of drawers between the basin half-filled with dirty water and the pitcher. To prove, he told himself, that he could take it or he could leave it. He may have made a mess of his own life but he could assume responsibility if he had to. He wasn’t going to let that Linda girl down — not for all the goddam gold in the States!

He’d been two hours in the room and was over by the back wall bitterly glowering at the bottle when he heard the furtive knock. He wheeled like a man reprieved and growled, “Come in!” with a hand on his pistol.

It was Bennie with his Texican’s face stiffly folded into what he probably imagined to be a reflection of good will. He paused listening a moment with his head in the hall; then shut the door gently and twisted around with a grimace. “Whew! I reckon we’re safe enough here if that big Mex don’t come snoopin’. Cordray’s gone to the stables to have a look at his horse.”

Reno didn’t say anything. He stepped away from the wall and left his hand where it was. Bennie spotted the bottle. “By God, I could do with a quick one myself!” He started forward but stopped. “What’s the matter — you tongue-tied?”

“Speak your piece and get out.”

Temper tightened the muscles of the gunman’s dark face. Then he shrugged. “Guess I asked for it, but this ain’t what you think. I’m here on my own hook. You’re in a bad spot, General, but if you want to split the chips I kin git you out of this.”

“Out of what?”

“That kin wait. You willin’ to split that swag you got buried?”

“You’re talking over my head.”

Bennie grinned. “Come off it, chum. We got no time to waste. You fetched two bags of gold to pay fer them rifles. All I want’s a fair shake. You give me half an’ I’ll git you out. How about it?”

The gun fighter stared like a man struck dumb when Reno lifted the pistol from his belt and tipped the muzzle. “Make tracks,” Reno said, “before I give you half of this.”

Cheeks livid, Bennie reached for the door, yanked it open. In his shotgun chaps and black cotton shirt which apparently he wore rain or shine, summer and winter, he looked as he skewered his head around for all the world like an enraged little spider. Crouched with his yellow eyes blazing, he abruptly whirled and was gone.

Reno grimaced, closing the door. He took the hand off his gun which he had slipped back in leather, irritably rasping it across the scratch of a cheek. The stench of the man still lingered like a foul miasma come out of some swamp. But he had sure hit the nail on the head about one thing. Time had about reached the bottom of the glass.

Tomorrow Sierra would be here; Reno knew it as surely as he knew his own name. Whatever was to be done would certainly have to be done tonight.

No matter what Cordray thought, he couldn’t
know
he wasn’t up against Red Hat. Nor did he know about Reno being aware of his suspicions. Forewarned was forearmed. There must be someway, Reno thought, to use these facts to the girl’s advantage. And he had one more thing on his side which was not to be discounted — he knew where Cordray’s outfit was holding those Broken Spur cattle!

He shaped a cigarette and fired it, pacing the floor like a bronc in a horse trap. But the smoke only increased the cottony dryness of his throat and he ground it under a boot heel. If only he could get his damned mind to start working… .

Instinct urged him toward flight and he knew that the girl would go with him. At the point of a gun he might get them both mounted, but what kind of life would that be for either one of them? Running, always running, scared of their own shadows! He couldn’t do that to Linda. Nor could he go and leave her here knowing what Cordray was up to.

His orginal notion, though not good, was the best. Bargain with the grasper, fight fire with fire. Promise anything just so the ruse sufficed to get that fraudulent note torn up. But what could he bargain with — threats? Cordray would laugh at him. He would know he could block anything Reno threatened. Nothing but hard cash would ever move Cordray and he would never part with the note until the gold was in his hands — or then, like as not. He would be more apt to pay off with a bullet.