The Red Sombrero (4 page)

That this constraint was almost wholly of her making she was well aware, nor could she find any plausible reason for it. All her life she had lived with tales of the Cordray saga and she knew it was not awe which made her restive in his presence. He was the soul of tact, a charming host, never presuming upon the situation which had placed her under his roof. He had offered to oversee the rebuilding of Spur headquarters for her and it was certainly not his fault that things were progressing so slowly. Adequate help was hard to come by and those of her father’s crew still alive had apparently fled the country. She had been over there often enough to know he was doing everything he could to speed completion of the new buildings. His own vaqueros were riding Spur range, patrolling it to discourage the inroads of rustlers. In her behalf he had hired carpenteros and adobe makers and when these went off on a drunk he hired others. She knew he’d had men trying to track down the raiders and had only given up when every chance had been exhausted. Yet her disquiet in his presence remained a nagging irritation and she resented her inability to put it down and be as gracious as her debt to him would have her.

The evening wore on and dusk came to subdue the surrounding contours of the hills and gobble up the sun while her thoughts continued to pick at Lewis Cordray and the reactions he awoke in her.

She was an honest girl and he had treated her as one, treated her almost as an equal, despite the differences in their backgrounds and the gap between their ages. He was fourteen years her senior and about all the law there was in the country; and two weeks back he had asked her to marry him and she had fled white-faced to her room like a schoolgirl.

Her cheeks burned painfully at the memory. Though he’d said nothing further about it and continued to treat her with every consideration, it was obvious that soon he would expect her to give him an answer.

So here she was with a ranch on her hands and no crew to run it. What could she say? Even she had to admit it would be the most practical arrangement. What other man in this region could do better by her? From every commonsense viewpoint it was the best possible solution of all her problems. She would have security and the envy of every woman in the country. As the wife of Don Luis —

She hit the gelding with her spurs. She didn’t want to be his wife! She saw the line shack through the darkness and pulled up, unaccountably shuddering. The only thing she wanted in all the world was to be loved!

• • •

She tied the gelding to a gnarled juniper and stood beside him, stroking his muzzle, telling herself she was being silly. She went into the shack and struck a match, looking around in distaste at the litter of rubbish. There was a lamp in a bracket and she went across to it and lit it, only then becoming conscious of the man who had come in behind her.

He hulked better than six feet in the cotton drawers and shirt of a peon, the unusual height of him emphasized by a gauntness that seemed little short of starvation. He stood without movement, the deep socketed eyes in that bony face going slowly over her shape with a brightening shine.

“You had something to tell me?”

The apparition smirked.

Linda kept her voice steady. “I got your note. Let’s get on with it.”

When the man neither moved nor altered his expression she repeated the words in Spanish, still without drawing either response or visible reaction. “What’s the matter — are you deaf?”

His eyes were flat as a snake’s, as unwinking.

Growing a little vexed, Linda said, “If you can’t talk, write it down for me. You’ll be paid what it’s worth when the men are caught up with.”

He said abruptly, “What men?”

“The men you were going to tell me about.”

He put a heel to the door and slammed it shut. He ran the tip of his tongue across thin lips. Then he commenced to walk toward her.

With her cheeks suddenly white Linda backed away. When the backs of her shoulders hit the wall he grinned. His left hand shot out and closed like a trap in the neck of her dress.

Linda struck at him. Cloth ripped. She tried to get to the door but he was quicker. He caught her about the hips and dragged her kicking and scratching toward the bunks in the corner.

He threw her into the bottom one but she whirled over and got out of it. “Full of ginger,” he grinned — “just the way Juarez likes ’em.”

They were both panting now. She said hoarsely, “Are you crazy?”

“I’m going to tear them goddam things right off you.”

She made a dash for the window. He got a leg out and tripped her. The fall left her breathless. Twisting her head, gagging, she saw him bending to reach for her. She was on hands and knees, trying desperately to get clear of him, when she saw the door open and bloodshot eyes in a whiskered chin-strapped face peering in at them. She saw the cracked lips move and heard the croaked, “Turn around, you!”

Juarez heard it, too. For one dragged-out instant he crouched in his tracks. Then he spun like a cat. Flame lanced from the door. He had a knife in his hand when the slug knocked him backward.

From somewhere outside Bennie’s shocked voice gasped,
“Red Hat!”

R
ENO OPENED
his eyes on a bright oblong of ceiling composed of chinked ocatillo wands interspersed with hand-squared joists of pine, the marks of the adz still upon them. He followed the gleam of the sun down a white gypsumed wall past a chest of closed drawers with a pitcher and basin to the face of the girl who sat beside the bed, watching him.

Her hair was brown as a meadowlark’s wing. She wore it parted in the middle and pulled tight behind small ears that were good enough to show if she’d had enough experience to more properly make the most of it. Her face was plain, a kind of everyday job whose blue eyes, as they met his, pulled away to leave it flushed with acute embarrassment.

“Expect I owe you something for fetching me here.” He said weakly a moment later, “What place is this? I mean which side of the Line?”

The blue eyes came back to him, still self conscious but worried too now. “You’ll be all right, only you mustn’t talk. You’ve got to get some rest. Do you feel strong enough to eat again?”

Reno managed a feeble grin. “My stomach feels like it’s wrapped around my backbone.”

She blushed again and got up and went out and came back with a bowl and spooned broth into him. After that he fell asleep and it was dark the next time he opened his eyes and he was alone in the room. He slept again.

It made a stronger man of him, strong enough to scrape his thoughts together and consider his situation. The sun was on the east side of the house; when he’d seen it before it had been late afternoon. He guessed this much by the appearance of the trees he could see through the window. He needed to know where he was, how close to the border and which side of it; it was imperative that he discover the answer quickly. The fact that the girl was American meant nothing. The man he had killed last night was a Mexican. This room was finished in the Mexican fashion and the girl wore her hair like a Mexican, too. He thought of the money, those bags of gold onzas. And he thought of Sierra and shivered.

He threw back the blanket and found himself naked. What in Christ’s name had they done with his clothes!

He came up on an elbow and sank back with a groan. He damned that wrenched shoulder that could still turn him dizzy with hot splinters of pain. He got the blanket up over him again and lay soaking in the sweat of weakness. He couldn’t do anything until he knew where he was, and not even then without some clothes and a gun. He felt puny as a pup relegated to the hind tit.

He glared at the mud chinked ocatillos of the ceiling. Never had he felt so goddam helpless. That it should be now, of all times, was unbearable outrage. He ought to be on a horse. He ought to be riding like mad …

The girl came into the room and smiled painfully. “Do you think you could eat something now? Do you feel strong enough?”

“Ma’am,” Reno said, “I could eat a bronc — hoofs, hide and tail.”

Her smile flashed again and then was lost in a blush that ran into her hair. She had on a blue print whose bows and ruffles did nothing for her. She was scrubbed so clean you could even smell it as she stood there undecided, awkwardly worrying a ruffle with uncontrollable fingers. “I — I think perhaps some milk toast — ”

“I’ll never get out of this bed on that crap. I got to build up some strength,” he growled irritably. “I ain’t ate in so long I’ve forgot what it tastes like. Bring me a steak and some spuds and black java.”

After she had gone some of his memories caught up with him, how he’d crawled back into town down that trough dug by storm water, hiding out among the rubble of one of the wrecked houses while Perron’s hunters beat the woods for him and ran into a nest of dug-in Federalistas. How he’d lain there in concealment until the next night had given him a chance to slip away, and how he’d walked and walked and walked and walked until he’d lost all track of time and direction. The only habitations he had happened on were abandoned ones their owners had deserted in the fright of Sierra’s proximity. Such horses as he had seen had kept well away from him; he’d been unable even to get near enough to crease one. He’d subsisted on the fruits of cactus and mesquite beans eaten raw. He’d traveled only during darkness, holing up through the long hours of sunlight, sooner ready to starve than risk detection by using Descardo’s pistol on such rabbits as he had managed to get near enough to hit.

He figured he’d been gone from Boca Grande perhaps three nights when he’d seen the light of the shack and found the girl struggling with that loco Mex. That left him still the better part of another week before Sierra, with the reported knowledge of Descardo’s finish, would feel any real alarm concerning what had happened to that rifle money. Depending of course upon the vicissitudes of war, he believed that he might count upon a further couple days before Sierra’s increasing anxiety would prod him into definite action. When that happened he would go to Cordray.

Let him! Reno personally had no intention of going within miles of Cordray, but he did feel kind of sorry for the bastard. Tano Sierra was a pretty violent man. He would probably seize the rifles whether he had the price or not. But that was Cordray’s lookout. To hell with him, Reno thought.

The girl came back with a plate of eggs and bacon garnished with toast and a pot of coffee. She set these down on a chair, blushing when Reno said, “Just push it over where I can get hold of it — ”

“But you can’t feed yourself — ”

“Do I look stove up that bad? All that’s the matter with me is I’ve been going too long on nerve. Nothing a little food won’t fix up in short order.” He was too cagey to mention that shoulder. “You go along. I’ll make out to eat this stuff. And, say — when you come back fetch my clothes along, will you?”

She looked dubious. “I don’t think you had better get up just yet. Juan says — ”

“I don’t know who this Juan jasper is but — ”

“It was Juan who put you to bed. He says you’re suffering from exhaustion and exposure, that it will be several days before — ”

“Ma’am, I never argue with a lady but I’ll be on my way in another couple hours. You just fetch in my clothes and I’ll see if I can talk your dad out of a horse. Lordy, I’ve got to get out of this bed; there ain’t no two ways about it.”

He thought she looked funny when he mentioned her dad but she didn’t say anything. After a moment, moving the chair over handy to the bed, she went out.

Careful this time of his shoulder, Reno maneuvered himself into a sitting position and went to work on the food.

He felt better after he’d eaten and put that pot of black coffee inside him. Even the shoulder felt better so long as he was watchful not to twist or move it quickly. Damn lucky it was his left.

He eased himself down again, pulling the blanket over him, and lay there turning over plans having to do with those bags he had taken off Descardo’s saddle, mighty glad he had got rid of them before showing up at that shack. With that kind of dough a man could really go places!

If he could get to where he could spend it.

He heard steps approaching that were certainly not the girl’s and composed his face for company, bitterly conscious of his need of a razor and a soak in a tub. He could not see the door from where he lay but heard it open and the steps coming around to him.

“What’s this I hear about you champing to get up? Linda tells me you’re demanding your clothes and a horse muy pronto.”

The man who had spoken, who now stood by the bed looking down at him, had the high beaked nose of a Spaniard. His eyes — gray or green — were twinkling, and this air of good will appeared to envelop the whole man. The major-domo, Reno was thinking, taking in the immaculate attire and the pseudo brusque tone of him.

“You hear right,” Reno told him. “Business does not wait on the whims of the flesh and I am three days late already. You’re Juan, I suppose, and you have my thanks — ”

Beak Nose held a hand up. “A quite natural assumption but somewhat wide of the mark. I am Don Luis, the owner of this place, and the thanks should go from me to you that you were able to step into that affair of the impulsive Linda in what Americanos so aptly call ‘the nick of time.’” He smiled. “My house is yours.”

It was quite a speech, Reno thought, and then forgot it. “How far are you from the border?”

“About eight kilometers,” Don Luis answered, “but do not speak of leaving today. You have much weakness, señor, and in any event it is otherwise impossible. The insurrecto, Tano Sierra, yesterday defeated a large detachment of Federal infantry and the roads are filled with fleeing troops and swarms of bandits. Make yourself comfortable,” he smiled with quiet charm. “I will send Juan in with soap and a razor and when you are feeling better you may provide yourself from my wardrobe with garments more suitable to a man of your station.” The humorous twinkle crept into his stare again. He clapped his hands. “Eladio,” he called, “you may inform Juanito the gentleman is ready for his services.”

With a courtly bow he stepped around Reno’s bed and the door was shut softly behind him.

• • •

Juan, who was large with three jellylike chins and a stomach that bulged comfortably over his belt, was a gem of the finest luster. In Chicago or San Francisco you would have called him a gentleman’s gentleman but here on the border he was simply Juanito, a man who knew his work and performed it with pleasure.

After a relaxing bath in a foot tub and a haircut and shave that made him feel almost human, Reno, once more in bed, as Juan was gathering up his towels and reaching for the basin, remarked casually, “A brash fellow, that Sierra. Is it true his men are pushing north of the border?”

“Who can say where the wind goes?” Juanito shrugged philosophically. “There was a terrible battle. For many hours you could hear the pounding of the guns. The cowboys say all the hills are filled with people.” He waved his hands, shaking his head. “Such excitement! None but a fool would brave the border roads today.”

“None but a fool would leave a bed without clothes. When does the patron tell you I am fit to be dressed again?”

“Ai.”
Juanito thrust the towels under an arm to count on his fingers. “Today is Wednesday,” he declared, looking up with surprise. “On the Friday, if you are strong enough.” He showed his teeth in a grin.
“El Rancho
Tadpole,” he said in English, “has few guests these days. Don Luis means to make the most of you.”

Reno, growling disgustedly, suddenly tightened.
Tadpole!
He came half onto a shaking elbow. “We’re in Mexico, aren’t we?”

“No, señor. Estados Unidos.”

With cold horror looking out of his eyes Reno whispered, “What place is this, hombre?”

“It is the ranch of Don Luis Cordray.”