The Red Sombrero (8 page)

T
HE FAT SERVANT
, Juan-called-Juanito, was resting his weight in an old cushioned rocker out back of the stables when the dour-faced Bennie finally ran him to earth. The big Mexican had his sandals off, bare feet ensconced on a sack of whole oats. He had a bottle of vino uncorked beside him and one of Don Luis’ expensive coronas was expanding his comfort in a cloud of blue smoke. Though Bennie, being a Texican, would not have been found caught dead with a ‘greaser,’ he managed with great effort to dissemble his feelings and said with what passed for good will, “What goes, hombre?”

“Mucho trabajo. Nothing but work,” Juan sighed, offering the bottle. “And how goes it with you?”

Bennie shook his head, scowling, wiped off the bottle and took a generous swallow. Handing it back he hunkered down on his bootheels, crammed tobacco in his cheek and said in what he reckoned to be a roundabout fashion, “Them soldiers down yonder’s gittin’ all-fired close to the line this last day or two. You ever git a look at this Tano Sierra?”

“No, señor.” Juan puffed complacently. Soon it would be dusk, the finest hour of the day. He was glad he lived north of the border; in the south things were much different. Many times he had felt the homesickness, and sometimes he thought he could not resist the call of the land but he had stuck it out. He felt sorry for those fellows. For of what good was a revolution which, even if successful, would but swap one group of masters, for another with no benefit to the people? Here at least if things were not to your liking you could pick up your hat and go someplace else… .

“You figure he’s goin’ to git anywhere?”

“Quien sabe?” Juan said. “It will be as God directs, no doubt.”

“To be sure. And God is good,” observed Bennie piously. “And what do you think of this stranger, amigo?”

Juan put another cloud of smoke about him. “He who holds his tongue avoids much trouble. Besides,” he could not resist pointing out, “I am not being paid to think on this rancho.” He made a business of inspecting the ash of his cigar.

Bennie, snorting, made a business of getting out his wallet. He disengaged a couple of banknotes and made tents of them on the ground where Juan could see them. “We have a saying in my country, too.”

They looked at each other and the Mexican grinned. “Dispensame, señor — pardon me, but you are right. Sometimes I think in spite of myself. What was it the friend of the poor would like to know?”

“I want to know who this bird really is!”

“Bird?” Juanito blinked. “In the red hat? The General, señor. Assuredly.” He crossed himself. “El Carcinero — the Butcher.”

“You’re sure of that?”

The fat man stared. “But of course, señor. Who else?”

“The patron,” Bennie said, tapping Juanito’s knee, “is of the opinion this man is a counterfeit.”

The Mexican fished a match from his pocket, removed the cigar from his mouth and held it over the flames, twirling it, until it burned with a reasonable evenness. “The patron has great knowledge.”

“But you don’t think he’s right, eh?”

“The patron is always right, señor.” Juanito stared at a big toe critically. “But right wears many faces. It is one thing to one man, something else to another. Consider, señor, would a rogue in a mask promise fifty pesos and, when the favor was done, keep the promised money in his pocket?”

Bennie scowled. “What favor?”

The Mexican picked up the banknotes. “He was ask for a gun.”

• • •

Reno finally got out of his chair in disgust. Two hours he’d sat waiting, and nothing to show for it. “Women!” he snorted, and growled bitterly, stamping off down the hall. Yet when he went into his room to make himself presentable to sit at table with his host, the gun, rolled up in a shell belt and holster, was on the chest of drawers between the crockery pitcher and the basin.

The belt was his own. Fading light from the window struck up a yellow gleaming from the rims of cartridge cases as he buckled it about his hips. He felt whole again with that weight dragging at him. He slipped the pistol — which was not Descardo’s — out of its leather and loaded it, making a few quick passes with it, a tight grin lengthening the line of his lips. Let them try to hold him now!

There was a razor beside the basin, a towel, a washcloth and homemade soap. He stripped out of his shirt and washed himself. Lathering his face, he picked up the razor and went over to the mirror. There was a lamp in a bracket but the window had no shade and so he got along without it. He was getting into his shirt when an unnerving possibility occurred to him. Supposing the girl had tampered with those cartridges …

He stood still, scarcely breathing, while his mind turned it over. He finally picked up his jacket, shrugging into it. If she had monkeyed with the loads he would be better off not knowing. His heart beat faster. Softly opening the door he stepped into the dark hall.

Straight ahead of him was the kitchen, light and tantalizing smells coming out of it. He heard the chunk of wood against iron, the metallic clatter of a stove lid. He remembered the expression of Linda’s face as he’d last seen it.

He put that thought away from him.

Stepping into the kitchen quietly he saw the old woman by the stove with her back to him, bending over to take something out of the oven. The lamplight made dark gullies of her wrinkles. Reno lifted the latch of the outside door and stepped into the yard, gingerly closing it behind him.

He could see the yellow squares of the bunkhouse windows and the tawny path of light that came from the open cookshack door. He flattened himself against the wall of the house and watched the windows, seeing Bennie cross to a table and not discovering anyone else. Sounds traveled from the stables where unseen mozos, servants, were doing up the evening chores. He saw an indistinct shape with a forkful of hay moving through the gloom in the direction of the corrals. His belly was growling but he decided against approaching the cook shack and then, moved by impulse, strode toward it. Avoiding the finger of light he came up to the door and slipped through it. An old stove-up puncher was sampling stew from a ladle. He twisted his head and went still, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah?”

Reno said, speaking Spanish, “Fix me up a cold snack, por favor, cocinero.”

The cook, who was a gringo, took in the weight at his hip and nodded. He was turning away when Reno said, “I’ll be back for it,” and stepped into the night again. It was full dark now but he had tested his theory and struck out for the stable with a feeling of greater confidence. The best of the stock would be kept up and he wanted a good horse for this job. He tried to think how Descardo would have handled this and, with confidence swelling, moved through the door hole into the smoky glow of a lantern.

A mozo shoveling manure looked up at him, blinking. Reno ignored him. Striding down the line of stalls with his glance flicking over the shadowy shapes of eating horses, he stopped behind the last one with a show of greater interest. “Fetch a saddle, hombre.”

The man came reluctantly nearer. “Mother of God — that is Carablanco!”

“Do I care what he is called? Put the gear on him.”

“But, excelencia, that one is the horse of the patron — ”

“Saddle it, fool!”

The frightened mozo wrung his hands. But the habit of obedience was bred in his bones and he hurried off, crossing himself, and came back muttering under his breath with saddle, blanket and bridle. The smoky light from the lantern picked out bright glints from the square skirt’s ornamentation as he set down the hull to go and lead the horse out. Reno’s thoughts leaped with satisfaction as he observed the broad chest and powerful shoulders of the stallion. This should be a good one with ample speed and plenty of bottom.

The horse rolled his eyes but stood solid while the heavy Spanish bit was slipped into his mouth. When the saddle hit his back he took a deep breath but the mozo’s knee knocked it out of him and the mozo’s strength jerked the latigo tight. The horse tossed his head, stamping impatiently. As Reno reached for the reins a shadow moved across them and a voice someplace back of him inquired with a deceptive blandness, “The General ain’t figuring to git lost in the dark, is he?”

Reno, remembering his shoulder, stood still. A dozen thoughts flew through his head, all of them desperate and not one of them practical. Then he pulled the tongue off the roof of his mouth, saying to the mozo, “Mil gracias, hombre,” and, gathering the reins in left hand, turned.

The Texican, Bennie, stood with a thumb in his shell belt, his short and broad shape blocking the path to the door. “Maybe you don’t hear so good,” he said.

Reno stood there hearing his heart thump against the cold pit of his belly. He could not make out the man’s expression with the light coming over his shoulders but he did not need to see it to understand he had come to the end of something.

The stillness was deep as the growl of a dog and it clogged in his throat. His legs started shaking. But he knew if he quit now, if he took the easy way again, he’d be saying goodbye to what he could have been forever. It wasn’t only the gold that hung in the balance; it was what passed with Reno for pride, for self respect.

With the shirt clinging damp to the small of his back he realized with sudden clarity there were things worse than death; and he moved forward, stiffly walking toward the Texican blocking the door.

He could not see the man’s tongue lick across lips gone dry. A moment ago Cordray’s gun fighter had been filled with a malicious amusement, bold and made brash by the indisputable advantage of having caught Sierra’s agent with his back turned. While that back was still turned he had filled his hand, exulting in the prospect of seeing this fellow crawl, of humbling and making him ridiculous in the goggling eyes of that whey-faced mozo. Now that prospect was shattered, blotted out in the incredible grimness of the man’s unexpected advance.

Bennie backed up a step. His gun jumped to focus. He tried to squeeze its trigger but somewhere the impulse must have shortcircuited and he was locked in his tracks, frozen in the certainly of the doom looking at him from those unwinking eyes beneath Descardo’s red hat.

Bennie, without even realizing it, began backing. His gun fell out of nerveless fingers, thudding dully in the dust of powdered hay and dried horse droppings. His shaking hands went above his head and Reno followed him through the runway’s arch and into the windy blackness of the night with Cordray’s horse, on the reins, catfooting behind him.

Just as the horse cleared the doorhole, Bennie tripped. With arms flailing wildly he struck the ground on his back. A muffled curse whined out of him and, staring down at him, Reno said from the saddle, “Never get in my way again,” and was gone.

I
N THE SANCTUARY
of her room Linda sat a long while with her thoughts and her conscience before she could bring herself to take her Dad’s pistol and leave it where Reno must inevitably find it.

Once the deed was accomplished she was filled with confusion, prey to shame and regret, to remorse and misgivings. How could she so abuse Don Luis’ trust and hospitality?

She paced the narrow confines of her room, distraught and frightened. Twice she went to the door, determined to gain peace of mind by removing the gun before he could find it. But each time, with her hand on the latch, something stopped her.

A thousand questions clawed at her mind, but full dark had come and none of them were answered when she heard the horse.

Don Luis, in his office, also heard the horse and wondered who could be departing Tadpole at a time so near the cook’s call. He wasn’t particularly interested and yet the wonder remained at the outer fringe of his awareness, intruding upon the contemplative tenor of his thoughts with a nagging sense of increasing disquiet. At last he put aside the papers he’d been examining and called for Juan.

The fat major-domo sidled into the room with an anxious smile and stood twisting his hat, uncomfortably reminded of the purloined cigar he had enjoyed behind the stables. The box lay open but the saints were good. Don Luis’ brusque query put his worry at rest.

“I do not know, patron, who has left the ranch at this hour.”

“Then find out. And be quick about it.” Don Luis picked up his papers again but as the Mexican turned away he said testily, “Make sure first of all the señorita is still in her bedroom.”

In some ways, he reflected, that Tejano was right. He had not been giving enough time to the girl. Because in his own mind the fact was established, he had taken her ultimate surrender perhaps a little too much for granted. He would remedy that. Tonight he would court her. He would have a couple of the mozos sing outside her window. It was true that one who would enter a low door must stoop. Blood of Christ, he could play the bear if he had to! If all else failed there was still the bank and, beyond that, foreclosure. In the meantime an ounce of honey might be just what the situation wanted. And the affair might not be without interest. Many a leg gets warm neath the blanket.

About to select a fresh weed from the box, Don Luis’ head canted to the renewed sound of hoofbeats. “Valgame Dios!” he snarled, jumping up, and threw open the win-down the better to hear. But he’d heard right with it shut Another horse was departing, heading south in a hurry.

Cordray pulled in his head and put down the window. He was more perturbed than ever, filled with a dark suspicion as the significance of that direction washed everything else from his mind. He was reaching for his hat when he heard the hurried slapping of the Mexican’s guarachas.

“Patron!” Juanito’s chins were shaking as he struggled to catch his breath. “Carai!” he cried, blowing his cheeks out. His fat bulk heaved. “The General is gone and the Tejano has gone after him!”

“Carajo!” Don Luis’ face turned ugly with anger. Thrusting Juanito out of his path he rushed from the house breathing curses.

There were three lanterns lit at the stables and the runway was bright with this combined radiance. Five mozos were standing in a close huddle, arguing; when Don Luis stormed in and they sprang apart, frightened.

“Rascals!” he shouted. “Did I not warn you that rogue was to remain in the house on my orders? Sons of goats I Why didn’t you raise the alarm?” He laid hands on the nearest, cuffing him, beside himself. “All your life I support you in idleness and this is how you repay me. Who furnished the horse?”

They cringed back from him, trembling.

“Quick — which one of you?”

At last one, with the sign of the Cross pulled his head up. “It was I, señor — Pablo.” He told how the General had overridden his protests. How the Texan had come up during the saddling and what befell of it, and how afterwards the Texan had gone spurring away after him.

Cordray gnawed at his lip. He couldn’t afford to have the man reach Sierra … Setting aside the business of that let-out notch on the chin strap, the man — whether or not he was actually Descardo — had doubtless been with Descardo’s party when that group had left Sierra. Therefore, was it not reasonable to assume the fellow had quit that group with the money? And, if that were so, did it? not also follow that he was now on his way to recover it?

Cordray said to the men, “To horse, hombres!” He whirled on the fat man who threw up his arm as though to ward off a blow. “The Winchesters, Juanito — hurry! One for each — and Pablo! Put my saddle on Carablanco.”

The man stopped in his tracks and shuddered. His eyes rolled crazily. “I cannot,” he wailed, shrinking into the shadows.

Don Luis’ face darkened. “What is this?” he demanded. “You have a fear of the horse?”

“Alas, no, señor. It was on Carablanco that the General rode away!”

• • •

Reno wished he had a slicker that he could button around his throat to keep the cold wind out of him. It was ever like this in the border country, furnace hot in the day and like the Yukon after night fell. But there was nothing he could do about it, or about that grub he’d had no chance to pick up. He tightened his belt against the growls of hunger and rode with the wind pushing against his right side.

The shack he was looking for, according to the girl, was but an hour’s quick ride from headquarters. South, of course, for that was the way he’d come into this country. But after twenty minutes he reined more to the east so that the wind was behind him, and found the pace better.

The big roan was an easy traveler, a sure footed horse well used to rough country and caring nothing for the dark. Reno talked to him a little, reminded of the years he’d earned his keep riding after cattle, the old carefree days on his dad’s Circled Triangle, before the smoke of a six-shooter had driven him away. It had been colder up there, summer and winter both, with the snow sometimes drifting twelve feet deep in the mountain meadows.

He pulled his thoughts away from these memories and stopped the stallion, taut with listening. With the wind howling down through the rocks like it was he found it hard to be sure; imagination could have foisted that hoof sound upon him — probably had. He rode on, warmed by thoughts of the plunder he was seeking, those two precious sacks of onzas that would brighten his horizons if he could find and get away with them.

It was a stake — a real stake, the thing he’d always needed. A chance to begin afresh, to live down the mistakes of a wasted past. He put all other thoughts from his head. He must find the shack, and he must find it before morning. This was the night of the eighth day since he had taken that gold from Descardo’s saddle, and suspicion must soon prod Sierra into action.

A remembrance of Linda stole into his mind and he thought,
Poor kid
. She was starved for affection. He recalled how restlessness had swayed her, how the need for understanding, for justification, had awakened in her the hungers prompting that sudden fierce response which had first shocked and then amused him.

He was not amused now; he felt revulsion and scorn for the way he had used her. She had named him right, a bad lot, he thought bitterly; the ghost of a man filled with malice and mockery which he used like a sachet to camouflage the truth — a defense mechanism built up through the years to wall away the decay engendered by past failures.

He was wrapped in the somberness of these dour reflections when the unmistakable sound of a horse came down the wind to jerk him into full consciousness of danger. He stopped the roan to listen, then swung him right and applied the steel, driving him headlong into the waist high brush, crashing south. A full five minutes he held the stallion to that pace and again pulled up, hearing nothing.

Striking east, he moved on with more caution, narrowly scanning each rockpile and thicket, with the gun the girl had got him held in readiness across the pommel. One rider, he thought. Probably Bennie. Smarting under the chagrin of his recent humiliation.

He began to think he might have come too far in this direction. It was going to be hell to find that place without he waited for the moon to come up. Another hour, perhaps. Should he go on now or wait?

The thought of Sierra made him turn the horse south. The land became more rolling. The rocks and brush gave way to scattered stands of cholla and prickly pear with here and there a gnarled mesquite lifting new growth above its cut over roots. A blood-orange disc climbed above the West Potrillos and picked out the dim far ramparts of distant Mexican mountains. The wind died away and the stars seemed almost near enough to touch.

He rode more carefully still, holding the stallion to a walk and scanning the night in all directions. He saw no sign of the shack and eyed the mountains again, orienting himself and swinging more to the west. He was pretty sure, now, that he had come too far.

The moon, turned butter yellow, crept above the spruce tops that stood like wrought-iron fringe atop the rocky escarpments back of him. Its glow pushed his shadow far out across the argent waste into which the blue roan was carrying him, bending it around the earth’s irregularities and causing him to tighten his grip on the pistol.

He wished now he had been smart enough to let Bennie pass when he had first heard the horse. Then he could have been the stalker and followed Cordray’s gun dog. There was no doubt in Reno’s mind that, having lost his trail, the hard faced Texican would line straight out for that shack.

Perhaps it wasn’t yet too late to translate that notion into action. The ground was soft underfoot but there was plenty of shale to hammer a horse’s hoofs through this cold quiet.

He pulled up by a thicket of catclaw and sat listening, straining to catch any dim sound of travel. He felt the chill biting into him, making his wrenched shoulder ache, but continued his vigil for another ten minutes before, shivering and cursing, he was finally convinced he had missed the shack too far to make further waiting feasible.

He kneed the roan into motion, dropping into a gully, following its twisting course westward with white clouds high above him, his horse’s hoofs muffled in the deep sand of its bed. For a quarter of an hour he pursued this course, then put Carablanco onto a cattle path climbing the treacherous slope of the arroyo’s north bank.

Before his head came level with the rim he reined sharply, warned by the clack of shod hoofs on stone. There was brush flanking the rim and he debated edging into this, wanting to see and yet loathe to risk discovery without a better knowledge of what he had run into. While he hung seesawing between desire and caution, a bludgeoning shout put cold prickles up his back. “Halt or we knock you out of the saddle!”

Reno’s shoulder’s sagged. To be taken like this after all he had been through was enough to make a pessimist of any man. While the breath was sighing out of him, and before he could regather enough to throw in the sponge, a gruff voice just above and beyond him snarled disgustedly, “Ahr — the hell with it!”

Reno’s head came up. Bennie!

The Texican said, “I got my paws up, ain’t I? You oughta be able to see enough to know that much! What you need, Lewis, is a good pair of glasses. If I’d knowed it was you I was runnin’ from — ”

Cordray’s voice broke in, furious. Sounds of a horse being turned in the brush and afterwards, being reined out of it, obscured the more pungent of the remarks he was making. Then the voices, farther off and pulled down but still intelligible, moved into an additional burst of profanity. Don Luis’ ominous, Bennie’s sullen. Reno, scarcely breathing, kept a hand on the stallion’s nostrils.

Cordray said, impatiently, “You were a fool! In the first place, the fellow’s not Descardo — ”

“He had a gun!” Bennie growled. “What’d you expect me to do? Commit suicide!”

“The man’s bluffing — ”

“He wasn’t doin’ no bluffin’ when he salivated Juarez! Christ, be reasonable. Anyway, what’s the point in beatin’ the brush if the guy ain’t Descardo? If you’re just figurin’ to give these yaps a little exercise — ”

“The man has the money.”

Reno, though he stood in his stirrups, was unable to hear any more for several moments. Abruptly Bennie said, “Whyn’t you quit throwin’ dust and git down to cases? If the guy ain’t the General, where the hell did he git the money? How’d he know about it? Hell’s fire, Cordray, I can’t do you no good stumblin’ around in the dark!”

“Very well,” Cordray said in angry Spanish. “On Sierra’s staff there is a drunken colonel, a renegade gringo called ‘Reno.’ A man of education who speaks the language fluently. This is the one who came here in the red hat of the General. When Descardo’s dorados ran into the Federalistas, I think this comic-opera colonel managed to get away with the gold.”

“It don’t make sense to me,” Bennie growled. “Sure, I see what you’re suggestin’, but the guy come to Tadpole. You reckon he’d do that if he was plannin’ to make off with the swag?”

“He did not come to Tadpole. He arrived at a Tadpole linecamp, the one nearest the border and,” Cordray, switching to English, said with a deal of significance, “the only camp we have not been using. Consider — the man was exhausted, half out of his mind from wandering around, probably lost, in the desert. He observed the light and approached, a quite natural reaction for one in his condition. The man needed food. He needed a horse. The action with Juarez used up the last of his strength and he fainted. So when he comes to and discovers where he is, being a man of quick wit he plays the bluff with the hat to fob us off until he can dig up the gold and get out of here. Well,” he said brusquely, “it makes sense, does it not?”

“It kinda hangs together,” Bennie acknowledged, “but I can see a couple holes in it. In
his
boots, actin’ for Sierra, I’d of done the same thing he did, refused to give up the dinero until I was damn well sure of the rifles. Another thing, he don’t look or act like no gringo to me! And what’s more, if he was figurin’ to clear out he’d of gone straight to the shack. He sure as hell wasn’t there when you put
me
on the run.”