The Savage Gun (21 page)

Ben was leaning out from the saddle, looking down at Dynamite's legs. The horse was limping, favoring its left forefoot.

John turned Gent and rode up to Ben.

“Dynamite's gone lame, Ben.”

“I know. Happened back there, when that rabbit jumped out.”

“Let me take a look. Get down.”

Ben dismounted. John did the same. He handed Ben the reins of his horse, knelt down next to Dynamite's left leg. He lifted its hoof. The horse held steady. John examined the shoe, saw a splinter sticking out. He touched it and the horse winced. The muscles in its leg quivered, rippling up and down its ankle.

“Going to have to take that shoe off, Ben. He's got a splinter in his hoof.”

“That the only way you can get at it?”

“Looks like.”

“Shit,” Ben said.

“Can't be helped.” John drew his knife from its sheath. Gingerly, he stuck the blade under the heel of the shoe, began to pry, moving the blade up and down gently to loosen it.

The horse tried to back away, pulling its sore hoof out of John's hand.

“Easy boy,” Ben said. He rubbed Dynamite's muzzle to calm the horse.

“Hold him steady,” John said. “I'll try it again.”

He lifted the hoof. The shoe showed a small gap where he had pried it loose. He stuck the knife into the other side, pushed through the gap. He worked the blade, felt it strike one of the nails. He widened the gap, then moved the knife to the other side of both nails. He worked the knife down to the toe of the shoe, prying all the time. The nails loosened.

“Almost off,” Ben said.

“Yeah. I think I can pull the shoe now.”

John set the knife down, grabbed both sides of the shoe with his hand. He pulled up, straight toward him. The shoe came off, exposing the splinter of wood buried in the soft center of Dynamite's hoof. He dropped the shoe on the ground.

“This is going to hurt him a little,” John said.

“I'll hold him.”

Ben put his arm around Dynamite's neck. He spoke softly to the horse while John grabbed the splinter firmly with his thumb and index finger. He jerked on the end of the splinter. It came loose and the horse hopped away on the other foot.

“Got it,” John said.

“All of it?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Can you put the shoe back on?”

John tried to hold the shoe to the hoof and insert one of the nails. The horse wouldn't stand for it, pulled its foot away.

“We need a blacksmith,” John said. He stood up, handed the shoe and three nails to Ben.

“Damn,” Ben said.

“We'll have to walk to Pueblo,” John said, looking down the road.

“There's a little town called Fountain down the creek a ways. Maybe they have a blacksmith.”

They watered their horses and set out down the road along the creek, walking the horses.

A pair of pintails ejected from the creek, rising straight up from an eddy at one of the bends, their graceful bodies shedding water droplets that burned amber in the sun. All along a stretch of grassy banks, mallards and green- and blue-wing teals took flight as Ben and John passed. The mallards quacked in protest, the whap-whap of their pinions sounding leathery in the hush of afternoon.

A muskrat swam upstream, a long stem of grass in its teeth, its wake blending the colors of the water into a flowing amalgam of subdued tints as the sun sank toward the snowcapped peaks in the distance. A line of hills began to turn purple and gray. A stately gray heron croaked and took flight like some ungainly specter of geometry that constantly changed shapes as it struggled to gain purchase on an invisible ladder of air.

The afternoon grew long shadows and gold burnished the rocky outcroppings on the plain, the small dark buttes in the distance, the craggy spires that jutted up like rocky minarets blasted by wind and rain into skeletal remnants of an ancient kingdom long since vanished from the earth.

The village of Fountain was half asleep when the two men entered the town to barking dogs, slinking cats, and the smells of corn tortillas and beans, hot lard, and cooking meat. Blessedly, they heard the ring of a hammer on an iron anvil, and the whickering burble of a horse, mingled with the bray of a donkey. They headed in that direction as their shadows puddled up at their feet and the sky glowed like Vulcan's workshop in the west, behind the dark towers of mountains, and the evening breeze turned chill as it blew against their weary faces. Lamps came on and lighted homely windows in adobe dwellings and brush-constructed jacales, chasing shadows with feeble orange light, and voices drifted from the huts in liquid scales of staccato Mexican.

It would be late in the evening, or early morning, John thought, before they could hope to reach Pueblo, even if they could reshoe Dynamite and his lameness went away.

He cursed the lost time, but was helpless to do a damned thing about it.

A rooster crowed a scratchy madrigal from its sandpaper throat as the dusk descended over Fountain and the black-water creek that bore its name.

21

ROSA'S CANTINA ON CALLE VACA WAS A LARGE ADOBE STRUCTURE that had once served as a mission when that part of the country was still claimed by Spain, and later, Mexico, until the United States took all the land between the Rio Bravo and the Rio Grande del Norte. It was in the old part of town, near the foothills, and near the main road to the mountains. It had survived the fire that destroyed much of El Pueblo, but the new city had largely forgotten its existence, partly because it was well off the beaten path, and partly because it catered to what the landed gentry now considered disreputable people.

Rosa kept her customers coming back because she served strong spirits at reasonable prices and she didn't cheat with watered-down drinks or serve up questionable whiskies such as Taos Lightning, whiskey that fried a man's brain and sometimes killed the drinker with impure alcohol. Rosa herself was an attraction, with her stunning good looks, attractive figure, and a personality that made every man feel welcome. Her girls didn't roll drunks nor pick their pockets, and her bouncers were not vicious thugs who hit first and asked questions later. They behaved more like regulators or peace officers, breaking up fights, calming hot tempers, and putting passed-out drunks to bed in one of the upstairs cribs until they sobered up.

But she was also an opportunist, and an information gatherer. When she learned that a customer had means, money, a mining claim, or a thriving business, she used this information for nefarious purposes. She might persuade a man needing money to follow up on this information and commit robbery, never anywhere near her cantina, nor shortly subsequent to a victim's visit, but sometime afterward. She would split the proceeds with whoever perpetrated the crime and add to her growing wealth. She was never suspected of any crimes, and none of her victims ever connected her to their misfortune. She stayed in the background. She kept her hands clean and her pretty mouth shut. And those who carried out her criminal wishes were fiercely loyal to her, for she could be counted on for bail money, bribes to officials in law enforcement, and even the hiring of a defense attorney when bribes failed. Rosa was a very smart woman, and she knew how to manipulate and control men. And, like many of those she used for her own purposes, she had absolutely no conscience whatsoever.

Rosa catered to the workers in the nearby smelters and to men riding the owlhoot trail. She was attracted to down-and-outers because she had come from humble beginnings herself, having grown up in bleak Sonora, the daughter of a poor farmer living on sixteen hectares of hardscrabble land. She had migrated to Texas where she worked as a cook for a rich family who treated her kindly and instilled in her a love of money and opulence.

When she was in her late teens, she ran off with an enterprising young man who was a trader in Santa Fe. He died of consumption and left her with enough money to journey north to Pueblo, where she bought the old, crumbling mission, restored it, and made herself living quarters above the cantina. She still had enough space left to construct cribs for the girls, and her charm brought in the customers, making the cantina a success even in that part of town.

She was sitting at the far end of the long bar when Ollie came in that night, saddlebags slung over his shoulders, rifle in hand, enough dust on him to create a small desert, and an unlit cheroot in his mouth. The Mexican musicians were on a break and the few diners were just finishing their meals. Oil lamps cast a homey glow on the tables, the small dance floor, and made the bartop gleam like flowing honey.

Rosa smiled, but did not leave her seat at the bar. She never chased men; they chased her.

Ollie smiled and walked slowly toward her, his gaze roving to the right and left, out of habit. A regular at the bar raised a hand in greeting when he recognized Ollie. Most of the other patrons ignored him.

“I can tell by the look on your face you had a successful trip,” she said as Ollie stood next to her, a wide grin on his face. “Where are your compadres?”

“Puttin' up the horses. Good to see you, Rosa.”

The stables a few doors down were another drawing card for the cantina, and there were three hotels on the same block. The one next door was the best of the three and had been where Dan Savage had taken a room when he was alive.

“Check in yet?”

“No. Wanted to see you first. Miss me?” He pulled out a stool, sat down.

“Por supuesto, mi amor,”
she said.

“Mi querida,”
he said.

Her black hair shone in the lamplight, polished ebony, tied up in a bun in back, a single blue flower pinned along one side. Her blue gingham dress was tied with a yellow sash, her sandals a pale pink. Just a touch of rouge on each cheek highlighted her high cheekbones, and her lips were moist, the red of rubies. She wore a pale blue choker around her graceful neck like a woman of culture and breeding. Her bracelet and rings were silver, inlaid with turquoise. The silver was from Tasco, but the jewelry was fashioned in Taos and sold in Santa Fe.

Ollie hungered for her and she knew it from the lustful gleam in his eye.

“You'd better take a cup,” she said. “What is your pleasure?”

“Maybe you shouldn't ask that, Rosa.”

She laughed, low in her throat, like a cat purring.

“You are horny, eh? Like the buffalo.”

“Horny as a bull elk.”

“And you smell like one, Ollie.”

They laughed and she beckoned to the bartender.

“I will buy you your first drink while you tell me all about your adventure. And maybe you will tell me what is in your saddlebags.”

He pulled the bags from his shoulder and set them down between his feet. He shoed a boot toe under the flap.

“Pedro,” Rosa said when the bartender appeared, “Mr. Hobart wishes a drink.”

“
Buenas,
Mr. Hobart. Whiskey?” Pedro was thin, dark-skinned, wore a pencil-etched moustache, neatly trimmed sideburns, a white shirt with red garters.

“Pedro, you got any of that Old Taylor left back there?”

Pedro looked at Rosa. She nodded.

“Right away, Mr. Hobart.”

Pedro poured two fingers of whiskey from an Old Taylor bottle into a shot glass.

One of the musicians struck a chord on his guitar. There was a shuffling of feet on the bandstand, a fluttering of sheet music on the stands.

Ollie picked up the glass, looked at Rosa.

“And for you, Rosa?”

“You know that I do not drink, Ollie.”

“Not ever?”

“Never. Especially I would not drink when there is business to conduct with my lover.”

They both laughed. Hobart drank half the whiskey in the shot glass.

“There is business to conduct,” Ollie said.

“You were successful then.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You guess so? What does that mean? Was there not much, ah, what you went after?”

“We got plenty. Something else.”

Her brows knit. Worry lines appeared on her forehead like small pencil marks.

“You must tell me, Ollie.”

He told her about killing all the miners, the wife of Dan Savage, and their daughter. Rosa's eyes never blinked. Instead, they glowed in the lamplight like the feral eyes of a hunting cat, the pupils expanding and contracting with the telling of each detail.

“Did you know that Savage had a grown son?” Ollie asked.

“He mentioned this to me. Johnny, I think he was called.”

“And, there was an old man we missed. I don't know his name.”

“That would be Ben Russell. He drank here with Dan.”

“Well, him and Johnny, or maybe just Johnny, killed four of my men and those two are breathing down our necks.”

“Coming here?”

“Probably,” Ollie said.

At that moment, the band struck up a lively Mexican tune with lots of guitar runs, a cornet, and a drum. And Dick Tanner, Army Mandrake, and Red Dillard entered the cantina and marched to the bar near where Rosa and Ollie were sitting.

They looked at Ollie.

“Belly up, boys,” he said, “and wet your whistles.”

“Howdy, Rosie,” Red said, touching a finger to his hat brim.

“Howdy,” chorused Army and Dick as they each set a boot on the brass rail above the floor.

“They'll want their shares,” Ollie said to Rosa.

“You have it all?” She expressed surprise.

“I kept it until we got here. Good thing, too.”

“You want me to weigh it and give you cash?”

“If you can cover it.”