The Widow's Revenge (5 page)

As she crawled along, dragging the canvas bag that contained her heavy artillery, the fun gradually diminished. During this ordeal Loyola scuffed her knees, tore her skirt half off, and muttered unladylike curses in her native tongue.

When she was close enough to hear the poppity-crackle of the campfire and the muffled sounds of voices, the wild-eyed old woman crouched behind a prickly huckleberry bush. After a pause to catch her breath and say a prayer, Loyola raised her white-haired head just enough to take a quick look. What she saw did not appear to be a sinister gathering of Satanists.

This seemed to be nothing more than a bunch of ordinary folks camping out and having a good time. A tall, skinny fellow was telling off-color jokes. Several were chugging beer from longneck bottles. There was a sizable carcass on a spit over the fire, and one of their number was ladling a thick, fragrant sauce onto the roasting meat.

Loyola sniffed the mouthwatering aromas.
That barbecue sauce smells too good to be store bought
. She sniffed again.
And the meat smells like roasted pork.
But (she thought) you could bet your Social Security check that those goat-murdering bastards didn’t buy their meat like upright citizens.
They must’ve killed one of Lonnie Ross’s pigs.
Wouldn’t bother
them
that Lonnie’s wife was sickly and that the young couple had four hungry children to feed and Lonnie hadn’t worked since he got laid off last Christmas. When Loyola heard someone laugh, angry tears welled in her eyes.
First they murder my sweet little nanny goat, now they’re picnicking on one of my dirt-poor neighbor’s pigs.

It was apparent that someone had to do something about this outrage. Loyola knew very well who that
someone
was, and also what that
something
was—and she was more-than-ever determined to draw warm blood.

But not before she’d learned everything she could about this devilish bunch.

Straining to hear, the aged spy cocked her ear. As she’d hoped, snatches of conversation did reveal something about their malevolent plans. Quite a lot, in fact. She tried very hard to commit every bit of it to memory.

After Loyola had absorbed as much as she could without becoming completely befuddled, she gave up the tedious intelligence-gathering game.

The time had come to get down to serious business.

THE WIDOW’S REVENGE

Loyola Montoya raised the heavy pistol in both hands, closed her left eye, took careful aim at the back of the nearest and biggest witch, and whispered, “With a little luck, I’ll drill the son of a bitch right through his black heart.” Stiffening her back and setting her teeth in anticipation of the roar of the .45 and its jarring recoil, she hissed through her teeth, “This is for Nancy.” The expectant marksman pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

The weapon in her hands might as well have been a useless lump of pot metal. Accustomed to conversing with herself when puzzled, Loyola commenced her whispering. “What went wrong?” She glared at the pistol. “I must’ve left the safety on.” (She had.) But the shootist knew how to remedy that error. And she tried. Ever so hard. But though her thumb searched ever so diligently for the smallish latch, it could not find the contrary thing.
Oh, what an old fool I am.
Humiliated and deflated, she muttered, “Damn!”

Whispers and hisses are one thing (or two?); a mutter, quite another.

Two or three someones had heard Loyola’s heartfelt “Damn!”

One was the man whose broad back had been her intended target. He shushed his comrades to silence with a subtle gesture, then turned to stare directly at the spot where the Apache elder was concealed behind the huckleberry bush.

The other members of the coven followed his gaze.

Thirteen evil stares are a formidable force to be reckoned with.

Loyola froze. But not entirely. The thumb on her right hand was (unbeknownst to the dangerous lady) still searching for the safety.

The big man made another barely perceptible gesture. Four other
brujos
separated from the circle to join him. The five, striding purposefully about two yards apart, approached the old lady’s hiding place.

The Apache warrior’s determined thumb found what it had been looking for, and her trusty trigger finger reacted—

Boom-boom-boom!
(They are not called
automatic
pistols without good reason.)

“Yi-yi-yikes!” (With each thunderous report, the startled shooter yelped.)

Simultaneously with the
booms!
and Loyola’s yelps, devil worshipers were falling to prone positions with arms outstretched. No, they were not calling on their Father Below for deliverance. The prudent supplicants were hitting the dirt so as to present the smallest possible targets. Sad to say (one cannot help but side with the sniper), the tactic was effective. Not one of the hated thirteen was struck by the zipping lumps of lead.

The sole casualties were a gnarly branch on a twisted piñon, a quarter-million-year-old chunk of brownish red sandstone, and a left front tire mounted on one of the unhappy campers’ stolen motor vehicles. We are not talking shabby, off-brand retread. The fatally wounded tire was a brand-spanking-new Goodyear whitewall.

One hesitates to moralize, but this helpful advice simply
aches
to be offered: It is unwise to shoot a hole through a man’s automobile tire. Particularly when his religious persuasion encourages him to all manner of violent excesses.

FLIGHT

That single word pretty much sums it up. Loyola made a hasty retreat, and, like a flushed partridge—anything but a silent one. The venerable pistol still smoking in her right hand, she splashed across the shallow creek, fairly trotted through the sickly orchard, mounted her back porch two steps at a time, unlocked the door, slipped inside, and latched it behind her.

An impressive performance for one of her years. Perhaps her last before the final curtain falls?

The exhausted woman stumbled across the kitchen, tripped over her feet, and tumbled to the floor. She lay as still as a discarded rag doll, staring unseeing at the dark ceiling, gasping for breath. Poor old soul. Morbid thoughts flitted about in her mind like black moths trapped under an iron pot.
Well, I guess this is it.
Death’s cold hand pressed hard against her chest.
I wish I could’ve killed some of those witches while I still had
the strength.
Alas, she felt her life force fading away.
I always figured dying would hurt more than this.
Her tired old heart thumped slower and slower, then began skipping beats. Feeling terribly alone, Loyola remembered her grandson.
I wonder if Wallace will find my body. And where the half-wit will bury me. Probably in some weedy cemetery next to a landfill.
Her hands and feet had gone from prickly-chilly to completely numb.
I hope one of my lady friends will tell the mortician to put that nice, black silk dress on my corpse. And my black slippers.
Loyola’s vision had narrowed. She was looking down a long, dark tunnel.
Well, what in the world is this?
She could see a hint of light at the far end.
That looks like a candle flame a thousand miles away. But I seem to be getting there pretty quick!

For a soul who had no great hankering to be husked from her earthly shell just yet, this was an ominous development. And one whose outcome must remain shrouded in mystery. There are strict rules about who can approach that boundary, so we have no choice but to leave the Apache elder’s spirit as it continues swiftly on the one-way journey toward—

Wait a minute. What is this?

The whole business is very unseemly, but the supposed corpse is twitching.

Moreover, the aged heart has thumped. There—it thumps again.

And look at that—her wrinkled face smiles.

One can only conclude that the stubborn woman has
refused to die.

Why—because she is determined to live and fight another day?

No doubt. Evidently, the old warrior still has plenty of fire in her belly.

But there may be another, more revitalizing reason for her tenacious hold on life. Though her terrifying adventure into the witches’ lair was absolutely exhilarating, Loyola’s appetite for revenge has not yet been sated.

But with every faint heartbeat, things were returning to normal.

After lying on the floor for what seemed an eternity, the old woman gradually realized where she was and remembered where she had been. She also recalled bits and pieces of what she had heard in the witches’ encampment. Some of it had to do with Granite Creek, a town miles to the north. Which was not far from where Daisy Perika’s nephew owned a big cattle ranch.

Loyola was exceedingly fond of Charlie Moon. She could not count how many times when (back when he was a uniformed Ute cop) the amiable man had responded to her calls. Not only had Charlie invariably taken care of the problem—
he never made fun of me.
And there was another thing:
That skinny Ute ain’t afraid of nothing.
Recalling the fact that Charlie did not believe in witches, Loyola wondered whether such an apparent shortcoming might not turn out to be an advantage. Surely, she reasoned, the witches would be put on edge—perhaps even seriously off-kilter—if confronted by a gritty nonbeliever. Why, Charlie Moon would spit in their eyes, break their arms and legs, yank their heads off—and, after these preliminaries, get really mean-and-dirty tough.

That settled the matter.

I’ll call Charlie
.

But realizing that it was still dark outside, the weary woman decided that she could use an hour or two of serious shut-eye.
I’ll phone him after the sun comes up.
Flat on her back on the cracked kitchen linoleum, the automatic pistol gripped tightly in her hand, the plucky old soul yawned. And drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

AS SARAH FRANK HELPED CHARLIE MOON WASH THE BREAKFAST DISHES
, she was trying to think of a way to approach and then broach the delicate subject. Her budding female intuition suggested that the first order of business was to maneuver the Object of Her Affections into a pleasant, quiet spot where they could be alone. Preferably under a blue sky, in a field of fragrant wildflowers where butterflies fluttered by and honeybees hummed sweetly and so on and so forth. After considering several suitable locations on the Columbine, she selected that gently rolling high prairie that was bejeweled by an alpine lake.
Okay.
She inhaled and held her breath.
Here goes.
This was going to be difficult, but the thing had to be done. Straightening her back, the young lady got right to it. Handing her prospective husband a freshly washed saucer, Sarah said—with only the slightest quaver in her voice, “After that big breakfast, I think it’d be nice to go for a walk.”

Moon nodded approvingly as he dried the saucer. “It’d do you good.”

The teenager’s face burned. “What I meant was . . . I thought maybe you’d like to go for a walk too.”

“Well, that sounds like a fine idea but—” The fellow generally completed everything he started, including sentences. But Moon had heard the urgent warble of the telephone.

Sarah sighed, rolled her big, brown eyes, and departed for the parlor.

After drying his hands on the dish towel, Moon picked up the telephone. “Columbine Ranch.”

A familiar voice crackled in his ear. “Charlie Moon—why, that
is
your voice. I’d know it anywhere. I expect you remember me; this is Loyola.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Montoya.” He smiled at his memory of the eccentric Apache elder. “I hope you’re doing well—”

“Well I’m
not
, and I don’t have time for silly chitchat, so you listen close to what I’ve got to say.”

“Yes ma’am.” S
he’s a lot like Aunt Daisy.

“I’ve got a serious problem. You remember my grandson Wallace?”

“Yes I do. His father was a friend of—”

“Don’t mention my son to me, Charlie. He was a no-account who didn’t have a friend in the world except for vermin like himself. And Wallace’s momma was one of that horse-stealing, egg-sucking bunch of Anglos from over by Trinidad and you know well as I do that not a one of those yahoos was worth the powder it’d take to blow ’im to hell. And even with some good Apache blood pulsing through his veins, Wallace didn’t turn out much better. When he should be here looking after me, he’s gone—and you can bet your last greenback dollar that he’s hanging around with a bad crowd.” She paused long enough to get a breath. “A while back, Wallace started hanging around with them damned witches that’ve been plaguing me every night for a week. Or maybe it’s been for a month. Nowadays, I tend to lose track of time. Back when I was young, I didn’t have any need for a calendar or a clock, but ever since my eighty-eighth birthday it’s been all downhill. Wallace is probably shacked up with some slut—”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Montoya, did you say
witches
?”

“Charlie, if you keep interrupting me, I’ll lose track of what . . . Now what
was
I talking about?”

“Something about a plague of witches.”

“Oh, right. Witches. And I want ’em off my property right now! So strap that big pistol onto your skinny hip and pin a big, shiny policeman badge onto your shirt and streak your face with war paint and saddle up Old Biscuit and gallop down here right now and—”

“I’m not an SUPD officer anymore, Loyola.”

“I know that. But from what I hear, you’re some kinda big-shot tribal investigator. If that ain’t so, just tell me.”

Charlie Moon was distracted again, this time by a glimpse of someone hovering in the shadowy hallway. One of Aunt Daisy’s few pleasures was eavesdropping. Charlie pretended to be unaware of her presence.

“Charlie?” Concerned that she had been disconnected, Loyola shouted in Moon’s ear, “Charlie Moon—are you there? If you’ve hung up on me, I’ll just call back.”

“I’m here.”