.45-Caliber Cross Fire Page 17

  Peasants were moving around the front yard or sitting slumped on the front gallery steps, sharing bottles or wooden cups or standing before the place, gazing into the two broad front windows left of the gallery and chattering and gesturing animatedly.

  Cuno stood in the shadows against a wooden wall, heart thudding. He knew right away he’d located Spurr and Fire Eyes. Cuno knew little of Mexico, but he was aware that the gray-uniformed men were officers in the rural Mexican police force. Fire Eyes was doubtlessly an attractive trophy in more ways than one.

  He sqatted down on his heels and rubbed his bottom lip with his index finger, staring at the two front windows on the other side of the street. Somehow, he had to know for sure.

  He’d been hearing loud snores since he’d approached what he figured to be a livery barn. Now he straightened and turned to stare into a break between the barn and a low, stone cantina inside of which a girl was laughing uproariously, nearly drowning out the strains of a mandolin.

  About twenty feet away from the alley mouth, two figures slouched in the shadows, both snoring, one snoring raucously. One sat with his back against the cracked cantina wall, arms crossed, chin to his chest. On his head was a ragged, low-crowned sombrero with a braided eagle feather band.

  Cuno crouched over the man, carefully lifted the hat from his head and set it on the ground. Less carefully, but not waking the thoroughly soused Mexican, he removed the man’s serape and dropped it over his own shoulders. He left his own hat on the ground, donned the ragged sombrero, letting the hide thong dangle beneath his chin, and stepped cautiously out of the alley mouth into the street.

  Keeping his head down, he made his way as inconcpicuously as he could through the crowd, staggering a little as though drunk, and after a time made his way into the yard where the smell of tequila and beer and strong Mexican tobacco was especially thick, as was the perfume of several putas lounging about with the celebrating Rurales. He shouldered between two peasants speaking in hushed voices while peering almost fearfully through the front window nearest the gallery and cast a glance through the flyspecked window himself.

  The room beyond was large and square with a high ceiling, with several desks and four jail cages to the left. Two uniformed Rurales sat facing the cages in straight-backed chairs, rifles across their laps. In the cage nearest the front wall, Spurr sat on the edge of a cot, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, smoking and eyeing the two guards derisively. He looked especially haggard, frustrated, defeated. His lips were moving, but Cuno couldn’t hear what he was saying though he doubted it was complimentary.

  In the cage next to him, Fire Eyes sat on a cot, her back against the wall, one knee up and a wrist draped almost casually over it. Her lips were swollen, and there was a nasty gash on her right brow. She stared straight ahead in stoic defiance of her incarceration.

  Several times since Cuno had begun milling about the crowd, he’d heard “Ojos del Fuega”—“Fire Eyes”—or simply “Fuega” spoken in hushed, shocked tones. He jumped now as loud pops rose behind him, and he whipped his head around, hand closing over his pistol butt, to see two silhouetted figures stepping back from a line of crackling, flashing firecrackers.

  The men and whores laughed and clapped. Someone threw out another line of sizzling firecrackers, and Cuno used the diversion to make his slow but purposeful escape down the north side of the street.

  He crossed the street, slipped into the break between two buildings, and made his way back to his horse. Pensively, his heart beating slowly but insistently, he shucked his Winchester from the saddle boot. He gave Renegade another soothing pat as the horse sniffed the serape suspiciously, then stepped over the crumbling stable wall and made his way back toward the Rurale headquarters.

  He moved into the break between the stable and the cantina, slumped down near the two deeply unconscious Mexicans, stretched his legs out, crossed his ankles, and lay the rifle across his lap. From here, he had a good view of the street and the celebrating crowd.

  Someone fired a pistol into the air, and someone shouted something in Spanish that Cuno couldn’t understand.

  They’d likely celebrate all night.

  Cuno dropped his chin and lowered the sombrero over his eyes, waiting them out.

  22

  CUNO ONLY HALF slept, keeping one ear cocked, gauging the tides of the celebration that rose and fell with the endless hours. The cold seeped up out of the ground and into his butt and legs and back, and he felt his muscles tighten and turn to stone.

  A couple of times he stood and walked around before slumping down against the stable once more. He had to keep an eye on the Rurale headquarters, waiting for a chance to try to spring Spurr and Fire Eyes. It probably couldn’t be done, but he had to try.

  He hadn’t realized he’d slept before something woke him, and he jerked his head up suddenly with a grunt. The silence around him now was startling, and he swung his gaze across the alley mouth to the street. A man’s voice sounded. Hoof thuds rose, growing louder until, in the predawn dimness, five riders angled into Cuno’s view from the right and drew their horses up before the hitchrack fronting the Rurale headquaters sitting dark and silent on the other side of the street.

  The newcomers all wore dove-gray uniforms and high-topped black boots. The beefy lead rider had some decorations on his tunic, and though it was hard to see in the dim light, Cuno thought he looked older.

  The men spoke in Spanish as they tied their horses. There were four flanking the lead rider, who was much heavier than the others, his belly bulging almost obscenely. He wore two red stripes down the side of his uniform pants. As he and the others crossed the gallery and entered the headquarters, a dull yellow glow grew in one of the second-story windows.

  Cuno climbed to his feet, silently berating himself for not waking earlier, when he might have had a decent chance to pluck Spurr and Fire Eyes from their trap. Now he grabbed his rifle, looked at the two Mexicans passed out where they had been before but snoring much more quietly now, and whipped off the serape and sombrero and dropped them down beside the man he’d borrowed them from. He picked up his own hat and donned it as he hurried out to the street, where he stopped and scowled at the Rurale headquarters.

  Several windows glowed now, including the two large ones at the front. Cuno could see shadows moving around inside. Loud laughter thundered, along with the sound of a man clapping his hands once.

  Cuno looked around. Seeing no one else on the street, he jogged across to the headquarters and pressed his shoulder against the front wall, left of the two front windows.

  The voices continued, and now Cuno saw a stocky, middle-aged, black-haired lieutenant in the main room with the men who’d just entered, and a couple more, younger Rurales. The lieutenant was yawning and tucking his shirt into his pants while the fat newcomer, who wore a colonel’s insignia on his tunic shoulders, stood before the door of the cage holding Fire Eyes, his boots spread, hands clasped behind his back. Cuno didn’t understand enough Spanish to know what the man was saying, but he could tell by his demeanor he was very pleased by the capture of the Yaqui queen.

  Cuno couldn’t see much of Spurr because of the Rurales blocking his view. But as the fat man waved a hand at the cell door, and one of the younger Rurales moved forward with a key, Spurr leapt to his feet. “Keep your pig hands off her, Colonel!”

  Three young Rurales aimed their rifles at Spurr while another opened the cell door, and the colonel, his fat face stretched with a lusty, oily smile, stepped back away from the door to let the younger men enter. Four younger Rurales bounded into the cell, as though into a lion’s cage, and fairly hurled themselves at the cot.

  Fire Eyes’s head came up, fists and moccasined feet flying. She screamed like a trapped puma, fighting the young Rurales for all she was worth. As the colonel threw his head back, laughing, Cuno ducked below both windows and took long strides to the end of the gallery, stepped over the rail, threw one of the headquarters’ two front doors open, and st
epped inside.

  The four Rurales had managed to each grab an arm or a leg and were hauling Fire Eyes out of her cell while she squealed and bucked and tossed her head furiously. The fat colonel and the dark-haired lieutenant were turned sideways to Cuno, their heads swiveling to watch the young Rurales carry the girl toward the stairs at the back of the room. What they had in mind was obvious.

  Spurr had his face pressed up to the door of his cell, hands wrapped around the bars, shaking the door as if to rip it off its hinges as he barked rabid insults at the girl’s attackers.

  He was the first to slide his eyes toward Cuno. He stopped shouting and shaking his cell door, and as his gaze met Cuno’s, a faint smile etched itself on his mouth.

  The fat colonel, talking loudly with the lieutenant, turned his head slightly toward Cuno, started to turn away, then turned back again, his dark eyes incredulous. As the lieutenant followed his gaze, Cuno loudly racked a shell into his Winchester’s breech and pressed the stock against his right hip.

  That stopped everyone in the room, including the four Rurales hauling the struggling queen toward the stairs. Aside from Fire Eyes, everyone stopped talking. Then, as she turned her head toward Cuno, she stopped squealing and fighting.

  Silence hung as heavy as a wagon-sized boulder suspended by a thin rope over the room.

  Cuno’s Winchester broke the silence, the resounding roar causing the whole room to jump and the colonel to scream and fly backward and sideways into the lieutenant, who took the next bullet just under his left ear and went down hard under the weight of the heart-shot colonel. Cuno cocked and fired the Winchester from his hip, squinting against the puffing powder smoke, the empty casings careening from the smoking breech.

  The Rurales screamed and wailed and stumbled or twisted around or were punched back into desks or walls, dropping their rifles or pistols and making agonized faces as blood oozed from their tunics. The four men holding Fire Eyes had dropped her as soon as the shooting had started and reached for the pistols on their hips. They’d been the easiest to take down.

  They were piled up around Fire Eyes now, two dead, two wailing and writhing as they bled. One of the others, lying back down over the lieutenant’s desk, was flopping his arms and legs as though trying to stand. Cuno lowered his empty rifle, shifted it to his left hand, palmed his Colt .45, and silenced the man on the desk with a shot to his temple.

  Quickly, Cuno stepped over the dead men and around the swirling blood pools and grabbed the keys where one of the dead Rurales had fallen. Fire Eyes had scrambled onto one knee, her brown eyes red and wild behind her hair, and glanced around at the dead men and then at Cuno. She still looked trapped and feral, breathing hard.

  Cuno said, “Watch the stairs.”

  Then he turned to Spurr’s cell and poked the key in the lock as the old lawman gazed at him through the bars. “Can’t leave you two alone for a minute, can I?”

  “I do believe I’m getting old, kid.”

  “Hell, you were old twenty years ago.”

  Cuno jerked the door open, and Spurr ran over to an unlocked rack on the front wall where his rifle had been placed and from the barrel of which his shell belt, knife, and Starr .44 dangled. Gunfire exploded behind him, and he whipped around to see Fire Eyes crouching at the bottom of the stairs, one of the Rurales’ pistols in her hand, a fresh smoke cloud around her head.

  Two half-dressed Rurales were rolling down the stairs, lifeless as dolls.

  As Fire Eyes grabbed her own rifle, which had been leaning with her arrow and bow quiver against the lieutenant’s desk, and slung their lanyards over her shoulders, Cuno ran to the door and looked up and down the street.

  “All clear. I’m guessin’ your horses are in the barn across the street. I would have saddled ’em, but the night got away from me.”

  Spurr was hastily buckling his shell belt. “Join the celebration, did you? It was quite the fandango—wouldn’t have minded bein’ part of it myself.”

  There was a flurry of footsteps and voices from above them, and dust sifted from the rafters as the other Rurales scrambled around, dressing, some moving toward the stairs and shouting in Spanish that echoed around the stony stairwell. Fire Eyes gave a harsh Spanish retort and fired her own rifle from her hip, the bullets plunking the wall of the second-story landing.

  Fire Eyes laughed raucously then spat more lashing Spanish. That silenced the men upstairs, likely convincing them that descending the stairs wouldn’t be a good idea.

  Spurr had moved up beside Cuno and was looking around the Rurales’ five nervously dancing horses at the street, where the dawn shadows were slowly fading. No one moved. Bird chirps were the only sounds.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Spurr said, glancing over his shoulder at Fire Eyes and then crossing the gallery and dropping into the street.

  He and Cuno walked cautiously across the main drag, turning and waving their rifles around, keeping an eye on the second and third floors of the Rurale headquarters. Fire Eyes followed close behind them, and as Spurr opened the barn’s left side door, Cuno said, “My horse is back along the trail. I’ll cover you while you saddle yours.”

  As Fire Eyes slipped into the barn behind Spurr, Cuno dropped to a knee and aimed his Winchester at the ominously silent headquarters. Behind him, he could hear the squawk of tack and the clink of buckles as Spurr and Fire Eyes quickly rigged their mounts.

  A third-story shutter inched back away from a window, and a rifle barrel angled out of it. Cuno waited a half second, until he could see the silhouette of a head, and then he fired two shots quickly. The man gave a low grunt and disappeared while his rifle dropped out of the window and clattered onto the second-floor balcony.

  Cuno heard the clomp of hooves behind him. Spurr and Fire Eyes were leading their horses up behind him, Cochise prancing and shaking his head, the cream stallion nodding and snorting. Cuno threw the second door wide, then stepped halfway out into the street, carefully covering the headquarters with his rifle as Spurr and Fire Eyes swung up into their saddles.

  “Come on, kid,” Spurr said, glancing anxiously at the headquarters while throwing out a hand toward Cuno.

  “He rides with me,” Fire Eyes said haughtily, throwing out her own right hand.

  Cuno quickly glanced from Fire Eyes to Spurr then back again, then grabbed the girl’s hand as he leapt up onto the stallion’s rump behind her. Spurr chuckled and touched heels to Cochise’s flanks, and the big roan and the handsome cream galloped off along the twisting, still-silent main street, the thuds of their hooves echoing like pistol shots in the silent early moring.

  When they came to the stable where Cuno had left Renegade, Cuno slipped off the cream’s back, led Renegade out of his confines, and mounted up. Spurr and Fire Eyes were already galloping down the trail and out of the town.

  Well rested, though fidgety from his night in the stable, Renegade had no trouble catching up to them. Fire Eyes overtook Spurr and said, “Follow me!” She angled off the left side of the trail and into the rocky desert between two sandstone ridges turning rose in the morning sunrise.

  A javelina squealed and ran into a mesquite thicket.

  “Where we goin’?” Spurr said, reining Cochise along behind her.

  Cuno turned Renegade in the same direction, nudging his heels against the stallion’s flanks. They were heading nearly directly west now, the sky lightening to their left.

  Fire Eyes said over her shoulder, “We are going to need help keeping those guns and dynamite out of Cuesta’s hands.” She smiled shrewdly. “And I know just the people to help.”

  Spurr scowled and glanced at Cuno galloping off his left stirrup. “How come I’m feelin’ like I just jumped out of the fryin’ pan into the fire?”

  23

  AGAIN, CUNO AND Spurr had trouble keeping up with the wild-assed Yaqui queen. She and her horse seemed tireless. There were no springs out here—at least none that Cuno and Spurr knew about, and none that the queen stopped at—so several
times they stopped to pour water into their hats for their horses and to take a few spare sips themselves.

  Fire Eyes was staying at least a hundred yards ahead of them, and sometimes that gap opened to a quarter mile. By midday Cuno was beginning to believe that the Yaqui queen and her tireless horse were supernatural. She slowed her pace only to make sure that Cuno and Spurr were still behind her.

  Up one canyon and down another they traveled, in some of the most waterless, rugged country Cuno had ever seen. If there was anything growing on any of the knobs and ridges they were riding between, he couldn’t see it. The only life was the occasional hawk or small flock of turkey buzzards crowding some moldering animal corpse.

  Around one thirty, judging by the sun, Cuno and Spurr galloped over a gravelly knob and saw the queen standing beside her cream about fifty yards ahead, at the entrance to a narrow canyon opening between two towering sandstone ridges. She was holding a bandanna out to the horse, rubbing its lips.

  “I’ll be damned if she and that damn creature aren’t tired!” Spurr said as he and Cuno continued on down the knob.

  “Don’t get your hopes up.”

  They reined up before the queen, who tossed her head toward the narrow entrace to the canyon behind her, then reined the cream around and batted her moccasined heels against its sides. “Stay close now!” she said with an air of frustration.

  She did not ride hard but kept the cream at a spanking trot. A hundred yards into the narrow defile, the wind- and water-sculpted sand rising to their horses’ fetlocks, she reined up suddenly and waved her arm sideways across the top of her head. Cuno followed her gaze to the top of a finger of solid rock. A figure stood there, silhouetted against the bright desert sky. Cuno could see tan breeches, a red sash, and a red bandanna holding long black hair tight against the brave’s head. He held a rifle in one hand down by his side, and after a few seconds he lifted it straight up above his head.