A Good Day To Kill (9 page)

They shook hands.

A telegram from Blevins came after lunch.

Chet knew Higgins. He sent Roamer and Cole over there to check on it. They were to wire him if they needed help. He cautioned them not to fall into any traps. Holding the man's wife could be bait to coax them into one. No telling who was behind it, but they needed to be extra careful.

“If we see a trap, we'll back off and wait for backup,” Roamer promised.

“I don't need you guys shot up.”

“We'll be more careful,” his man promised.

The three rode off the next morning. Chet met the contractor who was moving the women to Nogales. Pueblo Sanchez was a very thorough man and he took this move serious. He planned to take three wagons to deliver them to the place Chet had arranged for them at the border.

“It may take three days to get them down there.”

“Speed is not important. Just move them smoothly.”

“I can hardly believe you have fed them this long.”

“They were desperate when we discovered them. I couldn't let them starve.”

“Señor, I will be careful moving them.”

“Good.”

That settled, he sent Jesus to Nogales to rent the place. JD was appointed as Chet's guard for the day. Shawn was shoeing the last of the horses that needed it, and JD helped him. Chet worked on his expense book. Maria brought them lunch and stayed to talk. “How is your son?”

“Fine, when I left him.”

“I bet she's glad he is here.”

“Yes, her past experiences had her real worried. But it went very well.”

“I'm glad it did. Tell her I want to meet her someday. I didn't meet her when she came to Tombstone to take care of you.”

“You two would enjoy each other,” Chet said.

“Good, I will look forward to meeting her.”

“I'm sure, in time, she'll want to see the new ranch. I'll make it a point to introduce you to her then.”

Maria smiled. “I never thought I would be glad there were outlaws down here. But if there had been no outlaws, we would never have met you and your family.”

“Can't tell, some things are mysterious. But, yes, we did meet because of outlaws.”

She leaned over the table and kissed his forehead. “
Gracias, mi amigo
.”

He almost laughed. Good woman.

Things were at last under way to ship those abandoned women and children to Nogales. When that was finished, he was ready to ride up and confront Masters about his plot to have him murdered. He'd turned that over in his mind a hundred times.

Cole came back and reported that the outlaws had gone to Mexico with the rancher's wife. Standing under the tent, he took a sip of coffee. “All the information we could get was they were staying around the village of Los Palmas.”

“That's a little farther into Mexico than that saloon was down on the border,” Chet reminded them.

“We hate for them to get away with this kidnapping,” Cole said.

“I agree. Jesus is the man we need to go with us. He's gone to rent a place down at Nogales and then take the squatters down there.”

“Ortega can do our Mexican business. They want you to meet them down there at El Conejo. I said I'd show you the way and we could case these bandits' place and see how to get her out.”

“That woman's safety comes first. We can't go blazing in there and get her hurt or killed.”

“I figure we can handle that,” said Cole.

“The
Federales
won't appreciate us acting like we're lawmen down there.”

“Well, do I ride back and tell them we can't do it?”

“Cole, I can hang up this badge. We'll leave Juan in charge. JD, Shawn, you, and I will split up, then each take a packhorse and head south to arrive there separately to get less notice.”

“Good.” Cole drank some of his coffee. “This is lots better than the piss I've been drinking.”

“That's why Mexicans drink red wine,” Chet teased him.

“What's happening?” JD asked as he joined them.

“We're packing two horses and splitting up to meet down in Mexico and see if we can get that rancher's wife away from those bandits. You can ride with me.”

“I better go tell Shawn. What about Jesus?”

“He's renting a place at Nogales for the squatters.”

“I know that. Is Bronc coming back today? He would be good to take, too. Jose can watch the ranch and our things.”

Marie came on the run, having discovered Cole had ridden in.

Chet leaned back on the bench and asked her, “Is Bronc coming home today?”

“
Si
. He will be home.”

“Good, he can go with us. We're going to Mexico. The outlaws that have the rancher's wife are down there. Ortega and Roamer are spotting them. We're going to split up and join up with them down there.”

“My brother-in-law Juan and I can handle this place,” Maria said.

“Good. Jesus is in Nogales. When he gets back, tell him to move those squatters, but for him to be careful. I don't know how long we'll be down there.”

“
Si
, I can do that.”

“You ladies be careful. We have made enemies over our arrests and curbing the lawlessness.”

Marie reassured him. “We will be fine.”

“Good, just so nothing goes wrong. We'll pack for tomorrow.”

She went back to her
casa
, and everyone else went to work. He wrote Marge a long letter and set it out for someone to take to Tubac and post when they went for food and mail.

Mexico could prove to be a challenge, but the two brothers knew how to get around down there. When they found the rancher's wife, this had to be another lightning raid and a quick escape. He had no idea of the strength of the bandits, either, but maybe by the time they reached the area his men would have information about the gang and their whereabouts.

They left before dawn, and as afternoon slipped away they faded into Mexico. The border wasn't guarded except at the road points like Nogales and the other places where they collected fees for import or export of goods. The trail they took paralleled the Santa Cruz River, and they split up at the border. Chet and Cole went one way, Bronc, JD, and Shawn went another, to meet up later near the kidnappers' location.

They avoided towns and camped in the desert at night. Cole talked some about his wife, Valerie.

“I'm sure happy I married her. She's a great gal. You know, I worried a lot about whether she'd put up with my job and me. And she's real careful what she spends, for some day we want a ranch of our own. These rewards we've been earning may help buy it one day.”

“They could,” Chet said. “When I met her in Tombstone and sent her to Preskitt, I knew she was alright.”

“Yes, she talks about that a lot. How she served you stew, and you didn't know her, but went out on a limb to help anyway. That really impressed her.”

“There are right and wrong ways in this world. You do them right, they usually end up good.”

“You've picked some good ones. Your place in Texas would never have been this big, would it?”

“In a lot of ways, I chose the right thing to do. I had money to expand there, too. but with the circumstances I was under, I couldn't risk doing it.”

“You saw some things here no one else saw. Buying a ranch being run by a crooked, tough foreman?” Cole shook his head as if in disbelief.

“Yes, it was. But I saw it as a large ranch astraddle a river in Arizona. It had to be a bargain.”

“I know the rest of that story. According to Hampt, it was a tough one to take.”

“I look back and think it was only a page in my life. The worse page was when I started home and the stage robbers killed my nephew, Heck. I guess those kind of things drove me to become a lawman and to try to end the outlaw reign in this country. Someone had to care.”

“That was before you married Marge. Your wife helped you through that time?” Cole reined his horse up and looked at all the tall tube parts of the Mexican cousin to the saguaros standing six feet tall. “We take the right-hand trail here.”

Chet nodded. “Yes, and I had an intended woman in Texas, but she couldn't leave there because of her parents' health. But, Marge, bless her soul, got me through it and understood my problems. And she waited, too, with no promise of anything. For all she knew, I could have come back with a wife.”

“I laughed about how she went around and paid all your bills. She was set on having you.”

“At first, it made me mad. But the poor girl had a case on me, and with all her money and schooling she picked me.” He turned in the saddle and checked their back trail as they rose higher on the side of a small range of mountains. No rising dust, no sign of anyone on their back trail, so he turned back and shook the saddle horn. It was good to have the roan gelding under him—a great mountain horse.

“Then you married her.” He coaxed Chet into telling more of his past, parts that happened before Cole joined the outfit.

“Bo found this tract of land for sale on top the rim and I wanted to go see it. So, since Marge was willing to traipse around with me, I planned to ask her to go. My sister, Susie, told me Marge was unmarried and had been to a finishing school, and that she wouldn't go.”

Cole was laughing by then. “She would have gone?”

“Hell, yes. She said she would, but my conscience bothered me. The stigma of folks finding out she went, regardless of how proper we were, would have been bad. So I asked her to marry me. We got married, and Sarge's cook, Victor, went along and we found Reg's wife, Lucie, who was our guide.”

Cole shook his head. “You fell into a pile of shit and came out like a rose.” He went on laughing. “I only met Lucie a time or two, but she's a swell person.”

“Neatest lady I ever met. And she can out rope the two of us. That smile never fades and she laughs a lot. Just what Reg needed.”

They caught up with a wood train, so Cole reined up. Several burros loaded with bundled sticks on their backs filled the entire trail through the cactus and brush. The single man in charge made the animals all get over to the side of the pathway, took off his
sombrero
, and bowed.

“
Gracias, mi amigo
,” Chet said, and tossed a silver dollar in his
sombrero
.

“Oh, patron, you are too generous.
Gracias
.” His words were in Spanish, and with a big smile across his brown face, he bowed again.

Chet waved at him and then they led the packhorse past the line of already hipshot burros.

Cole shook his head at his generosity. “That was more money than his sticks will bring him.”

Chet agreed.

“Tell me about Reg's first wife.”

“Juanita came to us to help Susie keep the big house and fix meals. She was a beautiful young woman. I was ready to leave, and an older couple wanted someone to run their ranch, take care of them, and when they died the ranch would be his. Reg married Juanita and they stayed to run that ranch.”

“Do you think your enemies killed her?”

“He never mentioned it. I never asked.”

“It must have been real tough for him. I can only imagine how hard it would be on me if I lost Valerie. What was the worst part for you back there?”

“The final blow for me was one cold Texas morning when I was checking cattle on the far south end and three of them tried to ambush me. It was in some tall cedars and I did lots of scrambling, but when I left there they were buzzard bait and I was unscathed.

“I see why you left.”

“Exactly.” The two of them were on the rise by then and fixing to drop off into more desert, but cottonwoods lined the far valley.

“If you don't give them all away, next year, you'll have a Barbarossa colt to ride,” said Cole.

“I think Bonnie was well worth two of them. I bet JD thinks so.”

“I think from being around him, he appreciates her a whole lot. I wouldn't trade her for my wife, but she's a swell person. You traded some big patron down here in Mexico a Barbarossa for her, didn't you?”

“Hell, we couldn't whip him and I wasn't certain she was even at his ranch. He sent her to us and his men came later and got the horses. It was a good swap.”

“Reckon we can do that good down here for this woman?”