Bullet Creek (18 page)

Before her expression could betray her thoughts, she stood, poured tea into two dented tin cups on the table. She gave one to Pepe and, with her cup in her right hand, sat down on the cot and slowly sank back against him. She took her cup in both hands and sipped.

“Don't worry, Isabelle,” Pepe said, stroking her hair. “I'll take care of you. We'll have a dozen children. Together, we'll raise many mustangs and become very rich.”

“Do you really think so, Pepe?” she asked, her mind far away.

“Why not? When a man works hard, the world is his. That is what Papa has always said, and it makes sense, no?”

“Yes,” Isabelle said. “That is what Mama has always said, as well.”

They sipped their tea, staring into the fire. Pepe draped his right arm around the girl's shoulders. When they were through with the tea, Pepe set their cups on the floor, then placed his hand on Isabelle's chin, directing her face toward his. They kissed for several minutes, until Pepe again placed his hand on her breast.

“No, Pepe,” Isabelle said sharply, removing his hand and sitting up. “It's not right.”

Pepe was exasperated. “More of this nonsense?”

“El patron is dead. How can you be so nonchalant? Your future is as much in the air as mine!”

“I thought you loved me.”

“I do love you. If you loved me, you wouldn't pressure me this evening.”

“But I'm going to be gone for a couple of days,” he beseeched her with more than a trace of melodrama, “and I wanted to take the memory.”

“Where are you going?”

“Real wants me to fetch Cayetano,” the boy announced proudly, “the best pistolero around.”

“Cayetano?”

Isabelle thought about it, a perplexed expression on her face. “So there really will be a war with the Bar-V, then, won't there?”

“Call it a war if you wish.” Pepe grinned, showing his missing tooth. “But with Cayetano, it will be more like a massacre. Good riddance to the gringos, I say!”

“Pepe, take me home now, please.”

“What's the matter? Talk of battle too much for you?”

“I'm tired, and I want to go to bed—my bed.”

Pepe chuffed with disgust. He returned the tea, cups, and pot to the single board shelf beside the fire.

“Must you bring him, Pepe?” she asked, gazing up at him beseechingly.

“Of course I must. On Real's orders.”

“The great Real.”

Silently Isabelle followed Pepe outside and stood near the hovel as he filled a rusty tin bucket with water from the spring. He took the bucket inside and presently the hiss of the doused fire rose. Sweeping aside the deerhide flap, Pepe reappeared, tightened the saddle cinch, and slid his rifle into the boot before lifting Isabelle onto the horse's back.

As he did, her right foot touched something hard against the horse's side. She glanced down at the rifle in the soft, worn saddle scabbard beneath her right leg, the gray stock protruding. The greasewood oil that Pepe had rubbed into it glistened in the starlight.

Pepe carried the old rifle wherever he went. Priding himself on his hunting prowess, he provided game for many peons at Rancho de Cava, and often for the hacienda. He was a crack shot. Isabelle had seen the rifle often, but for some reason she found herself staring at it now, as Pepe mounted and batted his heels against the horse's ribs.

The horse trotted off into the darkness of the canyon. Her hair flopping against her back, her rump jouncing in the saddle, the brooch bouncing across her bosom, Isabelle felt a strange unease. She wasn't sure what had caused it, and she unconsciously decided not to examine it too closely. Wasn't everything turning out the way she had planned?

Two days later, Lee Luther and Ky Tryon were riding along Horseshoe Gulch, looking for strays. It was late in the afternoon and both riders were sweaty, tired, and looking forward to day's end, when they could ride back to the Bar-V headquarters for supper and, afterward, gas with the other riders till bedtime.

Tryon halted his horse on the lip of a narrow cut choked with mesquite brush and tossed a heavy stick he'd picked up earlier. He whistled shrilly as the stick hit the brush, then, standing up in his stirrups, gave a few sharp bellows. No calves spooked from the cut.

“Huh—that snag's usually good for a couple quitters.” He turned his claybank back toward Luther, who rode slowly along the cattle trail, hunkered over a small tobacco pouch and cigarette papers.

“Jumping Jehosaphat!” Tryson said, chuckling as he came abreast of the boy. “What on earth are you doin'?”

“What's it look like?” Lee Luther said with a concentrated air, staring down at the makings on his right thigh. “Rollin' a smoke.”

The lanky Tryon laughed. “You don't smoke!”

“I'm about to start.”

“It's a bad habit. After a few years, your lungs feel small, and you don't have enough wind to hoof it across a barnyard.”

Lee Luther had the paper troughed between the first and second fingers of his right hand. He was trying to roll it closed but the tobacco was sliding off the paper and onto the saddle between his thighs. “You boys do it,” he said. “Hell, everybody in the bunkhouse smokes 'cept me.”

“For Chrissakes, why are you tryin' to roll a smoke on horseback, if it's your first time?”

“Navarro does it. I see him do it all the time, like it weren't no more trouble than swattin' a fly. Sometimes he'll even roll a smoke while he's trotting.”

Again, Tryon laughed, enjoying the break in the afternoon's monotony.

“Damn!” Lee Luther said, giving up in frustration and letting a sudden breeze sweep both tobacco and paper from his hands. “Almost had it that time!”

Jerking back on his horse's reins, Tryon leaned over and snatched Lee Luther's tobacco pouch from the boy's lap. As Luther halted his own horse, Tryon removed his right glove and poked two fingers into the pouch, producing a piece of brown wheat paper. Peppering the paper with tobacco, he quickly, expertly fashioned a smoke, grinning proudly and holding it up for Lee Luther's inspection.

Lee Luther grabbed the quirley and growled, “Yeah, but can you do it while you're ridin'?”

He stuck the cigarette between his teeth and reached into his shirt pocket for a match. Feeling a bit self-conscious and hoping he wouldn't cough his lungs out like the last time he'd attempted to smoke a cigarette, he glanced at Tryon.

The rider had turned to stare straight ahead along the trail. From his expression—one eye squinted, his sunburned skin stretched taut across his cheekbones—he didn't like what he saw. His fingers frozen in his shirt pocket, Lee Luther followed Tryon's gaze and felt his back muscles bunch along his spine.

Four swarthy riders astride high-stepping Arabians, wearing sombreros and serapes and holding rifles, approached from about thirty yards away. They rode loosely in their silver-trimmed saddles, heads canted to one side or the other, lips stretched back from their teeth in sneering grins.

Lee Luther's right hand began moving toward his holstered Colt.

“Keep it there unless you wanna snooze with the snakes,” Tryon said, barely moving his mouth, keeping his gaze on the Mexicans. “They got us dead to rights.”

Tryon heard Lee Luther swallow. “Should we try to run for it?” the boy asked.

“Like hell.”

The four riders checked their horses ten yards away and stood staring at the Bar-V men. The man second from the left twisted a phony smile and said, “Buenas tardes, amigos. And what brings you to Rancho de Cava?”

“What're you talkin' about—Rancho de Cava?” Tryon snapped with unfettered animosity and disgust. “You're on Bar-V graze, hombre.”

“Bullsheet,” said the Mex.

Tryon slowly lifted his left hand, making no sudden moves, and pointed into the distance behind the de Cava men. “See that line of hills yonder? That's your line.”

“What hills? Those there?” said the vaquero sitting left of the first man who'd spoken. “I think you have that wrong, gringo. The boundary is those buttes over there . . . behind you, uh? That means you are a good kilometer off your home ground.”

“Now, under normal circumstances, we would not have a quarrel,” the first man said. “We would simply share a smoke and a laugh and go our ways.” His expression hardened as he brought the barrel of his Winchester down, aiming at Tryon's chest. “But after the other night, when your jefe killed ours, the penalty for trespassing became death.”

“Our jefe didn't kill your jefe, you fool!” Tryon barked, rising in his stirrups.

“And we ain't trespassing,” added Lee Luther, a fearful trill in his voice.

Sneering, the Mex thumbed back his Winchester 's hammer.

“Hold it,” a voice sounded from Tryon's left, on the other side of Lee Luther. “First man who slings lead buys a bullet from me.”

Tryon looked left across Lee Luther's saddle horn. Two men hunkered on the lip of a low hill, cheeks snugged up to rifle stocks. A third peered out from behind a rock, behind and left of the de Cava men. Tryon felt a slight sense of relief. Ward, McGraw, and Sharpe, all of whom had been working the area called the Shadows with Tryon and Lee Luther, had the Mex riders in their rifle sights.

The de Cava men turned slow looks at the hill, the sneers leaving their faces. No one said anything. The cicadas hummed and the crickets chirped. A finger-sized, olive-colored salamander regarded the horseback riders from a nearby rock, its throat contracting and expanding, its eyes like two tiny black Indian beads.

Tryon grinned at the first Mex.

“Perhaps . . . we crossed the line without knowing,” the man said tensely, shuttling his gaze between Tryon and the hill.

He raised his Winchester slightly, and drew back on his Arabian's bridle reins. The horse backed up two steps, nudging the one to its right and quartering around in the trail. The other Mex riders followed suit, looking around confusedly, brows beetled with alarm.

“I'd say you got it wrong, all right,” Tryon said, slowly removing his Schofield from its holster, thumbing back the hammer. “We at the Bar-V, though, like to let bygones be bygones. You boys hightail it back to where you came from, we'll call it an even score.”

“
Sí, un marcador igualado,
” the first man said, his mount sort of side stepping back along the trail. The others were holding their reins tightly, backing their horses away, shunting their exasperated gazes among Tryon, Lee Luther, and the other three Bar-V men on their right. “Until next time!”

His last word had no more passed his lips than the man swung his rifle sharply toward Tryon and pulled the trigger. The slug whistled just left of Tryon's head. Ky raised his revolver at the shooter and fired, but his crow-hopping mount caused the slug to sail wide. Losing his grip on his reins as his horse bucked with a shrill whinny, Tryon flew back off the horse's right hip and hit the ground on a shoulder, hearing the snap of his gun arm across a rock.

Gunfire rose, and horses whinnied. Men were shouting in both English and Spanish.

When Tryon tried to lift his hand still gripping the pistol, pain shot through him and dropped a red veil over his eyes. The broken arm wouldn't budge. He cradled it gently in his other arm and, ducking away from the prancing horses trying to bolt away from the staccato gunfire, crawled back from the trail.

Two shots punched the rocks around Tryon. He turned behind one of the rocks and, wincing against the searing pain in his broken limb, switched the gun to his left hand, and thumbed back the hammer.

Peering into the trail over which smoke hung in a gauzy, sifting cloud, he saw Lee Luther sitting in the trail, knees bent before him, squinting into the dust and smoke and clutching his right arm while shooting with the other hand. Blowing a sombrero off a head, he pulled the gun back and thumbed back the hammer, yelling, “Yeah!”

Tryon aimed his Schofield at one of the rifle-wielding Mexicans returning fire to the hilltop, but before Tryon could trigger the gun, the man's shoulder popped open, spurting blood. The man tossed his rifle over his head. Bearded face bunching and eyes widening, he fell back onto the butt of his rearing mount, lost his grip on the reins, and crashed down the right side.

His horse lunged sharply left, swinging the man around like a kid falling off a merry-go-round, and his boot caught in the stirrup. The horse whinnied and lunged off down the trail, heading for de Cava range, dragging the screaming rider alongside, bouncing him off the rocks and cactus.

Lee Luther yelled with jubilation, the boy's six-shooter dancing and roaring in his hand.

Tryon ducked another shot and returned fire. His shot sailed wild as his target wheeled his mount and, seeing that he and his compadres had caught the skunk by the wrong end, galloped back toward de Cava range. The men on the hill snapped off a few shots in the man's wake, then silence fell with dust over the trail.

Cutching his broken arm, Tryon looked around. The Mex riders had left one man behind—dead in a dusty, bloody heap on the left side of the trail. The man's rumpled sombrero lay half on his back, half on the trail.

Still sitting with his boots before him, Lee Luther laughed and hooted and extended his gun eastward. The hammer fell on an empty cylinder, giving an anticlimactic click.

“Shit,” the boy said, scowling at the gun.

“It's all over, Junior . . . for now.” It was Frank Sharpe, moving down the hill toward the road, Hacksaw Ward to his left. Short-legged, potbellied Ace McGraw had stepped out from behind his rock and was staring after the de Cava men while thumbing fresh shells into his carbine's loading gate. Blood dribbled down his jaw from a nasty burn on his cheek.