The Frighteners (31 page)

Antonia had joined me. She was calmly running a comb through her long hair. ‘‘Road much not good, goddamn, but we make, no sweat. Very good man. Shoot good. Drive good.” Standing there, the little girl looked up at me and grinned her great, big grin. “Love good? ”

“I don’t think this is the right time to check out my virility, small fry.”

“Very brave with gun. Very brave with car. Very cheecken with girl, ha!” But it was just her manner of friendly kidding; and in a moment she stopped grinning, looking off to the east and north where Arturo’s instructions would take us. ‘ ‘Still think men wait at place with black stones?”

“Well, if they’re anywhere around here, they’re keeping themselves well hidden. There were at least half-a-dozen places back along the road where we’d have been easy targets for an ambush. I guess we can take it that they’re letting us come through as I’d hoped.” I glanced at her. “Antonia.”

“S
í
, what is it?”

“This is as far as I’d better drive,” I said. “I’ll take it on foot from here. You can wait in the truck or come with me as you choose, but if you come and there’s trouble you’re on your own, and if you lag behind I won’t wait for you.”

“Sooch a proud man!” she said. “We see who makes lag, ha!”

We made our way north along the ocean side—well, the Sea of Cortez side—of the Cerros Vaqueros. It was rough going. The girl had tucked away her pretty pumps and switched to moccasins. She followed silently behind me. Whenever I looked back, she was right there, never more than half-a-dozen paces behind me. Her dark little face was always carefully expressionless, but I found myself regretting my macho remark about lagging, which I guess was the idea.

It occurred to me that I really wasn’t picking my female hiking companions very well. One I’d practically had to carry through the wilderness, and this one looked as if, impatient with my clumsy progress, she wanted to carry me.

There was also the fact that the girl continued to make me uneasy. We’d divided up the handguns and ammo before starting out. That gave her enough firepower to take on the whole revolutionary army, such as it was; and I don’t like having people with guns behind me whom I don’t altogether trust. She was cute and sexy, she was bright and cheerful, she was proving herself to be stoical and enduring, and I had no doubt that she was brave; but she came from a background I could never understand, and the atavistic instinct that had saved me many times before still warned me that, small and attractive though she was, she was dangerous. Whether she was just generally a dangerous young lady, or specifically dangerous to me in this particular situation, remained to be seen.

I was navigating by time. Figuring our speed over that rugged terrain at two miles per hour, I calculated that it should take us until roughly eight-forty on my watch—two hours—to put us opposite our destination. However, it was only a few minutes past eight o’clock when Antonia tapped me on the shoulder and pointed east.

‘‘I think far enough,’’ she said. ‘‘I think Piedras Negras there. We look?”

I studied her face for a moment, wondering how much more she knew than she’d told me. If anything. Maybe I was borrowing trouble. After all, some people have a sharper sense of country than others, and my primitive time-and-velocity calculations weren’t infallible. We could have made better progress than I’d estimated. Or Arturo could have been dealing in short kilometers.

“Sure, if you think so,” I said.

I led the way to the top cautiously, by way of a brushy notch that afforded good cover. We crawled to a vantage point from which, still hidden, we could look out across the valley. As Arturo had said, you couldn’t miss them. Apparently there had been a prehistoric volcanic disturbance in the mountains across the way, accompanied by a lava flow that had hardened as it cooled, like black fudge, and had then been split into jagged blocks by centuries of erosion, bite-sized candies for a rock-eating giant, casually spilled out of a great bowl in the mountainside opposite. From the north-south road that was clearly visible over there, presumably the same road we’d seen on our first view of the valley, lower down, a small track ran up into the disorganized jumble of black stone blocks.

I said, “If there’s a village, it’s got to be right up in those rocks. We can’t cross over to it here without being seen, the damn valley is too open. It seems to get narrower up above, and I think I see better cover there, so we’d better keep going another kilometer or so. Then we’ll slip across and come back down the foothills on the other side. We can hope they won’t be expecting trouble from the north. A superannuated gent like pore ole gray-whiskered H. H. Cody, plumb exhausted from being chased from country to country, feeble from loss of blood, wouldn’t be likely to make any wide five- or six-mile mountain detours, even assuming that he was still capable of getting around on foot. What do you say?”

There was no answer. I looked sharply at my companion; she was staring across the valley with odd intentness.

I asked, "Do you see something? Have they got a man watching in those rocks?’’

“
Qu
é 
dice?
Oh . . . oh, yes, I think I see man moving. Not see now.”

I didn’t think shed seen any man, but I said, “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to rest and watch for a bit, see if anybody goes in or out. Hell, we’ve got all day.”

I got out the telescope, and we settled down comfortably in the brush. Antonia slipped off a moccasin and picked a thorn out of her foot.

“You have plan, Cody?”

I said, “Well, I think I’m probably going to kill somebody, if you want to call that a plan. I’m getting a little tired of being ambushed and hunted. I think it’s time to do some ambushing and hunting. Maybe I can make somebody mad enough to do something stupid.”

“Somebody? What somebody?”

“Well, I’m hoping for a mystery man called Sabádo, but I’ll settle for your friend Carlos Mondragon, if you’re still of the same mind about him.”

“If you mean I kill him, I am still of mind. You think I find that politico here?’’

I shrugged. “I think trapping Cody is basically a
gringo
operation, but they do like to use guerilla manpower when they can, like when they laid for me near Cananea, and even earlier when they arranged for the killing of Will Pierce and Millie Charles way down east of Mazatlan.”

“You think they make follow those two clear to Mazatlan; and then, on road to Durango,
poof?
” She made a chopping motion with her hand.

“
Poof
is right,” I said. “Actually, that pursuit may have been Mondragon’s own idea. He knew that Pierce was looking for the arms; hell, since Pierce hadn’t been paid for them, they were still his, weren’t they? His ticket back to financial respectability, maybe, if he could find somebody else, somebody with money, to buy them off him. Mondragon was undoubtedly informed of Pierce’s visit to Arturo and his jaunt up this way, with the pretty lady in the white pants. It seems likely that he was as intrigued by the couple’s subsequent mad dash south as I am. He couldn’t help but think that Pierce had spotted something at Piedras Negras that gave him a clue to the whereabouts of the weapons and that he was heading south to check it out. I figure Mondragon loaded his murder crew into his little brown van and went after the couple to see what they were up to. When it began to appear they were leading him on a chase to nowhere he moved in on them, in his usual impatient fashion, tried his usual crude, muscular brand of interrogation, and wound up, as usual, with some dead bodies and no information.”

Antonia said, “Not much bright, this Mondragon.”

“Well, he’s desperate; if he’s ever going to get his revolution off the ground, he’s got to have those arms. Of course his Yankee paymaster, who didn’t give a hoot about the weapons now that the whole deal had gone sour, found the killings quite satisfactory. It wasn’t feasible for him to silence everyone connected with the ill-fated arms deal; but he could at least take care of those who were likely to make trouble for him north of the border. As far as he was concerned, the only good Pierce was a dead Pierce, and the same went for Cody after he had the bad judgment to let it be known that he was going to spend his honeymoon in this area, presumably snooping. I figure the paymaster—-call him Sabádo—made a new deal with Mondragon: ‘Take care of all these embarrassing Yankee characters for me, wipe them off the map, and you’re welcome to the damned weapons if you can find them.’ Which means, I figure, that Mondragon is right over there across the valley somewhere, waiting for us with his merry machete-men so he can carry out his part of the bargain. You may get a shot if you can figure out the right place to lay for him.” I glanced at her. “Of course, it’s likely to be risky. It could even get you killed.”

She shrugged in the inimitably fatalistic way they have. “All peoples die. You let Antonia look though glass, please?”

“Sorry. Anytime.”

I watched her as she adjusted the telescope to her vision. She looked cute trying to squinch her left eye closed as she peered through it; but something about her expression wasn’t cute at all. She passed the instrument back without speaking.

I asked, “Did you see anything?”

“
Nada. No hombres
. Only birds. Maybe we go now, hey?”

She backed off the crest and started away at a good clip. I paused to take a final look through the little scope. I couldn’t see any birds, except for a hovering buzzard, and you always see those. I couldn’t see any hombres either. I had to hurry to catch up with Antonia. She made no move toward letting me resume the lead; she just kept loping along ahead of me in her lithe and silent way. She seemed to know where she was going. She found a twisting pass through the hills that took us over into General Santa Anna’s valley, which we crossed by way of various arroyos and brushy gullies that hid us, we hoped, from any lookouts posted up high to the south of us, if they should bother to look our way. There was, as I’d said, no reason why they should. We hoped.

Then we were in the Santa Anna foothills and climbing. The week-old bullet crease and the days of inactivity were telling on me seriously now. The phony chest bandage impeded my breathing. Cody’s clumsy boots didn’t help, and maybe the fact that the kid was half my age gave her an additional edge; but I was damned if I was going to be outwalked or outclimbed by a lousy little Native Mexican wench wearing paper-thin moccasins and wrapped in a lousy blanket. I plugged along grimly in her wake.

“So. Now very careful. We look from top.”

Following along breathlessly, I’d almost run into her when she stopped. She pointed to the top of the ridge we’d been climbing, where it came to a knobby point.

“From there see Piedras Negras, I think,” Antonia said.

“Would they be likely to have a sentry there?”

“Si. Could be man other side. Bad place for climb but good place for look.” She hesitated. “I go?”

“Sure, you’re quieter in those moccasins,” I said. “You scout it out, since you obviously want to. But if there is a sentry, let me deal with him. I’ve had more sentries to practice on, probably, than you have. . . . Oh, just one thing. A favor, Antonia.’’

She made the inevitable Spanish response: “It is yours.”

“I’d like to borrow your .22.”

She frowned. “You want my little automatic gun you say no good? You make joke?” she asked. When I didn’t speak, she shrugged. “I say is yours, okay, is yours. Here.” Watching me hide it, she laughed with comprehension. “I see, you need very small gun for the boot. Muy bueno!”

Then we stood for a moment, facing each other. She was very foreign to me in that moment. In the next hour—hell, in the next few minutes—she might betray me completely, or she might lay down her life for me, and I wouldn’t be surprised either way. She removed the
serape
and gave it to me to hold. Without her high heels and the bulky blanket she was almost tiny.

She gave me her beautiful big grin. “Not much lag, hey?” she said slyly.

“Don’t rub it in. Just go away and let me finish catching my breath,” I said. “Antonia.”

“S
í
.”

“Be careful.”

She rose on tiptoe and kissed me lightly on the cheek and was off up the slope, silently, fading from sight in the sparse brush almost at once. I sat down to wait, a little chilly in the shade of a bush since I’d worked up a good sweat on the way up. The same buzzard was still circling lazily over Piedras Negras, or where I figured Piedras Negras ought to be. He’d been joined by a friend. Or maybe they were two brand-new
zopilotes
. I guess all buzzards look alike to me.

I examined the
serape
she’d left with me, lumpy at one end with her small red shoes; there were pockets in the coarse material to hold them. There was also a partial box of high-speed .22s, but I left it there; no sense packing a hideout gun and then lugging extra ammo where it would be found by the first man to shake me down. Not that I expected to be caught and searched, but it was in the realm of possibility. . . .

“There is one man.” Antonia had returned as silently as she’d departed. “Sit against rock, smoke cigarette, I smell, a hundred meters easy.”

“Yank orMex?”

“He is
gringo
, I think. Much yellow hair like girl. Talk on little radio. No hear good, too far, but words sound
inglés
." She’d retrieved her
serape
and was putting it back on as she spoke.

I said, “They do love their electronics.” I glanced at my watch. “That would have been just about ten o’clock; maybe he checks in on the hour. I can’t think of any reason a
gringo
would be up here except to help them get me. Well, Cody. So I guess I’m entitled to get him if I can. Did he have a rifle?”

“S
í
.”

“A real rifle or an assault rifle?”

She frowned, not quite sure of the distinction. “It was long gun with telescope and the handle to be pulled and pushed, very
anticuado
. Old-fashion.”

“Hey, a bolt-action job with a scope. Well, that figures; it’s good sniper country. Okay, I can use that gun.” I took out the flat little Russell knife and checked the edge; but Jo Beckman hadn’t dulled it significantly with her surgery. “You wait here, please,” I said to Antonia.