The Red Ripper (13 page)

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Authors: Kerry Newcomb

BOOK: The Red Ripper
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Sadness fell on Bowie like a stone. Pain momentarily contorted the duelist's expression. The man steadied himself against the doorsill and wiped a hand across his stubbled chin, placed a hand over his eyes for a moment, then dropped it aside.
“Pretty bad,” Bowie said. His blousy shirt was stained and in need of mending, sort of like the man himself. Bowie hooked a thumb in his belt near the hilt of his knife. A small-caliber flintlock pistol jutted from the top of his left boot.
“Maybe you'd better forget your business with Wallace and move on?” Mad Jack guardedly asked.
“He is a man of some renown,” Bowie said. “I am no stranger to reputation myself.”
“And who might you be, monsieur?”
Bowie told him, his drink-heavy breath fanning the Frenchman's face. He almost lost his balance as he spoke. His vision blurred, then focused on the world once more. He steadied himself against the door frame. “I've come a far piece to meet him. Looks like I found me a revolution, too.”
Mad Jack's eyebrows raised. “Nobody's said a damn thing about a revolution; there's been no such talk.”
Bowie chuckled. At his age, the veteran of several duels, he considered himself a keen judge of human nature. He had heard enough of the local gossip. Folk were talking themselves into a sure-enough shooting war. “No. But there will be.”
He grabbed a mug from a nearby table, and Mad Jack poured him a measure from the jug. Bowie swilled it down, his eyes widened and bulged, his grizzled cheeks
turned red, and he gasped in a great lungful of air. “What the hell's in that jug?”
“Boar piss and branch water. I cut the head off a water moccasin, toasted it, tossed it in the brewing barrel, and covered it over with cactus juice. Snake poison gives the drink its staying power,” Mad Jack chuckled.
“Tastes like it,” Bowie rasped. His eyes began to water as the world took a step backward, then rushed toward his face. “By heaven, there's a drink for a man.”
“I boil it off over behind the smokehouse,” Mad Jack told Bowie, pleased with himself. The freebooter was an easy mark for a compliment. “I let it age for a few days and toss in a pinch of jalapeños just to give it a kick.”
Bowie tucked a coin into Flambeau's pocket and helped himself to another drink.
“I'll keep a marker for you, if you figure on staying around these parts.” Flambeau gave the famed knife fighter a wary look. Bowie sounded like he meant trouble for William. If that was the case, Mad Jack intended to “read him from the book.” “On second thought, pay as you go. If you cross the line with William Wallace you won't be around long enough to pay your bill.” He filled the man's cup to overflowing.
“We'll see, Cap'n. We'll see.” Bowie's speech was already slurred. He gulped the home brew, shuddering as another ball of fire coursed the length of his gullet and exploded in his belly. He clapped the older man on the shoulder and stumbled back into the cantina, disappeared around the edge of the door, and promptly vanished into the gloomy interior. Bowie slumped into the nearest chair before his legs gave out from under him.
Mad Jack backtracked and glanced inside. Jim Bowie sat with his arms outstretched on a tabletop near the back door, his eyes blank as spoons, staring into the heart of his own personal darkness.
“Careful; it sort of sneaks up on you,” Mad Jack warned.
 
Esperanza guided Bradburn along the well-worn trail that led down from the high prairie to the banks of the Brazos. By the water's edge they continued beneath a drapery of black willows, their branches heavy with vines and gray-green leaves flirting with the silty surface of the river. The meandering current bubbled over submerged stones, troweled a trench in the mud underneath fallen timbers, and lapped against the muddy embankment, gradually shaping the earth to its own design.
The señora kept up a constant flow of information, made uncomfortable by the way the man undressed her with his hungry gaze. She had immediately recognized her mistake and suggested they return to the cantina, but the alcalde would not hear of it. Resigned to his company, Esperanza recounted the history of the settlement and her husband's own belief that Texas had for too long been treated like a poor orphan state and ignored by the government in Mexico City. Don Murillo had welcomed the settlers, she told her companion—the colonists from the north brought energy and a spirit of renewal; they came as builders, not invaders. But surely the alcalde understood all this. After all, he was one of them.
Bradburn smiled at her remark, and his thick hand reached up to brush a wisp of black hair from the woman's cheek. She retreated from his side, put off by this gesture of familiarity. He laughed as his pale eyes surveyed the riverbank, darting toward the back trail, then to the opposite shore. He mopped the sweat from his sunburned scalp and the folds of his flashy jowls.
“I am Santa Anna's man, appointed by the president himself,” Bradburn said. “I am loyal to only one thing,
and that's the money the Mexican authorities put in my pocket. I know what I'm here for: to keep tabs on all these blasted visionaries.
El presidente
and General Cos understand a man like me. And I understand you, señora.” He approached the woman, who continued to step backward, trying to keep a proper distance. “A woman like you cannot have too many patrons, eh?”
“What do you mean?” Esperanza icily replied.
“I have heard the stories. The kitchen girl whose beauty bewitched a lonely
haciendado.
You went from hauling water and stirring
menudo
to the bedchamber. Very good, my dear. See? We think alike. We do what needs to be done.”
“señor, you do not know me at all!” Esperanza snapped, her features reddening with indignation, dark eyes flashing fire.
“I am the alcalde. I have the power and authority. And before long, I'll have the wealth. A percentage of every shipment arriving in Anahuac.” Bradburn followed the woman through the branches of the willow and trapped her against the tree trunk, his big belly like some massive barrier. “Don Murillo is an old man. I'll warrant you'll have his entire estate before long. When that day comes, you will be needing a friend. Someone who has the ear of the government. I can be that friend. Together we could control half of Texas.” The man smelled of rum, of sour perspiration and greed, a volatile combination when mingled with lust.
“How dare you speak to me in such a manner,” Esperanza said, blood rising to her cheeks.
“Save your indignation,
por favor.
” Bradburn grinned. “We both know it's misplaced. You were a scrub girl until the old man caught a scent of what's underneath that skirt. I'd like to nest there awhile myself. But I can wait.” His gaze swept up her willowy frame
and settled on her lush red lips. “Well, maybe just a taste.”
“No,” she hissed and tried to shove past him, but the alcalde's bulky torso was too much for her.
“Yes,” he said. And the alcalde was always right.
 
Cardinals and robins and raucous blue jays flitted among the branches of the pines and post oaks overhead. A pair of brown squirrels scampered out of harm's way. They leaped to the nearest tree trunk before turning back to scold the intruder who had interrupted their search for last year's pecans. Butterflies hovered like lazy rainbows, wings aflutter, brief glimpses of bright bouquets poised between heaven and earth, suspended on diaphanous wings. Wallace sucked in a lungful of air fragrant with a mixture of wild honeysuckle and cedar. He stepped over vines strewn upon the earth like green entrails, rotting in the afternoon. The siren call of the river and the promise of a chance meeting with Esperanza lured him onward.
The cantina, with its sounds and smells, fell behind as the trail wound through a patchwork quilt of sunlight and shadow. He heard a fish, possibly a bass or catfish, break the surface of the river to snare one of the many insects that dipped close for a drink. He settled into his long-legged stride and was about to softly call Esperanza by name when he heard her voice ring out, raised in protest. Wallace frowned and quickened his pace and, rounding a thick wall of cane, lady fern, and a thicket of scrub oak, broke from cover in time to see the señora being accosted by a wide-shouldered, rotund man, his belly straining the his sweat-soaked ruffled shirt. The man's finely stitched trousers were spattered with mud. The cut of his clothes befitted a gentleman, but hardly his actions.
There beneath the branches of a black willow at the
water's edge, Esperanza struggled to free herself from the heavyset man's grasp. She spun on the heels of her riding boots and almost broke free, but her companion objected, reaching out and catching her by the arm and hauling her back. His cheeks were beet red and streaked with sweat from the struggle. The woman might have worn him down and escaped. But Wallace never gave her a chance. He didn't need to see any more. The cur had laid his meaty paws upon her. He had forced Esperanza against her will to remain in his company. Nothing else was of any concern.
Wallace charged the remaining distance, legs pounding, long red hair streaming behind him, his square-jawed features ablaze with a Highland rage. Esperanza saw him and her eyes widened, her mouth forming a silent,
No.
Too late.
A twig snapped underfoot. Wallace caught Bradburn as the man half-turned at the sound. Bradburn cried out and fumbled with the pistol tucked in the sash circling his waist. Wallace caught the man by the front of his shirt, lifted him off the ground, and tossed him into the river as he would a big sack of mealy grain. Bradburn splashed in the shallows and rose sputtering and fuming from the muddy waters. His clothes were plastered to his body, the skimpy strands of his hair matted to his skull.
“I am William Wallace. Remember the name. I shall escort this lady to her husband; then I must meet with the alcalde. That gives you time to crawl out of that river and leave these parts. Or, by heaven, it will not go well for you.”
Esperanza tugged on the big man's sleeve and when she had his attention said, “This is the alcalde: John Bradburn.”
“Lay hands on me, will you?” Bradburn fumed and sputtered, livid with rage.
“Wallace,
yes, I will remember all right. Remember to have you arrested for assaulting a lawfully appointed official!” Bradburn exclaimed, staggering up from the river's edge.
“And I will tell my husband that you forced yourself on me,” Esperanza said, interrupting the official. “And it will not matter what rank you hold. Don Murillo will order our vaqueros to hunt you down and kill you in the slow way, the Apache way. Mark my words. Let this matter be quiet or your soldiers will not be able to save you.”
Bradburn balked at her threat. He spit out a mouthful of brown silt and wiped the moisture from his face. His gaze shifted from the woman to the man, gauging her determination. At last he nodded and, brushing past both parties, made his way up the embankment, his breath coming in short, heavy rasps as he fled the scene of his embarrassment.
“There goes a man hotter than sixteen yards of hell,” Wallace dryly noted. He shook his head.
“Look what you have done,” Esperanza scolded him. “Now everything is ruined. I did not need your help. I have handled men like him before.”
“It didn't look that way from where I stood.”
“Señor Wallace, you are like the wild west wind; you do not think. You just act. You blow here, there, everywhere. Oh, the alcalde behaved boorishly and I am grateful to you. But this is serious. My husband is worried about what will come. San Felipe is our home now. Our roots are here. I fear your rash conduct will bring us to ruin.”
“I only meant to help,” William offered. He hadn't expected a scolding. Women were harder to figure than a Chinese box.
“You can't help it. You are a man of many names
and titles. Some days you are a rancher and a farmer; then you are gone from Briarwood and Roberto tells us you are off chasing the sunset. Months pass and we hear of Big Foot Wallace or El Destripedor Rojo, stories of Indian fights or chasing wild horses, grinning a panther out of a tree, which I do not believe for a minute, always building your legend. You have the land grant and the house you built, but I think you are as much a visitor there as anyone. Tell me, señor, where
is
your home?”
“Texas,” William said. “I have always liked the sound of the word. Texas is my home.”
“But no man can claim it all.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Be serious.”
“The minute I crossed the Rio Grande I knew where I belonged. I was whole again. Look at the Brazos; what do you see?” He drew close to her and grabbed her by her shoulders and turned her toward the flowing water.
“A river,” Esperanza meekly replied, taken back by his intensity.
“I see my life's blood.”
William glanced up toward the trail. The alcalde was out of sight, but he could hear the man crashing through the underbrush. The big man glanced around at the river, the swaying branches of the black willow, kicked a rock into the current, shrugged, and did everything he could to avoid Esperanza's eyes.

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