Warriors of the Night (14 page)

“You are a very pretty little girl,” Ben said.

“I can be quiet as a mouse.”

“Good.”

“Or I can be very loud and tell those men you are stealing one of their horses,” Emilia sweetly added.

“Why don’t you be quiet as a mouse,” Ben suggested.

“For a dollar I will,” the girl replied.

Ben reached beneath his shirt and produced a small drawstring bag in which he kept a few coins that he saved for emergencies. He paid the girl, who seized the money in her stubby grip and scampered back down the wooden walk to a bench on which she had arranged her rag dolls. Ben suspected the diminutive, curly-topped blackmailer would own half of San Antonio one day. He untied the brown gelding and led the animal down the alley. Once out of sight of the plaza, he climbed into the saddle and, keeping his distance, began to shadow the three men he had seen leaving Father Esteban’s. So far, curiosity had cost him a dollar. Ben didn’t know it, but the price was about to skyrocket.

T
HE RAIN RETURNED. IT
came in a slow, gray drizzle that made the very air heavy to breathe. The clouds themselves seemed to settle on the town, muting the voices of everyday life. The inhabitants of La Villita, the Old Town, retired to the humble adobe and thatched-roof homes that lined the narrow maze of alleys and muddy streets, some scarcely a block long.

Ben McQueen kept his hat lowered to conceal his features. He wrapped his upper torso in the threadbare serape he had found draped behind the saddle. He imagined faces behind the shuttered windows and the blank stare of open doorways. At any moment he’d be discovered and the denizens of these
jacales
would emerge to drive away the Anglo intruder. He dismounted by a one-room shack long abandoned to stray dogs, rodents, and wolf spiders. He tore a buckskin string from the fringes of his coat and hobbled the gelding to keep the horse from wandering off, then he entered the shack. The roof had been burned away and the window frames were charred black from a fire. The only articles of furniture in the forlorn dwelling were the blackened remains of a table, a bed frame, two stools, and, in one corner, the broken pieces of a cradle and a jagged shard of broken mirror.

Ben chose his steps with care. He was close enough to hear the voices of the three
compesinos
he had followed. A window at the rear of the shack looked out onto a makeshift corral whose fencing was a mixture of salvaged wood and thorny underbrush brought from the hillsides and piled up to form a natural barrier. He recognized the men in the corral and the wagon they guarded. Cal Ashworth had evidently abandoned his camp in the remains of the Alamo for a rather precarious place here in La Villita. He did not seem too intimidated by his surroundings, but then Ashworth had a Patterson Colt tucked in his belt and there was a telltale bulge beneath his frock coat. No doubt he wore a second gun on his right hip. Lester Harlan stood in the center of the wagon, whose canvas top had been rolled up on the side facing the entrance to the corral. Harlan cradled a double-barreled shotgun as if it were a newborn babe. It appeared he had reconsidered his association with Ashworth. The promise of easy money must have been a lure the hide hunter couldn’t resist.

“I wish the others were here,” Harlan called down to his employer.

The hook-nosed, bruised and battered Ashworth stiffly turned and faced his hireling.

“You’d be splitting your pay with them,” he said.

“Then the hell with it,” Harlan grinned. “I’ll see things go nice and orderly-like.” He patted the shotgun, then pointed to the gate. He didn’t need to speak. Ashworth could see for himself. He had business to transact. And his customers were at hand.

The corral was an irregular circle about sixty feet in diameter. The two Anglos, their wagon, and their horses were the only occupants. The makeshift gate hung ajar.

Anabel Cordero, disguised as a young peon, glanced at her two companions. Miguel Ybarbo, his head bandaged, shifted nervously in the saddle, then dismounted. Hector, his older brother, caught Miguel as he stepped around his horse to assist the señorita.

“We are all strong young men. No need to help our friend here, eh?” Miguel nodded, deferring to his brother. There was wisdom in his words. Miguel’s actions might reveal that their companion was a woman.

Hector maneuvered himself alongside the daughter of Don Luis Cordero. His loyalty to her was unremitting and steadfast, like that of Jorge Tenorio. Hector surveyed the motley collection of
jacales
surrounding the corral. They had entered Old Town unnoticed. But where was Jorge? The old throat-slitter had promised to keep watch as the three men approached the corral. But the damn
pulquerias
were enticing to a man with a thirst as great as Jorge Tenorio’s.

“You should not have come with us, señorita,” Hector muttered, unable to shake his gloomy thoughts.

“My place is here.”

“But if there is trouble…?”

“My place is here,” she firmly repeated. Hector was a good man, but he had to be silenced. This was no time to doubt herself.

Anabel led the way across the corral. Beads of rain rolled along the brim of her sombrero, only to be shaken loose with every step.

Cal Ashworth mistook Anabel for a young vaquero and discounted her at a glance. He turned to Hector, obviously the eldest of the three.

“El Tigre?” Cal Ashworth asked.

“I am El Tigre,” Anabel said.

“I may have been born at night but it wasn’t
last
night,” Ashworth retorted. “I told the chili-eater with the gnawed ear I’d deal with El Tigre and no one else.”

“We have brought the money you asked,” Anabel said. She glanced around at Miguel, who reached beneath his serape. Cal Ashworth’s hand snapped up, and he centered the business end of his Patterson Colt on Miguel’s belly.

“We came unarmed,” Hector said. “See, no guns.” He lifted his serape to show he had no percussion pistols tucked away in his belt.

Miguel chuckled and untied a pouch of gold doubloons from his belt.

“Please,
señor
. Do not shoot us. P
or favor
,” he taunted, and held out the pouch.

“Don’t worry, Cal. I’ve got them covered,” Lester Harlan said from the wagon. “First man so much as sneezes wrong, I’ll cut him in half with a load of buckshot.” Harlan scowled at the Mexican who mocked him.

Ashworth visibly relaxed at the absence of guns among his customers. He grew more confident. Greed and pride were an integral part of his character. He sensed a chance to make a profit and jumped at it.

“We’ve brought the gold, two hundred and fifty dollars. Where are the revolvers?”

“Show them the case of Patterson Colts,” Ashworth said.

“Right here under my left foot,” Lester Harlan called out, tapping his boot against the case lid. “Twelve pretty revolvers. And tins of powder and shot.”

“Then hand them over and we’ll be off,” Anabel said. The sooner this transaction ended the better. She nodded to Miguel, who stepped forward and dropped the bag of Spanish gold, the last of her father’s plunder, in Ashworth’s outstretched hand. The gun merchant hefted the bag. A slow frown crawled across his face, like fog creeping up from a riverbank, obscuring the true features of a landscape and placing the unwary traveler in danger.

“Funny thing about gold. Often when there’s one bag, there’s another.”

Yes, danger.

Anabel tensed. She glanced aside at Hector and nodded. Then she returned her attention to Ashworth, who hadn’t noticed the subtle signal that had passed from one “peon” to the other.

“We have brought the payment you asked. Now give us our guns,” Anabel said.

“Well, young pup,” Ashworth replied, stroking his two-day-old growth of chin whiskers. “Hard times breed hard bargains. Two hundred and fifty dollars was yesterday’s price. The way I see it, my guns have doubled in value today. Bring me another two hundred and fifty in gold before sundown and we have a deal. Tomorrow it may just double again, so I wouldn’t beat around the bush. Best you lads dig into your strongbox.”

“We will pay the original price and not a coin more,” Anabel stated flatly. She checked the wagon. Lester Harlan was still standing guard. But beneath the wagon she could make out two pairs of knee-high boots that belonged to Chico Raza and Tomas Zavala. They had entered the corral from the wagon’s blind side. Harlan’s attempt to stay dry in the drizzling rain would be his downfall.

“You’ll pay my price,” Ashworth replied. His lip curled as he spoke. “I imagine Captain Pepper over at the Ranger headquarters would be mighty interested to know some of El Tigre’s bandits were hiding under his very nose.”

“Then you leave us no choice,” Anabel told him, a note of resignation in her voice. Ashworth sensed a threat and turned his gun on her. “
Adios,
” Anabel said, and touched the brim of her sombrero. Suddenly she whipped it from her head and slapped the gun from Ashworth’s hand, then slapped him across the face, momentarily blinding him. Ashworth staggered back and tried to ward off blow after stinging blow. Unable to see and caught completely off balance, he stumbled back against the wagon.

Harlan, shotgun in hand, hesitated only a second, shocked that one of the bandits was a pretty señorita. The delay cost him his life. Zavala slit the canvas siding and Chico Raza dove through the rent in the fabric and caught Harlan as he turned to face him. Raza’s left arm encircled Harlan’s throat while his right plunged a knife into the hide hunter’s back. Harlan pitched backward as Raza manhandled him to the wagon bed. Zavala clambered into the wagon to help Raza subdue the dying man.

Miguel and Hector drew knives from their boot tops and rushed to the aid of Anabel Cordero as she continued to assail the gun merchant. Ashworth shouted for the hide hunter to help him and then, with one hand raised to protect his face from the woman’s vigorous onslaught, fumbled for the gun tucked in his waistband. He freed the revolver, but too late. Miguel Ybarbo rushed past his older brother, dove beneath Anabel’s attack, and plunged his dagger into Ashworth’s heart.

The entire action lasted less than a minute. Anabel retreated a few paces, her breathing rapid as the adrenaline coursed through her veins. Miguel stepped aside and stole the revolver from his victim’s dying grasp. Ashworth sagged against the side of the wagon; a stain darkened the front of his frock coat and spread out from the knife hilt which protruded like some grisly badge upon his chest. His legs buckled. Ashworth sank to his knees. He died, held upright by an arm that had caught in one of the wagon’s front wheels.

Chico Raza climbed down from the wagon as Tomas Zavala lowered a heavy wooden crate of Colt revolvers over the side. Both men were grinning as they worked.

Anabel remained where she was, unmoving. The sudden violence had left her drained. It could have been avoided, but Ashworth had given them no choice. She looked down at his crumpled form, then to the black ring on her hand. Her father had lived a life of violence, fighting against what he took to be injustice, determined to restore the honor and prosperity of his family.

On this rainy afternoon, she had begun to realize what it meant to be the daughter of Don Luis Cordero.

She wasn’t the only one dumbstruck. Hidden in the
jacal
a few yards from the corral, Ben McQueen could scarcely believe his eyes. He turned and put his back to the wall, muttering “son of a bitch” beneath his breath. Anabel had played him for a fool, using her wiles to blind him while she plotted treachery. And he had fallen for every flirtatious glance. He’d traded his innate caution for the promise in a pretty girl’s smile.

He drew his Colt, checked the loads, then returned to the gaping ruins of the
jacal’s
rear window. He watched as the bandits loaded their weapons in the gray mist, and recognized Zavala and Raza as the two men who had attempted to ride him down. He saw one of the bandits, a dark-featured man with a thick mustache and black hair, step away from the wagon and carry a gun belt and holstered revolver to Anabel. She strapped the weapon on her waist and adjusted her serape to hide the gun. She tucked her hair beneath the sombrero while nervously searching the surrounding buildings. Nothing but silence and the humble facades of mud-brick buildings—gray mist, gray walls, stained, rotting wood. Even if there were witnesses, who would speak against Anabel and her men? She was among friends in La Villita. She had nothing to fear. Old Town was the one place in San Antonio her secret was safe.

Anabel’s gaze swept over the man in the window and darted back in alarm. Her mouth dropped open and icy fingers clutched at her spine.

“Ben,” she whispered.

Ben McQueen lifted his gun. He didn’t know if he could bring them all down, but he’d do his best to see that these men joined Spotted Calf in the calaboose.

But before he could issue a command for the bandits to throw their weapons in the mud, a piece of pottery cracked behind him. Ben whirled around, his gun held waist high. He saw a shadow, glimpsed a man with silver-streaked hair. Jorge Tenorio swung his rifle with all the rough, solid strength in his arms. The walnut rifle butt caught Ben flush against the side of his head.

Ben stumbled and fell against a side wall. The world reeled crazily. He tried to retain his hold on consciousness, tried to bring his Colt to bear on his attacker, but his hands refused to obey his commands. The gun dropped from his fingertips. He sank to his knees. Was that Anabel framed in blinding light?

The brightness became unbearable. But he had no mouth to scream. Ben was grateful when the darkness came. He ceased resistance and plummeted into the abyss.

L
IGHT AND DARKNESS. PAIN
like a steep grade a man must climb. It was the path home, out of a nightmare. He saw a jaguar drinking from a pool of blood. The jaguar opened its jaws wider, then wider still to reveal the face of a man who stared back and grinned and licked the blood from his lips. Evil was aroused. Something darker than sin lurked on the edge of unconsciousness, waiting, leering. Ben sensed its presence and crawled upward. Pain was the way back, leading him like a beacon while unbridled horror nipped at his heels.