Slocum and the Bandit Durango, page 15
“Tomas got it and let Durango sleep a little. I never read it, but like Nalda, I heard what he told Durango. Two spies and trouble at the pass.” The bartender stretched and spoke to her. “Make us some coffee and food. These two men are the ones that put Durango in jail the last time.”
“Why would that no-account traitor send Durango a note?” Dyke asked.
“Too many things unanswered,” Slocum said.
“You know,” Nalda said, “that woman who came here with Jimenez shot Durango’s horse and it fell on him. They say he broke his leg very bad. A woman set it and they took him out of here on a stretcher between two horses.”
José nodded. “He was high on peyote and drinking mescal for the pain, too.”
“I’d’ve peyoted that son of a bitch,” Dyke said.
“Are the bodies in the church?” Slocum asked.
“Sí, señor,” she said. “The door is unlocked. I can get you a lamp.”
“Nalda, you fix the food and coffee. I can show him,” José said.
“Sí, I just wanted to help.”
Slocum and his men all thanked her as they followed José out.
“I will have lots of food ready when you get back,” she promised them from the doorway.
“Gracias,” Slocum said, and turned to José. “Is there a Señora Valdez here?”
“Sí, she is the wonderful woman that opened the school.”
“Where does she live?”
“Up the road across the stream.”
“Durango ever talk of holding her hostage?”
“Hostage?” José laughed aloud. “She came often to see him, and made him open the school. She is a beautiful woman. But she is not a woman to touch. You know what I mean?”
“Durango never touched her?”
At the tall, ornate door to the small chapel, the man stopped and smiled. “He wanted to, but he wanted her to come to him.”
“I’ll have to meet this lady.”
They removed their hats and entered the dark interior. The candle lamp illuminated the stations of the cross on each wall. Small candles on racks burned in the front. Four coffins were lined up in the front of the church.
Slocum lifted the cloth off the first one. He did not know the man.
“Ortega. He was a bandit,” the cantina man said.
Slocum moved to the second coffin and raised the shroud. It contained Tomas’s remains, no mistaking his sharp features. The next one he exposed was Enrique, and the dark bullet hole in his forehead made him look stark.
Slocum wet his lips and moved away from the coffins.
“You don’t want to see Doña?” Dyke asked.
“No. I want to remember her as the sweet girl that joined us to get a chance to go home.” Slocum beat his hat against his leg.
Dyke nodded. “Good idea.”
Buck peeked at her, and then he turned away looking sick. “It’s her all right. What now?”
“Durango’s getting away.”
Dyke and Buck nodded.
“We riding after ’em?” he asked the pair.
“We don’t go after them, they’ll be back here and be worse the next time,” Buck said. “You wasn’t figuring on going after them?”
“Oh, I was going. I just wondered if you two wanted to.”
“I want that sumbitch dead,” Dyke said. Then realizing he was in a church, he shook his head in disapproval and started for the door.
“So does God,” Slocum said, stepping outside. “They can’t go fast with all those pack animals. We’ll catch them.”
“What about the prisoners?” Buck asked. “Them Apaches may eat them if we don’t go up there and do something.” Dyke said, “I ain’t losing any sleep over them. But we left that kind of in the Apaches’ hands.”
“Buck, what do we need to do with them?” Slocum asked.
“Damned if I know. The damn federales are so corrupt these days, I doubt they’d do anything to ’em.”
“Turn them loose?”
“Hell, they’d just take over some other valley or go back to robbing and killing.”
“Should they be shot?”
“I reckon.”
“Then we’ve got to do that first and then find Durango.”
“Hell, we’re burning daylight,” Dyke said.
They mounted up, and José stopped them. “Have some food first. Nalda will have it ready. Then go do what you must do.”
They agreed and stopped at the cantina. It was just before dawn when they finished eating and paid her. Then they rode out.
Slocum was weary, bone-tired, but he knew there was nothing he could do but ride on and deal with the prisoners.
They reached the pass by noontime. The older Apache, Padre, came to meet them.
“Everything all right?” Slocum asked.
“Fine. You need us anymore?”
“Where are the prisoners?” Slocum looked around.
“Your man came and got them.”
“My man? Oh, Valdez. What did he do with them?”
The Apache made a pistol with his hand and said “bang” a couple of times.
Dyke shook his head and looked at the sky for help. Buck gripped his saddle horn and did the same.
“Then what?” Slocum asked the Apache.
“He had two men with a wagon haul them away.”
Slocum nodded, and wondered what he needed to do about Valdez. “We’re going to track down the outlaw chief. You two want to go along and scout?”
The Apaches agreed with big grins.
“Buck, take them and get a couple of mules from the mine to pack the food. That’s all we’ll need. Dyke and I are going to find Valdez. He has some explaining to do. Meet you at the cantina.”
Buck agreed, and told the Apaches something in their language and they laughed.
Slocum and Dyke set out to find Valdez.
“Slocum, we don’t even know where he lives,” said Dyke.
“How many places can he live in this small village?”
“We can ask Benito at the cantina.”
They found the bartender a few minutes later busy washing mugs.
“Where does Valdez live?” Dyke asked him.
“Oh, the señor has gone to Mexico City.”
“Huh? When did he leave for there?” Slocum asked.
“A couple of hours ago. He said he had to see some mining company about their needs for a new mine.”
“You knew he executed those six bandits?” Slocum asked.
“Yes. He said that Sanchez told him to do that.”
“Was this man Sanchez here?”
Benito shook his head. “If he was, I never saw him.”
“Why did he kill them?”
Benito stopped washing dishes. “I don’t know and I don’t ask.”
“Tell me about his wife.”
“They don’t live together.”
“They’re separated?” Dyke asked.
“I guess.”
“But he told me he was concerned that Durango might hold her for ransom.”
Benito laughed. “Maybe Valdez would pay him to keep her.”
“That bad, huh?” Dyke asked.
Benito smiled.
“Come on, we have a bandit to catch,” Slocum said to Dyke. “Thanks, Benito.”
Outside, going down the stone steps to their horses, Dyke glanced back. “Strange deal. Shoots six worthless bandits in cold blood and then he goes to Mexico City. Don’t make sense.”
Slocum agreed. “We may never know about the man.”
They mounted up to go meet Buck and the Apaches and then ride after Durango.
It was past midnight when they rode up to Antonio. The Chinese candles were lit and the music wafted out from the cantina. It looked very peaceful, and they decided to stop and see if there was any word about their man.
A cheer from the people assembled went up when they came in the door. “Did you find him?” José shouted.
Slocum shook his head. “We’ll get them.”
“Nalda, get them some food. They must be hungry,” José said to her.
Slocum was about to sit down when a man came inside and went over to him. “There is someone outside who wants to talk to you.”
Slocum frowned at him.
“She won’t hurt you.”
He gave a sign to the others that it was all right, and went out the door. Under the starlight he looked around. Who was she and what did she want?
“I am over here, Señor.”
She was seated at a table under the arbor. He removed his hat and she indicated a chair opposite hers.
“Good evening. My name is Slocum, but I don’t know yours.”
“My name is Juanita Valdez.”
“What can I do for you, Señora?”
“Let’s not be formal. Juanita is fine. I am very sorry about your losses. For too short a time, I knew both of them—Enrique and Doña Maria Salaras.”
“I never knew her last name.”
“She told me how brave you were. How you didn’t have a thing to gain by coming up here except your honor.”
He could barely see much of her besides her straight back in the filtered starlight. “She was easily impressed.”
“No. She, too, was brave.”
“You know, Juanita, there are things in this world that need doing. If they ain’t anyone else’s job, then it’s yours.”
“My, you are profound. I am amazed. Tell me, what will you do now?”
“Go find Durango and either bury him or deliver him to the officials.”
“You’ve done that before and it didn’t work. They turned him loose.”
He shrugged, listening to the soft music coming from the cantina. “Do you dance?”
“I guess I can.”
“Good. I’d rather dance than talk.” He took her in his arms and they slowly began to dance. She was tall, with a willowy figure, and easy to dance with.
“Is your husband mad?” he asked, not looking down at her.
“There are times I suspect he is. I understand you met him.”
“I never knew if he was on this side or my side.”
“He has some serious mental problems, so we don’t live together.”
“Couldn’t you get it annulled in the Church?”
She shrugged and threw her head back. “I bear my own burdens.”
“He’s very smart, I understand.”
She readjusted her hand on his shoulder. “I would rather dance, too.”
He gave her a hug and a smile. “I won’t probe.
“I want to say your kindness to Doña will not go unrewarded.”
He spun her around and brought her back against him when the music stopped. And he kissed her. It soon became more than that, and they both were flush-faced when they split apart. He pulled her tight against his body.
“Let me come back,” he said, smelling her lilac perfume. “When this is over. When we have some time to savor each other.”
She exhaled slowly. “I haven’t been that stirred up in years—yes, I would enjoy that even more. I shall wait for your return.”
Later, he slept a few hours by himself rolled up in two blankets against the mountain night’s chill. At dawn, he roused his partners, Buck, Dyke, and the two Apaches, and they ate the breakfast Nalda had promised them.
With the horses saddled and the mules packed, they rode south, Slocum confident they could not lose the bandits with the two Apaches reading sign. They trotted hard all day. Obviously, the trail led out of the Madres and off the western slope.
They found two of the bandits’ previous camps, and the horse apples on the trail were looking fresher.
“There’s a village called Santo Cristoforo west of here in the foothills,” Slocum said.
“They would be there tonight at the speed they travel,” the old Apache, Padre, said. His partner agreed.
“Then we will push on and catch them there.”
The day passed swiftly. The trail grew steep and the crunch of gravel under hooves filled Slocum’s ears. A shrill cry of a hawk soaring overhead filled the deep canyon as they descended down the side of the deep gorge on a narrow one-horse-wide shelf.
Slocum tried to ignore the right side. From time to time, his stirrup scuffed the wall side. The torturous way down kept him anxious to be on solid ground. How did they ever get Durango off this mountain on a sling between two animals? To judge from the tracks, that was how Durango’s men must have carried him out of the valley.
The sun had dropped to the western horizon when Slocum at last reined up, swept his right leg over the dun’s rump, and stood on solid ground. Even the unemotional Apaches looked pleased. The last ray of golden sunlight shone on the completed tower of the church further down the valley and the small village that surrounded it.
“You been to Santo Cristoforo before?” he asked the old man.
Padre nodded.
“You and Buck go see what you can learn about them. There’s water here for the stock, and we’ll make camp.”
The Apache agreed. He and Buck remounted and rode on with Slocum’s warning to be careful.
Slocum and Dyke began to unpack the mules, and the younger Indian, Red Boy, fell in and helped.
“Reckon they’re here?” Dyke asked.
“I think so,” Slocum said, wondering how many of them were left. One of them had been wounded, and Durango’s leg had been badly shattered by the horse falling on him.
Time would tell.
“Is that the only way back out of here?” Slocum asked Red Boy.
“No, good way over there.” He waved to the south.
Dyke looked at the sky. “Oh, hell, that damn mountain must have taken ten years off my life.”
They all three laughed.
Slocum looked back toward the village bathed in twilight. He hoped they were there.
21
Dyke had cooked a sliced slab of bacon for something quick. Seated on the ground at the fire, Slocum heard horses coming. He set his tin plate aside and rose. On his feet, he shifted the six-gun in place.
“It is them,” Red Boy said.
Slocum marveled. How that young buck knew, he wasn’t sure, because Red Boy never stood up to look. In fact, he never stopped eating his frijoles. Must be some sense that they naturally possessed.
“They’re here in a camp at the edge of the village,” Buck said, dropping down heavily with a ring of his spur rowels.
“How many?”
“Five or six healthy ones. Durango was asleep on a pallet. There’s another man there that’s in bad shape. Some doctor had been there and was leaving when we first peeked at them.”
“What do you think?”
“I think about dawn we can take them easy.”
“Good. Draw us a map on the ground.”
Squatted on his heels, Buck showed them all the ground features in the firelight.
When they finished, Dyke brought them plates of crisp bacon.
“Is there any law here?” Slocum asked,
Padre shrugged.
“What do you mean by law?” Buck asked.
“If we make this raid, I want that stolen money they have for the people of Antonio. Crooked authorities would only confiscate it for themselves.”
Everyone agreed.
“So we need to take care of Durango, locate the money, and pack it and get the hell out of there. That means have these mules loaded and ready to take along, too.”
“That’s a damn good idea,” Dyke said, sipping his coffee.
“Padre, how do we get out of here and not take that damn canyon?”
Buck stopped eating and blinked in disbelief.
“Mine road is that way.” The Apache waved to the south.
Slocum grinned at Buck, shaking his head in dismay. “We’re going that way out.”
Padre and Red Boy came back to the dry wash to join them after looking things over. Durango’s camp was asleep.
Padre shook his head in the starlight. “No guards. Plenty snoring.”
Slocum nodded. Was that luck or a bad sign? There wasn’t any time left. “Everyone take one of them out, and then we will get the few that are left. I don’t care how. Just be certain that the outlaws won’t get up and fight us. These men had no mercy with the villagers. They deserve no mercy.”
Padre led them all down the wash. They eased past the sleeping horses on a picket line. Slocum pointed to the packsaddles in a pile. Everyone nodded.
Then they moved like shadows in the night. Each man went to a pallet with either gun or knife raised. They dispatched the outlaws with a clunk to the head or cut their throats.
Slocum was almost to the pallet where he figured that Durango slept.
“Stop right there, you sumbitching sawbones,” Durango shouted as he sat up and raised a pistol. “You ain’t cutting off my damn leg.”
Three pistols shots answered him. He fell backward and dropped the gun from his grasp. One outlaw managed to get up screaming, and started to run off in the night. Bullets in his back cut him down.
“Get a couple of horses and packsaddles,” Slocum ordered, reloading his Colt. “Padre, you and Red Boy watch for anyone coming from town.”
Slocum went through the panniers until he found the heavy ones. Then, striking a match, he read the Spanish words on a wooden case. He looked around. Buck and Dyke were coming with the packsaddles and animals. He went over and threw more fuel on the campfire. The blaze increased the light and they strapped on the cross bucks.
Slocum staggered over under the weight and managed to boost the wooden crate in to the pannier on one side of Dyke’s horse.
“Takes two to load them,” he said to the others.
In minutes, four cases were loaded, and the Apaches, with their rifles ready, retreated to the fire.
“The villagers are afraid to come up here,” Padre said, and shook his head as if it was nothing.
“Good,” Slocum said. “Get the rest of the horses and mules. We’re getting the hell out, too.”
The Apaches ran off to bring them in.
In minutes, with Dyke and the Indians driving them, they were cat-hopping up a steep road for the high country.
From well up the mountainside, Slocum looked back as the first purple light of dawn made the church tower and roofs visible. It was a good thing—the outlaw and killer Durango would hurt no one ever again.
