6.
JUST IN TIME FOR DINNER
T
HE slug spanged off a rock as Hawk hit the ground and rolled. The horse reared, whinnied, and lurched into a gallop, racing across the yard.
“You're just in time for dinner, gringo!” A guttural laugh rose from the balcony. “Have some hot lead! A little tough, but it really stays with you!”
Three quick rifle cracks. The slugs slammed into the ground where Hawk had first hit. Now he lunged to his feet and ran, crouching, toward a boulder.
Another laugh, another rifle shot.
Another man shouted in Spanish, “What wonderful luck, Jesus! A
norteamericano
to assist with our target practice!”
A rifle boomed twice, both slugs cracking into the boulder as Hawk leapt behind it. Grabbing a revolver in each hand, he edged a look around the boulder's right side.
Powder smoke wafted in an open window behind a dead orange tree. A ruddy, unshaven face appeared in the window. Sunlight flashed off the rifle as the man raised the butt to his shoulder.
The maw flashed and the report echoed around the yard as the slug slammed into the boulder, spraying shards.
When Hawk lifted his head again, the man in the window was smiling, teeth glistening in the sun's rays angling through the orange tree.
Two other men crouched behind the wall of the dining room balcony to the left of the window. One of the men fired his two pistols resting atop the balcony wall. Hawk ducked as one slug blew up gravel to his right and the other barked into the rock with a deafening spang.
Keeping his head behind the boulder, Hawk lifted his chin and cupped his hands around his mouth. “You fellas are in my house!”
Another pistol shot. “Oh? We thought it was abandoned, senor.”
“You thought wrong, amigo. You got five minutes to pull out!”
“Pull out?” The shout rose from the window. “But we like it here!” The man chuckled. The rifle boomed, barking off the rock, pelting the brush behind Hawk with shards.
Hawk thumbed both pistol hammers back. His trigger-happy boarders were no doubt on the run from
rurales
on the other side of the border. Border toughs. Nasty as the rats Hawk had had to run off when he'd first moved in.
He lifted his head and snaked the Russian over the top of the boulder, aimed at the man in the window who was aiming his rifle at Hawk. Hawk's Russian spoke a half second before the man's rifle boomed.
The rifle bullet tore up a sage clump two feet before the boulder. Peering through his own gun smoke, Hawk saw the man in the window stumble back and turn slightly, blood beneath his left eye glistening in the sunlight.
Hawk ducked behind the boulder as the two men in the balcony cut loose with pistol fire, shouting Spanish epithets.
When the barrage faded, Hawk set both his pistol barrels on the boulder and fired, blowing a sombrero off a head and tearing adobe from the lip of the balcony wall. Large chunks of mortar flew in all directions. He emptied the Colt, holstered it, and, not waiting for the two men in the balcony to reload, bolted off his heels and ran toward the hacienda.
When he was ten feet from the low wall encircling it, a hatless, black-haired head bobbed up from behind the balcony wall. A revolver flashed and popped, the slug plunking into the dirt a foot to the left of Hawk. Hawk dove behind the wall, extended the Russian over the top, aimed, and fired.
The shooter grabbed his right shoulder and screamed. Falling, he triggered a stray round into an empty planter.
Hawk straightened, leapt the four-foot wall, and ran toward the hacienda. A pistol on the balcony barked twice. Both shots spanged off the crumbling flagstones behind Hawk's pounding heels. Running up the steps, Hawk returned the two shots. As the gunmen ducked down behind their barricade, he gained the top of the entrance steps and stopped.
He holstered the Russian, sprang off his feet, and grabbed a viga pole protruding from the sun-faded adobe. He swung up and over the balcony wall. One of the ambushers cursed and raised his revolver toward Hawk. Hawk kicked the man's wrist. As the gun flew from the man's hand, Hawk dropped to the balcony floor.
The ambusherâa burly Mexican with curly salt-and-pepper hairâreached across his thick waist for the bowie knife sheathed on his left hip. Hawk straightened, met the challenging gaze of the big man before him, the extended knife flashing in the westering sunlight. The wounded man lay on the floor, reaching for a .36 Colt Navy two feet to his left.
Hawk feinted right. The big Mexican slashed with the knife.
Hawk bolted straight back, caught the man's arm on the backswing, and rammed his right fist into the man's soft belly. The man grunted. Hawk slammed his fist into the man's jaw, the solid smack followed instantly by the crack of breaking bone. Dropping the bowie, the stout Mexican stumbled straight back, overturning a wicker chair and falling with a shrill Spanish curse.
The other Mexican grabbed the Colt. Cursing, he swung it toward Hawk, but before he could thumb the hammer back, Hawk drew his Russian and fired. The slug painted a round, red hole on the man's neck, just below his bulging Adam's apple, knocking him back against the balcony wall.
Hawk turned the Russian toward the big man, who had his right hand on a Remington sheathed in a silver-trimmed shoulder holster. His eyes darted to Hawk's revolver. His hand froze on the Remy's butt. He smiled tensely as he removed his grasp from the Remy and opened both his hands.
“Enough,” he said in Spanish. “Perhaps we can share the quarters, uh, gringo?”
Hawk shook his head and curled his upper lip. “Something tells me you snore.”
The man's eyes flicked to the Russian. He blinked, shifted his anxious gaze again to Hawk's eyes, lines stretching across his forehead. He opened his mouth to speak. Hawk's Russian spoke instead, carving a neat, round hole through the man's forehead, silencing him forever.
The Russian smoking in his right hand, Hawk looked around. Silence except for the breeze sliding down the mountain behind the hacienda, whispering in the pine tops. Keeping his ears pricked for other bushwhackers, Hawk reloaded the Colt and the Russian, then dropped the Colt back into its holster.
Extending the Russian in his right hand, he turned and walked into the hacienda. Because the local Mexicans believed the house haunted, it had pretty much been left as the family who'd lived here had left it after the smallpox had felled them one after another. He moved through the dining room and sitting roomâboth immaculately furnished, though layered in dust and spiderwebs and littered with rodent droppingsâpast the foyer in which the rifle-man from the window lay dead on the flagstones. He came to an inner courtyard lit with wan evening light, a green sky showing above the walls webbed with corded, brown vines.
Above Hawk's head, the ceiling creaked slightly.
He studied the heavy timbers, listening. Another creak sounded, as if a foot had been lightly planted on the floor.
Hawk turned to a recessed door across the hall, and tripped the latch. He opened the door slowly, climbed seven steps, and stood looking over a large room with a large canopied bed and four scrolled posters. A balcony with a wrought-iron railing opened on the room's left side, facing south. One of the balcony's heavy wooden doors was closed; the other stood half open.
The room was appointed with several deep rugsâone of sleek black panther skinâseveral heavy wooden chairs, a bureau, and an armoire that filled an entire wall. An elk trophy with an enormous rack hung over the bed. On the other walls and in niches were book-lined shelves, carved tables, paintings, and tapestries.
The room had probably been the sleeping quarters of the casa's hacendado. It afforded a good view of the village and the trail leading up the mountain from the valley. Hawk had slept in the room when he'd holed up here before taking up the scout once more. He intended to hole up here again.
Apparently, someone else had found the room hospitable in his absence.
The air was rife with cigar smoke. The bed and one pillow held the indentation of a body, as if someone had been resting there only moments ago. On the bedside table stood a brandy bottle and a half-filled glass. Several cigar butts lay in a silver-lined ashtray. One sent a thin stream of smoke curling along the blue lamp looming over it.
Flexing his fingers on the Russian's grips, Hawk moved around the end of the bed, heading for the balcony. He glanced to his right. On the floor beside the bed stood a pair of calfskin saddlebags, the flaps dyed red, fancy stitching trimming both pouches. Hawk continued toward the balcony, moving slowly, setting each boot down quietly on the fieldstone flags.
He was four feet from the half-open door, holding the revolver straight out from his chest, when the door burst toward him, knocking the Russian aside. A short man bolted out from behind itâa middle-aged hombre with a black silk tunic, red sash, black patch over his right eye, and thin gray hair combed straight back from a low forehead. The man held a short-barreled pistol in his right fist.
The old bandito snarled as his pistol popped.
Hawk's Russian spoke once, twice, three times, the bullets punching through the man's chest and belly. The old jackalâprobably the group's leaderâgave a defiant cry, his face creased with pain as he stumbled back against the balcony rail. With another scream, he fell backward over the rail, twisting and dropping out of sight. His body made a soggy, crunching sound as it hit the stone patio below.
Hawk stepped forward and winced. Pain seared his left side. He looked down. The bullet had torn through the side of his sheepskin vest. He opened the vest. A small blood splotch grew on his shirt, about six inches below his left armpit.
“Shit.”
He pressed his right hand over the wound, winced at the burn. Probably the bullet had carved a nasty furrow between his ribs, maybe kissing a bone or two. He'd heard it ricochet off a bedpost behind him.
Ignoring the burn and the blood dribbling down his side, Hawk checked the rest of the house for more bushwhackers. Twenty minutes later, he deemed the house clear, though nearly every room was littered with the bandits' food scraps and cigar butts. He found a dusty brandy decanter in the hacendado's office, apparently overlooked by the bandits, and took several slugs, quelling the pain from the bullet burn.
Stuffing his neckerchief under his shirt, he got the blood to clot, then hauled the dead bandits one by one out of the hacienda to a deep ravine at the east end of the yard.
He rolled the last man into the gorge and took a breather, pressing his neckerchief once more to the wound, then headed back toward the hacienda.
On the way, he spied his grulla cropping bunch grass in a cedar grove. He led the mount to the stable flanking the hacienda and saw that he'd acquired a cream Arab and three mustangs, all snorting and contentedly munching hay inside. When he'd finished tending to the grulla, adding water to the stock troughs, Hawk draped his saddlebags over his left shoulder, hefted his Henry rifle in his right hand, and walked outside.
Barring the stable doors, he turned and started toward the house. Nausea and fatigue flooded over him like warm, black water. He sank to one knee, dropping the rifle and saddlebags.
He cursed, then froze as the sound of galloping hooves rose on the other side of the yard. He peered into the shadows as a horse and rider crested the hill and angled toward the hacienda. Wincing and clutching his side, feeling the blood ooze from the burn, he reached for his rifle.
The hoof thuds faded, and the horse snorted. There was the squeak of saddle leather. “Gideon!”
It was Juliana Velasquez.
“Vamos!”
she ordered the horse.
He looked up as the girl galloped the pinto toward him and then dismounted as the horse skidded to a stop ten feet away.
She dropped to one knee beside him. “Are you all right? I heard shooting!”
Up close, Hawk hardly recognized her. Normally, she wore long gray skirts that old Carmelita sewed from flour sacks along with loose blouses and rope sandals. Her hair usually tumbled carelessly about her narrow shoulders.
Tonight, she wore a purple satin blouse cut low in front and a slitted black skirt that fit her tight as a drumhead across her hips and thighs. A black ribbon served as a choker, and her slender feet were clad in flat-soled black shoes.
“Coyotes moved in.” Hawk pulled his hand away from his side. The palm was covered in red. “They were kind enough to throw me a welcome home party.”
Juliana sucked a sharp breath and closed her fingers around his arm. “We must get you inside.”
“Was just headin' that way.”
“I will help,” she said, taking his arm as he picked up his rifle and saddlebags and then stepped off the walk and angled toward the hacienda's rear door.
She walked so close to him that her left breast nudged his arm, and he found himself looking down past her buffeting black hair to the blouse, the matronly breasts jostling inside, pushing at the fine, purple satin.
She looked up at him, her features flushed with excitement. “Where are they now? Did they flee?”
“Dead.”
Her expression changed to curiosity. Then they were entering the hacienda and making their way through the musty, sepulchral shadows, heading toward the kitchen and the fire and the succulent smell of roasting javelina.
She pulled out a chair at the dining room's long, oak table. He sat down heavily, grabbed her wrist, let his gaze wander across her alluring outfit once more. His eyes moved to her face. “Go back to the village. I can't be sure there aren't more banditos heading this way.”
“I am not afraid.” She turned away, grabbed a pan, and began working a pump handle. Her gaze flicked across his chest and shoulders. She wasn't yet eighteen, but her eyes flashed with womanly interest. “Take your shirt off, and I will tend your wound.”