Heart of Thunder (3 page)

Hank Chavez rode slowly toward the hotel from the south, hoping that the size of the building did not mean the rooms were expensive. He wanted to stay there rather than search farther for his lodging.

He had pulled up his mount under a cottonwood tree when he saw a man and a young woman step out onto the landing behind the hotel. In the bright afternoon light he could see that the man was bleeding. Wounded by the young lady holding the gun? It was hard to believe, yet Hank grimaced as the man reached for the woman and the gun was fired.

Hank stared in rapt fascination. The woman—no, she could be no more than a girl, seventeen or eighteen—was very lovely. A young girl, but she had a woman’s body. Lovely hair floated down her back and shoulders, dark hair that shone fiery red in the sunlight.

Leaning forward, Hank rested his forearms on the pommel of his saddle and watched the scene. He would have given anything to know what they were saying, but he was too far away to hear. Soon the man fell down
the stairs and then limped away. Hank’s dark gray eyes flew back to the girl, staring at her intently, willing her to look his way so that he could see all of her face. Was she as lovely as she seemed?

But she did not turn toward him. And after a moment she was gone, back into the hotel, and as quickly as his desire to meet her had come to him, it was gone, as well. The lady with the gun. No, he did not want to meet her. He had important business here, perhaps even killing business, and no time for getting entangled with vixens.

It had taken months to get to Denver from Dallas, months of pushing himself, of getting lost, of backtracking, always avoiding towns where he might be tempted to rest. He might have caught up with Pat McClure, who had left Dallas only a few days before Hank had found he was gone. But after reading Pat’s note, Hank had been so furious that he had wrecked his hotel room, proceeded to the nearest saloon, and wrecked that, too. Unable to pay for the damages, he had gone to jail for a month.

He might have got the money from Bradford Maitland. After all, Hank had once saved Maitland’s life, and Maitland was rich. But Hank had been too proud to ask. Maitland had won the woman Hank had wanted, and while Hank had conceded graciously, there was still a resentment deep inside. After all, she was the only woman Hank had ever asked to share his life. But he had never really had a chance with Angela. When Hank had met her, she had already belonged to Maitland, body and soul. Of course, Maitland had been too pigheaded to know that. If only he had continued to be pigheaded, Hank thought again wistfully.

No, he would never ask Maitland to help him, or Angela, who had her own wealth. He had already taken money from her, actually taken it, when he had robbed the stagecoach she was traveling on.

That was how he had met Angela Sherrington. Hank
hadn’t been able to forget her, and he had gone to find her and give back half of what he had stolen from her. She had been furious of course—oh, such fury—until she saw the jewels he was returning. Later he had used the excuse of returning her money in order to seek her out again. But, by that time, Maitland had come.

Hank had asked Angela to go with him to Mexico. She had refused. She was a woman who would love only one man in all her life, and that man was Bradford Maitland. Hank admired that. Yet he had waited in Dallas for her to change her mind, hoping Maitland’s cruel treatment would kill her love. She was a woman well worth having, even if she had loved before. But when Maitland had come to his senses, Hank had known he had lost her forever.

His partner, Pat McClure, had joined him in Dallas, willing to go to Mexico with him to help Hank get back his family estates. But Pat had found a pretty little
señorita
and had moved into her adobe house on the outskirts of town, while Hank stayed at the hotel. So Hank had been unaware that Pat had left for Denver until he finally had gone to find him and the
señorita
had given him Pat’s cryptic note, the note that told Hank nothing and everything. Hank could have killed Patrick McClure right then, no matter how close they had been. For Pat had taken not only his own money, but the money he had been holding for Hank, as well, the money meant to buy back Hank’s family’s
hacienda
in Mexico.

All Hank Chavez had lived for those many years was that dream. Since the day in ’59 when a band of Juárez irregulars had come to the
hacienda
and massacred his family, Hank had dreamed of vengeance. The men were bandits, indulging in killing and pillage for profit, using the revolution as their cover.

The leader of this band had claimed the Chavez lands were church property, which everyone knew to be untrue. But that hadn’t mattered. Since Juárez had de
clared that the church was to be stripped of its property because of its support of the conservatives, “church property” had been a ready excuse for plundering anything in Mexico.

Hank could never forget seeing
vaqueros
he had grown up with shot for resisting conscription into the army. Their wives and daughters had been raped. His grandmother had died from a heart attack after watching her son, Hank’s father, killed for trying to bar the gang from their home.

There had been survivors. Though a few women had died fighting rape, most had survived, as had their children and the old men not useful to the army. Hank, seventeen, had survived, though many times later he had wished he had not.

After the horrors he had seen, he had been struck from behind and had woken up to find himself in the army, forced to serve or to die. He had been told that his lands were no longer his, that they would be sold to help the revolution.

All that had been in the name of revolution—but, hell, it had been all for private profit. And there had been nothing Hank could do. He couldn’t even blame Juárez, blame the revolution, blame an oppressed people trying only to better themselves. He could do nothing except try to get back what was his.

For a year and a half, Hank had fought for the liberals, fought bitterly, unable to reach Juárez to demand justice and unable to escape. It had been a galling, bitter time, and he had become obsessed with getting his land back.

Two others of his family had survived, only because they had been away from home at the time of the attack. His grandfather, Don Victoriano, had taken Hank’s sister Dorotea to Spain to meet the Vega side of the family, and they had stayed on when Don Victoriano became ill. Word had reached Hank that his grandfather was dying, and he had rebelled at being prevented from
going to him. He had spent almost two years in prison because of that rebellion. While he was in that stinking prison, his grandfather had died and his home had been sold. He could not have hoped to buy it back, not even when he escaped from prison. He was poor.

No one knew his true name was Enrique Antonio de Vega y Chavez. The many
gringos
in prison had called him Hank.

After his escape, he had left Mexico. There was always the chance that he might have been hauled into the army again. He had worked in Texas until he had had enough money to get to Spain, to his sister. But his sister was no longer in Spain. She had married an Englishman and was living in England. So Hank had gone to England. But Dorotea, who had her own family, did not really need Hank anymore. He had felt useless. And there had been that terrible desire to reclaim the family lands. For that, he needed money, a lot of money, money he didn’t have. He had returned to North America late in 1864. He had been educated very well in his youth, and there were many things he could do, but none would bring him the kind of money he needed.

Then he had met Patrick McClure and some other men who were making money easily. They were stealing it.

Becoming an outlaw had gone against everything he believed in, and he had compromised by robbing only people who could afford to lose a little. He would not steal from the miners in the Midwest, as Patrick and his gang had been doing, for those men worked hard for their gold and what they carried was usually all they had. Nor would he rob banks, which meant taking the savings of innocent people. But he had robbed the stagecoaches that crossed Texas. Passengers on stages did not carry all their money on them. It had been important to Hank that he not leave a man destitute. He had even returned money a few times, when some
one convinced him that what he was taking was all he had.

His new profession had been profitable if not likable. Amassing money took a long time because a single stage did not produce a great deal and everything had been split with the other men. But after five years, much, much sooner than it would have taken otherwise, Hank had had enough to return to Mexico and buy back his land.

He ought to have been there now, his dream realized, he thought bitterly. Instead he had had to ride hundreds of miles to track down his partner. He could only pray that he wasn’t too late, that Pat hadn’t spent all his money. If he had, he’d kill Pat, so help him he would.

A quick word at the desk in the large lobby and Hank knew he’d have to find other lodgings. He had only ten dollars left, and that would not even give him one night in the fancy hotel.

He found a stable for his horse, then moved on down the street looking for a cheaper hotel or a boarding house. He hoped for a bath, too. His clothes were no longer black but brown, they were so covered with trail dust. And he needed to see a barber. He’d grown a full black beard in the last months, and his coal-black hair was several inches past his shoulders, making him look like a saddle bum.

Hank passed a barbershop, made note of its location, then moved on past a restaurant and an ice-cream parlor. Then he saw the sign,
MRS. HAUGE’S BOARDING HOUSE
. On plain white paper tacked on the bottom was the word
VACANCY
. He got the room for a dollar a day or five by the week, taking it by the day. He wasn’t planning to stay long. His saddlebags slung over his shoulder, he declined Mrs. Hauge’s offer to show him to his room and just asked for directions.

It was a new two-story house, and his room was upstairs, at the end of a long hallway, on the right. As Hank moved down the hall, he found himself following
a trail of blood, blood still wet. He heard voices coming from a room where the door stood open. The path of blood ended there at the door. As he drew nearer, the voices became distinct.

“I’m just glad your new house ain’t finished yet, Doc, so you’re still here. I don’t think I could’ve made it any farther than this.”

“Nonsense,” came a crackly reply. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, but you aren’t that bad off, Tom. Now lie still.”

“How the hell can you say that? I’m dyin’.”

“You are not dying,” was the firm reply.

“Well, it sure feels like I am,” the deeper voice grumbled. “I’m hurtin’ all over.”

“
That
I don’t doubt.”

Hank moved to the open doorway and peered inside. Tom was stretched out on a long, narrow table. A short, older fellow stood by his feet holding a knife. Neither man noticed Hank. He forgot his fatigue and watched as the Doc cut away Tom’s pant leg and began examining one of the wounds.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, Tom. How did you get so shot up?”

“I tol’ you, this fellow jumped me by Cherry Creek,” Tom replied testily. “And don’t ask me why again, ’cause I just don’t know. He just kept firin’ and firin’, and I couldn’t get out of his way in time. He was crazy.”

The doctor shook his head as if he didn’t believe a word. Hank wanted to laugh. He supposed Tom didn’t want to admit the truth, and he sympathized.

“It’s those two wounds between your legs that have me puzzled,” the Doc continued thoughtfully. “They’re mighty close to you-know-what.”

“I
know
how close they are!” Tom snapped, his face reddening.

“I just don’t understand. If your legs were closed, and a single bullet sliced between them, that would have been a strange shot. But the two wounds aren’t from
one shot. You were shot twice there. The wounds are identical, an inch of flesh out of both thighs. The fellow was an expert shot. For Christ’s sake, Tom, were you just standing there letting him use you for target practice?”

“Will you stop yammering and get me fixed up?”

“I can only work so fast,” the doctor grumbled. He moved alongside the table, studying each wound in turn. “That lower leg wound is as clean as the one in your arm. The shoulder is the only one I’ll have to dig into.”

“Yeah, she—he—said he’d leave me a bullet as a memento,” Tom muttered.

The Doc raised a brow. “You said ‘she.’”

“Did I?” Tom stammered. “Well…the guy had a woman with him. The green-eyed bitch enjoyed every minute of it!”

The doctor handed Tom a bottle of whiskey, shaking his head. “Enough talk. Drink some of that before I take the bullet out. You realize, don’t you, that you won’t be able to go back to the mines for some time? Neither arm is going to be much use to you for a while.”

“Hell,” Tom growled, and took a drink.

“I wouldn’t complain. You count your blessings instead, Tom. It’s remarkable, but not one of your wounds is really serious. No bone is shattered, not even in the shoulder. Out of five wounds, you’ve just got a lot of torn muscle and cartilage. You’re damned lucky, young man. If that fellow
was
an excellent shot, then he didn’t mean to do you any permanent damage.” The doctor ran his eyes over the length of his patient. “I just don’t understand it,” he said softly.

Hank moved on to his room, still unnoticed. His curiosity was thoroughly aroused again, yet he knew that Tom would never admit to being shot five times by a slip of a girl. Ah, well, it wasn’t Hank’s business. And he was not fool enough to question the girl. He would ask no questions of a lady who could shoot so well—or
so badly. And it might have been either one. Either she had aimed way off while trying to hurt Tom, or she’d been a superb shot. Hank shrugged. He’d probably never know which it was.

Chapter 3

S
AMANTHA was still crying into her pillow when a deputy of the law knocked on her door. She wasn’t at all prepared for Mr. Floyd Ruger, not in her emotional state. A man with a much-too-serious face, he threw one question after another at her without giving her a chance to think before she answered.