Renegades (19 page)

“Revolutionaries?” Don Felipe repeated. “That is what the Black Scorpion and his men call themselves?”

“That's right.”

Almanzar poured more brandy. “As good a name as any, perhaps. Go on, Frank.”

“The Black Scorpion and his men attacked the Rurales rather than let them kill more of the villagers.” That wasn't exactly the way it had happened, Frank thought, but close enough. “Antonio was still with them when the showdown came, and he was wounded in the fighting. Esteban was killed defending him. I was able to get him on El Rey and get out of there. We made it back to that jacal where Hermando was staying, and you know the rest.”

“What of the Black Scorpion?”

Frank shook his head. “Gone. Whether he's dead or not, I don't know. Most of his men were wiped out, though, so I wouldn't expect to see him around any time soon, if ever again.”

“And the Rurales?”

“Estancia was alive the last I saw. He suffered heavy losses. But he can get replacements up here, I reckon. Nobody in Mexico City knows that he's more interested in setting up his own outlaw empire than he is in carrying out El Presidente's orders.”

“If someone was to get in touch with the authorities and tell them the truth ...” Don Felipe mused.

“It might do some good, eventually,” Frank said, “but it might not. I imagine Estancia is paying off some of his superiors to keep his activities covered up.”

Don Felipe jerked his head in a nod. “Unfortunately, you are probably correct about that. It may be that the Rurales are a problem the people will have to deal with on their own.”

“Most of the time the people are to be trusted more than the government, anyway.”

Don Felipe sighed. “This is certainly true in my country.” He took a deep breath. “But for now, at least, Estancia's plans have been damaged. Perhaps by the time he rebuilds his forces, things will have changed.”

“We can hope so.” Frank knew better than to count on that, however. Change usually came slowly.

“In the meantime, I have a son to nurse back to health, and—perhaps—fences to mend.”

“I'll drink to that, too,” Frank said.

Frank took a couple of days to rest up from all the excitement and danger before he rode back across the Rio Grande. Though still vital and healthier than most men twenty years younger than him, he wasn't as young as he had once been. Good food and plenty of sleep, coupled with his own hardy constitution, put him back at full strength pretty quickly, though.

Before he left, Don Felipe summoned him to the parlor and made a presentation to him. “You mentioned that you lost your hat during the fight with the Rurales,” Don Felipe said as he held out a brown felt sombrero, its band studded with conchos and its brim decorated by crimson and gold needlework. Carmen stood to one side, watching. “Allow me to replace it, amigo.”

Frank grinned as he took the hat. “
Muchas gracias,
Don Felipe. I don't reckon I've ever seen a finer sombrero.” He set it on his head and tightened the bead on the chin strap.

Carmen clapped her hands and laughed. “You look like a vaquero now, Señor Morgan. Surely at least a drop of Mexican blood flows in your veins.”

“Well, maybe so,” Frank said. “I don't rightly know.”

Don Felipe gave him an envelope as well. “This is the letter I have written to Cecil Tolliver, suggesting that we meet in San Rosa one week from today. If he is agreeable, I will see him there. If not ...” The don shrugged. “At least I tried, as you asked of me, Frank.”

“And I appreciate that,” Frank said as he tucked the envelope in his shirt pocket. He shook hands with Don Felipe and gave Carmen a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He told her, “Say good-bye to your brother for me.”

“I will, Señor Morgan,” she promised. “Antonio will be upset that you left while he was sleeping.”

“He needs his rest, and I need to be riding. Besides, I reckon I'll probably see him again one of these days.”

Antonio was still flat on his back in his bed, resting and recovering from his wound. He had lost a lot of blood, and Frank figured it would be at least a week before the young man was up and around again.

Don Felipe and Carmen followed Frank outside. Stormy and Dog waited for him in front of the wrought-iron gate in the outer wall. Frank swung up into the saddle and lifted a hand in farewell as he rode away from the Almanzar hacienda.

Stormy had had more than enough rest, and the big Appaloosa was obviously glad to be on the move again. He stretched his legs out into an easy lope that ate up the miles. Dog kept up easily, venturing off to the sides of the trail in hopes of scaring up a rabbit or a lizard.

As he rode, Frank thought about everything that had happened. Since the ransom hadn't been needed, Don Felipe had returned to Nuevo Laredo and sent wires arranging for the money's return to Frank's accounts, where it had come from to start with. He had also brought back to the hacienda the stories he had heard in the border city about how Captain Domingo Estancia's Rurale company had suffered grievous losses in a battle with
bandidos.
Captain Estancia had appealed to Mexico City for new men to replace those he had lost. In the meantime, the Rurales who were left would continue their regular patrols as best they could. As for the
bandidos,
Estancia's report stated that they had been wiped out to the last man. Frank knew that wasn't the case. He knew at least one man—Antonio—had escaped, and he wouldn't have been surprised if a few of the others had as well. Estancia just didn't want to admit that.

Late in the day, Frank forded the Rio Grande at a shallow crossing and sent Stormy up the northern bank. He was back on Texas soil at last, and that felt mighty good. He wasn't sure exactly where he was, but he knew that if he kept going, sooner or later he would strike the main trail between San Rosa and the Rocking T.

The sun was just about down when he did so. Judging the Tolliver ranch to be to his right, Frank turned Stormy in that direction.

He had ridden less than half a mile when he spotted a small adobe ranch house off to the side of the road, with a barn and a large corral behind it. It appeared to be a well-kept layout, and Frank knew it must belong to one of Cecil Tolliver's neighbors. He would have ridden on past without giving the place a second thought, if a gunshot had not suddenly rung out from somewhere over by the house.

That made Frank rein in for a moment. He was curious but not worried. This was Texas, after all. There could be all sorts of innocent explanations for a single shot: The rancher could have killed a snake or tried to run off a coyote, or something else like that.

The woman's scream that followed on the heels of the gunshot was what made Frank stiffen in the saddle and stare toward the little spread.

Something was wrong over there, no doubt about that, he thought. He heeled Stormy into motion again, turning the Appaloosa so that he was trotting toward the ranch house.

As he came closer, Frank saw three men on horseback in front of the house. One of them held a revolver with a thin curl of smoke rising from the barrel. A man lay on the ground just in front of the doorway, writhing in pain as he used his good hand to clutch at a bullet-shattered shoulder. A woman knelt beside him, sobbing as she tried to comfort him. She lifted her head as she cried out, “You didn't have to shoot him!”

“I thought he was goin' for a gun,” drawled the man holding the smoking Colt. He slid the weapon back in the holster on his hip.

“He isn't even carrying a gun!” the distraught woman accused.

“Maybe he ought to start,” one of the other mounted men said. “If he's goin' to be a troublemaker, he better be ready when it comes to call.”

“Nobody's trying to start any trouble,” the woman insisted.

“That ain't the way it looks to us.”

Frank was close enough to hear the exchange, which meant that the men could hear Stormy's hoofbeats. One of them said to the others, “Somebody's comin',” and they all swung their horses around so that they were facing Frank. In the thickening shadows, he couldn't see their faces very well. They were just shapes on horseback.

But that meant they couldn't see him very well, either, and that was confirmed as one of the men snorted in contempt and said, “Hell, it's just some damned greaser.”

They saw the sombrero, Frank thought. It was hard to miss, even in bad light. He pulled Stormy back to a walk and then halted at the edge of the small yard in front of the ranch house. His head was tipped forward a bit so that the broad brim of the sombrero obscured his face even more.

“What do you want, Pancho?” one of the men snapped. Frank had heard the voices of all three and knew that they were Texans.

“I heard a shot, Señor,” he said. “I thought perhaps something was wrong.”

“Something's wrong, all right. What's wrong is that you're messin' in something that's none o' your business, pepperbelly. Why don't you just ride on outta here?”

“Wait a minute,” one of the others said. “Look at that horse he's ridin'. Where'd a Mex get a fine-lookin' horse like that? Most of 'em ride donkeys, don't they?”

“I'll bet he stole it,” the third man said.

Frank said, “No, Señor, this is my horse. I am not a thief.”

“Well, if you don't want to be strung up as one anyway, light a shuck, Pancho,” the first man said. “This don't concern you.”

Frank gestured toward the wounded man on the ground. “What did he do?”

“Gave us some lip, that's what he did. And if you don't want what he got in return for it, you'll turn around and get your Meskin ass outta here.”

“Wait a minute, Dewey,” one of the other men said. “Don't you reckon the greaser ought to leave that horse here with us, until we find out for sure whether he's lyin' about stealin' it?”

“Yeah,” Dewey said. “That's a right fine idea, Terrall.” He moved his hand closer to the butt of his gun. “Get down off that horse, Mex. It's too good an animal for the likes of you.”

“You would take my horse, Señor?” Frank said.

“Damn right! Now do what I told you.”

Frank had looked the men over in the fading light as best he could, and he had them pegged as drifting hard cases, the sort of scum who would shoot down an unarmed man. They probably planned to rob this place, and there was no telling what they would do to the rancher's wife. Frank remembered a time when a decent woman would have been safe from even the most hardened, ruthless owlhoot. But the West was changing, and not necessarily for the better. That was “progress” for you.

“It seems to me, Señor, that if there is a horse thief here, it is you,” Frank said.

“Why, you dirty pepperbelly!” the one called Terrall exclaimed.

“But if you're bound and determined to try to take my horse,” Frank went on, “then you've got it to do.” With his left hand, he pushed the sombrero back off his head so that it hung by its chin strap.

“Dewey,” the third man said nervously, “he ain't a greaser! He's a white man, ridin' an Appaloosa, and he's got a big dog with him—”

“Son of a bitch!” Terrall burst out. “He's—”

“I don't give a damn who he is!” Dewey yelled. His hand stabbed toward his gun. “Hook and draw, you bastard!”

Facing odds of three to one and not knowing how fast on the draw these men were, Frank couldn't afford to waste any time. He drew smoothly and swiftly, in less time than it would take a man to blink his eyes. Stormy stood absolutely still, having experienced many moments like this before. Frank fired without seeming to aim, the Colt in his hand bucking and crashing twice, the shots so close together they sounded almost like one. He put the first two slugs in Dewey's chest, since Dewey was the first one to get his gun out. The hard case went backward out of the saddle like a giant hand had slapped him down.

The third shot came hard on the heels of the first two and slammed into the chest of the man whose name Frank hadn't heard yet. And he might never know it, because the man toppled from his saddle and was dead before he hit the ground. That left the one called Terrall, and Terrall managed to get one wild shot off before Frank's fourth bullet punched through his sternum. Terrall's shot had gone harmlessly into the ground between Stormy and the other horses. He dropped his gun and clutched the saddle horn with his right hand as he swayed backward. Shakily, he lifted his left hand and pressed it to his chest. Blood welled between his fingers.

“You've killed me!” he gasped.

“Your choice,” Frank told him coldly. “It wasn't my idea.”

“You ... you're Frank ... Morgan!”

A line of crimson leaked from the corner of Terrall's mouth as he gasped the name. With a groan, he swayed back and forth and then toppled out of the saddle, falling heavily to the ground like a cut-down tree going over. He flopped in the dust and didn't move.

Dog padded forward and sniffed at all three of the men. When he didn't growl at any of them, Frank knew they were all dead. Trusting Dog's senses, Frank holstered his Peacemaker and swung down from the saddle. He stepped over to the wounded rancher and knelt beside him. The man's wife was on his other side, and she looked at Frank with something like amazement in her stunned eyes.

“You ... you killed all three of them,” she said in awed tones.

“They slapped leather first,” Frank told her. “I wouldn't lose much sleep over the likes of them, ma'am.” He bent his head to take a look at her husband's wound. “Let's see about patching up this bullet hole, friend.”

“I ... I'm much obliged, mister,” the rancher said through teeth gritted against the pain. “I reckon they would've killed me, and no tellin' what they would have done ... to Doris...”

“Well, you don't have to worry about that,” Frank assured him. “Those hard cases won't ever bother anybody else.” He slipped an arm around the man's shoulders and another under his knees. “Let's get you inside.”

Grunting a little from the effort, Frank lifted the wounded man and carried him into the ranch house. The man's wife hurried ahead and indicated the room where Frank should take him. “Put him down there on the bed,” she said as Frank carried the man into a small bedroom.

“Dang it, Doris,” the rancher said, “I'll get ... blood on the sheets.”

“If you think I'm worried about a little thing like that, then you don't know me very well, Howard Longwell,” she told him.

“I'd listen to her if I was you, Howard,” Frank said with a smile as he lowered the man onto the bed.

Longwell's wife fetched a basin of water and a clean cloth and began washing the blood away from his wounded shoulder. Frank thought there was probably a broken bone or two in there, but if the doctor came out from San Rosa and set them properly, they might knit up all right. Longwell might not ever get the full use of his arm back, though, and Frank felt anger burning inside him as he watched the woman minister to her husband. Those bastards outside had sure enough had it coming, he thought.

Longwell appeared to have lost consciousness, either from loss of blood or the shock of being shot, or both. Without looking up from what she was doing, the woman said quietly, “You'd better get back on your horse and ride, mister. Don't stop until you've covered a lot of miles.”

“I was thinking I ought to ride into San Rosa to find a doctor for your husband, ma'am.”

“You don't want to do that. You've done enough. You saved Howard's life, and probably mine, too. They wouldn't have wanted to leave any witnesses behind. But that's no reason for you to throw away your own life.”

Frank frowned. “Are you saying those fellas had kinfolk or partners or something like that who might come after me?”