A vaquero looked at him, then toward the riders, and shouted something in Spanish.
Several horses wheeled. One rider slipped from the saddle, then jacked a fresh round into the Spencer. The vaqueros opened up, spilling twoâno, threeâof Lo Grande's men from their saddles.
Albavera's rifle had been reloaded, and he didn't even remember doing it. He pulled back the hammer, dropped to his knee, aimedâbut stopped himself. They were still out of range for a sawed-off rifle.
A horse whinnied, and Albavera turned, falling on his back, raising the Springfield. About a dozen riders came loping in from the east. More of Lo Grande's men?
Then we're finished.
Albavera sat up, and let out a cheer. They were white men. Railroaders from Sanderson. That merchant, Kipperman, and some other gents from Marathonâincluding the burly Mexican who'd damn near gutted Chance with a pitchfork when they had first arrived in Marathon.
They galloped past, firing, charging the Mexicans of Lo Grande.
Albavera stood. Letting the dust pass, he looked left, right. “Where the hell is Dave?” He realized he had asked the question verbally, though nobody could hear him. He turned, running behind the dust, hearing the gunfire, then a shout, “
¡Ãndale! ¡Ãndale!
” Through the dissipating dust, he saw, just like that, the Mexican bandits turning their horses, galloping south.
A bullet whined off a rock. Another Ranger screamed. Dropping his gun, he ran, stopped, and lifted his hands over his head.
The roof of the caboose collapsed as Albavera drew near. Turning his head, he shielded his face from the sparks and smoke that flew into the sky. When he lowered his arms, he saw the body of a vaquero lying near the ruins of the caboose. Then he saw another man, lying faceup in the sun, a gun in his hand, a bullet in his chest.
Albavera lowered his Springfield, tried to shove it in the holster, but missed, and let the weapon fall into the dirt. He swallowed, as best he could with a throat so dry, and kneeling, put his hand on the shoulder.
The eyes opened.
“
¡Paren a ese hombre!
” came a cry, and Albavera looked up. Vaqueros galloped or sprinted in his direction, every damned Spencer among them aimed at him. Keeping his right hand on the shoulder of the man lying in front of him, he raised his left hand into the air, and looked back down at Don Melitón Benton.
The old man moved his lips, spit out a little trickle of blood, and said, “Don't worry.”
Albavera eyes returned to those vaqueros coming at him. He quickly studied the area, hoping to find Dave Chance, or maybe Mickey McGee. He saw neither. He figured they were both dead . . . and that he'd likely soon join them.
“If it's just the same to you, Don Melitón,” he said in a dull whisper, “I reckon I'll worry some. I reckon I'll worry a hell of a lot.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“You're a real ugly son of a bitch to wake up to.”
Dave Chance ground his teeth against the pain shooting through his left arm, and let Moses Albavera gently pull his right arm until he was sitting in the sand by the railroad tracks. His vision blurred for a moment, and the air stank of death, of burning wood and oil. Smoke from the wreckage drifted across the sky like clouds. Horses snorted, stamped their hooves, and whinnied nervously. A few men cried piteously, “
Agua . . . agua . . . por favor . . .
” Men walked among the bodies and debris was strewn across the desert flats.
Chance screamed his bloody head off.
He practically doubled over when Albavera set the broken arm, spitting out tears and curses, pushing himself back up, slowly realizing that his left arm didn't hurt quite as bad as it had. After he caught his breath, he gave Albavera the coldest stare he could muster.
Albavera grinned. “Next time, you might watch who you're calling a real ugly son of a bitch. Especially considering how much your face has been worked over. Here. Let me brace that arm. I'll fashion a sling out of a bandana.”
“I didn't know you were a doctor.”
“I'm not. But I got plenty of experience in accidents.”
“Where's Grace?” Chance asked after Albavera had braced the arm with a dead cactus limb and eased it through a bandana he had looped and tied around Chance's's neck.
“Savage took her with him.” Albavera jutted his jaw south.
Chance wet his lips. He let out a long sigh, one of relief. The answer he had expected was
She's dead
.
“I figure we'll be going after him.” Albavera pulled Chance to his feet.
“I'm going after her.”
“I'm riding with you.”
Their eyes locked. Albavera pointed south. “Juan Lo Grande and about ten or twelve of his men rode after them.”
“Damn.”
“Uh-huh. And we don't have any horses.”
“Sure we do.” Chance pointed at several riderless mounts. “Already saddled.”
“Well, before we light out of here, you'd better come with me. It's Don Melitón.”
The old man's eyes slowly opened, saw Rodney Kipperman kneeling over him, his hands bloody. He searched the faces of the vaqueros who stood, shading him with their sombreros, solemn. At last, his eyes landed on Dave Chance.
“I am dying,” he spoke quietly.
Chance's eyes dropped briefly. “I am sorry, Don Melitón.”
Don Melitón answered with a curse more in line with a Missouri bushwhacker than a Spanish nobleman. “I want no pity.” He swallowed, let out a little cough, and braced himself against the pain. For a long time, he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, his lips pressed together, sweat peppering his forehead. Rodney Kipperman, the Marathon merchant, wrapped strips of linen across the old man's bare chest.
“How is he?” asked someone in the crowd.
“I ain't no doctor,” Kipperman snapped. “But you heard him.”
The don's eyes opened again. “I want you, Sergeant Chance, to find the man who has killed me.”
“That I plan on doing, Don Melitón.”
The old man's head shook with surprising strength. “It was not Lo Grande. It was your
capitán
, Hec Savage.”
“I figured that. I'll find him.”
“Find him. Kill him.”
“You got my word.”
“Our word,” Albavera added.
“This I want . . . more than I want to avenge the death of my son.” His eyes moved to Moses Albavera. “You were right. Both of you. My son was worthless.” He coughed.
“My vaqueros will attend to matters here. They will take me home”âthe old man's voice began to fadeâ“to die. With dignity.”
“SÃ, patrón
,
”
one of the vaqueros said.
“They will not molest you,” Don Melitón said, and weakly lifted a finger toward Albavera. “You . . . are . . . free. . . .” He closed his eyes again, and his muscles relaxed.
Kipperman bent his head to the old man's chest. When he straightened, he said, “He ain't dead. Not yet anyhow.”
A bearded vaquero knelt. “We will attend
el patrón
.”
Kipperman and all the Anglos in the crowd were dismissed. Slowly, Kipperman stood, wiping his bloody hands on a cloth rag. “You want us to come with you, Ranger?”
“No.” Chance shook his head.
“Are you out of your damned mind?” Albavera whispered in his ear. “Savage isn't alone. One of his Rangers rode out after him. Tall man with a big rifle.”
“Doc Shaw,” Chance said, guessing.
“That evens the odds, but we need to think about Lo Grande. He has a dozen men. Maybe more.” Albavera put his hand on Chance's right shoulder. “We could use all the help we can get, pard.”
Stubbornly, Chance pulled away from the big Moor. “Mickey McGee's lying over yonder, dead with a broken back. Don Melitón's lying here, about to be called to Glory. I'm not getting any other volunteers, any other amateurs, killed, Moses. Hec Savage is a professional. I'll do this alone.”
“Not alone,” Albavera said. “I'm a pro, too.”
Chance faced the merchant. “I appreciate the offer, Mr. Kipperman, but I think it would be best if you and these men handled things here. Take Mickey McGee's body. Take real good care of Mickey.” His voice started to crack. He stopped.
What was that he had told Moses Albavera? About the graveyard in Marathon?
It will get even more crowded before I'm all done.
Something like that. Only he had never expected one of those graves to be for a friend of his. He certainly hadn't planned on seeing Don Melitón Benton dead.
Without waiting for an answer from Kipperman, without another word, Chance spun on his heel, and started walking to a horse. Moses Albavera quickly caught up with him. “You can't even saddle your own horse. Not with that arm of yours.”
“Like I said, the horse is already saddled.”
He stopped by a dead man, pried a lever-action rifle from the man's hands. He worked the lever, blew dust off the rifle, and eased down the hammer. It was an 1881 Marlin, .40-60 caliber. Held ten shots. The dead man had a bandolier across his chest. And a Ranger badge. He looked at the dead man a little more closely.
“Munge McSween,” he said, and jerked off the badge, pinning it to his own vest, replacing the one Don Melitón had ripped off back in Marathon. He fumbled with the buckle to the bandolier before Albavera mumbled something, and dropped beside him. “Here. Let me do that.”
Chance didn't protest. Ten minutes later, they were riding south.
It felt like someone was slicing the bones in her feet and legs with razors. Tears of pain blinded her as she bit down tightly on the stick Hec Savage had put in her mouth. The fire in her legs burned harder, and she broke the stick with her teeth, spit it out, cursed. Her fingers clawed into the hot sand. She prayed she would pass out, but her prayers went unanswered.
There was a final moment of agony, and suddenly the pain lessenedâbut didn't stop. Grace Profit figured she'd always be hurting, but those razors had quit cutting into her bones. Her fingers relaxed. She felt her head being lifted, felt a cool rag brushing the tears off her cheeks.
When Grace opened her eyes, she saw Hec Savage's battered, bruised face.
“I don't reckon you'll be trying to run away from me,” he said with a smile. “Not with both of your ankles busted.”
The rag vanished. A moment later, Savage brought a pewter flask to her lips, and she drank. That seemed to dull the throbbing in her ankles. She drank some more.
“Easy.” Savage pulled the flask away from her, letting rye whiskey roll down her cheeks. “Save some for me, Grace.” He took a swig, and dropped the flask into his pocket. “How do you feel?”
She didn't answer.
“Not much I can do.” He looked around at the desert. Grace followed his gaze. They were shaded by a mountain to the west. She heard water trickling over rocks, and guessed they were on Calamity Creek. The mountain looked like Elephant Mountain, but that would mean they'd traveled a far piece since . . .
Since . . . what?
She tried to remember. Since the train had . . . derailed.
No . . . there had been a collision. The face of the dead Ranger in the caboose popped into her mind. It was a miracle she had survived. She remembered the heat, the smoke, the caboose on fire. Pictured Savage carrying her out. Pictured the man Savage had shot off his horse, Don Melitón Benton.
Savage's voice sounded tired. “I laced your boots up as tight as I could. That's about all I can do. For now. Till I get you to some old sawbones.”
“In Argentina?” She realized those were the first words she had spoken. Her voice sounded strained.
Savage stared at her. The flask returned, but to Savage's lips, not hers. After swallowing, he shook his head. “I don't think one bar of gold bullion will get us all the way to Buenos Aires, honey.”
“We could go to Terlingua.” She swallowed. “Or, better yet, Fort Davis.”
He smiled. “They might hang me in Terlingua. Besides, that's getting too close to Juan Lo Grande's country. And they'd definitely do me grave harm were I to show my face in Fort Davis. No, I'm still thinking if we can make it to the RÃo Grande, cross it, we can follow that river east. You up for that, Grace?”
There was no time to answer. Hoofbeats sounded, and Savage lowered her gently to the ground, gave her his hat as a pillow. He stood, drawing one of his Merwin Hulbert revolvers. She watched him step to the horse, using it as a shield, then heard the hammer click as he lowered it, and pushed the .44 into the holster.
The Ranger, Doc Shaw, rode into view, that big rifle cradled across his lap.
He eased the weary mount past the captain and Grace, and she heard the mount drinking water from the stream. Shaw grunted as he dropped from the saddle.
“Well?” Savage asked.
“Lo Grande's got his men spread out. Cutting for sign.”
“How many men does he have?”
“I couldn't tell. Eight at the least. Fifteen, sixteen at the most.” He drank water from a canteen. “But he could have some men south of here.”
“Anybody else?”
“Not that I saw.”
“All right.”
Shaw spit. “No, Captain, it ain't all right. Our horses are worn out, and we can't keep riding in Calamity Creek to hide our trail forever. Look at that water, Captain. This creek'll be dry in two or three more miles. Besides, even if Lo Grande's men can't find our trail, it'll be obvious what we're doing. It's not like we can follow this creek north.”
Silence. Grace tried to turn her head, but that made her legs hurt, so she gave up. Letting her head sink into Savage's hat, she stared at her feet, let out a sigh, and listened.
“We get to the Big Bend, closer to the river, we can hide out,” Savage said. “Rest our horses.”
“For how long?”
“I don't know, Doc,” Savage thundered. “However the hell long it takes. Then we can sneak across the border, head east.”
The silence returned, shorter this time.
“It's sixty,” Shaw said, “maybe eighty miles to the river.”
“I know that.”
“Weather's warming up.”
“Weather's not the only thing warming up,” Savage said. “I can feel Hellâso can youâif Lo Grande or the law catches us.”
Shaw let out a sigh. “More than two hundred thousand dollars in gold . . . just . . . pissed away.”
“Have a drink, Doc.”
“Is this what I traded my badge, maybe my life, for, Captain? Two fingers of tequila.”
“It's Manhattan rye.”
“Oh, well, that makes it all worthwhile, don't it?” She heard him drink, heard the empty flask drop into the creek. “How's the strumpet?”
“She's no strumpet, Doc. She's a good woman.”
“How is she?”
“Both ankles busted. I got her boots on tight.”
“She can't walk.”
No reply.
Shaw cleared his throat. “We've got Lo Grande's men behind us, trailing us. Only a matter of time before they find us. By now, Colonel Thomas must have every Ranger, every sheriff, every marshal, every man in Texas who can handle a gun on a train bound for Marathon or Murphyville. And Don Melitónâ”