The Red Sombrero Read online

  Last night, at Laguna Guzman, he’d been reasonably affable. But all this day his irascible temper had been feeding on disappointments when neither Perron nor Reno would rise to his pointed barbs, until now, with this place looming black as a stack of stovelids, he was in a mood to strike his mother.

  Reno yawned, rubbed his eyes and took a pull at his bottle — the last he’d fetched with him — indifferent to the scope of the general’s abusive language. It was Reno’s belief that every man had a boiling point; some like Sierra, were able to let off their steam in recurrent orgies of the flesh. But this was denied the general. For Descardo women, as females, simply did not exist.

  The general’s first rude jolt of the day had come with the dawn when Sierra had summoned the pair of them before him. Descardo, Tano said, was to accompany Reno and a number of picked troopers on a trip to the Cordray ranch where they would pick up the new repeating rifles their army must have if they were to advance on Agua Prieta with any likelihood of success.

  Descardo said gruffly the chore did not require a general. “A child could pick up those rifles — even such a dimwit as this borracho jellybean.” This he said in English, jerking an insulting thumb at Reno. Switching to Spanish he said, “I’ll be needed when you take Palomas. You’ll want news of the Federals and who can pry news out of prisoners like I can? God’s blood! Send the gringo.”

  “And who’s to make sure he doesn’t ride off with our money? Those rifles don’t come three for a dollar and Cordray’s ranch is across the Line. You’ll go with him, taking ten of your Dorados, the fiercest fighters you can find. You will lead the attack on Boca Grande, General. Take the four biggest guns. When the town has ceased defiance you will fortify the pass to cover my advance with the infantry. Is this clear?”

  A man went only so far with Sierra; and Descardo, seething, jerked his head in a sullen nod.

  The Liberator picked at his teeth, eyeing Reno. “Very well,” he said, glancing again at Descardo. “You will then gather such animals as you may require to remove the rifles. Leaving Perron in charge of affairs at Boca Grande you will push on with Reno and your Golden Ones to Cordray’s ranch where you will give him these bags of money, load up the cases and immediately return. Time is of the greatest significance, General. I will be in Las Palomas. Go with God.”

  Small wonder the Butcher was boiling; nor had the-day’s many harrassments with this artillery improved his outlook. Humiliated even to be sent on this errand, to be coupled in the chore with this drunken fool of a gringo was a slap in the face vain Descardo bitterly resented. But it was the knowledge of Reno’s favor with Sierra which twisted the screw right into the quick. It tied his hands and near set him crazy. Then all that waiting on the guns! He was a cavalry officer and it laid raw his spirit to be continually chafed with requests from Colonel Perron to have the goodness to rest his horses a little so the men with the guns could bring them up with the column. The terrain was rough, frequently precipitous and rocky; delay after stubborn delay had been occasioned by the weight and unwieldiness of those bastardly cannons and their complement of shot.

  Reno, sensing these things, could feel the man’s suffering and, in a moment of impulse, generously held out his bottle.

  Descardo struck it from his hand.

  Reno with a frantic bleat fell out of his saddle, much too late. He pawed around in the reek with little whimpers of agony while the general loosed his first laugh in twelve hours. “Yai!” he roared, slapping his breeches. He rocked in his saddle like a dark chunk of gelatin, convulsed with derision for the shame of this gringo who could use the best Spanish and reel out strings of words not even Sierra could wholly understand — for the shame of such a one groveling upon the ground like any pelado borracho whelped without his full complement of buttons.

  And then the shame hit Descardo, and he shouted. “Get up on your feet — get into the saddle you filth of a whore! Must you cry like a baby? Get out of the dirt! Get up — get up!”

  His voice was deep and strong as a bull’s but it made no impression on the gringo at all. The night was dark, but not too dark with the moon coming up through the naked branches for those who were nearest to see him scrabbling in the wet place with his cut and bleeding fingers — not too dark for ears to catch the animal cries that came out of his blubbering, whisker-stubbed lips.

  “Mother of God!” With a snarl of disgust Descardo set back his horse with its front feet waving high and black above the American. But at the final instant, in the last split second before those shod hoofs slashed toward earth, he wrenched the stallion’s head around, not daring to complete this calculated savagery. Remembrance was too strong, the remembrance of this fellow’s favor with the Chief. Instead he drove his rowels deep, the black mass of his bunched riders tearing recklessly after him across the rocks of the slope in a whooping howling descent upon the squalid hovels which men called Boca Grande.

  Reno’s half wild horse, reins flying, departed with them.

  The American scarcely noticed. He was too prostrated with the enormity of his loss to have even a passing interest in things which went on about him. He cowered there, moaning like a new-made widow, completely oblivious to the cracking of rifles. He saw the muzzle lights hurl their flares from the town’s dark doors and glassless windows and as these continued Reno pushed himself up, arrested, watching. Even to him it must have been apparent the general’s men had ridden into an ambush. It must have finally got to him also, as the racket of battle rose to new, fiercer heights, that this was something more than the work of the clods who lived there. Despite their obvious surprise. Descardo’s dorados would have slaughtered mere farmers long before this; agrarians never could have pinned them down as they were pinned down, cut off and immobilized behind their dead and dying horses. This was slaughter; quite as quarterless and deadly as the Butcher himself was wont to manage.

  The moon, silvering, climbed higher. Reno, bottle forgotten in what was happening to Descardo, slunk back into the deeper shadows of brush-fringed outcrops, there to squat on his heels, beset by queer notions, appalled by the almost incredible swiftness with which the general’s wild horsemen were being reduced to lifeless bundles of rags. Those Federalista rifles were taking revenge for a lot of things down there and Reno suddenly became aware that had Descardo not smashed his bottle he would himself have been caught in that payoff.

  It was a sobering thought and the American shuddered, and became abruptly aware of other, nearer sounds heavily slogging through the clamor of the diminishing tumult below. He twisted his head around, staring like a fool at the black laboring shapes working frantically behind him, men twisting wheels, sweating, panting, cursing as they swung the heavy trails into positions, others anchoring them.

  Perron’s guns!

  Light and shadow blurred in bewildering patterns as powder-and-shot men sprang to their places and cannoneers twirled the wheels of their spindles. The whole mountaintop rocked as flame and smoke belched from the muzzles of the four fieldpieces. The stench was abominable. For frightening moments the gasping American, knocked flat by the airlash, could neither hear nor see anything. Then, with ears ringing and livid rings like halos dancing before his flickering vision, he got a piece of a look at what had happened below him.

  Through dust flung up by targeted adobe, Federalista infantry was scrambling from the hovels in wildest confusion, milling like rounded-up range stock, diving every whichway, clogging alleys, a few of them still firing into writhing clots of grounded dorados, some flinging aside their arms to run faster, a ragged wave of them scuttling for the brush beyond town. One house had collapsed in its entirety; two more had been partially demolished and many had gaping cracks showing in them, made plain by the moonlight. Even as Reno stared, Perron’s guns spoke again; and he remembered the bags lashed behind Descardo’s saddle.

  Flat on his belly he wriggled into the comforting blackness of manzanita and mountain laurel. Even though the strength had been shaken right out of him
he continued to move, sometimes crawling, sometimes sliding, but dropping always lower, roughly paralleling the course recently taken by Descardo. There were obstacles. Rocks and pear and cholla with detachable joints compounded the hazards of his travel yet he kept doggedly at it, wheezing from the unaccustomed exertion, cursing between these labored gusts of tortured breath as cruel thorns ripped through his clothing. Twice while he was crawling he put a hand down on joints of the cholla cactus and the pain nearly set him crazy till he had worried these loose with a piece of stick and pulled out what needles he could find in the darkness. Once a ricochet almost tore off his hat but he kept going.

  He kept going until the nearest part of the street was not more than a short run ahead of him. Across the rubble of collapsed buildings he could see the sprawled shapes in its moon-silvered dust. Spitting flashes of muzzle light still occasionally leaped from the deeper black of a door hole as something twitched in the street but the big guns were silent now and no return fire lanced from the ugly mounds of dead horses.

  Having approached as near as he dared for the moment the American squatted in the gloom of a mesquite’s drooping branches, satisfied to catch his breath while he waited for the remaining Federalistas to slip away. He knew what Perron would do. There was no swagger about that one. He had been a small town cobbler before joining Sierra; a humble man who was content to obey orders, leaving glory to the fools who craved it. He’d been sent with the general to hold this town and he would stay where he was until Tano came up with reenforcements and new orders.

  For a long fifteen minutes after the last rifle flash Reno emulated Perron and remained where he’d stopped. When he could stand this inaction no longer he crawled out from under the thorny branches and, working forward through the shadows lest some of those snipers had not yet departed, came to the edge of that silent street, scanning those still shapes closely.

  It was cold standing there in the blackness of the alley and Reno, shivering, scrubbed a hand across his cheeks and scowled at the windrowed dead. If the general’s horse had been killed he could find it but he was afraid of the street’s moonlight brightness. He wanted to find that horse but now he wanted to stay alive, also. He didn’t want the bullet and he didn’t want the capture — particularly he didn’t want the capture.

  He shivered again, and with his back skin crawling forced himself to step into the street. Eyes seemed to dig at him from every piece of shadow and he thought of the sentries Descardo had killed and of the poor luckless prisoners, and he hoped if Federalistas were watching him they would give him the bullet.

  He moved up to the nearest still shape and felt sick, but he held himself and forced his eyes to look at them. He saw the red chin strings of Descardo’s cavalry and he looked at the horses but none of these had belonged to the general any more than these two-legged hides had belonged to him. It was the black horse he wanted.

  He moved along to the, next pile and as he worked through it a hand flapped up and caught hold of his ankle. “Please — water …” a voice gasped, and Reno froze in his tracks. A downward look from the corners of his eyes doubled him, retching; afterwards he found an undamaged canteen and went back with it but the man was dead.

  Reno gagged, keeping his mouth shut. He felt the sweat in his hands as he uncapped the tin and tried to rinse the brassy taste out of his throat. He spat and made as though to throw the half filled canteen away from him but with his arm drawn back something stopped him. He sloshed the water around inside the tin, scowling, and screwed on the cap and thrust his head through the strap and again took up his grisly search for the black.

  Once he twisted his head, peering up the dark slope toward the guns, and several times he stood motionless, half crouched, frozen, listening. He knew that Perron’s men could see him plainly in this moon glare; not to recognize him, naturally, but plain enough to use their rifles. It bothered him why they didn’t because it sure as hell wasn’t like them.

  He found the general’s horse back out of the light by the edge of a building and the bags were still lashed to the saddle. His hands shook like a man who had ague when he put them to work on the fastenings. He cursed the fingers that were suddenly all thumbs and tried to choke back the rasp of his breathing. He would have cut the damned strings except for his need of them. When they finally came loose he was soaked completely through with sweat.

  He sank back on his heels, too used up to do anything. But almost at once the fear was at him again and he squirmed round, head cocked, listening into the downdraft of wind off the mountains. He raked the dark slope with his feverish eyes; then he picked up a bag in his shaking hands, growling. It was heavier than he’d expected. He worried off the bit of cord that held it shut and thrust fingers into it. His breath sucked in harshly as he crouched there, staring incredulously. Gold onzas they were, not silver pesos!

  He thrust them back in the bag and retied it. Working frantically now he refastened them, one at each end of the whang strings, with enough slack between to give him purchase. Getting up he looked for Descardo and found him ten feet away with his black coat still on, with one leg doubled under him and his face in the mud which his own blood had moistened.

  Reno looked at him and spat.

  He jerked the quirt from the man’s limp wrist and, shuddering, wrestled him out of the coat. There were six tiny holes where the bullets had ripped into it; the back was torn where these had come out and the front was sticky slippery, but Reno had no puke left in him. He put the coat on. Then he pulled the general’s hat off the corpse and, discarding his own, put that on too, loosening the chin strap a little to get into it.

  His head was pounding as bad as his heart now. The excitement. God — a fortune! And right here in the stinking street!

  He peered around. Do it right, his head pounded; and he threw away his pistol and picked up Descardo’s. It might make the difference if he were stopped by men who didn’t know the general personally.

  He was gone if he got stopped by the Federalistas anyway. He caught up the lashed bags and eased them over a shoulder. A rock clattered somewhere on the slope and he went rigid.

  His guts turned over and tried to crawl out of him. They were coming, all right. With Perron’s knowledge or without wouldn’t matter if they found him in this coat and hat. He might explain the money but he couldn’t explain those, and he’d play hell getting out of this country without them.

  He crouched there, shaking, trying to make up his mind whether he should run or try to hide from them. Running would make noise but at least he might get into the brush where they’d have their work cut out to catch hold of him. He threw a fast look around, caught up the quirt and got out of there.

  He became aware he’d chosen wrong before his eyes ever saw the backs of these places. Perron’s men set up a yell and several rifles racketed viciously. Too late he realized he should have crossed that bright street, not gone diving down this alley; there was nothing in front of him now but the mountain. He would have to run west and the brush he wanted was north, beyond the damned street and that far line of houses.

  He dug in his toes and put everything he had into covering ground. This coat and the weight of the money didn’t help. He skidded around the corner and headed west, still swathed in shadow. That helped a little but he knew those soldiers would see him just as soon as they got off the slope. He would be silhouetted against the open range which, yonder, lay as bright as the street he’d fled away from. He knew it had to be now or never and swerved again between two houses, losing more of his precious lead, and coming into the street three doors above where he’d started.

  The house now directly in front of him was one of those Perron’s guns had collapsed, and the ground all about it was a chaos of broken adobes. He didn’t dare risk his footing and, forced to swerve once again, struck out to cut behind the next one. He was still six jumps from its corner when they spotted him.

  Their shouts were lost in the crash of their rifles. He could hear the bu
llets slamming into the wall, could see the adobe spatter and the wind whirl away its dust. Something clouted his hat and he could feel the tug through his chin strap. Something plucked at the coat and he stumbled with all that weight on one shoulder and half fell around the corner, crashing into the opposite wall.

  He did fall then but fear pulled him erect. He caught up the bags and ran from the rear of the passage into moonlight, swerving to avoid the glinting flash of broken bottles. The dark line of the brush was only fifty yards away but the grunt of his tortured lungs held the rasp of a wind-broken bronc. Every time he drew breath it was like knives turning in him and his heart was banging like the thud of a stamp mill.

  He couldn’t rest. He couldn’t stop to catch his breath even. He was staggering now, his legs going wobbly. There was a roaring in his ears and the rifles were in full cry again. He could see little puffs of dust bursting out of the drought-cracked ground where the bullets hit.

  But the brush was getting nearer. It was barely thirty feet away when the heel of his left boot went, and he stumbled. He fell heavily, his hands not equal to the weight of those bulging bags he had clung to. Pain splintered through him and he knew when he tried to get his left hand under him the fall had wrenched his shoulder.

  Another man might have given up or fooled himself into thinking those others would. They must have seen him go down. They’d quit firing; and on the ground, with all that brush black behind him, it stood to reason they couldn’t see him. Just a little rest, damn it, just a little and you can make it.

  With his breath a rattling sob in his throat he got his head around enough to catch the soldiers in his focus. They’d stopped to reload. Now they were coming on again. Not running though, spread out and coming careful lest the wounded quarry flash its teeth.

  Reno, groaning, twisted around and, still aiming brush-ward but on a long western tangent to get away from the angle he’d been traveling when the heelless boot had thrown him, started crawling. Every inch was sheer torture in that heavy coat and dragging those bags as he had to. But it was either that or get to his feet and if he got to his feet they would see him. It did not occur to him to jettison the bags.