Ambush at Shadow Valley (27 page)

‘‘You mean to Shadow Valley, where all the Satan's Brothers will protect him,'' Hector cut in, a concerned look coming upon his face.

‘‘That's where I would look,'' Beck said as if concluding the conversation. His expression softened a bit and he said, ‘‘Thanks for telling me about Flannery and Caplan.''

Sam only nodded at Beck. He touched his fingers to the brim of his sombrero and said to Clarimonde, ‘‘Ma'am,'' and turned his stallion back out of the yard toward the trail.

As the two lawmen rode away, Beck stared after them and said to Clarimonde, ‘‘Well, that's done. I know he means well as far as helping you goes. But he lives strictly by the book. He refuses to ever look the other way, or step short of the law for any reason. It's hard to trust a man like that.''

Clarimonde also stared off behind the ranger and Hector, her eyes still misty. ‘‘I am so happy my Bess is alive. I must go to her. I want to hold her, to tell her how much I love her, and take her home to Papa, so he will see that we're both all right.''

‘‘All in time, Clair,'' said Beck. ‘‘But if you want your papa and your shepherds safe, this comes first, the way we agreed to do it.''

‘‘Yes, I know.'' Clarimonde sniffed and dabbed her sleeve to her eyes. ‘‘Do you think those two will ride all the way to Shadow Valley, tonight?''

‘‘Yes, I believe they will,'' said Beck. ‘‘He knows that sooner or later Soto is going to be there. He wants him bad enough, he's willing to go there and wait it out. Meanwhile, we had better get ready, and do what we need to do here.''

Fifty yards along the trail, Sam and Hector veered up onto the hillside. ‘‘Do you think Soto and his demons will be coming here tonight?'' Hector asked, leading the big paint behind him.

‘‘I'm counting on it,'' Sam said. ‘‘So is Memphis Beck, the way I read him. He's got something in mind for Soto when he gets here. He thinks it's something he can't trust us with. That's why he wanted to send us off to Shadow Valley. He wants us out of his way.''

‘‘But whatever happens tonight, we will be here waiting for Suelo Soto and his demons, eh?''

‘‘Without a doubt, Hector,'' Sam said, ‘‘we're going to be here, whether Memphis Beck likes it or not.''

Chapter 23

As darkness fell moonless and black around the hacienda and the surrounding hillsides, Clarimonde heard Beck walk away from the corral, leading his horses and the horse that had belonged to Dave Arken off toward a stand of woods. A moment later she heard him returning toward the hacienda, this time alone, having hitched the horses to a scrub juniper inside the tree line. ‘‘We can't risk finding them butchered in the corral,'' he said, stepping inside through the rear door.

‘‘Did you see anything, hear anything?'' Clarimonde asked, a bit anxiously.

‘‘No,'' Beck replied. ‘‘But I wouldn't anyway, not unless Soto wanted me to.'' He reached out, took her by her shoulders and drew her to him firmly, but gently. ‘‘It's going to be all right. You'll see. I know how this man thinks—so do you. We both know how he is going to come at us. We'll be ready.''

She allowed herself to relax for a moment in Beck's arms, feeling safer than she had for a long time. ‘‘Perhaps we should have told the ranger—''

‘‘Shhh,'' said Beck, cutting her off. ‘‘We can handle ourselves. Look at everything you've been through. The ranger might have been on his way, but he wasn't there. You did it on your own. You're the one who found your way out from under Suelo Soto. You freed yourself.''

She thought about it, and decided not to question the matter any further. Instead she said, ‘‘Now that I know my shepherd, Bess, is alive, as soon as this is over, I want to go to her and take her home.''

‘‘We can do that as soon as it's safe for you,'' Beck said. ‘‘Did you give any thought to what we talked about?'' On their ride to the hacienda he had invited her to travel with him and the gang. She hadn't responded and he didn't push the subject too hard right then.

‘‘Yes,'' she said, ‘‘and I'm afraid that is not the life for me. I have lived wild and dangerously in the past. All I want now is to live simply, and to sleep well of a night. I am sorry if I disappoint you.''

‘‘Don't be sorry.'' Beck smiled. ‘‘I haven't given up on you yet. I still have some time. I plan on talking you into it.''

‘‘No,'' Clarimonde said amiably, ‘‘if I were interested you would not have to talk me into it.'' She gave him a tired smile.

‘‘Seeing Paris, sunny Italy, South America? Instead of being Clair, your new name would be ‘Lady Dynamite'? None of that excites you?'' he asked.

‘‘Lady Dynamite . . .'' She shook head slowly. ‘‘There was a time, perhaps, when it would have excited me,'' she admitted. ‘‘But not anymore. Life had its way with me long ago. Now I want only to tend goats with my papa and spend time with my shepherds. Please don't try to dissuade me. It will only make me feel bad, turning you down.''

‘‘Ah,'' said Beck, seeing an opening and reaching in for it. ‘‘If it makes you feel bad turning it down, maybe you just need to think about it some more?''

Clarimonde looked at him closely and said, ‘‘I know that if you talked enough about it, I will give in. I know that if I think enough about it, perhaps I will change my mind. But try to understand that I do not want you to talk me into it. I do not want to talk myself into it. A terrible event has taken place in my life. Now that it is over, I don't want to let it change anything. I want my life to go on as it was.''

‘‘But shouldn't you be able to take something good out of it?'' Beck asked.

‘‘I want nothing from it,'' she said, ‘‘except to wake up and have it gone, like someone awakens from a bad dream.''

Beck sighed and relaxed his arms around her. ‘‘All right, I give up,'' he said. ‘‘But we've still got a deal on you mixing explosives for me?'' As he spoke, he turned an oil lamp down low and carried it to the bedroom.

‘‘A deal is a deal.'' She smiled, following him. ‘‘I will be back with Papa and the herd as soon as it is safe. When you need me, you will know where to find me.''

‘‘All right then,'' said Beck. ‘‘Now for the rest of the deal.'' He set the dimly glowing lamp on a nightstand, and said as he turned it even dimmer, ‘‘It's bedtime, Clair. Are you ready to ride?''

‘‘Yes, I'm ready. Are you?'' Clarimonde smiled. She loosened her clothes, stepped out of them and let them fall in a heap on the floor beside the bed. Beck looked at her standing naked before him in the dim glow of the light.

‘‘Oh, yes,'' said Beck, as he unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. He tossed the shirt onto a chair beside the nightstand. He took off his hat and his gun belt and hung them both on a chair back. Then he slipped his Colt from its holster and held it to his naked chest. ‘‘After you,'' he said in a gentlemanly manner.

From across a short stretch of flatlands to the west of the hacienda, Suelo Soto had seen the lamplight go low. He smiled thinly to himself watching the dim glow travel from window to window through the hacienda, like a ghost. Behind him Satan's Brothers waited with the horses, keeping the animals as silent as themselves.

But Soto was in no hurry. He gave Beck and the woman all the time they needed—plenty of time to sate themselves with one another, he told himself. He could wait. While he waited, he sat deftly cutting cord for the two canvas-wrapped balls of clay he had tied together. Down between the two balls he had stuck three vials of pure nitroglycerin.
A gift from hell, all for you, Memphis Beck and Clarimonde . . .

When a half hour had passed, just as the brothers behind him had begun giving one another questioning looks, their eyes adjusting some to the darkness but still unable to see clearly, Soto rose into a crouch, a black cigar smoldering in his mouth, and moved away toward the dimly lit window of the hacienda.

Once beneath the half-opened window, he pulled himself up enough to look into the dim light. He saw where Clarimonde and Beck had shed their clothes. He saw the empty holster, knowing that Beck would be the kind of man to sleep with his gun beneath his pillow. But tonight his gun wouldn't help him, Soto thought, easing down the deadly balls of explosives by their cord until they rested on the floor.

I hope the whore was worth it, Memphis Beck . . . ,
he said to himself, looking at the exposed arm lying draped sidelong out from under the sheet. Instead of puffing the cigar to stoke it, he jammed the cord down into the blackened tip and twisted it back and forth until it found the buried fire and began to sizzle to life.

Easing back to the ground beneath the window, he waited only a second with his gun drawn, making sure the burning fuse cord didn't awaken the sleeping lovers. Then he slipped away into the darkness as silently as he'd arrived. . . .

Lower down on the hillside where the two lawmen had set up watch from the cover of the trees, Sam had noted the faint, reddish glow of fire from the cigar move down the hillside toward the hacienda. Instantly he'd recognized it and realized what was going on. ‘‘That's him. That's Suelo Soto,'' he'd said to Hector, sitting eight feet away. ‘‘He's making his move.''

Hector had seen the cigar at the same time. He rose quickly, followed Sam to the horses and jumped into the saddle. Leaving the big paint horse hitched to a tree, the two lawmen raced across the stretch of flatlands toward the house. But halfway across, the air around them came alive with whistling bullets slicing past their heads. To their right along a hill line, heavy rifle fire flashed like angry fireflies. Rather than sacrifice his stallion, Sam reined up quickly, grabbed his rifle from its boot and leaped from his saddle. Giving the stallion a slap on the rump he shouted, ‘‘Go, Black Pot!'' Then he dived to the ground.

‘‘There must be an army—!'' Hector shouted, his words ending abruptly amid a volley of fire.

‘‘Guardia?''
Sam called out. He could not see Hector, but he'd heard his horse neigh pitifully as it took a tumble and a slide along the stony ground. Then the neighing fell to a moan.

‘‘I'm hit,'' Hector said in a strained voice.

The ranger crawled hurriedly to him, following his voice more than the dim, grainy image lying sprawled in the darkness. ‘‘Easy,
Guardia
,'' Sam said, hovering over him, a bullet slicing the air, dangerously close. ‘‘How bad?'' As he asked, his fingers felt the warm blood on Hector's chest. He heard the young man struggle for breath.

‘‘Don't . . . worry about me. . . . Get to the hacienda in time,'' Hector said in a rasping voice.

‘‘I'm not leaving you,
Guardia
,'' the ranger said above the whistling bullets.

‘‘Leave me,'' said Hector. ‘‘These demons . . . see in the dark.''

But the ranger ignored him, knowing the riflemen could see no better in the dark than they could. Crouched, he dragged Hector along by his bloody shirtfront, realizing that the rifles had been firing blindly at the sound of the horses' hooves. Now that the stallion had run away and Hector's horse lay dying, the shots had started spreading out wildly.

‘‘
Por favor
. . . leave me,'' Hector pleaded in a waning voice. ‘‘I am . . . bleeding so bad. . . .''

‘‘No,'' the ranger said stubbornly, crouching lower as a volley of fire seemed to find them in the dark. As soon as the volley relented, Sam stared toward the dim glow of light in the bedroom window of the hacienda. What about Beck, he wondered. Hadn't he heard the shooting?

But as he dragged Hector forward again, any questions he had about Beck no longer mattered. Two hundred feet away, the hacienda turned as bright as day. ‘‘Oh no,'' Sam managed to say. For a moment the whole adobe structure seemed to rise up and hang suspended in the air. Then it flew apart in thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of fiery pieces, before the ranger could even drop to the ground out of the blast.

At the distant hill line where Satan's Brothers had been firing into the darkness, Soto hurried in among them and jumped into his saddle. While the blast still stood high in the air, rolling in a whirlwind of fire, he looked out across the flatlands. A grin of satisfaction came to his face; fire reflected with a glitter in his dark eyes. He saw the ranger stagger back up onto his feet after being knocked to the ground. ‘‘Ha! Not a bad night's work, eh,
mi hermanos
?'' He spoke in Spanish to his brothers in Satan. They looked surprised, knowing his hatred for his native tongue.

A few feet from where the ranger fell, Hector lay sprawled, his mouth agape, his horse lying dead a few yards behind him. Turning his horse toward a trail leading down out of sight, Soto said, gesturing toward two of the brothers on foot, ‘‘You two, run down there and finish them off.''

The two Satan's Brothers handed their rifles up to some of their mounted comrades and, bare-footed, looped away across the flatland. ‘‘Let's ride,'' said Soto, jerking his horse's reins toward the trail, leading the men away while fire boiled high in the night. . . .

On the far side of the hill, Memphis Beck stopped his horse beside Clarimonde and said, ‘‘Well, that's that. I kept my part of the deal. I killed you off.'' He smiled. ‘‘I even died with you . . . something I've been meaning to do lately, to give myself a new start.''

‘‘You did it,'' Clarimonde said, looking back with him toward the fire as it lit up the night.