Bullet Creek (10 page)

Looking down, the girl's almond-shaped eyes squinted angrily. “Pepe! Just what do you think you are doing, young man, sleeping when you are supposed to be hunting?”

The sixteen-year-old boy had jerked his head up with a start. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his fists. “I just laid down for a little nap,” he complained, annoyed at the disturbance.

“Have you shot a deer?”

Pepe shook his head and yawned. Seeing Real, his eyes snapped wide. His face quickly acquired a sheepish cast.

“Then you get out there and don't come back until you've shot a deer for the stew pot, you lazy goat!”

Moving quickly now and shooting embarrassed looks at Real, Pepe stood, grabbed an old Burnside rifle from beside the rock fireplace, and stumbled out the door, his sandals slapping the hard-packed earthen floor.

“Before you go, loosen my saddle cinch,” Real called to the boy. “I'll be here awhile.”

De Cava had doffed his hat and rolled onto a cot on the opposite side of the room, kicking a chair out from the small eating table and resting his wounded leg on it. Nodding at the bloody calf, he said to La Reina, “Work your magic, senorita. Pop that pill out of my leg.”

La Reina glanced at the leg, pursing her lips with disgust. Then she retrieved a dark purple bottle from a cupboard and handed the bottle to Real. From another cupboard she produced a long, thin folding knife and a tin basin. When she'd filled the basin with water from a stone pitcher and sterilized the knife with a match, she knelt down before Real, who was well into the bottle of sangria. She expertly removed the bandage, cut the slacks away from the wound, examined it closely, and set to work, probing the wound for the slug.

Real cursed and jerked his leg several times, taking several long pulls from the bottle. The sangria dribbled down his chin and onto his sweat-soaked white shirt.

“You only come when you are frisky or when you want me to remove bullets from your hide,” the girl accused, pouting, as she worked the knife's slender blade.

Real winced and tensed the leg, took another hard pull, swallowed, and sighed. “Don't I give your father money and sangria?” He raised the bottle as if for proof. “Don't I give you plenty of frilly dresses and”—he smiled lewdly—“
muchofelicidad
between the sheets?”

The girl flushed, her cheeks dimpling and her eyes narrowing. Her tone softened.
“Sí.
But it would be nice if I had a reason to wear the dresses. A trip to Tucson, say, or Nogales. Not so far . . .”

Before he had a chance to reply, she stuck her left fingertip into the hole with the knife. “Holy Mother, you're killing me!” Real exclaimed, rising up on his elbows and arching his back.

The girl removed the knife and held the small, round bullet between her bloody thumb and index finger. “Got it!”

When she'd cleaned the wound and wrapped the calf in white cloth, Real took another long pull from the sangria and wrapped his right arm around La Reina's neck, pulling her down to him. “Now your reward, my little peasant queen!”

A half hour later, she got up and gathered her clothes. Watching her dress, Real chuckled. “You almost made me forget my main reason for coming here. Tomorrow morning I want you to send Pepe out for your brother, the pistolero.

Standing silhouetted before an open window, her hair gilded by the waning afternoon sun, La Reina turned to him quickly. “Cayetano?”

“
Sí
.”

“You know my father has disowned him!”

“Sí,” Real said, reclining with his hands laced behind his head, grinning as he watched the girl's long fingers smooth the sack blouse across her breasts. “But I need a man with Cayetano's gun savvy”—he winced against the pain spasming up his leg—“to teach some gringos a lesson they won't soon forget.”

 

An hour after dark, Gundalupe Sanchez left the bunkhouse and walked across the yard of Rancho de Cava, oddly silent in the wake of the vaquero's shootout with the Bar-V riders, and entered the big house's front courtyard. The gate squeaked as he closed it behind him, latching it with a ring, then traversed the stone tiles to the broad oak doors.

Tapers smoked on either side of the entranceway, casting bizarre-shaped shadows across the brown adobe. There was the faint smell of the lemon oil the women had used to cleanse the don's body for burial, and of mesquite smoke. The segundo paused before the door, studying the iron knockers and large strap hinges.

Should he knock now that the don was gone, throwing his own position here into question, or go on in without knocking, as he'd always done?

Sanchez decided to knock.

After a minute, the door was opened by young Isabelle, who nodded formally as Sanchez, nodding in return, his sombrero in his hands, stepped around her, and walked inside. He followed the dimly lighted corridor through the smoking parlor smelling of Spanish brandy and Havana cigars. Continuing through a broad, arched entrance, he stepped into a wood-beamed sitting room, at the end of which a fire burned in a massive stone hearth. Candles flickered in gold sconces set upon two square tables covered with white linen cloths.

Between the tables sat the coffin Sanchez had built with his own hands last night and early this morning. In the coffin lay the don in a brushed black suit with a crisp white shirt and an elaborately embroidered wine-colored tie. In the don's hands, resting upon his flat belly, was a broad-brimmed, low-crowned sombrero with red, green, and silver threads in the traditional de Cava pattern of a tiger swiping at two diving hawks.

The don's black mustache had been combed and waxed, the wax glistening in the light of the fire. From the position of the don's head, you could not tell that half his brains were missing.

In one of the several folding chairs arranged before the coffin sat the slender, sullen maid. Dressed in black, with a lace shawl shrouding her head, Henriqua crouched over her Bible and rosary, muttering prayers. Nearby sat one of the rancho's peon families, a father, mother, and three children, their heads bowed in prayer.

As the segundo began making his way toward the coffin, the man and his family stood and shuffled slowly up the aisle. The woman and her children were appropriately quiet, their eyes downcast. When the man passed Sanchez, his eyes were puffed and rheumy with tears. His gaze briefly met the segundo's, the farmer's right eye narrowed with emotion. He gave a phlegmy sigh and his head a single, bereaved shake, then followed his family out of the room.

His hat in his hands, Sanchez continued up to the coffin and cast his weary gaze upon the don. They'd spent so many years together, holding the ranch against the blistering desert heat, bandits, and Indians. Once, vaqueros from long lines of cattlemen rode proudly upon this land. Drinking was outlawed except during the rodeo, and the only shooting was restricted to snakes, coyotes, and marauding Indians.

Now drunkards and pistoleros scurried about this formerly noble grant—vermin on saddles, spending as much time wreaking havoc south of the border as they did at Rancho de Cava, tending cattle or perfecting their roping and riding skills.

A few years ago, Sanchez would have sobbed. A jaded old man who'd seen this coming for years, he simply placed a gnarled hand on the don's, squeezed, muttered a prayer, and turned away.

He'd passed Henriqua, her head still bowed over her beads, and was nearly to the end of the room when Lupita stepped out of the shadows. Light from a nearby wall sconce flickered cinnamon light across the regal planes of her face. Lingering around her was the faint smell of brandy.

“Come to pay your respects, Senor Sanchez?”

“
Sí
,” he said and bowed gravely. “I am deeply saddened by your loss.”

Lupita said nothing, but her eyes softened slightly.

Filling the silence, Sanchez said, “I have packed my bags, and tomorrow I shall take my—”

“What is your hurry?” Lupita gathered her cloak about her shoulders and leaned against the arched doorway. “This is your home, is it not?”

Sanchez looked at her, careful how he formed his words. Her own words of last night still bit him. “It was—”

“When the war with the Bar-V is over, we will have a ranch to run. Obviously, my brothers cannot do it. You are segundo, you will remain segundo. I will talk to Real and Alejandro—if Alejandro still lives.”

“Senora, I am a vaquero. The men your brothers have hired are not vaqueros. They will not take orders from me.”

Her voice hardened with anger. “They will if I tell them they will!”

The old segundo lowered his gaze to the frayed brim of the hat in his gnarled hands. Anger welled in him, but this was no place, no time to vent it.

Also, where else would he go? He'd been raised by Pimas, all dead now. He'd learned very young how to ride and rope and to gentle mestenos. There was little else he could do. In spite of the desecration, Rancho de Cava was his home.

There was always the possibility, however slight, he could thwart this war that Lupita, Real, and Alejandro were bent on waging with the Bar-V, and help turn the ranch back the way it used to be, when he and the don were young.

He wondered what the don would want him to do. Leave and die alone in the Sierra Madres, with only a gold pan and a burro to his name? Or swallow his pride and stay at Rancho de Cava and weather the coming storm?

“Please. I will see.” Sanchez stepped past her, heading into the shadows toward the front of the house.

“Guadalupe?”

He stopped and turned back around.

“What were you doing in the north orchard this afternoon?”

His right eye narrowed slightly, and the bull-hide of his face darkened along the knobs of his cheeks. Momentarily, his heart picked up its beat, then steadied and slowed. “I was just musing, the way old men muse, senora.” The old segundo's leathery face broke into a brief, phony smile. He bowed again and walked away.

Earlier, when the Bar-V riders had returned to the headquarters, they wasted little time burying Dave Watts in the cemetery atop the rocky rise flanking the main house. Bodies didn't last long in the desert.

Like most Bar-V men, Watts had no family—at least, none he'd stayed in touch with. What few belongings he had would be distributed among the other men, his tack and weapons going to whoever needed them most.

Paul Vannorsdell said a few words over the rough pine coffin the blacksmith had hammered together and nailed a lid on. When the ranch owner was through, he donned his hat and regarded the other men standing grimly in a semicircle around the grave.

Zopilotes circled, the shaggy buzzards executing lazy figure eights against the blue-green sky.

Vannorsdell said, “There's no use mincing words—we're at war, boys. Stay armed at all times and watch your backs.” He looked at Navarro. “Double the pickets around the headquarters—night and day—and post extra men with the cattle. They'll no doubt try to melt away our herds.”

One of the riders said, “Want we should still deliver those steers over to Lordsburg tomorrow, boss, like we planned?”

“No, we'll wait on that,” the rancher said. “No one crosses the de Cava range till this thing is resolved.

“Several o' those charros were pistoleros, boss,” another man piped up, packing his pipe. “I seen some of 'em down Mexico way. Looks like Real's done hired him an army.”

Vannorsdell glanced at Navarro darkly. “I saw 'em. You boys just keep that in mind and stay out of their way. They were drunk today, or we would have had a real fight on our hands.”

The men donned their hats, grimly mounted their ground-tied horses, and rode down to the headquarters, their shadows long in the early evening light. Vannorsdell and Navarro walked together along the shoulder of the rise. Brooding, they wended their way amid the graves of other fallen Bar-V men and that of the rancher's own wife, Dahlonega, killed in an Indian raid nearly twenty years ago, when she and Paul were still living in a dugout, with brush corrals and only a handful of scrubby longhorns making up their herd.

Vannorsdell stopped, dug a cigar from his pocket, and bit off the end. Gazing southeast, toward the de Cava grant just beyond a long salmon spine of pine-spotted andesite nearly fifteen miles away, he lit his cigar, turning the Havana and sucking the flame.

“It's a helluva note, Tommy. One of my best friends is dead, and his family blames me for his murder.”

“It's a mite prickly, but you've been through worse.”

“I was younger then, tougher and meaner. This breaks my heart. I may have to kill Francisco's sons. That's a helluva thing to take to my own grave.” Vannorsdell drew deep on the cigar and stared at Blackstone Ridge bordering the de Cava grant.

“I'll have a talk with Alejandro when he comes around,” Navarro said. They'd taken de Cava's younger son to the main house and posted a guard on him while the half-Comanche blacksmith, Three Feathers, who was also a passable medico, doctored his shoulder.

“Good luck with that firebrand. Probably either him or Real killed Francisco, but there's no way to prove it. No doubt they're blamin' me to distract attention from themselves.” Vannorsdell shook his head. “I don't know, Tommy. This has land war written all over it. I truly loved that old don, but his sons are poison mean. I hate to think how all this is gonna play out.” He drew on the cigar again, staring at the coal, pondering.

Navarro had been rolling a quirley. Now he lit it. Blowing smoke at that of Vannorsdell's cigar, the still air letting it linger, he said, “Let's try to keep a lid on the powder keg for the next few days, until I've had a chance to talk to my old friend Sanchez.”