Scorpion (7 page)

“You worry too much, amigo. The gringos will be gone before long. General Najera hopes to build a troop of norteamericanos with Señor Tolliver as their captain and then use them against their former compadres. The gringos will lose heart when they find themselves confronted by other gringos, eh? Maybe General Taylor’s whole army will decide to join us when they see how well Señor Tolliver has been treated.” The mestizo mopped the sweat from his high forehead with a bandanna. In the glare of the afternoon sun, his features reflected the Aztec heritage that was the legacy of his forebears.

Raúl Salcedo glared at his friend, making no effort to hide the fact he was mightily unhappy, but he kept his objections to himself, saving them for Valentin Najera and the confrontation to come.

The first bath was the best, after a week spent along the dusty border trails. Najera motioned for the fifteen-year-old girl attending his needs to bring another kettle of hot water from the kitchen at the rear of the hotel. Marita Two Ponies was a dark-skinned lass, slim-hipped and buxom, with a coquettish way about her. She had the eyes of a woman twice her age. A prostitute since the age of twelve, Marita had run away from Father Rudolfo’s mission and been seduced by the amount of money to be made plying her considerable charms in Saltillo’s cantinas. She had been wise enough to pick and choose her paramours, and had at last attracted the attention of none other than General Najera. Now she was his consort, and he insisted she share a blanket with no one else. It was common knowledge that Najera could be as jealous as he was cruel. Marita was only to happy to oblige the general, though a man like Raúl was more to her liking. She had even deluded herself into thinking one day the general would take her to wife.

The girl leaned down over the tub and kissed Najera, who laughed and bit her neck and reached beneath the bodice of her peasant blouse to cup a brown breast. He blew on her neck and chuckled, then sent Marita on her way with a pat on the derriere. He watched her leave before he turned to Raúl, slouched against the wall. The gunman was staring at the prostitute. For a fleeting second Najera thought he saw something more than indifference as the gunman and prostitute exchanged glances.

“She’s got an ass like a boy’s. Flat. That’s my only complaint.” Najera sighed. He dismissed his suspicions. Raúl would never be such a fool. Using a porcelain bowl, he poured water over his head to wash the soap away and settled back in the tub. Smoke curled from the tip of his cigarillo. He reached for a glass of brandy on a nearby table, inhaled the bouquet and took a sip. He sighed and smiled, then his gaze rested on Raúl, who shifted uncomfortably beneath the general’s scrutiny.

Salcedo had recounted the entire episode from the time he climbed into the freight wagon and ran down Don Sebastien in the streets of Linares, to his final failure, when Señora Quintero escaped his trap for the second time, thanks to the interference of the stranger. Raúl explained how he had decided to abandon the attempt and wait for another opportunity to present itself after the widow had arrived at Ventana.

“Still … one complaint is not all that much,” Najera said, still thinking of the girl. The general was in a forgiving mood. After all, he had won a great victory. “She is only a woman. Alone, without her husband to act as her champion, there will be none to speak for her. All of Ventana will be mine.”

“It will be as you say,
Jefe.
”

“But only with your help, my loyal one.” Najera blew a cloud of smoke into the air. “The situation is far from hopeless. Señora Quintero will probably be arriving tomorrow or the next day. Keep watch on the roads. I think we will ride out to Ventana and welcome her home, eh? Send riders to watch for them, and keep me informed.”

“I know just the men,” Raúl replied. Angel was acting far too friendly toward the turncoats, Tolliver and Dobbs. It was time to put a stop to such behavior. The gunman turned to leave, then hesitated. Najera could tell his lieutenant was troubled by something else.

“What is it, mi compadre?” Najera said.

“The gringos who rode in with you. General Najera, such men are without honor. I ask you, can such as these be trusted?”

“Of course not.” Najera settled back in the tub and folded his hands behind his head. “But they can be used.” He grinned and winked, and Raúl suddenly realized that Najera shared his opinion of the turncoats. “I’ll pay them their blood money. Let them run our whores and drink in our
pulquerías.
And when the invaders are driven from Mexico …” Najera raised a hand as if holding an imaginary pistol. The “gun” recoiled, its implication clear. Raúl nodded, satisfied with the general’s response. The door to the hotel room opened and Marita reentered, bearing a large kettle of hot water. Steam curled from the curved spout as she pointedly ignored Raúl and carried her burden to the high-backed washtub. Najera tucked his knees to his chin while the girl added the hot water to the tub. When she had finished, he straightened, then caught her wrist and pulled the girl into the tub. Marita squealed and pretended to struggle with her suitor, splashing water onto the hardwood floor. Raúl departed as the laughter turned to sighs of ecstasy.

The Casa del Noche Cantina was adjacent to the hotel lobby and occupied a corner formed by the junction of Market Square and the Paseo de Caballo, a tree-lined side street at whose end was a series of corrals and pens holding well over two hundred horses, remounts for the dragoons, confiscated from the surrounding rancheros.

The interior of the cantina was brightly lit, thanks to the wall-length windows that opened onto both streets and permitted a cross breeze as well as sunlight to enter the room. Fully a dozen tables, each one circled by three or four chairs, were provided for the customers. A bar ran the length of one of the walls, and men were crowded before the row of glasses and dark brown bottles of whiskey, tequila, and other spirits concocted by Señora Montenez, the proprietress of the hotel and cantina.

She could be seen hurrying among the tables, dispatching her young serving girls from customer to customer with all the finesse of a commander in the field. Señora Montenez genuinely enjoyed her work. It gave her pleasure to see a man eat his fill or unwind from a hard ride with a bottle of tequila while one of her girls entertained him, singing soft love songs or dancing to the strains of a flamenco guitar. It was understood that Serena’s women were not to be trifled with. She hired them to serve and look pretty and to remind lonely men of loves left behind. If a man wanted more, let him visit one of the brothels, where he might find some
puta
to service his needs.

Raúl remembered the last man to try and force himself on one of the señora’s “songbirds.” He left the cantina minus an ear. Serena Montenez noticed Raúl as he descended the back stairs that led from the rear of the upstairs hall. The señora, a buxom black-haired woman whose thick features were hidden beneath a layer of rouge and powder, crossed the room to stand at Raúl’s side.

“Is the general ready for his dinner?”

“I think he is having dessert first,” Raúl icily replied. The proprietress had offered Raúl her favors just that morning, but he had declined. He wanted nothing to do with this woman. He pictured Najera and Marita in the tub together, locked in one another’s embrace, and scowled. Señoritas … they lured men into taking unnecessary chances, then demanded too much. Marita was playing with him, flaunting her relationship with Najera to drive him crazy. As for Señora Montenez, if he had taken the señora to bed, sooner or later Angel would have discovered what they had done, and then Raúl knew he would have to kill his friend. With but two compadres, Raúl Salcedo had no wish to lose one.

“Marita is with him.”

Señora Montenez understood. She started to return to work, then paused and glanced over her shoulder. “You should have had me while you had the chance, little one. Now Angel is already waiting for me in my bedroom out back.”

“See you please him, señora,” Raúl said. “And soon. For he will be gone before dark.” The gunman flung his black and scarlet serape back across his shoulder. “Tell him to meet me within the hour down by the horses. The general has work for him.”

The woman scowled. “That is not enough time for me. I have waited all week. I see your hand in this.”

“You would have had more than my hand this morning.” Raúl chuckled. “And if Angel were to find out, he might mark that homely face of yours. And maybe leave you for a younger, prettier señorita. One who doesn’t show how much she has been used.”

Señora Montenez’s hand shot up to slap his face but Raúl’s reflexes were quicker and he caught the woman by the wrist and bent her arm back until she winced. Then he motioned for her to attend Angel. The proprietress met his malevolent gaze and glimpsed enough dark madness in his eyes to chill her to the bone. Though unafraid of most men, the hotel keeper recognized here was someone to give a wide berth. She hurried off and did as she was told. Raúl heard laughter and noticed Ned Tolliver and Lucker Dobbs watching him from the bar, leaning back on their elbows. One man held a jug of whiskey, the other a thick, clear tumbler of the same.

“You havin’ a lover’s spat?” Dobbs said. His grin revealed a row of broken teeth.

Raúl moved quietly over to the former Rangers at the bar, but ignoring the bigger man, turned to Ned Tolliver, whose owlish gaze behind his spectacles was unwavering. He was not afraid of any man, especially this Mexican kid with the somber expression.

“Keep a tight rein on your fat friend,” Raúl said softly. “Before his big mouth talks him into a shallow grave.”

“I’d not want to be the man to try and lay him down,” Tolliver replied.

Lucker grabbed a tortilla, folded the flattened bread around a helping of refried beans and began to eat. A full mouth didn’t stop him from talking, though.

“Lookee here, Ned. Seems this pup is trying to bare his fangs. From where I’m standing, I don’t see nothing but a mouth full of milk teeth.” His speech was muffled by the food he’d packed into his cheeks. A trickle of brown beans and grease dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Dobbs wiped it away on the sleeve of his buckskin shirt. He looked to be the epitome of an uncouth, slovenly oaf, solid as a brick, with half the brains.

But Ned Tolliver had not sided with the big man for his intelligence. Tolliver recalled Dobbs at the battle at San Jacinto, ten years earlier. The man had been marked by bayonet and gunshot, yet he stood tall amid the carnage of that Texican victory and prowled the battlefield with knife in hand. Then, Lucker Dobbs had been stained crimson to the elbows with the blood of the Mexican soldiers he had slain in battle. No, Tolliver did not envy the chili eater if Dobbs lost his temper.

Raúl glared at both of the gringos, then turned away and sauntered through the sunlight and tobacco smoke. Several men called out to him, inviting Najera’s lieutenant to join them for a drink, but Raúl was anxious to leave the cantina and the gringos behind. He emerged through the bat-wing doors, scattering a trio of children who fled like startled mice. He stood with his hands on his hips and studied the
mercado.
The merchants were arriving at their stalls, lured to the square by the arrival of the soldiers and hoping to hawk their wares for a tidy profit. A man walked past him balancing bolts of cloth on his head. Another man in the wake of the cloth merchant led a burro laden with two large clay cisterns of goat’s milk. A woman was rolling out tortillas, slapping them into shape with her hands and baking them on a flat sheet of hammered iron placed over a cook fire. Another woman was stringing chorizo, highly spiced homemade sausages, and dangling them from the pole roof of her stall. She accomplished this task under the watchful scrutiny of a pack of mongrel dogs, a mangy assortment of mixed breeds varying in size but sharing a common ailment—hunger. The señora noticed her unasked-for audience and took up a straw broom to chase them from her stall. The dogs ran off a few paces, then returned to the very same spot. The woman was not about to allow them to remain. She hoisted her skirts and assailed the mongrels yet again. This time she continued her pursuit down a length of stalls and over to the edge of the
mercado.
Suddenly the dogs scattered, and led by a particularly scruffy-looking mixed breed, a cross between a sheepdog and a coyote, charged past the woman and raced pell-mell toward her stall. Realizing she had been duped, the woman howled, swung the broom in an arc above her head and bolted to the rescue. But the pack beat her to the stall, and in a matter of seconds the dogs had dragged off several strings of sausages and escaped down the nearest side street, leaving the señora to shake her fists in the air.

Raúl chuckled. Mariano Rincón appeared at his side. A trace of liquor was on his breath but his hands were steady. He held a cup of pulque, fished a fly from the surface of the milky liquid and tossed it out into the dusty road. Pulque, fermented juice extracted from the agave cactus, was a strong, bitter drink capable of sneaking up on the unwary and leaving a man to bay in the moonlight with the wolves. Rincón drained the contents of his cup, and motioning for a boy to approach, instructed the youth to return the cup to the bar inside. A few centavos was more than enough compensation for the orphan to oblige the mestizo. Rincón fished a couple of peyote buttons from his pocket and held one out to Raúl. The gunman declined.

“We will not be staying the night in Saltillo,” Raúl said. Mariano Rincón shrugged and shoved the nut-brown roots back in his coat for another day.

“Where are we going?” the mestizo asked. “Will we need fresh horses?”

“Three horses. Angel will join us as soon as he can escape Señora Montenez.”

Rincón chuckled and remained at his friend’s side. The two men watched as seven of Najera’s lancers unloaded as many jars from a string of pack mules they had procured from a farm north of Monterrey. Raúl immediately guessed the contents of the jars when he noticed how the pack train had been slowed by the curious inhabitants of Saltillo, who had crowded around to peer beneath the jar lids at General Najera’s grisly trophies, preserved in oil.