Читать книгу Gunsmoke Talk: A Walt Slade Western - Bradford Scott - Страница 7

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SLADE WENT sideways in his saddle as the muzzle of the gun jutted in his direction. It spurted smoke. The slug fanned his face. The sorrel shot past like a streak of goose grease. Slade swore a wrathful oath and reached for the butt of his Winchester snugged in the saddle boot under his thigh. Then he desisted, glaring at the lurching, reeling horseman as he careened around another bend and out of sight. Looked very much like he was wounded and had perhaps almost unseeingly thrown down on something he thought might block his headlong flight.

Also, to El Halcon’s keen ears came a second drumming of hoofs, more than one set, coming fast. It began to look like the nervous-trigger gentleman might be the object of a chase. Slade tensed for possible action. It quickly proved more than possible.

Around the bend swooped three more riders. The foremost gave a yelp of alarm, and they jerked their mounts to a slithering halt.

This time Slade went clear out of the saddle. As he hit the ground, a slug yelled through the space his body had occupied an instant before. Another kicked dirt into the air scant inches from his head.

Prone on the ground, Slade drew and shot with both hands. There was a yell of pain, and one of the riders dropped his gun and clutched at a blood-spouting arm. Another yell and the leg of a second flopped wildly out of the stirrup. Screeching curses, the trio whirled their horses and streaked back the way they had come. Slade lined sights with the third man’s back, then held his fire. The whole affair had been so absolutely loco as to defy explanation, and he did not wish to kill anybody unless he was forced to. He got to his feet, listened a moment to the hoofbeats dimming into the distance and dusted himself off, growling angrily to Shadow, who, knowing just what to do when lead started whistling, had leaped sideways into the brush.

“Okay, feller,” his master concluded, “you can come out. I don’t think there’ll be a second encore. What in blazes have we horned into?”

If Shadow knew, he didn’t admit it and satisfied himself with a derisive snort. Slade mounted, hesitated a moment. He would have liked to trail after the trio, but there was the first rider to consider. Little doubt but that he had stopped lead. Might be badly hurt and in need of assistance. Had looked like he would fall from his mount at any moment.

Turning Shadow, Slade rode back the way he had come. He rode warily, alert for anything else untoward, but the back trail remained peaceful. Finally he reached a point where he could see ahead for considerably more than a mile. The lone horseman was nowhere in sight.

Halting Shadow, Slade rolled a cigarette, lounged comfortably in the hull and considered the situation. Even at the rate he was traveling, the fellow would not have had time to reach the next bend in the trail. So he must have turned off somewhere into the brush. Appeared he was not so badly hurt, after all, and had no doubt gotten in the clear. Of course, he might be holed up somewhere awaiting his pursuers, but Slade thought that unlikely, and he had no intention of trying to find out; he’d heard enough blue whistlers singing songs to him for one day.

“Well, horse,” he remarked, “looks like Captain Jim was right, per usual, when he ’lowed there was a bunch of horned toads, raising the devil hereabouts and twisting his tail. That is, if today is a fair sample of the goings on. Yep, looks like we should be able to do a little business in the section, if we manage to stay in one piece long enough. Oh, well, needs must when the devil drives, as the saying goes, so let’s amble on our way if we hope to make Clint by not too far after dark. Should be hitting the cultivated lands before long; may learn something from somebody there. That is, if that ruckus had its inception that far northwest. We’ll just go and see.”

Shadow offered no objection, doubtless reflecting that oats were to be had at Clint to pleasingly supplement the strictly grass diet he’d been on for the past few days, and ambled on at a fairly fast pace.

Slade glanced at the westering sun. Only about a dozen miles to Clint, a shady town of adobe houses and folks who as a rule were peaceful and law-abiding. So much so, in fact, that the community was able to dispense with the services of a town marshal, relying on Trevis Serby, Sheriff of El Paso County, for any required law enforcement, abetted by Tomas Cardena, the plump and genial mayor whom Slade knew well.

That is, it used to be like that, but if the day’s happenings were a sample of present conditions in the section, even Clint might be pawin’ sand a mite. Be that as it may, there was opportunity at Clint to put on the nosebag and sleep in a comfortable bed, both of which had their attractions for a healthy young man who had been subsisting on scant rations of late and using the sky for a blanket.

A few more miles of steady going and they reached the beginning of the cultivated lands. Now the trail led between small farms, orchards and vineyards—a scene of pastoral peace and prosperity.

Workers in the fields raised their heads to gaze at the tall horseman, but nobody spoke to him. Slade gradually developed the conviction that he was undergoing a critical appraisal. Also, sensitive to expressions and gestures, he sensed an atmosphere of distinct hostility. Not necessarily directed at him personally, but toward what he might possibly represent. Quite different from what he had encountered when he last rode this way, a couple of years back. Began to look like any stranger was an object of suspicion.

Of course the section might have experienced considerable change in two years. It had always been subject to change. Time was when the population of the valley was almost wholly Mexican, but the steady flow of immigration from the east had changed that. Now Americans, especially Texas- Americans, were in the majority.

Even in comparatively recent years the section had known plenty of turbulence. At San Elizario, only three miles to the left of Clint, Judge Charles Howard, John McBride and John Atkinson, members of the very small American colony at the time, were shot to death before an adobe wall in the final tragedy of the famous Salt War.

Through the brush country, Slade had ridden very much on the alert, carefully studying the movements of birds on the wing and little animals in the growth, against a possible attempted drygulching by the trio of gunslingers, although he thought such an attempt unlikely. Two of the hellions were probably not feeling very good at the moment and had no doubt headed for some place where they could get patched up, possibly Clint

Now, however, in the region of cultivation, he relaxed somewhat; it was not a good terrain for an ambush.

Sunset flamed in a riot of color that drenched the western peaks with gold and rose and amethyst and mauve. The mighty shoulders of the Franklins were swatched in royal purple. The towering crest of Sierra de Cristo Rey was ringed with saffron fires. Comanche Peak glowed crimson and violet. Gradually the dusk sifted its blue film of beauty over the farm lands. The bonfire stars of Texas blazed overhead, and it was night.

Slade rode on. Shadow quickened his pace in anticipation of something with which to line his empty belly. And soon the lights of Clint sparkled in the decreasing distance.

Mayor Tomas Cardena, whose duties as Clint’s chief executive were not onerous, owned a hospitable cantina which was frequented not only by the townspeople but by sprightly young vaqueros from south of the Rio Grande, bronzed and bearded farmers and grape growers, and quite a sprinkling of Texas cowhands. With now and then gentlemen who looked to be punchers but who had not recently known the feel of rope or branding iron. For Clint was in the nature of a “passing through” town and at times frequented by those who preferred to do most of their riding during the hours between sunset and dawn.

At the hitchrack in front of the cantina Slade drew rein. He tied Shadow securely to the evening breeze and entered. Cardena, plump, jovial and efficient, spotted him at once and gave vent to a joyous exclamation. He hurried forward, hand extended, his rubicund features wreathed in smiles.

“Capitan!” he exclaimed. “You have returned!”

“Looks sorta that way,” Slade admitted, returning the other’s grip.

“Ha! This is a day!” chortled Cardena. “We will celebrate with the dinner beyond compare, and the wine of the best. Come, Capitan!”

“First,” Slade replied, “I want to care for my horse. Chances are you’ll remember him, too.”

“The beautiful caballo, how could I forget?” returned the mayor. “We will take him to my barn at once. Come, I will accompany you.”

Outside, Cardena made much of Shadow, who evidently remembered him. Then he led the way to his commodious stable.

“The best,” he ordered the old keeper, who also remembered both Slade and the horse. After which they returned to the cantina. Having seated his honored guest, Cardena hurried to the kitchen to give instructions for the preparing of the meal. He returned to the table and occupied a chair, his black eyes twinkling.

Slade liked Tomas Cardena, who was an excellent example of Mexican courtliness and Texas vigor, a combination hard to beat. He spoke both English and Spanish fluently, and in moments of excitement or when he wished to swear with unusual vigor, he resorted to both languages, with an occasional pungent Yaqui expletive thrown in for good measure. Also, there was plenty of stringy muscle beneath his plump-appearing exterior, and he was capable of keeping order in his establishment if the going should happen to get a mite rough.

His cantina, although not overly large, was excellently appointed and softly lighted without being gloomy.

After a while the dinner arrived, and it was all the host had promised for it. He and Slade enjoyed it to the full, for Cardena had not yet dined and El Halcon had been eating sketchily for some days.

The wine, poured with ceremony commensurate to the occasion, was a product of the valley’s golden grapes, and Slade considered it the peer of the best France could boast.

“And now,” said Cardena, after the dishes had been cleared away and they were left alone over coffee and cigarettes, “and now, Capitan, what brings you here?”

“Trouble,” Slade replied, “or so I have been given to understand.”

“Aye,” nodded Cardena, “there is trouble here.”

“Just what is the trouble, Tomas?” Slade asked.

“The trouble,” Cardena replied sententiously, “is the Starlight Riders.”

“Starlight Riders,” Slade repeated. “Quite poetic.”

“Yes,” Cardena agreed grimly, “very poetic. It was given them by some loco hombre because they commit their depredations chiefly under the stars. There is nothing poetic about those devils. Not that they aren’t artists—with rifle and sixgun. They exact tribute from the farmers and grape growers of the valley, and from the small ranch owners to the east. Those who do not pay suffer.”

“Extortion through fear,” Slade observed. “It has happened in other parts of Texas.”

Cardena nodded. “Back in the old days,” he said, “bandidos from the south preyed on the valley dwellers in similar fashion. And the attempt to collect a ‘tax’ on each bushel of salt taken from the Salt Lakes by Mexican carters resulted in the Salt War, in the course of which men died.

“And here,” he added, his face hardening, “men have also died.”

“So I have heard,” Slade remarked. “And have shopkeepers and cantina owners here and in El Paso been approached?”

“So far, not here,” Cardena replied. “But I have heard that some cantina owners in El Paso and in Juarez across the river have been approached.”

Slade nodded thoughtfully. “Something of like nature was attempted in San Antonio a few years back,” he observed.

“Si, and I heard that El Halcon visited San Antonio and strangely those practices suddenly ceased to be, and that certain ladrones also ceased to be,” said Cardena.

Slade smiled, but did not otherwise comment. “Just what all has happened here, Tomas?” he asked.

“Workers in the field have been shot at,” Cardena answered. “Barns have been burned, and haystacks. One small farmhouse was burned. And the bodies of the two farmers who lived there were found amid the ruins. They had been shot to death. The whisper goes that they refused to pay when approached by an emissary of the Starlight Riders. Because of the fear of reprisals, it is difficult to get anybody to talk.”

“An old owlhoot method—rule by terror, get the inhabitants of a section demoralized and afraid to open their mouths,” Slade said. “And Sheriff Serby has been unable to do anything about it?”

“So far,” Cardena replied. “He has tried. He visited me here a couple of times, and we discussed the matter and tried to gain information, with no success.”

Slade’s black brows drew together, and he shot a glance at his table companion. If the situation was as bad as the mayor outlined it, he was developing fear for the safety of Tomas Cardena. Not at all impossible that his cooperation with the sheriff had been relayed to the Riders. Cardena didn’t scare easily, was impetuous and outspoken. If the wrong pair of ears had overheard his conversations with Serby, he might well be singled out for retaliation.

Abruptly Slade wondered if he’d already had a brush with some of the Starlight Riders. Began to look a little that way. He reviewed the happening on the trail. An undoubtedly wounded man apparently fleeing for his life, with three others in hot pursuit. And he was revising his former opinion that the throwing of lead at himself might have been but the reaction of nervous trigger fingers. More likely it had been a deliberate attempt to eliminate a witness to a crime or to remove a possible obstacle from their path.

Well, if so, he had taken the first trick, which developed a feeling of satisfaction. He decided to acquaint Cardena with the incident and proceeded to do so.

“What do you think?” he concluded.

“I think,” Cardena replied slowly, “that those three men were members of the bunch, and that the one fleeing from them was somebody who had defied them. And they headed in this direction?”

“Apparently so,” Slade answered. “I’ve a notion they were in need of a little medical attention. Would hardly show up in town until after dark, I imagine.”

Cardena thought a moment. “Tell you what,” he suggested. “Suppose we amble over to the doctor’s office and see if he’s treated anybody for gunshot wounds tonight.”

“Not a bad idea,” Slade agreed. Cardena said a few words to his head bartender and they left the cantina.

“Just a short walk,” said the mayor. “Reckon you can make it without your horse. Oh, I know—you cowhands, or former cowhands, can usually just make it to the nearest saloon, on foot.”

“You malign us,” Slade protested. “Sometimes we’ll pass up the first one and walk all the way to a second.”

“Uh-huh, if it happens to be next door and looks more quiet and peaceful,” was the sarcastic rejoinder. Slade chuckled and did not pursue the argument.

It was really but a short jaunt to the doctor’s office, and Slade made it despite his high heels, without suffering crippling results. Cardena gestured to a lighted window.

“Doc’s up and in his office,” he said. “We don’t need to knock.”

Slade, slightly in front, pushed open the door, and they came face to face with a remarkable tableau.

A man was just gingerly rolling his overalls down over a bandaged leg. The white-haired doctor was applying a bandage to the arm of another man.

Nothing unusual for a doctor’s office, but—

Both men wore black masks, and the one the doctor was ministering to held a gun in his hand!