Читать книгу Dead Men Don't Lie - Jackson Cain - Страница 19

Chapter 9

That night Slater and Moreno rode into Alberto’s camp behind the clump of boulders up in the Sierra Madre foothills. He was sitting in front of a blazing fire, drunk on tequila, shoving hot beans and tortillas into his mouth.

“You got the pesos?” Alberto asked with an inebriated grin.

“You got anything in your head except tamales y frijoles?” Moreno asked, swinging down from his horse.

Alberto put down his beans. He stood and, lowering his hand onto his holstered pistol, he said:

“You really wanna fuck with me?”

“Nobody wanna fuck anybody dumb as you,” Slater said. “Anyway we got the pesetas—more than you can ever imagine.”

Alberto still had his hand on his gun.

“Ey, amigo,” Moreno said, slapping Alberto’s back, giving him his widest, most ingratiating grin. “What’s more important? Pesos in your saddlebags or notches on your pistola? Come. Bring the tequila. We got to celebrate. You are now a wealthy man.”

Turning around toward his mount, Moreno unhooked a valise, opened it up, and tossed it at Alberto’s feet. Bound-up packs of hundred-dollar bills spilled out in front of the drunken man.

“Ah, I knew you was simpático,” Alberto said. “We will have mucho bueno times, you, Señor Slater, and me, no?”

Hypnotized by the riches strewn in front of him, he knelt down and opened up money bag after money bag after money bag on the blanket in front of the fire.

“It is mucho bueno, muy bueno,” the inebriated outlaw whispered.

“No,” Slater said. “It’s no good, no bueno.”

The two bandits stared at Slater. Alberto was confused.

“There’s too much money in them bags, Moreno. Didn’t you hear the banker? We didn’t hit any federale payroll. We intercepted a money shipment straight from the U.S. Treasury to El Presidente Díaz himself. We got us over a hundred fifty thousand fresh-minted yanqui hundred-dollar bills. How many brand-new, hot-off-the-printing-presses hundred-dollar bills you ever seen in Méjico? Spend one of those—take one into a bank, a hotel, take one anyplace, even into a dirt-poor Chiapas cantina—and you’ll have Díaz, his federales, his rurales, the U.S. Army, every bounty hunter south of the Rio climbing up our asses.”

“What you suggest we do?” Moreno asked.

“I’m taking my share and going to ground. I’ll stash it and live off the land till I can figure out how to spend it. It may take me years to dig it up.”

“You sayin’ we got a fortune, but we can’t spend it?” Moreno asked.

“Not one bill of it. It’s so hot, it’s smokin’.”

“Es verdad,” Moreno said softly, half to himself, finally understanding their problem.

“You just ain’t got the cojones to spend it,” Alberto said, his hand, once more, hovering over his sidearm. “I’m taking my share right back to my village. I left it like a thief in the night, but I’m comin’ back rich as Don Porfirio himself. I’m livin’ like a grandee from here on out, and any hombre says different, he’s havin’ it out with me.”

Slater cross-drew a pistol out of his belt in a smooth, single motion and shot the intoxicated man just above his right eye.

“Had to be done,” Moreno said, slowly nodding. “He was a threat to both of us.”

They paused only to eat the rest of the beans, washing them down with black coffee. Quickly, emptying the rest of the blackened pot onto the campfire, they kicked dirt over the rest. Unsaddling their horses, they walked to the remuda, threw the saddles onto their new mounts, and cinched them up. They threw a pad, crossbucks, and panniers onto a fresh mule. They then meticulously loaded the gear and money bags on it.

They cut the exhausted stock loose.

We got fresh horses, a strong pack mule, mucho dinero, and a head start, Slater thought bleakly. That’s all I ever asked for.