Renegade Read online

  “No good-byes?”

  “No nothing. Just wait till it’s dark and leave, but don’t tell me when you’re going. I’ve been enough of a fool over you and did I see you really fixing to leave I’d likely say something crazy.”

  “You need the words, Willy?”

  “No. Don’t you dare say them. Don’t you dare cheapen what’s happened betwixt us with fool words that don’t mean nothing. By this time tomorrow you’ll be laughin’ fit to bust at the little she-coon who—”

  “Hey, shut up. Now you’re the one who’s spoiling something beautiful with foolish words. Nobody’s going to laugh at you, Willy. Nobody’s ever going to forget you, either.”

  “Aw hell, move you’ fool ass an’ come, you sweet crazy thing!”

  Chapter Four

  The train stopped nowhere near the mining town of Tombstone. Walker hadn’t known this when he boarded with a ticket for California, but he soon learned Tombstone was off the main line for one thing and closing down because of flooding in the mines for another. It was just as well. Tombstone had popped into Madame Octoroon’s head, probably, because of the reputation it had as a hard-cased town near the border. If a semi-literate madam thought of it as a likely place for a wanted man to be headed, others might well be considering it, too.

  The overnight ride in the day coach hadn’t been so bad, but it got hot as a two-dollar pistol when sunrise caught them on the Arizona desert. Neither the conductor nor any of the other passengers had seemed suspicious or interested in a tall redheaded man in a checkered suit a size too small, but it was time he began thinking his next move through.

  The whore had probably been right about the San Diego station. The station at Tucson might offer a suspicious marshal or two, too. So when the train stopped for water at Benson, he got off.

  Benson was a little jerkwater stop on the banks of the shallow San Pedro River, running north out of Mexico. Walker found a saloon open for business early and went inside. He bought a bottle and took it to a table in a corner near the back. He didn’t intend to drink the bottle. But only a hard drinker would be sitting alone in a saloon in midmorning, and he didn’t want any questions, either. The Mexican bartender didn’t look like he was interested in asking any.

  It seemed to take forever, but after a while he heard the train whistle and knew it was pulling out. He stared down at his glass, not betraying any interest in the railroad’s own business.

  A few minutes later, a lean-looking middle-aged man with a tin star pinned to his faded blue shirt came in and moseyed up to the bar, not looking Walker’s way. The lawman greeted the bartender in border Mex and in the same lingo asked, “What have we got over in the corner, Jose?”

  The bartender shrugged and answered in Spanish, “Just a drunk. He looks like a salesman or something.”

  Walker kept his face blank, staring owlishly down at his half-filled glass as the town law sauntered over, casually, and sat down at his table. The lawman stared thoughtfully at the stranger in town for a long hard minute before he said, “If you was on the transcontinental, mister, you just missed your train.”

  Walker looked up, pretending to be startled as he answered in a slurred voice, “My train? Thash imposhible! They told me the train was stoppin’ for an hour!”

  “It stops for mebbe fifteen minutes and, like I said, it just left. You got any money on you, mister?”

  “Money? You want money?” Walker blustered, taking out some crumpled bills and spreading them on the table. The lawman looked relieved and said, “Put it away before you lose it, friend. We got a vagrancy law in Benson but as long as you got two dollars you’re O.K. What line are you in? Salesman?”

  Walker knew a salesman would be expected to have a sample case. He shook his head and said, “Printer, Journeyman printer. Hear there’s work in my line out on the Coast. Got laid off in El Paso a week ago for some reason and … Look here, they had no call to fire me like that! I mean. I come to work on time, most days, and I never made all that many mistakes and … Damn it, the printer’s wife was down on me and—”

  “Yeah, I know,” soothed the lawman, getting to his feet with a look of bored pity as he added, “There’s no print shop worth mention in this town, mister. If I were you I’d catch the next ride out. Do you follow my meaning?”

  “Sure, Marshal. Where in hell is this town, anyway?”

  “You’re in Benson, Arizona Territory. See that the sun don’t set on you hereabouts, unless you like working on county roads.”

  Walker waited until the lawman left before he went over to the bar and said, in English, “Thash a mean sheriff, you know?”

  The bartender shrugged and said, “He’s just doing his job.”

  “Yeah, but he tol’ me to git, an’ he sounded like he meant it. You know where I can hire me a horse?”

  “Livery stable just down the street, but where do you think you’re going?”

  “Back up the track to Dragoon. Thash just a few miles from here, right?”

  “More like fifteen. What you want to go to Dragoon for?”

  ‘Teller on the train said they has a newshpaper in Dragoon. Said they might hire me there, but the fool train didn’t stop there, and—”

  “Mister, if I was you, I’d catch the next through train and go on out to the Coast like you said.”

  “Shit, I don’t know for sure there’s a job for me in Dago an’ Dragoon’s a lot closher, so, yeah, I’ll hire a nag an’ run on up to Dragoon.”

  Out in the blazing sunlight, he dropped the drunken act and went to the livery stable like a man who knew what he was doing. He’d established a false lead with the bartender, but he knew the livery stable would hesitate to send an obvious drunk out across fifteen miles of desert.

  The colored stablehand saddled up a swaybacked bay gelding without comment and accepted a ten-dollar deposit against its safe return. It left Walker almost broke, but he had a horse and gun, now, which was a lot more than he’d escaped from Death Row with.

  He rode out of Benson in the direction of Dragoon, fording the shallow San Pedro without meeting anyone important. Like most desert streams, the San Pedro was lined with trees and brush, mostly mesquite and salt cedar. Such grass as he was likely to find would be growing near the river, too, and according to the map, the valley of the San Pedro led to Del Rio, Mexico. It should take him at least two days to reach the border, and there was an Army post at Fort Huachucal between him and the dubious safety of Mexico. This horse would be missed about sundown. They’d have it on the wire by nightfall, but he’d be in rugged, almost deserted country by then. Yeah, he’d ride all night and hole up in the Mule Mountains across the river from the fort until he figured his next move. Just what that move might be was sort of hazy at the moment, but he was still alive and running free, and that was more than he’d expected just two nights ago.

  Dick Walker would never know whether the troopers from Fort Huachuca had really bothered to look for him. The scrub-covered Mule Mountains just north of the border were a maze of canyons, and he had little trouble holing up with his stolen horse for the next few days as he waited for the interest to die down. He found a little spring in a shaded canyon where the antique horse could graze and water. He spent most of the next few days hunkered on a ridge with a good view of the outside world and, as far as he could tell, nobody rode anywhere near his hideout. He catnapped at night and could have stayed there forever, had he had anything to eat. The horse was doing fine on grass. The Mule Mountains didn’t offer enough other food for even an Apache to survive, which was probably why there were none around.

  He nibbled mesquite pods and caught some frogs at the spring. He ate a couple of lizards and considered using one of his precious six shots on a buzzard, more than once. He’d had no idea how much a buzzard resembled a fat turkey until he’d fasted a couple of days.

  But he didn’t shoot any game, knowing the sound would carry for miles. Having plenty of time to study the rough map of the territory he carried
in his head, Walker finally decided his best bet was a border jump between Nogales and Douglas, avoiding any towns, Mexican or American, until he was well south of the border. The damned wire probably stretched to Del Rio, and, even if it didn’t, a big town like Del Rio would be crawling with Rurales.

  With his old gelding fat and rested, he struck out southeast into the busted-up hell of the Sierra Madres. It was said that even the Rurales steered clear of the Yaqui Indians of the Sierra Madres. The Yaqui were supposed to be meaner than the Apaches. On the other hand, the Rurales were gringo-hating sons-of-bitches who’d shoot a redheaded man with blue eyes on sight. With luck, any Indians he met might not be packing machine guns. Uncle Sam, in his infinite wisdom, had just sold El Presidente Diaz a whole mess of those new Maxim machine guns, doubtless to help him keep a “stable government” in power.

  Yeah, his chances against the still-wild Indians of the Sierra Madres were piss-poor, but he’d played tag with Apaches and come out alive.

  He had no idea what a man with a six-gun could do against a machine gun. He’d fired one of the damned things only once, back at the 10th. He still couldn’t believe what it had done to the target.

  Chapter Five

  As is often the case, the things a man fears fail to materialize. It’s the things he’s not expecting he has to worry about.

  Dick Walker got across the border undetected, following a dry ridge of the Sierra Madre foothills into Sonora, Mexico. He rode at night and holed up by day, watching for smoke and not spotting any. If there were any Yaqui in this part of Mexico, he never noticed them. Perhaps they knew about those machine guns of the Mexican Rurales, too, and were not anxious to meet anyone.

  He followed the mountains south as far as a fork of the Yaqui River and followed it downstream to the little pueblo of Uruachic, occasioning some merriment as he rode in, wearing a smile and a loud checkered suit.

  The people were friendly enough and he repaired some of the damage by trading the Yankee duds and a few coins for a more normal-looking outfit. He was wearing the white cotton shirt and pants of a vaquero, with a straw sombrero, when the Rurales picked him up.

  It happened as he was riding out. Too late to draw suspicion by swerving from the trail, he noticed some men in dusty brown uniforms lounging in the doorway of a cantina on the edge of town. He tried to brazen it through by simply riding past. It didn’t work.

  One of the Mexican federal policemen called out, “Hey, you with the red hair and gringo saddle.”

  Walker couldn’t pretend he didn’t hear. He reined in and smiled, speaking Spanish as he replied, “What is it, Sergeant?”

  Now there are a few, a very few, redheaded Mexicans. But the Rurale detected Walker’s American accent and laughed, shouting, “Hey, the gringo speaks Spanish! Where did you learn that snotty Castilian lisp, gringo? You take lessons from some fancy puta from Madrid, eh?”

  “I learned a little in school. The rest I picked up from Mexican friends.”

  “Ah? You got very fancy Mexican friends, then. Maybe big rich rancheros who like gringos, eh?” His voice dropped to a growl, and Walker saw the others were getting interested as the N.C.O. added, “My people were poor peones. The kind who walk with cow shit between their toes. The kind your fancy friends spit on. You going to spit on me, gringo?”

  “No, but I’ll buy you boys a drink. I was on my way to Chimpas, but I’m in no hurry. Is the cantina open?”

  “Hey, you’re a very funny fellow. Since when do Los Rurales pay for a drink, eh? Get down off that horse. Let’s see some identification.”

  The American dismounted carefully, saying, “I don’t have one of your Mexican passports, but—”

  “Hey, that’s a nice gun. U. S. Army .45.”

  Walker kept his hands out to the sides as the sergeant took the gun from his waistband and examined it. One of the others came over to admire it and the sergeant said, “You need a permit to carry a gun in this country, gringo. You got a permit for this gun?”

  “No. I guess I’ll have to give it to you, right?”

  “I know. You’re learning fast, gringo. What else you got?”

  “Not much. I have only a few dollars, but I said I’d buy you boys a drink.”

  The sergeant took his money and snorted, “Bah, now you don’t got no money at all and this makes you a vagrant. Didn’t you know it was against the law to be poor in Mexico?”

  “I guess I do now, Sergeant.”

  The N.C.O. laughed. The others laughed too. The laughter was not really friendly. Walker sighed and said, “Look, you have my money and my gun. The horse isn’t worth much. Can I keep him if I give you the saddle?”

  “Bah, I spit on your Yanqui saddle. I spit in your mother’s milk, too. The horse is very old, and ugly as your sister.”

  “I can keep it, then?”

  “You could if you were going anywhere.”

  There was a long silence as they waited to see if he’d crack. He shrugged and said, “It’s up to you, Sergeant. I used to be a soldier. I know better than to argue with the man in charge.”

  The sergeant stuck out his chest and said, “Maybe I don’t shoot you right now, after all. What kind of soldier were you? A Yanqui soldier? I spit on the U.S. Army. It is said they have to sit down to piss. I’ll bet you were an officer, eh?”

  Walker didn’t answer. There was no way he was going to say the right thing.

  The Rurale N.C.O. said, “All right, Captain Gringo with the fancy Spanish. You will get on your sister and come with us.”

  “Anything you say, Sergeant. Where are we going?”

  “We are going back to our station. You are going to your death, if you are very, very fortunate.”

  Walker remounted, resisting the break they might want him to make, and waited until all five Rurales had gotten their obviously better and faster mounts and were in their saddles before he asked, mildly, “Would you mind telling me what I’m charged with, Sergeant?”

  “Charge? Who needs a charge? You are a gringo with no money and no friends, deep inside my country.”

  “I know, but what have I ever done to you?”

  “To begin with, you were born. Our captain will decide what else we have to shoot you for. Come. La siesta time is almost over and the captain will be pleased to see we have been defending our country.”

  “Oh, you’re taking me to an officer? That’s good.”

  “Good for us, maybe. For you, I don’t know. If it was up to me, you’d be dead already, for I am a most compassionate man. Our captain likes to talk to people before he orders them against the wall. Since you are a man of sense who gives good guns without silly words about his rights, I shall tell you something: When the captain asks questions, it is best to answer them. He likes to beat confessions out of prisoners.”

  “But what if I’ve nothing to confess to, Sergeant?”

  “You’d better think of something. One way or the other, the captain will get a confession to something out of you, gringo.”

  As they started to ride off together, the sergeant suddenly laughed and called out to his companions, “Hey, I make the joke! We are taking Captain Gringo to meet Captain Torture. It is most amusing, don’t you think?”

  The others laughed. Walker didn’t. He didn’t find his new name, or the jokes about it, at all amusing.

  Chapter Six

  Captain Torture, if that was his name, was a fat little man with a heavy drinker’s nose. His officer’s kit was stained with red wine and he looked like he had a terrible hangover as he stared at Walker from behind the desk of his cool adobe-walled office at the Rurale post. Two of the men who’d brought him in stood between Walker and the only doorway, pistols out but pointed politely at the tile floor. There were dark smears on the wall that might have been human blood. They were dry and Walker didn’t think he’d better comment on them.

  He didn’t know it, but the fat little man called Captain Torture was in one of his nicer moods. He had a splitting headache and a v
ery pretty peasant girl was awaiting his further pleasures tied to the bed in his quarters. Captain Torture asked the routine questions, got the routine lies from the wanted fugitive, and decided the game wasn’t worth the candle. He waved a fat fingered hand and ordered the guards, “Put him with the others in the cell. Maybe we will shoot them later this evening. Maybe in the morning.”

  Walker asked, “Don’t I get a trial, sir?” and Captain Torture said, “You have had your trial. I could think of a charge, perhaps, if it wasn’t such a hot day. It should be most interesting to you, as an American. We just got one of those new Maxim machine guns and the men are anxious to try it out. As for myself, I am fatigued with this discussion. Perhaps we shall talk some more before your execution. Perhaps not. In any case, this conversation is over.”

  “Damn it, Captain! I demand to see the U.S. Consul!”

  Captain Torture raised an eyebrow meaningfully and one of the guards pistol-whipped Walker across the back of the head, sending him to his hands and knees on the tiles, righting not to black out. When the stars finally settled down enough for him to look up, Captain Torture was no longer behind the desk.

  The guard who hadn’t hit him helped him to his feet, saying, “You were most fortunate, friend. The captain seems very indulgent today.”

  As they hauled him away, he heard a woman’s anguished screams from somewhere in the distance. One of the guards chuckled and observed, “The little Indian girl has a lot to learn, eh?”

  The other shrugged and answered, “True. I wonder why he takes them in the Italian manner after going to so much trouble about virginity. I mean, if you’re only going to put it up their ass—”

  “Careful, the open mouth draws many flies. What the captain does in his spare time is none of your concern. Some men collect stamps. Some have other hobbies, eh?”

  Walker was taken to a stout oaken door and they threw him into a crowded dark cell with perhaps fifteen others. It was hard to tell with all the noise, and there was no place to sit back and get an overall view. Once he’d assured the anxious prisoners he had no more idea than they of what was happening outside, they simmered down to a constant muttering of resigned, protested innocence. From scraps of conversation he could follow he gathered most of their stories were like his. All but two of the men in the fetid little cells were simple peasants who’d managed to cross some Rurale, any Rurale, some way. Apparently it was against the law to do anything in Mexico under El Presidente’s “stable government.”