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  Savage kept right on running as though the hounds of hell were snapping at his heels, so fast in fact that the big sombrero tumbled off just as he raced beneath a light.

  “It is Savage!”

  Suddenly there was gunfire in the valley night, the wicked lead droning around him as he did an impression of an antelope in full flight.

  The wild shooting didn’t hurt him, but the fall did. In the darkness, he ran headlong into a pit as dark as a pawnbroker’s soul. He cartwheeled and cracked his head against a large stone that didn’t give an inch. The sky seemed full of shooting stars and Roman candles as he clawed his way out the far side, cursing like a muleskinner. What price excitement now, Savage? And where had he left Stud? His brain was so addled he couldn’t remember, and the loud voices and the thump of running feet drew closer.

  SAVAGE 6: GET THE GRINGO!

  By E. Jefferson Clay

  First published by Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia

  © 2019 by Piccadilly Publishing

  First Electronic Edition: November 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Table of Contents

  One – Break for the Border

  Two – One of the Family

  Three – Gringo on the Run

  Four – Messages and Mysteries

  Five – Don’t Go Down the Mine

  Six – Find Yaqui Joe

  Seven – Garcia’s Gold

  Eight – Get the Gringo!

  Nine – Unholy Partners

  Ten – The Battle for Rancho Cortez

  About the Author

  One – Break for the Border

  Savage tasted grit in his teeth. It was a hot windy day along the New Mexico border, and the sky was tinged with yellow. Sand skittered across the street and whispered its insidious way through the chinks and cracks around doors and windows. Savage felt an abrasive crunching beneath his boots. He paused to pull a sheaf of papers from a hip pocket, papers that told, in a general way, who he was, what he did and what the law thought of him.

  He stood tapping the papers against his hand for an indecisive moment before crossing to the door with the marshal’s sign on it. He gave it a good thump.

  “Come in, come in, no need to knock the damn thing down!”

  It was not a promising beginning. The border marshal of Chano was a harried, middle-aged man who was doing his best to promote cordial relations between the United States and Mexico that troubled summer. He was also a man with an encyclopedic memory for names, faces and reputations, and he twitched visibly when he read the name Clinton Dylan Savage—dealer.

  “You expect me to give you official permission to visit Mexico?” he croaked. “At a time when relations have never been more tense, when Mexico is simmering with revolt from Sonora to Mexico City and when every decent, law-abiding citizen along the border is trying to keep the lid on? You want me to let you across the border? Surely you can’t be serious?”

  Savage studied the man stonily, and few could be stonier when he put his mind to it. He was deadly serious, of course. He was going to Mexico, and he wanted official approval—papers to show the Rurales and Federales, if necessary. But he wouldn’t crawl to any desk man, and he was not about to stand still for the suggestion that he couldn’t be trusted down there.

  “Do I get the papers or don’t I?” he growled.

  “You certainly do not, Mr. Savage—dealer! Dealer in what?” the marshal demanded, rising. “In mayhem, violence, underhanded dealings, chicanery and outright immorality perhaps?”

  It was painfully clear that the border marshal had heard of Savage before. The lawman snorted righteously and got ready to continue.

  “Forget it, mister,” Savage snapped. “If I don’t get any papers, I sure as hell don’t want any lectures.” He set his hat on the back of his head and strode to the door, a tall and black-haired man with the coldest eyes the border marshal had ever seen. “See you when I get back ... mebbe.”

  As an official of some importance and accustomed to respect, the marshal was too angry for a time after his visitor’s departure to think clearly on what had been said.

  He was having a cup of coffee poured for him by the secretary, who always wore blouses two sizes too small for her, when understanding suddenly hit him, bringing him to his feet and upsetting his drink.

  “Hell and damnation!” he exploded. “Why didn’t I see it before? He intends to cross anyway.”

  “Who, Marshal?” the girl blinked. “Do you mean that good-looking Mr. Savage?”

  “I mean Savage the troublemaker,” the marshal gasped. He was rushing for the door to alert his patrol sergeant when it happened. From the direction of the nearby border came a roaring blast that broke a window and made the frame building tremble on its adobe-brick foundations.

  The simple action of passing through the doorway seemed to age the marshal at least a year. By the time he got through, instinct was telling him that whatever the nature of that sudden uproar, Clint Savage was behind it. The lawman had refused Savage permission to go into Mexico. He should have known Savage wasn’t the kind of man that would take a refusal meekly.

  “It’s Savage trying to cross illegally,” he roared as a dark, powdery smoke cloud drifted across the hills. “Stop him!”

  “We can’t jump to conclusions, Marshal,” the patrol sergeant said mildly, but then he led his men off at a gallop to investigate.

  The border marshal refused to be reassured, and he spent an anxious, nail-biting time at his window until the haggard sergeant returned to report that somebody had blown up the border patrol’s supply shed, apparently to create a diversion.

  Two horsemen had raced across the border into Old Mexico as the marshals were fighting the fire. “Savage,” the border marshal said wearily.

  The sergeant clicked his heels. “Report that identity of transgressors not yet established, sir.”

  “It was Savage, you spit-and-polish moron. Who else would dare?”

  The sergeant had no answer for that.

  The man cleared his throat. “Er, one bright spot, sir. Our lookouts saw a Rurale patrol give chase—probably alerted by the explosion.”

  “They won’t catch him.”

  The sergeant opened his mouth to argue but thought better of it. He told himself just to wait patiently until word came through from their Mexican counterparts that the villains had been captured and were to be returned to them for punishment. If border security could be treated with such outrageous contempt, the sergeant considered soberly, it would become the laughing stock of the region. The Rurales must run the pair down.

  But they didn’t.

  Seated in a chair tilted back with its front legs off the floor, his boots crossed atop the cantina table, Yaqui Joe chuckled appreciatively around a mouthful of tequila. He swallowed the spirits and showed his horse-teeth in a big grin.

  “Ah, amigo, when I name you Crazy Savage, I was right on the target, no?”

  His remark drew no response. Leaning on the unplaned plank bar of the gloomy little adobe cantina, Savage was more interested in the girl pouring his whiskey. She was a bit old by his standards ... at least eighteen. But he wouldn’t quibble about that, he thought generously. He would make allowances for the fact that she was past her prime when she began taking an interest in him, which she was beginning to do now, as he gently stroked the soft inside of her arm.

  “Ah, si,” Yaqui Joe continued, “crazy to blow up the border house with the dynamite and double-crazy to set fire to the grass in the canyon so the Rurales cannot chase us any further ...” He chuckled at the recollection and took another slug of tequila. The snaggle-toothed Mexican-Indian breed hadn’t been back to his homeland for some time, and was in good spirits. “Of course also it is crazy that you come so far just to try and prove me a liar, but Yaqui Joe is glad of this craziness, for now you will see my family and the home I come from.”

  That brought a sideways glance from Savage. The son of a bitch was sticking to his story about his folks being stinking rich and his father being a real don, he mused. But time was running out. This time, Savage was really calling his bluff. Ever since Yaqui Joe, horse thief, no-account and all round weird character had attached himself to his coattails, Savage had been obliged to listen to lies about lofty origins and splendid connections. It was so obvious that scrofulous and penniless Yaqui Joe had sprung from poverty and would surely perish without two dimes to rub together. That was why Savage had finally decided it was worthwhile to take a visit to Mexico with him. Yaqui Joe had spun a tale about how his aristocratic parent was in poor health and long overdue for a visit from his wandering eldest son.

  If nothing else, Savage believed, this journey would force Yaqui Joe to admit that he was a liar. And if Savage had to blow up the odd border outpost and give the Rurales a little exercise to see that happen, then so be it.
  “Did you really do all he says, Mr. Savage?” the girl asked. She had been strangely standoffish at first but was melting gradually.

  Savage, whose major soft spot was pretty women, gave her a slow look and shook his big head. “Not me,” he lied. “And you can call me Clint.”

  “But ... but isn’t that dynamite sticking out of your saddlebag ... Clint?” she queried.

  Savage turned his head to scowl at the bags which had been dumped carelessly at the end of the bar. There was no mistaking the fact that those solid red sticks sticking out from beneath the flap were in fact, Dr. Nobel’s best known invention.

  He squeezed her hand. “I just tote them for sentimental reasons, sugar.”

  “Dynamite? Sentimental?” she half smiled. “You’re making jokes to me, Clint.”

  “No chance,” Savage drawled, his quick eye catching an image in the spotted bar mirror. An evil-looking Mexican in grubby black velvet was coming through the back door. “You see, honey, when my old man was on his death bed, he gave me just two pieces of advice. Whenever you visit a whorehouse, always ask for the madam, and always take some dynamite when you go to Mexico—just for the cockroaches.”

  She stared at him blankly for a moment before she understood he was pulling her leg. She was laughing and leaning warmly towards him when she sighted the newcomer and her laughter became a shriek. “No, Pancho!”

  The cry reminded Clint Savage that he was in Mexico, a slow-moving land with a hidden streak of red, of sloe-eyed women who invariably had a husband or lover lurking someplace close ... of indolent men who could be stirred to quick violence.

  All this flashed through his mind as he whirled, filled his fist with a six-gun and ducked as a flash of steel came zipping towards him through the smoke-filled air.

  The knife thudded into a roof support behind him as Savage touched his trigger. The Mexican lost his hat and stood staring at it stupidly as it cartwheeled across the dirt floor with two neat new holes through the crown.

  “Pancho ... he thinks he owns me,” the girl gasped. Savage wasn’t interested in her life story. He plucked the knife from the upright and wordlessly beckoned to his would-be assassin while Yaqui Joe and some wide-eyed customers looked on. The ugly Mexican stared malevolently at Savage as the gringo holstered his shooting iron and held out the dagger, handle first. Pancho sensed a trick but couldn’t see what it could be. He suddenly snatched the knife, spat a curse and tried to slash Savage’s throat.

  Savage gave him a backhander across one ear. Then he slammed his palm against the man’s other ear. The knife thunked point first into the floor. Blood ran from the man’s mouth and face as Savage went on belting his ears until he collapsed to the floor, deaf to the world.

  The girl was deeply impressed as she leaned forward to study her lover, who just might be ruined for life. Her eyes were wide with puzzled admiration as she looked up at Savage’s face.

  “Why did you give him back the knife? He could have killed you.”

  “Dyin’s not the most important thing a man does in this life,” Savage said soberly, picking up his glass. “Just the last.”

  Savage and Yaqui Joe covered a leisurely twenty miles the next day, sticking to the back trails and keeping clear of the big haciendas and small adobe towns that studded that part of Sonora. The following day, they put forty behind them, with Savage puffing black cigars and Yaqui Joe lightening the miles with a little guitar music and a lot of talk about Rancho Cortez, supposedly his family’s sprawling cattle ranch, farm and stud horse range.

  “... such a place as you have never seen, Savage,” he boasted. He made an expansive gesture. “Rich land as far as the eye can see, a rancho so vast that only an eagle could overlook its borders. Bulls and stallions roaming the range worth a prince’s ransom ... all wearing the Martinez brand.”

  “Martinez?” This was the first time Savage had heard the name. “You’re sayin’ that’s your handle?”

  “Si. I am Jose Martinez, first son of Don Carlos Martinez and ...”

  “King of the maypole.”

  Yaqui Joe shook his huge sombrero sadly. “Ahh, amigo, to be mistrustful is often necessary in this wicked life, but to doubt the word of a true amigo, that is a sad thing.”

  “Two corrections. First, I’m not doubtin’ you, I’m tellin’ you straight to your face you are the biggest liar between here and Vera Cruz. And the next thing is that you never were, ain’t now and never could be my amigo. Savvy?”

  Where Savage was concerned, Yaqui Joe had a hide like a bull moose. The big, toothy grin showed. “Hey, you like to, as you say, rib Yaqui Joe, for a big joke. But I know you do not come so far and blast your way across the border for nothing, companero. This proves you believe me, no matter what you say.”

  Tobacco smoke trailed over Savage’s shoulder as they traveled on in silence. The breed couldn’t be further off the mark, he mused. He sure as hell didn’t believe him, not for a minute. And the real reason he had been prepared to come this far of his own free will had nothing to do with either trust or friendship. He meant to confront Yaqui Joe with this, his biggest lie, and then use it as a lever to bust up their one-sided ‘partnership’ once and for all.

  Clint Savage figured that a one-hundred mile ride into strife-torn Sonora would be a cheap price to pay for his freedom. Dirt cheap, in fact.

  They reached the tip of the sierras just on dusk and camped in its mighty shadow that night.

  The mountains sprawled like a vast, tawny, humpbacked, brush-covered beast rising above the rangeland plains. The steep sides were gashed and scarred with canyons, arroyos, gullies and watercourses that slanted down steeply. High up in the mountains were little hidden valleys where wild cattle grazed and the puma, wolf and bobcat prowled. There were stands of pine and thorny brush. There was grass to be found and clumps of the razor-edged maguey used by the Mexicans to brew their fiery mescal and pulque.

  “Beyond lies my home, amigo,” was the last thing Yaqui Joe said before Savage went off to stand guard with his Winchester.

  “And New York City,” Savage muttered under his breath. He was easing himself onto a comfortable slab of rock and stretching his long legs in front of him when he saw the Indians. There were five of them drawn up in a curved line across an arroyo, less than a hundred feet away. Savage hadn’t heard a thing, although he prided himself on his total alertness, particularly when he was in strange country. He knew they weren’t there when he and Yaqui Joe made camp. That meant all five had arrived since, without making so much as a whisper of a sound.

  Slowly and warily, Savage lifted the muzzle of the rifle until it was trained on the figure with the feathers in his coarse black hair. The Indians made no move, but Savage was well aware that they all carried rifles, and every weapon was angled in his direction.

  His mouth was dry. He wanted to yell a warning to snoring Yaqui Joe, but he was afraid his voice might be all that was needed to trigger off violence. He was angry that he had let the danger get in so close and doubly peeved by the fact that if trouble erupted, the savages had the numbers on their side.

  The silent tableau held for several minutes before the Indians suddenly turned their ponies around. Without a backward glance at the big, black-haired American with the Winchester and the eagle feather in his hat, they melted into the night.

  Savage lost no time legging it back to camp to awaken Yaqui Joe and tell him. The breed had him describe the Indians in detail. Then he put on a grave and wondering smile as he nodded sagely. “Yaquis,” he said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  Yaqui Joe touched his breast. “Their blood is mine, amigo.”

  “I thought you said your blood was that of Don Carlos Martinez, and that came in a direct line from old Cortez himself?”

  “Both. Half-Spanish and half-Yaqui.”

  “They looked mean,” Savage said, eyes scanning the ridges. “And the sons of bitches move like ghosts.”

  “True, true,” Yaqui Joe seemed amused. “Do you know what they call the Yaquis down here in Sonora?”

  “Negative,” Savage said, making use of one of his best words. “But I have a bad feelin’ that you’re goin’ to tell me.”

 

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