The war wagon a gatling.., p.8
The War Wagon (A Gatling Western #5), page 8
“It was not. It was Andrew Johnson,” Cheno said irritably. “Why did you leave Mexico, skinny boy? With Benito Juarez we had a new country. Even as a gringo boy you could have grown up to be something there.”
Belden said without being asked, “He probably went back to work for the Rangers. McNelly was and is always recruiting jailbirds and wanted men. Gets a hold over them and they have to do whatever he says.”
Gatling made a move toward Belden, but was stopped by Paco and his long-barreled Russian Colt .45, a beautifully made double-action manufactured by the Hartford company for the Czar’s officers.
Pushed back a few feet, Gatling shouted, “Why don’t you drink some warm piss, Belden?”
Cheno was puzzled. He looked at his daughter, who hadn’t said a word since being chastised. “Such talk!” he said. “What is the meaning of this warm piss?” The question was directed at Gatling.
Gatling said, “Ran into Belden down on the river. Wanted to push a fight, tried to make me drink his warm piss.”
“This is crazy!” Belden shouted.
Cheno patted the air with the flat of his hand. He looked like a bandmaster telling the band to play soft.
“It sounds crazy,” he agreed. But it amused him. “Did you drink it?” he said to Gatling.
“I showed him my spring gun, Cheno,” Gatling said. “You saw it. Paco showed it to you.”
The old man smiled and rolled up his shirtsleeve and displayed the spring gun strapped to his forearm. “This is for when I go to make the deal with Diaz.” He rolled down his loose shirtsleeve, which had no cuffs and no cuff buttons, then he put on the silly now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t air of the professional magician about to work a trick for his audience. Then he put on a sort of old-auntie lisp that Gatling figured he thought funny. “Yes, my Press-ident,” he said. “Effy-ting is agreeable to me, but there is one more thing I would like to tell you. I am going to kill you, my Press-ident. Bang! Like this!” Cheno flexed his arm and the spring gun jumped into his hand and he fired a shot that blew Gatling’s hat off his head. The two guards with the British rifles banged into the cave, but the old man waved them away. They went out sheep-faced, disappointed at not being able to use the fast-working bolt actions on something human. Paco picked up Gatling’s perforated hat and stuck it on his head.
“And like that I am the new President of Mexico,” the old man said, squeezing the spring so he could put the derringer back out of sight.
Belden had to get his oar in. “I say this with respect, General Cortinas, but you would be in a stronger position if first you were the new Governor of Coahuila.”
So that’s it, Gatling thought. He knew Belden hadn’t come all this way to eat refried beans with a bunch of shit-ass Mexicans without a Sears Roebuck catalogue to their name. It was some kind of trap.
“I am still the rightful Governor of Coahuila,” the old man said. “What you mean is, I would be in a stronger position if I assumed my rightful place.”
“That’s right, sir,” Belden said. “The time is right, sir. Diaz has withdrawn troops from the north to fight in Morelos. Melendez, the Governor is weak—”
Cheno couldn’t pay attention to anything for very long. He waved his liver spotted hand, saying, “We will talk about it later, Mr. Belden. The skinny boy could escape, and then where would all your plans be?” He gave the sweaty killer an indulgent smile. “Our plans. But I have news that will cheer you. Today is my birthday.”
Peggy Santos looked startled. “Is it, my father? I thought you—”
The old man put on a sly face. “I am sixty-five, Mr. Belden. We will celebrate my next birthday in Mexico City, and if your information about Coahuila is correct, you will be with me in a place of honor.”
“I hope to be, General Cortinas,” Belden said fervently.
Cheno smiled at him. “Call me Cheno,” he said, then for a moment he lost interest in the Presidency of Mexico and pointed at Gatling. “Did you enjoy your conversation with the filthy Ranger spy who calls himself Jennings.”
“He’s no spy,” Gatling said. “He’s just a poor old prospector who’s spent his life looking for gold. I’ve seen a hundred old-timers just like him. McNelly would never hire such a man.”
“That’s what I expected you to say. If he’s just a poor old prospector, why are you defending him?”
“No special reason. Why would you want to kill an old fellow that’s part tetched in the head?”
“Because he’s a spy,” Cheno said. “Because he insulted me and my people. I am going to make such an example of him that no spy will come into this country again. And you. You better think about defending yourself. Not that it will do you any good.”
“Let me have him,” Belden said.
“Not yet,” Cheno said. “There is no hurry. Tonight we will have a big party in my honor. It seems as if everything is coming together for me. So many important men are worried about what I may and may not do. I have five hundred fine, new rifles, all the ammunition I need, and soon the Governor’s offer of fifty thousand will be like loose coins in my pocket.”
Cheno told Paco to take Gatling back to the cave. For an instant it looked as if Peggy Santos was going to say something. But she didn’t. Gatling wondered if she was having doubts about the way things were going.
Jennings was still asleep when they shoved him back in the cave. The poor old bastard was in for a very hard time, but there was no point in telling him that. The pain would come soon enough. Gatling thought of the five hundred in gold dust in the Greenville cemetery. It had been meant as a gesture of friendship.
Gatling found himself wanting to kill his old friend Cheno. Not much chance of that, but when you wanted to do something bad enough, sometimes you managed to get it done.
Chapter Seven
THEY CAME FOR Jennings when the party was going good. By then everybody was drunk or close to it. Cheno didn’t come up to the cave with Paco, but he stood below it, swaying on his feet, and shouted up at Gatling. “You say McNelly was afraid I would roast him like a barbecue pig. Instead I will roast his stinking spy and maybe I will roast you too. Look out now and watch me light the fire with your stinking Governor’s pardon. Do not be afraid that I will shoot you. That would be too easy. Watch me light the fire, I am ordering you.”
Gatling had been watching them build a fire big enough to roast an ox—or a man. Christ! he thought. They can’t do something like that! But he knew they would. Cheno would, the kind of demented man he had become. Belden stood beside him, a bottle in his hand. Belden was having a right good time of it. Gatling wished to hell he had killed the bastard when he had the chance.
Jennings was waking up, blinking and scratching and yawning. “What’s all the yelling about?” he wanted to know.
Gatling didn’t know what to say. Paco and two men were climbing up to the cave. Jennings saw the look on Gatling’s face. “I guess my time has come,” he said.
“Afraid so,” Gatling said. “Goodbye, Mr. Jennings. Been nice knowing you.”
Paco had his Russian Colt drawn when he came into the cave. Jennings made a grab for it, but he was too old and too slow. Paco broke Jennings’s wrist with the heavy barrel of his gun. The old prospector’s hand, broken and bleeding, dangled uselessly by his side. He cursed all Mexican greasers as the two men with Paco dragged him out. One of them slapped his sagging face. Gatling knew he was trying to curse away his pain.
“You move back,” Paco told Gatling in Spanish. “Move back or I will shoot the legs from under you.”
Paco chained and padlocked the barred door before he went back down to where they were dragging Jennings to the fire. Cheno looked up at Gatling, watching through the bars; in his hand he had the pardon, now torn and crumpled. There was no sign of Peggy Santos. Belden, still on Cheno’s heels, turned and looked up at Gatling and raised his bottle in mock salute. More than anything, Gatling wished he had a gun.
Gatling watched while they chained Jennings to a long iron rod with a handle for turning it over a fire—a spit. The poor old bastard, weak and groggy, lost his nerve when he finally realized what they were going to do to him. Who wouldn’t? Gatling thought. They hung the iron rod over two upended rocks with the human barbecue dangling from it. Jennings kept on screaming though the fire wasn’t lit yet. Cheno looked up at Gatling, then put a match to the pardon and shoved it into the stack of dry brush under the fire. There was a whomping sound as the brush caught fire. Jennings screamed, but not for very long.
Gatling broke the pottery water jug; the sound was covered by the laughing and yelling down by the fire. The smell that was coming up from the burning body was pretty bad. They had a guitar and a fiddle going and there was a lot of whooping as Cheno’s men swung the few whores in camp. Gatling didn’t know if and when they’d come for him. It could be five minutes from now, it could be a week. It was night now, but the fire threw some light into the cave. He picked up a long, sharp sliver from the broken jug and began to put a point on. If it was the last thing he ever did, he would stick it through Paco’s throat. But it didn’t have to be Paco who climbed up to the cave. Better than Paco would be Belden, and better than Belden would be Cheno himself. Too much to hope for, though; Cheno had turned crafty and cautious in his old age.
But nothing happened. Gatling crouched to one side of the bars, knowing he couldn’t hope to kill more than one man with the pointed shard, because it would surely break after the first stabbing blow. If he could provoke them into killing him, then his troubles were over. Anything was better than the fire. But the singing and the shouting just got louder; it was turning out to be one hell of a celebration. By the sound of it, they weren’t hurting for liquor. Now and then, when there was a lull in the music and the singing, he heard Cheno yelling, sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish. Not all of what he was yelling was understandable, but Gatling got some of it. Cheno was telling his men to eat, drink, and be merry because not long from tonight they would be occupying the Presidential Palace in Mexico City. Guns were fired off every time Cheno got to the good parts of his rambling speech.
The guard outside the cave left his post for a few minutes and came back with a bottle. Gatling tried the bars while he was gone, but there wasn’t time to do anything more than that. The guard had been drinking earlier and now, starting on his second bottle, he was in a murderous mood. Between drinks, he taunted Gatling through the bars of the cage. This went on until he fell asleep with his head nodding forward on his chest. Gatling reached out through the bars and tried to get at the guard’s rifle, but it was no use. Down below, the celebration was beginning to run out of steam. Not all the merrymakers were knocked out by liquor; a few were still drinking. Two women were fighting halfheartedly, cheered on by a fat Mexican with a red sash. An hour later everybody was asleep.
Gatling wondered what the other guards were doing. Could be they were snoring in liquor-drugged sleep like everybody else. Mexicans were good fighters but made lousy soldiers unless rigorously trained by harsh officers. A few empty cans without clappers were tied to the top of the bars, and they rattled a bit when he tried to force the first bar from its socket. He was still pulling and pushing when Peggy Santos whispered, “Stop doing that. I could hear you before I got close.”
He hadn’t heard her climb up from the floor of the canyon. Now, with the fires burned down, she was just a shape in the darkness. The key clicked in the padlock and she pulled the door open. The chain made a faint rattle and the guard stirred in his sleep. Gatling came out with the shard of pottery in his hand. The night air was clear and cold; it was good to get away from the stink of putrid beans and stale piss.
“I’m letting you go,” she said before Gatling could speak. “Everybody is drunk and asleep.” She sounded disgusted at the condition of her father’s little army. “Your horse is tied at the start of the canyon, where we came in. You’ll have to get past the lookouts at the peaks. They’re probably drunk too. Get going and keep on going. You’ll be followed as soon as this fool here”—that was the guard—“wakes up.”
Gatling was starting to reach for the guard’s rifle when she drew a pistol and pointed it at him. “You don’t get a gun,” she told him. “I won’t have you killing any more of my people. This is the best chance you’ll get. Count yourself lucky.”
“Why?” There was no time, but he had to ask the question.
“Maybe I was wrong about you,” she said, anger and uncertainty in her voice. “I don’t know why. You stood up for the old prospector when you didn’t have to. Now will you get the hell away from here?”
“What will happen to you?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be asleep by the time they find out. Maybe Cheno will blame the guard. He’ll hardly shoot me. Get moving, you fool.”
She had disappeared when he climbed down and started back along the canyon. A few men were still sprawled beside the dying fires; most were sleeping in the caves. Looking for a gun, he tried to turn over one man with a gun belt, but the man groaned and kicked so hard he had to give it up. The canyon was long and narrow, dark even by day; at night, without a moon, it was hard to see. It took him a good twenty minutes to get to where the horse was. The animal whickered and he talked softly until it quieted down. It was saddled and ready to travel. Peggy Santos had given him three canteens of water, dried meat, and cold tortillas, but no gun. It wasn’t a bad start, a lot better than he’d hoped to get. They’d be chasing him hard, hungover and killing mad, but if he could get back to where the light gun and the Mauser pistol were cached he’d be all right. At least he’d be better off than he was now.
He found the twin peaks and walked the horse between the towering red rocks. Nobody challenged him or shot at him; the only sound was the gritty night wind; a lot of Mexicans were going to catch hell in the morning. Cheno would have to blame somebody for the escape. The old madman would never think of blaming himself. He was a general and could do no wrong.
Moving as fast as he dared in the bad light, he was in sight of the mountains by late morning. It was already furnace hot, but most of the water had to go to the horse. There was no water between here and the river. They’d be up and after him by now, well-watered and well-armed, moving fast across the desert. He was hungry but ate none of the dry meat; too salty. He no longer had the binoculars, but that wasn’t too bad; in the bright, clear air, he could see for miles. The horse was only in fair shape. It hadn’t been given much time to rest after crossing the mountains and the desert. Cheno’s men had fresh horses and plenty of water. They would be starting to gain on him in a few hours.
He had to rest the horse before he started up into the foothills that led to the cut. If he could take the light gun into the cut, he could hold them off as long as the ammunition lasted. But they wouldn’t give up no matter what. What they’d do is wait him out until his water and ammunition were used up. And maybe they’d start climbing up and around him before then.
He still had about three miles to get to the light gun when the horse threw a shoe and started to limp. Soon it was limping so badly, stumbling in places, that he knew he’d make better time on foot. He couldn’t give the animal any more water because it was no more use to him, so he unsaddled it and turned it loose. Cheno’s men would find it when they came tearing along. He whacked it with his hat and it limped away. Then he stuffed the food in his pockets, shouldered one half-empty canteen, and started to climb.
He was up high when he saw them coming far out on the desert, still about five miles away, he figured. Where he was, the wind was blowing hard, but cooler than down on the flat. The wind would do something to cover his tracks. A long slope led up to where he had hidden the light gun; rock slides had narrowed the slope in places, and this was where he would have to make some kind of stand. The cut was high above where he was and he’d never make it in time.
Still climbing, he lost sight of them when they started into the lower mountain. Once he caught the flash of a telescope lens, then it disappeared. He wondered if they had found the horse. It might give him a little time if they started searching the rocks close to the abandoned saddle. More likely, some would search while the others came ahead.
He moved faster when he spotted the quartz-streaked rock, the marker for the hidden weapons. The blanket the case was wrapped in was thick with dust; it would be a bitch if dust had seeped into the case and fouled the guns. But the weapons looked all right when he carried them down to the place he had already picked to shoot from. It was high above the slope, had good cover, and from there he could sweep the slope and the rocks on both sides with concentrated fire. It was no kind of real plan, just a means to survive for a while. Again there was the flash of the telescope, and maybe they were trying to see if he had reached the cut. Up above him there was a bulge in the mountain and he couldn’t see the cut. They’d be likely to have a better view of it from lower down. The telescope flashed again, and he couldn’t figure what they were up to. If they hadn’t caught sight of him, why were they wasting time? Even if he had a rifle or a pistol, what could one man do to a big bunch of hardened fighters?
He held the light gun steady as two men appeared at the bottom of the slope and started their horses up at a walk. The others, he figured, were behind a cluster of big rocks about five hundred yards down from his position. The two riders passed below him without looking up, and from the way they rode, they weren’t looking for tracks. That didn’t figure either, but just the same, there it was.
The two riders disappeared from sight and Gatling waited for them to come back. That took about thirty minutes, and they were still walking the horses as if they didn’t want to raise any dust. He knew they hadn’t seen him or they would have done something about it. They passed him again, and there was another short wait after they rode in behind the rocks where he figured the main force was. Then they all started up the slope, thirty or forty men, all on foot. If they weren’t coming after him, they had to be setting up an ambush. Now they were close enough so he could see Paco and Belden out in front. Cheno wasn’t there. Maybe he was directing operations from behind the lines. The old Cheno would have been leading his men, armed with four Navy Colts and his terrible short saber.
