Pistolero

She nodded. "Sí."

  He smiled and brought the bottle to his lips. "Good for you," he said. He took a sip of beer. "Bien por ti."

  She smiled back.

  He laid his bottle back down on the table just as the bartender moved roughly alongside.

  Matthews ran his fingers up and down the warm bottle. He looked up at the man.

  The bartender stood looming over them, not happy. He looked from Matthews to Isela, bent over, and rested both big hands on the table. Matthews could see that it was, in fact, a Brazilian .32 in the shoulder holster that dangled under his arm. A puny round, but interesting in its incongruity, he thought.

  The big man turned to Matthews. "Su mujer?" Your woman?

  Matthews took a sip from his bottle. He shook his head, no. He set the bottle back on the table. "Mi amiga."

  The big man turned to Isela and leaned in close, practically brushing her nose with his moustache. "You can't be in here," he growled in Spanish. "A woman like you. Somebody's wife. You will cause problems for me with the law. Get out." He stood up a little, wiped a hand across his mouth, then put it back down on the table. Leaned in close again. "Leave, woman, or I'll drag you out by the hair."

  Matthews understood most of it. He looked across the table at her. "Tequila or cerveza?" he asked pleasantly.

  Isela was brought again almost nose to nose with the man. She looked unflinchingly into his eyes. "Bring a bottle of tequila and a glass," she said in Spanish. "And then sit down." She gestured at an empty chair. "Please. We can be of some value to each other. Give me a few minutes of your time."

  Matthews took another long, slow sip of room temperature cerveza.

  ~

  It didn't take long. Isela did most of the talking, and the bartender mostly nodded and threw the occasional sour glance at Cole Matthews. From time to time he would pour another dollop of tequila into his glass, then refresh Isela's. When the big man pushed his chair away from the table and shuffled back to the bar, Matthews watched him go, then turned to her.

  "I gather you keep fifty per cent of the crib, make ten on drinks?"

  She nodded.

  "You sure this is what you want to do?"

  She shrugged. Gotta do somethin'.

  He took a sip from his bottle.

  "Yo seré estupendo," she said. I'll be fine.

  She leaned across the table and put both of her hands on top of his. "Get a room," she said. "And let me stay with you one more night."

  Matthews smiled. A little weary, a little sad.

  She brought his hand to her lips. "Una noche más," she said softly.

  Chapter Six

  He tossed in three nondescript cards, kept two kings. "Tres," he said softly, and the vaquero across the table peeled three new ones from the deck and sent them over to him, one – clumsily – by one.

  He picked up the first to fall. Another king. He worked it between the first two and reached for the next card thrown him. The ace of hearts. Then, the amazing third: the last of the kings. He slid it in alongside the others. Four kings, side by side, smiling wide smiles full of irony at him. He smiled back and shook his head, not caring if it seemed a tell.

  His luck, ever since he had pulled up a chair and said, Deal me in, compañeros, had been phenomenal. Three sevens, a ten-high straight, a heart flush, then a six-high straight, and now four cowboys, ace kicker. It seemed he couldn't lose if he tried, and he had come close to trying; he had almost folded the second straight just to be polite, but didn't when it seemed to him that it would be disrespecting the luck.

  He fingered the little pile of coins and notes on the table before him. He was up forty, maybe fifty pesos, and there was the irony. North of the border with this run of cards he'd have won enough money to buy a small house by now, but down here, in a seedy little cantina in Hermosillo, after taking one pot, then another, and still others after that, he had amassed enough small change to – what? – pay for dinner and a room later?

  Ah well, he thought, he had learned some fine new Mexican words today; words like comprobación (check), and aumento (raise), and llamada (call). And hell, he didn't want a house anyway.

  He looked off at a cantina girl plopping herself down onto the lap of some vaquero and putting an arm around his neck, and he thought of Isela. Probably doing pretty much the same thing right about now, he thought, hustling some Santa Marta barfly for a drink. Or jouncing under one on a dirty mattress in a tiny crib upstairs.

  The man sitting to his right spoke a little hesitantly. "Señor?" They were all a little awed by his manner, and by the big revolver that hung under his left arm. Shoulder holsters weren't much seen in Mexico, and if he had known it would make him look so much the killer, he wouldn't have worn it.

  He looked to the center of the table and saw that the pot had gone up five pesos, and it was his to raise, call, or fold. He looked around the table. Four faces stared silently, diffidently back at him. "Siento," he said. Sorry. He pushed a coin out. "Llamada," he said.

  Isela, he thought again. Poor little soul. It had been four months (or was it five?) since he had ridden out of Santa Marta, and he still felt like he had abandoned a puppy on the roadway. He had asked himself the question, But what could I have done? and its ugly twin, What the hell should I have done? a thousand times, and he still had no answer.

  Maybe, he thought, he would ride back and check on her. Just make sure she was all right. And then he thought otherwise. Better to simply put her behind him and resign himself to throwing another pound or two of guilt on the tonnage that was already on his heart, he decided, and better also not to deepen the feelings that she had been developing for him. Her plate was full enough with sorrow. Let her get on with the business of forgetting him as well.

  He was brought back to the table by the silence all around. He raised his head and glanced from one face to another, the fat storekeeper on his left, the two vaqueros across the table, the old peon on his right. "Señor?" one of them said.

  He was being called. There were sixteen or twenty pesos on the table, and they were waiting for him to show his cards. The storekeeper and one of the cowboys had folded, but the other vaquero showed a pair of jacks; the old man looked expectantly across two pair. Nines over fours.

  Matthews tossed his cards in face down, and shrugged as if to say, Win some, lose some, no?... He sat back in his chair and brought a bottle of warm beer to his lips. Let the old man have the pot, never mind the handful of kings, the hell with cursing the luck. He tilted the bottle in his hand and examined it. Only a swallow or two left. He decided he would finish the cerveza, then excuse himself. Maybe find something to eat.

  The old man raked in his winnings with a wide, somewhat toothless grin, and the storekeeper – his turn to deal – began gathering up the cards.

  Matthews finished his beer. Set the bottle on the table. He pushed his chair back to come to his feet. The storekeeper began shuffling the cards and said something about dos desertores de ejército – two army deserters – and Cole Matthews froze where he sat and turned to listen.

  One of the vaqueros said something in reply. He only caught part of it. Stolen army payroll... Five hundred thousand pesos...

  There was some snickering. Some laughter at the army's embarrassing misfortune. At the implied incompetence.

  He sat slowly back in his chair. Then, he looked toward the bar and beckoned for another bottle of beer.

  ~

  He played one more hand, won fourteen pesos with a pair of tens, then went to the livery and paid his bill.

  He found the bay wandering the corral with a dozen other horses, bridled him, and took him to the shade of the stable.

  Guess I might've had a look in those brownbellies' saddlebags before I shoveled 'em over, he told himself a little wryly, and tossed a blanket over the horse's back. Then: Ah, hell... Time was shor
t. A lot was going on.

  He hoisted the saddle up and over, then crouched down to secure the cinch, wondering what half a million pesos was worth in terms of Yankee Morgans these days. As best he could remember, the two currencies were pegged about par, meaning... well, about five hundred thousand dollars.

  But, he figured, rising to his feet, that was a number that probably grew some with each telling. He plopped his bedroll behind the saddle and began to tie it down, thinking, So add it up... A private in the Mexican Army was paid seventeen pesos a month, last he heard; a corporal eighteen, a sergeant maybe twenty. That being the case, payday for an entire regiment would come to no more than – what? – sixty or seventy thousand pesos?

  The bay snuffled and tossed his big head and looked back at him, glad, Matthews thought he could see, to be on the move again. He dropped the sawed off ten-gauge into its scabbard right of the saddle horn, then shoved the Winchester down into its scabbard on the left.

  He put a hand on the horse's flank and walked behind him, over to the big, heavy-barreled Sharps which stood in the dirt and the straw, leaning against the stable wall. So since payday for a regiment – two or three thousand men – is most likely what we're talking about here, half a million pesos is way over the line. A good story, but bullshit. More like seventy thousand, if he was lucky. And if the story was even true. He took up the Sharps and slid it into the long leather scabbard that lay under the right stirrup, then put both arms up on the saddle and stood for a moment, thinking.

  One thing he knew: armies everywhere paid their soldiers in cash. And sixty or seventy thousand dollars – or, hell, pesos – was a good day's pay on either side of the border.

  He led the bay out of the stable, into the sunlight, then stood looking down the parched little street that became the barren road to Santa Marta, and wondered how far back it was to that broken down little barn in the middle of nowhere... A hundred and fifty, two hundred miles?

  Well, he thought, no matter. I got nothing planned for the rest of my life.

  He stepped up into the saddle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Chapter Seven

  - 1 -

  As he rode, he commenced to wonder why. Why he was riding a hot, dusty trail back to an abandoned little patch of desert littered with bodies expressly to dig up a grave to look for saddlebags full of money he didn't particularly want or need. And, to wonder what the hell he would do with it if he found it.

  He had never been much driven by either ambition or want of money. Even less so after four years in the blood and the chaos that the Mexicans called el tiempo del azul y el gris.

  The time of the blue and the gray... He sometimes reflected that his part in it had been not unlike that of a horse soldier in one of Scipio's African legions, or a British Lancer in India. Or a trident-wielding gladiator in the Colosseum. Personal killing, the Army called it. Death delivered by garrote and by hand, with revolver and saber and from a thousand yards out with a Sharps long range Creedmoor; death most personal – not musket fire desperately and randomly pointed into a dark hornet's cloud of advancing infantry, but eye to eye with the pale rider – plunging your knife into the other man's throat, and with no way of telling yourself afterward that you maybe didn't kill anybody. No room for attempts at that soul-absolving silliness, ever.

  Well, he knew it had changed him. Shaped him, maybe more like. Four years of it, night and day – how could it not? Toss in the years spent carrying a badge and the black void that filled him with the leaving of his wife behind, and the shaping was about complete. His heart had been changed. Deadened. All he knew was that he didn't really feel much anymore. Or care much anymore. About anything. Not his own life, certainly. Or that his world had become vastly different and darker than he could ever have forseen. And not even that the wife of his youth was forever behind him and his heart was deadened even to that. He didn't spend much time thinking about any of it, truth be told.

  So, he would drift. His old man, sport and thimblerigger that he was, had schooled him in the ways of the poker table when he was young, and that provided a reliable and good enough living, and he was content just to wander.

  ~

  He took the road east out of town, the road that led back to Santa Marta, and would find his way from there back to that doomed, haunted little homestead.

  - 2 -

  There were two tiny towns between Hermosillo and Santa Marta, spaced just about the right distance apart, one to another, to make it little more than a day's ride from one to the next. He took no note of the names of these little places, (or even if they had names) only that they were the usual cluster of pastel painted adobes built loosely around a dusty little plaza, and – the only real matter of importance – that there was a place of tortillas and beans, and a place to spend the night.

  The purveyors of goods and services in these little towns were only too happy to receive the pesos he gave them, but like the townspeople who peered out of windows and from around corners, eyed him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, and not a little apprehension at the sight of the weaponry on his person and on his saddle. They were a little surprised, sometimes, that he spoke to them, if a little haltingly, in their own tongue, and they were surprised as well at his courteous manner. Nonetheless – like people on both sides of the border always were – they were glad to see him move on.

  ~

  He reined in at the little stone well and sat with both hands on the saddle horn surveying the place, the little house, the little barn; the ground between house and well where he had killed six Mexican soldiers.

  The bodies were gone. There were boot prints and hoof prints and wagon wheel ruts all about the place, but the bodies were gone. Found by another patrol, hauled away, and planted in Army dirt somewhere, he figured.

  Other than that, the place looked the same. The two graves and their makeshift crosses under the scraggly juniper tree were undisturbed, though the last bunch of desert flowers Isela had placed there had long since blown away.

  He took off his hat and looked high overhead. Another hot, blue-sky day in Mexico. He wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve and put his hat back on. Stepped down out of the saddle and looped the bay's reins around one of the well posts. "Back in a few minutes, big boy," he whispered, and ran his hand down the horse's mane.

  He walked toward the barn. Glanced off at the rickety corral, and could practically hear again the baa-aah-aaah of one of Isela's little goats.

  The barn. He stuck his head in the door and looked around. Straw was still strewn over the double grave, and the shovel was still over in the corner, where he had left it.

  He carried the Schofield in the around-the-waist Buscadero rig this day, with its push dagger inside the front and a Remington .44 caliber derringer in back, and he unbuckled it and hung it by the buckle on a nail in the wall. He tossed his hat onto a milking stool.

  He took the shovel in hand, planted one foot firmly down on the blade, and began to dig.

  ~

  The dirt was soft and had already been turned once, so the work was easy enough but the work was hot, even in the shade of the little barn. Damn, he thought, stomping the shovel down to take another bite of dirt, should've thrown the bags in last. He rested for a moment, used one arm to wipe sweat from his forehead, then went back to it.

  About eighteen inches down the spade hit something solid. A saddle, he knew. He had thrown the rifles in first, then rolled in the bodies, then came the saddlebags, and lastly, had tossed the saddles in on top.

  He deepened and widened the dig, throwing shovelfuls of dirt this way and that, and finally exposed both saddles, which lay end to end. He set the shovel aside and bent over and struggled to bring out the first one. "Hell of a lot easier goin' in than comin' out," he muttered to himself, and to
ssed it to one side. It landed with a thump in the dirt, and one set of saddlebags was revealed.

  He stood for a moment to catch his breath. The underarms and the back of his shirt showed dark, widening circles of sweat. Then he crouched down and wrested out the other saddle, heaved it to one side, and a dirt covered, thirty-five pound slab of leather landed alongside another.

  He stood looking down into the hole. A second set of saddlebags lay next to the first, and there was a glimpse of the two dead Mexican soldiers beneath. He had brought a handkerchief to cover his mouth and nose when dealing with the jellied, putrefying remains, but could see it wasn't going to be necessary. The bodies were partially dessicated; five months in the dry, alkaline dirt of the Sonoran Desert, and they were already turning into mummies.

  He knelt down and brought out one set of saddlebags, then the other. They were fastened up tight with buckled straps. He didn't remember them being so heavy, and then thought again it was curious that he hadn't wondered about their contents, and had just shoveled them over without looking inside.

  On one knee, he laid one set of saddlebags aside and put the other down in front of him. He unfastened the buckle, pulled wide the flap, and upended the bag, dumping the contents into the dirt.

  Bundles of peso notes tumbled into a small mountain at his feet, and then a handful of gold bars clattered on top. The bars surprised him. Hadn't expected that. He picked one up, a ten ounce wafer, about three inches long by an inch-and-a-half wide by an eighth of an inch thick; the Mexican eagle was embossed into the shiny top surface, along with the words, Banco de México. He turned it in his hand. Solid gold. And if he remembered the price of gold correctly, it would cash out at two hundred and forty dollars. He slipped it into his shirt pocket and counted the rest of the little gold bars. Ten in all.

  He picked up one of the bundles. A stack of hundred-peso bills an inch thick, bound tightly with a band of paper. On the paper band was that same eagle, and the same words. Banco de México. He glanced at the bill on the top of the stack, at the diagonal Cien pesos in the corner, at the face of Benito Juárez in the center, then fanned the bundle with his thumb and dropped it back on the pile. He looked from one pair of saddlebags to the other thinking if they were loaded the same, the amount was enormous. Far more than his estimate of sixty or seventy thousand pesos.