Pistolero

  Matthews turned back to the street. A little two-wheeled donkey cart clattered past. Behind him, the music began to sound somewhat familiar. Boccherini, perhaps.

  Another sip of the coffee, and the guitar seemed to be getting closer, ever so slightly less faint, as if it were coming his way. He turned in his seat to see the guitar man wending a path between mostly empty tables; and yes, headed his direction.

  Then the man was beside the table and standing next to him. The fellow bent over and leaned down close, and, still plucking gentle chords, spoke into Matthews’ ear.

  “La Dama,” he whispered. “The General's lady – she says to give you two words." The man stood up straight. He continued to play.

  Matthews set his cup on the table.

  The man looked furtively to one side, then the other, then leaned over a little at the waist again. "Ha vuelve," he said softly. He's back.

  Matthews looked off in the direction of the army post. He reached up and took a five peso note from his shirt pocket, sat fingering it as he gazed into the distance for a few moments, then turned to the beggar.

  “Amigo,” he said, stuffing the bill into the man's own shirt pocket, “Adelita, por favor.”

  The man grinned a mostly toothless grin and nodded, then turned and began to wander away, back toward the restaurant wall. The Boccherini (if that's what it was) changed seamlessly to a pretty Mexican folk ballad.

  Cole Matthews reached for his mug. He leaned back in his chair and put one boot over the other at the ankles. Gazing out at the street, and just enjoying the music, he brought the cup to his lips with both hands and took another sip of the strong, black Mexican coffee.

 

  Chapter Fourteen

  Matthews left the serape draped over the back of a chair in his hotel room and went looking for a cantina. The sun was just beginning to set.

  He found a grimy, raucous little place a few blocks off the plaza in a darker, more forbidding part of town. Words were painted crudely in whitewash over the doorway on the outside of the building: Agujero del Soldado. Soldier’s Hole.

  Whatever that meant, he mused, pushing his way through a single swinging door. Some of the possibilities didn’t bear much thinking about.

  It was an army bar, a soldier’s hangout, the drunken and the drinking about half filling the place in their dissheveled brown uniforms. Cerveza was being shouted for, and lies were being told, and there was much jostling and laughter. Exactly the place he was looking for.

  As he shoved his way in, a soldier at the door shoved back. “Maldito gringo,” he snarled.

  Matthews gave him a smile and a pat on the shoulder and passed on by, moving into the center of tumult. He spied a poker game at a table on one of the side walls and headed that way. As he made his way through the roomful of khaki, some of the soldiers took notice with curiosity and suspicion, but many turned and looked at him with open hostility. A big corporal bumped shoulders with him in an effort to provoke a situation, but Matthews slipped around the man, only interested in the poker game on the side wall.

  He presented himself at the table and looked down on them. Six players, no empty chair. They looked up at him with annoyed, hostile faces.

  A young lieutenant tilted his chair back against the wall. He ran a finger across the bottom of a sparse mustache. “Lo que quiere, gringo?” What you want, gringo?

  Cole Matthews pulled a fat sheaf of peso notes from his shirt pocket and held it aloft. “Room for one more?”

  The teniente smiled. He turned to a boy on his left – a skinny private – and shooed him out of his chair with a look and a wave of the hand.

  ~

  He spoke to them only in English because he didn’t want them to know that he habló

  a little Spanish, and they all seemed to understand him well enough.

  The surprising thing was how openly the young lieutenant was deferred to by the others, even though a captain and a major sat across the table.

  He was a solid, muscular, good looking kid, maybe twenty years old, and that was another odd thing: nineteen or twenty was too young to be a full lieutenant. A butter-bar subteniente maybe, but a good five years too young for the silver bar. He was an arrogant pup as well, brash and rude, with a smile all full of himself and a nasty way of tilting his chair against the wall and leaning back when the cards were being dealt, resting his open hands on the table and making the dealer lean forward and work at getting the cards to him. From time to time he took a gold pocket watch from a trouser pocket and made a small show of looking at it.

  But Matthews smiled affably and sat and dribbled money away to each of them to maintain his welcome at the table, and listened as carefully as he could to their exchanges in Spanish.

  He learned a few things. He learned that the manhunt in the desert had accomplished nothing; the payroll robbers were still on the run. He learned that the bodies of a dozen or more soldiers had been found at two different locations out in the Sonora, and there was great wonder and bewilderment over how two worthless deserters had managed that. He learned that his fellow players had never seen a shoulder holster before, and he learned that they thought he was a complete idiot who didn’t know a full house from a hole in the ground.

  He reached across the table and took the deck. His deal. Actually,boys, he thought, a hole in the ground is something I do know a little about...

  He glanced up at the lieutenant who sat staring at him with contempt and amusement, his chair tilted back and his arms folded across his chest. His eyes not leaving Matthews’ own, the young man spoke to the table, a river of Mex too fast to understand, but three words came through clear enough: estúpido yanqui bastardo. There was muted laughter all around, and the lieutenant sat looking at Cole Matthews with a smirk.

  Matthews decided to clean him out. He smiled. Fun’s over, kid, he said in his mind. He shuffled, brought an ace to the bottom, squared the deck, and gave it a false cut.

  ~

  It only took about an hour, but as the kid lost hand after hand he became more and more abusive, his mood blacker and more ugly, and the other players dropped out one by one seeming almost to flee, chiefly (Matthews believed) to not be remembered as witnessing the humiliation. Let the boy lieutenant tell any story he wanted in the morning.

  With only the two of them left as the place approached closing time, the kid was down to his last fifty pesos.

  Matthews glanced at the boy’s holdings, a humble, embarrassing little stack of coins on the table in front of him. Time to put him out of his misery. He squared the deck, executed a riffle pass bringing a pair of queens to the top, stacked on the shuffle, and then pulled another false cut. He dealt the kid four tens, himself four queens.

  There was no skill or subtlety about the boy; his eyes flickered when he saw the tens. “Voy a jugar estos,” he said. I’ll play these.

  “Dealer takes one,” said Matthews, looking a little concerned as he fingered his cards. He tossed aside the non-queen, gave himself another, completely irrelevant card, and then sighed and looked faintly disappointed. Sitting on a low two pair, presumably.

  The kid pushed all his money into the center of the table.

  Matthews raised him a hundred and the boy looked down, at the bare place on the table where his money had been.

  “Table stakes,” Matthews said softly. A reminder. He smiled.

  The kid’s eyes flashed and then tightened. A mixture of surprise and rage with two words written on his face: table stakes? Not enough dinero to call the bet, say adios to the pot…

  “Le dirá qué,” Matthews said gently. “Lance su reloj.” Tell you what. Throw in your watch. He smiled again.

  The boy was jolted. “So you speak Spanish,” he said.

  Matthews still wore the taunting little smile. “Un poco,” he said. A little.

  The kid sat staring at him, frozen in an ugly moment of r
ealization, a moment in which he knew suddenly that he – all of them at the table – had been conned. He sat stunned and furious. Then he leaned back in his chair, reached down into a trouser pocket, and came out with the watch. He laid it on the table.

  He hunched forward and put his cards down. He spread them out. Four tens. “Supera eso, viejo,” he hissed. Beat that, old man.

  Matthews sat in silence for a moment, looking at the tens.

  “No hay problema,” he said, and laid down the queens. He folded his arms across his chest and sat back in his chair, his right hand resting on the grip of the Schofield in the holster under his left arm. He cocked his head a little to the side and sat looking across the table at the young lieutenant.

  Looking down at the cards, the kid’s eyes were ablaze. He rested his hands on the table and clenched his fists. He looked up at Matthews, then gave a glance to the revolver under his arm. “Gringo hijo de puta,” he whispered. Gringo son of a bitch. He clenched and unclenched his fists. A small purple vein appeared in his forehead.

  Matthews said nothing and made no move to rake in the pot, just sat looking at him.

  The kid pushed his chair away from the table and rose to his feet. He looked down at Cole Matthews, his fists still clenched. “Nos vemos de nuevo en algún momento,” he said. See you again sometime.

  He turned and walked away, across the room and out the door, and Matthews watched him go. You better hope not, kid. He took a sip from a bottle of warm cerveza and sat quietly for awhile.

  The din had died down; the place was almost still. Only a few soldiers remained. The bartender was putting out lights and wiping down the counter.

  Matthews’ chair screeched as he pushed it away from the table and came to his feet. He adjusted the hang of the shoulder holster as he walked slowly to the door and then out.

  On the table in the cantina behind him was a small mountain of peso notes and coins, and a shiny gold watch.

  ~

  He decided that – as much as he felt the name of the place might be right for him – he was weary of Los Perdidos, and he would be moving on. Now. In the night, when travel was cooler.

  He went back to his hotel room, gathered up the saddlebags and his weapons, and left a twenty peso note on the bed. The knife Lupe had given him was tucked down inside his belt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was a perfect place for an ambush. The moon was full, illuminating the trail with gentle light, and the trail narrowed and wound between two hills that gave a rifleman both cover and concealment – head high saguaro, large rocks, and a boulder or two.

  He saw muzzle flash, a tiny sunburst in the darkness of the hillside, and then he heard the shot and felt the bullet.

  It hit him low in the right side, a hammer blow of fire and pain just under the ribcage. He slumped over with a grunt, and – knowing that he presented a moonlit silhouette – allowed himself to fall from the saddle.

  He landed in soft dirt, on his shoulder on the right side of his horse, and rolled into the shadows. The bay swung his big head around and down, and sniffed at him curiously.

  There was a frenzied, boots on the ground sound from the slope. The shooter was clambering over rocks and scuffling edgewise through dirt on his way down. Matthews reached for the Schofield, and a current of agony shot through his side.

  And just as suddenly, the shooter was there. At his head, looking down at him.

  On his back, Matthews brought the Schofield out of the shoulder holster and up. The shooter kicked it out of his hand.

  He groped for and brought Lupe’s knife out of his belt. The man’s face was hidden in shadow, but he could make out rumpled army fatigues. He felt more than saw the man’s revolver pointed at his head. And then he heard the cocking of a Nagant.

  Gripping the knife like an icepick, he swung it up and brought it down hard, through the man’s boot and into his foot. In a strange, slow, otherworldly way, he felt the needle-like stiletto point slip between bones, then go through the sole of the boot and hit a rock.

  The man screamed like a gut shot mountain lion and dropped to one knee. Thoughtlessly, instinctively, he reached for the knife with both hands letting his revolver fall to the ground.

  Matthews reached up, took him by the collar, and pulled him in close.

  The man wrenched violently back, and his shirt tore away in Matthews’ hand. He combed the dirt frantically with his hand for the lost Nagant.

  Still with the knife in his right hand, Matthews jerked and twisted it out of the man’s foot, and the man screamed again. Matthews plunged the blade deep into the left side of his chest and then gave him a shove.

  The soldier made a deep, awful sound, at once a grunt and a gasp, and fell away, onto his back.

  Matthews lay breathing hard and looking up at the stars for a few moments, one hand on the wound in his side. Then he clenched his teeth and sat up with a groan.

  ~

  It was the obnoxious soldier kid from the cantina. Still alive, but barely, and not for long, with a knife in his chest about where his heart would be. His arms lay at his sides and he moved not a muscle, just gazed up at the sky breathing shallowly and with a raspy sound.

  Matthews was not surprised to find it was the boy lieutenant, and not surprised to find the kid still alive. Nobody dies instantly. Even a knife in the heart; the thing reflexively pumps for a moment or two, the aorta empties, the body takes a greater or lesser amount of time to shut down. To die. A grizzly a hundred yards away can take a five hundred grain bullet in the heart and still close the distance to kill you.

  But then, after a moment or two, the boy was gone. A long exhale barely audible, and then the pupils began to blow.

  Matthews sat looking at him for a moment, at the youthful, handsome face frozen in death, at the sparse little mustache. He shook his head. Bad choices, kid. Then, having always thought to keep the turquoise handled knife as a memento, he leaned over to pull it from the boy’s chest.

  Then stopped, his hand in the air. Inside the torn shirt, on the kid’s right shoulder, a tattoo was partially visible. Even with just the snatch of a glance, it looked somehow familiar, felt somehow significant. Matthews leaned in closer and drew the front of the shirt back and pulled the sleeve down for a closer look.

  He sucked in his breath. He didn’t surprise easily, but this was something he hadn’t expected: a small, brightly colored rattlesnake entangled with a rose.

  The name Ronaldo curved underneath like a smile.

  He looked back at the boy’s face and saw the resemblance for the first time. Lupe. No doubt about it. A younger, male version of la Dama, and he was his mother’s son, in every handsome, murderous way. And, Matthews thought, that would make him the son of the great and lofty General de Brigada. Which explained the silver bar on his shoulder, and the deference from captains and colonels.

  Looking again at the rattlesnake and rose tattoo, he strongly supposed the General had one on his shoulder too, with his own name curving underneath. Kind of a family coat of arms, Matthews thought wryly. Like the Borgias.

  ~

  He left the knife where it was. One last taunt. At this point, after all the trouble Lupe and the boy lieutenant and the Mexican Army had brought him, the thought of them finding his mother’s knife in the kid’s chest – and all the chaos that would cause – almost made him laugh.

  One hand on his side, he lumbered to his feet and went to the bay. He took his spare shirt from one of the saddlebags and tore off a long strip. Then he wadded up a smaller piece
, placed it over the wound hole, and wrapped the long piece tightly around himself like a ribbon.

  He tied the makeshift thing off with a knot, then stood for a moment, an elbow up on the saddle, resting, breathing slow and heavy. With his other hand he clasped the moistening bandage.

  He glanced at the two army saddlebags full of gold and pesos that lay across the front of his saddle. Then down at the dead soldado.

  ~

  Kneeling down, he tucked another bundle of peso notes – four packets in all – inside the kid’s shirt. A red herring, another joke, and more chaos and confusion when the body was found. He dropped one of the small gold bars next to the boy’s hand and stood up straight, holding his side and stifling a groan.

  He went to his horse, then stood for a moment, looking around. At the boulder studded hillside where the boy had crouched in ambush. At the body bathed in moonlight. At the knife in the kid’s chest.

  Done here, he decided. He put a foot in the stirrup and hoisted himself painfully into the saddle.

 

 

 

 

  Chapter Sixteen

  - 1 -

  He rode all night, his hand on his side and slumped over in the saddle most of the way. By mid-morning he was across the river and back in the first of the two unnamed little villages on the road to Santa Marta, and had thought to ride on through, to make it as far as the next tiny place before he stopped and slept and rested his horse, but then he spied a clothesline full of wash. It was in the yard of a little adobe, on something of a side street to his left. He reined the bay in that direction.

  He rode through stubble and rocks, making straight for the wash: two or three small, children’s shirts, a worn dress, a tiny pair of trousers, some socks, some underwear, and – the prize – a bed sheet, all on a single line of rope between two posts about thirty feet apart. He brought the bay up to where the bed sheet hung and reined in.