AT RIO TONTO, the shining steel tracks of the provincial railroad angled away from the great lake into the tawny hills and the sandy wastes of the drier country regions lying between the lake district and Mazatlan.
Early sunlight shimmered off the new green paintwork of the powerful locomotive hauling eight freight cars and a caboose through the gap in the hills, then along the rim of the canyon.
It was a perfect Mexican morning and the engineer leaned from the cabin to let the wind caress his face. His smile was just a white blob in the twin circular lenses of the binoculars trained upon him from the treeless hill a quarter mile ahead.
“Clickety-clack, clickety-clack!” Sainty chanted as they drew nearer. “Rhymes with payin’ back, payin’ back. Don’t it?”
The young Mexican desperados clustered around the outlaw in this sun-warmed depression, grinned and nudged one another but kept their eyes locked on the train.
Sainty cut a quick glance across at Slotter and Avis, who smiled despite their nervousness.
Not that the pair were averse to a little mayhem. They’d prefer pulling a job for some hard cash, as funds were running low. Putting their necks on the line because Sainty wanted a little revenge, didn’t hold water with them.
But then, they were not calling the shots.
Sainty, as always, was boss honcho.
The train was now traveling a straight stretch of track leading to the bridge slung across a deep draw in the canyon.
The cars were laden with hay bales and oil drums and moved along at a good clip with the loco making easy work of the going.
The engine, Sainty saw, was four-by-six-by-oh, sixty feet long and American built—Sainty knew his trains. He’d spent a large part of his life robbing them, blowing them up, or just plain admiring them.
The outlaw licked his lips as the gap between loco and bridge lessened. He raised the glasses to his eyes again, this time focusing on the bridge.
Down amongst the solid pylons, where a meager little stream trickled along the canyon creek, a combination of hawk eyes and powerful binoculars picked out a tiny wisp of smoke. Like there was some bum down there amongst the girders, either heating a can over a small fire of enjoying a fat cigar.
Only the gunhawks on the hill knew that the smoke came from a long blue fuse which Sainty had lit ten minutes earlier. Only he really knew why he’d gone to the time, trouble and risk to plant a two-pound parcel of dynamite beneath the right of way.
Sure, Avis and Slotter knew he was getting square with the railroad for sending him on his two-year stretch, suffering in a lice-ridden Mexican calabozo as a result of a failed strongbox robbery on the Ventura Line.
So why go to all this trouble just to get square?
It was plain enough to Sainty. And Savage was responsible.
Until he became aware that Savage was in the province, Sainty had been content to take up where’d he’d left off. A little cattle rustling, the occasional stage holdup, that sort of thing.
Savage changed all that.
The fact that someone had gone to the trouble to secure the services of the big man had rung all Sainty’s warning bells. It was time to stop thinking small-time.
Blowing up a train was always a risk—with its guards, detectives and its links with the law. Sainty figured the risks were worth it. He reckoned the railroad was vulnerable. Like Savage.
Sweat coursed down Sainty’s face and he could not have blinked had he tried. The gap between train and bridge was now two-hundred yards. And Sainty knew explosives.
The calculations involving the speed of the train, fuse length and even daytime temperatures had all been meticulously planned. All there was left was the joy of eager anticipation.
As the train clattered onto the bridge, the watchers saw it rise from the buckling steel rails as though it were feather light and caught in a gentle updraft. It wasn’t until loco, tender, cars and caboose were twisting in the air like a broken-backed lizard atop a massive ball of smoke and fire, that the awful voice of the explosion reached them. If any man survived this plunging chaos of twisted metal and splintering timbers, he could count himself lucky.
None did.
All were dead aboard the morning freight as nine horsemen came dusting down the hill and headed north.
Into Savage country.
Savage rode through the morning with the sun climbing his back.
He was feeling mighty good.
It was rare that dust and distance and an open plain could fail to deliver that aura of peace that a man with a violent way of life could get to crave. He was relaxed and easy as Stud carried him across one sweeping plain after another, with women, rich dead miners and seedy sidekicks relegated to the back of his mind.
Eventually he topped out the last of a series of comb-like ridges to find himself overlooking a sad looking valley spreading on either side of yet another trickling river lined by willows, and the occasional cottonwood.
Savage took off his hat and wiped his brow. He glanced at the sun and calculated the time. Assessing time, distance and direction, he decided to ride the length of the valley then angle away to the east, bringing him back to San Rafael by late afternoon.
He came upon the little farm by the river quite by mistake a half hour later. Corrals, vegetable garden, a battered looking adobe ranch house with a couple of scraggly chickens on the roof.
Then through the rippling heat haze he saw the horses lined up at a fence and immediately reined-in to take a closer look. There were four of them, all fit-looking animals which seemed to ring a bell. He pushed on a little to bring the front of the house into sight. He saw a group of men had another man stripped to the waist and tethered to a snubbing post. As Savage watched, something snaked through the hot air to land across the man’s naked back, and he heard the faint slap of impact.
They were handing the man a good whipping.
He looked at the horses again and remembered where he’d seen them—the day on the trail they’d encountered the Vegas.
The man taking the flogging was a scrawny little Mexican with hard-scrabble farmer written all over him. The big man with the whip was Amanda Buell’s alleged suitor, Rodrigo Vega.
Stud’s hooves struck the ground as horse and rider entered the yard. Heads turned and one man swore as they recognized the man who’d dumped Don Luis on his aristocratic butt.
The vaqueros made hesitant moves towards their weapons but froze. Savage turned his horse side-on, dropped his right hand close to gun butt, then waited, defying them to do something stupid.
Rodrigo whirled and faced him, blood slowly draining from his face.
“You again! What the devil do you think—?”
“Why don’t you shut up!” Savage stepped down and approached the farmer. A sound came from the house and the face of a young woman peered fearfully out.
Savage smiled as he reached the snubbing post. The farmer’s back was savagely cut and bloodied. His pain-wracked eyes rolled up to meet Savage’s.
“What’s this about?” Savage said.
“I stole a steer for food, señor,” the man confessed. “We were hungry.”
“He is but a filthy thief,” Vega accused. “And this is his punishment. So step aside, Yaqui Joe, you have interfered enough. This does not concern you.”
Vega was a husky fellow, as were his vaqueros. All stared at him. Four-against-one, their looks challenged.
Savage grabbed hold of Vega’s whip and pulled hard. The man stumbled against him. Savage pushed him away so roughly he stumbled and fell. Vega screamed an order from the ground and the vaqueros came at him in a rush.
They knew their stuff. Savage realized this the moment they spread out around him.
The first man rushed him and Savage cursed when he didn’t duck quickly enough to slip under a whistling haymaker. The blow caught him on the temple and staggered him. The second man moved in to follow up the advantage. Savage put a boot in the man’s guts then elbow-smashed him to the ground, breaking the man’s jaw.
Then a man landed on his back and Savage went down on one knee. The man went for Savage’s eyes. Savage buried his teeth in the man’s forearm. Blood flowed and the man let go, Savage bucking him off as he was hit again.
This time by Rodrigo Vega.
The man hit like a professional. Savage spat blood, stepped around a vaquero’s attack, feinted, then sunk his fist wrist-deep in Vega’s belly. It felt good. Almost as good as the jolt that shot up his leg as he caught the spewing Don’s son with a paralyzing kick to the ribs that had him down a second time.
Savage found himself sandwiched between two men. Then an uppercut caught him under the chin, snapping his head back.
He went down.
He fought the temptation to go for his guns. Felt he had something to prove.
He did so with two minutes of sustained barroom brawling that had Vega’s last man down for the count.
“Get up and cut this man loose,” Savage slurred, sleeving blood from his mouth.
Vega didn’t respond quickly enough, but another toe to the ribs had him moving. Savage slumped against the fence as Vega cut the ties and the farmer fell to the ground.
“Carry him inside,” Savage ordered. “If you ever set foot back here, I’ll come for you. Understand?”
Vega nodded.
“Then get!”
Savage waited until they were out of sight before turning to the house.
The girl standing in the doorway was tall and olive-skinned, her body lush in a firm-fitting cotton dress.
“I thank you deeply for helping us, señor. Come inside and let me treat your wounds. Please take off your shirt.”
It was an offer Savage couldn’t refuse.
The wind whispered around the quiet adobe through the afternoon trees. In the corral, a swaybacked jackass stood hip-shot and dozing in the heat. There was fresh meat hanging in the meat house and the parlor was empty, with two empty plates on the table. In the room to the left the rancher slept soundly with several yards of bandage wrapped about his badly-beaten body and half a bottle of rum inside him for the pain and to help him sleep—for a long time. In the room to the right, the only sounds coming from there were the silken rustle of bedsheets.
The girl was showing Savage how grateful she was. The Rancho Tejano riders would certainly have killed her father, she stated. Vega’s mood was that ferocious. She was so grateful Savage couldn’t believe his luck.
Later, as she was straddling Savage and trimming his black mustache, she told him she likened him to a glamorous caballero of Old Mexico she used to read about in books. She thought of him as a knight so totally different from the handful of downtrodden suitors who came knocking on her door.
Savage was interested to a point—the point where that old familiar feeling started acting up again. This girl was truly beautiful.
Savage was soaring again. It was so unexpected yet so right. Just what he needed to banish all thoughts of Yaqui Joe’s bitter disappointment from his mind.
Right now, he didn’t care if he was forced to return Stateside empty-handed. Or even if Beautiful Amanda accepted Rodrigo’s hand in marriage. And certainly never a thought for a man named Vinny St. Claire.
They could all fry in hell as far as Savage was concerned.
But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. When the girl rose to make him coffee, Savage couldn’t help but marvel at the firm, opulent perfection of her golden body before she drew on a tattered robe and went to check on her father.
Savage lit a cigarillo and lay back, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. Life had never been so good, he mused.
He was up and dressed minutes later and swigging a mug of powerful black coffee laced with three fingers of tequila.
As he headed back to San Rafael, he pictured himself as that swashbuckling caballero. He felt a twinge of regret that his reward far outweighed the good deed he’d done.
The girl stood in the doorway watching him ride from sight.
He felt a far deeper twinge when he realized he didn’t know her name.
To the denizens of La Luz de Mi Veda on the plaza, he was just another young drifter, a Mexican with a mean mouth, bushy sideburns, a knife sticking from a boot top and a bulge beneath his flashy shirt which was obviously a hidden weapon.
If he looked tougher than the normal run of the mill drifter who passed through San Rafael, nobody was taking much notice.
There were too many other distractions keeping them busy. The continuing preoccupation with Ignacio Martinez’s legacy, for one. It was to be collected from its stronghold out at the Sister Nina next day to be escorted back to the bank. Then there was the startling news of Yaqui Joe’s brutal clash with Rodrigo Vega out in the valley.
The San Rafael man in the street had seldom had so much to occupy his attention. Who had time to take any special notice of one shifty-eyed stranger more or less?
Yet this was a stranger with a difference. Dispatched from the foothills by Vinny St. Claire to check out on the movements of Clint Savage, the stranger had been amazed to discover that the famed Savage was a weedy little runt with snaggled teeth and bad body odor.
But by the time he’d left town to report back to Sainty, he’d, shoved Savage into the background of his thinking. He was infinitely more interested in the news of Martinez’s gold and the fact that tomorrow it was to be moved from the Sister Nina into town, a distance of some ten miles.
It wasn’t too surprising that Sainty also showed far more interest in the gold.
What genuine heller down on his luck would not?