14
All of the guards milled around on the fenced-in grounds of the mine. Some, still groggy with sleep, muttered among themselves and sought coffee to stimulate sodden brains. They had heard the rattle of gunfire in the town below and worried over what it might mean. Typical low-grade hired guns, they remained loyal to the man who paid them, so long as he continued to pay. Or until someone else offered more.
Several had gathered at the main gate, and talked in low tones. The topic of conversation was El Rey del Norte, and the possibility he had come to claim Pueblo de la Paz and all it possessed for himself. The prospect did not engender enthusiasm.
“He will shoot us down like dogs,” one hardcase guard suggested.
“Why would he do that, Lopez?” another countered. “I have heard that he welcomes men who can use their guns. He is building an army capable of taking on those corrompidores in Ciudad Mexico.”
“What?” a third asked disbelievingly. “Porfirio Diaz is presidente and, for once, he has the army behind him He may be corrupt, as are all politicians, but he has the power, ¿no es verdad?”
“A curse on all politicians,” Lopez, the worried one, spat. “But our problem is El Rey. We must decide what we will do when he comes here.”
Within a few minutes, they found out their concern had been focused in the wrong direction.
Five men, led by Carbone, approached the front gate to the mine. Fires had been lighted in a scattered pattern. Their fitful light, in a stiffening breeze, allowed a clear view of the compound, and prevented any chance of escape by the slave labor inmates. Carbone halted his followers and they spread out, facing an equal number of guards on the opposite side of the fence.
“Are you from El Rey?” the worried one asked.
“No,” Carbone answered. “We’ve come to tell you you are out of a job.”
A couple of the guards snickered at this. “Oh? How is that, hombre?” the worried man challenged, grown suddenly bolder now that El Rey del Norte was out of the situation.
“The owners of this mine, who pay your wages, are in jail. They are charged with slavery.”
Giggles turned to braying laughter. “These men here have been convicted by a court and sentenced to hard labor. There is no slavery. It is against the law in our country,” Lopez sneered in answer.
“Open the gate,” Carbone commanded.
Lopez had recovered his usual nasty outlook. “Who are you to give me orders?”
“Esteban Carbone y Ruiz.” It came out weighted with menace.
Lopez was stunned by this revelation, though machismo would not permit him to show it. “So? An old man who has hung up his guns. A hacendado, with soft hands and no stomach for a fight. Go home to your estancia and play with the women, Don Esteban.” Lopez made the honorific sound like an insult.
Was Smoke Jensen in position? He had to be, Carbone told himself. He drew a deep breath. “I had hoped that you would not be so eager to die, hombre.”
With that he drew with all the old speed and sureness. His long-barreled .45 made a blur as it left the leather. Its muzzle rose to gut-level in less than an eye’s blink. His first slug struck the receiver side-plate of the Winchester in Lopez’s hands. Stinging shock and pain ran up the truculent guard’s arms, and he let go of the damaged weapon with a sharp yowl of discomfort.
It could be said of Lopez that he was a game fighter. He never hesitated, once in action. His right hand dropped to the pearl grips of his .45 Mendoza, and he hauled it out with alacrity. Unfortunately for him, he remained what he was, a third-rate gun hawk.
Carbone’s second bullet slammed into the chest of Lopez with enough force to stagger him. He gulped for air that did him little good, fought to raise his six-gun as the world dimmed around him. To Carbone’s left and right, shotguns taken from the jail boomed, and a scythe of buckshot laid low three of the other guards. The fifth turned tail and bolted into the greater safety of numbers. Carbone took note of muzzle flashes from the uphill side of the compound and smiled in satisfaction.
Smoke Jensen hugged the cheek-plate of his Winchester stock to his face and sighted in on a bull of a man who appeared to be in charge at the mine. From this range it would be an easy shot. When Carbone opened the dance, he squeezed off a round.
Almost at once, the boss guard went to the ground, shot through the hips by a fat .45-70-500 Express slug. He bellowed at the other warders, more in rage than pain. At once they scattered out of the vulnerability of firelight. From here on it would be rough. Smoke had identified the guard shack and put three rounds through its flimsy walls. Yelps of alarm and the tinkle of wounded pots and pans coldly amused him. Two slugs turned a watch-fire into a shower of sparks.
Then he returned his attention to the barrack. Men dived through windows and scrambled out the door as hot lead gouged a tabletop, knocked the stovepipe out of alignment in a shower of soot, and wet down the occupants with a spray of tequila from a shattered bottle. Smoke Jensen took time to shove half a dozen large cartridges into the Express rifle before he rose and started downhill.
Well spread out, as Smoke had instructed, eight townsmen accompanied him. At first they met no resistance. All attention focused on the main gate. Smoke saw a guard in a tower take aim at the front of the compound and brought the Winchester to his shoulder. The Express rifle barked, and the man on the elevated platform threw his weapon high in the air as he fell to the side and draped his bleeding body over the side wall.
That got notice from the hardcases nearer to the back of the mine property. Their return fire caused several of the citizens of la Paz to drop to the ground, and one round clipped a young man in the shoulder. His cry of pain could trigger panic among the untrained, Smoke Jensen realized. He had to keep them advancing.
“Everyone down. Crawl forward to the fence,” he commanded.
They obeyed at once, grateful for a way not to provide a tempting target. At a crouch, Smoke led the way. He reached the fence and found it to be what farmers in the States had taken to calling “hog wire”: big, six-inch open spaces formed by twisted, interlaced wire. It made easy climbing for a human. It would also make easy pickings, like flies on the wall, for the gunmen inside. He summoned one of the volunteers, a thick-shouldered man who had proclaimed himself the town blacksmith.
“Let’s take a hold of the bottom of this and see if we can raise it,” Smoke suggested.
“Estar facil—that’s easy,” the grinning smithy responded. He knelt beside Smoke and, together, they prised upward.
Slowly at first, then with a surge, the wire bent to their powerful effort. It rose from the ground, restricted only at the wooden posts where the mesh had been secured with staples. Bullets snapped over their heads and bent backs, and Smoke noticed the stolid blacksmith wince, though he never hesitated.
“You’re good at this,” Smoke praised when they had opened a swath wide enough for several to cross under at once.
“I have a brother-in-law who is inside there,” he answered simply. “He is from out of town, and they . . . took him,” he added with a shrug.
“We’ll get him back,” Smoke assured him.
Once they were inside the compound, the fighting grew close. Knives and six-guns against clubbed rifles and, oddly to Smoke’s way of thinking, whips. Advancing with his volunteers, Smoke saw the head guard roll over and prop himself up on one elbow. He had fisted a .45 and sought a good target.
“Some people never learn,” Smoke complained to himself as he stepped up close behind the murderous warder.
With an economy of motion, Smoke brought the butt-plate of his Express rifle down on the head of the would-be back-shooter. It made a ripe melon splat, and the .45 slipped from nerveless fingers. Two guards in their union suits burst from the barrack, revolvers blazing. Smoke Jensen stood right in their path.
No time to swing the Winchester Express into line. Smoke let go and, in one smooth motion, whipped out his .44. It bucked and snorted and sent a lethal message to the charging guards. First one, then the other, fell in the dust, but not before a bullet from the second man had put a hot line across the right shoulder of Smoke Jensen. It affected his aim, so that his next .44 round punched a black hole in the forehead of the gunman who had shot him.
Smoke regretted that. These were only hired punks, not soldiers of El Rey del Norte. If they had sense enough to give up, they would be let free. Smoke and Carbone had extracted a promise from the people of la Paz to that effect. They knew better, he reasoned, than to renege. Already he heard Carbone’s voice, clear and steady above the tumult, informing the defenders of that fact.
“Stop fighting. Your bosses are locked up. You have nothing to fear from us. Give up and go free.”
Gradually a slackening in the melee could be noted. Smoke smiled to himself. Carbone had definitely not lost it. He still commanded while others followed. Smoke added his own imperfect Spanish to the inviting flow of Carbone’s urging.
“Throw up your hands. Stop fighting.”
A shot cracked past Smoke’s head, and he spun to the left, where the enemy lurked in a shadow. Another muzzle bloom gave him a target, and he pumped two fast rounds into the darkness. A muffled cry answered him, and a guard stumbled out into the light of the fires. He tottered, made a futile gesture of surrender, and crashed to the ground, to twitch and die.
Quiet came in an instant. Slowly the groans of wounded and battered men rose. From a locked barrack came the plaintive cry of a prisoner. Quickly the men of Pueblo de la Paz set about freeing the victims of greed. When they lined up outside, Smoke and Carbone addressed them. They told of the depredations of El Rey and asked if the men would show gratitude for their freedom by joining in the fight to rid Mexico of another form of vermin, like those who had made them slaves.
Shouts of approval rose among the former prisoners. In a body they rushed forward to pledge their lives to the effort. When they had been taken into town, fed and armed from the arsenal in the jail, Carbone came to where Smoke Jensen leaned back in a captain’s chair, to catch a few badly needed winks.
“What now, companero?” the premier gunman of Mexico asked.
“I think it’s time we delivered our new recruits to your rancho, don’t you?”
“Seguro, si. We can ride out within half an hour.”
“See to it,” Smoke concluded through a tired smile.
They kept with Smoke Jensen’s plan. Climbing higher into the Sierra Madre Occidental, the small column of volunteers came to a place where the road split. Carbone called a halt while he studied the map he carried in his mind. At last satisfied, he addressed Smoke.
“This left-hand track leads eventually to my ranch. Ernesto Rubio is a trustworthy sort. I suggest we send the recruits on south to the ranch. My segundo can take care of housing and training them.”
“And we go where?” Smoke asked.
“This is the long way around,” Carbone protested the delay, “but it leads eventually into the state of Aguascalientes near Martine’s estancia. It is not a well-traveled road, and we should get by without being noticed.”
Smoke smiled. “I like that. I’ve always been a strong believer in surprise. Odds are that if we are out of sight long enough, this Carvajal will start to think I’ve turned tail and headed back north. By then we should have enough men ready for a fight.”
The two friends watched the former slaves depart. Then they gathered up their packhorses and moved out at a brisk trot along the spiny ridge of a lesser sierra. High above, an eagle circled and made its plaintive cry. Somewhere below, furtive prey would be motionless in fearful anticipation of the sharp talons that could close on their small, furry bodies and carry them off to feed a brood of chicks. Smoke Jensen watched the magnificent bird as it soared and dipped in the currents sent up from sun-drenched slopes of pine and balsam.
Cedar trees gave off their pungent odor, which invigorated the big mountain man. With each passing hour Smoke Jensen felt more at home in these rugged escarpments. He made careful, unconscious note of terrain features. Never again would he be a stranger here. Neither man broke the companionable silence until they halted to rest their horses and nibble on cold rations.
“Over beyond this rampart, to the north a hundred leagues, is Cannon del Cobre. It is spectacular. Larger even than Canñon Grande, in Arizona,” Carbone informed Smoke.
“That would be a sight worth seeing.”
“It is very rich in copper ore,” Carbone added.
“Is it actively mined?”
“No, the terrain is too rugged.”
“Well, then, maybe it will last for a while longer,” Smoke opined. He strongly disliked and fervently lamented the vast, ugly gashes left in the land of the American West. Hydraulic mining was relatively new, yet it had left its indelible mark on the once-beautiful mountains and valleys.
Sighing, he abandoned such reflections to study the sky. A deep line formed on Smoke’s brow as he took note of a growing expanse of black-bellied, towering clouds in the west. In the next ten minutes they seemed to have doubled in number. Smoke called Carbone’s attention to them.
“Oh, sí,” Carbone responded, relatively unaffected. “A storm is gathering. We’ll get wet before we find a place for the night.”
Smoke Jensen considered the swift, powerful violence of thunderstorms in the High Lonesome. They could gather out of seeming nothing and dump a cascade of water and hail, and lash the land with tempestuous winds before sailing ponderously away to the southeast. These huge boomers appeared to be kin to those he’d known much of his life. Yet, Carbone seemed indifferent to the menace in the sky.
“We’d better move on, then,” Smoke suggested.
Forty minutes later, the entire sky had turned black. It was as though night had fallen on this part of the mountains. Ahead and behind them, bright, golden sunlight sparkled on the snow-capped pinnacles of the Sierra. Muted thunder rumbled to the west. Only a few at first, then wide swaths of tree tops began to sway and twist in a growing wind.
It sang mournfully through the pine boughs. Smoke settled his Stetson more firmly on his head and turned up his collar. Sidewinder twitched nervous ears and rippled his loose hide in agitation. A sudden flash turned the world white around them. The peal of thunder came like a blast of cannon fire to someone sleeping beneath the muzzle.
Their packhorses squealed in alarm. Carbone looked about with newfound uneasiness. Large drops of rain, widely spaced, began to patter down. They bounced high off the ground and rattled the leaves of oak and aspen. Smoke paused to look all around.
“We’d best find some cover. I’m betting on hail,” he told Carbone.
“Sí. This is worse than I expected.”
“How far are we from somewhere to shelter?”
“¿Quien sabe?” Carbone responded with a shrug. “Who knows?” he repeated. “Maybe half a league. There is, or was, a small ranch in this part of the Sierra. We should almost be there.”
“We’ll have to be quick about it,” Smoke urged, his last words drowned out in another cataclysmic flash and bang of celestial outrage.
Mixed with the heavy odor of ozone, the wood smoke could not at first be discerned by Smoke Jensen. He caught a whiff of it, though, when the wind shifted and increased in velocity A billow of gray-smudged white boiled past them.
“That lightning started a fire,” Smoke declared. “It’s upwind of us. Let’s ride.”
Carbone took the point, his big spurs raking reckless speed out of his mount. A thoroughly frightened packhorse streamed in his wake. Smoke Jensen followed in the race to get out of this celestial outrage.
Instinctively, Carbone chose a path through the trees that led diagonally across the fire’s front, angled southwest. Within minutes, flames licked high into the air behind them. Panicked and riderless, the packhorses tried to bolt ahead of the mounted men. They squealed pitifully and fought their lead ropes. Farther west, it had been raining longer. Smoke and Carbone entered a steady, slow-moving downpour that advanced toward the flames.
It would be a race, Smoke knew, between the deluge and the fire. Their lives quite clearly depended upon which element of nature won. He still fought with his lead animal when a loud, sucking sound came from above them. Wise in the ways of mountains, Smoke glanced upward in time to see a wall of sodden earth pull away from the breast of the mountain and lean far outward toward them. He sucked air and shouted above the tumult of roaring water and thunder.
“Let go the packhorses! Ride out fast,” he commanded.
Carbone quickly obeyed. They slipped and slid ahead on the steep path. Once, Sidewinder went to his rear haunches as the great slab of mud and rocks towered over them. Smoke urged the Appaloosa stallion with a smart slap of reins, and Sidewinder surged forward once more. At his side, Carbone had gone pale-faced, and his eyes held a haunted light.
With a tremendous crash, the mudslide slammed to the ground behind them. Tree trunks broke with explosive reports, and branches flew every direction. The mud oozed up to the hoofs of their mounts. Carbone gasped in relief at being spared. Smoke looked hard-eyed at where the hind legs of a packhorse protruded from under the sloppy edge of the cascade. Its companion nuzzled up to the other horses for comfort.
“We’ve lost that one and the gear,” Smoke observed. “At least it was quick. Can you say how far to that old house?”
“If we can find the trail again, perhaps,” Carbone answered with a shrug.
Rain still pounded them as Smoke Jensen and Esteban Carbone set off in search of the trail and shelter. A new, ferocious downpour assailed them and drove visibility to a matter of feet. For once, Smoke began to doubt that all mountains were alike. This deadly, powerful tempest, whipped up by a tropical storm, resembled nothing like he had experienced in the Shining Mountains. Reluctantly, he admitted to himself that they could easily die here.