They quick-marched all day and into the night with the shore party dogging them every step of the way. There was a full tropic moon, which was good and bad for them. It made it possible to see where they were going in the rough country of the Pacific slope, but the moonlight exposed them to view as they struggled onward to the east, too. Gaston suggested leaving the trail and trying to lose the pursuers up some draw or canyon, but Captain Gringo vetoed the idea for two reasons. The trail they were following seemed to be leading them to San Jose in the high country to the east, and they didn’t want to take a chance on getting boxed in a blind canyon. The other leader acted like he knew his job and there was more than enough light to follow footprints off the trail. Their best hope, tiresome as it was, was to just trudge on until the sailors decided they were as far inland as they were supposed to go. He was sure the gunboat skipper had given them orders on that point. But they were already miles from the sea and the sons of bitches showed no signs of giving up.
He muttered, “Horses.” as they topped another rise.
Gaston asked, “Pardon? I could swear you just said, ‘Horses’.”
“I did. That eager officer back there isn’t going to break off hot pursuit as long as he keeps spotting us ahead of him. Those sons of bitches are as good as we are and they have the numbers on us, too. We’re not about to out walk them. But if we could just rustle up some horses to ride—”
“I salute your sage plan, my old and rare. But where does one intend to find these noble steeds? We haven’t passed a ranch or village since we began this fatiguing business!”
Captain Gringo said, “I know. This old trail must be a post road built by the Spanish in the old days. They tended to run their communication lines through country nobody could live in. You notice we haven’t passed a single stream or water hole?”
“I have, to my distress. It’s no wonder the Spanish failed to hold their empire together. They were most obviously insane!”
“No they weren’t. If you send your dispatches through country too grim to squat in, you avoid a mess of Indians. I noticed the same thing up in Arizona Territory when I was fighting Apache with the old Tenth Cav. We never followed the old Spanish trails, looking for Geronimo. The sons of bitches led through places no Apache would be dumb enough to be!”
Gaston shrugged and said, “So much for your idea of horses, then. You won’t even find wild mustangs where there is no water.”
They marched on in silence, each man wrapped in his own gloomy thoughts and discomfort. The night was cool and would have been pleasant, if they still had water in their canteens and weren’t so tired. Captain Gringo knew that dawn would be the test. If another hot day caught them out in this dry brush he wouldn’t be able to drive them much farther without water. His own cramped muscles warned him that he was dangerously dehydrated. Some of the whiners, like T.B., had fallen silent and just plodded on, glassy-eyed. A dangerous sign. They were going to have to dig in for a stand wherever the first man dropped. If that meant a fire fight with the U.S. Navy, so be it. They were really starting to piss him off. That other leader was obviously a wise ass who’d picked the best men from the crew and loaded up on water before he started out. He wondered if they had any automatic weapons with them. The odds were lousy even if they were only packing Krag repeaters.
The trail horseshoed around a bend and Gaston said, “Regard! A light!”
Captain Gringo said, “I see it.” As he trudged on, squinting at the tiny pinpoint of orange to the northeast. Whatever it was, campfire or ranch house, it was not on the trail they were following. But the slope was flattening as they marched east and the moonlight painted silvery ridge lines between them and the mystery light that didn’t look too rugged. Captain Gringo called back, “Watch where you put your feet, guys. We’re cutting across to that light over there I”
As he left the trail to wade through waist high scrub, the others followed. It was rougher going and he knew they were leaving a clearly visible path of broken branches and trampled ground cover behind. Worse yet, they were breaking trail for the goddamned Navy. The men on their tail would find it easier, faster going. But if they found horses near that light.
Gaston had been thinking along the same lines. So he kept his voice low as he asked, “What if they only have two or three horses. Or only one? You and I could ride double, but—”
“Jesus, don’t you ever get tired of being such a fucking optimist?”
“In country so desolate, one hardly expect to find a large ranch, hein? I shall be most surprised to find a remuda of mounts for us all.”
“Look, they may have no horses at all. They may have a railroad station. At least it gives us a straw to grasp. So stop flapping your fat lips. You’re giving me a hard-on.”
The light was farther off than they’d first judged and the brushy draws they had to cross getting to it were bitches, but at last it started to get closer and they saw it was a big light. Captain Gringo said, “That’s no lantern in a window. It looks like a house on fire.”
Gaston said, “Mais oui. Why do we struggle on? Do you intend to piss on the flames? We certainly have no other water to put it out with.”
Captain Gringo kept going, losing the light as they crossed low ground and seeing it closer each time they topped a rise. At last they staggered up a last ridge and he waved his men to cover as he studied the scene ahead.
He’d been right about it being a ranch. A cluster of connected adobes formed a horseshoe with its open end facing them. The end of one wing was burning. The flames licking through the caved-in tile roof cast a ruddy glow on the well in the yard and two bodies lay sprawled in the dust near it. One was a woman, face down with her limp arms almost reaching the broken water jug she’d been carrying when she went down. The other was a man in peasant cotton, with a stick still clutched in his dead hand. As they watched, a shadow moved between them and the fire, and a gun flashed from the house forming the top of the horseshoe. Someone down below yipped a taunting coyote laugh and a coarse voice called out in Spanish, “Hey, Don Alberto, for why do you wish to be so unreasonable, eh? Give it up, Don Alberto I We only seek for to share your wealth. You can keep your fucking wife and daughter! We don’t wish for to kill you. Just send out your money and silver and we will leave, like the caballeros we are”
“Bandits,” said Gaston. Captain Gringo wondered what else was new. He said, “They’re down in the brush, between us and the ranch, at the base of this hill.”
Gaston said, “Mais oui. I just saw one move. But they are outside the fire’s glow from the house. I can’t see how many of them there are.”
The Detroit Harp came to join them, crouching with the machine gun on his shoulder. He asked, “Why haven’t they surrounded the place?”
Captain Gringo pointed with his chin and said, “The rancher’s cleared the brush out back for his corrals and. garden. No cover that way. As I put it together, those bandits eased as close as they could through the chaparral down there and opened up on the patio without warning. Everybody made it back to the house but those two servants by the well.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “Out. As usual, the family was taking the air after dark. If there are more than a dozen bandits down there, they are tres lousy shots.” Then he nudged Captain Gringo and added, “They ran off such horses as those unfortunate ranchers may have had when they fired the stable. I see no reason to wait and see how it turns out.”
Captain Gringo turned to The Detroit Harp and said, “Give me the Maxim.”
As the tall American took the machine gun and opened the breech to slip one end of the ammo belt he’d been packing into the action, Gaston said, “Tres noble, I agree, but have you forgotten those sailor boys are right behind us?”
Captain Gringo sighed and said, “Can’t be helped. There’s a wife and daughter in that house.”
“Goddamn it, Dick, they’re going to move on the sound of gunfire and you’ll be low on ammo when they get here!”
“I know. I want you to lead the guys off along this ridge and hole up. If I can’t get back to you, get these guys to San Jose and make sure they get paid by that fucking Greystoke.”
Then he started easing down the slope toward the besieged ranch without waiting to see his orders were obeyed. He moved slowly and silently, machine gun braced on his hip with the belt trailing behind him as he tried to spot the bandits in the brush ahead. He heard a twig break behind him and froze until he heard Gaston murmur, “The Harp knows the way to San Jose.”
“Right. Watch where you put your feet, for Chrissake.”
He froze once more as a gun fired just down the slope and the same voice called, “Hey, Don Alberto? You are really beginning to annoy us! Are you going to be reasonable, or do we have to rush you? If we get you the hard way, it will be most hard on your women, eh?”
The rancher was too smart to answer. Gaston nudged Captain Gringo and said, “Those round patches in the brush look like straw sombreros, non?”
Captain Gringo nodded grimly and moved closer as Gaston drew his own revolver. The tall American’s heel turned on a loose rock and he stumbled and staggered down the slope to recover his balance. One of the bandits hissed, “Atender! What was that?”
Before anyone could answer, Captain Gringo opened up with the machine gun, sweeping a stream of hot lead back and forth as he fired half blind into the brush down the slope. Twigs, branches, dust, and straw sombreros rose darkly against the firelight as men screamed and rose to run. A figure wearing crossed ammo belts and a fancy black charro costume staggered out into the light, hands over his head as he sobbed for mercy. Captain Gringo kept sweeping the brush as a rifle squibbed from the house and tore the side off the bewildered bandit’s head. A gun flashed up at them from the brush and Gaston fired his pistol and said, “Got you, my enthusiastic friend!”
And then the machine gun’s bolt clicked on an empty chamber and he added, “Merde! You used up all the ammunition!”
“I think I burned out the bore, too,” said Captain Gringo as he dropped the useless weapon and drew his own pistol to say, “Watch it. I could have missed someone.”
Gaston said, “I don’t see how! You fired enough rounds to massacre a regiment!”
As they eased down the slope, a voice from the house called out, “Who are you, caballeros? Thank God you came! It was just in time!”
Captain Gringo called back, “Stay under cover, señor! We’re still checking for live ones!”
Gaston eased around a bush, rolled a body over with his boot, and said, “This one will shoot no more women at a well.” Then he said, “Ah, there is another, missing the top of his skull, and yes, two more hugging one another in that cactus clump like babes in the wood. I told you you were being lavish with that ammo, Dick. You killed the bastards more than once!
The body count was eight as they moved closer to the light and could see the bandits spattered through the bushes. If anyone had gotten away, he was still running. Captain Gringo walked toward the houses, holstering his gun and he called out, “We got them. Are you people all right in there?”
A tall distinguished looking man in white came out of the house, still holding his rifle, but lowered politely as he came to meet them. He held out his free hand and said, “I am called Alberto Moreno y Valdez. I am trying to find the words to thank you properly, señor but my language is most inadequate. Suffice to say, my house is your house and from this day forward I will stand with you to the death!”
Captain Gringo shook his hand and said, “Por nada, Don Alberto. You can call me Ricardo and this is my friend, Gaston.”
Across the patio, some cotton-clad ranch hands had come out to fight the fire and see to their dead without being told. Two women in black dresses walked through the confusion to join them, shyly. Don Alberto introduced them as his wife and daughter. It was hard to remember which was which, as both were bit old and fat in their widow’s weeds. Don Alberto was part way through explaining how the recent death of his son-in-law may have encouraged the bandits to attack an isolated ranch, defended by one old man, when Gaston tugged Captain Gringo’s sleeve and murmured, “Company.”
The tall American turned and muttered, “Oh, shit,” as a skirmish line of men in navy blues and white puttees moved into the light with bayoneted rifles held at port. The C.P.O. in charge called out, “What’s going on here? Do any of you people speak English?”
Neither Captain Gringo nor Gaston replied. Don Alberto said, “I speak English, señor, albeit poorly. Who are you, and what brings you here?”
“We’re U.S. Shore patrolmen, after a gang of outlaws. We’ve been trailing them all the way from Punta Purgatorio. We saw your burning barn and heard gunfire. Now it’s your turn.”
Don Alberto nodded politely and said, “You will find your bandits over there at the base of the hill. They attacked us, but, as you will see, my friends and I just had it out with them.”
The C.P.O. turned to one of his men and snapped, “Check it out, Ryan.”
Then, as the seaman trotted toward the bushes, he turned back to Don Alberto and asked, “Who are these guys?”
“I just told you, señor. They are my friends.”
The seaman sent to the brush line called out, “Hey, Chief? He’s right as rain! There’s a mess of guys over here, shot to shit!”
The C.P.O. turned and walked toward the hillside, calling back, “I want eight bodies to report, Ryan. We’ve been following eight guys, and I ain’t going back without eight scratched off!”
“You got eight, Chief. Funny, I don’t remember them sombreros, but we was looking at ‘em from a distance.”
“Look for that machine gun. If they didn’t have that machine gun with ’em, they’re the wrong guys.”
They both vanished from sight up the slope as the other sailors stood where they were, bemused. Finally, one of them said, “Hell, let’s give them a hand with that fire. I don’t know what the Chief is talking about.”
As the shore patrol stacked its rifles and went over to pitch in with the peons, Captain Gringo turned to Don Alberto and said, “I suppose we owe you an explanation, sir.”
Don Alberto shook his head and said, “It is we who owe you, señor. Who you are and where you may have come from is not important. You came here when we needed you!”
The C.P.O. came out of the bushes, carrying the beat up Maxim and a satisfied smirk. He said, “Those were the guys who smoked up our gunboat and busted the skipper’s pet balloon, all right. You folks sure fight like tigers! Three guys against eight and a machine gun! I’d have said it was impossible if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
His assistant, Ryan, joined them with a fancy gunbelt as he chimed in, “Hell, we knew them guys were crazy. They must have been smoking that Mary Wanna stuff when they stole the balloon. Can I keep this for a trophy, Chief?”
The C.P.O. shook his head and said, “No. I don’t want any wise-ass local government guys to accuse us of looting. We’ll pack the machine gun back to show the skipper we caught up with the gang. But that’s it, and we’d better get going. We weren’t supposed to move so far inland and the skipper’s probably worried.”
He raised the whistle hanging on his chest and blew it before he yelled, “Come on, that fire’s almost out. Grab your weapons and let’s go.”
Then he nodded to Don Alberto, Gaston, and Captain Gringo and said, “We have to shove off. So I’ll say adios. But you guys sure know how to fight. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”