They found Milton Draper three weeks and several hundred miles later. They also found a half-dozen hardcases who toted their guns in his service.
It was in the little sleepy town of San Rafael de Some-thing-or-other. The alcalde was a cousin twice removed of Blade and it was he who sent word to Blade who, with McMasters, was fruitlessly combing the hills to the west of town. An alcalde, by the way, is a Mexican equivalent of a mayor, magistrate and chief of police all rolled into one. Pablo Gomez Espada liked being all three rolled into one. It made him the biggest man around those parts and, as all Espadas knew right from wrong (or so they claimed), it seemed to him a just and excellent arrangement.
He sent the message by a beautiful niece, knowing that Blade would not fail to listen to a beautiful woman.
The young lady told him: ‘Tío Pablo says that this Draper is in San Rafael and there is with him some bad men and a very beautiful Yanqui lady.’
Blade said: ‘Is she as beautiful as yourself, nina?’
She smiled archly and asked: ‘Do you think that possible?’
‘Let us say that it would be very difficult.’
McMasters was all business. When he risked his life, he took the matter very seriously, A man was apt to, he said, when he only had one for the losing.
‘Tell me, guapa,’ he said, ‘exactly where this Draper is living and, if possible, where he keeps the gringa.’
‘That I can tell you,’ said Mercedes, ‘for the alcalde has used me as a spy on your behalf. I have to tell you every detail you may need.’
And this she proceeded to do and both her listeners were compelled to admire the extent of her observation and memory.
When the recital was ended, Blade asked: ‘And had the American lady suffered at all at the hands of these men?’
Mercedes said: ‘This girl, she means so much to you?’ Blade nodded.
McMasters said: ‘There ain’t no sense, Joe, in thinking on that kind of thing. We couldn’t hurry or we’d get the girl killed. You want her alive.’
Blade said: ‘Sure.’ He turned to the girl and said ‘Thank you for coming here, chica. Now you ride back to the alcalde and you tell him that we shall come tonight after dark.’
The girl said she would do that and added: ‘Tío Pablo said that you were kissing kin.’
‘That’s true,’ Blade agreed with a smile and kissed her. McMasters swore and looked so downcast that the girl kissed him too. The Mexicans, Blade said, were an understanding people. They watched the girl ride away. McMasters watched Blade and saw the tension in him. Both men knew that what they had to do would risk Charity’s life. McMasters admired the girl deeply and he knew they were risking her.
‘So let’s look at it coldly,’ McMasters said. ‘What stands between us and the girl?’
‘A half-dozen men and Draper,’ Blade answered.
‘And maybe somebody watching the road into town,’ McMasters added.
Blade looked pensive for a moment, then said: ‘A pair of high-crowned Mexican sombreros are called for.’
‘Two pairs of calzoneras,’ McMasters added, referring to Mexican pants split below the knee to reveal the linen underpants.
‘And a couple of ponchos.’
‘A pair of Chihuahua spurs to complete the picture.’
‘They should get us into San Rafael safely.’
‘Where shall we find such things?’ McMasters said. ‘Don’t tell me, I can guess. You have a cousin right here in town who can help.’
Blade said: ‘I have a widowed aunt who has buried four husbands and has several wardrobes we can choose from.’
‘Lead me to this wonder.’
Señora Pilar Espada y Rodrigo was not at all what McMasters expected. She was an elegant lady of about thirty years old. She seemed to take to McMasters and certainly found for him a suit of clothes far more elegant than the one she offered to her nephew. To cut a long story short, when, they set off for the town of San Rafael, they were not recognizable as the two Americans who had recently come into town. Even their horses had been exchanged for two animals of the small local breed.
By midnight they were entering San Rafael.
The town was silent except for a dozen curs that ran and snapped at their horses’ heels. The two men had to beat them off with their quirts. All their curses were in excellent Spanish. They reached Blade’s kinsman’s house without seeing a sign of their quarry.
The alcalde greeted them warmly. He was a small tired man with white hair and a crumpled black suit. He offered them food and wine, which they gladly accepted. Mercedes was there, all smiles to see them again. She said that she had been watching the gringos closely. There was always an armed guard at the front and rear of the house. It was obvious that the Americanos were of an extremely nervous disposition. The alcalde was made uneasy by this.
Sooner or later, nervous men always shot somebody.
Mercedes told them: ‘The gringa señorita was held in a room at the back of the house.’ It was on the second floor, but an agile man could reach her window.
McMasters said briskly: ‘I make a diversion on the street while you go get the girl, Joe.’
‘Just like that,’ said Blade.
‘Just like that.’
Blade asked: ‘What sort of diversion?’
‘I shoot somebody – ain’t that diversion enough?’
Blade grinned – ‘Yeah, that’ll do. Just so long as you take enough time about it for me to get Charity out of there.’
The alcalde was a little worried. What if the Rurales heard of the trouble in his town? He had never had trouble with the police.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘I am the alcalde here. I think it best that I look the other way. I never saw either of you in all my life.’
Blade said: ‘You could swear us in as something or other.’
The Mexican threw up his hands.
‘Go, go,’ he said, ‘get this over with quickly. I can see this is going to be a bloody affair. It might be better for us all if I arrested you both and flung you in jail.’
Blade looked surprised and shocked.
‘I cannot believe what I hear,’ he said. Mercedes giggled.
‘I shall come with you,’ she said. ‘Men do not go to war with women on their arms.’
‘Go,’ said the alcalde again. ‘Fresh horses will be saddled ready for you. I want you as quick as possible away from this place.’
‘Four horses,’ said Blade.
‘My God,’ cried the alcalde, ‘you’re not stealing Mercedes on top of all this.’
‘We shall be taking Draper back to the States.’
‘You will have to apply to the Mexican government for extradition.’
Blade smiled and said: ‘As smuggling is the traditional trade around these parts, we shall smuggle him in. I hate to go against tradition.’
The alcalde wrung his hands and looked up to heaven.
‘Don’t tell me such things, they shock me to my soul.’ Which was pretty good coming from a man who had inherited a smuggling outfit from his father.
Five minutes later, Blade and McMasters were out on the night streets. The little town was quiet. From the next street there came the sound of a street band – harp, horn and fiddle playing something slow, soft and impassioned. The moon rode high and bright. A few clouds drifted. Blade thought of Charity and wondered not for the first time if he would be able to get her away from Draper unharmed. He didn’t fool himself that the big man wouldn’t kill her if it suited his purpose. If he found himself defeated by Blade, he might kill her out of sheer rage.
They turned right down a dark alley. Mercedes had a hand on their arms. They came to a large plaza. About the only occupant they could see was an old man seated near a bright brazier. He looked as though he were asleep. Blade wondered if he was what he seemed. Draper wets a resourceful and imaginative man.
They halted in the deep moon-shadow of a great tree. Mercedes pointed at a large house on the north side of the square.
‘That is the house,’ she said.
McMasters said softly: ‘I shall start the diversion in one smoke.’ He had never used a watch in his life.
‘All right,’ said Blade. ‘Mercedes, can you show me the window of the room the girl is held in?’
She said: ‘Come, we will walk like lovers, that is the best disguise.’
They put their arms around each other and wandered aimlessly out into the moonlight. Behind them, they heard McMasters mutter, ‘That bastard gets all the luck.’
They went slowly to the edge of the square without seeing anybody who might belong to the house where the girl was held. Now they came to a vacant lot where a house had been pulled down and nothing had been put in its place. They picked their way slowly through scattered trash and broken adobe bricks. The girl guided Blade in an arc around the house in which Charity was imprisoned. Soon they reached a well-trodden track that brought them to a crumbled adobe wall.
Suddenly – ‘Alto.’
The voice obviously meant business. They halted. Blade looked around, but he couldn’t see anybody.
In his excellent Spanish, he said: ‘We have halted, my friend. What do you wish us to do now?’
‘What are you called, hombre?’
‘I am called Porfirio Rodriguez and I have the honour of being first cousin to the alcalde of this town,’ said Blade with quiet pride.
The man in the shadow laughed – ‘Well, Porfirio Rodriguez, first cousin to the alcalde, if you do not go away from this spot instantly, I shall have the doubtful pleasure of blowing your foolish head off.’
Blade said: ‘Such strong words, señor. Let us see the face of the man who is bold enough to use them.’
The man said: ‘This is a gun pointing at you. Get out of here before you come to harm. And I beg you not to think that I joke. It is no pleasure to me to kill my fellow-countrymen.’
‘You put your case so graciously,’ said Blade, ‘that I have no alternative but to obey you.’
This passing of words to and fro gave Blade the opportunity of studying the rear of the house which was now no more than twenty paces from him. But time was ticking by and pretty soon would come the moment when McMasters would consider that he had time to finish his smoke.
He felt Mercedes jump with alarm against him as all hell broke loose at the front of the house. It sounded to Blade as if two armies had met in mortal combat. He knew he should have expected something spectacular from McMasters.
But Mercedes was no more alarmed than the Mexican who had challenged them. He was so startled by the outburst of gunfire that he came clean out of cover from behind the adobe wall. Blade brought his gun out from under his poncho and hurled the girl away from him. She tripped and went down as Blade sang out: ‘Drop the gun.’
The man’s automatic response to this order was to turn and fire. Blade’s experience made his own reaction as automatic. Even as the man’s gun came around, Blade had thumbed back the hammer and pressed the trigger. The two guns seemed to sound as one. The Mexican had fired a fraction of a second too soon. The bullet passed six inches from Blade’s head. Blade’s took him in the body and tore him from his feet. He grasped at the crumbling adobe and it gave under his touch. He fell on the adobe bricks on the ground.
‘Mother of God,’ he said softly, ‘he has killed me.’
Blade took his gun from his hand and tucked it under his own belt. Then he said to the girl: ‘This wasp has lost his sting. Help him to the alcalde.’
The man gazed in astonishment at Blade.
‘Was there ever such a one?’ he asked the night sky. But Blade was gone, running in towards the house and the exact spot that Mercedes had told him of. There was a small outbuilding, red-tiled as the rest of the house. It took no more than a couple of seconds to reach this and climb on to its roof. This brought him almost to the window he wanted, but he saw to his chagrin that it was beyond his reach. In any event, it was heavily barred.
His mind sought an answer.
McMasters was keeping up the firing at the front of the house. That sleepy plaza must now be full of flying lead. Blade knew that he would have to act quickly or the Draper men might drive McMasters off. He leapt for the roof of the house and made it. Scrambling on all fours, he climbed clear over it and down the far side that took him above the patio. Lamps were burning in a couple of windows and provided him with a little light. He saw a man run across the patio to the front of the house. Blade lowered himself to the edge of the roof and leapt. It was a long drop and he came down so hard that it jarred him from his soles to his skull.
He dropped almost at the feet of a man rushing out of the southern part of the house to cross the patio. But for the fact that Blade was readier for the meeting than the other man was, Blade could have been killed. But he had struck hard with the barrel of his gun almost before the man was aware of him.
The man staggered back against the wall of the house and Blade hit him again. The first blow had knocked the man’s hat off. This second blow landed on his bare skull. He pitched forward on to his face and Blade did not wait to see how unconscious the fellow was. He darted through the open doorway through which the man had come.
He was in a dark hallway.
Not far away, he heard Draper’s bellow – ‘For God’s sake use your head, man. Take some of the boys around the east side of the square. There ain’t too many men out there. Outflank ’em.’
A door opened and threw a shaft of light into the hallway. Blade shrank back into a niche. He could follow the man’s approach by the sound of his bootheels and the jingle of his spurs. He measured the man’s head to a nicety. But the fellow proved to be tougher than the other in the patio.
There was a roar of alarm and rage and Blade more sensed than saw the man pull his gun. Blade fired point-blank. The man screamed and was thrown aside by the heavy bullet.
Coughing on the gunsmoke, Blade headed for the stairs he had seen in the shaft of light from the room. He darted for these, went up a half-dozen treads and then the door was opened again.
Draper shouted: ‘What the hell goes on?’ The dull gleam of a gun showed in his hand.
Blade said: ‘Throw down your gun, Draper, or you’re dead.’
The big man fired and jumped backward in the same second. The bullet slammed into the wall by Blade and showered him with plaster. Almost immediately, Draper drove another shot at him. Blade replied once, but the big man was back in the shelter of the room.
This looked like a Mexican standoff to Blade. He was here to rescue Charity and he wouldn’t attain that target standing here on the stairs. Turning, he ran up the stairs. There were four doors facing him along the lengthy hallway. One of the two to his right must open to the room in which Charity was kept.
From down below came Draper’s roar – ‘Blade’s in the house. Blade’s upstairs. Blade’s in the house. For crissakes get off your butts and cut him down.’
Blade sent a shot down the stairs and heard Draper’s howl of alarm. Then Blade jumped for the first door. This was unlocked and opened on to an empty bedroom. Darting to the next, he found it locked.
‘Charity,’ he called.
The only reply he got was a drumming sound that seemed to be that of somebody banging their heels on the floor.
He hurled himself at the door. He had not done too well lately with knocking down doors and this Mexican one was no exception.
He tried kicking it open. It resisted stubbornly. He fired a shot into the lock. All he gained from that was the ricochet that burned his cheek. Cursing with some skill and a good deal of venom, he once more hurled himself at it. It gave a fraction of an inch.
He knew that he was in danger from both ends of the hall and from the stair-well. His nerves started to scream a little. His muscles tightened at the expected bullets.
He changed his attack on the door from the lock to the hinges. He nearly broke his shoulder, but this time the door gave enough to give him encouragement.
Just as he backed up for another charge, somebody fired a gun from the far end of the hall. Only the poorness of the light saved him. The bullet struck the door a glancing blow and howled on down the hall. Blade felt the burn from the splinters of wood thrown at his face. He turned, but the far end of the hall was in pitch darkness. He drove a shot in that direction and the man down there sent two shots back, fast. Neither hit Blade, but their closeness drove him to extra fury as he attacked the door again. He had to get in that room if he wanted to save himself. His energetic frenzy paid off. After one more charge, during which time the man down the hall emptied his gun at Blade, the door suddenly collapsed under his attack and he was thrown stumbling into the room.
Men shouted somewhere in the house.
Feet sounded on the stairs and down the hall.
Blade tripped over something on the floor. A moment later, his searching hands told him that he had found the girl. Then they told him that she was gagged as well as bound. He whipped the gag from her mouth.
All she said was: ‘Joe.’
Blade weighed his priorities and decided that a fully-loaded gun was what they both wanted at that moment. His ears on the sounds outside the room, he pushed empties out and thumbed fresh rounds into the gun.
Very near the door to the room, a man shouted: ‘Blade’s in there with the girl.’
The footfalls stopped.
Draper’s voice boomed out – ‘Rush him. Forget the girl. Rub ’em both out.’
Left-handed, Blade drew his knife and sliced the razor-sharp blade through Charity’s ankle bonds. His gun was pointed at the faint light coming through the doorway. The knife found her wrist bonds and cut through them. Charity gave a soft moan of pain as her circulation got to work again. Blade pulled the gun from his belt and thrust it into the girl’s hand.
‘One shot fired,’ he said. ‘Now, how the sweet hell do we get out of this one, girl?’
Charity was ever a one for surprises.
‘Believe it or not,’ she told him, ‘I have not been idle in my captivity.’
He said: ‘You cut a hole in the floor.’
She said tartly: ‘That’s your one weakness, Blade. You underestimate me.’
‘So what has the clever girl done?’
‘She has loosened the window bars. The walls are adobe. So all you have to do is exert some of that masculine strength of yours.’
‘That’s my girl,’ he said.
She punctuated the sentence with a shot through the doorway. They heard a man fall back against the stair rail. They heard it slowly crack under his weight before he hit the stairs below.
‘Jesus,’ said one man in awe.
Blade whispered to the girl: ‘Cover the doorway from the far corner while I get those bars out.’
She said: ‘I’m staying right here, brother, where I can cover the hall outside.’
He swore and said: ‘Your obstinacy will be the death of you.’
‘This is no time for sentimentality,’ she snapped. ‘Get moving, buster.’
He thrust his gun into leather, stood up and took a grip on the grill. It moved quite easily as he tested it. When he threw his weight backwards it came away in his hands. He hurled it across the room in the direction of the door.
A man in the hall shouted: ‘They’re going out the window.’
‘Carlos, you hank,’ roared Draper. ‘Get down there.’
Boot heels thudded.
‘To go or not to go,’ said Blade, ‘that is the question.’ Charity made up his mind for him: ‘We go, fast.’
She was at the window. Blade listened to the sounds in the hall. The men there were hesitating to approach the doorway, hoping that the two of them would be caught as they climbed from the window.
Blade gripped Charity’s arm.
‘You see that broken adobe wall? Make for that, lie down on the far side of it and stay still. It won’t be too long before I join you.’
‘Joe,’ she said, ‘you’re going to do something damn foolish.’
‘I’m going to do something I have to do,’ he said. ‘Now, git, before you get us both killed.’
She kissed him quickly, slipped out of the window and dropped to the roof below, light and quick.
No doubt about it, Blade thought, she’s a girl in a million.
He saw her reach the wall and disappear behind it. A few seconds later the two men ran into view. One of them ran into a shot from Blade. The second man jumped back in time to evade Blade’s second shot.
The men outside were either afraid of Draper or they were light-headed. They rushed the doorway. The first man tripped on the iron grill that lay in his path. As he measured his length on the floor, Blade fired. The second man stumbled over him and was a sitting duck for the next shot. One of them, Blade never knew which, tried to hit him, but the shot went a foot wide. Blade’s last shot brought a yell of terror and one of the men dragged himself out of the room into the cover of the hall.
‘Christ,’ he heard Draper bellow, ‘he’s one man. One stinking man. His gun’s empty, go get him and earn your pay.’
‘The only pay we’ll get out of this, Draper,’ said a man, ‘is a bullet in the guts.’
Blade was thumbing fresh rounds into his gun. Draper shouted: ‘The room’s empty. Go in there and cut ‘em down from the window.’
His gun fully loaded, Blade dropped flat on the floor and fired at an angle across the entrance to the right. At once he rolled quickly to the right and drove two shots to the left. He knew he still held the initiative. If he let up for a moment, he was a goner. His three shots created pandemonium. Another man fell down the stairs. One ran off down the hall. Not a shot came back in return. He wondered if Draper was still outside.
He listened. He thought he could hear a man’s rasping breath, but he could not be sure. Rising, he went silent-footed to the window and, crouching down, looked out. The corner of his eye caught a slight movement. Resting his gun wrist on the sill he drove a shot at the man creeping bent over in the moonlight. The shot turned him violently and he staggered. Then he was getting back out of sight, dragging his left foot.
Blade made his one mistake with that shot. He knew the risk he took and he had to make it to prevent the man from reaching Charity. But he gave his position away to a man at the doorway to the room. He heard the gun thunder and something smashed into him from behind. It drove his face against the adobe. He fell back into the room.
Even as he hit the floor, his mind was screaming: Line your gun up on the door.
He rolled over on to his belly, pushed his gun out on a straight arm. Something pale moved. He took it for a shirt-front and thumbed and fired at once.
A man shrieked as high-pitched as a woman.
Another man said: ‘This is a goddam slaughterhouse. Count me out, Draper.’
‘You yellow bastard,’ Draper yelled. ‘I don’t need trash like you.’ There came the sound of a man running. A gun went off in the hall. The footsteps stopped and a body hit the floor.
A massive relief flooded through Blade. At long last, he was getting somewhere. He rolled very carefully to the far corner of the room and reloaded the gun. That made him just about out of shells. He stood up and went silently to the window. He went out of that window quiet as a mouse.