Chapter 16
“Pulque?” asked the don. “I ferment it myself right here at Hacienda de la Paz. Er . . . I should say my peons ferment it, but under my close supervision, of course.” Holding up a slender, brown stone jug he’d removed from the top of a heavy wooden cabinet beneath a framed, painted map of Baja, the old patrón smiled at his guests.
Prophet salivated. “That’s one of the two things that calls me to Mexico year after year.”
The don switched his gaze to Colter, raising the jug a little higher and arching a brow. Colter glanced sheepishly at Prophet, flushing.
“Red don’t imbibe, Don,” the bounty hunter answered for the younger man. “He’s still—”
“What do you mean I don’t imbibe?” Shifting uncomfortably in the big, deep leather chair he’d dropped into when the don had invited them into his personal library for presupper drinks, Colter beetled his brows at his new partner, as though he’d never heard anything so silly. He looked at the don and curled his upper lip in an ironic smile. “Lou’s just sore ’cause he knows I can drink him under the table. Sure, fill ’er up, Don. I got a mouthful of trail dust beggin’ to be cut.”
“Kid,” Prophet said under his breath and with a wooden grin. “There’s no shame in—”
“No shame in what, Lou?” Colter shifted around again. “No shame in throwing back too much busthead and howling at the moon? Pshaw! I can hold my liquor.” He smiled at the don. “Even the black powder variety you brew down here in Méjico.”
“All right.” Prophet dropped his arms to the sides of his own leather chair. “It’s your head, El Rojo.”
“All right, then.” The don glanced at his mayordomo standing just inside the open door. “Raoul, three pulques, if you will.”
“Sí,” said Raoul, a straight-backed, elegant-looking old Mexican with a carefully trimmed gray mustache. The don placed a hand on the servant’s shoulder and whispered into his ear.
As he did, Colter turned to Prophet again, and said under his breath with more than a little indignation, “What do you think I’m gonna do—sit here and drink goat’s milk like a blame nancy boy while you two swill Mexican busthead and compare knife scars and scorpion bites? This is Mexico, Lou!”
Prophet shrugged and sat back in his chair.
While the mayordomo, Raoul, walked over to the liquor cabinet, the don got both his crutches under him and ambled over to a chair near where Prophet and Colter had parked themselves at angles before the small fire snapping and crackling in a deep stone hearth. The library was a testament to old Spanish wealth—opulence that had gone somewhat to seed, however. The furniture was stately and Old Mexican in the best Spanish tradition, and the full armor of a Spanish conquistador was mounted on a wooden pedestal beside the fireplace, complete with jewel-encrusted sword.
But the leather furniture was badly cracked, the seams frayed. Wooden chair arms were splintering and showing the wear of the ages. In fact, most of the wood in the room, and there was a great deal including that of heavy shelves bearing the weight of hundreds of handsome cloth- or leather-bound Spanish volumes, had long since lost its luster.
There were patches of dust here and there, in hard-to-reach places, and cobwebs hung like tangled threads in wall corners. The heavy drapes thrown back from two long, arched windows, open to the cool night air and citrus aromas wafting from the surrounding patio, owned their own patina of dirt and soot from the fireplace.
Not that Prophet put any stock in neatness and maintenance himself, but the shabbiness, which he’d spied in other parts of the grand old house as he and Colter had been led here from the front entrance, spoke to him of better days at Hacienda de la Paz. Of younger housekeepers, perhaps, a younger don better equipped to stay on top of such supervision, and no doubt an overseeing lady of the place who had long since passed on.
Seeing that the don was having trouble with his crutches, Lou rose to help, taking the crutches from the old man, easing him into a chair near himself and Colter, at the end of a low table, then leaning the crutches against the man’s heavy leather armchair.
“Gracias, amigo,” the don said as he sank back in his chair, a little breathless. “It is no good—getting old.”
“I don’t look forward to it,” Prophet said.
The don looked at Colter. “You are still quite young.”
“I reckon in years, Don.”
“You feel older, eh?” The don fingered his left cheek. “Maybe it has something to do with the scar, eh?”
“Maybe.”
“La Marca de Sapinero.” Keeping his eyes on Colter, the old don gave a grim, knowing smile. “Sheriff Bill Rondo’s brand.”
Colter frowned at him in astonishment. “You know . . .”
“Sí, sí.” On the table before the don were three short stacks of reading material—books, magazines, and dime novels with yellow pasteboard covers. He leaned forward and with his arthritic hand riffled through a couple of the stacks, knocking the books around the table. “I try to brush up on my English from time to time by reading books from America. In my old age, I have wearied of the more serious fair”—he tossed a heavy, cloth-bound volume aside—“and indulge myself with more romantic tales of derring-do on the wild ’n’ woolly American frontier. Ah, here it is . . .”
He plucked a slender pasteboard volume from a now-messy stack and shoved it across the table toward Colter. The redhead stared down at it, deep lines cut across his forehead, pale where his hat had shaded it from the sun.
Leaning forward, Colter plucked it off the table and held it up so Prophet could see the cover on which a crude drawing showed a slender, long-haired young man bearing down on three obvious curly wolves with exaggeratedly savage faces. The young man wore a grisly S on his left cheek. He held a pistol in his left hand, flames stabbing from the barrel. One of the cutthroats facing him was thrown off his feet by the bullet. One man still standing wore a big silver star and held a gun in one hand, a branding iron in his other hand.
The brand on the end of the iron was a large, bright-red S.
The title in large dramatic letters read: THE SAPINERO BRAND.
Below, in smaller letters: The redheaded gunslinger wore the Brand of Sapinero on his face . . . or was it the Mark of Satan? The man who branded him found out for sure—the hard way!
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Prophet said. “Kid, you’ve ridden into dime-novel country.”
Colter scraped his thumb across the edge of the book, riffling the pages. “Reckon I have at that.” He didn’t seem quite sure how he felt about it.
“Just like Louisa,” Prophet groused. The Vengeance Queen, too, had had a dime novel written about her. “Me,” Prophet said, wryly, “all I get is shot at!”
“Ah, you are famous in your own right, Señor Prophet,” said the don. Raoul had given the old patrón a stone mug of pulque, and it quivered now in the oldster’s shaking hands. Raoul had set mugs of the astringent Mexican liquor on the low table near Prophet and Colter, and then after a quick nod to his patrón, retreated from the room. The don smiled around the mug he held up close to his spade-bearded chin. “Or, shall we say, infamous?”
“That’d likely be a better word—you’re right on that score, Don,” Prophet growled, lifting the mug and taking a small sip of the liquor.
The don sipped his own brew then smiled over the lip of the mug. “The big ex-Confederate bounty hunter who sold his soul to the devil . . .”
“I see my reputation precedes me, as well.”
“I read about you in a book about the Vengeance Queen.”
Prophet laughed. “Ain’t it just like her to get most of the glory.”
“You are her partner, are you not, Señor Prophet?”
“She’s mine. When I feel like indulging her persnickety ways, that is.”
The don frowned curiously, sliding his glance between Lou and Colter. “But, now . . . you two are partners . . . ?”
“For the time bein’,” Prophet told him.
“We found ourselves in similar situations, you might say,” Colter explained before taking a tentative sip of the pulque. He swallowed and his cheeks instantly flushed but he tried not to grimace.
He shot a quick glance at Prophet, who hooked a half smile at him.
“I see, I see,” said the don, studying each man in turn.
The man’s stare made Prophet feel like a horse the man was thinking about making an offer on. Apparently, the don’s scrutiny made Colter uneasy, as well, for the redhead glanced again at Prophet, this time with a question in his eyes.
After a long, uneasy silence, the don turned to Prophet. “You said, señor, that there were two things that lured you to Méjico. One was pulque. And the other . . . ?”
As if to dramatize the bounty hunter’s response, there was a soft knock on the library door. Not waiting for a response, Señorita Marisol poked her head into the room to say, “Papa, Seville wanted me to ask if you would like corn or beans with the birria.” She must have seen the three regarding her with a bemused half smile, for she froze there, frowning curiously back at them.
Prophet’s heart did a little Indian dance in his chest. Marisol looked even more beautiful now than before. She must have bathed after the long journey, for her heart-shaped face had a fresh-scrubbed look, enhancing its rich earthy tones, and her hair still showed a little dampness. She wore it down now, tucked behind her ears and spilling down her shoulders; it shone with a recent brushing. It was as rich and glossy as her eyes.
She wore a sleeveless, salmon-colored gown with a very low-cut neck and a bodice edged with gold embroidery. The gown enhanced the ripeness of her figure. A lacy, sheer, cream shawl was drawn around her shoulders.
“¿Qué es?” she asked, befuddled.
The don looked at Prophet then at his daughter and shaped a toothy smile. He blinked once, slowly, then said, “Tell Seville that the corn will suffice, mi hija.”
Marisol continue to stare at the three men, perplexed. She looked at Prophet. There must have been something about his own expression that affected her, for a flush rose into her smooth cheeks. She averted her eyes and, muttering softly under her breath, pulled her head out of the room and drew the door closed with a soft, slow click.
The don turned to Lou, smiling. “Could that other thing be the señoritas, Señor Prophet?”
“It might just be at that, Don. I hope I’m not being impolite by saying your daughter might just be the most beautiful señorita I’ve ever laid eyes on.” Lou smiled. “And I’ve seen a few.”
The old hacendado studied him shrewdly, nodding. “You are a good judge of woman-flesh, Señor Prophet.”
“Call me Lou. I mean, I am sitting in your library, drinking your liquor—which is mighty fine, if I might add.”
“Sí, sí. And you did save my daughter’s life.”
“Sorry about your sister, Don,” Colter said through a slight rasp after taking another small sip of the pulque. “I wish we could have saved her, too.”
“Of course, I am bereaved,” the don said, waving a hand in the air, at once accepting and dismissing the notion. “But mi hermana lived a good, long life. One of great adventure. She has been ill for years, an illness similar to the one that took my wife five years ago, but only after eating away at her slowly for the previous ten, the past six of which she was a mere ghost of her former self. This way was better. A bullet to the head. It was almost a merciful thing Juan Carlos did. I didn’t want to see Aurora linger. Besides . . .” The don turned again to Prophet. “I guess Juan Carlos got his—how do you say? Just deserts?”
“About that,” Prophet said, shifting uneasily in his seat. “Just how mad is . . .”
“Don’t worry about that. You are safe here at Hacienda de la Paz, I assure you. Besides, I ordered Miguel to assure Don Amador that he got what he deserved by a stranger who did not know who he was. I told the don that his son was about to kill my daughter. That he will believe. He knows how Juan Carlos felt about Marisol, and how hot Juan Carlos’s blood ran. No, no. I assure you both that while a few years ago such a happening would have resulted in all-out war between our haciendas, both Don Amador and myself are far too old and worn-out to fight. Or to send others to do our fighting.”
The don paused to take a deep drink of the pulque. “Besides,” he continued, thumbing some of the liquor away from the corner of his mouth, “we both have another problem that has us both badly preoccupied. At least, I’m sure Don Amador is as preoccupied with Ciaran Yeats as I am, for I am told the bloodthirsty devil has done as much damage over at Hacienda del Amador as he has here.”
That was the second time Prophet had heard the name. Now he had an opportunity to voice his curiosity. “Who is Ciaran Yeats, pray tell?”
“He is the, uh, matter I mentioned. The reason I summoned you here for a private conversation.”
“I don’t understand,” Colter said, cutting a quick glance at Lou.
Don de la Paz stared at the redhead. His rheumy brown eyes flickered with emotion. His hands shook, including the one holding the pulque. It shook so badly that the creamy white liquor splashed up over the brim to run down the sides of the cup.
“Easy, Don,” Prophet said when forked veins bulged so severely in the old man’s forehead that Lou was afraid he was about to have a stroke and die right there in his chair.
The don drew a breath as though to calm himself. It didn’t work. His raspy voice quavered as he said, “He is the vile gringo jackal who has kidnapped my youngest daughter. He is the vile son of a wild lobo bitch I am going to pay you both most dearly to kill!”