They decided to follow the Brazos south out of Davis, quitting it only when the last of the high land that swept down from the center of Texas had been left behind. Their trail then led almost directly westwards, giving them the chance of taking in San Antonio or steering well clear.
Herne thought it best to swing round below the town, keeping to less well-used tracks and smaller settlements. If the route proved to be a good one, and wide enough to bring a wagon through, they would make use of it for the return journey.
The intention was to pick up the Nueces River and follow its winding course towards the Rio Grande. As the Mexicans knew it: the Rio Bravo del Norte. Past Crystal City, they would cross the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass.
La Rosita was less than a hundred miles from there, always with the heavy peaks of the Serrenias del Burro towering northwards as they rode.
The two men had packed ample supplies, although they expected to replenish them on the way. Hard tack, bacon, beans, coffee a generous amount of tobacco for Coburn, and a deal of ammunition.
Herne was carrying his well-worn single shot .55 Sharps in the bucket holster which ran underneath the flap of his saddle. Coburn preferred a Winchester .44-40, accurate over two hundred yards and with an extra sight at the top of the stock. Although it lacked the range and precision of Herne’s rifle it did have speed of shot.
Between them, the guns made an efficient pair.
For four days the only time they were used was when Coburn shot them a couple of rabbits. The five thousand dollars rested safe underneath the thick wool of Jed’s coat and there wasn’t anybody around who looked interested in taking it away from him.
Which was the way both men liked it.
“Hey, Jed,” said Whitey towards the evening of that fourth day’s ride, “that girl – the one you was lookin’ after on account of what happened to her ma along of your Louise – what happened to her, anyways?”
“School.”
“Uh-huh. She got relations send her?”
Herne shifted in the saddle and looked about them. Nothing but a flat landscape without a tree or a bush to break its monotony. Around the horizon the failing sun spread itself like a ring of weak gold.
He wasn’t sure why he didn’t like talking about Becky, but he seemed to get knotted inside whenever he did. Knotted in his head and in his stomach. He guessed maybe it was on account of her being the nearest thing to kin he had left in the world.
Unless you included Whitey.
“Jed? You hear me?”
“Sure I heard you. No one paid for her but me. Sent her over to England on the boat for a spell. She was draggin’ me down and there were things to do.”
“Damn, Jed! That must have cost one hell of a lot of dollars.”
“Most of what I got from our spread an’ stock.”
“That’s why you went back to sellin’ your gun after those years you was with Louise?”
“Maybe. Reckon I’d’ve done that anyway. Man makes one attempt to change his life. That don’t work out an’ you go back to what you know best. What you’re born to.”
It was Coburn’s turn to be silent…his own attempt at settling down was yet to come. And he felt a yearning for it, a longing for the peace it would bring. Smooth white hands holding sparkling, yellow gold.
When the line at the land’s edge had lessened to a single strand of weak white light, Coburn spoke again. “Jed, ‘stead of camping out here tonight, how about you an’ me finding somewheres to get ourselves good and rollin’ drunk?”
Jed smiled. Normally he wouldn’t have been taken with the idea. But things had been kind of dull of late. Besides, Whitey wasn’t the only one with ideas going on inside him that a couple of bottles would set to sleep.
“Why not?” he replied. “If’n w hurry along we should reach a cantina before it’s too late”.
It was a border town like any other. So anonymous it didn’t even seem to have a name. Fifteen or so buildings huddled together, some made out of planks roughly hewn and nailed, others out of baked mud and clay. A couple of hundred yards away from these buildings there was a scattering of tents, showing clearly despite the darkness.
The cantina wasn’t named either, but the noise and the light that spilled out showed the two men where it was. No door, just a space with a low arch framing it.
They stepped through.
There were half a dozen men sitting in a circle to the right of the room. One of them held a cockerel by its neck and wing, restraining it from movement while he discussed its virtues. They all seemed to be Mexican, swarthy skinned and wearing light colored peasant clothes, their hair tied at the back or pushed under wide brimmed sombreros.
They turned slowly as the Americans came in, their conversation dying out and their dark eyes running over the newcomers. The cock freed its wing and flapped loudly and wildly in its owner’s grasp.
Herne walked over to the heavy wooden table on the other side of the room which was serving as a bar. Two women in brightly embroidered blouses and slit black skirts moved aside to let him through. An old man sitting behind the table raised his head and stared up at Herne, his eyes unwavering.
“Señor?”
“Can you fix us something to eat?”
The man spoke quickly to the older of the two women, so that Herne was only able to pick out the occasional word. But it must have been all right.
“Si, señor. Tortillas.”
“That’s fine.”
“Tequila, señor?”
The old man was already reaching under the table for a bottle when Herne answered. The glasses were dirty, fingerprints clear on the grease and dust. The Mexican saw the expression on Herne’s face and wiped the glasses quickly with a piece of cloth he picked up from the table. It left them dirtier than before.
“How about a place to sleep?”
“Señor?”
“Sleep.”
The man shrugged. “There is a room at the back. You can sleep there. But...”
“But what?”
The man smiled. “There are no beds.”
“We’ll use our bed rolls.”
Herne took hold of the bottle by the neck and Coburn stretched down for the glasses. As they were moving away, the old Mexican called Herne back.
He shifted his glance immediately to the woman still sitting by the table. “Yvitta – she has room with bed.”
Herne looked at her. Dark hair hung in curling waves about an oddly sallow face. Her lips were painted bright crimson and her cheeks rouged and powdered in almost exact circles. Herne could see the steady rise and fall of her breasts underneath the thin material of her white blouse, the large nipples pressing on the cotton. The long fingers of her right hand moved slowly along her thigh, below the point where the skirt split.
“Thanks,” said Herne. “We’ll take the room out back.”
He turned quickly but not before the girl had pouted angrily at him and flashed her eyes dangerously. However little Mexican Herne understood, it was clear that she knew English well enough.
Back at the stained round table, Whitey Coburn was not looking any happier.
“What’s up?”
“Those bastards over there keep turnin’ round and starin’ at me. Then back again and laughin’ to each other, I ain’t about to stand for that.”
Herne poured his friend a full glass of tequila and a half glass for himself. If it tasted as rough as he thought it would, he wasn’t about to take too many chances.
The Mexicans continued to swivel their heads and laugh. No matter what Herne could say to the contrary, it was obvious that the object of their amusement was Coburn with his strange albino appearance.
Jed could sense his friend getting increasingly tense, closer and closer to the point where he must burst over into violent action. Yet he did not want to risk a fight here and now. Another day would see them close to La Rosita.
“Damn those bastards!” said Coburn, swallowing back a shot of tequila and coughing as the rawness tore at the back of his throat.
“Take it easy, Whitey. They bin drinkin’, that’s all. They’re more interested in that prize fighting cock of theirs than they are in you.”
As he said that, three of them laughed aloud once again,
Once too often.
Coburn stood up fast, pushing table, bottle and glasses to the floor. His Colt was in his hand and anger burnt fiercely in his pink eyes. Lines of fury were etched strongly on his face.
“Right! Now which of you Mex bastards thinks I’m so all-fired funny? Let’s see you laugh now.”
Silence. Only the cockerel still flapping its wings and trying to turn its head from side to side. Dark, wide eyes stared upwards at the strange, white-haired Americano with the palest of faces.
Coburn stepped forward, kicking the table sideways towards the girl beside the bar. The other woman appeared with plates of food in her hands and stopped in her tracks, a steady drip of sauce falling from one of the sloping plates.
“Come on, you cowardly drunken shit kickers! Laugh! Laugh, damn it!”
Herne watched the old man for any signs of movement but there were none. The group of Mexicans still hadn’t made any effort to say or do a thing. It was doubtful if any of them were carrying guns, although one or two would certainly have knives. But faced with Coburn’s Colt and his obvious temper they were not about to do anything foolish.
Suddenly all of them were very sober.
“Well? What happened to the joke?”
Some of them started to back away as he advanced upon them. They flinched as Coburn’s left hand reached down and seized the bottle from in front of them and swung it back by the neck, pouring the contents down his throat.
He held the bottle high and flung it against the far wall, where it smashed and bounced back into the cantina in fragments.
‘See that, you bastards? Was that pretty funny, too?”
The cockerel freed itself from its owner’s grip at last and threw back its head in a loud crow of triumph, wings at full stretch, red and brown, striped with black.
Coburn fired fast and the sound of the cockerel was lost in the roar of the gun: it was not to start again. The head had been blown into nothingness. Everyone stared as the headless bird ran round in a frantic circle, blood spouting wildly from its severed neck.
Whitey took another pace forward and kicked out with his boot, sending the dying cock into the middle of the terrified Mexicans.
They jumped back and shouted out with a mixture of fright and anger. Seconds later all of them had run through the archway and out into the night.
Coburn turned round to look at Herne; the anger was still evident in his eyes. He pushed the Colt down into his holster and bent down to pick up the table.
Herne said nothing, just got up and went over to the old man for another bottle of tequila. As he stood there the girl with the rouged cheeks rested the back of her hand against the outside of his leg. Jed noticed, but did nothing to move it until he walked back to where the plates of tortillas were waiting.
Coburn greeted him with a grin.
“You feelin’ a lot better for that?” Herne asked.
“Damned right! Tell you what, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m plumb glad we ain’t about to eat no chicken!”
Herne bit into the spicy food and washed it down with more of the strong liquor. The girl who had stroked his thigh was becoming more attractive by the minute, more desirable. He was aware of a stirring in his groin; a longing that he had not been able to satisfy properly for too many empty nights.
Whitey noticed his friend’s interest and chuckled into his glass. “Seems to me you’re goin to get a better bed than you bargained for.”
“I don’t know…”
“Then you’re a fool, Jed. An’ that’s one thing I didn’t reckon you to be. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little creature comfort on the trail. ‘Sides, she ain’t a bad lookin’ woman.”
“How about you?”
Coburn refilled his glass and dug his fork down into the tortilla. “All I want to do is sit here and finish this bottle. After that, I’ll stretch out in back and get me a good sleep. You I’ll see in the mornin’.”
Herne, nodded and bolted down the remains of his food. The girl was staring at him openly, her nipples dark against the white material and her legs parted in more than a promise.
He stood up, nodded to Whitey, then stepped over to the girl. A few moments later they walked out of the cantina together, leaving Coburn alone with an old Mexican and the body of a mutilated cockerel.
It didn’t seem to bother him none: not at all.
The stars showed clear through the open window of the girl’s room. Yvitta. She had said her own name again and again. Yvitta make you happy. Yvitta make it good for you. Yes, now, you do…ooh, yes that is good. Yvitta will…
The straw was caught in clusters under the cover of the mattress and where some of it stuck through it scraped roughly against Herne’s back as he moved from side to side, up and down. The Mexican girl straddled him, her smooth brown thighs alongside his chest as she rocked above him, drawing his strength deeply inside her. One hand pressed down upon Herne’s chest, the warm palm circling faster and faster, while the fingers of the other squeezed the nipples of her own breasts.
Herne closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on what was taking place; on the warm wetness that enclosed him and slid around him; on the sound of the girl’s voice…She moved her hand to his mouth and he bit down into the soft flesh at its side, gently at first then harder, harder...
Whitey Coburn was still sitting at the same table when they came in. The woman had reappeared and taken away his plate; the second bottle was close to being finished. He was about ready to turn in.
They burst through the open door of the cantina and this time they had guns. Nor were they the same frightened peasants as before. Coburn recognized the one who had owned the fighting cock, perhaps one other. The rest were older, more determined. Ammunition belts crossed their chests in the manner of Mexican banditos.
Their leader had a straggly moustache and a scar that showed clearly through the dark skin and stubble of beard as it traced its way jaggedly down the length of his face. He also had a pistol – and it was already drawn and cocked.
There were five others: three had guns drawn. Two didn’t. Yet.
Coburn blinked and cursed inwardly. Not that there was any sense in doing that. Not now. What he had to do was get out alive. And by himself.
The leading Mexican looked Coburn up and down, then sneered. “When they told me of the gringo with white hair and pink eyes I did not believe them. I thought that they had been drinking too heavily. But now…” He gestured with the barrel of his gun. “Now I can see with my own eyes they were telling me the truth. A gringo who is like a rat, a white rat with little pink eyes. A rat who is only good for shooting at cockerels!”
Whitey threw the bottle that was close to his left hand and fell fast to his right. He heard the roar of the Mexican’s gun, loud in the confined space of the cantina. He rolled and pushed himself up into a crouch, banging against another table as he did so. His Colt was drawn and clear and the first shot smacked into the center of the Mex’s crotch. There was a scream of pain and two more shots, one upon the other. The one that was Coburn’s took another of the Mexicans high in the chest and sent him staggering back against the white wall, blood pumping through his shirt and staining his gun belt.
Whitey jumped over the bar table, pushing the old man to the floor. He turned the table over and ducked down behind it. As he did so a shot thudded into the end of it and another one raked along the wall behind him.
He took a quick glance over the edge. Two had jumped back outside the cantina and were trying to take snap shots round the open doorway. One was lying flat, sheltering behind a couple of small tables and some chairs. A fourth stood in the middle of the room; his pistol was in his hand and it was pointing in Coburn’s direction but the look of fear on his face made it doubtful that he would actually pull the trigger.
Coburn recognized him as the owner of the cockerel. He shot him in the face, changing the expression of terror into a mashed and bloody blur. To Whitey there seemed to be some kind of poetic justice about that.
There was a sudden volley from the door and he ducked low again, moving to the end of the table and transferring his Colt to his left hand. They had both followed through into the room and fired again. Whitey squeezed his trigger and got the first of them in the shoulder. He cursed and cut back along the floor.
The old man was stretched out with one arm raised up along the white wall. His mouth was open and a line of pale blood trickled over his cheek and on to his scrawny neck. There were two bullet wounds in his chest and another low in his belly.
At least they’d hit something.
Coburn stayed low and jammed fresh shells into the chambers of his Colt. In that moment of stillness he could hear the whimpering noises of die Mexican he had shot in the crotch.
Coburn smiled and peered over the top of the table. Beyond the wounded man, behind the Mex who had taken his in the face, something wriggled at floor level.
Coburn took a quick shot and grinned as a yelp told him he had hit something. Something that now sprang upwards in a final gesture of bravery and recklessness. He got as far as four feet away from Coburn before a bullet turned him full circle and dropped him across his two friends. The whimpering continued …
... Herne arched his back as mutual orgasm shook their bodies in a strained frenzy of climax. Eyes clenched tight shut he could not escape the vision that lowered its head towards him, eyes shining, mouth slightly open, smiling. Louise. His Louise. His wife. He shook his head and pushed upwards on the mattress. The face was still there, pink tongue teasing between full, warm lips. A spasm coursed through him: not Louise any more. Becky.
It was Becky’s face closing on his: her body he imagined emptying himself into.
Herne flung a hand upwards and as he did so the first shots rang out from down the street.
His eyes opened fast. All they saw was the Mexican girl, Yvitta.
“Move!”
“Señor?”
“Get your ass off there!”
She lifted her right leg and Herne ducked out underneath, grunting as he did so. Hands reached for pants and gun. He was still pulling at his shirt as he ran out into the street.
He saw two Mexicans standing by the open door to the cantina, guns drawn. He didn’t need to guess what was happening.
One of the men whirled round at the sound of Herne’s approach, mouth open to shout out a question. Before the first word had had time to form itself on the man’s lips, Herne shot him through the throat.
The second Mexican hesitated, knowing that he was caught between two fires. By the time he had decided to run, Coburn had appeared in the doorway. He did not get far. A bullet drove him into a wall on the other side of the street and he pushed himself up on to his knees, hands raised in appeal, possibly in prayer. Whitey Coburn steadied his arm and gave him due deliverance.
“Have a good time?” he asked Herne, as Jed came to a halt alongside him, looking into the interior of the cantina.
“Nothin’ on what you had,” Herne replied stepping inside.
Coburn laughed and holstered his gun. In the comer the Mexican women was kneeling over the old man, lips moving fast, saying a litany of words without apparent meaning,
beads passing through her fingers as tears fell on to the body of the dead man stretched out beneath her.
Coburn stepped into the middle of the room and yanked the wounded Mexican leader to his feet. The center of his body was deep red and the insides of his legs ran with steady streams of blood.
“So I’m a white rat with pink eyes only good for shooting cocks, is that right?” hissed the albino.
Through his pain, the Mexican stared at Coburn in bewilderment. What was he going to do now, this strange gringo? Perhaps he would kill him. That would end the pain. Please God, let the gringo finish him off!
Coburn brought back his boot and kicked the man full force in the groin. The Mex stumbled backwards, a scream spluttering from between his lips. Coburn wiped the toe of his boot on the dead body of the one he had shot through the head and turned to face Herne.
“If you’ve all finished here, I guess I have. Stayin’ the night don’t seem such a good idea after all.”
It didn’t at that.
The two men walked out of the cantina, leaving it to the prayers of a terrified woman and the agonies of a slowly dying man.