IT TOOK CAMERON a good ten seconds to remember where he was, and to realize who these three men aiming guns at him were …
Rurales.
The dove-gray uniforms and visored military-style hats were all the identification he needed. He assumed the prefect had ratted on him and Jimmy, something Cameron had been too tired to worry about last night. He should have seen it coming, however. The United States and Mexico were not on good terms these days.
Cameron had pushed himself onto his elbows when the man on the far right, wearing sergeant’s stripes, grabbed him brusquely by the collar and yanked him to a sitting position. He yelled something in Spanish, too fast for Cameron’s comprehension.
Holding up his hands placatingly, Cameron swung his stockinged feet to the floor and reached for his moccasins. While he put them on, the sergeant grabbed Cameron’s weapons.
“Come,” he said in halting English. “Move, gringo. You are wanted man!”
“Hold on, Charlie, can’t you see I’m movin’ as fast as I can?” Cameron carped, yanking on the moccasins, which had shrunk from sweat and sun.
“Move, gringo,” one of the other rurales repeated—a reed of a kid with a downy brown mustache barely visible above his mouth. Corporal’s stripes adorned his wool sleeve.
“Take your fingers off the triggers, boys, I’m comin’,” Cameron said, standing and grabbing his hat.
“Hands up, hands up!” they yelled as they pushed him past his horse to the rear of the barn and out the door into the bright morning sunlight.
Cameron stopped in the yard and said, “I’ll go with you in a minute, but let me check on my friend first.” He dipped his head toward the rear of the adobe house overgrown with shrubs.
“Move, gringo!” the sergeant yelled again, poking him in the side with his rifle.
Cameron had thought it was worth a try. He’d wanted to know how Jimmy had fared overnight, and he also wanted to make sure the rurales had left him in the house. By the way they hazed Cameron down the street without saying anything about the kid, he assumed they’d left him with the prefect’s wife. He was grateful for that, anyway. A Mexican hoosegow was no place for Jimmy in his condition.
The rurales ushered Cameron down the street, past jacals and chicken coops and stables made from stones and woven branches. A dog came out from one of the jacals to bark at them fiercely, then turned tail when it saw it was going to be ignored. The woodsmoke hanging in the golden air above the huts smelled of tortillas and spiced meat, causing Cameron’s stomach to grumble.
He really could have used a cup of strong coffee and a cigarette, followed by a big plate of eggs and ham and a handful of fresh corn tortillas filled with goat cheese and olives. Instead, he was being hazed down the street like a cantankerous bull, his saddle-sore ass and thighs aching with every shove.
His “morning stroll” ended at a squat, whitewashed adobe that stood alone on the eastern side of the street, separated from the other adobes by about twenty yards. Painted above the door was the word Alcalde, or “Mayor.” Cameron could see a stable out back, and a corral where a good dozen or so horses milled under a cottonwood tree. Half-dressed soldiers lazed there as well, washing at the well and pitching hay to the horses.
The corporal knocked twice on the hut’s plank door and went in, then stepped aside as the sergeant pushed Cameron through the doorway. The third man, a private, stopped outside and came to attention as he took up a sentinel’s position to the right of the door.
Cameron blinked as his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness within, then saw a medium-tall man with a soft round paunch, sitting before a small desk on which was a plate of eggs and bacon. Next to the plate sat a covered bowl that Cameron guessed, was keeping tortillas warm. Nearby was a half-empty bottle beside a filmy glass containing one dead fly.
Cameron stood before the desk as the man forked egg into his mouth, followed it with a bite of tortilla, and chewed. Yolk stained the man’s salt-and-pepper mustache.
He looked up at Cameron with lazy, colorless eyes. His dove-gray jacket, boasting lieutenant’s bars and silver buttons, was open over a washed-out undershirt.
Cameron smelled cigar smoke, and turned to see another man sitting in a wing-backed chair behind him, his fat legs crossed. He wore a straw fedora and a stained suitcoat with tattered cuffs. The alcalde, Cameron thought, whose office had been taken over by the rurales. The unshaven man looked almost comatose, and Cameron assumed he was drunk. Life no doubt had been better before the rurales.
“And who are you?” the lieutenant asked tonelessly as he chewed, as though they were in the middle of a conversation.
“The name’s Jack Cameron.”
“American?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Hunting Apaches.”
The man swabbed his plate with the last of his tortilla and stuck it in his mouth. Cameron’s stomach rumbled. “Why?”
Cameron shrugged. “Need the money.”
“You a scalp-hunter?”
“That’s right.”
The lieutenant took a slug from the bottle on his desk and sat back in his chair, which creaked with the strain. He studied Cameron suspiciously.
“What happened to you and the boy?”
“Had a little bad luck,” Cameron said. “The Apaches we were following started following us, you might say.” He fashioned a smile with only one side of his mouth. “They captured the boy and took him to their rancheria. I snuck in and got him back.”
“Who is he?”
“Name’s Jimmy Bronco. I found him along the trail and we threw in together.”
“He hunts scalps, too, uh?” The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed.
Cameron shrugged again. “Why not? We heard you guys down here were paying seven pesos a head. That right?”
The lieutenant did not answer right away. “That’s right, señor, but by the look of you, I don’t think I have to worry about you breaking my bank, as you say, no?” The man’s mustache lifted a little as he smiled, but only with his mouth. His washed-out eyes remained on Cameron’s.
Scalp-hunters were about the only Americans welcome in Mexico these days. They were like wolfers, Cameron thought. No one wanted the unsavory breed in their town unless there was a wolf problem.
Cameron knew the man was suspicious of his story, but he also knew the rurale would probably take him at his word. He was a long way from his superiors in Mexico City, and they did not care anyway. Jailing Cameron and Jimmy would only mean paperwork, and Cameron could tell the lieutenant was not a man who enjoyed paperwork. He had obviously grown used to the indolence and lack of supervision out here.
He could haul them out in front of the wall around the square and shoot them, but Cameron did not think the man was a cold-blooded killer. He might be a drunkard, and a lout, but not a killer.
Cameron had an idea.
“Tell ya what else I heard,” he said, squinting one eye wistfully. “Gaston Bachelard’s out there … somewhere.”
For the first time, a look of uncertainty came to the lieutenant’s fat, florid face. A blush stretched upward into the widow’s peak cutting into the curly, gray-flecked hair. He tipped his head a little. “Bachelard?”
“And, no doubt, Miguel Montana.”
The lieutenant’s voice was furtive, suspicious. “How do you know?”
“One of my men ran into him up north and east of here.”
The lieutenant considered this, probing a back tooth with his tongue. “He is heading this way?”
Cameron raised an eyebrow for dramatic emphasis. “Sí.”
“What does he want?”
Cameron almost smiled at the man’s discomfort. “Well, my man said he had quite a contingent with him. Just guessing, I’d say he’s gonna try to take as many villages in this part of Chihuahua as he can. And if what I’ve heard is true, the peons are no doubt gonna welcome him with open arms.” Cameron fashioned a doubtful look and shook his head. “You know how the poor have taken to him and little Miguel.”
The lieutenant scowled, his face coloring in earnest. “Yes, the lies he spreads…”
“The rurales don’t have much support in this neck of the woods?”
Cameron asked it like it was a serious question, but he knew they didn’t. The rurales were corrupt, occupying villages and helping themselves to homes, food, livestock, and women. They helped fuel the ubiquitous fires of revolution just as much as the fat politicians in Mexico City did.
Cameron could tell the man wanted nothing to do with Bachelard and Montana, but then again, if he was able to kill or capture the pair, it would be quite a feather in his hat. And it was best to try and track them down before they could ride to the village and attack on their own terms.
Besides, the villagers could and probably would side with the revolutionaries …
“You say he is north and east?”
Cameron gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. “Somewhere out that way.”
“Could you take me to him?”
“I guess I could if I had to.”
“You have to.” The lieutenant said something in Spanish to the corporal standing slightly behind Cameron. “Sí, sí, Teniente,” the man said, and left in a hurry.
“Go get the boy and your horse,” the lieutenant said to Cameron, a kind of fearful resolve in his eyes. “You will take us to Bachelard. If you try to escape, we will hunt you down and shoot you.”
Cameron shrugged. “Well, okay, if you say so, Teniente.”
He turned and strode casually to the door, making brief eye contact with the mayor. The man turned away glumly and sucked on his cigar. Cameron tugged on his hat brim and grinned. Then he headed up the street, past the fountain, toward the prefect’s house, suppressing a smile.
If everything went as planned, he’d avoid a Mexican jail and get himself and Jimmy back on the trail toward Adrian Clark, Tokente, and Marina—with a police escort. He doubted the Apaches would attack a fully armed contingent of rurales, even given the rurales’ reputation for ineptitude and cowardice. But even if they were attacked, Cameron and Jimmy would have a better chance with the rurales than without them.
When they were beyond the Indians, Cameron and Jimmy would find some way to evade the Mexicans, then head for the others. He didn’t think it would take much to lose the rurales in the mountains. They weren’t known for their tracking abilities, or much else besides drinking and plundering their own villages.
Cameron knocked on the pueblo’s door. The door was opened by the prefect’s wife. The prefect was sitting at the table eating breakfast. Across from him sat Jimmy Bronco, shoveling in food as fast as he could get it on his fork. Cameron grinned with relief to see the kid looking well on the road to recovery.
“I had to report your presence, señor,” the prefect said defensively, standing and turning to Cameron.
“And I thank you mighty kindly, señor,” Cameron said.