"Look at the face on that man," Crampton said, peering through the night at the horseman passing by on the street.
"One damn ugly hombre," Butcher replied.
The two scalp hunters had just come out onto the sidewalk in front of La Posada Cantina in El Paso when Ben, mounted on Brutus, came past. He was illuminated briefly as he rode through the light shining through the windows of the cantina.
"He has to be that Hawkins we've been hired to shoot," Crampton said.
"I think so too, for there couldn't be more than one man that ugly in El Paso."
"Tattersall found out that Hawkins is staying at the El Prado. Let's follow this fellow and see if that's where he's going. If it is him, what do you say to us shooting him and not wait for Tattersall's help?"
"I like the idea, for then we'll get Valdes's money quicker," Butcher said.
* * *
Ben rode Brutus into the dark alley behind the hotel. When near the stables, he dismounted and dropped the reins to ground-hitch the horse. He approached the stables warily, for Lester Ivorsen knew where he was staying and just might be mad enough to try to shoot him. Ben found no enemy lurking in the stables, only the horses of other hotel patrons in some of the stalls. Brutus was brought forward and given a pitchfork of clover hay and a generous ration of shelled corn. The horse went for the grain first. While he crunched away, Ben rubbed him down with one of the brushes supplied by the hotel.
Ben left Brutus eating contentedly and went through the night along the stone-paved walkway to the hotel. He had just arrived from Canutillo. There he had gone to Tom's wheelwright shop to check for a message from Maude, and found none. He had then returned to Silas Dunlap, grazing his sheep by the river, and had had him point out the horse tracks of the rider who had carried off the woman.
The tracks had been easy to follow until they struck the heavily used road leading west toward Silver City. There they had merged with scores of other horse tracks and he had lost them. Ben was frustrated at not being able to follow the tracks farther, and deeply worried about what might have happened to Maude. Tomorrow at first light he would continue his search.
He halted at the entryway into the walled courtyard and peered ahead into the partially lighted area. To aid those people arriving after dark to find their way, the manager kept a hurricane lamp lit and hanging on an iron pole in the center of the courtyard where the path from the street met the one coming from the stables. The light only partially lit the large enclosed area, not reaching the darkness under the trees on the perimeter nor the wall of the hotel on the side next to the stables. Still thinking of Lester, Ben stepped sideways to get out of the light coming along the pathway.
Just as Ben moved a pistol fired with a bright red flash from the deep night shadows beneath a tree on the left side of the patio. Instantly he felt a sting across the outside of his left arm up high near the shoulder. He flinched and moved to the side, and at the same time drew his Colt six-gun.
He fired twice, bracketing the location of the flash, hunting the shooter's chest, and kept moving so as not to give his enemy a stationary target. A man cried out and Ben heard something heavy fall, something that could be a man's body. Damn that Lester for forcing Ben to shoot him.
Red flame blossomed on Ben's right in the blackness by the wall of the hotel. The bullet skimmed past the side of Ben's face with the snarl of a deadly bee.
Ben fired twice again, one shot on each side of the flash, wanting to kill his enemy. Two men shooting at him meant that it wasn't Lester, for the man had no friends who would try to kill Ben. Maude's father was an ornery bastard and most likely angry at Ben; however, he wouldn't be party to a deliberate night ambush.
A second shot at Ben, poorly aimed, came from farther along the side of the hotel. Then came the pounding thud of feet as a man ran from the patio. The nerve of Ben's second adversary had broken and he was fleeing.
Ben stopped moving. There could be a third man or a fourth and Ben didn't want to blunder into one of them. He crouched and his eyes probed the darkness. He waited turning his head and listening intently. He saw nothing, and heard nothing, except the moans of the wounded gunman off a ways.
A man shouted from the main entrance of the hotel, "Stop that shooting out there for I've sent for the sheriff."
"Tarlow, stay inside," Ben shouted back. Tarlow was the hotel owner. "It's not safe."
Ben crept soundlessly toward the source of the moaning sound He held his pistol ready to shoot should the man be only pretending to be injured. The man came into sight, a crumpled form on the flagstones of the courtyard. When closer still, Ben could make out the man's pistol where it had been dropped on the stone-covered ground.
Ben picked up the gun and rolled the man onto his back. The man looked up into Ben's shadowed face.
"That you, Crampton? I can't see good."
"Yeah, it's me," Ben said in a coarse voice.
"Did we get him?"
"He's dead."
"Good," the man said in a weak voice. He felt his bloody chest and found the hole where the bullet had struck him, breaking the thick sternum bone and plowing deep into his body.
"Goddamn, I'm bleeding bad." He inserted his finger into the hole, trying to plug the flow of blood.
Ben wanted to question the man for there was much he needed to know. However, he waited for the man to speak. The most truthful information would be that which came voluntarily while the man thought Ben was his partner.
The man was silent for a time. Then he spoke slowly, with his words slurred. "I'm done for, ain't I? A doctor won't do me any good?"
"That's right," Ben said. The man was quiet again, considering his plight. Finally his words came, mere whispers.
"I thought so. Tell Tattersall that you get my share of Valdes's money." His voice was faint, sliding down, ever weaker.
"Whose money?" Ben wasn't certain he had correctly heard the last words. The man didn't respond, holding his finger jammed into the hole in his chest and barely breathing.
"Whose money?" Ben said more loudly. The man was dying, and Ben held his thoughts by only a little spider's thread. He slapped the man sharply. "Whose money?"
"Valdes," the man whispered. He went slack, all life gone.
"Valdes," Ben said. So that was what all this was about. He grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him into the light of the hurricane lantern. He knelt beside the man to examine his face. He was a stranger.
Ben rose to his feet. Ramos Valdes had hired men to come to El Paso to kill him because of the horses he had stolen. The gunmen would most likely have succeeded if Ben hadn't been concerned about Lester wanting revenge on him. He had been god-awful lucky.
Ben saw that Tarlow had come forward and now stood in the edge of the light from the hurricane lamp. He called out to the man. "Tell Sheriff Willis that two men tried to shoot me. One got away. This one wasn't lucky. I'll talk to the sheriff, but later. Right now I've got something to do south of the river."
"All right, Ben. I'll tell him what you said."
Ben went to the stables, took Brutus away from his shelled corn, and saddled him. Valdes had a freight station in Ciudad Juarez. Ben knew where it was for he was almost as familiar with that town as he was with El Paso. That was where he would start his search for Valdes.
He rode south the short distance to the Rio Grande, forded the slow-moving water, black as ink in the darkness, and went into Ciudad Juarez. Ben had been careful not to kill any of the Valdes family or their men. However, they considered his theft of their horses to be worth his life, and they had tried to collect it. That added a deadly dimension to the game. He would give them more of a fight than they had bargained for.