Slocum #388

Slocum woke early and, after voiding his bladder, dressed and went to the kitchen area. He found the crew busy preparing breakfast. Donna blinked at him and then drew her bathrobe tighter and more proper.

He took a freshly made sopaipilla and a small honey bowl from one of the saucy-eyed younger girls. “Gracias.”

Then he turned to Donna. “I wouldn’t want to miss a thing that goes on down here.”

She hugged him and pressed her hip to his. “Well, we are always glad to see you.”

“I thought that now you are his wife, you would sleep in, huh?” The sweetness of the bite of food flooded his mouth.

“Being married makes no difference. I have to be certain everything is just so or I am not happy. How is the man’s wife you retrieved?”

“Hypnosis. I have read about it. Do you think this is how he manages these people who work for him?”

“What do you know about it? I only ever saw one doctor use it. During the war he did it to help wounded men through surgery without ether, to dull the pain.”

“Salazar must have gone to Europe and studied it over there. He’s from a rich family, so it would be no problem for him.”

“Yes, in a little while. The ranch is a two day ride. So we can leave at a decent hour for that one.”

“You must, and God also watches over you.” She gave him a kiss on his cheek, then went off to organize something the girls were doing.

He and his “good scouts” rode out around eight o’clock, with the sleepy-eyed Angela shaking her head aboard the dun horse. Yawning big, she rode in close to Slocum. “I am not a morning person, I have decided.”

She forced a smile. “With you, I have to be.” Then she openly laughed at something else and shook her head to dismiss it.

He’d miss her when all this was over. But he soon needed to meet a man about taking his herd of steers to Kansas. Time to get things ready up there. Walter Kenny expected him. The days had flown fast with all this tramping up and down the mountains. He hoped to close this matter soon and be rid of this Cockroach once and for all.

Slocum made arrangements with a small rancher for them to camp on his land. Hardly more than a boy, the rancher said he ran some cattle in this high country and also caught and broke mustangs to survive. His pregnant young wife carried a baby that still suckled her. But they were happy, and knowing they were a small subsistence farm, he made sure his crew ate from his pack goods.

From the stacked hides, Slocum decided the ranch family lived on deer meat. His name was Laredo and his wife’s was Pia. Pia and Angela talked together much of the time they were there. Slocum felt certain that she did not have many females come around—she about talked Angela’s ear off.

Later when they were alone in the pines above the ranch house, Slocum and Angela whispered to each other in the bedroll.

“He also sold her two older sisters earlier to that same man. She doesn’t know what happened to them. Laredo was one of her first customers, and later he took her from that place and married her in a church. But she worries that they still look for her.”

He agreed and kissed her. In another day he hoped to confront the one causing all the current grief in this land.

The following day, they reached the ranch in late afternoon and were close enough to see cooking smoke escaping the casa’s chimney. In the corrals, a handful of horses stood hipshot. They had been ridden hard and had dried salt encrusted on them from their hard push up there.

In his telescope, Slocum counted a half dozen armed men moving about the place. Night would take care of those odds. Slocum and the others moved farther away from the casa. Finding a fresh spring and a small valley for the horses to graze in, they camped for the afternoon until after dark, when Slocum planned to raid the place.

Being familiar with the setup of the ranch down there from when they had rescued Martina would make it easier for him and his men to take the place. He simply wanted to get Salazar this time. He was deep in thought when Angela joined him, seated with his back to a large pine tree.

“San Antonio. I promised a man I’d ramrod his trail herd to Kansas, and that’s not far away.”

“Trail driving is a tough business. Very remote country. We don’t see much civilization.”

“For you, hombre, I can wait.” Hands behind her head, she smiled as if in anticipation of the reunion event.

After darkness, he and his crew descended on the ranch. He told Angela to wait a ways back from the ranch house in a grove of pines until things were clear. Squatted down, he whispered, “If anyone finds you or you get in a tight place, remember, clap your hands three times—it might stop them.”

He looked off toward the lights in the house and the Chinese lanterns outside. “It has to do with how his spells work. Just use it if you need it.”

He patted her leg and set out. Six-gun in his fist, he scrambled from big tree to big tree, looking for any signs of the guards patrolling the main casa. His men were coming in from various sides, and his plan to take all of them was ambitious. Lightning speed might do it.

Shots sounded from the south, and the guards directed all their attention in that direction. Then a stick of blasting powder went off. Men were screaming and stumbling around outside the house by the time Slocum reached the edge of the building.

With his right arm in a sling, Salazar shouted orders from the house. Satisfied that no one was behind him, Slocum stepped in.

“Salazar, drop the derringer in your left palm or die.” Slocum cocked his Colt’s hammer back with a click, ready to gun him down. His poised finger was on the trigger—the derringer clunked onto the porch.

In the darkness, Slocum’s men walked in holding Winchesters ready at their hips. They began to disarm the other gunmen, shoving them down to sit on the ground.

“Much better, away from you.” Slocum was not satisfied that they had the entire place under control.

“Gentlemen,” Salazar said with a new look of evil on his face. “My men, the ones you did not get, now have you covered.”

Salazar laughed aloud at the new situation. He whirled and pointed his finger at Slocum. “Who do I shoot first?”

“Get their guns,” Slocum shouted and dove for the man nearest him. He wrestled the rifle from the outlaw’s hands and then whirled around to face the raging Salazar.

“How did you learn that?” Salazar snarled as the pistoleros took charge from the dumbstruck guards.

“It worked. It worked,” the excited Angela cried, coming into the flickering light of the lanterns.

Slocum walked over and thumped Salazar on the chest with his index finger. “From the woman you abused.”

Obregón stepped in and clutched Salazar’s bad arm. “Listen, hombre, we ain’t taking you to no fucking federales for them to turn you loose. You killed my compadres. You raped some of the finest women on this Earth. There ain’t a prison good enough for a damn cockroach like you.”

“Hang you,” Slocum said. “When it gets light enough. You also killed a great lady I knew and liked.”

“Like Obregón said, you will be bait yourself for the vultures and buzzards in the morning.”

“Keep your money. It will make the fires of hell even hotter.” Obregón turned on his heel and walked away, making the others line up the bandits, hands tied behind their backs. They stood hangdog as the sun first peeped into the deep valley holding the ranch.

Twelve blindfolded bandits stood before the barn. Obregón had cut out two youths from the gang and forced them to watch as three men were stood up, and then fell to the ground, each one shot in the heart. This was done four times, and Obregón was only forced to dispatch one who had not instantly died from the rifle bullets. Then he ordered the two boys to carry the bodies over and dig a large common grave for all of them.

A rope was fashioned into a noose, a saddled horse of the outlaws’ was brought forward and Salazar was placed upon his back, the noose secure around his neck.

“Yes. You are making the biggest mistake of your life hanging me. My father is a very rich man. He will hire killers to track down each of you here today and kill every one of you. You must think about this before you hang me.”

Obregón swung a coiled reata at the horse’s butt and shouted, “Enough of you!”

The horse sprang forward. The rope creaked under Salazar’s weight, his neck popped and he swung there—dead.

Two weeks later, Slocum and Angela were in the square in San Antonio listening to the strum of two guitars. Seated at a table in the shade with them was a shorter man whose weathered face was the color of good saddle leather. They sipped on their drinks. The other man wore a brown suit and appeared to be in his early forties. Walter Kenny’s blue eyes sparkled as he leaned back in his chair and considered Angela.

He nodded his head like he understood. “They’re tough critters to get rid of sometimes. And you, miss—why are you hanging around with him?”

“Good, you looked like a woman with good sense. I know that song they’re playing. Let’s you and me dance.”

Slumped in his chair, Slocum simply smiled back and drew a deep breath as he watched them whirl across the smooth rock pavement. La Cucaracha was dead at last.