L. J. Washburn
L. J. Washburn is a past winner of the Shamus Award for Best Private Eye Paperback Novel. She won it with a Lucas Hallam novel called Wild Night. There were other Lucas Hallam novels, but of late she has been keeping the character alive through short stories. Here one of Hallam’s old Texas Rangers buddies asks a favor that gets Hallam involved in much more than he bargains for. Livia’s Hallam stories always illustrate that she is at home with not only the western genre, but the mystery and historical genres as well.
The night before, Hallam had said, “The Blue Burro is the sort of place a fella with enough money can buy anything his heart desires…’cept maybe an honest drink.”
Tonight, before his eyes, that assessment had been borne out. He’d been sitting at a table in a corner of the smoky cantina for a couple of hours, nursing a succession of watered-down drinks, and during that time he had watched the ownership of stolen jewelry, packages of dope, and underage girls change hands a dozen times or more. Most of what he saw filled him with anger and the desire to haul out the hogleg under his coat and let daylight through the innards of the skunks responsible for it.
But he was here to do a favor for an old friend, a friend who had once saved his life, and until that job was done, Hallam had to rein in his temper.
Besides, Race had hinted that there was a lot riding on this assignment, a whole hell of a lot. Things that maybe affected the whole blamed country…
Both men had worn the star-in-a-circle badge when they rode together in South Texas, hunting outlaws in the brush country along the border. Jim Race had been a sergeant in the Texas Rangers, and so had Lucas Hallam. Eventually Hallam had left the force and hired on with the Pinkertons, but Race had stayed in the Rangers and made captain. More than fifteen years had passed. Roads were paved now, and automobiles chugged and clattered along them. Nary a horse was tied up in front of buildings lit up by electricity. Over in Europe, nation fought against nation using metal behemoths that lumbered along through bloody mud and flimsy contraptions of wood and canvas that soared overhead through smoke-filled skies. Everything had changed in the world.
But when Hallam got the telegram from Jim Race asking him for help, Hallam had come without hesitation. Some things, it seemed, did not change.
They met in a room in the Camino Real Hotel, in downtown El Paso. When Hallam opened the door and saw Race standing there, memories came rushing in on him.
The two of them pinned down in a shack on the banks of the Nueces River, their horses dead…Hallam with a bullet in his leg, unable to run…standing off rush after rush of the outlaws who wanted to kill them, until night finally fell…the way Jim Race had hoisted the much larger Hallam over a shoulder and gone out the back of the shack under cover of darkness, carrying him across the river and a couple of miles to an isolated ranch, where they had gotten help…
It had been a heck of a thing to do, especially since Hallam had urged Race to slip out alone after dark. He would stay there, he had said, and keep the gang busy until Race was long gone. Race hadn’t even considered the idea. He’d grinned and said, “You wouldn’t do that if the tables were turned, now would you, Lucas?”
Hallam hadn’t been able to say honestly that he would have, and so that was that.
Now as they faced each other in the hotel room, Race took off his hat—a fedora, for God’s sake, not a Stetson!—revealing a lot of gray in his reddish hair. He stuck out a hand and said, “Lucas, it’s mighty good to see you again.”
Hallam shook with him and looked at the brown tweed suit. “I thought you was still a Ranger.”
“I am. Captain, in fact. Reckon you could say I’m undercover.”
Hallam grunted.
“Too many people in El Paso know me,” Race went on. “This getup’s not going to fool anybody for very long, but at least I won’t draw as much attention to myself dressed this way. I don’t want anybody to know about you and me talking.”
Hallam nodded. During his time as a Pinkerton operative, he’d had clients who needed to keep everything between them secret. This wasn’t really the same thing, but in a way it was. If he took the job, whatever it was, he wouldn’t get paid, but he’d be working for the Texas Rangers anyway.
“I got a bottle and some glasses. Sit down and tell me about the trouble you got.”
Race laughed humorlessly. “You mean a fella can’t want to get together with an old trail partner without having anything else in mind?”
“That telegram sounded to me like you needed a hand with something,” Hallam said as he splashed whiskey into the pair of glasses on the night stand. He handed one to Race, took the other himself. “You want to drink to old times?”
“Hell, no,” Race said. “Mostly they weren’t near as good as we remember ’em.”
“Probably not.”
“I’ll drink to the future instead.”
Hallam shrugged and clinked his glass against Race’s. “To the future.”
“Let’s hope there is one.”
Now that was a damned odd thing to say, Hallam thought. He tossed back the hooch, licked his lips. “Tell me about it,” he said again.
Without being asked, Race sat down on the edge of the bed and put the fedora on the spread beside him. “I’m looking for a fella named Kenneth Langham. He’s supposed to be somewhere over in Juárez.”
“Young fella?”
“Twenty-three.”
Hallam nodded. Young Americans went missing in Juárez all too often. Most of them stumbled back over the river bridge sooner or later, once they got their fill of whatever fleshpot or dope den that had swallowed them up for a while. Some of them landed in jail on the wrong side of the border, and that was just too bad. A good number wound up dead, and that was worse, but still, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot you could do about it. Somebody bound and determined to wreck their life would usually find a way to do it.
“I didn’t think the Rangers handled missing persons cases.”
“Young Langham’s father has money.”
“Oh,” Hallam said, but that still didn’t really explain anything. In his experience, the Rangers didn’t do favors for rich men. But he had been away for a while. Maybe that was something else that had changed.
“Normally, all we’d do is contact the authorities in Juárez and let them look into it,” Race went on. “You know how much good that would do, though.”
“More than likely not much,” Hallam said.
Race nodded. “And we can’t operate across the border ourselves.” He smiled faintly. “It’s not like the old days, Lucas, when jurisdictional lines could be…bent a mite every now and then. Relations between the U.S. and Mexico are especially strained right now, what with Carranza taking over and Villa raising such a ruckus all over the place and nobody much knowing who’s going to be in power from one day to the next…” Race shook his head.
“So what you need,” Hallam said, “is for somebody who’s a civilian to go over the river and look for Langham.”
Race looked squarely at him and said, “Yes. That’s exactly what we need.”
“Got any idea where to start lookin’?”
That was when Race had said, “Have you ever heard of a cantina and gambling den called the Blue Burro?”
The Blue Burro was owned by a man named Gonsalves, who also owned a ranch a dozen miles or so below the border. Hallam had heard plenty about him but had never met the man. Most of what Hallam had heard was bad. Gonsalves was said to have personally killed at least eight men and ordered the deaths of many more. In the old days he would have been a bandido. Now he was just a businessman who was somewhat more ruthless than normal.
“Good luck, Lucas,” Jim Race had said the night before when he left the hotel room. “And thanks. There’s a lot riding on this. More than I can say. Walter Langham is a mighty important man. Important to the whole country.”
The name had been a little familiar to Hallam. He had gone to the El Paso Public Library during the day and read some newspapers. Walter Langham was Langham Steel. He could probably get away with calling President Wilson “Woody” if he wanted to. How in blazes had the son of a man like that gotten mixed up with a polecat like Rico Gonsalves? Then he remembered all the other rich men’s sons who had gotten themselves in trouble. Yeah, there was always a way. And Race had been pretty positive about the tip the Rangers had gotten that Kenneth Langham was spending a lot of time at the Blue Burro, one of Cuidad Juárez’s most notorious dives.
Being a civilian, Hallam could grab the kid, drag him across the river to El Paso, and turn him over to the Rangers, who could then ship him back to his daddy. Of course, if Kenneth raised a big enough ruckus before Hallam got him out of Juárez, the Mexican police might arrest him for kidnapping, and he’d probably never see the light of day again. Hallam would do his best to see that that didn’t happen.
“Señor, por favor? You like a girl, señor? You like me?”
Hallam turned his head and looked up and saw a girl standing there at his shoulder. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty, no doubt about that, but Hallam figured she wasn’t over sixteen. She rested a hand with long red fingernails on his shoulder and leaned over so that he could get a good look down the low neck of her blouse.
“No thanks, honey,” Hallam told her, feeling even older than his forty-four years. He wished he could tell her to get out of this hellhole, but he knew that even if he did, it wouldn’t do any good.
She leaned even closer, breathing into his ear in English, “I think they’re going to try to kill you soon.”
Hallam wasn’t expecting that. She hadn’t sounded Mexican at all when she said it, and as he glanced at her again he decided that despite the dark hair and eyes and the olive skin, she was American. And maybe a mite older than he had first thought, too.
“Who?”
“The two at the bar…there…I heard them talking about you. They work for Gonsalves.”
Hallam looked where the girl indicated with a flick of her eyes. Two men stood with their backs to the bar, watching the room. Hallam had already pegged them as a couple of Gonsalves’s enforcers. One was Mexican and about as wide as he was tall. The other one had pale hair cropped short and a face like a wedge. His eyes were pale, too, and they lit on the table where Hallam was sitting.
The girl leaned in still more, twined an arm around Hallam’s neck, and kissed him. She put a lot of feeling into it. She sure as hell didn’t kiss like a sixteen-year-old, Hallam thought, and then reminded himself that it had been a long time since he had kissed a gal that age. He didn’t really know how a sixteen-year-old would kiss in these modern times.
“Who are you?” he asked between his teeth when she pulled away.
“Just somebody trying to do a fellow American a favor. I think you’d better get out of here while you still can, mister.”
“They’re watchin’ me. If they want to kill me, they won’t just let me leave.”
She reached down and took his hand. “Come with me. I know a way out.”
Hallam’s mind worked fast. This might be a trap. Assuming that the fellas at the bar really did want to kill him, the girl could be working with them, trying to lure him someplace where they could dispose of him without too much fuss. Or she could be telling the truth about wanting to help him. Of course, that left unanswered the question of why an American girl was pretending to be a whore in a Juárez cantina.
If he played along, he might find out, Hallam decided.
He held the girl’s hand as he came to his feet. “Lead the way,” he said.
She tugged him toward an arched doorway with a beaded curtain over it. Hallam had seen girls taking customers through here all evening, so there shouldn’t be anything suspicious about what they were doing. The girl glanced back at him and said quietly, “They’re still watching. I don’t like the way they’re talking to each other. I think they’ve realized that I’m not one of the regular girls.”
“Best not waste any time, then.”
The beads rattled as they pushed through them. The hall on the other side was lit by only a few candles stuck here and there. It was narrow, with a lot of doors on both sides and a door at the far end. The girl let go of Hallam’s hand and hurried toward that door.
“It’ll be locked,” she said over her shoulder. “Can you break it down, or pick the lock?”
“Comes down to it, I’ll shoot it open.”
She looked at him again. “You’ve got a gun?”
“Yep.”
“Good. You may need it.”
One of the doors on the left side of the hall opened. A heavyset American stepped out, grinning back into the tiny room at the girl who sat nude on the bed, counting the money he had left her. “You did fine for your first time, darlin’, just fine,” the man told her. Hallam bumped him hard with a shoulder as he went past. “Hey!”
The beads rattled loudly.
“Get back in there,” Hallam said.
“Who the hell do you think you are, bud?”
Hallam thought about leaving him there in the line of fire—anybody dumb enough to think he’d found himself a virgin in the back room of a bordertown cantina was pretty close to being too stupid to live—but instead he put a hand on the man’s meaty shoulder and gave him a hard shove that sent him flying back onto the bed. The nude girl jumped out of the way.
“Go!” Hallam said to the girl in front of him.
She ran the last ten feet to the door at the end of the hall. Hallam was right behind her. He reached under his coat and drew the .45 revolver from the holster canted on his left hip. Somebody yelled, “Alto!” but didn’t wait to see if he was going to stop. A gun roared, the sound deafening in the narrow confines of the hallway.
The bullet spanked past Hallam and gouged a big hole in the cheap plaster on the wall. He twisted, saw the two men who’d been at the bar coming after them. It was the pale-haired man who had fired; smoke drifted from the barrel of the gun in his hand. His Mexican compadre had a knife with a long, heavy blade. The thing was damn near a machete. There wasn’t much room to do it, but Hallam put a bullet between them that made them jump in opposite directions and run into the walls.
“Get out of the way,” he said to the girl as he turned back toward her.
She huddled in a corner as he launched himself against the door. It was sturdier than it looked, but Hallam was a big man and knew how to hit a door. The wood around the lock splintered.
Hallam stumbled a little as he went through the door, but he was still able to reach back with his left hand, grab the girl’s arm, and drag her after him. Two more shots blasted. Hallam flung the girl down the alley toward a distant spot of light and then dropped to one knee. Since he always carried the hammer on an empty chamber, he had four rounds left in the Colt. He slammed all four of them down the hall, hoping none of the whores or their customers would pick that moment to step out.
The pale-haired man went down, clawing at a bullet-torn thigh. The Mexican pitched forward, too, but Hallam sensed that he wasn’t hit, just getting out of the way of the lead. Hallam got to his feet, feeling a twinge in his bad knee as he pushed up, and then he ran after the girl. His boots splashed through muck in the alley, and he thought he stepped on a rat or two.
“Over here,” she called as he reached the mouth of the alley. She was behind the wheel of a Model T with the top pushed back. Hallam ran over and cranked the engine while she held down the starter. The engine caught.
“You know how to drive this thing?” Hallam asked over the coughing and sputtering.
“Just get in!”
Hallam used his long legs to step over the passenger side door without opening it. He dropped onto the seat as the automobile lurched forward. He put the Colt back in its holster and then hung on.
In the lights from the buildings they passed, he saw her grinning at him. “First time in an auto, cowboy?”
“No,” Hallam said. He frowned as the contraption swerved around a corner. “I’m just not real fond of ’em, that’s all.”
“Well, we’d better hope Gonsalves’s boys don’t have one handy, or they’ll come after us.”
“The gringo won’t. I put a forty-five through his leg.”
“Good for you.”
There were fewer automobiles over here in Juárez than across the river in El Paso. At this time of night, Hallam and the girl pretty much had the streets to themselves. She drove past the big downtown mercado, which was closed, and stopped in a small park. The place was deserted.
“I’m obliged for your help,” Hallam said.
“Why did Gonsalves’s men want to kill you?”
“Don’t know. Why did you decide to give me a hand?”
“I couldn’t stand by and let a fellow American be murdered.”
“That’s another thing,” Hallam said. “What was an American girl doin’ at the Blue Burro?”
She laughed. “A girl has to make a living somehow—”
“No,” Hallam said, “you ain’t a whore. Who are you, lady?”
“I’m the one who helped you, remember? I don’t think you have a right to ask questions.”
Hallam opened the door of the Model T. “All right, then, I reckon I’ll be movin’ on.”
She hesitated, but only for a second, before saying, “Wait. Please.”
Hallam had figured from the first that she wanted something from him. He had no idea what it might be, but either she would tell him now or he would walk away. He had business of his own over here, and it meant that he would probably have to venture back to the Blue Burro before this night was over.
He sat there with the door half open and waited in silence. After a moment, the girl said, “My name is Jacqueline Southwick.”
“Fancy name.”
“This is where you’re supposed to ask if I’m one of the Philadelphia Southwicks.”
“I reckon you must be,” Hallam said, “or else you wouldn’t’ve brought it up.”
“Yes, I am. I came down here to look for someone. A…a young man.”
“Your beau?”
“That’s right. At least…I thought he cared about me. Now I’m not so sure. He…he abandoned me on a trip through Texas, while we were in Dallas. I should have gone home, I know…I could have wired my father for a train ticket…but I was afraid something was wrong, that my friend might be in trouble. I heard he was in El Paso, so I came out here. I had enough money for that. Then I heard that he had been seen in Juárez, at a place called the Blue Burro, so I dressed myself like the sort of…the sort of woman who would frequent such a place, and I came to look for him.”
Hallam thought about the story. It was just oddball enough to be true, but he wasn’t sure yet if he believed her.
“You’re rich?” he asked.
“Well…my family is. My money is actually in a trust fund that I can’t touch until I’m twenty-one. That’s still two years from now.”
“And you ran off on a lark with a young fella and came to Texas. Did the two of you elope?”
She shook her head. “No, we’re not married. I know, it’s positively scandalous—”
Hallam held up a hand to stop her. “But the whole adventure got fouled up when the young fella dumped you in Dallas, and you’re a mite too ashamed to go slinkin’ back home to your folks.”
Her chin lifted angrily. “If you have to be so crude about it, I suppose that’s a reasonable assessment.”
“How long have you been hangin’ around the Blue Burro lookin’ for the young fella?”
“This is the third night.”
“You been posin’ as a soiled dove for three nights and ain’t had to…”
“Young women of my class are quite adept at promising more than they ever intend to deliver,” she said.
Hallam just shook his head. Jacqueline Southwick had no idea how lucky she had been. He was going to have to see to it that she took herself back across the river and stayed there. He didn’t need that headache on top of his job for the Rangers, but he couldn’t just leave her to wolves like Gonsalves and his boys, either. She thought of herself as an adventuress, but really she was just a lamb waiting to be gobbled up.
“You didn’t ever find your beau, did you?”
“No. But I think I know where he is. I overheard Gonsalves talking to some of his men.” She leaned toward Hallam, excited and animated as she spoke. “I think they took Kenneth down to Gonsalves’s ranch.”
“Kenneth?” Hallam said.
“Yes, that’s my friend’s name. Kenneth Langham. Of the Pittsburgh Langhams.”
Hallam was still digesting that when she grabbed his arm and said, “The minute I saw you, I knew you were the man to help me. Will you take me to Gonsalves’s ranch and help me rescue Kenneth? I know that awful man is holding him prisoner! He probably intends to demand some sort of ransom from Kenneth’s father.”
That sounded likely to Hallam, if indeed it was true that Kenneth Langham was at Gonsalves’s ranch. Having Jacqueline Southwick fall into his lap, so to speak, had filled in some of the blanks for Hallam. Even without meeting Langham, Hallam had him pegged as a wild young man, too full of himself for his own good, the sort who would drag a gal halfway across the country and then desert her and run off to gamble and whore his way into trouble on the wrong side of the border. Easy pickin’s for a man like Gonsalves, who was always in the market for a fast, dirty dollar. Langham probably never expected his girlfriend to try to track him down, and he probably hadn’t figured that his father would use the influence of power and money to set the Rangers looking for him, either. Those strands had intertwined and brought Hallam and Jacqueline together.
Had Jim Race known about the girl? Hallam doubted it. Race would have warned him about that possible complication. And even though she had given him a hand, she was a complication, one that he didn’t need.
“Maybe I’ll go and look for your fella,” Hallam said, “but you got to get back across the river to El Paso.”
“Oh, no,” she said instantly. “I’m going with you, mister—What is your name, anyway?”
“Lucas Hallam, and if I’m goin’ to pluck your beau away from Gonsalves, I can’t be lookin’ out for you at the same time, Miss Southwick.”
“You won’t have to look out for me. I can take care of myself. In fact, I helped you get away, back at the Blue Burro, remember?”
“And I said that I’m obliged—”
“Besides, if I go along we can take my car, and we can be at Gonsalves’s ranch before morning. I have a pretty good idea of how to get there. If you go alone, you’ll have to either walk or find a horse, and it’ll take you a lot longer.”
Hallam tried not to sigh in frustration. “You don’t know what you’re gettin’ into—”
“I can shoot if I have to.” Her hand dipped into the folds of the long skirt she wore, and from somewhere she came up with a small pistol. It gleamed in the faint light that penetrated the shadows under the trees. “Just give me a chance, Mr. Hallam. I…I have to help Kenneth if I can.”
Hallam knew it was the wrong thing to do. He knew he ought to take her across the river by force if necessary and make her stay there. But once he was gone, how could he stop her from following him? If she was bound and determined to be part of this, maybe it would better to keep her close by, rather than having her blunder around and maybe cause even more problems.
Besides, there in the rear hallway of the Blue Burro, she had seemed pretty coolheaded. She drove the automobile good, too, he thought. Better than he could, that was for damned sure. And if they succeeded in snatching Kenneth Langham away from Gonsalves, they would need to rattle their hocks out of there in a hurry.
“All right,” he said, hoping that he wouldn’t regret it. “You can come with me. But you got to do what I tell you to do.”
“Of course.” He couldn’t really see her face in the shadows, but he could hear the smile in her voice as she added, “Should we seal the bargain with another kiss?”
“Just drive,” Hallam told her.
Hallam had a pretty good idea where Gonsalves’s ranch was, and Jacqueline had overheard enough to confirm the location. They found the main road leading south out of Juárez and followed it.
Hallam thought about what had happened at the Blue Burro. Why had Gonsalves’s thugs come after him? They shouldn’t have known who he was, and they sure shouldn’t have had any idea that he was there on a job for the Texas Rangers. And yet the girl had overheard them plotting to kill him, and they had come after him as soon as he’d made a move to get away. Had someone found out about his meeting with Jim Race and put two and two together? An even more disturbing question occurred to Hallam. Did Gonsalves have an informer working inside the Rangers?
He would worry about that once he had rescued Kenneth Langham, Hallam told himself. He felt a stirring of resentment. Not only was he risking his own life on the young man’s behalf, but a beautiful young woman like Jacqueline was putting herself in danger because of him. It sounded to Hallam like Kenneth Langham needed to grow up a whole heap. Somebody ought to shake some sense into his head. Maybe, if he had the chance, he would give the boy a good talking to.
Not that it would accomplish much, more than likely. Youngsters like that thought they had the world by the tail, just because their fathers had money. They might grow old, but they seldom grew up.
Kenneth Langham would at least have the chance, if Hallam had anything to say about it.
Jacqueline talked quite a bit, raising her voice over the rattle of the engine. She complained about the way her folks treated her, always prodding her to do things she didn’t want to do and telling her she couldn’t do the things she really wanted to. Hallam figured out pretty quick that she was a smart girl, smart enough so that a life of sitting around drinking tea and going to society parties bored the hell out of her.
“I think I’d like to learn how to pilot an aeroplane,” she said. “Don’t you think that would be fun, Mr. Hallam?”
Hallam had seen a few of those flying machines, and they bothered him more than automobiles did. “I reckon I’ll stay on the ground,” he said. “I never wanted to be higher up than the back of a good horse.”
“Oh, pooh. You’re a spoilsport, just like my father. He thought it was completely improper for me to learn how to drive. Young ladies just don’t do such things, according to him.”
“Well, maybe they shouldn’t.”
“Despite your rough exterior, you’re just like him. I can tell that now.”
That was the first time anybody had ever told Hallam that he was just like some rich man from Philadelphia.
“I’m going to learn how to pilot an aeroplane,” Jacqueline went on, “and someday I’m going to fly off in one and visit all the jungles and deserts in the world and have all sorts of thrilling adventures. And if my father doesn’t like it, that’s just too bad. I’ll be a grown woman soon, and I’ll do what I want.”
Hallam hoped she lived through this night, so that she would have a chance to be a grown woman. It hadn’t seemed to occur to her that she was in the middle of one of those thrilling adventures right now.
That was because it didn’t seem so thrilling while it was going on, Hallam mused. When your life was actually in danger, everything seemed a mite confusing and frightening, and usually you had to be both lucky and good to survive. Especially lucky.
“Of course, once Kenneth and I are married, he’ll probably try to tell me what to do, too,” Jacqueline went on. “But will I listen to him?”
“Probably not,” Hallam said.
She laughed. “That’s right. Probably not!”
The road was rough, and the ride shook up Hallam’s insides more than any horseback ride he had ever taken. The Model T rattled so much he didn’t see how it held together. But somehow it did, and along about three in the morning, they came to the side road that led to Gonsalves’s ranch. Jacqueline turned west, toward a range of low hills. Hallam saw the faint twinkle of lights a couple of miles away. That would be the ranch.
The sound of the automobile’s engine would carry quite a ways in the night air. When they came to a small gully with gently sloping sides, Hallam said, “Drive down in there, over behind that clump of mesquite. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”
“We’re not going to drive all the way to the ranch?”
“Not unless you want them to know we’re comin’.”
“Oh. Yes, that makes sense. We’ll hide the auto here and come back for it once Kenneth is with us.” She drove down into the wash.
Hallam didn’t intend to walk back here. He figured they could get their hands on some horses, there on Gonsalves’s ranch, and ride back to the automobile. If need be, they could just forget about the contraption and horseback all the way to the border. Wouldn’t be the first time he had ridden across the Rio Grande that way, Hallam thought with a faint smile. Wouldn’t even be the first time he had crossed the border with somebody chasing him.
“I don’t reckon there’s any chance I could talk you into stayin’ here and waitin’ for me?”
“Of course not.”
Hallam gave some thought to tying her up and making her wait here. But he knew she’d put up a fight, and more important, if anything happened so that he couldn’t get back to the automobile, then she really would be in a fix. Like it or not, he was stuck with her. In a way, he had been ever since she had sidled up to him in the Blue Burro.
“Come on,” he said.
His boots had low heels, so walking wasn’t too bad a chore. Jacqueline wore slippers, though, and they didn’t give her feet much protection from the rocks and gravel on the road. She didn’t complain, but she couldn’t help but say “Ouch!” from time to time. Hallam was glad they didn’t have that awful far to go.
They were about halfway to the lights that marked the ranch when he heard something. He stopped and turned and looked to the south. Another automobile was coming up the main road from that direction. Its headlights cast yellow cones in the darkness. Those beams of lights bounced up and down as the automobile hit rough spots.
Hallam figured the vehicle would go on past the ranch trail, but the lights slowed and then swung to the west. “Somebody’s comin’,” he said. “Get off the trail.”
Jacqueline didn’t argue. She hustled off into the scrubby brush with Hallam following her. “Squat down,” he told her when they were about fifty yards off the road.
“I don’t believe anyone has ever told me to squat before. That’s another of those things proper young ladies of Philadelphia society don’t do.”
“We’re a hell of a long way from Philadelphia,” Hallam said. He hunkered on his heels and waited with the Colt in his hand.
There was enough moonlight and starlight for him to be able to see the automobile as it approached. It wasn’t a Model T, he saw. This contraption was somewhat bigger and heavier. He leaned toward Jacqueline and asked, “You know what kind of automobile that is?”
“I think it’s a Mercedes-Benz touring car.” She sounded puzzled. “That’s a German automobile. I wouldn’t expect to find one down here.”
The Mercedes-Benz, if that’s what it was, rumbled on past the spot where they waited. “Well, it looks like it’s goin’ to Gonsalves’s ranch, just like us.” Hallam waited until the red lights on the back of the automobile had vanished, then stood and motioned for her to follow him.
They resumed walking toward the ranch. Hallam didn’t holster the Colt, and he noticed that Jacqueline had the little pistol in her hand, as well. “You sure you can shoot that thing?”
“I’m an excellent shot. I’ve been to a target range in Philadelphia several times.”
“Ever shot at anybody who’s shootin’ at you?” Hallam asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, but if I have to, I will.”
“Before the night’s over, you’ll probably have to.”
There were a lot of lights burning at the ranch, Hallam saw as they drew closer, more than should have been at this time of night. In fact, it looked like the whole place was awake. That wasn’t good. He had hoped they could slip in, locate Kenneth Langham, and get out with him before anybody noticed. Hallam figured the young man would be guarded, but he wasn’t worried about taking care of a couple of guards. If he had to fight all of Gonsalves’s men, though, it would be a different story.
The house had been there for a long time, a sprawling two-story Mexican hacienda made of whitewashed adobe, with red slate tiles on its roof. There was an outer wall, also of adobe, with a black wrought-iron gate in it. The house would have an inner courtyard with a fountain in it, overlooked by a second-floor balcony that ran all the way around. Once the place had been owned by a real ranchero, a don who raised fine cattle and horses, instead of a whoremonger and dope smuggler like Gonsalves. Hallam wondered how Gonsalves had gotten his filthy hands on the ranch. It was probably an ugly story.
The big German touring automobile was parked in front of the gate. A man wearing some sort of uniform leaned against the front fender, smoking a cigarette. That would be the driver, Hallam thought. Another man strolled over from the gate. He wore a town suit and a peaked sombrero. One of Gonsalves’s guards. Hallam and Jacqueline watched the two men for a moment as they crouched behind some brush; then Hallam whispered, “Give me a few minutes to work my way around closer to them, then you walk up bold as brass.”
“I’m going to distract them while you attack them, is that right?”
“I reckon that’s the general idea,” Hallam said. “You up to it?”
“Of course!”
He squeezed her shoulder for a second, then moved off into the darkness, circling closer to the wall so he could come up behind the two men. For a big man, he moved with a quiet grace that made his passage through the shadows nearly soundless. He wound up kneeling beside the adobe wall about a dozen feet from the driver and the guard. They didn’t have any idea he was there.
Hallam had been waiting only a moment when Jacqueline strolled into the light and approached the automobile. “Hello, boys,” she said in a sweet, lilting voice. Both men turned sharply to stare at her, startled to see anyone come walking out of the night, let alone a beautiful young woman. Out of habit, they reached under their coats, and Hallam knew they were reaching for guns.
He was on them before they knew what happened. His big hands closed on their heads and smashed their skulls together with a sound like a watermelon being dropped on the floor. The two men collapsed without any chance to raise an alarm. Hallam didn’t think either of them would wake up for quite a while.
Jacqueline ran lightly over to him. “Did you kill them?” she whispered, sounding a little awestruck.
“They ain’t dead…I don’t think,” Hallam told her. He took her arm. “Come on.”
The gate was half open. They slipped through. Hallam led the way along the wall of the hacienda until they reached a corner where a stairway led up to the second floor. As quietly as possible, they climbed the steps, went through a narrow passage, and found themselves on the balcony overlooking the interior courtyard. A railing of black wrought-iron that matched the exterior gate ran along the edge of the balcony. The fountain down in the courtyard laughed and gurgled, and a man laughed, too. It wasn’t nearly as pretty a sound.
Hallam catfooted along the balcony toward the voices he heard. Jacqueline followed him, and he certainly couldn’t complain about her making too much noise. She was as quiet as an Apache.
The trees growing around the fountain had lanterns in them. Hallam and Jacqueline stayed well back so that the light from the lanterns didn’t reach them. It spilled over the two men who sat in comfortable chairs beside the fountain, though. Hallam recognized Gonsalves, a slender, narrow-faced man with a mustache. The other man was shorter and thicker, with close-cropped gray hair and one of those monocle things stuck in his eye. He wore an expensive suit and toyed with a heavy walking stick made from some sort of gnarled wood.
“When the time comes, you will have my country’s gratitude officially, Señor Gonsalves,” the gray-haired man said. “Until then, you have my gratitude, unofficially, for your assistance in this matter.”
“It was my pleasure, Excellency,” Gonsalves said. “You will speak to the Kaiser on my behalf?”
“Most assuredly.”
Hallam frowned. The Kaiser? That was the fella who was the big boss over in Germany, and the gray-haired man in the courtyard below looked and sounded German, as far as Hallam could tell, not being an expert on such things. Why was somebody who worked for the Kaiser paying a visit to a cheap Mexican crook like Gonsalves?
And where was Kenneth Langham?
“Will the young man be here shortly?” the gray-haired man asked. “It is a long journey back to Mexico City, and I wish to delay it as little as possible.”
“I sent one of my men to wake him,” Gonsalves said. “He should be here soon.”
A door opened somewhere down below. Footsteps rang on the flagstones that paved the courtyard. A voice said, “Herr Rammelman, it’s good to see you.”
Jacqueline’s fingers dug into Hallam’s arm. “That’s Kenneth,” she hissed.
Hallam had already figured as much. And as Kenneth Langham strolled up to join Gonsalves and the German, it was obvious that he wasn’t a prisoner after all. He wore a lounging jacket, and a cigarette dangled from his lips. He shook hands with Rammelman.
“What’s he doing?” Jacqueline hissed. “What’s going on here?”
Hallam didn’t know the answers, but he figured if they kept quiet, they might learn them. He put a finger to his lips and touched Jacqueline’s shoulder lightly with his other hand.
Kenneth sat down with Gonsalves and Rammelman. A jug of tequila sat on a small table, along with some glasses. Kenneth poured a drink for himself. The other two men already had glasses in their hands. Kenneth lifted his glass and said, “My father sends his regards, Herr Rammelman…along with a more tangible token of his esteem.”
Rammelman grunted. “More than a token, Herr Langham. Half a million dollars is a great deal of money. More than enough to persuade Señor Villa to assist us.”
“Here’s to war,” Kenneth Langham said.
Hallam’s head was spinning. Kenneth Langham hadn’t been kidnapped. He had come here to Gonsalves’s ranch voluntarily, and he had brought half a million dollars with him, delivering it on behalf of his father. Walter Langham had built a fortune in steel…and that fortune would only grow larger if the United States became involved in a war. But a war with who? Mexico?
The men tossed back their tequila. Gonsalves licked his lips and said, “Herr Rammelman, you must make it clear to Villa that I will be the territorial governor once he is in power. That is my fee for arranging this meeting.”
“Of course,” Rammelman said. He reached inside his coat and brought out a sheaf of papers. “Everything is set forth in these documents. General Villa will attack the United States and draw them into a war in their own backyard, so to speak, so that the Americans will have neither the time nor the inclination to interfere with our affairs in Europe. Then, once we have been successful, we will assist Mexico in turn to reclaim all the territory stolen from her by the Yankees. Everyone profits by this arrangement…including, of course, Herr Langham and his father.”
Kenneth smiled. “The money’s in my room. Why don’t I go get it before Villa gets here?”
“An excellent idea,” Rammelman said. He laughed. “I must admit, I am a bit curious to see what half a million American dollars looks like.”
Kenneth stood up and walked under the balcony, out of sight. Hallam glanced over at Jacqueline. Her face was drawn tight, and her eyes were wide with shock and anger. He took her arm and drew her back into a darkened alcove.
“He…he’s a traitor!” she whispered, her voice shaking a little from the depth of her feelings. “I thought I knew him, but I didn’t know him at all!”
“Take it easy,” Hallam said. “This changes everything. We got to figure out what to do.”
“Well, I don’t want to rescue him anymore, that’s for sure! He made his own choice to join up with these…these hoodlums.”
“Yeah, but if we leave him here, he’s goin’ to turn over half a million bucks to Pancho Villa, and Villa’s goin’ to try to start a war with the United States. I don’t know about you, but I don’t care much for that idea.”
“Neither do I,” Jacqueline said. “How do we stop them?”
Hallam’s rugged face creased in a grin. He had hoped she would see things that way. “Come on.”
They found some more stairs and hurried down to the first floor. Speed and stealth were their most important allies, Hallam thought. He looked along the covered walkway where several doors were located. Kenneth Langham had come out of one of those rooms. Beyond them, Gonsalves and Rammelman were visible sitting next to the fountain, but the two men weren’t paying any attention to the shadowy corner where Hallam and Jacqueline lurked. They were still drinking and talking.
Hallam and Jacqueline peered around the corner of the adobe wall at the doors. Hallam talked in a swift whisper, and Jacqueline nodded. When one of the doors opened and Kenneth Langham stepped out carrying a small leather suitcase, Jacqueline stepped around the corner and softly called his name.
Kenneth stopped and looked, staring at her in surprise. If he yelled, they were in for a fracas, Hallam thought, but instead, the young man was so shocked to see the girl he had left behind in Dallas that he took a step toward her and said, “Jacqueline?”
Hallam couldn’t see Kenneth Langham from where he stood, but he could see Jacqueline just fine. He watched her smile and beckon to Kenneth, and as pretty as she was, dressed in that long, colorful skirt and low-cut white blouse, it would take most young men a lot of willpower to turn down that invitation. Kenneth didn’t have that much willpower. He hurried along the flagstone walk, bringing the suitcase with him. Jacqueline retreated around the corner. Right about now, Kenneth had to be wondering if he had imagined her. He had to find out.
He stepped around the corner, right into Hallam’s fist.
The punch landed solidly on Kenneth’s jaw, jolting his head back and making his eyes roll up in their sockets. At the same time, Hallam used his other hand to grab Kenneth’s coat and keep the young man from falling. He jerked Kenneth’s limp form deeper into the shadows.
“Did…did you hurt him?” Jacqueline asked as Hallam lowered Kenneth to the ground. She might claim she no longer cared for him, but some habits were hard to break.
“Just knocked him out,” Hallam said. “Grab that bag.”
Jacqueline picked it up. “It’s heavy.”
“Blood money usually is.” Hallam risked another glance around the corner. Gonsalves and Rammelman were still sitting by the fountain, drinking and smoking. They didn’t seem worried that Kenneth Langham hadn’t returned yet.
Even though Hallam had seen only the two men he had knocked out at the gate, he figured Gonsalves had at least a dozen more men at his beck and call, and all of them would be hardened killers. It would take only a shout to summon them. The smart thing to do would be to throw Kenneth over his shoulder and get the hell out of here. He and Jacqueline could slip back to the Model T and light a shuck for Juárez. Once they made it over the border to El Paso, Hallam could dump the kid and the money in Jim Race’s lap and let the Rangers sort out everything.
And yet he couldn’t help but think of those documents Rammelman had placed on the table next to the tequila. The papers detailed the whole German plot involving Pancho Villa attacking the United States. It seemed to Hallam that it would be a good thing for the American authorities to have those papers.
“Take the suitcase,” he told Jacqueline. “Get back to the automobile and wait for me. If you hear a bunch of shootin’, though, you better take off and get back to El Paso as fast as you can. When you get there, take the money to a Texas Ranger named Jim Race and tell him everything that happened.”
“A Ranger? Are you a Ranger, Mr. Hallam?”
“Used to be. Right now I’m just givin’ them a hand.”
“I knew as soon as I saw you I could trust you to help me. That’s why I said what I did about Gonsalves’s men plotting against you.”
“Wait a minute,” Hallam said. “You mean they weren’t talkin’ about killin’ me?”
“Well…no. As a matter of fact, they were after me. I thought if I pretended to help you, then you would help me.”
So when the two gents had chased them down the hallway in the back of the Blue Burro, they had been trying to get their hands on Jacqueline, not him, Hallam thought. He had figured it was the other way around. It looked like just about everything in this business had turned out to be something different than it appeared to be at first glance.
“I’m sorry,” Jacqueline said. “I shouldn’t have lied to you.”
“That’s all right,” Hallam said. He hadn’t spilled the whole story of his involvement to her, either. “Take the money and get out of here.”
“Please…be careful. And bring Kenneth with you, if you can.”
“If I can,” Hallam promised.
She slipped off into the night, taking the suitcase with her, and as soon as she was gone Hallam used Kenneth’s belt to tie the young man’s hands behind his back. He found a handkerchief in Kenneth’s pocket and crammed it in his mouth to serve as a gag. Then Hallam left him sitting there against the wall, still unconscious.
He didn’t know much about those newfangled automobiles, but he knew they ran on gasoline. When he got back to the Mercedes-Benz parked in front of the hacienda, he found the two men he had knocked out still lying slumped beside the vehicle, out of sight from the house. Hallam caught them under the arms and dragged them farther away from the automobile. Then he went back and poked around the contraption until he found the spout where gasoline was put into it. He unscrewed the cap, sniffed to make sure he had the right place, and made a face at the stink. People claimed that automobiles would eventually do away with the smell of horse shit, but as far as Hallam was concerned they weren’t really much of an improvement.
He pulled the tail of his shirt out, tore some strips of cloth off it, and knotted them together. Then he lowered the makeshift fuse down into the gasoline tank, letting some of it dangle out. He waited a minute to allow the fabric to soak up some of the gasoline and then fished a match out of his pocket. He snapped it into life on his thumbnail and held the flame to the cloth. It caught fire and began to burn. The lower it went, the faster it would go.
Hallam turned and ran back toward the house.
Kenneth Langham was gone when Hallam got to the place where he had left the young man. Hallam bit back a curse and drew his gun. Kenneth must have come to and managed to get to his feet. He had stumbled off looking for help, which meant that any second—
Out in the courtyard, Gonsalves started yelling in Spanish.
A second later, the Mercedes-Benz blew up, lighting the night sky with a brilliant splash of flame.
Hallam ducked around the corner and broke into a run, heading toward the fountain. He saw Rammelman trying to untie Kenneth. Gonsalves was gone, no doubt heading for the front of the house where the explosion had just rocked the place. Kenneth saw Hallam coming and let out a yell. Rammelman spun around and jerked out a gun.
Hallam didn’t see a German diplomat, didn’t think about the possibility of an international incident. He just saw a fella pointing a gun at him. After that, instinct took over, and the revolver bucked in Hallam’s hand as he fired.
The bullet spun Rammelman around and dropped him to the flagstones. He hunched over, badly wounded. Kenneth’s hands were free now, and he made a dive for the gun Rammelman had dropped. Hallam lunged forward and kicked him before he could get it, breaking his jaw. Kenneth sprawled on the ground, knocked senseless again.
The documents still lay on the table. Hallam scooped them up with his free hand and jammed them inside his coat. He bent, picked up Kenneth Langham, and tossed the young man over his shoulder. The boy was skinny and didn’t weigh too much. Hallam headed for the back, knowing he couldn’t go out the front. That was where Gonsalves and his men would be congregating, where the Mercedes-Benz still burned fiercely.
Hallam was half right and half wrong. Gonsalves’s men might be at the front of the hacienda, but Gonsalves himself came trotting out of the rear wing, carrying a shotgun. When he saw Hallam coming toward him, he jerked the greener up and fired.
Hallam felt the bite of buckshot, but he also heard the deadly thud of lead into Kenneth Langham’s body. Kenneth jerked and slipped out of Hallam’s grasp as Hallam fell to one knee. The Colt came up and roared as Gonsalves tried to reload. The Mexican cried out as Hallam’s bullet tore into him and drove him backward. He dropped the greener and tumbled onto the flagstones, barely twitching when he landed.
Hallam looked at Kenneth and saw that the lounging jacket was sodden with blood, as was Hallam’s coat. Most of the blood on Hallam had belonged to Kenneth. The young man had caught the brunt of the shotgun blast, and it had pretty much blown him in half, although Hallam’s life had been saved in the process. Hallam hadn’t meant for it to happen that way, though. He didn’t hide behind any man, and sure as hell not a traitor.
Traitor or not, Jacqueline was going to be upset to hear that Kenneth was dead.
But she’d never hear about it if he didn’t get away from here, Hallam told himself. He lurched to his feet, ignoring the hot, wet pain where a few of the lead pellets had ripped through his side, and ran out the back of the hacienda, kicking open a rear gate.
He circled the place and headed for the gully where he and Jacqueline had left the Model T. He hoped she was still there. The idea of walking all the way back to Juárez, shot up as he was, didn’t appeal much to him.
Lights bloomed in the darkness in front of him before he got there. An engine roared and clattered. Hallam leaped aside, but the automobile skidded to a stop before it reached him. “Mr. Hallam!” Jacqueline cried.
Hallam tumbled over the side door and gasped, “Go!”
She hesitated. “Kenneth?”
“He didn’t make it,” Hallam said through his teeth. The pain in his side was getting worse.
Jacqueline hesitated only an instant to let that soak in. Then she spun the wheel and tromped the foot feed. The wheels threw sand and gravel in the air as the automobile slewed around and took off. Shots banged from the hacienda, but none of the bullets came close.
Hallam figured they were about halfway to Juárez before he passed out.
He was sitting at the bar in the Camino Real when Jim Race slipped onto the stool beside him. The tightly wrapped bandages around Hallam’s torso didn’t keep him from lifting a glass of whiskey to his lips.
“Nobody can raise quite as big a ruckus as Lucas Hallam,” Race said quietly. It was the middle of the afternoon and they were alone at the bar, it being siesta time for the locals.
“You sent me down there,” Hallam pointed out.
“To look for a missing kid, not to uncover some German plot to start a war.”
Hallam shrugged. “I found the kid.”
“And he wound up dead, too.”
“Gonsalves did that, not me.”
“Yeah.” Race signaled the bartender for a drink. When the man had brought it and gone, the Ranger went on, “Those papers had too much blood on them to be legible, you know. Kenneth Langham’s blood.”
“I told you what they said. And you got the half-million. That’s got to be proof of something.”
“Yeah, but what?” Race shook his head. “The word is, we’re letting the whole thing drop. As far as the Rangers—and all the rest of the authorities on this side of the border—are concerned, we don’t know a damned thing about it.”
Hallam grunted. “What about Walter Langham?”
“What about him? All he knows is that his boy went into Mexico and didn’t come back. A damned shame, but these things happen.”
Hallam sipped his whiskey. “Why did Langham pretend to want Kenneth found in the first place?”
“It was just a formality, a report so that if anything happened to the boy, Langham would look like an innocent concerned father. He didn’t really expect us to do anything about it. That’s my guess, anyway.”
A hard smile touched Hallam’s face. “So in a way, it was Langham’s own fault that his plan got ruined and his boy got killed.”
“If you want to look at it that way. Unofficially, Langham will be investigated…but a man with that much power and money…don’t expect too much justice, Lucas.”
“Not too much,” Hallam said, thinking about Kenneth Langham. “Just enough.”
After a moment, Race said, “What about the girl? Can she be trusted to keep her mouth shut?”
“I reckon. She’s pretty smart. Got me back here in one piece, didn’t she? Anyway, she’s goin’ to be busy for a while.” Hallam grinned. “She’s goin’ to buy herself one o’ them aeroplanes and learn how to fly it. Says she wants to take me up for a spin.”
“Lucas Hallam in an aeroplane?” Race snorted. “I don’t believe it!”
“You never know, Jim,” Hallam said. “You just never know.”
A couple of years later, Mexican rebel troops under the command of Pancho Villa crossed the border and raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing sixteen people and prompting the United States to send a punitive expedition into Mexico after him, commanded by General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing. That failed expedition did nothing to stop the United States, and Pershing, from a year later entering what was then known as the Great War. Hallam sometimes wondered what, exactly, had prompted Villa to attack Columbus. One thing was certain: If the attack was part of a German plot, Walter Langham didn’t have anything to do with it. The steel magnate had blown his own brains out three months after his son’s death in Mexico. It was in all the papers.
Jacqueline Southwick learned how to fly an aeroplane, one of the first women to do so, but she didn’t fly off and have any more adventures. She married a rich young fella back in Philadelphia instead. Before that, though, she spent some time in California with Hallam, and she probably would have stayed longer if he had just said the word, which he didn’t. He was too old for her, whether she wanted to believe that or not.
So when it came time for her to leave, she kissed him one last time and then got on the train, and as Hallam watched it pull out of the station, he smiled and said softly to himself, “Oh, pooh.”