William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

They turned left, the corridor taking them to a side door. Lorena opened it and they stepped outside, into the sunlight. The door opened on the east side of the hacienda.

A vaquero waited patiently nearby, sitting his horse. A lead rope hitched around his saddle horn trailed behind him to a string of three horses, all saddled and ready to go.

Sam knew him: Latigo, a pistolero with plenty of sand.

“Latigo will go with you,” Lorena said.

“Thanks, but I don’t need him. He travels fastest who travels alone,” Sam said.

“Still, I will feel better if there is another along to watch your back. One gun more or less won’t make any difference to the fortune of the Grande, but it could make a very great difference to you. Latigo is one of mine, loyal first to the Delgados, not the Castillos.”

Sam nodded. “I’ve seen him at work. A good man.”

“But bad enough to stay alive,” Lorena said, “like you, amigo.”

“And you!”

Sam crossed to Latigo. The pistolero, in his mid-twenties, was of medium height, with a runner’s build. Beneath a sombrero, thick black hair was parted in the middle, the ends reaching down to his jawline. He sported a blue bandana headband. He had almond-shaped eyes and a thin mustache.

He lifted a hand in greeting, holding it palm-up for a beat before letting it fall to his side. “We meet again.”

“Sure you want to go along?” Sam asked.

“Why not? It’s a nice day for a ride,” Latigo said.

“In that case, I’ll stay here and you go.”

“I don’t like riding that much, gringo.” Latigo’s gaze dropped to the sawed-off Winchester in its special long holster hanging down Sam’s right thigh. “I see you still have that trick gun, the Kick of the Burro.”

“Mule’s-leg, podner.”

“What I said.”

Sam went up and down the string of three horses, checking them out. The second in line, a piebald brown-and-white cow pony, was dressed with Sam’s own saddle.

“They’re all good but the pinto is the best. I had them put your saddle on it,” Latigo said.

“I’ll take your word for it. Thanks,” Sam said, pleased. He liked the pinto’s lines and appreciated being able to ride his own saddle, broken in to his specifications. It wasn’t the same, riding with another man’s leather underneath him.

He put the brown paper lunch bag into a saddlebag, then secured the rolled-up black robe behind the cantle. A length of rawhide thong helped rig the gun case on the saddle’s left-hand side. Unfastening the lead rope, Sam cut the pinto out of the string.

Latigo took the rope, trailing the two reserve horses behind him. Sam stepped into the saddle, mounting up on the pinto.

“ Muchos gracias, señora, ” he said, nodding to Lorena, touching thumb and forefinger to his hat brim. A tip of the hat, polite and respectful.

“Vaya con Dios,” she said, lifting a hand in seeming casual salutation and letting it fall. Entirely correct and proper, yet no more than that, for the great lady of the rancho.

Sam and Latigo walked their horses across the patio into the courtyard. In its center, a knot of vaqueros wrestled with Rancho Grande’s ultimate weapon. The Long Tom, an old Spanish cannon about fourteen feet in length, was mounted on a carrier with four solid wooden wheels. It looked like it belonged on the gun deck of a Spanish galleon or pirate ship. It was very old, but effective. Its punishing firepower had broken more than a few Comanche onslaughts across the long years.

The handlers struggled to move the Long Tom into place, positioning it so that it anchored the defense of the courtyard and its field of fire encompassed the main gate in case of a breach.

Diego Castillo was up on a parapet, repositioning the riflemen along the wall. He was oblivious of Sam ... or pretended to be. That suited Sam fine.

The front gate was in the process of being secured. One massive door was closed, the other stood open. Sam and Latigo exited single file, Sam first, Latigo following with the string of two horses behind.

Once they were clear of the portal and out in the open, Sam waited for Latigo so they could ride abreast. Behind them, eager hands wrestled with the slab door, pulling it closed with a dull, booming thud that reminded Sam unpleasantly of the closing of a coffin lid.

Latigo was looking at him. Perhaps they shared similar thoughts.

“That sounded like the crack of doom,” Sam noted.

Latigo shrugged his shoulders. “ Quien sabe, gringo? Who knows?”

FOURTEEN

Sam and Latigo heard the death throes of the doomed stagecoach before they saw it. It was early evening; long shadows were falling.

From beyond the next ridge came the drum of thundering hoofbeats. A coach jounced on overworked springs, the undercarriage rattling and banging, its iron-rimmed wooden wheels rumbling along a dirt road. Counterpointing the stagecoach’s frantic flight came the clamor of raucous pursuit, more hoofbeats, shots, shrieks, war whoops and yowls, bloodcurdling in their feral intensity.

The ridge ran east-west. Sam and Latigo rode almost to the top, pausing just below the crest of the rise, showing only enough of their heads to let them see what was happening below without being seen.

On the far side of the ridge stretched the rutted dirt road of the Hangtree Trail. Sam and Latigo were west of Hangtown, east of the Breaks, and far enough away from both so that neither could be seen.

The stagecoach hurtled east, chased by a band of Comanches. It was flanked on both sides by a couple lead riders, the rest of the braves closely bringing up the rear. Prey and predators streaked by at a breakneck pace.

The braves harried the coach like wolves trying to bring down a lumbering bear closing in for the kill. Shots cracked, arrows whizzed. That the moment of truth was near could be seen from the fact the stagecoach was without a driver.

Two men would normally have occupied the seat up front, the driver and the shotgun messenger. But there was only one, and he was dead. He lay on his side sprawled across the driver’s seat, inert save for the motion imparted by the plunging, bucking, roiling vehicle. Arrows jutted out of him.

The shotgun guard was nowhere to be seen. He must have fallen off somewhere farther back on the road, out of sight. Other arrows protruded from the coach’s roof, sides, and back. That it was not yet a corpse wagon was told by intermittent shots and shrieks coming from inside it.

The course lay straight across the flat. Six terrified horses, yoked in tandem to the wagon pole, raced straight ahead, freed of all restraint now that no man’s hand held the reins. The end would be soon. Comanche riders flanking the coach team whipped their mounts with leather quirts, urging them to greater speed to overtake the lead horses.

Once that was done the braves could grab the animals’ headstalls, turning them and bringing them to a halt. Two were almost there, leaning dangerously far out of their saddles, hands reaching.

Their fellows were bunched up in a pack coming alongside and behind the vehicle. Copper-red, half naked, sinewy Comanches armed with rifles, lances, and bows and arrows failed to completely obscure the forms of passengers inside the coach.

A bowman riding abreast of the coach box reached over his shoulder to draw an arrow from the quiver hanging across his back. Fitting it to the bowstring of his curved composite bow fashioned from buffalo bones, he drew the string taut, angling for a shot.

A man in the coach shot at him with a six-gun, missing, but causing the bowman to slow down and fall back.

Jamming his hat down tight on his head to keep from losing it—the hat that is, not the head—Sam kicked his heels into the pinto’s flanks, urging it forward. It lunged over the crest of the ridge and down the other side, tearing a slanting line across the gentle downhill slope and pounding across the flat.