I leaned against Grizz’s side. “Yeah, I heard that one, too, Boz.”
“Damned shame,” he continued. “Ole Dusty had the only decent snooker table within a hundred miles of these parts. Plus, his hangout was, for damned sure, the spot a man could depend on to have a mug of cold beer and a friendly game of nine ball goin’ anytime you ’uz travelin’ ’tween Sonora and Del Rio. Yep, done spent many a pleasant, idle hour with a pool cue in my hand in that joint. And now she’s gone. Nothin’ but a heap of stinkin’ ashes left.”
I knelt in the wet sand, dipped my hat in the lethargic stream, then slapped the waterlogged chunk of handwoven, Mexican palm leaf back on my sweaty head. The soothing liquid ran down my neck and onto my broiling shoulders as I rose. Hands on hips, above the grips of my pistols, I glared across a glass-smooth waterway that looked almost as though it had frozen in spite of the blistering heat.
For as far as a man could see, in either direction, a single dirt trace ran along the easternmost bank of the river, from north to south. Carta Blanca’s narrow, central thoroughfare split off the wagon-rutted Del Rio road and snaked its meandering way through the forlorn village.
Half a dozen aged, shabby, run-down businesses lay scattered about on either side of the town’s gloomy Main Street. All the crude buildings a body could lay an eye on stood at odd, incongruent angles to one another, as though the berg had been platted, drawn up, and then carelessly erected by a troop of drunken, giggling children.
Behind the few remaining shops and stores, low, adobe houses roofed with layers of limbs and twigs, stained in washed-out shades of pink, blue, or yellow, cropped up amongst stunted live oak and mesquite trees like blocky, out-of-place wildflowers. Built into the base of a squatty, rock-strewn hillock, Mendoza’s Cantina proved the exception to that rule. Locals all knew that Mendoza lived in rooms behind the bar that he’d tacked on to the back of his watering hole.
As I swabbed at my dripping neck with a frayed bandanna, I said, “Well, boys, if Dusty’s place has sure enough burned, doesn’t leave a passing man much to do in Carta Blanca but drink. From here, thank God, appears Big Jim Boston’s corral and smithy operation is still cranking along over yonder to the south.”
“Yeah,” Boz said, “can see smoke wafting off the forge.”
“Looks like Miss Martha Hooch’s rooming house is still standing, too,” I continued. “Only two-story building in this part of the country. Guess a body could still purchase a decent meal there, long as he’s willing to pay dear for it. And it seems as though Eldritch Smoot’s pissant-sized mercantile outfit, next to Big Jim’s, is still operational.”
Glo squinted, shaded his eyes with a dripping hand, shook his head, and said, “Done heard tell as how mos’ dem houses and buildings yonder’s emptier’n last year’s rattlesnake nests, Mistuh Dodge. Might remember when my friend Moses Blackstock stopped in at the ranch for a visit month or so ago. Mose said there warn’t ’nuff people left in Carta Blanca for a decent card game.”
Slipped my long glass out and socked it up against one eye. “Can’t see but two horses out front of Mendoza’s. Big bay mare and a piebald gelding.”
“Them hosses belongs to two of the Pickett boys,” Glo offered. “Priest and Cullen as I remembers. Leastways, them’s the ones what was ridin’ hosses like them you’ve described when I snuck up on ’em earlier this mornin’.”
“Roscoe on either animal?” Boz said.
“Naw. That ’un they calls Roscoe was mounted astride a big ole hoss what was blacker’n a sack full of witches’ cats on a moonless night. Hoss gave me the creepin’ willies jus’ lookin’ at it. Swear as how Satan, his very own self, musta rode that animal straight up out of the smolderin’ pit. Kep’ thinkin’ maybe the beast was actually gonna breathe real fire whilst I ’uz lookin’ at it through my own long glass.”
The scope made an angry series of metallic clicks when I slapped the big end with an open palm. “Would be the two worst of them Pitt boys we’ve caught up with, wouldn’t it?”
Boz let out a derisive chuckle. “Sweet Jesus, Lucius, all three of the Pickett boys is in serious cahoots with horned Satan. Their reservations for a room in a festerin’ hell were made the day they got born. Whole family’s lower’n a snake’s belt buckle. Even the women. Hell, that sister of theirs, Winona, is just about tougher’n the snout on a wild sow.”
From behind us, Clementine scratched Bear’s ragged ears and called out, “Are the three of you bold gentlemen just gonna stand here by the river and talk all day? Might as well throw some blankets on the ground and have a picnic. Skip rocks on the water. Play hopscotch. Or maybe you gents can pull your pocket knives and play mumbletypeg.”
I cast a sidelong glance over my shoulder. Didn’t take much for a body to recognize that a stern hardness had replaced the girl’s earlier displays of fear, emotional loss, and hesitant indecision.
“You seem a might anxious for more bloodshed, Clem,” I said.
The Webb girl flipped her shock of straw-colored hair to one side and kicked at a fist-sized rock with one foot. “Yes. You could say that, Mr. Dodge,” she snapped. “I’ve contemplated what would happen when we caught up with these killers. Pondered the problem all the way from the site of my family’s sorry grave. I’ve come to the conclusion that the men responsible for my present situation owe me their blood—every drop of it. And you’ve already sworn to deliver their blood to me. So, let’s get this hoedown started.”
I swung my gaze back to the grubby collection of buildings across the river, slapped a glove-covered palm with my reins, then said, “All right, here’s how I think it’d be best to handle this dance. We’ll circle around to the south. Ease up on the backside of Big Jim’s stable. Spend a few minutes talking the situation over with Jim. Then we can decide on how to approach the problem from there. Everyone okay with that idea?”
Boz and Glo both nodded and grunted their approval at the same time.
Clementine strode up beside the horse. “Let’s be on our way then. Quicker those men are in the ground, the better I’ll like it.”
I climbed back aboard, then helped the girl up to her spot behind me. Once she’d settled in, I touched Grizz’s side with one rowel and urged him into the shallow stream.
Unnoticed, our small posse slipped along the riverbank around Carta Blanca to the south. In a matter of minutes, we arrived at the back entrance of Big Jim Boston’s dilapidated corral and smithy concern. The busy, musical sound of metal ringing against metal sang through the sultry air.
Boston’s weathered, board-and-batten livery barn sported a comic, drunken lean toward the east. Boz sat his animal in the building’s wide-open back entrance. He flicked a grinning gaze from one side of the structure to the other. During a lull in the noisy shoeing, he called out, “ ’Bout one good gust of wind outta the west and Big Jim’s gonna be wearing this place around his ears like a wooden hat.”
From the stable’s dark interior, a low, earth-thumping voice rumbled out, “I heard that, Tatum. If’n you don’t particular like my place of commerce, for one reason or ’tother, then you can, by God, take your trade sommmers else. Hear tell as how folks have several fair to middlin’ blacksmiths in Del Rio. Don’t like the way any of their places look, might have to head on over Uvalde way. ’Course, the best man there’s my brother, Jake.”
As our party dismounted, a totally bald, shiny-pated, bullet-headed man the size of a freight wagon stepped from the barn’s murky shadows. Adorned with a stained leather apron, the giant sported a moustache the size of a draft horse’s hind leg. Covered in a layer of soot, grease, and grimy grunge, he wiped ham-sized hands on a ragged chunk of nasty burlap, then flipped the rag onto an equally grubby shoulder.