Suddenly, from outside there was a crash of gunfire, the race of pounding hoofs, shrill Texas yells.
The men at the door wheeled and ran toward the court. Even Herrara was caught, gripped by shock in the middle of his blow. And in that instant I leaped.
My left hand gripped the gun-wrist, my right seized his throat, not a grip around the neck, but the far more deadly grip of the Adam's apple and the throat itself.
His gun exploded, but the muzzle had been turned aside, and the roar was lost in the concussions of the shots outside. I smashed him back bodily against the stone wall with stunning force. My right hand gripping his throat held him on tip-toes against the stone, and my other hand gripping his gun-wrist ground his knuckles against the roughness of the stone wall.
Brutally, I ground the flesh against the stone, rasping it back and forth until he struggled to scream and his fingers could no longer grip the gun.
I released my hold upon his throat and stepped back. He struck weakly at me with the cat, but then, my feet wide, I hit with my left fist, then with my right, rolling my shoulders for the power it gave. One fist struck his ribs, crushing them; the other his face.
His head bounced against the wall, and glassy-eyed he started to fall toward me. I struck him again, and when he fell forward that time I knew that he was dead.
Quickly, I stripped off his gun belt and picked his pistol from the floor.
The passage outside the door was empty, and I ran along it, turned down another, and was in the living quarters of the ranch house. A door stood open, as it had been left when the shooting called the men out, and I smashed through it.
The room was empty and still. My footsteps padded on the bare floor as I crossed to the gun case. Picking up a chair with one hand, I swung it and smashed the glass. I reached in for a shotgun and filled my pockets with shells.
A Henry rifle was there, and I took that also, and two belts of cartridges that hung from a chair. And then as I turned away I saw a familiar sight. In the corner of the gun cabinet was my old Walch Navy .36 with the initials C. B. scratched on it. Quickly, I took it up and thrust it into my waistband with another pistol that lay there.
No one appeared in the passage as I ran, and I went through the door to the long veranda outside.
There I stopped in the shadows.
Mounted men were racing back and forth, and the red lances of gunfire stabbed the darkness. A Texas yell broke out, and a shot caught a Mexican upon a balcony. He fell head-long from it and landed nearby. The rider wheeled his horse, and in that instant he saw me.
The pistol swung at me to fire and I shouted, "ationo! I'm an American!"
He held his pistol on me. "Who are you?"
His voice rang with authority.
"A prisoner. They've held me six years."
"Six years?"
A horse was tied to the hitch-rail and he jerked loose the tie-rope. Heavier firing sounded outside the court. "Come! And be quick!"
He raced from the court to where other Texas riders were milling. "Wrong place!" A man shouted at the rider beside me. "Flores' place is half a mile up the road!"
"There are two hundred men there!" I yelled at them.
The man beside me said, "Let's go!" And he led the racing retreat at a dead run down the valley.
After a mile or two they slowed to a canter, then to a walk. I glanced at the stars, and there was the North Star, beckoning us on.
"They'll be after us," the man beside me said, and there was no time for questions.
Closely we rode on, and fast, for the Rio Grande lay miles to the north. The night was cool, and the air fresh on my face. Sometimes when we passed close to a rock face we could feel the heat still held from the day's hot sun.
We slowed to a walk again, and the man I rode beside turned in his saddle and looked at me.
"Six years, you say?"
As briefly as possible, I explained. Not about the gold, exactly, but enough to let him know they had wanted to learn a secret I alone knew.
When I mentioned Herrara, he nodded grimly.
"He's one I'd like to find myself."
"Do not waste your time," I said. "From now on you need pay him no mind."
He glanced at me and I said, "He was using a whip on me when you came shooting into the patio, and his men rushed away."
"He is dead, you think?"
"He is dead. Without a doubt, he is dead."
"My name is Mcationelly," the rider said then.
"These are Texas Rangers."
Thirty of them had crossed the river to strike a blow at the outlaws who were raiding ranches and stealing cattle north of the border--and sometimes south of it, as well.
Las Cuevas had long been the outlaws' headquarters, and it was Las Cuevas for which the Rangers had aimed. But mistakenly they were led to a ranch that belonged to the Las Cuevas owner, only a short distance away from the main ranch buildings. It was that mistake that had saved my life.
At the Rio Grande the riders turned on command. The outlaws were not far behind. "You, Sackett," the captain said, "go on across the border. You've had trouble enough."
"If you'll grant me the pleasure, Cap'n," I said, "I'll stay. There's men in that crowd who have struck me and beaten me, and I owe them a little. Bess," I added, "I carried off their shotgun. It is only fair that I return the loads from the shells."
Here at the river the air was still cooler because of the dampness rising from the water--and it was free air.
For the first time in years I was out in the night, with free air all about me.
The outlaws came with a rush, sure they would catch the Rangers at the border before they got across the river, but they were met with a blast of gunfire that lanced the night with darting flame.
One rider toppled from his saddle, and his fall as much as our fire turned their retreat into a rout.
They vanished into the mesquite.
Several Rangers rode out to look at the body, and I followed Mcationelly. "Well,"
I said, "seems to me if you had to kill only one, you got the right one. That there is Flores himself."
We swam the river back to the Texas side and I followed on to their camp, which was on the bank of a creek a few miles back from the river.
Reckon I looked a sight. My shirt was in rags and the only pants I had were some castoffs they'd given me when my own played out. There I stood, bare-footed and loaded down with guns.
"You'd better let us stand you an outfit,"
Mcationelly commented dryly. "You're in no shape to go anywhere in that outfit."
They were good boys, those Rangers were, and they rigged me out. Then, to raise some cash, I sold one of them my pistol for six dollars--it was the spare I'd picked up (i'd come away with three); and I sold the shotgun for twelve to Mcationelly himself. The Captain had taken Flores' gold- and silver-plated pistol off the body--it was a rarely beautiful weapon.
The horse I'd ridden across the border was a handsome, upstanding roan.
"Anybody asks you for the bill of sale for that horse," Mcationelly commented, "you refer them to me."
The first thing I did was to head for the creek and take a long bath, getting shut of my old clothes at the time. When I lit out for Rio Grande City, come daybreak, I felt like a different man.
Yet being free wasn't what it might have been. First off, I didn't know where to go.
Mcationelly had heard nothing of my pa, and only remembered some talk of Jonas Locklear being dead several years back. What had become of his land, he didn't know.
So there I was, a free man with no place to go, with a rightful share in the gold that might have already been spent. But something I did own, if I could find them. I owned a mare and a mule colt.
I showed up in Brownsville wearing shirt and jeans that didn't fit, a pair of boots that hurt my feet, and a worn-out Mexican sombrero. Dark as I was and wearing cartridge belts crossed over my chest, I even looked like a Mexican.