The Outlaws of Salty's Notch Read online

  A town, Breaker had thought at the time, that would nightly be turned a ruddy gold by the setting sun. Which was only fitting. It was gold that had brought him to La Belle Commune. It was gold that would see him on his way back to Texas a very rich man.

  OK. So that had been a couple of weeks ago. Then, he had been a man on a horse feeling his way, looking at possibilities. Now he had with him the men who would help him realize his dream.

  The house had enough rooms to house an army, though renegades would be a better way to describe the four men Breaker had enlisted in the New Mexico cantinas and the saloons of southern Texas. Rag tag was a term he had heard bandied among military men. Even that term was paying the lawless band an undeserved compliment.

  They had been arriving over the past few days, following the lines on a map Breaker had put before them, then burned. On this, Breaker’s second visit to La Belle Commune, he had out of necessity risked riding through the town. For his plan to work and gain him the fortune he had been fighting for all his life, there had to be an easy way down to the shore. That he had spotted the broad trail on his one ride through had made the risk worthwhile. Everything was in place. And one look at the derby-hatted marshal dozing in front of the jail had told him that if the men he had gathered around him formed a rag tag army, then that was all that would be needed to take total control of the town.

  Total control was necessary. From what he had seen there would be no resistance. And yet. . . .

  In any undertaking, Breaker thought wryly, something unexpected could come leaping out of nowhere to upset the apple-cart. His sight of Paladin in the shadows of the saloon’s gallery had been a shock that almost caused a give-away double-take. He’s resisted, but that one look had been sufficient. It was Paladin, all right. Looking a bit ragged around the edges, yes, but there was no doubt that his old enemy Paladin was in town.

  Yawning, rousing himself with an effort from reverie that was serving no purpose, Breaker said, ‘It begins tomorrow. We give the good citizens of La Belle Commune time to wake up. Then we ride in, take over the town, let nobody in or out. All that needs is the removal, permanent’ – he looked meaningfully around the watching faces – ‘of three ageing has-beens who between ’em run the place.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Not needed. The town marshal and two other fellers. One owns the saloon, the other the general store.’

  ‘A kid fresh out of school could do that all on his own with one hand tied – but why would he?’ This was a tow-headed gunslinger known only as Deakin. He had skin pitted by smallpox, a voice that set teeth on edge. ‘I’ve been here five days, Breaker. Nothing’s moved down there. It’s a ghost town, dying in the sun.’

  ‘That’s why it was chosen.’

  ‘By you?’

  Breaker shook his head. ‘No, not by me. But there’s something I found out. A drunk in a Las Cruces cantina bartered a fairy story for a drink. I dug deeper, discovered his rambling tale was no made-up story but the honest truth. So I looked at the whys and the wherefores, set those against possibilities and the truly unbelievable outcome.’ He grinned. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  It was close to midnight. The five men who had ridden through La Belle Commune one by one were sprawled around a camp-fire built in a stone circle on sloping lawns. Two weeks ago Breaker had looked down on those lawns from the balcony, and a woman on a chestnut mare had crossed them silently and without seeing him. Go back not too many years and those same lawns had been trodden by plantation owners and their ladies. Absurdly rich gentry, they had been waited on by black slaves bearing silver trays loaded with crystal glassware containing the finest imported French wines.

  What the four gunslingers were passing from hand to hand, mouth to mouth, was a cracked jug of moonshine whiskey which had been brought in from Texas by a Mexican called Guillermo Rodriguez. He looked little more than a kid, slim in his dark red shirt and tight black pants. His black hair was swept straight back and some kind of perfumed pomade gave it a glossy sheen. A colourful sombrero decorated with silver conchos hung at his back. In the flickering light of the fire Rodriguez was looking at Breaker with undisguised insolence.

  ‘I came at your bidding,’ he said, ‘but, like Deakin I do not understand how taking over a ghost town can make me a rich man.’ In the darkness his white teeth flashed in a broad grin that was a challenge to Breaker. ‘If you can explain satisfactorily, it is possible I will decide to remain here.’

  ‘Please yourself,’ Breaker said. ‘All I’ll say is it’s not the takeover that’ll put gold in your saddle-bags, but what it enables us to do in subsequent days.’

  ‘Subsequent,’ another voice echoed, and there was a ripple of laughter. ‘What that means is anyone’s guess, so maybe you should let us all into the secret, tell us where this gold’s at.’

  The man who had spoken was sprawled beyond the reach of the firelight. His black attire left him a vague shape in the shadows. His name was Flint. The light that did reach him glinted on the cold steel of a revolver pouched in leather low on his thigh, on the pallor of his face, on black eyes that were fixed on Breaker.

  ‘What a man doesn’t know about,’ Breaker said, ‘a man can’t mess up. A tale told once gets repeated. Passed on. If the wrong person hears it, I’ve wasted my time.’

  ‘You think one of us would do that?’ The firelight flickered in Flint’s eyes. There was quiet menace in his voice.

  ‘I’m not prepared to find out. But when the time’s right—’

  He paused as Lomax, one of the two men closest to the fire, spat his disgust into the flames.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, lurching to his feet. ‘I’m out of here, look me up next time you’re in Galveston—’

  Then the breath left his body in an explosive whoosh. A swinging right hook delivered by the other man, a craggy giant called Devlin, took him in the solar plexus and dumped him in the fire. He yowled like a scalded cat, bucked himself out of the embers with the back of his shirt smoking. He rolled in the grass, stopped to glare at the man who had delivered the blow.

  Devlin, after taking a careful look at his knuckles, drew deeply on a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the rising moon. He was still contemplating his artistry when the man he had downed launched himself back across the scattered, glowing embers.

  The result was the same. Without disturbing the ash on the cigarette in his left hand, Devlin swayed sideways, delivered a chopping blow to his attacker’s neck and watched him drop like a log.

  This time he stayed down. One arm had flopped across the fire. Devlin stepped forward to kick it clear, walked a few yards and stood drawing on his cigarette.

  ‘You see,’ Flint said softly. ‘Lomax wants out, Devlin drops him, but if I’m any judge that big man’s of the same opinion. We all are. When the time is right, you say. Let me tell you, Breaker, the right time is now. You wait any longer, there’ll be nobody here to listen to your little secret.’

  The fire hissed in the silence. A far off coyote howled. From the trees an unseen night bird flapped away into the night. Lomax groaned and rolled over, struggled to rise, made it and stood swaying.

  Breaker shook his head, climbed to his feet and stretched.

  ‘If you’re right, I’m in trouble, because what’s coming can’t be handled by a man on his own.’ He grinned. ‘No, not even by me. Devlin, douse that fire. Then all of you head up to the house. Take the jug to the top balcony, drag out some chairs. You’ll see a cigar stub that’s been there a couple of weeks. I spent time up there. From that balcony you can see the lights of the town. I’ll tell you what’s about to happen. Show you as best I can where it’s going to take place.’

  Breaker hung back. Devlin kicked loose earth over the fire, then followed the others. They went up steps flanked by columns, in through a front door that had once been opened by an English butler.

  Those were the days, Breaker thought, following – and for me, something similar is within touching distance. T
here’s a pot of gold waiting at the end of a rainbow. To reach it I’ve got the help of a mutinous crew, and to make matters worse a man I thought had drowned in the Red River with a couple of bullets in his back is alive and well and living in La Belle Commune. Paladin, who was just about the best bounty hunter in the West.

  Now isn’t that something to make a man of action lick his lips?

  When the talking was over, two men remained on the balcony. Rodriguez was well back against the board walls of the house, sprawled on a chair with worn upholstery through which in places the stuffing had burst. He was smoking a thin black cigarillo. From time to time, his teeth flashed in a grin.

  ‘They are convenient, these balconies,’ he said, ‘as a way for a man to meet another man’s wife with discretion.’

  ‘Never figured you as discreet,’ Breaker said.

  ‘If a virile man was in this room, for example, and a beautiful woman in the one below . . .’ Rodriguez shrugged eloquently. ‘For a strong and agile man to lower himself from this balcony would be the work of a moment.’

  ‘Right now there’re no women here,’ Breaker said, ‘and there’s work to be done.’

  ‘Ah yes, and we work well together, you and me,’ Rodriguez said softly. ‘Me with my reluctance, my apparent desire to be away from here. You with your tales of immense riches.’ He chuckled, enjoying what he considered to be a good joke.

  At the balcony’s ornate balustrade, smoking and staring at an unseen, distant sea, Breaker shook his head impatiently.

  ‘You sure you’ve got the date right?’

  ‘Sin duda. There is no doubt. He drove north from Nicaragua by wagon. A great distance, and always there was the fear of pursuit giving wings to his heels. In Mexico he acquired a caique’ – Rodriguez shrugged expansively – ‘or maybe not, maybe it was a ketch. No es importante. He is sailing from Isla Pajoros, which is an island close to Vera Cruz. His plan is to stay within sight of the coast for most of the way here.’

  ‘Avoiding deep water.’

  ‘Sí. He is an excellent sailor, an excellent judge of tides, of prevailing winds. Because of the cargo, he has an arrangement. There will be several men here to meet him.’

  ‘Why La Belle Commune?’

  ‘In Texas, he is a wanted man. Better to be safe. In Louisiana he robbed a bank and as a consequence served time in a Lafayette jail. Later, a free man wandering down the coast, he came across this place. It haunted his imagination, stayed in his mind.’

  There was a silence. Breaker flicked his cigarette, watched it spark its way down to the lawns, turned abruptly.

  ‘We’ve ridden together for a while,’ he said, ‘but I still don’t know what motivates you.’

  ‘It is a family matter.’

  ‘That tells me nothing.’

  ‘A family begins with a father, and a mother.’ Rodriguez’s white teeth flashed white in the gloom as he drew back his lips in a grimace of hatred. ‘At a certain time when I was much younger there were bandits who rode from village to village, killing without discrimination but with much crazy laughter. One hot day it was our pueblo they selected for their amusement. My mother, she was singing quietly to herself as she hung out washing. She was in the way of the bullets they scattered like blind men sowing grain.’

  ‘Mexicans, murdering their own people?’ Breaker said. He’d dipped his head. His eyes were hidden, the moustache drooping over lips that had tightened to a thin line.

  ‘But of course not,’ Rodriguez said. ‘These bandits were gringos. Five or six of them, they would come splashing across the Rio Grande with their rebel yells and their bottles of bootleg whiskey. There was one man who was perhaps the worst of the bunch – without him, who knows, maybe there would have been no crazy killing.’ He stared hard at Breaker, a thin smile curling his lips. Then he shrugged dismissively as if he had said too much. ‘Since then, since the cruel death of our mother, I have grown cold. I care for myself, and the pueblo that is my home, but have a burning hatred of Texans—’

  ‘I was born in Amarillo. That makes me Texan, so why should I trust you?’

  ‘I make exceptions when it is suitable. Without me we would not be here. The trust is in the outcome of our endeavours. We take the town. We wait. A boat arrives. We are rich men.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Breaker said. ‘A boat carrying a cargo of gold, stolen in Nicaragua, brought north through hostile territories by a thief with cojones. His name is Alvaro Rodriguez. And why I question my trust in you is because that man is your elder brother, and you’ve sold him down the river.’

  Chapter Three

  Most days in La Belle Commune begin with the town’s sprawl of tumbledown shacks shrouded by a white sea mist. For a while, the air is cool and moist. The temperature drops in bedrooms where sleep has been impossible. Mist curls in through open windows. Skin sticky with night-sweat welcomes the chill. What passes for life in La Belle Commune becomes bearable.

  The respite is short lived. The sun pokes its dazzling rim above the eastern horizon and begins its inexorable climb to a zenith. The mist rolls back. Precious moisture evaporates from rusty tin roofs. The packed earth of La Belle Commune’s wide thoroughfare begins soaking up the heat that will by mid-morning be strong enough to sear though the thin soles of worn-out boots.

  But not Brad Corrigan’s. The mist was lingering when he banged open the door and ducked into the small room that was the jail’s office. When he pushed back the stiff catch and opened the window he saw that, as on every other morning for as far back as he could remember, the door to Alec Mackie’s store was open wide. Directly across the street, Rik Paulson was out on the saloon’s gallery smoking his first cigarette of the day. He saw Corrigan, and raised a hand. Corrigan grinned, bowed, and turned away.

  The businessmen of La Belle Commune rise early not to serve non-existent customers but to be at their place of work before the heat makes even a short walk a chore.

  Without knowing, oblivious to the danger, on this day they had played into the hands of Bushwhack Jack Breaker.

  The five men rode down from the trees encircling Emma Bowman-Laing’s antebellum mansion as the mist was clearing from the town. They took the raking slopes leading down to the coast at a canter, riding in line abreast when conditions were favourable, at others forming an extended single file. Ahead of them there was no sign of life.

  Rodriguez was unconvinced. ‘Five men, riding in a bunch, is certain we will be seen,’ he said.

  ‘Seeing ain’t knowing or understanding,’ Breaker said. ‘By the time they understand, it’ll be too late.’

  Acting on Breaker’s orders, as they entered the town and clattered past the first shacks in a cloud of dust they broke formation. By the time they’d reached what Breaker thought of with some amusement as the town’s business centre, Devlin and Lomax had moved with intent over to the south side of the wide thoroughfare. Deakin was a little way behind them, but in the centre of the road.

  Devlin, Lomax and Deakin had been told to keep their guns pouched. On no account were they to resort to gunfire. They were to move as silently as the morning mist.

  Flint was with Breaker.

  ‘He was lazing in that rocking chair yesterday, the marshal,’ Breaker remarked as he pulled his roan over to the jail and swung down alongside the hitch rail. ‘Had his hat tipped, but I saw his eyes watching me. Don’t get careless.’

  Flint wasn’t listening. He’d dismounted swiftly and was in the office ahead of Breaker. When Breaker joined him in an interior where dazzling early morning light created deep shadows in a contrast that confused the eyes, a tall man was coming through an inner doorway. He was wiping shaving suds from his face with a towel. An under-shirt hung outside his pants, over narrow hips. Incongruously, considering he had just finished his morning’s ablutions, a tired derby hat green with age was perched on his head.

  He was, Breaker noted, a good ten feet away from his desk and the coiled belt with its leather holster and pouched six-gun.


  ‘Guess this is where I find out what’s going on,’ Corrigan said without obvious concern. ‘Where’re your three outlaw pals?’

  ‘Put your shirt on, Marshal,’ Flint said softly. ‘We’re going for a ride in the country.’

  ‘Need to walk a bit first,’ Corrigan said, his pale blue eyes straying towards the desk. ‘I’ve an arrangement with a feller called Shorty Long. Got something passes for a barn behind his ruin of a house. He acts as the town hostler. Folk pay him a dollar now and then to look after their horses.’ He was watching Breaker. ‘Shorty spends a lot of time over at the saloon. Takes some effort to rouse him before noon.’

  He had been talking easily, scrubbing his chin with the towel, moving towards the desk.

  ‘Where?’

  Corrigan grinned at Breaker. ‘Thataway,’ he said, jerking his thumb towards the east side of town. ‘Fifty yards down the road. If your ride in the country is going to take us to the Widow Bowman-Laing’s old house,’ he said knowingly, ‘Shorty’s place is on the way.’

  Hand still raised, still talking, he stepped sideways with deceptive speed and threw the towel across Breaker’s face. A continuation of the movement turned into a lunge for his desk and the six-gun. His hand slapped the leather holster. Breaker was cursing, fumbling with the damp cloth. Flint, a thin smile on his face, went for his six-gun. His hand was a blur, but Corrigan caught the anticipated move. His long leg lashed out. The toe of his boot caught Flint’s wrist as his fingers touched the gun’s butt. The outlaw pulled his hand away and swore through clenched teeth.