The Man from Misery Read online

  “You’re a liar!” the large man bellowed.

  The guitarist stopped playing, stood up, and scampered into the kitchen, holding the guitar against his body to protect it. Several couples opted not to finish their meals, eased away from their tables, slinked towards the door, and rushed outside. Five men at two other tables sat and watched, expectant.

  Emmet held his hand out a few inches from the large man’s stomach. “Easy, friend. There ain’t no cause for that kind of talk.”

  “No cause?” the man said, his voice swollen with rage. “No cause? This reckless good-for-nothing gets my daughter pregnant and then hightails it out of town, leaving me and her mother to manage the mess, and you say there’s no cause?”

  “I never touched your daughter, sir,” Abe said, still chewing.

  Emmet noticed the blond man in the straw hat positioning himself behind Abe’s chair, his hands resting on his guns, ready to pull.

  “I think we got a case of mistaken identity, here,” Emmet said. “This boy’s name is Abe.”

  “You’re a liar, too.”

  Emmet stood and squinted into his accuser’s eyes. “Folks that know me will tell you I almost always tell the truth.”

  The man in denim would not back down. “His name is Zack,” he said. “I never forget a face, especially an ugly, freckled one.”

  “An ugly, freckled one?” another voice boomed.

  The large man spun towards the door to see Zack walk in.

  “An ugly, freckled one?” Zack repeated. “Let me just say two things. First, Mr. Danny Brown, I think you got the wrong pig by the tail.”

  Brown’s eyes flipped back and forth between Abe and Zack.

  “Second, that doesn’t say much about your daughter’s taste in men, does it? Rita Ann is her name, isn’t it? Or is it Rita Marie? Something like that.”

  “How dare you mock her,” Brown said.

  “No, I’m serious,” Zack said. “I don’t quite remember her name.”

  “Her name was Rita Ann, you worthless scum.” His voice was low but oozing with venom.

  “Does it matter?” Zack said, and when he smiled, the moment turned.

  In the time it takes to wink, Zack and Danny Brown drew iron, but Zack was quicker and sparked the pistol out of Brown’s hand. The bullet had no sooner ricocheted off the gun and embedded itself into the wall than Abe’s knife was out of his sleeve and jammed into the blond man’s thigh, causing him to crumple to the floor, howling. The table overturned, and food flew and plates shattered as Abe heaved himself on top of the blond man, one hand a flailing fist, the other reaching for his boot knife, which he snatched and pressed against the man’s throat.

  “Easy, Goldilocks,” Abe whispered. “Easy.”

  Zack stared at Danny Brown. “Next bullet’s going to be through your brisket.”

  As he arched his hands over his head, Brown glared back and said, “My girl drowned herself over you. Killed the unborn baby inside her. The grief split her mother and me up. I just wanted you to know that.”

  Zack blanched, swallowed, gave no reply. Emmet heard the uncomfortable silence growing louder, so he moved towards the door and said, “One thing I know, Mr. Brown, is that since you caused this mess, you can pay for our meal. Let’s go, Abe.”

  “One second,” Abe said, and then, with a short grunt, he plucked the knife out of the blond man’s thigh, who let out a piercing scream, followed by a spray of cuss words. Abe gazed down and smiled. “Just needed my knife back.” He turned to Emmet. “Now we can go.”

  Emmet yelled over to Carmen, who was cowering in the kitchen. “Thanks for the food, darling. You can expect a nice tip from our table.” Emmet glanced back at Danny Brown. “Can’t she?”

  Brown didn’t answer, so Zack cocked his pistol and said, “Didn’t hear you.”

  “Yes,” Danny Brown answered, his eyes bulging with hate.

  Emmet tipped his hat and walked out the door and into the street with the twins behind. “Let’s get the hell away from here,” he said as they mounted up.

  “Boot knives sure come in handy,” Abe said as he slipped the weapon back into its fold.

  In a sour voice, Zack said, “Knives are good for cutting things. Guns are good for killing things. A man with a knife going up against a man with a gun will lose every time.”

  “Not every time,” Abe said. “Sometimes if the man with a knife is quick enough, it can end in a tie, or better—a knife never jams.”

  Seconds later, Emmet noticed a man rushing at them from the opposite side of the street.

  “Wait!” the man shouted. “Please wait.”

  The trio turned towards a short Mexican in a striped cotton shirt and brown pants, about fifty years old. He had a prominent jaw and a bit more flab on his bones than his height needed.

  “Tarnation, Zack, how many women have you been with?” Emmet asked.

  “I swear I’ve never been to Santa Sabino before,” Zack said as the stranger caught up to them.

  “Excuse me, señor. Are you Emmet Honeycut?”

  Emmet glanced at both sides of the street to see if the man had brought friends.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “I’m Reno Alvarez, a friend of Major Kingston’s. I’ve been waiting several days for you to show up. Please come with me—and quickly.”

  Reno led them around a corner off the main street, down an alley, and out of sight of Carmen’s cantina. He peered up at the men on horseback and said, “Major Kingston told me to watch for a tall, lean man coming in from the north with a few other strangers. I heard the gunshot and wondered if you had something to do with it.”

  Zack glanced over at Emmet. “Could be a trap.”

  Emmet nodded. “Alvarez, assure me and the boys that you’re on the square.”

  “Major Kingston understood that you’d want a sign. He told me to tell you the password the both of you used on the night patrol just before the Battle of Chicken-monga.”

  “Chickamauga,” Emmet corrected him, smiling. “Leave it to the King to think of everything. Tell me the password.”

  Reno straightened up, beamed, and said, “Camelot.”

  Emmet slapped his knee and hooted, because Reno said it just like the major, with an overstated English accent.

  “Do you know where the word comes from, Alvarez?”

  “I don’t, Mr. Honeycut. And, please, call me Reno.”

  “Call me Emmet. This here’s Zack and Abe. Camelot was where King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table held court. There were a lot of stories about how those chivalrous fellers saved fair maidens and fought off evildoers. Major Kingston committed the stories to memory and would recite them around the campfires at night for us soldiers. It boosted morale. We used that password a lot.”

  “Have you saved young women and battled bad men?” Reno asked.

  “I’ve tried.”

  Reno nodded. “How appropriate, given the situation here.”

  Emmet cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “Got something to tell us?”

  “Not here.”

  “Where’s Major Kingston?” Zack asked.

  This time it was Alvarez who looked around. “He’s away on business but will return tonight. He instructed me to bring you and your men to my home, where he’ll join us. Please come with me.”

  “Wait a minute,” Zack protested. “I never got my lunch, and my belly’s growling like a ticked-off tiger. I say we find another cantina.”

  “Señor, the less the three of you are seen on the streets of Santa Sabino, the safer it will be for all of us,” Reno said. “You’ve already brought unwanted attention to yourselves with the gunfight. The commotion that brought me running could have brought others. You best stay out of sight. Please, come with me, meet my daughter, Mariana, and enjoy our humble hospitality.”

  Emmet noticed a tall, thin man observing them from fifty yards ahead who hadn’t been there a minute ago. The bright yellow sash cinched around his waist flapped in the light bre
eze.

  “Let’s go, boys.” Emmet said. “Reno knows what’s going on up here, and it’s time we got the full picture.”

  Reno climbed atop a tan bay he had tied up in the alley, and the four departed Santa Sabino on the same road they came in.

  CHAPTER 7 RENO’S BUNGALOW

  A few miles outside town, the group switched off the main road and onto a small trail that angled east. Reno led the way, Zack followed, then Abe, with Emmet bringing up the rear. They passed under numerous groves of piñyon pine, and Emmet relished the comfortable cool of the shade after riding in the hard sun. The woods were quiet except for the distant peal of the angelus bells at San Lazaro. Nobody was talking, so Emmet grabbed the opportunity to ask Reno how he met Major Kingston.

  “My daughter spotted a stranger in town who was inquiring about a man with a red sombrero,” Reno said. “He didn’t appear to be a gunfighter. I approached him by the livery and warned him that it wasn’t safe to be asking questions like the ones he was asking. I told him the man in the red sombrero was named Garza. When I asked why he was searching for Garza, Major Kingston said ‘unfinished business.’ I told him I knew Garza and couldn’t wait for the day when somebody would come along and crush him. When the major realized he had a partner, he told me why he came to Santa Sabino.”

  “What’s the unfinished business?” Emmet asked.

  “Garza abducted his niece. The two of us have been plotting how to rescue her. I’ll tell you more when we reach my home.”

  Thirty minutes later, they approached another fork. The main trail kept ascending to the east, but they veered to the north toward a steep slope leading down. Up ahead lay a tangle of deadfall, and the trail seemed to disappear. Reno pushed his bay forward, and the animal dropped down the slope, scattering stones and sand and snapping brush as it went. The drop in elevation was more than two hundred feet.

  Once over the rise, they heard the soothing sound of water rushing over rock. The air filled with mist, and the scent of pine intensified. They followed Reno down the defile. At the bottom, the trail widened as it snaked along the stream. Through the trees Emmet saw a one-story bungalow nestled in a stand of old cottonwoods. An enormous vegetable garden stretched between the house and the stream.

  As they emerged from a small glade, Reno yelled, “Mariana, more guests have arrived, and they are thirsty, hungry, and tired.”

  They dismounted, and Reno escorted Emmet and the twins to a small porch in the front and pointed out where to sit. Emmet’s sore backside welcomed the relief of the soft pillows on wicker chairs. Minutes later, a woman came out balancing huge plates of food on her left arm and toting a straw-covered wine bottle in her right. She wore a white cotton blouse and black skirt, both embroidered around the edges with beads formed into the shapes of flowers.

  “This is my daughter,” Reno said.

  Emmet and the twins doffed their hats. Mariana was about thirty years old, slight of stature, and desperately beautiful. She had raven hair, warm, brown eyes, and a welcoming smile. Emmet stood like a stone statue, smitten.

  “My friends, eat, drink, rest,” Reno said, as he took the bottle from her and splashed wine into the glasses.

  Zack kicked off his boots and propped back in his chair. “I’m so hungry I could eat a saddle blanket. Now this is more like it, ain’t it, Abe?”

  Abe lifted his head from the plate of red beans, rice, and pork he was plowing through and nodded it was so.

  Emmet couldn’t help noticing the generous portion of pork on each plate—he suspected meat was a luxury for such simple people. “Thanks for staking us to a feed,” he said, and then he took a huge swallow from the glass. “What can you tell us, Reno?”

  “Enrique Salazar and Yago Garza abducted Major Kingston’s niece, Faith, and are holding her at their estate south of here. Salazar and Garza are cousins who run this town. They’re powerful men. Salazar is the brains, Garza, the strong arm.”

  Emmet set the glass down and picked up his plate. “How did they get control?”

  “Border-jumping Indians and bandoleros tormented the people of Santa Sabino for years until the cousins assembled a gang of gunmen and finally put an end to the raids. At first, the villagers enjoyed the peace, but the cousins seized control of the town, bit by bit, shop by shop. They take a cut from just about every business as tribute money.”

  Emmet forked some rice and beans into his mouth. “They control everything?”

  “Just about. Saloons, hotels, brothels. There are many uncooperative business owners buried in these hills. Even Father Ramirez has to pay—the cousins get a cut from his weekly collection plate.”

  “What do they want with Faith? Ransom?”

  Reno ran his fingers through his hair, leaned forward. “Greed drove them into new ventures. About three years ago, the cousins began selling girls as sex slaves. Once a year, they sweep the territory for young women—typically unmarried girls living with their parents. If they find one in a village, they pay off her parents for a pittance. In remote places, they simply murder them.”

  “Faith’s parents?” Emmet asked.

  “Murdered.”

  “I get the picture.”

  “After they’ve rounded up a dozen or so girls, they hold an auction at their estate and sell them off as if they were swine. The bidders are wealthy landowners who travel great distances to buy these untouched women. Major Kingston is hoping the cousins will let him ransom his niece. More wine?”

  “No, thanks.” Emmet wiped his mouth with a small scrap of cloth that served as a napkin. “Why doesn’t the law get involved?”

  “Salazar and Garza are the law.”

  “What happens to the girls before the bidders arrive?”

  “These rich men will pay great sums for a young virgin, so the cousins make sure the girls remain intact before the bidders arrive. Anybody stupid enough to get frisky with the females gets a bullet in the head for his trouble.”

  Emmet noticed Reno’s eyes were haunted with fatigue that hinted at a life of hard but honest work. “So the women ain’t harmed?”

  “Just the opposite. Salazar wants them looking their best, and that includes providing them good food, a safe house, and even going so far as to curl their hair and put them in fancy dresses. Two wagons of girls arrived this week. The landowners are expected to arrive in four days. Perfect timing.”

  Emmet shook his head. “How do you know all this?”

  Reno thumbed towards the village. “Pedro, the baker, and Pepe, the tailor. Salazar told Pedro to start making basketfuls of tortillas a week ago. He’ll work his ovens day and night until the bidders and soldiers arrive. He’s summoned Pepe to the hacienda to measure the girls for new dresses later today.”

  “Two wagons of girls came in this week?”

  “Yes.”

  Emmet’s gut turned queasy, and he set his glass down. “There’s something eating at me, Reno, and I got to ask you about it. You mentioned a Father Ramirez. Does he run an orphanage?”

  “Orphanage? No. What gave you that idea?”

  Emmet related his moonlight meeting with the two brothers in the wagon. Then he clenched his fist and said, “I could’ve saved those girls.” He slammed his fist on the table, knocking the glass on its side. Mariana rushed over to mop the spill, the wine turning her sop cloth red. He apologized to her and took several calming breaths.

  Reno said, “Don’t blame yourself. You didn’t know who the girls were, or what was happening to them.”

  “Is the major alone? Has he recruited anyone else?”

  “Several men from town have been giving Major Kingston information and helping him move around the perimeter of the estate. But they’re peasants, simple men like me, not gunfighters. I’m grateful that you three have come to help. Major Kingston is expecting Soapy Waters and possibly others to join him.”

  “And if I know Soapy,” Emmet said, “he’ll be showing up with a wagon load of fire and brimstone.”

  “Ho
w many men?” Reno asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Emmet said.

  Reno persisted. “Well, are we talking a half a dozen, a dozen, more?”

  “I told you I don’t know,” Emmet said. “Why are you so interested in the exact number?”

  Reno backed off. “So I can make sure I have enough food for them, that’s all.” His tone carried a thin bitterness.

  “We could know as early as tomorrow,” Emmet assured him.

  “I’ve posted a friend on Chimney Rock,” Reno said, “which offers an open view of the valley. He’ll spot any wagons an hour before they get to the base of the overlook, ride down to meet your friends, and direct them here.”

  “Soapy was right there alongside me the night before Chickamauga,” Emmet said, “so I expect Major Kingston told you to give him the same password.”

  “Camelot,” Reno replied with a smile.

  “Sure enough,” Emmet said, “Soapy will give you the same knowing hoot that I did when he hears it.”

  “Major Kingston will return tonight,” Reno said, “and provide more details on what’s happened—and what’s going to happen. For now, I ask you to excuse me. I must see to business, including making preparations for Señor Soapy and the others. Please continue to relax. You might want to sleep before you meet with Major Kingston. My house is small, but you’re welcome to sleep in it.”

  “Thanks, Reno, but me and the boys will put down under the trees. I ain’t quite ready to settle in yet. In the meantime, would it be okay if I chat with Miss Mariana for a spell?” Emmet said it loud enough for her to hear.

  “Of course,” Reno said, a twinkle in his eye.

  “Let me clear the table,” Mariana said. She stacked the plates, collected the forks, and went inside the house.

  “Abe, Zack,” Emmet said, “now that you finished your meals, it might be a good time to start breaking down your gear.”

  “Right now?” Abe whined.

  “Maybe I’d like to spend some time with Mariana,” Zack whispered.