Savage 12 Read online

  Flinging her arms wide without awaiting a reply, she hurled herself bodily upon the casket in a flood of tears. Every heart present couldn’t help but be moved and virtually assured that the burial of Ignacio Martinez should be an unqualified success—as indeed it was.

  And when it was over and she was alone with her friend, Francesca had one regret. That Jose had not made it in time.

  Yet there was no doubt in Francesca’s mind that Jose would come. She would postpone the reading of the will until he arrived.

  “Oh I hope and pray so, Francesca.” The woman they called Beautiful Amanda sighed. “We were such friends, and to think he might soon be back with us ... I just cannot wait to see him again.”

  “Nor I, Amanda. My handsome and beautiful Jose back in San Rafael. I, too, cannot wait. Hurry, Jose, please hurry.”

  Beautiful ...? Handsome ...?

  Were they talking about Yaqui Joe ...?

  If this were not a mystery to rival that of just how much dinero Ignacio had left behind, it would do until the real thing came along.

  Chapter Two – Of Pimps and Whores

  NIGHTS LIKE THIS Savage liked to dream about Texas—of the days before the War, of the women he’d known and loved, of wild times and the good friends he’d made along the way.

  It wasn’t often he found himself in such a mood. He was a hard man with some pretty hard ways. Reminiscing was for fools and dreamers.

  But whether it was this calm Mexican night, the untidy incident back at Nacozari, the prospect of big money or simply the fact that he hadn’t been involved in any serious trouble for some time, he just couldn’t tell.

  All he knew was that he felt like dreaming. But something was troubling him.

  That something was fussing about the camp, cleaning up when everything was tidy, seeing to the animals when Savage had already fed and watered them, pretending to be relaxing when Savage knew he was as tight as his guitar strings.

  When Yaqui Joe hunkered down to stoke up the fire for the third time in as many minutes, it was all Savage could take. He sat up, took his cigar from between his teeth and yelled;

  “What the hell are you so jumpy about?”

  Yaqui Joe jumped a foot. “Hey, why you frighten your amigo this way?” he protested.

  “What do you want to tell me?”

  Yaqui Joe was dumbfounded. He could not understand how Savage knew. He had given no indication that something was playing on his mind—he was sure of it.

  Yet now that the door had been opened, he had no option but to square his shoulders and come right on out with it. Their destination was San Rafael, it was less than a few hours away and he could wait no longer.

  “Señor Savage, my great companero—”

  “Cut the bullshit!”

  “What Yaqui Joe say now?”

  Savage was on his feet, black mustache twitching with suspicion.

  “Whenever you start that soft syrup stuff, I know it’s something bad. How bad, you slippery little wetback?”

  His eyebrows shot up at a thought.

  “You haven’t lied about Uncle Ignacio’s gold, have you?”

  “No, on my mother’s grave.”

  “I’ve met your mother, remember? Calcheyna ain’t dead. So what is it?”

  Yaqui Joe swallowed painfully then pointed at Savage and said, “You are me ...Yaqui Joe is you.”

  Savage rested hands on hips. Even by the little Mexican’s strange standards, this was hard to figure.

  “I’m warnin’ you ...”

  “I did not think I would ever see Uncle Ignacio or Francesca again, so I saw no harm.”

  “Explain.”

  “In her letters Francesca pleaded for a picture of the cousin she had not seen for so long. Beautiful Amanda, she pleaded also, as I was once her hero. In the letters I wrote, I say that I am big and strong with all the señoritas chasing me. You understand, companero, what a fool Yaqui Joe would make of himself when, after telling all these lies, I send a photograph of me as you see me now.”

  “So what photograph did you send?”

  Yaqui Joe swallowed a lump in his throat the size of a cantaloupe.

  “Yours.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. Savage blinked.

  “You sent them my picture?”

  “Si.”

  “So in San Rafael they think you are me?”

  “Tall, dark and handsome Yaqui Joe,” the Mexican admitted. He hazarded a crooked grin. “Some big joke I play, huh? A swell crazy joke on the señoritas? Yaqui Joe, tall as the tree with the big guns and the—”

  “Crackbrain! Well, you’re just goin’ to have to tell them the truth.” Savage paused with a frown. “But how come they’d believe I was you? I mean, nothin’ personal, but you are kinda on the runty, ordinary lookin’ side, wouldn’t you say?”

  Yaqui Joe drew himself up proudly to his full five and a half feet.

  “As the child, I was magnificent. The blood of the Conquistadors flows through my veins. I am the son of Don Carlos Martinez, owner of the finest rancho in all of Mexico—Rancho Cortez. My first nickname was Bonny Jose, and I was thought to be the best looking boy in the province until ...”

  “Until what?”

  Yaqui Joe shrugged and spread his hands. “Until life, amigo ... just life.”

  Savage understood. Life did funny things to a man. All men. But he was still puzzled. “Are you sayin’ you want me to pass myself off as you down there?”

  “Amigo, it will only be for such a little while. Uncle Ignacio, he will die and he will leave his favorite nephew his gold. I will take my share and we will be camping here at this very spot within the week, rich and free with none in San Rafael knowing the truth. Will you do it—for my beloved cousin and for Beautiful Amanda, por favor?”

  Savage hesitated. Beautiful Amanda did sound interesting enough, he supposed. And as the man said, it would only be for a few days.

  “All right, damnit,” he said. “But who will you be?”

  Yaqui Joe pushed out his chest.

  “Amigo,” he said proudly, “meet Señor Clinton Savage.”

  Savage shook his head. It was all he could to stop himself from breaking up. Lucky they were down here below the border where reputations didn’t count. This sort of thing could wreck a man back home. Nobody knew him here, leastwise that was the way he had it figured. Even so, he couldn’t let it go at that.

  “You’re out of your mind, you know. I mean, you do know you’re as whittled as a cow on loco weed, don’t you?”

  Yaqui Joe was not insulted. He was relieved. He’d expected a far more volatile reaction, all things considered.

  Savage scowled.

  “I tell you you’re loco and you think it’s funny? Maybe you’re more gone than I figured.”

  “No, amigo, you do not understand.” Yaqui Joe spread his hands. “Ever since we meet to ride together, I think you are crazy loco in the head, the things you do and the troubles you make. I tag along with you mostly to see what crazy thing you do next—and now you say Yaqui Joe is crazy. Do you not think this is funny?”

  “Negative.”

  The man they called Sainty had no right getting mixed up with the big-breasted whore in the tight red dress. Even he might have agreed with that had he taken the time to evaluate his position here in sprawling Hermosillo this early evening as he waited in a doorway for friends.

  But he didn’t.

  As in so many incidents in his incident-ridden life, this badman from Taos acted first and thought later.

  It went like this.

  He was lighting a cigarette in this deeply recessed doorway, Stetson tugged low over ice-blue eyes and being as inconspicuous as it was possible to be for a wanted American train-jumper, cow-thief and cold blooded killer, when it happened.

  A cart laden with rotten fruit collided with a battered old coach containing three fat men clutching rum bottles and clubs.

  A brawl resulted and red-blooded Sainty stepped out of his doorway to get a better look. The cart driver called a warning and one of the fat men broke his bottle against a wheel and charged.

  For one moment a spill of light from a cantina lit up Sainty’s face. An overdressed dude with a diamond stickpin and trousers striped like a circus tent saw him, recognized him from Wanted dodgers, and instantly disappeared.

  The brawl petered out and Sainty was back under cover, looking both ways along the street for Avis and Slotter.

  Looking north, he could see the tops of the false fronts on the only decent street in the city.

  But on this cockroach-infested thoroughfare that stretched from the grime-encrusted railroad depot up to the slaughterhouse and flea markets, this was a place where the rats were always searching for a better neighborhood. Here the deputies never ventured abroad alone, and babies bellowed unattended and every half hour everything was drowned out by the roaring clank of shunt engines making their way along the elevated line and showering everything below with soot and cinders.

  It was a perfect hideout for a man on the run.

  Sainty had been that way ever since busting out of the Rio Escondido Penitentiary three weeks earlier, leaving three dead warders and one wounded fellow prisoner in his wake.

  Accustomed to living high on the hog in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, the province’s most wanted outlaw had left a crimson trail between distant Rio Escondido and its unofficial slum capital.

  But at last things were coming together. He’d slipped the posses in the Sierra foothills three days earlier and made contact with Slotter and Avis. They’d kept in touch with the bunch while Sainty was locked away, and Sainty was looking forward to reuniting the bunch and riding free at the head of
the gang out on the open range, hungry for serious trouble and big money once again.

  Then she appeared.

  He heard her before he saw her, her cries cutting through the murmur of voices and the thud of bootheels from an area the size of a decent horse yard.

  Nothing unusual about someone yelling on Perdido Real—more like the norm.

  Then he saw her.

  She was threading her way through the plank walk throng towards him, a high-breasted whore in a red satin dress slit to the thigh to reveal the longest, lushest leg he’d ever seen.

  Lust hit him like an uppercut.

  How long had it been?

  Six months was the closest he could figure. Six months of hard labor, regular whippings, lousy jailhouse grub—and not a sound, sight or scent of a woman.

  And for the past three weeks of sleeping under the stars, slitting the odd throat and running like a fox pursued by an endless array of hound dogs, not a moment to ponder the most vital thing in life.

  Sex.

  Sainty was too overwhelmed to be able to do anything else but stare at her.

  Then he realized why she was yelling and looking back over her shoulder.

  As certain as he was that she was a whore, Sainty knew her pursuer had to be her man. He was medium-sized, olive-skinned, and was decked out in a shiny brown suit, frilled shirt and high-heeled boots. There were fake gold rings on his fingers and he carried a pair of kid gloves in his left hand as he reached for the woman with his right.

  “Halt or I’ll cut your heart out,” he panted in Spanish.

  Needs of the flesh dragged Vinny St. Claire further out of his doorway like he was hooked on an invisible line.

  Naturally nobody else took any notice. Down here, if you didn’t beat up your wife, mistress or whore on a regular basis, grave reflections on your masculinity were almost impossible to avoid.

  Besides, Antonio was a pimp and was known as a bona fide mean one who carried at least three knives which he would use with the least provocation.

  The woman’s eyes met Sainty’s.

  As the pimp ran past, his greasy fingers now hooked in the back of the red dress, Sainty slammed in a right cross as only he could. He connected fair-square on Antonio’s jaw just below the ear.

  The pimp went down like the plague.

  The woman hung onto Sainty’s powerful neck with tears in her eyes. He was her hero.

  “Does that mean I get one for free?” he asked, not a man to let an opportunity slip by.

  “Que?”

  The woman acted as though she didn’t understand, even though the hard-bitten gringo was pawing at her like he wanted to throw her down and ravish her right then and there. And to hell with the passing traffic.

  That was pretty close to the truth. When she realized it, it seemed no time at all before she was leading Sainty up a narrow staircase to a battered old room in which stood but one piece of furniture—a big old double bed.

  Sainty threw off his coat and it hit the floor with a thud.

  “Steady down,” he muttered to himself. He just wanted to get laid, not give himself away.

  For some reason, this simple goal proved more difficult to achieve. Smiling and teasing him, the woman darted this way and that around the bed, Sainty making clumsy grabs for her as he threw off his vest, flat-brimmed hat and kicked off one size nine boot.

  He was quick and agile yet she continued to elude him. She was like a matador evading the lethal horns of the bull—a rather appropriate metaphor considering the fact that amorous Sainty was one of the deadliest men in Mexico.

  In different circumstances, and in a less passionate frame of mind, Sainty may have considered the possibility that she was deliberately wasting time, which indeed she was.

  But Sainty had only one thing on his mind ... his body.

  He grabbed at her dress but she beat him to it. She ripped it off in one practiced motion until she was naked in his arms and falling back on the bed to utter her first word in English.

  “Now!”

  She didn’t have to tell him twice.

  The railroad detectives were sweating with fear as they took the stairs.

  “Hear anythin’?” panted the first man.

  “Nothing.” His companion paused against a backdrop of unpainted walls, scarred banister railings and grimy windows. “Do you think that’s good or bad?”

  The first man wasn’t sure. They’d been alerted after the pimp had set up the romantic tryst between his woman and the man whose square-jawed features ornamented walls, fences and telegraph poles all over Hermosillo. Having just listened to the man describe the gringo who’d gone upstairs with Carmelita, the detectives were certain it was indeed Sainty; the perpetrator of many violent crimes in Colonia Federico Province, including several attacks upon the venerated railroad.

  They wanted him desperately but also wanted to survive the experience.

  “Do you hear snorin’?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But he has been up there only minutes. With Carmelita, would you be asleep so soon?”

  The answer to that was a definite no.

  Both gazed up the stairs. It was quiet except for that low buzzing sound that indeed sounded like a snore. But should they be wrong, and should they tiptoe into that room to find St. Claire waiting for them, what then?

  They were being paid to find out.

  They raced up the final few steps to enter the room. On the bed lay the naked Carmelita, pinned down on her back by a powerful arm flung carelessly across her creamy soft belly. The man lay face down and was fast asleep. They could only see his profile, but it was enough. Iron jaw, snub nose, bulging brow and a bristling prison-style haircut.

  This was Vinny St. Claire, no mistake, and they were here to take him in.

  The first man raised his shooter high above his head. Carmelita’s eyes were like saucers. She gave a little nod which said to hit hard and don’t miss. Having sex with Sainty had been more like wrestling a grizzly bear. She could only imagine the carnage should these men fail to take him on the first attempt.

  The gun came down. It crashed against the jailbird haircut with a sound like a sack being dropped.

  The pistol rebounded from the impact and Sainty came off the bed like something made of Indian rubber, getting to his feet on an invisible updraft of energy and anger, cursing and whirling in midair before even fully aware of what had awakened him.

  His head was like solid cement.

  This was all too plain to the detectives, who, despite the guns in their hands, might have cut and run had they believed it would do them any good.

  It was plainly too late for that, so they met the outlaw’s charge head-on, swinging their gun barrels and beating a brutal tattoo upon that solid cement skull.

  Sainty was soon going down on both knees, still swinging and cursing, but done for as he rolled on one shoulder, clearheaded for the first time in an hour.

  “Whore!” he croaked thickly through blurred vision. “This was a setup. You and that motherless pimp—”

  “Si, gringo pig!” she taunted, grasping the bedhead, heavy breasts bouncing up and down. “Antonio saw your face and told me to amuse you until the tenientes arrived. What a poor idiota you are. My Antonio is too clever for you.”

  At that moment a gun butt caught Sainty above the right eye and he went all the way down to the floor. Taking him roughly by the legs, the detectives dragged him down the stairs, his hard head thudding on each riser. Doors creaked open and heads peered out as the whisper ran up and down the stairwell:

  “It is him, the gringo, St. Claire! May the saints be praised.”

  Despite the pleading, there was nothing remotely saintly about the two Americans standing in the dark of the lobby as prisoner and captives passed beneath a smoking lamp.

  Red Slotter and Jim Avis had kept the rendezvous with their leader, albeit a tad late.

  Suddenly the dusty old building began rocking to an insane fusillade of gunfire as Sainty’s boys cut loose.

  Sainty was blinking half-awake as two writhing figures danced above him, bouncing off the narrow walls with blood gushing from crimson bullet holes in chests, heads and stomach.