Wrath of God

There seemed little point in going into that now and it certainly wouldn’t change anything so I pulled an end of the car rug around my legs against the cold and turned up my collar.

How many men have you killed, Keogh? It was a hell of a thought to go to sleep on.

The morning dawned grey and bleak, heavy rain still falling. We had stopped close to the edge of what had once been a dry stream bed. Water was rushing through it now in full spate like a moor-land burn on a November morning back home. The mountains were closer than I had expected and we got out the map and finally managed to place ourselves.

We had about ten or twelve miles of open country to traverse before reaching the trail we were seeking, the one which would take us up through the Nonava Pass. It was marked quite clearly on the map between two mountains, one a sugar-loaf and the other with three distinctively jagged peaks. We could see them both in the distance quite clearly in spite of the rain.

That magnificent engine fired without difficulty when van Horne pressed the self-starter and he took the Mercedes away slowly, working out his route as he went, for any remaining trace of the track we had been following had been washed out by the heavy rain.

It was still bitterly cold and the girl, Victoria, stayed muffled in the two car rugs she had used during the night and peered out into the morning, her face as serious and grave as ever. I asked her if she was all right and she nodded and actually smiled which was something.

Van Horne said, ‘How come you speak Spanish as well as you do?’

‘My mother was born in Seville.’

‘Is that so? Your old man must have got around. I picked mine up in Juarez one year, working as manager in a small casino there. I had to stay out of circulation for a while on account of the fact that I’d broken out of Leavenworth – that’s the Texas State Penitentiary.’

‘What were you in there for?’

‘Shooting a guy who was trying to shoot me, only he had friends at court and I didn’t.’

Strange, the change in him. The brash, confident manner, the excessive toughness in the voice as if he was trying to prove something, though whether to me or himself was debatable. I was thinking about that for want of something better to do when we went over a slight rise a couple of minutes later and saw Federal cavalry in the hollow below.

They were saddled up and grouped in a rough circle as if waiting to receive their orders after breaking camp. The surprise was mutual and the whisper of the engine at the slow speed at which we were moving combined with the heavy rain, explained why they had not heard our approach.

There was a single, excited cry as we were seen and as van Horne swung the wheel and slammed his foot hard down, a couple of shots whistled through the air. We went down the slope in a great sliding loop that took us through a patch of water a foot deep and out into the final stretch of open plain rising into the mountains.

By now, the hunt was up with a vengeance and the result was by no means a foregone conclusion for the federales, as usual, were superbly mounted and try as he could, there were stretches where van Horne had no option but to slow down considerably.

We were perhaps two hundred yards in the lead when he cursed and braked sharply as we went over a small ridge and found the way blocked by a flooded arroyo. By the time we had extricated ourselves, the gap had narrowed to no more than fifty yards. We started to climb steeply, cutting across a broad shoulder at the foot of the sugar-loaf mountain, the wheels spinning in the loose shale.

‘Once over the top there we’re certain to hit that trail,’ he shouted. ‘They don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of keeping up with us. The Thompson’s under your feet. Give them a little discouragement.’

I pulled out the celebrated Gladstone bag and found the sub-machine-gun inside resting on top of dozens of packets of crisp bank-notes. An interesting discovery, but I had more important things on my mind. I leaned out and loosed off a long, rolling burst well above the heads of our pursuers. It certainly started them reining in, but when I attempted to repeat the performance, the drum magazine jammed, a common fault with them at that time.

The federales urged their mounts up the slope, but a moment later, we were over the shoulder of the hill and saw the trail quite plainly no more than fifty yards below us. It was in much better condition than I had expected and the moment we reached it and the Mercedes started to climb, I knew we were home and dry.

Van Horne turned and grinned savagely at me, dropping a gear as the trail lifted along the side of the ravine and then, as he looked back, he gave a sudden exclamation and jammed on the brakes. A whole slice of mountain seemed to have broken away in a great wave of earth and rock, probably a result of the heavy rain during the night, wiping the trail off the map for all time.

He slammed the gear stick into reverse, and started to turn the Mercedes, but he was already too late as a dozen or so federales came over the rise and boiled around us like an angry sea.

The Enfield was ready in my hand and there was little doubt that I could have dropped a couple of them, but no more than that which seemed rather futile in the circumstances. I put it down on the seat and raised my hands as ostentatiously as I could.

4

The next few minutes could well have been my last and probably almost were. I got a boot between the shoulder blades as I stepped out of the Mercedes that put me down on my hands and knees. No place to be with a dozen horses doing their best to trample me into the ground. I was kicked twice, the second time with such force that I thought a rib had gone and then a grip of iron fastened on my collar and brought me to my feet.

Van Horne steadied me with one hand and swung a fist into the rump of the nearest horse with such force that it reared up, almost unseating its rider. Someone struck at him with a plaited leather riding whip. He allowed it to curl around his arm, then pulled the owner from the saddle with no apparent effort, the first hint I’d been given of the man’s enormous strength.

There was considerable confusion for a moment or two after that as the soldiers frantically hauled their mounts out of the way to avoid trampling their unfortunate companion. One or two of them drew sabres and for a moment things looked decidedly nasty and then a single pistol shot sounded and a young officer burst through the outer ring and reined in sharply.

He had a thin, sallow face, a dark smudge of moustache and wore the silver bars of a lieutenant. Unlike most of his men, he was not wearing a rubber poncho and his tailored uniform was soaked with rain.

He smiled coldly, leaned down from the saddle and touched van Horne between the eyes with the barrel of the pistol. ‘Large or small, strong or weak, señor, one bullet is all it takes.’

‘Just call the dogs off, that’s all,’ van Horne told him. ‘We’ll come quietly.’

‘You will indeed. My orders were to apprehend you alive if possible, but I would be happy for you to give me an excuse to act otherwise. I find you an affront to all decency. Take off that cassock.’

Van Horne glared at him, hands on hips. ‘And what if I tell you to go and do the other thing, you pipsqueak.’

The lieutenant dismounted, tossed the reins of his horse to one of his men and faced van Horne squarely, raising his revolver to belt level. He thumbed back the hammer very deliberately.

‘Señor, for reasons of my own which are none of your business, I do not like you or anything about you. I assure you now, on my mother’s grave, that if you do not do exactly as I say, I will give you what you so richly deserve.’

He was no longer smiling and if one looked closely, the gun was shaking a little. Van Horne raised a hand as if to placate him. ‘All right, soldier boy, anything for a quiet life.’

He unbuttoned his cassock at the neck, pulled it over his head and tossed it into the Mercedes. He was wearing a pair of very clerical-looking trousers in black worsted and a white shirt.

The lieutenant said, ‘The collar also, if you please.’

Van Horne removed it and threw it into the Mercedes after the cassock. ‘Satisfied?’ he demanded.

‘Only when I see you hang, señor,’ the lieutenant said. ‘You will now drive this automobile back down the trail under my instructions. The slightest attempt to escape and I shoot. You understand me?’

‘You’ve got a big mouth with that in your hand, that’s all I understand, sonny.’ Van Horne turned and moved back to the Mercedes.

‘You can walk,’ the lieutenant told me and started after van Horne.

‘What about her?’ I nodded towards the girl who was being held unnecessarily by two of his men. ‘Can’t you take her with you?’

He looked towards her and frowned. ‘She’s the one from old Tacho’s place, isn’t she? The one who can’t speak.’

‘That’s right. Have you spoken to him? Did he tell you what happened last night?’

‘No, but I’ve had a reasonably full account from the sole survivor of the rurales you butchered.’

‘Very interesting,’ I said. ‘Did he tell you what they were trying to do with the girl? Did he mention they were about to hang me for trying to intervene? Would have finished me off if my friend there hadn’t arrived when he did?’

He believed me, which was the only important thing, his face turning paler than ever and the expression in his eyes was terrible to see.

‘A dirty world, lieutenant,’ I said softly. ‘And that kid couldn’t even raise a scream to save herself.’

He turned away without a word, grabbed Victoria by the arm and shoved her into the back seat of the Mercedes, then climbed in beside van Horne and told him to get moving. It took van Horne quite a bit of manoeuvring to get the Mercedes pointing the right way but he managed it after a while and we all got out of the way to let him drive past.

We started down the trail, the rest of us, the troopers riding, but the sergeant in charge, a small dark-haired man with a heavy moustache, dismounted and walked beside me, a pistol in his hand.

I produced a packet of Artistas. ‘All right if I smoke?’