“Help you with something, fellas?”
All three turned at his call, two of them flicking their eyes to the third as they came over to stop before the trapper. When that man in the middle spoke, his Spanish spilled out far too fast for Bass to grasp more than a handful—hardly enough to go on.
“Ho-hold on,” Titus suggested. “No
“Ahhh,” the middle one with the goatee replied.
“Yes, they are mine,” Bass started to explain. “Something wrong?”
The soldier shrugged one shoulder and motioned to the others as all three stepped around Bass for the darkened doorway.
Inside, the bartender noisily greeted the soldiers, waving them over to the bar where two of the whores each had a pair of trappers at their sides. The trio fixed their malevolent gaze on the Americans until the owner clattered some cups in front of them and began pouring them drinks.
The three toasted, then turned to gaze over the cantina patrons as if comfortable with the foreigners. But the moment a woman pushed past the curtain from the back rooms holding the arm of Roscoe Coltrane, one of the soldiers cried out her name. After flicking him a glance, she steered the trapper in the opposite direction, toward the last of the empty chairs.
“Shit,” Bass muttered. Sure as rain, trouble was coming.
The soldier slammed his clay cup down on the bar, then tugged at the bottom of his short-waisted leather jacket, its stiffened epaulets extending off the man’s shoulders. He had all the appearances of being a man on a mission.
As the soldier stomped across the earthen floor, he loudly berated the whore, finally seizing her upper arm in his big, brown hand, yanking her up and whirling her around just as she settled on Coltrane’s lap.
“Leave ’er be,” Silas Adair growled at the soldier, appearing at the table so quickly he knocked a chair aside.
By that moment the soldier with the goatee was shouting at his companion, gesturing him back to the bar. The angry soldier stood frozen a moment longer, glaring down at Coltrane’s hand on his knife, at Adair’s fist locked around the butt of his pistol still stuffed in the front of his belt, then smiled wanly as he tapped the hilt of the saber short-chained over his left hip. The soldier released his grip on the whore and turned on his heel, slowly.
Scratch finally took a breath and bent over, picking his empty cup off the blanket where he had been sitting, starting for the bar as the whore cursed the soldier and spat at his heels.
In a blur the Mexican turned and slapped her across the jaw, making her reel to the side, pitching into Coltrane’s arms. Lunging forward, the soldier grabbed the screaming woman’s arm and yanked her away from Roscoe as Coltrane snagged her other wrist. By now the other whores set up a caterwauling and shrieking so loud it would have raised the dead back in Santa Fe.
Reaching across his waist, the soldier pulled free his short saber with a loud, metallic scrape. The moment Roscoe stopped yanking on the woman and let her go, the Mexican spat into the whore’s face. Coltrane’s face flushed with anger as he rocked onto the balls of his feet, ready to pounce … but in a flash of candlelight, the soldier held that glittering saber out before him.
Adair grumbled, “You want I should shoot ’im, Roscoe?”
“No!” Smith answered for him. “That’s more trouble’n we bargained for right now.”
“Maybe ’nother time,” Williams suggested. “Don’t make nothing of this, Coltrane. She’s just a soldier’s whore an’ this
That brought a wry smile to Roscoe’s face as the tension started to drain out of his shoulders. He rocked back onto his heels. As his smile broadened, Coltrane extended the index finger on his right hand and held it under his left ear. Then with a loud, guttural sound, he slowly dragged the finger around the front of his neck, across his windpipe, until he reached the right earlobe.
That done, Roscoe turned his skinny back on the soldier and settled in a chair at Adair’s table. Which seemed to prompt the woman to begin thrashing and kicking, attempting to free herself from the soldier’s grip. Infuriated at her attempts, he hurled her against the bar, watching the whore crumple to the floor. Coltrane flew out of his chair and shrank into a crouch at the instant the soldier brought up his saber and started inching forward—barely wiggling the tip of the weapon in that narrowing distance between himself and the American.
He jabbed. Roscoe backed a step. Another feint, and Roscoe retreated another step, staring down at that short saber. Inch by inch by inch—
Until he had Coltrane backed against the wall.
Bass motioned Kersey, Purcell, and Corn up behind the other two soldiers as he cocked back his arm. Hurling the arm forward, he threw his clay cup against the back of the swordsman’s head. It shattered as the soldier stumbled, got watery in the knees. Coltrane swung his arm in an arc, knocking the saber from the Mexican’s grip.
In that moment the other two soldiers started away from the bar, Kersey and Corn lunged forward with their pistols and cracked the Mexicans on the back of their skulls.
“That ain’t messy at all, now is it, Peg-Leg?” Corn asked.
“Just as long as we don’t kill any stupid hard-dicked Mexican
“That’s right—we showed these greasers not to trouble us no more,” Peg-Leg added. “G’won now, boys— throw all three of ’em outside so we can go on an’ have ourselves li’l more fun.”
11
But trouble came calling them by name.
While a half dozen of the trappers were dragging the trio of unconscious soldiers out the door into the summer sun, the cantina owner was hopping animatedly among the Americans: cursing, shrieking, tugging at the celebrants to stop them in their tracks. Trying to convince the gringos they were about to make a terrible mistake.
While some of the whores whimpered, most inched away from their American customers to huddle together in a corner of the cantina. It was clear they were frightened of what had just happened. And even more apprehensive of what might well now take place.
There was no talking any of those women into the cribs behind the bar now. The last trio of trappers flung back the blanket curtain and burst into the room, their fornication rudely interrupted. Those three appeared all the more pitiable as they implored their women at the same time they were scrambling back into their clothing.
When the cantina’s barmen indicated in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t serve another drink to these unwanted guests, four of the trappers either leaped over the bar or swept around the end of it to snatch up glass and clay bottles for themselves. The moment the bartenders attempted to intervene and save the liquor, both were soundly pummeled by the four drunk Americans.
Seeing that these unwanted customers were beating his hired men, the cantina owner dashed back to the bar, where he tried his best to drag the trappers off the bartenders, shrieking at the Americans.
“What’s he shouting, Peg-Leg?” Williams demanded.
“Says the soldiers’re coming back.”
“Let ’em,” Thompson snorted. “We’ll thump their heads again!”
“No.” And Smith shook his head. “He ain’t talking about them three niggers we throwed out in the street. This’un’s saying that bunch went to fetch up more soldiers. He wants us long gone by the time they get back here with more hands.”
“We ain’t leaving here without something for the trail, are we, boys?” Thompson roared at his compatriots as they crowded against the bar.
“What you got in mind, Phil?” Frank Curnutt asked when he let one of the hired men drop from his grip so he
