Leaving Yuma Page 23

  Apparently deciding that we were alone and probably harmless, they kicked their horses forward, converging on the Watson Masner with cocky grins and making sure that Luis and I were aware of the appreciative manner in which they were studying Abby Davenport.

  “Welcome,” the taller of the two men said expansively. “You are lost, no?” His gaze flitted briefly to the battered automobile, and I felt a moment’s concern that he might recognize it from Sabana, but his expression remained unchanged, and after a brief detour to Abby’s chest, he brought his eyes back to Luis. “You are the Americanos’ guide?”

  “Sí, we are on our way to Puerto Penasco, but need horses to complete our journey.”

  The taller man’s eyes widened. “Puerto Penasco? That is a long way, amigo, and there isn’t anything there except a few Seri fishermen. I think you will need more than horses to complete that journey.”

  “Sure, some food and water … and more arms.” Luis tipped his head toward the bandit’s waist. “I notice that you seem to have plenty.”

  The taller man chuckled. “A few perhaps, but not enough for trade.” His gaze darted once more to Abby, his hunger for her—for any woman, I suspect—like coals buried deep in his eyes. I’m sure she was aware of his interest, but she maintained an artfully cool demeanor as she studied the horses wandering down off the slopes to inspect our arrival.

  “Perhaps there is something we have need for,” the tall man murmured.

  “I don’t think so,” the shorter man interjected scornfully.

  “Hey, my friends, you are making me a little nervous,” Luis said. “Surely with so many horses, you can spare a few for this fine automobile. Some horses and a little food, and we will be on our way.”

  “These horses belong to Major Soto, and are not for trade,” the shorter man replied brusquely.

  “Ah.” Luis nodded in understanding. These were Soto’s remounts, probably switched out every few weeks so that his men always had fresh riding stock.

  Swaying back with a smile, Luis seemed to relax, his voice taking on a deceptively compliant tone. Standing a few feet away, I swallowed hard, but kept my stupid grin beaming toward the bandits as if I hadn’t a clue in the world as to what was happening.

  “Are you sure about the horses?” Luis asked mildly. “We have gold, if you don’t want the automobile.”

  That was as pretty a lie as any I’d ever heard, and it slipped off of Luis’ tongue like butter from a hot knife, but Soto’s men fell for it completely. They didn’t even bat an eye in doubt. While they were exchanging broad, congratulatory grins, Luis and I palmed our revolvers so quick we had them pointed at the bandits before they even knew what we were up to.

  The man at the shack had been too far away to hear Luis’ fabrication, but he saw the results before the horsemen did, and shouted a warning as he raced for his carbine. Up close, the bandits’ eyes widened as they stared into the bores of our revolvers, their own guns still uselessly holstered. Surprising the two horsemen even more, I told them in Spanish not to move a muscle.

  “Don’t even quiver,” I added.

  At the house, the cook had paused with his carbine in hand, waiting to see what we intended to do.

  Speaking to the taller horseman, I said, “I want you to pull your pistol real slow and let it fall to the ground. If you try anything funny, or if I even think you’re trying something funny, I’m going to put a bullet through your heart. Savvy?”

  Head bobbing, he delicately plucked a double-action Colt from his holster and let it drop beside his mount’s forelegs, then followed it with a pair of older model single-action revolvers of the same caliber and a little hideout gun stashed inside his shirt that I hadn’t even considered. After a questioning glance, he left a Winchester booted.

  “Now get down and walk over to the corral.”

  He did as he was told without taking his eyes off of me. Judging from his expression, I had no doubts about what he’d do to me if he got the chance, but that wasn’t my first shindig, either, and I kept the Smith & Wesson on him all the way, fully committed to pulling the trigger if I had to.

  “Now get down on your belly,” I ordered, and, after he’d complied, I had Abby fetch the lariat from his saddle. Handing her my little sodbuster’s knife, I told her to cut off a four-foot section, then go inside the corral and tie the man’s hands to the bottom rail. It took her only a couple of minutes to complete the task.

  With the first outlaw bound and out of the way, we turned to the second man. While Abby and I were doing that, Luis led the horses around the far side of the Watson Masner and hitched them to the bed. Afterward Abby lifted a gourd canteen off of the taller man’s saddle horn and took it to Susan. Luis and I stood off to one side, studying the man at the house and wondering what to do about him.

  “If we try getting any closer, he’ll start shooting,” I pointed out.

  “Sí, I think you are right.” Raising his voice, Luis called, “You should come over here and let us tie you. We don’t want to hurt you, but we need horses and food.”

  The man shook his head but didn’t move. He was standing before the door with his carbine held protectively across his chest, watching us with equal patience. Luis glanced at me. “We could probably shoot him before he got inside.”

  “Maybe we could, but, if we missed and he did get inside, we’d never get close to that stew pot or the spring.”

  “Mister Latham,” Abby said loudly, and I spun around at the urgency in her voice. She was staring toward the mountains we’d crossed that morning. Although I couldn’t see the low saddle from where we were, the cloud of dust rising above it couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than what it was. At my side, Luis swore softly.

  “How long before they get here?” Abby asked.

  Picturing the route in my mind, I knew it would be too soon for what we needed to accomplish. “Half an hour, at most,” I replied.

  “Then?”

  I was staring at the loose horses watching us from the surrounding hills. A few of the more curious animals had descended all the way to the cañon’s floor, but were keeping their distance.

  Horses aren’t the dumb brutes some people make them out to be. They can sense trouble, and likely these remounts of Soto’s were well aware of the tension hanging over our little band, not to mention the odd behavior of the two bandits stretched out on the ground with their hands tied to the bottom rail of the corral. Although we could have used a third mount for Abby and the girl, my bigger concern at that moment was leaving behind fresh horses for our pursuers.

  “If we had more time …” I started to say.

  “We can’t wait,” Luis replied.

  “Can we take the extra horses with us?” Abby asked, sensing our dilemma.

  “Not without spending an hour or so bringing them down from the hills,” I remarked.

  “Perhaps there is another … way,” Abby said, her sentence ending with an odd hitch. She turned to Luis and me. “It’s important that we take as many of these mounts with us as possible, isn’t it?”

  “Either that or scatter them so that Soto’s men can’t use them for a while,” I replied.

  “Then you must promise not to laugh.”

  I’ve got to admit she’d piqued my interest. With an armed bandit standing not eight yards away and a troop of soldados bearing down on us from above, she seemed more concerned with looking foolish than she did with our swiftly deteriorating predicament.

  “Whatever you must do, señora, you must do it quickly,” Luis said kindly. “I promise, neither of us will laugh.”

  With her cheeks flushing prettily, Abby stepped between the bandits’ mounts and, cupping her hands around her mouth, emitted a near-perfect imitation of a colt’s terrified whinny, followed by the harsh barking of what sounded like a vicious dog. The result from the hills was instantaneous, the remounts
—the mares in particular—came plunging frantically through the brush as they raced toward the Watson Masner and the unseen colt under attack.

  At my side, Luis was laughing like a child at Christmas.

  “Mama!” Susan cried as the herd swept toward us, and Luis stepped quickly forward to lift the child from the buckboard’s narrow bed.

  “Don’t worry, little one,” he cooed reassuringly. “Your madrecita knows what she is doing.”

  I reckon she did, too. The horses, all of them, were gathered around the Watson Masner in less than five minutes, milling nervously as they searched for the now-silent colt they had instinctively rushed to protect.

  Over by the corral, the two bandits were straining their necks to keep an eye on the high-strung remuda, while at the adobe shack the third bandit had ducked inside while our attention was diverted by the horses. I watched one of the shutters swing partway open and felt a chill clamber up my back as I recalled the last time I’d stood out here, the gun barrels bristling from the jacales like quills from a porcupine’s spine, and Old Toad’s rage as the tide turned against us—but that’s getting ahead of myself, which I’ve noticed I’ve had a tendency to do during these recordings. I’ll try to watch that in the future.

  Excerpted from

  Despots and Dictators

  A Detailed Description of Tyranny

  within the United Mexican States

  by Herbert Carlton Matthews

  Broken Mill Press, 1930

  Chapter Eight

  Sonora: The Díaz Years

  [Editor’s note: José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz (September 15, 1830–July 2, 1915) was an eight-term president of Mexico, ruling for thirty-five of the forty-year interim between 1876 and 1916. Viewed largely as a dictator by outsiders and countrymen alike, his administration was one of constant internal conflict and corruption, resulting in national economic instability and often brutal oppression. He was forced from office during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 to 1920.]

  * * * * *

  [T]hese smaller insurrections, a direct response to the heavy-handedness of the Díaz administration, continued in the west with men like … Juan Adolpho Castillo and the bandit chief “Chito” Soto [becoming] a constant thorn in the government’s side.

  [Castillo was a] disenfranchised landowner from the state of Durango before taking up arms against the Díaz regime in the late 1890s. Although never a threat on the level of men like Emiliano Zapata or Pancho Villa, Castillo’s Army of Liberation was estimated at numbers between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred men … [and] struck terror throughout the states of Durango, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and southern Sonora.

  * * * * *

  Adolpho Castillo’s own brief regime was put down by Díaz’s troops on March 4, 1908, at the Battle of Sini, in Sinaloa. He was tried by military tribunal, found guilty of treason, and executed by firing squad at dawn on March 5, 1908.

  * * * * *

  On a smaller scale were men like Francisco “Chito” Soto, who early on was a staunch supporter of the Castillo polity. Yet in the end, even he turned his back on the General [Castillo].

  Unlike Castillo, Soto did not come from wealthy ancestry. His parents were laborers in the sawmills of Tierras Aradas … with the younger Soto displaying at a tender age the resentment toward the upper classes that was so prevalent among early supporters of the revolution.

  Although rumors persisted for many years that Soto was banished to the Sabana Valley of Sonora because of Castillo’s fear that the bandit’s popularity among the men might eventually undermine his own authority, Soto was never able to raise more than two hundred and fifty men on his own … [and] it seems unlikely he would have ever posed a serious threat to the general’s power.

  * * * * *

  “Chito” Soto was killed at the Battle of Celaya on April 13, 1915; he was a captain in Villa’s División del Norte.

  Session Sixteen

  There wasn’t going to be enough time to pry that third bandit out of his adobe hideaway, which meant we were going to have to give up our goal of packing along any extra food, finding a third saddle, or plunging our heads under the cool waters of the mossy tank. I think it was the latter I regretted the most.

  We took the bandits’ guns along, as well as the shorter man’s sombrero for Abby—protection against the burning Sonoran sun. Luis gave Susan his bright green bandanna, which she wore over her head like a shawl, much to her pride and Luis’ delight. Abby studied the sombrero doubtfully, but after a careful examination for vermin, she put it on. I also gave her the taller man’s double-action Colt, along with its holster, which I stripped from his waist; the belt was a loose fit, even pulled up to its last notch, but I figured we could punch some new holes in it that night if we were still alive.

  All of this was accomplished within minutes. Then Luis swung into the shorter man’s saddle and went after a horse for Abby, while I confiscated the taller man’s leggy claybank, with its heavy vaquero’s rig decorated with tarnished silver conchas, a horn as big around as a dinner plate, and sweeping tapaderos. Noticing a series of long, curving welts along the horse’s ribs spawned an urge to rip the massive spurs from the bandit’s heels and do a little gouging of my own. Instead I gritted my teeth and swung into the saddle. A lot of those old-time cowboys from both sides of the border were pretty heartless when it came to bit and spur, but I’d never felt a need to dominate an animal that way.

  Although I was keeping a wary eye on the adobe shack, that third jasper never showed himself. From time to time I’d catch a glimpse of a rifle barrel poking out the window, but I think he was doing that more to remind us that he was still there, and that he wouldn’t be trifled with. If he’d pointed it at us, I would have hit the dirt fast, and taken Abby and Susan with me, but he seemed content to let us go about our business as long as we didn’t pay him any mind.

  As it turned out, our efforts to take the remuda with us, or at least frighten and scatter it, was nearly our undoing. When Abby’d asked me earlier how much time I thought we had, I’d estimated thirty minutes. Taking into account not only the number of miles between the divide and the mouth of the side cañon, but also the steepness of the road as it wound down off the mountain, I figured we’d have at least that long, but I’d either lost track of time or Soto’s men were pushing their horses a lot harder than I’d anticipated.

  Luis was just riding up with a dappled gray in tow for Abby when I swear his face turned as pale as whey. His lips parted, but no words came. Abby and I both instantly knew what he’d seen, and didn’t waste time taking peeks for ourselves. Grabbing the woman around the waist, I tossed her onto the gray’s back, then grabbed the girl from behind the Watson Masner and shoved her into her mother’s arms.

  “Can you ride?” I shouted—kind of a moot question at that point, I suppose, although the woman was nodding frantically that she could. She tucked the child in front of her while I looped the free end of the lariat around the gray’s muzzle, then tucked it back through the noose to fashion a simple, single-reined bridle. Handing her the rope’s loose end, I swung into the claybank’s saddle without touching the stirrups, then heeled my mount alongside of Abby’s.

  “Mister Latham,” she gasped, nodding toward the wider valley behind me, where the pounding of hoofs from the direction of the road were rapidly increasing in volume. Grabbing Susan, I plunked her down in the saddle in front of me.

  “I’ll take care of her,” I told Abby. “You just concentrate on hanging on.”

  I’ll tell you what … my respect for that woman just kept on growing. There was no fussing, no demands that I return her daughter, just a grim acceptance of what needed to be done if we were to survive. Abby Davenport knew when to raise hell, but she also knew when to keep her mouth shut and do what she was told.

  Luis had already capered his long, lean sorrel behind the remounts and was spurring his hors
e among them, screaming like a mountain lion. When he fired his single-shot Remington into the air, the whole herd bolted toward the open valley. Luis rode hard on their heels with Abby close behind him, leaning low over the gray’s neck. Swinging the claybank in at her side, we made our break for the distant wastelands.

  I got my first good look at Soto’s men as we exited the side cañon. I counted twelve mounted soldiers racing after us, but could have missed one or two. Alvarez was there. So was the stocky sergeant, Marcos, who I thought—apparently mistakenly—I’d shot back at the garrison.

  We came out of the side cañon hugging its western flank, Soto’s men pounding after us from the east, not quite three hundred yards away. The Remingtons they were carrying were easily capable of reaching us from that range, but thankfully Alvarez didn’t halt his command to have them dismount and fire, and damned few shooters could have come even remotely close to us with anything other than a wildly lucky shot at that distance and from the back of a running horse. By keeping his men in their saddles, Alvarez lost an opportunity to stop us cold.

  The remuda began to break apart almost as soon as we were out of the wide draw. Luis couldn’t keep them together by himself, and Abby and I were too far back to be of much help. At a gesture from me, Abby did swing her gray to the left while I reined to the right, and between the three of us we made a sort of inverted funnel that kept the herd loosely together for perhaps another half mile. Then a chance shot from one of Soto’s men clipped the leather on my right-hand tap, and I said the hell with it and shouted for Abby and Luis to let the horses scatter.

  Without us pushing them, the remounts quickly spread out in front of us like an opening blossom. Coming together in a wedge, the three of us forged a path through its center, squinting our eyes against the dust and ducking our shoulders to the pebbles and clods of earth flung up by the hard-digging hoofs. Soto’s men were lost behind us, and we took advantage of our temporary camouflage to veer to the north.