The Red Sombrero Read Free Page A

defiance you will fortify the pass to cover my advance with the infantry. Is this clear?”
    A man went only so far with Sierra; and Descardo, seething, jerked his head in a sullen nod.
    The Liberator picked at his teeth, eyeing Reno. “Very well,” he said, glancing again at Descardo. “You will then gather such animals as you may require to remove the rifles. Leaving Perron in charge of affairs at Boca Grande you will push on with Reno and your Golden Ones to Cordray’s ranch where you will give him these bags of money, load up the cases and immediately return. Time is of the greatest significance, General. I will be in Las Palomas. Go with God.”
    Small wonder the Butcher was boiling; nor had the-day’s many harrassments with this artillery improved his outlook. Humiliated even to be sent on this errand, to be coupled in the chore with this drunken fool of a gringo was a slap in the face vain Descardo bitterly resented. But it was the knowledge of Reno’s favor with Sierra which twisted the screw right into the quick. It tied his hands and near set him crazy. Then all that waiting on the guns! He was a cavalry officer and it laid raw his spirit to be continually chafed with requests from Colonel Perron to have the goodness to rest his horses a little so the men with the guns could bring them up with the column. The terrain was rough, frequently precipitous and rocky; delay after stubborn delay had been occasioned by the weight and unwieldiness of those bastardly cannons and their complement of shot.
    Reno, sensing these things, could feel the man’s suffering and, in a moment of impulse, generously held out his bottle.
    Descardo struck it from his hand.
    Reno with a frantic bleat fell out of his saddle, much too late. He pawed around in the reek with little whimpers of agony while the general loosed his first laugh in twelve hours. “Yai!” he roared, slapping his breeches. He rocked in his saddle like a dark chunk of gelatin, convulsed with derision for the shame of this gringo who could use the best Spanish and reel out strings of words not even Sierra could wholly understand — for the shame of such a one groveling upon the ground like any pelado borracho whelped without his full complement of buttons.
    And then the shame hit Descardo, and he shouted. “Get up on your feet — get into the saddle you filth of a whore! Must you cry like a baby? Get out of the dirt! Get up — get up!”
    His voice was deep and strong as a bull’s but it made no impression on the gringo at all. The night was dark, but not too dark with the moon coming up through the naked branches for those who were nearest to see him scrabbling in the wet place with his cut and bleeding fingers — not too dark for ears to catch the animal cries that came out of his blubbering, whisker-stubbed lips.
    “Mother of God!” With a snarl of disgust Descardo set back his horse with its front feet waving high and black above the American. But at the final instant, in the last split second before those shod hoofs slashed toward earth, he wrenched the stallion’s head around, not daring to complete this calculated savagery. Remembrance was too strong, the remembrance of this fellow’s favor with the Chief. Instead he drove his rowels deep, the black mass of his bunched riders tearing recklessly after him across the rocks of the slope in a whooping howling descent upon the squalid hovels which men called Boca Grande.
    Reno’s half wild horse, reins flying, departed with them.
    The American scarcely noticed. He was too prostrated with the enormity of his loss to have even a passing interest in things which went on about him. He cowered there, moaning like a new-made widow, completely oblivious to the cracking of rifles. He saw the muzzle lights hurl their flares from the town’s dark doors and glassless windows and as these continued Reno pushed himself up, arrested, watching. Even to him it must have been apparent the general’s men had ridden