John Roger felt a feathery stir in his stomach, gone before he could identify it. He reproached himself for the erroneous assumption that Montenegro had let the issue drop. Still, the cheek of the man! To come knocking at this hour. He was about to have Beto send him away with instruction to call at the office, but then thought no, if the business could be settled for good and all right now, so much the better.
“Déjalo pasar,” he said.
Beto lifted the wooden crossbar and drew back the iron bolt latch and pulled open the door. Elizabeth Anne asked John Roger who it was. Her voice composed but her eyes intense. “Someone I must talk with,” he said. He told her to stay inside while he met with the visitor in the patio. As he went out the door in his shirtsleeves he heard her hurrying up the stairs.
There were two of them. Of similar height and leanness, wearing expensive dark suits and cavalier hats. One carried a bundle shaped like a bedroll. They watched his approach as Beto shouldered the door closed behind them. “Bienvenidos, caballeros,” John Roger said. “Yo soy el dueño, Juan Wolfe, a su servicio.”
He was near enough now to see their similarity of features behind the pointed Spanish beards and to know them for father and son. The elder’s aspect evinced a mix of curiosity and resolve, the younger’s was bright and excited as a pup’s.
Hernán Montenegro introduced himself and then Enrique, and then got directly to the point. Mr Wolfe had offended Montenegro honor. First in the letter terminating the contract between the Trade Wind and La Sombra Verde, and then twice more in direct assertions—to Guillermo Demarco and to Stephano Herrera, the attorney representing the Montenegro interests. I have been detained in Mexico City these past months, Montenegro said, else I would have answered these insults before now. His tone was of cool indignation and his bearing assured, but his Spanish lacked the Castilian inflections pervasive among the hacendados of John Roger’s acquaintance.
I beg to differ, sir, John Roger said. I committed no offense against your name. You slighted yourself when you conspired with Demarco to cheat my employer.
Montenegro’s face tightened. “Y otra insulta más,” he said. Then looked at Beto and said, “Quítate.” The handyman gave John Roger an apologetic look, then turned and hurried off to shut himself in the carriage house.
The hacendado nodded at his son. The young man squatted and lay the bundle on the cobbles and unrolled it to reveal two caplock pistols and a pair of unsheathed cavalry sabers. Then stood up and grinned at John Roger.
I demand satisfaction, Hernán Montenegro said, removing his jacket and handing it to his son. Pistols or blades. The choice is yours. He handed the boy his hat.
John Roger’s eyes went from the man to the weapons and back up to the man. He smiled and felt inane for it. And then again felt the flutter in his belly. And this time knew it for fear. This is absurd, he said.
Pistols or blades, sir, Montenegro said.
No, John Roger said. No, of course not. I’m not going to fight a . . . a duel with you. Especially not in—
Montenegro’s backhand slap knocked him rearward in a half turn. Its stinging surprise gave immediate way to fury and he whirled back around with his fists raised but the man had already snatched up both sabers and held one with its point only inches from John Roger’s throat. He had to be fifty years old but was quick as a cat.
As you have declined the prerogative to choose, Montenegro said, I pick the sword. It allows for a more personal engagement, don’t you agree?
He stepped back and lobbed the other saber at John Roger, who fumbled the catch and had to grab the sword blade with both hands, cutting his left palm.
The son sniggered. Montenegro smiled and said, Even before we begin I have drawn first blood. He told John Roger not to be concerned about Enrique, whose only warrant was to serve as his second. Or to bear away my body, should I not prevail, he said with a smile. Enrique grinned.
Listen, John Roger said, listen. This is ridiculous. Let’s be reasonable. There are courtrooms, for God’s sake. There are laws for—
“En garde!”
John Roger instinctively brought up his sword and the hacendado touched his own blade to it—and then attacked with a clear intention of making short work of him. But John Roger nimbly skipped rearward, parrying the thrusts, and Montenegro paused to stare at him in smiling surprise. And went at him again.
And now John Roger knew the fearsome difference between a college sporting contest and a mortal combat. He retreated around and around the fountain, keeping close to it in order to deny Montenegro a wider latitude of attack, fending against the man’s furious onslaught. Their wavering shadows moved along the walls and over the cobbles to no sound save the ringing of blades and shufflings of feet, the heaves of their breath. After ten minutes that John Roger would have guessed at an hour, they were gasping and soaked in sweat. Both of them now gripping their saber with two hands, John Roger’s bloody palm still the only wound in evidence.
Then he stumbled on a cobble and went sprawling—and received a grazing slash to the head as he rolled away from Montenegro and rose onto one knee. He caught a burning blow high on his shielding arm in the same instant that he swung his own blade sidearm and he felt its edge slice into Montenegro’s leg, and the man let a yelping curse. Then was again on his feet and again giving ground as he warded Montenegro’s resumed offensive. Both men now trailing blood as they circled the fountain. John Roger’s left arm dangling useless. Montenegro limping after him, disposed of all finesse and hacking two-handed with the saber as if pursuing him through jungle. John Roger was only dimly aware of the pain of his wounds, his sword now heavy as stone and one eye blurred with blood from his gashed scalp. Yet he sensed Montenegro’s desperation to end the fight before the failing leg quit him, and he readied himself for the rash move he knew was coming.
And it came. Montenegro bellowed and rushed at him with a manic sidelong slash of his sword meant to wound some part of him, any part, and create an opening for a thrust. John Roger dropped to a crouch and the blade flicked his hair as it whisked over his head and he thrust his own sword blade up into the man’s lower belly and felt the point glance off the spine and pass through.
John Roger fell on his rump, still gripping the sword on which Montenegro, huge-eyed with disbelief, was impaled in an arrested stoop with six inches of blade jutting from his back. Then blood spouted from the man’s mouth to sop John Roger’s sleeve and his saber clattered onto the cobbles and his eyes lost their light like blown candles. He toppled sideways and the force of his weight twisted the sword from John Roger’s grasp.
Enrique screamed.
John Roger, braced on his elbow, turned and saw the boy raising a pistol at him. Saw him cock the hammer.
There was a gunblast—and Enrique’s head jerked sideways and his hat flew off together with fragments of bloody skull and his pistol discharged into the rim of the fountain and the ball ricocheted into the night as he collapsed in a lifeless heap.
John Roger looked up to the balcony to see Elizabeth Anne standing there, the smoking Dragoon gripped in both hands. And he keeled into unconsciousness.
He woke in his bed. The window ashen with imminent dawn. His head and arm ponderous with bandages and pulsing with pain.
Elizabeth Anne dozed in a chair at his side. He stared at her and she came awake. He smiled. “Hello, darling. It appears I’m still among the quick.”