“No, El Matador!” Luis pleaded. “Please do not kill a poor, innocent peasant. I once was a …”
“Shut your stupid mouth,” Edge hissed at him as he moved over to the pole,
“What you doing, gringo?” El Matador demanded when he saw the, movement, failed to hear the words spoken between unmoving lips.
“Alfaro wasn’t smart,” Edge called back. “He wouldn’t listen to Luis. Luis has a secret.”
“What is the secret?” The voice of the bandit was heavy with puzzled anger.
Edge looked around the plaza, at the bandits on the wall and the townspeople grouped at the head of the street. The examination was heavy with meaning.
“If we shout like this, it won’t be a secret no more,” Edge said.
A low mumbling of discontent spread along the top of the wall. “Silence,” El Matador commanded and launched himself forward, landed lightly on his feet. “Cut the old man loose. We will talk.” He glanced up at his men. “In private.”
Edge hurriedly slid the blood-stained razor back into its pouch, then stooped to take a knife from the body of a nearby soldier who no longer had a face, used its sharp blade to slice through the ropes binding Luis.
“I talk and you only open your mouth when you’re spoken to,” he whispered close to Luis’ ear. “You’re on borrowed time already, and death pays all debts.”
“Señor, anything you demand of me,” Luis said, coming away from the pole, staggering under the weight of his relief, as the bandits limbed down from the wall.
“You!” El Matador shouted at the citizens of Hoyos. “My men need food, drink and rest. They have released you from the terror of the army. Make them welcome or you will wish that Captain Alfaro were still in command.”
The people broke into hurried movement to do the bandit chiefs bidding, beckoning the bandits off the plaza and on to the street, into the houses and cantinas, Matador himself headed for the Golden Sun, just as the heavenly body for which it was named tipped the first rays of a new day over the horizon. He beckoned for a fat, heavy-breasted woman of thirty or so to follow him, then waved his heavy gun at Edge and Luis to do likewise.
“I pray for your success, señor,” Luis said in a hushed whisper as he fell in behind the swaying rump of the fat woman. “El Matador, he is a very mean man.”
“Who spoke to you?” Edge demanded.
“Nobody Señor,” the old man apologized hurriedly. “A thousand pardons.”
“You’ll need more than that to save your rotten hide.”
Luis did not speak for fear of Edge’s anger, instead turned to give him a bewildered look.
“It’ll cost you ten thousand, American,” Edge explained shortly.
The old man swallowed hard and entered the cantina as Matador began to berate the woman for her slowness, demanding she go to the kitchen and cook him a meal. He swaggered across to the table where Alfaro had carried out the interrogation, fell into the chair and grasped the almost empty bottle of tequila, tilted it to his lips without need of a glass or desire for salt. Edge folded his long body into a chair at an adjacent table while Luis stood uncomfortably between the two.
“More tequila, cow,” the bandit chief shouted, tossing aside the empty bottle and bringing the blunderbuss down with a crash on to the edge of the table. Its gaping muzzle pointed at Luis, who inched out of the line of fire.
Matador saw the movement and let out a burst of laughter as the woman padded out of the kitchen door, went behind the bar for a bottle and carried it over to the table. Edge thought she might have been pretty had her features not been enveloped in rolls of fat.
“I do not shoot a rich man until I know where his money is,” Matador said with a grin, snatching the bottle from the woman’s pudgy hands, then releasing his gun to reach up and squeeze a large nipple dearly outlined under the black material of her dress. She winced with pain but made no sound, ambled back to the kitchen as the bandit thumped her hard on the rump, screaming: “Food, cow.”
“She is much woman,” Luis tendered, with a sidelong look at Edge.
Matador grinned. “You like her old man? Maybe if I like what you going to say, I give you her as well as your life.”
“Reckon that’s worth ten thousand dollars, American,” Edge said softly.
The grin fell from Matador’s face like a dropped veil and he snatched up the blunderbuss, pointed it at Edge. “You no joke with me, señor,” he hissed. “I got your life in my trigger finger. I squeeze and you dead. No mistake this time.”
“I never joke about money,” Edge answered.
Matador seemed to hold his breath for several moments, Then he nodded towards Luis. “He has that much money?”
“He knows where it is,” Edge replied.
“I know where is ten thousand,” Matador said softly still menacing the gun. “A hundred thousand in a bank at Mexico City.”
“This ain’t in no bank,” Edge said; wondering idly if he was telling. “This is someplace we can get our hands on it. Easy.”
“Where is this place?”
Luis started to open his mouth, raise his right hand with the ring on the third finger. But then his lips clamped tight as Edge shot out a foot, kicking the old man hard on the shin. Edge, grinned at Matador as Luis bent to massage his aching leg.
“That ain’t no kind of a deal,” he said. “Soon as you know, that, Hoyos ain’t a healthy place for us no more. I got holes in my head to see out of, hear with and breathe through. I don’t want any more.”
Matador’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Captain Alfaro was keeping you alive to maybe make you suffer a little, señor?” he asked softly.
“And I thought he just liked me,” Edge answered.
“I know more ways to make men suffer than he ever heard of.”
“Torture ain’t reliable,” Edge said easily. “Some men break early. Others take longer. Some men just die of plain fright. Better you let us take you where the money is.”
Matador eyed Luis. “I think he break easy.”
Edge shook his head. “No good, He knows the place. I know exactly where in that place.”
The kitchen door swung open and the woman padded out, carrying a plate piled high with tortillas. She slapped the plate down hard on the table before Matador, her eyes spitting hate at the top of his head.
“You live ‘til we get to the place and you show me where,” the bandit said with finality, snatching up a tortilla and biting into it, his expression showing that the food met with his approval. “Then I decide what to do with you. Hey, cow.”
The woman had begun, to go back to the kitchen, turned with resignation to await another order from Matador. The bandit swung the blunderbuss, leveled it and squeezed the trigger. The vicious load peppered the woman’s large breasts and she screamed, her hands going to the injured parts, blood oozing from between the clutching fingers. Then Matador drew one of his Colts and took careful aim as the woman’s horror-filled eyes stared at him. The bullet drilled a neat hole in the center of her forehead and she fell backwards, the skirts of her, dress riding high up her naked thighs the flesh quivering with the death convulsion.
“It is a kind man who would put an injured cow out of her agony,” Matador said evenly, holstering his smoking revolver and picking up another tortilla.
“Why?” Luis gasped, unable to rip his eyes away from the thick exposed flesh of the dead woman’s legs.
“She would have been no good for you, amigo,” The bandit said. “Those legs, they would have broke your back at the height of your passion. But it was not for that reason. This place, it is quiet. The cow may have heard our voices. As the Americano said, a secret is not a secret when others know of it.” He took a long drink with the new bottle, smacked his lips. “Now I eat, then I sleep. After that we go and get the money.”
Edge rose to his feet, content with the situation as it stood. He jabbed a stiff finger into the ribs of Luis, dragging his fascinated gaze from the body of the dead woman.