The inside of the place was lit by several candles, Longarm saw as he stepped through the doorway. His eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness. Over the years, he had been in probably a hundred cantinas similar to this one. A crude bar ran across the back of the room, built of rough-hewn planks laid across the tops of several barrels. The floor was hard-packed dirt, and scattered around it were a handful of tables and chairs, all of them as crudely made as the bar. Another arched doorway, this one covered by a beaded curtain, led into a room in the back. A few Mexican farmers stood at the bar, being served by a grossly fat woman in a peasant blouse that revealed far too much of her pendulous breasts. A quick glance around told Longarm that the woman behind the bar was the only female in the place.
All the tables were unoccupied except for one in the corner. Six men were crowded around it, passing a bottle of tequila from hand to hand as they played cards and smoked small black cigars that looked like burning pieces of rope. Smelled like it too, thought Longarm as he moved unhurriedly toward the bar. As he reached it and turned slightly, he saw Coffin and Scott step through the door of the cantina.
In the brief moments since he had entered the building, several pieces of information had burned themselves into Longarm’s brain. For one thing, he was convinced the men at the table were members of El Aguila’s gang. Four of them were Mexicans, the other two gringos, but they were all cut from the same cloth—hard-cases, each and every one. For another, they were drunk and not paying attention to anything except their celebrating. That meant the loot from the latest raid on Del Rio had probably been split up already.
Their inattention to the newcomers also meant that no one had warned them about the three men riding into the village. Evidently none of the townspeople felt any great liking for these members of El Aguila’s gang. Still, Longarm was a little surprised that fear hadn’t prompted someone to try to curry favor with the desperadoes by telling them about the strangers.
These folks really didn’t like El Aguila, Longarm realized. That was all right with him.
The only real disappointment was the fact that Sonia wasn’t there.
Or maybe she was. As Longarm rested his left hand on the bar, he heard an unmistakable sound—the moans and sighs of a woman caught up in the throes of passion. The noises were coming from the back room. Whoever was back there sounded as if she liked what was happening to her. Longarm’s jaw tightened. He hated to think that maybe Sonia was enjoying her captivity.
The woman behind the bar edged over to him, a nervous expression on her face. “You want something?” she asked in heavily accented English.
“Tequila,” said Longarm. He glanced over his shoulder. Coffin and Scott were staying close to the door, lounging with their shoulders against the adobe wall. The outlaws in the corner hadn’t glanced toward them, as far as Longarm could tell.
The sounds of lovemaking had ended in the back room. With a clatter, the curtain of beads was shoved aside. Longarm turned his head and saw a young woman step out into the main room. The neckline of her blouse was pulled down so that half of one brown nipple was visible. She had a satisfied smile on her face.
But she wasn’t Sonia Guiterrez.
The woman behind the bar thumped down a glass in front of Longarm and splashed some tequila in it from a bottle. As Longarm reached for it, a man followed the younger woman out of the back room. He was smirking, clearly pleased with himself.
But when his gaze locked with Longarm’s, his eyes widened and his hand dropped in a blur to the gun on his hip.
A couple of thoughts whipped through Longarm’s brain in that instant. He had figured that because there were six horses at the hitch rail outside and six men around the table in the corner, all of the outlaws were accounted for. But the man who had come out of the back room, the man who was now grabbing for his gun as a curse sprang to his lips, had definitely recognized Longarm. And Longarm thought he recognized the man too. He remembered the duster the man wore, and the cream-colored hat with conchos around the band.
The last time Longarm had seen him, he’d been tossing a stick of dynamite into Sheriff Sanderson’s office in Del Rio.
All of that flashed through Longarm’s mind even as he acted. He flicked his left wrist, and the tequila in the glass he held in that hand flew up into the face of the outlaw. At the same time Longarm twisted toward the man, his right hand flashing across his body to palm the Colt out of the cross-draw rig. The outlaw in the duster yelled in pain as the tequila stung his eyes. He stumbled back a step as he blinked furiously. His gun was already out, and it was coming up fast, even though he was half-blinded.
Longarm triggered twice, the slugs slamming into the outlaw’s midsection at close range and driving him backward like a giant hammer. Before the man even hit the dirt of the floor, Longarm was spinning around toward the table where the other owlhoots were.
One of the men at the table went diving away from the others,
indicating to Longarm that he was probably one of the locals and not a
member of the gang at all
The others were all leaping to their feet and reaching for their guns.
“Hold it!” yelled Coffin, who had drawn the pearl-handled Remington.
The long-barreled revolver was leveled at the outlaws.
They ignored the command, as Longarm expected they would. Everyone else in the cantina had wisely hit the floor, so Longarm and Coffin had a clear field as they opened fire. The gunshots were deafening as their thunder filled the low-ceilinged cantina.
From the corner of his eye, Longarm saw Scott tip over one of the tables and crouch behind it for cover. The drifter had drawn his guns, but he hadn’t fired yet. Of course, he didn’t really need to. Longarm and Coffin had had the drop on the outlaws, and it had been foolish of the men not to surrender. Most owlhoots weren’t noted for the sharpness of their wits. These had tried to blaze away at Longarm and Coffin, and were getting cut down for their trouble.
The shooting lasted only a handful of seconds, though it seemed longer. A couple of the outlaws were thrown back against the adobe wall behind them by the lead plowing into their chests. Another doubled over, gut-shot, and collapsed onto the table where they had been playing poker, scattering the cards. The pasteboards fluttered to the ground, stained with outlaw blood.
That left just two of the gang on their feet, and one of them was wounded. The man dropped his gun and clutched at a bullet-shattered elbow. He whimpered and cursed in pain as he stumbled against a chair. The other man let his gun fall to the floor too, though he wasn’t wounded. He lifted his hands and cried out, “Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, don’t shoot no more!”
The man who was surrendering was one of the gringos, Longarm saw. His companion with the broken arm was Mexican. The fight was out of both of them, and as Longarm and Coffin approached, guns still leveled, they cringed back.
As all the innocent bystanders in the cantina scurried out the front door of the place, including the barmaid, Longarm kicked the fallen guns out of reach and said harshly, “You’re two of El Aguila’s men. No use in denying it. We trailed you here from Del Rio.”
The Mexican with the wounded arm spat at Longarm’s feet. There were tears in his eyes and his face was contorted in pain, but he found the strength somewhere inside him to put up a stubbornly defiant front. “We deny nothing,” he said.
Scott had followed Coffin. He checked the men on the floor and announced, “These boys are all dead. That was pretty good shooting.”