Let the other—” he glowered at the dead outlaw—“let him go unshriven and unannealed, his soul dragged hell-wards weighted by his sins. Sleep well, Cápitan, I will attend to all.”
Accompanied by Amado and Estevan, Slade made his way through the crowd of curious gathered on the wharf.
“Vive El Halcón!” a voice cried. The cheer was given with a will. Slade smiled and raised his hat. “Thank you, amigos,” he called answer.
“A glass of wine before you retire?” Amado suggested.
“I’ll settle for a cup of coffee,” Slade replied. “Wouldn’t go bad right now.”
“Bueno!” said the cantina owner. “Dolores will joy to see you are all right. She was in tears when we left in answer to your call.”
When they entered the cantina and sat down at a vacant table—most of the patrons were grouped at the bar, discussing the recent happenings—Dolores joined them.
“I was terribly frightened when I heard that awful shooting,” she told Slade. “I just knew you were mixed up in it. And when you called Uncle Amado your voice sounded as if you were hurt.”
“I wasn’t,” he replied cheerfully. “Just a mite excited, I guess.”
Dolores shrugged her slim shoulders disdainfully. “I don’t think you ever get excited, or show any emotion of any kind.”
“You may learn different,” Slade warned, his eyes dancing.
For some reason known best to herself, the remark caused her to blush and lower her lashes.
“You look terribly tired,” she said, solicitously. “You should go to bed without delay.”
“That’s a notion,” he agreed. “I am tired and I’m going to do just that; it’s been a busy night. See you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here in the late afternoon,” she replied. “Hasta luego!”
“Hasta luego—till we meet again.”
FOUR
SLADE DID GO TO BED, AFTER CLEANING AND OILING HIS GUNS, and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. He awakened shortly after noon, greatly refreshed and fit for anything. After breakfast at Amado’s La Luz, he and the cantina owner attended the inquest.
It was more formal and stately than the rangeland type across the river, but the verdict was similarly terse and to the point. Slade was commended for the part he played. The deckhand met his death at the hands of parties unknown whom the authorities were urged to apprehend and bring to justice. The slain outlaw was now tasting of the flames of infierno, it was hoped.
Afterward, everybody reparied to Amado’s cantina for a drink. Slade and the owner occupied a table in a corner near the dance floor, where they could talk without interruption.
“And you feel sure that the outrage was planned and executed by the man Sosna you seek?” said Amado.
“No doubt in my mind,” Slade replied. “I didn’t get a look at him, but I heard his voice, a voice I’ll never forget. Yes, it was Sosna, all right; the chore was typical of him.”
“And were it not for your courage and intuition, it would have succeeded,” Amado commented.
“Luck played a considerable part,” Slade replied. “I just happened to sit down by the window at just the right time and spotted the hellions sliding up the gangplank.”
“And tackled them all, singlehanded,” Amado observed dryly.
“And I slipped a bit there,” Slade added. “I was careless and neglected to be on the watch for a lookout posted by the cabin door, and very nearly got my comeuppance in consequence. Well, I guess you can’t think of everything.”
“Nobody has been able to so far, I would judge,” Amado agreed. “and you believe the ladrones crossed the river to Texas?”
“That’s my opinion,” Slade conceded. “By way of the ford to the west of Matamoros, I’d say.”
“And you intend to pursue him?”
“I do,” Slade stated. “That is,” he added grimly, “if it doesn’t turn out he’s pursuing me, which has been the case more than once in the past.”
Amado chuckled. “Sounds like the carrousel, the—merry-go-round,” he said.
“It goes around, all right, but there’s not much merry about it,” Slade smiled.
El Halcón versus Veck Sosna! The ablest and most fearless of the Texas Rangers pitted against the most cunning, most ruthless outlaw Texas ever spawned!
Slade pushed his empty coffee cup aside and stood up. “I’m going to take a little ride,” he announced. “Tell Dolores I’ll see her later.”
“I’ll do that,” Amado promised. “She will await you eagerly.”
When Slade reached the stable, Shadow whinneyed joyfully. The old keeper bowed and smiled.
“He likes not to be inactive,” he observed, apropos the tall black.
“I’ll give him a chance to stretch his legs a mite,” Slade said as he cinched the saddle into place. “We’ll be back.”
“Adios, Cápitan,” said the keeper. “Vaya usted con Dios—go you with God.”
Leaving Matamoros and Brownsville behind, Slade rode west on the Camino Trail, which ran close to the river’s edge. After a while the flat lands on the far side of the stream gave place to low rises thickly grown with brush, continuing to the ford and beyond.
At the ford, Slade reined in and gazed across to the heavy chaparral growth that ran close to the water’s edge.
The ford was a narrow ridge beneath the water, something like the Indian Crossing at Laredo, which is a ledge of limestone rock lying just below the surface of the water, and in dry seasons becomes exposed. Here there was never any exposure and the water was deeper. And, similar to the Indian Crossing, below the ford the river swirled and eddied, flashing and glittering and spuming rainbowed arcs of spray.
Such peculiar geological phenomena interested Walt Slade. He knew that this eastern section was on the fringe of the earthquake belt, the manifestations of which were often disturbing to the west coast. Such formations as the ones just mentioned evidenced subsidence or elevation not far in the past, geologically speaking, and it was with the eye of a geologist that he studied and understood them.
Shortly before the death of his father, subsequent to financial reverses which entailed the loss of the elder Slade’s ranch, young Walt had graduated from a famous college of engineering. He had planned to take a post-grad course in special subjects to round out his education and better fit him for the profession he had determined to make his life work.
However, at that time it became economically impossible and he was sort of at loose ends
