The Chicanery of Paco Ibañez Page 8

  ‘Your boy knows what’s going on. We sat around a camp-fire, four of us. He wanted to know what he was getting into, and I told him: Paco Ibañez wants Texas back under Mexican rule.’

  ‘That’s a fairy-story. A man of your intelligence wouldn’t swallow it, and neither did Lucas. I believe you know exactly what’s going on, but you’re persisting with that ridiculous idea because it effectively hides the truth.’

  ‘No. I persist because that’s what I’ve been told. And that’s all I’ve been told; that’s all I know.’

  ‘And you believe that load of bull?’

  ‘Believing wasn’t part of the deal. They told me they wanted cash. I wasn’t concerned with why.’

  Wilde cocked his head. ‘So that was the start of it. Gomez offered a deal: you come up with the money for Ibañez, in return you’d get your cut – you, Ryan and Jago.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Allman said, shrugging his shoulders.

  All three lawmen were sitting on the grass. They had formed a tight half-circle around the outlaw. Their six-guns were prominent. Wilde knew that with the tree at his back and the encroaching arc of menacing lawmen to his front, Allman would feel trapped. Instinctively, his mind would be searching for a way out.

  Gord Bogan, hat tipped back, sitting cross-legged in dappled shade, was watching Allman closely.

  He said, ‘Didn’t it occur to you they chose that story of a Texas takeover because they knew men like you, men who’d too often seen the inside of hot, stinking cells, would be happy to see the Texas authorities in trouble?’

  ‘If they believed that, they were wrong. Being in prison makes no difference. I’m proud to be a Texan; I’d fight to the death if Texas was threatened—’

  ‘Then supposing it is. Supposing that story is true. We need you to help us to find out for sure, stop those crazy bastards, whoever they are. You keep talking about a mysterious “they”. Keep saying “they” did this, “they” asked that. Who the hell are we talking about here, Allman?’

  The outlaw shrugged, and gazed out towards the river with a thoughtful look in his eyes.

  Wilde could see a noticeable relaxation in the man’s posture. Quick to weigh up a situation, the outlaw would by now have worked out that if he could be seen to be co-operating – even if he was telling another pack of lies – he could escape the pen, or the scaffold. He’d know that the information he gave and the names he named here by the Rio Grande could not be checked until he was long gone. And that thought gave Wilde a moment of silent amusement, because that wasn’t the way it was planned.

  ‘I can see you’re coming around to our way of thinking,’ he said, as Allman continued to sit in silence. ‘Why wouldn’t you? It’s the sensible way out of a bad situation, and you owe men like Gomez and Ibañez no favours – especially now they’ve got their hands on the money.’

  Allman shrugged, but said nothing.

  ‘Have they?’

  ‘They’ve got the saddle-bags, I’ve got my cut.’

  ‘Your cut.’

  Wilde hesitated, keeping his face impassive as he prepared to challenge the outlaw over the one glaring weakness in the Paco Ibañez story that hadn’t yet been discussed. He looked at Allman, looked into the man’s unreadable, colourless eyes, and shook his head.

  ‘That’s the bit I can’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why take a cut? You and your pals were robbing the banks – why not take the lot, and to hell with the Mexicans?’

  ‘Two reasons,’ Allman said. ‘First was that Gomez had connections. He made the raids possible because he knew the banks that would have money in sufficient quantities, and the date it would be there.’

  ‘And the second?’

  Allman jerked a thumb at Lucas.

  ‘Your boy came along, but he was so all-fired keen to make himself accepted he might as well have been wearing hoss blinders. He saw Gomez. What he didn’t see was Gomez’s sidekicks. We agreed to take a cut because we had no choice. It was a closed deal: either we accepted, or we were dead meat and Gomez would move on and find others who would be happy to oblige.’

  Wilde looked at his companions, saw Lucas spread his hands, Gord Bogan shrug. He took a breath.

  ‘OK. So you were forced into it; you’ve done everything you agreed to do; you’ve been paid and now you’ve got nothing to lose by talking to us.’

  ‘Only my life,’ Allman said, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the glittering waters.

  Lucas, silent up to now, gave vent to a rich chuckle.

  ‘You scared of what the big man will do when he knows you’ve sold out?’

  ‘Ibañez? I just told you, I was scared because I knew what he and his pals would do if we turned down the deal. If I sell out …’ Allman grimaced. ‘If I sell out and he gets wind of it, I’m a dead man – but the only way he’ll know is if you tell him.’

  ‘You sure it’s Ibañez? You sure he’s not having his strings pulled by someone higher up?’

  That puzzled Allman. He looked hard at Lucas.

  ‘You know the answer to that: I know what I’ve been told.’

  ‘That’s what’s worrying us. When a man’s told something, the first thing he needs to do is separate the truth from the lies. That didn’t concern you; all you were after was the money. But if you were concerned, I think you’d find Gomez has been lying to you from the outset.’

  ‘Like you say,’ Allman said with a thin smile, ‘who the hell cares?’

  ‘Texas Rangers,’ Lucas said. ‘If cross-border trouble’s brewing, it’s their job and their duty to care. And if you were telling the truth when you said you care for Texas – then you care.’

  Allman shifted uneasily. ‘Yeah, well, if you put it that way—’

  ‘We want to put a stop to it,’ Wilde said, stepping in quickly as he sensed a breakthrough. ‘Gut feeling tells us Ibañez is no more than a name hiding a much bigger name who wants his identity kept secret. We need to get to Ibañez. The link with Ibañez is Gomez. You must know how to find Gomez—’

  ‘No.’ Allman spoke flatly. ‘Buy my way out, you said, talk to you now and I ride away—’

  ‘I changed my mind. You help us – then you ride away.’

  Gord Bogan grinned at Allman’s discomfiture.

  ‘Three choices,’ he reminded him. ‘I can’t see you opting for either of the first two, so….’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Allman said fiercely. ‘Talk of three choices is a laugh, because I’ve got no choice, so untie my goddamn legs and let’s get this over and done with. But there’s one condition.’

  ‘You know the conditions,’ Wilde said. ‘Help us find Gomez, and you ride free.’

  ‘If I ride away after helping you I want to stay clear of Crane and his jail. Crane’s holding my Hawken rifle. I want it.’

  Wilde shrugged. ‘Consider it done.’

  As Bogan took out his knife and did as Allman had bid, Thornton Wilde glanced at his son with a faint smile of satisfaction.

  It was only when he was climbing onto his horse to lead the way back to El Paso that he realized Gus Allman had not been gazing thoughtfully at the deep, rolling waters, but at the river’s far bank.

  There, almost lost in the heat-haze, their heads sheltered from the baking sun by wide-brimmed sombreros and wearing light serapes that fell loosely to their thighs, two Mexicans on ragged ponies were sitting watching. They were distant figures, cloaked in anonymity, as still and as silent as the landscape.

  About them there was a brooding menace that Wilde found impossible to shake off. It stayed with him all the way into town, a dark shadow dimming the small triumph of their negotiations with the outlaw.

  FIFTEEN

  All right, so he was locked in a cell again, a non-paying guest in the El Paso jail. Not exactly where he wanted to be, but there was a consolation: at long last it was a step in the right direction when, for the past couple of days, the simple plan that would bring him more money than he’d seen in his whole life seemed to be unravellin
g.

  Allman lay back on the cornhusk mattress, watched the smoke from his cigarette drift lazily in the beam of late afternoon sunlight, and smiled with satisfaction at his lucky break.

  His worst moment had come after he’d seen Ryan and Jago go down in a hail of bullets. Not because those born losers being drilled full of holes bothered him – them dying was part of the plan anyway, it just happened a little early – but because, when he turned around, that damn Texas Ranger, Gord Bogan, had got the drop on him. He’d appeared out of nowhere after Ryan and Jago had been gunned down by Cedar Creek’s marshal, Wilde, and his boy, Lucas. Lucas Wilde, the Texas Ranger who’d stepped out of the dust of a San Angelo street and thought he was smart passing himself off as a gunslinger called the Waco Kid. Which, Allman was pleased to admit, had never got close to fooling him. OK, he’d argued for the kid against Ryan and Jago, but that had been a thinking man’s choice: wasn’t it better to have the kid on the inside where he could see him, keep an eye on him?

  But it didn’t work out that way, Allman reflected grimly. When he downed the kid with the big buff’ gun, they should have checked he was a goner. Instead, they’d let him sit there on that big horse and he’d lived to make himself a nuisance at the El Paso livery barn. One hell of a nuisance: Allman was forced to concede that when he’d been caught cold by the rangers the subsequent trip to jail had looked like the end of the road.

  Then, damnit, the offer from Wilde had come out of the blue. Marshal Tom Crane had released him. He’d been taken downriver. And after a couple of hours spent arguing in the pleasant sunshine, he was back in business.

  Arguing for the sake of it – though they didn’t know that. Arguing to make it look good, to make it look as if those damn lawmen were twisting his arm. Just like he’d acted scared on the way downriver from the jail, acted like he didn’t know what was going on, didn’t know if he’d live or die. Hell, he’d know all along. They needed him, for Christ’s sake, and he was never going to refuse what he was being offered, not when time was running out and there was so much at stake.

  And time was running out, thanks to Tindale, the joker in the pack. Damn it, nobody had been expecting a maverick lawman to come out of the woodwork. By taking them halfway back to San Angelo he’d wasted valuable time, put in jeopardy a plan that had been six months in the making and was just days away from execution.

  Allman chuckled, his expelled breath sending smoke spiralling in the sunlight.

  Aptly chosen word in the circumstances, he thought approvingly – both for circumstances in the past, and those still to come. Tindale’s death had been an execution. And very soon, within – he took a quick squint at the direction of the sun’s rays outside the cell’s barred window – within, he reckoned, a little over twenty-four hours, well, there was going to be another.

  Allman took a drag on his cigarette, his eyes narrowed.

  What he couldn’t understand was what the hell the rangers were playing at. If he was to believe what he was hearing, they had no idea what Paco Ibañez was up to. In fact, they were close to dismissing the man from their calculations and going after some mythical figure they’d conjured up out of their imagination.

  But that was – what did they call it, academic? OK, well, it was academic, the name of the man they were after was irrelevant. The important point, the puzzling point, was they’d been alerted by the first of the bank robberies but they hadn’t stopped him, and Ryan, and Jago. Known bank robbers – yet they’d let them run.

  Why?

  As far as Allman could see, there was only one answer: back at ranger HQ, someone in high office knew what was going on; knew what Ibañez was up to and had issued the order to back off and wait. That led to another thought: either Wilde and the two Texas Rangers were lying when they pleaded ignorance – or their HQ was keeping them in the dark. Giving them some information, but not all. A risky strategy, as demonstrated by what had happened as they followed the outlaws. Lucas Wilde, the Waco Kid, had been a plant, the man on the inside; he had come close to dying. After that, the lawmen had been left with no choice. They’d continued with the chase, nearly died in their encounter with the Mexicans set on them by Ibañez, and walked into an ambush in the El Paso livery barn. That one had been set up by Charlie Gomez, and again it had come close to succeeding. Would have done, too, Allman thought, if he hadn’t been backed by two useless sidekicks.

  So, yeah, a risky strategy, if that’s what it was.

  Well, the rangers had been right about Ryan and Jago, they had hated Texas for what it had done to them, and they had been in for the money. Allman grinned. Not that there’d ever been any chance of them getting their hot hands on any. They’d been recruited, and were expendable. Their job had been robbing banks, then getting rid of the rangers – and when that last bit didn’t work out, well, at least he had the rangers themselves to thank for saving him a job. Tonight, Ryan and Jago would have been the first casualties, his way of clearing the field before the main action; before the six months drew to a close and he earned his money.

  Not that he didn’t have plenty already. And that was something else that was causing him considerable amusement. The lawmen were convinced the money from those bank robberies was taken to finance Paco Ibañez’s crazy dreams. He’d gone along with the idea, managed to concoct an acceptable story when asked why he was satisfied with a cut. Truth was, the bank robberies came first, all on their own. They had been his idea, all the money was his (and, yeah, despite what he’d told the rangers, he still had those well packed saddle-bags), and it wasn’t until some time after the first robbery that he’d been approached by Gomez. With a proposition. One that would double his money for the expense of a single bullet.

  And as for there being coercion, Mexicans threatening to turn him into dead meat if he refused to do what they were asking – well, that too was garbage. They’d made the offer. He could have walked away. He didn’t.

  So, first things first, Allman thought, sitting up and using his heel to grind his cigarette into the dirt floor. By saving their own skins and getting rid of Ryan and Jago, the rangers had saved him one job but left him another. Getting rid of them was now down to him – and although they could have proved more difficult to eliminate than his two dead pals, without realizing it they were playing into his hands. Wilde, the ageing Cedar Creek marshal, had acted like a goddamn army general as he laid down precise rules of engagement: they would go after Ibañez when the sun had sunk below the western hills and the border town of El Paso was in darkness.

  But they were underestimating the opposition, and that was a stupid mistake. They’d emerged from one gun battle with Mexican peasants with their skins intact, but common sense should have told them the men they’d downed could be replaced tenfold. That would have been done, because Ibañez always made damn sure he was well protected.

  Also, Wilde and the two rangers were relative strangers to the border town. Its layout was unfamiliar to them, and by choosing to work in the dark they were handing him the advantage. He’d lead them in, the Mexicans would do the rest.

  Yeah, it was real nice of the old feller, Allman thought – and, with a shake of his head at the way everything was falling into place, he lay back, closed his eyes, and prepared to doze away the few short hours to sundown.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘So what was he doing there?’ Paco Ibañez said. ‘Why was he one minute in a jail cell, the next on the banks of the Rio Bravo del Norte talking in a friendly manner to three lawmen?’

  ‘I do not know why he was there, why he was free, nor why he is now back in jail,’ Charlie Gomez said. ‘But I do not agree that the talk was friendly. According to the men who were watching from the other side of the river, Allman was tied to his horse when he arrived; his ankles tied when he was allowed to dismount.’

  The two men were in a small, thick-walled adobe dwelling on the outskirts of El Paso. There was no oil lamp. Instead, a candle flickered in the centre of a crude wooden table. Ibañez was
smoking a thin cigar. Both men had a small glass in front of them containing the remains of a colourless spirit.

  The room they occupied had one door, and one small window. Through that rough aperture the men could see a sprinkling of stars that were already being dimmed by the light of a full moon.

  Unseen were the proud men they knew were out there, the small group of armed countrymen who had been crossing the border ever more frequently in the past few weeks. Six months ago, in the early days of the enterprise, there had been no need for them. Then word had leaked out of the suspicions and subsequent involvement of the Texas Rangers. Suddenly the enterprise was in jeopardy, and the man whose brainchild it was needed protection. In the past few days, as the rangers drew closer to El Paso, that protection had taken the form of aggressive defence. Now, in the final hours, Gomez had ordered the protective circle to be reduced and drawn in. A chosen few hardened fighters remained. They formed an impregnable wall of steel around their leaders.

  Inside the room, the two men were conversing in Spanish. The answer Gomez had given to his question had not satisfied Ibañez.

  ‘If that is what those men observed, there on the river-bank, and they are accurate in reporting what they saw, what brought about the change? Why was Allman released, when you and I know that in the early hours of the morning he and his amigos ambushed the three lawmen?’

  ‘The release was temporary. He is now back in jail. But his return was also observed. I have heard that he walked in without coercion. That his mood was relaxed.’