El Matador laughed, the sound ringing out across the plaza. “Not so lucky, I think, if we did not arrive. That Alfaro, he almost know as many ways to kill a man as me,”
Edge shrugged. “Sometimes it’s better to know how to live than how to kill.”
“Right,” El Matador agreed. “Why they try to shoot him?” He gestured with his blunderbuss towards Luis, who had now recovered from his initial burst of joy, was listening to the exchange with fearful interest, suspecting that one threat had merely been replaced by another.
“Alfaro thought he was one of your men, scouting for you.”
Matador laughed once more. “That quivering heap of skin and bone?” he snorted. “I think I will carry out the execution so that all here may know that El Matador does not have such a shaking jellyfish in his band of brave men.”
“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.
