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.
“Come on, amigo,” he said wryly. “Let’s go find us some live ones.”
EDGE had too many other things on his mind to concern himself with the multitude of pleasures which the town of Hoyos had to offer a man. Primarily he wanted what he had come into Mexico for the return of the money the bandits had stolen from him, and revenge against El Matador. But it did not take him long to decide that both these objectives would have to wait. For not all the bandits had accepted their leader’s invitation to relax. Obviously following a standing order, two men lounged outside the cantina, their attitudes of ease made fraudulent by the watchful glints of their eyes. They were the fat Miguel and the pock-marked Torres and as Edge and Luis moved out of the doorway, Torres broke away from the other and started down the side of the cantina, obviously intent upon taking up sentry duty at the rear of the building.
“We going to find some girls?” Luis asked, eyes alight with excited anticipation as he headed towards the street entrance, from which came the sound of laughter and shouting, an occasional feminine scream which could have been of pain or delight.
Edge shook his head. “I hope you find one that’s got everything,” he said.
“Señor?” The wizened face was puckered with bewilderment.
“They ain’t invented a pill for it yet.”
