House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

Did the army or Beckman’s men hurt you? I should have driven the hearse away and not burned it in front of your house.

His words had no more influence on her than confetti blowing on her face. She stroked his hair and eyes and kissed his hand. You’re chosen, she said.

Chosen for what? You’re saying I’m a Hebrew? She didn’t answer, and her silence frightened him. What’s wrong with you, woman?

He waited, but she refused to speak.

This is a dream. I’ll wake from it and you’ll be gone. I won’t forgive myself if someone has hurt you on my account. Brothel madam be damned, there’s something mighty good in you.

See? You’re kind. That’s why you’ve been chosen. Don’t be afraid.

Don’t you be calling me that.

Mi amor, she said.

He sat straight up, shaking with cold in spite of his coat, the eastern sky ribbed with pink clouds. He called out her name, convinced that her lips and body were only inches from his.

He untied the flaps on his saddlebags. Everything he had placed there was undisturbed. He opened the wood box that contained the fused goblets. Were the jewels real? They could be. The chalice could have been looted from a cathedral in Monterrey, in the Mexican state of Nuevo León. Or from the home of an aristocrat who discovered that peons possessing the importance of barnyard animals were about to take everything he owned, including his life.

He stared at the sunrise, sick and nauseated, his head throbbing, the smell of beer and whiskey rising from his clothes. He had already mortgaged the day, and he had a choice of living through it dry or drinking again and mortgaging tomorrow. He rode his horse through the alleyway. The street was totally quiet, the pools of rainwater wrinkling in the wind. Four soldiers were riding their horses in single file toward the jail. The last rider was leading a prisoner on foot by a rope knotted around his neck. The prisoner wore sandals and a black duster that had no sleeves; his eyes seemed lidless, half-rolled in his head, not unlike those inside a severed head upon a platter.

“What have you got yourself into, partner?” Hack said under his breath. He didn’t know if his words were addressed to himself or the unfortunate eater of fried grasshoppers.

HACKBERRY DISMOUNTED IN front of the jail. The soldiers had locked their prisoner in a cell with several other prisoners and were drinking coffee from fruit jars and eating with their fingers from tin plates in the breezeway. Hackberry’s hat was slanted over his brow, his eyes downcast, the way he would approach a horse in order to avoid personal challenge. “Muy buenas,” he said.

The soldiers looked sleepy and irritable and didn’t bother to answer.

“¿Qué pasa con el hombre que no tiene mangas?” he said.

“No te metas, viejo,” replied a soldier who was leaning forward in a str

aw chair so he would not drop crumbs on his uniform.

“No creo que soy viejo.”

“Either your Spanish or your hearing is not too good, gringo,” the same soldier said.

“Probably both. I think I’m still pretty boracho.”

“That could be the problem, man. Where did you get the rifle?”

“From General Huerta. He’s a friend of mine.”

“That’s pretty nice of him. Can I look at it?”

“He’p yourself.”

The man in the straw chair was bigger than the others, his cuffs rolled neatly on his upper arms, his skin as smooth as clay, his nose thin, one nostril smaller than the other, a delicate scar at the edge of one eye, like a piece of white string. He partially opened the bolt and squinted at the empty chamber and the rounds pressed into the magazine. He ran the balls of his fingers along the bolt and rubbed them with his thumb. “It’s still got what-you-call-it on it.”

“Cosmoline?”

“That’s the word. When did General Huerta give you this?”

“Two or three months ago, I think. In El Paso.”

“That’s funny, ’cause he died in January. This is November.”

“That’s probably why the nights are getting right chilly.”