Rancholand, pt. 1
This week's short story takes us to alternative 1880s Southern California, where the United States never took charge
“That’s a lot of blood he’s losing!”
“Shut up, Medge! Hold ‘em still!”
The kid struggled with the tourniquet, so after I tied off Grambling’s right leg, or what was left of it, I hopped around to the arm.
“Let me do it. Get some water!”
Slight chance the señora, despite her bleeding heart for bleeding whites, had antiseptic. No one did on this side of the godforsaken world. Dammit, what am I thinking?
“Forget that; make it whisky! I know she’s got it!”
“She’s got tequila handy!” Medge hollered from the other room.
He was already halfway across the abandoned parlor, half-filled glasses on the card tables. Two bodies still writhing apart from the three dead. The innkeeper and a server were hiding under the bar.
“That’ll do.”
Grambling shook, wearing a look like he knows it’s the end. I don’t have the heart yet, to be honest. He’s a tough som’bitch after all. We took our chances through Tejas and the Comanche lands. Didn’t bat an eye when his horse went down and I took us fifty miles off course to rustle a bronco from some natives.
All to bleed out in this larder.
“Stay with me, Grambling. Stay with me. Medge, where the fuck are you?!”
“Sorry, sorry!” Spilling half the bottle before he got back.
Aarrgh-ahhh!
“Keep pressure on it!”
“Where are you going?” Medge asked.
“I’ll be right back.”
The kid would lose his nerve if he knew we’d be hanged by Easter if we let the Rurales escape to the garrison at San Rafael.
The shootout had pressed everyone back into their adobes, but enough time had passed where they’d be poking at the windows. Bullets cracked as I sprung out onto the porch. Planting my foot to shift my weight, I dove back in.
Guess all of ‘em didn’t go to San Rafael. The muzzle flash and sound meant they weren’t using the crummy Ciudadelas most Rurales carried.
“How’d they get their hands on some Walkers?” I mumbled.
“What was that?!” Medge cried.
“We’re pinned down! Second floor of the depot. María! ¿Estás aquí?”
“¡Sí, qué lástima!”
Her voice came, as expected, right from under the bar.
“Ayúdalo!”
She sent the server instead. He sported a terribly ornate mustache, but what else was he going to spend his little money on? To his credit, he held Grambling more securely than Medge. No place like a Río bar to get practice.
Medge didn’t need another hint to pull alongside me, crouching underneath the left window. The cracking of the .45 caliber rounds on the mud-brick had him shaking, though.
“You all right?”
“I’m alright,” he lied.
“Lay down cover fire on my signal. When the flames start, head to the stables. Out the back door.”
Medge nodded, though I know he had questions. The unbroken line of adobes on the Rurales’ side of the street meant we’d need to push ‘em back to make a clean escape. Of course he didn’t get that. He got little besides drunk.
I ran around the bar hunting and pecking for the bottles I wanted. Two should suffice.
“Are these really Bacardí?” I shook the bottles at María, knowing her enterprising nature.
“El ron es genuino, blanquito,” now peeking over the counter.
They better be. Ripping a bar cloth in half, I stuffed one down each neck and studied my work. The shadow of Mustache in my peripheral vision jerked me upright.
“What are you doing with that?” He held Grambling’s pistol, though for the moment it wasn’t pointed at me.
“Está muerto.”
I always warned Grambling about the machetes. Rurales and their machetes, daggummit.
María could probably save herself and this bar if they turned these guns on Medge and me. I think that’s what Mustache was really doing, positioned with my head to him so I couldn’t see María’s face.
“Síguelo.”
I hoped María’s instruction to follow wasn’t some sort of code. Either way, I took my time going up the stairs, back to the wall. He didn’t look scared, like Medge did. Speaking of Medge…
“Let ‘em have it!”
It didn’t take Medge long to draw the Rurales’ fire. The shattered glass across the street meant at the very least he was close to his mark. I never had luck with a smoothbore rifle, but this failed farmhand wasn’t bad with it.
“Can you shoot?”
“Sí, viejo.”
“Who are you calling viejo?”
Mustache shook his head and scoffed. I wasn’t in the mood for jokes, least of all the spectacle of a Fornio switching sides to fight the local police. Medge was doing all right, at least from what I could see of it until he disappeared as we inched along the landing.
“Here,” I said.
I got into position and promptly shouldered the second door from the end. Not my first.
A good-time girl and her cliente huddled in the corner. He’d been comforting her, locked up and hidden away. Though once he caught sight of me and Mustache, he flung her toward us.
“¡Tenla! No quiero problemas.”
Had I not needed to check him roughly for weapons, I would’ve paid him no mind. Rameras, especially in this town, deserved decency for what they put up with.
“Dejarlo atrás,” Mustache told the chubby man with a ring on his finger and gout in his gut. It was good thinking on Mustache’s part, holding the woman back until he left. She struggled against him, wanting to leave with the man.
“No, Fatima. Ir a la señora.”
The beautiful girl, not more than a year into womanhood, nodded her head and wiped her eyes.
“Ello will draw sus armas.”
“Good thinking,” I said. It was.
I threw open the shutters and stepped onto the catwalk. Shaky. The Rurales across the Calle de los Negros hadn’t seen our shadow, though Mustache’s new sombrero stolen from the cliente wouldn’t help us keep a low profile.
“¿Qué es eso?”
“No lo necesita.”
I pulled him around me, keeping him pressed up against the flat adobe wall. Whoever in María’s family built this place could have shelled out for more brick along the accents. I inched toward the edge.
“Okay, this is good. I want you to cover my crossing the street, and then back across again.”
“Qué estás haciendo?”
“Damn, my lighter fell out. Gimme yours.”
“¿Tu que?”
“Dame tu encendedor!”
“Pero you’ll die, viejo.”
