.45-Caliber Desperado Read Online Free PDF Page B

pig’s throat. Many men have died worse than pigs under his command. Down along the border, he was a scalp hunter under the guise of a cavalry lieutenant.”
    â€œ Chiquita ’s right. Go ahead, kid.” This from Mule Zimmerman, whose shadow angled across the warden’s shoes as he stood at the edge of the gallows, looking straight-backed and damn near healthy aside from his swollen face. He grinned with menace as he smashed a fist into the palm of his ham-sized other hand. “Less’n you’d like me to do it.”
    Frank Skinner sat near Zimmerman, legs hanging down over the front of the gallows, slump-shouldered and weak, but grinning.
    A pistol roared close by. Cuno jerked with a start. The warden screamed and raised his right leg, wrapping both hands around his bloody knee.
    The pistol roared again and the tip of the warden’s nose disappeared in a blood spray, leaving a blunt, ragged red nub. He released his knee to clutch his face, throwing himself belly down in the dirt and mewling like a gut-shot javelina.
    Hooves thudded. Cuno turned to see the dark man he’d seen in the guard tower with Camilla gallop toward him on a tall black Arabian steed with two white front socks and a white star on its face. He had a thick mustache, and his brick-red cheeks were unshaven. It was a broad, savage, thick-lipped face with large, fervid brown eyes.
    â€œHow you like that, Warden?” the man intoned as he brought the steed to a dusty halt.
    Leaping out of the saddle, he stepped in front of Cuno. He removed his black, salt-stained Sonora hat and crouched in the dirt beside the warden. He pointed at the hairless top of his own head that was so badly knotted with pink and white scars that Cuno felt himself wince as he took a step away from the man. He’d seen healed scalping cuts before, and this man’s looked like a particular nasty job.
    â€œHow you like this, uh, Warden?” he shouted in heavily accented Spanish, spittle flying from his broad, dark-pink mouth. “This what your men do to me on the border summer before last. You like, uh?”
    The broad-faced Mexican jerked the warden’s own head up by his hair, and with his other hand he slipped a horn-gripped knife from a sheath attached to the double cartridge belts crossed on his waist.
    â€œMaybe you like a haircut like mine, uh?”
    Cuno turned away as the man lowered the knife to the warden’s head. The warden’s scream was high-pitched and long-lived.
    â€œI think I keep this one here,” shouted the Mexican, straightening and holding the bloody scalp aloft. “Think I’ll dry it and hang it from my cartridge belt the way your men did with mine and those of my companeros you corralled in Yaqui Canyon . . . snuck up on us like a bunch of dirty coyotes!”
    He twisted his face with yellow fury, holding the bloody scalp high above his head, his eyes and jaws wide as he glared down at the howling warden. “You were after Apaches—oh, but you didn’t care! All Mexicans were half Apache, you said as your men hacked away at me! But I’m no Apache, Warden. Uh-uhhh!” He laughed suddenly—mad laughter that rose to drown out the warden’s howls. “No, I’m Yaqui, and that’s even worse!”
    He lowered the scalp but lifted his chin, sending guffaws careening toward the bright blue sky over the prison.
    Cuno turned to Camilla. Her face was expressionless, but she was keeping her eyes off the warden, who continued to scream, cry, and curse so shrilly that Cuno thought his eardrums would burst.
    Good lord, who were these savage saviors of his, anyway? And why was Camilla riding with them? He’d known her to be a far meeker creature than the one he’d seen manning the Gatling gun—a girl who’d been brought north from Mexico by an American confidence man, then dumped. She’d done what she could to survive, including playing nursemaid to