Reefer Ranger: part 11

“¡Maria! ¡No, Maria!” A woman’s wailing echoed off the adobe walls.

He inched closer to the body he’d just shot, now slumped on the ground. He kicked the head out of the shadows. It listed into the sliver of moonlight in the narrow alley. McCutchen made out the shape of a woman’s face, a woman’s hair. He knelt down. It was the girl el Jeffe had threatened with his knife, no more than 13 years old. Her dress torn, a dark stain spread across her chest.

“Jesus.” McCutchen stood woozily. He’d never shot a woman. Never in all his years of bringing justice to these God-forsaken borderlands. And only a girl at that. Sobs came from a nearby adobe.

“Shut up! Shut the hell up, you hear me? Comprende English?” McCutchen limped around the back of the adobe into the open night air. “I ain’t no bug. I ain’t no badman. I’m the God-damned law! You hear me?” He fired into an open window. “You caused this, not me!”

Something behind him caused him to turn, the hair on the back of his neck bristling. Something big was moving in the dark a hundred yards off, or a lot of somethings. A single shot echoed from the direction of the sentry on the knoll. He flinched, but it hadn’t been aimed at him.

Suddenly the night air boiled with angry voices. “¡Viva la revolucion! ¡Viva Villa!”

“Son of a bitch.” Of all the nights for Villa to attack the Huerta stronghold, it had to be tonight. Of all the dumb luck. McCutchen limped as fast as he could toward the last adobe in the row of buildings, a large square structure standing thirty yards apart from the others. In the daylight it appeared to be the best built, and in this case, the most likely to stop bullets. It also had no windows, only huge double doors.

War whoops shattered the quiet like church bells on a Sunday morning. Momentarily he thought about bolting, simply running into the brush and letting the Mexicans kill each other. But he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t scurry into the desert like a bug. Sons a bitches, he still had a job to do.

He shot the lock off the heavy wooden doors and swung them open enough to see inside. A stack of kerosene lanterns sat next to a bucket of lighters. Good enough. He shut the heavy doors behind him, drowning in the pitch blackness. Shouts from outside grew louder. Groping in the dark, he found a four by four beam meant to barricade the doors from the inside, and dropped it into place just as bodies slammed against its callous surface.

He turned toward the lanterns, found one and lit it. “What in the name of all things holy?” He held the lantern high until it revealed an armored vehicle and crate upon crate of weapons. Several of the crates opened, he didn’t even recognize some of what he saw. They were guns, he just hadn’t seen their sort before.

Part 12