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  When he was twenty feet away Logan chose a small stone and threw it hard at the sleeping man's face. His aim was decent, and the sleeper howled himself awake, clutched at his ripped cheek, and stared directly into Logan's Spencer muzzle.

  Logan said, "Buenas dias, hombre."

  The bandit's eyes darted, but he saw no escape. He forced a look of injury. "Amigo, why did you hit me? I have done nothing to you. I am a man of peace resting for the night in my own country."

  Logan's voice was without feeling. "I too am a man of peace, so I will ask you politely to answer my questions. If you refuse or lie to me, I will then no longer be a peaceful man."

  The bandit sought to sit up, but Logan's voice stung like a viper. "If you move, I will kill you." His captive's motions ceased, and his eyes again darted.

  Many of the border Mexicans were a mix of Spanish and Indian. This bandit was mostly Indian, Logan supposed. He was a small man of middle years. Beneath his worn serape his body appeared somehow misshapen, and he had lost most of his teeth. Neither was unusual. Poor Mexicans lived thin with diets as poor as their goats. Teeth were lost early, and men were aged by their fortieth year. Women often died earlier.

  Such men had little to live for. They grew without benefit of civilized behavior, and some could kill, torture, or betray. Logan intended this one to tell what he knew and then die.

  Logan asked, "May I have your name, hombre?"

  "I am Jose Perido, senor, a poor man only hunting for a deer or an antelope."

  Logan nodded toward the rifle. "You have a fine gun, Jose Perido, and you have many bullets in your bandoleer."

  Perido was quick. "Oh, the fine rifle is not mine, senor. It is the property of my patron. I am allowed to use it for the hunt.

  "My patron is a powerful man, senor who has a hundred men and rules his ranchero as would a king."

  Logan smiled grimly. "Punto has twenty men, Perido, and he has no ranchero around here."

  The bandit blinked turtle-like before showing a snaggly smirk. "Ah, then you know my patron, senor, and you know that he would avenge any injury done to me."

  Logan's smile was just as evil. "I know exactly how much Punto would worry about injury to you, bandido. I suggest that you should worry about how much injury there will be if you do not tell me what I wish to know."

  The bandit shrugged with Spanish eloquence. "Of course, I will answer as best I can, senor."

  Logan removed his smile and again became grim. "The first question is, where is Punto now?"

  Again the shrug, "I do not know, senor, I am but a..."

  Logan aimed with care. The Spencer boomed its shotgun-like thunder and the soft lead bullet plowed its blunted way through the bandit's thigh. The impact jerked the man’s leg, and the bullet left a splash of lead on the stone behind the blasted leg before whining away in ricochet flight.

  The bandit's agonized screams sent the hobbled horse prancing and snorting in fear, but the hobbles and tie rope held. Levering in a loaded round, ejected the spent cartridge. Logan eared back the hammer and waited.

  He experienced no qualms and wished only to know Punto's plans before he ended the bandit's life. Logan waited until his victim's sounds dwindled to pain-filled whining.

  "You are fortunate, Perido. The bullet seems to have missed the bone, but the next will take your knee, and that is all bone. It is said that knees are the most painful of all the joints. Perhaps we will see."

  The bandit's fight was gone. Almost certain death clouded his reason, but men fought to live, and strangely the less each had to live for the harder he seemed to struggle.

  Perido held up a placating hand. "I will tell you, senor, but please do not shoot me again."

  "Where is Punto's camp?"

  "We camp at the Zapata, senor, only a few hours ride."

  The Zapata. Logan knew it. The distance and the spot made sense. Logan believed the story.

  "And who are your band's trackers, Perido? Describe them to me."

  The wounded man groaned for a moment before gathering himself to answer. "I am bleeding, senor. Please allow me to attend to my wound."

  "As soon as you answer, hombre. Then you may fix your wound."

  "There are two, senor. The best is Juan of one eye. He is close to our leader, and you can tell him because his face has been shot away."

  "The other?" Logan was unrelenting.

  "The other is also Juan, but he is like any of us. He has a mustache and wears a sombrero with silver on the band. You can tell him by his knife which is long and curved."

  Logan did not really need more. He could care where the band came from and where it intended to go, but Punto probably disclosed neither, and someone like Jose Perido would be told nothing beyond the next campground.

  A last question. Logan said softly, "What will Punto be doing at the camp, amigo?"

  Heartened by the friendlier tones, Perido was quick to answer. "The men will drink, senor." He hesitated before adding, "and they will pleasure themselves with a woman of the camp."

  Logan allowed his rifle to fall out of line and nodded to the outlaw to treat his wound. So, the girl Julie Smith still lived. She was a complication that he could not allow to alter his plans. Logan looked away from the bandit attempting to staunch his blood flow, allowing his rifle to point even further away and appearing to think of other things.

  As expected, Perido went for his rifle, and Logan let him touch the stock before he fired. The .56 caliber Spencer bullet could be a devastator in close. The bullet sledged into the bandit's chest and drove the air from his body. If the bullet penetrated, Logan did not see it, but life faded from Perido's eyes even before Logan crossed to him.

  The man had little, but Logan took it all. He saddled Perido's horse, slid the Winchester into its scabbard along the saddle, and looped the bandoleer of .44s across the saddle horn. He left Perido lying where he had died.

  He rode Perido's horse to his own camp, packed his equipment, and quickly departed. He stayed far off the trail, although he had no expectations that Punto would have others guarding his back trail.

  Logan knew the Zapata. The camp was used by many, and in their time the scouts had been among them. The Zapata was a narrow valley between the mountains. To some it resembled a shoe, and so acquired its name. The water there was plentiful, and was the last for many miles.

  The Zapata stream ran only a dozen yards before again disappearing beneath the desert, so Logan knew almost exactly where Punto's camp would be.

  Punto was wise. At the Zapata, the valley narrowed and was only about three miles wide, with the water almost centered in the flat land. If challenged by a superior force, Punto's band could split and ride into mountains on either side.

  Although not high like the Sierra Madre Range, the mountain edges were steep, and there was only one horse trail into each side. A trail could be held by a single rear guard, and an attacker would have to ride miles to reach the next path into the mountains.

  Of course, attackers could abandon their horses and climb on foot the way the Apaches had, but few would choose that kind of warfare. In these deserts men moved by horseback. Afoot, the distances were too great, and a band like Punto's would not really know the desert anyway. Bandits were mostly dregs who had become more familiar with cantinas than wastelands.

  Trailing Perido's horse and the mule, Logan rode south toward the Zapata. He stayed far off the trail, and resumed his customary horse-easy pace. There was no need to hurry, the Zapata was only a morning ride away, and Logan would need the night to help him.

  The bandits' camp would be close to the water, which meant that reeds and brush would be thick all around. Logan expected that when he was ready he would make his attack through that cover.

  One down, only twenty to go.

  6

  Punto left the card game before evening dusk closed around them. He rarely gambled when he could not clearly see the faces of his opponents. Punto played to win, to win all of the money availa
ble.

  Gambling was as much a part of Punto's planning as the raids themselves. He took his band north, looted all that he could gather, and fled south to safety in Mexico. Then, while his men rested, drank, and womanized he won their shares of gold, silver, and almost anything else he found desirable.

  What fools they were. He had done exactly the same for nearly fifteen years and most, even those who had been on every raid, still had not learned.

  This, Punto's last raid, was proving no different. He already had most of what had been taken in the north. Another day in camp, waiting to see if they were followed by a dangerous posse, Punto claimed, would provide him with all that was worth having.

  The part that Punto liked best was when the gamblers insisted that he sit in.

  "Senor Punto, today I will win back all that I have lost. Come, take cards, and we will show that you have been lucky for too long."

  He would pretend reluctance, but they always insisted that he give them another chance, and he almost always won. Wisely, Punto played out a few bad hands and lost small pots, but within hours his winnings became great. Also wisely, Punto never allowed the money he won to pile high on the blanket they played across. He pocketed his gold and silver, leaving only a few pieces showing, and the players rarely realized how his winnings stacked up. When they rode away, Punto's saddle bags would be heavy with money. The bags could be too heavy, but his majordomo, Juan of one eye would carry more.

  In the foothills of the Sierra Madre, Punto and the four from his hacienda would part with the rest of the band, and all would return to wherever they had come from.

  This year, there would be no plans for another rendezvous. Punto was ending it. The north was becoming too crowded. In one small village they had encountered heavy resistance and had fled ingloriously with two men lost.

  Punto had enough, anyway. In Mexico a common man could live for a year on the sale of a gold ring. Of course, Punto was not common, and he had come to Mexico with money enough to live comfortably for many years.

  The raids had made certain that Senor Wesley Seer continued to live in the style he had established.

  He had been Seer before the name Punto had taken hold. The great war had made him Punto when a light cannon he was serving had exploded and destroyed his looks.

  Tens of thousands of men had suffered worse wounds in the War, but Wesley Seer had been inordinately proud of his handsome appearance. Born to a penniless and landless Louisiana family, pleasing features were all Seer had possessed.

  The cannon's explosion blasted away Seer's cheek and propelled black powder particles into the living flesh. The force of the impact drove Seer's nose sideward, and the sergeant who pulled it straight did a poor job. There was no way to remove the powder from Seer's cheek and for nearly a year the wound repeatedly infected and partially rehealed. When the cheek finally grew new skin, the area was shiny as if polished, and beneath the new skin was a black layer that never lightened. Coarse war time humor renamed Wesley Seer as Dot because of the almost round black spot that covered a large part of the left side of his face.

  Seer never returned home. His unit had been irregulars that hounded along the north's western borders. Other companies of raiders attained a perverse publicity, but Seer's raiders were at least as effective and probably more vicious.

  Within his company, Seer was only a minor cog. Recovering from his wound, he continued to man one of the unit's light field pieces, and no one noticed or cared that Wesley Seer had become strange and distant. Why would they? They had all changed, and as the war wore down the raiders recognized that they had become wanted men, and that once the fighting ceased there would be no place for those who had looted and killed too often and too easily.

  The raiders gambled endlessly over cards and homemade dice. Seer found that even among those practiced players he could win often, although not as regularly as the sergeant who had straightened his nose.

  Sergeant Hoff Fritz also had an after-the-war plan. Fritz intended taking his winnings to California. He would assume a new identity along the way, and to hell with what people in the old south or the worthless damned Yankees thought of what he had done in the war. In California, Fritz would buy a saloon and live rich on other people's drinking and hell raising.

  Seer listened with more attention than most others. He mildly disliked Fritz because of the poor nose straightening, but the Sergeant had ideas that Wesley Seer thought he could improve upon.

  Seer knew about Mexico. He had shared service with a man who had been there. The soldier had spoken longingly of a dirt village on the Gulf of Cortez, a town called Guaymas where a man could live well on almost no money and where servants and women could be hired for pennies. According to the soldier, land could be had for a few pesos, and a man could set himself up with a hacienda and become an honored caballero for only a handful of dollars.

  Seer expected Guaymas would not be that fine, but he also believed that the soldier spoke from personal knowledge, and that a man such as Wesley Seer might do well if he could arrive with enough American money.

  Rumor that the war had ended reached the raiders. Before dark, Seer staked his saddled horse far from the others and tied Sergeant Fritz's alongside. He could do this without questioning because Fritz was deep in gaming, and many of the irregulars were sodden with drink. The war's end was not a minor thing, and most had serious thinking to undertake.

  When the game broke up and the players sought their blankets, Seer approached his sergeant.

  "Sergeant Fritz, you'd better come out and look at your horse. There's something bad wrong with him."

  The game had gone well, and Fritz was expansive. That his horse was sick barely touched his euphoria. Horses came and went. Unlike the east where horses had become hard to find, the raiders had extra animals. His was a good horse, but if the animal went down there were others.

  Seer said, "I moved him over with my animal away from the remuda, Sergeant. Thought he might get over it, but he still stands humped like his belly hurt."

  Fritz said, "Well, I don't know as I'll know what to do with him, but I'll have a look."

  When the sergeant bent close to examine his horse by moonlight, Seer sunk his long Arkansas toothpick into Fritz's kidney. The sergeant grunted once, but Seer twisted the eight-inch blade savagely, and the sergeant went down without further sound.

  Seer listened but heard no alarm. He knelt to cut Fritz's swollen money belt from around the sergeant's thick waist. Fritz still breathed, but with his guts sliced apart he would not live long. Seer gave him no more thought.

  Trailing the sergeant's horse, Seer rode west. He would ride carefully, planning on long distances, but if pressed, he could switch to Fritz's animal and outdistance the wearying mounts in pursuit.

  The soldier had actually been modest in his claims for Guaymas. The town was not much, but it lay on the gulf and was swept by cooler sea breezes. Money was so rare in the area that any coin had value far beyond its face amount. Wesley Seer established his ranchero of many acres and assumed a life of wealthy leisure.

  If he had lived modestly within the barter economy, Seer would have had enough cash to live out his lifetime, but the style he preferred required greater funds. Recalling the ease of their heavily armed raids sweeping into unsuspecting villages afforded Seer his money gathering method.

  For raiding, Senor Wesley Seer would return to his Dot persona. In Mexican, Dot could be Punto, which was pronounced as Poonto by most. To his bandidos, Dot became Punto Negra. Black Spot...the name suited.

  Only a handful of his vaqueros accompanied Seer's raiders. The rest of the brigands were picked up en route. In this manner, Punto Negra's identity remained a mystery because the village of Gauymas and Senor Seer's ranch lay beyond the mighty Sierra Madre mountain range and on the western edge of the coastal plain.

  Only once had one of the casually gathered raiders found his way to the distant hacienda. Punto had welcomed the comrade profusely, then had Juan o
f the one eye quietly murder him and feed the body to the voracious sharks that swarmed in a bay's warm waters.

  Fifteen times Punto had led his raiders, but he was now older and established in Sonora as a man of consequence. His place secure, his coffers full, Wesley Seer prepared to put the killing days behind.

  In the future, Senor Seer might travel to California, and certainly he would be a familiar in Mexico City. Because some would remember, Seer had no plans to visit Texas or New Mexico.

  Within the week, Punto would disappear into the Sierra Madre range to be gone forever. No more would he stink of sweat and sit in the dirt gambling with murderous peons who could never have comprehended the other life enjoyed by their leader.

  Punto shook himself free of thoughts of future pleasures. Although he could not see through the brush and scrub trees that surrounded the stream, his eyes turned north and his mind considered the scout he had left back at the river. The man would return in the morning, and Punto would send another guard a few miles out to replace him in the improbable event that a late riding posse from the north might still try for the raiders who had hit them. He was tired of the woman's wailing, and the gambling pots had become small. One more day, and they would move on.

  Punto's interest shifted to the nearest mountains that gazed blindly down upon them. He had considered placing his lookout on that high ground because the view from the top would extend nearly to the river, and dust clouds heading south would be detectable for many miles. He had not because the climb was only a goat's path, and he wanted his scout to be close to the trail so that night passages would be heard. Jose Perido was along the river, and that was best Next time he might... But there would be no next time. Punto almost regretted his decision.

  For an instant, Logan thought that Punto had somehow discovered him. The outlaw had looked up at the mountains and straight into the telescope's lens. Discovery was not possible—Logan's mind knew that—but staring for many minutes at the raider had tightened Logan's nerves.

  Punto was a leaned man of middle years. There was a touch of the dandy about him, hair too long and sweeping, and a stance of arrogance with a chin-high gaze that seemed to look down on those around him.