Gringos #9: Durango (An Adventure Novel of the Mexican Revolution)

By JD Sandon

As the Revolutionary war in Mexico builds to a savage climax, The Gringos face their sternest test. In a welter of blood and a hail of death-dealing lead, they must avert the most vicious and cunning plot yet to rob the people of their chance of freedom. The Gringos ... four men on the wrong side of the border, the wrong side of the law and only just on the right side of Hell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Apr 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798215766453

JD Sandon

J.D. Sandon was the pseudonym used by two authors: Angus Wells and John Harvey to write an exciting series of books set in the Mexican Revolution of the early 1900's. Both writers ave contributed to other series as well as their own.

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Western Fiction

As the Revolutionary war in Mexico builds to a savage climax, The Gringos face their sternest test. In a welter of blood and a hail of death-dealing lead, they must avert the most vicious and cunning plot yet to rob the people of their chance of freedom. The Gringos ... four men on the wrong side of the border, the wrong side of the law and only just on the right side of Hell.

GRINGOS 9: DURANGO

By J. D. Sandon

First published by Mayflower Books in 1982

Copyright © J. D. Sandon 1982, 2024

This electronic edition published April 2024

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book / Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Series Editor: Ben Bridges

Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.

‘Shoot all the brave horses And how will we ride?’

– John Stewart

‘If there is sadness in our faces, it is because of our poverty, our daily struggle to survive.’

– Mateo Zapata, son of Emiliano Zapata,

paying homage to his father in Mexico City, August 1979

Chapter One

THERE WERE THREE of them. Blocking the light that filtered through the slats of the still-swinging door. Rain falling from their clothes in rivulets that soon became clogged in the sawdust and dirt of the cantina floor. Three. The one in the center was tall, at least three inches over six foot, the brim of his sombrero bent down by the storm that he had ridden through. His shoulders bunched large against an oiled slicker which glistened in the orange glow from the kerosene lamp swinging above the bar. The rowels of his spurs jingled slightly, even though his boots were now still. Cradled beneath his left arm was a rifle, its long barrel sheathed in a fringed case of soft, wet leather.

His companion to his right side was shorter by as much as a foot. He wore a sodden striped blanket for a coat, draped across his right shoulder and tied beneath his left hip. The force of the rain seemed to have merged the colors into one another. His hat was dented and black; silver conchos shone dully from about the crown. A heavy gun belt was strapped low across his hips, an old Colt Peacemaker tied down at the right side, a small leather thong around the hammer.

The third man had somehow managed to keep a stub of black cigar alight through the last minutes of the downpour. Now he withdrew it from his mouth and let smoke drift upwards towards the low ceiling. Gold glimmered at the front of his teeth, under the ragged dark of his mustache. He almost smiled.

This one was younger than the men he rode with, less, perhaps, than twenty years of age. His body, even shielded beneath his slicker, was lean and muscular. It gave off a sense of barely concealed speed and aggression—like a panther always ready to leap. He was hatless, his hair blackened and flattened by the rain, tight on the high curve of his skull. His nose was angular, the eyes on either side of it bright and pale blue. He, too, held a rifle in the crook of his arm, the metal of the barrel gleaming. A black gun belt was angled down towards his left hand and the fingers of the hand brushed negligently against the rectangular butt of a Colt .45 automatic.

Three men: blocking the light from the street.

Three.

Cade Onslow angled his chair back so that it rested on the rear legs only. He spread his left arm across the stained top of the table, pushing, as if by accident, the bottle and glass, beyond his easy reach. Clearing the way for his own right hand.

‘That your horse?’ It was the youngest who spoke, his voice light and musical, his eyes playful as they flickered over Onslow’s face and body.

There were only three others in the cantina—two peons who had been rolling dice on a table at the side of the room and the straw-haired bartender, whose mouth now hung open slackly and whose single eye was fastened on the space between Onslow and the three newcomers as if expecting that at any moment it would be broken apart by gunfire.

Onslow guessed it had to be his horse.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s my horse.’

The questioner laughed, high-pitched, almost a giggle. Onslow noticed for the first time that the brightness in his pale blue eyes was far from natural.

‘Where you get that horse?’ asked the short man, turning his body a little so that his gun hand, too, was nearer to its weapon.

Onslow glanced momentarily at the lamp shifting in the wind. ‘Who’s asking?’ he said, his voice hardening.

Blue-eyes laughed.

‘This,’ announced the short man, almost touching the central figure on the arm, ‘is Christo Gomez.’

Gomez didn’t budge; didn’t bat an eyelid. He didn’t need to be told who he was. Neither did Onslow. Not now the first introduction had been made. Christo Gomez was a bandit leader whose men had taken their pickings from all sides involved in the Mexican Civil War, without at any time pausing to ask themselves who they were robbing and killing or why. What was there to ask? The answer was simple—greed.

What—of all human emotions—could be more simple than that?

Gomez had staked himself a territory east and south of Durango and held onto it tightly. Any attempts by either the Federales or the forces of the revolution to shift him from those hills had met with failure. From the Mezquital river to the valley of the Rancho Grande, Gomez men held sway. Even when the bandit leader and hero of the revolution, the famed Pancho Villa, sent emissaries to Gomez and asked him to join forces, the answer had been no. A no strongly reinforced by returning Villa his men without their horses, their weapons or their boots.

If Villa had not been so engaged in racing the other revolutionary leaders to the spoils of Mexico City, he would have ridden into the hills himself and taught Christo Gomez a lesson.

Perhaps.

Now Cade Onslow was sitting sheltering from the rain and enjoying a few glasses of tequila to keep back the cold, and who should come in and share his shelter and warmth but Christo Gomez himself. And far enough away from Durango—right on the edge of the bandit’s territory—to make such an event unlikely.

The ways of life are strange.

‘Where do you get this horse?’ repeated the short man. ‘Gomez ask the question. He want to know.’

Onslow raised an eyebrow. ‘If this is Christo Gomez and he wishes to learn something from me, perhaps he will ask with his own words.’

The short Mexican bristled with anger and his already swarthy face darkened still further. The youngster laughed and tapped his fingers against the cross-hatching of his gun butt. Gomez himself remained unmoved; the rain continued to drip from the bottom of his slicker but his spurs were now still.

‘The horse,’ Gomez said at last. ‘Tell us about the horse.’

His voice was deeper than Onslow had anticipated, there was something tired and old at the root of it, a tiredness that failed to show in the way he stood or the expression on his face as he waited for Onslow’s answer.

‘What’s so important about a horse?’ the American said.

‘There are horses and horses,’ laughed blue-eyes.

‘Brands and brands,’ said the shorter man.

‘That horse,’ said Gomez, ‘bears the brand of the Federales.’

Onslow shrugged. ‘If I put on the uniform of the Federales, does that make me one of them?’ He stared at Gomez. ‘If I take your hat and coat, shall I become Christo Gomez?’

The short Mexican bunched his fists and glared at Onslow as if he had uttered blasphemy. The blue-eyed man giggled and spat the cigar end into the center of the room. Gomez was still unimpressed. Also he was getting a trifle impatient. He began to angle his rifle downwards, so that the fringed sheath slowly slid down the barrel.

‘You better tell him about the horse,’ advised the younger Mexican, shifting his shoulders under the short oilskin which finished above his gun belt. A drop of rain shone from the grip of his Colt. Without looking, he smeared it away with his thumb. Onslow watched as the thumb continued forward and squeezed the main safety catch down to free the gun’s sliding breech. The rest of the hand tightened about the grip and Onslow knew that the heel of the hand had pressed the butt safety free also.

‘Feller ridin’ him didn’t seem to be needing him anymore,’ Onslow said.

‘How come?’ asked Shorty.

‘On account of I’d put a couple of .45 slugs through his chest.’

Blue-eyes laughed his high-pitched laugh.

‘You say this,’ said Gomez, ‘but we have seen Federales in these hills. And others, gringos and our own countrymen, riding sometimes with them.’

Onslow nodded: didn’t he know that? What else was he doing riding around Durango while the bulk of Villa’s army drove downwards towards Mexico City, riding the rail tracks that had survived being blown up, his men—and women—hanging from the sides of freight cars or riding the roofs, singing and chanting their victory all the way.

Didn’t he know that?

What he didn’t know was why.

Maybe Gomez did.

Maybe Gomez would tell him.

Maybe his friend Jonas Strong would come through that cantina door in back of the Mexicans with his Browning automatic shotgun held tight in both hands.

Maybe lightning would strike them dead from the sky instead.

The last time Onslow had seen Strong he was riding off to the north of the territory and not looking back. That had been three days ago.

‘I was riding with Villa,’ Onslow said. ‘A hundred miles north and east of here. We ran into a troop of federal forces. My own horse was shot from under me. I didn’t take to being on foot for long. The first good mount I saw, I shot the rider from its saddle.’

‘A good story, gringo,’ smiled Blue-eyes, ‘but why would a man such as yourself be riding with Villa. A mercenario.’ He said it as if it were a very dirty word.

‘Why?’ asked Gomez—and the sheath fell away from his rifle and shushed across the floor like a slow-moving snake.

‘He’s told you,’ answered Onslow, looking at the youngest man. ‘I am a mercenary. I fight for money.’

Gomez spat without turning his head.

Onslow’s dark eyes narrowed. His mouth tightened beneath the line of his thick black mustache. His weather-worn face showed all of its years. He said: ‘I did not think that Christo Gomez was averse to killing men for money.’

A glass came apart in the bartender’s hands and the crack took two pairs of eyes swiveling round. Not Onslow. Not Gomez. The bandit leader’s rifle started to angle quickly upwards; Onslow’s fingers closed on the grip of his Colt automatic.

The men’s eyes locked one with another.

One second.

One second in which the two dice players at the side of the room took it into their heads to make a run for the door.

Wood scraped on wood.

Gomez, despite his instinct and training, allowed his attention to be pulled round. His mind, though, had already decided that he was going to show the gringo what happened to men who spoke to him without sufficient care.

The bullet sailed high to Onslow’s right, smacking into the rough adobe of the cantina wall and ricocheting away. Onslow had already thrown himself to the left, pulling his pistol as he did so. His left arm sent the table spinning forwards towards the three Mexicans, bottle and glass crashing into smithereens. Blue-eyes shouted out and dragged his own automatic clear of his holster. His first shot struck one of the dice players in the right buttock, tumbling him into the center of the room. His second splintered wood away from the seat of the chair in which Onslow had been sitting.

The second dice-player halted in front of Gomez, terror-struck. His wide eyes were pleading, his lips moving already in silent prayer. He didn’t have time to get a whole lot off his chest.

Gomez fired a rifle bullet into it at close range.

That got things off his chest with a vengeance.

Blood and tissue and body fiber sprayed around the interior of the cantina. A splotch of red flew into the back wall like a shooting star. The man was lifted off his feet by the impact of the slug; lifted up and thrown backwards so that he eclipsed the star with his own already dead body.

As he slumped down his mouth let out a groan, unaware that its owner was no