Renegades by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

Being a revolutionary didn’t pay very well, Frank thought, and the food wasn’t very good, either. He sat with his back propped against the rock wall of the cave and looked at the single tortilla and the small spoonful of beans that Esteban had brought to him on a battered tin plate.

Esteban had a similar plate. He sat down cross-legged next to Frank and said, “You see now why Antonio needs money for supplies. He will not steal from the people.”

“But he’ll steal from his own father,” Frank said. He rolled the tortilla and scooped up some of the beans with it.

Esteban’s shoulders lifted and fell. “Don Felipe can afford it.”

“It’s his money,” Frank argued. “It doesn’t matter whether the government takes it away from him in the form of unjust taxes, or if a band of so-called revolutionaries extorts it from him to support their cause. It’s not right either way.”

“Perhaps not. Do you believe in the lesser of two evils, Señor Morgan?”

Frank hesitated. “Maybe not in principle, but in real life I reckon it does work out that way sometimes.”

“Then consider us the lesser of the two evils now at large in the border country,” Esteban said.

“I only have your word for that.”

“No,” Esteban said flatly. “You have seen Estancia with your own eyes. You saw what he had done to Pablo. You are a man who recognizes true evil when you see it, Señor Morgan.”

Frank couldn’t argue with that. Estancia was a cold-blooded bastard who wouldn’t hesitate to destroy anyone who got in his way. Frank also had no trouble believing that he was a criminal as well, just like the Rurales that he led. The only difference was that Estancia had never gotten caught.

Yet.

Frank had already started weighing his options. He knew that Porfirio Diaz, Mexico’s El Presidente, was an iron-fisted dictator in his own right. But it was unlikely that Diaz would tolerate one of his Rurale captains setting up an outlaw empire of his own along the Rio Grande. If Diaz knew what Estancia was doing, there was at least a possibility that he would move in with the Mexican army and clean up the situation.

Antonio and his cohorts weren’t going to turn to Diaz for help, though. They hated and distrusted Diaz almost as much as they did Estancia. So that wasn’t likely to come about. On the other side of the river were the Texas Rangers, but they had no jurisdiction over here. The Rangers were good Texans, which meant that if there was no legal and proper way to do the right thing, they’d just do it illegally and improperly. But even they would balk at crossing the border and going to war against a troop of Rurales, Frank thought. That would cause too big of an international incident even for Texas.

Like it or not, that sort of left Antonio, in his guise of the Black Scorpion, and his men to oppose the true bandidos. Frank couldn’t see any other way.

“What about Stormy and Dog?” he asked Esteban.

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