Chapter 8

Tuesday was a bonanza! Not only did Will LaFrance show his face at the Lucky Horseshoe, but another kidnapper by the name of Jack Weimar was with him. Weimar operated south of here according to the word from Jesus Lopez, so I wondered if he and LaFrance had something big planned. Well, we would find out if we could capture LaFrance, and we hoped to pick up Weimar at the same time.

They both headed to the rooms with whores the moment they showed up in the saloon. I hoped that his whore would not tell LaFrance that we were looking for him, but Jean assured me that the whores she had talked to had promised not to give us away. They were as appalled by the kidnappings as we were, so we probably were okay. All we had to do was to wait for LaFrance and Weimar to return to the main saloon.

As it turned out, LaFrance came out first. He headed to the bar for a beer, and Jean and I bracketed him once he got there. The way he was half facing the bar, I managed to stick a gun barrel into his gut and Jean did the same for his back in the region of his kidneys. LaFrance kind of deflated when he felt those two guns pressing into him. Jean walked him to a chair while I told the bartender who we were and what we were doing. His niece had been kidnapped a few years ago, so he was on our side as soon as he got the word from me.

I used a manacle to fasten LaFrance's right wrist to the chair leg while we waited for Weimar to show up. I had Jean search LaFrance for guns, and she came up with three. That included a spare hideout gun inside his pants at his back. She also took his two knives. Jean took those out to her horse to stash in her saddlebag for safe keeping, and she barely got back before Weimar came down the stairs from the room where he had fucked the whore.

I left Jean to guard LaFrance and to keep him quiet while I braced Weimar at the bar. The bartender helped by distracting Weimar while I poked my pistol muzzle in his belly. To save us some trouble, the bartender offered us the use of one of the whore's rooms while we questioned the two alleged kidnappers. I had no doubt about LaFrance, but I did have a smidgeon of doubt about Weimar. I figured that LaFrance would settle that question before the night was over.

We chained Weimar's hands behind his back around a post in the storeroom of the saloon before we took LaFrance upstairs for questioning. LaFrance was stripped and tied spreadeagle to the bed. Jean wanted to question him, so I backed out of the way. My God, what that woman did to LaFrance had to be seen to be believed. In only minutes, he was blubbering like a baby and begging me to keep her away from him. There was no loose blood to worry about, but he was reduced to a Hell of pain in only minutes. He answered all of my questions with only the threat of Jean getting back to him. We quit with him by stabbing him in the heart with my stiletto to keep down the amount of blood that had to be cleaned up. Also, we did not want to spoil his face so that the marshal could not identify him and keep us from collecting the reward.

We just rolled LaFrance off the bed and under it before we went to the storeroom to collect Weimar. LaFrance had said that the reason that he had been away from Big Horse so long was because the two of them had kidnapped and sold several girls from the territory even farther south than Weimar's usual operating grounds. We had gotten the name and description of Weimar's broker from LaFrance, but we wanted to verify both by questioning Weimar.

Jean was equally successful with questioning Weimar, and we disposed of him the same way as we did with LaFrance. We swapped places between Weimar and LaFrance and called in the marshal to identify LaFrance for the reward. We had some explaining to do about the condition of the body, but Jean had done such a good job that there was not really much for the marshal to complain about. He believed me when I said that I had killed LaFrance because of his kidnapping spree, so that was the end of that. I gave the marshal $2 to pay for burying LaFrance and Weimar when he gave me the receipt for the body. I also gave the bartender a half-eagle for letting us rent his room.

Jean was really worked up over the way that she had treated the two kidnappers, and she really gave me a workout that night in bed. Wow, that woman really had some venom over kidnappers to work out of her system! I was glad that she was on my side!

This town did not have a courthouse, so we had to wait on collecting the reward. I put the receipt away to keep it safe. There was no time limit on collecting the reward, so we did not have to hurry unless we ran out of money, and that was not going to happen any time soon!

LaFrance and Weimar gave us the names and contact information on where to find their brokers as well as the same information for two kidnappers working even farther south than Weimar's neighborhood. We also found out that LaFrance had been working with Weimar in kidnapping girls, and they had just delivered four girls to the broker we were going after. Hopefully, we could catch him before he made the delivery.

We set out for Waverly Crossing first thing the next morning, and we arrived three days later. We had really pushed our horses, and they were beat. It was not likely, but the broker, Oskar Navarro, just might still be in the area. The first place we checked was the cantina that was the usual meeting place with Weimar, but Navarro was not there. That was no surprise nor was the fact that we could not get any information from the bartender, even with Jean's perfect Spanish. She had tried to intimidate the bartender with the hidalgo version of Mexican Spanish, but even that did not do any good.

We had not said why we were looking for Navarro, and we hoped that he would not be scared off if he heard that two gringos were looking for him. If we were lucky, he would think that we were new suppliers looking for a broker. On the other hand, if we were luckier, we would catch him before it made any difference.

There were three more cantinas in Waverly Crossing, and we visited all of them with no more luck. However, as we were leaving the last cantina, we were approached by a Mexican boy who asked how badly did we want to find Navarro. I let Jean talk to him, and he offered to lead us to Navarro if we would pay him for his effort. Naturally, Jean agreed, and they haggled for a few minutes before settling on a half-eagle ($5) as the price. Normally, we would consider that to be highway robbery, but we were in a hurry to find Navarro and did not quibble over the price too much.

Juan led us to a small house on the edge of town and said that Navarro was inside with two vaqueros and several gringo girls. If that were true, Juan had just saved us a lot of annoying work. I told Jean to hold a gun on Juan while I checked out the situation. She was to shoot him if anything went wrong. I did not think that she would do it, but I was trying to intimidate Juan into not giving us away.

I crept up to the house and looked in through a window. Damned if Juan had not been square with us. I was so relieved that I gave him another half-eagle as a tip and told him to get the Hell away from there. He grabbed the gold piece and ran like the Devil itself was chasing him.

I told Jean to cover me from the window while I went to the front door. I did not want any shooting around the four girls I counted in the room with the men if it could be avoided. There was a lot of chance that one of the girls might be hit by a stray bullet even if the Mexicans did not try to kill them out of spite.

I waited until Jean was ready before I went to the front door. My cover story was that I was a kidnapper who had three girls and was looking for a broker. I was going to tell Navarro that I had tracked him down with information supplied by Weimar. If that worked, we had a chance of getting all four girls safely away. If not, we would just play it by ear.