Free The Red Sombrero by Nelson Nye

the dwindling margin of time between himself and those onzas and retribution. This unwanted reminder made him shiver again until it crossed his mind that he had nothing to worry about so long as the gold was on hand when Tano got here.
    He clenched his fists, impotently cursing tinder his breath. By rights every nickel of that dough was his. He had found it, gotten it away from the Federals — had come within an ace of paying for it with his life. He shuddered to think how far he must have walked, wandering around through those hills trying to dodge the damned soldiers. And now this insufferable Cordray, this mincing fop of a Spanish hidalgo, proposed to steal this security away from him!
    Sweat broke out on the backs of Reno’s hands as the injustice of Cordray’s attitude began to instill his mind with its poisons. He felt the gathering blood pounding into his temples as outrage fed the fires of his wrath. The ranchman became a symbol, personification of greed and rapaciousness.
    Reno, gnashing his teeth, commenced a hunt for his bottle, at last discovering it beside the abandoned chair. Finding it empty, he was about to fling it away in a fury when he heard the approach of footsteps overlain with the jingle of spurs. His eyes narrowed blearily. If this turned out to be Cordray …
    Still gripping the neck of the bottle, but holding it now like a weapon, the American tiptoed to the left of the door and, flattening against the wall, grimly waited.
    • • •
    Bennie, who didn’t want any trouble with Descardo, heard the results of Cordray’s recent eloquence with mixed emotions. They were standing by the corral, looking over the colts the wrangler had fetched in off the range for bronc-stomper breaking. “Look at that apron-faced bay,” Corday said. “Jesucristo! See the breadth of chest — look at those quarters. That one that will run like the wind!”
    Bennie followed the patron’s pointing finger but did not comment. Don Luis called to his breaker of broncs, “Put a rope on him, Carlos.”
    The broad-shouldered narrow-hipped man in scuffed range clothes reached down his rope from a saddle on the pen’s top pole and slipped through the bars, standing quiet and imperturbably while the excited three-year-olds dashed to the corral’s farthest side. This was not a square corral; it was built in the shape of a bull ring, thus precluding any chance of a horse being crippled in a corner. Carlos stood for a moment, casually smoking his brown-paper cigarette, while the milling horses jammed together, snorting and whickering nervously, their wide rolling eyes watching the man with increasing alarm.
    Abruptly Carlos’ wrist twisted back and then forward. The loop he’d shaken out went through the air with the speed of an arrow, dropping neat and snug about the bay’s arching neck.
    The frightened animal went into the air with a squeal, its companions breaking and wheeling away to either side as the man dallied his rope around the post in the pen’s center for purchase and, darting left, took up the slack.
    The bay horse fought with all the fury of unthinking terror but the man was an expert at this kind of thing. Once the horse hurled himself against the bars and took hide off, squealing shrilly without avail. Its eyes rolled wildly as it tried unsuccessfully to get its legs once again off the ground. Carlos put more weight on the rope and in a matter of moments the half-choked horse found himself within three feet of the post. Glassy eyed, he stood on braced legs breathing wheezily.
    Cordray said, “Put a saddle on him.”
    Carlos stood like a block of stone, the smoke from his cigarette dribbling into squinted eyes. The horse heaved mightily and abruptly fell down. Spitting out the butt of his cigarette, Carlos eased up on the rope a small fraction and swiftly tied it.
    Picking up his hackamore the man slipped it over the bay’s head and tied it short to the post, afterwards flipping off the reata. Quickly now