A rider materialized from the dust ahead of him, and Flora, the blonde who belonged to Beers, came galloping toward the wagon ahead of him. She shouted something to the driver of that wagon, then galloped on back toward Cuno, putting her calico gelding up near his lumbering team and jouncing wagon. She wore a red calico blouse, tight denims, and cream duster that flapped around her like wings. A .36 Smith & Wesson was thonged low on her left thigh. She jerked her bandanna down from her nose and mouth, and her face looked small and fragile beneath the brim of her slightly oversized Stetson.
“Beers says Trinidad Tanks is just on the other side of this dust bowl. We’ll be pulling in. He says it’s a tight fit, but it’s got good grass and water.”
Cuno nodded as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and holding the ribbons in one hand, the blacksnake in the other. Beers obviously knew the area, as did Sapp. Likely, both men had been on the run down here at one time. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
She kept her cool brown eyes on Cuno for about one more second then lifted the bandanna over her nose, turned her head forward, and touched spurs to the calico’s flanks. She galloped off and Cuno glanced back to watch her; it was hard not to watch the blonde, pretty in a suntanned, tomboyish way. He turned his head forward, and as he did he thought he glimpsed her swing her own head around to look at him again as she galloped back to the next wagon.
Nearly an hour later, Cuno stood in his seat to hooraw his two mules up out of the lakebed, along which adobe and rock ruins of a long-extinct village once stood—there’d probably been gold and silver mines in the mountains around the playa—then turned it into a broad canyon mouth opening on the right. Dust sifted from the three wagons that had pulled in ahead of him. Those wagons pulled to stops where the canyon walls opened wide and the area formed a green park where a stream meandered through sycamores, willows, and cottonwoods.
An ancient church ruin stood amongst the trees, fronting the stream, birds winging in and out of its gaping front opening that had probably once been covered by stout oak doors. There was plenty of grass along the southern canyon wall flanking the church, and here the wagons were driven, splashing across the stream, the men berating their weary mules and cracking their whips over the teams’ lathered backs, making sounds like pistol fire.
Cuno took his time with his team and with Renegade who’d been trailing along behind his wagon. He watered the animals in the creek, enjoying the memories the mules conjured as he carefully, almost dreamily adjusted their harnesses and hames and made sure all the buckles and chains were secure before inspecting the mules themselves for injury.
His father had taught him the value of a good mule team, and their mules had become like family. Cuno had always thought he’d have mules and his own freight business, and he’d managed to run one for a time in Colorado until the Utes had attacked the Trent ranch to which he and his partner, Serenity Parker, had run a load of winter freight to fortify the ranch against the looming high-country winter.
He’d lost Serenity, but he’d managed to save himself, Camilla, Michelle Trent, and the Lassiter children from the Utes before he’d gotten crossways with Dusty Mason and ended up in the federal prison.
When he’d tended the mules and set them to graze, he glanced around to see the other men building fires or heading out with rifles to patrol the area against interlopers. Several others gathered wood while the man who’d been designated cook and his helper began throwing a meal together—likely beans and dried jerky again, which seemed to be the caravan’s staple, maybe rabbit if anyone had shot or snared one. Snakes seen along the trail were fair game for the stew pot, as well.
Beers and Sapp stood around a rock over which they’d draped a map, and, smoking, they appeared to be discussing their route.
Cuno was vaguely curious about that route, but he could live without knowing where he was heading. He didn’t care how lost in Mexico he became. He’d likely be down here awhile. It was best to forget about home.
He glanced at the wagon he’d been pulling. He’d taken a look through the front pucker, of course, but all he could see were crates stacked tight against the wagon’s sides and tailgate. The crates were unmarked. Likely guns and ammo, and he didn’t care about that, either, so he turned his natural curiosity away from it. He was a fugitive. He couldn’t get into any more trouble than he was already in.
When he’d washed in the stream and filled his canteens, he went over to pour a cup of coffee from the cook’s fire. Beers shouldered up to him for a moment and told him which watch would be his tonight. Aside from that, Cuno spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him. He parried a couple of dubious looks, then drank his coffee alone before grabbing his rifle and deciding to take a walk around, maybe inspect the church.
He walked along the stream for fifty yards, then followed an old path that led up through it via a small cemetery, long since abandoned and grown up with grass and shrubs. He entered the church through a small side door and heard the echoes of his boots off the cavernous walls and high ceiling.
The place had been gutted by time, spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling. The flagstone floor was cracked and buckled, and many flags were missing, showing the grit-laden clay beneath. There were no windows, only a door on each side and the large front door that gaped broadly, allowing the late afternoon light to angle inside, flooding the room with gray-blue shadows.
Cuno walked around, looking at the old walls and the ceiling, the pitted flags, feeling the eerie presence of ghosts from generations past, when the church had once served the village whose ruins remained along the playa, whose dead lay in dusty, sunken graves, long forgotten.
The large, sepulchral church gave him a sense of how ancient this country was compared to his own. All the misery it had known, all the people who had settled here, lived out their lives and died. All the wars. All the men like himself to whom it had offered sanctuary over the centuries. Men like himself maybe who had only wanted a decent life but had found themselves kicked around by random currents that were always swirling, kicking a soul this way and then that.
Oh, well. He’d find a woman here eventually. A good life. What choice did he have?
A woman’s laughter tinkled beyond the far side door, as if dramatizing his thoughts. Flora said something, then laughed again. A man’s voice pitched jovially, intimately, joined hers. The voice didn’t sound like Beers’s.
Cuno crossed the silent church to the far side wall and pressed his back to it about five feet from the open door. The voice had fallen silent but now the woman said angrily, “No, Dave. I told you—no!”
Dave Sapp’s back must have been facing the church, for his voice was muffled when he responded, and Cuno couldn’t hear him clearly. But he heard the belligerence in the man’s voice.
Flora said something in a frustrated, fearful tone but keeping her voice down, and Cuno turned through the doorway and walked outside. There was a large cottonwood near the church, and the two were standing beyond this and some willows.
Sapp said as though through gritted teeth, “You think you can have it any way you want it—that it?”
“Let go of me, Dave, or so help me I’ll scream for Beers!”
Cuno moved around the tree in time to see Flora jerk her arm out of Sapp’s grip. She jerked around, but Sapp stuck out his foot and tripped her. Flora hit the ground with a gasp. Cuno stepped forward, between the girl and the tall, blond-mustached Sapp whose face beneath the broad brim of his tan kepi was swollen red with rage.
“I think the woman’s finished with the conversation,” Cuno said, knowing he was likely pounding the first nail in his Mexican coffin.
Sapp’s eyes blazed at him. “You just stepped in the wrong pasture, honyocker.”
“She’s had enough.”
“Knock it off,” Flora said, pushing up on her elbows, keeping her voice down. “Both of you!”
Sapp showed his two silver front teeth as he ground his jaws and stepped toward Cuno. “You sp
yin’ on us, boy?”
“I was in the church.”
Sapp took another step, and suddenly the knife he’d had on his belt was in his hand, and he was crouching and moving toward Cuno fast, holding the knife as though to slice it across Cuno’s belly.
“Dave!” Flora hissed, crabbing out of the way on her rump.
“Shut up,” Sapp said, brows hooding his eyes savagely.
He wasn’t holding the knife right. Cuno spread his boots, then kicked his right foot up. It connected with the underside of Sapp’s wrist.
The brigand gave a startled grunt as the knife flew out of his hand. Instinctively, he whipped the injured wrist back, and then Cuno bounded forward and hammered the man’s face with a right cross and then a left uppercut.
Sapp didn’t know what hit him.
Dust flew as he spun around and fell hard, kicking up dirt and gravel. He pushed up onto his hands and knees and shook his head, throwing his thin, blond hair around before glaring at Cuno over his right shoulder.
Cuno held his fists up. He could feel the girl’s eyes on him in shock as he sidestepped around Sapp, hoping the man would leave the trouble where it was. The last thing he needed was to be cut loose from the caravan this deep into Mexico, with Yaqui thick as buzzards on a gut wagon.
Damnit, why hadn’t he just stayed with his wagon and his team and his horse and minded his own business?
“Stop,” Flora said, pushing herself to her feet and regarding Cuno and Sapp anxiously before swinging a glance in the direction of the main camp, obviously hoping that Beers hadn’t heard the commotion. “Both of you—stop it right now!”
“I don’t think so, sweetheart,” Sapp said as he leapt to his feet and lunged toward Cuno, faking a jab with his left fist. When Cuno didn’t go for it, he still hurled a haymaker. He was no bare-knuckle fighter, likely just a saloon brawler.
He grunted as he spun, and then he yelped when Cuno smashed his right fist, knuckles out, into his ear.
Sapp turned his face toward him, and it was even redder than before. Blood dribbled from the cut on the back of his ear. Fear flashed in the man’s eyes as he realized he was fording the wrong stream. Then he glanced at the girl shuffling around them anxiously, and his eyes went hard once more.
Now there’d be no stopping him, Cuno knew. If the girl wasn’t here, he’d stop. But he wouldn’t stop now.
Cuno would have to finish it fast.
Sapp was too angry now to fight any better than he already had, and Cuno let him come. Easily ducking another haymaker and feinting away from a left jab, Cuno hammered his left into the man’s belly, then drove his right fist into Sapp’s jaw.
Sapp stumbled backward.
While Cuno had him off balance, he hit his other ear and then his jaw again, and while Sapp continued to stumble backward, falling, Cuno followed him, unable to stop himself now, the tension of the past several days and also his disdain for the men he’d thrown in with uncoiling within him.
Again and again he smashed Sapp’s face, and when he was down, he hit him once more.
He straightened and backed up. Fire raged through him. Bells tolled in his ears. He was holding his jaws so tight he could hear his molars grinding.
Sapp lay on his back, knees slightly bent. He shook his head, planted his hands beneath him, and tried to push himself up, but he couldn’t do it. He sank back again in the gravel, his belly expanding and contracting quickly as he breathed.
A familiar voice chuckled behind Cuno. He heard the trill of a spur and then Bennett Beers’s voice: “You had enough yet, Dave?”
Faintly, Cuno heard Flora gasp as she jerked her head toward the man who’d put his stamp on her.
11
BEERS WALKED UP with two other men flanking him. He was puffing one of his long Mexican cheroots, and he held a brass-chased Henry rifle on his shoulder. Against the growing night chill, he wore a tan duster over his black frock coat, silk shirt, and string tie.
“Thought you didn’t allow fighting amongst your men, Bennett,” Flora said. “I heard a bunch of scuffling and cussing while I was gathering firewood, and walked over to see these two going at it like two hammerheads in the same corral.”
Beers slid his devilish, blue eyes toward her, rolling his cheroot around between his teeth. “Hope it didn’t ruffle your drawing-room sensibilities, my pet.”
She looked at him sharply, flushing.
Sapp lifted his head and heaved himself up on his elbows. “My fault.” His lower lip and both ears were bloody. “I reckon I was just teasin’ the new dog a little to see what kinda fight he had in him.” As he tugged on one of his silver-capped teeth as though it might have been loose, he cut his eyes to Cuno but could not completely conceal his disdain.
“Did you find that out, Dave?” asked one of the men flanking Beers, who studied his first lieutenant coolly through downcast eyes.
“I reckon I did.” Sapp chuckled and raised his left hand. “Come on, kid—you done enough damage. Now give me a hand up.”
Cuno grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet, keeping himself tense and ready for anything. He wouldn’t have put it past Sapp to try a sucker punch.
Beers cut his half-shut eyes to the girl. “That how it was, Flora?”
She wrinkled the skin above the bridge of her nose. “How else would it be?”
“I don’t know. I just know I’ve told Dave a thousand times that we’ll put up with no fighting amongst the men, as we have bigger fish to fry down here. And then I find him carryin’ on, and… you’re here, too.” He rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other and let his pale blue eyes flick to the girl’s ample breasts pushing out from behind her calico shirt.
She drew her shoulders forward a little, and self-righteous indignation flashed in her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean, you bastard?” She’d whispered it, bright eyes slitted, then brushed past Beers and stomped back in the direction of the camp.
Beers smiled in admiration as he watched her walk away from him.
“Good-lookin’ girl,” Sapp said, donning his hat and brushing blood from his lip as he shouldered up beside Beers. He threw an arm around the gang leader’s shoulders and gave him an affectionate squeeze. “But that there’s a little too much girl for me!”
He chuckled as he and Beers began walking in the direction of the camp, the two other men falling into step behind them.
Beers said something that Cuno couldn’t hear, and all four men threw their heads back, laughing.
As they rounded the rear corner of the church, Sapp stared over his shoulder at Cuno for about five menacing seconds, then turned his head forward and walked away with Beers and the others.
Cuno slept lightly that night with his weapons close to hand. He knew Sapp would make a play for him sooner or later, and he had to stay prepared.
The next two days were hard pulls across the Sonoran Desert—hot, dusty, grueling, and tedious even this late in the year when the days, with their blazing sun, were blessedly short. At night, Cuno slept only a few hours before he was kicked awake to take one of the several revolving scouts. Two Gatling guns were always posted, but he was usually sent to a rocky knob somewhere to keep scout with his rifle.
He didn’t mind. He enjoyed being away from the others, as their company—if you could call it that—was growing as tedious as the desert rolling away in all directions toward distant, blue mountains in the south that appeared to grow only minimally closer. He’d be relieved to draw his time from Beers and light out on his own again. It had been nice having a pack to run with for a while, but he was once again yearning for the company of only his horse.
Renegade even smelled better than this lot of cutthroats. All except Flora, of course, who was as dangerous, he realized now, as she was comely.
On the group’s third night out from the place where Cuno and Sapp had locked horns, Cuno found himself around midnight keeping watch from a boulder about ten feet down from the top of a tall escarpment of
ancient, eroded lava. The campfire was a flicker of light behind him, beyond a knoll. From his vantage he could see a complete circle around the camp they’d made in a vast nest of black boulders strewn eons ago by an erupting volcano chain.
He heard the light foot thuds of someone walking toward him and looked down to see a shadow moving amongst the rocks that resembled a giant house of cards that had been knocked into a ragged pile. He knew it must be someone from the camp, but he wasn’t out here to make assumptions.
Softly, just loudly enough for the person now just directly below him, he said, “Identify yourself.”
The dark, slender figure stopped moving. He saw a tan hat move and a pale, oval face tilt toward him. “Flora. Identify yourself.”
“Your knight in shining armor.”
The girl made a scoffing sound. She didn’t move for a time. Finally, she said, “Hold on.” Then she moved around in the rocks until her shadow disappeared. He could hear her footsteps growing louder, and he could hear her breathing as she climbed the escarpment, grunting a little as she slipped over large, slender rocks.
He could smell the freshness of her just before she appeared before him, moving along the same small corridor he’d taken up here. There was a thumbnail moon to her right, and it shone in her hair tumbling down her shoulders.
She stood before him, looking down at him obliquely. He did not get up. Finally, she hiked a hip on a rock behind her, kicked her danging leg.
“Fool stunt you pulled the other day.”
“I didn’t realize I was leaping into quicksand until I was nose deep.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means your stunt was just as foolish.”
“If it was any of your business.” She looked around cautiously for a time. Sliding off the rock, she sat down three feet to his right, pressing her back to the stone escarpment. “You could have told Beers. Might have got you somewhere.”
“Where?”
She hiked a shoulder. “Maybe into a higher pay bracket.”
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