Hoping the quiet splash of the fountain would mask the noise he made, Noel scrambled up the nearest post of the loggia that bordered the courtyard and managed to hoist himself onto its sloped roof. A clay tile came loose and skittered off the edge, shattering with a shrill ring that brought the voices this way.
It was pointless to swear. Noel dashed the sweat from his eyes and started crawling up the crumbling stuccoed wall toward the window. He was halfway to it when a soft owl hoot from below caught his attention.
Panting, his cuts stinging from sweat, Noel braced his boot toe on a support beam projecting from the wall and glanced down. He saw Cody and Lisa-Marie standing side by side, both staring up at him. Annoyance stung him, and suddenly he felt like a fool.
“What are you doing down there?” he called softly.
“I climbed out the window as soon as Senora Chavez locked me in,” said Lisa-Marie. “Come on down.”
Why hadn’t she shown up sooner? He choked back the temptation to yell at her and gestured furiously. “Get to the stables. I’ll join you there.”
They hesitated a moment, then Cody tapped his sister on the shoulder and they melted into the shadows. Seconds later, while Noel was still trying to figure out how to maneuver himself down, Don Emilio and a handful of servants burst into the courtyard and fanned out.
Don Emilio’s distinctive voice was not smooth now. It was iron-hard, issuing orders in rapid Spanish. Noel resisted the instinctive urge to plaster himself to the wall and instead scurried upward as fast as he could. He caught the window ledge, dangled precariously for a few moments until his scrambling feet found toeholds, and dragged himself bodily inside the room.
Sprawling on the floor, he rested for a moment to regain his breath. His chest and back throbbed mercilessly, and he thought that heroism was for the birds.
As a guest room, Lisa-Marie’s accommodations lacked a great deal. It was tiny, barely large enough to hold a narrow bed of heavily carved walnut, a night table, a crucifix, and an armoire. The door stood open, and beyond it could be glimpsed a larger chamber filled with candlelight.
Noel was picking himself up when he heard a scolding voice coming. A woman dressed in a voluminous, ruffled wrapper and shawl stepped inside. She froze at the sight of him. Her small plump hands went to her mouth, and her eyes widened until he thought they might pop.
“Sangre de Cristo,” she said, most improperly, and seized an unlit candlestick from the bedside table. She rushed at him, brandishing the candlestick like a wild woman. “Thief! Brigand! Rapist! Murderer! You steal my Lisa-Marie, my nina del ojo. You wicked man! You beast! You—”
Ducking beneath the rain of blows, most of which were as glancing as they were inaccurate, Noel seized her wrist and wrenched the candlestick from her hand. She sputtered and struggled, but beneath her plump form lay no real strength.
“Oh!” she cried. “Oh, Dios!”
She swooned suddenly, making herself an unwieldy, limp burden of incredible weight. Puffing, Noel struggled with her and managed to drag her to Lisa-Marie’s unslept-in bed. He dropped her upon the snowy expanse of starched linen trimmed with Battenberg lace and dashed through the larger room to the door. Just as he eased it open, however, a trio of servants appeared in the corridor.
They gave a shout. “There he is!”
Cursing, Noel bolted down the length of the corridor with them chasing right on his heels. One of them tried to tackle him, but Noel twisted with a burst of desperate speed. The man’s fingers clutched at the back of his shirt and lost their hold. Noel ran faster, not daring to glance back.
The corridor dead-ended. Skidding to a halt on the polished floor, his feet tangling in a rug woven of bright colors, Noel could not stop his impetus and slammed into the wall with his shoulder. The men shouted eagerly, but there was a wooden ladder attached to the wall. Without hesitation Noel scrambled up it, and burst through the trapdoor in the roof.
He wriggled his way into the soft night air and dropped the trapdoor closed on his pursuers. A wail muffled beneath the wood told him that at least one had fallen off the ladder. He wasted precious seconds with the iron ring bolt, seeking a way to lock the door, and found nothing.
Giving up, he fled across the flat rooftop, crouching low to keep his silhouette from showing above the short wall bordering the roof’s edge. He paused only once, panting hard, to take his bearings. There were covered walkways between the separate buildings on this side of the compound. If he stayed on the roof, he could go almost the entire way to the stables.
Behind him, the trapdoor crashed open. He heard curses and furious expostulations from his pursuers. Noel glanced back and saw three figures silhouetted in the moonlight. He crouched low in the shadows and scuttled along the wall to the end of the roof. Then, with one quick bound, he vaulted the wall and hit the sloping roof tiles of hard-baked clay. His heels skidded, dislodging tiles that shattered loudly on the ground below. Men searching the courtyard looked up. There were more shouts.
Noel flailed his arms to keep his balance. He couldn’t slow down; he was sliding too fast. He crouched, trying not to look at the ground below, and jumped the distance between the edge of this overhang and the next section of roof.
He landed badly, banging his knees and sending more roof tiles shattering. They slid under his hands and feet, granting him little purchase as he struggled to climb up the overhang to the low wall. Finally he managed to grab a splintery support beam. He clutched it just as both feet slid out from under him and he landed hard on his hip. Gasping for air, he pulled himself up and balanced precariously on the support beam before climbing up and over the wall bordering this new section of roof.
The next jump was easier. No overhangs this time to maneuver, and he made the leap to the flat top of the stables without difficulty. But his pursuers had anticipated him. He saw a group of them ringing the stables. The horses in the corrals milled about, slinging their heads and nickering nervously.
It was the last building of the row. Noel wiped his face with his sleeve and crawled about in search of a trapdoor. There was none.
“Get him!” shouted a voice.
He heard the slap of a ladder against one wall, but before he could react Cody whooped loudly. Horses, already frightened by the commotion, suddenly plunged out an open gate in the corral. Noel glimpsed Cody and Lisa-Marie riding in their midst, crouched low behind flying manes.
The men yelled after them, shouting for the sentries to stop them at the main gates.
Noel started down, but from the corner of his eye he glimpsed a shadow climbing onto the roof. The man rushed at him, and Noel turned just in time to grapple with him. They rolled, gouging and slamming fists into each other. Each blow to Noel’s welts reawakened the old agony. Knowing he could not last long, Noel clipped the man with a dirty blow. His opponent gave a hoarse, gargling cry and slumped. Noel squirmed free and saw another climbing onto the roof.
Yelling, Noel rushed forward and pushed the ladder away from the stables. The men on it screamed, and the ladder swayed a moment before toppling backward to the ground. Men jumped frantically from it in all directions, like fleas jumping off a wet dog. Grinning to himself, Noel took a running start and jumped the distance between the stables and the compound wall.
He was tired, and he misjudged the distance. He landed short, his toe slipping off the flat top of the wall and bringing him down hard across it. He wheezed, consumed with agony, and gripped the rough plastered surface with desperate fingers.
A hand closed around his ankle. Noel managed to kick free. He pitched himself headfirst over the wall, his impetus flipping him in midair so that he landed flat on his back in the middle of a mesquite thicket.
Thorns ripped through his clothing and skin. He howled in pain and thrashed to get free. By the time he succeeded, blood ran freely from the scratches. He staggered around in a small circle, trying to regain his wits as well as his bearings.
From atop the wall a sentry shouted at him to
halt. There came the almost simultaneous crack of a rifle, and a bullet thudded into the sand a scant foot from Noel. He dived to the ground and squirmed into the shadows at the base of the wall, his heart going like thunder inside his sore ribs. Maybe he shouldn’t have listened to the kids. Maybe he should have trusted Don Emilio and stayed put in that big comfortable bed where he belonged.
Now he was out, although he might have a hole in his hide at any minute, but the twins were still inside the compound. They were mounted, but they couldn’t get through the gates unless he did something.
Noel crawled along rapidly, his elbows digging hard into the abrasive sand. Now and then he encountered a thorny branch of mesquite lying on the ground like a booby trap.
When he thought he was safely past the sentry, he got cautiously to his feet, still hugging the wall and the deep shadows at its base, and trotted along as fast as he could.
And all the while, a little voice was yammering in the back of his head, telling him to give up this foolishness, to let Don Emilio hold the twins for ransom if he wished, to let Don Emilio marry the girl and eliminate the boy, to let Don Emilio take ownership of the Double T and develop it. Otherwise, all Noel was accomplishing tonight was to seal the altered events of history and thereby destroy his own future.
“LOC,” he said softly, urgently. “Project electrical field to main compound gates. Are you within range?”
“Affirmative,” intoned the flat voice of his wrist computer.
“Loosen all hinges and locks,” said Noel. “Do it now!”
“Affirmative,” said the LOC. “Accomplished.”
Ahead, around the comer of the wall, Noel could hear an outcry go up and the sound of rapid hoofbeats. His head came up. Were they through the gates? Were they free?
No sentry guarded the comer. With the birds flown, what was the point? Panting, his legs burning, Noel pushed himself into a run and dared break cover into the moonlight.
Moments later he heard hoofbeats approaching and saw two horses coming his way. The moonlight shone bright on Lisa-Marie’s hair. Noel stumbled to a halt, and they reined up on either side of him.
“Get up behind me,” said Cody, jerking his foot free of the left stirrup and reaching down his hand.
Noel swung up behind the boy and gripped close, feeling the boy’s muscles ripple in his back. Cody wheeled the snorting horse around and kicked it to a gallop. Beside them, Lisa-Marie kept even, her hair streaming behind her, the horse’s mane whipping across her hands.
They rode flat out for perhaps five hundred yards, then Noel heard the ground rumble. He glanced at the star-spangled sky for storm clouds, but even as he looked he knew it wasn’t thunder he heard. Behind them came a horde of riders, swarming upon them, overtaking them with whoops and laughter. They circled until the runaways’ mounts slowed and finally stumbled to a halt. Perhaps twenty vaqueros surrounded them, laughing and swinging coiled lariats in their hands.
“Break for it again!” they called. “Give us a real chase. Let us rope you like maverick steers, eh?”
“Let us go!” shouted Lisa-Marie, her voice raw. “You have no right to keep us against our—”
“Right?” interrupted a deep voice. It rolled out through the darkness, and the jeering vaqueros abruptly hushed. Their ranks parted, and Don Emilio came riding up on his fine stallion. The horse pranced and snorted, tossing its beautiful head. Hatless, his white shirtfront a pale blur in the shadows, Don Emilio’s anger was strong enough to be felt.
Noel tensed and dropped his hold around Cody. He wanted to be ready for anything.
“Is it right for you to disrupt my entire household in this bizarre manner?” demanded Don Emilio. “Is it right for you to sneak from my house in the dead of night like thieves?”
“We had no choice,” retorted Lisa-Marie. “You were keeping us prisoner—”
“A strong word,” he interrupted. “And a stronger misconception. I am not your enemy, muchacha.”
“Then why wouldn’t you let us go home? Why bring Grandpa here unless you intend to force him to give you his ranch?”
“Yeah,” put in Cody.
Don Emilio said nothing for a moment. His horse tossed its head and pranced restively. “Noel?” he said at last, and his voice held disappointment. “You have assisted them in this mad delusion. I thought you were a man of sense.”
“They want to go home,” said Noel carefully, trying to gauge the extent of Don Emilio’s anger. “Why not let them?”
“Not this way,” said the Mexican. “Not with the Apaches stirred up and outlaws running free. Not alone. Not at night. Senor Trask will arrive tomorrow, and we will talk. It is the way—”
“You know good and well Grandpa won’t give you the time of day unless he’s forced to,” said Cody furiously. “You’re just trying to force him—”
“No one is being forced to do anything!” shouted Don Emilio. “Santa Maria, how many times must I say it?”
“Then let us go home,” said Lisa-Marie. “Prove your honor by releasing us.”
Before Don Emilio could reply a rider came galloping out of the brush. He reined up so violently his horse reared. “Don Emilio! Quickly—”
“Yes?” said Don Emilio. “Who are you?”
“Pedro Rodriguez, senor.”
“Ah, bueno,” said Don Emilio. “You have brought the old man more quickly than I expected—”
“No, no, senor. I beg your pardon a thousand times, but I must give you bad news. He is gone.”
Lisa-Marie gave a choked cry. “Grandpa?”
“Explain,” said Don Emilio swiftly.
“The Comancheros attacked us just as we stopped to camp for the night. They killed Luis and Tomas, and rode off with him. Agustine is badly hurt, a bullet in the chest. I rode here as fast as I could.”
“No,” said Cody. “No! We’ve got to go after them. We’ve got to—”
Noel touched his shoulder. “Easy, Cody. Don’t go off half-cocked.”
Cody shrugged off his hand. “I’m going now—”
Don Emilio spurred his horse forward to block Cody’s. “Don’t be a fool! We must think. We must plan.”
“This ain’t none of your—”
“Of course it is! Now accept my help and do not make me more angry with you than I already am.” Don Emilio gestured to his men. “Pedro, go on to the hacienda and get a fresh horse and canteens. Catch up with us. Can we be at your camp before dawn?”
“Si, senor.”
“Bueno. Do you know which direction they were heading? You had better tell Miguel I want him for a tracker.”
“Senor, they said that if you wanted El Raton you must go to Silver Canyon.”
Noel’s ears pricked up at that.
Don Emilio snorted. “Dios, he is setting a trap for me. He will regret it.”
Cody and Lisa-Marie exchanged looks through the darkness. For an eerie instant Noel had the impression they were communing.
Cody said, “You’ll never find it with a tracker.”
“No, this I am aware of. Silver Canyon is a legend. Some do not think it exists, but I know differently. My father saw it once when an old Indian took him there as a boy. He was blindfolded going in and out, and could not find it again. It would seem El Raton has been more fortunate than I.”
“We know where it is,” said Cody.
Don Emilio drew a sharp breath of air. “That is what I thought,” he said softly.
“But we’re not going to tell you,” said Lisa-Marie. “Never.”
“You have no choice,” said Don Emilio. “Your grandfather’s life is at stake now.”
The twins sat in stubborn silence, but Noel could sense Cody’s anguish.
“Noel?” said Lisa-Marie, and her voice betrayed her worry.
He frowned at the back of Cody’s head and drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Don Emilio is right. You need his help, and to get it you will have to pay his price.”
“You’re as bad as he is!”
“Hush up, Lisa-Marie,” said Cody.
“But, Cody—”
“I said to hush up! We’ve got to do it. We’ve got no choice.” Cody looked at Don Emilio. “You won’t need the tracker. I’ll show you where the canyon is. Just you make sure nothing happens to my grandpa.”
Chapter 14
By midmorning the next day, Noel felt like he’d been permanently welded to his saddle. His body ached from the long hours of riding. His eyes stung from lack of sleep. He was hungry and thirsty, and he needed a shave. The sunlight already scorched him. From far away on the western horizon came a flotilla of cumulus clouds, but they looked empty of rain. He inhaled the dry, dusty air and wondered if it ever rained on this desiccated land. He could smell the heat in the gleaming sorrel horsehair on his mount’s neck. He could smell the oiled leather of his saddle. He could smell the sharp, unpleasant stench of broomweed crushed by hooves. Ahead on the trail, a rattlesnake loosed a warning. They skirted the coiled serpent, the horses snorting uneasily, and its angry whirring rattle filled the air. A hawk sailed high overhead, oblivious to them.
Cody’s horse had a devil’s horn around its fetlock. He reined up and dismounted to pull off the barbed seed pod. Noel stopped beside him, letting the others go on.
“How much farther?” asked Noel in a low voice for Cody’s ears alone.
“Not far. Maybe a mile. It’s in those ridges over yonder.” Cody got the devil’s horn off and released the horse’s foot. It stamped with irritation, and he patted its shoulder. “I’m scared, Noel. They killed Uncle Frank, and I’m scared they’re gonna kill Grandpa, too. Lisa-Marie still thinks El Raton works for Don Emilio. Do you reckon this is a way to get me to tell him where Silver Canyon is?”
Noel’s spirits felt compressed, as though he could sense time running out. He needed to consult his LOC, but there was no privacy. “Maybe,” he said cautiously, aware of the keen looks cast his way by the passing vaqueros. “There’s still no choice though.”
Cody nodded and took off his hat to wipe out the inside. “I know it. I just don’t like being outfoxed. And then I reckon what if El Raton is on his own and Don Emilio’s all right? It’s hard, knowing what’s right.”
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