Veronica winced. "Lord, don't remind me. I won't say I regret doing what I had to do ... But at odd moments all through the day, as we were riding, and even just a little while ago as I was soaking in my bath, my mind's eye would suddenly flash to that man's face when I shot him ... the shock and the pain ... all that blood." She shuddered slightly. "Killing is an awesome responsibility. I expect I'll have a number of uneasy nights before I can completely come to grips with it."
"Yeah, you probably will," Kendrick allowed. "But the way you get through it is to believe exactly what you said—it's what you had to do. When you get those flashes of how Tully looked going down in his own blood, think about the other way it could have gone. How you would have looked after the three of them got done having their way with you, how I would've likely been the one left dead—even what they were going to do to Ludek. Letting it go that way was one choice you had. Doing what you did was the other one. Period."
Veronica held his eyes for a long count. "A man like you knows about killing; everybody figures that. But you also know about the afterward part, about living with having done killing, don't you?"
"I reckon I do. Dealt with more than my share of it."
"Yet it bothers you."
"Man'd have to be a pure cold-blooded varmint of some kind—a snake or lizard or the like—not to be bothered, not to have some sort of feeling about taking another man's life. I learned about killing during the war. Learned I was better at it than most; steadier, quicker to be willing to take on what you called that 'awesome responsibility'. During the war I believed a man deserved killing because he wore a different color shirt than I did. After the war I learned it's not as simple as that. But there still are men out there ... not men, really, more like festering sores that walk and talk like men, and when all the poison they're carrying around in them starts threatening too much of what's good and decent and right—when they cross a certain line—then they need killing because that's the only thing they understand, the only way to stop them."
"The kind of men you collect bounty on."
"A lot of them, yeah."
"Men like Jory Ludek?"
Kendrick shrugged. "I don't know if I'd put him in that category. He's cocky and wild, and may very well swing at the end of a rope some day or get shot because somebody gets fed up hearing his mouth run—but he don't really seem black-hearted like the kind I'm talking about."
"Was Tully? The man I shot?"
"The thing there was, Tully and Butch and Mort together made a bad mix. Individually, they wouldn't've had the guts—or the meanness, probably—to crowd anybody the way they did bunched together. They were trying to measure up to what they thought Grodine and his hired gunny, Brade, expected of them and not wanting to come up short in front of each other."
"They made Brade sound very dangerous. Grodine, too, I guess, even though he may have a certain amount of justification because of what happened to his daughter."
"Men like Grodine are only dangerous as long as they have money to pay for men like Brade."
"But Grodine does have plenty of money, apparently. That means Brade will keep coming ... after Ludek, and now after us."
"Expect so, yeah."
"Doesn't that worry you?"
Kendrick shrugged. "I'll deal with if and when I have to. Fretting about it before then won't do much good."
Veronica regarded him closely. "You could have avoided all of it, you realize. You could have taken the deal Tully offered, let them have Ludek to hand over to Grodine, and in the end probably still have had a body to turn in for the reward. But I could see in your eyes you were never tempted by that for a minute, were you?"
"Like I told Tully, it ain't the way I operate. Bounty hunting's got the low reputation it has because there are too many men out there who would have taken Tully's deal. Even a fugitive who gets a Wanted Dead Or Alive paper tagged on him is supposed to have the right to a judge and jury before execution, unless he makes a fight of it and won't be taken any other way."
"But that means you're laying your own neck on the line for the sake of a man you most likely are delivering to be put to death anyway."
"That's the way it happened to shake out this particular time, yeah," Kendrick said, frowning as if he didn't understand the point. "A man don’t change the rules he lives by just because it turns inconvenient not to stick by them."
Veronica studied him even more intently, a faint smile of wonderment playing about her lips. "What an unusual and fascinating man you are. Big and rough on the outside ... deadly in your actions. But so complex, so strangely compassionate. The way you talked about the Apaches on the trail this morning. The way you're talking now, about men's poisonous hearts and rules to live by ... "
Kendrick felt uncomfortable under her scrutiny. "Yeah, well, none of it amounts to spit if Darrel Brade and a bunch of Circle G wranglers ride up and shoot me full of holes. Or if Fire Shirt and his braves lift my scalp out in the barrens somewhere. Does it?"
"It would matter, though. To me. To anybody who ever really got to know you."
"That's a pretty short list, lady," the bounty hunter said, twisting his mouth wryly. "Short because I don't make a habit of flapping my jaws the way I have been to you. Don't rightly know why I am now, come to think on it."
"Maybe it feels good to open up to somebody," Veronica ventured. "Maybe you've needed it more than you realize."
"Always got along without it before. Never saw where talk got much accomplished. It's what a body does that counts. Speaking of talk, though, of opening up—what about you? Aside from the recent events I already know about, what's the rest of your story? How did a savvy lady like you find herself in Mexico in order to get tangled up with that wife-cheater in the first place?"
Veronica gave a small shake of her head. "I'm afraid I'm not always so savvy, and there are probably those who would argue I'm no lady, either. You see, the story of my life can be summed up in four simple words—abysmal luck with men. Before the lout in Mexico, there was the banker in Dallas who proved to be embezzling from his own business. Before him there was the west Texas rancher who turned out not only to have a wife back in Ohio, but seven children. There was the Army officer in Arizona who got himself knifed to death by a drunken half-breed trying to break up a bar fight. Early on there was a wild-eyed, devilishly handsome young wrangler who dreamed big but unfortunately lied even bigger ... You get the picture. It's certainly not a record I'm proud of, nor one I really care to go into any more detail about."
"Fair enough. Just remember, hindsight's always perfect. Goes back to what I said before about what a body does, about having the guts to go ahead and try something—put your faith in somebody—even knowing there's always a chance that down the road there could be regrets."
"There certainly have been down the roads I've taken."
Kendrick extended a forefinger and thumped it on the tabletop. "Which brings us to picking the road we should take out of our present situation. Staying here bottled up in this town sure don't strike me as the smartest thing to continue doing."
"What do you mean 'our present situation'?"
"Hell, you ought to know the way things are stacked as good as I do. We got Mexican pistoleros coming after us because of you. We got Brade and Grodine's Circle G men coming after us because of Ludek. We got Ludek himself chafing to make a break, and I wouldn't count on him hesitating to do whatever he had to do to either one of us in order to pull it off. We got a pack of Apaches on the warpath between us and Socorro, where we both want to get to ... Any of those things sound familiar? Giving them the chance to catch up with us one at a time or all together while the Army's got us corralled here like horses waiting to be freighted don't slide comfortable down my craw, no how."
"I should have known," Veronica said, eyes suddenly agleam. "I was surprised when you agreed so easily to that lieutenant's escort offer. All during the rest of the way in I kept watching you. You looked so intense. You were forming a plan, we
ren't you? You have no intention at all to just sit and wait for somebody else to make the next move."
"Matter of fact," Kendrick said, rubbing his jaw, "I guess I do have an idea for how we could continue on to Socorro—and I don't mean by making one of those hellacious big swings to the east or west like Lieutenant Rorsch suggested. Doing it that way would be better than hanging around on the Army's say-so, but it would take such a whale of time and only stretch the chances for something else to go wrong."
"So what's your alternative?"
"What I got in mind sure ain't without risk, and some might say it's downright crazy. I want to be clear on that much right up front. I can make that kind of decision for me and Ludek, but you’ve got to un-derstand and say for yourself. That's part of what hung me up when it came to the lieutenant's offer this morning."
"Lord, Kendrick, haven't I proven I'm willing to take a risk? Like I told you at the outset, I'm desperate to reach Socorro."
"But maybe not as desperate as what I've got in mind. If I make a wrong move and we fall prey to the Apaches ... well, nothing we've got behind us can compare to that. Lagging here ain't my way, but leaving you behind might be the biggest favor I could do you. You'd have to fend off only what might come along, and you'd be surrounded by law and order and good citizens to help see you through it."
"Damn you, Kendrick," Veronica said through clenched teeth, "don't you go treating me like some delicate flower. Was it a delicate flower who blasted Tully almost in two with your shotgun? If nothing else, for that you owe me—you owe me the right to ride with you if that's what I choose."
Kendrick's jaw muscles worked. At length he said, "That's a fact, and I shouldn't've lost sight of it. All right, you're welcome to come along if that's the way you want it then ... Tell me, you ever hear of a place called the Jornado del Muerto?"
Chapter 8: Tenderness and Trouble
Veronica Fairburn stood naked before a washbasin of warm, soapy water. Her riding clothes were laid out on the hotel room bed. The undergarments she’d rinsed the previous night were still draped carefully over the bed's brass footboard, the way she had hung them to dry. Bright sunlight poured through the room's thinly curtained window, carrying with it sounds drifting up from the street below, the bustle of Las Cruces waking to a new day.
Veronica withdrew a fat sponge from the basin, squeezing excess water from it. With the sponge she began washing her arms and shoulders, then her throat and neck. Foamy rivulets trickled down over her exquisitely upturned breasts. The sensation of this caused her to recall with a flush the way Kendrick's hands had felt on her—so rough and demanding, yet at certain moments as delicate as the touch of the suds. In every way, he was a man of fascinating contrasts.
She had gone to him in the middle of the night. Crossing the shadow-cut hallway, silently slipping the latch on his room door, presenting herself to him. Boldly. Shamelessly.
He had yanked their bodies hard together after sweeping away her scant wrap, and his lips had covered hers with the kind of passion she had known he would possess. When their mouths parted after long, hungry exploration, he had held her at arms' length and demanded huskily, "Are you sure this is what you want? If you think for some reason this is necessary to guarantee I take you to Socorro, I've already given my word on that."
She'd pushed away his restraining hands and pressed herself tightly to him once more, saying, "Behind, there's nothing but hardship and violence. Ahead, before we're through, there'll be more rugged country and possibly more violence. For right now, I need something to balance that ... something sweet and nice ... something ... "
Kendrick hadn't let her finish. Instead, he'd again covered her mouth with his and then proceeded to show her he understood exactly what she meant. Understood what it was they both needed.
Between bouts of rekindled lovemaking, they had spent the remainder of the night wrapped tenderly in each other's arms; until Veronica slipped away at the first gray hints of dawn and went back to her own room.
Sometime after full light, Kendrick had rapped on her door, announcing through it that he was going to make final preparations for their trip and advising her to be ready out front in approximately forty-five minutes when he would return with Ludek and their saddled horses.
Finished drying herself, Veronica now shook out her freshened undergarments and began donning them. She realized most of this attention was probably wasted; a couple hours on the trail in the arid, sun-blasted country through which they'd be traveling and any scent of soap or perfume left purposefully lingering on either her person or clothing would be quickly overcome. Nevertheless, it was important to her to at least start out feeling clean and pampered. And after last night, she mused, maybe it would be a little more important to Mr. Bodie Kendrick as well.
Thinking anew about Kendrick caused her to quicken her pace at dressing the rest of the way. A half hour had already passed since she'd listened to the fading clump of his boot heels following his knock at the door. Forty-five minutes he'd said, and she still had to finish packing the bulging carpet bag she had lugged all the way from Mexico—its contents her entire worldly belongings. When he'd carried it up from the livery for her yesterday evening, Kendrick had already grumbled his opinion about such unnecessary "fooferahs", and if he ended up having to wait for her to drag it back down this morning—no matter what had transpired in the interim—she'd undoubtedly be in for another piece of lecturing.
Veronica sat on the edge of the bed and tugged on her boots. As she straightened from the task, she became abruptly aware of another presence in the room. Brushing a spill of long hair away from her eyes, she automatically flashed a half-defensive smile, expecting it was Kendrick and he'd returned earlier than anticipated.
When her gaze fell instead on the swarthily handsome man who stood poised catlike just inside the door, Veronica's smile froze like a death grimace. "You!" she said breathlessly.
The swarthy man was smiling, too; his display of teeth a silent snarl. In precise English flavored by a Mexican accent, he said, "Si, my treacherous beauty—me! Are you not happy to see your sworn true love?"
"How did you get in here?"
"You were always so careless about locking doors."
"That doesn't give you the right to just—"
"Where you are concerned, I have every right. I have the right to intrude and accost you like the lying, thieving little puta you have proven yourself to be."
Veronica thrust out her chin defiantly. "You have no proof of anything."
"You disappeared and we both know what disappeared with you. Much as my heart refused to believe it at first, what more proof did I need?"
"How far do you think that will get you? We're in America now. The kind of bully-boy tactics you're used to don't cut it around here."
"As I see it, we are in a room, just the two of us. Whatever tactics I see fit to use here, I think, will 'cut it' very much."
"One scream from me and this whole end of town will be on you like flies on a dung heap."
The intruder's eyes went ice cold. "Do not be foolish enough to think I would hesitate to silence you—permanently, if necessary. The fact that you are traveling in the desperate company that you are tells me you have not yet completed your betrayal. Meaning I have intercepted you in time to allow you to live ... providing you accept the failure of your mission and hand over to me that which I must retrieve."
"And then you slit my throat, is that it?"
An indifferent shrug of one shoulder. "If I thought I would derive any satisfaction from seeing you dead, you would already be there. I suspect I could then find what I am after either on your body or in your large bag over on the chair—I doubt you would allow it out of your sight any farther than that."
Veronica's eyes darted involuntarily to the open carpetbag filling the seat of the chair in the far corner.
The intruder smiled knowingly. "Si. The bag, then."
He moved toward it in the same fluid, gliding motion
that had carried him so silently into the room.
Veronica tried to block his way, saying, "No! You're too late. I sent what you're after on ahead by courier."
The man sneered down at her as she clutched his arm. "Must every word that comes out of your mouth be a lie?" He swung his arm in a hard, snapping backhand, hurling Veronica away. She sprawled awkwardly across the bed and tumbled off on the other side, her feet kicking out, smashing the washbasin and pitcher that had served her so soothingly only scant minutes ago. China shards and water splashed in every direction.
The intruder began rummaging through the carpetbag, scattering its contents recklessly.
Veronica clambered to her feet and came around the end of the bed with an angry curse. She paused to snatch up a piece of the shattered pitcher, its gently curved handle now accessing only a jagged remnant that came to a serviceably sharp tip. Thus armed, she leaped full onto the back of her attacker and plunged the crude weapon into the side of his neck.
The man straightened up, howling in pain and rage. He twisted his upper body sharply first one way and then the other, rolling his shoulders as his hands reached back, clawing into the woman's hair and dragging her from him. Again Veronica was hurled away, crashing this time against the wall without benefit of the bed to slow her momentum.
This was the scene that Bodie Kendrick—alerted by the raised voices and the crash of furniture and bodies—burst in upon. The door splintering under his kick, he came to the center of the room in a rush, fists balled, eyes scanning. He saw a dazed Veronica crumpled on the floor, saw the dark-complected Mexican looming over her wearing a fierce expression above the blood that was streaming from his neck and down over the front of his embroidered shirt.
Needing only a fraction of a second to assess the situation, the big bounty hunter stepped over Veronica in a single long stride, cocking his shoulders in the same motion and then slamming his right fist hard into the face of the man in the bloody shirt. The latter had no chance to react defensively. The blow knocked him back and down into the chair, upending it so that he was dumped heavily to the floor on the other side.
Hard Trail to Socorro (Bodie Kendrick - Bounty Hunter Book 1) Page 6