“Yes, Erin,” Sam said quietly, “he looks real good.” With the barber’s help, Sam loaded Bram Donovan’s coffin onto the back of a small buckboard wagon sitting outside in the alley. Then they rode in silence to the cemetery at the edge of town, their horses hitched to the rear of the buckboard.
Two Mexican gravediggers helped Sam unload the coffin and lower it by rope into a freshly dug grave.
When they’d finished, Sam stood beside Erin, his sombrero in hand and his head bowed, while she said a short prayer. Then he watched as she scooped up a handful of dirt, held it out above the grave and let it pour down on the coffin below.
Sam backed away as she stood in silent reflection for a moment. Making certain he was out of her sight, he tipped the Mexicans and thanked them for their help.
“When you finish filling the grave,” he said quietly, “take the buckboard back to the barber, sí?”
“Sí,” the two replied in unison. They stood aside and waited, shovels in hand, until Erin finally turned away from the grave and toward the Ranger. In moments, the Mexicans watched the woman and the Ranger mount their horses and ride away. Then the gravediggers set about filling the grave.
From a window of the Perros Malos Cantina, Three-Hand Defoe watched Sam and the young woman ride past.
“Le fils d’une chienne,” he cursed to himself in French, almost whispering.
“What did you say?” Behind him, Sidel Tereze stood buttoning her dress and straightening it down her midriff.
“I call him a son of a bitch, this lawman from Nogales,” said Defoe. “Is that all right with you?” he added with sarcasm.
Tereze shrugged and dismissed the matter. She didn’t care.
“I only asked because I heard you speaking French,” she said. “It sounded like my father.”
“Oh, then I remind you of your father?” asked Defoe. “Did he have you dance naked on the backs of his hands too?”
“I didn’t mean in that way,” Tereze said. “I meant the manner in which you speak French reminds me of him.” After a pause, she asked, “Is there anything else you want from me?”
Defoe looked at the redness on the backs of his hands and rubbed them together, knowing they would bruise.
“All I want is to see someone kill this lawman,” he said bitterly. “But now he has left, so I am disappointed .”
He stood with his tie loose and hanging on his chest, his hair disheveled, his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest.
“But you are not disappointed in me?” she asked, pouting a little.
“No, no,” said Defoe, “that was good.” He rubbed his hands together more vigorously.
“I can kill him for you,” Tereze suggested, taking a step closer to him from behind. “I could kill him in my own way . . . ,” she whispered, letting her words trail.
“Go!” Defoe demanded, cutting her short. He pointed to the door. “If I want someone to stand on his hands, I will come get you.”
“Whatever you say, Henri,” Tereze said with another casual shrug of her shoulder.
Chapter 7
Sam and the young woman rode on well after the harsh sunlit terrain had succumbed to a purple blanketing darkness. Having eaten the good meal at Mama Maria’s in the afternoon to hold them over, and having amply grained and watered both animals before preparing them for the trail, neither of them saw any reason to stop and make camp right away.
That suited the Ranger just fine, he thought, looking back over his shoulder from time to time, checking their back trail. He’d wanted to get across the rolling flatlands and take shelter in the rocky cover of the low foothills. The farther they rode tonight, the deeper they would be inside the hills come morning.
To be honest, he told himself, he’d enjoyed the woman’s company and was hesitant to put the night to an end. He breathed deep and let it out slowly, savoring the feel of the night surrounding them, as if somehow the shadowy purple darkness drew them closer.
Did she feel the same way? He believed so. Of course, it was not something he could just ask her. He straightened a bit in his saddle, having let himself relax in his thoughts. Anyway, it had been a good ride, and he hoped she felt the same.
Not that they had spoken to any great extent. In fact, their conversation had been sparse. Yet the presence of someone riding beside him other than a prisoner in handcuffs had felt nice for a change. But enough of that—to the business at hand, he told himself, straightening again and riding on.
When they did finally decide to stop, owing to the absence of moonlight in the deep blackened ravines, it was past midnight. The Ranger could have ridden farther—indeed, he could have ridden all night. There was the scent of the cooling desert below, the looming crispness of mesquite, of budding rock cactus and gusting night air, spiky and fresh and even heady with the faintest scent of the woman beside him.
Stop it, he told himself, feeling akin to a man on a first-time courting call. He smiled to himself, wondering how long it had been since he’d passed a night in this manner, a large yellow Mexican moon overhead, visions of wildflowers looming just out of sight.
“This is nice, out here,” Erin said softly, as if she’d somehow read his thoughts. She raised her brother’s flop hat from her head and shook out her hair. The two sat atop the horses, gazing into the shadowy darkness ahead of them. To their right, where the trail broke away, they looked above the ground and into the starry sky surrounding the hill line, as if it had risen from the flatlands below.
They turned their standing horses to the edge of rock and sky.
“Yes, it is,” Sam said, hearing only the quiet creak of tack and saddle as the horses settled beneath them.
“I have spent many nights outdoors this past year, but none as peaceful or as beautiful,” Erin remarked quietly, as if not to disturb the night and its sounds and feel. “It’s enough to make one forget one’s troubles.” She paused, then added in a more solemn tone, “Almost anyway . . .”
“Yes, almost,” he offered quietly.
They sat for a moment in silence.
Finally Sam stepped the dun forward and gazed down into the greater darkness, seeing only short traces of the silvery trail meander out of sight across the rolling flatlands below them.
“Come morning we’ll be able to see our back trail from here,” he said. “This is a good place to get some rest.”
“I’m not even tired,” Erin offered, but her voice said otherwise. “I mean, I could rest, or I could ride farther, either way.”
“I’m not that tired either,” Sam said. “But this is a good spot. The horses could use a rest before we head down tomorrow afternoon toward Pueblo de Ruinas.”
“Where I’ll take a land coach to . . . ,” Erin said, hesitating, asking for help.
“To Jerez,” Sam said. “From Jerez to a half dozen other towns. Then you’ll be able to take a train in the San Luis Potosi region all the way to Mexico City.”
“Then on to the Port of Tampico,” Erin said as if tiring just thinking of the long journey that lay ahead of her. She knew she still had a long way to go before even embarking on her sea trip back to Ireland. She shook her head in the moonlight.
“It’s a far place you’re heading to,” Sam offered.
“Yes, but it’s home I’m headed to,” she replied, “and home is never too far.” She turned a curious look to the Ranger. “And where is it that you call home, Ranger Burrack?”
Home . . . ?
Sam had to think about it for a second before he could answer.
“Owing to trouble along both sides of the border, my home is now Nogales . . . the Ranger outpost.”
Erin smiled.
“‘The lawman from Nogales,’ is what the Gun Killers call you.”
“I bet that’s not all they call me,” Sam replied.
“No, it’s not,” said Erin. She followed his gaze out across the wide purple sky. A shooting star streaked in and out of sight. She thought about the Gun Killers, about her dead b
rother, Bram, Matten Page and the Torres brothers. She thought about Luis and Teto.
Teto . . .
“We are both a long way from home, Ranger Burrack,” she said.
Sam pondered her statement. He was certainly not as far from home as she, but to him home was much the same as the present surroundings. Home for him was the weathered plank and adobe Ranger barracks. He was used to tall saguaros in a rocky valley carpeted sparsely by mesquite, hedgehog and barrel cactus.
“I’m at home here,” he said in reflection.
“Here?” Erin questioned, looking around the rugged Mexican hillside. “Forgive me for saying so, Ranger Burrack, but Mexico isn’t even your country.”
“I know,” Sam said, and he swung down from his saddle, offering nothing more on the matter.
He presented her with his gloved hand. Erin took it and swung down beside him.
“How does a body get so far from home, Sam?” she asked, as if he might actually have an answer to such a question.
Sam looked at her in the moonlight, realizing she had things she needed to say.
“I don’t know, Erin,” Sam said quietly. “You tell me.”
She paused, then lowered her face and said in a voice that failed to hide that she was bordering on tears, “Ranger Burrack, I’m afraid I am not the person you think me to be.”
Moments later, over steaming cups of hot coffee, the Ranger listened as Erin told him about the past three years of her life, and those of her brother, Bram’s.
Theirs was not the story of two orphans coming to the United States to escape poverty or servitude. Their father had died and left them enough of an inheritance to get them both to America—the land of freedom and opportunity, she had told Sam as she held the warm tin cup in both hands.
“I offer no excuse for anything my brother and I have done,” she said.
Sam only studied her face in the soft flicker of firelight.
Her brother, Bram, had fallen in with the wrong crowd almost as soon as they had stepped off the ship in the New York Harbor. As for her, rather than try to stop her brother from pursuing a life of crime, she had allowed herself to be swept into it. Lured by fast money and fast living, she’d gone along for the ride. And now . . .
“And now the ride is over,” she said at length with a sigh, staring into the low flickering flames. Tears welled and glistened in her eyes.
The Ranger reached over with the coffeepot and refilled her nearly empty cup.
“I—I feel as if I’ve misled you somehow, Ranger Burrack,” she said. “In spite of all your kindness, I feel I have let you down.”
“Don’t feel that way,” Sam said. “You haven’t let me down.”
That wasn’t quite true, he admitted to himself. He did feel disappointed. But he’d get over it, he reminded himself. “I would have done the same for anyone in your situation,” he said, which was true.
“My brother and I are wanted in Texas,” she said without looking up from the fire. “We took part in the robbing of a mine payroll with Luis and Teto Torres.”
“Oh?” Sam was a bit taken aback by what she said. He didn’t know what surprised him more, the fact that Erin had taken part in a robbery, or the fact that she had admitted to the act so openly. “What part did you play?”
She didn’t answer; she couldn’t seem to look him in the face. He reached over and tipped her chin up gently.
“Don’t tell me you shot somebody,” he said, wanting to lighten the gravity of what he could see was clearly bothering her.
“No, nothing like that,” she said, managing to face him now even as he withdrew his hand. “I didn’t even realize what had happened until it was over. I waited up the trail for them with fresh horses,” she said. “But I felt just as guilty as I would have had I shot someone.”
Sam nodded and said, “Under Texas law, you are just as guilty.”
She said hesitantly, “Are you—going to take me into custody?”
“No, ma’am,” Sam said, sounding more businesslike now than before. “I’m here for the Torres brothers. If Texas wants you, they’ll have to come settle up with you themselves.”
“Will you have to mention to anyone that I’m here?” she asked.
“Only if someone asks,” Sam said. “But if you’re in Ireland, it doesn’t matter anyway. Does it?”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” she said quietly. She looked away and across the shadowy purple night, letting Sam know that she was finished talking about the robbery for the night. “Anyway, I only want to get home to Ireland and put this part of my life behind me.”
Sam nodded. He suspected there was more she wanted to tell him, but it would wait until she was ready, he thought, leaning back on his blanket against his saddle, which rested on the ground. Above him a million stars shone all around, but they had lost some of their sparkle. Sam only watched the stars for a moment; then he closed his eyes and listened to the cry of a lonesome coyote somewhere across the rugged hills.
Chapter 8
At the first sight of sunlight on the distant horizon, Erin awakened to the aroma of boiling coffee and sat up on her blanket. A few feet from her, the campfire crackled beneath a fresh mound of dried mesquite brush and downfallen scrub oak.
“Ranger Burrack?” she called out quietly, looking over at the bare spot where Sam’s blanket and saddle had been.
Hearing no reply, she started to call out again. But before she could, Sam stepped forward into the firelight leading both horses, saddled and ready for the trail.
“I’m right here, ma’am,” he said, stopping a few feet away, the horses right behind him. “I thought we’d make our way out of here before daylight, so that we can get across the flats and into some hill shade before the worst heat of the day.”
“Yes, I understand,” Erin said, rising from her blanket. “I’m ready if you are.” She ran her hands down herself and straightened the trail clothes she’d put on before they’d left Wild Roses.
“There’s fresh coffee, ma’am,” Sam said, letting her know he wasn’t pushing to leave. “I have some jerked elk and hardtack in my saddlebags, for breakfast.” He posed his words as an invitation.
“Thank you,” she said, “but I can’t eat a thing this early in the morning.”
He’d called her ma’am? Not Erin like before?
“Coffee, then?” he said. He dropped the reins to the horses and stepped toward the pot sitting in a banked pile of glowing embers. “You’re going to need something in your stomach—”
“Excuse me, Ranger,” she said, cutting him off, as if something he’d said disagreed with her. “I told you in Wild Roses that I eat like a bird.”
Sam watched her step over to her horse. She took down a canteen hanging from her saddle horn and walked away into the grainy morning darkness.
He pushed his sombrero up and looked down at the coffeepot for a moment. Then he stooped and filled both of the tin cups he’d set out for them.
He stood up moments later, his cup in hand, when Erin returned and hooked the canteen strap over her saddle horn. She stepped over to the fire, stooped down and picked up her cup of coffee.
“On second thought, coffee sounds good,” she said.
Sam looked at her, seeing that she’d washed her face, pulled her hair back and tied it in place with a strip of rawhide.
Nothing like a clean face, Sam thought, seeing how both her spirits and demeanor appeared to have lifted, brightened.
“How about that elk and hardtack now?” he asked.
She looked up at him, and smiled over the tin cup of steaming coffee. Before she could reply, Sam stooped beside her and took off his sombrero, leaving on the black bandanna tied back over his head. He looked into her eyes and took a breath.
“How far along are you, ma’am?” he asked.
“How far along—?” She stopped short with a stunned look on her face. “What on earth are you talking about?” she asked.
“Nobody eats like a bird crossin
g these Mexican hills and desert planes,” Sam said. “Maybe back in Wild Roses,” he added, “but not out here.”
“How dare you, Ranger,” Erin said, denying the matter as far as she could.
“Please, ma’am. You’re with child,” Sam said with finality. “I would call it none of my business, except that we’re crossing some awfully rough country together. I need to know what condition you’re in. So, begging your pardon . . . how far along are you?” he asked again.
She looked away, let out a breath and turned back facing him, her eyes welling with tears.
“Please don’t think me a harlot, Ranger,” she said.
“I don’t, ma’am,” Sam said. “I just think you’re in trouble, you’re scared and you don’t know who you can trust. So you’re holding back from telling the truth, thinking that lying is going to help you some way.”
She stared back into his eyes and nodded slightly as if weighing what he’d said.
“If I am correct, it has been eleven weeks since I first missed my time,” she said at length.
“Three months . . . ,” Sam said, considering her condition and gauging her ability to withstand crossing the rough hill country that lay ahead of them. Not to mention the country that led to Port of Tampico, where she was headed.
“Please don’t think me a loose woman, Sam,” she said. “I fell in love with the wrong man. When he found out I was carrying a child, he left me.” The tears welling in her eyes broke free and ran down her cheeks. She did nothing to stop them.
“Ma’am, you don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Sam said quietly. “My only concern is getting you safely to Jerez.”
But she continued as if she hadn’t heard him.
“After he left me, I learned that he’d been killed, robbing a train across the border in Texas,” she said.
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