To Hell and Back

by P. A. Bechko

  “Might be. Might be dead too. A man out here alone. Who knows?”

  “But if we got too close to his gold mine and he was there?”

  “He’d probably shoot us both.”

  The horses continued to plod along, heads drooping. She frowned at Jake. There was no comfort in the idea of a real bullet as opposed to an imagined ghostly presence. Amanda shook her head to clear it of such nonsense. She had no intention of letting her imagination run away with her. Instead, she was going to watch Jake Hollander, study his actions. She’d learn to take care of herself in this country, whatever the circumstances.

  They pushed on in silence until she was staring up at the Weaver’s Needle. It rose directly before them, majestic in the fading light of the day, the slender spire rising to pierce the indigo sky.

  Jake signaled another halt and passed the canteen to Amanda. Every drought-stricken cell in her body cried out for her to swallow the contents of the canteen in one gulp, but again she only sipped the tinny, tepid water and handed it back. She ignored her stomach, knotted with hunger, and swayed in the saddle.

  Her companion caught the movement and looked at her more closely.

  “We lost them a while back,” he informed her. “Couple of more hours and we can stop at a place up ahead where there’s water. Horses need it bad,” he added as if his and Amanda’s needs were secondary to that of their mounts.

  And it was true. Out here horses meant the difference between life and death. Without one it would take a miracle to survive for even a man of the land such as Hollander.

  Jake occasionally used a bit of rolling brush to erase a stray track or two, but mostly he kept to the hard, rocky surfaces with her following closely behind. She’d watched when he had allowed dust to drift on the breeze above a place where a metal shod hoof had scarred the rock, the powdery dust sifting down to mask all signs of their passage.

  “You’re doing just fine,” Jake encouraged her. “Every mile we move into these mountains, the safer we are from any posse.”

  Amanda was just plain numb. There was nothing left for her to feel. Pain. Exhaustion. Fear. What was the point? They would just keep plodding on—forever.

  Jake watched her apprehensively seeing she was right on the edge. They’d be able to rest son with confidence.

  “Keep to the rocks,” he admonished her once more as they started down a trail only he could see.

  Chapter 5

  That night they camped on a low rock ledge concealed by a thick growth of scrub brush circled by prickly pear cactus. Jake had grudgingly called a halt when the glowing sky had faded from its iridescent display of pinks and purples into total, impenetrable darkness.

  “No fire tonight,” Jake barked the order, stepping down from his horse.

  Amanda slid off with exhausted relief, knees rubber when her feet came in contact with the ground. She couldn’t help a touch of resentment at the fact that they were going to spend this night in cold misery.

  Jake stripped the saddles from their horses and rubbed them down with a hand full of leaves and green branches torn from the sheltering brush.

  He caught her looking at the horses as he worked.

  “Horses will be right as rain by the time we have to pull out.”

  “Good for them,” Amanda muttered. “Wish I could say the same for myself.” She paced heroically in an effort to un-kink the sore and cramping muscles she preferred to think of as not her own.

  She dropped to the ground in an untidy heap, bracing an elbow on her leg, cupping her chin in her palm. Her skirts were askew, her face dirt caked, and her small, laced half boots were all but destroyed. She didn’t even want to think about the intense burning sensation of her skin and the accompanying itch beneath that dirt on her face.

  “You’re doing fine,” Jake said softly.

  Amanda grunted, appalled by her behavior, but still didn’t move from where she was. Jake drew his knife and began hacking away at the stand of prickly pear.

  He felt her watching him. “We’re going to have to take a chance that the posse’ll pass this spot without seeing the cactus all torn up. The horses have to eat, and so do we.”

  “Eat?”

  “Prickly pear’s good.”

  After he devastated a good portion of the patch for the animals, peeling and de-spining, he started working on the small red fruits he’d set aside, peeling them and cutting them into small chunks. He added a few of the pads, de-spined and peeled.

  “Eat,” he urged Amanda.

  She was too exhausted to argue. She just ate.

  “I wouldn’t call it good.”

  “It fills your belly and that’s good.”

  She couldn’t argue with that so she finished her share and just stretched out on the patch of still faintly warm sand on the ledge instantly falling into an exhausted sleep.

  Jake threw his bedroll over her, then stood watch until the first streaks of dawn cast a golden glow across the eastern horizon. Nipped by the chilly sting of early morning he roused her from her dreamless stupor.

  “Got to get moving,” he said shortly.

  Instantly awake, Amanda bolted upright, quickly regretting it as pain rocketed through her body. Muscles, sore and cramped from many hours of hard riding, had knotted into steel during the night spent on the cold, hard earth. Legs ached where hip met socket and calves cramped in twisting, knotting pain. She was still exhausted.

  He squatted down beside her, empathetic but impatient and thrust a pair of saddlebags into her hands.

  “Duds in here ought to fit you well enough. Put ’em on. It’ll make the riding easier. I’ll saddle up while you’re changing clothes.”

  Amanda nodded numbly, climbed to her feet, aware of a dull pounding at the back of her head. Lifting her encumbering skirts, she moved off behind a meager screen of brush and fumbled the saddlebags open. Inside she found a red and black plaid shirt, worn leather work gloves, a bandanna and a pair of tough, homespun pants. She changed quickly. The shirt was loose all over, though not overly so. The pants were much worse. Even with the shirt tail stuffed inside, the waist was laughable. The hips, on the other hand, were snug enough to be almost indecent. The cuffs dragged in the dirt, but she quickly remedied that by rolling them up enough to clear the ground.

  Amanda flipped open the second of the pouches, searching for something to use as a belt. What she found was a belt all right, but it was a gunbelt—attached to a black leather holster. Nosed into that holster was a Remington Army revolver. It glinted gunmetal gray in the swelling sunrise and the brass cartridges filling the belt’s loops shone like liquid gold.

  She gaped, staring at her find, thoughts racing, tumbling over one another as she reached out a hand to touch the smooth, walnut grip. She drew the holster and gun from the saddlebag, pulling the revolver free. She liked the solid heft of the weapon in her hand but knew nothing about guns other than how to crack the cylinder to check the load, and that much she did. The gun had a standard six-shot capacity in a cartridge cylinder. Five of the chambers were filled. The sixth, the one the hammer laid against, was empty. Her hand trembled a little from nervousness and the weight of the weapon. She held it, turned it over in her hand, awed by the coolness of the metal, the smoothness of the wood, and the killing power caressing her palm.

  A moment more and she swung the heavy leather belt about her slim hips, buckling it in place. It felt right, hanging so it rested against her right hip. Hollander, she anticipated, would have plenty to say when he saw her with this. So be it. She would learn to use the weapon one way or another.

  Jake’s greeting was not a warm one when Amanda strode to the horses, the gun prominent on her hip

  “You’re crazy, take that thing off and give it to me.”

  “I want you to teach me how to use it.”

  “No.”

  “No? Then I’ll just have to teach myself.”

  “More likely blow your foot off.”

  Hollander crossed his arms over
his chest, looking down at her with the appearance of unending patience.

  “I’d be less likely to blow my foot off if I had a good teacher, now wouldn’t I?”

  “If you wear a gun you’ll have to use it.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No perhaps about it. You wear it, you’ll use it.”

  “And if I don’t learn and we’re alone out here and something happens to you. What do I do then?”

  Jake looked at her and rolled his eyes heavenward. It was an argument he couldn’t win.

  “Mount up. We’ll talk about it later.”

  Amanda stepped to her sorrel, slipping the toe of an almost shredded dress boot into the stirrup.

  “Hold up.”

  She managed to half turn despite the stretch.

  “Better put the loop over the hammer of that thing. It’s liable to fall out of the holster and break your toe.”

  Amanda colored, but did as he told her, muttering under her breath.

  “I told you I need someone to teach me.”

  When she levered herself back into the saddle, Jake was already up on his appaloosa.

  “I sure can’t argue with that.”

  He turned his horse, heading into the maze of twisting canyons and washed stone riverbeds.

  “Then don’t!” Amanda called after him as he gave his long-limbed horse free rein and the animal rapidly widened the distance between itself and the sorrel.

  She followed his lead as closely as she could, a butterfly of fear tickling her stomach when daylight spread between their respective horses.

  Jake was still uneasy, but when Amanda urged her horse forward, managing at last to catch up with him, he was more willing to talk as they lost themselves in the maze of diverging canyons. In minutes she knew in her gut she was hopelessly lost. Their horses climbed and descended, then climbed again. Finally they came across a couple of rock pools of water where the horses slurped noisily at the tepid water.

  Jake stepped down and dipped their nearly empty canteens below the scummed surface to pull in cleaner water. Then, the blanket wrapping the metal still dripping, he rose, lithe as a panther, and handed it up to her. Amanda tipped her head back and drank deeply, feeling no guilt with plenty more water so close to hand.

  “There’ll be better water up ahead. Sweet drinking water. Even cool when the shade of the rocks shelters it from the sun.”

  Amanda grinned and swung down. Her left knee nearly gave out when she put her full weight on it. She winced, straightened and limped over to the pool.

  “I’ll look forward to that, but right now, this is available.”

  She made herself a fresh mud pack to replace the one that had broken and flaked off since the day before. The effect was cooling and most of the burn seemed to have tamed despite her initial doubts.

  Jake took his turn drinking deeply, then refilled the canteen and slung it over his saddle horn.

  They moved on. The Weaver’s Needle now lay to the west of them, the change in view both startling and awesome. What had appeared to be a single slender spire was, instead, ridge-like. Behind the peak the height dropped abruptly, and it was, in fact, longer than it was high.

  They had climbed up out of the canyons and were riding at an easy lope along a broad ridge that gave them an unobstructed view across the lower mountains for many miles when Jake suddenly pulled his horse up short, staring hard into the distance. Amanda followed the direction of his intent gaze, squinting against the brassy glare of the noonday sun. On the brown, shadowed slope far to the north of them something was moving at a dogged pace. It could only be men, riding with purpose. She stilled in her saddle .

  “They’re following us?” Amanda breathed the question, terrified of the answer she already knew.

  Jake nodded.

  “God! How can they be so close? We rode so hard and so long. I didn’t see them behind us! Not ever! Not like this. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Chuckling softly, Jake took his hat off and beat the dust out of it against his leg. “You can relax little mud-dabber, they can’t get here from there.”

  “What? That doesn’t make sense.”

  She looked harder, trying to bring the small figures into clear focus with eyes tired, burning and tearing. She watched them a few moments longer and turned a puzzled expression on Jake.

  “We were moving fast so they’d figure we were running clear out of the territory. That we’d come right through the mountains and make a run in the clear, risking everything for that lead. I wanted them to think they could head us off if they were just a little smarter and moved mighty fast. They’re boxed now. There’s a gorge between us and them. They’ll have to backtrack and go around. That’ll take two, maybe three days, if whoever’s leading them knows where to head. And that’s on horses more whipped than ours.”

  Staring fixedly at the distant trail, she asked of Jake, “Can they see us as clearly?”

  He shook his head.

  “We haven’t been following a trail, we’ve been circling and I’ve kept us to cover. I had to know now where they were before I took us to ground in the canyon.”

  Relaxed now in the saddle, Jake reined his appaloosa around to continue on.

  “Just a damn minute!” Amanda snapped, anger giving her voice a rapier edge, “You’re telling me we’ve been going around in circles up here, looking for them, and you didn’t see fit to tell me? We haven’t been using any discernible trail and I have no idea of where we are or how we got here. What the hell do you think you’ve been doing?” Amanda stiffened righteously. “I would have ended up just as dead as you had they caught up with us somewhere in these God-forsaken mountains!”

  Pulling his horse up short at her first words, Jake half turned the animal to face her, anger ominously darkening the gray color of his eyes. Like thunderclouds laced with lightning, they pulsed with gold flecks.

  “I did what I figured to be best for us both. I could’ve lost you a long time ago, Lady, and maybe I should have.”

  “We made a deal. You said I had to follow your orders without question until we were clear of the hangman’s noose. Well, now we are. The promise is ended. Now, I want your promise. A vow that from here on you’ll tell me exactly where we are and where we’re going. I’ll do whatever I can to help along the way so the more you teach me the more help I’ll be.”

  Unreasoning anger at her reasonable, albeit not so diplomatically phrased demands, welled up within him. He was tired, not having slept the night past since he could not have trusted her to take a watch. Fueling the flames of his temper was the inescapable fact that he had saved her life, brought her along on this hell-for-leather race at the risk of his own and, damn it, was unaccustomed to taking anything off anyone, especially a small, pretty woman.

  “Your more than polite request seems reasonable,” Jake’s words flowed smooth as silk and with a resonance that could have vibrated a drum, “though you have nothing to offer in return.” He eyed her appraisingly, and before he could stop himself, his ornery side threw out the brutal remark.

  “Of course, you might have some hidden assets that haven’t surfaced yet.”

  He stared hared at Amanda and knew, despite the thick coating of cracked mud on her face, she was reddening in embarrassment. He relented, a little abashed at his own loss of control.

  “Okay, you have my word, though I don’t know why you’d take it.”

  “If you give your word you won’t break it.

  Jake smiled grimly, reddish lights shooting through his short-cropped beard, and he held his suddenly fractious horse with a firm but gentle hand.

  “I won’t, huh?”

  “No. You won’t.”

  For a few moments he regarded her in taut silence.

  “We’ll reach that canyon soon. When we do we’ll make camp and I’ll give you your first lesson, and that’s a promise too.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way. How’s your head?”

  Jake laughed out loud.r />
  “If you ain’t the—you waited until now to ask?”

  “Well, we were kind of busy and it wasn’t bleeding. I mean, I’m sorry, but I have had a few problems of my own. Does it hurt?”

  “Some, but I’ll live.”

  He swung his mount around, and this time they rode off in tandem.

  Chapter 6

  Sheriff Matt Carson and the seven men riding with him were all dog tired, baked by the desert sun. The trail they had been following had long since dried up leaving them frustrated and angry, angry enough to lynch that pair on the spot if they managed to catch them, presuming they could find a tree when the time came.

  Carson had been so sure the two fugitives were riding hard for the border that he had led his posse straight into the mountains, intent on cutting off their quarry.

  Everything had pointed to them running like a pair of scalded cats with no tactic other than to put miles between themselves and Phoenix. They hadn’t given the appearance of moving with and that damned woman had to be riding like a gypsy! He’d been so sure he could intercept them.

  He’d been wrong.

  That Hollander had snookered him good. So had the Cleary woman and for Matt Carson, it was a bitter gall riding his gut. He whipped his hat from his head, slapping it so hard against his leg that his horse sidled nervously beneath him as he squinted into the sun-splashed distance.

  “Lost ’em, didn’t we?” Liam Smith, the local livery man who’d had a small savings account over at Berglund’s bank, made the bald-faced statement.

  “Looks that way,” Carson ground out.

  “You know where the next water is out here?”

  The sheriff sighed. He’d already over-stepped himself coming this far. He didn’t know the country well but he balked at turning back.

  Joe, foreman of the Rocking Bar X ranch, leaned on his saddle horn, long angular face hard, dark eyes red-rimmed. He was rolling a couple of small pebbles around inside his mouth to keep it moist.

  “Horses are whipped. By the time we double-back and pick up a trail again, assuming there’s one to be found, they’ll be spent altogether. We’ll start losing ’em and a man on foot out here ain’t good for nothing.”