by P. A. Bechko
A soft scuttling in the brush brought her head up again just as they settled down to eat.
“Probably chulos,” Jake noted. “They’ll raid the camp if they get the chance. We best keep things buttoned up tight.”
A couple of coyotes yipped and howled from somewhere nearby. Amanda looked at her companion and grinned.
He grinned back.
“Never took close note of all this until I told you you’re going to be up half the night alone, did you?”
“Truth be told,” Amanda admitted, “you’re right.”
She’d long since given up pussy-footing around where Jake Hollander was concerned. He could spot a lie a mile off.
“It’ll help keep you awake.”
They ate in companionable silence as the night settled in. Jake smiled ruefully down at his plate of food. In spite of himself, and her attractiveness, Hollander was thinking of Amanda as more of a partner than a burden. About the only thing she had not shown an interest in as yet was hunting though she’d taken to learning about the edible plants quick enough. In unspoken agreement, she brought in plenty of wild plants, and he contributed the game and checked the edibility of her bounty.
Amanda gulped down her dinner. Lord, it seemed like she was always hungry these day. She ate like three of her former selves yet nothing changed. Her clothing fit the same, or hung looser. She was lean and hard and sun-browned. She had gained in physical strength, and had learned more in a few weeks than she had expected to in a lifetime, with there was plenty more still to come. She never forgot her goals, and the time they would abandon their hideout was drawing closer with each passing day.
“Have you given any more thought to going back East?” Jake raised the question.
Amanda smiled faintly, then shrugged. “A lot,” she admitted, “but I’m not going.”
Hollander shook his head almost in pity. “You still planning on heading back into Phoenix, proving you didn’t have any part in that robbery?”
“That we didn’t have any part in the robbery,” Amanda corrected him with an easy smile. “And you?”
Jake marveled at how much she had changed in the short weeks they had been hiding out. Her darkly tanned skin set off those green cat eyes far more than the lightness of her skin ever had. Her hair she managed by braiding or tying back, then tying the bandanna over her head to give some protection from the sun. The kid’s hat she wore over that, floppy brim drooping down over her eyes. She sat often cross-legged, Indian style. Her new-found, and growing confidence flowed about her like a cloak, and he had, over the past days, found his reservations falling away one by one. Amanda Cleary was head strong and stubborn, no fool, and proving quickly that she could carry her own weight. His only remaining concern was experience. She had none.
All she had learned, she had learned from him. She was planning on walking in with knowledge learned, but not used. Would she, Jake wondered, be able to pull the trigger if another, Berglund maybe, was pointing a gun at her? He believed she could, but there was no knowing for certain until it happened. Then, if she didn’t act within a split second, it would be too late.
“I’ve given considerable thought to the matter myself,” Hollander answered her, stacking the small bones to one side of his plate.
“We could try what you’re talking about, together, with certain conditions,” he said, surprising her enough to make her sit up and stare questioningly at him.
“What conditions?”
He heard the testy intonation of her voice, sensed the defenses rising, but he plunged on ahead with what he had to say.
“You’ve learned a lot,” he began, “but it’s only been a few weeks, and I’ve been at this for years. We can go after it and worry this thing, take it as far as we can. but if it reaches a point where we can do no more, where all that could happen is we’d both wind up dead and I say we run, we run.”
It was with some effort that Amanda continued chewing thoughtfully on her dinner, her face an expressionless mask, something else she had picked up from Hollander along the way.
“If you say,” Amanda said slowly. “Why you?”
“Because if it happens, there won’t be time to think about it and there won’t be time to argue about it. I have more experience. My word has to be law.”
Amanda hesitated only because she did not want to even think of the possibility of running again. But, she knew he was right. His experience far overshadowed hers. She was determined to go on with, or without him, but she was not such a fool as to not recognize the odds would be much more favorable if they stayed together.
Jake waited in impatient silence while Amanda considered his offer. By now he knew she was never too taken with anything that had strings attached, even sensible ones. He wasn’t sure what he would do should she refuse. He assumed that if she used the exceptional brains God had given her, she would accept. She was, he had learned her, one of the most logical and practical people he had ever come across.
“All right,” she said at last. “We’ll do it your way.”
Hollander nodded in reply. Then he rose and carried the remains of their meal from camp.
Chapter 10
Amanda slouched in the saddle, reins loose in her hands while the horse beneath her nibbled at the sparse grasses, meandering a step or two in search of more to eat. She drifted along with his loose-limbed walk, pleased at how comfortable she felt astride a horse now. None of the old aches plagued her. Muscles no longer burned. Instead they felt strong and alive. Gone was the pale, milky whiteness of her skin. In its place was a golden tan, albeit one with an almost perpetually underlying pink tinge.
She adjusted the sheltering brim of her hat and her eyes flicked across the land rolling before her, fixing briefly on the distant sky line. The dust, as always, was thick, blowing on a stiff wind off the surrounding hills and up from the desert floor in a curling ground swell that put grit in her teeth and made her eyes feel like they orbited in twin beds of ground glass. An unexpected gust startled Colorado and the horse brought his head up fast, skittering several strides before Amanda’s firm hand on the reins drew him once more to a standstill.
“Easy, Colorado. Take it easy boy,” She spoke in a newly cultivated soothing tone she reserved just for the horse.
Long hours in the saddle, traveling over treacherous terrain, had cured her of every self-doubt she could remember. Steep grades and rocky slopes no longer held any terror for her and she sent the dependable gelding up the worst of them at a walk or a high gallop, without a qualm.
She kept off the skyline and made sure the slope of a dusty hill was at her back while her gaze probed the distance. Hollander had kept up her rigorous training. Her teacher, her guide and her nemesis, he left nothing out. He instructed her on, where to find water and what to do when she couldn’t. He guided her when she practiced with the gun. He criticized, scolded and cursed. In between he taught her the rudiments of tracking and gave her a few tips on how to handle herself in a close fight despite her slight size. Much of the time, though, he was out wandering, tracking, hunting, keeping close watch on their situation and the security of their camp.
Once she’d conquered her initial soreness, she had begun saddling up and wandering the canyons, washes, and slopes of the Superstitions astride the dependable sorrel gelding, putting to the test all that Hollander had taught her. Sticking close to camp at first, she had later begun widening her horizons, concentrating to learn the countryside well enough to be able to find her way back with confidence. She stretched her limits further and further with each ride, at times riding with Hollander when he went hunting, but more and more she traveled and explored alone. She taught herself independence, caution and patience.
She tracked anything that moved, over ground that was hard-packed or loose, leaf and grass covered or barren. She brought back more and more foodstuffs to fill their larder. And, she kept a close watch for any sign of other human beings invading the security of their hidden canyon.
She rode almost constantly and when not in the saddle, practiced with the six-gun. Her right hand, wrist and arm strengthened quickly, her speed and accuracy developed apace. Hollander told her she had the potential to be damned good, something which had apparently surprised him.
She’d ridden hard this morning, pushing her limits. It was a good two hour ride at a brisk pace back to camp. She was skirting the edge of the mountain range having followed a different route altogether from the one Hollander had used to bring them in.
Amanda leaned back in the saddle, looking south across open desert. They would be leaving their secluded oasis very soon, but this was not the day.
She touched Colorado with one soft-booted heel, intending to start back to camp in the face of the sun’s steady climb toward its zenith, and turned her eyes from the vast, open country rolling from the foot of the mountains. But something bothered her, and she paused. Her horse shook his head impatiently, bracing himself on the steep slope, loose rock rattling from beneath his hoofs. Still, he obeyed the firm hand on the reins, legs locked and quivering against gravity’s pull.
Something moved on the edge of her vision, and her ears detected a kind of distant rumbling, jangling sound. She urged Colorado to a more level spot, her own head cocked, intent upon the distant sound.
A stagecoach.
Amanda watched intently for a few moments, eyes fixed on the rocking box of a conveyance and the plume of dust rising in its wake, then was about to leave for the second time when she spied something else. Riders. Three of them. Dust curling up behind their running horses, they were pounding after the stagecoach, their intent questionable until gunshots ripped through the rarefied desert air. The driver jumped the team into an all-out run.
It was only a matter of minutes before the three men waving guns ran the coach down. Who was in that coach? Armed men. Or, more likely, people less able to defend themselves. The sight made her stomach turn. The distance wasn’t far as the crow flew, trouble was, most of the distance separating them was steep and rocky.
Amanda stared, aghast. There was no one riding shotgun on that stage. It hit her like a wet rag in the face on a parched day. She didn’t even think beyond that. She touched her heels to the sorrel’s side and started down.
Instantly, dun colored dust billowed and loose rock clattered from beneath metal shod hoofs, sand hissing its way down the incline as Colorado took to the slope in a jerky, slip-sliding gait that sat him down on his haunches more than once during their insanely swift descent.
Amanda had no plan, not an idea as to what she was going to do, but she couldn’t turn her back on what was obviously an attack on the hapless stagecoach when she could help. She could almost hear Jake Hollander’s words, angry and deprecating, ringing in her ears, but she pressed on, Colorado crow-hopping the last few feet down slope, then leaping like a deer onto the hard-pan.
The game sorrel stumbled, legs locked. For an instant her heart flip-flopped in her chest and she pitched forward violently in the saddle, keeping her seat only through a combination of luck, and a momentary surge of strength rocked through her veins by the adrenaline roaring in her blood. Stinging, wind-driven dust rubbed her face raw and her heart-beat pounded in her ears as she lined Colorado out into a head long run, his coat already lathered from the wild plunge down the slope.
As her horse drew out of the blinding dust of their decent, Amanda spotted the stage slowing to a halt.
“Come on, Colorado,” she encouraged the sturdy red, already flying over the hard pan. “We’re going to have to bluff them!”
Colorado tossed his head, dust tumbling from his mane, as if agreeing with her.
She’d have the element of surprise on her side, but shuddered to think what might happen if that wasn’t enough.
She leaned low over Colorado’s neck, hugging his neck and rocked effortlessly with the game little sorrel’s rolling gallop.
Fear swept away what little moisture in her mouth the searing wind had not depleted. She reached for her six-gun with her right hand, fingers curling around the smooth butt, thumb flipping the leather loop off the hammer. The cool weight of the gun felt good in her hand as she skirted the base of a low hill, bearing down on the stagecoach. Fleetingly, she thought Jake and the lessons he had pounded into her. You hold a gun in your hand and sooner or later you were going to have to use it. A knot twisted in Amanda’s stomach as she swept forward.
A woman stood uncertainly beside the coach, its door ajar and swinging in the wind. She held her small daughter protectively against her skirt. The driver, disarmed, was held apart from them, gun aimed at his chest, his weapon lay in the dust several yards away.
Amanda was fast approaching when one of the outlaws turned with a jerk in her direction. She was out in the open with nowhere to go but forward. Teeth gritted she brought the gun up, hoped the moving horse would not throw her aim off too much, and started firing.
She tore up the hard packed earth at the feet of the outlaw’s horse as he turned to warn another of her approach. Her next shot took off the hat of the second man to send it skittering across the ground. Only pure luck she hadn’t hit him. Amanda shifted her aim, blocking any thought of what would have happened to that man’s head if bullet had connected with flesh.
Amanda acted on impulse and gave a deep-throated yell, waving her arm as if signaling others to join her. At that distance, there wasn’t much danger of their realizing she was a woman so she pressed her advantage as the outlaws’ horses began milling around just before the stage driver dove for the ground, taking the woman and her little girl with him.
Gunshots cracked in staccato reply, one bullet scarring the ground to her right, another whistling past her ear. She returned the fire on gut and a pained yelp was the result. A moment later one of the outlaws jerked his bandanna mask down, yelling to the others. Amanda fired again, and missed. But even before she’d pulled the trigger recognition hit her like the slap of cold river water. She knew him! The bank robbery in town. He was one of them!
Another bullet tugged at her flapping shirt sleeve, and then, suddenly, the outlaws wheeled their horses almost as one, breaking into a dead run, headed south.
It tore at her innards to pull up instead of follow, but she was alone and not foolhardy.
She shortened Colorado’s strides, easing him off the long-legged, forward plunge, watching as the foiled stage robbers faded into the dust of the desert. Their horses throwing up great gouts of dust, in only moments they were barely visible as blurred shapes in the distance.
She wheeled her lathered, dust-covered mount, and returned to the stage at an easy gallop.
The driver was helping the woman, a slender thing, young and fragile-appearing, to her feet when she rode up. To Amanda’s eye, the young woman looked much as she herself must have looked when she had come out on the stage from Boston.
“Well sir!” the driver, a tall, wiry man with a scruffy beard and rounded cheeks, called out at Amanda’s approach, “You saved our bacon, you sure did. I don’t know where you come from, but we sure as hell are glad to see you!”
The young woman, flaxen curls blowing beneath her bonnet, brown eyes squinting against the glare of the blazing sun had helped her child up out of the dirt, and smiled weakly in Amanda’s direction,. The little girl hid her face against her mother’s skirts, and there was not much of her to see save a few curls the same flaxen color of her mother’s sticking out from beneath her smudged bonnet.
Amanda drew Colorado to a halt and let him blow, dust swirling about his feet. Amanda looked down at the stagecoach’s passengers and smiled.
“Why, you’re a woman!” the slender young mother choked out the words in her surprise, and drew her daughter closer into the bell of her skirts.
“Jehosaphat! I’ll be a whiskey dipped mule if you ain’t right!” The driver narrowed his eyes, staring intently.
“I’m glad I could help,” Amanda holstered her six-gun and leaned on the saddle horn, but she left
the loop off the hammer for the time being. “You better get moving again,” she warned. “Those three might catch on to what I did and come back.”
The sorrel range pony shifted nervously beneath Amanda as if sensing something unsavory on the wind.
The driver stared, his attitude changing abruptly. “They got wanted posters out on you for robbing the bank in Phoenix a few weeks back.” His face turned dark. “Says you’re worth seven hundred and fifty dollars.” Small beady eyes held Amanda in the intensity of their gaze. “Where’s that fella you’re ridin’ with? Poster says he’s worth a thousand.”
“Those posters are a lie. We didn’t have anything to do with that bank hold up, but the men who just tried to rob you did. Tell that to the authorities when you get to the next town!”
She looked in the direction the outlaws had taken. Hollander had said to clear themselves they would have to prove another’s guilt. Their proof was riding south at that moment. She had to tell Jake.
The driver took note of the distracted look on Amanda’s face and edged toward his gun. Seven hundred and fifty dollars was a lot of money any way a man looked at it.
The hat she had shot off the outlaw’s head caught Amanda’s attention. There was a neat hole in the crown where her bullet had passed through, but a hat with a hole in it was better than no hat at all. She stepped down and picked it up, slapping it against her thigh to remove the dust and settled it on her head. Surprisingly it was a pretty good fit.
Amanda gathered Colorado’s reins and was about to swing back into the saddle when the young woman’s voice, clear as a bell, rang out.
“No! You can’t”
At almost the same instant Amanda caught the driver’s swift and furtive movement out of the corner of her eye. Her hand dropped to her gun, clasped it and drew all in one well-oiled movement, raw terror clutching at her belly. The Colt was out, aimed and cocked, before the driver could get halfway there. The click of the hammer being drawn back was louder than a pebble in a tin pan.
