by Tess LeSue
What would she do back east?
Enjoy herself.
Yes. But doing what? Needlepoint?
“I reckon we should camp when we find water. There’s a creek about an hour ahead.” The sound of Kennedy Voss’s voice made her jump. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d left San Francisco. “There ain’t a lot of water out this way. We’d be fools to pass it by.”
Camp. With Kennedy Voss. Ava let that sink in.
It sank right to the pit of her stomach.
“It’s too early to camp!” Lord Whatsit kicked up when he heard Voss’s suggestion. “Absolutely not! There are hours of good riding time ahead! Egad, you people are determined to fail! Well, we Whents are no also-rans! We win.”
“So, get riding,” Voss sneered. He didn’t have much use for a lord either, apparently.
“We will!” Becky joined in now. “Won’t we, Miss Archer?” She was pulling faces at Ava, clearly thinking she was being subtle. It was painfully obvious she wanted to get Ava away from Voss. Ava bet she was a terrible poker player.
“You ain’t catching up to those boys. They’ll be in Mariposa before you’ve so much as scratched yourselves.” Kennedy Voss was unperturbed. He just rode along, his sweet farm boy face as deceptively mellow as ever. “But by all means, y’all go chasing shadows all you want. I’ll take good care of Miss Archer for you.”
“I’m not leaving the lady at your mercy.” Lord Whatsit looked set to get all outraged again. It was a flat-out waste of energy.
“I’m not at anyone’s mercy,” Ava corrected him. She was feeling prickly from the heat and from the tension. “And no one takes care of me. I take care of myself.” At that point, she would have liked to kick her horse into a trot to pull ahead of them, but no matter how hard she dug her heels into Freckles, there was no trotting. Which quite ruined the effect of her haughtiness. She kept her nose in the air anyway. Sometimes a girl had to act like she had dignity, even when it was falling from her in flakes, like old paint.
* * *
• • •
BY THE TIME they got to Mariposa it was all over. There were no Deathrider, no other Hunters, no mayhem. There was just a community left more than a touch high-strung by events. Events that Ava had clearly missed by a mile.
Damn it.
The ride to Mariposa had been agonizingly slow, and camping with Kennedy Voss had been an exercise in sleep deprivation. Of course she couldn’t sleep with that maniac outside the tent. She and Becky had spent every night with their weapons loaded and cocked, jumping every time a lick of wind flapped at the canvas of their tent. Voss hadn’t done anything more inappropriate than stare at her over the campfire with his flat snake stare, but Ava felt she was simply waiting for the ax to fall. . . . He might be holding back now, but he wouldn’t forever. That wasn’t how he worked. And she shuddered to think what fantasies and plans were passing through the mind behind that flat gaze.
And it wasn’t just him. The other couple of Hunters who’d stuck to them like grime were almost as bad. Rowley and Hicks were a half-witted pair of trail hounds who fancied themselves gunslingers, but who were actually just failed miners–cum–two-bit thieves. They’d brought a jug of moonshine along and spent most days falling-down drunk. How they kept in the saddle was a mystery. Both were in awe of Voss and fell over themselves trying to impress him, although no one doubted their plan was to shoot Voss as soon as there was competition over capturing the Plague of the West. By falling in with them, Rowley and Hicks had bet on Ava and Voss finding Deathrider first; they thought that Ava had some insider knowledge and that while the Hunters were tearing off after a shadow, they’d follow her right to the prey. They thought they were being crafty.
They weren’t. It was a plan hatched by stone-cold idiots. Firstly, because neither Ava nor Voss had any information on Deathrider; secondly, because the large pack of Hunters was liable to find Deathrider long before they did; and thirdly, because there was no way a couple of drunken hustlers like those two could shoot a man like Kennedy Voss. Voss would have them eviscerated before they’d so much as twitched a finger toward their weapons. In no small part because they were blind drunk.
For his part, Voss ignored them. They were flies he couldn’t be bothered swatting. Yet.
By the time they reached Mariposa, Ava was sandy eyed with exhaustion. She knew if she kept on this way, she was headed for disaster. She’d fall off her horse and break her neck, or shoot herself in the night when she nodded off with her gun in hand, or get so addled that Voss would easily overpower her. She figured that was his plan—to wear her down until she had no fight in her, to get her so tired she’d be utterly at his mercy. Although it was possible that he was also dumb enough to think she knew where Deathrider was. And why kill her before she’d led him to the Plague of the West? Or before she’d immortalized him in another book, this time for killing the only man she’d made more famous than him?
Mile by mile, her memory threw up stories of Kennedy Voss’s crimes: the Pettifrew girls, for example, up there in the mountains, or when he had ripped through a whorehouse in Bellevue. On a Sunday, no less, while the rest of the town was in church. Which was why no one had been there to rescue the whores—he’d had the place to himself. Ava had ridden into town after the fact, quite a long time after the fact, but she’d seen the bloodstains for herself—they’d still been stark even so many months later. No matter how hard the proprietor scrubbed the floorboards, he couldn’t get the stains out. It wasn’t a whorehouse anymore by that stage; no one fancied whoring there anymore, not after what had happened. Even if they could have found a whore to work there, she wouldn’t have been able to coax a customer over the threshold. Some places have a history so burdensome, it eclipses their future. When Ava reached Bellevue, months after Voss had left, the building had been taken over by the local pastor, who’d planned to turn it into a school. They were in the process of painting over the stains when Ava had come to see it. She’d written about those stains in Kennedy Voss and the Belles of Bellevue. It sold well. People liked a bit of horror.
But it was the horror that was fraying her nerves now that she was riding along with the man who was the cause of it all.
Hell, traveling was hard enough without adding a murderous rapist into the mix. It was a relief to get to Mariposa and no longer be in desert country with him. It was a small measure of comfort, but comfort nevertheless.
Ava took in the dirt pit of Mariposa. As they rode in, people scattered like pigeons. Anxious faces peered out of windows, blinds were pulled and doors were locked. Ava noted the bullet holes in some of the shop signs down Main Street.
The place looked like the seventh level of hell, just like every other mining town she’d seen. Every tree for miles had been torn down, and the earth had been blasted and burrowed until all you could see was churned muck. Civilization was a thin veneer. The stumps of felled trees still jutted from the earth, even in the middle of the street, so you had to pick your way around them. The clapboard buildings rose from the mud like crooked toadstools; they were splattered with dirt, and their windows were opaque with dust. The fanciest by far were the whorehouses, which didn’t surprise Ava in the least. Whores did a roaring trade in these towns. There were a hundred men for every woman, and the nature of the town meant that almost every woman was a soiled dove. Regular women didn’t stop in these places; it wasn’t safe or congenial.
Unless you were traveling with Kennedy Voss, Ava thought dryly. Then a mining town looked like a veritable refuge.
She made for the general store and hitched her horses to the post.
“We’re not stopping!” Lord Whatsit looked ready to pitch a fit.
“All the best, then,” Ava said, giving him a faux-cheery wave. She dug her notebook and pencil out of her bag and headed for the store. She didn’t bother to see if anyone followed her. She didn’t need to. Voss was close enou
gh by that he might as well have been her shadow.
The store door was locked. The wax blinds had been pulled, covering the windows as well as the panes in the door.
“Guess they don’t want us here,” Voss said. He was so close, she could feel his breath on her neck. Show no fear.
Ava gave a lighthearted knock on the door. It wasn’t easy trying to seem this cheerful when her blood was cold with fear. She had more of an urge to pound impatiently at the panes. Maybe smash one or two of them.
But she’d need to put the occupants at ease if she was going to get any information out of them, so lighthearted was the order of the day. Something had badly scared the citizens of Mariposa. Ava doubted the Hunters had been gentle as they’d come tearing into town, but she wondered if it was more than that. . . . She wondered if their fear had anything to do with the Plague of the West.
“Hello?” she called, injecting a chirpiness into her voice that she most certainly didn’t feel. When there was no answer, she rapped with a little bit more force.
“You need something in there?” Voss asked curiously. He leaned against the doorframe, so close he was brushing her elbow. All he needed was a thread of straw between his teeth, and he’d look like a perfect hick.
“Yes, Mr. Voss, I do.” She tucked her pencil behind her ear and prepared to talk her way in.
“Yeah? And what are you needing? A shovel? Some feed for that bag of bones you’re riding.”
She gave him a disdainful look. “No, Mr. Voss, what I need is much more vital. What I need is information.”
“Information, eh?” He scratched his chin. “About that Plague of the West fella and whether those Hunters got him?”
She snorted. “They didn’t get him. If they’d caught him, these people wouldn’t be locked behind their doors.”
Voss nodded in satisfaction. “So, you want to know which way they went?”
“I want to know the details, Mr. Voss. I want to know what happened here. In vivid detail.”
For a moment the flatness left Kennedy Voss’s gaze and he looked at her with something akin to admiration. “You like details? I like details too. I notice everything. It’s why I’m good at what I do.”
Ava kept her expression serene, even though he was making her toes curl. Why I’m good at what I do. He made murder sound like a job.
“Stand back,” Voss said, pulling his gun. “I’ll get the door open for you.”
And with that, Ava lost every last hope of putting the citizens of Mariposa at their ease. All thought of talking to them faded, replaced with a simple desire to keep them alive. Because Kennedy Voss was about to show Mariposa that they hadn’t seen anything yet.
8
THERE WAS NO point in running. They were surrounded. A great ring of men on horseback, rifles drawn, was advancing at a measured pace. The lazy tightening of their noose showed their power—these men were in no rush because they knew they’d already won.
Even from a distance, it was clear to Deathrider that this was something worse than Hunters or Apaches.
This was the United States Army.
“How in hell did they manage to get this close without us noticing?” Micah complained. He’d drawn his weapons.
Deathrider didn’t know.
The army. The goddamn army.
“Since when do we get outmaneuvered by white men?” Micah asked, sounding more than a little shocked.
“Since today.”
Dog growled and stood protectively in front of Deathrider. Deathrider gave him a scratch. “Relax,” he told Micah. “Try to look confident.”
“Are you mad?” Micah couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the approaching blue-clad army. “What am I saying? Or course you are. You’re insane. Loco. Out. Of. Your. Mind.”
“Put your hands in the air, Micah. Keep them where they can see them.” Deathrider’s mind was racing. How in hell did they get out of this one?
“You’re giving up?”
“No. I’m just doing this the smart way.”
“Why start now?” Micah muttered, but he lifted his hands in the air and turned a slow circle to show the army he was no threat.
“You too, Dog.” Deathrider pulled on his ears. “Drop. Play nice.”
Keeping a wary eye on both Deathrider and the approaching men, Dog dropped on his belly in the dirt. He put his chin down and his ears lay flat to his head. He let out a reproving whine.
Deathrider lifted his own hands in the air and cursed the fact that he and Micah still had their hair down. If they’d had hats on already, they might have passed for white. At a distance anyway. But it was too late now. Hair down, they would never pass. But at least they spoke English and could play the part of being “civilized.” That usually kept men like these happy. Happy enough to ask questions first and shoot later anyway.
“Howdy,” he called once the men had drawn to a halt. They stopped a good five yards out, their noose drawn tight. Deathrider turned full circle, searching for the leader. “We speak English,” he said amiably. He kept his voice calm as his eyes skipped over the soldiers. They were a ragtag bunch who had clearly been on patrol a good long while. Their blue jackets were crusted with dust, and their faces were sunburned above their whiskers.
“Drop your weapons!” Ah, there was the leader. He was a square brick of a man, with muttonchop whiskers and a hell of a lot of gleaming buttons. The fabric of his coat was as dusty as the other men’s, but he’d clearly taken the time to keep his buttons polished. His boots too. His whiskers were trimmed, and his tack was freshly oiled. This was a man who kept to the rules, Deathrider intuited. Which might play in their favor.
“Have we broken a law?” Micah called. He was shifting nervously from foot to foot, his hands turning in the air. He looked like he was warming up to dance.
“Sir.”
“What?” Micah looked confused, and Deathrider’s feeling of dread intensified.
“‘Have we broken a law, sir?’ I don’t know what kind of manners you use amongst your own people, but we address people respectfully. Especially when speaking to a man of my rank.” The man turned his body to show his decorations so they could appreciate his rank.
“Have we broken a law, sir?” Micah parroted. Deathrider was glad to see he refrained from rolling his eyes. Just.
“Just by being here, you broke the law, son,” he said. His voice was like a pistol crack. “It’s illegal for Apaches to cross the border.” His sharp gaze drifted to the remains of the fire and to the wagon. “But it looks like you’ve broken more than just one law here today.”
“We’re not over the border,” Deathrider pointed out.
“And that wagon wasn’t us,” Micah said hastily. “That was the Chiricahua. We think. We just stopped to bury the poor bastards.” He pointed at the cairn.
“That’s a clear lie, sir. It ain’t normal for them to bury their kill, Captain,” one of the soldiers said authoritatively. “They usually leave them for the vultures.”
The captain nodded at the man who’d spoken. “That seems to fit with what we’ve seen in these parts.”
“I can examine the scene, if you wish?”
“By all means, Walker. That’s why we brought you.”
Deathrider caught Micah’s eye. What was to examine?
The man called Walker dismounted, while the rest of the soldiers kept their rifles trained on Deathrider and Micah.
“You two throw your weapons down,” the captain ordered. “There’s nothing to be gained by fighting—you’re outnumbered ten to one.”
Still holding Micah’s gaze, Deathrider nodded. “We might as well do it.”
Micah scowled at him. Deathrider imagined he’d be bitching about this for weeks.
As they carefully unholstered their weapons and laid them in the dirt, Deathrider watched Walker examine th
e graves and then the burned-out wagon, where the remains of Seline’s pink dress caught the breeze and fluttered like a pennant.
“What do you see, Walker?” the captain rumbled.
“A lady has been murdered here,” Walker said grimly. “A gentlewoman by the look of this gown. The material is of fine quality.”
“They’ve massacred a white woman!” There was outrage among the men, and the sound of rifles bracing.
“Don’t shoot!” the captain said sternly. “Not until Walker has discerned the cause of events.”
This man Walker must have been their tracker. Of sorts.
“Yes, there was definitely a woman murdered here,” Walker said solemnly, finding Seline’s hacked-up pink bonnet. A chunk of orange hair was tangled in the silk roses. With great sadness, Walker untangled the hair and examined it. “Sir,” he called to the captain, his voice grave, “it looks like they scalped her!”
There was a rolling sound of disgust from the soldiers. Micah gave Deathrider a filthy look.
Deathrider watched in disbelief as Walker took the hank of hair over to the captain. The man took it and, following Walker’s lead, examined it closely. What they were hoping to find was beyond Deathrider. It was just a hank of hair. Glaringly orange from the henna dyes Seline used, but unremarkable otherwise. There was no sign of scalping in that hank of hair. If it was proof of anything, it was proof of a haircut.
The captain looked up from the hank of orange hair and addressed his men. “It is true. The lady was most definitely scalped.”
The rolling dismay became a low growl of rage.
White people. They beggared belief. The irony of the situation hit Deathrider hard. He’d been planning to stage this scene so everyone would think Seline had been attacked, scalped and killed by Apaches. And that was exactly what was happening here—only he hadn’t staged it yet. And they thought he was the Apache who’d done it. When he wasn’t even a damn Apache! He didn’t look anything like an Apache: not like a Chiricahua, not like a Jicarilla, not like a Mescalero. He looked as much like an Apache as he looked like a Spaniard.
