* * * * *
Ride north they did, following the twists of the Rio Grande, the old El Paso del Norte trail, through the ruggedly beautiful countryside as it tumbled away from the Franklin Mountains.
The temperature progressed ever hotter through to the heart of the afternoon so Kendrick held the horses at a steady but moderate pace. He'd initially figured five days to Socorro. With this kind of heat and the delayed start they had gotten, he now reckoned it might carry into a sixth.
They stopped for a brief lunch in the shade of a jutting rock formation with a slender offshoot of the river bubbling close by. Kendrick uncuffed Ludek long enough to let him eat some jerky and a biscuit and a half can of peaches. He also allowed him to walk around a bit, do some stretching, kneel in the cool stream to wash and scoop some soothing water to the scrapes and bruises around his mouth where Hutchins had struck him. Only after Ludek was back in irons did Kendrick relax his guard enough to eat and take some refreshment from the stream himself.
Flashing his by now familiar smirk, Ludek observed, "You treat me like you must think I'm a real dangerous character, bounty man."
"Try anything foolish," Kendrick told him, "and you'll quick find out who's the most dangerous character on this here trail ride."
At dusk, after they'd crossed into New Mexico Territory, Kendrick selected a campsite in a clump of cottonwood trees on a low bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. He leg-ironed Ludek to an exposed root of one of the trees, leaving him limited mobility for eating and sleeping and giving a break to his chafed wrists. Kendrick was a hard man, but not an unnecessarily cruel one.
After tending to the horses, he got a campfire going and set about fixing supper. More jerky (but softened this time in hot bacon grease); biscuits; beans; a shared can of stewed tomatoes; plenty of hot, strong coffee.
"You ain't a half bad trail cook, I'll give you that," Ludek said as he pushed aside his emptied tin plate. "I guess a fella could do worse than to be brought in by you. I've heard tell of some bounty hunters who don't believe in grubbing their prisoners decent during the trip in, keep 'em practically starved. Suppose they figure anything more is just a waste of good vittles on a condemned man."
Kendrick nodded. "And there's some bring in all of their prisoners cold across a saddle. Waste no vittles at all that way."
"You ever done it like that?"
"Brought a few in dead, yeah. But not to save grub—only because they gave me no choice."
Night rolled in nearly cloudless and brilliant, tinting everything silver-blue under a thousand stars and a fat slice of moon. The land rapidly gave up its heat.
Returning from the riverbank where he'd washed the pots and mess kits, Kendrick stooped to rummage in one of his saddlebags until he carefully withdrew a spool of string wrapped around a smooth piece of notched wood. A half dozen barbed hooks dangled from a loop at one end of the string.
Straightening up, Kendrick said, "You sit tight, I'm going to mosey upstream a spell. You might work on mustering a wish of good luck to me. If I get any, we'll have ourselves fresh fish for breakfast in the morning."
Ludek frowned. "How far you going?"
"A ways. Till I come on a likely spot."
"How long you figure to be gone?"
It was Kendrick's turn to frown. "Why? You going to miss me?"
"Right. Like the Fever. It's just that ... "
"Just that what?"
"Well, it's dark and all."
"You mean to tell me a hardass desperado like you is afraid of the dark? Besides, it's the dark of the moon and stars. Almost as bright as day."
"Almost, maybe. But it ain’t day. You don't know these hills that good. What if you stumble in the shadows—trip and break your fool neck? Or fall in the river and drown? Where does that leave me? Staked out here like coyote bait, that's where."
"Ah, the truth of it at last. Just when I thought you were starting to show a fondness for me."
"I'm serious, dammit. You ain't going to catch no fish anyway."
"Not if I don't try." Kendrick grinned. "Like I said, you'd better wish me good luck ... at fishing and at making it back in one piece, both."
"That ain't funny. If you're so all-fired bent on fishing, why not do it in the morning?"
"I intend to be making tracks by first light. Besides, the right time is now. The fish have stayed deep all day, out of the heat. Now that the air is cooling they'll be coming up to feed."
"What if there's Indians out there?"
"Jesus Christ, Ludek, you know all the Indians around here are on reservations."
"Wasn't that long ago Geronimo himself was --- "
"Including Geronimo. Now shut up, will you? If there are any fish within a mile of here they'll all be scared away by your bellyaching."
Kendrick's broad-shouldered silhouette slid over the rim of the bluff and disappeared. Ludek, listening hard, heard only a couple boot heel scrapes after that and once a patter of loosened gravel. Then nothing. Only the crackle of the campfire and the whispery conglomeration of night sounds that seemed like nothing at all until there was suddenly nothing else to hear.
After a minute or so, Ludek gave a hard kick at the chain fastening him to the cottonwood root, then sat back on his haunches and said softly to himself, "Shit."
* * * * *
Five hundred yards away, in the notch of a lava boulder, another lone figure watched Kendrick dip out of sight over the low bluff and disappear into the inkiness along the riverbank. The figure had caught snatches of the preceding conversation carried on currents of the chill night air, the repeated words "fish" and "fishing", Ludek's protests, the big bounty hunter's nonchalant determination. But above all— before, during, and after the exchange of words between the two men—the watcher was gnawingly aware of the drifting aroma of strong-brewed coffee still simmering in the blackened pot over the fire.
Minutes ticked by.
Ludek sat and brooded.
With increasing impatience, the watcher remained very still. Why didn’t the fool close his eyes and sleep? Before the other one returned?
The coffee aroma continued to tantalize.
Some fifteen minutes after Kendrick had left on his fishing expedition, a scraggly tumbleweed of clouds skittered slowly across the sky and blotted out the moon and several neighboring stars. A huge shadow floated across the land. The figure in the lava notch rose, intending to seize the opportunity to close some distance on the camp. But as silently as the floating shadows, another figure materialized out of the volcanic rubble behind the watcher and pounced with the swiftness and ferocity of a hunting cougar.
Chapter 4: Socorro Bound
Bodie Kendrick re-entered the camp, not ascending from the down slope northerly direction in which he'd departed but rather descending from the boulder-strewn higher ground to the south and east, away from the river. In his right hand he held the reins of a buckskin mare, leading the animal easily; in his left he clamped the upper arm of the blonde woman from the restaurant that morning, marching her smartly at his side, about a half step ahead. She was dressed as before, with the addition of a broad-brimmed dark hat.
Jory Ludek stood crowded against the shadow of his cottonwood, eyeing the procession's arrival, watching the shapes emerge out of the silver-blue gloom into the flickering yellow circle of campfire light. He'd heard a commotion in the hills to the south some minutes back, alarming him at first until he recognized the commanding bark of Kendrick's voice. Then he'd heard what sounded like the voice of a woman, accusing, cursing. Ludek couldn't imagine what a woman would be doing way the hell out here— until he saw the blonde.
"Well, my fishing trip was a success," Kendrick announced, releasing the woman with a flourish. "Except unfortunately it didn't net anything we're going to be able to fry for breakfast."
The woman glared at him, rubbing her arm where he'd gripped her. "I hope you fry in hell! You ruffian. The way you jumped on me, I thought I was being crushed under a landslide."
Ludek chuckled. "You plumb got a way with everybody you meet, don't you, Kendrick? Here I been thinking maybe it was just me."
The woman wheeled on him. "And you, you drunken snake! None of this would be happening at all if you'd tended to business like I paid you to do instead of immediately going on a whoring and swilling binge at the very first cantina you came to."
Ludek hung his head. "That's a pure fact, ma'am. And I'm rightly ashamed. You don't know how many times this very day I have sorely regretted—"
"Oh, shut up before you make me vomit," the woman cut him off. "I don't know how I could have been so stupid as to put my trust in the likes of you."
Turning back from picketing the buckskin, Kendrick allowed his mouth to pull into a lopsided grin, saying, "Yessir, Mr. Ludek, I can see you're going to have to give me one of your world famous lessons on how to better hit it off with the folks I run into."
The woman's eyes flared anew and then immediately softened as she watched Kendrick kneel beside the fire to pour himself a steaming cup of coffee. When he lifted the cup to his lips and took a scalding sip, her throat muscles worked with his.
After watching him take another drink, she said, in by far the softest voice she'd used so far, "Can you ... spare a cup of that?"
Kendrick shook the pot, sloshing its contents. "Sure. Got plenty." He leveled a flat stare in her direction. "But it's going to cost you."
"Cost me ... how?"
"Answers. For openers, how about your name?"
"I thought Mr. Ludek would have supplied that by now."
"Hey, lady," Ludek protested quickly, "I don't spill to lawmen or no damn bounty hunters or none of their cut, you got that?"
"That's a fact," Kendrick confirmed. "Whatever else his shortcomings are, this jasper's been hell bent on keeping his confidences."
The woman shrugged as if she saw no major virtue in the issue. "Very well. My name is Veronica Fairburn."
Kendrick rummaged a clean cup from the mess gear he'd washed earlier, poured it full of coffee, held it out to the woman. "How long since you've eaten anything?"
"Nearly all day. I had a muffin with my coffee first thing this morning. After that ... well, things turned pretty hectic. You obviously saw that I hadn't the wherewithal to pitch any kind of proper camp when darkness arrived."
"I've got a sack of hard biscuits. Some jerky. Canned peaches or pears or—"
"Either of those, the peaches or pears, would be wonderful. Maybe a biscuit. If it isn't too much trouble."
Ludek made a face. "Hey, before you two set up housekeeping or something, you suppose I could get a cup of that coffee, too? You got me chained the hell and gone over here away from the fire, my backside's getting frostbit. And don't give her the last of the peaches, neither. Pears make my tongue raw."
"Bellyaching sure as hell doesn't seem to bother it any," Kendrick muttered.
He handed the prisoner a cup of coffee, then pointedly ignored him as he split open a can of peaches and dug out a biscuit for the woman.
"Lord, no meal ever tasted any better," Veronica praised as she spooned a wedge of peach from the tin and pushed it hungrily into her mouth to chew along with the bite of biscuit she'd already taken.
Watching her eat, the firelight dancing reddish gold off the cascading paleness of her hair, the flickering shadows high-lighting the strong planes and delicate features of her face, droplets of peach juice glistening on her full lips, Kendrick realized with thudding force that he had seldom been in the company of so beautiful a woman. He had to brace against the basic instincts this kind of realization triggered and remind himself with equal force that she remained very much an unproven quantity, a still-mysterious factor that demanded to be weighed carefully as far as what her motives were and to what extent she could be trusted.
"All right," he said evenly. "Now the rest of it."
She eyed him over another dripping wedge of peach. "The rest of it?"
"The whys and what-fors. What's the connection between Veronica Fairburn, a woman of obvious beauty and intelligence and spirit, and a half-assed outlaw saddle tramp like Ludek? Why did you hire him in the first place, and why are you so desperate you tried to sneak-follow follow us out of town after I'd taken him into custody?"
Veronica smiled ruefully. "The one word you used—desperate. That about tells it all. You're looking at a very desperate woman, Kendrick."
"What's got you that way?"
"Circumstances. Life. Fate. Who ever really knows how people get themselves into the fixes they get in?”
"In your own case, you must know how you got into whatever it is you're talking about."
"You don't let up, do you?"
"Looks like I'm stuck with you awhile, unless I decide to toss you back to the night—a situation you're clearly not very well equipped to handle. Before I decide otherwise, though, I aim to know what's going on."
The woman set aside her can of peaches, took a long swallow of coffee. "Under the circumstances, of course, you have every right to know. But that doesn't make it any easier to tell. I'm afraid I don't come off looking very good. I told Ludek and look where it got me."
"I ain't Ludek."
Veronica drank some more coffee, then heaved a sigh. "Very well. I'm desperate because I ran against some trouble back across the border in Mexico. Not trouble with the law, but the kind of trouble that can follow you just as relentlessly. It had to do with a man. A no-good man, but I couldn't see that until it was too late. He had a smooth way and a line of sweet talk that made me as starry eyed and foolish as a schoolgirl. Well, it turned out he was married. That was bad enough, but it got worse. His wife, when she found about me and our affair, decided to fight for him. Him she could forgive, me she could not. She belongs to a very rich and powerful family. The family's money made the man decide it was her he truly loved after all, so then the family's power—because they needed somebody to atone for the dishonor that had been caused to one of their own—was aimed at me."
"Was your life threatened?"
"Not in so many words. But I feared for it all the same. To give the devil his due, the man discreetly arranged to provide me with a horse and some money and an escort to get me as far as El Paso."
"Mighty big of him."
A fatalistic shrug. "He might have been risking his life to do that much. Considering what a coward and a cad he is, it was as close to a heroic act as he'll likely ever manage. At any rate, that's what landed me in El Paso yesterday afternoon. My escort returned to Mexico and I was on my own."
"At which point you struck up an association with our Mr. Ludek?" Kendrick guessed.
"Exactly. His arrival in town coincided with mine. We were having our horses liveried at the same time and place. I couldn't help noticing the two guns he carried and the rugged overall look of him. He appeared to be competent, someone who was ready and willing to handle trouble if it came."
"Looks can be deceiving," Kendrick said, "especially if you base it on how many shooting irons a man carries. Man who knows what he's doing can usually get the job done with one gun. When you see a man packing one for each hand it means he's either awful good or he's trying to make up in show what he ain't really got in ability. More often than not, it's the last. Same as that fancy Dan in the restaurant and his flashy cross draw rig that didn't do him a whole lot of good when it came right down to it, remember?"
"Don't you listen to him, lady," Ludek called from the cottonwood. "You got a keen eye for man flesh—meaning yours truly—even if you did get made a fool of by that slicker down in Mexico. And you, Kendrick, if you think I carry those two hoglegs of mine just for show, whyn't you let me strap them on and prove how pitiful I am for a fact with them?"
Neither
Kendrick nor Veronica bothered to acknowledge him.
"Right or wrong," she said, "I decided he might be my answer for moving quickly on from El Paso, getting further away from Mexico. If the wife's brothers or some of their hired vaqueros are indeed after me then they're not going to be turned away by a minor thing like an international border. So I boldly introduced myself to Ludek and blurted out my situation. I offered him fifty dollars in silver to escort me to Socorro where I have friends who will help me, see to my safety from there on out."
"If you had money, why not book stagecoach or rail passage?"
"Number one, there wasn't a stage leaving until Friday. Number two, the railroad doesn't go to Socorro or even close. I didn't have that much money, anyway. And besides, I reasoned if anybody did come after me the first thing they'd check would be if a woman of my name or description left town by stage or rail and that would give them a clear-cut schedule and route to pursue. I figured I had a better chance to elude them if I did something more unexpected."
A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of Kendrick's mouth, the manhunter in him appreciating her guile.
"You pretty much know the rest," Veronica concluded. "Ludek took my fifty dollars, agreed to give me safe escort to Socorro. We were to start out at daybreak. But then he got drunk, and you showed up, and I couldn't find him when I went to meet him this morning, and ... well, like I said, you know the rest. After the trouble in the restaurant, I avoided the marshal's deputies who came asking around for me. By then I'd learned Ludek was a fugitive in your custody and I didn't want to have to try and explain my association with him. When I saw the two of you riding out, I decided my best option was to follow you."
Hard Trail to Socorro (Bodie Kendrick - Bounty Hunter Book 1) Page 3
