by Paul Lederer
‘So it would seem. Sit down and tell me about it,’ Quinn suggested. Alicia was still trembling with anger. She seemed to wobble on her feet. He took her elbow and sat her on the bunk again. Across the room Sabato, remarkably, had fallen back to sleep.
‘My sister and I were riding early in the morning. My horse caught a stone in its hoof and I told Dolores to ride ahead, I would catch up. I heard strange sounds, a muted cry, and I crept forward, leading my horse. And I saw them … him atop her.’ For a moment Alicia’s grief overwhelmed her fury. She calmed herself and went on.
‘I saw him kill Dolores. What could I do? I had no gun. I ran away! Coward that I am.’
‘You would have just gotten yourself hurt,’ Quinn said.
‘Perhaps. I rode then, rode back to my father’s rancho. He swore he would get Short, but by the time he had gathered his mounted vaqueros from the line camps, word came that the sheriff had already captured Short. My father begged me to not get involved in the trial. He said that if the man was released, my life would be in danger as well. And so I remained silent. He was right, it seems. Jody Short was convicted anyway. But now he is free again!’ she said in an agonized voice.
‘Maybe, for the time being,’ Quinn replied. The anguished young woman moved to him, leaned her head against his chest and slipped her arms around him. It took Quinn a moment to figure what the girl had in mind.
She slipped the gun from behind his belt and turned to rush away. Quinn was just able to catch her arm and turn her back, wrenching the Colt from her hand.
‘Let me do it! I want to kill him!’ Alicia spat as she writhed in his arms. Her voice was loud enough to rouse Sabato from his sleep.
‘Not here. Not now,’ Quinn said positively. ‘There are a dozen armed men out there. How far do you think they’d let you get? Besides,’ he added, ‘this pistol may be our only chance to save our own lives.’
‘What’s happening?’ Sabato asked. He sat up on his bunk, rubbing the back of his thick neck.
‘Nothing,’ Quinn answered, ‘the girl’s upset.’
Sabato nodded, asking no more questions. The simple concept of a hysterical female was an explanation he could understand.
‘Where’s Guerrero, anyway?’ Sabato said as he rose to tuck in his shirt and stamp into his boots. His voice was absurdly officious, as if he were going to take Guerrero to task.
‘I couldn’t guess,’ Quinn answered woodenly. Sitting beside him on the bunk now, Alicia continued to be flooded with the sort of fury that would do her no good at all. Her fingernails dug into his arm and now and then a tight hiss escaped from between her teeth He had no doubt that she would have shot Jody Short had she gotten the opportunity. He tried to keep her calm, because, important as her hatred of Short was to her, it might also impede any chance of his own objective succeeding. She wanted Short dead; he was determined to find a way to get Alicia and himself out of Soledad alive.
An hour later a message from Guerrero arrived.
It was the fat man, Rafael who entered the room, although they could clearly see two other men waiting outside in the bright sunlight. Rafael approached them and said in good, if halting English:
‘Guerrero wants to see you now.’
‘And about time, too,’ George Sabato said, reaching for his hat.
‘Not you!’ Rafael said sharply. ‘The man Quinn and his wife.’
Quinn nodded, rose and whispered to Alicia: ‘Remember our story.’ She nodded and Rafael, stony-faced, let them precede him to the door. Quinn wondered whether the Mexican would be able to make out the form of the pistol butt beneath his loose shirt, but apparently he was not that sharp-eyed. Nothing was said as they stepped out into the heat of the day and were marched to the open door of the building next door, the one they had seen Guerrero and Lily Davenport disappear into the day before.
The interior of the adobe building was cool. It boasted a wooden floor which was waxed and unscarred. There was a native stone fireplace with an old Kentucky rifle on hooks above it and striped Navajo rugs were scattered about. A brown leather sofa and matching chair completed the furnishings.
As Quinn and Alicia were shown in Lily Davenport, wearing a flouncy white dress which certainly had not come across country with her, walked forward to greet them. Her manner was that of lady of the manor as she seated them on the leather sofa. Her eyes sparkled nearly as brightly as the diamond necklace she wore. No one knew what to say, so they sat in silence for another minute before Ernesto Guerrero, in dark trousers, a gleaming white shirt and bolo tie appeared. The bandit leader was smiling. Quinn could not decide whether the expression eased his doubts or made him more uncomfortable. As Guerrero sat in the leather chair, Lily seated herself on its overstuffed arm and they all considered one another. Guerrero spoke first.
‘Quinn, Lily has told me what you did for her along the trail. If not for you, she says the Apaches would probably have captured her. Or worse.’
Quinn only nodded, not knowing where this was leading. Guerrero continued:
‘Mrs Quinn,’ the outlaw said to Alicia whose response to that form of address was a blank stare. There was an amused glow in Lily’s eyes. Alicia had been right – the woman was not fooled, but she let Guerrero go on, resting her ringed hand on his shoulder.
‘Mrs Quinn, I know who you are,’ Guerrero said, leaning back more deeply into the chair.
‘Do you?’ Alicia said without expression.
‘Yes, I think so. Lily has told me the circumstances of your boarding the stagecoach. She also was able to give me a description of the man who put you aboard it. Your father.’ Still Alicia did not respond and so Guerrero continued:
‘Unless I miss my guess, your name is Delgado. Your father, Vicente Delgado and I once did some business together. Not so long ago I was invited to his rancho, and I saw you briefly. Am I wrong?’
‘No.’
‘I did not think so.’ Guerrero rose to his feet. ‘I know your father. Well. I know that if he finds that you are missing, he will comb this desert until he finds you. And I know this – Vicente is a proud and vengeful man if he thinks he has been insulted.’
‘Where is this leading?’ Quinn wanted to know. Guerrero smiled crookedly.
‘I cannot insult Vicente Delgado. You, Quinn, saved Lily’s life. You do not work for the stage line, do you?’
‘No, it was only a matter of necessity, my driving that coach.’
‘So I have been given to understand.’ Guerrero paused, stroking his chin. ‘You have no reason to care whether the stage reaches Yuma or not?’
‘No.’
‘Where would you go …?’ Guerrero glanced at Lily and then returned his dark eyes to Quinn and Alicia. ‘Where would you go if I let you have the two saddle horses you brought with you?’
Quinn answered, ‘Back to Vicente Delgado’s rancho, of course. First to show her father that Alicia was safe, and then – I think we would try again to settle down there. If Alicia will still have me.’
‘I wish you luck there, Quinn. She is a fine-looking young woman. I suppose it may seem that I have not come directly to the point. Quinn, I owe you a debt for saving Lily. Mrs Quinn, I will not offend your father. I cannot, however, risk having you two ride to Yuma to report what has happened. If you are determined to return to Vicente Delgado’s rancho, and give me your word that you will remain silent, all I can say is that I will have your horses saddled, and vaya con Dios.’
Quinn said nothing for a minute, but he could feel relief loosening his cramped muscles. Things could hardly have gone any better.
‘Have you any clothes to ride in?’ he asked Alicia.
‘In my bag. Tell me, Guerrero,’ she went on without apparent unease, ‘what about the young man? The one who wore shackles? What will you do with him?’
Guerrero shrugged indifferently. ‘I can always use more men. I have taken him on in … what do you say? A probationary status.’
Alicia’s eyes had gone cold again, that terrible
coal-black glare had returned. Quinn spoke up to distract her.
‘And the other passenger? The fat man?’
‘About him, I have not yet decided. But do not concern yourself with it, Quinn. I promise you that I am not a cruel man.’ Which might have convinced Quinn had he not seen some of the work Guerrero and his raiders had done up along the Yavapai Range. Perhaps the man was only trying to convince Lily that the popular conception of him was wrong. Who knew? It didn’t matter at the moment. They had been granted a reprieve, although Quinn believed it was more a matter of Guerrero fearing a reprisal from Vicente Delgado than out of gratitude to Quinn for having saved Lily.
No matter – they had been set free by the outlaw leader, and this was not the time to debate the reasons behind it, but only to take full advantage. And immediately, before Guerrero could change his mind.
‘Where do we find the horses?’ Quinn asked rising. He had to reach behind him to grab Alicia’s hand and tug her to her feet. He was frightened of what the impulsive girl might say next.
‘Do you know Rafael? He will show you where they are,’ Guerrero answered. He followed them partway to the open door and waited until Quinn was three steps from the threshold before adding in a low, ominous voice that Lily Davenport could not have heard.
‘Do not disappoint me, Quinn.’
SIX
‘Just keep moving,’ Quinn hissed into Alicia’s ear as he guided her by the elbow to where Rafael and two other bandits stood in the shade of the awning, studying them. Glancing behind them once, Quinn saw Guerrero flick a hand in a small gesture of command. Tom Quinn was not so sure even now that they were going to be set free. The signal to his men could have meant anything.
Alicia seemed determined to speak her mind, to return to the adobe. This was not the time for that. It was time to try to make their break from the outlaw camp. Quinn had already decided that if there was treachery afoot, he would snake his Colt from behind his belt and go to shooting if that seemed to be the only way out.
He would set Alicia free one way or the other.
The outlaws’ suspicious eyes remained fixed on them, their weapons at the ready, as Quinn and Alicia swung aboard the saddle ponies. Quinn was riding Mike Hancock’s gray, Alicia Jody Short’s buckskin. Alicia now wore black jeans and a white throat-high blouse, retrieved from the boot of the stagecoach. She had been forced to change in the stable behind one of the stall partitions, but she had not complained. She left her dress and traveling bag behind them. Perhaps now she was beginning to feel the urgency that Tom Quinn felt. Who knew what the outlaws were thinking? Who knew when Guerrero, given time to reconsider, might change his mind about letting them go free?
Quinn could almost feel the eyes of the bandits on his back as they trailed out of town toward the east, but no shots were fired, no voices raised. Within thirty minutes they were out on to the open desert. Tom Quinn swiveled frequently in his saddle to watch the backtrail, but he saw no sign of pursuing horsemen.
It was past midday, the sun still riding high. They pressed on across the white sand until they reached a low knoll studded with nopal cactus and yucca. There Quinn called a halt and swung down from the gray horse’s back to let their mounts rest. There was no shade, so he and Alicia sat side by side on a sun-heated flat stone, sipping water from their canteen. In a few hours it would be cool; Tom planned on riding through the evening as long as possible. At some point he meant to intersect the stage road again, send Alicia on her way and turn his own horse homeward, toward the Yavapai country.
They had been extremely lucky, he considered as he watched Alicia tilt back her head and allow the canteen water to trickle down her throat. Anything might have happened back there. As the dry wind drifted a few loose strands of dark hair across Alicia’s forehead and a small swarm of gnats raised from somewhere to harry them, the woman finally corked the canteen, handed it back to Quinn and smiled.
‘Well, then, we have fooled them,’ she said.
‘I don’t know about that.’ Quinn continued to stare out across the long desert flats. ‘You were right, Lily never believed our story.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ Alicia said, her eyes meeting him with a subdued urgency. ‘They think we have ridden away to my father’s rancho.’
Quinn frowned. ‘What do you mean? That is exactly what we are doing.’
‘No!’ Alicia said, rising to her feet to stand, hands on hips, studying the raw land stretched out before them. ‘That is what I wanted them to think.’ She crouched down, put her hand on Quinn’s wrist and said with all sincerity:
‘We must sneak back into Soledad and kill Jody Short.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ Quinn said, laughing explosively.
‘Of course I am,’ Alicia said, looking at Quinn as if he had just fallen a notch or two in her estimation. ‘If he can escape the law, he cannot escape me. He murdered my sister, don’t forget.’
‘I haven’t forgotten, but what you are proposing is madness, Alicia.’
‘You won’t go with me?’ she asked, her hand falling away from his wrist.
‘No.’
‘Then you must give me the pistol,’ she said defiantly. Quinn laughed again, but there was little humor in it.
‘I don’t think so. I’ve been trying to keep you alive, not send you off to get killed.’
‘I think you do not understand honor. A debt of blood.’ She was now petulant and pleading at once.
‘I think maybe I do, but I don’t understand suicide. There’s no way anything can be done in Soledad. You saw how things are. Guerrero has at least a dozen men there. Maybe more. What do you think you could do against them?’
‘I don’t know! I don’t care! So long as I kill Jody Short before they capture me. Will you give me the pistol?’
‘No.’
‘I think maybe you are a coward,’ she said accusingly.
‘I think maybe I am not a madman,’ Quinn heard himself saying. She had turned her slender back to him, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. ‘Alicia – tell me this – if you knew that Jody Short was on that stage, why didn’t your father raid it and take him away?’
‘We did not know,’ Alicia said, turning slightly toward him. Her words were brittle, dry as the desert heat. ‘Even if we had, Father could not risk a gamble like that. It would draw too much attention to him.’
‘Attention?’
Alicia flipped a hand in a vague gesture. ‘He has been trying to keep himself veiled from the law. There was … some trouble on the rancho recently.’
‘What do you mean?’ Quinn asked, rising from the flat rock now. He turned Alicia and looked down into her dark eyes. ‘What exactly did happen down there? What does your father do? Tell me.’
‘Oh it’s nothing to tell,’ Alicia said lightly. Then she began shuddering and Quinn wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly to him until she said explosively: ‘I hate it!’ and pushed away from him.
Quinn released her. Apparently what Guerrero had intimated was true. He and Vicente Delgado were sometime associates, both involved with the border raiders. It seemed they did not like each other, but feared breaking up their uneasy alliance.
‘We can make another fifteen miles before dark,’ Quinn said to Alicia’s back. She shrugged, her slender shoulders moving slightly within her white blouse. Quinn tried again: ‘Alicia, what you have in mind is impossible,’
‘You don’t care about taking the stage through to Yuma?’
‘No.’
‘No matter that your friend Tank Dawson asked you to do it?’
‘It’s impossible now.’
‘You don’t care about poor fat Sabato?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t care that the murderer of my sister will ride free? About the effort your friend Mike Hancock made to see that the killer would be brought to justice?’
‘Alicia,’ Quinn said, spreading his hands, ‘I might care. I do care about some of this, but there are many
men back there who would shoot us down.’ More quietly he added, ‘And I care about getting you home safely.’
‘Without honor?’ she snapped.
‘There is nothing to be done, frustrating as that might be.’
‘Then do not go to sleep, Quinn,’ she said darkly. ‘For the moment that you do, I am taking your pistol and riding back to Soledad on my own. I swear it!’
The silver half-moon was rising as they approached the dark and silent Pueblo Soledad. They saw no bandits on the streets. There were no sounds except for the faintly ticking clock of mortality in Tom Quinn’s head.
Madness.
Quinn had not been able to dissuade the woman. He had spent half of the evening trying. Although his arguments against the wild venture were more logical than hers, nothing could weaken the woman’s resolve. She had her mission; it must be accomplished or shame would haunt the rest of her years. She would not let Jody Short escape retribution. He had killed Dolores; he must pay for his crime. Her thinking went no farther. She was implacable.
Which left Tom Quinn with only two options – send the girl off to be killed by herself or go along and have both of them killed. He relished neither choice. His dilemma was somewhat akin to Alicia’s. That is, he could give her the pistol and ride away from her now, back toward his ranch along the Yavapai to resume his life of peaceful contentment, but he would remain haunted as well. Never knowing what had happened to Alicia, whether he was right to abandon her in her time of need.
Quinn was no romantic, and the project was scented with doom. He turned his logic this way and that, looked down into Alicia’s dark eyes as hope colored them and the suffused light of dusk flushed her face. When he spoke it was not exactly a growl, but it was close:
‘All right, then. Let’s get going.’
Back to Soledad as night settled and the stars flared silver-bright against a cobalt desert sky. Quinn had no doubt that they could sneak back into the pueblo. The question was, what they were to do once they had made it that far?
Alicia had her own ideas.
