Tejada sat on the ground with his back to a boulder, cuffed hands resting in his lap. Jasmine had hobbled his ankles with a two-foot length of rope. He was barefoot. He wore a filthy chambray shirt with a torn pocket and worn buckskins with whang strings down the outsides of the legs.
A wide black belt with a sheath for holding a knife was wrapped around his thick waist. Sartain had confiscated his knife. The man’s two pistols—conversion Remington .44s—had been stowed in Jasmine’s saddlebags.
Tejada was snoring softly behind his sombrero, which he’d pulled down over his face and long, broad nose. Jasmine sat on the other side of the wash from him, against the base of the towering southern ridge. She was also sleeping behind her hat, hands resting on her lap below her fancy twin pistols. Her long legs, clad in black denim, were crossed at the ankles.
Sartain squatted over the fire to pour himself a cup of the coffee simmering on a rock near the short, wavering flames that wrinkled the air above them. He’d built it with the nearly smokeless wood of the catclaw shrub.
Tejada raised his cuffed hands and poked the brim of his sombrero off his forehead with both thumbs. “Señor,” he whispered.
“What is it?”
Uncle Hector glanced at the pot.
Sartain gave a quiet chuff of disgust but poured the older man a cup of coffee. He took it over to him and sat down beside him, leaning his back against the same large rock. He set the coffee down beside him to cool and then reached into his shirt pocket for his makings sack.
“She makes a good cup of coffee,” Uncle Hector said, keeping his voice low, after he’d sipped the potent brew. “It is good to have a woman around who can make a good cup of coffee.”
“Yeah, she’s right handy.”
“Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Pretty as a speckled pup.”
Uncle Hector chuckled deep in his chest as he smiled admiringly at Jasmine, still sleeping under her hat. “Pretty as a coral snake would be a more appropriate description,” he said with cunning. He glanced at Sartain. “I would tread carefully around her.”
“You would, would you?” Sartain snorted ruefully as he sprinkled chopped tobacco onto the wheat paper he troughed between his fingers. “I guess you learned your lesson then, didn’t you, you old pervert?”
“Sí, I have learned.”
“Not to resort to rape?”
“Rape can be fun in its way. To take a beautiful woman by force is one of the pleasures of a man. It has been done for thousands of years. Quite intoxicating. There is sex, and there is rape.” He slowly shook his head, grinning lasciviously, sweat dribbling down his cheeks as he stared at Jasmine’s rising and falling chest. “Fornication is meat and potatoes, but rape is a delicacy.”
“We should have left it in the caves.”
Uncle Hector glanced at Sartain again, narrowing an eye. “You might want to take a turn. You are much stronger than I, an old man. But you are a large, vigorous hombre. You could manage it. I would like to see that.”
He made a groan-like grunting sound in his chest, narrowing his eyes slightly.
Sartain scowled at the depraved old Mexican. “Hard to believe you were ever a man of honor, Uncle Hector. From a supposedly good family.”
“Oh, my family was always half-savage, señor. Just because we had money didn’t mean we weren’t depraved.” Uncle Hector grinned, chuckling. “Ask the campesinos who worked for us.”
Sartain regarded him askance as he snapped a match to life on his thumbnail. “Mister, I’m almost hoping you’re leading us on a wild goose chase so I can put a bullet in you.”
“To have one such as that moaning and writhing beneath you.” Uncle Hector continued as though he hadn’t heard The Revenger’s threat. “Now, that would be something, would it not?”
He let his voice trail off when Jasmine grunted and turned onto her side, curling her legs under her right hip and snugging her shoulder up tight against the stone wall, facing down the ravine. Her hat tumbled off and onto the ground. She didn’t retrieve it. Her thick hair hung in a pretty mess down her back and shoulders.
“Ahh,” Tejada said luxuriously.
Sartain found himself regarding the woman with male admiration akin to the depraved Mexican’s, his heart thudding, loins heavy. Annoyed, he said, “Do me a favor and hobble your lips from now on, Uncle Hector, or I’ll hobble them for you. With the butt of my pistol.”
Tejada only chuckled as he kept his slitted eyes on the woman.
“Be careful of her, señor,” he warned in a soft, lilting singsong. “Tread very carefully. That one there—she is up to no good. I guarantee you that.”
The Revenger didn’t want to encourage conversation, but he couldn’t help asking, “What makes you say so?”
Uncle Hector hiked a shoulder. “The way she looks at you at times. You haven’t noticed because she makes sure you aren’t looking at her before she looks at you. It is a strange, dark look. Sí, Señor. I don’t know what darkness women carry in their hearts—no man can ever know for sure—but I assure you from my old man’s experience it is a darkness very much like that we carry in our own. It just plays out a little differently, that is all.”
He grinned with menace and enunciated the rest very precisely, “Hard-edged.”
There was the crunching whip of a snare being sprung. A rabbit gave a high, clipped shriek.
Uncle Hector stretched his lips back from his teeth in a grin. “And almost always more surprising.”
He lifted his coffee in both cuffed hands and sipped.
Chapter 15
They camped that night along the base of the same southern ridge, about five miles as the crow flies from where Sartain had set his traps. They roasted the two large jacks he’d taken and drank coffee spiced with whiskey, then Jasmine and their captive turned in while there was still a little spruce-green light left in the sky beyond the jutting black ridge.
Sartain took the first watch from the top of a near outcropping.
The next day, they rode through spectacular red country that was a tormented landscape of jutting mesas, fluted pinnacles, wind-blasted pediments, and distant sierras that seemed to float above a gauzy, dark-blue horizon. They skirted the edges of several canyons. The only sign they saw of other humans were the remains of old fires, probably Indian fires, and a single rusted food tin lying near a seep from which they filled their canteens, a process that took nearly an hour due to the slowness of the trickle.
That night they camped in higher country, where a smattering of pines grew here and there against crumbling escarpments. There was more grass too, which meant feed for the horses.
That night they dined on a wild turkey Jasmine took down with a slingshot, further fueling Sartain’s admiration of the woman and wondering where in hell she came from. But she was as tight-lipped about her past—and pretty much everything else—as ever. The only complete sentence she’d uttered all day was to Uncle Hector. “If you keep ogling me, you old bastard, you’re going to be dancing in hell.”
“I will be dancing in hell soon anyway, Chiquita. Forgive an old man his wanting to wring out all of life’s sweet juice.”
Sartain again took the first watch. He sat on the rocky crest of an ancient volcano under a sky awash with stars. A large sycamore stood behind him, growing crookedly from a wide crack in the upper wall of the cone—a massive, beautiful ruin of a tree that had probably lived for a hundred years or more. In its top, an owl hooted from time to time before taking flight with a great rush of its wings, probably sweeping the lower slope for mice or rabbits.
There would be another such rush of wings and feathered body again in a few minutes, and then the hoots would recommence from the top branches of the ancient tree.
Wolves gave their mournful cries from distant ridges. Coyotes yammered maniacally in surrounding canyons.
Around midnight, Sartain heard the crunch of boots climbing the mountain. “It’s me,” Jasmine said in her customary toneless voice
, subtly announcing her disdain as if The Revenger might have forgotten how she felt about him.
“Did you bring the bottle?” he asked as her silhouette took shape before him against the dark backdrop of the canyon in which the coals of their fire glowed umber.
“Why would I bring a bottle?”
“So, you and me could have a few drinks and bury the hatchet, though why we need to is beyond me,” groused Sartain.
“It likely always will be.”
She stood facing him, hands on her hips, her left foot planted out to the side and a little forward. Her hair blew in the night wind. The stars shone in it. Her shoulders were back, bosoms forward.
She scowled down at him with an almost feral look on her face.
Sartain’s blood ran hot. He’d never felt so challenged by any woman. He gained his feet, leaving the Henry leaning against the tree. He stared into her eyes. She didn’t blink. He stepped forward.
She took one step backward, smiling mockingly, shaking her head.
“Yes,” he asserted and took another quick step forward.
He wrapped his right hand around the back of her head and kissed her. She did not respond at first. Neither did she fight.
Gradually, she opened her lips. Her saliva was warm against his lips and tongue. She reached down between them, and then he felt something small, round, and hard press against his ribs. He pulled his mouth off of hers and looked down between them to see her right hand holding one of her fancy pistols against him. She broke free of his grip and stepped back from him.
She clicked the pistol’s hammer back and smiled devilishly, her hair and her eyes shimmering like those of some black-hearted succubus in the starlight.
She waved the pistol toward the canyon in which the fire glowed. “Get the hell out of here.”
Sartain stood staring at her, wide-eyed, heart thudding.
Running the back of her hand across her mouth, she declared, “You heard me, get out of here. And if you ever try that again, I’ll put one in you.”
Sartain turned and picked up his Henry. “All right.”
He stepped toward her. She stepped back and to his right, raising the cocked pistol higher.
He chuckled as he set the rifle on his shoulder.
“Whatever you wish, señorita,” he said as he started down the slope, cold sweat trickling down his back.
* * *
Mid-afternoon of the next day, Sartain swung down from his saddle. He moved off the trail and knelt beside a mesquite.
“What is it?” Jasmine urged as she rode up behind him, beside Uncle Hector, who still rode barefoot, ankles handcuffed to his stirrups.
Sartain picked up the horse apple he’d spied as his gaze had raked the terrain around the ancient horse trail they’d been following along the barranca, which was once again flanked by steep red cliffs. He sniffed, then crumbled the manure between his gloved fingers, letting it dribble to the ground.
“Fresh. Sort of, anyways. Not more than a day old.”
He studied the barranca, whose north ridge was shoving out purple shadows that angled eastward. Cactus wrens and finches peeped in the sparse mesquites and paloverdes. Scanning the ground around him, he frowned, straightened, and walked over to run his gloved finger along the outline of an unshod horse hoof. He’d done enough tracking both during and after the war to glean several bits of information from the single horse print.
The unshod mount that had made this print was light but probably not young, because the hoof had a slight crack in it. Probably a middle-aged, desert-bred mustang carrying a relatively light rider and little gear, for the impression was not overly deep. Sniffing the apple had told him the horse had not been grained recently, only grass-fed, and he’d recognized several half-digested mesquite beans.
Taken together, those details told him the horse most likely belonged to a desert native. Most likely a Yaqui or an Apache.
“What is it?” Jasmine urged again, rising up slightly in her stirrups and leaning forward.
“Unshod hoofprint.”
“So?”
Uncle Hector, sitting his horse to her left, frowned at her. His cheeks had turned pasty beneath the brim of his sombrero. “Señorita, I believe you do not understand the significance of such a thing. What Señor Sartain has likely found is the print of an Indio horse. And if there is one Indio, there are most likely more. I, for one, would like to hold onto what little hair I have left.”
The old Mexican shook his head. “No, this is bad. Very bad.”
“What?” Sartain answered. “You actually thought we’d travel through these mountains in the heart of Apacheria and not run into Apaches?”
“No, no, no. I warned you of this, Señor Sartain. I knew we would. I hoped we wouldn’t, but I knew there was a very good chance we would enter these mountains and fall prey to one of the many things that haunt them—wild animals of particularly bellicose dispositions, for instance. Rattlesnakes of similar ill temperaments. Spiders, scorpions, gila monsters, bandidos, revolucionarios, rurales, federales, thirst, the possibility of being stranded on foot by a dead or injured horse. Rock slides, volcanoes—oh, yes, these mountains have been known to blow their tops like angry wives from time to time!—and, of course, the ever-present and always blood-thirsty Apaches.”
“When I was learning all I could about this part of Chihuahua, I believe I read that the Yaqui also call this part of Mexico home. From here to the Yaqui River, I believe,” Jasmine said.
Uncle Hector sighed deeply, wagged his head fatefully, and shuddered. “Sí, señorita. Thank you for amending my list. The Yaqui dwell in this sierra as well. And they are no spring maidens either, I assure you. That is why I warned you that rational men not on the run from something do not venture into these mountains. Las Montañas de Sombra are known for swallowing men—and women, forgive me, señorita—and leaving their bones to the javelinas.”
Uncle Hector gave another sigh. This one was not as throaty as the one that had preceded it. It was mostly air. Looking down, Tejada opened his mouth wide. His eyes sharpened with shock. Sartain followed the man’s gaze to the arrow bristling from Tejada’s left calf.
“Oh!” Jasmine cried.
“Go!” Sartain shouted, spying movement on a knoll behind Uncle Hector. “Get outta here!”
He waved his left arm furiously and raised the Henry. The Apache stood about halfway down the knoll, beyond a paloverde and several ragged mesquites. He was pulling another arrow from the quiver hanging down his back.
Jasmine reached over and grabbed Uncle Hector’s reins out of the shocked man’s hands. She ground her spurs into her horse’s flanks and shot off up the trail, jerking Tejada’s horse along behind her. Sartain began pumping lead at the Apache, a stocky youngster wearing only the traditional red felt bandanna, a deerskin breechclout, and moccasins. His skin was as dark as worn saddle leather.
Two of The Revenger’s bullets plumed dust around the brave, who shot another arrow wide and then wheeled and dashed back up the knoll.
Sartain’s third bullet punched into the kid’s left shoulder blade, flinging him violently forward with a clipped, animal-like wail. He dropped his bow. As he rolled down the side of the knoll, his deerskin quiver spilled arrows.
Sartain lowered the Henry and reached for Boss’s reins, the big stallion backing away from him, his eyes looking wild. When the Cajun got the reins, he saw several horseback riders plunging down the steep side of the ridge beyond the knoll from which the brave had flung his arrow into Uncle Hector’s leg.
They were too far away to see clearly—a couple of hundred yards—but Sartain didn’t bother to scrutinize the riders. Only Apaches could put their horses down a cliff that steep and not break their own and their horses’ necks.
The Revenger swung up into the saddle and whipped his rein ends against Boss’s left hip, yelling, “Hi-yahhh! Hi-yahhh, boy—let’s go!”
Without further encouragement, Boss chewed up the ground in front of him. Jasmine
and Uncle Hector were about sixty yards away and riding hard, the Mexican slumped in his saddle, sombrero-clad head bobbing and wobbling from side to side. Behind Sartain, rifles belched. The Indians raised the ululating cries that never failed to turn his spine to cold jelly.
Chapter 16
Glancing back over his left shoulder, the Cajun could not see the warriors, but judging by the loudening of their rifle shots and coyote-like yells, they were galloping toward him. As he started to turn his head forward, he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his left eye and turned back.
Sure enough, they were coming hard and fast. Several paint ponies showed themselves galloping through the chaparral, white spots glowing in the sunshine. There were flashes of red or green bandannas and the riders’ leathery brown skin. Dust rose from the chaparral.
Ahead, the barranca’s walls began dropping in places, so that the ridge crest appeared to be a sawblade with teeth of vastly different lengths. The ridges also began leaning away, the barranca floor widening. Sartain saw little cover straight ahead. He glanced behind once more.
The Indians had broken out of the brush and were riding hell for leather, yammering and hunkering low in their saddles, a couple triggering carbines.
There were a half-dozen. That wasn’t so many. But then The Revenger cursed again when he saw that he’d made a hasty count. There’d been a gap between the first six and the others that were just now galloping out of the brush. Six more, at least. No, ten. Twelve, maybe fifteen to twenty!
No point in keeping track. Sartain, Jasmine, and their prisoner were in trouble. That was all they needed to know.
He whipped his rein ends against Boss’s hip again and dropped his head low over the galloping mount’s neck. The stallion was blowing hard, lungs sounding like a bellows, pinning his ears back against his head. Jasmine was slowing her mount, looking back at Sartain and the Apaches thundering down the barranca behind him, quickly closing the gap with the fittest ponies anywhere on the continent.
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