Fallon looked up at the mountains as the early-morning sun slanted across them and shook his head.
“Have you got a gun, Felipe?”
The vaquero shook his head. “The patron keeps all firearms locked in the armory in the cellar. He alone has the key, senor. We would need sledgehammers to break down the door.”
Donna Clara emerged from the house, a shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders. Behind her the maid carried little Juanita. The women sat on the rear seat with the child. Fallon climbed back on his horse. They turned through the gate and went up through the trail toward the head of the valley.
The sun moved over the top of the mountains, chasing the blue shadows from the desert, and Felipe cracked the whip over the horse’s backs, urging them on.
Already the heat lifted from the land like a heavy mist, and Fallon wiped sweat from his face with a sleeve.
They dropped down through a dry arroyo and moved toward the place where the trail from the mine joined the one to Hermosa. Beyond this point the big trail wound its way between great, tapering needles of rock and entered a canyon so deep that the bottom was shaded from the sun and unexpectedly cool.
Through the silence a jay called three times, and Fallon glanced up sharply. Or was it a jay? Usually jays stayed close to water, and there was none here. At that moment there was a spine-chilling cry from behind that re-echoed within the narrow walls of the canyon, and two Apaches galloped in from the desert, blocking the buckboard’s retreat.
Felipe threw one terrified glance over his shoulder and curled his whip out over the horses. The canyon widened into a deep, saucer-shaped bowl with sloping sides. If they could get to the other end, they would be in the clear. Felipe whipped the horses again. He made out three specks ahead, and, as they closed the distance, the specks were clearly three Apaches on horseback. Felipe tried reining in the confused horses, but now the Apaches in front were close enough so that one raised his rifle in an almost casual gesture and fired. The shot bruised Felipe and again he tried reining the frightened horses, but a second shot rang out and found its mark. Felipe cried out sharply and went over the side.
As the women screamed, the buckboard slued, the rear wheels bouncing over a boulder. The terrified horses reared up, snapping the lead traces, then burst through the Apaches as the buckboard turned over, spilling its occupants to the ground.
Fallon reined in as Maria rolled beneath him. He lost his seat and went backward over the animal’s rump, falling heavily to the ground. He rolled over and over, half stunned, and landed beneath the wrecked buckboard beside Father Tomas’s body.
Donna Clara was running for the narrow entrance to the canyon, clutching Juanita in her arms, tripping over her long skirts, her mouth open in a soundless scream. An Apache in an old blue coat with brass buttons galloped behind her, laughing, holding his rifle by the barrel. He swung it in a circle and Fallon could see it curving toward Donna Clara’s head. He could do nothing to stop it as the Apache’s rifle splintered bone, and Donna Clara pitched forward onto her face. Juanita clutched at her mother’s body, screaming, trying to shake her back to life.
Fallon looked about him desperately, but there was no retreat. The sloping sides of the bowl lifted smooth and bare into the sky out of the white sand. Rough hands dragged him from under the buckboard.
The Indians lashed him to the rear of the buckboard, his hands behind him. Maria crawled over to her mistress, weeping, then tried to take Juanita in her arms, but the child would not let go of her mother. Felipe leaned against the rock, clutching a bloody arm. The Apaches were armed with repeating rifles, and two of them had revolvers in their belts. Their faces were painted in vertical stripes of blue and white.
What happened then was like something out of a nightmare. One of the Apaches turned Donna Clara over. She was mercifully dead. He went over to the frightened Maria. She was begging him for mercy but, his face impassive, the Apache lifted his rifle and smashed her head again and again. He picked up little Juanita, who was now kicking and screaming, and when Fallon yelled, “Leave the little girl alone,” he lifted Fallon’s chin and spat in his face.