He drew deep on the cigarette. “I know you’re my woman, Maria Cristina. Maybe I’ll make you my woman tonight.”
“Maybe you die.” She looked at him, her eyes fierce and proud.
“Sure,” he said, “my mistake was letting you ride. If you had followed behind with a pack on your back you’d be happy now. Next time we move, you walk.”
“You think you strong!”
The moon had risen beyond the mesa and the cholla needles were like white flowers in the strange light, a beautiful white like a garden of flowers … a garden of death. A bat dipped and darted through the air and out across the pool something splashed in the water.
He rolled up on his elbow again. “Always figured to get myself a ranch. Just a few cows and some horses. Mostly horses. Nothing real big, just a place that’s mine. I want my own home.
“I always wanted a place with a view. One where I can see all the way into tomorrow … a place with a long trail leading to it with my house at the end of the road. I want to see my own horses feeding in my own meadow. I want to see some youngsters growing up.”
He smoked the cigarette down to a butt, then nursed the last few drags before tossing it into the flames. “Been a long time since I had a home. Take me awhile to get halter-broke again… but I could do it.”
A coyote spoke the moon, his shrill cries mounting in crescendo, then dying away in echoes against the mesa wall.
“A man can’t make it alone. Needs him a woman. These here city women, they look mighty nice but a man out here needs a woman who can walk beside him, not behind him.”
Maria Cristina said nothing. Her eyes were a little softer, perhaps, her hands relaxed. Some of the tenseness seemed to have gone out of her.
“You an’ me, we could make it. I’m a hand with horses and I know where there’s some pretty good wild stock. Buy us a stallion maybe, good blood. Might get a Morgan.
“Man can do a lot worse than raise horses. This is horse country, an’ down here they’ll always have a need for horse stock. With a Morgan stallion a man could breed some fair stuff in a few years. First year or two might not be easy. Reckon I couldn’t offer you much … not right off. Nothin’ much but work and a home.”
“I have always work.”
She did not look at him but she spoke. He glanced across the fire at her but she did not meet his eyes and then suddenly she got up and started away.
“A man should stick to what he knows,” he said, to her departing back. “I know horses … maybe not so much about women.”
He made no move to follow her. She seemed to wish to be alone, to think, perhaps. Well, it was true of himself. He took his rifle and walked off toward the path, not knowing if she saw him or not.
The forest of cholla lay like a fluffy white cloud when he climbed the mesa, yet a cloud composed of thorns, invisible in the moonlight, but ready to rend and tear. The Indians and the Mexicans thought the bunches of needles would lean toward a hand that came close, would jump at bare flesh. He doubted it but there were times when it seemed to happen.
Atop the mesa he looked off into the vast mysterious distances of the desert.
He thought of the silent girl beside the pool. He had known few women and certainly none at all like Maria Cristina. Yet it seemed to him she was like some horses he had handled, shying from a hand that would caress, hungry to be petted, yet afraid to be trapped, to be caught, to be cheated.
He stared out across the desert. Wherever the fire was, it was gone now … no … it was there, winking from time to time across the distance.
Around that fire were belted men, tough men, dedicated to hunting him down. Between those men and himself there could be no peace. It was a bloody and desperate fight for survival, a fight that had driven him until soon he would have his back to the wall, where he must stand and fight.
It was a pity that Maria Cristina was involved, yet had she not chosen to involve herself he would be dead. He would have died on that mesa shelf, alone.
All the more reason he should protect her now, yet it would be useless to tell her to take the horse and go. She would merely look at him with that haughty contempt and remain right where she was.
So what to do? If they escaped from here, where could they go? Deeper into Mexico? He did not know the trails, although he knew this area of Sonora and much of Chihuahua. And he was sure she did not know the way. Every foot of travel to the south would be dangerous because of marauding Apaches.
To go back across the border at some point distant from the Sutton-Bayless stronghold?
Yet with one horse it would be a dangerous trip. Only luck and the strength of the red horse had brought them this far and neither could last.
After long thought he got up and went back down the trail to the water. Only the fire glowed … there was no sound and no movement. His bed lay beside the fire where he had unrolled it but of Maria Cristina there was no sign.
He spoke her name into the silence … nothing. He said her name again, louder this time and with rising fear.
No sound, nothing …
He ran swiftly to her bed. It was there but she was not. He called her name loudly and only the echo replied. He ran to the water’s edge. Something caught his eye … a fragment of cloth on a branch of ironwood.
A good-sized fragment, as though she had deliberately hooked it over the branch to leave a clue.
There were two paths that way. He ran along the nearest, praying his choice was right. He ran to the crest of the hill and stopped. All was wide and white in the moonlight and nowhere, anywhere, was there a sign.
And then, faint and far off, quickly stifled, a cry.
Faint… lost, until he almost doubted his senses, but the cry of a woman, a cry for help.
Heedless of obstruction or ambush, he plunged down the traiL He darted around turns in the path until he had covered at least a hundred yards, then he slowed to listen.
No sound … but there would not be. This was not a white man for no white man could have stolen a woman in such a way without noise. It had been an Apache … or more likely, Apaches. Possibly the three they had met upon the trail, for they knew where Jordan and Maria Cristina were going.
And being Apaches, they knew every trick, every device, and they were men trained to desert war from childhood, men who would kill, and kill swiftly, for this was their way of life. Yet they had his woman … Suddenly, somewhere off in the desert, he heard a sudden rush of horses, a pound of retreating hoofs.
He did not stop to swear or even to listen. Immediately he turned and ran back to the pool. Once there, he saddled the red horse and loaded his gear. It needed only a minute to roll her bed also and to fill the canteens. And then he was riding.
This much time he had taken, for upon an Apache trail there was no guessing how far a man would travel until he came up with them. Yet come up with them he would.
When he reached the place where the Indians had left their horses there was still a smell of dust in the air. The earth showed no tracks in the dim light and he dared not strike a match, yet he circled until he caught again the smell of dust and then started after them.
At any moment they might try an ambush, yet he had doubts of that for they were a small party, three or four at most. Twice, when well started, he got down to examine the ground. Here the earth was less torn and he could find the hoofprints. He pushed on until the moon was gone and the risk of losing the trail was too great.
Dismounting, he picketed the horse and settled down to wait. He rolled an endless chain of cigarettes and smoked until only half a sack of tobacco remained of his store. The last hour before dawn was endless, yet he waited and when the day became gray and the air was cold with morning he could see the tracks. Four horses, all unshod. One carried double.