All that night and the day following Trace Jordan lay quiet and rested. He nibbled at his food, drank a lot and slept. His thoughts reverted to Maria Cristina. There was a kind of strong fierce pride about her that got into a man’s blood, no matter how sullen she might seem.
At dusk three riders appeared on the crest, out of the canyon below. Lantz slipped out of his hiding place on some signal and went to meet them. Jordan watched, but without the glasses, for the sunlight was shining into the shelf and he was afraid a reflection, even from behind the brush, might warn of his presence.
The sheep were starting home. He looked again quickly. Maria Cristina was not with them!
Lantz finished his talk with the men and started back. Jordan reached for his Winchester, an automatic gesture. Yet almost at the point where Lantz could have seen the boy was alone with the sheep, he turned back for a final word.
A stone rattled and Jordan turned swiftly. Maria Cristina had come around the ruined wall. Her breath was coming fast, her eyes were wide. She had a small package of food. She turned to go and he caught her hand.
“Cuidado! He indicated the riders. “Hurry! They will find you gone!”
Her eyes held his, cold, inscrutable. “You are afraid they will find you? Or that you will get no more food?”
“Don’t be a fool,” he said shortly.
She turned abruptly away.
“And be careful,” he said. “You are a beautiful woman, Maria Cristina.”
She looked at him, her eyes flaring a little, yet as she seemed about to speak she suddenly turned away.
Lantz had disappeared and the other riders were riding away when he looked around. Rifle in hand, he moved to the cliff-edge. He had no doubt of what he would do if Lantz saw the girl and followed her. He could kill him.
That night, long after darkness had come, he got to his feet for the first time. Using his rifle as a cratch, he took two steps, then had to sit down. Later he managed two more.
The sheep were penned and Juanito was inside when Maria Cristina approached the house. She circled to come up from the spring where she had left a bucket She could hear angry voices within the house. One was Vicente. His eyes were flushed and angry when she came into the house.
Her mother shot a quick glance at Maria Cristina from dark, worried eyes. Maria Cristina had entered in the midst of a quarrel gone suddenly silent.
Vicente stared at her in sullen anger. Head high, she crossed the room to wash her hands. Her mother began placing food upon the table. Juanito sat at the table, holding his knife; the room was lighted by candles and by the fire. It was a large room, a living-room as well as a kitchen. There were three bedrooms and a parlor, never used.
Vicente paced the floor. Suddenly he turned on her. “You’ll get us all in trouble! Hiding that man!”
Maria Cristina looked at him, her eyes disdainful. “You are a fool,” she said.
He glared at her, furious. He started to speak, then plunged through the door and slammed it behind him. Maria Cristina looked after him, her lips tightening. Feeling as he did, there was no telling what he might do. Yet he did not know of the hiding place on the cliff. Not even Juanito knew.
And he was right, of course. It was a danger to them all to help the wounded man. Yet she had found him alone, wounded and dying, and it had seemed there was nothing else to do.
Vicente stomped back into the house and, seating himself, began angrily to eat “You have no right,” he said. “Where is he?”
“I don’ know what you talk about.”
Vicente half-sprang to his feet “You know!” he shouted. “You hide that man! You feed him!”
“And if I do?”
“They’ll bum us out! They’ll kill the sheep!”
“And what would you do? Fight or run?”
Vicente glared. “I would fight!”
“All right… I fight now.”
Sullenly he returned to his eating and when he had finished his meal he got to his feet and went outside. He paused by the window and Maria Cristina looked at him, a tall young man, too thin, in worn and shabby clothes. She felt a sharp pang … it was not right … Vicente had no youth. No bright time of riding, no colorful clothes and the courting of girls. He had grown up a frightened and lonely boy in a land of strangers. It was no wonder he had become a frightened young man.
Vicente was right. She should not bring trouble to her family. They had been born to trouble and had lived always in the shadow of fear. She, at least, had the few good years away from here, even if there had been bitterness in those years also.
Why should she help the man on the cliff? Because he was the enemy of her father’s killers? She had not given it a thought at the time. Because he had been hurt… ?
She had listened to his delirious muttering and he had called upon no woman. Why should that be important?
Yet there was something quiet and sure about him, something that brought her peace, even in the midst of trouble, something that stilled her restlessness. The memory of it disturbed her so she brushed away the thought. Her imagination, that was all. She was no longer a child to be excited by any drifting cowpuncher.
Trace Jordan got to his feet in the darkness and tried using the rifle for a crutch again. He moved carefully. Tonight a rolling pebble might be heard for some distance and he dared make no unusual sound. Yet he belted on his gun and tried it, knowing his hands would need their skill. He would need his guns. At any minute they might come.
Considering that, he went around the ruin to the way up used by Maria Cristina. It was a steep slide of trail in a wide crack in the rock wall but as she had made no sound … he saw it then, a narrow ledge, only inches wide, along the edge of the rock slide.
He returned to the spring and drank deep and long. He never seemed to get enough water. A gentle wind stirred and he caught a whiff of wood smoke. They were still out there, just across the canyon, waiting for him to make a mistake. Had they a clue? Or was it the intuition of old Jacob Lantz?
Despite his weakness he was restless and the big red horse was uneasy too. The grass was growing short now and the horse could not be fed for many more days. They had been penned too long, yet to try an escape now was out of the question. Using the rifle as a crutch, he kept trying his muscles. He knew only that when the time came it would be suddenly … he was always hungry now. Was it a sign of recovery?
He had begun a systematic study of the country. Knowing desert lands, he could sort out the canyons and ridges and make sense of a sort. Even canyons have a pattern… the thought of attempting that trail up the cliff face at night made him sick to the stomach but by day they would be an open target, pinned to the cliffs face.
What of Maria Cristina? So lonely, so sullen, so remote? She was proud … it showed in every line of her body, every move. Her clothes might be shabby but her manner was that of a queen.
Yet he had no right to think of her. He must think only of getting away for his every minute. Here was a danger to them all. He moved suddenly and the movement brought a gasp of pain that doubled him over. He sank to his knees, fighting for breath. If one unexpected movement could do that to him escape was impossible.
He crept back to his blankets and slept and then a long time later he awakened with a start. His hand dropped over the butt of his gun … what had awakened him? No ordinary sound in the night would have done it, his subconscious was too familiar with such sounds. It would have to be some other sound, something that did not belong to the quiet symphony of the night.
Wind stirred, a faint breeze. The night was wide, white and still. The pinnacles gave birth to long shadows … he had been mistaken then. It had been imagination or fever. Yet he stood a moment longer. The air he drew into his lungs was fresh and cool as mountain water and the stars hung like lanterns in the sky. He knew the feelings, the smells. He knew the long hours of heat, the moving cloud shadows, the thousand canyons with their thousand untold stories. He knew the tumbledown pueblos and the Tivas and the mysterious trails left by the Old Ones and marked by their rock piles … there were rock piles beside the trails in Tibet, he had heard … his side was itching tonight. Maybe the flesh was beginning to heal.