He turned back, then stopped abruptly. He heard a faint sound, something moving down below in the canyon. He listened … the bright moonlit stillness brought tiny sounds to his ears. Barely audible. Something . . . somebody was moving down below.
Breathless, he held himself, aware that somebody or something could hear also. And might already have heard him.
Had he made a sound in his delirium? He did not believe so, for a man’s subconscious remains on guard always. Yet the rock walls were like sounding boards and he could hear easier what moved below than they could hear him.
He heard the faint stirring again … had the searcher some clue? He could not be looking for tracks at this hour, yet… ? The night was empty again. Far off a plaintive coyote begged the sky.
“It ain’t no way reasonable.” Joe Sutton stared Irritably into the fire. “No man drops out o’ sight the way he done.”
Ben Hindeman rolled his tobacco in his jaws, not talking. He was reasoning it out in his slow, methodical way. Of them all, Hindeman was the only one to whom Jack Sutton ever took a back seat and Joe had his own ideas about that. Jack, for all his gun-slinging, was a little afraid of his hard-jawed brother-in-law.
“Lost him,” Mort Bayless said, “over on that mesa and he was in bad shape. He didn’t get far.”
It was Mort’s brother whom Jordan had killed at Mocking Bird Pass and Mort had been one of them with Jack at the killing of Johnny Hendrix. He had no particular worry about Jordan ever getting him … he wanted to get Jordan to even up for his brother and because he was a killer by nature.
“If he ever got to the mesa at all,” Joe said.
During the last two days the search had dwindled away and Jack Sutton was pleased. Two of the boys had returned to cut hay, another had a wife who was expecting. The need for many men was past and as he fingered the thick scab on his ear lobe, he wished they would all go home. He had plans of his own and the capture or killing of Trace Jordan had become secondary.
Ben was the one he wanted to go back. Ben didn’t want the Mexicans bothered and had it been anyone but Ben he would have believed him soft on the girl. But not Ben. He was never soft on anyone. That very lack of feeling made Jack uneasy. Ben was tough and in his slow way he was smart.
Jacob Lantz leaned over and filled his cup with coffee, “He’s around,” he said flatly.
Ben’s head came up. “You see him?”
“No … but he’s here.”
“How d’ you know if you ain’t seen him?” Jack demanded irritably. Sometimes Lantz’s cocksureness infuriated him.
“If Jake says he’s here,” Hindeman said, “then he’s here.”
“I don’t know why,” Lantz said, “but I feel it.”
“If he’s here,” Mort Bayless poked the fire, “them greasers know it. I say we just ride down there and take that girl —”
“Well do nothing of the kind.” Hindeman did not even look around.
“She wouldn’t talk, no way,” Lantz said.
“I’d make her talk!” Mort said savagely. “You’d see!”
“You’re a fool,” Hindeman said. “You could kill her and she wouldn’t talk. Not that one.”
Lantz took his coffee and a dish of beans to one side. Meanwhile his ferreting mind gnawed at the problem. A wounded man, alone…
“Got to be close,” Hindeman said. “If he’s alive he’s eatin’ and if he’s eatin’ he’s gettin’ it from the Mexicans. But Vicente is the only one ever leaves the place.”
Jack Sutton was stretched on a blanket. He lifted himself to an elbow. “Mort, tomorrow you an’ Joe stick to Vicente. Go where he goes. Stick tight to him.”
“Won’t get us nothing. I think it’s the girl.”
“Jack’s got the idea, Mort. Stick to him. He’ll break. He’ll make a wrong move or he’ll talk.” He turned his leonine head. “Don’t crowd him, just watch him.”
Lantz was beginning to know Jordan. He was a man who had been up the creek and over the mountain … when they caught him it was not going to be fun.
“I’ll find him,” he said. “When I find him, you boys can have him.”
They looked at him, this wry old man with his sour-smelling body and the look of secret humor about him.
“What’s that mean?”
“Some of you boys won’t ride back. This one’s a curly wolf.”
Somebody snorted his disgust and Mort Bayless turned impatiently. Jack Sutton was angered by Lantz’s attitude, yet he was well aware that without him they wouldn’t have come this far. Old Bob Sutton had kept Lantz around and now it was Ben.
Jacob Lantz went to his blankets and rolled up. Staring morosely at the sky, his thoughts ran back over the terrain. There had to be a place and it had to be close by.
Morning was a suggestion of pale light when Jordan awakened. His first thought was of the creeping sounds of the previous night. He must be very careful.
By daylight he examined the steep chimney of trails. A girl or a child might manage that narrow ledge but one wrong step … that girl was one to mother a race of warriors. Yet a man might slide a horse down the incline of trails. He had seen wild horses do stunts almost as dangerous. Yet a man might wind up at the bottom with a broken leg and have to shoot it out.
Jordan saw the young man he took to be Maria Cristina’s brother start up the canyon on the paint pony. As he rounded a bend in the canyon, two horsemen fell in behind him. Twice the young Mexican turned to look back.
Two more riders rode up to the house and dismounted near the stable. So it had gone that far. Every move of the Chaveros was to be watched. Another man came out of the willows and walked toward Maria Cristina. She saw him coming and waited, her black hair blowing in the wind, her skirt stirring. She stood very straight.
Several minutes they talked. Her manner was cool and imperious. There was something fascinating in her face as he watched through the glasses, something proud and fierce that sent a strong eagerness through him.
The man to whom she talked was Jacob Lantz, a man without emotion, a man with an obsession. Whatever he said left her unstirred and when she moved her dress clung to her hips and thighs. He put the glasses down and mopped his face. It was going to be a hot day.
No question about it. He would have to go. He had no right to cause more trouble. He would make a break for it. Returning to his blankets, he settled down to wait for darkness.
Awakening with a start, he found it was already night and he heard a faint rustle of sound. He came swiftly to his feet, gun in hand. Then, bolstering the gun, he moved swiftly to the ruin. Drawing back against the wall until the shadows folded him into their darkness, he waited …
At first, no sound but the trickle of water; then a faint whisper of movement, a suggestion in the night, a sound of breathing … his hands went out, grasping for a throat.
His hands caught at flesh … there was an instant of fierce struggle ending abruptly when his hands found the soft contours of a woman’s body. “Maria Cristina?”
“Let me go.”
The voice was cool, almost detached. Yet there was tension in the body he held. Reluctantly his hands relaxed their hold but he did not move them away.
She stepped back, letting his hands fall. He could hear the sound of her breathing. A little faster from the climb? Prom the struggle? Or… ?
“Thought it was Lantz.”
She did not reply. There was a suggestion of perfume, some flower scent, faint but clinging. He could see the outline of her face against the outer sky. “I’m going,” he said. “I’m getting you all into trouble.”
Still she did not speak nor move. The lone star hung above the canyon’s rim. “If you had not come along, I’d be dead.”
Her face turned toward him but it was all darkness and he could see nothing of her expression.
“You’re a woman who could walk beside a man, Maria Cristina. Not behind him.”
“You talk too much.”
“Maybe . . . maybe not enough.”
Trace Jordan searched for words but found none. There was a time he had talked easily to women but with this girl and at this time he could find no words for what was within him.
A quail called questioningly into the night and there was no reply. He smelled again the smoke from the watchfires of the hunting men and heard the wind stirring the manzanita, yet he was only faintly aware of them, so conscious was he of the nearness of Maria Cristina.