That warm and windless evening, as the sun set, they made camp alongside a deep, muddy pool that offered the only wetness they’d seen all day. Tracks of various animals and birds encircled it, attesting to its being the only water for miles around. Brackish, warm, a pool in an otherwise dry rill, the liquid was wet and life-giving and therefore welcome.
Squatting at the water’s edge, Jacey hurriedly filled the small coffeepot and their canteens by dragging them across the surface while Zant held the neighing, restless horses at bay. As likely as not, those two’d drink the mudhole dry once they got at it.
Done, Jacey capped the second canteen, came to her feet and turned around. “All right. Bring ’em over before they start buckin’ and bitin’.”
She stepped back as Zant moved in with the now frantic animals. For once, as they lowered their heads and drank, there was no all-out war between the two horses about being side by side. Well, Jacey figured, they were tired and thirsty. But also, maybe they’d come to an agreement that since necessity had thrown them together, they should make the best of it. Maybe they realized that to fight each other now, out here, meant neither one of them would survive. Jacey shook her head, bridling her unguarded thoughts. She was still talking about the horses, wasn’t she?
She looked away from the animals to the man. And suspended thought in favor of just watching the play of heavy muscle under his sweat-stained shirt as he stretched and rocked from side to side, as if loosening cramped muscles.
If she wanted … if she dared … she could reach out and touch him. He was that close. Gripping instead the canteens and the coffeepot with two-handed determination, Jacey spoke the next thought that came to her head. “Tired of the saddle, huh?” Oh, that’s great, Jacey. Just let the man know you’ve been standing here leering at him.
Both sets of reins threaded through his fingers, Zant turned sideways toward her, looking surprised that she was still standing there. He then grinned and stretched mightily. “I’ll say. A few more days of this and my new name will be Flat Butt.”
Not from where she was standing. Her eyes widening at the splayed-out, masculine sight he made, Jacey found herself incapable of laughing with him. She desperately groped for a canteen cap and finally found one. She fumbled it open and gulped a mouthful of nasty-tasting water. She grimaced, swiped a hand over her wet lips, and offered the open canteen to him. “Me, too,” she offered.
“You too what?” He took the canteen—his long fingers covering her smaller ones for one brief, electric second—put it to his mouth, and drank deeply. Jacey braced her suddenly wobbly knees. He handed the canteen back to her and swiped his forearm across his lips and dripping chin. He then turned back to the horses, checking to see that they didn’t take in too much water. He smoothed a hand over his stallion’s red coat, stroking, patting.
But it was Jacey who shivered. “Um, my butt’s flat, too.”
He turned back to her, frowning. “What?”
Heat seared her cheeks and neck. “Nothing.” She beat a new path up the shallow incline. Her ranting insults to herself marked each stiff-legged stride. Stupid, crazy, big-mouthed, asinine, lovestruck— She stopped. Lovestruck? No. She jerked around to Zant. He’d squatted on his haunches and was sluicing water over his neck and through his hair. His denims stretched tightly over his far-from-flat butt and his steely thighs. Oh, yes. Lovestruck. The realization tore out of her in a loud, distressed curse. “No, dammit!”
Instantly, Zant and Knight and Old Blood straightened up and turned their heads and dripping muzzles to stare at her. “You okay?” Zant called out. He combed his fingers through his thick black hair.
“No.” She heard the pout in her voice and covered it by squawking, “I mean yes.”
“Then what were you yelling about?”
“I wasn’t.”
Zant stared at her and then exchanged a look with the two horses. He shrugged his broad shoulders. They arched their necks and shivered their manes all about.
Jacey turned on her boot heel, stalking to the much-used campsite they’d claimed for the night. To one side of the trampled brush and the blackened ring of stones encircling a gray-ash-filled center, she set down the coffeepot and canteens. Tossing her thick braid back over her shoulder, she busied herself with gathering wood for a campfire, which was about all she could do until Zant brought the horses over. Still saddled, they carried the food, utensils, coffee, and bedrolls on them.
With the wood crooked in her arms, and squatting to dump her load, Jacey gave a start when long shadows fell over her and stretched out on the sandy earth before her. She jerked around. Zant and his two four-legged companions were plodding up to her. Still feeling defenseless in the face of his powerful maleness—at once so foreign and so inviting to her—she stood up and held her hand out. “Took you long enough. Give me Knight’s reins.”
He separated them from his stallion’s and held them out to her, his face mirroring a quizzical yet assessing look. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Never better, outlaw.” She snatched at the reins.
He pulled them back. “No. Something’s eating at you. Whenever you call me outlaw or gunslinger, I’m anywhere but on your good side.”
She’d die before she’d tell him what was wrong. “Why should that bother you? Do you care if I’m sore at you … I mean, really care?”
His level stare unnerved Jacey as much as his gunfighter’s stance. But she stood her ground, held her breath, waited for him to speak. He shook his head. “No. I don’t guess I do.”
Jacey’s heart plummeted. She just wanted to take her horse and get the heck away from him, if only for a few minutes. “Then just give me the reins.”
He held them out to her, allowed her to grip them, and then refused to let go. Jacey looked up into his scowling face. “I lied,” he said. “I do want to know what the hell’s wrong with you. When we went to the watering hole a few minutes ago, we were getting along just fine. Now you’re a spitting alley cat. How come?”
Jacey wanted to turn and run. But where to? Out here, alone with him in unfamiliar and deserted and desolate country, she was completely at his mercy. So, she drew in a deep breath through her pinched nostrils and tugged at the reins. But with no better luck than she had the first time. “All right. Fine. I’ll tell you what’s wrong.”
“Well?”
“Well,” she repeated with emphasis, “I’m … hungry, is all. I haven’t had a bite since breakfast.”
He frowned, but then his face cleared. He even grinned. “Then I must be looking pretty good to you about now.”
Jacey sucked in a dry breath and began choking. Could he read her mind? “What?”
He grinned and pounded her—unnecessarily hard, in her opinion—on the back. “Tully’s woman. You said she should have eaten him herself. And I said I’d have to make sure you didn’t get too hungry. What’d you think I—Wait a minute. Why, Jacey Lawless”—the ornery sidewinder chuckled in a purely mocking way—“am I starting to look good to you? Is that what’s wrong with you?”
“Hogwash.”
He stared at her a moment and then threw his head back and laughed. With her bottom lip poked out far enough for her to trip over it, Jacey snatched Knight’s reins from him and practically dragged the animal away to unsaddle and hobble him for the night.
Zant’s mocking words chased after her. “Hogwash, huh? We’ll see, Jacey Lawless. We’ll see.”
* * *
All was done. The horses were unsaddled, brushed down, hobbled, and left to graze among the tough grasses. The fire burned brightly in the cool and starlit night. Jacey’s stomach was full of Maria’s tortillas and beef and beans and a slice of mock-apple pie. She reclined in her bedroll. Zant did the same in his—across the fire from her. And he’d better stay there, if he knew what was good for him.
But apparently he didn’t. Her stomach muscles clenched, Jacey watched him roll easily to his feet in a smooth display of coordination and grace. Well, give the devil his due. He was something. Bending over, grabbing his boots by the mule-ear straps, he tugged them on and started in her direction. As he approached, Jacey gripped her blanket and spoke in a low, threatening voice. “I’m not asleep, so tread carefully, outlaw.”
“Settle down, Ornery. I’m just going to relieve myself.”
Looking straight ahead at the fire, refusing to admit her blunder, Jacey muttered, “Well … see that you do.”
He chuckled and stepped around her. Lying on her side, facing the fire, she listened to the grainy shifting of the sand under his boots as he moved farther and farther away. Jacey grinned. Why couldn’t she stay mad at him? She never had any trouble staying mad at anyone else she knew. Even Hannah and Glory and Biddy. Why, if anyone put her in a snit, she’d stay there for days, making everyone around her miserable, until Papa would—
“Jacey?”
Alert to the eerie, hissing sound, Jacey tensed. When the sound didn’t repeat after several moments, she dismissed it as a bird and resettled in her thoughts, recalling Papa getting tired of her grumpiness and tanning her seat if she—
“Jacey?”
Frowning, Jacy turned over and sat up. There it was again. She looked out into the night, in the direction Zant had gone. If that rotten mud toad thought she was going to help him with relieving himself, then he could.… No, he wouldn’t do that. So, the sound—no more than a rustling of scrawny branches—had to be her imagination.
Flopping back down, she again took up her fond memories of life at home. Papa’d tan her seat if she so much as raised her voice to Mama. Well, she learned early on not to do that. Which meant her sisters were fair game. They were never any match for—
“Jacey?”
Jacey sat up. That was no wind and no bird. It was Zant. If this was his idea of a joke—“What do you want, Chapelo? You think you can scare me with your whispering?”
Jacey picked up his note of urgency and, yes, the fear in his voice. Was he bluffing her? And if not, what made him think she wanted to see anything that could scare him? “What are you up to? I’m not about to come out there to look at your—”
“Quiet.” His voice was no more than a squeak. “Bring … your gun. Now.”
Still not convinced, but nevertheless dropping her voice to just above a whisper, she called out, “Why?”
“There’s a—” He bit off his words.
Jacey came to her knees. Was that the sound of rattles she heard? She gave the night her full attention. The dry rasp of a rattler’s warning carried to her. Sweat instantly dewed her lip and seemed to pool under her arms. “Oh, my God.” She said it as a prayer. She swallowed and bent to search out her Colt. “I heard it. I’m on my way.”
“Jacey?”
She stood up, wiped her sweating palm on her skirt, and cocked her gun. “Yeah?”
“Knight’s … hobbling this way. If he … senses the snake, then.…”
Jacey exhaled audibly. “Then he’ll raise hell, and you’ll be a dead man.”
After a long moment of silence, she heard Zant’s hissed, “Thanks.”
Jacey grinned, despite the seriousness of the situation. Then, feeling as ready as she’d ever be, she stepped off her sleeping bag and away from the reassuring glow of the campfire light.
Plunged now into the relatively pitch-black night, she blinked until her eyes adjusted somewhat to the covering darkness. But having no idea which cactus or bush or rocky outcropping he’d chosen, she could only place one booted foot cautiously in front of the other. No sense stepping on the snake. And that was another thing—it’d be nice to know where the danged rattler was in relation to Zant. And to her.
What she did know, though, was the critter would be none too pleased with her approach. In fact, it’d be pretty riled about now. Instinct would have to guide her. Suddenly, Jacey was shoved forward from behind. That push was too solid to be instinct. Stumbling, tripping, fighting to keep her feet, she barely got her hand over her mouth before she cried out. The renewed alarm of big rattles being shaken—very close by—greeted her flat-footed halt. The sharply in-drawn breath she heard had to be Zant’s.
Behind Jacey, Knight whuffed and blew and nudged her again. Her heart in her throat, she turned, but was barely able to discern the black gelding from the surrounding night. Reaching out, groping, she located him and rubbed her hand over him. He faced her head-on. With no choice and hating it, she thumped his tender muzzle and hissed, “Git.”
Startled, the horse reared his head and stepped back as best he could with hobbled feet. But his retreating footfalls, as be headed back in the direction of the campfire, were a welcome sound.
Jacey closed her eyes in a moment of prayerful thanks. And then traded her gun from one hand to the other, so she could wipe each damp palm down her skirt. The snake rattled again and stirred. She froze. It was on her left. Sounded like it was about waist-high to her. Which meant, if its coils started on the ground, it was about fifty feet long. Or much smaller if coiled on the sun-warmed boulders next to her. Jacey prayed it was lying atop a boulder. Okay. Waist high to her. Which put it about … crotch high to Zant, who had to be on the other side of the boulder, since she hadn’t knocked into him yet.
Crotch high. Lordy. Now she understood why he hadn’t just stomped it or backed off. If he got bit, it’d be on his—Jacey made an awful face. That would hurt. Poor Zant was in a very delicate predicament. And one she had to get him out of. In a hurry. No telling how long the snake would remain patient with them. So, living up to her reckless reputation, Jacey made a deliberate feint, hoping to make the snake rattle again—but hopefully not strike—so she could better pinpoint it. The snake cooperated by shaking its rattles.
Good. About two arm-lengths away. But who was it facing? Her or Zant? Suddenly afraid to the point of irritation, Jacey fumed. Could this be any trickier? If she knew its tail was to her, then she’d just grab it and sling it, like she did back home when she came across the varmints. Danged things were always underfoot up in No Man’s Land.
Suddenly Jacey realized she hadn’t heard a sound from Zant in a while. Had he already been bitten? Was he even now lying on the ground and writhing? No, if the rattler’d bitten him, he’d be making a bunch of noise and the snake would’ve slithered away. Usually. Sometimes, they just kept biting, depending on how threatened they felt. Jacey, why are you spooking yourself with these thoughts? Just shoot the danged thing. Zant’s expecting it. He’ll get out of the way.
Jacey raised her cocked gun, held her arm out level and steady, yelled, “Now, Zant!” and began firing. Bullets pinged off rock, striking bright flashes of fire, but a few hit something, made no noise. Jacey prayed she’d hit the snake, and not Zant. But figuring Zant’d probably prefer a quick death by bullet over a lingering, painful one like the rattler would deliver, she fired until her Colt was empty. When she finally lowered her arm, all about her was as calm and quiet as Christmas Eve night.
Until the air was split with the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard. “Son of a bitch!” Zant screeched from the other side of the boulder. “You trying to kill me? That damned rattler and his blown-off head flew off that rock and hit me in the chest. I must’ve flung that monster all the way to California. And now my hands are shaking so bad I can’t get my pants buttoned.”
Grinning in relief, glad he couldn’t see her trembling chin in the dark, Jacey called out, “Hey, Chapelo! Aren’t you even going to thank me?”
“Thank you?” He sounded closer, like he was stepping around the boulder. “For what? You damn near shot my … head off. Bullets whizzing by, I’m trying to jump out of the way and get down. Scared the hell out of me.” He then pushed past her, still buttoning his denims, and reverted to rapid, angry Spanish as he tromped back to the campfire.
To his back, Jacey called out, “I did warn you, remember?” He didn’t bother with a response. She grinned again. Big baby. Wasn’t nothing but a little old snake. Shaking her head, Jacey trudged back to the welcome glow of their fire. A sidelong glance across the flames showed her Zant seated on his bedroll and tugging his boots off. He didn’t even look up at her approach. Quirking her mouth, Jacey sat on her own blankets and busied herself with reloading her Colt, plucking bullets out of their confining loops on her gunbelt and expertly poking them into the empty chambers.
The next thing she knew, the campfire’s light was blocked and the outlaw’s stocking feet were standing in front of her. She eyed them a minute before walking her gaze up the long drink of water that was Zant. Looking into his darkness-shaded face, detecting only the gleam of his black eyes, she remained quiet, waiting for him.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Jacey. And … thank you.”
Her throat working, Jacey looked down at her gun in her lap, quietly telling it, “It was nothing. You’d do the same for me.”
“Yes, I would.” He squatted in front of her and tilted her chin up until she had to look into his eyes. “And, Jacey, what you did was far from nothing. It was everything—to me. And I know you didn’t have to save my hide. You could have done nothing and been rid of me once and for all.”
Jacey ignored the wrenching heartache at just the thought of him dead and spoke with all the spit and vinegar she knew he’d expect from her. “The thought crossed my mind. But that snake didn’t have anything to do with … what’s between me and you. I don’t run from any fight. And I don’t take the easy way out, Chapelo. So, when the time comes, you can be sure we’ll be on even footing. And it’ll be only my hand and yours that sees this through to the end.”
He quirked a grin and said, “You could win a fight against your weight in wildcats, couldn’t you?” He let go of her chin, his black-eyed gaze making a slow sweep of her face, as if he were trying to find a chink in her armor, a soft spot, an opening. Apparently not finding one, he stretched to a stand, stared down at her, said, “Thanks, anyway. I owe you one.” And walked away.
Jacey finished reloading her Colt, her task made all the harder for her shaking hands and the tears blurring her eyes.
* * *
The next day, about lunchtime, Zant and Jacey found themselves pinned down behind a single boulder outside Two-finger McCormack’s old place. And exchanging gunfire with Two-finger. As luck would have it, Angel Peterson, one of the meaner sorts from the old Lawless Gang, was inside with him and firing away.
In a lull, which Zant used to duck down and reload—Jacey did the same—he shoved bullets into the chambers and spoke rapidly. “Mean old sons of bitches. They need a whipping more than they need anything else.” With his back to the rock and his knees drawn up, he labored over his task.
Done first with her reloading, Jacey rubbed against his side as she raised up enough to peek over the boulder’s rounded top. “Well, I’ll be a—Zant, look at this.”
He looked up. “Look at what? What’re they doing?”
“Just look.”
His gun fully loaded again, Zant popped the cylinder back into place, spun it, and cocked it. Turning around, he edged himself up the rough-sided boulder, noting Jacey’s look of disbelief, and looked toward the cabin. A once-white combination suit, with the left arm and right leg cut short, hung over the end of a long stick and waved back and forth out the window. He turned to Jacey. “I’d say those drawers belong to Two-finger. You think it’s a truce flag?”
Jacey chuckled and said, “That’s what I’m guessing—on both counts.”
“It could be a trick.”
“It could. What do you make of it?”
Zant considered that. Rubbing a hand over his growth of beard, he decided it was a truce flag and not a trick. Because his and Jacey’s heads were poked up over the boulder and no one had taken a shot at them. He turned again to Jacey. “Stay low. Let’s see what they do. Make them make the next move.”
Jacey nodded her agreement, and they both turned to look at the waving drawers. They didn’t have long to wait. From inside the cabin came a sharp-edged voice. “Who are you out there?”
Zant notched his Stetson up in disgust and called back, “You’d know, you old coot, if you hadn’t started shooting the minute we rode up. You’re just damned lucky you didn’t hit our horses before we yee-hawed them away.”
“Don’t fret, stranger. They’ll come back. Now, I’m not goin’ ta ask ya again.” But then he did anyway. “Who are you?”
“I’m Zant Chapelo—the Kid’s son. And the lady is Jacey Lawless.”
After a moment of silence: “J. C. never was no lady. You’re lyin’.”
Zant bonked his forehead down on the warm, solid rock and closed his eyes. From that position, he asked Jacey, “Would you please explain your name to them?”
To his right, Jacey huffed out a loud breath and then called out. “I’m Jacey. J-A-C-E-Y. J. C.’s second daughter. I was named after him.”
Zant raised his head at the hushed but frantic whisperings carrying to them from inside the cabin. Then, a different, rasping voice called out, “All right. We believe you—even though Angel says he never thought he’d live long enough to see a Chapelo and a Lawless riding together all peaceable like. But bein’ who you are don’t change nothin’. What you two want?”
Zant figured he’d call riding with Jacey anything but peaceable, but he kept that to himself and said, “We just want to talk to you.”
Both old men answered. “About what?” Then, Two-finger, the raspy-voiced one, added, “We don’t know nothin’ about what it is you want.”
Zant turned to exchange a look with Jacey. Just in time to catch her waistband as she went over the rock. “Get down, dammit.” He shoved her onto her bottom in the sand.
She came up clawing and hissing. “They know something. Why else would they have said that?”
Zant clamped his hand on her shoulder, holding her down as he got right into her face and hissed, “So they can draw you out and shoot you. Now, stay put, and let’s see if they know anything. You got that?”
She nodded, but every rigid line in her body said she didn’t like it. Zant raised up enough to see the cabin. “What do you think it is we want?”
“You’re here about the money. We ain’t got none of it.”
Zant frowned and looked down at Jacey. She shrugged her shoulders. He turned to the cabin. “What money are you talking about?”
Silence. Then came Angel’s voice. “If’n you don’t know, we ain’t about to tell ya. You think we’re simpleminded?”
Zant bit back his honest opinion and lied, “Far from it, old-timer. But we’re not here about anything to do with money. We’re here about J. C. Lawless himself.”
“Wal, he ain’t here.”
That did it. Zant lost control and screeched like an owl. “I know that, you old fart.” Then, taking a deep, calming breath, he jerked his Stetson off, barely suppressing his urge to bite it and crumple it. His still raised voice sailed across the distance. “J. C. and his wife have been killed. And we’re—”
“We didn’t do it. Go away.”
Near to bellowing again in frustrated rage, Zant slid down the boulder to sit next to Jacey on the hot sand. “Tell me one thing. How in the living hell was the Lawless Gang ever anything to fear?”
He watched as suppressed humor lit up her delicate face. “I guess they were different when they were younger. They’re all old men now. My father and yours were the youngest ones, remember?”
“I do. But if this is all I have to look forward to—being some crazy old outlaw coot without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of—then I’m beginning to think I should’ve let that snake do his worst last night.”
Jacey grinned, showing white, even teeth. “Sorry I saved you.”
“Yeah, thanks for the favor.” He then crammed his Stetson back on, rested his elbows on his bent knees, and said, “I’m about ready to do just what Angel says and go away. Five more minutes of this, and I’ll shoot ’em both for being so stupid.”
Jacey chuckled. “I think they’re kind of funny. Look what they’ve done to you. You’re red-faced and cussin’ and spittin’ thorns.”
Closer to laughing with her than he cared to admit, Zant feigned being put out with her. “Is that so? Since you’re the one who thinks they’re so all-fired amusing, why don’t you try reasoning with them, missy?”
She raised her arched eyebrows at him. “I think I will.” And she did just that. Pushing her bottom off the sand, she turned and edged up the boulder. Her first words, though, were for Zant. “The flag is gone.” She then turned to call out, “Hey, you inside? We just want some information. I’ve got a piece of spur to show you and some questions to ask. That’s all. I swear it—on my Lawless name.”
Her words and her oath were met with silence, which slowly became a sustained, suddenly suspicious, and too quiet silence. Frowning, Zant joined Jacey in peeking over the boulder. “I don’t like the looks of this.”
Jacey eyed him. “Me, neither. What do you think they’re doing?”
“Well, either they’re reloading. Or they fell asleep. Or they went out a back way.”
“I figured along the same lines.”
Zant eyed the cabin, taking in the jutting foothills behind it, the thick covering of oaks and junipers and the creosote bushes that nestled the ramshackle abode. No movement from anywhere. He picked up a good-sized rock and chunked it at the squatty old house. Jacey ducked behind their boulder with him. But, nothing. No response. He turned to her again. “I guess you already figured, too, that one of us has to go out there and search the cabin.”
“One of us? You’re the one who doesn’t want to end up an old coot. I say you go.”
“Thanks.”
“Just tryin’ to oblige, Chapelo. I’ll cover you.”
Zant yanked his Stetson low over his eyes and nodded. “Just try not to shoot me.”
He made a movement to dart around the covering rock, but froze with Jacey’s retort. “Try not to give me a reason to.”
He looked back over his shoulder at her. Her grin and that sparkle in those damned black eyes of hers said she’d do it, too. “Before this is all over, Jacey Lawless, I’m going to put you over my knee.”
She held her gun up parallel with herself and cocked it. “Now those are the words of a man intent on giving a woman reason enough to shoot him.”
Zant grunted his opinion of that and then slouched around the side of the boulder. No man and no bullets challenged him. Thus emboldened, he skittered to the cabin’s edge, looked back to see Jacey with her Colt trained on the open window, and then edged his way over to it. He jerked around to quickly peek inside, gain an impression, and then jump back to the cover of the outside wall. He thought about what he’d seen. Dirt. Rough furniture. Unmade beds. Dried-up remains of countless meals and scattered clothes everywhere.
Otherwise, it was empty. Of Angel and Two-finger, at any rate. On the dirty floor was the makeshift flag. He signaled the all-clear to Jacey and then went to the closed door. When she joined him, staying behind him as he indicated for her to do, he opened the door and burst inside, his gun leveled at anything that might move. But nothing did. He relaxed his stance but didn’t reholster his Colt.
At his side now, Jacey grimaced. “Those two stinkers. Just as we thought—gone.”
Notching his Stetson up, Zant took a good look around. “Yep. Right out this back door, I’d say.” He kicked clothes and tin plates aside as he strode to the crude, gaping-open doorway. He looked out, training his gaze on the upward slope of a steep foothill. “Look here, Jacey.”
Stepping close to him, she peered between the doorjamb and his shoulder. She looked in the direction he pointed and chuckled. “I’m guessing that cloud of dust tells its own story.”
Watching the obvious signs of a full retreat up the cactus-studded hill, Zant reholstered his gun and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked down at Jacey, finding himself once again captivated by her fragile size, which made her enormous fighting spirit a never-ending surprise. “Well, there went numbers three and four of the five remaining Lawless gang desperadoes. You think we should go after them?”
Jacey shook her head. “No. I don’t think they know a thing beyond what goes on right here under their own noses.” She then turned to look around the rumpled room. “And maybe not even that.”
Zant scanned the room with her—anything to keep from staring openly, longingly at her—and then started for the front door. “Come on. Let’s go locate our horses and clear out. Wouldn’t want those two old Jaspers to die from the heat while they wait up in the hills for us to leave.”
* * *
“Dammit, Jacey, we’ve been hunting for two hours. Just how far do you think that nag of yours shied?”
“What’s wrong, Chapelo? Am I too heavy for your prissy stallion?”
“He’s not prissy.”
“And Knight’s not a nag.”
“If he doesn’t turn up soon on his own, he’ll be vulture bait when I’m through with him. And quit squirming. You’re about to knock me off the back of my own horse.”
“How can I be squirming? I’m sitting in the saddle. Now head this burro of yours over by that stand of mesquite trees. And move your hand, outlaw, before I slice it off and hand it back to you.”
“Oh, hell, my hand’s not even touching your—”
“Over there! Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“I think I saw a flash of black moving around in those mesquites. Maybe Knight got his reins tangled in a branch. Turn this animal.”
“I am. At least Sangre had the sense to wait close by.”
“Sense? The only reason this swaybacked mule was close by was because he was standing on his own reins and didn’t have enough sense to lift his hoof.”
“It’s a trick I taught him.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. You taught him to tromp on his own reins and thereby take a chance at throwing himself and breaking his own neck? I’m not sure he has the sense to do that.”
“Sangre is a blooded stallion with Arabian lines. He’s not a donkey or a mule or a dumb animal.”
“Then maybe it’s you I’m thinking of.”
“How’d you like to walk until we find that gelding of yours?”
“Fine. It’s too hot up here anyway what with your big-boned self all mashed up against my back. And move your arm.”
“Ouch, dammit. You want down? Then, get—Don’t jump. You’ll … fall on your butt. Like you just did. You okay?”
“I’m fine. I like walking. I was walking before I was riding. Suits me fine.”
“Get the hell back up here. You can’t walk in this heat. I mean it—now.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, Chapelo.”
“I can. And I do all the time.”
“Yeah, and I don’t do it.”
“The hell you—Fine. Suit yourself.”
“I always do. And back off some. That Arabian of yours is blowing his hot breath on me.”
“Whoa, Sangre. Hey, wildcat? Joe Buford’s place is another two-day ride—or five-to seven-day’s walk—northwest of here. You intend to walk it the whole way?”
“I will if I have to. But I intend to find Knight way before that. You can always go on ahead, if I’m holding you up.”
“If I had any sense I would. Now get back up here with me.”
“Not until you apologize.”
“Look out for that scorpion.”
“I see him. There. Now he’s dead. And you better hope that’s Knight in those mesquites. He’s got my bedroll and most of the food. How’d you like to go to sleep tonight with your belly grumbling and having to share your bedroll with me?”
“You offering? Because if you are, I’ll abandon this search for that ornery black critter of yours right here and now.”
“Shut up, Chapelo. That was no offer. It was a threat.”
“Yeah? How about I get you to make good on it?”
“I’m not sleeping with you—no how and no way.”
“Maybe not tonight.”
“Maybe not ever.”
“That’s a mighty long time, Miss Jacey.”
“Not near long enough, Mister Zant.”
“We’ll see.”
“Yes, we will. And I’ll be the winner.”
“I doubt it. Now, what am I supposed to be apologizing for?”
“I forgot. Oh, for saying Knight’s a nag.”
“All right. I’m sorry your horse is a nag.”
“Is that supposed to be funny? I’ll tell you one thing, I can’t wait to get to Buford’s place. Because after that, I won’t have to put up with your bossy ways anymore. I’ll be heading back to Tucson. And you can go to hell.”
“I probably will. But it appears to me you’re betting heavy on Buford knowing something that the other ones didn’t.”
“Call it a hunch. He knows. It’s always the last one who knows.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because you quit looking when you find the one with the answers. Leastwise, smart folks do.”
“Ahh. Well, would the smart folks—particularly the one on foot and sweating like a washerwoman—maybe want a drink of some nice, cool water?”
“Nope. I’m fine, thank you.”
“Yeah, you’re fine, all right. I swear I never met someone with so much spit and—Hey, come back here. Where you running off to?”
“To get Knight. It’s him—just like I said, outlaw. I was right about where he’d be, and I’ll be right about Joe Buford’s knowing. You just wait and see.”