THE KILLING THRUST never landed. Instead, Luis witnessed a miracle as the lean arm holding the Bowie knife halted in mid-stroke. Then Azul flew backwards, stretching his length on the sand several feet away from the Mexican.
Behind him Manolo sat his horse with a broad grin splitting his handsome features and a lariat in his hand. The noose was tight around Azul’s shoulders and Manolo walked the horse Backwards to hold the furiously struggling man down.
‘Eh, Luis,’ he called, ‘a good thing I came back, no?’
‘Madre de Dios,’ Luis grunted as he rose unsteadily to his feet, ‘a very good thing. This madman would have killed me.’
He walked over to Azul and kicked him hard in the stomach.
‘¡Bastardo! Now we shall see how you like dying.’
‘Huerfano,’ Azul corrected him bitterly, wondering how he might escape the two men, ‘you killed my parents and blood cries out for blood.’
As he said it a plan began to form in his mind. It would depend upon the skillful baiting of Luis, using the bloodstained Mexican’s hatred to his own advantage.
Manolo had dismounted now and thrown a neat hitch around Azul’s ankles, drawing the rope up and around his wrists so that he was arched back, feet to hands, and able only to move his head. He twisted round to watch Luis’s face.
‘I am Apache,’ he went on, ‘I am not afraid to die, not like some mewling Mexicano who carries his cojones in his mouth.’
He broke off as Luis ended the insult to his courage with the tip of his boot. Azul winced at the pain that flooded through his tightly-stretched stomach muscles and spat over the man’s toes. Luis swore, kneeling to grab Azul by the hair, twisting his head back.
‘Scum,’ he grated, wafting tequila and garlic into Azul’s face, ‘it is your cojones that will block your windpipe. Then we shall see how you talk.’
‘So,’ Azul gasped, ‘you like the words no better than the knife’s prick. Bind me tight, then, in case I get free and come looking for you.’
‘When I have finished with you,’ snarled Luis, ‘you will do no more looking. At anything. You will beg me to kill you.’
‘I’ll beg you for nothing scalp hunter.’
Manolo interrupted them. ‘Kill him, Luis. Get it done fast. Nolan sent me back to warn you of a Federale patrol heading this way. There’s no time for your fun. Put a bullet in him.’
‘No!’ Luis’s rejection was final – to Azul’s delight: his plan could work yet.
‘Damn it,’ Manalo went on, ‘do you want them to find you here?’ He waved his hand in the direction of the corpses littering the small homestead. ‘Maybe you’d like to explain how it happened? Kill him and let’s get out.’
‘I’ll leave him to die,’ Luis shouted, ‘but my way. Slowly.’
He dragged Azul away from the barn and cut four lengths of rawhide from the plaited riata. Selecting a group of tall cactus plants, he dropped Azul in the center. Then, with Manolo helping him, he lashed the bound figure so that Azul’s limbs were stretched out in a star shape, wrists and ankles tied firmly to the plants. He tore the shirt from Azul’s back then, deftly, slashed the helpless man’s chest in a bloody tracery.
‘Ants, coyotes and buzzards,’ he grinned evilly, ‘will smell the blood. I wish them good eating; and you an unhappy death.’
He spat straight into Azul’s face then spun on his heel and walked over to his horse.
‘OK, Manolo, now we can go.’
The two men mounted and rode away as Azul sighed with relief in spite of the pain lancing his chest. It had gone as he had hoped: if the Mexican had been less consumed by anger and hate, he would have thought more clearly. He might have remembered the woman hiding back in the barn, or that even a hog-tied man stands a better chance of living than one with a bullet in his skull. The chance was slender, but at least it was there. Azul was still alive and therefore might – just – get free.
Dubiously, he tugged at the ropes holding him to the cactus plants. As he expected, they were firmly fastened, with no way for him to wriggle free, and drawn so tight that he was unable even to flex his muscles. Spread-eagled on the warm sand, he looked up at the sun standing high and hot in the clear sky. He winced as a big red ant, attracted by the blood oozing over his ribs, scuttled across his body to sink its pincers into the edge of a wound. Soon, he knew, it would communicate its find to the rest of the colony and bring a column of voracious insects to enjoy the unexpected feast. Of course, the ants would contest their luck with the buzzards winging down on the thermal currents, who in turn would argue with the twilight patrol of coyotes.
He had won the desperate gamble with Luis, but now he had a solitary race to run between his ingenuity and slow death.
He twisted his head to the side, looking for the barn. It was out of sight amongst the jumble of cactus and mesquite; but not, he knew, out of earshot.
Filling his lungs, he sent a cry echoing over the desert.
‘Señora! Help me, por favor.’
The silence around him remained unbroken except for the chirruping of cicadas and the clicking noises of the ants’ mandibles as a bustling file scurried over the sand towards him. He felt their bite as he called again.
‘Señora. I helped you. Now I ask you for your help. In the name of your God you owe it to me.’
‘¿Por que?’ The voice came soft from behind his head. ‘Why should I help an Apache?’
‘For the love of God,’ Azul replied, doing his best to keep his voice level against the needle pricks of the ants, ‘I saved your life. The Mexicans would have killed you. Afterwards.’
‘Sí,’ the woman came into view, her ragged blouse held tight against the proud rise of her breasts, ‘but would you be any better? We have fought your people here. Apache and Yaqui, are they any better than those murderers?’
Azul chose his reply carefully.
‘Look at me. Then tell me if I am Apache. Remember, then tell me that I did not save you back there in the barn.’
‘You wear the clothes of an Apache,’ the woman muttered, ‘but your hair is that of a yanqui. And you did save me.’ She paused, the concept of a traditional enemy actually helping her confusing her thinking. ‘Why?’
‘Because,’ Azul said urgently, ‘I hate them as much as you. I was trailing them because I want to kill them. They murdered my people as they did yours.’
‘And if I free you?’ she mused, ‘what then? Your body and your knife instead of theirs?’
‘No.’ He put all his feeling into the assurance, even though it was difficult to keep his eyes from her breasts. ‘They killed my parents and I swore a blood oath that they should die by my hand. Two are killed already, now I want the others.’
He watched the woman, still lovely in spite of the tom clothes and straw cluttering her dark hair like the doubt that clouded her eyes.
‘Cut me free and I give you my word I shall take you somewhere safe before I revenge us both.’
‘Somewhere safe?’ She played with the words as a child does with a suspect toy. ‘An Apache village?’
‘No. My village is gone together with my people. I have nothing left now except my vengeance; cut me free and let me take it, for both our sakes.’
The woman nodded slowly as though the idea of the deaths that had passed and those to come were too much for her to comprehend, then she looked Azul straight in the eye.
‘Yes. I will do it. But first promise that they shall die.’
‘I have sworn it,’ he said, shaking his head to throw loose a stray ant, ‘there is a knife in my boot. Free me and I’ll go after them.’
Silently, she leant over his prone body, her long hair brushing his chest, to draw the knife from its resting place in his boot. Swiftly, she slashed the rawhide holding his wrists and ankles, then squatted back holding the knife, hilt towards his hand. He used it to cut the last of the bonds from his limbs, then slid the blade back into his moccasin and stood up.
The woman rose with him, drawing her blouse tighter around her body as she eyed him nervously.
‘Don’t worry,’ murmured Azul, ‘you will be safe with me.’
Without waiting for a reply he began to walk back to the village. The woman fell into step behind him, staring at his broad shoulders and the droplets of blood that marked his path.
They reached the horses Azul had tethered outside the sprawl of adobe huts before they spoke again.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked as he lifted her up on to the big Sonora saddle of the spare mount.
‘Linda. Señora Linda Ramirez. Viuda Ramirez now.’
Azul grinned. ‘In American, Linda means pretty; viuda, widow. I don’t think you’ll stay a widow too long.’
Against her will Linda answered his smile; for all the taciturn savagery of this strange blond Apache it was difficult not to like him. Somehow he carried with him a reassuring quality, a determination and honesty that made her believe in what he said, that gave her faith in his goodwill and prompted her to believe him when he said he would kill the men who had slaughtered both their villages. She settled down in the saddle and followed him as he rode easily out of the shattered homestead.
‘He should be screaming by now,’ Luis grinned as he cantered alongside Manolo, ‘the ants will have found him and maybe the buzzards, too.’
Manolo shook his head. ‘Amigo, you should have killed him like I said. That one gives me a bad feeling. There’s something about him that smells of death.’
‘His own death,’ laughed Luis, ‘slow and hurting, like a filthy half-breed deserves.’
‘I don’t know,’ Manolo looked doubtful, ‘he’s not the kind to die easily.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Luis grinned, ‘he’ll die. I just wish I could have taken his scalp, it’s a pity the gentleman prefers black hair.’