Jacob awoke at a slow, sliding movement on his chest. The movement ceased, but a solid weight remained. Slowly, ever so slowly, he cracked an eyelid.
In the light of first dawn he saw the tan-and-brown body of a giant rattlesnake coiled on his chest. Jacob flinched, and before he could prevent it, his lungs expelled a short breath of air.
The rattlesnake was awakening from the drugging coolness of the night. Its recovery was being hurried by the heat radiating from the mound on which it lay. Already it felt the elastic strength in its muscles.
The large reptile felt the warm wash of air over it. It sensed a quiver in the mound beneath.
A third of the snake’s body lifted, and its venomous, fanged head swung to point straight at the source of warm air. The bulbous, nearsighted eyes stared. The wet, forked tongue licked out to capture the molecules of scent on the air and to deposit it inside the olfactory pits in the top of the snake’s mouth.
Jacob rolled his eyes to the side. The Comanche crouched not three yards away, intently watching Jacob and the rattlesnake. His lance was in his hand. But Jacob could tell by the expression on his face that he was not going to give any assistance.
The reptile sensed the almost imperceptible tremble of the mound again. It pulled back its head and the elevated portion of its body, in preparation for striking at this strange-smelling animal that was so threateningly near. The snake pointed its tail at the sky and began to vibrate its loose, interconnected rattles in a frenzied warning.
Jacob had to strike before the snake did. He lashed out. His open hand hit the solid, muscular body of the reptile. It seemed to be gripping his clothing. Then it broke loose and slid to the side.
Jacob rolled the opposite direction. He kicked the blanket free and leapt to his feet.
The rattlesnake coiled instantly. It raised its poisonous head, poised to stab out at the thing that had hurt it.
“Goddamn heathen Indian,” stormed Jacob. “You put that snake on me.” He rushed at the Comanche.
High Walking sprang erect. He thrust his lance out to meet Jacob’s charge.
Jacob barely halted in time to prevent himself from being impaled on the long steel head of the Indian’s weapon. “You bastard, I could have been killed by that snake, or poisoned so badly that I couldn’t travel.”
Jacob’s fist ached to smash the brown face and the black eyes that watched him without emotion, like marbles of obsidian. All of Jacob’s will was required to hold in check the anger that flamed in his mind. “Why did you put the snake on me?” he demanded.
“I wanted to see how brave you are,” High Walking said. “I do not want to go with a coward to fight battles.”
The Comanche lowered his lance and turned his back to Jacob. He gestured to the south. “That is the way we must go. We waste much valuable time here,” he said over his shoulder, without looking at the white man.
Jacob stared at the man’s back. “One more trick and I will kill you,” he promised.
One slight shrug of the Indian’s shoulders was the only response to Jacob’s threat. “Do we go now?” asked High Walking.
Jacob pulled on his moccasins and rolled his blanket. “Damn heathen,” he said under his breath as he cinched the saddle on his horse.
“Let’s ride,” Jacob called harshly.
The rested horses ran easily through low hills studded with prickly pear, cholla cacti, and scattered clumps of bunch grass. As the day wore on, yucca appeared, as well as agave, stabbing skeletal fingers upward. The riders also encountered small sand dunes. Fresh tracks of buffalo and antelope appeared. And always there were the tracks of the Texans’ horses pounding on ahead.
The sun reached its zenith, burning the earth with unnatural heat. Horses and men sweated. Strange mirages formed, then melted away and disappeared before Jacob’s and High Walking’s eyes, to reappear again like monstrous spirits rising from the bowels of the earth.
The Indian and the white man ignored the false images. The Texan raiders traveled somewhere ahead of those things that did not exist. What were real were the men they must find and kill.
* * *
The two riders came warily toward the hacienda, which squatted a hundred yards ahead on an old river terrace. At one time the adobe building had been whitewashed. Jacob thought that an odd thing for the owners to do in this remote location where few visitors would ever come. However, the house was now heavily weathered, the brown adobe showing in many places. The hacienda stood exposed, with no protective walls.
“The Texans have already been here,” Jacob said, raising his sight from the scores of tracks on the sunbaked ground.
“No one will be alive,” High Walking said.
“I’ll look inside.”
“No time for that. Let us go on at once. We cannot help the people who lived here.”
“I said, I’ll go look around.” Jacob’s voice was flinty. “You do whatever you want.”
High Walking’s dark face turned surly. Perhaps he had made a mistake in journeying with Jacob. Never could he be a friend to a white man. Always an enemy. However, to kill the scalp hunters, he would use the strength of anyone. He whirled his cayuse and circled off to the left, his eyes sweeping the ground.
Jacob found the major contents of the hacienda to be in place. The storerooms were partially empty, with open sacks and lids off other containers. In the kitchen, plates and dishes sufficient to feed ten men stood on the long wooden table. Jacob went quickly to the fireplace and felt the stones. They were cold. No cook fire had burned there that day.
He ran from the hacienda and toward his horse. The men who had attacked this rancho were miles ahead. He yelled out loudly to the Comanche.
High Walking rode up the grade from the river. “They crossed the Pecos just below here, where the water is wide but shallow. Their sign is fresh. Made late yesterday.”
“I know. We’ll catch them tomorrow if we hurry.” Jacob flung himself onto his mount.
* * *
The flat, smooth surface of the Rio Pecos shone brightly in the glare of the hot evening sun. The fish of the river had long ago sought a cool haven in the shade beneath the overhanging banks. Just downstream from the smooth flow of deep water, the river shallowed and became braided, flowing in three swift streams between low gravel bars.
“Damnation, I’m melting,” complained Custus. He looked west at the sinking sun. “I hope the night comes quick.”
“This is better than riding out there on the Staked Plains herding sheep and cattle with the other men,” replied Borkan. “The only shade there is a man’s hat brim.”
“You’re right.” Custus turned onto his back. “It’s your turn to keep an eye open while I catch a nap.”
Borkan and Custus lay in the shadows among a grove of cottonwoods and spied on the road where it forded the wide spread of water at the gravel bars. Kirker had ordered them to keep lookout for two days. If no pursuit came trailing the Texans, the two men were to give up their vigil and hurry after Kirker.
Borkan rose to a sitting position and surveyed the Pecos Valley. On both sides of the river the cottonwoods clung to the banks in a narrow, hundred-foot-wide band. Higher on the bank, the desert bunch grass had finished growing and was turning brown. The hacienda they had attacked the day before, though less than half a mile distant on the old river terrace, could not be seen.
Borkan came to quick attention. Two horsemen, their mounts moving at a fast gallop, had come into sight on the steep road leading down from the hacienda.
“Custus, wake up and get your rifle. Some fellows are coming.”
* * *
Jacob and High Walking sat their saddles and watched over the wide expanse of open water at the far shore. At their feet, the Pecos murmured a liquid undertone. High overhead, a buzzard hung ominously on wings that did not move. Jacob saw the bird riding the updraft of hot wind and wished he had that vantage point from which to examine the dense mat of trees on the opposite bank of the river.
The water wrinkled at a strong puff of wind coming from the east, the direction in which danger could lie. High Walking sniffed, turning his head, testing, evaluating. Jacob did likewise, searching for the odor of sweaty horses and men.
Just for an instant Jacob thought he caught a whiff of scent from something that should not be there. But so faint was the smell, so laden was the wind with the odor of the river mud and water, he wasn’t certain.
“You go,” said High Walking. “If we circle every place where our foes could hide, we would never catch them.”
Was there a new and odd tone in the Indian’s voice? Jacob believed there was. But he said nothing. His long-legged horse felt the heels of its master brush its flanks, and it stepped forward into the shallow water of the river.
Jacob held his rifle ready and his eyes probed the thicket of cottonwoods he must reach and pass through. The last rancho on the Pecos had been overrun, and the livestock was moving east to Texas. Never was there a better time for the raiders to waylay and kill anyone following them. Nor a better place. If the Texans left as a rear guard were not as strong as the men who hunted them, then they had an excellent retreat to the east up a draw full of trees.
The nearest gravel bar was reached and crossed. The horse entered the middle stream of water. The edge of the bar was steep, and the gravel and cobbles rolled from under the hooves of his mount. The horse began to fall.
Jacob heard the crack of the rifle above the splashing noise of the horse trying to regain its balance. He felt the tug of the bullet cutting at the neck of his shirt. He’d been shot at, and only the movement of the horse had saved him from being hit.
Immediately there came a second shot, just as the horse straightened and tossed its head. The bullet struck the brute in the throat.
The animal lifted its head, curled back its upper lip, and screamed shrilly. It crashed down on its side with a mighty splash.
Jacob vaulted from the saddle as his horse fell. He landed on his feet in water to his knees. His eyes swept the shore. Two plumes of blue-gray gunpowder smoke floated near the base of a large tree.
His rifle jumped to his shoulder. He aimed to the right and low of one of the smoke plumes. The gun roared. The instant he pressed the trigger, he was scrambling in long, lunging strides at an angle downstream toward the wooded riverbank.
A shrill, undulating war cry sliced the air behind him. He heard a horse running in the river, coming up fast behind him. A rifle boomed from the distant trees.
Jacob cast a fast look to the right. High Walking’s horse was breaking stride, falling. The Comanche flung himself into the air. He hit the shallow water hard. Then he was up and still holding his war bow, raced a zigzag pattern toward the riflemen.
A fourth shot rang out. Jacob couldn’t tell where the bullet went. High Walking did not slow but continued to run as if he hadn’t been injured.
Jacob won the distance to the grove of trees without being fired on again, and raced full-tilt around its outside border. He had to cut off the escape of the gunmen. But even as he closed upon the band of trees that extended up the draw, two horses, one without a rider, flashed by in the green foliage and were gone.
More than one man had fired. Yet only one had fled. Jacob went cautiously to the ambush point.
High Walking was already there. A body lay at his feet. He pointed with the end of his bow at a hole in the man’s chest.
“You killed a man you could not see. That is very difficult to do.”
“It was easy,” said Jacob.
High Walking’s face twisted into a crooked smile. “Yes, easy,” he replied.
“We have no horses. Now we walk,” said Jacob.
“Not walk. That is too slow. Can you run?”
“I can run,” Jacob said. He turned and with long strides waded into the river to his horse. He stood for a moment and watched the dark blood of the dead beast spreading like slow smoke through the clean water of the Pecos. The death of the faithful mount bit at him like acid.
Hastily he dug out a pouch of lead balls, a horn of powder, and a tin of caps from the pack on the horse’s back. A canteen of water was hung over a shoulder. He took nothing else.
High Walking came from the body of his cayuse with a small pack and bow and arrows and joined Jacob at the riverbank. He led off at a fast trot.
* * *
Jacob and the Comanche ran, their footfalls measuring the last minutes of the day. All around them the wild grass, like the guard hairs of some giant wolf, shook and shimmered beneath the yellow sun. Then the sun fell behind the western hills.
The men halted in the gray-purple end of the day. High Walking searched around for a short time, then began to dig with his knife at the base of some low-growing plants with fringed leaves. He pulled the roots loose from the soil and tossed half to Jacob.
“Yampa,” he said.
Jacob grunted his thanks and laid the wild carrots beside him. He was too exhausted to eat. He lay back, feeling the sweat drying and crusting into a thin film of salt crystals on his skin.
Jacob took one deep, weary breath and was asleep.