ROSA CANALES MADE to urge her mistreated horse to a faster pace, then realized Steele had no intention of making better time. At first was puzzled as she reflected that she may have misunderstood him. Then she glimpsed the trace of a fleeting smile on his profile and recalled in a different frame of mind their final exchange. And scowled as she demanded: ‘You make another joke, gringo!’
‘Did I?’ he answered, not interrupting his routine watch on their surroundings.
‘A expensa de mi padre … at the expense of my father?’
‘If he’s so rich, he can afford a little expense, I—’
‘I wish no more to discuss anything with you if you cannot be cortes … be civil about …’
‘That’s fine with me, Rosa,’ he told her evenly. ‘I’m happy I know enough.’
And for a long time – perhaps more than an hour – they rode through the desert heat of the afternoon without a word passing between them. While Steele watched for a movement on the encircling horizon blurred by the shimmering heat haze, and the woman stared straight ahead. He with a mind that was open to admit any line of thought and was host to none: she obviously concentrating very hard – on one line, on many or maybe at barring all.
Then Steele signaled a halt so that he could dismount and move off the trail to a clump of stunted mesquite. Enclosed in her private world of deep thought – or its opposite – Rosa Canales was once more puzzled. But then, when Steele halted and, only partially hidden by the mesquite, obviously urinated, she vented an unladylike grunt of comprehension. And, when the Virginian was back in his saddle and they were moving once more at an energy conserving walk, the woman uttered a similar, but louder sound.
‘You want to say something, Rosa?’ he asked.
He glanced directly at her and saw that she compressed her lips – as if to emphasize that she intended to keep them sealed. But a half minute later, she changed her mind.
‘I think that you have said my father is a fool.’
‘I did?’
‘For offering to pay money to have his punetera of a daughter back.’
‘Punetera mean what I think it does. Rosa?’
‘Bitch! It means the bitch.’
Steele nodded, like he was acknowledging her reply to his direct question. But then said: ‘If it’s what you think you are, maybe you can start doing something to change it.’
‘And live happily ever after, gringo?’ she suggested scornfully.
Now the Virginian shook his head and, at the completion of the gesture, peered fixedly along the arrow-straight trail. While he said, absently: ‘That only happens in stories, Rosa. There never are any happy endings in real life. Because everybody who lives has to die in the end. And there’s nothing happy about dying.’
‘Claudio and I would have had much happiness before we …’ She recognized the change that had come over Adam Steele and broke off to peer eastward, too. But failed to see anything different about the arid, sparsely featured terrain from when she had last looked across its parched surface – albeit with a total lack of interest in the vista. ‘There is new danger?’ she demanded, looking at his unmoving profile now: her anger at him of a few moments ago washed away by a surge of fear.
‘Maybe, or maybe not. Which means I don’t have any idea. Which is a waste of words. But they ‘re plentiful enough, even out in the desert.’
He began to rake his gaze in other directions now and after a few moments most of the woman’s tension drained out of her. But she saw that he paid most attention to the horizon immediately ahead of them. And she maintained a careful watch to the east, too. Said, after a brief pause:
‘I think perhaps, you tell me that I am wasting the words if I try to make the excuses for what I am?’
‘You don’t have to make excuses to me, Rosa. Far as I’m concerned, you’ve said enough. Reckon that’s what I was trying to say when—’
‘Adam!’
‘Now there’s something you don’t see plenty of in the desert,’ he continued, speaking in the same easy tone as before she shrilled his name. The woman seeing, as did he, the momentary flash of reflected daylight. ‘Nature never did put anything in the desert that glints like that. Ring any bells?’
‘Que?’
Steele narrowed his eyes, struggling to see into the distant heat haze and confirm what he thought he had seen. And he did not respond to her counter query for perhaps two minutes. By which time they had covered enough ground for the range of low ridges to show clearly.
‘Some hills where the trail came out on to this stretch of desert, Rosa. Best part of a day’s ride from the way station where you and Chevez headed down the spur toward Fort Curry.’
She nodded several times while he was speaking and was quick to supply as he finished: ‘Sí, me mal no me acuerdo … if I remember correctly, Adam, they are called the Gila Bend Mountains. Esteban and I were told—’
‘Fine, Rosa. When you and he came out of the hills, did you pass through a town or by a house, another way station … anything like that? With glass windows?’
There was another glint of sunlight reflected off a man-made object as he finished the question. And she gasped and needed to swallow hard before she could reply:
‘No, nothing. Not in those mountains. On the trail. You think … ?’
‘I know.’
‘What is causing it?’
‘No, Rosa.’
‘But you said …’
‘I know that worrying about what’s causing it won’t serve any purpose.’
‘That is easy to say.’ She dragged her gaze away from the line of hills that now showed dark and clear against the heat shimmer. But felt drawn to look back at them, and shuddered as she added ‘But much harder to do.’
There was just one more glint of reflected sunlight, seen to be in direct line with where the trail ran off the desert and into the hills. Then the slopes and ridges of the Gila Bend Mountains became as impassively uncommunicative as the face of Adam Steele. Movement there was on the features of the man as he breathed and as an occasional bead of sweat squeezed from a pore and coursed across his bristled skin. And movement there appeared to be among the hills – as shadows changed shape and direction almost imperceptibly to the dictates of the dipping sun.
Then evening came and quickly gave way to night, the dusk and then the darkness settling over the more easterly high ground some time before they dropped over the two riders and their three animals. And when full night with its bright moon blanketed the entire terrain, Rosa Canales once more brought a long talk-free silence to an end. Abandoned her surveillance of the hills that were still some three miles distant and sighed with relief before saying:
‘You know what I think it was, Adam?’
‘No.’
‘The man at the way station. He has something that has been much polished. On his clothes, perhaps. Or his gun, it could be. He is riding away from us still, and this is why we see the llamarada … the flash of the sunlight on this thing so few times. He has gone too far into the hills and is out of the sun to us. You think this could be so, Adam?’
‘Sure it could be, Rosa.’
‘If I think this is so, then I do not have the worry.’
‘I told you not to do that, a long time ago.’
‘Sí, Adam. But when you first tell me this, I am still confused by what has happened at the place where the gringo … the man called Lomax is shot. But I have thought much of this. I have thought that if the man who killed him meant to harm us, he would have done so there, no?’
‘Right, Rosa.’
‘So I think it was the man Lomax who meant harm to … to you. So that he could have me to himself to take to my father and get the five thousand dollars.’
‘Could be, Rosa.’
She smiled, enjoying his agreement with so much of what she was saying. Hurried on: ‘And so we really have no reason to be worried by him, Adam. He is on nuestro equipo … on our side. He is our compadre. Did he not also kill Gregario Garrido who also meant you harm, Adam? So a companero de armas … a companion in arms to us. Almost the angel de laguarda … the guard …’
‘Sure, Rosa,’ Steele said. ‘All that is why I’m not worried about that feller, either. Yet.’
‘Todayia?’ she asked, snapping her head around to stare at him, her new found peace of mind suddenly eroded. ‘Why will it be necessary to concern yourself with him later?’
‘Angels have wings for high flying, Rosa,’ he answered, and continued to peer at the point where the trail went into the hills.
‘Adam, if you are again making the -9 ‘We’ve already seen he has an expensive taste in clothes. Maybe his harp needs some new strings. Five thousand dollars will buy a lot of catgut, I reckon.’
She was suddenly looking at him aghast and there was a strangled tone to her voice when she forced out: ‘You mean you think he is waiting until we are almost at De Raza Hacienda – then he will …’
Steele, with a pursing of his lips the only change of expression, suddenly reined his horse to a halt. And let go of the lead line by which he had led the burro. Then had the Colt Hartford out of the boot a second later when the woman had stopped her mount. For another second she continued to gaze across at his profile in deep surprise becoming fear after she had curtailed what she was saying. Only then realized she had to look elsewhere to discover the reason for the abrupt interruption to the night ride. Blurted, in an even more choked tone:
‘Dios, mi padre!’
She made to urge her horse into a lunging gallop: then stared back at the Virginian with a mixture of anger and pleading when he shot out his free hand, to grasp her reins and wrench them from her.
‘Easy, Rosa,’ he rasped softly. ‘Speaking of your father, I don’t think we should rush in where maybe even a guardian angel fears to tread.’