Carola Ray was one of the most remarkable women that Jed Herne had ever met. Whitey Coburn had once described a notorious madame of a Dallas sporting-house as being the ladiest lady he’d ever met. He’d been joking as Big Janey Holtom had weighed in at three hundred and fifty pounds and stood four inches over six feet. Having once won instant fame by felling two Swedish sailors with simultaneous punches from her left and right fists.
But Carola Ray was really a lady.
Herne had been concerned about riding with Thaddeus Ray and his brother Isaac, who was a hard-drinking man if Herne had ever seen one. But the woman eased some of his worries. Though her blatant sexuality made him cautiously aware of potential difficulties. Her eyes challenged him and the fact that they both knew she was naked beneath a thin robe didn’t jar her self-possession.
Thaddeus was delighted at Herne’s agreement to lead them after the Apaches, vanishing with Isaac to search out some horses. Four to ride and four to pack were Jed’s orders, with the instructions not to clinch any deal until he’d examined the animals for himself. One bad purchase and they would all be put at risk.
Carola sat down in a chair, her long hair soaking wet from the bath, crossing one leg over the other with a fine disregard to the amount of pale thigh that she revealed, waving for Jed to sit opposite her.
‘You are a killer, Jed, are you not? I could tell it from your face, even without knowing it from my husband. There is an unmistakable cut to your jib.’
‘You got any man’s clothes? This isn’t goin’ to be a church social.’
‘I can ride as well as any man. Better than Thaddeus or his brother.’
‘You mean a canter down Rotten Row?’ he sneered, parodying her English, clipped accent. ‘That the name of the place in your London park?’
‘I have ridden there. I have also hunted with the Quom, Mr. Herne.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The finest hunt in England, and been complimented by the Master for my dash and verve.’
‘Hunting what? Tame deer?’
‘Foxes.’
Herne laughed, a short barking sound that filled the hot bedroom. ‘Foxes? By God, Ma’am, but that must be mighty dangerous sport.’
‘They are—’ she began.
‘Must be barely fifty of you after them, all well horsed. And you have dogs too. Guess you have to have slaves with scatter-guns to make sure one of the bushy-tailed bastards don’t leap up an’ bite you on the foot.’
‘You are most amusing, Mr. Herne. I am sorry to see that you share Thaddeus’s quaint Yankee humor, if that is what it is.’ Her eyes were angry and the knuckles on the arm of the chair white Herne was momentarily glad she hadn’t got a riding crop to hand as he had no doubt she would have used it on him.
Then he would have been forced to punch her senseless to the floor.
And that would have been the end of the job.
She made a great effort to be nice. Since they’d been in the hot, stinking border township, it had quickly become obvious that their task of finding the Indian chief was not going to be so easy as it had appeared from the safety of New York. There wasn’t a soul in Nogales who had even thought they had an outside chance of coming up on Geronimo. But the man who ran their rooming-house had told them of the stranger in town. Herne the Hunter.
‘If there’s a man in the whole country who can bring you up to old Geronimo, then it’s Jed Herne. And that’s if you believe one tale in ten about him. Just one in ten.’
Now that she saw him Carola Ray could believe that. There was an almost visible aura about the tall, middle-aged shootist. A hardness that went far below the skin into the core of the man, unlike anything that she’d ever encountered before. And it excited her.
‘I have no wish to quarrel with you, Jedediah. You have no objection to my calling you Jedediah?’
‘Jed’s shorter.’
‘And I am Carola. You have agreed terms with my husband for this scouting?’
‘Sure.’ Herne sniffed, seeing that the loose gown had fallen even further open, revealing the darkness of her body, deep in the shadowed canyon between her thighs. The memory of Adeline Fuller was still too fresh for him to do more than consider the availability of this lady and file the fact away for the future.
‘You think we will find Geronimo?’
The shootist shook his head. ‘No. I don’t guess we will. Oh, we can try. Maybe we can come close. But we need a whole lot of luck if’n we’re going to manage it.’
Carola nearly told him that they faced financial ruin if they didn’t deliver the stories and pictures they’d signed up for, but held back. She had learned early in life that it was a sorry error to lay too many of one’s cards on the green baize.
‘We can do it, Jed. I’m sure of it.’
‘Glad you are, Carola. But there’s other Apaches round abouts here. Plenty of mean bastards with white skins too. And there’s word of a gang of Mex bandits, breeds and renegades close the border. Led by a killer called Jesus Maria Diego. Called El Poco. Means the Little One. Diego’s a bare five feet tall. Been thievin’ and butcherin’ around southern Arizona, northern Sonora, for better’n four years. Had the Cavalry after him. And the federales and rurales. Word is he pays off the Mexican soldiers. Maybe even the blue-bellies. Been riding free too long.’
‘And we might find ourselves falling a victim to this El Loco?’
‘Poco. El Poco.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Loco means crazy. From what I hear about Diego, that name’d fit him just as well.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you a drink, Jed, only my husband’s brother will scent liquor at fifty miles across storm-tossed waters and so it’s safer …’ she allowed the sentence to dangle off into the space between them. Herne nodded.
‘I met Isaac. Takes pictures. I seen good ones before. Met a man called Matt Brady a couple of times after the War. Brought home the dyin’, but it didn’t catch the fear and the smell and the noises.’
‘Times will probably arrive, Jed, when someone invents a machine capable of capturing all of that.’
‘Then that might mean the end of wars, Carola. If’n the bastards who sit around in Washington and Richmond and London and the big safe cities planning the attacks and the defenses got to know what it was really like, really like, then they’d stop it. Be good.’
It was the first real sign of emotion that she’d seen from him, and it made her like him more. She stood up, knowing from past experience that if she didn’t make a positive move it would be all too easy to fall into bed with this man, Herne. And a lady never sleeps with her servants.
~*~
Two days later, an hour before dawn came pinkly from the eastern sky, the four of them rode quietly out of Nogales, heading southwards, towards the great wilderness that served as a natural barrier between the Territory of Arizona and Mexico. Limitless mountains of grey-yellow rock soared from the orange deserts, with rare rivers, hidden at the cool deeps of scarred valleys.
Herne led the way, followed by Isaac, with Thaddeus Ray and his wife bringing up the rear. In the end it had been necessary to invest in four spare horses and a mule to carry the heavy camera. Each animal was laden with food and water, festooned with canteens that bumped and rattled in the stillness.
There had been no rain for weeks and even though they moved slowly they sent up a smudged pillar of red dust into the air behind them, visible for fifteen miles or more. Nobody spoke much, though Ike occasionally hummed a verse or two from shows he’d seen back in New York. As they left Nogales further behind, and the land closed around them, so the singing stopped and they carried on in almost total silencer
It was another scorching day, the mercury in the thermometer on the porch of Pilch’s General Store in Tucson nudging the one-twenty mark. The sky was untouched by any cloud and the heat bounced back at the four riders as they picked their way along.
‘Look!’ That a rattler?’ asked Isaac Ray, pointing with a finger at a coiled snake resting in the partial shade of some sagebrush.
Herne nodded. ‘Want a picture of him?’
‘Why? Can I? Oh, you’re joshin’ me. By the time I got everythin’…Yeah.’
They rode on, deeper south.
Jed moved a hundred yards or more ahead of the rest of them, scanning the trail for any sign of unshod ponies. Moving from side to side, knowing that Geronimo was too wily to stay near a main trail for long. There was water a few miles ahead of them. The only water for a long ways, and Herne hoped that they might pick up some indication there of any Apaches in the area.
He paused, standing in the saddle, looking ahead of them at the great ranges of hills that seemed to roll on forever. Guessing that Geronimo was likely somewhere up there. Looking back at the little party he had chosen to lead.
Isaac, in faded blue shirt and pants, slumped in a characteristic pose forward over the neck of his bay mare. On the first halt of the morning Herne had gone through the photographer’s baggage, letting his hand drop to the butt of his Colt when Ray protested. Finding three bottles of tequila and smashing them on a nearby boulder, watching the liquor drain and darken down the orange stone.
‘Drunk on the trail’s bad. In a town he’s likely to get hisself killed. Out here he can maybe get us all killed. Time for that when we get safe back.’
There hadn’t been any protest, though Ike had stopped twice before noon to swing down from the saddle and crouch by the side of the trail, retching noisily as he vomited up thin strings of yellow bile. Herne took no notice of him.
Thaddeus rode stolidly on his own grey gelding, looking as if he’d just finished a crash course of lessons on how to control a horse. His hands never loosed on the reins, and each time they stopped for a mouthful of water and a brief rest, his stiffness showed his lack of experience.
‘Swear my breeches are worn clean through, Jed,’ he said, wincing as he tried to find a position that didn’t pain his raw thighs.
‘Should wear clothes made for comfort. That Eastern vest and pants must be thicker than a preacher’s Sunday best. And that hat’s too small round the brim for out here. Doesn’t shade your face nor your neck.’
Carola was dressed most sensibly, and she had risen again in Herne’s estimation for the way she pushed on with them, never once complaining, though she was obviously suffering from the severe heat. She had brought some cream with her that she kept rubbing on her cheeks and lips to try and check the dryness and cracking, but her skin was more used to the New York climate which lacks the blistering heat of Arizona.
Her clothes were well chosen. A light brown divided skirt that reached to well below the knee, cut so that she was able to ride astride the ‘palomino that she had selected for herself. She wore black riding boots that reached to mid-calf with short, functional spurs on the heels. A pale green blouse, with long sleeves to protect her arms completed the ensemble, topped off by a stylish hat of white lace, fringed with a long veil that hung over her face.
When they stopped in the middle of the afternoon, leading the horses for a half hour to give them a break, Carola came forward and walked with Herne, leaving her husband and his brother to stride along together in silence. She was interested in the Apaches, keen to store away as much information as she could before they actually met any, so that her mind would then be clearer for any interviews she might manage.
The Englishwoman was especially eager to know about the way that the Chiricahua raised their children. Jed told her what he knew and she listened, occasionally asking a further question, several times taking out a small notebook and writing in it with a silver-cased pencil.
‘They are much more devoted parents, these naked heathen savages, than many I know back home among the English shires,’ she said.
‘How’s that?’
‘I once spent several months as the house guest of Lord Gethes and his wife, Aubretia. While I was there her ladyship gave birth to a child, their first. The day after the birth she was reclining in her chamber—it was always filled with cats, I recall. And the nanny brought in the child. A tiny bundle wrapped in a great shawl of finest Flemish lace. Lady Aubretia barely looked up from the cats on her bed and told the servant to take the child away and bring it back when it was six years old.’
‘Six!’ exclaimed Herne, unbelievingly.
‘Six years. To give it a ring to wear on a chain around its neck and to call it Titus. A wet-nurse would be provided for the baby. And that is how the upper classes in England raise their young.’
‘I don’t know a damned animal treats their young as bad. I heard that, the dukes and lords and all were a mite crazed, and that explains why.’
‘The English are all somewhat touched, Jed.’ She suddenly looked across at him and he felt the power of her personality. ‘There are times when all of us want to do things that would be foolish. Perhaps disastrously so. I think you know what I mean, Jed, do you not?’
‘Yeah. Guess I do, Carola. Guess I do.’ Raising his voice to reach the brothers. ‘Mount up. Time to move on faster!’
The pillar of dust followed them wherever they went along the trail. Only in another day or so, when they were among the foothills of the mountains would stones replace sand and they would be better able to move in secrecy.
~*~
That night Geronimo and his small band were sitting eating around a tiny smokeless fire, hidden in one of a nest of canyons, less than a hundred miles from where Herne and the Rays were camped. They had only seen the groups of pursuing soldiers once during the day and they had simply stopped and watched the column as. it snaked away into the distance, heading westwards.
But there were others in the region. A wily old fighter like Geronimo kept his scouts ranging a long way from the women and children. Keeping them circling around in overlapping figures of eight so that there was no chance of their being caught from any side. And one of them had reported finding the marks of a largish body of men, passing by from south to north. Which meant that they were probably heading northeast from Sonora. A mix of shod and unshod horses and ponies.
‘Three hands of men,’ said Nachez, second on of the mighty Cochise, the most famous of the braves who had chosen to follow Geronimo.
‘What kind?’ asked Geronimo.
‘I think some Mexicans, but some are half-whites. They are not people.’
‘You saw them?’
‘From two bowshots away,’ replied Nachez, licking his fingers to clean them of the grease from the meat, wiping them finally on his blue velveteen waistcoat. ‘I saw the man who leads them.’
He made a gesture with his right hand, using the side of his palm to indicate the height of the man who had been at the head of this group. Showing that he had been very short.
‘El Poco,’ said Geronimo, and his face was deadly serious.