Clay squatted beside a small fire and stoked it with buffalo chips he pulled from a burlap bag. He held out his hands to the flames and rubbed them in the hope of massaging the aching chill from his fingertips. Gradually warmth spread through fingers and thumbs. He took two more of the patties of dried manure and tossed them onto the fire, before clutching the buffalo robe draped over his shoulders tightly about him.
His gaze lifted from the coffee pan and the small bubbles that formed on its side. Despite the clear sky overhead and a bright noonday sun, the cold seeped all the way to the bone. A north wind howled straight out of Raton Pass and ripped along the Canadian River. Small white-capped waves broke the surface of the narrow river with each bone-chilling gust.
Clay attempted to convince himself to be grateful for plentiful water—something lacking while on the Colorado plains during September and October—and failed. This early November day held a bite that he usually associated with January and February. Winter chomped at the bit, and autumn’s weak hands barely held it back.
Not waiting for the pan to come to a complete boil, the rancher poured himself a weak cup of the brew and drank the warmth into his body. He had chosen correctly in turning south for Santa Fe rather than trying for Fort Sill. The black mare and the single bay packhorse were all but played out. He had hated trading his two other horses to trappers, but the deal they cut for his furs and the animals had been too good to pass up. With one pack animal he traveled faster. He would purchase new horses in Santa Fe when he restocked his trade goods.
After that, he was not sure. He had lost trace of Rides-A-Mare two weeks ago. The Kiowa might have turned east to winter in the Indian Nations or ridden south into Apache lands.
Clay pushed aside the decision on which direction to take. He still had to follow the Canadian River through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to Taos and then move along the Rio Grande to Santa Fe. A week of riding lay ahead of him. Time enough to choose his trail once he reached Santa Fe.
Draining the tin cup, he refilled it with stronger brew and rose to retrieve a strip of jerked beef from the mare’s saddlebags. A stride from the horse he stopped. Two riders rode toward him from the east across the grasslands that swept from the river to Laughlin Peak.
Jerky forgotten, Clay back stepped to the fire and retrieved his rifle from the ground. He cocked the Winchester and silently wished he had taken the time to cross the Canadian before stopping to rest the horses. With water between him and the riders, his position would have been far more secure. All he could do was wait, hope for the best, and prepare for the worse.
Three hundred yards from the camp the riders drew their mounts to a halt. In spite of the buffalo robes they hugged about themselves, their sombreros, saddles, and bridles marked the two men as Mexican. As did the border Spanish one of the riders called out, “May we ride into your camp?”
Clay’s head cocked to one side. The voice was vaguely familiar, but he could not place it. “That depends on what you intend on doing when you get here.”
“Just talk, my friend Clay Thorton,” the rider answered. “I only wish to visit with a man I thought to be dead.”
Clay squinted. The voice and the snowy white beard covering the man’s face belonged to ... “Raul! Raul DeOro! And Luis!”
“Si!” the Mexican Comanchero answered. “Luis and I have been riding hard all this morning hoping to find you.”
Clay waved the two men in while he dug two more cups from the pack and got the jerky from the saddlebags. He handed his friends steaming cups when they dismounted. “It ain’t much, but the jerky ain’t tainted and the coffee’s hot. Warm yourselves by the fire.”
“Muchisimas gracias.” Raul sat on his heels by the fire and motioned Luis to do the same.
While the two men busied themselves with coffee and jerky, Clay added three more buffalo chips to the fire. “I’m not complaining about the company, but you said you were looking for me. How’d’ya know I was here?”
“Two days ago we camped with a band of Comanches on the Purgatoire,” Raul said. “They told me of a white man who dressed and spoke like a Mexican. He had come to their camp a day before us, looking for a Kiowa brave riding an Appaloosa mare. That man could be no one else than my friend Clay Thorton, I told myself. So I came in search of you.”
“But what brings you here?” Clay drank from his own cup.
“What always brings me into the Comancheria,” Raul replied. “My wagons are behind us. Luis and I left them this morning at the base of Raton Pass.”
“We had searched for you all this morning,” Luis added. “We would have turned back were it not for the smoke from your fire.”
“Well, I’m damned glad to see you.” Clay grinned. “Doubly glad for company on the ride into Santa Fe. You are headed for Santa Fe, aren’t you?”
“Si, ” Luis said, with a nod.
“But you might not wish to travel west with us, my friend.” Raul stared at the rancher. “I have seen the brave you seek, the one the Comanches call Rides-A-Mare and the Apaches called Coyote Man.”
Clay’s temples pounded. “You’ve seen him?”
Raul bit at his lower lip and tilted his head in the affirmative. “Three weeks ago near Horse Creek.”
Clay knew nothing of the creek, nor did Raul’s description help place its location. Neither had the rancher heard of the Comanche chief Double Wing in whose camp the Mexican had seen Rides-A-Mare.
“I saw him ride from the camp, my friend,” Raul explained. “Double Wing and his band asked that he leave the camp and never return.”
“They drove him out?” Clay asked, uncertain he understood. “While showing all the hospitality Comanches display for guests in their camp, they did just that,” Raul replied as he refilled his cup from the pan. “This Kiowa is a bad one. He is reckless—wild and dangerous. His own people fear him. That fear is something the Comanches have learned to respect.”
Clay frowned. “Fear him?”
“Both the Kiowas and Comanches say he is a brave with great medicine,” Raul answered. “His courage is great. He leads many raids, but those raids cost too many lives. The Comanches believe his medicine is both good and bad. He is like a double-edged knife to them. He cuts both enemy and friend.”
The rancher recalled Crow-Who-Flies-Far describing the Kiowa in similar terms. The old chief had said the brave helped the Lipans with one hand while hurting them with the other, or something to that effect.
“He has become an outcast among the Kiowa and Comanche bands,” Raul continued. “While the Americans Sheridan and Mackenzie lead soldiers deep into the plains, a brave so reckless cannot be trusted. He is friendless on the grasslands.”
“Then he moves south!” Clay’s gaze shifted to the southern horizon. “Rides-A-Mare intends to become the Apache Coyote Man again.”
“There is no other refuge for him but among the Apaches,” Raul confirmed Clay’s speculation. “Double Wing said the Kiowa indicated he would join old friends in the Guadalupe Mountains.” Clay’s chest tightened, and his heart doubled its tempo. Those friends had to be Crow-Who-Flies-Far’s band. Clay was certain of that.
“I reckon you were right about me not heading for Santa Fe.” Clay traced the southern route he would take along the Canadian and its tributaries and then down the Pecos to Fort Sumner. Still following the Pecos’s banks, he would eventually reach the Rio Hondo. Heading east along that river would bring him to Lincoln and Fort Stanton, where Crow-Who-Flies-Far said he intended to take his band of Lipans.
“There is more, my friend,” Raul said. “The Kiowa knows that you follow him.”
Clay nodded. “I figured that out last spring. It didn’t take much for me to realize that’s why he was moving about so much—trying to stay ahead of me.”
Raul shook his head when he placed his empty cup aside. “You misjudge this brave. He moves because he finds himself unwelcome in each camp he comes upon. He fears you not, but delights in the chase he has led you on for more than a year.”
Clay stared at Raul as his words penetrated his mind. He had been a fool. Rides-A-Mare was Kiowa; the Apache fright of a white man they called Fears-Not-Death meant nothing to him. The long months, the endless miles on the trail while Clay chased one slim thread after another had been no more than some enormous joke for the brave.
“You must stay ever alert, Clay Thorton. This brave is dangerous,” Raul warned. “When he wearies of toying with you, he will turn. Then the hunter may become the hunted.”
Clay half-listened to the Mexican. His attention shifted to his horses. His plan to buy new animals in Santa Fe was now out of the question. Rides-A-Mare, or Coyote Man, as the Kiowa surely called himself again, was somewhere in the south, not to the west.
The rancher looked back at Raul and Luis. “Do you think I could interest you in a little horse trading?”
Raul glanced at his friend’s two horses. “It depends—if the price is right.”
The abandoned wickiup was the first Indian sign Clay had come upon since leaving Tularosa and entering the Sacramento Mountains three days ago. The rancher drew the chestnut gelding he had purchased from Raul to a halt in front of the oven-shaped structure and dismounted. Except for a ring of stones filled with gray ash from a fire, there were no other inklings that this site had served as an Apache camp.
Tying the chestnut and packhorse to the limbs of a pinon, Clay poked his head into the brush-covered Indian dwelling. The dirt floor was hard and clean. Better was the absence of insects and snakes. He smiled; the wickiup would provide shelter for the approaching night.
While Clay grained the horses, he did not ponder why the wickiup had been abandoned and the camp vacated by the Indians. He knew. Someone had died in the wickiup and, as was Apache custom, the structure was shunned in fear of evil spirits, ghosts that might possess the living.
After the feed bags were secured to the horses’ heads, he loosened the cinches of both animals, but left pack and saddle on their backs. The Sacramentos, like the adjoining Guadalupe range, were Mescalero territory. In spite of a dearth of Indian sign, Clay realized unseen eyes might be observing his movements this very moment. Should trouble break out during the night, all he would have to do is tighten the girths and ride.
Gathering cones, needles, and dead branches from beneath the stunted pines that ringed the clearing in which the vacated camp sat, he placed them in the ash-filled circle of rocks left by the Apaches. He lit a fire and began cooking a supper of biscuits, bacon, and coffee.
Although the possibility of Indian attack was always very real in this land, he gave it little weight. From the fire ash, he judged Apaches had forsaken the campsite three to four days ago. Whoever died had possessed powerful medicine for the band. There was no other reason for the Indians to abandon the whole camp, not with winter so close.
Had the dead Apache been a member of Ishpia’s band? Clay wondered while he flipped the bacon with the tip of his hunting knife. He doubted it; that would be too much to hope for—that the first Apache sign he stumbled on was left by the band with which Coyote Man traveled.
The rancher lacked any reason to believe other than the Kiowa rode with the Mescalero Ishpia. At Fort Stanton, Crow-Who-Flies-Far had welcomed him like an old friend. Before Clay had presented the old war chief with gifts of tobacco, sugar, and flour, the Lipan recounted Coyote Man’s sudden appearance among the Apaches gathered around the fort. Crow-Who-Flies-Far assured Clay the brave answered to the name Coyote Man again and not Rides-A-Mare, as the plains tribes called him.
The Lipan also told how the Kiowa and twenty young Mescalero braves, following the warrior Ishpia, slipped away from the reservation four nights after Coyote Man’s arrival at Fort Stanton. Crow-Who-Flies-Far had heard Ishpia boast he would winter along the Rio Penasco, which, when not a dry bed, flowed out of the Sacramentos, through the northern foothills of the Guadalupes, and eastward into the Pecos.
Clay lifted the lid to a pan, tested the browning biscuits with a fingertip, and judged them cooked when they bounced back. He slipped two from the pan, sliced them open, and sandwiched three slices of bacon in each. The remaining three biscuits, he left in the covered pan beside the fire for his breakfast in the morning. With a cup of coffee sitting beside him, he settled to the ground and ate.
The Penasco flowed directly south of the camp. If he read the lay of the land right, it was no more than twenty miles from his position. Right down in that valley, he thought while his gaze traced the slope of the mountains. Farther south he saw the Guadalupes, blazed a brilliant gold by the setting sun. Perhaps a hundred miles separated him from—
He shoved memories of his ranch out of his mind. The Rio Penasco was his destination. Once he reached the river, he had to locate the Mescalero chief Ishpia and the Kiowa brave who rode with his band.
Popping the last bite of biscuit into his mouth, Clay rose. With coffee cup in his left hand, he retrieved the two buffalo robes from the packhorse. Although the sky was clear and the wind still, a chill settled over the land as the sun sank below the western horizon.
Clay crawled into the wickiup, thinking that this was the first time in weeks he would sleep with a roof over his head and there was no cloud in the sky to even hint of rain. The shelter seemed almost a waste.
The howling wind grabbed Clay’s ears and dragged him up from the dark corridors of sleep. He rolled to his back under the buffalo robes and blinked at the tangled canopy of brush and branches overhead. Several perplexed seconds crawled by before he recognized the roof of the wickiup and recalled the shelter he had found for the night.
It took another ten seconds for him to comprehend that the steam dissipating in the air was not steam, but his breath transformed to clouds of mist by the cold. That was when he noticed the chilled ache of his cheeks and the tip of his nose.
Another yowling gust whined outside. The wickiup shook violently as wind railed against the makeshift structure.
Blinking a dozen times to work the gauzy film of sleep from his eyes, Clay pushed to an elbow and peered at the open entrance to the wickiup. Illuminated by dim morning light, a maelstrom of heavy, moist snowflakes swirled outside, whipped frantically by the wind.
Snow? The rancher’s eyes widened, his mind unable to accept immediately the wet, white sheet that covered the ground. The sky was clear last night—
The high-pitched neigh of a horse shattered his disbelief. Another whinny came in refrain.
The horses! Something's after them!
Clay thrust the robes aside, snatched up his rifle, and scurried on hands and knees to the wickiup’s door. The sharp crack of snapping tree limbs sliced through the wind’s howl. The rancher poked his head outside in time to see his mount and packhorse reel and bolt. Dragging broken pine limbs in reins and lead rope, they disappeared into a cedar brake downhill.
Winchester cocked and raised, Clay shoved to his feet outside and quickly took in the area round the wickiup. Nothing—he saw nothing that might have frightened the horses.
It was the wind that scared them, he realized when he peered up through the falling wall of white to the low dark clouds that covered the sky. Somewhere the sun shone above those clouds, but he could not judge where it stood in the sky. It might have just risen, or was hanging mid-sky. The sole thing of which he was certain was that while he slept a blue norther had blown in, bringing what appeared to be the makings of a blizzard with it.
“Damn!” Clay cursed aloud as he ducked back into the wickiup to retrieve a robe, which he threw over his shoulders and wrapped about his chest. He hastened outside again and ran after the horses. He had to find them before they got too far. This was not a land for a man on foot.