THE LEAD RIDER brought his buckskin mustang to a halt before Clark and Marina, and the others gathered behind him. The man squinted at Clark with bottle-green eyes, and Clark returned the scrutiny warily, regarding the man’s rough countenance, the blond stubble on his ruddy, sunburned face beneath a thick coating of adobe-colored dust.
The man was over six feet tall, wide-shouldered, slim-hipped, and rangy. He wore a big, horn-handled bowie, two cartridge belts, and a walnut-gripped Army Colt butt-forward in a holster soft as an old shoe. His denim breeches were nearly white where his muscular thighs hugged the saddle, and sun-bleached chest hair curled between the rawhide cords at the open neck of his buckskin tunic. The well-oiled Winchester ’73, held across the bows of his saddle, still smoked from the .44/40 slug he’d blown through the skull of the big Mexican, Mocho.
Clark did not know what to make of this man or the men behind him—a gray-bearded white man, a Mexican, a towheaded boy, and an Apache Indian. The Indian’s hands were tied and staked behind his back, and a reata was noosed around his neck. The boy held the other end of the reata in his gloved hand.
At first Clark thought they’d been rescued from one group of bandits by another. But as the lead rider dismounted, grabbed his canteen off his saddle, and moved toward Clark, Clark saw a distinct look of civility and concern in his eyes.
“Hell of a wreck,” the man said as he uncorked the canteen, knelt down, and handed it to Clark. “You two all right?” He glanced at Marina, who appeared to be in shock, holding her blouse closed with her hands and staring blankly at the horses and riders gathered before her.
Clark took the canteen, filled his mouth, sloshed the water around, and spat, getting rid of some of the grit. Then he drank. “Here you are, my dear,” he said, offering the canteen to his wife.
She didn’t take it, and Clark did not have the energy to encourage her. The cut on the side of his head made his brain throb and his vision swim. He assumed he’d suffered a concussion.
The newcomer took the canteen, moved to Marina, and knelt beside her. “Ma’am,” he said gently, “some water might make you feel better.”
Slowly she turned her head and focused on him. She took the canteen in both hands and sipped. She started to bring the canteen away from her mouth, then lifted it again and took two more swallows. Some of the water ran from her lip to her chin as she handed back the canteen.
“Gracias,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Any broken bones, any cuts that need tendin’?” the man asked her.
She shook her head, dropping her eyes.
Corking the canteen, the rider turned back to Clark. “That’s a hell of a tattoo you have on your ear.”
Pressing his neckerchief to the wound, Clark nodded. “Yes, they weren’t exactly gentlemen.”
“Gaston Bachelard is one-hundred-percent snake, is what he is,” the other replied. “I recognized him through my field glasses. Didn’t realize he was raiding this far north these days.”
He untied the bandanna from around his neck and wrapped it around Clark’s head, adjusting it over the wound before he tied it tightly. “There … That should help stop the blood until we can get you stitched.” He looked at his companions, who sat their horses and looked around warily, rifles clutched tightly in their hands.
The big man with the gray beard said in a low, gruff voice, “I’m gettin’ nervous sitting out here in the open like this, Jack. ’Paches might’ve heard our gunfire.”
The lead rider turned to Clark. He removed his buckskin glove from his right hand, and offered it. “I’m Jack Cameron,” he said. Then, jerking a thumb at his companions: “That ornery old cuss with the gray beard is Bud Hotchkiss. Beside him there is Pasqual Varas. The kid is Jimmy Bronco. The Indian goes by Perro Loco. We’re taking him to an Army detail waiting for us in Contention City.”
“You bounty hunters?” Clark asked.
“Only by necessity,” Cameron replied. “We all ranch west of Hackberry Mesa up by Fountain Springs. Perro Loco’s been raiding our spreads for the past seven months, so we got together to track him down. Just so happens the Army was offering a reward, because of all the people he’s killed. They’ve caught him twice, and he escaped both times.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Clark said, nodding as he stared darkly at the Indian sitting his horse with a look of supreme insouciance.
He was big for an Indian, and broad-chested, powerful arms thrust back behind him. His long, blue-black hair hung below his shoulders. Wisps of it blew across his broad, pitted face. He wore the usual Apache garb—deerskin leggings, knee-high moccasins, and deerhide vest. He also wore a duckbilled forage cap, no doubt taken off the body of a slain soldier.
Turning to Cameron, Clark said, “I’m Adrian Clark and this is my wife, Marina. We, too, were on our way to Contention City.”
“Well, if you’re well enough to ride, I guess you still are,” Cameron said, standing and offering Clark his hand.
Clark looked toward the luggage scattered behind the stage. “What about our bags?”
“You’ll have to leave them, I’m afraid,” Cameron said, walking to his horse. “We don’t have the horses to carry them. We’ll be riding double as it is.”
“What about the stage horses—couldn’t we ride one of them?”
“One’s dead and the other three have scattered. We’d be all afternoon trying to catch one.”
Clark turned to Marina and helped her to her feet.
“Your wife can ride with Bud,” Cameron said. He poked his boot through a stirrup and pulled himself into the saddle. “You can ride with me.”
A groan sounded behind the riders, and Clark saw the bandit who’d been shot in the neck push up on a knee and lift his pistol. “Hey…!” Clark yelled.
The sound hadn’t died before Cameron raked the Colt off his hip and swung his horse around to face the gunman. He cocked the Colt and fired, and the bandit sank back with a bullet through his forehead.
Clark whistled through his teeth. He’d heard about Jack Cameron, the ex-Army scout and Indian fighter. Who in the Southwest hadn’t? Cameron’s name had come up when Clark was inquiring about guides, but none of his business associates had known where to find Cameron, so Clark had settled for McCormick. At first he’d thought this man was just a saddle tramp with the same name. Obviously he was the man himself.
“If you two are ready,” Cameron said, “we’d best get a move on.”
“Come, my dear,” Clark said, leading Marina to the graybeard’s skewbald horse and helping her onto its back. Then he accepted Cameron’s hand and mounted the buckskin. As he swung up, his vision blurred for an instant and he felt dizzy.
As they rode off behind Cameron, Clark turned once to gaze at the two dead bandits.
Gaston Bachelard hunkered down in the shade of a boulder and trained his spy glass on the rocky flat below, where the stage lay like a matchbox crushed by a boot.
“No Apaches,” he snarled to the man kneeling beside him. His voice tightened with anger. “Four white men.” He lowered the glass and looked at the other man. “We were run off by four white men and an Indian tied to his horse!”
The other shrugged and raised his thin, dirty hands, palm up. “I am sorry, jefe,” he replied. “It was Rudolpho who said—”
“Silence!” Bachelard intoned.
He lifted the glass and resumed his study of the scene a hundred and fifty yards down the rocky grade.
At length, the other man said, “If they are not Apaches, then why do we not attack, jefe?”
Bachelard worked a piece of hog tripe from between his two front teeth and bit down on it thoughtfully. “I think that’s Jack Cameron down there.”
“Cameron?” the man asked, wide-eyed. “The scout?”
“Ex-scout, I believe.”
The Mexican straightened, lifting the tattered brim of his straw sombrero and jutting out his chin. The sun discovered his hawklike face and shone in his mud-brown eyes. “We can take Cameron, jefe,” he said with proud confidence. “I know what they say about him, but he is only one man like another—”
“Yes, he is one man like another,” Bachelard snarled, “and I would not hesitate to take him if Miguel Montana had sent me some real men instead of you four sons of stupid dog bitches—every one of you no better in a fight than the little girls you like to fuck in Hermosillo. ‘Apaches!’ you scream!”
Bachelard clamped his big, clawlike left hand on the back of the Mexican’s neck, and brusquely directed his gaze down the hill. His voice was harsh and tight, but low. “There are your Apaches, you goddamn bastard child of a two-peso whore!”
The Mexican squirmed. “I told you, jefe, it was Rudolpho—”
“Keep quiet, fool!” Bachelard hissed. “Don’t fuck things up any more than you already have. We could have had the goddamn plat by now and been on our way back to your fearless leader Montana if it hadn’t been for your so-called Apaches!”
Bachelard grunted and lifted the glass again to his right eye. “‘Send me four of your best men, Miguel,’ I told him, ‘and I will bring you the plat in a week.’ A week! So he sends me you four horse turds—and who knows how long before we get it?” Bachelard shook his head, mumbling more obscenities and laughing without mirth. He focused the glass and gazed down the slope.
“No,” he continued thoughtfully, voice edged with disgust, “if I had more of my own riders here I’d lay down some lead and storm the son of a bitch. But since I’m shorthanded now, with your buddy Mocho and my man Kruger attracting flies down there with Cameron, and since the rest of you are a bunch of goddamn kittens afraid of your own mother’s shadow, I’ll have to wait for the element of surprise.”
A gun barked below. Staring through the spyglass, Bachelard gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Damn—Kruger had a chance.”
A minute passed, then Bachelard lowered the glass and gazed down the grade with his naked eyes.
“They’re riding off,” he said, brightening. “With Clark and the woman. They’re leaving.”
The other man furrowed his brow. “This is good, jefe?”
“Cameron will look for water, and the only water within half a day’s ride is Cholo Springs, at the southern end of the Whetstone Mountains. He’ll camp there for the night.”
Jesus smiled and nodded his head. “Ah … I see, jefe. And this … this is good?”
Bachelard thought as he spoke, fingering his scraggly goatee. “Cholo Springs is a well-covered spot, easy to defend. But not impregnable. If we follow them there, then wait for the very best opportunity, for full dark or first light, we’ll have the plat and the girl before the sun is up. And we’ll have the great Apache-hunter Jack Cameron roasting on a spit!”
He turned to his companion with an evil leer. “‘Rascal thieves, here’s gold. Go suck the blood o’ th’ grape…’”
The man looked at him, baffled, tentative. “What is that you say, jefe?”
Bachelard clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder, the jefe’s fickle mood swings and propensity for quoting verse keeping the man perpetually on edge. “I said, how does that sound to you, Jesús—the plat and the girl and Cameron squealing like a stuck javelina before morning?”
“Oh!” Jesus nodded eagerly, thrilled to be back in his boss’s good graces. “Muy bien, jefe! Muy bien!”
“Go, Jesús … tout de suite!” Bachelard ordered the Mexican, hazing him up the bluff to where the three other men waited with their horses.