4
Dawn found Slocum and his pack train and riders headed west of the last orchards on McCarty’s land. Things were going well, and even his bruja, Angela, was surprised they’d managed to get it all together so easily. Slocum knew everyone on the hacienda wanted him off on a successful hunt for their lady—including himself.
The Madres were several days’ ride to the west, though their sturdy mountain horses should make good time. Their group was well armed, carrying lots of supplies and a purse loaded with Mitch’s money that he’d insisted Slocum take with him—Slocum expected to arrive at the base of the mountains with no problems in a few days.
“Where will we enter the Madres?” Angela asked, riding beside him as the day’s heat and dust rose in their faces.
“Maybe Cuervo. There aren’t a lot of people there to report that we are going into the interior, if this Cockroach has any informers.”
“He probably does. Most of those kinds of men offer a generous reward for such information.”
“I’ll tell the men to spread the rumor we are simply going to the Kinsey Mine to see an old friend. If they miss the McCarty brand on our horses, that might help mislead them.”
“You have thought of everything.” She shook her head as if amazed.
He reached over and clapped her leg. “No, not enough. I’m counting on you to help me.”
“If I think of anything, I’ll tell you.”
He nodded, stood in the stirrups to look back and surveyed the line of his riders and pack animals. Deciding that everything looked good, he settled back down. “We’ll water our stock at Coyote Wells tonight and ride on.”
“We won’t camp there?”
He shook his head. “Those desert outposts are usually controlled by trail pirates and are a good place to get killed in your sleep.”
“I guess I had not thought about that.”
“Have you stayed there before?”
“A man in my past and I stayed there one night.”
Slocum nodded. “Maybe you were lucky.”
“Maybe he was a pirate himself.” Then she laughed. “I never heard them called trail pirates before. But the name suits many of them.”
He agreed with a nod.
“I was young and didn’t know about my powers back then. He was older and I thought he was so handsome. He wore a silver-mounted holster and acted so powerful with the black kid gloves he wore all the time.”
“What became of him?”
“They hung him.”
“Oh.”
“The law in a small village arrested him for killing two unarmed men in a card game. There was a trial and the judge sentenced him to hang.
“I stole his horse from the livery and rode off the night before his execution. I cried all night long over losing him. Then when the sun came up, his face appeared before me in the sky and he told me not to cry anymore for him. That he was in peace and the money hidden in his saddlebags would take care of me.”
Slocum nodded. “What did that teach you?”
“That I had powers and was a bruja. Others don’t see and hear such things, only a bruja would. Like I knew when I first saw you talking to people and them scorning you that you needed me to help you.”
“I was lucky then.”
She shook her head and gave him a sly smile. “No, it was my good fortune you came along. That village was full of prejudiced people who hated me. I needed a new place and the real man who came along.”
“How old were you when you rode off with him?”
“Not very old. He came to the village where I lived and I heard his silver spurs before I ever saw him ride into the square on a powerful black horse that day. I believed no great man like him would even look upon a skinny girl like me. But later he said he saw me that day and I cast a spell on him. He came back again three more times looking for me.”
“How long before you saw him again and he took you away?”
“Two years, about. He rode in and I was busy washing clothes at the well. He stood by his black horse as the gelding drank deep from the trough. Impatiently he slapped the ends of his reins on his leg. When the horse was through, he walked over, still slapping his leather pants.”
“ ‘What is your name, señorita?’ he said.
“‘Angela,’ I told him.
“ ‘You have a lover in this village?’ he asked me.
“My eyes must have bugged out looking at him. What did he mean, lover? My tongue was glued down. I had no answer.
“‘I thought not,’ he said. ‘Come, I will buy you a new dress and we will be married.’
“ ‘What about this w-wash?’ I stuttered.
“ ‘They will find it,’ he said, dismissing it as nothing. Then he motioned for me to come to him, and he picked me up in his arms like I was a feather. He stepped up in the saddle and, still holding me, asked where my mother was at.
“I pointed over his head at the small church. ‘With the Virgin Mary.’
“And he replied, ‘Then no one here will cry for you.’
“He rode out of the village with me in his arms. Late that night he woke up a priest, who married us. After the short ceremony, he took me to a snug cabin in the mountains. We stayed a week up there on our honeymoon, then he took me to a woman who made three dresses for me. I thought he was rich. No one that I knew had ever owned three good dresses.”
“What did he do next?” Slocum asked.
“I was so awed by him and his whirlwind ways with me in bed, I didn’t know or care. I guess he gambled a lot and maybe even shot men for their money. Later I learned his name was not what he’d told me. But for almost a year, I was his simpleminded bride.”
Slocum laughed. “Some story. What was his name?”
“The one I knew him by was Franco Cruces. But they said he was Juan López and he was wanted in Texas.”
“So you were Mrs. Cruces?”
“I still am. I should wear black, huh?”
“How long have you been in mourning?”
She chewed on her lower lip as if she was counting before she spoke. “Maybe five years.”
“Time to wear what you want to.”
“Good,” she said, and she sparkled in the blazing sun riding beside him.
They arrived in Coyote Wells at twilight. Slocum paid for the water for their animals and also to fill their canteens and two small barrels. The price came to three pesos. The man in the cantina-store stared hard at the silver coins Slocum put on the bar. Then, as if satisfied, the man nodded and picked them up with a muttered, “Gracias.”
The riffraff standing at the bar looked him over and then turned back to a magpie-mouthed puta seated on the bar, who leaned back with her black hair–mounded crotch exposed and her short legs kicking back and forth to entertain them as she chattered nonstop.
One man, chewing on a stick, followed Slocum to the door. “You want some pussy?”
Slocum shook his head.
“No one’s used her today. You could have her for a peso.”
Slocum would rather use his hand to jack off than listen to her mouth the whole time they were in bed. “No, thanks.”
“You may not find any for days going into those mountains.”
“I’ll take my chances.” With that, he was outside under the palm-frond porch, hoping the pimp was gone.
“Anything there?” Angela asked when he rejoined them.
“A puta for a peso.”
She laughed.
He nodded in approval at his men, who went about armed with rifles, just in case. Not showing them off or waving them around, but merely holding them in their hands, ready if they needed them, and they shoved them back inside their scabbards before mounting up. Slocum’s train moved out, and he knew they had drawn more than one curious look from the loafers around the stopover.
Camped an hour later, the three men found dried sticks and dead mesquite branches for Angela to cook over. The coyotes started yapping at the dark. Jesús took a long gun and moved out of the firelight to keep an eye out for anyone or anything that could be a danger. The others sat in the firelight and laughed when Slocum told them about the magpie puta in the store-cantina. Angela fussed with the cooking, busily making flour tortillas with her hands, cooking them on a round metal sheet over the fire and boiling some beans.
Slocum took his lookout, Jesús, a cup of coffee laced with brown sugar. The man nodded politely and set his Winchester aside to take the cup in both hands.
“It is hot,” Slocum warned him.
“Ah, but to have real coffee is a luxury for me.” He blew and then sipped on the tin cup, which he cradled in his kerchief to protect his hands. “And sugar is even better.”
“A pistolero doesn’t have coffee at his casa?”
“I have five children and a wife. Coffee is very costly.”
Slocum nodded that he understood. “You must like this work.”
“It is better than irrigating and hoeing crops. I have been a pistolero since I was sixteen.”
“Were you born on that hacienda?”
“Oh, sí. I would live no other place.”
“Have you been to the Madres before?”
“Sí. I met my wife up there and went back to get her.”
“Does she have relatives up there?”
“Sí.”
“Would they know about this Cockroach?”
“I don’t know—but I will ask them if I see any of them.”
“Angela will be ready to feed us soon. I’ll whistle and you can come eat. I don’t think the bandits up here are that industrious.”
“What does that mean, in—?”
“It means too sorry to get off their asses.”
Jesús laughed aloud. “Sí, I savvy that.”
Another mournful coyote cut loose. “They sure are yapping a lot.”
Jesús shrugged. “What is it anyway?”
“Just a coyote,” Slocum said and went back to the fire.
After the meal, the three men told Slocum they would take turns keeping guard and promised to wake him before dawn. He thanked them, then took his and Angela’s bedroll on his shoulder, and they went out in the desert to be alone. After he had kicked the sticks and rocks out of the way, he rolled the bed out. Then he toed off his boots and shucked off his pants.
She unfastened all the buttons of her dress. Then she took her sandals off. Her breasts gleamed in the moonlight, soft and tempting. She gave a little shimmy, and her dress fell to her ankles. Then she toed the garment to the edge of the bedroll and stood naked before him. He let his gaze feast on those twin mounds of flesh that swayed gently as she took a deep breath. As he stared at her beauty, his rod straightened and she smiled. The nest of darkness nestled at the V of her thighs beckoned to him. He grew even harder. She hurried to get under the covers. He soon joined her, his rolled up gun and holster placed near his head.
They snuggled like lost lovers under the blankets, with him feeling her solid breasts and rubbing her flat belly, kissing her in open-mouthed fashion. Then their hands searched deeper until she helped him on top and he centered on entering her. They were subdued in their efforts and whispering about the finer things as he pumped his iron-hard erection into her, and their efforts heated up. At last deep inside came an eruption, and she raised her butt off the pallet to meet his charge. They collapsed in a heap to spend the night in each other’s arms.
His last thought before he surrendered to sleep was, What a bruja to have for my own. Thank you, Mrs. Cruces.