The old trail, scoured into the land over the decades by the wagon trains bringing supplies and settlers to Santa Fé, stretched ahead of them along the valley of the Cimarron. Seven hundred and eighty miles from one end to the other, fording as it went the Canadian River, the Pecos, Rock Creek, Rabbit Ear Creek, McNee’s Creek, Cold Spring, Upper Spring, Willow Bar – which lay just ahead of them now – with Middle Spring, the Cimarron, Sand Creek, the Arkansas, Coon Creek, Pawnee Fork, Ash Creek, Walnut Creek, and then the Big Bend of the Arkansas, where they said the mosquitoes were so big they held you down while they bit you. After the Big Bend would come Cow Creek, the Little Arkansas, Turkey Creek, Cottonwood Creek, Lost Spring, Big John’s Spring, Bridge Creek, Hundred-and-ten-mile Creek – which was ninety-five and not a hundred and ten miles from Independence – and finally, Willow Springs.

They would cover something like a hundred miles most days, moving at about ten miles an hour across long-grassed prairie, cut deeply here and there by buffalo trails. The land was flat and endless. Even this early in the year it was hot. Every dozen miles or so they stopped at a swing station to change the horses. The home stations, where they stopped for nooning it or supper were placed between forty and fifty miles apart.

The discomfort was intense, wearing and incessant. The weather was ferociously unpredictable, the food was poor and the insects were insatiable. Maria felt as if she would sleep for a week once she got off the coach. At least they had not seen any Indians.

At Fort Union they had been joined by a major of the Sixth Cavalry and his jolly, rotund little wife. They introduced themselves immediately as Morgan and Joyce Nelson. Mrs. Nelson turned out to be an almost non-stop talker, who obviously considered reticence a challenge. If she was aware of the slight ‘atmosphere’ in the coach, she gave no indication of it. From the time that Anderson had made his accusation, Maria Gonzales and her duenna had sat alone on the rear seat. Felicity Osborn had ostentatiously moved to the much less comfortable center seats. Her whole prim posture stated, as she clung grimly to the straps, that any discomfort was preferable to sitting next to someone who would marry that most detested and detestable of all frontier creatures, a bounty hunter.

‘He is not a bounty hunter!’ Maria had protested. ‘The men he killed – it was a personal thing!’

‘He took the money, didn’t he?’ Anderson sneered. ‘He took the bounty? That makes him a bounty hunter in mah eyes!’

‘Hmph!’ Felicity Osborn said as if that clinched the matter.

Maria was torn between the desire to tell them and the inclination to let them think anything they wanted. It made no difference to her what some tinhorn gambler with his world in his pockets said about Jed. She did not value the opinion of a skinny-hipped spinster and a tosspot dentist. Maria knew the man, as they did not. And she knew that he had done what he did because he had to.

She remembered the day he came to the house in San Antonio again. She thought he was a peddler or some kind of beggar. He looked rough and hurt, with the sleeve of his coat pinned across his chest.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he said.

‘I do not think so.’

He reminded her of their meeting in the home of the alcalde in Brownsville. He was a lieutenant in the army. Jedediah Strong. After that, it was as if it had all been foreordained.

The stagecoach lurched and the jolt brought her back to the present. d’Arly Anderson was watching her intently. His eyes glittered with malice and … something else? His very stare made her shift uneasily, and as if he sensed her unease, the faintest of thin smiles touched his slash of a mouth. She looked at him again and saw now what she had not seen before, saw what had been there all the time and she was too blind to see it. Lust lit the man’s eyes as he looked at her. Lust-and something sicker.

At first she thought she was dreaming.

She began to yield to the soft insistence of the hand because in the dream it was Jed. She turned towards him, and then all at once she woke, her throat thick with terror. She opened her mouth, and as she did she felt the cold sharp touch of steel against the side of her neck.

‘Quiet!’ a voice hissed. ‘Quiet, or Ah’ll kill you!’

It was pitch black in the stage station. In the warm stillness of the night she could hear the soft snores of her duenna, the harsher sounds of the men in the other room. Maria made no sound. How had the man got into her room without waking anyone? She arched her back slightly, preliminary to resistance.

‘Make one sound, bitch, and Ah’ll slit yoah greaser throat!’ the voice hissed. Anderson! she thought. He was half-naked in the bed beside her. She could feel the heat and hardness of him through the cotton shift she was wearing. His hand moved between her thighs and she winced.

‘Don’t,’ she said.

‘Yo’h gonna like it,’ he said. ‘Open yoah legs.’

The knife point pressed harder against her flesh. She could feel it breaking the surface of her skin. Anderson’s breathing was thick and harsh and he reeked of whiskey. Her terror was already gone; she was calm, thinking of ways to defend herself against this obscenity.

‘Open!,’ he said again. Maria did as she was told and he gave a very small sigh of pleasure as his fingers moved into the soft cleft. Maria forced her mind away from reaction, the sweet, gentle release she knew she must fight. How was he lying? Weight on the left elbow, knife to her throat, right hand busy, busy.

‘Like that, do you?’ he murmured.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Don’t do this.’

‘You want it,’ he said. ‘You’ve been looking at me. Asking for it.’

‘No,’ she said, trying to move away from the hand, the sinuous, knowing, seeking fingers.

‘Touch me,’ he whispered. ‘That’s what you greasers like, isn’t it?’

‘No,’ she said, turning her head away from his mouth.

‘Do what I say, you bitch’

She shook her head and tried to move. He turned the knife just a fraction, and Maria gasped with fright as the point of the knife nicked a fold of her flesh. She felt a soft trickle of blood, like a hair on her skin.

‘Do it,’ he said.

If I scream, she thought, he’ll cut me. She was afraid of the knife. He moved the blade again. Drowning in disgust, she touched him. The thing itself did not bother her: that was just biology. It was the knife which made it shameful, perverted.

‘Ah!’ Anderson said. Without warning he took hold of her shift and pulled it upwards. He pushed back the bedclothes so that he could see her. Eyes accustomed to the blackness, Maria looked around vainly for some kind of weapon. There was nothing. He switched the knife to his right hand and laid it across her belly: His head came down and she felt his mouth on her breast. He took the nipple in his mouth and rolled his tongue around it. It felt softly rough, like dried leaves soaked in honey. She could not control her body’s reaction. The nipple sprang erect, and he began to bite gently at it, too hard for pleasure, not enough for pain. Maria willed herself to rigidity, staring at the ceiling, stamping hard on the tiny voice, far away in the back of her mind which whispered let go, submit, react to the urging of the senses.

‘Now,’ he breathed. His breathing was changed, thicker, more urgent. He took the knife in his left hand, laid it against her breast. It was not cold any more. He put his hand between her legs again.

‘Come on,’ he said, as if she was being unreasonable.

‘No,’ Maria said in a whisper. ‘You’ll have to kill me.’

She could see his face. He smiled and she saw the sick desire in his eyes. There was a slithering burn across her breast, and she knew that he had cut her. Not deeply, just enough to draw blood. It was vile but it was real.

‘Come on,’ he said again. He put his right hand to her breast and rubbed gently, kneading the blood across her belly. She felt fouled, ugly. Sickness arose in her throat.

‘Child, child,’ he said, and his voice had gone strange, dreamy. ‘Beauty child.’

He rolled on to her, and she felt both his hands under her buttocks, lifting her towards him. The knife, she thought. Where is the knife? Her hand groped down the bed, fingers seeking. Anderson’s clumsy body butted at her. Maria’s fingers found the stiletto and she brought it up, laying it against his throat.

‘Uck,’ he said, rearing back.

She eeled away from him, the knife held in her hand. He looked at her and the sick smile came back.

‘You won’t,’ he hissed. ‘You can’t.’

‘I will keep the knife,’ Maria said. ‘If you come within afoot of me again I will kill you with it.’

‘Ah’, he said. ‘Who wants a fuckin’ greaser whore anyway?’

He padded through the doorway and Maria sat down on the bed, all her strength going out of her. It was like a nightmare. They had conducted their entire encounter in muted whispers like conspirators. No one had wakened. Her due ma, Apolitiaria, snored softly, dead to the world. Maria looked at the rumpled bed, the spots of blood on the rough sheet. She shuddered and took the blankets off the bed, wrapping them round herself. Then she went and sat on the chair in the corner of the room facing the door, and waited for dawn.