Part 12 (1/2)

He hammered the shoe into place, then led the horse out to where the fire was snapping, the coffeepot chugging. The girl knelt on the ground, rolling his blankets.

As he led the sorrel up to the fire, Ligia looked at him and sank back on her heels. ”Now you are going?”

”After some coffee. It'll be light soon.”

”I will cook eggs for you.”

Yakima shook his head and knelt beside the fire, removing the pot with the leather sc.r.a.p. ”Just the coffee.”

He poured them each a cup, and they sat around the fire, saying nothing, sipping the coffee. When he'd finished half his cup, he leathered his horse, attaching the bedroll and rifle scabbard, praying silently that the sorrel's hoof would hold up until he could trade for another mount.

The gray of the false dawn shone in the east, dimly defining the distant ridges. A nighthawk cried somewhere above the dark adobe roadhouse hunched on the other side of the yard.

Watching Yakima from a nearby rock, Ligia s.h.i.+vered under her heavy poncho. ”You go where?”

Yakima slid the Winchester from the saddle boot, began thumbing sh.e.l.ls into the receiver. ”I'm not sure yet.”

”You are pursuing the desperadoes . . . the Thunder Riders?”

Slipping a sh.e.l.l through the rifle's loading gate with a metallic click, he glanced at her.

”They go to Junction Rock. A very bad place. Many badmen there . . . gringos and Mejicanos. All running from the law.”

Yakima walked around the horse and stood before her. ”Never heard of it.”

”I heard the desperadoes talking.”

Yakima frowned. ”Was the woman still with them? The pretty gringa?”

”Si.”

”She look all right?”

The girl shrugged. ”Si.” ”Si.” She smiled knowingly. ”Very beautiful.” She smiled knowingly. ”Very beautiful.”

Yakima set two fingers beneath her chin and pecked her cheek. ”Adios, Ligia.”

He turned to the horse, swung into the saddle, and reined the sorrel toward the yard.

Behind him, Ligia's voice rose softly in the predawn silence. ”Be careful, Yakima. Many banditos and Indios along the trail. Very bad bad!”

Yakima walked the sorrel along the top of the mesa, then down the southwest side. As he bottomed out on the desert floor, the sun rose above the eastern horizon, light shafts spreading across the sky and the broken, red-bronze terrain like a giant blossoming marigold, sweeping shadows along before it.

He was crossing a cactus-choked wash when he reined up suddenly. In the corner of his eye he'd spotted a sun flash-a faint p.r.i.c.k of reflected light, brief as a firefly's spark-a mile or so ahead, just to the right of the trail.

It might be only sun reflected off mica or a cast-off bottle, but he had to check it out or risk getting bushwhacked. He cursed. Another d.a.m.n delay.

He turned off the trail and followed the twisting, turning watercourse generally west, crouching so his head remained below the lip of the south bank. When he'd ridden a couple of hundred yards, he swung straight south, keeping his eyes on a pillar of boulders rising above the chaparral ahead and left, roughly where he'd seen the sun flash.

He gigged the sorrel along, trotting when he thought he could keep his dust trail low, swinging wide of the rocky pillar, then circling to within two hundred feet of its back side. Snorting softly, he shucked his Winchester from the saddle boot.

Five men perched atop the rocks up and down the pillar, two peering around its one side, three around the other, all holding rifles. They wore short charro or fringed deerskin jackets, black leather chaps decorated with hammered silver disks, and sombreros. El Segundo sat the lowest on the pillar, staring around the right side, his sombrero hanging down his back, the white streak in his hair glowing in the morning suns.h.i.+ne.

His head was canted back, and his jaws were moving, as if he were talking to one of the others.

Yakima gently levered a round into the Yellowboy's breech. He snugged the stock to his shoulder and aimed carefully along the side of El Segundo's head, hoping to clip the man's ear, and fired.

The slug drilled the rock before El Segundo with a shrill pshting! pshting!

El Segundo flinched and grabbed his ear as he wheeled, stumbling back against the rock and dropping his rifle. As the others jerked around toward the source of the shot, snapping their eyes wide, Yakima cut loose with four more quick shots, the other four men grabbing, respectively, an upper left arm, upper right thigh, upper left thigh, and left calf.

When they were all howling like whipped pups, Yakima drilled a hole through one of the vaqueros' sombreros, then planted the stock of his rifle against his hip and pulled the sorrel's reins taut in his left hand.

”Go on back to the hacienda,” he yelled, ”or next time you'll get more than a friendly tattoo!”

None of the four attempted to raise his rifle. They all stood or sagged among the rocks, clutching their b.l.o.o.d.y bullet burns and regarding Yakima with awe and fury.

Yakima considered grabbing one of their horses, no doubt tied nearby. But stealing a horse might put their don on his trail with more men than he could outdistance or shoot, for horse stealing in this country was considered more lowly than murder. Besides, Yakima might have to explain the horse's brand to rurales.

Deciding to wait and make a legitimate trade for the gimpy sorrel farther up the trail, he backed the horse away from the five vaqueros, then turned behind a cl.u.s.ter of Joshua trees and heeled the mount into a lope, angling south, hoping the trail of the Thunder Riders hadn't faded.

Later the same day, Speares led the posse through a narrow valley with low, sage-stippled hills on the left and a towering sandstone scarp streaked with bird s.h.i.+t on the right. They pa.s.sed through a cottonwood copse, the few remaining yellow leaves rattling in the chill wind, and Speares reined his horse to a halt at the lip of a broad, sandy draw.

As the rest of the weary, unshaven posse drew up behind him and around him, Speares cast his gaze to the draw's opposite bank. A good seventy yards away, it was cloaked in tough brown shrubs and occasional sand-colored boulders.

Patchen's horse shook its head as the marshal peered across the draw. ”Good place for an ambush.”

”There've been plenty of good places for an ambush, and we ain't been ambushed yet.” Speares rose up in his saddle to rake his gaze along both sides of the opposite bank, for fifty yards in each direction.

”Don't mean there won't be a first time,” said one of the three dust-clad market hunters, Nudge Tobias. ”I say we scout it first.”

”So do I!” the banker, Franklin, exclaimed haughtily. His saddle-chafed thighs were bleeding through his broadcloth trousers, and every chance he got, he made sure everyone knew how unhappy he was, riding way the h.e.l.l south of the border with a lowly catch party.

Speares looked at Patchen.

”Not a bad idea,” the marshal said. ”There's no cover down there.”

”Pshaw!” Speares said. ”That gang ain't worried about no catch party. They don't have enough respect respect for us to waste time layin' an for us to waste time layin' an ambush ambush.”

Harley Knutson, who owned one of the two gun shops in Saber Creek, mopped sweat from his sun- and wind-blistered forehead. ”How in the h.e.l.l you figure we can can take them down, Speares? That's what I wanna know. I mean, they're the take them down, Speares? That's what I wanna know. I mean, they're the Thunder Riders Thunder Riders!”

Speares placed a hand on his cantle and hipped around to regard the beefy shop owner with strained tolerance. ”We can can take them down, Harley, because take them down, Harley, because they don't think we can. they don't think we can. h.e.l.l, I don't even think they know we're on their trail.” h.e.l.l, I don't even think they know we're on their trail.”

”Well, in that case, Sheriff,” said one of the other markethunters, a walleyed hombre named Jan Behunek, ”why don't you cross first? Just to put our minds at ease.”

Behunek cut his self-satisfied gaze to his partners, one on each side of him. The other posse members voiced their own agreement, nodding.