Wild Country

'Only my disquiet, senor. Your San Antonio Rose has too much of the gringo in him.'

The ghost of a smile: 'Not as much as I, you buffoon. If he has arranged bail for Longo and Slaughter, he is still dependable.'

'Perhaps so that they can lead the yanquis back here?'

'They know better than that. And if they do not, a sniper laser will teach them quickly enough.' Now the smile was a grin: 'That would please you, I am sure.'

A blink and a smile, where a yanqui would have nodded.

One elegant finger, backed with sorrel hairs, wagged before the mestizo. 'You are a deeply prejudiced man, Cipriano. Were it not for those renegade Texans of mine, it might be you and Kaiyi who would cross Wild Country with our shipments. And you would never pass for TexMex, my friend. You never learned to lower your chin when facing armed Anglos.'

'Gracias a Dios for that,' Cipriano muttered. 'Even here in Mexico they cheat at cards. They eye our women too openly. They need humility.'

'They need a cold-steel education, you mean,' Sorel furnished with a thumb-flick that mimed a switchblade. 'Perhaps you are right, but now we need them. For one thing, the two yanquis know where the shipment is hidden, and I cannot afford any more losses to the border patrol.'

His Indio eyes slitted, Cipriano asked, 'And how do we know the yanqui patrols did not confiscate your demon-powder?'

'Because,' Sorel said as if to an idiot, 'if they had, they would be holding Clyde Longo and Harley Slaughter without bail. One can learn much merely by understanding how the yanqui system works. Now then: since Slaughter is a cautious man, we can expect him to stay in contact with our San Antonio contact. I wish you to encode a reply.'

Cipriano was cautious, too; he handed Sorel a small polypaper pad so that the encoded message would be, letter for letter, Sorel's own. The message was longer than most. Cipriano read it through, understanding most of it.

It was always possible that a transmission could be monitored. That explained why Sorel did not want that shipment's location radioed from Texas. The shrewd Slaughter had no doubt cached the stuff secretly, and well. Cipriano would have bet that Felix Sorel intended to meet Longo and Slaughter personally somewhere near Junction, Texas. But Cipriano would have lost.

The Indio scanned the message again; shrugged. 'Your man, San Antonio Rose: he knows this Cielita Linda?'

'That is not your worry,' Sorel said curtly. 'Be at ease, Cipriano; I would not entrust such a crucial operation to anyone who has less to lose than I do.'

'But — a woman,' Cipriano said, fingering his encoder key.

Sorel replied first with silent amusement, striding to the door. Then, 'If San Antonio Rose is a man, why not Cielita Linda? I shall send Kaiyi to operate the comm set,' he added aloud, stepping through, making certain the door latched. He hurried to change into swim trunks, only half-amused at Cipriano's complaint. The trouble was, Cielita Linda was a woman; and while she had much to lose, she also had powerful connections north of Wild Country. It was her infatuation with Felix Sorel, more than anything else, that compelled her to take heavy risks. Sorel would have preferred to rule her through fear for, as he had been taught, in his business fear was by far the most dependable motive.

Chapter Five

As always after a month's absence from Sandy, Ted Quantrill felt buoyed by a sense of coming home. He always found changes — the corn stood in rosy golden rows, now, ready for picking, and the pumpkins would be turning color soon. Sandy's old windmill generator was gone, too, replaced by new vertical foils with a capstan drive. The new rig made more efficient use of ground winds and did not need to stand on a high tower, so it was not so conspicuous. Also, a secondhand hovercycle had been added since his last visit. Otherwise it was the same familiar little spread, he thought, strolling in the dusk with Sandra Grange.

Time was when Sandy would have crowded near him, even in weather hot as this. Yet her independence had grown with her body. Sandy was no longer a grubby eleven-year-old, staring worshipfully up at him; nor an ardent, full-breasted seventeen, anxious to discover whether love and sexuality could coexist in a world as hard as the one she'd chosen. Now she was within a few inches of Quantrill's height, her arms tan as his, her hands roughened by farm chores. He knew she had changed to the bodiced dress and open sandals for him on short notice, but she walked beside him as an equal, the queen of her small domain.

Pleased at thoughts of her self-sufficiency, Quantrill eased his arm around Sandy's waist, urged her to face him. 'I've thought about you every day,' he said, kissing her gently, one hand massaging her shoulder.

'Have you thought about changing your line of work every day, too?' Her soft South Texas drawl was like her responding kiss: warm, vibrant, but with a reserve born of longstanding arguments.

'That, too,' he said, guiltily because he had done nothing of the sort. He let the massaging hand shift a bit. 'You sure we won't have an hour before Childe gets home? I've missed you. Sandy.'

'I know what you've missed,' she said, accusing, her full lower lip pursed as though scorning what they both enjoyed. She eased herself away, put fingers to her lips, blew a piercing four-toned blast that echoed from a nearby arroyo. 'Now I'm sure. She'll be here in five minutes or I'll tan her hide.'

His smile was wry, his hands-out gesture full of defeat. 'Umm, let's see; those first two notes say, 'Come in, all clear,' right? But I didn't get the others.'

'The third said, 'Ba'al, too,' and the last note stands for your name. That's why she'll bust her buns to get home, poor darlin'. She doesn't know what a nasty old man you really are.'

'Damn' little chance I get to prove it.'

'We've been all over that, and I still say the older Childe gets, the more she understands. If you want to play house with me, Mister Deputy, we do it on neutral territory.' Realizing how snappish that sounded, she took his ear gently, circled her forefinger in it. 'I'm surprised you're still so randy after the last time, Ted.'

'Last time?' It was nearly a yelp. 'That was August, you blowsy wench! When do I fit into your bloody schedule again?'

She giggled, raised her face in bogus sweetness, and began to croon: 'On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me-e-e…'

'Christmas your ass.'

She snapped her fingers. 'Couldn't phrase it better myself,' and then dissolved in laughter at the look on his face. 'Ted. I have to get the corn in. Then I'll see about letting Childe stay with friends in Rocksprings, and I'll give you a call. Soon, love.'

'That's a promise,' he insisted, half in frustration, half-amused.

'No. That's a threat,' she replied, raking his stalwart body with her glance, mouth parted. The cool competence in her eyes had the effect she intended. She laughed again as he wheeled away and swore to herself that she would not be so cruel again. Not this trip, anyway.

He was muttering, 'Jesus Christ, there must be a law against teasers,' when Childe rode out of the scrub cedars, waving happily from her mount. Ted Quantrill wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to the sight, one that few others had ever seen and those few scarcely believed.

Childe sat at ease, gangly bare legs astride the great boar, Ba'al, one hand entwined in the grizzled neck ruff while she waved with the other. Quantrill waved back, wondering whether her grip might be painful to the boar. He had never seen the great insolent-eyed Ba'al hesitate from wariness of pain. The significance of Childe's method of sitting her mount was not that it hurt, but that it worked. It seemed that the boar had an Apache's outlook on life. For Ba'al, pain was overrated.

The way Childe communicated with the boar, it was no wonder the kid behaved so much like a white Indian. On the one hand, Childe had been taught the languages of Wild Country by her companion: tracking, weather signs, what you could eat, what might eat you — for bear, puma, and wolf had always lurked in these parts. On the other hand, Childe liked listening to Sandy talk, and Sandy usually had no one else to talk to. In this way, Childe learned a