her mouth, her eyes wide in terror.
He sensed she had seen enough blood spilled on her account. Women like her drew trouble, like flecks of iron to a lodestone. Yet knowing it did not help. Here he was, his own knife drawn against the young vaquero, who again pushed the whore back out of his way and turned sideways, crouching slightly at the knees.
There was no grace, no finesse in Hook’s sudden, drunken lunge for the Mexican. The only thing that saved him was the surprising suddenness of it, closing before the vaquero could slash out at his enemy.
A cry of shock, a yelp of pain reverberated in Jonah’s ear as he slid his knife along the Mexican’s ribs, dragging the man close with his free arm. He felt the warmth ooze over his blade hand. With all the strength he had, Hook held the vaquero close, continuing to dance from beneath the man’s wild swings with that knife, knowing that if the Mexican broke free …
His breath exploded from him when the vaquero spun Hook and pushed him backward against the bar. The Mexican’s free hand clamped around Jonah’s wrist, repeatedly hammering the arm and hand against the edge of the bar. Unable to maintain his grip, the knife popped free, sent spinning down the bar.
As quickly Jonah brought both hands up, seizing the vaquero’s wrist, holding his red-tainted knife high overhead. There they struggled, pitching their weight against the other, spinning and each trying to throw his opponent off balance. Hook lunged for the vaquero’s ear, catching it between his teeth, squeezing down until he felt the salty, thick syrup trickle over his tongue. With a squeal of pain followed by a grunt of effort the Mexican drove his knee into Jonah’s groin.
Down Hook tumbled, the sudden pain radiating out from the core of him like exploding stars.
In triumph the vaquero stood over his vanquished enemy, rotating the knife handle as he dropped to his knees on top of Hook so that he could plunge it into the gringo’s heart. He smiled, then as suddenly as he had descended on his enemy, the vaquero wore a look of utter surprise, a pinched look of panic as he rocked back to gaze down at his chest where the American released a second knife.
Staring dumbfounded, the Mexican struggled to rise. But his legs had gone to water and would not hold him.
Hook shoved the Mexican off. The vaquero tumbled to the floor, his legs beginning to draw up as Jonah pulled his knife free from the man’s chest—then savagely plunged it into the red-stained white shirt again and a third time, splattering flecks of blood across the creamy buckskin jacket.
“Where? Where’d I get the knife?” Jonah asked in reply, slowly pulling the blade from the man’s chest, then holding the sharp tip against the vaquero’s Adam’s apple. “Where I come from, a man never carries just one knife,
With a jerk Jonah fell to the side as the bunched gunshots boomed in the low-roofed earthen room. A last one rang in his ears before Jonah rolled over to find Two Sleep still sitting, his pistol muzzle smoking, and two of the vaquero’s companions crumpling slowly, a third clawing desperately at the edge of the bar, their own guns tumbling from their hands to clatter dully onto the pounded clay floor.
“Watch the drink man,” Jonah snarled at Two Sleep, his head nodding at the bartender.
Two Sleep leveled one of the pistols at the Mexican behind the bar as Jonah crabbed back to the vaquero, who lay wreathed in blood, his breath coming ragged. He put the tip of his knife blade back against the Mexican’s throat, then gazed up into the flickering candlelight, eventually finding her.
“C’mere!” he ordered her in English. When she did not obey immediately, he called her gruffly in Spanish.
Whimpering, the whore stood over him, tears having streaked the
“You want me to kill him quick?”
She shook her head, then nodded yes.
“You love him, eh?” Jonah asked as he slowly drew the bloody knife from the vaquero’s throat, wiping it off on the buckskin jacket.
“No—I could not love him. He is trouble to me every time he comes in,” she said quietly in the hushed cantina. “But there would be more trouble for me if you kill him.”
Hook peered down at the Mexican and sighed, then gazed up at the whore. “It doesn’t matter now,
“He is dead too?” growled the bartender.
As he rose, Jonah stuffed the second knife away inside his boot. “These others, they should have minded their own business. How about you? Will you mind your own business?”
The man’s puffy black eyes were like a frightened, caged animal’s as they darted here and there, then eventually landed back on Hook’s face. He slid Jonah’s knife down the bar toward the American. “Si. Just go. Go now and never come back.”
Two Sleep still had his pistols drawn, covering the room as Jonah dragged up the Winchester propped against their table. Hook reached over to clamp his right hand around the woman’s wrist, holding his left forearm protectively in front of him.
“You owe me,
Her eyes climbed from his bloody shirt, softening as they peered into his. “Yes. I owe you,
27
SHE SMELLED MORE of dust than anything else. It wasn’t that the woman was dirty. Just this land, the mud houses, what with the wind that blew night and day—it seemed natural for her to have the same sweet, musky smell of the land.
That, and the slightly damp feel to her sere-colored flesh as she worked herself into a frenzy, throbbing like a steam piston up and down atop him. Her breasts quivered inches from his eyes, the nipples coming rigid and rosy against the dusky hue of her skin. Jonah reached up and brought one round melon to his mouth as she trembled atop her perch in his lap. Throwing her head back, the high Indian cheekbones firing her eyes with an even brighter flame and her long black hair slithering over the curve of her shoulder, she shuddered from chin to toe.
The whore whimpered softly as her mouth came forward toward his, then slid off his lips, tantalizing him as her teeth sought the side of his neck. She bit him, hard enough to make Hook wince.
He hadn’t been bitten like that in … Jonah couldn’t remember a woman ever biting him before. Not in anger. Nor in passion.
Hurriedly leaving the smoky cantina, the whore led the two horsemen across the alameda, a tree-lined walk, then on down the muddy street pocked with the holes cut by recent hooves and streaked with greasy rivulets carved by iron-rimmed wheels, each silvery, moonlit sliver of water afloat with the day’s refuse tossed from most every door leading into the rain-drenched darkness. On she took them to the poorest part of this squalid village, where the houses squatted like colorless mud toads amid the low-hanging smoke of cedar fires.
First she took them to a small stable, where they stripped their horses and pack animals. It was there the woman told the Indian to make himself a bed of straw. When Hook had loosened the lashes that held his bedroll behind his saddle and dropped it atop some hay in an empty stall, the whore shook her head.
“Oh, no,
Telling the Indian that they would be in the small hut across the muddy street, she led Jonah back into the storm and darkness, dodging puddles and piles of droppings gone cold with spring’s onslaught before ducking out of the rain. In the tiny room she lit a single candle. When he straightened there beside the short doorway, the crude door hung awap on its loose leather hinges, Jonah had to remove his hat to keep it from brushing against the low ceiling, his shadow cavorting across the near wall in the dance of flame thrown out by that tallow candle.
She had turned then, her black hair dripping with rain, catching the flicker of the single flame like a red mirror, hair strands hung in dark tendrils over her eyes as she pulled his coat from his arms, gently nudging him back
