beneath the bony fingers of lengthening shadows. The Mexicans were struggling along behind them, still out of sight behind the last ridge or back beyond that last bend in the canyon. And the Comanche were still somewhere ahead of them, above—where they could likely look down and see the Americans dogging their backtrail. Titus figured the chances were better than good they were watched from time to time throughout that cold day as the clouds hovered among the peaks overhead. Black-cherry eyes peering back now and again to survey the distant, snaking movement of ten horsemen leading those half a hundred soldiers.
No telling what might happen to those white women and children once the Comanche believed their pursuers had halted for the night, no longer pushing the chase … when those raiders were free to halt, light their fires, and take a good, close look at the women they’d thrown up on horses and whipped out of the village. Women like Rowland’s wife.
It made Scratch shudder.
“We ain’t stopping here for long, ye understand,” Hatcher declared brusquely at twilight when the sun had receded from the flat land far below them, gone beyond the western hills on the far side of the Taos valley.
“Ain’t we gonna rest none?” Graham asked wearily, his face liver-colored with fatigue like the rest of them. Then Rufus noticed at the way the sudden pinch of pain crossed Rowland’s face and said, “Hell, forget it, Jack…. I s’pose we ought’n keep on long as we can see far ’nough in front of us for the horses.”
“Just what I was figuring myself, Rufus,” Jack replied. “It’s for damn sure them Injuns gonna be stopping somewhere up ahead once it gets dark enough—but they’ll keep on climbing long as they can.”
“I’ll wager them bastards get a mite spooked in these here mountains at night,” Caleb observed.
Isaac said, “For sartin the Comanch’ ain’t used to no mountains, that’s for sure.”
“They’re flatlanders, by whip,” Solomon agreed.
“Maybeso we can turn that back on ’em,” Bass declared.
“What ye mean?” Jack asked, his eyes narrowing in interest.
“Like you boys said: they ain’t on their own ground,” Scratch explained. “Even if they ain’t spooked by the mountains or the night, leastwise we know they ain’t on their home ground where they’re used to fighting.”
“Bass is right,” Workman said enthusiastically. “This is home ground for you fellers. That’s gotta count for something.”
Hatcher nodded, thoughts clearly spinning round in his head, and he growled, “We’ll make it count for something, boys. Willy, turn back down-trail and go talk to that Guerrero soldier. Get him to hurry up his men now that it’s getting dark.”
“I’ll bet they’re the sort to stop for the night,” Simms grumbled.
“They cain’t this night,” Hatcher argued. “Tell ’em in Mexican that we gotta use these hours of darkness to close the gap on the Comanche the most we can.”
“Right.” And Workman began to turn his horse around.
Jack continued, “Ye stay with ’em, Willy—till I send one of the boys back for you.”
The whiskey maker sawed back on his reins. “Stay with them soldiers?”
“Yep,” Jack advised. “Till tomorrow sometime.”
Concern knitted Workman’s brow. “Why tomorrow I gotta wait to join back up with you?”
“We eat up enough of the ground atween us and the Comanch’ tonight,” Hatcher explained, “we’ll have us a chance to lay a trap for them sumbitches afore tomorrow night.”
The whiskey maker nodded. “You want me to tell Guerrero you’re gonna lay a trap for the Comanche?”
“Ye tell ’em we got a chance at getting the women back, only if them soldiers ain’t afraid to keep on comin’.”
“All right, Jack. I’ll wait back with ’em. Wait till you send one of the boys to come fetch me up.”
“When I do,” Hatcher said quietly, “it’ll be time to bring them soldiers up on the run. Time for us to open up the dance on them Comanche.”
Workman didn’t utter another word, only nodding at two of the men as he reined his horse about and set it off down their backtrail into the mountain twilight. In moments he was gone from view, engulfed by the growing gloom, along with the fading muffle of his horse’s hooves, that last vestige of him swallowed by the trees and the boulders, become a part of the night coming down around them.
“Caleb, I want you and Bass to hang back ahind the rest of us.” Hatcher waited till the two of them nodded. “Keep yer eyes on the downslope so them red sumbitches don’t double back and pull a grizz on us. Let’s move out.”
They followed him into the dark, across the open ground and past the stands of tall evergreen and spruce, where the shadows seemed to loom all the larger for the coming of night as the stars winked into view overhead. Right then it didn’t feel all that much colder than it had been during the day, Bass thought. Odds were good it would be before morning, before sunrise, before the earth ever started to warm once more.
Jack stopped them not long after moonrise some four hours later. He slid from his Spanish saddle, only motioning with an arm that he wanted the other eight to do the same. Gripping their reins, the bone-weary men stepped in close.
“Solomon, you and Isaac good at a sneak,” he began in a low voice. “What with the moon coming up and it being dark for some time now, I figger them Comanch’ gonna be ready to hold up for what’s left of the night so they can get ’em some sleep. You two keep going ’head of us—find out where and when they stop for camp and some sleep.”
Bass looked over at Rowland. He knew that the man damned well knew better. If the raiders stopped for the rest of the night, sleep might not be all they stopped for. That brand of cruel worry had already been at work at the man all day—carving deep lines in Rowland’s grayish face.
If the warriors had no more than three or four hours head start on them at the most, then what hours remained between now and daybreak could hold the key to freeing the women. Staying on the trail of those ponies and cattle and sheep here in the cold and the dark might well be their only chance of catching up to the raiders before they got over the mountains and down onto the plains. Down onto the flat where they would again be on their home ground, where they and their ponies would again have the advantage of numbers and knowing the terrain.
But up here, across the next few hours, the Americans would have the advantage to use, or lose. Either they would succeed because of how they used the time and the terrain, or they would lose because they had recklessly squandered both.
“Johnny,” Hatcher said as Solomon Fish and Isaac Simms disappeared on up the hoof-chewed trail left by the raiders. “Want ye stay near me.”
“Sure, Jack.”
“See to yer cinches, boys,” the leader reminded the rest. “We’ll give them two fellers a li’l bit more rope till we foller along.”
In something less than an hour, with the moon climbing above the plains to the east, Hatcher suddenly threw up his hand and whispered harshly for a halt. Out of the dark limned two horsemen riding low along the withers until they made out their companions.
Solomon Fish straightened. “Figgered it had to be you.”
“Ye run onto ’em?”
Simms nodded as the rest of the bunch came to a halt on Hatcher’s tail root. “Looks to be ’bout half of ’em sleeping. Other half up watching.”
“They got a fire?”
Shaking his head, Fish said, “No. Not a damned one. They ain’t taking no chances, Jack.”
“Damn,” Hatcher grumbled, scratching at his chin in reflection. “I don’t think we’re gonna jump ’em this way, fellas.”
Between that gap of the missing four front teeth, Rufus asked, “If’n it ain’t in the dark—how the hell you ’spect us to s’prise them red niggers?”
“Lookit the moon,” Jack ordered them.
Caleb asked, “What you saying?”
“This is a cagey bunch of niggers, they are,” Hatcher told them. “Don’t ye figger they’re the sort to be up and on down the trail soon as it gets light enough to see?”
“Damn right,” Rowland protested, spewing his words. “That’s why we ought’n go on in there now!”
