Zak looked straight into the man’s flashing brown eyes.
“Be careful,” Felipe had said in Spanish. And Felipe’s body tensed into a coiled spring. He was like a tiger ready to pounce, Zak knew. Like a tiger cornered. He was a man without an ounce of fear. His mother’s name had been besmirched by a gringo. There were few insults more scathing than calling a man’s mother a whore.
Felipe was ready to fight.
To defend his mother’s honor, dubious as that honor might be, Felipe was ready to die.
Chapter 6
Zak knew how dangerous Felipe had become. He’d just been slapped in the face with an insult so foul and demeaning that it had cut through to the core of the man’s being. Few things were more sacred to a man than the woman who had given him life, his mother. Felipe was ready to put his life on the line in defense of the woman who had birthed him.
“All you have to do, Felipe,” Zak said, “is tell me the truth and I’ll take back what I said about your mother.”
“It is too late for that,” Felipe said.
“I’ll find those men anyway. I do not need to know their names. I do not need you to tell me where they went. I will find them.”
Felipe drew back, cocked his head and looked more closely at Zak.
“Who are you?” he said. “What do you call yourself?”
“Cody.”
Felipe spewed air through his nostrils.
“Are you the one they call
“I am sometimes called ‘Shadow Rider.’”
“Because you wear the black clothes and ride the black horse.”
“No,” Zak said. “Because I am like a shadow. I come upon a man with no sound. I am not seen and I am not heard until it is too late.”
“Ah, I wondered. You are the Indian fighter. You are the one who rode with the general they call Crook.”
“I am the one.”
“Then, perhaps you come here to kill Apaches, no?”
“Maybe,” Zak said.
“Then you and I, we are on the same side. I, too, would kill Apaches. And the men you seek. They, too, wish all the Apaches killed. Maybe you would like to join them.”
“Maybe.”
“That is why you hunt them?”
“I wish to talk to them, yes.”
“I think they would like to talk to you, Cody.”
“Now we are getting somewhere, Felipe. I want to know who those men were who painted themselves like Apaches, rode the ponies here. I want to know who they work for.”
“You ask much, Cody. But I will tell you so that you will go and leave me alone. Perhaps I will see you again one day.”
“Perhaps.”
“The men you look for have gone to Tucson. You must see a man named Ferguson. He owns the freight line.”
“I am looking for a man named Ben Trask,” Cody said.
“Ah, you know this man?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“You are friends, no?”
Cody didn’t answer. He let the question hang and watched Felipe squirm inside his skin. He could almost see the man’s mind working, the way his forehead wrinkled up and his nose crinkled, making his eyes squint.
“This one, Trask, he is there. He works for Ferguson.”
That was all Zak wanted to hear.
Trask was just the kind of man to stir up trouble with the Apaches, but he’d bet money that he had something else on his mind, as well. Trask might be working for Ferguson, but he was also working for himself, perhaps looking for an opportunity to make some illegal money.
“All right, Felipe. I’m leaving now.”
“You do not want another horse?”
