off. None inside the wagon had stepped down. He had accounted for all the tracks.
Yet someone had escaped.
Why?
Zak touched a hand to his face. Two days of stubble stippled his jaw. The hairs were stiff enough to make a sound like someone scraping a match head across sandpaper. He touched spurs to his horse’s flanks and left the smell of death behind.
The wind moved miniature dust devils across the land like dervishes on a giant chess board, with squares painted burnt umber and yellow ochre. Cloud shadows slipped across the rocky outcroppings and small spires like wraiths from some surreal dream, slinking and rippling over the contours of the desolate earth, making the land seem to pulse and breathe. Little lakes shimmered and vanished in the smoke of shadows, only to reappear again farther on in silver curtains that danced enticingly along the old Butterfield Stage route that wound through stone cairns and cactus like the fossilized path of an ancient serpent grown to gigantic size.
Zak Cody licked the black cracks on his lips, shifted the pebble in his mouth from one side to the other. His canteen was empty, all of the water inside him where it could oil his muscles, saturate his tendons. That was the Apache way, not the white man’s, who rationed water until he died of thirst, leaving his gaunt skeleton on the desert either through ignorance or an addled mind.
He found the first object beside the trail almost by accident. A glint of sun, something odd seen out of the corner of his eye. He rode over to see what was glittering so, thinking it a stone veined with mica or quartz. But there was a blue-green cast to it that defied immediate identification. It was small, and might have passed notice on an overcast day.
He reined in the black and dismounted. Stooping down, he picked up the dazzling object, turned it over in his fingers while he stared at it. There was gold on it, too, and he saw that it was a piece of jewelry. Woman’s jewelry. The gold band was attached to the precious stone, and there was a pointed shaft through the band. A woman’s earring, he determined, before he put it in his shirt pocket. A few feet away, almost hidden from view, he spotted the matching earring. He slid it into his pocket with the other one and climbed back into the saddle.
Now, what would a woman, possibly a refined woman, be doing way out in the middle of nowhere, miles from any sizable town, any town where a fine lady might wear such a fashionable accessory? Ahead, miles away still, was Apache Springs, and beyond that, Fort Bowie. He had seen the wagon tracks, knew how fresh they were, how many horses, four, were pulling it, and how fast they were going. Cody was a tracker, by both habit and training, so he always studied the ground wherever he rode his black gelding, a Missouri trotter, sixteen hands high. He called the horse Nox, knowing it was the Latin word for night.
A hawk floated over the road, dragging its rumpled shadow after it along the ground. It disappeared over a rise and a moment later he heard its shrill
A few moments later, he figured perhaps fifteen minutes had passed, he saw something else that was out of place in such surroundings. A flash of silver light bounced off it in one short streak, almost like a falling star going in the wrong direction, from earth to the heavens. He stopped and picked it up.
A bracelet, of silver and turquoise. Probably Tasco silver, from the way it was wrought, so finely turned, turquoise beads embedded in round casings that clasped them tight. A woman’s bracelet, graceful and elegant, such as a refined lady might wear.
Zak crossed and recrossed the ruts in the ground, looking for more cast-off artifacts. Ten minutes later he found a necklace made of silver and turquoise, like the bracelet. He stopped long enough to retrieve it and put it in his pocket before he rode on. He kept his gaze on the broken land, scanning both sides of the road for any sign of movement, judging the age of the tracks, holding Nox to a steady, ground-eating pace, closing the distance between him and the four-wheeled vehicle.
He spat out the pebble when Nox gave a low whicker and his ears stiffened to cones, twisted in a semiarc. Apache Springs was close, he knew, and he began to drift wide of the road, but keeping it in sight. The tracks were very fresh now, and as he topped a small rise, the springs lay below him, a wide spot in the road, deserted except for the small coach that stood off to one side. A woman sat on the seat, alone, her head facing the opposite way.
He saw legs move between the horses. A man was checking the traces.
Zak rode toward the coach, his hazel eyes narrowed to thin dark slits. They flickered with little flecks of gold and light brown, specks of magenta. The man emerged from between the horse’s legs, and the woman turned and stared straight at him. A hand went up to her mouth and she stiffened on the seat.
“Ho there,” Zak called as he rode down to the springs, wending his way through the ocotillo and prickly pear. There was a legend painted on the side of the coach: FERGUSON’S STAGE AND FREIGHT COMPANY. Underneath, in smaller letters: HAULING, PASSENGER SERVICE. And, in still smaller letters:
The man stepped away from the horses. He was wearing a linen duster, pale yellow in color, and his hat brim was folded to a funnel that shielded his eyes.
“Howdy, stranger,” the man said. “See any hostiles?”
Zak looked at the woman, then back at the man. Suspicion crept through his mind like some small night creature, sniffing, probing, twitching its whiskers. Something about the way the man was standing, the way he held his arms out, slightly bowed, away from his sides. And the woman, just in that brief glance, seemed paralyzed with fear. Fear was something Zak could almost smell, as if it gave off a scent, more subtle than sweat but as distinctive as fumes from a burning match.
“Hostiles?” Zak slowed his horse, halted it a few feet from the man, the coach, the cowering woman.
“You know. Apaches. We run into a hell of a patch back there.”
The man inclined his head in the direction that the coach had come from. Zak noticed he didn’t lift a hand to point a finger.
“No,” Zak said. “I saw no Apaches.”
“Well, they’s about.”
