alone in the room.
“We’ll get those straps off you pretty soon, O’Hara.”
Ted just glared at him.
Trask smiled.
“We’re going to use your map today. You’re going to take us to those places you marked.”
“Apaches move around a lot,” Ted said. “They could all be gone by now.”
“That would be your tough luck, Lieutenant. But I want to ask you something, and it’s just between you and me, okay?”
Trask picked up a chair and set it by Ted’s bunk. He sat down and leaned over so his voice would not carry.
“Go ahead, Trask. You have me where you want me.”
“Patience, patience. Only a little while longer. We’ll get some breakfast for you, some hot coffee and you’ll be good as new.”
Ted sighed, resigned to being bound awhile longer.
“What do you want to know?” he asked Trask.
“When you and your company were checking on the Apaches out there, did you find out where they keep their gold?”
Ted stiffened. “Gold?”
“Yeah. We know they been hiding it somewheres. You must know where they keep it. You tell me.”
Now he knew what Trask was really after. Apache gold. There had been rumors of it at the post and in Tucson. He’d never paid much attention to the talk. But now he knew that Trask believed the rumors and he wanted what he thought the Apaches had.
He also knew that his life depended upon his answer to Trask.
He felt as if he were in a roomful of hen’s eggs, and if he made a wrong step, he would break those eggs and Trask would have no further use for him. He let the answer form in his mind, take shape, harden into what had to sound like truth coming from his mouth.
Trask’s breath blew against his face, hot and smelling of stale whiskey and strong tobacco.
Ted closed his eyes and opened them again.
Trask was still there, leaning close to him, waiting for his answer.
And Ted’s throat was full of gravel, and his gut had tightened with fear and uncertainty.
Trask waited for his answer, a cold look in his pale, steely eyes.
Chapter 15
Cloud shadows grazed across the land like the lingering and bewildered shades of sheep. Buttes and mesas stood like the hulks of rusting ships lost on a long ago sea, and the sun blazed down on it all with an unrelenting fire that would bake a lizard’s blood. Carmen’s face sweated under the brim of her straw hat and no amount of fanning with her hands would push cool air through her mouth and nostrils.
The wagon tracks were dim now, but still visible on the baked sand, like snake tracks turned to fossilized impressions by centuries of sun compacted into a single searing moment. Chama sniffed the air as if seeking a vagrant breeze that might cool his face, dry the sweat soaking from his hairline into his eyes and staining his shirt under his armpits.
Zak worried a small pebble in his mouth, spat it out as he rode up alongside Carmen, who was riding between the two men, Jimmy in the lead, Zak following in the rear.
“You’ve been to the next station,” he said to her. “Know who’s there?”
“Why should I tell you anything, gringo?”
“Because I asked you with politeness, Carmen.”
“Phaa,” she spit, but she could not produce a drop of saliva. “You take me prisoner, make me ride in the hot sun, and you say you are polite? You are
“So much killing,” he said, half to himself.
“Yes. You. You kill.
“
“And so, you too will die. By the gun.”
“I knew a man,” Zak said, “who taught me much. He was a Lakota. An Ogallala.”
“I do not know what that is.
“Yes. He was an Indian. His name was Two Hawks. We were watching the dances. He told me that when the people danced, they held hands. They formed a circle. He said that was to show that all people are connected to one another. That we are all the same, in spirit.”
“We are not all the same. I am Mexican. You are gringo,
