Last night I’d thought to ride on and leave Lila and her pa behind. But now I knew I couldn’t do it. I was well and truly trapped. Me, I was all that stood between Lila and the Apaches and what they did to a woman, and to haul my freight now would be a lowdown thing.
I made the decision but didn’t feel particularly brave or honorable, like that Lochinvar knight Ned kept wagging his chin about. All I knew was I had it to do and there could be no stepping away from it . . . not if I wanted to live with myself after.
When I went into the cabin, Lila handed me a plate of bacon, salt pork and pan bread; suddenly hungry, I wolfed it down.
Ned didn’t eat, but sat at the table, his head in trembling hands, battling whatever demons were tormenting him.
Despite myself, I felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the man. Sometimes the best remedy for wrongs is just to forget them, and I tried to do that now.
“Ned,” I said, “we got to get moving.”
The man looked up at me with faraway eyes and nodded. He rose to his feet and stumbled outside.
Lila watched him go, then asked: “What happened between you two out there?”
I shrugged. “I got rid of your pa’s whiskey.”
The girl studied me, judging my motives. “He’ll be better off without it,” she said finally. Then, after a heartbeat’s pause: “Thank you, Dusty.”
I smiled at her. “I’m starting to think that recently every person I meet is a problem in search of a solution. I found the solution, is all. At least for now.”
Ten minutes later we crested the rise and were once more among the rocks. Lila riding the black while me and her pa walked beside the oxen.
At the top we paused and I looked down at the long miles stretching away before us, the Staked Plains to the west lost behind a gray morning haze.
Without saying a word to Lila I left the wagon and went back to the place where I’d fought the Apache. The man’s body was gone but written in charcoal on a flat rock near where he’d fallen were the crudely scratched Spanish words:
I knew enough of the language to translate. It said: Kills with His Teeth.
The Apaches had given me a name and were letting me know that I was a marked man. All they wanted to do now was capture me alive. After that, using all the devilish ingenuity they could muster, they’d test me to see if I was the great warrior I seemed.
I knew that test would be much worse than anything Shorty Cummings had suffered and I would scream and shriek my way into eternity.
A sudden chill in my belly, I walked back to the wagon. Lila raised an eyebrow, but didn’t offer a question. For that, I was glad, fearing that my tongue would stick to the roof of my dry mouth.
When Lila did speak, her words did little to allay my fear.
“Dusty,” she said, pointing south, “look over there. It’s more smoke.”
I followed her pointing finger to the low hills and mesquite flats stretching away from us. In the distance I watched the smoke rise, then break, then rise again, black puffs drifting one after another into the lead-colored sky.
Fascinated, fearful, I couldn’t tear my gaze away from it. “Lila, that’s talking smoke. Apache smoke.”
“What are they talking about?” the girl asked, her dark eyes huge.
“Us,” I said.
Chapter 12
We were halfway down the slope when the rain began, not the downpour I’d expected but a soft drizzle, lacing across the landscape as fine as spun silver.
As soon as we reached the flat and turned south, I remounted the black while Lila took my place beside the oxen and I rode away to scout the trail ahead.
For the most part this was open country, a grama and buffalo grass plain with low hills rising here and there, their slopes dotted with mesquite and post oak.
I startled a small herd of grazing antelope and they bounded away from me over the crest of a hill and were soon lost to sight. Several times I spotted long-horn steers, strays from the spring herds, but they were every bit as wild as the antelope and kept their distance.
When I reached a shallow valley between a couple of low, flat-topped rises, I reined in the black and slid my Winchester from the boot.
My ears straining for the slightest sound, I sat still in the saddle, scanning the valley ahead and the surrounding slopes.
Nothing stirred.
The drizzle continued to fall silently on the grass and far above me the gray clouds were starting to thin and far to the west I saw a patch of blue sky.
I turned in the saddle, looking for the wagon. It was about a mile behind me, the oxen plodding through the long grass, and I could make out the tiny figures of Lila and her pa.
There was no way around it—the wagon would be here soon and before it arrived I’d have to scout the valley, a likely place for an Apache ambush.
I wheeled the black around the screening rise of the hill to my right and got behind its shallow slope. I rode down into a rocky wash, followed it for a couple of hundred yards, then rode out of it again, finally stopping at a dense thicket of mesquite growing low on the hill.
Rifle in hand I swung out of the saddle and, crouching low, made my way up the rise. I reached the crest and looked around. As far as I could see the land around me seemed empty.
But the Apaches had been here.
A small, charred circle on the grass showed where they’d coaxed a sullen fire out of mesquite root and sent up smoke, probably the talking smoke we’d seen earlier in the morning.
I got down on one knee, my rifle at the ready, but saw only silent hills and rain-washed grass. After a few minutes the pattering drizzle petered out, discouraged by the blossoming sun that felt warm on my back, and around me the color of the grass and hills shaded from dark to light green as the sunlight touched them.
I rose to my feet just as the riders started to come.
A column of cavalry was riding through the valley, a red-and-white guidon fluttering at their head, two pack mules bringing up the rear. The officer in command threw up a hand when he saw me and halted the troop.
I made my way down the hill, under the careful scrutiny of two dozen hard-eyed buffalo soldiers, and stopped beside the officer, an elderly white captain with iron gray hair showing under his battered campaign hat.
“Captain James O’Hearn,’ the officer said by way of introduction, his voice harsh like he gargled with axle grease. “Ninth Cavalry.”
I gave O’Hearn my name and added: “I see you’ve fared badly, Captain.”
The officer nodded. “Had a run-in with Apaches south of here. Lost my scout and a couple of my men are hit hard.”
I glanced along the column and saw a Pima draped belly down across his saddle, his long black hair hanging loose, almost touching the top of the grama grass. Two of the soldiers sat slumped in the saddle, one with a bloodstained bandage around his head.
O’Hearn studied me with interest. “What brings you out here, Hannah?”
I nodded toward the approaching wagon. “That. We’re headed for the Clear Fork of the Brazos.”
The captain watched the wagon creak slowly toward the column, and when he saw Lila walking by the side of the oxen as she finally reached us, he touched the brim of his hat. “Captain James O’Hearn, ma’am. Ninth Cavalry.”
Lila dropped an elegant little curtsy, then introduced herself and her father.
Obviously taking pleasure in the sight of a pretty woman in this stark wilderness, O’Hearn smiled and swung
