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  “On your way here, Doctor,” Sam asked, “did you see either of the passenger’s bodies, or any coach horses?”

  “No, Ranger, we didn’t see either of the passengers, which is most upsetting,” the doctor said. “But we did see a couple of dead horses. One had a harness on it. I presume they were the coach horses.”

  Sam nodded and fell silent. The doctor eyed him above his wire-rims.

  “Of course you can check closer on our way back, during the day. Perhaps it won’t be storming then—we’ll see better.”

  “I won’t be going back with you, Doctor,” Sam said flatly. “I have to be getting on.”

  “What?” The young doctor looked at him, bemused, and almost smiled. “But of course you will. We may still have bad weather coming.”

  “What are you talking about over there?” Dawson asked, stepping over from his position.

  “Ranger Burrack thinks he’s going to be getting on,” the doctor said, almost mocking the Ranger.

  “What are you talking about, Ranger?” Dawson asked. “You can’t go nowhere, the shape you’re in.”

  Strait put in, “If you get out there and get a case of the fever with that shoulder wound, what’ll you do?”

  Sam only stared at the three of them.

  “I think we all know what I’ll do if I come down with the fever, don’t we, Doctor?” he said.

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “You’ll die. If it were an arm or a leg, it could be removed. But a shoulder . . .” He shook his head. “There’d be little chance of saving you.”

  “So it won’t matter if I’m out here on the trail or back in Nogales,” Sam said. “If I catch the fever, I’d likely die wherever I am.”

  “But in Nogales someone could take care of you, make you comfortable,” the doctor reasoned.

  Sam and Dawson looked at each other; Dawson grinned and took a long swig of whiskey.

  “Obliged, Doctor,” Sam said. “But I’m not looking to catch the fever, or to be comforted. I’m looking to bring in the man I’m trailing.”

  “Do you not hear what I’m telling you, Ranger?” the doctor said, getting exasperated. “You cannot go on the trail until your wound is better, and that is that.”

  “I’ll be on the trail either way, Doctor,” Sam said, “whether I’m going backward to Nogales or forward in pursuit. That being the case, I’ll choose forward every time.”

  Dawson and Strait both chuffed.

  “He’s got you there, Doc,” Dawson said, tipping the rye bottle toward the Ranger in salute.

  “Indeed,” the doctor said skeptically. Speaking to Strait he said, “Clevo, gather what the Ranger needs. We’re turning back when I’m finished here.” He looked down at the broken stock on the Winchester across his lap. “You can take my new rifle. It’s been fired very little—but mind you, I’ll expect it to be returned to me, unharmed,” he emphasized.

  “I’ll do my best, Doctor,” Sam said. “You have my word.”

  The doctor only nodded as he looked back down at his work. He put the sharp tip of the needle against the torn flesh on the Ranger’s shoulder. Piercing the sore and damaged flesh, he pressed it through.

  Sam sat looking at Dawson and saw the grim look on his face. He raised the tin cup of coffee to his lips as the doctor drew the thread snug.

  Dawson finally shook his head and looked away toward the feeding roan.

  “I’ll get your horse readied up for you, Ranger,” he said. “If you’re crazy enough to go on in this weather, I’m crazy enough to help you get started.”

  “Obliged, Dawson,” Sam said quietly as the doctor continued his work.

  PART 2

  Chapter 9

  El Pueblo de Armonía, Old Mexico

  Hard rain had hammered on the battered tin roof throughout the night, finally easing up, the wind diminishing from a roar to a whisper. Water burrowed in beneath the eaves and cut itself a channel. Now, even though the rain had stopped, the water still ran down the adobe’s rear wall and guttered in a stream across the dirt floor. One of the new Texan gunmen, Evan Hardin, stepped across the stream toward the front window. Rifle in hand, he looked out through one of the gun port crosses that had been carved in the center of each of the adobe’s ancient window shutters.

  “I had a feeling deep in my guts,” he murmured, raising his rifle to his shoulder and taking aim through the gun port at the rider coming up into sight. He eyed down his rifle sights and centered on the rider’s chest, allowing for the short rise and fall of the galloping horse.

  “Bang!” he said. A grin came over his scarred, beard-stubbled face as he continued looking down the rifle sights for a second longer. Then he lowered the rifle and brought the tip of the barrel out of the gun port. “Guess what, Freeman. I just shot our new boss,” he said over his shoulder. “If I’d had a mind to, that is,” he added.

  “Yeah?” Behind Hardin, Freeman Manning—the other new Texan gunman—threw his worthless poker hand down on the battered wooden table and stood up, adjusting his gun belt and the gun standing in its holster. He shot a guarded grin across the table to another gunman, Rudy Roach. A young Mexican woman, Rosa Dulce, was perched on Roach’s lap, her hand moving around inside Roach’s half-buttoned shirt.

  “If Evil Evan here so much as dreamed he shot Wilson Orez,” Hardin said, “he’d wake up with this whole place stinking.”

  Rudy Roach chuckled under his breath. He shoved the woman’s hand away.

  “You’re right in my way, Rosa Dulce,” he said, reaching out and pulling in the few dollars and coins lying in the middle of the table. To Manning he said, “Your pard wouldn’t be the first gunman Wilson ever caused to soil himself—not the last either, I’m willing to wager.”

  Evan Hardin stared at the two of them, his rifle hanging in his right hand. He switched it over to his left. His right hand opened and closed near the Colt on his hip.

  “No man’s yet to make me soil myself,” he said. “I’m looking right now at the two least likely to ever bring it about.”

  As always, Manning couldn’t tell if Hardin was serious or not. Instead of replying, Manning picked up his damp Stetson and placed it on his head.

  “Since he’s here, just as well we go out front and greet him.” He adjusted his big revolver in its holster. “If you can stand up yet, that is,” he said to Roach.

  Roach looked embarrassed. He gave the young woman a stiff little nudge.

  “Step up, Rosa, darling,” he said quietly. “Let’s go see what Wilson Orez’s got to say when he meets you.”

  “Do you think he will like me?” Rosa asked shyly.

  “Darling, he’d be a fool not to,” Roach replied.

  “Ummm, Wilson Orez!” Rosa Dulce’s eyes brightened as she stood and shook her full peasant skirt out and let it fall down below her calves. “Always, I want to meet this man so much.”

  “Oh, and why is that?” Rudy Roach asked, a little piqued by her words.

  “Because I always hear that he is an hombre malo,” she said, her voice turning hushed and excited.

  “Oh? Because he’s a bad man, eh?” Roach said. He gave Manning a wry look.

  “Sí! Hombre muy malo,” said Rosa Dulce, appearing even more excited than before. “Muy, muy malo,” she added, smiling seductively, cupping her hair at her neck.

  “Hear that, Rudy? Your bride says that Orez is a very, very bad man,” Manning chuckled, looking at Roach with an arched brow. “And how long did you say you two have been married?”

  “Damn, darling,” Roach said to Rosa Dulce, looking deflated, ignoring Manning’s question.

  Rosa’s smile fell away as suddenly as it had appeared.

  “What I say that is wrong?” she asked. She looked back and forth at the faces of the gunmen nervously.

  Manning chuckled again.

  “I exp
ect you’re able to stand up now,” he said to Roach.

  Still seated at the table, still ignoring Manning, he looked up at Rosa Dulce for a second and shook his head slowly.

  “Darling, no man likes to hear his wife carry on about another man that way,” he said quietly to Rosa. He stood up, adjusted his gun belt and the crotch of his trousers.

  “Sí, I know this,” Rosa Dulce said, still uncertain what she had said that had been so poorly taken. She tried to make up for her uncertainty with a bright smile, realizing from experience that she was among dangerous men.

  “You know this?” said Roach, eyeing her quizzically.

  Manning and Hardin only passed each other a look. They had met Roach and his bride only a few days earlier on their way here to ride with Orez.

  “Sí, I know this. I know that men are jealous,” Rosa said, smiling, twirling her skirt back and forth playfully. “I am not so stupid, you know.”

  Roach, his brow wrinkled, was having a hard time understanding.

  “You know it, but you say it anyway?” he asked, trying to get it straight in his mind.

  “There, you are jealous, no?” she said. She started twirling her skirt more briskly side to side. She cocked her head and said teasingly, “You are a jealous, jealous man.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Roach denied flatly.

  “Yes, oh yes, you are,” she taunted, flipping her skirt up at him like some matador goading a sullen bull. “You are a jealous, jealous man.”

  “So, then . . . you said it just to make me jealous?” Roach looked at her, confused, feeling embarrassed under the gaze of these two new gunmen.

  “No, I only said that always I want to meet him,” Rosa replied. “It is you who make yourself jealous.”

  “Oh, then you . . .” Roach tried to consider her words. But he had to stop, bewildered, unable to even get so much as a starting grasp on what she was talking about. Finally he shrugged as the other two gunmen walked out the door and left it open behind them. “We’ll talk more about all this some other time,” he said quietly between the two of them. “We’ve got some things that need sorting out.”

  Following the two Texans out front, Rudy Roach and Rosa stood back against the front of the adobe out of the peppering rain and watched as the rider dropped below a low hill and in a moment bounded back into sight. Roach stood watching as Orez rode closer, seeing the easy way he let the horse take in the wet ground beneath its hooves, splashing up mud-silvery water and leaving a mist of it suspended for a moment in its wake. The money from the stagecoach hung in two canvas bags on either side of Orez’s saddle.

  A very, very, bad man? What the hell is wrong with her? he asked himself. What kind of bride had he chosen for himself?

  He cut a guarded glance sidelong at the beautiful young woman without her seeing it. He noted the look in her dark eyes as she stared toward Wilson Orez, and he didn’t like it. He saw her secretive smile as she watched Wilson Orez draw his horse quarterwise, then straighten it at the front hitch rail and stop. Orez swung the canvas money bags over his shoulder and stepped down from his saddle into the mud, his rifle in hand.

  The hell’s wrong with this woman? Rudy Roach asked himself again. The two weeks she’d been with him, he’d never seen her act this way. Of course they hadn’t been around anybody until yesterday when they arrived here to meet Manning and Hardin. Wait a minute, maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was him, getting himself all worked up for no reason. Maybe he was just being jealous—you jealous, jealous man, he pictured her saying. Maybe that’s what she was trying to tell him. He considered it, but then dismissed the matter. There was nothing wrong with him. He watched Orez step under the front canvas overhang and slap his wet hat against his thigh.

  “What are you doing here?” Orez asked Freeman Manning bluntly, looking at each man in turn. His eyes lingered on the woman for a second, but only for a second. Then he looked back at Manning.

  Manning appeared surprised at Orez’s question.

  “We’re here to take up with you, like we agreed to, Wilson,” he said. His eyes went to the canvas bags, then quickly back to Orez’s face. “You said meet you here, to ride with you, remember? You said you needed us to keep watch on your back trail, lag back and shoot holes in them for you if need be.”

  Orez looked at him for a moment.

  “There’s nobody trailing me,” he said. He gestured back into the distant rumble of thunder and swirl of black-gray sky above the desert hills and basin. “If there had been, I shook them off a long time ago. Nobody tracks in this kind of weather.”

  Manning and Hardin looked at each other.

  “Then you want us to go on,” Manning asked, “or cover your back like we said?”

  “Do what suits you,” Orez said. “While my trail has disappeared, I’m going up there to lie low among my people, the Red Sleeves.” He gestured in a direction of a line of taller hills not even visible from where they stood.

  His people? Manning said to himself. He and Hardin looked at each other. Neither had heard of the Red Sleeves kicking up any dust in years.

  The three gunmen knew better than to ask for clarification. They knew he was talking about Apache renegade country, the Twisted Hills at the foot of the Mexican Blood Mountains, a rugged place where rebel warriors on the run holed up, away from both the Mexican federales and the American cavalry.

  “What would suit Evan and me,” said Manning, speaking for the two of them, “would be to get on a looting spree while this weather has everybody hunkered down. Seeing them bags hanging over your shoulder makes me hungry for some myself.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Hardin. “I always say if a man ain’t robbing something, what the hell is he doing?” He smiled thinly.

  Orez considered it. He looked back and forth between the two of them, then moved away as if in thought. After a moment, his caged eyes went to the young woman.

  “Where did you take this one captive?” he asked Roach, looking Rosa Dulce up and down appraisingly.

  “Captive . . . no, Wilson,” Roach cut in. He gave a thin, stiff smile. “This here is no captive. This is my brand-new wife.” He took Rosa by her arm and pulled her forward. “Rosa Dulce, this is Wilson Orez.”

  “I am pleased mostly to meet you,” Rosa said, excitement and fear in her eyes as she stepped forward, managing to wiggle her arm loose from Roach’s hand. “Rudy tells to me everything about you.”

  “He does?” Orez gave Roach a hard look. “What do you tell her?” he demanded.

  “No, she doesn’t mean that,” Roach said quickly.

  Wilson Orez settled some. He looked the woman up and down again, then looked back at Roach.

  “She’s a captive,” he insisted.

  “No.” Roach shook his head. “I swear she’s no captive.”

  “She is a captive,” Orez insisted. As he spoke, he took the woman by the arm and led her inside.

  “Jesus!” Roach murmured. He gave the other two gunmen a worried look. They followed Orez and the woman inside. “I’ve got to make him understand, this is my wife. This ain’t no made-up deal here,” he said quietly.

  The two Texans just shot each other a quizzical look.

  • • •

  Orez seated the woman at the table and looked around the crumbling old adobe, the muddy floor with its interconnecting rivulets of water. Rifle at the ready, he stepped across the floor with his rain slicker dripping water. He inched a heavy wooden door open and looked in the adjoining room, seeing a blanket spread on a pile of dry straw. He walked back toward the woman and looked down at her, taking her by her chin. She smiled with fear in her eyes as he turned her face back and forth, inspecting her.

  Seeing Orez handle his woman, Roach started to take an angry step forward. Manning grabbed his shoulder, stopping him for his own good.

  “Huh-uh,” Manning whispered.
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  Roach clenched his teeth and his fists. But he stood still, knowing Manning was right.

  “She is a captive,” Orez said. He turned quickly and stared hard and accusingly into Roach’s face. “If she’s not a captive, what’s she doing with you?”

  Roach only stared, not knowing how to respond.

  Manning cut in trying to change the subject.

  “Say, Wilson, where’s Tom Quinton and The Slider?” he asked, looking around as if he had missed seeing the two men. “We expected to see them here.” It was Tom Quinton who’d introduced them to Orez. Maybe Quinton could remind Orez, since he seemed to have trouble realizing why they were here.

  “They didn’t make it,” Orez replied, without taking his eyes off the woman. “Have you eaten?” he asked her.

  “Yes, I have. Thank you,” Rosa Dulce said, fluttering her eyelashes a little.

  “Tom Quinton and The Slider didn’t make it?” Manning said.

  “What did I say?” Orez said bluntly.

  “Where does that put us?” Manning asked.

  Orez didn’t reply. He continued staring at the woman. “Come with me,” he said to her. He pulled her to her feet even as she started to stand on her own. He moved toward the other room with her.

  “Whoa, now, hold on!” said Roach, stepping forward, grabbing Rosa’s other arm before Orez pulled her away. “Damn it, what do you think you’re doing, Wilson? I told you, this is my wife! This ain’t like the times before. This is the real deal. We just got married!”

  “Congratulations,” said Orez. He gave a yank on Rosa’s arm and pulled her away from Roach toward the doorway to the other room. “She’s going with me,” he added bluntly.

  Rosa Dulce gasped.

  “Like hell, she is!” said Roach. He slapped a hand on the butt of a Colt holstered on his hip. Orez’s hand came from behind his back with his large knife gripped in his fist.