Only His

9

As Caleb had predicted, rain came again to the mountains. The sound of it was welcomed by Willow, for the silence had become oppressive.

Caleb hadn’t been in camp when she had finally gathered her dry clothes and her courage and had returned to the fire. All seven horses still grazed in the meadow, silently telling her that, wherever Caleb had gone, he would be back. The horses couldn’t tell Willow when, however. She gathered edible greens in the meadow and tried to forget what it had been like to be kissed by Caleb Black until the world burst into fire and he was the burning center of it.

Forgetting was impossible. Flashes of memory and sensation splintered through Willow at odd moments, making her shiver with pleasure and yearning.

Rain began to fall while the last scarlet flush of evening still stained the western sky. Willow retreated to the shelter the western sky. Willow retreated to the shelter and changed into her trail clothes. She sat in the doorway and watched for a figure striding through the twilight rain. No one came. Finally she curried up across the entrance and fell asleep.

When Willow woke up, she was between the blankets and Caleb was sharpening his knife while chunks of meat roasted over the fire. The sky was iridescent with a pink, rain-scrubbed dawn. Though she made neither sound nor motion to tell Caleb that she was awake, somehow he knew. He turned and looked toward the shelter.

«Coffee’s hot,» he said, looking back at the whetstone in his hands. The big blade of his hunting knife flashed as he stroked it over the stone. «You’ve got fifteen minutes until we ride. Hear me?»

Willow’s heart sank at the cold distance in his voice. «Yes, I hear you.»

When she returned from the forest, Caleb handed her a stick with a chunk of roasted meat skewered on it. Saying nothing, he went back to honing his knife. Automatically, she bit into the meat.

«Fresh venison,» Willow said, surprised.

Caleb grunted.

«But I didn’t hear a shot,» she pressed, wondering how far Caleb had walked to hunt deer. Gunfire carried for miles between the stone peaks.

«I didn’t use a gun.»

«Then how…?» She glared at him. «Caleb Black, you aren’t going to tell me you caught a deer the same way you caught those silly trout!»

«Not quite, southern lady.» Steel sang huskily against stone. «I used the knife.»

«You threw it?»

«That would be a damn fool thing to do, and despite the evidence yesterday, I’m not a damn fool.»

Willow flushed and tried to apologize. «Caleb, I didn’t mean —»

«I stalked the buck until I was close enough to cut its throat,» Caleb continued, ignoring her attempt to speak.

Her eyes widened in shock. «You what?»

«You heard me.»

«But that’s impossible.»

«You keep telling yourself that while you eat your venison. But don’t take too long over it. We’ve got a high pass to cross before it rains again.»

Calmly, Caleb tested the knife’s edge against the hair on his forearm. The blade was sharp enough to shave with. Satisfied, he returned the knife to its sheath, reached for the shotgun, and began methodically taking it apart an cleaning it.

Willow ate breakfast while she watched Caleb clean the shotgun, rifle, and six-gun. Clearly he was a man at home with the weapons. He worked quickly yet thoroughly, with an economy of motion that was fascinating to her. The skill, precision, and delicacy of his big hands made memories splinter inside her, showering her with sensations.

«Caleb,» she began huskily.

«Southern lady, do you suppose you could be bothered to get off your rump and groom your own horse? The kisses were nice enough, but I’m still not standing in line to be your maid.»

Caleb’s voice stung like a whip, making Willow angry at herself and at him. «That’s good, because I’m not standing in line for your kisses, either?»

She dropped her half-eaten venison in the fire and stalked out to the meadow.

Willow made no attempt to speak to Caleb again. They left the meadow in a silence broken only by the creak of saddles and the rhythmic beating of hooves. An hour into the ride, he reined in at the top of a long rise and let the horses blow while he carefully searched the area ahead with his spyglass. Then he took out his journal and filled in more of the blank spaces on the map he had been keeping of their route since Canyon City. When he finished, Willow still hadn’t come alongside. Impatiently he turned Trey and rode back to her.

«Come up where you can see,» he said.

Willow urged Dove to the top of the ridge. The view from there was breathtaking. Willow sat in rapt silence, looking out over the land.

Before her, a clearing in the forest stretched for miles between widely separated ranges of mountains. Aspen and evergreens defined the creases of the land and the flanks of the mountains, but most of the open area was covered in grass and wild flowers. A cobalt blue river coiled lazily through the park. Beaver ponds shimmered in shades of emerald and blue. Towering above it all, dominating even the untouched magnificence of the sky, were dark, ice-shattered peaks. Snow frosted the higher altitudes, gradually thickening into the glittering white of year-roundicefields.

«See over to the left, where those two peaks look like a dog with one chewed ear?» Caleb asked.

«Yes.»

«I want you to ride along the left side of the park, heading for the peak that looks chewed. If you see anything you don’t like, run for the forest. If anyone comes after you, use the shotgun on whatever is within range.»

Willow looked from the mountains to the man who was sitting on his horse only few feet away from her, yet even the remote peaks seemed closer.

«Where…» her voice tore. She cleared her throat and tried again, forcing herself to be clam when the thought of being abandoned made her shake. «After the peak, where do I go?»

The fear in Willow’s voice was too raw to hide completely. Caleb heard it and knew what she was thinking.

«I’m not cutting and running,» he said coldly. «Maybe that’s how the men you’re used to act, but I’m not one of your fancy men, am I? When I give my word I keep it.»

Looking everywhere but at Caleb’s savage yellow eyes, Willow nodded.

«When I was out hunting, I saw signs of a deer kill,» Caleb continued in a clipped voice. «Maybe a day old, maybe more. Wolves had been at it, but I could tell it was killed by a man.»

«Indians?»

«Renegades,» Caleb said flatly. «Some horses were shod and some were barefoot. Only bunch I know like that areComanchero ‘traders’. Raiders is more like it. They have a lot of Taos lightning with them.»

«What’s that?»

«Tangle-leg, tarantula juice, booze,» he explained impatiently.

«Oh, whiskey.»

Caleb grunted. «Call it what you will, they had so much of it they left a half-inch in one of the bottles.»

Willow frowned. She had heard ofComancheros, and none of what she had heard was good. They were indeed renegades of the worst sort — a mixture of white and Mexican outlaws, tribeless Indians, andhalfbreeds who bowed to neither white nor Indian law.

«Don’tComancheros usually stay farther south?» she asked hopefully.

«Only when the Army chases them there. There’s damn all worth stealing in the Mexican desert, and a lot ofComancheros looking to steal it. The Army has been too busy fighting rebels to waste any time on Indians and raiders, but now that the War Between the States is over, the Army is back. Things will get real lively before theUtes are herded onto some reservation. While the Army is busy, theComancheros will scavenge around the edges like the coyotes they are.»

Uneasily, Willow looked at the open space stretching before her, mile upon mile of beautiful grassland that must certainly be a natural gathering point for people riding through the rugged mountains, looking for easy passage.

«Pretty, isn’t?» Caleb asked, watching the land with a faint possessiveness. «You can’t see it from here, but there’s a year-round stream coming down off that rocky ridge. A man could put a house in over there and have a clear field of fire on three sides and country only a mountain goat could cross on the fourth. The water is sweet and plentiful.»

The mixture of emotions in Caleb’s voice made Willow turn from the land to him. He loved the land. Even as he described its dangers, his voice caressed its possibilities.

«If a man built his house in the right place, he wouldn’t have to get shot to fill a bucket.» Caleb continued. «Cattle could graze the high country in summer and hay could be cut from the lowlands for the winter. After a few years of hard work, a man would have himself as fine a spread as any Virginia gentleman ever did.»

Willow looked at the country again, but this time through Caleb’s eyes, seeing places to be ambushed or to hide, places that could be defended and others that would be easily overrun.

«Do you always think like that?» she asked.

«I’ve wanted to raise cattle for ten years. It’s just a matter of finding the right place and getting the money to begin.»

«No, I meant do you always think about fighting?»

Caleb gave Willow a sideways look that was part amusement and mostly disbelief. «Southern lady, anyone who wants to survive out here thinks like that. It’s second nature, like remembering landmarks infrontand in back of you, because everything looks different going than it did coming. But coming or going, this is as pretty a land as God ever made, and wild enough to be home to the devil himself. If a man doesn’t keep his eyes peeled and his ears pricked out here, he’ll end up stone cold dead.»

«Then why do you want to ranch here?»

Caleb’s smile offered neither comfort nor real humor. «Back East and in California, other men already own the good land. Not here. Here a man can have as much good land as he’s willing to fight for. I’m not a bad fighter, Willow, and not a bad hand with cattle, either.»

«Is that what you want — to homestead land here and be a rancher?»

Caleb nodded absently, again watching the country rather than the woman who was watching him.

«You can find some mountains and parks like these a few days south of the San Juan country,» he said. «The grazing is fine, but you’d be combing Apaches andComanches out of your hair every sunrise, and your cattle would have more arrows than a porcupine has quills. Not much pleasure in that, or profit.»

For the space of several breaths Willow looked at the land, then back at the hard-faced man who was watching every shift of breeze through forest and grass, his clear gaze sifting each motion to find one made by man. Or rather, men.

Comancheros.

Uneasiness prickled through Willow. She hadn’t expected the West to be civilized, but she hadn’t really understood what such a total lack of civilization meant, either. In some ways it was rather like being at war. Constant vigilance was needed, for inattention could be fatal. That didn’t bother Willow greatly, for she had become used to living on edge during the war. She had become good at listening for sounds, at sleeping lightly, at sliding away into the forest with her mother at the first hint of danger.

But this wide, wild, extraordinary land wasn’t like her farm. Here she was dependent on Caleb’s strength, fighting skills, and knowledge in a way that frightened her.

He warned me it would be like this, Willow toldherself. Hetold me in plain English.

She shivered as the echoes of a past conversation whispered through her mind oncemore. WhereI’m taking you there’s no law at all. Out in those mountains a man takes care of himself because no one else will do it for him.

And a woman? What does she do?

A woman finds a man tough enough to protect her and the kids she’ll bear him.

It seemed far more than a handful of days since Willow had heard and disregarded Caleb’s warning, thinking that whatever lay ahead couldn’t be more dangerous than the war she had already survived. It seemed a lifetime since she had ridden out of Denver’s rude comforts into a land that grew more wild with each westward step.

Yet, even knowing that, she wouldn’t have traded one of those steps for the safety of the East she had left. Despite the danger, there was something in the wild horizons of the Rockies that lifted her heart and made her soul sing.

Willow closed her eyes and absorbed the small sounds of the land around her. One of the horses snorted and stamped. A saddle creaked as Caleb shifted his weight. A bird called off in the meadow. There was no smell of smoke, of sawn lumber, of turned earth. The breeze carried scents untainted by man, becoming a river of life rushing softly around her, caressing her.

«Damn it, Willow, I said I would be back. Don’t you believe me?»

Startled, she opened her eyes. «Of course I believe you.»

«Then what’s wrong?»

«Nothing,» she said, smiling almost sadly. «Not the way you mean. It’s just that…» Her voice faded. «Suddenly I realized that I love this clean, wild land, even if it isn’t very safe.» She smiled with lips that wanted to tremble. «The idea takes a little getting used to.»

Caleb studied Willow with a sudden, fierce intensity, but said only, «If you wanted to be safe, you should have stayed home.»

«Yes,» she whispered. «I know. Don’t worry, Caleb. Whatever happens is on my head, not yours. I might not have known what I was coming to, but I knew what I was leaving behind.»

Caleb waited.

Willow said nothing more. She simply looked out over the land and measured the bittersweet pleasure of having realized part of her dream of finding a new home, only to discover that the land might not be possible for a woman living alone. It wasn’t like the more gently made country of her childhood. Yet the gentle land had been ravaged beyond her ability to bring it back.

«What are you thinking?» Caleb asked quietly.

«I was tired of the wounded, worn land,» Willow said slowly. «I wanted to see the Mississippi rolling broad-shouldered down to an unknown ocean. I wanted to see a treeless plain stretching from horizon to horizon with buffalo a great brown river winding through shoulder-high grass. I wanted to see the Rockies thrown like a magnificent stone gauntlet across the plains.»

Willow’s voice faded as she thought of other things she had wanted, to see a face that was kin to her or at least not enemy, to see her favorite brother, to laugh with him, to remember a time when she wasn’t alone. She wanted…She shook her head slowly, for she wanted things that had no words, simply a longing as deep as her soul and as endless as night.

Slowly, Willow let out her breath and accepted that, whatever happened, she was more alive here than she would have been in West Virginia. Nothing had ever called to her in quite the way the mountain landscape did, except the man who rode beside her. Like the mountain, Caleb was hard, unexpected, often baffling. And like the mountains, being with him offered moments of warmth and wild beauty. She turned and smiled gently at him.

«Go do what you must,» Willow said softly. «I’m all right now.»

Caleb hesitated before he pulled a big pocket watch from his pants and handed it to Willow. «Give me fifteen minutes head start. Then come on at a smart trot.»

Willow’s fingers tightened around the watch. The metal was smooth, burnished, and radiated the heat of Caleb’s body into her cold hand. Memories exploded in her, memories of being kissed, of his beard brushing against her sensitive skin, of his powerful body molded to hers, of his hand between her legs, shocking and caressing her in the same searing instant. Sensations rippled through her, making her tremble.

To have come so close with both the land and the man, and then to know how easily both could be lost…Willow bit her lip and bowed her head.

«Don’t worry,» Caleb said, moved despite himself by Willow’s fear and her fight against giving in to it. «I won’t be far off. If you hear gunfire, go to ground and wait for me to find you.»

«What if — what if you don’t?»

«I will. I didn’t live this long to be killed by some no-account, drunkenComanchero.»

Caleb tugged his hat down and lifted the reins. His big horse moved off at a canter, leaving Willow alone. Motionless, she watched while Caleb cast for sign along the left side of the clearing, working back and forth until he vanished in a depression in the wide, gently rolling park. He reappeared a few minutes later, only to drop from sight once more.

When the fifteen minutes were up, Willow drew the shotgun from its scabbard, laid the weapon across her lap, and started down thelefthand side of the basin at a hard trot. The horses strung out behind her, prodded by Ishmael to keep the pace.

It was two hours before Caleb rejoined Willow and rode by her side through the grass at the edge of the forest. The land was still open, still spacious, a wide, wide river of grass flowing between lofty dams of stone.

«See anything?» she asked.

«Tracks,» he said succinctly. «Four horses. One shod. They’re either hunting deer, hunting us, or hunting someone else.»

«How can you tell?»

«They were doing the same thing I was doing — casting around for sign.»

«Where are they now?»

«They split two and two. One set of tracks cut to the left behind us. The other cut off to the right along a branch of the river. There’s a good pass at the head of that branch. If it weren’t for those two gunnies, I’d have brought us in that way. It’s closer to where we’re going. As it is, we’ll go over the divide in a few days.»

«The Great Divide?» Willow asked breathlessly.

Caleb smiled at her excitement. «Comancheroscrawling all over and you hardly turn a hair, but you get excited over one more mountain pass.»

«All my life the rivers have gone to the Atlantic Ocean. To see water that’s going to the Pacific…» Willow laughed with delight. «I know it’s foolish, but I can’t help it. I grew up with letters from my brothers telling me about China, where a whole city is made of dhows tied together in the harbor, and the Sandwich Isles, where the waves are bigger than the barn before the rebels burned it, and Australia, where there’s an ocean reef bigger than the Thirteen Colonies put together, and all I ever saw was West Virginia sunrises, chickens scratching in the kitchen garden, and a haze over the hills.»

Caleb grinned, intrigued by Willow’s excitement. «Sounds like wanderlust runs in your family. No wonder you had the gumption to come looking for your fancy man when he wrote for you.»

«I’d have come anyway,» Willow admitted. «I couldn’t bear home anymore. There was nothing left but memories of a better time.»

Willow fell silent after that. Caleb didn’t try to lure her into more conversation. It was safer that way, both for his alertness and for keeping the distance he knew was necessary between himself and Reno’s woman. It was far too easy to like Willow, to enjoy her laughter and her silences, to remember what it had been like to feel her body soften and turn to warm, sweet honey in his arms.

Fancy woman. That’s all she is. Sweet Jesus, why can’t I remember that when I look at her? Why is she under my skin and in my blood?

The answer was as simple and as indelible as the instant his hand had slid between thin layers of cotton and felt the sultry woman heat of her licking over his fingertips. He had never had a woman want him that much, that fast, that hot. The memory of it hardened him in a bittersweet rush, leaving him achingly aware of just how much a man he could be with a woman like Willow Moran.

Caleb wrenched his attention from what he couldn’t have to the huge mountain park spreading away on three sides. From time to time he slowed the pace to a walk and checked their position against the peaks. Once he took a compass, a pencil, and his father’s frayed, leatherbound journal from his saddlebags. After a few minutes he drew out his own journal. He compared the compass readings with the lines he had written three years ago, compared his drawing with the peaks to the left, and nodded. Although he had not ridden this side of the peaks before, he knew where he was.

«Where are we headed?» Willow asked, coming alongside.

It was the first word either of them had spoken in several hours. Neither one had found the silence uncomfortable. They were accustomed to their own company.

«You tell me,» Caleb said dryly. «The SanJuans are south and west of us. We could go pretty much straight south between ranges for a few days and cut across just north of San Luis peak. Or we could go over the divide west of here and then go south. Or we could do a little of both.»

«Which is quicker?»

He shrugged. «Going south might be easier but would take longer. Going west would be easy for a day, then there’s a long climb over the divide and some zigzagging on the other side. Depends on whether your man really is on one of the Gunnison’s tributaries or if maybe he’s on the Animas or the Dolores or the San Miguel or any of ten other rivers worth naming.»

Willow hesitated. «The Gunnison is the only river Matt mentioned, but I’m not sure he’s on a direct tributary. He did say there’s a hot spring and a creek and a high, tiny valley surrounded by mountain peaks except for a really steep climb to the entrance.»

Caleb made a sound of disgust. «You’ve just described the whole damned San Juan region. Mountains and hot springs. Hell, there are hot springs all around us now and we’re not even there yet.»

«What about the valley?»

«It’s called a hanging valley and the Rockies are full of them.»

«A hanging valley?» she asked, frowning. «What’s that?»

«See that ridge off to the right, on the same line as the beaver pond?»

«Yes.»

«Look straight up from there.»

After a minute Willow said, «All I can see is a cascade jumping down the mountain.»

«That’s it. Hanging valleys are hidden, but the creeks that drain them aren’t.»

«I don’t understand.»

Caleb frowned. «It’s like someone broke a valley in half or quarters, set each piece like astairstep up the mountainside, and then strung them together with a creek. Since there’s no exit or entrance to the valleys but a waterfall or a steep cascade, and they overhang the park below, they’re called hanging valleys. Good places to graze cattle in the summer, if you can find a way to get cows into them. Hell in the winter, though. Snow comes early, piles deep, and stays late.»

Willow thought about it, then shook her head. «That doesn’t sound like Matt. He hated cold weather.»

«Is he a farmer?»

«If he were, he would have stayed in West Virginia,» Willow said dryly. «We — that is, the Moran family — owned several big farms before the war.»

«Is he a cattleman?»

She shook her head.

«Trapper?»

She shook her head again.

Caleb grunted. «I hear there’s gold in some of those high creeks.»

Willow flinched.

«God above,» Caleb said in disgust. «I should have known. Your fancy man is whoring after gold.»

She said nothing.

«Well, that explains it,» he muttered.

«What?»

«Why he left you,» Caleb said succinctly. «A man obsessed by yellow metal doesn’t give a damn for anything else — not wife, not child, nothing but the golden bitch.»

And least of all would he care for an innocent girl who gave her love and her body with never a thought for the future, Caleb thoughtgrimly. Poorlittle Rebecca. She never had a chance.

«Matt isn’t like that,» Willow said.

«Then why did he leave you alone so long that you forgot how to kiss a man? He should have come and gotten you when the war started,» Caleb said flatly, «and you know it as well as I do.»

There were other thoughts as well, ones he didn’t dare speakaloud. IfReno had been with Willow during the war, he wouldn’t have been in New Mexico, seducing my sister. He would have had his own fancy lady to take care of his lusts.

The condemnation in Caleb’s face was clear to Willow. She flushed, but said nothing. If she had been Matt’s wife, what Caleb said would have been true. But she was only Matt’s sister. Like his brothers, Matt had been gone more than ten years with just a few brief visits in between travels. He had no ties to North or South. He was owned by his love of the uninhabited West and the gold that winked like captured sunlight in wild mountain streams.

Silence returned until Caleb reined in abruptly, brought the spyglass to his eye, and swore viciously under his breath. He scanned the countryside all around but saw no other men. The two he had spotted cantered toward him openly, making no attempt to conceal their presence.

«What is it?» Willow asked after a moment.

«Comancheros. Two of them. Get out the shotgun. Don’t make a fuss about it, but keep it pointed between the two men. If they split up, you keep track of the one on the left. If he goes for a gun, give him both barrels and be quick about it. Hear me?»

«Yes,» Willow said tightly. «But I–I’ve never shot a man.»

Caleb’s smile was like a knife sliding from its sheath. «Don’t worry, southern lady. These aren’t men. They’re coyotes jumping around on their crooked hind legs.»

He pulled the rifle from its saddle scabbard, slipped the thong from his six-shooter, and waited. Nothing else was said while they watched the riders grow from pea-sized dots to life size. Willow thought theComancheros were going to gallop right over them, but at the last minute they reined in so sharply that their ponies sat hard on their hocks.

The ponies were small, unshod, and thin as slats. Despite that, they weren’t sweating or breathing hard from their long gallop through the meadow. Like the horses, the men were small, wiry, tough, and of mixed blood. The men were also dirty, edgy, and heavily armed. The man on the right was blond and blue-eyed beneath months of grime. The man on the leftwasmestizo.

From twenty feet away, the blue-eyed man called out, «Ola, Manfrom Yuma.»

«I see you, Nine Fingers,» Caleb said. «You’re a long way from where we last met.»

TheComanchero smiled, revealing one tooth of gold above and one black gap below. He looked at Willow. The blunt lust in his eyes made her skin cold.

«How much for her?» Nine Fingers asked.

«She’s not for sale.»

«I’ll give you a fat poke of gold.»

«No.»

Nine Fingers gave Willow another long appraisal. «Then how about I just rent her for a time?»

Caleb shifted slightly in the saddle. When Nine Fingers looked away from Willow, there was a six-shooter in Caleb’s right hand and a rifle in his left. At this range, the pistol was the more deadly of the two weapons.

«You’re a mite jumpy,» Nine Fingers said.

«Yes.»

Caleb’s voice was mild despite the rage tightening his gut. No woman, even one who was no better than she had to be, deserved what was in Nine Fingers’ pale blue eyes. The thought of theComanchero even looking at Willow, much less touching her with his filthy hands, made Caleb’s finger tighten on the six-gun’s trigger.

«Well, I guess I would be edgy, too, was I riding shotgun on a prime piece of woman-flesh and seven prime pieces of horseflesh.»

The otherComanchero spoke abruptly to Caleb. «You want Reno? I see him. I take you.»

«No thanks. I’m on another job right now.»

Nine Fingers laughed gutturally and said something to his friend about the Man from Yuma riding a yellow-haired pony harder and longer than a white-eyes fleeingComancheros.

Caleb looked quickly at Willow, wondering if she understood the mixture of coarse Spanish and Indian words. Her expression hadn’t changed.

«Seeing as howwe’reamigos, how about we ride that yellow pony for you,» offered Nine Fingers in English, spurring his horse closer as he spoke. «Then you’ll have time to chase Reno.»

The sound of the revolver being cocked was startlingly clear. Nine Fingers yanked back on the reins. The otherComanchero spoke quickly.

«You no want shoot, Yuma man. Bad men near. Ver ’ bad. Hear gun and come hell-running you bet.»

«That won’t be your problem,» Caleb said, looking at the twoComancheros. «You’ll be dead before the first echo comes back from the mountain.»

Nine Fingers smiled. «Short Dog is telling you the truth. Jed Slater is looking for you. He is purely pissed about the moniker you hung on his little brother. Kid Coyote.» Nine Fingers laughed with real amusement. «Old Jed promised to send you to Hell.»

Caleb shrugged. «He isn’t the first.»

«He’s talking about a big bounty on your scalp.»

«Coyotes talk a lot, too.»

Nine Fingers kept talking. «Not like this. Every bounty hunter between here and the Sangre deCristos will come ahelling, hoping to lift your scalp. Four hundred Yankee dollars for the man that kills you. A thousand Yankee dollars for the man who brings you to Jed alive.»

«You’re welcome to try,» Caleb said.

«Much money,» Short Dog said.

«Much trouble,» Caleb retorted. «Dead men spend no dollars.»

Nine Fingers laughed deeply and looked at his companion. «Esmuy hombre, no?»

Short Dog grunted and watched the barrel of the shotgun, which Willow had kept pointed between the twoComancheros. He urged his horse a few steps to the side. The shotgun barrel followed him.

«If Short Dog moves his hands, shoot him,» Caleb said to Willow without looking away from Nine Fingers.

She said nothing. She simply cocked the shotgun with a quick motion that spoke of familiarity. TheComancheros traded glances.

«Now don’t get your water hot,» Nine Fingers said, watching Willow intently. «We’re not hunting any tombstones. But think on this, little lady. If you come with us real easy like, we’ll be real easy like with you. If you wait until your man’s killed to be good to us, we won’t be listening to your begging. We’ll take you, strip you naked, and when we get tired of you we’ll sell you to the highest bidder between here and Sonora.»

Willow never looked away from Short Dog’s hands.

Nine Fingers smiled reluctantly. «Takes orders good, don’t she? I like that in a whore.»

«Ride or die,» Caleb said flatly.

«Adios.»

«TheComancheros spun their ponies on their hocks and galloped off in the direction they had come — the same direction Caleb and Willow had to go in order to cross over the Great Divide and pick up the trail into San Juan country.

Caleb watched until theComancheros angled across to therighthand margin of the clearing and vanished into a fold in the rolling land. As he holstered his six-gun and put the thong in place, the sound of three, closely spaced pistol shots echoed back through the park. Caleb said a savage word under his breath and waited, listening intently. The distant, flat echo of triple rifle shots came from the right. Instants later, from behind and to the right, came the faint sound of more gunfire.

«That tears it,» Caleb said. «Put the shotgun away and get ready to ride like the hounds of Hell are coming after us — because they will be as soon as Nine Fingers meets up with his friends.»