We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

  The harmonica wailed to an end and Jake threw himself on the grave, sobbing. He was crazed with grief and filled with the hunger to strike out and maim and kill.

  At that moment he was the most dangerous man on earth.

  Chapter 18

  Sam Sawyer followed the river trail west along the bank of the Gila, then looped to the south as the massive bulk of Watson Mountain blocked his path.

  He had lost blood and felt as weak as a day-old kitten, and the pain of his wounded ribs gave him no peace. Sweat beaded his forehead, and shimmering heat waves banked around him, adding to his misery.

  Under a pitiless sun, riding through the thin air, Sam looped west again into the Canyon Hills at the foot of the Pinos Altos Range. He desperately needed a place to hole up and treat his wound.

  Sam drew rein and looked around him. He saw little but mountain peaks and the green swath of high timber under the hazy bowl of the sky.

  Born of the Mogollon Mountains to the northwest, a sudden wind took Sam by surprise. Around him mesquite and juniper clicked their branches, and higher on the Pinos Altos slopes aspen trembled, to the amused rustle of the swaying pines.

  The wind grew in intensity, and Sam felt the sting of desert sand on his face. Shredded leaves and pine needles cartwheeled around him, and the sorrel grew restive and tossed its head, jangling the bit.

  The horse had begun its career as a cow pony, and from the dim shadows of its memory came the recollection that this was stampede weather, and dangerous.

  Roaring now, the wind pummeled Sam as he swung out of the saddle and led the sorrel toward what he hoped was the mouth of a narrow arroyo. He had no confidence in his sight, and he might well be heading straight for a U-shaped slab of dark rock.

  A loud crack! cut through the deeper bellow of the storm as the wind snapped a ponderosa pine. The tree toppled over and bled sap from a splintered stump.

  Spooked, the sorrel reared, frightened arcs of white in its eyes.

  “Easy, boy, easy,” Sam said, holding on to the reins for grim life.

  But weakened as he was by loss of blood, the reins wrenched out of his hands as the big sorrel reared again, this time twisting its head away.

  The horse turned, felt the wind under its tail, and bolted. It skirted the foothills, and Sam quickly lost sight of the animal as it galloped south.

  Cussing under his breath, he made for what he believed was the arroyo.

  To his unbounded joy, it was.

  * * *

  The rocky gully was narrow, not much wider than a slot canyon, and it was choked with brush and cactus. Sam had trouble making his way deeper as he searched for a place out of the wind where he could sit and rest.

  Mesquite and juniper grew on top of sheer rock walls that were about ten feet high. Above Sam’s head the trees rustled and creaked, hammered by gusts that shrieked like banshees.

  After about twenty yards, the arroyo opened up into a small amphitheater enclosed by tall spikes of raw white rock. Here there was grass, but no sign of water.

  Sam found a spot in the lee of the wind, sat down, and gratefully fetched his back against the warm rock. He reached for the makings, remembered that he no matches, and felt the bitter disappointment that only a smoking man knows.

  Steeling himself for the worst, he slipped his canvas suspenders off his shoulders and opened his shirt. Shifting his body around, he craned his head to inspect his wound.

  It didn’t look good. In fact, it seemed real bad.

  His entire left side was thick with dried blood, and when he touched his ribs the pain took his breath away and made him wince.

  “Blast it, Sam,” he said. “I reckon you’re shot through and through like you thought.”

  He had no water to bathe the wound and figured it wouldn’t help anyway. Maybe he was done for. Maybe he was breathing his last, and him without a smoke.

  Sadder still, his shirt was ruined, and he bitterly regretted the forty-five cents he’d paid for it in El Paso just a couple of years before.

  It had been a real nice shirt.

  * * *

  A ravening wind is the wild, bastard child of a high-country thunderstorm, and Sam heard distant rumbles as the sky turned to molten lead.

  There was no shelter in the clearing and he knew to steer clear of the few stunted trees that grew here and there. Up in the Spur Lake country he’d once seen a horse and rider killed by lightning after they took shelter under a wild oak, and the memory lived with him.

  Sam drew up his knees and bent his head, waiting for what was to come. Good or bad, he no longer cared.

  Lightning scrawled across the sky like the signature of a demented pagan god.

  Then came thunder.

  Then came the rain.

  The downpour battered Sam’s shoulders and rattled on his hat like a kettledrum. The clearing seared white in the lightning flashes, and the rain-running rock shimmered like wet steel. Thunder slammed into the arroyo, echoing like a cannonade, and he heard another pine groan, then break.

  Sam wrapped his arms around his chest, trying to make himself small, miserable in his loneliness.

  Hunched against the storm as Sam was, the rider took him by surprise.

  Chapter 19

  A boom of thunder that rattled the door of the dugout wakened Hannah Stewart from uneasy sleep.

  Rain hissed around her like a baby dragon under a rock, and lightning flared though the inch-wide gap between the door and jamb.

  She rose from a pile of sacking, stepped to the door, pressed her face to a gap, and looked outside. As far as she could tell, her view confined to a narrow slit, the only thing moving out there was the rain.

  There was no sign of Vic Moseley or the Wells brothers.

  Earlier—had it been an hour ago or a day?—she’d heard shooting, and much later the sound of horses moving out. Did that mean Moseley and the others were gone, at least for a while?

  Hannah had no answer to that question, but it didn’t really matter. Lori was still held captive, either in the saloon or the women’s quarters, and she had to find her.

  The heavy door presented a problem, since she didn’t have the strength to force it open.

  Waiting for lightning flashes to illuminate her way, she searched around the dugout. She found nothing but a rusty steel eating fork and some coiled rope.

  The fork she could use.

  The outside bolt was a heavy piece of timber that slotted into a U-shaped iron bracket. About an inch of the bolt showed between the ill-fitting door and the jamb.

  Hannah slipped the head of the fork into the space. She jabbed the prongs into the timber and tried to use them to ease back the bolt.

  It didn’t work. The tines were too blunt and fragile to penetrate the tough pine.

  She tried again, with the same result—the bolt refused to budge.

  Frowning, Hannah thumbed the prongs. Then she stepped to the rear wall of the dugout. Her face set in concentration, she began to scrape the steel handle of the fork against the rock.

  * * *

  After an hour of steady work, Hannah stepped to the door again and looked outside. The storm still raged. The rain that lashed in torrents across the ledge in front of the dugouts had already turned the dirt to mud. Here and there amid the downpour, puddles had formed, erupting all over in jolting Vs of water.

  No one would dare venture outside, and Hannah returned to her task.

  It took another hour of steady work before she managed to hone a passable point on the fork handle.

  She held the fork up to watery light slanting through the door and studied its sharpness. Hannah made a face. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do.

  Stepping to the door again, she rammed the sharpened fork into the timber with all the strength she could muster. This time the point sank about an eighth of an inch into the wood, and Hannah felt a little thrill of triumph.

  She pushed on the fork and then tried to start the bolt sliding back. It moved just a fraction. But it was a start.

  Another try and it moved again.

  A full hour passed before Hannah worked the bolt back enough that it slid out of the iron bracket and the door swung open on creaking hinges. Her fingers ached and the tines of the fork had dug into her right palm, raising painful welts. But now she was free to find her child and leave this terrible place.

  Hannah slipped the fork into the pocket of her dress as a weapon, hiked up her skirts, and ran into the raking rain.

  * * *

  The door to the adobe was closed against the weather, but Hannah didn’t hesitate. Strands of wet hair falling over her face, she slammed the door open and rushed inside, the sharpened fork in her right hand.

  The three women were startled. They’d been sitting on a cot, apparently deep in conversation, and now they jumped to their feet.

  Hannah waved her makeshift weapon. “Where is my daughter?” she said. “Where is Lori?”

  Lorelei was the first to recover from Hannah’s dramatic entrance. “Put the sticker down, schoolma’am, and we’ll talk,” she said.

  Hannah looked around her. “For Pete’s sake, where is she?”

  “The kid’s safe,” Lorelei said.

  “Where is she?”

  “In the saloon, with Matt Laurie, the bartender,” Lorelei said. “Moseley told him to keep an eye on her.”

  Hannah immediately turned to leave, but the other woman’s voice stopped her.

  “Wait!” she said. “Laurie is as mean as a snake and he’s got himself an L. C. Smith scattergun that’s both wife and child to him. He’ll kill a woman just as fast as he will a man.”

  “He’s done it before,” said another woman, a small blonde with dark shadows under her eyes. She said to Lorelei, “Remember Mary Sullivan?”

  Lorelei didn’t answer, her eyes reading Hannah’s face. “No matter what, you’re going into the saloon to get your daughter back, ain’t you?”

  “Yes,” Hannah said, an angry mama cougar in search of her cub. “And I’m doing it right now.”

  “Then I’m coming with you,” Lorelei said.

  “Please, you don’t have to risk—”

  “I’m coming with you,” Lorelei said. “For once in my life, let me try and do something decent.”

  “Lorelei, if you cross him, Matt Laurie will kill you fer sure,” the blonde said, alarmed. “You know how he is. He’s crazy.”

  Lorelei took a Remington derringer from the drawstring purse she kept under her bed.

  “He’ll kill me if I don’t kill him first,” she said. “And yes, I remember Mary Sullivan. How could I forget her? She was my sister.”

  Chapter 20

  The two women stepped out of the adobe into teeming rain. The thunderstorm lingered. Lightning slashed across the iron gray sky, and thunder growled and roared like a bee-stung bear.

  Their high-button boots splashing through water and mud, Hannah and Lorelei ran for the saloon.

  Lorelei stopped at the door and said, “Are you ready?”

  Hannah didn’t trust her voice not to shake and she settled for a quick nod.

  “No matter what I say, you go along with it, understand?” Lorelei said.

  She looked for a reply in Hannah’s pale face, and repeated, “Do you understand?”

  Hannah nodded, and Lorelei said, “Then let’s do it, schoolma’am.”

  Lorelei opened the door and Hannah followed her inside.

  Matt Laurie was quick and he wasn’t a trusting man. He reached behind the bar and laid his shotgun on the counter.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Lorelei?” he said. His eyes moved to Hannah. “Who let you out?”

  “I did,” Lorelei said. She smiled, moving a wisp of damp hair off her forehead. “We both felt the need for company, Matt.”

  Laurie was suspicious. It was obvious by the stiff way he held himself and the closeness of his hand to the shotgun. But a woman can cloud a man’s thinking.

  “What kind of company do you have in mind, Lorelei?” he said. He brushed his mustache with his forefinger, and his black eyes glittered.

  “Where’s my daughter?” Hannah demanded.

  The bartender jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back there in the storeroom. Nothing to harm her but whiskey barrels and maybe rats.”

  “I’m going to her,” Hannah said. She crossed the floor, her heels thudding on the saloon’s stone floor.

  Laurie’s shotgun came up. “Sheriff Moseley says nobody sees the brat until he gets back, so stay right where you’re at. I got all kinds of faith in this here scattergun.”

  Moving quickly, Lorelei crossed the floor, getting between Hannah and the shotgun. “Don’t mind the schoolma’am, Matt,” she said.

  “I don’t want no trouble with her, Lorelei,” Laurie said. “I don’t want no trouble with Dan Wells either.”

  “There will be no trouble, Matt,” Lorelei said. “Hannah’s just upset about her kid. She’ll get over it.”

  “Sheriff Moseley says she can see the kid when he gets back,” the bartender said. “That’s what he told me, and I do as he says.”

  Lorelei glared at Hannah, her eyes telegraphing her concern.

  “Well, that’s just fine, isn’t it?” she said. “You can wait until Vic gets back, can’t you, schoolma’am, you being his picked woman an’ all?”

  “Hell, Lorelei, I don’t want no trouble with Vic Moseley either,” Laurie said.

  “Tell you what, Matt,” Lorelei said. “Why don’t you come over here and give me a kiss?”

  Laurie’s eyes went to the dugout’s only glazed window, and for a few moments he watched the rain stream down the panes. “Well . . . ,” he said.

  “A big, strong man like you,” Lorelei said, with a dove’s professional sincerity.

  Laurie grinned. His teeth were few in number, and those that remained were black. “Then let’s get her done,” he said, talking through saliva.

  “Then come out from behind the counter, you big lug,” Lorelei said, smiling.

  Made careless by desire, Laurie left the counter . . . and walked belly-first into a .41-caliber bullet.

  The man’s face was stricken as he staggered back.

  “Lorelei, you gut-shot me,” he said, his eyes shocked, unbelieving.

  “So I did,” the woman said, smoke trickling from the little gun in her hand.

  Lorelei’s face showed no emotion, and watching her, Hannah felt a shiver. How could a woman kill that way? So coldly, as though she had no soul?

  It seemed that Matt Laurie was just as dumbstruck. The hand he held to his belly seeped blood through his fingers, and his face was ashen.

  “Why?” he said. “Why did you do that?”

  “I always planned on killing you, Matt,” Lorelei said as she loaded another bullet in her gun. “Right now seemed as good a time as any.”

  Bent over his wound, Laurie backed toward the bar.

  “I never did nothing to you, Lorelei.”

  The woman smiled, humorless as a hangman.

  “Remember Mary Sullivan, the little gal who loved to sing, Matt? Remember how you cut her in half with your shotgun when she tried to leave you after you beat her one time too many? You remember that?”

  “She was nothing to you,” Laurie said.

  “She was my sister.”

  Laurie turned and made a staggering reach for the shotgun.

  Lorelei fired again, and this time the man went down and then rolled onto his back, staring at her.

  “Get your daughter,” Lorelei yelled to Hannah, her face wreathed in gray gun smoke.

  Hannah stepped warily around Laurie. Then she ran for the storeroom behind the bar.

  After Hannah left, Lorelei got a bottle of whiskey from the bar and tossed it onto Laurie’s prone body.

  “You’ve got two bullets in your belly, Matt,” she said. “And you’ll be a long time a-dying. The whiskey won’t make it any easier, but in your case it’ll stand in place of prayers.”

  “Curse you, Lorelei,” Laurie said through teeth gritted against pain. “Put one in between my eyes. Get it over with.”

  The woman shook her head. “Mister, the whiskey is as far as I go. I’m doing you no more favors.”

  * * *

  Hannah returned with Lori. The child seemed unharmed, though her eyes widened in terror and she clutched onto her mother when she saw the wounded man writhing on the floor.

  Lorelei grabbed the shotgun and motioned to Hannah to leave.

  “There are horses in the barn,” she said. “Saddle a couple while I round up some grub.”

  “What about him?” Hannah said.

  “What about him?”

  “Shouldn’t we help him?”

  “He’s beyond help,” Lorelei said. “I gave him a bottle. That’s all the help he gets.”

  Hannah opened her mouth to speak, but the other woman pushed her toward the door. “There’s no time for talking. Get the horses saddled. We sure as hell don’t want to be here when Moseley and Dan Wells get back.”

  * * *

  When Lorelei showed up at the barn, she carried a sack of supplies and a couple of yellow slickers. She wore two battered hats on her head.

  She tied the sack to her saddle horn, then handed one of the slickers to Hannah. “And this’ll keep the rain off that nice yellow hair,” she said, removing one of the shapeless hats. “Now let’s ride.”

  Hannah shrugged into the slicker and settled the hat on her head.

  “Now you don’t look so much like a schoolma’am,” Lorelei said. She smiled. “I don’t know what the hell you look like.”

 

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