The Border Breed (The Making of America , Book 19)
Lee Davis Willoughby
THE BORDER BREED
[From the back cover]
On both sides of the border in the 1840's, there were proud, passionate men and women willing to sacrifice their bodies and their souls for the things they believed in. Among these bold, often reckless people was Joel Falconer, a young Texas fire-eater who joins an expedition aiming to conquer New Mexico and break through to Santa Fe. When he finds his young bride brutalized and slain by a mystery man named Il Diablo, he embarks on a crusade of revenge that changes for all time the face of the West.
THE BORDER BREED Nineteenth in the best selling series--
Young Joel Falconer stood in the dusty road with his four fellow Texans, watching the Mexican captain, Salazar, ride between the ranks of lancers and draw his horse up to face the prisoners.
"From where do you ride?" he asked Lieutenant Howard.
"From Austin, Texas."
"How many men are in your army?" asked Salazar.
"We are five men," the Lieutenant said. "We come seeking a new route west to bring goods from Texas to exchange for gold and silver from Santa Fe and Chihuahua."
"Is that what your General Houston ordered you to say? Does he think we are children to trust the word of Texans?"
He drew his sword and raised it above his head. Instantly, twelve soldiers with rifles filed past Salazar and took up positions in two rows, facing the Texans.
Beside him, Joel Falconer heard his friend Hayes swear and saw him clench his fists.
"By God, they're going to shoot us!"
The Making of America Series
The Wilderness Seekers
The Mountain Breed
The Conestoga People
The Forty-Niners
Hearts Divided
The Builders
The Land Rushers
The Wild and the Wayward
The Texans
The Alaskans
The Golden Staters
The River People
The Landgrabbers
The Ranchers
The Homesteaders
The Frontier Healers
The Buffalo People
The Far Islanders
The Border Breed
THE BORDER BREED
Lee Davis Willoughby
A DELL/BRYANS BOOK
Published by
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
New York, New York 10017
Copyright © 1981 by John Toombs
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
ISBN: 0-440-00660-6
Printed in the United States of America
First printing--August 1981
3-2-36 The Texas Republic is proclaimed at Washington-on-the-Brazos 
3-6-36 Santa Anna's Mexican troops capture the Alamo, killing 183 Texans 
3-27-36 Fannin's Texas troops are murdered after surrendering at Goliad 
4-21-36 Sam Houston leads the Texans to victory at San Jacinto 
6-19-41 The Santa Fe Expedition leaves Austin 
9-17-41 The Expedition is betrayed near Santa Fe, New Mexico 
12-25-42 Texas irregulars attack Mier, Mexico 
12-29-45 Texas becomes the 28th State to enter the Union 
Presidents of the Texas Republic 
Sam Houston 1826-38 
Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar 1838-41 
Sam Houston 1841-44 
Anson Jones 1844-45 
Susanna paused and looked up from the table she was setting for supper.
"Joel," she said aloud as she listened to the sound of an approaching horse.
She smiled, feeling a surge of relief. Joel was back early from San Antonio.
"Don't expect me till after dark," he had told her that morning as he held her close, his lips lingering on hers, his fingers Lifting her lustrous golden hair to caress her neck.
"You'll be all right alone?" he'd asked.
She nodded, trying to smile. This would be the first time they'd been apart, even for a day, since their wedding in St. Louis three months ago.
"If you hear or see anyone," Joel warned, "anyone at all, go into the cabin and bolt the door. As long as you have the rifle, no one will bother you."
Susanna looked past him across the new-plowed fields to the river and the rolling prairie beyond. The sun was up; huge, yellow and hot in a blue and cloudless sky. 
She pushed a strand of hair from her forehead. "It's not likely I'll see a soul all day," she said. "How many people have I seen since we came here?" Now she did smile. "I can tell you exactly. Three. There was old Mr. McGregor .. ." 
"I warned you what Texas'd be like. Living in a cabin east of San Antone ain't like going to a girls' school in Illinois." 
"Joel," she said, waiting until he met her eyes before going on. "I'm not complaining, Joel. There's nowhere else on God's earth I want to be. As long as I'm with you." 
Susanna watched his face redden; this man was still able to surprise her, even after three months of marriage. He was so dashing, so good-looking, seemed so sure of himself; and yet she could make him blush with a few simple words. At times she felt years older than Joel rather than the same age: nineteen. 
Kissing her awkwardly on the cheek, he walked to where his horse, Ivanhoe, waited patiently. She called to him as he put his foot in the stirrup to swing into the saddle. 
"Come here, Joel." 
He glanced back at her, looped the reins over the horse's head and strode back up the slope to where she stood in front of the log cabin. 
"I love you, Joel," she said. 
He gathered her into his arms, kissing her until she felt excitement pound inside her. She drew away, breathing rapidly, and saw his brown eyes watching her, questioning her. Touching his cheek with her 
fingers, she leaned to him and breathed gently in his ear.
"Tonight," she whispered.
Susanna raised her husband's right hand to her lips, kissing his three fingers and the fold of skin where his little finger was missing. He looked down at her as though memorizing the way she looked, taking in her golden hair, light blue eyes, fair complexion, and her strong, generously curved body.
"You'll only be gone one day," she said. "It's not as though you're joining the militia and riding off to fight Comanches or Mexicans.''
Holding her tight, he buried his face in her hair. She felt him- shiver, a sudden tremor that came and went in a moment.
"Are you all right?" she asked. "You're not coming down with chills or fever?"
"It's . . . nothing," he said, shaking his head. "I love you, Sue."
She smiled. Her excitement was gone, now replaced by contentment Maybe that's what being married does, she told herself, cools the fever in the blood and leaves a deep, abiding warmth. And that's good because the fever comes and goes, while love lasts forever.
Joel kissed her quickly again, mounted Ivanhoe and rode from the yard with his pack horse following. She watched him take the muddy track along the river, saw him reach the top of the rise at the bend in the San Antonio where he turned and stood in the stirrups to wave to her. She waved back, the wind billowing the handkerchief in her hand.
As soon as Joel was out of sight, Susanna's uneasiness returned.
She stood in the cabin doorway and listened to the
birds in the cottonwoods, the faint murmur of the river, and the sound of the wind whispering around the cabin. She was alone with only the trees and the river and the wind and the vast sky arching overhead. She started to whistle a song she had heard soldiers singing on the steamer from St. Louis, "The Girl I Left Behind Me," when she remembered her mother's words:
"Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad end."
Whistling, nonetheless, Susanna went back into the cabin and began the work of the day.
Now, hearing the horse outside, she dismissed her earlier foreboding. She'd just have to set another place, she told herself, smiling as she recalled Joel's amusement when he saw her formal plate setting for their first meal in the cabin.
This ain't Mrs. Davidson's School for Girls," he'd said. "This is the Texas frontier."
"I don't care which it is, I'm not about to let myself grow slack. Besides, this won't be frontier forever. The Republic will become a state, they'll build railroads, and more and more people will come. You'll see."
Susanna heard footsteps approaching the cabin door and the jingle of spurs. Not Joel's steps, she realized, not Joel's spurs. Drawing in her breath she hurried to the window and drew aside the deerskin curtain.
The stranger, seeing movement in the window, stopped outside and stared in at her. He was of medium height and dressed in black, and the loop of his sweat-stained hat dangled under his bearded chin. Susanna thought he might be Mexican but she couldn't be sure. His eyes were narrowed, as though from
squinting into the sun, and his face was as brown and creased as well-worn leather.
They stared through the window at one another for a long moment before Susanna let the deerskin fall, and ran to the door to slide home the wooden bar. She stood with her back to the door, breathing deeply.
The man tapped on the door three times and waited, then knocked three times more. He didn't speak. When Susanna heard sounds like river birds squawking, she was puzzled. She stepped away from the door and turned to face it.
"Who are you?" she demanded in a low voice. "What do you want?"
There was no answer. The bearded stranger-knocked again, loudly and insistently. Susanna edged to the window and peered out through the crack where the wind parted the deerskin. The man was standing in front of the cabin, his mouth' opening and closing as though he was speaking, yet no words were audible. All she heard were sounds; guttural, hawking sounds. Susanna put her hand to her mouth, afraid she might cry out in fear.
The stranger glanced at the window and Susanna drew back, knowing he must have heard her. The man took his hat from his head and held it over his chest with one hand while he pointed at his open mouth with the other. She stared at him, frowning; and then the wind closed the crack at the edge of the deerskin curtain, and she could no longer see him.
Dismayed as much by her own panic as by the stranger, Susanna shook her head and walked resolutely to the door. She reached up, and lifted the rifle from the rack mounted on the wall above the lintel: the gun was loaded and she knew how to use it
"Who are you?" she asked again, louder this time, reassured by the rifle in her hands. "What do you want?"
Again, she was answered only by knocking and the wordless hawking sounds. Maybe he can't speak, Susanna told herself. Holding the rifle in one hand, she went to the window and pushed aside the deerskin. The man opened his mouth wide, letting her see the black cavity beyond his yellowed teeth. She gasped. He had no tongue.
"Do you want Joel?" she asked. "Joel Falconer?"
The man shook his head and began making spooning motions with his hand.
"You want food?" she asked and he nodded.
"Stand away from the door," she told him, "and I'll get you some victuals."
He nodded, backing off and putting his stained hat on his head, his lips twisting in a grimace that she took to be a smile. Susanna leaned the gun against the wall and hurried to the stove to ladle stew from the pot onto a tin plate.
In Texas, she'd found, a stranger could always stop at a nester's cabin or at a ranch or at one of the large cotton plantations and be certain of getting a free
meal and, if need be, even a place to sleep. Texas hospitality was warm and open-handed, unlike the cold, crabbed selfishness of the wintry north.
She paused with her hand on the bolt of the door, reminding herself to do nothing that would let this black-bearded stranger know she was alone. The man must realize by now that Joel wasn't in the cabin, but he might be in the fields close by.
She drew the door open with one hand, holding the tin plate in the other. The man was only a few yards away. Watching her. She glanced briefly at him and
then, kneeling quickly, put the plate on the ground.
"I'll bring you coffee," she told him.
When she returned with the steaming cup he was still standing where she had left him. As she placed the cup beside the plate, she saw him glance from her face to the open doorway behind her.
She retreated to the door, nodding at the plate and cup. The man squatted Indian-fashion on the ground and began to eat. Ignoring the fork on the plate, he plucked chunks of beef from the hot stew and stuffed them into his mouth. He looked up at her, nodding vigorously, and she could only guess he was thanking her for the food.
"You're welcome," she said, smoothing her apron awkwardly with her hands. Trying to smile at him, she slipped hurriedly into the cabin, shutting and barring the door behind her.
Susanna took a long, shuddering breath and sat at the table. She would wait, she. decided, until he rode off before she began to eat. She looked down at the single place setting and realized, with a flutter of apprehension, that the stranger must have seen the table set only for one.
Susanna took the rifle and laid it on the table in front of her. Joel will laugh at my fears, she told herself. This isn't the 1820s, he'd tell her, when the Indians were a constant threat to Stephen Austin's first three-hundred colonists; this isn't '36 with Santa Anna's troops marching north to wipe out a small band of Texas rebels at the Alamo. This is 1841.
Still she sighed with relief when the stranger's tin cup rattled on his empty plate. She heard his spurs jangle and the creak of saddle leather as his horse moved away in the direction of the river.
Going to the window, she saw horse and rider top
the rise and disappear into the gathering dusk. For a moment she wondered how the man had lost his tongue, remembering tales of Indian atrocities and Mexicans whose tongues had been cut out by their own compatriots for betraying their cause. She shuddered.
After retrieving the plate and cup and checking the bolted door, Susanna lit the lamp on the table. She quickly ladled out her portion of the stew, leaving the pot to simmer on the back of the stove. When she finished eating she went to the door, and listened for a long minute before sliding the bar aside and stepping into the night. Several stars shone brightly in the dark and moonless sky.
A sound from the trees along the river startled her. It's only an owl, Susanna reassured herself. The cool evening breeze tugged gently at her hair. Realizing she'd forgotten to fetch enough water for the next day's washing, she returned to the cabin. Replacing the rifle in the rack above the door, Susanna took two wooden buckets and walked down the slope leading to the river.
The ground was soft from the spring rains and her long calico dress whispered as she walked. She felt safer in the dark than in the bright light of day. She had never feared the night as so many of the girls at Mrs. Davidon's had. In the darkness she was protected, free.
After filling the buckets with water from the San Antonio, she walked quickly back up the hill. As she paused at the door to set the buckets down, something warm and soft curled around her ankles.
"Ah, there you are."
Susanna lifted the cat into her arms, opened "the door, and dropped her on the floor inside the cabin.
After bringing in the water, Susanna carefully rebolted the door and placed the buckets beside the washtub. Restless, she went to the shelf near the bed, took down all four books and piled them on the table, running her fingers lovingly over the tooled leather covers of her Bible and Joel's three Sir Walter Scott novels.
She opened the Bible to Psalms, turning the pages until she came to her favorite passage. She read aloud:
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
She lifted her head, uncertain whether she had heard hoofbeats or not. Yes, near the river. Placing a red satin marker on the page, she closed her Bible.
Realizing now that she heard several horses, not one, Susanna ran to the window and looked out; she could see nothing in the darkness. She took the rifle down from above the rack but by the time she returned to the window, the hoofbeats could no longer be heard.
She waited, holding her breath. There, she heard them again. Lights flickered near the river, then came closer, swinging away from the bank and up the slope. Horses burst into the yard and raced past the cabin. The three horsemen carried torches and, as she watched, hurled the burning torches toward the cabin. She flinched. She heard the brands land on the thatched roof over her head.
The sound of the horses receded. Stopped altogether. Above her Susanna heard the crackle of flames. Already the acrid smell of smoke filled her nostrils. She
placed the rifle on the table and picked up a bucket of water, hurling the contents at the flames creeping along the underside of the roof. The water hissed before splashing back down, drenching the front of her gown.
The crackling over her head grew louder. Susanna grasped the other bucket, swinging it back and forth to gain the momentum needed to reach the roof. She stopped herself before she threw the water--she had a better idea.
She climbed on the chair and onto the top of the table. The flames licked at the dry thatch just above her head and the smoke, gathered near the peak of the roof, began choking her. She threw water on the flames, once, twice, three times, heard the hiss and then saw the fire go out.
Clambering down from the table, Susanna glanced around the inside of the cabin. The roof in the far corner was ablaze. The fire swept upward, spreading, coming alive again over her head. The buckets were empty. Soon the whole cabin would be in flames.
Grasping the rifle, she dashed to the door where she paused, listening. She heard only the snapping of flames. She slid the bar slowly to one side and stopped with her hand on the latch. Hurrying to the window, she looked out and saw figures watching from the darkness.
Susanna turned and ran to the window at the rear of the cabin. Tearing aside the deerskin, she looked out into the yard where the flaming cabin illuminated the chopping block and the woodpile. She saw no one. Clutching the rifle in one hand, she levered her upper body through the window, turned, and dropped to the ground, her feet jarring on the earth below.
As she hesitated, Susanna heard a crash as part of
the roof fell in on the split-log floor. The side of the cabin was blazing now, flames licking upward, the wood hissing and snapping and crackling.
She ran in a crouch from the burning building into the shadows behind the wood shed. She had reached the woodpile when she heard a yowl behind her and, looking over her shoulder, she saw a fiery shape come hurtling out of the flaming cabin.
Oh, God, she thought, I forgot the cat. She ran toward the burning animal. When she reached for it, the cat rolled over and over on the ground, spitting and howling in pain as her feet clawed frantically at the air. Still ablaze, the beast scuttled away into the darkness.
A man, silhouetted against the light of the burning cabin, loomed out of the darkness a few feet away. Susanna raised her rifle and hesitated, her finger on the trigger. The man lunged forward and she fired, the muzzle flash a bright yellow in the night.
The man grunted in pain and cursed as he dropped to his knees. The pungent odor of gunsmoke all around her, Susanna turned, rifle in one hand, and ran away from the fiery cabin into the shadow of the wood shed. Without pausing or looking back, she ran on, seeking the protection of darkness, ignoring the shouts coming from behind her.
Branches slapped against her face and she slowed down, then stopped. She knew she was in the shadow of dark cottonwoods bordering the river. Panting, she looked behind her. The cabin was a flaming pyre. She saw another, smaller fire behind the cabin and realized the shed had been torched as well. The cat was nowhere to be seen, nor were the men.
Realizing her danger for the first time, Susanna began to tremble. She bit her lip and hugged herself
but she couldn't stop shaking. Tears filled her eyes, tears of rage and frustration. She and Joel had worked so hard to build the cabin and now it was a blazing ruin.
Why?
She stepped deeper into the woods, setting the butt of the rifle on the ground to reload. Only then did she realize she had forgotten the powder pouch. Defenseless, she sank to the ground with her back to the trunk of a tree. At least she was safe here--the three marauders wouldn't find her hiding place. And Joel was certain to return soon.
Joel. At first she had thought she was the target of these night riders but now she wondered if they were seeking her husband instead. She knew so little about Joel, indeed had known him less than a month before marrying him. Yet she had no reason to believe he had ever been in Texas before, or that anyone wanted to burn him out of house and home. As the fire died down she saw figures on foot moving slowly across the yard toward the cottonwoods. Three men, each carrying a torch, stopped and knelt as one to examine the ground, then came on.
She slid her hand beneath her skirt to touch the sole of her buckskin moccasin. When her fingers came away dirty, she realized the men were following her trail in the soft earth.
Susanna scrambled to her feet and stepped on a limb: the crack of the breaking branch sounded louder to her than a rifle shot. She swung around and, still holding her rifle, ran deeper into the woods, oblivious to the branches raking her face and tearing at her calico gown.
The trees opened before her and she was on the
riverbank. The rays of the rising moon shimmered on the river and lit her way. She looked down and saw the blue of her dress and the pale whiteness of her hands. The night no longer shielded her.
Branches crackled behind her. Turning, she saw three torches disappear, then reappear among the trees, closer now; one following her path, another to the left, the third off to the right. They advanced cautiously--as if they thought she was still armed-- yet without pause through the darkened woods. Susanna grasped the warm rifle barrel with both hands, holding the gun like a club, and waited for the first man to leave the woods.
No, she couldn't stay here--she was outlined against the rising moon. Had she lost her senses? Reaching behind her neck, she undid the buttons of her gown, slipping the calico garment over her head and flung it to one side. She kicked off her moccasins, slid out of her petticoats, and, clad only in her chemise, turned to face the river.
For a moment Susanna stood on the bank looking down at the surging water. When she heard a shout behind her, she plunged into the river and struck out from shore. The water was cold and, she knew, still muddy from the spring rains. The current was strong, stronger than she'd expected, and she felt herself being swept steadily downstream.
She fought against the powerful rush of the water, her arms churning ahead in short strokes, her legs kicking. Her chemise tangled around her knees and she went under, swallowing a mouthful of water. She struggled upward, choking and gasping for air as she broke through the surface of the river with water stinging in her nostrils and her hair plastered to her face.
Then the undergarment tore, her legs kicked free, and she opened her eyes to see the darkened river bank only a few yards ahead. The current released her as she neared the shore and in a few strokes her feet touched the muddy bottom. She pulled herself onto the bank where she lay on her back, gasping to catch her breath. When her breathing cleared, she looked behind her to the far shore, surprised she'd been able to swim so far so quickly. 
She saw neither the men who pursued her nor the burning cabin; the light of the rising moon still shimmered on the water. She knew at once that something was terribly wrong. The moon should be rising behind her now, not facing her on the far side of the river. Susanna glanced about desperately. The cottonwoods hunched over darkly a short distance upriver. She hadn't reached the far shore at all--simply swept back to the same side of the river she fled from minutes before. 
Susanna pushed herself up from the ground to her knees, and looked around. 
A hand gripped her shoulder, pulling her back and slamming her to the ground. A man loomed over her, his hands pinioning her arms to the earth as he straddled her body. He opened his mouth as though to cry out in triumph. No words came, only a mangled cry. Susanna stared up at the gaping mouth of the man with no tongue. 
She screamed. 
Footsteps, running along the bank from upstream, thudded toward her. She struggled against her captor, twisting her body from side to side. It was no use, she couldn't break free. The man's grip on her upper arms tightened as her legs flailed helplessly behind him. 
"Bring her here."
The voice was so quiet and so unexpected that she'd almost failed to make out the words. He had spoken in English, without an accent.
The man with no tongue grunted. Standing, he seized her by the waist and flung her over his shoulder. Though she pounded on his back with her fists, the mute carried her easily along the riverbank. After a few minutes he stopped and, with a forward hunch of his shoulders, tumbled her on the ground in front of him.
Looking about, she found herself in the center of a blazing triangle of fire formed by three torches thrust into the ground.
"Tie her," the soft voice said.
The mute grasped her shoulders and forced her down on her back. Susanna lay limp, waiting. As his hands left her shoulders, she flung herself at him, clawing at his face. Another man- grabbed her wrists and yanked her savagely back and down, holding her arms while her hands were bound with rope. When they released her, Susanna's arms were extended to either side, her wrists tied tightly to stakes embedded firmly in the earth.
"If you do not struggle, you will not be harmed."
She twisted her neck to look behind her but could see only a blazing torch. The voice, soft as ever, had come from the shadows beyond the flame.
She lay on her back, her arms outstretched, straining futilely to free herself. Wet hair clung to her head and to her shoulders. Through the thin cotton of the chemise, she could feel stones and thorns jabbing into her back, her buttocks, and her legs.
Metal glinted in the torchlight. Seeing the blade of a saber pass directly in front of her eyes, Susanna
flung her head to one side. She screamed as the tip of the saber touched the skin between her breasts.
The blade, gleaming in the light from the torches, lifted the cloth of her wet chemise up and away from her body, slicing through the fabric from the top down to and through her already torn skirt.
With a quick flick of the saber, the man behind her, the man she had never seen, threw aside the right half of her chemise. With another flick to the left, her body was bared. The mute and the third man stared down at her white flesh, her full breasts and the triangle of damp, blonde hair between her legs. She heard the mute draw in his breath, saw his mouth working.
"Rafael," the man behind her said softly. The mute looked up. "Rafael, this prize is yours. You may do with her what you wish."
Grinning, Rafael knelt beside her, his hands fumbling at the buttons at the top of his trousers. When he pushed the pants down to his knees, Susanna closed her eyes. The fight had gone out of her; she lay inert and unmoving as the words flashed through her mind:
Yea, though I walk through the valley Of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me.
She felt Rafael's lips on her breasts as he spread her legs.
Her lips formed Joel's name, though no sound came. Desperately, she remembered the first time she had seen him at school, as he walked through the driving snow to return a stray horse. She remembered him riding to call on her, how she hurried to the 
many-paned window in the Davidson front parlor to watch him dismount at the hitching post. She remembered walking with him, seeing their tracks on the virgin snow, remembered the leap her heart gave when he first kissed her.
The heat of Rafael's sex burned against her thighs. He violated her, grunting with lust as he thrust within her, dull pain throbbing through her as she sobbed in disbelief and horror.
With a groan he rolled from her, his hands leaving her breasts. Voices reached her from a great distance speaking words she didn't understand. A hand grasped Susanna's hair and she opened her eyes to see a glowing light. The light neared her, the heat singeing her face, the light growing and growing until she seemed to be enveloped in flame.
And then she saw the comforting night, her friend, coming for her, opening its arms and enfolding her in the great peace of darkness.
Joel Falconer crossed the plaza of San Antonio de Bexar, pausing to let the mule-drawn wagons of a freight caravan pass. He glanced at the clock tower of the cabildo, the town hall, shaking his head in disbelief when he saw the hands still at nine o'clock. From the height of the Texas sun, he knew it must be getting on to three in the afternoon. 
A mule, goaded by a Mexican boy's long stick, plodded past him pulling a rolling barrel attached by two poles to the mule's saddle. Avoiding a puddle in front of the fandango hall, Joel walked by the cathedral, a stone building with a cross on top of its single grey tower. Behind the church, the flag of the Texas Republic fluttered high above the Military Plaza. 
Joel stopped, the blood stirring in him as he stared up at the flag: one white bar and one red bar and a single star in a field of blue. A damn good flag, he 
told himself. A damn good flag for a damn fine country.
Turning down a muddy street leading away from the plaza, he headed for the livery stable. A board had been thrown across the water and mud in front of the stable and Joel, the proud Lone Star flag in his mind, scarcely noticed the man seated in front of a grogshop a few feet away from the far end of the plank.
As he started across the improvised walkway, Joel frowned as he saw a rope snaking away from the plank. Suddenly the rope grew taut and the plank jerked to one side. Joel threw out his arms, trying to keep his balance. He tottered and fell seat first, landing squarely in the wet mud with a splat.
He pushed himself to his feet with water dripping from his pants and mud clinging to his shoes. Two bearded men standing in the grogshop doorway burst out laughing. The man seated on the boardwalk, hat pulled down over his eyes, hadn't stirred. Joel looked at the rope, his eyes following it from the plank to the seated man's hand.
Til be Goddamned," Joel muttered.
Then he charged through the mud, spraying water to both sides. The man scrambled to his feet and ran along the boardwalk with Joel close behind. With a leap Joel was upon him, grasping his jacket and spinning him around.
Bright blue eyes sparkled at him. A familiar grin split the other man's freckled face.
"Graver," Joel said delightedly.
"By all that's holy, if it's not Joel the Falconer himself." Grover Dunne grinned. "If I had known it was yourself crossing the plank, I never would have tumbled you into your watery swamp."
"You knew damn well it was me." 
"I never did. I swear by the saints above." Grover took off his hat and his red hair glowed like a halo around his face. Placing the hat over his breast, he said, "I swear to God I took you for the damn greaser what cheated me out of my knife in a game of chance the night before last." 
"I don't look any more like . . ." Joel stopped when he saw the twitching of a suppressed smile at the corners of Grover's mouth. 
Grover turned but Joel was on him before he had a chance to run and, half wrestling and half carrying the smaller man, he hurled him into the mud hole in the middle of the street. Grover landed on his shoulder and face, sliding forward in the muck. He lay without moving, his neck twisted to one side. 
Joel turned away. "Don't fun with me, Grover," he said, "I know you ain't hurt." 
When he heard a gurgle, he looked back. Grover's mouth was underwater and Joel thought he saw an air bubble burst on the surface of the puddle. 
"Grover?" 
A dog trotted up to the fallen man, sniffing at him. 
"Git," Joel shouted and the dog trotted off. 
He knelt in the mud, grasped Grover's shoulder and turned him onto his back. Grover lay unmoving, his eyes closed. Joel detected no breathing. 
"Grover," he said, "I didn't mean no harm. I was only getting back at you for what you done." He put his hand on Grover's chest and felt the strong beat of his heart. 
Grover's eyes opened; he winked at Joel and then he smiled broadly. 
"All even?" he asked. "All square, you and me?" 
"You son of a bitch." Joel stood up and looked down 
at the other man lying in the mud. He couldn't help laughing. "All square," he said.
Grover scrambled to his feet. When Joel started to brush off his clothes, Grover said, "San Antone mud don't brush off. You got to let it dry and then it'll flake off. Maybe."
"You shouldn't of done that, Grover, like you was dead that way and all. You gave me one hell of a scare."
Grover used a neckerchief to wipe the mud from his face. "Luckily," he said, "I have on my person a sovereign remedy for all the fears of mankind. Here, have a dram or two." He unfastened a canteen from his belt and handed it to Joel.
The whiskey burned down Joel's throat. He returned the canteen to Grover who wiped the spout with his fingers before drinking the remaining liquor.
"Whiskey, the curse of the Irish," Grover said. "May God bless and keep the man who invented it"
"I'm temperance, myself," Joel told him. With a wry smile he added, "Most times."
"Temperance? I don't believe it. You, the champion imbiber of the River Queen? The man who drank us all under the table, night after night, all the way from Cincinnati to Alton? I don't believe you've changed so much for the worse in less than a year."
"I have, though," Joel said as they strolled slowly away from the town. "I met a girl," he added sheepishly.
"Ah, and didn't we meet many a girl on the Queen? Sure and you must recall the lass from Albany with the dimple in her chin, who couldn't decide between us; what was her name?"
"I mean I'm married, Grover."
"Ahhhh." Grover let out his breath in an exaggerated
sigh. "I feared as much when I spied you walking across that plank a short while ago. I said to myself, 'Grover, that's not the same lad who drank and wenched with you as we sailed down the Ohio. He's changed, the lad has, and not for the better.'" 
Grover led the way onto a footbridge. "Here, now," he said, "watch your step. With your poor sense of balance, you'll find yourself in the creek." 
"There's a season for everything," Joel said, ignoring him. "I reckon I've come to my season for marrying and settling down." 
"By God, that sounds like the Good Book. Have you by chance married a preacher of the Gospel?" 
"Susanna does have a religious turn of mind." 
"Susanna's a lovely name." Grover suddenly became serious. "Means lily, if I remember right. Saint Matthew said, 'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.' How does that end?" 
"'Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.'" 
"Ah, yes." Grover sighed. "We both suffer from Bible-quoting mothers. May their souls rest quietly in peace." 
They stopped and stood side by side gazing across the rolling country, past the ruins of houses to the crumbling battered walls of what had once been large adobe buildings. The Texas flag flew above a seemingly deserted Spanish chapel. 
"Why did you bring me here?" Joel asked. 
"Bring you here? Is this son of Erin all plots and plans and conniving? Didn't we merely take a walk in the warm afternoon sun to bake the mud off our begrimed garments?" 
"You're all that and more besides." 
"Perhaps I did bring you here, in a manner of speaking, Joel Falconer. For your edification and enlightenment. For the good of your immortal soul. For both your benefit and the benefit of your country."
"Not to mention the benefit of your pocketbook?"
"The ten dollar bounty I may or may not receive has naught to do with it." Grover pointed at the ruins ahead of them. "Doesn't that pile stir your soul, Joel Falconer? Doesn't the very name set the blood racing in your veins, Spanish though it may be?" He paused. "The Alamo," he said softly, almost reverently.
Despite himself, Joel felt a stirring of pride.
"That mound to the front," Grover said, "is where the two six-pounders were positioned; behind are the low barracks where Jim Bowie lay ill until they murdered him; and beyond is the chapel where Davy Crockett's body was found after the slaughter. One hundred and eighty-three Texans besieged by Santa Anna and his four thousand regulars. My God, can you imagine those days? Joel, my boy, we were born too late."
"I admit I would have liked to have been in Texas then."
"It's not too late, Joel."
"I knew this was one of your schemes, Grover. Approaching it roundabout and by stealth. What do you have to do to earn the ten dollar bounty?" 
"Forget the ten dollars and listen to what I have to say. Listen well. President Mirabeau Lamar's expedition is leaving Austin next month for the west Himself is recruiting troops for the venture."
"To fight Comanches?" Joel asked.
"No, we're after bigger game than Indians. We're heading for Santa Fe."
"Santa Fe? That's in Mexico." 
"The president of Texas doesn't seem to think so. Lamar claims all the land to the south and west as far as the Rio Grande for the Republic. When the greasers see our three hundred Texans coming out of the sunrise they'll turn tail and run. The New Mexican settlers will rise up and join us and we'll enter Santa Fe as conquering heroes. Think on it, Joel. I can see dark-eyed senoritas tossing flowers in our path." 
"Is this what you've been leading up to all this time? Waylaying me in Bexar, then bringing me here to the Alamo like it was an accident?" 
"The suspicious part of your mind must have assumed grotesque proportions since I saw you last. However, to keep the record straight, yes, that's what I had in mind. I'm joining one of the companies, Pioneers they're called. We'll all be paid as armed men. Come in with us, Joel, and it'll be like old times, on the Ohio again. On the old River Queen." 
"That time's past and gone. I'm a married man now. I have responsibilities." 
"My friend, you sound just a wee bit pompous. Or are there little ones already? Is that what you're telling me?" 
Joel hesitated. "Not yet," he said embarrassed. I hope there will be soon." 
"Ah, the shame of it, to see a man in his prime led into a life of drudgery by a woman and her brood." 
"Grover, you know that when I was a bit in my cups, or when I was passing the time of day with a lass, I might have stretched the blanket a bit, might have added a mite to the truth here and there. You know that's true, Grover, and I admit it. Nevertheless, what I'm about to say to you now is the truth and 
nothing but. I'm a happy man, Grover Dunne; I have everything I ever wanted." 
"Ah, don't say that. Never say you have everything you want. You'll tempt the fates." 
"It's true, though, as sure as that sun's lowering in the west and we're heading back to Bexar." 
"My sainted mother taught me a curse from the old country," Grover said. "The curse is this: 'May all your wishes come true.'" 
"A curse? That sounds more like a blessing to me." 
"No, 'tis a curse, sure enough," Grover said as they crossed the footbridge over San Pedro Creek. Ahead, the adobe buildings of San Antonio threw long shadows in their path. 
"When you're at the bottom of the heap," Grover said, "there's nowhere to go but up. From the top of the hill all roads lead down. Every man needs a dream of something better than he's got, even though, in his heart of hearts, he knows he'll never make it come true." 
"And what's your dream, Grover?" 
"I shouldn't tell you because that's bad luck, too, yet I will, or at least a part of it. I want my pockets overflowing with coin of the realm, I want to have all the whiskey I can drink and all the lasses I can love." 
"There's more?" Joel asked, laughing. 
Grover looked up at the Lone Star flag snapping over the plaza. "There's more," he said, "and I don't want you laughing when I tell you. I want to bring honor and glory to the Republic of Texas." 
"I won't laugh at you for wanting that." 
"And you'll have a last drink with me to wish me luck?" 
Joel hesitated, glancing at the sun touching the tops of the houses. 
"I see you're thinking of fair Susanna," Grover said. "Surely your temperance bride won't begrudge you a quick libation with a friend from your bachelor days. A friend who's about to set off and forge a trail west to Santa Fe."
"Surely she wouldn't," Joel said as he pushed open the door to the grogshop. "It's only that this is the first time we've been parted since we married."
The shop, smelling of whiskey and cigar smoke, was dark and cool. Two Mexicans sat playing monte at a table in the far corner; otherwise the room was empty.
"Don Pelon," Grover called out, pounding his fist on the bar.
A fat balding man came from the rear of the building.
"Two whiskeys," Grover said.
"Two bits a throw," the barman said when he set the drinks in front of them.
Grover slapped a few coins on the bar. "The drinks are on Grover Dunne," he said.
They raised their glasses. "To Texas," said Joel. "To the Pioneers of the Santa Fe Expedition."
"The next toast's mine to propose," Grover informed him after they drank. "Forget my harsh words about the evils of the connubial state. This toast's from my heart." He raised his glass and the amber whiskey caught the light of the lamp behind the bar. "To Susanna."
"Ay," Joel said, "to Susanna."
They finished their whiskies in silence and left the shop. They stood outside on the boardwalk in awkward silence. There seemed nothing left to say.
"When do you head north for Austin?" Joel asked.
"Tomorrow."
Good luck." Joel gripped his shoulder. 'I have the luck of the Irish. All I touch seems to turn to brass." Grover sighed. "I expect you'll have a hot supper waiting for you at home," he said.
"That I will."
"Ah, you're a lucky man. A lucky man."
Joel left Grover standing alone outside the grogshop and hurried to the stable. He loaded his pack horse with supplies and rode south and east from San Antonio, his head light from the whiskey. After the last of the houses disappeared behind him he began to whistle off key, then gave it up and started to sing:
Yankee Doodle came to town, A-riding on a pony. Stuck a feather in his cap And called it macaroni.
Still singing, he approached a Mexican astride a mule. The man stared straight ahead, his brown and wrinkled face impassive and unreadable.
After the Mexican passed him, Joel turned in his saddle to look back. The man rode on toward San Antonio, looking neither right nor left. He probably thinks I'm a crazy gringo, Joel told himself. And I don't give a damn. Not about what he thinks or what Grover thinks or what anybody thinks.
All at once he felt sober. And alone. The fiery red sun was setting behind him and the shadows of the night slowly crept up to engulf him. The wind was rising, tugging at his hat.
He dug in his spurs and Ivanhoe's pace increased. For a time, Joel was lulled by the beat of his horse's hooves.
"May all your wishes come true," he said aloud.
Damn Grover and his Irish curses. I should damn myself, Joel thought, for listening to him. Santa Fe! He'd always been tempted to ride to Santa Fe and now he never would, though he'd never have admitted this restlessness to Grover.
Not that he'd lied to Grover. He had found what he wanted, Susanna. And yet, at the most unexpected times, he caught himself gazing west across the prairie.
That's the way all the Falconer men were, Joel thought, of two minds: looking for the steady rhythm of a settled life and loving the land, while at the same time yearning to follow the sun. A Falconer had followed it a hundred years before, across the Atlantic from England to Massachusetts.
As his father, another of that restless breed, had given up his farm to live in town and become a cooper. As he himself had left the town behind to strike out for the west, traveling first to Illinois and then to Texas.
He heard a cry in the night in the distance ahead of him. Joel reined up, listening. For long moments he heard only the silence of the prairie--and then a howl wavered on the wind, a cry that rose and fell. Only a coyote, he told himself.
He hurried on through the night. It was dark now, and he knew he was close to home. In his mind's eye he could see the cabin, with Susanna outlined in the light of the open doorway. He was late and he was vaguely uneasy.
Ahead of him he saw an aureole of light where the moon would soon rise. He bunked, seeing a second glow over to the left. Cursing the liquor, he shook
his head to clear it. A few drinks and he was already seeing double. 
Joel came to the river and turned to follow the path along its bank. The moon, large and yellow, rose over the rolling land in front of him just as the second light began to fade. But there was a second light, he had no doubt of it now, and that light came from just about where he judged his cabin to be. 
He hastily picketed his pack horse beside the trail and spurred Ivanhoe ahead at a gallop. When he finally topped the rise at the bend in the river, he stared in horror at the flames still licking at the blackened shell of his cabin. 
He rode in at a dead run, wood smoke filling his nostrils, choking him as he called, "Susanna! Susanna!" 
Joel swung down from his horse in front of the smouldering cabin, hearing only the crackle of flames from the dying fire. A blackened bundle lay in front of what had once been the cabin doorway. As Joel knelt, he smelled burnt flesh. It was the cat. He touched the animal's charred flesh even though he knew she was dead. 
The thud of horses' hooves from somewhere near the river caught his attention. He stood listening, his hand on the butt of the pistol in his belt. The horsemen were down below the cabin where the river began its loop. Drawing his pistol, Joel ran around the cabin, past the burnt-out shed and into the darkness toward the cottonwoods. 
The hoofbeats receded and disappeared in the direction from which he had ridden a few minutes before. With fear of what he might find making a knot in his stomach, Joel ran down the slope. His foot struck a stump and he fell to the ground. Cursing, he picked himself up. He needed a light 
Returning to the cabin, he found a wooden stake near the woodpile and lit it on the burning logs. Holding the firebrand in front of him, he trotted down the slope to the river and stopped at the water's edge. The reflection of the moonlight lay like a pale and insubstantial path across the water.
Some instinct told Joel to go downriver. He had walked only a few yards when he saw a dull red glow ahead of him. He ran toward the light and when the torch in his hand sputtered out he threw it into the river, hearing the embers hiss as it struck water.
The glow came from a torch thrust into the ground. A huddled form, washed by moonlight, lay a few feet away. With a choked scream, Joel threw himself to the ground.
"Susanna!" he cried.
His fingers felt her nakedness, touched a sticky wetness. In the moonlight he held his hand in front of him and saw that it was red with blood.
Joel stared down at her; her gold hair torn from her scalp and missing, her body bare and hideously mutilated. He shivered involuntarily. Closing his eyes, he tried to will away what he had seen, tried to will Susanna back to life.
He pounded the ground with his fist. He knew that what he had just seen would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Joel stood and staggered away from his wife's body to the bank of the river. A great numbness settled on him like a heavy cloak, making his every movement slow, deliberate, and dreamlike. This isn't me, he thought, this isn't Joel Falconer. How can I seem to be standing here watching myself, this man whose wife has just been murdered?
Joel knelt and leaned forward, plunging both hands
to the water, wringing them together. When he raised them palms and fingers splayed, his hands were white in the moonlight. The blood had been washed away.
Suddenly he vomited into the river, retching again and again until he had nothing left to throw up. Dipping water from the stream, he washed his face. When that was done he thrust his hands into the river again, leaving them in the water until they grew numb from the cold.
After a while, he stood up and dried his hands on his shirt. I have a great many things to do, he told himself. I can only do them one at a time, but I'll do them carefully and as best I can. And when I've finished, Susanna will say I've done well.
Making a circuit around his wife's body, he returned to the burnt-out cabin. In the remains of the shed he found a spade with its handle barely charred by the flames. Testing it, he walked slowly up the hill behind the cabin to the top of a small rise. At the crest he stopped and looked down at the San Antonio valley.
From here he and Susanna had first seen their land. Later, they had sat here, his arm about her shoulders, and decided where they would build the cabin and where he would plow to plant the corn and barley.
Now Joel put his foot on the top of the blade and shoved the spade into the ground. The earth was rich and damp and he was able .to work quickly, shoveling the dirt into a mound beside him. He toiled without pause until the grave was as deep as he was tall. Then he stopped and climbed out.
He returned to the cabin. Embers still glowed but he saw no flames. The puncheon floor was blackened though not burned through. He dug a hole in the
yard with the spade and buried the cat. Searching through the rubble, he found a tin plate, a cup and a fork and, on the floor, a book charred by the fire. Even before he opened it, he recognized the book as Susanna's Bible.
The Bible fell open to the Twenty-Third Psalm. With a cry of pain, Joel hurled it into the darkness.
"God damn you to hell," he shouted.
He was answered by silence. Still he felt nothing. No, that wasn't true; he felt cold. He shivered in the night wind blowing across the prairie.
When he found nothing else in the cabin or the shed to keep him, he walked slowly down the hill to the river, purposefully keeping away from his wife's body. He walked along the bank until he saw what appeared to be a bundle. Stooping, he recognized Susanna's calico dress and picked it up, holding the cloth to his face so he could breathe the essence of her for the last time.
Then Joel took the dress and covered his wife's body with it. Rolling the body onto the gown, he carried it up the hill to the side of the grave where he knelt to lay his burden gently on the earth. He glanced back down the hill.
No, he told himself, I can't go back. I'll bury her like this.
You must go back, he answered. That is part of what you must do. You have to finish what you've begun. Doing this will strengthen your hate and make what you must do later all the easier.
He nodded. Tearing off a large piece of the skirt, he carried the cloth to where his wife's body had lain. Though he saw the hair almost at once, he had to search the ground on hands and knees to find the
rest of her. When at last he was done he gathered the pitiful remains in the blue dress and carried them back to the top of the hill. By the time he reached the grave, the blue calico had darkened to a deep, sodden red. 
Joel climbed into the grave and laid the bundle on the bottom. Returning to the surface, he lifted his wife's body in his arms, carried her into the grave and laid her to rest. When he climbed out for the last time, he couldn't find the spade and stood, confused, looking about him. 
He remembered he had left the spade near the cabin when he buried the cat, so he walked down the hill to retrieve it. Then he trudged back to the side of the grave, and thrust the spade into the mound of earth. As he was about to throw the first shovelful of dirt onto the body, Joel paused, then knelt beside the grave, steepling his hands. He started to speak, choked over the words, and started again. At first he muttered the Psalm to himself but as he neared the end, his voice rose: 
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me 
All the days of my life 
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. 
By the time he whispered "Amen," tears were streaming down his cheeks and falling to the raw earth. He sobbed, ignoring the tears. 
"Susanna," he murmured. He said her name again and again, drawing comfort from the sound. "Susanna, Susanna, Susanna." 
At last he fell silent. Standing, he wiped his face with his sleeve, and shoveled earth into the grave. 
When he finished he realized he had no marker, so he went to the cabin where he fashioned a crude wooden cross.
After he thrust the cross into the earth, Joel stepped back and looked across the grave to the river valley below. The moon was high in the eastern sky, its silver light illuminating the river and the plowed fields immediately below him, and the rolling land beyond.
Joel took his pistol from the ground beside the grave and pushed it into his belt. He walked down the hill and called to his horse. At first he couldn't find Ivanhoe, then he heard an answering neigh from the river bank.
As he led the horse up the slope to where the shell of his cabin stood, he saw the cross standing out starkly against the sky. He stopped, raising his clenched fist.
"Whoever you are," he promised, "wherever you are, I'll find you. I'll make you beg for mercy, I'll make you scream with pain. I'll hurt you as you hurt her, and worse. I'll hurt you until you can bear no more and then I'll hurt you some more. And only then, only after you can't feel pain any longer, I'll kill you."
That night Joel bedded down on the hill above the river. In the morning he studied the ground around the cabin and found the trail of what he thought were three horses, although he couldn't be sure. He knelt beside one of the tracks, examining it intently. The left rear tip of one horseshoe was missing. 
He searched in widening circles and found the rifle from the cabin on the river bank. He put the fired weapon under his arm; he had plenty of powder and cartridges in the provisions on his pack horse. 
Coming back to the place where he had found Susanna's body in the morning, he saw three dead torches embedded in the ground. Three torches and three horses meant three men. The horses were shod so he doubted they were Indians. White men, or Mexicans. He smouldered with a dull, bitter rage at anyone inhuman enough to commit such an atrocity. 
Back at the cabin, Joel put the rifle in his saddle 
scabbard and mounted, trailing his pack horse behind him at the end of a rope. For one last time he looked at the blackened rubble where wisps of smoke still drifted upward, at his fields, plowed and planted, and at the hill where the rude cross stood out in the pale morning light.
He picked up the trail of the raiders downriver at the bend where the San Antonio swung eastward. There were three sets of tracks and the tip of one of the shoes was missing. They followed the river for five miles and then veered to the left. The horses had apparently gone down the riverbank, but after a short distance the prints disappeared at the edge of the muddy water.
Joel swam his two horses across the San Antonio. Reaching the far bank, he rode upstream without finding tracks and he cursed, knowing the raiders might have left the river at almost any point on either side. He rode back downstream and found the hoofprints again a hundred yards below where he had come ashore. They headed north in the direction of Gonzales.
Joel shook his head. This was all wrong. He had assumed, after deciding the attackers were not Indians, that they were Mexicans raiding north across their border to harass the hated Texans. If they were Mexicans, then they should have fled south toward the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Instead, they were headed in the opposite direction.
Joel's stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten since yesterday, so he chewed a strip of beef jerky as he rode north at a steady lope. Although not really hungry, he knew he must eat or he'd be unable to accomplish what he had set out to do. When he finished eating he checked his rifle, his pistol and his
Bowie knife in turn, as though he could impart to them by touch some of the determination he himself felt. 
Although the trail of the three horsemen was easy to follow in the rain-soaked earth, he discovered this annoyed him. It was as though the three men were flaunting their power, throwing down a gauntlet, telling him he could do nothing to them. Joel's anger twisted and hardened inside him like a knot. He'd show them how wrong they were. 
He tried deliberately not to think of Susanna or the night before, knowing he couldn't keep his reason if he did. Yet she seemed to be all around him, the scent of her was in the spring air and in the new prairie grass, her voice was whispering in the east wind. She was everywhere and yet she was nowhere. 
He would never see Susanna again. The sudden realization struck Joel like a blow. 
The trail had led him to a muddy road where the tracks of the three horses were lost amid the confusion of heavy horse and wagon traffic. He rode on at a walk, his gaze intently on the ground, eyes flicking from hoofprint to hoofprint. He let out his breath with a sigh of satisfaction. There, clear as day, was the print of the shoe with the missing tip. 
Away from the river, the country was rolling and open except for an occasional dense growth of chaparral. Despite the openness he saw no other riders but himself, though as he went on, he saw tracks where horsemen had turned onto the road in groups of twos and threes. 
The sun rose higher overhead and he stopped to water and feed his horse. It was three in the afternoon by his calculation when he heard the singing. 
Singing? He shook his head. The heat of the day must be addling him. But off the road ahead to the 
left, he saw a grove of cypresses where the music seemed to be coming from. As he drew closer, he heard the voices of men and women singing, and although the music rose and fell, he was able to make out the words: 
Jesus, my all, to heaven is gone And I want to go there too; His tracks I see and I'll pursue, And I want to go there, too. 
Joel reined up. He hadn't seen the telltale broken print for the last half hour. Either the tracks he'd been following had been trampled under others, or the three marauders had left the road and he had lost them. As he swung Ivanhoe across a trampled field and under the trees, the sound of singing grew louder. 
Joel stopped at the edge of a clearing where men and women and children crowded together on benches set in a semi-circle, their backs to him. A brush arbor, shading an aisle between the benches, led to a raised platform where a bareheaded preacher in a long black cloak faced the congregation. He was lining out a hymn from a pulpit, shouting two stanzas of verse before pausing to let a man in the first row lead the singing. 
"Come ye sinners," the preacher intoned, "ye poor and needy." 
"Come ye sinners," the congregation sang, "ye poor and needy." 
"All of us are sinners," the preacher said, "ever since the fall of man. All of us are poor and needy, poor in faith and in need of the love of Jesus Christ." 
"Amen, amen," a woman's voice answered. 
"Have you come to join our meeting, brother?" a voice beside Joel asked. 
Startled, Joel looked and saw a tall, thin young man with brown hair curling down to his shoulders. The man smiled encouragingly. 
"Are you a seeker?" he asked. 
"Not in the way you mean," Joel told him. "I'm looking for three men from the south, three men from down San Antone way, who've ridden long and hard." 
"Are you a backslider? Did you once turn your back on God and now seek His pardon?" 
"I have to find three strangers," Joel said impatiently. "Men from the south." 
"All of us are strangers in a strange land." 
"God damn it, you're not listening!" 
The young man stared steadily at Joel. "Blasphemy won't help you find them," he said, raising his voice so he could be heard above the singing. "I will ask among the brothers and sisters. I'll help you, just as the Lord helps those who have strayed or fallen." He smiled and Joel warmed toward the lad despite himself. 
"My name is Levi," the young man said. "Won't you join us? Not in the way I meant before," he added quickly. "Only for some victuals while I ask after the three men you seek." 
Joel hesitated, then nodded. What did he have to lose? Someone here might have seen the killers who'd raided his farm. He swung from Ivanhoe to the ground, suddenly he grew dizzy and staggered. Hands gripped his arm. When his head cleared Joel saw Levi holding him. Impatient, he shrugged Levi off. 
"I don't need any help," Joel said. "I'm all right" 
Levi smiled and said nothing. The hymn singing 
had stopped and the preacher paced back and forth while he exhorted his congregation. 
"That's the Reverend George Wilson," Levi said. "As he explains it, he came to Texas because he wanted to fight the devil on his own ground." 
"There's truth to that," Joel admitted. 
Against his better judgment, he found himself liking this young man. Religion was something else again. Growing up in a God-fearing family, Joel had turned from religion after being expelled from his congregation for blackening the eye of the singing master. Joel still remembered his anger when he heard the Reverend Cushing declare him "as bad as the devil himself." 
"Methodists?" he asked Levi as the young man led him to a rough plank table in a clearing. 
"No, we're Baptists." Levi cut a thick slice of beef and piled beans on a plate. 
Joel remembered that the Reverend Cushing, a staunch Methodist himself, had always referred to the Baptists as "that watery tribe." 
"Eat well," Levi told him, "while I make inquiries about your three strangers." 
After Levi left, Joel stared down at his food. The odor almost made him dizzy. Only when he forked beans into his mouth did Joel realize how hungry he was. When he'd finished the plateful he looked around and, seeing no one looking, he scattered flies away from the food with a wave of his hand and helped himself to more. After he was full he sat on the ground, leaning back against a tree, and listened to the Reverend Wilson's sermon in spite of himself. 
"There are two seeds and two only," the preacher intoned in his deep voice. "God planted his own seed, the seed emanating from the Godhead, in his two creations, Adam and Eve. After the fall, after the 
expulsion from Eden, the seed of the serpent was planted in We and is carried by all of her daughters. And so a child may be born from God's seed or from the devil's seed.
"All children born of the divine seed are the children of God, while all children born of the evil seed are the children of the devil. Those born of the devil are his bona ride children and to their evil father they must go. It is wicked folly to preach the Gospel to those of the seed of the serpent. They are damned; they are doomed. They will burn in the fires of Hell unto all eternity."
Joel walked toward the sound of the preacher's voice. Nothing here for me, he told himself, no solace, no hope, no help. Words, only words. What does the Reverend really mean? As far as he was concerned, nothing.
He stopped at the aisle leading to the pulpit and looked at the faces turned in rapt attention to the preacher: a boy of ten or so, an old woman wearing a poke bonnet *..
He gasped, staring at blonde wavy hair falling around a girl's shoulders. Susanna! He shook his head violently. This couldn't bel Susanna was dead. He would never see her again.
The blonde girl turned and looked at Joel, and he saw the difference. She was pert and pretty where Susanna had been beautiful. This girl had brown eyes, the color of his own; Susanna's had been blue. Only the hair was the same: hair of a soft golden color, hair that curled in almost the identical way.
The girl smiled at him, quickly, tentatively. Joel turned away and walked into the woods. He wondered what he was doing here. He was losing time, already the day was getting dark. He looked through the trees
and saw black clouds gathering in the west. The wind had changed; it was stronger now, bringing a warning of rain.
A hand touched his arm. Joel whirled and the blonde girl stepped abruptly back.
"You frightened me," she said.
"I didn't mean to. I was thinking of something else."
"Oh." She sounded disappointed. "At first I thought I knew you," she said, "the way you were staring at me. I reckoned I'd seen you last year when I was in Austin with my father. He's a member of the Congress, a Sam Houston man."
"No," Joel said. "I've never been to Austin."
"Maybe it was in Houston then. Or Washington-on-the-Brazos. Or Nacogdoches. We travel a lot, my father and I. I'm a Texan born and bred."
"I've only been in Texas since last fall. Your hair reminded me of someone else."
She touched her hair with her hand, bringing a strand forward and letting it fall down the front of her dress, where it lay curled on her full bosom.
"My name's Rebecca Ransom," she told him. "My father's William Knox Ransom. Have you heard of him?" She went on without waiting for an answer. "He's back there listening to the Reverend Wilson. He says the Reverend's a fool with all of his notions of bad seeds and good seeds. The Reverend is a poor farmer and my father thinks that a man who isn't able to cultivate corn isn't fit to cultivate Christian souls. What do you think, Mister ... ?"
"Falconer. Joel Falconer."
"What do you think, Mr. Falconer?"
Td say souls and corn aren't much alike. What it takes to save the one might not work with the other."
"My thoughts exactly." She paused, then said slowly, "Will you walk a ways with me? It's so uncomfortable sitting on those wooden benches hour after hour even with all the kneeling and the singing."
Joel glanced down at her, finding her face raised expectantly to his. Her gaze fell demurely away. The top of her head, he noted, came to his shoulder. She was Susanna's height. As they walked, Joel heard the faint voices of the camp meeting congregation behind him raised in another hymn.
Suddenly she grasped his arm, the fingers of her hands digging into his flesh. "I heard a noise," she said breathlessly. "In the brush, right over there by that tree."
"I didn't hear anything."
"A snake. A rattler. I'm sure that's what it was. I saw a boy once after he'd been bit by a rattler. He turned all blue and red till they sucked the poison out of him."
"I haven't seen any rattlers hereabouts," Joel told her. "We'll just give that tree a wide berth."
Joel noticed that she kept her hand on his arm. He was conscious of her nearness, the feel of her fingers, the brush of her body against his, and her scent, the scent of lilacs.
"My father says my hair is my best feature, too," Rebecca said, glancing up at him. "And my mouth is my worst feature. Not the looks of it, he says, but the number of times it opens and closes each day."
He stared down at her, frowning, puzzled at the drift of her chatter.
She laughed. "He means I talk too much. 'It's your mother's prime failing as well,' he says. Come to think of it, I wonder if that's why he travels so much?" She shrugged. "Now what I think is that if a body has
something to say, he should say it and not walk along all dour and sobersided like some people."
"Anyone you know?"
She stopped and looked up at Joel, without answering, a twinkle in her brown eyes. Her lips parted slightly and he knew she wanted him to kiss her. He stared at her, feeling nothing, nothing at all. Finally he shook his head.
"I can't," he said.
She whirled and ran from him. He started to call to her to wait but he stopped himself. He saw the pale green of her dress as she ran between the trees. Then she was gone.
Joel leaned on the trunk of a tree and rested his forehead on his upper arm. In the distance thunder rolled and from the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of lightning.
He clenched his fist and struck the trunk of the tree as hard as he could. Then he struck the tree a second and a third time. His hand dropped to his side and he stood staring at the ground, his mind empty, his senses numbed. At last he felt pain in his hand; he opened his fist and saw a bruise on the skin where his little finger was missing.
"Did she die?"
He turned quickly and saw the blonde girl had returned. She stood only a few feet away. He couldn't remember her name.
"Yes," he said.
"Did you love her very much?"
"Yes," he said.
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked.
"There's nothing. Nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do." His throat tightened and suddenly tears came to his eyes.
She walked over and put her arms around him. With her hand she drew his head down. "It's not a shame to cry," she told him.
"I know," he said.
The girl stood quietly holding him for many minutes, saying nothing, her body warm and comforting against his. Finally she stood up on tiptoes and kissed him gently on the lips. Then she released him and walked a few steps away and stood with her hands clasped in front of her.
"Rebecca," he began, finally remembering her name.
The quick shake of her head told him not to speak. She was looking away from him and, in the distance, he heard singing mingled with the far-off thunder.
"Will you say a prayer for me?" she asked.
Tm the one who needs praying over."
"No, I don't think so." She walked slowly back toward the camp meeting. Joel stared after her until she disappeared in the trees.
He heard a footstep and found Levi watching him. The young man looked as though he meant to speak but said nothing.
"Thanks for the grub," Joel said. "I was hungrier than I thought."
Levi nodded. "I see you've made the acquaintance of Miss Ransom," he said.
"I suppose you think she carries the seed of the serpent."
Levi shook his head. "What I think is that I've wanted to walk out with her these past twelve months and never have. And now you come riding in and ..." He left the sentence unfinished.
"Have you ever asked her?"
"No. The few times I've had the chance I've lacked the courage."
"If I was you, I wouldn't wait. I'd ask her." There, Joel thought, that's better than praying for her. 
"Before someone else does, you mean? I may, I very well may." He nodded, squaring his shoulders. "I don't want you to think I was spying on you. I came to tell you I may have word of the men you seek." 
"Three men riding north?" 
"Yes," Levi replied. "This morning Jared Varner was driving here from Gonzales in his wagon. He saw three horsemen ahead of him at the crest of a hill. When he came to where he should have been able to see them again they were gone. Then he saw them two or three miles off to the west and decided they were taking the cutoff through the hills." 
"Did he describe them?" 
"No, they were too far away. They were dressed mostly in dark clothing as far as he remembers and he thought they might be Mexicans. Come along, you can ask him the way they went yourself." 
When Joel inquired about the three riders, Jared sketched a map in the dirt for him. And before Joel left the meeting ground, he had sold his extra horse and most of his provisions to Jared Varner as well. After mounting his horse, Joel looked around for Rebecca Ransom but saw no sign of her. As he rode from the grove, he heard the trumpeting of a ram's horn calling the congregation to evening services. 
He found the cutoff Varner had described and left the main road to follow it. At first the ground was hard and he saw no tracks. The sound of thunder rolled closer and jagged streaks of lightning raked the flat horizon to the west. Joel glanced apprehensively at the darkening sky and hurried, knowing that rain would obliterate the tracks he was looking for. 
In the fading light, he saw hoofprints beside the 
at them. Shod horses, yes, but they could belong to anyone. Lightning flashed. He knelt and found himself looking at the track of the shoe with the missing tip.
Joe glanced ahead. Already the horizon was obscured by nightfall and the approaching storm, so he remounted and rode on, following the tracks north. A large drop of rain struck his face, then another.
Damn, he thought, he'd have to stop.
After feeding his horse he made camp as best he could. The wind rose, tugging at his bedroll but the storm held off until a bolt of lightning exploded overhead, followed at once by a boom of thunder. Rain pelted him; he could see nothing until the lightning flashed again, revealing the slanting rain, the mud, and his horse standing patiently nearby.
The storm passed sometime after midnight and he saw a single star through a rent in the clouds. An omen, he hoped, remembering that Sam Houston was a great believer in signs and portents. From living so long with the Indians, he supposed.
Joel was riding again by the time the sun rose in a cloudless sky. The tracks were gone, washed away, so Joel put the sun to his right and slightly behind him and headed north.
The flat land gave way to rougher ground where the trail wound in long loops through dense chaparral, crossing gullies awash with water from the night's storm. He was approaching a cut between two low bills when he heard the whisper of a sound behind him. He looked around.
The whiz of the bullet and the crack of the rifle seemed simultaneous. Ahead, from behind the top of the right-hand rise, Joel saw a telltale puff of smoke.
He spurred his horse's flank, bent low over the animal's neck and charged. Horse and rider topped the rise. A short, squat and blackbearded man had scrambled to his feet and was reloading a rifle. Joel swung at him with his pistol, feeling the barrel strike bone. And then his horse swept by. As Ivanhoe swung around, the man's rifle cracked, the bullet zinging past Joel's head. 
Joel fired back. The man spun away, his rifle dropping to the ground and his body slamming onto the rocks. Drawing his knife, Joel swung from his horse and ran to the man, kneeling beside him with his knife raised. The man lay on his stomach drawing deep, gurgling breaths. 
Joel grasped him by the shoulder and jerked him over onto his back. Blood frothed on the man's lips. Darker blood stained his upper chest. The man's eyes opened and stared past Joel. Joel looked behind him but saw no one. The only sound was the man's labored breathing. 
"Who are you?" Joel demanded. 
The man shook his head. 
Joel drew the blade of his knife lightly across the man's throat and etched a thin, bloody line. "Tell me or I'll kill you," he said. 
Again the man shook his head. 
Joel held the Bowie knife so the blooded point was a half-inch from the man's left eye. "Tell me who you are," he said, "or I'll cut your eyes, one by one." 
The man squeezed his eyes closed. He knows what I'm saying, Joel thought. He pricked an eyelid with the tip of the knife. 
The man's mouth opened and he tried to speak; his words were lost in a gush of blood. Joel stuck his knife into the ground beside him and grasped the 
man under the shoulders, raising him so he was sitting. He took the man's neckerchief and wiped the blood from his mouth. The man, he saw, had brown skin, close-set eyes, and hair that grew low over his forehead. He was young, probably not more than twenty. 
"Padre," the man gasped. 
"Father?" 
"Priest. I must have a priest," he said in English. 
"There is no priest." 
"Take me to a priest. There is a padre in Bexar, there is a padre in ..." Blood foamed on his lips and he coughed, choking on his own blood. He slumped forward, his chin falling onto his chest, and Joel had to prop him up with his back against a boulder. 
"There is no priest," Joel repeated. 
The man drew a series of deep shuddering breaths. All his strength seemed concentrated on breathing. "A priest," he insisted. 
"If I take you to a priest, will you tell me what you know?" 
Another deep breath. "Si," he said. 
"Who are you?" 
The man shook his head. "Manuel. My name is Manuel. I am not important. He left me here to kill you. He left me to be killed. What does he care who dies?" 
"Who?" 
Manuel glanced from side to side at Joel and beyond him. 
"El Diablo," he whispered. 
"The Devil? What's his real name?" 
"He has no other name. He is El Diablo." . "The night before last. Did he kill... T Q Joel stopped, unable to speak her name. He pulled 
the knife from the ground. He wanted to kill Manuel now, without waiting, but he knew he mustn't. At least not yet He thrust the knife into the sheath on his belt. 
"Did he kill the woman at the cabin?" he asked. "This El Diablo?' 
Manuel shrugged weakly. "There have been so many." 
"Two days ago. The woman with golden hair." 
Manuel nodded. "She shot him first. Here." His hand rose to his chest, coming away red with blood. Manuel Stared blankly at his fingers. 
"Where have they gone, this El Diablo and the other man who rides with him?" 
Manuel didn't answer. His eyes were closed, his skin ashen. Blood trickled from his mouth to his chin and down his neck. 
Joel grasped him by the shoulders and shook him. "God damn you," he shouted, "where have they gone?" 
Manuel's eyes flickered open and his lips moved wordlessly. Joel couldn't hear him. He placed his ear next to the man's mouth. 
"Santa Fe." 
Had Joel heard the words or had he imagined them? He shook Manuel again. The man's head flopped nervelessly from side to side. Placing his hand on Manuel's chest, Joel felt for a heartbeat There was none. 
He was dead. 
Slowly, Joel pushed himself to his feet and stared down at the body. He took out his knife, remembering Susanna's mutilated body. Then he shook his head. Manuel was dead, nothing could hurt him now. 
Joel found Manuel's horse picketed in chaparral thirty feet down the far side of the hill. One by one 
he examined the pony's feet. The first three shoes were intact, though worn. The shoe on the horse's left hind hoof was missing a tip.
"Damn," he said aloud, staring down at what had been his only clue. A clue that was now worthless.
No, he was wrong, it wasn't his only clue. According to Manuel the man, this El Diablo, had been wounded in the chest or shoulder.
And Manuel's last whispered words. "Santa Fe." Was El Diablo heading for the New Mexican city? Unlikely, since the city was nearly a thousand miles to the west. The only trails to Santa Fe led from Chihuahua in the south, from California, and from Independence, Missouri, to the north.
Santa Fe. The words tugged at his mind. He'd heard them from someone else recently. Then he remembered: from Grover Dunne! Grover was traveling to Santa Fe to join an expedition in Austin. And Austin was north of here, north of Gonzales.
Joel left Manuel's body where it lay. After he had traveled a mile he stopped to look back and saw four turkey buzzards circling in the morning sky. One of them dipped earthward. Joel watched until it dropped out of sight. The other scavengers followed suit.
Joel rode on, smiling grimly. One was dead; there were still two to go.
The messenger rode through the seaport city of Vera Cruz, along a sandy track to the mountains, and up the National Road leading to Mexico City. In the foothills he left the road and rode along a palm-lined avenue that led to the low, white hacienda of Magna de Clavo.
"Allo?" A sentry, resplendent in a uniform of blue, gold and red, barred his way.
The messenger reined in, drawing his lathered horse to a halt.
"Un mensafe por el general," he said.
"Dedonde es listed?'
"San Antonio de exar de Tejas."
The sentry nodded and stepped aside. The messenger rode on. When he dismounted in front of the hacienda, servants led his horse away while others ushered him into a magnificent sola. He waited impatiently, ignoring both the tropical scenery outside the
barred windows and the trophies of war displayed throughout the room.
A door opened and a soldier motioned the messenger to follow him. As they passed through long tiled corridors, the messenger heard the laughter of women and smelled the rich aroma of the kitchens. They entered a patio, the soldier stood aside, and the messenger found himself face to face with General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, hero of Tampico, hero of Vera Cruz.
The messenger brought his hand to the brim of his cap and held the salute until the general touched his own cocked hat with the tips of his fingers.
"I come with a message from El Diablo," the man said.
Santa Anna nodded. He was tall and handsome despite a long nose; spare but broad in the shoulders. His hand went to his chest where his fingers touched, one by one, the medals arrayed on his jacket.
"The Texans are sending a military force to Santa Fe," reported the messenger. "They intend to rouse the people to revolt against Governor Armijo. Five hundred or more men are gathering at the pueblo of Austin, armed with large numbers of rifles and cannon. They are commanded by a Colonel McLeod."
"When does this expedition leave Austin?"
"They may have left already. Their plan was to depart before the first of June."
Santa Anna pounded his right fist into the open palm of his left hand. He strode back and forth, limping, his wooden leg thudding on the hardpacked earth of the patio. When he turned to the messenger, his eyes were blazing.
"These Texans," he said scathingly. "They think of us as savage and corrupt idiots when Texas itself is a
land infested by infamous criminals. Thieves and murderers, vomited up by the worst sewers of Europe and North America."
"Yes, my general. I have been there and I have seen it with my own eyes."
"Eat your fill. Drink my wine. This house is yours for the night. In the morning I will send you to Governor Armijo in Santa Fe with word of this insult to our homeland."
"I am honored to perform this small service for General Santa Anna."
The General waved his hand in dismissal; the messenger saluted, turned about-face and went back into the hacienda. Santa Anna limped to the far corner of the patio where he stood staring down at a simple stone inscribed "Vera Cruz--1838."
He knew that bandits roamed the mountains along the road to the City of Mexico. To the north, along the route to El Paso del Norte and Santa Fe, there were not only bandits but tribes of warrior Indians as well. So he would send this messenger to Santa Fe tomorrow, another messenger the day after, and a third the day after that. The Texans would be destroyed; San Jacinto would be avenged. All of Mexico would honor Santa Anna.
He was a man who dreamed of greatness but, he told himself, he was a man of action as well as visionary. And his time was coming. Bustemente was a weakling, the army was in revolt. Santa Anna's time was near, he felt destiny in his bones. He could almost see himself riding to the National Palace in a carriage drawn by four white horses, almost hear the roar of the cannon salutes firing in his honor.
The General looked again at the stone at his feet under which his leg, severed after a French cannon
ball struck it at Vera Cruz, rested in its well-tended grave. When he was dictator of all Mexico he would disinter his leg and have it buried at the Santa Paula cemetery in the City of Mexico. With full military honors.
By then, the invaders from Texas would be in their graves as well.
When Joel arrived in Austin, the town was in a state of pandemonium. Dust rose in billows during the day, forcing him to cover his face with his handkerchief. Horsemen rode to and fro; soldiers in spanking cavalry uniforms, frontiersmen in new buckskins and moccasins. Mothers pulled wide-eyed children out of the way of wagons piled high with boxes and hogsheads. After dark, the sky glowed with the light from the hundreds of campfires around the town.
On his second day in town, Joel went to a crowded improvised cafe on the main street. While eating breakfast, a notice from the Austin City Gazette tacked to the wall beside him caught his eye:
". . . organize a military force for the purpose of opening a commercial intercourse with the people of Santa Fe . . . troops are necessary to escort the merchandise through the Comanche wilderness ... I therefore respectfully address myself to the young
men of the country ... All who arm, mount and equip themselves, will receive the pay of mounted gunmen . . . This expedition will furnish an ample field for adventure..."
Reading the words exhilarated Joel; he felt the call of the unknown that had drawn him from Worchester to his uncle's farm in Alton and then led him from Illinois to Texas. But that's not why I'm in Austin, he reminded himself grimly. I mean to find two men. And kill them. Nothing else matters.
When he left town, Joel followed a rutted dirt road north to the Pioneers' main encampment on the bank of Brushy Creek. Oxen grazed on the prairie to the east of the tents that were aligned row by row along the stream. Horsemen galloped past him toward the camp while others rode off across the prairie in small groups.
He heard a shot in the distance and then another. Hunters, he supposed, killing small game for their evening meal. As he rode into camp he saw men whittling, others working over their gear, cleaning their rifles for possibly the tenth time. Still others passed a canteen from hand to hand, shouting and laughing as they drank.
Riding slowly from campfire to campfire, looking for Graver Dunne, he caught snatches of talk:
"If you could of only been here in '36--old Sam Houston taught Santa Army a lesson he'll never forget. We found the bugger hiding in a swamp dressed like a peon and we dragged him dripping wet into camp, him and his fancy lady, too. Sam should of shot the bastard, then and there, and had done with it..."
"That buffalo was a mile away if it was a foot, so I canted my Sharps up maybe forty-five degrees and fired. Why that critter was so far away I almost had
time to reload and git ready to shoot again before I seen him stumble and fall. Hungry like I was, I ran all the way to where he lay, and it took me nigh unto ten minutes to git there . . ." 
"I been to Santa Fe. Went there in '38 on the Santa Fe Trail out of Missouri. No place like it in this here world for pretty women. Now listen here to me, I been to St. Louis and I been to Havana in Cuba and I been to New Orleans in Louisiana, but them women in Santa Fe, them black-eyed senoritas, they are the most beautiful and the most loving women in this here world. I never seen a more wondrous sight than senoritas bathing stark naked in the Rio Grande in the moonlight." 
"Kemp, you're funning us." 
"Those dons, they can't abide us Texans, not after the licking we gave them in the war. It's not that way with the senoritas though, God bless them. When they set eyes on a Texan it's like they never seen a man before and I guess that's the size of it, they haven't, not a real honest-to-God man ..." 
Joel swung his horse away from the campground. A quarter mile ahead he saw a crowd of men milling around a group of riders. As he neared, one of the riders left the group and trotted toward him. 
"By all that's holy," the rider shouted. "It's Joel Falconer. I thought it was you but I couldn't believe my eyes." 
Joel smiled. "Grover, I've been looking high and low for you since sun-up. I never thought I'd find you with all this coming and going." 
"The Pioneers are three hundred strong," Grover said. "All we need now is for McLeod to get off his ass and lead us out of this damn place. And, my boy, 
we need one other bit of luck. We need you to go with us." He swept his arm westward. "Into the Comanche wilderness, as our poetic president, the honorable Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, calls it." 
"I intend to sign up," Joel said. 
"Have the joys of married life paled so soon?" 
"She's dead, Grover. Susanna's dead." 
The smile vanished from Grover's freckled face. He took off his hat and held it to his chest. "May God have mercy on her soul," he said. 
The men behind him called out. "Dunne! We're fixing to start the race." 
Grover put on his hat and wheeled his horse. "Come along and watch," he said over his shoulder to Joel. "And if you have any money at all, bet it on me and Brutus here." He patted the neck of his big bay. 
"I only have a few dollars," Joel said. "Not even any Star money." 
"I'd lend you some there was any left. I've bet all I had." Grover lowered his voice. "They don't know it, but Brutus here's never lost a match race in his life." 
When they reached the other men, a thin, elegantly dressed Mexican rode his horse forward, stopping a few feet in front of the crowd. 
"Stand back, senores" he said, "and I will speak the requirements of the contest." 
Joel raised his eyebrows to find a foreigner taking charge, but the rest of the men seemed to take it for granted. 
"No speeches today, Navarro," one of them called and the others laughed. 
Navarro unsheathed his sword, shifting it awkwardly from his right to his left hand as Joel thought; 
though he isn't naturally lefthanded. The Mexican drew a line in the dirt, then walked his black stallion a few feet to one side. 
"This is the beginning and the ending," Navarro said. "The horses will race to the lone tree, circle and return." The tree was half a mile away. 
"Bring the horses," Navarro said. 
Grover rode forward and reined in his big American bay a few feet behind the starting line. Another rider came up beside him, a thin, bleak-faced man with a small black moustache and sun-bronzed skin. He looked as strong and wiry as his small Spanish pony. 
"Who is he?" Joel asked the man standing next to him. 
"Charles Lewis," the man told him. "He's the one I'm backing. That horse of his, Durango, sure don't look like much, but he's game as hell." 
"Senores," Navarro said to Grover and Lewis, "do you have any questions?" 
Both men shook their heads. 
"Advance your mounts to the line." 
They brought their horses forward then waited, tensed, arms raised, quirts ready. Navarro had resheathed his sword and now held a pistol pointed skyward. 
He fired, smoke exploding from the muzzle. The big bay reared and Grover had to cling to his neck to stay on. The smaller horse sprinted forward and by the time Grover had regained control, Lewis was far ahead. 
Grover spurred Brutus and the big American bay galloped after Durango. Grover must be fifty yards behind, Joel thought. He'll never catch him. * 
Durango swung wide at the race's midpoint, losing ground as Grover brought his horse in close and yanked him violently around the tree. The two horses straightened out for the run to the finish, the great strides of the bay closing the distance between them. Lewis hunched over the neck of the smaller animal, exhorting him, lashing the horse's flank with his quirt to keep the lead. 
"Go get him," Joel called. "Get him, Grover, get him." 
He might win, he thought, Grover just might win. The men were cheering, waving their hats and shouting as the two horses charged to the finish line. The American bay pulled alongside Durango and it seemed he would lunge past the smaller horse, but the two raced neck and neck. At the last moment the small Mexican pony thrust his head in front and crossed the line first by a nose. 
"Damn," Joel said. 
Grover rode back to the crowd and flung himself from his slickly-wet horse. 
"Did you see what he did?" he demanded of his audience. "Did you see what that damn greaser Navarro did?" 
"Lewis won fair and square," said one of the men as he accepted a Bowie knife in payment of a bet. 
"Navarro shot that gun off right in my horse's ear," Grover shouted. "He spooked him! How much did you have bet on the pony, Navarro? How much?" 
Juan Navarro shook his head as his horse sidestepped a few feet to the right. "Nada," he said. "I made no bet." 
"I had all I own riding on Brutus," Grover said. 
All at once he rushed Navarro, grabbing his leg 
and trying to pull him from his mount. The horse shied away and Navarro gripped the reins as he tried to shove Grover away with his boot. 
"Get down and fight like a man," Grover screamed at him, his face as red as his hair. 
Two men grasped Graver's arms and pulled him away from Navarro. 
"Call him out," someone said. "Challenge him." 
"Take your bloody hands off me," Grover shouted. 
Lunging to one side, he broke free and charged head down, bull-like, striking one of the men in the pit of the stomach. The man grunted and sat down hard on the ground. The other ran up behind Grover and clubbed him on the back of the head with his closed fist. Grover stumbled, lurching forward only to recover and charge the second man with fists flailing, striking him a roundhouse blow high on the cheekbone. The man kicked back, his boot hitting Grover's shin and sending him sprawling. 
While the crowd pressed forward around the fighters, cheering them on, Navarro sat on his horse watching and shaking his head. Charles Lewis walked his lathered pony in a circle a short distance away, ignoring the fight. 
Joel pushed his way through the mob. He saw one man holding Grover on the ground by the throat while another staggered to his feet and aimed a kick at Grover's ribs. 
Joel sprang forward, kicking the man's raised boot. The man cried in pain, turning away, hopping on one foot. Joel ignored him and grabbed the man astride Grover, flinging him to the ground. He swung wildly at him. The man grabbed Joel's arm and pulled Joel off-balance. Joel somersaulted over him, and came to his feet his fists raised. 
Grover was back on his feet as well. Joel ran to his side just as the shouts of the crowd died down, then stopped altogether. The men stood aside for a horseman in officer's blues. Reining up, the officer looked down at the fighters standing with fists clenched and arms cocked like figures in a boxing tableau. 
"Who started this?" Though soft, the young officer's voice held the honed edge of command. 
He can't be more than twenty-seven, Joel thought, looking up at the clean-shaven face tanned and lined by the sun and wind. The officer's gaze moved from man to man. No one in the crowd answered him. Hands in pockets, they shuffled away from the fighters as though putting as much distance as possible between themselves and trouble. One man spat a stream of tobacco juice to the ground. 
"Carter," the horseman said to the tobacco chewer. "You're an officer, you should be tending to your duty. Who started this brawl?" 
" 'Twas the Irishman," Carter said. 
"What's your name?" the officer asked Grover. 
"Grover Dunne." He stared defiantly up at the man sitting with his hands clasped on the pommel of his saddle. 
"Sir," Grover added. 
"Merchant or volunteer?" 
"Volunteer. Captain Hudson's company." 
"Take this man to the guard tent," he told Carter. Wheeling his horse, the officer rode through the crowd and galloped back toward camp. 
As Joel returned to his own horse, an older man fell into step beside him. 
"You're mighty handy with your fists," the man observed. "Fast for a big man, too." 
"Graver's my friend," Joel replied. 
"I gathered as much. I was about to pitch in myself, to help him even up the odds." He spat a long stream of tobacco juice. "Your friend was in the wrong, to my way of thinking," he said. 
Joel shrugged. "The Mex did spook his horse with that gun." 
"Not by intent. Besides, your Irish friend was in the wrong another way." 
"How so?" Joel unlooped the reins of his horse and began leading Ivanhoe along the creek. 
"We got ourselves too much trouble on this here trek without adding more by calling each other names and fighting. We'll have our hands full and more with Comanches without stirring up bad blood among ourselves. Least that's how I sees it." He stopped and held out his hand. "I'm Hayes, Hayes Archer. I'm with Hudson's Company, too. That's Company C." 
"Joel Falconer." 
Hayes Archer's grip was hard and firm. His whiskers were grizzled, his eyes rheumy and red-veined; all in all, an old man for the frontier. He must be forty or forty-five, Joel judged. 
"I don't rightly recall seeing you before," Hayes said as they walked by the creekside. 
"I hit town yesterday. Boarded overnight in Austin and rode here this morning." 
"Expecting to sign up?" 
"I reckon I will," Joel said. 
"The Pioneers need all the men they can get." He gave Joel an appraising glance. "You look like a man what can carry his own weight and then some. How tall are you? Six feet?" 
"A hair under." 
"Big men look taller than they are. Come along with me, Falconer, I'll see you get signed up." 
Joel followed Hayes Archer through the camp to a tent with a soldier posted beside the entrance. The guard nodded curtly to Hayes.
"I'm bringing another lamb to the slaughter," Hayes told him.
"I wouldn't always be poor-mouthing the Expedition if I was you." Joel was surprised at the soldier's tone of voice.
"Poor-mouthing? I'm telling you the truth, like I tell everybody that'll listen to me. You wait and see, there'll come a day when you'll wish you'd listened to old Hayes Archer. Mark my words."
Joel glanced from Hayes to the soldier, who motioned him inside. After Joel signed the papers making him a Pioneer and watched his name being added to the roster, Hayes showed him to the tent where he'd bed down.
"What'll they do to Grover?" he asked.
Hayes spat. "Nothing. Nothing worth mentioning, leastways. They'll give him a good dressing down and make him forfeit a half-month's pay. Nothing more."
"And who was the officer that broke up the fight just when he was winning?"
"I thought everybody knew him. Why, that's our great leader, the heroic General Hugh McLeod, victor of the Council House Fight with the Comanches last year. That was when you Texans invited the Comanche to a parley and murdered a dozen chiefs and twenty of their warriors when they showed up."
"That wasn't the way I heard it." Joel felt himself getting riled. What did he have to do with the Council House Fight?
Hayes shrugged. "I'm telling it to you straight," he said. "The way you might of heard it, bucko, makes no difference to the way it was."
If you don't like General McLeod . . ." Joel began. 
"General McLeod," Hayes said scornfully. "It was Colonel McLeod until three days ago. That's when President Buonoparte Lamar gave him a star for leading this here trek into the wilderness. On account of that and also on account of McLeod's being President Lamar's brother-in-law and drinking buddy from back in Georgia. Those damn Georgians stick together."
"If you don't like McLeod," Joel pressed on, "and if you think we got troubles piled on top of troubles, why are you coming along on this expedition?" 
"I was wondering how long it'd take you to ask that question," Hayes said. "I got my reasons and they're good ones. That's all you need to know, bucko." 
Joel frowned. Hayes had told him what he didn't want to hear. He wanted to learn that McLeod was a fire-breathing general who could lead them all to hell and back without a singe to show for the journey. Hayes was nothing more than a bitter old man, Joel thought. He vowed to have as little to do with him as possible. 
The truth hurts, he remembered his mother telling him. Perhaps he should at least listen to what Hayes said and make up his own mind. 
"I can see you're thinking I'm being hard on our young General McLeod," Hayes said, "and you're right. He's got the experience, there's no denying that, he's been with the army these last five years. It's not the General or his officers that's the root of the trouble, it's the men he's trying to lead. There's just too damn many Texans." 
"And what's wrong with Texans?" Joel demanded. 
"Ha, got your back up that time, didn't I? I'll tell you what's wrong with them, they're too goddamned 
independent. The only man that ever was able to ride herd on an army of Texans was Sam Houston, and even he had his hands full. Did you know that after the Alamo and the massacre at Goliad, Old Sam chased Santa Anna all through east Texas, whipped his ass to a fare-thee-well at San Jacinto, and in all that time lost only seventeen men?
"You got to hand it to Sam," Hayes went on. "If he was leading us to Santa Fe, we'd be there next month with the Mexicans and the Comanches happy to show us the way. But Sam's against the whole idea of this here expedition. Whatever Buonoparte Lamar's for, Sam's agin, and vice versa, and this is Lamar's idea."
"You still haven't said what they're doing wrong."
"Put up or shut up, is that what you're telling me, bucko? Well, just follow me and I'll show you."
Hayes led Joel from the campground up a low hill.
"Jim Bridger, now," Hayes said as they walked, "there was a man who knowed how to lead a body of men. When Old Jim organized a trapping party, they was organized. I was with him on the Snake, him and Broken Hand Fitzpatrick and that lady trapper, Maria DeVises. Now there was one fine woman. Smart as a whip, too."
When they reached the crest of the hill, Hayes swung his arm to take in the encampment below them. "Now, bucko," he said, "tell me what you see."
Joel stared blankly at him.
"Go ahead, tell me what you see."
To humor him, Joel said, "I see the rows of tents where the men are bivouacked and the cavvy with the horses. There's American horses for the most part, a few Spanish ponies, some Indian ponies and it looks like two or three wild mustangs. There's wagons with
the goods for the merchants to trade in Santa Fe and a herd of beef cattle for our feed and oxen to haul the wagons. That's what I see."
'That's about the size of it all right. Now, what don't you see?"
"I don't follow you."
"I'm asking you plain and simple, what should you see down below us that ain't there."
Joel shook his head.
"Indians," Hayes said. "Look as hard as you can, go into each and every one of those tents if you've a mind to, look everyplace you can think of and you'll find nary an Indian."
"What difference does that make? We're intending to hunt Indians, not recruit them."
"The difference is this: no white man has ever crossed Texas heading west, least not since the Spaniards did hundreds of years back. None, nary a one. Indians have, time and time again."
"Damn, but I'm slow-witted," Joel said. "Guides. We need Indian guides."
"Apaches if any such can be found, Apaches would be the best. There's nary a guide in camp and none are expected. Now there's something else we ain't got, not as important as the guides but important none the less. Something you can't see the lack of from here. We got the beef cattle like you said and every man's to draw three pounds of beef a day. And we got coffee, sugar, salt, rice and dried beef. And, thank the good Lord, we got tobaccy. What we ain't got is flour. They'll be no bread on this here trek, none at all, and I know how hungry a man can get for bread."
"I'd of thought we'd pack flour."
"No, siree, it costs too much. With the Republic of
Texas going to hell in a handbasket for lack of money, they decided to be penny wise and pound foolish."
"I reckon I can get by without bread if need be."
"Maybe," Hayes said. "Now I'll show you one more thing that's awry and then I've had my say." He reached down, plucked a blade of grass, and held it in his hand.
"See what I got here, bucko?" he asked.
Joel nodded. "Grass."
"Right. Not just grass, though, this is June grass. It's got its growth and it ain't fresh green anymore. The prairie grass was up on the first of April this year and we're already in the middle of June. The time to start across the prairies and the deserts is when the grass first comes up. We're starting too late, eleven weeks too late. The summer drought will be on us by the time we reach the Staked Plain. When the grass turns brown, what will the cattle eat? The game that eats the grass will thin out, too. What will we hunt for food? The water holes and the creeks will dry so what will we drink?"
"The way you reason," Joel said, "setting out for Santa Fe is a good way to commit suicide. Answer me this, Hayes. If what you say is the God's truth, why are you going along? Why, Hayes?"
Hayes stared silently at Joel for a moment, smiled thinly and turned on his heel and strode off down the hill. Joel shook his head; the old man could be right. If Hayes was only half right, they were in for trouble, big trouble, before too many days passed.
When Joel returned to the tent, he found Grover sitting outside.
"They didn't keep you in the hoosegow for long," Joel said.
"They've got no fit place to board prisoners. It was
either the firing squad or freedom. They fined me a half-month's pay and called us quits." 
"Hayes Archer was right. He figured that's what McLeod would do." 
"Not McLeod, his council of officers." Grover spat. "It didn't take long for Hayes Archer to latch unto you. I'd steer clear of our Snake River mountain man if I was you. He's a Jonah and a bringer of ill fortune. Has he listed all the grievous flaws of this expedition for you?" 
"He said we have no Indian guides, for one thing." 
"We're meeting up with some north of here. Lipan Apaches, I'm told." 
"Hayes says we're leaving too late in the season. In July and August the high plains are unfit for man and beast. Not to mention Texans." 
"The whole trek to Santa Fe will only take us six or seven weeks. We'll cross the plains like that." Grover snapped his fingers. 
"And he says we've no bread in the supply wagons." 
"I don't rightly know about that. I do know this Irishman can go six weeks without bread any time. Specially if he knows there's a full cup and a pretty senorita waiting for him in Santa Fe." 
"That's what I like about you, Grover," Joel said. "You put a man's mind at rest." 
"Blarney's been an Irish export since before the days of Saint Patrick." Grover frowned, suddenly serious. "I know you need cheering up and I know there's blessed little I can do. Do you want to share what happened back in San Antone with an old friend?" 
Joel told him about returning to his farm and finding Susanna's body, about the ambush and Manuel's dying reference to Santa Fe. 
"You've not gone to the law?" Grover asked. 
"What law? There's precious little law in Texas and what there is moves as slow as a lame tortoise. Even if there was any to speak of, I wouldn't go to the law. This is between me and those two bastards." Joel paused, then added, "I'd appreciate it if you didn't breathe a word I told you around camp." 
"My lips are sealed. If you need help, just holler. And if I see or hear anything I'll let you know. Here, have a swallow of something that's good for what ails you." 
Joel took the canteen and drank, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he finished. 
"Courtesy of Mr. Charles Lewis," Grover said, "the gent I should've beaten in the race this morning. He's a merchant who made and lost a fortune, in the Chihuahua trade, they say. Now he's hoping to make another by opening up a Havana-to-Santa Fe route by way of the great Republic of Texas." 
"Here's to him then," Joel said, raising the canteen and taking another drink." 
"Here now, me lad," Grover said, taking back the canteen. "You'd best not have too much. Captain Hudson said to tell you he's put you on picket duty tonight from midnight to four. President Lamar's due in camp any time now to make a speech and to spend the night. We're breaking camp in the morning and leaving for the west. At last." 
After supper Joel listened to the president's speech until he started to doze off and slept for a couple of hours. Later he crossed the creek and walked a half mile in the dark to a rise that had been pointed out to him as his post. 
He exchanged a few words with the sentry he was relieving before he started his foot patrol. Looking back at the camp, he saw the shadows of men passing 
to and fro in front of the fires and heard the shouts of laughter.
The camp didn't settle down until the small hours of Sunday morning. The stars shone brightly overhead, the coyotes were still, and the only sound Joel could hear was the faint and lonely whisper of the wind.
I'm a damn fool, he told himself. I'm setting out across a thousand miles of wilderness because a dying man said "Santa Fe." I've got no more chance of finding El Diablo than I have being elected President of Texas.
He heard a faint sound in front of him from the direction of the open prairie. He crouched, unslinging his rifle. In the dim starlight he saw the figure of a man walking toward him.
"Halt!" Joel called out. "Who goes there?"
The man came on without answering. Joel cocked his rifle.
"Who goes there?" he challenged again.
The man said nothing. When he stopped a few yards away, he grunted as though trying to speak. He was, Joel saw, gesturing and pointing to his mouth. The man must be a mute, Joel decided.
Joel stood up and stepped forward, his rifle ready. A twig snapped behind him. Whirling, he caught the glint of metal and flung himself to one side, rolling and coming to his feet ready to fire.
Footsteps pounded away from him. Joel ran in the direction of the sounds, shouting for the man to stop. Realizing after a moment that he no longer heard the steps, Joel stood still, listening. He heard the murmur of the creek in front of him. The man was gone.
When he returned to his post he saw no sign of the
mute, and though he searched the area for the next half hour, he could find no trace of either man.
He wondered if they were together and whether the one facing him was actually a mute. He wondered why the one attacked him or was about to. Could they be the men he and Grover had fought that morning come to seek revenge?
Or had they any connection with El Diablo?
Joel had ridden to Austin to hunt the men who killed his wife. Could they be hunting him now? Let them come, he told himself. The next time I'll be ready.
In the first light of dawn, the Pioneers struck their camp on Brushy Creek. Horsemen formed a column of two, oxen were yoked six span to each wagon, and General McLeod galloped to the head of the army where, with a wave of his hat, he signaled the march to begin.
The Expedition, three hundred strong, was on its way to Santa Fe.
Joel watched from his place near the rear of the line as Company D splashed across the creek with its guidon fluttering at the point. Behind the first company, above the General's party, the Lone Star flag rippled in the breeze. The band, a group of recruits playing clarinets, bugles, fifes and drums, struck up a stirring march. 
Following the first two cavalry companies came twenty-two wagons, their iron wheels biting into the dirt of the prairie as the oxen labored forward beneath their oaken yokes. The provision wagon came next, pulled by mules, and then the herd of beef cattle straggled behind the three companies of the rear guard. Near the end of the expedition, mules hauled the artillery, a six-pound cannon. One company on fatigue duty drove the cattle, cut away the banks of creeks, and removed obstacles to make the going easier for the wagons. 
The Pioneers made good time on the rolling prairie and by late afternoon they had traveled eight miles. The only mishaps involved the overturning of two wagons and both had been quickly righted to the sound of teamster curses and snapping whips.
By the time Grover rode ahead to join Joel, the morning's column of twos was no longer precise. Some of the men rode in groups of three or four, talking and chewing, while others rode alone.
"We're camping on the San Gabriel tonight," Grover shouted to him. "Let's you and me ride ahead."
Joel hesitated, glancing around.
"Come along," Grover said, "there's no harm in leaving the column, we're still in settled country. It's not as though we'll meet wild Indians. Not that I'd mind." When Joel still held back, Grover pointed ahead to the clouds of dust raised by horsemen riding away from the column onto the open prairie. "Everybody that wants to is going ahead. Nobody gives a damn."
Grover's big bay veered away from the column and Joel, still doubtful, followed. As they galloped past Captain Houghton's company, Joel saw Juan Navarro dressed in black and wearing a vaquero's hat, the silver on his saddle reflecting the sun. Behind Navarro rode another rider, shorter and blackbearded.
Joel stared. He knew that man from somewhere. The man, as though sensing he was being watched, * looked up and impassively returned Joel's gaze. His mouth hung open as though ready to speak.
Joel recognized him. He was the mute from the night before. And he rode with Navarro; Joel spurred his horse to catch up with Grover.
"What do you know about Juan Navarro?" he asked.
"That damn greaser. I know he made me lose the race by shooting his pistol in Brutus's ear."
"I mean before that."
Grover shrugged and slowed. "They say he stayed loyal to Texas during the war. Lived in San Antone at the time. Served with Houston and Lamar at San Jacinto, or so I'm told. What I think is that he was a damn Mexican spy, letting Santa Anna know what the Texan army was up to. His wife and daughters died of cholera a few years back. They claim he hasn't been the same since."
"I wonder why he's going with us."
"Some say he was asked to join the Pioneers because he speaks Spanish. And he knows the Governor of Santa Fe Armijo or whatever his name is. Then there's those, and Grover is one of them, that thinks he's got reasons of his own for going and that we'd best find out what those reasons are before we get too much closer to New Mexico. When we do get there, it's going to be three hundred of us against thousands of Mexicans."
"I can see where losing a wife and daughter could change a man," Joel said. "Make him do things he wouldn't have thought of doing before."
"I was telling some of the men around the campfire last night about you."
"Grover, you said your mouth was sealed."
"Ah, Joel, my heart is in the right place. They mentioned your name in a questioning way and my tongue was a mite loosened by the good whiskey we was drinking. No harm meant, no harm done."
Joel said nothing and they rode ahead in silence.
"Will you look there?" Grover pointed ahead to a line of brush. "That must be the river." *
They galloped to the San Gabriel, and as they rode along the bank, they saw two Pioneers who had fashioned fishing poles standing on the shore, casting their lines into the muddy water. 
"Any luck?" Grover asked. 
Both men shook their heads. Joel heard a shot, and then another. Downstream men were riding along the bank shooting at something in the river. As far as Joel could tell, no officer had ridden ahead of the troop; the men were on their own. Looking behind him he saw a cloud of dust rising above the main column of troops, and he wondered what Hayes Archer would say about the slack discipline. 
"There'll be hell to pay when McLeod and the rest get here," Joel said. 
"For what?" 
"All of us riding off from the column to fish and shoot, like we're on a hunting trip." 
"You're still thinking this is the regular U.S. Army, Joel, but it ain't. This is a Texas army. If a Texan doesn't like the way things are going he just says the hell with it, and nothing a four-day-old General might say or do makes any difference. You know what, Joel? You're beginning to sound a wee bit like Hayes Archer." 
"I got to admit I was wondering what he might say." 
"I'm not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn't do," Grover said. "If I was you, though, I'd give Archer a wide berth. We're all getting fed up with the way he's been complaining since he joined the Pioneers. Goddamn, he's not even a Texan and here he is in a Texan army, in the middle of the Republic, trying to tell us what to do." 
"I don't see it does much harm," Joel said, surprised to find himself defending Hayes, " 'cause no one pays no attention to him." 
"You're damn right they don't!" Suddenly Grover pointed along the river bank. "Look! Over there!" He spurred his horse forward. 
Joel followed. Because of the dust, he couldn't see anything until Grover reined up his horse and swung to the ground, rifle in hand. Joel dismounted and ran to stand beside him. In the mud below the river bank he saw two huge ugly creatures. Both were more than twelve feet long with thick brown necks, long flat heads and wicked-looking tails. Their scaly, armor- plated bodies made them look like survivors from some prehistoric age. 
"Alligators!" Grover shouted. He aimed his rifle and pulled the trigger. 
It failed to fire. The two 'gators waddled clumsily on their short legs toward the river. They were sliding into the water as Joel squeezed off a shot. He was sure he'd hit the second reptile but the bullet seemed to have no effect. 
Grover fired and one of the animals thrashed about in the shallow water. The other, Joel saw, had disappeared. Grover laid his gun on the bank and dashed into the river, splashing out from shore to where the wounded 'gator twisted and turned in the muddy water. 
"Watch put for his tail," Joel shouted. He ran into the water after Grover. He couldn't see what was happening in all the turmoil. 
The thrashing abated and Grover waded toward him pulling the alligator by the tail. The armored body gave a last quiver and was still. Grover, his Vet 
buckskins gashed and torn, his leg bleeding, pulled the reptile from the water. 
"Damn, but he's a feisty son-of-a-bitch." 
Grover let the tail fall to the ground and Joel knelt to examine the dead alligator. 
"There's two bullet holes," he said after a minute. "We both got him." 
"My first trophy," Grover said. "I mean to get me a few more before this journey's done." 
"They say 'gator tail makes good eating." 
Grover grimaced in distaste. "I didn't shoot him to eat him, I shot him for the hell of it." He stood and began reloading his gun. "This damn rifle misfired on me again," he said. "I was meaning to get me a new shooting piece with the money from the horse race. That damn Navarro." 
"I expect Hayes Archer knows more about firearms than most. Why not let him take a look at it?" 
"Ha. He'd give me a lecture on all the faults of the Hall rifle without doing nothing to fix it. I mean to break this gun down when I get the chance and figure where the problem is. Come on, let's find us another beast before the officers get here and spoil the fun." 
After searching in vain for more alligators, they rode back to rejoin the column on the last half mile of its trek to the night's campground. Though the men were tired after weeks of inactivity in Austin, there was excitement in the air, a brittle edge of anticipation, an electric expectancy. 
After Grover left, Joel joined the others as they gathered around the fires to broil rations of beef on sticks, or ramrods and drink their hot black coffee. The fires died down, embers glowed, coffee simmered 
over the coals, and wood smoke rose up lazily into the quiet night air. Overhead a host of brilliant stars arched across the sky. A bobcat squalled in the distance.
The old-timers whittled and chewed as they swapped stories of the desperate defense of the Alamo, of an escape from Mexican executioners at Goliad, of the glory of the victory at San Jacinto. They told yarns about the great plains to the north, about riding through herds of buffalo that covered the land as far as the eye could see, about Indians on the warpath beneath the Comanche moon in September and distant California where Spanish vaqueros herded cattle along the shores of the mighty Pacific. 
"Mr. Falconer?" 
Joel looked up at a handsome man with a full compliment of chin whiskers circling his face from ear to ear. 
"I'm George Wilkins Kendall," the stranger said as he sat on the ground beside Joel. "Of the New Orleans Picayune." 
Joel nodded. He'd heard talk that a newspaperman had come along as a member of the Expedition. 
"I'm keeping a journal," Kendall said. "Every night after we make camp I write down a few lines about the events of the day. I was told you shot an alligator down by the river today." 
"Grover Dunne and me did. There was two bullet holes in the critter when Grover hauled him out of the water." 
'Til make a note of it. Now if anything else out of the ordinary happens, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know." 
"Shooting a 'gator ain't much." Joel eyed Kendall suspiciously. "You're not in league with the officers, 
are you? Letting them read what you write and all?" 
"Certainly not," Kendall said stiffly. "I simply write what I observe and report what I'm told. I don't make judgments. I know some of the older men say there should be more discipline on the march. That the men who broke ranks and rode ahead to the river today should be given extra fatigue duty." Kendall shrugged. "It's not for me to say." 
"I thought of being a scribbler once," Joel said, "but I gave up the idea." 
"Think on it again after a few years. When you're young, that's a time for doing, but when you're older, that's a time for thinking about what you did and maybe writing it down. Now me, I'm thirty-two, in my middle years, and I try to do and write at the same time." 
"It always seemed to me that it's the doing what's important. I mean no offense," Joel added hastily. 
"No offense taken." Kendall plucked a long thin cigar from his vest pocket and offered it to Joel, who first refused it then lit it on an ember. The cigar smoke smelled rich and fragrant. 
"When you were in school in New England," Kendall said, "you probably heard of the tree in the middle of the desert that was felled by lightning." 
"How did you know I'm a Yankee?" Joel asked. 
"Your words mark you as plain as a brand across the forehead." 
Joel nodded. "You was saying about the tree." 
"A tree falls in the desert and there's no one living within a hundred miles. The question is, does the tree make a noise if there's no one to hear it? Now, in my view, a journalist is akin to a wave of air carrying the sound of that tree, not just for a mile but for thousands of miles, perhaps around the earth. 
This expedition may succeed; it may fail. We may ride into Santa Fe as heroes or hauled in as prisoners in chains. In ten years no one will remember us, who we were, what we did or why we did it. Unless one of us keeps a record." 
"I see what you're getting at," Joel said. "And the record isn't just writing on a sheet of newspaper to be tossed away, it's there to be read by people who might someday do things they never would have thought of before." 
"You're miles ahead of me already," Kendall said. "Yes, writing can be a sort of memory. The Picayune is New Orleans' memory. When a person dies, a man's father or friend or wife, they're not dead as long as we keep our memory of them alive." 
Joel glanced at Kendall, wondering if Grover had told him about Susanna. The reporter, who was smoking and watching the glowing embers of the fire, made no sign one way or the other. 
"That's why a man likes to have children," Kendall said. "So when he dies, as he must, a part of him goes on into the next generation and the next and the next." 
"You're married, I take it." 
Kendall laughed. "No, I'm just speculating. I'm a bachelor, never mean to be anything but. That's not to say I don't have any children. Back in New Orleans . . ." His voice trailed off. He stood abruptly, flipping the butt of his cigar into the fire. 
"Young man," he said, "you should be the reporter. I came here to find out about your damn alligators and you've set me to talking about myself. If you're ever in New Orleans, assuming we both get out, of this alive, come by the Picayune office, and ask for 
George Wilkins Kendall. Maybe you can be a scribbler yet."
After Kendall left, Joel sat staring into the dying fire with his thoughts whirling in his head. He hunched his shoulders and felt vaguely guilty. He was enjoying this trek into the wilderness and he knew he shouldn't be, not with Susanna lying in her grave...
The next day a bugler sounding reveille woke him at four in the morning. They made only five miles by nightfall because the wagons were overloaded, so General McLeod sent a party to Bryan's settlement. They brought back a wagon, four yoke of oxen, and the necessary chains.
The following day they traveled six miles in all and Joel saw his first buffalo, a small herd grazing far off to the west. The expedition camped that night on Oppossum Creek. Shortly after midnight a storm of thunder, lightning and wind struck and when Joel's tent was carried away, he and his tentmates were forced to spend the rest of the night without cover.
The next day they encountered a larger herd of buffalo.
"My God," Grover said to Joel, "there must be nigh onto a million of them." He pointed to a huge bull standing alone. "I'm getting me that one."
He left the ranks at a full gallop and dashed at the great shaggy animal. The buffalo fled with Grover a hundred feet behind, his rifle in hand. Joel followed them at a lope. The animal ran in a straight line, never veering, and Grover quickly overtook him and fired down at his neck.
Joel saw the muzzle flash and heard Grover cry
out. When he reached him, Grover had dropped his rifle and was holding his right wrist. Raw red patches showed on the burnt and blackened skin. 
"Damn Hall rifle," Grover said. 
"We'd best find the doctor," Joel told him. 
After Grover retrieved his rifle, they rode back to the column. 
"Doc Whittaker's in the Jersey wagon," a teamster told Joel. "He's been feeling poorly of late." 
The doctor, a greying man whose pale face was beaded with sweat, clambered from the wagon to the ground. 
"Let me take a look," he said. 
Grover held out his arm and Dr. Whittaker examined the wound. 
"I'll put on some grease to keep putrefaction from setting in." 
The doctor climbed slowly into the rear of the wagon and returned with a can. Dipping grease with his fingers, he smeared it over the blackened area on Graver's wrist and lower arm. Grover winced, clenching his teeth. 
'I don't like the looks of it," Joel said as they left the doctor's wagon. 
'Tis naught. By tomorrow I'll be as good as new." 
The next morning Grover joined the line of march as if nothing had happened. Joel noticed, though, that he held Brutus' reins with his left hand while keeping his right arm pressed tight to his body. Joel frowned and decided he'd make sure the doctor saw the wound again if it failed to heal. 
But that day General McLeod formed a spy company; Joel volunteered for duty and was accepted. He and the others were assigned to ride ahead of the 
Expedition to scout for water, grass, and game so the chief scout could choose the best route for the wagons to follow. 
When Joel returned to camp one evening three days later, he went to search for Grover. He saw one boy of eighteen, gathering wood for the fires. The boy had tied a small dead tree to the tail of his horse. 
"You damn fool," Joel shouted, starting toward him as the horse began struggling to free himself. 
The horse broke into a gallop and headed straight into the middle of the camp with the tree bouncing wildly behind him. The other animals bolted to attention. The horse cut a swath through the camp, dragging pots and strips of cooking meat in its wake, and scattering burning brands from the fires. 
The horses, mules, and oxen raced off as one and the stampede was on, the animals swinging in a group across the campground and thundering out onto the prairie. The men fanned out in pursuit and, after four hours of stumbling and cursing in the darkness, succeeded in rounding up most the strays. 
When Joel returned to his tent, he dropped to the ground exhausted. He didn't think of Grover until the next morning. He found him looking listless and haggard. 
"How's the arm?" Joel asked anxiously. 
Grover shrugged. His face was wet with sweat and he hadn't shaved for several days. 
"Let me take a look," Joel said. 
"Damn it, leave me be." 
Joel reached out to pull back Grover's sleeve. 
"Don't touch it," Grover shouted at him. Joel saw tears in his eyes. 
"Have you got a bandage on the wound?" Joel asked, looking at the thickness of Graver's lower arm under his shirtsleeve. 
"No," Grover admitted. "It's swollen something fierce. Joel, I'm scared." 
"We're getting you to the doc. To Whittaker. If you don't come on your own I'm fetching him back here to see you." 
Til come." 
They rode to the doctor's wagon. 
"The doc's a sick man," the teamster told them. "He's down with the ague." 
"He's got to take a look at this man's arm," Joel said. "It's swole real bad." 
"Take him inside." 
In the dim, fetid interior of the wagon they found Dr. Whittaker huddled under two Army blankets. As they knelt beside him, Joel saw the doctor tremble, his entire body shaking. 
"You got to look at Grover Dunne's arm," Joel said. 
The doctor struggled up until he sat holding his chin propped in his hands. "Cut off the man's sleeve," he said. 
Joel slit the sleeve and stared in horror at Grover's arm. It was bloated, bluish-red and oozing pus. It smelled like meat gone bad. 
"Mortification's set it," Whittaker said. "Gangrene." The doctor's teeth chattered as a chill swept through his body. 
"Can you drain the pus?" Joel asked. 
Dr. Whittaker shook his head. "It's too late for draining or bleeding. The only chance is to amputate the arm. Above the elbow." t 
"Nobody's cutting into me," Grover said. 
Dr. Whittaker shrugged. "If we amputate the arm 
you've got a fifty-fifty chance. If you let the mortification spread you'll be dead inside of three days."
"Can you do the cutting?" Joel asked.
Whittaker held out his right hand. It trembled badly. "I told them to sign up a second doctor," he said. "They didn't. Damn it, I'm not fit to take out a splinter."
"Come on," Joel said to Graver, "we'll talk to the Captain."
When they climbed down from the wagon they found Charles Lewis, astride Durango, waiting for them. "How's your arm?" he asked Graver. "I've been concerned about him the last day or two," he said to Joel.
"The doc says the arm's got to come off. Else he'll die."
"We'll have McLeod call a halt and find someone to do the cutting. The doc's in no shape."
"No!" Graver shook his head violently. "Nobody's going to cut me. No matter what."
"Can you persuade him?" Lewis asked Joel.
Joel shook his head. "When Grover gets something fixed in his mind nothing's likely to shake it loose."
Charles Lewis looked past Grover. "Here comes a man what can change his thinking."
When Grover turned, Lewis brought the butt of his pistol down with a thud on the back of Grover's head. He groaned and sagged back into Lewis' arms.
"Now all we got to do is find somebody to do the cutting," Lewis said as they stretched Grover on the ground.
Men gathered around them, staring down at the unconscious Irishman.
"Any of you ever amputated an arm or leg?" Lewis asked.
The men shook their heads. 
"What we got to have is a volunteer," Lewis said. 
"I'll do what's necessary." Joel stepped forward. Lewis stared at him for a moment, then nodded. 
"Build a fire," Lewis told one of the men, "and you two, carry the doc down here where he can give instructions. You, there, get some liquor from the medicine supplies and bring it here." 
With Whittaker propped against the wagon watching, they poured the whiskey into Grover's mouth. He gagged and turned his head from side to side. While Joel honed the surgeon's knife to razor sharpness, Lewis laid a kingbolt from one of the wagons on the fire to heat. 
Joel looked down at Grover. "God help us," he said. His stomach was queasy; his privates squirmed, as though someone had threatened to castrate him. 
"God won't help you," Doc Whittaker said, "but I will. Make a tourniquet." 
Joel twisted a cloth around Grover's arm high above the elbow. 
"Take the knife," Whittaker instructed, "and cut through his skin and flesh well above the putrefaction."
Joel picked up the knife. I can't, he told himself. I'm going to vomit. I can't do it. 
"Go ahead, damn it," Whittaker said, "or stand aside for someone who can." 
Joel sliced through skin and flesh and bared the bone above Grover's elbow. Grover screamed. Blood gushed over the knife and onto Joel's hands. Hurry, he told himself, you got to hurry. His unease lessened. Putting the knife aside, he picked up the surgical saw. 
Grover groaned, his eyes opening. The four men 
holding his shoulders and legs pressed him to the ground. Joel could think of nothing except what he had to do.
"The saw," Whittaker said. "Cut it off with the saw."
As fast as he could, Joel sawed through the bone just above the elbow joint. A teamster, holding the red-hot kingbolt with a pair of tongs, pressed it against the stump of Graver's arm. Flesh sizzled. Grover screamed and fell unconscious. Charles Lewis took grease scraped from a wagon axle and smeared it over the cauterized wound. Then he bound the stump with a bandage.
"Carry the lad into the wagon," Dr. Whittaker said. The doctor closed his eyes and for a moment Joel thought he was going to pass out. Recovering, he said to Joel, "We can't do any more. Now it's God's turn. All we can do now is pray."
Joel slumped to the ground as the others carried Grover to the wagon. I'm trembling as bad as the doc, he thought. Feeling a hand on his shoulder he looked up into Hayes Archer's grizzled face.
"I just got here," Hayes said. "From what I can see, you did a right good job on that arm."
"I did the best I could," Joel told him.
"A man can't do no more than that. The trouble is that so many do less." He spat. "It's a crying shame, the boy losing his arm."
There was a shout and the sound of running. Beyond the scattering crowd, Joel saw flames flaring up as though a spark had ignited gunpowder.
"The grass is a-fire," someone shouted.
"Beat it out! Use your shirts!"
The fire raced through the high, dry grass of the prairie with astonishing speed. A gust of wind swept it a hundred feet ahead and the flames spread out to
right and left. Joel pushed himself to his feet and ran to the line of men beating at the blaze. It was too late to put the fire out. Luckily the wind from the north drove the flames away from the column of men and wagons.
The fire, completely out of control now, leaped a small creek and burned across a mile-wide front, the broad band of flames leaping twenty feet into the air and sending off shoots of yellow flame and swirling columns of black smoke. The men stood and stared as though mesmerized by the crackle of burning grass and the roar of the blaze.
When Joel looked to find his horse, he saw Hayes standing a little way apart from the others. The older man was shaking his head dolefully. Not wanting to listen to him, Joel turned away and almost collided with Juan Navarro.
The Mexican, naked to the waist, his body glistening with sweat, held his shirt and jacket in one hand. On Navarro's upper chest, below his left collarbone, was a pink puckered scar.
You, Joel thought as he gazed at the wound. You're the one. For a second his vision blurred as rage shot through him.
Navarro stared at him for a moment, frowned, then turned on his heel and walked off. Joel's hand flashed to the butt of his pistol. He checked himself, letting his hand drop to his side. No, he told himself, not now, not here, not like this. Besides, a sliver of doubt remained. Juan Navarro must be El Diablo. And yet...
The Pioneers rode on leaving the fire behind them and to their left. All afternoon Joel could see the flames climbing the strip of low hills and breaks leading
up from the Brazos onto the prairie. They camped that night at a mud hole, the men eating beef, spurning the hump, tongue and steaks that General McLeod had ordered cut from the buffalo they killed today.
Joel walked to the Jersey wagon.
"Your friend's asleep," the teamster who was sitting with his back to the wheel told him. "The doc says that's the best thing for him."
Joel nodded. "When he wakes up, tell him I was asking after him," he said.
"The Irish lad was right-handed, wasn't he?" the teamster asked.
"Yes, he was."
"A shame. I noticed it was his right arm I buried beside the trail. A man's not much use to hisself without his good arm."
Joel said nothing, walking on. He saw George Kendall sitting in front of a tent with a board on his lap. The journalist, who had been hunched over a ledger with a quill in his hand, looked up and recognized Joel. Pointing to the ground next to him with his quill, he invited Joel to sit.
Joel shook his head. Kendall nodded understandingly and as Joel walked away he could hear the scratch of pen and paper.
He walked past the dying campfires, past the wagons, and out onto the prairie. Hearing a sound behind him, he turned and saw Hayes Archer watching him with a glowing cigar in his mouth. Neither man spoke as they turned and stared to the west where a long line of orange-red flame still swept across the prairie.
"The fires of Hell," Hayes said. "We've gone and
lit the fires of Hell without meaning to. Once they're lit there's not a damn thing we can do to stop them." 
"Do you think the fire will burn forever?" Joel asked, half in jest. 
"Through all eternity," Hayes Archer said. 
The two Comanche scouts held their horses motionless as they watched the Santa Fe Expedition crawl across the distant prairie. 
"They are many," the younger scout said. 
Two Texans left the column and rode onto the open prairie toward a bull buffalo, the buffalo racing away with the Texans in pursuit. Overtaking the bull, they fired into him but the bull lumbered on. They fired again and still the bull did not go down. They fired once more and the bull staggered, dropped to his knees, and the Texans raised their rifles in triumph, swung their horses about and returned to the column, leaving the buffalo for the gathering buzzards. 
"They are like children," the older of the scouts said. 
The right side of his face was painted a deep magenta; around his neck he wore a necklace of 
bear teeth. He counted many coups against the Apaches, against the Kiowas, and against the Texans.
"What was the teaching of your grandfather?" he asked the younger warrior.
"He taught patience. He taught that the young buffalo is strong and dangerous while the old bull tires and falls prey easily to the wolves that follow the herd."
"You have learned well. The men of Texas will grow weary. They will know hunger and thirst. They will scatter their belongings behind them on the prairie. They will become weak. And then their horses and their cattle will become ours. Then we will kill these enemies of the people."
An hour passed. When dust obscured the long line of Texans, the two scouts turned their horses and rode slowly in the direction of their camp where Wounded Bear's war party awaited their return.
Joel was weary. Bone-tired. The day's march had been long and hard. The sun, a flaming yellow ball, lay on the far horizon, promising a hot night and an even hotter tomorrow.
Joel slumped to the ground beside the Jersey wagon next to Grover. He glanced at the other man, seeing his sleeve pinned over the stump of his arm.
"Feeling better?" Joel ventured at last.
Grover shrugged. With his left hand he awkwardly tilted his hat down over his eyes.
Joel reached out and took the hat from Grover's head and tossed it aside.
"God damn it," Joel said in exasperation. "You didn't die, did you? Ever since you been well enough to be up and about, you've been acting like you've lost your last friend."
"What do you know about? It's mighty easy for you to talk."
"The Doc says you're going to be just fine. He's sure you're past the time when there's danger of mortification setting in."
"So I should be joyful?" Grover asked. "Do you want me to dance a jig?" He grimaced. "My damn arm hurts, the one you sawed off. My fingers hurt, my wrist hurts, my whole arm aches. I wake up in the night with a pain in my arm, wondering what's wrong with it, then when I try to touch it the arm's not there. It's gone, buried on the prairie. Do you know what I think when I wake in the night with my arm paining something fierce? Do you?"
Joel shook his head.
"I think they're at the grave. I think the coyotes have found where you buried my arm and are digging it up. I can see the arm a-laying there in the moonlight with the coyotes gathered around howling and gnawing at the flesh and bone. I can feel them gnawing at it."
Joel didn't know what to say. He wanted to comfort Grover, to tell him he'd do whatever he could to help him, but he didn't know how to choose the right words. Whatever he thought to say seemed wrong, seemed certain only to rile Grover.
"What good am I now?" Grover demanded. "I'll tell you. I'm no damn good, not to you nor to me nor to anyone else. I can't shoot, I can't hardly dress myself. They wanted to send me back, did you know that? I'll be a drag on the company, they decided. The only reason they didn't ship me to Austin was they didn't want to waste an ablebodied man to go with me. An ablebodied man! What's it like to be able- bodied, Joel? I can't remember anymore."
"I knows lots of men that've lost limbs," Joel said. "After a time they were almost as good as new. Then there was Deaf Smith who was with Houston at San Jacinto. Sam made him a scout because his eyesight got so good after his hearing went bad. Why, men with one arm get married and have kids and live their lives just like anybody." 
"What girl's going to give me a second look? Pity's what I'll get from them and that's sure as hell what I don't want." 
Grover pushed himself slowly to his feet. Joel started to help, thought better of it, and stood watching while Grover retrieved his hat and set it firmly on his head. 
"If you'd of just left me alone," Grover said, "I would of been all right. My hand was starting to heal, I could tell. The swelling wasn't as bad as it had been. All I needed was to get the wound opened up so the pus could drain out and in a few days I would of been as good as new." 
"That's not so, Grover," Joel said. "Doc Whittaker told us the only way to save your life was by taking off the arm. If we hadn't sawed it off all of you'd be six feet under and not just your arm." 
"Why do you say 'we' sawed it off? You're the one who did it. You're the one who amputated my arm when you didn't have to." 
"Do you think I did it a purpose?" Joel asked. "Do you think I wanted to cut off your arm? You make it sound like I was sawing away and laughing to myself at the same time." 
"I only know you were in an all-fired hurry to take off my arm when I was feeling better day by day. That's all I know." 
Joel felt a helpless rage. "If that's what you think," 
he said, "then I know what you can do as far as I'm concerned. You can go straight to hell."
Without looking at Grover, he turned and strode across the campground. Still angry, he hurried past the men who were smoking and talking around the fire and went into his tent where he lay on his pallet looking up at the dark canvas.
He didn't understand how Grover could blame him for the loss of his arm, making out he'd cut it off on purpose to spite him. Joel's rage receded and in its place was an emptiness. Grover had lost an arm and, Joel realized, he mourned his loss. A part of Grover was dead, laid to rest in a lonely grave. It must set Grover to thinking, Joel told himself, thinking about dying, how he, Grover, would someday die. As all men must die. Even as I must, Joel reminded himself. He pushed the thought away.
In his grief, though, Grover was killing something else. He was killing the friendship they had shared since they first met on the steamer on the Ohio. Joel had looked up to Grover, followed him. Now . . .
"God damn Grover to hell," Joel whispered to himself. "God damn this expedition to hell."
The next day Joel wondered if God had heard and headed him for the expedition entered the Cross Timbers, a long, narrow, rough strip of blackjack oak country extending down from the Indian Territory. The streams were mostly dry and the going was difficult for the Timbers were cut up by ravines clogged with brush and post oak. A twenty-four man fatigue party worked constantly to make a road for the wagons.
The oxen were travel-worn and the horses needed shoeing, so in the middle of the Cross Timbers the Pioneers camped on the Trinity River and set up a
blacksmith's forge. The carpenters worked to repair the wagons as the other men foraged for food, finding a few bear, deer, some buffalo and a great deal of wild honey. They also discovered a deserted Indian village. 
"McLeod and his officers went at it hammer and tongs last night," Hayes told Joel on their second day in camp. "There's no love lost there." 
"We're not making good time, that's for sure." 
"They decided the trouble is that the wagons are overloaded and so today they're throwing away our dried beef," Hayes said. "Some say it's spoiled and some say it's not. And the tents. Too heavy, they decided, so we're abandoning them and burning the tent poles just to make sure no one brings a tent along anyways. Too little and too late, it seems to me." 
"You ought to be happy about the new orders. The Captain says no one's to ride away from the column except by his leave. And that there's to be no shooting without permission." 
"Should have been the orders from the first. We'll see how long you Texans can abide by the new regulations."
Not long, Joel discovered. When they broke camp and worked their way out of the Timbers, horsemen rode ahead and when, late at night, the wagons made their way across the last of the ravines and onto the open prairie the teamsters found the other men camped at a spring. No one was disciplined. 
As the Pioneers trekked westward, Joel sought out men who might have known Juan Navarro in Austin. Where was Senor Navarro a week before the Expedition left? he asked, knowing that if he was in Austin 
he couldn't have been miles to the south near San Antone, couldn't be El Diablo.
The men shrugged their shoulders. Who knows? they asked. Senor Navarro was a man who kept to himself. They challenged Joel: why didn't he ask Juan Navarro himself if he wanted to know?
Almost all of the men, Joel noticed, were quarrelsome. The camaraderie of the first few weeks had waned and there were fist-fights as men threw the lie to one another over trifles. Water was in short supply and the beef ration was cut in half.
Joel was glad to ride ahead of the troop with the spy company. Soon after leaving the Timbers, he spotted trees to the north. The Red River, one of the other scouts guessed but the man wasn't sure because none of the men had been in this country before. When they came to the river they found the water undrinkable because of the gypsum. Gullies cut across the river bank, making travel hard, so they rode to the prairie to head the gullies.
Indian sign became more frequent. Though they discovered another abandoned camp where flies buzzed around the excretions of animals and men, they saw no Indians. They crossed a stretch of prairie blackened by fire and, on the same day, Dr. Whittaker was reported missing.
That night the band played and fires were burned at high points on the prairie in the hope that the doctor would hear or see them, but he did not appear. In the morning the six-pounder was fired but when Whittaker still did not appear they went on.
At midday Joel heard a shout from a scout off to the right of the troop and he spurred his horse in that direction. He reined up when he found the man dismounted and vomiting into the brown grass.
"Have you got the dysentery?" Joel asked. 
The man shook his head, pointing to where his horse stood pawing at the ground. Joel urged his own horse ahead and saw an object laying in the grass. 
"My God!" he said. He swung to the ground and knelt. 
A severed head lay in the dirt. 
She had been a white woman, there could be no question of that. Her face was bronzed by the sun, her skin had begun to decompose and her eye sockets were gaping wounds, the eyes eaten by the birds. She had not been scalped and her hair was a dark brown. A white woman's hair. Hair the same color as mine, Joel thought. 
He gagged and turned away. He fired his rifle three times into the air and stood waiting until others joined him in answer to his signal. The soldier who had found the head walked up beside Joel. 
"Comanches," he said. "The bloody savages." 
Joel nodded, his gaze searching the prairie. He saw nothing, no buffalo, no antelope, no living creature of any kind. Yet he sensed a presence on the undulating prairie, sensed that the savages were watching them, even now. Watching and waiting. A shiver coursed along his spine and his hand closed over the butt of his pistol. 
"Bastards," the man beside him said. 
They buried the severed head along their line of march and went on. By now the men's faces were mahogany brown, their hair long and matted, and their clothes torn and greasy. The next morning they found four of their horses missing. The sentries had seen and heard nothing. 
Dr. Whittaker had still not returned. 
"He's a goner," Captain Hudson said. "The only way we'll find him now is if we see the turkey buzzards gathering."
Joel watched Juan Navarro as the Mexican rode stolidly ahead with the mute behind him. The men shunned Navarro, Joel noted with satisfaction, for they knew of Joel's suspicions. Grover, before his accident, had spread the story of Susanna's murder. Navarro was a Mexican, they reasoned, and a Mexican could never be trusted. Not after the massacre at Goliad where Santa Anna had ordered the shooting of hundreds of Texans in cold blood after the men surrendered in good faith.
But Juan Navarro rode on, looking neither right nor left, as though oblivious to the stares and the mutterings of the men.
General McLeod sent scouts to hunt for creeks or ponds, without success. The grass was good but there was no water and that night they made another dry camp. Thirsty and tired, Joel lay on his pallet on the open prairie, his tongue turning a bullet over and over in his mouth as he waited for sleep.
He heard a footstep and opened his eyes. Juan Navarro stood over him.
Joel scrambled to his feet, clutching his pistol.
"I am not armed." Navarro held his hands toward Joel, palms up.
Joel pushed his pistol under his belt and faced the Mexican.
"Why do you bedevil me?" Navarro asked. "Why do you go among the men asking questions about me? Is it your intention to destroy me?"
"You shouldn't be afraid of questions," Joel said slowly, "if you've nothing to hide."
"I am not afraid of your questions because I have
done nothing to dishonor myself. Do you hate me because of the color of my skin? I can do nothing about that, nor do I desire to. Do you hate me because my honored mother and father were born in Chihuahua with the blood of the Conquistadores flowing in their veins?"
"I don't hate you, Senor Navarro." Joel was confused. The man seemed genuinely indignant, as though he had nothing to fear, nothing to conceal.
"That is good," Navarro said. "Nor do I hate you, Senor Falconer. Remember, I am a Texan, as you are. And for much longer, I believe. I have lived in this land all my life and when the government in Mexico City tried to impose its will on us by force of arms, I cast my lot with my fellow Texans. I was at San Jacinto where I saw General Houston lying wounded under a tree when Santa Anna was brought to him begging for his life to be spared. Santa Anna is a cruel and barbarous man, he brings no honor or glory to Mexico. Houston should have had him shot."
"I think all of us Texans would agree with you, Senor Navarro."
"Why do you refuse to consider me a Texan as well? When the call came for men to join this expedition to Santa Fe, I volunteered, knowing the need for men who speak both Spanish and English. I willingly serve my country and will serve her until the day I die. And yet you speak behind my back, you and your friend, Senor Dunne, you spread lies and falsehoods about me and I see the glances of my friends turned toward me in suspicion and distrust."
"My wife was killed, Senor Navarro. She was butchered like an animal. By animals." ,
"Yes, so I have heard. And this is a great misfortune
for you. This is a tragedy, of a certainty. Yet in your unhappiness, do you intend to make everyone suffer as you suffer?"
"That's not my aim, Navarro."
"Then what is your aim if it is not to persecute me because of the color of my skin, because of my ancestry?"
Joe glanced about him and saw that men had gathered nearby in the darkness to listen, their faces shadowed by the light from the campfire behind them. They said nothing, their glances shifting from Joel to Navarro and back as the two men talked.
"This is between the two of us, Navarro," Joel said. "It has nothing to do with anyone else."
"I fear no man," Navarro told him. "Let them listen, my conscience is clear. I hope yours is. Are you afraid to have them hear what I have to say?"
"I'm not afraid of them listening and I'm not afraid of you." Anger rose in Joel and he clenched his hands into fists.
"Good. Then ask me your questions. Don't ask others about what Juan Navarro does or who Juan Navarro is. Ask Juan Navarro himself."
"All right, I will. Where were you a week before the Pioneers left Brushy Creek? That would have been a Sunday. Tell me, Navarro, where were you?"
"On the Sunday before we left I was in the pueblo of Austin, preparing my equipment for the journey."
"And is there anyone who can prove you were there?"
"Prove the truth of what I say? I give you my word as a gentleman, that is enough."
"My wife's dead, Navarro. No, it's not enough."
Juan Navarro sighed. "So be it," he said. "Two
persons can testify to the truth of what I say. They are Pedro Garcia and his wife, Dolores. They were both with me on that day."
"Your servants?" Navarro nodded. "You expect me to take the word of your own servants? You must think I'm some kind of simpleton."
"Is there no one you'll believe? Is your mind so twisted by hate that it is closed to the truth?"
"I'm waiting, Navarro. Who else? Did only your servants see you in Austin on that day? Or the day before? Or the day after?"
"No, there was one other man. Senor Robert Beardsley called on me that day concerning a note of mine he holds. I paid him a sum of money and he gave me a receipt."
"And where is this Beardsley now?"
"In Houston, I expect. That is where he conducts his business. The receipt is with my papers in Austin."
"And the Garcias, your servants? Where are they?"
"At my house in Austin, of course."
"And there's no one here, no one on this expedition, who knows where you were the Sunday before we left?"
"There is no one." Navarro's voice rose in anger. "There does not have to be anyone. I give you my word I was in Austin. My word was good enough for Sam Houston when I joined him to fight the tyrant Santa Anna, it should be good enough for you, Senor Falconer."
"Sam Houston hadn't lost his wife."
"Senor Falconer, I swear to you, for the last time, that I was in Austin on the day you speak of. I can do no more. I will do no more."
Joel heard a sound behind him like the cawing of a bird, he felt fingers claw at the back of his shirt.
Swinging around, he looked down into the bearded face of the mute. The man's mouth opened and closed and spittle formed on his lips. He pointed his forefinger at Juan Navarro, all the while trying to force words from his mouth, words that turned into grotesque parodies of speech.
"Do you understand him?" Joel asked Navarro.
The Mexican shook his head.
The mute opened his left hand in front of him and, with his right hand held as though grasping a pen, made the motions of writing on his palm.
"Bring him a ledger and something to write with," someone said.
A few minutes later a tablet and pencil were handed forward. The mute took them, placed the tablet on the ground and began to write, forming each letter with the greatest of difficulty. When he finished he smiled triumphantly and handed the paper to Joel. Navarro watched from a few feet away, his arms folded across his chest.
A torch was brought forward and Joel held the paper to the light.
"I can't read it," he said after a moment. "It's in Spanish as far as I can tell."
"Let me read it for you."
Charles Lewis stepped from the crowd with his hand extended and Joel gave him the paper. Lewis was gaunt, his face bearded, yet he still wore a jacket and a black hat set at a rakish angle on his head. He studied the paper for a moment and then looked steadily at the mute.
"Do you swear that what you've written here is the truth?" Lewis asked him.
The mute nodded.
Lewis grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him
forward. Lewis, Joel saw, was surprisingly strong. 
"If you're lying," Lewis said softly to the mute, "you'll be turned out onto the prairie and left to die of thirst. The buzzards will pluck your eyes from their sockets. Do you understand?" 
The mute blanched as he nodded. 
"And you swear that this is the truth?" Lewis held the paper in front of the mute's face. 
The man glanced around as though seeking a way to escape. He swallowed, staring at Lewis. He nodded again as his lips formed soundless words. 
"What's he written?" Joel asked. 
"He says that Senor Navarro was not in Austin on the Sunday before the Pioneers left. He says he knows he was not because he saw him elsewhere. In San Antone." 
"The man lies," Navarro shouted, starting for the mute. The man dodged behind Charles Lewis. 
San Antone. In a blind fury, Joel lashed out with his fists at Navarro, striking him a glancing blow on the forehead. The Mexican staggered back, recovered and held up his hand. 
"The man is lying," he said. "He could not have seen me in San Antonio. I have not been there for many months." 
"Why would he lie?" Joel asked. "A man who works for you." 
"I do not know why he lies. I hardly know him, he has worked for me only since we left Austin. All I know is that he lies." 
"You're the one who's lying. What about the scar? The wound on your shoulder?" 
Navarro raised his hand to touch the front of his shirt. "An accident while cleaning a rifle." 
- The Border Breed 113 
"Not a shot fired by a woman trying to defend herself near San Antone?" 
"No, never. I am not a murderer." 
Joel stepped forward. He stopped when he saw that Juan Navarro held a pistol pointed at Joel's midsection. 
"Do not come closer," Navarro said. He swung the pistol at the mute and spoke rapidly in Spanish. The mute shook his head in denial. "I do not know why he lies," Navarro said, "yet he does." 
Joel took a step toward Navarro and then another. Men surged up behind Joel; Navarro backed away. Joel saw the Mexican's hand tighten and he braced himself for the impact of the bullet. 
A horse plunged into the crowd, scattering men to right and left. Captain Carleton reined up beside Joel, his gaze going from him to Navarro and back again. 
"Holster your pistol," he ordered Navarro. 
Reluctantly, Navarro thrust the gun into his belt. 
"You men," Carleton said, "return to your companies." There was an angry murmur from the men. "I'll have the lot of you on fatigue duty," Carleton warned, "all the way to Santa Fe." The men turned aside, grumbling and cursing under their breaths. 
"You, too, Falconer," the Captain said. 
Joel, hatred gleaming in his eyes, stared at Navarro. The other man returned the stare. Joel swung around and walked quickly away. 
"You'd best come with me," he heard Carleton say to Navarro. "You can sleep with the General's party tonight." 
As Carleton's horse moved off, a man came up to walk beside Joel. 
"We'll help you take care of the Mex," he said.
"I don't need help. I don't want help. I'll deal with him myself."
"If you need us, all you got to do is say the word."
Joel nodded and the man slipped into the darkness. I'll deal with Juan Navarro in my own way, Joel told himself. The bastard will be dead before another day is done.
Hayes Archer roused himself early, as was his habit. After rolling his pallet and tying it to the back of his saddle, he took a strip of rawhide from his saddlebag, put it in his mouth and began chewing it to lessen his thirst. By the time reveille sounded he was sitting apart from the others, watching.
He knew they had to find water today or the expedition faced complete disintegration. He was hopeful for he had been awakened in the night by thunder and had seen the flash of lightning above the distant prairie. If they were in luck, they'd find ponds of fresh water left by the storm.
No one approached Hayes or spoke to him. They were wearied of listening to him, he knew, especially since his warnings had come true. False prophets were apt to be praised, true prophets were crucified.
Hayes told himself he didn't care if they spoke to
him or not, that he didn't cozzen to the company of fools. He was wise enough to admit, though, that when he told himself this he was lying. He yearned for the companionship of the other men but he had made his choice and he had to live with the result. Not a choice at all, he realized; he had done what he had to do, spoken out as he had to speak out. Because it was his nature.
Shouts came from the Company D campground. At first Hayes ignored the hubbub until, his curiosity roused by the gesticulating crowd of men, he finally got to his feet and walked slowly in the direction of the noise.
An officer pushed his way into the crowd with Hayes following in his wake. Hayes stopped and stared down at the mute sprawled on his back on his pallet. The man's mouth was open in a silent scream. His eyes were open, too, staring as though in surprise and horror.
The hilt of a Bowie knife protruded from the mute's chest and around the knife the man's shirt was stained by his blood.
"That's his own knife what killed him," one of the men behind Hayes said. "I know it by the notches."
"Poor bastard," someone said.
"Maybe lucky bastard," a voice answered. "Leastways he don't have to die of thirst."
The officer, Captain Hudson, got to his feet after examining the body and faced the men, "He's dead, right enough," he said. "Did any of you men see anything last night? Hear anything?"
"He never made a sound," one of the teamsters said. "Course he never has, not to speak of." A few of the men laughed nervously.
"Navarro."
"What about Navarro?" Hudson asked.
"This is the man what named him last night. He threw the lie in Navarro's face."
"Navarro killed him to get even. For calling him a murderer."
"He didn't accuse him of murder when he wrote what he couldn't speak," someone objected.
"Might as well have. His meaning was clear enough. Now Navarro's made damn sure he won't talk. Or write neither."
"Maybe," Hayes said, "Navarro was the one what cut out his tongue in the first place. Maybe he betrayed Navarro another time before this."
"Navarro! Let's get him."
There was a murmur of approval and the crowd swung about as one, the men striding toward the front of the column where the General's party camped.
A hatless man stood waiting for them with his hands on his hips, a man they couldn't recognized in the dim early morning light.
"It's Navarro," the teamster said and they stopped, waiting for the lone man to make his move.
He stepped forward and they saw it wasn't Navarro but General McLeod. The General stood facing them, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"We've come for Navarro," the teamster said. "He's killed the dummy. We mean to see justice done."
"He's gone," McLeod said quietly. "Slipped away in the night. His horse is gone as well."
There was a sigh from the men, a letting out of breaths. They milled around, muttering, looking out over the prairie. Behind them, to the east, the sky was a dull yellow where the sun would soon rise. A few clouds, remnants of the night's storm, drifted above the southern horizon.
"He'll not get far," McLeod said. "There's no point looking for him." 
The man nodded. They knew what McLeod meant without him having to say it. If Navarro didn't die of thirst or hunger, he would be killed by the Indians. The Comanches might take women and children prisoner but never men. 
As the Pioneers dispersed back to their campfires they were met by Captain Hudson. "I need a fatigue detail to bury the mute," he said. "Archer, Baxter, Smith. Come with me." 
The three men carried the body to the front of the column where they began to dig. At a depth of four feet they struck rock. 
"Deep enough," the Captain said. "Lower away." 
When the body was covered with earth the men stood gripping their spades as though waiting. Captain Hudson stepped to the head of the grave. "Any of you men know his name?" he asked. 
"Not me," Baxter said. 
"Don't think he ever gave it," Hayes said. "Not that I recollect." 
"May God have mercy on his soul," Captain Hudson said. 
"Amen," the three men murmured. 
The bugle sounded behind them; the day's trek was beginning. 
The horses of the lead company, skittish from thirst, crossed the grave, followed by the yoked oxen, their heads down and their shoulders bowed, pulling the wagons of the merchants. The other companies, the remnants of the beef herd, yapping Indian dogs that had joined the party the day before, all crossed over the grave, pounding down the soft earth and 
obliterating the odor of death to protect the body from discovery by the scavengers of the plains. 
Hayes saddled up and rode with the company. While the other men, for the most part, clustered in twos and threes, Hayes rode alone, turning what had happened over and over in his mind, examining it from one side and then the other. His mind worked slowly but it plumbed deep. 
All at once he grunted and spurred his horse ahead to the front of the company where he stopped to watch the men as they rode past him. When the last of the troop had gone by, he urged his horse ahead once more. 
"Falconer?" he asked. "Any of you see Falconer?" 
He was answered by curt shakes of the head. 
"Ain't seen him since last night," Baxter said. Working with Hayes on the burial detail had made Baxter warm a bit toward the older man. 
The answer was the same all along the line. No one had seen Joel since the night before. 
Hayes approached Grover Dunne who was riding apart from the others. 
"Seen Falconer today?" Hayes asked him. 
Grover shook his head. Since he'd lost his arm, Hayes had noted, he'd drawn in on himself, not speaking, rebuffing those who tried to befriend him. 
"Heard about the mute and Navarro?" Hayes asked. 
"Couldn't help hearing." 
"Until you spoke those words I was suspecting that not talking was some sort of disease. One you'd caught from the mute, maybe." 
Grover stared stolidly ahead without answering. He looked much older; his face was bearded now and the beard had come in a dark red. His clothes hung loose on his body. 
"Ain't you interested at all in what might have become of your friend?" Hayes asked. 
"He's bound to be about somewheres." 
"He is your friend, ain't he?" 
"He was. I counted him as such till he sawed off my arm." 
"Ah, so that's it. You should of seen the agony writ on Joel's face when he done that. I couldn't tell who was hurting the worse, him or you." 
Grover rode on without answering, his shoulders hunched forward. 
"You're probably telling yourself fairy tales about how if he hadn't cut off your arm it'd still be attached today. And you'd be a-riding along with all your limbs, strutting like the cock of the walk. Let me tell you, bucko, I've seen men what had less putrefaction than you and nothing was done for them and they was dead inside of two days. Not a nice laying in bed death, neither. They died screaming and howling and calling for their Saviour. There was nothing to save them, though, nothing in this world or the one beyond."
"You talk a lot, Archer." 
"That might be, probably is. And I speak the truth, more times than not. Men don't want to hear the truth, they want whore's lies they can save and polish like gemstones. That's what you want, bucko, a lie. So you can blame somebody else for what was your own damn fault." 
"What do you mean, my fault?" 
"Carrying around that piece of junk you called a rifle, that's what I mean. You should have throwed the Hall away long before it most killed you. 
They rode in silence, the wind blowing dust from their horses' hooves behind them. 
"Where do you reckon Joel's got to?" Grover asked at last.
"Lit out after Navarro, more than likely."
"He wouldn't," Grover said. "That'd be the same as commiting suicide. What with the Indians and all." 
"Joel wouldn't see it that way. He's bound and determined to kill Navarro for what he thinks the man done to his wife. Can't say I blame him, if Navarro done it."
"You sound like you're not sure he's the man," Grover said.
"I'm not, not real one hundred percent sure. Maybe I'm three-quarters convinced. What sticks in my craw is that those what knew Navarro in Austin speak highly of the man. Still, he killed the mute."
"You're pretty certain he did that, then."
"Yep. Whether the reason's that the mute gave away Navarro's game or because he lied about him, I can't rightly say. One or the other, Navarro evened accounts with him once and for all before he lit out for parts unknown. Now I got some riding of my own to do."
Hayes reined in his horse, turned and set out at a walk toward the rear guard of the troop. After a few minutes he heard hoofbeats behind him and Grover rode up.
"Where you fixing to go?" Grover asked.
"I thought I'd mosey toward the rear of the column and after a bit light off across the prairie to see if I could find water. Look over yonder. See those trees about two miles south? I wouldn't be at all surprised but what there's a creek there."
"It's not water you're hunting for. It's Joel, ain't it?"
"While I'm searching for water, for a creek or a
pond left by that thunderstorm, I might take a look- see here and there for young Falconer." 
"I'm coming with you, Hayes," Grover said. 
Hayes shook his head. "No, I reckon the place for you is right here." 
"Joel's my friend and if he's out there amidst wild Indians, I'm going to bring him back before he gets himself killed." 
"I've been trying to avoid saying it," Hayes told him, "but the truth of the matter is I don't want you with me. You'd hold me back, be a drag on this private expedition of mine. A man travels fastest on his own, that's always been my philosophy." 
"What do you mean, I'd be a drag? I can ride good as you any day of the week." 
"Not with one arm you can't, bucko. You're forgetting you're not whole no more. You're a one-armed man in a two-armed world. Maybe you can ride passably well, though I'd have to see it to believe it, and maybe you could shoot if you'd been practicing loading with the one hand, which you ain't done. Maybe, I say. But ride and shoot at one and the same time? Never. If we met Comanches you'd be a dead man inside of two minutes and I'd as like to get myself killed as well trying to save your hide." 
"You can just Goddamn go to hell, old man," Grover shouted. 
"I suspect I might when all's said and done. I'm just telling you I'd like to do it on my own and not be helped along any. And the way I have it figured, my time ain't coming today or tomorrow." 
Grover reached out with his left hand and grasped Hayes' arm, turning the other man to face him. . 
"With one arm," he said, "I'm as good a man as you are with two." 
"Ever shoot left-handed, bucko?"
Grover released Hayes' arm. "No," he admitted. "Never." 
"I seen you," Hayes said, staring him down. "I seen you moping about, not even trying to learn to make do with what God's left you with. Feeling mighty sorry for yourself when you could of been making something of yourself instead. You think I want you out there on the prairie with me? If you do, you got another think coming."
"I'm coming with you whether you want me or not," Grover said. "After all, I'm all you got. There's not another man in this company that'd go out there with you and you damn well know it. I'm not going for your sake, I'm going for Falconer's, 'cause he's my friend. You wouldn't know what that means, would you, Hayes? 'Cause you ain't got one solitary friend in this here world."
Hayes sat his horse studying the other man. "I'm wasting time talking to you," he said, "when I could be looking for Falconer."
"I don't hear you denying the truth of what I say."
"I'm not like you, Dunne," Hayes said. "I don't try to deny the truth. If you're going to tell a man the truth you got to be able to hear it from him in return without flinching."
"I'm coming with you, Hayes," Grover told him. "Whether you want me along or not, I'm coming."
Hayes shrugged. "If you're determined," he said, "I don't suppose there's a way in the world I can stop you from tagging after me. Or any way I can stop you from a-blaming me if you come back without your other arm."
"I've heard enough of your shit, Archer. Let's ride."
"That's what I've been wanting to do for the last ten minutes and more." 
Hayes spurred his horse into the dust raised by the column's rear guard with Grover behind him. As the two men rode across the prairie toward the distant line of trees, no one tried to stop them; they were ignored by the Pioneers plodding on to the west. When they reached the trees, Hayes reined in at the head of a gully leading into the creekbed. 
"Dry as a bone," he said to Grover as the other man rode up beside him. "And I didn't see no sign of Falconer's trail along the way, neither." 
"You're so concerned with telling the truth," Grover said, "tell me this. You did that a-purpose, didn't you? You goaded me to make me come with you." 
"The way I hear you, you're accusing me of speaking with forked tongue." 
"That's right." 
Hayes smiled, saying nothing. 
"Why don't you admit it?" Grover asked. "You wanted me with you to protect your own hide, didn't you, knowing no one else would come?" 
"You don't hear me denying I goaded you a mite, do you? I'll tell you this, Grover Dunne, you've a few more brains in that thick Irish skull of yours than I gave you credit for just minutes ago. Not many more and you're loath to use them, but there's a few in there someplace. You're wrong about me bringing you along to save my hide. I brung you along for a more important reason. I wanted to save your soul, bucko." 
"You're not making sense." 
"Let's see if you can make some, then," Hayes said. "Let's see if you've really got the brains I just got through crediting you with. Tell me where we're likely to pick up young Falconer's trail." 
Grover sat pondering the question. "The way I figure it," he said, "is we got to decide where Navarro lit out for, then we'll know which way Joel took in following him."
"I'm listening."
"We're nearer to where we're going, that's Santa Fe, than to where we come from," Grover said, "so I suppose Navarro's heading west. Now from what I've heard, the Rio Grande is ahead of us flowing to the south and somewhere nearby there's the Pecos River as well. So I suspect he'd ride south of west, hoping to come on the settlements in the river valleys."
"I wouldn't of put it any different if I'd been reasoning it out myself. So what we'll do is cut to the south and then swing west looking for sign. Are you with me, bucko?"
"I'm with you," Grover said.
The two men set off for the south, their gaze on the parched and empty prairie ahead of them.
The sky was lightening in the east as Joel rode from the campground. A sentry saw him, called out, but he ignored the man and when Joel looked back a few minutes later he saw he wasn't being followed. Soon the campground was a dark huddle of wagons behind him.
He came on tracks almost at once, a single horseman who made no attempt to cloud his trail as he rode to the south and west, the direction Joel figured Navarro would ride. The horse was shod so it wasn't an Indian pony. No, it was Navarro's trail without a doubt.
Joel wondered how big a headstart Navarro had. Ten or fifteen miles, more than likely. The Mexican had probably left the camp in the hours after midnight, traveling slowly in the dark. Joel smiled grimly.
He was glad Navarro had fled after killing the mute. Now he was sure of the Mexican's guilt; now he would be able to overtake him and kill him on the empty prairie. There would be no one else, he alone would face the man who had killed his wife. 
Joel had no doubt he would find and kill Navarro. He had to, had to make him suffer as Susanna had suffered. He would not be denied his revenge; he could think of nothing else and wanted to think of nothing else. 
The sun rose to his left. As the day grew hotter, beads of sweat dampened his forehead and he wiped them away with the back of his sleeve. He shifted a bullet from one side of his mouth to the other as he tried to lessen his thirst. 
All at once he reined up. On the ground ahead of him he saw other hoofprints mingling with Navarro's, two or more horses following the same trail he followed. Unshod horses. Joel dug his knees into Ivan- hoe's flanks, guiding him to his right to the top of a small rise where he sat shielding his eyes with his hand as he peered off to the southwest. 
Were those spurts of dust rising from the prairie? Or was he seeing a mirage in the shimmering waves of heat? He couldn't be sure. 
He rode on, more wary now, his hand going to the pistol in his belt and to the stock of the rifle in his saddle holster. Looking behind him, he could no longer see the column of Pioneers. Probably by now he was not only out of sight of the expedition but out of earshot as well. 
He urged Ivanhoe on, determined that the Comanches wouldn't beat him to his prey. As the sun mounted higher, the heat of the day seemed to rise 
from the prairie around him. Ahead he saw a wavering mirage of water. When he approached, he realized it wasn't a mirage at all but a pool that must have been left by the thunderstorm he had heard in the night. 
After glancing carefully about him, Joel dropped to the ground and dipped water from the pool with his cupped hands, drinking slowly at first, afraid the water would be brackish. Instead, he found it sweet and cool. He drank thirstily with his horse slaking his own thirst at his side, and only when he was sated did he stand to examine the ground around the pool. 
He found a confusing multitude of prints. Unshod Indian ponies, the shod prints of the horse he'd been following, and the prints of small animals. All had come to the pond to drink. He fed Ivanhoe barley from his saddlebag before he remounted to follow the trail which now veered more directly to the west. 
The land grew rougher with the gentle rise to the west becoming more pronounced. He crossed a creek that had a trickle of water running between pools gathered among the rocks in its bed. Gullies leading into the creek from the prairie, though, were dry and choked with brush. 
After the tracks left the creek they turned to run parallel to it as the riders headed the gullies. Joel went on with his eyes to the ground ahead of him. 
With high-pitched cries, four painted Indians armed with lances and bows and arrows rode from a gully ahead of him. 
Joel whirled his horse and sprinted back the way he had come. The cries grew louder as his pursuers closed on him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the Indians had separated so that two came from 
directly behind him, one from his right, the other from his left. Their horses, small ponies, gained on him with every stride. 
An arrow whizzed past his head. Joel leaned low in the saddle, using Ivanhoe as a shield. An arrow thunked into the horse's far flank and he heard another strike the horse's hindquarters. Ivanhoe stumbled, pitching forward. As the horse fell, Joel kicked himself free of the stirrups, leaping clear, his feet hitting the ground at a headlong run until he fell himself, tumbling head over heels. 
He was up in an instant, running in a crouch toward the creek. Seeing the top of a gully, he dashed forward, hurling himself into the gully and scrambling for cover behind a rocky bank. 
He had his Paterson Colt .34 in his hand. He cocked the pistol, drew a bead on an Indian charging past, and fired. The Comanche screamed and spun off his pony. He thudded on the ground and lay still. 
Another Comanche thundered past, bow in hand, his horse shielding him. An arrow embedded itself in the bank behind Joel. Another skittered off a rock and ricocheted harmlessly into the creekbed. 
The last of the Indian ponies swept past him. Gun recocked, Joel waited. The dust in front of him cleared and he saw Ivanhoe on the ground kicking his legs feebly in the air. Joel swore. The Indian he had shot lay without moving a few feet from the mortally wounded horse. Joel's rifle was in its saddle holster twenty feet away. Twenty feet across open ground, twenty feet back to the shelter of the gully. It might as well be twenty miles. 
The prairie was quiet. Far away he saw a dust devil form in front of a barren hill, twirl around arid around and spin itself into nothingness. He waited, 
wondering where the three Comanches were. Indians were erratic, he knew; they might fight doggedly for days or they might ride away after a brief skirmish never to reappear. 
He doubted they'd leave without their fallen comrade. He'd been told Comanches always retrieved their wounded and their dead so the wounded could live to fight again and so the spirits of the dead could be speeded safely on their way to the great beyond. 
He had four shots left in his five-shot Paterson Colt. He'd been lucky to kill with his first shot; he knew he couldn't count on that kind of good fortune again. When the Colt's chambers were empty, he'd have to break the gun down to ram new rounds home. There must be a better way to make a pistol, he told himself.
He heard the clink of rock on rock coming from behind him. He glanced toward the creekbed where, at the lower end of the gully, he could see about ten feet of the almost dry creek. The Indians must be circling, one coming from upstream and another from down, intending to surprise him from the rear while their comrade attacked him from the prairie side. 
Joel backed deeper into the gully. As soon as he was sure he was completely out of sight of anyone on the prairie, he turned and crawled along the bottom of the gulley toward the creek. When he reached the end of the bank on his right side, he stopped, listening. He heard nothing. The sound of rock on rock was not repeated. 
Still he waited, hearing nothing. Only the blazing heat seemed to have reality, the burning unshadowed heat of midday. Joel huddled against the bank of the gully, seeking its scant shade while he wondered if, after all, the Comanches had tired of the hunt and 
had slipped away. He picked up a rock, tested its weight in his hand before hurling it as hard as he could across the creek.
The rock struck with a thud. There was no answering sound. Joel waited. Should he risk showing himself? He thought of Navarro. The Mexican must be many miles away by now. He'd never overtake him.
An Indian leaped into the open in front of Joel, lance in hand. Another ran at him from the creekbed on the other side of the gully. Behind him, Joel heard the war whoop of the other Comanche warrior as he leaped into the gully.
Joel fired at the nearest Indian, knowing there were too many of them, knowing he was doomed.
Less than ten minutes after leaving the dry creekbed, Hayes cut the sign of Navarro's and Joel's trails. He spurred his horse.
Surprised, Grover galloped after him clutching the reins in his left hand.
"What is it?" he shouted.
"I got a feeling," Hayes shouted back. "A feeling we've got no time to lose."
They galloped ahead, raising a cloud of dust behind them. When they came to the Indian sign, Hayes didn't pause but plunged on. They rode without talking as the sun rose toward the zenith.
All at once Hayes reined up, raising his hand.
"Listen!" he said urgently. The two men were silent. On all sides the prairie stretched endlessly away. Empty. Silent.
"Thought I heard a shot," Hayes said. "Could be I was mistook. Could be I'm getting spooky."
"I couldn't hear nothing what with the horses," Grover told him.
Hayes nodded, spurring his horse on, Grover following a few yards behind. They came to a pool of clear water where Hayes sat his horse as he studied the tracks. When he nodded to Grover, both men swung to the ground, dropped to their knees and drank. They remounted at once.
The heat rose from the prairie around them in searing waves and their view was obscured by mirages of water that faded as they approached. Again Hayes raised his hand and Grover reined in beside him.
"Looks like we're too late," Hayes said.
He pointed off to their right where three turkey buzzards circled ominously in the pale blue sky.
Hayes and Grover galloped across the prairie. The turkey buzzards flapped away as they neared the naked body laying face up in a wash.
"He's dead," Hayes said. "And will you look what the bastards done to him."
"Who--" Grover began.
"It's Navarro."
Juan's Navarro's body was punctured by more than a score of lance wounds. His heart had been cut out of his chest and lay on the ground a short distance away. His hands still grasped the broken stock of a rifle.
"You got to hand it to him," Grover said. "Broke his rifle over a Comanche's head."
Hayes said nothing and when Grover glanced at the older man he saw that his face was ashen and his hands trembled. Hayes rubbed his hands along the
sides of his pants and then folded his arms across his chest. 
"You've got a touch of the ague," Grover said. "Same as Doc Whittaker had." 
Hayes shook his head. Without looking at Grover, he said, "Ain't the ague at all. I'm plumb scared." 
"Of them Comanches? Because of what they done to Navarro?" Grover sounded incredulous. 
"That's about the size of it, bucko. When I was your age I wasn't scared of nothing or nobody. The last two, three years it's been different. I can't help thinking of my mortality. I dream about coming around a bend in the trail and I rein up and look down and see naught but a gaping chasm at my feet." 
"Well, I'll be damned." 
Grover leaned back in his saddle and started to laugh. He laughed so hard the tears came to his eyes and coursed down his cheeks into his dark red beard. 
"It ain't exactly funny," Hayes told him. 
"Sure and it is. Here we are chasing the ferocious Comanches, a one-armed man and a ... a coward." He glanced at the older man. "So that's why you came along on the expedition," he said. "To prove to yourself what kind of man you are. I think it's funny as hell." But he'd stopped laughing. 
"You got your words wrong," Hayes said. "A man what's got fear and goes to fight regardless, he's no coward. He's a brave man, bucko, a sight braver than one of your hell-for-leather gunfighters that never knew the meaning of fear." He smiled wryly. "Leastways, that's what I tell myself." 
Grover looked across the prairie for the telltale circling of turkey buzzards. "Joel can't be too far away," he said, "if he was following old Navarro." He 
stared down at the dead man. "I can't say I feel much of anything, seeing him dead. Not after what the bastard done."
They left Navarro's body where it lay and followed the tracks of the Indian ponies northward.
"Look," Grover shouted, nodding ahead to where horses appeared to be picketed.
They galloped toward the horses, saw they were Indian ponies, and swept by them with Grover in the lead, hunched forward in his saddle, and Hayes following a few yards behind. They saw an Indian, lance in hand, at the head of a gully.
"Eeee-o," Grover cried, charging forward.
When the Indian whirled to face him, Grover rode directly at him. The Comanche thrust upward with his lance but Grover swerved his horse, avoiding him and riding past Joel's fallen horse for the gully. The lancer recovered, braced himself, lance ready to hurl at Hayes. Hayes fired, missed, fired again, and the Indian dropped to his knees, a small circle of red oh his chest. His lance skidded harmlessly across the ground.
Grover plunged into the gully. Below and ahead at the gully mouth he saw Joel, faced by two Comanches. Joel fired and one of the Indians went down. The other ran forward with his lance out-thrust. Joel leaped aside, grasping the lance with his left hand, firing again. Off-balance, he missed. The two men struggled for the lance, the Comanche holding it with two hands, Joel with one, the smoking pistol in his other hand.
Grover released the reins, clutched at his pistol as he tried to guide Brutus with his legs. He pulled the gun from its holster. His horse, bearing down on the fighting men, suddenly stopped and wheeled. Grover
dropped his gun. He calmed the horse and rode toward Joel. 
Joel fired again and the Comanche staggered away. 
"Get on," Grover shouted, "get on!" 
Joel swung onto the horse. Hayes rode up beside them. 
"There's more coming," he shouted. "Five or six more." He spurred his horse into the creekbed and up the other side with Grover behind him. 
They gained the top of the bank and raced across the prairie beside the creek, riding flat out, the two horses lathered with sweat. After they'd gone a half mile, Hayes looked back, slowed and reined up. Grover rode past him, stopped, and then came back. 
"There's no sign of them," Hayes said. "They must be licking their wounds." 
"We gave them a few wounds to lick, that's for sure," Grover said. 
"The shoe would have been on the other foot," Joel said, "if you hadn't of come along when you did." 
"Ah, and isn't that what friends are for?" Grover asked. "Now we're even, you and me. I've no doubt you saved my life by cutting off my damn arm and here me and Hayes have returned the favor." 
"Grover," Joel said, "there's one more favor you can do me." 
"And what might that be?" 
"Give me the loan of your horse. I was on the trail of Navarro when those four Comanches jumped me. I haven't finished what I set out to do." 
"There's no need for that," Hayes said. "Senor Juan Navarro met up with your Comanche friends before you did. He's as dead as any man's ever likely to be." 
"I got to see for myself," Joel said. When Hayes glanced at him, he went on, "I'm not doubting your 
word, Hayes, it's just that it's what I got to do. I was going to kill the murdering bastard and if somebody did it before I had the chance, I got to see it for myself."
Hayes looked behind them at puffs of dust rising from the prairie.
"Seems like them Comanches are heading for camp," Hayes said. "We might be able to take a slight detour on our way back to the Pioneers."
Again the turkey buzzards rose as they approached, circling overhead. Joel grunted when he saw Navarro. He slid to the ground to stand staring down at the Mexican's mutilated body, his hands on his hips, thumbs hooked in the top of his pants. After a time Joel nodded as though satisfied and remounted behind Grover.
"Them savages must have read my mind," he said. "I was planning something similar for Senor Navarro myself."
"We ought to take him back with us," Hayes said. "So's he can be buried."
"No, we'll leave him where he lays." Joel's throat tightened and his voice grew husky. "He left her like that, a-laying on the ground. He deserves no better."
Hayes shrugged and turned his horse to the north. They didn't sight the expedition before nightfall so they made a dry camp. In the morning they circled to the east and then to the south, guessing they'd ridden ahead of the Pioneers, and at midday they crossed the tracks left by the horses, wagons and cattle. They overtook the column in the early afternoon.
That night they camped at the foot of the caprock, the escarpment dividing the prairie from the higher Staked Plain. The Pioneers were even dirtier than before, Joel saw, their hats stained and shapeless, their
clothing scanty and ragged. As soon as camp was made, the men scattered in every direction hunting for wild grapes or game. 
"There's a few deer and antelope hereabouts," Hayes told Joel, "but a man can't get close enough to shoot them. Some of the men are catching snakes and cooking them. I never did fancy snakes though there's some that does." 
The three men were sitting at a campfire eating the last of their dried beef as they talked. 
"I heard tell the officers are holding a pow-wow to decide what to do," Grover said. "What would you do, Hayes, if you was General McLeod?" 
Hayes spat into the fire. "If I was the General, which, thank the Lord, I ain't, I'd first call my officers together and I'd stare them up and down for a few minutes without saying a word. After I'd finished showing them who was boss, I'd say, 'Gentlemen, let us assess the situation.' That's what a West Pointer does, he assesses the situation. All right, buckos, review the situation for me." 
"General," Grover said, pitching his voice higher to imitate Captain Hudson, "our main cause for concern is we don't know where in hell we are. Never having met up with them Apache guides." 
"General," Joel said, "the provisions are most gone. And we can't tell from day to day whether we'll find water or die a-thirsting." 
"My men are wore out," Grover said. "I can't guarantee how many more days they can go on." 
"We're surrounded by hostiles," Joel added. "They're stealing the horses right out from under our noses and when they ain't doing that they're ambushing our men and murdering them every chance they get." 
Again Hayes spat into the fire. "Gentlemen," he said, "you paint a bleak and dismal picture. Ain't there no good news to report?" 
"Doc Whittaker's back," Joel said. "I heard he wandered into camp tonight none the worse for wear. He says he overslept one morning after being up all night and the troop went on without him. He spent the next five or six days following our trail on foot and finally overtook us." 
"I'll wager it was the medicinal alcoholic spirits and not the ague that led to his oversleeping. It's the only tonic for the chills and fever, the Doc says." Hayes looked from Joel to Grover. "Is that all the good news you gentlemen have to bring me?" 
"That's the sum and substance," Grover said. 
"AH right, gentlemen, outline our choices. What damn alternatives do we have for getting our asses out of this mess?" 
"We could bum the wagons," Grover said, "and high-tail it back to Austin. Without the wagons we'd be able to travel twice as fast." 
"We can divide the command in two," Joel said slowly. "Give one party the best men and the best horses and send them riding west to try to reach the New Mexico settlements. When and if they get there they can send back provisions for the rest of the men." 
"When you divide the command," Hayes said, "you're asking for trouble. I've seen it happen. Together we're strong, divided we're weak as hell." 
"Do you mean we're to go on as we are?" Grover asked. "Across the Staked Plain?" 
"Damn me, no. We can't do that and we can't slink back to Texas with our tails between our legs, either. I don't like it, gentlemen, yet there seems to be only 
one answer. We must divide the command. Are you agreed?" 
"Agreed," Grover said. Joel nodded. 
"Now," Hayes said, "all we got to do is wait and see what General McLeod and the rest of them mucky- mucks decide." 
That night Joel lay for many hours on his pallet without sleeping. The image of Navarro, scalped and bloodied, his heart torn from his body, would not leave his mind. He had expected, once Navarro was dead, to be free, relieved of his burden of revenge, yet he didn't feel free. Instead he seemed empty, as though the force that had driven him across the countless miles of Texas prairie was gone and there was nothing to take its place. 
He wondered if the mute had been Navarro's companion when they raided his farm near San Antonio. The "mute was dead, after betraying his leader, so there was no way of knowing for sure. Probably he would never know. 
What now? Joel asked himself. The idea of returning to his farm made him grimace with distaste. The farm called up images of death; it was an ending, not a beginning. Someday, perhaps, he could go back. Now he couldn't, even if they were able to reach Santa Fe. 
He needed a new start in a new country. But did he want to settle down? Santa Fe, California, Chihuahua, the Rio Grande country. He repeated the exotic names of cities and lands he had never seen, feeling almost as though they beckoned to him. 
He knew he'd never find another woman like Susanna. He'd only known her for a few months yet in that brief time he'd come to love her as he could 
never love anyone else. Drowsily, he tried to picture her in his mind. He couldn't. 
He heard the howl of wolves near the camp and the hoot of an owl. Indians? he asked himself, only half-awake. He listened but the sounds were not repeated. In the small hours of the morning he finally fell asleep. 
It seemed only moments later when he was roused by reveille. Rubbing his eyes, Joel struggled to his feet and joined the others for the morning rollcall. 
"Men," Captain Hudson told them as soon as they were assembled, "there was a council of all the officers last night." He paused. "We have decided to split the command. The men in the best condition, a hundred in all, mounted on the best horses and each man with five days' provisions, will proceed under Captain Sutton to the northwest until they come to the New Mexican settlements. The rest of the party will stay on his side of the caprock under the command of General McLeod." 
Joel and Hayes Archer were picked to ride ahead; Grover was ordered to remain in camp. 
"Captain," Grover said, "you're leaving me here on a death watch. Maybe I've only got one arm but I'm as good a man as the next one." 
"You'll stay here," Hudson told him. When Grover started to protest, he added, "If not of your own free will, then I'll have you put in chains." 
The next day Joel, Hayes and the others who were to ride on dried meat over slow fires, shod horses, molded bullets, and cleaned their rifles and pistols. By late afternoon they were ready. An hour before sundown the hundred men filled their canteens, mounted and set out to the west 
The Border Breed . 141 
They made thirty miles on each of the first two days but still the great plain stretched on and on ahead of them, seemingly without end. On the third day Joel spotted an old buffalo bull standing alone on the plain and chased him for miles, firing into him time after time without bringing him down. That night the weather took a turn for the worse with a chilling rain and cold winds. 
The next morning a party was sent to look for the buffalo and they found him down but still alive. Killing him, they carried the meat back to the camp where they made a pretense of cooking it over buffalo chip fires but they were so hungry they barely took time to warm the tough meat. 
At night the coyotes barked and howled around the camp. "Means we're near either Indians or whites," Hayes told Joel. "If it's whites, we're getting to the end of the Staked Plain. If it's Indians ..." He shrugged. 
The next day they found an old cart road and the men whooped with joy. The road ended abruptly in the sand. To the west they saw three mountains and again their spirits rose. 
The men were starving, their eyes sunken, then- faces drawn and haggard. When one of the horses broke down, his rider shot him, dividing the meat among the others. It was tougher than the buffalo, Joel found, and the more he chewed the larger the cud in his mouth seemed to grow. Still, hungry as he was, he swallowed his portion and felt better. 
Thomas Hunt, a surveyor who had been a member of the now disbanded spy company, rode ahead and reported back that he'd found another cart road. They followed the narrow track into a canyon where rocky 
walls rose on both sides of them. A river trickled through the valley with stunted pines and cedars clinging to the parched earth along its banks.
Joel, who was near the front of the column, saw Hunt, who had again gone ahead, ride toward them from around a rock-walled bend.
"Mexicans!" Hunt shouted.
The Texans forced their tired horses into a gallop. They rounded the bend and a moment later came on a small group of Mexicans huddled fearfully around a campfire. Charles Lewis dismounted and walked forward to speak to them in Spanish. They answered, nodding and gesturing with their hands.
Lewis turned to the Texans and said, "They say they are poor and have little to eat. They invite us to dismount and share what they have."
The Texans crowded around the campfire, gulping down the barley meal. Lewis went on questioning the Mexicans, nodding at their answers. At last he turned to Captain Sutton.
"They say," Lewis told him, "that the first big town we'll come to is San Miguel, eighty miles to the northwest. This side of San Miguel are the villages of Anton Chico and Cuesta where there are many herds of sheep and where we'll be able to get tortillas and atole."
"Tell them we mean them no harm," Sutton said.
"I have told them."
"And still they seem afraid."
"They are that They claim the country is up in arms waiting for the army from Texas. Mexican lancers are supposed to be on the way. They say the governor, Armijo, has ordered the arrest of all Texans in New Mexico. The priests are telling the people
that the Tejanos are coming to kill the men and steal and despoil the women." 
"Do you believe them?" the captain asked. "Do you think troops are on the way?" 
Lewis shrugged. "You know what Mexicans are like as well as I do," he said. "They see two riders and they think they've seen a troop of cavalry on the march. In the next telling the troop becomes an army. There's no doubt they're afraid to help us, though." 
"What are they doing here? They're not sheepherders as far as I can see." 
"They didn't say and I thought it best not to ask. My guess is they're comancheros who have been trading with the Indians. Trading illegally." 
Captain Sutton pondered the situation. "We'll send three men back to General McLeod to tell him what we've found," he decided. "I'll suggest that he come ahead, traveling as light as he can. Lieutenant Howard, you take Lewis here and four more men and ride ahead to San Miguel to get in touch with the alcalde. Sound out the feeling toward us in the town. Buy provisions for General McLeod and his men and send them back. We'll follow and join you there." 
Joel and Hayes volunteered to ride with the advance party and the six men set out at once. A few miles farther on they came to a herd of thousands of sheep. They bought two from the herders and that night used their ramrods to cook mutton ribs, shoulders, livers and hearts. 
The next day they rode into the village of Anton Chico where they ate tortillas, boiled eggs and miel at the adobe house of a Mexican sheep rancher. The Mexican's daughters gave each of the Texans a bundle of cigarritos filled with dried shreddings from the 
punche plant. Though they stayed the night, Joel slept little for the whole family, most of them sick with whooping cough, was crowded into the same room.
The next morning their host, Senor Alvarez, motioned Charles Lewis to one side where, with many worried sidelong glances, he spoke to him in rapid-fire Spanish.
"He says we are to be attacked by a company of Mexican lancers," Lewis told them. "He says we will all most certainly be executed."
They saddled hurriedly and rode from Anton Chico toward the larger town of San Miguel. The track was well-traveled and they passed Mexicans on mules and in carts but saw no lancers. At mid-morning they came to another village with grey adobe houses on both sides of the road.
"This must be Cuesta," Lewis said.
They rode into the village with their horses' hooves raising puffs of dust behind them. The windows of the houses gaped emptily at them. A dog barked, barked again, and then stopped. Cuesta appeared deserted.
They walked their horses to a small parched plaza in the center of the village. The leaves on the lone tree in the plaza were yellow and, as they watched, a breeze from the north rustled through them, sending several twisting and turning to the ground.
"I can feel them watching us," Hayes said.
Joel looked right and left, straining to see into the houses. He saw nothing.
"When I give the signal," the Lieutenant said, "we'll gallop the hell out of here." He was a young blond- bearded man with a ready smile. He wasn't smiling now.
A troop of cavalry rode into the street in front of them. Mexican cavalry. 
The Texans whirled their horses only to see more cavalry blocking the road behind them. Mexican lancers appeared on the roofs of the adobe houses, others in the open areas between the buildings. They wore blue and red uniforms and carried lances, swords, rifles and old-fashioned carbines. A few held bows and arrows. 
"There must be a hundred of the bastards," Hayes muttered. 
"Stand your ground," Lieutenant Howard told them. 
A man rode from the group of lancers in front of them. An officer, he was tall and bronze-skinned, his face thin and narrow, his nose long. His eyes, shadowed by the vizor of his cap, were dark as pitch. 
"I am Capitan Damaso Salazar," he said in English, "of the Army of Mexico." 
"Lieutenant Thomas Howard, Republic of Texas." Lieutenant Howard clipped his words short. 
"Ah, yes," Salazar said. "As you can see, we were expecting you. In fact, we have been expecting you for some weeks. You took much longer than we thought possible to cross the Staked Plain. Welcome to Nueva Mexico, Lieutenant." 
When Lieutenant Howard said nothing, Salazar smiled thinly. 
"You are in the territory of the Republic of Mexico," he said. "Our governor, Manuel Armijo, has instructed me to welcome you in his behalf. He is traveling here from San Miguel and I am under orders to escort you to him." 
"Good," Howard said. "I'd like to meet his excellency, Governor Armijo." 
"And you shall," Salazar said, "you shall. There is 
one formality you must follow, of course. I cannot bring a group of aimed men from Texas to meet the Governor. You must place your rifles and your pistols in my care."
When Howard shook his head, Salazar said, "I can understand your consternation. I assure you that each of your firearms will be labeled with the name of its owner and each will be returned when you leave New Mexico."
Lieutenant Howard turned to the other five men in his party. "What do you say?" he asked.
"We ought to do what he requests," Charles Lewis said. "We're outnumbered twenty to one. We'd make the same demand if a party of Mexicans came riding into Austin."
"I don't trust the cocky bastard," Hayes said. "We can make a fight of it but we'd never get out of this place alive if we do. I say we take the chance and lay down our arms."
Joel looked around him--there seemed to be Mexican lancers everywhere. He nodded his head as did the other two men.
"Our rifles and pistols will be returned to us?" the Lieutenant asked. "You give me your word as an officer?"
"Of a certainty," Salazar said. "In writing if you wish. Now if you will dismount and place your arms on the ground."
Reluctantly, they swung from their horses and laid their weapons in the dirt at the center of the road.
"And now," Salazar went on ingratiatingly, "if you will step back several paces so my men may collect your arms."
They stepped back and watched as two of the
lancers walked forward, gathering the rifles and pistols and carrying them back to Salazar. 
"Very good," Salazar said. "It pleases me to learn that some Texans have good sense. Many do not." 
He turned to an officer near him and barked an order in Spanish. 
"Turn your pockets out," he said to the Texans. 
Two lancers armed with rifles stepped forward. The Texans emptied their pockets. Men came up behind them, running their hands over their clothing, taking a knife from one, a concealed derringer from another. Joel saw Mexican civilians peering at them from the doorways of the houses, their faces impassive. 
Again Salazar gave a command in Spanish. 
"Wait." Charles Lewis "stepped forward with his hands clasped behind his head. One of the lancers raised his rifle and Lewis stopped. 
Lewis spoke to Salazar in Spanish. 
"He says, T am your friend,'" Hayes murmured so low that only Joel could hear. 
Joel glanced at Hayes, surprised the older man understood Spanish. Hayes' face was set and pale as he winked slowly at Joel as if to say, "There's a lot you don't know, bucko." 
Salazar stared at Lewis. Finally he nodded and motioned him to approach. The Capitan turned his horse and Lewis walked beside him. Joel watched as they stopped a short distance away from the lancers and talked, Lewis gesturing, Salazar impassive. At last Salazar nodded, motioning for a horse to be brought, and Joel saw Lewis mount with an armed lancer on each side of him. When Joel caught his eye, the other man turned his head. 
"What were they saying?" Joel whispered to Hayes. 
"I couldn't hear them. I expect old Lewis was selling that Mex Capitan a bill of goods of some sort. If he did, I say more power to him. I'd do the same thing if I was in his shoes." 
"Maybe Lewis will be able to get us out of this mess," Joel said. 
Salazar rode back between the ranks of the lancers and drew his horse up so he faced the five Texans. 
"From where do you ride?" he asked Lieutenant Howard. 
"Austin, Texas," the Lieutenant told him. 
Salazar nodded as though the words confirmed what he already knew. "How many men are in your army?" 
"Army?" the Lieutenant asked. "I know of no army. There's the six of us, as you can see." 
Salazar laughed without mirth. "Do not try to play me for a fool," he said. "I know an army of a thousand Texans set out from Austin at the beginning of June with the intention of conquering New Mexico. I know you are here to try to add our land to the Republic of Texas. I know this as surely as I know my name is Damaso Salazar." 
"We are six men," the Lieutenant insisted. "We come seeking a new route to the west so we can bring goods from Texas to exchange for gold and silver from Santa Fe and El Paso and Chihuahua." 
"Is that what your General Houston ordered you to say? Does he think we are children to trust the word of traitors?" 
"Do we look like conquerors?" the Lieutenant asked. 
"I must admit you do not," Salazar said. "You look like what you are, part of a ragged band of revolutionaries. In Mexico we have a time-honored way of dealing with revolutionaries whether they are Mexicans or Texans." 
He drew his sword and raised it above his head.
Twelve soldiers armed with rifles filed past Salazar and took up positions in two rows on the dusty street facing the Texans. Joel heard footsteps behind him and, glancing over his shoulder, saw that the cavalrymen had drawn to the sides of the street. The civilians, who had at first crowded onto the road, now scattered and ran when they saw the twelve rifle-bearing soldiers.
At a command from Salazar, the first row of riflemen knelt on the dirt road. Beside him, Joel heard Hayes swear and saw him clench his fists.
"By God," Hayes cried, "they're going to shoot us."
"When I give the word," Lieutenant Howard said, "we'll pitch into them." , 
The men watched the Lieutenant, waiting for his signal. Before it came they heard a trumpet blast ahead of them and Salazar's lancers and the twelve riflemen made way for an even larger detachment of Mexican troops. 
"El Gobernador." The words sped from soldier to soldier around the plaza. "Manuel Armijo." 
Joel stared as a handsome, portly man riding astride an immense mule approached them. He was richly uniformed in blue and gold with two rows of medals glittering on his chest. The lancers came to attention as he passed between their ranks. 
After nodding to Capitan Salazar, Armijo motioned Lieutenant Howard to come forward. Still seated on his mule he shook the Lieutenant's hand. 
"Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?" Armijo asked in English.
"Thomas Howard, a merchant from Austin."
Armijo seized the collar of Howard's jacket and pulled the Lieutenant to his mule. He pointed to the buttons on the jacket, each emblazoned with the word "Texas" and a single star.
"Texas." Armijo said the word triumphantly as though he had uncovered a grand deception. "This is not the garb of a merchant."
He turned to Salazar. "Capitan Salazar," he said, still speaking in English. "You are to march these men to San Miguel. They are my prizes, the first of many, and I wish to speak to them further before I display them to the people to demonstrate the fate of any Texans who attack us. The other man"--he nodded to Lewis--"I will take with me to act as interpreter when we intercept the main body of the Texas army."
Joel wondered how the Governor knew of Lewis and his ability to speak Spanish. He supposed that one of Salazar's men must have told him as he entered the village.
"They are to be taken to San Miguel on foot," Armijo went on. "They are Texans. I know Texans and they are a strong and untiring people. If one of them pretends to be sick or tired on the road, shoot him down and bring me his ears."
"With pleasure," Salazar said.
While the Texans' horses were being led away, Armijo motioned Charles Lewis to ride forward. Armijo kicked his mule, urging him ahead, and Lewis fell in behind him, looking neither right nor left as he carefully avoided the stares of the Texans. A troop of cavalry fell in four abreast and rode ahead of the
Governor while another followed behind. When the dust from the horses settled, Mexican foot soldiers formed ranks and trudged through the village on their way to intercept Captain Sutton's men.
Finally the soldiers were gone, leaving the five Texans in the dusty plaza with Capitan Salazar and some thirty of his men.
"RicardoI" Salazar called.
A black-bearded man stepped forward and listened as the captain barked commands in Spanish. When he finished, Ricardo saluted, stepped smartly away and about-faced.
Salazar walked his horse to where the Texans stood staring sullenly up at him. He stopped, his horse prancing to one side, and raised his hand to his hat in a mock salute.
"We will meet again," he promised. He dug cruel spurs into his stallion and galloped after the army of Governor Armijo.
Joel's arms were twisted behind his back and he felt a rope bite into the flesh of his wrists. When all five Texans were bound, Ricardo mounted a sorrel stallion and they set off for San Miguel, Ricardo and one other soldier on horseback, the rest of the Mexicans on foot, half of them marching ahead of the prisoners and half behind.
The Mexicans in front of Joel marched stolidly and in silence. For the most part they wore light blue uniforms and were armed with old muskets or bows and arrows. All of them appeared to have one or more knives thrust in their belts.
"San Miguel," Lieutenant Howard said to Ricardo. "How far? Where? Donde?"
Ricardo glanced down at his prisoners, then shook his head. He grasped his ear with his right hand and
made a cutting gesture with his left forefinger. He smiled.
"Bastard," the Lieutenant muttered, trudging on.
How far was San Miguel? Joel wondered. Twenty miles? More? The sun was high and hot and his throat was dry and raw from the heat and the dust. The heel of his right foot was soon rubbed raw so that each step brought a dull slice of pain.
After five miles, Ricardo called a halt. The forward group of lancers left the road and after a few minutes Joel heard the splash of water. When, ten or fifteen minutes later, they returned, the rest of the Mexicans went to the stream to drink and to rest. When his troop had reassembled, Ricardo mounted the sorrel.
"Water," Hayes said to him. "Agua. We can't go on without water."
Ricardo smiled, a smile reminiscent of Salazar's, Joel thought, and again made the motion of severing an ear.
Hayes sat down in the dirt. "By God," he said, "I'm not going on without water. Let them do their damnedest. I'm not budging."
Joel sat on the road beside him. "If none of us will go on, he'll have to give us water," he said. "He won't dare kill all of us or Armijo might have his head on a platter."
Lieutenant Howard sat down, crossing his legs, and the other two Texans, Smith and O'Connor, followed suit. Ricardo rode over to them, unsheathing his sword.
"Levantan!" he shouted.
The five men sat without moving, their hands tied behind them, their heads bowed, their eyes closed. Joel heard a swishing above him and, glancing through shuttered eyelids, saw Ricardo swinging his
sword over their heads as he shouted orders at them in Spanish. Hands seized Joel's arms and he was dragged to his feet and pushed forward. He let himself go limp and pitched to the road, twisting to cushion the fall with his shoulder.
Again he was pulled to his feet and held upright between two soldiers. He felt something sharp against his stomach and he opened his eyes to see Ricardo, on foot, in front of him holding a sword whose tip was pressed to Joel's body. Again he closed his eyes.
The pressure of the swordpoint was suddenly removed. When Joel opened his eyes again he saw Ricardo standing to one side motioning the Texans to leave the road. Ricardo was scowling and, Joel guessed, cursing in Spanish. Joel stumbled into the brush with the others following him and in a few minutes heard the murmur of water.
A scream of pain came from behind him. He swung around to see Smith on the ground with blood flowing from an open wound on the back of his thigh.
"What the devil?" Joel said.
"He tripped and the bastard sliced him." Hayes nodded to a Mexican soldier standing a few feet behind the fallen Smith. Joel saw the red of blood on the man's sword.
One of the lancers pushed Joel forward. He climbed a small rise and found himself looking down at a sluggish stream. Half walking, half sliding, he went down the bank to the edge of the water where he dropped to his knees. The water was roiled, a yellowish brown. He lowered his face, finding it hard to balance himself with his hands tied behind his back. Deliberately he fell forward into the water. Twisting to one side, Joel managed to lie so he could drink the
brackish water. He gagged but kept drinking slowly until his thirst was slaked. 
When they finished drinking, the five Texans stood beside the creek--the wounded Smith had been carried to the water. Hayes nodded downward. Ricardo stared at him, eyes wide, as though he didn't understand.
"I got to piss, God damn it," Hayes said. "Piss, do you comprende?" 
Ricardo, smiling, raised his hands uncomprehendingly. Again Joel's arms were seized and he was pushed and carried up the bank to the road. Damn you, Hayes, for mentioning it, he thought. Now I got to piss, too. Something fierce. 
They set out again, trudging along the dusty road. When Smith lagged, limping, Ricardo rode up beside him and prodded him with his sword. Smith increased his pace for a time, only to lag again. By now the leg of his pants was soaked with blood and Joel saw dark red spots on the road behind him. 
The sun was lowering toward the hills in the west when Joel heard a shout behind him. He turned to see Smith on his knees, his head bowed and his eyes closed. Hayes knelt in the road and the other Texans did the same. 
Ricardo gave a terse command. One of the Mexican foot soldiers stepped up behind Smith, cocked his musket and held the muzzle to the back of Smith's head. He fired. Gunsmoke drifted up as Smith groaned and pitched face first to the ground. Joel turned away, nauseous. He felt the warmth of urine where he had pissed in his pants. 
Ricardo dismounted and walked to the fallen man, shifting the body with the toe of his boot. Smith didn't move. 
"Muerte," the Mexican who had shot him said.
"The bastards have killed him," Hayes said. As though he didn't believe it, Joel thought.
Ricardo walked forward until he was standing above the kneeling Hayes. He motioned the Texan to his feet. Hayes didn't move. Joel sat watching him, fear and resignation gnawing at his innards. The soldier reloaded his musket, cocked the gun and placed the muzzle to the back of Hayes' head. The day darkened and Joel realized the sun had set behind the hills.
Hayes Archer raised his right leg and thrust himself up from the road. He staggered forward uncertainly; Joel saw sweat beaded on his forehead. Ricardo turned to the other Texans and one by one they pushed themselves to their feet and shuffled ahead.
Ricardo drew his knife and walked back to where Smith's body lay in the dust. Kneeling beside him, he grasped one of Smith's ears. Joel swore, turning away so he didn't have to see what happened.
"We've got to get away from these bastards," Lieutenant Howard said under his breath.
"Before we get to San Miguel," Hayes added. "They're sure to have a calaboose there."
"The sun's down," Joel said. "The darker it gets, the better our chances."
Ricardo came riding up beside them. "Silendo!" he shouted.
Joel glanced up at him, looking for Smith's ears, repelled yet curious. There was no sign of them. Nor did he see Smith's body.
The four men trudged on with the darkness gathering around them and the birds singing their twilight songs from the trees along the way. A half moon rode high over their heads like a pale corpse.
"Look," O'Connor said softly.
Through the trees ahead of them Joel saw the yellow glow of a light. They rounded a bend and he saw a second light, higher than the first and on the other side of the road. He thought he heard the shouts of children.
"That tree," Lieutenant Howard whispered.
A hundred feet ahead of them the branches of a large tree arched over the road.
"When we get to the trunk," the Lieutenant said, "me and Hayes will run to the right. Falconer and O'Connor to the left."
The three men murmured their assent.
They walked on with the tree looming closer and closer. Joel's heel pained with every step. He glanced from the corners of his eyes at Ricardo and the other horseman riding beside him. They had seen the lights and were talking in Spanish as though anticipating food and drink and rest. The foot soldiers picked up their pace as they neared their destination and Joel heard one of them speak and another answer with a laugh.
Lieutenant Howard was the first to reach the tree.
"Now," he said, sprinting ahead and to the right. Hayes ran after him, following him for a few paces before veering off at an angle.
Joel and O'Connor raced across the road past Ricardo who shouted as his horse reared. Joel pushed into the underbrush, plunging ahead, branches raking his face. He was clear of the growth when he stepped into nothingness, hurtling into a ditch. He cursed, levering himself up with his knees as he twisted and turned his hands in an attempt to free them. There was no give in the rope binding his wrists.
He ran along the bottom of the ditch, crouching to
keep his head below the level of the road. He heard O'Connor scrambling behind him. Men ran along the road shouting in Spanish, he saw their dark figures silhouetted in the failing light, saw the black outlines of their muskets and swords. 
A strangled shout came from behind him and he slowed. 
"They have me!" It was O'Connor. "The bastards have me!" 
Footsteps pounded toward Joel and he ran on. A light appeared on the road. The light bobbed past him, a lantern carried by a running soldier. More men ran to and fro. He heard a shot from off to his right and then another. More shouts in Spanish, the thud of horses' hooves. 
The ditch ended in a sloping bank of dirt. Joel scrambled up, slipping and sliding, gaining two feet, losing one. When he reached the top he turned to his left where he saw the sheltering darkness of trees ahead of him. The cries of the men pursuing him were closer. 
He ran all out. If he could reach the trees, he'd be safe. In the darkness, he'd be able to hide, could slip away during the night. His side ached from running, his heart beat wildly, his breath came in short racking bursts. The trees were a few yards away. His leg struck a fallen branch and he hurtled forward. Men cried out behind him. He brought up his knees to lever himself to his feet. 
Joel heard steps, a cry of discovery, a swish above his head. Pain exploded in a sharp burst of red and he crumpled to the ground. 
When he opened his eyes he was lying on his back on what felt like a wooden plank. His head throbbed and, probing his hair with his fingers, he found a 
swelling behind his right ear. Only when he felt blood on his fingertips did he realize his hands were untied. 
He tried to sit up but the movement brought a stab of pain to his head and he sank back onto the plank. The night was dark. From far off he heard men marching, the bark of dogs, and the neighing of horses. He closed his eyes, his head whirled, and he slept. 
When Joel reawakened he saw he was lying on the wood floor of a small room. The walls of the room were adobe, there was no furniture of any kind, and the single window was barred. His nose wrinkled and he looked around, finally realizing that he smelled his own urine. 
When he sat up, he drew in his breath and moaned. His head throbbed painfully though less than it had the night before. He was hungry, his mouth was dry, his right heel hurt. Ignoring it, he stood up and walked to the barred window. 
He found he was imprisoned in a building overlooking the plaza of a fair-sized town, San Miguel he supposed. There were adobe buildings on all four sides of the square which was bare except for a single pole in the center where the red, white and green eagle and serpent flag of Mexico snapped in the wind. 
Soldiers walked back and forth in the plaza while others sat with their backs against the adobe buildings as they smoked and talked. A horseman raised dust as he galloped past Joel's window and disappeared off to his left. The shadows of the buildings were long and the sunlight in the plaza was the light of early morning. 
A key rasped in the door behind him and he turned to see a soldier step into the room. The man motioned with his musket, warning Joel to stay where he was. 
Another guard appeared behind the first and placed a tray of food on the floor. The soldiers backed from the room, the door swung shut and the key was turned in the lock. 
Joel sat on the floor, picked up the tray and put it on his lap. He never had thought he'd be so glad to see tortillas, beans and a cup of what smelled like coffee. The food was highly spiced, the coffee bitter, but he cleaned the plate and emptied the cup. 
When he was done, Joel sat with his back against the wall of the room and waited. No one came. He heard shouts and the sound of horses and mules from the plaza and he waited but no one came. 
He paced his cell and found it measured eight feet by nine. The ceiling was ten feet above his head and thatched. Three bars were set firmly into the metal frame of the window. There was no handle on the inside of the door. When he tried to leap up to test the roof he found he could not reach it, so he pulled himself up on the window ledge, standing on the frame. He touched the roof but when he shoved upward there was no give. 
He climbed down and sat on the floor to wait. He waited three days, never leaving the room. Each morning he was given a plate of food, always tortillas and beans, and a cup of coffee. He saw no sign of O'Connor or Lieutenant Howard or Hayes Archer, but he assumed they were dead or prisoners like himself. 
On the morning of the fourth day he heard increased activity in the plaza outside his cell. Drums beat a tattoo. From the window Joel saw troops falling into ranks, forming a square open on the side of the plaza farthest from him. A horseman rode to the center of the plaza and he recognized Salazar. As a 
band played, the Mexican flag was raised to the top of the flagstaff.
Minutes later, he saw a man led across the plaza by a small contingent of soldiers. His hands were tied behind his back, his eyes were blindfolded, he was bareheaded and his blond hair was matted. Lieutenant Howard. A priest in flowing brown robes followed the soldiers, his head bowed over a breviary.
Lieutenant Howard was marched to the far side of the plaza where a sergeant pushed him to his knees with his head a few feet from an adobe wall. Six of the soldiers raised their rifles, aiming down at the Lieutenant, The sergeant glanced to Salazar, who nodded, and the sergeant shouted "Fuego!" The soldiers fired, shooting the prisoner in the back. Lieutenant Howard pitched forward. Joel saw his mouth open and close as though gasping for air.
Joel gripped the bars of his cell's window. He heard himself shouting, cursing Salazar.
The sergeant stepped up to Lieutenant Howard with a pistol in his hand and shot him through the heart. The shot came from so close that Howard's shirt was set on fire by the powder flash, smouldering until quenched by the Lieutenant's blood.
To the beat of drums and the blare of a bugle, the soldiers marched from the plaza. Joel heard the key turn in the lock of the door and he swung around, expecting the soldier to step inside while his companion placed the tray of food on the floor.
The soldier stepped inside, rifle at the ready, his eyes on Joel. Charles Lewis walked from behind the guard into the cell where he stood staring at Joel, his arms folded across his chest. He was cleanshaven now except for a black moustache and his clothes were
new, a black wide-brimmed hat, a dark vest ornamented in silver, and black trousers. The rowels of his spurs glinted in the dim light coming through the open door behind him.
"Lewis!" Joel said, his heart leaping. His hopes of freedom were rekindled and he rushed toward the other man with his hand extended.
"Stay where you are," Lewis warned, his hand on the butt of his holstered pistol.
"Lewis," Joel said again, not understanding at first. Joel motioned in the direction of the plaza. "You don't mean you're with them?" he asked.
"The Lieutenant was a prisoner who was caught trying to escape. The punishment, as you saw, was death by firing squad."
"I was caught trying to escape."
"Yes," Lewis said softly.
A tremor ran along Joel's spine. He said nothing as Lewis continued to stare at him.
"All this time," Joel said, "you've been working with them, just waiting for a chance to betray the Expedition. To deliver us into the hands of the Mexicans."
"Captain Sutton has surrendered his men without a fight," Lewis told him. "I was able to convince the Captain that Governor Armijo's intentions were honorable, which they are. General McLeod has also surrendered--also without a fight. So much for the heroic Texas army. So much for your plans to enslave New Mexico."
"You know full well," Joel said, "that it was nothing more than a trading venture."
Charles Lewis smiled. "You sound as though you believe your own lies," he said.
"It's not a lie, it's the truth."
"Are three hundred armed Texans needed to escort a few wagons?" Again Lewis smiled. "They're all in custody now, every last man-jack of them. Tomorrow they'll be sent on foot to El Paso del Norte in the beneficent care of Captain Salazar. From El Paso those who are still alive will be marched to the City of Mexico. They will arrive at the capital, perhaps, in time to celebrate Christmas at the Cathedral."
"When the word gets back, all Texas will take up arms. They'll fight their way to Mexico City if need be."
"If all of your Texans are heroic fighters like the members of the Santa Fe Expedition, we have little to fear. You Texans have sown the wind, soon you'll reap the whirlwind. Anyone who trusts a Texan is a fool. Juan Navarro was a fool. He trusted you Texans and where is he now? Dead, left to the turkey buzzards to devour. Left to the coyotes and the wolves."
"Navarro?" Lewis's words had jumbled the meaning of what had happened on the long trek from Austin. Joel groped among the facts as he tried to reassemble them.
"I could have warned him, I suppose," Lewis said, "but it would have done no good. Juan Navarro was a fool, a traitor who turned his back on his own country to side with the rebellious Texans. You see what it profited him. He lost his own soul and the wealth of the world as well. You killed him, Falconer, you killed Juan Navarro, a man who never harmed you, and with that you have to live for the rest of your life."
"The Comanches killed Navarro. I saw him after they were done with him. They'd ambushed him on the prairie and hacked him to death."
"No, not the Comanches. You killed him with your
false accusations. You convinced everyone in the company that he murdered your wife. I can tell you he did not." 
"If it wasn't Navarro--" 
Joel, realizing the truth, leaped for Lewis's throat. The soldier swung the butt of his rifle, catching him on the side of the head and he staggered back against the wall. Joel leaned with one shoulder to the adobe, steadying himself. 
"Yes," Lewis said, "I was the one you wanted, not Navarro. Rafael and I. Poor Rafael, it was a great misfortune that Navarro killed him. He should have killed me--I was the one who told Rafael to falsely betray him. Rafael hated the Texans almost as much as I do. They cut out his tongue years ago after a skirmish along the border." 
"You're lying." 
Lewis shrugged. 
Joel crouched low and charged him. The soldier swung the butt of his rifle again but Joel was ready for him, shielding his head with his arm, taking a glancing blow on his shoulder. Joel recovered and rammed headfirst into Lewis's groin, his fist jabbing up at the other man's crotch. Lewis grunted. Joel felt hands grasp his shoulders and he was yanked back. He swung around and drove his fist into the soldier's face, seeing the guard's head jerk back. 
Hearing Lewis behind him, he turned, too slowly, his reactions dulled. He saw the butt of Lewis's pistol arcing down and he twisted his head back but the gun struck a glancing blow on the side of his forehead. Joel staggered and dropped to one knee, hands splayed on the floor. Lewis kicked his arms savagely and Joel pitched face forward onto the planking. 
He tried to get to his feet and found he couldn't. 
He stared up at Lewis who was in the doorway, the guard beside him with the musket aimed at Joel.
"When I came to Texas in '25," Lewis said, "I pledged myself to her government, the Mexican government, and I embraced her ways and her religion, the Church of Rome. I married a senorita from Durango. She was a lovely girl with jet black hair and dancing eyes and a voice like the murmur of the water in a stream. We were happy and we lived, she and I and her mother and father, in peace.
"Then the riff-raff came from the east and Texas became the dumping ground for all the scum of the earth, most of them with the law only a few steps behind. They pledged themselves to the Mexican government and the Mexican constitution to get land from the empresarios but they were lying and when the troublemakers began their work, Austin, Houston, Lamar and the rest, they saw a way to get more land and make more money so they fought against then- own government
"They won, too, at least for a time, at San Jacinto. Were the Texans magnanimous in victory? No, they sent their armed bands roving the countryside, killing the Indians for sport, burning and pillaging the ranches of those who had remained loyal to Mexico. They cut Rafael's tongue from his mouth while his wife and children watched. To me, they did worse.
"I vowed I would fight them with all of my strength. Just as they killed and laid waste what was mine, I would kill and lay waste what was theirs. My wife fled to Durango where she died, homesick and alone. I will never rest as long as a Texan remains alive."
"You came here this morning to kill me, then," Joel said.
"No I leave that to others. The soldiers will see
that you die. Captain Salazar's orders are that one of you will be executed each day until all those who tried to escape are dead. I came to tell you of Juan Navarro. I thought in the time you had left you would like to ponder his death and the part you played in it." 
"You're crazy, Lewis," Joel said. "You're sick and you're crazy." 
"Men who dedicate their lives to a cause are often accused of being mad." 
Charles Lewis turned on his heel and left the cell. The guard backed out after him, shutting and locking the door. 
Joel went to the window, his head and shoulder aching. Looking out, he saw a few soldiers lolling in the plaza. He could see no reminders of the execution that had taken place only a few minutes earlier. 
That night he couldn't sleep. He put all thoughts of Juan Navarro from his mind--or attempted to--yet he feared that if he slept he would be visited by images of the Mexican's body lying on the prairie awaiting the buzzards and the coyotes. A man does what he has to do, Joel told himself. He does what he thinks is right. He'd had good reason to believe Navarro had killed his wife even though he was the wrong man. 
He wondered whether Lewis's threat of executions meant that O'Connor and Hayes were prisoners like himself. He pictured Grover Dunne, who was undoubtedly a prisoner, beginning the long trek south to El Paso del Norte. He'll live through it, Joel told himself. If any of us comes out of this alive, it will be Grover Dunne. The Irishman had already looked death in the face and come out of it with no more than the loss of an arm. One way or another, Grover 
Dunne survived. He'd make it back to Texas if any of them did.
The hours of the night stretched on and on, dark and empty. Joel was at the window watching as the first light of dawn streaked the sky. He thought of Travis's last defiant message from the doomed Alamo:
"Liberty or Death!"
He could do far worse than repeat those words when he faced the firing squad. He wondered if he'd have the courage to die like a man. Like a Texan.
A drummer marched into the plaza and beat a tattoo. A squad of Mexican lancers followed and stood at attention as the flag was raised. From behind him, along the corridor beyond the door to his cell, Joel heard approaching footsteps. A key rasped in the lock.
an 
The door swung open. When no one appeared, Joel took a step forward and then another and another. He looked out into a dark corridor and saw a form huddled on the floor blocking the door. Pushing, he found the door would open no farther so he slipped through the opening into the corridor. No one challenged him. 
His first thought was to run to his left where he saw a slit of light. He heard a groan behind him and, turning, he shut the door and found a man sitting with his back against the wall. 
'Til wager you're damned surprised to see me, bucko," Hayes Archer said. 
"Hayes! Where in hell did you come from?" 
"The woods. I been hiding." Hayes jerked his head toward the guard's body. "There's another dead greaser by the outer door," he said. "I didn't have the strength to move him." 
Joel ran along the corridor and found the outer door 
closed but unlocked. In the light coming through the wire grill at its top, he saw a second Mexican lying face up in the corridor, his dead eyes open and staring. Grasping the man under the shoulders, Joel dragged his body back to the door of the cell. Hayes wasn't in the corridor.
Joel opened the cell door and saw Hayes slumped against the near wall, his dulled eyes watching as Joel pulled the guard into the room and let him fall to the floor. Joel returned to the corridor and dragged the second body into the cell where he laid it beside the first.
When he knelt at the older man's side, Hayes shook his head. "Life's mighty peculiar," Hayes said. "All these years I've been a-fretting and a-worrying and now it's not the way I thought at all."
"Shut up," Joel told him. "Where're you wounded?"
"Lower back. On the right side."
Joel turned him over and tore the bloody shirt away from his body. He grimaced. The bullet wound was red and swollen with green pus dripping to the floor where the skin, matted to the shirt, had torn away.
"We got to wash out this wound," Joel said.
"It's too late for that, bucko." Hayes coughed and Joel saw a thin thread of blood hanging from the corner of his mouth. Using the end of his own shirt, he cleaned Hayes's face as best he could.
"I was always a-feared of dying," Hayes said. "And now that the time's here, there's nothing for me to fear at all. I'm tired, bucko, and I want to rest."
"You're not going to die." Joel bit his lip, knowing he was lying. "You're too tough to die, Hayes."
"Nobody's too tough to die." The words were whispered. Hayes roused himself. "Joel," he said.
Joel leaned closer.
"Joel," Hayes said again. "Do you intend to sit in this cell with these two dead greasers and philosophize about living and dying? Or do you intend to get the damned hell out of here?" 
Joel gripped Hayes's shoulder and the older man smiled weakly. "You'll learn," Hayes said, "if you don't get yourself killed first." 
Joel heard troops marching across the plaza outside. Had this been his morning to die? If so, more soldiers were sure to come for him at any moment He looked down at the two dead men, one short and swarthy, the other tall and thin. 
He knelt beside the taller of the two Mexicans .and began tugging on the man's well-worn uniform. 
"I was right, you know," Hayes said as Joel stripped off his own clothes and pulled on the Mexican's. "I told them they was running a half-assed show. That they'd come to grief. Discipline. You got to have discipline. If you ain't got it you ain't got nothing at all." 
The guard's clothes were a tight fit but, Joel decided, better than nothing. As he pushed the Mexican's pistol and knife into his waistband, the drums in the plaza began beating a tattoo. 
He knelt beside Hayes. The older man tried to speak but his words were inaudible. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth into his grizzled beard, darkening it. 
"You saved my life twice," Joel said. His throat tightened and he choked on the words. "I wish there was some way I could repay you." 
Hayes opened his eyes. "I was right, wasn't I, bucko?" he whispered. "Everything I told them was right. About not having the Lipan guides and about the discipline and the bread. They ought to have listened to me." 
"You were right," Joel said. "One hundred percent right. You told them what they was doing wrong and they wouldn't listen and now look at the mess they're in. None of this would have happened if they'd listened to you."
Hayes smiled and closed his eyes. He was right. That, Joel decided, would be Hayes's epitaph.
Joel stood, stepped to the door, opened it a crack and listened. Hearing nothing, he pushed the door open, slipped from the cell, closed the door again and walked quickly along the corridor. It was lighter now and on the floor beside the outer door he saw the guard's musket and sombrero. He put the hat on his head and found that it fit. Picking up the musket, he opened the door and stepped outside.
He found himself in a narrow alley between two adobe buildings with the plaza to his left. To his right, beyond the buildings, he saw the high brown grass of a field and, beyond the field, a wooded hill.
Men trotted past the end of the alley where it opened onto the plaza. Joel turned the other way, intending to run across the field and find shelter in the woods. He stopped after his first hesitant step. He could almost hear Hayes's voice.
"Discipline, bucko. What's needed is discipline. An army needs it and a man needs it. Any fool can run like a scared rabbit for his hole. Just like any fool can get a bullet in his back." 
Joel nodded to himself and walked the other way. When he was a few yards from the plaza, he began to run. He ran until he overtook the Mexican soldiers, then trotted beside them with his head down, watching their running feet and seeing that, luckily, their boots were as worn and nondescript as his own.
The soldiers formed into ranks to the left of the
building where he had been imprisoned. He saw the brown eyes of soldiers pass over his face and drop away again without a flicker of interest or suspicion. An officer strode to the front of the troop, faced them and called them to attention, Joel matching his actions as closely as he could to those of the man in front of him. 
He waited, standing ramrod straight, the musket at his side. The sun came up and threw the shadow of the house behind him across the plaza onto the side of the facing building. Joel saw the dark outline of the roof and, on the roof, two less distinct shadows of Mexican lancers standing guard. He felt trapped, hemmed in. He wondered if he shouldn't have made a break for the woods when he had the chance. 
A horseman rode into the plaza. Without moving his head, Joel followed him with his eyes. It was Salazar, tight-lipped and impassive, wearing a thong around his neck with six oval ornaments threaded on it. Joel stared at the neckpiece in horror, his hand tightening on the stock of the musket at his side. The six trophies strung around Salazar's neck were human ears. 
A shout came from across the plaza. A soldier ran from Joel's prison and dashed across the hardpacked earth of the square to come to attention in front of the captain. He saluted and Joel was certain he was telling Salazar that he had found two dead guards and a dead Texan in the cell. And that the other Texan had escaped. Certainly he would mention that one guard had been stripped of his uniform, and that the Texan could be among them at this very moment. 
The Captain raised his quirt and for a moment Joel thought he would strike the soldier. Salazar let his hand fall to his side, drew back his shoulder and 
began shouting orders. The troop on the far side of the plaza trotted along the road to the west; another troop wheeled and left San Miguel along the eastbound road. Joel could not believe his good fortune that no one had realized his method of escape. They were looking for a Texan in Texan's garb.
The officer in command of Joel's troop shouted an order and Joel and the others trotted across the plaza and, in twos, along the alley Joel had left only minutes before. When they came to the field they spread out to right and left and began using their muskets to beat the grass aside.
Horsemen galloped past them and rode into the woods on the far side of the field. Glancing back, Joel saw other lancers searching the houses around the plaza with dogs following them and yapping at their heels.
When the beaters reached the far edge of the field they began pushing through the brush to climb the hill. Joel heard a shout off to his left followed by the sound of running feet but soon the flurry of activity died out. The only sounds were the thrashing of the Mexican lancers in the brush and the pounding of hooves behind him as riders came and went in the village.
Joel slowed his pace, dropping farther and farther behind the line of searchers. An officer cantered along the edge of the field, shouting at him, and he hastened forward until the officer rode out of sight. Again he lagged until finally he was alone in the woods. He watched the lancer ahead of him reach the top of the hill and disappear over the crest.
Turning, Joel walked quickly back to the field, crossing the trampled grass to the rear of the first of the adobe buildings. He walked between two buildings
to the plaza where he saw soldiers guarding the road as it entered and left the town. Across from him other soldiers still searched the houses fronting on the square.
Two officers rode past him to a building with a Mexican flag fluttering on a short staff beside its door. After dismounting and throwing their reins over a rail, they walked rapidly into the building, the guard at the door bracing to attention as they passed. There were, Joel saw, five horses, all saddled, at the rail in front of the building which, he assumed, was being used as the lancers' headquarters.
He walked past the guard, looking the man in the eye and nodding. The guard nodded back. Joel stopped beside the second horse at the rail and lifted his left hind leg, bending over as though examining the shoe. After a moment he grunted, walked to the rail and unlooped the horse's reins.
Without looking at the guard, Joel led the horse across the center of the plaza. He walked stiffly, expecting to be challenged at any moment and ready to fling himself into the saddle and gallop off if he was. Over his head he heard a snap-snap and, looking up, saw the Mexican flag furling and unfurling in the breeze.
When he reached the far side of the plaza he mounted and rode between two buildings to the field. He debated which way to go. Not west, certainly, that would only lead him farther from Texas. The road to the south would normally be the best route for it led to El Paso del Norte and from that border city he could make his way down the Rio Grande Valley to the Texas settlements near the mouth of the river. Yet somewhere on the El Paso road the Mexicans were even now marching the captured Santa Fe
Pioneers southward. To go that way meant almost certain discovery and death. 
He .turned his horse into the rising sun and headed east, leaving the field to ride under the trees at the edge of the woods. The brush slowed him and he made poor time. After he had gone less than a mile he heard the shouts of men ahead of him and after a few minutes saw, between the trunks of the trees, lancers on foot beating their way through the woods searching for him. 
Swinging his horse to the right, he rode to a line of trees with the road just beyond. On the stretch he could see, a quarter-mile in each direction, there were no Mexicans. He dug his heels into the horse's flanks--he had no spurs--and urged him eastward along the road. The sun beat down on him, the sombrero was a tight band circling his head, and his pants were tight and binding in the crotch. 
Joel heard hoofbeats ahead of him. He slowed, intending to leave the road, then changed his mind and urged his horse ahead. The other rider approached at a gallop. The man, dressed in civilian clothes, rode by without a second glance and the beat of his horse's hooves receded in the distance. Joel had acted without thinking, without plan and without fear, but now his heart beat a tattoo in his chest. 
He could still hear the sounds of the search far off in the woods to his left; a steep hill rose abruptly on the other side of the road. Once he was beyond the limits of the search, he decided, he would leave the road and strike out across country. 
As he rode he checked his pistol and the musket he had tied to the saddle. Both were loaded. When he stopped at a stream for a drink and to water his horse he searched the saddlebags. They were empty; he had 
no powder. He had two rounds, then, one in the musket and one in the single-shot pistol, no more. 
After he left the stream, the country on his right, to the south, leveled. He no longer heard the searchers to his left and decided to ride in that direction at the next break in the brush. He rounded a bend and drew in his breath. A hundred feet ahead a fallen tree lay across the road. Two soldiers sat on the barricade holding rifles whose butts rested in the dirt at their feet. Their two horses were picketed in the shade of a tree beside the road. 
Joel glanced quickly to right and left, hunching forward, ready to dash for cover. Looking ahead, he saw that the two soldiers were on their feet, guns held at port arms as they waited for him to approach. 
He shrugged imperceptibly and let his horse walk ahead toward the barricade. When he had covered half the distance he debated whether he should gallop forward and urge his horse to jump over the tree and race on along the road. Looking past the barrier, he saw two more horsemen, both Mexican officers, approaching from the other direction. Joel slumped in his saddle. 
The taller of the sentries stepped forward and challenged him. Joel said nothing, reining up a few feet away from the tree. Again the sentry shouted at him in Spanish; Joel hadn't the slightest idea what he was saying. Was he demanding a password? Was he asking him where he was bound? Asking him to identify himself? 
Joel opened his mouth as though trying to speak, grunting as he had heard the mute grunt. The sentry stared up at him. Joel pointed to his mouth, jabbing his forefinger between his teeth, shaking his head. 
The sentry raised his eyebrows and turned to his 
companion as though to seek advice but the other sentry's back was turned as he talked volubly with the two officers. Satisfied at last, he nodded and waved them on. When he turned around, the first sentry motioned toward Joel with a twist of his head.
The two horsemen, who had been about to ride past the barricade toward San Miguel, stopped to watch. One of them pointed at Joel and laughed. The other shook his head. The first nodded, speaking rapidly in Spanish, and reached into his pocket. Joel saw the glint of a silver coin. Were they betting whether he was actually a mute?
Again the other officer shook his head. He walked his horse up beside Joel's, reached out and took Joel's chin in his hand. He was going to force him to open his mouth.
Joel jerked his head to one side. The officer cursed, gripping Joel's shoulder and yanking him toward him. The sentry reached for the bit of Joel's horse.
Joel pulled free of the officer and pounded his heels into his horse's flanks. He charged forward before the sentry could grasp the bit, rode around the fallen tree and, crouching low, galloped away.
He heard cries behind him, the flat crack of a rifle, the thud of hooves. A rifle fired again and pain stabbed Joel's right leg. Seeing a gap between clumps of brush to his left he raced his horse into the opening as a rifle cracked behind him.
His horse stumbled and for an instant Joel thought he was about to plunge to the ground. The gelding recovered and raced across a field, splashed through a stream, climbed the opposite bank and galloped into a woods. He let the horse have its head as they raced up a faint trail between the trees.
After he had gone a mile, the horse faltered again.
Reining up, Joel listened but could hear no sounds of pursuit. When he swung to the ground his right leg buckled under him and he fell on his side among matted leaves. 
His leg was numb. Looking down, he could see nothing wrong but when he felt along the back of his thigh he touched the sticky ooze of blood. Probing further, he winced when he found the raw wound the bullet had made on the back of his thigh a few inches below his buttocks. 
Pushing himself to his feet, he tried to walk and found that he could. As far as he could tell the bullet hadn't broken any bones. Seeing the gelding standing a few feet away with his right foreleg raised, Joel limped to him. There was an ugly wound in the horse's shank; it was a miracle he had been able to run this far. Joel led the limping horse from the track--an Indian or animal trail, he supposed--and along the bottom of a cut. 
As the feeling came back into his thigh, each step sent pain knifing up and down his leg as he climbed a short slope, sliding on the loose rocks. When he came to the top he unsaddled the horse and concealed the gear in the brush. He slapped the horse's rump and the gelding limped a few paces away where he stood with bowed head. The horse had not uttered a sound in all this time. 
Joel walked to the horse and stroked his neck. He was a gallant, well-trained animal, as gallant as Ivanhoe had been. They both deserved a better fate. 
Joel raised the musket and considered whether to risk revealing his position by shooting the horse. He decided not to. After quickly tying his wound with his kerchief, he retraced his steps slowly, gun in hand, clouding his tracks as best he could as he cautiously 
approached the trail. He heard a man shout from the direction of the road but wasn't able to tell if the Mexicans were still pursuing him.
He limped along the trail for a hundred or more yards until the track crossed rock. Here he left the trail, being careful to leave no sign, no footprint, no snapped twig. When he was a hundred feet from the trail he struck off into the woods, trying to put as much distance between himself and the trail and the abandoned horse as he could.
His leg ached. When he touched the kerchief he found it soaked with blood. He took off his shirt and, using the knife, cut away two strips of cloth. Lowering his pants, he wiped the wound as clean as he could before he tied the cloth over the bullet hole with the other strip.
Joel walked easier for a time. His leg, though, soon began to throb again, forcing him to stop to rest. He wondered if the Mexicans would search for him once they found that he had escaped from the vicinity of San Miguel, fearing they would since they knew he must soon return to the settlements for food.
The sky darkened. Looking overhead, he saw massed arcs of clouds covering the sun, the clouds piled high, one above another, their fringes white, their centers black and menacing with the threat of rain. Joel got to his feet and went on, pausing only when he found berries growing beside a creek. Most of the berry husks were empty; the berries that remained were purple and partly eaten by the birds. He tasted one, found it bitter, and decided not to risk eating more.
Thunder rumbled in the hills around him and the wind rose, a wind from the north that sliced coldly across his face. Ahead, a jumble of boulders lay piled
at the base of a hill and, when he went closer, he found that they formed a rough cave some three feet deep. The first drop of rain touched his face as he knelt and crawled in among the rocks. Only after he was hunched over inside the cave did he wonder whether rattlers might also use these rocks as a sanctuary. 
The storm began with a few random drops of rain that left dark stains on the rocks outside the cave. Lightning flashed, a clap of thunder shook the earth, startling him, and the rain poured down in a cloudburst. Water dripped from the boulders above his head onto his back and no matter how he twisted and turned in his niche he couldn't completely avoid the wetness. His leg throbbed constantly now and each beat of his heart seemed to send a pulse of pain through his body. 
After ten minutes the downpour lessened, though the rain continued to fall steadily. Thunder echoed and re-echoed among the hills with all the violence of an artillery duel. Only after an hour did the rain lessen, the thunder becoming a distant murmuring. A few minutes later the sun came out and Joel saw a rainbow in the sky to the north. He wondered if it was an omen. 
Joel stood and again his leg buckled but he was ready this time and held on to one of the boulders for support. His back was soaked from the rain and the crude bandage around his thigh was wet with blood. He was hungry for he hadn't eaten since the morning of the day before and he cursed himself for not eating berries he had found along the creek. Birds had eaten them; didn't that mean they were safe for humans? 
At least, he told himself, the storm had hidden his 
trail better than he could have. The Mexicans would only find him now by luck or if he was forced to leave the woods in search of food. Or to find a doctor. He doubted whether he could remove the bullet himself. Yet if he left the wound untended he feared it would putrefy as Grover's arm had.
He lowered his pants and twisted his body so he could see the area of his leg around the bandage. The flesh looked red and he remembered the red streaks on Grover's arm before he had amputated it.
Joel took two or three short steps, testing his leg, and found he could walk. Using the musket as a cane, he struggled up the hill above the cave. The crest was bare so he limped to the top of a rounded boulder and scanned the countryside. All around him were wooded hills interspersed with fields where sheep grazed. Other than the sheep there were no signs of life; he couldn't see the road. The storm muttered far to the south.
Spotting the dead hulk of a tree on a rise to the east, he made it his goal and set off down the hill in that direction. When he reached the tree an hour later he looked around him. The view seemed the same except that the shadows of the trees had lengthened as the sun lowered and the only evidence of the storm to the south was a cluster of black clouds on the horizon.
Joel went on to the east. Several times he fell and had to push himself to his feet. He had forgotten why he had to go on, knowing only that he must keep walking, that if he stopped, if he faltered, he would die.
He crossed a meadow, startling two deer, the animals bounding away into the woods. He paid them no heed. He climbed another hill, pausing at the top,
knowing he lacked the stamina to go on and yet he went ahead, punishing himself, forcing his body to test the limits of its endurance. He had to go on, he had no choice. 
He was in a draw, the hills steep on both sides of him, when he sensed he was being followed. Stopping, he looked behind him and saw two Indians. They both wore headbands, breechclouts, knee-high moccasins and little more. One held a rifle, the other a lance. 
They had stopped when he stopped and now stood watching him. One of the Indians looked past him and Joel glanced over his shoulder to see three more braves dressed the same as the others barring his way at the foot of the draw. Joel knew they weren't Comanches but had no idea what tribe they did belong to. 
One of the Indians behind him spoke and he heard feet padding along the ground toward him. Exhausted, Joel dropped to his knees. The two Indians in front of him ran forward. He remembered nothing more. 
He opened his eyes. It was night and he didn't know where he was nor what had happened. He remembered that his leg should be throbbing yet it wasn't. He thought of Susanna, pictured her, blonde and fair, and he smiled for he had the sudden notion that she was near him, looking for him, calling his name. 
No, Susanna was dead and he wasn't. He blinked, the memory of the Indians with the knee-high moccasins coming back. He sat up, looking about him, and saw the dark outlines of trees and a lightening in the sky beyond. Listening, he heard the song of a bird in the woods. He knew he was alone, that the Indians had gone. * 
He felt along his waist and found his knife. His pistol was missing. Running his hands along the ground near him he couldn't find the musket The Indians had taken the musket and the pistol and left him the knife. He wondered why they hadn't killed and scalped him.
His right leg began to ache. Cautiously, he touched the bandage with his fingers and found it still in place. Something, though, was different, the bandage seemed thicker and wetter though the wetness wasn't the sticky ooze of blood he had felt before. When he probed beneath the bandage his fingers touched wet fibers. The Indians. They must have found his wound and treated it with their own remedies.
If they had stopped it from putrefying, he didn't begrudge them his firearms. Again he wondered why they had treated him. Had they followed him and sensed in his determination to go on a kinship with their own endurance?
Joel got to his feet and discovered that, though his leg was stiff, he could walk. The sky had lightened still more and, after searching fruitlessly for his gun, he set out again for the east. At first he walked briskly but he soon began to tire and by the time the sun was halfway up to mid-sky he was forced to stop and rest.
His leg had started to throb once more and, although he wet the poultice with water from a stream, the pain grew worse. He sneezed several times, feeling the tingling sensation throughout his body that warned him he was ill.
The day grew hotter and he rested more and more frequently. By now he was ravenously hungry and feverishly thirsty. When he again found berries along
a stream he ate them, gulping the cold water to wash them down. He felt no ill effects though the berries did little to appease his hunger. 
Toward evening he stumbled on a well-traveled trail. After examining the prints of horses and of men, he retreated to the woods, walking parallel to the trail along the side of a hill. He was crossing an open field when he heard the horseman. He hurried ahead, limping, reaching the trees on the far side of the field and taking shelter in the shadows as the horseman came into view. The man was a Mexican wearing a sombrero and dressed in buckskins. Joel dropped to the ground and lay peering down through the branches. He saw the rider stop, the Mexican's eyes searching the woods where he lay concealed. 
Joel waited, not moving as the rider scanned the woods. After a few minutes the Mexican rode slowly on. Just before he passed from Joel's sight he turned in his saddle and looked back. He knows I'm here, Joel told himself. 
Joel veered from the road, climbing over the hill where he found himself at the head of a valley of rolling meadows dotted with grazing sheep. Halfway down the valley was a cluster of buildings, a large house and several small sheds and a road leading to the ranch from lower in the valley. Near the ranch the woods covering the hill encroached into the grazing land so that the trees were only a few yards from the nearest buildings. 
Retreating into the woods, Joel found a secluded spot in a thicket of brush and slept until it was growing dark. Then he limped through the woods and approached the ranch from above. He heard horses nickering in a corral and stopped when he saw a man cross from one of the outbuildings to the main 
house. As the darkness deepened, lights appeared in the windows of the house, the yellow glow reaching across the ground toward him. 
Joel slipped from the shelter of the trees and, walking as fast as he could on his aching leg, reached the first of the outbuildings. The door was ajar and he went in, smelling the rich sweet aroma of hay. As he was futilely searching the shed for food, a thudding of hooves brought him to the doorway. He saw six or seven Mexican soldiers in front of the main house being greeted by a man holding a lantern aloft 
Joel crouched deep in the shed's shadowed interior. Men passed by outside, he heard a shout from the direction of the house, another man led a horse past his hiding place but didn't stop. And then, for a time, 
(all was quiet. And dark. He stiffened, hearing footsteps nearing the sheds. The steps paused at the door and he held his breath. After a moment whoever it was entered the shed. Joel edged nearer to the door, his knife in his hand. A dark figure passed in front of him. 
Springing forward, he locked his left arm around the intruder's neck. He was about to thrust upward with his knife when he held. The person he was about to kill was a woman. 
Joel relaxed his grip on her neck.
"I'm here to help you," the woman said in a low voice.
She spoke in English!
"Who are you?" Joel asked.
"Maria. "There's no time to talk. Let me go. Trust me."
He hesitated, then dropped his arm, freeing her. She took his hand and led him through the doorway, down a slope beside the shed to the back wall where she knelt on the ground, drawing him after her. He set his teeth against the pain in his leg as he crouched beside her.
Maria shifted something in the darkness. He reached forward and found she'd moved a board.
"Under the shed," she urged. "Hurry. There's just room enough."
His hand felt for and found the opening and, he
slid on his back into the space beneath the shed floor. An animal scurried away from him as he wedged himself into the niche, his hat on the ground beside him. Again he heard the scurrying, then the scraping sound of the loose board being replaced over the opening.
"You critters'll have to put up with me for awhile," he muttered, picturing the bared teeth of rats. He tightened his grip on his knife.
Sweat beaded his face and he knew from his inner trembling that he was feverish. His eyelids drooped but he fought against sleep.
After what seemed like hours, he heard men's voices speaking in Spanish and saw, through a slit at the end of the board covering his hiding place, a faint light that came and went. All at once footsteps thudded on the floor over his head and light shone through the cracks between the floorboards. The man above him grunted and the footsteps went outside.
Joel sighed and closed his eyes. Later, he thought he heard horses and the shouts of men. He should shove the board to one side. Escape. He tried to lift his arm but it was too heavy, he was too tired. He couldn't even think any more.
When he opened his eyes he saw a beautiful young woman watching him from a doorway. A Mexican senorita. She saw him look at her and smiled. He had dreamed of blood, several limbs and death and for a moment he thought he was dead, transported to some strange Mexican heaven.
When he tried to sit up, he felt a stab of pain in his leg. His hand went to the bandage tied around his thigh and he felt his nakedness under the sheets. Sheets! How long had it been since he'd slept in a bed with sheets?
The woman leaned over him, her cooling hand on his forehead. A name drifted into his mind. Maria. He thought he saw concern written in her cinnamon- brown eyes. The room whirled and he sank back, closing his eyes. He couldn't separate dream from reality.
The boy with the sandy hair who stood in the doorway and ceremoniously took a gold watch from his pocket, glancing from the watch to Joel and back at the watch. Was he a dream?
The horseman wearing the thong strung with human ears. Was he real? Salazar. Was his name Salazar? The black-haired senorita leaning over him, bathing him. Was she real? Grover Dunne astride a black stallion, flapping the stumps of his two severed arms, screaming at Joel without making a sound, tears running down his cheeks when Joel failed to understand. Real? Or a dream?
He opened his eyes and sat up. For a moment his head spun but he gripped the sides of the mattress until his senses cleared. Rain beat against the side of the house and a night wind moaned. In the wavering light from the candle on a table by the bed he saw that he was alone in the room. Shivering in the chill air, he pulled the blanket up around him, puzzled by its strange cross-hatched designs. He wore a heavy flannel nightshirt. When he felt beneath it he found that the bandage was no longer around his leg. His fingers touched a thick scab over his wound. How long must he have lain here for such a scab to form?
The door opened and the senorita entered. For a moment a name wavered at the edge of his mind but before he could grasp it she noticed he was sitting up and ran to kneel beside the bed. She bowed her head.
"Gracias a Dios," she said.
He watched her as she whispered a prayer in Spanish. Her black hair was lustrous in the candlelight, her skin a soft, warm brown. She wore fringed buckskin almost the color of her eyes, men's clothing, pants instead of a skirt.
"I thank you as well as God," he said.
She looked quickly up at him, pausing a moment before she spoke. "I but do the will of God," she said in English. "I thought you would die so I prayed to God and He has spared you."
"Maria," he said, the name coming to him. "You are Maria?" He had a confused remembrance of her leading him from a shed to safety.
Again she paused. "My name is Maria McLeod," she told him.
He puzzled over her speech. Although she spoke in English, her accent wasn't American. Nor was it the sound of a Mexican speaking English. And her last name was McLeod.
Tm Joel Falconer," he told her.
"Joel Falconer," she repeated as though testing the name. "You are hungry," she said. "I'll bring you food."
"I can wait till morning. Don't go to all that trouble in the middle of the night."
"I don't care about time." She smiled. "I leave the keeping of the clocks to Jaime."
"Jaime?"
Again she paused. "He is my brother. You'll find that he's constantly telling you what time it is."
Maria left the room and returned with a bowl of meat broth and coffee. She handed him the broth and he held it carefully on his lap, his hands unsteady as he raised the spoon to his lips. Maria sat on a chair,
watching him as he ate, and when he finished she took back the bowl.
"You are a Texan, are you not?" she asked.
Joel nodded.
"Are you the man who escaped from the lancers at San Miguel?"
"Yes," he said. "I was with the Santa Fe Expedition. We rode from Austin to trade with the merchants of New Mexico."
"We were told the Texans came to conquer us. To lead our people in revolt against the tarantula Armijo, that beast who calls himself our governor."
"Is that why you saved my life? Because you hate this Armijo so much?"
"No. Here in the valley we are far from Santa Fe, far from Armijo. I helped you because you were one man pursued by many, because there's been too much killing, because my father would have helped you if he were alive."
"Your father was killed by the Mexicans, then?"
She shook her head. "The Comanches killed him. Last year. The troops were in the south, the lancers, leaving us unprotected, and the Comanches swept down from the mountains to the north killing and burning and stealing our sheep. My father went to speak with them, to offer them a ransom if they spared our ranch, and they killed him. They are savages."
"Who runs the ranch now?"
Her eyes flared. "I do. The land is mine, the ranch is mine. Mine and Jaime's. I will never leave it; I'll never give it up. They'll have to kill me to take it away."
"I didn't mean to provoke you," Joel said. *
"In Santa Fe they say it is wrong for a woman to
manage a ranch. That's man's work, they say, and they snicker at me behind my back. Out of respect for my father, though, they deal fairly with me. At least they have until now. They say I should marry, that a woman of twenty-three should be married and have three or four children. Do you know what I say to them, Joel Falconer?" 
"Ma'am, I don't have the slightest notion." 
She paused in the doorway and smiled sweetly. "I say, 'I must do as God wills.' But what I think to myself is 'Go to hell.'" 
Maria shut the door behind her, leaving Joel staring at the heavy wood panels. What a waste, he thought, her not being married. She was one of the prettiest girls he'd ever seen, though normally he didn't cotton to dark women. He smiled slightly. When she. got riled she sure was a regular buzzsaw. 
In the morning he woke to see light filtering into the room through the cracks of the closed shutters. Knowing something had wakened him, Joel looked to the open door where a sandy-haired boy of eight or nine stood watching him with serious hazel eyes. 
Joel felt a momentary disappointment when he saw that Maria wasn't with the boy. Buzzsaw or not, Maria was right pleasant to look at. He pushed away the sudden feeling of guilt, telling himself he wasn't being disloyal to Susanna. Maria meant nothing to him, any man appreciated the sight of a pretty woman, there was nothing wrong with that. No one could ever take Susanna's place. 
"You're Jaime," he said to the boy, who nodded without answering. Jaime was much fairer than his sister, Joel saw, and decided that if their father, McLeod, had been Scottish, their mother had obviously been Mexican. 
"My name's Joel Falconer," he said, holding out his hand to the boy. Jaime stared at him but didn't move. Joel dropped his hand and tried to remember what Maria had told him about her brother. Clocks, that was it.
"You wouldn't happen to know what time it is?" Joel asked. "I don't own a timepiece myself and with the shutters closed I can't rightly tell."
The boy smiled and drew a watch from his pocket. He opened its front and studied the face.
"Ten minutes after eight," he said.
"That's a mighty fine-looking timepiece you have there," Joel told him. "Any man would be proud to own it."
Jaime walked shyly across the room, proffering the watch. "You can look at it if you want," he said.
Joel took the gold watch and chain in his hand, surprised by its heft. The hours were marked in Roman numerals. On the inside of the cover he saw an inscription written in flowing script:
Floyd McLeod, April 15,1812. Godspeed.
"It was my father's," Jaime said proudly. "His father, my grandfather McLeod, gave it to him when he left Glasgow bound for the States. That was before I was born, you see, and before Maria was born. Even before my father married my mother."
"It's a fine watch," Joel said. "A damn fine watch."
Jaime's eyes widened. "Maria doesn't allow swearing in the house," he said.
"All right. Don't tell her what I said; it'll be just between the two of us. Women don't always understand that men have a different way of speaking among themselves. And acting. In fact, it sort of riles them to see how well men get on with each other, not needing women, so they do their . . ." He paused.
"They do their darnedest to keep us paying attention to them."
"Maria's always telling me what I can't do." Jaime put the watch back in his pocket. "You didn't have a pistol or a rifle, Mr. Falconer. I asked Maria and she said you didn't. Only a knife. I thought all Texans carried firearms."
"I had a Mexican musket and pistol. A band of Indians relieved me of them."
"We have lots of Indians near the valley. Comanches and Kiowas and even Apaches. How did they dress, Mr. Falconer?"
"If I can call you Jaime, you ought to be able to call me Joel. How about it?" He waited for the boy's hesitant nod and then added, "As I recall, my Indians had moccasins that came all the way up to their knees."
"Apaches. Tomas said he saw sign of Apaches a while back. Before you came. That's why I ought to learn how to shoot a gun, because of the Indians. And because of the rattlers, too."
"You don't know how to shoot?" Joel was genuinely surprised.
"I've watched Tomas," Jaime said quickly, "and so I think I could if I had to. Maria says I'm too young to be shooting and killing."
"Ah, Maria." Joel lay back and stared at the ceiling. It sounded as if Maria ran not only the ranch but everyone in it.
"I'll bet you're a good shot, Mr.--Joel," Jaime said.
"Passable." Joel glanced around the room. "Do you know where my clothes are?" he asked.
"Maria burned them."
"She burned them?"
"She said they weren't fit for man nor beast. They did smell something fierce."
"I have to have clothes. I've lain in bed long enough. It's time I was moving on." 
"And where, may I ask, do you think you're going?" 
Joel looked at the doorway and saw Maria standing just inside the room with her hands on her hips. 
"I'm intending to head back to Texas," he said. 
"That's the way with you Texans." Her voice was scornful. "Freebooters, the lot of you, never content to settle down in one place for longer than a month or two at a time. You're fiddled-footed, at least that's what I've heard you called. I imagine you're born that way." She glanced at Jaime. "Have you finished your chores?" she demanded. 
When Jaime shook his head, she put her hand to his back and guided him from the room. 
"He's a good boy," Joel said. 
"What did you expect, a heathen savage? We may not live in Santa Fe but we know how to behave with guests." 
"Even when they're fiddle-footed Texans?" he asked. 
"I meant no harm by my remark," Maria said. "I spoke the truth. The world would be a better place if more people spoke the truth." 
"If it's speaking the truth you want," he said, "I thank you most kindly for taking care of me during my illness. I must have been a great botheration, what with all your other duties running the ranch." 
"I don't run the ranch alone. There's Tomas and his wife, Esperanza, and the boy Ricardo." 
"And Jaime," he said. "How old is your brother?" 
"Almost nine," she told him. "I've raised him ever since our mother died of the fever when he was five months old." ¦ 
"I'm right sorry about your mother and father," Joel 
said. He drew in his breath. "I know what it's like. I lost my wife not more than eight months ago." 
She walked to the bed and put her hand on his arm. "How terrible," she said. "I will pray for her. And for you, so far from home. Did you travel this long way to try to forget her?" 
"No, I joined the Pioneers to find the man that killed her. I mean to kill him when I find him." 
"No!" She drew her hand away. "A horrible death, to be sure, but there's too much killing, too much war, too much hate and fighting. How can a second wrong correct the first? When will you men have enough of killing? Never? My father would be alive today if he hadn't been so stubborn, so sure he was in the right. The Comanches are savages but so is any man when he takes a gun in his hand." 
Joel said nothing and when she saw he wasn't going to respond, she went to the window nearest the bed and threw open the shutters. She stood for a moment looking out as Joel blinked in the sunlight. When Maria turned, her full breasts were outlined beneath her buckskin shirt. Her hair, which had been braided the night before, now fell in flowing waves over her shoulders. 
She saw him staring at her and walked quickly to the other window and opened the shutters. 
"You're beautiful, Maria," Joel said. 
"Don't," she told him, her color heightening. "I forbid you to speak to me in that way. I don't wish to hear." 
"I only speak the truth. I seem to recollect you wanted men to speak the truth. You're as lovely a woman as I've ever set eyes on." 
She took a white handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. 
"Why are you crying?" he asked.
"I don't know." She put away the handkerchief. "Perhaps because my heart tells me you do mean to speak the truth. I've grown accustomed to hearing lies from men ever since my father died."
"I wouldn't think you'd see many men here." Joel tried to ignore the sudden pang of jealousy he felt at her mention of other men.
"After my father's death, a great many of them seemed willing to go far out of their way to offer their condolences. And their help in running the ranch. A few even offered themselves. In marriage, of course. Do you know, Mr. Falconer, I think that to be courted by a Spaniard is heaven on earth but to be married to one must be hell. Hell on earth. Unless, of course, you fancy bearing him thirteen children in the space of fifteen years."
Joel blushed. "I reckon you wouldn't like that," he said, flustered at her mention of childbearing.
"I'm more interested in seeing that sheep multiply, not humans."
"I expect you would be." His voice had a sharp edge and she glanced at him. Joel turned his head away. "I've been told you burned my clothes," he muttered.
"Yes, of course I did. They weren't fit for man nor beast."
"I also heard that." He looked at her again. "Would Tomas have a shirt and trousers I can wear? I've had enough of laying in bed."
"Wait. I'll be back."
She left the door open behind her and Joel heard her moccasined feet padding away. Looking through the window, he saw the sun shining on the brown rolling valley, on the evergreens covering the distant
hills and, beyond the hills, the snow-capped crests of the mountains. He lay back in bed, his hands clasped behind his head, realizing for the first time in many months he was content. He refused to question his contentment, afraid that if he did it would vanish. 
Maria came into the room holding a bundle of clothes in her arms. 
"If I was rude to you a moment ago," she said, "I beg your pardon. I'm not accustomed to having a man in the house." 
"You mean, not one who talks back to you." 
"I mean what I say, no more." She laid the clothes on the bed, looking quickly away. 
He picked up the shirt. The buckskin was soft, with no sign of wear, the shirt well made, crafted with care. He knew it would fit and fit well. He glanced at Maria. "Did you make these?" he asked. 
She turned so her back was to him. He swung hi? feet to the floor and eased himself up, finding he could stand without much pain in his leg. 
"Tell me the truth Maria," he said softly. "Did you make these clothes for me?" 
"There's little to do on the ranch this time of year," she said, "except sew and mend." 
He grasped her arm, turning her toward him. Her hair brushed his face and for a moment, as she looked into his eyes, he thought she yielded. With a sudden movement she jerked herself free and ran from the room. 
Joel sat on the bed, feeling the weakness in his legs. You're a damn fool, he told himself. You don't even like the woman and you try to kiss her. He remembered what his father had said to him when he had the row with the choirmaster: 
"Never start what you can't finish." 
Yes, he was a fool who'd never learn. Yet what was he to do with the girl standing by his bed just asking to be kissed? Well, to be honest, maybe that wasn't the way of it, not altogether, but he'd felt her weaken and lean to him, there was no doubt in his mind about that, none at all. 
Joel shrugged. He'd best leave it alone. After all, he wasn't intending to stay. He got to his feet again and tried on the shirt and pants and found they fit as perfectly as he had thought they would. He paced about the room to be sure he could walk, then stepped into the cool corridor, following the smell of cooking to the kitchen where a short, plump Mexican woman smiled at him. 
"The senorita said you come," she said in halting English. "Por favor. Please." She nodded to a chair at the long wooden table. 
He sat and smiled up at her as she placed fried eggs and a slice of mutton in front of him and poured him a mug full of coffee. When he finished eating, he said one of the few Spanish words he knew. "Gracias." 
With food inside him he felt stronger and he walked into the yard. As chickens scattered at his approach, he went to the corral where he saw three horses, fine- looking animals, and, nearby, three cows in a pen. There was no sign of Maria. 
Joel climbed to the top of the corral fence, noting with dismay the effort it took. He let one of the horses nuzzle his hand. The contentment of an hour before was gone, vanished as quickly and quietly as Maria had vanished. 
Each day Joel found himself stronger and able to do more without tiring. By the end of the week he 
rode up the valley with Maria to where the sheep dotted the hillsides. He wasn't surprised to see she rode astride.
"This is the Valley of the Moon," she told him. "It was named that long before my father settled here and long before the first Spaniards explored this country hundreds of years ago. I think the Indians gave it that name because the valley runs to the southeast and when the harvest moon rises it fills the valley with its light."
"I gather you loved your father very much," he said.
"I understood him better than I understood my mother even though I look more like she did. My father seldom spoke, he was a dour Scot, as they say, yet I think I could almost always tell what he was thinking. He taught me to ride and to shoot and to love this land. I'm never going to leave this land, Joel. Never."
"It's beautiful country. I've never seen anything like it."
"The land is good," she said. "The sheep?" She shook her head. "The wool is a poor grade and every year the price we're offered is lower. We need to import better breeding stock. My father was to travel to Scotland this year, if he could have raised the money, to buy and ship new stock here to replenish the flocks."
"I wish I could help you," Joel said.
"We'll manage, Jaime and I."
"Don't you think it's time Jaime learned to shoot just as you learned from your father? He's almost nine."
"No! I grew up too fast, I had to because my
mother died and there was no one to help. Let Jaime be a boy for a few more years. I don't want him to learn to kill before he has to."
"Learning to use a gun isn't learning to kill, not necessarily. It's learning to defend yourself, to shoot game for food."
"I won't hear of it," Maria said.
Joel felt a rush of anger. She was such a damn unreasonable woman.
She reined up and faced him. "You're welcome to stay here on the ranch as long as need be to mend yourself," she went on, her voice sharp. "In fact you're welcome to stay as long as you like. Jaime needs another man he can look to and learn from. But you are not to cross me, Joel Falconer, or you can no longer be a guest under my roof. Do I make myself clear?"
He forced himself not to speak until he had mastered his anger. He was, as she said, her guest, wrongheaded as she was about the boy.
Maria walked her horse ahead. "I can tell Jaime likes you," she said more softly. "He told me you admired father's watch. Sometimes he worries me, makes me think he cares more about that gold watch than he does about people."
"I've been meaning to ask," Joel said, "about the men from the Expedition, the ones Armijo took prisoner. Has there been any word of them?"
"I've been dreading the day you'd ask me. I've heard the men are south of El Paso del Norte now, on the road to the City of Mexico. Many died along the way from Santa Fe and many more were killed. Jornada de Muerte it's being called. That means Journey of Death."
"Damn murdering greasers," Joel said.
She reined up again and swung her horse around
next to his. Her face was flushed. Without warning she lashed out with her quirt, striking him on the side of the cheek. He gasped, his hand going to his face. 
Maria turned her horse and rode off. He sat watching her; then, with a curse, he spurred his own horse in pursuit. She galloped down the long valley, the sheep bleating as they scattered from her path. He gained on her slowly, surely. She topped a small fold in the valley slope and disappeared from his sight. When he reached the crest he saw her a few yards ahead of him, her lathered horse stopped. 
He reined up and swung to the ground. His leg buckled and he stumbled forward, holding her saddle to steady himself. She turned her head toward him, keeping her eyes lowered, then threw the quirt from her. 
"I'm as bad as the rest of you," she said. "I answer hurt with hurt. Pain with pain. Once it's started, there's no end." 
He reached up and grasped her hand and pulled. She slid from the saddle into his arms and he held her to him, kissing her. For a second her lips responded to his but then she jerked away, shaking her head. 
"You wanted me to kiss you," he said. 
"I want no part of you, Joel Falconer," she told him. She stepped from him, brushing off her buckskin pants. With a quick graceful motion she swung back into the saddle. 
"I don't understand," he said. "You nursed me for weeks after saving my life by hiding me from the lancers, you made these clothes for me, you as much as asked me to stay on with you at the ranch, you invited me to kiss you, don't deny it, and then you push me away. Do you know what you want?" 
"No, I don't know what I want. Perhaps I'll never 
know. Yet I do know what I don't want. You. I don't want you. You're a man with a grief in his heart that's driving you to take revenge on a fellow human being. That makes you as ill in the spirit as you were in the flesh a month ago. There's no nursing that will cure an ill of that kind." 
"Maria..." 
"Don't try to explain. You can't. You're a wan derer, Joel. Today you're just passing through the Valley of the Moon, tomorrow you'll be just passing through Santa Fe or Houston or New Orleans. You'll always be a man who's just passing through and I'm a woman who's here to stay, who's found out where she belongs. So you might say I do know what I want, in part. I want my birthright, my land, my valley. No one's going to take them away from me and no one's going to take me away from them." 
She drew in a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. With a cry she spurred her horse and galloped down the slope of the valley toward the ranch. 
Joel watched her ride along the verge of the woods and, finally, into the trees. After he could no longer see her he stood staring after her. At last he mounted and slowly followed her down the valley. 
Winter came to the Valley of the Moon. 
The sheep had been herded from the high mountain meadows to the lowland valleys long before the blue northers swept- down across the Plains to leave mantles of white on the mountains. Men walked with their heads lowered, their bodies bent against the wind, their faces hunched down inside the wool collars of their coats. 
Joel stayed on at the McLeod ranch. He had a sense of waiting, of knowing that something was going to happen that would change his life, but what it was he couldn't foresee. He helped Maria with the milking, rode out with her to the distant ranges where the McLeod sheep grazed, and he could tell by her quick smile when he came on her unawares that she welcomed him. 
Yet he also sensed the barrier she had built between them. 
Jaime often rode with him when he hunted. Joel killed deer, coyotes, and once, in the timbers to the north, a bear. Jaime, still denied a rifle by his sister, followed him as he stalked game, watching wistfully yet saying nothing, never protesting.
Joel noticed Jaime imitating him. The boy aped the way he walked, the way he talked, and even his slight limp when, on cold mornings, the ache returned to his wounded leg. Joel smiled to himself, pleased and proud, and found he was guarding his language when the boy was within earshot.
When they first met in the morning, Jaime would say, "What time do you reckon it is?"
And Joel would squint at the sun, pondering the question. "I'd say it's half after seven or thereabouts," he'd answer.
Jaime pulled the gold watch from his pocket, opening and holding it up for Joel to see, shaking his head if Joel's guess was more than ten minutes off.
"I expect that's a mighty accurate timepiece," Joel said once.
"I reckon it loses five minutes a week," Jaime said. "That is, if the big clock on the stair is right."
Joel nodded, realizing Jaime had no way to tell the exact time. Not for sure. Time mattered little to Joel, he spent his days following the steady rhythm of day and night, sun and stars. He had all the time he would ever need, he thought, and more, so he lived from day to day. Waiting.
Unexpectedly, in the middle of winter, the weather changed, the wind shifting to blow from the south, bringing the warm dry air of the desert. On the first day of this Indian summer, Joel, walking from the main ranch house, stopped in surprise. Maria stood waiting for him, a different Maria. Gone were the
fringed buckskins. She wore a black skirt trimmed with red, a white blouse scooped low in front to reveal the uppermost curves of her breasts, and her hair was tied back by a red ribbon.
"My mother's," she said. "I found the clothes packed in a trunk in the storage shed. Do you like them?"
Joel let out his breath in a sigh. "You're lovely," he said. "I've never seen anyone as lovely."
He saw her stiffen as though she would angrily protest his words as she had done so often before. She bit her lip and said nothing.
Tomas led Maria's horse from the corral and Joel lifted her into the sidesaddle. As soon as he mounted, they rode up the valley.
"This weather makes me want to dance," Maria said. "When my mother was alive we always had a fandango in the spring. Families would come from miles around and stay three or ¦ four days, dancing and racing horses, playing guitars, singing. We had wonderful times then, when my mother was alive."
"I couldn't understand at first," Joel said, "why your father would want to settle here. This being a foreign land and all. I'm beginning to understand, though, the more I see of the country."
"My father told me he fell in love with this valley and then, when he met my mother in Santa Fe, he fell in love with her. So he had no choice but to stay."
"If she was anything like you, your mother must have been a right beautiful woman."
They rode up on the northern slope of the valley. When they dismounted, Joel spread his saddle blanket on the grass and they sat with the warmth of the sun soaking into them as they looked down at the sheep grazing on the rolling hillsides.
"I always remember my mother as such a happy person," Maria said. "She was always smiling and laughing; she could even make my father laugh aloud." She shook her head. "I'm more like my father. Dour. Always worrying whether this will get done or whether someone has done that. I'm a person who makes rules and expects them to be followed. I even make them for myself."
"Yes," he said, "I expect you're right. I've been watching you and studying you and to my way of thinking you're one of the most serious-minded women I've ever met"
She stared at him as though she'd expected him to deny the truth of what she'd said.
"You were wanting me to tell you that you were wrong, weren't you?" he asked.
"I don't know what I wanted you to say."
"You know what you said once about Spanish men being good at courting and not so good when it came to marrying? I expect Texans are just the reverse, they're not much good at courting but they make real good husbands."
"Texans are different, I agree," Maria said, "but you don't have it quite right. They're not good at either courting or marrying."
He looked at her and saw she was smiling at him. He reached out for her hand but she sprang to her feet and ran. Joel ran after her, catching her by the arm and turning her to face him. His arms circled her waist and he kissed her. She returned the kiss as her body moulded itself to his so that he felt her breasts on his chest and her thighs against his thighs.
"Joel," she whispered.
His lips brushed hers, trailed across her cheek, and
he kissed her closed eyelids. With his hand he gently pushed the hair away from her face, kissing her ear, nipping her earlobe, kissing her throat.
She tried to step back but his arms held her to him as his tongue traced the hollow of her throat. Excitement raced through him, a need, a wanting, a pulsing desire for her. His tongue found the upper swell of her breast, darting beneath the pliant fabric of her blouse.
She put her hands to his chest and pushed him away. She was breathing rapidly, her breasts rising and falling, her cheeks flushed. She lowered her head and covered her face with her hands.
"Maria," he said, taking a step toward her.
She looked up at him, her eyes glistening, and shook her head.
"Maria," he said again. "You wanted me to, you still do."
"I told you I don't know what I want." She turned from him and walked back to her horse. "Help me mount," she told him.
He thought she was inviting him to take her in his arms again but when he put his hands around her waist she held herself rigid, so he lifted her into the saddle and, without a word, she swung the horse about. He mounted and followed, walking his horse a few feet behind hers, watching her, not able to take his eyes off her, wanting to curse her at the same time he wanted to take her in his arms.
When they returned to the ranch, Joel busied himself repairing the thatched roof of a shed that had been damaged in the latest storm. He saw Maria, dressed in buckskins once more, ride off with Jaime, but he deliberately paid them no heed. The repairs
took longer than he'd expected and when at last he was done the afternoon shadows stretched far across the ground. 
"Tomas," he called, seeing the overseer carrying a saddle to the corral. 
Tomas, smiling and touching his hand to his hat, put the saddle on the ground and came to meet him. 
"Donde esta la senorita?" Joel asked. He practiced speaking Spanish whenever he could and by now knew enough to make himself understood. 
"She rides with the boy," Tomas said slowly in Spanish. He swept his hand toward the upper valley. "She did not tell me where they journeyed." 
"It is late," Joel said. 
Tomas shook his head. "It is not good. I have seen signs of Comanches in the north. I ride now to look for the senorita and the boy." 
"I ride also," Joel said. 
Tomas nodded and the two men saddled their horses. A mile above the ranch they separated, Tomas riding along the north slope of the valley and Joel along the south. 
Joel climbed steadily, scanning the hills and valleys around him. He circled a herd of sheep, raising his hat to the Mexican shepherd boy, Ricardo, who raised his staff in an answering salute. 
"La senorita?" Joel called to him. 
Ricardo shook his head. 
Joel left the valley and rode across a series of grass- covered hills. He and Maria had come this way many times and at each crest he half expected to see her and Jaime riding unconcernedly toward him as they made their way back to the ranch. Yet he did not come upon them nor did he see sign of their having been this way. 
At Wolf Creek, its waters running high from the winter rains, he stopped to drink. The sun was behind the hills to his left and beneath the cottonwoods bordering the creek it was already dark. Joel went on in the waning light, riding along a ridge so he could search the valleys below. 
The ridge ended and he dropped into a saddle between two hills. Coming to a faint trail, he saw horse droppings on the ground. Dismounting, he found the unshod prints of three or four horses. Joel swore. Indians. The prints, as best he could ten, were at least a day old. 
When he rode on he saw that the sunlight had left the hilltops. The valleys were already dark and he knew he must decide whether to camp for the night and resume his search in the morning or return to the ranch. The decision was made for him. Looking about in the dusk he found that the landmarks he had followed were no longer visible. He doubted whether he could find his way back to the McLeod ranch even if he had wanted to. 
He rode on until he came to a stream. After he tethered his horse near the water, he ate the jerky he had brought with him. Tomas must have found them, he assured himself. Maria and Jaime had ridden to the north, going too far, but Tomas had surely come on them as they rode home. By now they were safe at the ranch. 
He saw the sky lighten in the east and remembered another night, the night he returned to his cabin from San Antone and saw the two halos of light in the sky. He shivered, pushing all thoughts of his burning cabin from his mind as he watched the moon rise over the hills. 
After a troubled sleep, Joel was up before dawn 
and, in the first light of day, began looping to the south in the direction of the ranch. He saw no sign of Maria and Jaime nor did he see any more signs of Indians. He crossed Wolf Creek and then followed a trail through a woods to the grasslands on the other side. As he came from under the trees he reined up, staring ahead of him in surprise. 
A lone rider loped northward halfway down the slope in front of him. He recognized her at once. 
Maria! With a shout he spurred his horse down the hill. Looking up, she saw him and rode to meet him, smiling, trying not to smile, smiling anyway. They met, their horses shying from each other, and they both started to speak at once. 
"Thank God you're all right," Joel said. "And Jaime?" 
"All right, he's all right. We met Tomas on our way to the ranch last night. You didn't come home. I was worried so I rode out this morning to meet you." 
He reached out to her, his hand closing on her arm, and he drew her to him, kissing her lightly on the lips. 
"I love you, Maria," he said. 
She shook her head slowly from side to side. 
"No, no," she murmured. 
"I didn't realize it until I couldn't find you, you and Jaime. I prayed for you like you did once for me. You're all right, my prayers were answered." 
"I don't want to hear," she said. "Not now. You don't know how worried I was about you. I couldn't sleep. Joel, I couldn't sleep all last night." 
He leaned forward to kiss her again but she took his hand from her arm, squeezing his fingers before releasing them. Swinging her horse about she rode .off a few yards and looked back at him, the first rays of 
the sun shining on one side of her bronzed face, throwing the other half into shadow. 
"I'll race you to the ranch," she called, spurring her horse, her black hair streaming behind her. 
He galloped after her, content to follow without trying to overtake her, thankful that she was all right Below them trees grew on both sides of a stream flowing into the valley. Maria turned her horse and entered the woods and after a moment she was out of sight. 
She screamed, a shrill cry of horror. A sliver of fear pierced him; he charged through the brush beneath the trees and found her, stopped, sitting on her horse staring at the ground. 
Joel rode up beside her and looked down. A skeleton lay amidst the brush, the bones white, bleached by rain, wind and sun. The man, if it had been a man, lay on his back, his skull grinning up at them. Joel» saw that the skeleton wasn't complete, that some of the bones were scattered and the entire right foot was missing. 
"Madre de Dios," Maria said over and over. "Madre de Dios, Madre de Dios." 
"He's been dead for years," Joel said. "Do you know who he is?" 
Maria shook her head. She had regained her composure by the time she looked at Joel. 
"The herders come and go," she said softly, "and the shearers. He might have been one of them. We might have thought he'd run off while all the time he was lying here, dead or dying." She put her clenched fist to her mouth, the knuckles white against her teeth. 
"I'll get Tomas and we'll come back and bury him," 
Joel said. He left the cover of the woods with Maria riding behind him, all thoughts of a race to the ranch forgotten. 
"Don't tell Jaime," she said. "Not until after he's buried." 
"Damn it, you can't keep the boy hid away from Me forever. He'll soon be a man." 
"I don't want to protect him forever," she said, "just for a time. Let him be a boy a while longer. Please, Joel. He's known enough of death, his mother's dead and so is his father. Let him be a boy for a few more years." 
Til do as you say," Joel said stiffly. Though I don't like it, he told himself. 
His pounding excitement of a few minutes before, his joy at finding Maria safe, was gone. It had disappeared and left him empty. The world was a place of death, life was a battle against long odds, and the combatants, who should all be on the same side, couldn't understand one another. Even when they spoke the same language. 
He and Tomas rode from the ranch after the midday meal to bury the skeleton. Jaime saw them and ran beside their horses. 
"Let me come," he cried up at Joel, 'let me come with you." 
Joel shook his head. "Not today," he told the boy. "Get on with your chores." 
Jaime stopped and stood staring after them. Joel looked back, glancing up at the sun. 
"I reckon it's one in the afternoon," he said, deliberately misstating the time so Jaime could prove him wrong. 
Jaime reached for the gold chain looped from his 
pocket. He hesitated and his hand dropped to his side. Without a word he turned and ran back to the house. 
"The boy likes you," Tomas said. 
"Too much." Joel forgot and spoke in English. "If you like somebody too much that means he can hurt you. Hurt you bad. I wonder if loving someone is worth the candle what with the pain when they leave you. Or when the time comes for you to leave them." 
"I do not understand," Tomas said. 
"I don't wish to hurt the boy," Joel said in Spanish. "Perhaps he likes me too much." 
"A boy must learn the ways of the world. Of joy, of pain, of life, and of death. It has been so always. And will be, always." 
That night Joel lay on his bed with his hands clasped behind his head staring into the darkness above him. He heard the house creak, listened to the sounds of the night coming through the open window, the cicadas and the tree frogs awakened by the false spring. In the morning, he decided, he would pack his gear. He was, after all, as Maria had said many times, only passing through. 
"Joel." 
She spoke his name so softly that he wasn't certain at first if he could trust his ears. 
"Joel," she said again. 
He swung from the bed. He was fully dressed though his feet were bare. 
"Maria," he whispered, seeing her dark figure in the doorway. 
Her hand touched his arm and found his hand. "Come with me," she told him. 
"Maria," he said again. 
Her hand was soft and warm in his and the scent of her, the scent of the flowers of early spring, was all around him.
"Don't say a word," she told him. "Don't make a sound."
Silently she led him from the room and along the corridor. She opened the outside door and, looking ahead over her shoulder, he saw that the ranch yard and the fields beyond were silvered by the moonlight.
A horse stirred in the corral as they went by; Maria soothed him with a word. She released Joel's hand and he followed her up the slope of the valley behind the main house. They climbed, not speaking, not touching, until they were high on the hill. She stopped, turning to him. She was dressed, he saw, in the blouse and skirt she had worn for the first time the day before. Her hair was loose on her shoulders and the moon, rising behind her, shadowed her face.
She held out her arms to him and he went to her, drawing her to him, kissing her, gently at first and then, as the excitement swelled in him, demandingly. His tongue found its way between her lips and her tongue met his, touched, withdrew, touched again. Her hand slid up along his back, her fingers caressing the nape of his neck, and he could feel her softness pressed against the length of his body.
She stepped away, her hand lingering on his cheek, her fingers exploring his face as though she meant to memorize his every feature. Her hand left his face and she reached down and pulled her blouse over her head. She undid her camisole and slid it off. He gasped at the sight of her full breasts which were both revealed and shadowed by the moonlight.
He reached for her, wanting to touch her, wanting to crush her against him.
"No," she said. "Wait."
Her hands went to her waist and he saw her dark skirt drop to the ground at her feet. She stepped from the skirt, then from her petticoats, and placed the clothes on the sward beside her. She sat on the grass, then lay back with her arms raised to him. For a moment he couldn't move, was unable to go to her, as though he was mesmerized by the moonlit curves and soft shadows of her body.
Hastily, he threw off his shirt and his trousers, kneeling beside her.
She murmured words in Spanish he didn't understand.
He lay beside her and when he took her into his arms her body was soft and yielding. His lips found her mouth and they kissed, his maleness rising as their tongues intertwined, as the excitement built in him. His lips left her mouth, his tongue going to her neck, to the hollow of her throat, his lips nipping her flesh as they went lower, seeking the firm swell of her breasts.
He kissed her breast, his hand caressing it from below, cupping its fullness upward as his mouth covered her nipple, his tongue circling, circling. She had lain unmoving beside him; now she moaned softly and he felt her writhe against him, heard her breathing quicken and felt her arms tighten around him. 
His hand sought her, trailed upward along her thigh, going between her legs to find the softness of her, his fingers caressing hers. She turned onto her back, her hips moving, her hand seeking him, and his mouth left her breast and he knelt between her legs and gently entered her.
Maria cried out in pain, the cry muffled as her hand went to her mouth. He was inside her, his hands
beneath her body, grasping her buttocks, drawing her to him as he thrust within her, his desire rising in a wild storm of passion, rising and bursting inside her, his mouth returning to her lips to kiss her as he rose and fell within her, more slowly, his passion subsiding. 
He lay beside her, his mind in a whirl, sated, at peace with himself and the world. Maria raised herself on one arm and touched his lips with the tips of her fingers. 
"I love you, Joel," she said. "No matter what happens to you or to me, remember that. Promise me, Joel, that you'll remember." 
For a blinding moment he was reminded of Susanna and he stared straight ahead at nothing, telling himself that he had betrayed her. No, he said under his breath, no, I haven't. She would have wanted me to ... He pushed the thought from his mind. 
"Joel," Maria said. "You haven't answered me." 
"I will remember," he told her. 
Maria's hand left his mouth and her fingers trailed down across the hair on his chest. 
"Life is for the living," she said. He sat up, startled, thinking she had read his thoughts, knew he was thinking of Susanna. "That skeleton we found this morning," she went on, "that horrible skeleton. I couldn't get it out of my mind all day." 
"Don't think about it," he told her. 
"It makes me want to seize every minute of every day and wring all the living I can from it." 
Her fingers curled and pulled the hair on his chest. She trailed her fingers lower and he felt his flesh involuntarily flinch away as she touched his stomach. Her hand lingered on his leg as though she was afraid, then she tentatively touched his sex. After holding it with her fingertips, she explored as though 
discovering the hidden parts of a man's body for the first time. 
Again he felt the stirring within him, the beating of his desire, the rising. She drew in her breath, her hand still holding him, tightly at first, then loosely, then tightly again. He knelt beside her, her hand still on him, and she rose, both of them kneeling, facing one another, their bodies aglow with moonlight. She led him to her and she fell backwards so he was drawn down on top of her. Her legs encircled his body, her hands on either side of his face as she led his lips to her breasts, first to one and then the other, and she moaned as he caressed and kissed them each in turn. 
"Joel!" Her voice cried out to him, wanting him, and he thrust inside her, slowly at first, then faster and faster as her passion rose to match his. All at once he stopped, his mouth leaving her breast, his sex leaving hers. 
"No, no, no," she moaned. 
He took her head in his hands, kissing her gently on the lips, letting himself slide back within her, advancing, retreating, faster and faster and faster until she cried out, gripping him, her nails digging into his back, she felt the warm explosions within her that she wished would never end. His passion mounted and joined hers as they lay locked in one another's arms. 
"I didn't know," she said slowly, breathing heavily. He shifted his weight from her body so he was lying on his side looking down at her. 
"Never before," she said. "I have never been with a man before. I was afraid, even with you. I wanted to because I love you but I was afraid. Now I know I shouldn't have been." 
He started to speak but found he could not. Instead he leaned forward and kissed her, his tongue moving across her closed lips. He wanted to tell her it had never been like this for him, that with Susanna the ecstasy had been only his--until the last time they made love ...
No, he couldn't even think about it, much less speak of it to Maria.
A cold breeze rustled the grass around them and he felt her shiver. She stood up and began putting on her clothes as he lay watching her.
"Tomorrow," she said, "I want you to tell me all about yourself. I want to know what you did when you were a boy growing up in Massachusetts, what you wanted to be when you became a man. Even those things I've heard before I want to hear again. I want you to tell me about your fight with the choirmaster and how you sailed in the steamer down the Ohio, how you met your friend Grover Dunne." She paused. "And I'd like you to tell me about her--about Susanna--if you can."
"I think I can," he said. "I could never tell anyone else, but I can tell you."
He dressed and, with his arm around her waist and hers about his, they walked slowly down the hill to the ranch. When they came to the main house, she kissed him quickly and was gone.
The next morning he found Jaime in the barn.
"I reckon it's seven o'clock," Joel said.
For a moment Jaime looked at him, then, smiling sheepishly, pulled out his watch. "It lacks ten minutes of seven," he said. "And yesterday, when you said it was eight, you were more than thirty minutes wrong."
"When you finish your chores," Joel told him, "we are going to do a little shooting."
"You mean I'm to watch?"
"No, I mean I intend to teach you to shoot. Now hurry with the chores and meet me by the corral when you're done."
When Jaime ran to the corral a half hour later, Joel had two rifles propped against the shed. He handed one to Jaime and they walked side by side past the main house. They heard the front door open and looked to see Maria standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
"And where do you think you're going?" she demanded of Jaime.
"Joel means to teach me to shoot," he said hesitantly.
Maria opened her mouth to protest, closed it again and remained silent. After a moment she said, "Take care, both of you." She watched them until they were out of sight.
"First you blow down the barrel," Joel told Jaime when they stopped on a level stretch of ground a mile from the house. "To make sure the touchhole is clear. Like this. Then you take your powderhorn, fill the measure and pour in the powder. You wrap the ball in a piece of cloth, like this, and use your ramrod to set it"
He primed the pan with a pinch of gunpowder, closed the lid, and pulled the hammer back.
"All right," he said, "now lie down and line up your sights on that stump over yonder. Good. Squeeze the trigger, don't yank it."
The gun roared and Jaime grunted in surprise and pain as the rifle butt kicked hard against his shoulder.
"Good, good," Joel told him. "A trifle low, you got to allow for the distance. Now you load her the way I showed you."
After an hour's shooting they walked together down the slope, guns under their arms, the man talking of hunting in the Berkshires, of game he had stalked and killed, the boy looking up at him, eyes wide as he listened.
When they came around the side of the main ranch house, they heard a horse approaching along the trail from the south. Joel rested the butt of his rifle on the ground, watching the rider, thinking he recognized him yet not sure.
The man waved his hat in his left hand and Joel saw that his right arm was severed above the elbow.
"Grover!" he called. "Grover Dunne!"
"Joel, you old bastard," Grover shouted as he brought his horse to a halt. "I thought I'd never find you."
Grover dismounted and grabbed Joel, pounding him on the back.
"Good news," he said. "Great news. El Diablo, I found out where El Diablo's headed. We're going after the bastard. Get ready to ride,"
Joel and Grover were up at dawn the next morning. After eating, they went to the corral to saddle up.
"We got to get us a move on," Grover said. "We got a lot of hard riding ahead before we reach the lower Rio Grande."
"You're sure El Diablo--or should I say Lewis--is with this General Ampudia?" Joel asked as he tightened the cinch on the sorrel gelding.
"Sure as a man can be that has to take the word of them greasers down in El Paso. After they let me go because of having only the one arm, I did a little gambling there, played a bit of monte to raise me a stake, all the while listening to hear what I could hear. The man what called himself Charles Lewis was in El Paso a month before us prisoners got there, or so I heard. He lit out from there before we were marched in, riding southeast along what they call the Rio
Bravo, that's the Rio Grande, heading for the fighting along the border."
"What fighting s this?" Joel asked.
"The Mex's have got another army together, four or five thousand men, they say, and they mean to invade Texas just like Santa Anna did in '36. And the Texans are raising companies of Rangers and militia, intending to make life just a mite difficult for them Mexicans. It's going to be one hell of a fight."
"Sure sounds that way." Joel couldn't share Grover's enthusiasm.
Grover stared at him. "You sure as hell look like the same man I've known these past two years and more," he said. "You talk like he did and you've got the same ugly face, yet you're not the same at all. What's happened to change a fine lad like yourself? Was it that prison you were in at San Miguel? Did that take some of the starch out of you?"
"I don't think I'm much different from what I was," Joel said. "A man can't help getting older."
"And he can't help starting to think of settling down, is that it? I can tell by the way you're looking at me that I've hit the nail on the head. That senorita, she's a fine-looking woman, no mistake about that. But don't let her looks fool you, mi amigo, I've seen too many men that married senoritas become no better than Mexicans themselves."
Joel grasped the front of Grover's shirt and pulled him forward. "Take it back, Grover." His voice was steel.
"Take what back? I didn't say a word against the lady. Why, I said she was a fine-looking ..." He stopped and shrugged. "Whatever I said to rile you, I take back. We've been friends too long, Joel, you and me, to let any senorita come between us."
Joel let go and Grover straightened his shirt. "We'd best be starting out," Grover said. "Like I say, we got a long way to ride."
"You go along ahead," Joel told him. "I've got to thank Maria for the loan of the horse. And say my goodbyes."
"Don't let her sweet-talk you into changing your mind. Hear?"
"Grover, I made a vow over the grave of my murdered wife that I'd avenge her and I mean to do it. Nobody's going to change my mind, not any man nor any woman, either. Nobody."
Joel led his sorrel to the main house where he looped the reins over the horse's head, opened the door and went in. The house seemed empty.
"Maria!" he called.
"You don't have to raise your voice," she said from the arched doorway to the sala. "I'm here."
He stood looking at her, the length of the room between them, feeling a wrenching within him as though he was about to lose a part of himself.
"I said my goodbyes to Tomas and Esperanza," he told her. "And to Ricardo. I couldn't find you. Or Jaime. Where is the boy?"
"I don't know. I told him he should see you before you leave, should say goodbye. He shook his head and ran off. I think he's been crying. He didn't want you to see him crying."
Joel took a step toward her. "I've grown real attached to Jaime," he said. "He's a fine boy. He's going to be a man you can be proud of."
"If he lives long enough." Her voice rose. If he doesn't run off, thinking to find something better on the other side of the mountains, and get himself
killed. Looking for something he'll never find. Never find because it's not there." 
"Are you talking about the boy or about me?" he asked softly. 
She stepped toward him and stopped. "I'm talking about both of you, I suppose. Why do I feel as if I'm going to cry? I shouldn't, I knew you'd leave. When I thought about it at all. My mind is Scottish, "but my heart is Spanish. My mind told me you'd go all the time my Spanish heart was promising me you wouldn't." 
He took two quick steps toward her and held out his arms. "Maria," he said. 
She ran to him, her arms going around him as she buried her face against his chest. He lifted her chin with his fingers, looking into her glistening eyes. When he kissed her, she clung to him, her nails biting through his shirt to the flesh of his back. 
All at once she stepped away, though she was still in the circle of his arms, and said, "Vaya con Dios. I will remember you always." 
"I'll come back, Maria," he told her. "When I've done what I have to do, I'll come back to you. I swear I will." 
"I know you mean what you say. You mean it today. But my mind tells me you will never return to the Valley. Never." 
Joel brushed a strand of black hair from her forehead. "And your heart, your Spanish heart?" he asked. "What does it tell you?" 
Maria kissed him again, softly, her lips brushing his. "My heart says the same," she whispered. 
She ran from him. Joel took a step after her, stopped, hesitating, then turned and left the house. 
He saw Grover waiting for him a quarter mile away on the road leading to the south. Joel mounted and without a backward glance left the McLeod ranch. For a long while he rode beside Grover without speaking and though Grover glanced his way from time to time, he too said nothing. 
The trail curved right, passed through a grove of cottonwoods, and followed the bank of a creek for a half mile before crossing to the other side at a ford. As he climbed the far bank, Joel heard a horse following them. He reined up, a surge of joy welling inside him. It was Maria, he told himself, she was coming to tell him she was going to ride with him. 
"It's that kid, Jaime," Grover said, "riding hellbent for election. He means to come along and join the fun, I reckon." 
"I'll see what he wants." Joel splashed back across the creek and waited for Jaime at the top of the opposite bank. 
Jaime reined up beside him. The boy started to speak, stopped, tried again and failed. His face was red and stained by tears. 
"I guess you must reckon I wouldn't make a good Texan," he said at last. 
"Even Texans cry," Joel told him. 
"I've got something I want you to have." Jaime reached into his pocket and then held out his hand. Joel took Jaime's gift, staring down at the watch in the palm of his hand. 
"This is your father's watch," Joel said. "He meant it to stay in the McLeod family." 
"I don't want it anymore. It's yours, Joel. I want the watch to be yours." 
Joel hefted the watch. "This is the finest present 
anybody ever gave me," he said. "And I accept it" 
He was starting to put the watch in the pocket of his jacket when he hesitated. 
"I'm going south to El Paso and on down along the Rio Grande," he said. "Grover and me have to ride hard and there might be trouble and fighting where we're going. I wouldn't want anything to happen to this watch. Not to such a damn fine watch." 
"It is a damn fine watch, isn't it?" 
"It is that. So what I intend to do is this. The watch is mine but I want to leave it here with you for safekeeping. When I've done what I have to do, I'll come back for it. You take care of it for me until then. Agreed?" 
Jaime took the watch and slid it carefully into his pocket. "Agreed," he said. 
The boy turned his horse and was walking him back toward the ranch when Joel called after him. "By the looks of the sun coming up, I'd say it was most likely seven o'clock." 
Jaime pulled the watch from his pocket and snapped open the cover. It was a long time before he answered. Finally he said, "I reckon you're wrong. It's only half after six." 
He closed the watch, thrust it into his pocket, and dug his heels into his horse's flanks. The last Joel saw of him he was riding into the cottonwood grove on the way back to the ranch. 
"Halt! Who goes there?" 
Grover and Joel reined up. 
"Two lost Texans a-looking for General Somervell's army," Grover called out. 
"Come on ahead so's I can take a gander at the two of you." 
They rode forward, stopping several yards in front of the rifle-toting rider. 
"What part of Texas do you boys hail from?" the sentry asked. 
"San Antonio de Bexar," Joel told him. 
"We been out west," Grover put in. "To Santa Fe and El Paso del Norte. Matter of fact, we been on the trail from New Mexico for nine months what with one thing and another." 
The sentry, an older, grizzle-bearded man, nodded. "I never was one," he said, "to ask a man his name." 
"We got no objection to saying. I'm Grover Dunne and this here's Joel Falconer." 
"Caleb Austin. Before you ask, the answer's no, I'm no kin of the other Austin from up north. Met old Stephen once, right about this time of year it was. December. He sure looked like death warmed over and I wasn't a mite surprised to hear he passed on soon after." 
"We're looking for Somervell's army," Grover said. 
Caleb nodded. "Let me ride a ways with you boys," he said. "Else some hair-triggered son-of-a-bitch is likely to throw lead at you." 
Grover started to ask about Somervell again, thought better of it and clamped shut his mouth. They had ridden only a short way when they came to the Rio Grande where they saw thirty or forty men camped along the Texas shore. 
"Is this part of Somervell's army?" Grover asked. 
"I think you asked me that before," Caleb said. "And I can't rightly answer you yes or no. This is Somervell's army from Texas, you might say, or a part of it, and yet it ain't Which must sound mighty peculiar." 
"It does. What do you mean it is his army and it ain't?" Joel could see that Grover's temper was straining at its bounds. 
"Well," Caleb said, spitting a long stream of tobacco juice at the ground, "it's true we was part of old Somervell's army when we set out a-chasing that Mexican General Woll. And it's a fact we was a part of it when we followed on Woll's heels all the way from San Antone, where he'd taken an entire district court prisoner, to the Rio Grande." 
"You were part of his army then and now you're not?" Grover asked. 
"Sonny, if you'll give me a chance I'll get to that. If I just said right out yes or no I'd be lying and you'd be obliged to ask me to go through the entire story like I'm doing. So why don't you just simmer down a mite and listen to what I'm telling you." 
"Go ahead, old timer," Grover said. 
"Now that's what I like from younguns, respect for their elders." Caleb Austin shifted his chaw from one cheek to the other. "Now like I was a-telling you, we chased Woll clear out of Texas. Then old General Somervell marched us up and down along this here bank of the Rio Grande as though he couldn't make up his mind whether to fish or cut bait. We captured Laredo, though captured's a strong word considering the town is on our side of the river and that it weren't defended by the Mexicans. 
"Well, sir, a few of the boys ran a little wild in Laredo after we took the place. So what does Somervell do but beg the alcalde's pardon for all the fuss and, to make matters worse, orders the boys to give back what they took from the Mexicans. Then we marched to Guerrero, and that's on the other side of the river all right, but there wasn't nary a Mex in sight there either. So old Somervell says the campaign's over, men, and wasn't it a glorious victory? And orders us to haul our asses back to San Antone. 
"By this time some of the boys was mighty disgusted with Somervell's notion of how to fight a war. We'd come all this way to fight Mexicans, by God, not to ask their pardon for running off with a mule or two. So three hundred and more of us said we'd just stay here on the Rio Grande and do what we come for. Which was to show them Mexicans they can't march into Texas any old time they pleased. While we were 
at it, we told Somervell, we might just conquer all of Mexico like Cortez did years ago.
"'You're a bunch of hot-headed fools,' Somervell tells us and rides off with most of his army. So here we are, at least this detachment of us that's guarding the river crossing. The rest of the troops, who've under Colonel Fisher, the man that was elected commander all right and proper-like, are on the other side of the Rio Grande getting provisions at a Mexican town a few miles over yonder. Town called Mier."
"I see what you meant," Grover said, "when you told us you're Somervell's army and yet you ain't."
"I thought you would, sonny, if I took my time and explained it real slow-like. Now we hear there's a Mex army wandering up and down on the other side of the river looking for us but we ain't seen hide nor hair of them. They say their General, Ampudia's his name, has upwards of three thousand men. With cavalry and cannon and what-all. Three hundred Texans against three thousand Mexicans. I'd say that makes the battle, if there is one, a right even bet."
"Ampudia," Joel said. "Is there a man named Lewis with him? Charles Lewis?"
"Lewis? The name don't mean nothing to me. I did hear, though, that there's a renegade from the States with Ampudia; I did hear that. I couldn't tell you the bastard's name. Judas, maybe."
Charles Lewis, Joel thought, it's got to be Lewis.
"We'll cross the river," he told Grover, "and see what we can find."
"I'm with you," Grover said. "Fighting's what I came for."
"Stop and have a bite to eat first," Caleb told them. "We ain't got much 'cept venison and beef but you're welcome to share it. I got to get back to my post.
There's no telling what might turn up," he said, looking at Grover. "And a merry Christmas to both of you boys."
"Christmas?" Joel asked.
"By my reckoning," Caleb said, "this is the twenty- fourth day of December. If it ain't Christmas yet, it's mighty close."
"Merry Christmas to you," Joel called after him.
"And may the good Saint Patrick watch over ye and keep ye," Grover added.
After they ate, they swam their horses across the river, Joel holding the reins of his sorrel in one hand and their powder and rifles above the water in his other.
"Lookee there," Grover said when they came from the water at the bottom of a hill on the far side. "We don't have to wait till we get to Mier to find our provisions. There's a bees' nest in that tree and Grover Dunne, for one, is going to get himself some honey."
He dismounted and Joel watched as he clambered up the tree as agilely as any two-armed man. Joel licked his lips; he could almost taste the honey. All at once Grover stopped. After a minute he began climbing down even faster than he'd climbed up, swinging from a branch and dropping the last ten feet to the ground.
"Too many bees up there for your liking?" Joel asked. "I can't say I see that many from here."
"The bees didn't bother me, I saw hornets of a different sort. There's a regular Mexican army upriver heading this way with a troop of cavalry in the lead. We'd better get us to Mier while the getting's good."
They galloped downstream along the river bank. When they came to a creek emptying into the Rio
Grande, they followed it. From ahead of them came the sound of scattered shots. 
"Looks like some of them Mexicans got there ahead of us," Grover shouted. 
"Look," Joel called back. "Texans. They're crossing the creek." 
A group of buckskin-clad riders were fording the creek in water that came to their horses' bellies. A cannon boomed in the distance, then another. 
"I reckon we've found General Ampudia," Grover said. 
Did the Mexican general really have three thousand men? Joel wondered. And did the Texans only number three hundred? No matter what Caleb Austin said, those didn't sound like good odds to him. 
They came to the ford and crossed the creek. On the other side they found ten or so Texans debating with one another. 
"We was told to ride to Mier," one shouted, waving his rifle in the direction of a collection of grey adobe buildings a few miles from the creek. Dust rose above the town and they heard more shooting. 
"The Berry boys and the Doc and the rest are pinned down in that hut," another of the Texans argued, pointing a hundred yards up the creek to a small building. Joel saw puffs of gunsmoke coming from the hill above the hut. Mexican soldiers ran down the hill, darting from one clump of brush to the next, firing as they came. 
"First things first," Grover shouted. He charged past the Texans, holding the reins in his one hand just above his rifle in the left-hand holster on his saddle. 
Joel spurred his horse after Grover, leaving the road and heading for the hut. He heard the shouts of men behind them and knew the Texans were following. 
The men in the hut cheered the riders as they rode up.
"Take five men," Grover shouted to Joel, "and go up the hill that way." He nodded to the right. "I'll take the rest and head along the other side. We'll surround the bastards."
As far as Joel could see there were forty or fifty Mexicans on the hillside above them. Motioning to a group of Texans to follow him, Joel rode from in front of the hut and started to climb the hill to his right. He saw puffs of smoke coming from the hillside and heard the bark of muskets. With six men following him, he swung around a cluster of palms and up a steep slope, his horse climbing in short, lunging leaps.
The ground leveled and he and the others reined up on a crest in the rear of the Mexicans. A few of the lancers, having seen the attempt to outflank them, were retreating back up the hill but most of the soldiers were still advancing on the hut.
The Texans swung from their horses and took positions on the edge of the rise overlooking the hill. Their rifles cracked time after time. Joel saw Mexicans drop their muskets and pitch forward to the ground. Others returned the fire. He looked across the slope but couldn't see Grover.
And then he did. Grover and the other Texas horsemen were on the opposite side of the hill, charging down on the Mexicans, yelling and screaming as they fired their pistols. The Mexicans began rising from cover and Joel saw there were more than he'd thought, at least sixty. Pursued from above and under fire from the hut by the creek, the lancers ran down the hill. Joel fired and saw one of the Mexicans fall. Grunting with satisfaction, he fired again and missed.
"By God, will you look at that!" the man next to him shouted.
Mexican cavalrymen swept along the creek toward the hut, a hundred strong, their swords raised. A column of cavalrymen left the troop and charged up the hill, passing their comrades as they galloped toward the Texans. Grover wheeled his horse and, with his men close behind, retreated up the hill. Joel and the rest of the Texans ran to their horses and mounted, riding higher along the flank of the hill in the direction of the road to Mier.
They went down the far side of the hill and gained the road, stopping to wait until Grover and his men joined them. The Mexican cavalry hadn't followed them over the crest.
"They're goners," Grover said when he and the others galloped up. "Them in that hut. There wasn't a damn thing we could do. I considered charging them but we'd all of been killed if we had."
"Best get to Mier and warn Colonel Fisher there's cavalry behind him," Joel said.
The Texans rode two and three abreast along the road with the sound of firing growing louder ahead of them. A cloud of dust had settled over Mier and every few minutes they heard the dull boom of cannon. They passed a house, then a cluster of adobe buildings. To Joel, Mier seemed small and dirty, a grey and dusty border town with dogs running loose in the streets between deserted houses.
The empty, dust-choked street led directly into the center of the town. A cannon roared in front of them and shot sprayed against the walls of the adobe buildings. A Texan's horse went down; another reared, throwing its rider; a horseman cried out in pain as he clutched his leg.
A rider galloped into the street from between two houses, wheeling his horse to face them.
"Get out of the road, you dumb bastards," he shouted. "Can't you see the cannon's got a clear shot?"
They dashed to the right and left, finding shelter between houses as the cannon roared again. Joel dismounted and turned to look for Grover but couldn't see him.
"They've got us trapped here." the rider who had shouted the warning told Joel. All around them men were slouched against the sides of buildings. "This street's enfiladed by one cannon and the next street's being raked by another. You're lucky you made it this far without getting yourself killed."
Joel took his Bowie knife from his belt and chopped at the adobe wall in front of him. A chunk of the sun- dried brick broke away and fell to the ground.
"If we can't go around," he said, "we sure as hell can go through."
Another man pulled out a knife and began hacking at the adobe. In a few minutes they were all attacking the wall, three men working while the others rested. Joel's knife was the first to break through to the far side.
"Stand back!"
One of the Texans raised his foot, the biggest foot Joel had ever seen, and slammed it heel-first into the wall. The hole burst wider and after a few more kicks was wide enough for them to crawl through. They ran across an empty room to the opposite wall and began chopping.
"The Mexicans have got their cannon in the square," the man who had kicked in the wall told Joel. "If we can get to them, we got a chance." He saw Joel glance
at his boot. "They call me Bigfoot Wallace," he said. 
They cut, hacked and kicked their way through one house and then another. As the first man crawled from the second house into an alley, a shot rang out and he groaned, collapsing with his body halfway through the hole. Grasping his feet, Joel pulled him into the house. The man was bleeding from a wound in the back of his neck. He was opening his mouth, trying to speak when his body went limp. He was dead. 
"The bastards are on the roof of the next house," Bigfoot Wallace said after looking through the hole. He nodded to a ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling. "Who's with me?" he asked. 
"They might be on this roof, too," a man objected. 
"If they are, they won't be for long." 
Bigfoot clambered up the ladder and pushed the trapdoor open. He waited a minute and then, satisfied, climbed to the roof. Joel, behind him, expected a shot but he heard nothing. He climbed through the trapdoor and saw that a three-foot-high rampart surrounded the roof. Bigfoot Wallace was crouching beside the wall nearest the Mexican-held section of the city. Joel ran up beside him. 
"I ain't taken a look over the wall yet," Bigfoot said. "Thought it might be prudent to have two of us try it at the same time. Are you ready?" 
"Give the word." 
"Now." 
They stood up. Two Mexicans were leaning over the rampart of the house opposite them with their rifles aimed into the ally below. Joel and Bigfoot fired at the same time. The Mexicans screamed and fell out of sight. Joel and Bigfoot reloaded, all the while 
watching the other roof, but no Mexicans appeared.
The firing in the city died down and Joel realized he hadn't heard the roar of the cannon for some time.
"Looks like we got ourselves a stalemate." Bigfoot shook his head. "And I thought we'd clear these bastards out of this here town in half an hour."
"There's more of them back along the river," Joel said. "At least three hundred cavalrymen."
"Does the Colonel know?"
"No, we were bringing the word when the cannon caught us on the street."
By now three more Texans had climbed to the roof. "Keep a lookout," Bigfoot told them. Til take you to the Colonel," he said to Joel, "if you don't mind crossing a street or two."
"Lead the way."
They climbed down the ladder into the house and through a hole into an alley on the Texas side. Bigfoot walked rapidly along the alley to a street. He stopped.
"Now," he said and they dashed to the far side of the street without being fired on. They crossed two more streets before Bigfoot turned left between two buildings. They turned a corner and found themselves staring into the muzzle of a rifle.
"Bigfoot!" the man with the rifle greeted them. "I could hear you coming a mile off."
"We got to see the Colonel," Bigfoot said.
The sentry motioned to the door behind him. "The Colonel's been hit," he said, "but he ain't in too bad a shape."
They pushed open the door and found three men standing around a table studying a map while another sat on the floor with his back to the wall.
"Colonel Fisher?" Joel asked the man on the floor.
One of the men at the table looked up. "I'm Fisher," he said.
"I came to report Mexican cavalry at the creek," Joel said. "Three hundred or more of them."
"Thanks," the Colonel said, "but you're late with your news. A one-armed man told me the same story a while back." He looked past Joel. "Bigfoot," he said, "come over here and tell me what you think."
Joel retreated to the door as the men huddled over the map.
"Don't mind the Colonel," the sentry said. "He's got a lot on his mind."
"You see where the one-armed man went?" Joel asked him.
"Second house to the left," the sentry said.
Joel found Grover sitting on the floor drinking from an upraised bottle.
"Try some of this," Grover said, handing the bottle to Joel. "This aguardiente will knock you back a pace or two."
Joel swallowed the liquor and gagged. He wiped his lips with his sleeve.
"There ain't no food," Grover said in a low voice, "and they're most out of ammunition. Now with the cannon in front of us and the Mex cavalry deployed along the creek, we're bottled up in Mier. We've been trying to get to them cannons in the plaza. We killed some of the gunners but then the Mexicans threw us back."
"This is a fine mess I've gotten us into," Joel said.
"You? It's been my doing as much as yours." Grover glanced toward the other Texans sitting around a table drinking aguardiente. "Come with me," he said, "I got something to show you."
The Border Breed 239
He led Joel through a doorway into the next room. "Look," Grover said, opening the door of a large oven. "If worst comes to worst, you and me can hide in here. They won't find us in a month of Sundays. When they're gone, we can light out for the river."
Joel shook his head. "I came after Lewis and I'm going to find him. Hightailing it back to Texas won't help me."
"Don't be a fool. The first thing you got to do is stay alive."
Again Joel shook his head.
"What do you mean to do?" Grover asked.
"Right now I'm getting me some shut-eye," Joel said, lying down on the floor and putting his hat under his head for a pillow.
Grover grunted and stretched out a few feet away from him.
Joel closed his eyes, hearing sporadic gunfire in the city around them, all the while thinking of Maria. When he and Grover had crossed the arid plain of West Texas they had seen mirages of great herds of buffalo, mirages that vanished as they neared them. Now his remembrance of Maria seemed like a mirage, real and lifelike while at the same time insubstantial.
He woke to find Grover leaning over him.
"Joel, Joel," Grover said. "They're giving up. They're coming down the street with a white flag. The Mexicans are giving up the fight just when they're about to win it."
Grabbing their guns, Joel and Grover ran into the alley. When they came to the street they saw Texans clustered around a man who was holding a long pole with a white flag tied to its end.
"That's Doc Sonnickson, the army surgeon," Grover told him as they hurried up to the crowd of Texans.
"The Mexicans have seventeen hundred men in Mier?" one of the men asked the doctor disbelievingly. "And seven hundred more on the way?"
"That's right," Sonnickson told them. "I saw them with my own eyes after they captured us in the hut by the river. I wouldn't he to you boys, I'm one of you. General Ampudia told me that if you don't surrender, he'll give you no quarter."
The Texans muttered among themselves.
"Here the doc comes waving a white flag," Bigfoot Wallace said in disgust, "and we're expecting him to tell us the Mexicans are giving up and what he says instead is they want us to surrender."
"Not till hell freezes over," one of the men said. "That's when Texans surrender, and not before it!"
"Make way for the Colonel." One of the commanding officer's aides pushed through the crowd followed by Colonel Fisher.
"Is this the truth you're telling us?" Fisher asked the doctor.
"I swear to God." Sonnickson placed his hand over his heart. "The Mexicans are fighting on their own soil here in Mier. It's not like it was at San Antonio."
"Do you swear by the Lone Star Flag?" Bigfoot Wallace asked.
"Bigfoot, you know I've been a patriot all of my life. I wouldn't do anything to hurt Texas. Liberty or Death has been my motto ever since the Alamo. You know that, Bigfoot."
"No quarter," one of the men said. "That means they'll kill us all."
"And what if we do surrender?" Colonel Fisher asked. "What terms does Ampudia offer?"
"All the men who enter the plaza and lay clown their arms will be treated as prisoners of war." 
"Not as rebels?" 
"No, as prisoners of war." Sonnickson lowered his voice. "I can tell you, Colonel, the Mexicans have suffered dearly in this fight at Mier. Their losses must be ten times yours. They'll be glad to see the last of you. I expect they'll confiscate your arms and let you go in a day or two so you'll be free to cross the Rio Grande and return to your homes. General Ampudia didn't say that in so many words, you understand, but that's what I figure will happen." 
Grover stepped forward. "Colonel," he said, "this sounds an awful lot like what Governor Armijo promised us when the Santa Fe Expedition reached New Mexico. After we surrendered they didn't treat us like prisoners of war, they treated us like dogs." 
"General Ampudia isn't Armijo," Sonnickson said. "He's an honorable man. A professional soldier." 
"Tell the General," Colonel Fisher said, "that I ask for an hour's time to consider his ultimatum." 
Sonnickson nodded and, holding the white flag high over his head, walked quickly back to the Mexican lines. On the Texan side, the word of the Mexican demands spread like wildfire. 
"I say we fight." Bigfoot Wallace spat in the direction of the Mexican lines. "It's like Dunne here says. You can't trust the bastards to give you the time of day, much less live up to their promises." 
"We ain't got no food or water," a man named McDade objected. "How long we gonna fight without water or victuals? Tell me that, Bigfoot." 
"Look, we're but six miles from the Rio Grande. I say we stick together and make a rush for it. Any Mexican that's fool enough to stand in our way gets a ticket to hell." 
"Did you ever see a bunch of Texans what stuck 
together?" McDade asked. "Every time they come to a fork in the road some of them will head to the right, some to the left, and the rest will stand around arguing. They can't agree on nothing. Like when Somervell pulled out to head back home. It'll be the same all over again with half of us surrendering and half of us fighting and the devil take the hindmost." 
"Don't trust them," Grover said. "I know. You can't trust them Mexicans." 
"It don't take no Johnny-Come-Lately like you," one of the men said, "to teach us the ways of Mexicans. We been here fighting them for months and where have you been?" 
"Are you calling me a coward?" Grover asked. 
Joel grabbed Grover's good arm and pulled him away. 
"You can't tell some people nothing," Grover muttered. "Look what happened at Goliad." 
While the men argued back and forth, Colonel Fisher, under a flag of truce, walked to the Mexican lines and met with Ampudia. When he returned, he called his officers together. 
"We'll put it to a vote," he told them. "Whatever we decide to do, I expect every man to stick to it. If we fight, we all fight, and if we surrender, we all surrender."
"I vote to fight," Bigfoot Wallace said when Lieutenant Greene put the question to his company. 
"Accept the offer," McDade said, "and become prisoners of war." 
Another man voted to accept. And another. 
"Fight," Joel said. 
"He don't get no vote," McDade protested. "He ain't one of us." 
"Any man what's here fighting gets to vote," Greene said. "You?" he asked Grover. 
"Fight till we've killed them all." 
"Lay down our arms," the next man said. 
Greene left to report the results of the vote to the council of officers. When he returned, he stood in the doorway of the house as the men looked expectantly at him. The Lieutenant pulled his sword from the sheath at his side, raised his knee, and broke the blade in two. He threw the pieces to the ground. 
"The vote is to accept General Ampudia's terms," he said, "and become prisoners of the Mexican Army." 
Grover drew Joel aside. "I'm heading for that bake oven," he said, "soon as the way's clear. Once it's dark I'll sneak out and head for the river. I'd sure appreciate company. It's going to be a mighty long and lonely six-mile walk." 
Joel shook his head. "You're on your own," he said, grasping Grover's left hand. "Good luck to you, Grover." 
"I'll need all I can get." 
Grover hung back when the other men began leaving the house. Joel nodded to him and then hurried forward to trudge beside Bigfoot Wallace. He saw Texans in groups of threes and fours come from alleys along the street and head for the plaza. 
They walked past the cannon positioned at the head of the street as Mexican lancers motioned them into the square. Ahead of them Texans were laying their guns and knives on the ground in the center of the plaza. Beyond the pile of weapons Joel saw priests moving among four rows of dead Mexicans. 
Bigfoot spat as he added his rifle to the pile. "It's gonna take a damn sight more prayers than those 
padres know," he said, "to save the souls of that bunch." 
Joel and Bigfoot were herded with the other Texans into a roped-off area guarded by musket-carrying foot soldiers and cavalrymen brandishing swords. As they watched, other cavalrymen rode into the plaza dragging slain Texans at the ends of long ropes. After the bodies were cut loose and laid in a row Joel counted fifteen dead Texans; he guessed there were at least five hundred Mexican bodies in the plaza. 
The men, women and children of Mier began returning to their homes. The children taunted the Texans, picking up rocks from the street and hurling them into the prisoners' ranks. The Mexican men spat at the Texans as they passed while the women stared, shaking their heads. 
One of the women, hobbling along using a stick for a cane, approached the prisoners and stopped in front of Joel. She peered up at him and he saw that her face was lined with the sorrows of many years. 
"Pobrecitos" she said to the Texans in a sad and pitying voice. "Pobrecitos." She turned and shuffled away. 
"Only a bit longer," Esperanza said encouragingly.
Maria heard the words through a fog of pain. "Madre de Dios," she whispered, "Mary, my namesake, help me." 
A great thrust of agony made her gasp the last word and then she forgot everything but the need to bear down.
"The feet come first," Esperanza muttered. "Truly this is a contrary one."
A timeless pushing pain was followed by blessed relief. Maria relaxed, heard a choking cough, a whimper, a full-throated cry. A moment later Esperanza laid a weight on her stomach and Maria craned her neck to see.
"A fine, healthy girl," Esperanza told her. "And hungry. Already she tried to suck her fingers."
More cramping pains, then Esperanza grunted in
satisfaction as she picked up the knife to sever the cord. 
"All is well," she announced. 
Esperanza wrapped the infant and handed her to Maria. "I will be back when I have buried the afterbirth," she said. "Put her to your breast." 
"Tell Jaime to come to me," Maria said. J 
Esperanza nodded. 
Intent on gazing at her daughter, Maria didn't notice Jaime until she looked up to find him staring down at the baby. 
"She is your niece," Maria told him. "You are an uncle now--Tio Jaime." 
Jaime glanced at Maria and then back at the baby. "What's her name?" he asked. 
"I shall call her Estrella--star." Maria smiled, thinking of the night she and Joel had made love under the star-filled heavens. 
"I'll take good care of her," Jaime promised, "for she's like me. She has no father." 
Maria frowned. "Estrella does have a father. He isn't here now, he may be dead, but he is her father." 
Jaime's face lit up. "Do you mean Joel? Joel's her father?" He grinned when Maria nodded. "After Joel comes back maybe he'll be my father, too. Do you think he might?" 
"Jaime, we can't count on Joel ever coming back to us." 
Esperanza entered the room as Maria spoke. "Vamos" she ordered, putting her hand on Jaime's shoulder. "Later, if you behave, I will bring you the baby to hold." 
Jaime went out and Esperanza came to the side of the bed. 
"I have named her Estrella," Maria told her. 
A name of hope," Esperanza said, "as my name is. This is the time of the Nativity when the star in the west led the wise men to the Christ child. May this star lead Senor Falconer to us. You must send a message to him." 
"No." 
"It is true he may be hard to find but you should try. He would want to know he has a daughter. He would come back." 
Tears gathered in Maria's eyes. She touched the dark fuzz on top of Estrella's head with her lips. 
"I don't want Joel to return because he feels it's his duty," she said. "There will be no message." 
"Your uncle wishes to speak to you," Claudia Calderon told her niece. "He's in his room." 
Leah Burgess nodded and stood up, smoothing the skirts of her green and gold gown. Going to the mirror on the wall, she tucked in a wisp of her light brown hair. 
"I always feel as though I'm about to be presented at the consulate when I go to talk to Uncle Alfredo," she said. 
"All the Calderons seem stiff and formal at first," Claudia said. "It's one of their many charms. After being courted by the eligible bachelors of Cincinnati, Alfredo quite swept me off my feet with his European savoir-faire." 
"If he'd only call me Leah instead of 'My dear niece.'" 
"Why don't you tell him to call you Leah? I never 
knew you to be reticent, especially not where men are concerned."
"I have told him. He only smiles and says, 'When the proper time arrives, my dear niece.' It's not as though we only met yesterday. We've been traveling through Mexico together for three months now, from inn to inn, barranca to barranca, from one delegation of villagers to another."
"Your uncle is a very democratic man. Isn't that why the Spanish government chose him as their first consul to Mexico since the Revolution? He wants to meet as many of the people as possible to let them know that Spain recognizes their new country and that the time of fighting has now come to an end."
"Most of the people here are so terribly poor," Leah sighed. "Sometimes they break my heart. Other times they make me furious. Why are they content to do everything the way their fathers and grandfathers did?"
"Now you sound like a Yankee."
"If you can call a New Yorker a Yankee. Doesn't it infuriate you to see the rich landlords riding in their gold carriages past the peons sitting along the streets drinking pulque?"
"It was always like this," her aunt said, "and always will be. You can't change human nature. If all the money in the world was taken from the rich and distributed equally, it would soon find its way back to the same people who have it today."
"Now you sound like Grandfather Braun."
"My father may be old-fashioned but he's right about a great number of things. Now hurry, Leah, you know your uncle is a busy man."
"Men are always busy. And women always seem to be hurrying to serve them."
"It's the way of the world," her aunt said. "If s not our place to question it."
"Perhaps not your place," Leah said.
"Hurry, Leah, hurry."
Leah ran to her aunt and kissed her on the cheek. She turned and swept from the room and down the upper corridor of the inn. From outside she heard the sound of a horse cantering along Vanegas' only street and, from the cantina next door, the shouts and laughter of the men.
She tapped on the door to her uncle's room.
"Entre." he called.
When she pushed open the door, her uncle looked up from his writing desk and smiled. He rose and walked quickly across the room with his hands extended, taking both of her hands in his and kissing them each in turn.
"My dear niece," he said. "You look charming. You bring the beauty of the City of Mexico to the provinces. The stares of the men applaud you; the glances of the women envy you."
"They envy the fact that I am the niece of the gallant Alfredo Calderon."
Alfredo led her to a chair and, once she was seated, returned to his chair on the other side of the desk. He was a handsome man, Leah thought, with his close-cropped, greying hair and his neatly trimmed moustache. Not only handsome, but courageous and hard-working as well. She knew he had many decorations that he wore only on the most formal occasions.
"You do not regret coming here to spend six months with us?" Alfredo asked. "I am the first to admit that the pueblo of Vanegas cannot compare to the bustle of New York."
"I have no regrets, uncle," Leah said. "All that I'd
change if I had my way would be to leave our military escort at home. I always feel as though we're in a parade." 
"As you know, there are many thieves and bandits roaming the countryside. There have been so many revolutions and there is so much poverty that men grow desperate. The government of Mexico can't permit the Spanish consul to be murdered while he tours the provinces." 
"I'm not afraid of bandits. In fact, I think I'd like to meet one." 
Alfredo smiled. "I've encountered a few on their way to the firing squad and I can say with all honesty that you would not have cared for them. They were exceedingly dirty and gave off an odor that preceded them by many leagues." 
"I feel as though I'm wrapped in a cocoon," Leah said. "In Mexico City we always leave our cards at the same houses and visit the same people, we go to the Cathedral with them, to the theater with them, and meet them again at the costume balls. They're charming, I admit," she added hastily when her uncle raised his hand. 
"I wasn't about to dispute you," he said. "I merely wanted to point out that you have already left your cocoon to become a lovely butterfly." 
"Is that what they mean by the language of diplomacy, uncle?" 
"I don't know. I only know that I speak the truth." 
"You have a way with women." Leah smiled. "Tell me your secret." 
"When a woman is beautiful and nothing else," Alfredo said, "I praise her embroidery, perhaps, or her wit. When a woman is less than totally beautiful, I admire the beauty she has. Her eyes, perhaps, or her 
hair. When a woman has both great beauty and talent, as is the case with yourself and your aunt, I can only show my awe and prostrate myself at her feet." 
"You always leave me speechless," Leah said. 
"But not, or so I have observed, for very long at a time. Which is but another of your charms." 
"I'm afraid you'll spoil me. The men I know in New York will seem so gauche when I go home." 
"As a matter of fact," Alfredo said, "it's concerning one of those men that I wished to speak to you." He tapped his forefinger on a sheaf of papers on his desk. "The name given here is J. Falconer. Didn't you know a Falconer in New York? I recall being introduced to him when your aunt and I were there on our wedding journey." 
"Justin. Justin Falconer. I've dined at the Falconer home on Washington Square. His father had something to do with building the Erie Canal." 
"What was he like, this Justin Falconer?" 
"He was known as a dashing young blade. His father was always getting him out of one scrape after another. Justin liked to gamble and he once fought a duel, or so I heard. There was talk of him traveling west until the dueling scandal blew over and I think he did leave New York a year or more ago. Why do you ask? Is Justin in Mexico?" 
"He may very well be." 
"Why, that's wonderful. I'd love to see Justin again." 
"Was there, how do you say it in the States, anything between you and young Falconer? I have a reason for asking." 
"Between me and Justin? Heavens, no. He had a 
way with the ladies, I'll admit, but I wasn't one of those smitten."
"That's just as well. Justin Falconer may be in Mexico, but not for the reason you think." He tapped the papers on his desk. "This is a roster of the Texans captured in the battle at Mier. There are more than two hundred names and one of them is J. Falconer."
"Justin fighting for the Texans? Justin a filibuster? He might be, uncle, it would be like him to do something foolhardy."
"If he did, this is one escapade his father won't be able to get him out of. The Texans are being marched to Mexico City where, more than likely, they'll all be imprisoned."
"Justin? In a Mexican prison? How horrible. Uncle Alfredo, isn't there something we can do? I'd never forgive myself if harm came to Justin when I could have helped him."
"Of course we don't know whether this is Justin or not. The name Falconer is uncommon, I think, yet not unheard of in the States."
"It's not just Falconer. This is J. Falconer. It must be Justin."
"I intend to make inquiries. Now tell me what this Justin Falconer looks like. I can't recall him at all."
"He's tall," Leah said, "and good-looking. His hair is black and he has brown eyes, though they might be hazel." She paused. "Is he in any danger?" she asked.
Alfredo shook his head. "I've been assured that the prisoners will be well-treated," he said.
Joel heard the distant blare of bugles and the rattattat of drums.
"We're coming to another town," Bigfoot Wallace muttered. "Listen to the band."
The Texans marched in double file, shackled in pairs, Joel's hands were tied to Bigfoot's and their legs were hobbled by a ten-foot length of chain. A cannon rumbled along the road ahead of the prisoners, another followed, while Mexican cavalry and infantry marched along both flanks.
"Prisoners of war!" Bigfoot spat on the dusty road. "Ha! More like animals. Animals on exhibit. Now I know what it must feel like to be an elephant in the circus--not that I ever seen one myself."
"Grover and I told them not to trust these bastards," Joel muttered.
He hadn't seen hide nor hair of Grover since the surrender at Mier. He hoped to hell he'd made it across the Rio Grande to Texas.
They plodded under an arch at the entrance to the town. At every street crossing Joel saw another arch and, along the sides of the main road, soldiers stationed at thirty-foot intervals.
The men of the town cursed the Texans, called them devils and fiends of Satan, spat on them and hurled rocks into their midst. The women watched-- some of them crying, some counting the beads of their rosaries and making the sign of the Cross.
One of the Texans, a boy of fourteen, staggered along ahead of Joel. As he passed, women ran into the road to thrust loaves of bread into his hands. The boy shoved them inside his shirt.
"I wonder what they'd do," Bigfoot said under his breath, "if they knew he killed thirteen of them bastards at Mier."
A cavalry officer rode along the line of prisoners swinging his quirt at the women. He struck one on the back and she stumbled and fell to the ground. A
man ran to her side, helped her up, and shook an angry fist at the officer.
The cavalryman reined up a few feet from Joel and faced the crowd of Mexicans along the road. Joel drew in his breath. The officer was bearded now but he'd know him anywhere. Charles Lewis. El Diablo. Yanking Bigfoot with him, Joel lunged at the rider, tripping on the chain that bound his ankle.
Bigfoot pulled him to his feet.
"Don't be a damn fool," he said. "There's nothing you can do here. Bide your time."
Joel stood watching Lewis who, facing the crowd, hadn't seen him.
A foot soldier poked Joel in the side with the butt of his musket Bigfoot dragged him back into the line of march.
"You'll get both of us thirty-nine lashes if you ain't careful," he said.
Behind them Lewis was shouting at the crowd in Spanish.
"Can you make out what he's saying?" Bigfoot asked.
"He's telling them that no one is to help the Texas devils. He says anyone who does will be shot. He'll shoot them himself, whether they're man, woman or child." 
The
crowd seemed to draw in its breath in shock as Lewis went on.
"What did he say then?" Bigfoot wanted to know.
"He says he doesn't care if it's the alcalde or the governor or even the mistress of Santa Anna himself, they'll be shot. I guess they're not used to being told about Santa Anna's women."
"They're told precious little. For all they know, Santa Anna won the battle of San Jacinto."
"I'm going to kill that bastard," Joel said.
"Santa Anna? It's not likely you'll ever get the chance."
"Not him. The one who's doing all the threatening."
"It's not likely you'll get the chance with him either, not with us being prisoners. One of the guards told me they expect to march us to Mexico City and that's a right humbling distance. All of fifteen hundred miles, or so they say."
"We'll get our chance," Joel said. "They won't be guarding us this close forever. Once we're well away from the border, they'll slack off and we'll jump them. Are you with me, Bigfoot?"
"You're damned right I am," Bigfoot Wallace said.
"Senor Bocanegra," Waddy Thompson said, "I appreciate the arrangements you have made to permit me to speak to the General. Your courtesy is more than I have any right to expect."
Jose Bocanegra smiled. "Whenever the minister from the United States of America requests an audience with General Santa Anna on a matter of urgent business, I hasten to accede to his wishes."
Bocanegra nodded to the two guards who had stiffened to attention on either side of the massive golden door. The door swung open. Their footsteps clicked on the red and gold tiles as they crossed the expanse of floor to where Santa Anna stood looking from an open window.
Santa Anna turned, nodded to Bocanegra and held out his hand to Waddy Thompson. "My friend," he said in English. He gestured around the great room. "My house is your house."
"The General is always the gracious host," Waddy Thompson said in his soft Southern accent. "I am
always astounded when I find that a magnificent warrior is also a perfect gentleman."
Santa Anna smiled as his hand went briefly to the array of medals on his military jacket. He nodded to Bocanegra and the Mexican foreign minister bowed and left the room, closing the door behind him.
"I never fail to be struck with wonder," Waddy Thompson said, "at the view of Mexico from this window." The two men looked down at the city and across the valley to the snow-capped volcanic peaks in the distance.
"Mexico City is one of the most civilized places in the world," Santa Anna said. "I have often heard it referred to as the 'Paris of the New World.'"
"As I have many times heard his Excellency called the 'Napoleon of the Americas'."
"Napoleon was a magnificent warrior. He brought glory to France as I will bring glory to Mexico."
"A great leader can afford to be merciful to his defeated enemies," Waddy Thompson said.
Santa Anna limped away from the window and, clasping his hands behind him, stood with his back to the American.
"You refer to the rebels and brigands captured by our valiant Army at Mier."
"I do. My government is concerned for their safety."
"I Lave given orders to execute them," Santa Anna said. "At first I intended to bring them here to Mexico, to display them as examples of our military prowess both to my people and the people of Texas. At Salado they attempted to escape and some of them did, only to be recaptured in a few days by my soldiers. For that they must die."
"Shoot them if you so choose," Waddy Thompson said, "but let me tell you this. If you do, you will at
once involve in this struggle a much more powerful enemy than Texas."
"Texas? Their President Houston has washed his hands of the rebels. They abandoned the Texas Army to fight on their own. You and your government may be concerned for their safety, but Houston is not. At this very moment he seeks to sign a treaty of friendship with Mexico."
"The United States is concerned, your Excellency. Many of these men are citizens of my country."
"How many? One? Two? Three? And it is for this reason you expect me to spare their lives?"
"No," Waddy Thompson said. "I expect you to spare them because the 'Napoleon of the Americas' is valorous in battle and magnanimous in victory."
"I will give your request every consideration," Santa Anna said.
"It is all I ask." Waddy Thompson bowed and left.
A few minutes later Jose Bocanegra entered the room. Santa Anna nodded to his foreign minister.
"Santa Anna has decided," the General said, "to be magnanimous to the Texan rebels. They will not all be executed as I ordered at first. To show the compassion of the Mexican nation and the Mexican people, Santa Anna orders that only one in ten of the Texans shall die."
This must be the way death smells, Joel thought, like horses and the sweat of men. And this must be the taste of death, dry and parched. Surely this was the look of death, the hundred and seventy-six Texans standing in rows, from A to Z, Alexander to Zamora, the Mexican guards watching, muskets in hand, some on the roof of the Salado hacienda, the others gathered on all sides of the Texans.
Joel remembered Kendall, the journalist from New Orleans, and wondered what had become of him. If he were here in Salado, would he still be taking notes while he waited to learn if he drew life or death?
A Mexican holding the roster of Texans stepped forward. "Alexander!" he called.
The first Texan was led from the ranks. He thrust his hand under the cloth and into the clay jar containing the hundred and seventy-six beans. One hundred and fifty-nine white beans--for life. Seventeen black beans--for death.
He was a fool not to have tried to escape with Grover when they were in Mier, Joel told himself. He was a greater fool not to have stayed at the Valley with Maria and Jaime.
He glanced at Charles Lewis who stood watching the drawing from the roof of the hacienda with his arms folded across his chest. Joel shook his head. No, by God, he wasn't a fool, he'd been right. He'd draw a white bean, the odds were heavy in his favor, and he'd kill El Diablo.
A Mexican officer who spoke English watched as the men drew from the jar of beans. "Take your time, compadre," he said to one man, smiling, "it will be all right, rianana." When a man drew a black bean, he said, "What bad fortune. Perhaps your luck will be better next time."
An Irishman approached the jar, looked skyward, saying, "Saint Patrick, give me a white one." His bean was white.
The Mexican with the roster called out, "Falconer."
Joel saw Charles Lewis give a start, then Lewis's smile broadened and he raised one hand to his shako in a mock salute.
Joel had noticed that when the beans were put in the jar, the white ones were poured in first, then the black, and that they had been mixed only slightly. He stepped up to the soldier holding the jar, put his hand under the cloth, and dug deep. He grasped a bean near the bottom and drew it out, holding it up for all to see.
The bean was black.
Joel was herded from the courtyard along with the other doomed men. He saw the remaining Texans, those who would live--and they included Bigfoot Wallace--being forced to sit on the ground. A Mexican soldier stood behind each of the seated prisoners, musket loaded and cocked, the gun aimed at the back of the Texan's head. 
The seventeen men who had drawn black beans were led to the rear of the stables where they were separated from the rest of the Texans by a thick adobe wall. 
A Mexican officer shouted a command. 
"On your knees," the soldier behind Joel said, shoving him forward. Joel knelt and saw the other men kneeling in three rows. Desperately, he looked around him. Charles Lewis was nowhere to be seen but armed guards were everywhere. 
The commanding officer reached into his pocket and brought out a silver watch, opened it, and called the hour to the man holding the roster. The man wrote on the sheet of paper.
Joel closed his eyes, remembering Jaime taking his watch from his pocket long ago.
"That's a damn fine watch." Joel had said.
"Maria doesn't allow swearing." Jaime told him.
Maria.
A hand gripped his shoulder and Joel looked up to see a moustachioed lancer staring down at him. "Falconer?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm Falconer." He felt a surge of hope.
"Arriba! Up!"
Joel got to his feet. The lancer pushed him toward an officer standing at the corner of the stable with his hands on his hips.
"J. Falconer?" the officer asked.
Joel nodded.
"Come with me."
With the officer beside him and the lancer following, he was taken along the outer wall of the stable and across a courtyard to the hacienda's main building. The guard at the door motioned them inside. They entered a hallway and passed under a tiled archway into the sala, a room running from the front of the house to the patio in the center.
Joel blinked, trying to see in the dim light of late afternoon. A man and a woman were seated behind a table on the far side of the room, watching him. Joel stared in surprise. The man was a Mexican officer with epaulets on his shoulders; the woman was an American.
She rose slowly to her feet. She was tall, had light brown hair and was wearing a high-necked tan dress.
He knew he'd never seen her before. Her eyes, fixed on his, were green.
She gave a cry and ran across the room, her hands grasping his.
"Justin!" she cried. "Thank God you're safe!"
She embraced him and the scent of lilies-of-the- valley enveloped him. Astonished, he stood rigidly in her arms.
"I'm Leah," she whispered in his ear. "Your cousin."
He held her away from him. "Cousin Leah," he said fervently, "I've never been so glad to see anyone in my whole life."
"Oh, Justin," she said. "We'd given you up for dead. All this time without word. What have they done to you? You're so thin. And that awful beard. I hardly recognized you at first."
"I--" he began but she put her fingers to his lips and turned to the officer who was standing behind the desk watching them.
"This is my cousin, Colonel," she told him. "This is Justin Falconer."
"Then I am most happy to release him to your custody," the Colonel said. "If you will sign this paper." He pushed a document across the table to her.
Leah dipped a quill pen in an ink bottle and scrawled her name at the bottom.
"And," the Colonel said, "if you will be so kind as to remember my services when next you speak to his Excellency, the Spanish consul."
"I will always remember Colonel Dominicio Morales," Leah said. "I will do more than mention your courtesy to my uncle, I will see that it is known at the highest level of government in the City of Mexico."
"The senorita is most kind." The Colonel took Leah's hand and raised it to his lips.
"And the Colonel is most gallant." Leah turned to Joel. "I have a horse waiting for you outside," she said, linking her arm in his. "We'll ride to the inn at Salado where I'll insist that you shave off that horrible beard."
Joel started to reply when he felt her fingers bite into his arm. He drew in his breath and remained silent.
They walked slowly from the sola, across the hallway, and past the guard at the door. Joel looked straight ahead, expecting a shout from behind him, a hand on his shoulder telling him he'd been found out.
A boy stood in front of the hacienda with two horses. Joel gripped Leah about the waist, feeling the rigid corset beneath her dress, and lifted her into the saddle. He mounted the other horse and was starting forward when he saw Leah groping in a reticule tied to her saddle. He pulled up and waited.
"Gracias," she said, handing the boy a coin. She flicked the reins and came to ride beside Joel.
"The Colonel's no fool," she told him when they were out of earshot. "If I'd let you say more than you did, he might have guessed you were from Texas and not New York. That's why I pinched you."
"Actually, I'm from Massachusetts," Joel said.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her appraising him.
"With a shave and a haircut," she said, "I do believe we'll be able to pass you off as an Easterner. And with some new clothes. Where on earth did you get the ones you have on?"
"A German merchant in Matamoras gave them to me. I guess he felt sorry for me with the Mexicans cursing at me and pelting me with rocks as big as
your fists. He didn't have time to take my measurements."
"You're trying to put me in my place, aren't you?" Leah asked. "And you're succeeding. Those clothes are horrible, though. I'm quite sure we'll be able to make something of you, Mr. Falconer. At least we'll civilize you enough to pass in the provinces. When we get back to Mexico City . . . Well, I'm not sure what we'll do then."
"We ain't going to Mexico, ma'am. You're forgetting my name's not Justin. It happens to be Joel."
"Joel," she repeated. "Of course I knew your name probably wasn't Justin. You do look a bit like him, though. Your height and coloring's the same, or nearly so, but you're a much bigger man than Justin. And not nearly as handsome. Before you ever came into the hacienda, I said to myself, 'Leah, whether this man's Justin or not, you're going to say he is. You'll never forgive yourself if you have the chance to save him and pass it by.'"
Joel heard a volley of shots from behind them. The firing squad, the bastards. He stiffened; he could almost feel the impact of bullets striking his back and head.
"Where are we bound?" he asked after a time.
"To the inn. Senor Aguinaldo's there. He escorted me to Salado."
"No, we're not going to the inn. That's the first place they'll look for us."
"Look for us? You have nothing to fear. Your name on their records is J. Falconer. Just the first initial. Now they'll think you're Justin Falconer."
"The records may show me with just an initial but there's a man at the hacienda, a renegade Texan, who
knows my true name is Joel. He knows because because he and I rode together for three months on the way to Santa Fe. As soon as he finds out what happened, he'll gather some men and come after us. He'll kill us both."
"Kill us? You've lost your senses, Mr. Falconer. My uncle, Senor Alfredo Calderon, happens to be the Spanish consul to Mexico."
"Charles Lewis won't care if your uncle's Santa Anna himself. He'll kill me and he'll kill you for helping me. I know him--you don't."
Joel spurred his horse ahead.
"Where are you going?" she shouted after him.
"I'm not sure yet," he shouted over his shoulder.
She reined up abruptly, causing her horse to rear. When he rode back to her side, her bonnet was awry and her face was flushed.
"Don't be a fool," Leah said. "You can't escape alone, I can help you. I can see you get to Vera Cruz where you can board a ship bound for the States."
"I don't intend to escape alone. You saved my life back there and so I'm greatly beholden to you. Turn about's fair play. I'm taking you with me."
"My life is not in danger. Are you intending to kidnap me? Are you a Mexican bandit? Do you mean to take me to your mountain hideout where you can have your way with me?"
"See that ravine ahead of us?" Joel asked.
"I think the correct word is barranca."
"We're riding up that ravine until we're out of sight from the road and then we're going to bide our time and find out if Lewis is following us."
"You may be riding up the barranca, but I'm not. It's getting dark. If I'm not back at the inn Soon, Senor Aguinaldo will have the whole Mexican army
The Border Breed 267
looking for me. To tell you the truth, Mr. Falconer, I had to trick him so I could get away and ride to the hacienda by myself."
"You don't do nothing straightforward-like, do you?"
"'Don't do nothing' is a double negative, Mr. Falconer, and means just the opposite of what you intend. Hardly the speech of an educated young man from Massachusetts! And when you say 'straightforward-like' you're ..."
Leah gasped as he reached out and grasped her, pulling her toward him. Holding her arm, he shook her savagely. Despite himself, he found that touching her excited him.
"If you don't come with me of your own free will," he said, "I'll tie and gag you and bring you that way."
"You would, wouldn't you? I expect you'd actually carry me off with you."
"You're damn right I would. But only to save your life. Now I've given you a choice. Which is it going to be?"
"Let go of me. I'll come with you, though it's not of my own free will."
He released her and rode ahead with Leah following him. They climbed down the steep slope to the bottom of the ravine where, instead of taking the trail up the other side, Joel headed along a dry, rock- strewn creekbed.
After they rounded a bend in the ravine, he dismounted and waited until Leah slid to the ground.
"You stay here with the horses," he told her.
Returning to the bend, he lay beside boulders where he had a view of the road. The ravine was in shadow but sunlight still shone on the rim.
"How long do you intend to stay here?"
He glanced over his shoulder. Leah was crouched behind boulders ten feet from him.
"Keep out of sight," he told her.
"I can't possibly lay on my stomach like you're doing. Crinolines weren't made for young ladies intending to hide in barrancas."
"We'll be here," Joel said, "as long as we have to be. If you've let the horses get away, we might be here permanent."
"I tethered them to the chaparral."
He grunted and for a time they waited in silence.
"Have you ever been to New York City?" she asked suddenly.
"Never have."
"You'd like the city. You'd cut quite a swath among the ladies there. I'd introduce you as the wild man from the prairies of Texas who choked a grizzly to death with his bare hands."
"That's Davy Crockett you're thinking of. He was killed at the Alamo."
"My father owns a shipping firm," she said, "Burgess and Brooke. George Brooke is dead. He was killed when the Alexander Hamilton's boiler blew up on the Hudson River. The Hamilton and the Mary Powell were racing between New York and Newburgh when the boiler exploded and the ship caught fire. Her captain had to run her aground near Nyack."
"Shut up," Joel told her. "Shut up and listen."
Hoofbeats approached from the direction of the hacienda. Four horsemen paused at the rim of the ravine, then rode down the narrow trail to the bottom. They climbed the far side and galloped off toward Salado.
"That was him," Joel said, standing up. "That was
Charles Lewis. I didn't think it would take him long to pick up our trail."
"Then we can go now?"
"No, we'll wait here till it's dark. They'll be looking for us along the road to Vanegas and on the Monclova road, everywhere."
"We should go to the inn at Salado," Leah said. "It's only another mile. Senor Aguinaldo will help you escape. Even if you don't want to go to Mexico with us or to Vera Cruz, he'll be able to disguise you so you can slip out of the country. You do speak Spanish, don't you?"
"Un poco, nada mas."
"When I was invited to Mexico to visit my uncle and aunt I studied the language for three months. With a private tutor."
"To tell you the truth, ma'am, I wasn't expecting to be spending any time here in Mexico when I started out. If I'd known, I would have found me a tutor, too."
"Now you're being sarcastic, Mr. Falconer, and it doesn't become you. You're trying to make me appear rich, spoiled and frivolous. It could be that you're right--perhaps I'm all of those things--but I'm more than that. A damn sight more. Does my language shock you?"
"No, I've heard ladies use a heap more colorful language than that."
"I imagine you have, though I wonder if the word ladies is the proper designation for the women you have in mind."
Joel grunted. "You talk too damn much, ma'am," he said.
"Please don't keep calling me ma'am. My name is Leah Burgess. And I think talking is much to be 
preferred to grunting. Is that how you Texans communicate, by a succession of grunts? Perhaps one grunt means yes and two grunts means no, and when you want to express a more complicated thought, if you ever do, you probably use a series of long and short grunts."
Joel took her by the shoulders--she was only half a head shorter than he was--shaking her so hard that her head jounced back and forth.
"Not another word," he told her. "I got thinking to do and I can't do it with a damn fool woman jabbering in my ear."
"I--" she began.
He lifted her by the upper arms, holding her a foot off the ground, her crinoline billowing out behind her.
"One more word and I'll gag you. I swear to God I will."
She stared at him, her green eyes wide. After a moment she gave a slight nod.
"Good." He lowered her to the ground. Damn, he thought, the touch of her disturbed him something fierce.
Sitting on a boulder, Joel pondered his next move. Seeing Senor Aguinaldo might be the best first step. At least Aguinaldo would be able to take this blathering woman off his hands and see that she was spirited out of Charles Lewis's domain. And she was right, Aguinaldo could probably help him get out of the country as well.
He waited until he saw stars overhead before he stood and walked to their horses with Leah stumbling after him. He heard her fall and had to force himself not to turn back to help her to her feet.
"We're paying your friend Senor Aguinaldo a visit," he told her.
When she started to speak he turned and gripped her arm. She stifled a cry of pain.
"Not a word," he warned.
Joel released her and swung into the saddle. He waited while she climbed to the top of a boulder and mounted her own horse, then turned back down the ravine, letting his horse pick his own path to the road. After they climbed to the rim of the ravine, Joel left the trail, bearing off to the right, riding slowly toward the scattered lights of Salado.
When they were a stone's throw from the town, he stopped. "Which building is the inn?" he asked.
Leah said nothing.
He edged his horse next to hers.
"Which is the inn?" he asked again.
Still she said nothing.
Joel reached out and slapped her, a stinging blow that sent her face jerking away from him.
"Tell me," he demanded.
"It's the building with the two lighted windows," she said sullenly, holding a hand to her cheek.
"That's better. You wait here. I'll go to the inn on foot to get an idea of the lay of the land."
"Aguinaldo doesn't know you. I'd best go with you."
Joel hesitated. "All right," he said finally.
They dismounted and led their horses to within a hundred feet of the fear of the inn. There seemed to be no unusual activity in the village. A horseman rode slowly along the street, two dogs fought behind a building some distance from them, they heard an angry shout and the dogs quieted.
"Tell me what the inn's like," Joel said.
"There's one door in front. It goes into an entryway that's two stories high, that's the height of the building. There's a stair to the right of the door leading up
to rooms along a corridor above the entry. Senor Aguinaldo's room is the first at the top of the stairs, mine's next door. At the end of the corridor there's another stair going down to the kitchen and out the back. Oh, yes--there's usually a boy in front of the inn to take care of the horses and run errands." 
"Good. We'll go to the back. Do you remember where the lights were in the upstairs corridor?" 
"No, we arrived this morning when they weren't lit I didn't notice." 
They tied their horses and made their way to the rear of the inn. Through the open kitchen door Joel saw a woman bending over a table. He edged closer until he could see the inside stairway to the right of the door. 
"We'll wait until she leaves the room," Joel said. "When she does we'll go in and up the stairs. Keep that damn dress of yours as quiet as you can." 
"You're being too cautious. If those men were ever here looking for you, they're gone now. Senor Aguinaldo would send them on their way quickly enough." 
Joel said nothing. A short fat man came into the kitchen and stood talking to the woman. She nodded, the man left and again she bent over the table. After a time she lifted what appeared to be a tray and carried it from the kitchen into another room of the inn. 
"Now," Joel whispered. 
He ran to the door with Leah behind him. As he started up the stairs, he stopped. 
"Don't move," he told her. 
Joel edged past her and ran down the steps into the kitchen. He looked around him. There. Going to a rack on the wall he removed a knife and, holding it at his side, ran back to the stairs. He squeezed past 
Leah's crinolines just as they heard the woman's footsteps enter the kitchen below them. 
Joel cautiously climbed the steps. There was no door at the top of the stairs. Knife in hand, he stood with his back to the wall and peered into the corridor beyond. An oil lamp glowed in a bracket on the corridor wall in front of him. A man stood at the far end of the corridor near the top of the front stairs leaning against the wall with his back to Joel. He had a pistol thrust under his belt. 
Joel waited. The man walked to the head of the stairs where he stood looking down into the entry for several minutes before returning once more to lean against the wall. From below Joel heard the sound of men laughing and smelled the spicy aroma of food. 
He held his hand out behind him, touched Leah's dress to signal her to stay where she was. He heard her draw in her breath and realized his hand was on her breast. He pulled his hand away. He edged into the corridor and along the wall, hoping the lookout at the top of the stairs was alone. 
When Joel was ten feet from him, the man stiffened as though listening. Joel tightened his grip on the knife. The Mexican swung around and as he did Joel lunged forward, thrusting at his body with the knife, heard the man cry out, felt the blade plunge home. As he twisted the knife, he clapped his other hand to the man's mouth. 
The man moaned, dropped to his knees, and pitched face first to the floor as Joel yanked the knife from his body. The corridor was quiet. Joel placed his palm on the Mexican's chest. There was no heartbeat, no rise and fall of breathing. He was dead. 
My God, Joel thought, what if this is Aguinaldo? 
What if he was waiting here for Leah to return? No, it couldn't be, Aguinaldo wouldn't skulk in a corridor, he'd have gone to find her. 
"You've killed him." 
Joel turned to find Leah staring over his shoulder at the dead man. 
"Do you know him?" he asked. 
"No." 
Joel let out a sigh of relief. One of Lewis's men, there was no doubt about it. At least not now. 
He lifted the dead man by the shoulders and dragged him into the shadows where the corridor ended in a cul-de-sac on the other side of the stairs. Leah had said the first door was Aguinaldo's room. Joel felt for the latch and found it. When he lifted the handle, the door swung open. 
A single candle burned on a table to his left. There was a window in the far wall and, under the window, a bed. A man lay on the bed with the hilt of a knife protruding from his chest and blood staining his fawn-colored vest. 
Leah screamed. Joel pulled her into the room and shut the door. 
"Aguinaldo?" he asked. 
She nodded, her hands clasped to her mouth. Joel crossed the room, knowing before he felt for the man's heartbeat that Aguinaldo was dead. He drew out the knife, wiped it clean on a blanket and thrust it under his own belt. He glanced around the room. 
"What are you looking for?" Leah asked. 
"A weapon. I'll take the pistol from the man in the hall but I thought Aguinaldo might be better armed. Here we are." Rummaging through a trunk on the floor he had come on a silver-handled pistol. 
"You told me," Leah said. "You warned me and I didn't believe you."
"I didn't expect they'd kill him. There was no reason to kill him. All he did was bring you here to Salado."
"They mean to kill me," Leah said. She sounded stunned. "They really and truly want to kill me." Her voice was a monotone, her face ashen.
"They want to kill us both," Joel told her. "Come on, we can't do Aguinaldo any good now."
"Wait," she said.
Leah hurried from the room before he could stop her, opened the next door along the corridor and went into her room, closing the door behind her.
Joel dragged the body of the Mexican into Aguinaldo's room and left it on the floor. Returning to the corridor, he closed Aguinaldo's door. He stopped at the head of the stairs, listening, heard a drunken shout from below followed by laughter. Impatiently, he looked behind him. Where was that damned woman? What in hell was she doing now?
Had she tricked him? Bolted herself into her room?
Joel lifted the latch and pushed, expecting the door to be locked. It wasn't and he stumbled inside.
Leah gasped as she whirled to face him. She wore a white lacy camisole and a short petticoat that clung to her hips, nothing more. He stared at the thrust of her breasts under the thin cloth, at the dark outlines of her nipples, at her pale arms, the swell of her hips, at her legs below the short skirt of the petticoat. Desire flared through him.
She reached down and snatched a dark dress from the back of a chair and held it in front of her. Though her face flushed, she met his gaze.
"I didn't know," he said. "I thought. . ." 
"The crinoline wouldn't have done at all," she said. "I'll change into this"--she nodded to the dress in her arms--"if you'll let me." 
Joel backed from the room, listening for the click of the latch as he drew the door shut behind him. Damn, he thought, she was a fine-looking woman. He paced back and forth in the corridor to damp his ardor. 
When Leah opened the door and came into the hall he saw she had changed into a dark brown dress with a long skirt. The sleeves came to her wrists, the bodice moulded her breasts, and the collar was high on her neck. Across one arm she carried what appeared to be a hooded cape. 
Taking a woman with him, he thought, was as hobbling as having an iron chain on his leg. No matter how good-looking she might be. 
"Let me have his pistol," Leah said, nodding to the floor where the Mexican had lain. 
"Can you shoot?" 
"When I knew I was coming to Mexico, I had three months of lessons. With all the bandits and revolutionaries in the country I thought I'd best be prepared."
Grudgingly, he handed her the pistol and watched while she put it in a pocket in the folds of her dress. 
He walked down the front steps with her hand on his arm. Glancing into a room at the rear of the inn he saw, through a haze of smoke, men eating and drinking. No one paid any attention to them as Joel opened the front door and led Leah outside. 
He looked carefully to his right and left The street was deserted. 
"Where are we going?" she asked. 
I plan to take the Monclova road," he told her, "to the north. We'll make our way to Texas from there."
Leah nodded and before he could stop her she disengaged her arm and walked to the end of the building. A figure appeared from the darkness and he heard Leah talking. When she came back, he asked, "Who was that?"
"The stableboy. I gave him some money and told him that if anyone asks, and they will, to tell them that he overheard us talking of riding south to Vanegas where my uncle is. If he told them he saw us heading that way they might think we were trying to lead them astray, but if he says he overheard us, they'll believe him."
Joel said nothing.
"Did I do the right thing?" she asked.
"I reckon you did," he said. "I never would have thought of doing that even if I could have made myself understood."
Leah turned and faced him.
"I know what you're thinking," she said. "You expect I'll be like an albatross hanging around your neck, bringing you bad luck and holding you back. Well, Mr. Joel Justin Falconer, I intend to prove you wrong."
She strode away from him.
"I'll be damned," he said, staring after her.
When he could no longer see her in the darkness he swore under his breath and ran to overtake her.
The wind changed, rain followed. A light drizzle at first, starting just after midnight, it soon became a heavy, driving downpour.
"We'll have to find shelter," Joel called back to Leah who rode with her horse roped to his. He couldn't see her in the darkness.
"All right," he thought she answered.
Joel followed a ravine up into the foothills above the Monclova road, riding more by intuition and guess than by sight, at last finding an overhang that offered partial shelter from the rain.
He dismounted, walked back to Leah, and held up his arms. When she let him Lift her to the ground he felt the sopping wetness of her clothes. She sneezed. He carried her up among the rocks and sat her in as dry a spot as he could find.
"I have to tend the horses," he told her.
When he returned she had her cloak spread on the
ground and was standing to wring water from her skirts. Joel settled beside her as the rain beat steadily on the rocks around them, splashing intermittently into their sanctuary. 
"I always liked rain when I was a girl," Leah said as she sat next to him. "I used to sit in my room with the rain beating on the roof and dream of being an actress like Fanny Kemble. I wrote plays and acted in them with my brothers and sisters. Of course I always kept the heroine's role for myself." She sneezed again. 
"Were you ever on the stage?" Joel asked. 
"Never. My father wouldn't hear of it. He was afraid of the company I'd have to keep if I got involved in acting. He said that actors and actresses were 'low-life'. 'You find enough ways to get into trouble as it is,' he always told me." 
"He might like the idea of you being an actress better if he could see you now." 
"He'd buy me my own theater, I expect. Anything to keep me in New York and out of harm's way." 
"This rain might help keep us from harm," Joel said. "They'll have the devil of a time picking up our trail again." 
She shifted uncomfortably beside him. "I'd like to say I feel a pea under all my mattresses but I'm afraid it's just a rock under my cloak. Am I making sense? I'm so tired, Mr. Falconer, and I think I'm catching a cold." 
"Here." He reached out and pulled her to him so her head nestled on his shoulder and her body pressed against his. 
"That's much better," Leah told him. She yawned. "You don't mind if I call you Mr. Falconer, do you? I like it so much better than Joel." 
"I don't mind, Leah." Only after he'd spoken did 
he realize he'd said her name for the first time. He liked the sound of it. "Mr. Falconer's an improvement on Justin, at least." 
"Justin's not my cousin, you know. I told the commandant at the hacienda he was because I thought he'd be more likely to let him go if he was a relative of mine. You don't think God will mind the fib, do you?" 
"I don't think--" Joel began and then, hearing her steady breathing, realized she was asleep. 
God, but she was a talker. He was getting sort of used to it, though. Who did her talking remind him of? Oh, yes, Rebecca, the girl at the revival meeting. Rebecca was probably married to the boy Levi by now. He was the one who'd admired her so much. Joel closed his eyes, listening to the rain, feeling the warmth of Leah's body on his, and fell asleep. 
The rain stopped the next afternoon. Dark wind- driven clouds scudded low over his head as Joel saddled the horses. 
"We'll have to find us some grub," he told Leah. "I reckon you're hungry." 
"No hungrier than you must be. Tm sure we'll find something along the way." 
After an hour's ride, they topped a rise and saw the deserted road to Monclova below them. 
"We'll stay in the hills," he said, "but try to keep the road in sight. The going will be slower that way but we'll be safer." 
"Should we ride at night and sleep in the daytime?" 
"Not as long as it's overcast. I don't know this country; we'd waste too much time finding our way at night without the stars to guide us." 
They found water a-plenty in the creeks that now ran high and muddy with run-off from the storm. As 
the sky darkened with the coming night, Joel made camp beside a pool where the waters of a stream swirled in a backwater before rushing on for a hundred feet to plunge over a waterfall.
"We'll risk a fire," Joel said. Til gather wood." He shifted from one foot to the other. "I expect you'll want to wash up."
After looking distastefully at the chocolate-colored water, Leah glanced at him.
"I think not, Mr. Falconer. I had a wonderful bath at the inn only yesterday morning. Perhaps you're the one who should try the waters while I collect the wood."
"I do feel mighty grimy."
When he hesitated, Leah said, "Mr. Falconer, I assure you I won't spy on you while you bathe if that's what you're afraid of. The opportunity to see a man's unclothed body fails to interest me."
Leah turned and, as she walked upstream looking for dry brush, Joel undressed quickly. Piling his clothes on the bank, he waded into the creek and when the cold water reached his thighs, he dove headfirst into the rushing current beyond the backwater. He was swept downstream and had to grasp a boulder on the far side of the creek to keep from tumbling over the falls.
Pulling himself from handhold to handhold along the bank, he made his way to an eddy above their camp where he again dove into the deeper water, striking out for the other shore as he was swept downstream. His foot struck bottom and he stood up in water to his waist, exhilarated. He used his hands to wash himself as best he could.
Ten minutes later, after making sure Leah was nowhere in sight, Joel waded to shore. His clothes were
gone. He glanced at the two saddles, at the grazing horses; yes, this was the place he'd left them, there could be no mistake about that. 
"Leah!" he shouted. 
"I'm here." Her voice came from behind a cluster of boulders downstream. 
Joel splashed back into the creek and waded downstream with the Water coming to his thighs. As he rounded the boulders he saw Leah kneeling on the bank. He sat down quickly when she looked up. 
"Your clothes were filthy," she said. Leah was kneeling on a flat boulder wringing the water from his shirt. "My uncle warned me about banditos but not about Texans." 
"Warned you?" 
"He told me they'd smell bad," she said. "There, that's the best I can do. You'll either have to put them on wet or wait until I start a fire to dry them out." 
"This water's getting mighty cold." 
"Then put your clothes on wet. I'll leave them here and start the fire while you're dressing." 
Joel sat on the muddy creek bottom watching her walk purposefully back to their camp. 
"I'll be goddamned," he muttered. 
Joel smiled to himself. She was quite a woman; he hadn't heard her complain once since they'd left the inn. Still, she made him feel as though he was always chasing after her and never quite catching up. She made a man seem lacking somehow, he decided. 
When, later, they were lying on opposite sides of the dying fire, he heard her stir. 
"Were you ever married?" she asked. "Somehow you strike me as a marrying man." 
"I was married. I'm not now. My wife . . . My wife died more than a year ago." 
Leah was silent for a time. "I'm terribly sorry," she said finally. "I don't know what to say. Sometimes I think I can find all the words except the important ones." 
Again she was silent. 
"Most often," she said at last, "I don't know what I'm going to say before I say it. I even surprise myself. My father claims the reason I talk so much is that I want to find out what I'm thinking. Are you asleep?" 
"No," Joel said. "I haven't heard a woman's voice in a long, long time. I was just listening and enjoying it." 
"I've changed my mind," Leah said. "I've decided not to call you Mr. Falconer. I'll call you Joel. Do you know, Joel, I don't think I'm catching a cold after all" 
"That's good, Leah." 
"You really want me to be quiet so you can go to sleep, don't you? I will. Someday, Joel, when the time's right, I want you to tell me about your wife." She sighed. "I don't know why," she said, "but all at once I feel like crying. Because all this--lying here with the fire glowing in the darkness--is real, somehow, and all that happened to me in New York wasn't. I mean the parties and the dances and the flirting. At least that's the way it seems and it makes me want to cry. Because I know I'll go back to New York if we ever get away from here and then it will start all over again and be just as unreal as it was before." She paused. "Are you sure you're not asleep, Joel?" 
"I'm not asleep." 
I like your name, I really do. I was just teasing you when I said I didn't--playing the coquette. I don't like myself very much when I do that. And now I am going to sleep. Goodnight, Joel." 
"Goodnight, Leah," he said softly, smiling to himself.
Joel wakened in the first light of dawn. A difference in his surroundings nagged at him. Looking quickly around he saw that Leah wasn't on the other side of the campfire. He heard a splashing and, standing, thought he saw her in the creek. 
He walked quietly to the bank where he found her clothes piled neatly on a rock. He nudged them with the toe of his bare foot. Again he heard the splash of water. In the dim light he could just make out the whiteness of her bare body some thirty feet away where she was lying on her back in the shallows. She cupped water in her two hands and let it cascade over her face. When she stretched her arms over her head, her breasts came above the surface and Joel drew in his breath. 
As she lowered her arms, Leah looked to the shore and saw him. With a gasp she slid her body deeper into the stream, turning so she was on her stomach with only her head showing above the water. 
"Walk on down the creek," she told him, "so I can get dressed." 
Joel nodded. He bent down and picked up her gown, her camisole and her petticoat and draped them over his arm. 
"Mr. Falconer," she said, "you will leave my clothes right where you found them. I'll never forgive you if you don't." 
He smiled and laid the clothes back on the rock. It was lighter now and, looking at her, he thought he saw the curve of her buttocks beneath the muddy water. As he walked along the bank he carefully avoided looking at her again. He did, though, glance 
beyond her to where the water eddied behind a humped-backed boulder. "My God." He looked about him and, seeing a thick stick she'd gathered for the fire the night before, grabbed it and waded into the creek.
"What is it?" Leah asked, alarm in her voice.
Joel brought the stick down with a splat.
"Missed him," he said. "A snake. He's coming for you." He jabbed the stick into the water. "I've hooked him," he said. Til try to lift him out. He's a big one."
He heard Leah's stifled scream. He turned and saw her splashing from the creek, water beading her pale body. She ran to her clothes and picked up her dress, holding it in front of her.
"Did you get him?" she asked.
Joel stared at her for a moment in open admiration before he turned to look into the water. "He plumb got away."
"You're lying!" Leah knelt, picked up a rock and, holding her dress with one hand, hurled the rock at him. He ducked and heard it splash in the creek behind him.
"I've never seen his like before," Joel said. "He was big and black and must have been all of six feet long. You wouldn't think you'd find a snake like that in a creek of this sort, now would you?"
Td be more apt to believe you if you didn't keep standing in the water."
"You're right, I'd best get out of his way. There's no telling what a critter like that might do. I wouldn't be a mite surprised to see him crawl right out onto dry land and offer you an apple. Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden."
"Don't blaspheme," she said. "Now turn around so I can get dressed."
"I reckon I've seen enough," Joel said, turning. 
"You don't fight fair." He heard the rustle of her clothes. "I think that's what I like about you. Did you know I have a dream? A daydream? In the dream I meet a man, a very handsome well-dressed man and no matter what outrageous thing I say or do, he nods and says, 'Quite so' and 'Yes, I certainly agree.' In my dream I fall in love with him, marry him in a church on Fifth Avenue, and I'm miserable for the rest of my life. There, I'm dressed, you can turned around now." 
Her gown was dirty and wrinkled, her hair wet and hanging loose around her face, her fair skin tinged brown from the muddy water. She stood smoothing the front of her dress absently with her hands, her eyes on him. 
"You're a beautiful woman," he told her. 
"You shouldn't say that, Joel." 
She walked toward him but stopped suddenly a few feet away, lifting one foot and grasping it in her hand. 
"Oh, oh, oh." She bit her lower lips. "I stepped on a rock." She put her foot on the ground, limped to him and slapped him full in the face. 
He took her in his arms, pulling her to him, kissing her. She drew in her breath and he could feel her lips tighten under his and then she sighed, kissing him in return, her hand going to the nape of his neck, her body pressing against his. 
"I've been meaning to do that," she said as she drew away from him. "Not kiss you--hit you. Ever since you slapped me outside the inn. Now we're even." 
She nodded and turned away from him. Joel started after her, thought better of it and stopped. The day was brightening though clouds still covered the sky. 
He climbed to the top of a boulder and scanned the trail behind and ahead of them. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.
"Have they given up?" Leah asked when he returned to pull on his boots and saddle the horses.
"We can't count on it," he said. "If it was me, I'd be making sweeps through the country north and south of Salado trying to pick up our trail again."
She nodded. "I'm ready to ride," she told him.
They went on to the north. At midday they saw two riders in the distance heading in the same direction on the Monclova road and, a while later, a ranch off to the east. Joel led the way into the foothills, returning to more level ground only after they were well beyond the adobe buildings.
' Water was plentiful and they were able to keep their canteens full. The grazing for the horses was good and they saw tracks of game near the creeks. A rabbit raced away from them, flushed from his hiding place, yet Joel missed when he tried to shoot him.
"Damn country," he said as he put his pistol back in his belt. "A Godforsaken country, a Godforsaken people."
"Ah, Joel," Leah said, "you're wrong. It's a magnificent country and the Mexicans are a wonderful people. They're so kind, so gentle, so courteous. The men are proud and dashing, the women are beautiful."
"I guess we ain't been meeting up with the same folks."
"Do you know what they call Texans in Mexico? Los barbaros, the barbarians. And the Mexicans are brave fighters, whatever you think. Didn't a few conquistadors conquer millions of Aztecs?"
'That was hundreds of years ago."
"And today, isn't Spanish spoken by more people in
the Americas than English? Wasn't it the Spaniards who brought the first horses here and the first sheep and the first cattle? Wasn't there a university in Mexico City eighty-five years before Harvard was founded?"
"My God, you sound like a damn textbook. Wait, don't tell me, let me try to figure it out for myself. When you heard you were coming to Mexico you found a tutor who taught you the history of the country. Am I right?"
"His name was Antonio Gutierrez. He was born in Vera Cruz. Senor Gutierrez was a perfect gentleman. Dark. Handsome. And he never contradicted me."
"I'm surprised you didn't marry him and make your dream come true."
"Unfortunately he was seventy-two years old and had seven children, twenty-eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He was honest, too; he admitted Mexicans had flaws. He used to say that if you brought five Mexicans together you'd find that none could agree with any of the others and the result would be five different political parties all issuing proclamations."
"They sound like Texans."
"I expect if Mexicans and Texans ever took the time to know each other better they'd find they were more alike than different."
"No they wouldn't. Not by a long sight."
"Even the name of your country is Spanish. Tejas."
"Maybe if these Mexicans would stop trying so hard to kill me I could cotton to them a mite more than I do."
"Maybe they would stop if you Texans weren't trying to take their land away from them. Saying the Rio Bravo is the border of Texas."
"The Mexicans are no better than slaves to their army, their politicians and to Santa Anna. The Texans have set out to free them."
"Perhaps you ought to start by freeing your own." "My own what?"
"Slaves. And don't try to tell me there aren't slaves in Texas because I know there are. There are hundreds of Negroes working in the cotton fields, all of them owned by Texans." "That's different."
"It doesn't seem any different to me. Not by a long sight, as you put it."
Joel reined up. "We'd best be resting the horses," he told her.
She looked sideways at him, slid to the ground and walked away to sit on a boulder. Joel climbed a small hill, scanning the countryside.
"I don't see hide nor hair of them," he said. Leah shrugged, turning her head away. Joel sat on the ground some distance from her. She'd riled him right proper, he told himself, in part because there was truth in what she'd said. He wondered if there was anything worse than a woman who was right as often as Leah was.
He glanced at her. She was still turned away from him so he saw her face in profile. For the first time he noticed a scattering of freckles on the side of her nose. She was as vain as the next woman; she probably used lemon juice to try to take them off. He remembered that Susanna had done the same but to no avail. Joel blinked. He'd thought of Susanna straight and clear, without a cry of pain inside himself. He shook his head. I'm not forgetting you, Sue, he told himself. I'll never forget you, no matter what
Joel stood up and started to speak when all at once he tensed. He eased the pistol from his belt.
"Don't move," he whispered to Leah. "Don't move and don't make a sound. There's a rattler coiled about three feet behind you."
She gasped, tensing. Suddenly she relaxed. "Joel Falconer," she said, "you might be able to trick me once with your imaginary snakes but not a second time. What kind of a fool do you take me for?"
She stood up. The rattler struck just as Joel fired. The bullet shattered the snake's head, its body falling to writhe on the ground at Leah's feet.
Joel blew the smoke from the muzzle of his pistol. "I take you for a damn idiot," he said. "And I call myself the same for fooling you back at the creek."
Leah stood staring at the dead snake. "My hand's shaking," she said. "I can't make it stop."
Joel shoved the gun back into his belt. Taking her hand between both of his, he said, "That was a lucky shot--my not being used to the pistol and all."
"I suppose we can call it quits now," she said, removing her hand from his. "I saved your life at the hacienda and now you've saved mine." She smiled weakly. "I think you'd better help me onto my horse, I feel sort of quakey inside." "Not yet"
Joel took his knife, cut the rattle from the snake and began skinning the reptile.
"I'm hungry as hell," he said, "and I know you must be the same. There's not much to eat here but it'll be enough to take the edge off our hunger." "You actually intend to eat that snake?" "The meat tastes mighty good once you forget what it is you're eating."
"It must be an acquired Western taste. At least I don't think they serve rattlesnake at the Waldorf."
"It's not much different from eating frogs it seems to me. Or the eggs from inside of a fish. Or the eggs getting ready to hatch into chickens or geese. Or whatever it is people in New York City eat."
After starting a small fire, he found two sticks, handed one to Leah, speared a chunk of rattlesnake meat on the end of the other and began to roast it.
"I don't mind helping you cook the snake," she told him, holding a piece of the rattler over the flames, "but I don't intend to eat any."
Joel took his stick from the fire, let the meat cool, then put it in his mouth and used his teeth to pull it from the end of the stick.
"Right tasty," he said.
"Here," she said, holding her stick to him, "have mine, too."
He opened his mouth, removed the chunk of meat and chewed it as they put two more pieces over the fire.
"It's delicious, considering," he said. "You're making a big mistake, Leah."
"I've been told that so often by so many people about so many things I'm beginning to believe my life has been one big mistake after another." When he glanced at her, she said, "Not actually. I'm thinking of my father, mostly, telling me what I should and shouldn't do. Even mother, when it came to Jeffrey."
"Jeffrey?"
"When I didn't marry him. He proposed three times and I turned him down every time. He thought I'd marry him because he was going to take me on a tour of Europe as a wedding present. There must be some
way to see Paris and Rome and the Swiss Alps without having to marry Jeffrey first."
"Here," Joel said, offering her a piece of rattlesnake meat. "At least try it."
She opened her mouth and immediately closed it again. "I suppose a little bite won't hurt. I am hungry." Leah nipped off a piece of the meat with her teeth. She chewed and swallowed. "It's horrible," she said.
Til finish it then," Joel told her.
"No--in for a penny, in for a pound. Let me have the rest."
He extended the stick to her again and she took the meat in her mouth and began chewing.
"I seem to have a penchant for Js," she said, still chewing. "First there was Justin. I don't think he was very serious when he asked me to marry him because later I found out he was engaged to a girl from Jersey City at the time. And then there was Jeffrey, and now you. I don't mean I think you're going to ask me to marry you, because I don't. I don't even mean I like you, though I do, sort of."
He looked at her, feeling the color rising to his face. She put-her hand -on his arm.
"Promise me something, Joel," she said. "At first, when a man asked me to marry him and I said no, and I always have said no, I tried to be kind and only made it worse and he ended up not liking me and I ended up not liking myself. When the time comes for us to part, I want to just walk away and have you do the same. With no regrets. Do you promise?"
"You're talking a heap of foolishness, Leah."
"I often do." She brushed a strand of brown hair from her forehead. Her green eyes glistened in the firelight. "But promise me, Joel. Please."
"'Course I promise. 'Cause there won't be no regrets."
"That's another double negative. You're really saying there will be. But you're right, I'm talking foolishness. Now give me another piece of that damn snake before it's all gone."
After they ate the last of the rattler, Joel clambered up the hill again. From the crest he saw four riders far to the south, and, as he watched, the small black figures grew larger. The riders weren't on the Monclova road, they were following the trail he and Leah had taken.
"They're coming," he told Leah when he returned to the campfire. "They're on our trail, nearing the butte we passed maybe an hour back."
She pushed herself to her feet, put her boot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle. They rode from the camp, heading north.
"We have to find rocky ground," Joel said, "and hope like hell they lose our trail. Their horses are probably fresher than ours and I don't doubt they know the country."
"And they don't have a woman to slow them down."
"I'd ride the river with you any day," he told her.
"I don't know exactly what that means," she said, "but I take it for a compliment"
"It is."
They hurried on at a trail lope as Joel led the way higher into the foothills, across a slate-like rock shelf, up an arroyo and across more rock at the top. For a time they followed an animal trail, climbing until they came out on a height overlooking the valley and the road to Monclova.
Joel stopped and looked down and back. The four
" V
horsemen still followed, closer than before, their pursuit fast and relentless. 
He and Leah rode on across a mesa, plunging down a steep slope on the far side. Bearing to the right, they came to a stream and Joel led the way into the water. Their horses, blowing from exhaustion, splashed downstream for more than a mile. At a spot where rock shelfing came to the water's edge, Joel urged his horse up the bank. 
They went on, intent and silent, knowing their horses were almost spent. The track led them around the base of a hill covered with prickly pear cactus. Above them a lone tree leaned away from the wind, its roots exposed and twisted as they sought out each meager pocket of soil. Again Joel paused to look back. 
"They're closer still." He glanced up at the darkening sky. "Our only chance is to keep ahead of them till it's dark. Then we can go on while they'll have to wait until morning to find our trail." 
"Is he with them?" Leah asked. "The one who means to kill you." 
"Yes. I know him by the way he sits his horse. He's one of the four." 
Joel dug in his spurs. They rounded the cactus- covered hill, riding from between two huge boulders into the open with a vista of a range of dark mountains in the distance. 
A rider on a grey horse appeared on the trail a quarter of a mile ahead of them. The rider stopped, facing them. He wore buckskins, carried a rifle in one hand and had a brown serape thrown over his shoulder. On his head he wore a black broad-brimmed sombrero. . 
Joel held his hand to one side and Leah stopped. As they watched, a second rider joined the first and 
then a third. The three horsemen hesitated as though waiting to see if more men would follow Leah from between the boulders. When none did, the rider on the grey raised his hand and brought it forward. 
"Bandits," Joel said. He heard Leah draw in her breath. 
The three riders charged, brandishing their rifles. Joel wheeled his horse, Leah beside him, and they raced back between the boulders toward the jut of the hill. 
Ahead of them they heard horses' hooves and a sudden shout. Lewis and his men were around the next bend in the trail. They were trapped. 
"Down," Joel called to Leah. "Get off your horse."
They leaped to the ground. Taking his quirt, Joel struck the animals' flanks, one after the other, calling out "Arragh!" and the two horses charged ahead.
He took Leah's hand and ran up the hill between the cactus. Hearing a rip and a gasp, he looked back to see Leah's dress torn and a thin line of blood on her skin beneath the tear. She shook her head, telling him it was nothing, and they ran on, zig-zagging up the hill, sliding and almost falling on the loose rocks and dirt. Finally Joel knelt behind a cluster of prickly pear, pulling Leah to the ground beside him.
Horsemen raced past below them. The ladrones. The three bandits disappeared around the hill. Joel heard a shout, a shot, and a cry of surprise. More shots cracked. Men shouted, horses neighed.
"This is our chance," Joel told her. He took her
hand again, pulled her to her feet and they ran up the hill.
When he reached the crest, Joel glanced back. In the twilight gathering in the valley he saw the flash of a shot and the smoke of gunpowder. He grunted with satisfaction, loping down the far side of the hill with Leah beside him. In a few minutes she was breathing hard and he slowed to a fast, striding walk.
"I can keep up," Leah said, gasping the words.
They half-walked, half-slid down a long slope, heading for the brush at the bottom. As Joel expected, they found a creek cut into the earth like a ragged slash made by a knife. Joel clambered to the bottom where he stood holding his upstretched hand to Leah.
She leaped down and he caught her. Taking her in his arms, he swung her legs up and carried her as he waded into the surging muddy waters of the creek.
"I can walk," she said.
"It's faster this way," he told her. He placed his feet with care on the uneven bottom to avoid slipping on the mud and wet rocks. The water around his ankles was ice-cold and he shivered.
"Joel." She nestled her head on his shoulder, her hair brushing softly against his ear. "I was afraid, Joel. I didn't think I was going to be afraid but I was. When the bandits charged us, I thought I was going to be killed. I thought I was going to die." 
"We're all right now. They've got their hands full back there. The ones who are still alive."
"The creek. Aren't you walking in the water so they'll not find our trail?"
"No sense taking chances. Here, we'll rest for a bit." He put her down on a flat boulder in the middle of the stream and sat beside her with his feet drawn up and his hands around his knees.
"I thought I was going to die." Leah shook her head as though she still couldn't believe it. 
"There's been a few times I've had the same feeling," Joel said. "And it scared the hell out of me, too. There's nothing to be ashamed of in being scared." 
"I'm not ashamed of being afraid," she said firmly. "That's not what I meant. It's that when you think you're going to die you change the way you look at things. What seemed to matter a few minutes before doesn't seem important any more. It changes your way of thinking. There's so much I have to do. So many things I've never done. I don't mean buying clothes, sailing to Europe, or going to dances, they aren't important, Joel." 
"I never said they were." 
"Shut up, let me talk so I'll understand what I'm trying to say." She drew in a long breath and let it out. "People are what matter, Joel. People that love you and that you love. Giving is important, Joel, not taking." 
"It's more blessed ..." 
"Yes, the Bible's right. It is more blessed to give than to receive. I think I've been taking all my life without realizing it. I've been selfish. Who have I ever worried about except Leah Burgess? When I thought of others it was because of what they could do for me, what they could give me." 
"We'd best be getting on," Joel said. "We can make a couple more miles before it's too dark to see." 
"I'm all right now," she said, smoothing the torn fabric of her dress over the cut from the cactus thorns. "You don't have to help me; I'm not going to be a burden to you. Nor to anyone else, ever again." 
He stood up, pulling Leah to her feet "We'll leave the creek and bear off to the right," he said. "We've 
I our canteens and the two pistols. We'll be all right if-" He stopped. She was standing facing him and, as he stared into her green eyes, he started to tell her how pretty they were but he didn't. It would be wrong, somehow, to say anything. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him gently on the lips.
He couldn't remember a woman kissing him like that before. There was no surge of excitement in him but something else, a sense of affection, of caring, of wanting to protect her. When he put his hand on the side of her face he found her skin warm and smooth to his touch.
Suddenly she shook her head.
"Leah--" he said.
Again she shook her head. "No, don't say another word, Joel Falconer, not another word." She stepped down from the boulder into the water and waded to the shore. "Are you coming?" she asked.
He followed her up the bank and they struck off on foot to the right of the stream.
"How far have we come from Salado?" she asked after a few minutes.
"Thirty miles, give or take."
"And how far have we to go?"
"We're maybe three hundred miles from the Rio Grande."
She nodded. "We're going to make it, Joel. I wasn't sure before but now I am. We're going to make it, you and I, there's nothing that can stop us. I have a feeling, a good feeling like I used to get in New York in March or April when the winter finally broke and I ran through the house opening the windows to let the spring come in."
"I get that same sort of feeling just being with you,
Leah. Only I don't know how to put it into words." 
"You're a man who can say a lot without speaking, Joel," she said. 
He stopped, listening. "I don't hear them," he said. "Before, at the creek, I couldn't be sure what with the water." 
The night darkened until, low in the west, a single star appeared over the mountains above a sliver of a moon. As soon as the moon was down they made a dry camp, sleeping side by side. Joel woke first, before dawn, and found Leah's head nestled against his chest. When he leaned to kiss her on the forehead, she stirred in her sleep. 
Watching the rise and fall of her breasts, he pictured her in his mind as she had been when he saw her running naked from the water, her skin glistening, her breasts firm and high, her hips curved and pale. He turned from her as his excitement rose and he hardened. Shutting his eyes he imagined her walking to him, a dress held in both hands to shield her bare body. She opened her arms to him, letting the dress fall to the ground, and he gathered her into his arms, her flesh warm and yielding against his, her lips on his lips, her tongue finding his tongue. 
"Joel." Leah put her head on his shoulder. 
He rolled over so he lay facing her. She raised her arms over her head, yawning and stretching, her breasts straining against the cloth of her dress. He cradled her breast in his hand, caressing it as brought his lips down on her mouth, kissing her, his lips moving hungrily over hers. 
Leah turned her head away, her hand pushing against his chest. He stared into her eyes and knew she could tell how much he wanted her for her eyes widened and he saw fear written on her face. He 
stood up and walked away from her. Only after his excitement lessened did he turn. She was on her feet, watching him.
"Don't be afraid," he said.
"I'm not afraid of any man," she flared. "It's me I'm afraid of, not you." He took a step toward her but she raised her hand.
After staring at her for a moment, he nodded. "We'd best get on our way. I ain't used to traveling by shank's mare and I don't suppose you are, either."
"It doesn't matter to me how we go," Leah said as they struck off to the north. "Not today. Not after yesterday when I came so close to death and escaped, thanks to you. Today I feel like I'm going to live forever. I'm immortal, Joel. I feel so good, so alive."
They walked for an hour by Joel's reckoning, rested, then walked another hour through the foothills with a valley to their right. As the day wore on they saw an occasional horseman on the road below them, Indians sitting on carts pulled by burros, and, in the late afternoon, a troop of twenty Mexican cavalrymen riding north.
By nightfall, Joel was bone-tired. He glanced at Leah plodding silently along at his side. She hadn't spoken in the last hour; there was perspiration on her face and her mouth was set as though she went on only by force of will.
"We'd best make camp," Joel said.
"I can keep going if you think we should."
"No, we'll sleep here and start early tomorrow. We must have made twenty-five miles today."
"Let's just go over the crest of that hill," she said.
Joel nodded.
The country around them was barren and arid, the only growth cactus and, along the creeks, clumps of
chaparral. The mountains were stark, without trees, the peaks standing out sharply against the darkening blue of the sky. 
From the top of the hill they looked ahead and saw a light. 
"A ranch," Joel said. 
The low-lying adobe buildings were a mile ahead of them in a valley hidden among the hills. The single light came from one of the windows of the main house. 
"They have horses," Leah said. "By God, look at those wonderful scrawny horses in the corral, there must be seven or eight of them. I never thought the day would come when I was so happy to see a horse." 
Joel knelt, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. "Here's what we'll do," he told her. "It'll be dark in half an hour or so. We'll wait till they're all asleep before we steal down and make off with two of the horses. If the Comanches can do it with no one the wiser, we can." 
"I have a better notion," Leah said, Reaching into a pocket of her dress she brought out a knotted handkerchief. She undid the knot and handed the handkerchief to Joel. He looked down and saw five gold pieces. 
"Wouldn't it be simpler," Leah asked, "just to buy two horses?" 
He weighed the coins in his hand. "I reckon we could buy a small herd with these," he said. 
"Grandpa Braun told me to always carry a few gold coins with me wherever I went. I never really believed I'd need them till now." 
Joel stood up and shook the coins in his hand. "By God," he said, "we'll risk it. How would you like to sleep on an honest-to-God mattress on a real bed 
tonight?" When she nodded, he said, "We'll tell them our horses ran off or some such fool story and ask if we can spend the night."
"Oh, Joel, yes."
He started down the slope toward the ranch with Leah running after him.
"Not a word about the money," he told her. "I'll buy the horses in the morning. You can't trust Mex--" He looked at her, smiling. "You can't trust people, 'specially if they know you've got gold they'd like to get their hands on."
Barking dogs ran from the ranch and, as they approached the house, they saw a short, fat mustachioed man standing in the doorway with a musket under his arm. Joel raised his hands, palms out, smiling, and Leah spoke rapidly in Spanish. Joel heard the word ladrones repeated several times. The Mexican asked a question and Leah answered, speaking too fast for him to follow.
All at once the Mexican smiled, leaning his gun against the door frame. He opened his arms to Leah and she went to him, letting him embrace her and kiss her on both cheeks. He turned to Joel, still smiling, arms extended in welcome.
"Mi casa es su casa," he said.
"Grooms" Joel told him.
A woman, as tall and thin as the man was short and plump, bustled up. There was another volley of Spanish. The woman smiled, kissed Leah while looking slyly at Joel. She took Leah's hands in her own and led her into the house. The heads of three children, all boys, appeared one above the other at the side of a doorway. The woman shooed the boys ahead of her as she took Leah into another room.
"Good, good," the man said. Motioning with his
hand, he led Joel along a corridor toward the rear of the house. The air was redolent with the smell of food, a savory spicy odor that made Joel's stomach churn. God, he was hungry. 
After seating Joel in a slatted chair, the Mexican held up one finger before disappearing through a doorway. He returned holding a razor, the blade glinting in the candlelight. Laying the razor on a table, he again held up his finger and disappeared. After a few moments Joel heard the whine of a kettle and his host returned with a bowl of boiling water. After putting the bowl on the table, he opened a drawer, brought forth a cracked mirror and hung it on the wall. 
"Good, good," he said. When he smiled his long black moustaches seemed to smile along with him. 
After Joel had shaved and washed under the approving gaze of the ranchero, he followed the other man back through a maze of corridors. The Mexican stopped, shaking his head as though he had overlooked something. 
"Diego," he said, pointing at himself. 
"Joel." He nodded in the direction he had seen Leah going. "She is named Leah," he said in his rudimentary Spanish. 
"Good, good." Diego threw open a door and stood to one side. 
The room beyond was lighted by a single candle burning steadily on a table set for two. Steam rose from platters of chicken and corn, tortillas and rice. In the center of the table was a bottle of red wine. 
Diego, gesturing like a napkin-wielding waiter might, motioned Joel forward. When he sat at the table it was all he could do to keep himself from 
picking up the food in his fingers and starting to eat He looked at Diego and said, "Leah?" 
Diego held up his finger and nodded. 
The far door opened and Leah came into the room. Joel stood up so suddenly the chair fell to the floor behind him. He drew in his breath in surprise. 
Leah was dressed in white, the satin of her gown gleaming through the fine lace that fell in tiers from her waist to her feet. Her head was crowned with a white mantilla and cascades of white lace covered her hair. 
Joel glimpsed the Mexican woman behind Leah. The woman smiled and then she and Diego were gone, shutting the door behind them. 
"You're beautiful," Joel said. 
"She wanted me to wear her dress. It was shipped from Spain years ago." 
Leah sat across from him and began ladling food onto his plate. "I'm simply famished," she said. 
Joel took a leg of chicken in his fingers and bit into it. "Buerw," he said appreciatively but he ate sparingly, knowing that too much food after so little could lead to disaster. As he ate, he sipped from the red wine in his glass. 
Leah raised her glass. "To a safe crossing of the Rio Bravo," she said. 
"The Rio Grande," he corrected her. "And to Grandpa Braun." She smiled, her face glowing in the candlelight
"What did you tell them?" Joel asked. 
"Why, what you suggested. That we were pursued by bandits and lost our horses. That after wandering all day we came on their ranch." 
"Tell me the rest What else did you say? They 
wouldn't treat just any lost Americans like this. All this food, the wine, that dress." 
"I may have told them a little fib," Leah admitted. "I might have made them think we were married. That we were married and not really married, if you know what I mean." 
"No, I don't know." 
She sighed. "I told them we'd been married by a padre two days ago but we hadn't... That we weren't married yet in the true sense of the word." 
Joel didn't know whether to be angry or whether he should laugh. He laughed. He put his head back and laughed harder than he had in months. 
"I didn't think you'd mind. I don't think God will be displeased with me, do you? We have more to eat than we might have had otherwise and we have this wine to help us celebrate. And it's made the Covaru-bias's--that's their name--happy because they were able to give us our wedding feast. So no harm's been done, has it?" 
"I reckon not." Joel poured Leah and himself another glass of wine. Raising his glass, he said, "To the new-married couple." 
When Leah smiled, he noticed her face was flushed. 
"I am not accustomed," she said slowly, picking her words with care, "to drinking the fruit of the grape. In fact, I have a suscept--" She paused, frowning. "--'tibility to wine," she finished triumphantly. "In fact . . ." She stopped, frowning again. "In fact," she repeated, "it makes me want to sing." 
"I'd love to hear you sing." 
Leah stood, holding her hand up for silence. 
"It is my honor,' she said, "nay, my pleasure, to present to you this evening one of the leading ladies 
of the English stage, the honored and esteemed singer, Miss Leah Burgess-Braun."
Joel leaned back in his chair, applauding.
"You probably noticed," Leah whispered from behind her hand, "I use a stage name so as not to embarrass my father." She raised her glass and sipped the wine. "I love my father," she said, "even if he is rather stuffy."
"You were going to sing," Joel said.
Leah nodded, putting her glass on the table. "In honor of my American friends who have been so kind to me on this tour," she said, "I will now sing a popular American song." She nodded as though to her accompanist and began.
Yankee Doodle went to town A-riding on a pony, Put a feather in his cap And called it macaroni.
For a brief moment, for Joel, it was two years before and he was riding from San Antonio to his farm singing the same song. He blinked, saw Leah bowing, and he clapped his hands.
"Encore, encore," he called.
Leah sat down hard in her chair. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "there will be no encores tonight." She put her hand to her forehead. "Joel," she asked, "is the room really spinning around and around?"
"No. it sure ain't," he told her.
"Then it must be me. I'm afraid you'll have to help me."
He stood up, blowing out the candle, and lifted her from the chair. She laid her head against his shoulder and he felt her hair tickling his nose. Through the
satin of her dress he felt her thigh, firm and rounded. 
Joel carried her to the door, opening it and stepping through into a long dark corridor with a lighted doorway at the far end. He walked slowly to the door, pausing just inside the room. A candle burned on a table beside a high narrow bed on which a lace coverlet had been thrown over the blankets. The room's two windows were both shuttered on the inside. 
Going to the bed, Joel laid Leah gently on top of the coverlet before he returned to the door and closed it. Walking to the table, he leaned down and blew out the flame, throwing the room into darkness. When he crossed to the bed he found Leah sitting up. 
"I'm all right now," she told him, her voice husky. 
He reached behind her, beneath her hair, found the button at the top of her gown and undid it. His fingers went to the next button and the next and the next. 
"What are you doing?" she whispered. 
He didn't answer. When he'd unbuttoned the last button, he pulled the top of the dress forward over her arms. He took the hem of the skirt in his hand and tugged. Leah slid from the bed and he heard the soft rustle of satin and lace. Kneeling, he found the dress and mantilla on the floor and carried them to the chair by the door where he hung them neatly on the back. 
As he returned to the bed, he stumbled over a leg of the table. 
Tm here," Leah whispered. 
He reached out toward the sound of her voice, his fingers, on the lace coverlet, feeling her body beneath the blanket. . 
"Wait," Leah told him. "Lie beside me, on top of the blanket" 
Joel pulled off the coverlet and let it drop to the floor beside the bed. He stretched out full length on the blanket, his hands going to her hair, brushing it from her forehead, smoothing it. He touched her cheek, his fingers gently explored her chin and neck and found the blanket drawn up over her shoulders. 
Lying on his side, Joel leaned forward to kiss her, finding her lips soft and yielding under his. She opened her mouth and he could taste the last of the wine on her lips and on her tongue as it met, twisted and entwined with his. 
Through the blanket he felt the racing of her heart Excitement surged inside him and he hardened against her. Raising himself above her, keeping his lips on hers, he pulled the blanket down, his lips following to trace the hollow at the base of her neck, going lower to trail kisses between her naked breasts. 
Her hands came from beneath the blanket, pushing between their bodies. At first he thought she meant to hold him away from her but then he realized she was undoing the buttons of his shirt. Her hand slid across his bared chest, her fingers twisting his hair, her hands sliding the shirt down his arms. 
Joel rolled from her and stood beside the bed, his hands going to the buttons at the top of his pants. He heard a sound from the bed. 
"Let me," she whispered. 
Her fingers went to his waist and along his pants to the top button. She grasped it, twisting, undoing that button and the next and the next until his pants were held up only by his erection. She undid the last of the buttons and his pants slid to the floor. 
He felt her fingers flutter to him and away, to his sex and away again. He took her hand in his and she pulled him to her, to the bed. He lay beside her. The 
blanket was gone and his hand roved down across her nakedness, to the curve of her hips, to her thigh.
"Kiss me, Joel," she said as she drew him to her.
She returned his kiss, her breasts soft beneath his chest, her leg warm beside his. She drew her head away, breathing rapidly.
"My breasts," she said. "Kiss them, both of them."
His lips went to her nipple and he kissed first her right breast and then her left.
"Oh, yes," she whispered, "kiss them, kiss them both. I like the feel of your mouth on me. Your tongue, yes, kiss them with your tongue. Oh, Joel, kiss me, let me feel your lips on my body, on all of my body. Your hand. What are you doing, Joel? Oh, Joel, oh, Joel, yes, yes, yes."
He covered her mouth with his own, his hand moved lightly on the warm wetness of her sex. He caressed her there, his fingers gently sliding back and forth, now outside her, now inside. A trembling gathered within her, her body shaking yet holding back, like a roiling flood, dammed too long, seeking release.
Spreading her legs, he slowly worked himself into her and she moaned, her mouth turning from side to side, kissing him, her lips leaving his, kissing him again, her teeth nipping at his lips, her tongue darting out to meet his. His hands slid down her body, beneath her hips to her buttocks, lifting her to him until the motion of her body, the thrusting rise and fall, matched his as her legs twined tightly around him.
Her whole body trembled and she pulsed against him. Joel cried out, thrusting within her, and she held him to her as she shook with spasm after spasm. Suddenly she relaxed, though her head still turned from side to side. He closed his eyes as he seemed to
rise higher and higher, exploding in ecstasy, a feeling of complete peace flooding his being as his body, still locked in her embrace, completely relaxed.
She trembled, her body rising to meet his again, and she cried out, "Don't let me go. Hold me, Joel. Hold me as tight as you can."
He put his arms around her and drew her to him, her legs tightening around his, her arms wrapped around his body, her fingers digging into the flesh of his back. She kissed him fiercely and then let him go, turning from him so she lay facing away from him. She lay like that for a long time before she turned to lie on her back. He nuzzled his face against her hair, kissing her ear.
"It was Maria's wedding dress," she said, "and now I suppose you could say it was mine, too."
Joel sat up. "What?" he asked. "Maria? Maria who?" He felt as though the hand of God had gripped and twisted his heart.
"Maria Covarubias, of course," she said. "She told me she was married twenty years ago this month."
Joel lay back beside her.
"If you can," Leah said, "you might tell me about her."
"Tell you about who?" Joel asked, still thinking of Maria McLeod and the Valley of the Moon.
"Your wife. Susanna."
He drew in his breath and let it out with a sigh. He said nothing for a long while. When he began to speak he told her first about his trip on the steamer, how he had met Grover Dunne, about the girls' school at Alton, and his courtship and marriage. He told her of their farm near San Antonio and the murder of his wife, sparing himself nothing.
When he finished, Leah drew him to her, quietly,
tenderly, gently, letting his head rest on her breast as she stroked his hair. After a time her hand stilled; he felt the steady rise and fall of her body beneath his head. Raising himself on one arm, he tried to see her in the darkness but could not. He kissed her, and she stirred in her sleep but did not waken and soon he, too, slept. 
Joel woke with a start, sitting up. He knew he had heard a sound, a strange noise, a noise he shouldn't have heard. The bedroom was dark; Leah slept at his side. Sensing danger, he swung his feet from the bed. 
Deep within the house he heard a muffled cry. 
Joel lit the candle and dressed hurriedly, thrusting a pistol under his belt.
"Joel?"
Leah, stretching and yawning, sat up in the bed behind him. Seeing him clothed and armed, she tensed.
"Get dressed," he told her. "Get your pistol. Stay in this room, barricade the door, don't let anyone in."
"What? Why?' She let the blanket fall and he saw the white fullness of her breasts in the light from the candle.
"I'm not sure. Something's wrong in the house. Do what I tell you while I find out."
He inched the door open, listened, and stepped into the corridor. The casa was dark and quiet. He walked quickly and silently along the hallway past closed doors, stopping in front of the door to the dining
room. The room where he and Leah had shared their wedding feast the night before.
I shouldn't have left the bedroom, he told himself. With its shuttered windows and heavy wooden door I could have barricaded myself there and held off ten men. I can still retreat, it's not too late. No, damn it, I'm through running, through hiding. 
There was no sound from inside the dining room. Joel lifted the latch and pushed the door. It creaked open. He stood with his back pressed to the corridor wall, waiting for the flash of a gun, a triumphant shout. He heard nothing.
With his cocked pistol in his hand, he eased into the dark room. An arm gripped him around the throat, cutting off his breath. He struck backwards with his elbow and heard a grunt. The arm around his neck relaxed as fingers gripped his gun hand and twisted. He broke free from the hold on his neck but his pistol dropped to the floor, clattering on the tiles.
Joel lashed out with his free hand, felt his fist strike flesh and bone, heard a cry of pain. The grip on his wrist loosened and he yanked free. He hurled himself to the floor and lay still, hearing heavy breathing from behind him. He crawled along the floor to a wall and along the wall until he touched the heavy legs of a table.
A light flared. Crouched behind the table, unarmed, he saw shadowy shapes. There were two of them, then. A pistol flashed and a bullet slammed into the wall above his head. They'd spotted him.
Joel rose, gripping the underside of the table, lifting and hurling it at the two shadowy figures. As the men leaped clear, Joel reached along the floor for his gun, his hand grasping the barrel and, turning the
gun, closing over the grip. A man lunged at him. Joel fired and the man screamed and fell.
As the room reverberated with the sound of his shot, Joel recocked the gun, at the same time kicking out at the table holding the candle. Another gun roared, the bullet zinging off the floor beside him. His foot hooked the table leg, the table tilted, the candle fell to the floor and went out. He fired in the direction of the last shot, then rolled to one side. No shot answered his. Again the room was quiet, the air acrid with the smell of gunsmoke.
He heard a footstep on the far side of the room, fired. A boot kicked his wrist, sending his gun skittering across the floor. He reached out, caught his attacker's leg and pulled. As the man fell, Joel leaped on top of him. The butt of a gun struck the side of his head. Pain exploded in a flash of red and he slumped to the floor.
He blinked. Hazily, he saw a light. Charles Lewis held the candle while another man, a Mexican, stood over Joel with a pistol aimed at his forehead. A third man lay on the floor, dead.
Joel cursed himself. He'd been wrong. There'd been three of them, not two.
Lewis righted the overturned table and placed the candle on the top. He slid a long-bladed knife from a sheath on his belt, holding the blade in front of him so the metal glinted in the yellow light.
"Tie him," Lewis told the other man.
Lewis made a short slicing motion with the knife. "I will do to you," he told Joel, "what the Texans did to me. Do you know what a eunuch is, Senor Falconer? If you don't, you should take pains to find out because that's what you'll be. If you live."
The Mexican knelt behind Joel, a rope in his hand,
looping one end around Joel's right wrist. When Joel tried to struggle up from the floor, the Mexican slammed his head down against the tiles. Dazed, Joel felt the rope tighten on his wrist. All at once the Mexican held.
Joel looked up to see the man staring at the doorway. Lewis half turned to look.
Leah stood in the open doorway. Damn it, Joel thought, why didn't you stay where you were safe?
She held a blanket in front of her, folded over her arms. Joel saw her bare legs beneath the blanket, her light brown hair falling over her bare shoulders, her white upper arms. Was she naked?
Joel's gun was on the tiles a few feet from him. He tensed, ready to hurl himself across the floor to retrieve it.
Leah let the blanket fall. Her naked body glowed in the candlelight, the rich swell of her breasts, her nipples, the shadowed curves of her hips, the triangle of brown hair. Joel stared not at her body but at the pistol in her right hand.
She fired and the man beside Joel twisted backward, his face smashed, a raw red wound where his nose had been. Lewis brought his hand back, his knife poised to hurl at Leah; Leah pulled the trigger again and the gun misfired; Joel grasped the pistol on the floor, firing up at Lewis just as the knife left his hand. Leah screamed.
Joel scrambled to his feet. Lewis stood holding his shattered right wrist in his left hand. Blood dripped onto the tiles at his feet. Leah stood just inside the doorway staring at the knife embedded in the door an inch from her face. 
She knelt and picked up the blanket, holding it in front of her again.
"Go get dressed," Joel told her.
She stared at him, at the pistol in his hand. Joel backed to the door and levered the knife from the wood as Charles Lewis watched, his face expressionless. Joel could see the pain from his wound reflected in his narrowed eyes.
"Do what I tell you," Joel shouted at Leah.
He heard her sharp intake of breath and then the sound of her bare feet padding away along the corridor.
Joel glanced from Lewis to the two men lying dead on the floor. He'd meant to torture Lewis, El Diablo, to make him suffer everything Susanna had suffered. The bile rose in Joel's throat and he gagged. He pointed the pistol at Lewis's heart and pulled the trigger.
The passengers embarking on the sailing ship Lone Star turned to stare at the couple walking up the gangplank.
She was a striking woman, tall and brown-haired with lively green eyes, the same color as the green of her high-neck, crinolined gown. She wore a silk bonnet that matched her dress and, as she boarded the ship and looked up at the sailors in the rigging, she twirled a parasol on her shoulder with a gloved hand. There could be no doubt that she was a lady. 
The man beside her was harder to place. Dressed in a fawn-colored suit with flaring trousers, he wore a gold watchchain looped across a red vest. His roughhewn face was shaded by a broad-brimmed tan hat. 
He looked uncomfortable. When the woman leaned toward him to fluff his yellow cravat, he looked even more uncomfortable. 
"My father needs shipping agents in the west," Leah was saying. "Here in Galveston, in St. Louis, and in New Orleans. You'll be able to travel and make a name for yourself at the same time. And your headquarters will be in New York. You'll love the city, there's nowhere in the whole world quite like it."
"Leah," Joel said, "hold up for a minute and let me talk."
"I want to show you the city. We'll ride the horsecars, we'll eat at Lorenzo's, we'll sail the steamer up the river, we'll..."
Joel put his hand gently across her mouth.
"I'm not going with you to New York, Leah," he said.
She stared at him.
"I'd be a fish out of water," he told her.
"No, wherever you go you'll never be that. In New York you'll be a big fish in a big pond."
"I'm afraid that you'd soon have me mounted on a board in your father's house. With a plaque underneath saying 'Texas--1843."
"I know why you're saying that, Joel. Just because I helped you pick out your clothes at the haberdashery."
"Except for the vest," Joel said.
"Yes, you can claim credit for the vest. The red does not go with the yellow, not at all, but you would have your way." She put her hand on his sleeve. "Oh, Joel," she said, "I knew you wouldn't come with me to New York. I've expected it all along."
"You could always stay here in Texas," he told her.
"Me? In Texas?" She looked past him, westward, to the town and the rolling wooded countryside beyond. "Can you imagine me making soap, Joel? Plowing
the fields? I could do it if I had to, you know I could. Yet I don't have to. That's not my fault, nor yours, it's just the way it is, Joel."
"You're one hell of a woman, Leah," he said.
She glanced at him, then looked away to where bales of cotton were being lowered into the hold.
"I think," Leah said, "no, I know that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me." She pulled off her glove and put her hand to his cheek. "I'll never forget you, Joel Falconer. Let me tell you a secret," she said. "I wasn't as lightheaded from the wine as I made out I was--at our wedding dinner at the Covarubias ranch."
"I'll never forget you standing in the doorway as naked as the day you were born."
"I had to shoot that man, I had no choice. I never want to think of it again. Thank God the Covarubias were all right."
"The wedding night was mighty fine," Joel said. "The honeymoon was even better."
"A honeymoon lasting all the way from Mexico to Galveston."
"All ashore!"
Joel saw a ship's officer standing beside the gangplank with a speaking trumpet to his mouth.
"Kiss me, Joel," Leah said urgently. "Kiss me. Don't say anything, just kiss me."
He took her in his arms, his lips meeting hers in a short, tender kiss. His arms tightened around her but she pushed him gently away. He turned and walked to the gangplank, pausing at the rear of the crowd of departing visitors.
Glancing behind him he saw a man raise his grey top hat to Leah.
"Texas?" Leah said in answer to the man's question.
"From Texas? Good heavens, no, I'm from New York. I've been visiting my uncle, the Spanish consul in Mexico. My cousin, Mr. Falconer, he's a Texan, was kind enough to see me aboard. Texas is such an uncivilized country, don't you agree?"
"I certainly do," the grey-hatted man replied.
"Of course," Leah said, "New York will be almost as hot this time of year. We always go to the shore in August for a month. To Ashbury Park."
"Quite so," the man said. "I know the Bensons who have a summer home there."
"Sir?"
Joel jerked around to see the officer staring at him. The gangplank was deserted.
Joel nodded. As he was stepping from the ship he looked back for the last time. Leah was walking away from him, the man at her side nodding as she talked. Leah glanced over her shoulder, her eyes met Joel's and, though he couldn't be sure, he thought hers glistened with tears.
Looking neither right nor left, he strode down the gangplank and away from the quay along a dusty street. He stopped at the first grogshop and pushed open the door, smelling the familiar odors of whiskey, cigar smoke and sweat. Standing at the bar, he drank a glass of whiskey, straight, then set his glass down for a refill.
He heard the door open behind him. The men in the shop glanced up in idle curiosity. Joel, staring straight ahead, heard his name.
"Joel Falconer."
He turned and saw Grover Dunne in the open door. Grover walked to the bar and clapped Joel on the back.
"I'll be damned," he said, "if it ain't old Joel Falconer
all got up like an English milord. I seen you on the Lone Star, me boy, and I said to myself, 'If that ain't Joel Falconer, it's sure his spitting image.'"
Grover slapped his hand on the bar. "This one's on me," he said.
"How have you been, Grover?" Joel asked.
"Can't complain. How have you been, that's the question. Been doing pretty damn good, seems like. Always manage to land on your feet, don't you? That's the way it is, some folks got the luck and some don't."
Joel saw Grover looking him up and down. "I sold my land near San Antone," Joel said. "The young lady bought these duds, though. Sort of a going-away present."
"You always had a way with the ladies, didn't you? Right from the first time I met you on the steamer on the Ohio. Me having only one arm kind of makes them shy away. I expect I shouldn't complain about what the Comanches did to me. After all, they might of killed me."
"The Comanches?" Joel asked.
"I'll swear the arrow I took in my arm was poisoned," Grover said. "Why else would the arm putrefy so quick?"
"The way I remember, it was your rifle misfiring that wounded you."
Grover raised his glass to his lips and drank. "Your memory's mighty short then," he said. "Mighty short."
Joel shrugged. "I reckon it is," he said. "A lot's happened since the Santa Fe Expedition. I never expected to see you again after we surrendered at Mier."
"Maybe you surrendered," Grover said. "You and Bigfoot Wallace and Colonel Fisher and the rest of them. Grover Dunne didn't give up as easy as all that.
I had to fight my way to the river, through the whole of the Mexican cavalry it seemed like, but I made it. Swam to the other side leaving three or more dead greasers behind me."
Grover called for another round. When it came, he raised his glass.
"To Texas!" he said. "To Statehood!"
They touched glasses and drank.
"It won't be long now," Grover said, lowering his voice. "The Republic will be no more than a dream, a legend. Can you keep a secret, Falconer?"
"I reckon I can." 
"The United States is raising an army," Grover said, "across the border in Louisiana, getting ready for the time Texas joins the Union. That fellow I never cottoned to, that Kendall from New Orleans, he wrote a book that's got them all riled up in the States about the cruelty of the Mexicans. When the time comes they're going to march to the Rio Grande and any Mexican that gets in their way is going to be one dead Mexican." He poked Joel in the ribs. "Do you get my meaning, bucko?" he asked.
"I think I do."
"There's gonna be a war along the Rio Grande," Grover said, and before it's over we'll see the Stars and Stripes and the Lone Star flag raised over Montezuma's palace in Mexico City. There'll be glory for all them that's man enough to fight, glory and booty, besides. I'm leaving in the morning to join up, I was booking my passage when I saw you. Why don't you come with me, Falconer? It'll be just like it used to be, me and you riding together, just like when we were with the Pioneers heading for Santa Fe, just like it was at Mier. What do you say?"
Despite himself, Joel was tempted. He closed his
eyes, heard again the bugle sounding reveille, saw the long line of mounted men crossing the prairies, smelled the woodsmoke of the campfires. It was a life fit for a man. 
But not the only one. 
"No, Grover." He shook his head slowly. "I expect I'll do some ranching." 
"I wondered about you when I saw you in that getup," Grover said. "Being around women makes a man soft. You ain't afraid of the Mexicans, are you?" 
Joel's hand tightened on his whiskey glass. Then he relaxed and smiled. 
"No," he told Grover, "I'm not afraid. What you and I want are two different things. Somewhere along the trail you took one fork and I took another." He called to the bartender. "One last round, Grover," he said. "On me." 
Grover nodded. When the drinks came they clinked glasses. 
"To the way it used to be," Joel said. 
After they drank, Grover clapped Joel on the shoulder. He crossed the grogshop to the door, his spurs clinking. 
"They can make you strong, too," Joel said. 
Grover turned. "Who?" he asked. 
"Women," Joel told him. 
He sat watching Grover leave the shop, wondering if he'd ever see him again. Grover had changed, become sharp-edged, as prickly as a cactus. Mean-spirited. Hayes Archer had been sharp-tongued but never mean-spirited. Joel wondered what he'd be like himself as the years passed. Not like either Grover or Hayes, he hoped. 
He knew what would have happened if he'd sailed 
on the Lone Star. He'd have become like the Indians he'd read about, the ones Columbus took with him from the New World back to Europe. Those Indians had caused quite a hubbub at the Spanish court, or so the story went. Dressed in finery--savages outfitted like kings--they were curiosities to be gawked at.
That's what would have happened to him if he'd gone with Leah. When Grover came into the shop he'd thought, for a second, that it was Leah returning for him. He'd sort of hoped, at least a part of him had, that it was Leah. She was a damn fine woman who kept a man on his toes, kept him wondering what she'd do next. Every time you thought you had her figured out she turned the tables on you. He had to admit it got kind of tiresome at times.
Sour grapes? Joel shook his head. He could have gone east with her, she'd wanted him to. She'd given him that, he'd always know he could have gone to New York with Leah Burgess.
He suspected he'd meet her again. In a few weeks they'd be hundreds of miles apart, yet someday, when he least expected it, there she'd be with a smile on her face and a devilish gleam in her eye.
She'd probably be married by then. Probably? Course she'd be married, he had no doubt about it. She herself had said she'd marry and guessed she'd accept the wrong man. Not that he, Joel, was the right one. Far from it. They both realized that.
Then why was he sitting here sipping his whiskey and thinking of Leah? Because he was a fool, just like she'd always claimed.
A fool in more ways than one, not just about women. What did he really know? He'd had enough schooling to be able to read and write and figure, but how much
did he know about what made men and women act the way they did? Damn little.
He wanted to learn. One thing Leah had told him still stuck in his craw. The Mexicans, and the Spaniards before them, she'd said, were really the civilized ones; it was the Texans who were the barbarians. He'd been turning that notion over in his mind and, though he didn't believe it and didn't think Leah really did herself, still there was some truth in what she said.
Where did the complete truth lay? He meant to find out. He'd have to do some reading but he liked to read and did whenever he got the chance. What should he read? Could he trust the history books to tell him the truth? He'd have to read the different sides and then make up his own mind. Wasn't that what a man had a mind for?
Kendall's story of the Santa Fe Expedition was a place to start. Kendall had seemed a fair man, no matter what Grover thought, who'd tell the tale the way he'd seen it. And Joel had been there so he'd be able to judge. Kendall's story would surely differ, though, from the one he might write if he ever had a mind to, or from Grover's or Hayes Archer's. Or from Juan Navarro's, if it came to that.
If the Comanches told the same story around their campfires, and there was somebody to write it down, he wondered if he'd recognize it as being about the same journey into the wilderness.
What if Salazar told his story? Or Armijo? They'd sure as hell be different too.
Where was the truth then? Because, by God, you couldn't spend your whole life looking at a question from first this direction and then that. You had to decide what was right and then do it. A man had to
move on, do his work, make a life for himself. Studying was all well and good, and he meant to study and find the truth as best he could, but there came a time when a man had to fish or cut bait. 
The bartender held out the bottle. 
Joel shook his head. Tossing a coin on the bar, he left the grogshop. From the boardwalk in front he saw the billowing canvas of the Lone Star as she sailed into the Gulf and, as he walked along the quay, the ship grew smaller and smaller in the distance. 
Here he was trying to sort out the truth about the Expedition, about the Mexican, the Texans and the Indians, when he didn't even know the truth about himself. 
What kind of a man was he? What did he want? 
He found it easier, somehow, to say what he didn't want. He was tired of the fighting and the killing, one death leading to the next. If that made him a coward, so be it. Sometimes killing was necessary, as shooting El Diablo had been. Yet so many were dead. Juan Navarro, the Lieutenant at San Miguel--he'd forgotten his name--Hayes Archer, the men killed at Mier, those executed at Salado, all the others along the way, Texans, Mexicans, Indians, good men and bad. 
Why had they died? For an idea, some of them, for liberty. Others died for Texas or to prove themselves or to win glory and gold. Or for no good reason at all, by chance. His time for fighting was over; he'd done his share. He wanted more than the fleeting comradeship of men under arms, he wanted a steady pulse to his life, wanted to be able to choose the path he followed.
The ship was out of sight now. Joel walked back toward the town with the sky arching over his head, 
the big, open sky. He meant to live in big sky country--cities weren't for him. He wanted land he could call his own, land he could make something of before he passed it on to his children.
For he meant to have children. A boy like Jaime; a girl like the girl Susanna must have been. Joel sighed, recalling his last morning with Susanna when he kissed her goodbye, expecting to see her a few hours later. He'd never seen her alive again.
Susanna was special, would always be special. She had been the first woman he'd ever loved and he loved her still. He would always love her and remember her and honor her in his heart. For as long as he lived.
The best way to honor her wouldn't be by spending the rest of his life worshipping her memory. The greater part of his life, he hoped, was ahead of him. The time had come for him to put down roots. The Bible was right, there was a season for all things and this was his season to work, to begin to make something of his life. He had the money from selling his farm so he could do what he pleased, could tell any man to go to hell. But that wasn't what he wanted.
He wanted to make a new beginning. And not alone. A man was alone most of his life as it was, even in a crowd or in ranks, alone with his thoughts, with himself. He wanted to share with someone, a woman who would be his partner, the two of them standing together, against the world if need be. A strong woman, one to be at his side through good times and bad, one to make a new life with.
He had promised he'd go back and he meant to keep that promise. It seemed so long ago. Had it been real? At times the winter months he'd spent near Santa Fe had come to seem like a mirage and he still thought
of the Valley of the Moon as an oasis in a world gone mad. He'd have to find out whether the Valley was real. Whether she was real...
Two months later Joel crossed the creek at the ford below the grove of cottonwoods. The leaves, trembling in the westerly breeze, were a bright autumn yellow and Joel paused to look at them, awed by their beauty. 
He rode up the gentle slope into the Valley of the Moon with the grass around him golden under the late afternoon sun, the mountains to the west a deepening purple. Soon, he knew, the sheep would be herded down from the high meadows to the lowlands and soon the blue northers would roar across the plains to bring the cold and snow of another winter. 
Fall was a time to reap; winter a time to prepare; spring a time of new beginnings. The circle of the year, the seasons always changing, always different, yet always the same, with spring returning each year to offer another chance, if not to you, then to the sons and daughters who would follow you. 
Joel breathed deeply of the crisp, pure air. * 
As he rode to the ranch house, chickens scattered out of his way and dogs barked. Tomas saw him first and raised his hat in salute. Joel swung from his horse and embraced him. 
He heard a shout and looked up to see Jaime running from the shed behind the house. 
"Joel, Joel," he called. 
The boy was bigger than he'd remembered, almost a man now. Even so he gripped him under the arms and swung him aloft. 
"Joel," Jaime said, "I didn't think you were ever coming back." 
"I had to," Joel said. "I gave my word." 
He reached into the pocket of his buckskin jacket and brought forth a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. "This is for you," he said. 
Jaime tore the paper open to reveal a box some three inches square and an inch deep. He lifted the top from the box. 
"A watch," he said. "And a gold chain." 
"You'll be needing a timepiece," Joel told him. "Have you kept good care of mine?" 
Jaime pulled his father's watch from his pocket and handed it to Joel. 
"It's running slow," he said. "As far as I can tell." 
Joel nodded. The door opened and he looked past Jaime and saw Maria standing there with her hands on her hips, watching them. After letting his hand rest for a moment on Jaime's shoulder, he walked to the door and looked down at her. He'd imagined this moment, how he'd take her in his arms, then kiss her. But Maria made no move toward him and his impulse to embrace her faltered and fled. 
"I said I'd come back," he told her. 
"Is that why you're here?" Her voice was sharp. "Because you promised." 
"I came because it was what I wanted to do." 
"I know you care for Jaime," she said, her voice softening, "and the Valley." 
"That's true," Joel said, "but you're the reason I came. You, Maria." 
"You were here before," she said, "and you could have stayed." 
"I'd made a vow and I had to see it through. That's over now, thank God; it's over and done with." 
"I remember telling you once that you were the kind of man who was always passing through. Are you just passing through now, Joel?" 
"No," he said, "I want to stay. I've a little money, enough for new breeding stock for the ranch. I want to make this my life, if you'll let me." 
He reached into his pocket and brought out a box slightly larger than the one he'd given Jaime. "This is for you, Maria," he said. 
She opened the box. "It's lovely," she said, cupping the red rose in her hands. She bent her head to the flower. 
"The bush it came from is with my gear," Joel said. "I was thinking we'd plant it here by the front door. It will be for us, Maria, you and me. If, God willing, we have children, we'll plant a new rose bush for each of them." 
Maria's lips twitched and he thought she was trying not to smile. She took him by the hand and led him into the house, through the sala to a smaller room beyond. Esperanza looked up, smiled at Joel, and slipped from the room. A baby crawled to them and Maria scooped the girl into her arms. 
"You can plant that next rose bush whenever you wish," she said, smiling slightly.
Joel stared at her.
"Yes," Maria said, nodding. "Her name is Estrella. Estrella Falconer. The name means star."
"She's a Texan then. You named her for the Lone Star Republic."
Maria held Estrella to Joel and when he took the baby clumsily in his arms, Estrella began to cry. Joel felt a sudden, fleeting pang of regret as he pictured the ship under full sail entering the Gulf, the ship carrying Leah away from him.
"Toss her up in the air."
"What?" he asked.
"She likes to be thrown up and caught," Maria said.
Joel shifted Estrella and held her over his head. The baby stopped crying and stared down at him. He jiggled her a little and she laughed.
He turned to Maria, holding his daughter in the crook of his arm.
"She's happier to see me than you are," he said.
Maria reached out her hand, he drew her close, putting his free arm around her.
She laid her head on his shoulder. "I have never been so happy," she whispered.
Joel felt the beat of her heart against his body, a strong, steady rhythm--the rhythm of his life to be.
SIXTEENTH IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA SERIES
THE FRONTIER HEALERS
In the chaos that followed the Civil War, a turbulent tide of men and women surged across the Mississippi to escape the unspeakable horrors of a broken and humiliated South. Some chose to cast their lot in the sprawling, raucous mining town of Virginia City. Among them was the beautiful half-breed, Yvonne Beaunais, and her daughter, Tangeree. Yvonne's burning ambition was to provide her daughter with the education that would open up the tantalizing new world of medicine that had been denied her.
Together they administered their healing herbal remedies to the sick and dying. Together they defied the threats of Matthew Lassiter, who ran Virginia City like a fiefdom. And together, they fought against heavy odds to improve the quality of living in a brutal frontier town--and sought their own private fulfillment in love and life.
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SEVENTEENTH IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA SERIES 
THE 
BUFFALO 
PEOPLE 
Among the ex-slaves and black freedmen who made the perilous journey West after the Civil War in search of new life, love and freedom was a man of heroic strength, who was to change forever the face of the Colorado Territory. Birdwell Jacobs was the son of a white planter and a slave woman of noble Ashanti lineage. He rose to become a leader among the "buffalo soldiers" of the U.S. Cavalry, fighting gallantly in the brutal struggle with the great Indian tribes. Then he met and fell in love with the bold, beautiful Jody Robb--in a towering passion that challenged all barriers and taboos--forever sealing his destiny. 
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EIGHTEENTH IN THE MAKING OF AMERICA SERIES
THE FAR ISLANDERS
Hawaii in the late 19th century was a land of oppression and hardship for those who came under the maniacal reign of King Kalakaua. Each day brought new atrocities, each year brought new, inhuman laws, stripping men and women of their birthright.
Missionaries, traders and adventurers came to Hawaii in this era in ever-growing numbers, some offering salvation and some scheming to ravish the fair islands of their riches. Among them came Lorrin O'Lee, a dreamer of mighty dreams, who, with the beautiful, mysterious Kaiulani, fought the overwhelming tide of evil that menaced this troubled paradise.
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