the Burning Hills (1956) (13 page)

The Indian girl who helped in the kitchen was throwing out some water. She looked quickly at Trace Jordan and started for the house.

"Seen Maria Cristina?" he asked.

The girl looked at him curiously. She shook the last few drops from the pan. "She gone. She gone maybe two hours."

"What?"

"She take horse. She say goodby, all. She ride away."

"Where'd she go?" he demanded.

The girl shrugged. "Where? I don't know. She say nothing. Just go."

Swearing, Trace ran for the corral. He hastily threw a saddle on the big red horse and stepped into the leather. Without a backward glance, he started down the trail.

Maria Cristina would go home, of course. She had been obviously disturbed by the fact that nothing was known of Buck Bayless or Wes Parker. Bayless she knew and he did not worry her. Wes Parker was another of the crowd who ran with Jack Sutton and Mort and the more Jordan thought of it, the more reason he could see for her worry. Yet it was not that alone and he knew it.

Maria Cristina had carefully avoided being alone with him since their arrival at Slaughter's. She had evaded any chance of a private talk without seeming to do anything of the kind. Whatever she was thinking he did not know, but obviously she did not intend to share her thoughts with him.

Several times he had caught her looking at him, wide-eyed and serious, yet she always looked away and her manner had been cool.

The trail led through Guadalupe Pass and there was a chance he could overtake her there. He knew there was a spring in the Pass itself or near the opening of the Pass and there were several springs just north of the Pass at different points. Beyond the Guadalupes the country was unfamiliar to him except for that area covered in his flight.

He rode steadily into the morning and from time to time he saw her tracks. Six or seven miles from the Bancho she stopped at a tank to water her horse, then pushed on. She was holding a steady gait and he saw no other evidences of travel but those made by her pony.

Word was out that Apache raiding parties were riding, which was enough to stop all travel. It was no time for a lone man to be on the road, to say nothing of a pretty girl. Yet before he could even see the cleft that marked the Pass, he saw a rider on a bay horse coming toward him.

Trace Jordan slid the loop off his gun butt and eased himself in the saddle, holding his pace. The rider came on, a little slower.

When not more than two hundred yards separated them, Jordan slowed his horse. At the same moment he recognized the rider as the man who had warned him away after drinking with him in Tokewanna.

"Howdy." Jordan drew up. The man's face was pale under the tan. "I'm Joe Sutton," he said, "and I'm not huntin' trouble."

"Then there will be no trouble."

Joe Sutton took the makings from his pocket and began to roll a smoke. "You ... did you see anything of Ben? And the others?"

"I saw them . . . Ben's at Slaughter's and he's alive. I think hell pull through,"

The match broke in Button's fingers and Jordan leaned over and held his cigarette to Button's.

"Mort?"

"He's dead ... so's Old Jake but the Apaches did that, not me."

He explained, taking his time, first what had happened at the rocks and after. He told of the ride back to the border with Ben Hindeman.

"Pass anybody on the trail?" he asked then.

"No." Sutton looked thoughtful. "Saw some tracks, though. They showed up first inside the Pass so whoever made 'em must have turned off."

"What happened to Buck Bayless and that fellow Parker?"

Joe Sutton shrugged. "Parker is dead ... Bayless is hurt but not bad. The way I hear it, they went to the North to try to make that Chavero kid tell where his sister went. They ran into Vicente."

"And...?"

"I reckon we had Vicente figured all wrong. He wasn't about to back down. So Buck says. Vicente told Wes to travel an' Wes didn't take to it We buried Wes next morning."

There was still a thing to be settled. Jordan wanted to be riding on, but there was no time better than now. There had been too much killing and Joe Sutton seemed a reasonable man.

"Ben Hindeman said the fight's over. I'm getting my horses back."

"Ben's the boss." Joe Button was relieved. "Fool thing, anyhow." He threw down his cigarette, half-smoked. "Jack and Mort ... yes, and Wes too. They got us into more trouble than we could get out of."

Trace Jordan reined his horse over. "See you," he said and put Big Red down the trail. Being a cautious man, he glanced back but Joe Sutton was riding on.

It was almost sundown when he found her. Maria Cristina had made camp in a little wooded draw off the Pass. She got up from the fire as he rode up, her face without expression. He swung his horse alongside the fire.

"What did you ride off for?" he demanded irritably.

"I do not run. I go home." She knelt beside the fire, knelt suddenly as if her knees had weakened. She began fussing over the food she was preparing. In the late afternoon light her face seemed unnaturally pale.

He swung down. "Damn it, you didn't have to run off! You could have said something!"

"Why? Who I say something to?... To you?"

"I don't want you going off like that," he protested. "This is no time for a woman to be traveling alone."

She did not look up, adding sticks to the fire. Then she added sullenly, "I am all right."

The words he had been thinking on the trail were gone. Somewhere he had lost them. He told her of Vicente and Wes Parker but she would not look at him. She put coffee in the water and got up.

He stepped around the fire and took her by the arms. "Maria Cristina, I don't want you going away. Not ever again. I want you with me."

She turned on him, looking up into his eyes, and there was no longer sullenness there, or anger. "You don't know what you say."

"I know all right --" She tried to draw away from him, her eyes suddenly wary, half-frightened. "No ... you take your hands off." She tried, ineffectually, to twist out of his grip.

"Don't do that!" he said sharply, angrily. He drew her swiftly into his arms, her body coming against his. She looked up at him, her eyes very black and suddenly burning, almost hungry.

Then desperately, fiercely, she fought him. She fought to twist free, to get away. He held her, then slowly and inexorably he brought her mouth around to his.

She twisted her face away, fighting like a panther to escape, then suddenly, fiercely, she turned her mouth to his and their lips met and clung.

He held her, saying nothing. "Just ain't halter-broke," he said gently, "but you'll do. You'll do all right." She stood quiet in his arms and the big red horse moved off a few steps and fell to cropping grass. He had his own degrees of patience and was becoming accustomed to the oddities of human behavior.

Later, when most of the coffee had boiled away, Jordan drank it, black and strong.

She looked at him, her eyes soft in the gathering dusk. "You know one time I say I don't think you ever make it?"

"I remember."

"Well... now I think maybe you make it."

She laughed then, a laugh teasing and tender, a soft laughter that lost itself with the campfire smoke in the brush along the canyon's wall.