the Burning Hills (1956) (4 page)

"Eat... there is no time for talk."

He ate hungrily while she removed the bandage and examined the wound. It looked little better. She bathed it and replaced the bandage with a clean cloth.

When he had finished the stew she took the pot to the spring and washed it, then returned with a piece of cotton cloth wrapped around some tortillas and some strips of jerked beef. "No fire," she warned, "they look for you."

She started to rise but he caught at her skirt. She looked down at him, her face sullen, revealing nothing.

"Who are you? Where do you come from?" he asked.

"Do I ask this of you?"

"I want to know whom to thank."

" Tornado."

"At least your name."

She said nothing, standing patiently until he released her skirt. She arose with a lithe movement and turned away but he craned his neck to look after her and said suddenly, without conscious thought, "You ... you're beautiful!"

"I think you talk too much... you sleep." Yet when she reached the ruined wall she stopped. She did not turn her head but when she had stepped over the fallen stones she said, "Maria Cristina," and was gone.

He listened for some further sound of her going but heard nothing but the trickling of the water. She was risking her life to come here. To most of the Sutton-Bayless crowd the fact that she was a woman would mean nothing beside the fact that she was an enemy.

Jacob Lantz was the man he feared. Lantz was a man with a reputation. He had been one of the mountain men, had scouted for the army against the Indians, had hunted and trapped where his will took him. He had lived much with Indians, not only the Utes who were his mother's people but with Navajo and Apache as well. He would watch the girl, knowing she lived nearby and knowing she was an enemy. The wounded man would need food and care and if he was to get it at all, it must be from this family. And Jacob Lantz was not an easy man to outguess.

"Maria Cristina."

He whispered the name, liking the sound of it in his ears. Spanish, certainly. Yet she moved like an Indian and there was about her an innate dignity as typical of the Indian as the Spanish. There was that dignity and a pride of person out of keeping with her surroundings. These things impressed him.

He checked his guns again. There could be no certainty for him. Every moment was a moment of danger. Each hour might be his last. He was leaving no tracks, yet the coming and going of the girl could not long remain unnoticed.

The food he now had was sufficient for a couple of days if he ate sparingly and he knew he must. There was no telling when she could return. Or if she would.

Whatever path she used must be well concealed, yet the fact that his hiding place was known at all worried him. If found, he would have no chance at escape. It was simply a matter of killing until he was himself killed. He could only hope they would come when he was awake.

He lay back, staring up at the rocks. He was very weak and the slightest movement tired him. It must be days, even weeks before he would be fit to travel. And that was long, much too long. Again and again his thoughts reverted to Maria Cristina. A long time ago, in another life, he remembered women who had such poise and bearing. But that had been in the Tidewater region of Virginia when he was a boy.

What could her blood line be? The Conquistadores? Or that even older lineage, of the Toltec kings?

At times he heard riders in the canyon or on the mesa above, so he knew the search continued. And again he watched the evening come, watched the shadows grow long and waited for that lone star above the canyon's rim.

Only tonight there were two. One hung in the sky, the other was lower down, somewhere on the mesa across the way; but this was a fire, the campfire of watching men.

Jacob Lantz was beside the fire and it was seven miles from the ledge on which Trace Jordan lay wounded. Jack Sutton was there with him and a half-dozen others. All were tired and the older men disgusted. The younger ones found it a welcome relief from range work but all were determined. Only Jacob Lantz was tasting the bread of bitterness.

For the first time in years he had lost a trail he could not again find. Jordan had eluded him, either escaping clear out of the country or hiding himself securely.

The trail had simply vanished. Nor was it possible to say exactly where it had vanished. Sutton did not believe Jordan had ever mounted the mesa and Hindeman was inclined to agree. Lantz was positive Jordan had reached the mesa but could not explain why he believed it. He had seen only two fresh tracks atop the mesa and neither could be identified as those of the hunted man.

Jordan had lost blood, much blood. Yet he had kept moving and at no time had he failed to use his head. Such a man was dangerous.

Lantz knew nothing of Jordan but he could read a trail and he knew that Jordan knew wild country and how to cover a trail. And he used none of the obvious methods. Nor had he done the same thing twice.

The country through which they moved was wild and broken. It lay upon the border between New Mexico and Arizona to the north and Sonora and Chihuahua to the south. Water holes were few and the country south of the border was without population for more than fifty miles into Mexico.

In the past there had been bitter fighting along the border but only Pablo Chavero had lasted against the hard-fighting Sutton-Bayless outfit and then he too had gone down. Yet if the hunted man were to get aid from any source it could only be that one family.

"Vicente's yellow," Mort Bayless said.

"That girl isn't," Hindeman said.

"We'd see it if she helped him," Joe Sutton argued. "This country's all wide open."

"Then why don't we see him?"

Lantz ignored the conversation, considering the girl. She had no love for any gringo, that much he knew. But most of all she had no love for any Sutton or Bayless. The question was: would she risk all they had by incurring the Sutton anger?

She might...

He set himself to watch the girl. Vicente, he soon realized, was worried. It showed in the young Mexican's restlessness and in the way his eyes kept searching the hills. A man of lesser perception might believe he knew something but Lantz surmised the truth. Vicente wanted no trouble and with the Sutton riders in the hills trouble could come at any moment

Lantz settled himself among the sparse growth above the canyon. He had his glasses with him and he could watch the movement around the house. His was an infinite patience. Neither hours nor days had any meaning when he was on the hunt and his eyes missed nothing.

At dusk he watched Maria Cristina and Juanito bring in the sheep. They were penned near the house, the big dogs were fed and smoke lifted lazily from the chimney.

Vicente came out and chopped wood. Lantz would see the axe rise, then fall and some time later he would hear the sound, mellowed by distance. The setting sun edged the shadows with somber orange as of distant fires blazing. Jacob Lantz lit his pipe and waited. Now would be the time ...

Yet nothing happened. The fingered pinnacles grew tall, the deeper canyons swallowed darkness. Maria Cristina came from the house and he poised like a hound at a vagrant scent but she merely checked the corral bars and returned inside. And then that canyon too was lost in darkness. Only the two visible windows glowed. The night grew cool.

Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps they knew nothing. Yet he could go closer at night.

At dusk Trace Jordan rolled from his blankets and, taking his time, crawled to the edge of the cliff. From behind the screen of brush he looked into the canyon.

For the first time he could appreciate the situation. Below him the canyon was less than a hundred yards wide but within a short distance it spread out into a flat. The canyon was actually a hanging valley that dropped off, some two miles away, into the vast flat that lay on both sides of the border and it was upon that flat where Sutton-Bayless cattle grazed.

In the foreground, almost in the center of the widest part of the canyon lay the Chavero homestead. The canyon at that point was well grassed and along the lower slopes of the canyon where it was not too steep to be grazed he could see the telltale signs of sheep-fat, antelope bush and other plants that were excellent stock feed.

Once his eyes seemed to catch a flicker of movement on the steep canyon slide across the way. After watching for a long time he decided he was mistaken.

He lay watching the canyon until the night was wholly dark, unaware that on the opposite slope Lantz was also watching. Feeling a faint chill, he crawled back to his blankets. He lay a long time, sick and exhausted by his efforts, before he could muster the strength to eat a tortilla and a small bit of jerky. He took his time, savoring the food and chewing a long time to make it last.

The girl was taking a great risk and he had no right to permit it, yet he had little choice. Obviously the Suttons believed him in the vicinity or the chase would long ago have gone on. And how long would this hiding place remain unfound? Suppose from the cliff opposite someone glimpsed a darkness where his shelter was? Or detected some chance movement of his?

Maria Cristina was pitting her wits against the cunning of Jacob Lantz and it was unfair.

Given an even chance, his brick-dust horse would outrun anything in the country but the canyon was undoubtedly watched and his own strength was not up to a hard ride. He could not stand the pounding of a hard ride over these trails and he had still to find the killers of Johnny Hendrix and to take from them, if possible, the price of his stolen horses.

He was awake with the sun. He ate, then drank deep at the spring. He flexed his muscles, tightening and relaxing them, working his fingers to keep them supple. When the sun came up he moved from the overhang to lie in the warmth and sunlight. Later he started to crawl to the cliff-edge but gave it up. He was too weak.

The big red horse fed on the rich grass at the back part of the ledge. He was invisible unless he got to the edge of the brush along the rim.

The day drew on slowly ...

Whatever Maria Cristina had used in that poultice, it had taken the inflammation from his wound. When he examined it before bathing, he saw it looked much better, although still an ugly gash.

From his saddlebags he got his glasses. They were a strong pair of binoculars purchased at an army post, handy in hunting stray cattle or wild horses. He studied the terrain to know it better, trying to learn the trend of the canyons ... it was well along in the morning when his eyes caught a momentary reflection on the cliff opposite.

Well below his own position, it was high above the sheep. When he had watched the place for a long time he decided his eyes had been mistaken or it had been sunlight reflected from a bit of shale dislodged by some scurrying rabbit or pack rat. There was nothing there . . . and then he saw it again.

It was a scant movement that alerted him. He swung his glasses back over ground previously examined.

The spot seemed to offer no concealment, yet there might be some shallow place in the ground where a man might lie. A man who would be invisible until he moved. And then he saw him, a lean old man with sharp hatchet features, a man who could only be Jacob Lantz. He lowered his glasses, knowing the danger of looking too directly at a man. Such men had a sharp awareness that warned them when they were watched. Maria Cristina was with the sheep. The boy was off gathering sticks for the bundle they would take home behind the saddle at night. Did she know Lantz was on the cliff? Trace tried to think of some way to warn her without at the same time revealing his own presence and it was impossible. He would only wait and trust to the girl's innate good sense.

He tried to judge the distance to where Lantz lay. Four hundred yards? It was across the canyon and down toward the Chavero home ... no, closer to six or seven hundred.

He got his rifle and checked the chamber to see if a shell was ready, then put it aside. He sighted down the rifle barrel first, trying to estimate the drop of the bullet. Shooting downhill could be deceptive. That might come but it must be as a last resort.

Twice Maria Cristina got to her feet. Each time she walked purposefully and each time Lantz moved swiftly along the cliff to keep her in sight. Once she gathered wood, another time it was squaw cabbage for an evening meal. Returning to the shade, she sat there a few minutes, then got up and walked directly to a place under the cliff where Lantz stood but where she would be invisible to the old tracker.

Puzzled, Jordan tried to imagine her purpose. It came to him suddenly. Maria Cristina knew Lantz was watching and was deliberately tormenting him!

There was now no possible way in which he could see what she was doing and to a man of Lantz's mind there could be nothing worse. She might actually be with the hunted man, she might be sending him a signal, she might be hiding food for him.

On the hillside Lantz was restless but the girl sat quietly sewing under the cliff. Yet she had been there only a few minutes when the young man on the paint pony rode up. This, although Jordan did not know, was Vicente.

Vicente drew rein near where Maria Cristina sat and waited for her to speak. When she said nothing, Vicente said, "They are still here."

She made no reply. Maria Cristina loved her brother but his weakness angered her.

"Do you know where he is?"

"Who? Of whom do you speak?"

"The man they seek. This Jordan."

"What do I know? Until now I did not even know his name."

Vicente stared uneasily at his sister. She was simple like Rosa, his Navajo wife. He understood Rosa, he also understood his mother. This one was different. Perhaps it was because she had married that gringo and gone away to live in cities ... but no, she had always been a strange one.

She would walk out with no man, yet when she went to town she swished her skirts at them. This was not good. Sometime he would have to kill somebody over her. Why did she not take a man like other women? A woman without a man was nobody.

And she knew something about the man they hunted. The knowledge frightened him. If Jack Sutton or Ben Hindeman found they had been helping the wounded man, they would kill all of them, every one. Or they would kill Maria Cristina.

If they tried that, he, Vicente, must fight. And he did not want to fight. He was only one man and there were many of the others.

Maria Cristina knew what her brother was thinking. She even knew what Jacob Lantz was thinking and she had known since early morning that he was on the hillside. She had known he would be there and, knowing all this canyon, she soon knew exactly where he was. It was not a problem yet. The man up there had food and there was water. If necessary he could manage at least two days alone.

When she had first come upon him she believed him dead. Had she left him alone then, he would now be dead and no problem at all. And he was a gringo.

This stranger was nothing to her. She had no liking for any North American. Only her husband ... he had been kind, even when drunk. Always a gentleman, too. Even now, remembering all his weakness, she had a queer respect for him.

That one up there ... he was not weak. Nor was he soft. She remembered his guns. They were cared for. His jeans were polished where the holster chafed ... this was a man who had lived with a gun.

She turned her thoughts from him. He would be all right, that one. When his strength returned he could ride. That would be an end of him ... and good riddance.

Vicente was restless. He sat the worn saddle and rolled a cigarette. He liked the sunlight on his back. He did not know they were watched but knew they must be. He drew deep on the cigarette and Maria Cristina looked up at him. There was only that to be said for him. The way he sat a horse and wore a gun. "I think you too much frighten, Vicente. You ... who are good with a gun. I think you better than Jack Sutton."

Vicente was so astonished that he rode away. It was the first time Maria Cristina had said one word of praise to him. But better than Jack Sutton? No ... no, it could not be. Yet the thought remained. She believed he could do it.

All that night and the day following Trace Jordan lay quiet and rested. He nibbled at his food, drank a lot and slept. His thoughts reverted to Maria Cristina. There was a kind of strong fierce pride about her that got into a man's blood, no matter how sullen she might seem.

At dusk three riders appeared on the crest, out of the canyon below. Lantz slipped out of his hiding place on some signal and went to meet them. Jordan watched, but without the glasses, for the sunlight was shining into the shelf and he was afraid a reflection, even from behind the brush, might warn of his presence.

The sheep were starting home. He looked again quickly. Maria Cristina was not with them!

Lantz finished his talk with the men and started back. Jordan reached for his Winchester, an automatic gesture. Yet almost at the point where Lantz could have seen the boy was alone with the sheep, he turned back for a final word.

A stone rattled and Jordan turned swiftly. Maria Cristina had come around the ruined wall. Her breath was coming fast, her eyes were wide. She had a small package of food. She turned to go and he caught her hand.