Apache Squaw Page 9

  ‘Just thinking to myself.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Want another drink? Plenty left. I guess we’ll break for an hour in a half hour. Rest up us and the horses. Then move along to reach your spread well before sundown.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m fine. I wouldn’t want you worrying about me, Mister Herne.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for that sun, Mrs. Parsons, those words would have froze me clean to death.’

  She didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. ‘When are we going to stop? I’m tired. Didn’t get that much sleep last night. Nor some of the nights before.’

  ‘Soon be back in your own bed. Nothing like that, is there?’

  She pulled up at the reins, staring him straight in the face. ‘If I told you what it was like being in my own bed, with my own husband, then I doubt you’d believe it.’

  There wasn’t an answer to that, so Jed simply heeled his stallion on ahead, seeing a jagged set of hills, like gapped teeth, about a mile ahead, trailing away towards the south and the Mexican border, where they grew into towering peaks, eventually spilling over into the Rio Grande.

  ‘Break there. Pass goes around it to the north, but I been this way before. There’s an easy way through.’

  ‘No Mescalero war parties?’

  ‘One Eye wasn’t leadin’ what you’d have called a war party back in the old days. Last twenty years or so, and things have changed with the Indians. I know it’s only six years since Yellow Hair George gotten himself chopped into minced meat up at the Little Big Horn, but the fighting’s over. The great days when some of the plains tribes could put a couple of thousand men into the field and not notice the loss. Gone forever.’

  ‘Not so as I noticed, Mister Herne.’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ that what happened to you was a church picnic. But back when, things was different. Some tribes had plenty of white women. Nobody’ll ever know how many. Some wagon trains just disappeared round Arizona. Men butchered, and the women and kids taken. Five years from now, and folks comin’ this way’ll hardly credit what happened to you.’

  ‘Not a thing I’ll ever forget.’

  ‘No. No, I guess you won’t.’

  The foothills offered some protection from the sweltering heat, and Herne was glad to lead the horses to a patch of shade in a steep valley. If there had been any problems with the local Indians, he would have ridden a hundred miles to avoid going through such an obvious place for an ambush. But all was quiet to the east.

  The only problem there was the occasional raid across the border by Mexican bandits, after the easy pickings of the Texas and New Mexico ranges. Fat cattle to be cut out and driven back into their own country. Sometimes the Rangers would catch a few, but most times they gotten away free.

  It had been a great relief to the whole area when reports came back that the most ferocious of the raiders, El Capitan, had been killed by the local federates a few weeks earlier.

  Herne came and lay down in the shade, leaving the horses tethered. Mrs. Parsons had unbuttoned the blouse as far as decency would allow. Maybe even a couple of buttons further, and was lying stretched out, resting her head against a smooth boulder, in one of the few clumps of grass. Eyes closed.

  ‘How you feelin’, Mrs. Parsons? Not far to go now.’

  ‘I know that, Jed. And I’m feeling just about like you’d feel in my place.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘I am sorry. Doesn’t change a thing. I’ll still go on acting the way I did before, but I truly am sorry for you.’

  Emmie-Lou sat up, rubbing a finger across the front of her skirt, hitching it up a little to show something of her leg above the top of the riding boot.

  ‘Jed?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’re a very handsome man.’

  ‘And you’re a damned pretty woman, but that don’t and won’t alter a thing.’

  ‘I’m not saying it will. Your wife must have been very lucky.’

  ‘I told you ‘bout her on the way in from West Wind Canyon. All I’m tellin’. We met and we married and now she’s a year under the ground.’

  ‘Now it’s my turn to say that I’m sorry. Guess that I’m so filled up with pity for myself that I forget that there’s other folks have a bad time too.’

  For a time they lay in silence. Herne closed in with dark thoughts of his past. The woman locked into nightmares about her future.

  Suddenly, breaking the silence of the pass, Emmie-Lou sat up decisively. ‘Jed Herne, I want you to lie with me.’

  ‘Won’t make...’

  ‘I know that.’

  She stood up and moved to kneel by his side, resting a hand on his shoulder as gentle as the wing of a butterfly. He was moved by her youth, and on an impulse he laid his hand on top of hers, covering it. Squeezing it softly.

  ‘Jed.’

  ‘Mrs. Parsons. I figure we ought to be movin’ on. Less somethin’ happens we both regret.’

  ‘Both of us?’

  He sat up, so that their faces were close together. He could smell the clean scent of soap on her skin, and saw the softness of her cheeks. The eyes, so young, and so like the eyes of Louise. His heart gave a great leap with the pain of remembering and the loneliness that sat at his shoulder on the trail that wound endlessly to its inevitable end.

  ‘Jed.’

  ‘Emmie-Lou. You have to believe me. I…God knows but I’d…I’d like to. How the…? How can I when I’m goin’ to take you back in a few hours? I’ve got to do that, and you have to...’

  ‘I do understand, Jed, my dearest. I do. And I know what will happen. We’ll never ever meet again, so...’

  He looked deep in her eyes, and reached up, stroking her cheek with the tips of his fingers, brushing back a strand of fine hair from her forehead. Let his hand slip around the back of her neck, slowly tugging her forwards, closer to him.

  Closer.

  Her lips were dry, the skin cracked from the heat of the sun, tasting of salt. Hesitantly, like a deer coming to a pool, Herne touched his tongue to her lips, feeling them part, and her teeth nibble at him. Sucking him into the moist cavern of her mouth, while her arms went round him, tugging him still nearer to her.

  Emmie-Lou rolled back, making Jed follow her, keeping their mouths locked together, her fingers gripping him by the shoulders, digging through his shirt to gouge at his back.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she moaned, her eyes closed.

  He kissed her again, letting his right hand inch towards the open neck of the blouse, sliding inside. Tracing through the trickle of sweat between the breasts, and cupping her body. Feeling the nipple spring up against his fingers like a tiny animal. She pushed him over to his side so that she could free one hand, touching him through the thick material of his trousers, panting through clenched teeth.

  ‘Please, Jed. Do it.’

  Instinctively he looked all around them, checking the trail ahead and back. Ranging over the tops of the ravine, making sure the horses were well tethered. Taking the Colt from the holster, and laying it on the ground near to his hand. Only then did he walk cautiously across again to where Emmie-Lou lay, legs stretched apart, a look on her face of soft arousal. She had unbuttoned the blouse to the waist, and he saw that she wore nothing beneath.

  The breasts were jutting and firm, tipped with fire amid the pools of shadow. She smiled up at him as he hopped around pulling off his boots, rolling his trousers down over his ankles.

  ‘My, my. A real gentleman. Taking off your boots first. Don’t forget the hat as well, Mister Herne.’

  He grinned at her, tossing the Stetson on the ground with the trousers and boots, making sure again that the gun was ready to his hand.

  ‘None of your damned insolence, Mrs. Parsons.’

  ‘Or what’ll happen to me, sir? I hope you aren’t going to hurt me with that dreadful great weapon I see you have.’

  It was the first time that he’d seen her behave with anything
like a natural happiness, as if she was determined on a final fling before returning to the darkness of her marriage. For Jed it was a change to feel relaxed and roused with a woman. Since the death of Louise there had been so little time.

  So much killing.

  He knelt for a moment beside her, looking down at her, thinking how young and vulnerable she was. At that moment he was a hair’s breadth from selling out the contract and riding to pay Parsons back the money he’d been paid.

  Then he thought about living with himself for the next God knows how many years if he did. Just for a few minutes of lust and a girl with a baby face who’d picked the wrong man to marry. His own peace of mind wasn’t worth it.

  ‘Please, darling Jed.’

  She smiled up at him, and he lay by her, kissing her tenderly on the lips, while his right hand delved under the long skirt, fondling her leg. Sliding higher, between her smooth thighs, until he reached his destination. Emmie-Lou was wearing a pair of thin cotton drawers, with ribbons tying the legs.

  It only took a moment to untie them and push his hand up and through. Touching her, and finding her warm and ready for him. As his fingers made contact, she moaned and writhed, thrusting her hips hard against him, closing her legs on his wrist with surprising strength, grinding them together.

  ‘Oh. That feels so good, Jed.’

  She touched him, her hand cool on his hot swollen flesh, squeezing him and rubbing her fingers around him. He closed his eyes, trying to contain his passion.

  ‘Jed?’

  He probed at her, using his fingers to bring her to fever-pitch, and he kissed her on the mouth, feeling her gasping and moving uncontrollably under him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can’t we…?’

  ‘We can’t do anything after this but ride on a few more hours. You want to stop this, Emmie-Lou, then I’ll be damned sorry, but I’ll understand. I want you.’

  ‘I’ll give you everything you want.’

  ‘Hell. I’ve been offered a whole lot of things in my time. But never everything.’

  ‘All right, Jed. I won’t ask you again. I guess there isn’t any point.’

  ‘There isn’t. Once you sell out, then you keep on that way. I haven’t gotten as old as I have to finish up like that. Sorry, Emmie-Lou.’

  ‘Then love me a little, Jed. I never gotten much lovin’, and once Lishe gets me back there, then I guess I’m not ever goin’ to get much.’

  ‘Maybe it won’t be that bad,’ said Herne, knowing men well enough to be sure that what she said about her husband was dead to rights.

  ‘So at least take me back home with the taste of a real man on my lips, and the feel of some real loving deep inside me. Love me up a damned storm, Jed Herne. So that I’ll remember it forever and a day.’

  She was smiling at him as he lay close, but her eyes glistened with tears. He touched his lips to her face, tasting the wetness and the bitterness of her sadness. Then the closeness of her body roused him, and he thrust his knee between her thighs, and entered her, feeling her jerk as though she’d been struck.

  ‘My God, yes! Oh, yes. Yes.’

  The first time was too quick, both of them clawing their way to a frantic climax. As he lay on top of her, taking most of his weight on elbows and knees, the sand warm to the touch, Herne felt himself stirring again.

  ‘Already? I didn’t know that a man could...not so soon after.’

  He didn’t answer, concentrating all his attentions on keeping what he’d won. It had been so long that he wasn’t sure that he could. And the thought that maybe he couldn’t crowded out his confidence. Emmie-Lou began to move against him, straining up her mouth to kiss him, her tongue probing in between his teeth, keeping him roused.

  He felt the fluttering tightness of her stomach muscles as she readied herself for the last surge of passion, and he managed to join her, both of them collapsing panting and exhausted among the shaded boulders.

  ‘Jed?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I…No, it don’t matter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just that…’ she leaned across and kissed him, very gently, on the lips. ‘Just that I wanted to thank you. For what you done back in the canyon. And for what you just done. I’ll truly never forget you.’

  He kissed her on the cheek, getting stiffly to his feet, brushing red sand from knees and hands. Reaching for his clothes and gun. Looking round from habit at the skyline, and finding it reassuringly clear.

  ‘Emmie-Lou. I want you to know that I am truly sorry for all this…’

  She stood up, as pink and naked as a peeled shrimp, and hugged him, her body pressed hard against his. ‘Jed Herne, you are one Hell of a man.’

  ‘I’ll not forget you, either.’ And, after a decent pause for the emotion of the moment. ‘I’ll never forget you, Emmie-Lou. Not ever.’

  Which was a lie.

  Before he met and married Louise, Jedediah Herne could not have counted either the men he’d killed or the girls he’d laid. Occasionally a face would stand out, but they were just blurs on a long, long trail. Bar-girls and faro-dealers in saloons from California to the eastern sea-board. Faces to smile at and bodies to be satisfied. And dollars to be handed over for the privilege.

  Maybe he’d remember Emmie-Lou Parsons for a while.

  Maybe.

  The rest of the ride back to Lishe’s spread was as calm and peaceful and uneventful as Herne had hoped it would be. The sun scorched them from a sky as clear as the sea off Big Sur, with only a hint of a wind to keep life tolerable. Herne rubbed at his chin where traces of stubble were appearing. There hadn’t been much time for shaving that morning at Fort Gilman.

  ‘I guess ‘bout another two miles. Maybe three. Should be seeing your husband’s riders soon.’

  ‘They don’t come out this way often. It’s poor land, and that ridge yonder cuts it off from the grazing pastures to the east.’

  Since their rest during the hottest part of the day, their relationship had changed. Despite all her loving words, Emmie-Lou had grown more bitter as they neared her home, returning to the theme of begging and asking and threatening and weeping. Just for him to give her a chance.

  ‘After what I done for you, Jed.’

  ‘You lay back and took your pleasure of me, Mrs. Parsons, and I was grateful then. I’m still grateful. And the answer is still the same.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  The ridge she mentioned was a jagged spur of rock writhing out from the main body of the southern foot-hills, spreading in a barren tangle towards the Mexican border. There was no clear way through it, but a trail bent easily across the top, winding among the boulders like a broke-back rattler.

  From the top it was possible to look clear over the last couple of miles to the Parsons’ spread, set like a black mausoleum in the center of a red featureless cemetery.

  Neither of them spoke over the last mile to the top of the ridge. Emmie-Lou prayed for some kind of miracle. Jed tried to figure out the best way of sending the two and a half thousand dollars to where it might do most good. The greater part of it to England and the rest to buy him a better horse.

  It hadn’t been an easy mission, but when you gotten to be the best around, then not many of them were. Another fifteen minutes and it would be all over.

  ‘There it is, Mrs. Parsons. Home again.’

  The house squatted silently, like a great black toad on a strip of orange silk, and Emmie-Lou shuddered at the sight. Reined in and sat there for a moment, breathing deeply. Trying to capture the moment and hold it. Stretch it out for ever.

  ‘Best move on.’

  ‘Yes.’

  From where they sat, they could see the land to the east, with the spine of rock straggling away to their right, northwards. And the semi-desert behind them that they had ridden the further range of hills shimmering in the ferocious heat. Only to their right was the view obstructed. By the mountains that folded on and on towards Mexico.


  Herne set his spurs to the horse, walking it forwards, when he heard the click. A sound that froze him in the saddle, wondering how many? Where? And who?

  ‘Hold it very still, Señor, or we will pick you from that horse like a flea from a whore’s belly.’

  Slowly he turned round, and there they were. At least a dozen. Maybe more. Mexican bandits, most wearing sombreros, except for the fat one with the Winchester aimed at Herne’s guts, barely ten yards away. He had on a battered naval officer’s uniform cap, its peak decorated with strips of peeling gold braid.

  ‘El Capitan?’ asked Herne, though the question wasn’t really necessary.

  ‘Si.’

  ‘I heard you were dead.’

  The Mexican laughed, showing a mixture of rotting teeth and gold fillings. ‘Not me, Señor. But, very soon, you will be. You have the word of El Capitan.’

  And he thumbed back the hammer of the Winchester.

  Chapter Ten

  They rode fast, making it hard for Herne to stay in the saddle with his wrists tried behind him. But the trail was good, with no loose stones to make a horse slip. The bandits kept close, swirling at the center of a dust-cloud that billowed about them as they headed south. Towards the Rio Grande.

  The Parsons’ spread was far behind them, and Jed guessed that they’d aim to cross the border by sun-down, safe away from any American pursuit. They were within three or four miles of the Mexican line when El Capitan held up a hand and they all reined in.

  Although his knowledge of Spanish wasn’t that good, Jed knew enough to be able to understand what was going on. Rather than cross and get caught by darkness, they decided to go to a hide-out a mile along the river valley, up a box canyon.

  El Capitan saw that Herne was listening to their conversation and heeled his horse across alongside him. ‘You speak our language, amigo?’

  ‘A little. You’re camping near here?’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘Then back to Mexico in the morning?’

  The chief laughed, and Herne recoiled from the dreadful stench of rotting teeth that gushed from his mouth.

  ‘You hear that, my friends! This gringo thinks we go back to Mexico tomorrow.’ Looking at Herne closely. ‘We look maybe stupid?’ Jed shook his head. ‘No. Then why we want to get killed?’