Twisted Hills (18 page)

“They are all like this one?” the Mexican leader asked Lilith, turning the empty rifle in his hands.

All right, now I see,
Sam told himself. He breathed a little easier, just starting to understand what was go-ing on.

“Yes, they are all in the same condition,” Lilith replied. “Used very little, some still with packing grease in their chambers.”

“Good,” the Mexican said. He handed the unloaded rifle back to Sam. With the wave of a thick hand, he gestured the riders forward. They hurried on foot and filed past Sam and the woman, through the wagon's rear door. Sam turned, Lilith and the Mexican flanking him, and watched three men throw aside a striped Mexican rug and lift a trapdoor with eager hands. Rifle after rifle appeared up out of the floor as if by magic. They moved from one pair of hands to the next, coming down out of the wagon to the rest of the waiting rebels.

“A gun runner,” Sam said flatly to Lilith as even the Mexican leader himself stepped up into the wagon.

“Please, Joe, do not judge me harshly,” Lilith said. “It was either do this or lose my wagon and everything else—”

“They know your wagon pretty well,” Sam said. “This isn't your first dealing with them.”

“No, no, it is not,” Lilith said. “I am so ashamed for deceiving you.” She stood with her head hung, but it was only for a second. Then she raised her face to his and tilted her chin up. “No, I am not ashamed,” she said defiantly. “These are people who are struggling against a cruel, oppressive leader. They need help. I bring them that help. As an American, you should understand such a thing.”

Sam had to digest it with one hard swallow.

“I do understand, Lilith,” he said, letting out a breath. “I only wish you hadn't misled me.”

“For that, I apologize, Joe,” she said. “But I could not take a chance. You told me yourself the kind of man you are. I had to keep my intentions a secret from you.”

Sam only nodded; he stepped back and watched as the Mexican rebels unloaded the hidden compartment beneath the wagon's floor. The rifles continued in their chain from wagon out to horses, where they were tied down behind saddles, five, six, seven at a time. Ammunition cartons were tied atop them. When the arms were unloaded, secured and readied for travel, a thin young man stepped forward with three canvas pouches in his hands. He held them toward Lilith, who only gestured him inside the wagon.

“All for the cause of Mexican freedom?” Sam said, seeing the man stoop inside the wagon and lay the gold pouches in the open floor compartment.

“It is gold that I must have in order to purchase more rifles and ammunition for them,” she said in her own defense. “Again, I beg you,
please
do not judge me, Joe.”

The stout Mexican stepped forward. He looked down at the cartridges still lying in the dirt. He gave Sam a wide smile.

“Leave the bullets there until we are gone, eh,
señor
?” he said.

Sam only nodded.

The leader turned to Lilith.

“We are grateful to you for your support. Now, I bid you and your
father
a safe journey,” he said.

Sam held his peace until the leader and his riders had turned and rode away. When their horses had climbed the sloping hillside and disappeared into the shelter of rock ledges and boulders, Sam stooped and picked up the cartridges and reloaded the rifle.

“What did he mean, you and
your father
?” he asked Lilith, standing up, rifle in hand.

Lilith shrugged.

“Who knows?” she said. “I am just glad that is over with.” She gazed at him. “If you hate me now and wish to ride away, I will understand.”

Sam looked all around. “I said I'd ride with you to San Carlo. I still will if that's where you're headed.”

“No,” she said. “Now that I am finished with the rebels, I can go home to Agua Fría.”

“Then that's where I'll accompany you,” Sam said.

“And when we arrive there?” she asked, pensively. “Will you forgive me for deceiving you?”

“I've been dealt worse,” he said. He realized that he had been deceiving her and everybody he'd encountered since he left Nogales. “I think I can handle this.”

In the afternoon, on the desert trail back to Agua Fría, the Ranger rode the dun alongside the peddler's wagon. He kept close watch on the rocky hillsides rising on the left of the desert floor. As the sun began to draw downward beyond the Blood Mountain Range and the land began to shed its heat, they moved up into the rocky hills to take shelter for the night.

Beside a thin runoff stream, they set up camp and built a small cook fire that, owing to the Apaches still prowling the hill country, they would extinguish as night closed in. The two had eaten hardtack and jerked goat meat in silence. With the dun and the team of wagon horses grained, watered, rubbed down from the day's dust and hidden from sight in the shelter of stone, Sam had walked to the stream and sat down on a thick long slab of limestone at the water's edge. He sat in the evening silence, sipping hot coffee, the French rifle lying across his lap.

The two hadn't talked any more about the rifles Lilith had sold to the rebel band. As far as Sam was concerned, the incident was not something he was supposed to get involved in. Under the Matamoros Agreement, American lawmen had no business being involved in Mexican political situations. It was something he would never mention when reporting back to his captain. As soon as he accompanied Lilith back to Agua Fría, his only concern was to take down Segert's and Madson's gangs. In Segert's case, it would be a pleasure, owing to what he and his men had done to him.

“Joe, may I sit with you?” Lilith asked quietly, standing beside him at the water's edge, her hands around a tin cup of coffee.

Sam scooted over a few inches and gestured a nod at the space he'd made for her.

“Thank you,” Lilith said. She sat down and gazed at stream in silence for a moment. Finally she said, “Who are you, Joe. What were you really doing in Agua Fría?”

Sam looked at her.

“Are we starting that all over now?” he asked. “Or are these just questions you're going to ask until you get answers that suit you?” He feigned his disagreeable attitude and started to stand up. But Lilith stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“You first tell me you are not one of these men who come here looking for gun work. Then you tell me that you are. I am only trying to find out what to believe.”

Looking for a way out, Sam said coolly, “I didn't come here to run guns. That's something you can believe.”

“All right, I deserve that,” Lilith said. She paused, then said quietly, “But there are things about you that I still do not understand.”

“Maybe you shouldn't trouble yourself,” Sam replied, wanting the conversation to be over.

She ignored his effort to end it.

“I know that you are not a gunman like the ones who ride with Raymond Segert or Bell Madson.”

“What makes you so sure?” Sam said.

“Because there are sacks of gold in the bottom of the wagon, and yet you have demanded none of it, in spite of how I deceived you into delivering the rifles.”

Sam sipped his coffee and looked at her.

“How do you know I wasn't going to demand a cut of it before we get to Agua Fría?” he asked.

“Perhaps you were, but I don't think so,” she said. “Perhaps you were going to kill me in my sleep and take it all for yourself,” she added. “But I doubt that too.”

“You've got a lot of doubts,” Sam said. Again he started to stand.

She took his arm, but this time he stood anyway. She let her hand fall from him. He slung the coffee grounds from his empty cup.

“I'd best put out the fire,” he said, “before we draw in every Apache in the range.” He turned toward the fire.

“Joe, please,” she said. “Tell me who you are and what you're doing here. It is important that I know.”

Sam only shook his head. He walked to the small fire and rubbed it out with his boot.

“Don't sleep in the wagon,” he said. “Get yourself a blanket.” He nodded at the towering stones and boulders surrounding them. “We'll climb up there a ways and spend the night.”

“But what about the gold?” she asked.

“We'll carry it with us,” he said. He picked up a blanket from his saddle on the ground and walked to the wagon. She joined him on the way.

They took the three canvas pouches of gold from the wagon. Sam strung the pouches together with a strong strip of rawhide and draped them over his shoulder.

“We can keep these with us, or hide them overnight in the rocks,” he said. “If Apaches come across us, we'll be protecting more than this gold.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “We'll hide it in the rocks.”

Sam saw the troubled look on her face.

“As large as this desert is, it could be crawling with Apaches and they'd never come across us,” he said, hoping to lighten her worry. “It's hearing gunfire, or seeing a bright campfire that draws them in.”

“Let us hope we have neither,” she replied.

With a blanket she picked up for herself from the bed, the two left the wagon and horses behind and walked to a narrow crevice leading up into the stonework above them. They climbed an uneven stairway of broken stone and partially exposed pine and ironwood root. On their way up, near the top of a flat cliff overhang, they found an opening in the stones beside them and shoved the pouches into it for the night. Sam covered the opening with a flat stone he loosened from the wall of the crevice.

They continued climbing fifteen feet up and over onto the cliff overhang that sank back into the hillside enough to hide them from sight, yet provided a good view of the hillside below them and the sprawling desert floor. Careful not to make a sound, they rolled out their blankets and adjusted themselves in the hard stone bed they'd chosen for the night.

Except for the harshness of their surroundings, the night passed uneventfully for the two of them, sleeping there among the rocks some thirty-five feet above the spot where their wagon sat out of sight behind a boulder. Twice in the early darkness, Sam was awakened from a light, watchful sleep by a chorus of coyotes out on the desert floor. He was familiar with how coyotes started their nightly yelping and baying in a large circle, a natural, ages-old cadence that stopped only when they had gradually drawn closer and gathered into a pack. He noted the distance between where that cadence began and where it stopped.

Good hunting,
Sam thought, allowing himself to drift back between a thin sleep and waking vigilance. He spent the night blanket-wrapped, the French rifle resting in the crook of his arm. Five feet away, Lilith lay sleeping in much the same position, with the dead scalp hunter Ollie McCool's shiny Smith & Wesson snuggled to her bosom.

In the middle of the night, with a three-quarter moon overhead, Sam eased over and checked to make sure she was sleeping. Then he eased down the crevice and stopped where the two of them had hidden the pouches of gold among the rocks.

•   •   •

Before the first ray of sunlight blinked on the horizon, Sam shook the woman gently by her shoulder. As she awakened, she fumbled with the Smith & Wesson, as if trying to cock the big pistol. Sam reached out and took it from her hands. She looked up at him, bleary-eyed.

“Lilith, wake up,” he said almost in a whisper.

“What is it?” she whispered in reply, growing more awake quickly, thinking she detected an urgency in his voice.

“Nothing,” Sam said. “We just need to get an early start out of here.” He was on one knee beside her, rifle in hand, and brushed a strand of dark hair from her face.

She relaxed and stretched and wiped a hand over her face, feeling better. She saw he had already rolled his blanket and was ready to leave.

“When I return to Agua Fría, I think I want to stay there for a while,” she said.

“What about your business?” Sam asked. He stood, stepped back and rose on his toes and looked out past the edge of the cliff. The desert floor still lay cloaked in purple darkness.

“My sharpening can wait,” she said. She pushed up to her feet and adjusted her dress. “Anyway, I get paid a small amount from the rifle deal,” she said. As soon as she said it, Sam realized she wished she hadn't.

“Oh, a small amount?” he asked casually. “Who gets the largest amount?”

She didn't answer right away. Instead she attended to rolling up her blanket and tucking it under her arm.

“There is
always
someone higher up, who
always
gets the largest part,” she said.

“I understand,” Sam said, not wanting to push too hard for an answer. She turned toward the crevice they'd climbed the night before. But Sam guided her in another direction.

“This way,” he said. “I found us a better crevice. This one is a game path—less steep.”

She hesitated.

“But the gold,” she said.

“It's only fifteen feet up the crevice,” he said. “We'll reach it easier from down there, once we're ready to leave.”

Lilith only nodded. She followed him to the far edge of the cliff and down another thin, narrow crevice. At the bottom of their downward climb, Lilith walked to the wagon while Sam gathered the horses and led them back to the campsite. When he'd returned with the horses, he saw Lilith bowed over a new fire she'd built. He walked over quickly and put out the fire with his boot.

Lilith looked up in surprise.

“I thought you'd want some coffee before we leave,” she said.

“Not this early, not while it's still dark,” Sam said. He gestured toward the desert floor. “A fire in this darkness can be seen for miles.”

“I'm—I'm sorry, Joe,” she stammered. “I don't know what I was thinking.” She chastised herself as she stood up quickly and rubbed her boot back and forth with him. “I know better than to do something like this.”

“Take it easy,” Sam said, seeing her reaction. “Everybody makes mistakes now and then. Like as not, there's no one out there anyway. A few more minutes, we can make all the coffee we want. Just keep the fire low.”

“Yes, of course,” she said. She breathed easier and looked out across the grainy black desert floor. “I will not make such a mistake again, you have my word.”

Sam watched her walk away toward the wagon. In the east, the first red-gold light mantled the edge of the earth.

•   •   •

By the time Sam had inspected and tacked the team of horses and saddled and readied his dun, the light had grown silver-blue across the endless ocean of sand. As he cinched the dun, he looked out across its back and saw something move at the bottom edge of the hillside. He settled his eyes in the direction of the movement and waited until he saw it again. There it was! A horse? Yes, a horse, he decided. But not just one horse. Now he counted three horses, spread out abreast, moving onto the trail slowly, soundlessly.

He sidestepped away from the dun and picked up the French rifle from against a rock.

Lilith saw him checking the rifle quickly as he kept an eye down on the lower hillside.

“What did you see?” she said, barely above a whisper.

“I see we've got more riders coming,” Sam said, his voice not as guarded as hers. From their stealthy approach, he could tell the riders knew there were people up here. “This has got to be the busiest place I've seen in a while,” he added.

“Oh no!” Lilith said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take cover,” Sam said. “I'll try to slip around the rocks and see how many guns are down there—”

His words were almost cut short by a booming voice in the rocks above them. “There's more guns than you can count on your fingers and toes,” the voice called out.

“Segert,” Sam said under his breath, recognizing the voice he'd last heard before the Mexican vaqueros dragged him away in the dirt. He looked up at the big man standing in view twenty feet above him. The Ranger's first instinct was to raise the French rifle, take aim and fire. But as he cocked the rifle he saw a line of gunmen spring up from the cover of rock. He heard the clicking of rifles cocking as one.

“Don't do it, Jones,” Segert said. “It'll only get you killed first thing before breakfast.”

“I had nothing planned for today,” Sam called out, not giving an inch, the French rifle ready to fire.

“Then think of that pretty little peddler gal,” Segert called down to him. “It'd be a shame to splatter her head all over these hills.”

Sam judged Lilith to be standing no more than six feet from him. Like it or not, Segert was right. If rifles started blasting here among these rocks, if a straight shot didn't kill her, a ricochet surely would.

Sam hesitated. He looked along the line of riflemen aiming down at him, some in tan Mexican army uniforms, some in trail clothes.
Federales
siding with Segert's gunmen, he told himself. What a dangerous mix.

“Joe, Joe, I'm scared!” he heard Lilith say beside him in a shaky voice. “Tell me what I should do, please,” she added, her voice almost sobbing.

“What do you want, Segert?” Sam called out, hoping for a way out. “I figure whatever business you had with me ended when your gunmen used me to sweep the trail.” Even as he spoke, Sam lowered the rifle an inch.

“You are a hard man to kill, Jones,” Segert said with a dark chuckle. “I've got to hand it to you.” He made his way down the hillside, the riflemen following suit.

Sam watched, lowering the rifle more as the men closed down and lined up again ten feet from him and Lilith. Behind him, he heard more men move up from the side of the campsite.

Surrounded.

“You're right, Jones,” Segert said. “You and I are finished with business. But the captain here has other business with you.”

A thickly built Mexican soldier with a sharp black mustache stepped forward from the left, two soldiers with rifles flanking him.

“Yankee pistolero,” he said. “I am
Capitan
Silvero. You are under arrest for the selling of firearms to the enemies of the sovereign government of Mexico and its peoples,” he said. “Hand over your weapon,” he demanded.