The Mexican went to Chick and kneeled over him. Bowen watched Brazil mount and ride down canyon. There, twenty yards ahead of them, a half dozen convicts were clearing the pinyon clumps: cutting the trees close to the ground, but leaving enough stump for the chain to be wound around and fastened to securely.
As the Mexican helped Chick to his feet, Pryde and Bowen walked over to them. Pryde asked, “How are you?”
An exaggerated expression of pain was on Chick’s face. “He’ll be sorry he did that.”
Pryde shook his head. “When the time and the day comes, you’ll be second in line. I got first dibs on Mr. Brazil.”
The Mexican was looking at Pryde. He smiled then. “If that day ever comes, I hope I’m there to see it. When you’re through with him, maybe I’ll kick him in the face.”
By noon, they were not more than a hundred yards farther down the canyon. The convicts worked as slowly as Renda would let them, knowing that he wanted to stretch the job time for all it was worth. Still, two or three times a day Renda would conscientiously speed up the work pace, as if rebelling against this one small advantage they held over him.
The clearing crew would cut down the pinyon and large mesquite bushes, drag them to the side of the canyon and burn them. The stump-pulling crew followed-digging under the shallow-rooted pinyon stumps, looping the chain about the trunk stub, levering with the shovel and finally pulling it out with the wagon team. One of them would drag the stump to the nearest fire as the others went on to the next stump.
Two guards watched the clearing crew because there was usually thick brush ahead of them. From the east side of the canyon, Brazil watched the group Bowen was with and most of the time Brazil did not leave the thin strip of shade close to the slanting talus wall.
Behind them came the pick-and-shovel crew-filling the stump holes from “borrow pits” along the side of the road, breaking stones, clearing the small mesquite bushes and the yellow-blazing patches of brittlebush, raking them over to the bonfires.
The scraper came next-two timbers bolted together and pulled by a wagon team. Six men, Manring one of them, stood on the timbers to add weight. The scraper bumped along over the roadway, the convicts losing their balance, jumping off and on, and every ten or fifteen feet the team was pulled off to the side, dragging with it the loose rocks and sand that the timbers gathered.
Two men with shovels came last-filling the potholes that the scraper passed over and did not fill completely. Renda stayed even with them, walking his horse along the east-wall shade approximately one hundred feet behind Brazil.
The Mimbreños were up on the canyon patrolling along both sides. They remained in the shadows of the pinyon pines and were not seen all morning, not until Renda stopped work at noon.
As the convicts drifted over to the east wall where the equipment wagon stood, Salvaje and two of his Mimbres came down a shallow wash, a dust cloud trailing behind them. They were riding past the equipment wagon when Renda called to them and they pulled up. The two Mimbres sat their horses, motionlessly watching Salvaje rein toward Renda who was now facing the convicts grouped at the back end of the equipment wagon. He pointed to Bowen, Pryde and the Mexican. “You three step out,” he called. Then turned to Salvaje again. “You’re going to the creek?”
The Mimbreño nodded and held up three fingers. “That many at a time.”
“Take these men with you,” Renda said. “They’re going to water the teams.”
The Mimbres moved off one at a time as each pair of horses was brought out. Salvaje waited until Bowen came up, then fell in next to him and they moved the team down the canyon, winding through the scattered scrub brush to a stand of sycamores that showed darkly against the west slope. A trickle of water came down from the rocks and formed a shallow pool in the deep shade of the trees. From here, the creek flowed to the end of the canyon, disappeared into the rocks and came out again miles to the south, above the Pinaleño station.
They drank: the convicts first, the Mimbres one at a time, and now they rested as the horses stood over the clear, sand-bottomed pool, their muzzles touching the water, rippling the water with breath from their nostrils, raising and shaking their manes, tails fanning lazily and now and again a rump or flank quivering to dislodge an unseen something.
Salvaje touched Bowen’s arm. “But for the work of getting more horses, I wish you would run away another time.”
Bowen frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“That was a good thing with you in the meadow,” Salvaje explained. “But the two horses you killed I was made to replace.”
“Renda made you buy two horses?”
Salvaje shrugged. “Not buy; but it is the same thing.”
“You’d think he’d supply the horses,” Bowen said.
Salvaje shook his head. “He is not easy to live with. Sometimes I see him as an escaped man. If he was ever that, he would not be brought back alive.”
Bowen hesitated. The Mimbre’s words took him by surprise and stayed in his mind as he said, “You speak English very well.”
“From San Carlos.”
“I visited Cibucu many times,” Bowen said. “When I was trading horses. I knew Zele and Pindah and Bu-sikisn.”
Salvaje’s eyes came alive. “They were of Victorio.”
Bowen nodded. “I drank tulapai with Zele and he told me much about Victorio and old Mangas.”
“Perhaps I was there then,” Salvaje said.
“They spoke of a band still in the Sierra Madres,” Bowen said. “Maybe you were there.”
Salvaje nodded thoughtfully. “The good days. At San Carlos it was not easy to live among Tontos and Mojaves.”
“But better than here?” Bowen asked.
“Sometimes. The men such as you make it worth staying here.”
“The men who run?”
“The ones who know how to run. Some are like children about it. Others do well.”
“Listen,” Bowen said then, “I’m sorry I cracked a couple of heads that day. I mean that truthfully, because I don’t have any fight with you or your men.”
Salvaje’s eyes held on Bowen and he studied him thoughtfully, as if wanting to understand all of Bowen, all of the things about him that would never be spoken. Finally he said, “Maybe you try it again some time.”
Bowen nodded. “Maybe I will.”
The team horses raised their heads from the pool a moment before Bowen heard the leaf-rustling, twig-snapping sound of someone coming through the trees. He looked up as Salvaje rose, expecting to see another of the Mimbres or one of the guards and his face showed open surprise as Karla Demery walked her horse into the clearing.
Bowen saw her look directly at him, then her skirt curved gracefully as she stepped from the saddle. Again, she was wearing a man’s shirt and her dark hair was even shorter than he had pictured it-curving low on her forehead, but brushed back on the sides into a soft upcurl at the nape of her neck. And Bowen was thinking, watching her take her horse to the pool edge: I’ll bet she can ride like hell. I’ll bet she can cook and shoot and do everything like hell. But, he thought then, seeing her looking at him again and feeling the sudden quickening inside of him: Don’t try to figure her out.
Karla’s gaze moved from Bowen and Salvaje to Pryde and the Mexican, then raised to the two Mimbres standing behind them. To no one in particular she said, “No guards? I’m surprised at Mr. Renda.”
Squatting at the edge of the pool, the Mexican pushed up his hatbrim with his thumb. “These barbarians are guards enough.”
“I’m still surprised,” Karla said. Her eyes returned to Bowen and Salvaje. “I’m delivering mail to the camp, but I might as well leave it with you.” She looked directly at Bowen. “You’ll see that Mr. Renda gets it?”