The four ponies, brands and saddles indicating they had been taken from some unfortunate Mexicans, had to be led wide of all the fresh-spilled blood. But they greeted Consuela and the two mules as if they’d known them for many a year.
As Longarm watered the overheated ponies, he told Consuela there wasn’t enough for all of them in those five-gallon bags.
He said, “I can cut and pulp some cactus. Pear is all right and barrel is better for the stock. We’ll save the well water for the two of us. Come sundown, we’d better turn the mules loose on yonder road. They’re coach mules who know it well. They’ll make it to the nearest fonda that’s still pumping water. You and me ought to make it on out of this desert in one hard night’s ride, changing back and fourth with four mighty tough ponies.” She asked how he could tell how tough their brand-new mounts were.
He answered simply, “Yaqui were riding ‘em. Horse Indians sort of go along with Professor Darwin when it comes to choosing horseflesh. If a pony can take ‘em where they want to go, when they want to get there, they keep it as a mount. When it can’t, they eat it. We ain’t got time to talk about it. We have to get far from here fast. I’d best see now about that cactus water. I vote we leave here just after sundown, and this ain’t no parliamentary democracy. We’ best shun that road everyone knows about and beeline by moonlight across the caliche. We’ll be leaving a mighty easy trail to follow as we do so. But that won’t matter if we’ve made it out of this fool desert before it’s light enough for any other Yaqui or … bandits to follow.”
She didn’t argue. He broke out some more canned grub and opened it for her before he stepped back out in the blast-furnace glare with a gunnysack to gather some cactus pads.
They were in luck. He found more than one watermelon-sized barrel cactus along with some soapier-tasting pear.
He toted them all back to the shade, where Consuela watched with interest as he got all the well water into one rubberized bag before he began to refill the empty one with cactus juice.
As he did so, he explained. “Found what was left of a wagon party surrounded by this barrel cactus one time. It appeared they’d died of thirst, the poor greenhorns. None of ‘em could have known there was a few quarts of tolerable water in each and every one of these thorny things. Thanks to that recent rain, these are juicier than usual. So their pulp water’s almost pure.” She asked for a pear pad to cut up as salad greens for their pork and beans. He didn’t care. It was sort of a cross between lettuce and soap suds when you weren’t used to it. But being a Mexican, she was used to it. He allowed he’d have some too. For the more moisture you got in you the better, especially when you couldn’t tell how much you’d really sweated since your last good whistle-wetting.
It got hotter. Consuela said she couldn’t believe that was possible either, and she’d been living in Sonora a spell. She said that back in her thick-walled ranch house around this time of day, she’d been in the habit of stripping down totally to lie atop her bedding during the dry heat of la siesta.
He told her to go ahead, adding, “It’s too blamed hot for a member of the opposite gender to notice. Or leastwise, to do anything about anything he might notice.” She laughed roguishly and said she was tempted to just go ahead and test his self-control. She added it would certainly feel better, no matter what he thought about ladies cooling off as best they knew how.
He went on eating beans and cactus cross-legged as he told her to try and get some damned sleep, in any state of dress, while he stood guard. “I’ll wake you up in time for you to spell me on guard for an hour or so. Then we’ll be pushing those ponies, and ourselves, as if our lives depended on reaching the coast by morning, because they likely will.” She repressed a shudder, asked if he was trying to cool her off by chilling her blood, and then calmly slipped her thin white dress off over her auburn head and lay back on the cotton flannel to close her big blue eyes with an innocent Mona Lisa smile. He couldn’t help but notice she had auburn hair all over.
Her nipples were pink, and standing at attention on her small but nicely molded breasts. Her pale skin and slender build were surely new wonders to admire after his recent adventures with Rosalinda and Ampollita. But he looked away, lit a cheroot, and got up to stand guard on the far side of the tethered stock.
Of course, a man had to move about his post to cover all sides as he guarded it. So he naturally just had to catch a glimpse of her pale nude form from time to time, and then time again.
He had to laugh at himself for peeking. He muttered, “She knew you were close enough to just spread her thighs and enjoy as close a look as you wanted, if it hadn’t been so hot and in such a dumb time and place. Haven’t you figured her yet as what her own kind calls one of them chirladas? She wouldn’t go on and on about it if she really wanted it. Did Rosalinda? Did Ampollita? Did any gal back home who wasn’t a total prick-teaser? How many times have you told a pal not to waste his time and tips on a barmaid that swaps dirty talk with the boys bellied up to her bar?”
He took another drag on his cheroot and snorted, “Shit, even if it wasn’t true, trying to lay anything that nice in this heat would kill you dead as those four Yaqui!”
Chapter 10
As anyone who studies deserts knows, the hottest days are usually followed by the coldest nights, since air baked dry can’t hold much heat after sundown. Yet the night stayed balmy as the two of them rode the four ponies across trackless caliche at a pace that would have done the U.S. Cav proud. So Longarm wasn’t surprised to glimpse distant flashes along the southern horizon, or wonder why the desert breezes from that same direction were commencing to taste more like seaweed than greasewood. When Consuela allowed they seemed to be in for another gully-washer, Longarm said, “I sure hope so. A good rain ought to erase our trail. But just in case it don’t, let’s ride.”
They did, risking their mounts and their own necks on the thin edge of desperate. Mounted astride like a man with her feet braced in stirrups and her skirts hoisted scandalously, Consuela was a good rider. He knew she’d had more than livery stable experience when she didn’t question his frequent trail breaks and changes of mounts. Longarm kept the four-mile-an-hour average of a good infantry column in mind as he rested the ponies more often and trotted them a mite faster.
So by first light, a tad after five in the morning because of an overcast, they were winding their way downgrade through an ancient and wildly eroded lava field when suddenly, off to the southwest, they could see a real silvery sea and Longarm said, “We made it. Can’t be more than a dozen miles from the coastline and it’s downhill all the way.”
Then fat raindrops landed all around to make cowpats of mud in the powdery dust. You didn’t get caliche in a lava field. The chemistry was different as time and occasional but patient rainwater broke basaltic lava down.
Consuela sobbed, “We’re going to get soaked! What will people say if I ride into town with my nipples showing through a thin wet dress?”
Longarm replied, “They’ll say you’ve got great nipples. But hold the thought and let’s swing closer to yonder wall of black rimrock. We may be able to find some shelter from the coming storm.”
In such tricky light, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded, but they did—by the time they’d gotten good and wet. The cave-like mouth of a lava tube, paved with a flat bottom of black sand, gave them more room than they and any number of scorpions and bats might ever ask for. Dismounting, they led the ponies in under the overhang. Longarm handed Consuela some of his wax matches to explore deeper as he broke out the best canvas tarp they had and stepped out into the rain with it to spread it flat in the downpour.
It poured down on him too. But he was already wet, so what the hell. He moved back inside to spy an orange glow, and following it around a bend in the glass-walled lava tube, found Consuela had built a small but cheerful fire, using windblown tinder and some dry sticks she’d found back there.