Actually, Katie was an exceptionally attractive woman, though beauty itself meant absolutely nothing to Shardeen. Whether he was with a young, lovely girl just coming into maturity or an elderly woman dissipated by a lifetime of ordeal and toil made no difference to him. For Shardeen, rape wasn’t a sexual experience. It was an exercise in power.
More than the sex itself, Shardeen enjoyed inducing fear in women. He had discovered this particular predilection while riding with a group of vigilantes who sold their services as “Indian Regulators.” Anytime there was an Indian disturbance, whether it was one Indian or a group in a war party, the Indian Regulators could sell their services. Hired by those communities too far away from the nearest military outpost to use the regular army, the Indian Regulators would conduct retaliatory raids against the nearest Indian village.
Of course they seldom, if ever, got the Indians who were actually guilty of the crime that had enraged the white settlers, but it didn’t matter. The punishment the Regulators inflicted upon the Indians, innocent or not, gave the ranchers, farmers, and citizens of the nearby towns a sense of retaliation. And sometimes it really did have the effect of causing the Indians to police their own a little better.
One of the benefits that Shardeen particularly enjoyed was having his way with captive Indian women. There was no way any court would come after him for raping an Indian woman. The feeling of total domination and control Shardeen enjoyed in such situations was so powerful that he would have ridden with the Indian Regulators whether he was paid or not.
“Hey, Shardeen,” Red called up to him, interrupting Shardeen’s thoughts. “What do you say we stop for a while? They ain’t no way anyone’s gonna follow us down here. Besides which, we been travelin’ on solid rock for near an hour. They couldn’t track us if they was to try.”
“Let me take a look-see,” Shardeen replied. He halted, then climbed to the top of a pile of huge rocks, holding a collapsed spyglass in his hand. He opened up the telescope and looked back over the way they came. For as far as he could see, he saw nobody. He snapped the glass closed, then came back down from the rocks.
“Did you see anyone?” Red asked.
“No.”
“Then we can stop a while?”
“Yeah, all right,” Shardeen agreed.
“Good,” Red said, getting down from his own horse. He looked toward Katie, then rubbed himself again. “Hey, Shardeen, you said we could have us a little fun with the mama once we was in Mexico, didn’t you?”
“That’s what I said,” Shardeen answered.
Katie shivered involuntarily.
“Well, we’re here,” he said. Red walked back to Katie Kincaid, then pulled her down from the horse. “Come on, honey. Me an’ you’s gonna have us a little fun.”
Katie’s eyes revealed her stark panic and loathing, and she looked at Shardeen as if pleading with him to say something.
“So, Shardeen will you be wantin’ a little of the fun after I finish?” Red asked.
“You’re askin’ the wrong question, Red,” Shardeen replied with an evil grin. “What you mean to say is, do I wanna let you have some of the fun after I get finished?”
Not too far away from Shardeen and his captives, Jim, Frank, Barry, Tennessee, Chad, Gene, and Ken were also crossing into northern Mexico. At the moment, they were riding through an area known as the Cumbres de Majalca, which, Hector Ortega explained, meant Summits of Majalca. Though Jim didn’t think of it in such terms, the Cumbres de Majalca were visually stunning, peppered with high mountains and deep canyons, and strewn with many unique rock formations created by eons of erosion. Ortega had chosen this route because of the readily available water, as there were numerous arroyos sending small winding tributaries through the pine, oak, and dry scrub to the Sacramento and Chuvinca Rivers.
They had been on the trail for four days now, and during that time Hector Ortega had spoken only when it was necessary. At night the short, swarthy Mexican would sit quietly, cleaning the brace of Colt .45s he wore high on his gun belt. By day he rode in silence.
That was all right by Jim and the other Americans, who had no wish to be sociable with him. They had resented the fact that Clay Allison appointed Ortega their trail boss, but there was nothing they could do about it. They had not only accepted half the money, they had already spent much of it, so they had no choice but to go along with Clay Allison’s decision.
Jim was thinking about that very thing when, out of the corner of his eye he thought he caught a movement. Just as he was twisting around in his saddle for a closer look, Tennessee slapped his legs against the side of his horse and moved up beside him.
“I make it two men riding alongside us,” Tennessee said.
“Yeah, I thought I saw something,” Jim answered. “Wonder who they are?”
“Suppose we ask our leader?” Tennessee suggested.
“Good idea,” Jim said. He moved up the line. “Ortega,” he called.
Ortega looked back at him, but said nothing.
“We’re being watched.”
Ortega looked around, then shrugged. “I see nothing.”
“Look at the notch in the hill off to our left. In just a moment, they’ll go through there.”
Ortega looked in the direction indicated by Jim, and just as Jim had said, two riders moved quickly through the notch slipping by so expertly that only someone who was specifically looking for them would have noticed.
“Did you see them?” Jim asked.
“Sí.”
“Who do you think they are?”
“Perhaps they are bandidos.”
“Bandidos?”
“Sí. There are many bandidos in the Cumbres de Majalca. We have come from Texas. Maybe they think we are rich.”
“Well, maybe I had better set them straight,” Jim suggested.
Telling the others to continue riding, Jim left the trail and, using a nearby ridgeline for concealment, rode ahead about a thousand yards. He cut over to the gully the two men were following, then dismounted, pulling his Winchester .44-40 from its saddle boot and climbing onto a rocky ledge to wait for them. He jacked a round into the chamber. It would be an easy shot, if he wanted to take it.
He didn’t want to kill them, though. He knew there were times when one had to kill, and when those times came, there was no place for hesitancy. He had killed before, and he would kill again when and if it was required. But to the degree he could, he had made a compromise with grim reality: He killed only when he had no other choice. These two riders had not yet put him in such a position.
They really were quite good, Jim thought. They approached so skillfully that he could barely hear them. Not one word was spoken between them, and they guided their horses in a manner that their hooves would barely disturb the loose rock and shale of the gully. Jim watched them come into view around the bend. He stood up suddenly.
“Hijo de puta!” one of the riders exclaimed in a startled shouted. His horse reared, and his hand started toward his pistol.
“Don’t do it, hombre!” Jim shouted in warning, raising his rifle to his shoulder.
“I would listen to the gringo,” the other man said. Both men were wearing large sombreros, colorful serapes, and crossed bandoliers bristling with shells.
“Your amigo is making sense,” Jim said.
The one whose hand had started toward his pistol stopped, then got his horse under control.
“I don’t know what you hombres are after,” Jim said. “But if it’s money, you are barking up the wrong tree. We’re just out-of-work cowboys.”