He spent the rest of the afternoon panning up and down the stream and accumulated a pinch or two of dust. He was not going to get rich.
It was hot and dry with a sky of glaring blue dotted here and there with miniature fleece. Around four he knocked off panning and took a dip in the pond. He left his clothes close to the water, with the big Webley on top of them. He dove deep and swam around as he had the day before, but found nothing of interest. He did not really expect to find another body.
This time he stayed down just a few seconds over four minutes. It was time enough for her to approach the pond without Nick’s hearing the hoof beats. When he surfaced, blowing and sputtering, she was sitting there on a magnificent palomino, staring at him. The Luger in her hand was rock-steady. Just behind the Palomino, flattened on their bellies, were two enormous Dobermans, their scarlet tongues lolling slant-wise from the wickedly fanged mouths.
The man and woman stared at each other for a moment. The woman spoke first, in German. “Der Tag kommt?”
Nick Carter’s brain raced like a computer. It was half of a recognition signal and he knew it, but he did not have the countersign. That this was The Bitch he knew instantly; he also guessed that her visit was somehow tied in with the dead man he had found, but he could not take advantage of his knowledge. There was nothing to do but play it cool and straight. He let just a hint of servility creep into his manner. He gave her a tentative smile.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t speak German. Just English. That was German, I guess?”
He saw a flicker of disappointment in the narrowed green eyes. She was a tall woman with enormous firm breasts and an incredibly small waist. Her hair was fine-spun silver, a Medusan mane flowing below her shoulders and caught with a golden brooch. Her magnificent skin had a tawny glow about it. Knowing what he did about her — which he must pretend not to know — Nick Carter was impressed, tremendously impressed. This woman, Bitch though she might be, was a legend in her own time.
The Luger moved in her hand as though it had a life of its own. He knew that if the whim took her she would murder him then and there.
She spoke again. “The word Siegfried means nothing to you?”
“No, ma’am. Should it?” Nick tried to look abashed and uneasy. At the moment it was not difficult, standing naked as he was in water to his waist.
The green eyes roved from Nick to his pile of clothing, taking in the Webley, then traversing on around the pond and the clearing and the hut. She was missing nothing. The eyes came back to Nick. “What do you do here?”
Nick shrugged and said, “Just trying to make a living, ma’am. Get a little stake, is all. I’m figuring on panning ’til I get me enough gold, then go back to the States.”
As though the thought had just struck him he added, “You own this land, ma’am? Am I trespassing? If I am I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll move right on, ma’am, if you say so.”
“I don’t actually own the land,” she said. She was carrying a crop in her left hand and she tapped a thigh, swelling round and voluptuous in pink jodhpurs. Tap — tap — tap — there was impatience and arrogance in the act. “I don’t own it,” she repeated, “but I run it. I say who pans gold around here and who does not. I could have you jailed, or hanged for that matter if I choose. Or I can shoot you now. I doubt anyone would miss you.”
Humbly, with the best hangdog look he could summon, Nick said, “I doubt they would, ma’am.”
The palomino began to fret, dancing on slender legs, switching its flaxen tail at the flies tormenting it. The woman jerked savagely at the bit, reining the animal in cruelly. “Be quiet, you bastard!” Her green eyes never left Nick, nor did the Luger take its cold black stare away from his belly.
“You are all alone?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have seen no one else? Another man? He would be older than you, nearly bald, but a powerfully built man. You have seen such a man?”
I sure have, thought Nick. He’s buried about twenty feet away. He said: “No, ma’am. I ain’t seen anybody. But I only been here since yesterday. Please, ma’am, can I come out now? It’s cold in here.”
She ignored that and asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jamie McPherson, ma’am.”
“You are in Mexico legally? You have proper papers?”
Now Nick allowed himself to become more at ease. He was playing it strictly by ear, but he thought he could get away with acting as though the tension had eased a bit. After all she hadn’t shot him yet, and he must not overplay his hand. Not appear too stupid, too servile, or she would never give him an opportunity to take the place of the dead man. Which was precisely what N3 had in mind. He knew he was anticipating wildly, but sometimes these crazy gambles came off.
So he said, slyly, “Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t say I’m exactly legal. I got papers, all right, but they’re maybe a little out of date. Maybe a lot out of date.”
For the first time a hint of a smile touched the wide scarlet mouth. Her teeth were large and a dazzling white. Nick wondered, considering what he knew to be her true age, if they were her own. That would be another miracle.
The Luger moved curtly. “Get out,” she commanded. “Get dressed. I want to see your papers. Then perhaps we will talk.”
Nick Carter stared at this silver-haired Valkyrie with an astonishment that was not altogether feigned. “But, ma’am — I mean, well, I ain’t got any clothes on!”
The Luger stared at him. “Get out, I said. I have seen naked men before. Many of them. You are of tremendous build from the waist up — I wish to see the rest of you.” It was said with a natural air of command, with the perfect candor of one who is above the petty conventions.
Nick shrugged and climbed the slippery bank. The Old Man, Hawk, was never going to believe this. He hardly believed it himself.
As he left the water the two Dobermans bristled and showed their fangs. The woman leaned from her saddle to slash at them with the riding crop, but the pistol did not leave its target: Nick’s thick-muscled belly.
“Be quiet,” she ordered the dogs. “Damon, Pythias, down both of you!” The dogs sank back on their haunches, quivering, eyeing Nick meanly. Surely a misnamed pair of brutes, he thought, showing no recognition of the classical names. An uneducated bum like him wouldn’t know about Damon and Pythias.
He walked toward his clothes. “Do not pick up the gun,” she ordered. “Kick it over in my direction.”
Nick nudged the Webley toward her with his big toe. She swung easily from the saddle and picked it up. Her ease of movement reminded Nick of the cougar he had seen last night. He reached for his clothes.
“Do not dress yet. Stand up and turn around. Slowly.” There was a new note in her voice.
Slowly, with the sun hot on his naked flesh, Nick turned to face her. Slowly, very slowly, the green eyes began at his feet and crept upward. They lingered for a long time on his loins and Nick felt himself beginning to react. He tried to stop it, to fight back the surging tumescence, but to no avail. Slowly, inexorably, he continued to react to her avid stare. He saw her moisten her lips with a flick of her tongue. The green eyes were narrowed on him, on his flesh, and for a moment the golden mask of her face seemed to melt, to don and discard a series of new masks in rapid succession. The AXEman felt a growing excitement in himself, quite apart from the physical urge that was tinning him into a stud on display. He studied her face, with its arrogant slightly hooked nose over the wide slash of mouth, and in that face he read the permutations of passion — this was a woman who could slip from wild ferocity to dulcet murmurs of acquiescence; this woman was capable of — it was written plain on the features — of cruelty, perversion, erotic phantasmagoria beyond the wildest dreaming of sane people — he doubted she was sane in the ordinary sense — of phallic worship performed to the devil’s mass. At her age, he thought, she must have seen, had indeed experienced, everything that man and woman can do together, plus many things that were artificial and unnatural. Still she was not satiated. Her glance now bespoke the truth of that.