“Of thirst?”

“They were mostly murdered,^” Joanna answered. “You ever hear of the Clanton gang?”

“As in Wyatt Earp?”

“Before they tangled with him, the Clantons ambushed a band of Mexican gold smugglers here in the Peloncillos. According to legend, the Clantons made off with a shipment of stolen gold, only to be caught by the survivors a few miles away. In the ensuing fight, a few more people died and the gold disappeared. It’s still supposed to be out there somewhere.”

“Amazing,” George Winfield murmured.

“The Peloncillos have always been a haven for smugglers. It’s a mountain range that’s almost impossible to patrol. The Baker Wilderness Area, between Skeleton Canyon and the international border, is supposed to be closed to vehicular traffic. Unfortunately, smugglers don’t necessarily pay any attention to the edicts of the Environmental Protection Agency or the U.S. Forest Service.”

“Amazing,” George Winfield said again, settling back in his seat and staring out the window at a landscape that was waist-high in yellow grass. “I can’t believe I’m living in a place where those names are part of history and not just something that used to turn up in Saturday matinees. Coming here I thought this would all be real desert, maybe even sand dunes. This almost looks like wheat.”

Joanna considered explaining to him how Anglos had encouraged the spread of mesquite, which had killed off the native grasses, but she let it go. Let him learn some of that stuff on his own, she thought.

They drove in silence for several more miles before George spoke again, clearing his throat as he did so. “By the way, Joanna, has Ellie said much of anything to you about…” He paused. “Well, about us,” he finished lamely.

There he was, using the name Ellie again to bring up a topic Joanna wasn’t at all eager to discuss. “Not really,” she returned coolly. “Why?”

“She hasn’t happened to mention that we’re… er.. married?”

Joanna turned to look at him and in the process ran the right-hand tires onto the shoulder of the road. She had to struggle with the steering wheel for a moment before the Eagle returned to the sun-cracked pavement.

“Married?” she demanded, her face pale. “You can’t be serious!^”

George shook his head. “I wouldn’t kid around about some-thing like this. I’ve been telling her for weeks now that she needed to let you know. In case you haven’t noticed, your mother’s a little stubborn. We eloped, Joanna. Last month. We got married in a little chapel up in Vegas. I’ve booked an Alaskan cruise for our honeymoon in August. I wanted you to know about it before then.”

Joanna couldn’t think of a single word to say in reply. George hurried on. “I hope you’re not too shocked. At our ages, you know, it’s hard to tell how much time we have. And your mother and I are just alike. High-fidelity and low-frequency, if you know what I mean.”

He chuckled at his own joke and then looked at Joanna to see if she was laughing. She wasn’t. They were approaching the turnoff to Skeleton Canyon. With her chin set and her eyes staring straight ahead, Joanna jammed on the brakes. She swung the Eagle onto the gravel road with such force that, had George Winfield not been wearing his seat belt, he would have come sliding into her lap.

“I guess you’re a little angry about this,” he murmured a little later.

“Angry?” Joanna repeated. “Whatever makes you think that?”

“I suppose that’s why Ellie was so reluctant to tell you in the first place. She was afraid you’d react this way.”

In front of them a trio of three black-tailed deer gracefully leaped across the sandy track, clearing the barbed-wire fences on both sides as though they didn’t exist and then disappearing into the waist-high grass. Seeing them gave Joanna a chance to gather her resources. The last thing she ever wanted to do was react just the way her mother said she would. If Eleanor had thought Joanna was going to be angry, then, by God, angry was the last thing she’d be!

“I’m surprised,” she said carefully. “Surprised and shocked, but not angry.”

George Winfield sighed. “That’s a relief, then,” he said. “What about your brother? What do you think he’ll say?”

Bob Brundage, Joanna’s long-lost brother, was another one of Eleanor Lathrop’s little secrets. Born out of wedlock before D.H. Lathrop and Eleanor married, Bob had been put up for adoption as an infant. Joanna had first learned of his existence at Thanksgiving the previous year, when he had tracked down his birth mother after the deaths of both his adoptive parents.

“I have no idea what Bob will say,” Joanna replied, curbing a desire to snap. “You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“I thought we’d invite him and his wife to the reception,” George continued.

“What reception?”

“The one we’ll have when we get back from the cruise. Maybe in September sometime. That’ll be fun, don’t you think? Nothing too fancy. Maybe just a little get-together at the club-house out at Rob Roy Links. That’s where we went on our first real date, you see.”

“I’m sure it’ll be a ball,” Joanna said. “I can hardly wait.”

They came around a sharp curve where the road was blocked by a barbed-wire gate. Parked in front of the gate was a battered green Range Rover. A slender woman in a dark blue dress and wearing huge, wraparound sunglasses stood next to the vehicle, studying a map.

Joanna rolled down her window. “Excuse me,” she called. “Would you mind moving out of the way? We need to get past.”

The woman looked up. “Maybe you can help me. I’m looking for Skeleton Canyon, but when I came to this gate, I was afraid I had missed a turn. Am I going the right way?”

Leaving the Eagle idling, Joanna climbed out. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling out her badge. “I’m Sheriff Brady. There’s been a serious accident up in Skeleton Canyon today. A fatality. We’re expecting emergency vehicles in and out of here on this road. If you don’t mind, it would probably be better if you could postpone your visit to some other time.”

“But that’s why I’m here,” the woman replied. “Because of the accident. I heard about it on my police scanner and came straight on out.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an ID wallet of her own that she handed over to Joanna.

“Frances G. Stoddard,” the identification card said. “Private Investigator.”

Suddenly, a day Joanna Brady was convinced had already bottomed out got that much worse. “You’re David O’Brien’s private eye.”

“Bingo,” Frances Stoddard said with a smile. ^“You can call me Frankie. Everybody else does. What was your name again?”

“Brady,” Joanna said wearily. “And you can call me Sheriff.”

If Frankie Stoddard was offended by Joanna’s brusque reply, she certainly didn’t let it show. “Glad to meet you, Sheriff,” she said. “I understand you’ve been traveling in a vehicle with no radio, so you probably don’t know what’s going on.”

“What now?”

“If this is the right road, two of your officers are up ahead. Stuck in a wash. They’ve called for a wrecker to come get them out. I have a winch on the Rover. I thought if I could get up to where they are…”

Joanna closed her eyes and shook her head. From bad to worse and worse again.

“Come on,” she said to Frankie. “If you can move your vehicle out of the way, I’ll go first. And if you can winch them out, I’ll be eternally grateful. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck here half the day without getting anywhere near where we’re supposed to be.”

At the turnoff in Apache, the road to Skeleton Canyon had been a fairly generous gravel affair that soon dwindled to dirt. On the other side of the closed gate, however, it was comprised of two rocky tracks with foot-high grass growing up in the middle. A few hundred yards beyond the gate, the road opened out again into a wide, sandy wash. Ernie Carpenter’s van sat stuck in the middle of it, mired in sand up to the hubcaps.