“Maybe we can look out after our own skins, Zach.”

“Maybe you just think you can.” But he was looking them over again and Susan could see it when he realized he had lost them. Weed, Portugee, Gant, Quesada, they had all turned cold toward him. Shelby was frowning at his boots, not sure which way to turn. Menendez was the only one who didn’t look worried and adamant. Even Taco Riva was watching with evident interest.

Provo let the reins drop from his fist and turned away from his horse to face the rest of them. He looked slightly disgusted. For a moment his hard stare rested against Susan and she felt the icy touch of dread.

Provo said, “It’s like this. I owe Sam Burgade. I owe him a little something for the twenty-eight years I put in on the rockpile and for one or two other things we don’t need to go into. I want you gents to help me pay off that debt. No, let me finish. You want to know what’s in it for you. I’ll tell you. First, where I’m taking you, that posse won’t be able to follow us. It’s out of bounds for them. Burgade, maybe, but Burgade’s just one man. The posse won’t come with him. Figure out those odds and then stack them up against the odds you’d face if you cut out on me and tried to run for it on your own with every sheriff in Arizona looking to nail you. Second, you still want money. All right. I’ve got forty-eight thousand dollars in gold coin buried up on the Mogollon Rim. I need to use some of it to pay off certain people to make sure the law ain’t allowed to follow us where we’re going. I intend to keep some of it for myself. But I’ll put up twenty-one thousand dollars. It’s yours to split—three thousand apiece. Three thousand dollars is a lot of money to a man on the run. Now let’s get on these horses and move out. You think about my offer on the way over the top.”

He turned quickly, breaking up the tableau. “Come on, missy, put it in the saddle, all right? Or do I have to pick you up and tie you on?”

Riva rode point, because he seemed able to communicate things to a horse that nobody else could. Riva picked the path in the starlit dark, and the rest followed at a steady slow-climbing pace. Susan sat her saddle loosely, weary, resting both hands on the saddle horn because she didn’t have any reins to hold—Quesada had the reins, he was leading her horse. They weren’t taking any chances with her. Provo had tied one of her ankles to the stirrup leathers to insure she wouldn’t try to jump off her horse and run for it in the darkness. She had bent down once to try and shift the knot, because it was digging her ankle bone painfully, but the man right behind her—Menendez—had spoken sharply and gigged his horse close and threatened to slash her with his quirt, and she had straightened up and ridden in silence after that.

She felt grit-dirty inside the homespun dress. It seemed clear that Provo intended to push straight through the night, only stopping now and then to breathe the horses. At this rate she wondered how long he expected the animals to last, let alone their riders.

Through the first few hours of the night ride she swung from mood to mood like a lunatic, weaving from one extreme of emotion to another: terrorized dread that made her tremble violently and repress screams of fear; furious rages that made her want to claw the eyes out of all their faces—she had wild violent visions of tying them all to stakes and building huge fires around them—and left her weak, drained; dirges of self-pitying resignation, waiting for them to kill her and be done with it; frightful fantasies in which she saw them holding her down, spreadeagling her, venting their sweaty lusts upon her body; spates of cynical uncaring exhaustion in which she went numb, told herself to just mark time until it was over—hope to survive it, and ignore whatever might happen in the meantime.

Finally they reached the summit of the pass and started down the long eastward slope toward the San Pedro River. It must have been well past midnight, although she was not versed in reading the time by stars. Her body was slack, moving loosely with the jolts and shifts of the saddle. The hot rages and icy terrors had cooled and thawed within her; fantasies had dulled, resolve had dissipated. It was no longer necessary to force indifference upon herself. She was too washed-out to care anymore. She swayed as if she were asleep; she was not asleep, but neither was she altogether awake. A kind of peace had settled on her, a protective daze from which she did not expect or want, to emerge.

* * *

The first shadow-streaks of dawn caught them in the foothills, still heading for the river. They were not hurrying the pace but they had kept moving steadily, eating up ground. Someone rode by and passed her a cold hard biscuit and a strip of dried beef, and when she had eaten them she looked up and saw it was Mike Shelby, watching her gravely, holding his horse alongside hers. He handed her a canteen and she drank from it greedily. She didn’t think to hand it back to him, and he took it gently out of her grasp, capped it and slung it over his saddle horn. He seemed to smile a little in the dawn, and then he dropped back toward the tail end of the column.

Daylight grew steadily; it seemed to revive some of them. Portugee Shiraz pulled up beside her and said, “You want some grub, lassie?”

Menendez, behind her, said, “Shelby already fed her.”

“Tryin’ to get the inside track,” Portugee said, and cackled unpleasantly. “Well, that’s all rat, I reckon maybe we all get a turn at you ’fore this is over, lassie. Soon as we get time to stop awhile. Hey, Menendez, she’s a real looker, this’n. I like the tits on her.”

“Turn them upside down, they all the es-same,” Menendez replied with Mexican indifference to cruelty.

Portugee gave a bray of laughter. “Look, she’s sweating,” he said, pleased. “We got her scared. You scared, lassie? Scared maybe we gonna mo-lest you? Haw!”

“Wouldn’t want to get her upset,” Menendez said. “She might wet her pants.”

“Aw, naw, we wouldn’t want that. Naw, you just take it easy now, lassie. Don’t fret yo’seff none.” To Menendez he added, “I always say, a contented cow gives the sweetest milk.”

From up ahead of Quesada, Provo’s voice came floating back: “Shut up back there. Leave her alone.”

She had kept her eyes shut; she kept them shut now. She didn’t know why Provo had any interest in protecting her from the rest of them but whatever his motive she was remotely glad of it.

Provo called a halt in the greasewood at the edge of the hardpan flats. Out across the valley she could see the dark ribbon of greenery that marked the course of the river. There was a tall structure of some kind, made of metal that glittered in the early sun. Probably a windmill, its blades flashing the reflections.

Provo pointed at it. “That ought to be Vestal’s horse ranch. Well ride in and swap for fresh animals. Anybody puts up an argument, show some iron—but don’t kill anybody unless we have to. I ain’t a butcher.”

She saw him look around at the rest of them. “You’ve had all night to think on my offer. What about it? George?”

George Weed said, “I could use three thousand. But where’s this place where the law can’t get after us?”

“Redrock country,” Provo told him. “My people’s place. Arizona law got no jurisdiction there.”

“Maybe—but who says those Navajos will let us come in?”

“As long as you’re with me, they’ll let you stay.” Provo’s glance moved on. “Portugee?”

“I guess.”

“Quesada? Will?”

Nobody said no.

“Let’s go, then.”

Six

The sun burned everywhere it struck and the air was like coarse wool, so hot it was hard to breathe, and the dust was in Sam Burgade’s teeth. Sunday, late afternoon: the heat lay in an intense shimmering layer along the high plateau, and dust devils funneled erratically in yellow wheelings of sand, twigs, and leaves.