Provo’s abrasive baritone shot forward. “Let them by, Mike.”

“The hell.” He didn’t look over his shoulder at Provo. “You got no call to do this to her. She never did you any grief.”

“Mike, I won’t mess around with you. You make trouble now and you’ll be mostly a hole.”

The voice was dead-flat. Shelby turned slowly to look. Provo had his rifle across the crook of his elbow, pointed generally at him. Shelby trembled in rage.

Gant and Portugee began to walk up past him. Sunlight raced along Provo’s rifle in a fragmented glitter of darting reflections. Gant and Portugee drew their holster-guns and dropped them on the ground as they walked past; Gant was muttering: “… wipe that touch-me-not look off that high and mighty face of hers.” Gant had a rancid smell. He walked heavily on his heels, undoing his belt. Shelby saw the spittle running from his mouth. He wore an expression of anger rather than lust.

Portugee was breathing fast. His urgent need showed in his trousers. Gant, hot in the face, walked up and dropped his trousers and stood staring at Susan. Gant held his erection in his hand.

Susan sat frozen with dread, sweating, quivering in every rigid limb.

Quesada shouldered past Shelby and went up the slope after them. “I want a piece of this.”

Menendez looked on with sneering contempt. Taco Riva refused to watch: he turned his back and began savagely currying one of the horses. Shelby stood rooted, drenched in sweat and rage.

Will Gant said, “You first, Portugee. I want to watch.”

Portugee didn’t even take down his pants. He just opened his fly and dropped to his knees. He put his hand on Susan’s breast and smiled.

Susan closed her eyes. She sagged to the ground, drawn up like a sick, aged wreck. Shelby couldn’t even tell if she was conscious.

Provo wasn’t even watching them. Provo was watching Shelby. The gun was rock steady in Provo’s hands. Shelby’s fingernails cut into his palms.

Portugee ripped Susan’s shirt open and kneaded her breasts brutally. He was going to take her roughly, as if to reassure himself he was the equal of any other man. He shoved her back against the earth and Shelby heard him say, “Spread her legs out and hold her feet down.” Quesada did it.

Suddenly the girl moved. She made a grab for the knife in Portugee’s belt scabbard. She got it out and whipped it toward his belly.

The tip drew blood. Portugee snapped both hands around her wrist and twisted in opposite directions. The knife fell from her hand and Shelby heard her suck wind in through her teeth. Her head rocked back and her eyes rolled back in her head. Shelby saw her go limp and knew she had lost consciousness.

It didn’t stop them.

Ten

Burgade lay on the ground stunned. His head thundered with pain. He opened his eyes to slits. Light streamed down through the trees, its color very rich.

He saw Hal fingering the field glasses in his lap. They trembled in Hal’s hands. Breath hissed and sawed in and out of him. “I can’t look, either,” Hal said. His face was a twisted ugly mask of anguish and fury.

Burgade wiped his sleeve across his eyes. He rolled over and made a grab for the rifle.

Hal planted his foot on Burgade’s wrist. “No, sir. I don’t want to hit you again.”

“You should have let me shoot.”

“You might have hit Susan. At this range you can’t—”

“Then let me get closer! In God’s name, man—”

“There’s no God,” Hal said. “Not out there.”

Burgade struggled to free his wrist. Hal reached out and picked up the rifle. “No. There’s seven of them.”

“Leave me alone!”

“Sir,” Hal said, his voice shaking, “that’s what they want.”

“Then let them have it!” He jerked his arm free and rolled over.

Hal jumped him, pinned him to the ground. “Get hold of yourself. They haven’t killed her.”

Burgade lay with his face pinned against the ground. A twig dug into his cheek. He heard the rasp of his own, breathing. The pulse thudded in his throat. Hal said in a soft hiss, with calculated brutality, “Women have been fucked before. She can survive it if we can.”

Through the red haze of grief and unthinking total anger, Burgade felt a twinge of awe: that this young man, who loved her, could take it so coolly.

His eyes brimmed: he wept.”

“Are you all right now?”

“Yes.”

Hal let him up. He sat up and wiped dirt and leaves off himself numbly. “What are they doing now?”

“Nothing.”

“What about Susan?”

“She’s lying where they left her. I don’t think she knew what they were doing. I think she fainted. It’s just as well.”

Burgade reached for the field glasses. “Is she—”

“She’s got her clothes on, what’s left of them. And I’m sure she’s not hurt. I saw her move.”

“Not hurt.”

“You know what I mean, sir. She’s alive. That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? In the end. Staying alive is what matters.”

“You’re a tougher son of a bitch than I ever credited.”

“Yes, sir, I guess I am.”

Burgade spent a long time looking through the field glasses. They had an eight-power magnification but still that only brought the camp up to a hundred yards’ distance; he couldn’t make out details. He saw Susan roll over on her side and draw her knees up. One of the men was standing nearby. He couldn’t tell for certain, but by the set of the man’s head and the movements of his hands it appeared he was talking to Susan, trying to calm her down. It wasn’t Provo. After a long time, eliminating names, he finally decided it had to be Shelby, the kid. He didn’t know whether Shelby was one of the ones who had raped her. He’d seen Gant drop his pants and then he had flung down the field glasses in disbelieving rage. He’d reached for the rifle in a blind savage fury and Hal had knocked him down.

He put down the glasses and took half a dozen evenly spaced deep breaths, with his eyes closed. Finally he looked at Hal. “Thank you.”

Hal was very grave. “Yes, sir. I couldn’t let you do it. I felt the same way you did. But they’d have killed you. And I cant help her, without you. I wouldn’t know what to do. I can help, but you’ve got to point the way for me.”

“You don’t need a weathervane,’Hal. You’re a better man than you think you are.”

“I know my limitations, sir. My ignorances. What I don’t know about this kind of thing would fill an encyclopedia.” Hal’s glance turned outward, past the trees toward the flat. In a different voice he said, “We’re going to get her out of this, sir. You and me. And when we do I’m going to try to make her see that this hasn’t made any difference in the way I feel. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of patience. From you and from me. She’s going to have to travel a long road back before she can trust a man’s hands again—mine or any other man’s.”

Burgade stared at him and listened to the quiet run of Hal’s talk. Suddenly feeling almost burst his throat. He grabbed Hal around the shoulders and hugged him against him and felt the tears wet on his cheeks.

The sun was painful against his grainy eyes. He shaded his brow and studied the sky across and beyond the flats, above the westward summits. He felt utterly drained. It took a supreme effort just to lower his hand to his side. The ground around his feet was still damp, saturated by last night’s pelting rain; the topsoil among these trees was thin, the rock and clay beneath it wasn’t porous, and there was no place for the water to go. But the grass out on the flats had been dried by the day’s blast of sunshine.

It would work. He turned and began to walk back through the trees to the clearing where they had tethered the horses. Weed was there, tied to the bole of an oak, a bandanna gag in his mouth. His face was swollen on one side where Burgade had struck him last night; the eye was puffy and half-closed. He looked bitter.