Dakota Kill and the Romantics by Peter Brandvold

Author:Peter Brandvold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER 5

AN HOUR LATER, Cameron left the others along a dry creekbed, and spurred his buckskin ahead to scout the place where he wanted to camp. He rode a half-mile before halting his buckskin on a flat rock above a dry, rocky wash and reaching into his saddlebags for his field glasses. He’d fashioned a stiff leather hood over each lens, to keep the glass from reflecting sunlight, and now he brought the sand-colored spur above him into focus.

At the base of the spur was a shallow wind cave in which he’d camped several times when traversing the country between Tucson and Tombstone. It offered perfect shelter from wind, rain, and sun. Situated as it was on a rise, with rocky ground sloping away to the dry wash, the cave also offered protection from other men.

Interlopers could come from the west only, for in the south and north loomed steep-walled mountains, weathered smooth to preclude climbing or anything but a suicidal descent by even the surest-footed Apache. To the east the trail wound along the wash until it vanished in a cul-de-sac from which a spring issued. Twenty feet below the spring the water pooled in bowls it had carved in slabs of black basaltic rock, ideal for watering horses and filling canteens.

The entire place was so favorable for overnighting, in fact, that it often attracted other campers. You never knew who you might run into. Cameron had once camped in the cave with a doctor traveling to deliver a baby, but he’d once spotted a party of young Apache warriors there, as well, and had lost no time in hightailing it back down the trail.

Now the dying sun had filled the cave with stygian shadows while pinkening the sandstone wall around it. But he could see no horses, and no smoke from a cookfire. Reasonably sure the place was deserted, Cameron returned his field glasses to his saddlebags, turned the buckskin around, and headed back down the trail to retrieve the others.

A half-hour later the ragged procession plodded up the slope, the hang-headed horses winding around boulders and the dangerous “jumping” cholla cactus. Rein chains jangled, horses blew, and shod hooves rang off rocks.

Cameron brought up the rear, behind Marina, who rode now with young Jimmy Bronco. Her head hung wearily to the side, long black hair bouncing on her shoulders. She’d torn a slit in her skirt so she could ride astraddle, and Cameron tried to keep his eyes off the bare thigh the breeze occasionally revealed—not an easy task, given the sensuousness of the woman the thigh belonged to. She hadn’t said anything for hours, but Cameron could tell she was no ordinary woman. She’d nearly been raped by Bachelard’s men, not to mention killed, yet her eyes remained brave. Although riding the bare rump of a half-wild mustang over rough terrain, she’d never asked Cameron and the others to stop so she could rest. Her stalwart, self-contained sense of self only added to her beauty.

What the hell was she doing here? Cameron wondered.

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