The Backstabbers by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2020-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

Morning came, and Arman Broussard and his Mexicans halted. The coolness of the evening desert had fled, and the hot sun came up like a copper coin in a brassy sky. It was their second day on the trail south. The water in the canteen was almost gone, and strain showed on the faces of the Mexicans who’d been poorly fed and driven hard in the mine from dawn to dusk seven days a week for years.

One of them, an older man named Vincente Fonseca, was in a bad way. He was bone-tired, sagging from weariness, and his eyes were hollow. Before he was taken by the Rathmores he’d had six children, but he didn’t know where they were, and he believed his wife had died. When he’d been young and strong Fonseca had been a carpenter, but that was years ago and now his strength was almost gone.

Positioning himself so that his shadow fell on the old man, in his halting Spanish Broussard asked him how he felt. In a voice that was barely a whisper Fonseca told him that he must go on without him, that his time to die was very near and that he’d seen Santa Muerte, the Angel of Death, and she had beckoned to him.

Broussard said, “Despues de descansar, pronto te sentiras mejor,” hoping like hell it meant, “After some rest, you’ll feel better.”

But the old man shook his head and said no more. He died just before sundown.

Broussard and the Mexicana buried Fonseca as best they could under sand and loose rocks and then took to the dark trail south again. The gambler knew the odds and figured their chance of survival was slim to none and slim was already saddling up to leave town. The water would soon give out . . . and that would be the end.

Two hours later, they found Luna Talbot. Or the coyotes did.

* * *

The coyotes were yipping close to the walking men, skulking silver shapes in the moonlight, flickering in and out of the brush. Broussard thought it strange that the animals would come so near to them, men being the most dangerous of their traditional enemies. But he dismissed the coyotes from his mind and continued walking. But then the yips grew more frequent and excited and it was one of the young Mexicans who first heard the sound that did not come from an animal or an injured deer.

The man’s face puzzled, he said to Broussard, “Señor, es una mujer?”

Is it a woman?

The only woman who could be alone in the wilderness and cry out like that was Luna Talbot. But Brossard had thought her dead, killed by the Rathmores . . . or the desert. Could it really be her? The question struck him like a blow. Then he was running, charging into the murk, whooping like an Indian to scare away the coyotes.

In the gloom, he at first thought the dark shape on the ground was in fact a deer or some other animal, but as he ran closer he made out the unmistakable form of Luna Talbot.

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