The Romantics by Peter Brandvold

Author:Peter Brandvold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

CAMERON AND THE others were waiting for Alfred Going to finish using the outhouse, around which three goats grazed in the morning sun. The rest of the group was mounted and ready to go.

Going had decided at the last minute—he already had mounted his horse, in fact—to take his constitutional, and the others waited self-consciously. Cameron held the reins of the Mexican’s horse; Clark, Marina, Hotchkiss, and Jimmy Bronco sat their tail-whipping mounts by the corral, Clark coughing into his handkerchief every few minutes.

Hotchkiss made small talk with Marina until there was nothing left to say. Finally he asked Cameron, with a touch of anger, “Did he always do this when you were getting ready to go somewhere?”

“Yeah … I guess I’d forgot,” Cameron said regretfully. “If I’d’ve remembered, don’t think I would have pushed him to come along.”

“A damned annoying habit,” Hotchkiss allowed.

The outhouse door squawked open and out stepped Going, buckling his gunbelt around his waist and adjusting the soft leather holster on his hip.

“Thought you fell in,” Hotchkiss groused.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Going. “She-Bear’s huevos rancheros sometimes have a bad effect.”

“Ain’t you gonna tell her good-bye?” Cameron asked him.

Climbing into his saddle, Going shook his head. “She-Bear, like many Indians, does not believe in good-byes. I told her I was going, so she knows that I am going and that, if the Creator wills it, I will return.” He accepted his reins from Cameron and touched his steel-dust gelding with his heels.

“I bet she’d like to shoot me for stealing you away from her,” Cameron said.

“Of course she would,” Going said, chuckling. “What woman would want to see a man like me ride away? But I appeased her by telling her I would come back rich, and that lifted her spirits. She-Bear is a greedy woman—truly an oddity among her people. Once she told me she’d like to live in a city and dress like a white woman. Hee.”

A few miles south of his ranch, Going led the group off the freight trail. Cameron was wary. You didn’t leave the main trails in this part of the country unless you knew exactly where you were going. The main trails usually led to water and if you left them you had to be sure that your bushwacking would lead you to springs or creeks, or you would die. It was as simple as that.

Cameron and Going were riding about fifty yards ahead of the others when Cameron said, “You have a trail mapped out in your head?”

Going turned to him with his wide smile. “Don’t worry, amigo. I know where I am going. You forget, I grew up in this country.”

Cameron shrugged. “Yeah, I know you did. I just hope you remember where to find water.”

“I know where to find water. And, just as well, I know where not to find Apaches. Apaches have been raiding along the freight roads lately, and I’ve seen a couple of rancherias along water courses. There has been some

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