Trilby

He’d had to browbeat Jack Lang into letting him join the party. The Easterner had been hell-bent on going alone with his few men, and Thorn had a sudden mental image of the older man lying dead in the Arizona dust.

His conscience had burned him raw over his assumptions about Trilby. He’d done enough damage to her reputation that he hadn’t felt right about going back over to the Lang place. He knew Jack and the rest of the family despised him for what he’d said to Trilby, although, miraculously, she seemed not to have told anyone what really happened during that ride on the desert. It was better than he deserved, he admitted. Now at least he could help keep her father alive. Perhaps that would atone a little for his actions.

Samantha had been asleep, and he hadn’t woken her. The child was so withdrawn and quiet lately that he worried about her. She was thin and pale as well, not a healthy child in any way. He wished that his emotions weren’t locked in steel so that he could communicate with her on some level. But since Sally’s death, Samantha had drawn into her own mind. He didn’t know how to reach her anymore.

He watched Jack Lang ride up, his expression preoccupied.

Jack, in turn, studied the Westerner, feeling suddenly overdressed and out of place. Thorn looked grim, Jack thought, and even under the circumstances, he was able to appreciate how very Western and dangerous the other man looked in his jeans and blue-checked Western shirt and red bandanna. He had on wristbands, as Jack did, but Vance’s were scarred and worn dark with age. His boots had small rowels on the spurs and he was wearing wide, bat-wing leather chaps. His hat wasn’t a new one like Jack’s. It was weather-beaten and warped, but it suited him somehow. A rope was looped over his saddle horn and he was carrying the usual saddle roll that most of his men’s gear sported. A colorful Mexican poncho was thrown over one broad shoulder and he was smoking a cigarette with lazy disinterest. For a man going to war, he looked magnificently unaffected.

Jack had to bite back angry words. He hadn’t really spoken to Thorn since his conversation with Curt Vance. It was difficult to have to deal with a man who’d been instrumental in very nearly ruining his daughter’s reputation.

“Ready to go?” Thorn drawled when Jack reached him. “I can add ten men to the party.”

“I’m sure we have enough,” Jack replied stiffly. “I brought six.”

Six men, plus himself and Vance, to hunt down a party of bandits. Thorn could have chuckled at the man’s innocence. The Mexican revolutionaries probably boasted fifty men. Fighting across the border was growing stronger by the day as the resistance to Díaz’s rule mounted. Several different small bands of insurrectionists were raiding local stock from the northern Sonoran province of Mexico—and they weren’t averse to taking local cattle over the border to sell as well as feed hungry men. Of course, they didn’t exactly pay for the local cattle they took. Things in Mexico were definitely building to war, Thorn thought privately, and he was worried more by the day about the grim possibility of American intervention if fighting migrated over the border. Intervention would mean war with Mexico, and no one wanted that.

“I’d feel more comfortable with my men along,” Thorn said. He looked straight at Jack as he spoke and he didn’t blink. The look was as vivid as a curse.

“As you wish, of course,” Jack said austerely. He hadn’t mentioned Trilby, and neither had Thorn. But both men were having trouble acting naturally.

Thorn had heard about Jack’s visit to his cousin and what had been said. He and Curt had argued for the first time in memory. But at last, Curl had convinced him that his shadowy paramour was not Trilby. The revelation had left Thorn confused and brutally ashamed. He’d savaged Trilby, all because Sally had accused her. But why had Sally lied? That was the only piece of the puzzle he couldn’t fit in.

However, there was no time for it now. Thorn put his hand to his mouth and let out a fierce, piercing whistle. Immediately ten mounted men rode out and joined the small party.

They looked a lot like their boss, Jack thought. Most of them wore weather-beaten clothing and they were armed to the teeth. One or two of them looked absolutely roguish. There were two Apaches in the group; one short, aging one and another who was tall and well built with oddly intelligent black eyes. He looked positively grim.

“You’re not taking the Indians?” Jack asked under his breath.

Thorn mentally counted to ten. “Naki and Tiza are my trackers,” he told Lang. “The best in my outfit. I can’t even find the signs they can.”

“Look here, I don’t trust Indians,” Jack snapped. “The stories I’ve heard about them…”

“I don’t imagine you’ve heard that in the old days some whites kept the Apaches as slaves?” he asked quietly. “Or that soldiers often attacked Indian villages and killed women and children?”

Lang cleared his throat. “Well…”

“I’ll vouch for my men. All of my men,” Thorn said quietly. “Let’s ride.”

“Yes, of course.” Jack raised his arm and motioned for his men to follow. He tried to fall in alongside Vance, but the man put his spurs gently to his horse’s flank and went like the wind. Jack Lang knew for a fact that he couldn’t have managed to even stay on the horse at the speed Vance was going. He fell back, riding with his own group as Vance and his men outdistanced them. Jack refused to let himself ask who was leading the party. It was apparent that Vance was.

Despite the faint color breaking over the mountains, it was mostly dark. But the Apaches dismounted from time to time and stared around at things like boulders and stony ground. Lang was certain no man could track over rock, but the Apaches were able to. They led the men across the broad, white river that separated Jack’s land from Vance’s, and off to the west of Douglas.

“Vance, this is near the border. Damned near the border,” Jack said, voicing his concern. “We can’t go over into Mexico without permission.”

Thorn leaned his wrists over his pommel and gazed at Jack Lang. “Listen, there’s no question that the raiders have crossed the border. We only needed to know where, not if. They’ll be down below Agua Prieta, and we can find them if we’re quick. If we wait until we get permission, you’ll lose half your herd. Besides that, we can’t risk the army coming down here after us.”

“But, man, if we’re caught…”

“We won’t be.” He signaled to his men and rode forward at a quick clip.

Jack hesitated, but in a minute, he followed.

They trailed the Mexicans to a valley just below the San Bernadino Valley, careful to keep plenty of distance between them and the U.S. Army troops that were bivouacked there along the border. The bandits were so confident that they’d settled down to a nice, leisurely breakfast with one of Jack Lang’s steers being butchered as the main course.

There were only six of them. That convinced Thorn that they were only renegades, not part of any Maderista forces. These men were acting on their own, he was pretty sure, but they didn’t look quite smart enough to be acting without guidance. He wanted to know whom they were working for.

He signaled to his men, forgetting that it was Jack Lang’s party, and rode into the camp, unfurling his lasso at the same time. He threw a loop over the man who looked like the leader and jerked him down. The others had drawn their weapons, but finding themselves outnumbered and outgunned, they quickly threw up their hands, crying out in garbled Spanish.

A rapid monologue of Spanish exploded from Thorn, who stepped gracefully out of the saddle to hog-tie the leader. But as he began to question the man, one of the Apaches, the tall one, approached him and, with a cold look at Jack Lang, began to speak in his own tongue.

“We’re not alone here.”

“Speak English,” Thorn snapped.

“Not in front of him,” Naki replied, indicating Jack Lang. “I’ve heard what he’s been saying. If he insults me once more I’ll tie him bare-legged to a cactus. You tell him that,” he added, with a cold scowl in Jack Lang’s direction that made the older man look uncomfortable.

“Will you tell me what you found out?”

“When you tell this stage cowboy that he’s headed for a stake and some firewood, I will.”

Thorn glared at him. “It was the Iroquois in the Northeast, not the Apaches, who burned people at the stake!”

Naki glowered as he eyed Jack. “Are you sure?”

“Damn it!”

“Oh, very well! There are about a hundred Federales headed this way.”

“Why didn’t you say so?!” He turned in the saddle. “Federales,” Thorn said sharply. “We’ll have to clear out. Get those cattle moving!” he called to his men.

They fired into the air to stampede the milling cattle, and Thorn quickly threw his roped quarry across his own saddle before he mounted and lit out for the border.

“Don’t spare the horses!” he called to Jack Lang. “We can’t let ourselves be caught on this side of the border!”

“As I said myself before we sashayed down here,” Jack muttered to himself, but not so that Thorn could hear him.

They made it across the border just minutes ahead of the Mexican soldiers, cattle and all. In the ensuing rout, all but the Mexican thrown across Vance’s saddle managed to escape while the cowboys tried to salvage the cattle. They did lose a few head in the process, but not enough to make any great difference in Jack Lang’s fortunes.

With Thorn in the lead, they rode hell-for-leather for Blackwater Springs Ranch. Trilby heard them come up and ran to the window. Jack Lang and Thorn were just riding up to the front of the house. She was so relieved to see her father that she instinctively ran out onto the porch.

Thorn saw her just as he tossed the trussed Mexican to the ground and loosened his rope, leaving the freed man lying there. He looked utterly ruthless as he turned to her.

“Get in the house and stay there,” he said, with icy command.

She began to disobey just as the Mexican looked at her and laughed. He said something in Spanish to Thorn.

It was obviously something insulting, and about her, because Thorn went for him on the spot. The Mexican pulled a knife, which Thorn was too furious to notice. But Naki saw it. As the smaller man raised it to strike, Naki’s hand flashed down to the big hunting knife he carried in a sheath on his belt. He whipped it out and flung it, handle first, with frightening speed and accuracy, knocking the Mexican’s knife right out of his hand.