“Where are you going?”
Silently, Karla stood and tiptoed over to the unconscious guard. She crouched beside him, placed her hand on the bone-handled knife poking up from a sheath on his right hip, and slowly slipped it out.
Holding the knife in both hands, she turned slowly and tiptoed back to Billie kneeling and watching her, the girl’s wide eyes shadowed by the dying umber fire. Karla knelt and put the knife’s sharp edge to the ropes tying Billie’s ankles together. One flick of the knife, and Billie’s feet were free.
“Let’s free the rest of the girls,” Karla whispered, rising.
She turned away from Billie, then turned quickly back. A shadow moved just behind the girl, a high-crowned hat taking shape in the dull light. Karla’s blood turned to ice. Before she could move or think or do anything, an arm snaked around her from behind.
A hand closed brusquely over her mouth, pinching off her wind, lifting her off her feet, and jerking her back, half carrying, half dragging her off down the canyon.
Chapter 18
Karla flailed with the knife until an arm smashed down on her wrist. Her hand opened, and the knife fell as she was pulled quickly backward, stumbling over rocks and shrubs. She fell and was dragged over sand and gravel, the bottoms of her feet and the backs of her heels rubbed raw.
She must have been carried sixty or seventy yards down the canyon before the man suddenly released her. She fell hard on her back, the air slammed from her lungs.
“Got yourself free, uh, pretty gringa?” the man said in a heavy Mexican accent, catching his breath. “Good. That makes less work for me and Weelis.”
Karla was too out of breath to say anything. She looked back the way she’d come. A shadow moved toward her. Two figures, in fact—the man called Willis manhandling Billie the way Karla had been wrenched and dragged down the canyon. Willis had one arm around the girl’s waist, his other hand cupped over her mouth.
Approaching, he twisted around and flung Billie down beside Karla, then brought his hat to his mouth, sucking a finger. “Little bitch bit me!”
Billie gasped and sobbed, her hair splayed across her face.
Gaining her breath at last, Karla rose up on her elbows and snarled at the Mexican, whom she’d heard called Pancho, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Pancho flung his hat aside and grinned down at her, showing his pointed brown teeth buried within his thin, drooping mustaches. “Weelis and I decided we have gone without female companionship long enough.”
With that, he chuckled and threw himself atop Karla, pinning her hands down with his own and nuzzling her neck. Karla recoiled from the oily, bristly feel of the man, and from the ripe stench of the mescal on his breath. Gritting her teeth, she struggled, scissoring her legs and trying to free her hands.
As she fought, she heard Billie struggling to her left, pleading and sobbing. Clothing ripped. Billie started to scream, but it was cut short by a hand on her mouth.
“Shut up, you little bitch,” Willis growled at the girl. “One word of this to Edgar, and Pancho and I’ll skin you both alive!”
Karla slipped her right hand out from under Pancho’s left, and slapped the wiry Mexican hard across his face. Laughing, he grabbed her wrist, squeezing until she thought the bone was being pulverized, and slammed it back down in the gravel beside her head.
He was lowering his head once more to hers when he suddenly froze. Keeping his hand clamped down on hers, he jolted upright and looked around, listening.
“Weelis,” he whispered.
Willis was too involved to reply until Pancho had called his name two more times. Willis raised his head from Billie’s chest and turned to his cohort, frowning incredulously, his hair in his eyes.
Pancho opened his mouth to speak but stopped when something thrashed in the brush on the south side of the canyon, to Karla’s right. Both men turned sharply that way. An instant later, Pancho released Karla’s left hand, and slipped his revolver from his holster, thumbing back the hammer.
“What the hell was that?” Willis said, rising on his knees and unholstering his own pistol.
The brush on the other opposite of the canyon thrashed, as though something large were on the prod. Both men whipped their heads that way.
“ ’Paches,” Willis said, a trill in his voice. He stood, stumbling back a step. “Shit . . .”
“Madre Maria!” Pancho cried, standing over Karla and extending his pistol toward the right side of the canyon.
Karla turned her face to the ground and crossed her arms over her head as the bark of Pancho’s revolver echoed like a cannon in the narrow cleft. The man fired again. Willis did, as well, both men firing until the chasm filled with one continuous roar, making Karla’s ears ring and her nostrils fill with the rotten-egg smell of cordite.
The din died suddenly, punctuated by both gun hammers snapping on empty chambers.
“What the hell . . . ?” Willis whispered.
Karla lowered her arms and turned to look up at the two men. They stood ten feet away, back to back, facing opposite sides of the canyon. The darkness was relieved by only the few stars that shone between the towering rock walls. Billie lay huddled to Karla’s right, facedown, head buried in her arms.
On the right side of the canyon, the brush popped and rattled, as though someone were thrashing around with a stick.
“Sheet,” Pancho muttered. “They’re still there—reload!”
Both men had just begun ripping fresh shells from their cartridge belts when a gun popped on the right side of the canyon, the flash like a sudden lightning bolt lashing parallel to the ground.
“Madre!” Pancho cried, both knees buckling as he grabbed his left thigh.
Willis flipped opened his revolver’s loading gate and tried shoving a bullet into a chamber. The bullet clicked against the cylinder and dropped from his shaking hands, plunking off his right boot toe.
The gun in the brush popped again.
Willis’ right leg snapped back. The man grunted sharply and fell, clutching his knee and cursing.
Silence thickened, relieved only by the sighs and groans of the two wounded men shuffling around in the darkness before Karla, who lay on her side beside Billie, one hand on the girl’s back.
For a time, she’d been certain she was about to die. Now she wasn’t so certain. . . .
The brush on the right side of the canyon thrashed. A man chuckled. Karla turned from the wounded men to see a tall shadow move out from the canyon wall. The brush on the opposite side of the canyon crackled, and another shadow walked out to meet the first one in the canyon’s center, where Pancho and Willis clutched their wounded limbs and rolled on their backs in agony.
“Does that hurt terribly, Pancho?” Edgar Bontemps asked. “It should.” He slid his foot toward the wounded Mexican.
Pancho screamed. “Ah, madre, please . . . !”
Sensing what was coming, Karla closed her hands over Billie’s ears and steeled herself, wincing.
“What have I told you men about playing with the girls? Huh, Willis? What have I told you about damaging the trade goods?”
“Please, Edgar,” Willis said in a pinched voice. “Don’t do this. You can’t expect us to ride with these girls for days without tryin’ to get a little. That ain’t reasonable. It just ain’t reasonable.” He panted. “Oh, Lord. You blew out my knee, Edgar!”
The gun exploded again, flames stabbing down from Bontemps’ silhouette. Willis screamed. It did not sound like a human scream at all, as it spiraled and echoed toward the canyon’s rim, charging the darkness with an enervated fever.