“Why not?” Karla said, running a hand down the gelding’s smooth, arched neck, across the well-defined withers. Her shoulders loosened. So the horse really was hers. It wasn’t a joke or a trick of some kind. And what a magnificent beast he was, too.
She turned a genuine smile to her grandfather. “Thank you, Grandpa,” she said. “He must have been awfully expensive.”
Vannorsdell flicked a dismissive hand.
Cantering hooves sounded on the trail east of the ranch yard. Karla turned her gaze that way, where the low sun cast long, sharp-edged shadows along the ground. A rider on a sleek pinto moved up the hill toward the ranch headquarters, his low-crowned sombrero bobbing above the dense chaparral sheathing the wagon trail. As the rider approached, Karla saw the red bandanna flopping around the man’s neck, the gray flannel shirt, brown vest, blue charros with gold stitching down the outside of the legs, the red sash around his waist.
“Juan,” she said, her full lips spreading a smile.
She released the halter rope and crawled through the fence. As she made her way across the yard, toward the entrance portal into which the Vannorsdell name and the Bar-V brand had been burned, her grandfather barked, “Better wash for supper, boys.”
As the men dispersed, spurs softly chinging as they headed for the bunkhouse, Karla stood by the portal, smiling as she watched the approaching rider appear around a bend in the trail, and pass through the headquarters’ open gate. Silhouetted against the painted western sky, the rider halted the pinto before her, his face shaded by his broad-brimmed hat.
“Well, well, well,” she greeted, jamming her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, shifting her weight coquettishly, “what brings you here in the middle of the week, Senor Juan? Don Renaldo give you your walking papers?”
“Hello, Karla,” the young man said, looking down at her but lifting his eyes to regard someone behind her.
She glanced over her right shoulder. Her grandfather stood before the corral, chest out, shoulders back, looking toward her. Vannorsdell cleared his throat, turned, and bent his old legs for the ranch house.
She turned again to Juan, who sat his saddle with a tense set to his shoulders. His handsomely chiseled, clean-shaven face was framed by his hat thong and by the long dark curls spilling down from his hat.
When he said nothing, just looked at her with troubled eyes, she said, “Would you like to come inside?”
“I cannot stay long.”
Karla studied him, rocked back on her heels, and swept a strand of hair from her face. “Is something wrong?”
Again, the young vaquero looked behind her. She turned another look over her shoulder. Her grandfather stood on the house’s wide veranda, looking toward her and smoking a long, thin cigar.
She turned back to Juan, her eyes wide with confusion. She opened her mouth to speak, but Juan cut her off. “Karla, I came here to tell you good-bye.”
“Good-bye!” she repeated. It was as if he’d slapped her across the face.
“I am leaving the Territory. Going back to Mejico.”
Only two days ago, they’d picnicked along Antelope Creek, flirting and joking . . . and planning their future together.
Haltingly, trying to absorb his words, she said, “Juan, I thought ...”
“I see now that it would not work, mi amore. I am a Mejicano. A bean eater.” He glanced at the house again. “You are a Norteamericano. You must marry a fair-haired gringo.” He cuffed his hat off his head, revealing a full head of sweaty dark brown hair.
Her heart thudding, Karla stepped up to his horse, placed a hand on his knee. “Juan, it will work—if we love each other.”
He shook his head and looked off. When he turned back to her, his lower lip trembled. He bit down on it. “You’re new to this country. This is the way it works here. I wanted to stop and tell you good-bye so you wouldn’t wonder what happened when you didn’t see me again.”
Karla felt as though a large bone were lodged in her throat, and her eyes burned. Her voice trembled as she spoke. “It’s my grandfather, isn’t it? He told you not see me anymore.”
“Don’t be mad at him, Karla. He’s right. If we got married, what would we do? Where would we live?”
“Here!” Karla cried. “You’ll work here—for my grandfather.”
The vaquero laughed without mirth and, squeezing her hand in his, leaned down and gazed lovingly, apologetically into her eyes. “I love you, Karla. But vaqueros don’t marry gringas.” He reined the horse around and galloped out through the gate, his gold-brown dust powdering the mesquite and creosote behind him.
Karla stood for a long time, listening to the fading thuds. Anger burned within her, and she wasn’t sure who she was angrier at: Juan or her grandfather. Tears rolling down her cheeks, she wheeled and strode stiffly toward the house.
She found her grandfather in his study, smoking in his chair behind his desk. His hat was off; his silver hair had taken its shape.
Karla stopped just within the door, took a deep breath. Her voice was even and hard. “You ran him off. You told him not to see me again.”
Vannorsdell regarded her sympathetically, the cigar smoldering between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. “Karla,” he said with a reasonable hunch of his shoulders, “he’s a Mex.”
Karla stared at him, felt the pressure building, feeling more hatred for her grandfather than she’d ever felt for another living thing. “Bastard!” she screamed.
She turned and—her smooth suntanned cheeks mottled red—ran from the room.
Chapter 3
Tom Navarro’s spry paint followed the meandering desert trace through a notch in the hills, around a long bend hugging a dry wash on the left, and into a shallow canyon. Scrub pines and mesquite stippled the boulder-strewn slopes on both sides. Behind Navarro, the wagon rattled and drummed, the beer and wine casks sloshing near the tailgate.
Amado, Waters, and Tryon rode behind the lumbering Conestoga, slouched in their saddles, faces dimming beneath their hat brims as the sun sank low.
The supply trip to town was normally a much-coveted assignment—especially when the fun-loving Tixier led the crew. It wasn’t as much fun when Navarro led. The silver-haired frontiersman and exgunslinger ran a tight ship, allowing the men to stay in town only two nights and never past midnight either night. And they could cavort only with the doves Navarro deemed acceptable—namely, those who would not put a man on his back with a burning case of the pony drip. Men with the drip couldn’t ride or do much of anything but lay abed and howl.
And howling, as Navarro said, “ain’t what the boss is payin’ us for.”
Navarro halted the paint and dismounted to remove a windblown branch from the trail. As he grabbed the horn to mount again, he froze and lifted his head to the slope rising on the right side of the trace. Holding his breath, he pricked his ears.
He’d turned fifty that March but he still had the ears of a coyote, and he’d heard something just now. Wasn’t sure what but it didn’t sound natural. There wasn’t a lick of wind. The birds were oddly silent for this time of the day. It had cooled some, and the birds usually fed and fought and called reminders of their boundary lines from early dusk to good dark.
Hearing nothing else, Navarro swung up into the saddle. The wagon hammered along behind, slowing as it approached Tom. Tryon must have seen the cautious set to Navarro’s shoulders.
“What is it, boss?”
“I don’t know.” Navarro glanced around. It was getting late for an Apache attack. The desert Indians wouldn’t normally fight at night, for they worried that, if they were killed after dark, their souls would get lost on their way to the next world. “Stay alert. I’m gonna ride up the southern slope and take a look around. Keep moving. I’ll catch up to you in a bit.”