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In triumph the vaquero stood over his vanquished enemy, rotating the knife handle as he dropped to his knees on top of Hook so that he could plunge it into the gringo’s heart. He smiled, then as suddenly as he had descended on his enemy, the vaquero wore a look of utter surprise, a pinched look of panic as he rocked back to gaze down at his chest where the American released a second knife.

Staring dumbfounded, the Mexican struggled to rise. But his legs had gone to water and would not hold him.

Hook shoved the Mexican off. The vaquero tumbled to the floor, his legs beginning to draw up as Jonah pulled his knife free from the man’s chest—then savagely plunged it into the red-stained white shirt again and a third time, splattering flecks of blood across the creamy buckskin jacket.

“Donde?” the vaquero asked with a gasp, blood on his lips.

“Where? Where’d I get the knife?” Jonah asked in reply, slowly pulling the blade from the man’s chest, then holding the sharp tip against the vaquero’s Adam’s apple. “Where I come from, a man never carries just one knife, Señor. Never just one.”

With a jerk Jonah fell to the side as the bunched gunshots boomed in the low-roofed earthen room. A last one rang in his ears before Jonah rolled over to find Two Sleep still sitting, his pistol muzzle smoking, and two of the vaquero’s companions crumpling slowly, a third clawing desperately at the edge of the bar, their own guns tumbling from their hands to clatter dully onto the pounded clay floor.

“Watch the drink man,” Jonah snarled at Two Sleep, his head nodding at the bartender.

Two Sleep leveled one of the pistols at the Mexican behind the bar as Jonah crabbed back to the vaquero, who lay wreathed in blood, his breath coming ragged. He put the tip of his knife blade back against the Mexican’s throat, then gazed up into the flickering candlelight, eventually finding her.

“C’mere!” he ordered her in English. When she did not obey immediately, he called her gruffly in Spanish.

Whimpering, the whore stood over him, tears having streaked the alegría she had used to rouge her cheeks.

“You want me to kill him quick?”

She shook her head, then nodded yes. “Sí. No, no—leave him be.”

“You love him, eh?” Jonah asked as he slowly drew the bloody knife from the vaquero’s throat, wiping it off on the buckskin jacket.

“No—I could not love him. He is trouble to me every time he comes in,” she said quietly in the hushed cantina. “But there would be more trouble for me if you kill him.”

Hook peered down at the Mexican and sighed, then gazed up at the whore. “It doesn’t matter now, Señorita”

“He is dead too?” growled the bartender.

As he rose, Jonah stuffed the second knife away inside his boot. “These others, they should have minded their own business. How about you? Will you mind your own business?”

The man’s puffy black eyes were like a frightened, caged animal’s as they darted here and there, then eventually landed back on Hook’s face. He slid Jonah’s knife down the bar toward the American. “Sí. Just go. Go now and never come back.”

Two Sleep still had his pistols drawn, covering the room as Jonah dragged up the Winchester propped against their table. Hook reached over to clamp his right hand around the woman’s wrist, holding his left forearm protectively in front of him.

“You owe me, Señorita. You better help me stop this bleeding—for saving your life.”

Her eyes climbed from his bloody shirt, softening as they peered into his. “Yes. I owe you, Señor.”

27

Spring 1873

SHE SMELLED MORE of dust than anything else. It wasn’t that the woman was dirty. Just this land, the mud houses, what with the wind that blew night and day—it seemed natural for her to have the same sweet, musky smell of the land.

That, and the slightly damp feel to her sere-colored flesh as she worked herself into a frenzy, throbbing like a steam piston up and down atop him. Her breasts quivered inches from his eyes, the nipples coming rigid and rosy against the dusky hue of her skin. Jonah reached up and brought one round melon to his mouth as she trembled atop her perch in his lap. Throwing her head back, the high Indian cheekbones firing her eyes with an even brighter flame and her long black hair slithering over the curve of her shoulder, she shuddered from chin to toe.

The whore whimpered softly as her mouth came forward toward his, then slid off his lips, tantalizing him as her teeth sought the side of his neck. She bit him, hard enough to make Hook wince.

He hadn’t been bitten like that in … Jonah couldn’t remember a woman ever biting him before. Not in anger. Nor in passion.