the Burning Hills (1956) (3 page)

Her eyes were large and dark, ringed with long lashes, and in that first glimpse he found eyes that were soft with a woman's tenderness ... and then that tenderness was gone and she looked away. "How you feel?"

She spoke abruptly, her tone giving nothing, neither friendly nor unfriendly.

He tried several times to speak before he could make his lips shape the words. "Good." And then after a pause he indicated the poultice. "Feels good --" She gave no indication that she had heard but arose and went to the edge of the cliff where, concealed by the manzanita, she looked into the canyon. He listened and heard nothing and after a few minutes she returned to his side.

She had built a small fire to heat the water and now she added some tiny sticks to the little flame. There was no smoke, almost no smell.

"Nice," he whispered. "Nice of you."

She looked around sharply. "I do it for a dog!"

And when she removed the poultice the gentleness was gone from her fingers. He watched her as she worked, liking the way her dark hair fell across her shoulders, the swell of her breasts under the thin blouse. Yet her features were sullen and without warmth.

"If they find you've helped me you'll be in trouble."

"There is always trouble."

There was no strength in him and he lay staring up at the overhang and he must have slept, for when he awakened again she was gone. The fire was cold. His side was freshly bandaged and his face had been bathed, his hands washed.

There was nothing he could do so he was glad no effort was required of him. Yet he could wonder about the girl and it passed the long hours when he lay awake with only remote sounds from the canyon or the distant cry of an eagle. She had been gentle when she believed him unconscious but changed abruptly when she became aware of his attention. It made no sense ... but neither did her presence in this place.

She asked no questions so she must know what he was doing here. She was neat, her clothes not dusty from travel, so she could not have come far to get here. Yet if she lived nearby, the Sutton outfit must know her. Thought of the Suttons made him remember his guns.

Lifting himself on one elbow, he saw his saddle had been brought nearby and his rifle lay against it within reach of his hand. His two pistols in their twin belts, the one he wore and the spare he carried, had been placed near him, their butts within easy grasp.

The opening of the path down the mountain had been barricaded with brush and branches, all dry so the slightest noise among them would awaken him if he slept. Whoever the girl was, she thought of everything and she could be no friend of the Sutton-Bayless outfit.

Yet how had she reached him if the trail was blocked? The thought of another approach worried him and if the girl knew of this place, others must know. For the first time he gave careful attention to the shelf on which he lay.

That part of the hollow exposed to the sun was thick with grass and there were some bushes and trees. Where he lay no sunlight could reach and no rain unless blown by wind. There was grass enough for his horse unless he had to remain too many days. Looking around, he found his tobacco and papers at the edge of the ground sheet upon which his blankets were now spread. He rolled a smoke and when it was alight he lay back, drew deep, then exhaled.

The girl might be an Indian, yet she was no Apache and this was Apache country. Yet neither her facial structure nor manner impressed him as Indian and her inflections were definitely Spanish. Few Mexican families were supposed to live along this section of the border, yet it could be.

It was very hot. He rubbed out his cigarette and eased his position. Sweat trickled down his face. His mouth tasted bad and he dearly wanted a drink, yet lacked the will to rise. Out over the far canyon wall a buzzard wheeled in wide, lazy circles.

No sound disturbed the fading afternoon and across the canyon a great crag gathered the first shadow of evening. Somewhere a horse galloped and then the hoofbeats drummed away into silence and the heat.

Maria Cristina had heard the riders when they first came into the valley. No such group of riders had come to the canyon since her father's death and it would mean nothing but trouble. When as many as a dozen men rode in a group in this country it meant killing.

Turning from the sheep, she walked to the horse that dozed in the shadow of a cottonwood and took from a holster an ancient Walker Colt. Held at her side, it was concealed by the folds of her skirt.

She had no reason to believe the oncoming riders were friendly. She was a Mexican and she owned sheep but aside from that, she was the daughter of Pablo Chavero, who had died up the canyon to the west, fighting even as his blood wrote its epitaph upon the rocks. Listening to the sound of their coming, she could almost see the faces of the riders. Only the Sutton-Bayless outfit could muster so many. "Juanito! Stay with the sheep!" Juanito at eleven was already more like her father and not at all like her older brother, Vicente.

She walked away, her hair blowing in the wind, knowing why these men came, and she waited, standing sullen and lonely upon the hillside, expecting nothing.

These would be the same men who had killed her father and driven them to this place. And now if they could find him they would kill the man who lay up there. In the rocks, perhaps dying.

It was a vast and lonely land and if her whole family were killed here, there would be none to ask why. Only the restless eyes of the men along the street of Tokewanna would catch fire less often, for she would not be passing, her skirt rustling, her hips moving with the faint suggestion she knew so well how to use.

It had been four years since she had a new dress. Just old things made over. It had been three months since she had been to town to look at the goods in the stores, to finger the cloth she could not buy.

To walk in the town was good. The men stared and made remarks and the women turned away from her, their lips stiff, eyes angry. She was that Mexican girl, "no better than she should be." The women resented her because the men turned to look. Deliberately, she challenged their stares. She might hate them but she was a woman. They despised her but they wanted her too. Among the pale-faced women her dark beauty was an arresting thing. She knew it and liked it so. She knew that the something wild within her was felt by the men. She lifted her chin ... other women had beautiful clothes but she was Maria Cristina.

They came over the crest of the knoll in a tight bunch, then walked their horses down the slope and drew up a dozen yards away. There were ten in the group and all their faces were familiar.

Jack Sutton was the worst of them, recklessly good-looking and a man with death behind him. He looked her over deliberately, insolently, head to foot. "You get better-lookin' every time I see you, Mex! By the Lord, some day I'll --"

"Some day!" Her contempt was a lash. "Some day you get keel!"

Ignoring him, she turned to Ben Hindeman. "What you want?"

There was no nonsense about Hindeman. Shorter than the rangy Sutton, he was a blocky powerful man, his broad jaws always dark with a stubble of beard, "You seen a wounded man on a beat-up red horse?"

"I see nobody. Who come here?"

Sutton was staring at her and she knew he wanted her and deliberately, with every move of her body, she taunted him, hating him both for his contempt and his desire. She was a Mexican and she kept sheep, yet she treated him with contempt and it drove him to fury.

"If you see anybody," Jack Sutton said, "send that kid brother to tell us. Better still ... I'll come back ... alone." He looked her over, grinning with no smile in his eyes. "I think you need a man."

She turned her eyes upon him. "Where is a man?" Contempt edged the insult."You?"

Anger whipped his face. "Why, you dirty -- !" He leaped his horse at her but, even as the horse sprang, Maria Cristina whipped up the heavy Colt, firing as it lifted.

The blast and flash of the gun made the horse jerk aside his head and almost fall; but a bright spot of red showed on Button's ear and blood began to well from it in slow crimson drops.

She held the Colt poised, her expression unchanged. "You go. Next time I no miss."

Unbelieving, Jack Sutton touched his ear and brought his hand away covered with blood. His face was white with shock.

Hindeman's eyes were glinting and he studied Maria Cristina with new attention. "If your horse hadn't shied," he told Sutton, not without an edge of satisfaction, "you'd be dead."

"Why, yes, Ben." Button's voice was low. "She would have killed me. That dirty sheepherder would have lolled me."

Hindeman turned his horse and the rest followed. Jack Sutton turned in his saddle to look back. "Keep that gun handy. Ill be back."

As they crested the knoll one of the riders lifted his hand in farewell. It was Jacob Lantz.

Prom a pocket in her skirt she took a cartridge and reloaded the Colt. If Lantz had tracked the man this far there was danger. He was a queer, stoop-shouldered old man, more bloodhound than human. He never bathed and prowled around the hills like a strange cat.

What could the man have done? To make them hunt him so, he must have killed a Sutton. Twice during the morning hours riders paused near the spring and she gathered from talk she overheard that they were working all the canyons with care.

Juanito walked toward her, swinging a stick. "Who do they look for?" he asked.

She looked at him, her eyes warm. When she had turned back from her facing of Sutton she had seen Juanito get up from behind a rock. Only eleven, he was already like her father. He had been large-eyed and pale but he had the rifle.

"A man," she said. "They look for a man."

" Idon't want them to find him."

"Maybe they won't," she said.

A rider came down the canyon in worn buckskin breeches and a patched vest. He rode a ragged paint pony. It was her brother Vicente, a tall too-thin young man with a weak face.

She stared at him, feeling no kinship, wondering how a son could be so little like the father. Vicente could draw a gun faster than any man she had ever seen, as fast as Jack Sutton, probably, who had killed eleven men. But Vicente had killed no one, nor was he likely to. He was a weak man, without courage.

"What do they do here?" he demanded. "For whom do they look?"

"You afraid?" she asked contemptuously.

"I am afraid of nothing!" He spoke loudly, glaring at her. "Why should I be afraid?"

"Why? Why, I don't know. Only you afraid. You always afraid of everything."

Juanito could not hold back the story. "Maria Cristina shot Senor Sutton."

Vicente was shocked. "You shot him?"

She shrugged. "In the ear, only. His horse jumped."

Vicente stared at her. She would be the death of them all! They had little enough but here they were left unmolested. Why could she not leave well-enough alone? The business of gringos was the business of gringos.

Vicente remembered finding the body of his father. He had worshiped his father and his father had been a strong man and yet for all his bravery and strength they had hunted him down like a crippled wolf and left him dead upon the rocks. What chance then for Vicente?

He stared gloomily at the ridges, wishing they would find the man and go away. Maybe he was a coward. But he was alive and the sun was warm and there was music in the wind.

"I wish they would find him," Vicente said. "Then they would go away."

Maria Cristina stared at him, her eyes black and scornful. "You are a fool."

He started to reply angrily, then rode away, his back stiff with outrage. Did she not know he was the man of the family? To speak so to him! But he could not maintain the outrage for it was she who ran the family affairs and he was afraid of her.

Maria Cristina stared after him but she was already thinking of the other problem. Where could a man hide and not be found by Jacob Lantz?

Yet even if there had been a safer place, to move now was a danger. A man cannot be trailed who leaves no tracks and as long as he could lie quiet on the shelf, he might be safe. But she must be careful ... very careful.

It was Maria Cristina who led her family to this valley after the death of her father. She had learned of the shelf long ago and went there sometimes to be alone. So far as she was aware it was known to no one else. The Indians who once lived there had chosen the site with care. It was not an easy place to find.

She had bought their first sheep, she tended them and saw to their shearing and the sale of the wool. It was she who insisted upon the strong well-built adobe where they now lived. And she had sent to San Francisco for the few furnishings left after her marriage.

She had married a gringo cowhand when she was fifteen and after her father was killed and with him she had gone to Virginia City in Nevada. There he struck it rich in the silver mines and they went to San Francisco, but drink and gambling broke him and he died in a gun battle while drunk. Maria Cristina returned to her family with all the fine pride of her Mexican heritage and the memories of brief days of glory in Virginia City and San Francisco.

When she came the second time to the rock shelf it was sudden. A rustle of petticoats and a brush of moccasin on a stone and she was there. She had come up some trail from behind the ruin. She knelt beside him in one swift graceful motion, placing a pot on the ground. It was a stew, still hot.