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  Rebel’s mouth tightened. “Professional manhunters,” she said. “You mean bounty hunters, Conrad? You of fered a reward for the men who robbed the bank?”

  He frowned as he sensed her disapproval. “Well, what was I supposed to do? I want those bastards brought to justice, if you’ll pardon my French!”

  “Oh, you don’t have to apologize,” Rebel said. “They sound like bastards to me, too. But bounty hunters aren’t much better. They’re killers, too. They’ve just got the law on their side.”

  “That’s an important distinction,” Conrad snapped.

  “I reckon so,” Rebel said, reverting back to the West ern manner of speaking that she had grown up with. “Was the reward you offered dead or alive?”

  “Of course.”

  She nodded. “Then if those bounty hunters catch up to the robbers, they’ll bring ‘em back dead,”.

  “And that won’t bother me a bit,” Conrad said.

  Hoyt’s men were scattered all through Tucson in vari ous saloons, whorehouses, and gambling dens, with the exception of Bartholomew Leaf, who was having his picture made in a photographer’s studio when Hoyt found him. Leaf was an Englishman, and just about the vainest son of a bitch Hoyt had ever met. He was also a hell of a shot with a rifle.

  Jack and Ben Coleman were in a brothel, with only one whore. What the brothers were doing with her, Hoyt didn’t particularly want to know. He just knocked on the door of the soiled dove’s room, uttered the magic words “Ten grand reward,” and went back downstairs. He knew the Coleman brothers wouldn’t waste any time following him.

  Sure enough, by the time he’d rousted Joaquin Esco bar from a cantina where he’d been playing a guitar he’d borrowed from an old man, and called Deke Mantee and Bob Bardwell from their poker game, then headed for the livery stable where they had all left their horses, he found Leaf and the Colemans waiting for him. Mantee, Bardwell, and Escobar showed up moments later. Hoyt already had the stable keeper and both hostlers hard at work saddling the group’s horses.

  Hoyt looked around at his partners-Leaf in his sober suit and black derby; the stocky, pug-nosed Coleman brothers; Escobar with his deceptively open, friendly face; lean, swarthy Mantee, who looked more like a Mexican than Escobar did; and Bardwell, such an aver age hombre that you forgot what he looked like two min utes after you’d been talking to him. Bardwell was an excellent tracker, as was Escobar. All seven of them were fairly familiar with the Arizona Territory, having hunted down fugitives all over it.

  “You said the reward’s ten thousand?” Mantee asked.

  Hoyt nodded. “That’s right. Sound worth it to you?”

  Mutters of agreement came from the men.

  Hoyt took his horse’s reins from the man who had sad dled the animal. “We’ll stop at the store and pick up some ammunition and supplies before we ride out,” he said. “The outlaws were headed southwest when they left town.”

  Escobar said, “There’s not much in that direction until you get to the border. And then there’s nothing over there, either.”

  Hoyt nodded. “That’s why we’re taking supplies and water with us. We may be out on the trail for several days, and there won’t be any place to stock up again.”

  “You don’t think they’ll head for Ambush Valley, do you?” Escobar asked with a frown. Like most Mexicans, he both hated and feared Apaches in roughly equal amounts. Geronimo’s surrender to General Crook some nine years earlier had effectively ended the Indian wars in Arizona, but across the border in Mexico, several bands of bronco Apaches were still hiding out in the mountains. Those renegades emerged from time to time to launch a raid across the border, so anybody who had spent any amount of time in Arizona still worried about the Apaches and likely always would.

  “My word, I hope not,” Leaf said in response to Esco bar’s question about Ambush Valley. “That’s the most un civilized place I’ve ever seen.”

  “If that’s where they’re headed, we need to stop them before they get there,” Hoyt said. “I don’t want to have to track ‘em through that hellhole. But just in case we do … Joaquin, you know where to find water in there?”

  Escobar’s shoulders rose and fell in an eloquent Latin shrug. “I know where some of the water holes are sup posed to be, Senor Hoyt. That does not mean they will be, or that they will have water in them if they are there.”

  “Let’s just catch up to the bastards ‘fore they get there,” Jack Coleman suggested.

  Hoyt nodded. “Yeah, we’re wasting time.” He swung up into the saddle. “Come on.”

  They were a hard, dangerous-looking group of riders as they left the stable. As they trotted up to the general store, Hoyt frowned. Another bunch of horsemen were gathering there, townies from the looks of them. Hoyt spotted Sheriff Lamar Fortson among them. Fortson had a bandage wrapped around his left forearm. It didn’t look like a professional job, though. Looked like the sheriff had just tied a rag around his wounded arm.

  “You put together your posse in a hurry, Sheriff,” Hoyt drawled.

  “You didn’t give me any choice,” Fortson said. “I couldn’t let you ride out after those bank robbers by your self. Now, these men have already been deputized—” He jerked his head toward the townsmen. “So if you and your men will raise your right hands, Hoyt, I’ll swear you in.”

  “Let’s just skip that part of it,” Hoyt said. He turned to the Coleman brothers and went on. “Jack, Ben, go in there and gather up the things we’ll need. Make it fast.”

  The Colemans dismounted and hurried into the store to follow Hoyt’s orders. Fortson sat there on his horse, fuming and glaring for a few seconds before he said, “You refuse to let me officially deputize you?”

  “That’s right,” Hoyt said. “No offense, Sheriff, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to swear to follow orders from you.”

  “I’m the law around here!”

  “And my men and I know what we’re doing, probably better than you do.”

  “Well, I may not be able to stop you from going, but by God, you’d better not get in our way!” Fortson blus tered. He turned to his posse, waved his arm over his head/and shouted, “Come on, men! Let’s ride!”

  Hoyt looked over at Escobar and Bardwell. “Go pick up the trail before those amateurs ruin it,” he said. “We’ll catch up to you later.”

  The two bounty hunters nodded, wheeled their horses, and galloped around the posse. The sheriff and his men had started moving, but they were slow about it. A posse made up of storekeepers, freighters, layabouts, and saddle tramps could never be as swift and professional as Hoyt and his men. Escobar and Bardwell had raced out of sight while the members of the posse were all still trying to get headed in the same direction. Fortson yelled orders at them, but it didn’t seem to help much.

  Hoyt smiled thinly as he watched the posse lumber out of town. Getting ahead of them wouldn’t be any problem.

  “I hope that by some quirk of circumstances those fel lows don’t catch up to the outlaws before we do,” Leaf said. “They’ll probably be wiped out if that happens.”

  “Not our problem,” Hoyt said.

  Chapter 4

  Cicero McCoy kept his men moving at a fast pace the rest of that day following the bank robbery in Tucson. It would take most of the next day to reach Ambush Valley, a day to make it through the hellish place, and then part of the day after that to reach the border. They could have gotten to Mexico faster by traveling due south after leav ing Tucson, but there was nothing in that direction to slow down any pursuit. It would have been a straight race to the border, and McCoy liked to have the odds more on his side than that. That was why he’d decided to follow the route through Ambush Valley.

  They would have to stop when darkness fell. When you rode at night it was too easy to get lost and start going in circles in this trackless wilderness. And there would be only a sliver of moon for the next couple of nights. McCoy had taken that into account when he was planning the bank job, too. Any posse that fo
llowed them from Tucson would have to call a halt for darkness or risk losing the trail completely.

  Things could still go wrong, but McCoy liked their chances. He had planned well and so far it was working.

  Cortez was in the lead now, since he knew this coun try better than any of the rest of them. He decided when to stop, and held up a hand to signal a halt when the sun was down and stars had begun to twinkle into existence in the sable sky above them.

  “Cold camp,” McCoy ordered. “Tend to your horses before you look to your own needs.” That was just common sense, like not building a fire. Without the horses, they’d stand no chance at all. “Two men on guard at all times. Beck, Newton, you’ll take the first watch.”

  These eight men had ridden together for long enough so that they functioned like a well-oiled machine. Within half an hour, the horses had been grained and watered, the men had made a meager supper on jerky and biscuits, and all of them were asleep except McCoy and the two guards.

  McCoy should have been asleep, too, but he was too keyed up to doze off just yet He sat with his back propped against a rock and took off his hat. He ran his fingers through his hair, which was completely white despite the fact that he was only thirty-two years old. His hair had turned white before he was twenty-five. Some hombres were like that. He wasn’t vain enough to let it bother him.

  A cold breeze blew. Nights cooled off in a hurry in this semidesert country. The rock at McCoy’s back retained a lot of the day’s warmth, though, and kept him from getting chilly. He wished he could take one of the thin black ciga rillos from his pocket and light it, but he had given strict orders that there be no smoking. The smell of burning to bacco could sometimes travel a long way, and he didn’t want anybody using such a thing to trail them. Time enough for smoking … and tequila … and willing, dusky skinned women, once they were south of the border. McCoy grinned in anticipation.

  Without being aware of it, he drifted off to sleep, but like a wary animal, his slumber was light. He came awake when the guards changed, then dozed off again. He and Cortez would take the last watch. They would saddle up and hit the trail again as soon as the sky grayed enough for them to see where they were going.

  Dreams crept in while McCoy was sleeping. He never remembered them when he awoke, but he knew they often haunted him because people told him that he some times stirred around and muttered in his sleep as if he were angry. Once, in fact, one of the men who had been riding with him at the time had said, “I was afraid you was gonna wake up and start shootin’, Boss. You seemed mighty proddy.”

  That had never happened, but McCoy worried that someday it might. At times he wished he knew what those troubling dreams were about … but mostly he fig ured maybe it was better to remain ignorant.

  The men who had the turn before them woke McCoy and Cortez, and then wrapped up in their blankets for a little more shut-eye. An eerie quiet layover the vast, mostly empty country. The only sounds were the soft sighing of the wind and an occasional rattle of pebbles as some small, nocturnal animal went about its errands. McCoy wasn’t worried too much about a posse sneaking up on them. White men couldn’t move that quietly. He would hear them coming long before they got there.

  But Apaches were another story, and McCoy stiffened as he heard an owl hoot in the distance. Didn’t have to mean anything, he told himself. Chances were it was a real owl, not some painted savage. He waited tensely, but didn’t hear any more hoots. Finally, he relaxed again, while still remaining vigilant.

  Not long after that, Cortez padded over to him. The half-breed’s moccasins made little sound on the sandy ground. “Time to go,” Cortez whispered.

  McCoy nodded his agreement. He and Cortez woke the other men.

  A short time later, after a quick breakfast, the outlaws were in the saddle again, winding their way through the gray shadows toward the southwest. By the time night came again, McCoy thought, they would be in Ambush Valley, and they would be safe.

  The posse was half a mile out of Tucson before Abner Hoyt and his remaining companions rode after them. It didn’t take long to close that gap. Hoyt and his men were all mounted on fine horses, the best they could afford. Because a man’s life often depended on his horse, espe cially when he was engaged in such a dangerous pro fession as bounty hunting.

  The posse members, on the other hand, rode a mixture of cow ponies, draft animals, buggy horses, and nags whose best days were long since past. Hoyt signaled for his men to follow him, and swung wide around the other group of riders. As they rode past, he glanced over and saw Sheriff Fortson glaring at them. Hoyt couldn’t help but grin.

  That reward as good as belonged to him and his men.

  They left the posse in their dust. Now they could follow the trail of the bank robbers themselves. Farther back, the tracks had been obliterated by the horses of the men from Tucson. Bardwell and Escobar were some where up ahead, making sure they didn’t lose the trail, but for now Hoyt and his partners had no trouble follow ing it.

  Late that afternoon, Hoyt spotted a lone rider coming toward them. He waved his men to a halt. They waited with their hands near their guns, just in case that horseman wasn’t friendly. A few minutes later they relaxed as they recognized him as Bob Bardwell.

  The nondescript Bardwell rode up and reined in. He took his hat off, sleeved sweat from his forehead, and said, “Joaquin’s about a mile ahead. He says that we’ve cut into their lead some, but they’re moving fast, too, and we won’t be able to catch them until sometime tomorrow.”

  “What if we rode through the night?” Hoyt asked.

  Bardwell shook his head. “Then we’d risk losing the trail altogether. Joaquin’s waiting for us, and when we catch up to him we need to stop and make camp.”

  The delay chafed at Hoyt, but he trusted his scouts. If you were going to ride with a man, you needed to be able to trust his judgment. Hoyt nodded and said, “All right. As long as we stop them before they get to Ambush Valley, that’s all that matters.”

  “How do you know that’s where they’re going, Abner?” Deke Mantee asked.

  Hoyt leaned over in the saddle and spat on the ground. “Where else could they be headed? If all they wanted to do was get across the border, they could have ridden straight south to Nogales. Problem is, men on fast horses might’ve caught them before they got there. It’s a longer run to Ambush Valley, but they have to figure that if they make it through there, nobody will come after them.”

  Ben Coleman laughed. “Stupid bastards’ll die o’ thirst in there.”

  His brother agreed, saying, “They’ll be buzzard bait before they ever get out of that valley.”

  Hoyt wasn’t going to count on that. The way he saw it, the outlaws had to have someone with them who knew the way through the desolate region. If they did, then their daring plan might just work.

  “Let’s go,” he snapped. “We still need to catch up to Joaquin.”

  They reached the place where Escobar was waiting for them as the sun was dipping below the western horizon. Nightfall was a sudden thing out here. Dusk didn’t last very long. It was light, and then darkness had closed down on the rugged terrain. The bounty hunters made camp in the lee of a shallow, rocky bluff where they could build a small fire without running the risk of it being noticed. It was rare for the Apaches to venture into these parts from across the border, but none of the men wanted to take a chance on that.

  Some hot coffee and food braced them after the hard ride from Tucson. Bartholomew Leaf took tea instead of Arbuckle’s, and as he sipped the steaming beverage, he asked, “Do you think that posse will get this far, Abner?”

  “Lord, I hope not,” Hoyt replied. “I reckon we’re a mile or more ahead of them. I hope they’ve already stopped for the mght. We don’t need them blundering around.”

  A short time later, though, they heard hoofbeats from the northeast, and Hoyt bit back a curse. Fortson should have known better than to try to keep following the trail after dark.

  Hoyt
took his rifle and climbed to the top of the bluff along with Mantee and Bardwell. A dark mass was visi ble as it moved across the sandy plains toward them. Hoyt waited until the riders were within hailing distance then waved his rifle over his head and shouted, “Fortson! Sheriff Fortson! Is that you?”

  He heard the lawman’s voice calling orders. “Hold it men!” One of the riders came forward. “Hoyt?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Hoyt said, not bothering to keep the disgust out of his voice.

  “Reckon we can share your camp?”

  Quietly, Bardwell suggested, “It might be better to keep ‘em close by so that we can keep an eye on them, Abner.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. They’re townies and plowboys and grub-line riders. Nothing’s more dangerous than a bunch of amateurs.” Hoyt raised his voice. “Yeah, Sheriff, come on in. Just take it easy and don’t spook our horses.”

  Soon the area in front of the bluff was crowded with men and horses. They made enough noise to wake up every Apache within a hundred miles, too, Hoyt thought disgustedly. He just hoped there weren’t any Apaches that close.

  He went over to Fortson and said, “Listen, Sheriff, if you’re going to camp here, too, you’ve got to keep your posse under control.”

  “My men are fine,” Fortson replied coldly. “If we’re going to work together, Hoyt, we need to all get along.”

  “Nobody said anything about us working together,” Hoyt snapped. “We’re still going after those bank rob bers on our own.”

  “Suit yourself. Just remember who’s the law here.”

  He had another reason for wanting to nab those out laws now, Hoyt thought as he shook his head and returned to the fire he and his men had built earlier. He wanted to rub his success in the face of that officious sheriff.

  Hoyt worried that trouble might develop between his men and the members of the posse, but the night passed quietly. Early the next morning, while most of the posse men were still snoring, Hoyt and the other bounty hunters were mounted and ready to ride. As the hoof beats of their departing horses roused the sleeping town ies, Hoyt heard Fortson yelling behind him, exhorting the men to get up and get on their horses. Hoyt smiled in the gray dawn. Once again, he and his friends were going to leave the posse behind.