Terror Trail Read online

  It did not help when one of the twin sisters challenged him directly.

  “Problem?” she said, leaning slightly forward in her chair. “What kind of problem? Army horses have been stolen. People under your protection have been murdered.”

  Stern rocked forward, planting elbows on his desktop blotter.

  “Ma’am, as I’ve informed you,” he replied, “this is a hospital for ailing veterans. It has not been a normal army base for years now, and my men do not patrol the territory as you seem to think.”

  The second sister chimed in then. “But you’re still soldiers, are you not? When army property is stolen—”

  “Please don’t let the uniforms confuse you, ma’am,” Stern said, forgetting whether this one was Dolores or Sonya. “I am the ranking officer of this facility, but I command a staff of medics, orderlies, and nurses. We receive our orders and our paychecks from the surgeon general’s office, not the U.S. Cavalry.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel,” said the dusty man seated across from Stern, Clint Something, “all we want is help. It’s no concern of ours who pays your salary, as long as you’re in uniform.”

  “And I sincerely wish that I could help you,” Stern replied, “but chasing horse thieves is not part of my assignment here. And as for tracking them across the Rio Grande into Mexico, well . . .”

  “They’ve already made it there by now,” one of the sisters said, a challenge in her tone.

  “Exactly!” Stern agreed. “And so, you must see that my hands are tied. I have neither the troops nor jurisdiction to invade another sovereign nation.”

  “But you know someone who could,” Clint Something answered.

  “I know the mandatory channels that must be pursued,” Stern granted, feeling cornered now. “But that takes time, and given the inherent delicacy of relations between Washington and Mexico . . .”

  “But you could try,” one of the twins said, talking over him.

  Stern felt his shoulders start to slump and squared them with a will. “I can dispatch a telegram,” he granted, “but I must advise you to expect a disappointment.”

  “Try that, please,” the other sister said. “Before we have to handle this ourselves.”

  Frowning, Stern said, “And I must warn you in the strongest terms that any private effort to pursue these miscreants in Mexico would leave the individuals behind it open to arrest and prosecution.”

  “Let’s take one step at a time,” Clint Something said. “Now, how about that telegram?”

  * * *

  * * *

  Sending the telegram and waiting for an answer from the nation’s capital wasted the better part of three hours. The commander of Veterans Hospital offered them food while they were waiting, but all three of his unwelcome guests declined. That seemed to put him off, as if he’d been insulted, but Dolores frankly did not care.

  Finally, a sharp knock sounded on the base commander’s door. Stern shouted, “Enter!” and Lieutenant Finch obeyed immediately, crossing to Stern’s desk, saluting him before he passed a flimsy piece of paper to the officer in charge.

  Dolores recognized the telegram, watched Stern peruse it before handing it across his desk to Clint Parnell. “Alas, as I expected,” the lieutenant colonel said. “Feel free to read it for yourself.”

  Dolores watched Clint scan the text, frowning, before he passed it to the twins. They huddled, reading it together, faces souring as it extinguished fleeting hope. The wire read:

  War Dept., Washington, transmitting to Veterans Hospital, New Mexico.

  Regret the incident reported but advise no action on your part. Repeat, no action, by direction of the Secretary. Referenced contract voided without penalty for either side. Forbid civilian vigilante trespass onto foreign soil. Matter referred to State Department and Commander-in-Chief, who concur. Stop.

  “You’re doing nothing, then,” Dolores said, when she had read the message twice.

  “And you,” Stern said, “I fear, must do likewise. Despite your feelings in this matter—”

  “You know nothing of our feelings,” Sonya snapped at him, both sisters on their feet now, Clint Parnell rising a fraction of a second later. “As you do nothing to protect us!”

  “Ma’am, having read this message from the highest of authorities—”

  “We leave it with you,” Sonya interrupted as she dropped the telegram onto Stern’s desk. “Why don’t you have it framed and hang it on your wall?”

  Stern made no effort to detain them as they left his office, which was wise, considering the trio’s mood. Outside, they found their horses fed and watered while they’d waited for the telegram, mounting in unison and reining toward the stockade’s gates. No one attempted to prevent their leaving, and they put the fort turned hospital behind them, starting back the way they’d come.

  * * *

  * * *

  Do you think that he will send a troop of soldiers after us?” Dolores asked when they had ridden a full mile beyond the hospital.

  “I doubt it,” Clint Parnell replied. “First thing, he doesn’t have a troop at his disposal. We already saw that for ourselves. If the War Department goes that way, the order will come out of Washington, most likely routed through a fort still active in patrolling the frontier.”

  Dolores ran the short list in her head. That meant Fort Union, north of Watrous in New Mexico, or maybe even Fort Bliss at El Paso, Texas. Mobilizing troops from either post, dispatching them against her family’s rancho, would take a few days at the very least, likely more than a week.

  “We need to hurry, then,” she told Clint and her sister Sonya.

  “But without killing our horses in the process,” said Parnell. “We’ll have to camp again tonight, no matter what.”

  Dolores thought about her snowflake Appaloosa, knew that Clint was right, but still chafed at the waste of precious time, when every passing hour took her brother’s killers and the hacienda’s stolen livestock deeper into Mexico.

  Logic told her that the raiders had most likely emanated from Chihuahua, nearest to the southern border of New Mexico, but she would take nothing for granted. She intended to pursue them wherever they ran and tried to hide themselves, regardless of the cost. Aside from getting justice for Eduardo and her father, bringing back the herd—or most of it, at least—would mean preserving that year’s income for the ranch and for her family.

  Threats of arrest by Isaac Stern and his superiors in Washington meant less than nothing to Dolores. Her primary debt, for the life she enjoyed before last night—indeed, for life itself—was to her kin and to the local empire that her padre had carved from the desert with an outpouring of sweat and blood.

  If distant strangers tried to interfere with that responsibility . . . well, they would have to wait in line.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ascensión, Chihuahua, Mexico

  Pancho Villa lit a thin cheroot, inhaled its bitter taste, and turned to his primer teniente, Javier Jurado, speaking through a cloud of acrid smoke. “What word from the border?”

  “Nothing yet, jefe,” Jurado answered. “They will first complain to someone from the military.”

  “Who will offer them no satisfaction,” Villa said. “The gringos are afraid of war with Mexico just now.”

  Jurado nodded. Said, “As they should be, considering los alemanes.”

  That was true. Germany’s emperor and king of Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm II, had been pursuing diplomatic ties with Mexico, seeking not only the ore drawn from its mines, but also an alliance for the future if a war broke out involving Germany and the United States. Porfirio Díaz, while welcoming foreign investments in the nation he had ruled since 1884, still balked at signing an agreement that would agitate his nearest neighbor with an army large enough to challenge Mexico’s and seize more of its borderlands if foolishly provoked.

  In Villa’
s estimation, Washington would not risk war over the onetime theft of fifteen hundred horses, even if they had been earmarked for the U.S. Cavalry. Rather then squander men and resources, upsetting the fragile Díaz-Taft summit, they would locate caballos elsewhere, possibly dispatch a formal protest that would have small impact—maybe none at all—upon his operations in Chihuahua.

  Ascensión felt safe for now, at least. One hundred twenty miles of high desert and the Sierra Madre Occidental lay in between the city and Chihuahua’s capital at Ciudad Juárez. The land was unforgiving, temperatures topping one hundred nine degrees Fahrenheit on summer days, then plunging to minus nine degrees after nightfall. Díaz had federales in the area, of course, but for the most part they were lazy, little more than bandits in their own right, although graced with uniforms and modern guns.

  “How long until Zapata reaches us?” Villa inquired.

  Jurado shrugged. “He’s on his way, jefe, but coming from Morelos, who can say?”

  Morelos was the second smallest of Mexico’s thirty-two states, after Tlaxcala, located some twelve hundred miles southeast of Chihuahua. A trip like that, crossing mountains and deserts, navigating woodlands while dodging federales, might consume two weeks or more. Villa disliked waiting, sitting still and serving as a target while news of his strike across the border spread like wildfire, but if he was going to divide the stolen horses with Emiliano Zapata’s band of anti-Díaz activists, a face-to-face agreement was required.

  Zapata, one year Villa’s junior, was a man of rural roots who loathed Porfirio Díaz for favoring landowners with monopolies on land and water used for sugar cane production. Peasant villagers were suffering because of such corruption, and Zapata—known among his people as El Caudillo del Sur, “Attila of the South”—had earned a reputation for ambushing federal troops, divesting them of arms and ammunition to support his cause, and was increasingly admired for his audacity of opposition to the current president of Mexico and his regime of el porfiriato.

  To survive, however, Zapata required more than weapons and courage. He also needed a steady supply of horses to replace those killed or captured during skirmishes with the authorities.

  And that was where Villa came in.

  If only he could stay alive and free to see their dealings through.

  * * *

  * * *

  Doña Ana County, New Mexico Territory

  Clint Parnell and the Aguirre sisters finished breaking camp after their second night of sleeping rough around a campfire, huddled with their guns, and taking turns on guard. Gray dawn enfolded them as they mounted and turned their animals toward home.

  Parnell had spent the better part of yesterday, after they left Veterans Hospital, trying to talk the twins out of their plan to ride with him and a selected handful of vaqueros to retrieve their stolen horses and—with any luck—punish the raiders who had slain their brother among other members of the household.

  Not that Sonya or Dolores had agreed with him, mind you. Far from it. Both were dead set on participating in the chase, and Clint would have to leave the final say to his wounded employer. Alejandro had a fair record for curbing his twin daughters if they chose a course of action he deemed rash, but they were still his youngest children—and the sole survivors of his family today. Whether he could dissuade them, even order them to stay at home, remained an open question in Clint’s mind.

  There would be no escaping from the chase for Clint himself, of course. He was prepared to cede his post to José Esperón for the duration of the hunt, assuming that Parnell ever returned from Mexico. He’d spent most of the prior afternoon selecting ranch hands to ride with him when he crossed the Rio Grande, leaving it to volunteers and weeding out vaqueros who had wives and children on the hacienda.

  Would that number be enough, considering the force that had attacked them two nights earlier? Parnell deemed that unlikely, but he had not settled on a source for reinforcements yet.

  Around midmorning, Sonya eased her varnish roan beside Clint’s dapple gray, lowered her voice a bit, and said, “I’m sorry that we argued, but you understand, ¿no?”

  “I do,” he grudgingly admitted, “but it’s still a bad idea. Two women on the trail, chasing a gang of killers . . .”

  “Give it up, will you?” Dolores chided, riding within earshot on his other side. “You wouldn’t argue with Eduardo if he chose to follow them.”

  Parnell felt brutal saying it, but could not help himself. “Eduardo can’t join in, remember? Do you want to leave your father worrying about the pair of you? You’re all that he has left.”

  “We will persuade him,” Sonya said, with perfect confidence.

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Then we come with you anyway. The choice is ours.”

  “Okay, then,” Clint replied. “It’s like I said last night. Whatever Alejandro says, I’ll go along with it. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.”

  Sonya reached out to let her fingertips graze Parnell’s sleeve. “It’s sweet of you to worry,” she observed.

  “Sweet doesn’t enter into it,” Clint answered. “I come back—assuming that I do come back—and tell your father that he’s childless, you can bet I’ll be the next one who gets his brains blown out.”

  “Never!” Sonya assured Parnell. “He loves you like a second son.”

  Clint nearly had to snort at that but kept it to a negative head shake. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” he said, and left it there, counting the empty hours still ahead of them, before his boss settled the argument for good and all. Whatever the decision, Clint reckoned the odds were fifty-fifty that he would be riding to his death in Mexico.

  * * *

  * * *

  Two armed outriders met the homeward travelers as soon as they had crossed onto Aguirre property, then stayed behind to make sure no one had been trailing them. Another half hour elapsed before the ranch house and its other buildings rose out of the desert into view, the sisters and Parnell urging their horses to a faster pace as they neared home.

  Forewarned of their arrival, Alejandro met them on the porch, standing erect without the cane that made him feel too much like an old man before his time. Granted, he was not young or at full strength, considering his wound, but he refused to let his workers view him as disabled or defeated.

  Beside him, Manuelito Obregón anticipated Alejandro’s order, saying, “I shall tend their horses, jefe.”

  “Gracias, hermano,” Alejandro said, watching his daughters and their foreman close the gap, then finally dismount. As Manuelito led their animals away, Aguirre turned and beckoned with his good arm, saying, “Come inside with me.”

  He waited until they were in the dining room, with Alejandro seated at the table’s head, flanked by his daughters, Clint Parnell to Sonya’s right. Reading their faces, he began, “You bring the news that I expected.”

  “No one from the army means to help us, sir,” Clint said. “In fact, they warned us against taking any action on our own.”

  “Because the fat man, Taft, fears causing problems with Díaz,” said Alejandro.

  “You were right, sir,” Clint confirmed.

  “Then we must act in spite of them,” the hacienda’s owner said.

  Aguirre saw his daughters’ faces light up as they heard. He felt them yearning, like young whippets straining at their leashes, eager to be off and running on a rabbit’s trail.

  “You wish to join the hunt,” he said before either could speak aloud.

  “Papa, we must,” Sonya replied. “Eduardo—”

  “Lost his life to these cobardes,” Alejandro cut her off. “Would you ride off and leave me without any living family?”

  “Why do you doubt us, Papa?” asked Dolores.

  Alejandro was about to answer tartly, when he realized he lacked the proper words. His daughters, although young, were women
fully grown. Was that his only objection to their plan, based solely on their sex?

  They had been trained, to all intents and purposes, the same way that he had prepared Eduardo to fulfill his role as son and heir of the Aguirre rancho, share and share alike among the three siblings. Both sisters were skilled riders and crack shots, as they had proved on hunting expeditions and, more recently, during the rustlers’ raid. They stood as much chance of surviving on the southward journey, traveling with Clint Parnell and others he selected as companions, as their brother might have done, had he survived to face this day.

  But still, Aguirre knew the risks were greater for a woman on the outlaw trail. If they were captured, by either the federales or bandidos, Alejandro knew full well what they were likely to endure in hostile hands. Men might be executed, sometimes tortured, but for women in captivity . . . it made him sick to think about the possibilities.

  Finally, his shoulders slumped, Aguirre said, “I do not doubt you, either of you. But I fear for you. Can you not understand that? We have lost so much already. First, your mother, then—”

  “And that is why we must recover what we can,” Sonya cut in, placing her left hand over Alejandro’s right, and giving it a squeeze. “If we do not participate, what good are we?”

  He hesitated for another long moment, then faced his daughters each in turn, nodding resignedly. “Bien,” he finally replied. “Do as you like, then. I shall pray for you each day and night until you finally return.”

  “You won’t be sorry, Papa,” said Dolores.

  Forcing a grim smile, their father thought, But I already am.

  * * *

  * * *

  Dolores and Sonya Aguirre stood together, hand in hand, beside their brother’s grave. The soil that covered his remains still had a fresh-turned look about it, but they knew the desert sun would bake that out within a few more days.