Thunder Over the Superstitions Read online

  Miller laughed.

  Then he lunged toward Hawk again, ramming the carbine’s butt against the left side of Hawk’s mouth. Again, the back of Hawk’s head hammered the rock behind him. His mouth burned. He tasted the copper of blood from the cut on the inside of his upper lip. His left eyetooth throbbed.

  He felt blood dribble down from the outside left corner of his mouth.

  Rage boiled within him. He tried to draw back on it. Rage was a waste of energy as long as he was trussed up like a hog for the slaughter.

  Still, he gritted his teeth, ignoring the barking of his left eyetooth, which felt loose, and glared up at Miller grinning down at him. Miller thrust the butt of his carbine toward Hawk once more, and the rogue lawman braced himself for another blow, squeezing his eyes closed.

  “Now, ain’t you tough!” the girl said sarcastically. “Beating up a tied man!”

  Miller stopped the rifle about four inches from Hawk’s face. He looked at the girl, pursing his lips and flaring his nostrils.

  “First you wanna dry gulch him,” she said. “Now you wanna beat him senseless when he can’t fight back.” She pulled her folding knife out of her jeans pocket, and opened it. “Let me untie him. Then you two can go at it, even odds.”

  She held Miller’s gaze with a mocking one of her own.

  And then she hardened her voice as she said, “Either that or kill him. But if you keep beatin’ on a defenseless man, Pima, I’m gonna think you can’t handle no other kind.”

  Miller whipped his head back toward Hawk. His close-set eyes seemed set even closer together. They were wide with pent-up fury. He aimed the carbine’s barrel at Hawk’s head, and clicked the hammer back.

  Hawk stared at the rifle’s small, round, black maw.

  As black as death.

  Here it comes, he thought.

  He was mildly surprised that he felt no trepidation whatever. In fact, a strange calm washed over him. He felt his mouth corners spread an almost affable smile as he continued to gaze up at the man he thought was sure to kill him.

  But in Hawk’s mind, he was not seeing Pima Miller. He was seeing Linda and Jubal. They were standing on a green hill in the far distance, so he couldn’t see them clearly, just their silhouettes, mainly, and the fact that Linda was wearing a frilly dress that was nearly the same rich yellow as her hair.

  They were smiling, beckoning. A warm wind was blowing the skirt of Linda’s yellow dress and her and Jubal’s hair.

  They were beckoning to him. His family was beckoning him home. Vaguely, as he stared toward them, wanting to get up from the ground and run to them, he felt a tear ooze out the corner of his right eye and roll slowly down along his nose toward his mustache.

  The bullet did not come.

  The mirage faded, and Hawk found himself staring up at Pima Miller, incredulous. “What’re you waiting for?”

  The rifle sagged in Miller’s arms. As the killer stared down at Hawk, his expression was faintly surprised, befuddled.

  The girl owned much the same countenance. Her lips were slightly parted, hair hanging down along both sides of her face. Her breasts rose and fell behind her shirt as she breathed.

  “Nah,” Miller said. “Ain’t much fun in killin’ a man who ain’t afraid to die.” He depressed the carbine’s hammer and lowered the barrel. “All in good time,” he said. “All in good time.”

  He turned to Jodi. “Where’s that coffee?”

  The girl held her openly fascinated gaze on Hawk. Then she turned to Miller as though she’d forgotten he was there. She smiled and started walking toward the fire. Casting her amused smile at Hawk, she said, “Comin’ right up!”

  Hawk was disappointed.

  He’d thought he was going home.

  The day passed slowly. For Hawk, sitting back against the boulder with his smashed face, it also passed miserably though the pain dulled after an hour or so.

  What caused the bulk of the misery was knowing he’d been fooled. And having to watch Miller and Jodi stroll about the camp without being able to kill them.

  The two had decided to stay put for the day, resting themselves as well as their horses. Miller’s bullet wound still bothered the killer, which was plain from the stiff way he moved and by the long nap he took under the lean-to, while an afternoon thundershower soaked Hawk to the bone.

  The girl joined the killer and when they woke up, they didn’t seem to mind that Hawk was sitting only a few feet away. They coupled like back-alley curs, grunting and cursing and laughing throatily. Jodi seemed to like that Hawk could watch if he wanted to, and since he didn’t have much choice, he saw her glance toward him now and then, while her hair jostled across her bare shoulders and jouncing breasts.

  When they were done and dressed, the rain had stopped. The girl smiled once more at Hawk as she threw her hair back behind her shoulders and began looking for dry wood with which to build a fire.

  Earlier, Miller had sent the girl off to retrieve Hawk’s horse, and they’d picketed the grulla with their own. Hawk couldn’t see the horses from his position, but he recognized his own mount’s sporadic, nervous whickers. The grulla was no doubt able to smell Hawk, maybe even smell the dried blood on his rider’s face, but he could not see him.

  That fact and the strangers’ presence made the horse owly.

  It didn’t do much for Hawk’s mood, either.

  As Miller and the girl sat around the fire that night, eating a jackrabbit the girl had snared and roasted, she said over her steaming coffee cup, canting her head toward Hawk, “How do you intend to turn him in for that reward money when you yourself got a bounty on your head?”

  Miller forked meat and beans into his mouth and stared at her dully while he chewed. Then he picked something from between his teeth with his fingers, rubbed it on his trouser leg, and said with menacing nonchalance, “How do you know I got a bounty on my head?”

  “I don’t know,” the girl said, hiking a shoulder. “Don’t you?”

  “You know I do.”

  “I figured you did,” she said, hardening her voice with strained patience.

  “That mean somethin’ to you?”

  Jodi studied him. She held her plate on one thigh, her coffee cup on the other thigh.

  “Yeah,” she said after several seconds, adding slowly, carefully enunciating every word as though for a moron to understand: “It means how in the hell do you think you’re going to turn in that big drink of water over there for that twenty thousand dollars you say he’s got on his head, when you yourself are wanted? I’d spell it out for you if I thought you could read!”

  It was Miller’s turn to study her with menacing blandness. After a while he said, quietly defensive, “I can read.”

  “What?”

  “I can read, goddamnit!”

  Jodi glanced over at Hawk, sitting about ten feet away. Hawk watched them, biding his time, waiting, since that was about all he could do, anyway. He sensed something happening between them. Something that might work in his favor, but he wasn’t sure what that might be.

  Meanwhile, he was quietly straining his wrists behind his back, trying to work the girl’s knot in the ropes free. It didn’t look good. She’d tied a damned tight double knot, and so far, after several hours of spontaneous work on it, he hadn’t made much, if any progress, but only caused his nails to bleed.

  “What’re you lookin’ at him for?” Miller asked the girl.

  “I was wonderin’ if he was makin’ any more sense out of you than I am.”

  “Don’t look at him. He ain’t there. You just keep your moon-calf eyes off him. He’s my worry—not yours.”

  “Oh, that’s right—it was the bounty on your head we was talking about. And how is it you figured to turn him in, when—”

  “That’s what you’re here for.”

  Again, Jodi stared across the fire at Miller as though she were having trouble understanding him.

  “You don’t have a bounty on your head, do you?” Miller as
ked her.

  “None that I know of.”

  “So . . .”

  “So I’m gonna turn that man over to the first US marshal we run into.”

  “Just his head.” Miller grinned and looked at Hawk. “Once when we get close to Tucson, were there’s an old drunken deputy US marshal posted, we’ll shoot the son of a bitch, throw his head into a gunnysack, and you’ll turn it over to old Hiram Mitchell and fill out the paperwork to put in for the reward. And when it comes, we’ll split it.”

  “Fifty-fifty?”

  “Sure,” Miller said, hiking a shoulder. “I’m a fair man.”

  Jodi glanced over at Hawk once more. The firelight sparkled in her hazel eyes, blazed in certain strands of her hair flowing down over her shoulders.

  She set her plate aside and used a scrap of burlap to remove the smoking coffeepot from the fire. She refilled both Miller’s cup as well as her own and then returned the pot to the rock near the fire’s glowing coals and short, dancing flames.

  She sat back down, picked up her cup, and blew on it, the steam bathing her pretty face. “How do I know I can trust you?” she asked Miller.

  “How do I know I can trust you?” Miller returned, leaning back against his saddle and crossing his legs at the ankles. “How do I know you ain’t figurin’ on turnin’ me in for the reward on my head?”

  “How much reward you got on your head?”

  “Enough.”

  “How much?”

  “Enough, I said.”

  The girl didn’t let him off that easy. “How much?” she asked, gritting her own teeth and leaning toward him, hardening her jaws. She gave it as well as she got it, Hawk mused, still straining at the ropes binding his wrists.

  Miller stared at her, blinked, glanced away, sheepish, and then returned his gaze to her. “Twelve hundred.”

  “Hah!” Jodi laughed, slapping her thigh. She hooked a thumb toward Hawk. “He’s got twenty thousand on his head and you got twelve hundred on yours, and you think I’d take yours over his?”

  Miller sat up, glaring at her and gritting his teeth again. “Just ’cause he has twenty thousand on his head and I only got twelve hundred don’t mean a damn thing. It just means he’s been at it longer, that’s all! And, shit, he’s a lawman! He makes them other lawmen look like fools!”

  “Oh, take the hump out of your neck, Pima. I don’t need your bounty, and I don’t need his bounty, neither. And you don’t need his bounty, neither. Too risky . . . when I got some-thin’ else in mind.”

  “Oh, this again.”

  “Yep, this again.” The girl picked up her plate and Miller’s, went over to some loose gravel between the fire and Hawk, and scraped a handful of the gravel and dirt over one of the plates, cleaning it.

  She looked at Miller. “You know that old Apache gold mine everyone’s been blabberin’ about for years?”

  “The one the Dutchman says he found?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What about it?”

  “I know where it is,” Jodi said.

  Miller gave a caustic chuff. “Oh, sure you do.”

  “I do.” Jodi was cleaning the second plate. She flashed a quick glance at Hawk and then looked over her shoulder at Miller again. “And I been waitin’ for the right man to come along to help me clean it out.”

  CHAPTER 14

  TAWNY HEAD, BLACK HEART

  The night passed even more slowly for Hawk than the day had.

  Miller hadn’t given him anything to eat, and his hunger, coupled with the fact that he was battered, wet from the rain, and tied, made him feel as though he were balancing a smithy’s anvil on his shoulders.

  Miller and the girl had kicked out their fire and retired to their lean-to. They’d rutted again as before and then Miller got up to wander around with his rifle. Hawk had spied Apache sign the day before, and he had a feeling that the killer had, as well.

  Miller walked around, looking tense. He smoked for a while along the top of the ridge above the lean-to, cupping the coal in the palm of his hand as he stared out over the canyon. Then, apparently satisfied they were alone, he came down off the ridge and sauntered over to Hawk.

  “Only reason I’m keepin’ you alive is ’cause I don’t have to haul your smelly carcass through the desert to Tucson. If it was winter, you’d be dead.”

  Hawk didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes straight ahead, not giving the man anything.

  That seemed to rile Miller. He swept his right boot back, then hurled it forward, ramming the toe into Hawk’s right thigh. The pain seared through the rogue lawman’s leg, but he kept quiet and held still, staring straight ahead.

  “That hurt,” Miller said, chuckling. “I know it did.”

  He kicked out of his boots and crawled back under the lean-to.

  Hawk dozed now and then but sometime around three thirty or four he awakened. He’d heard something, but he wasn’t sure what. The horses were milling around faintly, edgily. He recognized the grulla’s deep, almost soundless whicker.

  Hawk looked around. The night was still, silent. Save for the starlight, it was a black as the inside of a glove. Something or someone was on the prowl near the camp. He could tell as much by the faint tingling at the base of his spine as from anything else.

  The horses continued to sidle around, snorting, for another half hour. And then they settled down. And the tingling at the base of Hawk’s back faded, as well.

  At first light, Miller crawled out from under the lean-to. He muttered something to the girl then grabbed Hawk’s Henry, stumbled past Hawk, and checked the horses. He didn’t return soon, so Hawk figured he’d gone out on the scout again.

  The killer must have sensed something the night before, as well.

  The girl gathered more wood, built a small fire, and made coffee. When the coffee was done, she brought a cup over to Hawk, and dropped to a knee beside him.

  “Want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks,” Hawk said.

  Jodi looked genuinely surprised. “Really? You don’t want no coffee?”

  “Nope.”

  She stared at him, brows knit together. “You sure?” She blew the steam toward him. “Don’t that smell good?”

  Hawk didn’t say anything.

  “Jesus, you’re a tough son of a bitch, ain’t ya?”

  Still, Hawk said nothing. She stared at him, sleep in her eyes, lines from her saddle still creasing her cheek. Fine lines from her slumber stretched out from the corners of her hazel eyes. She hadn’t brushed her hair but merely tucked the tangled mess behind her ears.

  She’d left the first three buttons of her shirt undone, showing a bit of white chemise and the first dip of cleavage.

  “I s’pose you’re thinkin’ I might’ve poisoned it,” she said.

  “Just don’t care for any of your coffee.”

  “Reckon I don’t blame you. Since I was tryin’ to get him to kill you an’ all.” The girl paused, feigned a sheepish look, pooching her lips out and casting her eyes low. “Sorry about that.”

  Hawk gave a droll chuckle.

  She raised her eyes coyly. “Hope we didn’t keep you awake last night . . . with all our carryin’ on.”

  “I slept fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  She studied him sidelong. “Pshaw! You heard. And I bet you were wantin’ some, weren’t you?” She pressed her hand against his shoulder, gave him a shove. “Come on! I know I’m purty. I ain’t high-hatted or nothin’, but I been told I’m easy on the eyes enough times I’m startin’ to believe it.” She looked off. “Seem to satisfy him well enough.”

  She rolled her eyes to Hawk. “You wanna kill him, don’t you?”

  Hawk looked at her.

  “Why don’t you, then?”

  He continued to stare at her skeptically.

  “You and me could be partners, you know. I’m gonna need a tough man to help me mine the gold out of that old hole. Geronimo and his Apaches kee
p a close eye on things up here. The Superstitions are the home of their Thunder God, and he’s a colicky cuss. He don’t like intruders. That’s what us white folks are—even half-breed white folks.”

  Teasingly, she placed a finger on Hawk’s long wedge of a nose, and shoved his face to one side, smiling and then folding her upper teeth over her bottom lip.

  A brazen one, this girl. A coquette. A tawny-headed, black-hearted coquette.

  Hawk wouldn’t trust her as far as he could throw her uphill against a prairie cyclone.

  “What’re you sayin’?” Hawk said, feigning interest.

  “I’m sayin’ that if you was to throw in with me, I’d make it worth your while.”

  She slid her shoulders back slightly, pushing her breasts out, and slid her face down close to Hawk’s. He could hear the faint crackling of her lips as she broadened her coquettish smile. “You’d be a rich man and you’d have a pretty, young girl to warm your fancy bed at night. To do things to you I bet you’ve never even dreamed of.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. And all you have to do is promise me you’d like that . . . and you’d like to be richer than your wildest dreams . . . and promise to kill Pima . . . and you’re in.”

  “You really think that old mine is more than legend?”

  “I know.” She gazed at him gravely now, her bold gaze certain. “I’ve seen it. The old man didn’t. I kept it from him because I couldn’t trust him to not get drunk and gas about it to others. He’d act like it was all his, like he found it himself. I saw it early in the spring, when I got lost out here, and I’ve drawn a map. It’s in my saddlebags.”

  “What about the Apaches?”

  “They’re a problem. We’ll have to be careful. It might come to fightin’. If it does, I’d rather have you doin’ the fightin’ than a man like Pima.”

  Jodi looked away as though to make certain they were alone, and then she shook her hair back from her face and leaned even closer to Hawk, until he could smell her distinctly feminine fragrance mixed with the smoky, horsy smell of her clothes, and feel her breath against his cheek.