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  Reno glared at Hawk again, lips pursed. Hawk crawled inside, quickly cut the man free of his ties, then crawled out again and closed the tailgate. “Let’s go smoke the peace pipe with your old pal, eh, Reno?”

  “If I somehow manage to get out of this, Hawk, you double-crossing bastard, I’m gonna kill you slow.”

  “You already tried that,” Sergeant Ironside said as Hawk climbed up into the driver’s box. He hoorahed the team forward, adding with a sidelong glance at Hawk, “Now it’s Monjosa’s turn.”

  Hawk blinked his eyes against the dust kicked up by the wagon’s team and Monjosa’s three lead riders as they barreled across the desert, branching off the trail and heading through broken country that more than once threatened to tear the wagon apart or overturn it.

  Reno’s agonized screams rose shrilly amid the thunder of the shifting rifle crates in the box. Two riders stayed even on each side of the wagon, with four behind, the men tilting their hat brims low against the west-falling sun.

  When they’d safely crossed another in a series of rocky arroyos, Ironside turned to the Rogue Lawman and yelled, “You’re a helluva son of a bitch to throw in with, you know that, Hawk?”

  “If you remember,” Hawk said, wedging his boots up tight against the dashboard and clutching the seat with both hands, “you insisted!”

  Ironside clucked, shook his head, and kept the team about fifty yards behind Monjosa’s lead riders, who seemed to be leading them into a notch in the rumpled dun rise of craggy-peaked mountains growing larger and larger ahead. Soon the notch widened, then it yawned, and suddenly the wagon plunged into the shade between two steep canyon walls.

  The canyon floor rose and fell, widened and narrowed, and then suddenly Hawk saw verdant green shrubs growing along its middle, in a rocky gulley snaking through the middle of the defile’s floor. The air cooled slightly, and Hawk thought he detected a moistness against his sun-rawed cheeks.

  Ironside lifted his head and worked his nose. “Goddamn,” he yelled above the wagon’s roar, “is that what it smells like?”

  Sure enough, a narrow stream was rippling and flashing along the gulley, tumbling over rocks that had long ago fallen from the ever-steepening canyon walls. As the wagon continued south by southeast, the team slowing and blowing now as it tired, the greenery grew heavier and lusher. Palm trees began popping up along the widening defile, their leaves fluttering in the wind sifting down the canyon, and flashing pink in the last rays of the sun angling over the ridges.

  The palms nestled in boulder-choked nooks and crannies of the canyon walls—some only a few feet tall, others reaching a good twenty or thirty feet straight up from their boles littered with the broom-colored trash of shed leaves. Roots angled out from the bases of the palms’ trunks to snake into the gurgling, twinkling brook, reaching deep for the precious water.

  The horses lifted their heads and shook their manes as they smelled the water. Hawk’s own parched mouth watered at the prospect of dipping his face into one of those sandy back eddies or dark pools filling bowls in the steplike slabs of black volcanic rock.

  The wagon followed the riders around a dogleg in the main canyon, into a broad, open horseshoe, and then suddenly the riders ahead threw up their arms and stopped their horses. Ironside hauled back on the team’s reins. As the wagon chugged to a grinding, squawking halt, Hawk looked around at the adobe-brick or stone shacks and ocotillo corrals surrounding him, with here and there a small dugout shack or Apache-like jacal.

  It was a rancho of sorts, with dozens of ragged-looking, heavily armed men milling about the shacks and corrals—tending horses or hay sheds or cook fires, with here and there a black-haired, tan-faced woman manning one of the several smoking iron pots suspended over the fires by iron spits.

  A few children herded goats or tended brush-roofed chicken coops. A couple of dogs ran out from the hovels to scatter the chickens and goats and to bark at the newcomers, raising their hackles and tails and showing white rings around their eyes.

  What caught the brunt of Hawk’s attention was the large, stone, tile-roofed casa sitting on a terraced ledge on a rocky shelf, set back against the canyon’s pink southern wall. The house boasted two stories, with large stone hearths abutting both ends, and arches over the ground-floor gallery. The arches were fronted by orange trees, some brown from neglect, but on the branches of the few living trees the ripe fruit fairly glowed in the fading sun rays.

  The earless Mexican galloped his steeldust Arab to the bottom of the stone steps rising to the casa above and, rising in his stirrups, shouted in Spanish, “Visitors to see you, Jefe!”

  The scream echoed around the canyon for several seconds, as did the barks of the dogs and the bleating of the goats. In one of the several corrals, a horse added an anxious whinny to the reverberations.

  The earless Mex rode his Arab in a tight, quick circle and was about to scream again when a gruff voice said from the direction of the corral, “Here, idiot. I’m here!”

  Hawk shifted his gaze from the house to see a man separate himself from the handful of others congregated at a near corral’s right front corner and walk toward the wagon. He was a stocky Mex with a trimmed black beard forming precise lines down his jaws and over his upper lip. He wore a black, floppy-brimmed hat, a coarsely woven, open-necked tunic under a dark-blue coat that Hawk recognized as the uniform of the Mexican federal police—this one with colonel’s bars on the shoulders—and dusty, embroidered charro slacks that clung to his stout thighs like second skins.

  A long red silk scarf was wrapped around his neck, its pointed tail dangling nearly to his knees.

  Hawk felt an unconscious prickling in his loins when his eyes drifted to the man’s right hand. Or what would have been his right hand had he not been wearing a sheathed knife in its place, the soft, shiny, black scabbard extending a good foot from the bloodstained sleeve of the man’s federale coat.

  “Jefe!” the earless rider said, galloping his horse to the wagon’s rear. “Come over here quickly! You will want to see this!” He grinned largely, evilly.

  Wilbur “Knife-Hand” Monjosa strolled toward the front of the wagon where Hawk and Ironside waited in tense silence. The men who’d been standing with Monjosa at the corral shuffled up behind him in an interested group, hanging about ten feet back behind their knife-handed leader.

  They all had their hands on their pistol grips. The men who’d guided the wagon into Monjosa’s canyon-nestled rancho held their rifles and pistols on Hawk and Ironside with obvious threat and warning.

  Monjosa’s voice was deep and gravelly: “Who the hell are you?” He shuttled his brown eyes quickly between Ironside and Hawk. In his left hand he held a crock jug against his shoulder.

  “This is Sergeant Ironside. I’m Hawk. We heard you were looking for guns.”

  “I am always looking for guns,” Monjosa growled, his deep voice pitched thickly with drink. His eyes were rheumy, the whites owning the consistency of an undercooked egg. “But I don’t usually entertain strangers, if you know what I’m saying. My canyon . . . !” He swept the jug up and around to indicate his spring-fed domain. “It is private! I value my privacy very much!”

  He turned toward the earless rider waiting expectantly at the wagon’s rear. “Fierro, why did you bring them here? You know my rules! No one comes to the canyon unless I personally okay it!”

  “¡Sí, sí,Jefe!” Fierro said, the skin above the bridge of his nose bunching slightly. Then he grinned and glanced at the wagon. “But this you must see. I am certain you will find the unexpected visit very much worth the invasion of your privacy, Jefe!”

  Monjosa glanced suspiciously at Hawk and Ironside once more, then turned and tramped heavily, bull-leggedly back to the wagon’s rear. Hawk looked at Ironside, who expelled an anxious breath and set the brake. Climbing down the opposite side, Hawk walked to the back of the wagon where Fierro was backing his Arab away from the tailgate, grinning wolfishly and giving his boss plenty of room.
/>   His mud-brown eyes sparkled like gold dust.

  23.

  AMIGOS PARA LA VIDA

  “WHAT is this surprise, huh?” Knife-Hand Monjosa asked Fierro. “You know how I feel about surprises.”

  “¡Sí, sí, Jefe,” Fierro said from his saddle. “But I think you’re gonna like this one.”

  Hawk looked at Monjosa. His trigger finger twitched as though stung by a mosquito. The man was within seven feet of him. He might never get this close again. Of course, if Hawk carried out his mission now, he’d be condemning himself and Ironside to certain death.

  He’d wait. No one had taken his guns. As long as he had his guns, he could kill Monjosa anytime he wanted. Maybe an opportunity for killing the man and getting himself or at least Ironside out of here alive would reveal itself.

  He spread his boots and hooked his thumbs behind his cartridge belt as Monjosa, scowling over his shoulder at the grinning Fierro, swept back the pucker flap. Monjosa drew a sharp breath and stepped back in awe, still keeping the stone jug propped against his shoulder.

  Kid Reno sat on one of the rifle crates, grinning. He waved. “How you doin’, Knife-Hand? Been a while.”

  “Cristo!” Monjosa whispered, as though he were watching a ghost. “Kid? Is it really you, Kid?”

  Reno’s grin faded to a smile. He sat with his elbows on his knees, hands laced together. His gaunt, craggy face was sweaty, and his eyes were spoked with pain lines. “It’s me, all right. Your old pard, Kid Reno. Came back to say hi, see how you were doin’.”

  Monjosa continued staring in awe at Kid Reno, as if only half believing what his eyes were telling his brain. Slowly, he swung his head to Hawk, frowning.

  Monjosa opened his mouth slowly to speak, but before he could form words, Hawk said, “The Kid’s with me and Sergeant Ironside. Three-way split. What he’s sittin’ on are brand-new Winchester repeaters. There’s a Gatling gun in there, too. Over a thousand rounds of ammunition. And there’s more where all that came from. Lots more. Ironside, the Kid, and I—we got an inside connection. We four can have us a very lucrative relationship . . . if, uh . . . you and the Kid can bury the hatchet.”

  “Bury the hatchet?” Monjosa growled, squaring his shoulders and glaring into the wagon at the Kid. “I should bury my hand in your guts for what you did to me, you double-crossing, mealy-mouthed son of a bitch!”

  “Come on, Wilbur,” the Kid said, raising his hands palm out, “she was a whore, for chrissakes, and a cheap one even by Mexican standards!”

  “I loved her, you bastard. I have never known a more delightful creature. And the very night I ask her to marry me, I find you two together, rutting like back-alley curs on my own kitchen table!” Monjosa paused, staring into the wagon at Reno. His tone softened slightly. “It takes cojones to come back here, Kid. Even bigger ones than I figured you for. You must think you really have a deal for me, uh?” He frowned, wrinkled his broad nostrils. “What is that smell?”

  Reno’s glance slid toward Hawk, then back to Monjosa, who scowled back at him skeptically, brown brows beetled. “It’s a hell of a deal, Wilbur. One that’ll make you forget Margaretta and any other woman. One that’ll make your head spin at all the gold we’re likely to fleece them Apaches and banditos for.”

  Squinting one eye, Monjosa switched his glance to Hawk. Then he took a long pull from the stone jug on his shoulder and beckoned to the Kid with his menacing knife hand. “For a man with cannonball cojones, you sure cower in there like a kangaroo rat. Get out here. Let’s talk about it.”

  Kid Reno chuckled delightedly as he tripped the latch and let the tailgate drop. “Amigos, eh, Wilbur? Amigos para la vida. Friends for life. We shouldn’t let women get between us!”

  As the gunrunner scrambled out of the wagon, Hawk felt a worm of dread turn over in his belly. The situation was beginning to angle off in a surprising direction. If Monjosa and Reno were back being friends again, that left him, Hawk, and Ironside out in the cold. He’d counted on them merely calling a truce.

  The thought had no sooner oozed over Hawk’s brain before Monjosa, glowering at both Hawk and Ironside, said, “Where you find these two, Kid, uh? We really need them? You know how I feel about bringing men I don’t know into my canyon. Shit, I’m not running a goddamn dance hall out here.”

  Hawk took one step back. As he slid his hand toward his Russian, a hand reached around from behind him and snagged the big, silver-chased pistol from its cross-draw holster on his left hip. Then the stag-gripped Colt was removed, and Hawk’s cartridge belts felt suddenly as light as air on his hips.

  That worm turned again in his belly, just behind his belly button, and he felt a hard pressure in his temples.

  At the same time, Ironside was relieved of his own Army .44, the big sergeant wheeling to scowl at the man behind him, “Hey, what’s the big idea, you son of a bitch?”

  Suddenly, the sergeant bent forward with a great “Gnaw!” of expelled air as the butt of a Winchester was driven with brutal force into his heavy paunch.

  “Hey, what you talk like that for, amigo?” Knife-Hand said. “You got no right talk to my men like that. You’re no guest here. You came yourself as if I invited you, but I didn’t invite you, so you mind your manners, okay, you fat gringo bastard!”

  “Back off,” Hawk snarled, stepping toward Knife-Hand and bunching his fists at his sides. “You got no call to take our weapons.”

  Monjosa turned his glowering, rheumy-eyed stare at Hawk. “Hey, Kid, we really need these two? I don’t think I like the way they act. I know I don’t like this one’s tone.”

  Kid Reno snarled wolfishly at Hawk and took the stone jug from Monjosa, rubbing the lip with the palm of his hand. “You know, when I think about it, Wilbur, I see no reason why we need these two at all.”

  Reno’s eyes were glassy as cunning thoughts danced behind them, likely wondering how much he should reveal to his old partner about Hawk’s mission here and how much he should keep to himself. He didn’t want to do anything to imperil his precarious, two-minute-old reconciliation.

  “Hell, I’m the one with all the connections,” he said. “These two here—shit, they just supplied the wagon.”

  Hawk’s pulse hammered in his temples as he cast his stony gaze at Reno. He had maybe a half minute left. He had to grab a gun or a knife and kill Monjosa. The desire was a pounding, thundering obsession. He couldn’t die without having met his objective. Each mission was all he lived for. He had nothing else. Each breath he took now he took so he could kill Knife-Hand Monjosa. But he had to time it right, make his move quickly and efficiently so that he himself wasn’t killed before he could accomplish his task.

  He whipped around toward the man behind him, catching the man off-guard and bulling him over backward. The man hit the ground on his back, Hawk on top of him and reaching for the Schofield in the holster under the man’s left arm.

  “Gringo bastard!” Monjosa screamed.

  Hawk rolled onto a shoulder and began to raise the Schofield in his right hand. A silver-tipped boot slammed into his wrist. The gun twirled in the air over his head.

  He saw a rifle butt slam toward him. Hawk reached up with both hands, grabbing the rifle and jerking it down so hard that the man wielding it dropped to his knees with a squealed curse. Hawk thrust himself to a half crouch and hammered his right fist against the rifle-wielder’s heavy, bearded jaw.

  Something hard smashed against the back of his head. The world darkened as though a cloud had passed over the sun. Both his hands dropped to the ground. Hawk heard himself growling like a rabid coyote, felt spittle spraying across his lips as he tried to remain conscious and to push himself to his feet.

  He had to get a gun.

  “A dog, uh?” Monjosa laughed. “Growling like a dog.”

  Hawk lifted his head but before he could rise from his hands, another boot slammed into his right side, the toe grinding deep into his ribs. The pain was sharp and searing, barking all through him.

  R
ipping laughter mocked him. He whipped onto his other side, his frustrated, desperate snarls growing louder.

  “Lift him up,” Monjosa ordered. “Watch this, Kid. This is what I dreamt of doing to you after you fled here like a scalded javelina.” His laughter roared. “And what I will do to you still if I catch you fucking any more of my putas!”

  Brusque hands grabbed Hawk’s arms from behind. He was hauled to his feet and held in iron grips. He could smell the sweat, horses, and leather on the two men flanking him, hear them grunting as they twisted his arms behind his back with so much force he thought his shoulders would pop out of their sockets.

  “Hold him!” Monjosa barked, studying Hawk from beneath his shaggy brows.

  The contrabandista lifted his right wrist and, with his left hand, slid the black leather sheath off the knife, revealing the twelve inches of polished, razor-edged steel. He tucked the sheath behind his cartridge belts as he moved slowly toward Hawk in that bull-legged, heavy-footed gait.

  Behind him, Reno stood holding the crock jug up against his shoulder, grinning at Hawk. Catching Hawk’s eye, the gunrunner winked. All around the canyon, men and a few of the hard-looking women and half-naked children had frozen in their chores to watch the happenings near the wagon with bemused interest.

  Even the corralled horses were staring toward Hawk. Monjosa’s men had all moved up to the wagon, forming a ragged circle around it, watching in grim, bemused fascination.

  Sergeant Ironside was on his knees, a rifle aimed at either side of his head, his hands raised to his shoulders. A desperate, miserable expression made a mask of his sweaty, dusty face.

  Somewhere in one of the shacks, a baby cried.

  “You come in here,” Monjosa said, his chin down, eyes dark, voice rumbling up from his belly, “and think you can take advantage of my hospitality. Think you can sell me rifles, get big money?”