Border Snakes Read online

  He’d known that, letting her live, she’d come back to haunt him. And she had haunted him, several times. Trouble was, she’d also saved his life a time or two. . . .

  Hawk rested a forearm on his saddle horn. “You shadowin’ me?”

  “Nah.” Saradee took another puff from her cigar. “I think our paths are just naturally meant to cross. Must be something in the stars, Hawk. What do you say you light and sit a spell, join me for a drink?”

  Behind her, Melvin Hansen said tightly, molasses-dark eyes pinned to Hawk, “I don’t see why. . . .”

  “Shut up, Melvin,” Saradee said with a smile.

  Melvin’s pink-splotched tan cheeks turned pinker, and his chin dimpled as he slid his eyes to Saradee and then returned them to Hawk. They were as flat as those of a Mojave rattler.

  “Melvin’s new to the gang,” Saradee explained to Hawk. “He still can’t get used to a woman runnin’ things.”

  Hawk wanted to ride on. Or part of him did.

  Another, smaller but insistent part—a breathless voice in the back of his brain—urged him to answer her siren call.

  He glowered across the grulla’s twitching ears at the pretty, lightly tanned blonde regarding him with infuriating frankness and female understanding and decided—or part of him did, anyway—that giving his horse a rest couldn’t hurt. Since she was one of the curly wolves he spent his lonely days hunting, it couldn’t hurt to hear what she had to say, either.

  She might even put him on Kid Reno’s scent.

  Hawk lifted his Henry from his saddlebows and, keeping his eyes on Melvin Hansen, who returned the favor, swung his right boot over his saddle horn and dropped to the ground. He tossed his reins over the hitch rack, mounted the veranda’s cracked, rotting steps, tipped his hat to the silent, expressionless April, and turned to the black-clad gunfighter.

  “Would you mind watering my grulla, Melvin? It’s a hot day, and he hasn’t drank since Saguaro.”

  Hansen gritted his teeth, but before he could speak, Saradee said with her petulant grin, “Do it, Melvin. Hawk here’s a friend of mine, and any friend of mine is a friend of yours.”

  She turned and walked into the cabin.

  11.

  THE GIRL HE SHOULD HAVE KILLED

  HAWKgave the gunman from Wisconsin a phony grin, then followed Saradee into the station house’s dingy shadows, the air stale and rank with the smell of dry rot and mice shit. There was a small bar consisting of planks laid over barrels, and a door to the left that probably led to a kitchen. A door on the right, partly covered by a ratty, dusty blanket, probably led to overnight sleeping quarters for stage passengers.

  There were three or four small tables, some tipped over, and a half dozen chairs, some without backs and also tipped over. Dust lay a half an inch deep on everything, and enough cobwebs for a witch’s lair hung from ceiling beams and support posts.

  Saradee made her way to one of the few upright tables, around which several chairs were gathered, and on which was a clear bottle and three tin coffee cups. “Come on over and have some tequila. Picked it up in Nogales. The dead worm on the bottom died with a smile on its face.”

  She kicked out a chair and plopped down, slapping her well-turned thighs. “That snake water’s so damn strong it’s like to put hair on my tits, but it’s right refreshing. Make you see the world through a whole new pair of eyes.”

  Hawk kicked out a chair across from Saradee and slacked into it. “I doubt all the rotgut tequila in Sonora could make me see it any clearer. What the hell’re you doin’ here, anyway? And why’d you send that note? You’re wasting my time, Saradee.”

  “How can you be so sure I’m wasting your time?” Saradee picked up one of the tin cups. “You all right with drinkin’ after Melvin?”

  “I reckon I’m no more particular than you are.”

  Saradee’s lips quirked with satisfaction at that. Hawk’s ear tips warmed. Was that jealousy he heard in his voice? He ground his jaws against it and accepted the cup from Saradee. He glanced inside at the clear liquor half filling the cup.

  “Don’t worry,” Saradee said. “I ain’t gonna get you drunk and take advantage.” She nudged a chair to her right and crossed her boots on it. “Though it’s right tempting . . . you bein’ you, and me bein’ me an’ all. We got some history, Hawk. Don’t tell me you don’t think about it. I can tell you straight out that I do.”

  Hawk sipped his drink and started wishing he’d listened to the soft voice of common sense and ridden on.

  “Answer my question.”

  “Which one?”

  “How ’bout the first one? We’ll mosey over to the second one after I’ve had enough sips of this coffin varnish to thin out your bullshit.”

  Saradee sipped her tequila and, smacking her lips, looked over the brim of her dented cup at him. “That’s no way to talk to an old flame.”

  “Moment of weakness. Thank Christ it didn’t last.”

  “Moments of weakness,” Saradee said. “And they could stretch into a fair piece of time . . . if you’d take the hump out of your neck. Ain’t no man more qualified to ride with my bunch.”

  Hawk chuffed an ironic laugh. “Shit, I kill men like your bunch. And women like you.”

  “Then how come none of us is dead yet?”

  “I’m feelin’ merciful today.”

  She tossed her head back, and thrust her shoulders against the slat-back chair. Whether she was aware of it or not, her breasts pushed so hard against her blouse that the button over her cleavage popped open, revealing more of the crucifix over a smooth stretch of snow-white camisole. She was a fair-skinned girl, but the sun had turned her olive. The camisole stood out against it . . . alluring.

  Against his will, Hawk’s brain tossed up a picture of her naked and straddling him, those large, cherry-tipped breasts jostling an inch in front of his face. He drew a ragged breath, and winced against the memory, turning away from it as he lifted his gaze to Saradee’s glowing blue eyes.

  “You ain’t changed a bit.” She pouted. “Just as stubborn as ever. Oh, well, you and Melvin would just fight over me, anyway. I’d have to have Lindley shoot you both to put you out of your misery like moon-crazed wildcats.”

  Hawk lifted his cup to his lips for another sip of the heady, astringent brew. “Back to the subject.”

  “Ah, shit, I’m not followin’ you, Hawk, though it wouldn’t be difficult except for hopscotchin’ my horse over all the dead men you leave in the trail. I had business over in California and this is the best back trail from California; the U.S. marshals and Pinkertons preferring not to get beefed out here where no can find and bury ’em.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “That’s one question too many.”

  “All right.” Hawk shrugged. “Let’s get back to one already asked but not yet answered.”

  “Kid Reno?” Saradee smiled like a little girl offering to sell a rose for a penny and a tousle of her cornflower curls. “Shit, he’s in Ehrenberg. Never met the man, but I saw him there. Figured to ask him to join up with me—you know, safety in numbers—but, now, there’s a problem I don’t need.”

  She squinted an eye and held up her shot glass, poking her index finger around it at Hawk. “He must have half the marshals, Texas Rangers, Arizona Rangers, county sheriffs, and Pinkerton agents in all the frontier dusting his back trail. And then, when you have to make a fast dip into Mexico . . . well, the man wouldn’t be fit company in Mexico. Not if you don’t want every rurale and federale and any other kind of ‘rale’ in Sonora and Chihuahua clinging to you like the lice clinging to the Kid’s rancid hair!”

  She threw back the last of her shot and slopped more tequila into her cup.

  “Me and the boys lit out under cover of darkness, left the Kid howling and bellowing like a poleaxed bull in one of the whorehouses in the company of his men. Christ—what a gang of miscreants and mangy coyotes.”

  “What was he howling about?” Hawk asked.

/>   “Just drunk and stompin’ with his tail up. Melvin and I heard he has the pony drip something awful, but it don’t keep him from trying to spread his seed around, hot as it is. I don’t reckon he can get it up or keep it up or at least bring the practice to completion. Too painful, I ’spect. I wouldn’t know—I’ve never had the drip. You?”

  “Knock on wood.” Hawk threw the last of his own shot back and rattled the empty cup back down on the table. “Ehrenberg?”

  “As of two weeks ago, anyway.”

  “If he’s got the drip, he might still be there. I hear it’s hell to ride with.”

  Hawk fished inside his sheepskin vest and dipped his fingers into his shirt pocket.

  “I don’t need your money,” Saradee said with indignation.

  She dropped her boots down off the chair and leaned over the table toward Hawk, resting her elbows on her knees. Her eyes were shiny, her cheeks flushed from the tequila. “What I would like is a long afternoon under some cool cottonwoods. I know a creek near here. We could slip away, just the two of us. Take a little dip. . . .”

  Hawk glowered at her. His heart shuddered. Hot blood jetted through his loins.

  No woman aside from his wife had ever had such a grip on him. But she was nothing like Linda. She was some wild creature of the southwestern deserts and mountains. A she-cat with the perpetual springtime craze crawling up a dry, sun-blasted arroyo looking for a mate as hot-blooded and feral as she.

  Try as he might, he could not keep his mind from remembering the radiant mounds and knolls and plains of her porcelain-smooth body. Nor the fierceness with which she’d writhed beneath him, her arms and legs entangled with his, her heels grinding into his rump, her fingernails deliciously raking his back.

  Her catlike howls and groans that set his male lust and passion exploding like a million pounds of black powder. . . .

  She stared across the table at him, her eyes aglow with radiant knowing. “Come on, Hawk. You remember how it was. It could be like that every night. Hell, every morning.”

  Hawk wanted to run a hand down his face as though to wipe her image from his retinas, but he maintained an impassive expression as he lounged back in his chair. “You talk like we got somethin’ in common. Like I said, I kill folks like you.”

  “That’s what we have in common, Hawk.”

  “Thieves, rapists, murderers. You’d kill your own mother for a plug nickel and a shot of rotgut tequila.”

  “We’re flip sides of the same coin, lover.”

  The word bit him like a razor-edged blade twisting deep in his guts. He swallowed, and his brows bunched like stormy mountains. He was repelled by the brittleness, the faint desperation he heard in his own voice. “One of these days, Saradee, I’m gonna come gunnin’ for you and your boys. I’m gonna run you down.”

  “If you’d really wanted to beef me, you’d have done it two years ago in Mexico.”

  “The time wasn’t right then. We had to throw in together to stay alive. But we ain’t in Mexico anymore, and your days are numbered.”

  She stared into his eyes—a diamondback mesmerizing a cat. Her tongue darted deliciously across her lips as she spoke. “Our hearts are the same, Hawk. You think you ride for some noble cause, but it’s even lessnoble than mine, because I don’t pretend I’m some kinda saint with a six-gun. And you’ll never be able to kill me because you remember what it was like to fuck me!”

  Hawk kicked his chair back and heaved himself to his feet.

  Saradee laughed. “A man like you is dangerous, Hawk. You oughta be locked up . . . or go ahead and admit what your are—a cold-blooded killer. Come on, lover. Throw in with Saradee, and let’s have some fun!”

  Hawk gritted his teeth against the throbbing in his temples. He wheeled and started for the door, clenching his fists above his guns.

  Saradee rose from her chair and called behind him, “Well, you think on it and let me know. I got a feelin’ our paths are gonna cross again real soon.”

  Hawk stopped at the door. His jaws were tight, and his nostrils flared as he breathed. He couldn’t help taking one more look behind.

  Saradee stood staring after him, fists on her hips, breasts jutting against her blouse. Her gaze met Hawk’s. She grinned.

  “Tell Melvin to get in here,” she called as she sank back down in her chair, suddenly pouting again. “I ain’t done drinkin’ yet, and I’m not the kinda girl who drinks alone.”

  Hawk turned his head forward and walked through the door. He stopped on the other side. Melvin Hansen sat against the veranda’s front railing. He stared gravely at Hawk.

  “Boss’s callin’,” Hawk said.

  He started toward the veranda’s steps. In the corner of his left eye, Hansen stiffened. Hawk stopped again and looked at the gunman. Hansen’s right hand had slid toward the walnut grips of his Colt Army positioned for the cross draw on his left hip.

  Hawk met the gunman’s flat, hard, wide-eyed gaze.

  All sound and all thoughts dwindled to vapor in Hawk’s head. He became conscious of only his right hand and Melvin Hansen, whose own right hand had flattened out across his brown wool vest and watch chain, halfway to his Colt.

  Hawk waited. Half consciously he felt his cheeks lift with an eager, encouraging grin. Hansen’s eyes gained a wary cast. The skin above the bridge of his nose wrinkled slightly, and slowly, he let his right hand fall away from his belly and drop back down to his side.

  Hawk canted his head toward the station house’s open door. “Boss’s waitin’.”

  Chagrin blossomed in Hansen’s burned cheeks, and the man’s fury returned. Keeping his eyes on Hawk, he rose from the veranda’s rail and, hooking his thumbs behind his cartridge belt, stomped off into the station house.

  “Where the hell you been?” Hawk heard Saradee say. “I don’t like to be kept waitin’, Melvin.”

  Hawk allowed himself a faint smile as he continued down the steps and into the yard, where April stood with his grulla. A bucket of water sat on the ground in front of the horse. The saddle’s latigo strap dangled toward the ground, and its bridle bit had been slipped from its mouth, as well.

  “Obliged,” he told the girl, who stood holding the grulla’s bridle with one hand and regarding Hawk with customary dullness.

  He buckled the belly strap, shoved the bit into the horse’s mouth, and stepped into the saddle with a squawk of sun-cured leather. Saradee’s men continued to regard him with faint curiosity from the shade beneath the brush arbor.

  Hawk pinched his hat brim to April. “Obliged.”

  April released the grulla’s bridle and stepped back. Hawk reined the grulla away from the station house and booted it into a gallop past Saradee’s men and the windmill and stock tank, and southwest along the seldom-used stage road toward Ehrenberg.

  12.

  KID RENO RIDES

  KID Reno was Hawk’s only clue as to the specific whereabouts of Knife-Hand Monjosa.

  According to an old sheriff he’d met—a wizened old desert rat, long retired, who kept his ear to the outlaw-trampled trail out of habit—Kid Reno had been Knife-Hand’s first lieutenant down in Mexico but had recently fallen out of the murderous half-breed’s favor. They’d somehow not killed each other but parted ways.

  The sheriff figured the Kid would be holed up somewhere in Arizona, as he was said to have a Lipan Apache wife he felt some loyalty to and vice versa. As Kid Reno was nowhere near the recluse Knife-Hand was, and had many friends and acquaintances in Arizona, the sheriff didn’t think he’d be as difficult as Knife-Hand to run down.

  And the Kid would know the whereabouts of Knife-Hand’s several mysterious hideouts along the Colorado River, might even know which he was currently calling home. Getting the desperado himself, a notorious thief and killer, to divulge such secrets would be a trick in and of itself, but the sheriff was confident that Hawk’s best chance of locating Knife-Hand would be to run down the man who knew him best.

  Hawk wasn’t thinking such thoughts on
his second day out from the Sweetwater stage station, however. He’d thought them all through, shuffled them, and set them aside days before. No, Kid Reno wasn’t on Hawk’s mind this day, though of course he should have been, as the Kid had many ears listening for him, and there was a good chance the Kid knew by now that he had a shadow.

  At the very least, Hawk should have been paying careful attention to the rolling, sun-blasted terrain around him, as this was as much Apache country as the hideout territory of law-dodging cutthroats from America as well as Mexico.

  What he was thinking about as he traversed a broad, sandy arroyo between two rocky, creosote-and-mesquite-stippled cutbanks, was Saradee Jones.

  For the third or fourth time that day, he found his mind harking back to her sprawling naked in his soogan blankets down in Mexico—that wanton succubus, that golden-haired, high-breasted Circe who knew better than any ten-dollar whore how to drive a man to the end of his wits with aching need and howling desire.

  And this careless inattention to his immediate surrounds was why, just as his nostrils detected the faint smell of wood smoke on the warm, early-afternoon breeze, he heard a sudden, faint whistling too late to prevent a careening rope loop from falling down over his head and shoulders. The broad, revolving noose drew taut so suddenly and with such force that, before he could so much as lift his hands, he found himself hanging in midair three feet behind the grulla’s ass and lazily swishing tail.

  His wind gushed out of him in a sudden whoosh and then the ground rushed up from below to hammer him brutally about the back and shoulders. Before he could do much more than lift his head and blink his eyes in an attempt to clear them, the rope drew taut again, pinning his arms to his sides.

  Someone gave a victorious howl.

  Hawk grunted loudly as the rope jerked him straight back along the arroyo in the direction from which he’d ridden. The rocky, sandy ground slid away beneath him, scraping his butt, and he reached up to grab the rope and turn belly down to keep from being taken for a Dutch ride over rocks on his back.