gray, billowy thunderheads.
It was monsoon season, and the storms were spilling down off the mountains and filling the washes out here on the prairie. It was good-tasting water. The best Cuno had ever tasted. Lightning crackled and flashed like witchesâ fingers poking the lime-green tableland. Thunder sounded like gods tossing boulders.
He and the de Cava gang rode hard for three days after the prison break. Cuno wasnât sure where in the hell they were going; he was beginning to wonder if Mateo even knew. They headed west toward the mountains, and just as they began make the climb into them, heading toward the passes, they swung hard east again and holed up in another isolated badlands.
They headed out before sunrise the next morning, angling northeast.
Cuno didnât much care, as long as he didnât have to push Renegade too hard and ruin him. He didnât care where they were going, because he had nowhere to go now that he was a fugitive. A desperado.
In fact, riding was as good a thing for him to do now as anything. The gang, unheeled as a pack of rabid wolves, provided safety in its numbers. The air and the sun were balms to his battered body, and now, after three days, the swelling around his nose and eyes was going down.
As they rode, Cuno often glanced at Camilla riding beside him. She glanced back at him, her hair flying out behind her shoulders, her blouse billowing forward then pulling back taut against her breasts as she rode.
It was exhilarating, riding hard and looking at her and then stealing off with her alone at night and enjoying the delights of her supple, dusky body. He liked how, just as he brought her to fulfillment, she snarled like a bobcat and sunk her teeth into his shoulder. And sheâd said only Mateo was part Yaqui! Heâd lain with her before in the Rawhides, but sheâd seemed so much quieter then. Demure.
Now there was a wild carnality, a hunger about her that thrilled him. Maybe because it matched his own savagery, which heâd felt growing in him gradually behind the prison walls, then burgeoning suddenly as soon as he rode through those prison gates and knew that he could never go back to the old life heâd had before.
Not after killing that town marshal.
Not that heâd been so damn civilized before. In fact, heâd killed many men. But at least heâd tried to settle down and live the life of a good citizen, until he and Sheriff Dusty Mason had made the deal that had likely saved the lives of Michelle Trent and the Lassiter kids, not to mention Camilla herself. A tough deal, because Cuno hadnât killed those marshals in cold blood. And unlike what Mason had thought, he and his old partner, Serenity Parker, hadnât been running rifles to the Utes.
They had been running rifles, all right. Against their wishes, theyâd hauled several crates of Winchesters to the Trent ranch, though Cuno had thought theyâd just been hauling supplies, not finding out till they reached the ranch that Trent had double-crossed him and had arranged for rifles and gunpowder to be hidden in their freight wagons, to be used by Trentâs ranch hands against the marauding Utes themselves.
That was all past now. All water under a high bridge.
Now he had a gang and a woman and his old horse and the .45 that Charlie Dodge had given him back in Nebraska. He had the damp breeze spiced with sage and cedar in his face.
And he had a good, albeit wild, Mexican filly who reminded him, bittersweetly, of his dead wife, July. And maybe best of all was not knowing or caring where in the hell Mateo de Cava was leading him, because he had no-where to go and heâd come from nowhere . . .
In the late afternoon, the falling sun behind him, Cuno watched a settlement of sorts rise from a broad, shallow bowl in the prairie, surrounded by low bluffs. Shiny silver rails stretched toward the village from the east and ended a little ways south, where graders and
It was monsoon season, and the storms were spilling down off the mountains and filling the washes out here on the prairie. It was good-tasting water. The best Cuno had ever tasted. Lightning crackled and flashed like witchesâ fingers poking the lime-green tableland. Thunder sounded like gods tossing boulders.
He and the de Cava gang rode hard for three days after the prison break. Cuno wasnât sure where in the hell they were going; he was beginning to wonder if Mateo even knew. They headed west toward the mountains, and just as they began make the climb into them, heading toward the passes, they swung hard east again and holed up in another isolated badlands.
They headed out before sunrise the next morning, angling northeast.
Cuno didnât much care, as long as he didnât have to push Renegade too hard and ruin him. He didnât care where they were going, because he had nowhere to go now that he was a fugitive. A desperado.
In fact, riding was as good a thing for him to do now as anything. The gang, unheeled as a pack of rabid wolves, provided safety in its numbers. The air and the sun were balms to his battered body, and now, after three days, the swelling around his nose and eyes was going down.
As they rode, Cuno often glanced at Camilla riding beside him. She glanced back at him, her hair flying out behind her shoulders, her blouse billowing forward then pulling back taut against her breasts as she rode.
It was exhilarating, riding hard and looking at her and then stealing off with her alone at night and enjoying the delights of her supple, dusky body. He liked how, just as he brought her to fulfillment, she snarled like a bobcat and sunk her teeth into his shoulder. And sheâd said only Mateo was part Yaqui! Heâd lain with her before in the Rawhides, but sheâd seemed so much quieter then. Demure.
Now there was a wild carnality, a hunger about her that thrilled him. Maybe because it matched his own savagery, which heâd felt growing in him gradually behind the prison walls, then burgeoning suddenly as soon as he rode through those prison gates and knew that he could never go back to the old life heâd had before.
Not after killing that town marshal.
Not that heâd been so damn civilized before. In fact, heâd killed many men. But at least heâd tried to settle down and live the life of a good citizen, until he and Sheriff Dusty Mason had made the deal that had likely saved the lives of Michelle Trent and the Lassiter kids, not to mention Camilla herself. A tough deal, because Cuno hadnât killed those marshals in cold blood. And unlike what Mason had thought, he and his old partner, Serenity Parker, hadnât been running rifles to the Utes.
They had been running rifles, all right. Against their wishes, theyâd hauled several crates of Winchesters to the Trent ranch, though Cuno had thought theyâd just been hauling supplies, not finding out till they reached the ranch that Trent had double-crossed him and had arranged for rifles and gunpowder to be hidden in their freight wagons, to be used by Trentâs ranch hands against the marauding Utes themselves.
That was all past now. All water under a high bridge.
Now he had a gang and a woman and his old horse and the .45 that Charlie Dodge had given him back in Nebraska. He had the damp breeze spiced with sage and cedar in his face.
And he had a good, albeit wild, Mexican filly who reminded him, bittersweetly, of his dead wife, July. And maybe best of all was not knowing or caring where in the hell Mateo de Cava was leading him, because he had no-where to go and heâd come from nowhere . . .
In the late afternoon, the falling sun behind him, Cuno watched a settlement of sorts rise from a broad, shallow bowl in the prairie, surrounded by low bluffs. Shiny silver rails stretched toward the village from the east and ended a little ways south, where graders and
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