Ambush at Shadow Valley by Ralph Cotton

dangerous?’’
    â€˜â€˜He’s a Mayan,’’ said Soto. ‘‘It’s his religious duty to try and kill me and anybody with me.’’ He swung down from his saddle, stepped back to his saddlebags and flipped them open.
    â€˜â€˜What the hell is this all about?’’ Ransdale asked, looking back and forth, suddenly very serious. ‘‘Am I standing in the middle of some kind of religious rigmarole?’’
    â€˜â€˜Just stay on your toes, and watch my back,’’ Soto said, taking a straight razor from his saddlebags and opening it.
    â€˜â€˜Whoa!’’ said Ransdale, eyeing the razor. ‘‘It looks like somebody is about to lose something awfully important to them?’’
    Ignoring Ransdale’s words, Soto said, ‘‘The Indian will be back, in spite of what the old man says about Mayans being timid .’’
    Ransdale swallowed a dry knot in his throat, looking all around the courtyard. ‘‘I was kind of wanting to spend some time with that French sweet cookie, soon as she gets her head fixed up some. Suppose that Indian might have turned tail and run off, like the priest said?’’
    â€˜â€˜Don’t call this old fool a priest,’’ Soto said sternly. ‘‘And trust what I tell you—the Indian will show up any time. A Mayan must do what he is sworn to do.’’ He held his bare hand toward the priest and made the sign of the devil with his fingers. ‘‘Then I’ll do what I’m sworn to do.’’
    The wounded priest, unable to raise either hand and make the sign of the cross, murmured under his breath, ‘‘Dios me ayude.’’
    Giving him a look of raw hatred, Soto stepped forward with the razor in hand and said, ‘‘It’s good that you’re praying for help, old man. You’re going to need all the help you can get.’’
    Ransdale watched and listened intently, noting that Soto’s voice had begun to take on a trace of an accent since they’d arrived here. ‘‘Are you getting ready to cut him like a steer?’’ he asked, watching Soto walk toward the priest.
    Soto didn’t answer. Instead, he walked past the priest, toward a fountain where water rose from beneath the earth and ran in a thin stream from the mouth of a laughing stone cherub. ‘‘Find a hammer and some nails,’’ he said to Ransdale as he kneeled down at the short fountain wall and laid the razor on it.
    â€˜â€˜Sure thing . . . ,’’ said Ransdale, staring bemused, watching Soto take off his hat, raise a knife from his boot well and begin slicing handfuls of thick, dark hair from atop his head and let them fall to the ground.

Chapter 8
    In the nuns’ sparsely furnished living quarters, Clarimonde finished cleaning and bandaging the wound atop the young novice’s head. While she’d attended to the wound she had told the woman everything, letting her know the kind of men they were both up against. The young Frenchwoman took her by the forearm and said, ‘‘I will choose to die before I will submit to them.’’
    â€˜â€˜I understand,’’ said Clarimonde. ‘‘And if you choose to die, then I’m certain you will die.’’ She pulled her forearm away from her gently but firmly. ‘‘They will think nothing of killing you,’’ she added flatly.
    The young novice asked, ‘‘Do you think staying alive has been worth it to you? Will you ever be the same after letting them take away your soul?’’
    â€˜â€˜Worth it to me?’’ Clarimonde thought about her father and the dogs, and the good, clean, simple years she had spent there attending the goats. She started to tell the woman that it was not for herself that she had gone along with these men. But she stopped herself and said, ‘‘It doesn’t matter