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  Cameron’s voice came. ‘Now, Evans …’

  Evans glanced over at the major. ‘Yes sir?’

  ‘My cousin up at Val Verde recommended Taylor here. That’s good enough for me.’

  Evans began to speak, maybe to argue, but then he held his tongue. After a moment he walked away.

  Cameron told Taylor, ‘Don’t mind Buck Evans. He’s kind of prickly, sometimes. Will you join us in a cup of coffee, sir?’

  Taylor swung down from the saddle. He and Cameron shook hands. Whilst the Scot had larger hands than Garth, his grip was easier. Cameron indicated the woman in the white dress. ‘This is my daughter, Fiona.’

  She stood against the sun; he couldn’t make her out clearly, save that she was fair-haired. ‘Ma’am.’

  She held out a cup of coffee to him, which he took. ‘Thank you.’

  The woman moved away. Taylor squatted down, getting comfortable on his hunkers. He drank the hot, unsugared coffee gratefully. ‘When you fixing to pull out, Major?’

  ‘You come straight to the point,’ Cameron observed. ‘Good. Now you’re here, we can pull out tomorrow morning.’

  ‘All right. After this –’ Taylor raised his coffee cup, ‘-I’m going over to the hotel to book a room for tonight and bathe some of this desert off me. Around three, four, I’ll mosey back over here and give your wagons a look over. Gives you time to change your mind about this trip.’

  Cameron gave him a sharp look. ‘Why should we change our minds?’

  ‘Because Loco has jumped the reservation.’

  The Scot poured himself some coffee. ‘I’ve heard all about these Apache renegades.’

  ‘The Mescaleros used to hide out in the Superstition Mountains. That’s close by where you’re fixing to go.’

  ‘Talk is they’ve run off to Mexico.’

  Remembering Nachay, Taylor felt unease. He frowned. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Might be wiser to wait and see.’

  It was Cameron’s turn to frown. He fingered one burnside. This was clearly a habit with him, an aid to thinking. ‘Quite frankly, Mr Taylor, we can’t afford to wait. Most of us have put everything we have into outfitting for this trip. We’re eating into what’s left of our money and supplies as it is. We need to get down to the Rio Azul while there’s still time to put crops in. So I don’t intend to linger here just because Loco might be in that country.’

  ‘As long as you know what you might be getting into. Even without hostiles, it’s pretty mean country all the way to Rio Azul.’

  ‘But once we get there, it’s paradise.’

  Taylor glanced up at Cameron in surprise. Nobody who had been along the Rio Azul would ever describe it as paradise. Taylor wondered if he should tell Cameron that brutal truth now. But he was hired as a scout, nothing else. It wasn’t his place to stamp on this man’s hopes and illusions. ‘Well, at least it’ll grow something, unlike the rest of this country.’

  ‘You changing your mind?’

  Taylor finished his coffee, threw the grounds to the earth. ‘You’re paying me, Major.’

  He stood and moved to his horse.

  As he climbed into the saddle he saw Fiona Cameron standing nearby, watching him. Now he could see her clearly, Taylor decided she was strikingly attractive, maybe even beautiful. Perhaps twenty-three. She was tall with a lot of golden hair – some might consider it a sinful amount – piled up on her head. Her cotton dress was long enough to allow no glimpse of ankle, but it couldn’t hide her shapely figure and full breasts. Some might think her eyes – which were of a colour he couldn’t quite identify – and mouth were sinful too.

  He said, ‘Thanks for the coffee, ma’am.’

  He rode towards town.

  Buck Evans was suddenly in his path. Taylor reined in.

  Evans stared up at the horseman whilst fondling the fringes at the side of his gloves. His eyes were disdainful. He dawdled a minute or so, in no hurry to give the other man the road. Then he stepped aside and Taylor rode by.

  Taylor decided he hadn’t lost his knack of making enemies at the drop of a hat. First Garth and now Evans. Maybe taking on this job was a mistake, and he should let Cameron find himself another trailblazer. Almost certainly he’d have to whip Evans to get these movers to accept him as a scout. He thought about the strength in the man’s arms and shoulders. He thought about the killing look in Jed Garth’s eyes. And then he thought about Fiona Cameron’s eyes, which might be green….

  CHAPTER THREE

  Next morning, an hour after daybreak, the wagons were lined one after another along the creek, pointing east.

  Taylor had carried out his inspection the previous afternoon (‘Ma’am, you won’t get a stove that heavy ten miles down the trail we’re following.’) and had given the wagons a further looking over just now. He squatted by a mesquite fire, finishing up a breakfast of bacon and beans on the tin plate on his lap. Breakfast courtesy of Fiona Cameron.

  He felt depressed.

  The train consisted of ten wagons. The four Williams brothers owned a Conestoga, which looked too big and unwieldy for the country they proposed to travel. The others were the lighter, smaller ‘prairie schooners’. Most of the wagons were in fair condition, although the mixture of oxen and mules pulling them were gaunt and ribshot. The outfit was low on saddle horses and most of them were fairly worn down.

  There were thirty-six people, eighteen of them men or boys old enough to use a gun. All of them were farmers who’d come down from Kansas, except a Mexican woman – Señora Sanchez and her fifteen-year-old half-Zuni son who had joined the train in the last few weeks. Mercifully there were only two families with children – an Irishman called McShane had a small tribe of kids underfoot – and the Veidts, a Dutch or German family, who had three young ones, and who knew scarcely one word of English.

  Some of the older men had served in the War but none of them had fought Indians, except for Buck Evans and his younger brother Ethan. The Evans brothers had tried their hand at buffalo hunting and had fought Comanches on the High Plains. Or so they claimed. They were armed with Winchesters, as was Major Cameron. The others were armed with a ragbag of weapons, down to the Dutchers who had only one Colt pistol between them. (Taylor had insisted they get themselves a rifle.)

  The size of the outfit, as well as their lack of experience in Indian fighting, added to Taylor’s gloom. They were too big to escape notice, yet not big enough to withstand a large war party, especially if the Apaches spotted how poorly armed they were. Any bronco Apache’s mouth would water at the prospect of the booty on this train – guns, ammunition, supplies, oxen and mules, not to mention women and children to be carried off as slaves. And there weren’t just Apaches to consider. There were bandits in this country – and across the line in Mexico, who could plunder as ruthlessly as any Apache. In the past bands of them had wiped out wagon trains and made it look as though Indians had done it.

  Of course, if there were no human enemies to threaten them, then all the travellers might have to endure was heat, thirst and dust. But you couldn’t bank on that. Taylor finished his breakfast, mopping up bacon grease with a sourdough biscuit. He remembered the faces of the wagon party as he’d moved amongst them. Faces marked with weariness, disappointment and defeat, faces without hope. Worn-down people in worn-down clothes. That depressed him too. He wondered again about taking on this job. Maybe he ought to spell out to Cameron the realities of what he’d find on the Rio Azul, then quit and let the major get himself another scout.

  He finished breakfast, ate dessert – an apple – and rolled a cornshuck cigarette. Major Cameron approached, smiling.

  ‘Well,’ he asked, ‘Are we ready to roll?’

  Taylor lit his cigarette. ‘Just about. Thank your daughter for a fine breakfast.’

  Cameron poured himself coffee.

  Taylor said, ‘You’re still set on this trip? I think you’re crazy.’

  His bluntness drew an angry glare from Cameron, who held that look for a minute. Then his face be
came weary. He said, ‘I don’t mean to sound patronizing but as a young man you perhaps can’t appreciate what it means to be busted down to nothing. To work hard all your life and then have it snatched away from you. You grind away for years and years and then lose it all in … days.’ Cameron paused, presumably remembering hard times. He looked bleak, his face suddenly that of an old man. ‘We farmed in Kansas and grasshoppers did for us. Ate all our crops two years running. In Nebraska it was drought. So we set out for California but the money ran out. Left us stranded here. Then we heard about the new settlements at Rio Azul. So you see, Mr Taylor, we’re at the end of the trail. Literally. Rio Azul is the last throw of the dice – for all of us.’

  Taylor heard the despair in the man’s voice. Despite himself he felt oddly moved.

  He threw the remnants of his cigarette to the earth and stood. ‘I’ll get ’em going.’

  Within half an hour the wagons were manned and drivers poised to crack their whips and get the stock rolling. A hot east wind lifted, sifting dust across, so they’d move with dust blowing into their faces. The wind flapped canvas and pulled at the men’s hats and the women’s sunbonnets.

  Taylor and Cameron sat their horses at the front of the train. They gazed into the glare of the desert beyond.

  Cameron lifted his battered slouch hat from his head and used it to shade his eyes. ‘If there’s a trail out there, I can’t see it.’

  Taylor narrowed his eyes against the wind. ‘It ain’t much. They say the Spaniards first used it a couple hundred years back. A big expedition, soldiers and priests and such. They called it the Trail of Hope cus it was supposed to lead to a city of gold. When they found out it didn’t lead anywhere, they renamed it the Trail of Lost Souls.’

  Cameron smiled a very little. ‘Still trying to get me to change my mind? Maybe it’ll turn into our Trail of Hope.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Cameron slewed around in the saddle and faced the wagons behind him. He lifted his arm. In his strong voice he bellowed: ‘Let’s go!’ With his arm he gestured forward and the lead wagon began to move, the others following. Fiona drove the Cameron wagon. The prairie schooners – and the Williams’s Conestoga – wobbled and crawled out of Ore City, on to the Trail of Lost Souls.

  A small crowd had gathered at the edge of town and watched the wagons leave. Amongst them was a tall man in a black shirt, who seemed to have his eyes fixed on Taylor. As he rode by Taylor saw that this man was Jedediah Garth.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When the wagons reached their first nooning place, and the travellers were taking their meal, Calvin Taylor gathered the handful of men with saddle horses before him. That included the two Evans brothers and the four Williams siblings. It also included the half-Zuni boy, Ramon Sanchez.

  Taylor told the men standing before him: ‘From now on, four outriders out at all times. Point, rear and flanks.’ Buck was staring off at the wagons. Taylor asked, ‘You listening, Evans?’ Evans started as if Taylor had flicked him with a quirt. He glared. Taylor ignored that and went on: ‘The most dangerous is rear.’

  After a little discussion they picked the first four outriders and worked out a rota for who followed them. Then Taylor broke up the meeting. He hunkered down and started to roll a cigarette. As he might have predicted, Buck Evans was the one to linger behind when the others walked away.

  Evans told Taylor, ‘I don’t like the idea of having that Sanchez kid as an outrider.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s an Indian. Apaches around, more likely he’ll join them than warn us.’

  ‘He’s part Zuni, not Apache.’

  ‘Same breed of cats.’

  Taylor felt a flicker of temper. He made his voice rougher than it needed to be. ‘Shows you don’t know anything about Indians. Apaches and Zunis was enemies before white men even got out here.’

  A little anger showed in Evans’s face. ‘I know about Indians. When we was buffalo hunting, Ethan and me, we had us a partner. One morning we found him, come on him sudden. Comanches had … scalped him, cut him up. Cut off his …’ Evans voice trailed away, and his lips tightened. He bunched his fists and then slowly flexed his fingers. ‘Cut him up something awful. And that was a good man. Five years and I still can’t get what I saw out of my head.’

  Taylor waited a moment before speaking. ‘I’m sorry about that, Evans, but—’

  ‘So don’t tell me I don’t know about Indians. I seen plenty. They’re all the same to me. The only good ones … well, you know.’ He sneered. ‘And don’t be talking to me like I’m some sort of a kid. I don’t have to take your orders.’

  Taylor had been moved by Evans words a moment before, but now temper worked in him again. ‘Yes you do. Long as Major Cameron wants me as scout, you’ll take my orders and like it!’

  Evans blinked. ‘Will I now?’

  He began to pull off his fringed gloves.

  Taylor heard himself sigh. He thought: It might as well be now as later. He stood.

  For the first time Evans smiled slightly, a pleasant prospect in front of him.

  Then his expression changed, his gaze moving past Taylor, fixing on something.

  Fiona Cameron approached. She said, ‘Gentlemen.’

  Evans touched the brim of his hat. ‘Miss Cameron.’

  She gave him a brilliant smile. ‘You’ll come to supper, Buck?’

  Evans was suddenly a gentleman mindful of his manners. He pulled his hat off and turned it in his hands. ‘I’d be proud to, ma’am.’

  Fiona then gave Taylor the same smile. He waited for her invitation to supper too; but it didn’t come. She walked away.

  Evans gazed after the woman, smiling. Then his eyes moved to Taylor and the smile faded. A vaguely triumphant look replaced it. He strode off.

  Taylor was, not for the first time, mystified by a woman’s doings. What was all that about? Was Fiona trying to make him jealous? Had she succeeded? Or was she about some strange coquettish game? She needed to be careful, he thought, playing him against Evans when there was already bad feeling between them. A game like that could turn deadly fairly quickly.

  The wagons made twenty miles that day. They saw no Indians, few travellers of any kind. The main enemy the travellers faced was the hot wind that blew all day and the alkali dust it raised, rasping skin, bleaching clothes and flesh, greying hair and tasting harshly in the food they ate and the coffee they drank.

  At sundown Taylor rode in from his final scout, checked on the night guards, then rode to the circled wagons. As he dismounted there, a slight figure shaped out of the gathering darkness and came towards him: Ramon Sanchez. Taylor asked him: ‘Qué tal, hombre?’

  Ramon shrugged. Most of the time he was too shy to speak or even look you in the eye. Taylor said, ‘Your turn on night guard, amigo.’

  Taylor watched him walk away. Ramon’s dark skin, very black hair and high cheekbones showed his Indian blood but at least his hair was cut short and he dressed in the serape and white cotton pants of a Mexican peasant. Otherwise someone might mistake him for an Apache in this darkness and take a shot at him.

  The travellers sat around campfires, finishing supper. Taylor found a fire to sit by and ate a tortilla with a beef jerky filling he didn’t taste. He was conscious of his own weariness; he’d been how many hours in the saddle today?

  It seemed very quiet. Taylor had expected some display of optimism and eagerness from these pilgrims after successfully completing the first day of their journey to the promised land. But there was little activity around the campfires. No Bible meeting or debating, no fiddle or squeezebox music or dancing. Voices were low. Even the children were listless and silent. Maybe heat and dust and the trail had beaten them down. Perhaps this desert and the dangers it might contain had cowed them. With full darkness and the first chill of the desert night, most of them stole away to their beds.

  A few campfires remained, burning low. By one Joshua Williams teased a mournful tune out of a mouth organ.
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br />   Someone approached; Taylor looked up and saw Fiona Cameron. She held out a tin cup.

  ‘You seem to like my coffee.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Taylor drank gratefully. ‘You sure make good coffee, ma’am.’

  He was pleased to see her smile slightly at the compliment. Then he remembered she was just about to eat supper with Buck Evans. Maybe that was a pang of jealousy he felt, after all….

  Taylor listened to night noises: Josh Williams’s plaintive mouth organ and the lowing of oxen. Far off he could hear coyotes and owls and once the flesh-crawling yowl of a wolf. Real critters, or Apaches impersonating them? He noticed the woman watching him.

  She said, ‘I was wondering …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Fiona gave a small, embarrassed smile. ‘I’m forgetting my manners. You don’t ask people about their past out here.’

  ‘What were you wondering?’

  ‘Desperation’s driven us into this wilderness. But you …’

  ‘Why am I here?’ Taylor sipped coffee. ‘Maybe I’m a real bad man running from the law.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you?’

  Taylor smiled ruefully. ‘My story’s common enough. I wanted to dig my fortune out of the ground.’

  ‘You were a miner?’

  ‘A prospector. I went looking for gold and silver on my own.’

  ‘Did you find any?’

  ‘No. But I’m still looking.’

  Fiona smiled guardedly.

  Taylor hadn’t told her the whole of his story, but maybe that was enough for now. He said, ‘An Apache once asked me: “Why do you come into our country to scratch our rocks? Is it because they itch?”’

  She smiled again, more easily this time. ‘I didn’t know Apaches had a sense of humour.’

  ‘Indians are human beings. Even Apaches.’

  ‘Even this savage, Loco? That means crazy, doesn’t it?’