Chapter 5
JUD FILLED THE PACK WITH WATER. IT LEAKED A little, but not much. This would probably ruin it, but right now that didn't matter. Besides, it was Sam's.
Then he and Viola climbed the embankment and peered into the clearing that separated them from the woods. They could see no one, either here or in the line of cedars that was their immediate destination.
"Looks like it's all clear," Viola said.
Jud nodded. But then his eyes slowly descended to the sandy earth. There were footprints. As best he could tell, they led from the trees to here-the edge of the embankment-and then back toward the woods. They didn't have to be fresh; they could have been made a week ago. They could also have been made just a few minutes ago. But at least they weren't Sam's: Jud's guess was that they'd been made by moccasins.
He saw no reason to tell Viola. If there was any new danger, they'd know soon enough, and there was nothing they could do about it anyway.
"Okay, let's go," he said.
The pack, filled with water, was too heavy for him to run with, so as quickly as they could, they walked the distance to the tree line. They paused here for a moment's rest, then started on toward the prospective camp site. They didn't talk.
When they were about a hundred yards from where they'd left Sam, Jud heard a movement in the underbrush. He said nothing, but he stopped and held Viola back. He waited motionless, listening intently for another sound, his eyes searching the undergrowth around them.
"Pssssst!" a voice said in a whisper. "Jud!"
It was Sam. Jud looked in the direction of the sound and saw him crouched in the thicket, barely visible. He had the gun with him, and was gesturing with his arm. At first the gesture was unclear, and Sam repeated it. The only thing Jud could see that it might mean was for them to keep going and pretend they hadn't heard. He took Viola's arm and led her on through the trees, past the camouflaged figure of her husband.
"Don't look back," Jud whispered, still holding Viola's arm and marching her onward like a naughty child.
Dusk was fast changing into night. Darkness was covering the forest.
They walked perhaps another fifty yards. Through the trees ahead of them they could see the tent, already pitched. Behind them the rustling in the brush, and they stopped, waiting. The sound increased to a violent thrashing that could only mean a struggle. Jud dropped the heavy pack, debating whether to wait here or start back to help Sam. Then the thrashing stopped, and there was a scream-the scream of a girl.
They heard Sam's voice: "Got you!"
Viola and Jud looked at each other. He shrugged in answer to the question her eyes registered.
"Wait and see," he said. "It sounds like Sam came out on top-of whoever it was."
In a moment the rustling resumed, but it was a slightly different sound.
"He's bringing her," Jud said, looking at Viola's voluptuous body and marveling at how quickly a little intrigue had taken his mind off what he'd just done with her.
"The girl we saw earlier?" she asked.
"Probably. Unless there are two of them. And that's a little hard to believe."
"The first one was hard to believe."
The rustling came nearer.
"Sam?" Jud hollered. "You all right?"
"Yeah, I'm all right if I can keep my fingers out of this she-wolfs mouth. Get your ass back here and help out a little!"
Jud looked at Viola, grinning. "Come on."
They left the water pack and canteens and made their way hurriedly back through the brush. But when they reached Sam, they had a surprise: It wasn't the girl who looked like a boy; apparently, it was the old hermit's squaw.
"Hey, Jud," said Sam with a laugh, holding the girl with a hammerlock, "this ain't hardly what you expected, is it?"
It wasn't. She was perhaps eighteen, maybe twenty; it was hard to say. She was the most striking figure Jud had ever seen. Writhing and twisting like a wild cat, she refused to submit to the arm-breaking hold the burly ex-fullback had on her. Her hair was long and black, tied in a braid that reached almost to her hips. Her eyes were also black, and now wide and furious. Her skin was coppery, the color of a new penny. She was dressed from head to toe in rough leather-a tight, jacket-like shirt, tied together with thongs in the front but open enough to reveal the cleavage of otherwise unhampered breasts; tight, rough leather trousers stretched like rawhide over the fullness of her hips, making her lithe legs look perhaps even longer and more slender than they really were; and moccasins on her feet. The deep red-brown of the rough leather was the perfect compliment to her raven hair and copper skin, and on a closer look Jud could see the points of her nipples to either side of the dark cleavage.
She glared at Jud, then at Viola. In her eyes, it seemed they could see all the hatred that had built up in two centuries of the slaughter and abuse of her ancestors.
Sam eased his hold on her a little, and she started to struggle anew. He dropped the rifle, which he'd held precariously under his arm, and concentrated all his force on tightening the pin of her arm behind her back. She struggled for a moment longer, and Sam pushed the arm upward. When the pain got too much for her, she gave a short scream and stopped struggling, but the hate boiled even more hotly in her eyes.
"Jee-sus!" Sam said. "I never saw a bitch put up a struggle like this!"
"Who is she?" Jud asked, wondering what Sam would do if he went over and picked up the rifle, then deciding against it.
"I don't know," Sam said. "Who are you?"
The girl said nothing. She sulked, glaring at Jud and Viola. Sam lifted up on her arm. She didn't move, didn't cry out.
"Who are you?" Sam asked again.
Still she said nothing. He lifted more on the arm, and she still didn't cry out, and she remained passive rather than struggling. But her face tightened, and tears spilled out of her eyes.
"Who are you?" Sam demanded even more viciously.
"Let it go," Jud said.
Sam tightened his grip even more on the girl's arm. Her lips parted as if she would scream, but no sound came out. "I said let it go!" Jud shouted.
Sam released the grip. The girl sighed. The tension left her face, and Jud realized how close he had come to diving headlong into Sam. He would have killed him then, if he could have.
"Okay," Sam said dryly. "What do you suggest we do with her?"
"Tie her up," Jud said.
"Yeah, but I mean in the long run. She's probably the one who gave that gold piece to the girl at the curio shop. If we put a little pressure on her the right way, she'll lead us right to it. We won't even have to fool with the old man."
Jud laughed sardonically. "Would you enjoy that, Sam?"
"I want the gold; that's all."
Jud laughed again. "Did you see her then? She didn't make a sound, and you damn near broke her arm. You could cut her up in little pieces and she still wouldn't tell you a thing."
"There's ways," Sam said.
Jud knew this wasn't going to work. Sooner or later he was going to have it out with Sam. If they'd done it ten years ago, it would have been a good, rough fistfight. Now things were a little tougher, and the stakes a lot higher.
"We'll take her back to camp and keep her tonight," Jud said, mustering all his authority in his voice, and spicing it with just the hint of threat. "Then tomorrow we'll use her as a hostage to get us into the cabin without getting our heads blown off. Now, give her to me; I'll take her the rest of the way."
Sam laughed. "You think you can handle her, huh? You may have a surprise coming."
"I can handle her," Jud said.
He walked over to Sam, glancing down at the rifle on the ground. If he moved quickly enough he could beat Sam to it, but once he'd made a move like that, he'd have to keep Sam covered from then on. He wasn't ready for that yet, if indeed it was going to come to that.
"Let me have her arm," Jud said.
The girl just looked at him, apparently more curious than anything else now. Jud reached between her body and Sam's taking hold of the pinned arm. Sam released her and stepped back, and Jud moved in behind her, holding the arm and reaching around her with his free arm. He could feel her breast brush his forearm, feel her full hips against his loins. She had a good body, and there was something about her nakedness beneath the coarse leather that stirred in him a new and demanding craving, making what he'd done with Viola seem far in the past.
He waited for the struggle he'd expected, but it never came. She didn't fight him.
"Well," Sam laughed as he bent over and picked up the rifle, "Jud's still got a way with women!"
"Let's go," Jud said.
They started back to camp, and the Indian girl walked willingly before him, not offering the least resistance.
"How'd you find her?" Jud asked.
"You two took a little long," Sam said.
Viola shot Jud a startled glance, but he signaled her with his eyes not to worry. If Sam had seen anything, they'd have heard about it already.
"I climbed a tree," Sam said, indicating some scratch marks on his arm. "I could see you coming, and then just once I saw movement behind you. Her. I figured it was somebody following you, so I went out there and hid. Sure enough, she came along about twenty yards back of you, making it through those trees like a mountain lion. But she wasn't expecting me, and I got the jump on 'er."
Sam had pitched the tent right over one of the smaller cedar trees. That was the only way there was room for it, because it was a big tent, and apparently he hadn't been in the mood to cut another tree down. So there was a tree in the tent, and there was hardly room left to move around. But Jud said nothing about that.
"Get me a piece of rope," he told Viola.
Sam started to pile up what wood he could find for a fire, and Viola went to one of the packs and got the rope.
"You don't have to tie me," the girl said quietly.
"I'm afraid we do," Jud laughed. "I'm sorry, but we didn't start the shooting."
Viola brought him a six-foot piece of lariat. He pulled the girl's arms behind her and tied them together, then wound the remainder of the rope around a tree and tied it. This gave her a couple feet of play to move around in, but it was virtually impossible for her to escape. He'd intentionally picked a tree about thirty feet from the tent, and at least partially obscured from it by another tree. He wanted a chance to talk to her in private and see what he could get out of her.
"Can she get away?" Viola asked.
He shook his head, studying the hatred with which the Indian girl glared at Viola.
"Go tell Sam not to start a fire here. We'll have to eat cold food. These trees are too dry."
Viola hesitated, looking first at him and then at the girl, who now sat cross-legged on the ground, leaning back against the tree trunk.
"Go on!" Jud said.
Viola's lips quivered. She started to say something, but didn't. She turned and went back through the trees to the tent.
Jud turned to the girl. "I did not like the other man," she said. "I did not want his hands on me." Jud smiled, but her expression never changed. "Your woman is very beautiful," the girl said. Jud almost corrected her, then stopped himself, waiting to sec what else she'd say.
"I have seen well that she knows how to please you," the girl added, just a trace of a savage smile flickering on her lips.
So she'd seen, thought Jud. She'd seen everything. And once she found out Viola wasn't his, but Sam's wife, she had just what she needed to start them fighting among themselves. And he had no doubt but that she'd use it, and that she'd have the cunning to save it until just the right time.
"I would not trust my woman with that man, if I were you," she said. Then she actually did smile. "She is your woman, isn't she?"
Jud turned and walked back to the tent. She already knew, and she was saving it.