The Thunder Riders Read online

  A low rasping sounded on the other side of the boulder.

  Slowly, Yakima scaled the rock and edged a look down the other side. Directly beneath him, the Apache clung to the rock in mid-climb, his Winchester hanging by the lanyard down his back. His lips were stretched back from his teeth, and his brown eyes bored into Yakima’s.

  He was so close that Yakima could see the pores in his sweat-slick skin, the distended cords and veins in his neck, and the missing eyetooth revealed by his stretched lips.

  Yakima rose from a crouch, lowered his Winchester’s barrel. At the same time, the Indian whipped his hand up toward the top of the rock. Yakima’s left boot was jerked out from beneath him, and the ground bounded up suddenly to slam against his back. His finger jerked back on the rifle’s trigger, and the sudden boom flatted out across the pine-carpeted ridges below, the slug sailing skyward.

  Before Yakima knew what had happened, the Indian was on top of him, slashing down with a stout-bladed bowie. Yakima threw his left hand up, caught the Indian’s right wrist, stopping the blade inches from his throat, and bucked straight up with a desperate yowl.

  The Indian grunted as he flew, twisting and turning in midair, across the boulder and out of sight.

  A resolute thump sounded from somewhere behind and below, and there was the rattle of falling gravel.

  Yakima drew a deep breath, wincing at the pain at the back of his head, then lurched to his feet, and glanced down the far side of the rock.

  At its crenellated base, the Indian lay impaled, belly up, on a sharp branch sticking straight up from a deadfall pine. The man’s arms and legs sagged toward the ground. The eyelids opened and closed several times before freezing half closed. One foot jerked and fell still.

  Blood bubbled up around the forked branch protruding from the Apache’s torn shirt and belly.

  Breathing hard, Yakima sleeved sweat from his forehead. He spat dust and grit from his lips, turned to retrieve his hat and Winchester, then began descending the rock.

  The killing had just begun.

  Chapter 19

  From somewhere beyond the edge of Anjanette’s sleep, a light thud sounded.

  Considine’s arm shot out from under her head. He reached across his own body, grabbed one of the revolvers from his matched holsters, and, thumbing back the hammer, aimed the barrel straight out at the fire guttering in the stone ring near his and Anjanette’s blanketed feet.

  Sparks rose from a short ash-white log along the edge of which a slender orange flame flickered.

  Propped on one arm, Anjanette slid her gaze from the fire to Considine staring wildly at the flames, his index finger drawn taut against the trigger.

  “Just the fire,” she said, reaching out to push the gun down.

  “Shit.” Considine depressed the hammer, then slid the revolver into the holster beside him. He fell back against his saddle and drew his blankets to his chin with a yawn.

  Anjanette lay back against her own saddle for a time, staring at the luminous sky. It was close to dawn. Behind her, she could hear the gurgle of the river, feel its warmth penetrating the chill night air.

  She closed her eyes, drew the blanket up to her chin, but she could tell that sleep wouldn’t return. Damn Considine and his nerves. He was always so eager to take a shot at something or someone.

  She sighed, threw her blankets back, and rose to her knees.

  Considine turned to her sharply, frowning. “Where you goin’?”

  “For a swim.”

  He stared at her, his brows ridged.

  “Is that all right?” she asked sarcastically. “Should I have asked permission first?”

  “No,” the desperado leader said reasonably, resting his head back against the saddle. “That’s all right, I reckon.” He lowered his hat over his eyes and crossed his arms on his chest. “There’s woolly hombres out there. Stay close. Take a pistol.”

  As Considine’s chest began rising and falling rhythmically, Anjanette stood, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, pulled her boots on, and headed off through the ruins toward the river sliding through the fog at the bottom of the canyon. She stepped around a couple of the sleeping gang members. Knowing that three were posted around the ruins and on the ridge overlooking the canyon, she aimed for a thick stand of cottonwoods lining the river, out of sight from above.

  On the shore, screened from the ridge by the stout trees, she kicked out of her boots, shucked out of her skirt, shirt, and underclothes. She shivered, feeling a dank chill in the warm fog. Cupping her breasts in her hands, she stepped into the river.

  The water felt like ink rising over her knees and hips as she waded toward a pool in a slight horseshoe a few yards downstream. In the pool, she sank down, enjoying the sensation of the warm liquid closing over her.

  For a time she lolled there, thinking about Considine. She regretted getting mixed up with the desperado leader. She saw now that he had two faces. Before throwing in with the gang, she’d been shown only the face of the sweet, roving rogue. He was much coarser, darker, angrier than she’d expected. Anjanette was no hothouse flower, but Considine’s predilection for violent lovemaking left her feeling cheap and frightened.

  She’d seen what he’d done to Yakima’s horse. Any man who would pistol-whip a defenseless animal was no man to keep company with.

  But then, if she went back to Saber Creek, Old Antoine would only continue to work her like a rented mule. In five years, she would look like one of those Indian War widows who tended chickens and took in laundry in their brush huts along the creek.

  Anjanette cupped the lukewarm water over her breasts, lolling back in the stream.

  Yakima.

  There was a man who knew how to treat a woman. His touch had been neither too gentle nor too harsh. There was a man who, born and bred in the wild, owned a strange sensitivity. While reveling in his own manliness, Yakima could treat a woman to the sweet sublime. Even now, she could feel his big hands, his lips, the sweep of his long hair on her breasts, his hips thrusting between her thighs, his muscular buttocks flexing beneath her hands.

  The problem with the handsome half-breed was that he was as untamed as his horse. Lonely, to be sure. But a loner just the same.

  She wondered where he was now. He’d no doubt searched for his horse, because Yakima and the black mustang were like blood brothers. Maybe he’d given up by now, realizing that no one man could tangle with the Thunder Riders. He’d probably bought another horse in Saber Creek and returned to his mountain cabin, alone.

  A hand closed over Anjanette’s shoulder and she jerked her head around with a start. Behind her in the snaking mist, staring down at her stonily, Toots loomed, silhouetted in the weak dawn light. Naked, the big woman looked like a pale pumpkin with breasts resembling half-filled gut flasks. Her round belly bulged out beneath them. She had pulled her hair back in a bun, a few strands wisping about her plump cheeks and expressionless eyes.

  “Jesus,” Anjanette said, crossing her arms on her breasts and closing her legs. “You scared the hell out of me!”

  Toots held out her hand. Anjanette half expected to see a stiletto in it. Toots slid the grimy sliver of lye soap toward her. “Wash my back.”

  Anjanette stared at her, the water flowing around her waist and Toots’s chubby, dimpled knees.

  Toots jerked her hand, frowning impatiently, and said as though speaking to an idiot, “You wash my back, and I wash yours.”

  Anjanette glanced at the soap, then at the woman’s eyes, still half expecting a trick of some kind. Seeing no cunning in Toots’s expression, Anjanette lowered her arms and climbed to her feet. Toots’s gaze slid across Anjanette’s breasts, her expression softening.

  “If you want your back scrubbed,” Anjanette said, taking the soap from the woman’s hand, “turn around.”

  Toots turned. Anjanette crouched to dampen the soap, then rubbed it between her hands until she’d worked up a good lather. She applied the lather to Toots’s back, inwardly recoi
ling at the feel of the woman’s soft flesh under her palms, the bowed shoulders, a wedge of flaccid breast peaking out from under her right arm.

  “Mmmhhhhhh,” Toots groaned, lifting her head. “That feels good.”

  When Anjanette had finished lathering the woman’s back, she held the soap over Toots’s right shoulder. “Here.”

  Toots sank down into the water and plucked the soap out of Anjanette’s hand. Again, her eyes strayed across Anjanette’s full breasts. “I’ll wash you.”

  “No thanks.”

  Toots frowned and put some steel in her voice. “I wash you.”

  Anjanette held the woman’s gaze. Was Toots, in her own awkward way, trying to bury the hatchet?

  Anjanette shrugged, turned around.

  “Bend down,” Toots ordered.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re taller than me. Bend down a little.”

  Anjanette bent forward. Toots began running her soap-lathered hands across Anjanette’s back. She was a little chagrined at the pleasant sensation of the soft, soapy hands on her skin. Toots stopped scrubbing, touched her finger to a slight bruise just beneath Anjanette’s right shoulder blade.

  Anjanette sucked a sharp breath through her teeth.

  “That hurt?” Toots asked.

  Anjanette didn’t answer.

  Toots continued scrubbing, rubbing both palms up and down and across Anjanette’s slender back. There was a faintly mocking tone in Toots’s voice. “Jack getting rough?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “One thing you can expect outta Jack.” Toots ran her right hand down under Anjanette’s arm, sliding her fingers across the side of Anjanette’s round, firm breast. “He’ll get rougher.”

  “I can get pretty rough myself.” Anjanette clamped her arm taut against her side.

  “Me, though,” Toots said, sliding her hand down Anjanette’s other side and snaking it forward to cup that breast, palming the nipple. “I can be slow . . . easy-like.”

  Anjanette thrust Toots’s hand away and turned, crossing her arms on her chest, an angry flush rising in her cheeks. “I don’t care how slow and easy you are. Keep your hands off my tits and don’t come near me again!”

  There was no warning signal in Toots’s eyes before she slammed the back of her right hand against Anjanette’sjaw—a stinging blow, a fire ripping through Anjanette’s lower lip.

  As Anjanette’s head flew back, Toots leapt toward her, wrapping her hands around her neck. Anjanette tripped on the slippery rocks and fell on her back in the water. Toots fell on top of her, driving Anjanette’s head under the water as her fingers pressed into her neck, pinching off her wind.

  Anjanette thrashed, panicking as the back of her head was ground against the rocks and the water washed over her face.

  She looked up through her own bursting air bubbles to see Toots’s face pinched with fury just above the surface, teeth gritted. She ground her knees into Anjanette’s chest and ribs and dug her fingertips into her throat, as though trying to claw out her windpipe.

  Anjanette, choking on water, flailed with clawed hands, but Toots, grinning maniacally, tipped her head back out of reach. Feeling as though her lungs were about to explode, Anjanette raised her right leg and pushed off the river bottom with every ounce of her remaining strength.

  Toots flew to the side, splashed into the river. At the same time, Anjanette bounded up, water flying off her body, sucking air down her battered throat between choking coughs, her nose burning. She’d barely gotten up when Toots was on her again, rising up out of the river and throwing her head into Anjanette’s belly.

  Again they went down, but this time Anjanette twisted, punching her right fist against Toots’s cheek so hard that Anjanette’s own knuckles barked painfully. The big woman screamed and tumbled sideways. As she lifted her head once more, Anjanette staggered toward her across the rocks, water splashing up around her legs, and jabbed her again with her other fist.

  Toots screamed as her head flew back, and one arm dropped in the water. When she turned toward Anjanette again, the left side of her bottom lip hung down like a bloody leech.

  Fire flashed in Toots’s eyes. With a great rumbling shriek rising from deep in her chest, she leapt toward Anjanette.

  They went down together, rolled, struggled back to their feet, shared slaps and punches, grunting and yelling. As Anjanette turned to parry another in a series of vicious blows, she glimpsed the rest of the gang, which had dwindled to only seven or eight men, gathered along the shore in various states of dress.

  Behind the webbing curtain of fog, they hooted and yipped and clapped. A couple of them, including Toots’s brother, Tomas, were shaking hands as though a bet had been placed. Considine stood before a willow snag in only his long underwear, boots, and cartridge belt, fists on his hips, grinning bemusedly around a cold cigar.

  Anjanette turned back toward Toots as the big woman lurched forward and gave Anjanette’s right breast a savage twist. Anjanette cursed sharply. Laughter and applause rose on the riverbank.

  Made lucid by fury, Anjanette ducked a haymaker, then brought her right fist up hard into Toots’s plump belly. Toots spat out a Spanish epithet and dropped to her knees, then lurched forward and pulled Anjanette’s feet out from under her. Anjanette hit the rocks hard. Knowing how fast Toots could move in spite of her size, Anjanette quickly regained her knees, but somehow Toots had wrapped her arms around the back of Anjanette’s neck.

  Snaking her hand under Toots’s arms, Anjanette dropped her head and slung the big woman over her right shoulder.

  “Ahhh!” Toots screamed, hitting the river on her side and sending up an enormous, thundering splash.

  Again sucking air down her battered windpipe, Anjanette scrambled to her feet. Toots pushed onto her hands and knees, hanging her head with exhaustion, bleeding from the half dozen cuts and scrapes on her face, arms, and knuckles.

  Anjanette staggered before her, grabbed her under her arms, hoisted her up.

  Toots’s dark, dazed eyes met Anjanette’s.

  “If you know what’s good for you”—Anjanette head-butted the big woman so hard that Toots’s eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp in Anjanette’s arms—“you’ll stay the hell away from me, bitch!”

  Anjanette dropped her arms. Toots fell into the river, lolled on her back, arms and legs spreading out around her in the current. Covering her breasts with her arms, already feeling one of her eyes swell and licking blood from her split lips, Anjanette headed for shore.

  The men standing on the bank were exchanging money. Considine held her blanket out while Mad Dog stood beside him, grinning and squinting through puffs of cigarette smoke.

  “I’m impressed, Chiquita,” Considine said. “Not many men, let alone women, have ever beaten Toots in a fair fight.”

  Anjanette grabbed the blanket out of his hands, wrapped it around herself and under her arms, folding it closed. She sneered at Considine and Mad Dog, then stooped to gather her clothes and stalked off through the trees.

  When Considine had pocketed the twenty dollars he’d won from Mad Dog, he turned and began walking back toward the ruins and Anjanette. Nothing got him randier than two women fighting naked.

  He’d moved only a couple of yards before a Mexican-accented voice called, “Hey, Boss. Look there!”

  Considine turned. Toots’s brother, Tomas, was out in the river helping his sister to shore. He’d stopped several yards from the bank and, holding the big woman with one arm, pointed toward the opposite side of the river.

  Three horses stood at the edge of the water, staring toward Considine. The other men had begun dispersing and heading back to their morning coffee fires before Tomas had yelled. Considine stared at the horses. At first he didn’t think they were carrying riders, but he saw now that he was wrong. They were carrying riders, all right— the riders were sitting backward on the saddles, and they were lying belly down across their cantles.

  Unless the fog was
creating some sort of illusion . . .

  Considine threw his cheroot into the river. He glanced at Mad Dog, then moved into the river, heedless of the water rising over his boots and climbing past his knees and thighs. He took long strides against the stream, swinging his arms, frowning at the three horses watching him warily, snorting, twitching their ears and flicking their tails.

  The water dropped back down Considine’s legs as he approached the opposite shore. Mad Dog and the other men spread out to his left and slightly behind—all except Tomas, who stood with Toots on the opposite shore, staring across the sliding, fog-shrouded stream at the horses— two duns and a claybank.