Part 6 (1/2)
His hat tumbled off his shoulder and dropped to the ground. He gave a savage grunt as he entered her. She cursed and sagged forward, wrapping her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist.
Considine ground up and into her, and she rose and fell against the escarpment as though riding a green mustang over broken terrain. Her hair bounced over Considine's shoulders and down his back.
Considine gave a final grunt, sighed deeply. His knees bent, and they dropped slowly together, raking air in and out of their lungs, down the rock wall to the ground.
Anjanette buried her face in his shoulder, and Considine leaned his head against the scarp behind her. Gradually, their breathing slowed.
”I'm sorry, Chiquita,” Considine said, clearing his throat and smoothing her hair back from her face with both hands. ”I shouldn't have thrown you over my horse, given you such a hard ride. I only wanted it to look convincing.”
Anjanette's black eyes softened slightly. ”You nearly killed me, making me ride that way. You're too rough sometimes, Jack.”
”I forgot to bring you a horse. I'm sorry.” He kissed her gently. ”Forgive me?”
She lifted her chin defiantly. ”I also thought you were coming yesterday yesterday morning.” morning.”
”My man from the bank sent me a cable yesterday in Javelina, said the company delayed it a day to throw off possible”-he smiled, broadening his mustache and showing a chipped front tooth-”holdup artists.” He lifted her chin with his gloved right hand. ”Did you miss me, baby?”
Anjanette hiked a shoulder and quirked a corner of her mouth. ”I got along.”
Considine stared back at her, his eyes pensive. Finally, he stretched his lips in a broad smile and caressed her cheek with the palm of his hand. ”I can tell you missed me. You're not nearly as tough as you make out. There isn't a woman alive-not even the desert-rat granddaughter of Old Antoine-who has yet been able to resist my charms.”
The thunder of hooves and wagon wheels rose behind Considine. He turned to look back through the chaparral, where a dozen riders loped toward them. Behind them came the stage, bouncing through the greasewood and cactus, weaving around shrubs and boulders while Wolf MacDonald whipped the reins over the team's backs and bellowed long-practiced curses.
Considine turned back to Anjanette, dropping his head to nuzzle her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, licking her nipples. He'd met her four months ago, when he and the rest of the gang except for Mad Dog McKenna had split up after robbing an army payroll caravan near Pima Tanks. Considine and McKenna had meant to spend only one night at Charlier's Hotel and Tavern, then light out for New Mexico.
But that was before Considine laid eyes on Old Antoine's granddaughter. Anjanette had sashayed around the saloon that night, grinning and smiling and cavorting like one of the boys, her colored bandanna holding her Indian-black hair back from her finely sculpted face, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pus.h.i.+ng like ripe melons from behind her white cotton blouse, skirts swis.h.i.+ng about her legs.
When she set down a beer and a tequila shot before Considine, sitting slumped back in his chair, he could tell from her eyes-cool but with little sparks of copper-that her attraction to him was as keen and immediate as his for her. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swelled and her light brown cheeks flushed. Her pa.s.sion was like heat radiating from a stoked boiler.
They spent the entire week frolicking in Anjanette's bedroom every night after Old Antoine took his customary bottle to bed and drank himself to sleep. One night, unable to wait until Anjanette had finished sweeping the saloon, they made love atop the long mahogany bar, her blouse ripped open, skirt thrown up across her belly, his denims bunched around his ankles.
At the end of the week, Considine had promised Anjanette he would spring her from the confinement and boredom of Saber Creek and her grandfather's tavern and show her a world of adventure she'd only dreamed about. A month ago, when he'd learned of the Wells Fargo gold s.h.i.+pment from an hombre working in the Saber Creek bank, he'd figured he'd found a way to do just that.
They decided to make her exodus from town look like a kidnapping, to make a posse afraid of getting a hostage killed, and to keep her face off wanted dodgers. She, unlike the other Thunder Riders, wasn't a seasoned owlhoot, after all.
Now Considine lifted his head and kissed the girl's lips. ”We best go meet the pack.”
As he and Anjanette walked back through the mesquite thicket, holding hands, Anjanette said, ”Speares will be gathering a posse, you know.”
”Sure. But it's suicide to ride after us. More than one lawman has found that out the hard way.” Considine glanced at her, giving his rakish smile. ”Besides, Chiquita, isn't that what you're for? To slow him down? Your sheriff wouldn't want us to kill our lovely hostage-the loveliest girl in Saber Creek, if not all of Arizona.”
He kissed her cheek and snaked an arm around her waist as they moved out of the mesquites. Before them, the other gang members were dismounting their dusty, sweaty horses, casting knowing grins and smirks toward Considine and Anjanette.
The stage driver, Wolf MacDonald, drew back on the team's reins, bellowing.
”I almost killed him last night,” Anjanette said tightly. ”He pushed me too far.”
Considine looked at her again quickly, and grinned. ”I don't doubt it! Is that how he got that-?” He gestured to indicate the wrapping over Speares's broken nose.
Anjanette shook her head, staring at the stage stopping twenty yards away, the horses lurching back in their collars, digging their hooves into the dirt. ”A friend stepped in.”
”Hey, pard, I think we oughta ditch the stage here!” A tall man in faded Union cavalry trousers, wolf coat, and stovepipe hat rode up on a cream barb. He was round-faced, unshaven, with long, straight black hair and silver hoop rings dangling from his ears. On his right cheek a dog's face had been tattooed. The other cheek and eye had been horribly disfigured by Apaches when Ernst ”Mad Dog” McKenna was only five years old, and his Scottish parents were ranching in the White Mountains. ”No point in haulin' it any farther. Country breaks up only a few clicks farther south. Let's strap the lockbox to a couple horses and light a shuck due south.”
Considine strode between several horses, squinting against the dust, and approached the stage. MacDonald set the brake and began climbing down from the driver's box.
”Anybody still alive in there?” Considine asked, nodding at the bullet-riddled carriage housing.
MacDonald chuckled and wiped a stream of dusty chaw from the right corner of his mouth. ”s.h.i.+t, if all the bullets flying in town didn't kill 'em, the ride I just gave 'em did did!”
As MacDonald leapt to the ground with a grunt, Considine drew his pearl-gripped Peacemaker and opened the coach door. A woman in a green traveling dress rolled halfway out, head and arms dangling toward the ground, gla.s.sy eyes staring up at Considine as if with a puzzling question. Blood dribbled from her lips and from the holes in her right temple and shoulder.
Considine shuttled his gaze from the woman to the coach's dark innards, where two men and an old woman in a black dress with white lace trim lay sprawled every which way. The desperado leader winced and shook his head as he holstered the Colt.
”Well, that makes it easy.”
He reached in, pulled the woman in the green dress out, then reached in again, found the handle on the strongbox, and yanked it out from beneath the gray-haired lady, grunting with the effort.
”Dog, help me here!”
Mad Dog McKenna swept his bear coat back from the big bowie sheathed over his belly and grabbed a handle of the strongbox. Together, he and Considine lifted the box, which must have weighed over a hundred pounds, to the ground beside the dead woman in the green dress.
”Must be payday soon out to Fort Chiricahua,” Considine said with a laugh.
”Ah, s.h.i.+t,” Considine said, ”what do those soldiers need with money, anyways? There's nothin' to buy buy up in them bald hills.” up in them bald hills.”
MacDonald stepped forward, rubbing his big hands together. ”Come on, Jack, open her up, will ya? I wanna see all them coins!”
Considine drew his Colt, stepped back, and triggered the gun. He had to fire once more before the heavy iron lock broke and hung slack against the stout wooden box. Holstering the revolver, he knelt down, removed the lock from the chains, and opened the lid.
Several lumpy burlap pouches, tied with rawhide, snuggled in the box like baby pigs at their mother's belly. Each one was marked WELLS FARGO, LORDSBURG, N.M.T.
MacDonald whistled. ”Can I open one?”
”Not till we get to the tavern.” Considine looked around. ”Prewitt, Cooper, Sanchez-separate these pouches, rig them to a couple of the stage horses.”
As Prewitt and Cooper stepped forward, Cooper said, ”Sanchez didn't make it out of Saber Creek, Jack.”
Considine cursed and cast his gaze around the well-armed men-mostly Yanquis but a few greasers, a black man, a half-breed Sioux, and a former Apache cavalry scout humorously known to the desperado gang as Kills Gold-Hairs because of his predilection for towheaded wh.o.r.es. There was also a round-bodied Mexican woman named Toots, sister of one of the Mexicans, who could shoot better than some of the men, and who hunted, trapped, cooked, washed dishes, and tended wounds.
Considine brought his eyes to Mad Dog. ”How many we lose?”
”Four,” said Ben Towers, the only black man in the group-a former slave and hide-hunter whom Considine and McKenna had met in Yuma Pen's infamous snake pit. Towers had gone on a bender and killed several men in his hide-hunting outfit, and found that he enjoyed killing men more than buffalo, and robbing banks more than stretching hides for a living.
”But Eddie-he's not in good shape,” said Toots, standing among the men who'd gathered in a semicircle around the strongbox. She was a Duke's mixture of Pima, Mexican, and Irish. She turned her barrel-shaped body to indicate the man sitting on a tall, blaze-faced black stallion about forty yards away.
The man was crouched forward in the saddle, hatless, curly auburn hair blowing in the breeze. The horse's head was up as the animal looked around, twitching its ears and snorting angrily.