Eventually, they stopped and cut her down but let her ride the mule. They gave her a frock to wear. They even offered her water from a canteen. Her buttocks and her back had been chaffed by the sun and the cold wind. Riding the mule bareback was almost as grueling as being carted on one like a sack of flour. She ached, and she desperately wanted to sleep, to close her eyes and dream and . . . maybe . . . wake up from this terrible nightmare.

  She did not close her eyes, however. She observed. She made herself remember the twists in the trail, the turns, the rocks, and the watering holes. Soledad Tadeo knew where they were taking her. She had heard other youngsters and a few men talk about that place.

  Soon she would be at El Cañon de Los Dolores.

  Sometimes, the priest and the nun would try to scare the children they taught. If you are not a good boy and girl then one night the Apaches may come for you. They will take you to The Canyon of The Sorrows. So you must remember to pray and to go to confession and to live the best life you can and remember your parents and your siblings in your prayers.

  She had heard those stories so many times that she had begun to think of that canyon as a myth or some kind of fairy tale.

  They rode into the canyon, and she heard the singing, saw the men dancing, saw carts and wagons and plenty of horses. Two of the Apaches grabbed the rope to the mule upon which Soledad Tadeo rode and they loped it to a corral at the end of the canyon. A Mexican in the uniform of a Rurale opened the gate, but the corral was not for the mule. The man in the Rurale uniform jerked her off the mule’s back and shoved her through the gate. She stumbled to her knees and tried to catch her breath. The gate closed behind her and the Mexican spoke in a mix of Spanish and Apache, but she could not make out any of the words. She heard the mule being led away.

  Later, she heard the gunshot. The Apaches killed the mule and roasted it for supper. It had been an old mule anyway.

  When she looked up, she saw other women, most of them Mexican but a few who had to be norteamericanos. One was blond. Two were redheads. Several were even younger than Soledad Tadeo. All had the same look on their faces that she knew was chiseled on her face as well. Their eyes revealed their hopelessness. Two, she thought, had already lost their minds.

  Soledad Tadeo sat down. She tried not to look at the women. She looked at the canyon. She burned it into her memory.

  CHAPTER 68

  On the third day at The Canyon of The Sorrows, the raiders came. They brought whiskey and casks of wine, trade goods, rifles that were not worth much money and powder that was wet but maybe would dry out and fire a musket.

  After much drinking and much gambling and plenty of eating and three fistfights, the man wearing the uniform of a Rurale opened the gate to the corral. He jerked one of the redheads up by her hair and dragged her four feet before he let her rise and walk in front of him. He shoved her out of the gate, and six men—four were Mexican and two dressed like and were as pale as most norteamericanos so Soledad figured they were gringos—closed in around her.

  One lifted her dirty red hair. Another opened her mouth and stared at her teeth as though he were guessing the age of a horse. One clasped his hands over the woman’s breasts, and another clapped his hands and ran to do the same. The woman was too dead to notice or to care.

  The Rurale shoved both men away and called out in Spanish, “We will start the bidding at fifty pesos.”

  Apparently, the men came in pairs, for only two Mexicans and one gringo offered money for the redhead. The Mexican in the blue silk shirt and the leather knee britches called sotas won the redhead. He snapped his fingers, paid the man in the uniform of the Rurale, and his partner grabbed the redhead and pulled her to a covered wagon.

  She had been sold for eighty-five pesos.

  The gringos outbid the Mexicans for the blonde. They also got Soledad Tadeo, laughing when one of the Apaches pointed to the young buck’s mangled ear and then tapped his teeth and made a biting motion at her. They paid two hundred pesos for Soledad Tadeo. She might have gone a little higher, but the Mexicans seemed a bit afraid of a girl who might bite the ear of a customer. The blonde cost them four hundred. They also bought a girl younger than Soledad Tadeo and a boy who they thought would be a good servant for a while and then a worker in one of the mines.

  As she was led to the covered wagon, Soledad Tadeo saw the young Apache with the ruined ear looking at her. She stared back, unblinking and the warrior had to turn away. She would remember him, and she made herself a promise. This rich gringo planned to sell her into prostitution, but no one was going to touch her that way until she was ready—and she would never be ready and never be in love. And if anyone ever struck her again, she would kill the hijo de la puta.

  Inside the wagon, Soledad Tadeo found a seat near a rip in the canvas. She sat, and when the wagon pulled out, she raised her left hand and stuck a finger in the tear. She pulled the canvas down and watched. She noticed everything—the junipers and the cactus. She figured out which way they were traveling. Hours later, when the wagon stopped, she removed her hand from the rip and waited.

  The gringo with the derby hat and the checkered coat opened the flap in the back. He looked at his purchases and cleared his throat. “We’ll be going through what amounts to a town in this lousy country. I can stick Harry in here with a gun, but I don’t want to do that. Greasers are stupid, but they might wonder why I’m pulling a saddled horse behind this wagon. I could tell them it’s mine, but they might not buy it. People get kind of edgy after an Apache raid. So you’ll stay in here and you won’t make one peep. Because if any of you try to warn the greasers, well, those greasers will be dead. And we’ll be taking you back to The Canyon of The Sorrows. We’ll be giving you back to those Apache bucks. Savvy?” He repeated the threat in Spanish and closed the flap.

  No one said a word as the wagon and the outrider, the man who had served as the rich gringo’s partner, crept to Rancho Los Cielos. They rode through the small village without stopping. The village meant nothing to Soledad Tadeo. She was dead already. The village was dead. Her mother was with God. When they crossed the border, they turned west.

  They camped that night, letting the women drink water but giving them nothing to eat. To the boy, they did toss a piece of bacon one of them had dropped in the dirt. The boy picked it up, looked at it, and tossed it back to the gringos. The man in the checkered coat and derby hat rose from the fire, walked to the boy, and laid a gash on the side of his head with the barrel of a revolver.

  None of the others made any attempt to help the boy.

  CHAPTER 69

  The next morning, they were back in the wagon and traveling west. Soledad Tadeo again put her finger in the rip and watched the desert pass.

  Around noon, the wagon and the outrider stopped. She craned her neck and watched. She wet her lips. One man was riding down a hill. He carried a stick across his lap as he nudged a pinto horse toward the man driving the wagon and the man on the horse. When he was lost to her, she slowly rose and moved to the front of the wagon. The man in the derby hat and the checkered coat had kept the flap closed, and there was no tear in that part of the canvas, but she sat on the bags of trinkets and beans and cloth, wet her lips, and raised her finger to the flap. She pulled it back just enough so that she could lower her head and see.

  The man on the pinto horse had stopped in front of the wagon. “Howdy.

  The rich gringo’s partner had nudged his horse up a few yards past the wagon. She could not see that gringo, but she could see the driver of the wagon. He had wrapped the leather reins around the brake of the wagon and was stretching. Not that his muscles were stiff at all, but he was stretching to put his right hand on the butt of a revolver stuck in the small of his back.

  “Man,” the rich gringo said, “it’s a long way and hard on an old man’s back traveling from Lordsburg.”

  “Lordsburg,” the newcomer said.

  No, she realized. It was not a stick at all, for once he stopped the black and white mustang, he raised the stick up and braced the bottom against his thigh. It was not a stick. It was a rifle.

  He was lean and thin and leathery. His hair was gray and long. He seemed oddly familiar but she could not see very well through the small opening.

  “That’s right. We’re on our way to Prescott.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  The rich gringo’s hand tightened on the revolver. His thumb slowly began pulling the hammer to full cock.

  “You callin’ my pard a liar, friend?” the gringo on the horse said.

  “Nope. I’m just saying that I’ve never heard of someone coming from Lordsburg and going to Prescott heading to Rancho Los Cielos first. It’s out of the way.”

  “You’ve been following us?” The rich gringo started to pull the revolver out of his pants, but still pretended to be stretching his back and his arms and his shoulders.

  “I scout for the Army,” the old man said. “Apaches raided a couple homesteads. Took some women captive.” He spit off to his right. “They also raided south of the border. Killed some good folks. Took some more captives. Women, mostly. Even young girls.”

  “That’s horrible.” The revolver was out of the rich gringo’s pants. “What will they do to those poor innocent creatures.”

  “The Apaches?” The man sighed. “They’ll do whatever they please. Then they’ll sell them to white traders.”

  “Traders?” the one on the horse asked. “White men.”

  “I wouldn’t call them white,” the scout said.

  The man stopped with the pistol.

  “What would white traders want with kidnapped girls?” The one on the horse was trying to distract the man on the pinto from the rich gringo with the checkered coat, the derby, and the pistol in his right hand.

  “Take them to Prescott. For one of the brothels that caters to the lowest form of man there is.” The man on the pinto was finished. He did not wait. He did not ask for the two gringos to surrender. He raised the rifle with one hand and shot the man in the derby hat.

  Soledad Tadeo did not see the gray-haired man shoot the other gringo, the one on the horse. The gunshot had surprised her so much she had tumbled backward, and then the man in the derby hat and the checkered coat was falling through the canvas, pushing it open and landing next to her and the boy who had not accepted the bacon.

  The rich gringo was dead. The bullet from the rifle had taken him in the center of the chest. There was little blood on his buttoned coat. His eyes remained open and would never blink again.

  She heard the other shot as she pried the pistol from the dead man’s hand. The man on the pinto might not be able to kill the one on the horse, so she would help. She climbed through the canvas onto the seat, leaped over the side, and saw the gringo’s horse galloping back toward Rancho Los Cielos. There was no rider. She stumbled to her knees and saw the man who had killed the rich gringo and that he had also killed the rich gringo’s partner.

  The stranger dropped the rifle and ran to Soledad Tadeo. He looked as though he wanted to pull her into his arms, but he stopped. His eyes looked funny, like he was about to cry. He reached and gently took the pistol from her hand. “Are you all right?” he managed to ask in slow border Spanish.

  She did not answer.

  He helped her up. “How many are in the wagon?” he asked.

  She did not answer again. She knew this man. He was a gringo. Maybe he had been in her house. That made her remember her mother and she turned around.

  “It’s over,” he told her. But he was shaking as he stood and walked back to the man he had shot off his horse. She saw him stop over the man, saw him bring up the pistol that had once belonged to the rich gringo who was now dead in the back of the wagon.

  Soledad Tadeo saw the gray-haired scout extend the pistol and pull the trigger. The bullet turned the man’s head to one side. The stranger who had just killed the two white men kept pulling the trigger until the revolver was empty, and, yet, even then he kept cocking the hammer and squeezing the trigger, cocking the hammer and squeezing the trigger.

  CHAPTER 70

  Soledad Tadeo had not thought of that ugly episode for years. Yet the memory of the man who had saved her life, the one who had stopped her and the others from being taken by those miserable gringo slavers to Prescott made her picture his face, and she knew he was the same scout who had been visiting her for all those years. He was the man named Sam Florence. This Sam Florence had never asked her about The Canyon of The Sorrows, but he had told the soldier named Holden and his hard-drinking friend called Masterson that she knew the way to that canyon.

  How could that be? How did this Sam Florence know?

  It did not matter. That was years ago. Her mother was still dead. And few Apaches had returned to The Canyon of The Sorrows to sell captured women to men like the one who had worn a checkered coat and a derby hat.

  She looked at the soldados named Holden and Masterson who did not wear the uniform of the bluecoats to the north. She told them, “It is enough that I know the way. It is enough that I will take you there. We should go now.”

  “Thank you,” Holden said.

  “I will get my horse,” she told them as she headed out the door. “We will ride in twenty minutes.”

  Rancho Los Cielos had never been much of a village, but the Apache raid when she had turned fifteen years old had driven off others. The priest and the nun left their church and school and moved to a larger town where Rurales were stationed and guarded against Apache raids. Others decided to move to safer places or to escape the terrible memories that January night had left to haunt their dreams. With fewer people living in the village, businesses closed until practically all that was left was Mariscos and The Cantina That Has No Name—and even those would have been gone had not bandits from both sides of the border made the place a resting spot, a place to drink tequila and maybe have something to eat before riding away.

  Those were all that came to Rancho Los Cielos these days. No one could remember when the last time Rurales had come through to make sure all was well. The only decent person to stop was the scout, the old man whose name was Sam Florence. Soledad Tadeo turned and looked back at Grat Holden.

  Maybe this Yanqui was a good man, too. Not that it mattered.

  She found her saddle in the lean-to behind the corral and groomed the horse before throwing the blanket over the back and the saddle on top of the blanket. Once she had the saddle cinched in place, she took the reins and led the horse out. She closed the gate behind her and walked to Mariscos. The two gringos were about to mount their horses.

  Soledad Tadeo glanced at The Cantina That Has No Name. The owner and bartender was crossing the street, muttering something, not paying attention. Most likely he was going to the privy that stood on the other side of Mariscos. That was what had become of a town like Rancho Los Cielos. Two businesses. One corral. One outhouse.

  The man who owned and who worked at The Cantina That Has No Name was Juan Gomez. He did not see the man who killed him.

  The arrow came out of nowhere and struck Gomez in his chest. He dropped to the dirt with no time to gasp or cry out. He simply died and lay in the street, spread-eagled, as the Apaches rushed around both sides of Mariscos.

  Soledad Tadeo felt the reins whip out of her right hand, leaving the mark of leather that burned her palm. She heard her horse snort, turn, and bolt down the trail that led to the border. She did not look back. She dropped to the ground.

  “Imbecile,” she called herself. Her horse was galloping away, and she was lying in horse apples and dirt. She had left her revolver and her rifle in the cantina. A woman her age, with her experience, should have known better. Rancho Los Cielos was not Nogales. It was not Agua Prieta. She deserved to die like Juan Gomez.

  All of the Apaches swung their horses to the corral. She covered her head with both hands and felt one horse leap over her. She breathed in dust, rolled to her side, and kept rolling. The Apaches pulled their horses to hard stops, with two of the animals coming to their knees, and one tossing its rider over its head.

  No more than ten, she thought, coming to her feet.

  The Apaches yelled and almost immediately turned their mounts around. The one who had been thrown, had risen quickly, grabbed the hackamore, and was trying to swing into his Indian saddle when a gunshot rang out—the first. He was slammed off the horse, crashed into the top rail of the corral, flipped over it, and landed in the water bucket.

  Soledad Tadeo was running. Apaches must have been coming to Rancho Los Cielos for horses. There were not enough women in the town to make that kind of raid profitable anymore.

  On the other side of the street, she saw the man who had saved her when she was fifteen—Sam Florence—swinging the barrel of his smoking Winchester and firing again. She did not know if his shot proved true, but she understood that he had fired the bullet that had killed one of the Apaches. She turned toward The Cantina That Has No Name, to hide behind the scout named Sam Florence.

  CHAPTER 71

  “Get those horses inside, Masterson!” Holden roared. “Inside. Get them off the damned street!” He saw the dead Mexican in the street, the arrow still quivering.

  The Apaches had come out of thin air. Their horses raised dust as they swarmed into the street, milling, regrouping, and took off toward the corral.

  The revolver leaped into Holden’s hand and he shouted again at Masterson. If those bucks ran off with their horses, Holden knew any slim chance he had of getting those Springfield rifles back would be gone. His heart leaped as the beautiful woman who was to serve as their guide dropped to the ground.

  To his surprise, the Apaches did not stop, and none tried to lean over and scoop her into his arms, to carry her away . . . perhaps to The Canyon of The Sorrows. They stopped in front of the corral, yelling, pointing. He couldn’t understand anything, but from their gestures most of them appeared to be angry. They had come for horses in the corral, only to find no more than one or two inside.