“Those wagons carry the guns?”

  “They carry something. My gut tells me they carry rocks.”

  “¿Piedras? ¿Rocas?”

  The old gringo in gray shrugged. He then explained that mules, also loaded down with much weight, were going in another direction. That meant the guns the gray coats and Amonte Negro needed could be heading in the wagons or with the mules . . . or, as the old gringo believed, on the hard rock into the high country.

  It was just too confusing and gave Amonte Negro a headache when he had not had any mescal since breakfast. “So, what is it that you think we should do?” he asked the colonel.

  “You pick your fastest galloper. Send him after the wagons. Send four riders with him. If your galloper discovers that the wagons indeed carry the rifles we seek, that the Yankee traitor Foster is welshing on our deal, then he gallops back to catch us. If he sees for certain that this is a decoy . . . a . . . a . . . a . . . ?” He looked at his interpreter for help.

  “Señuelo.”

  “Do you understand?”

  “Señuelo. Sí.”

  “If that is the case, you kill the drivers, cut the mules loose, and return to us.” The old man pointed at the trail that led toward the Rio Fuerta.

  “I will send my fastest galloper after the mules that left in that direction. And four men. They will have the same orders. If they find the Springfields we need, the galloper returns to fetch us while the others follow Foster’s yanks. If they find this is also a . . .” He tried, but could not pronounce the Spanish word for lure. “If that is the case, those men are killed and my men return to us. If the mules do indeed carry our weapons, we will catch up to them with our entire force. That is what I propose, General.” He pronounced that right.

  It made Amonte Negro grin.

  “Do you have any objections?”

  His horse wanted to run again, and Negro had to bring it under control, while he tried to read the gray coat’s face. It was hard, especially without mescal or tequila or even beer, but Amonte Negro was no fool. No gringo could be trusted, no matter if he wore blue or gray or the clothes of some peon.

  “We will do as you ask, Coronel, but with one change.” Amonte Negro grinned. He was so smart. Benito Juárez, have mercy on his soul, could have used a man with Amonte Negro’s brains. “My men will ride after the mules. Your men can go after the wagons. Does that please you, Coronel?”

  The colonel chuckled and nodded. “Your intellect is inspiring, General.” He turned, and barked out five names. Five riders pulled their horses out. They did not have to wait for further instructions. One bolted after the wagon tracks. The others followed at a trot.

  The gray-coated gringo was looking at Amonte Negro, who had to pick five men to follow those mule tracks. That was also hard for a man like Amonte Negro. Which of his men were smart enough to do the job? Which of his men could he trust? Hell, he would have to go himself, but that was all right. Maybe the mules were hauling tequila.

  CHAPTER 78

  The iron hooves of the horses made little noise on the hard, hard rock. Sam Florence had seen to that. He had ripped off the sleeves of a coat, cut them into padding with his Bowie knife, and wrapped it over the feet of the mounts. Then he had secured them with rawhide thongs.

  There was noise, but not much, and all the riders had a light touch on the reins. They rode deeper into the hills and felt themselves climbing higher, off the desert floor and into a dark, foreboding place.

  Every mile or two, Florence would rein in his horse, dismount, and check the padded shoes he had made for the hooves. He tightened those when needed, adjusted them, or even found more cloth to help diminish the noise.

  They rode. All three men kept their rifles across the pommels of the horse. The girl carried one of the Springfield rifles in her right hand, the barrel pointed down. It had to be an uncomfortable way to carry such a weapon, but none of the men made any suggestion to the wildcat known as Soledad Tadeo.

  * * *

  “Are you all right?” Grat Holden had just reined in his horse and looked at Soledad.

  She had stopped her horse in the middle of a turn on the trail they followed. She shivered in the saddle and kept her eyes closed tightly. He doubted she had even heard him.

  He turned in the saddle and held up his right hand, signaling Ben Masterson and Sam Florence to stop then turned back toward the Mexican girl. He started to reach out, to touch her arm, making her aware of his presence, but he stopped. Something about this woman told him that he should not touch her, especially when her eyes were closed.

  He repeated his question louder and using her name.

  Her eyes opened and she turned, giving him a savage look at first, but eventually relaxing and drawing in a deep breath, which she held briefly, and then exhaled. “I am fine.”

  Holden considered her for a moment. He said softly and sincerely, “You don’t have to do this, ma’am. We can ride on ahead, try to find that . . . place.”

  “You would never find it,” she said.

  He started to nudge her horse ahead, but stopped almost immediately.

  She looked up at him with softer eyes. “But I thank you for your kindness,” she said, in the quietest voice, with the softest eyes he had yet heard or seen her use. “And this,” she added, the softness gone, “is something I do have to do.” She rode ahead.

  Once she was about twenty yards ahead, Grat Holden eased his horse around and walked him back toward Masterson and Florence.

  “We shouldn’t have brought some petticoat with us,” Masterson said.

  “Shut up,” Florence said.

  Holden turned his horse around again, and the three men followed the girl at a distance, not too far so that she might get out of sight, but not too close, either.

  He let his horse fall alongside the old scout’s pinto. “How long have you known her?”

  The scout kept his eyes ahead, debating on how to answer. Finally, he let out a soft chuckle and said, “I don’t rightly think anybody knows her.”

  “That’s the truth,” Masterson mumbled.

  “I think you’ve known her a long time, Sam,” Holden said.

  “What’s it to you?”

  Holden shook his head. “Does she know you’re her father?” He saw the old man’s features harden.

  But the scout did not blink and did not look at Grat Holden. Sam Florence kept his head straight ahead. A few yards later, his shoulders slouched. The old man kept staring ahead at the girl riding thirty yards ahead, but he answered Holden’s question. “I suppose she’s wondering about it, making up her own mind. She’s always been good about making up her own mind.”

  Ben Masterson let out a soft curse.

  “Why don’t you tell her?”

  Florence shrugged. “Gave up that claim when I left her ma.” He smiled regretfully. “Ana was something. Soledad’s mother. Man, could she cook.”

  “Why didn’t you stay? Or marry the woman?”

  “She wouldn’t have me. That’s the long and short of it. Oh, it was all right for me to visit. Nothing wrong with that. I was welcome to come by and say hello and maybe share a cup of coffee, or if I was lucky, one of her sopaipillas or enchiladas. As long as I didn’t stay.”

  “What happened to her mother?” Masterson asked.

  “Murdered,” Florence said. “Apaches.”

  “Crooked Nose?” Masterson asked. “Geronimo?”

  “Nah. Some kids and a couple old men. They’d raided a few ranches east of Nogales on the American side. Took a few captive women. Came into Mexico and took some more. I guess Ana was too feisty for that bunch. So they killed her. And took—His head nodded ahead.

  “My God,” Holden said in a terrified whisper. “To The Canyon of The Sorrows.”

  “Yeah.” Florence’s eyes turned into slits. “I didn’t learn this till later. I was scouting, but you know the Army and you know the government . . . on both sides of the border. The raiders got across the border, so our Army boys had to stop. Turn back. Send some telegraphs to the Rurales. But I stayed around—never occurred to me to ride to Rancho Los Cielos—and when I saw a wagon crossing the border and bound toward Tombstone, I paid myself a little visit.”

  “Aye,” Masterson said. “I remember that fracas. Would’ve been six years back, last winter. The two men—white men they were—were shot dead. You brought the girls and, if my memory’s correct, a young lad, back to Fort Bowie.”

  “She was one of them,” Florence said. “That’s how I knew she’d been to The Canyon of The Sorrows.”

  “So why did you make her do this? Lead us back?” Holden felt the blood rush to his head.

  “I didn’t. I said you could ask her. She decided to come back. And I’m glad. A doctor over in Tucson once told me that you had to face your nightmares at some point. And then they’d stop tormenting you. So she does this, I figure, maybe that helps her, frees her mind. Either way, we get to find The Canyon of The Sorrows. And we destroy the son of a bitch so that nobody ever has to go through what she did, what who knows how many women before and since, have gone through.”

  Holden slumped in the saddle. He wanted to throw up.

  Beside him, Sam Florence quickly reined in his pinto, and turned back. Holden and Masterson stopped. So did the girl, some yards ahead.

  “Hell,” Florence said.

  They heard the echoes of hooves, many hooves, thundering across the stones.

  “Whoever that is,” Masterson said, “they’re coming mighty fast.”

  CHAPTER 79

  Jed Foster wet his lips, wiped his face, and dried his sweaty hands on his pants before picking up the small container of nitroglycerin. He smiled at the young outlaw, Joe Coberly, who had volunteered to stay behind and help him prepare for their . . . well . . . visitors.

  Slowly, he moved to the rocky corner where the canyon widened into the boxed part and stopped at the hole Coberly had dug just under the rocks that had been tumbling down for years. Rain, wind, and erosion had caused the rocks to fall since the beginning of time, Foster figured. In a little while, progress would bring more rocks down—burying those and with luck, a bunch of fools, too.

  “Is it the Fourth of July, Capt’n?” Coberly asked.

  Foster had knelt and was bending over to put the glass bottle on bandannas and old socks that Coberly had made for the nitro’s bed. He stopped, not moving his body, just raising his eyes. You want to talk about nothing while I’m holding four ounces of death?

  Coberly said, “Sorry,” in his softest whisper.

  Foster put the bottle on the bedding, let out a short breath, wiped his hands again, and covered the glass with one of Coberly’s socks. Gently, he stood, removed his hat, and waved it. On the top of the canyon, the sharpshooting Mexican named Ennio lifted his rifle, one of the new model 1880s Foster had given him. He had also fitted a long brass telescopic sight on that particular weapon.

  “Can . . . you . . . see . . . it?” Foster yelled, spacing his words, and hearing the echo.

  “Sí,” Ennio called down, and his word bounced across The Canyon of The Sorrows.

  Foster offered a little salute at the Mexican and walked briskly away from the hole that contained the most powerful explosive found in the world. Joe Coberly had no trouble keeping up with Foster as they crossed the floor of the canyon.

  The young killer hooked his thumb toward the last of the nitro and then tilted his head up toward Ennio and his Springfield rifle.

  “Even with that fancy lookin’ glass, Capt’n, that’s still one tough shot for anybody to make. Shootin’ downhill. At that distance. With who all knows what hell will be breakin’ loose once we’ve started the ball.”

  “Well”—Foster stopped in the center of the canyon—“that’s one of the good things about working with nitroglycerin, kid. You just have to get close to touch that stuff off. Sometimes, not even that close.”

  The boxes were there, just in front of the old corral. He could see the black stenciling clearly from where he stood. Even an old man like Will Muncie would be able to read that. And even an illiterate greaser like Amonte Negro or some heathen Apache buck like Crooked Nose could figure out what those boxes held.

  SPRINGFIELD ARMORY

  Springfield, Massachusetts

  US RIFLE, CALIBER .45-70-405, MILITARY

  Foster grinned. He thought, Or what those crates are supposed to hold.

  One box was open, the waxy paper had been wadded up and moved to help cushion the other small containers of nitro. One long box just underneath the rough, weathered bottom post of the corral caught Foster’s eye and caused him to grin again. Most of the boxes were empty of everything but dust.

  The one behind the others, though, held some wax paper, some cloth, a bandanna . . . and another four-ounce bottle of liquid hell.

  He moved beyond the corral, climbed over some rocks, ducked in a depression, and hurriedly made his way to the edge of the wall. He leaned and reached up, his fingers finding the slot.

  “I can’t believe you found that,” Coberly said.

  “You have to know something about ancient Indians. Apaches weren’t the first to use this canyon. Pueblo Indians were here hundreds of years earlier. They were smart, smart old Indians. They knew if they were attacked, they’d have to climb out. It was either that . . . or die.”

  “So that’ll be our options when the fight starts?”

  Foster smiled. “You didn’t have to stay here, Joe. Tomorrow, you’ll be up there. With the others. I’ll be down here. I’ll have to climb out.”

  “I wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “Well, I like to press my luck. This should be fun.”

  “So . . . tomorrow’s the . . .”

  “Fourth of July. That must really get old man Muncie’s goat. His boy, his oldest son, was shot on the Fourth of July.” Foster laughed. “Shot for cowardice. He loses his son, he loses Vicksburg and loses Gettysburg—and most likely the entire war—on one lousy day. And now he has to grovel . . . to Yankees on the day he hates the most.”

  Coberly shook his head. “You’ve thought this whole thing through.”

  “That I have.”

  “Well, here’s something I can’t figure out, sir. You sent two boys with the mules carrying nothin’ but rocks one way. And you sent those four wagons with only the drivers out another. So that they’d most likely be followed.”

  “That’ll thin somebody out. Not sure who. Mexicans, Rebs, or injuns, but it’ll reduce the number we have to kill. Not that killing them will be hard. Not with all the nitro we have.”

  “Yeah. But ain’t you thought about what’ll happen to those decoys, the ones in the wagon and the ones with the mules?”

  Foster felt so giddy he laughed out loud. He wrapped his right arm over the young outlaw’s neck and pulled him close.

  “Of course, I have, Joe.” He released the killer and stepped away from the only way out of the canyon, the long climb out of the canyon. “They die!”

  CHAPTER 80

  A monte Negro was tired from riding so hard. Maybe he should have gone after the wagons. Mules were not stallions, but they did move faster than wagons, although these mules—or the men who were driving the animals—were not moving that fast. But they seemed to not know where they wanted to go.

  First, they had been going southeast, and once they reached the Rio Fuerta, which was dry that time of year, they had moved in its sand to Cañon Feo, and that place lived up to its name. It was ugly. Very ugly. And the sand was so thick, it made traveling hard, even on fine animals such as those Amonte Negro and his men had stolen.

  Cañon Feo, of course, ran north. The mules might be bound for the United States. If they crossed the border, that would force Amonte Negro to make a decision. Could he ride into Arizona and take the mules and the rifles they carried—if they carried those Springfields—and make it back across the border where he would be safe? The gringos, they did not like Mexicans coming into their country to take anything, even if what they came to take rightfully belonged to Amonte Negro and his people. By the saints, even Arizona Territory should still belong to Amonte Negro and his people. When he was in charge in Mexico City, Amonte Negro would make the United States give Arizona back to Mexico. California, too. And New Mexico.

  Just when the burly Mexican was beginning to think that maybe he should have stayed with el coronel in his gray coat, he heard a mule braying just ahead. The galloper was loping back, so Negro raised his hand to stop the three men who rode with him.

  The galloper slowed his horse, looked behind him, and reined to a stop.

  “Dos hombres. Catorce mulas.”

  Two men with fourteen mules. That should be easy for five men to take care of. Negro asked if the mules carried any rifles. The galloper said that they carried something, in leather bags. Maybe they were rifles, if rifles could be taken apart and made shorter . . . which, Amonte Negro knew, could be done. Not all guns, but the Yanqui gun makers, they knew how to do such things.

  “The two men are drinking,” the galloper told his boss. “They have stopped to rest under the shade at the water hole.” He grinned. “They are not drinking water.”

  Amonte Negro laughed. “Mescal? Tequila?”

  “I do not know.”

  Negro drew his pistol. “We should find out.” He cocked the gun and raised it over his head. “Asalto,” he commanded, and the five men raced out of the end of Ugly Canyon and toward the lone tree that provided the one place of shade over the water hole.

  “Do not kill the mules!” Negro yelled, and he aimed his pistol and fired.

  One of the men dropped the bottle and ran for the nearest mule. He and his partner had been riding mules and leading mules. There were no horses that Amonte Negro could see, but that was fine. Mules brought much money to the people of Mexico. And twelve of the mules were equipped with packsaddles. The saddles maybe carried guns. Maybe gold. Maybe tequila.

  The second man ran through the water hole, which was shallow and did not slow him down. He came out and ran into the desert, but two of Negro’s riders circled around him and forced him to stop. The man raised his hand and pleaded in Spanish—for he was a Mexican like Amonte Negro and his revolutionaries. He had a wife, a sick mother, and seven little children in Pozos Liberales just one hundred kilometers to the south. They shot him anyway.