He grinned and said, “I do remember asking the señorita to tell you to come alone.”

  Six men flanked Foster. Two were a few paces in front of the man who considered himself a revolutionary. Two more were along the edges of the arroyo, up on the banks, hidden in the junipers. The other two stood behind Foster, who had pretended he had not spotted the imbeciles when they had ridden past them.

  Amonte Negro hooked his thumbs in the bandoliers that crisscrossed his chest. He wore a sugarloaf sombrero, fringed leather pants, and a blue jacket that had gone out of style and certainly out of favor about the time Juarez was killing Emperor Maximilian. Negro’s sandals were mismatched. He wore no socks.

  His teeth were crooked, but at least he had some, and his face bore scars and patches of dark beard. Neither slim nor fat, neither short nor tall, he did not cut a dashing or dull figure. He was just one of the thousand poor men trying to figure out how to get rich or at least a good meal before they died. Mexico was filled with such men. Amonte Negro was just the closest to Rancho Los Cielos.

  Foster shook his head. He felt sorry that a beautiful young maiden like Soledad Tadeo had only an illiterate wastrel like Negro to pin upon her hopes for this country.

  She translated Foster’s comments while the horse slopped up the water.

  The man laughed and sang out in Spanish.

  “He says you did not come alone either. You brought a starving coyote that you dressed like a mule.” The horse raised its head as the girl shrugged. “It is his idea of a joke. You may laugh. Or not.”

  She didn’t laugh. Maybe she was growing tired of Negro.

  Foster did not laugh, either.

  “Tell Negro I thought he would like a few weapons to test before our gathering to see who shall be lucky enough or rich enough to win the golden prize.”

  She put little emotion in the words, but Amonte Negro certainly did in his reply. He puffed his chest in and out, paced back and forth, and punctuated exclamations with jabs of his fingers or pumps of the right fist. He kicked sand and pounded the bandoliers where they crossed his heart, finally finished.

  “He says he has seen nothing in his life but hardships. He was born during the reign of Maximilian and has gone through men like Juarez and others whose names he cannot remember.” She rolled her eyes and told Foster, “de Tejada and Iglesias.”

  “And now that Porfirio Díaz is finished as president, all Mexico gets is a puppet, for Flores will not give Mexico what it needs and when Díaz is back after the puppet—” She stopped. “To get to the point, he says you should merely give him the weapons. You would be blessed.”

  “Blessed,” Foster said, “isn’t rich. Tell him that I am blessed. Blessed with luck.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Negro did not give the girl a chance to relay Foster’s response. He was at it again.

  When it ended, the girl was rolling a cigarette for herself. Unlit, she stuck it in her mouth and said, “He does not like that there will be Apaches in the canyon where the trade will occur.”

  Foster laughed. “Tell him that when he kills the Apaches with the Springfields he buys, he can take their scalps and turn them in at the alcalde’s for the bounty. That’ll help him earn back what he pays for the rifles.”

  She turned to Spanish, and Foster watched the man’s dark face. The Mexican grinned, but there was little mirth in the bandit’s face. He spoke a short sentence this time.

  “He does not trust you,” the girl translated.

  Foster hooked his left thumb toward the two cutthroats standing behind him.

  “And I am to trust him?”

  She translated again.

  He spoke, and she said, “He will look at your gifts.”

  “They are not gifts,” Foster explained. “They are weapons which he may use to test. I expect to be paid for these, too.”

  He could tell that neither Negro nor the men whose faces Foster could see liked that answer.

  Foster bowed and said, “Con el permiso del galante general Negro, mostraré a todos las armas que he traído para que él y sus hombres prueben.” There was no trace of English in his accent. He spoke as if he were born in Mexico.

  Even the woman looked impressed and shocked.

  “You speak Spanish.”

  “And French. Despite all the demerits I chalked up at West Point, before they kicked me out, I did learn a few things.”

  He swung out of the saddle with ease and walked to the mule to show the bandits who called themselves revolutionaries the Springfields.

  “Six rifles,” he said after he had laid the new rifles on a blanket in the sand. “Sorry, one of you will not have one. I didn’t know you were bringing six men. I thought you and I and the girl maybe would shoot a few targets and I’d send you on your way. Now one of your amigos will be disappointed. He might even kill someone for the Springfield he doesn’t get. Don’t translate that for your hero.”

  “I will not,” she said.

  He asked if anyone knew how to load the weapon. None did. He showed them. He showed them how to aim, how to adjust the rear sight. He told them how far the Springfield could shoot with some accuracy. He showed them how to affix the bayonet and how to use the rod to clean the barrel after firing. He doubted if the bayonets would be used for anything except plucking bread or spearing cantaloupes.

  He fired only one round himself, clipping a branch off a juniper at two hundred and fifty yards.

  The men were impressed, but he did not reload the Springfield. Instead he presented the smoking beauty of a firearm to his excellency, the cutthroat killer from Sonora.

  “Would he like to try this rifle?”

  “Ask him yourself,” the woman told him in English. “You did not need me.”

  “Oh, yes, I most certainly did. He would not have met me here alone. But were I to bring a woman, well, no gallant gringo would risk putting a woman in harm’s way. He would, of course. He still wants to kill me and get the guns.”

  She asked Negro, who shook his head and answered.

  She did not translate, but he didn’t need it. The old fool did not want to waste any bullets. He would take the gift.

  Foster raised and wagged a finger as he smiled. “But remember”—he spoke Spanish—“I said that these weapons—the rifles, the bayonets, and the boxes of shells—are not gifts. There is a price for these, too, just as there is a price for the rest that we will sell in a few days. Remember?”

  Negro kicked dirt and spit between Foster’s boots.

  “And what is the sum?”

  Foster grinned. “A favor.”

  She translated. Negro did not understand.

  “No money. The weapons and ammunition are yours. But I want you to send some men to the border. The American Army will not let these weapons disappear into your country without trying to get them back. And they will not trust your government to recapture the guns and send them back. The Rurales would keep them for themselves. You know that. So I think some troopers, not wearing the uniforms of the American Army, will be headed this way. They will be able to follow our trail at least to Rancho Los Cielos. Before they get there is a nice little canyon that would be the perfect place for an ambush.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Grat Holden considered himself pretty strong, but even he had to grunt and summon up every muscle in his arms, legs, and back to heave the cell door up and over. It landed with a deafening clang on the dirt, and he peered into the black hole.

  “All right, Masterson, come on out.”

  “Who’s that?” a creaking, dry voice rose from the hole in the Arizona earth.

  “Holden,” he answered.

  “Holden.” That was all for half a minute. “Holden? Oh, yeah. The . . . lieutenant.”

  “Out, Sarge. Out Trooper Masterson.” Standing above the pit, Holden tried to figure out how deep the sweatbox, that place of solitary confinement, went.

  A ragged, hoarse cough rose from the shadows, and then Holden made out movement. White . . . no gray clothes that once had been white . . . rose into the light. Masterson looked completely different from how he had looked at Sergeant Byron Lusk’s funeral only a day or two earlier. He was thin, pale, gaunt, a ghost in filthy clothes. With him came the stink of the sweatbox.

  To Holden’s surprise, he realized that the pit—the prison cell—was no more than seven feet deep and maybe seven feet wide. A man could not stand, could barely sit.

  In five years, Grat Holden had never known such a cell even existed at Fort Bowie. Ben “Hard Rock” Masterson was no soldier and was bound for Fort Leavenworth’s penitentiary, but no man, no prisoner, no one deserved to be confined in a place like this, even for an hour.

  The former noncommissioned officer bowed his head and shuffled his feet. Solitary, Holden had heard, had broken everybody who had spent time in the sweatbox. Just looking at the pathetic figure almost broke Grat Holden.

  “Come on, Masterson,” Holden managed to say, with sympathy that he felt.

  The soldier shuffled his feet, kept his head bowed, his body hunched and moved to the edge. Without raising his head, he said in a pleading, almost inaudible whisper, “Beggin’ the gen’ral’s pardon, sir, but could you lend me a hand? I ain’t got no strength to climb all the way up.”

  All the way up. Holden grimaced. Any soldier on the post could have leaped out with hardly any effort at all. Any soldier . . . but this one.

  Holden leaned forward and extended his hand. “Here you go, Masterson. Put your hand here.”

  “Where?” Masterson shielded his eyes, though the sun had already dipped low on the horizon. The gloaming must have felt like staring directly into the sun at high noon.

  Holden moved his hand until it brushed against the one-time sergeant’s.

  “Feel it?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Yes sir.” He closed his hand around Holden’s.

  “Sarge . . . Masterson,” Holden said softly. “You’ll need to squeeze a bit tighter.”

  “This good enough, Gen’ral?” Masterson asked.

  What Holden wanted to do was to leave Ben Masterson there, storm into Colonel Smythe’s office, kick the martinet out of the adobe building, across the parade ground, and all the way to the pit, and then kick him into it. He could see Smythe having a good laugh, joking with the sergeant major and maybe a few officers, perhaps even the post chaplain, that he would like to see Mr. Holden’s face when he realized what kind of soldier he had been saddled with to accomplish an impossible mission. But Holden also wanted to help this poor, wretched creature out of the sweatbox.

  He would see to Carlton Smythe later.

  “A little bit tighter, Ben,” Holden said.

  Then his right hand felt as if it had been caught between a Percheron’s hoof and a blacksmith’s iron. A second later, he felt himself flying into the hole, face-first. Masterson released his grip on Holden’s now throbbing hand and laughed as the lieutenant fell into the black pit. He landed in the wetness and excrement that Ben “Hard Rock” Masterson has been living in, with nothing to eat but hardtack, and nothing to drink but tepid water.

  Holden landed and groaned. He felt revulsion. He felt anger. He felt betrayal. He felt his head jerked up by the hair and slammed into the pungent ground again.

  “Like it, Holden?” Masterson shouted, but did not wait for an answer.

  CHAPTER 21

  The soldier’s boot came between Holden’s legs, but the court-martialed sergeant’s legs weren’t as strong as his hand and arms—not after being cooped up in the box for that long. The blow hurt, but did not cripple Grat Holden.

  Understanding that his legs were of little use, Masterson bent down to ram Holden’s face in the filth and rocky floor again. He glanced up and behind him, surprised to see that Holden had arrived at the guardhouse with no enlisted men. Even the sentry was gone. That caused Masterson to hesitate.

  Trap! he thought, and whirled.

  It was a mistake. Holden was here alone. This wasn’t some way to have a sentry open fire and shoot Masterson down, kill him, save the Army the trouble of feeding and housing him in Leavenworth for the next ten years.

  He moved back toward Holden just in time to see that the lieutenant had raised his right foot, brought it back, and then Ben Masterson felt the crushing blow of the boot against his thigh.

  The blow drove him back against the top of the hole. He collapsed, his leg throbbing, and his shoulder caught against the side of the hole as he fell back toward the bottom. His arm felt like it had almost been ripped out of the socket.

  He lunged to his left, letting Holden’s second kick go wide, and watched the lieutenant fall.

  Masterson rose, or tried to, while instantly moving toward Holden, but the leg Holden had kicked gave way. He was on his knees just as Holden came up out of the black void and threw a haymaker that sent Masterson back into the darkness.

  Holden bent down, intending to find Masterson’s throat and strangle the fraud and fiend.

  Instead, he found Masterson’s left fist and went sliding back into the muck and mess, his back and head slamming against the rocks that lined the end of the cell.

  A savage roar helped Holden regain his senses. He saw the catamount-like blur of a man in rags as he leaped for the kill. Holden lifted his legs, bent his knees, and raised his hands. He caught Masterson as he soared. Holden heaved and cursed and watched the determined man fly out into the yard.

  Holden pulled himself to his feet, breathing and gagging and determined to join Masterson in clean air, out of the pit no one deserved to be in—not even Jed Foster.

  Out of the pit, Holden tripped on the rocks and pebbles, fell to his knees, and saw Masterson rolling over, shaking his head, and trying to push himself up. Holden also saw several blue-coated men rushing across the parade ground. Someone blew a whistle. Someone tapped the drums. Others came running from the stables, from officer’s row, from the enlisted men’s barracks. Even a few galloped over on horses.

  Holden rose. He waved his hands over his head.

  “Stay back!” he shouted. “Stay back. This is personal.”

  The last word came out as a gasp as Masterson drilled a punch in Holden’s kidneys.

  He landed on his knees, gasping, groaning, stinking, and about to vomit.

  Masterson grabbed a handful of hair and tried to twist Holden’s neck. Tried to pull off his head. Tried to break the lieutenant’s neck. But his hands kept slipping in all the wretchedness that coated Holden’s hair.

  So Masterson drilled a knee into Holden’s spine. Maybe he could break the dog’s back.

  Holden fell face-first like a tree cut by a logger, face-first, while Masterson lost his balance and fell hard on his buttocks. That almost broke the old sergeant’s backbone and tailbone.

  He grunted and fell to his right, telling himself to get up, feeling his weakened legs move like they were pedaling one of those newfangled velocipedes. He rolled onto his back, saw Holden pushing himself over and up.

  He also saw the men gathering in a circle. Soldiers—officers and enlisted men—and civilian muleskinners and teamsters. Maybe even two or three post laundresses. Nobody knew what to do. No one wanted to take charge.

  Then the truth hit Ben Masterson.

  Nobody wanted to touch the filthy, reeking, brutalized men.

  He made himself stand. He took one step backward, two, three, and thought he might keep backing up till he was against an Arizona walnut tree. Somehow, he stopped. He stepped forward, felt his right knee buckle, and tasted the sand and blood and his own foulness.

  Somehow, Masterson pushed himself up.

  A woman gasped.

  Two saddlers handed money to a corporal of infantry.

  He was moving right toward that green pup of a lieutenant. In Masterson’s blurred vision, he thought he saw the strangest thing. He thought he saw Grat Holden off the ground and heading right in his direction, bringing a fist back and driving it forward.

  The fist caught Masterson right above his nose and between his eyes.

  He went down and felt Holden coming with him. Masterson managed to lift his legs and kick out, sending the lieutenant somersaulting into the darkening skies with a crash and a prayer.

  The prayer came from another laundress.

  Voices came to him.

  “That’s it.”

  “The lieutenant’s done for.”

  “A bottle of sutler’s beer says Holden gets back up.”

  “You’re on.”

  “Goodness, the stench is going to cause me to—”

  “Hey, did you see that? Major Nelson is throwing up.”

  “Shouldn’t we stop this? Colonel Smythe will blow his top.”

  “I ain’t putting my bare hands on those two until they’ve had a month of Sundays in the bathhouse.”

  “Hey, you owe me, boy, Holden’s back on his feet.”

  “Yeah. Well he won’t be for long. That old reprobate Masterson’s standing up, too.”

  Indeed, Masterson realized he was standing, moving toward the weaving, staggering, bleeding, stinking Grat Holden.

  “Stop this, men!” the chaplain called. Or maybe it was the archangel. “Stop this brutality!”

  Masterson tasted griminess in his mouth, but he had no saliva to spit it out. He certainly didn’t want to swallow any dirt. His breathing felt ragged. He was dragging his left leg, but Holden’s left arm hung useless at its side, and with a few more blows, Masterson thought he could close up the lieutenant’s left eye for good.

  One of the laundresses began praying, and quickly turned the prayer into a psalm or song. The chaplain turned away from what he might witness, knelt, and began praying earnestly and silently. The soldiers and civilians and even the post sutler began laying down more bets.

  “Five-to-one the sarge is finished.”

  “If they’re both standin’ when this is all done, I’ll give you even money . . . I’m finished, pal.”

  “C’mon, Holden, show ’em how we do it in . . . where the hell is the lieutenant from?”