me what you found out?”
“When you tell this stage cowboy that he’s headed for a stake and some firewood, I will.”
Thorn glared at him. “It was the Iroquois in the Northeast, not the Apaches, who burned people at the stake!”
Naki glowered as he eyed Jack. “Are you sure?”
“Damn it!”
“Oh, very well! There are about a hundred Federales headed this way.”
“Why didn’t you say so?!” He turned in the saddle. “Federales,” Thorn said sharply. “We’ll have to clear out. Get those cattle moving!” he called to his men.
They fired into the air to stampede the milling cattle, and Thorn quickly threw his roped quarry across his own saddle before he mounted and lit out for the border.
“Don’t spare the horses!” he called to Jack Lang. “We can’t let ourselves be caught on this side of the border!”
“As I said myself before we sashayed down here,” Jack muttered to himself, but not so that Thorn could hear him.
They made it across the border just minutes ahead of the Mexican soldiers, cattle and all. In the ensuing rout, all but the Mexican thrown across Vance’s saddle managed to escape while the cowboys tried to salvage the cattle. They did lose a few head in the process, but not enough to make any great difference in Jack Lang’s fortunes.
With Thorn in the lead, they rode hell-for-leather for Blackwater Springs Ranch. Trilby heard them come up and ran to the window. Jack Lang and Thorn were just riding up to the front of the house. She was so relieved to see her father that she instinctively ran out onto the porch.
Thorn saw her just as he tossed the trussed Mexican to the ground and loosened his rope, leaving the freed man lying there. He looked utterly ruthless as he turned to her.
“Get in the house and stay there,” he said, with icy command.
She began to disobey just as the Mexican looked at her and laughed. He said something in Spanish to Thorn.
It was obviously something insulting, and about her, because Thorn went for him on the spot. The Mexican pulled a knife, which Thorn was too furious to notice. But Naki saw it. As the smaller man raised it to strike, Naki’s hand flashed down to the big hunting knife he carried in a sheath on his belt. He whipped it out and flung it, handle first, with frightening speed and accuracy, knocking the Mexican’s knife right out of his hand.
“I say!” Jack Lang exclaimed from where he was sitting beside Naki.
The Apache slipped out of the saddle gracefully and retrieved his knife. Thorn and the Mexican were mixing it up roughly now, knocking each other about with little care for which bystanders they knocked over.
“Heathen savages,” Naki remarked as he swung back into his saddle.
Jack Lang stared at him incredulously, diverted from the fight.
“That!” Naki emphasized, waving one arm toward Thorn. “God in heaven, man, don’t you even care that they’re in danger of bashing each other’s brains out? I thought you white people were civilized!” He managed to sound disgusted and superior.
“You speak English!” Jack gasped.
“Yes, but it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. Mixed metaphors, double negatives, alliteration…”
He turned his horse and rode off, still muttering to himself. He could barely contain his laughter as Jack Lang sat with his mouth open, gaping after him.
Thorn and the Mexican were drenched in sweat and covered with dust and blood. Thorn was tall, but the Mexican was broader, and his pride had been damaged by the indignity of his treatment.
But Thorn eventually beat him into a dazed submission and, dragging him up, began to question him in curt Spanish. The man answered reluctantly, but he did finally answer. Thorn let him go with a shove.
“Give him a horse,” he told Jack Lang. “I’ll reimburse you.”
“We’re letting him go?” Jack gasped. “But he should be arrested, tried for his crime!”
“I said, let him go,” Thorn told the older man in a way that defied protest.
Jack motioned to one of his men and sent him after a suitable mount. Trilby had gone back into the house at the beginning of the unpleasantness, but she was hopelessly drawn to the window as she heard the sickening thuds abate. What she saw made her run for the back porch, where she was violently sick.
While she was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping hot, sweet tea to calm her nerves, Thorn came in with her father. He was bare-headed, his face cut and badly bleeding, like his knuckles.
“Can you do something for Vance, Trilby?” her father asked curtly. “Your mother is in the bedroom and she won’t come out.”
Trilby didn’t blame her. “Of course,” she said, bucking up. She could hardly contain her nausea. The smell of blood was overwhelming. She got a pan and went to the sink, adding a clean cloth to the water she pumped into it. She sat down at the table beside a weary Thorn and slowly began to clean his cuts. She didn’t look into his eyes. In fact, he didn’t lift them; he acted oddly subdued. Perhaps, she thought bitterly, he was in pain. She had to fight the urge to leave the room and let him stay that way, but her soft heart outweighed her outrage for the moment.
“I don’t understand why you wanted the Mexican turned loose,” Jack said irritably.
“Keeping him would cause his men to come after him,” Thorn explained, wincing when Trilby wiped his cut cheek. “Some Mexicans are like Apaches when they want revenge.”
Jack was beginning to get the picture. “I see.”
“I doubt it, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. They make a habit of raiding north of the border for cattle and selling them to a big landowner in the southern province of Sonora. I told them if I caught them on this side of the border again, I’d have a little talk with their benefactor. I don’t think we’ll see them again anytime soon. But there are other raiders. This isn’t the end of it.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” He grimaced as he saw Thorn’s face. The man had helped him, despite the damage he’d done. “You look terrible.”
“Fighting isn’t pretty. Is it, Trilby?” he asked her, with a glint in his dark eyes as he suddenly looked up, full at her.
She averted her eyes. “No.” She had to choke the word out. “What did he say that made you attack him?”
“I’ll never tell you that,” he said solemnly. “He did it to provoke me, hoping he could catch me off-guard and put that knife into my belly.”
“Your Indian friend,” Jack said uneasily. “He’s not what I expected.”
“He’s not what anyone expects,” Thorn replied. “Thank God for his skill with a knife. I’d have been gutted but for him.”
“How fortunate for you
