going to wash out your mouth with soap.”
Another voice, from off in the shadows. “Give him some water, Pardo.”
“Why don’t you introduce all of us to this hombre, Chaucer?” the man said, glancing over his shoulder. He looked again at Reilly. “Start talking. Or start dying.”
Reilly’s fingers ran down his vest. His badge. His badge was gone. His eyes found the girl. The name bounced around in his weary head. Pardo…Pardo…Pardo… He saw the girl’s face again, remembering, heard her saying something, felt her small hands on his chest, taking off his badge, heard that voice, that warning.
The man with the Colt wet his lips. He swallowed, thinking, and grinned. “One sentence, Mac. One sentence, but make it a good one. Then I’ll give you some water. Or a chunk of lead.”
He tried to swallow, couldn’t. “They were,” he tried, wondering if anyone could really hear him, “hauling my ass…to…prison.”
He closed his eyes. He didn’t expect Pardo to believe him. He expected to feel a bullet tear into his brain, and he wouldn’t have minded it one bit.
The water revived him. The girl smiled at him, and even Pardo grinned. He still held the Colt, and the pistol remained cocked, but it was on Pardo’s lap now, not pressed against Reilly’s nose.
Reilly wanted to drink forever, but the girl pulled the canteen away. “Not too much,” she said. “We’ll get you some broth in a minute.”
“Feel better?” the man with the gun, the man named Pardo, said easily.
“Not really,” Reilly answered honestly.
“Hauling you to prison, eh?” Pardo said. “Yuma, I take it?”
Reilly started to nod, but there was something about Pardo’s tone. He tried to savor the taste of water, the wetness on his cracked lips. The girl had dipped a bandana in a bowl of water, wrung it out, placed it on his forehead. The coolness almost put him back to sleep, but the man’s voice called out, sharper.
“Why were they taking you to Yuma?”
Reilly swallowed. He had been taking W.W. and L. J. Kraft to Fort Bowie, to meet up with Lieutenant Jeremiah Talley. The man named Pardo was lifting the revolver.
“Not Yuma,” Reilly said, and the gun lowered. “Huntsville.”
“Huntsville?” Pardo’s eyebrows arched. “Huntsville?”
“Texas,” Reilly said. It seemed far enough away.
“You’re in Arizona Territory,” Pardo reminded him.
“Thought it was far enough from Texas,” Reilly said. “It wasn’t.”
The girl let him have more water. Another woman, lean, harder, reeking of mescal, squatted beside him with a bowl of something that smelled a lot better than she did.
“Want me to give him this, Jimmy?” the woman asked.
“Leave it,” Pardo told her, his eyes boring into Reilly. “All right, Mac. What were three deputy marshals in Arizona taking you to Texas for?”
Reilly looked at the bowl the stringy woman had left at his side. His stomach pleaded for the broth. He had never known broth could smell so good. He looked back at Pardo. Pardo. The name, the face. Bloody Jim Pardo. Everybody in Arizona Territory knew about Jim Pardo. So did the people in Texas. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried lying about Texas, but it was too late now.
“Fort McKavett,” Reilly said.
“Where’s that?”
“Texas.” His pal Talley had been stationed there before being transferred west to Bowie. “San Saba country.”
“What about it?”
Reilly tried to grin. “Soldiers there don’t like me much.”
Explosively, Pardo laughed. “They don’t like Jim Pardo, neither.” He lowered the hammer on the revolver, and shoved the Colt into his holster, reached over, and lifted the bowl and spoon. The spoon moved in Pardo’s hand to Reilly’s mouth. Reilly’s lips parted. The broth went in, warming him as it made its way down his throat. Pardo brought the spoon back to the bowl, filled it, and moved it back to Reilly’s mouth.
“What do you think, son?” Ruby Pardo spit into the fire, the tobacco juice sizzling against a stone.
He shrugged. If Mac had told him they were taking him to Yuma, he would have killed him then and there. ’Course, they could have been headed to Yuma, could have turned the wagon around when they were ambushed, could have turned back because of some other problem, but Texas made sense. Extradition, Wade Chaucer had mentioned. Some big word like that.
“If he robbed the Yankees at McKavett or killed one of them, he might be all right,” Pardo said.
“You trust him, then?” His mother put a screwdriver to the Evans.
Reilly filled a cup with black coffee. “You know me better than that, Ma. Man still has some questions to answer. Like how come he wasn’t killed? Like who ambushed them? Like what exactly is he wanted for in Texas?”
“Maybe Apaches done it,” Ruby said.
“No, Ma. Apaches wouldn’t have left him to bake to death in that wagon. They would have had their fun with him.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait. I’ll see the major before long. Major Ritcher would know something about this guy.”
Ruby set the rifle and screwdriver aside. “That’s smart, son. Real smart. Don’t trust nobody, and keep your eye on that Wade Chaucer.”
“I always do, Ma.”
“Smart. You’re smart, and brave. You pa’s proud of you, Jim. Real proud.”
Pardo rubbed his nose and frowned. Pa. If only his father could tell him that, to his face, but he had been shot down like a mangy dog during the war. Kansas redlegs had burned down his home, turned Pardo and his ma into outlaws. Well, a lot of bluecoats had paid for what they’d done to his family, and Pardo hadn’t finished collecting.
“I’m proud of you, too, Jim,” his mother said. That meant more to Pardo than anything. He sat a little straighter.
“And what about the woman and her kid?” Ruby asked. “The woman’s fit as a fiddle now.”
“We’ll see about them, too.” The coffee tasted as bitter as his mother’s voice had turned when she spoke of Dagmar Wilhelm.
The girl’s face had changed. A slim hand lifted a spoon, but pulled away.
“You are staring at me,” she said. A trace of a German accent.
Reilly tested his voice. “Either I’ve slept as long as Rip Van Winkle…”
She
