on his hammock, and his mother and grandmother were singing him a lullaby. He began whispering his Hail Marys.
When he opened his eyes again, he was on the ground, and the buzzards were circling lazily against the pale blue. Through swirls of dust, a lone rider on a big black horse moved toward him. The tall man, whose low-crowned sombrero was the color of dust, wore a strange costume of weathered rawhide. He was as filthy as Teo, yet he sat on his horse with a world-weary cockiness that said he was somebody, more than border trash from el dompe.
Although the man’s coppery face was hard and lean, his teeth were as white as the chicles Teo had sold to the fat gringo turistas. He had a golden mustache.
Terrified, Teo grabbed at his plastic bag of tortillas that Chaco had tied to his belt. In his other hand he gripped the bottle that held the remains of Chaco’s red soft drink. Swaying weakly, drowning in the blinding sunlight, Teo struggled to his feet.
The man called down to him gently in his native tongue, more gently than Papacíto ever spoke. “Cuidado, manito.”
Was he a phantom? A trick, like the trick the coyote had played when he’d dumped Chaco and the other toughs from el dompe here, in the middle of nowhere, swearing that a truck would be waiting for them a little farther where the pasture hit the road past the immigration checkpoint.
The stranger’s manner and the fact that he spoke a lilting, peculiarly accented Spanish was more terrifying than anything.
Then he saw her.
The trees began to whirl, and Teo was on the ground again, his dirty white shirt covered in blood. Only it wasn’t blood. It was the sugary soft drink. He’d spilled the last of Chaco’s precious drink.
Chaco would beat him for sure. Sobbing, he begged God to tell Chaco he was sorry, to tell his mother he was sorry he hadn’t minded when she’d told him to sweep the street or bring her a bucket of water.
When the tall dusty rider got off his horse, Teo screamed and screamed.
Until he saw a girl running lightly beside the huge man. Her hair was straight and reddish gold, with deep shifting highlights glinting in the hot blaze of light that flowed all around her.
She was an angel.
His very own angel.
Teo closed his eyes, and a great peace stole over him. He wasn’t afraid to die anymore.
“Angelita!” he whispered.
He opened his eyes. The girl wasn’t an angel. It was his mother, and her voice was as sweet as those songs she used to sing before he went to sleep.
“Don’t be afraid. You are safe, little one.”
With the last of his strength, Teo stretched his thin hand toward her, but she vanished.
There was only the mysterious rider.
Only terror.
Only death in a strange, wild land.
One
South Texas
El Dorado Ranch
A bad woman can ruin the best man alive, same as a bad man can destroy a good woman.
El Dorado Ranch, set as it was right square in the borderlands cactus country of the biggest state in the continental union, might seem too rough a place for sob-sister tales to get a firm hold. But there’s nothing more fascinating than love gone wrong; nothing more fun to talk about, either—especially if it’s the boss’s love life gone wrong.
North Black, for all that his daddy had been a local legend, for all that North had inherited his own natural arrogance and aura of cowboy majesty, for all that he sat that high-steppin’, champion quarter horse, which had set him back a cool half million, for all that his carved leather saddle was trimmed in sterling, for all that he’d been billed by the state’s most popular magazine as the most eligible bachelor in Texas—for all that, this cowboy king was damned near done for.
Nothing is more disagreeable or more difficult to stop than gossip, especially when it’s true. It was common knowledge at El Dorado Ranch—better known, at least in these parts, as North Black’s private kingdom—that the king was on the verge of collapse. And not only because the worst drought in living memory plagued his vast ranch in south Texas. But because an impossible little spitfire had gotten a grip on his heart and then done him wrong.
North was killing himself with overwork, his loyal crew said, doing way more than his share of the real cowboying. Why, the king was up before dawn and working cattle long after dark. Even when his hands quit, he never took a break. His lunch was a sandwich in the saddle topped off with a swig out of his canteen. Evenings, when no serious rustling or poaching mischief was afoot, were spent in his office poring over ledgers or talking on the phone.
Wherever there was trouble—illegals, bulls loose, broken pipes, cut fences, dry water holes, cows lost, a horse that needed to be broken, or more of the Midnight Bandit’s mischief, North took the job on himself. Then there was Gran, who stole his best cowboys to work her garden every time he turned his back.
Nobody blamed North for wanting to work himself to death. Not after what that little witch, Melody Woods, had done to him—time and again.
First, she’d jilted him at the altar like he was a nobody—right there, in front of God, his crew, his friends, his family; hell, in front of the entire damned ranching aristocracy of Texas. She’d made a fool of him, the king, a man known to be too arrogant and too proud.
“She did worse than hurt his pride,” said Sissy, his wild sister, who was worrying about him more than usual. “She broke his heart.” And Sissy knew a thing or two about broken hearts.
“His father would never have lost it over a woman,” Libby Black, his grandmother asserted at every possible occasion. “The ranch came first.”
“You always make El Dorado sound like a religion, Gran,” Sissy said.
“It was till I got some sense and took up gardening.”
“It’s not a religion,” Sissy said. “Not for me.”
“Which is why I put North in charge.”
Not that North ever talked about the impossible Miss Woods. Not even after he’d fallen for her sister, Claire, on the rebound. Fortunately he and Claire had come to their senses, realizing they should be friends rather than lovers.
Gossip had it that Miss Melody Woods had had a hand in the breakup of that romance. That very same night, first chance she got, she’d gone and made a fool of him again.
Yes, sirree. She’d turned the king into a jealousy-crazed maniac in a run-down bar in Rockport, Texas. Hell, that shrimpers’ dive better known as Shorty’s, was so bad, the king would never have set the scuffed toe of his handmade, black boot inside it, if Melody hadn’t lured him there on purpose. For reasons known only to her, she’d danced and gotten those rough, dangerous fishermen in such a rowdy stir, they would’ve given her more than she’d bargained for, if the king hadn’t rushed her and carried her off over his shoulders like he was a caveman and she was his woman.
Only
