the Lonely Men (1969) by Louis - Sackett's 14 L'amour

then pines. Running streams, rocks. All anybody could want but grub.
    They have to bring it in. They get it from the Mexicans, or they kill them." He gestured. "The Apaches have almost cleared this part of Sonora of the Mexicans.
    At least the rich ones. And the poor ones can only stay if they'll provide food for the Apaches."
    My thoughts went back over the desert to Laura. She was a pretty woman, and she was brave ... holding herself up, like she did, with her little boy lost, and all. But somehow she left me uneasy. But I was never very comfortable around women ... except Ange. And the Trelawney girls I'd known back home in the hills.
    We sat there quiet a little longer, listening to the horses cropping at the shrubs. Rocca was smoking and squinting at the hills around.
    None of us knew what might be waiting for us up yonder. Even if we found the boy alive, we still had to get him from the Apaches and get him back across the border. Our chances were none too good. I looked over at Rocca and said, "Shall we move out?"
    He rubbed his cigarette into the sand, and got up.
    Me, I just stood there a moment or two thinking. All of a sudden I wished I was somewhere else. We were facing up to a lot of hell, and I looked forward to none of it. Besides, there was something about this whole affair that made me mighty uneasy.
    We crossed the Bavispe and took a thin trail that led up through scattered oaks, along steep switchbacks toward the pines. The only sound was the chirping of birds, the grunting of one of the horses over a steep part of the trail, or the clatter of a falling rock.
    For an hour we climbed, pausing several tunes to let the horses catch their breath. Finally we rode out on a bench under the pines where stood the ruins of stone houses built of rough lava blocks with no mortar. There were at least a dozen of them in sight, and maybe more back under the trees. The walls were of a sort of gray felsite, and here and there one appeared to be better built than the others, as though built by different hands, by different thinking.
    Rocca indicated a slight depression in the grass near one of the walls. "We're still on the trail."
    A crushed pine cone looked as if it had been scarred by a sharp-shod hoof. There were other signs too.
    The country here was wild and rugged, and we saw no water. We were now over six thousand feet up, judging by the growth around us, and still we climbed. The trail occasionally wound along a rim with an almost sheer drop falling off on one side or the other. We rode with our rifles in our hands, our boots light in the stirrups, ready to kick free and hit the ground if there was time. Riding that kind of country with Apaches around will put gray in your hair.
    We came out presently on a shoulder of the mountain with pines all around us.
    There was sparse grass, and a thin trickle of snow water ran down the mountain slope. Found the tracks of the rider there ... plain. The small horse had stood under a tree, tied to a low branch while she scouted ahead. She?
    The word came to me unbidden, without thinking. It came like a voice speaking to me, and I spoke aloud what I had heard in my mind's ear. "It's a woman, Tamp.
    That's a woman or girl riding that horse."
    Rocca rested his big hands on the pommel. "I think you are right," he said. "I think so."
    "A woman?" Battles was incredulous. "It don't stand to reason."
    "Did Dan Creed have a wife? Or a daughter?" I asked.
    Rocca looked around at me. "I don' know, Tell. I tell you, I don'."
    I dropped to the ground. "Sit tight," I said. "I want to see what she went to look at."
    A step or two and it was dark and green under the trees. A step or two more and I was lost to them, waiting back there for me. I could see a pressed-down leaf here, and the kicked-over damp, dead leaves, scuffed by a passing boot. The trail was easy, but it took time, for I scouted the trees around me as I moved.
    Suddenly -- a running man could scarcely have stopped in time -- I was