His hands moved to Luna’s mane. He focused on untangling knots there, focused on the dirt on his knuckles and the mare’s coarse black hair.
“I’m dressed,” Nena said behind him.
He would not turn quickly. He would not. As casually as he could muster, he shifted his weight and looked over his shoulder.
He had never seen a woman wearing trousers before. They were obviously too big—Nena had to hold them up. And yet. His eye fell on how the trousers accentuated the slenderness of her waist, how the cloth of his shirt—a shirt he had mended with his own hands over a dozen times—draped over her breasts.
He averted his gaze quickly. Why was his mouth so dry? He cleared his throat. Should he say she looked nice? Should he say nothing at all?
“You don’t have a belt, do you.” Nena’s words, delivered humorlessly, were more a statement than a question.
No, he did not. He did have rope, however. He reached for it, eager for something to do with his hands. He brought it to Nena, holding it out as if he were going to measure around her waist.
She snatched it from him, fumbling to keep the trousers up at the same time. “I’ve got it.” She slipped it through the belt loops of the trousers, then tied it in a firm knot. “Could you cut it?”
He reached for his knife, stepping closer to her as he took the extra length of rope in his hand. Her body leaned pliantly toward him as he drew it taut. Heat flushed his neck and cheeks. The rope was in his hands. If he wanted, he could pull her closer, close enough that he could smell her hair, bend his face to the sweet curve of her neck that was no longer covered by her dress and press his lips to her skin . . .
Then he noticed that the skin along one side of her lower neck, beneath her scapular, where it curved elegantly over the collarbone to meet her right shoulder, was dappled with a long scar.
He nearly dropped the knife in surprise.
“My God,” he breathed. “Is that . . .”
“Just cut the rope,” Nena snapped. When he obeyed, she ordered: “Let’s go.”
She cut past him to the horse he had ridden from the battlefield and began to tighten the mare’s girth. Her movements were sharp, irritated. As if she were uncomfortable in the clothes or uncomfortable with his question. Or both.
Néstor watched her. For a moment, all he could hear was her screaming his name in the dark. The wet, nightmarish sound of a monster sinking its teeth into her flesh.
He wore pistols on either hip. Always had since the moment he could afford the second. He reached for the holster on his right hip and unbuckled it.
“Here,” he said, folding the leather straps beneath the gun and handing it to her. “Let’s hope you don’t need this.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
HEAT HOVERED THICK on the afternoon, shimmering like a glaze, as they saddled the horses. Their backs were turned to each other; each was absorbed in their own thoughts as they mounted and set out. The clouds beat a steady march west across the sky, their color shifting deeper and deeper as thunder rumbled its threats in the distance. The smell of the storm nipped at their heels; humidity built until it was close to breaking, heavy and rank on their skin as the breath of a predator.
But it did not break. Not yet.
Perhaps one of them should have been keeping watch as they rode. Perhaps one of them should have cast looks over their shoulders as they rejoined the road closer to the river.
Perhaps then they might have noticed a lone figure along the riverbank, not far from where they had crossed. Rising from among the reeds, observing in silence, and slowly retreating.
But it did not retreat far.
Not far at all.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
THEY RODE TO the river, washed off dried blood as quickly and as best they could, then carried on. Would they be able to cover the ground between them and the jacal Néstor had seen before nightfall? They risked the main road to save time, but moved off it if they heard riders approaching. Encountering strangers posed three potential problems that he sorely wished to avoid.
The first: if members of the Mexican military saw them and thought they were deserting the army, Néstor at least would be apprehended and forced to return, leaving Nena to return to Los Ojuelos without protection.
The second: it would be noted that Nena, an unmarried young woman, traveled alone with a vaquero. If it were discovered that she was a ranchero’s daughter, it would be easy to claim that Néstor had kidnapped her for himself, an offense punishable by the patrón of a rancho by whipping or death.
This seemed a trifle in comparison to the third: encountering Yanquis. He would not easily forget the sight of them at dawn, eastern sunlight glinting white off their bayonets. The sound of those bayonets thrusting through the stomachs of Mexican soldiers made him feel nauseous. He staved off the feeling and his hunger by slowing their horses to a walk and eating provisions of acecina—strips of dried, salted beef—wrapped in tortillas in the saddle as they rode.
Food was another concern that followed Néstor along with the storm clouds. Aside from the acecina and tortillas from camp kitchens, they had very little. In the dead man’s saddle in which Nena rode he had found provisions for making pan de campo, but with the impending rain, he would not be able to make any when they rested tonight. Instead, he made sure they took the time to collect and eat a juicy, bright cluster of tuna fruits and cut provisions of nopal cactus while washing by the river. But until tomorrow, that, dry tortillas, and acecina were all they had.
Nena held the reins of conversation in a tight fist. Long periods passed where she would not respond to a cautious question. He could have left her in silence. But hadn’t Beto often succeeded in teasing him out of his own brooding silences?
When he leaned over to offer her more acecina, he spoke.
“You look just like a vaquero,” he said. “Eating in the saddle. You might have a future among us after all.” He kept his voice carefully light, almost teasing, as he referred to a childhood desire of hers to become a vaquero like him. As if none of the events of the past two days had happened at all, and he was still trying to charm her out of her cold silence on the road to Matamoros.
Perhaps he wanted to break the eeriness that crept from the east, the silence that followed at their heels. The rumbles of thunder that ended in his chest, promising that if they didn’t pick up the pace soon, there was no outrunning the storm. Even from his own horse, he could see that tension drew Nena’s shoulders taut.
“You have a lot of work to do, though,” he said.
“Oh?” she asked.
“You’ve changed,” he said. “You’re not nearly bad enough. You used to be defiant. Remember when Félix said you weren’t allowed to ride that stallion he bought from Hacienda del Sol? The big-boned gray. He threw you into a prickly pear.”
A smile flickered across her face.
“I swear you still have the scar on your cheek,” he added.
“I do not.” Was it his imagination, or was her tone warmer? Was that a hint of her dimple, to the corner of her mouth? “Mamá would certainly remind me if I did.”
“Ah, Do?a Mercedes.” Néstor sighed theatrically, conjuring the overbearing villain of their childhood to mind. “She’s made you so prim. I can’t help but wonder if you’ve forgotten how to misbehave.”
“Ha,” she said flatly. “Perhaps you’re right.”
He imagined their voices casting a veil of safety around them. If they kept speaking, they may as well be only a few miles from Los Ojuelos. They may as well be riding from one rancho to another after a visit, with no worry of being followed.
He had no reason to believe they were being followed now. But a creeping sensation up the back of his neck twisted his imagination in sour directions, knitting his throat tight with anxiety.