The Crossings by Jack Ketchum Read Free Book Online Page A

barely touching down and at times not touching down at all. On the other side we dismounted and unfastened the horse's girths and took off their saddles, allowing that they needed to get their wind back some after working so hard and I pulled my flask out of my saddlebag and passed it around and after a while we continued on.
    By late mid-afternoon we'd reached a low flat ridge with sparse cover in the valley just beneath us and Elena stopped and pointed to the southwest.
    "About half a mile," she said.
    "All right," Hart said. "We'll head on down and wait till nightfall."
    We started down slowly four abreast.
    "You know where they're keeping her?" Hart said.
    "Could be many places. Does it matter?"
    "Unless you want to get us killed it might."
    She seemed to consider that and then shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I will find her."
    Hart shook his head. She turned and studied him a moment.
    "We don't get along too well, Mr. Hart. Why is that, do you think?"
    "I respect what you want to do here, miss. It's family and I understand that. You're just goddamn sloppy going about it is all."
    "That's not what I asked you."
    "That's all you need to know about me and my being here, though."
    "I don't think so."
    "Look. Couple of years ago up to pretty recently I was spending a lot of time and giving a lot of thought to trying to kill you people so your people wouldn't kill me. It took some effort on my part but after a while I got real good at it. Now just because a few old men sign a piece of paper saying it's peacetime doesn't mean I all of a sudden feel all secure and happy in your company."
    "I'm a woman, Mr. Hart."
    "I'm well aware of that."
    "You mean you saw me naked."
    "That I did."
    "So what did you see?"
    "Nothing I haven't seen before and nothing real hard on the eyes particularly."
    "You saw a Mexican. Half Indian. You saw an enemy, right?"
    "Maybe."
    "Of course you did. You saw someone who is not like you. Someone who does not even pray to your Christian god.
    He smiled. "That much, at least, I don't hold against you."
    "I didn't fight the war."
    "I never said you did."
    "Mother tells me that you lost a brother."
    "Oh, Mother does, does he?"
    He shot Mother a look that could have burned saguaro into the steaming sand. Mother caught that look and apparently found an urgent need to study the sky.
    "A stepbrother, yes."
    "Ask me what I lost, Hart."
    "Okay. What did you lose?"
    She didn't much like his tone. I didn't much blame her.
    "Fine," she said. "To hell with you. It's none of your damn business."
    And it was only when we finally reached the grove of sheltering junipers below that I guess she changed her mind.
    "A mother," she said. "That's all, Hart. To you, a Mex woman. Dead with a baby inside of her because the only doctor for five miles around was too busy with wounded Anglo cabrones like you and Paddy Ryan at the time. You killed women, Hart. You all did. Every last one of you."

TEN

    We picketed the horses in the copse of trees and made our way through the scrub, the last few yards or so crawling on our bellies until we were within about forty yards of the compound and maybe ten yards from the lone guard in front who sat tending his small fire with sticks and twigs and gnawing on a half of roast rabbit, his rifle lying in the dirt beside him.
    What I saw behind him in the sparks and waves of light pouring off the four huge bonfires might have come straight out of Dante's Inferno — a book I had never much liked in my youth — had Dante been a less than pious man.
    "Well, we got us a hell of a party here," said Mother.
    A marketing was taking place in front of us.
    I saw perhaps thirty young women all grouped for inspection — the sisters' wares on display. Some simply standing shackled together and others bound to posts or wagon wheels, their clothing a bizarre mix of cheap shifts, men's shirts and trousers, dirty dresses and torn underwear or unrecognizable rags which barely even covered them, even a single