Azul shrugged respecting the German’s professionalism. He ate with his fingers.

Dumfries came back from the horses and asked, ‘Why the hell you feedin’ him? Leave the bastard go hungry.’

‘I got paid to fetch him to Cinqua alive,’ said Baum. ‘I ain’t gonna deliver a starved man.’

Dumfries snorted. Then spat into Azul’s plate.

The half-breed watched the spittle sizzle in the hot fat, then lifted another strip of bacon. Chewed it slowly, and asked:

‘I guess you’d like to see me dead?’

‘Goddam right I would.’ Dumfries’s face got ugly with rage. ‘I’d kill you now, were it my choice. Like I killed that bastard Englishman an’ the whore he was with.’

‘But you won’t,’ said Baum; firmly. ‘Not while I’m here.’

Dumfries slumped on the ground and began to pick at his breakfast. His eyes were tinged red with lack of sleep and fury. And Azul got an idea.

They moved on through the desert country of southern New Mexico. Baum led the way, with the rope constantly fastened to Azul’s saddle horn. Dumfries brought up the rear, his eyes seldom leaving Azul’s back. As if he were afraid the half-breed might somehow slip his bonds and escape into the arid wasteland stretching out all around them.

When they halted to eat, or to sleep, Dumfries still watched. It was an obsession. One that Azul played on.

The first day, when they halted at noon, he tried out the idea that had come to him in the morning, when he remembered something old Sees-Both-Ways had told him. Something he had not properly understood until now.

There are many kinds of love, the Chiricahua shaman had said. A man can love his wife, or his brother. His children; his horses. All in different ways. He can love his parents. But in a different way to how he loves his women.

And hate is the same. Different, but the same. It is the other side of the coin. It is right for a man to hate his enemies, but he can respect them at the same time. He can grant them the right to their own beliefs while he goes on hating them. That is important to remember, for otherwise a man’s own hate can undo him, turn him sour. Like a bad apple set amongst other bad apples, so that all infect one another. A man like that sees nothing but his own view. Only the poisoned, brown skin. Never the patches of gold.

He becomes like some old, sick coyote who snarls and snaps at all the young ones because they have something he can never find again. And he seeks to destroy them because they have what he can never have.

‘Must hurt you,’ Azul had said, ‘seeing me alive.’

‘Won’t be long,’ Dumfries replied. ‘Then you get hung.’

‘Four, five days,’ grinned the half-breed. ‘How long’s your son been in the ground?’

Dumfries had moved to strike him, but Baum stopped the older man. Told Azul to stay quiet. But the half-breed had started the same kind of prodding each time they halted.

Baum had gagged him for a while, but Azul still managed to catch Dumfries’s eye and let him know with facial movements what he was saying. And the bounty hunter’s sense of honor insisted that he bring his man in alive, so he had to take the gag out so that the half-breed could eat.

And Dumfries went on getting madder, prodded up through the edges of his hatred into the area of hysteria that bordered on real insanity.

And it came to a head one night, two days out from Cinqua.

It was a cold and windy night, a lonesome howling norther blowing down from the High Sierras, bringing with it the threat of snow. The fire was built high, but still flickering; the horses turned haunches-back into the wind, heads low. Azul was tied to his saddle and Baum was asleep, Dumfries watching over the prisoner until it was time for the changing of the guard.

‘Your son wasn’t much good,’ said Azul; almost casually. ‘He got mad because he didn’t like the way Backenhauser drew his face.’

‘Close yore goddam mouth,’ grunted Dumfries. ‘Or I’ll kill you.’

‘Baum wouldn’t like that,’ said Azul. ‘And you do what Baum tells you.’

‘The hell I do.’ Dumfries’s voice got hoarse and cold as the wind. ‘He don’t tell me nothin’.’

‘He tells you to keep me alive,’ sneered the half-breed. ‘You’d like to kill me, but you don’t have the guts.’

‘I don’t?’ Dumfries mouth curved back in a feral snarl. ‘You want to find out?’

‘Don’t wake the German,’ Azul prodded. ‘He might get angry with you.’

‘You goddam squaw man’s bastard!’ Dumfries drew his Colt. ‘I’m gonna kill you now.’

‘Tied up?’ jeered the half-breed. ‘Like Cal Backenhauser?’

‘Yeah.’ Dumfries’s face broke into even uglier lines. ‘Just like that. With a knife. Yore knife.’

He holstered his gun and went over to Azul’s saddlebags. Tugged the Bowie clear of the sheath and scraped his thumb across the fine-honed blade. Then he thrust the knife under his belt and drew the gun again.

‘Move it, bastard!’ He shoved the Colt up close against Azul’s ribs. ‘Pick up yore saddle an’ walk.’

Azul climbed to his feet and slung the saddle across his shoulder. Dumfries took him out beyond the perimeter of the fire’s light to where the prairie was cold and dark and lonely. Empty.

‘Baum won’t like this,’ Azul sneered.

The corners of Dumfries’s mouth tucked down as his teeth grated together and his eyes got screwed up tight with rage. A low grunting sound came from his lips, more animal than human. He thrust forwards with the Bowie.

Azul laughed and moved backwards.

It was important to keep the rancher off balance.

‘Don’t make too much noise. Or Baum could come stop you.’

‘Goddam fuckin’ bastard!’

Dumfries ran forwards, hefting the Bowie knife in a scything movement aimed at the half-breed’s belly. Azul stepped back and sideways, heaving the saddle clear of his shoulder in a swing that landed the heavy-laden leather hard against the rancher’s side.

Dumfries stumbled, the knife going clear of Azul’s gut.

He tottered, then came back on his feet, moving in again with the blade held low, ready to jab upwards into the half-breed’s stomach.

Azul was off-balance, his arms dragged down by the weight of the saddle, both hands constricted by the rope binding him to the horn. He let himself fall. And Dumfries came in, lips spread wide in an evil grin as he thought he saw an easy target.

Then Azul’s legs kicked out, pivoted upwards from the bulk of the saddle. Landing just below Dumfries’s knees so that the rancher was pitched abruptly forwards as his center of balance went out from under him.

The knife thudded into the leather of the saddle’s seat. Azul rolled, spreading his legs so that Dumfries’s were pushed apart. He lifted his right knee, hard and fast into the gap. And the rancher screamed as the half-breed’s leg drove upwards against his groin. Pain flooded through his body as he felt his testicles crushed, and vomit spilled out of his mouth, blocking off the screaming.

Azul twisted, driving his wrists against the blade of the Bowie knife, sawing viciously at the rope with a total disregard of his own flesh.

There was pain. Blood ran down over the saddle, but then his hands were free of the weight.