Still bound together, but free enough that he could pick up the Bowie from the saddle and grasp the hilt in both hands as he lifted up on his knees and drove down with awful force into Dumfries’s belly.

The blade went in through the rancher’s corduroy waistcoat. It cut easily through his linen shirt. Went on through the flesh of his stomach into the muscle behind. For a moment it grated on his pelvic girdle, but then the angle of the blow turned it upwards, scraping over the bone, into the soft pit of the belly. It opened the viscera in a flooding spill of organs as Azul twisted the point round and dragged the knife stickily over the line of Dumfries’s belt.

The rancher’s eyes opened wide as the pain hit him. His mouth gaped, ready to emit a scream, but Azul tugged the knife out from his stomach and jammed the blade down between the parted lips.

It pinned the tongue back, severing the tip so that a sticky blob of jerking tissue tumbled on to the ground. The remainder was shoved downwards as the blade cut through the rear of the throat, severing windpipe and vocal cords before slicing into the bones of the neck. The vital bones that connect brain to body.

Azul planted both knees on Dumfries’s arms and twisted the Bowie.

There was a grating sound as the blade turned through the bones, and the rancher opened his eyes wide for one last look at the sky before it got blocked out behind the column of blood spouting from his throat and mouth.

Azul tugged the blade clear and rolled away from the body. He began to hack at the rope binding his wrists together.

Was halfway through before he heard Fritz Baum’s voice and felt the cool touch of a pistol’s muzzle against his face.

‘Nice try,’ said the bounty hunter. ‘But not quite good enough.’

Azul dropped the knife onto the mess of Dumfries’s stomach.

‘Now stand up, real slow.’ Baum stepped back from the corpse. ‘An’ don’t try nothin’ fancy.’

Azul weighed the odds. Baum had been hired to bring him to Cinqua alive, and the journey down from Lordsburg had shown that the bounty hunter had his own peculiar sense of honor. The half-breed felt confident the man would not kill him, unless forced to. But that need not stop him from maiming his prisoner: a .45 caliber slug through Azul’s knee would make Baum’s task very easy.

Slowly, his eyes blazing with a cold fury, he climbed to his feet.

‘Kick the knife over,’ ordered the German. ‘Gently.’

Azul hooked a toe under the blade and sent the Bowie spinning through the firelight. Baum stooped, not taking his eyes off the half-breed, and picked up the bloody weapon. Without bothering to wipe the blade, he backed over to his saddlebags and thrust the knife inside.

‘Now bury him.’

‘How?’ Azul held out his bound hands. ‘Like this?’

‘Yore problem.’ Baum grinned. ‘You killed him, you cover him,

He moved warily towards the body, motioning Azul back with a wave of the Colt, then reached down to lift Dumfries’s gun clear of the holster. Deftly, he ejected the cartridges, then hurled the pistol away into the darkness. It thudded on the sand, and from the shadows came a low growl and the pad of clawed feet as a prowling coyote took fright.

Azul began to gather rocks, building a shallow cairn over Dumfries’s corpse. It would not take the scavengers long to expose the body, but at least it would hold them for a while.

By the time he was finished it was close to midnight and a pale moon, its yellow face streaked across with clouds, was riding high in the blue-black sky. The night breeze carried a hint of rain, and away to the north a whippoorwill uttered its eerie cry. Baum built the fire up and beckoned Azul towards him. He moved round behind the half-breed, holding the Colt against Azul’s right shoulder. Then he slammed a foot against the back of Azul’s left knee, smashing the leg out from under so that the blond-haired man gasped and pitched forwards. He rolled clear of the fire, then felt the German’s pistol jam against his leg.

‘One move,’ grunted Baum, warning, ‘an’ you get a slug.’

Azul lay still as the bounty hunter looped a rope around his ankles and drew it tight. Then Baum hauled his legs up and dropped a noose around his neck. He cut a second length of rope and fastened it around Azul’s waist, fixing the half-breed’s hands tight against his belly. He chuckled.

‘Hope you’re a peaceful sleeper, feller.’

Still chuckling, he holstered his gun and dropped a blanket over Azul’s rigid form. The half-breed lay still, utilizing the arduous training of his Apache upbringing to hold his body motionless. His wrists were pinned firmly to his stomach, his left arm starting to ache as the circulation got cut off by his body weight, and his legs were drawn up at right angles, as if he were kneeling. The rope strung between his ankles and throat was taut, the slightest movement of his legs drawing the noose menacingly tight around his windpipe. There was no chance of escape.

Baum settled back on his bedroll and hauled a bottle clear of his saddlebags. It was almost empty, maybe three mouthfuls of whiskey slopping around in the bottom. He raised the bottle in mockery of a toast, holding it towards the cairn of stones.

‘Absent friends.’

The liquor gurgled into his mouth and he swallowed appreciatively.

‘Pore old Amos. He paid me plenty to watch you hung. He shoulda kept his temper. He’d be alive now if he had.’ More whiskey went down his throat. ‘Don’t pay to lose yore temper. Not in this game.’

He emptied the bottle and tossed it away. For an instant the glass shone in the firelight, then it hit the cairn and shattered with a tinkling sound that reminded Azul of the pianos back in Lordsburg.

‘Sleep well,’ laughed Baum. ‘But don’t sleep too tight.’

Chapter Thirteen

IN THE MORNING the threatened rain was closer, moving down from the distant bulks of the Mogollons on a wide curtain of black cloud. The wind was stronger, cutting over the flatlands with a chilling intensity that set the dried-up balls of the Tumbleweed dancing over the sand. Across the forefront of the cloud, thin streaks of fork lightning played, as though the storm marched towards the border like some massive, many-legged insect. When Baum built up the fire, long streamers of sparks blew clear, wisping over the sand like skittering red flies.

The German tugged on a slicker, shivering in the early chill, and set a pot of coffee on the fire before removing the noose from the half-breed’s neck and fashioned a hobble around the man’s ankles; then he freed Azul’s hands from his waist.

Azul groaned and rolled on his back. His knees and arms were numb from the constriction of the rope, and there was a dull ache in his side where his elbow had dug into his ribs.

And there was a memory.

He rested a while, then stretched out, wincing as the blood began to flow again.

‘I gotta piss.’

Baum chuckled, but he still helped the half-breed to his feet. Azul swayed, fresh pains shooting up his legs. Then he hobbled away from the fire, towards the cairn of stones covering Dumfries’s body.

‘Don’t go too far,’ Baum warned.

‘No.’ Azul halted at the piled rocks and began to fumble with his buckskin pants. ‘How can I?’

‘Yeah.’ The bounty hunter laughed. ‘I guess you’re kinda tied up with me.’

Azul got his pants open and directed a stream of urine at the cairn. Across the stones he could see the neck of Baum’s bottle, the cork resting a foot away. He emptied his bladder, staring down at the rocks: Watching the yellow stream splash over yellow boulders, over a colder, clearer color that interlaced the burial mound: the color of fragmented glass.

He finished and began to fasten his pants. Then he cried out and let his body pitch forwards. He twisted as he fell, folding his knees and turning his body so that his left shoulder struck the rocks and took most of the impact. It hurt: the fragments of wind-washed stone were hard, if not sharp. But he got his bound hands on a piece of glass. It was larger than most, a jagged fragment from the side of the bottle, towards the base. It was curved slightly, so that he was able to fumble it into his hands without slicing his fingers.

He stretched over the cairn, back turned towards Baum, and slid the broken glass inside his pants.

There was a moment of pain when the jagged edge cut into his belly, but then he fastened the pants and wriggled clear of the cairn.

Baum came over to help him up.

‘Jesus!’ said the bounty hunter. ‘I never thought this job would include helpin’ a man take a piss.’

‘So let me go.’ Azul stumbled towards the fire, supported by the bounty hunter. ‘I got a thousand dollars in my saddlebags. Take it and let me go.’

He knew the promise wouldn’t work even as he said it. Knew that Baum followed his own path – his own kind of honor – as firmly as did Azul.