Fritz Baum climbed up on his horse and rode north in search of the man called Breed.

Chapter Two

AZUL OPENED HIS eyes and wondered why the light hurt. He closed them and winced at the pounding inside his head. It didn’t go away, so he sat up, running a furred tongue around the sandpaper of his mouth. Beside him in the wide bed, a mass of auburn curls shifted on the pillow and a pale arm reached down to drag the sheets over the unseen face.

For a moment, Azul wondered who the woman was. Wondered, too, where he was. Remembrance made him groan, reaching for the jug on the washstand. He filled an empty glass with the cold water and drank it down in one long swallow. Drank three more glasses before ducking his head over the bowl and spilling the remaining water over his skull and neck.

He was in a saloon called The Golden Goose, in a town called San Jacinto in northern New Mexico. And he was badly hung over.

He dried his face, piecing together the fragmented recollections of the previous night. He had come into the town after fifteen days on the trail and decided to stop over a spell to rest his horse and enjoy himself some. It had been a long time since he just lay around and drank, longer since he had had a woman. And with two thousand dollars in his saddlebags and no particular place to go, San Jacinto had seemed as good as anywhere to rest up and ease the saddle kinks from his body. He had checked his horse into the stable and gotten himself a room and a bath. Then he had eaten a meal and wandered into the main part of the saloon. He vaguely recalled working his way through half a bottle of whiskey before the red-head joined him, but after that it got difficult.

He rubbed his eyes, cursing his own stupidity. He was used to drink — most Apache warriors indulged in the home-brewed liquor they called tiswin when they got the chance, and there were some who favored whiskey but he had never drunk in such quantity before. He had never had so much money before.

The thought prompted him to action, concern and the natural resilience of his body overcoming the fuggy aftermath of the alcohol. He checked the Colt’s Frontier draped over the rail of the bedhead and then the Winchester propped against the wall. That was automatic, a reflex born of living long with the imminence of death. His next move was prompted by an emotion unfamiliar to him: pride of ownership. An Apache - and the man called Azul had been raised as a Chiricahua brave cared little for material possessions. His horses, his weapons, his wife, they were important to him, but little else. There was no need to own things when all was provided by whatever power ruled the world, the white man’s God or the Great Spirit of the Indians. There were buffalo on the plains and deer in the hills; rabbits in the meadows and fish in the streams. A man could build himself a shelter from branches and grass, or from animal hides, or even turves. He could fashion weapons from wood and bone and rock. Everything was there, and all a man need do was look around him and use what was given.

Unless he lived in the world of the pinda-lick-oyi – the whites – where everything was labelled and owned and bought with money. And Azul – half white and half Apache – had brought two thousand dollars of the white man’s money with him from Wyomingⁱ.

He climbed off the mattress and got down on his knees to check the twin leather bags dumped under the bed. They were both there, and the cobwebs he had spread across the flaps were undisturbed. He stood up, gritting his teeth against the sudden elevation and clutching at the bedhead as his brain seemed to explode in blaze of light.

‘What’s the matter, honey?’

The auburn curls emerged from under the sheet and got pushed back by a long-fingered hand. The nails were painted a vivid red that matched what little was left of the lipstick. The face beneath was pert, not beautiful, but attractive even after a night’s drinking and a longer time in bed. Her eyes were green and large, the pupils distending as they focused on his naked body, and her mouth was full enough to offset the small, tip-tilted nose. She sat up, letting the sheet fall away so that firm breasts, tipped with dark nipples that erected in the early chill, were exposed. Her waist was trim, spreading into wide hips that looked, from the angling of the sheets, to give way to long legs.

She smiled when he grunted and shook his head, regretting the movement even as he began it.

‘You need some coffee, darling. Black coffee and a good breakfast. Then a long bath. You got the money?’

‘Sure.’ Azul sat down on the bed and closed his eyes. ‘What’s your name?’

He’d have seen the woman pout if his eves had been open, but instead he just heard her reply: ‘Colleen, honey. Colleen Murray. Don’t you remember?’

Images flashed swiftly through Azul’s mind. They had finished the bottle he had bought and then ordered another. Most of that had gone down his throat before the woman suggested they go to his room. They had taken what was left with them, and emptied it stretched over the wide bed. He remembered a fusion of bodies, limbs entwined, a tongue probing his mouth before drifting over his body; the spread of her thighs and the soft, welcoming warmth of her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess I drank too much.’

‘You didn’t act drunk,’ she smiled. ‘Why don’t I go fetch you breakfast and we try it again sober?’

‘Don’t forget the bath,’ moaned the half-breed. ‘I need that.’

Colleen pushed the sheets all the way down and stood up. Even through the hangover, Azul could see that her body was trim, not yet given over to the flabby softness of drinking with too many wandering drifters, of spending most of her life in bed. She pulled on a dress that was cut low at the front and high on her legs, not bothering with the underwear scattered over the floor. Not even bothering to fasten all of the hooks at the back.

‘You just wait there, Azul,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in just a little while.’

He began to nod but then thought better of it. Instead, he stretched out on the bed, keeping his eyes closed as his head struck the pillow and fresh sparks of light danced painfully through his mind.

The opening door lifted him to his feet with the Colt cocked and ready in his hand. Colleen gasped as she saw the pistol, then smiled, heeling the door closed.

‘Don’t shoot me, sweetheart. Leastways, not with that weapon.’

Azul shrugged, lowering the hammer. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t say that.’ Colleen settled the tray on the bed. ‘Man like you doesn’t need to say he’s sorry.’

‘Just being polite,’ said the half-breed.

‘Being polite,’ said the whore, undoing her dress, ‘is never needing to say you’re sorry.’

‘Sounds like some old love story,’ grunted Azul. ‘What you get to eat?’

In answer she lifted the cloth covering the tray. The first thing Azul saw was the coffee pot. He grabbed it and poured a mug of thick, dark coffee. After that he looked at the food. Colleen watched as he forked bacon and eggs into his mouth, crunching biscuits and solid hunks of fried bread at the same time. He emptied the coffee pot and wiped his mouth clean with the napkin.

‘The bath ready?’ he asked.

The woman laughed. ‘Should be. Come on, I’ll scrub your back.’

She was very good. Azul did nothing except obey her instructions as she lathered his body and sluiced him clean. When she was finished she wrapped him in a towel and hurried him back to the room.

‘Well?’ she asked, laughing. ‘You feel clean now?’

‘I feel sober,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’

‘Around noon, I guess.’ She frowned. ‘Why?’

‘I gotta be moving on.’

He didn’t know why he said it. There was no reason he had to leave, no place he had to go. He could stay around San Jacinto and live high on the money in his saddlebags for a year or more or bank the money and settle down. Whatever, there was no reason he needed to hit the trail again. Except the one driving reason: the wanderlust.

He knew that he couldn’t stay happy in a town for long. A night or two, maybe, but after that he began to feel closed in, to long for the open spaces, for the mountains and high meadows that had been his home.

He tugged the saddlebags out from under the bed and delved inside, peeling off two twenty-dollar notes. Passed them to Colleen.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘For everything.’

The whore’s eyes got wide as she took in the size of the bills.

‘You sure you wanta give me this much?’

‘Sure,’ said Azul. ‘You helped me through the night.’

He got dressed and went down to the saloon.

He was mostly thinking about fetching his horse from the stable and moving further south. Drifting down to the Mogollons to check the Apache trails and maybe following the bands down into Mexico for the winter. But then the stink of the saloon hit him and his head swirled so that he felt like his belly was climbing up his throat to spew its contents out over his fresh-cleaned shirt.

He remembered something his father had told him, the first time they had drunk whiskey together. That had been in Santa Fe, when Kieron Gunn was still trading between the merchants there and the Chiricahua. He had taken his son into a saloon and bought a bottle without a label, filling both glasses and urging Azul to down the near colorless liquid. After five glasses, the boy had collapsed and his father had carried him to bed. In the morning, Azul’s head had felt the same way it did now, and his father had poured black coffee into him and forced a breakfast down his throat that he spewed up a few minutes later. When the boy had ended his vomiting, Kieron Gunn had taken him down to the saloon and ordered more whiskey.

We call it the hair of the dog, he had told his son. A man’s gotta learn to hold his likker. He needs to handle it an’ make it work for him, instead of against him. Best you learn that early.

Azul had. He had learned to recognize his limitations and learned also to live within them. He had never been so drunk again, until now. And now he felt he needed his dead father’s support.