‘Not much, it seems,’ chuckled Backenhauser. ‘I never thought those cowboys would get so angry.’

‘Why do it, then?’ Azul demanded. ‘Why come here when you don’t even understand your own country?’

Backenhauser shrugged, staring hard at the cold face of the half-breed, feeling the tentative starting of fear.

‘I don’t know. All the painting in England’s been done. I wanted to portray something new, so when I heard about the New Frontier, I came West. I thought I could do something new.’

Azul stripped meat from the roasting haunch and passed chunks to the artist. Backenhauser took them, eating greedily. The half-breed cut his own portion and ate slowly, chewing each mouthful so as to take all the goodness out, savoring each mouthful.

‘I guess you don’t think much of me?’

Backenhauser wiped a hand over his face and stroked through his mustache for forgotten fragments.

‘Not much,’ Azul agreed. ‘But I guess I’m stuck with you.’

‘How’s that?’ Backenhauser shrugged. ‘You could leave me now. Like you said: We’re squared. You saved my life; I helped you.’

Azul paused, sucking marrow from a deer bone. The same kind of imponderable question that had been so easy to resolve when it was simply a question of pointed guns proved harder to answer when it became a question of words.

‘You said we were square,’ said Backenhauser. ‘You saved me, I helped you.’

‘You couldn’t live out here,’ said Azul. ‘Could you?’

‘I got a horse,’ said the artist. ‘I guess I can find the next town.’

‘You can’t stay alive that long,’ said the half-breed. ‘You know where it is?’

Backenhauser shook his head.

‘You got no food with you,’ said Azul. ‘You know how to hunt?’

The gray derby shook again.

‘And you can’t even ride right.’

The derby nodded.

‘So if I leave you out here, you’re gonna die,’ said Azul.

‘Right,’ said Backenhauser. ‘I think I would.’

‘So I’ll take you through to the nearest settlement,’ said Azul. ‘Someplace a stage stops. That way you can get home.’

‘Thanks,’ said Backenhauser. ‘I thought you’d do that.’

‘Why?’ Azul was confused. ‘How’d you work that out?’

The artist shrugged. ‘Painting, folks teaches you a lot about them. It’s not just getting a good likeness, it’s spotting their real character as well, getting that into the picture. A photographer can get a likeness, but an artist’s got to paint what’s under the skin.’

‘What’s a fut…Whatever you said?’ Azul wiped the juices of the venison from his mouth.

‘A photographer.’ Backenhauser frowned. ‘You never heard of that?’

Azul shook his head.

’Well,’ the smaller man thought for a moment. ‘An artist uses paint, or pencils to get a picture. He uses his imagination. A photographer has a kind of machine with a special thing inside it called a plate. He points the machine at something and opens the front so that light gets inside and prints the image on the plate. He gets an exact likeness of whatever he wants to record.’

‘But you paint more than that,’ Azul murmured.

‘Sure.’ Backenhauser nodded. ‘I try to capture their character, not just what they look like, but how they feel. That’s how I was sure you’d help me: I’m a pretty good judge of character.’

‘You didn’t judge so well back in San Jacinto,’ retorted the half-breed, straight-faced.

Backenhauser chuckled: ‘I can’t be right all the time.’

Azul shook his head, mouth curving in a smile. ‘No, but you only need be wrong once out here and you don’t get a second chance.’

He banked the fire and spread his bedroll on the ground. ‘Get some sleep. We start early.’

Morning brought the threat of rain rolling out of the west on a line of dark storm heads. There was a stillness in the air and the light assumed a translucent quality, presaging a bad blow. Azul got the fire built up again and set pieces of venison to broiling before nudging Backenhauser awake. The artist sat up, yawned, stretched. And groaned.

‘Oh my God!’ He winced, rubbing at his back. ‘I’m stiff.’

‘Horseback riding,’ grunted the half-breed, pouring coffee. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

‘Yeah?’ Backenhauser sounded doubtful. ‘In how long?’

Azul shrugged. ‘Depends. Don’t fight the horse, just sit easy. Ride with it, not on it. Besides, we got time.’

‘The stage was bad enough,’ grumbled the Englishman. ‘But I never knew there were so many places a body could ache.’

‘San Jacinto’s only a day behind us,’ said Azul. ‘You can always head back.’

‘I’d sooner live with the aches,’ answered Backenhauser, ‘than have them cured that way.’

Azul grinned, beginning to like the small foreigner. He passed the coffee over and fetched a strip of meat from the fire. While Backenhauser was eating, he got the horses saddled and checked the load in his Winchester before ambling back along the trail.

‘Where are you going?’ called the artist. ‘You’re not leaving me?’

‘No.’ The half-breed shook his head. ‘I want to check behind us. See if Dumfries sent any men out.’

He loped back the way they had come, conscious of the growing pressure in the air, a sure hint of the coming storm. If it broke as fiercely as he anticipated, it should slow any pursuit. Though at the same time it would check his own forward progress now that he had Backenhauser in tow.

Several hundred yards east of the camp the hills jutted in a long ridge stretching above the flatlands. The half-breed halted there, on the edge of a promontory affording a clear view down to San Jacinto. It was impossible to pick out individual details at that distance, but there seemed to be more activity than was usual. Groups of horsemen were leaving the town and spreading over the surrounding countryside, two bunches moving purposefully in the direction of the hills. Azul watched them for a spell, calculating that it would take close on half a day for them to reach his position. Then he looked up at the sky. The storm heads were closer now, blowing in fast and black, leaving behind a deep, dark curtain of falling water. If the storm hit while the pursuers were climbing the slope their passage would be made treacherous, slowing them, maybe, long enough for the half-breed and the artist to ride through the storm and lose themselves on the far side of the mountains.

He ran back to the camp and kicked the fire out. Backenhauser looked surprised and worried at the same time, setting down the sketchpad he was using as Azul waved him to his feet.

‘They’re coming.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘How long we got?’