‘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?’
‘Long enough,’ grunted Azul. ‘If we move out fast.’
Backenhauser closed his pad and tucked it into his saddlebag. He moaned as he lifted his foot into the stirrup and swung astride the roan gelding. Then moaned some more as the half-breed led the way along the spine of wood-strewn rock, heading straight for the approaching storm.
The rain hit one hour later. It was as though they moved into a solid curtain hung between sky and land, its forward face illuminated by the brilliant sun shining directly behind them. At first there was just a loose, intermittent spattering of moisture, most of it caught by the trees, but then it got stronger and a wind got up. And soon they were in darkness, with the droplets of rain taking on the size of hailstones, lashing savagely down through the fall-bared limbs of the trees so that the only protection was the evergreen cover of the pines. Azul reined in, dragging on his slicker and settling the black Sonoran Stetson at an angle over his face. Beside him, Backenhauser shivered, turning up the collar of his Eastern-style suit and draping a blanket around his shoulders. In moments it was sodden.
‘You got a coat?’ shouted the half-breed against the growing howl of the wind.
The artist shook his head. ‘Left it back in town. And I’m not going to fetch it.’
Water was spilling from the curly brim of his derby, splashing into his face so that his mustache got spread out in limp lines either side of his mouth. He was grinning. ‘All right,’ yelled the half-breed. ‘Follow me.’
The rain got heavier as they rode into the face of the storm. The trees afforded some protection, but the wind was strong enough that it drove the water down through the branches, adding a searingly cold rush of air to the discomfort of the water, swirling through the clearings so that the rain was driven directly into their faces, clouding their vision and filling their mouths and nostrils with moisture. In any other circumstances, Azul would have found somewhere to hole up and ride out the storm, but with Dumfries’s posses chasing him and Backenhauser to watch, he preferred to push on.
Lightning forked across the sky, followed instantly by great booming peels of thunder that terrified the horses and made them difficult to handle. Azul slowed the gray, patting the streaming neck as he waited for the artist to catch up. When Backenhauser came alongside, huddled down in his saddle with the blanket draped, now, over his head, the half-breed fastened his lariat to the roan’s bridle, securing the other end to his saddle horn.
‘Why don’t we stop?’ Backenhauser bellowed, cupping a hand to his mouth as the wind threatened to carry his words away. ‘We can’t go on through this.’
‘It’ll wash our tracks out,’ yelled Azul. ‘Most like, it’ll stop Dumfries’s men … give us a lead.’
