“C’mon cutey... come across... you won’t look too good if you don’t...”

Alec stepped into the hut, gun level at his waist.

In the wavering light of a single candle, he saw one of his own youngsters holding Angela’s arms pinned tightly behind her back with one brawny arm, his other meaty hand over her mouth. Gianelli stood in front of her with a long, slim knife. Her shirt was torn away and three long welling red slashes streaked down one breast to the nipple. Her eyes were wide with pain and terror.

“Gianelli!”

He wheeled around. The knife blade was red.

“You want to find out where your father is, I’ll find out for you,” Gianelli said, his voice low and shaking with excitement. “I’ll get a lot more out of her, besides.”

“Get away from her.”

The kid let his hand drop from Angela’s mouth, but still held her arms.

“Listen,” Gianelli said. “I’ve had a bellyfull of your orders. I’ll get what you want from her and then I’ll get what I want.”

The gun’s blast was deafening in the tiny hut. Gianelli slammed back against the wall, his mouth open in a silent “Ooohhh...” He dropped the knife and slid to the floor.

The kid stepped away from Angela, toward Gianelli’s crumpled body. “I... he told me...”

Alec fired once more and the kid’s face dissolved in an explosion of blood. Angela screamed and Alec grabbed her, pulled her out of the hut into the clean night air, leaving the stench of gunsmoke and blood behind them.

“They... they...” she gulped.

“They’re dead,” Alec said. He still held the gun. His hand was trembling so badly that it took three tries to slide it back into his holster.

Jameson was the first to reach them, a carbine in one hand. Half a dozen other men pounded up right behind him.

“What happened?”

“I just killed two men who couldn’t follow orders. Drag them out into the village square and leave them there.”

They were a quiet and subdued group when they left the village the next morning. The villagers stood mutely around the two corpses as Alec lined his men together and marched them out the gate, down the westward road. Angela rode on the captured wagon beside Alec. Douglas’ man, unarmed, drove the horses.

She still seemed dazed. “You’re just going to... leave the bodies there?”

Alec had not slept all night. His head throbbed. “Let the villagers bury them in the fields. Make good use of them.”

“Why...? You didn’t have to kill them.”

He turned on the hard wooden seat to stare at her. She looked as bleak as he felt. “Did you want me to leave them with you?”

“I...” Angela ran a hand through her blonde hair. “In some crazy way I feel like it’s my fault. Partially, at least.”

“I shot them. They deserved it. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it exactly the same way.”

She shuddered visibly. “Because it was me.”

“Because they were acting like scum!”

“With me. If it had been one of the village women...”

“I’d have done the same thing,” Alec said coldly. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

They rode in silence for most of the morning, heading for the hills that bordered the western edge of the valley, under a sky of rolling fat cumulus clouds that checkered the landscape with warm sunlight and sudden cool shadow.

“Jameson found out last night that there’s a relay station for the horses over the first row of hills,” Alec said to her. “Is that true?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. And it’s built like a little fortress.”

“Can you talk the people there into giving us fresh horses peacefully, or will we have to fight?”

“Why should I help you?”

“You’ve got a damned short memory.”

“No. A long one.”

“All right, be tough. We’ll get the horses anyway.”

Which Alec did, by the simple expedient of threatening to shoot Angela if the men holding the station didn’t give them all the horses in their fortified corral. Alec held Angela on a knoll, far enough from the station so that the men could see her plainly enough. Jameson did the negotiating.

Angela fumed, “You’re using me!”

“That’s right,” Alec replied, smiling. “But that’s better than killing people, isn’t it?”

She was too angry to answer.

Toward sunset, as they rode together on the wagon, he asked her, “Still angry with me?”

“Yes.” But she looked more sullen than angry.

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“There’s no soreness?”

“Of course it’s sore! But it hasn’t bled anymore. And the bandage is still in place. Want to inspect it for yourself?”

“Dammit, I didn’t do it to you!”

“You killed them. You shot that boy.”

“You ought to be glad that I did.”

“You’re a murderer and you expect me to love you for it?”