By the time Cruz reached the wagons, he was certain he would find no one alive. In that he was correct, but he was confused by what he did find. The bodies of two men and women, riddled with arrows, and the bodies of another man and woman killed by bullets, lay inside the circle of wagons. Only one of the dead had been scalped, and the job had been half done, as though something had interrupted the Comanches in their gruesome work. Yet the Conestogas had been completely ransacked, their contents spilling from the wagon beds like beans from a broken jar.

Cruz closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He did not want to believe the Comanches had taken Sloan. In such a way had Sloan’s sister Bayleigh disappeared into Comanchería. It had taken three years, and a stroke of blind luck, for Long Quiet to find and rescue her.

Cruz met Miguel at the center of the circle of wagons. “Comanches!” he spat. “Did you see any signs that they have taken the woman I seek?”

He was asking Miguel for a word of hope, but he trusted the vaquero to tell him the truth.

“I cannot tell, Patrón.”

“Can we catch them?”

Miguel squatted in the grass next to one of the dead. “The Comanches were here maybe five, maybe six hours ago. They will not stop until they are safe in Comanchería. But there is something else here I do not understand.”

Cruz followed Miguel’s gaze and saw the clothing and tools tossed here and there at random in the circle of wagons. “I know what you mean,” Cruz said. “The Comanches would have taken as many of these things with them as they could carry… and they would have scalped all of these settlers. Unless…”

“… unless someone else was here and ran them off,” Miguel finished. “Bandidos, maybe?”

Cruz pushed his hat off his head and let the tie-string catch it so he could thrust a hand through his hair. “That seems most likely, judging from the condition of the wagons. But who took my-Señorita Stewart? And where are the children Paco mentioned? Do the Comanches have them? Or the bandidos?”

Miguel shook his head. “There is no way of knowing.”

“Then we will have to follow both. You take half the vaqueros and go after the Comanches. I will follow the bandidos with the rest.”

“The roundup-”

“The roundup will have to wait,” Cruz snarled. He left Miguel and stalked back through the circle of Conestogas to where he had left his vaqueros waiting. When he arrived, he simply stood there, his face twisted in a scowl of rage.

“Patrón?” Paco’s terrified voice brought Cruz from his nightmarish thoughts.

“Juan, Luis,” he said to the two closest vaqueros. “You stay here and bury the dead. Tomorrow, get someone to fix that broken wheel and find mules to haul these wagons back to the hacienda. Also, send a message to the Texas Rangers in San Antonio to see if they can discover whether these people have any family who should be advised of their deaths.”

He turned to Paco and said, “Tell Doña Lucia what happened here, and that I will not be returning until I have found Señorita Stewart.”

“Sí, Patrón.”

Cruz’s thoughts were bleak as he watched Paco cross himself in fervent relief and spur his mount away.

Miguel had followed Cruz away from the wagons but had stopped to examine the tracks on the ground. “There is something more here, Patrón, that you should see.”

Cruz kneed his stallion over to the spot where Miguel knelt next to a jumble of hoofprints.

“These tracks were not made by Indian ponies,” the vaquero said.

Cruz read the sign that headed west toward Goliad and San Antonio. Suddenly, he felt the urgency to be gone from this place, a need to know what waited for him at the end of the trail.

“Vaya con Dios, Miguel. Till we meet again.”

Cruz kicked his fatigued bayo into a gallop without thought to the equally tired vaqueros who followed doggedly after him. He was calm. Too calm.

Anyone who knew him well would have realized the signs of danger. Like a feral animal, he hunted his prey. He relished the fight to come. His nostrils flared at the remembered scent of blood, the feel of flesh against his fist. If his wife had been hurt…

He forced his mind away from that thought, but it kept returning. His eyes narrowed, and his jaw tautened. He would kill any man who had harmed a hair on her head.

Chapter 9

SLOAN TIGHTENED HER GRIP ON THE SLEEPING child in her lap and nudged her horse with her spurs to keep him moving at the same steady jog as the mounts of the bandidos who surrounded her. Her left arm and shoulder ached from holding the little girl.

She welcomed the pain because it kept her mind off the paralyzing fear that had gripped her since the bandidos had taken her prisoner at the immigrants’ camp. She forced her thoughts away from the ordeal to come. She and Betsy were still alive. For now, that was enough.

The outlaws seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere and her presence had slowed them down. The leader of the ragtag band, called Ignacio by the other bandidos, had more than once urged her to spur her horse to greater speed.

In a very short time, she had grown to hate the Mexican whose tiny eyes disappeared into the sagging flesh on his cheeks when he grinned and whose bulging stomach was so huge that even his striped serape couldn’t disguise it.

When her hiding place beneath the wagons had been discovered, Ignacio had admonished his men, who had openly stared at her with lecherous eyes, to use her if they must but to do it quickly.

Sloan knew she had to act fast, but she wasn’t quite sure what she should do. Each of her two younger sisters had faced a similar crisis and come through it alive.

But she was nothing like Cricket or Bay. In the same situation, Cricket would have used her hands and wrestled the bandidos to the ground. Bay would have used her soft heart to turn away their wrath.

Sloan had used her head, blurting a promise of wealth if the bandidos would return her and Betsy-unharmed-to Three Oaks.

Ignacio had laughed cruelly at her offer. They had important business, he had said, and could not be burdened with a woman and a child on their journey. But several of the other bandidos, including an older, rail-thin, leather-faced man called Felipe, had been insistent that they take her along with them and collect the huge ransom she had promised her father would pay for her safe return.

Sloan had tried not to wonder where they were going, tried not to wonder what could be more important to Ignacio than the fortune she had offered for her and Betsy’s release. But it was certain Ignacio could be bent on nothing good.

It appeared they were finally nearing their destination and that her curiosity would soon be appeased. In the distance stood a lone live oak. Underneath the tree she saw the silhouette of a rotund man standing next to a closed, single-horse carriage. Her speculation was interrupted by the low rasp of Felipe’s guttural voice.

“You should send someone to take a message to the woman’s father while we meet with the Englishman.”

“Chingada! Leave me in peace, Felipe.”

Sloan stiffened at the crude profanity spoken by Ignacio. The response she heard from Felipe was equally foul. The sleeping child in her arms stirred restlessly. “It’s all right, Betsy. Everything’s going to be all right,” she crooned.

“Silencio! If you cannot control the niña, I will get rid of her,” Ignacio warned.

Betsy writhed desperately, trying to escape Sloan’s grip while fighting demons in her sleep.

“Be still, baby, I don’t want to drop you,” Sloan cautioned. She felt her pulse speed at the venomous look on Ignacio’s corpulent face.

Then the little girl began flailing and kicking in earnest, and Sloan was forced to pull her horse to a stop to try and calm her. “Please, baby, don’t fight me. It’s all right. You’re all right now.”

Nothing she did seemed to calm Betsy, whose struggles soon left her panting for breath. Sloan was tempted to wake the little girl, but that seemed cruel since Betsy would likely find the waking world no more pleasant than her nightmare sleep.

The sun crept farther above the horizon, bringing the lone figure in the distance into greater detail. An Englishman, Ignacio had said.

Sloan was aware of the political intrigues surrounding the annexation of Texas, of England ’s efforts to get Mexico to recognize the Republic as a sovereign state while at the same time encouraging Texas to remain an independent nation. But she had purposely chosen to ignore the whole political situation. Once burned, twice chary.