Maria looked at her for a moment. “You think the brothers are coming, don’t you, girl?”
“Yes.”
This time Maria didn’t argue.
Anda said, “Take a long drink, and then we go.”
While the two women drank, Anda moved to the mouth of the side canyon and looked into the valley. The Barbosas were there, closer than she would have thought, and coming at a fast walk. She was less than a kilometer in front of the big men. She went to the falling water and drank, then wiped her mouth and said, “They’re coming.”
Maria and Alicia turned as if the brothers were right there. Maria asked, “How far?”
“Maybe ten minutes behind.” Anda went to the rocks by the spring and began to climb. The two big-eyed women followed. They topped out in less than a minute and Anda led them across a pine covered flat. Their trail led through eleven piles of stones and onto a spine of dark rock that sloped down in a gradual curve to the left. Anda moved careful but quick, wanting to put the edge of the mountain between them and the trail.
***
Jesse and Johnny fell face-first into the pool and sputtered and splashed the water over their upper bodies and into their mouths. Jesse tossed his shirt-turban to the side and carefully bathed his head with the water, hissing as the coldness hit his burned scalp.
“Ohh, man. I didn’t think anything could taste this good,” Johnny said.
Jesse drank a handful of water and splashed some more on his head and chest, “Yeah, I couldn’t have gone a lot further.” He looked around the area and saw the tracks left by the women, saw the ones where their toes dug in as they climbed onto the rocks by the spring.
“You know this was here?” Johnny asked, nodding his head to indicate the spring.
“How would I know? I don’t go climbin’ around in these damn mountains.”
“How you think they knew about it?”
“They didn’t. Just luck they wandered up on it.”
Johnny wasn’t so sure, but let it lay.
Jesse took another drink and pointed to their tracks, “We’re right on their heels. Let’s get ‘em.”
Johnny said, “Let’s do it.” He took a drink and followed Jesse as his brother climbed the rocks.
***
Anda looked back. The two women walked so slow. Alicia was sitting again, rubbing her legs. They had come off the spine and were on a long, steep switchback trail that zigzagged back and forth and was visible all the way to the bottom of the mountain. Anda tried to move faster, because it was a certainty the Barbosas would see them before they could get down, but the women weren’t cooperating.
The trail was steep, and Anda’s thighs quivered from the effort, but the two women were in much worse shape. They panted and huffed, sometimes falling as the strength in their legs gave out.
She watched as Alicia got to her feet and the two came forward on shuffling feet. The three of them looked back at a sound and saw Jesse Barbosa at the start of the switchback, yelling for them to stop.
Anda said, “Hurry! We can hide at the bottom!” Adrenaline started the two tired women moving and Anda took one last look at the men hurrying down the trail, whooping and yelling as if the women were already caught.
The women went down the trail at a fast walk, looking often at the men, Anda saying, “Keep this distance between us. Don’t go faster and waste your strength. We will need it at the bottom.”
Jesse and Johnny began to tire, and their legs, especially their thighs, were getting shaky. They slowed to a walk, too tired to yell. Jesse became angry when he saw the women slow their pace to match his.
“It’s that damn little Indian,” said Johnny between deep breaths. “She’s making them do it, taunting us like that.”
“What’s she doing now?” Jesse said. They watched as the little Tarahumara sent the women hurrying down the trail where it narrowed to a shoulder-wide corridor through a dense stand of tall, spidery ocotillo.
Anda waited until the women were out the other side, then she pulled the long, thorny branches of the ocotillo from opposite sides of the trail and hooked them together by their own thorns, making a tiger-clawed barrier across the path. She did it at a steady pace, leaving a hundred thorny barricades for the brothers to break through. Johnny looked on both sides of the trail. The ocotillo was much worse there, leaving no way around.
As they watched, Anda finished and stood looking at them, then she gave them the Come on hand signal.
“Oh, I tell you, I am gonna kill her!” roared Jesse. They increased their pace and trotted down the trail and Anda did the same, trotting to catch up to the two women.