“Let’s make a turn up here, see if they stay on us. If they do, it means there’s a tracker in their group.”
Walking at a slightly faster pace put them quickly into the rougher areas, with fingers of alluvial washes spread out like long, spidery fingers. They crossed two dozen such cuts in the terrain, some were three feet deep, while others only six inches, but all prevented fast pursuit.
Hunter spotted the vehicle again, an older model Ford pickup with oversized tires, still coming their way. It was a good seven or eight hundred yards behind them, but made much faster time than the two did on foot. She turned and said to Adan, “We need to speed up.”
They moved into a dog trot, a ground-eating, shuffling run that Apaches used in the nineteenth century to cover a hundred miles a day, and glided over the broken ground. Adan kept up, but he showed the strain on his face.
The sharp snap of a supersonic round passing close and the plume of dust from the bullet strike showed thirty feet in front of them. Two seconds later, the distant boom of the report reached their ears.
Hunter sprinted ahead as Adan ran beside her. She said, “Cut into that arroyo up there.” She was also shocked at how close the man came to hitting them from that distance. He’s good, she thought, and that frightened her.
They cut into the three-foot-deep arroyo and Hunter dropped down to crouch as she continued along the cut. Adan labored with his breathing. “I can’t go much farther, Hunter.”
“A little farther, okay?”
He nodded, saving his breath.
Another bullet hit far from them, so Hunter relaxed but kept up the pace. They were still some thirty or more miles from the border and any help, and that made her stomach weak with dread.
The arroyo deepened to five feet, so the two runners raced upright, going quicker and breathing easier than before. When the arroyo split, Hunter took the left, and took the next left off of that. She stopped and caught her breath as Adan collapsed on the sandy arroyo floor. When their breathing slowed, she listened.
The pickup was still coming. She found some sage growing at the edge of the cut, and raised her head behind it to peek at their back trail. The truck was two hundred yards, maybe a bit more, behind them. The driver had already cut the distance by over half. She saw the scoped rifle out of the passenger side window as well. They had a shooter, a tracker, and a vehicle. Hunter swallowed, and her mouth was dry.
She watched the pickup wallow across several small washes, and Hunter saw two men in it. One was the shooter, he was obvious. The other was the driver and the tracker. She figured that out when they stopped and the driver got out to check for sign. The shooter took his rifle, a scoped, bolt action Remington, Hunter thought, and scanned the area through the scope. When the tracker signaled for him to return to the pickup, he lowered the big bore rifle and hopped inside.
Adan touched her shoulder, “I know them. They work for Winston Hart, on his big ranch.”
“Who are they?”
“The one with the rifle is Anselmo Ancira. The driver is Ben Zambrano.”
Hunter pointed at the healed scar on his face, “Did they do that to you?”
“Ancira did. Zambrano is nicer. Not nice, but nicer than Anselmo.”
Adan saw Hunter’s nostrils widen and her eyes take on a hard look when he told her about who hit him. She said, “Okay, then.”
Adan said, “We cannot outrun the men in the pickup, can we?”
“No, but I have an idea. Are you game?”
“Por supuesto, of course.”
She told him her plan, and he smiled.
**
Ben Zambrano slapped the steering wheel, “These two are causing me some major grief!”
“They’re like damn jackrabbits, cutting this way and that way, then disappearing and reappearing someplace else. I can’t even get a bead on them,” Anselmo said.
“I’m calling for some help.” He lifted the mike from the fifteen-watt two-way radio and called, reaching the ranch. He sent their coordinates and told them to send a couple more guys, armed. They said two men were on their way with AK-47s, be there asap.
Ben saw the boy rise up in sagebrush a hundred yards ahead of them and take off running across a flat area. He floored the gas and they pursued him across a patch of washboard and hardpan, then through a thick copse of creosote bushes, where he dropped out of sight like jumping into a well.
Ben slowed and drove
to the point where they last saw him, and stopped parallel to a small wash. He got out, leaving the truck running, and found where the tracks showed in the sandy bottom. “I’m gonna follow them for a while.”