Anselmo nodded, took his rifle and walked to a nearby high point to check the area.
Hunter rolled out of the sage patch twenty yards to the side of the pickup and hurried to the vehicle, sliding into the driver’s seat without a sound. She glanced at the two men and, with her heart beating as fast as a hummingbird’s, pulled the shift into D and shot out of there.
Ben looked back over his shoulder and shouted, “Hey! Hey!”
Anselmo turned, brought up the rifle and shot.
Hunter felt the bullet hit the passenger door with a hard, metallic sound and it entered the cab to smash the two-way radio into several pieces. She cut the wheel and took a sliding turn around a hill no more than six feet tall, but that was enough. A final, futile bullet whined overhead, and she was in the clear.
Adan raced out of a second arroyo as she approached, and Hunter slid the pickup sideways to him. He hopped into the passenger’s seat before it stopped while Hunter gunned the motor and they sped away, leaving a rooster tail of dust behind them.
Hunter felt an enormous sense of relief as they drove toward the border. Adan wore a goofy grin and giggled. He said, “We did it.”
“You did a good job.”
They drove across the country, being careful to dodge potholes or rocks large enough to tear out the transmission, until Hunter spotted a primitive road on her left. They took it and made better time, but she was still careful, watching for anything that might slow their progress.
She said to Adan, “Look around in here, see if there’s any water or something to eat.”
He opened the glove compartment and pulled out two sticks of jerky, but there wasn’t any water in the pickup. She said, “Let’s hold those until we get some water. There’s a lot of pepper on them.”
Adan nodded. They continued, now close enough to the border to see the massive mountain ranges in the Big Bend and Mexico. They were getting closer, she could feel it. She wondered what Ben and Anselmo were doing now that they were afoot. The thought made her smile.
The smile faded when, in the rearview mirror she spotted a lone finger of dust in the air some miles to their rear. She continued at her pace, but kept an eye on the dust trail. It wasn’t long before she knew for certain it was coming fast for them. She said, “We’ve got company.”
“Adan jerked his head to look, “Are you sure it is the same men?”
“No, but they are coming very fast, and straight for us. There were two turns on this road back there and they passed them both by. We can’t afford to think they aren’t the bad guys.” She drove as fast as she dared, sliding around several turns, with the pickup throwing rooster tails of dust and gravel on each one. Her mind raced, which way to go? Where can I cross? Will they kill us before we make it to Texas?
She thought of the border areas she knew, and made a decision that would put them in a slim window of safety, if she didn’t slip.
Cutting left, she abandoned the primitive road and shot across the creosote flat, through a three-strand barbed wire fence with the breaking wire making sounds like strumming an out-of-tune guitar, then onto a ranch road going northeast.
Adan said, “You’re speeding up.”
“They’re gaining.”
“Go faster, then.”
She did.
After ten minutes, with the pursuers falling back to several hundred yards behind them, Adan said, “I recognize some of this.”
“I’m trying to get close to Lajitas to cross through the river.”
“In this pickup?”
“We’re gonna try. We won’t have time to do it any other way.”
Adan though for a bit, “You can jump it, like in the movies.”
Hunter grinned, “You know a spot?”
“Downriver, a quarter mile below Comanche Creek where it enters the Rio Bravo. There are small bluffs at the river’s edge that are ten, twelve feet high. You can jump there and maybe get all the way across.”
She grinned, “Maybe?”
Adan said, “Even if we don’t, we will hit in the water close to the Texas side.”