Free Scorpion by Kerry Newcomb Page A

have been grazing the wild grasses that carpeted the meadow.
    Several miles to the north the desert took hold and the landscape became stark and ancient-looking, home to the spirits of the Old Ones, whose passing had preceded the coming of Cortez and the conquest of the Aztecs, and foretold the demise of the mountain tribes and the death of their culture.
    Here in Quintero’s valley, bright yellow trumpet flowers heralded the advent of summer, and warm breezes wafted through the chino grama grass, stirring swarms of bees and dragonflies and lifting hawks to lofty heights. But the ranch that should have been bustling with activity sat strangely silent. The mid-afternoon heat of July and August was weeks away. It was not hot enough to warrant taking a siesta, yet the bunkhouse, barn, and hacienda appeared abandoned. Where were the vaqueros, where were the housekeeper and her husband?
    Zion muttered his concerns to the disguised man sitting beside him on the wagon seat as they halted the wagon before the thick heavy-looking front doors of the hacienda. Even more puzzling, there was no sign of any trouble.
    “What are you waiting for?” Isabella asked. “I’m tired of this wagon.” She climbed over the side and hopped down onto the hard-packed drive that circled in front of the hacienda. Zion started to caution her, but when Josefina joined her adventurous daughter, he realized there was no holding them back. The women were home. They felt safe here. The fact that the ranch appeared deserted did not seem to faze them in the slightest.
    “We’ll bury my husband in the family plot after we’ve all refreshed ourselves with a cool drink.” She wasn’t wasting any time. And judging from the heat and the condition of the casket, that was all to the good. They’d plugged the bullet holes as best they could, but despite their efforts, Don Sebastien’s earthly remains had begun to smell a little ripe.
    Ben didn’t care if the place was a ghost town. All that mattered to him was that they had safely reached their destination. Zion no longer needed his skills. The women were home, and the sooner Ben could quit their company, the better. As for the coffin, let the dead bury the dead. A scruffy-looking herd dog poked its head around the corner of a hog pen, and recognizing the new arrivals, darted past a chicken coop, took a shortcut through the empty corral, and came loping toward Isabella, who greeted the excitable animal with open arms.
    “Niño!” she called out, and the dog placed its front paws on the girl’s shoulders and proceeded to lick her face while she laughed. The front door of the hacienda opened and an unusual couple in their mid-fifties emerged from the cool interior of the house and stepped into the sunlight. Elena Gallegos was the housekeeper, a tall rail-thin woman. Her long hair hung in two thick braids in the fashion of the Comanche women she had lived with during an eleven-year captivity that had robbed her of her childhood. Her plain features, burned brown from the sun, brightened with a smile as she recognized the wagon.
    “My little ones … my poor little ones,” she exclaimed, and left the shade of the porch to gather Josefina and Isabella in her embrace.
    Pedro Gallegos, Elena’s husband, held back at first sight of the coffin in the wagon and the stranger in chains clambering down to stand alongside Zion in the yard. He was carrying a shotgun. His sombrero was tilted back to reveal a shock of steel-gray hair. Shorter than his wife by six or seven inches, Pedro looked to have been a feisty ranchero in his youth, and still pulled his own weight about Ventana, despite an injury that had left him with a permanent limp and too stove-up to earn his wages astride a horse.
    “Looks like we made it,” Ben said. He held up his manacled wrists, but Zion, preoccupied as to the whereabouts of the other ranch hands, ambled across the yard to join Pedro in the shade of the tile roof that shaded the front