Free Trilby by Diana Palmer Page B

grim, Jack thought, and even under the circumstances, he was able to appreciate how very Western and dangerous the other man looked in his jeans and blue-checked Western shirt and red bandanna. He had on wristbands, as Jack did, but Vance’s were scarred and worn dark with age. His boots had small rowels on the spurs and he was wearing wide, bat-wing leather chaps. His hat wasn’t a new one like Jack’s. It was weather-beaten and warped, but it suited him somehow. A rope was looped over hissaddle horn and he was carrying the usual saddle roll that most of his men’s gear sported. A colorful Mexican poncho was thrown over one broad shoulder and he was smoking a cigarette with lazy disinterest. For a man going to war, he looked magnificently unaffected.
    Jack had to bite back angry words. He hadn’t really spoken to Thorn since his conversation with Curt Vance. It was difficult to have to deal with a man who’d been instrumental in very nearly ruining his daughter’s reputation.
    “Ready to go?” Thorn drawled when Jack reached him. “I can add ten men to the party.”
    “I’m sure we have enough,” Jack replied stiffly. “I brought six.”
    Six men, plus himself and Vance, to hunt down a party of bandits. Thorn could have chuckled at the man’s innocence. The Mexican revolutionaries probably boasted fifty men. Fighting across the border was growing stronger by the day as the resistance to Díaz’s rule mounted. Several different small bands of insurrectionists were raiding local stock from the northern Sonoran province of Mexico—and they weren’t averse to taking local cattle over the border to sell as well as feed hungry men. Of course, they didn’t exactly pay for the local cattle they took. Things in Mexico were definitely building to war, Thorn thought privately, and he was worried more by the day about the grim possibility of American intervention if fighting migrated over the border. Intervention would mean war with Mexico, and no one wanted that.
    “I’d feel more comfortable with my men along,” Thorn said. He looked straight at Jack as he spoke and he didn’t blink. The look was as vivid as a curse.
    “As you wish, of course,” Jack said austerely. He hadn’t mentioned Trilby, and neither had Thorn. But both men were having trouble acting naturally.
    Thorn had heard about Jack’s visit to his cousin and what had been said. He and Curt had argued for the first time in memory. But at last, Curt had convinced him that his shadowy paramour was not Trilby. The revelation had left Thorn confused and brutally ashamed. He’d savaged Trilby, all because Sally had accused her. But why had Sally lied? That was the only piece of the puzzle he couldn’t fit in.
    However, there was no time for it now. Thorn put his hand to his mouth and let out a fierce, piercing whistle. Immediately ten mounted men rode out and joined the small party.
    They looked a lot like their boss, Jack thought. Most of them wore weather-beaten clothing and they were armed to the teeth. One or two of them looked absolutely roguish. There were two Apaches in the group; one short, aging one and another who was tall and well built with oddly intelligent black eyes. He looked positively grim.
    “You’re not taking the Indians?” Jack asked under his breath.
    Thorn mentally counted to ten. “Naki and Tiza are my trackers,” he told Lang. “The best in my outfit. I can’t even find the signs they can.”
    “Look here, I don’t trust Indians,” Jack snapped. “The stories I’ve heard about them…”
    “I don’t imagine you’ve heard that in the old days some whites kept the Apaches as slaves?” he asked quietly. “Or that soldiers often attacked Indian villages and killed women and children?”
    Lang cleared his throat. “Well…”
    “I’ll vouch for my men. All of my men,” Thorn said quietly. “Let’s ride.”
    “Yes, of course.” Jack raised his arm and motioned for his men to follow. He tried to fall in