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The food came twenty minutes later, along with six cold Dos Equis beers, and they ate and drank in Raymond’s room, talking about what they would do the next morning. When the meal was finished, Hunter yawned, stood and said, “Think I’ll hit the sack. See you at daybreak.”
***
In El Paso, Truman was awake at five AM. He slipped into his running gear and walked out the front door, taking his time stretching and loosening up, liking the feel of the cool desert air before sunrise. After stretching out his calves on the curb, Truman started at a slow jog along the lower edges of the Franklin Mountains where they jutted into the center of town, dividing it into its east and west components.
Thirty minutes into the run, he was sweating good, feeling the endorphins flowing and exhilarating him. Truman’s legs felt strong and springy as he jogged on the road’s asphalt surface, just inside the pedestrian sidewalk that separated the road from the talus slope.
Three-quarters of the way to the Scenic Overlook, Truman heard a vehicle coming up the mountain. He hopped off the road and onto the sidewalk as the vehicle accelerated up the hill. This guy is hauling, Truman thought. He moved to the outside edge of the sidewalk.
At the last second, something made him look.
A red Dodge Ram pickup with a heavy pipe bumper was on the sidewalk coming straight at him. Truman had time to get his feet off the ground before it struck. He felt the impact, then the quick slide across the hood and the numbing slam into the windshield, continuing over the top of the pickup, spinning in the air like a top and looking down into the pickup bed before landing among the rocks and talus on the sloping side of the mountain.
Truman listened in a daze as the truck sped away in the distance, then he looked at his legs. One cocked at a crazy angle, and there was red wetness over several of the rocks. Truman leaned his head back until it rested on a small patch of grass and said, “That hurt,” before passing out.
***
The morning sun was half up when Raymond and Hunter reached the small cairn of stones that marked where Hunter stopped following the tracks yesterday. Raymond said, “You want to stay on them while I go ahead and check a few places? I can drive ahead a couple miles, check the wash by Calle de Seis Muertos. If she keeps circling, she’ll have to cross it.”
“Yeah, or maybe we’ll get lucky and she hasn’t reached there.”
“So she’ll be between us? That would be good,…but she is Tarahumara.”
“Not much chance she’s gonna stop because we got tired last night.”
“It’s just a thought,” Raymond continued, “I’ll wait at the wash for you. You aren’t there in a couple hours, I’m coming back to track you.”
“If you find her sign, come get me and we’ll go ahead together.”
“You got it,” he said, and walked to his car.
Raymond pulled off the shoulder of Seis Muertos and parked on the gravel hardpan. The road was empty this early, and Raymond dropped off the side and into the wide, shallow draw. The road spanned the wash with a low bridge made of timbers from high in the mountains. The bridge was there when Pancho Villa and his army took Ojinaga in The Great Revolution. Pancho’s second-in-command, Rodolfo Fierro, discovered six officers of the opposing army hiding under the bridge. In an act of expedience and to save ammunition, Fierro had his men hang them from the timbers. They were left to rot, and in time, it became the reason for the road’s name, literally translated as the Road of Six Dead Men.
Raymond worked fast across the loose sand-and-gravel wash. The draw was dry and dusty, and there were impressions at various places in the bed. Some were goats, another a burro. Alongside the animal tracks were several sets of tennis shoe imprints that Raymond figured were local children who herded the animals. Near the juncture of the bridge and the edge of the wash were numerous prints, showing where people descended into the wash to use the privacy as a bathroom.
The sun was clear of the horizon by the time Raymond worked across the entire streambed. There wasn’t a single huarache track, and he felt that maybe they were lucky, that Anda had stopped for the night and was between them. On a hunch, more than anything else, he climbed out of the draw and worked slowly up the foothills. Raymond tried to put himself in the little Indian’s mind, to think of what she might do. He realized she was almost a wild thing, and had lived by her wits for over a year. Raymond stopped scanning the ground and straightened up. He checked over the area and made the decision where to look.
He climbed straight up the side of the largest foothill, and when he topped out, the view was what strengthened his guess. He was two hundred feet above the surrounding area and had easy access to higher ground and steeper slopes. The foothills formed the rough first step into the higher desert mountains around Ojinaga. Raymond could see that Anda, by taking a winding route, wouldn’t have to descend or ascend, but could travel the ridges and have an eagle-eye view of anything moving below her.
Raymond picked a spot where the path would have to narrow. He found her tracks by the base of a table-sized slab of rock. He followed them a short distance and saw where she walked, and occasionally stopped suddenly before continuing around a small bush of greasewood or low patch of prickly pear cactus. Raymond could see the obstacles clearly, but knew if someone walked at night, the brush would be invisible until the person was right on top of it. He took his western straw hat off and rubbed his head. She came this far at night, and had still been going strong. Problem was, these foothills ended four miles ahead, and the last one ended right above Outlaw Road. “Shit,” Raymond said, then put on his hat and hurried down the side of the hill to his car.
***
Raymond called Hunter on his cell phone as soon as he reached the car. She told him where she would be on the road, and he drove as fast as he dared.
When she belted herself in the passenger seat and he was driving, Raymond said, “She’s headed to Outlaw Road.”
“Then let’s go.”
“You remember what I said about that place? You do not go in there without a weapon, understand?”
“We don’t have any time, Raymond. She’s in there and she’s in trouble. We’ve got no choice.”
“Think about it, will you? You’re probably the most famous woman in the southwest right now. You think they won’t recognize you out there, won’t know you’re La Patrulla, La Tejana? You’re in Mexico and those people out there would love to have a Border Patrol Agent to take out their frustrations on. You understand that, r
ight?”
Hunter sat tight-lipped for several seconds, then softened her look and said, “You’re right. Maybe we call Wayne, let him get some of his Mexican contacts to help us?”
