The Eye of the Hunter Read Online Free

Nogales when he had married her. He tried to see in her face the brush-popping frontierswoman, but her arrestingly pretty features defeated him. The face was flawless—in his opinion—her hair brushed back and waved in the style of a Greek marble, her eyebrows dark and arched; the pale eyes would have to be gray or blue. They quirked up a little at the corners—charming, he thought! Exotic! Physically, she looked to be a lightweight; but frail little women had been manipulating men since Eve. Though it was almost impossible to believe, she might be a husband killer.
    A dead shot, as Rip had said....
    The old man called something in Spanish.
    Henry slipped into the hot water with a sigh of pleasure. Soaping, he tried to recall in Rip’s last letter a forecast of trouble breeding like a germ. Some trivia—a slight fever, harbinger of a lethal disease; an angry encounter with someone. But he remembered nothing of that sort.
    Rip was missing, and Mrs. Rip was willing to talk about it. But only to him, evidently. And he would bet his money belt that she had a story to tell, too....

Chapter Three
    Nogales, A.T.: August 1899
    Frances Parrish was saddling her little buckskin mare in the yard of the ranch house fifteen miles up the Santa Cruz River. She wore a divided leather skirt for the long ride ahead, a frilled white shirt of her father’s, and blued Chihuahua spurs on her boots. Her dark hair was pinned up because of the heat, with a straw boater atop it.
    Her old Mexican maid, Josefina, held the bridle of her horse as she tied a blanket roll behind the cantle. She had known Josefina since she was a child in Hermosillo. The women chattered breathlessly in two languages, the horse eyeing the Mexican woman as she waved her hand to emphasize what she was saying.
    â€œPanchita, no es necesario esto! Alejandro lo puede . He can ride like a monkey, and if he has to ride all night, it won’t matter to him!” Alejandro was Josefina’s grandson, only fourteen.
    â€œAlejandro has to work on the big rock, Josefina. Ademas , I can ride like a monkey, too, and I’m taking all I need to stay overnight. Oiga! —if anyone comes past on the way to town, ask him to bring me some black powder— no se cuanto, pero —maybe five pounds, que piensas ?”
    â€œNo se, Panchita . But there are lions out there. You must take a rifle!”
    â€œAll right—bring me his carbine, la chiquita .”
    But when she held the carbine in her hands, and Josefina was lacing the scabbard to the saddle, she looked at the weapon in doubt. Like everything else Rip owned, the carbine was shamelessly decorated—engraved and inlaid, the scabbard hand-carved and dyed yellow, green, and red. Rip would be furious when she caught him out, and when he was angry he drank; when he was drunk he tried to drag her to bed, and she would have none of it anymore. They were finished.
    Could she trust herself with a gun? If she actually had to fight him off, would she shoot?
    Yet it was true that there were mountain lions in those canyons a half day’s ride west, and, more to the point, smugglers and wandering cow thieves. Finally she checked the magazine, put a shell in the chamber, and set the gun on safety. She took a deep breath, reached down to squeeze the hand of the Mexican woman, and said, “Adios, Josefina!”
    â€œAdios, Panchita! Que te vayas bien!”
    The previous night, the minute she laid eyes on the treasure map in Rip’s boot, she had finally realized what he was up to: digging for the famous treasure of the Jesuits, like an army of men before him!
    Ever since they were married, he had made frequent trips into Sonora to buy cattle, leaving her for months at a time to run the whole show, with nothing for help and protection but a Mexican woman and a boy too young to raise a mustache.
    But the few cattle Rip brought home were sorry-looking critters. Once he had brought a leather bag