She pictured the scene of the stage robbery except that in her mind the man who pursued her into the rocks was not one of the robbers at all, but Gaetan. She centered the sights of her Remington on his chest and squeezed the trigger. She watched him waver on his feet the way the robber had before dropping to the ground dead and rolling not just down the mountainside but straight into the flames of hell. She dreamed of escaping, of sneaking through the Apache camp the way she had through the Rurales’ camp. In the confusion of the dream, she saw Gaetan on the wheel again, but this time she walked up to one of the Rurales, politely asked to borrow his rifle, and ran the bayonet through that blackest of hearts before skipping off into the night by herself, light-hearted and free. What she did not do was study the people and place around her, find their weaknesses and devise a plan. The remoteness of the mountain valley, the terrible, narrow trail to it and the lookout she had seen greet Gaetan combined to make escape seem impossible.
