The Blaze of Noon

by Tim Champlin

  Somewhere inside, a whistle signaled the end of the supper hour. The two gravediggers paused. Suddenly they heard faint sounds of a struggle and a yell, followed by a shot. The guard leaped to his feet, hand going to his Colt as he turned toward the cell-block. It was a fatal mistake. A second later, the flat of Ocano’s shovel struck Big Bill Braxton full in the face with all the power of the big half-breed behind it. The head guard fell without a sound.

  Seconds later the iron grate flew open and several prisoners in striped uniforms burst forth, two of them waving pistols. A dozen men scattered among the mounded graves, running like rabbits, bounding down the slope toward the river. After a slight hesitation, the Gatling gun chattered its deadly staccato from the guard tower. Lead slugs ripped across the bare ground, overtaking the fleeing prisoners.

  Ocano finished off Braxton by smashing the guard’s face with a rock, then dashed away, joining the rush for the river.

  Two men flung up their arms and fell, but Deraux saw no more. He was dragging the body of the guard toward the open grave amidst the cracking of Winchesters and the rhythmic explosions of the Gatling.

  In the dust-blown twilight at the bottom of the shallow grave, Deraux stripped off his prison garb and exchanged it for the uniform of the dead guard. They were nearly the same size, and Braxton also had dark hair. The guard’s face was unrecognizable, and Deraux hoped it would be an hour or two before they realized the body in the yellow and black stripes was not his.

  The long-barreled Colt .45 was fully loaded and the loops of the cartridge belt held another twenty-four rounds. He peered cautiously above the hole. Dusk was coming on, and blowing dust obscured details. Gunfire from the towers had ceased and he saw several striped mounds—bodies of cons cut down. These few had not reached the cover of the brush along the riverbank, but had, nonetheless, escaped.

  He waited as long as he dared, hoping for darkness. But a manual search would soon begin. Three minutes later the gunfire was becoming sporadic and distant. He bellied out of the grave and lay still for several seconds, watching and listening. Finally he rose, tugged the kepi down on his head, and trotted toward the lower end of the sloping graveyard, pistol in hand, hoping to be mistaken for a guard if he were seen from one of the watchtowers. There was a shout from behind, but he didn’t stop, plunging into the brush and sliding on down the hill toward the riverbank.

  Suddenly he realized men were in the river and guards were yelling directions at each other, running along the bank, shooting at heads bobbing in the water.

  Taking advantage of the noise and confusion, Deraux changed course and started through the mesquite away from the river and toward Yuma. The uproar of the break out would have guards swarming the streets of the town as well as the banks of the river. If he were caught in Braxton’s uniform, he’d be arrested for murder.

  At the corner of the first street, he paused to holster his Colt, catch his breath, and brush the dust off his uniform. Ocano had bolted away on his own, waiting for him as one hog at a trough waits for another. That was all right with Deraux. It was every man for himself now.

  Where to go? He knew no one here. If any of the off-duty guards were in town and had heard the noise of the break, they’d be on the look-out. Any of the guards would quickly recognize him as a phony.

  From somewhere down the block came the faint music of a concertina. He darted across the street into an alleyway. A rat scurried away from his footfalls. Rotting garbage overflowed trash barrels, its ripe stench mingling with the smell of privies behind a row of saloons.

  The streets began to fill with people, and Deraux stepped into the shadows of a doorway as two men came down the alley, talking in Spanish and sharing a bottle. He was thankful for the darkness and the blowing dust. He had to find some other clothing before the Saturday night revelers became too numerous in this part of town.

  A pair of uniformed guards turned into the alley, one carrying a lantern. They worked their way toward him, swinging their clubs, peering into privies, and behind barrels and empty boxes.

  Deraux felt a moment of panic as he pressed back into the doorway. He had to hide. Perhaps he could rip off the cap and jacket, and lie down like a drunk who’s passed out. But then they’d recognize him as an escaped prisoner by his close-cropped hair, or his face, if they were guards he knew.

  He had to make a quick decision. They were within ten yards of him. He dropped his hand to the Colt. But the sound of shots in this alley would bring the law running. He could surprise and overpower one guard, but not two, before the alarm was given.

  He held his breath and prepared to spring.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As Deraux crouched, his shoulder bumped the door behind him. To his surprise, the door gave and swung silently inward on oiled hinges. He glanced at the approaching guards. The light of their bull’s-eye lantern probed here and there behind the litter as it swung toward him, hardly a dozen feet away. He had no choice. Colt in hand, he quickly ducked inside the dark room and pushed the door nearly shut behind him.

  “We could be waylaid in this damned alley,” one of the guards growled, their light flashing across the now empty doorway.

  “Yeah. Keep your eyes open and your gun handy,” the other man replied as their footsteps and voices began to recede.

  Deraux took a deep breath, trying to calm his pounding heart. He leaned weakly against the wall. Where was he? The room was completely dark, but, as his eyes adjusted, he could make out a dim light showing through a muslin-draped doorway leading to the next room. He holstered his pistol and, hands extended, cautiously groped his way toward the light. He bumped into a low bed and a chair, but made almost no noise, finally pausing at the curtained doorway. The odor of stale cigar smoke and perfume hung in the stuffy room. A Mexican woman sat in an armchair, filing her fingernails by the light of a coal-oil lamp. She was in a dressing gown and her wavy hair fell to her shoulders, reflecting a black sheen in the lamplight. From what he could see of her face, he got a quick impression of sultry good looks, made puffy by dissipation.

  Something moved on the other side of the room and Deraux leaned back into the shadow. A lean man was asleep on the sagging couch across the room from the woman. He stirred and mumbled something in his sleep.

  Deraux guessed he was in the crib of a prostitute, possibly in the rear of some saloon. He slid away toward the door he’d entered. Time to go. The guards should be gone by now. It was doubtful they’d search the alley a second time. Then he hesitated. Could he get out of Yuma wearing the guard’s uniform? Better than prison stripes, but the garb would surely call attention to him.

  He carefully felt his way to the door, opened it a foot, and slipped out, closing it softly behind him. The moon was rising and the wind had died, although the air still smelled of dust.

  Deraux tried to get his bearings. He had to avoid the river where most of the other prisoners had fled and the searchers were concentrated. And he would need water if he was going to strike southeast into the desert. He paused and tugged the cap down on his head. The moon gave pale illumination to the littered alleyway.

  He was startled by thudding footsteps and turned to see a bulky figure lumbering toward him. Deraux brought up his Colt, the barrel glinting in the moonlight. The man slowed, snatched something off a nearby trash heap, and swung it at him. Deraux ducked, firing blindly. The board glanced off his shoulder, striking him in the ear. His cap went flying and he fell on his back, head reeling. Before he could cock the revolver, the bulky form leaped and pinned him. He heard harsh breathing and smelled sweat.

  Suddenly the door behind them opened and lamplight flooded the struggling pair.

  “¿Quién es?” quavered a woman’s voice.

  Yellow light fell full on the flushed mustachioed face a foot from Deraux’s eyes.

  “Ocano!” Deraux gasped through the chokehold. “It’s me . . . Deraux.”

  The attacker’s eyes went wide. “Son-of-a-bitch!” He released his grip and drew ba
ck. “Thought you was one o’ them damned screws.”

  The woman who’d opened the door moved to close it, but the big man rolled upright and thrust a big boot in the way. “Hold it, lady, we’re coming in.” Ocano dragged Deraux to his feet as if he weighed nothing. The board had left a slight cut on his ear and a rising swelling on the side of his head.

  Deraux rubbed his bruised throat as he stumbled back inside. The phenomenal grip of his former cell-mate had nearly crushed his windpipe. He recognized the woman he’d been spying on a few minutes earlier. She led the way through the bedchamber and through the muslin curtain into the sitting area. The drunk was stirring on the couch.

  “Lady, get this man some clothes,” Ocano said, indicating Deraux.

  “I have none, señor,” she said. Her hand shook as she placed the lamp on the table. She turned to the lean Mexican now sitting and rubbing the sleep from his red eyes while looking bewildered. “Rivera, where can this man get a pair of pants and a shirt?” she asked.

  “I do not know,” he said.

  Deraux, who was standing closest, could smell the whiskey on his breath. A nearly empty bottle lay on the floor by the couch.

  “Shit!” Ocano spat, looking at the Mexican’s lean frame. “He could swap with you, but you’re too damned skinny.” He glanced around the tiny room, then settled on Deraux. “You and me gotta get the hell outta here. That shot’ll bring the law.” He gnawed indecisively at the corner of his mustache. His baldhead glistened with sweat in the lamplight. He grabbed the woman’s arm. “What’s your name, chiquita?”

  “Elena.”

  “Get us two or three canteens of water . . . pronto!”

  She jumped.

  “Hold it.” Ocano swept up the bottle from the floor and emptied it with a swallow. “Here, fill this with water, too. I’ll be watching you, so don’t say a word about us being here, or I’ll kill you. ¿Comprende?”

  “Sí, señor.” Her eyes were wide. “I swear on the Virgin of Guadalupe.”

  “You’d better swear on your own life, ’cause that’s what you’ll lose if you give us away.”

  “You have my word.”

  She opened the door to the saloon, letting in the clamor of voices, laughter, and clinking glassware. Ocano flattened himself against the wall and caught the door, holding it open a crack so he could watch the girl.

  Deraux kept his gaze on Rivera. He suspected the Mexican was not nearly as befuddled with drink as he let on. From the looks of these quarters, Deraux assumed Elena had just finished with this client.

  Elena returned in five minutes with three canteens and the whiskey bottle full of water. She handed the bottle and the heavy containers to Ocano. “I told the bartender I needed the water to wash myself,” she said.

  “Who’re you?” Ocano asked the Mexican.

  “Angel Rivera.”

  “What’s the shortest way out of town?”

  Rivera pointed toward the alley.

  “How far?”

  “Half a mile to the edge of the desert.” Rivera looked as if he wanted to throw up from fear or a sour stomach. “You are the hombres from the prison, no?”

  “How far to water?” Ocano demanded, ignoring the question.

  “A day, mas o menos.”

  “Speak English! How far in miles?”

  “About thirty or forty miles, more or less, to the high tanks in the first mountains.”

  “You know the way?”

  Rivera nodded, swallowing, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

  “You’ll guide us there.”

  “But señor, I am not a well man. The heat . . . the tanks might be dry this time of year.”

  “And you might be lying, you little weasel!” Ocano jerked him to his feet by his shirtfront, and backhanded him across the mouth. Rivera’s head snapped sideways and his fearful expression changed to one of rage.

  “Look out!” Deraux yelled.

  A knife flashed from the Mexican’s boot top and the blade whipped up just as the big half-breed jerked back. Ocano’s shirtfront was ripped open and a fine trickle of blood oozed from a foot-long cut on his hairy chest.

  “Ah, you strike quicker than a sidewinder, amigo.” He grinned, showing big white teeth below the bushy mustache. “But you’ll have reason to regret that.”

  Rivera crouched in a defensive posture, holding the blade up for another slash or thrust.

  Deraux cocked the Colt, the double click of the hammer loud in the sudden silence.

  “No, no, don’t shoot the little bastard,” Ocano said. “He’s defiant as a cornered rat. But we need him as a live rat, not a dead one.” He held out his hand. “I’ll take that before it gets you into any more trouble.”

  Rivera, eyeing the long-barreled Colt trained on him, handed over the knife, haft forward. Ocano shoved the weapon under his belt.

  Elena, who’d backed into a corner, reached into a woven bag on the floor and brought out a full whiskey bottle. “Here, señor, please take this and go, before someone comes.”

  “Ah, my little puta, you read my mind.” The big man pulled the cork with his teeth, then took three huge swallows. “Whoogh!” He drizzled the ninety-proof liquid down the cut on his chest, catching his breath as he did so. “And now, we’ll bid you a good evening, with thanks for your hospitality,” Ocano said, recorking the bottle and handing it back to Elena. He turned toward the Mexican. “You! Rivera! Out the door. You will pay for your indiscretion by acting as our guide across the desert to the nearest water . . . and beyond.”

  “Por favor, señor . . . I meant nothing by it. I reacted only. It was . . . a mistake.”

  “You’re damned right it was a mistake, and you’re about to pay for it.”

  “Please don’t make me go with you into that . . . place. Even the Apaches do not go there in August. It is the very flames of hell itself. No man can live. . . .”

  “Let’s go!” Ocano jerked the whiner to his feet and flung him toward the door. “Get moving! We can be twenty miles from here by daylight.” He handed one of the full canteens to Deraux, who had holstered his weapon. Ocano yanked open the door, thrust his head out, and looked up and down. “All clear.” He shoved Rivera out into the moonlight. “If he tries to run, shoot him,” he said to Deraux.” He turned back. “Adiós, Elena. If I only had a little time, what you and I could do. . . .” He sighed and shoved Rivera ahead of him.

  Deraux stripped off the uniform jacket, wadded it up and flung it over a fence behind a privy. With no hat, only dark blue pants and his long underwear top, he would not be mistaken for a guard. His cropped hair identified him as a prisoner, but they would have to steal some hats, anyway, before challenging the desert. “Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego,” he muttered to himself.

  “What’d you say?” Ocano asked.

  “Nothing.”

  With Rivera between them, they turned out of the alley and started east along the dusty street. Deraux realized their long, slim chance at escape had only begun.

  They zigzagged through back streets and alleyways, keeping to the shadows and away from pedestrians and the light of saloons and stores. In a pool of light spilling from the kitchen door of a restaurant, they surprised four Mexicans shooting craps. The sudden appearance of Deraux’s blue-black Colt persuaded three of them to part with their straw hats. As an afterthought, Ocano scooped up the pot of greenbacks and silver pesos from the ground.

  “Adiós, muchachos,” the big half-breed growled, grinning as the trio faded into the night. From there, they moved quickly toward the eastern edge of town.

  “Taking that money wasn’t smart,” Deraux said. “They’ll sound the alarm and the guards will be after us.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Ocano seemed unconcerned.

  “Even if they do, they won’t know where we went. Besides, the guards will never follow us into the desert.”

  “Hell, no,” Deraux panted as they jogged along in the dark. “The Yuma trackers will be glad to do it for
fifty dollars a head.”

  “Scared?”

  Deraux could almost see the big man grinning in the dark. “Not so’s you could notice it.” Deraux shoved the lagging Rivera ahead of him. “We got our Mex, here, to guide us to water.”

  “Hope he knows where he’s going,” Ocano said.

  “If he doesn’t, we’ll all die together.”

  They slowed to a fast walk, catching their breath as they passed the last scattered adobes where Yuma trickled into the desert. Deraux had the impression of a limitless ocean rolling away to the east; a sudden qualm gripped his stomach. Yet he knew this was, for now, the safest direction away from pursuit. The other prisoners had run for the Colorado, and the search would be concentrated up and down the river. The guards knew it was suicide for anyone to attempt to cross the desert on foot. One or two of the escapees might walk the railroad bridge into California, but a lot of desert awaited them there as well.

  “How many of the other boys got away?” Deraux asked.

  “Vasquez won’t have to worry about drowning in the river. He was cut down in the graveyard along with a chink and another man I didn’t stop to notice,” Ocano said. “Last I saw of Gilliland, he was swimming like hell for the California shore.” Ocano paused and uncorked a canteen, taking two or three deep swallows.

  “Better go easy on that water,” Deraux said. “We got a long way to go.”

  “I ain’t got to this point in my life by being told what to do.”

  Deraux shrugged. They had three two-quart canteens and one quart whiskey bottle full of water to see the three of them through to the next water, many miles away. He had one of the canteens slung from his own shoulder and would make sure it stayed there, if he had to defend it with his Colt from the big man. Ocano was bull-headed and would take what he wanted, regardless. During the several months Deraux had known the half-breed, the big man had not shown loyalty to anyone but himself.