Blade laid a hand on Roxanne’s arm.
‘I know him,’ he said. He was silent with wonderment for a moment, amazed that the man he had left wounded had managed to come this far.
The Delaware said: ‘Go back, Blade. They’ll kill you. They have taken your animals and are waiting to kill you. They know you have the gold.’
Blade said: ‘All right, we’ll go back. This about makes us even, Sam.’
The Indian said: ‘I can’t ever repay you, not for what you did.’
Roxanne turned back to Blade and said: ‘What’s he talkin' about, Joe?’
Blade said: ‘I patched him up. He thinks he owes me. So he’s warning us.’
‘I get that much.’ She turned back to the Delaware, but he was no longer there. The silence with which he had gone unnerved her a little and she put out a hand to grasp Blade’s again. ‘What do we do now?’
Blade said: ‘Without mounts, we’re lost. Will you trust me, Roxanne?’
She said: ‘That depends on how far.’
‘Totally,’ he said.
‘Then the answer’s “no”.’
‘I want you two girls and Doke further along the Denver road,’ he told her. ‘The old man could guide you there.’
‘The old man ain’t goin’ to do a damn thing for us willingly, an’ you know it.’
‘Offer him half the gold.’
‘Sal would never agree that.’
‘I didn’t say give him half, only offer it.’
She laughed softly and slapped his arm: ‘You’re as bad as us.’
‘Will you do it?’ he insisted.
‘So we’re on the road to Denver,’ she said. ‘Then what happens?’
‘I come along with some horses. You get on them and ride into town. How does that sound?’
‘Dreamy,’ she said. ‘I can’t see it happening. Once I’m out of sight, what’s to prevent you from takin’ off an’ leavin’ us all high an’ dry?’
He said: ‘If you can’t see that now, you never will.’
She turned her face to him.
‘Joe,’ she said, ‘are you tryin’ to tell me...?’
‘What you know already,’ he said. ‘What I feel about you, Doke feels for Salome. We four would make a good team, Roxanne.’
She giggled a little. ‘You’re right, you know. But I have to be sensible. No good us talkin’ about the future. The truth is that Harry Lister is between us and our horses. We’re in a helluva fix an’ no two ways about it.’
Blade said: ‘I’ve lifted horses off smarter men than Harry. Trust me. I promise I’ll meet you down the Denver road with mounts before dusk. I swear it, Roxie.’
She looked serious.
‘By heck,’ she said, ‘I believe you mean it. Sal’ll scalp me when I go back an’ tell her what I did.’
Blade kissed her. ‘Good gal, you won’t regret it.’
She told him: ‘I hope to God I don’t, Joe. You welch on me an’ I’ll have your liver an’ lights. That’s a promise.’
‘Do I get a gun?’ he asked.
She looked at him straight, doubt in her eyes. ‘You’re stealin’ horses, not shootin’ men.’
He shrugged ‘Have it your own way. Now get back to the others fast as you know how. Once I’m on a horse I shall be traveling fast and I don’t want to miss you on the road. And Roxie—?’
‘Yes, Joe?’
‘We’ll have a whale of a time in Denver.’
She didn’t smile, but said very solemnly: ‘I hope so, Joe. I really hope so.’
He turned away from her and went on down the valley. Overhead, the light started to peel back the darkness. The clouds parted and revealed blue sky beyond. Somehow the sight made him feel a little more hopeful. He turned and saw Roxanne hurrying back the way they had come. She turned at the same moment and they both paused to wave to each other.
Now, Blade turned to higher ground, to have as much of the valley under his gaze as was possible. The rocks were still wet and shiny from the rain and he walked with great care, knowing only too well that a slip could mean a broken or sprained ankle. That was the last thing he wanted. The fortune and certainly the lives of the others depended on him pulling off what he knew to be a chancy gamble.
There were, he knew, a good many things that could go wrong. First, he could fail to find the horses. Either because they had been lifted by Lister and his crew or because—hell, there were a dozen ways a man could lose his horses. Second, he could run into Lister’s outfit. Third, Lister could be behind him, at that very moment swooping down on Salome, Doke and the old man.
But it would do nobody any good to weigh these possibilities. He had to go ahead and do what he could. Either his luck was good or bad. There was nothing he could do about that. Keep moving fast, Blade, he told himself, and don’t lose your nerve. He also had to keep his sense of proportion—remember, the gold belonged to the old man. It had to be old Mart who placed that gold in the Denver bank.
He reached rimrock and found that he was sweating. He rested a moment, ranging his eyes up and down the valley. The blue white-capped mountains reared their heads high above him, marching majestically away into the distance.
What a country! he told himself. Looking at it, he felt small and unimportant.
Something caught his eye ... there ... the early sun hit metal. No more than a dull glimmer of reflected light. Then, suddenly, it flashed bright and he knew he was seeing the sun being thrown back by the surface of a mirror. Somebody was signaling.
He turned his head, searching along the rocky side of the valley behind him, looking west. He waited patiently and his patience was rewarded. There came an answering flash. He watched the flashes carefully and he realized the signalers were using a code he did not understand. He reckoned the first mirror down in the valley was about two miles distant from him, while the other was half as far off.
He had to assume that he had been spotted and that the two signalers were exchanging information about their movements in the immediate future. In other words, he had to be cautious or they would have him pinned between them. In short, if he was not damned smart he was a gone coon.
Bent double, he moved south over the ridge and came into a valley so shallow that it scarcely merited the name. There was little cover there, though there were a few scattered boulders. The grass here was short and sparse and offered no means of concealment at all. He hurried across this dip in the ground and went over the far ridge and was immediately out of sight of the rimrock of the deep valley. He had come on broken ground, cut here and there by sweeps of barren malpais, and sloping sweeps of shale. He broke into a steady trot After some fifteen minutes, the ground started to drop away beneath his feet and he found himself looking down on to verdant meadowlands that swept smoothly away to some foothills to the east.
Another thirty minutes and he was looking down from the cover of close-growing trees on to the grass where he had left their animals. He could see no sign of them. Which meant that either they had managed to wander among the trees which surrounded the place or had been taken by Lister. He took his glass from his pocket and inspected every inch of country in sight. The grass was longer here and he could see where the animals had moved and where they had grazed. But that was the only sign of their having been there. He made the inspection carefully and without hurry until at last he was satisfied that they were nowhere near.
He looked around until he found a stout bough from a tree which had been broken off by the recent storm. This he trimmed with his pocket knife until he had a hard, nicely-balanced club. This gave him some satisfaction, for he knew from experience that, in a close fight, there was no more formidable weapon.
Thus armed, he set out to find the trail of the animals. He reckoned it would not be too difficult a chore to do that. Getting the animals back was something else altogether. He didn’t fool himself that his chances were very high. He frankly faced the fact that there was a good chance, before the sun went down again, that he
would be dead.
Chapter Thirteen
When the sun hit the land, the land steamed as it dried itself out in the increasing heat. The rain held off, though there were some black warning clouds scudding darkly in the sky. When Blade picked up the trail of horses, he knew they had been moved since the rain had stopped. Which meant they had not been moved too long ago. He quickened his pace, hoping to come within sight of them before noon, even though he knew that he would not have a real chance to get them back before the protective cloak of darkness came down. Though he hurried, he watched his back-trail carefully, knowing that he had at least one man behind him. He was pretty certain that the Lister bunch knew that he was on his way. They would try to stop him. Which meant they intended shooting him, either from ambush or from behind.
He tried to forget that he was armed only with a stick. He thought about the reason for his making this trip, the reason for his taking up with Doke and he wondered if he would ever get around to finishing the mission. Why the hell did he always manage to get himself sidetracked? Doke was a large enough handful for any man. So why did he have to become entangled with the two girls? Why the old man, Mart Summers? When he thought about Roxanne, he couldn’t blame himself. Any man worth his salt would have done the same thing.
Thinking of Roxanne, he nearly walked into a trap.
He was coming down out of timber and over a rolling shoulder of grassland. The tracks of the horses showed plain. A horse nickered softly in front of and below him. This sound having attracted his attention, his sharp eyes caught the glint of metal. He walked on as if he were totally unaware of the man lying in wait for him in the rocks below. He waited until he walked into a natural dip in the land, no more than a hundred yards from the man lying in ambush. If the man had shot at him from that distance, he could not have missed. The fellow had wanted to be doubly sure of the shot and now he had missed the chance.
Or rather, Blade hoped he had missed his chance.
Once lost from the view of the man below him, Blade dropped into the long grass, worked his way back to the edge of the dip and looked over his back trail. He did not have much time to spare. He had to make a move before the hidden man came looking for him.
The man behind him must have been pretty sure of himself. He came walking out of the trees on to the green shoulder, large as life, his rifle held ready for a shot. He was no more than a hundred and fifty yards distance from Blade, walking almost exactly in Blade’s footsteps.
Blade rolled to the bottom of the dip and, after studying his mental map of what he knew of the country briefly, he started crawling as fast as he knew how towards the south. This was a fairly safe and comfortable process—till the dip ran out on him. He swore. Lying flat with his nose no more than an inch from the ground, he wormed his way forward. Moving with the effort of his elbows and toes, his progress was painfully slow. At any moment, he braced himself for his discovery by the man above and behind him. The man only had to spot movement in the grass and he would start shooting. A cold chill began to creep down Blade’s spine.
He had covered thirty or forty yards when a voice no more than a stone’s throw from him bellowed: ‘Where’s he at?’
There seemed to be astonishment in the silence that hung over the scene. Then the man below yelled back: Tie’s between us. He has to be.’
The topography of the place saved Blade’s life. His luck must have changed. The man behind him shouted: ‘There’s some rocks to the north. He must be holed up there. Move out and come at him from your right.’
The man below replied that he would do that. The man behind Blade went pounding away from Blade. Blade did not waste any time at all. He crawled as he had never crawled before. He stopped once to listen to the men shouting back and forth as they hesitated to go into the rocks, no doubt thinking he had a gun. Obviously, they were puzzled by the fact that he had not taken a shot at them.
He came to a gully and dropped down into it. Working his way along it, he came to rocks and picked his way through them, first into some brush and then to some stunted trees. These offered him enough cover to break into a run. He swung north, praying his new-found luck would stay with him.
It must have done, for suddenly he heard the deep rumble of a horse’s whicker. He swung left again and almost at once came on a bay horse tied to a tree. He was so surprised and pleased that he almost laughed out loud.
The two men were still shouting to each other, so he was in no doubt about their distance from him. If there were no more than two men, his immediate future was assured. He untied the horse and vaulted into the saddle. He eased that horse away from there almost a step at a time, going about a hundred yards or so through the trees, completely hidden from the men searching for him, before he lifted the animal into a brisk trot Every now and then, he ducked down to avoid low-growing boughs. Then he was in fairly open country, and he allowed the horse to stretch out. No shot came from behind him and he knew that, for a while at any rate, he was safe.
All he had to do now was to find the other horses and lift them, no matter who they belonged to. As he knew, that was easier said than done. When he stopped and looked into the saddle pockets on the animal, he reckoned luck was really smiling on him. Not only were dried biscuits there (looking like a veritable feast to his hungry eyes) but there was the former rider’s spare revolver. So, munching the biscuit and loading the gun, he rode on his way.
Chapter Fourteen
Whichever way he looked at it, the situation in which Doke Struther found himself was odd. In fact, life had been pretty breathtaking ever since Joe Blade had appeared on the scene.
Looking at his situation objectively, Doke couldn’t help feeling that life had been more colorful and certainly more worth living since old Blade had thrust a gun into his hand and told him to be a hero. Really, when you came to think of it, circumstances could not have been odder—there he was a half-dried out soak walking across the Colorado wilderness in the company of two beautiful women and a fortune in Spanish gold. It was enough to take a fellow’s breath away. Not only that, when he was in the company of Salome Richardson he could forget about a drink for several hours at a time.
As he tramped along the rocky trail with the red and wrinkled neck of old Mart Summers plump in front of him, the two girls bringing up the rear with their guns in their hands, he could not but help thinking that life could play some funny tricks on a man. A few days ago there was nothing to live for; now he was willing to fight for his life. And, he had to add, even though their guns were pointed at him, for the lives of these two girls.
That was another strange thing—although ostensibly he was the prisoner of these two girls, he felt responsibility for them. He did not doubt for one moment that he would defend them to the death if they were attacked by Lister and his cohorts.
The gold was quite a problem. The two parfleches were of considerable weight. Doke himself carried a filled parfleche and he was stooped forward under the dead weight. The rest of the gold was divided up between the two girls and the old man. Mart had been willing enough to carry at least some of the treasure simply because that brought some of his precious gold physically nearer to him. Most likely he thought if he actually had some of it on his back, he would have a better chance of sneaking off with it.
There was little talk between the four of them. Laden as they were, they saved their breath for walking, knowing there were a good many hard miles to be covered before nightfall. Neither the two girls nor Doke doubted for a moment that Mart Summers knew these hills well. He led them unerringly through the rough country that could never have been covered by a horse and rider. Sometimes he led them between rocks several hundred feet high through ways scarcely wide enough to allow them through. Now and then he climbed ridges which taxed their strength to the limit. At the end of the steep climbs they would find themselves standing for a while, as they caught their breaths, high above the vast country, seeing the sierras marching shoulder to shoulder into the far distance.
At times the chill struck them to the bone, in spite of the sun. A few minutes later, they would be in a close breathless canyon, fighting their way through almost impenetrable brush. Two or three times they had to pick their way precariously across rocks in the bed of roaring mountain torrents.
Once when they stopped to rest, Salome said: ‘How long can we keep this up, for God’s sake? You tryin’ to kill us, Mart?’
Old Summers cocked a rheumy eye at her and snapped back: ‘Missy, I’m savin’ you a hull day this way. Don’t you forget, we’re tryin’ to race men on horses. This is crazy. At this rate, I might as well walk you into Denver itself.’
Doke said loyally: ‘Joe said meet him on the road.’
The old man said: ‘Blade ain’t God Almighty.’
Doke snarled back: ‘He’ll do to get along with.’ He looked at Roxanne for confirmation.
‘We do like Blade says,’ said Roxanne.
Salome said: ‘I have a vote, too. Maybe the old man had somethin’ there. If we head straight for Denver, we don’t meet up with the Lister crowd an’ we keep our gold.’
‘My gold,’ said Mart. They ignored him.
‘We stick with Joe,’ said Doke.
‘Only guns vote,’ said Salome.
Roxanne said: ‘This gun votes we stay with Joe.’
‘You,’ said Salome with derision, ‘you’re ga-ga about the son-of-a-bitch. You reckon the sun shines out of his ass.’
Mart looked prim.
‘I never heard sech language on the tongue of a lady,’ he said.
Roxanne said, as scornfully as Salome: ‘Sal, I reckon the gold made you forget the difference between right an’ wrong.’
Salome said: ‘I ain’t forgot it, I’m just ignoring it.’
Mart surprised them by saying: ‘I’m carryin’ gold an’ that gives me a vote. I vote we stay with Blade. I ain’t as young as I was an’ this gold’s too heavy for me to tote all the road to Denver.’
Salome didn’t give up so easily. She said: ‘Soon’s we’re on the road, Lister will find us. We’ll be sitting ducks.’
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