Return of the Outlaw

by C. M. Curtis

  “Who are those two?” asked Jeff.

  “Trouble,” replied Amado. “The big, ugly one is Tobe Hatcherson. The Indian is named Sundust.”

  “Who are they?”

  “You’ve been away too long. They hunt men. And they’re good at it.”

  Jeff was not watching Hatcherson and Sundust now; his eyes were on Fogarty. He wished he could go down there and confront the killer and settle the whole matter once and for all. Just the two of them, kill or die. He looked at Amado, and the old Yaqui seemed to read his thoughts.

  “We have to kill them, Jeff—both of them; first Fogarty then Stewart. If one of us fails, the other has to succeed. If we both fail, Angelita is lost.” Amado’s voice dropped as he gazed across the canyon. “But first we’ll have to deal with Hatcherson and the Indian.”

  It had been years since Jeff had heard the name Angelita. It was the name Amado had given to Anne when she was a child, and he had never called her anything else.

  The smell of the frying bacon floated up to Jeff’s nostrils on the clean morning breeze, making his stomach growl. Since Jack Mason had made the discovery that provisions were being filched he had begun sleeping next to the supply packs, and Jeff and Amado had lost their source of provisions. They still had plenty of salt and a little flour, and on the previous day Amado had killed a small deer. But flapjacks and bacon sounded a lot better. Jeff watched through Amado’s spy-glass as one of the men ate an apple. He could almost feel it crunch under his teeth and taste its sweetness on his tongue.

  Turning back to look at the men below, Amado said, “See the rifle Hatcherson carries across the saddle? It’s a fifty caliber Sharps—a buffalo gun. He can knock a man out of the saddle half a mile away. Stay out of range.”

  There was a long silence.

  Knowing Amado as long as he had, Jeff had learned to expect the unexpected, and he certainly did not expect what happened next: Amado drew his knees up under him, rose to his feet, and stood there on the ridge, watching the group on the far side of the canyon below. Sundust, alert to any movement, saw him first. With a low grunt he caught Hatcherson’s attention and directed it, with a slight movement of his head, to the figure of the man outlined against the sky. The other men followed Hatcherson’s gaze, and soon all were aware of the lone figure on the mountain.

  In the minds of most of the men in camp, Amado was mocking their futile efforts to capture him, but Sundust understood, and Hatcherson did too: a challenge had been issued.

  One of the men reached for a rifle and raised it to his shoulder.

  “Forget it,” growled Hatcherson. “He’s out of range. He’ll just think you’re a fool.” Hatcherson knew there was only one rifle in the camp with that kind of range—his own. He also knew the man on the mountain would disappear long before he would be able to draw a bead on him. For a moment, everyone stood watching, waiting for Amado to do something else. Then he was gone, flattened against the ridge, watching them, but invisible to their eyes.

  Fogarty had watched the reactions of the two new members of the party, an insolent, mocking sneer on his lips. Hatcherson smiled and there was an unpleasant gleam in his eyes. Sundust returned to gnawing a bacon rind as if the incident had not occurred.

  For the next two days, Jeff spent most of the time in the saddle. Following Amado’s instructions, he penetrated deep into the mountains, moving fast, choosing his trails with care, trying to stay out of sight and keep ahead of his pursuers. During this time he saw nothing of Amado who had merely said he would be back later, and had slipped away. By the end of the second day, Jeff was tired and almost out of food. He had found the deeper he penetrated the desert mountain range the more difficult it became to find water.

  That night, as he had done the two previous nights, he kept moving, pushing his jaded mount forward until well after midnight when the moon went down. Then, too tired to eat, he slept a few hours until dawn, and after a fireless meal, was back in the saddle again, feeling little refreshed from the short sleep.

  The sun rose higher in the sky and dispelled the night’s chill. Jeff’s tired horse plodded along, sluggish and foot-sore. A gentle breeze caressed the mountainside, and the desert insects hummed soporifically. Jeff dozed in the saddle, his body swaying automatically to the movements of the horse.

  The fifty Caliber slug from Hatcherson’s buffalo gun covered the distance faster than the sound of the explosion that sent it, and had already torn its murderous pathway through soft flesh by the time the booming sound of the rifle was heard by its victim. Hatcherson’s aim was good, but the distance was great and the bullet struck Jeff’s horse in the side of his ribcage, about four inches in front of Jeff’s leg. The brute’s legs buckled and he was on the ground before Jeff was fully awake. Jeff kicked his feet free of the stirrups and lunged to cover behind a boulder at the side of the trail.

  Looking across the gulf of a wide valley, he saw a vague trace of the blue smoke from the muzzle of the sharps and he marveled at Hatcherson’s marksmanship. Now he knew why Amado had cautioned him to stay out of range.

  Neither Hatcherson nor Sundust was in sight, but Jeff had no doubt they were advancing toward him. He crawled over to his dead horse, using its body for cover and quickly withdrew his rifle from the saddle scabbard. He grabbed the canteen and untied his blanket from the back of the saddle. Spreading it on the ground, he laid his small supply of provisions and ammunition on it, rolled it up and tied both ends with rawhide thongs. His eyes explored the terrain before him, but still he saw no trace of his pursuers. He took a quick swallow from his canteen, and as he did, it occurred to him that perhaps Hatcherson’s shot had not missed its mark. The man hunter may have killed the horse intentionally, saving Jeff for sport—Indian style.

  Jeff knew it was time to get as far away from this place as possible. But simply moving fast would not be enough. Sooner or later he would tire and his patient, dogged pursuers would overtake him. He had to use his head. He had to do as Amado would do. He would need all the knowledge and skill he possessed. It would be a contest of wits as well as physical endurance.

  Keeping behind cover he worked his way along the hillside, angling upward until he was able to slip over to the opposite side. Once there, his gaze swept the rugged mountains before him, and he planned his strategy. Choosing a distant peak as his objective, he started walking.

  It was mid-afternoon when he finally stopped in the shade of an overhanging ledge and partook of a hasty meal of cold meat and flour. His bad knee throbbed incessantly and with each step a lancing pain shot through it. His feet were swollen and painful inside his boots, and not for the first time today, he cursed the inventor of footgear designed strictly for riding. He had no idea how many miles he had covered since losing his horse, but he knew they had been hard miles of alternately struggling up steep sides of canyons and sliding down opposite sides in the loose dirt and rocks; struggling through dense pockets of brush, striving against a million thorny fingers that clutched and grasped at his clothing and skin. He sensed the presence of the man hunters and felt they were gaining on him. He desperately needed rest and a good meal, but he knew there would be neither tonight. Amado had warned him that Hatcherson and Sundust did not stop hunting when the sun went down, and had many times overtaken their prey wrapped in blankets and in the false belief his pursuers were somewhere in the darkness, wrapped in their own.

  Amado had also admonished him not to allow himself to be taken alive. There had been no need to elaborate.

  Jeff swallowed the last piece of the dried venison and licked the flour from his fingers. He wanted to wash it down with a swig from his canteen, but decided against it. He was in unfamiliar territory now and water holes were few and hard to find.

  He hoisted himself to his swollen feet and stood for a few moments in the shade, scanning the terrain, flexing his stiff knee to limber it up. There was no sign of Hatcherson or Sundust, but he knew they were out there. Against the protest of his tired muscles and swollen fe
et, he forced his body into a trot and started down the trail again.

  An hour later he rounded a bend in the small animal trail he was following and found himself on high ground overlooking a broad panorama which spread out before him. In front of him, curving around to his right, lay a sloping mountain, higher than the one on which he now stood. To his left towered a sheer scarp face, vertical and smooth, rising several hundred feet above him. He spent a good fifteen minutes studying the terrain, his eyes keen to any movement, keeping in the shadows until he had decided which direction to go. Presently he stepped out into the light and moved forward again. Almost immediately his eyes caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off something shiny on the mountain to his right. He dived back into the shadows and sought cover in the brush. Peering out, he saw the flash once again, and then twice more. He turned to look at the scarp face behind him and saw the reflection skating back and forth across the rock surface. This was not the sun glinting off a belt buckle or a rifle barrel; someone was purposely trying to signal him. Was it Amado, or were the man hunters attempting to trick him?

  He pondered the situation for a moment and another thought occurred to him. Whoever was signaling, friend or foe, was out of rifle range, but the signaler could be spotting Jeff’s location for someone else who could approach from another direction and pick him off. If it was Sundust and Hatcherson, he would be wise to stay under cover and remove himself from the area as quickly as possible. He turned again to watch the reflection on the smooth rock face behind him. As he watched, he realized there was a pattern to the movements. As he observed, the pattern was repeated again several times. Then he recognized it. It was the Rafter 8 brand. It had to be Amado.

  It was after dark when Jeff finally arrived at a spot he estimated to be near the point from where the reflection had come. He gave a low whistle that had always been the signal he and Amado used when hunting together and waited for an answer. None came. Moving as quietly as he could, he climbed higher up the slope, repeating the whistle every few minutes. When an answering whistle finally came, it was so near it startled him. He whirled around, drawing his gun. From out of the darkness a familiar figure glided toward him.

  “Amado, you must be trying to stop my heart,” said Jeff, but he was glad to see his friend after three days of being alone and hunted.

  “Follow me,” Amado said, and without further conversation he turned and led the way down a rugged trail that would have been difficult to negotiate even in daylight. Bone weary and foot-sore, Jeff hoped it wouldn’t be far.

  Nearly an hour later, when they arrived at the camp-site Amado had chosen, Jeff was surprised to find three horses tied to a picket rope. One of them Jeff recognized as Amado’s own horse. Where the other two had come from he could not even guess.

  “They used to belong to Hatcherson and Sundust,” Amado said.

  Then Jeff realized what Amado had done. After his own horse had been shot, Jeff had purposely taken his path over terrain too rugged for a horse. This, he had done to force his pursuers to abandon their mounts and place them afoot like himself, thus eliminating their mounted advantage. Amado must have been following and watching the man hunters, and when they left their horses, he stole them.

  “How did you know where to find me?” Jeff asked.

  “I brought the horses through the canyons, then I climbed that mountain back there. From there you can see all around. I saw you from far away, but I had to wait until you got closer, and until you came to a place where I could signal you without Sundust seeing it.”

  “But how did you know which direction I would go?”

  “I knew which way I would go.” Amado replied matter-of-factly. “You chose the same way. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  Not daring to risk a fire, they ate a cold supper of jerked beef, biscuits, and hardtack taken from the saddle bags of the two stolen horses.

  Jeff was almost too tired to chew, and if he hadn’t been so hungry from the exertions of the day, he would have preferred to go to sleep without bothering to eat. When they had finished eating Amado reached into his pocket and produced an apple.

  “Dessert,” he said tossing it to Jeff.

  The mere sight of this unexpected treat made Jeff’s mouth water; he had been craving an apple for days. “Are you going to have one too?”

  “No,” said Amado, “I already ate mine; there were only two.”

  Jeff could tell Amado was lying. There had been only one apple. He pulled his sheath knife, wiped its blade on his shirt and sliced the apple in half. Handing half to Amado he said, “I can’t eat more than about half an apple; the skin gets stuck in my teeth.”

  When they had finished the apple, Amado said, “Get some sleep. They won’t find you here. I’m going to scout a canyon I spotted that might have water. I’ll be back before dawn.”

  Jeff nodded and rolled into his blanket, which he had spread on the ground at the base of a house-sized boulder. He fell immediately to sleep.

  A soft breeze was blowing, cooling the rocks and hills. Now and then, from distant parts, coyotes yapped their haunting songs into the night. As Jeff slept, a silent shadow crept toward the camp. Making no more sound than a snake, Sundust approached, and as he drew near he pulled the big knife that was sheathed at his side. He was down-wind of the camp and stopped frequently, testing the air with his nostrils like an animal. He smelled the horses and knew he was close. As he crept on moccasined feet, the rounded bodies of the animals loomed out of the night. The horse smell was strong here. He could make out Jeff’s blanket-covered form and could hear the sound of his breathing as he slept.

  As he slipped past one of the horses, he abruptly stopped and for an instant his attention was distracted. He recognized his horse. How had it gotten here? He heard a small sound and spun around. Directly in front of him loomed a dark figure and for the tiniest instant the Indian looked into a pair of eyes—and in those eyes he saw hell. Then, the razor-sharp steel of Amado Lopez’ knife sent him there.

  In that moment, with his blade still in Jimmy Sundust’s body, Amado recalled something he had once heard about the two trackers. “They always hunt together like the snakes they are. If you see one in front of you, the other will be behind you.”

  The skin prickled on Amado’s back and he knew it was true.

  “Jeff,” he shouted, jerking his knife clear as Sundust’s body sagged to the ground.

  Jeff rolled to the side, throwing off the blanket and coming up to a crouch, still groggy from sleep. He saw Amado, about thirty yards away—throwing a knife at him.

  The knife tumbled through the air, whirring high over his head, and Jeff heard it clatter harmlessly on the rocks behind the boulder, at his back. Thinking more clearly now, he realized there was an enemy on the boulder: above and behind him. He spun around, and saw Tobe Hatcherson holding the big “Sharps 50” to his shoulder, aimed at Amado. Jeff had slept with his pistol in his hand, and realized now, that he was still holding it. There was no time to raise it, no time to aim, to cock and fire. Everything that had happened since Amado’s shout, had occurred in the space of less than two seconds, and the thought Jeff acted on took another fraction of a second to pass through his mind. “Hatcherson!” he shouted.

  There is something about the sound of a man’s own name being shouted at him that never seems to fail to make him flinch. Hatcherson was no exception, and the slight, involuntary jerk occurred just as he squeezed the trigger, and it spoiled his aim.

  Amado, who was already diving to one side, rolled out of the way, unharmed. Hatcherson had not been aware Jeff was below him, and now, with no time to reload, he swung his discharged weapon downward as Jeff swung his pistol upward. The heavy steel barrel of the big sharps struck Jeff on his upraised right arm and then made a solid impact against the side of his head. As Jeff fell, Hatcherson drew his pistol, cocking it as he pulled it out. Jeff fell on his shoulder, and following his momentum, rolled to his side and on to his back, swinging h
is right arm upward and pulling the trigger according to instinct rather than aim. When he fired, he was looking down the muzzle of Hatcherson’s pistol. The shot struck Hatcherson in the neck, and the burly man hunter fell backward, out of sight.

  Jeff heard the body slide off the back side of the boulder and come to a stop in the loose rocks at the base. Amado ran past him and slipped behind the boulder. A moment later he came back.

  “You all right?” asked Jeff.

  Amado nodded, “You?

  “I’m fine, what were you doing here? I thought you had gone.”

  “I stayed to make sure you slept and nobody bothered you.”

  Jeff raised an eyebrow—Amado wasn’t being honest. “It was no bother really,” he said, but there was no anger in his sarcasm. “And you smell . . . Jeff suddenly realized Amado was smeared with fresh horse excrement.

  “It’s to hide the human smell,” said Amado

  Jeff sniffed, “It works. You don’t smell human.”

  Amado built a fire and squatted in front of it, gazing into the flames. Weariness showed on his face. “I’m getting too old,” he said. “I almost got us killed.”

  Jeff tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. He was feeling a mixture of emotions himself. Part of it was like the letdown he had always felt after a battle, and part was a sense of relief that he was no longer being hunted—at least not by the two bulldog man hunters. True, Fogarty and the others were still out there, but Jeff had confidence in his ability to continue to elude them. Besides, he reasoned, Fogarty would probably give up when he learned Sundust and Hatcherson had failed.

  A sharp rock beneath one of his feet reminded him his boots were off. He moved over to the blanket, still carrying his pistol. By force of long standing habit, he reloaded before doing anything else. Afterwards he sat on the blanket and looked at Amado who had not moved from his position by the fire.