M’Candliss had swung onto his still-saddled clay bank, and he raced after her. The rest of the horses bolted, snorting and whinnying, in all directions. M’Candliss knew that Isabella had begun yelling and had headed through the camp to give him time to escape in the darkness—an act of self-sacrifice that he wasn’t about to accept. Riding after her, he sent a number of the banditos sprawling before they could recover and fire at her retreating back. The guard, Miguel, was still writhing on the ground, his cries the loudest of all. Confusion reigned as the flying horses scattered the fires and the men.
Then they were out of the camp, heading for the pass, the clay bank starting to close the distance between M’Candliss and the woman. He tried to keep himself between her and the bullets which now cracked forth from the regrouping outlaws. He hunched lower and urged the clay bank to greater speed.
The trail grew steeper. Ahead was the opening in the cliff, a black mouth ready to swallow them. A shot plucked at M’Candliss’ shirt; another left a furrow across his gunless holster. Then they were into the cleft, and the guns could no longer search them out. M’Cand’liss figured they had a short breathing space, perhaps as much as ten minutes’ head start, depending on how fast the banditos could round up their horses and give chase. But ahead of them was the sentry, who might have been warned by the commotion.
“Isabella!” M’Candliss called. “Slow down!”
The woman reined up, allowing the clay bank to close the last few feet between them. “What is it? Why do we stop?”
“The sentry,” M’Candliss said. “We’ll have to go around him.”
“That is impossible. There is only one way out of the camp.”
“How does the sentry get to his spot?”
Isabella thought for a moment, then replied, “There is a small trail just ahead. It leads to the little place where he sits.”
“Show me,” M’Candliss said, and she nodded. She gave him the pistol, a well-used, black-powder Harrington & Richardson. It was smaller than his own Colt .45, but the feel of it in his hand was just as reassuring.
Two minutes later Isabella showed M’Candliss where a narrow path led around a massive granite boulder and up the rock face. The horses picked their way carefully along it, while their riders peered into the gray shadows ahead. The trail was little more than a ledge cut into the wall; a false step by one of the horses would send them hurtling into the gorge below.
A hundred yards along, M’Candliss stopped and dismounted. “I’ll go on alone from here, Isabella,” he said.
“But—”
“You’ll know soon enough whether it’s me or him. While I’m gone, get the horses turned around; we’ll be on our way that much faster. Or you will be if I don’t make it.”
He turned and continued up the boulder-strewn slope, pistol in hand. It seemed he was walking along the top of the world—in an eagle’s nest with nothing but black sky stretching to infinity and sheer rock dropping hundreds of feet below. In the pale moonlight, he could make out the main trail winding up the slopes to the entrance to the camp; but the bottom of the gorge below was shrouded in Stygian blackness.
He moved cautiously, watching the trail’s surface for loose stone. Once, a trickle of gravel dislodged by his boot showered over the edge, a miniature-landslide that echoed in the stillness. The sentry would have heard that, he was sure—perhaps even have seen Isabella and him from his perfect lookout. He would be ready, waiting...
The attack came sooner than M’Candliss expected. Only a few more seconds had passed when the black figure suddenly sprang up in front of him, as if from nowhere. M’Candliss fired just as a belch of flame erupted from the shadowed form. Chips of rock stung his neck as the sentry’s bullet whined off a boulder on M’Candliss’ left; he heard a cry and a Mexican curse, then the clatter of the sentry’s pistol on the rocky trail, and knew that his own shot had been truer and had winged the man.
But the bullet hadn’t put the sentry down, or disabled him. He bellowed and charged. M’Candliss fired again, but missed in his haste and the darkness. He had no chance to fire a third time; the sentry was on him, grunting, thick-fingered hands groping for his throat. He lost his pistol as the man pinned him and tried to throw him sideways off the ledge. But M’Candliss was stronger; he got his own arms around the man’s waist, squeezed, and managed to stand both of them straight up in a desperate embrace, so that neither was able to move the other for three or four seconds. Then, with a savage flexing of his muscles, he sent both of them stumbling into the rock wall, and the impact was enough to break the holds they had on each other. They broke apart like something splitting in half, and staggered in opposite directions on the trail.
When M’Candliss regained his balance he was ready to rush the sentry and end the fight then and there. But he hesitated when he saw the man reach to his belt and come up with something that glinted coldly in the moonlight—a long-bladed Mexican knife. M’Candliss looked for his dropped pistol, saw it near the edge of the precipice; but he knew he couldn’t get to it before the sentry reached him with the knife. He set himself instead, crouching in a defensive stance as the bandito attacked with the knife held low.
M’Candliss feinted as the man lunged, and slapped the knife wrist aside; at the same time he caught hold of the other hand, thrust a leg across in front of the sentry, and broke the knife from the man’s grip. In the struggle that followed, both men went down just inches from the drop-off.
The sentry tried to jam a forearm across M’Candliss’ throat to crush his windpipe. M’Candliss kicked up with one leg and drove his boot into the sentry’s ribcage. The man flew off him, but when he landed it was next to the fallen knife; he snatched it up. Before he could use it, M’Candliss scrambled to his feet and was ready when the man lunged again. This time the knife got inside M’Candliss’ defensive tactics, and he felt the blade slash through his shirt, just nicking the skin of his sucked-in belly.
But the attack had thrown the sentry off balance, and M’Candliss kicked out again and felt his boot sole jar against the man’s hip. The sentry staggered backward, his wounded arm spraying droplets of blood as it windmilled over his head. He was right at the edge of the precipice, and he had no footing to regain his balance; he toppled backward and fell screaming out of M’Candliss’ sight. There was a heavy thunking noise, cutting off the cry, and then fading echoes as the body tumbled into the gorge below.
M’Candliss leaned against the rock wall to catch his breath and wipe sweat from his face. Then he found Miguel’s Harrington & Richardson, holstered, and made his way back to where he had left Isabella.
He didn’t see her by the horses, and he realized she must have hidden herself in the rocks when she heard him approach; it was shadowed here and she wouldn’t have been able to see who was coming down the trail. He called out to her, identifying himself. A moment later she appeared from behind an outcropping and hurried toward him. “You are all right, Capitan M’Candliss?”
In the moonlight, he was again struck by her resemblance to his murdered wife. He said tersely, “More or less. Let’s get moving.”
“Yes. The others—I think I have heard them coming.”
M’Candliss swung into leather and eased his clay bank forward, following the Mexican girl down the treacherous surface of the trail. Now he too could hear the pounding rhythm of hoof beats in the distance, coming nearer from the valley below.
When they reached the main trail, the pale light of the desert moon illuminated the winding path along the rim of the great bowl. A dry night breeze murmured among the gigantic shadows of rocks outlined against the sky. Isabella led them through the narrow cleft between the towering cliff faces, and they dropped in a gradual descent along the trail. Some distance behind them, M’Candliss could hear the clatter of hooves against rock, the faint shouts of the raiders as they reached the top. He knew that he and Isabella were visible in the moonlight as they picked their way along, but the dips and curves were sufficient to prevent a
ny accurate shooting from above.
They had descended to a point now where they could increase their speed. The trail had widened somewhat, become less precarious, and their horses’ footing was surer. They made their way through the same shadowed canyons they had traversed on the trek to the bandito fortress, crossed the same mesquite-ridden arroyos and arid, rocky stream beds. And then, with the sounds of their pursuers faint in their ears, they were out of the Galiuros at last and into open land again.
M’Candliss motioned to the woman, pointing toward the southwest where the town of Adobe Junction lay, but she shook her head. “It is too far across the open desert,” she said. “They are close enough already to use their rifles. We would stand little chance of reaching Adobe Junction.”
M’Candliss knew she was right. “Is there another way around to the town? One that’s not so open?”
“Yes,” Isabella said. “To the south.”
“That’s private ranchland, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Mostly it is owned by a man named Gillette,” she said with distaste.
Arlo Gillette, M’Candliss thought. The bigoted Mexican-hater and budding Territorial politico. He said, “How long will it take to go that way?”
“Several hours more. But it is our only hope, verdad?”
It looked that way to M’Candliss too. He didn’t want to risk the extra loss of time, not when a whole trainload of American and Mexican lives depended on his swift action; nor did he much like the idea of trespassing on Gillette’s rangeland, since there was no telling what kind of vigilante riders Gillette might have out protecting his claim. But the risk of crossing the open desert, of trying to outrun the pursuing banditos, was much greater. M’Candliss couldn’t stop Gueterma from murdering all those men at Saddleback Gorge, unless he himself remained alive in the interim.
“All right,” he said grimly to Isabella. “South it is. Let’s ride!”
He dug his boot heels into the clay bank’s flanks, Isabella bent low over the flowing mane of her bay, and they veered south through rumpled, craggy land toward the Gillette holdings.
Chapter Nine
They rode in silence for close to a half-hour, alternately running their horses at full speed and slowing them to a walk to conserve their energy. Isabella set a zigzagging course for them, skirting jagged outcroppings and the shadowed shapes of barrel cactus, twisted and tangled prickly pear, and giant saguaro like silent sentinels. From time to time, M’Candliss glanced over his shoulder. There was enough moonlight to let him see the plume of dust raised by the hooves of the raiders’ horses. He judged that they were at least half a mile behind, and falling further back all the while.
As he rode, he calculated time and distance. If he and Isabella could skirt through Gillette’s land without incident and reach Adobe Junction by late tomorrow night, there should be ample time to wire Lordsburg, New Mexico, the last station through which the delegates’ train would pass before climbing into the Dos Cabezas Mountains and Saddleback Gorge, and have the stationmaster halt the train at that point. Then, with the safety of the dignitaries assured, M’Candliss could lead his Company of Rangers, which should be waiting in Adobe Junction, to the mountain fortress, and put an end to Gueterma and his banditos once and for all.
More time passed. The clay bank began to labor again, and M’Candliss could see that Isabella’s bay was blowing heavily as well. When they topped a rise he signaled for the girl to slow her mount to a walk. Turning in his saddle, he looked behind them another time.
The dust cloud was a good three-quarters of a mile away now, he judged. He said as much to Isabella.
“Do you think they still pursue us?” she asked.
“Like as not,” he said. “But then again, they might have turned tail and headed back into the mountains.”
“Even if they still come, they will not catch us now.”
“No,” M’Candliss agreed, “they damned well won’t. Isabella, do you know where Gueterma is holding Clement Holmes?”
“No. He did not tell any of us.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “He told us very little of his plans, yet we followed him like sheep. We were fools.”
“Everybody’s a fool at least once in his life,” M’Candliss said. “Could he have had Holmes taken down into Mexico?”
“I think not, but I am not sure.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?” She shook her head.
“No, none.”
Isabella fell silent after that. She stared out over the barren land ahead, her face expressionless. M’Candliss had the feeling that she was thinking about her murdered father, the grim part she had had to play in order to help M’Candliss escape the fortress, the betrayal of her and her people by Gueterma. Inside, he felt a softness toward her. Now that her thinking had been cleared and rechanneled, she would make a good spokeswoman and champion of her people.
They walked their horses for a time, then put them back into a gallop. A trail appeared, angling westward, and Isabella led them onto it and over the brow of a ridge. Below were forty or fifty acres of sparse grazing land. Scattered along a hillside in the distance were a hundred or so head of cattle.
“Gillette’s graze?” M’Candliss asked.
Isabella said that it wasn’t. “It belongs to another,” she told him, “a man called Miles. He, at least, does not have hatred in his heart for my people.”
M’Candliss took another look at their back-trail. The dust cloud seemed to be dissipating, which meant either that the banditos had turned back or they had fanned out into smaller search parties that were staying off the trails. In either case, they no longer posed an immediate threat.
With Isabella leading the way, they rode down onto the graze. The clay bank flickered softly, the way he always did when he smelled water. There had to be some close by, M’Candliss thought, to support the grass and the paloverde trees that grew here and there in the vicinity.
He and Isabella were a third of the way across the graze, angling west to skirt the hillside where the cattle were, when gunshots shattered the night’s stillness.
They came from beyond the hillside—two, close together, followed by one from a different, larger weapon, then more of the first type. M’Candliss and the girl drew sharp rein. Banditos? he wondered. Doing battle with some of Miles’ men, or one of the vigilante groups?
More shots cracked in rapid succession. Then the shooting stopped altogether and the night silence resettled. M’Candliss felt torn between going to investigate and giving the location of the shots a wide berth. He couldn’t afford to get involved in anything that would put his life and his mission in jeopardy; and yet neither did he want to avoid trouble only to stumble into it blind somewhere else close by. If there were men in the area, he had to know who they were—local ranchers or more of Gueterma’s raiders.
Two more shots erupted behind the hillside, and they made up his mind for him. He said to Isabella, “I’d better see what’s going on. You wait here, over in that patch of rocks. If I’m not back in an hour, go on without me. Tell the people in Adobe Junction that Gueterma’s behind the raiders and that he’s planning to blow up the delegates’ train at Saddleback Gorge.”
She made a little gasping sound. “Madre de Dios! That will cause war between your country and mine.”
“Yeah. War is what Gueterma wants. He figures he can move right in and become El Presidente.”
“He told you this?”
M’Candliss nodded. “And your father overheard; that’s why he attacked Gueterma, and why Gueterma shot him.”
“Mamapinga!” She said the Mexican obscenity with a mixture of savagery and awe. “We must stop him, Capitan. We must!”
“Don’t worry,” M’Candliss said grimly. “That’s just what we’re going to do.” He left her and spurred his horse up the hillside. There was no more shooting, and he heard no other sounds as he rode. When he crested the hill he saw more grazing land and a small cattle pond some five hundred yards distant
In the moonlight he could make out two—no, three—men at the pond’s near end.
The men wore wide Mexican sombreros and bandoliers of ammunition, and were on horseback. They rode in the water, stirring it up so that it had a phosphorescent look in the moonshine. M’Candliss couldn’t quite tell what they were doing, but it looked as though they were dragging something behind them by lengths of rope.
M’Candliss heeled the clay bank along the brow of the hill, keeping to the cover of trees and rocks. A draw appeared then, cut downward along the edge of the slope, and when he turned into it the men dropped from sight. Near the bottom he found a path that led out of the draw onto the flat stretch of grazing land. Then he could see them again, moving slowly back and forth through the water as though planting seeds in earth. He was less than eighty yards from the pond, but he still could not make out what they were doing.
He started to edge closer, toward where a copse of trees grew on his left. But the clay bank, with the scent of water strong in his nostrils, snorted and then nickered softly, and the sounds carried in the night’s stillness. The three men reacted with swiftness and violence, dropping whatever they had been dragging through the water and drawing their weapons. Flame jumped from the hand of the rider on the right, and M’Candliss heard the bullet slash air over his shoulder. He ducked reflexively, hauled the Harrington & Richardson out of his holster, and kicked the clay bank into a hard run straight at the three men.
Another shot sounded, this time from the man on the left, but it too missed wide. M’Candliss, riding low over the horse’s neck, didn’t fire until he was close enough to make his shots count; then he squeezed off twice, just as the one on the right cut loose at him again. M’Candliss’ aim was better; that one jerked back, exposing his body, and M’Candliss shot into it. The man slumped forward, and his horse, whinnying with fright, bolted out of the pond. The one in the middle threw a quick, wild shot in M’Candliss direction, then raced after his wounded comrade. The third raider yelled as M’Candliss sent two more bullets that way, slapped his mount, and galloped after the other two.
Border Fever Page 8