Even as he uttered the infamous suggestion, Shiloh’s lustful eyes devoured the girl, and his thin lips uncovered his stained teeth in a bestial grimace. Quincy felt a shudder of repugnance. Hardened brute though he was, there were times when Shiloh Platt turned his stomach. The half-breed was a mean one, a man who enjoyed spilling blood.
“Don’t yu reckon we better just make shore afore we turn him loose?” he suggested. “He’s crazy enough to try somethin’ stupid.”
“Don’t yu worry none,” leered Shiloh. “I won’t be takin’ no chances on him. He’s what yu might call – dispensable.” He spurred forward until he caught Rusty’s eye, then signaled him aside.
“What yu want, Shiloh?” he asked shortly. “Spit ’er out; I’d as lief ride alongside a polecat.”
Shiloh’s breath hissed between his teeth but he controlled his passion. “We’re goin’ to be clear o’ the desert afore long, Rusty,” he began ingratiatingly. “Time yu learned what part yo’re goin’ to play.”
“I’ll have no thin’ to do with yore dirty plans!” snapped Rusty angrily.
Quincy raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Don’t yu want the gal to get home safe, sonny?”
“Yu know damned well I do,” replied Rusty. “But I ain’t shore that’s what yu two skunks is plannin’.”
“Why, o’ course it is, o’ course it is,” Shiloh said smoothly. “All we want is the reward, kid. Yu don’t deny we’ve earned it?”
“By God!” Rusty swore. “Ah, what’s the use? Yu don’t know the difference anyway. I’m tellin’ yu just one thing: if playin’ any part in yore dirty schemes is a condition o’ gettin’ Barbara home safe, I ain’t buyin’!”
“I think yu’d better,” Shiloh warned him, a deadly thinness in his voice. “She could get – hurt.”
“If’n yu don’t do what yo’re told,” added Quincy.
Rusty’s face went white with anger. “Yu so much as lay a finger on her, and I’ll hunt yu to the ends of the earth an’ kill yu like the mongrel yu are!” he gritted.
Platt let his anger come to the surface for a moment, and he gestured at Rusty’s gunbelt, looped around his saddle-horn, hissing: “What yu aimin’ to do, kid? Beat out my brains with a rock?”
“What is it yu want me to do?” the boy asked, as defiance fled his expression and his shoulders slumped.
“That’s more like it, sonny,” Quincy said encouragingly. “I allus figgered yu was a sensible kid.”
“Get to it,” ground out the boy.
“She’s simple enough,” Shiloh told him. “Yu ride in to Tucson an’ roust up ol’ man Davis. Yu tell him we got his daughter, an’ the price to him is twenty thousand dollars.”
“Yo’re mad!” Rusty gasped. “He’ll never pay it!”
“He better,” was the meaningful reply. “I’d hate to think o’ the consequences if he don’t.” His evil eyes touched the girl and rage seared through Rusty at what he saw in them. Then once more his shoulders dropped, as though he had realized once more the impossibility of fighting.
“I guess there ain’t much choice at that,” he managed.
“The gal’ll give yu somethin’ o’ hers to identify yoreself, an’ she can write a note. Davis has to come along – no sheriff, no posse – yu tell him. Any double-cross an’ it’s the gal who’ll suffer. Yu make shore he knows that.”
Rusty nodded. “I’ll need a gun,” he said.
Shiloh looked up, as though the thought had not previously occurred to him. “Course yu will,” he replied. “Can’t take no chances on them war whoops stoppin’ yu gettin’ to Tucson.” He turned aside, and drew the youngster’s gun from its holster.
“Here y’are, kid,” he called, and tossed the gun underhand to the youngster, who caught it neatly and – without checking it – thrust it into the waist band of his pants. Platt smirked; it could not have worked better had he been able to control it.
“I’ll jest scribble them instructions,” he said, pulling a notebook from his saddlebag, and moistening a stub of pencil on the tip of his tongue. He motioned Quincy not to move as the scar faced man looked sharply up: Rusty was edging his horse sideways gradually, placing himself in a position directly between Barbara Davis and the two scalphunters.
Shiloh looked up in assumed astonishment as Rusty rapped out a command: “Shiloh! Quincy! Unbuckle yore gun belts an’ let ’em drop!”
The gun pointed rock-steady at the mid-point between Shiloh and Quincy, who sat unmoving. A grin of evil glee was twitching at the corners of the half-breed’s mouth.
“Yu heard me!” Rusty said, impatience thinning his tone. I’m countin’ three: if yu ain’t shucked yore gunbelts by then, I’m goin’ to shoot ‘em off yu!” Over his shoulder he added “Barbara! When I give the word, yu ride like Hades for the south, yu hear?”
Barbara nodded tensely; would Rusty’s desperate gamble pay off? Almost as if in answer to her thought, Shiloh’s face twisted into a vicious sneer.
“Fire away, yu dolt!” he hissed. “Did yu think I’d be fool enough to give yu a loaded gun without first testin’ yore loyalty?”
The knowledge that he had been duped flooded Rusty’s eyes, and the empty click as he pulled the trigger of the six-gun confirmed it: the half-breed had been one step ahead of him the entire way. Rusty had played along with Shiloh in the hope of getting his hands upon a weapon; Shiloh had out-thought and outwitted him. With a shout of pure anger, he rammed the spurs into his horse’s flanks, and the animal lunged forward at Shiloh. In the same moment, Rusty hurled the heavy six-gun at Quincy’s head. The weapon smashed into Quincy’s forehead and he swayed backwards, almost falling from the saddle, his senses reeling.
Even as Rusty hurtled towards him, however, the half-breed’s hand darted for the gun at his side. “Ah, would yu?” he snarled, and flame lanced from the weapon.
Rusty slewed sideways out of the saddle, hitting the earth and lying limp; he kicked once, and blood matted his hair. A thin keening scream broke from Barbara Davis’s lips, and went on until Shiloh stalked across to where she stood and slapped her rudely across the face. The girl went silent with a shocked gasp.
Quincy was dabbing his forehead with a kerchief; the gun had raised a lump on his forehead just below the hairline and blood trickled from it. Shiloh regarded the fallen Rusty dispassionately.
“Better to find out now that he’d double-cross us,” he grated. “When it comes to gettin’ that money, we don’t want no slip-ups.”
“Is he dead?” the scar faced one wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” Shiloh said callously, “an’ what’s more I ain’t carin’. He played his hand, an’ he lost.”
“The question is – what do we do now?” Quincy asked. Shiloh shrugged and was about to speak when a movement on a far hillside caught his eye. He froze for a moment, and then pointed with a finger which trembled slightly.
“There’s yore answer,” he said. “We better ride!”
Following the half-breed’s pointing gesture, Quincy saw riders sweeping down the long slope of a ridge in the near distance. The Apaches were coming.
“Git on yore hoss!” he snapped to the girl, who was bending beside the prone body of Rusty, dabbing the blood away with a strip of cloth. He dragged her away from the body, and Barbara screamed at him, arching her lithe young body, trying to rake Quincy’s eyes with her fingernails. “He’s alive!” she sobbed. “He’s alive, he’s alive! Oh, for pity’s sake don’t leave him there to die!”
“What yu want me to do, carry him?” Ignoring the girl’s sobs, Quincy tossed her bodily on to the back of her horse, and slashed it across the rump, sending it galloping off as he swung into his own saddle, catching up with the girl and Shiloh, heading in a last long rocketing run for the edge of the desert and the lawless town in Wilderness Canyon.
Chapter Fifteen
Through the bright desert day Sudden had pushed the wiry little Apache pony hard. The clear, invigorating morning air had revived his achi
ng body, aided by the magnificent constitution born of long days in the open, simple food, and the casual health of a big cat. Now the blistering heat of afternoon had slacked his progress, and Sudden moved more slowly. Yet inexorably he pushed on, and the miles dropped beneath the feet of the horse.
“If Apaches can run in this heat, damn’ if I can’t ride in it,” he gritted, as he pushed on through long stretches of empty desert, sometimes stopping to check the traces he was following. Juano’s warriors had made no effort to conceal their passing; they had no reason to suppose that anyone was following them, or to fear anyone who was. He rode on through the deathly silence of the desert, frowning slightly in puzzlement at the south-westerly direction into .which the trail was veering. That they were following Shiloh there was no doubt; but why had the half-breed deliberately elected to go deeper into the desert instead of running for the shelter of Fort Cochise?
“Even if he stayed clear o’ the Fort itself – an’ bein’ as Quince was along, I’d reckon he would -he’d’ve still been inside the patrol area. Mister Shiloh Platt must have some other cards to slide from up his sleeve.”
As the tracks continued south-west, Sudden reviewed in his mind the layout of the country surrounding him. Fort Cochise lay to the south-east now, and between it and the desert lay the ridges and folds of what was known as The Wilderness. They were badlands: gouged-out canyons, twisted rock formations, as bleak as the surface of the moon. The Wilderness was skirted on the south by the Fort Cochise road and on the west by the valley road leading to Apache Wells and on to Phoenix. Shiloh would not head straight for Tucson. Which left only one place he could possibly head for to find safety: Wilderness!
Sudden recalled the stories he had heard about the town. Bleke had mentioned it during their long talk in Tucson, but they had both agreed that the threat of an Indian war overshadowed the necessity of doing something about Wilderness. “The town’s a cesspool, Jim,” Bleke had barked. “One o’ these days it’s goin’ to need cleanin’ out.”
The little pony willingly responded to Sudden’s urging and the man from Texas pushed on, his face grim. Around him, he sensed the fertile, unseen life of the desert. Insects, spiders, birds, lizards, snakes, rats, rabbits – all flourished unseen in the thickets of cactus and cholla. Once, he saw a zebra-tailed lizard scurry across the rocks, its forelegs dangling against its chest; on a flat stretch of hot sand a horned toad regarded him with a flatulent eye, not deigning to move aside at the thunder of hoofs.
Sudden eased the pony up a hogback ridge, careful to keep his silhouette below the skyline. Dismounting, he tied the Apache rope hackamore to a stunted bush which clung to the bare slope and eased himself forward on his belly, using elbows and knees for leverage, rifle cradled across his arms. If his calculations were correct, he was close behind Juano and his braves. If he over-ran them, his own efforts and the brave sacrifice of Tucson would have been for nothing: he would be ruthlessly dealt with by the Apaches.
“An’ one try a week’s all I aim to give ’em,” he muttered with a grin. He reached the crest of the ridge, and peered cautiously over. An explosive exclamation escaped his lips. “My Gawd!” he breathed.
Below him, in almost a straight line from where he lay on the hot rim rock, Juano and his warriors stood in a circle around a squat saguaro cactus. Lashed to its spiky stem, the cruel barbs biting deeply into his body, Sudden made out the slumped form of Rusty. The boy’s face was twisted with pain, and his hair was matted with blood. His head was held back, rigid, away from something which Juano held before the youngster’s face. Straining his keen gaze, Sudden made out the object in the Apache’s grip: it was a male rattler! Juano’s hand held the ugly reptile just behind its flat, diamond-patterned head, while his left hand and arm firmly clamped the threshing, writhing body so that the snake could not tear itself out of his grasp. The rattler’s darting tongue flickered in and out, carrying the hated, feared smell of humans to the tiny brain, making the creature bare its venom-carrying fangs in a terrible grimace. Juano thrust the snake within an inch of Rusty’s face and the youngster shrank involuntarily back. In doing so he impaled his body harder upon the torturing barbs of the cactus, and despite himself, a cry of pain escaped his compressed lips, already bloody where he had bitten them.
“You tell!” Juano shouted at him. “Why girl important?”
“Go – to – hell!” Rusty managed, twisting his head to keep the gaping reptile’s head as far from his face as possible.
“Speak!” hissed Juano. He thrust the snake forward. Rusty flinched and again the wicked spikes of the saguaro sank deeper into the unprotected flesh of his back. A thin scream of pain was wrung from his lips.
“You tell!” the Apache spat. “They go Tucson? They go town-in-canyon? You tell!”
Rusty shook his head. “They – they’re headin’ for Tucson.”
“You lie!” snarled Juano. “Now Juano know. Going other town. Now you die!”
Again he thrust the snake forward, this time releasing its head; but in that same second a bullet smashed the ugly creature’s striking face into a thousand pieces, a second blasted Juano off his feet, a neat hole between the mad eyes, a third and fourth dropped the warriors at either side of the Apache leader.
“Jim!” Rusty cried.
Sudden had worked his way down the side of the ridge while Juano and his braves were engrossed in torturing the boy. He stood now like a grim specter of death at the head of the shallow gully which had concealed him long enough to sneak within ten yards of the bunched Apaches and now he mercilessly turned the deadly brilliance of his shooting upon them.
His fifth shot spun one of the warriors screaming to the ground, the sixth cartwheeling yet another off his feet. Now the Apaches reacted instantly to the shock of Sudden’s appearance, falling flat or scattering to avoid the murderous accuracy of the Texan’s shooting. One leaped into a dead run towards Sudden, a screeching yell of insane hatred shrieking from his throat. The Texan had dropped to one knee, making himself a smaller target, and again the Winchester barked, cutting the Apache down in mid-stride, whirling him aside like a dried leaf. Without hesitation, Sudden dashed forward, weaving as he ran towards the saguaro where Rusty watched helplessly. Apache bullets whispered around the lithe form of the running man; one tugged gently at his sleeve, and another burned across the upper muscle of his left arm and then he was beside Rusty. A sweeping slash of the knife in his hand freed the boy, who dived to the ground, rolling, to snatch up the rifle dropped by one of the fallen Apaches. Rusty came to his feet to meet the screeching rush of the last two Apaches, frantically working the bolt of the old-fashioned weapon. His bullet stopped one of them as if the Apache had run into a brick wall. The other moved in a crouching run towards Sudden, leaping at the Texan in a tigerish bound as Sudden reversed the empty Winchester smoothly, grasping the barrel with both hands. He whirled it in a short and vicious arc which ended as the butt caught the Indian in mid-leap. The mighty blow split the Apache’s skull like a melon, making a dull sound like that of a butcher’s axe hitting a side of beef. It dropped the Indian in a quivering, lifeless heap to the dusty ground. A sifting curtain of dust stirred slightly in the still air and then settled, as Sudden tossed the useless rifle aside and straightened up warily.
“Gawd alive!” breathed Rusty. “Now wonder they call yu Sudden!”
“They don’t,” the Texan told him. “Not if they like me.”
Rusty was instantly contrite. “Jim, I’m a fool,” he apologized. “I just never seen anythin’ like it in my life! Where in ’ell did yu spring from anyways? I figgered yu was cashed for shore.”
“So did he,” Sudden said, pointing to the still form of the dead Juano. “If he hadn’t ’a’ been so wrapped up in teasin’ yu with that rattler.”
Rusty shook his head. “I know it,” he said quietly. “Jim, I’m thankin’ yu.”
“Shucks, no call to do that,” Sudden told him with a smile. “Yu all right?”
“I been better,” Rusty admitted, “but I’ll do.”
In a few terse words, he described the events which had led up to his being shot by Shiloh; and how Juano had found him lying half-conscious in the open desert.
“He shore played in pore luck,” remarked Rusty with a glance at the dead Apache. “I still can’t figger out why he didn’t just kill me an’ ride on after Quincy an’ Shiloh,”
“Some men is just born pizen mean,” Sudden said, and there was that in his voice which convinced Rusty that his friend was speaking from deep inside some bitter, personal memory. “They don’t have to be Apaches,” Sudden went on. “They’s plenty o’ whites no better, mebbe wuss; men what just can’t resist gloatin’, torturin’ a helpless prisoner. He was one. He did it once too often.”
Despite himself, Rusty felt a shiver run across his skin at Sudden’s cold epitaph for the Apache. Many years later, when he heard for the first time of Sudden’s finding of the two men he had sought so long, and of his final reckoning with them, Rusty would remember this moment.”
As if making an effort of will, Sudden looked around. “Pick up all the guns an’ take any ca’tridges yu find. If any o’ these bucks got bows, break ’em. I’ll check their hosses. We don’t want to leave nothin’ here for their sidekicks to use again.”
Rusty looked a question, and Sudden grinned. “Yu figger it was all over, Rusty? Hell, no! There’s another bunch o’ them on my tail, an’ they’ve got a much smarter hombre than Juano to lead ’em. I’d as lief not be here when they arrive an’ find this.”
He lifted his chin to indicate the scattered corpses of the slain Apaches. Rusty nodded his agreement. If they had been prized prey for their pursuers before, now they would be hunted with the special zeal the Apaches reserved for their bitterest enemies. Walking stiffly, favoring his thorn-slashed muscles, Rusty did as he was bid. They bundled all the rifles into a saddle blanket and mounted the ponies which Sudden led up from their place of concealment in the wash below.
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