With such a number he could herd the escaped prisoners like sheep, firing a bullet when necessary to turn them back, edging them away from the easiest routes, winning his final victory and the gold merely for a long ride into the desert. It amused Hat to consider that. Yet he had a moment of doubt….There was that one with the new boots…he was a cunning traveler, like a prairie wolf. Would he find another way?
But eventually he must turn to the dunes. Of course, if he held to the line of mountains he could reach a point where the ride to the water would be shorter. If he tried that, they must head him off.
Hat was first of all a hunter, and as such, he was interested in what his prey might attempt. He was not worried. After all, they were amateurs in the Pinacate country; he was the professional. One last reservation he had…the Pinacate itself might take a hand in the game.
The old gods lurked among the mountains, this he knew, and the Pinacate was a place of the gods, as all such solitary places are apt to be. The Pinacate had moods and whims—sudden storms, strange fogs moving up from the Gulf, white frosts that came suddenly, even in summer. Such frosts appeared on the rocks in the morning and vanished with the first sun.
Directly in the path of the way they must go lay a forest of cholla. By appearing on the slopes to the east or west, he would herd his quarry into the cholla. Possibly they might pass through without injury, but such a thing rarely happened. There were paths that led into the cholla, some of which went nowhere, and he had made a few of these himself. On his various forays into the desert he would take the time to follow these little trails, in and out. Each was a cul-de-sac, a trap difficult to escape from without injury.
He had found these blind trails successful in putting his enemies afoot. A horse badly stabbed by the thorns of the cholla was a crippled horse. Hat had no such feeling for horses as was found among the Plains Indians, and also among some of his own tribe. To Hat the horse was something to ride, and when a horse died or was crippled, he got another one.
Finally Hat went to sleep. He would awaken with the first light, and that would be soon enough. It was up to him to choose the place where they would die, and in his own mind he had already made a selection.
Out on the lava, a coyote howled. A nighthawk swooped and darted in the night, and out on the broken basaltic fragments a tiny rock fell, rolled down a slope, and fell again.
The stars, like far-off campfires, held their stillness in the sky.
Tom Badger came out from the camp and paused beside Rodelo. “Quiet?”
“Yeah.”
“Dan, you keep shy of Harbin. What’s between you is your own business, and you settle it when you can, but now we’re needin’ every gun.”
“I don’t want to fight.”
“You know, I’m wonderin’ about you, Rodelo. Why are you here—what are you after?”
Rodelo ignored the question. He nodded his head toward the mountains. “You’re an Indian, Tom…or part Indian. What’s he waiting for?”
“The right time, the right place. He knows where we have to go, he knows how we have to get there.”
Tom was silent for a moment. “I’d guess he only plans to kill one man.”
“One?”
“Yeah…the last one.”
CHAPTER 9
THE LAST STARS were still bright in the sky when they saddled up. The clumps of cholla seemed to glow with a light of their own, and the bleak moonscape of broken lava, eroded and faulted into a fantastic jumble of jagged rock, had an eerie look.
All of them were silent. There were only the sounds of leather creaking as saddles were heaved into place, of cinches tightened or packs adjusted.
The pack horses were in the worst shape. The gold was a load of about a hundred pounds, but it sat heavily, with none of the resilience of a live weight.
Rodelo, standing behind his horse, checked his gun. All the loads were in place, and he was ready. He holstered the gun but loosened the thong that held it in place, so it could be quickly removed.
Nora was first in the saddle. The others followed quickly, and after a moment in which no one moved Rodelo rode out, leading the way. He went eastward, then south, following the vestige of a trail that soon seemed to play out, but he held a course that could swing wide of Pinacate. Harbin came up beside him. “Where d’you think you’re going?” he asked.
“If you want to try it due south, you go ahead. I’m riding around.”
“What’s down there?”
“There’s a big crater. Between that crater and Pinacate Peaks there’s the worst mess of pressure ridges and broken lava you’ll ever see. Maybe there’s a way through, but if there is I never saw it, and I’m not hunting it in the dark.”
Grumbling, Harbin fell back. He was suspicious of every move Rodelo made, and his suspicions were growing stronger. He was operating with a short fuse, and the blow-off could come at any time.
Rodelo picked up the dim trail, skirted a shoulder of black basalt, and rode down into a crack, emerging in a forest of cholla. He drew up, his eyes scouting what lay ahead to be sure he got the trail. There were numerous openings, but none of them looked good. Finally he made a choice, but he moved slowly, avoiding the thick clumps of cholla. The wickedly barbed spines had a way of penetrating deeper if not removed, and they could cause painful sores.
Nobody was talking. They had no idea of how close the Yaquis might be, but voices carried far in the rocky desert, and they had no wish to be heard.
Before leaving the tanks, Rodelo had taken a long drink of water, and then had drunk again. Standing beside Nora, he had said, “An old desert Indian told me once that the water a man lost went from his blood first. Did you notice how little we bleed after a scratch? That must be the reason. And if that’s true, it would slow up a man’s actions and probably his thinking.
“A white man usually tries to ration his water, but an Indian drinks all he can hold whenever he gets a chance, knowing he will last longer, and be in better shape.”
So far they had suffered little, but there had been a steady loss of water over the past few days which could have been only partly replaced by their drinking at the tanks. Watching, he had seen none of the others drink as much as he had.
When they came to a small clearing among the cholla, they drew up. Badger rode up to Rodelo. “Dan, we got a lame horse—a pack horse,” he said.
Rodelo and the others gathered around. A joint of cholla was tightly caught in the horse’s flesh just above the hock. There were thorns around the hoof, and flecks of blood on the shoulder.
“We’ll have to turn him loose,” Rodelo said. “We’ll load the pack on the other horse, and split up the grub among us.”
“Will he die?” Nora asked.
“Him? He’s better off than we are. He’ll have a sore leg and shoulder for a few days, but he will limp back to the tanks. There’s water enough there for him.”
“What will he eat?”
“What he ate last night. What the bighorns eat. Galleta grass, palo verde…he’ll make out.”
While the others stripped the pack from him, Rodelo extracted the thorns one by one, then released the horse with a slap on the hip. With only a few minutes’ loss of time, they moved on, but now it was light.
Under ordinary conditions the horse crippled by cholla would soon have recovered, and had there been no demand for speed he could have been taken along. The pain caused by the stabbing of a cholla thorn is intense, and the joints of cholla are difficult to remove. Rodelo had found the simplest way was to put a knife blade or strong stick between the cholla joint and the part it had penetrated, and then with a quick jerk rip the thorn free. Some might stay in the skin, to be removed by the teeth if no tweezers were handy.
The Indians were not following them now. Knowing how their quarry must go, Hat led his band in a wide sweep to the play
a beyond the edge of the lava, leaving one Indian to keep them in sight.
The sun rose above the horizon, and at once the rocks turned to flame and the desert shimmered with heat waves and mirage.
Dan Rodelo felt the sweat start to trickle down his face, and down his chest beneath his shirt. He rode with caution, not only because of the Indians but because of the desert itself. He guided his horse with care, choosing the ground over which they must go, not by miles but by yards, selecting each bit of route through the cholla, the ocotillo, and the jagged rocks.
Everything in the desert seems to wear a thorn; every plant, every living creature is equipped to survive in that most ruthless of all worlds. In the desert one quickly learned to stay on the sunny side of bushes, for a rattler might be coiled in the shade; one learned to avoid slippery rock, to be careful of the steep slides, to avoid if possible the deep stretches of sand that with each step robbed a man of his strength.
Now, Rodelo realized, the battle would soon be resolved. Within a matter of hours each man here would be in a deadly struggle merely to stay alive, and each was aware of it. The margin between life and death had narrowed here; a horse with a broken leg could put a man afoot, and from there there would be no escape. Without water, a man might, with luck, last twenty-four hours. A few, through sheer will to survive, had lasted three or four days.
“Watch yourself,” Rodelo warned Nora. “If you bump into a cholla bush you’ll have a dozen or more thorns stuck into you, and every one hurting like the very devil.”
Now there could be no question of speed. At times the trail was steep, and always it wound about among the cactus and the corners of jagged rock. The slightest slip meant falling against the thorns or the sharp rock edges.
Twice they stopped while Rodelo, not liking the looks of some opening ahead, would get down and explore on foot. It was a caution that paid off, for both openings were false leads.
Harbin was surly, his eyes scanning the rocks, but flickering over to Rodelo from time to time. Nora stayed close to Rodelo, and the gunman’s jealousy grew. Tom Badger, with a gift for survival, stayed out of the line of fire and had no comments to make.
Starting up a slight incline in the lava maze, Gopher’s mount suddenly slipped and fell back, throwing Gopher against a wall of cactus. The horse, fighting to his feet, was studded with cholla thorns; Gopher crawled out on his hands and knees, his back and side covered with the yellow joints.
Harbin burst out angrily, “You clumsy fool! Get yourself out of this! I’m going on!”
“We’re all in this together,” Rodelo said, “and we’ll stick together.”
“Who says so?” Harbin flared.
“I do,” Rodelo replied.
There was a moment of silence. Harbin drew his horse around so that his right side was toward Rodelo. Harbin’s hand was on his gun. “It ain’t so far to the coast,” he said. “You won’t be needed.”
Dan Rodelo was on the ground near Gopher, his knife in his left hand. He was wondering how accurate a throw he could make. He could draw a gun or throw a knife with either hand, but a year in prison had given him no practice.
The bullet came an instant before the report, the smack of the bullet and the sound of the shot tripping over each other. All of them could hear the trickle of water as it ran from the canteen.
“You’ll need me,” Rodelo said. “You’re going to be out of water.”
Harbin swore, watching the last drops from the canteen dribble to the ground.
Rodelo went to work with his knife, first removing the cholla joints from Gopher then from the horse. Badger got down from his horse to help. Nora and Gopher held the horse while Rodelo, with Badger’s help, extracted the thorns. The horse, ordinarily half-wild, seemed to know they were trying to help, and stood quietly. It cost them almost an hour.
“Let’s get out of here,” Rodelo said when the last joint had been pried loose. He started into a gap in the cactus growth, and a bullet clipped a joint of cholla behind him. They could see no one anywhere, and after a moment or so they went on.
In the dreadful heat, they could move only at the slowest pace. On their left several volcanic cones reared their heads. “Must be a hundred volcanoes in there,” Gopher commented. “I never seen so many.”
“Brady figured close to five hundred craters,” Rodelo said. “He was down here some years back and knew the country as well as anybody.”
The lava was a chaos of tilted blocks and pressure ridges, pock-marked with pits and deeper depressions; old flows of lava were covered by later ones. The cactus grew everywhere, seeming to need no soil.
By midday they had gained very little distance. Once a wrong turning had led them into a dead-end canyon and they had been forced to retrace their steps. Finally they found a way out of the arroyo in which they had seemed trapped; but climbing the steep trail, a horse slipped and scraped his leg.
At one time they rode for an hour over thick volcanic ash—black, powdery dust that rose all around them and settled on their faces and clothing. They crossed a point of ropy lava and worked a precarious way among the small calderas, or craters. Twice they dismounted to walk, sparing their mounts as much as possible.
They plodded on in sullen silence, submitting to the heat like beaten slaves no longer possessing even the will to protest.
Once a lizard darted across the trail before them, but nothing else moved. They saw no bighorns, no javelinas, not even a rattlesnake. Several times they saw or believed they saw Indians, but there were no more shots.
The earth shimmered with heat waves; the distant mountains seemed nearer. Pools of water seemed to lie across their way just ahead of them, and once when they topped out on a ridge they saw a far-off playa that appeared to be one vast lake.
“Mirage,” Badger said.
Their lips were cracked now, their mouths and throats parched. All of them were conscious of the slosh of water in the remaining canteen.
With startling suddenness they emerged from the chaos of lava and rode out upon a flat plain dotted with clumps of chamiso and creosote. No longer bunched together, they stretched out over at least a hundred yards, with Nora and Gopher bringing up the rear, separated by only a few yards.
The dead silence of the desert afternoon was split by the sharp reports of rifles. A bullet kicked dust just beyond the hoofs of Rodelo’s horse. He drew swiftly and fired a shot that ricocheted off a rock slab. Behind him he heard a choking scream, and he turned his horse swiftly. The others were on a dead run for the cover of the rocks, but Gopher was down, and he was dead. Riding past him, Rodelo saw he had been hit at least twice, in the head and in the neck. The other pack horse was down.
Rodelo was in the open, facing toward the danger, expecting every moment to be fired on, but he could see nothing of the Yaquis.
The gold was there in that pack on the horse that was dead, but Gopher’s horse was alive, if still in poor shape because of the bad fall into the cholla.
Now it was already the middle of the afternoon. How far had they come? Four or five miles? Perhaps even less. And now Gopher was gone.
Gopher was gone, a good horse was gone, and a canteen was gone.
Rodelo caught up Gopher’s horse and stripped the saddle from it. He was strapping on the pack saddle when Badger and Harbin came out of the rocks, followed by Nora. They helped him hoist the gold into the saddle.
Badger turned to where Gopher lay. “You’re forgettin’ somethin’, Joe.” From Gopher’s pocket he took the twenty-dollar gold pieces. “No use leaving that for those Injuns.”
“Toss ’em once, for luck,” Joe suggested.
Badger flipped the coins in the air and Joe promptly grabbed them before Badger could. “Thanks, sucker,” he said with a grin.
Tom Badger stood very still, looking at him, his eyes utterly cold. Then he walked to his horse.
Rodelo handed the remaining canteen to Nora. “Drink,” he said.
“I can manage.”
“Go ahead,” Badger agreed. “You drink it, lady.”
She glanced at Harbin. “Sure,” he said. “I want to keep you alive.”
She took a swallow, then passed it to Rodelo. He handed it on to Badger. When it was returned to him there was barely a swallow of lukewarm water, but it seemed amazingly cool to his parched mouth.
“Throw it away,” Harbin said. “I don’t like the empty sound of it.”
“And if we find a water hole? What will we carry water in? Nobody in his right mind ever threw a canteen away in the desert.”
“That reminds me,” Badger said, “that this lady said she knew of a water hole. Or have you forgot?”
“I say we make a run for the coast,” Harbin said. “How much farther can it be?”
“Too far,” Rodelo replied.
“You say it’s too far, but what if we waste time looking for water and don’t find any?”
“The breaks of the game,” Rodelo said shortly.
Badger looked at Nora. “Do you know where there’s water?”
“The water hole I know of is at the south end of the Pinacate.”
“That’s near where we are now.”
Nothing more was said, and they moved on. Dan Rodelo was in the lead again, just ahead of Nora. “Do you know any landmarks?” he asked her. “How do we know where this place is?”
“I will know it…I think.”
He glanced back at her in amazement. “You’ve actually been in this country?”
“When I was a child.”
Suddenly he turned in the saddle. “Then you must be Nora Reilly!”
“What do you know about Nora Reilly?” she asked.
“Shipwreck on the Gulf…eighteen or nineteen years ago. Small sailer of some kind, headed for Yuma. She got caught in the tidal bore…on the edge of it, I guess. Smashed into some rocks, but they got ashore, and they made it overland to Sonoyta—a little border town up yonder.”
Kid Rodelo (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 8