Rodelo rode warily through a clump of cholla, paused briefly in the partial shadow of a giant sahuaro, then moved out. The point for which he was heading was not far off.
By now Badger, Harbin, and Nora would be starting into the sand hills. There a walking man could sink halfway to his knees at every step, or slide back one step for every two steps forward. A horse could sink in to its belly if it was carrying a rider. Once in the sand dunes, they would lose sight of Pinacate, their only landmark. From time to time they might see it, but unless they were especially careful they could spend time and effort struggling against the sand in the wrong direction. To maintain a true course there would be a part of the difficulty.
Now he saw, off to his right and close against the base of the mountain, a clump of mesquite—perhaps eight or ten good-sized trees—and a sahuaro and some cholla grew nearby. The clump of mesquite would be an ideal place to leave his grulla.
The mouse-colored horse was in better shape than the others. In any event he was a good horse, a mustang born to desert and mountains, used to getting along on sparse water and the indifferent forage supplied by the desert. That horse was Dan Rodelo’s ace in the hole, for he knew that when the chips were down the mustang would stand up long after the strength of the other horses had failed. This it was that would save him from the desert.
Once among the mesquite, he stepped down from the saddle and tied the grulla. The horse would feed off the green leaves and the beans while he was gone. Taking his rifle, he left the cluster of mesquite and scrambled up the steep side of the mountain toward the notch.
A few hundred yards off, a Yaqui drew up and watched for a moment. Then he slid off his horse, tied it, and started up a game trail. He had known where the trail was, and had waited to see if Rodelo planned what he expected, and then he took his own route to the top. Following a trail known to him, he could move faster and more easily than the white man.
The Indian’s dark eyes gleamed with anticipation…this was the one with the boots that Hat had spoken of. He was also the one who knew the water holes and who was a great warrior. To bring his body back and to claim the reward would be something to boast of in the lodges of his people.
He had no doubt about it—the white man was climbing to his death.
When Dan Rodelo reached the notch, he found it in no way extraordinary. He saw a game trail coming in from the south that would have made his climb easier had he known of it. There was some cholla there at the notch, a half-dead palo verde, and some flimsy skeletons of dead cacti.
Gathering these together with some dead burro bush and a few fragments of the palo verde, he struck a match. The slight wind puffed it out. He stood his Winchester against a rock and dug for another match. Crouching, he turned his head and searched the rocks carefully. He was in a sort of basin formed by the notch. On the east he could catch a glimpse of the chaos of lava below the mountain, on the left were the dunes; and far off, the shimmer of sunlight on the Gulf. He felt uneasy, but he bunched his kindling and was about to strike the second match.
Behind him something brushed faintly on rock. Turning, as if to pick up another stick, he glanced over his shoulder. A lizard lay upon the flat surface of a rock, its little sides panting. He watched it a moment without moving. Had the lizard made the sound? Suddenly, its head went up and it was gone like a streak across the sand.
First, the smoke. His ears pricked for the slightest sound, he struck the match and touched it to the dead leaves and branches. A thin tendril of smoke started to rise. He added more fuel, and then, at a whisper of sound behind him, he threw himself to one side.
The Yaqui landed on the balls of his feet where a moment before Rodelo had crouched. Instantly, Rodelo kicked out with both feet, staggering the Indian. Springing up, he was ready when the Indian turned on him and sprang in with knife held low.
Dan slapped the knife wrist aside, grasped it with his other hand and, thrusting a leg across in front of the Indian, broke him over it to the ground, twisting the knife from his grip. The knife fell to the sand and the Indian, slippery as a snake, slid from his grasp and was up. Rodelo feinted as the Indian lunged, and sent a right at him coming in.
The Indian stopped in mid-stride, and Dan, too anxious, missed his punch and fell against him. Both went to the ground. The Yaqui was quicker, whipping over Dan and thrusting a forearm across his throat.
Rodelo was down on his back, the arm across his throat, when the Indian reached for a grip on his throat with the other hand. Dan swung his feet high and caught both heels across the warrior’s face, raking him with a spur and bending him backwards off his body. Dan came up, gasping for breath, his throat bruised.
The Yaqui squirmed away, then leaped up, blood running from his face, gashed by the spur. He circled warily, swept up his knife, and lunged at Dan again, who threw himself aside, tripping the Indian. The Yaqui came up again, thrust with the knife and ripped Dan’s sleeve. Then Dan moved in, watching his chance. He dared not use his gun, for there might be other Indians near. His own knife was at his belt, a thong around it. His hand went to the knife, reaching for the thong.
A swift slash with the Yaqui’s knife ripped Dan’s shirt across the front and he felt the sting of the cut across his hard-muscled stomach. But the slash with the knife had swung the Indian around, and Dan kicked him on the knee. Before he could recover, Rodelo rushed in, heaved him bodily from the ground, and threw him into a patch of cholla.
The Indian screamed, and struggled to get free, but with each movement he picked up more joints of cholla. His struggling only served to get him into a worse condition. Rodelo backed off and picked up his rifle.
The smoke was climbing to the sky now in a thin column. Adding fuel, Dan looked over at the suffering Indian. “You asked for it, boy,” he said grimly. “Now you get out of it.”
He left at once, starting down through the rocks at a breakneck clip. The Yaquis would be coming, and he had no idea how far away they were.
He was on a ledge almost at the bottom when he saw a rider with a led horse come out of the mesquite and start down the trail. It was Joe Harbin, and he was leading the grulla!
“Joe!” he yelled. “Joe!”
Harbin turned in his saddle, thumbed his nose at him, and kept going.
Furious, Rodelo whipped his rifle to his shoulder, but Harbin was already down in the arroyo and out of sight. When he appeared later he was out of range…at least beyond accurate shooting, and a miss might kill the grulla.
They had him now, as good as dead. He was without a horse, without water, and the Yaquis were coming nearer every moment. He had to move. Somehow he must get to water, he must cross the dunes, he must survive.
His heart beat heavily with apprehension. He knew the desert too well not to know his chances were slim. The jaunt back to the hidden olla with its water supply would have meant little on a horse, Afoot, it was a matter of life and death. And suppose they had found the olla and broken it?
He had to move, yet he did not immediately. From this moment, every step he made must be a step in the right direction. To move without thinking was to ask for death.
Tom Badger would lead the way through the dunes, and they would have started without Joe Harbin. By the time Joe caught up they would be well into the sand and would be having a bad time. Once in the sand, the horses would be of little use to them, and the two men and the girl would have a struggle with them to even get them through. And during that time the Indians would be moving upon them. A man on foot could move faster than a horse in the dunes.
Rodelo had already been several hours without a drink of water. He was, he believed, closer to the shore at this point than Badger and Nora were, but he could not be sure, and to be lost in the dunes would be fatal. He knew that from now on, he was walking a thin wire, with death on either hand.
He moved then, keeping to the heaviest growth, searching for the few shadows, working into the thickest clumps of brush. The first thing to do was to get aw
ay from the mountain, away from observation.
He went on, turning south presently, and walked at a steady pace, or as steady a pace as the terrain would permit. He was alert for trouble, and he felt good to be moving. Somewhere ahead of him the showdown awaited…and then, if lucky, the gold and Nora.
For the first hour the going was not too difficult, and he made good time…he went perhaps two and a half miles. The next hour was over lava, in and out of the edge of the dunes, and he made less than half that distance. Time and again he was tempted to turn directly into the dunes and try to fight his way through to the shore. There were places where the sand seemed well packed, but he could not depend on it, and he needed water desperately.
By now his mouth was dry, his lips parched, his tongue like a stick in his mouth. His pace had slowed noticeably, and his reactions were slow too. He fought the urge to discard his rifle. He saw no Indians.
It was sundown when he finally reached the tank. As he had expected, the others were gone; and as he had feared, his olla was broken…that would have been Joe Harbin. But there was a taste of water in the bottom, not more than a swallow and he drank it eagerly. The water in the tank was gone, every last drop.
One thing he did find—an abandoned canteen with a bullet hole through it. Suddenly a thought came to him, and he stripped the blanket covering from the canteen. Dew would form on metal.
He considered moving on, thought of the risks, and decided to wait here and rest. He lay down and tried to sleep, but his thirst kept him awake. Then he recalled seeing a good-sized barrel cactus above the tank. Cautiously, he made his way through the broken lava about the tank and found it. Wary of its spines, he managed to slice off the top. Reaching in, he got a handful of the pulp and squeezed the juice into his mouth. It was somewhat bitter, but it was wet. For what seemed like a long time, he kept dipping into the top of the barrel cactus and squeezing the drops into his mouth. When he lay down again, he slept.
He awakened suddenly, conscious of a penetrating chill. Going to the canteen, he licked the dew from the surface and felt better, little though it was.
He thought of the tank in the Sierra Blanca—with luck there would be water there. If he were to start for it at once, there was a fair chance he could make it shortly after daylight.…But suppose there was no water there? Then he would have to strike for the coast, with not a chance in a thousand of making it through.
By the time he had reached that conclusion he was walking, stepping out almost mechanically, his mind seemingly only half aware of what he was doing. On the horizon to the southwest he could see the ugly bulk of the Sierra, and the thought occurred to him that he should have struck out at once through the sand hills for the shore…back there where he had lost his horse. By now he might have been standing on the shore of the Gulf.…
He fell down.
Staggering, he got up, wary of rocks. Like a drunken man, he felt his way cautiously, uncertainly, and stepped out upon a level space and started walking fast—or so he thought.
After a while he was conscious that it was growing light. He was dimly aware that he had fallen again…several times. And the mountains seemed no nearer.
He walked on, staggering and falling.
He was almost to the foot of the mountains when he fell again, and this time he could not get up.
He pulled one knee up and tried to roll up on it, but could not. He crawled a few feet on his belly, aware of the blistering heat of the sand. The thought went through his mind that if the air above was 120 degrees, it might be as much as a 160 degrees down on the sand. But he could not get up. Yet he clung to the rifle, and to the canteen.
He had been lying there for some time when he realized he was staring at the side of a barrel cactus. The realization heaved him to his knees, and the rifle, used as a crutch, got him to his feet.
Fumbling with his knife, he got it out and slashed off the top of the barrel. Once again he squeezed moisture from the pulp into his mouth, a miracle of coolness that seemed to go all through him.
After a few minutes, he started on once more.
When he came to the tank in the Sierra Blanca he found that it was in a hollowed rock basin under a waterfall. The water was deep and cold.
Chapter 12
*
TOM BADGER WAS in the lead, and was starting to skirt a deep crater when they saw Harbin approaching, leading the grulla. Tom drew up. “Looks like Rodelo must have run into trouble,” he said.
Nora’s lips tightened, but she said nothing. Her heart was pounding as Harbin drew nearer, her body felt suddenly cold and stiff, as she had never felt before.
“What happened?” Badger asked.
“Looks like Danny’s plan to draw Indians drew them faster than he figured.”
“Tough.”
“Well,” Harbin said, “it wasn’t my idea to send up that smoke.”
“Nobody to blame but himself,” Badger agreed. Then, for Nora’s benefit, he added, “But he gave his life tryin’ to help us.”
“Where is he?” Nora’s voice was cold.
“Dead, more’n likely. Them Indians ain’t much on prisoners.”
“Why would they want him? I mean when he wasn’t with you? He isn’t an escaped convict, and they couldn’t get a dollar for him.”
Badger glanced at Harbin and said, “He was with us. They knew it, and that would be enough. Come on, we’re wastin’ time.”
Nora swung her mount. “I’m going back after him. A man like Dan Rodelo doesn’t die that easy.”
“Are you crazy?” Harbin almost shouted at her. “He wouldn’t have a chance, back there. You wouldn’t neither.”
“Just the same, I am going back.”
She started her horse and Harbin swung his alongside. “You are, like hell!” He reached over and slapped her across the mouth. “You’re my woman, and you’d better know it! From now on you ain’t goin’ nowhere unless I tell you!”
“Let go of my horse.”
Deliberately, he swung the horse around, and Nora, lifting her quirt, struck him hard across the face with it.
Wrenching it from her hand, he threw it onto the sand. The livid streak left by the lash lay across his face. There was blood on his lips where it had cut into the chapped flesh. Harbin’s eyes were ugly.
“You’ll pay for that, a-plenty. You ride along now. You may last out the year, but I won’t never let you forget that blow, believe me. Now get on before I kill you right here.”
He started her horse toward the dunes. “You might as well know it—I’m the boss man from here on.”
Tom Badger pulled his horse alongside, and Joe reined in. “Ride on ahead, Tom,” he said.
“You’re the boss, you said.”
“That’s right. And I’ll give the orders.”
“Not in the back, Joe. I’m not Rodelo. We ride together.”
Harbin shrugged. “Suits me, if you feel you’re safer.”
Skirting the crater, they picked their way across the broken lava, following a precarious trail. To the north a long dune stretched out far to the east, at one point coming almost to the base of the Pinacate. From time to time they glanced back to look for the gap between Pinacate and Sierra Blanca. Then they entered the dunes.
They had drunk well before leaving the tank, and if the horses held up they hoped to be through the dunes in two or three hours, or even less if they found a place where the sand was hard-packed. At one place they saw the raw granite peaks of a sand-buried mountain range projecting a few feet above the sand. The time would come when they would be completely covered, a range of mountains several hundred feet high drowned in the sand.
A huge dune lifted on their right, another on the left. They rode a few yards and then found their way partly blocked by a drift of sand several feet high. The horses plunged and struggled getting through it, and by the time they reached the small space beyond it they were blowing hard. Tom Badger swung down, his face gray.
“We got trouble,”
he said.
Harbin nodded. “Must be an easier way through.” The dune ahead of them was at least sixty feet of slanting sand, not too steep, but soft.
“Maybe…but we ain’t got the time to look for it.”
They started on, struggling up the long slope of the dune, sinking over their ankles, the horses going in over their hocks. But they kept going, and made the top of the dune. Looking back, they could see the way they had come…not much more than a hundred yards.
Joe Harbin swore bitterly. He could have sworn they had walked almost a mile.
They pushed on, but it was an unending struggle. The horses lunged, the packs came loose. There was no question of riding; they not only had to lead their horses, but had to pull to help them through the sand.
There was a temptation, once on top of a dune, to follow its ridge. Once, finding a ridge that seemed to run in a somewhat southwesterly direction, they did follow it rather than descend into the hollow between that one and the next, a higher dune. When they looked back they had lost their guide mark, the gap between the mountains.
When perhaps an hour had passed, they stood together on the crest of a long sand hill. In no direction could they see anything but sand.
“I’ve got to rest,” Harbin muttered. He dropped to the sand and put his head on his arms, which lay across his knees.
There was a faint breeze that smelled of the sea. Nora inhaled deeply, hoping it would last, but it did not. After a while they started on. There was no sign of pursuit.
Nora Paxton was a girl who had spent much of her life riding, canoeing, hiking in the woods, and she was glad of it now. Neither of the men had ever done much but ride a horse until they went to prison, and there was no question of even walking more than a few yards while guests of the Territory of Yuma.
Now she was thinking of Dan Rodelo. She told herself that what Harbin had said must be true. Dan was out there either dead or wandering on foot in the desert’s heat. If he was not dead he soon would be.
Novel 1966 - Kid Rodelo (v5.0) Page 10