“We could send up a smoke,” Harbin suggested.
“They’d think it was Indians.”
“What then?”
“We go on,” Rodelo said. “We have no other choice. We go on tonight.”
He looked at the packs. There it was, the gold he had come so far to get. There was the gold for which he had served a long, bitter year in prison—the gold he had told himself he would return to those to whom it belonged.
But what of these men? They had stolen it, or one of them had; and they had gone through a hard struggle to get away with it. How was he going to tell them what he meant to do?
The moment was near, and when he spoke he must be ready to shoot. Joe Harbin had counted too long on that gold, and no doubt Tom Badger had done his own figuring. Poor Gopher had been out of it from the beginning.
“We’d better dig in,” Badger said. “Those Injuns will be comin’ back.”
“Can’t you talk to ’em? They’re your people.”
Tom Badger looked at Harbin. “Are you crazy? I’m part Cherokee, and the Cherokee were eastern Injuns until the government took their land. We never even knew about these Yaquis. As far as that goes, the Injuns were always at war with one another—it was their favorite sport. They’d take my scalp as quick as yours.”
They worked with pieces of shell and scooped out a trench, throwing up a wall of sand. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Badger glanced over at Rodelo. “You know where they’ll camp?”
“North…that’s the only place I know of with water. There’s two or three springs on the shore to the north of here.”
“D’you think that boat might be in the other bay?”
“If it came at all, and if it hasn’t gone back, that’s where it will be.”
Joe Harbin drank the brackish water. He studied Dan Rodelo. “I don’t figure you,” he said. “You’ve come a long way for nothing.”
Rodelo looked at him and said nothing, but he could feel the showdown coming.
“You figured we might cut you in for a piece of it, is that the idea? You want a piece of the take?”
Rodelo smiled. “I want it all, Joe. Every last bit of it.”
Harbin chuckled. “Well, you’re honest. I’ll say that for you.”
“That’s just it, Joe. I’m honest.”
They looked at him now. “What’s that mean?” Badger said.
“I went to prison for a year simply because when they caught Joe Harbin I was riding alongside of him…I just happened to meet up with him on the trail. I didn’t know there had been a holdup, but I had worked at the mine, I knew the gold was going up the trail. The jury figured it was too much of a coincidence.”
“So you got stuck,” Joe said. “Well, what of it?”
“I am going to take the gold back to them, Joe, and I’m going to rub their noses in it. I’m going to show them what a bunch of two-bit fair-weather friends they were, and then I’m going to ride away.”
They stared at him, nobody speaking. Nora Paxton could hear the slow, measured beat of her heart. Suddenly Joe Harbin said, “You figured to murder us and take the gold?”
“No. I figured the Indians might do that for me, or the desert. Failing that, I thought I might come up with a plan that would get the gold without anybody being hurt.”
“Now, there’s a good lad,” Harbin said. “He’d take our gold and not hurt us! Why, you damn fool! Who would buy a story like that?”
“I might,” Badger said. “Or once upon a time I might have.”
“Tell you what,” Rodelo suggested. “Suppose I give you each a thousand dollars? We’ll call it reward money for helping to recover it.”
“Generous, ain’t he?” Harbin sneered. “You ride off with our gold and leave us settin’ with a thousand each! You got gall, kid, but you’re in the wrong business. You ought to be a con man or a gambler.”
He looked over at Nora. “Did you know about this?”
“Some of it. I believe he’s telling the truth. I believe he intends to return it.”
Harbin had the saddlebags behind him on the sand. He put a hand on them. “You forget it, Rodelo. You’ll never lay a hand on a cent of this.”
“How about some coffee?” Nora suggested. “We could take a chance on a fire. They know where we are, anyway.”
Nobody paid any attention. Harbin was looking at Rodelo, and Dan could see he was ready. “How about it, kid? You going to try me? You want a piece of the action right now?”
Dan Rodelo smiled stiffly. It was an effort to smile because his lips were cracked and his face was stiff with dust, but he made it. “No, Joe, not yet. I’m going to need you for those Indians, and you’re going to need me.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Badger said. “I think the coffee is a right idea. We’ll have us a fire, make coffee, and then we’ll build up the fire some an’ ease out of here. We can walk in the water…those tide flats stretch quite a ways out. We can get on over to that other bay.”
They kept well back from the fire, although it was screened by the mound of sand they had piled up. Nora made coffee, and they drank it slowly, savoring every drop. All of them needed food, but thirst had taken the edge from their appetites. What they wanted was liquid, in any form. The coffee brightened them up, and when the time came to move out they started cautiously, Tom going first and taking the horses. They reached the edge of the water together and started along, walking single file.
The Indians came out of the night suddenly. There was a flash of a gun and a horse went down, and Dan Rodelo swung his Winchester, firing at the flash. He sprang aside, hit the ground flat-footed and fired at another flash, then dropped to the sand and rolled over behind the dead horse, firing again quickly.
He emptied his rifle and fired the Indian’s gun, and when that was empty, calmly reloaded his own. Then came a lull. Somebody was beside him and suddenly the man spoke. It was Tom Badger.
“That straight about you comin’ after the gold?”
“I told the truth, Tom.” He paused and then added, “I never had much, Tom, but I was working into something back there. I was making a place for myself, and then I had to fall in with Joe on the trail after that holdup.”
“Tough,” Badger said.
They waited a moment. Then Badger asked, “D’you think we got anybody?”
“Uh-huh…one, maybe two.”
“No tellin’ in the dark, like this.” After a pause he added, “I got a hunch, kid. I got a hunch I’m not goin’ to make it.”
“You’re crazy. If anybody makes it, you will.”
A few hundred yards east of them the Indians drew together. Yuma John was feeling disgusted. “I think it is finish,” he said. “I want no more. Too many die.”
“They are but men,” Hat said.
“We are men also,” Yuma John replied. “I think it is well to wait for another time.”
“No,” Hat said. “These I will have.”
“I go,” Yuma insisted. “Who goes with me?”
Two of the Indians joined him. When they had gone, Hat looked at the others. Four were still with him. Well, it was fewer with whom to divide, but it would go hard with him when he returned home. He had always been successful, and the young men had sought every chance to ride with him. Now they would say his luck was gone.
Hat led the way back toward the beach, where they found a dead horse and a few tracks. Their quarry was gone. Hat started on, leading the way.
The ambush should have succeeded. He had recognized the trick of the fire for what it was, and they had gone ahead and waited for the white men to come. They heard them walking at the water’s edge but had miscalculated in the darkness. Several of his men must have shot at the horse, wasting bullets. The return fire had killed another man.
“Look,” one of the young Yaquis said.
There was a darkness on the sand…blood. Hat lifted his head and looked after them. One of them was wounded, and had been hit hard.
Joe Harbin discovered it at almost the same instant, and a quarter of a mile further along the beach. Tom Badger was lagging, hanging to the side of the grulla.
“Tom? What the hell?”
“I caught one.”
Harbin paused. “Bad?”
“Don’t let them get me, Joe. I don’t want them to cash me in.”
“They won’t.”
“I mean it.”
Dan Rodelo fell back. They had reached the point—what was it called? Sea Lion Bluff.…
“Let’s stop here,” he said. “We can see the bay. It’s high here, and we can run up a signal, make a fire, or something.”
“Them Injuns,” Tom said, “they’ll be comin’ along.”
“Why not lay for them?” Joe Harbin said. “We ain’t likely to find a better place.”
There were rocks along the shore, and on the outer edge of the bluff some sea lions had gathered, justifying the name of the point. Among the rocks and brush, with the bulk of the bluff rising behind them, they waited.
There was a rustling of surf…the tide was out…there was muttering and movement among the sea lions only a short distance away. Nora huddled close to Rodelo and whispered, scarcely moving her lips. “What will we do?”
“Wait,” he said.
“Tom?” It was Harbin. “Where you hit?”
“In the belly.”
Harbin swore.
Suddenly Nora spoke. “Dan, there’s a light out there! On the water!”
They all saw it then. It was well out, and plain to be seen. Undoubtedly the boat lay at anchor and in swinging with the tide it had turned, showing the light.
“We made it,” Tom said. “That’ll be Isacher’s boat.”
Minutes passed. There was subdued movement from the sea lions, but nothing else. The blackness of the bluff would give perfect concealment for their small party, and any sound of movement would be laid to the sea lions.
Rodelo shifted his Winchester. He had only the one rifle, fully loaded now. The other, a poor sort of weapon, he had left back on the beach. He had examined the belts with his fingers and knew he had at least seventy rounds of ammunition, all .44’s, and they could be used in either the rifle or the six-shooter he carried.
They heard the whisper on the sand before the Indians came into view, and when they did come they were only a suggestion of movement in the darkness, a shadow on the pale sand. No figure was distinct.
Nora whispered suddenly, “Joe…don’t! The boat is out there. Maybe in the morning we can get aboard without a fight.”
He shook her off. “Not now…we wouldn’t have a chance.”
He lifted his rifle, and Tom Badger, lying on his stomach in the cold sand, did likewise. Behind a rock Rodelo eased his own gun into position.
It might have been some movement, some glint of light on a gun barrel, but suddenly Hat hissed a sharp warning.
Instantly, Joe’s rifle roared, followed by smashing reports, like echoes, from Badger and Rodelo.
A man screamed, a horse plunged, snorting, and the answering fire came quickly, stabbing flame toward the thundering rifles of the three men on the beach.
There was no question of picking targets, for there were no targets, only a confusion of movement and the flames as the Indians fired. The three men were on the ground, offering only their own gunfire for target, their bodies merged into the blackness of the bluff behind them.
Suddenly the firing ceased, there was the drum of racing hoofs. Joe shot once more, after the vanishing horse.
Then silence.…
Only lapping water, a faint stir of wind. Overhead bright stars that hung in the darkness above them.
“What do we do now?” Nora asked.
“We wait,” Joe Harbin said grimly.
From the sand there came a low moan, then a subdued gasp.…
“Joe?” Tom Badger’s voice was weak. “Joe, let the kid have the gold. Let him take it back. It ain’t worth it.”
“Sure,” Harbin replied easily. “Don’t worry about it. I was thinkin’ the same thing.”
Chapter 14
*
THE GULF LAY like a sheet of steel in the first gray light. Far out on the water lay the low black hull of a ketch, her two black bare poles pointing thin fingers at the sky.
On the sand, their bodies twisted in death, lay four Indians. Hat was not there.
Dan Rodelo stood up slowly, his muscles cramped from his position and from the dampness of the night. He picked up his rifle and wiped the moisture from the barrel.
“We’d better light a signal fire,” Nora suggested. “They might leave without us.”
They gathered driftwood. Only Tom lay still. “How is he?” Rodelo asked.
“Gone. You heard him—that was when he passed on.”
Joe Harbin looked down at Badger. “He was a good man, and a good partner. I’d never have made it through the first year without him. He was always talkin’ me down when I was ready to blow my top.”
He glanced at Rodelo. “You seen me enough. You know I got a short fuse.”
He lay the sticks in position, ripped a corner from his shirt for tinder, felt in his pockets. “You got a match?”
Dan reached for his shirt pocket, and Joe Harbin went for his gun. It was a difference of six inches in the position of their gun hands, and Joe Harbin was fast.
His hand dropped, gripped, the gun slid smoothly out and the muzzle came level in one perfectly timed movement, a result of long practice that had left dead men behind him.
His gun muzzle came level but something struck him hard in the side, and with a startled realization he saw Dan Rodelo was shooting.
The second shot followed the first so fast that he was turned in his tracks, his own shot drilling into the sand almost at his toes. He backed up and sat down hard on a rock, his six-shooter hanging from his fingers.
“You told Badger you’d let me have the gold,” Rodelo said mildly.
“Hell, he was dyin’—it made him feel better. You didn’t figure I’d fall for that, did you?”
“He was trying to save your bacon, Joe. He knew what was coming. You see, there in the past few days I think he figured out who I was.”
“You?” Harbin was holding his side where the blood welled out around his hand.
“I was a kid outlaw-gunfighter back in Texas before I saw it wasn’t getting me any place. That job at the mine, that was my first real job.”
“That Badger,” Joe Harbin said wonderingly, “always talkin’ me out of it, even with his last breath. I should have listened.” He was breathing now with long, shuddering gasps.
“You better light that fire,” he said suddenly. Then, “Say, that boat’s makin’ sail?”
Rodelo turned sharply to look seaward and too late heard the click of the drawn-back hammer. He dove head-first onto the sand, heard the roar of a gun, felt sand bite into his face. And then he was rolling over and came up shooting.
Three times he triggered the Colt, and with each shot Joe Harbin’s body jerked; it rolled slowly off the rock to the sand.
White-faced and shaky, Rodelo got to his feet and looked at Nora. “That was close,” he said. Wonderingly, he looked down at Harbin. “He never quit trying.”
“I’ll light the fire,” Nora said.
She took his matches and stooped down. When she saw the flames take hold and the column of smoke lift toward the sky, she got up and walked along the side of the bluff, and dug into a crevice in the rocks. The box she brought out was rusted and old, but still solid.
“I remember the place,” she said. “This is what I came for. All there is of the family I once had.”
“They’ve lowered a boat,” Rodelo said.
He picked up the sacks of gold and walked down the beach with them as the boat came in close. Two men were in the boat.
“You Isacher?” one asked.
“He’s dead…killed some time back, trying to escape. I’m takin’ his place.”
“I don’t know about that,” the man protested. “I was to get twenty bucks a day, and—”
“You’ll get that, and an extra twenty if you’ll bury those two men at sea.”
“Why do that? Nobody’ll ever find ’em.”
“There’s an Indian up there who claims a fifty-buck bounty on each prisoner he takes in, dead or alive. They didn’t want to go back.”
“Twenty bucks? Sure enough.”
He glanced at the heavy sacks Dan lifted into the boat. “What’s that?”
“Trouble, friend. Too much trouble. You just forget it.”
“I got to be an old man mindin’ my own business. It’s already forgot.”
Nora got into the boat, and Dan walked to the grulla and slipped the bridle off. “All right, boy, you’re free. You go on back to Sam, if you want, and we’ll come and get you one of these days. If you don’t do that, you just run wild.”
He slapped the mustang on the hip and walked away, trying not to show how much he minded.
The horse looked after him, then trotted off a few steps toward Pinacate. He stopped and looked back to make sure he was right. Dan Rodelo was getting into the boat.
Taking his position in the bow of the boat, Rodelo could look shoreward, and he saw Hat come down out of the desert and ride to the shore at Sea Lion Bluff. The Indian sat his horse, looking around, then rode off slowly.
“Wherever you go,” Nora was saying, “I want to go with you.”
“All right,” he said.
She held the rusted box tightly in her hand, but somehow it no longer seemed so important.
About Louis L’Amour
*
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way
I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Novel 1966 - Kid Rodelo (v5.0) Page 12