ON THE RIM of the distant ridge the smoke lifted a questioning finger, and somewhere farther toward the west another replied.
Dark-skinned warriors riding their shaggy ponies came down out of the draws of that distant ridge like hawks sailing from the high rocks and they scattered in a ragged rank, heading toward the west.
The finger of smoke talked of two people riding one horse … it would be easy, almost too easy. Their faces were wide across the cheekbones and dark, their eyes like slits of obsidian. Knees clutching the lean flanks of their horses, they rode west.
Chapter VII
THAT SLAP ACROSS the mouth had just the effect Considine had known it would, for nothing is so calculated as to drive a man to fury.
Whatever had been worrying Runyon was gone. He moved in swiftly, his fists cocked. Considine watched him coming, and stabbed suddenly with a left that caught Runyon coming in. It was a jarring blow, but Pete kept coming, and ducking suddenly he swung a high overhand right.
Considine saw it coming, but it was fast, faster than any such punch had a right to be. It caught Considine on the side of the head and staggered him. The crowd yelled, and the two men went into each other slugging.
Considine’s foot rolled on a stone and he reeled. Runyon caught him with a wicked left that exploded lights in Considine’s brain, and he tried to clinch, but Runyon moved carefully around, and swung a hard right to the stomach.
Considine clinched, and quicker with his feet than Pete, he back-heeled him into the dust, then stepped back with an elaborate show of courtesy to allow him to rise.
Runyon looked up, partly stunned, wholly surprised, for he knew that Considine was nothing if not a good finisher. He got up, taking his time, puzzled by Considine’s neglect. He had seen his former partner fight more than once, and when a man was down he rarely got the chance to get up more than halfway before he was clobbered.
There was an angry welt on Runyon’s cheekbone, a cut that trickled blood at the corner of his mouth. He was cautious now, and more dangerous. He would be using his head … and Pete Runyon was a dangerous man. He was two inches over six feet, the same height as Considine, but he was fifteen pounds heavier than Considine’s lean one hundred and eighty-five.
Pete moved in swiftly, feinted, and swung a right to the neck, then stepped in with a smashing left. They fought toe to toe, slugging, smashing, driving. Pete landed a left to the jaw, then a right. He bored in, ducking his head, then charging and swinging overhand blows with both hands. Considine backed up, tasting blood from a smashing blow on the mouth.
With that taste of blood, he was mad for the first time. He pushed his left hand against Pete’s head, then brought up a short right uppercut that lifted Pete’s head where a left swing caught him and knocked him staggering into the crowd.
Considine stepped back, gasping for breath. How much time had passed? Half a minute? A minute?
Runyon moved in and swung a left. Grasping the left wrist, Considine pivoted suddenly and threw him over his shoulder, but Pete had fought Considine before and as soon as the move started he went with it, and landed rolling.
On his feet again, Runyon moved in and again the two men slugged until they were streaming with sweat and every man and woman in the crowd was hoarse from shouting. Pete caught Considine with a right and knocked him down.
Considine hit the ground hard, shaken by the fall, and he rolled over, starting to get up. Time? How much time?
He took his time getting up, wiped the dust from his hands, and walked in. He stabbed a left to Runyon’s mouth and was rushed to the corral fence, where he brought up with a crash. He slipped out of the corner, hit Pete again, and a right grazed his own jaw.
They rushed together, clinched, and Pete back-heeled Considine to the ground. He fell, but he got his feet under him and took a breath while the crowd shouted for him to rise.
Considine’s head was buzzing … the roaring of the crowd and the roaring in his skull seemed one and the same. He got up, and Pete charged him. Considine met him with a right to the jaw that smashed Runyon full length on the ground.
Pete lay still, felled like an ox under the slaughterer’s axe.
Panic flooded Considine. If Pete was out … he could visualize the crowd flooding back up the street at the moment his men emerged from the bank.
Gasping and bloody, he moved forward, and in that instant Pete Runyon got up.
Lying face down, he shoved up suddenly and drove at Considine’s knees. Considine came down with a thud and they rolled over and over on the ground, fighting and gouging while the crowd roared. Breaking free, they came up together and fell to slugging with a will. Suddenly, all animosity was gone and both men were filled with the sheer joy of combat. Slugging toe to toe, they moved back and forth across the dusty corral, slamming away exuberantly with both hands.
Runyon was grinning now and, in spite of himself, so was Considine. All his struggle to make it look like a grudge battle was gone. He liked this big man he was fighting, and there was no beating around the bush. He ducked a right fist and smashed his right into Runyon’s belly. Runyon grunted, sagged at the knees, then clinched and butted him under the chin with his head.
Considine’s teeth clicked together and he fell back onto the ground. When he got up he felt a right smash his lips. He spat blood into the dust and heard a great roaring in his head. He feinted and dropped Pete to his knees with a right fist.
Pete got up slowly. He doubled his big fists and bored in, and they fought gasping for breath, wrestling, grunting with the force of the blows, and smashing wickedly at each other.
Considine was exhausted. He did not know how Pete felt, but he knew that he was all in. Pete was a bruiser, no question about it. Considine feinted, slammed a right to the wind, and tried the same combination again and was dropped to his knees when Pete countered swiftly.
How much time? How long had they been fighting?
His feet felt heavy and his arms were tired. He moved in—and suddenly a whip cracked. He saw Mary beside them, and she held a whip and was drawing it back. Only his suddenly up-thrown arm saved him from serious injury.
“Pete, you stop this! Stop it now, or I’ll leave this town and I’ll leave youl”
Pete turned to protest and Considine brushed a hand across his bloody face. “What’s the matter, Pete? Quitting?”
Mary turned on him, but before she could speak men moved between them. “Better ride, Considine—you’ve had your fight. I’d say it was even up.”
Considine looked over their heads at Runyon, and found again that puzzled expression on his face.
Considine lifted a hand. “It was a good fight, Pete! Good-bye … and thanks!”
He missed the stirrup with his foot the first time, then made it. Not too fast now, he warned himself.
As he rode past the bank he saw a sign hung on the closed door: OUT TO LUNCH.
That would hold them all but Epperson. He would come back to the bank—but he might stop and talk about the fight for a while.
His head ached and his jaw was stiff. He spat blood into the dust and swore, and even the swearing hurt. That damned Pete always could punch. Luckily, his hands were in good shape … they were puffed and swollen, but unbroken. His hands had always been good, they were powerful hands, square across the knuckles and strong. Now he worked his fingers to keep the stiffness from them.
The last buildings of the town fell behind, and he lifted the horse into a trot, then a canter. When he was out of sight of town he ran the horse for half a mile, then slowed to a canter again. Twice he looked back from ridges, but saw no pursuit.
It had gone well, almost too well, yet he felt no elation. What had he done, after all, but thumb his nose at a lot of people who had everything he did not? He always said he had his freedom, but what sort of freedom is it when every sheriff may be hunting for you?
He let the horse canter for a short distance, then ran it again. He saw Dutch before he reached the can
yon, for Dutch was standing out there watching for him. In some ways Dutch was like an old mother hen. Considine swung to the ground, and Hardy moved in quickly and switched his saddle to his own horse for him.
Dutch stared at Considine’s face. “How was it?”
Considine merely looked at him and said, “I told you he could punch.”
They stepped into their saddles and started out. The route had been carefully scouted beforehand and they knew what they had to do. The horses had been freed, and they would eventually drift back to Honey’s place or to the ranches from which he had gotten them.
Riding through the soft sand of the wash, they mounted a steep bank and cut across the top of the mesa.
“Saw a smoke a while back,” Hardy said. Hardy was young. He always had something to say.
“We’ll see a lot of them.”
Considine was tired, but his weariness was as much mental as physical. They had brought it off—up to a point. Now they had to get away.
He glanced back at their trail. Nothing in sight. By now they knew. By now Pete Runyon realized what the fight was all about, and he would be good and mad. So would the rest of them be mad … and although some of them would think it a good joke, it would not keep them from running him down and shooting him if he made a fight of it.
His face throbbed with every step of his horse. It was puffed and bruised and cut. Sweat trickled into the cuts, but the sting and smart of the cuts was nothing to the memory of the part he had played back there. Granted that outlaws would be talking of it for years … what had he done?
It was Dutch who first saw the smoke. “Now what could that be?” he said, pointing toward the billowing cloud rising ahead of them.
“I hope it ain’t what it looks to be,” Hardy commented. “I left my girl’s picture in that store.”
Slowing their pace, each man shucked his rifle from its scabbard. Considine swung wide on the flank and a little in advance. The Kiowa fell back, on the far side. They came up to the store at a fast walk, a line of mounted skirmishers.
The store was gone … only the adobe walls of one building remained, probably just as Honey Chavez had found it, long ago.
“Tracks,” Hardy said, indicating them. “Fire still burning. They can’t be gone very long.”
“He kill,” the Kiowa pointed to a large patch of blood. “Chavez kill this one.”
Considine rode quickly around. The Indians were gone … all their dead and wounded carried off, as usual.
“He made a fight of it,” Hardy said. “I’d never have believed he had it in him. He must have killed three, by the look of things. Wounded a couple.”
Although they saw Chavez’ body lying there, they could not take time to bury him, but Chavez would have been the first to understand that. Let the posse do it.
They rode out swiftly. There was nothing to keep them now. Westward at first, then south into the desert and toward the border.
They went down the trail at a canter, all of them seeing the tracks of the Indian ponies in the dirt, superimposed upon the tracks of Lennie and her father. The Apaches would have seen those tracks, and they would know one of the riders was a woman … a good tracker would know which horse she rode.
By this time Dave Spanyer would know what was behind him and the man was no tenderfoot. He had been up the mountain and over the hill, and he knew a lot about trouble and the packages in which it presented itself. And from what Dutch said the old man had told him, Lennie could handle her rifle better than most men.
It was very hot. The air was still. They rode at a good pace, conserving the strength of their horses, yet keeping up a steady, distance-eating gait.
The original plan was still good: to strike into the very heart of the desert, keeping to the tinajas and seeps, the water holes least frequented by the Indians and incapable of supplying more than four or five men at a time.
The sky was a vast emptiness. Considine gave no thought to the money in the sacks they carried. He was thinking of the girl on the trail, and her father … and somewhere between them, the Apaches.
HOURS EARLIER, DAVE Spanyer had come to his moment of bleak decision.
Before that, he had done a lot of soul-searching. Irritably, he ran over in his mind the events of the night before. After all, when a girl got to Lennie’s age she had to be trusted. What if something happened to him? She would be on her own, anyway, and the only way she would learn about men was by meeting them … besides, every bit of trail-side rumor he had heard said that Considine was a gentleman.
“I ain’t much of a father,” he said suddenly. “Never had much truck with women folks. Never rightly understood them. Your Ma was different. She knew how to handle me, but I just do the wrong things, Lennie. You got to make allowances.”
She said nothing, so he searched for words as they rode through the hot, still afternoon. “Had your Ma lived we’d have made out, and she’d want you to marry a good man and have a home, and that’s what I want for you.”
It was only a few hours ago that the rain had ceased, yet there was small indication of it except for some cracked mud in the bottom of a hollow here and there. But his instinct told him that water would be the least of their troubles before this ride was over. He wiped his rifle free of dust, then bit off a chew of tobacco.
He scanned the desert and the mountains. A man never knew there were Apaches around until they started to shoot—not unless he kept his eyes open.
But his thoughts kept reverting to Lennie. He wanted to reach her, to make her understand. He groped for words, yet every trail his thoughts tried to follow led into an unfamiliar jungle of ideas where he was not at home.
Finally he said, “There’s more to loving a man than kissing and such.”
“I know there is, Pa.”
Relieved at her response, he went on, “Next shade, we’ll pull up for a bit.”
They must keep their horses fresh, for there was no telling when they might have to run for it.
Suddenly, in front of them, they saw the tracks that came out of the desert to the southeast and cut across their trail. Six unshod ponies, the tracks not an hour old…
Spanyer studied their trail, looked off in the direction toward which they were riding, but saw nothing. “Might have seen us,” he said. “We’d better take care.”
“Pa?”
“Huh?”
“About them … Considine and the others. Do you think they made it?”
“No tellin’.”
“Will they come this way?”
“They’ll light out fast for Mexico. From what I hear tell, that Considine knows the desert like an Apache or a Pima.”
“I liked him.”
“You just forget him. You’ll likely never see him again, but if he comes gallivantin’ around you, I’ll kill him.”
Spanyer turned in the saddle to look behind him, but the desert was empty … he saw no dust. Yet worry lay heavy upon him, and he could not ride easy. He kept twisting and turning, and he knew the symptoms—he only felt like this when he had the feeling of being watched.
He could see nothing, but he knew they were in trouble now, and he did not need to see it. Those tracks were too fresh … trust an Indian to see them. So what to do?
Dave Spanyer had no illusions about the situation. Once you had Apaches on your trail you were in trouble … all kinds of trouble. They would attack … they would probably try an ambush, to kill him. Yet they might not.
Suppose Considine and his bunch had gotten away? They would be coming this way, and if he waited … But he decided against it. The chance of their escaping scot-free was too slight for him to rest any hopes on it. The best thing was to keep going … and it might be he could find a place where he could make a stand.
“Pa … how did you meet my mother?”
Preoccupied as he was with Apaches, the question startled him.
“Oh … she came west with her husband, and he took a fever and died. Being around, I
sort of stopped by, time to time, to see if she was making out.
“Your Ma was a real lady … educated … she made me promise to see that you got some schooling.
“I never did figure out what she saw in me. Them days I was younger, and maybe not so mean, but anyway I respected her more than anybody I ever knew. We had a good life, a good life.”
His eyes had not ceased to move as he talked, nor had he missed anything. Now he said, very quietly, “Lennie, you slip that Winchester out of its scabbard. Easy now … and be ready for trouble.”
“Are they Indians, Pa?”
Her horse was a half-broken mustang, and the rattler was almost under its feet. At the sound of the rattle, the mustang leaped into the air and came down running.
The horse lunged into the rocks, then broke loose on a dead run. Bounding a huge boulder, it hit the top of the rockslide running, and had no chance. The rock started to move under its hoofs, and the horse struggled madly to keep its feet, then fell and rolled over amid a cascade of rocks.
Cursing wildly, Spanyer plunged his own horse in pursuit, even as he heard the crash of the falling rock and his daughter’s scream.
Swinging around the rocks, he drew up and slid to the ground, yet even now he took a quick glance around—this was no time to be off the trail. He half ran, half slid down the rocks to Lennie’s side.
She was already getting up. She was shaken, and undoubtedly bruised and skinned, but there seemed to be no broken bones. And she had clung to her rifle. He went past her to the horse.
Even before he reached it he could see that its leg was broken. There was no hope for it—the leg was badly shattered, and for all he knew it had a snake bite too. He stripped off the pack behind the cantle of the saddle, then, not wishing to risk a shot, he stooped quickly and with his Bowie knife cut the horse’s throat.
Lennie started toward him and he stopped her. “Gone,” he said brusquely, to cover his fear. “Leg broken. I had to kill him.”
“Oh, Pa!” Tears started in her eyes. “He was such a fine horse!”
“Are you crazy? That was a rattle-brained, hammer-headed broom-tail, and never an ounce of good to anybody.” He paused. “Nevertheless, we’re going to miss him.”
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