by Paul Lederer
‘I still wonder about the gold,’ George Sabato said.
‘Yes, but I told you earlier –’
‘I know,’ Sabato said sharply. ‘It’s there still or it’s not. We can’t do anything about it either way.’
‘That’s right.’
‘We could stop and I could take a quick look,’ Sabato suggested hopefully.
‘Do you really want me to halt this coach right now?’ Quinn asked, glancing eastward toward the lightening skies.
‘No. I suppose not,’ the chubby man answered after a moment. ‘It’s just that – Quinn, you don’t understand that my reputation, my career are dependent on delivering that gold to Yuma Prison.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Quinn muttered, ‘that if we don’t keep this stage rolling, neither you nor the gold has a chance of ever making Yuma.’
Sabato held any retort he might have made and the stage swayed and rumbled on across the long white desert.
Alicia had removed Jody Short’s gag because the young outlaw was having trouble breathing.
No shouts for help could now do him any good. Besides, she wanted to talk to him, to ask him why. Why had he done what he did to Dolores Delgado? She put it to him bluntly:
‘How could you kill my sister like that? She was a good woman.’
‘Who says I did it?’ Jody Short snarled, rubbing his throat. Wearing that gag had been nearly enough to strangle him.
‘The jury did. I do,’ Alicia said with venom. ‘You did not know that I saw you that day, but I did. I was right behind Dolores on the trail.’
‘You’re mistaken,’ Jody tried.
‘I am not!’ Alicia said to the beady-eyed bandit. ‘The jury was not mistaken. Your face had scratches on it from her fingernails. Your horse’s hoofprints were found at the scene. A piece of your shirt was clutched in Dolores’ hand. That is why I did not come forward. It was not necessary then. If they had found you innocent then my father would have let me testify. There is no doubt that you committed the crime, Short. I just need to know why.’
‘What does it matter to you?’ Short demanded. He lifted his hands which were still bound with his own belt.
‘It matters.’
Jody Short’s face contorted. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. His feral eyes met Alicia’s and he shouted:
‘Because she was dirty! All women are dirty. They try to hide beneath their finery, their skirts and stockings, but they are dirty things! I would like to kill them all.’
Alicia just sat staring at the young man for a long time. Short had been twisted inside somewhere in his life. She couldn’t guess and didn’t care to know what might have perverted him. She only knew that she had been right – Jody Short must be executed. The stagecoach jolted on across the desert.
‘Somebody’s on our backtrail,’ George Sabato said to Quinn. Glancing across his shoulder, Tom Quinn also saw the distant rider illuminated by starlight.
‘Doesn’t take too much to figure who it is,’ Tom muttered.
‘Can’t you get some more speed out of these animals?’ Sabato asked worriedly.
‘They’re giving it all they’ve got. Truth is they could use a rest about now.’
‘I thought you said that you scattered all of their horses,’ Sabato said, clinging to the iron seat rail as they hit a deep rut in the road.
‘Those that we found,’ Quinn answered, ‘but those probably weren’t even their personal mounts. Besides, most of the horses could have been easily caught up again.’
Sabato was still studying the backtrail. ‘I can only make out one rider,’ he said with puzzlement. ‘That makes no sense, does it?’
Quinn didn’t bother to answer. Nothing that was happening on this tangled journey made a lot of sense to him.
A quarter of a mile farther on the lone rider, who was obviously gaining ground on them, could be more clearly seen, illuminated by pale light in the eastern skies.
‘Quinn,’ Sabato said, ‘pull the team up – it’s the woman who’s trying to catch us.’
‘Lily Davenport?’ Tom asked in disbelief.
‘Yes. I can recognize her now.’
‘Damn all,’ Quinn said, drawing back on the reins to slow the team. ‘Now we’re in for it.’
Because even if Guerrero was willing to let them escape into the desert, knowing that they now knew the location of his hideout, he would not be so willing to let his lover escape.
Quinn reined the team to a full stop. The horses blew and shook their heads with relief. Lily Davenport drew up beside them minutes later on a frothing black pony. The horse’s eyes were wild; hers were no tamer.
‘Thank God!’ she said. Her body was shuddering. Alicia leaned halfway out of the stagecoach window to gape at her.
Quinn was laconic: ‘Short honeymoon.’
‘I didn’t know … I have to go with you. I think my horse is injured,’ Lily said in between gasps.
There was no time for debate. Tom just told her, ‘Make it quick!’
Lily, showing she had some heart, quickly unsaddled the black horse and slipped its bridle before turning it free to make its way homeward. She climbed aboard and Quinn snapped his reins. The coach started on its lonesome way again.
‘Was that smart?’ George Sabato asked.
‘I don’t know, Sabato. I’m not sure I’ve done anything smart for the last few days. It’s done, that’s all.’ He shrugged and returned his attention to guiding the team along the barely visible trail across the trackless, dimly lighted desert.
For hours they continued across the deceptively desolate land. Empty and lifeless, it seemed, and the skies held clear, but there were hunters out there, and the sudden thunder of guns hung only briefly in abeyance.
Quinn knew all of this, yet the constant strain of holding the four horses on to their path, the battering his body had taken in Las Palmas still bothering him, his concern about Alicia, forced him to focus only on the task at hand and leave the watching and worrying to George Sabato.
‘Shouldn’t we have reached the road to Yuma by now?’ Sabato asked anxiously.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Maybe we passed it by! How long did it take us when that man, Paco, drove us to Soledad?’
‘I can’t recall.’
‘If we miss the coach road, we’re doomed, you know that, don’t you?’ Sabato asked.
Probably. Quinn was starting to believe that they were doomed anyway. He was weary, his shoulder joints feeling as if they had been separated by the constant tug of the reins. His back hurt, his legs ached from the beating he had taken in Las Palmas. He was driving a weary team across a featureless desert. The sun would rise soon and grow white-hot as it arced into the skies, and then they would find themselves waterless beneath its glare and, if lost, quite definitely doomed on the desert flats.
There was nothing for it. Quinn did not think he could have missed the Yuma coach road, but in the darkness of the previous night, it was possible that he had. He thought that Sabato was right about one thing – it had not taken the coach this long rolling south from the road with Paco driving to reach Soledad. Or had it? He cuffed cold perspiration from his forehead. His body clock did not seem to be functioning well. Surely they would hit the stage road soon? Had to. Even with a weary team, the going would be easier on it than it was through this sand.
And there was the chance that they might encounter other traffic on the main road. A stage going in the other direction, freighters, even an army patrol. They had to find the road to Yuma.
Then it suddenly seemed that it no longer mattered if they did or did not.
‘They’re coming, Quinn,’ Sabato said. ‘Half a dozen riders, maybe more, on our backtrail. It looks like we’ve had it.’
EIGHT
It seemed that Sabato’s assessment of the situation was correct – they had had it. But Quinn was not going to make it easy for Ernesto Guerrero’s raiders. He drew up the team as the faintest dawn color limned the eastern
horizon and ordered Sabato:
‘Give me your pistol.’
‘What? You’d leave me unarmed!’ Sabato replied in shocked disbelief.
‘You’re driving now. I have already proved to myself that it’s impossible to drive a team of four and shoot at once.’
‘I can’t handle the team!’ Sabato objected. ‘I’ve never even attempted it.’
‘You’ll have to now,’ Quinn said, handing Sabato the handful of reins, eight in all. He showed Sabato how to place the leather ribbons between his fingers. The fat man continued to shake his head.
‘I can’t do it, I tell you.’
‘You can get them started. That’s all that’s necessary for now. Give me that pistol.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Sabato asked, his voice quavering. He handed Quinn the pistol which Tom shoved down in front, behind his belt, thinking irrelevantly that the world owed a debt to the man who had invented holsters.
‘I’m going to climb down and make it a little harder on them,’ Quinn replied as he prepared to swing out of the box. ‘It’s the woman Guerrero’s after, of course, but we can’t surrender her. They probably would not let us go on to Yuma anyway, knowing what we do.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Sabato complained.
‘Nor do I,’ Quinn said
He swung easily to the sandy earth and walked to the coach door. Peering in at the unhappy Jody Short, at Lily Davenport and Alicia, he told them, ‘Sabato’s going to drive. I’m going to stay and try to hold the outlaws back. There may be a chance if Sabato can cut the stage trail.’
‘You haven’t got a chance, Quinn,’ Jody Short growled.
‘Probably not. But the rest of you might. If I am successful, Lily and Alicia might be spared – and you, Short, might yet survive long enough to meet the hangman.’
Short just glared at him. Lily Davenport hung her head. Alicia rose with determination.
‘I am staying with you,’ she announced.
‘Oh, no, you’re not,’ Quinn replied strongly.
‘Yes, I am. You have two weapons, I see. I am a good shot.’
‘No,’ Quinn said flatly. Alicia was trying to push past him to exit the coach.
‘I am a determined woman,’ she said.
‘I’m starting to get that idea,’ Quinn said. Still he barred her way.
‘You can’t stop me. I will simply jump out when the coach starts again and make my way back,’ Alicia told him.
‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ Quinn asked the crazy woman with the black eyes.
‘You shouldn’t have to stand and fight these men alone, and there is no one else to help you,’ Alicia said.
There was no point in arguing further. The approaching riders were much nearer now, the dust rising from their horses’ hoofs showing as a sheer veil against the pink of the dawn light. Quinn backed away and let Alicia leap from the stage, handing her one of the pistols without comment. He returned briefly to look up at George Sabato who sat as if paralyzed on the box of the coach.
‘Let them run,’ was the best advice Quinn could give the prison officer, ‘if disaster threatens, just pull back on all eight ribbons as hard as you can.’
‘Quinn …’ Sabato began in a pleading tone.
Tom Quinn took his hand and slapped the near horse on the rump with all the force he could muster and the stage lurched into uncontrolled motion. The last thing he saw by the pale light of new dawn was George Sabato’s bloodless face, his eyes wild with panic as the four horses lunged forward across the desert.
‘He was frightened,’ Alicia said at his shoulder as they watched the dust settle.
‘So am I,’ Quinn told her. ‘Let’s find a place to set up our ambush.’
As they slipped from the road into a shallow wash where some greasewood and a few huge stands of nopal cactus grew, Quinn asked Alicia:
‘Did Lily tell you what happened back there? Why she made her escape?’
‘She said,’ Alicia answered, panting, grabbing at Quinn’s supporting arm as they slid down the quartz-sand bank, ‘that she heard Guerrero, Rafael, the blond man, Lon and some of the others discussing business when they thought she was asleep. The talk was of ‘eliminating’ some of their competition among the border raiders. They might have even been talking about my father,’ she shrugged as they climbed back up the sand bluff to search for concealment, ‘but there was murder afoot – that was made clear. And Guerrero told the others that if you and I broke our promise to him – that we would be eliminated as well.’
‘She must have known what sort of man Guerrero was,’ Quinn said, tugging Alicia down beside him as he bellied up to the rim of the wash.
‘When she met him, he was handsome, dashing, quick of wit, easy with a smile. She swears she did not know,’ Alicia answered as the following riders now drew out of the dawn shadows to become distinct figures. ‘Sometimes a woman in love sees only her dreams, and not the reality of the man.’
Quinn was listening, but not paying a lot of attention to the dark-eyed girl. He sighed heavily, drew back the hammer of his big Colt and waited, watching the coming horsemen. He could hear Alicia’s rapid shallow breathing as she lay beside him, the blue-steel pistol looking huge in her small hand.
‘Don’t fire until I do,’ he told her, ‘or until they start it.’
They had a total of twelve bullets against an enemy with hundreds of rounds of ammunition at their disposal. Whatever they accomplished it would have to be economically and quickly done. Quinn’s original idea had been simply to hold Guerrero back until the stage carrying the women could reach the coach road then try to make a run for it himself as best he could. That might or might not have been foolish, even suicidal, but he couldn’t see the women taken again by the border raiders.
Now with Alicia remaining stubbornly behind with him, he knew there would be no chance of the two of them making a dash for freedom.
He would just have to see to it that Guerrero changed his mind about the wisdom of tracking that stagecoach down.
They had several small advantages over the border bandits. They had surprise on their side. They were in a concealed position. The bandits would have to fire from horseback – always a chancy proposition.
‘Don’t use all of your bullets in the first volley,’ Quinn said in a whisper. Alicia nodded mutely.
For Quinn, although he had only six shots, he meant to waste one firing into the ground in front of the Guerrero raiders’ horses. That would give the bandits pause to consider and slow them down. The problem with that idea was that alert eyes could spot the smoke rising from his pistol and pinpoint their position. Yet Quinn had an inborn prejudice against shooting down even men like these from ambush. There was also the slender chance that they could talk their way out of this. Guerrero had led his men out in a rage, no doubt. Maybe his ardor, the eagerness of his men had cooled somewhat after the long ride. Perhaps knowing that they had ridden into a fight they had not expected would instill caution.
Thinking through all of that as the horsemen approached, Quinn knew that none of his speculation was useful, that they were a collection of vague hopes and wishful thinking. He tried to pick out Guerrero among the riders, for if all else failed, he meant to take out the leader of the border raiders first, hoping that the rest would scatter in confusion.
The raiders were nearer now, much nearer. Quinn was able to identify Guerrero riding near the front of the pack. Hatless, he wore a white shirt and black trousers. Beside him rode the blond kid, Lon. The fat man, Rafael, did not appear to be among them.
‘Here goes,’ Quinn said raising his sights toward the path of the horses. ‘If the shooting starts, don’t spare a man – or a horse if that’s the only shot you get. And.…’
‘I know, don’t use every bullet in the first salvo,’ Alicia said with a snappishness caused by tension.
‘That’s right,’ Quinn said. For if any of the Guerrero men swung down and rushed them, they would have to be read
y to take them down at close range.
Quinn fired his warning shot.
And everything that could go wrong did.
This was no rabble riding after them. All of them were experienced fighting men and instead of drawing their horses up they scattered in every direction, unlimbering their guns. Quinn winged his second shot at Guerrero, but missed as the outlaws began to fire back. Quinn saw Alicia unleash a bullet from her .44. Her shot struck a border raider’s buckskin horse and it went down, but the rider leaped free, the only noticeable damage a limp as he raced toward cover. Three shots out of twelve gone, and nothing to show for it.
Tom fired again. His shot might or might not have hit Lon. It was difficult to be sure because the bandit went to the side of his horse and rode on, Indian-style. A dozen bullets from the outlaw guns sprayed the earth just above their heads as Alicia and Quinn ducked low.
‘They’ve spotted us for sure. We’ve got to move,’ Quinn shouted.
‘Where?’ Alicia asked, searching the dry wash behind them.
It was a fair question. There was little brush in the draw. Only some flimsy greasewood and the clumps of nopal cactus. He inclined his head and nodded toward the cactus thicket. Alicia’s eyes widened. Even if they could make it that far, the result was bound to be painful. And the paddle-shaped blades of the nopal weren’t going to stop any bullets aimed their way. Quinn saw no other choice. At least the cactus would offer concealment. Perhaps Guerrero would decide to forget them and continue his quest for the stagecoach. More likely, Tom thought grimly, the bandit chief would simply split his force, leaving a few riflemen behind to take care of them.
There was time for a spasm of regret at having gotten Alicia into this, but no time to dwell on it. They slid down the flank of the gully in whirls of dust, hit the flat ground and raced for the cactus patch. A bullet whispered past, much too near, as they ran on. Once the other bandits had figured out where they were going, every man on the rim above would open up with his weapon and they would have no chance after that.