The asphalt doesn’t go an inch beyond the resort limits in that direction and as he says, there isn’t even what you could call a road, just a few burro-cart tracks in the soft powdery dust. But one good thing about it: the tire-treads of their heavy machine are as easy to pick up as if they’d driven over snow.
As if I had to be told this late what the whole idea is, I take time off to look at the piece of paper I picked up outside the casino. “Fifty thousand,” it says in pencil, “gets her back. Notify Timothy in L.A. that the joke is on him, he’ll know what we mean. We’ll cure her of gambling, also of breathing, if he don’t come across.” It is all printed out; evidently it was prepared before they drove up to the casino.
“Americans,” I remark to the driver. “You can tell by the way it’s worded. It’s our fault if we lose ‘em, they’ll stand out like a sore thumb if they stay on this side of the line.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, “like a sore thumb with wings; they’re making pretty good headway so far!”
That crack in the note about curing her of gambling makes the whole thing look twice as bad to me, because reading between the lines I get this out of it: Timothy must have engineered the snatch as a practical joke to begin with, to throw a scare into her and break her of the habit of running down to Agua and throwing away her money. But now his hired kidnapers have double-crossed him and turned it into the real thing, seeing a chance to get ten times the stage-money he paid them. And if there is anything worse than a snatch, it is a snatch with a double-cross in it. He knows who they are, and they know he knows; it’s sink or swim with them and they won’t stop at an5d;hing. Poor Fay is liable to come back to her public in little pieces, even after the ransom is paid.
We haven’t once caught sight of them so far, even though they can’t possibly make it any quicker than we can over a roadbed that consists entirely of bumps, ridges, hillocks, gullies, with scrub growing all over the place. And yet the treads of their tires are always there ahead of us in the glare of the heads, big as life, so I know we’re not wrong. The visibility is swell too, ever3rthing stands out under the moon, the ground is white as cornstarch. It’s not the seeing, it’s the going, that is terrible. One minute the two left wheels are at a forty-five degree angle taking some mound, the next minute it’s the two right wheels, and the springs keep going under us the whole time like concertinas.
“Go on,” I keep telling him, “get some speed into it; if they can do it, we can! She paid ten grand for this boat.”
“But it’s supposed to be used for a c-c-car,” he chatters, “not a Rocky Mountain goat. That tequila don’t go good with all this see-sawing, either!” I take the wheel back from him for awhile and give him a chance to pull himself together.
A minute later as we ride a swell that’s a little higher than most of the others, I see a red dot no bigger than a pin-point way off in the distance. In another instant it’s gone again as we take a long downgrade, then it shows up just once more, then it goes for good.
“That’s them!” I tell him. “They don’t even know we’re coming after ‘em, or they wouldn’t leave their lights on like that!”
“They wouldn’t dare drive over this muck without any,” he groans, holding his stomach with both hands.
“Watch me close in,” I mutter, and I shove my foot halfway through the floor.
Immediately there’s a bang like a firecracker, and a sharp jagged rock, or maybe a dead cactus-branch for all I know, has gotten a front tire. We skiver all over before I can get it under control again.
“That’s been coming to us for the past forty minutes,” he says, jumping out. He reaches for the spare and I pull his hand away.
“That would only go too. Let’s strip them all off and ride the bare rims, the ground’s getting harder all the time.”
We get rid of them and we’re under way again in something like five minutes’ time. But that puts the others five minutes further ahead of us, and the going before was like floating on lilies compared to what we now experience. The expression having the daylights jolted out of you is putting it mild. We don’t dare talk for fear of biting our tongues in two.
A peculiar little gleam like a puddle of water shows up a little while later and when I see what it is I stop for a minute to haul it in. It’s that gold dress of hers lying there on the ground.
“Good night!” he says in a scared voice. “They haven’t—”
“Naw, not this soon. Not until they make a stab at the fifty grand,” I say grimly. “They probably made her change clothes, that’s all, to keep her visibility down once it gets light—”
And away we go, him at the wheel once more.
The sky gets blue, morning checks in, and we can cut the lights now. There’s still gas, but it’s rapidly dwindling.
“All I ask,” I jabber, keeping my tongue away from my teeth, “is that theirs goes first. It should, because our tank started from scratch at the casino, they must have used up some of theirs getting to it from across the line. They also got eight cylinders to feed.”
A little after six we pass through a Mexican village, their treads showing down its main lane. Also, there is a dead rooster stretched out, with all the neighbors standing around offering sympathy to its owner. “They left their card here,” I say. “Let’s ask.” We put on the brakes and I make signals to them, using the two Spanish words I know.
“How many were in the car that ran over that hen’s husband?” I signal.
They all hold up four fingers, also swear a lot and tear their pajamas.
“Hombres or women?” I want to know.
All men, is the answer.
“M’gard!” groans the driver. “Maybe they give it to her and buried her back there where we found the dress!”
“She’s still with them,” I answer, “They got her into men’s clothes, that’s all. Or else there are four in the gang and they have her trussed up on the floor.”
We have a little trouble starting, because they have all collected around us and seem to want to hold us responsible for the damage. A couple of’em go home for their machetes, which are the axes they chop maguey plants with.
“We’re cops,” I high sign them, “chasing after the first car, which has bandidos in it.” When they hear that, they send up a big cheer and clear out of the way. Unfortunately, we knock over a chicken ourselves, just as we’re pulling out; a hen this time.
“It woulda been a shame to separate them two,” says the driver, blowing a feather off his lip.
There are no firearms in the village, so we don’t slow up to explain.
“Shoulda got water,” says the driver. “We’da gotten a lot more than water if we waited,” I tell him.
It’s hot as the devil by nine, and every bone aches.
“We must be way to the east of Mexicali by now,” I mention. “What are they going to do, keep going until they hit the Colorado River?”
“They must have some hide-out they’re heading for between here and there,” he thinks.
“They’re looking for one, you mean. They didn’t have time to get one ready. It was Timothy who cooked up the thing yesterday morning after he found out where she went to. She didn’t even know herself she was coming down to Agua until the last thing Friday night—”
At nine twenty-two by the clock I say, “What’re you stopping for?”
“I ain’t stopping,” he says, “the car is. Maybe you’d care to cast your eye at the gas-lever?” I don’t have to, to know what he means. We’re without gas; and in a perfect spot for it, too.
The wheels have hardly stopped turning before the leather seats begin to get hot as stove-lids.
“All I need is a pinch of salt,” he says, “to be a fried egg. Well, as long as we’re not going any place any more, here goes!” And he hauls a long bottle of tequila out of one of the pockets of the car and pulls the cork out with his teeth.
“Hold on!” I say, and I grab it away from him. “How about trying this on the tank, i
nstead of your insides? Maybe it’ll run on this—”
I hop out and run around to the back and empty it in. He follows me out with two more bottles.
“I laid in a supply,” he says, “for that garage party of mine last nights”
“Give it the ignition,” I snap, “before it finds out what it’s using.”
Well, sure enough, the engine turns over on it, and when I get in next to him, it starts to carry us!
“You shoulda bought a kegful,” I gloat, “it’s lousy with alcohol!”
“Anyway,” he mourns, “it’ll take us to some different place to roast in.”
“I can’t figure,” I’m telling him, “why it hasn’t happened to them; they haven’t had a chance to fill up since we’ve been on their tail—”
When suddenly he stops, this time of his own accord. “It has!” he says. “There they are—or am I just seeing mileages or whatever they call those things?”
They’re so far ahead we can’t even see the car; it’s just the flash of the sun on nickel we can make out from way off. But it holds steady in one place, meaning they aren’t moving any more, they’ve stopped. There are three long, gradual, intervening hollows between us and the flash, separated by two medium-sized rises, not high enough to cut it off. But on a line with them, to the left, there is quite an abrupt crag or cone-shaped mound, the highest thing for miles around. Its shadow falls the other way, they’re right out in the blaizing sun.
“They’re stalled,” I say, “or they would have gone around it into the shade. Cut way over to the left, if we can put that thing between us and them maybe we can sneak up and get the drop on them—”
It isn’t the odds that matter, but I keep remembering they have Fay with them, and they are just the kind of rats if they see us coming would—I know the driver is armed without having to ask, she always insisted that he carry a gun on his person just in case. I replace the shot I fired at them from the casino.
“If they flash like that,” he remarks, turning at right-angles to the left, “so do we—they’ve seen us by now.”
“They’re facing the sun, and it’s behind us,” I remind him, “won’t be straight overhead until noon. They can’t tell, unless they got energy enough to climb on foot all the way to the top of that crest. I don’t think they even know we’ve lasted this far—”
We keep going in a big wide loop, and the hillock slowly shifts, first to dead center, then on around to the right. The winking flash their car gives off disappears as the crest gets in the way, and now we and they are on opposite sides of it.
“Now we’ll close in,” I say. “See if we can make the shade, anyway, before we get out of the car.”
“You shoulda been a general at the Mame,” he tells me admiringly.
“How do you know I wasn’t?” I squelch.
The shade cast by the summit keeps backing away from us, distances being deceptive in that clear air, but finally when the ground has already started to go up, up, it sweeps over us like cool blue ink—and what a relief! I give him the signal to cut.
“We go the rest of the way on our own.”
“Aren’t you going to use the car for a shield,” he says, “if they start firing at us?”
“There isn’t going to be that kind of firing. Miss North is right in the middle of them.”
We get out, and on foot we start up to the top on our side, instead of, as he wants, circling siround the base. Looking down on them from above will give us a big advantage, I figure; they won’t know whether we’re a whole posse or just two fellows. It’s a tough climb, too; the hill, which looked so smooth from way off, turns out to be full of big and little boulders, and with a tricky grade to it.
“Ever3rthing’s under control,” he heaves behind me, “except suppose it turns out they just stopped to rest instead of being stalled, and they’ve gone on while we been doing our mountain-climbing act?”
I don’t bother answering, it would take too much breath away from my footwork. If they were just resting, they would rest in the shade, not out in the broiling sun.
We get to the top finally, and I motion his shoulders down, so they won’t show against the skyline. Then we both stick our noses over and look. The car, being further out, comes in sight first—but there is nobody in it or near it.
“Don’t tell me they’ve gone off on the hoof and left it—” he whispers.
“Sh!” I shut him up, and crane my neck higher. They’re in closer to us, right under the brow of the hill, which is almost perpendicular on their side. Three of them are standing around talking it over, and there’s a fourth one a few yards away sitting by himself on a boulder.
I nudge the driver and point with my gun. “What d’ye want to bet that’s Fay North? He’s the only one wearing smoked glasses, like she had on, and the poor guy’s barefoot, d’ye notice?” Otherwise the figure has on dungarees, a shirt, and a cap pulled way down on its head.
Well, I have everjiihing doped out beautiful. They haven’t seen us yet, so we’ll get the drop on them from above, make them reach without having to do any shooting at all, have her frisk them, and then march them ahead of us back to our own car. So I motion him to edge over further along the crest, away from me, so it’ll look like there are more of us up here. He’s been standing right behind me, gun in hand, looking over my shoulder. He turns to do like I say, and then something happens.
All of a sudden he’s flat up against me backwards, pressing as close as he can get and quivering all over like jelly. There’s a clatter, and he’s dropped his gun. It sounds like a bee or hornet is buzzing around us. He’s crowding me so that I can’t get out of the way without going over the crest in full view of them, and he has no room to move, badly as he wants to. I twist and look past him, and aiming out of a cleft between two boulders alongside of us, at about chin-level to him, is a perfect honey of a rattler, coiled in striking position. It’s so close to him the weaving of its head almost seems to fan his face—or it looks that way from where I am, anyway.
There’s no time to think twice. I whip up my hand and plug three shots into it, close enough to singe the line of his jaw. There’s no trouble hitting the thick bedspring coils, I could have almost reached out and touched them, if I’d cared for the pleasure. It strikes with a sort of a flop, but it’s dead already, and hangs down like a ribbon. But there goes our chance of surprising them; in a split second we have to topple on our bellies and back away, the way bullets are pinging all over the rocks around us, and sending up squirts of dust. They are certainly quick on the draw, those guys.
The three who were together have shot apart like a busted tomato. One gets behind a bit of scrub; one gets in closer, where there’s a little ledge to protect him. And one doesn’t get any place at all, goes down on his knees as I get rid of my three remaining shots.
The driver has grabbed up his gun, and shoved over to the other side, to have elbow room. The figure sitting by itself further out has jumped to its feet and started to run toward the car. I can tell by the way she runs that it is Fay North, just as I thought. But she can’t make time on the hot sand in her bare feet, stumbles and waddles. The one under the ledge suddenly darts out after her before I have finished reloading, and the second one breaks for it too, at the same time, which is what you call team-work.
The driver gets him the second step he takes, and he slides to a stop on his ear. But the first one has already caught up with her, whirled her around, and is holding her in front of him for a shield. To show us who she is, he knocks the cap off her and all her blond hair comes tumbling down.
“Hold it, don’t shoot!” I warn the driver, but he has sense enough without being told.
The guy holding her starts backing toward the car with her, a step at a time. He’s holding one arm twisted painfully behind her back, and you can see his gun gleaming between her elbow and her body sighted on us, but she’s game at that. She screams out to us: “Stop him from getting to that car; he’s got a tommy-gun in it!�
�� Then she sort of jolts, as though he hit her from behind.
I bum at that, but there’s nothing I can do. But the driver doesn’t seem to have that much self-control. He’s suddenly flying down the incline almost head-first, in a shower of little rocks and dust, arms and legs all waving at the same time. But at least not dropping his gun like before. When I see that, I break cover too, but not quite that recklessly, keeping bent double and zig-zagging down the slope.
Fay is almost hidden by smoke, the way the guy behind her is blasting away, but I see her suddenly come to life, clap her elbow tight against her ribs, imprisoning his gun and jarring his aim. He tries to free it, they struggle, and she gets a terrific clout on the jaw for her trouble. It seems impossible the driver didn’t get any of that volley, but he keeps going under his own momentum, as though he can’t stop himself
Fay is out cold now, we are both almost over to her, but the thug with her is only a yard or two away from the car. He lets both her and the gun go and dives for it. He tears the door open and gets in. I jump over her where she is lying, without stopping, because once he gets his hands on that tommy-gun—
He has his hands on it already, as I light on the running-board, but that split second’s delay while he is swerving it my way costs him the decision; I tomahawk him between the eyes with the butt of my gun. The tommy goes off spasmodically in the wrong direction and the windshield up front flies in pieces; then him and me and it all go down together in a mess in the back of the car.
The driver shows up in a minute more and sort of folds up over the side of the car like a limp rag, head down. There’s blood trickling down from his shoulder.
“Gee, that was swell,” I tell him when I get my breath back, “the way you rushed him from the top of that hill! If it wasn’t for that he’d *a’ been sitting pretty behind this tommy-gun by now.”
“Rushed him hell!” he grunts. “I lost my balance and fell down it, that’s what happened!”
We truss up the guy in the car, who is all right except that my gun broke his nose, and then we go back to where Fay is sitting up in the sand, looking very bedraggled. Her shoulder is wrenched from the way he had held her, and there is a lump on her jaw, and her face is all grimy and dust-streaked. Even so, when we stand her on her feet and she takes off those smoked glasses, him and me both stare at her and blink and stare some more.
Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics Page 35