Brazos did not answer for a moment. From the way he held his head high, it was clear that he considered this a matter of honor. Like most cowhands, pride and honor were all Brazos possessed besides his saddle and the clothes on his back. Perhaps that was why he was so touchy about them.
“If that’s what it comes to,” he said at last. He pulled clear of Spud and rode away.
30
A long, difficult descent, marked by many cuts and scrapes, brought Swede and Rosie out of the hills, into a narrow valley.
“Sand Canyon,” Swede rasped.
The canyon was brooding, silent, so remote it might have been on another planet. The canyon floor was brown and hard, cracked in places from the heat. It radiated the sun’s blast back up at them; it was like walking in a furnace.
They staggered on, moving forward, then sideways, like drunks. They no longer knew what they were doing. The sun had pummeled them to a stupefied condition somewhere between life and death. It was hard to keep their balance; their senses were almost gone.
Rosie stopped. In slow motion, she sank to her knees. Up ahead, Swede gradually realized that the girl was missing. He looked back just in time to see her collapse full length on the ground. With difficulty he turned himself around. He stumbled back and pulled her to her feet.
“Come on, Rosie,” he croaked. “You can make it. It ain’t far now.”
Rosie’s emerald eyes stared dully. She set her feet forward, one then the other. Swede draped her arm around his shoulder and they shuffled on.
Swede had lied to her. They weren’t going to make it. It was all over. This was how it felt to die—and the funny part was, it didn’t feel like anything at all.
They swayed from side to side, barely upright. Rosie hung on Swede’s shoulder like a dead weight. He bumped into her and they almost fell down. If they fell, they would never get up.
Suddenly Swede halted. He was looking at something through his puffed, blurred eyes. He began laughing crazily. Rosie stared at him as if the sun had driven him mad.
He pointed weakly. “See that rise?”
Ahead, the canyon twisted sharply left and a hill rippled the smooth surface of its floor. Swede said, “Scorpion Springs is on the other side.”
Rosie’s jaw dropped. Swede hugged her. “We did it, Rosie, we did it! By God, I thought we was goners!”
He took her hand and they started running for the hill, infused with new life, crying and laughing at the same time.
“You sure leave things till the last minute,” Rosie gasped.
They scrambled up the low rise, slipping in the gravel, out of breath and dying of thirst, making little animal noises in their throats. Swede pulled Rosie the last few feet to the top. With a cry of joy, they turned and then stopped.
Before them the ground sloped away to the springs, which were surrounded by shady cottonwoods. Five men were waiting at the springs, their horses drinking from the glassy pool. The men stood under the cottonwoods or sat among the rocks, cradling their rifles watchfully.
Swede reeled backward, as if struck by a tremendous physical blow. Then he pulled himself together and shook his head admiringly. “It's Kirby. I knew it would be.”
31
Swede and Rosie moved off the top of the rise before they were seen. Rosie lay on the slope, exhausted and beaten. Swede sat heavily. He pulled out his knife and began stabbing at the dirt. His blood was flowing faster. His thirst had abated. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, because a fight was coming.
“Damn,” he said. “Damn—we were so close! Somebody in that posse must have knowed a shortcut to the springs.”
“Now what?” Rosie breathed.
“Kirby thinks he’s got me. He thinks I can’t get past him to the Bravo; he thinks I have to come in for water. When I do, he’s going to shoot me. Well, I ain’t done yet. I’ll walk through them mountains to Mexico.”
Rosie sat up, her red-rimmed eyes filled with alarm. “Swede, the river must be ten miles that way. We couldn’t make ten feet. We’d die long before we got to water.”
Swede replaced the knife in its sheath and struggled to his feet. “I didn’t say nothin’ about ‘we.’ You’re stayin’ here.”
Rosie stood up. She grabbed his arm. “Swede, there’s no use in you going on—don’t you see that?”
“They have to take me out,” Swede said. “They know that; it’s part of the game.”
“You and your damn games,” she swore, dropping his arm. “Is that all this is to you? If it is a game, you’ve lost—so why don’t you use your head for once and give up?”
Swede said, “I won’t let them hang me, Rosie.” Then he forced a smile through lips that were cracked and swollen.
“Well, if you won’t give up, I’m coming with you,” Rosie told him, pulling her straw hat low.
“No.” Swede moved closer. He caressed her, fondling her lank hair, feeling her warmth through the sweat and dirt on her back. “I’d take you if I could, Rosie. You know that.”
She clung to him. “Then let me come with you now. I won’t be a bother. I just want to be with you as long as—as long as I can. Please, Swede.”
“No, you don’t want to see this. I don’t particularly want to see it myself. You’re going down to the springs. You’ll be safe there, and you’ll get water.”
“I’m going with you,” she insisted.
“No.”
Rosie stepped back, angry. She flopped to the ground and threw away her hat. Arms folded, legs crossed, she looked past Swede. “Then I won’t go in.”
Swede stared.
“I’ll sit here in the sun and burn. It may be hours before those men leave the springs and start looking for us. By that time. I’ll be dead.”
Rosie was smug, because she was right. Swede looked away from her, then back, getting madder and madder. With a deliberate motion he drew his pistol, raised it, and fired three shots into the air. He holstered the weapon and looked at Rosie as the gunshots echoed off the rocks of the canyon. “Help’ll be here in a few minutes,” he said.
Rosie looked at him, half in disbelief, half in fear. Then she buried her face in her arms and broke down crying.
Swede’s anger died. He lifted Rosie to her feet and held her close. In a soft voice he said, “Did you mean it, Rosie—about goin’ with me to Mexico?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed.
“That was nice. I’ll always remember that—leastways, as long as I got left. I wish we’d got the chance, Rosie. I’m sorry it has to end this way, believe me.”
Rosie was still crying. She would not look up. Swede tilted her chin toward him. For the first and last time, they kissed. Swede tasted the salt and blood on her lips, feeling her slender body pressed against his, smelling her, raw and sweaty. She responded, slowly at first, then with a fierce determination to hold on to him, clasping him so tightly that at last he had to push her away.
“Good-bye, Rosie,” he said. Then he turned and hurried off.
Rosie watched him go, choking through her tears. "Swede. Oh, Swede—damn you!”
32
Swede moved as fast as his exhausted condition would permit, trying to ignore the pain in his blood-soaked feet. Looking over his shoulder continually, he started up the steep hills at the canyon's side.
Rosie sat on the slope, her head once more buried in her arms. She remained that way, willing her mind blank, trying to keep out the pain that threatened to overwhelm her, trying to keep out the sound of approaching hoofbeats.
The hoofbeats grew very loud, and the ground trembled. The posse came boiling over the rise, weapons drawn. They reined in when they saw the girl.
“Madonna Santa ,” said Harry Ferrante. “There she is. The putanna ."
Rosie did not look up. She tried not to think about these men, about why they were here.
The posse came closer. The smell of horse sweat and unwashed men was strong. “She’s right pretty for
a whore,” Brazos said. “Lookit them long legs.”
“You dumb ass, she heard you,” Spud told him in a loud whisper.
The girl ignored them.
To George, Kirby said, “Find Swede’s trail.”
The black man walked his horse along the bottom of the rise, leaning down, until he discerned Swede’s boot prints. He began following them toward the hills.
Kirby dismounted and lifted the canteen from his saddle. He knelt beside the sobbing girl. “Here, miss, take some water. Are you all right?"
After a moment, Rosie looked up, sniffling. “Yes.” The thick dust on her face was smeared into a sort of mud from her tears. She took the canteen.
Kirby patted her shoulder. “Good girl. You’ve been through a lot, but you’re safe now.”
She drank, tentatively at first, then greedily, until she started choking and coughing.
From across the canyon, George called, “He went this way!”
Kirby rose. George was pointing at a steep incline to his left, the steepest in this part of the canyon. In the strong afternoon sunlight, the brown hill was seamed with fissures and steep gullies. Granite boulders littered the hillside. Higher up, stunted pines and cedars provided a sprinkling of green all the way to the sheer cliff at the top.
Kirby’s eyes scanned the tangled hillside foot by foot. “Can you see where he’s gone to ground?”
“No,” George cried.
The members of the posse were tense. They were a long rifle shot from the hill, but with a desperate man, you never knew. Rosie struggled up beside Kirby. “Don’t kill him! Please don’t kill him!”
Kirby looked at her. He did not like this kind of woman. She sold her body for money; she lived in sin. But he could not ignore her obvious sincerity. He said, “So, it’s like that, is it?”
Rosie barely had strength to stand, but she clenched her fists and her emerald eyes blazed. “Yes, it’s like that. And you don’t have to kill him. He’s only got nine bullets left.”
The effect of this announcement on the posse was varied. Harry was terrified that after this long pursuit there would be no shoot-out, but he said nothing, in deference to his friends Brazos and Spud.
“Boy,” Spud breathed. “That sure is some great news.” He looked at Brazos with relief. “Makes it a hell of a lot easier on us.”
The young cowboy was glum. “Don’t help Swede none, though. Not in the long run.”
Kirby pulled his waxed mustache thoughtfully. “Can we believe you?” he said to Rosie.
“Yes, yes, I’m not lying.” Rosie was pleading. Then something in Kirby’s manner made her suspicious. “You will take him alive, won’t you?”
Kirby said nothing, and Rosie took this as a sign of affirmation.
Kirby motioned to Brazos, who led the spare horses over. To Rosie, he said, “You’ll have to come with us, miss. I can’t leave you alone at the springs with the danger of Indians, no matter how remote, and I don’t have enough men for a guard. We’ll do our best to spare you any unpleasantness.”
Kirby remounted. To Brazos he said, “If she won’t get on willingly, put her on."
33
Swede holed up as soon as the first rider crossed the rise. There was better cover up high, but he had no choice. His only hope was not to give away his position. He had to have the element of surprise.
Two fallen pinon trees lay together near him, and he crawled into the notch formed by their trunks. The trees must have been washed down the hill in the winter rains. The wood had a musty smell, and ants and mites had eaten away large sections of it. The dry brown needles pricked him through his clothes.
He poked his rifle barrel through the branches. He had a good view of the hillside directly before him, but farther down, the hill was broken by boulders and gullies. It would be hard to get a clear shot at anyone down there, while his own position was relatively open. On each side of him were deep fissures, up which attackers might crawl unseen.
He watched Rosie mount the horse and follow the posse across the canyon floor. Rosie was safe now; that was something. Maybe it was the most important thing, he thought. Then he cursed himself for being sentimental.
The posse reached the shade at the foot of the hill. There were four of them beside Kirby. They hobbled their horses and watered them. It wouldn’t be long now.
The afternoon sun burned down on Swede. Weak from thirst and exhaustion, he drifted in and out of a feverish, dreamlike state. Screened from the posse by the pine branches, he rolled over and scanned the hill above him for a bolt hole, in case he had to run. He took off his hat and raised it to block the sun’s glare.
Sunlight glinted through a hole in the hat’s crown. Swede had known the hole was there, but he had ignored it before. He turned the hat over in his hand, as if looking at it for the first time. He’d always thought of this as his new hat, for it had replaced the Yankee campaign hat he’d brought home from the war. Now the brim was shapeless, the sweatband was worn away, and the felt no longer kept out the rain. He’d have to get another one.
He came shuddering back to reality. What was he thinking about? There wasn’t going to be another hat. There wasn’t even going to be another day for him.
Swede put the hat back on. He settled in behind the pine branches, waiting.
* * *
At the foot of the hill. Black George showed Swede’s tracks to Kirby. Kirby’s gaze followed the direction of the boot prints. Nothing moved on the sunlit hillside.
“He’s up there somewhere,” Kirby said.
“Rugged country,” George said. “A thousand places to hide.”
“And it ends in a sheer cliff. He won’t escape this time.”
Rosie stood back, watching anxiously, while the men stretched their legs, shaking out muscles in preparation for the climb. Each man took a good drink, then filled his canteen from the water bags and slung it over his shoulder. They took extra shells from their saddlebags.
Unlike the others, Kirby did not remove his rifle from its case. As Brazos and Spud exchanged looks, Kirby took Karl Reichardt’s sawed-off shotgun from his saddle and loaded it. The shotgun was good for the kind of close-in work that Kirby planned. He emptied the box of shotgun shells and put them in his vest pocket.
Kirby looked at his men. “Remember—take your time. Draw fire. Make Swede use those nine shells. But don’t give him a good target. You hear that, Harry?”
The dark-haired youth was so excited he could scarcely pay attention. He was playing with the hammer of his silver-plated Italian rifle. “Yeah, yeah—I hear you,” he said.
Kirby went on. “We’ll pin Swede down. We’ll flank him and get him in a cross fire.”
“Cross fire!” Rosie rushed forward. “But you promised you wouldn’t—”
“Beg your pardon, miss, but I didn’t promise anything. Now, if you’ll be so good as to watch the horses ...”
The sunburned girl fumed. She felt tricked.
“And I’ll ask you to stay under cover,” Kirby told her. “There’s the danger of stray bullets.”
Rosie drew back her bleeding lips. She looked Kirby straight in the eye. “You bastard. I hope he kills you.”
Kirby returned her stare coldly. “My rifle’s unloaded, in case you’re thinking of doing the job yourself. I took the shells with me.” Then he turned away. “All right, spread out.”
Kirby’s pulse quickened. He wiped his sweaty hand on his trouser leg and loosened the hammer tie on his Smith and Wesson .44 revolver. He positioned the two reluctant cowboys on his left, where he could keep an eye on them. To his right stood George, looking calm. Beyond George, the kid Harry was practically bouncing up and down.
“Get your finger off that damn trigger,” George snapped at Harry, “’fore you get somebody killed.”
Kirby waved the line of men forward. They climbed without hurry, weapons at the port, searching the rocky, wooded landscape above them.
Rosie watched them go. She felt helples
s, useless when Swede needed her most. All she could do was step back and yell, “They’re coming, Swede!”
She wanted to add “I love you,” but she would not open her heart in front of these strangers. Then she thought, the hell with them. She had never told a man she loved him before, and there wouldn’t be another chance to let Swede know.
“I love you!” she cried.
34
Swede stiffened as Rosie’s cry faded across the hot canyon. She was only making it worse on him.
Below, the posse moved into the sunlight. They were lost to sight for a minute, hidden by a fold in the hillside. Swede thumbed back the hammer of his Winchester.
He heard them—grunting, breathing hard. Boots scraped on rock. There was a scrabble of stones and a muttered oath as somebody fell.
The first one emerged—a black man—bare-chested, dangerous, with a bandaged head. Then came Kirby, stiff and neat and righteous as always. They were taking their time, keeping behind cover. To Kirby’s left, Swede saw a short, older fellow—a cowhand by his dress and his bowlegged distaste for being on foot. Then another cowhand—a young one, with the brim of his hat trimmed just so. Too many for Swede to fight—not successfully, anyway.
Swede rested his rifle across a pine branch, smelling the hot gun grease. He took aim at Kirby, waiting for him to move into the clear. If he could take out Kirby, there was a chance the others might get scared and run away.
Kirby halted behind a screen of rock and greasewood. He was searching the hillside higher up, perhaps giving Swede credit for more strength than actually remained to him. Then Kirby moved into the open space before Swede. Swede got him in the V of his sights. His finger tightened on the trigger.
The sun glanced off something to Swede’s left. He turned and saw a man with a silver-plated rifle working in from the fissure above him.
The Bank Robber Page 13