The sky grew pale, then the red arrows of the sun opened the heavens to the gold that followed. The shadows fled, somewhere a bird sang, the song crystal clear in the morning air. The sky became blue, the cacti turned from gray to green, and the morning was with them.
Her father still slept; and now, relaxed in the shade of a boulder, his face for the first time looked old, and for the first time she thought what this must mean to him, to be starting over again at his age, to be making a new life … and for her.
There was strength in him still, a resilient strength as of some kind of strange steel that resists all corrosion, so that he lived on, seemingly timeless, everlasting. Yet he was not … and she knew some of his haste, knew the reason for it.
The sky was fully light now, and when she looked around again she saw an Indian sitting on a horse. He was not over a hundred yards away, and he was looking straight toward them.
Considine was riding with the Kiowa. The Apaches, who were stalking the two ahead of them, had not held to the trail, but they were moving westward. Considine remembered vaguely some story about a Yuma Indian who had taken an Apache girl to wife and had become a noted warrior among them. If that was the case, it might account for the Apaches ranging so far west. The four riders had been following the trail only a short time when they found the broken shoe. From there on, the tracks were of two people who walked, leading the horse. Only occasionally did they ride, obviously saving the horse as much as possible for whatever might lie ahead. Considine closed off his thoughts from Spanyer and Lennie. They would make it … somehow. Tonight he and the boys would hole up in that cave on Castle Dome. West of the Dome there was a saddle by which they could cross into the valley beyond, and then follow Silver Creek to the east side of the mountains. There were a couple of springs down there. It might be better to stay west and avoid those springs … but there was good water there. He could tell that the horse Spanyer led was limping badly, and would be no use at all if they did have to run for it. He swore to himself … nobody looked at him, or said anything. The story of the tracks could be read by them all. Hardy mopped his face and tried to ease his position in the saddle. Their eyes were constantly moving, searching, watching. They were carrying more money than they had ever had in their lives, or were likely to have again. “Man,” Hardy said suddenly, “I’d like to have seen their faces back in Obaro!”
Nobody replied … somehow robbing the bank in Obaro seemed a small thing today. Hardy stared at the others belligerently, but they ignored him. Well, nobody else had ever done it, had they? And they had. He could tell the girls down in Sonora that he was one of those who stood up the bank in Obaro. That would make them sit up and listen!
Only he was not convincing himself. Somehow, the robbery of the bank had dwindled in importance. Their eyes were reading the trail sign: an old man and a young girl were leading a crippled horse through Indian country. “The posse might help them,” Dutch said, voicing a thought that was in all their minds.
“Take ‘em off our trail,” Hardy said, with false cheerfulness. The four rode on in silence, dusty, tired, and wary. Behind them was a posse, before them a war party of Indians, south of them the inviting border where there was a ranch they knew of, where they could hole up for a few days before going back toward Sonorita and then down to Hermosillo. Suddenly a flock of quail burst from the brush some fifty yards ahead and to the left. Dust lifted from an empty trail. The four riders were gone … vanished. The explosion of those quail had been warning enough, and they had acted with the split-second speed they had acquired by years of danger. From the lip of a dry wash, Considine held his Winchester steady while his eyes searched for an enemy. Dutch had gone into the same wash some fifty yards up. The others were nowhere in sight.
For a short space of time nothing happened. Considine glanced around at his horse, surveyed the wash behind him, and waited. His skin itched from the dust and sweat, his tongue touched his dry lips. He squinted his eyes into the hot bright day and searched for an Indian. And then a rifle’s flat statement ended the silence.
The shot came from their side, and it brought a dozen quick replies. Hardy came walking placidly down the wash behind Considine and grinned up at him. “That Kiowa, he sees better than any man I know. I’ll lay you five to one he notched one.”
He unlimbered his rifle and crawled up beside Considine. “The Kiowa’s not a dozen feet from where he was when those quail went up. He’s got him a nest among the rocks.”
There was no sign of Dutch. The Kiowa fired again, but nobody replied to his shot. Considine mopped his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes. The earth felt hot, and the temperature here against the sand was much hotter than it was when one was riding. His shirt was soaked with sweat. The Kiowa shot again, and an Indian reared up suddenly and threw his rifle out in front of him; then he toppled forward over a creosote bush. Silence followed, a silence in which there was only sand and sun, and the smell of their own stale clothing.
Suddenly there was a chorus of shrill yells and half a dozen Indians came from the sand and rushed the Kiowa’s hide-out. All three men fired from the wash, and two Indians fell. Considine triggered his rifle swiftly again, and in the moment following his shot, Dutch fired from up the wash. The Kiowa had deliberately baited the Apaches into an attack to open them up for the guns of his friends. The Indians probably thought they had fled. Minutes passed, long, slow minutes, and nothing happened. Then the Kiowa came into sight, riding his horse. He drew up, looking around, and the three men came over the edge of the wash, leading their horses. Dutch was bleeding from a scratch on his face.
“Shale,” he said, “ricocheted from a bullet.”
It was their only injury. They found no Indians, not even dead ones, but there was blood.
“Two,” the Kiowa said, “maybe three.”
The Apache was a good fighting man, but no fool. Against the kind of shooting they had faced, this was not the time nor the place. But these Apaches were not the same bunch that followed Spanyer and Lennie. Perhaps thirty or more had broken up into small parties because of the water. “They were coming here,” the Kiowa said. “There is water there.” He indicated a dry waterfall and, turning his horse, he rode to it and swung down. Dropping to his knees, he dug into the sand. Soon the sand was wet, and then there was water. They drank, then one by one they allowed their horses to drink as the water seeped into the hole.
“There is often water in such places, but after a rain it is sure,” the Kiowa said.
A few clouds drifted across the sky, making islands of shadow upon the desert.
There was no smoke.
“An old hideout’s up yonder,” Dutch said suddenly, “up on High Lonesome.”
“Pete Runyon knows it.”
“Do you think he’s still coming?” Hardy asked.
“You can just bet he is.” Considine glanced at their back trail. “I can say for sure that he’s a persistent kind of man.”
“Does he know about the cave on Castle Dome?”
“I doubt it … but he might.”
Dutch rolled a smoke, letting his huge body relax slowly. “Only the old ones know it,” he said.
“I told Considine.” He touched his tongue to the cigarette paper. “Spanyer probably knows it, and he knows about High Lonesome.” “We turn south right up ahead,” the Kiowa said. “Beyond that peak.” They squinted against the sun. Before them were the tracks of the man and the girl and, almost wiping them out, the tracks of the Indians. Dutch stared at the tracks, then blinked his eyes against the smart of the salt from the sweat trickling into his eyes.
Considine looked up toward High Lonesome.
CHAPTER X
Before Lennie could wake her father, the Indian on the horse had vanished.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her. “You saw it all right.” Under the hot morning sky the desert mountains looked like a crumpled sheet of dusty copper, dotted here and there with clumps of green brush. Dave Spanyer had studied their situation in the vague light before he closed his eyes, and he knew they could be approached from all sides. But on two sides there was almost no cover, and therefore he expected the attack from there. Any sensible defender would be watching the approaches that allowed for cover, and Spanyer was sure the Indians would show themselves there. But the real attack would come from the quarter least expected. A master of concealment, the Apache knew the art of guerrilla fighting as no people before or since. Moreover, he lived in a country that provided little in the way of natural cover, and he had learned the art of winning battles in such a country.