Considine wheeled to look at Lennie, and saw Spanyer fighting with a huge warrior, struggling for a knife. Considine turned swiftly and brought his gun down as though on a target and shot the Indian through the temple. He saw Spanyer’s eyes turn toward him and then Considine himself was down, fighting in mortal combat with a stocky Indian—who smelled, of all things, of cheap perfume, probably captured in some raid.
Considine struggled up, and felt angry teeth tear at his side. He shot an Indian who was coming over the barrier, and saw the Kiowa fall to his knees, laying about him with a Bowie knife.
Then he saw the Kiowa start to come up, and three bullets seemed to strike him at once. He was knocked clear around and fell back against the rocks, and as he caught Considine’s eyes on him, he seemed about to smile. Just then Considine saw an Indian grasp Lennie, and he lunged up and stepped in swiftly, laying the long barrel of his six-shooter along the man’s head. As the Indian fell, Considine shot into him.
His pistol knocked from his fist, Considine grasped the Bowie knife the Kiowa had dropped, and threw himself at the other Indians who were fighting around Lennie.
Right and left he slashed, his blade red. His shirt was torn from his body, but he fought like a man gone berserk, until the Indians fell away from him … and they fell back … and back…
He rushed out of the circle of rocks. He ran a few feet, searching right and left for an enemy to strike at. Something was wrong—he saw no Indians. He turned halfway around and heard Lennie call something to him, and she threw him a Winchester.
He caught it in midair, and then he was running—why or where he had no idea. He ran, and then he stumbled and fell with his face in the wet grass. He tried to get up, but could only crawl forward. He felt the shadow of brush around him, and crawled like an animal deeper into the darkness. The last thing he could remember was Lennie screaming something at him. What was she trying to say to him? Had it been a warning? And where were the Indians?
From somewhere he heard a vast thunder that seemed to come from the earth beneath him, a thunder that grew louder and then suddenly faded out, and he was alone. It was dark, and his memory was gone … Was this what it felt like to die?
The Obaro posse, led by Pete Runyon, came with a rush. They came spread out in a scattered line, and they came with a thunder of hoofs. Racing up, guns ready, they rode into High Lonesome, but it was into a dead silence. The basin was empty. Hot stillness held itself in this hollow hand of hills.
Where there had been the beat of rifle fire, there was now no sound but that of the soft wind. High overhead a buzzard circled, soon to be joined by another. They slowed to a funeral pace, for, wise in such things, they knew they rode into a place of death. A lone gray gelding stood by a clump of mesquite. On the ground, abandoned by the fleeing Indians, were the dark, still forms of the Apache and Yuma dead.
The circle of rocks was before them … and within it … An old man appeared suddenly in an opening of the rocks, a bloody old man, and beside him a girl in a torn dress. A wide-eyed and frightened girl, but a pretty one, despite that. “They had no sense, Pete,” Weedin said. “They rode right into a fight they couldn’t win.”
Dave Spanyer and Lennie stood waiting. “Howdy,” Spanyer said. “Ain’t much to say except that you didn’t come any too soon.”
Pete Runyon looked past him into the ring of rocks, then walked his horse still closer. From the saddle he could see into the rough circle that had been their defensive position.
He saw a dead Apache, then Dutch, lying half under the rocks, a cartridge spilled on the ground near him. The Indian he had throttled lay beside him in death.
Dutch … the big man was wanted in seven states. And Hardy … all whang leather and steel wire, tough, dangerous, quick to shoot. He lay where he had taken his last bullet. The gravel near his mouth was dark with blood. “There’s the money,” Epperson said. He made no move to pick it up—just looked at it.
Eckles glanced around, saw the Kiowa sprawled and dead, and looked further. He started to speak, but Weedin interrupted.
“It must have been a buster of a fight. There’s seventeen or eighteen dead Indians out there.”
Weedin took a cautious look around. The other men looked away uneasily—at the sky, at the mountains. One man kicked his toe into the gravel, another cleared his throat “We’d better get out of here, Pete.” Weedin’s voice was casual. “They’ll be coming back for their dead—with more Injuns.”
Two of the men moved abruptly toward their horses, eager to be away. A third and a fourth followed. Most of the men had not dismounted. Nobody looked toward the steeldust gelding.
“We might catch us a couple of those Apache horses,” Spanyer commented. “We’re goin’ on to Californy.”
“After this?”
“Where we was headed. Where we aim to go.”
Eckles lifted a hand to point toward the gelding, but his eyes met Weedin’s and his hand stopped in midair and he walked hastily away. Pete Runyon picked up a sack of the gold and handed it to Weedin, then took the other himself. He stood looking around him, trying not to seem curious, but struggling to read the story in the earth, scarred with footprints and evidence of the struggle. Once, lifting his eyes, he glanced toward the brush against the wall of rock, some distance off.
“Nothin’ over there,” Dave Spanyer said quietly. “They came from the other way.”
“These were outlaws,” Runyon said. “They robbed the Obaro bank.”
Dave Spanyer looked straight into his eyes. “Three of ‘em, was there?” “Why, yes.” Pete Runyon spoke slowly. He had not considered that aspect. “There were just three.”
At his horse, Runyon worked with the saddle. His canteen slipped and fell to the earth, but he ignored it. He stepped into the saddle. “You and your daughter,” he said, “you come with us. We’ll see you started on your way.” Dave Spanyer mounted the horse they brought for him. Lennie, her face very pale, was already in the saddle. She kept her eyes on the horizon, as if there was something out there that gripped her attention … or as if she dared not trust herself to look anywhere else.
Spanyer glanced at Weedin and Murphy, both of them seasoned with dust and fighting and the ways of men and cattle. “They come just in time, those outlaws. Only just in time,” he said.
“They done some shootin’,” Weedin said.
The posse turned their horses and started down from High Lonesome. Runyon looked over at Weedin. “You got some tobacco, Ollie?”
“Sure haven’t, Pete. Must’ve lost mine … back there.” They rode away down the canyon and nobody wanted to look back. After a few minutes Lennie and Dave Spanyer caught up with them. “Our bank was robbed,” Murphy commented, to no one in particular, “but we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
No sound disturbed the clear air of afternoon. Wind stirred in the grass, ruffling the hair of a dead Apache.
Out from the brush against the rock wall crawled a tall, lean-waisted young man and he limped toward the steeldust that somehow had his bridle caught in the brush. There was blood on Considine’s leg, and there was blood on his side, but he could walk, and he carried his rifle.
A gun belt with his six-shooters hung over the pommel of the steeldust’s saddle. Considine found the canteen where it had been dropped, with the name on the side in black paint … Pete. He saw the sack of tobacco, and retrieved it. Once more in the saddle, he took the trail the Kiowa had used and rode up into the hills above High Lonesome.
Far off to the east, on the main trail, he saw a small dark spot, and a trailing dust cloud—the posse, returning home with the bodies of three dead outlaws. On the hill’s long crest he sat his horse, the sun in his eyes. There was a stubble of beard on his jaws. He was weak from loss of blood and very tired, but he scarcely glanced toward the south and the border. Castle Dome lifted its massive shoulders above the desert mountains.
Shadows, faintly purple, were gathering along the mountains. Far off, the Sand Tanks were already growing darker. He started the steeldust down the hill toward the west, toward California.