“You think Joe will settle for that? After all, he was the one who pulled off the holdup.”
Dan Rodelo got to his feet. “We’d best get back to the horses. We’d be in fine shape now if Joe was to take a notion to ride out and leave us, wouldn’t we?”
They climbed down the way they had come, going hand over hand, their feet against the steeply slanting rock wall. On the ground below, Rodelo added, speaking softly, “Tom, you know as well as I do, the size of that split is going to be decided by the Yaquis, not us.”
“Yeah,” Badger said gloomily. “They could trim us down a mite.”
The night was cold, and they took turn and turn about standing watch. In the last hour before dawn, Joe Harbin shook them awake. Over a small, quick fire of dried-out creosote wood, they made coffee and finished the bacon. Before the desert was more than gray, they were in the saddle once more, horses well watered, the desert stretching wide toward the border, now only a short distance away.
The rocky ridge of the mountains was their guide line; the desert floor was broken here and there by black, ugly outcroppings of ancient lava. There was creosote brush, occasional agave, and cholla.
The sun was not yet above the horizon when Joe Harbin rode up from the rear. “We got company,” he said.
They drew up and turned to look. Far off they saw a thin column of smoke pointing a beckoning finger at the sky.
“Well, we expected it,” Badger said. “They must’ve tried several routes. The smoke will call ’em in.” He glanced back again. “No use waitin’ for ’em.”
They went on. The sun rose, the day’s heat began, and they deliberately slowed their pace. Gopher wanted to get on, to run. “It would kill your horse, kid,” Badger said mildly. “You’ll need that horse.”
They saw no Indians. Rodelo looked only occasionally to the rear. He watched ahead and on both sides, for Indians could come from anywhere, and there might well be Yaquis somewhere ahead, returning from the Gulf, for instance.
“You’re bearing east,” Harbin said suddenly. “What’s the idea?”
“Pinacate,” Rodelo replied. “Some of the roughest country this side of hell, but some tanks of water, too … and some places to fort up if need be.”
“Won’t that give us further to go?”
“Very little. The Gulf is south of us now. Adair Bay is due south.”
Nobody talked then for a time. Later they saw another smoke, off to the west. The horses slowed to a walk, and when Rodelo swung down and led his horse, the others did likewise. Again, Nora fell in beside him.
She was showing her weariness now. Her face was drawn, her eyes hollow. “I had no idea it would be like this,” she said.
“Whenever you can,” Rodelo advised her, “drink. Dehydration begins to dull your senses before you realize. Some say you shouldn’t drink at all the first twenty-four hours in the desert, but that’s insanity. Others say to make your water last. But it’s better to drink plenty when you’re close to water, and keep drinking. You’ll stand a better chance of getting through.”
“Will we make it, Dan?” It was the first time she had called him by his name.
He shrugged. “We’ll make it … some of us will. But we’ve got pure hell ahead of us, and don’t you doubt it.”
He gestured to the east. “This is the Camino del Diablo … the Devil’s Road we’ve been talking about. Between three and four hundred people died along it during the Gold Rush.”
Here the desert was sprinkled with creosote bush, clumps of cholla, and an occasional saguaro or ocotillo. They found their way through it, usually riding single file, maintaining a generally southerly route.
When they came to a small rise Joe Harbin halted. “Why don’t we just lay up and ambush ’em?” he asked. “We could be rid of them once and for all.”
“And have them ride around us?” Dan answered. “They could cut us off from water.”
“What water?” Tom Badger had turned his head and was watching Rodelo.
“There’s Tule Wells, but it’s a mite far east, I’d say. We can save time by striking right for Papago Tanks.”
And now the desert began to be broken and rugged. Volcanic cones stood up in half a dozen places and Rodelo, swinging wide, indicated a deep crater to the others.
This was the edge of the Pinacate country. To the south it grew worse, with miles of pressure-ridge lava, sand dunes, and broken country almost devoid of water. Through all that country there was only a trail or two, so far as he knew. Miles and miles of it were broken rock, razor-edged lava that could cripple a horse or a man on foot within hours. There was no life out there except occasional bighorns, coyotes, and rattlers. But they must weave a way through, then make a run for it across the sand to the bay.
They made dry camp among the black rocks, forting up for a fight that did not come. At daybreak they moved out again, drinking often from their canteens, seeing their water supply dwindle, bit by bit.
Tempers grew short. Joe Harbin cursed his horse, and Gopher muttered under his breath and glowered at everybody. Dan fought to keep his temper. Nora alone seemed assured, calm. Her face was haggard, her eyes hollow, and at night when she dismounted she almost fell from her horse, but she did not complain.
That night the Yaquis closed in, but not to fight.
They came swiftly, suddenly, as Harbin was selecting a camp, another dry camp. From out of a seemingly empty desert the Indians came in a swift short charge, a flurry of shots, and then disappeared down a draw toward the desert ahead.
Flattened out among the rocks, they waited, guns ready, but the Yaquis did not return. After a while, Badger got to his feet, expecting a shot.
All was still. Twilight shadows were deep, the desert held no sound. Badger walked to the horses as the others slowly got up.
He spoke suddenly, his voice oddly strained, high-pitched for him. “Look,” he said.
A bullet had struck their largest canteen, and the water had drained out on the sand. Only a dark spot remained where it had soaked away.
“We’ll make coffee,” Rodelo said, “there’s enough left for that.”
Six
Dan Rodelo looked at the stars, felt the coolness of the desert night, and was thankful. There was not much in the life that lay behind him that had been pleasant or easy. Only there was a memory of his mother long ago, and of a home where all was comfort. How long had that been?
Now he rode a desert trail with men of violence, and he himself had been a man of violence, living where the weight of a fist and the speed of a gun were all that spelled the difference between life and death. And now he fought out this last, desperate fight among desperate men.
Desperate men … and a girl.
What kind of person was she? Why did she want to make this trip into the desert with such men as these? Dan Rodelo had thought out every step of what he had to do. The one thing he had not counted on was Nora Paxton.
Four men and a woman, ringed with death, a death that might come from the Yaquis in pursuit, but could just as likely come from the desert itself.
Their biggest canteen was holed, the others almost empty. The horses would need most of what there was, and at best, there would be a swallow for each of them. When they rode out at daybreak there would be no water left.
Without water, how long could a man live and travel under that sun, in that parching heat? A day, perhaps … or two days. He knew of one man who had lived three days beyond the point where he should have died, lived by sheer guts, by hatred, by the driving will to live and get revenge.
There was water enough for coffee, and when the coffee was made they sat together and drank it, each busy with his own thoughts. Dan Rodelo knew what might be done in these circumstances, but he was no murderer, and he could come to only one conclusion, the same one he had arrived at in the beginning: to see the thing through to the end … and at the end he must tell them the truth.
It would mean a shooting, of course, and he was not the gunman that Joe Harbin was. Possibly he was faster than Tom Badger, but even of that he could not be sure. He had been a fool to try what he was trying, but that was the sort of man he was—not very wise, not very shrewd, using only what he had, which was a certain toughness, a stamina, a stubborn unwillingness to quit.