“What about it?” Joe looked up at Rodelo. “You are the man who is supposed to know where there’s water.”
“We’ll try. We’ll move out by daybreak.”
“If they let us,” Badger said.
“They will,” Rodelo said.
He was somehow sure of that, sure of it because he had known Indians before. There was something in the Indian that made him torture, not only to bring suffering to an enemy, but to test how much he could stand. To the Indian bravery was all, bravery and stamina, so it was like him to test his enemies, to know how great his victory had been.
And Hat was no fool. Time was on his side, and he could afford to hang back, to let the heat and thirst and the fierce tempers of the men they followed do their work.
The shooting they had done was only a preliminary test, a plumb line into the well of their resistance. The pursued men had reacted suddenly, sharply, so the Yaquis knew the time was not yet, and they would follow for another day, perhaps two days.
“Do you know where there’s water?” Nora asked.
“I know where it might be. Don’t expect a spring. If there are springs in this country I never met anybody who knew of them. There are tanks like those at Tinajas Altas or at Raven’s Butte … there’s Papago Tanks, Tule Wells, and some isolated places. I think I can find them.”
“You’d better,” Harbin said.
Rodelo glanced at him. “Don’t push your luck,” he said quietly, “because I have at least one advantage.”
“You?” Harbin sneered.
“I know just how good you are with a gun, but you don’t know anything about me.”
“There’s nothing I need to know.”
He spoke abruptly, almost carelessly, but Dan Rodelo was sure the remark had hit home. Harbin was naturally suspicious, trusting no one, and he would be doubly suspicious now. He would ask himself just what Rodelo meant. Was he, perhaps, a known gunfighter using a different name? If so, who would he be?
Harbin ran through them in his mind, trying to place the whereabouts of each one. Jim Courtright, Ben Thompson, Commodore Perry Owen, Doc Halliday, John Bull, Farmer Peele … one by one he named them off to himself. But there must be some he didn’t know.
Rodelo had hoped for just one thing, to make Harbin curious, and wary of him.
These were not desert men, Dan Rodelo knew that much. Both Badger and Harbin were men of the plains. Tom Badger was part Indian; he had been a buffalo hunter and then a cow thief. He had more than once been involved in the holdup robberies of stages, and had ridden in a cattle war.
Harbin had been a cowhand, a fireman on the Denver and Rio Grande, a hired gunman in several township and cattle wars, and finally a holdup man. His first killings had been over card games.
Whatever they knew of wilderness was what they knew of the Plains states and the mountain country on the east slope of the Rockies. Neither was likely to know the little tricks of desert survival … though possibly Badger might.
At daybreak they moved out, mouths dry, lips cracked and stiff, every movement of their eyes painful under inflamed lids. In the distance, but not very far off, there was a low dust cloud that kept pace with them. Harbin glowered at it, and swore.
They could no longer travel with any speed. The Pinacate country was all about them, broken lava, deep craters, pinnacles of rock, and everywhere was a thick growth of cholla. Some desert dwellers called one kind of cholla the “jumping cactus,” for when a hand came near it or when you passed too close the cactus seemed to leap out and deliberately impale you upon its needle-sharp thorns.
The cholla is covered with knobs about the thickness of a short banana, and these knobs are covered with spines, each one capable of causing a painful sore. The joints of the cholla break off easily, for this is the way the plant is propagated. The cholla grows in thick clumps, spreading in some cases out to cover acres, and it seems to love best the crevices in the lava. In some places clumps of cholla may climb halfway up a small volcanic cone, and their lemon yellow spines glow on the dark desert like distant lights.
To ride among them made every step a risk. The joints broke off and stuck in the horses’ legs, in the riders’ clothing, even in the saddle ladder. Nothing was safe from the thorns. Once in the flesh, they seemed hooked there, and were both difficult and painful to remove.
Dan Rodelo rode in the lead, weaving a precarious way among the outcroppings of jagged lava and the cholla. It was ugly country. At times they had to cross short stretches of lava where a slip would be almost sure to mean a broken leg for a horse. Once they skirted a crater that must have been at least four hundred feet deep. In the bottom were several scattered sahuaro, and some of the big cactus had grown at a point where the ridge was broken like a breach in a wall. Clusters of cholla were all about them, and clumps of cat-claw. Far off he could see a bighorn watching from a volcanic cone. This was the heart of the Pinacate country.
Nora closed in beside him. He was shocked at her face. Her lips had cracked, and they had bled. “Is it much further, Dan?” she asked. “I mean to the bay?”
“A good bit.”
“What’s going to happen?”
He looked at her, and he was worried by the same thought. “Too much, I’m afraid. You keep your head down, d’you hear, when the Yaquis come. And after that … well, you know how Joe Harbin feels.”
“What’re you two talkin’ about?” Harbin shouted. “That’s my woman you’re a-talkin’ to, Rodelo, and don’t you forget it.”
Dan turned a bit in the saddle. “She will decide that, I think.”
“Like hell she will! I’ve decided it. She’s mine, and any time you want to argue the question you speak up.”
Dan sat easy on his saddle, but the thong was off his six-shooter. “Don’t ride that reputation too hard, Joe. Somebody might want to try it out.”
“Any time.”
Talking hurt his lips, and Dan Rodelo did not reply. He squinted his eyes against the sun, searching the lava for familiar signs, but he saw none. Yet the tank had to be near.
All morning they had ridden without water. Now the sun was high, the horses moved with lagging steps. Suddenly he saw a white blaze on a dark rock up ahead. At the same time a bee shot by him, flying a straight course.
The horses smelled the water and quickened their pace. And then they all saw it. Nora stared, and then turned her face away. Tom swore bitterly. In the tank, which was half filled with water, lay a dead bighorn, and it had been dead several days.
Joe Harbin turned on Rodelo, “This the kind of water you take us to?”
“It ain’t his fault. Be reasonable,” Tom said quietly. “We’re in trouble, but we ain’t goin’ to get out of it by fightin’ amongst ourselves.”
Gopher looked at Rodelo, his eyes haunted by fear.
“We’ve got another chance,” Rodelo said, “about an hour from here.”
Wearily, they climbed into their saddles once more and started the reluctant horses toward the southeast. Fear rode with them, for now their margin of safety was gone. All were feeling the effects of dehydration, which had been growing with each passing hour. Rodelo, who had saturated himself with water when he had the chance, was in better shape than the others. Nora had followed his advice to some degree.
Dan Rodelo studied the terrain as they moved along. Once down on the flat, there would be no water. He knew that Papago Tanks, usually holding some water, often quite a lot, were somewhere near. But there were few landmarks. The terrain, weird as it was, had a sameness that made locating any spot difficult.
He could feel the effort his horse was making, could feel the heaviness in its muscles, the desire to stop, no matter what. When they had put a mile behind them, he drew up. “We’d best walk,” he said, “if we want our horses to last.”
Though loath to do so, they dismounted, and Rodelo started to walk on.
Nobody felt like eating, nor was it wise to eat, with no water. Rodelo’s lips were painfully cracked, but they scarcely bled, for with dehydration any scratch dried up almost at once. He walked slowly, setting a pace easier for those behind him to follow. A careless touch on a bit of rock in passing was like touching red-hot iron from a forge.