“Why me?” Nora’s surprise was obvious.
“You can keep me company. Else I’m likely to fall asleep.”
Tom Badger chuckled, but made no comment. Joe turned on him. “What’s so funny about that?”
“Nothin’. I was just wonderin’ who was going to keep Gopher and me awake … and Danny.”
“Maybe I should share the watch with each of you,” Nora suggested with amusement.
“We could roll the dice to see who takes which watch. Low roll to take the first watch.”
“That ain’t necessary,” Joe said.
“Let’s have the dice, Dan,” Badger said. “I think that’s a fair idea.”
He shook the dice and rolled them, out on a flat rock. A five and a four.
Gopher rolled snake eyes, a two, and Rodelo followed with a six. Joe took the dice, threw them irritably … a pair of fives.
“That gives you the dawn watch, Joe,” Badger said. He started to pick up the dice, but Nora reached over and took them from him. “You’re forgetting me.”
“You don’t have to stand a watch,” Harbin said.
“I agree with Joe,” Rodelo said quietly. “You will need your rest, Nora.”
“So will all of you. After all, I am in this too, I’m riding a horse, I’m drinking water, and I will do my share.” She rolled the dice … a four.
“That gives me second watch, I think,” she said.
Rodelo took up his blanket. “Whoever is on watch,” he said, “keep an eye on the horses. If we lose them, we’ve had it.”
Gopher, first on watch, went to a rock near the horses, a position from which he could look over the camp without being approached from behind. Rodelo found a place in the lee of a rock that could shelter him from the cold wind blowing down the arroyo.
But there was more to it than that. Scattered on the ground were the smaller twigs broken from the firewood they had gathered, and it was virtually impossible for anyone to approach without a stick cracking. Wrapped in his blanket, Rodelo took a last look at the fire, at the positions of the others, and then went to sleep.
Eight
Rodelo was awakened by Nora’s careful, almost noiseless movements when she went to relieve Gopher.
“It’s only me, Gopher,” she said. “It’s my turn to take the watch.”
“You don’t have to, ma’am. I can stick it out.”
“You get some sleep while you can. I think tomorrow will be a rough day.”
“I’d like to do it, ma’am. It would be a real pleasure for a lady like yourself.”
“No … you get some rest. And Gopher, drink a lot of water. That’s what Dan has been advising me to do.”
Gopher was standing up, and Rodelo could see him. He heard his voice, very low. “I like him, ma’am—that Rodelo, I mean. I think he’s square. I guess … I guess I never met many who were really on the level. Not like him.”
“He was in prison.”
“But he wasn’t guilty, ma’am!” Gopher said quickly. “Everybody knew that. He just got himself roped into the deal when Joe Harbin grabbed that gold. Folks thought he’d connived with Joe, but that ain’t so, and many’s the time in prison I heard Joe say as much. He figured it was a good joke on Rodelo.”
Gopher was silent for a moment, then he added, “Joe could have cleared Rodelo, but he didn’t. You see, the way I heard it, after Joe stood up that payroll he made a clean getaway, then ran into Rodelo on the trail and they rode on together, the way folks do when they meet up like that. Only it seems Rodelo knew about that payroll and they figured him to be in on it.”
“You’d better get some rest, Gopher,” Nora said. “Tomorrow is another long hot day.”
Dan Rodelo lay quiet. Well, Gopher had told her, and from Gopher she would believe it, for Gopher had nothing to gain by lying. Suddenly, he was glad she knew, even though she did not, yet, know all of it. Nobody knew it all but himself, not even the people back at the mine who had been willing enough to buy the idea that he was a thief.
He lay there, half awake, half asleep, for some time, and finally eased from under the blankets and belted on his gun again. He went at once to the tank and drank, deep and long. Out in the night a coyote sounded, and he listened, but heard no echo. The Indians said that was the way to tell … that a man imitating a coyote would also make an echo, but there was something in the timbre of a coyote’s howl that did not echo. Rodelo had never decided whether this was true or not, but it seemed to be, the few times he had put it to the test.
He walked out to where Nora was on guard. She looked around quickly, her gun muzzle lifting. He grinned in the darkness. No nonsense about her—she was ready for trouble.
“It’s me,” he said quietly.
“My time isn’t up yet.”
“Do you object to some extra rest? I was awake, and I might as well be awake out here as back there.”
He seated himself near her. The night was still. Out upon the desert nothing moved. The stars held still in the sky; the black bulk of Pinacate loomed off to the south.
“I didn’t expect the desert to be like this,” she said. “So much growing, and all.”
“The plants have learned how to survive, each in its own way. Some of them store water against the long drouth, and some seeds will only grow when a certain amount of water has fallen. Most desert plants hold back their leaves or blossoms until the right amount of rain comes, then they blossom quickly and get it over with.”
Rodelo listened for a moment, then he said, “Did you ever look over a desert from high up on a mountain? The greasewood looks as if it had been planted, it’s so evenly spaced. Well, it’s spaced like that because it needs to draw water from the area around it.”
They sat quietly for a time, and then he spoke again. “I don’t get it. What are you doing here? I mean, what have you got to gain?”
“What have I to lose?”
“Your life means nothing to you?”
“Of course it does.” She looked around at him. “It might be that I want that gold, too. Or part of it.”
“You’d be wasting your time. You’ll never see a single coin of it.”
“Joe Harbin may feel otherwise.”
He was silent while again he assayed the darkness. “He won’t,” he said then. “Joe isn’t the kind to let one bit of that gold slip through his fingers if he can help it. If you’re counting on that, you better forget it.”
“I can handle Joe.”
“Maybe you can, at that.” There was an edge of sarcasm in his tone. “Jake Andrews was no Sunday school teacher, either.”
“What’s that to you?”
“Nothing … nothing at all.”
“Jake was all right. He was a good enough man in his way, but he listened to Clint. Jake heard about the gold, heard of it from Joe Harbin’s woman, because one night when Joe was drunk he did some bragging. Clint kept after him until Jake agreed to go and have a look for that gold.”
“What about you and Jake?”
She turned her eyes on him, but in the darkness he could not see their expression. “What about us?” she said.
“I mean … you don’t seem his sort of girl.”
“Any sort of girl was Jake’s sort. He pulled me out of a wrecked train up in Wyoming. I was on fire—my clothes, I mean. He put the fire out, and helped me get away from the Indians who wrecked the train … if they were Indians.”
“What do you mean?”
“I always thought Jake was in that himself. Only when he found me he pulled out, very fast. But he treated me all right. Jake was a hard man, and something of a brute, but he had a queer streak in him. He talked roughly to me, as he did to everyone, but he was oddly gentle too. He wanted to marry me.”
“He was a rancher, wasn’t he?”
“Indians drove off his herd and burned him out. He had some idea of going into Mexico and starting again.”
“So now you’re here.” He stared out over the desert, keeping his ears attuned to night sounds. Their voices were low, barely above a whisper. “Right in the middle of hell.”
The wind was cold, and unconsciously they had drawn closer together. Dan looked toward the camp. All lay still, sleeping. At the fire only a few embers glowed among the ashes. His eyes searched the darkness for movement, for any shape that did not belong there.