Rodelo, standing behind his horse, checked his gun. All the loads were in place, and he was ready. He holstered the gun but loosened the thong that held it in place, so it could be quickly removed.
Nora was first in the saddle. The others followed quickly, and after a moment in which no one moved Rodelo rode out, leading the way. He went eastward, then south, following the vestige of a trail that soon seemed to play out, but he held a course that could swing wide of Pinacate. Harbin came up beside him. “Where d’you think you’re going?” he asked.
“If you want to try it due south, you go ahead. I’m riding around.”
“What’s down there?”
“There’s a big crater. Between that crater and Pinacate peaks there’s the worst mess of pressure ridges and broken lava you’ll ever see. Maybe there’s a way through, but if there is I never saw it, and I’m not hunting it in the dark.”
Grumbling, Harbin fell back. He was suspicious of every move Rodelo made, and his suspicions were growing stronger. He was operating with a short fuse, and the blow-off could come at any time.
Rodelo picked up the dim trail, skirted a shoulder of black basalt, and rode down into a crack, emerging in a forest of cholla. He drew up, his eyes scouting what lay ahead to be sure he got the trail. There were numerous openings, but none of them looked good. Finally he made a choice, but he moved slowly, avoiding the thick clumps of cholla. The wickedly barbed spines had a way of penetrating deeper if not removed, and they could cause painful sores.
Nobody was talking. They had no idea of how close the Yaquis might be, but voices carried far in the rocky desert, and they had no wish to be heard.
Before leaving the tanks, Rodelo had taken a long drink of water, and then had drunk again. Standing beside Nora, he had said, “An old desert Indian told me once that the water a man lost went from his blood first. Did you notice how little we bleed after a scratch? That must be the reason. And if that’s true, it would slow up a man’s actions and probably his thinking.
“A white man usually tries to ration his water, but an Indian drinks all he can hold whenever he gets a chance, knowing he will last longer, and be in better shape.”
So far they had suffered little, but there had been a steady loss of water over the past few days which could have been only partly replaced by their drinking at the tanks. Watching, he had seen none of the others drink as much as he had.
When they came to a small clearing among the cholla, they drew up. Badger rode up to Rodelo. “Dan, we got a lame horse—a pack horse,” he said.
Rodelo and the others gathered around. A joint of cholla was tightly caught in the horse’s flesh just above the hock. There were thorns around the hoof, and flecks of blood on the shoulder.
“We’ll have to turn him loose,” Rodelo said. “We’ll load the pack on the other horse, and split up the grub among us.”
“Will he die?” Nora asked.
“Him? He’s better off than we are. He’ll have a sore leg and shoulder for a few days, but he will limp back to the tanks. There’s water enough there for him.”
“What will he eat?”
“What he ate last night. What the bighorns eat. Galleta grass, palo verde … he’ll make out.”
While the others stripped the pack from him, Rodelo extracted the thorns one by one, then released the horse with a slap on the hip. With only a few minutes’ loss of time, they moved on, but now it was light.
Under ordinary conditions the horse crippled by cholla would soon have recovered, and had there been no demand for speed he could have been taken along. The pain caused by the stabbing of a cholla thorn is intense, and the joints of cholla are difficult to remove. Rodelo had found the simplest way was to put a knife blade or strong stick between the cholla joint and the part it had penetrated, and then with a quick jerk rip the thorn free. Some might stay in the skin, to be removed by the teeth if no tweezers were handy.
The Indians were not following them now. Knowing how their quarry must go, Hat led his band in a wide sweep to the playa beyond the edge of the lava, leaving one Indian to keep them in sight.
The sun rose above the horizon, and at once the rocks turned to flame and the desert shimmered with heat waves and mirage.
Dan Rodelo felt the sweat start to trickle down his face, and down his chest beneath his shirt. He rode with caution, not only because of the Indians but because of the desert itself. He guided his horse with care, choosing the ground over which they must go, not by miles but by yards, selecting each bit of route through the cholla, the ocotillo, and the jagged rocks.
Everything in the desert seems to wear a thorn; every plant, every living creature is equipped to survive in that most ruthless of all worlds. In the desert one quickly learned to stay on the sunny side of bushes, for a rattler might be coiled in the shade; one learned to avoid slippery rock, to be careful of the steep slides, to avoid if possible the deep stretches of sand that with each step robbed a man of his strength.
Now, Rodelo realized, the battle would soon be resolved. Within a matter of hours each man here would be in a deadly struggle merely to stay alive, and each was aware of it. The margin between life and death had narrowed here; a horse with a broken leg could put a man afoot, and from there there would be no escape. Without water, a man might, with luck, last twenty-four hours. A few, through sheer will to survive, had lasted three or four days.
“Watch yourself,” Rodelo warned Nora. “If you bump into a cholla bush you’ll have a dozen or more thorns stuck into you, and everyone hurting like the very devil.”
Now there could be no question of speed. At times the trail was steep, and always it wound about among the cactus and the corners of jagged rock. The slightest slip meant falling against the thorns or the sharp rock edges.
Twice they stopped while Rodelo, not liking the looks of some opening ahead, would get down and explore on foot. It was a caution that paid off, for both openings were false leads.
Harbin was surly, his eyes scanning the rocks, but flickering over to Rodelo from time to time. Nora stayed close to Rodelo, and the gunman’s jealousy grew. Tom Badger, with a gift for survival, stayed out of the line of fire and had no comments to make.
Starting up a slight incline in the lava maze, Gopher’s mount suddenly slipped and fell back, throwing Gopher against a wall of cactus. The horse, fighting to his feet, was studded with cholla thorns; Gopher crawled out on his hands and knees, his back and side covered with the yellow joints.
Harbin burst out angrily, “You clumsy fool! Get yourself out of this! I’m going on!”
“We’re all in this together,” Rodelo said, “and we’ll stick together.”
“Who says so?” Harbin flared.
“I do,” Rodelo replied.
There was a moment of silence. Harbin drew his horse around so that his right side was toward Rodelo. Harbin’s hand was on his gun. “It ain’t so far to the coast,” he said. “You won’t be needed.”
Dan Rodelo was on the ground near Gopher, his knife in his left hand. He was wondering how accurate a throw he could make. He could draw a gun or throw a knife with either hand, but a year in prison had given him no practice.
The bullet came an instant before the report, the smack of the bullet and the sound of the shot tripping over each other. All of them could hear the trickle of water as it ran from the canteen.
“You’ll need me,” Rodelo said. “You’re going to be out of water.”
Harbin swore, watching the last drops from the canteen dribble to the ground.
Rodelo went to work with his knife, first removing the cholla joints from Gopher then from the horse. Badger got down from his horse to help. Nora and Gopher held the horse while Rodelo, with Badger’s help, extracted the thorns. The horse, ordinarily half-wild, seemed to know they were trying to help, and stood quietly. It cost them almost an hour.
“Let’s get out of here,” Rodelo said when the last joint had been pried loose. He started into a gap in the cactus growth, and a bullet clipped a joint of cholla behind him. They could see no one anywhere, and after a moment or so they went on.