The Yaqui went to the sand, and Rodelo leaned over and stripped him of his cartridge belt. He carried the second Winchester along with him.
He saw the two Indians almost at once, fifty yards off and half hidden by the sand bank. He dropped the dead Indian’s rifle and brought up his own as the Yaquis caught sight of him. He saw them start to lift their rifles, but he was already firing.
His first shot, a snap shot but with enough time, was a direct hit. He saw one Indian stagger a few steps, then fall. His second shot glanced off the other Indian’s rifle and went along his arm, leaving a streak behind it. The Indian dropped to one knee and fired back. Rodelo’s third and fourth shots smashed him in the chest and neck.
Then Rodelo went up the wash at a run, carrying the extra rifle. His advantage was now gone, and from this moment it would be a hunting party, and he would be the game. How many Indians remained he did not know, but it was a safe guess to estimate it at ten or a dozen—far too many.
In the tiny hollow behind low mesquite brush where there was only partial concealment and sparse cover, Joe Harbin crouched with his gun in hand. Badger, his shoulder carrying the bloody scratch of a bullet, was nearby.
“What’s goin’ on out there?” Harbin muttered. “We got company.”
“That will be Dan Rodelo,” Nora said coolly.
Harbin looked around at her. “Like hell!” he said. “Nobody could cross that amount of country without water.”
There was no further sound for several minutes, and then Harbin saw an Indian moving swiftly through the brush, his attention not on them, but directed toward some other object. He was a young warrior, and he had momentarily forgotten one enemy in concentrating on another. He was a very young warrior who would grow no older.
Joe Harbin saw him drop to the ground, and waited. The Indian had made one mistake in forgetting his first enemy, and having made one mistake he might make a second and get up from the sheltered position into which he had dropped. An older warrior would have crept along the ground and then gotten up some yards from where he had hit the ground.
The young Yaqui had been taught all that, and had done it many times in practice, but right now he forgot. Intent upon Dan Rodelo, whom he could see edging along the shallow wash, he raised up from his position slowly.
He felt the bullet hit and went to his knees. He felt it as one feels a sharp blow in the back at the waistline. He felt no pain, nothing. Puzzled, he started to get up, and could not. Slowly he wilted to the ground, looking unbelievingly at his legs, which no longer seemed a part of him. He tried to rise again, and felt a twinge of pain. He put a careful hand around to his back and it came away bloody. He reached a second time, and his questing fingers found the hole. The bullet had smashed through his spine, and it was now lodged somewhere inside him. He lay back and looked up at the sky. The buzzards were there, waiting.
Hat was puzzled. Somebody else had entered the fight, somebody he had not seen. There might be only one, but his common sense warned him there were more. There had been some shooting, but he had no idea who had shot, or why.
He gave the quail call that would withdraw the Indians, and slipped back to the place where they had left their horses. The Indians joined him. Four were missing.
Dan Rodelo came up to the little group, walking easily with his Winchester cradled over his arm. Another hung by a strap to his back, and he wore two extra cartridge belts. He had his own canteen and a water skin taken from a dead Indian.
He came to them out of the desert, and they watched him come. All had seen the Indians withdraw, but they knew it was only a temporary respite.
Rodelo looked around quickly. Only two horses were there, the grulla, loaded with the gold, and one other. Badger had been wounded slightly, and had bled quite a bit. He looked drawn and pale.
“We’d better get out of here while the going’s good,” Dan said, keeping his eyes on Harbin.
Harbin watched him, his eyes deep-sunken beneath his shaggy brows. “So you made it? I got to hand it to you, Danny. You got guts.”
“I made it,” Rodelo said. “And I’ll make it all the way.”
Harbin grinned at him, but it was not a pleasant grin. He took the bridle of the grulla and started off.
“Wait,” Rodelo said. “You’d better have a drink.”
Badger reached for the bag, grabbing it thirstily. Harbin held off, watching Badger drink. Rodelo knew what he was thinking—that he might have poisoned the water.
After a bit, Harbin drank, while Nora drank from the canteen.
They started on, but it was stumbling, bitter going. They walked steadily, Dan Rodelo bringing up the rear. A fine white dust rose from the plain. Weird dust devils danced in the distance, and the sun was lost in a brassy sky. They plodded on, and there was no sound but the shuffling of their feet—only occasionally a mumbled curse or their hoarse panting. The ground before them was flat, their course straight except for minor deviations because of creosote or cacti. The two horses hung back, wanting to stop. There was no sign of the Indians.
The Indians knew they were going, and knew what was at the end of it—they could still afford to wait. They knew the white men had no place to go. Rodelo’s unexpected appearance had spoiled their plan for the moment; they had tried too soon, and had tasted the bitterness of the white man’s bullets, and now they would wait.
Overhead, also waiting, were the buzzards.
At last the sun was going down behind the mountains to the west behind the Gulf, spilling crimson and gold over the sky and turning to flame the rugged peaks of the Pinacate. The edge of the dunes became a dark, unending line behind them.
The sun had set when they reached the shore … The boat was not there.
They stared out over the blue water. In their exhaustion and despair, they had no words for the emptiness that lay before them. They just stood silent in utter defeat.
The boat had been their goal, leading them on, drawing them, keeping them going. A haven they would reach, where they could rest, have a drink, eat cooked food once more.
Had the boat gone? Or had it never come?
“There’s another bay,” Nora said in a few minutes. “Right south of here.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know. Five miles—maybe ten miles even.”
Ten miles! An impossible distance in their present condition.
The grulla tugged at his lead rope, and Harhin released his grip, almost without thinking. Trailing the rope, the mustang walked away along the flat plain where the tides came, and at a somewhat higher point he stopped and dipped his head out of sight.
“Water,” Badger said flatly. “He’s found the water hole.”
They followed the mustang and gathered around the pool. It was small, the water was brackish, but it was wet and they could drink it.
“We could send up a smoke,” Harbin suggested.
“They’d think it was Indians.”
“What then?”
“We go on,” Rodelo said. “We have no other choice. We go on tonight.”
He looked at the packs. There it was, the gold he had come so far to get. There was the gold for which he had served a long, bitter year in prison—the gold he had told himself he would return to those to whom it belonged.
But what of these men? They had stolen it, or one of them had; and they had gone through a hard struggle to get away with it. How was he going to tell them what he meant to do?
The moment was near, and when he spoke he must be ready to shoot. Joe Harbin had counted too long on that gold, and no doubt Tom Badger had done his own figuring. Poor Gopher had been out of it from the beginning.
“We’d better dig in,” Badger said. “Those Injuns will be comin’ back.”
“Can’t you talk to ’em? They’re your people.”
Tom Badger looked at Harbin. “Are you crazy? I’m part Cherokee, and the Cherokee were eastern Injuns until the government took their land. We never even knew about these Yaquis. As far as that goes, the Injuns were always at war with one another—it was their favorite sport. They’d take my scalp as quick as yours.”
They worked with pieces of shell and scooped out a trench, throwing up a wall of sand. It wasn’t much, but it was something.