Rodelo shifted his Winchester. He had only the one rifle, fully loaded now. The other, a poor sort of weapon, he had left back on the beach. He had examined the belts with his fingers and knew he had at least seventy rounds of ammunition, all .44’s, and they could be used in either the rifle or the six-shooter he carried.
They heard the whisper on the sand before the Indians came into view, and when they did come they were only a suggestion of movement in the darkness, a shadow on the pale sand. No figure was distinct.
Nora whispered suddenly, “Joe … don’t! The boat is out there. Maybe in the morning we can get aboard without a fight.”
He shook her off. “Not now … we wouldn’t have a chance.”
He lifted his rifle, and Tom Badger, lying on his stomach in the cold sand, did likewise. Behind a rock Rodelo eased his own gun into position.
It might have been some movement, some glint of light on a gun barrel, but suddenly Hat hissed a sharp warning. Instantly, Joe’s rifle roared, followed by smashing reports, like echoes, from Badger and Rodelo.
A man screamed, a horse plunged, snorting, and the answering fire came quickly, stabbing flame toward the thundering rifles of the three men on the beach.
There was no question of picking targets, for there were no targets, only a confusion of movement and the flames as the Indians fired. The three men were on the ground, offering only their own gunfire for target, their bodies merged into the blackness of the bluff behind them.
Suddenly the firing ceased, there was the drum of racing hoofs. Joe shot once more, after the vanishing horse.
Then silence …
Only lapping water, a faint stir of wind. Overhead bright stars that hung in the darkness above them.
“What do we do now?” Nora asked.
“We wait,” Joe Harbin said grimly.
From the sand there came a low moan, then a subdued gasp …
“Joe?” Tom Badger’s voice was weak. “Joe, let the kid have the gold. Let him take it back. It ain’t worth it.”
“Sure,” Harbin replied easily. “Don’t worry about it. I was thinkin’ the same thing.”
Fourteen
The Gulf lay like a sheet of steel in the first gray light. Far out on the water lay the low black hull of a ketch, her two black bare poles pointing thin fingers at the sky.
On the sand, their bodies twisted in death, lay four Indians. Hat was not there.
Dan Rodelo stood up slowly, his muscles cramped from his position and from the dampness of the night. He picked up his rifle and wiped the moisture from the barrel.
“We’d better light a signal fire,” Nora suggested. “They might leave without us.”
They gathered driftwood. Only Tom lay still. “How is he?” Rodelo asked.
“Gone. You heard him—that was when he passed on.”
Joe Harbin looked down at Badger. “He was a good man, and a good partner. I’d never have made it through the first year without him. He was always talkin’ me down when I was ready to blow my top.”
He glanced at Rodelo. “You seen me enough. You know I got a short fuse.”
He lay the sticks in position, ripped a corner from his shirt for tinder, felt in his pockets. “You got a match?”
Dan reached for his shirt pocket, and Joe Harbin went for his gun. It was a difference of six inches in the position of their gun hands, and Joe Harbin was fast.
His hand dropped, gripped, the gun slid smoothly out and the muzzle came level in one perfectly timed movement, a result of long practice that had left dead men behind him.
His gun muzzle came level but something struck him hard in the side, and with a startled realization he saw Dan Rodelo was shooting.
The second shot followed the first so fast that he was turned in his tracks, his own shot drilling into the sand almost at his toes. He backed up and sat down hard on a rock, his six-shooter hanging from his fingers.
“You told Badger you’d let me have the gold,” Rodelo said mildly.
“Hell, he was dyin’—it made him feel better. You didn’t figure I’d fall for that, did you?”
“He was trying to save your bacon, Joe. He knew what was coming. You see, there in the past few days I think he figured out who I was.”
“You?” Harbin was holding his side where the blood welled out around his hand.
“I was a kid outlaw-gunfighter back in Texas before I saw it wasn’t getting me any place. That job at the mine, that was my first real job.”
“That Badger,” Joe Harbin said wonderingly, “always talkin’ me out of it, even with his last breath. I should have listened.” He was breathing now with long, shuddering gasps.
“You better light that fire,” he said suddenly. Then, “Say, that boat’s makin’ sail?”
Rodelo turned sharply to look seaward and too late heard the click of the drawn-back hammer. He dove head-first onto the sand, heard the roar of a gun, felt sand bite into his face. And then he was rolling over and came up shooting.
Three times he triggered the Colt, and with each shot Joe Harbin’s body jerked; it rolled slowly off the rock to the sand.
White-faced and shaky, Rodelo got to his feet and looked at Nora. “That was close,” he said. Wonderingly, he looked down at Harbin. “He never quit trying.”
“I’ll light the fire,” Nora said.
She took his matches and stooped down. When she saw the flames take hold and the column of smoke lift toward the sky, she got up and walked along the side of the bluff, and dug into a crevice in the rocks. The box she brought out was rusted and old, but still solid.
“I remember the place,” she said. “This is what I came for. All there is of the family I once had.”
“They’ve lowered a boat,” Rodelo said.
He picked up the sacks of gold and walked down the beach with them as the boat came in close. Two men were in the boat.
“You Isacher?” one asked.
“He’s dead … killed some time back, trying to escape. I’m takin’ his place.”
“I don’t know about that,” the man protested. “I was to get twenty bucks a day, and—”
“You’ll get that, and an extra twenty if you’ll bury those two men at sea.”
“Why do that? Nobody’ll ever find ’em.”
“There’s an Indian up there who claims a fifty-buck bounty on each prisoner he takes in, dead or alive. They didn’t want to go back.”
“Twenty bucks? Sure enough.”
He glanced at the heavy sacks Dan lifted into the boat. “What’s that?”
“Trouble, friend. Too much trouble. You just forget it.”
“I got to be an old man mindin’ my own business. It’s already forgot.”
Nora got into the boat, and Dan walked to the grulla and slipped the bridle off. “All right, boy, you’re free. You go on back to Sam, if you want, and we’ll come and get you one of these days. If you don’t do that, you just run wild.”
He slapped the mustang on the hip and walked away, trying not to show how much he minded.
The horse looked after him, then trotted off a few steps toward Pinacate. He stopped and looked back to make sure he was right. Dan Rodelo was getting into the boat.
Taking his position in the bow of the boat, Rodelo could look shoreward, and he saw Hat come down out of the desert and ride to the shore at Sea Lion Bluff. The Indian sat his horse, looking around, then rode off slowly.
“Wherever you go,” Nora was saying, “I want to go with you.”
“All right,” he said.
She held the rusted box tightly in her hand, but somehow it no longer seemed so important.