Presently Badger sat up and lit a cigarette. He glanced over at Rodelo. “You awake?”
Rodelo awakened instantly. “Yeah.”
“How far south do these mountains run?”
“To the border.”
“Is there a way through them?”
“Uh-huh … a couple of ways that I know of. The Indians probably know of others.”
Badger considered the matter. “You know this country pretty well?”
“As well as any white man, I expect, but I wouldn’t count too much on anything. It’s a country with little water, and that hard to find. Folks have died within a few feet of water at Tinajas Altas … the water is in rock tanks, high above the trail.”
“I’ve heard of that.” Badger was thoughtful. “Do you know of any water down in the Pinacate? She says”—he indicated the sleeping girl—”there’s a water hole south and a mite west of Papago Wells.”
Dan Rodelo eased the position of his gun to stall for time. Now how in the devil did she know that? It was an unlikely place, and he would have gambled that even the Yaquis did not know of it. The Yumas might … after all, this was their country, but how did Nora Paxton know of the place?
“Yes,” he said reluctantly, “there is such a place. It isn’t what I’d call easy to find, but it’s there.” Then he added, “But you can’t depend on any desert water hole to be full all the time. Most of them dry up once in a while, or get down to a mere trickle.”
An hour before daybreak they stopped the wagon, poured water in a hat, and let each of the horses drink. “We’d best take time to eat,” Rodelo said. “It’ll be some time before we get the chance again.”
“You sure they’ll find us?”
“The Yaquis? You can bet on it.”
They built a small fire and made coffee and fried bacon and eggs, eating with it some of the bread they had picked up at Sam’s.
Rodelo was wary. Neither Harbin nor Badger was to be trusted; as for Gopher, it was unlikely he would start anything without some nudging from one of the others; but it paid to be careful. He avoided looking into the fire so his eyes would not be affected for night vision, and he made a point of hanging back from the others, keeping all of them always within sight.
Finally they put out the fire and moved on, the trail now taking them farther from the mountains and out into the bottom of the valley. Before them and around them was the Lechuguilla Desert.
Rodelo had no doubt as to what was happening on the other side of the mountains. The Yaquis, led by Hat, the shrewd old tracker who had taken the lead in the trailing of escaped convicts, would be searching for their trail. At first Hat would have swung south to cut the trails into the desert, then east and north. Finding no tracks, they might check beyond the river, but he doubted it because of the wagon. Not finding the wagon, the Indians would believe the outlaws still used it.
Hat would immediately grasp what had happened, and would cut for sign around the edges of the dunes. It might take a bit longer, but there would be a dozen or more Yaquis to make the search for tracks. By now Hat would have found their sign and be on the trail.
How much time did that leave? Hat would trail the horses to Gold City. Sam Burrows would tell them nothing, but it would not have taken long for Hat to decide they were again in a wagon—a wagon that must be abandoned within the next few hours. The team drawing the wagon could be released to save water and they would find their way back to Gold City. From that time on it would be a race to the south. They had saved a few hours, and every minute was important.
Joe Harbin stood in his stirrups and looked back the way they had come. There was no dust showing against the sky.
Badger was not looking back. They would know soon enough when the Yaquis started to close in. “We’d better spell the horses,” he said, and all of them got down from the wagon and walked on.
Ahead of them were the famous Tinajas Altas, the “High Tanks” famous for saving many lives on the Devil’s Road, a road where many had also died. And to the south the country became rough.
Dan Rodelo dropped back beside Badger. “We’re going to take another chance,” he said. “I’m trying to lose those Yaquis.”
Badger gave him an amused look. “You haven’t a chance.”
“We can play for time.” He pointed to a long finger of rock that pushed into the desert not far ahead of them. “See that? Right beyond it there’s a narrow pass through the mountains and we’re going to take it, and hope they’ll miss the turn-off and ride on south.”
Badger looked doubtfully at the mountains. “There’s a pass through there? I never heard of it.”
“We’ll leave the wagon,” Rodelo said. “From here on we’ll ride.”
“I’ll feel safer,” Badger acknowledged.
The sun was well up in the sky when Rodelo guided the wagon into the lee of a sand dune, pulling in as close to the side of the dune as possible. Then, with Harbin and Gopher to help, he went up on the ridge of the dune and caved sand over on the wagon. In a few minutes it was covered; then, picking up handfuls of sand, they let it dribble out, sifting over what few tracks were visible.
After they had mounted up, Rodelo led them in an abrupt turn into the mountains, and in no more than fifteen minutes they were in a rapidly narrowing canyon that led them up a thousand feet in altitude in less than a mile. They crossed the Gilas on a narrow trail that showed no signs of recent use other than the tracks of bighorn sheep, a trail that wove in and around among peaks and ridges that lifted several hundred feet higher.
The route over the Gilas was not more than five or six miles. They had watered the horses well before abandoning the wagon, emptying many of the cans and sacks and leaving them with the wagon. This lightened their load considerably, but Dan Rodelo knew what lay ahead perhaps better than any of them, and he knew it was not going to be easy.
“Are we going to make it?” Gopher asked him once.
“Some of us will,” Rodelo replied.
He led them south, taking up the old Journey of Death, the Devil’s Road. This led straight away south now for the Tinajas Altas, which were on a ridge that trailed off the end of the Gilas.
The day was hot. He slowed the pace of the horses, paused frequently for rest, and kept an eye on the trail behind. He noticed that Nora was taking the hard going surprisingly well.
She wore a skirt split for riding and a Mexican blouse, and like the others, she carried a gun. Joe Harbin seemed to have marked her for his own, but nothing was said, and she accepted the situation without comment, agreeing to nothing, rejecting no one. She was a shrewd girl, Rodelo decided, and one to watch.
It was Gopher who kept looking again and again to the rear. Harbin looked back rarely. He rode with the confidence of a man who has been through the mill, a hard-shouldered man, sure he needed no one.
The sun was now high overhead, the heat intense. In the brassy sky there was no cloud, only the sun whose rays seemed to blend into one great searing blast. The floor of the desert was hot beyond belief, and their horses plodded wearily, hopelessly, into the dead stillness. Far off to the south a dust devil sprang up, racing wildly across the flat desert floor.
Now Gopher no longer looked back. He sat his saddle, head hanging, simply enduring the heat.
“We had better hunt some shade,” Rodelo commented, “or we’ll kill our horses.”
“Shade?” Harbin swore. “Where would you find shade?”
“Up in one of the canyons.”
“Not me,” Harbin said. “I’m headed for Mexico, and then the Gulf.”
“You won’t make it unless you give the horses a rest,” Rodelo replied. “We’ve pushed them hard.”
Harbin’s face was streaked with sweat trails through the dust. His eyes were cruel when he turned to look at Rodelo. “I don’t figure you,” he said, “and I don’t trust you. Just where do you come into this, anyway?”
“I’m in,” Dan replied shortly. “I’m in up to my neck.”
“We can change that,” Harbin said, drawing up. He swung his horse a trifle to face Rodelo. “We can change that right here.”
“Don’t talk foolish,” Rodelo replied. “You wouldn’t have a chance without me. There’s damn little water in this desert, and you’ve got to know where it is to find it.”