“She knows.” Harbin jerked his head to indicate Nora. “She told us about a place.”
“A fat lot of good that will do you until you get there … and maybe that was a rain pool. It might all be gone by now. How long do you think an exposed pool will last in this heat?”
Tom Badger had been sitting his horse watching, withholding comment. He had nothing to lose if Harbin died; but, because of the water, a great deal to lose if Rodelo was telling the truth.
“Hold off, Joe,” he said at last. “Dan’s right. This here country is hotter’n the floors of hell, and dryer. How long d’you think we’d last without water?”
Joe Harbin touched his parched lips, the cold hand of truth warning him as nothing else might have done. And there was no turning back now. It was go through or die.
“Aw, forget it!” he said. “Let’s get on.”
The trail showed plainly enough and Dan Rodelo watched him start off, followed by Gopher and Badger. Nora fell in beside him.
“He’ll kill you, Dan,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“He’s killed quite a few men.”
“And some day he’ll get killed—maybe by me.”
She studied him. “Have you ever used a gun—like that, Dan?”
“Some,” he admitted.
No use telling her how much, nor where and why. He knew far too little about Nora Paxton, and little enough about the others. As long as Joe Harbin felt he could kill him whenever he wanted to, Rodelo was sure of a fair chance. At this stage of the game, if Harbin guessed it might be a contest he would shoot him out of hand.
Rodelo mopped the sweat from his face and turned to look back. He could see nothing but dancing heat waves, shimmering their watery veil across the distance. If the Yaquis were back there, they were beyond those heat waves … He rode on.
Only he himself knew what a chancy game he was playing, only he could know how much was at stake, and how wild the gamble he was taking. Yet what he was doing had to be done, for himself, at least. For in the last analysis a man must be true to himself first, and what was at stake in this was his own estimate of himself, and much, much more.
He rode with men he knew would kill, men who he knew had only hate for him, the interloper. Hate, and a question. Badger and Harbin, and maybe Gopher … any of them would kill him if the time was right. They would kill him for a canteen, a horse, a gun, or just because they hated him.
At the moment Harbin wanted to kill him because he talked too much to Nora, but Rodelo knew that within hours that would no longer be important. In the last hours it would be his own life that each man thought of and fought for. Beauty faded under the hot sun, and even sex came to nothing when one was faced with the raw and bloody face of death.
They all knew something of the country ahead, some by experience and some by hearsay. But only Dan Rodelo knew it well, and even he did not know it perfectly. No one did. No one wanted to remain there long enough to know it. There was no worse country anywhere than what lay before them. They did not have water enough. There were very few water holes, and those might not have water for more than one man, or one man and his horse.
Rodelo thought of the men riding ahead of him. Tom Badger was calm, cool, dangerous. Joe Harbin was a man of sudden, terrible passions, of long, brooding hatreds leading to sudden moments of killing fury. Gopher was not so much like a gopher as like a rat, quick to run, quick to squeal with fear, but if he was cornered he would be ready to slash out at anything, even himself.
And what of Nora? Rodelo was mystified by Nora. Who was she? How had she come to be with these men? What did she want? Where was she going?
He had watched her. There were little refinements about her that puzzled him. She was, despite what one might have imagined, a girl with the instincts and perhaps the training of a lady. Her language was good. She had none of the careless, often rough talk of drifting frontier women. She was obviously not Joe Harbin’s woman, although he had plans in that direction. Tom Badger resented her, and that was because she represented a threat to their escape.
Badger knew they dared carry no excess baggage. He knew their escape was going to be touch and go, and there shouldn’t be anyone extra to worry about. Above all, Nora was another mouth that drank water.
They rode on through the blazing afternoon, heads hanging, mouths dry. Several times they drank a little water, and from time to time they stopped to sponge the mouths of their horses.
The mirages vanished, and the mountains far off to the south turned blue, then purple. The sun declined, the shadows grew long, and canyons bulged with darkness, ominous and threatening. The sky was streaked with flame; a few scattered clouds were edged with gold.
Dan Rodelo turned in his saddle and looked back. There was nothing. No sign of dust, only the quiet beauty of a desert when the sun has gone.
Tom Badger had slowed his pace. His face was streaked with dust and sweat. “How far to Tinajas Altas?” he asked.
“Too far.” Rodelo gestured toward the low mountains along which they rode. “We’ll cross over here and take a chance. There’s a tank over there by Raven’s Butte. Sometimes it has a little water.”
He led the way. The going was no better and no worse than they had had before—a dim, rocky trail to be followed single file. They found the tank in a canyon southwest of Raven’s Butte.
Rodelo swung down. “There’s not enough here for the horses,” he said, “but it will help.”
He led each horse to drink, counted slowly while they drank to allow each horse an equal amount. When the horses had finished, the tank held no more than a cup of water.
When they left Raven’s Butte, going south, they walked the horses. It was about seven miles, Dan Rodelo decided, to Tinajas Atlas. There would be water there, and they could fill their canteens, then water the horses again. They would need every drop they could get.
“No Injuns,” Gopher said triumphantly. “We lost ’em.”
Harbin glanced at him contemptuously, but made no comment. It was Badger who spoke. “Don’t you fool yourself, kid. They’re back there, and they’re comin’ on.”
“Do you really think they’ll catch up with us?” Nora asked Rodelo.
“They’re in no hurry,” he said. “They can catch up all right, but they will wait until the desert has had time to work on us.”
It was full dark by the time they reached Tinajas Altas, where they camped on the flat desert in a cove in the ridge. They built a small fire and made coffee. Nora sliced some of the bacon from a slab they had bought, among other food supplies, from Sam Burrows. They were not hungry, only exhausted from the heat and the savage travel over the blistering desert.
Presently the moon rose, and Tom Badger took up several canteens. “Let’s see if there’s water,” he said.
Rodelo went ahead. He had been here only once before, but he found his way to the place where some traveler had left a rope trailing to help climbers. “The lowest tank is usually half full of sand, but there’s water under it,” he explained to Badger. “We’ll try the upper tanks.”
The water lay in basins of solid rock, hollowed by centuries of tumbling water in a stream channel, which was actually more of a waterfall. “There are dead bees in it sometimes,” Rodelo explained, “but they’re no problem.”
Badger dipped up some of the water in his palm. It was cold and fresh. “Can’t knock that. Anyway, I heard there were some rains down thisaway a few weeks back.”
They filled the canteens, and then sat down on the rock beside the pool, refreshed by the coolness and drinking again and again.
“I can’t just figure you,” Badger said after a minute or two. “You don’t size up like the law, but you sure ain’t on the dodge. You done your time.”
“Put me down as a man who likes money,” Rodelo replied carelessly. “And where else could I get a piece of fifty thousand dollars? For that matter,” he added ironically, “where could you?”
Badger chuckled. “You got me there, amigo. A piece of fifty thousand … What we’re all wonderin’ about is how big a piece?”
“A three-way split, what else?”