One by one he ticked off the possibilities, then … “Got an idea,” he said. They mounted and followed him. Yet three hours later when they rode up to Wolf Pen Tank there were no tracks around and green scum covered the water. Not even a stray steer …
Angrily Lantz bit off a chew of tobacco. Now where in tarnation!
He swore bitterly, remembering. Old Chavero had once holed up for several days at that intermittent stream that came out of the ground near the pinnacles. “That’s it!” he said. “That’s it!” Bayless swore. “How long’s this goin’ on?”
“Come on,” Hindeman said, “well find ’em.” They left Wolf Pen at a brisk trot. The afternoon was well along and in a short time it would be cool and they could move faster.
At dusk Trace Jordan pulled the picket pin and saddled up. Then he led the red horse to the path that led out the back way. He was restless and worried, unable to sit down or relax. His wound was itching … it must be healing. He drank more water and moved to where he could look down the trail. There was nothing in sight.
Yet he had almost dozed off when he heard the sound of a walking horse.
He came to his feet, Winchester in hand. Twice as he listened the horse stumbled. It was very tired. He shifted the rifle to his left hand and touched his pistol. He moved to the patch of meadow, passing soundlessly through the grass. The moon was just coming over the rocks and the meadow was bathed in pale light. Ghostlike the horse and rider materialized from the dakness.
Jordan started to her, seeing her hair against the light. Then faintly, far or close he could not guess, he heard another sound.
“You are here?” She spoke softly, yet her words carried. He did not reply. Somebody or something was out there in the darkness. Somebody who also listened.
She walked her horse deeper into the clearing. She made a silent lonely figure, like an Indian woman on her horse. “You are here?” There was a plaintive lost tone in her voice that twisted his heart.
He waited and in the stillness there was no sound. She sat still upon her horse, waiting for some response. He could almost feel the hope going out of her. Was he, as she must have believed, only another man who would ride away? Had he taken her help, let her get into a corner and then left her alone? Desperately he wanted to speak, to cry out, to —
“No,” it was another voice, “he ain’t here. But I am.”
A tall man in a conical hat stepped from the shadows. She tried to start her horse as he grabbed at it but the horse was too tired to move quickly. Sutton grabbed the bridle and jerked the horse around and then he reached for Maria.
Trace Jordan picked up a small stick and tossed it into the brash a dozen feet away. It lit in the brush and instantly the man by the horse turned and Jordan saw moonlight on a gun barrel.
Sutton waited, his gun poised. Then he relaxed slowly. “Animal,” he said aloud. He turned toward Maria Cristina. “Now I’m goin’ to finish what I started,”
She was still too close to him. There was too much risk of her being hit if shooting started. Jordan picked up a small stone and tossed it into the brush across the clearing. Sutton froze in place, listening. Then he holstered his gun. “Get down,” he said, “or I’ll pull you down.”
Maria Cristina had sat still, apparently too weary to move, too defeated to try. Now she moved suddenly. She threw her leg over the horse and dropped to the ground on the opposite side. She slapped the horse and he lunged. Sutton sprang back and Maria Cristina dropped into the blackness at the edge of the brush and was absolutely still
Jack Sutton stood alone in the clearing, staring at the shadows, listening for her breathing. “Do you no good,” he said conversationally. “I’ll have it my way now. Ben ain’t here to stop me.”
There was a faint whisper of grass around Trace Jordan’s feet as he moved. Trace Jordan was going to kill a man. He had to kill and not be killed for she must not be left alone with Jack Sutton. He stopped and he knew Sutton could see him.
“Who is it?” Sutton demanded. “Buck? Ben?”
Tension was building but more for Sutton than for him. He knew whom he faced; Sutton saw only a shadow in the night. “Speak up!” Sutton said impatiently. “Who are you?”
“I reckon I’m the man you been hunting,” Jordan said, “unless you hunt only women.”
Chapter Four
The night was cool. Jack Sutton stood very still, hearing the slow heavy beat of his heart. He wished he could see Trace Jordan. This shadowy figure worried him. There was no personality there, only something dark, indefinite, indistinct.
Never, since the beginning, had he seen this man. His partner he had killed and he had helped to pursue him and bring him to this moment but never once in all that time had he actually seen Trace Jordan.
You could not look into his eyes; you could not measure the man. It disturbed Sutton but did not make him less confident.
“I figure you’re one of those who murdered my partner,” Jordan said.
Sutton wondered if Jordan could see his gun hand. It was dangling at his side but he began to inch it higher. “Sure.” His voice was taunting. “I’m one of them. Fact is, it was my idea.”
His hand was at the bottom of the holster as he spoke. He had only to bend his elbow to grasp the butt. He bent his elbow suddenly. His hand grasped his gun butt and suddenly he was choking with the lust to kill. He drew —
The bullets smashed him in the belly like two fists, a hard one-two that set him back on his heels. He put his left foot back to steady himself and started to lift his gun but when he got his hand up he found it was empty.
Confused, he stared blindly at his hand and then his knees buckled and he fell. His body from the waist down was numb, yet his brain was alive and clear. He tried to speak, to see the face of the man who stood there, watching him. He tried to frame words but then the notion faded … this then was how it felt to die.
The last thing he remembered was the wet grass on his face.
Trace Jordan walked forward, circling a little, knowing his bullets had gone true, yet wary as always, taking no chances, estimating the danger of the man who lay there.
“Maria Cristina?” Then she was coming toward him. “We must ride now. They’ll be coming.” He gestured. “Take his horse. He hasn’t covered the ground yours has.”
Into the desert they rode. Sand and more sand. Rock, Spanish dagger, yucca, ocotiflo and broken lava. It was a brutal heat-baked corner of hell.
The cacti cast weird shadows in the moonlit night and a low wind moaned in the scattered clumps of brush. They rode in silence, knowing there was no returning now. Another Sutton had died and made another mark against them.
The Sierra de San Luis pointed a rocky finger into the wastelands south of the border. It was Apache country and it was the desert and the desert can kill. This was the land that time and again had defeated armies of the United States. This was the land of the peccary and coyote, the land of the rattler and the scorpion, of the prickly pear and the cholla.
In the moonlight even more than by day the desert is a place of weird and strange beauty. One can live in the desert. There are plants that provide food; there are plants and places that provide water. But if one does not conform to the desert’s pattern, one can die in the desert
They did not talk. When the first light of dawn came he saw how her face was bruised and swollen and for the first time Trace Jordan was glad that he had killed a man. Yet she did not complain, she sat her horse well and rode straight on into the awful wilderness to the south. He looked back but saw nothing. No riders, no dust, no movement.
Sweat trickled down his face and down his body under his shirt. Twice within three hours great canyons split the desert floor. They descended into them and they emerged from them. And when he looked back a second time there was a dust cloud. There were two dust clouds.
This was wilderness, raw, untamed. There were no villages and no ranches. It was the land of the Apache, the most dreaded guerilla fighter the world has yet known. When it was almost noon he drew up and they dismounted, sponging out the mouths and nostrils of their horses. And then they walked.