Maria Cristina came swiftly to her feet when she saw his face and Jordan explained, holding back nothing at all.
Hindeman was conscious. “You two take out,” he said. “Small chance I’ll make it, anyway.”
“You’ll make it,” Jordan told him dryly. “You’re too mean to die.”
As soon as it was dark they loaded up and just before they rode off, Jordan built a fire and stacked fuel so it would fall into the flames. Due north then, holding a course on the polestar, they rode. The desert was broken and rough but they made good time.
“Keep goin’,” Hindeman told them. “Don’t pay me no mind. If them Apaches get me it won’t matter, anyway.”
So they pushed on through the night and in the first gray of dawn, with the horses wearily plodding, they glimpsed far off a cluster of buildings.
At the same instant Maria Cristina called out, “Trace!”
He turned in the saddle. Behind them and to the east, not six hundred yards away, a dozen Indians sat their horses. They had come out of an arroyo and were apparently as surprised as Jordan himself.
“Keep moving,” he told her. “Keep moving no matter what.”
They rode on, holding their pace. Suddenly the Indians began to move out. Their ponies began to trot.
Trace Jordan stepped up the pace. The buildings were not more than five miles away now. The Indians were very close and coming up rapidly.
Turning, Trace Jordan, lifting his Winchester, took careful aim. He took up the slack on his trigger, took a deep breath, let part of it out, then took up more slack, then a little — the rifle leaped in his hands and a horse jumped and fell back, throwing his rider.
Twice more he fired; then, waiting to see the effectiveness of his shots, he raced after Maria Cristina and the litter.
With shrill yells the Indians came after him. Suddenly, at the buildings, a rider appeared around the corner of a barn and started for them. Behind him came other riders until seven were strung out, racing their horses.
Trace heard shooting and, turning his horse, he emptied his rifle at some two hundred yards distance. An Indian on a paint pony fell from his horse and rolled over, got up, then fell again. Then a horse shied violently at another shot and the Indians slowed up and spread out.
Jordan ran his horse after the litter, feeding the shells into his rifle. When he looked back again the Indians had broken off their pursuit and turned away.
The riders from the ranch came up and swung their horses alongside. Their leader was a small square-shouldered man with cold gray eyes.
“Hindeman!” he said sharply. “Apaches get you?”
“No.” Ben Hindeman indicated Jordan. “He did.”
On the second morning following their arrival at Rancho San Bernardino, Trace Jordan came out into the morning sunlight and pulled on his hat. It was very early and John Slaughter was still at breakfast. Ben Hindeman was sleeping and apparently much improved.
There had been no sign of the other riders from the Sutton-Bayless outfit.
Buck Bayless and Wes Parker had not been among those in the fight at the rocks and Hindeman would say nothing about them. Yet something in his manner made Jordan increasingly restless.
The Indian girl who helped in the kitchen was throwing out some water. She looked quickly at Trace Jordan and started for the house.
“Seen Maria Cristina?” he asked.
The girl looked at him curiously. She shook the last few drops from the pan. “She gone. She gone maybe two hours.”
“What?”
“She take horse. She say goodby, all. She ride away.”
“Where’d she go?” he demanded.
The girl shrugged. “Where? I don’t know. She say nothing. Just go.”
Swearing, Trace ran for the corral. He hastily threw a saddle on the big red horse and stepped into the leather. Without a backward glance, he started down the trail.
Maria Cristina would go home, of course. She had been obviously disturbed by the fact that nothing was known of Buck Bayless or Wes Parker. Bayless she knew and he did not worry her. Wes Parker was another of the crowd who ran with Jack Sutton and Mort and the more Jordan thought of it, the more reason he could see for her worry. Yet it was not that alone and he knew it.
Maria Cristina had carefully avoided being alone with him since their arrival at Slaughter’s. She had evaded any chance of a private talk without seeming to do anything of the kind. Whatever she was thinking he did not know, but obviously she did not intend to share her thoughts with him.
Several times he had caught her looking at him, wide-eyed and serious, yet she always looked away and her manner had been cool.
The trail led through Guadalupe Pass and there was a chance he could overtake her there. He knew there was a spring in the Pass itself or near the opening of the Pass and there were several springs just north of the Pass at different points. Beyond the Guadalupes the country was unfamiliar to him except for that area covered in his flight.
He rode steadily into the morning and from time to time he saw her tracks. Six or seven miles from the Bancho she stopped at a tank to water her horse, then pushed on. She was holding a steady gait and he saw no other evidences of travel but those made by her pony.
Word was out that Apache raiding parties were riding, which was enough to stop all travel. It was no time for a lone man to be on the road, to say nothing of a pretty girl. Yet before he could even see the cleft that marked the Pass, he saw a rider on a bay horse coming toward him.
Trace Jordan slid the loop off his gun butt and eased himself in the saddle, holding his pace. The rider came on, a little slower.
When not more than two hundred yards separated them, Jordan slowed his horse. At the same moment he recognized the rider as the man who had warned him away after drinking with him in Tokewanna.
“Howdy.” Jordan drew up. The man’s face was pale under the tan. “I’m Joe Sutton,” he said, “and I’m not huntin’ trouble.”
“Then there will be no trouble.”
Joe Sutton took the makings from his pocket and began to roll a smoke. “You … did you see anything of Ben? And the others?”
“I saw them . . . Ben’s at Slaughter’s and he’s alive. I think hell pull through,”
The match broke in Button’s fingers and Jordan leaned over and held his cigarette to Button’s.
“Mort?”
“He’s dead … so’s Old Jake but the Apaches did that, not me.”
He explained, taking his time, first what had happened at the rocks and after. He told of the ride back to the border with Ben Hindeman.
“Pass anybody on the trail?” he asked then.
“No.” Sutton looked thoughtful. “Saw some tracks, though. They showed up first inside the Pass so whoever made ’em must have turned off.”
“What happened to Buck Bayless and that fellow Parker?”
Joe Sutton shrugged. “Parker is dead … Bayless is hurt but not bad. The way I hear it, they went to the North to try to make that Chavero kid tell where his sister went. They ran into Vicente.”
“And…?”
“I reckon we had Vicente figured all wrong. He wasn’t about to back down. So Buck says. Vicente told Wes to travel an’ Wes didn’t take to it We buried Wes next morning.”
There was still a thing to be settled. Jordan wanted to be riding on, but there was no time better than now. There had been too much killing and Joe Sutton seemed a reasonable man.
“Ben Hindeman said the fight’s over. I’m getting my horses back.”
“Ben’s the boss.” Joe Button was relieved. “Fool thing, anyhow.” He threw down his cigarette, half-smoked. “Jack and Mort … yes, and Wes too. They got us into more trouble than we could get out of.”
Trace Jordan reined his horse over. “See you,” he said and put Big Red down the trail. Being a cautious man, he glanced back but Joe Sutton was riding on.
It was almost sundown when he found her. Maria Cristina had made camp in a little wooded draw off the Pass. She got up from the fire as he rode up, her face without expression. He swung his horse alongside the fire.
“What did you ride off for?” he demanded irritably.
“I do not run. I go home.” She knelt beside the fire, knelt suddenly as if her knees had weakened. She began fussing over the food she was preparing. In the late afternoon light her face seemed unnaturally pale.
He swung down. “Damn it, you didn’t have to run off! You could have said something!”