Revenge for their brother’s death, and the girl. They could take her to Sonora or back in the hills, and nobody would even think to look.
Then he heard the sound of horses on trail. He tried to lift his head to listen, but it was tied too tight. He lay there, hating himself and miserable, listening to the horses. Desperately, his mind fought for a way out, an escape. Again he strained his muscles against the binding rawhide. He forced his wrists with all his might, but although he strained until his hands dug into the sand under him, he could do nothing, he found them tight as ever. The sweat and blood made his wrists slippery so they would turn, ever so little, under the rawhide, but that was all.
His fingers were touching something, something cool and flat. For an instant, listening again to the approaching horses, that something made no impression, it refused to identify itself. Then on a sudden it hit him, and his fingers felt desperately.
A small, flat surface, light in weight, triangular—an arrowhead!
There were many of them here, he knew. All over this ancient medicine ground of the Yaqui Indians, delicately shaped from flint.
He gripped it in his fingers and tried to reach it up to the rawhide that bound his wrists.
They had crossed his wrists, then bound them tightly, and had taken several turns of the rawhide around his forearms, binding them tightly together, but by twisting his fingers he could bring the rawhide thong and the edge of the flint arrowhead together. Straining in every muscle, he commenced to saw at the thong.
The horses were still coming. In the echoing stillness of the canyon, he knew he would hear them for a good half hour before they arrived. The steep path was narrow, and they must come slowly.
Minutes passed. The cutting pain in his wrists was a gnawing agony now, and the salt of perspiration had mingled with it to add to his discomfort. Yet he struggled on. It was desperately hard to get the edge of the flint against the rawhide now, but he could still manage it, and a little pressure.
A voice called out, then another. The horses came into the basin, and he heard a question in Spanish, then a laughing response. Then a light was struck, and a fire blazed up. In the glow of the fire applied to sticks gathered earlier, he could see the four brothers, and Bess O’ationeal.
She was standing with her back to him, her wrists tied, and Juan gripped her arm. Lobo stared at her greedily, and then Juan asked a question. Leading the girl, they turned toward the anthill and the Cactus Kid.
Bess cried out when she saw him. “ally! When they told me you were here, I thought they lied. They said you were hurt—t you—Then when I was outside talking to them, I suddenly realized something was wrong, but when I tried to leave and go back inside to get someone else, they grabbed me, tied me, and brought me to this place.”
“Keep your nerve, honey,” the Cactus Kid said grimly. “This isn’t over!”
Juan laughed and, leaning down, struck him across the mouth. “Pig!” he snarled. “I should kill you now. I should cut you to little pieces, only the ants will do it better. And if you die, you would not hear what happens to the se@norita. It is better you hear!”
He straightened up, and they trooped back to the fire. The frightened, despairing look in the girl’s eyes gave him added incentive. He scraped and scratched at the rawhide, staring hard toward the fire.
The brothers were in no hurry. They had the girl. They had him. He was helpless, and no one suspected them. Moreover, they were in a place where no one came. They could afford to take their time.
Suddenly he braced himself again and strained his muscles. He felt a sudden weakness in his bonds, and then his straining fingers found a loose end. He had cut through the rawhide!
Working with his swollen, clumsy fingers, he got the loose end looser, then managed to shake some of the other loops from his wrists. In a matter of minutes, his hands were free. He lay still then, panting and getting his wind, then he lifted his hands to the halter on his head and neck. A few minutes’ work and that was freed, then the thongs that bound his wrists and ankles.
He was outside the glow of the fire, which was at least a hundred yards away. He chafed his swollen wrists and rubbed his hands together. Then he got several pieces of rawhide and stuck them into his pockets. One piece, about eighteen inches long, he kept.
The Cactus Kid got slowly to his feet, stretching himself, trying to get life into his muscles. In the vast, empty stillness of the black canyon the tiny fire glowed, and flamed red, and above it the soft voices, muted by distance and the enormity of the space around them, sounded almost like whispers.
Tiptoeing to the edge of the stream, he felt for the rock he wanted, two inches long and evenly balanced in weight. Taking the eighteen-inch rawhide, he knotted one end of it securely about the stone. Then he tried it in his hand.
Fading back into the shadows then, his boots still lying where Lobo had dropped them when they were jerked from his feet, the Kid melted into the almost solid blackness and began to cross the space between himself and the fire.
He didn’t like killing, and he didn’t like what he was going to have to do, yet he was not the one to underrate the fighting ability of the brothers Fernandez. They were cruel, vindictive men, lawless and given to murder. He knew what they would do to the girl, he knew the horror in which she would live for a few days or a few weeks, then murder. They dared not leave her alive, possibly to get back to Aragon.
To think that only a few miles away now, the dance was in progress! Only a few miles away old Buck Sorenson was calling dances and his sons were sawing their fiddles. There was help there, but it was too far. What was to be done, he must do himself.
Miguel knelt above the fire. He was cooking. Juan sat near the girl, and kept a hand on her. From time to time he made remarks to her in his sneering, irritating voice. Lobo sat across the fire, his eyes never leaving the girl’s slim body or her face.
In the darkness, the Cactus Kid watched. His guns were there, he could see them lying on a blanket. They were too far away. There was no chance to get them.
He waited. It was a deadly, trying waiting. Minutes seemed like hours. Then Miguel straightened. “Pedro!” he snapped impatiently.
The Fernandez who dozed on the sand looked up.
“Get me some water from the spring, you lazy
one!”
Pedro started to complain, then Juan looked up.
“Get it!” he snapped.
Grudgingly, Pedro picked up a canteen and
started off into the darkness. The Cactus Kid came to his feet, moving like a ghost in his socked feet, moving after Pedro.
He waited, while the hulking Mexican held the canteen in the spring to fill it, and then as he straightened, the Kid moved in behind him, holding a loop of the rawhide in his left hand and gripping the stone in his fingers.
He threw the stone suddenly, and its weight swung the rawhide around the Mexican’s neck. He had swung the stone from the right andwitha quick, backhanded motion, and as it came around Pedro’s neck the Kid caught it with his right. Then he jerked hard with both hands, cutting off the startled yell that started to rise in the man’s throat, and gripping the rawhide hard, the Kid jerked his knee up into the small of Pedro’s back and turned his knuckles hard against the back of Pedro’s neck.
It was sudden, adroit, complete. For an instant the Kid held the man, then lowered him to the ground. Perhaps he was dead. Perh—there was no question now. Withdrawing the thong, the Kid searched him in vain for a gun, then slid away into darkness, and once more got close to the camp. He sighed regretfully. Pedro had been unarmed.
“Where is that fool, Pedro?” Miguel demanded impatiently. Then he yelled, “Pedro! Where are you?”
There was no answer.
The echo of Miguel’s voice died, andfora
minute the three brothers stared at each other.
Lobo got to his feet, staring into the darkness. There was no sound out there but the falling water in the spring, and the rustle from the stream.
Lobo Fernandez shifted uneasily, staring around into the darkness. “I’ll go see where is he,” he said, finally.