“Give them all the credit you want!” she insisted. “I think you’re wonderful!”
The Cactus Kid smiled benevolently and brushed his fingernails lightly against the front of his shirt, then glanced at them.
“Of course,” he said, “you may be right. Who am I to argue with a lady?”
Valley of the Sun
Sprawled on his face beside the cholla, the man was not dead. The gun that lay near his hand had not been fired. He lay now as he had fallen six hours earlier when the two bullets struck him. But the dark stain on the back of his sun-faded shirt was from blood that had caked hard, dried in the blasting sun.
Above him, like the tower of a feudal castle, was the soaring height of Rattlesnake Butte. It loomed like a sentinel above the sun-tortured waste of the valley.
Near the wounded man’s hand a tiny lizard stopped. Its heart throbbed noticeably through the skin as it stared in mingled amazement and alarm at the sprawled figure of the man. It sensed the warning of danger in the stale smell of sweat and blood.
Under the baking heat of the sun, the man’s back muscles stirred. The lizard darted away, losing itself in a tiny maze of rocks and ruined mesquite. But the muscles of the wounded man, having stirred themselves, relaxed once more and he lay still. Yet the tiny movement, slight as it had been, seemed to start the life processes functioning again. Little by little, as water finds its way through rocks, consciousness began to trickle back into his brain.
His eyes were open a long time before he became aware of his position. At first, he merely lay there, his mind a complete blank, until finally the incongruity of his stillness filtered into his mind and stirred him to wonder as to the cause.
Then memory broke the dam caused by bullet shock and flooded him suddenly.
He knew then that he had been shot. Understanding the manner of men who fired upon him, he knew also that they had left him for dead. He was immediately aware of the advantage this gave him.
Mentally, he explored his body. He was wounded, but where and how he did not know. From the dull throb in his skull he suspected at least one bullet must have hit him in the head. There was, he discovered, a stiffs low down on his left side.
He could remain here no longer. He must first get out of the sun. Then he must take stock of his position and decide what was to be done. Being a desert man, he was acutely aware of the danger of lying in the sun and having all the water drawn from his body. There was a greater danger from heat and thirst than from men determined to kill him.
Brett Larane got his hands under him and very carefully pushed himself up. He flexed his knees with great caution. His arms and legs functioned normally, which was a good sign. To be helpless now would mean sure death.
When he was on his knees he lifted a hand to the scalp wound in his head. It was just that, no more nor less. No doubt there had been a mild concussion also. The wound in his lower left side was worse, and from the caked condition of his shirt and pants, he knew he must have lost a great deal of blood.
Bleeding, he knew, would make a man thirsty, and this was an added danger.
He retrieved his gun and returned it to his holster. The shot that struck him down had come utterly without warning. The drawing of the gun had been one of those purely instinctive actions, natural to a man who is much dependent upon a weapon. It had been due to conditioning rather than intelligence.
Shakily, he got to his feet and glanced around for his horse, but it was nowhere in sight.
They had taken his outfit, then. He was a man afoot in the desert, miles from possible aid, a man who had lost his saddle. In this country, that alone was tantamount to a death sentence.
There was shade under the overhang of the butte and he moved toward it, walking carefully. Once there, he lowered himself gingerly to a sitting position. He was afraid of opening the wound and starting the bleeding again. Weakness flooded him, and he sat there, gasping and half-sick with fear. Nausea swept over him and came up in his throat.
He wanted to live, he wanted desperately to live.
He wanted to see Marta once more, to finish the job he had begun for her. He wanted to repay those who had shot him down from ambush. He wanted all these things, and not to die here alone in the shadow of a lost butte on a sun-parched desert.
Realist that he was, he knew his chances of survival were slight. On this desert without a horse, a strong man might figure the odds as at least fifty to one against him. For a wounded man, the odds went to such figures that they were beyond the grasp of any run-of-the-herd cowhand.
Horse Springs, the last settlement, lay sixty miles behind him. And in this heat and without water, that distance made the town as remote as a distant planet. Willow Valley lay some forty or fifty miles ahead, somewhere over yonder in the blue haze that shrouded the mountains along the horizon.
No doubt there was water not too far distant, but in what direction and how far?
There are few stretches of desert without some sort of spring or water hole. But unless one knew their location they were of no use, for no man could wander about at random hoping to find one. One might be within a dozen yards of one and never know it.
All the while he thought of this he knew he dared not look. He would have no direction, no indication, and in his condition there was but one thing, to head for Willow Valley and hope someone found him before he died.
Nor was the trail one often traveled.
Outlaws like those who shot him infested this country. Few people wanted to go to Horse Springs, so the desert was avoided. He had taken this road for that purpose, never dreaming that Joe Creet would guess the route he had chosen.
It had been Creet, of course, who shot him. Larane had heard his jeering voice in the momentary space that separated the shots.
He had seen the three riders from the Saxon Hills in one fleeting glimpse as he tumbled from the saddle, and he would not soon forget their faces. Joe Creet, Indian Frank, and Gay Tomason.
Trouble had been building for some time between Creet and himself, but it was Tomason’s presence there that surprised him. An expression of cold triumph was on the man’s face as he lifted his gun.
Joe Creet’s motive was obvious enough. The outlaw had always hated him. Only six weeks ago he had given Creet a beating that left marks still visible on the man’s face. Moreover, Creet must have learned about Marta Malone’s money, which he had been carrying.
But Tomason?
Gay had been his friend, they had ridden together,
worked together, come west together.
The answer to that was Marta. With him out of the running, Gay would have the inside track with her. With no other eligible men around, Gay would probably win her. For a long time Brett Larane had been aware of Gay’s interest in the girl, but he had never believed it would go this far.
Larane was a quiet man, tall and strong, and given to deep, abiding loyalties and lasting friendships.
It would have been Gay who told Creet what trail he was to take. Creet could have trailed him, but could not have been lying in wait for him as he had been, so Tomason must have told Creet or even led him to the spot. Yet with both men, andwith Indian Frank, who followed wherever Creet led, the motive lay deeper than these more obvious things.
No one needed to tell Brett Larane of the seriousness of his position. In this heat a man without water, by resting in the shade at all times, might live from two to five days. Traveling by night and resting in the shade by day, he might live from one to three days, and might make twenty miles. And twenty miles would leave him exactly nowhere.
Yet if he was to survive, he must make an effort. Here in the shade of Rattlesnake Butte he could not afford to wait. Time was precious, and he must move on. And well he knew that all of those calculations on time and distance concerned a man in the full flower of health, and he was wounded and weak.