“What I’m wonderin’ is where they are goin’,” he said dubiously. “They shore ain’t headed for nowhere, thataway, and right smack into the dead center of the worst Injun country!”
Smith stared off over the desert, shook his head wonderingly, then walked back to the spring and drank deeply once more. He was a typical man of the trail. He drank when there was water, ate whenever there was food, rested whenever there was a moment to relax, well knowing days might come when none of the three could be had. He straightened then, wiping the stubble of beard around his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Somet’ing iss wrong?” The Dutchman glanced at Red. “What iss, aboot a kid?”
“Couple of youngsters ridin’ south. Boy, mebbe thirteen or fourteen, and a girl about the same age.” He mopped his face again, and replaced his hat. “Mount up.”
They swung into their saddles and Red shifted his bulk to an easy seat. The saddle had grown uncomfortably hot in the brief halt. They started on, walking their horses. It was easy to kill a good horse in this heat. Suddenly the trail the kids were taking veered sharply west. Clanahan reined in and stared at it.
“Childer!” The Dutchman exclaimed in a puzzled voice. “Und vhy here?”
“They are shore headin’ into trouble,” Smith said, staring at their trail. His eyes stole sheepishly toward Clanahan, and he started to speak, then held his peace.
The Dutchman sat stolidly in the saddle. “Mine sister,” he said suddenly, absently, “has two childer. Goot poys.”
Yaqui Joe looked over his shoulder at their trail, but it was empty and still. Off on their far right a line of magenta-colored ridges seemed to be stretching long fingers of stone toward the trail the kids had taken, as though to intercept them. A tuft of cactus lifted from the crest of the nearest hill like the hackles on an angry dog.
Red’s mouth was dry and he dug into his shirt pocket for his plug and bit off a sizable chunk. He rolled it in his big jaws and started his horse moving along the trail to the west, following the two weary horses the youngsters were riding.
Smith stared at the desert. “Glory, but it’s hot!”
He suddenly knew he was relieved. He had been afraid Red would want to hold to their own route. Safety lay south, only danger and death could await them in the west, but he kept thinking of those kids, and remembering what Apaches could do to a person before that person was lucky enough to die. Thoughtfully, he slipped a shell from a belt loop and dropped it into his shirt pocket.
An hour had passed before Clanahan halted again, and then he lifted a hand.
“Joe,” he said, “come up here.”
The four gathered in a grim, sun-beaten line.
Five unshod ponies had come in from the east and were following the trail the youngsters had left.
his’Paches,” Joe said. “Five of them.”
Red’s horse seemed to start moving of its own
volition, but as it walked forward Red dropped a hand to the stock of his Winchester and slid it out and laid it across his saddlebow. The others did likewise.
Suddenly, with the tracks of those unshod ponies, the desert became a place of stealthy menace. These men had fought Apaches before, and they knew the deadly desert warriors were men to be reckoned with. The horses walked a little faster now, and the eyes of the four men roved unceasingly over the mirage-haunted desert.
Then the faraway boom of a rifle jarred them from their drowsy watchfulness. Red’s gelding stretched his long legs into a fast canter toward a long spine of rock that arched its broken vertebrae against the sky. Suddenly he slowed down. The rifle boomed again.
“That’s a Henry,” Bronco said. “The kid’s got him a good rifle.”
Red halted where the rocks ended and stood in his stirrups. A puff of smoke lifted from a tiny hillock in the basin beyond, and across the hillock he could see that two horses were down. Dead, or merely lying out of harm’s way?
In the foreground he picked up a slight movement as a slim brown body wormed forward. The other men had dropped from their saddles and moved up. Still standing in his stirrups, Clanahan threw his Winchester to his shoulder, sighted briefly, then fired.
The Apaches leaped, screamed piercingly, then plunged over into a tangle of cholla. Bronco and the Dutchman fired as one man, then Joe fired. An Indian scrambled to his feet and made a break for the shelter of some rocks. Three rifles boomed at once, and the Indian halted abruptly, took two erect, stilted steps, and plunged over on his face.
They rode forward warily, and Clanahan saw a boy, probably fifteen years old, rise from behind the hillock, relief strong in his handsome blue eyes.
“Shore glad to see yuh, mister.” His voice steadied. “I reckon they was too many for me.”
Red shoved his hat back and spat. “You was doin’ all right, boy.” His eyes shifted to the girl, a big-eyed, too thin child of thirteen or so. “What in thunderation are yuh doin’ in this country? This here’s ‘Pache country. Don’t yuh know that?”
The lad’s face reddened. “Reckon we was headed for Pete Kitchen’s place, mister. I heerd he was goin’ to stay on, Injuns or no, an’ we reckoned he might need help.”
Clanahan nodded. “Kitchen’s stayin’ on, all right, and he can use help. He’s a good man, Pete is. Your sister work, too?”
“She cooks mighty good, washes dishes, mends.” The boy looked up eagerly. “You fellers wouldn’t be needin’ no help, would yuh? We need work powerful bad. Pa, he got hisself killed over to Mobeetie, and we got our wagon stole.”
“Jimmy stole the horses back!” the girl said proudly. “He’s mighty brave, Jimmy is! He’s my brother!”
Clanahan swallowed. “Reckon he is, little lady. I shore reckon.”
“He got him an Injun out there,” Smith offered. “Dead center.”
“I did?” The boy was excited and proud. “I guess,” he added a little self-consciously, “I get to put a notch on my rifle now!”
Bronco started and stared at Red, and the big man hunkered down, the sunlight glinting on his rust-red hair.
“Son, don’t yuh put no notch on yore rifle, nor ever on yore gun. That there’s a tinhorn trick, and you ain’t no tinhorn. Anyway,” he added thoughtfully, “I guess killin’ a man ain’t nothin’ to be proud of, not even an Injun. Even when it has to be did.”
The Dutchman shifted uneasily, glancing at the back trail. Yaqui Joe, after the manner of his people, was not worried. He squatted on his heels and lighted a cigarette, drowsing in the hot, still afternoon.
“We better be gettin’ on,” Clanahan said, straightening. “Them shots will be callin’ more Injuns. I reckon you two got to get to Kitchen’s all right, and this is no country to be travelin’ with no girl, no matter how good a shot yuh are. That Victorio’s a he-wolf. We better get on.”
“Won’t do no good, Red,” Smith said suddenly. “Here they come!”
“Gleason?”
“No. More ‘Paches!”
A shot’s flat sound dropped into the stillness
and heat, and the ripples of its widening circle of sound echoed from the rocks. Joe hit the ground with his face twisted.
“Got me!” he grunted, staring at the torn flesh of his calf and the crimson of the blood staining his leg and the torn pants.
Clanahan rolled over on his stomach behind a thick clump of creosote bush and shifted his Winchester. The basin echoed with the flat, absentminded reports of the guns. Silence hung heavy in the heat waves for minutes at a time, and then a gun boomed and the stillness was spread apart by a sound that was almost a physical blow.
Sweat trickled into Red’s eyes and they smarted bitterly. He dug into his belt loops and laid out a neat row of cartridges. Once, glancing around, Red saw that the little girl was bandaging Joe’s leg while the Yaqui stared in puzzled astonishment at her agile, white fingers.
Out on the lip of the basin a brown leg showed briefly against the brown sand. Warned by the movement, Clanahan pointed a finger of lead and the Apache reared up, and the Dutchman’s Henry boomed.
It was very hot. A bullet kicked sand into Red’s eyes and mouth. His worn shirt smelled of the heat andof stale sweat. He scratched his jaw where it itched and peered down across the little knoll.
Across the basin a rifle sounded, and Smith’s body tensed sharply and he gave out a long “Aaahh!” of sound, drawn out and deep. Red turned his head toward his friend and the movement drew three quick shots that showered him with gravel. He rolled over, changing position.