Bronco Smith had taken a bullet through the top of the shoulder as he lay on his stomach in the sand, and it had buried itself deep within him, penetrating a lung, by the look of the froth on his lips.
Smith spat and turned his eyes toward Red. “Anyhow,” he said hoarsely, “we put one over on Gleason.”
“Yeah.”
Red shifted his Winchester, and when an Apache
slithered forward, he caught him in the side with a bullet, then shifted his fire again.
Then for a long time nothing seemed to happen. A dust devil danced in from the waste of the desert and beat out its heart in a clump of ironwood. Red turned his head cautiously and looked at the boy. “How’s it, son? Hotter’n blazes, ain’t it?”
Later, the afternoon seemed to catch a hint from the purple horizon and began to lower its sun more rapidly. The nearby rocks took on a pastel pink that faded, and in the fading light the Apaches gambled on a rush.
Guns from the hollow boomed, and two Indians dropped, and then another. The rest vanished as if by a strong wind, but they were out there waiting. Clanahan shifted his position cautiously, fed shells into his gun, and remembered a black-eyed girl in Juarez.
A lizard, crawling from a rock, its tiny body quivering with heat and the excited beat of its little heart as it stared in mute astonishment at the rust-red head of the big man with the rifle.
Sheriff Bill Gleason drew up. When morning found the posse far into the desert, he decided he would ride forward until noon, and then turn back. The men who rode with him were nervous about their families and homes, and to go farther would lead to ou-and-out mutiny. It was now mid-morning, and the tracks still held west.
“Clanahan’s crazy!” Eckles, the storekeeper in Cholla, said. He was a talkative man, and had been the last to see and the first to mention that Big Red was on a trail. “What’s he headin’ west for? His only chance is south!”
Ollie Weedin, one of the Cholla townsmen, nudged Gleason. “Buzzards, Bill.
Lookffwas
“Let’s go,” Gleason said, feeling something tighten up within him. The four they trailed were curly wolves who had cut their teeth on hot lead, but in the Apache country it was different.
“Serves ‘em right if the Injuns got ‘em!”
Eckles said irritably. “Cussed thieves!”
Weedin glanced at him in distaste. “Better
men than you’ll ever be, Ecklesffwas
The storekeeper looked at Weedin, shocked.
“Why, they are thieves!” he exclaimed
indignantly.
“Shore,” someone said, “but sometimes these days the line is hard to draw. They took a wrong turn, somewheres. That Clanahan was a good man with a rope.”
In the hollow band of hills where the trail led, they saw a lone gray gelding, standing drowsily near a clump of mesquite. And then they saw the dark, still forms on the ground as their horses walked forward. No man among them but had seen this before, the payoff where Indian met white man and both trails were washed out in blood and gun smoke.
“They done some shootin’!” Weedin said. “Four Apaches on this side.”
“Five,” Gleason said. “There’s one beyond that clump of greasewood.”
A movement brought their guns up, and then they stopped. A slim boy with a shock of corn-colored hair stood silently awaiting them in sun-faded jeans and checkered shirt. Beside him was a knobby-kneed girl who clutched his sleeve.
“We’re all that’s left, mister,” the boy said.
Gleason glanced around. The eyes of Yaqui Joe stared into the bright sun, still astonished at the white fingers that had bandaged his leg in probably the only kindness he had ever experienced. He had been shot twice in the chest, aside from the leg wound.
Bronco Smith lay where he had taken his bullet, the gravel at his mouth dark with stain.
The Dutchman, placid in death as in life, held a single shell in his stiff fingers and the breech of his rifle was open.
Gleason glanced around, but said nothing. He turned at the excited yell from Eckles. “Here’s the bank’s money! On these dead mules!”
Ollie Weedin stole a glance at the sheriff, but said nothing. Eckles looked around and started to speak, but at Weedin’s hard glare he hesitated, and swallowed.
“It was one buster of a fight,” somebody said.
“There’s seventeen Injuns dead,” the boy
offered. “None got away.”
“When did this fight end, boy?” Gleason asked.
“Last night, about dusk. They was six of ‘em first. I got me one, and he got two or three with a six-shooter. Then they was more come, and a fight kind of close up. I couldn’t see, as it was purty dark, but it didn’t last long.”
Gleason looked at him and chewed his mustache. “Where’d that last fight take place, son?” he asked.
“Yonder.”
Silently the men trooped over. There was a
lot of blood around and the ground badly ripped up. Both Indians there were dead, one killed with his own knife.
Weedin stole a cautious look around, but the other men looked uncomfortable and, after a moment of hesitation, began to troop back toward their horses. Gleason noticed the boy’s eyes shoot a quick, frightened glance toward a clump of brush and rocks, but ignored it.
Ollie shifted his feet.
“Reckon we better get started, Bill?
Wouldn’t want no running fight with those kids with us.”
“Yuh’re right. Better mount up.”
He hesitated, briefly. The scarred ground
held his eyes and he scowled, as if trying to read some message in the marks of the battle. Then he turned and walked toward his horse.
All of them avoided glancing toward the steeldust, and if anyone saw the sheriff’s canteen slip from his hand and lie on the sand forgotten, they said nothing.
Eckles glanced once at the horse that dozed by the mesquite, but before he could speak his eyes met Ollie Weedin’s and he gulped and looked hastily away. They moved off then, and no man turned to look back. Eckles forced a chuckle.
“Well, kid,” he said to the boy, “yuh’ve killed yuh some Injuns, so I reckon youh’ll be carvin’ a notch or two on your rifle now.”
The boy shook his head stiffly. “Not me,” he said scornfully. “That’s a tinhorn’s trick!”
Gleason looked over at Ollie and smiled.
“Yuh got a chaw, Ollie?”
“Shore haven’t, Bill. Reckon I must have lost mine, back yonder.”