Andre Norton: The Essential Collection (227 page)

"Could he try to take the wagon road south?"

"As a last resort, perhaps. The pass was the only outlet through which he could run that band of stolen horses and his pack mules. But there are other places, at least two I know of, where a few men, riding light, can get through. I believe he'll try to head for one of those."

"Make it ahead of us now?"

Rennie laughed shortly. "If he does, he'll have a warm reception. The Pimas are already scouting both passes. We planned to close the border when we set up that ambush. Meanwhile"—he glanced back—"Teodoro!"

"
Sí, Don
Cazar?"

"How far are we from your hunting-camp site?"

"Two, maybe three miles. Slow riding in the dark,
Don
Cazar."

"We'll head there. That—except for the hole behind us which Bartolomé will cover—is the only water for miles. And we're between Kitchell and the border spring. One thing he will have to have is water. We stake out the pools and sooner or later they will come to us."

It made sense, but still Drew was impatient. Out there one of Kitchell's men, or perhaps the outlaw himself, was riding Shiloh. The fact that Rennie's plan seemed a gamble did not make it any easier to follow. But the Kentuckian could think of nothing better to offer.

The moon was rising as they came to the water hole near the mustangers' camp. Men and animals drank together, and when Drew dismounted his weariness hit—hard. Fatigue was a gray cloud in his brain, a weight on arms, legs, body. Voices around him sounded faint and far away as he steadied himself with a grasp on the stirrup leathers and fought not only to keep on his feet but awake.

"What's the matter with you, boy?"

Drew tried to lift his head, tried to summon words to answer that demand. A sullen kind of pride made him release his hold and stand away from the bay, only to reel back and bring up hard against a rock, grating his arm painfully. He clung there for a moment and got out:

"Nothing a little sleep won't cure." He spoke into the dark outline of Hunt Rennie. "I'm all right."

Drew made a painful effort, pulled himself away from the rock to fumble at the cinches of the bay's saddle, only to be pushed aside.

"Steer him over there, Perse ... bed him down."

The Kentuckian's last scrap of protest leaked away. He hardly knew when a blanket was pulled up over him as he lay in a rock niche, already drifting into deep sleep.

Voices awoke him into the gray of early morning. The light was hardly brighter than moonlight but he could make out Hunt Rennie, sitting cross-legged, rifle to hand, while Chino Herrera squatted on his heels before him. Chino had not been with them when they left the pass. And there was Greyfeather, too. Their party had had reinforcements. Drew pushed away the blanket and sat up, realizing he was stiff with cold. Fire ... hot coffee ... there was no sign of either. He yawned and jerked his coat straight about him. His attention suddenly focused on an object which lay on the ground at Chino's left. It was a book, the same size as the three he had bought at Stein's!

Without thinking, Drew moved forward, was about to reach for the volume when he heard the click of a cocked Colt. A hand swept down on the book.

"You, hombre—what do you want with this?" Herrera, with no friendliness in either voice or eyes, was holding a gun on him.

"That book—it looks like the ones I bought in town." Drew was startled by the vaquero's enmity.

"Give it to him," Rennie ordered.

For a moment Herrera seemed on the point of open dispute, then he obeyed. But for some reason his weapon remained unholstered. Drew took up the volume.

"
History of the Conquest of Peru
," he read out. The binding was a match for that of the other three. But—there
was
something different. He weighed the volume in his hand. That was it! This book was heavier....

"Well, hombre, you have seen such a one before?"

"Yes, this is bound to match those I bought from Stein. And one of those was
History of the Conquest of Mexico
. This is surely a part of the same library."

"Those—what did they have in them?"

Rennie appeared content to let Chino ask the questions, but he continued to watch Drew and the book.

"Have in them?" Drew repeated. "Why pages. They were books to read—
The Three Musketeers
,
The Count of Monte Cristo
, and
History of the Conquest of Mexico
. That's all, just books."

"Open this one," Rennie told him.

The Kentuckian had trouble obeying. And for the first time he saw he did not hold a book composed of pages but a type of box. The cover resisted his tugging. Then, as if some catch had been mastered, it opened so suddenly he almost lost his grip on the book. The core of those once separate pages had been hollowed out to contain a nest of raw cotton on which lay ... The Kentuckian gasped.

Even in this subdued light those stones glittered, and their settings were gold and silver. Drew saw elaborate pieces, the like of which he had never seen before.

"There was a mule shot back in the pass," Rennie explained. "His pack was opened. Three books were in it—one of them fell out and burst open."

"This one?"

"No, it held gold coin.
Hard Times
by Charles Dickens—the contents hardly indicative of the subject, were they? Upon investigation a
Wonders of the World
produced more coin. And, as you see,
History of the Conquest of Peru
was even more fruitful. You are sure this binding matches that of the books you bought?"

"Certain. This was bound to order, as were the other three. They were part of someone's personal library—had no bookplate, though."

"And what was Stein's story concerning them?"

"An old prospector named Lutterfield found them in a trunk in some cave he located out in the desert country. He brought them in to trade for supplies."

"Lutterfield," Rennie repeated thoughtfully. "Yes, that could be."

"Trunk in a cave?" Herrera was skeptical. "But why leave books in a trunk in a cave?"

"One of Kitchell's caches? Or else left by someone who cleared out in '61 and had to travel light. If anything remains, perhaps Lutterfield can locate it for us later. Anyway this"—Rennie took the book box from Drew, clapped the cover over, hiding the treasure—"won't go to Mexico now. And if the owner is still alive, we may even find him—who knows? You had your sleep out, boy?"

Drew found Rennie's expression one of indifference. Maybe
Don
Cazar no longer regarded him with the cold dislike Drew had met at the camp, but they were still strangers. What he had once said back in Kentucky at a remote and distant time was very true now. "Maybe Hunt Rennie doesn't know I exist; maybe we won't even like each other if and when we do meet ... I don't know...."

Now Drew thought he did know. Was this insurmountable barrier all his fault? Because he had been so sure he wanted to go it on his own—come to his father as an equal and not a beggar? But could he ever have acted differently? Too independent, too defensive always—Alexander Mattock had made him like that. Now it seemed that his grandfather had won, after all. Because his grandson was the kind of man he was, there would be no meeting with Hunt Rennie to claim kinship, nothing more than what now existed.

"I'm all right." After too long a pause, Drew replied to his father's question. "Do we just keep on sittin' here?"

"If necessary, Chino, pass those supplies you brought in. We eat cold, at least for now."

"You look ready to up saddle 'n ride." Anse was waiting behind Drew's rock. His arm rested in a sling with a neat and reasonably clean bandage about his wound.

"How's that hole?" Drew asked with renewed concern.

"Nothin' much more'n a nick. Say, th' Old Man's like a real doc, ain't he? Carries doc's things in his saddlebags an' patched me up last night so I'm near as good as new. After I drunk th' wrinkles smooth outta my belly an' had me some shut-eye, why, I'm as right as four aces in any man's hand! 'Course I sure could do with some coffee—'bout strong 'nough to float a hoss shoe gentle like. But we ain't bendin' lip over that this sunup. Lordy, this jerky sure gives a man's chewers a workout!"

They chewed away at the dark sun-dried
carne
of the border country. There was about as much flavor in it as in a piece of wood, but it kept a man's insides busy and about half satisfied. And they did have water.

Drew looked out over the land about them. Rennie had their small force stationed to cover every approach to the water hole, and with the Pimas here too, Drew was sure that they would not be surprised. Would Kitchell follow the pattern Rennie expected—try to water here? And then strike for the south? With his men scattered, many killed or taken at the pass, he had very little choice.

For some reason the quartet of fugitives must have been trailing quite a distance behind the main band, and so had been warned in time by the gunfire. Was one of that four Shannon? And what would it mean to Rennie if Shannon did turn up now with Kitchell?

Drew jerked back against the boulder, reacting to a screech from somewhere out in that wild country—a fierce, mad sound which tore at the nerves. He had heard its like before, but never rising so to the pitch of raw intensity. It was the challenge of a fighting stallion, one of the most terrifying sounds ever to break from the throat of an animal.

From the pocket meadow came the answering squeals of their own mounts, the pounding of hoofs as they fought their stake ropes.

"
Don
Cazar!" It was Teodoro. "The Pinto comes—and would fight!"

Again that shriek of rage and utter defiance. The rocks echoed it eerily, and Drew found it hard to judge either distance or direction. The wind was rising, too, scooping up dust to throw against men and boulders. But that wild stud could not be too far away, and what had stirred him to this point of vocal outburst?

"Teodoro," Rennie called, "get back there and see if you can quiet those horses."

Drew reached for the carbine he had taken from the boot on the saddle of the captured bay. Army issue ... Spencer. He appraised it with the sharp, quick scrutiny of a man who had had to depend on enemy weapons before. Just how had this fallen into outlaw hands? The arm was well kept, ready for action.

Horses turned mean, turned man-killer at times. And the Pinto was reputed to be a murderer of his own species. Not just content to protect his band from a raiding stallion, he actually went out of his way to seek and force a fight with other males. Could it be that now the wild killer had been drawn from hiding to meet a strange stallion?

And could that stranger be Shiloh? It would mean the men they sought were circling back to this water hole. Shiloh and the Pinto! Even when saddled and ridden, the Kentucky stallion might respond to the challenge. And so handicapped he would have no chance! Drew bit hard on his underlip.

The yap-yap of a coyote sounded brazenly from the ridge behind which Drew was almost certain the Pinto had trumpeted.

"Pass the word," said Rennie. "Riders coming."

Anse hissed it on to Donally, who hid in the brush behind. Drew lay tense, as if his whole body was able to listen and assess sounds.

Waiting, as always, fretted the nerves. Imagination gave birth to sounds, made the quiver of a bush unnatural, planted in a man a growing sense of eyes boring down on his body, nakedly visible to the enemy. Drew's muscles ached. He forced tight rein on his imagination and began the hard task of consciously schooling himself past the danger of a freeze when and if attack did come.

Wind moaning about the rocks, sand blown in eyes and face. Twice Drew half put out his hand to the canteen which lay between him and Anse. Both times he did not complete the reach. His tongue felt swollen, the saliva in his mouth sticky, sickly tasting.

No sun—this was going to be a cloudy, overcast day.

He half arose. That scream came again, this time closer, more rage-filled. Drew turned his head.

"Cover me!" He did not give Anse a chance to protest.

That slope ... he had been studying it carefully for long moments of the wait, gauging the distances between bits of cover, the tricky open spaces he would have to cross. But the riders they had been alerted to expect were not in sight, and if what he truly believed was about to happen did, the outlaws might never reach the water hole at all.

He was running, dodging, working his way up to the crown of the ridge. But he was still too low to see what was going on at the far side when that scream of challenge was answered. The answer was deeper in tone, but it carried with it the same rising note of anger and fighting promise. Although Drew had never seen Shiloh prepare to give battle, he was sure he had just heard him voice such readiness.

The Kentuckian flung himself flat before he reached the skyline, wriggling on in a desperate crawl. Then he lay panting in a small earth dip, only a ragged fringe of grass between him and the down slope.

Even in the swirl of wind-blown dust there was no mistaking Shiloh—rearing and fighting to dislodge his rider, wheeling about in a circle. Three other horses and their riders had edged well beyond the circumference of that circle, the horses neighing and snorting.