Novel 1966 - Kid Rodelo (v5.0) (12 page)

He walked on, staggering and falling.

He was almost to the foot of the mountains when he fell again, and this time he could not get up.

He pulled one knee up and tried to roll up on it, but could not. He crawled a few feet on his belly, aware of the blistering heat of the sand. The thought went through his mind that if the air above was 120 degrees, it might be as much as a 160 degrees down on the sand. But he could not get up. Yet he clung to the rifle, and to the canteen.

He had been lying there for some time when he realized he was staring at the side of a barrel cactus. The realization heaved him to his knees, and the rifle, used as a crutch, got him to his feet.

Fumbling with his knife, he got it out and slashed off the top of the barrel. Once again he squeezed moisture from the pulp into his mouth, a miracle of coolness that seemed to go all through him.

After a few minutes, he started on once more.

When he came to the tank in the Sierra Blanca he found that it was in a hollowed rock basin under a waterfall. The water was deep and cold.

Chapter 12

T
OM BADGER WAS in the lead, and was starting to skirt a deep crater when they saw Harbin approaching, leading the
grulla
. Tom drew up. “Looks like Rodelo must have run into trouble,” he said.

Nora’s lips tightened, but she said nothing. Her heart was pounding as Harbin drew nearer, her body felt suddenly cold and stiff, as she had never felt before.

“What happened?” Badger asked.

“Looks like Danny’s plan to draw Indians drew them faster than he figured.”

“Tough.”

“Well,” Harbin said, “it wasn’t my idea to send up that smoke.”

“Nobody to blame but himself,” Badger agreed. Then, for Nora’s benefit, he added, “But he gave his life tryin’ to help us.”

“Where is he?” Nora’s voice was cold.

“Dead, more’n likely. Them Indians ain’t much on prisoners.”

“Why would they want him? I mean when he wasn’t with you? He isn’t an escaped convict, and they couldn’t get a dollar for him.”

Badger glanced at Harbin and said, “He was with us. They knew it, and that would be enough. Come on, we’re wastin’ time.”

Nora swung her mount. “I’m going back after him. A man like Dan Rodelo doesn’t die that easy.”

“Are you crazy?” Harbin almost shouted at her. “He wouldn’t have a chance, back there. You wouldn’t neither.”

“Just the same, I am going back.”

She started her horse and Harbin swung his alongside. “You are, like hell!” He reached over and slapped her across the mouth. “You’re my woman, and you’d better know it! From now on you ain’t goin’ nowhere unless I tell you!”

“Let go of my horse.”

Deliberately, he swung the horse around, and Nora, lifting her quirt, struck him hard across the face with it.

Wrenching it from her hand, he threw it onto the sand. The livid streak left by the lash lay across his face. There was blood on his lips where it had cut into the chapped flesh. Harbin’s eyes were ugly.

“You’ll pay for that, a-plenty. You ride along now. You may last out the year, but I won’t never let you forget that blow, believe me. Now get on before I kill you right here.”

He started her horse toward the dunes. “You might as well know it—I’m the boss man from here on.”

Tom Badger pulled his horse alongside, and Joe reined in. “Ride on ahead, Tom,” he said.

“You’re the boss, you said.”

“That’s right. And I’ll give the orders.”

“Not in the back, Joe. I’m not Rodelo. We ride together.”

Harbin shrugged. “Suits me, if you feel you’re safer.”

Skirting the crater, they picked their way across the broken lava, following a precarious trail. To the north a long dune stretched out far to the east, at one point coming almost to the base of the Pinacate. From time to time they glanced back to look for the gap between Pinacate and Sierra Blanca. Then they entered the dunes.

They had drunk well before leaving the tank, and if the horses held up they hoped to be through the dunes in two or three hours, or even less if they found a place where the sand was hard-packed. At one place they saw the raw granite peaks of a sand-buried mountain range projecting a few feet above the sand. The time would come when they would be completely covered, a range of mountains several hundred feet high drowned in the sand.

A huge dune lifted on their right, another on the left. They rode a few yards and then found their way partly blocked by a drift of sand several feet high. The horses plunged and struggled getting through it, and by the time they reached the small space beyond it they were blowing hard. Tom Badger swung down, his face gray.

“We got trouble,” he said.

Harbin nodded. “Must be an easier way through.” The dune ahead of them was at least sixty feet of slanting sand, not too steep, but soft.

“Maybe…but we ain’t got the time to look for it.”

They started on, struggling up the long slope of the dune, sinking over their ankles, the horses going in over their hocks. But they kept going, and made the top of the dune. Looking back, they could see the way they had come…not much more than a hundred yards.

Joe Harbin swore bitterly. He could have sworn they had walked almost a mile.

They pushed on, but it was an unending struggle. The horses lunged, the packs came loose. There was no question of riding; they not only had to lead their horses, but had to pull to help them through the sand.

There was a temptation, once on top of a dune, to follow its ridge. Once, finding a ridge that seemed to run in a somewhat southwesterly direction, they did follow it rather than descend into the hollow between that one and the next, a higher dune. When they looked back they had lost their guide mark, the gap between the mountains.

When perhaps an hour had passed, they stood together on the crest of a long sand hill. In no direction could they see anything but sand.

“I’ve got to rest,” Harbin muttered. He dropped to the sand and put his head on his arms, which lay across his knees.

There was a faint breeze that smelled of the sea. Nora inhaled deeply, hoping it would last, but it did not. After a while they started on. There was no sign of pursuit.

Nora Paxton was a girl who had spent much of her life riding, canoeing, hiking in the woods, and she was glad of it now. Neither of the men had ever done much but ride a horse until they went to prison, and there was no question of even walking more than a few yards while guests of the Territory of Yuma.

Now she was thinking of Dan Rodelo. She told herself that what Harbin had said must be true. Dan was out there either dead or wandering on foot in the desert’s heat. If he was not dead he soon would be.

For the first time she began to realize fully what might be the consequences of her longing to hold in her hands once more something that belonged to her mother. It was coming home to her that she might not extricate herself from the situation into which she had forced herself. Even if they got out of the dunes alive, which at this point was uncertain, there would remain the problem of escaping from Joe Harbin, and possibly from Tom Badger. If successful in that, she must still get back to civilization somehow.

During most of her life she had followed the way that seemed open at the time. Things had gone well for her, considering everything. But until now she had been dealing with civilized people in a civilized and ordered world. Now she might as well be a million miles away from that world.

She did not for a minute believe that Dan Rodelo had been dead when Joe Harbin took his horse. Or rather, she had believed it for no longer than a minute. Somehow Harbin had murdered Rodelo or had contrived to set him afoot—which was much the same thing.

Of one thing she was sure. She was in better shape to cope with the present situation than either man was. Both were riders, not walkers; both had spent some time in prison, a part of it in solitary confinement. They had been weakened by lack of exercise, inadequate food, and lack of the need for effort. The hard labor they had been doing during the past few days had only just begun.

She had to get away—somehow she must escape them. But what if the Indians came, as they were sure to do? Harbin and Badger must at least defend her as they must defend themselves. She would wait, at least until the Indians had attacked; and knowing the two men, she knew no Indian or anyone else was likely to take them easily.

They struggled on, falling down, tugging at the bridles, even pushing the horses. The packs slipped, were readjusted, slipped again.

Suddenly Badger stopped. “Joe…look!” He pointed at the declining sun, and it was on their right. Still high in the sky, still blazing hot, but on their right. They were going south, not west!

Joe Harbin swore slowly, in a muffled, ugly tone.

His cheekbones were streaks of red from the sun. His cracked lips were white with dust, as was his beard. His cruel black eyes were deep-sunken under shaggy brows. Grimly, he turned right, descended a couple of hundred feet on a long slope of sand, then started up, at an angle, another long slope.

Twice they believed they had reached the edge of the dunes, but each time more sand hills lay beyond. Finally at sunset, from the crest of a dune, they saw the sea.

They stood unmoving, struck dumb at the sight. The sun was setting beyond the dark mountains of Baja California, but nearer to them lay that thin streak of blue that was the Gulf.

“We made it,” Harbin croaked. “By the Lord Harry, we made it!”

“Not yet,” Badger replied grimly. “Look!”

Half a mile away, riding the ridge of a dune, one…two…three…four…Four Indians, just to the north of them, and probably at the edge of the dunes.

“I can take that many standin’ on my head,” Harbin said. “Any time!”

“How about those?” Nora asked quietly, pointing to the south.

Five…no, six Indians there.

Joe Harbin looked at them. “One good drink o’ water and I’ll handle them too.”

“Water?” Badger glanced at him. “You don’t savvy Injuns, Joe. They’ll let us get close, and then they’ll pin us down out in the open where there’s no shade, no shelter, and no chance. They’ll have water. They’ll drink, they’ll stay out of rifle shot, and they’ll wait…like buzzards, for us to die.”

Nevertheless they moved on, wanting at any cost to get out of the sand hills.

“We could wait at the foot of the hills,” Nora said, “find a place in the shade. It would be late afternoon before the sun got to us.”

“And then?” Joe’s tone was sarcastic.

The answer to that was obvious. If they waited, they would die. And if they tried for the shore, they would die.

“Answer to that is,” Harbin muttered, replying to what Badger had said, “don’t let ourselves get pinned down. We got to keep going. If they want to set on a water hole they got to fight us for it.”

The pack horse went down, struggled, and failed to get up. “Cut the pack loose,” Badger said, “and load the gold on the
grulla
.”

When they went on, the pack horse still lay there. But Nora knew that when the coolness of night came the horse would get up, and somehow it would get to the edge of the sea, where it would find water at one of the water holes near the shore.

The sand hill broke off sharply and before them lay the coastal plain. Now they could feel the coolness of the Gulf, though it was five miles off at this point.

“We better rest,” Badger muttered through broken lips. “We’d stand a better chance.”

D
AN RODELO DRANK deep of the cold water at the base of the Sierra Blanca. He drank, and drank again. He removed his shirt and bathed his chest and shoulders. And all the while he was thinking hard.

By now they might have reached the Gulf, but he thought not. Perhaps Tom Badger could have, but there was no telling about Harbin. He was impulsive, dangerous, and tyrannical. Badger would play second fiddle to Harbin, waiting for his chance.

Seated in the cool shade of the rocks near the tank, Rodelo went to work on the battered canteen. Though a bullet had gone through it, he had an idea he might plug the holes well enough to keep some water in the canteen.

The weblike skeletons of the cholla that he tried to use crumbled in his fingers. Nor could he do much with a piece of ironwood that he found. He had neither time nor patience to carve that very hard wood into the necessary shape. The result was that he cut from a sahuaro cactus a plug for each hole, then filled the canteen. A little water leaked, but as the cactus plug swelled, it leaked no longer.

Carefully, he cleaned his guns, wiping each cartridge free of dust, running a rag through the barrels, checking the action then reloading.

Finding a hidden shadowed place among the rocks, he slept again. When he awakened the sun was already high and hot. His canteen was still full; the sat on a rock and studied the way he must go.

He was, he was sure, near the southern end of the area of great dunes, and might save time in the long run by scouting south, but he did not know how far he would have to go. After considerable thought he decided to strike out across the dunes, holding to as direct a line as possible.

He was so close to the Sierra that he could not pick out any distinctive peak, but far up the side of the mountain he saw a white scar, apparently a deep cut made by run-off water. Choosing this as a means of holding his course, he took up his rifle, shouldered the canteen, and started off at a steady walk.

He continued to check the white scar on the mountain, looking back and keeping it directly behind, him, but when he had gone perhaps half a mile, he chose a peak that would be even better as a guide. The first mile was the easiest, following much of the way along the high side of a dune where the sand had packed well. He made good time—not so good as a man might make on hard ground, but not much slower.

After that it was a struggle. Soft sand that slid back, losing one step out of three. But he was familiar with shifting sand, and he chose his way with care. After about an hour of walking, he believed he had made almost two miles, and now he could smell the sea plainly.