Novel 1966 - Kid Rodelo (v5.0) (5 page)

“I could put her on the stage. Buy her a ticket either way she wants to go.”

Dan Rodelo started toward the door, then paused. “Put out the light, Sam.”

Only when the room was dark did he walk to the door and step out.

“You sure don’t trust a feller,” Harbin said.

Dan went toward them. “I trust you, Joe. I just don’t want you to have too much trouble with your conscience, that’s all.”

He stopped near them. “What about this girl? That’s a rough trip ahead. Why don’t we leave her here?”

“You’re crazy! She’s seen the gold, heard us talk. We can’t leave her now.”

“It’s up to you, Joe.”

Harbin turned his head. His eyes were black holes in the darkness under his hat brim. “Why me?”

“You’re the killer in this outfit.”

“Me? Shoot a woman?”

“We’re wasting time,” Nora said quietly. “Joe wouldn’t shoot me, and neither would the rest of you. Let’s go…and save your ammunition for those Yaquis or Yumas or whatever they are.”

Dan Rodelo took the reins and turned the wagon into the road, their horses following behind on lead ropes. He drove slowly at first, then at a swinging trot until they reached the road east. He slowed down then, letting the horses take their time, and after a bit he brought them to a trot once more. In the back of the wagon Badger stretched out beside Harbin to sleep. Gopher curled up against the tailgate.

“I don’t understand you,” Nora whispered. “What are you doing?”

Rodelo smiled at her. “Beautiful night, isn’t it?”

“You might have gotten me killed!”

“Joe Harbin wouldn’t kill a woman…not without a good reason—unless he needed your horse, or something.”

“And then?”

“He’d kill you, all right. He’d kill you and never give it another thought.”

Chapter 5

N
OW THEY MOVED steadily southward, with the fantastic peaks and ridges of the Gila Mountains on their right. The air was cool and pleasant, and they held to a good pace, stopping at intervals, or after climbing a grade, to rest the horses. Nobody was in any mood for talk. After a while Rodelo gave over the reins to Harbin and turned in, lying stretched out in the back of the wagon.

Presently Badger sat up and lit a cigarette. He glanced over at Rodelo. “You awake?”

Rodelo awakened instantly. “Yeah.”

“How far south do these mountains run?”

“To the border.”

“Is there a way through them?”

“Uh-huh…a couple of ways that I know of. The Indians probably know of others.”

Badger considered the matter. “You know this country pretty well?”

“As well as any white man, I expect, but I wouldn’t count too much on anything. It’s a country with little water, and that hard to find. Folks have died within a few feet of water at Tinajas Altas…the water is in rock tanks, high above the trail.”

“I’ve heard of that.” Badger was thoughtful. “Do you know of any water down in the Pinacate? She says”—he indicated the sleeping girl—“there’s a water hole south and a mite west of Papago Wells.”

Dan Rodelo eased the position of his gun to stall for time. Now how in the devil did she know
that
? It was an unlikely place, and he would have gambled that even the Yaquis did not know of it. The Yumas might…after all, this was their country, but how did Nora Paxton know of the place?

“Yes,” he said reluctantly, “there is such a place. It isn’t what I’d call easy to find, but it’s there.” Then he added, “But you can’t depend on any desert water hole to be full all the time. Most of them dry up once in a while, or get down to a mere trickle.”

An hour before daybreak they stopped the wagon, poured water in a hat, and let each of the horses drink. “We’d best take time to eat,” Rodelo said. “It’ll be some time before we get the chance again.”

“You sure they’ll find us?”

“The Yaquis? You can bet on it.”

They built a small fire and made coffee and fried bacon and eggs, eating with it some of the bread they had picked up at Sam’s.

Rodelo was wary. Neither Harbin nor Badger was to be trusted; as for Gopher, it was unlikely he would start anything without some nudging from one of the others; but it paid to be careful. He avoided looking into the fire so his eyes would not be affected for night vision, and he made a point of hanging back from the others, keeping all of them always within sight.

Finally they put out the fire and moved on, the trail now taking them farther from the mountains and out into the bottom of the valley. Before them and around them was the Lechuguilla Desert.

Rodelo had no doubt as to what was happening on the other side of the mountains. The Yaquis, led by Hat, the shrewd old tracker who had taken the lead in the trailing of escaped convicts, would be searching for their trail. At first Hat would have swung south to cut the trails into the desert, then east and north. Finding no tracks, they might check beyond the river, but he doubted it because of the wagon. Not finding the wagon, the Indians would believe the outlaws still used it.

Hat would immediately grasp what had happened, and would cut for sign around the edges of the dunes. It might take a bit longer, but there would be a dozen or more Yaquis to make the search for tracks. By now Hat would have found their sign and be on the trail.

How much time did that leave? Hat would trail the horses to Gold City. Sam Burrows would tell them nothing, but it would not have taken long for Hat to decide they were again in a wagon—a wagon that must be abandoned within the next few hours. The team drawing the wagon could be released to save water and they would find their way back to Gold City. From that time on it would be a race to the south. They had saved a few hours, and every minute was important.

Joe Harbin stood in his stirrups and looked back the way they had come. There was no dust showing against the sky.

Badger was not looking back. They would know soon enough when the Yaquis started to close in. “We’d better spell the horses,” he said, and all of them got down from the wagon and walked on.

Ahead of them were the famous Tinajas Altas, the “High Tanks” famous for saving many lives on the Devil’s Road, a road where many had also died. And to the south the country became rough.

Dan Rodelo dropped back beside Badger. “We’re going to take another chance,” he said. “I’m trying to lose those Yaquis.”

Badger gave him an amused look. “You haven’t a chance.”

“We can play for time.” He pointed to a long finger of rock that pushed into the desert not far ahead of them. “See that? Right beyond it there’s a narrow pass through the mountains and we’re going to take it, and hope they’ll miss the turn-off and ride on south.”

Badger looked doubtfully at the mountains. “There’s a pass through
there
? I never heard of it.”

“We’ll leave the wagon,” Rodelo said. “From here on we’ll ride.”

“I’ll feel safer,” Badger acknowledged.

The sun was well up in the sky when Rodelo guided the wagon into the lee of a sand dune, pulling in as close to the side of the dune as possible. Then, with Harbin and Gopher to help, he went up on the ridge of the dune and caved sand over on the wagon. In a few minutes it was covered; then, picking up handfuls of sand, they let it dribble out, sifting over what few tracks were visible.

After they had mounted up, Rodelo led them in an abrupt turn into the mountains, and in no more than fifteen minutes they were in a rapidly narrowing canyon that led them up a thousand feet in altitude in less than a mile. They crossed the Gilas on a narrow trail that showed no signs of recent use other than the tracks of bighorn sheep, a trail that wove in and around among peaks and ridges that lifted several hundred feet higher.

The route over the Gilas was not more than five or six miles. They had watered the horses well before abandoning the wagon, emptying many of the cans and sacks and leaving them with the wagon. This lightened their load considerably, but Dan Rodelo knew what lay ahead perhaps better than any of them, and he knew it was not going to be easy.

“Are we going to make it?” Gopher asked him once.

“Some of us will,” Rodelo replied.

He led them south, taking up the old Journey of Death, the Devil’s Road. This led straight away south now for the Tinajas Altas, which were on a ridge that trailed off the end of the Gilas.

The day was hot. He slowed the pace of the horses, paused frequently for rest, and kept an eye on the trail behind. He noticed that Nora was taking the hard going surprisingly well.

She wore a skirt split for riding and a Mexican blouse, and like the others, she carried a gun. Joe Harbin seemed to have marked her for his own, but nothing was said, and she accepted the situation without comment, agreeing to nothing, rejecting no one. She was a shrewd girl, Rodelo decided, and one to watch.

It was Gopher who kept looking again and again to the rear. Harbin looked back rarely. He rode with the confidence of a man who has been through the mill, a hard-shouldered man, sure he needed no one.

The sun was now high overhead, the heat intense. In the brassy sky there was no cloud, only the sun whose rays seemed to blend into one great searing blast. The floor of the desert was hot beyond belief, and their horses plodded wearily, hopelessly, into the dead stillness. Far off to the south a dust devil sprang up, racing wildly across the flat desert floor.

Now Gopher no longer looked back. He sat his saddle, head hanging, simply enduring the heat.

“We had better hunt some shade,” Rodelo commented, “or we’ll kill our horses.”

“Shade?” Harbin swore. “Where would you find shade?”

“Up in one of the canyons.”

“Not me,” Harbin said. “I’m headed for Mexico, and then the Gulf.”

“You won’t make it unless you give the horses a rest,” Rodelo replied. “We’ve pushed them hard.”

Harbin’s face was streaked with sweat trails through the dust. His eyes were cruel when he turned to look at Rodelo. “I don’t figure you,” he said, “and I don’t trust you. Just where do you come into this, anyway?”

“I’m in,” Dan replied shortly. “I’m in up to my neck.”

“We can change that,” Harbin said, drawing up. He swung his horse a trifle to face Rodelo. “We can change that right here.”

“Don’t talk foolish,” Rodelo replied. “You wouldn’t have a chance without me. There’s damn little water in this desert, and you’ve got to know where it is to find it.”

“She knows.” Harbin jerked his head to indicate Nora. “She told us about a place.”

“A fat lot of good that will do you until you get there…and maybe that was a rain pool. It might all be gone by now. How long do you think an exposed pool will last in this heat?”

Tom Badger had been sitting his horse watching, withholding comment. He had nothing to lose if Harbin died; but, because of the water, a great deal to lose if Rodelo was telling the truth.

“Hold off, Joe,” he said at last. “Dan’s right. This here country is hotter’n the floors of hell, and dryer. How long d’you think we’d last without water?”

Joe Harbin touched his parched lips, the cold hand of truth warning him as nothing else might have done. And there was no turning back now. It was go through or die.

“Aw, forget it!” he said. “Let’s get on.”

The trail showed plainly enough and Dan Rodelo watched him start off, followed by Gopher and Badger. Nora fell in beside him.

“He’ll kill you, Dan,” she said.

“Maybe.”

“He’s killed quite a few men.”

“And some day he’ll get killed—maybe by me.”

She studied him. “Have you ever used a gun—like that, Dan?”

“Some,” he admitted.

No use telling her how much, nor where and why. He knew far too little about Nora Paxton, and little enough about the others. As long as Joe Harbin felt he could kill him whenever he wanted to, Rodelo was sure of a fair chance. At this stage of the game, if Harbin guessed it might be a contest he would shoot him out of hand.

Rodelo mopped the sweat from his face and turned to look back. He could see nothing but dancing heat waves, shimmering their watery veil across the distance. If the Yaquis were back there, they were beyond those heat waves.…He rode on.

Only he himself knew what a chancy game he was playing, only he could know how much was at stake, and how wild the gamble he was taking. Yet what he was doing had to be done, for himself, at least. For in the last analysis a man must be true to himself first, and what was at stake in this was his own estimate of himself, and much, much more.

He rode with men he knew would kill, men who he knew had only hate for him, the interloper. Hate, and a question. Badger and Harbin, and maybe Gopher…any of them would kill him if the time was right. They would kill him for a canteen, a horse, a gun, or just because they hated him.

At the moment Harbin wanted to kill him because he talked too much to Nora, but Rodelo knew that within hours that would no longer be important. In the last hours it would be his own life that each man thought of and fought for. Beauty faded under the hot sun, and even sex came to nothing when one was faced with the raw and bloody face of death.

They all knew something of the country ahead, some by experience and some by hearsay. But only Dan Rodelo knew it well, and even he did not know it perfectly. No one did. No one wanted to remain there long enough to know it. There was no worse country anywhere than what lay before them. They did not have water enough. There were very few water holes, and those might not have water for more than one man, or one man and his horse.

Rodelo thought of the men riding ahead of him. Tom Badger was calm, cool, dangerous. Joe Harbin was a man of sudden, terrible passions, of long, brooding hatreds leading to sudden moments of killing fury. Gopher was not so much like a gopher as like a rat, quick to run, quick to squeal with fear, but if he was cornered he would be ready to slash out at anything, even himself.

And what of Nora? Rodelo was mystified by Nora. Who was she? How had she come to be with these men? What did she want? Where was she going?

He had watched her. There were little refinements about her that puzzled him. She was, despite what one might have imagined, a girl with the instincts and perhaps the training of a lady. Her language was good. She had none of the careless, often rough talk of drifting frontier women. She was obviously not Joe Harbin’s woman, although he had plans in that direction. Tom Badger resented her, and that was because she represented a threat to their escape.