Return of the Outlaw (15 page)

In that moment, with his blade still in Jimmy Sundust
’s body, Amado recalled something he had once heard about the two trackers. “They always hunt together like the snakes they are. If you see one in front of you, the other will be behind you.”

The skin prickled on Amado
’s back and he knew it was true.

“Jeff,” he shouted, jerking his knife clear as Sundust
’s body sagged to the ground.

Jeff rolled to the side, throwing off the blanket and coming up to a crouch, still groggy from sleep.  He saw Amado, about thirty yards away
—throwing a knife at him.

The knife tumbled through the air, whirring high over his head, and Jeff heard it clatter harmlessly on the rocks behind the boulder, at his back. Thinking more clearly now, he realize
d there was an enemy on the boulder: above and behind him. He spun around, and saw Tobe Hatcherson holding the big “Sharps 50” to his shoulder, aimed at Amado. Jeff had slept with his pistol in his hand, and realized now, that he was still holding it. There was no time to raise it, no time to aim, to cock and fire. Everything that had happened since Amado’s shout, had occurred in the space of less than two seconds, and the thought Jeff acted on took another fraction of a second to pass through his mind.  “Hatcherson!” he shouted.

There is something about the sound of a man
’s own name being shouted at him that never seems to fail to make him flinch. Hatcherson was no exception, and the slight, involuntary jerk occurred just as he squeezed the trigger, and it spoiled his aim.

Amado, who was already diving to one side, rolled out of the way, unharmed. Hatchers
on had not been aware Jeff was below him, and now, with no time to reload, he swung his discharged weapon downward as Jeff swung his pistol upward. The heavy steel barrel of the big sharps struck Jeff on his upraised right arm and then made a solid impact against the side of his head. As Jeff fell, Hatcherson drew his pistol, cocking it as he pulled it out. Jeff fell on his shoulder, and following his momentum, rolled to his side and on to his back, swinging his right arm upward and pulling the trigger according to instinct rather than aim. When he fired, he was looking down the muzzle of Hatcherson’s pistol. The shot struck Hatcherson in the neck, and the burly man hunter fell backward, out of sight.

Jeff heard the body slide off the back side of the boulder and come to a stop in the loose rocks at the base. Amado ran past him and slipped behind
the boulder. A moment later he came back.

“You all right?” asked Jeff.

Amado nodded, “You?

“I
’m fine, what were you doing here? I thought you had gone.”

“I stayed to make sure you slept and nobody bothered you.”

Jeff raised an eyebrow—Amado wasn’t being honest. “It was no bother really,” he said, but there was no anger in his sarcasm. “And you smell . . . Jeff suddenly realized Amado was smeared with fresh horse excrement.

“It
’s to hide the human smell,” said Amado

Jeff sniffed, “It works. You don
’t smell human.”

Amado built a fire and squatted in front of it, gazing into the flames. Weariness showed on his face. “I
’m getting too old,” he said. “I almost got us killed.”

Jeff tried to think of something to say, but couldn
’t. He was feeling a mixture of emotions himself. Part of it was like the letdown he had always felt after a battle, and part was a sense of relief that he was no longer being hunted—at least not by the two bulldog man hunters. True, Fogarty and the others were still out there, but Jeff had confidence in his ability to continue to elude them. Besides, he reasoned, Fogarty would probably give up when he learned Sundust and Hatcherson had failed.

A sharp rock beneath one of his feet r
eminded him his boots were off. He moved over to the blanket, still carrying his pistol. By force of long standing habit, he reloaded before doing anything else. Afterwards he sat on the blanket and looked at Amado who had not moved from his position by the fire.

“Why don
’t you get some sleep?” Jeff said. “It’s my turn to watch.”

“
No need to watch. Fogarty and the others are too far away.”

“Do you think they
’ll give up now?”

“We
’ll make sure they do.”

Fogarty frowned as he considered the situation. He didn
’t know whether to wait for Sundust and Hatcherson, whom he had not seen in days, or to move ahead and try to meet up with them. The group had heard shooting the night before—distant, but clear—and were confident the manhunters had brought the hunt to a successful close. Morale in the camp was high this morning. After almost two weeks, they would soon be leaving these desolate mountains.

After the arrival of the man
hunters, Fogarty had recalled the four new men Stewart had brought him and had sent them back to the ranch, feeling there was no need for them to stay now. This morning he was confident he had been right. He decided to wait and let Hatcherson and the Indian come to him, rather than trying to locate them in this vastness. One of the posse members was dispatched to climb to the top of a nearby mountain and build a signal fire to advise the man hunters of the posse’s location.

By mid-afternoon when there was no sign of the pair, Fogarty had become restless and edgy.
He climbed the mountain himself and replenished the dead signal fire with green wood. He fired three evenly-spaced shots in the air and listened, hoping to hear a return signal. He had heard stories of the two manhunters, of how they liked to take their prey alive and torture them. He knew that sometimes Indians could spend days on their torture, keeping their victims alive and suffering until the two conditions finally became incompatible, but he wished they would get it over with and get back with the corpses. This inactivity was getting on his nerves.

The signal fire on the mountain was kept burning brightly throughout the night, but when morning came there was still no sign of the two missing hunters. By mid-day, Fogarty, growing increasingly restive, climbed the mountain again and built another fire,
this one larger than ever, and over the space of an hour, he fired the three-shot signals into the air several times, still with no response. The optimism the men had felt earlier was waning, and it was generally agreed among them that sitting around and building fires and shooting bullets into the air was accomplishing nothing.

Fogarty
took Morris Tate aside. “You’re the only one here who knows these mountains. Wherever Hatcherson and Sundust are they’ll have to have water. Going on the direction of those shots we heard, where is the nearest water between here and there?”

Tate didn
’t like the idea of pushing deeper into the mountains, but he had spent enough time around Fogarty to know that no one talked the man into or out of anything. “The shots,” he replied, “were to the northeast, and as near as I can remember, there’s a spring, must be five, six miles due north of here. From there we’d have to cut back east.”

Fogarty n
odded and turned to walk away. As he did, Tate spoke again. “It’s a fool’s errand, Fogarty. If Hatcherson and Sundust got ‘em, they got ‘em and we’re done; and if they didn’t we ain’t never going to either.”

Fogarty turned and fixed an e
xpressionless gaze on Tate, then turned back around and walked toward the group. “Mount up,” he commanded.

It turned out to be more than five or six miles to
the spring Tate had spoken of. In fact, by the best estimate the men could render of distance covered over such rugged terrain, it was nearer to eight or nine. The men and horses were exhausted and thirsty when the canyon they were following finally widened out into the small basin that boasted as its central attraction to men and wildlife, one of the scarce water holes to be found in these mountains. As they approached the spring, Tate, who was in the lead, noticed a large, dark object floating in the water. At first he thought it was a log, but it didn’t look quite right. Besides, there were no large trees in these desert mountains.  Drawing nearer, the sudden realization of what he was seeing chilled his blood. Other men, eager for water rode up beside him, and each in turn drew up sharply at the recognition of the gruesome thing floating in the water. All around could be heard exclamations of disgust, anger, and disappointment.

Fogarty said nothing. He merely dismounted next to the small pool of red-tinged water, reached down and grasped the dark thing floating there. He wrestled it out o
f the water and turned it over. It was Jimmy Sundust.

Fogarty made no comment, nor did his face register emotion, but in his heart was the blackest rage he had ever felt in his violent life. His insides were nearly consumed by its fire. Like a magnifying glass focuses sunlight into a small, white-hot pinhead of fire, so was his fury focused into an almost uncontrollable need to kill.

They buried Jimmy Sundust’s body in the soft sand on the floor of the small basin and covered it with rocks for protection from scavengers. The horses drank, but the men did not. At this time of year the small spring was not a free flowing font of water, but a tepid, stagnant pool filled with algae and water bugs. It was replenished slowly by a trickle of water which flowed from underground and was unable to compete with evaporation, as was evidenced by the water marks on the rocks around the pool. As it was now, it would be weeks, perhaps until the next rain, before anyone could drink here without imbibing of Jimmy Sundust’s blood. The men were thirsty, but not that thirsty. Not yet. And they all knew, in this heat, compounded by the scarcity of water, a case of dysentery would be fatal.

Fogarty conferred again with Tate, this time not in private.

“Where’s the next water?”

“Too far,” Tate answered
. “Gotta be fifteen, twenty miles from here. Over country so rough, it’ll kill a horse.”

Anger flashed in Fogarty
’s eyes. “You’re lying to me Tate, because you want me to turn back. You tell me straight, or I’ll kill you right now.”

There was not a member of the party that doubted Fogarty
’s word.

Tate
’s jaw muscles stood out like a knot on a rope. “Alright Fogarty, we’ll just keep on doing it your way, you don’t leave a man much choice.” He paused for a moment to draw in a deep breath. “You can go two directions from here: north or east. Water’s about the same distance either way you go, give or take a mile.”

“How far,” demanded Fogarty.

Tate looked at the expectant faces of the other members of the party, knowing what he was about to say would be a hard blow to them. “About thirteen miles.”

“Are you sure it
’s just thirteen miles and no more? Last time you said five miles and it turned out to be almost twice that.”

Anger flared in Tate
’s eyes, “I didn’t sign on with this posse to guide you around these hills, Fogarty; I never said I had a map in my head. I’ve hunted here from time to time, and I’ve learned a few of the trails and watering holes, that’s all. There’s probably closer water, but I don’t know where it is and we could spend days looking for it. The most I can do is guide you according to the best of my recollection and if that ain’t good enough, then you might as well shoot me right now.”

“Let
’s go,” growled Fogarty. In a louder voice he said, “Anyone who has any water left in their canteen, bring it and put it into mine. We’ll ration it all out evenly.”

The men did as they were told. The combined amount of the party
’s water supply was less than one canteen-full.

The horses were allowed to drink their fill again from the
tainted water of the pool, and the men mounted up.

Fogarty looked at Tate
. “Which way?” Tate sat relaxed in the saddle, his hands crossed on the saddle horn. “I’m just the guide. You tell me where you want to go, and I’ll lead you there. I told you there were two directions we can go from here. You’re the one who has to pick. But there’s something you’ll want to think about while you’re doing it. If they got Sundust, they got Hatcherson too; ain’t much doubt of that. My guess is one of those springs has Hatcherson floating in it, and one don’t. You get to decide. You got a fifty-fifty chance of gettin’ it right.”

Fogarty realized
Tate was right and was angry with himself for not having thought of it. Now he tried to decide which direction to go and couldn’t. He knew that, up to now, he had been consistently outsmarted and the thought infuriated him. Now he tried to find some shred of reasoning to guide him, some method of understanding the men he was up against. He rummaged in his mind for a common ground or starting point from which he could follow the line of reasoning his enemies had used to determine in which pool to dump Hatcherson’s body.

The shots that had been heard two nights ago had come from the northeast. The posse would be expected, he reasoned, to go in the direction of the shots, either to attempt to pick up the trail of their quarry or to locate Hatcherson. They would not necess
arily be expected to deduce he had been killed just because Sundust had. Moreover, it would be a much shorter distance to the eastern spring for Lopez and Havens to transport the body of the bulky man hunter. The eastern spring made the most sense.

“
We’ll go north!” He announced.

It was well after dark when the tired party arrived at the northern spring. There was only a partial moon, but its light was sufficient to reveal the bloated body of Tobe Hatcherson floating in the small pool, and the thirsty men didn
’t need light to know the water was tinged pink with the dead manhunter’s blood.

They sat on their
horses staring in silence at the dark water, almost as though they had expected it to be this way. They had grown accustomed over the past two weeks to being beaten. The heart was gone out of the posse.

No one looked at Fogarty. If they had, they would have been surprised to see his veil of inscrutability dissolve into an expression of demonic malice.

They made no attempt to drink. Hatcherson had been dead and exposed to the desert heat for two days. Anyone who drank the warm, polluted water of this pool was sure to get sick.

Presently Tate dismounted and walked to the waterhole. Getting a grip on Hatcherson
’s clothing, he wrestled the heavy, stinking corpse out of the water.

For a moment, all eyes were on the rippling surface of the pool, which shone in the dim moonlight like the fresh
, pure water it should have been, and taunted the thirsty men. 

When Hatcherson had been buried, Tate turned to face Fogarty
. “From here we’ll have to backtrack any way you look at it. If we travel all night we should make it by dawn.”

“Let
’s go then,” said Fogarty tonelessly.

Under normal circumstances Tate
’s estimate would have been accurate, but the men and horses were exhausted and it was two hours past sunrise, after a night of agonizing fatigue and tortured thirst, when the exhausted party dragged itself into the small box canyon, which hopefully, would be found to hold the water they were seeking. Fear was on the group now—a fear no one voiced. They all knew if this spring was dry, they would be in serious trouble. And if the water was tainted they would have no choice but to drink it anyway.

They were u
nspeakably relieved to find that the water-hole, though shrunken, still contained water. It was tepid and a little stagnant, but drinkable. Men and horses drank their fill. The horses were unsaddled and tethered, and the men lay their weary bodies down beneath the shade of the canyon wall and slept soundly for several hours until the searing desert sun chased the shade away and woke them with its heat.

After eating, Fogarty ordered the men to saddle up. Supplies wer
e low and were being rationed. Each man had eaten a meager meal consisting of a slice of bacon and a biscuit. All canteens had been refilled.

Tate looked
at the haggard faces of the men and wondered how much more they could take.

Fogarty s
aid, “We can pick up their trail at Sundust Spring; they would have gone there last. It’ll be about a day old.”

“Wright,” he said pointing to the man nearest him. “Pick someone to go with you. Go back and get supplies. Get back here as soon as you can. We
’ll rendezvous at this spot. Take enough food to get you to the drop off point and move fast. Meanwhile, we’ll finish up what provisions we have and live off the land when they’re gone. There’s game in here.”

Morris Tate climbed into his saddle and looked a
t the gunman. “Fogarty, you don’t know when you’re licked. You’ve been out-brained man, it’s over. If they left a clear trail, it’s because they want us to follow, and if they want us to follow, it’s because they’ve got a reason, and when the time comes that they don’t want us to follow, there won’t be any more trail. It’s time to quit. We’re licked. Let’s go home.”

Fogarty spoke in a voice that came low out of his throat like the growl of an animal
. “I told you before, Tate, I’m in charge here, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to leave without my say so.”

“
Then you’ll have to do it right now,” rejoined Tate, “because leaving is exactly what I’m doing. I’ve had it up to my eyebrows with this pile of rocks and cactus, and with you, too, Fogarty. There comes a time when a man has to admit he’s been beat.”

With that, he swung his horse around and rode slowly away from the group. Fogarty
’s right hand moved to the butt of his pistol and lingered there for a long, tense moment until his fingers relaxed and slid away from the walnut pistol stock. Saying nothing, he mounted his horse and followed.