High Lonesome Part 8

Hardy stared at the others belligerently, but they ignored him. Well, n.o.body else had ever done it, had they? And they had. He could tell the girls down in Sonora that he was one of those who stood up the bank in Obaro. That would make them sit up and listen!

Only he was not convincing himself. Somehow, the robbery of the bank had dwindled in importance. Their eyes were reading the trail sign: an old man and a young girl were leading a crippled horse through Indian country.

"The posse might help them," Dutch said, voicing a thought that was in all their minds.

"Take 'em off our trail," Hardy said, with false cheerfulness.

The four rode on in silence, dusty, tired, and wary. Behind them was a posse, before them a war party of Indians, south of them the inviting border where there was a ranch they knew of, where they could hole up for a few days before going back toward Sonorita and then down to Hermosillo.

Suddenly a flock of quail burst from the brush some fifty yards ahead and to the left. Dust lifted from an empty trail. The four riders were gone ... vanished. The explosion of those quail had been warning enough, and they had acted with the split-second speed they had acquired by years of danger.

From the lip of a dry wash, Considine held his Winchester steady while his eyes searched for an enemy. Dutch had gone into the same wash some fifty yards up. The others were nowhere in sight.

For a short s.p.a.ce of time nothing happened. Considine glanced around at his horse, surveyed the wash behind him, and waited. His skin itched from the dust and sweat, his tongue touched his dry lips. He squinted his eyes into the hot bright day and searched for an Indian. And then a rifle's flat statement ended the silence.

The shot came from their side, and it brought a dozen quick replies.

Hardy came walking placidly down the wash behind Considine and grinned up at him. "That Kiowa, he sees better than any man I know. I'll lay you five to one he notched one."

He unlimbered his rifle and crawled up beside Considine. "The Kiowa's not a dozen feet from where he was when those quail went up. He's got him a nest among the rocks."

There was no sign of Dutch. The Kiowa fired again, but n.o.body replied to his shot. Considine mopped his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes. The earth felt hot, and the temperature here against the sand was much hotter than it was when one was riding. His shirt was soaked with sweat.

The Kiowa shot again, and an Indian reared up suddenly and threw his rifle out in front of him; then he toppled forward over a creosote bush. Silence followed, a silence in which there was only sand and sun, and the smell of their own stale clothing.

Suddenly there was a chorus of shrill yells and half a dozen Indians came from the sand and rushed the Kiowa's hide-out. All three men fired from the wash, and two Indians fell. Considine triggered his rifle swiftly again, and in the moment following his shot, Dutch fired from up the wash.

The Kiowa had deliberately baited the Apaches into an attack to open them up for the guns of his friends. The Indians probably thought they had fled.

Minutes pa.s.sed, long, slow minutes, and nothing happened. Then the Kiowa came into sight, riding his horse. He drew up, looking around, and the three men came over the edge of the wash, leading their horses. Dutch was bleeding from a scratch on his face.

"Shale," he said, "ricocheted from a bullet."

It was their only injury. They found no Indians, not even dead ones, but there was blood.

"Two," the Kiowa said, "maybe three."

The Apache was a good fighting man, but no fool. Against the kind of shooting they had faced, this was not the time nor the place. But these Apaches were not the same bunch that followed Spanyer and Lennie. Perhaps thirty or more had broken up into small parties because of the water.

"They were coming here," the Kiowa said. "There is water there." He indicated a dry waterfall and, turning his horse, he rode to it and swung down. Dropping to his knees, he dug into the sand. Soon the sand was wet, and then there was water. They drank, then one by one they allowed their horses to drink as the water seeped into the hole.

"There is often water in such places, but after a rain it is sure," the Kiowa said.

A few clouds drifted across the sky, making islands of shadow upon the desert. There was no smoke.

"An old hideout's up yonder," Dutch said suddenly, "up on High Lonesome."

"Pete Runyon knows it."

"Do you think he's still coming?" Hardy asked.

"You can just bet he is." Considine glanced at their back trail. "I can say for sure that he's a persistent kind of man."

"Does he know about the cave on Castle Dome?"

"I doubt it ... but he might."

Dutch rolled a smoke, letting his huge body relax slowly. "Only the old ones know it," he said.

"I told Considine." He touched his tongue to the cigarette paper. "Spanyer probably knows it, and he knows about High Lonesome."

"We turn south right up ahead," the Kiowa said. "Beyond that peak."

They squinted against the sun. Before them were the tracks of the man and the girl and, almost wiping them out, the tracks of the Indians.

Dutch stared at the tracks, then blinked his eyes against the smart of the salt from the sweat trickling into his eyes.

Considine looked up toward High Lonesome.

Chapter X.

Before Lennie could wake her father, the Indian on the horse had vanished.

"Don't worry," he said to her. "You saw it all right."

Under the hot morning sky the desert mountains looked like a crumpled sheet of dusty copper, dotted here and there with clumps of green brush.

Dave Spanyer had studied their situation in the vague light before he closed his eyes, and he knew they could be approached from all sides. But on two sides there was almost no cover, and therefore he expected the attack from there.

Any sensible defender would be watching the approaches that allowed for cover, and Spanyer was sure the Indians would show themselves there. But the real attack would come from the quarter least expected.

A master of concealment, the Apache knew the art of guerrilla fighting as no people before or since. Moreover, he lived in a country that provided little in the way of natural cover, and he had learned the art of winning battles in such a country.

The old man placed Lennie where she could do the best job of covering any attack from the obvious sides, and took the other sides himself. Fortunately, their circle of rocks was small, and the hollow was sufficient to allow cover for the horse.

"That Considine ..." Spanyer began, and after a pause he continued, "He might make you a good man."

Tears came to her eyes, and in that moment Dave Spanyer was_closer to his daughter than ever before. She no longer had even hope of seeing Considine again, but the brief moment with him had been her only moment of love, and she did love him.

Suddenly, with that one sentence, Dave Spanyer had broken down whatever barrier there was between his daughter and himself. In her own mind she could see them together, these two men whom she loved, and herself.

Looking out over the rocks and the mountain around them, she thought of the tired, stoop-shouldered man who was her father. He was oddly puritanical, not alone in his care for her, but in his viewpoint toward women in general. A man who had known nothing but loneliness since her mother died. Somehow, some way, she must make that up to him.

There was no movement out among the clumps of brush. Lennie held her rifle ready. She had killed game, but only when it was necessary for food; she had never shot at a man. It gave her a terribly frightened feeling to think of it ... and to think that within a few minutes she might be dead herself.

Her eyes searched the terrain, shifting from one rock or clump to another, moving slowly across the area before her. She was aware that movement is first detected, and best detected, from the corners of the eyes.

She saw nothing, no movement ... And then there was, a faint stirring on the ground, and she saw it was a brown foot that drew in behind a bush.

She judged the distance carefully, considered the bush. There was no place he could get to quickly from where he had been, so she sighted into the bush a little to the right of where she had seen the foot. She took a deep breath, let out a little of it, then steadied the rifle on the target. The muzzle wavered, and she steadied it again, and all the time she was taking up slack on the trigger. Suddenly the rifle leaped in her hands.

The foot stiffened out, then slowly drew back part way, and remained there.

"That's one, Pa."

"Good girl."

Three Indians rose at once and started toward her. She fired ... too quick. All three disappeared into the brush, a good fifty feet closer.

Spanyer had not turned his head, and suddenly they came out of the desert where nothing had been a minute before. He fired carefully ... once ... twice ... a third time.

One down, and one possible.

He wiped the sweat from his eyes. There was nothing in sight, nothing anywhere. They were out there, but they were invisible.

He wanted a drink desperately, for his mouth was suddenly very dry, but he dared not move from his post. They would get close, for there was no possible way to keep them off for long.

He glanced at the sun. It was still early. How long had they been watching out there? He shot suddenly at a suspicion of movement, then threw a wild shot into a vacant area to let them know that he knew what they were doing.

It came to him suddenly that he would never see the sun go down this day.

Well, he had lived a full life, if a hard one. What worried him was Lennie. She deserved better than this, to die in a lonely circle of rocks, die by a bullet ... for he would save a bullet for her. He owed her that, more than anything. He had given her life; now, to save her from what might come, he would also give her death.

His eyes were red-rimmed from staring. Lennie ... G.o.d knew he had wanted better than this for her. What kind of a man was he that he had got her into such a position? He had expected to die this way himself ... all the odds were in favor of itueither in some such place as this, or in the dust of a western street, or on the sawdust of a barroom floor.

But Lennie was young, her life only just begun. Only the other day, only hours ago, she had first looked at a man with anything but casual interest, and he, her father, had almost destroyed even her dream of him. And Dave Spanyer, frontiersman and outlaw, knew what it was to dream. He had done some dreaming himself.

Why did the young think that dreams were only for them? The old dream also, with less hope, less antic.i.p.ation, yet they dream. And he had dreamed for Lennie. He had dreamed of a good marriage for her, a good home.

He dried his palms by running his hands down the front of his pants. "You all right, Lennie?" he asked.

"All right, Pa."

"If we can stand them off until night, we might slip out of here and get away."

They might ... but the chances were not good. And the chances of surviving that long were not good either. He knew how slight those chances were. Those Indians were not going to take much more time, and they had cost them blood. Those Indians had patience, but they also would be eager, each one of them, to be the one to capture the girl.

"Make every shot count," he said, and then to give her something to die with, he added, "I shouldn't have been so rough. I think Considine is a good man. I hope he comes west."

"Thanks, Pa." She ran her eyes over the rocks and brush. "He was good to me ... he really was. I ... I think he liked me."

"He'd just better!" Then Spanyer was silent. Well, why not? If he was to have a son-in-law, why not Considine? He would understand Considine ... they would understand each other. "Of course he liked you! I could see it."

Nothing moved ... but they were out there. Dave Spanyer thought of his wife ... Was she watching them now? Did the dead know how the living fared? He had never thought much about such things before.

G.o.d, but the sun was hot! It was high now, blazing down upon them, and there was no shelter. "Califonry's quite a place, Lennie. We'll get ourselves a place there. I've been thinking ... maybe I could get word through to Mexico ... invite that young man to come callin'." There was silence. "You all right, Lennie?"

"Yes, Pa, butu"

The report of her rifle took over. She shot rapidly, three times, and then he saw an Indian come out of the gra.s.s where there did not seem to be cover for a rattler, and he shot him through the chest before he was off the ground. He could smell powder smoke, and fear ... yes, he could smell the fear that was in him. "Get one?" he asked.

"No."

"They lost one over here."

He snaked the canteen to him and took a quick drink, sloshing the water around inside his mouth before he swallowed. He fought off the desire to drink and drink and drink, and put the canteen down.

Tension and fear always made a man thirsty. After a fight sometimes he would drink until it seemed there was no bottom in him.

He glanced at the sun. They would be lucky if they lasted until noon.

He looked around at Lennie. She was all right, but their horse was down. A bullet had got him, and he was kicking out his last breath.

Well, he would have been hard to get out of here at night, anyway.

But Spanyer felt something go out of him. How could they tackle the desert on foot? And it was a nasty piece of travel before they could get to Yuma.

He lifted his rifle, searching the brush out there, and waiting. How much longer now? An hour? Two hours?

a "It isn't far now," Dutch said. "We can make the cave by sundown."

They started on again, and then they heard the far-off solid blast of a shot.

They drew up sharply, tense and listening. Then more shots, a lull, and another shot.

Dutch spat into the dust, avoiding the others' eyes. "They're up on High Lonesome. I know that place."

Another shot, and then a ragged volley. That last would be the Indians.

They sat their mounts, staring at the hills. Hardy looked away toward the border. It was close now. If the pursuit was still after them, it would end when they turned south, for there was small chance of any pursuit catching up before they were safely across.

Sixty thousand dollars ... in gold!

Considine looked at the mountains. He felt all hollow and empty inside. The d.a.m.ned old cantankerous fool! What got into a man that he would get his daughter into something like this?

But he knew. Spanyer was running away. He wanted to take her somewhere where he would not be known for what he was, he wanted to give her a chance, a start in life.

No start in life now. If they were cornered up there, off the usual trails, there was no hope of rescue. There was no hope of anything.

The posse would be closing in by now. They had probably brought extra horses. Trust Runyon to think of that. And they might have been riding most of the night. By the time the posse got here, Spanyer and Lennie would be gone.

"It ain't far to the border now," Hardy said. "I can almost see that Mex gal's eyes a-shining!"