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half a mile, then slowed to a canter again. Twice he looked back from ridges,
but saw no pursuit.
It had gone well, almost too well, yet he felt no elation. What had he done,
after all, but thumb his nose at a lot of people who had everything he did
not? He always said he had his freedom, but what sort of freedom is it when
every sheriff may be hunting for you?
He let the horse canter for a short distance,then ran it again. He saw Dutch
before he reached the canyon, for Dutch was standing out there watching for
him. In some ways Dutch was like an old mother hen. Considine swung to the
ground, and Hardy moved in quickly and switched his saddle to his own horse
for him.
Dutch stared atConsidine's face. "How was it?"
Considine merely looked at him and said, "I told you he could punch."
They stepped into their saddles and started out. The route had been carefully
scouted beforehand and they knew what they had to do. The horses had been
freed, and they would eventually drift back to Honey's place or to the ranches
from which he had gotten them.
Riding through the soft sand of the wash, they mounted a steep bank and cut
across the top of the mesa.
"Saw a smoke a while back," Hardy said. Hardy was young. He always had
something to say.
"We'll see a lot of them."
Considine was tired, but his weariness was as much mental as physical. They
had brought it off up to a point. Now they had to get away.
He glanced back at their trail.Nothing in sight. By now they knew. By now
Pete Runyon realized what the fight was all about, and he would be good and
mad. So would the rest of them be mad ... and although some of them would
think it a good joke, it would not keep them from running him down and
shooting him if he made a fight of it.
His face throbbed with every step of his horse. It was puffed and bruised and
cut. Sweat trickled into the cuts, but the sting and smart of the cuts was
nothing to the memory of the part he had played back there. Granted that
outlaws would be talking of it for years ... what had he done?
It was Dutch who first saw the smoke. "Now what could that be?" he said,
pointing toward the billowing cloud rising ahead of them.
"I hope itain't what it looks to be," Hardy commented. "I left my girl's
picture in that store."
Slowing their pace, each man shucked his rifle from its scabbard. Considine
swung wide on the flank and a little in advance. The Kiowa fell back, on the
far side. They came up to the store at a fast walk, a line of mounted
skirmishers.
The store was gone ... only the adobe walls of one building remained,
probably just as Honey Chavez had found it, long ago.
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"Tracks," Hardy said, indicating them."Fire still burning. They can't be gone
very long."
"He kill," the Kiowa pointed to a large patch of blood. "Chavezkill this
one."
Considine rode quickly around. The Indians were gone ... all their dead and
wounded carried off, as usual.
"He made a fight of it," Hardy said. "I'd never have believed he had it in
him. He must have killed three, by the look of things.Wounded a couple."
Although they saw Chavez' body lying there, they could not take time to bury
him, but Chavez would have been the first to understand that. Let the posse do
it.
They rode out swiftly. There was nothing to keep them now.Westward at first,
then south into the desert and toward the border.
They went down the trail at a canter, all of them seeing the tracks of the
Indian ponies in the dirt, superimposed upon the tracks ofLennie and her
father. The Apaches would have seen those tracks, and they would know one of
the riders was a woman ... a good tracker would know which horse she rode.
By this time DaveSpanyer would know what was behind him and the man was no
tenderfoot. He had been up the mountain and over the hill, and he knew a lot
about trouble and the packages in which it presented itself. And from what
Dutch said the old man had told him,Lennie could handle her rifle better than
most men.
It was very hot. The air was still. They rode at a good pace, conserving the
strength of their horses, yet keeping up a steady, distance-eating gait.
The original plan was still good: to strike into the very heart of the
desert, keeping to thetinajasand seeps, the water holes least frequented by
the Indians and incapable of supplying more than four or five men at a time.
The sky was a vast emptiness. Considine gave no thought to the money in the
sacks they carried. He was thinking of the girl on the trail, and her father
... and somewhere between them, the Apaches.
HOURS EARLIER, DAVESpanyer had come to his moment of bleak decision.
Before that, he had done a lot of soul-searching. Irritably, he ran over in
his mind the events of the night before. After all, when a girl got toLennie's
age she had to be trusted. What if something happened to him? She would be on
her own, anyway, and the only way she would learn about men was by meeting
them ... besides, every bit of trail-side rumor he had heard said that
Considine was a gentleman.
"Iain't much of a father," he said suddenly."Never had much truck with women [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]