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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.
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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 thegrulla ."
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."
Dan 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.
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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; he 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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]