Bare Hands

Chapter I On Guard

The country was rolling. Between the long hills draws stretched back to the purple mountains. In the early morning the wind blew gently down these draws, and the breeze was tainted with carrion. For this was Mexico, and, in Mexico, it frequently happens that the cool morning breeze carries the taint of carrion, particularly when it sweeps gently down sloping draws.

At the mine three men gazed over the landscape with anxious eyes. They were too accustomed to the carrion smell to notice it or comment upon it.

“We should get help to-day.”

Vincent Shaffer, immaculate, clean-shaven, spoke with nervous rapidity.

Robert Standish was older by thirty years. His eyes had bleached into expressionless calm. He gave the impression of one whose soul had soaked up emotions until, like a piece of old blotting paper, it had no more power to absorb.

“The relief,” he said, “would probably be as bad for us as the other.”

Dan Harder said nothing. He drew in his breath as though he might speak, but exhaled again, his great fingers twisting in inarticulate reticence.

He was a figure to command attention anywhere. His shoulders were so broad that they dwarfed his great height. His waist was slender, but the chest seemed almost deformed, so deep was it. But the striking feature of the man was his hands.

From the elbows down his body departed from normal. His forearm was as thick as an ordinary leg. His wrists were great masses of bone, and his hands were veritable hams. Just as a police dog puppy seems to run to paws, so did Dan Harder seem to run to hands.

Vincent Shaffer pointed.

“Look, look, dust!” he exclaimed, and there was a note in his voice that was almost hysteria.

Then it was Dan Harder spoke:

“Little cloud, one or two horses on the trail. Keep yore shirt on.”

Robert Standish stepped back into the cool shadows of the ’dobe house. When he returned he had a pair of powerful binoculars. He raised them to his eyes and studied the trail.

“One man, traveling fast.”

He lowered the glasses and swept his eyes over the sun-flooded flat. The deserted mining buildings glared in the sun until the eyes ached from contemplation of their dazzling outlines. The miners had left in a body.

The reputation of the Wolf was such that the populace fled before him. Even the Federal troops who were ostensibly trying to capture the bandit, managed to keep far enough in the rear so no sudden change of front would find them in actual conflict with the bandit’s gang.

The horseman swung down the steep side of the hill, hit the more level going of the canon, spurred his mount to top speed, then laboriously climbed the sharp pitch to the flat where the mining buildings writhed in the sun.

“Señores, good morning,” he greeted, in the language of his race.

“And to you,” gravely returned Standish, his expressionless eyes sweeping over the horseman in indifferent curiosity.

The man had ridden far and fast. His horse was tired. Despite the cool of early morning, the animal was caked with sweat and dust. The rider sat wearily in the saddle. A rifle was in his hands rather than in the saddle scabbard. The cartridge belt was almost empty. A pistol hung from a holster, worn black with much use.

The rider indicated the purple mountains.

“The pass is far?”

“About eighteen kilometers,” advised Shaffer.

The rider sighed.

“Is there perhaps a little food for a weary man?”

Standish bowed with grave courtesy.

“Our men have left. We are doing our own cooking. But if the señor will enter we will make some coffee, and there is food in tins.”

At the suggestion of dismounting, the man straightened in the saddle.

“No, no. You misunderstand. I have no time. I sit here too long now, waiting for my horse to get his breath. Coffee, no. I have no time. Señores, I beg of you, give me a can of the frijoles. I will eat from the can as I ride.”

As he spoke the words became more rapid. His reddened eyes swept back along the trail he had followed.

“He comes!” he exclaimed.

The men followed his gaze.

It could not be said that a cloud of dust was arising from the trail. Rather the entire horizon seemed to gather a dusty haze about itself. The body of riders was yet too far away to show a distinct dust cloud. It was as a faint fog, miles distant.

Vincent Shaffer ran to the ’dobe. From a locked box he extracted cartons of shells, piled them in glittering brass heaps upon a spring cot. His nervous hands buckled a revolver about his belt. For the tenth time that morning he looked at the rifle which stood against his bed, snapped open the lock to make sure a shell was in the firing chamber, tested the magazine.

Robert Standish brought out the can of beans.

The rider accepted it with thanks, looked at the pile of glittering shells.

“He is a devil, señores. Could you spare me a few of the shells? You have plenty. I have but few. East night I was surrounded, but I fought my way out.”

Vincent Shaffer heard the words.

“No, no, we have none too many.”

The rider smiled gravely.

“Señor, you have more than enough. If you have to fire one, you will be fortunate if you have the chance to fire two. The Wolf moves fast when he makes his kill. You gringos are brave. You are more than brave, you are foolish. Come, flee with me. With the four of us, with the ammunition you have, we can hold off any attack from the rear. We will ride through the pass and be safe.

“I have come far. I have seen the bodies of many men, and some of them had white skin. Come, amigos, is it not better that we ride?”

Standish shook his head doggedly.

“Then he would find the mine deserted and take a good title. We protect the property of our employers.”

The rider shook his head slowly.

“It is wonderful! No wonder that you of the north have much money. Always are you willing to lay down your lives lest your precious property should be taken. Is there, then some special heaven for the gringo which gives him standing according to the property which surrounds his corpse?”

Standish flashed the man a swift look. His words bordered on insolence, and yet, at a time like this, a certain amount of leeway was given.

“Give him some shells, Vincent, and let him be off,” he said crisply.

Shaffer’s reluctant hands furnished a few shells to the rider.

The man accepted them with a grin in which there was more insolence than thanks. He stuffed them in his belt, clapped spurs to his horse and clattered on up the canon.

The men followed him with their eyes for a moment, then looked back down the canon.

The cloud of dust had become whiter, had assumed outline. In a few moments it would top the crest of the rolling ridge. They watched it in fascination.

It was Dan Harder’s slow voice that cut in on their thoughts.

“The rider didn’t go up the trail,” he said.

“Huh?”

Standish snapped out the word impatiently.

Harder pointed one of his thick fingers.

The trail dipped down into the canon, crossed a dry stream-bed, and then ran through some brush. Half a mile farther it once more climbed from the wash and it was to this part of the trail, clearly visible, that Harder pointed.

Had the man remained on the trail, the dark blotch of horse and rider would have showed on the trail where it swung round the face of the slope. But the hill glinted in the sunlight, silent, deserted, not even a wisp of dust showing where anything had been along the trail.

And down the canon, on the soft breeze of the morning came the unmistakable taint of carrion, stronger, it seemed, than before.

Vincent Shaffer shuddered.

Dan Harder shrugged his huge shoulders.

“He circled around through that little saddle. He’ll either hide or ride back an’ join the Wolf.”

Robert Standish stroked the thin, pointed beard which gave his face an atmosphere of dignified distinction.

“Probably a spy, sent on to find out how many of us there were. You notice he tried to stampede us into flight. The Wolf would very much like to come on this mine abandoned and have some of his men relocate it.”

“Here they come!” yelled Shaffer, his white forefinger pointing to the crest of the hill.

The riders boiled over it in a black column that came without formation. At times it swelled until ten or fifteen horses were abreast, spreading out on each side of the trail. At times the stream narrowed until only one horseman followed the beaten center of the dusty trail. Then the stream swelled again.

A motley array of mounted men, they poured over the lip of the hill, spread out like a black river as they worked down the slope. And, behind them, a dust cloud billowed upward to the blue-black of the Mexican sky, drifting slightly on the carrion tainted breeze.

“Well, boys, we’re in for it,” said Robert Standish in emotionless tones. “Better get our pistols ready. And we’ll stay inside the ’dobe. That’ll protect us from stray bullets. They won’t start a general attack unless the Wolf orders it.

“That rider was right. If he does order it, we probably won’t even have a chance to reload. Let me do most of the talking.”

As calmly as though he were getting ready to write a letter, he entered the ’dobe, buckled on a revolver, sat at the battered desk and lit a cigarette.

Dan Harder sat on the edge of one of the cots, his great fingers flexing slightly.

Vincent Shaffer stealthily slipped a handful of glittering brass cylinders into his pocket, rattled the rest into a fan-shaped formation so that hurried fingers could snatch them up. Then he evidently felt that this looked like too much of an invitation to hostilities and swept the shells once more into a pile, covered them with a blanket.

Dan Harder watched him with eyes that glowed with sardonic humor. But his lips remained closed. He had made no move to buckle on the revolver which hung from the frame of the cot.

He had not known Shaffer until he came to the mine. Yet it was a strange whim of Fate that one woman had sent them both into this exile.

Rita Standish was one of those women who are born to make discord. Men saw her and desired. And her laughing eyes surveyed them impersonally, as playthings which had been sent to dance attendance upon her and amuse her.

Vincent Shaffer had been the first of the two. He had sought to impress her with his air of polish, that courtly reserve which had won women before. But when he had been hard hit he lost his mask and begged for her hand in marriage, as eager as a child.

Her laughing eyes surveyed him.

“You have not been hardened to the world. You are a mere boy,” she had told him. “Now father is in Mexico. Perhaps he would have room for you on his mine. Then, after six months — who knows?”

And so Vincent Shaffer had entered the Mexican wilderness, cursing it in his heart, afraid of it. And he wondered whether she had merely devised this method of securing assistance for her father and getting rid of a too pressing suitor, or whether she had been really sincere. The thought tortured him, even as the heat and the coarse fare tortured him.

Dan Harder had been the second. Her laughing eyes had looked at his huge hands.

“You are out of place in a parlor,” she had said. “Now my father has a mine in Mexico. I believe he might find a place—”

Harder had made one of his typical remarks, a remark that was far from the subject.

“The time will come,” he had said, “when your eyes will quit laughing at existence.”

But he had gone to the mine.

Each suspected why the other was there. Vincent Shaffer hated Dan Harder, as he did the country. Dan Harder always regarded Shaffer with quizzical amusement as though wondering what Rita Standish could have seen in such a man.

Robert Standish regarded them impartially through eyes which had been bleached into expressionless courtesy and treated them alike.