Bare Hands

Chapter IV Hopeless Odds

In the ’dobe house a soldier removed the gag from Shaffer’s mouth. He propped the bound man against the wall and glared at him with angered eyes.

“Bah. I am on duty to guard the pigs of gringos!” he muttered. “And there is loot to be had! There is a cache of liquor that our brave comrades have uncovered!”

Shaffer said nothing.

The soldier turned to Harder, tugged at the unconscious shoulders, moved the hulking body up against the wall.

“He is a great beef, this gringo,” he muttered. “He will die by torture, and such as he take a long time in dying.”

He went to a corner of the room, scraped the floor clean and made a small fire from bits of splintered wood. He left the place for a few moments and returned with a pan filled with frijoles. He sat them over the fire to warm.

Dan Harder stirred, opened his eyes, then closed them with an inarticulate moan.

Heat filled the room. The smell of the sputtering frijoles mingled with the unwashed body odors of the guard. From without came the sound of loud laughter, the babble of voices.

The guard removed the pan of frijoles, took some tortillas from a dirty knapsack and made his evening meal. He offered his prisoners neither food nor drink.

Shaffer tried to speak, but words failed to emerge from his dry mouth. He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

Harder studied him grimly.

“They’ve got the girl?”

Shaffer nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

Harder thought out loud.

“She’s safe until she meets the dictator. Ayala won’t dare to touch her until — until the dictator has found a new attraction. They’ll kill the old man of course.”

Shaffer shuddered again.

From without the talking became louder. The laughter ceased.

“We gotta do something quick or it’ll be too late,” observed Harder. “I guess they don’t kill us until mornin’. Did you hear ’em mention?”

“No,” said Shaffer in a dry, harsh voice. “They didn’t mention.”

The voices outside rose in a burst of confused noise. There came the sound of a cry, a shot.

The guard set down his half-emptied pan of frijoles, and made swiftly for the door.

Harder gave a lurch, rolled to the floor. As soon as the figure of the guard was swallowed in the darkness, he rolled over and over, swiftly, silently, rolling toward the growling embers of the fire.

He upset the frijoles, rolled directly upon the glowing coals.

The odor of singing hair filled the room. Then came the unforgetable smell of burning flesh. Harder lay with expressionless face, staring up at the ceiling.

Shaffer coughed and winced.

“Those are the hands that made the girl sick of me,” said Harder in a level voice. “Hope your dainty stomach doesn’t get turned with the smell of burning hair and skin.”

Shaffer tried to speak, but failed. His face drained of color. He slumped down, weak, sick.

Something bent over him. The odor of burnt flesh became stronger.

“All over now,” said Harder’s voice, and the great fingers busied themselves with the knots of the ropes about his wrists.

A moment more and Shaffer’s hands were free.

“Untie your ankles yourself,”^- said Harder. “I’ll watch the door. We want that rifle if we can get it.”

Shaffer’s trembling hands groped for the knot in the rope, found it and fluttered about it helplessly.

“It’s too tight,” he stammered. “C-c-can’t we get a knife? Oh, hurry!”

Harder returned to him.

“What t’ell?” he muttered.

His great hands dropped to the rope. The fingers twisted at the knot and the rope came loose.

A shadow blotted out the faint light which came through the doorway. The embers of the fire were stirred by some vagrant bit of wind and flared up.

“Ah-h-h,” muttered the man in the doorway, and rustled into stealthy motion. There sounded the crisp click of a rifle lock.

Harder’s outstretched hand, groping swiftly along the floor, caught the man by the ankle. His feet jerked out from under him. The crash of his body shook the ground.

The soldier turned like a snake. His hand flashed the bayonet from its scabbard, whipped it upward.

Harder’s great hand closed over the wrist. His other hand compressed the neck.

Shaffer ran around in futile circles, watching the swift pulsations of shadowy struggle upon the floor.

After a few moments the shadows became still.

Harder arose.

“You take the gun and the cartridges. You won’t be worth a damn without ’em. I’ve got my bare hands.”

Shaffer felt the welcome coolness of the rifle barrel. His eager hands clasped the cartridge belt around him.

“Let’s go,” said Harder.

They slipped out into the calm silence of the semitropic night. The soldier had quelled the disturbance of the remaining troops. They were grouped about a fire some eighty yards away. After Ayala’s departure they had uncovered the cache of liquors which had been buried under the floor of the cook shack. They drank frenziedly, seeking to consume it all before Ayala’s return.

The two worked their cautious way down the starlit slope, keeping their groping feet in the trail lest the rattle of a loose rock should warn the others. At length they reached the floor of the canon.

Shaffer turned toward the mountain pass.

“Wrong direction,” muttered Harder.

Shaffer stood his ground. “You’re... you’re not going in the other direction? Not toward the camp of troops!”

Harder looked at him curiously, his wide eyes seeking to find the expression upon the blur of the white face.

“Sure, where’d yuh think we was goin’?”

Shaffer drew back as though Harder’s great hands were reaching for him. “That’s plain foolishness, suicide. By traveling all night we can get to the settlement through the pass. We can wire the consul at Mexico City. They’ll dispatch fresh troops, close the pass, bring re-enforcements to the others. The Wolf will be trapped between the two forces, captured, executed.”

Harder’s voice cut like a knife:

“Yeah? And in the meantime?”

Shaffer shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t be a fool! It’s the only way. It’s suicide the other way. Two men against an army? You must be crazy.” Harder moved toward him.

“Gimme the rifle then.”

Shaffer jumped backward.

“No, no. Don’t be foolish. This is our only chance. Think of what it means. Come with me. They’ll kill us or capture us and that means death by torture.”

“I don’t want you with me,” patiently explained Harder. “Gimme the rifle.”

Shaffer continued to draw back in a panic.

“No, no. That would leave me unarmed. You’ve got your strength, your hands. I’m helpless.”

He turned swiftly, ran clattering up the canon.

From the flat above came a yell. The soldiers about the fire had heard the running steps.

A hail sounded from the darkness above.

Rattling stones marked the sound of Shaffer’s flight. A rifle vomited forth a stabbing spurt of ruddy fire. Another and another. The stones continued to rattle.

Dan Harder slipped in the shadows of a bush, stood perfectly still.

From above came more shouts and shots, and then footsteps sounded on the trail. A dark form bulked between him and the stars. Another and another ran past, staggering as they ran. The warm air of the still night reeked with the combined odors of alcohol and garlic.

After a moment Dan slipped from the bush and ran silently down the canon, toward the rim where the ruddy glow of camp fires shone against the star-studded sky.

After a hundred yards his keen ears detected something on the trail behind him. He looked back, thought he saw something in the darkness, and threw himself to one side of the trail.

A horseman was galloping through the darkness, a messenger sent to warn Juan Ayala of the escape of the prisoners.

The horse detected Harder, crouched by the side of the trail. Snorting and plunging wildly, it jumped sidewise from the trail, leaped over a bush and stood snorting and quivering.

Dan gathered himself for a spring, but the rider was too filled with liquor to appreciate the significance of the horse’s manner. He muttered thick Spanish oaths and pulled the horse back into the trail. A moment more and he had clattered away.

Harder sighed.

He had one advantage and one advantage alone. The men thought that both of their prisoners had escaped up the trail toward the mountain passes.

He plodded down the dusty trail. He had his bare hands, nothing else, and he was moving against an army. To be sure it was a ragged semblance of an army, raw, undrilled troops, more intent upon loot than discipline. But they were armed and they thought nothing of using those arms. Particularly were they efficient when it came to the shooting down of unarmed men.

The hill loomed black before Dan. Upon its crest the fires seemed to hang between earth and sky. Dan slowed his pace now and crept forward an inch or two at a time, listening to the noises which came to his ears through the still night.

A snatch of conversation in Mexican from two men who must have been within fifty feet.

“And now he will torture the guard who let the gringos escape. In the morning we will scour the country. They cannot get away. Perhaps they may hide, yes. But they have to eat and to drink, those gringos.

“There is no water save in the canon. There is no food. We will push rapidly to the summit, and there we will wait with rifles. But we must not shoot them. Particularly the big one with the hairy hands. They are going to sit him on a stake. Ah, but he will squirm!”

Then there was silence. The breeze shifted, and the rest of the words became indistinguishable. Dan moved forward a few feet. The next he heard of the conversation it was more to his right.

“Most beautiful señorita. It is the happy lot of the dictator. The father is a fool. He thinks—”

A shadow arose suddenly, directly in the trail.

“Halt! Who is it?”

Dan was too far to reach the man. He debated whether to chance a spring and grapple or to remain quiet and trust to luck. Could he chance a bullet? Would the shot bring the camp down upon him?

And then a voice sounded from beyond the sentry.

Dan sighed his relief as he realized the challenge had been for one coming down the slope.

“Amigo. I go back to the other camp. The Wolf is not to know until the men have been recaptured. I fit out a squad to ride to the crest of the pass. We shall have the gringos bottled in the canon. With the early streaks of dawn we will trail them. Ah, it will be sport!”

“Pass, amigo, and may you have luck in your hunt If you capture them, remember that I have had experience in the Yaqui method of torture.”

The other grunted.

“The stake is most complete.”

Footsteps came down the trail. Dan could have kicked out his feet and touched the man as he walked by.

The sentry crouched down once more, squatting on his haunches. As he crouched he became invisible except as a vague hulk of shadow.

Dan could have rushed him, caught his neck in his great hands before the sentry could have given an alarm. But when the next man found the sentry away from his post, the trail unwatched — what then? Or if he should stumble upon a dead body? Dan knew that he had to slip around the sentry. Minutes were priceless, seconds golden, and yet he must wait motionless.

At length the sentry changed his position slightly.

Dan groped about with his hands, caught a small pebble, and threw it to the right As it struck the surface of the ground the sentry rose to a crouching position, his rifle ready.

There followed seconds of wait, and then the man settled down.

Dan flipped another pebble.

This time the rock sounded exactly like the step of a man. The sentry jumped upright.

“Who is it?” he called.

When the silence had swallowed his voice he started on a swift run for the place where the noise had sounded.

Dan slipped past along the trail, crawling on his stomach.

The sentry puttered around through the bushes, walking, stopping, listening. Then he returned to his post muttering to himself strange curses in his native tongue.

Dan slipped past two blanketed figures snoring up at the stars, skirted the glow of a blazing fire, and tried to get his bearings.

The horses were feeding together up on a plateau. From time to time he could hear the snorts of the animals. There was a strong guard watching them. The dictator knew too well the advantage his mounts gave him. Playing the game of banditry that he was carrying on, swift mobility of troops was all that enabled him to hold out.

Dan groaned. He must have horses, and yet the getting of horses would be the most difficult part of his work. He picked his way through the fires. A tent glowed ahead. The oil lamp within showed distorted shadows on the canvas.

A sentry was silhouetted against the glow, standing stoically, his rifle at his side.

Dan advanced toward the tent.

Some subtle sense warned Dan in time of the horseman that was coming from the rear. He threw himself down amid a knot of blanketed sleepers.

The rider picked his way between the fires, peering to right and left. A pistol showed in his hand.

“I saw him walking,” he muttered as he went by, talking to himself in low tones. Evidently he had seen Dan’s great figure against the glow of the tent and had come to investigate.

Dan lay still for several seconds. One of the sleepers flung out an arm, and it touched Dan’s body, but the sleeper failed to awake.

Dan noticed that the arms were stacked some little distance to one side and that a crouching figure was before them. Much as Dan wanted a weapon, he dared not risk alarming the camp.

At length he rolled to his stomach, crawled along on all fours, then stood erect.

He stood less chance of detection walking upright than in crawling. Occasionally men came and went through the camp. The sentries challenged them, but the others slept on or let them pass. A crawling man meant menace. A walker would presumably be one of the army.

And then Dan came within earshot of the tent, moving so that he was at the back, away from the sentry who guarded the flap.

“I feel that it is time for my daughter to retire, general,” came the tired tones of Standish.

“Not yet, not yet,” purred Ayala.

Dan could see the squat shadow cast by the general at the head of the table.

“Where are our two companions?” asked Standish casually. His voice showed that he hoped they had escaped; that he asked the question as a matter of form.

“Where are you going?” said Ayala.