Forty Lashes Less One

12

Harold said, “What way do we go?”

Raymond got up on the bank of the dry wash and stood looking out at the desert that was a flat burned-out waste as far as they could see. There were patches of dusty scrub growth, but no cactus or trees from here to the dark rise of the mountains to the south.

“That way,” Raymond said. “To the Crater Mountains and down to the Little Ajos. Two days we come to Ajo, the town, steal some horses, go on south to Bates Well. The next day we come to Quitobaquito, a little water-hole village, and cross the border. After that, I don’t know.”

“Three days, uh?”

“Without horses.”

“Frank Shelby, he going the same way?”

“He could go to Clarkstown instead of Ajo. They near each other. One the white man’s town, the other the Mexican town.”

“But he’s going the same way we are.”

“There isn’t no other way south from here.”

“I’d like to get him in front of me one minute,” Harold said.

“Man,” Raymond said, “you would have to move fast to get him first.”

“Maybe we run into him sometime.”

“Only if we run,” Raymond said.

Harold was silent a moment. “If we did, we’d get out of here quicker, wouldn’t we? If we run.”

“Sure, maybe save a day. If we’re any good.”

“You think we couldn’t run to those mountains?”

“Sure we could, we wanted to.”

“Is there water?”

“There used to be.”

“Then that’s probably where he’s heading to camp tonight, uh? What do you think?”

“He’s got to go that way. He might as well.”

“We was to get there tonight,” Harold said, “we might run into him.”

“We might run into all of them.”

“Not if we saw them first. Waited for him to get alone.”

Raymond grinned. “Play with him a little.”

“Man, that would be good, wouldn’t it?” Harold said. “Scare him some.”

“Scare hell out of him.”

“Paint his face,” Harold said. He began to smile thinking about it.

“Take his clothes. Paint him all over.”

“Now you talking. You got any?”

“I brought some iodine and a little bottle of white. Listen,” Raymond said, “we’re going that way. Why don’t we take a little run and see how Frank’s doing?”

Harold stood up. When they had tied their blanket rolls across one shoulder and picked up their spears, the Apache and the Zulu began their run across the southern Arizona desert.

They ran ten miles in the furnace heat of sand and rock and dry, white-crusted playas and didn’t break their stride until the sun was directly overhead. They walked a mile and ran another mile before they stopped to rest and allowed themselves a drink of water from the canteens, a short drink and then a mouthful they held in their mouths while they screwed closed the canteens and hung them over their shoulders again. They rested fifteen minutes and before the tiredness could creep in to stiffen their legs they stood up without a word and started off again toward the mountains.

For a mile or so they would be aware of their running. Then, in time, they would become lost in the monotonous stride of their pace, running, but each somewhere else in his mind, seeing cool mountain pastures or palm trees or thinking of nothing at all, running and hearing themselves sucking the heated air in and letting it out, but not feeling the agony of running. They had learned to do this in the past months, to detach themselves and be inside or outside the running man but not part of him for long minutes at a time. When they broke stride they would always walk and sometimes run again before resting. At times they felt they were getting no closer to the mountains, though finally the slopes began to take shape, changing from a dark mass to dun-colored slopes and shadowed contours. At mid-afternoon they saw the first trace of dust rising in the distance. Both of them saw it and they kept their eyes on the wispy, moving cloud that would rise and vanish against the sky. The dust was something good to watch and seeing it was better than stretching out in the grass and going to sleep. It meant Frank Shelby was only a few miles ahead of them.

They came to the arroyo in the shadowed foothills of the Crater Mountains a little after five o’clock. There was good brush cover here and a natural road that would take them up into high country. They would camp above Shelby if they could and watch him, Raymond said, but first he had to go out and find the son of a bitch. You rest, he told Harold, and the Zulu gave him a deadpan look and stared at him until he was gone. Harold sat back against the cool, shaded wall of the gulley. He wouldn’t let himself go to sleep though. He kept his eyes open and waited for the Apache, listening and not moving, letting the tight weariness ease out of his body. By the time Raymond returned the arroyo was dark. The only light they could see were sun reflections on the high peaks above them.

“They’re in some trees,” Raymond said, “about a half-mile from here. Taking it easy, they even got a fire.”

“All of them there?”

“I count eight, eight horses.”

“Can we get close?”

“Right above them. Frank’s put two men up in the rocks—they can see all around the camp.”

“What do you think?” Harold said.

“I think we should take the two in the rocks. See what Frank does in the morning when nobody’s there.”

The grin spread over Harold’s face. That sounded pretty good.

They slept for a few hours and when they woke up it was night. Harold touched Raymond. The Indian sat up without making a sound. He opened a canvas bag and took out the small bottles of iodine and white paint and they began to get ready.

There was no sun yet on this side of the mountain, still cold dark in the early morning when Virgil Shelby came down out of the rocks and crossed the open slope to the trees. He could make out his brother and the woman by the fire. He could hear the horses and knew Frank’s men were saddling them and gathering up their gear.

Frank and the woman looked up as Virgil approached, and Frank said, “They coming?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see them.”

“What do you mean you didn’t see them?”

“They weren’t up there.”

Frank Shelby got up off the ground. He dumped his coffee as he walked to the edge of the trees to look up at the tumbled rocks and the escarpment that rose steeply against the sky.

“They’re asleep somewhere,” he said. “You must’ve looked the wrong places.”

“I looked all over up there.”

“They’re asleep,” Shelby said. “Go on up there and look again.”

When Virgil came back the second time Frank said, Jesus Christ, what good are you? And sent Junior and Joe Dean up into the rocks. When they came down he went up himself to have a look and was still up there as the sunlight began to spread over the slope and they could feel the heat of day coming down on them.

“There’s no sign of anything,” Virgil said. “There’s no sign they were even here.”

“I put them here,” Frank Shelby said. “One right where you’re standing, Dancey over about a hundred feet. I put them here myself.”

“Well, they’re not here now,” Virgil said.

“Jesus Christ, I know that.” Frank looked over at Junior and Soonzy. “You counted the horses?”

“We’d a-heard them taking horses.”

“I asked if you counted them!”

“Christ, we got them saddled. I don’t have to count them.”

“Then they walked away,” Frank Shelby said, his tone quieter now.

Virgil shook his head. “I hadn’t paid them yet.”

“They walked away,” Shelby said again. “I don’t know why, but they did.”

“Can you see Dancey walking off into the mountains?” Virgil said. “I’m telling you I hadn’t paid them.”

“There’s nothing up there could have carried them off. No animal, no man. There is no sign they did anything but walk away,” Shelby said, “and that’s the way we’re going to leave it.”

He said no more until they were down in the trees again, ready to ride out. Nobody said anything.

Then Frank told Joe Dean he was to ride ahead of them like a point man. Virgil, he said, was to stay closer in the hills and ride swing, though he would also be ahead of them looking for natural trails.

“Looking for trails,” Virgil said. “If you believe those two men walked off, then what is it that’s tightening up your hind end?”

“You’re older than me,” Frank said, “but no bigger, and I will sure close your mouth if you want it done.”

“Jesus, can’t you take some kidding?”

“Not from you,” his brother said.

They were in a high meadow that had taken more than an hour to reach, at least a thousand feet above Shelby’s camp. Dancey and Howard Crowder sat on the ground close to each other. The Apache and the Zulu stood off from them leaning on their spears, their blankets laid over their shoulders as they waited for the sun to spread across the field. They would be leaving in a few minutes. They planned to get out ahead of Shelby and be waiting for him. These two, Dancey and Crowder, they would leave here. They had taken their revolvers and gun belts, the only things they wanted from them.

“They’re going to kill us,” Dancey whispered.

Howard Crowder told him for God sake to keep quiet, they’d hear him.

They had been in the meadow most of the night, brought here after each had been sitting in the rocks, drowsing, and had felt the spear point at the back of his neck. They hadn’t got a good look at the two yet. They believed both were Indians—even though there were no Indians around here, and no Indians had carried spears in fifty years. Then they would have to be loco Indians escaped from an asylum or kicked out of their village. That’s what they were. That’s why Dancey believed they were going to kill him and Howard.

Finally, in the morning light, when the Zulu walked over to them and Dancey got a close look at his face—God Almighty, with the paint and the scars and the short pointed beard and the earring—he closed his eyes and expected to feel the spear in his chest any second.

Harold said, “You two wait here till after we’re gone.”

Dancey opened his eyes and Howard Crowder said, “What?”

“We’re going to leave, then you can find your way out of here.”

Howard Crowder said, “But we don’t know where we are.”

“You up on a mountain.”

“How do we get down?”

“You look around for a while you find a trail. By that time your friends will be gone without you, so you might as well go home.” Howard started to turn away.

“Wait a minute,” Howard Crowder said. “We don’t have horses, we don’t have any food or water. How are we supposed to get across the desert?”

“It’s up to you,” Harold said. “Walk if you want or stay here and die, it’s up to you.”

“We didn’t do nothing to you,” Dancey said.

Harold looked at him. “That’s why we haven’t killed you.”

“Then what do you want us for?”

“We don’t want you,” Harold said. “We want Frank Shelby.”

Virgil rejoined the group at noon to report he hadn’t seen a thing, not any natural trail either that would save them time. They were into the foothills of the Little Ajos and he sure wished Billy Santos had not got shot in the head in the train station, because Billy would have had them to Clarkstown by now. They would be sitting at a table with cold beer and fried meat instead of squatting on the ground eating hash out of a can. He asked if he should stay with the group now. Norma Davis looked pretty good even if she was kind of sweaty and dirty; she was built and had nice long hair. He wouldn’t mind riding with her a while and maybe arranging something for that night.

Frank, it looked like, was still not talking. Virgil asked him again if he should stay with the group and this time Frank said no and told him to finish his grub and ride out. He said, “Find the road to Clarkstown or don’t bother coming back, because there would be no use of having you around.”

So Virgil and Joe Dean rode out about fifteen minutes ahead of the others. When they split up Virgil worked his way deeper into the foothills to look for some kind of a road. He crossed brush slopes and arroyos, holding to a south-southeast course, but he didn’t see anything that resembled even a foot path. It was a few hours after leaving the group, about three o’clock in the afternoon, that Virgil came across the Indian and it was the damnedest thing he’d ever seen in his life.

There he was out in the middle of nowhere sitting at the shady edge of a mesquite thicket wrapped in an army blanket. A real Apache Indian, red headband and all and even with some paint on his face and a staff or something that was sticking out of the bushes. It looked like a fishing pole. That was the first thing Virgil thought of: an Apache Indian out in the desert fishing in a mesquite patch—the damnedest thing he’d ever seen.

Virgil said, “Hey, Indin, you sabe English any?”

Raymond San Carlos remained squatted on the ground. He nodded once.

“I’m looking for the road to Clarkstown.”

Raymond shook his head now. “I don’t know.”

“You speak pretty good. Tell me something, what’re you doing out here?”

“I’m not doing nothing.”

“You live around here?”

Raymond pointed off to the side. “Not far.”

“How come you got that paint on your face?”

“I just put it there.”

“How come if you live around here you don’t know where Clarkstown is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jesus, you must be a dumb Indin. Have you seen anybody else come through here today?”

“Nobody.”

“You haven’t seen me, have you?”

“What?”

“You haven’t seen nobody and you haven’t seen me either.”

Raymond said nothing.

“I don’t know,” Virgil said now. “Some sheriff’s people ask you you’re liable to tell them, aren’t you? You got family around here?”

“Nobody else.”

“Just you all alone. Nobody would miss you then, would they? Listen, buddy, I don’t mean anything personal, but I’m afraid you seeing me isn’t a good idea. I’m going to have to shoot you.”

Raymond stood up now, slowly.

“You can run if you want,” Virgil said, “or you can stand there and take it, I don’t care; but don’t start hollering and carrying on. All right?”

Virgil was wearing a shoulder rig under his coat. He looked down as he unbuttoned the one button, drew a.44 Colt and looked up to see something coming at him and gasped as if the wind was knocked out of him as he grabbed hold of the fishing pole sticking out of his chest and saw the Indian standing there watching him and saw the sky and the sun, and that was all.

Raymond dragged Virgil’s body into the mesquite. He left his spear in there too. He had two revolvers, a Winchester rifle and a horse. He didn’t need a spear any more.

Joe Dean’s horse smelled water. He was sure of it, so he let the animal have its head and Joe Dean went along for the ride—down into a wide canyon that was green and yellow with spring growth. When he saw the cotton-woods and then the round soft shape of the willows against the canyon slope, Joe Dean patted the horse’s neck and guided him with the reins again.

It was a still pool, but not stagnant, undercutting a shelf of rock and mirroring the cliffs and canyon walls. Joe Dean dismounted. He led his horse down a bank of shale to the pool, then went belly-down at the edge and drank with his face in the water. He drank all he wanted before emptying the little bit left in his canteen and filling it to the top. Then he stretched out and drank again. He wished he had time to strip off his clothes and dive in. But he had better get the others first or Frank would see he’d bathed and start kicking and screaming again. Once he got them here they would probably all want to take a bath. That would be something, Norma in there with them, grabbing some of her under the water when Frank wasn’t looking. Then she’d get out and lie up there on the bank to dry off in the sun. Nice soft white body—

Joe Dean was pushing himself up, looking at the pool and aware now of the reflections in the still water: the slope of the canyon wall high above, the shelf of rock behind him, sandy brown, and something else, something dark that resembled a man’s shape, and he felt that cold prickly feeling up between his shouder blades to his neck.

It was probably a crevice, shadowed inside. It couldn’t be a man. Joe Dean got to his feet, then turned around and looked up.

Harold Jackson—bare to the waist, and a blanket over one shoulder, with his beard and tribal scars and streak of white paint—stood looking down at him from the rock shelf.

“How you doing?” Harold said. “You get enough water?”

Joe Dean stared at him. He didn’t answer right away. God, no. He was thinking and trying to decide quickly if it was a good thing or a bad thing to be looking up at Harold Jackson at a water hole in the Little Ajo Mountains.

He said finally, “How’d you get here?”

“Same way you did.”

“You got away after we left?”

“Looks like it, don’t it?”

“Well, that must’ve been something. Just you?”

“No, Raymond come with me.”

“I don’t see him. Where is he?”

“He’s around some place.”

“If there wasn’t any horses left, how’d you get here?”

“How you think?”

“I’m asking you, Sambo.”

“We run, Joe.”

“You’re saying you run here all the way from Sentinel?”

“Well, we stop last night,” Harold said, and kept watching him. “Up in the Crater Mountains.”

“Is that right? We camped up there too.”

“I know you did,” Harold said.

Joe Dean was silent for a long moment before he said, “You killed Howard and Dancey, didn’t you?”

“No, we never killed them. We let them go.”

“What do you want?”

“Not you, Joe. Unless you want to take part.”

Joe Dean’s revolver was in his belt. He didn’t see a gun or a knife or anything on Harold, just the blanket over his shoulder and covering his arm. It looked like it would be pretty easy. So he drew his revolver.

As he did, though, Harold pulled the blanket across his body with his left hand. His right hand came up holding Howard Crowder’s .44 and he shot Joe Dean with it three times in the chest. And now Harold had two revolvers, a rifle, and a horse. He left Joe Dean lying next to the pool for Shelby to find.

They had passed Clarkstown, Shelby decided. Missed it. Which meant they were still in the Little Ajo Mountains, past the chance of having a sit-down hot meal today, but that much closer to the border. That part was all right. What bothered him, they had not seen Virgil or Joe Dean since noon.

It was almost four o’clock now. Junior and Soonzy were riding ahead about thirty yards. Norma was keeping up with Shelby, staying close, afraid of him but more afraid of falling behind and finding herself alone. If Shelby didn’t know where they were, Norma knew that she, by herself, would never find her way out. She had no idea why Shelby had brought her, other than at Virgil’s request to have a woman along. No one had approached her in the camp last night. She knew, though, once they were across the border and the men relaxed and quit looking behind them, one of them, probably Virgil, would come to her with that fixed expression on his face and she would take him on and be nice to him as long as she had no other choice.

“We were through here one time,” Shelby said. “We went up through Copper Canyon to Clarkstown the morning we went after the Cornelia Mine payroll. I don’t see any familiar sights, though. It all looks the same.”

She knew he wasn’t speaking to her directly. He was thinking out loud, or stoking his confidence with the sound of his own voice.

“From here what we want to hit is Growler Pass,” Shelby said. “Top the pass and we’re at Bates Well. Then we got two ways to go. Southeast to Dripping Springs and on down to Sonoyta. Or a shorter trail to the border through Quitobaquito. I haven’t decided yet which way we’ll go. When Virgil comes in I’ll ask him if Billy Santos said anything about which trail’s best this time of the year.”

“What happened to the two men last night?” Norma asked him.

Shelby didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure if she should ask him again. Before she could decide, Junior was riding back toward them and Shelby had reined in to wait for him.

Junior was grinning. “I believe Joe Dean’s found us some water. His tracks lead into that canyon yonder and it’s chock-full of green brush and willow trees.”

“There’s a tank somewhere in these hills,” Shelby said.

“Well, I believe we’ve found it,” Junior said.

They found the natural tank at the end of the canyon. They found Joe Dean lying with his head and outstretched arms in the still water. And they found planted in the sand next to him, sticking straight up, a spear made of a bamboo fishing pole and a mortar trowel.