The Loner: Inferno

Chapter 29

A ball of flame shot into the air from the explosion, lighting up the compound as bright as a day in hell. As The Kid led the women on horseback across the courtyard, he wasn’t surprised that the magazine was still standing. The stone structure had been built to contain an explosion. But with the magazine on one side, the force of the blast had to go somewhere. He hoped that it had blown a gaping hole in the wall.

He glanced over his shoulder to check on the women and saw all four right behind him, riding with the urgency of life and death. Jess had her reins and also those of Leah’s horse held tightly in her hands. Violet and Elsie were close behind them.

The guards on the wall shouted alarms—as if everybody within a couple of miles hadn’t heard the explosion—but they didn’t start shooting. They were confused by the fact that two of the riders appeared to be fellow Rurales. Those few moments they held their fire were invaluable to The Kid and the women.

Another glance back showed The Kid another good thing. He had left the corral gate open behind him, and the rest of the horses were so frightened by the blast they were streaming out of the corral and running wildly around the compound. As herd animals will do, they started following the horses on which The Kid and the women were mounted.

If he could lead them out of there, The Kid thought, it would take quite a while for the Rurales to round them up and put together any sort of pursuit.

He rounded the magazine and saw the big hole in the wall, at least eight feet wide. Rubble littered the ground, but other than that the way was open. The Kid leaped the dun over the chunks of masonry. Behind him, the other horses sailed over the obstacles as well.

They were out of the compound. Hot night air blew in The Kid’s face as he swung the dun toward the lights of San Remo. Behind them, guns finally began to pop as the Rurales realized what was going on.

The dun was faster than any of the other horses. The Kid held him back a little to keep him from running off and leaving the women. He waved them on and shouted encouragement, fearing that at any moment he would hear one of them cry out in pain as a blindly-fired shot found a target. Such a hit would be pure luck—bad luck—but just as dangerous as a well-aimed bullet.

But the only sounds that filled the night were the pounding hoofbeats and the gunshots that were dwindling in the distance behind them. So far, all the women seemed to have made it through the daring escape unharmed.

Circling around San Remo, they headed east toward the mountains, with The Kid in the lead steering by the stars. When they reached the slopes, he pulled the dun back to a walk and called to the others to slow down. After a minute, he stopped.

“What are you doing?” Jess demanded. “We have to keep moving!”

“Quiet,” The Kid said. “Let me listen.”

He didn’t hear any shots, but more important, he didn’t hear any hoofbeats. The Rurales weren’t coming after them yet. At least, they weren’t within earshot.

“All right,” he told the women. “We’ll walk the horses for a few minutes, then run them again. We’ll have to ride like that, or they’ll get so worn out they won’t be able to go on. That won’t do us any good.”

“That makes sense, I suppose,” Jess said grudgingly. “I still can’t believe we actually got out of that place, but now that we are, I want to put as much distance between us and it as we can.”

“We will,” The Kid told her.

He had a hard time believing they had escaped, too. Luck had been with them so far.

The bad thing about luck was that you couldn’t count on it. It could turn on you at a moment’s notice, without any warning, and usually with tragic results. It had happened to him.

They moved at a steady pace, climbing toward the pass. The Kid heard Jess muttering and knew she was impatient. They could let the horses run again once they were on the other side of the pass.

It was a long way to the border. Would their mounts be able to last that long? The Kid hoped he could find the waterholes where he and the scalphunters had stopped on the way to San Remo. If he couldn’t, there was no chance they could make it across that inferno of a desert between the mountains and the border.

His canteens still hung on his saddle, and one was full, the other about half. He had some jerky in his saddlebags. That wasn’t much for a journey that might take several days. He might be able to shoot some game along the way ... if they came across any animals other than lizards and snakes. It was possible they wouldn’t.

But worrying about everything that could go wrong was a waste of time. The important thing was to keep moving. They were in a race to the border, and the stakes were life and death.

The Kid kept them moving all night, except for brief halts to rest the horses. He could tell the animals were tired, and soon they would need to rest for a longer period of time. He didn’t want to stop until morning, when he could see if anyone was coming after them.

By the time the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon, they had reached the saddle where he and Kelly and the others had ambushed the Apaches. The stench of rotting flesh hung over the area and made the women grimace and gag.

“Don’t look at them,” The Kid advised. “The buzzards have been after them, and it’s not pretty.”

“After what they did to us, I’m glad they’re dead,” Jess said. “It doesn’t bother me a bit to see them.”

“Well, it bothers me,” Violet said. “Come on, Elsie.”

The Kid said, “Jess, give Leah’s reins to Elsie. If you’re all right, you can give me a hand.”

“Doing what?” Jess asked. “They’ve already been scalped.”

“There might be food in their gear,” The Kid explained. “I intend to have a look. We can use any ammunition they have that will fit our guns, too.”

For the next half hour, The Kid and Jess poked through the packs dropped by the Apaches when bushwhack bullets cut them down. They found strips of dried meat—probably horse meat, The Kid thought, but he wouldn’t tell the women that—along with rifles and ammunition enough for all of them. He gathered up a number of canteens, too. Most had water in them, and he could refill them at the first waterhole they came to.

He also spent some time with his telescope, scanning the foothills and mountains to the west. After a while, he caught a glimpse of the sun reflecting off something just below the pass. It had to be metal of some sort, and that meant pursuit.

“They’re back there,” he told Jess. “Quite a few hours behind us, though, so we’re lucky there. I was hoping it would take them a while to round up enough horses. We’d better get moving.”

“Can we stay ahead of them long enough to reach the border?”

“That’s a good question,” The Kid said with a faint smile. “Only one way to find out.”

They moved on in the rising heat, following the cutoff through the brush-choked wash that Kelly had used before. The Kid thought there was a good chance Kelly and the others would be with the Rurales, so he and the women couldn’t afford to go the long way around the way the Apaches had.

By midday they were all soaked with sweat and the horses were lathered and staggering. The Kid called a halt for an hour and told the women to crawl under some of the brush to take advantage of its shade.

“Watch out for snakes,” he warned them.

“Aren’t you going to rest?” Jess asked.

“Next time. Somebody needs to stand watch.”

“Give me half an hour, then I’ll spell you.”

The Kid started to tell her that wasn’t necessary, then nodded. “I’m obliged.”

“We’d either be back there in that compound or on our way to Mexico City if it wasn’t for you,” Jess said. “That’s a debt we’ll never be able to pay back.”

“Nobody’s expecting you to,” The Kid said.

The women fell asleep right away. The Kid woke Jess thirty minutes later. As soon as he lay down and closed his eyes he was asleep, too.

Getting out of the sun and dozing, even for half an hour, made him feel better.

Jess woke the others. They mounted up and headed out again. When they reached the end of the wash, The Kid said, “We’re going to stop here for a few hours and wait out the worst of the heat. The rest has helped the horses, but not enough. We can make better time by traveling at night.”

Grim-faced, Jess asked, “Do you think those bastards who are after us will stop?”

“I hope so, but even if they don’t, we don’t have any choice. The horses are about to drop, and we sure can’t get away from the Rurales on foot.”

“It’ll be all right, Jess,” Elsie said. “I’m sure Mr. Morgan knows what he’s doing.”

“I’m sure he does, too,” Jess agreed, but added under her breath, “But there may not be any way out of this.”

She was right about that, but The Kid didn’t feel like giving up.

They rested in the shade of the banks until the sun went down, sleeping and gnawing on jerky to sustain their strength. When the sun finally disappeared behind the mountains, they mounted up and The Kid led them into the desert.

“There’s a waterhole in some rocks about twenty miles north of here, if I remember right. We can make it before morning.”

“Unless you get lost and we miss it,” Jess said.

The Kid grinned. “Have a little faith.”

“That’s not ... easy to do.”

He grew solemn as he nodded. “I know. But we need to do it anyway.”

He was a fine one to talk, he told himself, after the way he had just about given up on life. He still felt that way sometimes, but for now, he had a goal that kept him going—to get the women safely across the border.

That night was a challenge to everything he had learned from Frank Morgan about using the stars as a guide. The Kid thought he had them going in the right direction, but he couldn’t be absolutely certain. If they missed the waterhole, as Jess had pointed out, they might not ever make it to the next one.

Long hours into the night, when the moon had risen and was on its downward sweep, The Kid caught sight of something dark up ahead. His heart leaped at the possibility that it was the rocks where the waterhole was located. He couldn’t be sure so he didn’t say anything to the others.

Then the horses suddenly lifted their heads and their ears pricked forward, and he knew they had scented the water. Relief flooded through him.

“Let’s go,” he said. “The waterhole is right in front of us.”

It was a crude tank formed by a rocky hollow in the ground. As he recalled from the previous journey, the water was stagnant and not pleasant to drink. But it was wet, and that was the most important thing. The horses were almost running by the time they got there.

The Kid dismounted hurriedly and grabbed the reins of the other mounts so they wouldn’t drink too much and founder. Jess and Elsie helped him haul the horses back.

Violet had to do the same with Leah, who tried to plunge her head into the little pool and drink and drink. Eventually, they all got their fill of the brackish water.

Leah sat back beside the pool and looked up at The Kid. “Thank you, Mr. Morgan.”

For the first time, he heard coherence in her voice. She knew who he was and what was going on around her. That was a big improvement.

They all rested. The Kid and Jess took turns standing guard again. Along toward morning, Jess woke him and said quietly, “Kid, I think you’d better look at this.”

He stood up and walked with her to the edge of the boulders around the waterhole. Across the desert behind them, several miles away, an orange light flickered.

“Is that a campfire?” Jess asked.

“Yeah,” The Kid said. “They’re going to have coffee and a hot breakfast. They don’t care if we know they’re back there.”

“Why not?”

“Because they think there’s no way we can beat them to the border. They think it doesn’t matter if we know they’re after us. Guzman and Kelly probably hope we see the fire, and that it makes us nervous.”

“Are you nervous, Kid?”

“No reason to be. We either make it or we don’t. Either way we gave it a good try.”

“Is that all that matters in life? Giving it a good try?”

“Sometimes that’s all that’s left.”

Jess didn’t say anything, but after a moment she moved closer, and her head rested against his shoulder.