“At this rate it take us all year to get in those cattle,” he said.
“We got two fresh hands to help,” Brian told him.
The Indian glanced at Forge and Partridge without hope. “So we get the beef. So what then?”
“We go on to Alta,” Brian said.
“Without water?”
“We can find a new route. There are other sinks.”
“Fenced in too.”
Brian frowned at him. “How can you be so sure?”
Sandoval sat down on a saddle, pulling a hoja from the pouch at his belt, building a cigarette. “You think Bouley put this wire up?”
“He owns Rabbit Sink.”
“Juan he tell me funny thing. Some of the men who shoot at us they also ride in to stampede cattle. Juan he get a good look at one. Latigo. Riding your Steeldust.”
Brian could not answer for a moment. He knew it should hold no shock for him, no surprise. Latigo was still handling the Double Bit cattle. Though he was technically now working for the court, his allegiance still remained to the ranch. And that ranch had been allied with Tarrant and all his interests for years.
“You think Tarrant did this?” Partridge said angrily.
Sandoval nodded. He dragged deep on his smoke. “The last of the Salt Rivers I am with any big herd. What you think it do to us if I no get through to Alta this year?”
Partridge began to pace around the fire, a stringy, bowlegged man, too exasperated to remain still. “I bet they got every free sink between here and Alta strung up with wire.”
“Or poisoned, or guarded,” Forge said. “What’s the difference? I think Sandoval’s right. This is Tarrant’s big bid to stop us for good.”
“We could fight ‘em,” Asa said hotly.
They looked at him without answering. They all knew that Tarrant had the combined crews of half a dozen of the biggest ranches in the state at his bidding. They would outnumber the Salt Rivers ten to one. It would be a stupid gesture to throw Sandoval’s pitiful group against such a force. The first clash would cut them to pieces, would leave them without enough men to handle the herd. Asa cursed softly and turned away, kicking spitefully at the gear on the ground.
Through the past moments, as their true position had become clear to Brian, something had been turning over in his mind. It was a gamble. But when a man’s back was to the wall, what did he have left?
“How about going in the back door to Alta?” he asked.
They all stared at him. In the flickering firelight their faces were drawn and chalky masks. Finally Forge said, “You mean up over the Rim?”
Brian nodded. “Circle north. Through the reservation if we have to. Down into the Tonto.”
He stopped. He hadn’t meant to stop. Hadn’t wanted to. But they all knew what was next and the expression on their faces stopped him and before he could continue again Partridge finished it for him.
“Dammit,” Partridge said, “who’s going through the Superstitions?”
“It’d be suicide!”
“How could we do it?”
“Tarrant would be on us before we topped the Rim—”
It came at Brian from all sides. He shouted to be heard over their voices. “You forget Tarrant’s got his men down here. If we move at all, they expect us to take the old route. They’ll be watching those sinks like hawks. The last thing in the world they’ll look for is a drive through their own back yard. If they do find out they’ll be a hundred miles behind us. There’s plenty of water up on the Rim. We can drive at night and cover ourselves.”
“So Tarrant doesn’t find us,” Asa said. “We still come up against the same thing at the end.”
“Damn right,” Partridge said. “My brother disappeared in them Superstitions fifteen years ago. I ain’t taking no cattle through there.”
It was Brian’s turn for anger. “Then where in hell are you taking ‘em?”
None of them answered. They scowled at each other, fingered their faces, toed the dirt. Finally Sandoval flipped his smoke into the darkness and rose.
“Is my cattle we talk about,” he said. He looked northwest into the night, toward the Superstitions. “Maybe Brian he is right. Maybe that is the only way left.”
A haunted look came to Juan’s seamed face. He crossed himself and shook his head. “I ride for you fifteen years, Chino, but I no can go there for you.”
Pancho moved closer to Sandoval. “I can.”
Sandoval smiled and put his arm across Pancho’s shoulder. He looked questioningly at Brian.
“It was my idea, wasn’t it?” Brian asked.
“And you’re stuck with it,” Partridge said.
“I’ll go,” Forge said quietly.
“Thanks, Morton,” Brian said. He was looking at Asa. The youngest Gillette met his gaze with smoldering eyes. Brian knew that Asa was still deeply suspicious of him, hostile despite what Brian had done for Pa. And Brian knew that Cameron would follow whatever decision Asa made.
Brian had the impulse to remind Asa how Sandoval had taken them in when no one else would defend them. But Asa was a hotheaded young fool without much room for moral obligation in his life. Brian figured that the only thing he could appeal to was the boy’s inflated ego.
“Maybe you haven’t got the guts,” he said.
A rush of blood darkened Asa’s face. He spat disgustedly. “I’ll last as long as you,” he said.
Partridge began moving again, scowling and kicking at the gear. “I’ll stand up to a fair fight, anybody knows that. You know that, Mort. I’ll stand up to a fair fight—”
“Forget it,” Brian told him. “You’ve made your choice. Just do one thing for us.” Partridge stopped fidgeting and frowned at Brian. “When you get back to Apache Wells,” Brian said, “spread the word that it’ll take us a couple of weeks to round up these cattle. And that we’re still going to try and drive across the desert.”
Partridge shook his head. “You’re a bunch of damn fools,” he said. He looked off toward the Superstitions. “You’re all just a bunch of damn fools.”
CHAPTER 12
After Ring Partridge and Juan left camp, Brian told the others what was on his mind. There was little doubt that Tarrant had men watching them. Sandoval had seen riders that morning and Pancho had found shod tracks at some distance more than once. However, as long as cattle remained in the pen with a guard over them, it was logical to assume the Tarrant men would think that this was home base and that Sandoval was still trying to round up his cattle in the badlands.
“So we’ll leave some cattle here,” Brian said.
“I can’t afford to sacrifice any beef,” Sandoval said.
“What about those sick ones in the pen?” Brian asked. They all looked at the corral. The cruel heat and lack of water had taken its toll. A dozen of the steers in the pen were either dying or too sick to make the next waterhole. “And there must be others out in the badlands,” Brian said. “Those are the ones we’ll leave.”
They rose before dawn the next morning and started out to the gather. It was an even more grueling process than the first roundup. It was a forgotten land, more twisted, more burned than that around Mescal Springs. The diamond-glitter of exposed rock faces blinded them half the time; the sun fried their brains and the heat simmered in maddening waves on every horizon. They had to dismount every few minutes to clean out the clogged nostrils of their animals. It was a titanic battle to catch every steer they sighted. The cattle were crazed with thirst and ran like mad things before the riders.
It was no weather to run a horse in and they killed two before noon. Forge got so sick he had to go back to camp and Cameron Gillette passed out while he was roping down a steer. But somehow they kept at it, half-blind, really from the heat, growing as frantic as the animals with thirst.
They gathered half a hundred steers befor
e dark and held them in a box canyon with a pair of maguey ropes stretched across its mouth. A dozen of the steers were obviously too far gone to drive. These Brian and Sandoval took back to the corral, riding ridges and open country so the Tarrant men would be sure to spot them. Under cover of darkness they then returned to the badlands.
It was Sandoval’s Indian knowledge of the country that saved them and kept them going. Like some animal, he was able to locate where the water rose to the surface after the sun was gone. He spent half the night circling camp and locating these seeps. The water was half mud and each seep contained enough for only a few men or animals, but it sustained them for the next day’s hellish struggle.
Forge finally got so sick they had to stretch him out under a cover made from two saddle blankets. He spent the night in delirium and was too feeble to ride the following day.
But it looked as though their ruse was working. They kept trailing the sick cattle to the corral every evening. The Tarrant men, apparently assuming that this was all they could catch, were certainly not going to ride into the living hell of the badlands just to watch a roundup.
And finally the nightmare ended. They had regained the bulk of their herd and were ready to drive again. Though still too sick to ride with them, Forge said he would stay at the corral and perpetuate their ruse. Every night he would drive a dozen sick cattle into the badlands under the cover of darkness. He would hold them there till the next day and then drive them back to the pen. The Tarrant men had not yet shown themselves very close, and such activity might deceive a distant watcher long enough to give the main herd a head start.
The animals were in such bad condition now that they had to reach the water on the Rim as soon as possible. It meant taking a chance and using the quickest route, the Salt River Trail. They sent Pancho to scout the way and headed northeast through the badlands. Driving at night, bedding down during the day, they sighted the trail on the second dawn. They bedded down a mile west, in a canyon where Sandoval had found a seep. Pancho rode into camp just as the sun seemed to explode from the edge of the world. He had sighted a pair of riders in the predawn darkness, coming toward the herd.
Sandoval and Brian rode back with the Mexican. They topped a ridge where ocotillo bloom flamed like burning candles and lonely saguaros pointed their sentinel fingers at a steel-bright sky. Below them a pair of riders were already toiling up the rugged slope toward them, half-hidden in a haze of dust. Pancho started pulling his saddle gun from its scabbard. Brian stopped him.
“You should have waited till daylight,” he said. “That’s Wirt Peters’s claybank.”
Sandoval let out a relieved sigh. They held their horses till Wirt Peters reached them. With him was one of his Mexican hands, Iguala, broad, paunchy, fifty, with a grizzled mat of gray hair and a sloping Aztec brow. Peters’s beefy face was running with sweat and his eyes were blank with surprise.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Brian grinned humorlessly. “We might ask the same.”
“Trailing strays. They always head for this seep.” Peters cuffed his hat back, looking at the herd in the canyon. He began to scratch at his blond beard stubble. He always did that when he was puzzled. “Ring Partridge said you was following the desert route to Alta.”
“That’s what we wanted him to say.”
Peters looked from Brian to Sandoval. “You ain’t goin’ up over the Rim?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ll have to go through the Superstitions.”
“That’s right.”
Iguala emitted a moan and crossed himself.
“Why don’t you throw in?” Sandoval asked.
Peters shifted his heavy frame in the saddle. He scowled at the ground. “Hell,” he said.
“You don’t get some beef to Alta this year you might as well quit.”
Peters scratched his jaw again. “Saw Tarrant in town yesterday. He said if I wanted to wait till fall I could use their water along the desert route.”
“All you had to do was sign the petition,” Brian said.
Peters flushed. “I didn’t sign nothing.”
“Then what the hell are you talking about?” Brian said.
Peters shook his head again, frowning at the ground. “The Superstitions,” he said.
“You hear what happen at Rabbit Sink,” Sandoval said. “How else would you do it?”
Peters scratched savagely at his jaw. “Dammit,” he said. Then he looked angrily at Iguala. The man made a bleating sound and shook his head back and forth.
“No, señor, not the Superstitions, not Iguala—”
“How about the edge of the Tonto?” Brian asked.
The Mexican considered it a moment. Then he nodded dubiously. “Maybe I go that far.” He crossed himself again. “No farther.”
Peters looked at Brian and sighed heavily. “I guess I’m just dumb. I’ll throw in with you.”
* * * *
They could not wait for Peters. It would take him a couple of days to get underway but his herd was fresh and he could push harder. He said he’d meet them at Three Crossings in the reservation. That evening they pushed on north along the Salt River Trail. It took them uncomfortably close to Apache Wells but they planned to pass it and be in the broken land along the edge of the Rim before dawn.
It was night when they reached the road leading into town. They chose a much-used cattle crossing so their tracks would be hidden in the others. When the herd was on the other side Sandoval rode up to Brian, leading his black roping horse.
“Everybody they think we take the desert route. To be seen in town it would hurt us?”
“Maybe we could risk it. Why?”
“No more grub. We can’t get it all out of the country.”
“None of us has a cent. Who’d give us credit?”
The Yaqui looked at his black roper. “Maybe a way I got.”
They told Asa to keep the herd moving. It was about ten miles to town. They knew that Jess Miller stayed open till nine on Friday. They had to push hard to make it. There was little traffic abroad. The crews of the big outfits were still occupied with the tail end of calf roundup or were detailed to watch the desert route they thought Sandoval was taking with his herd. Cochise Street itself was all but deserted. The only life it showed came in the yellow channels of light thrown from the windows of the store, the occasional bursts of sound coming from the Black Jack. As Brian and Sandoval racked their horses before the Mercantile, Brian could not help the glance he sent across the street toward the feed store. The windows on its second floor were alight, silhouetting the peeling gilt letters on an upper pane: George Wolffe, Attorney at Law.
Brian trailed Sandoval into the store. Jess Miller was helping a pair of bonneted women near the rear. When he saw the two men he gaped in surprise, then came hesitantly forward. He passed beneath an overhead lamp. The shadows it cast made his face look froglike.
“Brian,” he said. His eyes blinked, trying to meet Brian’s gaze squarely. He seemed acutely embarrassed, at a loss for words. Finally he looked at Sandoval. “I thought you were driving south?”
The Yaqui grinned. “Some grub we need.”
“I can’t extend you any more credit, Chino—”
“Not on cows that ain’t going to make it to Alta, is that it?”
“I—I—”
“Negrito he is outside.”
Miller’s fat mouth closed. He looked past Sandoval and a covetous light came to his eyes. He moistened his lips. Sandoval wheeled and tramped out again, his spurs setting up a big clatter in the room. Miller followed. Brian saw that the women had pulled back against the wall, watching him like a pair of frightened hens. For some strange reason it made him feel good. He grinned derisively at them and trailed the other two men out. Miller was standing on the curb, thumbs hooked in the armholes of his bed-of-
flowers waistcoat, lips pursed, rocking back and forth on his heels studying the black roper in the feeble light that came from the door.
“Ain’t in such good condition, Chino.”
“I been work him. A month in pasture, as good as new he’ll be.”
“Sounds like he’s sucking a little wind.”
“The price you can’t knock down. I know how much you always want him, Jess. A hundred dollars you offer last time.”
“Give you fifty—in grub.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Sixty.”
“Sold.”
Miller sent the Yaqui a birdlike glance. Then he turned so Sandoval would not see his triumphant smirk. He passed Brian, going back inside. Sandoval stepped off the curb and stood close to the black. He put his palm against the horse’s neck. He wasn’t looking at the horse or anything else. Finally he cleared his throat and came back on the sidewalk. He wouldn’t meet Brian’s eyes as he passed.
“Keep watch,” he said. “I get the grub.”
Brian stood in the light a moment, heedless of it. He looked at the black. He knew what the horse meant to Sandoval. It made him feel like hell.
Before he moved out of the light he saw George Wolffe’s door open. Someone stepped onto the landing and light burned for that moment against a woman’s shape. She stopped on the landing, staring across the street toward the Mercantile, and he knew she had seen him in the light.
Arleen.
She came down the stairs and across the street. Expectancy was like a cotton gag in his throat. How could she always do that to him? Just the glimpse of her at a distance.
Light from the Mercantile’s open door sent its soft glow into the street and picked up her form. She wore a dress of flowered chintz, its full skirt switching back and forth with the free movement of her hips. She was hatless and her face was a pale oval against the black mass of lustrous hair. She held a reticule in one hand and he knew she had meant to come across for some shopping. Probably a pound of coffee, he thought wryly. They always seemed to run out when George had night work. It was odd to remember these little things about them. It seemed so long ago that they had formed a part of his life.
Last of the Breed Page 12
