Leading his horse, Silvestra went first. In one place where the path broke and fell away, they had to jump across and then coax the horses to jump. Silvestra’s Indian-trained animal did it easily, but it took some doing to get the others across. Finally, they reached the top and looked back with wonder at the terrible desert they had crossed. At first there was nothing, then they all saw it at once—a stirring at the top of a sand dune many miles away.
Sundance looked at Silvestra. ‘How soon do you think they’ll get here? They must have started out ahead of time to get here this fast.’
‘They won’t get here tonight,’ Silvestra said. ‘Late in the morning. They look close, but they’re still a long way out. What time tomorrow depends on how early they start. But I think they will be in no hurry.’
The three men turned away from the desert to look at the Pima village. All its people stood there silently, waiting for them to do something.
The top of the mesa sloped back from the rim. Silvestra took the lead because he knew a little of their language. An old man with a wrinkled face and long gray hair spoke in a high-pitched voice. Silvestra translated as best he could:
‘Water, meat, fruit, women if you want women.’
More talk followed. Silvestra turned and said, ‘I have told the chief that we are tired and hungry and want his permission to rest here. It’s all right to go down now. Later we will explain to the chief and the village council the reason why we came.’
The three men were fed stewed rabbit by the Pima women. For dessert there were peaches, but the cold, clear water was best of all after days of enduring the brackish water in their canteens.
Silvestra began to explain to the chief. No fear showed in the old man’s face when he finished. Now the chief spoke and Silvestra translated.
Silvestra said, ‘The chief knows the slavers are raiding again as they did in the past. Bad news travels even across the desert. It makes him sad to know the slavers are coming to his peaceful village. But why do the slavers come so far to make slaves of a handful of harmless Pima farmers? I told him because the slavers can get almost any price they want for the right captive. Because, once in captivity, men and women must work like dogs until they die.’
But even then the chief said the Pimas would not fight. It had been centuries since a Pima had spilled blood. The three strangers could fight if they wished, but the Pimas would not take part in any killing, even if it meant being sold into slavery.
The chief walked with them while they looked over the abandoned part of the village, the part they saw when they first climbed to the top of the mesa. The Pimas who had lived in the abandoned stone-walled, mud-roofed houses were all dead, had been for many years.
Sundance thought this was where they would finish off the slavers. ‘We could keep them down below, but the fight would never finish. In the end they might just ride off and head back for Las Piedras.’
Silvestra carried the dynamite and Sundance placed it, judging how the walls of the abandoned stone houses would fall when the charges were exploded with rifle bullets. He figured the slavers wouldn’t bring the horses to the top; one or two men would stay with horses while the others climbed.
When they came they would get a surprise. The last surprise of their lives.
Six
‘It’s a simple plan,’ Sundance said, after the last of the dynamite had been placed. ‘The men will move back to the far side of the village. A few women and children will stay on this side. It’s their job to lead the slavers into the trap.’
Silvestra said, ‘The chief thinks some of the women and children will be shot.’
‘They won’t shoot anybody at four hundred dollars a head,’ Sundance said. ‘You know that as well as I do. Tell the chief his people will be all right. After today he won’t be bothered by slavers again. But the women and children have to get out of the way fast. They’re to show themselves, then run. They can’t be too close to the dynamite when it starts to go.’
In a few minutes Silvestra came back and said it had all been explained to the chief.
Sundance had been thinking. ‘If they rode all night they could be here before we expected,’ he said. ‘We better be prepared for that. They have Indians with them so they may have picked up our trail when we left the desert. Probably not, but we have a lot riding on this.’
Silvestra said, ‘The chief has set lookouts, but I’ll watch too.’
Sundance and Jorge were bunked in one of the empty stone houses. It was very cold even with a fire going. A thin night wind keened through the passageways between the abandoned buildings. The two men sat with blankets over their shoulders, working on their guns.
‘It’s funny how it comes back to you,’ Jorge said, jacking shells out of his Winchester .66. ‘This could be the same rifle I carried in the last year of the revolution. I remember the first small shipment of these rifles we got from the United States. Remember how we went to Vera Cruz and rowed out to the American ship lying off Punte del Norte. The French nearly got us on the way back to Juarez. Ah, a fine repeating rifle.’
‘I remember,’ Sundance said. ‘A hundred Winchesters, all brand new. That captain from New Orleans was well paid for them.’
‘But not more than they were worth,’ Jorge said. ‘Worth to the revolution. You picked the men to use those rifles and you taught them how to shoot to the best effect. The day they were sent out against the French at Las Animas. The French and their Mexican puppets came on in fine battle order, flags flying, drums rolling, confident that they were going to walk over the dirty Juaristas. On they came and then the charge was sounded. That was when those hundred Winchesters cut loose. It was a beautiful slaughter. I hope tomorrow’s slaughter will be equally beautiful.’
Sundance finished with his own rifle and slid it into its beaded and fringed scabbard. He prodded the loads out of his Colt .44. ‘For a so-called man of peace, Jorge, you have the damnedest way of expressing yourself.’
‘Why not speak the truth? It was good to kill the French. It will be even better to ambush the slavers. My only regret is that Bannerman won’t be with them. My hope would be to take him alive and throw him from the top of the mesa.’
‘I’d just settle for him dead,’ Sundance said. ‘Bannerman won’t be along, but most of his little army will. We may not get another chance to get them all bunched together. That’s why we have to make a good job of it—wipe them out to the last man.’
‘You think we can do it?’
‘We’d better do it, or we’re finished. If Bannerman gets most of his army back intact, we can forget about ever going back to Las Piedras. If we do kill all of them here, we can go back. For how long I don’t know. Like I said, it will take Bannerman a while to recruit some new guns. Maybe we’ll break him by then.’
Jorge said quietly, ‘I would like to see that before I die.’
Sympathy would have been out of place, so Sundance didn’t offer any. They both knew that nothing could be done. It was only a matter of time before Jorge died. ‘We’ll try to see that you get your wish,’ Sundance said quietly.
They stretched out on the packed dirt floor and slept for a few hours. Just before dawn Sundance heard someone coming. He cocked his gun. It was Silvestra. ‘They’re coming,’ the big Indian said. ‘Many men.’
Red light came through the doorway and streaked the dirt floor with vivid color. Sundance stood up.
‘How long, Silvestra?’
‘Thirty minutes, maybe less,’ Silvestra answered.
The big Indian was impassive as ever, but Sundance could feel the killing urge behind his eyes. There would be no mercy for any Bannerman rider who got in front of his gun.
They went outside and the chief was there with the women and children. The children shivered in the cold wind blowing across the top of the mesa, and Sundance felt something of Silvestra’s hatred for the slavers. The Pimas lived in peace with themselves and with nature, working hard for their meager prosperity—and now a bunc
h of men without souls were riding hell bent to destroy them. Yes, Sundance thought, it will be a pleasure to kill them.
‘I know the women and children are frightened,’ Sundance told Silvestra, ‘but they will be all right. Tell the chief that. But tell the chief they must not run until the slavers can see them. They are to run into the abandoned houses, then out the other side. The slavers will run in after them and that’s the last running they’ll ever do.’
The women had already started fires in the abandoned buildings, and now the smoke spiraled up from the chimneys—the beginning of another day in an Indian village. After the chief had been sent to join the men, Sundance, Jorge and Silvestra took up their positions. Each of them had two sticks of dynamite left over from setting charges in the houses. There was no need to tell Silvestra the length of fuse he should use.
Sundance took the two sticks from Jorge and fitted them with short fuses. ‘If I cut it much shorter it’ll blow up in your hand,’ he said. ‘That means once it’s lit, get rid of it fast. Don’t decide where to throw it after you light it. Know where it’s going to go before you fight it. Get a cigar going when they start up the cliff, but keep another one handy in case they take too long to reach the top. Don’t show yourself when the time comes—just throw it.’
The three men took up their positions, Sundance flat on his belly in a clump of brush, Silvestra behind a jumble of rocks, Jorge in a narrow fissure that ran across the top of the mesa. While they waited the sun climbed up in the sky, flooding the mesa with fight. At first it was red, then it turned blazing white.
Time passed and the air grew hot.
Waiting, the women were too silent, but the children made up for it. The younger ones were completely unaware that the destruction or survival of their small peaceful world depended on three strangers, men they had never seen before and would never see again after today.
The Indian lookout at the rim of the mesa turned suddenly and raised his fist in the air. Silvestra had told him to raise his hand once for every man in the raiding party. By the time he had finished he had raised and lowered his hand nineteen times. Silvestra waved him away from the rim and he ran silently to join the men.
Now everything was quiet except for the careless laughter of the children. The Pima village had stood atop this mesa for hundreds of years, protected by the desert from even the relentless Spaniards. Countless generations had lived and died here—always in peace. It was a strangely peaceful place for a massacre, Sundance thought.
Bannerman’s men were coming up the face of the mesa. Sundance could hear them calling back and forth. He waited with his finger resting outside the trigger guard. A round was already in the chamber; all he had to do was line up the Winchester and fire. In the past he had killed many men who badly needed killing, but never had he felt such deadly intent as now.
The first man to reach the top of the mesa was an Indian, a short squat Apache with a red headband, carrying a brass framed Winchester. Brass nails had been driven into the stock to make a decoration. The whole rifle seemed to glitter in the sun. The Pima children stopped laughing when they saw him, riveted in silence by his sinister presence. Sundance held his breath, hoping the women wouldn’t panic and run too soon. They might have if the Apache hadn’t turned away from them. He waved the other slavers to keep on coming.
One by one they appeared at the rim of the mesa. There were two other Apaches; the rest of the slavers were Americans and Mexicans. Sundance kept looking for the gunman called Cajun, but he wasn’t among them. Now they were all on the mesa. They started forward in a bunch, cruel arrogant men already counting their profits.
The Apache spoke for the first time—and the Pimas ran toward the abandoned dwellings. They poured into the narrow passageways between the houses. They were already out of sight when the Apache fired a shot in the air, and the slavers followed at a dead run. Sundance blew the ash from the tip of his cigar and watched them run. They ran into the maze of passageways and doors. They were all inside except for three or four men when Sundance leveled the rifle and exploded the first charge. The women and children were running fast to safety when the first charge shook the top of the mesa. They all had their targets and the other charges went off as Jorge and Silvestra opened fire. The explosions flashed bright orange in the sunlight. Countless tons of stone and baked mud caved in on the trapped slavers. Sundance touched the tip of his cigar to a charge and threw it. The first stick of dynamite was still bouncing when he threw the second. Smoke and flame boiled up, and men screamed as they were shredded or crushed by falling debris. Through the man-made hell Sundance heard Jorge screaming out his rage. A man trying to hold in his guts came staggering from the ruins of one of the houses. Sundance shot him in the chest. Then he killed a man with most of his face blown away. This man had no eyes and he ran clawing the air, begging for mercy. A few slavers had broken through at the other end. Jorge and Silvestra cut them down in a hail of bullets. Inside the ruined dwellings men were still screaming, but there was no answering fire. Sundance jumped to his feet and saw Jorge and Silvestra coming from the other direction.
Jorge’s normally sad eyes were wild with excitement. The killing mood was on him—the killing rage that comes only to quiet men who have been driven too far and for too long. He stopped and shot a man who had managed to crawl out of the ruins with his shirt on fire. He shot the man again, though he was already dead.
‘God forgive me, I am so happy!’ he yelled.
Sundance took no notice of him. ‘I’ll go after the others down below,’ he told Silvestra. ‘You stay here and kill the wounded, if there are any wounded. I have to catch up with the men down below before they get too much of a start.’
Silvestra nodded. ‘Where will we find you, Sundance?’
‘I’ll wait for you,’ Sundance said.
‘All right,’ Silvestra said and turned away.
Sundance’s horse was saddled and ready to travel, with four full canteens of water slung from the pommel. Leading the great stallion to the edge of the mesa, he saw two men riding down the slope into the canyon, pushing their horses as fast as they could travel. They had a start on him, but there was no way to hurry. Going down was a lot more dangerous than coming up, and so he went carefully. He talked quietly to his mount, easing him over the worst places where the wall of the mesa fell straight down in an almost unbroken line. Up on the mesa an occasional shot rang out, but all firing had stopped before he was halfway to the bottom.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the floor of the canyon, and by then the two fleeing slavers had disappeared. They had about half an hour’s start on him, but he felt no sense of impatience. He would follow them for as long as it took, and then he would kill them.
Going out through the draw to where the country ran down into the desert he watched for an ambush. When nobody shot at him he touched the big stallion’s flanks with his moccasined feet and rode down the slope at a gallop. Panic had caused the two slavers to pass up the only good chance they had of taking him by surprise. He would see that they didn’t get another.
Whoever the two men were, they were moving fast, maybe too fast for the country that lay ahead. He eased the stallion to a walk when he reached broken country covered with rocks and sliding shale. Chipped rocks told him that the two slavers were going at a dangerous pace. He topped the last ridge before the desert flats began. Then he saw them far off in the distance, raising dust, moving fast. He knew with grim satisfaction that there was only one direction they could go and hope to stay alive—and that was back the way they had come. The journey east was a terrible one; north and south was worse.
A few miles into the desert he saw an empty canteen. Now that he was down on the flats he could no longer see their dust. He rode easily with his hat brim pulled low over his eyes to guard against the glare of the sun on the gypsum sand. Five miles out into the desert he spilled water into his hat and let the stallion drink. Then he swallowed a mouthful of water and mounted up again.<
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Now it was two hours later and the stallion sensed death before he did. Sundance raised himself in the stirrups and shaded his eyes with his hand. Far off in the distance something big and black made a sharp contrast with the stark whiteness of a sand dune. He rode until he was about five hundred yards away, then dismounted and walked ahead with the rifle in his hands. The stallion followed, whinnying now and then.
A horse with a broken leg lay dying halfway up the dune, and Sundance didn’t see the dead man until he got closer. The body was already partly covered with drifting sand. The dead man had been shot in the face; sand already caked the shredded cheekbone. Sundance went to the top of the dune and saw a dust cloud in the distance. No need to hurry now. He went back down then shot the dying horse. The animal kicked once and died. It was all written out as clear as day. One of the horses had broken a leg and there had been a short dispute about the other animal. The buzzards were already circling in, lighting down and flapping into the air again, getting closer all the time.
Sundance led the stallion over the crest of the dune and mounted up when he got to the other side. By now he had come more than twenty miles from the mesa, and the sun was well past the noon mark. In the distance, the dry lake stretched out like eternity.
He was less than a mile from it when he saw a riderless horse coming toward him. At first it was just a vague shape with a trail of dust behind it. It got closer. He pulled the Winchester from its scabbard and waited. Now he was close enough to see the dust-darkened froth dripping from the crazed animal’s mouth. The animal’s eyes bulged in terror and sweat glistened on its flanks. It galloped straight at him, and his own horse whinnied with fright. Sundance raised the Winchester, took careful aim and fired. The heavy bullet struck the maddened horse between the eyes, but the force of its gallop took the animal another ten or fifteen feet before its forelegs buckled abruptly and it fell in a heap.
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