Noel nodded, then glanced at the sky in puzzlement. It was cloudless. “I didn’t know a storm could come and go so fast.”
The boy laughed in astonishment. “Mister, there ain’t been no storm here. Couple of nights ago it rained hard up in those mountains yonder.” He pointed north, and Noel saw a dim purple smudge of a mountain range on the far horizon. “Reckon this water came down from them.”
It was Noel’s turn to be astonished. “Impossible. Water wouldn’t run that far. Those mountains are miles away.”
“Yep. That’s the way it happens in this country. You think this draw was made by ’paches using shovels?”
Noel realized the boy was no longer looking at him with wariness. Instead, amusement gleamed in those large blue eyes along with some good-natured scorn.
Before Noel could answer, the boy pointed southeast at the tufts of dead grass. “Look at all this good tobosa grass. It’s here because water comes here. The better the grass, the more water has been coming down this draw.”
Noel wondered about the blow the boy had taken on the head. Gently he said, “The grass is dead.”
“Naw! It’s greening up some. We had a trace of rain a week or so back. Now this flood will bring it out quick. I’ll have to tell Uncle Frank to push the springin’ heifers this way.” He paused and worry returned to his face. “That is, if I can find Roan.”
“Who’s Roan?”
“My horse. Best one I ever had, too. You seen him?”
Noel shook his head. He thought about miles of desolate country, fierce heat, and no transportation. “How far are we from where you live?”
Cody squinted into the distance and nibbled on the corner of his mouth. “Now that’s a good question. I went into the draw probably about a mile or so up. That stupid maverick kept trying to run off from me. Didn’t want to be driven anywhere. Otherwise I wouldn’t have ridden the draw. Uncle Frank will call me a chucklehead for sure. And if I’ve lost Roan—”
“How far?”
“Oh, I reckon we’re about fifteen miles from the headquarters. Up over those little ridges yonder is a line cabin about five or six miles. But I don’t think we ought to go that way. Skeet said last night he’d heard some Comancheros had started raiding up from the border.”
“The Mexican border?” asked Noel.
“Sure.” Cody frowned. “You ain’t from around here, are you, mister?”
“Call me Noel. No, I’m not. I’m from…Chicago.”
Cody blinked, looking impressed. “Golly! That’s back East somewhere.”
“North.”
“Big city?”
Noel squinted. “Very.”
“I thought you talked like a tenderfoot. No offense.”
Noel smiled. “That’s me.” He pointed at his cloth shoes. “Especially if we have to walk fifteen miles in these.”
“I never seen moccasins like those before. Uncle Frank says it ain’t polite to ask folks about themselves, but you been with the ’paches, or something?”
It was the easiest explanation. “Yes,” said Noel.
“Golly! They’ve had you for a slave, haven’t they? Dressed you like a squaw and all. No offense. Did they torture you?”
“No.”
“Whose band was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long were you a prisoner? Where did they capture you? Did they get any of your friends? How did you get away?”
“I jumped in the water,” said Noel. “Now enough questions. We can’t stand around in this heat all day. I feel like my brain is melting.”
Cody bent over and brushed the sand from his hair. “I reckon I lost my hat. Let’s go up the bank a ways and look for Roan.”
“The horse would have come by now if he heard you calling.”
“Maybe. And maybe he’s already lit out for home. Uncle Frank is going to tan my hide for this. That maverick steer probably drowned his stupid self, and now I’ll be coming in afoot.”
“You’ll get your horse back, I’m sure,” said Noel.
“Naw, it ain’t a ten-dollar horse Uncle Frank’ll be mad about. It’s my saddle and my rope. Both new.” Cody turned red. “I just had me a birthday about a week back.”
“Congratulations. Let’s—”
Cody glanced past Noel’s shoulder and without warning he went tense and still. Then he grabbed Noel’s arm in a grip like steel and pulled him down behind a bush.
Noel slithered around in the hot sand on his knees and looked where Cody was staring. He saw the series of small, stony ridges to the south, a few tall yucca plants in white bloom, and cactus. Nothing else. A hawk sailed across the sky, and the earth was hot, empty, and silent. “What—”
“Quiet!” whispered Cody. His eyes were round and tense. Noel could see the pulse hammering in his temple. “I saw a mirror flash. If another answers…”
He didn’t finish his sentence.
Noel wondered why in the world they should worry about a mirror flash, but he kept quiet and thought it out. Steel mirrors were used for hand signals, swift communication in a land devoid of electronics.
“Who?” he whispered.
“It could be a couple of ’paches signaling each other,” muttered Cody. “Or maybe I just saw the sun flash off a silver concha on somebody’s saddle. I don’t see nothin’ now. You?”
“No.”
Noel was having trouble adjusting to long-distance visibility. The idea of seeing someone a mile or more away made him feel twice as exposed and vulnerable as before. He stared at the ridges until his eyes burned, but he saw no riders.
“Yep, I see ’em,” said Cody grimly. He pointed. “Just for a moment they went over the top of the ridge and were above the skyline. Maybe a half dozen. Must be Comancheros. ’Paches don’t like to ride horses much.”
“What are Comancheros?” asked Noel.
Cody shot him a serious, worried look. “Nobody you want to tangle with if you can help it. I reckon we’d better hightail it out of here.”
Chapter 2
They made poor time at first, for Cody insisted on keeping to cover and every half hour or so he crouched down and watched their back trail for a while to make certain they weren’t being followed.
Parched, parboiled, and drenched with sweat, Noel got tired of all the caution and said so. “Looks to me like we’re clear.”
Cody grunted. “Uncle Frank says that when everything looks most peaceful and safe, that’s when you ought to keep one hand on your gun and the other on your scalp.”
With his knife, Cody cut off the top of a barrel cactus and dug out some of the soft, moist insides. Noel sniffed the stuff with reluctance, but when Cody put it in his mouth and chewed on it, Noel did the same. The little taste it had was bitter. It didn’t contain enough moisture to make a difference. After a few moments, Noel spat it out. Cody did the same and wiped his chapped lips.
“Sure do miss my hat,” he said, glancing up at the merciless sun. “Least it ain’t July. We’d be fair cooked by now.”
Noel felt cooked enough. They were heading west, and the steady breeze from that direction increased as the afternoon wore on. It was a desert wind, dry and lacking even a trace of coolness. Noel’s arms and legs were sunburned. His face hurt from sun and wind. He quit talking. He quit watching the country around them. He just concentrated on putting his feet in the boy’s tireless tracks.
By the time the sun was slipping low ahead of them, the flat mesquite country had changed. Reddish, sandy earth had become powdery chalk that floated up from their dragging feet to coat their clothing and choke their nostrils. The ground grew rocky and sported a thin silky grass with tufts. Little dips and ridges made the going slower.
Noel had worn through his thin soles. He was limping on some thorns he’d picked up. Cody looked drawn and gray-faced. One of his boot soles came loose, and he tied it back together with his belt. A roadrunner trotted ahead of them for a few yards, then flicked its long tail and veered into the greasewoo
d. Grasshoppers jumped in waves away from them. Cactus wrens fluttered and chirped busily in the brush.
Noel and Cody crested a ridge overlooking a narrow arroyo choked with brush and tumbled boulders. There they took a rest, making sure they were below the skyline. Noel groaned as he sat down. He wasn’t sure he would be able to get up and walk again. Right now, the way his muscles were protesting, he could lie here on the stones and the cactus and sleep forever.
“We’re almost home,” said Cody. He slapped some of the dust off his trousers. “This here is the horse pasture. Just a quarter section in these little valleys and all, but there’s good grama grass for them to eat.”
Noel rubbed his face. He had no interest in grass. His own stomach felt so hollow he thought his ribs might collapse. A jackrabbit crouched about twenty feet away, long ears shining pink in the approaching sunset. He thought about the taste of rabbit meat and licked his lips. He’d learned to appreciate the flavor during past travels.
“How close is almost home?” he asked.
“’Bout a half mile. Maybe less. I sure hope Jose has already started cooking on that big feast he’s planning for tonight. I could eat a whole bull calf all by myself. Uncle Frank and Grandpa rode off to town yesterday to meet the stage. They’re supposed to bring my sister Lisa-Marie home tonight.”
Shyly Cody pulled out the photograph of the girl Noel had examined earlier. Noel pretended to look at it closely.
“She resembles you.”
“Yeah, we’re twins. I ain’t seen her in five years though. Uncle Frank packed her off to boarding school in Santa Fe when my ma died. He said the ranch wasn’t no place for a girl. I reckon that’s so, but she’ll be a stranger to me now.”
“Maybe not.”
Cody snorted. “Well, look at her. Wearing a fancy dress and all la-di-dah with ribbons in her hair. The last time I saw her she was wearing some of my pants and ’pache moccasins, her hair in pigtails, and screaming Mexican cuss words at the top of her lungs while Uncle Frank drove her off to town in the buckboard.”
Noel had to laugh. “I take it she didn’t want to go.”
“Naw. I figured she’d run away and be back down here in a few weeks, but she didn’t. She stayed the whole time until she graduated. Now she’s all educated and different, and what Uncle Frank thinks he’s going to do with her is—”
He broke off, turning his head, and sniffed. “You smell that?”
Noel put his nostrils in the breeze, which had grown still when the sun started to go down, but had now picked up again. The wind was cool on his bare arms, raising goose bumps through his sunburn.
“Smoke?” he said at last.
Cody climbed to his feet. “Shouldn’t be any. I haven’t seen signs of a fire.”
The boy looked worried again. Without a word, Noel pushed himself to his feet, biting back a moan, and forced his stiffening muscles to move. The boy was already striding out, setting a fast pace that soon left Noel lagging behind.
In the slow-gathering twilight, the rocky shale made footing treacherous. Noel slithered and stubbed his toes. He kept a wary eye out for snakes, but Cody was nearly running now with all caution forgotten. The smell of smoke grew steadily stronger. It wasn’t the light, savory-scented smoke of a campfire made from sagebrush or greasewood. No, it was heavy, acrid…the smell of a serious fire.
Ahead, a fat column of black rose into the purple sky, its menace silhouetted against the coral sunset.
“The ranch!” choked Cody. “Somebody’s burning the ranch! Oh, God, I got to stop them! I got to—”
“Hold it!” shouted Noel, lunging to grab his arm and sling him around.
Cody struggled, swinging a wild fist that Noel ducked.
He caught the boy by both arms and shook him. “You can’t just go charging in. You lost your gun, remember? What are you going to do?”
Cody’s eyes looked black in the shadows. He wrenched free. “I got to stop it.”
He plunged on, and Noel ran after him.
They climbed up a gulch that sliced a steep slope. Cody never hesitated at the top, but Noel took the crest cautiously and paused there to take in the sight.
The ranch headquarters stood cupped in a protected area, bounded on three sides by ridges, with a sloping vista spreading out from it to the south. A pair of mighty cottonwoods shaded a small dirt tank built to hold the runoff water pumped by the windmill. The barn and corrals stood some distance away from the other buildings. Livestock milled uneasily within the pens. The main house was a large rambling affair of adobe, fitted with a tiled roof. There couldn’t be much of it that would burn, unless there were ceiling timbers, but tall flames were raging through the shattered windows, seeking air, and the less substantial bunkhouse was entirely engulfed, its wooden frame barely seen through the yellow-white fire.
Men on horseback were circling at a safe distance from the fire. Noel could hear them shouting, and some fired their pistols into the air. A girl’s scream pierced the noise.
“Lisa-Marie!” shouted Cody.
“Cody, no!”
But Cody didn’t hear. He ran at the horsemen, yelling like a madman. One of the desperadoes saw him coming and laughed.
“Hey, amigos! It is another one, eh? Olè!”
He spurred his horse at Cody, and the animal’s shoulder knocked Cody spinning. The boy staggered and fell to one knee. The horseman wheeled his mount and came at him again just as Cody struggled back to his feet. The man struck Cody across the face with his big sombrero. Cody, however, seized his wrist, and nearly dragged the man from the saddle.
The man wrenched free, and swung his pistol viciously.
Even from a distance, Noel heard the thud of it hitting Cody in the face. Cody crumpled in a heap, and Noel’s temper snapped.
There wasn’t much cover, but the men’s attention was still on the fire and their own celebrations. Noel saw one rider pass a bottle to another. He crouched low and ran for the corrals, taking a risk on being seen, his heart whamming his rib cage like thunder.
He made it without being spotted, and clung a moment to the board fence. What he needed was a diversion and a weapon. The girl’s scream came again, a sobbing desperate cry that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He gritted his teeth and forced himself into action.
Over to one side of the corrals stood a buckboard wagon with a dome-lid trunk and some carpetbags still strapped to the back. The horses had been unharnessed, but among the milling animals inside the corral, he saw one with a saddle on.
Noel slipped into the midst of the frightened horses. They were rumbling and snorting, shaking their heads, their ears working in alarm. The fire threw eerie shadows across their backs. Noel spoke softly to them as he worked his way through their midst. It seemed to take an eternity to get to the saddled horse. At last, however, he grabbed the one he wanted. It shied, but he grasped the bridle and hung on grimly, making soothing sounds to it and stroking its neck until it quieted.
Untying the reins from where they’d been looped around the saddle horn, he felt for a saddle holster and found none. Well, a six-shooter would have been too much luck to hope for. He noticed one of the top boards of the fence had warped in the sun and weather. One end had come loose from a post, and the nails showed. He grasped it, getting a palm full of splinters, and managed to pull the whole board loose.
A piece of wood wasn’t much against men with pistols, but he didn’t much care for types who attacked houses about suppertime, set fire to them, beat up young boys, and made pretty girls scream. Swinging into the saddle, he balanced the board across the saddle horn, then bent over and unlatched the gate.
The horses milled and shied back. Then one saw freedom and lunged for it. The others followed, galloping full-tilt.
Noel held his quivering mount on a tight rein until all the others were out, then he gave slack. His horse nearly bolted out from under him, snorting and fighting the bit. He crouched low, clutching his board, and stayed at the rear
of the herd until they swept past the burning house and veered from it.
Noel tugged hard on the reins and forced his bucking, protesting mount straight at the nearest desperado. The man saw him and yelled a warning that was cut short with a mighty oomph when Noel whacked him across the middle with the board.
Mexican curses filled the air. A shot whizzed over Noel’s head. He ducked, and again his nervous mount nearly shied out from under him. Fighting to regain control of his horse, Noel wrenched the animal around and went galloping straight at the next man, yelling at the top of his lungs and swinging the board like a club.
The man shot at him, but the bullet went wide. Noel was too crazy to care. He hit the man with a mighty crunch. Screaming, the Mexican tumbled off the back of his horse.
Something plucked at the shoulder of Noel’s tunic. He heard a flat-crack sound, and an angry hum like a hornet. The bullets were getting closer. He had two down, and how many to go?
A rifle opened fire—its sound heavy and vicious above the pistols. Noel’s momentary craziness faded to fear, until he saw one of the desperadoes go tumbling and realized he had an ally.
Noel tossed aside his board and jumped off his horse, letting it shy free of him and run, reins dangling. He ran to the fallen man and scooped up his pistol.
It was a heavy Colt .45, long-barreled and awkward. He hoped it had some bullets left in it.
Before he could check, a hoarse yell made him look up in time to see a rider bearing down on him at a gallop. From that angle it looked like the orange flames shooting everywhere had formed a halo around this man. Noel glimpsed a flash of white teeth in the shadows beneath the wide hat brim and guessed the man was either saying his prayers or cursing Noel to perdition.
Noel had no time to aim. He shot the man’s horse in the neck. Horse and rider went down almost on top of Noel. He sidestepped and saw the rider kick free of the stirrups even as the horse was falling in a headlong tumble. Noel launched himself in a furious tackle, bringing down the rider before he could scramble clear.
The man stank of whiskey and sweat. His leather jacket was greasy with age and kept Noel from getting a good hold on him. He fought mean and dirty, kicking and gouging, but Noel managed to hit him in the head with his pistol, and the man went slack beneath him.
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