by Paul Lederer
Quinn’s mouth was dry, his heart pounding, his breathing ragged as they reached the half-acre-sized stand of nopal. There were game paths through the head-high cactus where a few browsing animals had passed and smaller creatures had come to hide or to retreat from the heat of day.
‘Get down and get in there,’ Quinn said, half-pushing Alicia to her hands and knees. Almost immediately she suffered needle-like punctures on the palms of her hands. Quinn heard her cry out in pain, but he pushed her ahead as he scooted into the thicket. There was no way to avoid the thorns and their bite was brutally painful, but Quinn kept on, urging Alicia ahead. The stinging of the cactus needles was far preferable to the angry bite of a .44 slug.
They made their way to a sort of clearing in the stand: ten feet or so of naked ground where some animals had apparently made their bed. The cactus loomed high on every side. They could see the blue sky only in patches. Alicia was biting at a thorn in her hand, trying to remove it with her teeth. Quinn didn’t take the time to remove the spines he had piercing his own hide. He sat cross-legged watching the entrance to the thicket for any man daring enough to follow them. None would be eager to attempt it, he thought, and the next minutes proved him correct. The gunmen started to fire their weapons into the big thicket. They had no visible targets and the cactus-stand’s size offered too many possible places of concealment. Still, several bullets penetrated their shelter, ripping through the fibrous paddles of the cactus. Quinn put his arm around Alicia and forced her to the ground to lie beside him.
‘I just got most of the stickers out,’ she complained but not bitterly. The ground, too, was strewn with thorns and she had collected many other piercing barbs as she was pressed to earth.
‘What are we going to do, Quinn?’ she asked, looking up at him with understandable fear in her eyes.
‘They can’t keep the shooting up for ever. They must know it’s just a waste of ammunition – and I don’t think they’re likely to try to burrow in after us. We wait,’ he said. ‘They’ll give it up sooner or later. They have to.’
‘How will we even know if they’re gone?’ Alicia asked logically.
‘If we must, we’ll wait until dark and try it then.’
‘Spend an entire day in this horrible place?’ Alicia asked. It was already dreadfully hot on the desert, and every small movement carried the risk of new puncture wounds. The ones they had gotten earlier were already beginning to fester and itch. Quinn did not answer. He had no answer. They would remain in hiding like quivering rabbits. It seemed to be their only chance of escaping alive.
An hour passed in slow torment. Once a rattlesnake slithered past, but they ignored one another and it went about its own business.
‘Do you think they’ve gone?’ Alicia asked hopefully, but the words had no sooner passed her lips than a barrage of rifle fire sounded again from the opposite bank. Timing the shots mentally, counting them, Quinn took it for two men with repeating rifles.
‘I think Guerrero’s gone. He’s left a couple of men to keep us pinned down until he can return.’
‘With the coach? With Lily?’
‘That seems to be his idea,’ Tom answered.
‘What will he do after that? What would you do, Tom?’
He shook his head. He didn’t wish to answer her. He knew what he would do if he were Guerrero and it scared the hell out of him. The nopal would not burn, but that did not mean that by collecting litter and dry brush a fire could not be started. If he were Guerrero, had the time and enough anger in him, he would try to smoke them out of the thicket, leaving them with the choice of asphyxiating or emerging to take a bullet. Tom did not know what choice he would make in that eventuality.
‘Can we surrender?’ Alicia asked at one point as the day grew drier, the air in the thicket more stifling.
‘We’d end up right back where we started,’ Tom reminded her. ‘If we were that lucky.’
Alicia was as aware of that as Quinn was. She also knew that this time Ernesto Guerrero would not even attempt to play gracious host. She was starting to get more uncomfortable with each passing minute, unable to rise, unable to even shift position without new pain. Her suggestion had been only grasping at straws.
It was dusk before Quinn could dredge up the nerve to try it again. The day had been long, sweltering. They had had no food, no water. The cactus spines were a constant torment. But with death waiting beyond the thicket, there had been no choice but to remain where they were. All of his thoughts were fixed only on keeping Alicia alive now. The stagecoach and its passengers meant nothing at the moment, not Sabato’s gold, Jody Short’s date with the hangman in Yuma, nor the careless Lily Davenport.
Only Alicia. And the small woman was exhausted, suffering mightily. He touched her arm and said, ‘Come on. I think they’re all gone,’ breaking the silence they had held as the hours of deprivation had passed. ‘I’m getting you out of here.’
‘Can you, Tom Quinn?’ she asked with the weakest of smiles. More roughly, he said:
‘Come on.’
Carefully, then, they again made their way on hands and knees across the blanket of thorns, the cactus around seeming to lash out at them in their passing. The sky beyond held a purple haze. A dry wind had risen with the sundown. That brought a small bit of relief. It was enough to nudge their spirits slightly higher.
At the exit to the thicket, Quinn held Alicia back with his arm as he studied the opposite rim of the wash. He could make out no silhouettes of man or horse. That did not mean that no one was there, but he had hopes that he and Alicia would be as difficult to spot from that side of the gully as the Guerrero riders were from theirs. They were now risking bullets, but it seemed to both of them to be preferable to smothering to death in the thorny thicket.
‘Which way?’ Alicia asked, remaining in a crouch as they emerged.
‘Not downhill, that’s for sure,’ Quinn answered quietly, his right hand tight around the butt of his Colt revolver. ‘Up and over, out of this gully.’
Alicia only nodded obediently. She could have asked him a dozen questions, such as where they were to go if they did manage to get out of the wash, which direction would they strike out in, how could they hope to find water. She said nothing. She touched his shoulder briefly, lifted sundown eyes to his and nodded. She would follow wherever he led.
Moving slowly, keeping their silhouettes low, they circled the stand of nopal, climbing over rocky ground now. Alicia slipped once, banging her knee roughly, but she stifled her cry of pain. Quinn tugged her to her feet and they started on as the last glow of color flushed the western sky with crimson and gold. They were a dozen steps away from the rocky rim when the man with the gun appeared, back-lighted by the sundown skies.
‘Hold it right there, Quinn,’ he commanded. ‘Or I’ll gun you both down, the lady first.’
NINE
Lon wasn’t kidding, Quinn knew. The blond-haired gunman stood, legs spread wide apart, revolver steady in his hand, staring down at them with expressionless eyes.
‘Looks like the game is over, Quinn. Why don’t you make it easier on all of us and drop those guns?’
Lon was a dark silhouette against the lurid backdrop of the sundown sky. Quinn considered trying to take him, but he was on uneven ground; the gunhand was ready. And he remembered Lon’s words. The man was without mercy; undoubtedly he would keep his threat to shoot Alicia first.
Quinn let his pistol drop from his hand. Not fighting back did allow Alicia a slender chance of surviving this night, depending on Guerrero’s mood. She glanced at Quinn unhappily but not accusingly and let her own pistol fall to the rocky earth. Lon backed away from the rim of the gully and gestured with the barrel of his revolver.
‘All right now,’ he said with grim satisfaction. ‘Clamber up here.’
Quinn led the way up the sand and rock of the bluff. Alicia, following, slipped and went to hands and knees, a small cry escaping her lips. She was exhausted, water-deprived, her hand and knees pi
erced by thorns. Quinn slid back down to help her to rise. Guiding her by the elbow they made their way to where Lon stood. The gunman did not seem amused, nor was he triumphant. There was no expression at all in his eyes or on his stony face.
‘What now?’ Quinn asked, his chest heaving with the exertion. Alicia was tilted against him for support.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Lon said between thin lips. ‘Personally I couldn’t care less about you two, but Guerrero might have something in mind.’
‘Such as?’
‘You’d have to ask him,’ Lon said without concern. ‘There’s a place not far along here where the bluff has broken down. We can cross the wash there. That’s how I got up here. But let’s get going before darkness settles.’ Now Lon did look slightly uneasy. It was the falling night, Quinn realized. The night into which Lon had sent so many of his enemies.
He feared that long night as well.
‘Let’s get moving,’ the blond gunman ordered, motioning with his pistol. It was then that the rifles from the far side of the wash opened up. Five, six or more. Lon halted, glanced that way and while he was distracted Quinn threw himself against the gunfighter. They fell in a jumble to the rock-strewn earth. Quinn had struck Lon on the neck just below the ear as they fell; now, on top of him on the ground, he winged wild rights and lefts at the bandit. He used no science, only ferocious instincts. Quinn was a wild thing trying to fight for his life and protect his woman.
Lon fought back furiously, like a cornered wildcat, using knees and elbows, fists and skull. But Quinn’s first savage blows had taken some of the steam out of the badman’s blows. Exhausted as he was, Quinn was still the bigger man and he had his adversary pinned. One thudding right landed at the hinge of Lon’s jaw. Quinn felt the blow send tremors from his wrist to his shoulder as it struck. Lon felt nothing. He lay sprawled and unconscious against the desert.
The rifle fire still racketed across the gorge. Now and then in the dusk muzzle flashes could be seen as Quinn got slowly, heavily to his feet, snatched up Lon’s handgun and walked to Alicia who had seated herself on the ground and seemed unable to rise.
‘Are you all right?’ Quinn asked crouching down beside her in the near-darkness.
‘Who is shooting, Quinn?’
‘I don’t know,’ he had to admit, shaking his head heavily. ‘But you and I have to get away from here. Can you walk?’
‘Yes, of course I can,’ she said with injured pride. But as Quinn helped her to her feet again, she wobbled and swayed in his arms. She could not go on now. Not without rest, without water. But they had to move away from the area. With the pistol in one hand he stooped, scooped Alicia into his arms and began making his trudging way north. Alicia struggled at first, tried to argue, but she didn’t have it in her. It was amazing how light she was, even as debilitated as Quinn himself felt. They went on as darkness invaded the desert skies.
A hundred yards on the horsemen halted their progress.
With Alicia in his arms, Quinn did not even consider trying to bring the Colt revolver into play. Two men, each with unsheathed rifles, sat like black silhouettes against the last remnant of burnt orange color offered by the dying sun, blocking their way. This was it then. The end of the long trail which led nowhere.
‘What are you doing?’ one of the men demanded loudly.
‘Just … trying to get … home,’ Quinn said with immense effort.
‘Put the girl down,’ he was ordered, ‘and don’t think of trying to use that pistol. You would have no chance.’
That was so. Quinn let Alicia slide slowly to her feet. The Colt remained gripped in his hand. He did not mean to surrender it – his only tenuous tether to survival.
‘Toss them your canteen, Luis. They need water.’
Quinn frowned, not understanding at all. The man next addressed Alicia.
‘Are you all right, girl?’
‘Yes, Father, thank you.’
‘Luis, send someone back to take care of that,’ he said with a disparaging glance at the still unconscious Lou.
The rifle fire had died down. Crossing the gully again, Alicia behind her father on his strapping black horse, Quinn mounted behind the silent Luis, they reached a rough camp and they paused to sit on the still-heated earth on a spread blanket and drink the blessed tepid water from canteens.
Vicente Delgado had shed his sombrero and rolled a cigarette. The smoke was bitter-smelling, but not unpleasant as it rose in layers into the warm desert night.
‘Can you tell us what happened?’ Quinn asked.
‘Only this,’ Delgado answered. ‘The eastbound stage reached Las Palmas yesterday and the driver told Aaron Pyle that the westbound coach had never reached Yuma and he had not passed it along the road. I was notified, of course.’ Quinn nodded, not knowing why ‘of course’. Apparently Delgado had much overt or covert power in Las Palmas.
Delgado continued. His hooded eyes showed only a calmness that he could not have felt when the news of his daughter’s abduction had reached him. ‘I turned this matter over in my mind,’ Delgado was saying. His hand now rested on Alicia’s shoulder. ‘Who would have taken a stagecoach away? For what reason? Highwaymen, bandits might have taken what money or jewels they could steal and ridden away, but a stagecoach! It would only slow them down as they tried to elude the law.
‘More, who was capable of this act? It would have to be a well-organized gang with a place near enough to the border that they could escape to and feel safe from pursuit. I then thought of my old … amigo,’ Vicente said the word harshly, ‘Ernesto Guerrero.’
‘He had a hideout not far south of the stage road. In Soledad. I knew that he had faithful men around him, a large profitable enterprise based there. I still could not reason out why Guerrero would want a stagecoach, but in my mind I was nearly certain that it must be him who took it. I summoned twenty men and we rode to Soledad.
‘The stage was gone when we reached the village. Ernesto was gone, but I found a man I knew,’ Delgado said thinly, ‘a fat little man named Rafael. You might have met him. I offered him – incentives – to tell me what had happened.
‘Within the hour we were on the trail northward. We caught up with Guerrero and his men just as they had managed to halt a stagecoach with a foundering team pulling it. They fled as they saw us. Guerrero knew it was no good to try lying to me as he has so frequently in the past. I looked first into the coach, but Alicia was not there. Only a taffy-eyed woman with brown hair, a little crazy-looking man with his hands bound.
‘We pursued Guerrero again. Not far from here he decided to make his stand. You must have heard the fight. He knew that the vengeance I would extract would be far more painful than any a bullet could offer.
‘The man was many things, but not a coward. The fight was brief but bitter.
‘And now,’ Delgado said, ‘as you can see, Guerrero is not here and I am.’
The story, long as it was, still left much to the imagination, but the finer points did not concern Tom Quinn just then. He was dog-tired, yet his body tissues were slowly absorbing the water he had been drinking, and settling night brought some small relief from the heat of day. He felt that he had to go on.
‘You say the coach horses had been run into the ground. Did you see the driver?’ Quinn asked.
‘The team stood trembling, heads hanging. They had had no water and had been run hard,’ Delgado answered. ‘As for a driver, I did not see one. Only the bound man and the woman with the taffy eyes.’
‘You left them there?’ Alicia asked, not totally surprised.
‘Was I to bring them along in pursuit of Guerrero, into the teeth of a gun battle?’ Delgado said with a short laugh.
‘No,’ Alicia said, ‘but –’
‘I tossed them a canteen. I did not free the bound man although he begged me to.’
‘I have to catch up with them,’ Quinn said, rising. His own legs were unsteady now.
Vicente Delgado’s dark eyes only watched, expressin
g nothing. ‘Do what you must,’ he said coolly.
‘Can I get a horse?’ Tom asked.
‘Guerrero’s men left many,’ Delgado said without humor. ‘Take your pick.’
‘Pick out two of the freshest ones, Tom,’ Alicia said and now she too struggled to her feet.
‘He doesn’t need two horses,’ Vicente Delgado commented.
‘Of course he does,’ Alicia said. ‘Am I to walk?’
‘You are continuing – to Yuma?’ her father asked without apparent surprise, but with concern.
‘It is what I started out to do,’ she answered with a toss of her head. ‘It is what I promised my sister.’
‘She is stubborn, no?’ Delgado said to Quinn.
‘She is stubborn,’ Tom agreed. ‘Would you be willing to accompany us along the trail – in case some of Guerrero’s men are still lurking?’
‘It is not good for me to stay north of the border for too long,’ Delgado answered. He did not explain. Tom thought that he needed no explanation to understand. ‘After this is over, Quinn, will you bring my daughter home?’
Quinn hesitated in answering and Alicia replied forcefully before he could. ‘I will not be coming home, Father. I am going to live up along the Yavapai. With Tom Quinn.’
‘I see,’ Delgado mused.
‘Do you object, Father?’
‘Not if it is a thing done under the laws of God.’ He rose then and shook hands with Tom Quinn, who stood dumbstruck, frowning deeply. ‘Good luck to you both,’ Delgado said. Tom started to speak again but Vicente Delgado told him: ‘Say nothing. It is pointless. The girl will have her way.’
Tom had plenty to say, but he did not feel like going into it then, not with Alicia’s father present, so he just accepted the premature congratulations mutely. Delgado beckoned his aide, Luis, and gave him a series of orders in rapid Spanish.
‘Horses will be brought to you and a waterbag. Is there anything else you require?’
‘Is there any chance that someone has found a spare holster?’ Tom asked. He had been carrying his pistols behind his belt for days now and his flesh there was rubbed raw, front and back.
