by Paul Lederer
The horses that were brought looked relatively fresh. Tom recognized neither of them – a stubby little pinto pony and a long-legged gray. Alicia did not waste a lot of time in goodbyes. She hugged her father once, whispered a word or two into his ear and then swung aboard the pinto. The silver moon was rising to their right when they again started up the trail, and the grooves the wagon wheels had left in the sand were easy to follow by its light. A coyote crossed their trail, looked up with annoyed surprise and darted into the gully.
‘You are not speaking,’ Alicia commented another mile on. ‘Are you angry with me?’
‘How are you feeling?’ Quinn asked.
‘Not so bad,’ she shrugged, ‘I have a lot of itching all over from the cactus. You did not answer my question. Are you angry with me? Is it because of what I told my father?’
‘It’s usual for people to have an understanding between them before a marriage is announced,’ Tom said grouchily.
‘I thought of that before I spoke – but I had to tell my father. Who knows when, if ever, I will see him again? I did not want him to worry.’
‘So you didn’t mean it?’ Tom asked, puzzled by the girl.
‘Of course I meant it,’ she said with surprise. ‘I am a determined woman. You, Tom, you are a stubborn man or else you would not still be at this task. Therefore, if we both set our sights on the same target, there is nothing that can ever stop us.’
Tom shook his head. That was a sort of logic, he supposed, but not the sort he was used to. The moon cast shadows across the sand and backlighted Alicia. Her profile was beautiful in moonlight and after another mile or so, he forgot his anger.
‘What do you think we will find when we reach the coach?’ Alicia asked.
‘I have no idea. Horses dead in their harnesses? George Sabato trying to walk out of the desert – he might have taken the gold and made an attempt. He feels that strongly about his obligation.’
‘What about Lily Davenport? And Jody Short?’ she asked, speaking his name as if it left a foul taste in her mouth.
‘We can hope for the best,’ he told her. ‘We won’t know until we catch up with them.’
‘Guerrero’s men – do you really think there might be some of them still around?’
‘Not if they’ve got any sense,’ was Tom’s answer.
The night wore on; the moon as small and bright as a silver dollar rode high in the sky.
‘I can see the rabbit,’ Alicia said to herself as she gazed skyward.
‘What rabbit?’ Tom asked in bafflement.
‘On the moon.’ She pointed skyward. ‘You have to look at it just right and you can see the rabbit on its face.’
Tom glanced that way, shrugged and put his mind on other things. Like the missing stagecoach, like the dangerous Jody Short, who might somehow have managed to free himself in their absence, like the ‘taffy-eyed’ Lily Davenport, who would not be safe if the little killer decided that she was ‘dirty’ as well.
‘Now can you see it?’ Alicia asked with a child’s delight.
Let her have her rabbit on the moon. Quinn was more concerned with the coyotes on the desert.
It was only an hour or so before dawn when they eventually came upon the stagecoach.
Amid all the long-spreading desolate silence of the vast desert, it appeared more desolate and silent than the land itself. Quinn held up his hand and they halted, sitting their horses side by side on the low sandy knoll overlooking the flat where the unmoving stage rested.
‘Could they all be asleep?’ Alicia asked in a low, taut voice. Tom did not answer. He loosened his Colt in its holster and they started their horses on again.
Riding slowly toward the moon-shadowed stage they saw no sign of movement, heard no voices. The desert whispered against itself. Therefore it was all the more startling when the man rose from behind a stand of creosote brush and called out:
‘You there! Rein in – I’m coming out.’
TEN
Quinn’s hand had dropped to his holster. If this was one of Guerrero’s bandits, he was ready to shoot it out with the man, little as he liked the prospect. But it was not. Staggering across the sand, a heavy canvas sack across his shoulder, came George Sabato, appearing shrunken, utterly weary.
‘I thought it was you, Quinn,’ Sabato said as he reached the horses. He looked up pleadingly. ‘Have you any water?’
Alicia untied the three-gallon burlap water bag from her saddle pommel and passed it to him. Delgado drank greedily, lowered the bag and drank again. At last he wiped his hand across his mouth and handed the heavy bag clumsily up to Quinn, who asked:
‘What are you doing out here alone, Sabato?’
‘Hiding the gold from the bandits,’ he said gesturing toward the now-familiar leather-handled bag lying at his feet. ‘I haven’t come this far just to lose it now.’
‘What happened?’ Quinn asked.
‘The horses couldn’t run anymore, and the raiders caught up with us. Then a second band of men arrived. There was a lot of shooting,’ Sabato said. ‘When I could, I slipped to the rear of the coach and recovered the gold. I made it into that stand of brush and stayed there all day, never knowing who would come back or when.’
‘What about Jody Short?’ Alicia demanded.
‘And Lily,’ Quinn asked.
‘I saw no more of them,’ Sabato answered. ‘I didn’t know what was happening, but if the stagecoach was their target, I wasn’t going to remain there with the gold. My career depends –’
Quinn interrupted him. He had heard all of that before. ‘Climb up behind me. We have to get back to the coach. We have reason to believe that the fighting is all over now.’
Sabato did not argue. He seemed unconvinced, but he was too weary to refuse. Heavy canvas sack still in hand, he swung up behind Quinn on the gray horse, and they continued on their way across the moon silvered desert.
Dawn was nearing, but it was still dark as they approached the stagecoach, darker now that the moon was heeling over behind the western mountains. Quinn rode with his pistol in his hand. He did not like the eerie silence. Someone should have heard them coming and emerged from the coach. Unless they weren’t able to. Sabato slipped awkwardly from the back of the horse and Quinn swung down, approaching the coach in a crouch, the Colt cool in his hand. He took a quick peek inside, lifted his eyes just above the window sill, then holstered his weapon, shrugging. ‘They’re gone.’
‘You mean that Jody Short got away?’ Alicia said, rushing to join him. ‘How could he?’ She swung open the door to the stage and peered in as if Quinn had made a mistake, as if Short and Lily Davenport had somehow hidden from him. ‘How could he?’ she repeated. The straps that had bound him lay on the floor of the coach.
‘At a guess,’ Quinn said, ‘I’d say that Short convinced her that they were now alone on the desert, and she would need his help to get out alive. She would have set him free if she believed that. Alone, frightened with Guerrero and another bunch of gunmen around, she might have seen freeing Short as her only chance to survive. He would have had hours to convince her as the night rolled past and no one came to her rescue. He must also have reminded her of the near-meeting with the Apaches.
‘Frightened enough, she might have done that.’
‘Where could they be?’ Alicia asked, searching the long desert with her eyes. It had grown cool as morning approached. She had her arms crossed beneath her breasts and her teeth chattered just a little.
‘They could be anywhere!’ Sabato said. He was frantic, but not over the missing passengers. His gold was all that was important to him. ‘We’ve got to get going again,’ he complained to Quinn.
‘Yes, we have to,’ Tom told him. ‘First, though, we have to find Short and Lily.’
‘But why …?’
Alicia told him in a scolding voice:
‘Because you do not know the little man as we do. He is capable of any act. Do you want to wash your hands of any fate that might befall
Lily Davenport.’
‘She’s the reason we’re in this mess,’ George Sabato replied.
‘Yes! And is that a reason to leave her in the desert with a woman killer?’
‘I guess not,’ a shamed Sabato said. ‘What do you want to do then, Quinn?’
‘You still have your hat,’ Quinn said with seeming irrelevance. Sabato frowned in confusion but did not respond, waiting for Quinn to continue. ‘We have almost three gallons of water in that bag. Give each of the horses a drink out of your hat. If it looks like any of them is absolutely incapable of continuing, we’ll cut them out of the harnesses and make our way as best we can. But it’s cooler now. They’ve had a long rest. With water they might be able to take us as far as Yuma if we take it easy on them. If we have to, we can try putting our saddle horses into harness, but that is an uncertain prospect at best. Let the horses drink, and we’ll see what condition they’re in when we’re ready to roll on.’
‘All right,’ Sabato agreed. ‘What are you going to do, Quinn?’
‘What do you think? I am going to find Lily Davenport.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Alicia said quickly. He did not try to argue her out of the idea. He knew her well enough by now to know that it would have been useless anyhow. ‘How do we proceed?’
‘There’s still enough moonlight for us to be able to see their footprints. There will be a lot of hoofprints from the bandits’ horses, but these will be overlaid on them. One set will be of a man’s boots, the others will be much smaller.’ Alicia gave him a half-mocking little smile as if he were stating the obvious.
Quinn went on, ‘Since the last place Jody Short wants to end up is in Yuma, and we know they wouldn’t want to go south toward Soledad again, we’ll try north and east first.’
‘I’ll look to the east,’ Alicia said.
‘Very well, I’ll try north. Try not to get out of sight of the coach,’ Quinn said severely. ‘I won’t have you lost out here.’
‘Because you do care?’ she asked hopefully. Quinn grunted a response which was no answer.
‘Don’t mount until you have found something. It’s much more difficult from horseback, even for experienced trackers, and neither of us is that. If you find their tracks just call out. There’s no need for silence. Anyone nearby will already know that we are here.’
They spread out then, leaving Sabato to water the horses. Methodically Quinn walked on, leading his horse, searching the sandy earth for tell-tale signs. He was more concerned for Lily than he had let on. True, she had gotten them all into this situation, but he still believed her to be more naïve than cunning. No matter which, she did not deserve to fall victim to the ruthless little maniac, Jody Short.
The moon was fading rapidly. Quinn still had not been able to cut their sign and now the dim afterglow he had been working by was nearly gone. Neither had Alicia had any luck. He could see her distantly criss-crossing the desert, searching for boot prints. Perhaps they were doomed to fail despite their good intentions. The entire run had been a disaster from the first moments; why should he hope that his luck would change now?
The sand underfoot was deep, deep enough for any impressions to have remained. There had been no noticeable wind blowing to drift the sand over their tracks. Quinn was beginning to wonder whether he had not guessed wrong again. Many things could have happened: for example one of the killed or injured raiders might have left his horse behind. Short and Lily Davenport could have caught it up and now be miles away on its back.
Quinn halted, gripping the reins to the gray horse tightly.
From somewhere a small sound had reached his ears. Soft, somehow pathetic like the mewling of a lost kitten. It came again. Ignoring his own advice, he swung into leather and started the long-legged horse in the direction of the sound.
A few hundred yards on he halted the gray, patted its neck, listened again, and the sound came to him once more. Now he was sure – it was a human voice. He heeled the big horse roughly toward its source.
He did not have to travel far. Arriving at the rim of a shallow wash, he saw her immediately. Lily Davenport lay on her back, skirt pulled nearly up over her head. She was thrashing and twisting. Her voice was muted because Jody Short, hair hanging in his face, had his hand over her mouth. Quinn started his horse, changed his mind and dismounted on the run. He half-slid, half-fell, down the sandy slope and charged Short full-bore, lowering his shoulder as he collided with the demented little man and drove him from Lily’s body.
Short came to his feet with a savage hiss, his fists bunched. His eyes lit with apparent delight as he recognized Quinn. He wanted to kill someone, it seemed. Anyone, so he lunged at Tom. It was a futile and brief murderous tantrum, for Quinn unholstered his Colt and clubbed Jody Short above the ear, putting all of his strength into the blow. Short fell face forward into the sand and lay there, his body twitching spasmodically.
‘Did you kill him?’ Lily asked, sitting up with effort.
Quinn had been trying to determine that. He rolled Short over and examined his victim. Short’s eyes were rolled back into his skull, but he was still breathing. ‘He’ll live long enough to hang,’ was Quinn’s assessment. He rose, dusting his hands and holstered his Colt.
‘Are you all right?’ Tom asked Lily Davenport.
‘I suppose so. I’ve been foolish all my life, but this is as close to losing my life over foolishness as I ever hope to come. I can’t thank you enough. This is the second time you’ve saved my life, Quinn.’
He felt like telling her that it was time for her to find a way of saving herself from herself but held his tongue.
Now behind them, Quinn heard a horse descending the sandy bluff in a flurry of dust. Alicia drew up her wild-eyed pinto pony and rushed to him, ‘Tom!’ she said, sparing Lily only a single unreadable glance. She almost hugged Tom Quinn, but not quite. She halted in her tracks and stood hovering over Jody Short with poison in her eyes.
‘Give me your pistol, Tom!’ she said.
‘No.’
‘I want him dead.’
‘I know you do. But we haven’t come this far only to have you do murder. He will be executed. By other hands, not yours.’
The daughter of an outlaw, Alicia had grown up learning a different code of justice. This was the man who had killed her sister, Dolores. He deserved to die, and it was her responsibility to see that he did. Tom Quinn walked to her, rested his hand on her shoulder and spoke softly.
‘It is for others to do, Alicia. Not for you. You would never feel clean afterward.’
Now she did throw her arms around him and hug him, her eyes streaming tears. He could feel her trembling in his embrace, but the quaking did not last long. After a moment she drew away from him, wiped her eyes and nodded.
‘Sabato will be wondering what’s become of us.’
And so he was. By the time the four of them reached the coach again, with Jody Short’s hands tied behind his back with Quinn’s bandanna, the fat prison courier was nearly at his wits’ end. His face brightened as he saw Quinn, Jody Short riding in front of him, Lily Davenport riding behind Alicia, clinging weakly to her, approaching.
‘Thank God,’ Sabato said. ‘I was wondering if the Indians got you.’
Lily slid unsteadily to the ground. Jody was unsaddled roughly. He cursed as he was led to the coach, telling everyone that he had done nothing to Lily, ‘But I should have! She’s as dirty as the rest of them.’
Lily, briefly clinging to Quinn’s arm, asked in a low voice, ‘May I ride up in the box with you? I can’t stand to look at that insect for another minute.’
That was the way they made their way to Yuma: Quinn driving the team which, though exhausted and stumbling, nevertheless had recovered enough to make their plodding way, Lily Davenport on the box beside Quinn. George Sabato rode in the coach opposite Jody Short who railed against all womankind for a few miles and then lapsed into a dark silence. Alicia rode alongside on the pinto horse. The gray had been tethered on
behind.
The weary miles passed with excruciating slowness. The red sun rose at their backs. Yuma, squat, little city that it was, rose from the desert before their eyes. By eight a.m. they were settled and safe, prisoner and horses led away to their final destinations, the team to much-deserved fresh water and oats, Jody Short to his tiny cell on death row.
Fed, rested and in clean clothes, they walked out of the small hotel that afternoon. Some sort of report had to be filed with the stage company, something must be said to the local sheriff. They would withhold certain bits of information, of course. Nothing could be said about Vicente Delgado’s involvement in the affair.
The day was dry and windless. Almost immediately they met George Sabato, his pink face newly shaven, his suit brushed, striding toward them. The little man was beaming. ‘They welcomed me as a sort of wandering hero,’ he told Alicia and Quinn as they stood together in the band of narrow shade cast by a storefront awning. ‘I managed to bring the gold through after an Indian attack and an ambush laid by border raiders. And I brought Jody Short in. Quinn …’ he said uncertainly, ‘you won’t tell them that I was not nearly as brave as they seem to think?’
‘No. What would that profit anybody?’ Tom answered. Let Sabato have his moment of glory, it cost Tom Quinn nothing.
They talked to the sheriff, who took in their tale with only occasional indications of disbelief. At the end of it the man, who shared his regret at the fate of Mike Hancock, rose from behind his desk and shook hands with Tom.
‘There are a few discrepancies between what you have told me and what George Sabato says, Quinn. But none of that matters. All I know is that you did us a service in bringing the stage through to Yuma with all the passengers safe aboard.
‘I meant to mention this to you – do you remember the three men who assaulted you in Las Palmas?’
‘Of course,’ Tom said bittterly.
‘It seems that they have been identified. Two brothers and a cousin. The cousin was out of a job and hoped to get work driving the Yuma coach after he heard the regular driver had been killed.’
