After liverying their horses, Clint and Felipe got a couple of rooms in the best hotel in town. Then they ate meals in separate restaurants and returned to Clint’s room. Splitting the take in half, they wound up with something over fifty dollars apiece.
“Cleent, that was the most funny thing,” Felipe said, as he had said several times now. “It is still much in my mind how they looked when we took their money! They just could not believe it!”
“Worked like a charm,” Clint admitted. “I was worried. I thought sure Barnham was better than he turned out to be. He had the look of it. I guess we were lucky.” He paused. “Looky, Felipe, where do we go now, hunting Dixon?”
Felipe rubbed his chubby hands together. “Señor, I have said that Dixon is in this town. But I do not think he is after all. But do not fear, there are people I can ask. We will find the señor Dixon, Cleent, do not fear. But I will not know where to look until I ask certain friends.”
Clint nodded, wondering whether to believe Felipe or not. He decided that for now there was nothing better to do but see what Felipe would turn up.
“Cleent, we have money. I am very thirsty. I think I will look for some fun.”
“After last night? That wasn’t enough for you?”
“That was last night. This is today, señor.”
Felipe went out. Clint decided not to try to stop him. It would not fit in well with his plans. When he was sure that Felipe was out of the hotel, he went along to Felipe’s room and jiggered the door lock with his knife. For about an hour he searched the room, but at last gave it up. The Griego money was just not there.
He decided that he would wait until Felipe returned drunk, and then would check his clothes. It was as important to find out if Felipe was telling the truth about not having the money as it was to get the money itself. The fifty some odd dollars he had left of the money he’d made today took the edge off the need to get the Griego money away from Felipe. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he suspected Felipe was telling the truth and it had been one of the señoritas who had stolen it.
Clint had not quarreled with Felipe’s assertion that he hadn’t been paid anything by Valenzuela, intending to locate the evidence to refute that later, and maybe corner Felipe into talking more about Dixon. But now, thinking about it, it seemed hard to believe that Felipe would not have at least bought meals and livery for them if he had any money. He could always explain that the money had come from Valenzuela, whether it had or not. Even Felipe wasn’t that much of a hoarder of money.
But the main reason he was inclined to believe Felipe was that he thought of him as a friend. They had been through a lot together. Even the misleading Felipe had done didn’t seem too bad in retrospect. After all, Felipe was related to Valenzuela, lowdown scoundrel that the bandit was, and Clint kept thinking about Felipe’s family living in the brush hut. Could you blame the man for getting money anywhere he could? Valenzuela, at least sometimes, paid him for his help, and what man in Felipe’s position would pass it up? Clint also thought of how he himself had treated Felipe from the beginning. It had been an invitation to Felipe to lie and steal.
Smiling still at the smoothness with which he and Felipe had won money today, Clint was feeling so mellow and friendly towards Felipe that he began to think Felipe probably deserved the money he’d taken from Griego’s man more than he, Clint, did. Clint thought he might not take that money from Felipe, even if he found it on him. And then he began to wonder what business it was of his to go searching Felipe’s room and his clothes, and after a short while, Clint got into bed and went to sleep, dreaming peacefully of pretty señoritas dancing. The burros were finally gone from his dreams.
~*~
He woke up, however, in a very different mood, thinking about Miguel being shot. He could still mentally hear the shots being fired, see Miguel jerking three times before slumping against the rope bindings. The image mingled with the image of his wife lying dead and battered in the woods, and though it was not yet light, he couldn’t get back to sleep.
He got out of bed and went for a walk along the mostly empty, quiet Main Street of Oak Creek. The rumble of ore pouring out of the mines continued, and there were still the cries of a few teamsters and the creak of a few ore wagons, but that was about all. The air was still, cool, and the trees hulked over the town against a barely lightening sky full of stars that seemed to have lost the mystery of night.
For something to do, Clint went along to the livery to look in on the horses and burros. He lit a lantern hanging on a hook inside the door and walked onto the main floor of the barn.
“What the ...” he began, then stopped.
The horses and burros were gone.
“The thieving, conniving Mexican tortilla chili pepper bean head,” Clint muttered, double-checking to be sure the animals hadn’t simply been moved to different stalls—they hadn’t.
Even took my horse, Clint brooded. Hadn’t the common decency to leave a man his horse. That called for hanging, by the law. It would be too good for the chili pepper.
Clint roused out the liveryman, who was not pleased by the disturbing of his sleep. He was a short, wiry little man with cynical eyes. He rolled off his corn-shuck tick and demanded what the hell Clint wanted.
“I want a horse, a fast horse, and a saddle.”
“Rent or buy?”
“Buy ... no, rent,” he changed his mind, remembering the shortness of his funds. A good horse would likely cost more than fifty dollars, even without a saddle. And he would need supplies for a couple of days at least.
The liveryman drove a hard bargain and Clint had to part with all but two dollars of his money to get the horse and saddle and two days’ supply of beans and sourdough. Clint couldn’t wait for the business section of town to open up to buy food, so paid dearly for stocks from the liveryman’s own larder.
“I want that horse back in four days,” the liveryman reminded him sharply from the doorway. “One day longer and I send the sheriff after you for horse thieving.”
Clint rode south out of town hell-for-leather. It was his guess Felipe had left town just as soon as he left the hotel saying he was going drinking. That gave him eight or nine hours head start. Clint had no way of knowing for sure which way Felipe had gone, but he doubted Felipe would have more business at Valenzuela’s, and it seemed likely that he figured he had a pretty good haul for one trip and was heading home. So, Clint set out into the desert going south, pushing the horse along at a good clip, aware that once the sun came up and the heat began to shimmer over the landscape, the horse wouldn’t be able to keep it up.
This was a desperate kind of gamble. He had bought two days of traveling time south to catch up with Felipe. The desert was huge and Felipe knew it well while Clint did not. And then there were the Mescaleros. Of course, it was true that Felipe was vulnerable, having such an array of horses and burros. Yet, Clint had a suspicion that Felipe would manage somehow. He might fear Indians, but he could fool Indians, if anybody could.
Clint knew that if he got pinned down at any time during the next four days, he would have the sheriff after him and a charge of horse thieving would hang over his head. With the desert full of Mescaleros, the possibility was not remote. The way Clint preferred to look at it was, if he got pinned down, and was overdue, a posse of armed men would be along to side him against the Indians.
As dawn stretched across the land, Clint began searching the horizon in all directions constantly, watching for both Felipe and Indians. He had seen nothing by noon, and gave the horse a short break to crop a patch of grass and drink some water from his hat. Clint took a sip himself and then swung up and dug in his heels.
The heat of the day was almost enough to make Clint stop for a longer break, but the knowledge that Felipe might do that made Clint press on. He figured it was his chance to do some catching up.
By nightfall he had still seen no sign of Felipe, but then he’d seen no sign of Indians either, and so he called it even and halted for a two hour rest. He ate a small amount, about half a meal, and let the horse crop such grass as there was. He decided that with the burros Felipe stood no chance of moving much more than half as quickly as a man on a good horse could, and likely a good deal less. So, Clint figured, if he pushed on after the moon came up, for at least a few hours, he ought to be somewhere near as far into the desert as Felipe, and in the morning there might be something to see.
Clint carried out this plan, and in the morning rode up onto the top of a slight rise to take a long and careful look around the horizon. He had the feeling he was being watched, for all it seemed plain that he was alone in this piece of country. Not a sign of burros or horses or Indians or anything but mesquite and cactus as far as he could see across the sand in any direction.
Unfortunately he had no way to tell if he was paralleling Felipe or had not yet caught up with him—or had passed him somewhere. Clint debated a while, and then decided he would ride southeast, then southwest in a zigzag motion, stopping on high points to take a look.
By noon, the horse, which he’d run pretty hard for the conditions, was slowing down and losing interest. Clint had still seen nothing. There remained, however, the persistent feeling that eyes were watching him. The Mescaleros worried him. He couldn’t imagine they didn’t know he was here. What were they waiting for? Clint took to snapping his head around to look behind him suddenly as he rode on his zigzag course all afternoon. But he never saw anything.
That evening as darkness fell, Clint became irritable. It was plain he had failed. And who could tell what it would cost in excitement and bloodshed to get back to town. And once he got there, all he could do would be get a job of some kind to make money so he could buy a horse and supplies and plenty of ammunition. Then he would ride south and find Felipe’s hut and, he hoped, Felipe. This was going to come out of Felipe’s hide.
In the morning, Clint reluctantly started back for Oak Creek. About midway through the morning, Clint brought up short and listened.
After a moment, he shook his head and nudged his horse on. But then he heard it again—definitely shooting.
He rode on cautiously, unwilling to ride into the middle of a fight with Indians, if that was what it was.
From the top of the next rise he saw Mescaleros riding in and out of gun smoke, which lay thickly over a mesquite thicket—and from the thicket came the unmistakable braying of burros.
There was no reason they had to be Felipe’s burros, but Clint was sure they were just the same. He had half a mind to get back down off the rise and wait for the shooting to stop, and the Indians to take what they wanted and leave. And then see if Felipe was the victim, and whether he was dead or alive.
But for some reason Clint didn’t do that. Instead, like a fool, he rode down on the doings with his Winchester in hand. He pulled up when within handy range, slammed the rifle to his shoulder and began knocking Indians loose of their saddles.
This surprised them considerably, and things got confused among them and they began whirling their horses and riding off in all directions. From the smoke surrounding the mesquite thicket a rifle snapped at them energetically. Somebody was still very much alive in there.
Now the Indians began to understand what had happened, and in a rage they came whooping and yelling up the slight rise at him, firing off volleys of shots. Clint had the advantage of them, since he didn’t have to shoot from the back of a galloping horse, and he dropped about half of them before they got two thirds the distance to him.
The other half, perhaps on signal, suddenly whirled and rode off east across the desert in a cloud of dust, the gun in the thicket still scolding them, although they were quickly out of reasonable range.
As the smoke cleared, Clint rode down on the thicket, Winchester butt-down on his thigh, barrel aimed at the sky.
“Howdy, Fats,” he said. “Little brisk this morning?”
“Oh, Señor Cleent! You have saved my life a second time! How can I ever repay you, Señor Cleent, for all you have done for me?”
“You can start by taking your clothes off,” Clint said reasonably, dropping the Winchester so it pointed at Felipe’s midsection.
“Señor, I do not understand this thing you ask me to do. Nevertheless it is unnecessary to point the gun at me, Cleent. I will do as you ask without the insult of a threat of a bullet.”
“Quit flapping your lip and drop your drawers.”
Felipe looked nervous. But he did as he was asked.
“Now toss your clothes up here.”
Clint went through them, and found two things which interested him: money, and Pepita’s letter to her father. Clint tossed down the clothes.
“Señor,” Felipe begged, “do not be angry with me. I am only a poor sheepherder. I have a beeg family and no money. Have compassion, señor.”
“You know, last night I was thinking maybe I had been too hard on you. I thought you were basically honest and that it was only a hard life that made you the way you are. But I think you have a hard life because you are crooked and thief. One day it will get you in big trouble, Fats. Somebody will put a bullet between your eyes. You do not know how tempted I am to do that myself, right now. You have caused me no end of trouble. I ought to skin you alive and leave you for the buzzards. I’d do it, too, only I want Dixon, and you’re my lead. First, we have to take this rented horse back to town. Then we’re going to ride to find Dixon. You won’t see the last of me until we do find Dixon. Then you can have the letter. I’ll keep the money, by way of compensation for all the cussing energy you’ve cost me. You understand, Fats?”
“Sí, Señor Cleent,” Felipe said meekly. “I have treated you poorly, have I not?”
“You have.”
“I am sorry, Cleent. It is much temptation for a poor man like me. I drink too much sometimes, you know?”
“Is that a fact,” Clint said, not really listening. He already knew how the conversation would go, and it was getting boring to have to have it every other day or so.
“Sí,” Felipe said eagerly. “Last night I have a drink, you know?” He was getting on his horse. “I begin to think, you know? I think about this beautiful horse and all the burros, and I think perhaps I need them more than you. I think perhaps you can always make the money, no? You can shoot, you are norteamericano, you are smart and you are strong. You can do anything, no?”
“Save it,” Clint said.
“But poor Felipe. He is only a poor mexicano, a sheepherder, a man with nothing, señor. A man who must make his money how he can. A big family too—and you have no family, sí? It is a lot of mouths to feed. I think I can sell the burros in Crooked Creek, and the horses are worth much anywhere, no? Perhaps Adelita will be able to buy a new dress, eh? It is so bad for Adelita to become beautiful with a new dress? Is not this worth a horse and some burros?”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Fats.”
“It is only that I try to explain, Señor Cleent, so you will understand. I do not wish to hurt you. But it is the way the world passes, is it not?”
“Shut up, Fats.”
“I think you are a fine, understanding man, Señor Cleent,” Felipe said reverently.
“Yeah,” Clint said, and stuck a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.