It was Gates’ horse that foundered first.
They were laboring up now to the crest of the low foothills of the Huachucas, aiming for a hogback ridge, when the faltering horse went to its knees. Gates, who had been half-expecting it, came off the horse and landed on his feet. The animal lay on its side whickering softly. It would not get up again.
‘Kill it,’ Angel said.
Gates pulled out his knife and slit the animal’s throat in one smooth sweep. The horse’s eyes bulged and it started to get up and then it lay down again and it was dead.
‘Get up behind Blantine,’ Angel said. ‘But watch him.’
Blantine said nothing. He did not move as Gates swung up on to the cantle of the saddle behind him and took the reins. Only the hooded eyes moved. If there was anything to see in them, neither of the two men watching Blantine noticed it.
They moved on up to the ridge of the hogback and Angel twisted in the saddle, keen eyes sweeping across the land behind him. The ground fell away from here to the south in smooth-looking gradients, dotted with sagebrush and prickly pear, the tall stalks of ocotillo standing clear against the ochre land, the shimmering malpais below and behind them looking deceptively smooth and featureless from this distance. Ahead of them, the prospect was much the same.
The land sloped steadily down to the north, and they could see the thin white vein of the road to Nogales off on the eastern edge of their sight.
‘How far you reckon it is t’Nogales?’ Gates asked.
‘Not far,’ Angel replied. He squinted up at the sun. ‘We could be in town by late afternoon. Across the border before nightfall.
He let his eyes scour the land to the south, behind them, again. In the unseen washes and gullies and riverbeds and arroyos that scarred and crisscrossed the broken malpais, an army of Apaches could be hiding and he would not see them. But there had been no dust behind at any time. It didn’t figure. If the Apaches had taken all of the pursuers then they would have come after the remaining quarry. If they had been stood off, they would have tried for easier prey. If they had all been killed ... but that was impossible. For then the pursuers would have taken up the chase again and he would have seen dust. He shook his head. No point in worrying about it. The biggest worry was whether the horses would last until they could get to Nogales and buy fresh ones.
They rode down out of the low hills around Nogales at four in the afternoon. The horses walked with their muzzles down almost touching the ground, the riders slack shouldered in the saddles. As they came nearer the town, Angel’s horse blew through its muzzle and its ears came up. It began to pick up its feet. The doubly-laden animal carrying Blantine and Gates also managed to lengthen its gait. They came into the street from the western edge of town, all of them gaunt and coated with the layers of dust that days in the desert had ground into their clothes. Their eyes were deep and burning holes in the chalky faces, and all three had coarse and stubbly chins. Nogales was a border town, and the three excited little attention. Men came in and men went out of Nogales every hour of the day. Some were honest men, some were thieves, some were lawmen and some were outlaws. Men on the run from the law of the Norteamericanos came to Nogales and received the same shelter and whiskey and women — if they had the price — as Tejanos or Californios cooling their heels while the heat died down in San Antonio or El Paso.
They asked no questions in Nogales. Visitors tended to be wary-eyed and touchy about questions. Visitors always carried guns which they looked ready to use. Nogales fed them, sold them women or whiskey or a bed for the night, then forgot their names and their faces and the direction in which they were travelling.
There were plenty of people in the street, with its adobe houses, its wide shaded ramadas, the larger bulk of a cantina here, a store there. On the crowded sidewalks Mexicans in silver-trimmed trousers that flared at the ankle jostled with hard-looking Anglos with six-guns at their waists. Here the mixture of the races met: the swarthy skin of the mestizo, the liquid chocolate of the Indians, the handsome bronze of the true Mexican blood, the paler bronze of the Anglos, the Norteamericanos, all came together in a melting pot of colors and sizes and tongues, American and Spanish and Yaqui and more. Inside one of the cantinas they heard a guitar strumming as they rode by, the languid melody of La Golondrina.
Angel relaxed gradually, for no one seemed to be paying them the slightest attention. He led the way down the street until he saw a sign swinging on a whitewashed pole by the entrance of an alley alongside a black tarpaper shack with a corrugated iron roof.
‘There’s a corral,’ he said. ‘They’ll have horses.’
They swung down in the open space before the lean-to that housed the rough stalls for horses. The dust was ankle deep from the passage of many thousands of horses over the years. The animals plunged their muzzles into the trough of water outside the building standing opposite the stalls. From it came the smell of manure and urine, wet straw and the warm stink of horses.
Yancey Blantine pushed the head of his horse aside and plunged his arms into the water, then his face, sluicing the dust and grime of the desert away.
He spluttered with the pleasure of the cooling liquid, standing erect with water pouring off him, his grizzly hair plastered down on his skull.
A man riding past the alleyway looked at the three men standing in the open space, his eyes flicking to Yancey Blantine’s face and then the bound wrists. No expression crossed the swarthy features. The man rode on unhurriedly up the street as an old Mexican came out of the stable.
‘Senores,’ he smiled, showing a bright gold tooth. ‘Quieren Ustedes alguna cosa.’
Angel nodded. ‘We want three horses,’ he said in Spanish.
The old man nodded. His eyes flicked quickly towards Gates’ face and then Blantine’s. They widened slightly when they touched the bound hands, but that was all. It was not of his concern. His concern was the sale of horses, the care of horses. Nothing more. A man could find enough trouble of his own without sharing anyone else’s.
‘The senor has come to the right establishment,’ the old man said. ‘At the stable of Juan Solteron only the finest of horses are sold, only the most noble and handsome animals. But of course as the senor will appreciate, such animals are of a price befitting the steeds of men like the senor and his caballero companions.’
‘How much?’ Angel said abruptly.
The old man frowned. The Norteamericanos had no sense of occasion, no finer feeling for the niceties of bargaining. A man could pass a pleasant hour, two maybe, bargaining over the sale of three horses. A civilized man, of course. A glass of wine, perhaps, from Jerez de la Frontera. A seat in the cool shade of the ramada. And an eloquent discussion of the merits of each individual animal. Such a thing could take up a very pleasant couple of hours. But no, these Americans wanted only to know the price, the price in their all-powerful dollars. He sighed.
‘Perhaps when the senor has seen the animals,’ he ventured, ‘and has had time to realize what a sacrifice it would be for me to part with them, who I have raised from tiny colts to their truly magnificent present state. In the normal way, senores, I would not sell these my very precious animals, but I have had many expenses. A sick child, senores, and a wife who needs special foods, and many visits from the medico. Ah, the times are very bad, senores,’ he, sighed, spreading his hands in that gesture universal among merchants of every race. ‘I must sacrifice my beautiful horses in the face of the need of my family. I will sell them to you for two hundred dollars American for each horse.’
Angel smiled, and held up a hand as Gates made to step forward, an angry expression on his face.
‘Your generosity is truly overwhelming, Don Juan,’ he said, using the respectful title and bringing a beaming smile to the old man’s face, ‘as I am certain that your horses are fine. Alas, my companions and myself must hasten on our journey to the north, where the mother of the old one there is dying of a slow illness. So stricken by grief has he been that we have had to tie his hands so that he will not do himself an injury. It has been our duty, of course, to send much of our money ahead of us to pay for the bills of the doctor, and we can therefore offer something less than you have asked.’
‘I understand it well, senor, Solteron said. ‘You, too, see my difficulty as I see yours.’
‘Verdad,’ Angel said. ‘Which is why I say fifty dollars each horse, not one centavo more.’
Gates ostentatiously touched the butt of his gun and the old man did not miss the gesture. He nodded abruptly, and led the way into the stable, where half a dozen horses stood in stalls along the wall.
‘My God!’ Gates said. ‘He calls these horses?’
They were in truth a sorry bunch, but Angel knew that there would be nothing better anywhere else in Nogales, and if there was they had no time to find them. He unfastened the money belt under his shirt and paid the old man the money for the horses, which they led out into the sunlight.
‘I’ll get the horses saddled,’ he told Gates. ‘See if you can round up some supplies. I feel as if I haven’t eaten for a week.’
‘Why don’t we go over to that cantina across the street?’ Gates said. ‘We could get a bite to eat, mebbe even cut the dust in my throat. Be on our way in half an hour, Frank?’
Angel grinned. He, too, had smelled the mouth-watering odors of chili and beans and frijoles and tortillas coming out of the unprepossessing adobe across the street. Although the sense of urgency he felt inside urged him to head on out of the town now, the look on Gates’ face was so comical that he had to relent.
‘You like Mex food that much?’ he said.
‘You better believe it,’ Gates said. ‘Come on, Frank, we got to eat anyway.’
Gates’ final remark clinched it in Angel’s mind. Whether they ate out on the open prairie or here in town, they would still have to stop to do it. Eating in town they’d save time in cleaning up, and there would be no campsite to steer any pursuers on to their trail. He wondered again what had happened to Gregg Blantine and the rest of Hurwitch’s men.
He told the old man that they would be back soon, and then turned to Yancey Blantine. As he turned, he thought he caught a light of dancing triumph in the old man’s eyes, but it was gone even as the thought struck him.
‘I’m going to cut your hands loose, Blantine,’ he said. ‘If you make one false move I’m goin’ to shoot your knee apart. You understand?’
Blantine nodded. He hooded his eyes and Angel could not see them.
‘I get you,’ the old man said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t try nothing’.’
His voice trembled slightly as if with excitement and Angel frowned.
‘What’s eating you, Blantine?’ he snapped. ‘You up to something?’
Blantine shook his head. ‘No,’ he said hoarsely. He kept his head down and did not meet Angel’s eyes. ‘Just — just so hungry, I guess. It’s been a hard trail we’ve ridden.’
He chafed his rope-burned wrists, getting the circulation moving, and Angel relaxed, if only to his normal state of wariness.
‘Keep your eye on him, too, Pearly,’ he said. ‘All the time.’
‘Sure, sure,’ Gates said. ‘Where would he run to, anyway?’
He looked across at the cantina again and licked his lips.
‘Come on, Frank,’ he said.
They started down the alley and then three men stepped into view in the street, guns in their hands.
‘Hold it right there!’ one of them yelled.