They had ridden long miles over mighty stretches of bare desert, crossed flat topped mesas, toiled up wide sweeping slopes of shifting sand, and threaded their way through tracts where Nature, by some internal convulsion, had disrupted the land into little hills, rocky gulches, and ravines. Above them a sun of polished brass poured down its blinding rays. A desolate and sterile land, without water or timber, its scant vegetation consisting of sage, greasewood, mesquite and cactus. Well might men shudder at the prospect of crossing such a trackless waste. The sand reflected the sun’s rays back into their faces, and they seemed at times to be wading through a lake of shimmering heat.
“Well, one thing,” Quincy said, his voice rusty with thirst. “No preacher’ll be able to scare me with hellfire no more. Gawd! To think o’ the times I coulda gone swimmin’ an’ didn’t.”
He turned his dust-reddened eyes upon the flaming disc in the heavens and mouthed a curse beneath the handkerchief which covered the lower part of his face.
“How far yu reckon we got to go?” croaked Shiloh. To emphasize his question he held up the water canteen and shook it. The thin swish of liquid indicated a perilously low level, and Quincy frowned. “Just about make ’er, I’d reckon,” he grunted. “Providin’ we don’t get no more trouble from them war whoops.”
There had been no sign of Apaches for the past twenty four hours, but neither of the scalphunters was foolish enough to believe that this automatically meant they had outdistanced the Indians. “It’s when yu don’t see the red sons that yu got to most ready for ’em,” was Shiloh’s unspoken thought. He glanced at the girl, riding slumped in her saddle, and then at Rusty, who favored him with a look of pure detestation. Shiloh scowled. “Yu got yore come-uppance to get, sonny,” he muttered. “An’ yo’re a-goin’ to get it shore.”
He squinted off to the left, lining up their route mentally with his own picture of the land through which they were passing. They had swung west, away from the route that Sudden had planned, the one which would have led almost due south to Fort Cochise. That route would have brought them out of the desert within a day, but Shiloh’s plan necessitated one further day in the desert. By evening, he figured, they would reach the edge of the desert, and then, skirting it, move down the long valley which dropped through the badlands to Wilderness.
He signaled with his eyes, and Quincy edged his horse alongside.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“By my reckonin’ we oughta be out o’ this hellhole in a coupla hours,” Shiloh replied. “We got to see if the kid’s goin’ to do like he’s told.”
“Yu reckon he will? He was killin’ mad when we left Sudden for the Injuns.”
“We got a double hold on him,” Shiloh leered. “Fust off, he’s sweet on the gal. Second, he still thinks he beefed that cardsharp in Bisbee. He ain’t goin’ to give us no trouble. He knows the gal’ll get back to her o’ man on’y if the reward’s delivered. And if the kid makes him understand that she won’t lack for some lovin’ I’m guessin’ Davis’ll come across pretty pronto.”
Even as he uttered the infamous suggestion, Shiloh’s lustful eyes devoured the girl, and his thin lips uncovered his stained teeth in a bestial grimace. Quincy felt a shudder of repugnance. Hardened brute though he was, there were times when Shiloh Platt turned his stomach. The half-breed was a mean one, a man who enjoyed spilling blood.
“Don’t yu reckon we better just make shore afore we turn him loose?” he suggested. “He’s crazy enough to try somethin’ stupid.”
“Don’t yu worry none,” leered Shiloh. “I won’t be takin’ no chances on him. He’s what yu might call – dispensable.” He spurred forward until he caught Rusty’s eye, then signaled him aside.
“What yu want, Shiloh?” he asked shortly. “Spit ’er out; I’d as lief ride alongside a polecat.”
Shiloh’s breath hissed between his teeth but he controlled his passion. “We’re goin’ to be clear o’ the desert afore long, Rusty,” he began ingratiatingly. “Time yu learned what part yo’re goin’ to play.”
“I’ll have no thin’ to do with yore dirty plans!” snapped Rusty angrily.
Quincy raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Don’t yu want the gal to get home safe, sonny?”
“Yu know damned well I do,” replied Rusty. “But I ain’t shore that’s what yu two skunks is plannin’.”
“Why, o’ course it is, o’ course it is,” Shiloh said smoothly. “All we want is the reward, kid. Yu don’t deny we’ve earned it?”
“By God!” Rusty swore. “Ah, what’s the use? Yu don’t know the difference anyway. I’m tellin’ yu just one thing: if playin’ any part in yore dirty schemes is a condition o’ gettin’ Barbara home safe, I ain’t buyin’!”
“I think yu’d better,” Shiloh warned him, a deadly thinness in his voice. “She could get – hurt.”
“If’n yu don’t do what yo’re told,” added Quincy.
Rusty’s face went white with anger. “Yu so much as lay a finger on her, and I’ll hunt yu to the ends of the earth an’ kill yu like the mongrel yu are!” he gritted.
Platt let his anger come to the surface for a moment, and he gestured at Rusty’s gunbelt, looped around his saddle-horn, hissing: “What yu aimin’ to do, kid? Beat out my brains with a rock?”
“What is it yu want me to do?” the boy asked, as defiance fled his expression and his shoulders slumped.
“That’s more like it, sonny,” Quincy said encouragingly. “I allus figgered yu was a sensible kid.”
“Get to it,” ground out the boy.
“She’s simple enough,” Shiloh told him. “Yu ride in to Tucson an’ roust up ol’ man Davis. Yu tell him we got his daughter, an’ the price to him is twenty thousand dollars.”
“Yo’re mad!” Rusty gasped. “He’ll never pay it!”
“He better,” was the meaningful reply. “I’d hate to think o’ the consequences if he don’t.” His evil eyes touched the girl and rage seared through Rusty at what he saw in them. Then once more his shoulders dropped, as though he had realized once more the impossibility of fighting.
“I guess there ain’t much choice at that,” he managed.
“The gal’ll give yu somethin’ o’ hers to identify yoreself, an’ she can write a note. Davis has to come along – no sheriff, no posse – yu tell him. Any double-cross an’ it’s the gal who’ll suffer. Yu make shore he knows that.”
Rusty nodded. “I’ll need a gun,” he said.
Shiloh looked up, as though the thought had not previously occurred to him. “Course yu will,” he replied. “Can’t take no chances on them war whoops stoppin’ yu gettin’ to Tucson.” He turned aside, and drew the youngster’s gun from its holster.
“Here y’are, kid,” he called, and tossed the gun underhand to the youngster, who caught it neatly and – without checking it – thrust it into the waist band of his pants. Platt smirked; it could not have worked better had he been able to control it.
“I’ll jest scribble them instructions,” he said, pulling a notebook from his saddlebag, and moistening a stub of pencil on the tip of his tongue. He motioned Quincy not to move as the scar faced man looked sharply up: Rusty was edging his horse sideways gradually, placing himself in a position directly between Barbara Davis and the two scalphunters.
Shiloh looked up in assumed astonishment as Rusty rapped out a command: “Shiloh! Quincy! Unbuckle yore gun belts an’ let ’em drop!”
The gun pointed rock-steady at the mid-point between Shiloh and Quincy, who sat unmoving. A grin of evil glee was twitching at the corners of the half-breed’s mouth.
“Yu heard me!” Rusty said, impatience thinning his tone. I’m countin’ three: if yu ain’t shucked yore gunbelts by then, I’m goin’ to shoot ‘em off yu!” Over his shoulder he added “Barbara! When I give the word, yu ride like Hades for the south, yu hear?”
Barbara nodded tensely; would Rusty’s desperate gamble pay off? Almost as if in answer to her thought, Shiloh’s face twisted into a vicious sneer.
“Fire away, yu dolt!” he hissed. “Did yu think I’d be fool enough to give yu a loaded gun without first testin’ yore loyalty?”
The knowledge that he had been duped flooded Rusty’s eyes, and the empty click as he pulled the trigger of the six-gun confirmed it: the half-breed had been one step ahead of him the entire way. Rusty had played along with Shiloh in the hope of getting his hands upon a weapon; Shiloh had out-thought and outwitted him. With a shout of pure anger, he rammed the spurs into his horse’s flanks, and the animal lunged forward at Shiloh. In the same moment, Rusty hurled the heavy six-gun at Quincy’s head. The weapon smashed into Quincy’s forehead and he swayed backwards, almost falling from the saddle, his senses reeling.
Even as Rusty hurtled towards him, however, the half-breed’s hand darted for the gun at his side. “Ah, would yu?” he snarled, and flame lanced from the weapon.
Rusty slewed sideways out of the saddle, hitting the earth and lying limp; he kicked once, and blood matted his hair. A thin keening scream broke from Barbara Davis’s lips, and went on until Shiloh stalked across to where she stood and slapped her rudely across the face. The girl went silent with a shocked gasp.
Quincy was dabbing his forehead with a kerchief; the gun had raised a lump on his forehead just below the hairline and blood trickled from it. Shiloh regarded the fallen Rusty dispassionately.
“Better to find out now that he’d double-cross us,” he grated. “When it comes to gettin’ that money, we don’t want no slip-ups.”
“Is he dead?” the scar faced one wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” Shiloh said callously, “an’ what’s more I ain’t carin’. He played his hand, an’ he lost.”
“The question is – what do we do now?” Quincy asked. Shiloh shrugged and was about to speak when a movement on a far hillside caught his eye. He froze for a moment, and then pointed with a finger which trembled slightly.
“There’s yore answer,” he said. “We better ride!”
Following the half-breed’s pointing gesture, Quincy saw riders sweeping down the long slope of a ridge in the near distance. The Apaches were coming.
“Git on yore hoss!” he snapped to the girl, who was bending beside the prone body of Rusty, dabbing the blood away with a strip of cloth. He dragged her away from the body, and Barbara screamed at him, arching her lithe young body, trying to rake Quincy’s eyes with her fingernails. “He’s alive!” she sobbed. “He’s alive, he’s alive! Oh, for pity’s sake don’t leave him there to die!”
“What yu want me to do, carry him?” Ignoring the girl’s sobs, Quincy tossed her bodily on to the back of her horse, and slashed it across the rump, sending it galloping off as he swung into his own saddle, catching up with the girl and Shiloh, heading in a last long rocketing run for the edge of the desert and the lawless town in Wilderness Canyon.