Yancey awoke to a boot in the side and jarred out of the shallow sleep to find the camp full of activity in the gray light of dawn. He looked up at the towering figure of Waco Wyatt, The man held a hunting knife in one hand and his six-gun in the other.
“Steve says to cut you loose, Bannerman. Try anything and you’re dead.”
“I kind of got that impression last night,” Yancey said wryly and twisted onto his side so the gunman could slash the ropes that bound his wrists. He sat there, rubbing circulation back into his hands, looking around, searching for Cato. He found him after a few minutes. The small man was saddling the horses and chatting with a couple of the other gunfighters.
Yancey compressed his lips. He was damned if he could credit the way that Cato was so much a part of this bunch.
They gave him an indifferent breakfast and then he had the chore of cleaning up the camp. Blayne walked across leading his mount. Yancey’s gun-rig hung from the man’s saddle horn.
“This is the test, Bannerman. I’m giving you your gun-rig back and you ride along with us like one of the boys. Just remember what I said. We’ll have our eyes—and our guns—on you. You’d be loco to try anything.”
“I’m not that big a fool,” Yancey said, accepting his gun-rig and buckling it about his waist. He started to automatically lift the Peacemaker out of leather to check the loads but froze at the sound of gun hammers clicking to full cock. He glanced around and found four men, including Cato, had him covered.
Yancey shrugged and took his gun out anyway and checked the chambers. They were loaded with .45 cartridges. Satisfied, he dropped the gun back into the holster and nodded sardonically at the others, his cold gaze lingering for a moment on Cato. Then he swung aboard his horse and waited, Wyatt ordering him to ride in the center of the bunch. At a word from Blayne they put their mounts out into the shallow Rio and splashed across into Mexico.
They only rode for two hours, then they sighted the small group of men waiting with guns drawn, by an outcrop of sun-blasted rock with dry, stunted brush growing around the base.
It was Cash Collins and four flint-eyed gunfighters, impatient for Blayne’s bunch to join them and to push on into Mexico. Yancey had heard of Collins; he was a rancher in the same mould as the infamous King Fisher. Like Fisher, they said of Collins, you didn’t count the miles to Collins’ spread, you counted the graves.
He was a hard man, one who had fought Indians, Mexican bandidos, white renegades and even the Texas government, to carve himself a tight cattle empire out of the southwest. He was law in this neck of the woods and nothing the Rangers or U.S. Marshals or anyone else could do could change that. It had been tried many times but Collins was still riding free, making his own brand of law, going his own way.
He had plenty of political pull and was a man who didn’t hesitate to spread his money where it would do him most good. He had a lot of foresight; a thousand spent today might seem excessive, but in five years’ time, he might have a use for the man he had given that thousand to and it might save him ten times that amount or keep him out of jail. But you could be sure that whatever Collins did, he expected to be repaid—with interest.
He always had a few fast guns around to back him up and to enforce his will.
There were no greetings when the two groups met. Collins merely set his mount at the head of the bunch, in the natural position of leadership and slipped his rifle away into its saddle scabbard. His men fell in with the others and they all rode on into the harsh land. Blayne set his mount up alongside Collins, a lean, leathery man wearing patched clothing and with stubble fringing his iron jaw, and spoke to him at length. They both glanced in Yancey’s direction a few times and the Enforcer knew he was the topic of the conversation. Collins hipped half around in the saddle once and stared at Yancey for a long minute before turning back to the front. He said nothing.
Cato was alongside Yancey at one stage during the ride, and the smaller man didn’t even glance towards him. But he spoke to Yancey briefly.
“You’re a damn fool ridin’ in here, Yancey,” he said quietly and Yancey had the idea Cato didn’t want the other riders to hear. “They’ll kill you.”
“Shouldn’t worry you.”
Cato shrugged and put his mount forward. Yancey stared after him, mouth tight, eyes narrowed.
They headed directly into the badlands and by noon were dismounted and leading their horses around the crumbling edge of a saltpan. One or two of the animals broke through the brittle crust and plunged wildly as they sank almost to their bellies. Some ropes on them from the others had them out after a half-hour’s sweating toil and the whole bunch moved back away from the saltpan.
The glare was killing and blinding. At noon, when they stopped for a meal, Yancey rubbed charcoal around his eyes, smearing it out with bacon grease. The patches of black saved some of the reflection, though it earned him plenty of jibes and remarks. But he figured he could see better than the others who laughed at him. He was surprised that Cato hadn’t done the same, for they had used the trick on desert assignments in the past. But his ex-pard threw a couple of jibes at him about looking like a clown or someone on the losing end of a fight and raised a few laughs with the others.
They mounted up again when they reached firmer ground and turned away from the saltpan, gradually putting it behind them so that Yancey’s glare precautions were no longer necessary. But he had noted landmarks that he figured the others likely hadn’t been able to see because of the glare and he knew he would be able to find his way back if he had to.
They camped that night in canyon country by a rock pool that had thousands of dead insects floating on top of the water, and these had to be pushed apart before the coffee pots could be filled and set on the campfire.
“Soon as supper’s cooked put out that fire,” Collins said in his grating voice. “This is bandido country.”
As soon as the meal was completed, one of Collins’ gunnies poured a coffee pot of water over the flames and then Blayne picked men for night guard duty. Yancey was tied up again to be on the safe side, and he settled down by a deadfall, his back against the log, feeling along the splintered branch stubs for one that was sharp enough and firm enough to rub the ropes against, hoping to snap some of the fibers. But there was nothing, so he closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep. The others were settling down and he heard the first two night guards grumbling as they walked to their positions. One of them was Cato and he stepped over Yancey’s prostrate form without even glancing at him.
Soon the drone of talking in the camp faded and was replaced by snores and the gruntings of men settling into their blankets. Animals howled around the canyon rim. Yancey drifted off into sleep, giving up the struggle with his bonds. He had heard Collins say that they had another full day’s travel before reaching the village they were planning to raid. There was nothing Yancey could do, even if he could get free. No law here that he could ride to. By the time he could get back to the Rio and find the border patrol, the raid would have taken place and Collins would be headed back north with his slaves.
He might just as well get what rest he could; the only thing he could do now was to try to make a break for it during the fighting. He couldn’t stop the massacre but he might be able to get help to stop Collins and Blayne getting their slaves back to the Rio.
He slept soundly. It was the feel of cold steel against the flesh of his wrists that woke him.
Yancey’s eyes snapped open but he didn’t move, sorting out his senses, figuring what was going on. A knife was sawing gently at the ropes that bound his wrists. The rest of the camp was quiet. He moved his eyes without moving his head and saw that there didn’t seem to be any movement. Then he saw a man settling down into his blankets further around the edge of the pool, heard his grunts and the rustle of the coarse cloth. At first he thought the man was getting out of his blankets but he was lying down and pulling them up over his head.
“Johnny?” Yancey whispered, figuring the man settling in was the other night guard who had been relieved with Cato by the second shift.
“Quiet!” a voice hissed.
The last rope parted and Yancey kept his hands in position, flexing his fingers to get the circulation going again. A hand touched his shoulder and squeezed, tugging slightly to the left, away from the camp. Yancey eased his body over slowly that way, doing a complete three hundred and sixty degree roll, carefully, so as not to make any noise. He saw the silhouette of a man’s head and a rifle barrel. It was Cato all right, briefly blotting out the stars, then the shadow was moving back into the rocks and Yancey got to all fours, slowly straightened, looking warily back at the dark, sleeping forms around the waterhole.
He followed Cato into the rocks and the smaller man led the way up the slope to a flat ledge with rocks studded around it and where they were screened from the camp below. Cato turned and unslung something from his left shoulder and handed it to Yancey. It was his gun-rig. Yancey’s teeth flashed briefly white in the darkness.
“I damn well knew you hadn’t turned rogue gun!”
“Lot of folks wouldn’t agree with you,” Cato said, and there was a flash of white where his mouth was. “Pulled it off pretty well, huh, the governor and me?”
“Sure as hell did. How come so much secrecy? What’s the big deal?”
“That was the trouble,” Cato said, glancing back towards the sleeping camp. “We didn’t know. Dukes had gotten word that Blayne was ridin’ all over the state, buyin’ up gambling notes. But only those that belonged to hombres known to be fast with a gun. He’s long been suspected of being mixed up in the wetback slave trade it seems, and there were all the indications that he was getting ready for some kind of big deal. Dukes’ Rangers had heard whispers along the border, too. Then he got this idea of plantin’ either you or me on Blayne, but trouble was, Blayne knew us as Enforcers. So the only way Dukes reckoned he could do it was to discredit one of us, make it look like we was discredited, and then try to plant us on Blayne. I was the logical choice, he figured. I was always rangin’ through saloons with women, drinkin’, playin’ the occasional game of cards. So he set me up with a fake background of gamblin’ trouble in Laramie and you know the rest. He figured it’d look more genuine if you weren’t in on it and you and me argued when you tried to straighten me out.” He grinned again. “Only thing was, I reckon he wasn’t expectin’ you to join Blayne’s bunch too!”
Yancey nodded. “Did his best to get me busy on something else. But I cleaned up the chore and got the whisper you’d been seen as a prisoner in Vernon. Thought I could help out. Blown your chore now, have I?”
Cato shook his head. “Found out what I needed. Knew there wasn’t time to get back to the Rio for help and couldn’t even guess where the nearest Federale post is. So I reckoned the only thing to do was for us to bust out of here and get to the village ahead of this bunch and warn ’em so’s they can be prepared to fight.”
“Idea’s okay, except for one thing: we don’t know where the village is.”
“I do. I heard Blayne and Collins talkin’. Place called San Felipe. Day’s ride to the southwest.”
Yancey was dubious. “Day’s ride for Collins and Blayne who know where they’re headed. We don’t know the country, Johnny. We’re likely to get ourselves lost and they could get there ahead of us.”
“It’s the best we can do, Yance. Unless you’ve got some other idea.”
Yancey had to admit he hadn’t.
“Then we better get movin’, pronto. I’ve just been relieved by the second shift of guards. There’s two of them: one up on the ridge above the waterhole, the other back that way.” He pointed off into the night. “Horses are over there in an arroyo. If we can get out without wakin’ everyone up, maybe we can scatter their mounts and leave them afoot.”
“That sounds more like it,” Yancey agreed enthusiastically. “Let’s get down and see what we can do.”
Then they froze as a gun hammer clicked back to full cock and Waco Wyatt’s voice spoke out of the darkness.
“I knew we couldn’t trust you, Cato.”
Yancey didn’t hesitate. He was still holding his gun-rig that Cato had handed him and he fired through the bottom of the holster as he whirled to face the sound of Wyatt’s voice. He caught a glimpse of the man silhouetted against the stars and then the gun flash momentarily blinded him so that he heard the blast of Wyatt’s Colt but didn’t see it fire. The bullet whipped past his face as he dropped to one knee, seeing Wyatt’s shape drop down behind some rocks. The man was yelling, but there was no need for him to waste his breath: the gunfire had already alerted the camp and men were spilling out of blankets, reaching for their shooting irons.
“The arroyo!” Cato snapped and ran off with Yancey hard on his heels.
The big Enforcer turned, figuring Waco Wyatt would make another try for them and saw the man’s head as he rose from behind some rocks. Yancey threw himself down, gripped his right wrist with his left hand to steady his gun as he brought the foresight around onto Wyatt’s silhouette and dropped hammer. The gunfighter fired at the same time so that the shots blended, but it was Wyatt who jerked back with a sick moan and they heard him flailing amongst the rocks in his death throes.
Yancey stumbled in the dark, came to a slope and fell, skidding and sliding and rolling down into the deeper blackness of the arroyo. Horses were whinnying and he could hear them moving restively, yanking at hobbling ropes and tethers. Cato was ahead of him, grabbing the two nearest animals.
Yancey staggered upright out of the dust and hurriedly buckled on his gun-rig, spotting several men topping the rise, and there was a ragged line of spouting flames as the guns fired down into the arroyo. Yancey triggered and a man lurched and crashed forward, rolling and tumbling down the slope towards the fugitives. Cato swore aloud as one of the horses ripped free of his grip and ran off. The other reared and pawed the air wildly so that he had to let go the rope. Swearing again, he dropped to one knee and began shooting with his rifle, levering and triggering as fast as he could work the action. The man Yancey had shot flopped in against the big Enforcer’s legs and Yancey saw something gleaming as it skidded down the slope a few feet away. He dropped his smoking six-gun into the holster and lunged for the object. It was the dead man’s Winchester and Yancey got it to his shoulder and working fast.
Two more yelling men jerked and flopped down the slope. Another let out a pain-wracked scream and fell back. The guns on the ridge fired a final ragged volley and then they heard Collins’ rasping voice ordering them to get under cover.
Yancey got to his feet and lunged for the jerking ropes of the plunging horse line. Cato was ahead of him, hunting knife sawing at the tethering ropes. They threw themselves across the backs of the frightened animals the moment they had them free, used their heels and twisted fingers in the manes to jerk their heads around and make a run for it down the length of the arroyo.
The men on the ridge ran along the top now, shooting down at them, trying to stop them. Blayne roared for them to quit as he heard the agonized whickering of a horse that had been hit by Some of the wild, flying lead. There were a dozen or so more gunshots and then they ceased and Cato and Yancey burst up out of the arroyo onto the starlit wastes of the badlands. They ran the frightened horses for another mile before hauling them back to a walk and then stopping altogether to let them take a spell.
They sat atop a small rise and tried to settle their own heavy breathing, straining to listen above the blowing and snorting of the sweating animals. There were only the night sounds but even these were muted by the horses trying to get their breath.
“They’ll be along,” Cato said grimly. “Collins don’t seem the type to wait till sunup. I reckon we can give ’em the slip all right in the dark, Yance, but come daylight they’ll walk all over us. They know this country a hell of a lot better than us.”
“Well, we’ll just have to cover as many miles as we can before sunup.” He hipped on the horse’s heaving back. “Moon’s lifting over the sawtooths there, so that means to head south and west we’ll have to cut across there. That way.”
“Right into the heart of the canyon country,” Cato said. “I tried to sound out the hombre I was on guard with. He’s worked for Blayne before. Knows there’s a quick way through those canyons, but it’s so complex he reckons he couldn’t find the trail if his life depended on it. Well, mebbe, but you can bet your britches Collins and Blayne’ll take the quick way while we’re hung up in there tryin’ to find a way out. I reckon that’s where we’re gonna lose the most time, Yance. Time—or our lives.”
“Well, we ain’t gaining any ground by sitting here palavering,” Yancey pointed out, moving his reluctant mount forward.
Cato set his horse after him and they rode in silence until they reached the first broken rocks at the edge of the canyon country.
The rocks rose like ragged ramparts and only a deeper oblong of darkness, with a hint of starlight at the top, indicated the entrance. They were about to move in when Cato spotted something glistening and reflecting the moon. It was a small rock-pool, almost hidden by a slanted slab of granite. They drank their fill, right alongside the thirsty horses, letting the animals drink first before plunging their own faces in. In the dark, there was no way they could tell if it was bad water or not just by sight, but if the horses didn’t hesitate to drink, then they figured the water was sweet enough. It tasted flat and stale and left a metallic scum on their teeth so they guessed it was probably full of alkali. With bellies sloshing, they swung aboard the horses and set the animals into the canyon. Once in through the entrance, they could see the way the defile twisted and turned by tilting their heads back and following the river of stars they could see slowly flowing by between the wall edges. The ground underfoot was rough and rocky and the horses stumbled frequently; occasionally their hoofs struck sparks from the granite or flint or quartz.
There was no way of hearing if they were being pursued in here for the narrow walls magnified the animals’ progress as they stumbled and clattered over the rocks. The only thing they could do was to allow the horses to have their heads, pick their own way through at their own speed. If they tried to hurry them, they would likely only fall or snap a leg. It was nerve-wracking, knowing that pursuit could be close behind them, but there was no other way. Maybe Collins and Blayne knew an easier trail through here and they might well find the bunch waiting for them at the other end.
“Marnie’s been worryin’ the hell out of me,” Cato confessed abruptly, his voice, quiet though it was, echoed off the walls, startling Yancey.
“She sure was cut-up pretty bad about it,” Yancey told his pard. “You didn’t give her any kind of a hint?”
“Couldn’t risk it. It was one of the things that kind of made it look authentic, me runnin’ out on her and her bein’ so upset. I hated like hell to do it to her, Yance, but there was no other way.”
“It was rough on her, Johnny,” Yancey said, and there might have been censure in his voice. “Hellish rough.”
“I know, damn it!” Cato gritted. “I thought of leavin’ her some kind of note, but I knew it wouldn’t be any good. If I did that, she’d brighten up right off and it wouldn’t look right to Blayne. He’s a very careful hombre, which is why he stays in business. Dukes was gonna try to make it a little easier for her, don’t ask me how, and soon as I got word to him what was afoot, he promised to let her know the truth.”
“Well, far as I know, she still thinks you ran out.”
Cato cursed. “Sometimes wonder why the hell I do this, Yancey. Stay as an Enforcer, I mean. Hell, I ain’t even a Texan!”
“Me, neither,” Yancey admitted.
“Yeah, well it’s even more of a mystery why you stick at it. Your old man owns half the country in real estate, railroads, lumber mills and riverboats and so on and you could be part of his empire, taking things easy. But here you are, close to dying in some remote Mexican, snake-ridden canyon, stinkin’ worse’n a polecat, saddlesore, and plumb tuckered, ridin’ your guts out to warn a bunch of peons who likely don’t even speak American and who probably would be better off for food and shelter if we let ’em be taken back to Collins’ spread.”
“Hogwash! You don’t believe that!”
“Guess I don’t, but I’m kind of tired of it all, Yance, and this deal particularly has gotten to me. It’s what I had to do to you and Marnie that bothers me. You’re okay now, you know what’s goin’ on, but you must’ve reckoned me for a real low son of a bitch for a while there,”
“For a couple of minutes, mebbe. But then I just couldn’t swallow that you’d gone rogue like that. Which is why I turned up at Blayne’s camp.”
Cato smiled slowly in the darkness, grabbing at his mount’s mane as the horse stumbled. “Well, it still leaves Marnie and I’ve got me one lousy taste in my mouth about her.”
“Well, I reckon it won’t be easy making her understand, Johnny,” Yancey told him candidly. “She was really cut-up and it’s gonna take a lot of talk to make her see why you couldn’t give her some kind of a hint.”
Cato didn’t answer and they rode on without further talk.
Three hours later, with just a hint of oyster gray starting to show above the sawbacks in the east, they neared the end of the defile through the canyon. They knew there were more ahead of them but they felt more confident now daylight was approaching. The stars were fading in the sky and there was a heavy blackness deep down in the defile where they rode. The horses slowed to a snail’s pace and picked their way through a maze of broken rubble and jutting rocks, worming their way through the last narrow confines.
Then, abruptly, they were out and in a wider, sandy-floored canyon, and they could already make out three or four darker areas that were likely other defiles running out of it.
Cato hipped on his mount and Yancey saw his teeth flash in a grin. “By hell, we did it, Yancey! We got through okay and ahead of ’em! We’ve still got a long way to go but we’ve got ourselves a mighty good lead!”
And, hard on the heels of his words, a bunch of armed men rode out of the deep shadows around the canyon walls, their guns leveled at the two Enforcers.