The truth came to the man Chaco in the middle of quirting his horse up a steep ridge. He stopped abruptly and forced the men behind him on the narrow trail to halt in precarious positions. They cursed him.
Behind him, Styree said: “What the Hell?”
“I should ought to of knowed,” Chaco said.
“What?”
“McCord’s place.”
Styree saw at once.
“You’re right,” he said. He looked eager now. “They have a wounded man with them. They have to go there. There ain’t no other place.”
Stoddard behind him said: “They’re ridge-ridin’. We cut across the valley, we could be hours ahead of them.”
Styree didn’t say another word. He turned his horse and urged it downhill. The other men reined around and followed him down. When he hit the floor of the valley, he set his horse to running. They used iron and followed him. Eleven men raced their sweating horses across the hot New Mexican valley.
As they rode, Styree considered the situation. If they caught the refugees in the open, there would be some pretty brisk action, but Styree didn’t have any doubt about the outcome of it. If by some mischance, Aragon and the men with her reached the house and found safety behind its thick walls, that would be another matter. It might take time, it certainly would take a lot of lead and powder. He wondered if he could hold these men together long enough for such a fight even with the offer of the booty at the end of it. Mart Storm was a man with a reputation. He could shoot and he had sand. What was more, the man had luck. And luck was a respected commodity in this country. Styree knew that he too needed luck in the hours that lay ahead.
The fact that the trading station belonged to the man McCord had some effect on Styree. Sure, McCord didn’t have a fighting reputation like Storm, but he had a reputation just the same, in spite of his shacking up with an Indian woman. McCord had standing and if he managed to send for help they might even have the United States army down on them. Styree didn’t rate the blue-bellies high, but there were a Hell of a lot of them and a good deal more where they came from.
There were snags through the whole of this operation. They were running these horses into the ground in this heat and they would be fit for nothing if they had to make the trading post at the same pace. Ahead lay the long march to Mexico. All right, they would take horses on the trail. But that would leave sign of their retreat all the way to the Border most like.
Sure, he wanted luck. If he wanted to come through this with success at the end of it, he would worship luck as a jealous goddess.
They rode on at the same hard pace until even Styree, driven on by his need to catch the fugitives before they reached the shelter of the trading-post, saw that the horses would not be able to stand up to such travel under the killing sun. Maybe they could steal horses later, but they would need animals that could run before they could pick up fresh stock.
When Maddox said: We’re killin’ these beasts, Marve.” Styree agreed and they slowed to a walk for fifteen minutes or so. Then it was trot, walk, trot into the greatest heat of the day. The men after their sleepless night were starting to show signs of wear and tear. Now that the pace was easier, a few dozed in their saddles.
They crossed the trail from the Navaho country and started into the slowly rising country toward McCord’s. But the land was broken between them and the post and they did not come within sight of it till an hour later. It was then that Chaco, who was out in front, rose excitedly in the saddle and pointed to the east. The others urged their animals forward and at once their eyes picked up the telltale wisp of dust.
“How many?” Styree demanded as the small cavalcade came to a halt.
“Can’t say,” Chaco told him. “Too far.”
Stoddard said: “Styree, they spot us an’ they can sure reach the post before we get to ’em.”
Styree raised his eyes a little and saw the dim squat shape of the trading post. Urgency rose up in him like some kind of choking excitement. With a yell, he quirted his horse and put it into a flat run. The others hesitated no more than a second before they followed his example and the line of horsemen strung out in a mad race for the small party ahead of them. In that moment, it didn’t matter to them if they killed their horses in the terrific effort. They had to reach the men and women ahead before they were safe behind McCord’s thick walls.
Styree rode like a man demented, cursing and muttering to himself, enraged with the animal under him as if it would go no faster because of sheer perversity. He lashed it ruthlessly with the quirt, but he couldn’t get another ounce of speed from it. Foam from its open mouth lathered his pants, the quirt cut its vicious song from its sweating hide.
It seemed that he covered a full mile before somebody ahead spotted him. He still could not see them clearly, but, as he thundered forward, he gained the impression that the small dark dots he could make out ahead of him suddenly increased their speed. The wisp of dust thickened. He could picture them to himself, suddenly scared, beating their tired and too few horses in a wild and, he prayed, useless run for safety. Pretty soon, he was conscious that it would be a pretty close run thing. Though he was gaining on them rapidly, they were nearing the house now. He howled at them, oblivious of the fact that they could not hear him. He thought he saw a figure come out of the building.
Another half-mile and the shot came.
He didn’t hear it. But he didn’t have to do so to know he’d been shot at, because his tired horse went out from under him. Even as he hit dust, landing badly and quite unprepared for such an eventuality, he realized what a blind fool he had been not to have foreseen that a man like Storm would cover for the women.
He spat the dust from his mouth, feeling it grate on his teeth. A rider thundered up and drew rein. Maddox.
“Git on, goddam you,” he bellowed. “Git on, git on, git on.” His bellow became a scream.
Maddox raked his weary horse with the rowels and went on, pulling his rifle from the boot under his right leg. He didn’t cover a couple of dozen yards before he whirled the animal aside and jumped from the saddle. Styree heard the crack of a rifle now.
The other men were crowding forward.
The rifle ahead turned on them. Some slipped from the saddle and flung themselves down, others spurred and quirted their horses off to one side or back the way they had come.
Styree climbed in a shattered fashion to his feet and started yelling for them to git on and kill the sonovabitch. Didn’t they know there was only one man stopping them. For crissake ride around him. Get out of rifle range and stop the others reaching the house. A few heard him and did as they were told. Others were now too far off to catch his words. His rage was so great that he thought his heart would burst in his breast. To have gotten so close ...
He reached his horse and found that it had been shot clean through the forehead. By God, that fellow sure could shoot. He ripped his rifle from its scabbard and took shells from his saddlebag. He found a slight rise in the land and crawled up it on his hands and knees. A shot and a wisp of drifting smoke and he placed the marksman in an arroyo ahead of him. He swore that he’d shoot the bastard to ribbons.
The heat was stifling in the arroyo. Jody lay on his belly, flat against the side, feeling the heat of the earth beneath him. He lay there watching for movement. But that wasn’t easy because the arroyo cut through a dip in the land and there were some higher ridges around him. Most of the riders had ridden back out of sight.
He despised himself. He had gotten himself into what he had come to recognize as a typical Jody situation. This was the kind of thing his family condemned him for. And they were right. Mart had sent him on ahead with the women and the wounded man. They had been his responsibility and he had failed them. Like he failed everybody, including himself.
Somebody out there to the west fired and the bullet kicked up dust in his face. He slid back down the side of the arroyo, ran a dozen paces to the south and climbed the side of the watercourse again. Now, he sighted a horseman running his animal past him, maybe a couple of hundred yards away to the south. Jody lined his rifle up with him and fired. The man rode on.
Jody couldn’t see the rest of his own party, but at the pace the man was going he reckoned he would reach them before they could gain the house. He levered and fired, levered and fired. Each shot missed. Then he was opened up on by somebody to the west and he lost interest in the rider. Jesus Maria would have to take care of him.
He changed his position again. He could at least put up some sort of a fight and hold some of them here.
Now there was shooting from the east, behind him from the direction of the post. He heard the beat of horses’ hoofs, raised his head and saw three riders trying to pass him to the north. They were in a hurry and had not gotten out of rifle range. He fired until the rifle was empty. When he had decided that he had missed the small moving targets with every shot, suddenly a horse went down and pitched its rider into the dust.
Now he heard more horses. He looked west and saw two men coming, bearing straight down on him.
This was the end, all right.
He climbed up out of the arroyo and shouted at them, laying his tongue to every foul word he knew, defying them. The leading rider fired twice with a belt-gun and missed with both shots. By then he was too close for another, Jody sidestepped the charging horse and belted the man from the saddle with the butt of the rifle. There was a savage satisfaction to see the man go back over the cantle of the saddle, roll over the rump of the horse and land in a pile on the ground.
The second rider drove his horse straight into Jody and knocked him from his feet with a violence that sent him to the bottom of the arroyo.
He was lying there half-senseless when Marve Styree came up.
He looked up into those deadly eyes and he reckoned there wasn’t much time left to him.
Evidently, Dale Brophy thought the same thing.
“It’s never pleasured me more to blow a man’s head off,” he said.
Styree turned the gun away with a hand.
“You’ll never win prizes for brains,” he said softly. “Aragon has one treasure up there to the house. But, me, I have a real treasure right here under my nose.”
So Jody knew that the women had reached the house. He sat up and Styree went on: “This pup is kin to Mart Storm. There ain’t enough gold in the world to buy kin from Mart. This here kid is our hole card, Brophy.”