Rawley said: ‘They’ll hit us tomorrow.’ He said it out loud and he said it to his men. Now this catastrophe had happened to them, they must be braced for the worst that could happen to them. They gathered around him in the moonlight, guns in their hands, guns they knew how to use so well, but they were impotent.
Rawley sat on the gold and talked to them, the gold that they wouldn’t be able to move until they had the horses and mules back. He felt like weeping from rage and frustration and he knew that if he had one of the perpetrators of the horse-theft there now he would kill him slowly and painfully. He ached to get his hands on just one of them.
From below him in the gloom of the moonlight, Rich said: ‘If they knew their business, they’ll hit us tonight. Now.’
‘Could be,’ Rawley admitted. ‘But I reckon they won’t. It ain’t their way. They let us sweat a while after they hit us. Carlos, come dawn, you take a half-dozen of the boys and go get the horses. They won’t have gone far.’
Carlos didn’t like the sound of that and he said so. ‘On foot? In this country?’
Rawley allowed some of his rage to seep through into his voice. ‘How the hell else do we get our mounts back, you damn fool? If you don’t have the sand, I’ll soon find somebody who does.’
Carlos consented to go because he feared Rawley more than the country. Which was saying something.
‘Now,’ said Rawley. ‘We got to have a little patience. Things look like they couldn’t be worse. But that ain’t so. They couldn’t be better. Them bastards think they got us. But they ain’t. We got them. This is the way I see it.’
He talked. They crowded close to listen. Their morale was at its lowest ebb, but they had to admit that Rawley had kept his nerve and he seemed to be using his head. They looked at each other and their looks seemed to say: He’s as smart as ever he was. Rawley had the gold and he meant to keep it. The need to keep that much gold would make any man smart in his opinion. He was going to ride out of this country with the gold and a couple of white scalps hanging from his bridle. That he solemnly promised himself.
* * *
At first, they were undecided whether to hit Rawley now in daylight or to wait for night. They talked it this way and that. Finally, McAllister said: ‘We hit ’em now, they don’t have any horses to follow us on. We have mobility and it’s our one advantage. Let’s use it.’
‘We also have night and surprise,’ said Sam.
‘But they could have their horses back by night,’ McAllister said. ‘I vote for now. Carlita does horse-holder, we hit ’em an’ run. I reckon if some of ’em ain’t desertin’ right now, one more attack’ll settle ’em for sure. I reckon right this minute, Rawley’s havin’ to woo them boys with a whole lot of smart talk.’
‘You could be right,’ said Sam. ‘So long as we all agree, I’ll go along with anythin’ so long as it ain’t too crazy.’
So it was decided. McAllister knew the country where the men were camped and he knew the best way to approach the camp. He’d go ahead now and scout the place to make sure everything was as it should be.
They nodded. That made sense. So he saddled the canelo and rode out.
He approached the camp directly from the east this time, wanting the ridges between himself and the camp so that his approach would remain unnoticed. He wasn’t too worried of the task ahead of them, for they would have the advantage of a high position, surprise and the mobility offered by their possession of horses. What worried him was his own tiredness. He had not yet fully recovered from his treatment at the mine and he had been the most of a day and a night without sleep. He was not at his most alert and his great body felt sluggish. He reached the ridge above the camp, dismounted and tied the canelo; then he climbed the ridge with his rifle in his hand. When he reached the top of the ridge, he lay down and took a long hard look at the camp. He did not have a completely clear view of the spot, for there were brush and boulders in the way, but he could see enough.
The first thing he noticed was that the horse-herd was still absent and that was a relief. He could see where the packs had been dumped and noted that there were several armed men around them. Not far off was a cook-fire with a cooky busy at his pans. A half-dozen men were taking advantage of the inactivity by catching up on their interrupted sleep. Their blanketed forms were visible to left and right of the dump of packs. It looked to him that there were another half-dozen men absent from camp and he accounted for that by the need to recapture the horses. That made him smile. They would have a long hard walk before they caught up with them.
He ran his eye over the surrounding country and reckoned that the best place to make an attack from was the ridge on which he now lay. It was high enough to give them a good clear view of the camp and, at the same time, was well within rifle shot. They could do untold damage from up here and they could slip away down the ridge to their horses when the damage was done. Hit and run was still the way to do it. His only disappointment was that all the men of the gang seemed to be accounted for and that didn’t leave much room for desertions. Well, after today if they didn’t start running out on Rawley, they wanted their heads tested. He crawled backward, slid down the ridge and reached the canelo. Mounting, he rode back east and met the others coming on at an easy pace.
‘How does it look?’ was Sam’s first question.
‘Pretty good. They don’t have their horses yet.’
‘Let’s get at it then,’ said Sam.
* * *
Carlos found six horses in a rincon about three miles from camp. He ordered one of the men to mount one and drive the others back to camp. He would keep just one to go after the other horses on. The men protested strongly. How the hell could they catch horses on foot? This was crazy. Crazy it might be, Carlos declared, but this was what the boss had ordered him to do and he must have a good reason. To the man who was to drive the horses to camp he said: ‘Remember what the boss said. You are not to drive the horses into camp. You hide them in that little canyon, then you walk into camp and tell the boss you have them.’ The man looked as if he despaired of Rawley’s sanity, but he reckoned he would do as he was told. Rawley held the gold and he wanted his share of it. He rode off, bareback, driving the loose horses in front of him. Carlos mounted the horse he was retaining and went on north after the other horses. He hoped fervently that Gato and his Indians were not about. He even crossed himself and he had not done that in years.
* * *
Tolliver was the sharpest-eyed man there. He lay among the giant boulders, feeling the heat of the rock under him, and watched the man on the ridge below.
He squinted, as if to sharpen his sight still more, and said: ‘That’s McAllister. The boss said he’d come there and that’s where he is. Maybe Rawley knows what he’s talkin’ about after all.’
The other man, Burt Green, said: ‘It’s a long shot, but I’ll make you a wager, Toll, I can hit him from here.’
‘Keep still,’ Tolliver said, laying a hard hand on his arm. ‘It ain’t time for shootin’ yet awhile. There’s more to come. That bastard’s jest scoutin’. We’ll have ’em all.’
They lay still and watched the man on the ridge-top until he had seen all he wanted to see and crawled back out of sight. Tolliver waited. He could see over the ridge on which the man had hidden and after a while he saw the moving speck which was the man mounted on a horse. Only now did Tolliver put his fingers to his lips and give out a shrill whistle. Far below him, Rawley stood up and peered up at him.
* * *
Rawley walked from the camp, carrying his rifle. He walked for about fifteen minutes till he found himself approaching the small canyon in which the horses were hidden. The men were there with their saddles and he could tell from the bored looks on their faces that he did not think that matters would turn out as he thought they would. But when he spoke to them, they brightened. Their quick movements when they obeyed him showed him that they were eager now. They slapped their saddles on their horses, tightened cinches and mounted up. He told them exactly where to take up their positions and they rode off. He turned east and south when he came out of the canyon, but they swung west first before they turned south through the hills. They moved at a brisk trot for an hour, circling and then halted on high ground above a small valley. Dismounting, they lounged around, holding their horses ready to ride at a second’s notice. One of their number climbed to a higher position so that he could watch for the approach of McAllister and his party. They all felt encouraged now. This time, they thought, things would go in their favour. This time, Rawley was going to turn the tide of ill-luck that had beset them.
* * *
Rawley was excited. He couldn’t remember when he had felt better. For a while back there, he thought he was losing his grip, but now he was confident that he was going to nail the men who had done as much damage to his pride as to his enterprise. By the time this day’s work was over his men were once more going to believe that he was a tough, unbeatable man. That was how he saw himself and that was how he wanted everybody else to see him.
He turned to Rich lying nearby and said: ‘They won’t know what’s hit ’em.’
Rich smiled.
‘Give me just one of’em,’ he said. ‘I could have a lot of fun with one of ’em in my hands.’
Rawley looked at the dummies made up of blankets and packs lying in realistic positions beneath other blankets. They would take most of the fire when the ball opened. He had Tolliver and a couple of men on the height that dominated the ridge from which McAllister and Spur would make their attack. The wounded men would come in useful, too, for most of them could still fire a rifle. They were posted in the rocks immediately above the camp. The mounted men would now be taking up their position south of the ridge. McAllister would be hit as he made his attack and his people would be ridden down when they tried to get away. Something inside Rawley laughed. Rich wasn’t going to be the only one who had a lot of fun. Speaking for himself, he could scarcely wait for the shooting to begin.