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CHAPTER 5

      FROM WHERE he sat high on the rimrock, Tonio could see the cloud of dust chasing the Hudson as it moved toward him along the dirt road.

      It was seldom that cars came out this way, but today his father had sent him up on the rocks to watch if anyone was coming. If the car went straight along the road it would be all right, but if it turned along the sandy track that led to the cabin, Tonio was supposed to race down and warn his father.

      The car turned off and parked where it wasn't visible from the house. Three men got out, looked around warily, and walked rapidly toward the high ground in Tonio's direction. One of the men was thin and old with a white beard; another was tall and heavy, wearing a Mexican straw hat, carrying a rope slung in a coil over his shoulder, and the third was in the middle, wearing an old beat-up hat with old boots that turned up in the toes. While the other two held pistols and rifles, the third man only had a pistol, which was holstered.

      Tonio skidded down the steep side of the escarpment amid a rush of falling stones. When he got near the house he called softly, "Vienen, Papa! Vienen! Tres hombres - y tienen armas!" Before he got past the corral, he saw the muzzle of his father's rifle nose out of the broken window.

      The three men had seen the boy as he dashed into the shack. They climbed a few minutes longer, until they were midway up the escarpment and stopped behind a couple of large boulders that had been dislodged when the land cracked and thrust itself up millions of years ago. Below them they could see the shack, and a '34 Ford, parked beside a battered old Model T that had been partially dismantled. A burro stood sleepily in a corral made of ocotillo and barbed wire. Next to the house a dog stretched and circled around for another nap, ignoring the chickens that scratched nearby. A ditch ran from the stream that flowed by the shack to a small plot of corn and beans, startling green against the desert's olive-colored mesquite and greasewood. About fifty yards from the shack, a stand of cottonwoods and salt cedars grew at the edge of the stream.

      "Well, now he's waiting for us," Brennan said. "That Ford down there must be the car he stole."

      "What are we waiting for?" Petrie demanded. "Let's go down and get the greaser before he gets away."

      Brennan gave him a gentle look. "You want to go down there and get him for us, Tom?"

      Petrie thought about that. Shook his head.

      "You think he's going to come out and get in the car and just drive away?"

      "No sir," Petrie said.

      Brennan was not the sort of man who let things pass easily. "That Mexican can probably shoot pretty good. He'd pick us off before we could get halfway down there. That's why we climbed up these rocks, ain't it? So we can wait till dark. First, Rand will distract him by firing from up here to draw his attention, and then we'll come up on him and get him from behind. Right, Rand?"

      Rand didn't answer. They were trying to make it look as though he had been an accessory in the killing of the hay truck driver. And now they wanted him to participate in another killing.

      "What about it, Rand? You gonna cover for us?"

      "Oh, sure," Rand said. But he had no intention of helping them.

      Brennan pointed at the trees. "See that big cottonwood down there, closest to the stream? That's where the Mexican will swing before morning if we don't get our goods back." He settled down in the boulder's lengthening shadow and began fiddling with his pipe, loading it carefully from a can of Prince Albert, then lighting it.

      In the shack, Pedro Ramirez, his wife, and Tonio waited for the darkness, too. Ramirez was in his early forties, short, with black hair and eyes so black their pupils could not be seen. He was a Tarahumara Indian from near Chihuahua, only a couple of hundred miles south of El Paso, and his people were great runners - sixty or more miles a day. Ramirez wished that he could run now, and escape the men who were waiting among the rocks. But even if he and Tonio could escape, his wife, Consuelo, was too plump to run, and the white-bearded man would undoubtedly torture her to make her reveal where he had hidden the gold.

      Ramirez thought they must have found the old cowboy with the limp and he told them where he lived. He was sorry he hadn't hunted him down and killed him.

      But it didn't matter now. He couldn't run, so he must fight. They would assume he had hidden the gold, so they wouldn't kill him until they made him tell where it was. But if he took the fight to them, and could kill them, he could take Consuelo and Tonio, and the gold, to safety in the car he'd stolen. They could go to Juarez, where Consuelo had a brother. They would be rich.

      The sun was already low on the horizon. Ramirez refilled the clip in the pistol's handle from a box of .45 bullets he found in the car, and he gave Tonio his rifle, to use if he failed to stop them from coming. "Be brave," he told Consuelo. "When you hear gunfire, and they are distracted, you and Tonio go out the back window and hide in the place we found in the rocks. Stay there until I come back, or they are gone."

      Consuelo was beginning to cry, but she knew how much he hated to see her tears, so she tried to conceal them.

      He waited until he thought it was dark enough, and while the moon was obscured by clouds, he took the gun he had taken from Smith and went out through the small window in back, and made his way along the ditch to the stream, which through the years had created a shallow ravine. He ran crouched over in the rocky stream bed until he reached the trees, where he could stand upright and still remain out of sight of the men above him. After resting a minute, he cut uphill about a hundred yards until he reached the shelter of the rocks and, shielded by them, he climbed to the top of the escarpment so he could look down on the men.

      He began to feel exhilarated. They had come for a killing. They would get one!

      He strained to listen and heard a low mumble of words. Moving slowly, so as not to dislodge the small rocks that lay among the boulders, he homed in on them. Below him the land was ripped into a tumbled mass of boulders that spilled into the desert.

      He heard their voices and the scrape of boots as they moved cautiously down the steep hill toward his cabin. They were arguing in whispers, but he couldn't make out the words, except for the word "no" which one of them kept repeating.

      Then he saw the movement of something lighter than the night. It was the old man's white beard. Ramirez crouched and extended the .45 at arm's length, sighted as best he could in the darkness, held his breath for steadiness and squeezed the trigger. The gun roared and leaped in his hand. His target gasped and somebody yelled with surprise.

      There was a fall of rocks as they sought cover. Their rifles roared and sent out brief stabs of flame along with the lead slugs. A bullet smashed into a rock near him and buzzed away into the night. Rocks clattered down as Ramirez moved to a point higher on the incline, while bullets hit where he had been. He searched for another target. He saw a man holding a pistol, and aimed at him and fired, but he missed. Ramirez stood straighter to see more clearly, then suddenly realized he must be outlined against the stars. But it was too late. A bullet smashed into him and he fell into a darker blackness.

      When Ramirez regained consciousness he was down by the trees. There was no feeling in his body, no pain, no movement. Only his eyes were alive. He saw a fuzzy view of treetops against a sliver of a crescent moon that edged out of the clouds. Without remorse or anger, he knew it was all over for him. Maybe there was still hope for Consuelo and Tonio. For him, no le hace, it didn't matter now.

      Brennan, his grazed arm still oozing blood under the handkerchief he'd tied around it, peered down at him. "Can you talk?"

      No answer.

      "Puede hablar?" Brennan asked.

      Ramirez's eyes stared up at him glassily. Brennan slapped him.

      Petrie said, "Let me at him, I'll make him talk."

      Brennan shook his head. "It's too late. You see his head roll when I hit him? His neck's broke."

      "Then let's put the poor bastard out of his misery," Petrie said. He threw his rope over a cottonwood limb and slipped the loop around the dying man's neck. "I'll hoist him up."

      "Let him die in peace," Rand said.

      "It was you that shot him!" Petrie said. "Whining about him now won't make no difference."

      Rand felt hollow inside, because it was his shot that had hit him. The Mexican's bullet had sung in Rand's ears, hitting the rock behind him, peppering him with rock chips, and Rand's response had been immediate. His thumb was on the hammer, then there was the smooth movement as the front sight crossed a darker spot against the sky, and the immediate, featherlight squeeze of the trigger. He couldn't even remember aiming. The gun had seemed to fire by itself and then the man was falling down the steep incline almost at their feet.

      "Do what you want," Brennan said to Petrie, and the big man leaned into the rope and walked it ten feet and wrapped the end around another tree trunk.

      Ramirez felt nothing. As he rose into the air, he saw Tonio come stumbling through the trees screaming, his rifle firing wildly. But by then Ramirez felt only that he was rising . . . he had become a feather . . . a hawk. He was flying away. . . .

      Tonio saw his father rising into the night sky, and for a moment he thought he was seeing a miracle - that his father was ascending to heaven. Then he saw the rope and began to run toward them.

      Petrie was the first to reach him. He wrenched the rifle out of Tonio's hands and clubbed him savagely with the butt. Tonio fell to the ground, but his father still filled his eyes, and the boy had no fear at all. Then he saw Petrie lower the rifle at him, the muzzle inches from his face, and the fear flooded through him.

      Rand ran to Petrie yelling, "Stop it! Let the kid alone!"

      Petrie paid no attention.

      Rand knocked the rifle aside.

      "You go to hell," Petrie snarled. He aimed at the boy's head again.

      The punch Rand threw had everything he had in it - a hundred and ninety-five pound blow that came up from his toes. He hit Petrie so hard under the chin that Petrie flew into the air, his teeth chipped when they clicked together and the rifle fired into the air as Petrie landed on the ground, unconscious.

      By then Tonio was on his feet. He saw Rand standing over Petrie, an expression on his face Tonio would never forget. The boy began stumbling back through the brushy salt cedars, expecting a bullet from Rand's gun to stop him, but when he looked back he saw Rand standing there, staring at him.

      "Stop him!" Brennan shouted.

      Rand followed Tonio into the cedars. He didn't think he could find him, and didn't want to, but as luck would have it, he bumped into him almost at once. The boy was petrified with fright.

      Rand grabbed him and held his hand over his mouth so he couldn't cry out. "Silencio! Run now, before they catch you," he whispered in Spanish.

      The boy bobbed his head and Rand released him. Tonio disappeared soundlessly into the night.

      When Rand got back, Petrie was standing up and leaning against the tree that the Mexican hung from. Brennan held Petrie's rifle so Petrie couldn't use it on Rand.

      "What the hell got into you?" Petrie cried. "My God, whose side are you on?"

      "If you'd killed him, he couldn't have told us where the merchandise is hidden," Rand said.

      "Yeah," said Brennan. "You're a damned fool, Tom. Rand was just trying to help us, and it's your fault the kid got away. Now we gotta get him and find out where his father hid the gold, but at least he's alive and able to talk."

      Petrie stared at Rand with pure hate. Rand smiled back at him sweetly.

      They searched the cabin by lamplight, but found nothing except the belongings of impoverished people.

      "We'll come back in daylight," Brennan said.

      They concealed themselves among the rocks and waited, shivering in the cold night air, shielding their lit matches when they smoked, taking turns sleeping. They said little. Rand didn't sleep. He didn't want to wake up with Petrie's knife in him, although Petrie had settled down somewhat.

      They waited a couple of hours after sunrise to see if the boy, or the woman whose clothes they found inside the cabin, would return, but they didn't. A hot wind had already blown the cool away when they went back down to the cabin and searched it again. They dug around inside with the Mexican's shovel. They checked the corral and they searched the cars. They looked in the ditch and woodpile. They walked among the boulders near the stream, looking for places where the soil seemed disturbed. They found nothing. The land around them was immense. The gold could have been buried in the field, or in the ravine, in the desert, among the rocks. They turned over the privy and stared into the stinking pit. The gold wasn't there.

      Brennan was angry. He shot a hole in the '34 Ford's gas tank, and caught almost a bucketful of fuel that ran out. He poured the gasoline around the inside of the cabin, went outside and threw a lit match through the window. There was a wooshing sound and the cabin was engulfed in flames that quickly spread to the woodpile outside.

      Grinning, Petrie threw a match under the Ford where the gasoline had dripped, and the car caught fire. Rand memorized the license plate, Texas E-78943, as its paint cracked off in the flames.

      Caught up in it, Petrie set fire to the old Model T, then began shooting at the chickens until he had hit them all. He laughed to see them flopping around drenched in blood, cackling shrilly. When the dog came running toward them, Rand told Petrie to stop, but the big cowboy shot the dog dead. Rand released the burro from the corral, daring Petrie to shoot it. The frightened animal ran off to escape the noise and the smoke.

      They waited a while longer to see if the boy would make his appearance. The hay-truck driver had said that the Mexican had a wife. Surely she'd be around to get the gold.

      But nobody came. The chickens all died or fell silent. The house burned until it was nothing but a pile of rock and adobe and charred wood. Only the stove remained standing in the rubble. Except for its color, it seemed almost untouched by the flames. They had checked the inside of the stove, but there was nothing in it but ashes.

      Brennan said loudly, "Let's go," and went back to the car and drove down the road toward town. Then they hid the car out of sight of the house, and walked back to the top of the escarpment and waited to see if the boy or the woman returned. They waited another two hours.

      Finally Brennan said, "I guess we really ought to go this time. I hate this godforsaken place."

      They got into the car and Brennan drove them back toward the ranch house.

     


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