I'm coming, Tom, his thoughts ran grimly. I'm on my way back to the country of Loco and his broncos, to burn Dalyville for Kadoba.
Across the width of the dusty side street the slat swing doors of a small saloon swung wide and two men stepped through. One of them was dirty bearded and wearing an outdated buckskin shirt much too hot for Arizona summer weather; a man who looked half desert rat, half mountain hunter.
But it was the second man, a much younger man, upon whom Kerrigan riveted his attention. This was the rider who had come into the corral at the hotel at Yuma and asked LeRoy, "He going with us to California?" The one supposedly ordered to go relieve "Old Cap" of some supposed horses.
They stopped and stared, and Kerrigan felt the chill take a hard grip on his belly. He shifted the food package to his left armpit, right hand dropping down within reach of the worn butt of the .44. But the younger man grabbed the older one by a shoulder and spun him back through the slat swing doors, and Kerrigan hurried on at a faster walk.
The next afternoon he saw them following him.
Five men and a pack mule. Five indistinct shapes in the shimmering heat waves back there when he first spotted them. He could even make out the shape of Hannifer LeRoy's odd hat.
"Well, I'll be damned!" Kerrigan ejaculated softly, and began to laugh, the first time that kind of sound had come from his lips in a long time. Quite a few things suddenly were clear to him.
You want to buy a horse, Mr. Kerrigan. My name is Hannifer LeRoy and I've got some. Forty-six of the best. They're on pasture south of town—in case Ace Saunders or Jeb Donnelly fails to make the kill. Right along the old Colorado's muddy waters. On the bank where right below it the deep swirl pools roil around and gouge out deep holes in the sandy bottom. Where a man goes around and around and around for about five days, sometimes standing upright, until gas forms in his swollen intestines and brings him to the surface at last and the waters float him on into Old Mexico twenty-six miles away. You haven't got that much time? Very well, Mr. Kerrigan. Take this red horse and cross the Colorado and wait for me. Wait until I can come over with Ace and Old Cap and maybe Jeb Donnelly…
Kerrigan looked back again. The shimmering heat waves had broken briefly and he saw the white bandage swathing the lower part of Donnelly's face. Yuma's marshal, it appeared, had changed jobs. Beside Donnelly rode LeRoy, as well as the man who'd come into the hotel corral and later appeared in the doorway of the side street saloon in Phoenix. Behind them, Ace Saunders and the man referred to as "Old Cap."
Kadoba, Lew Kerrigan thought in sudden grimness, we're square for the many things you taught me of how an Apache fights. But be careful when you open one end of that long sausage gut. And if you make it free, don't kill Bud Casey!
He looked ahead at some lava beds beginning to crop up in the distance; black and ugly on the sandy floor of the desert.
"I suppose," Kerrigan informed the big red horse, "that after Jeb made his try and failed, LeRoy figured he'd get you back, either across the river in California or at some later place up here."
He reached the black lava beds that lay like lymphatic scabs from volcanic eruptions of untold millions of years before, now radiating heat waves that distorted the vision. He did not go through, as those patiently biding their time probably expected of him. At the south edge of the beds he swung west and started around.
Close to them he felt the heat blasts. Big Red's sweat glands began to work overtime to cool him around neck and flanks. The sun was like a blowtorch upon Kerrigan's shoulders and neck and he shifted the bandanna at his throat and pulled his hatbrim farther down over squinting eyes. He pushed the big horse on around the edge of the black hell and then resumed his course northward. The heat waves threw up a wall of shimmering glass and the five men and six animals disappeared into the center of a cool lake mirage with green trees around the edges.
Only then did Kerrigan turn the horse in among the hellish heat of the rocks and start back to where his trail had ended at the south edge of the lava beds.
He let the reins trail, pulled the heavy .45-90 repeater from the thorn-scuffed scabbard, made sure of the long length of bright brass in the firing chamber, and closed the breech of the ugly-snouted weapon.
He crept back a few yards to a rocky vantage point and settled down to wait. Now let them come, damn them, he thought grimly. A man could only be pushed so often—and he was tired of being pushed.
Jeb, he heard his voice saying aloud to the heat-hazy figure of the distant marshal, you never should have left Yuma. You'd have been safer up on the hill with Wood Smith, among men who don't have rifles.
He hadn't wanted this thing. He'd already done more than a man's share of killing through the long years. At eighteen with the Texas Rangers against the Comanches before the Civil War. Four more years of it then.
I'm thirty-three, he thought in complete surprise. Hell, and Kitty is only twenty-one. Now why would he be thinking about that?
He concentrated his thoughts upon the men following his trail out there. They had accepted Tom Harrow's ill-gotten money to dance, and now the fiddler must have his pay.
In Yuma the repercussions of the prisoner's unexpected release from the penitentiary, and his explosive actions against the marshal almost immediately afterward, were still rocking the town. People were talking about how Jeb Donnelly had resigned as marshal, got himself a deputy sheriff's badge, and gone after Lew Kerrigan, his smashed jaw still bandaged. The night bartender had asked Wood Smith about it the day after the marshal left town. Smith had snarled an unaudible reply, signed for his drink, and gone on up the hill.
He entered the warden's deserted office at the usual time. A key rattled somewhere and Bud Casey, carrying his night lantern, came in from a final vigil in front of Tough Row. He stared at the head guard in surprise.
" 'Mornin', Wood. You're up kinda early to pick up your pay, ain't you? The warden won't be up here for two or three hours yet."
"Habit, I guess," the former head guard grinned. "Couldn't resist this last time."
He reached up and took down the polished brown club from a peg in the stone wall and slipped the shiny thong over his right wrist. "Let's go roust 'em out, Bud."
"Just a minute, Wood," Bud Casey said quietly. "You don't work here any more, remember? You finished up last night at dark. And when you did, that rough stuff finished with you."
"You ain't got my job yet," Smith grunted. "Come on."
There was nothing for Casey to do but shrug and blow out the lantern. He placed it on the floor in a corner and took down his big key ring. Knowing Smith as he did, there was nothing in Smith's actions to arouse undue suspicion.
"Okay, Wood. But I think you're a plain damn' fool to follow Jeb up north to work for Harrow. Maybe it's supposed to be smart for you to wait a couple of days while, so people are whisperin', Kerrigan is run down and killed. I don't think so. You're a plain damn' fool, and so is Jeb. Lew let him off with a broken jaw, instead of killing him like he should have done. You clubbed his arm the other morning to make the kill easy, only it didn't work out that way. In spite of that, Lew didn't stop by the prison on his way north long enough to slide a .45-90 outa the scabbard and put a slug through your belly at two hundred yards. You both had your chances, but I know Lew Kerrigan a lot better than most men. He ain't goin' to give you a second chance. Unless I miss my guess, Lew is going to do the same I read about them wounded tigers in India: waylay the hunter and kill him before he knows what hit him. And now that the professer has made his little speech, I guess I'll shut up. Let's go!" Casey finished angrily.