And he'd have to get out of the territory to some faraway place because he hadn't believed a word Judge Eaton had promised less than an hour before. He knew the man and his fanaticism. He suspected that Tom Harrow's freedom had had something to do with money paid or to be paid.
Kadoba's familiar shadow loomed up out of nowhere and the Apache grinned his schoolboy grin. "Soldiers come, Yew. Loco gone."
"Dead? Run away?" Lew Kerrigan asked without particular interest. General Crook had cleaned out most of the other bronco bands, and it would have been but a matter of time until he'd run down Loco if the raider had escaped.
"No dead. No run away. Apache scouts catch him. Catch me too but I go back there."
He pointed toward the distant fire, now beginning to slow down from lack of fuel. Many trees were burning fiercely through the tops but there was no wind to speak of out in the open country.
Kerrigan listened while the Indian talked with many gestures in a mixture of English, his own tongue, and a few Spanish words. He didn't jab an index finger against his throat as when he had told of killing Wood Smith. He slashed it across his throat in an emphatic gesture.
The White Eyes soldiers would have sent him away for two years and then turned him loose again. The old White Eyes who wasn't a soldier and didn't understand Apaches had put him in chains for life. He had killed him back there.
Again the simple generic Apache laws: If a squaw was unfaithful, hack off her nose or kill her. If an enemy did you wrong, kill him.
The judge had done a wrong to him and he had paid the debt as only an "untutored young savage" knew how.
"Where you go now, Yew?" he asked.
"Far away, Kadoba."
"You come with me, Yew. I take you to Apache gold. Loco no need more now. Not much like here long time. But some, I think."
"I don't need it," Kerrigan said tiredly. "I have enough for my needs. Where do you ride now?"
The Indian gave a guttural grunt. "Find other broncos, maybe. I hear soldiers cry, 'Where Kadoba? Where that damn' Apache kid?' Apache Kid now, me," he grinned.*
* Author's note: Kadoba is not to be confused with the notorious Apache Kid of later years. That Kid, born in 1869, was only six years old at this time and living on the reservation.
Suddenly he whirled and fled like a shadow, his animal-keen ears picking up sounds that warned of danger; sounds Lew Kerrigan did not hear.
Kerrigan straightened his tired frame and picked up the .45-90 repeater by the barrel. He was in no hurry to get back until the shouting soldiers somewhere over yonder in the night had brought things under control. He was certain that Carlotta and the others were safe, and with that to ease his mind nothing else mattered at the moment.
Tom Harrow had dealt him the cards, he had played out the hand in his own way, and now all he wanted to do was cash in his remaining chips and get out of the game. There would be no point in going back to Texas now, he suddenly decided. A man could dream as he traveled along the road Kerrigan had been traveling, but the longer he rode the harder it would be to turn back upon the past; and if he did, the dreams would be shattered in the bitter truth of reality.
Each day a man outgrew something of the yesterdays and left them behind, and Kerrigan knew now was the time to turn his back again and reach out for tomorrow.
He straightened his shoulders, feeling better now that the decision was made, and began walking back among the thinly scattered log shacks and little pole corrals and sheds.
He rounded one of those sheds by an abandoned burro corral and came face to face with Harrow and Jeb Donnelly. They'd been waiting for him, having ducked away when the soldiers ripped through and began to encircle the members of Loco's bronco band still alive and unable to escape. Kerrigan saw the two pistols leveled at him and the wild gleam of triumph in Tom Harrow's eyes.
"Drop that rifle, Kerrigan!" cried Harrow wildly. "Throw up your hands! It's taken a long time but we've finally got you."
Kerrigan let go of the rifle. Its stock thumped to the ground beside his moccasin and then it toppled over on the grass.
"Throw up your hands!" Harrow ordered again.
"Not for you or any other man in the world right now," Kerrigan said. "Tom, I'm tired and weary of running, of fighting and killing, of hating. I told you tonight I'm not going to kill you. Just go find yourself a horse somewhere and get on it and keep going, the same as I'm going to do. Jeb, you knelt down over a ditch up in the prison one day and beat me with a club while I was down. I paid you back with that gun Tom's carrying now. I said then that makes us square, and I'm willing to forget the part you played in the long haul northward from Yuma."
"That's damn' bighearted of you," Donnelly grunted, speaking awkwardly because he'd injured his partly healed jaw when he tore off the bandage while fleeing the Apaches burning Harrow's big mansion.
"I've just talked to Kadoba, who told me he cut the judge's throat," Kerrigan stated patiently. "He told me, also, that the new source of gold isn't much. A small two-inch vein of ore, which might trickle out within forty feet. I don't want to be taken down there a prisoner and then probably shot to death through the back of the head like Tom killed poor old Bear Paw Daly."
Harrow laughed abruptly. "If you take us and show us where, you at least have my word you'll go free and get something out of the stock I'll sell back East. If you refuse, Lew, you can remember what happened to Bear Paw Daly."
Kerrigan weighed his chances against taking a bullet from the small caliber pistol in Harrow's hand and living, while he writhed sidewise and tried to slam a .44 into Donnelly. Tired and discouraged though he was, something told him he would gamble and possibly win. It was worth a try. Anything except having to be taken a prisoner back down the long trail to show them the vein not far from the camp where Kerrigan had shot the marauding black bear.
But the gods of chance were still dealing the cards from the deck that night as Ace Saunders' cool voice came from behind. "Hold it, Kerrigan. I can read in your mind to a split second what you're going to try."
Harrow gave a soft, relaxed laugh as the gunman, his dark face black in the moonlight shadows of his hatbrim, came up. He said, "So you finally got him, huh?"
"We got him, Ace," Harrow grinned joyously. "One million dollars right in front of us! With my fame as the discoverer of Dalyville, we're rich, men. Richer than we ever dreamed a man could get. I've never admitted nor denied that the strike found by old Bear Paw was Adams' lost diggings. But when I go back East this next time it will be in every paper in New York. I'll have samples of the new strike, and men will go mad to buy stock. One million dollars—and he's right here in front of us."
Saunders smiled and said, "Well, Kerrigan?"
Joe, where are you? Kerrigan thought desperately.
"You haven't got your gold yet," he half-grunted.
"No," came the soft reply. "And you, Harrow, ain't ever going to get it."
Harrow stared at Ace in astonishment. "You" he whispered. "I never would have believed it, Ace. For two years you worked for me, drew your pay, turned your back to gold, gambling, and the gulch women you could have had. But the fever finally got you and you're trying to grab."
"I've had a bad case of fever that began a long time ago when' I first made Stubb Holiday run away with me. I saved my money and maybe I stole some little gold bars up there tonight in your house where they were hid under the fireplace hearth. I was all set to finish up this Kerrigan deal, collect my money from you, and take Stubb outa here and start a decent way of life on a small ranch."