And away we go; him at the wheel once more.
The sky gets blue, morning checks in, and we can cut the lights now. There’s still gas, but it’s rapidly dwindling.
“All I ask,” I jabber, keeping my tongue away from my teeth, “is that theirs goes first. It should, because our tank started from scratch at the casino, they must have used up some of theirs getting to it from across the line. They also got eight cylinders to feed.”
A little after six we pass through a Mexican village, their treads showing down its main lane. Also, there is a dead rooster stretched out, with all the neighbors standing around offering sympathy to its owner.
“They left their card here,” I say. “Let’s ask.” We put on the brakes and I make signals to them, using the two Spanish words I know.
“How many were in the car that ran over that hen’s husband?” I signal.
They all hold up four fingers.
“Hombres or women?” I want to know.
All men is the answer.
“M’gard!” groans the driver, “Maybe they give it to her and buried her back there where we found the dress!”
“She’s still with them,” I answer. “They got her into men’s clothes, that’s all. Or else there are four in the gang and they have her trussed up on the floor.”
We have a little trouble starting, because they have all collected around us and seem to want to hold us responsible for the damage. A couple of ’em go home for their machetes, which are the axes they chop maguey-plants with.
“We’re cops,” I high-sign them, “chasing after the first car, which has bandidos in it.” When they hear that, they send up a big cheer and clear out of the way. Unfortunately, we knock over a chicken ourselves, just as we’re pulling out — a hen this time.
“It woulda been a shame to separate them two,” says the driver blowing a feather off his lip.
There are no firearms in the village, so we don’t slow up to explain.
“Shoulda got water,” says the driver.
“We’da got a lot more than water if we waited,” I tell him.
It's hot as the devil by nine, and every bone in my body is aching
“We must be way to the cast of Mexicali by now,” I mention. “What are they going to do, keep going until they hit the Colorado River?”
“They must have some hideout between here and there,” he thinks.
“They’re looking for one, you mean. They didn’t have time to get one ready. It was Timothy who cooked up the thing yesterday morning after he found out where she went to. She didn’t even know herself she was coming down to Agua until the last thing Friday night—”
At 9:22 by the clock I say, “What’re you stopping for?”
“I ain’t stopping,” he says, “the car is. Maybe you’d care to cast your eye at the gas gauge?”
I don’t have to, to know what he means. We’re without gas, and in a perfect spot for it, too.
The wheels have hardly stopped turning before the leather scats begin to get hot as stove lids.
“All I need is a pinch of salt,” he says, “to be a fried egg. Well, as long as we’re not going any place any more, here goes!”
And he hauls a long bottle of tequila out of one of the pockets of the car and pulls the cork out with his teeth.
“Hold on!” I say, and I grab it away from him. “How about trying this on the tank, instead of your insides? Maybe it’ll run on this—”
I hop out and empty it in. He follows me out with two more bottles.
“I laid in a supply.” he says, “for the garage party last night.”
“Give it the ignition,” I snap, “before it finds out what it’s using.”
Well, sure enough, the engine turns over on it, and when I get in next to him, it starts to carry us!
“You shoulda bought a kegful,” I gloat.
“Anyway,” he mourns, “it’ll take us to some different place to roast in.”
“I can’t figure,” I’m telling him, “why it hasn’t happened to them. They haven’t had a chance to fill up since we’ve been on their tail—”
When suddenly he stops the car, this time of his own accord. “It has!” he says. “There they are — or am I just seeing mileages or whatever they call those things?”
They’re so far ahead we can’t even see the car; it’s just the flash of the sun on chrome that we can make out from way off. But it holds steady in one place, meaning they aren’t moving any more they’ve stopped.
There are three long, gradual, intervening hollows between us and the flash, separated by two medium-sized rises, not high enough to cut it off. But on a line with them, to the left, there is quite an abrupt crag or cone-shaped mound — the highest thing for miles around; its shadow falls the other way, so they’re right out in the blazing sun.
“They’re stalled,” I say, “or they would have gone around it into the shade. Cut way over to the left; if we can put that thing between us and them maybe we can sneak up and get the drop on them.”
It isn’t the odds that matter; but I keep remembering they have Fay with them, and they are just the kind of rats that if they see us coming they would—
I know the driver is armed without having to ask — she always insisted that he carry a gun on his person just in case. I replace the shot I fired at them from the casino.
“If they flash like that,” he remarks, turning at right-angles to the left, “so do we — they’ve seen us by now.”
“They’re facing the sun, and it’s behind us,” I remind him. “It won’t be straight overhead until noon. They can’t tell, unless they got energy enough to climb on foot all the way to the top of that crest. I don’t think they even know we’ve lasted this far—”
We keep going in a big wide loop, and the hillock slowly shifts, first to dead center, then on around to the right. The winking flash their car gives off disappears as the crest gets in the way, and now we and they are on the opposite side of it.
“Now we’ll close in,” I say. “See if we can make the shade, anyway, before we get out of the car.”
“You shoulda been a general,” he tells me admiringly.
The shade cast by the summit keeps backing away from us, distances being deceptive in that clear air; but finally when the ground has already started to go up, up, it sweeps over us like cool blue ink — and what a relief! I give him the signal to cut.
“We go the rest of the way on our own.”
“Aren't you going to use the car for a shield,” he says, “if they start firing at us?”
“There isn’t going to be that kind of firing. Miss North is right in the middle of them.”
We get out and start up to the top on our side, instead of, as he wants, circling around the base. Looking down on them from above will give us a big advantage, I figure; they won’t know whether we’re a whole posse or just two fellows.
It’s a tough climb, too; the hill, which looked so smooth from way off, turns out to be full of big and little boulders, and with a tricky grade to it.
“Everything’s under control,” he heaves behind me, “except suppose it turns out they just stopped to rest instead of being stalled, and they’ve gone on while we been doing our mountain-climbing act?”
I don’t bother answering — it would take too much breath away from my footwork. If they were just resting, they would rest in the shade, not out in the broiling sun.
We get to the top finally, and I motion his shoulders down, so they won’t show against the skyline. Then we both stick our noses over and look. The car, being farther out, comes in sight first — but there is nobody in it or near it.
“Don’t tell me they’ve gone off on the hoof and left it—” he whispers.
“Sh!” I shut him up, and crane my neck higher. They’re in closer to us, right under the brow of the hill, which is almost perpendicular on their side. Three of them are standing around talking it over, and there’s a fourth a few yards away sitting by himself on a boulder.