Walker looked at me with his jaw sagging open. It was pathetic to see this man, face to face with death, realizing that he might have made the mistake that had caused all this.
“Blaine confessed,” I went on. “He told me all about it, and he scribbled a confession in his notebook and gave me the notebook and wallet, so that I could turn in his confession and make what restitution he could.”
Pedro Gonzales husked: “That’s a damned lie!”
I shook my head and pulled the wallet from my pocket.
Every one of them knew that leather wallet. It was Blaine’s, and one that he was proud of, one that had the edges laced together with a leather thong, and had his monogram embossed on the leather front. I took out the notebook that was inside of it, and thumbed through the pages.
Pedro Gonzales pushed forward.
“It’s a lie!” he said again.
I looked at Gonzales and then let my face settle into a cunning leer.
“Oh, no, it ain’t a lie,” I said. “I’ve got the confession right here, but you aren’t going to get your hands on it. You’d destroy it!”
And I pushed the notebook back in the wallet, put the wallet in my pocket.
Stan Walker said: “Bob Zane, that’s evidence. I command you to deliver it into the custody of the law!”
I laughed at him mockingly.
“There isn’t any law,” I said. “As far as you’re concerned, the law is finished. As far as I’m concerned, the law is finished. As far as Pedro Gonzales is concerned, the law is finished. The law can’t do anything to any of us. We’re going to a higher court! We’re dying!”
Pedro Gonzales stared at us with his bloodshot eyes.
“Blaine wasn’t the one that did it,” I said. “Gonzales was the one who did the real killing. Blaine only helped.”
Gonzales said nothing.
Walker turned to him and said: “Gonzales, is that right?”
Gonzales still kept quiet.
I said: “Of course it’s right, you fool! Don’t you see? How could the motor of that car have been so hot that I burned my arm on it if it had been standing there in Jawbone Cañon for two hours? They smashed the car just to make an alibi.”
Nobody said anything for a while. There was silence. Then I got up and said: “You can do what you want to, but I’m not going to die with a murderer.”
I got to my feet and started to walk away, but I only went about twenty yards, and then staggered, stumbled, and fell down on my face.
I heard some one running toward me, and knew that it was Pedro Gonzales, from the way he limped when he ran. I could hear the sound of his feet crunching in the sand, one foot coming down harder than the other.
He flung himself on me and started clawing and scratching at my pocket, trying to get hold of the wallet that I had there.
Stan Walker was running after him, yelling for him to stop.
Gonzales got his hands on the wallet, but couldn’t drag it from my pocket because I flung my arm across my body so that I held the wallet close to my body.
Walker shouted something inarticulate and flung himself at Gonzales, knocking Gonzales back into the desert.
I sat up and stared at them. My eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and my voice was husky.
“There’s no use fighting about it,” I said. “It wouldn’t make any difference. There’s no escape. We’re going to die. We can’t reach water, and no help will come to us here. All that I ask is, don’t let me die with that murderer!
“Blaine died, but he died with a clean soul. He confessed.”
The strain was too much for Gonzales. He got to his hands and knees there in the desert and stared at us with his red-rimmed eyes glittering malevolently, his lips working and twisting. He was like some wild animal there, with the fierce sun beating down on his face, showing the ravages of thirst and hunger, the oily scum which had collected on his skin, the growth of stubble which was pushing out from his chin.
“He didn’t die clean, damn him!” he snarled. “I didn’t kill him; Blaine killed him! I only helped Blaine with his getaway. The dirty double crosser! He came to me and told me that this gambler had something on him, and that he had to kill him. I don’t know what it was, but the man had been following Pete for years. So Pete killed the prospector, and took the gold. He wanted to make it look as though the gambler had done the killing. Then he figured that the boys would string up the gambler. All I did was help Pete plant the gold in the gambler’s room and plan the alibi so that Pete would have a chance to alibi himself if anybody made any accusation.”
Walker said: “Gonzales, I arrest you in the name of the law.”
Gonzales jibbered at him with a face that was like the face of some great ape.
“You damn fool!” he said. “You can’t arrest anybody. We’re dying. All of us are dying. It’s the end! There’s no escape! Blaine’s dead. The gambler’s going to die. You’re going to die. Bob Zane’s going to die. I’m going to die. All here together, we’re going to die!”
The gambler said calmly:
“Well, at least let’s be men about it.”
I rolled over and got to my hands and knees. I sat up and stared at one of the mountains, and then pointed to the outline of a saddleback.
“I know that mountain!” I yelled. “There’s a prospector got a camp on the other side. The road’s only a little ways from his place, the main road that has travel on it.”
“Delirium,” said Walker, trying to calm me.
“Anyhow,” said the gambler, “we can see if he’s right. Personally, I’m tired of this place. I’d like a change of scenery for my death. I don’t want to die by the side of this automobile. It lacks distinction.”
I staggered away toward the mountain.
“Come on,” said the gambler.
Pedro tried to keep up, but his ankle was bad. He was limping and staggering.
I led the procession.
It was hard going in the hot sun, toiling up the little slope. We topped it. There, not half a mile away, was a little shack with a road running in to it, and a flivver standing in the sun, covered over with burlap. There was a trailer with a big water tank on it.
The men broke into a run.
The prospector came out when he heard us shuffling through the sand. He gave us water and made us some soup. We went out and got Pedro Gonzales.
The water brought us around all right. The fever left our blood.
Walker came over to me. His manner was more changed. It was deferential and somehow apologetic.
“Zane,” he said, “I had better take that confession as evidence.”
“You don’t need it now,” I told him, “not after having heard Gonzales’ confession.”
“I know it,” he said, “but nevertheless it’s evidence and I should have it.”
I grinned at him and said: “Well, you won’t get it.”
He stiffened.
“Why not?”
“Because,” I told him, “there isn’t any confession.”
He stared at me with his eyes getting bigger all the time.
“I knew you were making a mistake right from the start,” I told him, “and when I touched the radiator on that car down there in the cañon and it was red-hot, I knew that the car hadn’t been standing there for any particular length of time.
“Then I looked it over a little bit and saw that they must have driven into that rock on purpose in order to smash the wheel. I put two and two together, and figured that they wanted an alibi. So I slipped Blaine’s wallet out of his coat pocket, figuring that I might be able to fake a story about a confession if I ever had the opportunity.”
But I didn’t tell him that I had deliberately driven the car off the road in order to make the opportunity. He might not have appreciated that.