I salvaged as much of the rice as I could, and we had weak tea, not too hot, and rice. We ate in the dark.
I rolled the two into their blankets, pretended to crawl into mine. But I crawled out on the other side and started playing Indian.
The shots had come from a rifle. The two citizens at the spring might have had a rifle cached, but there was Big Bill Bruze to be reckoned with. Maybe he’d done the rifle shooting.
I crawled up along the sandy ridge, sniffing for wood smoke. Finally I located a camp. It was Big Bill, all right. I started to wake him up and have a show-down, then I figured on a better lesson. I still-hunted into his camp, picked out the biggest of his canteens, carried it out into the desert and buried it where I’d find it again. Then I went back to my blankets.
That night the desert began to whisper. The sand hissed over the sand on the wings of the desert night wind, and the whole darkness literally crawled with whispers. I could tell the others were awake, listening.
The desert is a fearsome thing out at night in the land of the marching sand hills when the wind brings the sand to life and the desert begins to whisper. Listening to those whispers will do things to a man’s soul. They bite deep. I didn’t sleep much.
V. Show-down
Morning, and I organized things. We needed access to that spring and I intended to have it.
“I’m going over to the spring,” I told Ed Bocker. “You stay here with the girl. Use your head. If anything happens to me you’ve got to get her out of here.”
He didn’t argue, just nodded. The desert was doing things to him. I could see that. But I had other things to think about. I went over to the spring. The two looked at me, surly-like.
I kept my eye on them and went through the camp, looking for a rifle. I couldn’t find anything that even looked like a rifle. I told the two a few choice sentiments and went back to camp.
There I made the two a little talk.
“We came into this country to find a mine. We’re going to find it,” I said. “What’s more, we’re going to have trouble. A little trouble all the time. A devil of a lot of trouble if we locate the pay dirt. Let’s go.”
We started out. I had the map and did more exploring than the rest. I left Bocker to do most of the guard duty. The girl did the cooking. I covered cañon after cañon: and always I had the feeling of being watched.
Day after day, the program was about the same. It was hard work, looking for gold and watching back trail. It did things to my disposition. It also did things to Bocker. He got thinner, more whipcorded. His eyes were steadier, and his lips took on a firmer line.
Then one day I stumbled onto it. It was up a winding cañon, and I could see there had been some old camp made at the mouth. A little ways on up I found a can with a piece of paper in it. The paper had some of Pete’s writing in lead penciclass="underline"
That was a funny message, but I figured it was because Pete’s heart had started to go bad on him when he was coming out and he’d left this paper to guide him when he came back.
I stood staring at the piece of paper when a rifle cracked. The report sounded thin and stringy on the hot desert air, but the bullet came cracking through the heat and whipped up the sand within two feet of me. I ducked for cover and got my own rifle into play.
I spotted him up on a ridge, just over the crest, four hundred yards away. He’d been following me, looking at me through binoculars. When he saw me pick up the can with the paper in it, he figured it was a location notice and had gone into action.
I decided to try a trick I’d seen once south of Tucson.
I started walking straight toward the ridge, firing often enough to keep him under cover, making him take little snap shots that went wild at the distance. Fifty yards, and I came to a protecting ridge that ran up and headed the ridge he was on.
I didn’t come over the top of that ridge the way he figured I would, but I started running for all that was in me, working up toward where the ridge joined the main formation.
I got up there, eased over the top, waited until I got my breath enough to hold the gun steady, and then began to slip down, on the same side of the ridge where my friend was.
Two hundred yards, and I got where I could see him. He was stretched out just back of the crest, his rifle at his shoulder, waiting for me to show myself against the skyline as I came across.
I could see he was getting a little nervous, from the way he was stretching his head.
But it never dawned on him to look up his own ridge.
I got my rifle at ready and cat-footed down to him.
When I was within twenty yards he heard me. He flung around and started to throw up the rifle. There wasn’t any time to waste in chatter. I slammed a bullet in the general direction of his gun arm and worked the repeating lever as I jerked in a fresh shell. That one was due to rip his heart to ribbons if he didn’t take the hint of the first one.
But the first shell hit the rifle on the lock and slammed it out of his numbed and nerveless fingers.
“Had another gun hid, I see,” I told him.
He was the same hombre I’d had the fight with at the spring. He’d evidently had one rifle buried in the sand, and they’d kept it cached.
I made him take his shoes off and pass them over. Then I took my rifle and started back down the ridge. He wouldn’t do much mischief in the hot sands of the desert in his stocking feet.
“You take my advice and head for camp,” I told him as I left. “Your feet won’t stand over a mile of this, and you’ll need all the mud you can puddle out of that spring.”
Sure it was cruel, but he had it coming.
Then I heard firing from the direction of my camp. The shots sounded thin and weak, but plenty rapid. I started down the ridge just as fast as I dared to take it in the sun.
I topped a ridge and looked down on camp from four hundred yards. A black speck was perched on a ridge, making talk with a rifle. Another black speck was wading out to meet him, shooting as he walked, shooting calmly, unhurriedly.
Another black speck was behind the blanket rolls, peppering away with a six-gun. It wouldn’t do any good at the distance except keep the guy with the gun occupied.
I knew Nell Thurmond was fully aware of that fact. She was just joining in. I elevated my sights for four hundred yards.
And then I held my fire. The black speck on the ridge had tossed away his rifle and was running down the slope. It was Big Bill Bruze. I could tell from his awkward, sidelong gallop.
Ed Bocker held his gun for a moment, at his shoulder. Then he tossed it away and started running up the slope, toward Big Bill.
I uncocked my rifle and shortened the distance as fast as my legs would cover the ground, and I could see some one else running toward the two enemies, a long-legged cuss who had sprung up from nowhere out of the desert. He must have been buried in the sand. I hadn’t seen him.
Big Bill Bruze and Ed Bocker met on a little level space. The sand was soft. There was no chance for college footwork. It was primitive man against primitive man.
I got there just as it finished. I’d seen some of the action while I was running, not as much as I’d liked, and I had to keep an eye on the long-legged stranger with the rifle who was quartering down the other slope.
Big Bill went down for the count as I came up.
I got a look at his face. His nose was ground to powder. His eyes looked like pieces of hamburger steak. His lips were ribbons.