She shook her head, decisively.
“It is not necessary,” she said.
Fargo hesitated for a minute. His lips were cracked, and his neck and face looked sun tortured, his temper was worn thin and his eyes were flecked with red veins, but he controlled himself, and kept friendly.
“It’s lots of fun, ain’t it?” he said.
One of the men laughed.
“It’s going to be more fun,” he said.
I went over to my blanket roll and got out my gun and the cartridge belt, strapped it on.
The two guards looked at me.
“Zane must be expecting to hunt a rabbit,” said Fargo.
I shook my head.
“You sometimes run into a coyote along in here,” I told them.
“You kill ’em?” asked Fargo.
“Not always,” I answered, “but I like to have my gun where I can reach it — when I’m dealing with coyotes.”
I thought that little warning would be all they needed.
We got started. That afternoon, late, we were where the peaks cut the sky.
“Now what?” asked Fargo.
“We turn up this cañon,” she said, and her voice was tremulous with excitement.
“You sure?” asked Fargo.
“Yes. The map’s as plain as can be from here on.”
I led the way up the cañon, and I decided I’d have the old six-gun ready to yank out. I didn’t like the attitude of the men.
“How far?” asked Fargo.
I didn’t get the immediate significance of what followed. The girl reached for the front of her blouse, and one of the men who had been to my right sort of hitched in his saddle.
“We’re all partners now,” said the girl, “and there’s no further need for secrecy.”
I sensed something of surreptitious motion, and whirled.
I was staring into the business end of an automatic, and the grinning teeth of the man who went by the name of Harry Osgood.
“If you’d unbuckle that gun belt, I could hoist the whole works over here onto my saddle,” he said.
I looked in his eyes, and knew he meant business.
The girl screamed.
Fargo had simply thrown his arms around her, and held her hands pinioned. There was a scrap of paper in one of them, something that was slick and dirty, the sort of paper a prospector would have used for a penciled map.
The other gunman was standing, well away from his burro, his automatic in his hand. The afternoon rays of the sun were sending long purple shadows along the cañons. There wasn’t a soul within sight save the members of our party. It was a wild, unfrequented stretch of desert.
Fargo tore the paper from the girl’s grasp.
I know death when I see it in a man’s eyes. Killing men is something like the dope habit. Some killers get so it’s an obsession with ’em. They like to pull the trigger and see an adversary crumple. It’s just like dope to the complexes that they build up.
This man Osgood had the eyes of a killer. He was getting ready to pull the trigger.
I’d expected there might be trouble if we got to the mine and found that it was rich, but I hardly thought they’d try murder over something that was just a dubious pencil cross on a rough sketch map. It just shows what happens when a man gets too trusting in the desert.
Osgood eased the gun over to his saddle.
“Now, you rat, take this, and...”
Fargo interrupted.
“Wait. We’ll see if we can find it first. Remember, this man knows the desert.”
Osgood stood snarling at me, his eyes glittering with the gleam of a killer.
“Not yet, not yet, Harry,” called the other gunman.
He went by the name of Rankin, and I thought he was more likely to be a leader than Osgood. He had more power. What I hadn’t counted on was Osgood’s killing complex.
Osgood hesitated. Rankin came up. They slipped a rope around my shoulders. One of them heaved. I went off the burro, and one foot caught in the stirrup. I got dragged and stepped on before I could kick free. The three men got a great kick out of it. They laughed long and loud.
They had the girl tied by the time I was free of the stirrup and on my feet again. They knotted my elbows so my hands were behind me, and stuck a gun in my back. Fargo was studying the sketch map he’d taken from the girl.
“Okay?” asked Rankin.
“Okay,” said Fargo.
“Let’s go.”
They went up the cañon. Fargo read the trail from the map.
They turned up a branch cañon, climbed to a mesa. I could see where some one had camped in there, making a dry camp. It had been some little time ago.
They still consulted the map, but I could see the little foot-trail that went to a rock outcropping that had been opened up.
They found the rock. The wild whoop that went up from Fargo’s lips was all I needed to tell me that our death warrant had been signed. That was why they’d jumped us before they had actually located the mine. It was one of those fabulously rich mines that have jewelry rock right on the surface.
I cursed the impulse that had sent me out to guide these crooks. I had some mighty valuable mining properties in a corporation. I didn’t really need the money, only I had a desert man’s horror of borrowing money and pledging stock as collateral. I was keeping that stock free and clear, and earning my living until the stock paid dividends, and now it looked as though the life insurance companies were due to pay up on the policy I’d taken out a couple of years ago.
But the men were so excited over the gold they forgot us. The girl was near me.
“What will they do?” she asked, but her tone and the dark terror of her eyes showed that she knew, without having to ask me. The men were gangsters from the city, gunmen who had perfected their skill in the art of killing. There had never been a badman in the desert who was as ruthless as these killers.
I tried a grin.
“Maybe get drunk,” I told her.
They were drunk, too, drunk with greed and gloating with avarice. They broke off chunks of rock, jumped around, flung up their hats.
Finally they thought of us and the burros. It was getting dark, almost dark enough to have warranted us in making a break. But they came to their senses in time.
They put me down with my back to a rock, and the girl beside me. Then they started to unpack the burros. Osgood was having a talk with Fargo. Fargo was shaking his head determinedly.
“There’s going to be a rush here, and digging all around the place. We’ve got to make certain we’ve got a place where there won’t be trouble. Wait a while.”
I hoped the girl didn’t know what they were talking about. They were figuring on killing us. But Fargo was thinking ahead. He wanted to have it so our bodies wouldn’t be found. I knew his type. He was one of the kind that likes to gloat. He’d come and gloat over us, tell us he was going to make us dig our own graves, and all that.
The girl was dry-eyed. I thought maybe she’d burst into tears, but she just stuck her chin up and took it.
They piled all the blankets, all the grub, all the saddles into one big pile, and they didn’t know anything about hobbling the burros. They just turned ’em loose. I could tell them something about those burros, what with that drifter along. But I wasn’t doing any talking just then.
They got a fire going. It got dark.
Fargo came over to us, sneered gloatingly at me.
“Sucker,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Thought you was going to be the big man and make me respect you, didn’t you? You wasn’t going to be a servant, not you. You were just the guide. We could divide the work up. Bah! I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going ’way up the cañon where there’s a nice quiet place and work half the night digging a big hole. I won’t tell you what’s going in that hole — not right now I won’t. I’ll save it for a surprise.”