There came more horses, and Drew stopped counting. But the gray he sought was not among them. The shouts of the drivers were louder. And then, as three men appeared bunched, there was a crackle of shots. Two of the riders fell, one leaning slowly from the saddle, the other diving into the dust. The third tried to turn but did not get his horse around before a mule pushed into him, followed by another and another. The horse thieves were trapped. Drew could hear the sharp snap of shots along the pass. More than those three must have been caught in the ambush.
The mules, braying and running wild, thundered on south after the horses. Then a saddled horse, riderless, galloped by with a second at its heels. Confused shouting rang out, without any meaningful words. This was as much a muddle, Drew thought, as any battle. You never saw any action except that immediately about you—mostly you were too busy trying to keep alive to care about incidentals. Come to think of it, this was about the first time he had ever sat out a fight, watching it as a spectator.
The roll of firing was dying down. Anse grinned at him.
"Takes you right back, don't it now?" he asked when he could be heard. "Th' Old Man, he's got him some of th' Gineral's idears—work good, too!"
"I didn't see Shiloh in that band." Drew stood up. "Couple of duns ... no grays."
"Come to think of it," Anse agreed, "that's right! But lookit that bay down there." He pointed to one of the saddled horses that had a dragging rein caught in a dead juniper stump and was trying to pull loose. "Got th' RR brand! Some of these must be from th' Range raid."
"Hey—down here—!" The hail broke down the pass from the north. Rennie climbed over his rock barricade, and other men came out of cover to move up the cut. Since no one tried to stop them, Drew and Anse went along.
"Got us two of 'em ready to talk!" Jared Nye strode to meet his employer. "They're Kitchell's gang, all right. Only he ain't with 'em."
"Patrón—" For the first time since he had known him Drew saw Bartolomé Rivas run. He was weaving in and out among the fallen men in the pass. "They ride." He was half choked by the effort to force his message past heavy gulps for breath.
"Who rides?" Rennie demanded.
"Three—four men ... that way." He waved a plump hand to the east. "They go like the wind, Don Cazar. And one—he rides the big gray!"
Drew whirled. The big gray—there was only one horse to be named so on the Range. Some of the outlaws had escaped the trap and one was riding Shiloh! Drew found the horse with the tangled rein, jerked and tore at the leather strap, and was in the saddle when a hand caught at the rein he had just freed.
"Where do you think you're going?" Hunt Rennie demanded.
Drew snapped the rein out from the other's hold. There was only one thing he wanted now, and that was getting farther and farther away with every second he wasted here.
"After Shiloh!" He used spurs on the horse and it leaped ahead. For all he knew any one of the posse might take a shot at him, so he rode low in the saddle. He heard startled cries, saw Bartolomé Rivas stumble as he got out of the path of the wild horse. There were rocks, sand, a body which the horse avoided in a leap, then there was free ground and Drew settled down to ride.
A horse was coming up from behind—they need not think they were going to stop him now. Drew turned his head as the mount pulled level with his own. He was ready to fight if need be. Only the man in the saddle was Hunt Rennie.
"Better find out which way to go before you break your neck or that bay's legs," Rennie called. "Out beyond that pillar—then east."
Drew nodded. But Rennie did not fall back. He was riding his heavy duty horse, a grulla famous for its staying power. And now the Kentuckian regained his proper share of common sense and began to pull in the bay. As his father had pointed out, a broken neck or a horse's broken leg was not going to bring Shiloh any closer. He heard the sound of other horses and glanced back as they wheeled around the pillar to the east.
Four riders were bunched—Anse, Nye, Teodoro, and Donally. That made six of them in all, pursuing four fugitives over miles of countryside which might have been shaped with no other purpose in mind than to shelter men on the run. But perhaps they could come up with the quarry soon....
Shiloh! He had to get Shiloh! Drew began to call upon all the horseman's knowledge and scout's lore that he possessed. Those qualities, rather than fighting power, were what he believed he needed now. With luck—always with a large-sized helping of luck!
16
"Now that you have that bucked out, how about a little sound reasoning?" Hunt Rennie still held his position, riding stirrup to stirrup with Drew.
The worst of it was, Don Cazar was right. This was no time for raw emotion to replace thinking. Already it was almost dusk and their quarry could not be traced into the dark, even if they had the aid of a full moon. The Kentuckian reined in. Growing shadows masked the country ahead—rough territory—which he did not doubt the fugitives knew far better than he did.
"All right." It was difficult, one of the most difficult things he had ever done, to admit even that much that he must follow Rennie's lead. "What do I do now?"
"You still think you can go it alone—want to?" Rennie's face was shadowed, and his voice again held that remote note.
"It's my horse." Drew was defensive.
"Stolen on my range," Rennie retorted. "This is far more my fight than yours. If we didn't get Kitchell back there at the pass, and I'm inclined to believe that we did not, then I want him! You don't kill a rattler by cutting off his rattles—you go for the head. But this rattler's on his home land and he knows where to hole up. We have only one card to play against him."
"What's that, suh?"
"Water. Oh, I know all the rumors that the Apaches have secret water holes back in the hills, and they may have introduced Kitchell to some of them. But the hills are behind him. He'll want just one thing now, to get south, across the border. He's lost a large number of his men, probably all of his loot, back there at the pass. He can't hold out here any longer. Once he's into Sonora we can't touch him—I know he has friends down there."
"Could he try to take the wagon road south?"
"As a last resort, perhaps. The pass was the only outlet through which he could run that band of stolen horses and his pack mules. But there are other places, at least two I know of, where a few men, riding light, can get through. I believe he'll try to head for one of those."
"Make it ahead of us now?"
Rennie laughed shortly. "If he does, he'll have a warm reception. The Pimas are already scouting both passes. We planned to close the border when we set up that ambush. Meanwhile"—he glanced back—"Teodoro!"
"Sí, Don Cazar?"
"How far are we from your hunting-camp site?"
"Two, maybe three miles. Slow riding in the dark, Don Cazar."
"We'll head there. That—except for the hole behind us which Bartolomé will cover—is the only water for miles. And we're between Kitchell and the border spring. One thing he will have to have is water. We stake out the pools and sooner or later they will come to us."
It made sense, but still Drew was impatient. Out there one of Kitchell's men, or perhaps the outlaw himself, was riding Shiloh. The fact that Rennie's plan seemed a gamble did not make it any easier to follow. But the Kentuckian could think of nothing better to offer.
The moon was rising as they came to the water hole near the mustangers' camp. Men and animals drank together, and when Drew dismounted his weariness hit—hard. Fatigue was a gray cloud in his brain, a weight on arms, legs, body. Voices around him sounded faint and far away as he steadied himself with a grasp on the stirrup leathers and fought not only to keep on his feet but awake.