“That,” Sentensa said grimly, “remains to be seen.”
CHAPTER 9
TUCO put his hat on the ground at the crest of the ridge overlooking the river. He carefully parted the bushes. The Man With No Name sat beside a fire in a small clearing on the riverbank. A smoke-blackened coffee pot squatted on the embers and the hunter idly examined an empty tin cup while he waited patiently for the coffee to boil. His saddled horse stood at the edge of the clearing, cropping grass.
Tuco wriggled back below the ridge line, put on his hat and scrambled down to where four men waited beside tethered horses. They were a gun-tough quartet, brawlers with hard, brutish faces.
“The set-up is perfect.” Tuco breathed hard. “He’s hunched over his fire, waiting for his coffee. He’s so sure no enemies are near that he does not even bother to look behind him. Red, you and Scar creep up from that way. Juan and Pedro will close in from the other side. When I call to him he will jump up with his back to you. Hit him then—make sure you come out shooting. Don’t give him a chance to get out his gun. He’s a dead shot.”
The man called Scar grinned wolfishly.
“Don’t worry, Tuco. The dead shot’ll be just dead—and we’ll split the four thousand dollars bounty on his head.”
“Three thousand,” Tuco corrected. “I take one thousand and you split the rest. Ah, to kill a hated enemy is sweet—but to kill him and make a profit is sweeter still.”
The hunter lifted the boiling coffee pot off the coals on the river bank. Still holding the shiny tin cup, he reached into the open saddlebag beside him and took out another cup, this one old and battered from long use. He poured coffee into this one and set it aside to cool.
Not once had he bothered to glance at the thick underbrush behind him. There was no necessity to swivel his head mound. The shiny bottom of the first cup was a micror. By moving it slightly he could maintain a constant watch on the underbrush at his back.
The mirrored surface showed a stir of movement, then a fleeting glimpse of two heads briefly raised. He turned the cup slightly and caught a similar glimpse on the opposite side.
The voice of Tuco came from in front of him, somewhere beyond the screen of shrubbery.
“Hey, Whitey, are you so selfish you don’t invite your old friend and partner to share a cup of coffee?” The hunter was on his feet and spinning around as the four broke through the brush. His palm slapped the hammer of his gun.
The four shots blended.
Deep in the woods, safely sheltered behind the thick trunk of a tree, Tuco also heard the four rapid shots. They were followed by silence. He blanched, whirled and ran frantically to where he had left his horse.
The Man With No Name paused in the act of reloading his gun. He cocked his head, listening to the pound of swiftly receding hoofbeats.
A faint smile stirred his lips.
“Goodbye, old friend and partner,” he murmured.
He glanced at the four sprawled belies, shrugged and squatted down to sample his cooling coffee.
Sentenza had spent most of the morning working his way up the mountain to avoid the Union forces holding the canyon and pass below. Close to noon he sat down to rest and catch his breath. He glanced idly around and his eye caught a flash of dark blue among the grey-brown of the rocks. He sprang up and moved cautiously towards the spot.
He found the body of a Union sergeant huddled in a shallow niche under an overhang of rock. The man apparently had been mortally wounded in the fighting that had surged up the flanks of Glorietta Pass and had crawled here to die.
Sentenza squatted and went through the dead man’s pockets. Inside the jacket he came upon an order, assigning Sergeant Allen Crane to adjutant duty at Battleville Prison Camp. Sentenza’s pale sorrel eyes glowed with satisfaction.
Luckily the sergeant had been no small man. His uniform jacket was full enough to conceal the long-barrelled pistol at Sentenza’s left hip. Sentenza buttoned the jacket and strapped on the dead man’s army Colt over it.
“Excellent,” he murmured, looking down at himself. “Now, if you can only remember how to salute properly, Sergeant Crane, you may wind up yet with two hundred thousand in gold.”
The scene had been duplicated too many times. The swarthy prisoner slumped in his saddle beneath the gallows beam, the hangman’s noose around his neck. The sheriff stood at the horse’s flank, holding his whip. The judge finished reading the list of charges.
“Therefore, with the powers vested in us by the law, the aforesaid Thomas Larson, commonly known as Shorty, has been duly condemned to hang by the neck until dead. May the Lord have mercy on his soul.”
Some two hundred yards down the street, in a narrow alleyway, the hunter steadied his rifle across his left aim and took careful aim at the gallows rope. The sheriff raised his whip. The hunter’s finger tightened on the trigger.
The barrel of a gun rammed hard into his back and the voice of Tuco biased, “Eh-eh-eh—not this time, Whitey.”
The ugly one reached around and snatched the rifle, then lifted the hunter’s pistol from its holster. Down the street the whip came slashing down and the horse lunged away.
“What about Shorty?”
Tuco chuckled coldly.
“Shorty be hanged, amigo. This partnership, like the old one, is—how did you put it, Whitey? Dissolved?”
The hunter looked at the figure kicking at the and of the rope. He shrugged.
“Sorry, Shorty, but I guess every man’s luck has to run out sooner or later.”
He tramped to the rear of the buildings, the gun nudging his back. He turned towards his horse.
Theo said, “No, Whitey. Not this time. The world is divided into two kinds of people, amigo—those who ride and those who walk. This time you walk.” He swung into his own saddle and grinned down. “They say walking is good exercise. It makes a man healthy. You are going to be the healthiest man in the territory, Whitey—if you live long enough. Start walking.”
The Man From Nowhere stumbled and caught himself, forcing his legs to move on. The hot sand dragged at his boots, making every step a supreme effort of muscle and will. The sun hammered down with incredible ferocity until he felt as if he were being beaten from head to foot with white-hot irons. Even when he closed his eyes the fierce glare from the sand burned through the lids. Every sobbing breath of the superheated air seared his throat and lungs.
“Come on there, Whitey,” Tuco said gaily. “Walk, man. Walk faster. You’re leaving me with no one to talk to. That is not polite.”
He sat comfortably on his horse, grinning down at his dishevelled victim. Two full canteens of water hung from his saddle horn, sloshing with every movement of the horse. The blond man stumbled again and instinctively grabbed for Tuco’s stirrup to keep from falling. The outlaw jabbed with his spur and the horse skittered out of reach. The hunter fell heavily. It seemed to take him forever to struggle to his knees, then to his feet again.
“You should watch where you are walking,” Tuco said in mock reproof. “Ah, but I know what the trouble is, Whitey. You are carrying too much extra weight.” He reached down, snatched off the hunter’s broad-brimmed hat and sent it sailing out of sight behind a dune. “There. Now you will walk lighter, amigo.”
Even at a slow walk the horse was moving farther and farther ahead of the man on foot. Tuco reined in, waited for the stumbling figure to catch up.
“Eh, Whitey, this desert makes a man thirsty just to look at it.” He uncapped a canteen and tipped it up, drinking noisily, letting some of the precious fluid dribble down his chin and on to his shirt. “Ahhhh, that’s better. You have no idea how good cool water can feel on the tongue and throat.”