"You look a little too skinny to be good at waiting."
The American nodded to the ledge. "Ask Juan how good I am at waiting. I used up a lot of my patience while my vaqueros scratched for your sign, but I still got some left."
Struggles admitted, "It didn't take you too long at that."
"Your boy isn't the only one who knows the country." He was waving the white cloth idly. "Look," he said. "Here's how it is. You either sit and die of thirst, or else get on your mounts and ride the hell out. Of course, for my own protection I'd have to ask both of you to leave your guns behind."
Struggles said, "You don't have a high regard for our reasoning, do you?"
The man shrugged. "I'm not talking you into anything." He waited a few moments, then turned and walked down the slope. The Mexican backed down, keeping the Winchester high.
Struggles fingered the trigger lightly and wondered what that principle was based on--about not shooting a man in the back. And when the straw hat was out of range he still had not thought of it.
Through the heat of the afternoon Struggles' mind talked to him, making conversation; but always an argument resulted, and his mind was poor company because it kept telling him that he was afraid. When the heat began to lift, a breeze stirred lazily over the bench and made a faint whispering sound as it played through the crevices above. And finally, the bench lost its shape in darkness.
It was cool relief after the glaring white light of the afternoon; but with the darkness, the slope that was still a painting now came alive and was something menacing.
Struggles crawled back to the slope and stood up, cupping his hands to his mouth, and whispered, "Juan," then gritted his teeth as the word cut the silence.
He waited, but nothing happened. He brought up his hands again, but jumped back quickly as a stream of loose shale clattered down from above. And as if on signal, two rifles opened up from below. Struggles went flat and inched back to the rim as the firing kept up, spattering against the flinty slope.
WHEN IT STOPPED, he raised his head above the rocks, but there was only the darkness. They're not a hundred feet away, he thought. Waiting for us to move. He settled down again, pressing close to the rock barrier. Well, they were going to have a long wait. But now he wondered if he was alone. Since the firing there had been no sound from above. Had something happened to Juan?
Time lost its meaning after a while and became only something that dragged hope with it as it went nowhere.
Sometime after midnight, Struggles started to doze off. His head nodded and his chin was almost on his chest, but even then a consciousness warned him and he jerked his head up abruptly. He moved it from side to side now, shaking himself awake; and as his face swung to the left he saw the pinpoint of a gleam up on the mountainside.
He came to his feet, fully awake now, but blinked his eyes to make sure. The light was moving down with crawling slowness from the peak, flickering dully, but growing in intensity as it inched down the rock slide path that Juan Solo had climbed earlier.
After a few minutes Struggles saw a torch, with the flame dancing against the blackness of the slope, and as it descended to the ledge the shape of a man was illuminated weirdly in the flickering orange light it cast.
The figure moved to the edge, holding up a baroque cross whose end was the burning torch--the figure of a man wearing the coarse brown robes of a Franciscan friar.
He held the cross high overhead and spoke one sentence of Castilian, the words cold and shrill in the darkness.
"Leave this Blood of the Saint or thus your souls shall plunge to the hell of the damned!"
His arm swung back and the torch soared out into the night and down until it hit far below on the slope in a shower of bursting sparks. The figure was gone in the darkness.
Quiet settled again, but a few minutes later gunfire came from down the slope. And shortly after that, the sound of horses running hard, and dying away in the distance.
The rest of the night Struggles asked himself questions. He sat unmoving with the dead cigar stub still in his mouth and tried to think it out, applying logic. Finally he came to a conclusion. There was only one way to find out the answers to last night's mystery.
At the first sign of morning light he rose and started to climb up the slope toward the ledge.
This would answer both questions--it was the only way.
He was almost past caring whether or not the American and his men were still below. Almost. He climbed slowly, feeling the tenseness between his shoulder blades because he wasn't sure of anything. When he was nearing the rim, a hand reached down to his arm and pulled him up the rest of the way.
"Juan."
The Indian steadied him as he got to his feet. "You came with such labor, I thought you sick."
And at that moment Struggles did feel sick. Weak with relief, he was, suddenly, for only then did he realize that somehow it was all over.
He exhaled slowly and his grizzled face relaxed into a smile. He looked past Juan Solo and the smile broadened as his eyes fell on the torn blanket with the pieces of rope coiled on top of it.
"Padre, you ought to take better care of your cassock," Struggles said, nodding toward the blanket.
Juan Solo frowned. "Your words pass me," he said, looking out over the slope; and added quickly, "Let us find what occurred with the American."
Struggles was dead certain that Juan knew without even having to go down from the ledge.
Not far down the grade they found him, lying on his face with stiffened fingers clawed into the loose sand. Near his body were the ashes of the cruciform, still vaguely resembling--even as the wind began to blow it into nothingness--the shape of a cross.
Struggles said, "I take it he didn't believe in the friar, and wouldn't listen to his men who did."
Juan Solo nodded as if to say, So you see what naturally happened, then said, "Now there is plenty of time for your silver, Senor Doctor," and started back up the grade.
Struggles followed after him, trying to picture Tomas Maria, and thinking what a good friend the friar had in Juan Solo.
Three-Ten to Yuma
HE HAD PICKED up his prisoner at Fort Huachuca shortly after midnight and now, in a silent early morning mist, they approached Contention. The two riders moved slowly, one behind the other.
Entering Stockman Street, Paul Scallen glanced back at the open country with the wet haze blanketing its flatness, thinking of the long night ride from Huachuca, relieved that this much was over. When his body turned again, his hand moved over the sawed-off shotgun that was across his lap and he kept his eyes on the man ahead of him until they were near the end of the second block, opposite the side entrance of the Republic Hotel.
He said just above a whisper, though it was clear in the silence, "End of the line."
The man turned in his saddle, looking at Scallen curiously. "The jail's around on Commercial."
"I want you to be comfortable."
Scallen stepped out of the saddle, lifting a Winchester from the boot, and walked toward the hotel's side door. A figure stood in the gloom of the doorway, behind the screen, and as Scallen reached the steps the screen door opened.
"Are you the marshal?"
"Yes, sir." Scallen's voice was soft and without emotion. "Deputy, from Bisbee."
"We're ready for you. Two-oh-seven. A corner...fronts on Commercial." He sounded proud of the accommodation.
"You're Mr. Timpey?"
The man in the doorway looked surprised. "Yeah, Wells Fargo. Who'd you expect?"
"You might have got a back room, Mr. Timpey. One with no windows." He swung the shotgun on the man still mounted. "Step down easy, Jim."