The border’s still a tough place, for all the tinsel and all the tourist traps. And they employ us fellows to sort of chaperon the coin shipments. We don’t have nothing much to do except to ride along. Mostly just being on hand is all the protection we need to give to a shipment.
No highwayman is likely to tackle a job where he knows there’s a couple of men standing guard who can shoot with either hand and shoot fast.
I ain’t so fast as I used to be. In the old days when Tombstone was still running I could go for iron with the best of them, even if I do say it. But Tin no spring chicken any more. But this here Phil Ryan’s fast, awful fast. I’ve seen lots of fast fellows in the old days, and Phil’s as fast as any of ’em. You could have put him back with the Earps and the Clantons, and he’d have made history — maybe would have made it a lot different from what it was.
Anyhow, I was glad to get a job that Phil had dug up. I knew it’d be ridin’ with him, and I always liked Phil.
“What’s this here job?” I asked.
“Chaperonin’ a bunch of gold bars up to the border from the Dry Canteen Mine.”
“Why the reinforcements? You been holdin’ down that job by yourself for quite some time.”
“They got a tip. Pedro Gallivan’s got an eye on the shipment.”
I whistled a little bit.
Pedro was a border character just like all the rest that had gone before. He wasn’t Mex and he wasn’t American. Sort of a mixture, was Pedro, and he was too slick ever to get caught.
The border has done lots of things to civilization, and civilization has done lots of things to the border. Dope, booze, and Chinks get run across, and that business is all cash. Pedro specialized in finding out where the cash was. He was a hijacker of cash. He didn’t monkey with petty running of hooch or dope or Chinks, but he sure did swoop down on the money.
He lived in a big hacienda with palm trees and servants, and he had a shell of respectability about the place that made him seem like a retired banker. But there were plenty of whispers around about Pedro Gallivan. He didn’t ever pull much in person. He always had a “fall guy” to take the blame if anything went wrong, and he had plenty of people working for him.
It was whispered that he furnished some of the big imports for shipment. He had people with him who were polished, educated, and crooked. Pedro was the head of the system. God help a man, or woman, for that matter, that Pedro got into his clutches. He made ’em work for him and work hard until he needed a fall guy, and then-well, dead people don’t tell tales in the border country any more than they do anywheres else.
“What makes you think Pedro’s going after the mine gold?” I wanted to know.
Phil glanced around him. His lips got tight. “A tip.”
“He never has monkeyed with any of that sort of stuff. Always worked on the border runners.”
“This is a straight tip.”
We sat and looked at each other for a while.
“Count me in,” I said.
He nodded, happened to glance toward the roulette, and sat down his beer glass so hard the bottom bumped the table.
“What’s doing?” he asked.
“A smoky-eyed jane with a system.”
He was on his feet before I knew what he was going to do, and halfway over to the roulette table before I had a chance to say anything.
She looked up and saw him coming.
Her face changed color for an instant, then the smoky eyes bored straight into his and the lips came back from pearly teeth.
Phil swept off his sweat-stained sombrero, and the girl cashed in her chips. They went out together and the crowd gawked.
I stuck around until midnight. That was when we were scheduled to start out. Phil showed on the dot. The border was closed and all the tourists had gone home. The place was quiet.
“The broncs are out front,” he said.
I followed him without saying anything.
My stirrups had to be lengthened, and I wanted to take a good look at the rifle that was in the saddle scabbard. I had my own guns, and I got ’em from the room where I was hanging out. We started about quarter past twelve.
The desert was silent, just crammed full of stars. The horses didn’t make much noise, plumping their feet down into the soft sand. We rode in silence for over an hour.
“What are the plans?” I asked.
“We intercept the shipment about ten miles farther south, and we escort it to the road. There they’ve got armed automobiles waiting. If there’s any trouble it’ll be on the trail.”
I rode along for another half hour.
We’d left the desert floor and were following a trail along the steep sides of the barren desert mountains that show soft and purple from the floor of the desert, but are very devils to ride over, being mostly straight up and down with all sorts of volcanic rock and what-not sticking out and playing thunder with a horse.
“Who was the girl?”
“Miss Dixie Carson.”
“She the one they call the Desert Queen?”
“Yes. Ever met her?”
“No. Never saw her before. Heard of her. Sort of whispers, nothing much definite.”
He didn’t say anything for a quarter of a mile. Then he half turned in his saddle.
“I love her,” he said.
“You should,” I told him. “I’m for you.”
He grunted and swung back into the saddle.
That was all there was to it. But he knew and I knew. Out there in the star-filled silence of a desert night a fellow doesn’t need to talk much to get an idea across. Phil knew I wasn’t going to babble anything, and that if he ever needed me to back his play I’d be there.
We finished our short cut and came to the main trail from the mine half an hour before the burro train got there. It showed up about daylight with a clatter of little bells and the sound of shuffling feet and soft, Mexican voices.
Phil hailed the leader, and then we rode on ahead. A couple of rurales were in the rear.
The east got brassy and the stars became little needle points. I could look back and see the burro train, twisting like some big serpent as it wound its way around the side of the hills, following a pass through the mountains.
I loosened up my rifle, looked up at the ridges of the mountains.
“Good place for an ambush, Phil.”
“Yeah. Let’s ride on ahead a ways.”
We touched the broncs with the spurs and went on ahead. After a while we couldn’t hear the little bells any more.
The sun touched the purple peaks of the high mountains.
“Phil,” I said, “my eyes ain’t as good as they used to be any more, but take a look at that bush up on the slope about two hundred yards, just below that outcropping of red rock.”
Phil swung his head up.
“Hm—” he began, and then it happened.
There was the cough of a high-powered rifle, and the bullet plunked into solid meat. I didn’t have time to see whether it was Phil or the bronc. I had the spurs into my own cayuse, and we were off the trail and going hell-for-leather down the side of the mountain.
There was a dry wash at the bottom, and some boulders in the bottom. I grabbed the gun as the horse scrambled into the boulders, and kicked my feet free from the stirrups when I felt air between me and the saddle.
Bullets were chipping bits of rock off of the boulders all around me. It was like a hailstorm on a lake. I could hear the pop of guns and the spatter of bullets. One of the horses was screaming with pain or terror or both.
I was glad we’d come on ahead of the pack train. It would have been plain hell to have the burros trapped in that cañon, each with a load of gold bars. As it was, there wasn’t anybody except Phil and myself, and Phil was able to take care of himself — or else it was all over with him.