These did.
I surveyed the wreckage afterward. The little gambler was there, and a couple of others, but there wasn’t any sign of Pedro.
I looked at Phil and he looked at me.
“Suppose he could have laid low on that ridge and started the others with the horses?” I asked.
Phil thought things over, then he nodded.
We rode back, and the trail told us what we wanted to know. One of the horsemen hadn’t started with the others. He’d kept up on the ridge, probably playing dead. Then, after the galloping horses had decoyed us into pursuit he’d come to life, gone down, got his own bronc, and rode away by himself.
But he hadn’t ridden toward the hacienda.
Pedro must have known the game was up at last. He was headed into the hills, straight for the border desert country. A man could live a long time in that country.
Phil and I looked at the ridges. The trail followed the cañon. There was no use following it, while there was one chance in ten on the ridges.
“You take the left, me the right,” I said.
Phil nodded, filled up his cartridge belt from his saddle bags and took the ridge. I took the other.
I didn’t see anything. Once I thought I heard shooting.
When it got dark I gave it up and made a camp. The next day I backtracked into the hacienda. The rurales were in charge.
“Got clean away,” I reported.
Phil was there. He didn’t say anything.
I noticed a bullet had splintered the horn of his saddle and there were two shells missing from his belt.
“Any action, Phil?”
He shook his head.
“No. And I’m glad, too.”
“Why glad?”
“Oh, under the circumstances, I wouldn’t want to go through a lot of red tape. I wasn’t a regular officer, you know, just a special guard, and I was off duty.”
His words sounded sort of casual. I took a good look at the splintered saddle horn again. Then I climbed a peak and got out my binoculars.
Far off toward the east I could see a little bunch of circling dots, swinging, twisting, spiraling, settling. It was along the ridge Phil had taken, and they were turkey buzzards.
I put up my glasses, rode back to the hacienda, took another look at Phil’s saddle, scratched my head. He saw me, and came out.
“Close call,” I said.
He nodded.
“Guess the New York office will want a report on what’s happened,” I said. “Would you like to write it?”
He shook his head.
“Saw some buzzards over the east ridge,” I hinted.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah”
“Ever see the president of this company?” asked Phil.
“No. Why?”
“He’s a pot-bellied cuss that’s awful cold-blooded. Know what’d happen if you’d bumped off Pedro and reported it?”
“Reward?” I asked.
“Naw. He’d fire you to cut down the overhead. He’d figure that with the bandit dead there was no need of a guard.”
“How about you?” I asked.
“I’m quittin’ the guardin’ business. Dixie and I are gettin’ married.”
I got to thinking about those buzzards some more. Then I got to thinking about what Phil had said. He’d met the president, and he knew. After all, there was that time they’d deliberately cut the force in two and left me without any reinforcements. I decided I wouldn’t ride over toward the east ridge.
That’s why I’m still chaperonin’ the gold shipments for the Dry Canteen Mine. It’s been a year since the Big Scrap, but they’re afraid Pedro may show up again, and they keep me on the payroll.
There’s strange things happen down here in the border country.
The girl? You mean the blonde? Her father went through bankruptcy, lost everything in the crash.
Where is she now?
Oh. See the third one from the end there, the house girl that’s solicitin’ dances for a cut on the drinks, the washy-eyed blonde? That’s her. She and Pedro decoyed Walter Hedley into the holdup, then tipped off the rurales. That got rid of Walter. Pedro was to marry the girl — or said he was.
She was Pedro’s last fall guy. That’s why I started to tell you about this border country. It’s a queer place.
Priestess of the Sun
The town of Mojave squats in the sunlight like a gigantic spider sitting in the center of a web of railroad lines, a main automobile highway, and little, single-tracked dirt roads that stretch out and out until they are lost in the heat waves which shimmer on the horizon.
Mojave is an outpost of civilization. Back of it lies the land of whispers.
My shadow was short and black as I walked across the main street of Mojave, headed toward the railroad tracks. That meant the sun was almost directly overhead, and that, in turn, meant that it was hot.
To the west, the Tehachapi Mountains rippled in a heat-tortured dance. To the east stretched the great barren waste that man has called the Mojave Desert — the land of whispers.
To the south, a long string of black dots emitted a spurt of white steam. Seconds later the hot silence of the desert parted long enough to let the sound of the train’s whistle seep through.
The string of black dots presently showed as dust-stained Pullmans. The glittering black monster that pulled the train up the grade from Lancaster hissed puffingly along steel rails that were so sun-heated they would blister an ungloved hand.
The train lurched to a creaking stop.
Passengers stared listlessly with tired eyes. The steel Pullmans were ovens. Perspiring skins caught and held the flour-fine desert dust that seeped through doors and windows.
I saw my package come from the express car, provisions shipped direct from Los Angeles, ready to be transferred to the back of my pack burros. I moved forward, and almost ran into her as she got off the train.
First I saw a pair of snakeskin shoes, a trim ankle, and the neat expanse of feminine leg which fashion then decreed as proper. Then I saw the hem of a blue suit, a flutter of feminine finery as she jumped, and she was on the ground, standing right in front of me, vivacious, slender, attractive — and tired.
Her eyes were tired. Her mouth drooped. But she was full of pep, the pep of civilization, the pep that comes from forcing oneself to appear full of life and spontaneity.
“You’re Pedro Madrone!” she said to me and I saw the flash of her teeth and the outstretched hand.
I took the hand, apologetically.
“I’m sorry—” I began.
Her voice interrupted me. It wasn’t a sweet voice. It was too rapid-fire to be sweet, and, like her eyes, it showed more than a trace of nerve strain.
“I’m Jean Stiles, the one that Ramsay wrote you about. Surely you got that letter?”
“But I’m not Pedro Madrone.”
Her face lost its smile. The eyes flashed a how-dare-you expression, and she jerked her hand from mine.
“Damn!” she said, and turned away.
Just that, no more, no less. Perhaps it was her nerves. Perhaps it was just her way. I walked on up to the express truck and didn’t bother about it one way or the other.
The next time I saw those snakeskin shoes was six months later and a hundred miles away. I saw them by moonlight and there were circumstances attending the seeing which robbed me of sleep.
It was full moon.
I lay rolled in my blankets far out in the Mojave Desert, in a place where few men have penetrated. There was no water, there were no roads. My water was almost gone. One more day and I would have to turn back to Randsburg, and even then I’d have to use all of my desert knowledge to make it.