Andre Norton - Rebel Spurs

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!

"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.

"What's the matter with you, boy?"

Drew tried to lift his head, tried to summon words to answer that demand. A sullen kind of pride made him release his hold and stand away from the bay, only to reel back and bring up hard against a rock, grating his arm painfully. He clung there for a moment and got out:

"Nothing a little sleep won't cure." He spoke into the dark outline of Hunt Rennie. "I'm all right."

Drew made a painful effort, pulled himself away from the rock to fumble at the cinches of the bay's saddle, only to be pushed aside.

"Steer him over there, Perse ... bed him down."

The Kentuckian's last scrap of protest leaked away. He hardly knew when a blanket was pulled up over him as he lay in a rock niche, already drifting into deep sleep.

Voices awoke him into the gray of early morning. The light was hardly brighter than moonlight but he could make out Hunt Rennie, sitting cross-legged, rifle to hand, while Chino Herrera squatted on his heels before him. Chino had not been with them when they left the pass. And there was Greyfeather, too. Their party had had reinforcements. Drew pushed away the blanket and sat up, realizing he was stiff with cold. Fire ... hot coffee ... there was no sign of either. He yawned and jerked his coat straight about him. His attention suddenly focused on an object which lay on the ground at Chino's left. It was a book, the same size as the three he had bought at Stein's!

Without thinking, Drew moved forward, was about to reach for the volume when he heard the click of a cocked Colt. A hand swept down on the book.

"You, hombre—what do you want with this?" Herrera, with no friendliness in either voice or eyes, was holding a gun on him.

"That book—it looks like the ones I bought in town." Drew was startled by the vaquero's enmity.

"Give it to him," Rennie ordered.

For a moment Herrera seemed on the point of open dispute, then he obeyed. But for some reason his weapon remained unholstered. Drew took up the volume.

" History of the Conquest of Peru ," he read out. The binding was a match for that of the other three. But—there was something different. He weighed the volume in his hand. That was it! This book was heavier....

"Well, hombre, you have seen such a one before?"

"Yes, this is bound to match those I bought from Stein. And one of those was History of the Conquest of Mexico . This is surely a part of the same library."

"Those—what did they have in them?"

Rennie appeared content to let Chino ask the questions, but he continued to watch Drew and the book.

"Have in them?" Drew repeated. "Why pages. They were books to read— The Three Musketeers , The Count of Monte Cristo , and History of the Conquest of Mexico . That's all, just books."

"Open this one," Rennie told him.

The Kentuckian had trouble obeying. And for the first time he saw he did not hold a book composed of pages but a type of box. The cover resisted his tugging. Then, as if some catch had been mastered, it opened so suddenly he almost lost his grip on the book. The core of those once separate pages had been hollowed out to contain a nest of raw cotton on which lay ... The Kentuckian gasped.