cord off in no time. Then it’s only a few miles back to the town we just left where, of course, they’ll hang you again, mare permanently. But it’s only seventy miles across the desert to a town where no one knows you. Consider it a challenge, my friend. A man needs a challenge to bring out the best in him. Good luck.”
“Judas!” Tuco howled. “Traitor! Coward! Vulture! Stinking bastard son of a bastard! Come back, Whitey, Get off that horse—if you’re a man. Get off and face me if you’ve got the guts.” He strained at his bonds, then launched a raging kick toward the departing figure. “ER get free, Whitey. I’ll get free to hunt you down. I’ll tear your black heart out and eat it. I’ll skin you alive with a dull knife. I’ll hang you up by your bowels for vulture bait—”
He tried to run after the vanishing figure. His toe hit an outcropping of rocks and he pitched on his face. He lay fora time, sobbing, kicking the hot sand.
When he sat up the bounty-hunter was out of sight.
CHAPTER 6
THE girl, Maria, stumbled up the creaking stairs to her room, whimpering and spitting curses. She was a bedraggled mess, her face smeared with mud, her hair in strings, her gown torn,
“
Because of Bill Carson she had thought all Confederate cavalrymen were gentlemen. But that had been before she had got into the buggy with the drunken bunch from the Second Cavalry. When she had refused to accept their worthless Confederate shinplasters they had used her by force, taking turns pinning her on the muddy ground. Then they had left her there without a penny.
She closed the door of her room and groped in the darkness for the oil lamp and matches she always kept on a little table just inside. The table was in its accustomed place but its top was bare. Both lamp and matches were gone.
From somewhere close by came the faintest whisper of movement. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Bill? Bill, is that you? Are you back so soon? Bill, don’t give me such a fright. Say something to me.”
A match flame sprang up, lighting a sinister wedge of face that was like the personification of evil. Maria choked back a scream of terror.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?”
Sentenza lit the wick of her oil lamp, turning it low. His shadow, thrown on the wall by the flickering lamp- light, was monstrous and terrifying.
“Who I am is unimportant. What I’m doing here is something we can talk about I want to know about your friend, Bill Carson.”
“I don’t know any Bill Carson,” Maria whimpered. “I never heard of him. Go away.”
“So you call out in the dark for someone you have never heard of. Where is he, Maria?”
“What do you want with him?”
“I’m asking the questions Where is he? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know a thing, I tell you. Get out of here and leave me alone.”
“Maria,” he softly, almost sadly, “I haven’t either the time or the patience for your stupid games. You’re going to tell me everything you know about Bill Carson—sooner or later. The choice of how soon will be entirely up to you.”
His hand caught her wrist and twisted cruelly. His free palm closed over her mouth, muffling her shriek of anquish. His strong fingers vised her jaw. “Where is he, Maria? Where—is—he?”
She shook her head.
She had been beaten up many times before—but never so savagely, so thoroughly, or with such fiendishly dispassionate skill in the art of inflicting pain. With every blow came the relentless question.
“Where is he, Maria? Where—is—he?”
Even the strongest spirit has its threshold of endurance.
“Stop ! I cant stand any more.” She clung to his knees, whimpering, turning up a puffed and bloody face. “I don’t know where he is now. He left ten days ago with his unit and I have heard nothing from him since. I swear that’s all I know.”
“What unit?”
“The Third Confederate Cavalry, General Sibley. They went to reinforce the garrison holding Sante Fe.”
He stared down at her for a long moment, then nodded.
“All right, Maria. Now, that wasn’t so hard to get out, was it?”
The curious little way-station stood between the edge of the desert and the main settlement. One side of its main room sported a sparsely-stocked bar. The remainder was filled with a hodge-podge collection of canned goods, saddlery, hardware. The main feature, however, was a large display of pistols, rifles, shotguns and ammunition.
The owner, a plump little widower known only as Milton, was accustomed to days when not a soul appeared from dawn to dusk. He was content with his isolation, never bored and never lonely. His passion for guns—although he never shot one himself—let him fill the empty hours with endless oiling and wiping and polishing of his stock.
The afternoon was waning when he laid the last pistol tenderly on its display pad and closed the case. He glanced through the window towards the courtyard and stiffened. His mouth fell open.
A strange man was coming on foot from the desert. He was obviously in the last stages of exhaustion. He stumbled toward Milton’s well. He fell against the well kerb, scooped handfuls of tepid water front the bucket, splashing them over his blistered face, sucking up cautious sips.
Through the closed door Milton could hear a steady, hoarse animal whimpering between the sucking noises.
His first impulse had been to run out and give succour, but something held him back. He had been visited before by fugitive outlaws fleeing to or from the desert. None of the encounters had ended pleasantly for him. This newcomer had the look of danger.
Milton matched up a small board sign inscribed: CLOSED. He inched the front door open far enough to hang the sign outside, eased the door shut again. He ran to the corner for the stout oak timber with which he barred himself in at night.
The door was hauled open before he could fit the bar into its brackets. The stranger stumbled through, dripping water. At close range he was even less prepossessing.
A word crashed into Milton’s mind, made shambles of any coherent thought
He backed up nervously. “I was just closing for the night”
“You just opened again,” Tuco croaked.
His gaze fell on the shelf of bottles behind the bar. He stumbled across, snatched a bottle of whisky and drank thirstily. A full third of the liquor had vanished before he lowered the bottle.
He let go an explosive, “Ah-h-h-h—” He stared around,the room and his eyes glittered. “Guns. I need a hand gun—the best one made.”
“Yes, yes,” Milton said. The stranger’s ugliness was that of death, with a foretaste of rot. Milton ran to a case and hauled out pistols, one at a time. “Here are only the very finest, mister. Remington, Colt, Root, Smith and Wesson, Navy, Joslyn—”
“That’s enough,” Tuco growled. “I know guns.”
He examined each pistol with the eye and ear of an expert, testing the trigger pull, the spring’s force. He spun cylinders close to his ear to gauge the set of the ratchets. When he found one that pleased him he loaded it sand thumbed back the hammer. His gaze roved the room, searching for a target.
“Wait,” the little man cried nervously. “Out in the back is a small range where you can try it out. You’ll know exactly—”
“Show me,” Tuco growled. “Come on—move.”
Milton scuttled to a rear door and opened it to reveal a small courtyard with a row of targets across the for side. Behind each target hung a piece of iron that would clang on a bull’s-eye.
The pistol bucked and slammed in Tuco’s hand. Five shots blasted and each one set iron to ringing. Milton, his eyes wide with awe, followed Tuco back to the counter.
