Bama must have gone to sleep. There wasn't a sound from behind the rock as the night crawled by. The cold got worse and ate right into my guts, and I had a feeling that all this was unreal and pretty soon I would wake up and discover that it had been a dream.
But it wasn't a dream. Ever minute of that thousand-year night was real. But finally it ended. Morning came in the east, bloodshot and angry, and after a while a broiling sun shoved itself over the ridges and beat down on us. By noon we were baked dry and there was no water anywhere. And if there had been water we couldn't have moved as much as a foot to get it. At every move, at every sound a man made, word would be passed down the line:
“Kreyler says goddamnit, be quiet!”
As we lay there, I learned to hate the Marshal. I hated every line in his dry, sun-cracked face. By noon I could cheerfully have killed him.
“Take it easy, kid,” Bama said softly.
“Where does he get off bossing us around like that? He's just one of Basset's hired help, isn't he? Like the rest of us.”
“Think of something else,” Bama said. “This sun bakes a man's brains. It gives him crazy ideas sometimes.”
For a while we lay there. I could see the Indian and his half of the party oh the other side of the canyon, and I began hating them too, every damned one of their sweaty, grim faces.
“Listen,” Bama said.
And after a minute we all began to hear the faraway sound of bells—small bells, cool little silver sounds in the blazing afternoon. Along the rim of the canyon there were brisk metal sounds of cartridges being jacked into rifles. Bama's face was tight and gray as he lay on his belly, sighting along the short barrel of his carbine. He looked as if death had already touched him—as if the grave and he were old friends.
Then the mule train rounded into the canyon. One after the other they came, as if there was no end—gray, sure-footed little mules with bells around their necks and tall, awkward-looking aparejos strapped to their backs. Along the flanks came the outriders, brown-faced, hard-eyed men, heeled up with rifles and pistols and knives, looking as if they were begging for a fight. In front of the whole business rode a grinning old Mexican on a pale horse, dressed fit to kill in a tall spiked sombrero decorated with silver bangles, flashing light and spitting fire every time he moved his head. His big-bottomed pants were of cream-colored buckskin with more silver bangles and pearl buttons down the seams. A gawdy serape and high-heeled boots finished off his outfit, along with a fancy-handled six-shooter at his side and a long-barreled rifle resting across the pommel of his saddle. He looked like hell, all right. He could have been a gay old ranchero on his way to visit the most beautiful senorita in all of Sonora, from the way he was dressed. I wondered how that grin of his would stand up if he knew that thirty rifles were aimed at the back of his head.
Still the mule train kept coming, and the outriders kept watching the hills with restless eyes. I wondered how they could fail to see us. Did they have any outriders up in the hills looking down on us? If they did, it would be too bad, because they already had more men than we had. Thirty-five, maybe forty outriders were in view by the time the tail of the train had rounded into the canyon.
Word came down: “Hold your fire until Kreyler gives the word.”
Bama was dead white. He didn't even seem to be breathing. I wanted to look behind me, but I didn't dare move. The palms of my hands were wet. It seemed almost impossible that in the next few seconds I would be killing men I had never seen before in my life, killing them without giving them a chance in the world. The thought lay heavy and unreal and dull on my mind—but it didn't have time to become an idea.
From somewhere—I didn't know where at first—came a wild, savage scream, and suddenly rifles were beating down on us from above. In the back of my mind I knew that what I had been afraid of had happened: Some of the outriders had got behind us and had discovered us before we could open fire. The next minute I heard one of our own men scream, and Kreyler was yelling, and gunfire seemed to explode from everywhere. I saw Mexicans go down in the first volley, and we fired again and more went down before they could bring their guns on us. But the rifles up above were raising hell.
“Make for the canyon!” I yelled at Bama.
He was pumping bullets into the Mexicans as fast as he could lever and pull the trigger. After a minute he lay down and began to reload. A bullet whined, kicking dirt up at his feet.
“In the canyon!” I yelled again.
“You're crazy!”
“It's better than getting shot in the back!”
Another bullet slammed into the rock beside his head. “Maybe you're right!”
The others were pouring down the canyon walls now, shooting as they slipped and skidded and fell to the bottom. The Mexicans were shooting their mules and using them for breastworks. It was all a crazy uproar of shooting and screaming and cursing, and there didn't seem to be any sense to anything. I felt the slight tug of a bullet going through the sleeve of my shirt and I snapped a shot into a brown, grinning face. The bullet hit in his mouth and exploded brains through the back of his head.
The violence and noise worked like a fever, and men who had been afraid now seemed crazy to kill. They rushed at each other like idiots, and now and then there was the keen flash of knives in the swirling smoke. I lost track of Bama. I seemed to lose track of everything except the brown faces that kept coming out of nowhere and falling back again into nowhere as my own pistols added to the noise.
The old leader of the smuggler train had been the first to die. He lay under his pale horse with his insides shot out by a dozen rifles, and two members of Basset's army were fighting over his fancy pistol.
I don't know how long it went on. I remember dropping behind a dead horse to reload, and when I stood up again there were no brown faces to shoot at. Whitish, gagging gun smoke swirled around the figures of the men still standing. Occasionally a moan would go up, or a curse, or maybe a prayer in Spanish. A pistol would explode to startle the sudden quiet, and the Mexican voice would be stilled.
“Jesus!” a voice said. “What did you have to shoot him in the gut for? That was a solid silver belt buckle, and look at it now!”
