him the most, his sore groin or seeing his plans blow up in his face. I motioned down the line for Bama to get things started again.
“Forward ho-o-o!” Bama called, as if he were still Lieutenant Miles Stanford Bonridge of the Army of Tennessee.
There wasn't any trouble when we hit the flats at the bottom of the grade. We crawled on up into the mountains and around daybreak the column halted again and Bama lifted his arm.
“All right, kid,” I said, “let's have a look.”
“This is it,” Bama said when we reached the point, and he made a vague gesture toward the rocky lowlands below us. At first I didn't believe him, because there was no canyon there at all; it was just a rocky tableland between two small mountain ranges a mile or so apart. Bama must have seen the dismay on my face, and he didn't look very happy about it himself.
I said, “By God, this is a hell of a place to try to ambush somebody.”
He grinned, but it looked a little sickly to me. “That's what the men have been thinking all along. Do you want to go through with it?”
“We've got to go through with it.”
But I didn't like it. We'd have to go right down and meet the smugglers on their own battleground, and I didn't like to think what the odds would be on getting out alive.
“Isn't there a better place than this?” I asked. “That map of yours showed a neck on this canyon.”
Bama wiped his face. “What looks to be a neck on paper can cover a lot of land on actual ground.” He was on the verge of telling me, “I told you so,” but he didn't. He just sat there and let me sweat.
“Well, we can't sit here and let the men lose what few guts they've got left.” I motioned for the column to start moving and we began slipping and sliding down the side of the mountain.
When we hit bottom it didn't look much better, but at least there were a few rocks and bushes that the men could hide behind.
“Maybe you ought to wait and hit them tonight,” Johnny Rayburn said, and it seemed to me that it was the first time he had opened his mouth in an hour or more.
“By night they'll be out of the mountains and into the desert,” Bama said. “We couldn't get within a mile of them.”
I rode out a hundred yards or so to get the lay of the land, and after I had done that I decided that the situation wasn't hopeless. I motioned for the men to come after me and we rode right out to the middle of the rugged mountain valley.
“It stands to reason,” I said as Bama pulled up alongside. “That they'll come right down the middle of this draw, fanning their outriders a hundred yards or so on both sides. Anyway, we've got to count on that and make our lines.” I motioned for Kreyler to come up, and his face was gray with sickness and hate, and maybe fear.
“Here's where we make our stand,” I said. “When the smugglers come down the middle we'll hit them from both sides from behind rocks and bushes or whatever you can find to get behind. We'll have to depend on surprise. Come to think of it, maybe this isn't as bad as it looks, because they're not going to be expecting an attack in a place like this. Anyway, Kreyler, you take half the men and I'll take the others, and we'll leave about four hundred yards of open space between our lines. When you began to lose your guts, just think of that silver.”
He didn't say a word, but he cut me wide open with a look that was barbed with hate.
“All right,” I said, “get your men and move out.”
There was one thing I almost forgot—the horses. I called to Johnny Rayburn and my dependable man, whose name was Lawson, and got them to round up the horses and take them up to the high ground until the fracas was over. Anyway, that would keep the kid out of the line of fire and away from Kreyler.
It took about a half hour to get everything set, scattering the men out in a wavery line and piling brush in front of them and on top of them to make them as inconspicuous as possible. On the other side of the flat I saw that Kreyler was doing the same thing, and finally everything was set. All we needed now was the smugglers.
By the time the sun was well on its way to looking like a blast furnace, and Bama was lying belly down behind a rock, mopping his face nervously with his neckerchief.
“Pull your guts together,” I said, and dropped, down beside him. “Hell, we should have picked places like this all along. These narrow canyons practically advertise an ambush, but they sure won't expect anything in a place like this.”
But Bama wasn't happy. His lips were dry and cracked and his eyes had a desperate look to them. “I wish you'd told me you were going to drive the horses off,” he said.
“If it's the bottle you're worried about, you can get it when this business is over.”
He licked his lips. “I'm not sure that it will do me any good then.”
Up until now I had been too busy keeping the men under control to find time to be scared. But now there wasn't anything to do but wait and think about it, and I began to get some of that uneasiness that I had felt on all sides of me.
“Was that smart,” Bama said, “giving Kreyler half the men? Do you think they'll fight?”
“They'll fight,” I said. “They'd better.”
Bama sighed and I knew he was still wishing for his bottle. I jacked a cartridge into the chamber of my rifle and said, “I don't like this any more than you do, but we've got to have that silver.”
“Sure,” Bama said.
“What's the matter with you? Don't you want to get away from this? Don't you want the safety and security that silver can buy?”
