and missed. A bullet hit Isager and turned him half around. He staggered, and the half-dead horse lunged clumsily away. A hoof went through the crust and the horse fell heavily and lay panting, one white sliver of bone showing through the hide of the broken leg.
Isager fell, pulled off balance by the fall of the horse, and Rodelo fired again and again. His gun muzzle wavered and the shots kicked up dust. Isager rolled over behind the downed horse. He knew from harsh experience that accuracy was more essential than speed. He steadied his gun barrel. The Indian who had been thrown was rushing him. The brown body loomed large and he could see sweat streaks on the man's chest. He squeezed off his shot and saw the Indian stumble in midstride and then pitch over on his face.
Isager pushed himself to his knees, then got up. The beach weaved slowly, sickeningly beneath him. He turned his head stiffly and looked toward Rodelo. The fallen man looked like a bundle of old clothes, but as Isager looked, the bundle moved. Rodelo uncoiled himself and got up. Blood covered his face from a cut on his cheek. He stared at his empty gun, then clumsily began feeding shells into the chambers.
Across the wavering sand the two men stared at each' other, then Rodelo laughed hoarsely. 'You look like hell!' he said, grinning from his heat-blasted face.
Isager's brain seemed to spin queerly and he blinked. What was the matter with him? A, pain bit suddenly at his side, and he clasped the pain with his hand. His fingers felt damp and he drew them away, staring stupidly at the blood dripping from his fingers.
'You copped one,' Rodelo said. 'You're hit.'
Isager swayed. Suddenly he knew this was it, right here on this dead-white beach washed by an ugly weedy sea. It was no way for a cowhand to cash in his chips. 'Beat it,' he said hoarsely. 'There's more coming.'
'How do you know that?'
'That's why they rushed. To get us an' claim the re ward. If they'd been alone they would have taken their time.' His knees felt buttery and queer. 'There's one good horse. Take the gold an' beat it. I'm done in, so I'll hold them off.'
He went to his knees. 'Only ...' His voice trailed off and he waited, his eyes begging Rodelo to wait a minute longer, then he managed the words, 'get some of that money to Tom Hopkins's wife. He ... he was that marshal. Funny thing, funny ... Never meant to kill him. He came at me an' it was just reflex ... jus' ... just drew an' shot.'
'All right,' Rodelo said, and he meant it. He turned and disappeared into the blinding light.
Isager lay down behind the fallen horse. He slid the rifle from its scabbard and waited.
Sheriff Bill Garden and two Apache trackers found Isager a few hours later. Gunfire from the advance party of six Yaquis had led them to this desolate beach. The convict was curled up behind a dying horse, surrounded by bright brass shells ejected from his rifle. Two of the Apache horses were gone and only one of the horses ridden by the convicts was alive. He was standing head down on the hillside not far away.
Horse tracks trailed away from the body of Isager, a faint trail toward the bluff to the south. Bill Garden glanced after them. The remaining scouts were still after the last man. He turned and looked down at Isager. 'Lord a-mighty,' he said. 'What a place to die!'
Far off across the water there was a flash of white, a jib shaken out to catch the wind ... a boat had left the fishing beds at Rocky Bay and was beating its way southward toward Guaymas.
*
THE COURTING OF GRISELDA
When it came to Griselda Popley, I was down to bedrock and showing no color. What I mean is, I wasn't getting anyplace. The only thing I'd learned since leaving the Cumberland in Tennessee was how to work a gold placer claim, but I was doing no better with that than I was with Griselda., Her pa, Frank Popley, had a claim just a whoop and a holler down canyon from me. He had put down a shaft on a flat bench at the bend of the creek and he was down a ways and making a fair clean-up.
He was scraping rock down there and panning out sixty to seventy dollars a day, and one time he found a crack where the gold had seeped through and filled in a space under a layer of rock, and he cleaned out six hundred dollars in four or five minutes.
It sure does beat all how prosperity makes a man critical of all who are less prosperous. Seems like some folks no sooner get two dollars they can rattle together than they start looking down their noses at folks who only have two bits.
We were right friendly while Popley was sinking his shaft, but as soon as he began bringing up gold he started giving me advice and talking me down to Griselda. From the way he cut up, you'd have thought it was some ability or knowledge of his that put that gold there. I never saw a man get superior so fast.
He was running me down and talking up that Arvie Wilt who had a claim nearby the Popley place, and Arvie was a man I didn't cotton to.
He was two inches taller than my six feet and three, and where I pack one hundred and eighty pounds on that lean a frame, most of it in my chest, shoulders, and arms, Arvie weighed a good fifty pounds more and he swaggered it around as if almighty impressed with himself.
He was a big, easy-smiling man that folks took to right off, and it took them a while to learn he was a man with a streak of meanness in him that was nigh onto downright viciousness. Trouble was, a body never saw that mean streak unless he was in a bind, but when trouble came to him, the meanness came out.
But Arvie was panning out gold, and you'd be surprised how that increased It is social standing there on Horse Collar Creek.
Night after night he was over to the Popleys', putting his big feet under their table and being waited on by Griselda. Time to time I was there, too, but they talked gold and how much they weighed out each day while all I was weighing out was gravel.
He was panning a fine show of color and all I had was a .44 pistol gun, a Henry rifle, and my mining tools. And as we all know it's the high card in a man's hand to be holding money when he goes a-courting.
None of us Sacketts ever had much cash money. We were hardworking mountain folk who harvested a lean corn crop off a side-hill farm, and we boys earned what clothes weren't made at home by trapping muskrats or coon. Sometimes we'd get us a bear, and otherwise we'd live on azorback hog meat or venison.
Never will forget the time a black bear treed old Orrin, that brother of mine, and us caught nine miles from home and none of us carrying iron.
You ever tackle a grown bear with a club? Me and Tyrel, we done it. We chunked at him with rocks and sticks, but he paid them no mind. He was bound and determined to have Orrin, and there was Orrin up high in the small branches of that tree like a 'possum hunting' persimmons.
Chunking did no good, so Tyrel and me cut us each a club and we had at that bear. He was big and he was mean, but while one of us closed in on him before, the other lambasted him from behind. Time to time we'd stop lambasting that bear to advise Orrin.
Finally that old bear got disgusted and walked off and Orrin came down out of that tree and we went on to the dance at Skunk Hollow School. Orrin did his fiddling that night from a sitting stool because the bear had most of his pants.
Right now I felt like he must have felt then. Every day that Griselda girl went a-walking past my claim paying me no mind but switching her skirts until I was fair sweating on my neck.
Her pa was a hard man. One time I went over there for supper like I had when I'd been welcome, back when neither of us had anything. He would stand up there in his new boots, consulting a new gold watch every minute or two, and talking high and mighty about the virtues of hard work and the application of brains. And all the time that Arvie Wilt was a-setting over there making big eyes at Griselda.
If anything, Arvie had more gold than Popley did and he was mighty welcome at table, but for me the atmosphere was frosting over a mite, and the only reason I dug in and held on was that I'd scraped my pot empty of beans and for two days I'd eaten nothing but those skimpy little wild onions.
Now when it came right down to it, Popley knew I'd worked hard as either of them, but I was showing no color and he wanted a son-in-law who was prosperous, so needing to find fault, he taken issue with me on fighting.
We boys from the high-up hills aren't much on bowing and scraping, but along about fighting time, you'll find
