All were silent, three awaiting a word from the fourth. Rydberg knew where the army payroll was buried. The government did not know, the guards did not know, only Rydberg. And Otteson, Isager, and Rodelo knew he knew.
He was a thin, scrawny man with a buzzard's neck and a buzzard's beak for a nose. His bright, predatory eyes indicated his hesitation now. 'How ... how much would it take?' he asked.
'A hundred,' Otteson suggested, 'not more than two. If we had that much we could be free.'
Free ... no walls, no guards, no stinking food. No sweating one's life out with backbreaking labor under the blazing sun. Free ... women, whiskey, money to spend ... the click of poker chips, the whir of the wheel, a gun's weight on the hip again. No beatings, no solitary, no lukewarm, brackish drinking water. Free to come and go ... a horse between the knees ... women ...
He said it finally, words they had waited to hear. 'There's the army payroll. We could get that.'
The taut minds of Otteson, Rodelo, and Isager relaxed slowly, easing the tension, and within the mind of each was a thought unshared.
Gold ... fifteen thousand in gold coins for the taking! A little money split four ways, but a lot of money for one!
Otteson leaned his bullet head nearer. 'Tomorrow night,' his thick lips barely moved as he whispered, 'to morrow night we'll go out. If we wait longer they'll have the wall repaired.'
'There's been guards posted ever since the quake,' Rodelo protested.
Otteson laughed. 'We'll take care of them!' From under the straw mattress he drew a crude, prison-made knife. 'Rydberg can take care of the other with his belt.'
Cunningly fashioned of braided leather thongs, it concealed a length of piano wire. When the belt was removed and held in the hands it could be bent so the loop of the steel wire projected itself, a loop large enough to encircle a man's head ... then it could be jerked tight and the man would die.
Rodelo leaned closer. 'How far to the gold?'
'Twenty miles east. We'll need horses.'
'Good!' Otteson smashed a fist into a palm. 'East is good! They'll expect us to go west into California. East after the gold, then south into the desert. They'd never dream we'd try that! It's hot as sin and dry as Hades, but I know where the water holes are!'
Their heads together, glistening with sweat in the hot, sticky confines of their cells, they plotted every move, and within the mind of three of the men was another plot: to kill the others and have the gold for himself.
'We'll need guns.' Rydberg expressed their greatest worry. 'They'll send Indians after us.'
The Indians were paid fifty dollars for each convict returned alive but it had been paid for dead convicts, too. The Yaquis knew the water holes, and fifty dollars was twice what most of them could make in a month if they could find work at all.
'We'll have the guns of the two guards. When we get to Rocky Bay, we'll hire a fisherman to carry us south to Guaymas.'
The following day their work seemed easy. The sun was broiling and the guards unusually brutal. Rydberg was knocked down by a hulking giant named Johnson. Rydberg just brushed himself off and smiled. It worried Johnson more than a threat. 'What's got into him?' he demanded of the other guards. 'Has he gone crazy?'
Perryman shrugged. 'Why worry about it? He's poison mean, an' those others are a bad lot, too. Otteson's worst of all.'
'He's the one I aim to get,' Johnson said grimly, 'but did you ever watch the way he lifts those rocks? Rocks two of us couldn't budge he lifts like they were so many sacks of spuds!'
It was sullen dark that night; no stars. There was thunder in the north and they could hear the river. The heat lingered and the guards were restless from the impending storm. At the gap where the quake had wrecked the wall were Perryman and Johnson. They would be relieved in two hours by other guards.
They had been an hour on the job and only now had seated themselves. Perryman lit a cigarette and leaned back. As he straightened to say something to Johnson he was startled to see kicking feet and clawing hands, but , before he could rise, a powerful arm came over his shoulder, closing off his breath. Then four men armed with rifles and pistols went down the side, of Prison Hill and walked eastward toward the town.
One hour before discovery. That was the most they could expect, yet in half that time they had stolen horses and headed east. Otteson had been shrewd. He had grabbed Perryman's hat from the ground. Both Isager and Rodelo had hats of a sort. Rydberg was without any covering for his shaven head.
Two hours after their escape they reached the adobe. Rydberg led the way inside the ruin, and they dug up the gold from a far corner. Each man took a sack, and then they turned their horses to the south and the desert.
'Each year,' Otteson said, 'the fishermen come to Rocky Bay. They live there while they fish, and then return to their homes down the gulf. Pablo told me, and he said to keep Pinacate on my left and head for the coast at Flat Hill. The bay is on a direct line between the hill and the coast.'
Pablo had been killed by a blow on the head from a guard's gun, but he had been planning escape with Otteson. Dawn came at last and the clouds slid away leaving the sun behind ... and the sun was hot.
From the Gila River to the Mexican border there was nothing. Only desert, cacti, rocks, and the sun, always the sun. There was not even water until one almost reached the border. Water was found only in tinajas, basins that captured rain and retained it until finally evaporated by the sun. Some of the tinajas were shaded and held the water for a long time, and in others there was just sand. Sometimes water impregnated the sand at the bottom. These things a man must know to survive on that devil's trail.
Their route from the Gila to the border was approximately fifty miles as the buzzard flies, but a man does not ride as the buzzard flies, not even in a lonely and empty land. There are clusters of rock, broken lava, up-thrust ledges, and clumps of cacti. And there are always, inevitably, arroyos. Seventy miles would be closer to the truth, seventy miles of desert in midsummer.
The border was a vague line which in theory left them free of pursuit, but in 1878 officers of the law often ignored lines of demarcation and the Indians did not notice them at all. Actually, the border was their halfway point, for they had a rough distance of one hundred and forty miles to traverse.
Behind them two guards lay dead, and the hostler only lived because Rodelo was not, by nature, a killer. Rodelo had the sleeping man's hands and feet tied before he got his eyes open. Then he gagged and left him. They stole four horses and three canteens and filled the canteens at the pump. Otteson, Rydberg, and Isager took it for granted the hostler had been killed.
They rode hard for twenty miles, and then they had the added weight of the gold. Otteson knew the way from Pablo and he pointed it out occasionally as they rode. But he did not offer his back to his companions.
Four battered and desperate men headed south under the glaring sun. Dust lifted, they sweated, and their lips grew dry. They pushed their horses, for distance was important. Otteson called a halt, finally. He was a heavy man and the hard riding sapped the strength of his horse. *
'Where is it we're gonna find water?' Isager noted the hesitation before Otteson replied. Isager knew the desert, but not this area. Otteson only had the knowledge Pablo had given him and he didn't want to tell too much.
'Near Coyote Peak there's water. Maybe ten miles yet.'
Isager tested the weight of his canteen. Rodelo drank several good gulps and returned his canteen to its place behind his saddle. Rydberg, who had brought the guard's water bottle, drank also. Otteson made a motion of drinking, but Isager watched his Adam's apple. It did not move.
Isager was a lean man, not tall, and narrow of jaw and cheekbone. He weighed one hundred and fifty pounds and carried no ounce of fat. He had been sent to Yuma after killing a marshal, which would have been his sixth notch if he had been a man for carving notches. It was noteworthy that in selecting a weapon he had taken a pistol. Isager was nothing if not practical. The pistol was his favorite weapon, and the four would be close together. By the time they had spread out to where a rifle might be useful, he would have a rifle. Of that he was positive.
Rodelo knew nothing of the desert but much of men. When younger he had sailed to the West Coast of Africa and had seen men die of the sun. He had replaced the bandanna that covered his head when working in the prison yard with a hat stolen from the livery, knowing the sun would be vicious on their shaven skulls. They depended upon Otteson, and he was not to be trusted. Isager alone he respected: he liked none of them. Rydberg did not guess what the others knew that they would soon be minus a man.
