“How about our spears then?” Raymond said. “We get hungry we could use the spears maybe to stick something.”
“The spears might be all right.” Mr. Manly nodded.
“Spears and two canteens of water,” Raymond said. “And the other clothes. Some people see us they won’t think we’re convicts running away.”
“Pair of pants and a shirt,” Mr. Manly said.
“And a couple of blankets. In case we don’t get back before dark and we got to sleep outside. We can get our bedrolls and the spears,” Raymond said. “They’re with all the baggage in that car we loaded.”
“You’d try to be back before dark?”
“Yes, sir, we don’t like to sleep outside if we don’t have to.”
“Well,” Mr. Manly said. He paused. He was trying to think of an alternative. He didn’t believe that sending these two out would do any good. He pictured them coming back at dusk and sinking to the ground exhausted. But at least it would be doing something—now. Mr. Rynning or somebody would ask him, What did you do? And he’d say, I sent trackers out after them. I got these two boys that are runners. He said, “Well, find your stuff and get started. I’ll tell the guards.”
They left the water stop at Sentinel running almost due south. They ran several hundred yards before looking back to see the smoke still hanging in a dull cloud over the buildings and the palo verde trees. They ran for another half-mile or so, loping easily and not speaking, carrying their spears and their new guard-gray pants and shirts wrapped in their blanket rolls. They ran until they reached a gradual rise and ran down the other side to find themselves in a shallow wash, out of sight of the water stop.
They looked at each other now. Harold grinned and Raymond grinned. They sat down on the bank of the wash and began laughing, until soon both of them had tears in their eyes.
12
Harold said, “What way do we go?”
Raymond got up on the bank of the dry wash and stood looking out at the desert that was a flat burned-out waste as far as they could see. There were patches of dusty scrub growth, but no cactus or trees from here to the dark rise of the mountains to the south.
“That way,” Raymond said. “To the Crater Mountains and down to the Little Ajos. Two days we come to Ajo, the town, steal some horses, go on south to Bates Well. The next day we come to Quitobaquito, a little water-hole village, and cross the border. After that, I don’t know.”
“Three days, uh?”
“Without horses.”
“Frank Shelby, he going the same way?”
“He could go to Clarkstown instead of Ajo. They near each other. One the white man’s town, the other the Mexican town.”
“But he’s going the same way we are.”
“There isn’t no other way south from here.”
“I’d like to get him in front of me one minute,” Harold said.
“Man,” Raymond said, “you would have to move fast to get him first.”
“Maybe we run into him sometime.”
“Only if we run,” Raymond said.
Harold was silent a moment. “If we did, we’d get out of here quicker, wouldn’t we? If we run.”
“Sure, maybe save a day. If we’re any good.”
“You think we couldn’t run to those mountains?”
“Sure we could, we wanted to.”
“Is there water?”
“There used to be.”
“Then that’s probably where he’s heading to camp tonight, uh? What do you think?”
“He’s got to go that way. He might as well.”
“We was to get there tonight,” Harold said, “we might run into him.”
“We might run into all of them.”
“Not if we saw them first. Waited for him to get alone.”
Raymond grinned. “Play with him a little.”
“Man, that would be good, wouldn’t it?” Harold said. “Scare him some.”
“Scare hell out of him.”
“Paint his face,” Harold said. He began to smile thinking about it.
“Take his clothes. Paint him all over.”
“Now you talking. You got any?”
“I brought some iodine and a little bottle of white. Listen,” Raymond said, “we’re going that way. Why don’t we take a little run and see how Frank’s doing?”
Harold stood up. When they had tied their blanket rolls across one shoulder and picked up their spears, the Apache and the Zulu began their run across the southern Arizona desert.
They ran ten miles in the furnace heat of sand and rock and dry, white-crusted playas and didn’t break their stride until the sun was directly overhead. They walked a mile and ran another mile before they stopped to rest and allowed themselves a drink of water from the canteens, a short drink and then a mouthful they held in their mouths while they screwed closed the canteens and hung them over their shoulders again. They rested fifteen minutes and before the tiredness could creep in to stiffen their legs they stood up without a word and started off again toward the mountains.
For a mile or so they would be aware of their running. Then, in time, they would become lost in the monotonous stride of their pace, running, but each somewhere else in his mind, seeing cool mountain pastures or palm trees or thinking of nothing at all, running and hearing themselves sucking the heated air in and letting it out, but not feeling the agony of running. They had learned to do this in the past months, to detach themselves and be inside or outside the running man but not part of him for long minutes at a time. When they broke stride they would always walk and sometimes run again before resting. At times they felt they were getting no closer to the mountains, though finally the slopes began to take shape, changing from a dark mass to dun-colored slopes and shadowed contours. At mid-afternoon they saw the first trace of dust rising in the distance. Both of them saw it and they kept their eyes on the wispy, moving cloud that would rise and vanish against the sky. The dust was something good to watch and seeing it was better than stretching out in the grass and going to sleep. It meant Frank Shelby was only a few miles ahead of them.
They came to the arroyo in the shadowed foothills of the Crater Mountains a little after five o’clock. There was good brush cover here and a natural road that would take them up into high country. They would camp above Shelby if they could and watch him, Raymond said, but first he had to go out and find the son of a bitch. You rest, he told Harold, and the Zulu gave him a deadpan look and stared at him until he was gone. Harold sat back against the cool, shaded wall of the gulley. He wouldn’t let himself go to sleep though. He kept his eyes open and waited for the Apache, listening and not moving, letting the tight weariness ease out of his body. By the time Raymond returned the arroyo was dark. The only light they could see were sun reflections on the high peaks above them.
“They’re in some trees,” Raymond said, “about a half-mile from here. Taking it easy, they even got a fire.”
“All of them there?”
“I count eight, eight horses.”
“Can we get close?”
“Right above them. Frank’s put two men up in the rocks—they can see all around the camp.”
“What do you think?” Harold said.
