Raymond pointed off to the side. “Not far.”
“How come you got that paint on your face?”
“I just put it there.”
“How come if you live around here you don’t know where Clarkstown is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus, you must be a dumb Indin. Have you seen anybody else come through here today?”
“Nobody.”
“You haven’t seen me, have you?”
“What?”
“You haven’t seen nobody and you haven’t seen me either.”
Raymond said nothing.
“I don’t know,” Virgil said now. “Some sheriff’s people ask you you’re liable to tell them, aren’t you? You got family around here?”
“Nobody else.”
“Just you all alone. Nobody would miss you then, would they? Listen, buddy, I don’t mean anything personal, but I’m afraid you seeing me isn’t a good idea. I’m going to have to shoot you.”
Raymond stood up now, slowly.
“You can run if you want,” Virgil said, “or you can stand there and take it, I don’t care; but don’t start hollering and carrying on. All right?”
Virgil was wearing a shoulder rig under his coat. He looked down as he unbuttoned the one button, drew a.44 Colt and looked up to see something coming at him and gasped as if the wind was knocked out of him as he grabbed hold of the fishing pole sticking out of his chest and saw the Indian standing there watching him and saw the sky and the sun, and that was all.
Raymond dragged Virgil’s body into the mesquite. He left his spear in there too. He had two revolvers, a Winchester rifle and a horse. He didn’t need a spear any more.
Joe Dean’s horse smelled water. He was sure of it, so he let the animal have its head and Joe Dean went along for the ride—down into a wide canyon that was green and yellow with spring growth. When he saw the cotton-woods and then the round soft shape of the willows against the canyon slope, Joe Dean patted the horse’s neck and guided him with the reins again.
It was a still pool, but not stagnant, undercutting a shelf of rock and mirroring the cliffs and canyon walls. Joe Dean dismounted. He led his horse down a bank of shale to the pool, then went belly-down at the edge and drank with his face in the water. He drank all he wanted before emptying the little bit left in his canteen and filling it to the top. Then he stretched out and drank again. He wished he had time to strip off his clothes and dive in. But he had better get the others first or Frank would see he’d bathed and start kicking and screaming again. Once he got them here they would probably all want to take a bath. That would be something, Norma in there with them, grabbing some of her under the water when Frank wasn’t looking. Then she’d get out and lie up there on the bank to dry off in the sun. Nice soft white body—
Joe Dean was pushing himself up, looking at the pool and aware now of the reflections in the still water: the slope of the canyon wall high above, the shelf of rock behind him, sandy brown, and something else, something dark that resembled a man’s shape, and he felt that cold prickly feeling up between his shouder blades to his neck.
It was probably a crevice, shadowed inside. It couldn’t be a man. Joe Dean got to his feet, then turned around and looked up.
Harold Jackson—bare to the waist, and a blanket over one shoulder, with his beard and tribal scars and streak of white paint—stood looking down at him from the rock shelf.
“How you doing?” Harold said. “You get enough water?”
Joe Dean stared at him. He didn’t answer right away. God, no. He was thinking and trying to decide quickly if it was a good thing or a bad thing to be looking up at Harold Jackson at a water hole in the Little Ajo Mountains.
He said finally, “How’d you get here?”
“Same way you did.”
“You got away after we left?”
“Looks like it, don’t it?”
“Well, that must’ve been something. Just you?”
“No, Raymond come with me.”
“I don’t see him. Where is he?”
“He’s around some place.”
“If there wasn’t any horses left, how’d you get here?”
“How you think?”
“I’m asking you, Sambo.”
“We run, Joe.”
“You’re saying you run here all the way from Sentinel?”
“Well, we stop last night,” Harold said, and kept watching him. “Up in the Crater Mountains.”
“Is that right? We camped up there too.”
“I know you did,” Harold said.
Joe Dean was silent for a long moment before he said, “You killed Howard and Dancey, didn’t you?”
“No, we never killed them. We let them go.”
“What do you want?”
“Not you, Joe. Unless you want to take part.”
Joe Dean’s revolver was in his belt. He didn’t see a gun or a knife or anything on Harold, just the blanket over his shoulder and covering his arm. It looked like it would be pretty easy. So he drew his revolver.
As he did, though, Harold pulled the blanket across his body with his left hand. His right hand came up holding Howard Crowder’s .44 and he shot Joe Dean with it three times in the chest. And now Harold had two revolvers, a rifle, and a horse. He left Joe Dean lying next to the pool for Shelby to find.
They had passed Clarkstown, Shelby decided. Missed it. Which meant they were still in the Little Ajo Mountains, past the chance of having a sit-down hot meal today, but that much closer to the border. That part was all right. What bothered him, they had not seen Virgil or Joe Dean since noon.
It was almost four o’clock now. Junior and Soonzy were riding ahead about thirty yards. Norma was keeping up with Shelby, staying close, afraid of him but more afraid of falling behind and finding herself alone. If Shelby didn’t know where they were, Norma knew that she, by herself, would never find her way out. She had no idea why Shelby had brought her, other than at Virgil’s request to have a woman along. No one had approached her in the camp last night. She knew, though, once they were across the border and the men relaxed and quit looking behind them, one of them, probably Virgil, would come to her with that fixed expression on his face and she would take him on and be nice to him as long as she had no other choice.
“We were through here one time,” Shelby said. “We went up through Copper Canyon to Clarkstown the morning we went after the Cornelia Mine payroll. I don’t see any familiar sights, though. It all looks the same.”
She knew he wasn’t speaking to her directly. He was thinking out loud, or stoking his confidence with the sound of his own voice.
“From here what we want to hit is Growler Pass,” Shelby said. “Top the pass and we’re at Bates Well. Then we got two ways to go. Southeast to Dripping Springs and on down to Sonoyta. Or a shorter trail to the border through Quitobaquito. I haven’t decided yet which way we’ll go. When Virgil comes in I’ll ask him if Billy Santos said anything about which trail’s best this time of the year.”
“What happened to the two men last night?” Norma asked him.
Shelby didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure if she should ask him again. Before she could decide, Junior was riding back toward them and Shelby had reined in to wait for him.
Junior was grinning. “I believe Joe Dean’s found us some water. His tracks lead into that canyon yonder and it’s chock-full of green brush and willow trees.”
“There’s a tank somewhere in these hills,” Shelby said.
“Well, I believe we’ve found it,” Junior said.
They found the natural tank at the end of the canyon. They found Joe Dean lying with his head and
