rock wall, as if by not seeing, the sprawling openness of the grade would not make him feel so naked. It stretched below him in a vast unmoving silence that seemed to hold time in a vacuum.
For a few minutes he watched Juan Solo almost a hundred feet above him. And when he again looked out over the slope, he saw it immediately, the thin dust thread in the distance on what only a few minutes before was a landscape as still as a painting. He watched it grow as it approached, squinting hard until he was sure, then he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, 'Juan!' sharply. And when he saw the figure look down, he pointed out to the dust trail until he was certain Juan saw it, then went over the ledge, sliding down to the bench in a shower of loose gravel that made the animals shy at their halters and back away from the slope.
He moved them in quickly as best he could under a jutting of rock and pulled his carbine from its boot before moving back to the ledge.
THE BENCH WAS a good thousand yards up the slope from the basin floor, and from there the riders were only dots against the ragged country, indistinguishable, disappearing behind brush now and again; but finally Struggles could make out six of them following the switchbacks single-file up the grade. He pushed his carbine out over the rocks watching the front door close as they approached. There was no back door. He had no doubt as to who they were, and still they kept coming, making no attempt to stay behind cover. From a hundred yards they all looked Mexican. One of them started to wave his sombrero and suddenly there was a pistol shot from above.
Struggles looked up, going flat behind the rocks, and saw Juan Solo down on the ledge again swinging his pistol in an arc before firing twice more; and when Struggles lifted his head above the rocks, he saw only a lone figure running after the horses that were scattering far down the grade. Nothing moved along the slope where the riders had been. Beyond the scattered rock and brush, the solitary figure was slowly rounding up the horses one at a time and leading them behind the shelter of a rise.
Struggles swung his carbine across a straight line waiting for something to move. They couldn't stay down forever. But for the next few minutes nothing happened.
Then, he saw the sombrero lift hesitantly above a rock for a full second before disappearing. After a few moments, the crown was edging up again when the pistol shot sounded from above and echoed back from down the slope. The hat disappeared again and someone yelled, 'Hold your fire!' and next a white cloth was waving back and forth over the rock.
A man stepped out from behind the covering holding the cloth and motioned to the side until another man moved out hesitantly to join him as he started up the grade waving the cloth. He carried only a holstered pistol, but the second man held a Winchester across the crook of his arm. They came on slowly until they were in short-pistol range.
Struggles put his sights square in the center of the first man's chest and thought how easy it would be, but then he called, 'That's good enough!'
The one with the rifle hesitated, but the other didn't break his stride.
'I said that's far enough!'
He stopped then, less than fifty feet away. A willow-root straw was down close to his eyes shading his features, but you could see that he was an American. There was an easiness about him, standing in the open in a relaxed slouch; and Struggles thought, He looks like a red-dirt farmer leaning against the corner on Saturday night. Only there's no match-stick in his mouth and a gun's only six inches from his hand.
The one with the Winchester, a Mexican, moved up next to him and stood sideways so that the cradled barrel was pointing up to the ledge. The American followed the direction of the barrel, then looked where he thought Struggles to be.
'Tell that crazy Indian to do something with his nerves,' he called.
Struggles lifted his head slightly from the rear sight. 'You're the one making him nervous, not me.'
'There doesn't have to be trouble--that's what I mean.' He pushed the straw up from his eyes. 'Why don't you come out in the open?'
Struggles' cheek pressed against the stock again. 'You better get to the point pretty soon.' And with the words saw the American's face break into a smile.
'Well, the point is, you're sitting on a pile of silver and I want it.' His smile broadened and he added, 'And the edge of the point is that we're six and you're two.'
'Only when you come to get us, it's going to cost you something,' Struggles said.
'Not if we sit back in the shade and wait for your tongues to swell up.'
'You look a little too skinny to be good at waiting.'
The American nodded to the ledge. 'Ask Juan how good I am at waiting. I used up a lot of my patience while my vaqueros scratched for your sign, but I still got some left.'
Struggles admitted, 'It didn't take you too long at that.'
'Your boy isn't the only one who knows the country.' He was waving the white cloth idly. 'Look,' he said. 'Here's how it is. You either sit and die of thirst, or else get on your mounts and ride the hell out. Of course, for my own protection I'd have to ask both of you to leave your guns behind.'
Struggles said, 'You don't have a high regard for our reasoning, do you?'
The man shrugged. 'I'm not talking you into anything.' He waited a few moments, then turned and walked down the slope. The Mexican backed down, keeping the Winchester high.
Struggles fingered the trigger lightly and wondered what that principle was based on--about not shooting a man in the back. And when the straw hat was out of range he still had not thought of it.
Through the heat of the afternoon Struggles' mind talked to him, making conversation; but always an argument resulted, and his mind was poor company because it kept telling him that he was afraid. When the heat began to lift, a breeze stirred lazily over the bench and made a faint whispering sound as it played through the crevices above. And finally, the bench lost its shape in darkness.
It was cool relief after the glaring white light of the afternoon; but with the darkness, the slope that was still a painting now came alive and was something menacing.
Struggles crawled back to the slope and stood up, cupping his hands to his mouth, and whispered, 'Juan,' then gritted his teeth as the word cut the silence.
He waited, but nothing happened. He brought up his hands again, but jumped back quickly as a stream of loose shale clattered down from above. And as if on signal, two rifles opened up from below. Struggles went flat and inched back to the rim as the firing kept up, spattering against the flinty slope.
WHEN IT STOPPED, he raised his head above the rocks, but there was only the darkness. They're not a hundred feet away, he thought. Waiting for us to move. He settled down again, pressing close to the rock barrier. Well, they were going to have a long wait. But now he wondered if he was alone. Since the firing there had been no sound from above. Had something happened to Juan?
Time lost its meaning after a while and became only something that dragged hope with it as it went nowhere.
Sometime after midnight, Struggles started to doze off. His head nodded and his chin was almost on his chest, but even then a consciousness warned him and he jerked his head up abruptly. He moved it from side to side now, shaking himself awake; and as his face swung to the left he saw the pinpoint of a gleam up on the mountainside.
He came to his feet, fully awake now, but blinked his eyes to make sure. The light was moving down with crawling slowness from the peak, flickering dully, but growing in intensity as it inched down the rock slide path that Juan Solo had climbed earlier.
After a few minutes Struggles saw a torch, with the flame dancing against the blackness of the slope, and as it descended to the ledge the shape of a man was illuminated weirdly in the flickering orange light it cast.
The figure moved to the edge, holding up a baroque cross whose end was the burning torch--the figure of a man wearing the coarse brown robes of a Franciscan friar.
He held the cross high overhead and spoke one sentence of Castilian, the words cold and shrill in the darkness.
'Leave this Blood of the Saint or thus your souls shall plunge to the hell of the damned!'
His arm swung back and the torch soared out into the night and down until it hit far below on the slope in a shower of bursting sparks. The figure was gone in the darkness.
