Last Stand at Papago Wells (1957) by Louis L'amour Page A

indicate Zimmerman. "And if you don't think I'll do it, you just hold that pistol until I count two. One, t--"
    Kimbrough backed up, his face sullen. "You better not go to sleep, Cates," he said. "If you do, I'll kill you."
    "When he's asleep," Junie said, "I'll be awake, mister."
    As they moved away, Cates turned to Junie Hatchett. "Thanks," he said simply.
    She glanced at him. "If anybody can get us out of here," she said, "it'll be you."
    Jennifer looked after her as the girl returned to the fire. "I see what you meant," Jennifer said. "There is iron in her." She hesitated. "Do you think she would have shot Grant?"
    Cates nodded grimly. "She'd have shot him. She would have done just what she said she would, and what's more, they both knew it. Her finger was taking up slack when he dropped that pistol."
    "I can't understand it." Jennifer said, frowning. "What could have come over Grant?"
    Logan Cates let his eyes wander along the edges of the arroyo. "Maybe he got carried away," Cates suggested dryly. "It's times like this that bring a man face to face with himself."
    The sun flared like a burnished sword and the sky was like a white-hot sheet of steel. Around them the lava grew too hot to touch and they led the horses to water, and returned them again to the thin shade in the lower arroyo. During all this time the desert stirred with no sound, the Apaches gave no indication of their presence and no quail called nor did the wind blow, nor did any stone rattle in the parched silence. The thirsty sky drank of the pools, and the people at the water holes drank, and the water seemed to fall away beneath them.
    In the late afternoon a restless Conley, tired of sitting and watching where nothing was, lifted his head a little to peer at a cluster of rocks and brush. The report of the rifle was thin in the great silence and distance, a little, lost sound in the emptiness. The young soldier fell, tumbling down among the rocks, and there lay still.
    Jennifer was first to reach him, then Big Maria and Cates.
    Maria looked up. "Just burned him," she said. "He'll be all right."
    Cates descended into the lower arroyo. Beaupre was resting in the shade. Lugo was crouched immovable against a rock face. Cates squatted beside him. "What d' you think? How many are out there?"
    Tony Lugo shrugged. "I think twenty ... more, maybe. I think Churupati won't attack with less."
    "We need food," Cates said. "I'll try it tonight."
    "You get kill."
    "No." Cates indicated a thin spot in the brush near the base of a smoke tree. "I go down the arroyo, tell nobody but you. I can go like an Indian. With the glasses I have seen some mountain sheep south of here. They want to come for water and they wait to see if we will go away. I think I can find them."
    "They'll hear the gun."
    "No. I'm going to use a bow and arrow. I have used them many times when I lived among the Cheyenne."
    "I make. You let me go."
    "No, I'll go. But you can make it. If I started, they would be wondering why. I don't want anyone to know where I am, you understand?"
    The need for food was serious. A few days might make all the difference, and Logan Cates knew that by now there was doubt in Yuma. The sheriff's posse had not returned, and already there would be talk of sending out another group to find the first ... or their bodies.
    The disappearance of the soldiers at the same time would immediately alert the people at Yuma to the probability of an Indian attack. All travel from the east would have ceased also, and these indications would be sufficient to allow them to understand what had happened. There were not enough men at the Fort to send out an expedition, but combined with what civilians could be sent out there would be a good-sized party.
    There was every chance for survival if they could wait the Indians out. Up to now the fight was all on the side of the defending party. Styles was dying--he had even ceased to cry out now--but otherwise they were still a formidable fighting