Novel 1966 - Kid Rodelo (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page A

with.”
    Rodelo listened for a moment, then he said, “Did you ever look over a desert from high up on a mountain? The greasewood looks as if it had been planted, it’s so evenly spaced. Well, it’s spaced like that because it needs to draw water from the area around it.”
    They sat quietly for a time, and then he spoke again. “I don’t get it. What are you doing here? I mean, what have you got to gain?”
    “What have I to lose?”
    “Your life means nothing to you?”
    “Of course it does.” She looked around at him. “It might be that I want that gold, too. Or part of it.”
    “You’d be wasting your time. You’ll never see a single coin of it.”
    “Joe Harbin may feel otherwise.”
    He was silent while again he assayed the darkness. “He won’t,” he said then. “Joe isn’t the kind to let one bit of that gold slip through his fingers if he can help it. If you’re counting on that, you better forget it.”
    “I can handle Joe.”
    “Maybe you can, at that.” There was an edge of sarcasm in his tone. “Jake Andrews was no Sunday school teacher, either.”
    “What’s that to you?”
    “Nothing…nothing at all.”
    “Jake was all right. He was a good enough man in his way, but he listened to Clint. Jake heard about the gold, heard of it from Joe Harbin’s woman, because one night when Joe was drunk he did some bragging. Clint kept after him until Jake agreed to go and have a look for that gold.”
    “What about you and Jake?”
    She turned her eyes on him, but in the darkness he could not see their expression. “What about us?” she said.
    “I mean…you don’t seem his sort of girl.”
    “Any sort of girl was Jake’s sort. He pulled me out of a wrecked train up in Wyoming. I was on fire—my clothes, I mean. He put the fire out, and helped me get away from the Indians who wrecked the train…if they were Indians.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I always thought Jake was in that himself. Only when he found me he pulled out, very fast. But he treated me all right. Jake was a hard man, and something of a brute, but he had a queer streak in him. He talked roughly to me, as he did to everyone, but he was oddly gentle too. He wanted to marry me.”
    “He was a rancher, wasn’t he?”
    “Indians drove off his herd and burned him out. He had some idea of going into Mexico and starting again.”
    “So now you’re here.” He started out over the desert, keeping his ears attuned to night sounds. Their voices were low, barely above a whisper. “Right in the middle of hell.”
    The wind was cold, and unconsciously they had drawn closer together. Dan looked toward the camp. All lay still, sleeping. At the fire only a few embers glowed among the ashes. His eyes searched the darkness for movement, for any shape that did not belong there.
    He knew the Yaquis were close, knew they were skilled man-hunters, and he knew what the fifty dollars a head would mean to them. And there was the added attraction of the girl, of Nora. Of course, they would not bring her back. Nobody knew about her, and it was unlikely that questions would be asked.
    As for himself, he wasn’t wanted anywhere, but Hat wanted his boots, which would be reason enough. And, of course, they wanted to make a clean sweep.
    “If you’re the last one alive,” he said, “and the Indians take you, you might talk them into taking you to Sam Burrows. He’d give them a hundred dollars for you. Tell them that—it might save your life.”
    “And otherwise?”
    “There are some springs on Adair Bay, and there’s to be a boat there to pick up a man named Isacher. He’s dead, so don’t worry about him. If not that boat, there are fishing boats along from time to time.”
    “And what if we all come through? Or if it is just you and Joe Harbin?”
    He looked at her thoughtfully in the darkness. “Then I suppose you will have to choose, Joe Harbin or me.”
    He turned suddenly and took her by the shoulders, and for a moment he held