of the plaza to get behind the machine-gunners. Nevada’s guns were echoing his partner’s, and this was one time he had no compunctions about shooting men in the back. Men who were dying before they had time to know what hit them.
They were half around the square, where broad steps led up to a wide, arcaded verandah looking out over the plaza, when Nevada caught the glimpse of a golden Sam Browne lighted by muzzle flame coming from there.
Utah saw it, too. “They’re up thar!” he shouted. “That danged Commandante and all them hombres who look like him. Pard, what we waitin’ fer?”
Nevada met McClatchey’s challenge by whirling his mount up steps worn smooth by countless generations of sandaled feet. A saffron-hued face, high-lighted by the muzzle blast of an automatic, loomed before him as his mount hit the tiles of the verandah. He felt lead sear his arm, as his Colt spoke. Red film covered that face immediately. Another man leaped toward the bridle reins. Nevada reared his mount. Iron-shod hoofs pawed out. The man met death screaming, his skull smashed by those striking hoofs.
It was a wicked way to kill, but he had no mercy for any of them. Men bent on destroying a nation by violence deserved this or worse. Lead creased his ribs from the shadows to the left. Nevada wing-shot the man, dropping him in a huddled heap to mingle with the shadows.
Only one of the seven who had taken refuge here on the porch was escaping. Nevada saw him leap down the steps, and race toward those waves of horsemen, and white-clad Penitente men out there in the plaza. Utah was beside him as they whirled their mounts down the stairs after him, and then he reined in as Tarrant drew up alongside them. The Government man’s face was bloody from a bullet crease, but he was smiling grimly, as the three of them watched a veritable wave of those yelling horsemen and white-clad townsmen seem to engulf the man.
“And that finishes things!” Utah howled. “I allus say yuh should git all the peas in a pod—and we shore got ’em this time!”
* * * *
Two hours later, with bloody Tres Cruces far behind them, Tarrant reined in, glancing at Nevada Jim’s blood-soaked shirt. “We ought to be far enough away now to take time out to bandage your wounds,” he said quietly. “It’s a sorry man, I am,” he went on, “that I can’t take you back to Arizona with me to collect the reward the Government has offered for the capture or death of the man known as The Commandante. Boys,” emotion had crept into his voice, “the United States owes you a debt it will never be able to pay.”
“Hell,” Utah cut in, “the U.S. don’t owe us nothin’, Dick. We’d be a coupla danged pore Americans if we had to get paid for doin’ our country a good turn!”
“There’s some sheriffs and a governor or two who will hear of what you’ve done,” Tarrant said earnestly, “I can promise that much.”
Nevada Jim turned his ironic gaze on McClatchey. “Nobody’s goin’ tuh pardon a coupla old owlhooters like us, Dick,” he drawled. “We been hellin’ around too long, thumbin’ our noses at sheriffs and posses, to ever have any peace across the Line. You can collect that thar ree-ward yuh mentioned, though, in our names, if you want to do us a favor, and give it to ol’ Dan Conover’s widder. She’ll need it now a lot wuss than us. Hyar, I’ll give yuh an order, tuh make it legal, if you got a pencil.”
But Dick Tarrant seemed not to have heard him. His blue eyes were bulging from his head, as he stared at the little red leather notebook Nevada had pulled from his hip pocket. Then a yell that echoed across the canyon down which they were traveling sped from the F.B.I. man’s lips. He grabbed the notebook from Nevada Jim’s hands and leafed rapidly through it. “Good gosh, Jim,” he said hoarsely at last, “is there anything else you can do for your country? Next to liquidating the Commandante, this book will do more to break the hold of the Fifth Columnists on the U.S. than anything else. We’ve been trying since the start of the war in Europe to lay our hands on this book, which we knew existed. It contains the key to the secret Fifth Column code, the locations of other radio stations in the U.S., and the names and addresses of their State and District leaders.”
“Seems like that ought to be enough fer one book!” Utah drawled. “We found it underneath one of them danged furriners we shot at Dan’s. Which brings up the p’int, Jim,” he looked at Nevada, “that we didn’t lay hands on nobody who could prove tuh this here lawdog that we weren’t the ones who salivated Conover.”
Laughter shook Dick Tarrant’s shoulders. “Was that what you came all the way here to disprove,” he demanded. “Why, boys, you were cleared of that charge within an hour after you pulled out! The bullet that killed Conover was from an automatic, not one of those old cannons you boys still carry.”
Utah’s mouth fell open. “Gosh-a-mighty, then we made this hull danged trip tuh Tres Cruces fer nothin’ but Dan’l’s gold!”
“Which we didn’t get none of,” Nevada put in dryly. “Fact is, we didn’t get nothin’ outta this jaunt, Utah, ’cept a couple of bullet-scraped ribs, and a pair of hosses not as good as the ones we had to leave behind. And on top of that, I got a thirst that it’s goin’ to take leastways a keg of beer to drown!”
Tarrant was reaching for a money belt, hidden beneath his shirt. “Boys,” he said earnestly, “I haven’t got much, but it’s yours—”
“Naw,” Utah waved grandly. “We ain’t got no right tuh honest money. We’re gittin’ jist what we deserve for bein’ ornery owlhooters. No glory. No dinero. No nothin’. Feller, you get that hoss of yores movin’ while we stick here awhile just to make sure no trouble comes traipsin’ along the back-trail.”
“But—” Tarrant started to argue.
Utah’s old mustache bristled fiercely. His spurred heel kicked out, caught Tarrant’s mount in the rump. Squealing, the animal buck-jumped down the trail, and for the first time since they had escaped from Tres Cruces, Nevada saw his old partner straighten fully in his kak.
His eyes were gleaming as he reached inside the front of his shirt. “I jest had to get rid of that lawdog, Jim,” he drawled, “afore this stuff fell out all over the trail.”
“Wh—” Nevada started to say, and then he halted, and a grin started on his lips. For Utah was pulling packets of green, American money from inside his shirt. “I dunno jest how much I got here, pard,” he said apologetically, “but a drawer of that thar Commandante’s desk was full of this stuff, and I helped myself, figgering turn about wuz fair play. He stole the gold we wuz goin’ tuh lift, so I figger it was all hunky dory for us tuh lift some of his dinero. They’s enough here tuh pay for a good beer bust when we hit the nearest town whar the Rurales ain’t too nosey.”
Nevada caught a packet of the money as his partner passed it to him, and even in the darkness he could read the thousand-dollar mark on the top bill. “Yeah,” he said dryly. “I guess there is.
‘Course, knowin’ you had this wouldn’t have influenced that thar noble gesture about not acceptin’ the reward for salivatin’ the Commandante, would it?”
Utah McClatchey’s parched old face looked hurt, as only a man who had ridden the owlhoot trails for forty years could look. “Why Jim,” he said gently, “that thar kid lawdog figgers you and me for heroes. You know we couldn’t spoil his delusions!”
TOM’S MONEY, by Harriet Prescott Spofford
Mrs. Laughton had found what she had been looking for all her life—the man under her bed.
Every
