pocket and stared at it.
“What you lookin’ at that danged thing for?” Utah queried irascibly. “Figger to find the answers to why that that plane’s headin’ back to Arizony?”
Nevada put the little red book back in his pocket sheepishly. “I was just thinkin’,” he explained as they went for their horses, “that mebbe that sky-buggy is headin’ back to Dan’l’s to look for this thing. They shore as heck ain’t pyrootin’ off in that direction for nothing.”
“You got more imagination than good sense, Jim,” Utah grumbled. “But dang it all, I suppose yore guess is good as mine. There’s only one thing I’ll lay you odds on,” his creaky voice turned grimly serious for a moment, “and that is that us two hellers from Helldorado have got to do all the plain and fancy hellin’ we’re going to afore that flyin’ chariot gits back here. They saw our hosses, that’s a lead-pipe cinch, and they didn’t see us, which is goin’ to make ’em mighty suspicious. We’re goin’ to have a fine time now convincin’ anybody that we’re just a couple of harmless ol’ prospectors!”
* * * *
The charcoal burner was a good half mile ahead of them by the time they gained the trail again, but the shadows were thickening so rapidly now along this flank of the mountain that they did not think the disguised lawman would notice them.
But in that surmise they were wrong. They had barely lined out single file again when a harsh curse from McClatchey in the lead made Nevada lift in his stirrups and crane his neck to see what had brought on the exclamation.
The answer was simple. The woodcutter had halted his burro. He was leaning negligently against the animal’s rump looking back at them. Then he waved.
Utah cursed again, heartily. “I’ll lay you my last centavo,” he growled back to Nevada, “that that hombre knew we were hidin’ in the brush here all the time. An’ if he ain’t standin’ there laughin’ at us, I’ll eat that straw sombrero he’s wearin’. Jim, we been out-smarted by that hombre! If he knew we were down here in the brush, why in Hades didn’t he cut loose at us with that fancy smoke-pole he’s packin’?”
Nevada Jim shook his head, and his thin, hatchet-face turned sour. “There ain’t but one answer tuh that,” he grunted as disgustedly as Utah.
McClatchey’s black eyes widened. “You mean he ain’t here lookin’ for us?”
Nevada nodded. “You guessed it the fust time,” he answered dryly.
“Then what in blue blazes is he here fer?” Utah demanded.
“If we knew that,” Nevada drawled, “and a few other things, mebbe we wouldn’t have to foller the gent to Tres Cruces!”
* * * *
Dusk was touching the plateau on which the Penitente town, Three Crosses, had been built, by the time the Hellers reached the top of the precipice trail. The charcoal burner had crossed the rim a good ten minutes before them.
“Let’s you and me be smarter’n that gent,” Utah remarked with one of his ugly grins, that showed his broken, tobacco-stained teeth, “and take a look for ourselves afore we stick our necks in a noose.”
Nevada nodded. Keen excitement stirred through him as he dismounted. Adventure such as this was meat and drink to the pards, and beneath that feeling coursing through him was another, deeper feeling that he could not analyze. He felt like a man on the threshold of some great discovery, for certainly there were forces at work here that neither of them could understand.
He was right behind Utah as the old outlaw dropped to his stomach and inched the remaining way to the rim, but he was as unprepared as his partner for the sight that met them.
Shimmering like lace in the last rays of sunlight striking the plateau, was a high steel-wire fence surrounding Tres Cruces. A single gate at the end of the trail in front of them was the only means that Nevada Jim could see of entering the town. And that was guarded by two Mexican sentries standing by their rifles on either side of it. The Mexicans appeared to be wearing some kind of military uniform.
Utah McClatchey, always the more vocal of the outlaw duo, was already voicing his surprise in a low, excited monotone. “Hang me for a hoss thief,” he exclaimed vociferously, “I never counted on seein’ a sight like this. Why that town’s done up tighter’n a dogie in a loadin’ chute!”
Nevada had been thinking fast. Now he voiced his thoughts as he watched the pseudo woodcutter approach the wire barrier, hat brim flopping down to partially hide his face. “You can knock boards off a loadin’ chute, Utah,” he answered, “an’ I got a pair of wire-cutters in my war-bag that’ll slice a hunk outta that fence like you’d open a can of sardines. Tonight—”
The words stuck in Nevada’s throat. For a moment both of them were too stupefied to speak. They lay there with their mouths open. One of the sentries had moved a little nearer the gate he guarded, and as he stepped forward, his movement startled a mother hen and brood of chickens busily scratching in the dust near his feet. Eyes bugging, they saw the startled hen rush against the steel fence, saw its feathers appear to puff out all over its body, and then it fell, a limp, shapeless think against the dust.
“So yuh want tuh ram a pair of wire-cutters ag’in that fence, eh?” Utah’s eyes were still bulging with surprise. “Jim, I dunno much about electricity, but I heard somewhere that metal sorta takes it from here tuh there. If you stick pinchers again that wire yo’re goin’ to look wuss than that thar chicken. Leastways they can throw it in the stew pot!”
Nevada had no answer for that. His faded, blood-shot eyes were watching the charcoal burner never waver in his march on the guarded gate, and his busy brain was full of calculations.
He spoke swiftly out of the corner of his mouth to McClatchey. “That wood-hoppin’ hombre is a heap sight smarter than we are, Utah. He must figger he knows a way to get them entries to open up that gate for him, or he’d be layin’ back here like us, lookin’ things over. Watch him close. If we’re ever going to get inside Tres Cruces, it’ll have to be the same way!”
“I see now,” Utah responded, “why we ain’t met none of them Penitentes out huntin’ or snoopin’ around. Jim, I’ll give you odds them jiggeros are prisoners in their own town! We—”
Nevada’s hard fingers bit into the old outlaw’s arm and stopped him. His eyes were watching the pseudo wood-chopper’s every move and gesture, for some signal that might make those gates swing open. The signal came as he studied the strange lawman. The man’s right arm shot skyward in some kind of stiff-arm salute.
The sentries answered it smartly. Then one of them pressed a button on a panel board alongside the small, adobe sentry house a few feet inside the fence. At his move, the gates swung open.
The charcoal burner, leading his donkey, passed through. Nevada watched the gates swing silently shut again, and then his eyes were shuttling to the sentry house. Six men in those same black uniforms came marching from the house. Nevada heard an order barked in some nasal-sounding, unintelligible tongue, by a small, mustached man who seemed to be the leader of the platoon of Mexican soldiers. Instantly they surrounded the wood-chopper and his burro.
Nevada felt Utah’s arm jerk. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the lifting sheen of metal, and only his quick move saved trouble for them right then. His fingers clamped McClatchey’s wrist.
“Let
