be a dead outlaw if you unlimber that smoke wagon!” Nevada cut him short.
The sound of a shot snapped his attention back to the tableau within the electrified gates of Tres Cruces. He hadn’t seen the gun appear, but now there was a long-barreled, ugly-looking automatic in the hand of the small leader of the sentry-house platoon. Laughter, that sounded more like the hiss of a desert sidewinder, was coming from the man’s throat. He stood there looking down at the inoffensive burro. The little animal was dead.
“That dirty, low-down skunk!” Utah was muttering. “Jim, get yore hands off me. Jest give me one shot. Only one. That jack needs company!” It was more than the pseudo lawman could stand, too. Perhaps, Nevada realized with sudden insight, that had been the little foreigner’s reason for shooting the burro. The man probably knew that any red-blooded American couldn’t stand the sight of seeing animals mistreated needlessly. And he was right.
* * * *
The ragged charcoal burner, who had been standing humbly beside his burro, suddenly became a raging whirlwind of a man. Nevada nodded admiringly as he saw the lawman knock two Mex heads together, drop them like discarded sacks, and make his spring at the little foreigner with the gun. Before the man could so much as lift the weapon, a pistoning fist plowed straight into his face. Blood spurted from the man’s nose like geysering water as he stumbled backward. But the fight was too one-sided to last. Sheer weight of numbers carried the nameless lawman to the ground.
“I’m goin’ in there!” Utah raged. “Jim, whar’s yore sportin’ blood? We cain’t let them kill that gent, even if he would like tuh see us behind bars.”
“They won’t kill him,” Nevada said grimly. “They want somethin’ from him. Notice the way they’re going through his clothes?”
For a few minutes they watched in silence as the strange lawman was thoroughly searched. Then four of the Mexicans picked up the unconscious American. “Good gosh a-mighty,” Utah groaned. “They’re takin’ the pore devil to the Castle of No Return!”
“The Castle of No Return? I don’t savvy, amigo?”
Utah relaxed like a spent runner and gestured at the town. Nevada followed his pointing arm. For the first time since they had reached the rim he was really getting a chance to look over Tres Cruces. “The town covered, perhaps, a square mile of the wide plateau. Crooked alleys wandered between the houses. There seemed to be only one straight street in the whole village, and that ran from the gate in front of them straight toward twin hillocks around which Tres Cruces was built like the spokes around the hub of a wheel. The hills were low, rising barely a hundred feet above the tile roofs of the town’s adobes. Three great, ironwood crosses stood on one of the hills, stark against the dusk. A grim reminder to the Penitentes that their creed demanded crucifixion.
Nevada turned his pale eyes to the other hillock. Sprawled across the summit of it was a great stone and adobe building, that made the huts squatting in the village below it took meaner by contrast.
“The Castle of No Return,” Utah McCatchy was saying, “on account of plenty hombres who git inside never come out again. Even the Penitentes ain’t got much use for the place!”
Nevada was listening to his partner with only half of his attention. His eyes were on the two tall stone towers rising from either end of the great hacienda. Wires were strung between them. He could just make them out through the gathering dark.
“I’ve heard it said,” McClatchey was going on, “that parts of the castle was built clean back in Aztec times. The Penitentes have added to it since. The boss Penitente hangs out thar and some of the things I’ve heard it said they do thar would curl yore hair. They go clean back tuh Bible times for a lot of their notions.”
“And right up to date for the rest of ’em,” Nevada cut in. “Those wires strung between them towers are one of these here aerials, which means they got a rad-io in one of the towers. And I’ll betcha on a outfit that size they can send out stuff as well as git it in. Fella, yore Penitentes didn’t put up that rad-io. It’s the work of them damned furriners.”
Utah nodded. “Yo’re right there, Jim. Makes my toes itch to tromp them sidewinders. An’ now,” he added gloomily, as they watched the platoon of soldiers carrying the pseudo woodcutter’s figure up the hill toward the castle, “we got to figger out a way to get inside that gate, grab that hombre they’ve done pulverized, git our gold which is bound to be in that danged castle, and the hombres responsible for killin’ ol’ Dan Conover, and then get them and us back out to the Border.”
Nevada chuckled. “Let’s just concentrate on getting inside that fence,” he said dryly.
He had hardly spoken the words when a far-off drone, like a bumble bee buzzing, came to them. Utah jerked. “Leapin’ blue blazes,” he exclaimed hoarsely, “it’s that danged airyplane comin’ back.” Then his canny old eyes surveyed the darkening plateau, and he relaxed a little. “They won’t see us here, at that,” he chuckled comfortably. “It’s gittin’ too dark.”
“Yeah?” Nevada drawled sarcastically. As he spoke, a brilliant light flooded the plateau, for flood lamps, half-buried in the sandy topsoil of the mesa came suddenly alight.
The radiance was blinding for a moment. Utah blinked like an old owl. “An’ now,” he growled, “we stand out like a wart on a sore thumb! Jim, we cain’t stay here, and there ain’t no danged sense in goin’ back. What in hell are we goin’ to do?” Nevada Jim looked at his old partner. There was a flaring, ugly gleam suddenly in his pale eyes. “When you can’t go back, feller, you got to go forward. Climb yore cayuse, and don’t forget that toy soldier salute.” He fixed Utah with his eyes, and said sternly: “Don’t open that ugly trap of yores, and don’t look surprised at anything I say.”
He pulled the little red notebook from his hip pocket again. “Mebbe this here souvenir will be a sort of passport through the gate.”
Utah blinked at the book. “That thing will more’n likely be a passport tuh hell,” he said gloomily.
* * * *
Mounted, and riding again, as though they were just reaching the end of the steep, precipitous trail, Nevada led the way toward the sentry-gate. Through eyes that appeared not to notice such things, he watched the sentries jerk to attention, grips tightening on their rifles, and then they relaxed as Nevada Jim shot his arm skyward in that stiff-arm salute.
Lounging carelessly in his saddle, Nevada leaned forward, and his hand brought the red-leather book from his pocket. One sentry dropped his rifle at sight of it. The other paled, like a man about ready to faint.
“Found this down in the canyon,” Nevada said in Spanish masking his surprise at the sensation the notebook caused, “after that old charcoal burner passed by. We were doin’ a little prospectin’, and by the time we picked up this here book, he was too far ahead to catch. Looked like he was comin’ up here, so we figured to bring it to him.”
“Si, si senor,” one of the sentries stuttered. “Andale, Ramon,” he addressed the other sentry, “press the button. Let these senores enter.”
Nevada watched the wire portals swing wide. In the air above, the drone of the silver monoplane had increased to a roar. The plane would soon be landing, and before that happened, they had to find some hiding place.
He pushed his mount through the gate with Utah close at his heels, heard
