Bare Hands

From above came more shouts and shots, and then footsteps sounded on the trail. A dark form bulked between him and the stars. Another and another ran past, staggering as they ran. The warm air of the still night reeked with the combined odors of alcohol and garlic.

After a moment Dan slipped from the bush and ran silently down the canon, toward the rim where the ruddy glow of camp fires shone against the star-studded sky.

After a hundred yards his keen ears detected something on the trail behind him. He looked back, thought he saw something in the darkness, and threw himself to one side of the trail.

A horseman was galloping through the darkness, a messenger sent to warn Juan Ayala of the escape of the prisoners.

The horse detected Harder, crouched by the side of the trail. Snorting and plunging wildly, it jumped sidewise from the trail, leaped over a bush and stood snorting and quivering.

Dan gathered himself for a spring, but the rider was too filled with liquor to appreciate the significance of the horse’s manner. He muttered thick Spanish oaths and pulled the horse back into the trail. A moment more and he had clattered away.

Harder sighed.

He had one advantage and one advantage alone. The men thought that both of their prisoners had escaped up the trail toward the mountain passes.

He plodded down the dusty trail. He had his bare hands, nothing else, and he was moving against an army. To be sure it was a ragged semblance of an army, raw, undrilled troops, more intent upon loot than discipline. But they were armed and they thought nothing of using those arms. Particularly were they efficient when it came to the shooting down of unarmed men.

The hill loomed black before Dan. Upon its crest the fires seemed to hang between earth and sky. Dan slowed his pace now and crept forward an inch or two at a time, listening to the noises which came to his ears through the still night.

A snatch of conversation in Mexican from two men who must have been within fifty feet.

“And now he will torture the guard who let the gringos escape. In the morning we will scour the country. They cannot get away. Perhaps they may hide, yes. But they have to eat and to drink, those gringos.

“There is no water save in the canon. There is no food. We will push rapidly to the summit, and there we will wait with rifles. But we must not shoot them. Particularly the big one with the hairy hands. They are going to sit him on a stake. Ah, but he will squirm!”

Then there was silence. The breeze shifted, and the rest of the words became indistinguishable. Dan moved forward a few feet. The next he heard of the conversation it was more to his right.

“Most beautiful señorita. It is the happy lot of the dictator. The father is a fool. He thinks—”

A shadow arose suddenly, directly in the trail.

“Halt! Who is it?”

Dan was too far to reach the man. He debated whether to chance a spring and grapple or to remain quiet and trust to luck. Could he chance a bullet? Would the shot bring the camp down upon him?

And then a voice sounded from beyond the sentry.

Dan sighed his relief as he realized the challenge had been for one coming down the slope.

“Amigo. I go back to the other camp. The Wolf is not to know until the men have been recaptured. I fit out a squad to ride to the crest of the pass. We shall have the gringos bottled in the canon. With the early streaks of dawn we will trail them. Ah, it will be sport!”

“Pass, amigo, and may you have luck in your hunt If you capture them, remember that I have had experience in the Yaqui method of torture.”

The other grunted.

“The stake is most complete.”

Footsteps came down the trail. Dan could have kicked out his feet and touched the man as he walked by.

The sentry crouched down once more, squatting on his haunches. As he crouched he became invisible except as a vague hulk of shadow.

Dan could have rushed him, caught his neck in his great hands before the sentry could have given an alarm. But when the next man found the sentry away from his post, the trail unwatched — what then? Or if he should stumble upon a dead body? Dan knew that he had to slip around the sentry. Minutes were priceless, seconds golden, and yet he must wait motionless.

At length the sentry changed his position slightly.

Dan groped about with his hands, caught a small pebble, and threw it to the right As it struck the surface of the ground the sentry rose to a crouching position, his rifle ready.

There followed seconds of wait, and then the man settled down.

Dan flipped another pebble.

This time the rock sounded exactly like the step of a man. The sentry jumped upright.

“Who is it?” he called.

When the silence had swallowed his voice he started on a swift run for the place where the noise had sounded.

Dan slipped past along the trail, crawling on his stomach.

The sentry puttered around through the bushes, walking, stopping, listening. Then he returned to his post muttering to himself strange curses in his native tongue.