Novel 1966 - Kid Rodelo (v5.0) Read Free Page B

caught up the reins and the team started for the gate at a smart trot.
    Joe Harbin pulled the warden in front of him and propped him up so he could be seen. The plan was working! Now, if only—
    “Halt!”
    Badger kept the wagon moving forward, and a second guard stepped out of the watch tower beside the gate, with shotgun lifted. “Halt, or we fire!”
    “Open that gate,” Badger ordered, “or you’ll have a dead warden on your hands.”
    Hesitating, the guards glanced right and left, looking for help, but there was none. The deputy warden and the others had rushed to aid the injured in the quarry.
    “You’ve got three seconds,” Harbin said, “and then I blow the warden’s head off and we shoot it out.…One!”
    The guards looked at each other. They owed their jobs to the warden, who was a friendly, pleasant man, although stern where duty was concerned.
    “Two!”
    One of the guards turned sharply and went to the rope that opened the gate. Without a word he began hauling on the rope. The gate opened…all too slowly. Joe Harbin could feel the sweat trying to find a way through his thick eyebrows, and he could feel the hair crawling on the back of his neck. At any moment there would be shooting.
    Then the gate was open and they went through, walking the horse until the wagon was safely clear, then picking up the team to a fast trot.
    They were at the break of the hill. “Drop him!” Tom said, and Joe Harbin shoved the still unconscious warden from the wagon and Tom Badger slapped the horses with a whip. Instantly they broke into a run. From the tower at the gate came a rifle shot, another, and then they were shielded by the break of the hill.
    Suddenly from behind them the bell began to peal, and Badger swung the wagon off the road and into the brush at the base of the hill. They moved along through the brush, bumping over stones, but holding to a good pace.
    A dry wash suddenly showed and Badger turned into it, the wagon making no sound in the soft sand. They drove on around the bend, then Badger said, “Beyond that rock cut the team loose and mount up. Here!” He tossed Harbin a hackamore that he took from inside his shirt.
    Swiftly, they stripped the harness from the two horses and, slipping the hackamores on, they mounted up, bareback. They rode south, holding to the soft sand where the hoofs of the horses left no definite prints, merely indentations in the loose soil.
    From the wash they rode into the bottoms and went a devious route through the acres of willows growing near the river. Suddenly Badger turned sharply and left the willows, riding again into the drift sand of the dunes.
    Joe Harbin, following a horse’s length behind, could only admire. It was obvious that Tom Badger had planned every bit of this. He had entered the willows where no tracks would be left, and now he left them at a place where tracking would be equally difficult.
    Badger kept glancing at the sky, and for the first time Harbin thought of the hour. That, too was well chosen. It would be sundown in a matter of minutes, and dark soon after, as always in desert country. Then they could ride on, comparatively secure until dawn.
    But Joe Harbin was a suspicious man. Badger had planned well, every step of the way…what plans did he have for the time after they got the gold? It was an unpleasant thought, but Joe Harbin had been doing his own thinking along those lines and he was wondering just how far he wanted to go with Badger.
    The trouble was they needed that boat, and Harbin was not at all sure how the crew of the boat could be handled. He was sure that Badger had a plan for that too, and Harbin might need him to help. Moreover, if the Yaquis came after them each of them would need the other to help. Standing off desert-wise Yaquis would be no simple task.
    Among the sand dunes, Badger drew up and waited for Harbin to come alongside.
    “You tell me straight, Joe, and no hedging. Does anybody know where that gold is