They suggested Bull’s question, “Ask him if there’s any revueltosos on the way.”
“At La Mancha!” Jake yelled back. “About thirty miles this side of the border!... Half of the brigada Gonzales is holding the town for Valles!”
The brigada Gonzales! The command that had furnished the murderers of Mary Mills. A spasm of hate writhed over Bull’s dark face. His big hands clenched. He turned and looked out of the cab window till he regained control of his voice.
“Does he allow we kin run through there?”
Jake nodded. “If we douse the headlight and race by afore they have time to block us.”
Looking back, just then, at Gordon, now stripped to his undershirt and growing sootier every minute, Lee heard the answer. She did not, however, give it much thought. The hills and rocks that took on queer shapes in the dim light of a rising moon, giant sahuaros that went slipping past like huge ghosts, the occasional fires and lights, glimpses of strange brown faces, the rush and roar of the engine speeding through mysterious night, held her senses. Yet it stuck in her mind, came popping out when, as the engine rounded a sharp curve, the headlight beam struck full on a sheaf of glittering wires.
“Oh!” she called out in sudden alarm. “We ought to have cut the wires!”
It was a vital error. Gordon’s whistle expressed their joint dismay; but Jake, with his intense practicability, recovered first. “Well, what’s to do—stop an’ cut them?”
Bull shook his head. “Too late! We’ve been running over an hour. Nothing left but to take a chanst.”
Jake nodded. But presently he spoke again. “Chanst? If they pull up a rail an’ ditch us at La Mancha, I’d hardly call it a chanst with half of the brigada Gonzales shooting us up from all around. We’d be pickled for keeps.”