They were several miles out, before Bob Leadley noticed that Bart was overtaking them from behind. At first he thought Bart was bringing a message from the town, but it proved he merely wanted to go.
‘You turn around and ride back, just as fast as you can, young man!’ the father said.
Those were the words which fixed it the other way.
‘Let him stick. Good chance to see what he’s made of,’ Letchie Welton laughed, just as he would have said: ‘Send him home,’ if Bob had asked to let him stay.... The next day the posse was pressing the three Mexicans a lot closer. They didn’t seem more than three hours ahead. It was desert work now, hot and grim. Toward nightfall, they came to a fork where the fugitives had broken apart, two turning to the left, one to the right. Letchie Welton sent four men after the lone pony to the right, and kept on with seven after the other two. On the third noon the two Mexicans, hard pressed, made their final split. This broke up the pursuing party a second time; Letchie Welton, Mort Cotton, Bob Leadley and Bart keeping on straight south, the other four turning east.
Toward sundown that third night, over a hundred miles from Bismo, only Bart was riding light and easy; his pony with a reserve left, the other three horses done for, and their riders as well. Canteens were empty; desert country, here and there a big solitary cactus, rising like a shade tree gone crazy.
‘There’s water ahead,’ Bart told his father. ‘I can tell by my pony’s ears.’
The lower rim of the sun was out of sight when they came to the Mexican’s horse, finished, lying at the edge of a pool of stagnant, coated water, choked in the hollows of a dry stream bed. The man-tracks stretched on toward a shadowy mass that proved to be the old hard-rock diggings of Red Ante, long since abandoned by any miners, Mexican or white. Letchie yanked up his horse’s head from the pool.
‘Our game’s ahead, men. Come on, we’ll get him and then come back to this pea-soup!’
Now, entering that deserted town, it was as if Bob Leadley had to see every detail. Not that he wanted to—but there seemed to be a pair of extra clear eyes, working back of his regular eyes, though he was partly out of his head from exhaustion. The abandoned street, between the huts of Red Ante, impressed him as something perpetual—moment and place. At the same time, a kind of insane anger was in his brain, because he had to hold up the weight of his horse’s head on the bridle-rein. The beast with dying strength, was fighting to get back to that scummy pool; and Bob, a heap in the saddle, was needing all his strength to keep from falling. At the same time, those deadly clear eyes of his took in the bone-white curve of Letchie Welton’s jaw, the big rent in Mort Cotton’s shirt under the left arm toward the back, the skin showing wet and blistered there—and all the rest in that falling dark: Huts partly sunken in blowing sand—wide-open door of a deserted blacksmith shop—familiar as a lithograph that had hung in his room for years—wide-open door, rusty anvil, sledge standing by—big rusty bear-trap in the center of the dirt floor, with its half-inch chain running to the base of the anvil—everything sagging and dust-covered. Now Bob was letting himself down out of the saddle—when Letchie’s pistol cracked, and his voice yelled:
‘There he goes. I winged him. I got the son of—’ A second pistol shot, as Letchie dug his spurs into his horse and pressed on the dark street. Bob Leadley and Mort Cotton staggered after him on foot, Bart keeping with them on his pony—to the last hut.