Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 66/Number 3/East of Sunrise/Chapter 2

WANG! The six-foot bow bent nearly double with the masterful fifty-pound pull on its leathern string. The arrow, long, slender, and tipped with razor-edged steel cruelly barbed, launched itself straight upward into the eye of the midday sun, the polished head flashing like a streak of fire.

Chombo el Arquero, half-breed horse trader by profession and master bowman in his hours of leisure, lowered the bow and stepped backward to lean against one of the four-by-fours supporting the roof of his hay shed. The shaft he had sped sunward was lost to sight, and Chombo’s interest was now in the target—a six-inch square of brown paper marked with a bull’s-eye and spread flat on the ground a dozen feet from where he stood.

Ordinary shots of seventy-five or a hundred yards at an elevated target were child’s play for him, and he held them in contempt; but to lose an arrow in the sky, and then to have it return and pierce a target not twelve feet from the spot where the bow was bent—that was a feat par excellence, the very chef-d’œuvre of a prince of archers.

So many things entered into the matter, so much depended on the sure judgment, the perfect execution. The aim zenithward must be deflected by just the hair’s breadth that, in the course of a long flight, would cover exactly the few feet to the target; the arrow had to be perfect in hang and balance and, above all, there was allowance to be made for the slightest cat’s-paw of wind.

Chombo was cunning and certain at all these calculations. He was a half-blood, peon Mexican and Yaqui; and it was the Yaqui strain in him that gave him his love for the bow and arrow.

He made his own bows and went questing into the high sierras for a certain springy evergreen that more than matched the English yew. His arrows were works of art, slim and strong, the haft feathered with eagle’s plumage, deftly trimmed, and the point worked from steel, polished and ground to a hair-splitting edge.

Chombo lived alone at his ranch, a few miles off the Quinlan Trail to Tres Alamos. No man ever came to him except for horses or burros; he had no love for company and but little more for customers. He had all grades of harness, saddle, and pack stock herded in his round corrals by night and scattered abroad in his wide grass valley by day. Three half-breeds like himself were his herdsmen.

His target range was the wide space between the rear of his adobe house and his hay shed. He was well-to-do, and while his men cared for his stock, he played soltaire [sic], brewed tiswin from the flowers of the saguaro cactus, smoked cornhusk cigarros, and amused himself with the long bow.

The arrow was gone a long time, as arrow flights are counted, and Chombo lighted a cigarro as he leaned against the hay-shed post. Then, at last, it came rushing earthward, the barbed tip glowing like a falling star. Plump! Chombo heaved a grunt of satisfaction. Once more he had accomplished the seemingly impossible, for the shaft had buried itself in the earth by half its length—exactly in the center of the bull’s-eye.

“Bravo, Chombo!” exclaimed a voice.

The half-breed whirled in his tracks. A woman had stepped out from behind a corner of the adobe house—a slender woman who walked with a quick, sure step, wore divided skirts and a mannish sombrero. The sombrero was skewered to her brownish hair by a hatpin that showed on both sides of the crown the blade-tip and hilt of a small dagger. The brim of the hat was upturned in front, and over it and the woman’s face was a gray veil.

“Huh!” muttered Chombo, scowling. “Who you? What you want, eh? Caballos?”

A short laugh came from behind the veil. “Are we alone here?” the woman asked.

“Me, I am always alone—daytimes. Why?”

A gloved right hand with a quirt dangling from the wrist arose to lift the veil. The ordinarily impassive face of the half-breed showed just a flicker of surprise.

“Lola Sanger! Huh! It is said around you have left the country.”

The veil dropped. “Leave the country while my brother’s score is unsettled?” There was a tigerish hunching of the slender shoulders, a clenching of the gloved hands. “You knew Dirk, Chombo; and I thought you knew me.”

“How settle?” demanded Chombo, showing interest. “Seward caught the two of you and put you in jail. Me, I came by night and passed you files and a hacksaw. You cut the window bars and make escape on two horses I have waiting. Dirk goes loco, makes fool of himself. He kills, robs, and tries to get Seward. What happens, eh? Seward get him over at old Esmeralda. Now Dirk Sanger is back in cell, in double irons. You want me to help him escape? Mañana.” Chombo shook his head. “It is too much.”

“There is no getting Dirk away from the sheriff at Tres Alamos,” agreed the other. “He has made his bed and must lie in it. But there’s Seward of Sacatone. I have him like this!” She put up both hands, open, and clenched them savagely. “Like this, Chombo,” she breathed, “if you will help.”

“Seward? Get Seward?” The dark eyes of the half-breed flashed at the prospect. But the light faded, and he shook his head ominously. “No can do; nobody can do.”

The girl came a step closer, inclining her body forward in her earnestness.

“You hate him; Dirk hates him; I hate him! You have too much sense to believe those yarns about his being in two places at the same time; about his shooting three guns at once and putting three bullets through the middle pips of three treys! Moonshine, all of it, Chombo; just as much moonshine as the story that he is bulletproof or,” she added, “arrowproof. How does the arrow fly? With only the twang of bowstring, and you can smother that. At a hundred yards would he be an easy target? Would you care to launch a dart at him at a hundred yards—and from cover?”

The lean, brown face of Chombo twisted into the look of a demon, pleased and trying to smile. Hate Seward of Sacatone? He? All Chombo’s heathen gods had been busy listening to his prayers for revenge. Seward of Sacatone had spoiled the sale of a dozen head of choice saddle stock to the Easterner who had taken over the J-O Ranch in Grass Valley—spoiled it by showing how some of the “choice” stock was wind-broken and spavined and double value being asked for all the rest. This was something the horse trader could not forget.

He slapped at the unstrung bow and stepped forward to wrench the arrow from the ground. A wolfish snarl dropped from his lips. “Show me cover,” he said; “show me Seward at a hundred yards. Then see!”

The girl echoed the snarl with a laugh of her own. “I knew I could depend on you!” she exclaimed. “Now, listen! The five thousand dollars in gold at Simms & Norcross’ has been sent to Cerillas in charge of Seward. He totes it on his burro in saddlebags. But he prospects by the way, for there is no particular hurry about the delivery. Seward is now along the Hermosito Trail. His trail will be crossed by La Joya of Forty-mile. You know La Joya?”

Chombo nodded, listening intently.

“You also know Seward’s bluff of wanting to help everybody. Well, when La Joya crosses his trail she will, to all appearances, be needing help. He will give it; and she will lead him to the pass through the hills east of Sunrise Cañon. A prettier place for an ambush you could not find. You know the place, Chombo?”

Chombo’s nostrils dilated. He took pleasure in the thought. He regarded his bow—and the arrow, the silent messenger to carry his hate. “What she do, this La Joya?” he demanded eagerly. “Seward is a fox. Your brother Dirk could not fool him.”

“La Joya is a woman, and a woman can fool him. He will do for a woman in distress what he would not do for a man, Chombo. Why, when he was bringing Dirk and me in from Tumbling Stone Mountain, prisoners bound for Tres Alamos, he stopped in the old trail and offered to let me come here to you, get a horse and ride for the rail- road. His name for that is chivalry.”

“Bah!” The half-breed had the full blood’s ideas of a squaw. “What is to be done then?” he wanted to know.

“I want a fresh horse, and a fast one,” replied the girl, “and you also must have a good mount. We’ll have to start at once for the pass east of Sunrise and ride hard. La Joya knows and will delay until we have time to get there. She has help from Forty-mile, hangers-on of the posada; but they are scared to death of Seward. They will go so far in helping La Joya, but no further. You alone can turn the big trick, Chombo. Will you go?”

The half-breed looked into vacancy, pondering. At last his hate overcame his better judgment. “Si!” he burst out suddenly.

The girl laughed gleefully. “I have been hiding out at Forty-mile with La Joya,” she went on, “and she and I have gone over our plans so many times that there can be no mistake. Dirk, at the best, will go to Yuma for life; but Seward will pay. He will be made to count the cost of his private war with Dirk. And then I can leave these deserts for good and be content. But get the horses, Chombo,” she added briskly. “I’ll be waiting for you on the porch of your adobe.”

Chombo turned quickly on his moccasined feet and ran in through the rear door of the adobe. There he left his bow and arrow and emerged with a rope and a bridle.

“In half an hour,” he called, as he loped away in the direction of the valley and his horse herd.

Lola Sanger passed around the house to the porch. The two had scarcely vanished before a pair of heads arose from behind the hay bales. One head wore a battered sun helmet and a shock of long red hair showed beneath the brim of it; the other head was capped with an old sombrero, and the face beneath was weather-beaten, swarthy, and pockmarked.

The man in the sun helmet whistled. “Say, Eph, what d’y’u know?” he muttered. “Walt Seward’s got a kick-off comin’.”

“Git the canteen and let’s climb out o’ this, Red,” insisted the man in the battered sombrero. “If Chombo had any notion we was around to listen in, he’d ’a’ pinned both of us to these hay bales with a couple o’ them arrers. I’m fer pullin’ our freight an’ doin’ it quick. Where’s the canteen?”

Out in the valley the day before, “Red” Galloway and “Eph” Springer had bargained with one of Chombo’s herdsmen for a canteen of tiswin. It was to be concealed between two of the hay bales; and the price of the tiswin had been a small nugget that the two desert hobos had found or stolen.

“Here she is!” muttered Red, pulling at a strap and lifting a small canteen into view. The canteen was so small, in fact, that Red swore luridly. “That nugget would assay twenty dollars easy,” he growled, “and two pints is all we git fer it.”

“Anyway,” returned Eph, “it’s plenty. Now we’ll vamose. Moharrie ain’t lookin’, is she?”

“Nary,” returned Red; “the ’dobe is in the way. Hit the ground, Eph.”

Like two ill-omened specters they skulked clear of the hay shed, glided across the desert, lost themselves over a “rise,” and came to two bony and shaggy cayuses. They stopped only to sample the contents of the canteen.

“Goes down like one o’ them there torchlight processions!” declared Springer, smacking his lips.

“Get a move on, get a move on!” urged Red, and they galloped desertward.