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Page 45
For an hour he rode toward the northeast. Then, turning out of the
trail and reining his horse into the utter blackness offered by the
narrow mouth or an arroyo, he sat still for a long time, listening,
staring back through the night toward Tecolote. At last, confident
that he had not been followed, he cut across the low-lying lomas
marking the western horizon and in a swinging gallop rode straight
toward San Juan.
He had had ample time for the shaping of his simple plans long before
catching the first winking glimpse of the lights of the Casa Blanca.
He left his horse under the cottonwoods, hung his spurs over the horn
of the saddle, and went silently to the back of Struve's hotel.
Certain that no one had seen him, he half-circled the building, came to
the window which he had counted upon finding open, slipped in, and
passed down the hall to Struve's room. At his light tap Struve called,
"Come in," and turned toward him as the door opened. Norton closed it
behind him.
"I am taking a chance that Vidal Nu�ez is at Galloway's right now," he
told the hotel keeper. "I am going to get him if he is. I want you to
watch the back end of the Casa Blanca and see that he doesn't slip out
that way. A shotgun is what you want. Blow the head off any man who
doesn't stop when you tell him to. Is Tom Cutter in his room yet?"
While Struve, wasting neither time nor words, went to see, Norton
unbuttoned his shirt, removed the thirty-eight-caliber revolver from
the holster slung under his left arm, whirled the cylinder, and kept
the gun in his left hand. In a moment Struve had returned, the deputy
at his heels.
"What's this about Vidal being here?" Cutter asked sharply.
Norton explained briefly and as briefly gave Tom Cutter his orders.
While Struve mounted guard at the rear, Cutter was to look out for the
front of the building.
"Going in alone, are you, Rod?" Cutter shook his head. "If Vidal is
in there, and Galloway and the Kid and Antone are all on the job, the
chances are there's going to be something happen. Better let me come
in along with you."
But Norton, his mouth grown set and grim and chary of words, shook his
head. Followed by Struve and Cutter he was outside in the darkness
five minutes after he had entered the hotel.
Struve, a shotgun in his hands, took his place twenty steps from the
back door of the Casa Blanca, his restless eyes sweeping back and forth
continually, taking stock of door and window; a lamp burning in a rear
room cast its light out through a window whose shade was less than half
drawn. Tom Cutter, accustomed to acting swiftly upon his superior's
suggestions, listened wordlessly to the few whispered instructions,
nodded, and did as he was told, effacing himself in the shadows at the
corner of the building, prepared when the time came to spring out into
the street whence he could command the front and one side of the Casa
Blanca. Norton, before leaving Cutter, had drawn the heavy gun from
the holster swinging at his belt.
"It's some time since we've had any two-handed shooting to do, Tommy,"
he said as his lean fingers curved to the familiar grip of the Colt 45.
"But I guess we haven't forgotten how. Now, stick tight until you hear
things wake up."
He was gone, turning back to the rear of the house, passing close to
Struve, going on to the northeast corner, slipping quietly about it,
moving like a shadow along the eastern wall. Here were two windows,
both looking into the long barroom, both with their shades drawn down
tight.
At the first window Norton paused, listening. From within came a man's
voice, the Kid's, in his ugly snarl of a laugh, evil and reckless and
defiant, that and the clink of a bottle-neck against a glass. Norton,
his body pressed against the wall, stood still, waiting for other
voices, for Galloway's, for Vidal Nu�ez's. But after Kid Rickard's
jarring mirth it was strangely still in the Casa Blanca; no noise of
clicking chips bespeaking a poker game, no loud-voiced babble, no sound
of a man walking across the bare floor.
"They're waiting for me," was Norton's quick thought. "Galloway knew
I'd come."
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