“They ain’t goin’ to git away with it!” Nevada said fiercely. Then he fell silent again, studying the eddying throng with a keen attentiveness.
The Penitentes, he knew, were a queer bunch of hombres. They would cut themselves to ribbons with a cactus whip, crucify their own people, practice all sorts of torture rites in parts of this grim old castle. A proud, mysterious sect, they would do all this to themselves, but to a man they would rise and kill an outsider who mistreated one of their strange clan.
The Commandante, and the Penitentes he had duped into siding his cause of treachery and anarchy were few. Nevada could see that much from the number of uniformed men who were patrolling the courtyard. And, suddenly, it came to him why that patrol was in action. A picture crossed his mind. He remembered the sight of dead Penitentes sprawling in the street behind them when he and Utah fled to the Castle. A nervous guardsman had used a machine-gun to try and cut them down, and had succeeded in killing some of his own people. That was why the Penitentes were being watched now. The Commandante was afraid of the strange sect! Afraid they might rise and drive his Fifth Columnists from Tres Cruces.
On the thought, he turned. “We’re goin’ back the way we came, Utah,” Nevada said quietly. “The three of us.”
“She’s nothin’ but a death walk,” Utah grumbled.
“Since when you been afraid to gamble with yore worthless life?” Nevada demanded.
“What do you plan?” Tarrant cut in.
Nevada’s thin face lit with excitement as he explained his deductions. He finished: “If we can show that Commandante up for the stuffed shirt that he is by pullin’ another sneak on him mebbe the Penitentes will rear right up on their hind laigs and smash the whole danged bunch. And while they’re doin’ it,” he added with a grin, “we’ll slip out and they’ll never miss us!”
Tarrant had caught some of Nevada’s excitement. “It’s worth trying,” he said eagerly. Quickly he stepped to a gun case in a corner and selected one of those ugly sub-machine guns. “Lead off,” he said grimly.
Utah was not so optimistic as they moved toward the window through which they had entered this tower room. “If they took our hosses, we’re goners,” he pointed out. “And I ain’t so sure but what I’d rather land in this furriner’s hands than in the grip of them Penitentes.”
But for all his grumbling, he was agile as a fox and as quick as he slipped through the open window to the roof. Nevada pushed Tarrant after his partner. But he was cut off himself, for they had been seen.
* * * *
A gun started its hellish song, spraying the roof with screaming lead. It did not come for long. Mustaches whipped back on his leathery jowls, Utah lifted cautiously. He shoved his old Peacemaker over the parapet, braving death for his partner. The Colt spoke once and the machine gun down there cut out abruptly.
Utah dropped back, beckoning. Nevada gathered his muscles. He went through the window in a flat dive, as lead from another machine gun screamed upward.
Yells, and more yells from down below almost drowned the sound of the second Thompson. Something was happening down there, Nevada knew, as he crawled swiftly along after Utah and Tarrant, but he dared not risk lifting his head to see if his hunch concerning the Penitentes reaction to their defiance of the Commandante was working as he hoped.
The answer to that would come later. One danger was past, and then another, for Nevada had more than half expected death to come searching for them from the tower they had first entered, but the old oak door had evidently withstood all attempts to batter it down.
Utah McClatchey was the first to dive through the window they had left open in the tower. Swiftly Tarrant followed, and then Nevada.
The F.B.I. man’s blue eyes widened at sight of the destruction Utah had wrought here. “This was the radio room!” he exclaimed. “We’ve been trying for a long time to trace the source of the powerful, short-wave station that’s been bombarding the States with propaganda. They won’t be using it again very soon, though,” he added grimly.
“Thanks to you.”
“So I done a good job, eh?” Utah drawled. He glanced at his hard-bitten partner. “You see,” he said, “I tole you this place was wuss than a den of sidewinders.”
“You’ve done a wonderful piece of work for your country,” Tarrant said, deep warmth in his voice.
“If this here mutual admiration society is ready tuh disband now,” Nevada Jim said with an exaggerated drawl, “I’d suggest we git downstairs and make a run for it before everybody figgers out that’s what we’re aimin’ to do.” Briefly, he looked to his two guns as he led the way down the stairs to the second floor.
The wounded radio man was still lying where they had left him. “So it’s you again!” he spat out the words.
Nevada looked at him, smiling, though his pale eyes were like ice. “Yeah, it’s us,” he said pleasantly. “And I’m shore as hell sorry you got a broken laig. If you didn’t have, I’d work you over proper. Any gent tryin’ to wreck a country like our’n is lower than scum on stagnant water!”
He passed on down, the stairs, the other two following. A glance showed him the thick, stout oak had withstood all assaults. Quietly as possible, he lifted the bar from its notches. Tarrant, right behind him, reached for the wall switch to turn out the lights. Nevada caught his wrist. “Nada,” he said softly. “You want to tell the bunch waitin’ for us that we’re comin’ out?”
“You think of everything,” Tarrant answered.
“I think we’re headin’ straight for hell in a basket,” Nevada Jim said casually.
“A gent’s gotta die sometime,” Utah growled. “But I’m aimin’ tuh take that Commandante with me.”
Tarrant’s penetrating gaze turned on the old Heller. “We’ll all try to do that,” he said, and couched the Thompson under his arm.
Nevada nodded. He cast one last glance at his guns, at the strained faces of his two companions. “Let’s go,” he said quietly.
* * * *
Hell was in the air when Nevada flung the oak door wide and catfooted through it. A machine gun’s wicked rattle was filling the night, but the bullets were not for them. For a moment Nevada had to blink to adjust his eyes to the darkness, and the surprise that met them. For horsemen were tearing into the plaza!
Wild horsemen, young Penitentes, howling like demons from hell, as they stormed the Commandante’s black-uniformed guards. Men who had been waiting out in the hills behind the plateau, their smoldering hatred of the foreign interlopers gathering until now they had no fear of modern guns. Utah McClatchey, Nevada realized instantly, had given them their chance to come in by destroying the power plant on the second floor of the tower behind them. For even from here, looking down the hill over the town, he could see where a great gap had been torn in the once-electrified fence. A gap through which those wild young horsemen were still streaming.
But they were dying almost as fast as they came! The machine guns were taking a terrible toll. Nevada made a leap for a riderless horse as it raced past, caught the bridle reins, and swung to leather. Tarrant and Utah were also mounted in minutes.
They came together at the base of the tower.
Above the roar of battle filling the castle courtyard, Utah howled: “Ain’t nobody payin’ attention to us. We can ride right out!”
Nevada