FOR three days they had been riding south, swinging in a wide semicircle toward the spot where the now dry Tres Piños River’s course went near the mountain called Thlotec. It was magnificent country, ripped and tumbled and slashed by the earth’s tortured writhings in ages long dead. Mountains tossed up like giant monuments with the rock showing red and grey and blue on their scarred sides. Shadowed gorges cool even in the dazzling hot glare of the sun.
They had seen no one. There had been no signs of pursuit by Sargi and his men, and Poco Kelly was beginning to hope that the man had died of his wound.
Then—It happened without warning, in the morning with the sun fighting its way brightly through the mist. They were riding single file through a steep-walled little canyon with Poco ahead o
