Terror at Hellhole Read Online Free Page A

all men regardless of race. He respects only strength and power.”
    Palma nodded sagely. His young son-in-law was indeed a man of wisdom, a man far more intelligent than other men of so few summers. “And what would we do with our wealth?” he asked. “The Quechan has never worshiped worldly goods.”
    Honas looked pleased, sensing that his father-in-law was relenting. “We will have warm clothing for the winter, white men’s clothing, and dresses for our women. We will be able to buy coffee and sugar, and bright cloth and needles with thread for our wives.”
    Caught up in the desire to add to the list, Palma said: “I would like some tobacco and a good pipe.”
    â€œThat, too, my father. We will soon have good rifles and knives that French Frankie will get for us, and steel traps that the merchants sell.” Then Honas added firmly, “And one day I will buy Avita a real house in the city.”
    Feeling already committed, Palma sighed. Tired of war, and continually fleeing from one place to another, he decided that he would do it. “Then so be it, my son. I will do as you ask.”
    Honas placed a hand on Palma’s shoulder. “May it always be so, my father.” And the older Indian nodded in agreement, for to obey a dream was strong medicine.
    They moved their dwelling and together they built a larger house in a clump of trees at the site of a little-known water hole, away from the beaten path. Soon they began to prosper by working together.
    Tracking for the warden of the prison, and at other times helping Sheriff Waringer at Yuma City, the two Quechans speedily earned a reputation for their ability to track down and bring back alive the prisoners they had been engaged to capture. Only if there was a gunfight, did the two men fail to return with live renegades. Soon they were called during all prison breaks because they could ferret out hiding places undetected by guards, and the Yuma City sheriff always selected them for his posses. Only Chato, the Apache, could match Honas’s skill to follow a spore on the blazing desert, but because of his inherent cruelty, preference was usually given to the young Quechan if he was readily available.
    Honas led the group of searchers through the underbrush thriving along the coffee-colored river. Occasionally reeds grew out into the water wherever the swift flow had been restricted by sandbars or accumulated debris and drift-wood.
    Pausing, he pointed up the steep sandy bank and said, “Your man Ayala, this is where he left the river. He crept up into those bushes until he got past the outskirts of the settlement. Up there he can travel faster with less chance of being seen.”
    Palma nodded and spoke in agreement, “The spoor is fresh. He has moved slowly, staying in the brush until he was past the river people living here.”
    Guard Frank Allison scuffed the sand with a square-toed boot. He smiled grimly. “Guess you’re right. None of the Mexicans or whites who live along the riverbanks claim to have seen anyone. It must have taken Ayala some tall hiding and sneaking around to get this far without being seen. That’s bound to have slowed him so we must be pretty close.”
    The river dwellers, with their mud and brush hovels, were human outcasts who survived along the banks downstream from Yuma, existing on fish, competing with the many gulls that flew up from the gulf of California, for the debris that floated down the Colorado. Wood, garbage, and anything floatable, discarded by their more affluent neighbors in Yuma, was how they made their living.
    Palma nodded again. “We can travel faster now and he has less concealment to hide his tracks.”
    Honas was the first man up the bank. Barren gullies fingered the baked earth sparsely covered with useless sagebrush struggling to grow. Inland, the far hills shrouded in a gray haze were barely perceptible against the blandness of the