Arizona Ambush

“Still no sign of Juan Pablo?” he asked the woman. She ignored him, which came as no real surprise. He was starting to think that she understood more of what he said than she let on, but she didn’t want him to know that.

During the afternoon, the woman left the hogan on some errand. That was all right with Matt, because he’d gotten drowsy. He stretched out on the blankets to take a nap, and he was asleep almost as soon as he closed his eyes.

He slept lightly. That habit had kept him alive on more than one occasion. And like a wild animal, he had the ability to go from sleeping to being fully awake in an instant, which also came in handy.

In this case, it allowed him to realize something was wrong as soon as a faint noise came to his ears and his eyes popped open. Even in the middle of the day, the interior of the hogan was dim and shadowy. Matt caught a glimpse of an indistinct figure looming over him. That was all it took for his muscles to burst into action and send him rolling to the side.

At the same time, the intruder’s arm swept down, driving a knife through the buffalo robes where Matt had been a split second earlier.

Chapter 21

Matt snapped a kick at the man and caught him in the side. The impact knocked the man across the hogan.

He was able to hang on to his knife. As Matt started to scramble up, the intruder bounced off the far wall of the hogan and came at him again, slashing back and forth with the blade.

Since Matt was still kneeling, he stayed low and threw himself forward in a diving tackle. The knife sliced through the air above his head, missing him as he caught the attacker around the knees. The man yelled as Matt knocked him off his feet.

Matt levered himself up and made a grab for the man’s wrist. Before he could catch hold of it, though, the intruder struck again. The knife had a brass ball at the end of the handle to keep a man’s grip from slipping off it. The intruder smashed this ball against the side of Matt’s head.

Stunned, Matt fell to the side. His muscles refused to respond to his commands.

Which meant he was as good as dead, he thought, because the intruder would need only a second to slash his throat from ear to ear.

Amazingly, that didn’t happen. As the world spun crazily around Matt, blurring his vision, he realized that somehow he was still alive. The man hadn’t killed him after all.

Footsteps thudded on the hard ground somewhere nearby. Matt rolled onto his uninjured side, got an elbow under him, and lifted himself so he could raise his head and look around.

He was alone in the hogan.

The knife-wielding intruder was gone.

Matt was baffled why the man had fled instead of completing his mission of murder. The only explanation he could think of involved the involuntary yell the man had let out when Matt tackled him.

The would-be assassin must have worried that his outcry would draw attention to the hogan, and he didn’t want to be seen emerging from the dwelling where Matt’s murdered body would be found later. So he had abandoned his plan and gotten out quickly.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again to kill Matt later on.

Matt sat up and took stock of himself. The bullet holes in his side hurt from all the activity, but as far as he could tell, they hadn’t opened up and started bleeding again.

He was still sitting there when a figure loomed in the doorway, blocking the light. Matt looked up and saw Elizabeth Fleming standing there.

She hurried into the hogan and dropped to her knees beside him. Juan Pablo’s wife followed her. The older woman’s usually stolid face actually wore a worried expression for a change.

“Matt, are you all right?” Elizabeth asked. “Someone said they heard a shout from this hogan, and then a man ran out.”

“That’s right,” Matt said. “Somebody snuck in here and tried to knife me.”

Elizabeth’s beautiful green eyes widened.

“Who in the world would try to do that?”

“I can only think of one fella I’ve had a run-in with lately.”

“You mean Pino?” Elizabeth asked.

“He was ready to stick a knife in me earlier,” Matt said.

Elizabeth shook her head.

“That was just a spur of the moment thing, because he was angry. I don’t think Pino would deliberately murder anyone. He’s one of the clan’s spiritual leaders.”

“Who else would come after me like that?”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth had to admit.

A harsh voice spoke outside the hogan. She turned her head toward the doorway.

“That’s Caballo Rojo,” she said. “He wants to know if everything is all right.”

“Not hardly,” Matt said. He started to get to his feet.

Elizabeth took hold of his arm to help him. Out of the habit of being fiercely independent, he started to shake her off.

But he had to admit, having her there to lean on felt pretty good. When he was standing, she kept her hand on his arm.

They went outside and found Caballo Rojo standing there with his arms crossed, waiting to hear what had happened. Juan Pablo’s wife followed Matt and Elizabeth out of the hogan and started talking before they could. A steady stream of Navajo words came from her mouth.

When she finally finished, Matt said to Caballo Rojo, “I don’t know what she told you, but someone snuck into the hogan while I was dozing and tried to kill me.”

The clan leader nodded solemnly.

“Who would do this?” he asked.

“Well, I think it was Pino.”

Caballo Rojo shook his head.

“Not Pino. Pino is good man.”

“I haven’t had trouble with anybody else from your clan,” Matt pointed out.

Stubbornly, Caballo Rojo said, “Not Pino.” He jerked his head in an indication that Matt and Elizabeth should follow him. If that wasn’t clear enough, he added, “Come.”

They exchanged a glance. Since they were both here because Caballo Rojo had extended his hospitality to them, they couldn’t very well refuse.

They followed the clan leader along the creek, past several of the other hogans and the grazing herd of sheep. When they came to another hogan, Caballo Rojo called out to someone inside.

Matt wasn’t surprised when Pino emerged from the dwelling. The man gave him and Elizabeth unfriendly looks, then spoke to Caballo Rojo in Navajo.

When Pino was finished, Caballo Rojo turned to Matt and said, “Pino here.” He made a flat, slashing motion with his hand. “All day.”

Matt wanted to point out that Pino could be lying about that. Even if the members of the man’s family backed him up on that, they could be lying as well.

But while Caballo Rojo might be a judge of sorts, this wasn’t a court of law, Matt realized. No rules of evidence applied here. What Caballo Rojo believed was the only thing that mattered, and clearly the clan leader was on Pino’s side in this dispute.

Anyway, to be absolutely honest about it, he hadn’t gotten a good look at the intruder, Matt reminded himself. All he could be sure of was that the man had been dressed like a Navajo ... and Pino was hardly the only one in this canyon who fit that description.

“All right,” he told Caballo Rojo. “Maybe Pino didn’t try to kill me. But somebody did.”

Caballo Rojo shrugged as if to say that wasn’t his worry.

“Fine,” Matt said. “But I’ll be sleeping with one eye open from now on, you can count on that.”

Caballo Rojo grunted and turned away. Matt had the distinct impression that the clan leader was washing his hands of the whole matter.

Pino glared at Matt and Elizabeth again and went back in his hogan, leaving the two of them alone.

“I don’t understand, Matt,” Elizabeth said. “Why would any of these people want to kill you? No one here even knew you until you were brought in wounded.”

“I don’t have an answer,” Matt admitted. “Maybe it would be best if I just got on my horse and left.”

“You’re in no shape to do that,” Elizabeth said.

He winced as the wounds in his side twinged a little.

“I’m in no shape to fight off whoever wants me dead, either. But if I could make it to Flat Rock and find Sam, he could watch my back.”

“You don’t know if he’s even there. He could have found the trail of those men who attacked you, and it could have led somewhere else.”

She was right about that, Matt realized. His instincts told him there was some connection between the bushwhackers and the settlement, though.

For one thing, the men who’d taken those potshots at him and Sam had been using repeaters. Judging by what he had seen so far, the Navajo didn’t have any rifles except a few old single-shot weapons. Matt was convinced the bushwhackers had been white men.

And where else in these parts would white men be found except in Flat Rock, or on one of the ranches in the area of the settlement?

As he pondered that, he sighed and said, “I won’t leave today. I reckon I’m still not strong enough to do that. But I don’t make any promises about tomorrow.”

“You should come back to my hogan,” she suggested. “I can watch over you and make sure nothing happens.”

Matt wasn’t sure a schoolteacher from Vermont would be able to stop somebody from trying to kill him, and besides ...

“That would just scandalize these folks even more. They’d run us both out of the canyon, and you didn’t want to leave yet.”

“Maybe I’ve changed my mind,” Elizabeth said. “Things are getting too tense here. Normally the Navajo are very peaceful people, but I’m starting to get a feeling that ... well, that there might be trouble.”

Matt looked up and down the canyon. He felt the same way. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and the skin prickled, as if someone was watching them.

Somebody who didn’t have their best interests in mind.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow, if you still feel the same way, we’ll get out of here.”

Elizabeth nodded in agreement.

Now all they had to do was live through the night, Matt thought.

Chapter 22

Mrs. McCormick had told Sam that she served breakfast at six o’clock. What he found waiting for him when he came into the dining room the next morning was worth getting up that early for.

The rich aroma of fresh-brewed coffee filled the room and mingled with other enticing smells, like that of fresh-baked bread and sizzling bacon.

Six men sat at the long table, including Noah Reilly. The little bespectacled clerk lifted a hand in greeting and smiled at Sam.

“Mr. Two Wolves!” he said. “Mrs. McCormick told me that you’d taken a room here. I’m glad to see you.”

“You, too, Noah,” Sam said.

Reilly pulled back the empty chair next to him.

“Here, have a seat.”

The table was already set and had food on it. Sam saw platters full of bacon, biscuits, hotcakes, eggs, and hash brown potatoes. A couple of pots of coffee sat within easy reach, and so did a pitcher of buttermilk. There was gravy and honey for the biscuits, molasses for the hotcakes.

It was classic boardinghouse fare and Sam’s stomach rumbled a little as he sat down next to Reilly, letting him know that he was ready for it.

Mrs. Reilly came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray with several jars of different jams and preserves on it.

“Good morning, Mr. Two Wolves,” she said. “Have you met everyone?”

Sam shook his head.

“No, not really, just Noah here.”

“Let me introduce you to the other fellows,” Reilly said.

He went around the table giving Sam the names and occupations of the other boarders, adding jocular asides about their professions such as “You don’t want to get too well acquainted with Cyrus here. He’s the undertaker!”

Sam filed away the information in his head, knowing that he wouldn’t remember most of it. The townsmen were all pleasant enough, although a couple of them were a little reticent in their greetings. Sam had a hunch that was because of his Cheyenne blood.

Overall, though, it was a pleasant meal, and Sam was stuffed by the time he was finished.

“What are your plans for the day, Sam?” Reilly asked as they walked out of the house after breakfast.

“I don’t really have any,” Sam replied with a shake of his head.

“Are you looking for work?”

“I might be.” He wasn’t, really, but he might have to use that as an excuse to hang around Flat Rock while he continued to search for the bushwhackers.

“Unfortunately, I can’t offer you a job. Mr. Wilmott, who lives in Prescott, owns the store but entrusts the running of it completely to me. Right now the profits don’t justify hiring another employee.”

“That’s all right, Noah,” Sam said. “I don’t think I was cut out to work in a store, anyway.”

“That’s true. It takes a certain, ah, type such as me, doesn’t it?”

Thinking that he had offended the man, Sam started to apologize, but Reilly smiled and waved it away.

“No, no, I’m perfectly aware that I’m not the adventurous, swashbuckling sort,” he said. “I think most of the time people are foolish to try to be something they aren’t, so I’m perfectly content to clerk in a store. It’s what I’m cut out for.”

“Well, that’s one way to look at it,” Sam said. He shook his head. “I don’t see how you stay as skinny as you do, eating at Mrs. McCormick’s.”

Reilly grinned.

“The dear lady does set a good table, doesn’t she?” He patted his stomach. “I guess I’m lucky that I burn it all off.”

Now that the sun was up, Flat Rock was coming to life.

Or at least as much life as this sleepy little settlement usually exhibited. A few pedestrians moved along the boardwalks, a couple of men on horseback made their way slowly along the street, and a wagon was parked in front of the general store.

The doors of the livery stable were open, and that gave Sam an idea. He said, “I’ll see you later, Noah,” and walked over to Pedro Garralaga’s place.

The stableman was inside, tending to the animals in his charge. At this hour the heat of the day hadn’t started to build up yet, so inside the barn it was cool and shadowy.

Garralaga said, “Buenos dias, Señor Two Wolves. You are out and about early this morning.”

“I thought I’d go for a ride before the day gets too hot,” Sam said.

“A ride? Where?” Garralaga made a gesture that took in their surroundings. “What’s there to see around here?”

“You never know. A man never stumbles over anything interesting if he doesn’t look around.”

Garralaga grunted.

“There’s not much anywhere in the Four Corners that’s interesting. But suit yourself. You want me to saddle your horse?”

“No, I’ll take care of it.”

Sam’s horse tossed its head and nuzzled his shoulder. He put his saddle on the animal, noting what a good job Garralaga had done on the repairs, and led the horse out into the aisle in the center of the barn.

As he did, he passed the stalls where the mounts belonging to Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman were kept. He’d halfway expected to run into the mysterious cowboys by now, since they seemed to turn up wherever he was, but so far he hadn’t seen any sign of them.

Obviously they were still in town, though, since their horses were here.

Sam said so long to Garralaga and rode out of Flat Rock, heading south. He had only the vaguest idea of where the Devil’s Pitchfork Ranch was, but he knew it lay south of the settlement.

If he had told anyone he was heading for John Henry Boyd’s spread, they probably would have advised him that he was loco. Boyd, Lowry, and the rest of the Devil’s Pitchfork bunch had shady reputations to begin with, and now they were all stirred up because they believed the Navajo had killed two of their men and rustled fifty head of cattle.

Sam didn’t believe that, but he knew he was running a risk by riding on Boyd’s range. If any of Boyd’s men caught a glimpse of his coppery skin, they would probably shoot first and then figure out who he was.

This trip served two purposes, though. Sam didn’t want Caballo Rojo’s people being blamed for something they didn’t do. If the army was drawn into this, it would only make the trouble worse. The best way to avoid that was to find out what had really happened to the rustled cattle.

Also, Sam was still trying to draw out the men who had attacked him and Matt. He couldn’t give them a much more tempting target than this.

Of course, that meant he was risking his life, but he thought it was worth the gamble. He hoped so, anyway.

If nothing else, the landscape was spectacular in its stark beauty. Dark, rugged mesas thrust up imposingly from the flat land around them, as did towering spires of red sandstone. Ranges of rocky hills bordered vast sweeps of empty ground. Cliffs jutted up and ran for miles. Colors faded from brown to tan to red to black. It was almost like being in an alien world devoid of life, Sam thought.

But here and there, pockets of life did exist. Canyons cut into the hills and cliffs, and in their shaded reaches, springs bubbled up, allowing hardy grass and stunted trees to grow. Higher up in the mountains, the slopes were dark with pine and juniper. This was a hard land, but it would support people who knew how to use it.

The Navajo possessed that knowledge. It was part of their heritage, going back centuries.

Most white men didn’t know how to use the land the way it was, Sam reflected. What they knew was how to change it. They would find a way to bring water into dry country and make it bloom. They would lay down steel rails to span vast distances. They would gouge holes in the earth and rip minerals from its heart.

In truth, Sam didn’t know which way was better. But there had to be a land somewhere that would finally defeat the ingenuity of the white men.

If such a place existed, it just might be the Four Corners. Maybe someday they would realize that and leave it to the Navajo, the Pueblo, the Hopi ... the people who were born to this forbidding landscape.

Despite those musings, Sam was still alert. His gaze roamed constantly over the country around him. Because of that, he was able to spot a thin line of smoke rising into the air a couple of miles ahead of him.

That was probably smoke from a chimney, he thought, and a chimney meant the headquarters of the Devil’s Pitchfork Ranch. So he was on Boyd’s range now.

Or rather, the range that Boyd claimed the use of. All this land was supposed to belong to the Navajo. Obviously that didn’t matter to some people.

If the trouble between the white settlers and the Indians escalated to the point that the army was sent in, that would give the politicians back in Washington the excuse they needed to invalidate the treaty establishing the reservation.

Sam had no doubt that they would do it, and that thought made him frown. In other places, evil men had attempted schemes such as that. Although he and Matt had never encountered any themselves, Sam had heard about them. In Denver, he had overheard men discussing just such a plot that had been broken up by the famous gunfighter Smoke Jensen and other members of his family.

Sam didn’t know if that was what was going on here, but it was possible.

And he found himself wondering if that bushwhack attempt on him and Matt could be connected to it in some way. That seemed far-fetched, but reality was often stranger than any fiction could ever hope to be.

He came to a pair of shallow hogback ridges about a mile apart. They ran roughly parallel for at least two miles, and the smoke rose at the far end of the valley they formed.

Also at the far end of the valley, looming over it, was an odd, three-pronged rock spire. As Sam looked at it, he realized that it resembled, at least roughly, a pitchfork.

That was where the ranch had gotten its name, he thought.

There wasn’t much grass in the valley, but there was some and cattle grazed there.

Sam reined in and sat there looking toward the far end of the valley. That was where Boyd’s ranch house was located, he thought. And it was from this valley that the cattle had been stolen.

He lifted his horse’s reins, ready to start riding back and forth until he found the tracks that fifty head of stock must have left.

Sam had just heeled his mount into a turn when he heard a bullet whip past his ear, followed instantly by the sharp crack of a shot.

Chapter 23

Sam didn’t know where the shot came from, but he could tell from the sound of the report that it had been fired from a rifle, probably a Winchester.

He also knew that the rifleman would have a harder time hitting him if he was moving, so he continued pulling his horse into a turn and jammed his heels into the animal’s flanks to make it leap ahead in a gallop.

Sam leaned forward over the horse’s neck to make himself a smaller target. As he did so, he saw a puff of gunsmoke spurt out from a spot about halfway up the ridge to his right.

That was the direction he was headed.

He was charging right toward the hidden bushwhacker.

Bushwhackers, he corrected himself as he spotted another jet of powder smoke from a different place on the ridge. There were at least two of them—again.

These would-be killers seemed to like working in pairs.

Sam gritted his teeth. This was what he had wanted, to draw the bushwhackers into attacking him again.

This time he intended to take one of them prisoner so he could get some answers. Chances were, the man wouldn’t want to talk, but threatening him with some Cheyenne torture would probably loosen his tongue ... whether Sam intended to follow through on those threats or not.

He was getting ahead of himself, Sam thought as he sent his horse plunging back and forth at zigzag angles to keep the riflemen from drawing a bead on him.

First he had to actually capture one of them.

And to do that he had to keep from being killed.

His horse suddenly gave a wild leap underneath him. Sam knew the animal must have been hit. As he felt himself come out of the saddle, he kicked his feet free of the stirrups. That was all he had time to do.

Sam sailed free through the air for a breathless second before the ground came up and slammed into him. He landed on his shoulder and rolled.

Pain shot through him, but he ignored it as his momentum made him roll over a couple of times. He let it carry him up onto one knee and looked around for some cover.

He knew he was going to need it.

Sure enough, more slugs plowed into the ground around him, spraying him with grit and gravel. Sam got his other foot underneath him and shoved himself upright.

Several good-sized rocks lay a few yards to his right. He flung himself toward them as another slug burned past his ear. A desperate dive landed him among the rocks. He hugged the dirt as a couple of bullets whined off the big chunks of stone.

A slug hit the ground right beside one of his outstretched feet, close enough that the impact made him wince. He drew his legs up as much as he could.

From up on that ridge, the bushwhackers could see down into this cluster of rocks. The area that was protected from their bullets was a tiny one. Sam tried to fit himself into it, but as big and rangy as he was, that wasn’t easy.

He made himself as small as possible and then tried to catch his breath. His left shoulder ached from falling on it, but he moved his arm around enough to know that nothing was broken, only bruised and battered.

He moved his right hand to his hip. The Colt was still in its holster. Sam drew the weapon, and even though he knew the range to the ridge was too great for a handgun, he felt better holding the revolver.

If he stayed where he was, maybe sooner or later the bushwhackers would get tired of the standoff and come after him.

That was when he would have his chance to use the Colt.

On the other hand, if they were smart they might just try to wait him out. The sun was climbing in the sky, and he didn’t have any shade here. It wouldn’t be too many hours before his position would become unbearably hot.

Then his choice would be to leave his cover and probably get shot down, or stay there and bake.

The rifle fire stopped. Sam figured the two bushwhackers were up there on the ridge talking about the situation and trying to figure out what to do next.

He wondered if the shots would draw any attention from the Devil’s Pitchfork. The sound of them might have reached the ranch headquarters.

But if the bushwhackers were two of John Henry Boyd’s men, which Sam supposed was possible, then it wouldn’t really matter.

Sam lifted his head just enough to glance at the ridge. As he did, a bullet slammed into the rock about a foot away. A stone splinter stung his cheek. More shots blasted and sent slugs ricocheting off the rock as he ducked down again.

Well, they were still up there watching and still wanted him dead, he reflected. He had established that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Staying as low as possible, Sam turned his head to look for his horse. He didn’t know how badly the animal had been wounded.

To his relief, he saw the horse grazing on the hardy bunchgrass about a hundred yards away. A bloody streak on its hip showed where a bullet had creased it for the second time, causing the violent reaction that had cost Sam his place in the saddle.

Sam’s gaze lingered on the butt of the Winchester that rode in a sheath strapped under the left stirrup.

He wished he had the rifle. Pinned down like he was, the Winchester wouldn’t do him much good, but with it the odds might not have seemed quite so overwhelming.

He blinked as beads of sweat popped out on his forehead and trickled down into his eyes. The heat was getting worse.

Already his mouth felt like cotton.

The shooting had stopped again. The bushwhackers were going to wait and let the sun do their work for them, Sam thought. How long could he stand it before he was forced into the open?

With no warning, more shots abruptly blasted out. Instinctively, Sam lowered his head even more, but after a second he realized that he didn’t hear any bullets ricocheting off the rocks around him.

Not only that, but the sound of the shots was different as well. They were coming from somewhere else on the ridge.

And they weren’t directed at him.

The duller boom of six-guns being fired came to his ears. It sounded like quite a battle was going on up there.

Sam risked a look and caught a glimpse of two figures on horseback vanishing over the top of the ridge. They were moving fast, and the shots that still rang out hurried them on their way.

Were those the bushwhackers, Sam wondered, or had whoever was trying to come to his aid been forced to flee?

Either way, he knew this might be the only chance he had to get out of this trap. He leaped to his feet and broke into a long-legged sprint toward his horse.

No bullets came searching for him. When he reached the horse, he yanked the Winchester from the saddleboot, worked the lever to throw a round into the chamber, and whipped around toward the ridge, ready to return fire if any came his way.

Silence had fallen over the valley again. Sam turned his head to look all around him, searching for any other sign of a threat. He didn’t see any, but he didn’t relax his vigilance.

Movement on the ridge caught his eye. He picked out two riders working their way down the slope. They were too far away for him to make out any details, but something about them was familiar.

When they reached the floor of the valley and rode toward him, he realized what it was. He recognized the two horses: a buckskin and a paint.

That was Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman riding toward him.

Sam’s forehead creased in a frown as he thought about the two cowboys. From the looks of it, they had rescued him from the bushwhackers.

But there had been two bushwhackers, too, Sam reminded himself. It was possible Stovepipe and Wilbur could have been the men he had seen retreating over the ridge. They could have pretended to flee, circled around, and be riding toward him now intending to claim that they had saved his bacon.

But why would they do that? Maybe to gain his trust, Sam thought.

However, there was no doubt in his mind that the hidden riflemen wanted him dead. Those shots had come too close to be any sort of warning or ruse.

Which meant that if Stovepipe and Wilbur had been the ones shooting at him, they might be riding up to Sam now in apparent innocence so they could blast the life out of him as soon as they got close enough.

Those thoughts went through his head in a flash. He looked at the approaching cowboys again.

Their rifles were booted, and their Colts were holstered. They were in rifle range now, so Sam brought the Winchester to his shoulder, leveled it at them, and called out, “Hold it right there, you two!”

Stovepipe and Wilbur reined in. Stovepipe leaned forward in the saddle with a puzzled frown on his craggy face.

“Why in Hades are you pointin’ that rifle at us, Sam?” he asked. “It appears to me we just done you a mighty big favor, the sort that usually prompts a fella to say gracias instead of threatenin’ to ventilate somebody.”

“I’m just trying to make sure I have everything sorted out the right way,” Sam said. “What are you doing out here? Following me?”

Stovepipe surprised him by answering, “Yep. That’s exactly what we were doin’.”

Sam’s frown deepened as he asked, “Why would you do that?”

Stovepipe rested both hands on his saddle horn and grinned. He said, “Because Wilbur and me, we got a hunch that you might be lookin’ for the same fellas we are.”

Sam was curious enough now that he lowered the rifle slightly.

“Come on over here so we can talk easier,” he said. “But don’t try anything funny, because I’ll be watching you.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Wilbur said.

They hitched their horses into motion again and rode slowly toward Sam. He kept the rifle pointed in their general direction and his finger was ready on the trigger.

When they were close enough, he called, “All right, stop there. Now dismount one at a time.”

Stovepipe looked at Wilbur, who shrugged.

“All right, I’ll go first,” Stovepipe said. “Don’t get trigger-happy now, Sam.”

The lanky cowboy swung down from the saddle. Holding on to his horse’s reins with one hand, he raised the other hand to shoulder height.

“See? Not tryin’ anything funny.”

“Now you, Wilbur,” Sam said.

Wilbur dismounted and didn’t make any threatening moves, either.

Once they were both on the ground, Sam lowered the rifle to his waist. He could still fire from the hip with blinding speed if he needed to.

“What’s this about us looking for the same men?” he asked.

“Well, in order to tell you about it, I’m gonna have to ask you to believe a couple of things we can’t prove right now,” Stovepipe drawled. “The first bein’ that we ain’t who we seem to be.”

“You mean you’re not a couple of drifting grub-line riders?” Sam asked. “Yeah, I had started to figure that out.”

“Truth of it is,” Stovepipe went on, “we’re lawmen. . . sort of.”

That took Sam by surprise, but he tried not to show it.

“How can you sort of be lawmen?”

“We ain’t federal marshals or Rangers or even local badge-toters. We’re private operators, I reckon you could say. Range detectives. We work most of the time for the Cattlemen’s Protective Association.”

Sam knew about the CPA. It was a loose-knit organization with members stretching from Montana to the Rio Grande. In fact, he and Matt both belonged to it, that is, assuming their ranch managers had remembered to send in their dues. The blood brothers didn’t keep track of such things.

“If you work for the CPA, you ought to have papers showing that,” Sam said.

Stovepipe shook his head.

“Well, see, that’s why I said we couldn’t prove it right now. We ain’t exactly workin’ for the CPA on this case. They’ve loaned us out, I reckon you could say?”

“Loaned you out?” Sam repeated. “To who? And what case are you talking about?”

“We’re workin’ for the War Department in Washington,” Stovepipe said. “Undercover-like, which is why we got no bona fides on us sayin’ who we are.”

Beside him, Wilbur spoke up.

“Are you sure we ought to be tellin’ him all this, Stovepipe? For all we know, he could be part of the gang.”

“Then who was that shootin’ at him a while ago?” Stovepipe wanted to know.

Sam wasn’t sure whether to believe anything they had told him, but he said, “For what it’s worth, that wasn’t the first time somebody tried to bushwhack me. It’s the third attempt in the past week, and I’m convinced they were all by the same bunch.”

Stovepipe let out a low whistle.

“Sounds like you’ve made yourself some powerful enemies, Sam.”

“Yeah, and I still don’t have any idea why.”

“Oh, shoot, we can tell you that.” Stovepipe looked over at Wilbur again.

The smaller man shrugged and nodded, telling him to go ahead.

“It’s about two things, Sam,” Stovepipe said. “Money ... and guns.”

Chapter 24

Sam looked at the two of them intently for a moment, then said, “You’re going to have to explain that.”

Stovepipe nodded.

“Figured I’d have to. You see, about a month ago a shipment of rifles—brand-new Trapdoor Springfields—were on their way to the garrison at Fort Defiance when the wagon they were in was waylaid.” Stovepipe’s face grew grim. “The troopers ridin’ escort with the guns were wiped out.”

“Do the authorities believe that the Navajo did that?” Sam asked.

“Nope,” Stovepipe replied with a shake of his head. “One of the troopers was shot to pieces but lived long enough to talk to some freighters who came across the massacre. Before he died he said it was white men who jumped ’em, and the shod hoofprints around the place indicated that, too.”

“But just because it wasn’t Indians who stole the rifles,” Wilbur put in, “that don’t mean those guns won’t wind up in Navajo hands before it’s all said and done.”

“The Navajo are peaceful people,” Sam protested. “They’ve been mistreated, but despite that all they want is to be left alone.”

“I ain’t gonna argue with you about how they been treated,” Stovepipe said. “But you’re a mite too young to remember a Navajo headman name of Manuelito. He wasn’t a very peaceful fella. From what I’ve heard, even the other Navajo were a mite nervous around him. He gave Kit Carson a pretty good fight over in New Mexico Territory a while back.”

“I’ve heard of Manuelito,” Sam said. “That was nearly twenty years ago.”

Stovepipe nodded.

“Yeah, but there are still some firebrands among the Navajo who think the ol’ boy had it right. They think tryin’ to get along with the white men ain’t worked out too well for their people, and it’s ’way past time to start killin’ again.”

Sam thought about Juan Pablo and the fierce resentment he felt toward the whites. It wouldn’t take much to get him to be in favor of a new Navajo war, and there were bound to be others like him among the clans.

“So you think whoever stole those rifles intends to sell them to the Navajo,” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense. What would they use to pay for them? Sheep? Blankets?”

“Didn’t say nothin’ about anybody payin’ for those Springfields. But they could still wind up in Navajo hands, like Wilbur said.”

“Only if the thieves want to start a war.”

Stovepipe shrugged.

Those same thoughts had gone through Sam’s mind earlier. Judging by what these two self-proclaimed range detectives were telling him, he had been on the right track.

But he wanted to see if their thinking matched up with his, so he said, “Where does the money come in?”

“The money’s to be made when somebody comes in and grabs all this reservation land once the government rounds up the Navajo again and marches ’em back to Bosque Redondo or some other hellhole. This is the largest reservation in the whole blamed country. It ain’t just in Arizona. It stretches over into New Mexico and up into Colorado and Utah as well. Millions and millions of acres. If they throw the whole thing open for settlement, instead of just the isolated patches here and there, it’d be worth a fortune.” Stovepipe shrugged. “Leastways, it could be, if there was a way to get water in here from the Colorado to the west and the Rio Grande to the east. Wouldn’t be easy, but with a big enough payoff waitin’ for ’em, you can bet folks’d figure out a way to do it.”

It was a long speech, but everything Stovepipe said lined up with the theory that had formed in Sam’s mind.

He thought about the marks he and Juan Pablo had found on the ground at the base of that bluff where the first bushwhack attempt had been made.

“The stolen rifles were in one wagon?” he asked.

“That’s right. Twelve crates with forty guns in each one. Nearly five hundred Springfields.”

“A crate with forty rifles in it would be pretty heavy, wouldn’t it?”

“I reckon so,” Stovepipe said. His deep-set eyes narrowed. “I’m startin’ to get the feelin’ you know more than you’re tellin’ us, Sam. We’ve laid our cards on the table. Now it’s your turn.”

Sam drew in a deep breath and let it out. He had to make the decision whether to trust these two men. His instincts told him that they had been truthful with him, and the facts they had provided went a long way toward explaining everything that had happened over the past week or so.

“All right,” he said as he made up his mind. “I think a friend of mine and I nearly stumbled right into those rifles being delivered to whoever they’re intended for.”

“You’re talkin’ about Matt Bodine?” Stovepipe asked.

Sam’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“How do you know about Matt?”

Wilbur said, “We’ve been workin’ out here on the frontier for quite a while, mister. You reckon we never heard of Matt Bodine and Sam Two Wolves?”

“You were mixed up in that Joshua Shade business a while back,” Stovepipe added. “Reckon that varmint might not have ended up at the end of a hangrope where he belonged if not for you two fellas.”

“Where is Bodine?” Wilbur asked. “He’s not dead, is he?”

“Not that I know of,” Sam said. “But he was wounded, and I had to leave him with somebody while I went looking for the men who bushwhacked us. I think that’s tied in with those rifles you told me about.”

“So where’s Bodine now?”

“With some Navajo about a day’s ride northwest of here.”

Stovepipe and Wilbur looked at each other again.

“You better tell us the rest of it,” Stovepipe said.

For the next five minutes, Sam did so, explaining how someone had opened fire on him and Matt, wounding Matt and leading to them being discovered by Caballo Rojo, Juan Pablo, and the rest of the Navajo.

“I think the bushwhackers must have tried to kill us because we came along just as they were about to deliver those rifles to someone,” he said. He told Stovepipe and Wilbur about the marks he had found on the ground at the base of the bluff. “Those were definitely wagon tracks I saw, and they looked like it was heavily loaded. And a crate full of Springfields would have left an impression on the ground like that, too.”

Sam grunted and shook his head.

“And I thought at first that it was a coffin.”

“Not a coffin,” Stovepipe said, “but in the wrong hands, what was in it sure might fill a bunch of ’em.”

“I backtracked the bunch to Flat Rock,” Sam went on. “I think they must’ve gotten spooked and postponed the deal. They probably have the rifles hidden somewhere close to the settlement. The boss, whoever he is, put guards on the trail outside town to see if anybody followed them. When I did, they tried to kill me again.”

“And they trailed you out here today and tried again, more’n likely,” Stovepipe said.

“And why did you follow me?”

“Just keepin’ an eye on you,” Stovepipe said. “To tell you the truth, we sorta thought you might attract trouble like a magnet, given your reputation for gettin’ mixed up in things.”

“And we weren’t completely convinced you weren’t mixed up somehow with the gang we’re lookin’ for,” Wilbur added.

Stovepipe winced.

“Now, you didn’t have to go and tell him that.”

“Just like you didn’t have to tell Lady Augusta that I like her,” Wilbur shot back.

Sam said, “So when somebody tried to kill me, that convinced you that I wasn’t one of the gang?”

“Didn’t figure they’d be shootin’ at you if you was one of ’em,” Stovepipe said.

Wilbur nodded at his companion.

“That’s what he said. If I had as many thoughts crammed into my head as Stovepipe does, I swear I’d go plumb crazy. That’s why I mostly let him do the figurin’ .”

“And what I’m studyin’ on now,” Stovepipe said, “is what brought you out here today, Sam. The hombres out at the Devil’s Pitchfork don’t cotton much to strangers.”

“Especially ones with Indian blood,” Sam said. “I know. But I got curious about those cattle that were stolen from out here. Boyd and Lowry blamed the rustling on the Navajo, but that just doesn’t seem right to me. Caballo Rojo and his people are the closest ones to the settlement, and I spent enough time with them to know they wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“Most of ’em probably wouldn’t,” Stovepipe agreed. “But all it takes is a handful who take after Manuelito.”

Sam shrugged.

“Maybe. But the whole idea is to increase the tension between the white settlers and the Navajo until a shooting war is inevitable. The men behind it are even going to give the Navajo those rifles to make it unavoidable. Right?”

“That’s the way it looks to me,” Stovepipe replied with a nod.

“So rustling cattle and making it look like the Navajo are responsible would just up the stakes.”

“He’s right, Stovepipe,” Wilbur said. “I reckon he’s about as good a detective as you are.”

“I never claimed to be no genius. What you say makes sense, Sam. The same bunch is playin’ the settlers and the Indians against each other to set up a land grab.” Stovepipe rubbed his beard-stubbled chin. “Question is, what are we gonna do about it?”

“The first step is to find out who they are,” Sam said. “Maybe if we track those stolen cows that will tell us something.”

“It sure might.” Stovepipe inclined his head toward his horse. “All right if we mount up again? We’ve all decided to trust each other?”

Sam slid his Winchester back in the saddleboot.

“I think so. And we’ll come closer getting to the bottom of this if we work together.”

Stovepipe nodded and said, “Sounds good to me.”

All three of them swung up into their saddles. As they started looking for the tracks left by the stolen herd, Wilbur said, “You know, there’s somethin’ that’s botherin’ me. You said you left your partner Bodine with the Navajo, Sam?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s got to be at least a few members of that clan who are workin’ with the gang that stole the rifles.”

That same worry had started gnawing at the back of Sam’s thoughts.

“You’re probably right,” he said. “And if that’s true, they might want to get rid of Matt just to make sure he doesn’t stumble over what’s really going on.”

Stovepipe said, “Yeah, and that means we’d better find the varmints we’re lookin’ for and bust up their plans as quick as we can ... because the longer your pard spends with those Injuns, the more danger he’s in.”

That thought made Sam’s jaw clench tightly. Matt was stuck there in the canyon, trying to recover from his wounds, probably with no idea that lurking among the Navajo was at least one man who wanted him dead.

“Speakin’ of danger ...” Wilbur said.

The other two men looked at him and saw him pointing toward the southern end of the valley.

“Riders comin’ fast,” Wilbur went on. “I’ll bet it’s John Henry Boyd and his bunch of gun-throwers, and they ain’t gonna be happy to find us here.”

Chapter 25

All three men reined in and turned their horses to face toward the oncoming riders. Wilbur moved his hand toward the butt of the gun on his hip, which drew a sharp comment from Stovepipe.

“Don’t do it,” the lanky cowboy warned. “There’s too dang many of ’em.”

Sam was already keeping his hands in plain sight, well away from his weapons, so Stovepipe didn’t have to say anything to him.

As the crew from the Devil’s Pitchfork approached, they spread out so that they formed a half-circle around Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur. That was menacing enough, and the expressions on the hard-bitten faces of the men were even more so.

To a man, they looked like they wanted to whip out their six-guns and start blazing away at these interlopers on Devil’s Pitchfork range.

Sam recognized the ugly, jut-jawed face of Pete Lowry. Lowry rode near the center of the group, and beside him was a man who carried himself in the saddle with such an air of command that he had to be John Henry Boyd.

The two of them kept coming after their companions halted, not stopping until they were within twenty feet of Sam and the two range detectives. Then they reined to a stop as well.

“Look at that, boss,” Lowry said, confirming Sam’s hunch that the other man was John Henry Boyd. “We don’t have go lookin’ for those damned rustlers after all. They’ve come to us.”

“You’ve got that wrong, mister,” Stovepipe said. “We ain’t rustlers.”

“Then who are you?” Boyd demanded. He was an old man, with white hair under his black Stetson and a face like worn, cracked saddle leather. “And what in blazes are you doing on my land?”

Sam felt a flush of anger. This wasn’t Boyd’s land, and in the technical sense it wasn’t even open range, the sort of graze that hundreds of cattlemen across the frontier claimed.

No, this was Navajo land, and the only reason Boyd was able to stake such a claim on it was that the authorities looked the other way ... and probably had been paid off to do so.

However, Sam wasn’t here today to right that particular wrong. Instead he said, “We’re looking for the rustlers, too, Mr. Boyd. We want to find out what happened to your cattle and where they were taken.”

“Don’t believe him, boss,” Lowry snapped. “These are the fellas we had that run-in with in town yesterday. The redskin claims to be a Cheyenne ’breed, but I think he’s a Navajo spy.”

Boyd turned to his segundo and said, “You blasted fool. You can tell by looking at him that he’s not Navajo. Not all Indians look alike, you know.”

That surprised Sam. Before he could start feeling too kindly toward Boyd, though, the rancher went on, “But that doesn’t mean he’s not a damned rustler anyway. A couple of white men and a Cheyenne ’breed can be owlhoots just like anybody else.”

“I never stole a cow in my life,” Wilbur said angrily, “and neither did Stovepipe.”

“And if we were the rustlers, what would we be doin’ back out here?” Stovepipe added. “Comin’ back to the scene of the crime would be kind of a durned fool thing to do, wouldn’t it?”

“Not if you were lookin’ for more stock to steal,” Lowry said.

“In broad daylight?” Sam asked.

Boyd leaned forward in his saddle.

“Then what are you doing here? I asked you before, and I don’t intend to ask you again.”

“And I reckon we told you,” Stovepipe said. “We’re lookin’ for them rustled beeves.”

“What business is it of yours?”

Sam glanced at Stovepipe and wondered what the man would say. He thought it would be a mistake to reveal their real identities to Boyd and the rest of the Devil’s Pitchfork crew. For all he and his two companions knew, Boyd was behind the scheme to smuggle guns to the Navajo and start a new Indian war here in the Four Corners.

Boyd already had a foothold here with his ranch. He would be in a good position to try to take over the rest of the region. Certainly he and his men could have lied about the rustling just to stir up the settlers in Flat Rock that much more.

He shouldn’t have worried about Stovepipe, Sam realized a second later. A lazy grin spread over the range detective’s face as he said, “Shoot, we figured there might be a reward, and we’re gettin’ a little short on funds. Thought you might be more inclined to give us some ridin’ jobs, at the very least, if we found them cows for you.”

Boyd glared at them.

“That’s what you thought, is it? What I’m inclined to do is run the three of you off my land. Either that, or string you up.”

“That’s what I’d do, boss,” Lowry said as he gave Sam a baleful look.

“I don’t want to waste the time on either of those things, though,” Boyd went on. “In fact, we’ve lolly-gagged around here enough.”

Without warning, he shucked his Colt from its holster and pointed it at Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur.

“Drop your guns,” he ordered. “You’re coming with us.”

Lowry looked as surprised as anybody.

“John Henry, what’re you doin’? You can’t trust these varmints!”

“I never said I trusted ’em. Why do you think I told them to drop their guns?” Boyd’s voice hardened. “I won’t tell you that again, either.”

“Reckon we’d better do what the man says,” Stovepipe drawled. He gave Sam and Wilbur a look that meant Play along. Sam understood that well enough. He didn’t see what else they could do right now.

He had seen the muscles in Boyd’s arm and shoulder tense before the rancher went for his gun. Sam was confident he could have beaten Boyd to the draw if he had tried to. He might have been able to get the drop on the rancher and use him as a hostage to get past the other fifteen men in the Devil’s Pitchfork crew.

But that wouldn’t have gotten him any closer to the answers he was looking for, Sam thought as he carefully used his left hand to slide his Colt from its holster. He pitched the revolver to the ground, where it was joined by those belonging to Stovepipe and Wilbur as well.

“Now the rifles,” Boyd commanded. “And I want that knife of yours, too, redskin.”

Again Sam swallowed the anger he felt. He leaned toward the opinion that Boyd and his men weren’t the ones who had bushwhacked him and Matt. Since that bunch obviously wanted him dead, they would have gone ahead and opened fire as soon as they rode up. Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur would have put up a fight, but they couldn’t have stopped the bunch from the Devil’s Pitchfork from wiping them out.

That didn’t mean Boyd wasn’t an arrogant, unpleasant son of a bitch anyway.

But maybe cooperating with the rancher would make it easier for Sam and his companions to find out what they wanted to know.

For that reason, Sam drew his bowie knife and tossed it to the ground as well.

“Now back off some,” Boyd ordered. When Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur had done that, Boyd jerked his head at a couple of his men, who dismounted and hurried forward to collect all the discarded hardware.

“Come on,” Boyd said. “You want to find out what happened to those rustled cows, you said. Well, so do I. We’ll follow the trail together.”

Lowry said, “I still think this is a bad idea, boss. They’re part of that bunch, I tell you.”

“Well, if they are,” Boyd said, “we’ve got us some hostages, don’t we?”

He led the pack toward the northwestern corner of the valley. Following the commanding gestures Pete Lowry made with his gun, Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur fell in just behind Boyd. The other hard-bitten gunmen of the Devil’s Pitchfork crew kept them mostly surrounded as they followed the rancher.

“This is what we want,” Stovepipe said to Sam from the corner of his mouth. “We get to find out where those stolen cows went, and Boyd sees that we ain’t rustlers.”

Sam nodded and said, “That’s what I thought.”

Lowry snapped, “Shut up, you two. I don’t want you back here plottin’ behind the boss’s back.”

“You know, you’re a mighty touchy sort, mister,” Wilbur said. “What happened, your ma take your favorite play-pretty away from you when you were little?”

“Why, you ...” Lowry growled as he moved his horse closer to Wilbur’s paint. He lifted the revolver he still held. “I oughta bust your skull open!”

“Pete!” Boyd’s sharp tone rang out. “That’s enough.” The white-haired rancher looked back over his shoulder. “But I warn you, mister, don’t try my patience any more than it already is. If you do, I’m liable to turn Pete loose on you.”

“Sure, Wilbur here understands,” Stovepipe said quickly. “Don’t you, Wilbur?”

“I reckon,” Wilbur said with obvious reluctance.

Sam hoped that Wilbur would behave himself and not get them killed by potential allies.

They already had more than enough enemies who would be happy to take care of that.

Chapter 26

Zack Jardine was on his way back to the Buckingham Palace Saloon when he saw Angus Braverman and Doyle Hilliard gallop into town.

For the past half-hour, Jardine had been talking to his partner in this enterprise and the discussion hadn’t gone very well, so he was in a bad mood to start with.

His anger flared up even more at the sight of Braverman and Hilliard. He had told the two men to keep an eye on that blasted half-breed and to finish him off if they got the chance.

Now, from the way they were hurrying, Jardine figured that they had fouled up again some way.

He lifted a hand to catch their attention as they started to ride past in the street. Both men reined in sharply, sawing the bits in cruel fashion.

“What the hell’s going on now?” Jardine demanded.

“It’s that redskin,” Braverman replied, not surprisingly. “He’s gone out to the Devil’s Pitchfork.”

Jardine wasn’t expecting to hear that. As his eyes widened, he said, “Why in blazes would he do that, after the run-in he had with Lowry and that bunch the other day?”

Hilliard said, “It looked to us like he was tryin’ to find the trail of those cows that got run off a couple nights ago.”

At that news, Jardine felt like spewing a string of vile curses. Realizing that wouldn’t do any good, he said, “I hope you took care of him.”

Braverman grimaced and looked uncomfortable as he shifted in the saddle.

“We tried, Zack, we really did.”

“But?” Jardine said ominously.

“But those two drifters who sided him in that saloon brawl showed up and came mighty close to partin’ our hair with lead. We had to get out of there while we still could.”

Jardine glanced around to make sure no one else was within earshot, then said, “You stupid sons of bitches. Now not only Two Wolves is out there poking around where he doesn’t belong, but so are those two cowboys. I’ve got a bad feeling about them.”

“It gets worse, boss,” Hilliard added with a shake of his head. “We were watchin’ from a distance, and we saw Boyd and his crew come up and grab the redskin and the other two.”

“They didn’t kill Two Wolves and his friends?”

That was probably too much good luck to hope for, Jardine thought.

Hilliard confirmed that hunch by saying, “No, they disarmed the three of ’em but didn’t hurt them as far as we could tell. Then the whole bunch rode off to the northwest, the same direction those boys took the cows.”

Jardine took a deep breath and tried to reassure himself that everything would be all right.

“We figured all along that Boyd and his men would try to trail the herd,” he said. “They won’t be able to find it.”

“That’s what that Injun claimed,” Braverman said. “But we don’t know that for sure.”

“Who knows those godforsaken canyons better than a Navajo?” Jardine asked.

“But Boyd’s got Two Wolves with him now. He’s Cheyenne, but maybe he can track as well as a Navajo can.”

Jardine took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick black hair. The whole deal had seemed so simple at first ...

All they had to do was steal those rifles before the guns made it to Fort Defiance, deliver them to the hotheads among the Navajo who wanted war with the whites, stir up the settlers by rustling a few cattle and killing a couple of punchers, and then sit back and let nature take its course.

When the fighting was all over, the redskins would be herded out of the Four Corners, and Jardine would be ready to swoop in and take over.

He scowled at Braverman and Hilliard as he recalled that if they hadn’t been so trigger-happy a week earlier, maybe none of the problems that currently plagued him would have cropped up. That incident had fouled up the delivery of the rifles, and the plan hadn’t recovered yet from having that kink thrown into it.

Now this unlikely alliance between Two Wolves, those two mysterious cowboys, and the crew from the Devil’s Pitchfork threatened to make things even worse.

Jardine sighed and settled his hat back on his head.

“There’s only one thing we can do about it now,” he said. “Angus, get a fresh horse and ride for the place where the cattle are being held as fast as you can. Warn the boys watching them that trouble may be on the way.”

“You really think I can get there before Boyd and the others do, boss?”

“I don’t know, but you can damned well try,” Jardine snapped. “There’s a good chance, because you know where you’re going and they don’t. Now get a move on.”

“You want me to go with Angus, Zack?” Hilliard asked.

Jardine shook his head.

“He’s a lot lighter than you. On a fresh horse he can move pretty fast.” He scowled at Braverman. “Didn’t you hear me? Go!”

Braverman nodded and pulled his horse around.

“You bet!”

He headed for the livery stable to change mounts.

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out, boss,” Hilliard said. “It’s like that damned Injun’s got some sort of redskin spirits lookin’ out for him! Every time we think we’re about to ventilate him, he gets out of it somehow.”

“Two Wolves’ luck can’t last forever,” Jardine said as hate filled his heart. “And when it runs out, I hope I’m looking at him over the barrel of a gun.”

Fifty cows and the half-dozen men pushing them along couldn’t help but leave a lot of tracks.

Unfortunately, even though there hadn’t been any rain in this arid country in a long time, the wind blew and sometimes wiped out marks left in the dust.

Not only that, but there were stretches of rocky ground as well where the hooves of cattle and unshod horses didn’t leave any impressions.

Because of those things, following the rustlers’ trail was more difficult than one might think it would be. However, Sam had anticipated that, so he wasn’t surprised when the tracks disappeared about five miles northwest of the ranch and the riders from the Devil’s Pitchfork had to search for them again.

As prisoners, Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur rode along with Boyd and the other men. They didn’t have any choice.

After an interval of futile searching, Sam suggested, “Why don’t you let me have a look, Mr. Boyd?”

The three prisoners were sitting their horses with Boyd, Lowry, and another man to guard them while the rest of the Devil’s Pitchfork hands rode back and forth across the range, looking for the trail.

“Don’t listen to him, boss,” Lowry said in response to Sam’s suggestion. “It’s bound to be a trick of some sort.”

John Henry Boyd frowned.

“What if he was to find the tracks of those rustlers?”

“Well, of course he might find ’em,” Lowry blustered. “I still say he’s probably one of ’em. He already knows where they went.”

Boyd looked at Sam, who shook his head.

“I don’t have any idea,” he said. “But I’m pretty good at finding a trail, if I do say so myself.”

“So’s Stovepipe,” Wilbur put in. “He’s got eyes like a hawk.”

Stovepipe grinned.

“Better than a nose like a buzzard, I reckon.”

Boyd frowned in thought as he rasped his fingers over the silvery stubble on his chin. After a moment, he nodded.

“All right, if you think you can find the trail, have at it,” he told Sam and the two cowboys. “But we’ll be right behind you, and if you try anything funny, you’ll wind up blasted out of the saddle quicker than you can blink.”

“No tricks,” Sam promised. “We want to find those cows as much as you do.”

“You know, I almost believe you,” Boyd said. “Which makes me wonder why you feel that way.”

“Because maybe then you’ll realize that we’re not your enemy, and neither are the Navajo.”

Lowry’s beefy face flushed even more.

“What about those unshod hoofprints we found? What kind of white man would ride an unshod horse?”

“The kind who’s trying to make everyone think he’s an Indian,” Sam said. He lifted his reins and heeled his mount into motion. “Come on.”

After all that, he was going to feel like an utter fool if he couldn’t find the trail, he thought wryly.

Less than fifteen minutes had gone by, however, when he spotted a rock that was a little darker than the same sort of rocks scattered all around it. The stone had been turned over recently and the burning sun hadn’t had the chance to bleach as much color out of it.

Sam reined in and swung down from his horse. As he hunkered on his heels to study the ground, John Henry Boyd called a question from behind him.

“You find something, Two Wolves?”

“Maybe,” Sam said. He spotted another darker rock a few feet away, and another after that. He straightened and walked forward slowly, leading his horse.

The signs were small, in some cases so tiny as to be almost invisible, but they were there. Sam followed them for a good fifty yards before he found an actual hoofprint. It had been left by a cow, and he came across more and more of them as the ground became softer again.

“Here,” he said, pointing. “They came through here.”

He lifted his arm and leveled it in a generally northwest direction, toward the area of buttes, ridges, and canyons where Caballo Rojo and his people lived.

“And they went that way,” Sam said, hoping he wasn’t wrong about the Navajo.

Boyd grunted.

“Then so will we,” he said as he slipped his revolver from its holster.

He pointed the gun into the air and fired three shots, signaling his widespread riders to converge on him again.

“You’re leading the way now, Two Wolves,” the rancher said.

“The redskin might be leadin’ us into a trap, boss,” Pete Lowry warned.

“I don’t care if he is,” Boyd snapped. “We’ll fight our way out of it. I want my cows back, and I want a shot at the mangy coyotes who killed my men.”

At that moment, Sam almost felt some admiration for the crusty old cattleman. He could appreciate the loyalty Boyd felt toward the men who rode for the Devil’s Pitchfork brand.

The riders gathered and the whole group struck out, again following the trail left by the stolen herd. Stovepipe brought his horse up alongside Sam’s and said quietly, “That was good trackin’, son. Couldn’t have done better myself, I reckon.”

“You don’t fool me, Stovepipe,” Sam said. “I’ll bet you picked up some of the same sign I did.”

The range detective grinned.

“Well, you was doin’ such a good job of leadin’ the way, I didn’t see no need to get in your way.”

“So you let me take the credit with Boyd, so maybe he’ll trust me a little more.”

“Credit’s somethin’ I never cared overmuch about,” Stovepipe admitted.

After another hour or so of following the trail, the riders began to get into an area that seemed a little familiar to Sam. Of course, most of the rugged landscape in the Four Corners region looked similar.

The rock formations jutting up from the arid plains were infinite in their variety, however, and Sam began to see some he was sure he had seen before.

That meant they were getting into the area where he and Matt had been bushwhacked.

And that meant they weren’t that far from the canyon where he had left Matt with Caballo Rojo’s people.

Elizabeth Fleming was there, too, Sam recalled. He had spent a considerable amount of time wondering how his blood brother was doing, and that included wondering what was going on between Matt and Elizabeth.

Sam didn’t have any real romantic interest in the redheaded Eastern teacher himself, but he knew how Matt was any time he was around a pretty girl.

Flirting came as naturally as gun-handling to Matt Bodine, and Sam hoped that hadn’t led to any trouble while Matt was supposed to be recuperating from those bullet holes in his hide.

Chapter 27

Matt made good on his promise to sleep with one eye open after the attempt on his life.

Not literally, of course, but with the skills developed during a dangerous life on the frontier, he slept lightly that night.

His instincts remained on alert to warn him of anything that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He wished he had his guns, but Caballo Rojo had ordered something done with them.

The only weapon he had was a fist-sized rock he had managed to sneak into the hogan. If anybody attacked him, he planned to brain the varmint with the rock.

The result of all that was that Matt was still tired when he rolled out of his blankets the next morning, but nothing else had happened.

Well, one other thing, he amended as he sat up and looked across the hogan.

Juan Pablo was back.

The Navajo was as stone-faced and unfriendly-looking as ever, Matt saw. He hadn’t heard Juan Pablo come in, and he felt a slight prickling of his nerves. He should have been aware of the man’s arrival.

Juan Pablo was standing up, though, so it was possible he had just stepped into the hogan. His wife knelt by the fire, preparing breakfast. If there was going to be any sort of reunion between them, obviously they intended to wait until they were alone for it, which was just fine with Matt.

“Good morning,” he said as he got to his feet. As soon as he’d seen Juan Pablo, he had wondered about Sam. “Is Sam back, too?”

Juan Pablo shook his head.

“The half-breed followed the trail of the men he sought toward the settlement of Flat Rock two days ago,” he answered. “I have not seen him since.”

Matt was disappointed that Sam hadn’t returned to the canyon. He asked, “Where have you been all that time since?”

Juan Pablo frowned, as if tempted to tell Matt that was none of his business, but then he said, “It took a day to return from the spot where I left your friend. The other day I spent cleansing myself of his presence.”

“And now you’re dirtied yourself up again by comin’ back here where I am.”

Juan Pablo grunted.

“You said that, white man, not I.”

“Well, I’m not gonna be here much longer. I’m leaving today.”

And so was Elizabeth, he thought, but he didn’t mention that just yet.

“Fine,” Juan Pablo said with a curt nod.

“Aren’t you gonna ask if I’m in good enough shape to travel?”

Juan Pablo’s silence was an eloquent indication of how little he cared about the answer to that question.

The man’s wife had a pot of stew ready. When she held out a bowl to him, Matt shook his head.

“Thank you,” he told her. He had exchanged very few words with her, and neither of them had understood what the other was saying.

But despite her sometimes disapproving demeanor, she had taken good care of him, and he appreciated that. He smiled at her and nodded, hoping that she understood he was grateful to her, and then stepped out of the hogan.

The air had that welcome coolness desert air always did, early in the morning. Matt breathed deeply of it and didn’t feel quite as tired.

He heard his name called, turned around, and felt even better.

Elizabeth was coming toward him, beautiful in her dark green long-sleeved blouse and long skirt.

“You’re all right,” she said as she came up to him.

Matt smiled.

“Did you expect something different?”

“After what happened yesterday, I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “Do you still want to leave today?”

Matt’s answer came without hesitation.

“That’s right. There’s still something bad brewing here. I don’t know what it is and I wish I did, but my guts tell me we’ll be better off getting out while we can.” He paused. “You’re still coming with me, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know ... I hate to leave these people. I’d like to think I’ve done them some good. They’re going to be able to make their way better in the white man’s world because of me.”

She didn’t understand, Matt thought. The Navajo didn’t want to make their way in the white man’s world. They wanted to be left alone to live in their own world, in their own way.

You couldn’t convince the “Lo, the poor Indian!” people of that, though. Folks who believed they were going to make somebody change for their own good were doomed to failure.

He wasn’t going to say that to Elizabeth. For one thing, it wouldn’t do any good. He couldn’t change her beliefs any more than she could change those of the Navajo.

But he could get her out of what might well turn out to be a dangerous situation, and he was going to try his best to do so.

“I really think you ought to come with me. I mean, since I’ve been wounded and all ...”

He ought to be ashamed of himself for playing that card, he thought as he saw sympathy light up her eyes. Somebody like Elizabeth couldn’t resist the urge to help somebody. But if it got her clear of this canyon, he was willing to do it.

Anyway, he was wounded. That was just the truth. And while he felt stronger today than he had since winding up here, he still thought it would be a good idea to have somebody around to look after him, if need be.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll come with you.” She smiled. “Anyway, there’s nothing stopping me from coming back here later on, is there?”

“Not a thing,” he agreed. They could deal with what would happen later once they were out of here.

“Of course, we don’t know if Caballo Rojo will allow us to leave,” Elizabeth pointed out.

She was right. That could be a problem.

So the thing to do was tend to it right now, Matt decided.

He took her arm and said, “Let’s go talk to him.”

They walked along the creek toward Caballo Rojo’s hogan. With the air still holding that hint of coolness and the sun not blazing down in the canyon like it would later in the day, this would have been a pleasant moment if not for the fact that Matt was worried about what the Navajo headman would say.

Caballo Rojo was sitting outside his hogan, working with a bit of silver, fashioning it into some small piece of jewelry. He looked up for a second as Matt and Elizabeth approached, but otherwise he didn’t acknowledge that they were there.

“Caballo Rojo, I’d like to talk to you,” Matt said. “I know you understand me, even without Juan Pablo here to translate for me. I want to thank you for your hospitality, for seeing that I was taken care of while I was recovering from my injuries.”

Caballo Rojo grunted but still didn’t look up again.

“Now that my wounds are healing, I think it’s time for me to leave,” Matt went on. “I’d like to have my horse, my guns, and the rest of my gear returned to me.”

No response from the headman. Matt and Elizabeth traded worried glances. This wasn’t going the way they had hoped.

But there was nothing they could do except go ahead with their plan. Matt said, “Miss Fleming is going to go with me, to help me in case my injuries trouble me.”

Caballo Rojo finally lifted his head. He shook it slowly from side to side in stubborn refusal.

Elizabeth said, “Do you mean you don’t want me to go with Mr. Bodine, Caballo Rojo?”

From behind them, a harsh voice said, “Caballo Rojo means that neither of you will leave this canyon.”

Matt turned sharply and saw Juan Pablo standing there. The Navajo had one of the single-shot rifles in his hands, and the weapon was trained on Matt’s belly.

Behind Juan Pablo stood three more men, one of them armed with another rifle, the other two with bows and arrows. They glared menacingly at Matt and Elizabeth.

Juan Pablo smiled, though, the first smile Matt had seen on the Navajo’s face.

It wasn’t a pretty expression.

“What’s going on here?” Matt demanded. He looked over his shoulder at the headman. “Caballo Rojo—”

“I have already spoken to Caballo Rojo,” Juan Pablo broke in. “I have told him how you plan to go to the settlement and lead the white men back here so they can attack us and wipe out all of our people.”

“That’s not true!” Elizabeth cried. “Caballo Rojo, you must believe me. I’ve never done anything except try to help your people, and Mr. Bodine would never betray you after you helped him the way you did.”

“Lies, all lies,” Juan Pablo said with the calm self-assurance of a man who knows that he has already won. “Like all the other whites, you seek only the destruction of the Diné. But your treachery will bring about only your own destruction.”

He lifted the rifle.

“No, you will never leave this canyon ... alive.”

Chapter 28

The trail of the rustled cattle continued to angle toward the canyon where the members of Caballo Rojo’s clan made their home. Sam grew more worried as he saw that.

Was it possible that the Navajo really were to blame for stealing that stock and killing Boyd’s punchers?

Sam didn’t want to believe that was true, but he couldn’t deny the evidence of his own eyes ... especially when the line of cliffs where the canyon was located came into view.

As he and the other riders came closer, however, the tracks began to turn more to the north. Relief went through Sam as he realized that the trail was going to lead past the entrance to the Navajo canyon.

This was the closest he had been to the place since leaving several days earlier, and he couldn’t help but wonder how Matt was doing. It would be easy enough to ride over there and see. It wouldn’t take long.

That is, it would have been easy if he and Stovepipe and Wilbur weren’t prisoners of the Devil’s Pitchfork crew.

As it was, Sam knew that Pete Lowry would be only too happy to gun them down if it looked like they were trying to escape, and so would some of the other men.

He wasn’t sure he wanted Boyd and his men to know those Navajo hogans were hidden in the canyon, anyway. That might cause trouble for Caballo Rojo and his people in the future.

So as the cliffs fell behind them, Sam felt mingled relief and worry. Relief that the trail of the stolen cattle hadn’t led straight to the Navajo, and worry about Matt.

He wasn’t sure why that had started nagging at him, but the bond that existed between the blood brothers sometimes enabled them to sense when the other one was in trouble.

Sam hoped that wasn’t the case now.

“That looks like hellacious country ahead of us,” John Henry Boyd commented. “I don’t reckon I’ve ever been up this far before. Can’t be far to the Sweetwater Hills.” He pointed to a range of low but rugged peaks with sides deeply seamed by canyons and crevices. “That must be them.”

Pete Lowry said nervously, “Boss, I’ve heard that those hills are haunted.”

It struck Sam as odd that such a sentiment would be expressed by the hard-nosed segundo. Even the toughest hombre could be touched by superstition, though.

A harsh laugh came from Boyd.

“Ghosts didn’t steal those cattle or ventilate those two boys, Pete. If they’re in those hills, the varmints who took ’em there are flesh and blood, and bullets will put holes in ’em. We’re not turning back now.”

“Never said anything about turnin’ back,” Lowry responded in surly tones. “Just tellin’ you what I’ve heard, that’s all.”

The trail grew dim, and once again Sam and Stovepipe had to search for it. This time it was the tall, lanky cowboy who found the tracks they were looking for.

There was no doubt now that they were headed straight for the Sweetwater Hills.

“Looks like there’s a heap of places to hide in those badlands,” Stovepipe said.

“Then it’s a good thing we’ve got you with us,” Lowry said. “Since you’re one of the gang, you can tell us how to find the rest of your bunch.”

Wilbur said, “I thought it was the Navajo who were responsible for what happened. Now you’re sayin’ it’s a gang of white outlaws? Sort of changin’ your tune, ain’t you, Lowry?”

Lowry snarled at him.

“Give me five minutes with a Bowie knife and I’d get the truth outta you, you short-growed little runt.”

Wilbur’s face flushed with anger as he said, “Blast it, I’m not that short! It just looks like it because I hang around with this beanpole here.”

He jerked a thumb at the grinning Stovepipe.

“Beanpole, eh? I ain’t sure I like that name. I’m just gettin’ used to Stovepipe.”

“Pipe down, all three of you,” Boyd warned. “Two Wolves, what do you think?”

“Your cattle are probably stashed in some canyon up there in the hills, all right,” Sam said. “And it won’t be easy to find.”

“You don’t know anything about it?”

Sam shook his head.

“I’m just following a trail, like you.”

“I’ve got a hunch you’re telling the truth.” Boyd silenced Lowry’s protest with a look before the segundo could even say anything. “Pete, give ’em back their guns.”

“Boss, that’s a mistake—” Lowry began.

“If it is, it’s my mistake to make!” Boyd said. “I still give the orders in this bunch.”

Lowry nodded.

“I never said you didn’t, John Henry.” With obvious reluctance, he turned in the saddle and motioned to the men who had taken charge of the weapons belonging to Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur. “Give ’em back their guns.”

Sam felt a little better once the familiar weight of the Colt was back in its holster, the Winchester was in the saddleboot under his left thigh, and his bowie knife was nestled in its sheath on his left hip. He knew the situation was still full of risk, but at least now he could fight if he had to.

“Let’s go,” Boyd said once the three men were armed again. The rancher added, “But just in case you’re trying to double-cross us, we’ll still be keeping a close eye on you and your friends, Two Wolves.”

“No double cross,” Sam said. “We’re on the same side.”

Lowry snorted.

“If that’s true, it’s the first time I’ve ever been on the same side as a damn redskin.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Sam told him with a smile. He didn’t have to like Lowry—that seemed pretty unlikely—but they might soon be fighting side by side, so it was a good idea if they could trust each other.

Several rugged mesas loomed between the riders and the hills. They would have to weave among those mesas to reach their destination, unless they went around and risked losing the trail ... because it appeared that the stolen herd had been driven through those big, flat-topped formations.

Sam cast occasional glances toward the tops of the mesas as the group started into the forest of rock. This would be a good spot for an ambush, he thought. Riflemen hidden atop one of those mesas would have a good vantage point.

But the sides of most of the formations appeared to be sheer. Men might be able to climb some of them, but it would be difficult.

Knowing that didn’t stop Sam from worrying. He had survived more than one bushwhack attempt already in the past eight or nine days. It might be pushing his luck to live through another.

“Where in blazes did the tracks go?” Lowry suddenly asked.

Sam studied the ground, then looked over at Stovepipe, who nodded.

“They’re gone, all right,” the range detective said. “Maybe we can pick ’em up on the other side of these mesas.”

“Let’s have a look,” Boyd said. “Those cows had to go somewhere.”

But when they emerged from the cluster of rock formations, half an hour of searching turned up no sign that the cattle had come this way, even to the keen eyes of Sam and Stovepipe.

“That’s just loco!” Wilbur said. “They went in there. They had to come out somewhere!”

“Maybe they doubled back and come out on the same side they went on,” Stovepipe suggested. “Might be a good idea if we was to split up, Mr. Boyd, and make a circle around the whole place.”

“Don’t let them talk you into that, John Henry,” Lowry warned. “If they split us up, it’ll be easier for somebody to jump us.”

Stovepipe frowned.

“All that mistrust is gettin’ a mite annoyin’,” he said.

“I’m not splitting my men,” Boyd decided. “But we’ll circle around these mesas like you said, Stewart. That sounds like a good idea to me. Your friend’s right about one thing ... Those cows have to be somewhere.”

With Sam and Stovepipe leading the way, watched hawkishly by Lowry, the group started around the area dotted with mesas. It was pretty extensive, so circling it took more than an hour.

They found the place where they had followed the tracks among the mesas, but that was all. By the time they got back to where they had started on the far side, Sam had to admit that something odd had happened.

The rustled cattle had gone in there, but they hadn’t come out.

“There’s only one answer,” he said.

“Yeah, I agree,” Stovepipe said.

“What are you talking about?” Boyd asked.

Stovepipe pointed at the sky with a thumb. Sam nodded in agreement with him.

“What the hell!” Lowry exploded. “You’re sayin’ those cows sprouted wings and flew away? Because that makes as much sense as thinkin’ they climbed one of these mesas.”

“We just need to look harder,” Sam said. “We missed something.”

Lowry snorted to show how much stock he put in that.

The tops of some of the mesas were probably a square mile in area, Sam thought, maybe even a little more than that. There might be enough grass growing on one of those to support a small herd of fifty head, plus the horses of the rustlers who had stolen them.

If he was right about the motive behind the rustling—that it was intended solely to stir up Boyd and the other ranchers in the area to the point where they would support a war against the Navajo—then the thieves wouldn’t care about the money they could make from selling the cows. They could let the stock starve on top of a mesa and still come out ahead.

That still left the question of how the rustlers could have gotten the cattle up there, but Sam figured if they found the right mesa, they would also find the answer. For now, all they could do was look.

And that depended on John Henry Boyd.

The rancher rubbed his jaw again as he frowned in thought. Finally, he nodded.

“Let’s take a closer look at all these mesas,” he said. He added, “And get your rifles out. I’ve got a bad feeling crawling around in my guts.”

Sam understood that. He had the same feeling.

The men rode around the base of each mesa as they came to it, looking for some sort of hidden trail. In some places, it was hard to get close because over the centuries huge slabs of rock had broken loose from the sides of the mesas and fallen around them.

It was possible some of those slabs might conceal the start of a trail, Sam thought. It wouldn’t have to be very wide. With only fifty cows to hide, the animals could be driven up single file if need be.

The sun blasted down, making the air so hot and dry it seemed to sear the lungs if a man took a deep breath. Sam was grateful for the shade provided by the hat he had bought back in Flat Rock. As the search continued, the sweating men became more impatient and frustrated.

Finally, Pete Lowry said, “This is crazy. There aren’t any cows on top of these mesas, John Henry. It just ain’t possible.”

“Then we got to admit them critters vanished into thin air,” Stovepipe said. “And I’m havin’ a hard time believin’ that.”

“So am I,” Boyd said. “We’ll keep looking.”

“It’s already so late we won’t be able to make it back to the ranch today,” Lowry pointed out.

“The boys we left there will be able to look after things. I want those cattle. More than that, I want whoever shot two of my punchers. They’re not gonna get away with that, by God.”

Lowry grumbled to himself but didn’t argue anymore.

Sam gazed toward one of the largest mesas, which sat about three hundred yards away. It rose some eighty feet to its table-like top. Slabs of red stone littered the ground around its base, and lightning-like cracks in the rock zigzagged their way up the walls in places.

Sam frowned. There was something about the mesa ...

“That’s it,” he said under his breath as understanding dawned inside him.

“What did you find, son?” Stovepipe asked as he brought his horse alongside Sam’s mount. The range detective kept his voice pitched low.

Equally quietly, Sam said, “Look at those cracks, Stovepipe. On some of them, the slope is gentle enough a cow could make it up them.”

“Yeah, but most places, they ain’t. I’m lookin’, but I don’t see one anybody could climb that goes all the way to the top.”

“But look at the line connecting one crack to the next one.”

“What line? I don’t see any—” Stovepipe stopped as his eyes narrowed. “Son of a gun. Is that a ledge?”

“I think so. It’s narrow enough that it’s hard to see, but it runs almost level over to another crack.”

“And there’s another one a mite higher up leadin’ to the next crack after that,” Stovepipe said. “They’re like steppin’-stones, with little ramps in between. You don’t notice the ledges because your eyes are fol-lowin’ the cracks.”

Sam nodded.

“That’s the way it looks to me. The cracks are more pronounced, so you can see them better.”

“That ain’t no natural formation. The cracks may be, but the ledges connectin’ ’em ain’t. They must go all the way around the mesa.”

“The Navajo probably carved them, no telling how long ago,” Sam said. “They could put lookouts up there to watch for their enemies, and they could fire arrows down or throw rocks off to ambush those enemies.”

“You reckon those ledges are wide enough for cows, or a man on horseback?”

“Only one way to find out,” Sam said as he lifted his reins.

Before he could heel his horse into motion, Pete Lowry said, “Hold on there, breed. Where do you think you’re goin’?”

Sam hesitated.

“I have an idea where the men we’re looking for might be,” he said. “But they’re probably watching us right now, and I don’t want them to realize that I’ve figured out their secret.”

“I don’t believe you,” Lowry said. “I still think this is some sort of trick.”

Boyd rode over and asked, “What’s going on here?”

Lowry nodded toward Sam.

“The ’breed says he’s figured it out. I think he’s just tryin’ to get away from us, though, so his friends can open fire on us.”

“That’s not true,” Sam said. “Look at that big mesa in front of me, Mr. Boyd. I think I see a trail leading up to the top.”

Boyd frowned.

“Where? I don’t see any trail, just a bunch of cracks like the whole thing’s about to come tumbling down in an avalanche.”

“I’ll bet it’s a lot more stable than it looks. I want to amble over there and take a closer look, but if the rustlers are up there, I don’t want them to realize that I know they’re there.”

Boyd nodded slowly.

“That makes sense, I reckon. Go ahead, Two Wolves ... but Stewart and Coleman stay here, and if any lead starts to fly, they’ll die before we do. You’ve got my word on that.”

When Sam hesitated again, Stovepipe said, “Go ahead, son. We’ll take that chance, won’t we, Wilbur?”

“Do we have any choice?” the redhead asked gloomily.

“Not a dang one,” Stovepipe said with a grin.

“Keep an eye on the top of the mesa,” Sam told Boyd. “If I was trying to set up an ambush, I wouldn’t tell you where it was coming from, now would I?”

“Likely not,” the rancher agreed, although Lowry still looked skeptical.

Sam started his horse toward the mesa, moving at a deliberate pace. Several of the Devil’s Pitchfork hands were still searching around the other mesas, so what he was doing didn’t look too suspicious ... he hoped.

Because he could feel eyes on him. The same instincts that had warned him of danger many times in his adventurous life were setting off alarm bells inside him now.

That warning was justified, too, because he was still a hundred yards from the base of the mesa when a rifle cracked and a bullet whistled past his ear.

Chapter 29

The hot breath of the slug was much too close for comfort. Sam leaned forward in the saddle and kicked his horse into a gallop as more shots blasted. Dirt and rocks spouted from the ground as bullets struck around him.

The closest cover was at the base of the mesa itself. The riflemen on top of the formation would have trouble firing straight down at him. The big slabs of fallen rock would give him some protection as well.

As he raced toward the mesa, Sam glanced over his shoulder at his companions. Stovepipe, Wilbur, Boyd, Lowry, and the other men from the Devil’s Pitchfork were scattering as bullets whined among them, too. The riders hunted cover as fast as they could.

One man wasn’t fast enough, though. He went backward out of the saddle as a slug smashed into him. One of his feet caught in the stirrup, and the panicky horse dragged him across the rough ground, causing his body to bounce grotesquely.

As Sam reached the rocks at the base of the mesa, he yanked his rifle from its sheath and swung down from the saddle. He dropped the reins and hoped the horse woudn’t run off too far.

Bringing the Winchester to his shoulder, Sam cranked off several rounds as fast as he could toward the top of the mesa. He had seen spurts of gunsmoke from up there and had a general idea where the ambushers were.

He didn’t expect to hit any of them, but with luck he could force them back for a second, which would give Stovepipe and the others more time to find shelter.

As slugs began to search for him, Sam ducked behind a chunk of sandstone that was taller than he was. Bullets smacked into the top of the slab, some drilling into the sandstone and others whining off as ricochets.

But none of them reached Sam, and that was all that mattered right now.

Sam slid along the rock, reached the corner of it, and snapped a couple more shots at the mesa’s rim, working the rifle’s lever swiftly between rounds.

Then he sprinted toward another rock that brought him closer to one of the cracks in the mesa wall.

When he reached cover again, he looked out over the flats in front of the mesa. The rest of the men who had come here with him were out of sight now, hidden behind boulders and some of the smaller rock formations that gave this landscape something of an alien look. Sam heard shots booming out from them as they returned the fire of the rustlers on top of the mesa.

While his companions were keeping the rustlers busy, Sam worked his way closer. When he reached one of the cracks, he saw that it ran deep enough into the rock to form a ledge angling upward. That ledge was wide enough for a couple of cows to ascend it.

Driving cattle up to the top of the mesa by this route would be difficult, and once the beasts were up there, getting them down would be even harder. But maybe the rustlers didn’t intend to bring them down, Sam thought. As he had reasoned out earlier, selling the stolen stock had never been the goal.

Once the Navajo had been moved out, the rustlers could leave those cattle up there to starve if they wanted to. Such cruelty wouldn’t be beyond men who had set out to start an Indian war.

Sam started up the crack in the rock. For several yards, the climb was an easy one. When it grew steeper, he came to one of the connecting, man-made ledges that were hard to see from a distance.

Up close like this, it was obvious that the path had been hewn out of the stone by hand. All the sharp edges had been rounded away by erosion, though, which indicated that long years, maybe even centuries, had passed since the work had been done.

Sam had heard legends about Old Ones, people who had been in this part of the world even before the Navajo, and he wondered if this path was some of their handiwork. Those Old Ones had disappeared mysteriously, sometime in the dim past, so if they had turned this mesa into a watchtower, obviously that hadn’t been enough to save them in the end.

The continuing racket of gunfire from above and below brought Sam out of his momentary reverie. The past might be fascinating, but the present was dangerous and needed his full attention.

He walked out onto the ledge, keeping an eye on the rim some seventy feet above him. After about fifty feet, he came to another of the zigzagging cracks and was able to climb it to the next man-made ledge.

As he moved higher and higher, his route carried him around the curve of the mesa, so he couldn’t see his companions anymore. He heard the shots, though, as the battle between the rustlers and the Devil’s Pitchfork crew continued.

Sam didn’t know how many men he would find on top of the mesa. It would have taken at least five or six to steal that herd and drive them out here, but once the cattle were hidden atop the mesa, fewer men would be needed to keep an eye on them. Some of the rustlers could have headed to town, leaving only a couple up there.

It had sounded like more than two rifles firing at him, however, and Sam figured there were at least four men he would have to deal with when he reached the top.

Those weren’t good odds. He would have felt a lot better if Matt had been here with him. Being outnumbered two-to-one didn’t mean much to the blood brothers. They had faced odds like that many times in their adventurous lives and were still alive and kicking.

But now that he had started up, there wasn’t much he could do except keep going. If he was able to come in behind the rustlers and get the drop on them, he could force them to surrender.

A sudden grating of rock somewhere above him made him jerk his head up.

Sam’s eyes widened as he saw a boulder almost as big as he was plummeting toward him.

He was on one of the ledges at the moment, so he threw himself into a dive that carried him out of the boulder’s path. It slammed into the ledge a few feet behind him as he landed. His momentum sent him sliding toward the brink of the curving ledge.

Sam had to drop his rifle to slap both hands against the sandstone and stop himself. Luckily the Winchester didn’t bounce off. The boulder rebounded from the ledge and fell the rest of the way to the ground, where it landed with a crash that raised a little cloud of dust.

Sam grabbed the rifle and scrambled to his feet. Obviously, the rustlers knew he was trying to climb the mesa, so he wouldn’t be taking them by surprise after all.

And if they could try to drop one boulder on him, probably they could make another attempt. He ran along the ledge toward the next crack in the rock. The mesa wall bulged out above it, so that would give him some protection.

His heart pounded as he climbed several feet up the sloping crack. He was safe here, but whether he retreated or forged ahead, as soon as he stepped out onto another of those open ledges, he risked having a boulder dropped on his head.

But he couldn’t stay here forever, Sam told himself. Boyd and his men might be able to lay siege to the mesa and starve out the rustlers, but they would be starving out Sam at the same time.

He looked up. The crack in which he had taken shelter became too steep after another ten feet for cattle and horses to use it as a trail ...

But a man could climb it, Sam thought.

A grim smile tugged at his mouth. It wouldn’t be easy—in some places the crack was almost vertical—but it could be done. And most importantly, the rustlers couldn’t get at him with either boulders or bullets while he was making the ascent.

He would need both hands, though, so he took off his belt and used it to rig a sling for the Winchester. When he had the rifle hung over his shoulder, he hurried along the slope until it turned upward at a steeper angle. Ignoring the ledge that had been cut into the rock, he started up the natural crack, crawling now because of the angle.

Somewhere above him, a man yelled, “Can you see him?”

“Blast it, no!” another man answered. “He’s found himself a hole somewhere!”

“Well, let him stay there,” the first man said. “Let him stay there and rot!”

Sam smiled again.

He continued climbing. The crack narrowed, grew steeper still, turned into a chimney. Sam pulled the Winchester around so that it hung in front of him, pressed his back against one side of the opening and his feet against the other, and worked his way up inch by inch.

After a while the strain set his muscles to trembling slightly. He slipped a little but caught himself before he fell.

There was nowhere for him to go except up, so he kept struggling to lift himself, again and again. Sharp places in the wall gouged his back through the buckskin shirt. He ignored the pain and continued climbing.

The shots would taper off, then flare up again. From down below, it would be very difficult for any of the men on the ground to get a clear shot at the rustlers on the mesa.

From the sound of it, though, Stovepipe, Boyd, and the others had found good cover for themselves, though, and continued throwing lead at the cattle thieves.

At the very least, that kept the rustlers occupied and gave Sam the chance he needed to make his way to the top.

The crack angled again, rather than going almost straight up. Sam stretched out in it to rest for a moment.

But not for too long, because the men who had come here with him were still at risk as long as they were trading shots with the rustlers. He had come to regard Stovepipe and Wilbur as friends, and the men from the Devil’s Pitchfork were allies, at least for the moment.

Sam moved the Winchester around to his back again and resumed the climb, once more proceeding on hands and knees. A few minutes later, he saw the end of the crack not far above him.

His first impulse was to climb out right away, but he stopped where he was instead and listened intently. He heard the shots coming from the other side of the mesa, but he heard something closer as well: a man clearing his throat.

He’d suspected that the rustlers might leave a man over here on guard, in the area where they had seen him last. If he just poked his head up without being careful about it, he would probably get a bullet through the brain.

Sam looked around and found a fist-sized chunk of sandstone. The guard was to his right, so he drew back his arm as much as he could in the narrow confines of the crack and threw the rock in that direction. It sailed up and out and came thudding down on the ground atop the mesa.

Sam followed the rock, moving fast.

As he emerged from the crack with the Winchester cradled in both hands, he threw himself forward on his belly. About twenty feet away, a man in range clothes was turning toward him. The rock had done its job and served as a distraction, causing the guard to take his attention off the crack for a second.

The rustler held a rifle, too, and it spat flame and lead as he hurried a shot at Sam. The bullet hit the ground well to Sam’s left.

Sam fired more deliberately, and his aim was true. The .44-40 round punched into the rustler’s midsection and doubled him over. The man dropped his gun and howled in pain as he clutched himself. He staggered to the side.

That took him too close to the edge. He let out a sudden scream as he toppled off into empty air. The scream continued for the couple of heartbeats it took him to fall all the way to the rocks next to the mesa.

As Sam scrambled to his feet, he heard the soggy thud of the rustler’s landing. That grim sound ended the scream.

He ran toward the other side of the mesa. With all the other shooting going on, the rest of the rustlers might not have noticed the shots Sam had traded with the guard, but he couldn’t count on that. He had to move fast while he still had the chance.

As he had suspected, the mesa had some grass growing on its top and even a few small bushes. Off to Sam’s right was a basin where the top of the mesa had sunk, creating a rock-lined pool that held water from the occasional rains.

Gathered around that pool were the cattle that had been stolen from John Henry Boyd’s ranch. They didn’t need to be fenced in. They wouldn’t get far from the water, and anyway, where would they go?

Beyond the pool was a rope corral made from a couple of lassos and some stakes pounded into the hard ground. Four horses were inside the corral. Since Sam had already killed one man, that meant there were three more rustlers up here.

He got instant confirmation of that a second later when three men emerged from behind the horses and charged toward him, guns blazing.

Chapter 30

Sam was outnumbered and the scrubby vegetation atop the mesa offered no protection.

So he angled toward the only cover he could find, the cattle clustered around the pool.

Bullets sang around him. He returned the fire as he ran, working the Winchester’s lever and snapping shots toward the rustlers.

One of the cows let out a bellow as a stray slug struck it. Sam ducked between two of the beasts. One of them swung its head and nearly hooked him with a horn. He bounced off the sturdy flank of the other cow.

Sam kept his head down as one of the rustlers shouted, “Where the hell did he go?”

“He’s in amongst the cattle!” one of the other men answered. “Spread out! We’ll circle them!”

Sam couldn’t afford to let that happen. He yanked his hat off his head and slashed right and left with it, swatting the rumps of several cows. At the same time he fired his Winchester one-handed into the air and let out a howl like a panther.

The cattle reacted as he hoped they would. The normally stolid beasts around him spooked at the racket and at being swatted, and in a herd of cattle, when one cow panicked, they all panicked.

The herd surged away from the pool in a full-on stampede, straight at the rustlers.

Even over the pounding of hooves, Sam heard the frightened yells that came from the three men as they tried to get out of the way.

He had his own scrambling to do, since he was in the midst of the cattle when they began to run. He leaped from side to side to avoid the lumbering beasts, but he was still pummeled.

If he fell, he would never get up again. The cattle would trample him to death. Sam knew that. He dropped his rifle, willing to lose the Winchester if it would save his life, and used both hands to grab the horns of a steer charging past him. The steel-spring muscles in his legs vaulted him onto the animal’s back.

Sam hung on for dear life.

With his legs clamped around the steer’s neck, Sam used his grip on the horns to twist the beast’s head. That forced it toward the edge of the stampeding herd.

He had lost track of the three rustlers, but he had more pressing worries at the moment. The steer began to buck.

Sam had heard that down in Texas, cowboys had started to have what they called rodeos, competitions that centered around ranch work. One of them was bull-riding, or so he had been told.

This was a steer, not a bull, but the ride was a thrilling and dangerous one anyway. Sam thought a couple of times that the steer was going to throw him off, but he managed to stay on until the animal reached the edge of the herd.

He let go of the horns and piled off, leaping desperately to put as much distance between himself and the stampede as possible. When he hit the ground, he rolled away fast and came up running.

Dust choked him, but at least none of the cattle ran over him. When he looked back, he saw that he was clear.

Now he could start looking for the rustlers again, he thought as he blinked grit out of his eyes and drew the Colt that had stayed thronged down in its holster.

The thing about a stampede on top of a mesa was that the cattle didn’t have very far they could go. When the leaders reached the edge, they began to turn, and the herd started to mill. Sam ran around the confusion, searching for the three men.

The first one he found wouldn’t ever steal any more cows. The man hadn’t been able to get out of the way, and the thundering hooves had pounded him into a gory mess that barely resembled anything human.

The second man had been more fortunate, but not much. Both of his legs were broken. His groans of agony led Sam to him.

But just like a broken-backed rattlesnake can still bite, this crippled rustler was dangerous. When he spotted Sam, he heaved himself up with one hand and lifted a revolver with the other. Flame geysered from the muzzle.

Sam flung himself aside and returned the fire. He didn’t have time for anything fancy. The rustler’s head snapped back as a red-rimmed hole appeared in his forehead and Sam’s bullet drilled into his brain.

Sam grimaced. He wanted to take at least one of the men alive so they could question him. Now that might not be possible.

He swung around looking for the third man, and as he did, the scrape of boot leather on rock warned him.

But not in time for him to get out of the way. The last rustler slammed into him from behind, driving him off his feet.

Sam went down with the man on his back. The rustler must have lost his gun in the chaos of the stampede, otherwise he would have just shot Sam. Instead he looped an arm around Sam’s throat from behind and started trying to choke the life out of him.

Sam tried to buck the rustler off, just as the steer had bucked under him. The rustler clung with the same tenacity Sam had, though.

Heaving himself up on hands and knees, Sam rolled, thinking that maybe he could break the man’s grip that way.

Instead the arm across his throat just pressed harder, cutting off his air as effectively as if it had been an iron bar.

Sam still had his gun. He struck behind him with it in an attempt to knock his attacker unconscious.

The rustler ducked his head and pressed his face into the back of Sam’s neck.

“I’m gonna kill you, redskin!”

Sam heard the harsh whisper, although it sounded muffled because of the roar of blood in his ears. His vision was beginning to blur as a red haze dropped over his eyes.

He had no choice.

He pushed the Colt’s barrel against the man’s leg and pulled the trigger.

The rustler screamed in his ear and let go of him. Sam arched his back, throwing the man to the side. He rolled away and came up in a crouch, holding the Colt ready to fire again if he needed to.

But all the fight had already gone out of the rustler, along with a great deal of blood. As the man screamed again, a crimson fountain shot into the air from the wound in his thigh. He pawed at it, but the blood just ran between his fingers like a river.

Sam knew his bullet had torn an artery. He had intended just to inflict a flesh wound, something to make the rustler let go, but now he saw that the man had only moments to live unless that bleeding could be stopped.

Sam leaped forward and slammed the Colt against the rustler’s head, knocking the man out. There was no time to waste in struggling with him.

He dropped the gun and pulled the man’s belt off, then wrapped it around the thigh as high as he could above the wound and pulled it tight. Slipping the Colt’s barrel into a loop he fashioned in the belt, he began twisting it.

As the belt tightened and cut into the flesh of the rustler’s leg, the gush of blood slowed. Sam used both hands to twist the Colt and draw the makeshift tourniquet even tighter. The blood stopped.

A grotesque rattle came from the man’s throat.

“Blast it, no!” Sam burst out. He held the belt tight with one hand on the gun and used the other hand to feel for a heartbeat. The rustler’s eyes were open and staring, and the muscles of his face were slack.

After a minute, Sam had to admit to himself that he wasn’t going to find a heartbeat. The fourth and final rustler on top of this mesa was dead.

Sam had just heaved a sigh of disgust when he heard a man’s voice call his name. He turned his head to look and saw Stovepipe Stewart running toward him, followed by Wilbur Coleman and John Henry Boyd.

“Sam, you all right?” Stovepipe asked as he pounded up. “Lord, that’s a lot of blood!”

“It’s all his,” Sam said. He released the tourniquet and pulled his gun loose from the dead man’s belt. “I was trying to wing him, but I nicked an artery instead.”

“I’ll say you did,” Wilbur put in. “Looks like he bled practically a whole lake.”

Weariness gripped Sam as he got to his feet.

“What about the rest of you?” he asked. “Was anybody hurt?”

“One of my riders, Ben Conroy, was killed,” Boyd said grimly. “Couple men got creased, but that’s all.” He looked around the mesa. “Any more of the varmints up here?”

“None breathing,” Sam told him. “There were four men with the cattle.”

“This is just about the craziest thing I ever saw,” Boyd went on. “Who’d be loco enough to drive cattle up a narrow little trail like that to the top of a mesa?”

“Somebody who knew the chances of you findin’ ’em would be mighty small,” Stovepipe said. “If it wasn’t for Sam’s eyes, likely we never would’ve spotted the way up here.”

Boyd looked at Sam and nodded. He waved a hand to indicate the cattle and the dead rustlers.

“I reckon this proves you didn’t have anything to do with that stock being stolen, Two Wolves. You wouldn’t have done what you did if you were part of this bunch.”

“If you check the bodies, you’ll see that they’re all white,” Sam pointed out. “Not Navajo.”

In his habitual gesture, Boyd rubbed his chin.

“Yeah, I reckon I was wrong about that, too,” he said.

“You ever seen this fella before, Mr. Boyd?” Stovepipe asked as he nodded to the man who had bled to death.

Boyd frowned.

“I don’t think I have.”

“I have,” Wilbur said. “I don’t know who he is, but I remember seein’ him in Flat Rock durin’ the past week or so.”

Stovepipe nodded and said, “I was just thinkin’ the same thing, pard. Let’s have a look at the others.”

“You won’t be able to tell much about one of them,” Sam warned. “He got caught in the stampede.”

“Got to pick him up with a shovel, eh?” Stovepipe hunkered on his heels next to the man Sam had shot in the head. “Well, we’ll let that one go. This one, though, I’ve seen him in town, too. Don’t you think, Wilbur?”

“Yeah, he looks familiar,” the freckle-faced puncher agreed.

“So the gang’s holed up in Flat Rock,” Boyd said. “We’ll go in there and clean out the whole place if we have to.”

“That won’t do any good,” Sam cautioned. “You don’t know who else is part of the bunch. What we need to do is figure out a way to draw them into the open.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Boyd said with obvious reluctance. “I know my boys, though, and they’re gonna want to go in shooting.”

“You’ll have to keep them from doing that.” Sam turned toward the rope corral, which had survived the stampede intact as the cows went around it. “I want to take a look at their horses. Maybe that’ll tell us something.”

“I was just thinkin’ the same thing,” Stovepipe said.

Together they examined the rustlers’ mounts. The brands were ones that Sam didn’t recognize, and neither did Boyd.

“That just means they didn’t come from any of the spreads around here,” the rancher said. “I figured as much.”

All four horses were unsaddled, but as Sam ran his hands over the flanks of a leggy roan, he said, “This one is hotter than the others. He’s been run hard fairly recently.”

“You reckon one of those fellas made a fast trip out here?” Stovepipe asked.

“That would mean the rustlers left three men to keep an eye on the cattle,” Sam said. “That sounds reasonable.”

“Then why’d the fourth man come out here all hell-for-leather?” Wilbur asked.

“To warn the other hombres that we were tryin’ to trail the stolen herd,” Stovepipe answered. “That the way it lays out to you, Sam?”

“Yeah. The men who tried to bushwhack me this morning hurried back to Flat Rock to tell their boss that I wasn’t dead. They must have seen the two of you join up with me, and then Mr. Boyd and his men came along and we all started trailing the cattle. The boss sent word to his men out here, hoping they’d get rid of us.”

“They jumped the gun a mite,” Stovepipe drawled.

“Yeah, one of them has a habit of doing that,” Sam said. He thought it was very likely that the man who had taken that first shot at him and Matt was dead now, one of the four men who had been killed here on top of the mesa.

“Getting those cows down off this mesa is gonna be a chore,” Boyd complained. “I’ll be damned if I’ll leave them up here, though. We’ll wait until morning and see if we can drive them back down that trail.”

“That’s up to you and your men,” Sam said. “Now that you’ve decided that Stovepipe and Wilbur and I are trustworthy after all, there’s something else we need to do.”

“What’s that?” Stovepipe asked.

Sam thought about Matt. The canyon where Caballo Rojo’s clan lived wasn’t very far away. They might not be able to reach it by nightfall, but he thought he could find it even after darkness had fallen.

“Let’s just say I want to go visit a sick friend.”

Chapter 31

This had been one of the longest days of Matt Bodine’s life.

He knew it had been hard on Elizabeth, too, but at least she had been in the shade part of the time. He had been baking in the blistering sun all day, tied to a stake. Standing there like that for hours had caused the wounds in his side to ache like a bad tooth.

But he could tell the bullet holes weren’t bleeding again, just hurting, and that was something to be thankful for, anyway.

They hadn’t really hurt Elizabeth, either, just forced her to sit beside Juan Pablo’s hogan and watch Matt’s torment. That was the only other good thing about this ordeal.

He looked over at her now and saw how her face was pale and drawn with the strain. He tried to summon up a smile to let her know that everything was all right, but he couldn’t quite manage it.

Things weren’t all right, though, and they both knew it. Juan Pablo and his followers intended to kill both of them. It was just a matter of time.

Juan Pablo had at least a dozen men backing his play. Matt didn’t know if Caballo Rojo was one of them, or if the clan headman was just staying out of this for the time being because he didn’t want Juan Pablo challenging him for leadership of everyone who lived in the canyon.

But the Navajo had been drifting in from their homes along the creek all day, gathering here to look at the captive white man, and some of them seemed very happy about it. The men had taken turns standing guard over Matt, although with his hands tied behind his back and his torso lashed to the stake, he wasn’t about to go anywhere.

He supposed it made them feel like they were accomplishing something to stand there clutching their old rifles and glaring at him.

Matt didn’t look directly at them. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of letting them see what bad shape he was really in. The sun had baked his brain until his vision was fuzzy, his thoughts were clouded, and despair gripped his heart. He felt like the heat had leached every bit of moisture out of his body. His tongue was swollen and his mouth as dry as cotton.

His head drooped forward, but he wouldn’t allow himself to pass out. Even though he was helpless, he wanted to know what was going on around him.

Because of that, he saw movement as someone approached him late that afternoon. The sun had started its slide toward the western horizon, which gave him a certain amount of blessed relief although the canyon still felt like an oven.

Through slitted eyes, Matt watched as Juan Pablo walked up to him, as haughty, cruel, and arrogant as if he were old Manuelito come back to life.

“Bodine,” Juan Pablo said. “This day has taught you that the Navajo are still a proud people.”

“I never ... doubted that.” Matt had to force the words out through his parched throat and mouth and past blistered lips. “But there is no pride ... in cruelty. You have ... nothing to be proud of ... Juan Pablo.”

The man’s face darkened in anger. He stepped closer and backhanded Matt viciously across the face.

The blow brought a cry of alarm and outrage from Elizabeth. She started to get to her feet, but Juan Pablo’s wife, who stood near her, clamped a hand on her shoulder and forced her back down on the ground.

“For too many years, my people have done what the white man told them to do,” Juan Pablo said. “They have treated us like animals! They have told themselves they are being generous to us by allowing us to live on our own land, while at the same time they try to take more and more of that land away from the Diné. But soon they will all be gone. We will drive them out.”

“A couple dozen of you?” Matt asked. “How are you going to do that? You won’t stand a chance.”

“More men will come, from all over this land you white men call the Four Corners.” Juan Pablo sneered. “As if your states truly mean anything. They are false boundaries.” He swept an arm around him. “Everything, as far as a man can ride on a good pony, belongs to the Diné. And when the other clans hear that we are driving the whites from our midst, they will come to help us. The uprising will spread and soon will be complete. Then all those who are not Diné will either leave ... or die.”

There was a slim chance Juan Pablo was right, at least partially, Matt thought. He had studied enough history to know that most revolutions started small. The ones that succeeded grew until they reached the point where they couldn’t be stopped.

But that wouldn’t happen here. It couldn’t. There weren’t enough Navajo to stand up to the army. Even if Juan Pablo was able to get all the clans to rise in rebellion, the cavalry would come in and crush them. Many of the men would be slaughtered, and the rest would be rounded up and probably forced back to Bosque Redondo with their families.

It would be a tragedy all the way around.

Juan Pablo was too worked up to see that. His eyes glowed with the fervent belief of a would-be messiah. He saw himself as the one who would lead his people to well-deserved glory.

Instead, he would just lead them to death, Matt knew.

It wouldn’t do any good to say that. Juan Pablo was long past the point where he could hear it.

Still, Matt had to try. He said, “If you let us go, Miss Fleming and I will try to help your people. We’ll tell everyone that the Navajo land should be left to the Navajo.”

Juan Pablo shook his head.

“You think those who have built the town of Flat Rock will abandon it? You think the white ranchers who have driven their cattle onto our land will take them away?”

He was right about that, Matt thought bleakly. Once settlers had moved into an area, they hardly ever gave it up. The government would have to force them to do so, and Matt didn’t figure there was much sentiment in Washington for something like that.

“There’s no reason you can’t all learn to live together,” he said.

A bark of fierce laughter came from Juan Pablo.

“Foolishness,” the Navajo declared. “The rattlesnake and the scorpion are more trustworthy than the white man.”

Matt sighed. He was at the end of his rope. He just wished there was some way he could save Elizabeth.

Maybe Caballo Rojo wouldn’t allow Juan Pablo to kill her. The headman had let her stay here in the canyon and try to teach the children. He must have thought she was doing some good for his people.

But as the sun dipped below the peaks to the west and a red glare filled the sky, Matt looked at Juan Pablo and saw the fanatical glare on the man’s face.

Caballo Rojo was no longer the most powerful man in this canyon.

Juan Pablo was, and he would delight in exercising that power.

Suddenly, one of the Navajo men came running toward them, shouting in what sounded like alarm. Juan Pablo swung around sharply.

The words flowed swiftly as the newcomer reported to Juan Pablo. Matt couldn’t follow any of what was being said.

But he didn’t like the cruel smile on Juan Pablo’s lips as the man turned back to him.

“Your friend has returned,” Juan Pablo said. “He approaches the canyon now, with two more white men.”

Matt’s heart sank. Under any other circumstances, he would have been very happy to hear that Sam was back. Now, though, his blood brother was riding into a trap and didn’t know it. If there was just some way to warn him ...

Matt opened his mouth to shout. He didn’t know if the sound would carry beyond the canyon walls, but he could try, anyway.

Before he could make a sound, Juan Pablo stepped forward and struck swiftly with the rifle he held. He rammed the butt into Matt’s stomach, causing Matt to gasp and double over as much as the ropes would allow.

Juan Pablo brought the rifle up and crashed the stock against Matt’s jaw. The brutal blow drove Matt’s head back against the thick stake to which he was tied. The double impact sent red explosions cascading through Matt’s brain.

When those explosions faded, nothing was left except an all-enveloping blackness.

Chapter 32

The sun was down by the time Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur reached the Navajo canyon, but the western sky was still filled with a reddish-gold glow.

During the ride down here from the mesa where the rustlers had been holed up, Sam and Stovepipe had discussed the situation and agreed that everything they had discovered so far supported the theory they had put together.

“Big question is, who’s behind it,” Stovepipe said. “Got to be somebody in Flat Rock.”

Sam nodded.

“There’s another big question,” he said. “Where are those rifles?”

“Also in Flat Rock, or somewhere close by. That’d be my guess, anyway. I don’t reckon the boss would want them too far away from him until he’s ready to try deliverin’ ’em to the Navajo again.”

“I wonder how come he’s waited this long,” Wilbur put in.

Stovepipe pointed a thumb at Sam.

“I reckon that’s because of our new pard here.”

“Me?” Sam said.

“Yeah, you and your friend Bodine. You spooked the fella who’s in charge of this bunch. He wanted to make sure you weren’t gonna cause too much trouble before he tried deliverin’ the guns again. That’s why folks keep tryin’ to shoot you.” Stovepipe frowned. “You know you might as well’ve painted a big ol’ target on your back, the way you rode into Flat Rock and started pokin’ around.”

Sam chuckled.

“Well, I was trying to stir up a hornet’s nest,” he said. “I guess I succeeded.”

“I’ll say you did,” Wilbur agreed.

Sam pointed to the mouth of the canyon up ahead on their right.

“That’s where we’re headed ,” he told his two companions.

A worried frown appeared on Wilbur’s face.

“Those Indians aren’t gonna try to lift our hair, are they?” he asked.

“They were friendly enough when I left,” Sam said.

That was only partially true, he thought. Caballo Rojo had tolerated the presence of the blood brothers, and Juan Pablo had barely contained his hostility toward them, only because his clan headman said so.

Sam had been gone for several days, and he knew that things could have changed during that time. But he hoped that he and his companions could ride into the canyon without putting their lives in too much danger.

Anyway, Matt was there, so Sam didn’t have much choice in the matter. He had to find out how his blood brother was doing.

They rode into the mouth of the canyon. Sam glanced up at the spots on the walls where sentries were usually posted. He didn’t see anybody, but that didn’t concern him greatly. The light was growing dimmer, and anyway, the Navajo were seen only when they wanted to be seen.

Sam looked along the creek. The first of the hogans wouldn’t be visible until they were deeper in the canyon. He listened and heard the bleating of sheep somewhere up ahead. That was a perfectly normal sound, and he probably would have thought something was wrong if he hadn’t heard it.

But at the same time, his nerves had grown taut. Something was wrong, he realized, although he didn’t know what it was.

Stovepipe must have shared some of the same instincts. The lanky range detective began, “I’m startin’ to get a bad feelin’ about—”

He didn’t have a chance to finish. Men suddenly rushed out of the brush on both sides of the riders. Sam twisted in the saddle to see who was attacking them. He had time to recognize the Navajo clothing, then one of the men reached up in an attempt to grab him and haul him off his horse.

Sam kicked the man in the chest and knocked him away. He started to yank his mount around, calling to Stovepipe and Wilbur as he did so.

“Get out of the canyon!” he told them. “Back the way we—”

Something crashed into the back of his left shoulder and made him slump forward over the neck of his horse. Sam thought at first he’d been hit by an arrow, but then he realized that would have been a sharper pain. From the way his arm had gone numb, he figured out that he’d been clouted by a club.

The Navajo warriors swarmed around the three riders. Wilbur drew his gun, but a club knocked it out of his hand before he could fire. Men grabbed Stovepipe and dragged him off his horse. Sam found himself hauled to the ground as well.

Heavily outnumbered as they were, Sam knew their chances of winning this fight were slim. He had no idea why Caballo Rojo’s men were attacking them, but that answer could wait for later.

Right now he just wanted to break free and get out of here.

That wasn’t fated to happen. Another club smashed into the back of his knees and made his legs collapse under him. Men pummeled and kicked him as he went to the ground.

Sam couldn’t see Stovepipe and Wilbur any more, but he doubted if they were faring any better. He could hear the commotion as the struggle continued nearby.

Sam grabbed an attacker’s leg and heaved, upending the man. That gave him a little breathing room. He launched a kick of his own and landed it solidly in another man’s groin. As the Navajo warriors fell back for a second, Sam rolled onto hands and knees and started to lever himself to his feet.

Before he could get up, a club struck him in the back of the head, sending him sprawling to the ground again. He landed with his face in the reddish dirt. The taste of it filled his mouth. He felt consciousness slipping away from him and tried desperately to hang on to it, but the effort was doomed.

The last thing he was aware of before oblivion claimed him was the brutal thud of moccasin-shod feet landing on his ribs.

Red light flickered and glared against Matt’s eyelids, gradually rousing him from the stupor that gripped him. He groaned as he moved his head from side to side in an attempt to shake loose some of the cobwebs from his brain.

The movement was a mistake. It made Matt feel like he was spinning crazily through a hellish void. When he forced his eyes open and saw flames leaping up in front of him, that only reinforced the feeling.

But it was just a campfire, he realized after a moment. He sagged against the ropes binding him to the post. His captors had built a fire that lit up the area in front of Juan Pablo’s hogan.

And he was no longer the only prisoner, Matt saw to his horror.

A few yards away, Sam Two Wolves sprawled motionless on the ground. For a terrible few seconds, Matt thought his blood brother was dead.

Then he saw the slow rise and fall of Sam’s chest and knew that he was still alive. Relief flooded through Matt.

It was tempered by concern, though, because Sam was unconscious and Matt couldn’t tell what had happened to him. Sam might be badly wounded and dying even as Matt stood there staring at him.

Two men Matt had never seen before lay near Sam. Both were white and looked like cowboys. They appeared to be out cold, too. All three men had their hands tied behind their backs.

Matt looked around for Elizabeth and didn’t see her. She might be in Juan Pablo’s hogan, he thought. Juan Pablo wasn’t visible, either, but two of his followers stood nearby, holding rifles and scowling at Matt and the other prisoners.

Sam groaned, causing Matt’s attention to snap back to him. After a moment, Sam shook his head and blinked his eyes open. He winced as the garish light from the fire struck his face. Then he lifted his head a little and started to look around.

“Over here, Sam,” Matt called softly.

Sam muttered something Matt couldn’t make out. He blinked again as he stared toward the post where Matt was tied.

“Matt?” he said. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” A grim smile curved Matt’s mouth. “I’d come over there and let you loose, but—”

“You’re not going to say that you’re a little tied up at the moment, are you?”

“I was thinkin’ about it, yeah.”

“I can see that. Is that Juan Pablo’s hogan?”

“Yeah.”

“I take it this is his doing?”

One of the Navajo guards spoke sharply in his native tongue. He gestured with the rifle, and Matt knew he was telling them to be quiet.

Matt ignored the guard and said, “That’s right. He plans to lead the clan in an uprising and try to get the other clans to join in. But they won’t stand a chance.”

“They might with nearly five hundred new Springfields to lure the other clans into joining them,” Sam said.

Matt’s eyes widened.

“Five hundred Springfields?” he repeated. “What are you talkin’ about, Sam?”

“If Juan Pablo is the leader of this would-be rebellion, then he has some white allies. The gang that bushwhacked us in the first place stole a shipment of rifles bound for Fort Defiance. They were about to deliver them to the Navajo when you and I came along and fouled up the works.”

Matt struggled to wrap his mind around what Sam was telling him.

“You know this for a fact?” he asked.

“At the moment, I don’t have any proof, but I’m reasonably sure the theory is correct.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Matt said. “Who are those two rannihans with you?”

Before Sam could answer, the guard who had tried to get them to stop talking earlier stepped closer and aimed a kick at Sam’s head. Sam rolled out of the way and pulled his legs around in a sudden move, sweeping the Navajo’s legs out from under him. The man let out a startled yell and then hit the ground.

“Maybe not the smartest thing you’ve ever done,” Matt said as the guard scrambled back to his feet with murder in his dark eyes.

At that moment, Juan Pablo stepped out of the hogan. He barked an order at the guard, who stopped in his tracks and then moved back with obvious reluctance.

Juan Pablo stood over Sam and said, “When the time comes for you to die, half-breed, I will kill you. You betray your blood by siding with the white men. You no longer deserve to live.”

“What about you?” Sam demanded. “You’re liable to get a bunch of your people killed if you go through with your plans.”

“And those who are left will mourn their deaths. But the people who live will be free. The white men will be gone.”

Matt said, “It’ll never happen, Juan Pablo. The government won’t let it. They’ll send in the army to wipe you out.”

“This is our land. We know how to fight here better than the white man’s army.”

Much as Matt hated to admit it, Juan Pablo had a point there. The Navajo knew this country, knew how to survive here, knew how to strike hard against the enemy and then hide. Normally a peaceful people, content to farm and hunt, to weave blankets and make jewelry, when aroused they could be fierce, implacable foes. Kit Carson had learned that, back in the old days.

Rooting them out of this wasteland and rounding them up wouldn’t be easy ... but the army had almost limitless resources to do so.

That wasn’t the case with the Navajo. They could fight a war and deal out plenty of damage ... but in the end they would lose.

Juan Pablo didn’t want to hear that. So Matt asked him, “What are you going to do with us?”

“You will all die, of course. When the sun comes up tomorrow morning, you will be killed.” Juan Pablo’s lips curved in a cruel smile. “You will be the first to die from the weapons that will save our people.”

“What do you—” Matt began, but before he could finish the question, Juan Pablo turned and strode away, taking the guards with him and ignoring the prisoners now as if they were no longer worthy of his notice.

It didn’t really matter. Matt had a hunch he knew what Juan Pablo meant by that threat.

Sam did, too. He said, “The Springfields. Juan Pablo’s going to get those army rifles tonight.”

Matt nodded.

“Yeah, that’s the way it sounded to me, too. We’ve got to get loose and find a way to stop him. He’s gonna get a lot of people killed for no good reason.”

As if to punctuate Matt’s statement, a swift rataplan of hoofbeats sounded in the night, fading as the riders moved away.

“That’s Juan Pablo and some of his men going to take delivery on those rifles,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” Matt agreed. “And they’ll bring ’em right back here so Juan Pablo can have his little firing squad in the morning.”

One of the men who had been brought in with Sam began to stir. He lifted his shaggy head and shook it. After a moment his bleary-eyed gaze landed on Sam.

“Thought you said these Navajo were friends of yours, Sam.”

“I said they didn’t kill us and they let Matt stay here to recover from those bullet holes. That’s a big difference from being our friends.”

“Yeah, I reckon.” The man looked at Matt with his deep-set eyes. “You’d be Matt Bodine?”

“That’s right,” Matt said. “Who are you?”

“A fella who wishes we’d gotten a mite more hospitable reception. Name’s Stovepipe Stewart.”

Sam said, “And this other fella is Wilbur Coleman.” Sam lowered his voice. “They’re range detectives, Matt. They’ve been helping me track down the men who bushwhacked us and figure out what it’s all about.”

“Stolen Springfield rifles, I’m bettin’,” Matt said.

“You’d win that bet,” said Stovepipe. “How’s Wilbur?”

“He’s breathing,” Sam said, “but he’s still out. I guess they dragged the two of you out of your saddles and walloped you with clubs, too.”

“Yeah. From the way my ol’ noggin feels, they got in some good licks, too.” Stovepipe rolled his shoulders to get some of the kinks out. “Well, you boys tell me what’s goin’ on, why don’t you?”

“Juan Pablo intends to murder us at dawn,” Matt said.

“By shooting us with those Springfields,” Sam added. “Which means he’s going to get them tonight.”

“Dang it. I guess the big boss in Flat Rock decided he didn’t need to wait no longer. Or maybe this here Juan Pablo fella sent word to him that he’s got all four of us hogtied, so he’s anxious to get rid of us while he’s got the chance.” Stovepipe sighed. “I wish we had ol’ John Henry and the boys from the Devil’s Pitchfork with us again right about now.”

“All right,” Matt said. “One of you is going to have to explain all that.”

For the next five minutes, both Sam and Stovepipe filled him in on everything that had happened since the blood brothers split up, along with explaining the theory they had worked out about some gang trying to start an Indian war so they could take over after the army forced the Navajo out of the Four Corners.

“That makes sense,” Matt said when they were finished. “Do you know who’s behind it?”

“No clue,” Stovepipe said.

Sam added, “We figure they’re operating out of the settlement, but we don’t even know that for sure.”

Wilbur groaned and started to come around. Stovepipe scooted over closer to him and said quietly, “Take it easy, pard. You’re all right. We’re sorta between a rock and a hard place at the moment, but we’ll get out of it.”

“Speakin’ of rocks, I feel like an avalanche landed on top of me,” Wilbur said. “And I’m tied up, blast it!”

“We all are,” Stovepipe told him dryly.

“Well, when we get loose, we’re gonna have a heap of score-settlin’ to do, that’s all I can say!”

“You’re right about that, pard—”

Stovepipe broke off with a sharp intake of breath as he glanced toward Matt.

A second later, Matt knew why the range detective had reacted that way. He heard the shuffle of soft footsteps behind him, and then he felt the touch of cold steel against his skin.

Chapter 33

Matt’s breath froze in his throat for a second as he felt the knife press against his wrist.

Then the blade moved, and the tug that came on one of the ropes binding him told him that the keen edge was sawing through it.

The rope parted and fell away. Whoever was wielding the knife moved on to one of the others and started cutting through it.

Matt’s hands had gone numb from being tied so tightly. As the blood began to rush back into his fingers, he felt like they were being stabbed with thousands of tiny pins.

Painful though it might be, it was a good feeling.

“I don’t know who’s back there,” he said in a half-whisper, “but I’m sure obliged to you for turning me loose.”

“I think it’s Juan Pablo’s wife,” Sam said. “I couldn’t see very well in the shadows, but it certainly looked like a woman.”

The last of the ropes came loose. After the ordeal of that long, blistering day he had gone through, he almost fell without their support.

He caught himself and half-turned, reaching out to grasp the stake to which he had been tied. Bracing himself with that grip, he looked into the stolid face of the Navajo woman who had fed him and tended to his wounds.

“Gracias,” he told her. Maybe she would understand his gratitude if he expressed it in Spanish. He waved his free hand toward the other prisoners. “Can you cut my friends loose, too?”

Before Juan Pablo’s wife could even take a step in their direction, Sam said, “Matt, somebody’s coming!”

Matt bit back a curse. He straightened and grabbed the knife away from the woman. She let him take it, willingly.

“Better get back in the hogan,” he said. “You don’t want them knowing you helped us, whoever it is.”

She might not have understood the words, but fear was universal. She turned and scurried into the earthen dwelling, the long skirt rustling around her legs as she moved.

Matt heard voices coming closer. There wasn’t time to cut Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur loose from their bonds before the men got there.

So, clutching the knife, Matt broke into a shambling run that carried him around the hogan and out of the circle of light cast by the fire.

He leaned against the hogan to catch his breath. Even that momentary burst of action had winded him.

As he stood there, he heard startled yells from the returning guards when they realized he was gone. The men shouted what sounded like questions at Sam and the other two prisoners, who didn’t respond.

At any moment now, they would come searching for him, Matt thought. He drew himself deeper into the shadows behind the hogan and waited.

The angry voices split up, which was a lucky break for Matt. As weak as he was, he couldn’t have fought two men at once. He knew he’d be doing good to deal with one of the guards.

His fingers tightened on the handle of the knife as one of the men came around the hogan toward him. They probably thought he had fled, abandoning the others, and wouldn’t expect to find him lurking so close by.

The man’s footsteps thudded on the ground. Matt saw him loom up out of the darkness.

He struck without warning as the guard stepped past him, bringing down the butt end of the knife’s handle against the back of the Navajo’s head. The blow drove the man to his knees. Matt kicked him in the back and sent him sprawling. His rifle clattered on the ground.

Matt sprang forward and grabbed the weapon. A shot might rouse others along the creek, so he used the stock to knock the guard out cold.

Panting from the exertion, Matt turned from the unconscious man just in time to see the other guard charging at him from the shadows.

He still had hold of the rifle, so he thrust it out in front of him like a spear. The second Navajo’s momentum carried him into the barrel, which dug deep into his belly and doubled him over. Matt stepped forward and brought his knee up, catching the man under the chin.

The guard went down, just as unconscious as his companion.

Matt fell against the hogan. Battling the two men had taken every bit of his strength.

But he had to summon up more from somewhere, he told himself, because Sam and the two range detectives were still prisoners. With a groan, Matt pushed himself away from the hogan and started around it at a shambling run.

He emerged into the firelight and was almost at the entrance when Elizabeth Fleming ran out of the hogan and almost collided with him. She grabbed his arm to steady herself and exclaimed, “Oh!”

“Are you ... all right?” Matt asked, still breathless and dizzy.

“Yes, Josefina just untied me.”

Matt had to think for a second to remember that Josefina was the name of Juan Pablo’s wife. He had heard it used only occasionally.

From the ground nearby, Sam asked, “Matt, what happened to those two guards?”

“They’re both ... knocked out ... for now.”

“Better cut us loose while you got the chance,” Stovepipe said.

“Give me the knife,” Elizabeth suggested. “You look like you’re about to fall down, Matt.”

“Feel like it ... too.” He pressed the knife into her hands. “Be careful, but ... don’t waste any time.”

As Elizabeth took the knife and knelt beside Sam, Matt saw movement from the corner of his eye and turned to look toward the hogan’s entrance. He saw the woman emerging from the dwelling with her arms full of gunbelts and holstered revolvers.

“Son of a gun!” Matt said as he recognized his own twin Colts. “They were ... hidden in there ... the whole time!”

The woman practically dumped the weapons into his hands. He staggered a little under their weight.

When Matt turned toward the prisoners again, he saw that Elizabeth had succeeded in freeing Sam. His blood brother leaped to his feet and flexed his hands a few times to get the blood flowing in them again.

“Give me my gun,” he said as he came over to Matt.

Sam took his gunbelt and strapped it around his hips. Stovepipe was free by then, and he hurried over to retrieve his revolver as well, followed by Wilbur.

Matt felt strength flow back into him as he buckled on the pair of Colts. It might not be real—the return of his guns had buoyed his spirits, and that could account for the fresh energy—but for now he would take it.

“I’m not sure what’s goin’ on here,” he said, “but it sure does feel good to be free again.”

“You can thank Josefina for that,” Elizabeth said. She still clutched the knife, which Matt now recognized as Sam’s bowie. “It was her idea to cut you loose and to untie me.”

“Why would she betray her husband like that?” Sam asked as he took the knife from Elizabeth and slid it into the sheath attached to his gunbelt.

With a grim little smile, Elizabeth said, “It was either that or cut my throat, and don’t think she didn’t consider doing that instead.”

“But why?” Matt asked.

“She freed us so you can take me out of the canyon and get me far away from Juan Pablo.”

“Oh,” Matt said as understanding dawned on him.

“What’re you talkin’ about?” Wilbur said. “You mean—Oh, shoot!”

His face was already red in the firelight. It became more so as he flushed.

“Yes, he was going to take me as a second wife once his armed uprising succeeded. Josefina doesn’t want that. So she thought that if she turned you loose, you’d escape and take me with you.”

“She was right about that,” Matt said. “Where are our horses?”

Elizabeth took hold of his arm.

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

The group hurried along the creek for a quarter of a mile, then Elizabeth led them to a brush corral where a number of horses milled around. It was dark away from the fire in front of Juan Pablo’s hogan, but Elizabeth had been here in the canyon for months and knew her way around, even when she had to navigate by starlight.

“Our horses still have the saddles on them, Matt,” Sam said, “but I don’t see yours.”

“That’s all right,” Matt told him. “I can ride bareback if it means getting out of here.” He paused. “We have to stop Juan Pablo, Sam. If he gets his hands on those rifles, innocent folks will die.”

“I know,” Sam agreed. “But I’m not sure where we’ll find the place the gang plans to deliver them.”

Stovepipe said, “I reckon if it was me, I’d head for the spot where they planned to turn ’em over to the Navajo the first time ... that bluff where you two boys got bushwhacked to start this fandango.”

Matt and Sam exchanged a glance and nodded to each other.

“It’s worth a try,” Sam said. “Let’s get mounted up. Elizabeth, you can take one of the saddled horses. I’ll ride bareback, like Matt.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Sam told her with a grin. “Remember, I’m half-Cheyenne. I was riding without a saddle almost before I could walk.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Matt said.

The horses inside the corral were nervous, but Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur were adept at handling them. They moved the brush gate aside and led out the animals they wanted, and a moment later all five riders were mounted.

“We’ll have to get past the guards at the mouth of the canyon,” Sam said. “They’re not expecting trouble from in here—”

As if to give the lie to his words, shouts of alarm suddenly rang out, echoing back from the canyon walls. The two guards Matt had knocked out must have regained consciousness.

“Blast it!” Matt exclaimed. “I should’ve cut their throats, or at least gagged them!”

“I’m glad you didn’t kill them,” Elizabeth said. “Juan Pablo is leading them into trouble, but they’re not bad people at heart.”

Stovepipe said, “No offense, ma’am, but I reckon they’ll ventilate us if they get half a chance.”

“We’ll have to try not to give them a chance,” Sam said. He urged his horse into a gallop. “Let’s go!”

Chapter 34

Zack Jardine tossed back the glass of whiskey and thumped the empty onto the table.

“Angus should have been back by now,” he said with a dark scowl. “Something happened out there.”

Dave Snyder, Joe Hutto, and Doyle Hilliard were sitting at the table with Jardine. Hilliard, who was Braverman’s best friend, leaned forward and with a worried frown on his face asked, “You want me to take a ride out to that mesa, Zack? I can find out what’s goin’ on.”

Jardine considered the suggestion for a moment, then shook his head.

“No. The cattle don’t matter that much. We’re gonna get those rifles in the hands of the Navajo tonight, and by this time tomorrow, the war will be started and nothing can stop it.”

Hilliard, Snyder, and Hutto looked surprised. This was the first they had heard about delivering the rifles to the Indians tonight. They had to be wondering how the arrangements had been made, since Jardine had been right here in Flat Rock all day.

Jardine smiled faintly at that thought. He liked to keep a few of his cards close to the vest, and one of them was the fact that he had a partner in this enterprise, a partner none of the other men knew about.

That partner was the one who had ridden out and met with Juan Pablo earlier today, after Two Wolves had formed that unlikely alliance with the Devil’s Pitchfork crew.

When Jardine had heard about that, he had known that it was time to make their biggest move yet in this game. Being cautious was all well and good, but at some point decisive action was needed.

This was that point.

“Go down to the Mexican’s place and get the wagon ready,” Jardine went on. “Bring it to the alley behind the saloon, and we’ll go get the guns.”

His men didn’t know where the rifles were hidden. Only Jardine and his partner knew that, because they had unloaded the crates after the first attempt to deliver the rifles to the Navajo.

The time for secrecy was over, though.

“All right, boss,” Snyder said. “Do we get all the other fellas who are in town together?”

“That’s right. We’ll all ride out with the wagon.”

That was only seven or eight men. The other members of the gang were either wounded or out at the mesa with the rustled cattle.

But that ought to be enough, Jardine told himself. Nobody knew what was really going on here, so they couldn’t prepare for it.

The three men hurried out of the Buckingham Palace. Jardine poured himself another drink and leaned back in his chair to enjoy it. His gaze roamed across the room and lingered on the beautiful Lady Augusta Winslow, who stood at the bar talking to one of the bartenders.

Jardine’s eyes narrowed. Once he was the King of the Four Corners, that lovely but stuck-up British bitch would be his for the taking. She wouldn’t dare turn him down. He had made a few advances already, only to be politely rebuffed.

She would learn, he thought. He would do the teaching, and it would be a lesson Lady Augusta would never forget.

He’d intended to sip the whiskey this time, but thinking about what he would do with the Englishwoman made him swallow the fiery stuff fast. He stood up and went out the side door, then along the alley to the back of the building.

His men showed up with the wagon about ten minutes later, with Hilliard at the reins. Jardine climbed to the seat and took over the team, forcing Hilliard aside. He was the only one who knew where he was going.

He drove along the back alley behind the buildings along Flat Rock’s main street. When he came to one of the larger buildings, he brought the vehicle to a stop and got down. The building was made of boards freighted in from Phoenix. The floor sat on piers, so there was a crawl space underneath it.

Jardine went up some steps to a small rear porch and knocked on the door there. A moment later it opened and a man stepped out.

“It’s time,” Jardine said. “Let’s get those rifles out.”

“Of course,” Noah Reilly said. “I’ll be glad to get them out of here.”

Reilly came down the steps, took a key from his pocket, and used it to unfasten a padlock on a short door that opened into the crawl space under the general store. He stepped aside so Jardine could reach inside and grasp the handle on the end of the nearest crate.

It hadn’t been easy for the two of them to wrestle those crates into and out of the crawl space, but Reilly was stronger than his small stature would indicate. Still, Jardine was glad that after tonight they wouldn’t have to do this anymore.

Jardine grunted with effort as he slid the first crate out.

“Load it up,” he told his men. He reached into the crawl space for another.

He supposed his men were surprised to find out that he and Reilly were working together. That wouldn’t be the case much longer, Jardine thought. Reilly had some idea that once they were successful, he would be the power behind the throne, so to speak, because the whole plan had been his idea to start with.

Jardine wasn’t going to let that happen. Once the Navajo had launched their bloody uprising and the army came in, Reilly wouldn’t be any more use. Jardine could get rid of him without jeopardizing anything, and that was exactly what he planned to do.

Of course, Jardine thought as he pulled another crate out into the alley, Reilly might have the same thing in mind for him. If that was the case, the little storekeeper was going to be mighty disappointed.

But not for long, since he’d be dead soon.

The other men didn’t say anything. They just lifted the crates of rifles and slid them over the lowered tailgate into the wagon. Curious or not, they knew to keep their mouths shut.

“Can you find the rendezvous point in the dark?” Reilly asked Jardine when all the guns were loaded.

“Don’t worry about that,” Jardine said. “I know these parts better than you do. We’ll be there a couple of hours before dawn.”

“Juan Pablo should be waiting for you.” Even in the gloom of the alley, starlight reflected off the lenses of Reilly’s spectacles. “And in another month or so, we’ll be well on our way to being rich men.”

Jardine grunted.

“Can’t be too soon to suit me,” he said.

“That’s true for me as well. I’ve spent my entire life working for other men. But not much longer.”

Jardine tried not to grin. Taking orders was really all that little varmints like Reilly were good for. They didn’t have any business being in charge of anything. Not like big, strong hombres like him.

“Let’s go,” he said curtly to his men. “We’ve got rifles to deliver. See you tomorrow, Noah.”

“Good luck,” Reilly called as Jardine stepped up onto the wagon box again.

“Thanks,” Jardine said, but he knew he didn’t really need luck.

He was going to be the King of the Four Corners. It was his destiny.

Matt, Sam, Elizabeth, Stovepipe, and Wilbur sent their horses racing along the creek toward the mouth of the canyon. Matt hoped Elizabeth was a good rider. In the dark like this, it would be easy for a horse to take a spill.

The guards who were shouting for help were between them and the canyon mouth. As the five riders came closer, men carrying rifles charged toward them.

“Hunker down!” Matt shouted as orange flame spurted from the muzzles of those rifles.

They leaned forward, over the necks of their mounts, to make themselves harder to hit. Matt sensed as much as heard a bullet humming past his head, but that was the closest any of the slugs came to him.

The Navajo who tried to stop them fell behind, as did the fire in front of Juan Pablo’s hogan. Shots still blasted sporadically, but now the men were firing blindly and the chances of them hitting were very slim.

But even wild shots got lucky and found their targets every now and then, Matt knew, so he stayed low and kept his horse moving fast, and hoped that the others would, too.

He looked over his shoulder. The riders were strung out a little now. He was in the lead, followed by Stovepipe, Wilbur, and Elizabeth. Sam was bringing up the rear, and Matt knew his blood brother was doing that on purpose to protect Elizabeth.

They were almost at the mouth of the canyon now. Matt wasn’t surprised when shots rang out from the sentries posted there.

Wilbur yelped in pain. Stovepipe turned to him and called, “How bad is it, pard?”

“Just nicked me, the varmint!” Wilbur replied. “Keep goin’, Stovepipe. Don’t slow down!”

“Wasn’t intendin’ to,” Stovepipe said. “But you holler if you need any help, hear?”

Matt knew he was operating purely on the excitement of battle and the urgent need to escape from this canyon. He drew his right-hand Colt and triggered a few shots toward the places where he had seen the flare of the sentries’ guns.

He wasn’t really trying to hit anything. He just wanted to give them something to think about and make them duck.

From the back of the group, Sam’s revolver roared, too. Matt knew he was trying to do the same thing.

The effort seemed to work. The running horses flashed past the sentries and through the entrance to the canyon. Now they were out in the open, with the cliffs rapidly falling behind them.

“Will ... will they come after us?” Elizabeth gasped.

“I don’t know,” Sam said as he pulled his mount up even with hers. “Juan Pablo left some of his followers behind to guard us and keep an eye on Caballo Rojo and the men who don’t want a war. I don’t know if they would risk leaving the canyon completely unguarded.”

“Some of them might come after us, though,” Matt said as the riders slowed slightly and grouped up again. “They won’t want us to interfere with Juan Pablo gettin’ his hands on those guns.”

“But that’s dang sure what we need to do,” Stovepipe put in. “Think you can find the place where the gang was gonna turn ’em over before?”

“I believe I can,” Sam said. “Matt was unconscious for a lot of that time, so he doesn’t know exactly where it is.”

“I trust you, though,” Matt said. “I—Whoa!”

He swayed suddenly in his saddle as a wave of dizziness washed over him. Wilbur was close enough to reach out and grab his arm in a steadying grip.

“You’re in no shape for this, Matt,” Sam said. “We need to find a place where we can leave you and Elizabeth before we go after Juan Pablo and the rifles.”

“Not hardly!” Matt shook his arm free from Wilbur’s hand. “I’m obliged for your help,” he told the redhead, “but I’m fine now. And I’m comin’ along to help you stop Juan Pablo, Sam. You can get any other ideas out of your head right now.”

“I see that being wounded hasn’t kept you from being as stubborn as ever.”

Elizabeth said, “Well, I’m stubborn, too, and you’re not leaving me behind, either. You can’t afford to take the time to find a safe place for Matt and me. The lives of too many innocent people are at stake.”

“The lady’s right about that,” Stovepipe drawled. “But if you can’t keep up, Matt, we may have to leave you behind.”

“I’ll keep up,” Matt promised grimly. “Come on. We’re burnin’ starlight.”

Stovepipe laughed.

“First time I’ve heard that one,” he admitted.

With Sam in the lead now, they pushed on, stopping occasionally to rest the horses when it became obvious that none of the Navajo from the canyon were pursuing them. Without Juan Pablo there to tell them what to do, uncertainty probably reigned.

The stars wheeled through the dark heavens overhead. Matt figured it was well after midnight by now. The rush of blood that had kept him going earlier was wearing off now, and weariness gripped him.

As Sam had said, though, he was too blasted stubborn to give up. His iron will kept him in the saddle.

Then, finally, Sam held up a hand to signal a halt. As the others gathered around him, he said quietly, “That bluff where Matt and I were bushwhacked the first time is maybe half a mile away. We’d better dismount and go the rest of the way on foot. Elizabeth, can you hold the horses?”

“Of course,” she said. “But what about Matt?”

He drew his Colt and replaced the shells he had fired earlier when they were escaping from the canyon.

“I’m going,” he said as he snapped the revolver’s cylinder closed. He looked at Sam. “And don’t try to stop me.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” his blood brother said. “Even with you in bad shape, there’s nobody I’d rather have siding my play than you, Matt.”

Stovepipe said, “All right, fellas, let’s go see if we can catch us some gun-runners.”

Chapter 35

Jardine hauled back on the lines and brought the wagon to a stop. Around him, his men reined in as well.

The dark, looming bulk of the bluff told Jardine that they were in the right place. He had been confident in his ability to find his way out here, even at night, but it was nice to know that he’d been right.

Now all they had to do was wait for Juan Pablo to show up.

The man was a damn fool, Jardine thought with a wry smile. Juan Pablo actually believed he could rouse the whole Navajo nation against the whites and lead his people to victory. He had no idea how doomed to failure they really were.

That failure would lead to Jardine’s success, though. Once the Navajo were cleaned out of the territory like the vermin they were, the way would be clear for a man with guts and brains to seize power ... a man like him, Jardine thought with a self-congratulatory smile as he took a cigar from his shirt pocket and clamped it between his teeth.

“How will we know when the Indians are here, boss?” Snyder asked from his horse as he brought the animal alongside the wagon.

“They should be here already,” Jardine said. He turned halfway around on the seat and reached behind him into the wagon bed. Finding the lantern that was sitting there, he lifted it and set it on the seat beside him.

Then he snapped a lucifer to life with his thumbnail, lit the lantern, and held the flame to the tip of the cigar, puffing until it was burning, too. He stood up, held the lantern out at the end of his arm, and swung it back and forth three times.

“That’s the signal, eh?” Snyder asked.

“Shut up and be ready for trouble,” Jardine said as he set the lantern on the wagon seat again. “There shouldn’t be any, but I don’t trust those damned redskins.”

Jardine left the lantern burning. He picked up his own rifle and sat with it across his lap. An air of tension gripped him, and he knew it extended to his men as well.

The Navajo weren’t paying anything for the rifles, although Juan Pablo had promised payment later on, once they had run out all the whites.

Jardine fully expected Juan Pablo to try to double-cross him on that angle, although Juan Pablo had no idea that Jardine didn’t really care.

But the Indians might try to get fancy and kill the men who had delivered the rifles to them. It was unlikely, but it could happen.

If it did, the Navajo would learn quickly that half a dozen tough men armed with Winchester repeaters were more than a match for a motley bunch of savages armed with bows, arrows, and a few ancient single-shot rifles.

If it became necessary, Jardine would wipe out Juan Pablo and the men he brought with him, then start over and arrange a deal with some other power-hungry redskin. The delay in his plans that would cause would be mighty annoying, but unavoidable.

Don’t borrow trouble, he told himself. Maybe everything would go off without a hitch tonight.

Jardine suddenly sat up straighter as he heard hoofbeats. Somebody was coming, and it had to be Juan Pablo. Who else would be out here in this isolated spot at such a wee hour of the morning?

Jardine heard a few muttered curses as his men gripped their rifles tighter and waited for the newcomers to arrive. As the hoofbeats thudded to a stop, Jardine stood up and lifted the lantern again so that its glow spread out on the arid, rocky landscape around the wagon.

He knew he was making a target out of himself, almost daring somebody to shoot at him, but at the moment he didn’t care. He felt invulnerable, as if no one would ever dare to challenge him.

Soon enough, that would be the truth.

The lantern light revealed the glaring, hawk-like face of Juan Pablo, who was accompanied by five other Navajo warriors. Juan Pablo edged his pony ahead of the others and demanded, “You have the rifles?”

“Would we be here if he didn’t?” Jardine shot back. He set the lantern on the wagon seat and waved his free hand toward the crates. “Here they are.”

“Open the boxes. I would look at them.”

Jardine smiled.

“You don’t trust me, amigo?”

“I would look at them,” Juan Pablo said again.

“All right, fine.” Jardine turned to Snyder and Hilliard. “Pry the lid off one of those crates.” He look at Juan Pablo again. “But only one. We’re not going to sit out here the rest of the night prying lids off and nailing them back on.”

Juan Pablo’s scowl didn’t lessen any, but he gave a curt nod of agreement.

When Snyder and Hilliard had one of the crates open, the Navajo moved his pony nearer the wagon and leaned over so he could look into the bed. The rifles were wrapped in oilcloth.

“Show me,” Juan Pablo snapped.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jardine muttered. “Dave, get one of the guns out.”

Snyder unwrapped one of the Springfields and used a rag to wipe the packing grease off it.

Juan Pablo held his hands out.

Snyder glanced at Jardine, who nodded. He handed the rifle to Juan Pablo, who snatched it and held it close to study it. The Navajo weighed the weapon in his hands, then opened the loading mechanism in the breech that gave the rifle its “Trapdoor” designation.

“Bullets?”

“Ten thousand rounds in those boxes,” Jardine explained, pointing to the smaller boxes that contained the ammunition.

Juan Pablo shook his head.

“Not enough to fight a long war.”

“But enough to get you started,” Jardine said. “There’s more ammunition in the settlements, and it’ll be yours for the taking.”

That was true, as far as it went. A lot of those rounds wouldn’t fit these Springfields, but that wasn’t his lookout, Jardine thought.

Anyway, all it would take was a couple of bloody raids and the army would be on its way from Fort Defiance to begin the forced removal—or extermination, if it came to that—of the Navajo.

Despite what Juan Pablo had just said, this wouldn’t be a long war at all.

“All right,” Juan Pablo finally said as he handed the rifle back to Snyder. “We will take the wagon, too.”

“Of course,” Jardine said. “That’s part of the deal.”

“When this is over, you and your men will be the only whites allowed on Navajo land.”

“As we agreed,” Jardine replied with a grave nod.

He stood up so that he could climb down from the wagon box again and turn the vehicle over to the Indians. His men had brought along an extra saddle horse for him to ride back to Flat Rock.

But before Jardine could get down, there was a huge crash that shook the wagon, and the impact flung him off and sent him tumbling to the ground.

Matt, Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur were all experienced at moving quietly through the shadows when they needed to, so they were able to approach the bluff without alerting any of the men gathered at the base of it.

Sam had spotted the lantern when it first flared to life. The light gave them something to steer by and confirmed their hope that the delivery of the rifles would take place here where it had been supposed to happen more than a week earlier.

They couldn’t climb to the top of the bluff using the trail Sam had found when he first explored this place with Juan Pablo, so instead the four men had circled around and found another place where the bluff was shallower and could be climbed.

Juan Pablo had known all along what had happened here, Sam thought as they made their way toward the rendezvous. Sam recalled how the Navajo had tried to persuade him not to investigate.

He was lucky Juan Pablo hadn’t just tried to kill him outright. He probably would have if he hadn’t known that he would have to return to the canyon and try to make Matt believe some lie about what had happened. At that point, Juan Pablo might have still been worried about crossing Caballo Rojo.

Now the renegade didn’t care anymore. He wasn’t going to let anything or anyone stop him.

Or at least, that’s what he thought.

The four men slipped along the edge of the bluff until they were above the spot where the white men were delivering the rifles to the Navajo. The big, cruelly handsome man on the wagon box seemed to be the leader of the gang. He gave the orders as Juan Pablo demanded to take a look at the merchandise he was getting.

Stovepipe tapped Sam on the shoulder and put his mouth almost against Sam’s ear to whisper, “If we was to put our shoulders against the boulder there and roll it off, I reckon it’d fall right on top of that wagon.”

The range detective was pointing at a good-sized boulder that perched at the very edge of the bluff. Sam studied the angles and realized that Stovepipe was right.

The boulder wouldn’t be easy to budge, but if they could drop it on the wagon, it would probably bust the vehicle all the pieces, not to mention surprising the hell out of the gun-runners and the Navajo.

Sam nodded his agreement with the plan.

He motioned for Matt to stay back and let him, Stovepipe, and Wilbur shove the boulder off the bluff, but Matt shook his head and moved into position with them, planting his feet and resting his left shoulder against the rock.

They waited until the men below were talking again, then heaved against the boulder. The voices covered up any tiny scraping sounds the rock made as it shifted.

But it didn’t shift enough to overbalance. Again the four men paused until the boss on the wagon gave more orders. When he did, they put their shoulders and legs into the effort.

Stone grated against earth, and suddenly the boulder was moving. With their feet dug in, Sam and the others continued to shove. The boulder tipped over ...

And was gone, plummeting through the air to land with a huge, shattering crash in the back of the wagon below.

The abrupt lack of resistance made Sam, Matt, Stovepipe, and Wilbur sprawl at the edge of the bluff. Wilbur might have toppled over himself if Stovepipe’s hand hadn’t shot out to snag his collar and haul him back.

As they scrambled to their feet, Matt saw several of the white men recover quickly from their surprise and start to raise the rifles they held. Matt’s hands dipped to his own twin Colts.

Wounded though he might be, Matt Bodine’s draw was swift and a thing of beauty. The guns seemed to leap into his hands like magic. Less than a heartbeat later, Colt flame bloomed in the darkness as shots roared out from both revolvers.

A couple of the outlaws grunted and toppled out of their saddles as Matt’s slugs ripped into their bodies.

Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur had their guns out and blasting by now, too. Sam snapped a shot at the boss of the gang, who had been knocked clear of the wagon when the boulder came crashing down on it.

The man scrambled to the side and avoided Sam’s bullet. He had managed to hang on to his rifle. Working the lever with blinding speed, he sprayed lead toward the top of the bluff as he ran toward one of the suddenly riderless mounts.

That forced Matt, Sam, Stovepipe, and Wilbur to pull back and cease fire for a moment, and as they did, Juan Pablo kicked his horse forward and raced over to one of the shattered crates that had fallen out of the wagon. He reached into it and began pulling out rifles, which he tossed to his men as they followed him.

The men on the bluff continued to trade shots with the outlaws, and because they were occupied with that, they couldn’t stop the handful of Navajo from looting the broken crate. Matt saw Juan Pablo grab a box of ammunition and leap back onto his pony. Matt snapped a shot at the warrior, but the bullet whined past Juan Pablo’s head harmlessly.

“They’re gettin’ away with some of those rifles!” Matt called to Sam.

“I know!” his blood brother replied. “And the boss is getting away, too!”

Indeed, the leader of the gang had made it to one of the horses and swung up into the saddle. He kicked the animal into a run that carried him out of the circle of light cast by the lantern, which was still burning even though it had half-fallen against the rail at the side of the wagon seat.

With their boss deserting them, the rest of the gun smugglers lost their enthusiasm for the fight. Three of them were down. The others wheeled their horses and galloped off into the night, taking a different direction than the fleeing Navajo.

Matt lowered his guns and asked, “Now what do we do?”

The scream that cut through the night answered the question. The men’s heads jerked toward the sound.

That scream came from Elizabeth Fleming, and as the cry was abruptly silenced, Matt knew that Juan Pablo must have stumbled over her.

Chapter 36

“That’s Elizabeth!” Matt yelled. “Come on!”

Sam caught his arm. “She had our horses with her, and Juan Pablo’s probably scattered them by now.”

“But we’ve got to go after them!”

“There are a couple of horses down there,” Sam said, nodding toward the mounts whose riders had been shot off of them. “Stovepipe and I will take them. You and Wilbur stay here and guard those rifles.”

“Blast it, Sam—”

“The two of you are wounded,” Sam cut in. “Stovepipe and I aren’t. Anyway, somebody’s got to guard those rifles, otherwise Juan Pablo is liable to circle back around and try to grab some more of them. So he may come to you.”

“I hope so,” Matt said as he reached for fresh cartridges in the loops on his shell belt. “I surely do.”

Wilbur protested, “I ain’t hurt that bad. I told you it was just a scratch, Stovepipe.”

“I know that,” the lanky range detective said as he rested a hand on his partner’s shoulder for a second, “but like Sam says, somebody’s got to look after them guns, and I don’t know anybody I’d trust more’n you to do it, pard.”

“All right, all right,” Wilbur grumbled. “Don’t go butterin’ me up. Just get after those varmints and help that girl.”

“Plan to,” Stovepipe said as he finished reloading his revolver and snapped it closed.

He and Sam made their way down the narrow trail to the base of the bluff, followed by Matt and Wilbur. The first thing Sam did when he reached the wrecked wagon was blow out the stubbornly burning lantern. The light just made them better targets.

During that brief moment when he’d gotten a good look at the wagon, he had seen that it would never go anywhere again, not without a lot of work, anyway. Both axles had snapped under the sudden weight of the boulder.

All twelve of the crates containing the rifles had broken open. Some of the weapons no doubt were ruined.

Most of them were still usable, though, and it would be up to Matt and Wilbur to make sure none of them wound up in the wrong hands, along with that ammunition.

Sam and Stovepipe caught the two remaining horses and swung up into the saddles they had emptied. Before they could ride off, Wilbur said, “Hey, we could unhitch a couple of horses from the wagon team—”

“No time,” Sam said. “We’ve got to find Elizabeth.”

He heeled his mount into a run toward the spot where they had left the redheaded teacher. Stovepipe was right beside him. Although Sam was trying to stay calm, worry gnawed at his guts.

As enraged as Juan Pablo was bound to be at having his plans ruined like this, there was no telling what he might do to Elizabeth to vent his anger.

Back at the wagon, Matt asked, “Did you get a good look at the hombre who was giving orders, Wilbur?”

“Pretty good, I reckon. Why?”

“You’ve been hangin’ around the settlement for a while, according to what Sam said. Did you recognize that fella?”

“I don’t know his name,” Wilbur said, “but I recollect seein’ him in the Buckingham a few times. You know, the way you see anybody in a saloon, drinkin’ and playin’ cards.”

Matt nodded.

“Then we’ll probably be able to find him in Flat Rock later. We’ve got some settlin’ up to do with that hombre.”

Wilbur snorted and said, “We’ll be lucky to find him. He’s probably takin’ off for the tall and uncut right now. Won’t stop until he gets to Denver or Santa Fe or El Paso.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Matt said. “He’s put a lot of time and effort into this scheme. He’ll try to figure out some way to salvage it. If he could cause some trouble that he could blame on the Navajo ... like maybe burning down the saloon or something ... he might try it.”

“You really think he’d do that?”

“Somebody who would steal a bunch of army rifles and try to turn them over to a troublemaker like Juan Pablo ... I wouldn’t put much of anything past him,” Matt said.

The flame of rage burned so brightly inside Zack Jardine that it threatened to consume him. He had been close, so close, to achieving his goal ...

And then like judgment striking literally from the heavens, that boulder had come crashing down and ruined everything.

He hadn’t gotten a good look at the men who’d been shooting at him, but he was certain one of them was Sam Two Wolves. That blasted half-breed had been a thorn in his side ever since Two Wolves had shown up in Flat Rock.

Joe Hutto and Dave Snyder galloped up alongside Jardine. All the others had fallen to the volley of gunshots from the top of the bluff, including Doyle Hilliard. Jardine had seen him go down with blood spouting from a bullet hole in his chest.

“Zack, what are we gonna do now?” Hutto yelled over the pounding hoofbeats.

“It’s all ruined!” Snyder added, echoing Jardine’s thoughts.

But Jardine wouldn’t let himself give up. He had come too far, invested too much in this scheme. As he cudgeled his brain, an idea came to him.

“Head for Flat Rock!” he told the two men. “We’re gonna grab that Englishwoman from the Buckingham Palace!”

“What good will that do?” Hutto wanted to know.

“Plenty, when Noah Reilly tells everybody that Indians carried her off! Everybody in town knows Reilly, and they’ll believe him!”

The more Jardine thought about it, the more he believed the hastily formed plan stood a chance of working. Nothing stirred up frontiersmen quicker than a threat to a woman.

If the men of Flat Rock and the nearby ranches believed that Lady Augusta had been kidnapped by the Navajo, they would mount a rescue effort and go charging recklessly out to the canyon where the Navajo lived.

Juan Pablo would meet that attack with all the ferocity he and his followers could muster, even without those army rifles, and blood would be spilled on both sides.

That was all it would take, Jardine told himself.

The blood was the key to everything.

And that key would unlock the fortune that could still make Zack Jardine a rich man.

When Sam and Stovepipe reached the spot where they had left Elizabeth, they found her gone and the horses scattered, just as Sam expected.

“That was pure bad luck,” he said as he brought his mount to a halt. “Juan Pablo and the others must have ridden right into her while they were trying to get away.”

“You reckon they headed back to the canyon?” Stovepipe asked.

“I don’t know where else they would go.” Sam lifted the reins and urged the horse into a run again. Stovepipe followed suit.

The time it took to reach the canyon where Caballo Rojo’s clan lived was torture to Sam. He hadn’t gotten to know Elizabeth all that well before he left to search for the bushwhackers, but from what he had seen of her, she was a fine young woman.

And she had taken good care of Matt, which meant a lot, too. Sam didn’t want anything bad happening to her. He doubted that Juan Pablo would kill her outright—he had expressed his intention to take her as his second wife, after all—but there was no telling what else he might do.

The eastern sky was starting to turn a faint shade of gray from the approach of dawn when Sam and Stovepipe came in sight of the cliffs where the canyon was located. They reined in to talk about their plan of action.

“If we just ride straight in,” Stovepipe said, “Juan Pablo’s probably left guards with a couple of those Springfields he grabbed at the mouth of the canyon to shoot anybody who shows up.”

“That’s the only way in there,” Sam said. “We don’t have any choice.”

“What we need is a distraction. I’ll go chargin’ in to draw their fire, and you come along behind me and pick ’em off.”

“That’s a good way to get yourself killed,” Sam protested.

“You got a better way to get in there?”

Sam had to admit that he didn’t. But he said, “Why don’t I go first and let you pick them off?”

Stovepipe didn’t answer him. Instead, the range detective kicked his horse into a run and galloped straight at the mouth of the canyon.

Sam drew his revolver and followed. Stovepipe had a good lead on him. Sam might have been able to cut into that gap, but he knew this was their best chance of getting into the canyon.

At least one of them might make it through, he thought grimly.

As if warned by some instinct, Stovepipe abruptly pulled his horse to the right, then back to the left. Muzzle flame spurted from both sides of the canyon mouth.

That gave Sam the location of the guards, assuming that there were only two of them. The Springfields were single-shot rifles, and although someone trained in their use could reload very quickly, the Navajo would be far from expert at that.

Sam was counting on that to give him a slight advantage. While the guards were fumbling to get fresh shells into their weapons, he reached the mouth of the canyon himself. He triggered two shots toward the place where he had seen a muzzle flash on the right, then twisted in the saddle and sent two more rounds toward the guard on the left.

He didn’t know if any of his bullets had found their targets, but he was in the canyon now and he could still hear the pounding hoofbeats of Stovepipe’s horse, so he hoped the range detective had made it through all right, too.

What happened from here on out depended on things that were largely out of Sam’s control. How many of the Navajo would support Juan Pablo now that the rifles he had promised them wouldn’t be delivered after all? Would Caballo Rojo continue to step aside, or would he try to take control of the clan again?

A shape loomed up out of the darkness. Sam was reloading his Colt as he rode. He thumbed the sixth cartridge into the wheel, snapped the cylinder closed, and lifted the gun.

“Hold on,” Stovepipe said. “It’s just me. Were you hit, son?”

“No, I made it through all right,” Sam said. “How about you?”

“Nary a scratch.” Stovepipe chuckled. “I’m pretty good at ziggin’ when folks think I’m gonna zag.”

“Now that we’re in, the guards may come after us. And the shots may have warned Juan Pablo that we’re on our way.”

“We best move fast, then, before the varmint has too much time to get ready for us.”

They rode swiftly along the creek. When they came to the first hogan, Sam expected shots to come from it, but the dwelling remained dark and silent.

That was a good sign, he told himself. It could mean that Juan Pablo didn’t have as much support among the other Navajo as he claimed to. Maybe most of them were going to stay out of this clash.

Sam and Stovepipe left that hogan behind and headed for the next one, a couple of hundred yards along the creek. The Navajo liked their privacy and didn’t live clustered up like some of the other tribes. Juan Pablo’s hogan was about three-fourths of a mile into the canyon, and Caballo Rojo’s was another half-mile beyond that.

After they passed two more hogans, they slowed as they approached the one belonging to Juan Pablo.

“He’s gonna be waitin’ for us, or for somebody to come after him, anyway,” Stovepipe warned.

Sam brought his horse to a halt and swung down from the saddle.

“I’m going ahead on foot.”

Stovepipe dismounted as well.

“Good idea,” the range detective said. “I’ll back your play, Sam, whatever it is.”

“We’ll need to draw him out. I know one way to do that: walk right up and challenge him.”

“The ol’ paint a target on your back trick, eh?”

“That’s right,” Sam said. “Only this time it’ll be on my front. And you’re going to come in from behind and get into that hogan so you can free Elizabeth while I’m dealing with Juan Pablo.”

“Mighty risky tactics ... but I don’t have any better idea.”

They split up, Sam going toward the front of the hogan and Stovepipe circling to the rear. Sam looked for possible cover as he approached but didn’t see any. The only things he saw were the stake where Matt had been tied and the burned-out ashes of the fire nearby.

Gun in hand, he called, “Juan Pablo! Come out and face me!”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam leaped to the side. The direction he chose was a gamble. He might be jumping right into the path of a bullet.

But as one of the Springfields cracked from just inside the hogan’s door, the slug whined harmlessly through the air to Sam’s left. He couldn’t return the fire for fear of hitting Elizabeth or Juan Pablo’s wife, so he continued sprinting to the side, hoping that would draw Juan Pablo out of the earthen dwelling.

Instead the renegade called, “Leave this place, half-breed, and I will allow you to live!”

“It’s over, Juan Pablo! There won’t be any uprising against the whites!”

“This is Diné land! It will always be Diné land!”

“No one will take it away from you,” Sam said as he crouched, out of a direct line of fire from the hogan’s entrance.

“Already the white men build towns and run their cattle on it! Soon their railroad will come! The Diné will be forced to leave our homes again!”

“Don’t you see that’s exactly what the men who tried to give you those rifles want? They know your people can’t win a war against the army. Rising up against the whites will have just the opposite effect to what you really want.”

“Lies!” Juan Pablo cried. “All lies! You might as well be white!”

Sam tried another tack.

“Let Miss Fleming come out of there,” he urged. “You’re alone now, Juan Pablo.” Sam made that guess based on the fact that no one seemed to be helping the would-be renegade anymore. “Let her go, and things don’t have to get any worse than they already are.”

“No! The woman is mine! I—”

Sam heard a loud thud from inside the hogan and recognized it as the unmistakable sound of something hard hitting flesh and bone. The thud was followed by a groan, and then Elizabeth called, “Sam! Sam, get in here!”

Sam dashed for the doorway. He saw Stovepipe coming around the hogan in a hurry, too, as the range detective responded to Elizabeth’s summons.

Holding his Colt ready, Sam stepped into the dwelling’s shadowy interior.

“I’m over here, tied up,” Elizabeth went on. “Get me loose, Sam, please.”

Sam could make out Juan Pablo’s crumpled form lying on the ground. The man’s wife stood over him, a chunk of firewood in her hand. Sam realized that the woman had clouted Juan Pablo with the wood and knocked him out.

Stooping, Sam took hold of the Springfield rifle that lay next to Juan Pablo’s unconscious form and handed the weapon to Stovepipe, who had followed him into the hogan.

Then he holstered his Colt and pulled the Bowie knife from its sheath.

“Josefina saved me again,” Elizabeth said as Sam knelt next to her to cut the bonds around her wrists. “Of course, she did it out of jealousy, not any great affection for me. In fact, I think she’d be pleased if I left the canyon and never came back.”

“Which is exactly what you’re going to do,” Sam said.

Elizabeth opened her mouth as if she were going to argue with him, but then she shrugged instead.

“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t stay here anymore. Maybe someone else can help educate these people. They deserve it.”

“What happened to the men who were with Juan Pablo?” Sam asked as the cut ropes fell away from Elizabeth’s wrists. She began massaging her hands to get the blood flowing again.

“They had a big argument outside after Juan Pablo forced me in here and tied me up,” she said. “I couldn’t follow all of it, but I’m pretty sure the other men told him they didn’t want anything more to do with his uprising. He let them down when they didn’t get the rifles.” Elizabeth paused. “I guess you and the others were responsible for that.”

Sam nodded as he helped her to her feet.

“That’s right. Matt and Wilbur are standing guard over the rifles now. We need to get back to them and head on to Flat Rock as soon as possible, to make sure the gang behind all this doesn’t try anything else.”

Elizabeth looked down at Juan Pablo.

“What are you going to do about him?”

“I’m going to leave him for Caballo Rojo to deal with,” Sam said. “And his wife. I’ve got a hunch she’s not going to put up with much more foolishness from him.”

“It’s true that the women wield a great deal of power in Navajo society. And Caballo Rojo is still the headman of this clan. I think he can keep Juan Pablo in line now that all the other men have abandoned his cause.” Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t think he’s truly a bad man. He just has a hard time getting used to life the way it really is.”