Mustang Man

*

Chapter 1

When I Came Down Off The Cap Rock Riding A Wind-Broken Bronc, Half Of New Mexico Must Have Been Trailin' Behind Me, All Ready To shake out a loop for a hanging.

Nobody told me I should wait around and get my neck stretched, so when I'd seen them coming my way I just wrapped myself around the nearest horse and taken off down country. Seemed likely those boys would run out of ambition before long, but they must have been mighty shy of entertainment in that gyp-rock country, because they kept a-coming.

Me, I high-tailed it out of there as fast as that bronc would take me, and for a spell that was pretty fast. Only the bronc had run himself out trying to save my bacon and now I needed myself a fresh horse, or else I'd never need another.

About that time I sighted a clump of cottonwoods down on the flat, and cottonwoods spell water in any man's country. Water usually meant there was stock close by, and probably folks. Where there was either there might be a horse.

So right then I began building myself a fresh dust cloud behind me, and when I rode up to those trees I was just a-fogging it. Sure enough, there were horses there, and some mighty fine stock, too. So I shook out a loop and dabbed it on a handsome lineback dun with a black mane and tail.

Snubbing him to a post, I stepped down and unlatched my saddle and threw it on the dun. I cinched up tight, and was about to climb into the leather when I heard the click of a cocked hammer and froze right where I was. That gun was behind me, but judging by the sound the range was no more than twenty feet; and my ma never raised no foolish papooses. Back there in the Clinch Mountains of Tennessee we boys learned to use guns mighty early, but we also learned to hold them in respect. When a man puts a gun on you, you've no cause to believe he won't use it.

"Mister"--the voice was dry and cold--"you sure ain't pa'tic'lar where you put your saddle."

"Figured I was mighty pa'tic'lar. If that ain't the best horse in the lot, you show me a better and I'll switch my saddle."

He chuckled, but I knew that rifle hadn't moved any. This was a hard man there behind me. "What you figure gives you title to that horse?"

"You keep an eye on the rim of the cap rock yonder, and when you see dust a-fetching up over the rim you'll know what gives me title. Those boys back yonder got themselves a rope, and they figure on making me the belle of the ball."

"What did you do?"

Well, I taken a chance and turned around. That old man held a Sharps .50 buffalo gun on me, a gun that would open a hole in a man as big as your fist. He was slight built, but he had a pair of the coldest eyes you ever did see.

"I fetched my gun a mite faster'n another man; only I was a stranger, and that other man, he owned himself a big outfit and a lot of good friends."

"You got a name? Something folks call you by?"

"Nolan Sackett."

"Heard of you. Outlaw, the way folks tell it."

"Look at that rim, mister. There's your dust. Now this here ain't no time to start discussin' a man's moral outlook. There's no time to talk about my past, not if I am to have a future."

He stepped around me so's he could look at the rim, and then he said, "What d' you figure to do now, Sackett?"

"Seems to me I've got a choice between a rope and a bullet, or a rope and a chance. Folks consider me a right fast hand with a six-shooter, so I'm likely to take the chance and see if I could beat you to a killing."

"You wouldn't beat me, Sackett, but I like your sand. You get up on that horse and light out. Hold to the bottom yonder and you'll be out of sight. The canyon cuts back toward the Yellow House, and you'll have a fair run down the valley.

Give that horse a spell now and again and he'll take you clear of them."

Well, I taken out. But not before I had one long look at that old man. "Thanks,"

I said, "and you need a friend, you call on Nolan Sackett. Or any Sackett, for that matter, for we run long on kinfolk."

That lineback dun taken out of there like he had a fire under his tail and was tryin' to outrun it. Sure enough, the canyon forked, and I went up the branch called Yellow House. An hour later, when I topped out on the cap rock again, there was no sign of pursuit. So I slowed the dun to a canter, and then to a walk.

That was wide-open country, a vast plain cut by occasional ravines, the rare streams flowing into the Arkansas or the Canadian River, although both rivers lay north of where I was riding, the Arkansas far to the north.

This was buffalo country and Indian country, and a man could lose his hair in one unwary moment anywhere within a thousand square miles. Buffalo hunters had come into it, coming out of Dodge; and here and there a few cattlemen had the idea of moving in, only mostly it was just an idea.

The outlaws had come early. Up north of the Canadian was the stretch of country they called No Man's Land, and east of there was Indian Territory. No man in his right mind rode into that country without a gun ready to hand, and the will to use it. There were canyons like the Palo Duro and the Yellow House, but mostly it was cap-rock country, and water a rare thing unless you knew where to find it.

The buffalo knew. They knew not only the few permanent springs and creeks, but rain-water lakes that sometimes lasted several weeks or even months if the rains had been heavy. Often enough, though, they vanished within a few days, so following buffalo tracks to hunt water was a chancy thing.

Nothing had ever led me to believe that anything would be easy for me. The only trails I knew were long and dusty, blazing hot or freezing cold. The nights I'd slept under a roof these past years were mighty few.

A body can get the name of outlaw sometimes without half trying, and I hadn't tried. I guess I never cared much, either. We Clinch Mountain Sacketts were good enough folk, I guess, but a mite poorer and rougher than those over in the Cumberlands or down on the flatlands.

We sprung from thin soil, and raised more kin than crops, but we were proud folk, too, and in those days a man's pride was defended by a gun. I ain't saying it was right, only that was the way it was, and gun battles were not only a matter of us feuding folks from Tennessee, nor in the West. It was the way things were done all over the country, and in Europe too, they say.

Andrew Jackson himself, him who was president of the United States, engaged in several gun battles, and killed Charles Dickinson in a duel. He got his shoulder shot up in the fight with the Bentons, and it was claimed that he had a hand in a hundred and three duels, as a fighter, a second, or a member of the party.

He was only one of many. Few prominent men avoided duels if they entered public life, where somebody might speak slander of them. Nor could a man continue to live in any community where it was known he had been called a liar and had failed to fight, or, in fact, if he had failed to fight whenever honor demanded it.

But I could lay no claim to dueling or fighting in the way of defending my honor or anybody else's. Soon as I was old enough, I drifted west, living as best I could. There was little enough at home, and when I was gone there was one less to feed. What fights I had, after the Higgins feud, were mostly with rough men who lived in the same way I did.

Now as I rode, the plains stretched wide around me, flat as a floor as far as a man could ride. Not a tree, not a bush, just the low, dusty grass, and the wide milky-blue sky above.

I took off my beat-up old hat and wiped the sweat-band. That hat had never been much account, and the bullet hole left there by a Kiowa brave before he died had done it no good.

Looking at that hat made me feel glum. A man ought to have a few worthwhile things in his life. All my years I'd honed for a store-bought suit, but I'd never managed it yet, nor even a good saddle. It was little enough a man could have unless he got lucky with cards or went west to the goldfields. Some folks had the turn for making money. Seemed to me I never did.

But that was a good horse I rode now. Maybe the best I'd ever had, and I owed that old man a debt. There was something about him I cottoned to, anyway. He was a hard old man, and he would have torn my guts out with that buffalo gun if I'd made a move for my gun; but when the chips were down and I'd been holding no more than a couple of deuces, he had come through.

Of a sudden, I saw the wagon.

For several minutes I'd been watching what looked to be a low white cloud lying off on the horizon, and hoping it was no thunderhead. Thunder storms can roll up almighty fast out there on the plains, and such lightning as you never saw. A man standing out on the level lands is a natural attraction for lightning, to say nothing of a man on horseback carrying a pistol and a rifle.

Now as I rode on I began to see it was no cloud, but a wagon top, and beside the wagon a woman was standing.

She was a mile or more off, but it was a woman, all right. What set me to fretting was that she was alone--nobody else in sight, and no stock of any kind--no horses, or mules, or oxen. And that worried me. Folks caught up with trouble out on the grasslands would do almost anything for a horse, and I was riding a good one. So I didn't just fetch up to that wagon, I veered wide around it.

That woman, she started to wave at me, but I just waved back and rode wide around her, keeping an eye on her and a hand on my rifle. Only I took time out to glance at the ground from time to time, for I wanted to know where the wagon came from, and what had happened to the horses or oxen that had hauled it there.

Horses ... six head of horses heavy enough to pull that wagon, and two head of saddle horses, led off by a man afoot.

Circling on around, I came on the tracks of the wagon as it went along to the place where it now stood. The tracks had cut into the turf ... that wagon was loaded, really loaded.

Right then he made a mistake, and moved. A man lying still is hard to see if his clothes blend into the background, but movement draws the eye. He was bellied down in a slight depression on the cap rock, just a-fixing to take my scalp and my horse when I came riding up.

So I pulled up a good three hundred yards off and shucked my own Winchester.

Then I started circling again, and he had to keep moving to keep me in sight. By the time I'd made a complete circle he could see I'd outfoxed him, and he quit on me.

He was smart enough not to risk a bullet unless he could score a kill with the first shot, but with me moving like I was, he couldn't be sure. Even if he got a bullet into me at that distance I might ride away; or if I fell, my horse might be frightened off. Circling as I was, I could bring my rifle to bear at any moment, and I was able to make him move as I wanted.

He spoke to the woman, saying something I could not make out at that distance, and then he stood up, his hands empty. I moved in closer then, keeping them lined up ahead of me. He was surely carrying a handgun, and I did not like the way she was keeping one hand hidden in the folds of her skirt. Either or both of them might try a sneak shot at me. Looked to me like I'd ridden into a nest of rattlers.

At fifty yards I drew up once more, taking my time in looking them over. My rifle was held pistol-fashion in my right hand, and I was a fair shot from that position. "You shed that small gun," I told him, "and tell your woman that if she doesn't drop that pistol I'll shoot both of you."

"You'd shoot a woman?"

"If she's holding iron on me," I said, "I'd shoot her as quick as you. You tell her to drop it, mister, if you figure to watch the sunset tonight."

He unlatched his gun belt and let it fall, and that girl, she walked over to a blanket near the fire and dropped her gun. Then I rode up to them, watching like a cougar watches a rattler.

He was a slim, wiry young man, scarcely more than a boy, and he wore city clothes, but they were dusty now. He had a square, pleasant-looking, young boy's face, only when you got close enough you could see his eyes were not pleasant now.

The girl was not more than eighteen, I'd guess, and she was pretty as a white-tailed pony. And the two of them were alike as two could be.

As for me, I knew what they saw, looking at me, and it wasn't much. My jaw was blunt and my nose had been broken, and I carried most of my two hundred and fifteen pounds in my chest and shoulders. I had a fifty-inch chest above a rider's small waist, and biceps and neck that measured seventeen inches around.

My fists were big and hard, the kind a man can get from wrestling big steers, wild mustangs, and wilder, rougher men.

The wool shirt I wore had been red at one time, but had faded, and my vest was made from the hide of a black and white cow. Nothing I wore or owned was new, and my outfit was beat-up, rained-on, and sand-weathered, and that included me too. Along with it I had a stubble of beard on a face deep-browned by the sun, and green eyes that showed up lighter than they were, against my dark skin.

I had me a fine-working Winchester and a pair of bone-handled six-shooters, only one of which was carried in sight. In my belt there was a bowie knife, and down the back of my neck a throwing knife, both of them Tinker-made.

This outfit I'd come upon was no rawhide bunch. The wagon showed travel signs, but it had been new not long ago, and both of these folks were dressed mighty well.

I hooked a knee around the pommel of the saddle, rested the muzzle of the Winchester in their general direction across my knee, and started to build myself a smoke.

"You all going somewhere," I said, "or do you like it here?"

"I'm sorry," the man said, "I am afraid we made the wrong impression."

"And you've been keeping the wrong comp'ny. Like the man who drove off your stock."

"What do you know about that?"

"Well, it's fair to surmise you didn't haul that wagon here by yourselves, and now you've got no stock."

"Indians might have taken them."

"It ain't likely. They'd have had your scalps too. No, it was somebody in your own outfit, somebody who figured to leave you high and dry out here on the cap rock; so you reckoned to kill me and ride out of here on my horse."

"We thought you were an Indian," the girl said.

Now, anybody could see a mile off that I was no Injun; but it wasn't just the lie that bothered me, it was the casual way they had set themselves out to kill a stranger. They didn't plan to ask me to ride for help, they just simply planned murder. That man had been bedded down for an ambush. Had I gone riding right up to the wagon at that girl's wave, I'd be dead by now and they would be riding out of here on my horse.

Wary as I was, I was also curious. What had brought them to this place? Who were they? Where had they come from? Where were they going? And why had their man left them and taken all their stock?

That last question provided its own answer. Either he was afraid of them, or he wanted what was in that wagon. If the last was true, the easiest way to get it was simply to drive off their stock and stay out of the way until they died or were killed. The fact that they were in this place at all gave some weight to this last theory, for they were right in the middle of nowhere, on the road to nowhere. Nobody in his right mind would have come this way with a wagon.

"Get down and join us," the man said. "We were just about to have coffee."

"Don't mind if I do," I said, swinging down, the horse between me and them.

"This is mighty dry country."

My comment brought no reaction from them, which unproved my hunch that they had no idea of the fix they were in. For there was no water anywhere around. They had two barrels slung to the side of the wagon, but I figured they weren't anywheres near full, and the nearest water--if there was any there--was a good forty miles away.

"You folks got yourselves in a pack of trouble," I commented. "You'll be lucky to get out of here alive."

They both looked at me, just looked, as if trying to understand me. "What do you mean by that?" the girl asked.

"Nearest water I know of is forty miles from here ... if the creek ain't dry, which it sometimes is. If it's dry, you got twenty miles further to go. Even if you could haul the wagon--which you can't--it would mean days from here. You're way off the trail."

"It's a short cut."

"Whoever told you that had no love for you. The only place this will shortcut you to is the dry side of hell."

They both were looking hard at me.

"Your best chance is to try walking out," I said. "At best you got a fifty-fifty chance."

"But there's your horse." He gave me a cool look. "My sister and I could share it."

Now, I've come up against some mean folks in my time, but nobody quite as cool about it as these. They were in trouble, but they either had no realization of how much trouble, or they were almighty sure of themselves.

"You ain't got my horse, amigo," I said, "and you ain't about to get him. And if you had him, you'd not know which way to go. If you knew where to go, you wouldn't have come here in the first place."

They exchanged a glance. They did not believe me, and they still wanted that horse of mine.

"You've got a chance," I added, "if I ride out of here and send somebody back with a team to haul the wagon out. That's if I can find somebody who's willing to come out here.

"This here is Comanche country," I went on. "Kiowas to the north, and Apaches west and south. Nobody wants to come into this country at all."

All of a sudden I had a feeling. They were not worried, because they were waiting for something, or somebody. Something they knew would happen. Nothing I had said had impressed them in the least. They were simply waiting.

The afternoon was almost gone, and it lacked only a few hours until darkness.

Was there somebody else out there? Somebody I had not seen or heard?

Suddenly the itchy feet of fear were crawling right up my back. Somebody was out there, somewhere, watching me.

"The closest place for you is Borregos Plaza," I said, "or maybe Fort Bascom, over west of here." All the time I was trying to figure which way trouble would come from.

They were eastern folk, but I wouldn't think of them as tenderfeet. There was much they didn't know of the West, if they knew anything at all about it, but they had a quality about them ... they were ice-hard and without mercy. I had me a hunch that when in doubt they would kill, without rhyme or reason.

The company I'd known since leaving the mountains, and much of it before that, had been hard company. Feuding and fighting men, hard-working and hard-drinking men often enough, but they had fought from anger or for pay; and when they killed it was from anger or for pay, or perhaps, by blunder, but not as these two would kill.

The girl had poured a cup of coffee for me. I'd been making believe to loosen the cinch on the saddle, but had not done so. I had an idea that when I left out of there it would be of a sudden with no time to tighten a cinch.

Turning my horse, I walked toward her, keeping the horse between me and where I suspected their man to be, if man there was. Close to the fire I stopped and squatted on my heels, and glanced quickly over to where I thought he was at, and just as my eyes shifted I saw that girl shove something back in the pocket of her skirt.

Now, nothing in my life led me to be what you'd call a trusting man. Back in the Tennessee hills we did a sight of swapping and a boy soon learned that when it came to swapping he couldn't trust even his own kin. It was a game, sort of, and we all swapped back and forth and the best stories told around the cracker barrel in the store at the crossroads or around a cabin fire were about swaps and swapping, and about who got taken. This just naturally made you grow up sort of skeptical. So when that dewy-eyed girl handed me that coffee I took it, longing for a swallow, but just a mite afraid it might be my last. So I held it, wondering how a man could keep from drinking it without arousing suspicions.

Back on Clinch Mountain there was an old-timer who could set and talk by the hour and not say a word a body could recall; he would just ramble on spreading words around like a man forking hay on a stack. Right then I decided to talk.

" 'Bout the time I sighted you folks I was gettin' fed to the teeth with my own company, and there's just so much you can say to a horse. You never talked to a horse? Ma'am, you just ain't ridden far in lonesome country. Why, I'd reach out to say the horses of this man's territory know more about what's going on than anybody else. Everybody out here talks to his horse. I've seen the time I hadn't nobody else to talk to, weeks on end.

"You take this here country now. A man can ride for days and not seen even a hump in the ground, let alone a man or a horse. Maybe you'd sight some antelope, or a herd of buffalo, although they are coming up scarce about now. A body can just ride on and on across the country, watching far-off rain squalls or maybe buzzards. Not much else to see.

"And traveling in this area ain't just what you're expecting. Now you folks, for instance. You head west from here, and what do you find? A canyon maybe three, four hundred feet deep. It's cap-rock country, so usually where the land breaks off there's a drop of four to fourteen feet of sheer rock, then a steep slope off to the bottom, and you may go miles before you can find a spot to go down into the canyon, or a place to climb out.

"You never see those canyons until you're right on top of them. Comanches used to hole up in them and wait for the Comancheros coming out from Santa Fe to trade with 'em. I come upon an Indian camp one time when there must have been seven or eight thousand head of horses there--fine stock, some of them."

Both of them were watching me. I was holding the cup in my hand, gesturing with it once in a while, just running off at the mouth like that old coot back in the hills.

"You take Indians now, they're all around you before you know they're in the country. And women folks--if they know you got a woman along, they'll hunt you for miles.

"You people here, you're ripe for the picking. Any Comanche youngster could shoot you both before you even knew he were near. I'd say without help you ain't got a chance of getting out of here.

"You figure on my horse? Why, he couldn't carry the both of you even half the distance you got to go. And your wagon would have to be left where it is. Take a six-ox team to move that out of here, heavy like it is."

"What makes you think our wagon is heavy?"

Me, I grinned at him, and shoved my hat back a mite with the lip of the cup.

"Why, your tracks. The deep bite they take into the prairie tells a body that.

Moreover, I'd lay a bet the Indians know where you are, and are closing in about now."

"Don't be silly," the girl said. "If they knew where we were and wanted to attack they would have done it long since."

I chuckled. "That's your thinkin', but it ain't Injun thinkin'. You take those Indians now, to speak proper of them--they know you ain't going no place. They know where that canyon is up ahead, and they know what you'll have to do when you get there. Meanwhile you're getting closer and closer to where they want you. They probably have a camp some place up ahead, and when you get close enough so they won't have to pack all they take from you for any distance, why, they'll move in."

Of a sudden I glanced at my coffee. "Well, what d' you know? I been settin' here talkin' until my coffee's gone cold."

And as I said it I splashed the coffee on the ground, set down the cup, and picked up the coffeepot with my left hand. My right still held my Winchester. I filled the cup about a third full, sloshed it about and dumped it again. "Warms the cup," I said. "I do shy from coffee in a cold cup." Then I refilled it and sat back on my heels. "Now, where was I?"

Well, their faces were a study. They didn't know whether I was smart to them, or just dumb. He was exasperated, but she was so mad she turned a little pale. I gulped down some of the hot coffee and it tasted good--kind of a chicory taste to it, like some of that New Orleans make.

Setting there a-drinking my coffee, seeming to pay them no mind, nor nothing else, I wasn't much worried. I could see over east toward where that canyon was from the tail of my eye, one of the quickest ways to detect movement, and I was keeping my horse within my range of vision. Shadows were growing on the lee side of that wagon, when of a sudden my mustang's ears pricked and I put my cup down.

That mustang, like all wild stock, was quick to see anything that moved. Most horses are quick enough to see and hear, but there's nothing like a wild one for letting you know when trouble's about. His ears warned me that whoever was out there had begun to move.

Any sudden move of mine to get away would bring on the fight I wanted to avoid.

I didn't cater to these folks' way of figuring things, and I didn't aim to let them take my scalp.

There was little cover out on those grasslands, and even the grass was skimpy, so if I tried to ride for it I would have two or maybe three of them shooting at me. Unless I waited until dark ... though every minute I waited increased my own risk, for darkness gave them freedom of movement.

So I just shifted my Winchester forward in my hands and looked at that young man standing over there beside his sister, and I said, "If you two figure to get where you're going all in one piece, you better tell your friend out there to stand up and come in with his hands up."

That set them back a notch. They just looked at me, and I eased back the hammer on the Winchester.

He turned a shade paler and said, "I don't know what you mean."

"You just speak up and tell him. You got a full thirty seconds to do it in, or I'll spread you wide open for the buzzards and the ants."

He didn't want to believe it, and when he decided he'd better he still didn't want to.

"It'll be you first," I said, "and then the girl and the other one. You got ten seconds now, and I'm takin' up slack."

My finger tightened on the trigger.

Chapter 2

"Andrew," the girl spoke out loud and clear, "come in with your hands up."

"Sylvie," her brother protested, "he wouldn't shoot. He wouldn't dare."

"He'll shoot, all right! " Sylvie said. "He would kill you very quickly, Ralph, and I believe he would kill me too."

There was a stir out in the darkness, and then a fat, stupid-looking boy came in toward us. He might have been only seventeen, but the rifle he carried was grown up.

"Put it down," I said to him, but I was prepared for him to try a shot. He looked at me, then shifted his eyes toward Sylvie ... toward her, not toward her brother.

"Do what he says, Andrew."

Reluctantly, he put down the rifle, then sat down abruptly and crossed his legs.

"Like I said, I don't want any trouble, but I've grown up with it. My advice to you folks is to go slow. You'll find things are different out here, and there's a lot of folks who will shoot first and ask questions later, if they have any to ask. Now, if you'll lay off trying to shoot me, I'll see if I can get you out of here."

"Why should you?" Ralph asked.

On that one I hedged. After all, why not ride out and leave them to get what they deserved? "You've got guns," I said. "I wouldn't want them in the hands of the Indians."

They didn't believe me. I doubt if they could believe any reason that was not entirely selfish.

"No matter which way you go, you ain't likely to find anybody inside of a hundred miles. I hear Jim Cator has a buffalo camp on the North Palo Duro, and the settlements west are nearer to two hundred miles than one."

They sat watching me, taking in every word.

"Whoever brought you in here trapped you for fair ... but there's a chance I might catch up to him and bring the horses back."

"If you could bring those horses back," Ralph said, "and kill the thief who stole them, I would give you fifty dollars."

"There's some who would do it for that," I commented, "but I am not one.

However, it would be easier to get your horses back than to ride out and send somebody in for you." I stood up suddenly. "I'll ride after him."

They all stood up at that, their eyes on me, ready to take any advantage. "Why not stay and try in the morning?" Sylvie suggested. "You can't track horses at night."

Stepping up, I took the bridle and turned my horse to watch them across the saddle, and then I mounted quickly, my rifle ready, covering them casually. "I don't need to track them," I replied. "He'll take them to water. I'll follow."

Swinging the horse, I rode a widening half-circle around the camp, keeping them under my gun until I was well into the darkness, then quickly I switched direction and walked my horse until I had put a good distance behind me. When I was a mile off I drew up and took off my hat and wiped the sweatband. For a while there they had me treed.

Then I set off through the night, taking my course from the stars. I had a fair idea where those horses would be, and if they were there, I'd look the situation over before making a move. I had no use for that lot back there, but I couldn't leave a woman to die out on the plains, nor did I want those guns in the hands of Indians, who had enough guns as it was.

The night was cool, and despite the fact my horse was tired, I kept him moving, and he was game enough. I don't think he'd liked that bunch any more than I had.

At times I got down and walked to save the horse. The dun had come far that day, for I had pushed him hard since early morning, but I had a hunch. There as a place in the cap rock that I knew of ... I'd been told of it by a Comanchero who had watered there at times when driving from Santa Fe over to a rendezvous with the Comanches.

It was a mere gap in the rock forty or fifty yards wide, and scarcely longer, but there was water in the bottom, a little grass, and a cottonwood tree or two.

There was a chance that the man I followed knew of it too, although few did. If he could water there, he could drive the stock north, and after another fifteen miles or so would come upon a series of small hollows fringed with cottonwoods and willows where there were fresh water lakes, or sloughs. From that time on he could move toward Tule Creek, with water to be found at intervals all along the way.

The last bright stars were hanging low in the sky when I came up to the water hole. There was the low, questioning nicker from a horse, and a sudden movement, then silence.

My move was just as quick. Leaving the dun standing, reins trailing, I ducked off to the left where a cottonwood made a shadow on the land, and I crouched there, waiting.

Slowly, the moments passed. The dun, weary of waiting when water was so close, walked a few steps toward the hollow, holding his head off to one side to keep from stepping on the reins. This was what I had expected would happen, and what I wanted to happen. Whoever was waiting would be likely to think it was a stray horse. Or so I hoped.

The dun was all mustang, however, and not one to go right down into the hollow.

He pricked his ears and whinnied a bit, and from the hollow there was an answering whinny. After a moment the dun walked on, then stopped again. Only this time he stopped because he was close to somebody.

Not moving a muscle, I waited. And then I heard a low, coaxing voice. He was trying to call my horse close enough to lay hand to the reins. The dun, knowing I was out and about, was not likely to let a strange hand reach him. Had he been a stray, lost and wandering, he might have let himself be caught ... at least as long as he had that saddle on him.

Suddenly the dun shied away ... evidently the man had tried to reach for him, which meant he was growing impatient. The dun backed off a step and stood there, and I just waited. Five, maybe ten minutes went by, and then the man stepped from the darkness and reached for the reins. The horse backed off a couple of steps, and I could have kissed him, for the man went after him.

"Hold it!" I spoke loud enough for him to hear, but not too loud, and as I spoke I cocked my rifle.

He made a move as if to dive for shelter, but I spoke again, quickly. "Don't try! You ain't got a chance."

"Who are you?"

"A driftin' man. That there's my horse."

"Thought he was strayed." I had gotten to my feet and started toward him as he spoke. "Didn't see anybody around."

"Hadn't planned on it. Don't get nervous now ... I'm holding a light trigger."

He had turned and was facing me, a stocky, barrel-chested man with his face in shadow. Suddenly he spoke. "Hell, you're Nolan Sackett!"

"Unbuckle your belt."

"Now, see here--"

I was getting impatient. "Mister, if you figure on eatin' breakfast, you'd better drop that gun belt."

He reached for the buckle, protesting. "Now look, Sackett. I'm Steve Hooker. We met one time over in the Nation, an' you got no call to stand me up."

"Maybe, maybe not."

When he'd unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it, I had him back off while I moved in and took up the belt and slung it over my shoulder.

Gathering the dun's reins, I followed my prisoner back down into the hollow. The horses were there, a fine team of six head, and two saddle horses. Down among the willows he had a fire going that had not been visible from the cap rock. I could smell coffee, and realized I'd not had a mouthful of food all day.

Once we got into the firelight I had him face around, and I knew him all right.

He had been a teamster for a freight outfit, fired for selling stock feed that belonged to the company. He had killed a tame Indian over at Fort Griffin one time. Nobody did anything about it, but nobody had any use for him after that.

I turned him around and lashed his hands together behind his back, then tied his ankles and his knees. After setting him where I could keep an eye on him, I stripped the rig from my dun and let him roll, then rubbed him down carefully with a few handfuls of dried grass. Then I put him on a picket line where he could graze, and let him go to water as he wished.

Getting a slab of bacon from my pack, I shaved slices into a pan and broke out a half a loaf of bakery bread, brought from town. Whilst I was frying it, I poured myself a cup of coffee and made idle talk about the Indian Territory.

"Where'd you get the team?" I asked suddenly.

"They're mine. Drivin' 'em west to sell in New Mexico."

I just looked at him, disgusted. "That's a mighty pretty story to tell a pilgrim," I said, "but nobody in his right mind comes alone into this country, especially with horses." And then I added, "I rode in from the south."

He made no comment about that, although he was doing some thinking, wondering whether I'd seen the wagon or not. "How did you find me?" he said, after a bit.

"You left tracks, and I followed them." And then I added, "You also left a woman back there, where she could be taken by Indians."

"That ain't no woman! She's a blasted devil! She's a witch right out of hell."

"Looked young an' pretty to me. Didn't seem any place to leave a couple of tenderfeet." I paused, turned the bacon over with a fork, and then added, "You could get lynched for that."

"They'd of killed me. They were fixing to. I heard 'em talk of it."

"Where did you pick them up?"

He hesitated. "I seen 'em first in Fort Worth. They were dressed elegant and seemed to have money. I sort of listened around and heard him making inquiries about the country west of Griffin."

"So?"

He peered at me. "Now look, Sackett. You ain't no fool. Why would a couple of well-dressed tenderfeet like them be interested in this country? This is buffalo country, Indian country. It's also cattle country, or so some think; but there's no fancy hotels and nothing to attract folks of that kind."

"What's your idea?"

"Gold, that's what. Gold, and lots of it. You think they'd come looking for range land, them folks? Not on your bottom dollar. Whatever they're huntin' is something they can carry away, and I think the answer to it is in that wagon."

"What's in it?"

"Now that's an odd thing. They never did let me see, and I tried. Maybe that's why they figured to kill me."

"Where were they headed?"

Steve Hooker was silent, probably deciding how much he should tell and how much he should hold back. Meanwhile, I started eating the bacon and fried bread right out of the frying pan. I was hungry enough to eat pan and all, but had to settle for about a dozen slices of thick bacon and the half-loaf of bread fried in bacon grease. And I drank most of Hooker's coffee.

"You better tell me," I went on, refilling my cup for the last time, "I ain't made up my mind whether to take you back to them, or let you waste away right here. You talk fast an' right and maybe you'll get a chance."

"What kind of talk is that? There's a good thing in this ... for both of us."

Well, now. I felt a sight better. I set back against the bank and watched my horse pulling at the green grass, feeling almighty pleased with the world.

Still, I had this man tied up and I was of no mind to trust him untied, especially as I was sleepy.

"What questions did they ask you?"

"Oh, they knew something, all right. I think they had read something or heard something, but they had special knowledge too. I mean they knew where they wanted to go."

He gave it to me, a little at a time. He had followed them when they went from Fort Worth to Fort Griffin by stage. Actually, he had ridden the stage with them, keeping his mouth shut and listening to the questions they asked. The girl had been very good at getting a couple of western men to talking; above all, she seemed interested in place names ... thought they were so colorful, she said.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Cross Timbers ... the Llano Estacado ... Boggy Depot... the Rabbit Ears."

Hooker hitched himself around a little, but I paid him no mind. He was hinting that I should loosen him up a little, which I wasn't about to do. "She got them to talk about those places."

"Ask any questions?"

"Full of 'em. She asked questions half the night. Her brother finally went to sleep, but not her. She kept prying away at what those men knew, but what she kept coming back to was the Rabbit Ears."

I went to the edge of the willows and broke up some sticks and twisted some dead limbs off a fallen cottonwood. When I came back I started feeding the fire again and made another pot of coffee. I knew a thing or two about the Rabbit Ears country, and I'd heard some stories. More than likely, bunkhouse talk being what it was, Steve Hooker had heard the same tales. And like he said, there was no good reason for anybody like those folks to want to go into such country.

"You sure took them far off the route," I commented dryly, "where they'd meet nobody who could tell them different."

"When we got to Griffin," Hooker said, "I approached her, told her as how I'd heard she wanted a wagon man, and I was a man who knew the country to the west.

Upshot of it was, she bought the horses and wagon, outfitted us complete."

He looked around at me. "She had me spooked, that girl did. And he was almost as bad. I don't know what it was, nothing they did or said, but she kept a-watching me and it kind of got me.

"Then one night I heard them talking. They thought I'd taken the stock off to water, and so I had, but I snuck back to listen. First thing I heard her say was 'Of course. Why waste our money on him? When we get to the Rabbit Ears we'll know our way back, so we'll kill him.' Thing that got me was she was so matter of fact about it, like she'd ask the time of day.

"Next morning I began to pull off south. I figured to get them lost so they'd never find their way back by themselves, and would need me. Then I got to thinkin'."

"I know," I said, "you got to thinking about that outfit. You got to figuring what it would bring you at Cherry Creek, or even Santa Fe. Six head of fine horses, a brand new wagon, and whatever they had inside."

"Well, what of it? They were fixin' to kill me."

"How'd you manage? Weren't they suspicious?"

"You're darn tootin' they were! They watched me all the time. On'y I told them we would make camp half a mile from water ... too many mosquitoes."

"Then you came on to this place?"

"Sure. Them tenderfeet would never find it. I on'y had to wait. Just set still an' wait."

"What about Rabbit Ears?"

"Who knows anything? She worried around that subject, but nobody had anything to offer except me, and I kept my mouth shut, on'y just saying enough to make 'em ready to talk to me when the time came."

"What did you say?"

"That Rabbit Ears was named for an old Injun chief. That was every bit I said."

There was no logical reason for anybody to come out from the East just to visit Rabbit Ears Mountain. As mountains went, it was nothing very much. Not too far west there were real mountains covered with timber, and much of the year with snow. Rabbit Ears Mountain lay just off the Santa Fe Trail, and was no more striking than many another hill or mountain. Of course, her questions might have masked some other interest in the country nearby.

After a bit Hooker interrupted my thoughts. "What do you figure to do?"

"I'm taking their horses back. After that, it's up to them."

"What about me?"

"You get out of here the best way you can. You're no pilgrim. You got yourself into this."

"You'd set me afoot out here?"

"No." I grinned at him. "You can go back to work for them, if you're of a mind to. When a man starts out on something like you started he takes his own chances."

The firelight danced weirdly against the dark, fragile arms of the willows.

Walking over to my saddle, I got my blanket and poncho and brought it back to a place near the fire, but in the shadows. I added fuel to the fire, pulled off my boots, and prepared to settle down for the night. From my pack I took a pair of moccasins and pulled them on ... in the night I might have to make a quick move, with no chance to get my boots on.

Then I went over and released Hooker and let him move around a little before I tied him for the night. He was a wily one, and I stood back away from him and kept my rifle in hand.

After he was tied up again and covered with his blanket, I went back and rolled up to sleep. When I fell asleep I was still giving thought to the Rabbit Ears, and what those folks might want out there. Oddly enough, I'd never even heard the name those folks used ... and it might make a difference.

Although in the West we set no store on names.

At daybreak I walked Hooker out on the cap rock with a canteen, a pack of grub, and his guns. His gun belts I took with me and rode off maybe three hundred yards, where I dropped them for him to pick up. Then I gathered the horses and started back.

Now, I was in no way anxious to be riding back to that outfit. In a way I had no blame for Hooker, although I'd leave no woman out there a prey to Indians, nor did I aim to give them a chance at me.

In my time I'd known a few killers, but I'd never known anybody quite as anxious to kill as these folks. Even when it was of no particular use to them. Whatever it was they were after, they didn't want anybody interfering with them, or even knowing what they were about.

Well, I wasn't going to play nurse to them. I liked my sleep too well. They would have the team, and if they got out of there they would do it under their own power and by their own skill.

The girl came out to meet me. She was bait, I had no doubt, and believe me, that Sylvie was tasty bait for any man's trap, and she knew it. She walked out when she saw me coming, skirting the clumps of prickly pear or the prairie-dog holes.

And then she stopped until I rode up to her.

Only my rifle was laid across my saddle bows, just sort of casual-like, but the muzzle kind of followed her when she moved. But she brought her hands into the open where I could see them, and kept them there.

"Here's your horses," I told her, "and the rest is up to you. You take my advice and you'll turn back to Fort Griffin. You don't fit into this country."

She smiled at me. "Why, Mr. Sackett! I thought you liked me?"

"You're a mighty pretty girl, Sylvie, and just about a safe as a nest of rattlers. But you take it from me and cut out of this country. Go east, where you belong."

She came closer, looking up at me with those big, dark eyes. "Come with us.

Please do. We need you, Mr. Sackett, we're all alone out here, and neither of the boys has ever driven a team." She reached up and touched my hand with her fingers. "Mr. Sackett, come with us. Believe me, you'd never be sorry ... and I'd be very grateful."

Well, now. She wasn't promising me anything, but in a way she was promising me everything, and she was quite a woman, that one. Only I wasn't having any.

"Sorry," I said. "Maybe if you were alone; but I'd trust none of you. You've got the horses. Hitch up and pull out right away, and follow my tracks. You'll come to water, and you'd better fill your barrels. They should help you over the dry stretch, and after that there's water most of the way north. Only you're going to run into the Palo Duro Canyon ... maybe a thousand feet deep in places."

"Are there no ranchers? No towns?

"Lady, this here is Indian country. You won't even find any buffalo hunters until you get farther north. There's said to be some folks at Borregos Plaza on the south bank of the Canadian. They're good folks, Mexicans from Mora or Taos, and they run sheep. If you act right, they'll sell you a little food and tell you how to get on to the north.

"I say they're good people, and they are, but there's one hombre from Santa Fe named Sostenes l'Archeveque ... he'd kill you as soon as look at you. He idles around there from time to time ... leave him alone."

All the time I'd been talking to her I'd been holding her right hand. A time or two she gave it a tug to get free, but I decided it was safer that way and, holding her right hand, I kept my eyes watching the other two. Finally I dropped her hand.

"Adios!" I said suddenly, and wheeled and rode off.

I gave my horse about three jumps north before I turned him sharply east, then west. Glancing back, I caught the gleam of light on a rifle barrel, but by that time I was another hundred yards off and a poor risk for a shot at the distance, and moving the way I was. So I rode away, and was glad to be gone.

Chapter 3

About that time I began to give thought to myself. Here I was, riding away from trouble, no more than eight or nine dollars in my pocket, and nothing more in sight. For a man with the name of outlaw, I was doing mighty poor at it. When it came to that, I never did see any rich outlaws. All I ever saw were living on the dodge, out on the plains, in the mountains, or in outlaw hide-outs, ragged, dirty, and miserable.

Buffalo hunting was about over. In no time at all the hunters would have wiped out the buffalo in this country, and would pull out. What I should do was to get myself a few head of cattle and start myself a ranch right here in the Panhandle of Texas. It would be no time at all until cattle were streaming into this country. The buffalo hunters would be telling of the good grass and the water holes, and no cattleman would ask for more.

I had the name of being a rough man, and that came of the troubles I'd seen, and the fact that I'd come out of them winning instead of losing. This was a time of bitter war and struggle, for the Indian gave up his hunting grounds reluctantly, and even those of us in sympathy with him were compelled to fight, because they could not always distinguish between friends and enemies. Of course, it wasn't only the white man fighting the Indian, for the Indians were constantly at war with each other.

Now I drifted north, holding to the high ridges, where I rode just below the crest, out of sight yet high enough to ride easy and keep a wide view of the country. When I saw dust, I drew up and got down and waited until it had gone out of sight, for though it might be white men raising the dust, I'd no reason to think they would be friendly.

All the time, my mind was being busy trying to remember all I'd heard of the Rabbit Ears, and the one thing I kept coming back to was a story I'd heard trailside down on the Neuces seven or eight years back.

The story was already old, and the man who told it to me was a Mexican from across the Rio Grande. He had hailed my camp from out of the night, and I told him to come in. That was brush country, and rougher than a cob; every other man an outlaw or a renegade hiding out from the Davis police.

John Wesley Hardin was on the dodge then, and Bill Longley, just to name two. Up in northeast Texas Cullen Baker was dead, or at least they said they had killed him, and he never showed up around after that. All these men were refugees from the Davis police.

I had stepped back in the shadows to let that Mex come in, and he came politely, with his hands up. He was an oldish man, but dapper and mighty elegant still.

His boots were dusty, and although he had tried to brush himself off there was traildust on him. "Senor?"

Well, I stepped out of the brush. By and large I'd found Mexicans the salt of the earth, and many a time when on the dodge the only thing that kept me alive was a bait of frijoles and tortillas at some Mexican sheep camp.

"Come in and set," I said. "There's coffee ready and beans in the pot."

So we ate, and then he rolled him a smoke and we yarned the night away. He was afoot ... he didn't say how or why, and in those days a body didn't ask questions. It happened I had an extra horse, a paint pony, pretty as a picture.

A few days before that pony had been ridden by a mighty handsome young Comanche with bad judgment. He was riding loose, hunting for some action, and when he saw me he exercised that bad judgment ... he decided I was easy pickings and fell in on my trail. Only I was keeping an eye on my back trail and when I saw I was followed I circled arround and hunched down close to the trail to see who it was.

When I saw it was a Comanche with two fresh scalps, I stepped out and spoke to him. He turned as if he was shot and started to lift his rifle, which was his second case of bad judgment, for I only figured to set him afoot so he couldn't follow me any longer.

He put hand to that rifle and I shot him through the brisket, emptying the paint pony's saddle like there'd never been anything there. The Comanche was game; he came up fighting, so I let him have another one, caught up the pony, and left out of the country.

"You need a horse," I said to the Mexican, "you take that one. The Comanche who owned him won't be hunting him."

"Gracias, senor." He spoke simply, yet with feeling, and he had a right. In that country at that time the only folks he was apt to meet would more than likely finish him off for his guns or whatever else he might have.

We drank more coffee and talked, and then at the last he said, "Amigo, I have no money. I cannot pay for the horse."

"He is yours, think nothing of it."

"My grandfather," he said, "used to drive mules on the Santa Fe Trail."

Well, now. That was an interesting bit of information if I'd been interested in his grandfather, which I wasn't, or in the Santa Fe Trail, which I'd seen my ownself.

"It was there he nearly lost his life. He was of a pack train for Nathan Hume."

It all came back to me now, and I recalled as if it had been last night, us sitting by the fire and him telling me about that pack train. They had come from Santa Fe, and were crossing the plains, bound for Independence, Missouri, or some such place, and they had been making good time until they were hit by a war party of Kiowas.

They were strung out too far, and they didn't have much chance. A few of them gathering around Nathan Hume himself, among them my Mexican friend's grandfather, bunched up and made a retreating fight of it back to the Rabbit Ears Mountain, where they dug in for a stand.

They were wiped out ... all but that Mexican, who found a hole and crawled into it. The Kiowas scalped and mutilated the bodies after robbing them of everything worth having, and then rode off a-running. After a bit that Mex came out and hoofed it back to Santa Fe.

When he got back he was warned to lie low, that the governor had sent a detachment of soldiers after Hume, and that if he were found he would be arrested. Nathan Hume had been smuggling gold secretly mined in the San Juans.

So this Mexican smuggled himself out of town on a borrowed mule and then joined a train headed for Mexico City. He had friends there, and he planned to get some help and return, for he was sure he knew where the gold was ... and was sure the Indians had not found it.

The trouble was, shortly after arriving in Mexico he was thrown from a horse.

His back was broken and he never walked again. He knew where three hundred pounds of gold was hidden, and he couldn't do a thing about it.

This was the story that was told to me by the Mex to whom I'd given a horse.

"Did you ever give thought to hunting that gold?" I'd asked him.

"Of course, senor, but"--he shrugged--"I had a difficulty in Taos ... a matter of a senorita ... and I was followed to Las Vegas. I killed a man, senor, a man with many brothers and cousins and uncles."

He put his cigarette in the fire and smiled. "I like life, senor, and I am a man who is content with a little now and another time. If I went north I might find the gold. I might also find a grave, and the odds for the latter are best. If you want the gold it is yours, senor."

"Any idea where it is?"

"There's a box canyon back of Rabbit Ears. It was there they made their stand ... the bones of the mules might be there still.

"There was a pool of water there, covered with a green moss or scum, and beyond the pool a hole under a boulder. The gold was hidden in the hole, rocks tumbled over it, and with a broken gun Nathan Hume chipped a cross on the boulder. You should find it."

The next morning we parted, and once in the saddle he held out his hand to me and we shook hands. "Be careful, senor, and ask no questions. The Mexicans who mined the gold had sons and grandsons, and they know that Nathan Hume's mule train did not get to Missouri ... they might even have spoken to the Indians."

It was not the first trailside story I'd heard of buried gold or lost mines.

Such stories were told and retold all up and down the country, although this was the first time I'd heard this one. But I kept it in mind, and planned to take a look for myself sometime. Only things kept happening.

In Serbin, a town of Wendish folk in Texas where I'd had friends, I killed a carpetbagger and was thrown in jail for it. But my Wendish friends found a way to help me escape and left my horse where I could find it. I joined up with a trail herd headed for the Kansas towns, but I was a man wanted by the law.

In Abilene, which was new, raw, and wild, I found my name was known. There'd been a cousin of mine there named Tyrel and he'd killed a man in the streets, somebody said, but then I got the straight of it. He had faced down Reed Carney, walked up to him, and made him drop his gun belt into the street.

Tyrel and Orrin Sackett--I'd heard tell of them, although they came from the Cumberland Gap country; but it gave me a rarely good feeling to know the Sackett blood ran true.

That was long ago, and now I was here, riding north in the Panhandle of Texas, riding over the Staked Plains and heading north toward Borregos Plaza, Adobe Walls, and the buffalo camps. I was riding a lineback dun across the plains where a man could stand in his stirrups and look straight away for three days, it was that level.

So I shoved my rifle down in the boot, I canted my hat back on my head, and I looked off across the country and opened my mouth in song. At least, I felt it was song, and tried to make it that way, although the dun wasn't sure. The sky was blue and the plains were wide, and there was land around to stretch in.

Maybe I'd only a few dollars in my jeans and a hanging party left behind, but the wind smelled good and the sun was warm, and it was a great time to be alive.

The country around me began to break up again into softly rolling hills, with a few ridges and some hollows where there were trees.

"Oh, I left my girl in San Antone, Away down near the border, I ..."

A tuft of feathers showed over the crest of a low hill, and a dozen yards away an Indian appeared, and then another and another. A broken line of Kiowas stretched out for two hundred yards. They were riding slowly toward me, their lances pointed skyward. I glanced around quickly, and across the valley there were half a dozen more riding toward me, walking their horses.

At least a dozen of them had rifles, and they seemed in no hurry. Down the valley the way lay open, but several of the Indians were further along than I was, and they had only to cut over and head me off. There were at least thirty Indians in the whole party, and they had me boxed.

Sweat broke out on my forehead, but my mouth was dry. I had seen what Kiowas could do to a prisoner, for I had come upon what was left when they had finished, and it was no sight for a man with a weak stomach.

If I tried to make a run for it I would be dead within a minute.

Turning my horse at right angles, I rode straight for them, still singing.

Chapter 4

My rifle was in the boot, and to reach for it would mean death. My pistol, in its holster, was held down by the thong hooked over the hammer, a necessity when riding rough country.

So I rode straight for them, pointing the dun to ride right between two of them who rode some thirty yards apart, and singing as I rode.

Nobody ever figured a way to account for the thinking of an Indian. They were curious as any wild animal, and at times as temperamental, but the thing they admired most was courage, because you needed courage to be a good Indian. I knew I wouldn't get anywhere now trying to run; and when it comes to that, I am not a man who cares to run, unless it's toward something.

That dun pricked up his ears. He knew we were in trouble, and he didn't like the smell of Indians; I could feel every muscle in him poised with eagerness to take out and run.

These braves weren't hunting me. They were a war party all right, and they were out for bigger game. But if they were fixing for trouble with me they were going to get it. As I walked my horse toward them I made up my mind what to do. The big Indian on the right was my meat. If they made a hostile move I'd jump my horse into him, and grab for my pistol. I went through the motions in my mind, and all the while I was singing about that girl I left in San Antone.

Behind me I could hear the riders closing in, and in front of me they had slowed their horses a little, but I kept right on riding. My right hand was on my thigh, where it had been all along, only inches from the butt of my gun. I knew that if I got my gun out before they killed me I wouldn't go alone. If there was one thing I could do well in this world it was shoot a pistol.

Back in the Clinch Mountains in the fifties and sixties a boy just naturally cut his teeth on guns, and before I was twelve years old I'd been out in the woods feeding the family with a rifle, and with little time for anything else.

My eyes held straight ahead, yet I was watching the Indian on either side of me.

There were a-plenty of others there, but it was those two who would bring on the trouble and they were coming closer and closer. My spur was just caressing that bronc's flank, ready to nudge him into action.

Those Indians came right on and I rode right toward them. Of a sudden the one on my left brought his lance down slowly, pointing it at me, but I never flinched.

Had I showed one sign of the scare that was in me, he'd have run me through, or tried it.

He put the point of that lance right against my chest, and I looked over it and right into his eyes. I put my left hand up, still holding the reins, and pushed the point aside, just nice and easy, and then I walked my horse right on past.

Believe me, the skin was crawling up my back and the hair on the back of my neck was prickling, but I didn't dare take a look back. Suddenly there was a rustle of hoofs in the grass, but a sharp command stopped them. One of those Indians, probably an old chief, had saved my bacon. I kept right on, walking my horse, the sweat dripping off my face as if I'd dipped my head under a pump.

I went right on until I had the low ridge behind me, and then I touched the dun with the spur and we lit out of there like the fires of hell were behind us.

Then I slowed, turned at right angles to my route and rode down into the bed of a small stream and followed it west for a couple of miles.

Riding in water is far from a foolproof way to hide a trail. My horses's tracks would remain in the bottom for maybe an hour or more with the stream running at that slow rate, and the water being clear as it was, so when I got upstream I caved dirt into the water at several points to muddy the stream so the tracks couldn't be seen, and also to give the stream more silt to fill in the tracks.

It would take some time for the water to become clear again.

They'd let me go on, more than likely, because they respected me, or because they were hunting bigger game, but some of the young braves might change their minds and trail off after me, liking the looks of my horse or my guns.

Alternately walking or trotting my horse, I worked my way across country, keeping an eye out for any movement, and all the time wary of my back trail.

Antelope were nearly always in sight, and from time to time I saw buffalo, scattered bunches of them, them, growing more frequent as I moved north. But I saw no more Indians.

Once I found wheel tracks, but they were months old. I took in after them and followed their trail, camping near water every night, occasionally laying over until noontime to give the dun a rest and a chance to graze.

The country grew rougher as I went on. The stubble on my face grew thicker, and my bones and muscles grew weary of riding. Sometimes it seemed as if there must be dust and sand all through me, and half the water I drank was gyp water. But every night I checked my guns, keeping tnem clean and ready for trouble.

Somewhere to the north, I knew, was the Mexican town of Romero. It was a little place, and had been there quite a spell. The folks there were friendly to the Indians, and some said had been Comancheros, who traded with the Indians, selling them guns in exchange for whatever the Indians had taken from the white men moving west. Nobody liked the Comancheros much, not even their own people.

But I never put my stock in that story about the folks at Romero being Comancheros.

But Borregos Plaza was the first place I would come to, and I was drawing close to it--at least, the way distances go in that country.

At daybreak I dipped into the Palo Duro, feeling uneasy because this was the heart of the Comanche country; but I rested in a clump of willows until nigh on to sundown, letting the dun eat that rich green bottom grass, and drink the water there. When the shadows started reaching out, I saddled up and scouted a way out of the canyon I was in, and I breathed easier when I was back on the plains.

The tiny cantina at Borregos Plaza was bright with lights when I walked my horse up the trail to the settlement. Dogs barked, and here and there I glimpsed movement in a darkened doorway. Strangers were welcome at Borregos Plaza, but the Mexicans who lived there had learned to be wary of them, too. It was a wild, rough land, and the few men who rode there were often wild, rough men.

Swinging down in front of the cantina I tied the dun and, ducking my head, went through the door. There was a bar about twenty feet long, and four tables with chairs around them. A fat Mexican in a white shirt stood behind the bar, his forearms on the bar. Two leather-chapped vaqueros stood near him, drinking. At one of the tables sat two older men, one with white hair.

The room was small, immaculate, and cool, with that sense of spaciousness one gets from Mexican building. All eyes turned on me, a big, dusty, travel-stained man. I went up to the bar, and ordered a drink.

"You have come far, senor?"

"Too far ... ran into a war party of Kiowas."

"You were fortunate. You are still alive."

"No figuring on Indians. I rode right through them. Nobody lifted a hand."

They exchanged glances. It took nerve to ride through a bunch of Kiowas, and they knew that if I'd shown any weakness I would be dead now. But nobody knew how scared I'd been, and I wasn't planning on telling them.

"You will be hungry, senor? If you will sit down my wife will bring food to you."

"Gracias." I walked over to a table and dropped wearily into a chair, then I removed my hat and ran my fingers through my hair. I could have fallen asleep right there.

The senora brought a plate of beans, beef, and tortillas to the table, and a pot of coffee. It was late, and the others drifted out to go home. The Mexican came out from behind the bar and sat down and filled a cup with fresh coffee.

"I am called Pio.... You want a place to stay?"

"No ... I've slept out so long I'd never be able to sleep inside. I'll go out under the trees."

"You won't have trouble. Those who live here are good people."

"Are there any other strangers around?"

"There was a man ... he rode through here yesterday but he wasn't around long.

He acted as if somebody was following him."

He looked up into my eyes but I grinned at him. "You got me wrong. I ain't after anybody. I'm just riding north, going up to Romero, and then if things look good, maybe over to the Colorado mines."

He was skeptical, I could see that, but he was a good man, and he was willing to wait for any further information.

Me, I knew better than to start anything in these quiet little places. They were quiet because they were left alone. The men here, each man in each house, had a buffalo gun and he could shoot. Each man in this town had fought Indians, renegades, and whoever wanted a fight. If a man started trouble in one of these little western towns he was setting himself up at the end of a shooting gallery.

Moreover, it was an even-money bet that Pio knew about the shooting down country. News like that travels fast.

After I'd eaten and had drunk a quart of coffee, I went outside and led my horse into the trees and beyond them to the meadow. Then, stripping off the saddle, I gave him a careful rubdown while he fed on a bait of corn I'd gotten from Pio.

Western horses got mighty little corn, but that dun had it coming; and thinking of him made me think kindly of that old man back there who had given him to me.

Before this, I hadn't dared to strip the saddle from him for fear I might have to light out again, to light a shuck, as the saying was.

It was a quiet night. I could hear the rustle of the cottonwood leaves, and sometimes heard subdued sounds from the plaza. There was a coyote out on the knoll making music at the stars. Rolled up in my blankets, two of them, atop my poncho, I slept like a baby ... a baby who'd never known a night in his life when there mightn't be trouble.

Sunup was a rare fine thing. Washing my face in the water that poured into the horse trough, I glanced over at the buckboard standing in front of the cantina.

A Mexican was hitching a fresh team to the buckboard, and the rattle of the trace chains was the only sound in the little street, shaded by the huge old cottonwoods.

My fingers had to do for a comb, something I'd not owned in more than a year, but I saddled up before I went into my saddlebags for my razor, which I stropped on my belt. Then I shaved, using the still end of the horse trough for a mirror.

It made me look some better, although I'd never win no prizes for looks, not with that broken nose of mine.

When I'd finished shaving, I dabbed whiskey on my jaws for a shaving lotion and then led my dun across to the hitch rail. A man living my land of life never would let himself get caught without a gun or a saddle horse.

I went inside, where Pio was standing over a table at which three people were sitting, but the first one I saw was the girl.

She was young ... maybe seventeen. Most girls were married at her age, or soon after. She had kind of dark red hair and brown eyes. ... She was beautiful ... taller than most girls ... and shaped like music.

The old man with her was rail-thin and waspish, with hard gray eyes and a gray mustache mixed with red. You could see at a glance that he was a man with no give to him, and a man that no man in his right mind would try to cross. The third man was a breed ... I'd say half Indian, anyway. A slight-built man, he was, and past middle age.

When I sat down at a table Pio's wife came in with a plate of food, a heaping plate, for she had noticed the night before that I was a good feeder. She was one of those women who like nothing better than to see a man sit up to table and put away the food.

A couple of times the old man glanced my way, and once the girl did. I heard Pio say something about "Romero ..." but his voice trailed off.

Pretty soon he came over to my table and dropped into a chair. He motioned to his wife for a fresh pot of coffee and we started in on it, Pio being as good a hand at putting it away as I was myself.

"Those people," Pio said, "they go north."

"Yeah?"

"I fear for them. She is young, the senorita. And the men ... good men, but not plainsmen."

"What are they doin' out here then? No man in his right mind brings a woman like that into this country."

Pio shrugged. "I brought mine. What must be done must be done. Perhaps there was no other place."

There were questions I could have asked, but it was none of my business. I was lighting out of here right soon, and more than likely I wouldn't be back this way again.

Only that pack train of Nathan Hume's kept sticking in my mind. If all that gold was up there in those mountains, maybe I should just look around. I wanted no part of that outfit I'd left behind, but it was likely I'd be there before them.

"It is said you are an outlaw, senor?"

I looked up at him, but I did not speak. It was said, but I didn't much like it.

"I think, myself, you are an honest man, and a caballero. I think you are one to be trusted."

"You think whatever you like."

"Those three ... they need help."

My hand was reaching for the bean pot, but it stopped halfway.

"No, you don't," I said. "Not me. I'm not being saddled with no pilgrims. Not crossing that country."

"It was a thought."

"You better give it another think. I'm a fast-travelin' man in Injun country. I want it so's I can run or hide, and you'd play hell hidin' a buckboard or its tracks. It's a far stretch from here to wherever they're headed, and I've got business up country."

"She is a pretty girl. The Comanches ..."

"Too bad."

Pio was silent. Maybe he knew more about me than I wanted to admit to myself, but he just sat there and waited, and like a damned fool I looked over at that girl setting there with her pa, if that was what he was, and that breed.

She was so fresh and young and pretty that I had to look away fast or soon I'd be doing just what Pio wanted, and making a fool of myself. Yet a body couldn't see her setting there looking so young and lovely without thinking what would happen to her if the Comanches got her.

Now, back east where the Indians are tame and mighty few, a lot of folks have started talking about the poor red man, but believe me, when you saw an Indian out on the plains settin' up on a pony with a Winchester in his hand or a lance, there was nothing poor about him. He was a fighting man from way back, and he was a savage ... a stranger was an enemy, and an enemy was to be killed or, if captured, tortured to see how brave he was.

In my time I'd had my share of troubles with Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahos, Utes, Cheyennes, Sioux, and about every land of redskin there was. With some I got alone fine; but when he's fighting no Indian needs take a back seat for any man.

They'd been called, by one of Europe's greatest generals, "the finest light cavalry under the sun."

When a man traveled in Indian country he sort of sifted through, gentle-like and taking up no more room than need be. He kept out of sight, and slept without a fire at night unless he could hide it well. And on top of that he prayed, if he was a praying man, and the deeper you got into Indian country the more of a praying man you got to be. You just couldn't afford to miss any bets.

Pio talked about the sheep. He talked about cattle. It would be no time at all, he was saying, until the Texas cattlemen started bringing their herds into the Panhandle. The buffalo was going, the Indian would be driven out, and the cattle would come.

"And then the farmers," I said, with disgust. My own folks had farmed, if you could call it that, on the thin soil of the Clinch Mountain slopes, but I wanted no farmers cutting up this country.

"No, this country is no good for farm," Pio said. "We try it. The wind blows too much. Only the grass ties it down."

"I know," I agreed, finishing off the last of the food on my plate "That last dust storm we had, I could taste some Kansas dust in it. I knew a man one time in the Brazos country who could tell what county he was in by the taste of the dust."

Well, right then I made a big mistake. I looked over at that girl again. Of course, you've got to realize that I hadn't seen a white woman for a good long time, and this one was kind of special.

"All right, Pio," I said, "pick up the chips. You go tell them I'll try to get them through to Romero, anyway."

"Bueno!" Pio smiled at me. "I knew this was what you would do. I tell them so. I tell them just to wait, that you're a good man."

Me? It was the first time in a long while anybody had said that about Nolan Sackett. Oh, they say 'He's a good man with a gun,' or 'He's a fair hand with a rope,' or 'He can ride anything wears hair,' but nobody just out and said I was a good man.

A man had to avoid that sort of thing. First thing a man knows he's tryin' to live up to it. And then what kind of an outlaw is he?

So I glanced over there again and the girl smiled at me. Well, that was all right. And as for the breed, I always got along with breeds all right. Only that old man had too stiff a neck to suit me. He would be bull-headed as an old mossy-horn range cow.

Anyway, I was in for it. Least I could do was have another cup of coffee.

Chapter 5

Sitting at the table, I could look out the open door and into the street. The sun was bright on the street, but the doorway of the cantina was shadowed by huge old trees that stood nearby. Across the street were the cottonwoods and willows beyond which I had slept the night before.

It was pleasant, sitting there and looking out on that sunlit street, and I wished I had such a place of my own, a little cantina somewhere along a trail where folks would stop off from time to time. You never saw anything more peaceful.

On the other side of the street and down a bit, just where I could see just one window and a corner of a building, stood an adobe that was partly fallen to ruin. It was small, and was likely among the first houses built here.

Pio came back to my table with those three people, and they all sat down around the table, leaving me only a partial view out of the door.

"Senor Nolan Sackett." Pio said, "I wish you to meet Senor Jacob Loomis and Senorita Penelope Hume, and this here is Flinch."

Now, when I heard that name Hume I kept a straight face. My muscles never even twitched, me being a poker player of some experience. It seemed to me, all of a sudden, that the Llano Estacado was being invaded by folks all with the same idea.

"Howdy," I said, and just let it lay there. From now on until I got the lay of the land they could do the talking.

The man called Loomis spoke. "We understand you are riding toward Romero, and that you might guide us there. We would pay, of course."

Nobody had said anything about paying me until now, but for a man with no more money in his jeans than I was packing that was welcome news.

"It's risky," I said, knowing that committed me to nothing at all. "It's almighty risky. The Comanches and Kiowas are riding, and they're upset by the buffalo hunters coming south. You'd be better off to stay right where you are."

"In the middle of nowhere?" Loomis responded in a tone of disgust. "Young man, we'll give you fifty dollars to guide us, and to fight for us if there's trouble."

"For fifty dollars," I said, honestly enough, "I'd fight the whole Comanche tribe."

A flicker of shadow caught my eye, something in the background. Looking past Loomis, I could see nothing but the sunlight on the road and a lone hen pecking at something in the dust.

"Were you figuring on stopping in Romero?"

Now, I needn't have asked that question, because nobody stopped in Romero except the Mexicans who lived there. Romero was a nice, pleasant little place at the end of several trials, none of them traveled very much.

"We will decide about that when the time comes," he replied, and his voice was testy, as if he didn't care much for questions.

"All right," I said, "you be ready to pull out come daybreak ... and I mean first light, not a mite later."

"I will decide about that." Loomis was brusque. "You will get your orders from me."

"No," I said, "not if I am to take you through. If you want me for a guide, you'll go when I say, stop when I say, and make as little noise as ever you can." I got up. That shadow movement I'd seen was itching at me. "You make up your mind, Mr. Loomis. I am leaving out of here when there's a streak of gray in the sky. You want to go along, you all be ready, because that's when I'm going."

Oh, he didn't like it. He wasn't even one bit happy with me, and I didn't care.

Fifty dollars was a lot of money, but a whole hide counted pretty high with me.

Besides, I had a few dollars when I rode in, and I'd have most of it riding out.

Now, I hadn't missed the girl's name ... Hume. And the man who supposedly hid that treasure in the Rabbit Ears was Nathan Hume. Some folks might consider that was just a coincidence, but not me.

Loomis pushed back from the table and was about to get up, so I put my coffee cup down and said, "Seen some folks headed that way. City folks ... young fellow and a girl."

You'd of thought I'd slapped him. "Didn't get their name," I said, "but the girl was called Sylvie. Matter of fact, there were three of them. I didn't cotton to 'em very much."

Penelope's eyes just got bigger and darker, it seemed like, but that old man went white as death. He sat down again, sat down hard, and for a minute or two he didn't say anything.

"You saw them?"

"Uh-huh ... unpleasant folks, I'd say." I looked up at Loomis from under my eyebrows. "You know them?"

He said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. "Not with favor, sir, not with favor. A most untrustworthy lot."

He got up again. "Come, Penelope. Daybreak will come all too soon."

After they had gone I saw Pio watching me. "What is it, senor? Who are those people you spoke of? He was afraid of them, I think."

So I told him a little about Sylvie and her brother, enough to put him on his guard against them. "I'd say they were touched ... off the trail somewhere in their heads, but what makes them dangerous is that they don't look it."

Whether he believed me I could not guess, but I left him to think about it and wandered outside. It was cool and pleasant under the old cottonwoods. The dun was living it up on that fresh green grass, with plenty of water close at hand.

But I wasn't looking forward to playing shepherd to that buckboard.

With my back to a tree where I could look down the street, I considered what lay ahead ... and kept an eye on that empty building across the street from the cantina. Had the flicker of movement come from there?

Time dragged slowly by, and I watched, half-dozing, yet my eyes were ready to catch any movement. Shadows fell around me, and I didn't think anybody could see me clearly--not to be sure, anyway. The dun was feeding right behind me, so nobody was going to come up on my blind side.

While I waited there I thought of tomorrow. Leaving town, we would go northwest along Punta de Aguas Creek, which emptied into the Canadian only a few miles off. Holding south of the creek, we could make Romero in three to four days, depending on how game they were to travel and how much trouble we had. With luck we could make ten, twelve miles in a day.

After a while I shifted the dun's picket pin to fresh grass, then, spurs jingling, strolled hack to the cantina and sat down inside. Pio was gone, but the senora came out and brought me a meal of buffalo steak, eggs, and beans. I sat where I could keep an eye on the adobe on the other side of the street. When I'd been there only a few minutes, Penelope Hume came in.

Now, I'm no hand with womenfolks. I'm a rough, hardhanded man, doing most any kind of work or getting into any kind of a fighting shindig. Womenfolks, especially the young, pretty kind, put a loop on my tongue to where it can scarce wiggle. And this Penelope, she was fresh and lovely, and land of sparkly when she laughed. Like I've said, she was a tall girl and well made. She was put together so that when she moved it had a way of making a man mighty restless.

"Mr. Sackett, may I sit down?"

Now there's things we don't know back in the Clinch Mountains, but a man knows enough to stand when a lady comes up to him, so I got up quick, almost spilling my coffee, and sat down only after she had been helped into her chair.

She looked across the table at me. "Mr. Sackett, I am glad you are going to show us the way to Romero, but I thought you should be warned. There's going to be trouble."

"I was born to it."

"I know. But you weren't born around Sylvie, Ralph, and Andrew."

"So you know them. Do they have another name?"

"Their name is Karnes. They are kinfolk, in a way ... there's no blood relation between us. But they knew ... well, they pried. They learned something only I was supposed to know; and now they are trying to get where we are going before we do."

I didn't ask any questions about that. The trouble was, these folks probably believed the secret of Nathan Hume's treasure was something only they knew. As far as the hiding place was concerned, if they knew that, it was something nobody else knew. But I was pretty sure I wasn't the only one who knew about that gold. Only most of the others didn't know as much as I did.

"What started you folks out here all to once?"

"My grandmother died, and when she died she mentioned a packet of letters in her will, and they were to come to me, as my father and mother were both dead.

Sylvie and Ralph were there, although they had no right to be. There was little enough to leave and, as I said, they were no blood relation. But they heard the reading of the will, and in it grandmother mentioned that in the packet of letters was an account of where Nathan Hume's gold was buried."

"Somebody must've got away and told about it. I mean, when Nathan Hume was killed."

"You knew about that?"

"He was a known man. He'd been taking pack trains from Missiouri to Santa Fe for years."

"Grandfather drew a picture, wrote a few lines, and gave it to an Indian boy. He thought the boy might get away, and if he did he was to mail this to grandmother. The letter was all addressed, everything. Well, the Indian boy did get away, and he sent the message."

"How about Sylvie?"

"After the reading of the will she was just too nice, and so was Ralph. Sylvie made some tea--What's the matter?"

"Sylvie offered me some coffee, one time."

"It may have been the same sort of thing. She made some tea, and I took it to my room, only I got busy writing letters and forgot to drink it. In the middle of the night I woke up and Sylvie was standing there reading the letters by candlelight.

"I got them away from her, but she was furious--she threatened me, laughed at me, said there was no gold, and even if there was I could never get it."

The sun had moved beyond the cottonwoods, throwing a shadow across the street and across our door. A dog trotted up the street and paused outside, and I watched him, for something worried him. He sniffed, trying to catch some scent that kept getting away from him.

It was a nice thing, setting here in this cool, pleasant room talking to Penelope Hume. "You said your folks were dead. What about Loomis--who is he?"

"He was a friend of my father, and of my grandfather too. He offered to help.

Flinch found us, or we found him, at Fort Griffin. He has been very loyal."

That answered one question for me. If I could answer the one about the adobe across the street I'd be happier, but I had a good idea about that, too. And I was watching the dog. He was a big dog, and part wolf by the look of him, with all a wolf's suspicion.

We talked of other things, Penelope and me. She told me of her home back in New York state, and I talked a bit about Tennessee, but more about the country we were in.

"Folks out here are a rough lot, ma'am. There's the good and the bad, and there's many a man who has come west to get away from something, some trouble he's had. You'll find men from the oldest families and with the best education working right alongside a cowhand who can't read or write.

"The trouble is, too many folks come just to get rich and then get out. They don't care what they leave behind as long as they can take riches with them."

All the time I talked I thought of how it seemed to set across the table from such a girl, me who owned nothing but a pistol, a Winchester, a beat-up blanket or two, and a borrowed horse. And likely would never have anything more.

"I'd better go," she said. "Mr. Loomis wouldn't like it at all if he knew where I was."

"You're all right with me," I said, "but ma'am, I'd not be trusting of folks.

There are some would murder you for what you know about Nathan Hume."

"My dear cousins? I know."

"Not only them," I said. "When it comes to money or a pretty woman, there's not many who can be trusted."

"Not you, Mr. Sackett?"

"I've the name of being an outlaw," I said.

A spatter of rain was falling when Flinch led out the horses in the morning. It was dark, with only a faint suggestion of light showing beyond the cottonwoods.

Underneath them it was still like night. I tethered the dun near the buckboard and, rifle in hand, went across to Pio's.

The room was lighted by candles. It was warm and pleasant, with the smell of breakfast cooking. Loomis was already at the table, his face stiff with sleep; only the eyes seemed awake. Drawing up a chair, I sat down opposite him, and was scarcely seated when Penelope came in, hurrying to her chair. I rose and seated her, and Loomis gave me a dark, angry look.

Whether he was irritated with me because he believed I was making up to her, I don't know, and cared less. Flinch came in, walking quite as a ghost, and sat down at the end of the table.

The senora came from the kitchen with a platter of food, and then brought a steaming pot of coffee. We ate in silence, all of us heavy with sleep. As for me, I knew I should be thinking of the trail ahead, and the day before us. But I could not keep my thoughts from going back to yesterday, and the dog.

Whoever had been in the adobe house across the way had gone before the dog could find him. I remembered how the dog, hackles stiff, had walked toward the adobe, growling. Nobody else had seemed to be watching him.

He went inside the open doorway, and I got up and strolled across the street and followed him. He knew me, had been smelling around when I picketed my horse the night before, and had seen me that day around Pio's house. He looked up at me, then smelled around the empty room.

The lean-to behind the adobe showed where a man had slept and smoked cigarettes, a lot of them. The big dog sniffed curiously, then wandered out to the low back wall where the man had evidently gone ...

Steve Hooker? I wondered.

It was still dark when we went outside. The air was cool and the spatter of raindrops had begun again. The old buckboard creaked when they climbed into it.

Flinch gathered the reins, and they moved off.

Pio came out as I stepped into the saddle. "I do not like it, amigo," he said.

"The senorita will have trouble, I think. We like her very much, my wife and I."

"Her worst enemies are behind us. The ones of whom I spoke. Tell them nothing."

"Adios," he said, and I left him there, and moved out after the buckboard.

We crossed the Canadian, which was mostly a wide bed of sand, and then went west on the farther side, keeping well back from the bank to avoid the numerous creeks. But occasionally we traveled in the dry river bed itself, the narrow stream of the river shifting from one side to the other as we moved along. By daylight we were well on our way.

Riding ahead, I scouted the country for Indians or for anybody else who might be around. As it grew light, I swung right and left now and again to cut for sign.

Most of the tracks I found were those of sheep from Borregos Plaza, or of buffalo.

The light rain increased, and I led the way out of the river bed. It never took long in this country for a flash flood to come, and I didn't know how much it had been raining up the country.

When we were maybe a mile back from the river, I caught movement in the willows ahead and below us, and two riders came in sight from the direction of the river. At that distance I couldn't make them out, but they never so much as glimpsed us, but rode on ahead.

It took only a few minutes for me to ride down the hill and pick up their sign.

They had been bedded down under a rough shelter on the bank of the river overlooking the trail, and they had been waiting there for some time. Crouching, I looked back the way we had come. They must have seen us leave the river bed.

Who were these two who had been tricked out of their ambush by sheer luck? If there had not been those heavy clouds in the distance and that rain to worry me about the river bed, we would have walked into the ambush and they would have had us cold turkey.

Where they had waited they had a thick screen of boughs for concealment, and yet a perfect field of fire through neatly prepared openings in the brush where they had broken away leaves and twigs. They could have taken me and one of the others with the first two shots, and the ones who were left would never have gotten away.

Those two men were western men; I knew that by the way they rode, and they were experienced at their work. Right then I began casting around in my memory for some clue as to who they might be.

Men hired for the job, surely. I could bet on that. So who was there around Griffin or Fort Phantom Hill who might be hired?

The names I came up with weren't happy ones to think about. I knew of several around this part of the country, and any one of them would be a package of trouble. The two who had laid for us were good at their job, too good for comfort.

I walked the dun up out of the brush and across the green slope through the rain, and was thinking about what would happen when all of these treasure-seekers reached the Rabbit Ears at the same time ... Or could we get there first?

"Who were those men?" Loomis asked as I came back to the buckboard.

He had had his eyes open then. "Hunters ... big-game hunters, Mr. Loomis, and we're the game."

"They were waiting for us?" He was incredulous. "Who could they be?"

"Somebody hired for cash to do a job. Good at the work, too. We were lucky this time, but we can't count on luck next time. Mr. Loomis, I didn't figure on this when I signed up with you, but it looks like I've got to go hunting for them.

Either I take those men, or they'll take us."

He didn't come up with any objection, and from his remarks he seemed more worried about who was doing the hiring than about the killers themselves. There was nothing I could tell him about that, but I knew we were in trouble a-plenty.

The best way I knew to keep those two from doing their job was to find them first.

Chapter 6

The rain continued to fall--a light, gentle rain. Although there was no flash flood in the river, the water widened and deepened, and we went on, keeping some distance back from the bank.

It was close to noontime before we turned off up Punta de Agua Creek. We had to pick our way along, avoiding obvious places of ambush and trying to keep in the open without becoming too good a target. It wasn't easy.

My dun covered twice the distance of that buckboard, just checking back and forth. We held north on the right of the creek and when we made camp on Los Redos Creek we were about half a mile back of its junction with Punta de Agua.

Nobody had much to say. All of us were beat from the rough country we'd crossed, and Loomis was glum and mean looking. We watered the horses, then picketed them in close. I put together a bed for Penelope, and then went out a ways from camp and bedded down near a rock wall where nobody could come up on me sudden, and where I had a lookout over the camp.

The trend of Punta de Agua was a little westward, then north, but when we started out again we held due north. About four miles out the creek turned westward, but I kept the buckboard headed north. I had a hunch that would worry those men who were racking guns for us, for if we were headed for the Rabbit Ears and Romero it would seem more than likely that we would follow the creek.

However, Punta de Agua Creek took another bend north, and I figured to cut west and pick up the creek at that bend.

I rode ahead and scouted the country and we made good time. The rain had stopped, but the slopes were wet and slippery. Meanwhile, I was doing some contemplating. Those ambushers would be somewhere ahead ... but where? If I could figure that out, I might sort of roust around and get the best of them.

We turned suddenly and headed due west for Rita Blanca Creek, and when we reached it we stopped to eat. Loomis was giving me angry looks and he stalked off to the crest of a rise.

"He'll get himself killed if he isn't careful," I said to Penelope, who was standing near me. But I wasn't watching Loomis, I was watching Flinch. The breed had me puzzled. He was a canny man, and a quiet one who did no talking at all, but he didn't seem to miss much. A couple of times I'd seen him casting about for sign. Now he was gathering sticks for a fire.

There was a good bit of broken brush and dead stuff lying near the creek. Flinch moved like a wild animal. A wild creature will move through the forest and never step on a fallen twig or branch. A horse might, or a cow, but never a deer or other wild animal, and Flinch was like that. You just never heard him as he moved, and scarcely saw him.

Was it entirely coincidence that he had been around when Loomis was looking for somebody to join them? He had not said he was familiar with this country, but I was sure he knew it as well if not better than I did myself.

As Penelope and I were talking, Loomis came back, and he looked at her sharply.

"Penelope! You come here!"

She turned, her chin up. "Mr. Loomis, I will not have you speaking to me like that! You're not my father, and you're not my guardian!"

A moment there he was mad enough to strike her had she been close enough. He glared at her, then said stiffly, "I gave up my business to come and help you.

Is this the thanks I get?"

Well, I had to hand it to her, the way she stood up to him. "Mr. Loomis, I am very greateful for your coming, and I thank you for it, but that gives you no right to direct my life. If we find the gold, you will be paid."

At that, his face flushed. "You talk too much!" he flared.

"If you mean she talks too much about Nathan Hume's gold," I said casually, "you're wrong. She's never mentioned it until now, and as far as that goes, nearly everybody in this here country knows that story. I'd bet a pretty penny Flinch knows it, too." I looked at Flinch.

He looked back at me and said nothing, but he knew all right.

"Her name was enough, even if it hadn't been for other things."

Now, I'd lied a little bit there, saying she'd said nothing about the gold, but she was in trouble enough and I wanted to leave Loomis without a leg to stand on. And I was beginning to be suspicious of his motives. He didn't strike me as the sort to pull up stakes and take a young girl west on a wild gold chase.

"This ain't exactly a traveled country," I added, "and the route you're takin' ain't the one I'd have picked for you. But I'll take you through to Romero if that's where you want to go. Or if it suits you better, I'll take you right to the Rabbit Ears."

Penelope looked thoughtful. "Which is the shortest?"

"Right up Rita Blanca Creek, I'd say. The difference is slight, but it is a difference, and the travel is a whole lot easier."

"We have to go to Romero," Loomis said stubbornly. "I planned on buying supplies there."

"If you know where the gold is," I suggested, "you'd be better off to get there as fast as you can and get it before the whole country moves in on you.

"Somebody paid those gents who were laying out for you. Maybe it was that Karnes outfit, maybe somebody else. I'd suggest you move fast and get there first ... if you can."

Well, that slowed him down. He wanted that gold, and he wanted it almighty bad.

After a moment he said, "All right, you take us the quickest way."

We headed off the way we'd been traveling. This was a wide-open and barren country, but there were long swells you'd scarcely call hills that would offer some concealment. I knew how to cross country unseen, for I was a man who'd lived that way.

Riding warily, I studied the country around, and suddenly came upon a stretch of rock swept clean by the wind. It was a place where there was a little firewood from dead brush on the creek banks, so we pulled up and made camp. It was early, but I had an idea of what I wanted to do.

We made a small fire and boiled some coffee and ate supper. I cleared a space around the fire so it wouldn't spread. Then I added some sticks that would burn slowly and would add more fuel to the fire kind of gradual. I even built a small rack of sticks above the fire, with the stick ends right in the flames. This would in time drop down, and help to keep the fire going.

When it was full dark I pulled my people back into the darkness. I wrapped the trace chains so they wouldn't jangle, and then we took off into the night, leaving the fire burning behind us. I knew that fire, rigged the way it was, would keep burning or smoking until well after daylight, and by that time I figured to be well away. We pulled out across the rock, and then into the scattered dunes. Those dunes by day were always feathered with a little windblown sand, and whatever tracks we made wouldn't last long.

This was bunch-grass country with ridges or dunes or sand breaking through from time to time. We headed north, keeping away from the creek but riding parallel to it. We traveled well into the night, and it was after nidnight when we came to the place I was hunting, a sort of slough with cattails around it, in a hollow among the low hills. We pulled up there, to spend the rest of the night there without a fire.

I slipped on my moccasins, and went out and dusted over our last tracks a mite.

Then I taken my own horse and went down into the cattails to a place I knew where there was a piece of solid ground among them, and there I staked out my horse and bedded down, maybe a hundred feet or so off from the others. Nobody could get to me without splashing into water, and the dun would let me know anyway. Then I slept, not worrying about a knife in the ribs or a knock on the skull.

There was a time there before I slept when I lay thinking back over the past few days, but thinking ahead. It was in my mind to try to foresee what might happen, and so be prepared for it. There's no way I know of that a body can foresee the future, but sometimes he can read it pretty well if he knows the way folks think.

Now, there's something about gold and the finding of it that changes a man's viewpoint. When it came to gold, I trusted nobody, not even myself. I'd never had much, and the sight of all that gold might turn me into a worse man than I figured to be.

Moreover, it might affect the others, and I'd no amount of respect for any of them, unless it was the girl. A young girl alone in the world without money is in for a hard time. She's prey to all sorts of advances and misfortunes, and hers can be a hard-bought life. Whatever happened, I wanted to see that the girl got her share of it.

I was thinking of myself too. Where there was gold I figured to get my share of it; but I have an idea that when that gold was found it would be every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

Morning came too soon and I was scarce awake, it being something short of daylight, when I heard a faint rustle in the water. I opened my eyes and looked up at the dun and his ears were pricked, so I just naturally reached down beside me and laid hand to my old Tinker.

Now, a Tinker-made knife was a handsome thing with a cutting edge like a razor--I often shaved with mine--but a strong blade that would cut through bone as well as flesh. They were made by a traveling peddler and tinker from back in the mountains, a gypsy man who traveled through, selling other things too, but from time to time with a Tinker-made knife to sell.

The water rustled, just faintly, and I thought of how a body approached this island in the reeds, and how much could be seen before he got right on it.

Suddenly I heard the squish of a wet boot and looked up to see Loomis standing there with an axe in his hand.

He was within reach of me, and he had that axe ready, but when our eyes met he stopped. His eyes were as mean-looking as I've ever seen. Now, I've lived a good part of my life in difficulties, and my mind thinks in terms of fighting. The way he was holding that axe told me he was going to cut down and to the left with it. A man swinging an axe from the right-shoulder side can't cut much to the right. Not with accuracy.

Loomis, if he tried to hit me, would cut down and left, so I was all braced to roll right and come up. His knuckles were white with gripping the axe, and I could see the hate in his face. Of a sudden it came to me that, old as he was, Loomis didn't only want that gold, he wanted the girl.

A moment there I thought he was stopped, then he suddenly took a deep, rasping breath and swung. The breath warned me, but he swung faster than I'd thought and I just skinned by, the axe missing by inches.

But then I was on my feet, like a cat, and had my Tinker pointed tight against his wishbone. He didn't have a chance to lift that axe again; my knife was right where I could open him up, and he knew it. I looked right down into his eyes and said, "Loomis, you're a murdering skunk. I got me a notion to kill you."

All the same I was in a fix, and I knew it. If he killed me, nobody would question it much. Penelope might, but she would have nobody to argue with, and I was a known outlaw. Flinch would say nothing of it, or think nothing of it. On the other hand, if I killed him, nobody would believe me at all.

So I just looked into his eyes ... we stood chest to chest, not eighteen inches between us, and I reached up with my knife and flicked a button from his coat ... and then another, and another, until I was right under his chin. Then I touched the point under his chin and just pricked him a mite.

"Mr. Loomis," I said, "you hadn't ought to done that. You make a body right mistrustful of folks. Now you just turn your tail around and hike back to camp ... And, Mr. Loomis, don't you ever try that again or I'll part your brisket with this blade."

Well, he was sweating like nothing you ever saw, he was that scared. He backed off, and then turned and ran back through the water.

I saddled up and loaded up and, taking my Winchester, walked the dun along the edge of the slough for a ways, then came out and skirted the camp. I wanted to scout the country anyway, but I also wanted to come into camp so's I could see everybody. It wasn't in my mind to ride up and have somebody a-laying for me.

When I rode in Penelope gave me an odd look, but nothing was said. I had an idea Flinch knew what was going on, for that breed missed very little. He was the sort that remains on the side lines and then picks up the pieces after the fighting is over.

We took out across the prairie. They would be hunting us by now, and no doubt would be following along streams where there was water. But from now on there were a good many scattered sloughs or pools, and water would not be so hard to come by.

That night we made camp in a depression north of Carrizo Creek, a place unlikely to be seen until a man was within a few yards of it.

Looms was restless and on edge. He avoided me, and I was just as glad. Squatting near the fire, I drank hot black coffee and talked to Penelope. It had been a while since I'd had a chance to talk to any girl.

"You be careful," I warned her there at the last; "you trust nobody. You're a mighty pretty girl, and where gold and women are concerned not many can be trusted."

"How about you, Nolan?" This was the first time she had called me my by given name.

"Me neither. I'm as hungry for gold as the next man."

"And women?"

"Well, up to a point. My ma raised me to respect womenfolks."

She was quiet for a minute or two and then she spoke very quietly. "I don't trust people altogether, Nolan."

"You must trust Loomis, to come clear out here with him."

"He's old enough to be my father. Or my grandfather, almost. Besides, how else could I get out here? Would you tell someone how to find a buried treasure and just let them go, hoping you'd get a share?"

"Nope."

"Neither would I."

We moved out from camp before the first light. There were clumps of mesquite about, and more prickly pear than we had been seeing before. I shucked my Winchester and rode with it to hand. We angled northwest across the country, headed for a crossing of Perico Creek almost due south of the Rabbit Ears.

The dun and me, we stayed off to one side, either in front of the buckboard or behind it, always keeping it within sight; but I was careful to offer no target for my back.

Where, I wondered, was Sylvie Karnes and her brothers? And what had become of Steve Hooker?

Topping out on a low rise I saw the Rabbit Ears off to the north, showing just above the horizon and a good ways off. They were two nubbins of mountain, scarcely big enough to be called a mountain in this country. But even from this distance you could see why it got its name of Rabbit Ears.

It was near noontime, and we were a mile or so short of the ford. Down off the rise you couldn't see the Rabbit Ears, and I said nothing about them to the others.

The thought in my mind was that we were now within a few miles of more gold than most people had ever seen, and unless I missed my guess half a dozen people were ready to kill for it.

A moment there I thought, why not just light out? Why walk into someting that was none of my business? Let the murdering Karnes outfit and the rest of them fight it out ... was any amount of gold worth that much risk? I doubted it.

It would be mighty easy to turn my horse and ride away. A few days' ride to the west was Mora, where I had kinfolk. To the north there were the hell-for-leather mining towns where a man could make do one way or another. A twitch of the bridle and I would be off and free-riding with nothing to worry about but Comanches.

The trouble was, there was a girl back there; and mean though I might be, I couldn't leave that girl to a pack of wolves. It just wasn't in me. Every ounce of horse sense I had told me to cut and run, but I swung my horse and rode on toward the ford on the Perico.

And right into a bellyful of trouble.

Chapter 7

Steve Hooker, Tex Parker, and Charlie Hurst were sitting their horses just across the ford, blocking the trail. They all had rifles, and they were just sitting there, and Hooker was grinning. The thing was, they expected me to stop.

"You boys want something?" I called out.

"You turn around and git out'n here!" Hurst yelled. By that time I was at the water's edge. That water was no more than eight inches deep and there was good hard bottom, so I let the dun have the spurs and went through the water and up the bank and into them before they realized I wasn't going to stop and parley.

They sure enough expected me to pull up and talk about it, but when trouble faces me I never was much on the talk. So I rode right into them and then I dropped the reins and slammed right and left with the rifle.

Hurst tried to duck, but the rifle barrel caught him behind the ear and knocked him from the saddle. Parker was reaching for me when I swung the rifle across and drove the barrel into the side of his head.

It struck with a thunk like the butt of an axe against a log, and he went out.

Grabbing the reins as my horse turned, I put the muzzle of the gun on Steve Hooker. His own rifle was coming up and I shot him, holding high a-purpose so he'd take it through the shoulder. He jerked, but stayed in the saddle, losing his grip on his rifle.

He started to swear, and I said, "You still got a left hand. You want to try for none?"

"You played hell!" he shouted at me. "Do you know who those boys are?"

"Sure. They ride with Bill Coe. I know all that outfit, and you can tell Coe he knows where I am if he ever wants to come hunting."

"You think he won't?"

"That's right. I know Coe, and he knows me. You'd have to weigh a lot of gold in the other side of the scales before he'd make a move toward me."

The buckboard came down to the water and drew up sharply. "What's going on here?" Loomis called.

"No trouble," I said, and swinging down I caught Parker by the scruff of the neck and dragged him clear of the trail. Both of their horses had been frightened into running off a ways. "Drive right on through. These boys figured to stop us, but they had a change of mind."

Penelope's face was white and shocked. "Are ... are those men dead?"

"No, ma'am. They'll both have headaches tomorrow, that's all."

"Was this necessary?" Loomis demanded.

"If you want to cross the ford it was necessary. You wanted me to take you where you're going and I'm doing it."

Wheeling the dun, I rode off up the trail, and the buckboard rattled on after me. It didn't make a mite of difference what Loomis thought, but the expression on Penelope's face bothered me. A lot of people hear about violence but never come face to face with it, and they've no experience with men of violence. One thing I'd learned a long time back: you just can't waste time talking. If there's talking to do, do it afterwards.

All the time we'd been traveling I'd been looking for wagon tracks. I didn't see how the Karnes outfit--Sylvie, Ralph, and Andrew--could make it faster than we had, but it never pays to weigh an opponent too light.

It was a far-stretching open land through which we rode. It was a country with lava outcroppings here and there, with the yellow-brown grass and the green showing through. It was the bright green of mesquite, and the oddly jointed clumps of prickly pear. A man could hear the cicadas singing endlessly in the brush, and from time to time he'd see a rattler curled in the shade of a bush.

It was bunch-grass country where the buffalo ran, and it was mustang country, wild and free. Maybe I would never have very much in the way of money, but I'd have the memories of this land when it was fresh and open, the memories of one of the grandest pieces of country a man could ever see.

The dun liked it, too. Whenever we topped out on a rise his nostrils would widen to test the wind, and he'd toss his head a little, ears pricked, looking straight away into the far distance.

Well, we were a part of this country, that dun mustang and me. Our natures bred us for it, and our way of living was the way the country demanded.

Back there I'd mentioned William Coe. Now, I would never hold him as a small-calibered man. Coe had a gang of men and a stone fortress not far north of here on the Cimarron, a regular Robbers Roost. His men were tough and wild and uncurried. He was a steady man, if an outlaw, not one to be stampeded into doing anything foolish. I wasn't hunting trouble with Coe, and he wouldn't be hunting any with me ... unless the price was right.

But if we got that gold out of the ground--three hundred pounds of it--the price would be right and all bets off. But Coe wasn't going to come hunting my kind of trouble because I'd rough-handled some of his men. He'd figure they were big boys now, big enough to saddle their own broncs.

Coe knew me maybe as well as I knew myself, for we'd been acquainted back yonder. He knew that trouble had become blood-kin to me, and that something in me wouldn't let me back up or back down, no matter what happened. When trouble showed, when I was faced with it, I just naturally stiffened my neck and went ahead. There was a streak of wildness in me, a streak of recklessness that I disliked. The cool way was the best way, that I knew, but at times I just naturally went hog-wild and started throwing lead or punches at whatever was in the way. It was going to get me killed some day.

The Rabbit Ears were standing up there plain now. I could see them clear, and so could Loomis and the others, so I dropped back alongside the buckboard.

"There they are, Loomis," I said, "and whatever happens will happen soon now. If we can get in there first and get that gold out, and hightail it out of here, we may get away without a fight. But we won't have much time."

"How much time do we have?"

"Maybe a day ... maybe a day and a night. No longer."

"Do you think Hooker rounded up those men himself? Or were they acting for somebody else?"

"I think it was his show, but from here on it may not be. Those other men were outlaws of the Coe gang ... their Roost isn't far from here. If Coe gets wind of that gold, and we get it out of the ground, we'll have us a running fight."

"Does he have many men?"

"Anywhere from three to thirty, depending on who is hanging out up there. He will have enough."

Now I dropped behind them and stayed off to one side. As we rode I studied the country, cutting for sign. There had been some movement around, and it worried me. Rabbit Ears Mountain wasn't far off the Santa Fe Trail, but as a usual thing there wasn't too much movement off the trail. But now there had been.

I was a fool to go riding over there for a treasure of which I'd been offered no part, guiding them there, and then having to choose whether or not to leave Penelope to her friends and her enemies, or to stay on and fight and perhaps get no thanks in the end.

But she was a fair lady, a girl's bright eyes have won the day more than once, and I was the fool ever to look into them. For I am an unhandsome man, and the romance in my heart does not show past the bend in my nose, or at least the girls don't seem to look beyond that.

Back in our Tennessee hills we had few books to read, and I'd never learned beyond the spelling out of words; but we had copies of Sir Walter Scott there in the mountains, and a teacher or a preacher to read them to us in passing. It was always as Ivanhoe that I saw myself, and always as the Norman knight that I was being seen by others.

Yet being the fool I was, I was forever riding into trouble because of a pair of pretty lips or a soft expression in the eyes of a girl. Nor was this time to be different. Even as I thought of riding off into the night, I knew it was not in me to go, and I'd risk a bullet in the back from that cold chill of a man up yonder in the buckboard. Or maybe from that quiet one who sat saying nothing, but seeing and hearing everything, that Flinch, who was one to fear and be careful of.

The Rabbit Ears were close now, so I closed in on the buckboard. My foolishness for the eyes of Penelope did not lead me to foolishness with Loomis. There was no nonsense in me where men were concerned, and if he wanted my kind of trouble I'd serve it up hot and well done for him, and he'd get indigestion from it, too, or I'd know the reason why.

"There are the Rabbit Ears," I said. "No doubt you know where to find the gold of Nathan Hume."

Loomis drew up, for he was driving then, and he reached in his pocket and paid me fifty dollars.

"Your money," he said. "You've been paid, and we have no more use for you."

Penelope was keeping her eyes straight front, so I said to her, "And you, ma'am?

If you want me to stay and see you clear with your gold, I'll do it, and no pay asked or wanted."

"No," she said, not looking at me at all. "No, I want nothing more from you. Mr.

Loomis is here. He will take care of things."

"I've no doubt," I said, and turned my horse away, but not my eyes, for I knew Loomis was one to shoot a man in the back if chance offered. At the moment, I almost wished he would take the chance, so that I might lay him dead across the buckboard seat.

I skirted a low hill and drew up in the shade of a clump of mesquite to contemplate. This was another time when the maiden fair saw me only as the Norman knight.

Chapter 8

So I'd been given my walking papers, and now there was nothing to keep me here.

Penelope Hume had said not a word to keep me, and I was no longer responsible.

Moreover, this was not the kind of country I cottoned to, wishing more for the sight of trees and real mountains right now, although I'll say no word against the far-reaching plains, wherever they lie.

The Rabbit Ears were basaltic rock--or lava, if that comes easier. There were ancient volcanoes to the north, and much of this country has been torn and ruptured by volcanic fires long ago. Where the wind had swept the flat country clear it was sandstone.

The Rabbit Ears could scarcely be called a mountain, as I've said. They were more like big mounds, falling away on all sides. At their highest they stood about a thousand feet above the surrounding country.

Circling wide, I drifted on across country to the north and watered at Rabbit Ears Creek, then followed the creek toward the west. On the northwest side of the mountain I found myself a notch in the rocks screened by brush and low trees, where there was a patch of grass subirrigated by flow from the mountain.

I staked the dun out on the grass and, swapping boots for moccasins, I climbed up the mountain. It was sundown, with the last rays of the sun slanting across the land and showing all the hollows.

There was a thin line of smoke rising from the brush along Rabbit Ears Creek; more than likely this was the camp of Loomis, Penelope, and Flinch.

Over east, maybe seven or eight miles from there, I caught a suggestion of smoke, and near it a white spot. It was so far off that had the sun not picked up that white I might never have noticed it. Even the smoke might be something my expectation had put there after I glimpsed that spot of white. For that white could be nothing but a wagon top ... the Karnes outfit, or somebody else.

What about Hooker? He had a bad shoulder. Tex and Charlie Hurst would have aching heads. Would they quit now? I decided it was unlikely.

William Coe would be at his Roost over on the Cimarron, not nearly as far away as I wished, for his was a tough, salty outfit, and Coe was game. He'd fight anything at the drop of a hat; he'd even drop it himself.

His outfit had raided Trinidad, had even raided as far east as Dodge, and had stolen stock from Fort Union, government stock. They had nerve. If one of those boys rode for Coe, I'd be in trouble.

On the north side of Rabbit Ears all the ravines ran down toward Cienequilla Creek. The location of the box canyon was unknown to me, and it might be anywhere between the mountain and the creek, or even over on the other side.

After I'd walked and slid back down the mountain I shifted the dun's picket-pin to fresh gazing and made myself a pot of coffee from dry, relatively smokeless wood. In the corner where I was the fire couldn't be seen fifteen feet away.

A man on the dodge, or in Indian country, soon learns to watch for such a place as this. His life depends on it. And if he travels very much his memory is soon filled with such places. As mine was.

Sitting beside the fire, I cleaned my pistol, my Winchester lying at hand, just in case. Then I checked both of my knives. The one I wore down the back of my neck inside my shirt collar slid easy and nice from its scabbard. A time or two in passing through brush or under low trees I'd gotten leaves or bits of them into the scabbard, and I knew that in the next few days I might need that knife almighty bad.

Later, lying on my blankets, I looked up at the stars through the leaves. My fire was down to red coals and my pot was still full of coffee. Tired as I was, I was in no mind to sleep.

My ears began making a check on all the little sounds around me. They were sounds of birds, of insects, or of night-prowling animals, and were familiar to me. But in every place some of the sounds are different. Dead branches make a rattle of their own; grass or leaves rustle in a certain way, yet in no two places are the sounds exactly the same. Always before I slept I checked the sounds in my mind. It was a trick I'd learned from an old Mexican sheepherder and mountain man.

Of course the dun was there, and as I've said, there's nothing like a mustang to warn a man if he hears something strange. For that matter, I was of the same breed. I was a mustang man--a man riding the long prairie, the high mesa, the lonely ridges.

That Penelope now ...

This was no time to think of her. Forcing my thoughts away from her, I considered the situation. Sylvie Karnes and her brothers wanted that gold, and they would stop at nothing to get it. I'd never come across anybody quite like them, and they worried me. I'd known plenty of folks who would kill for money, for hatred, or for a lot of reasons, but I'd met nobody so willing to kill just to be killing as they were, or appeared to be.

Sure as shootin', that coffee she fixed for me had been poisoned. No telling how many dead lay behind them, or lay ahead, for that matter.

Loomis would be after that gold, but he wanted the girl too. He would need her until they got the gold and after that? That was when Penelope Hume would come face to face with a showdown, and all alone.

Had she really wanted to go on without me? Or had they forced her to get rid of me? She had not looked my way even once, there at the end. Maybe they had talked her into it, but it might be that Loomis had threatened her.

Law and order were made for women. They are hedged around by protection. But out in the wilderness they are only as safe as men will let them be. Penelope Hume was a long way from any law, and it was likely that nobody even knew where she was, or where she was going. Loomis would have seen to that. If she never appeared again, nobody would be asking questions; and if anyone did ask, no one would answer. Many a man and many a woman disappeared in the western lands, left in an unmarked grave, or in no grave at all.

Whatever, law there might be would be local law, administered only in the towns.

Few officers ever rode out into the unsettled country unless they were Federal officers, and most of those were active only in the Indian Territory.

These were my thoughts as I mounted up and worked my way on down the mountain, keeping to whatever cover I could find. That box canyon would not be easy to find, but should be simpler for me, who knew this kind of country, than for either Loomis or the Karnes outfit.

Suppose I could get there first and get that gold out? Finders was keepers, wasn't that so? That was how I felt, and yet the idea made me uneasy. There would be nothing for that girl, for Penelope. I wasn't worried about Sylvie ... her kind could always get along. Penelope was something else, and I couldn't leave her without a two-bit piece to her name.

She was pretty, and she was a city girl. Both qualities put her in a bad spot.

She was pretty enough to attract trouble, and had too much of the city in her to know how to cope with this kind of country.

Right beyond me was a place where the canyon down which I was riding sort of opened out. There were trees along the creek ahead, and trees and brush along the mountainside. Slowing down, I peered ahead, searching for any sign of movement. I'd slip down there, I thought, find that box canyon, find the gold if I could, and then round up Penelope and the others and get the girl out of trouble.

It seemed to me she was safe until they either found or failed to find the gold; after that she would be fair game. Only I was uneasy, leaving her at all. She needed somebody at hand to care for her.

Ahead of me was some low brush; on the side of the mountain a few pifion. I started to swing around a big boulder when the corner of my eye caught a flash of light and I ducked. Something hit me a wicked blow on the skull, and the dun shied violently. A report went racketing off down the canyon, followed closely by another, and then I was laying on the ground among some rocks, looking at a pool of red on the sand.

Instinct told me I must move from where I lay, and yet I couldn't move a muscle.

My brain told me to get up and get going, but nothing happened; and then I heard a voice call out.

"Ralph! You stop right there! I always was a better shot than you, and if you take one step nearer I'll break your leg!"

"Pen! Now, don't be foolish! We just came to help you. If you knew what we know about Loomis--"

"I don't need any help. You just turn back and leave that man alone."

"But he's after the gold, too! We've got to be rid of him, Pen!"

"You back up, Ralph! You and Sylvie and Andrew might just as well go home. You don't know where the gold is, and you'll never find it unless you know."

Ralph laughed, and it was an unpleasant laugh. "We don't have to find it, Pen.

We'll just let you and Loomis do that for us!"

"You heard me, Ralph. Back up and let him alone."

"I'm going to kill him, Pen. If he isn't dead already, I'm going to kill him."

"Ralph"--Pen spoke matter-of-factly--"you make the slightest move this way and I'll not stop with breaking one leg--I'll break them both and just let you lie there. Nobody would ever find you except the buzzards."

Ralph must have believed her. I didn't see how he could, but maybe he knew her better than I did. All that time, I simply couldn't move. I was all sprawled out among the rocks, and I seemed to be paralyzed. I could hear, all right, and I could see, but I couldn't move. But all the while I knew that if that girl had not stood there with a rifle, Ralph Karnes would have killed me.

After a bit, Penelope spoke, just loud enough for me to hear. "Mr. Sackett? Are you all right?"

Well, now, that was a foolish question. Did she figure that I'd be just a-lyin' here if I was all right? I tried to speak, and finally made a kind of weak sound. Then I tried to move. I made a real effort, and I felt a sort of spasm go through me, but nothing else happened.

Then I heard her coming. At least, I hoped it was her.

She came down over the rocks as if she was born to them, and she kept looking around to see if anybody was closing in on her. Then she was standing near me and looking down, and I looked right into her eyes.

"You're alive then," she said, and then she kind of bent down close to me. "We can't stay here," she said. "He'll be back with the others. He knows you're hurt."

She pulled my arm across her shoulder and tried to pull me up, but she wasn't strong enough. My lips worked, and finally I managed to shape words. "Horse .. . get my horse."

She got up quickly, and as quickly was gone.

Meantime I tried to move my head, and managed it, then wrapped my fingers around a rock and tugged. The rock held, and I moved myself a little. With care, I managed to work that hand up the side of a slab of rock, but I had no strength at all in it, and it fell back to my side. I couldn't seem to make my fingers work as they should, and my head was starting to ache with a dull, heavy throb.

I didn't think I was seriously hurt. Maybe I just didn't dare think so, for to be badly hurt here was almost the same as being dead; yet I had been shot, hit in the head, it seemed, and had been temporarily shocked into some kind of paralysis.

To a man who has spent his life depending on his muscles and his reflexes, there could be nothing more frightening than the state I seemed to be in now. I'd made my living with strength, and with my skill in any kind of shooting, and without that, I had nothing. I'd never had no chance for schooling, and if I couldn't count on my muscles there'd be nothing left for me.

I found I could work the fingers of the other hand like a claw, opening and closing them. I got my hand on an edge of rock and tugged myself up, one-handed, to a kneeling position.

I knew I had to get out of here. Those murdering Karneses would be coming a-hunting me. If I was dead they'd be wanting to see the body; and if I wasn't, they had to know it and finish me off.

Penelope was coming back, leading the dun. I was surprised he had let her come up to him, he was that shy of strangers. But that girl had a way about her ... and nerve too.

When the dun came alongside me he snorted nervously, smelling blood, which was trickling down my face now. I spoke softly to him. "Easy, boy, easy now." With my one working hand I reached out and caught hold of the stirrup leather.

Penelope slipped her arm around my waist, and with her lifting and my grip on the stirrup I managed to pull myself erect. But when the horse took a step, I almost went to the ground; it was only Penelope's tight grip that held me up.

We started to move off, my feet trying to work but dragging. We hadn't made more than twenty feet before Penelope, glancing over her shoulder, let go of me, and I grabbed wildly with my one good hand to hang onto the stirrup.

Her rifle went to her shoulder and she fired in the same instant. Then she fired again. The dun was still walking dragging me toward the brush. "Go, boy, go!" I said to him, and he went. A shot came from somewhere and a bullet hit sand near me. Another shot, and it struck somewhere above me and the dun jumped, but I hung on until we got into a clump of jumper. Then I let go, and fell face down in the sand. Penelope shot once more, and then I heard her scrambling in the rocks. After that silence.

The dun had stopped among the trees, nostrils wide. My face was wet with blood and sweat, and I was trembling all over. My Winchester was in the boot, but I couldn't reach it.

Had Penelope been shot? Everything was so quiet. The sun was hot. I could smell dust and blood and sweat. Reaching back, I got the thong off my Colt and fished it out and up where I could shoot.

Nothing moved, and there was not a sound. The dun switched his tail, nosed at some brush, then pricked his ears to listen. Struggling, I managed to lift my head. All I could see was roots and rock. Underneath me there was blood on the sand, my blood.

What had happened to Penelope? And where was Loomis? For some reason I hadn't given a thought to him, nor to Flinch.

It was the Karneses who worried me. It must have been the Karneses shooting. And where was Steve Hooker and his outfit? For they must have heard the shooting if they were anywhere within miles, for sound carried on those wide plains.

Reaching out, I caught my fingers over a root and tugged myself closer to the trunk of a tree. It was a mighty slim tree, but I was in no position to argue about cover.

The worst of it was, I couldn't see a thing. I had cover of a sort, but I couldn't even see if anybody was moving out there. Was Penelope alive? Was she hurt? I'd no way of moving to find out--all I could do was lie there and wait, gun in hand.

The dun stamped his feet. Somewhere a pebble rattled. I shifted my gun and wiped my palm dry on my shirt. After a minute I put the gun down on a piece of bark and started to knead the muscles of the other arm, trying to get some life into it. My head ached heavily, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Presently I took up the gun again, fearing to risk any more time with it out of my hand.

The throbbing in my head had me wrinkling my brow against it, and my throat was dry, needing water. There was water in the creek, and in my canteen on the saddle, but one seemed as far off as the other.

Reaching out now, I gripped the trunk of the tree and pulled myself further along. It was much too quiet out there, and I was scared for Penelope. Looking out over the low brush and rocks, I searched for her, but could see no sign of her. I looked across the mouth of the canyon, and let my eyes move slowly across the rocky wall and the scattered boulders at the canyon's mouth, then down on the tree-dotted flatland that sloped away toward the creek.

Nothing...

And then behind me I heard a faint movement. Turning my head, I looked across the small clearing among the trees and brush. The dun was standing head up, nostrils wide, looking toward my right. Stiffly, I turned my head.

Andrew was standing very still in a narrow space between two clumps of mesquite, a prickly pear almost waist-high in front of him. He was holding his rifle up, ready to shoot, and his eyes were moving along the thicker brush on my side, looking for me. And when he shot, he would shoot to kill.

Andrew Karnes was no more than sixty feet away, but I was drawn back under the low-growing juniper and it was not easy to see me. His eyes were shifting around quickly, like a weasel's eyes, hunting something to kill.

My pistol was in my right hand, and I was looking back over my left shoulder. To shoot, I'd have to swing around, and that would make a noise. I had watched Andrew, and I knew he was quick as a cat--and there was no way I could move without giving him the first shot. I didn't want to chance it at that range. So I just lay there, hoping he wouldn't see me.

He came forward a step. His eyes went to the horse again, then began again their restless search for me.

I was going to risk it. I would have to. When his eyes got down to the farthest rocks, I would roll over and fire. I wouldn't be in the best shooting position, but I had no choice. It was him or me.

The dun stomped his hoof, and Andrew looked in that direction. Not wanting to take my eyes from him, I moved my left hand to a position under my left shoulder and pushed up, then I moved my right arm under my body.

Actually, I hadn't an idea whether I could do it. Each movement was a gamble, and each might be my last. My left hand started across my body. My eyes were on Andrew; my right hand was coming forward ... and then he saw me.

He must have failed to believe what he saw. Or maybe the shadows were thick enough so what he saw was indistinct, for there was an instant when he froze.

And then the rifle whipped to his shoulder.

Even as he moved, I moved; my left hand slapped the ground and my right thrust forward. My gun must have gone off an instant sooner, or perhaps he shot too fast, for the bullet whapped into the ground right where my body had been before the half-turn was completed.

My own shot was high. It cut a furrow across the top of his shoulder and his involuntary move jerked the rifle out of line. He levered another bullet into the chamber, but my second shot went right through his face. It was a miss, for I'd shot at his body, but the bullet went in under his eye and came out the back of his head.

He fell forward, all sprawled out, into that mess of prickly pear. The rifle, thrown forward as he fell, dropped into the sand beyond the patch of cactus. I held the gun on him, ready for another shot, even after I realized the back of his skull was gone.

Working feverishly, I poked the two spent shells from the cylinder and slipped two others in place. I listened, but I heard no sound. Catching hold of the branches of the tree, I pulled myself up, and was surprised that I could do it.

The shock that had temporarily put me out of action was wearing off.

My first move was for his rifle, for my own was on the dun, and I had no idea where brother Ralph was. Staggering, I got to the rifle and picked it up, then looked carefully around.

All was quiet again. How many ears had heard those shots and were now listening, I did not know. I only hoped that somewhere out there Penelope was able to listen.

My head still ached, and every step I took was made with caution, for I had no idea how bad a shape I was in. My fingers went to my skull. There was a deep furrow above my ear that had cut the scalp almost to the back of my head.

Leading my horse, for even if I could stay in the saddle I would be too easily seen, I started down the gradual slope, which flattened out toward the creek.

From time to time I paused, careful to conserve what strength I had.

Before riding away, I studied the area carefully, but there was no sign of life, no movement. What worried me most was that I had no idea what was going on, nor where anybody was. Penelope had been out there in the rocks somewhere, but she had vanished as if she had never been. And across there in the trees Ralph might still be waiting, to say nothing of that poisonous flower, Sylvie.

There were big old cottonwoods and willows along the creek, and there was water.

Once under the trees, I got down and took a long drink. I was hungry, but to risk a fire was to risk my neck. I wasn't that hungry. More than anything else, I wanted to find a place under a safe tree and sleep, but there was no chance of that.

Near me was a huge old cottonwood whose thick leaves rustled and whispered endlessly. Glancing up, I noticed the huge branches and the idea came suddenly.

After tying my horse to a shrub, I rigged a quick sling for my rifle from a couple of piggin strings and then reaching up, I caught the lowest limb of the big tree. Its leaves and the other trees around me offered concealment, and I climbed carefully until I was about twenty feet off the ground and could see all around me.

The first thing I saw was a dust cloud. It was some distance off, downstream, and whoever was causing the dust was out of sight beyond the rocks. My guess made it about half a dozen riders.

Not far away I could see some bones, lying time-whitened under the sun. Were these the bones of Nathan Hume's mule train? I remembered that there had been another battle, a hundred and fifty years before, when an army of Spanish pioneers whipped a huge band of Comanches at this place.

Chapter 9

It was very still. The only sound was the gentle rustling of the cottonwood leaves, which never seemed to be quiet. After a few minutes, just as I was about to get down from the tree, I saw Sylvie Karnes come down from the rocks riding a bay pony.

Now where had she gotten that horse? As I watched, she was followed by Steve Hooker, Tex Parker, and two other men whom I did not recognize. This looked to me like too much activity around for one lone Tennessee boy, even if he was a Sackett. My better sense kept telling me I should pull out of here, and fast.

Sylvie by herself was a package of dynamite, and I wanted no part of her. When they discovered Andrew dead--for it was likely they still did not know about it--they would have another reason for hunting me down.

Gold is a hard-won thing, and hard-kept, and when Nathan Hume bought smuggled gold from the Spanish miners in the San Juans he little knew what he was starting. Those old Spanish miners preferred to sell their gold in secret to traders like Hume, rather than have a big part of it taken from them by the Spanish or Mexican governments, to say nothing of the governors of New Mexico.

What Hume had started was being played out now, right here.

The group rode out on a little meadow about a quarter of a mile back from the creek and dismounted. They looked as if they were going to camp.

Carefully, I climbed down the tree. My neck was stiff and my head still throbbed with a dull, brow-wrinkling pain, but my muscles seemed to have loosened up.

Mounting up, I walked my horse down through the willows and across the creek, which here was only eight to ten inches deep.

The rest of the day I scouted around, searching for the box canyon. All I knew was that it was somewhere north of the Rabbit Ears, which was little enough to go on. And during all that day I stayed clear of the Karnes outfit, riding wide around. Now that they had tied up with Steve Hooker and the boys from Coe's gang, my troubles were multiplied. Of course, I couldn't wish the Coe gang any worse luck than making a deal with Sylvie. She was likely to poison the lot when she got the gold ... if she got it.

When night came I was far out to the north, and I rode on a few miles and camped on a little creek that emptied into the North Canadian. As I was eight or nine miles from the Rabbit Ears I figured to be pretty safe, so I built myself a fire I could have covered with my hat, and made coffee and broiled myself a steak. I had plenty of fresh meat now, for earlier that day I had killed a yearling buffalo well over to the east.

Just as I was about to pour some coffee, the dun, who was drinking at the creek, suddenly jerked up his head, water dripping from his muzzle, and looked across the creek into the darkness. Before you could say scat I was back in the darkness with my Winchester cocked and ready.

"Hold easy on that trigger, son. I'm huntin' help, not trouble."

I knew that voice, and while I lay quiet trying place it in my memory, it spoke again.

"That horse knows me better'n he does you. I gave him to you."

"Come on out then. Show yourself."

"You'll have to give me time. I'm hurt."

Well, I taken a long chance. That voice did sound familiar, and only one man could know how I got that horse. So I went down to the creek and crossed it.

The old man lay in the grass on the far side of the creek, and he was in bad shape. He had been shot more than once, and his left hand was a bloody mess, but he was game. There was no quit in that old man. His kind come from away up the creek, and he was a tough old mossy-horn with a lot of life in him yet.

So I just picked him up and carried him back to camp. He couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and thirty soaking wet, and I'd never seen the day when I couldn't pick up three times that much.

He was in bad shape, but it was his left hand that gave me the turn. Every fingernail was gone, and his ringers all bloody ... and that could have been no accident.

"Comanches?" I asked.

"In-laws," he said grimly. "Sometimes they can be worse."

"You ain't related to that Karnes outfit?"

"You met up with them?"

"Uh-huh."

First off, I filled a cup with hot, black coffee and held it for him to drink.

He was shaky, and he needed something to pick up his spirits a mite. He drank it, taking it in his right hand, while I put on some water to heat up to clean him up with.

"Looks to me as if everbody on the Staked Plains is related," I said, "and all of them after Nathan Hume's gold."

"I got a claim to it, better than any of the rest."

"Better than Penelope?"

"You don't say. She here?"

"Unless they've killed her, she is. She saved my bacon yesterday, and a fine girl she is."

After he'd drunk the coffee he laid back while I washed out a couple of bullet wounds, neither of them serious, beyond the blood he'd lost. At least, I'd seen men survive worse ones. I always made shift to pack a few wrappings of bandage, for a man on the dodge can't go running to no doctor. So I fixed up the wounds as best I could, and that hand along with it.

The fingernails had been missing for a while, but crawling through the brush he'd evidently torn open the wounds.

"You must have known something they wanted almighty bad."

"I should smile, I did. I knew where that gold was. And I know just where that box canyon is."

"I wonder they let you live."

"They fired my place and then rode off, leaving me hog-tied in the house. I was out cold and they never figured I'd get out alive. Well, I fooled 'em."

"Seems like everybody in the country started after that gold all to once."