Mustang Man

"What would you have me do?" the old man said. "I worked with old Nathan when I was a boy, and I had me a mighty good idea where that gold was, but as long as the widow was alive I didn't figure I had a right to it.

"Others hunted it, but most of them had no idea where to look. I knew how old Nathan thought, and I was sure I could lay hand on the gold. The old man was my cousin, blood-kin, and I was the only one of his flesh who had worked with him.

Many a time I went into the San Juans to meet up with the gold traders.

"Them Karneses, they didn't know where I was until you fetched up to their wagon. When they saw that brand on the dun, NH Connected, they knew it for old Nathan Hume's brand, and knew that I was somewhere about. That was one of the reasons they wanted to do away with you."

"Why didn't you try to get the gold before now?"

He glanced up at me. "You ain't seen that place yet, nor heard the stories.

Well, I heard 'em. Ain't no Indian alive who will spend a night in that canyon, and mighty few who will even go into it. Evil spirits, they say, and maybe there is."

"You ain't told me your name?"

"Harry Mims. Now don't get me wrong. It wasn't ha'nts kept me out of that box canyon. Mostly it was Comanches. Why, I've lost my outfit twice and nearly lost my hair a couple of times, too.

"One time I was lucky and got right up to the canyon before they come on me.

Well, they took my pack outfit and got so busy arguing over the loot that I sneaked off and hid until things quieted down. Took me two weeks to get back to Las Vegas, and when I got there I hadn't enough money for a meal. I got a job swamping in a saloon, then they moved me up to bartender. Took me six months to get myself an outfit again, what with gambling an' all."

"How'd you get clear up here now?"

"A-hossback--how'd you figure? They stole some horses off me, scattered the rest, but those horses come on home, and I caught up a few, saddled up, and rode. I taken me some time, but here I am."

He lay back, resting. He was in such bad shape I didn't feel much like asking him more questions. Somebody had been shooting at him more than a little, and he'd wasted away some, riding all that time. It gave a body the shudders to think what that old man had gone through in getting here.

"What do you figure to do now?"

"You ask a fool question like that? I'm going to get that gold, or stop them from getting it, and by the Lord Harry, I'll kill that Ralph Karnes."

"What about her?"

Harry Mims was still for a while, and then he looked up at me. "Sackett, I know she needs it, but I can't bring myself to kill no woman. Why, she was the worst of all when it came to thinkin' of things to do t' me. It was her thought of the fingernails, and she did part of it herself."

I could believe that of Sylvie.

After a while Mims dropped off to sleep, and I covered him up better. He hadn't told me where his outfit was, but it must be somewhere back in the brush. He couldn't have come far in the shape he was in, not afoot, anyway.

The death of Nathan Hume's widow, way back in Virginia, had opened a fancy show out here on the grasslands of the Panhandle. Everybody and his brother was heading right for the gold, and all at the same time. It was just my luck to land right in the middle of it; and here I was, saddled with an old man who needed help the worst way, and maybe with a girl, if I could find her again.

What about those Indian stories? Now, I was never one to doubt anything an Indian told me. Folks would say they were superstitious and all, but behind most of what they believed there was good common sense. I know one time down Mexico way Indians told me they would never go near a certain place, because there were evil spirits around. Come to find out, there had been a smallpox epidemic there, and that was the Indian way of quarantining the place. They thought evil spirits had caused the smallpox ...

Well, maybe there was something odd about that box canyon too.

After I'd found Mims's horses--he had four of them ... two pack animals and a spare saddle horse--I went back to the fire and drank some more coffee, then let the flames die down to the coals. Then when it was fairly dark, I moved my bed back into the darkest shadows, where I could see the old man and the firelit space, and where I'd be unseen by anybody scouting the camp.

Several times during the night I awakened, and each time I lay listening into the night. Finally, near daybreak, I decided not to go back to sleep. Many a night before this I had stayed awake for hours, for in my kind of life a man never knew when he would have to come up shooting.

A long time I lay there thinking of other nights in other places when I had stayed awake listening to the night sounds. It wasn't much of a life, being on the dodge all the time.

After a while I began to hear something. At first it wasn't really a clear sound, only of a sudden my ears seemed to sharpen, for something was moving out there, something that made no sound I could rightly make out.

I looked toward the fire ... a few red coals still glowed there, and Harry Mims, wrapped in two blankets and a ground sheet, lay dark and silent beside the fire.

I could hear his faint breathing.

I reached out with my left hand and took up the edge of the blanket that covered me and put it back carefully. The moccasins I always had with me were close by.

Holding my pistol in my right hand, I picked up the moccasins with my left and eased my feet into them.

Picking up a small stone, I tossed it at Mims. It struck his shoulder and his breathing seemed to stop, then it went on again. Was he awake? I had a hunch he was, awake and as ready as a body in his shape could be.

All was quiet, yet with a different sort of quiet now. In the area north of our camp even the night sounds had stopped. Then I heard a faint whisper--the sort of sound a branch can make scraping the side of a man's jeans. Somebody was approaching--perhaps more than one.

I came smoothly and silently to my feet and took a careful step backward, where I was nearer the tree and partly shielded by its branches. Now, even if my bed was seen, I myself was blended into the darkness of the tree.

That gun felt good in my hand, but suddenly I put it back in its holster and drew my knife. A knife was better for quiet work, in close.

Chapter 10

I waited there in the darkness, knife in hand, thankful its edge was razor-sharp. I held it low, cutting edge up.

Down in the creek there was a rustle of water. Cottonwood leaves whispered softly to the breath of wind. I could smell the wood smoke from the fire, the faint aromatic scent of crushed leaves. Whoever was approaching moved with great skill, for there was not another whisper of sound.

My leg muscles grew tired, but I did not want to shift my feet in a movement that might make even the slightest sound. Anyone who moved as silently as this unknown one would also listen well, for the two are one, to listen and to be conscious of others listening.

Then I saw a shadow where no shadow had been before. I had to look a second time to be sure my eyes were not tricking me into believing something had changed.

But the shadow was there. I made a slight move forward, and then my name was breathed. "Mr. Sackett?"

It was Penelope.

My relief was so great that all I could say was, "Where have you been?"

She did not answer, but came swiftly toward me. "Who is that by the fire?"

"Harry Mims. Have you heard of him?"

"I know of him. You'd best awaken him. We must go quickly, before it is light."

"What's happened?"

"Have you ever heard of a man called Tom Fryer? Or Noble Bishop?"

"Are they in this now?"

"Sylvie brought them in. I don't know where she found them, but from all I hear, this only makes things worse."

"Is Ferrara with them?"

"There's a slim, dark man. I didn't hear his name. They came into camp tonight, and they seemed to know you."

They knew me all right--it could not have been worse. There were not three more dangerous men west of the Mississippi than those three.

"You are right," I said. "We'd better move."

Mims was sitting up. As we neared the fire he used his good hand to help himself up. "I heard. Let's get out of here. Let's get the gold and run."

It took only a few minutes to roll up our beds and to bring up the horses.

Penelope would ride Mims's extra horse, for she didn't have one of her own.

We led our horses to the stream, then mounted and crossed. Mims took the lead, for he was sure he knew where the box canyon lay. I didn't like the sound of a box canyon, for that meant a trap--a canyon with only one entrance, and the chances were it had steep sides. It smelled like trouble--but then, everything smelled like trouble. I wished again that I had had sense enough to ride out of here before this.

Penelope was close beside me. "You're no tenderfoot," I said. "You couldn't move like that if you were."

"I grew up in the woods in Virginia. I was stalking deer before I was ten."

She'd had no right to make me feel she was helpless, I told myself. It was downright dishonest. Why, she was as good in the woods as I was myself. And she had saved my bacon.

"You pulled me out of trouble." I said it a little grudgingly, for I wasn't used to being bested by a woman. "Thanks."

"That's all right," she said.

"Where's Loomis?" I asked.

"Somewhere around. I lost track of him."

It seemed to me she was neither worried nor sorry. Maybe she already had him figured out. But how about me? How did she know I wouldn't take all that gold and run? I gave her an uneasy look. Could be I was guessing wrong all the way around. But one thing I felt pretty sure of--she wasn't anything like Sylvie Karnes.

When my thoughts turned to Ferrara, Fryer, and Noble Bishop, I felt a chill. Any one of them was bad enough. All three at once I wanted no part of.

Noble Bishop was a gunman. They told it around that he'd killed twenty men. Cut that by half and it might be true--at least, those killed in known gun battles.

Whoever he might have dry-gulched I'd never be knowing, although that sort of thing was more to the taste of Fryer than of Bishop. As for Ferrara, he was a knife man.

All three were known men, hired killers, men for whatever was needed when there was violence to be done. No doubt Sylvie had gotten wind of them through Hooker or one of the others, and she had wasted no time in hiring them.

Harry Mims was old, and he might be crippled now, but he led us as swiftly through the trees as though he could see in the dark. We followed, and when he brought up at the canyon's mouth we came up close to him.

"I don't like it," he said. "The place worries me."

"You're scared?" I was surprised, for that old man was tough. At any other time he might have gone for his gun at the very question.

"Call it what you like. Maybe the Indians know what they're talking about. I don't like that canyon, and never did."

"You've been here before?"

"Yes ... It's a litter of bones in there. More than one man has died in that place."

"Sure. Nathan Hume's pack train died there, or most of them. Their bones will be there--what else would you expect?"

"There's others," he said soberly. "I tell you, I don't like the place."

"Let's get the gold then, and get out. If we don't do that, we might as well leave right now, because they'll be coming and I'm not one to fight without cause."

The dun didn't like the canyon either. He tried to turn away, fought the bit, and did all he could to avoid entering. The other horses were nervous, but none of them behaved as badly as the dun.

We rode in, darkness closed around us. Up ahead of us, Harry Mims coughed, and then drew up. "Like it or not, we'll have to wait until daylight. There's a pool covered with green scum, and there's some holes around here too. God knows what's in them, but I'd not like to be."

We sat out horses then, no one of us wanting to get down from the saddle, though no one of us could have said why. It was simply an uneasy feeling we had, and the way the horses acted. I know I had no wish to trust the dun with me out of the saddle, unless he was strongly tied.

Presently a saddle creaked. "I'm getting down," Penelope said. "I'm going to look around."

"Wait!" I spoke sharply. "This may be a damned trap. Get back in your saddle and wait."

Well, I expected a quick answer, but none came. She got back into the saddle and sat quietly. By now the sky was growing gray, and it would not be very long until it was light enough to see.

Nobody said anything for several minutes, and then it was Mims who spoke. "Say I'm scared if you like, but I can't get shut of this place fast enough."

Rocks and brush began to take shape, and we could see the walls of the canyon.

Nobody was going to ride out of here unless he went out the front way. Or so I thought then.

"I could do with a cup of coffee," I said.

"Not there. Let's get the gold and get out."

"It won't be that easy," I said. "It never is."

Nevertheless, I was as eager to be away as he was, for the canyon was a depressing place. Bones lay about, and not all of them seemed old enough to be the remains of Nathan Hume's pack train.

We all saw the pool, which lay close to Penelope's horse. A still, dead place covered with a scum of green. Penelope leaned over and stirred the surface with a branch she broke from a dead tree. The water under the scum was oily and dark.

"You notice something?" Harry Mims said suddenly. "There ain't no birds in here.

I've seen no insects, either. Maybe them Indians are right."

The place was beginning to give me the creeps. "All right," I said. "From what I've heard the gold should be somewhere yonder."

We worked our way around the fallen rocks and over to the spot. There were bones enough, all right. A mule's jaw, white and ancient, lay near a shattered rib cage. But the skeletons weren't pulled apart, the way they often are after wolves or coyotes have worried at them.

I could see that the canyon walls were too steep for any horse to climb, in some places too steep for a man. Yet the first sign of life I saw in the canyon were the tracks of wild horses. Several horses had come through here not long since, but there were older tracks, too, which were headed toward the back of the canyon. On a hunch, I swung my horse around. "You hunt the gold," I said.

"There's something back there I've got to see."

Without waiting for a reply, I started off on the trail of those mustangs, and believe me, the dun was ready to move. He just didn't take to that box canyon, not at all.

Those wild horses headed right back up the canyon and into a mess of boulders tumbled from the rock wall above. They wound around among the rocks and brush, and of a sudden I found myself on a narrow trail going up a steep crack in the rocks, scarcely wide enough for a man on horseback. It went straight up, then took a turn, but I had no doubt but that it topped out on the mesa above.

So there was another way out.

Suddenly I heard a faint call, and turned in the saddle to look back. I hadn't realized I had come so far, or so much higher. I could see Penelope back there, a tiny figure waving her arm at me.

When I reached them Mims was down on the ground. He was lying on his face, which I saw had a faint bluish tinge when I turned him over. "Let's get him out of here," I said quickly. "If they come on us with him out--"

I'd no idea what was wrong with him, but it looked as if he'd fainted from some cause or other, and his heart seemed a mite rapid, but was beating all right. I got him up in the saddle and lashed him there, then led the way down the canyon and out. We rode at once toward the shelter of the trees but saw no one, and soon were back among the cottonwoods and willows along the creek.

By that time the better air outside the canyon, and maybe the movement on the back of his horse, seemed to have done him some good. I took him down from the saddle, feeling uncommonly helpless, not knowing what to do for him; but after a moment or two he began to come around.

"You given to passing out?" I asked. "What happened back there?"

"I don't know. All of a sudden I felt myself going. I tell you one thing--I want no more of that box canyon. There's something wrong about that place. Call it whatever you like, I think that place is ha'nted."

After a while he sat up, but his face was uncommonly pale. When he tried to drink he couldn't keep it down.

"Whatever we do had best be done quickly," I said. There are too many others around. They'll find the place if we waste time.

"Maybe I'd best go after the gold. I can take along one of the horses and pack some of it out, and I can get the rest on my horse."

Penelope stood there looking at me, and then she said, "Mr. Sackett, you must think I am a very foolish girl, to let you go after that gold alone."

"No, ma'am. You feel up to it, you just go along by yourself--maybe you'd feel safer that way. But I figure one of us ought to stay by Mr. Mims here."

"I can get along," said Mims. "You can both go."

To tell the truth, I'd no great urge to go back there at all, and even less so if I went along with Penelope. She had helped me out of a fix, but she needed my help. I didn't figure it would be easy to get that gold out, and I wanted nothing else to worry about--especially not a girl I had to look after. I said as much.

"You look after yourself," she told me, speaking sharp but not what you'd call angry. And with that she got into the saddle and I followed.

To see us, you wouldn't figure we were going after a treasure like three hundred pounds of gold. We didn't act very willing, and the closer we came to the mouth of that canyon the slower we rode. I didn't like it, and neither did she.

Harry Mims was a tough old man, but something had put him down, and it was nothing we could see. Maybe there was a peculiar smell, time to time. I never mentioned it, not really knowing whether it was imagination, or something more.

It was almost at the mouth of the canyon that we rode right into a trap.

Penelope might have had an excuse, but there wasn't anything like that for me--I should have known better. All of a sudden, there was Sylvie, standing right out in front of us, and when we both drew up, men started stepping out from the rocks and brush.

They had us, all right. They had us cold. And a prettier lot of thieves you never did see. Bishop was there, and Ralph Karnes. Hooker was there, too, his arm in a sling. And there was Charlie Hurst and Tex Parker and Bishop's men.

"Well, Mr. Sackett," Sylvie said, "it looks as if we can pick up the chips."

"Don't figure on it."

She just smiled at me, but when she looked at Penelope she was not smiling. "And now I've got you," she said, and there was an ugly ring to her voice. "Right where I've wanted you."

"Where's that canyon?" Bishop asked.

It sounded like an odd question, for from where he sat he could almost have thrown a rock into the mouth of it, but the way it looked we were about to ride right past it. The reason was that you had to ride to the far side before you could get past the big boulders at the mouth.

"Canyons all around, Noble. You take your pick." I gestured right toward the canyon. "Like that one, for instance."

He grinned at me. "You already checked that one," he said. "We found your tracks coming out. If you left that canyon the gold can't be there. So you show us."

"I wish we knew. How's a man going to pick one canyon out of all these around here?"

"You'd better find a way," Bishop said.

"Don't be a damn fool, Noble. Look, we've been up here a few days now. How long does it take to pick up that much gold and run? If we knew where it was, we'd have been off and running. Nathan Hume was supposed to have hidden some gold up here. We know that two men got away from the massacre. Maybe some others did, too."

"Two?" Sylvie spoke up. She hadn't known that.

"Sure, there was a Mexican got away--he was a packer for Hume. But the governor of New Mexico was after anybody who worked for him. Somebody tipped off the governor that Hume was smuggling gold out and paying no percentage to the government, or whatever they had to do in those days.

"That Mexican lit out for Mexico, but he got his back broke down there and never could come back. But that doesn't say some of his folks mightn't have come back."

"Are you trying to tell us the gold isn't there?" Ralph demanded incredulously.

"I'd say it isn't," I replied. "Bishop, I don't know about you, but Fryer worked the mining camps in Nevada and Colorado. He'll tell you hidden gold is usually gone, or nobody ever finds it. There's men who have spent their lives hunting for treasure like this, and never found anything."

"That's nonsense," Ralph said. "The gold is here ... we know it is."

"Lots of luck. I only hired on to guide these folks into this country. You find it, you can have it. And you'll know the place by the bones."

"Bones?" It was the first time Ferrara had spoken.

"Sure. A lot of men died there when Hume was killed, and a lot have died since.

The Comanches and the Utes say that box canyon is cursed. No Indian will spend a night in the canyon, and none will ride through if they can help it."

"See?" Hooker said. "That was what I was tellin' you."

"Take their weapons," Sylvie said. "We will make them talk."

"Noble," I said, "nobody ain't about to take my guns. Do you think I'd shuck my iron, with what I know's ahead? I've got nothing to tell you, so there'd be no end to it. You boys want what I'm holdin', you're going to have to buy it the hard way."

"Don't talk like a fool!" Ralph said. "Why, we could blow you out of your saddle!"

"Likely. Only Noble here knows me, and he knows I wouldn't be goin' alone. I seen a man one time who was still shooting with sixteen bullets in him. At this range I know I'm going to get two of you anyway--maybe three or four."

And they were going to help me do it, for if trouble started I was going to jump my horse right in the middle of them, where every shot they fired would endanger everybody else in their party.

Now, Noble Bishop was no damn fool. He'd used a gun enough to know that you don't just shoot somebody and they fall down. If a man is mad and coming at you, you have to get him right through the heart, right through the brain, or on a big bone to stop him.

On the other hand, a shot that's unexpected can drop a man in his tracks; although any expert on gunshot wounds can tell some strange stories about what can happen in a shooting.

Bishop knew I'd been wild and desperate. He knew I was reckoned to be a fast man with a gun, and a dead shot; and he knew if it came to shooting, somebody was going to get killed. In such a melee it could be anybody. And like I'd hinted, the gold might not even be there.

Bishop, Fryer, Ferrara, and maybe Parker were canny enough to guess what I'd do, and they weren't having any of it. After all, why start a gunfight when they could pick us off one at a time with small risk? Or let us find the gold and then take it from us? I knew how they were thinking, because I knew what I'd think in their place.

Bishop spoke calmly. "He's right as rain." He wasn't going to turn this into a wild shooting where anybody could get hurt, and maybe nothing accomplished in the end.

Time and numbers were on their side. All the help I had was a girl and a crippled-up old man, but both of them could scatter a lot of promiscuous lead at such close-up range as this.

"There's nothing to be gained by shooting it out here," Bishop went on. "You ride on your business and we'll ride on ours."

Sylvie was about to protest, then said. "Let him go. Just kill the girl. She has claim to that gold." You never did see anybody who looked so beautiful and was so poison mean as she did when when she said it.

"Nobody gets shot," Bishop said. "You all turn and ride out of here."

We turned and started away, but as I went past Bishop, I said to him in a low voice, "Noble, if you find that gold, don't drink any coffee she makes."

Then we went on by, but when I glanced back he was still watching us. After a minute, he lifted a hand and waved. That was all.

"I thought surely there would be shooting," Penelope said.

"Nobody'd been drinking," Mims said dryly, "and nobody was crazy. We'd have wound up with some of them shot up, and nothing settled."

All the same, nothing was settled anyway. Noble Bishop and me would have it to do, come the right day.

And I had an idea the day was not far off.

Chapter 11

Sylvie Karnes must have made contact with Bishop in Romero, I was thinking. But murderous as Bishop was, he did his work with a gun, which in my book was something altogether different from using poison. Yet he was none the less deadly, for all of that.

"How'd you get shut of Loomis?" I asked as we rode along.

Penelope shrugged. "Who said I was? We got separated, that's all."

Now, I didn't really believe that, nor did I believe that I'd seen the last of that stiff-necked, hard-mouthed old man.

"Whatever we're going to do," I added, "had best be done soon." Even as I said it, I had no stomach for it. I'd a sight rather face Bishop with a gun than ride back into that box canyon.

And Mims was in bad shape. He had lost blood, leaving him weak as a cat, and he could only fumble with his bad hands. It was no wonder he had passed out up there in the canyon, but the idea stayed with me that it had been something worse than mere weakness.

The shadows were growing long as we rode along the stream and then crossed to a low island covered with willows. It was no more than sixty or seventy feet long and half as wide, but there was concealment of a sort there, and some grass.

Swinging down, I helped Mims from the saddle, and felt him trembling with weakness. I spread his blankets, and got him over to them, and he let himself down with a deep sigh.

"We'd better make some coffee," Penelope said. "We all need it."

The stars were out while I gathered driftwood along the island's low shore, and the water rustled pleasantly. Behind the trunk of a huge old cottonwood deadfall, I put together a small fire. The wind was picking up a little, and it worried me, for the sound of the wind would cover anybody trying to approach us.

Nobody talked. All of us were tired, and on edge. We all needed rest, Mims most of all. When I looked at the old man it gave me a twist of pain inside. And it gave me a sudden turn to think that though I was young and strong and tough now, this was the way a man could be when he grew old. It was old age I could see in the face of Harry Mims now.

He drank some coffee, but refused anything to eat, and soon he fell into a restless sleep. Off to one side I said to Penelope, "All the gold in this country ain't worth that man's life. He's a good old man."

"I know." Then she was silent. I sipped black coffee and tried to reach out with my thoughts and picture what tomorrow would bring.

"I need that money, Nolan," she went on. "I need it badly. Say I am selfish if you will, but if I don't get the gold, I'll have nothing, nothing at all."

There didn't seem much of anything to say to that, and I kept still. But I kept thinking about the gold. We were not far from the canyon. As I thought about it, I wondered if I could find my way around in there in the dark. The trouble was they would probably have somebody watching. Tired as I was, I wanted to get it over with and get out of there.

That canyon worried me. A man who lives on the rough side of things learns to trust to his instincts. The life he leads calls for a kind of alertness no man living a safe and regular life would need; his senses become sharper and they make him alive to things he can't always put into words. I was not a superstitious man, but there was something about that canyon that was all wrong.

After a bit of contemplating, I decided not to go there by night. It would be hard enough to come upon the gold in the daylight, let alone prowling among boulders and rock slides in the dark, and maybe falling into a hole, nobody knew how deep.

Most of all I wanted to get shut of Loomis and Sylvie and Ralph, and I got to thinking about what kind of people they were. With western folks a body knew where he stood. I mean, things were mostly out in the open, for the very good reason that there was no place to hide anything. People were scarce, the towns were small, and whatever a man did it had to be pretty well known.

Things were beginning to change, though, because with the railroads a new kind of folks were coming west. The cheats and the weaklings that hard times had weeded out in the earlier years could now ride west on the cushions.

Jacob Loomis was a man who might have come at any time, though he wouldn't have been any great addition to the country. Sylvie and Ralph would not have come west at all but for the gold they thought they'd come by in an easy way.

Bishop might try to shoot me, I knew. Fryer might try dry-gulching me, but that was to be expected, more or less; anyway, this was Indian country where a man had to be on guard. Poison was another matter, and Sylvie and Ralph ... well, there was something wrong about them, something evil, something twisted in their minds.

Finally I went to sleep, though I knew when I closed my eyes that I would wake up to a day of guns and gunsmoke. There would be blood on the rocks of the Rabbit Ears before another sundown.

The last stars hung lonely in the sky, and a low wind trembled the cottonwood leaves when my eyes opened and my ears reached out for sound. One by one I heard the sounds--the rustling leaves, the low murmur of the creek water, the pleasant sound of horses cropping grass. Out in the creek a fish jumped.

Picking up my boots, I shook them out--centipedes or scorpions have a way of crawling into boots at night; and then I tugged them on, stood up, and stamped them into place. My hat was already on, of course. First thing any cowhand does of a morning is put on his hat. I slung my gunbelt and settled the holster into place, then tied the thong about my leg.

It was not yet full daylight. A single red coal showed in the fire. I stretched the stiffness out of me, wiped the night sweat from my Winchester, and went down to the creek to wash and to brush my teeth with a frayed willow stick.

Moving quietly, I went to the dun and rubbed his ears a mite, talking to him in a low, friendly tone. Then I saddled up, rolled my bed, and made ready to move out. The old man was sleeping, breathing evenly. That tough old man, all bone and rawhide, would pull though all right. As for that girl Penelope--

She was gone. Her bed was there, but she had slipped away. Her horse was gone too.

My mustang hadn't made any fuss because she came from within the camp, she was one of us, and she had a right to go. And for once I'd slept so sound I'd missed her going.

She had no business slipping off that way, but I had no business sleeping so sound that she could do it. The truth was, it made me mad to think anybody could slip out of camp without me knowing--but it worried me, too. My life depended on never sleeping that sound.

Kneeling down, I touched Mims on the shoulder. He opened his eyes right off, sharp and clear as if he had never slept.

"That girl kin of yours slipped off. No telling what's happened to her."

He sat up and reached for his hat. "She'll have gone to that misbegotten canyon.

We'd better get over there."

Whilst he got himself up, I slapped a saddle on his horse, and only minutes after he opened his eyes we had all gear packed and ready, and rode out of camp.

We walked our horses out of the creek and started up through the trees. The Rabbit Ears bulked large and dark against the sky. A quail called somewhere out in the brush. I knew we weere riding to a showdown, and for once I wished it was over.

We kept to low ground, seeking all the cover we could find, and riding out in the open only when we reached the canyon mouth. There seemed to be plenty of tracks, but we could make nothing of them. As before, the dun wanted no part of the box canyon, but at my urging he went ahead hesitantly. I could see that several horses had entered the canyon since we had come out of it.

The first thing we saw was Steve Hooker, and he was dead. He lay crumpled on the ground, one knee drawn up, his six-gun still in its holster, the thong in place.

"Look!" Mims said hoarsely. He was pointing at Hooker's tracks.

He had been walking along, taking slightly shorter strides than a man of his height might have been expected to take, which made me sure he had come in here after dark. Walking on uneven ground, unfamiliar to him, a man will usually take shorter steps.

He had fallen after a few staggering steps and had gone to his hands and his knees. He had gotten up and gone on, and then had fallen again. This time when he had risen he took not more than two or three steps before he collapsed.

"Something last night," Mims spoke in a low, awed tone. "Sackett, I'm riding the hell out of here."

"You wait just a minute," I said. "No use goin' off half-cocked."

Nothing seemed any different from yesterday except for the body of Hooker. I stepped down from the saddle and turned him over. There was no sign of a wound, no blood. His face looked puffy and had a kind of bluish color to it, but that might have been the effect of the early light, or it might have been my imagination.

The low clouds that had come with daybreak hung over the Rabbit Ears, and tails of mist drifted past them. The canyon was a gloomy place at any time with its dark, basaltic rock and the uncanny stillness. I heard no sound at all, and saw no birds, no small animals.

What was it the Mexican had told me that night on the Neuces?

The gold had been pushed into a hole under a boulder, and rocks had been caved in over it. A cross had been scratched on the rock. Forty years or more had passed since the day that happened--I didn't have a sure idea when it was that Nathan Hume had been caught in this trap and massacred.

"Look for a white cross, Mims," I said, keeping my voice low, not knowing who there might be listening. "The sort of thing a man would scratch on a rock if he was in a hurry."

We both saw it at the same moment and started our horses toward it.

The gray clouds seemed darker and lower still, and there was a hint of dampness in the air. I did not like the feel of it; I did not like anything about this strange, haunted place.

Dropping my Winchester into the boot, I swung down from the saddle, and tied the dun to some stiff brush nearby. I loosened the thong from my six-shooter, then walked into the hollow where the boulder stood. At the base of it, below the scratched cross, was a jumble of rumbled rock.

I looked all around. "Keep a sharp lookout, Mims," I said. "Don't watch me--watch for them."

"I wonder where that girl is?" Mims said in a worried tone. "She'd no call to go traipsing off like that."

"Let's get the gold. Then we'll hunt for her. I've got a hunch she can take care of herself."

The hiding place was logical enough. Men defending themselves from Indians would probably retreat to just such a place as this. It would have seemed a good place to make a stand, although Indians up on the rim could have covered them with rifle fire.

One by one I started moving the rocks, most of them slabs, or boxilders from head-size on up. I worked as fast as a body could, but I was trying to make as little noise as possible. It was not so much that I suspected anybody was close by, but there was something about that canyon that made a man want to walk softly and speak in a low tone.

My head, which had only stopped aching the day before, started in again now, and my breathing was bad. After a bit I left the hollow and scrambled up beside my horse, to lean against him. It was a surprising thing to know how much a wallop on the head could take out of a man.

Mims looked worried. "You feel all right? You sure don't look so good."

"Headache," I told him, "from that knock on the head from Andrew's bullet."

He looked at me thoughtfully. "Now, you never did tell me how come your head was like that. Andrew, hey? What become of him?"

"Come to think of it, it wasn't Andrew who shot me, it was Ralph. It was Andrew who came in to finish the job."

The air was better up there beside my horse--only a few feet difference, too.

After a few minutes I slid back down and went to work again, but I had moved only a few boulders when my head began to buzz and I felt very peculiar. I was going to have to quit.

"If there was a swamp around here," Mims said, "I'd figure you were getting a dose of marsh gas. It'll sometimes do that to a man. Cuts his wind."

Crawling up again, I staggered to my horse, took my canteen and rinsed my mouth with water, and then emptied some of the water over my head. After a moment or two I felt better and went down into the hollow once more. Almost at once I found the gold.

It had been dumped into a natural hollow in the rock underneath. Wasting no time, I began to get it out. Mims, despite his weakness, got down and started to help. Our excitement carried us on, with me passing the ingots up to Mims, who put them in the prepared packs on his two lead horses.

There was no question of silence any more. I was coughing and choking, and couldn't seem to stop. But I knew that at any moment the others might come.

When the last of the gold was loaded, I climbed up to where the horses stood, not more than six or eight feet above where the gold had been hidden. I fell down, pulled myself up, and then untying my horse, I got a leg over the saddle.

The dun wasted no time, but started for the steep trail up the mountain. It was that which saved us. I was coughing so hard I could scarcely do more than stay in the saddle. Harry Mims was right behind me with the gold. We had started up the trail when far back behind us we heard a clatter of hoofs and saw several riders come into the canyon. The first thing they saw was Hooker, and then the marks of our horses' hoofs where they had waited while we loaded the gold. They saw the hollow among the rocks, where I'd climbed down to get at the gold, and they saw the empty hole. While they were flocked around it our horses were still scrambling up the steep trail.

We were still within rifle range when they saw us. The gold had been there ... and now they were seeing it slip away from them.

Which one of them fired the shot, I will never know, nor how many of them there were. I know Tex Parker was there, or somebody riding his horse, and a man wearing a Mexican sombrero, who might have been Charlie Hurst. There was no sign of Bishop, nor of Penelope. All that I saw at that one quick glance, for I never got another.

One man whipped his rifle to his shoulder and fired, I saw the leap of flame from the muzzle, and then the whole world seemed to blow up in our faces. There was a tremendous explosion and an enormous flame shot up out of the canyon.

I hit the ground with a jarring thud, and I never knew whether I was blown from my saddle or thrown by my startled horse. Only I lit on my hands and knees, looking down into the canyon but well back from the edge.

Flame was streaking out in rushing streams from the point of the explosion, seeming to seek out every hollow, every low place among the rocks, and then it hit a three-foot-wide hole in the rocks. We'd seen that hole, but we hadn't gone near it. Now the mouth of the hole was a great jet of flame, and the air was filled with a terrible, continuing roar.

Pulling myself to my feet, I staggered away, filled with horror, and trying to get away from the sound of the roaring.

There was no sign of my horse, and none of Harry Mims or the pack horses, but for several minutes the only thing I could think of was that I wanted to get away.

I climbed up, and had gone almost half a mile before I saw Mims. He was still in the saddle, and he had the pack horses with him. He was trying to round up the lineback dun, but the mustang was frightened and would have none of him.

Slowly, I limped along the mountainside toward them. The dun shied several times, but finally he stood still and let me get into the saddle.

We rode straight away toward the west, with no thought in our minds but to get away from that dreadful sight and that terrible sound. I'd seen men die before, but never like that.

And where ... where was Penelope?

Chapter 12

Neither of us felt like talking. We rode straight ahead, but we had no destination in mind. It was simply that we wanted to get away from the box canyon, away from that awful scene.

It was Mims who finally spoke. "Must be some kind of gas ... or oil. You hear about that feller back in Pennsylvania who drilled him an oil well? Supposing something like that caught fire?"

I didn't know the answer, but it seemed as if it must have been something of the sort. Even the fact that we had the gold, three hundred pounds of it, was forgotten in the shock of what had happened in the canyon.

What brought me back to myself was the thought of Penelope. ... Where was she?

Loomis, I was sure, had not been among these in the canyon. There had been at least four or five men down there, and Fryer and Ferrara might have been among them, or perhaps some other friends of Parker and Hurst.

"We've got to get under cover," I said, "and we've got to stash this gold somewhere."

I was still coughing from whatever it was I'd gotten into my lungs dawn there--the same thing probably that had killed Steve Hooker. It might have been worse for him at nighttime, or maybe his heart was bad. We'd never know about that, and I wasn't giving it much thought. It was the living I was concerned with.

Steve Hooker had charted his own course, followed his own trail. If it led him to the death he'd found, he had probably saved himself from a bullet or a noose, for he was headed for one or the other. When a man begins a life of violence, or when he decides to live by taking something away from others, he just naturally points himself toward one end. He can't win--the odds are too much against him.

We kept heading west, riding at a steady gait for about four miles, and then I let Mims go on ahead with the pack horses while I did what I could to wipe out whatever trail we had left through the bunch grass.

When I came up to him again, walking my horse up Cienequilla Creek, he had stopped at a place barren of cover--a sandy bank rising a few feet above the shore of the creek. It was just what we wanted. We unloaded the gold and put it down close to the bank, then caved the bank over it. The sand was dry, and when we had finished there was no sign that this spot was any different from any other place along the banks where small slides or cave-ins were common. Wiping out our own tracks, we started back.

It was early--the sun wasn't more than an hour above the horizon. The sky was darkened by the pall of smoke above Rabbit Ears, but the smoke seemed to be thinning out some, we thought.

We had to find Penelope, if she was alive, and I was surely thinking she was.

She just had to be. Slipping off in the middle of the night like that ... it made no kind of sense unless she figured to get to the gold before we did, or anybody else.

But what happened to her? She had not been in the canyon, of that I was sure, so something must have stopped her, or turned her aside.

Presently I said to Mims, "I never figured to see you again after you loaning me that horse. Main thing I wanted then was distance."

"They had a rope for you, all right, and I never did see such an outfit." Mims chuckled. "Mad? They were really scratching dirt and butting heads. Fact is, they talked some about lynching me on general principles."

"What stopped "em?"

"I had me an old ten-gauge shotgun in the cabin. After you taken off I just went back and loaded her up. Time or two I've noticed that a ten-guage shotgun is quite a pacifier. Folks who get riled up and want to twist somebody's tail sort of calm down when they see one.

"Well, they rode up, just a stompin' and a-chawin', so I showed 'em the shotgun and told 'em you wanted a horse in a hurry and I let you have one.

"I just wished I'd of had that shotgun ready when Sylvie showed up. I never did shoot no woman, but there's one I figure I could shoot with a clear conscience."

By now we had picked up Rabbit Ears Creek and were working our way around to the south side of the mountain, all the while scouting for tracks. And soon we found them.

They were buckboard tracks, leading north past the east side of the mountain. We slowed our pace and followed, riding with rifles ready for trouble.

We found a camp that had been used for a couple of days, but was deserted now.

We could be only a few miles from the box canyon, and their next camp must be close by. We were getting smoke from the fire in the canyon now; it was thin, but there was a-plenty of it.

Harry Mims drew up. "Nolan, I ain't much on the scare, but we're sure askin' for trouble. That outfit's got to be close by, and they'll be in a sweat to get that gold or our hides."

"That girl needs help," I said, "and I can't ride off without seeing her safe.

It ain't in me."

"What kinda outlaw are you?"

"I ain't figured that out yet, but I surely ain't riding away until she's safe."

We had started on again, keeping under cover of brush and trees, and pulling up every now and again to listen.

Suddenly we came upon the buckboard--or what was left of it. It had been pushed off a little bank, brush thrown over it, and then set afire. There was little left but the wheel rims, the hubs, and some charred spokes. A smell of smoke still hung over it.

Neither of us could make much out of the tracks except that somebody had charged off the side of the hill and stampeded the buckboard horses. There had been a fight, for we found some empty shells, a bullet scar on a tree, and the earth churned up by the hoofs of several horses.

"I'll bet they didn't get Flinch," Mims commented. "From what you tell of that breed, he'd be a sly one."

It was mid-afternoon now. We listened but there wasn't a sound.

We rode on under a low sky made darker by the oily smoke still corning from the fire in the canyon. We held to the bottoms, alert for trouble. How Mims felt I could guess, and I knew that I was all in. Seemed like we'd been running and riding forever. What I wanted now was some sitting-around time and eating three square meals a day. I wanted coffee I didn't make myself, and some restaurant-cooked grub.

We had come up the east side of the Rabbit Ears and had reached the creek again.

Now we smelled woodsmoke, and we took our horses down to the damp sand along the edge of the creek.

There was a pack of trouble standing out for us somewhere close ahead, and we both knew it. You just don't ride up to a crowd like that without expecting trouble. And there'd be one woman there, maybe two. The women worried me most of all. You might figure out what a man would do, but never a woman.

And old outlaw told me one time, "Look out for the women. You never know whether they're going to scream, or faint, or go for a gun."

And they were there, all right, both of them. When we rode up the two of them were facing each other alongside the fire.

Jacob Loomis was sitting on a rock facing, toward us, his blanket roll beside him. Noble Bishop was there, his face still, eyes watchful, missing nothing. And Fryer ... I'd sort of figured him for one of those who died back in the canyon, but here he was, big as life and twice as ugly. And the Mexican was beside him.

Flinch worried me most of all. He wasn't there.

Loomis' eyes took on an ugly shine when we rode up through the trees. Bishop looked at me, but he made no move of any kind. With Bishop and me it was a cut-and-dried thing. Each of us had a reputation as a fast man with a gun, and each of us knew that if it came to shooting somebody was going to get hurt.

Neither was eager to try the other, but each of us knew that events might push us that way.

What was going on when we rode up I didn't wait to find out, but I knew it was something that had to be stopped.

"Penelope," I said, "it's all over now. We'll ride with you to Santa Fe."

Bishop turned his eyes to me. "What happened over there?"

"That canyon must have been full of gas from oil underground. It seeped out and, being heavy like, it held close to the ground in the low places. Me an' Harry here, we were up on the rim, and one of them--I don't know who--got skittish and fired a shot.

"You know how this black powder is. A flame jumped from the muzzle when he shot, and the whole canyon blew up all to once, with streamers of fire wherever gas had gathered. Those men never had them a chance."

"We rode over that way," Bishop said. "We couldn't make out much, and we didn't stay long. All we could see was rocks blackened by fire and that hole in the rocks shooting out a jet of fire."

"How long do you reckon it will burn?" Fryer asked.

"Who knows? Years, maybe. It'll burn as long as there's anything left to burn."

"What about the gold?" Ralph Karnes demanded.

I shrugged. "What about it? Looks to me like nobody's going to get at that gold for a good long time."

"Unless," Slyvie said, looking right at me, "somebody got it out before the fire started."

"There's always that," I admitted. "But it looked to me like all those fellows got it to once. I don't think any of them got out alive."

"I wasn't thinking of them," Sylvie said. "I was thinking of you."

Nobody said anything for a minute, but Penelope was looking at me, her eyes bright with the questions in them. I was hoping they would wait.

"Well," I said, smiling easier than I felt like, "if I had that gold I'd be splittin' the breeze for Denver right now. I surely wouldn't be wastin' time talking to you folks."

"Neither would I," Fryer said. "What would he come back for?"

"For her," Sylvie said. "Can't you see he's got an itch for Penelope?"

They were all looking at me, and I just shrugged.

I wasn't looking at Pen when I spoke. "You're funnin' me, Sylvie. With all that money no man's going to have to look for women; he'll just have to look out for them. Why, if a man rides into Denver with all that gold he'll be combin' them out of his hair.

"Now, Penelope here is a nice girl. We promised to see her safe into Santa Fe.

Mims here is a relative of hers."

I knew about where we stood. Fryer believed me easy enough, and so did the Mexican. Bishop ... well, he was holdin' court in his mind--he hadn't come to any decision yet. Sylvie and Loomis, they were so crooked they wouldn't believe anybody and they were suspicious of everybody. Sylvie, I knew, would never let us ride out of there if she could figure some way to do us in. And I knew that, money or not, Jake Loomis wanted Penelope. He wanted her right out in these hills with nobody around. I could see the purpose in him, and the cruelty.

Right then, I guess, I made up my mind it was going to be a shooting matter.

The last thing I wanted was to swap lead with Bishop in that crowd. Likely he felt the same way, but Sylvie or Ralph or maybe Loomis would surely trigger trouble unless we could get out of here quick.

"Mount up, Pen," I said, "we're riding out."

Even as I spoke my mind was laying out the whole scene, taking everything in.

The bank of the creek was low and flat, just rising a mite near the edge of the trees that surrounded the clearing. There were a few good-sized boulders close by. Some of their horses were back on the left, standing under the trees.

Penelope's horse, loaned her by Mims, was over with the team from the buckboard.

The harness had been stripped off and both of them now wore Indian-style bridles, made by Flinch, I'd bet.

"She's not going," Sylvie said. "This is family trouble, and we'll settle it here."

Bishop wasn't talking. I wanted to know where he stood, but as long as I didn't make a point of it he could wait and listen.

"There's no reason for trouble," I said, "family or no family. You and Ralph go your own way and she can go hers."

"We found Andrew," Ralph said.

Well, here it was. The whole thing was shaping up now just the way I thought it would, but had hoped it wouldn't.

"You shot me, Ralph," I said, "and Andrew figured to finish the job. He didn't quite make it."

"I think you've got the gold," Loomis said. "Why else would you be so ready to ride off?"

I shrugged. "Why waste time around here? The show's over."

Sylvie suddenly seemed to give in. "All right. Let's forgive and forget. We were just getting ready for supper. Get down and I'll pour some coffee."

This had gone on long enough. "I don't like your coffee, Sylvie. It comes out a mite strong for my taste. Pen, you get your horse. We're leaving ... now."

Pen started toward the horses and Sylvie sprang at her. All I needed was to move in to help her and somebody would take a shot at me.

But Pen didn't need any help. Sylvie tried to grab at her hair with both hands, but Pen wasn't having any. She let her have it.

Well, I couldn't believe it. Seemed I'd never learn. Here was that girl I was always for protecting, and she needed no more protection than a mountain lion.

Sylvie sprang at her, hands upraised, and Pen hit her right in the stomach with a doubled-up fist. When Sylvie gasped for breath and brought her hands down, Pen slapped her across the mouth with a crack like a pistol shot. Then she caught up the reins of her horse and swung up.

"Stop her!" Loomis shouted. "Bishop, you stop her--or give me a gun and I will!"

Bishop never moved. He just glanced over at Loomis and said, "You better be happy, old man, that you ain't got a gun. Nolan Sackett would kill you."

So we rode out of there and started west again. But I was worried. Noble Bishop would be wanting that gold, and how much of my story he believed I didn't know.

Only thing I was sure of was that he hadn't wanted a shootout down there by the creek. There were too many people and too many guns, and it would be a matter of luck, not skill, if a man survived. There were too many chances of a wild bullet doing what you didn't mean an aimed bullet to do.

We rode fast. We were going to pick up that gold and ride out of there, and I was hoping I'd seen the last of all of them.

Chapter 13

We were northeast of the Rabbit Ears now, and the peaks were red with the dying sun. There was a dull glow over the canyon and we could hear, even at this distance, the roar.

We headed for Rabbit Ears Creek, and from time to time I turned in my saddle, but nobody was following us that I could see. By the time we were due south of the mountain the stars were coming out and it was well on toward dark.

"They won't leave it alone, Sackett," Mims said. "They'll come."

"Sure, they will."

Penelope had not done any talking, and I was just as pleased. I was still mad over her riding out and leaving us in the night that way.

Taking the bulk of Cienequilla del Barro Mountain for a landmark, I kept on west and when it was well after dark I changed direction several times until we were close under the shadow of the mountain. Then we switched and turned northeast toward the creek where the gold had been buried.

Mims drew up suddenly. "Sackett, I don't like the smell of this. Something's wrong."

Of course it was ... but what? It had gone off too easy, altogether too easy. I was sure we had not been followed, but what if there had been no need? Supposing we had been observed earlier in the day? Observed in the vicinity, even if not while burying the gold.

Maybe they knew approximately where we had gone, but not exactly. There was a good deal of smoke, the clouds were low, and there might have been intervening trees or brush. As I thought of it, it was plain enough to me that they might have been watching from up on the Rabbit Ears.

"What's wrong?" Penelope asked.

"Mims has got a hunch we're walking into some land of a trap."

"How could that be? They're all back there."

"Are they?"

A faint breeze stirred across the bunch grass levels, but it brought with it none of the canyon's smoke, for that was all to the east of us now. The clouds were heavy and it was now full dark. A horse stamped impatiently. The horses wanted water, they wanted rest, and they wanted grass. I had a feeling it would be hours before they were that lucky.

"All right," I said, "let's go on."

Moving ahead, I walked the dun slowly, pausing often to listen, but there was no sound beyond those to be expected--the sound of the horses' hoofs in the grass, the creak of saddle leather.

We were within two hundred yards of the Cienequilla when I drew up again, but again I heard no sound. Flinch would have been the one on the mountain, of course, whether it was their idea of his. He would have been Indian enough to go up on the Rabbit Ears where he could watch everything that took place. He could not have seen us get the gold, but he could draw some conclusions from the way the pack horses moved.

So what would they do now? Wait in hiding until we had the gold out and loaded again? That would be what Bishop would want, but would the others be patient enough for that?

Suddenly I knew what I was going to do.

"Harry, do you know the peak called Sierra Grande? Due west from here?"

"I know it."

"Six or seven miles south of it there's an outcropping of lava and there's a peak there about four hundred feet high. When we get the gold loaded, you and Pen head due west for that lava flow and hole up somewhere south of the peak.

"You can water your norses on the Middle Fork of the Burro, but water won't be a problem. There are scattered ponds all over that country. Go on to the Carrizo if you want to, but it's about thirty miles, probably nearer forty the way you'll have to go to the peak. I wouldn't go out of my way if I can help it."

"What about you?" Penelope asked.

"It's dark. You move off quietly and they'll never know. I'll stay behind and tumble rocks around, cave in the bank here and there, make them think we were digging or hunting for the place. I figure I can give you an hour's start before they close in."

"And after they close in?"

"Why, there's liable to be a little difficulty, Penelope. I sort of doubt if they'll take my word, but I figure to be convincing."

"And then?"

"I'll come and join you."

There was a long moment of silence, and then she said, "There will be six of them--seven counting Sylvie ... and just you."

"Maybe I can slip away before they close in."

"Why are you doing this?"

"That's a lot of gold."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to shoot Mr. Mims and me? There's only two of us."

"We're wastin' time talking like this. Anyway, I was never much on doing things the easy way. We'll ride in now. If we're lucky we'll get the gold loaded and you out of here before there's trouble."

With that, I turned my horse and rode on to the creek. I felt pretty sure that they were close by, and that they would wait until we had the gold uncovered ... it all depended on that. But you couldn't be sure about Sylvie and Ralph. Nobody knew when they'd go off half-cocked.

We dug the sand away with our hands, loaded the pack horses, with me counting the ingots as I had when we hid them. When they were all on the pack saddles I pushed Mims's shoulder as a signal for him to go.

Then, loud enough so a listener might hear if close enough, I said, "I tell you it was further this was!"

"You try it," Harry said, catching the drift. "I'll look down the creek."

Penelope had stopped beside me, and I turned and, putting my lips close to her ear, whispered: "Go on! I'll need every minute!"

She turned her head then and kissed me quickly on the lips, and I was surprised as if she'd stuck a knife into me ... which I was half expecting. Then she was gone.

Reaching up, I caught hold of a rock stuck in the sand at the top of the low bank, tugged it loose, and let it fall with a little cascade of sand.

"Ssh!" I hissed. "You want to start the whole country moving?"

Then I fumbled around in the dark, managed to step on a dried branch, to tumble some more dirt, and with a piece of the broken branch I dug at the dirt.

"Over further," I said. "It was over the other side about ten feet."

The minutes dragged. All of a sudden I knew myself for a damned fool. This wasn't going to fool anybody anywhere near long enough. My eyes went to the dun.

The horse was standing there, ground-hitched. One quick jump and I'd be in the saddle and riding out of here. How much was money worth, anyway? A man's life?

Particularly when it was my life?

Suddenly, I heard a faint stir of movement on the far bank. Without waiting, I moved toward my horse. There was that movement again. After all, I had no friends over there. I palmed my six-shooter and let drive a shot right at the sound. Then I dropped to the sand, scuttled quickly five or six feet and came up running as two guns crossed their fire toward the point I'd just left.

There came a sudden crackle of flame and the brush across the creek exploded.

Somebody had dropped a match into a dead juniper. The flames soared high, and the area was brightly lit. Instantly I heard the hard bark of pistols, the sharper report of a rifle, and a spout of sand leaped in front of me. Just behind me something slapped the water sharply and, turning, I saw a leaping figure and fired.

The man, whoever he was, caught in mid-jump, jerked oddly, and fell. He started to get up, then rolled off the bank into the shallow water.

Something seemed to tug at my sleeve, and then I was running, falling, running again. Another tree burst into flame ahead of me, and just beyond it I saw my horse.

Starting up the sloping bank from what was evidently a ford on the stream, I saw Ferrara. He had a rifle and was taking aim, not more than sixty feet away. My six-shooter was in my hand, and I simply fired, threw myself to one side, and fired again. He went down, tried to bring the gun around, but I had ducked from sight and was back in the stream bed running for my horse. Crawling up the bank, I grabbed the reins and jumped for the saddle, mounting without touching a stirrup.

The dun, not liking either the flames or the shooting, took off at a dead run.

Behind me there were a few wasted shots, and then silence.

Riding north, I headed for the breaks along the North Canadian, knowing my first problem was to try to lead them away from Penelope and Mims, and the gold.

Also, I was going to have to find rest for my horse. Any wild mustang will travel for days, run a good part of the time, and get along on very little water, but carrying a rider is another thing.

After a brief run I slowed the dun, changed direction, and then reloaded my pistol and rifle. An hour or more later I holed up in a little hollow on a creek that fed into the North Canadian, stripped the gear from the dun, let him roll and then picketed him where he could reach the water. When I stretched out on the grass where I'd spread my blanket, I told myself I would not be able to sleep. A minute later I must have proved myself a liar, for when I awakened it was bright sunlight and I could hear the birds twittering in the willows.

For a long time I lay still, looking up to where the sunlight fell through the leaves, and listening. There was a magpie fussing on a branch nearby, but after a few minutes he flew off. I sat up, put on my hat, shook out my boots, pulled them on, and stood up.

Slinging my gun belt around my hips, I buckled the belt, then walked over and talked to the dun for a while, all the time listening for whatever my ears could pick up. I tied my gun down with the rawhide thong around my leg, and went back and rolled up my blankets and ground sheet. Then I dug into my saddlebags for a busted box of cartridges and filled the empty loops in my belt.

I was hungry, but the little grub I'd had was used up, except for a little coffee, and I had no urge to hunt anything and draw attention by shooting. It wouldn't be the first morning I'd ridden off with no breakfast, nor would it be the last. I went to the creek and drank, watered the dun again, and saddled him up.

Riding west along the Corrumpaw Creek, I held to a line that would skirt Sierra Grande on the south. The clouds of the last few days were finally giving up some rain, which began to fall in a cold, steady shower, and I put on my slicker.

From time to time I studied my back trail but saw nothing.

Had they gone off after Penelope and Mims, then? The two had a fair start, but with two heavily loaded pack horses they were not going to move very fast.

However, Harry Mims was an oldtimer, and a man who should know something about losing pursuit.

On the other hand, the hits I'd scored on two men might have cooled the others off somewhat. They could not know I was not with Penelope and Mims, or about to join them. I had no idea what the results of my shooting were. Both men were hit, and I hoped they were not killed, though wounded men are a sight more trouble than the dead.

That night, just before sundown, I sighted a sheep camp. There must have been over a thousand sheep in the lot, and three Mexican herders, with their dogs.

The three were well-armed men, for this was Indian country, although we were getting closer to the settlements. I joined them, and soon learned that they were out of Las Vegas.

After I'd eaten I told them I was pushing on a ways. "No reason for you to get into grief," I said. "There may be some men following me."

One of the Mexicans grinned slyly. "Si, amigo. Men have followed me also. Vaya con Dios."

Leaving them, I followed the south branch of the Corrumpaw until it lost itself in the steep slope of Sierra Grande, and made camp for the night. When daybreak came I found a bench and worked my way along it around the base of the mountain until the lava beds and their lone peak were due south of me.

The bench was five hundred feet or so above the land below and gave me a good view of the country toward the lava beds and the peak. Seated on a flat rock, I gave myself time to contemplate the country around that peak, which was a good five miles from where I sat. And that was a good mile south of the peak of Sierra Grande.

It was still early morning. Nothing moved down there. No dust clouds ... nothing. When I'd watched for at least an hour, I mounted up again and let the dun find his own way down the mountain. We rode across the valley floor, raising as little dust as possible; after the light rain of the day before, that was no problem.

When I reached the lava beds I rode with caution, with my Winchester ready to hand.

There was nobody there ... and no tracks.

Either they had never gotten here, or the tracks they'd left had been wiped out by the rain. For a while I scouted the country, and only once did I find anything like a track, and then it was only a slight indentation under the edge of a bush, such as a horse might have made in stepping past the bush.

Finally, I rode back to the peak. I'd told them to hole up somewhere south of the peak, so I tied my horse to a mesquite bush and climbed up on the lava.

I knew what lava would do to a pair of boots, and mine weren't in very good shape as it was. Scrambling around over lava, those boots could be done for in an hour or two, so I simply climbed the highest bulge I could find short of the peak and looked around.

The first thing I saw was an empty cartridge shell, bright in the sun. And a little beyond it, projecting from behind some brush, I sighted a boot and a spur.

It needed only a couple of minutes for me to get there. It was Harry Mims, and he was dead. He had been shot in the back at fairly close range, but he was a tough old man with a lot of life in him and he had crawled--his scraped and bloodied hands showed that--trying to get away over the lava.

He must have lost his gun when they shot at him. I didn't see it anywhere around and did not look for it. They had followed, caught up with him, and then standing over him had emptied a gun into his chest.

There were no other bodies, no horses, no gold, no Penelope.

Penelope? ... A little chill caught me in the chest. Suppose she had killed him?

Suppose it was she who'd shot him in the back, then followed him up and shot him in the chest to make sure of his death?

Who else could get that close? ... And where was Penelope?

Chapter 14

I left the place and rode to the west, cutting back and forth for sign. Almost a mile out I found where several horses, two of them heavily loaded, had crossed a wash, their heels sliding in the mud.

At intervals then I. found sign; but I'd been following for scarcely another mile when in, glancing around to study my back trail, I thought I saw another trail off to the right. Riding over, I did find another trail--a lone rider keeping well off to one side, and often stopping beside a mesquite bush.

Obviously, somebody had been scouting along the trail of the bunch of horses. I had no idea who the lone rider might be, but I knew Penelope had the horses, and I was sure there were no strange tracks among that lot.

Of the original group against us, I did not know which ones had survived, and were able to ride. Perhaps all of them.

It was just shy of noon when I found the other trail.

The new trail showed four riders coming in from the south, and a couple of the tracks were familiar ones. They belonged to some of the Bishop crowd. Who, then, was the lone rider following Penelope?

The trail held steadily west, then suddenly it ended in a maze of tracks.

Drawing up, I stood in the stirrups and gave study to the ground.

The pursuers had lost Penelope's trail, and in trying to find it again had chopped up all the ground with hoof marks. Circling, I tried to pick up the trail of the lone rider again. From the way he had been acting I had an idea that he was a good tracker, and as he had been ahead of them, he was most likely to discover where Penelope had gone.

She had ridden into a belt of soft sand where tracks leave no clear impressions.

Then she had evidently seen some herders coming with a flock of sheep and had simply ridden on ahead of them, keeping track of the direction they were taking and staying ahead so their tracks would wipe hers out.

The herd had been headed west, which was her direction, but I wasn't satisfied.

She would not want to go north, for in that direction it was too far to any town where she could be sure of protection from the law. West was all right for her, but it was almost too obvious. Cimarron was over west, and she might head for there ... but she might not. I found myself wishing I knew what she and Mims had talked about before he was killed. That old man knew this country and he had probably told her a good deal.

Those sheep were a good cover for her tracks, but it was likely Loomis, Bishop, and the rest of them would follow right along until they caught up with the sheep, and then they'd find her tracks. Yet I could not be sure of that. Suppose she turned off?

This girl was showing herself uncommonly smart. She was all alone now with three hundred pounds of gold, two pack horses, and a spare saddle horse, for she must have Mims's mount with her. She would outfigure everybody if she could, and I had a hunch she would leave that sheep herd at the first chance. She was, without doubt, riding a good way ahead of it. With that much gold she would be suspicious of everybody and taking no chance even with the herders.

So I held to the south edge of the herd, keeping an eye out for tracks. The herd was heading for a patch of junipers and pifion that lay ahead. There was good grass and. A lot of good grazing on the slopes around those trees. A mile or more this side were twin peaks, with a low hill standing north of them.

When I got to that low hill I drew up and studied the ground. The sheep had passed north of it, but there were scattered tracks out from the flock, as there always are, and dog tracks among them. There was no sign of a horse track, but somehow I was not convinced.

Skirting the hill, I rode up between the two buttes that lay south of it. I'd been on the dodge too many times myself to ignore such a place. If she turned off between those buttes the sheepherders would have their view of her cut off until they passed the buttes, and by that time she could be under cover. They would not know which way she had gone.

On the far side of the buttes I suddenly came on several horse tracks, one of which I recognized. Yet I had gone on half a mile farther before I found more.

She was using every bit of soft sand or hard rock she could find, and she left practically no signs.

Now the thing to figure was where she would be going. Cimarron was closest; if she bypassed that she could go through the mountains and turn north to Elizabethtown, or ride on to Taos. Each mile of this would be dangerous, but she had nerve, and evidently she had a plan. It was my hunch she would skip Cimarron.

Well now, here was a girl out of the East who was making fools out of the lot of us. One young girl, all alone, with four horses and three hundred pounds in gold, cutting across wild country toward ... where?

Her trail was plain enough, so I lifted the dun into a canter and followed as rapidly as possible. She was hours ahead of me when she crossed the Canadian, but she was moving her pack horses too fast. Carrying a dead weight such as gold was harder than carrying a rider.

We were riding in cattle country now, and sooner or later she was sure to come up with some cowhands. Sure enough, she had, and did the smart thing. She swapped her horses for three fresh and better ones. But before she did the swapping she left her gold cached out in the hills.

She'd been gone less than an hour when I came into their camp. Right off, I noticed her horses in the remuda. They were beat, for they'd been ridden hard, and she had been smart to trade them off.

Me, I asked no questions at all. Like always, they invited me to set and eat, and whilst eating I made a swap for my dun. I was in no mind to let the dun go, and told them so, and they let me have a fresh horse that I could swap back for the dun at any time, they said. And that I meant to do.

"Ridin' far?" one of them asked, I shrugged. "Yeah. Headin' to Mora to visit kinfolk. Name of Sackett."

"Heard of them." They looked at me with interest, for Tyrel and Orrin were known men in New Mexico.

The last thing I wanted those cowhands to know was that I was following Penelope Hume. They'd never tell me anything if they knew, for they'd all be on the side of a pretty girl, for which I'd not blame them.

"Seen a party of men north of here," I volunteered. "Look to be huntin' somebody."

The horse they traded me was a short-coupled black with some Morgan blood, and a good horse by any man's standards. Riding out of their camp, I came upon the place where she had left the gold hidden while making her horse trade. She had loaded up, pack saddles and gold, and lit out as if the heel-flies were after her. Likely knowing she'd lost time, she wanted to get on with it.

Now I thought of Fort Union ... she was headed for Fort Union. There were soldiers there, and she would be safe. The difficulty was that there would be a lot of questions asked about a young girl traveling across the country with all that gold.

But her tracks led right by the Fort, and by then I was actually within sight of her from time to time. I had no idea whether she had seen me, but if she had she knew she was headed for a showdown. I still wanted to know who had killed Harry Mims--shot in the back, at close range. Of the lone rider I had seen nothing in all this time. Nor had I seen anything of the others.

Suddenly I knew exactly where she was going. She was headed for Loma Parda.

The little town on the Mora Biver was rough and bloody, a resort for the soldiers at Fort Union, and for any number of drifters, male and female. They knew me at Loma Parda, but for her to ride into Loma with gold was like a lamb going to visit a lot of hungry wolves.

Chapter 15

When she reached the town I was no more than four or five miles behind her, but there was simply nothing I could do. By the time I got to the town her horses were turned into a corral and Penelope had disappeared. It seemed the last person she wanted to see was me.

Avoiding the saloon, where I knew Penelope would not be, I went to a Mexican eating place down the street from Baca's. It was an off hour, and they were glad to see me. They knew me there, and the woman who came to wait on table shook her head when she saw me and said, "Senor Nolan, what do you do to yourself? You are tired!"

Glancing around, I saw myself in the mirror, a big, rough, bearded man who needed a shave, a bath, a haircut, and new clothes. He also needed about three nights of sleep.

"Senora," I said, "have you seen a girl--a girl with several horses?"

"Ah? It is a girl now? Si, I see her. She rode in today, only a little while ago."

"Where is she? Where did she go?"

"Go? Where did she go?"

"Go? Where can you go in Loma Parda? She did not go, she is here."

"Where?"

The senora shrugged. "Here ... somewhere. How should I know?"

From where I sat I could look down the street and see anyone who moved, so I ordered a meal and stayed there, eating and drinking coffee and trying to stay awake.

There was not much out there in the street at this hour. In a little while the town would wake up, the soldiers would come in in one of the rigs that carried them over from the Fort, or they would hike, as many preferred to do. The town would be wide open. It was a town where killing was the order of the day, where the idea of gold would set the place afire. And somewhere in the town was Penelope, and three hundred pounds of gold.

Where did I fit in, anyway? I had given her a chance to get away, given Mims the same chance; but he was dead, murdered. And Penelope had not wasted any time looking for me, nor left any sign for me. And she had come here, to the least likely place. I couldn't even imagine her knowing of this place.

Rightfully, a piece of that gold was mine. I was the one who'd found it, I got it out of there, and now here I sat with about four dollars in my pocket and a nasty scar on my scalp to show for all I'd been through.

And then for the first time I remembered the money I'd been paid for guiding Loomis and Penelope. Fifty dollars ...

I wasn't broke, then. Fifty dollars was nigh onto two months' pay for a cowhand, and I'd known a few who had worked for less. While I sat there thinking about it, I saw Noble Bishop ride into the street. Jacob Loomis was with him, and Ralph and Sylvie Karnes. They come riding up the street, looking right and left, dusty and beat-looking, their eyes hot with the fire that only gold can light.

They did not see me sitting there, and if they went to the corral the big black horse would not be familiar to them.

But where was Penelope, and where was that gold?

And then I started to get really mad.

I'd been riding my fool head off, a good man had been killed and a couple of others less than good, and all for what? So one big-eyed girl could walk off with the lot, a girl with no more claim to it than any one of us. What if Nathan Hume was a relative? The gold had been buried for years, and without me she would never have had it.

I got up from the table so fast I almost upset it, dropped a half-dollar beside my plate, and started for the door.

The senora ran after me. "Wait a minute, senor! Your change!"

"Keep it. Feed me sometime when I come in here broke."

It was hot outside in the late afternoon sun, but I did not care. I strode up the street and pushed open the batwing doors of Baca's saloon. Baca himself was standing at the bar, and I saw his eyes turn to me, narrowing slightly.

"Baca," I said abruptly, "there's a girl in town who came in this afternoon, and she's hiding out somewhere. You know everything that happens in this town--I want that girl, and I want her quick!"

"I am sorry. I--"

"Baca, I'm Nolan Sackett. You know me."

He hesitated. Within call he might have fifteen, twenty tough men. If he called them I was in for one hell of a fight. But right then I didn't care, and I think he realized it.

"She's down at Slanting Annie's. Not her crib--her cabin. You take your own chances. She's got a gun, and I hear she's ready to use it."

"She won't use it on me." But even as I said it, I wasn't sure.

I walked outside. The sun's glare hit my eyes like a fist, and I stood blinking.

The anger was still in me, and I wanted only to see Penelope and know the truth.

I had fought for her, helped her escape, found the gold for her--and then she had gone off on her own.

Mims was dead. Had she killed him? How else could anyone have come up on him?

These thoughts went through my head, but in the back of my mind I didn't want to believe it.

Slanting Annie's cabin was under the cottonwoods on the edge of town. I walked down the dusty street, wishing I had a horse. No cowhand worthy of the name ever walked far on a street if he could avoid it, but there was no time to get a horse and the distance was short. All the time I knew that Bishop and the others were in town and would be hunting the girl, and me as well.

Annie herself came to the door. Slanting Annie had worked in a dozen western towns, and I had known her in both Fort Griffin and Dodge.

"Annie, I want to see Penelope Hume."

"She isn't here, Nolan."

"Annie," I said roughly, "you know better than to tell me something like that. I know she's here, and she'd better know that Loomis, Bishop, and all of them are in town."

"Let him come in," Penelope's voice said.

Annie stepped aside and I came into the shadowed room and removed my hat.

Penelope was wearing a gray traveling outfit of some kind, and she was actually beautiful. I hadn't realized before just how beautiful she was, although I figured her for a mighty pretty girl.

"Mr. Sackett, I thought you were dead!"

"Like Mims, you mean?"

"Poor Uncle Harry ... he never had a chance. Flinch did it."

"Flinch?"

Now, why hadn't I thought of him? There was Injun enough in him to be able to close in on a man without his knowing it.

"You expect me to believe that?" I said.

"Of course I do. You can't believe I would kill that fine old man!"

"You seem to manage pretty well when the chips are down." I dropped into a chair and put my hat on the floor beside it. "We've some talking to do."

She glanced at Annie. "Not now."

Annie looked at her, then at me. "You want me to leave so you can talk? You're perfectly safe with him," she added to Penelope.

I grinned at her. "Now that's a hell of a thing to say!"

"I mean that you're a gentleman. An outlaw, maybe, but a gentleman."

"Well... thanks."

"I'll go up the street. I want to see Jennie, anyway."

She took up her hat, pinned it on, and went out and closed the door.

"You're pretty good at getting across country," I said grudgingly. "That was a neat trick with the sheep."

"It didn't fool anybody."

"Yes, it did. It fooled them." I looked hard at her. "It didn't fool me."

"As for getting across country, I had a good teacher. Probably the best."

"Who?"

"Who else? You, of course. I watched you when you minded us, watched everything you did. You're a very careful man."

She was watching me with a curious expression that I couldn't quite figure out.

"You haven't asked about the gold," she said.

"I was coming to that."

"I'm afraid you're not much of an outlaw, Mr. Sackett. I imagine a really successful outlaw would have asked about the gold first."

"Maybe."

I looked around the room. It was a small, room in a small adobe house, but it was well furnished--there was nothing tawdry about it. I didn't know a lot about such things, but now and again I'd been in enough homes to know the difference between what was right and what wasn't.

"How'd you happen to know Annie?" I asked.

"Her aunt used to sew for my mother. I knew she was in Loma Parda, and I knew of no one else I could go to. I suppose you think a nice girl shouldn't even recognize Annie."

"I think nothing of the kind. Annie's all right. I've known her for quite a spell ... in a manner of speaking.

"You know what would happen if anybody realized you had that gold? It would blow the lid off this town. And right at this moment they're hunting you."

"Annie knows a freighter. She was going to get him to help me get to Santa Fe."

Then she said, "I had just made coffee--would you like some?"

While she went into the kitchen for the coffeepot and some cups, I sort of eased back in that plush chair. I didn't rightly trust the furniture. Benches and bunks or saloon chairs were more what I was used to, and I'm a big man. This sort of fine furniture didn't seem exactly made for my size. But it was a comfortable place and, looking around, I admired it. Even to the butt of the gun that showed from under a bit of sewing on the table.

Penelope returned with the coffee, poured some for me, and then seated herself, near the gun.

"The freighter was to leave tonight," she said. "He has ten wagons. Annie is arranging for me to have one of them."

"Where's the gold?"

She didn't answer that, but said, "I want you to have a share of it. After all, without you I might never have found it, and certainly I couldn't have kept it."

"Thanks," I said. "I can't set here waiting for them to come. I've got to find Loomis ... and Flinch."

"Be careful of him. I had to run, you know. After Flinch killed Mr. Mims there was nothing for me to do. I was afraid of him."

I still held my coffee cup, but I was doing some fast thinking. Not that I don't trust folks, but it began to seem to me she had been out of the room after that coffee just a mite longer than she should have been. I swallowed some coffee, put the cup down, and stood up.

"You're not going?"

"You'll be seeing me around. And when the time comes for that freighter to leave, I'll be back here."

Bending over, I picked up my hat. Her hand was near the gun--was that just accident? I took my time straightening up and saw she was looking at me, all bright-eyed. The trouble was, I wanted to trust her and almost believed that I could, but just wasn't able to gamble on it.

I went past her quickly and into the kitchen, opened the kitchen door, and stepped outside. On the small back porch I turned my eyes to the sun, and blinked a couple of times before stepping clear of the porch.

Back here there was a small stable, and the yard and the house were shaded by the cottonwoods. Somebody moved swiftly inside the house, and then I was at the front corner, looking across the street and up and down it. The first glance was swift, to locate any immediate danger, the second slower, carefully searching each possible hiding place.

It was a faint whisper of movement behind me that warned me. Turning sharply, I was in time to see Loomis lifting a shotgun. I palmed my gun and shot him through the middle, and both barrels of his shotgun emptied into the ground with a dull roar.

Instantly I was back under the cottonwoods and ran behind a long building, slowed down, and then walked out into the street to join a few others from the saloons.

"What happened?" somebody was asking.

"Shooting down the street," I said. "Maybe somebody killing a turkey."

I turned and walked up to Baca's, where things were stirring around. But there was no sign of Bishop. The corral was my next stop. I got the black out, saddled him up, and left him tied outside the corral but well in the shadows.

A thought came to me, and I looked around the corral. Her horses were there, including the pack horses. But I saw no sign of the pack saddles. I had not been far behind her when she rode into town, and she must have known that. She could not have known where Slanting Annie lived, so she could not have taken the gold there. A young girl riding through Loma Parda's street with three horses, two of them pack horses, would have aroused interest, and this she would have guessed.

So what then?

She would not have brought the gold to the corral, for she would have to unload it by herself, piece by piece ... unless she just loosened the cinches and let the saddles fall. She could not have done that in town for fear of the packs bursting, or somebody seeing them and becoming curious at their weight.

So the gold must be somewhere out of town, quickly unloaded and left there before she rode in. Standing with my hand on the saddle, I thought back along the trail. The sort of place she would need to hide the gold, where it could not accidentally be discovered, would be rare. Moreover, I had followed her trail in to Loma Parda, so how could she have veered off without my being aware of it?

Then I recalled that I had not actually followed her trail all the way into town. When her tracks merged with those of others coming or going, I had ceased to follow them and had merely taken it for granted that she was going on into town.

Stepping into the saddle, I skirted around the far side of the corral and rode down the alley toward the edge of town, and so out of sight of any watcher not in the stable itself.

There was another trail, I remembered, that led westward from Loma Parda toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and then went south to Las Vegas and so on to Santa Fe. That trail was occasionally used by freighters, I knew. Supposing Penelope had skirted the town, come up close to that trail, and hidden the gold there?

In less than ten minutes I was riding along that trail, looking for possible hiding places. If I wanted to dump a heavy load, to be easily picked up again, where would I leave it?

It was still light, but the sun was down and it would soon be dark. My horse made no sound in the soft dust of the trail. But look as I would, I could find no place such as I sought.

Then at the last moment, with darkness closing around, I saw a patch of grass pressed down and almost yellow, some scattered pine neddles and cones upon the grass. Drawing up, I studied the place. Something had been on that spot, something that was there no longer.

The mark, I saw, had clearly been made by a fallen pine tree, a tree no more than ten feet high that had been blown down or broken off and had rested there.

The tree was there, but it was now a few feet over to one side, still fastened to the stump by a strip of wood and bark. Somebody had picked up the top end of the tree and pulled it to one side, leaving uncovered the place where it had originally fallen and where it had been lying for at least several weeks.

Leading the black off the trail, I left it tied, and went over to the tree. When I had pulled it aside I found the pack saddles, fully loaded and not more than a few feet off the trail the freighters would take. Each saddle held a hundred and fifty pounds of gold.

Reaching down, I caught hold of a loaded saddle with each hand and straightened my knees. I walked off about fifty feet and paused, resting the saddles, and then after a moment went on. Twenty minutes or so later I returned and rode my horse all around the area, trampling out all the tracks. Then I rode back into town and tied my horse to the hitch rail in front of a store, now closed for the night.

Carrying those three hundred pounds had been no trick for me, for I'd grown up swinging a double-bitted axe, wrestling with a crowd of brothers and cousins, and then going on to handling freight on a river boat. After that I'd wrestled mean broncs--and thousand-pound longhorn steers. I guess I'd been born strong, and anything I could pick up I could carry away ... and often had.

But moving that gold would only help me for a matter of hours. By daylight there'd be other folks hunting it. However, if a freighter was pulling out with a train of wagons, I figured to be along. I'd driven a team a good many times, and handled a jerk-line outfit as well.

Standing in the darkness alongside my horse, I checked my gun and my knives, for if ever a man was bucking for a fistful of trouble it was me. If there were freighters about I figured they'd be in Baca's saloon, and it was there I went.

Chapter 16

The place was already half full of soldiers from the Fort, mingling with Baca's dancehall girls, and he had him a plenty of them. Here and there some tough-looking Mexicans stood around, and they were Baca men, not to be taken lightly.

Baca's eyes found me as soon as I came in, and they watched me as I worked my way through the crowd. When I stopped near him I ordered a drink. "Gracias, Baca," I said. "I found her."

He shrugged. "Bueno. Annie tells me you are a good man."

"One thing, Baca. If any trouble starts around here, I want none with you. I've no argument with you, and want no trouble."

"Si, it is understood." He motioned for a glass and poured me a drink. "To you, senor, and good fortune." We drank, and then he placed his glass carefully on the bar. "Noble Bishop is in town. He was asking for you."

"I'm not trying to prove anything, Baca. If he wants me he's got to come asking."

"Is it about the senorita?"

Better for him to think that than to start wondering. "She's a pretty girl," I said, "and a lady."

"So I am told."

"Frankly," I said, "I'm hunting a job. Something to sort of keep me out of sight for a while. Riding or driving a freight team. But not a stage ... nobody sees a freighter, but everybody sees a stage driver."

"There is a man in town--his name is Ollie Shaddock. He is taking some wagons out tonight, picking up more at Las Vegas."

I moved to a table near the wall, where I sat down and waited for Shaddock to come in. Most times I was a patient man, but now I was impatient, for gold makes a heavy weight on a man's thinking. It worried me that I had not seen Bishop, or Sylvie or any of that lot.

When Shaddock came in he was motioned to my table by Baca. I've no doubt Baca wanted to get shut of me.

Ollie Shaddock was a broad, cheerful man whose blond hair was turning gray. He thrust out a hand. "Anybody by the name of Sackett is a friend of mine. I'm from Tennessee, too."

"You know Tyrel and them?"

"I brought their ma and younger brothers west. I'm from the Cumberland."

"Me, I'm from Clinch Mountain."

"Good folks over there. I've some kin there. What can I do for you?"

"I want to hire on as a driver, or I'll drive for free. Only I want to be driving the last wagon when you pull out tonight."

His face sobered. "You tied up with that girl?"

"Sort of. I'll load what she thinks she's going to load. She'll get her share at Santa Fe ... only I want to be sure I get mine."

"You're a Sackett. That's enough for me." He motioned for a bottle. "Nolan, I was the one who started Orrin in politics. In fact, it was because I was sheriffin' back in Tennessee that the boys come west.

"Tyrel, he wound up their feud with the Higginses by killin' Long Higgins. It was up to me to arrest him, and he went west to avoid trouble ... me bein' a friend of the family, and all."

"Well, can you leave me a space for a couple of loaded pack saddles in the middle of the wagon?"

"Sure enough." Shaddock filled his glass. "You know Tyrel and them?"

"No. Heard tell of them."

By now the place was going full blast and I wanted to get out; besides, I wanted to see if Penelope was all right. That girl worried me. I couldn't figure whether she was a-fixin' to get me killed or not. Maybe she'd been out in that kitchen pourin' coffee ... but she might have been signaling Loomis.

Ollie Shaddock got up after a while and left, telling me where to meet them. It was sheer luck that he had turned out to be a friend of the family, and a man from the Tennessee hills. I'd heard of him before this, but only as being a man who operated several strings of freight wagons in New Mexico and Arizona.

After a few minutes I got up, paid what was asked, and eased out of a side door.

Baca watched me go, no doubt glad to see me leaving. Not that fights were unusual in Loma Parda, for the town had been the scene of many a bloody battle, with many kinds of weapons.

The night was cool and still. Stars hung large in the dark sky, the cottonwoods rustled their leaves gently. I stood there, hearing the voices from inside and the tinpanny sound of the music from the music box. There was a smell of woodsmoke in the air.

I moved to the side of the door, where I waited, breathing easy of the night air and letting my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. The last thing I wanted now was trouble. I had the gold hidden, I had a way of getting out of town, and in a matter of less than an hour we would be leaving.

When I moved, it was along the wall toward the street, and when I reached it I paused in the darkness looking both ways. Down the street I could see a light in Slanting Annie's window, and I wanted to go that way. Annie would be at work by now, but Penelope would be there, waiting as I was.

She wouldn't be caring about seeing me, I knew, for I was no likely man to attract a girl's eye. Lifting my hands, I looked at them. Fit for handling guns or tools, fit for the hardest kind of work, for lifting the heaviest loads, but they'd found no call to gentleness, nor were they likely to. A girl as pretty as Penelope ...

No use thinking about that. She had gone off and left me, leaving no sign. She might have murdered Harry Mims, and set a trap for me. Maybe it was like she said, that after he was killed she was afraid to be alone, but I couldn't trust her. The trouble was she looked so warm and friendly, so soft and lovely, that every once in a while my good sense went a-glimmering.

Somewhere around there was Sylvie and that brother of hers, and I'd given too little thought to Sylvie. But she'd probably given a lot of thought to me, and the chances were that she'd been working on Noble Bishop.

I stepped out on the street, which was partly lit by the light from the windows around, and walked toward the place where I'd left my horse.

The black nickered a mite and snuffed at my hand with delicate nostrils. I'd picked up a lump of brown sugar, and I fed it to him. Then I untied him and led him away into the darkness.

Well, it would soon be over. In a matter of minutes I'd be sitting up on the seat of a freight wagon, rolling out of town. Then I'd pick up the gold, put it aboard, cover it well, and we'd be rolling on toward Las Vegas and Santa Fe.

What would Penelope do when she found the gold gone? Would she come along, or would she stay behind and try to find it? With these thoughts in mind, I mounted up and circled the town, working around to where the wagons were. Penelope should be there soon.

The wind was cool off the Sangre de Cristos, cool and fresh to the lungs, carrying the scent of pines and the memory of snows. Alongside the church I drew up and looked along the street. A wild Texas yell came to me from one of the saloons, then a shot ... some celebrating soldier or cowhand. On the hills back of the town a coyote talked to the stars, complaining of something, by the sound of him.

When I reached the wagon I drew up alongside the last one and tied my horse to the tailgate. I took my Winchester from the saddle boot and placed it behind the seat, but within easy grasp of my hand.

A man came down the line of wagons. "Sackett?" he said.

"Here."

He moved over beside me, his cigar glowing redly. "You set store by that girl?"

"Some."

"She ain't showed, and it's getting nigh to time. You think she'll back out?"

"Not likely." I considered. Was this another trap? She had told me she was going tonight. Was I now supposed to go looking for her? Or had Sylvie and Ralph finally caught up with her?

"How soon you want to go?" I asked.

"Fifteen minutes. I'm waiting for another wagon, loading over yonder."

"I'll go get her."

Ollie Shaddock said, "You better wait here. She wants to come, she will."

"I'll see."

"Sackett, I've heard talk around town. You better walk careful. Somebody has been hiring guns. You know how Loma is ... you can get anything here you can pay for, and some things come cheap, like killings."

"Who's hiring?"

"No idea."

The wind off the mountains felt good on my face. It was no time for a man to die. Oddly enough, I was thinking less of that gold I would be picking up than of the wind in my face, or the girl. I had no meeting ground with gold. When it came to me I spent it and had little enough left to remember.

"Are you in love with that girl?" Ollie asked.

Was I? I didn't think so. I wasn't even sure I knew what love was, and I'd always guarded myself against any deep feeling for a girl. After all, who would want to live me? I was a big tough man with two hard hands and a gun ... that was me.

If it had been someone else I'd have answered with some scoffing thing; but it was Ollie, and he knew people of my blood, and he was from Tennessee. "Ollie, I just don't know," I said. "I don't altogether trust her. The other one, that dark-eyed Sylvie, she's pure poison. Her I know. But Penelope? Well, I can't make up my mind."

"You step light, boy. Step light." He meant it one way, but I decided to take it two ways, and I walked back to my horse and switched my boots for mocassins.

"Ollie, I'll be back. You just hold tight." It wasn't more than a hundred and fifty yards to Annie's house, and I walked along under the edge of the cottonwoods. My mouth felt dry and my heart was beating heavy--I wasn't sure whether it was because I expected trouble or because of that girl. I told myself I'd no business feeling like that about any girl, but all the telling did no good, none at all.

I could hear music at Baca's; there men were singing and drinking and laughing, men playing cards and looking at girls and chinking coins or chips in their fingers. I could see the horses standing three-legged at the hitch rail, and I saw a man come from the walk in the darkness and cross toward Baca's, a man wearing a big sombrero, spurs jingling.

In the shadows under a big old tree I stood and looked at Slanting Annie's house. Lights in the windows, all cheerful and bright. Yet bright as they were, I felt an emptiness in me, a sudden longing for lighted windows or my own, and a coming home to them, opening the door to warmth and comfort and a woman waiting.

Well, no use thinking of that, an unlikely thing for Nolan Sackett.

My mocassins made no slightest sound as I moved along under the trees. Long ago I'd learned to move like a wild animal in the wilderness. Boots would have made sound, but with the moccasins I could feel the branches under my feet before stepping down hard, and so shifted my step.

When I got to within fifty feet or so of the house I stopped again, holding myself close to the trunk of a cottonwood. There was no sound from within the house, and I moved closer and edged up to a window.

Penelope sat at the table, pouring coffee, and across the table from her sat Sylvie Karnes. Shoulder to shoulder with Sylvie was Noble Bishop. Ralph Karnes was coming in from the kitchen with a plate of cakes. Just as he put them down I heard Penelope say something about the time. All their heads turned toward the clock.

Penelope finished pouring coffee and sat back, taking up her own cup. There they sat, who were supposed to be enemies, talking together like at a tea party. I never saw the like. Maybe, after all, I was the only fool in the lot.

Then Penelope put down her cup, said something to Sylvie about the dishes, and went over and took up her bonnet. She turned and spoke to them all, obviously saying good-bye.

Like a ghost, I faded back into the trees and walked back quickly to the wagons.

Ollie was waiting impatiently.

"She'll be along," I said.

"Did you talk to her?"

"No, but she's coming."

"She'll be in the wagon right ahead of you, since both of you wanted to stop."

"Who's driving hers?"

"A good man ... Reinhardt. He's been with me a couple of years." Ollie looked around at me suddenly. "Never thought to tell you. Orrin Sackett is a partner in this outfit. He owns a third of it."

"He's done well, I guess."

"Yes, he has. I'd say he was one of the strongest political figures in the Territory."

Leaning against the wagon, waiting for Penelope to come, I reflected bitterly that Orrin had no more start than me when he came west. They had educated themselves, Tyrel and him, and both of them were big people in this country, while all I had behind me were a lot of dusty trails, barroom brawls, and lonely hideouts in the hills.

The fact that I was about to pick up enough gold to make a man wealthy for life meant little when a body figured on it. What mattered was what a man made with his own hands, his own brains. Whatever I got out of this was from sheer chance and a fast gun. And right at this moment I didn't even have the gold.

She came walking up out of the darkness. "Oh, Mr. Shaddock, I'm sorry to be so late, but some friends dropped in and I just had to talk for a few minutes. Are you ready to leave?"

"Yes, ma'am. If you'll get up in your wagon, ma'am. This here is Oscar Reinhardt. He'll be your driver."

"Thank you." I could see her eyes straining toward me, a figure she could only dimly make out.

Ollie turned and gestured toward me. "Nolan Sackett will be driving the last wagon."

Ollie walked away toward the front of the train, and Penelope came back to me.

"You're here then? I'm glad." She hesitated. "I'll have to admit that I'm glad to be leaving." Then she went on quickly. "I want to get away from this ... this killing." She looked up at me. I could see the pale oval of her face in the darkness. "Poor Mr. Loomis was shot. He's not dead, but he was badly hurt. I can't imagine how it happened."

"This here is a dangerous country," I said. "Somebody might have seen him wandering around in the dark and figured he was hunting for them. I heard about the shooting. There were two shots fired, weren't there?"

"I don't know." She turned away from me and walked up to her wagon, where Reinhardt helped her in. After a few minutes I heard the first wagons moving out. As with all such freight outfits, they wouldn't really be moving as a unit until they were on the trail. Some of the wagons were standing off the side of the road, and they would be falling into place one by one. The movement would be a lot of stop-and-go until they finally got lined out. The stopping of a wagon would attract no attention for many of them would be stopped briefly while other wagons pulled in ahead of them.

Reinhardt's wagon moved out, and I let them get a start. I was driving a team of big Missouri mules, eight of them, and they handled nice. I'd always liked handling the straps on a good team.

We moved slowly while getting lined out, slower than a man could walk. I was watching for the marks I'd chosen and it was not many minutes after the wagons pulled out that I drew up. The wagon ahead was rolling on. I listened for a while, but there was no sound.

My hands wound the reins around the brake and I got down carefully, as quietly as possible. Penelope might be in with Sylvie and them, but if she wasn't they would certainly be watching the wagon train move out. They would know that she had the gold, and that she must pick it up somewhere along the line. Would they be watching me too?

Climbing down the small bank off the road, I went into the trees, pausing from moment to moment to listen. I heard no sound that seemed out of place, and I stooped to pick up the pack saddles. Behind me I thought I heard a faint stir among the pine needles and junipers. Crouching, I listened, but heard nothing more.

I reached down into the hollow and lifted the first pack saddle out, then the second. I had been going to carry them both, but if I did I would be helpless if attacked. It was not so quick a thing to let go of such a weight and grab a gun ... One at a time then.

Picking up the first, I swung it to my shoulder and, keeping my free hand on my gun, walked back to the bank. There I needed the free hand to help me climb. I scrambled up and placed the pack saddle and its gold in the wagon, then went back for the second.

As I crouched by the second load, I listened again. I could hear the now distant, subdued sounds of the wagons--there was no special sound from Penelope's wagon. But I thought I heard something stirring up ahead. Taking up the second load, I lifted it to my shoulder and walked slowly and carefully to the bank. I put the gold down on the bank and, turning, looked all around, listening.

Nothing moved. Getting up on the roadbed quickly, I picked up the gold and lifted it into the wagon, then drew the tarpaulin over it and tied it in place.

I was standing beside the mules when I heard someone walking along the road. As he came up I saw that it was Reinnardt.

"Sackett? That girl's been out there ten minutes or more. What's this all about, d'you know?"

"I guess she had some packages she wanted picked up. Things look different in the dark and she's probably looking for them."

"Is that all?"

He was a good man, Ollie had said, and an honest man, no doubt. "Look," I said, "you better stay by your team. There's trouble in this, and there's no use in your getting shot over something that's no part of your business."

"Hell, I'm not afraid."

"Of course you're not, but that's not the point. You could get killed out there, and to no purpose."

"If that girl's in trouble--"

"Take it from me, she can handle it. Or I can. You sit tight." One hand checked my gun. "I'll go get her."

I had no urge to go down into that black patch of juniper with Penelope down there, and the Lord only knew how many others. The smart thing to do was to stay right where I was and let her get out under her own power.

All I would get down there was trouble. Nevertheless, that girl was down there alone, and like a damned fool I went after her.

At this point there was no bank--the road was level with the woods. Knee-high brush grew alongside the trail and I tried to step over it to avoid sound, but I made a little.

First off, I headed for that broken-off tree where she'd had the gold hidden.

When I was almost there, something moved near me, and I smelled a faint perfume.

"Penelope?"

A body moved against mine and a hand took my arm, a woman's fingers closing gently on my wrist. Suddenly those fingers tightened and my wrist was jerked back, and at the same time I felt her body move close to mine with a quick, violent movement. My wide silver buckle that held my gun belt saved me, that and my own reaction, for as the point of the knife hit the silver and was deflected upward. My hand swept down in a blind, instinctive action and struck her arm on the inside of the elbow.

Like I said, I'm a big man, and mighty strong, and that sudden blow must have numbed her arm. She dropped the knife and I heard it hit the ground. The next instant the whole place was lit by a tremendous blaze of light. Somebody had dropped a match into the top of that dead pine.

Now, anybody who has ever seen fire hit dead pine would know what happened then.

It went up in one tremendous burst of crackling, spitting flame, lighting the entire area. And across the space in front of me was Ralph Karnes, and not far away Noble Bishop.

In the instant the light leaped up, Bishop saw me and I saw him, and both of us knew the cards were on the table. His hand dropped for his gun, and my instinct must have triggered my muscles even before my brain realized the necessity, for my gun sprang to my hand ... a split second faster than his.

I felt the sharp whip of the bullet as it cut by my neck, and I saw Bishop crumple and begin to fall. He caught himself with his left hand on a tree branch and started to bring his gun around on me. I shot into him again.

Karnes shot, but he was no gunfighter and he shot too quick. He must have pulled the trigger instead of squeezing, because he missed me. I didn't miss him. He backed up, clawing at his chest and spitting, then fell into the leaves, where he threshed around like a wild animal for a moment, then was still.

The brief burst of flame was dying down, and I looked around for Penelope. She was standing where the gold had been, almost as if unaware of all that had happened, just standing there saying over and over again, "It's gone ... it's gone."

From the direction of town I could hear excited yells, and I saw a lantern bobbing in the distance as someone came toward us.

Without a word, I picked up Penelope and carried her to my wagon. "Get rolling!"

I said to Reinhardt. "Try to catch up with the others. I'll take care of her."

"She all right?"

"Sure ... now get going. I want to get out of here."

Reinhardt moved ahead and swung to his wagon. I put Penelope on the seat of mine, then climbed up beside her and took the reins from around the brake handle.

Reinhardt was moving out, and we followed. Mentally I counted my shots. Two bullets left in the pistol, no chance to load while driving the mules. The rifle was right behind me, within reach of my hand.

Suddenly, as the wagon began to move, Penelope came to life. "No, no! I can't go! The gold is back there! I've got to find it!"

"It isn't there," I said calmly. "It was moved within a short time after you hid it."

She turned on me. "How do you know that?"

"Relax," I said. "It's a long ride to Santa Fe."

"I don't want to go to Santa Fe! I want that gold!"

"They wanted it, too--Sylvie, Bishop, and them. Look what it got them."

Reinhardt's wagon had stopped again, then after a moment it started on.

"I need that gold," she said stubbornly. "I've got to have it. I don't know how to make a living, and there aren't any jobs for women."

"You could get married."

"When I marry I don't want it to be because I need someone to take care of me. I want to marry for love."

"Romantic," I said coolly, "Well, I don't care--it's the way I feel!"

"You have all that gold, somebody would marry you because he wanted somebody to take care of him."

Reinhardt was sure doing an erratic job of driving. He had stopped again. I sat there, holding the lines, waiting for him to get going again.

"You couldn't find that gold now anyway. That place back there will be overrun with folks trying to figure out who shot who. If you figure to go back, you'd better wait a few weeks."

We drove on for a short distance, and then I said, "Did you have a nice talk with Sylvie last night?"

She turned sharply around on me. "You were spying!"

"Sure. A man has to know what's going on. I like to know who my friends are."

"And you don't think I'm your friend?"

"Are you?"

She was silent for a minute. Then she said, "I ought to be. You've done more for me than anyone else has. I don't think I'd even be alive but for you."

"You saved my bacon when I was down and hurt. You kept Ralph off me." I urged the mules a little faster. "And you did pretty well coming across the country alone."

"If you hadn't been coming somewhere behind me, I couldn't have done it. I knew you had to be back there, and I tried to do what you would have done."

"You did it well."

Neither of us said anything for a good while, just listening to the rumble of the wagon wheels on the road, watching the stars. But I was listening for other sounds too. By now my ears knew the sounds the wagon made, and the harness and the mules. I knew what sounds came from up ahead, and what the right night sounds were around me.

There was a missing piece somewhere. ... Did Penelope have a knife ready for my ribs?

"That Sylvie," I said, "she tried to knife me."

"Where is she?"

"Back there. She may have a sore arm for a while, but she's going to live ... worse luck."

"She's mean."

"I sort of gathered that. Sure as shootin', other folks will die because of her.

I just hope we can stay shut of her."

That "we" sort of slipped in there, but Penelope didn't seem to notice it.

Then she said, "What could have happened to the gold?"

"Things look a lot different by night. You probably mistook the place."

"But that tree! I know it was under that dead pine!"

"There's lots of dead pines," I said carelessly.

"You certainly don't seem very upset about it."

"I'm not. I never had that much money in my life, so if I never see it again I ain't a-going to miss it."

We drove on, talking a bit from time to time, then she dropped off to sleep. It was daybreak when she sat up and began to push her hair into place and try to straighten her clothes.

"Where is the wagon train?" she asked. "We've fallen way behind."

"That Reinhardt! He's been taking it almighty slow. I didn't know until it got light that we were so far behind the rest of them."

Suddenly the wagon ahead pulled up. Nobody moved--the wagon just stood there. I got down and walked up to it. "Reinhardt," I said, "what's the matter? You gone to sleep?"

I looked into the muzzle of a gun, behind it the black, heavy-lidded eyes of Flinch.

"The belt," he said. "Unbuckle."

With this man I took no chances. Moving my hands with infinite care, I unbuckled the belt and let it fall to the trail.

"The bowie ... take it out of the scabbard and drop it ... fingertips only."

"Where is Reinhardt?"

Flinch jerked his head toward the wagon. "He is all right."

"How do you fit into this, Flinch? You working with Karnes?"

"I work for Punch. My grandfather ... he was in fight at Rabbit Ears. He was Indian. He tell me the white chief hide something there. A long time after he went back to look, but could not find. When I hear talk in Fort Griffin about Rabbit Ears, I get a job."

The way the wagons stood on the trail, Penelope could not see us. I heard her getting down from the wagon and heard the sound of her feet.

"You too," Punch said as she came up. "You stand over there. Beside him."

For the first time his thin lips smiled. "Now, after all, the Indian gets the gold."

"The gold isn't here, Flinch," Penelope protested. "It's back there, at Loma Parda."

"The gold in his wagon." He nodded toward me. "I follow him. I know he will find it, so I follow, watch him when he hide it, watch him when he load it in wagon.

It is better for me to have the wagon for a while ... the gold is much heavy."

Penelope stared at me. "You had that gold all the time? You mean you had--"

"Now I am going to kill," Flinch said. "First you, then her."

"Let her take my horse and go."

He did not even reply. I took a half-step toward him. "Up!" he said. "Manos arriba!"

I lifted my hands as high as my ears. He kept his eyes on me, wanting to see the effect of his words. "I kill you. I keep her until tomorrow."

"They'll hang you," I said. "Look here, Flinch, let's--"

My right hand, only inches from my collar, moved suddenly. The knife slung down my back, slid into my hand, the hand whipped forward, and he fired. I felt the slam of his bullet, heard the thud of my knife. It had gone into the hollow at the base of his throat, up to the hilt.

His mouth opened in a great gasp and blood gushed from it. He fell forward to his knees, grasping at the hilt, fumbling to get hold of it with both hands, but I had thrown with all my strength and the knife had gone in hard.

He struggled, choked, then fell over on his side, the knife coming free in his hand.

Stooping down, I took the knife from his fingers and sank it twice into the sandy earth to cleanse the blade. Penelope was looking at him, her eyes filled with horror.

"See what happened to Reinhardt," I said sharply. "Be quick!"

Startled, she turned and hurried to the wagon. When I looked back at Flinch, he was dead. Belting on my gun again, I stripped Flinch's gun belt and tossed it into the wagon.

Reinhardt came out from under the wagon cover, rubbing his wrists. "He wouldn't have killed me, I think," he said. "I staked him a couple of times when he was broke."

"We'd better move on. Ollie Shaddock will be wondering what happened."

He glanced at me, then at the dead man. "What happened? He was sure enough going to kill you."

I reached back and drew the knife again. "This," I said. "I learned it south of the border."

I started back to the wagon. Penelope joined me, and I helped her up. Reinhardt was already moving off.

We had been traveling for some time when she said, "You had the gold all the time?"

"Uh-huh."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Been contemplating on that. Likely I'll give half of it to you."

"You'll give--!"

"And I'll keep the other half myself. That way," I continued, "you'll be free to marry for love. But with half of that gold, I won't need anybody to take care of me, either, so you won't be married for what you have."

She didn't say anything to that, and I didn't figure she needed to, the way things were shaping up.

"I thought you got hit back there," she said presently.

So I showed her where the bullet had hit my cartridge belt right on my left hip.

It had struck the lead noses of two bullets, fusing them into one. "I'll have a bad bruise, the way it feels, but I'm the luckiest man alive."

Only thing was, I surely wished I had a shave. And before we got to Santa Fe she was wishing it, too.

Author's Note Borregos Plaza was on the south bank of the Canadian River, only a short distance from the river crossing that was to become Tascosa. Tascosa went from a booming and untamed cow town to a ghost town, and is presently the site of Boys'

Ranch, founded by Panhandle businessmen.

Romero, a small town in ranching country, has a long memory of buffalo hunting and Indian fighting days. The country around is little changed from the period of my story.

The Rabbit Ears, known to many travelers along the Old Santa Fe Trail, is only a little way from the town of Clayton, New Mexico. The box canyon featured in the story is there, so is the pool, which is usually covered with a green scum, and there is also an open hole some three to four feet in diameter. Around it the walls and rocks are blackened by fire, likely the result of some explosion of oil or gas.

Loma Parda on the Mora River is now a ghost town, some eight miles northwest of Watrous, New Mexico. When Fort Union was abandoned the town began to die, but in the 1870's it had a rough and bloody reputation.

At the time of my story the buffalo hunters still had two or three good years ahead of them, and they would be replaced by cattlemen. Practically the only settlers in the Panhandle country then were Mexicans from Taos or Mora with their sheep.

The Sostenes l'Archeveque mentioned early in the story was a notorious outlaw and killer of the period, often credited with twenty-three killings. He was killed by his own people when his conduct became too unruly.

About the Author "I think of myself in the oral tradition -- of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered -- as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books.

His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties -- among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.

[11 May 2002] Scanned by pandor [05 Jun 2002] (v1.0) proofed and formatted by NickL

The chapter headings on this scan were quite bad, so some of them might be wrong. Otherwise the scan was quite OK.