Skirmish on a Summer Morning

A flash of silver on the trail about a mile ahead of him brought Gregg out of his reverie. He pulled back on the reins, easing the buckboard to a halt, and took a small leather-covered telescope from the jacket which was lying on the wooden seat beside him. Sliding its sections out with a multiple click, he raised the telescope to his eye, frowning a little at the ragged, gritty pain flaring in his elbows. It was early in the morning and, in spite of the heat, his arms retained some of their night-time stiffness.

The ground had already begun to bake, agitating the lower levels of air into trembling movement, and the telescope yielded only a swimmy, bleached-out image. It was of a young woman, possibly Mexican, in a silver dress. Gregg brought the instrument down, wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to make sense of what he had just seen. A woman dressed in silver would have been a rare spectacle anywhere, even in the plushiest saloons of Sacramento, but finding one alone on the trail three miles north of Copper Cross was an event for which he was totally unprepared. Another curious fact was that he had crossed a low ridge five minutes earlier, from which vantage-point he had been able to see far ahead along the trail, and he would have sworn it was deserted.

He peered through the telescope again. The woman was standing still, and seemed to be looking all around her like a person who had lost her way and this, too, puzzled Gregg. A stranger might easily go astray in this part of southern Arizona, but the realization she was lost would have dawned long before she got near Copper Cross. She would hardly be scanning the monotonous landscape as though it was something new.

Gregg traversed the telescope, searching for a carriage, a runaway or injured horse, anything which would account for the woman’s presence. His attention was drawn by a smudge of dust centred on the distant specks of two riders on a branching trail which ran east to the Portfield ranch, and for an instant he thought he had solved the mystery. Josh Portfield sometimes brought a girl back from his expeditions across the border, and it would be in character for him—should one of his guests prove awkward—to dump her outside of town. But a further look at the riders showed they were approaching the main trail and possibly were not yet aware of the woman. Their appearance was, however, an extra factor which required Gregg’s consideration because their paths were likely to cross his.

He was not a cautious man by nature, and for his first forty-eight years had followed an almost deliberate policy of making life interesting by running headlong into every situation, trusting to his good reflexes and a quick mind to get him out again if trouble developed. It was this philosophy which had led him to accept the post of unofficial town warden, and which—on the hottest afternoon of a cruel summer—had faced him with the impossible task of quietening down Josh Portfield and four of his cronies when they were inflamed with whisky. Gregg had emerged from the episode with crippled arms and a new habit of planning his every move with the thoughtfulness of a chess master.

The situation before him now did not seem dangerous, but it contained too many unknown factors for his liking. He took his shotgun from the floor of the buckboard, loaded it with two dully rattling shells and snicked the hammers back. Swearing at the clumsy stiffness of his arms, he slipped the gun into the rawhide loops which were nailed to the underside of the buckboard’s seat. It was a dangerous arrangement, not good firearms practice, but the hazard would be greatest for anyone who chose to ride alongside him, and he had the option of warning them off if they were friendly or not excessively hostile.

Gregg flicked the reins and his horse ambled forward, oily highlights stirring on its flanks. He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead and presently saw the two riders cut across the fork of the trail and halt at the fleck of silver fire, which was how the woman appeared to his naked eye. He hoped, for her sake, that they were two of the reasonably decent hands who kept the Portfield spread operating as a ranch, and not a couple of Josh’s night-riding lieutenants. As he watched he saw that they were neither dismounting nor holding their horses in one place, but were riding in close circles around the woman. He deduced from that one observation that she had been unlucky in her encounter, and a fretful unease began to gnaw at his stomach. Before Gregg’s arms had been ruined he would have lashed his horse into a gallop; now his impulse was to turn and go back the way he had come. He compromised by allowing himself to be carried towards the scene at an unhurried pace, hoping all the while that he could escape involvement.

As he drew near the woman, Gregg saw that she was not—as he had supposed—wearing a mantilla, but that her silver dress was an oddly styled garment incorporating a hood which was drawn up over her head. She was turning this way and that as the riders moved around her. Gregg transferred his attention to the two men and, with a pang of unhappiness, recognized Wolf Caley and Siggy Sorenson. Caley’s grey hair and white beard belied the fact that he possessed all the raw appetites and instincts of a young heathen, and as always he had an old 54-bore Tranter shoved into his belt. Sorenson, a thickset Swedish ex-miner of about thirty, was not wearing a gun, but that scarcely mattered because he had all the lethality of a firearm built into his massive limbs. Both men had been members of the group which, two years earlier, had punished Gregg for meddling in Portfield affairs. They pretended not to notice Gregg’s approach, but continually circled the woman, occasionally leaning sideways in their saddles and trying to snatch the silver hood back from her face. Gregg pulled to a halt a few yards from them.

“What are you boys playing at?” he said in conversational tones. The woman turned towards him as soon as he spoke and he glimpsed the pale, haunted oval of her face. The sudden movement caused the unusual silver garment to tighten against her body and Gregg was shocked to realize she was in a late stage of pregnancy.

“Go away, Billy boy,” Caley said carelessly, without turning his head.

“I think you should leave the lady alone.”

“I think you must like the sound of your own bones a-breakin’,” Caley replied. He made another grab for the woman’s hood and she ducked to avoid his hand.

“Now cut that out, Wolf.” Gregg directed his gaze at the woman. “I’m sorry about this, ma’am. If you’re going into town you can ride with me.”

“Town? Ride?” Her voice was low and strangely accented. “You are English?”

Gregg had time to wonder why anybody should suspect him of being English rather than American merely because he spoke English, then Caley moved into the intervening space.

“Stay out of this, Billy boy,” he said. “We know how to deal with Mexicans who sneak over the line.”

“She isn’t Mexican.”

“Who asked you?” Caley said irritably, his hand straying to the butt of the Tranter.

Sorenson wheeled his horse out of the circle, came alongside the buckboard and looked in the back. His eyes widened as he saw the eight stone jars bedded in straw.

“Look here, Wolf,” he called. “Mister Gregg is takin’ a whole parcel of his best pulque into town. We got us all the makin’s of a party here.”

Caley turned to him at once, his bearded face looking almost benign. “Hand me one of those crocks.”

Gregg slid his right hand under the buckboard’s seat. “It’ll cost you eight-fifty.”

“I’m not payin’ eight-fifty for no cactus juice.” Caley shook his head as he urged his horse a little closer to the buckboard, coming almost into line with its transverse seat.

“That’s what I get from Whalley’s, but I tell you what I’ll do,” Gregg said reasonably. “I’ll let you have a jar each on account and you can have yourselves a drink while I take the lady into town. It’s obvious she’s lost and …” Gregg stopped speaking as he saw that he had completely misjudged Caley’s mood.

“Who do you think you are?” Caley demanded. “Talkin’ to me like I was a kid! If I’d had my way I’d have finished you off a couple of years back, Gregg. In fact …” Caley’s mouth compressed until it was visible only as a yellow stain on his white beard, and his china-blue eyes brightened with purpose. His hand was now full on the butt of the Tranter and, even though he had not drawn, his thumb was pulling the hammer back.

Gregg glanced around the shimmering, silent landscape, at the impersonal backdrop of the Sierra Madre, and he knew he had perhaps only one second left in which to make a decision and act on it. Caley had not come fully into line with the hidden shotgun, and as he was still on horseback he was far too high above the muzzle, but Gregg had no other resort. Forcing the calcified knot of his elbow to bend to his will, he managed to reach the shotgun’s forward trigger and squeeze it hard. In the last instant Caley seemed to guess what was happening and he tried to throw himself to one side. There was a thunderous blast and the tightly bunched swarm of pellets ripped through his riding boot, just above the ankle, before ploughing a bloody furrow across his horse’s rear flank. The terrified animal reared up through a cloud of black gunsmoke, its eyes flaring whitely, and fell sideways with Caley still in the saddle. Gregg heard the sickening crack of a major bone breaking, then Caley began to scream.

“Don’t!” Sorenson shouted from the back of his plunging mare. “Don’t shoot!” He dug his spurs into the animal’s side, rode about fifty yards and stopped with his hands in the air.

Gregg stared at him blankly for a moment before realizing that—because of the noise, smoke and confusion—the Swede had no idea of what had happened, nor of how vulnerable Gregg actually was. Caley’s continued bellowing as the fallen horse struggled to get off him made it difficult for Gregg to think clearly. The enigmatic woman had drawn her shoulders up and was standing with her hands pressed over her face.

“Stay back there,” Gregg shouted to Sorenson before turning to the woman. “Come on—we’d best get out of here.”

She began to shiver violently, but made no move towards him. Gregg jumped down from his seat, pulled the shotgun out of its sling, went to the woman and drew her towards the buckboard. She came submissively and allowed him to help her up into the seat. Gregg heard hoofbeats close behind him and spun round to see that Caley’s horse had got free and was galloping away to the east in the direction of the Portfield ranch. Caley was lying clutching a misshapen thigh. He had stopped screaming and seemed to be getting control of himself. Gregg went to him and, as a precaution, knelt and pulled the heavy five-shot pistol from the injured man’s belt. It was still cocked.

“You’re lucky this didn’t go off,” Gregg said, carefully lowering the hammer and tucking the gun into his own belt. “A busted leg isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a man.”

“You’re a dead man, Gregg,” Caley said faintly, peacefully, his eyes closed. “Josh is away right now … but he’ll be back soon … and he’ll bring you to me … alive … and I’ll …”

“Save your breath,” Gregg advised, concealing his doubts about his own future. “Josh expects his men to be able to take care of their own affairs.” He went back to the buckboard and climbed on to the seat beside the bowed, silver-clad figure of the woman.

“I’ll take you into town now,” he said to her, “but that’s all I can do for you, ma’am. Where are you headed?”

“Headed?” She seemed to query the word and he became certain that English was not her native tongue, although she still did not strike him as being Mexican or Spanish.

“Yes. Where are you going?”

“I cannot go to a town.”

“Why not?”

“The Prince would find me there. I cannot go to a town.”

“Huh?” Gregg flicked the reins and the buckboard began to roll forward. “Are you telling me you’re wanted for something?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“Well, it can’t be all that serious, and they’d have to be lenient. I mean, in view of your …”

As Gregg was struggling for words the woman pushed the hood back from her face with a hand which still trembled noticeably. She was in her mid-twenties, with fine golden hair and pale skin which suggested to Gregg that she was city-bred. He guessed that under normal circumstances she would have been lovely, but her features had been deadened by fear and shock, and perhaps exhaustion. Her grey eyes hunted over his face.

“I think you are a good man,” she said slowly. “Where do you live?”

“Back along this trail about three miles.”

“You live alone?”

“I do, but …” The directness of her questioning disturbed Gregg and he sought inspiration. “Where’s your husband, ma’am?”

“I have no husband.”

Gregg looked away from her. “Oh. Well, we’d best get on into town.”

“No!” The woman half-rose, as though planning to jump from the buckboard while it was still in motion, then clutched at her swollen belly and slumped back on to the seat. Gregg felt the weight of her against his side. Dismayed, he looked all around for a possible source of assistance, but saw only Sorenson who had returned to Caley and was kneeling beside him. Caley was sitting upright and both men were watching the buckboard and its passengers with the bleak intensity of snakes.

Appalled at the suddenness with which life had got out of control, Gregg swore softly to himself and turned the buckboard in a half-circle for the drive back to his house.

The house was small, having begun its existence some ten years earlier as a line shack used by cowhands from a large but decaying ranch. Gregg had bought it and a section of land back in the days when it looked as though he might become a rancher in his own right, and had added two extra rooms which gave it a patchy appearance from the outside. After his fateful brush with the Portfield men, which had left him unable to cope with more than a vegetable plot, he had been able to sell back most of the land and retain the house. The deal had not been a good one from the point of view of the original owner, but it was a token that some people in the area had appreciated his efforts to uphold the rule of law.

“Here we are,” Gregg said. He helped the woman down from the buckboard, forced to support most of her weight and worried about the degree of personal contact involved. The woman was a complete mystery to him, but he knew she was not accustomed to being manhandled. He got her indoors and guided her into the most comfortable chair in the main room. She leaned back in it with her eyes closed, hands pressed to her abdomen.

“Ma’am?” Gregg said anxiously. “Is it time for …? I mean, do you need a doctor?”

Her eyes opened wide. “No! No doctor!”

“But if you’re …”

“That time is still above me,” she said, her voice becoming firmer.

“Just as well—the nearest doctor’s about fifty miles from here. Almost as far as the nearest sheriff.” Gregg looked down at the woman and was surprised to note that her enveloping one-piece garment, which had shone like a newly minted silver dollar while outside in the sunlight, was now a rich blue-grey. He stared at the cloth and discovered he could detect no sign of seams or stitching. His puzzlement increased.

“I am thirsty,” the woman said. “Have you a drink for me?”

“It was too hot for a fire so there’s no coffee, but I’ve got some spring water.”

“Water, please.”

“There’s plenty of whisky and pulque. I make it right here. It wouldn’t harm you.”

“The water, please.”

“Right.” Gregg went to the oaken bucket, uncovered it and took out a dipper of cool water. When he turned he saw that the woman was surveying the room’s bare pine walls and rough furniture with an expression of mingled revulsion and despair. He felt sorry for her.

“This place isn’t much,” he said, “but I live here alone and I don’t need much.”

“You have no woman?”

Again Gregg was startled by the contrast between the woman’s obvious gentility and the bluntness of her questioning. He thought briefly about Ruth Jefferson, who worked in the general store in Copper Cross and who might have been living in his house had things worked out differently, then shook his head. The woman accepted the enamelled scoop from him and sipped some water.

“I want to stay here with you,” she said.

“You’re welcome to rest a while,” Gregg replied uneasily, somehow aware of what was coming.

“I want to stay for six days.” The woman gave him a direct, calm stare. “Until after my son is born.”

Gregg snorted his incredulity. “This is no hospital, and I’m no midwife.”

“I’ll pay you well.” She reached inside her dress-cum-cloak and produced a strip of yellow metal which shone with the buttery lustre of high-grade gold. It was about eight inches long by an inch wide, with rounded edges and corners. “One of these for each day. That will be six.”

“This doesn’t make any kind of sense,” Gregg floundered. “I mean, you don’t even know if six days will be enough.”

“My son will be born on the day after tomorrow.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“I can.”

“Ma’am, I …” Gregg picked up the heavy metal tablet. “This would be worth a lot of money … to a bank.”

“It isn’t stolen, if that’s what you mean.”

He cleared his throat and, not wishing to contradict or quiz his visitor, examined the gold strip for markings. It had no indentations of any kind and had an almost oily feel which suggested it might be 24-carat pure.

“I didn’t say it was stolen—but I don’t often get monied ladies coming here to have their babies.” He gave her a wry smile. “Fact is, you’re the first.”

“Delicately put,” she said, mustering a smile in return. “I know how strange this must seem to you, but I’m not free to explain it. All I can tell you is that I have broken no laws.”

“You just want to go into hiding for a spell.”

“Please understand that there are other societies whose ways are not those of Mexico.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Gregg said, wondering, “this territory has been American since 1948.”

“Excuse me.” She was contrite. “I never excelled at geography—and I’m very far from home.”

Gregg suspected he was being manipulated and decided to resist. “How about the Prince?”

Sunlight reflecting from the water in the dipper she was holding split into concentric rings. “It was wrong of me to think of involving you,” she said. “I’ll go as soon as I have rested.”

“Go where?” Gregg, feeling himself become involved regardless of her wishes or his own, gave a scornful laugh. “Ma’am, you don’t seem to realize how far you are from anywhere. How did you get out here, anyway?”

“I’ll leave now.” She stood up with some difficulty, her small face paler than ever. “Thank you for helping me as much as you did. I hope you will accept that piece of gold …”

“Sit down,” Gregg said resignedly. “If you’re crazy enough to want to stay here and have your baby, I guess I’m crazy enough to go along with it.”

“Thank you.” She sat down heavily and he knew she had been close to fainting.

“There’s no need to keep thanking me.” Gregg spoke gruffly to disguise the fact that, in an obscure way, he was pleased that a young and beautiful woman was prepared to entrust herself to his care after such a brief acquaintanceship. I think you are a good man, were almost the first words she had said to him, and in that moment he had abruptly become aware of how wearisome his life had been in the last two years. Semi-crippled, dried out by fifty years of hard living, he should have been immune to romantic notions—especially as the woman could well be a foreign aristocrat who would not even have glanced at him under normal circumstances. The fact remained, however, that he had acted as her protector, and on her behalf had been reintroduced to all the heady addictions of danger. Now the woman was dependent on him and prepared to live in his house. She was also young and beautiful and mysterious—a combination he found as irresistible now as he would have done a quarter of a century earlier …

“We’d best start being practical,” he said, compensating for his private flight of fantasy. “You can have my bed for the week. It’s clean, but we’re going to need fresh linen. I’ll go into town and pick up some supplies.”

She looked alarmed. “Is that necessary?”

“Very necessary. Don’t worry—I won’t tell anybody you’re here.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But what about the two men I met?”

“What about them?”

“They probably know I came here with you. Won’t they talk about it?”

“Not where it matters. The Portfield men don’t mix with the townsfolk or anybody else around here.” Gregg took Caley’s pistol from his belt and was putting it away in a cupboard when the woman held out her hand and asked if she could examine the weapon. Mildly surprised, he handed it to her and noticed the way in which her arm sank as it took the weight.

“It isn’t a woman’s gun,” he commented.

“Obviously.” She looked up at him. “What is the muzzle velocity of this weapon?”

Gregg snorted again, showing amusement. “You’re not interested in things like that.”

“That is a curious remark for you to make,” she said, a hint of firmness returning to her voice, “when I have just expressed interest in it.”

“Sorry, it’s just that …” Gregg decided against referring to the terror she had shown earlier when he had fired the shotgun. “I don’t know the muzzle velocity, but it can’t be very high. That’s an old Tranter percussion five-shooter and you don’t see many of them about nowadays. It beats me why Caley took the trouble to lug it around.”

“I see.” She looked disappointed as she handed the pistol back. “It isn’t any good.”

Gregg hefted the weapon. “Don’t get me wrong, ma’am. This sort of gun is troublesome to load, but it throws a 54-bore slug that’ll bowl over any man alive.” He was looking at the woman as he spoke and it seemed to him that, on his final words, an odd expression passed over her face.

“Were you thinking of bigger game?” he said. “Bear, perhaps?”

She ignored his questions. “Have you a pistol of your own?”

“Yes, but I don’t carry it. That way I stay out of trouble.” Gregg recalled the events of the past hour. “Usually I stay out of trouble.”

“What is its muzzle velocity?”

“How would I know?” Gregg found it more and more difficult to reconcile the woman’s general demeanour with her strange interest in the technicalities of firearms. “We don’t think that way about guns around here. I’ve got a .44 Remington which always did what I wanted it to do, and that’s all I ever needed to know about it.”

Undeterred by the impatience in his voice, the woman looked around the room for a moment and pointed at the massive iron range on which he did his cooking. “What would happen if you fired it at that?”

“You’d get pieces of lead bouncing round the room.”

“The shot wouldn’t go through?”

Gregg chuckled. “There isn’t a gun made that could do that. Would you mind telling me why you’re so interested?”

She responded in a way he was learning to expect, by changing the subject. “Shall I call you Billy boy?”

“Billy is enough,” he said. “If we’re going to use our given names.”

“My name is Morna, and of course we’re going to use our Christian names.” She gave him a twinkling glance. “There’s no point in being formal … under the circumstances.”

“I guess not.” Gregg felt his cheeks grow warm and he turned away.

“Have you ever delivered a baby before?”

“It isn’t my line of work.”

“Well, don’t worry about it too much,” she said. “I’ll instruct you.”

“Thanks,” Gregg replied gruffly, wondering if he could have been wildly wrong in his guess that his visitor was a woman of high breeding. She had the looks and—now that she was no longer afraid—a certain imperious quality in her manner, but she appeared to have no idea that there were certain things a woman should only discuss with her intimates.

In the afternoon he drove into town, taking a longer route which kept him well clear of the Portfield ranch, and disposed of his eight gallons of pulque at Whalley’s saloon. The heat was intense and perspiration had glued his shirt to his back, but he allowed himself only one glass of beer before going to see Ruth Jefferson in her cousin’s store. He found her alone at the rear of the store, struggling to lift a sack of beans on to a low shelf. She was a sturdy attractive woman in her early forties, still straight-backed and narrow-waisted even though ten years of widowhood and self-sufficiency had scored deep lines at the sides of her mouth.

“Afternoon, Billy,” she said on hearing his footsteps, then looked at him more closely. “What are you up to, Billy Gregg?”

Gregg felt his heart falter—this was precisely the sort of thing that had always made him wary of women. “What do you mean?”

“I mean why are you wearing a necktie on a day like this? And your good hat? And, if I’m not mistaken, your good boots?”

“Let me help you with that sack,” he said, going forward.

“It’s too much for those arms of yours.”

“I can manage.” Gregg stooped, put his chest close to the sack and gripped it between his upper arms. He straightened up, holding the sack awkwardly but securely, and dropped it on to the shelf. “See? What did I tell you?”

“You’ve got dust all over yourself,” she said severely, flicking at his clothing with her handkerchief.

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t fuss.” In spite of his protests, Gregg stood obediently and allowed himself to be dusted off, enjoying the attention. “I need your help, Ruth,” he said, making a decision.

She nooded. “I’ve been telling you that for years.”

“This is for one special thing, and I can’t even tell you about it ’less you promise to keep it secret.”

“I knew it! I knew you were up to something as soon as you walked in here.”

Gregg extracted the promise he wanted, then went on to describe the events of the morning. As he talked the lines at the sides of Ruth’s mouth grew more pronounced and her eyes developed a hard, uncompromising glitter. He was relieved when, just as he had finished speaking, two women came into the store and spent ten minutes buying a length of cloth. By the time Ruth had finished serving them the set look had gone from her face, but he could tell she was still angry with him.

“I don’t understand you, Billy,” she whispered. “I thought you had learned your lesson the last time you went up against the Portfield crowd.”

“There was nothing else I could do,” he said. “I had to help her.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“What does that mean?”

“Billy Gregg, if I ever find out that you got some little saloon girl into trouble and then had the nerve to get me to help with the delivery …”

“Ruth!” Gregg was genuinely shocked by the new idea.

“It’s a more likely story than the one you’ve just told me.”

He sighed and took the slim gold bar from his pocket. “Would she be paying me? With this sort of thing?”

“I suppose not,” Ruth said. “But it’s all so … What kind of a name is Morna?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Well, where is she from?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“You’ve had a shave, as well.” She stared at him in perplexity for a moment. “I guess I’ll just have to go out there and meet the woman who can make Billy Gregg start prettying himself up. I want to see what she’s got that I haven’t.”

“Thanks, Ruth—I feel a lot easier in my mind now.” Gregg looked around the big shady room with its loaded shelves and beams festooned with goods. “What sort of stuff should I be taking back with me?”

“I’ll make up a bundle of everything that’s needed and take it out to you before supper. I can borrow Sam’s gig.”

“That’s great.” Gregg smiled his gratitude. “Make sure you use the west road, though.”

“Get out of here and let me get on with my chores,” Ruth said briskly. “None of Portfield’s saddle tramps are going to bother me.”

“Right—see you later.” Gregg was turning to leave when his attention was caught by the bolts of cloth stacked on the counter. He fingered a piece of silky material and frowned. “Ruth, did you ever hear of cloth which looks silver out of doors and turns blue indoors?”

“No, I never did.”

“I thought not.” Gregg walked to the door, hesitated, then went out into the heat and throbbing brilliance of Copper Cross’s main street. He got on to his buckboard, flicked the reins and drove slowly to the water trough which was in an alley at the side of the livery stables. A young cowboy with a drooping sandy moustache was already watering his horse. Gregg recognized him as Cal Masham, one of the passably honest hands who worked for Josh Portfield, and nodded a greeting.

“Billy.” Masham nodded in return and took his pipe from his mouth. “Heard about your run-in with Wolf Caley this forenoon.”

“News gets around fast.”

Masham glanced up and down the alley. “I think you ought to know, Billy—Wolf’s hurt real bad.”

“Yeah, I heard his leg go when his horse came down on it. I owed him a broken bone or two.” Gregg sniffed appreciatively. “Nice tobacco you’ve got in there.”

“It wasn’t a clean break, Billy. Last I heard his leg was all swole up and turned black. And he’s got a fever.”

In the heat of the afternoon Gregg suddenly felt cool. “Is he likely to die?”

“It looks that way, Billy.” Masham looked around him again. “Don’t tell anybody I told you, but Josh is due back in two or three days. If I was in your shoes I wouldn’t hang around and wait for him to get here.”

“Thanks for the tip, son.” Gregg waited impassively until his horse had finished drinking, then he urged the animal forward. It lowered its head and drew him from the shadow of the stables into the searing arena of the street.

Gregg had left the woman, Morna, sleeping on his bed and still wrapped in the flowing outer garment whose properties were such a mystery to him. On his return he entered the house quietly, hoping to avoid disturbing her rest, and found Morna sitting at the table with a book spread out before her. She had removed her cloak to reveal a simple blue smock with half-length sleeves. The book was one of the dozen which Gregg owned, a well-worn school atlas, and it was open at a double-page spread of North America.

Morna had tied her fair hair into a loose coil and she looked more beautiful than Gregg had remembered, but his attention was drawn to the strange ornament on her wrist. It looked like a circular piece of dark red glass about the size of a dollar, rimmed with gold and held in place by a thin gold band. Its design was unusual enough, but the thing which held Gregg’s gaze was that under the surface of the glass was a sliver of ruby light, equivalent in size and positioning to one hand of a watch, which blinked on and off at intervals of about two seconds.

She looked up at him and smiled. “I hope you don’t mind.” She indicated the atlas.

“Help yourself, ma’am.”

“Morna.”

“Help yourself … Morna.” The familiarity did not sit easily with Gregg. “Are you feeling stronger?”

“I’m much better, thank you. I hadn’t slept since … for quite a long time.”

“I see.” Gregg sat down at the other side of the table and allowed himself a closer look at the intriguing ornament. On its outer rim were faint markings like those of a compass, and the splinter of light continued its slow pulsing beneath the glass. “I don’t mean to pry, ma’am, Morna,” he said, “but in my whole life I’ve never seen anything like that thing on your wrist.”

“It’s nothing.” Morna covered it with her hand. “It’s just a trinket.”

“But how can it keep sparking the way it does?”

“Oh, I don’t understand these matters,” she said airily. “I believe it works by electronics.”

“Is that something to do with electricity?”

“Electricity is what I meant to say—my English is not very good.”

“But what’s it for?”

Morna laughed. “Do your women only wear what is useful?”

“I guess not,” Gregg said doubtfully, aware he was being put off once again. After a few initial uncertainties, Morna’s English had been very assured and he suspected that the odd words she had used—electronics—had not been a mistake. He made up his mind to search for it in Ruth’s dictionary, if he ever got the chance.

Morna looked down at the atlas, upon which she had placed a piece of straw running east-west, with one end at the approximate location of Copper Cross. “According to this map we are about twelve hundred miles from New Orleans.”

Gregg shook his head. “It’s more than that to New Orleans.”

“I’ve just measured it.”

“That’s the straight line distance,” he explained patiently. “It doesn’t signify anything—’less you can fly like a bird.”

“But you agree that it is twelve hundred miles.”

“That’s about right—for a bird.” Gregg jumped to his feet and, in his irritation, tried to do it in the normal way with the assistance of his arms pushing against the table. His left elbow cracked loudly and gave way, bringing him down on that shoulder. Embarrassed, he stood up more slowly, trying not to show that he was hurt, and walked to the range. “We’ll have to see about getting you some proper food.”

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Morna spoke softly, from close behind him.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about,” he said, surprised at her show of concern.

“Let me see it, Billy—I may be able to help.”

“You’re not a doctor, are you?” As he had expected, there was no reply to his question, but the possibility that the woman had medical training prompted Gregg to roll up his sleeves and let her examine the misshapen elbow joints. Having unbent that far, he went on to tell her about how—in the absence of any law enforcement in the area—he had been foolish enough to let himself be talked into taking the job of unofficial town warden, and about how, even more foolishly, he once interrupted Josh Portfield and four of his men in the middle of a drinking spree. He skimmed briefly over the details of how two men had held each of his wrists and whipped him bodily to and fro for over fifteen minutes until his elbows had snapped backwards.

“Why is it always so?” she breathed.

“What was that, ma’am?”

Morna raised her eyes. “There’s nothing I can do, Billy. The joints were fractured and now they have sclerosed over.”

“Sclerosed, eh?” Gregg noted another word to be checked later.

“Do you get much pain?” She looked at the expression on his face. “That was a silly question, wasn’t it?”

“It’s a good thing I’m partial to whisky,” he confessed. “Otherwise I wouldn’t get much sleep some nights.”

She smiled compassionately. “I think I can do something about the pain. It’s in my own interest to get you as fit as possible by … What day is this?”

“Friday.”

“By Sunday.”

“Don’t trouble yourself about Sunday,” he said. “I’ve got a friend coming to help out. A woman friend,” he added as Morna stepped back from him, the hunted expression returning to her face.

“You promised not to tell anyone I was here.”

“I know, but it’s purely for your benefit. Ruth Jefferson is a fine lady, and I know her as well as I know myself. She won’t talk to a living soul.”

Morna’s face relaxed slightly. “Is she important to you?”

“We were supposed to get married.”

“In that case I won’t object,” Morna said, her grey eyes unreadable. “But please remember it was your own decision to tell her about me.”

Ruth Jefferson came into sight about an hour before sunset, driving her cousin’s gig.

Gregg, who had been watching for her, went into the house and tapped the open door of the bedroom, where Morna had lain down to rest without undressing. She awoke instantly with a startled gasp, glancing at the gold bracelet on her wrist. From his viewpoint in the doorway, Gregg noted that the ornament’s imprisoned splinter of light seemed always to point to the east, and he decided it could be a strange form of compass. It might have been his imagination, but he had an impression that the light’s rate of pulsation had increased slightly since he had first observed it in the morning. More wonderful and strange, however, was the overall sight of the golden-haired young woman, heavy with new life, who had come to him from out of nowhere, and whose very presence seemed to shed a glow over the plain furniture of his bedroom. He found himself speculating anew about the circumstances which had stranded such a creature in the near-wilderness of his part of the world.

“Ruth will be here in a minute,” he said. “Would you like to come out and meet her?”

“Very much.” Morna smiled as she stood up and walked to the door with him. Gregg was slightly taken aback that she did so without touching her hair or fussing about her dress—in his experience first meetings between women usually were edgy occasions—then he noticed that her simple hairstyle was undisturbed, and that the material of the blue smock, in spite of having been lain on for several hours, was as sleek and as smooth as if it had just come off the hanger. It was yet another addition to the dossier of curious facts he was assembling about his guest.

“Hello, Ruth—glad you could come.” Gregg went forward to steady the gig and help Ruth down from it.

“I’ll bet you are,” Ruth said. “Have you heard about Wolf Cagey?”

Gregg lowered his voice. “I heard he was fixing to die.”

“That’s right. What are you going to do about it?”

“What can I do?”

“You could head north as soon as it gets dark and keep going. I’m crazy to suggest it, but I could stay here and look after your lady friend.”

“That wouldn’t be fair,” Gregg shook his head slowly. “No, I’m staying on here where I’m needed.”

“Just what do you think you’ll be able to do when Josh Portfield and his mob come for you?”

“Ruth,” he whispered uneasily, “I wish you’d talk about something else—you’re going to upset Morna. Now come and meet her.”

Ruth gave him an exasperated look, but went quietly with him to the house where he performed the introductions. The women shook hands in silence, and then—quite spontaneously—both began to smile, the roles of mother and daughter tacitly assigned and mutually accepted. Gregg knew that communication had taken place on a level he would never understand, and his ingrained awe of the female mind increased.

He was pleased to see that Ruth, who had obviously been prepared to have her worst suspicions confirmed, was impressed with Morna. It would make his own life a little easier. While the two women went indoors he unloaded the supplies Ruth had brought, gripping the wicker basket between his upper arms to avoid stressing his elbows. When he carried it into the house and set it on the table, Ruth and Morna were deep in conversation, and Ruth broke off long enough to point at the door, silently commanding him to leave again.

Even more gratified, Gregg lifted a pack of tailor-mades from a shelf and went out to the shack where his pulque still was in operation. He preferred hand-rolled cigarettes, but was accustomed to doing without them now that his fingers were incapable of the fine control required in the rolling of tobacco. Making himself comfortable on a stool in the corner, he lit a cigarette and contentedly surveyed his little domain of copper cooling coils, retorts and tubs of fermenting cactus pulp. The knowledge that there were two women in his house, and that one of them was soon to have a child there, gave him a warm sense of importance he had never known before. He spent some time indulging himself in dreams, projected on screens of aromatic smoke, in which Ruth was his wife, Morna was his daughter, and he was again fit enough to do a real day’s work and provide for his family …

“I don’t know how you can sit in this place.” Ruth was standing in the doorway, with a shawl around her shoulders. “That smell can’t be healthy.”

“It never did anybody any harm,” Gregg said, rising to his feet. “Fermentation is part of nature.”

“So is cow dung.” Ruth backed out of the shack and waited for him to join her. In the reddish, horizontal light of the setting sun she looked healthy and attractive, imbued with a mature competence. “I have to go back now,” she said, “but I’ll be here again tomorrow, in the morning, and I’m going to stay until that baby is safely delivered into this world.”

“I thought Saturday was your busy day at the store.”

“It is, but Sam will have to manage on his own. I can’t leave that child to have the baby by herself. You’d be worse than useless to her.”

“But what’s Sam going to think?”

“It doesn’t matter what Sam thinks—tell him you’re poorly,” Ruth paused for a moment. “Where do you think she’s from, Billy?”

“Couldn’t rightly say. She talked some about New Orleans.”

Ruth frowned in disagreement. “Her talk doesn’t sound like Louisiana talk to me—and she’s got some real foreign notions to go with it.”

“I noticed,” Gregg said emphatically.

“The way she only talks about having a son? Just won’t entertain the idea that it’s just as likely to be a girl.”

“Mmm.” Gregg had been thinking about muzzle velocities of revolvers. “I wish I knew what she’s running away from.”

Ruth’s features softened unexpectedly. “I’ve read lots of stories about women from noble families … heiresses and such … not allowed to acknowledge their own babies because the fathers were commoners.”

“Ruth Jefferson,” Gregg said gleefully, “I didn’t know you were going round that homely old store with your head stuffed full of romantic notions.”

“I do nothing of the sort.” Ruth’s colour deepened. “But it’s as plain as the nose on your face that Morna comes from money—and it’s probably her own folks she’s in trouble with.”

“Could be.” Gregg remembered the abject terror he had seen in Morna’s eyes. His instincts told him she had more on her mind than outraged parents, but he decided not to argue with Ruth. He stood and listened patiently while she explained that she had put Morna to bed, about his own sleeping arrangements in the other room, and about the type of breakfast he was to prepare in the morning.

“And you leave the whisky jar alone tonight,” Ruth concluded. “I don’t want you lying around in a drunken stupor if that child’s pains start during the night. You hear me?”

“I hear you—I wasn’t planning to do any drinking, anyway. Do you think the baby will arrive on Sunday like Morna says?”

Ruth seated herself in the gig and gathered up the traces. “Somehow—I don’t know why—I’m inclined to believe it will. See you, Billy.”

“Thanks, Ruth.” Gregg watched until the gig had passed out of sight beyond a rocky spur of the hillside upon which his house was built, then he turned and went indoors. The door of the bedroom was closed. He made up a bed on the floor with the blankets Ruth had left out for him, but knew he was unready for sleep. Chuckling a little with guilty pleasure, he poured himself a generous measure of corn whisky from the stone jar he kept in the cupboard and settled down with it in his most comfortable chair. The embers of the sunset filled the room with mellow light, and as he sipped the companionable liquor Gregg felt a sense of fulfilment in his role of watchdog.

He even allowed himself to hope that Morna would stay with him for longer than the six days she had planned.

Gregg awoke with a start at dawn to find himself still sitting in the chair, the empty cup clasped in his hand. He went to set the cup aside and almost groaned aloud as the flexing of his elbow produced a sensation akin to glass fragments crunching against a raw nerve. It must have been cool during the night and his unprotected arms had stiffened up far more than usual. He stood up with difficulty, was dismayed to see that his shirt and pants were a mass of wrinkles, and it came to him that a man living alone should have clothes impervious to creases, clothes like those of …

Morna!

As recollections of the previous day fountained in his head, Gregg hurried to the range and began cleaning it out in preparation for lighting a fire. Ruth had left instructions that he was to heat milk and oatmeal for Morna’s breakfast, and provide her with a basin of warm water in her room. Partly because of his haste, and partly because of the difficulty of controlling his fingers, he dropped the fire irons several times and was hardly surprised to hear the bedroom door opening soon afterwards. Morna appeared in the opening wearing a flowered dressing gown which Ruth must have brought for her. The familiar, feminine styling of the garment made her prettier in Gregg’s eyes, and at the same time more approachable.

“Good morning,” he said. “Sorry about all the noise. I hope I didn’t …”

“I’d caught up on my sleep anyway.” She came into the room, sat at the table and placed on it a second of the slim gold bars. “This is for you, Billy.”

He pushed it back towards her. “I don’t want it. The one you gave me is worth more than anything I can do for you.”

Morna gave him a calm, sad smile and he was abruptly reminded that she was not a home-grown girl discussing payment for a domestic chore. “You risked your life for me—and I think you would do it again. Would you?”

Gregg looked away from her. “I didn’t do much.”

“But you did! I was watching you, Billy, and I saw that you were afraid—but I also saw that you were able to control the fear. It made you stronger instead of weaker, and that’s something that even the finest of my people are unable …” Morna broke off and pressed the knuckles of one hand to her lips as though she had been on the verge of revealing a secret.

“We’ll have something to eat soon.” Gregg turned back towards the range. “As soon as I get a fire going.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

He shifted his feet. “What question?”

“If somebody came here to kill me … and to kill my son … would you defend us even if it meant placing your own life at risk?”

“This is just crazy,” Gregg protested. “Why should anybody want to kill you?”

Her eyes locked fast on his. “Answer the question, Billy.”

“I …” The words were as difficult for Gregg as a declaration of love. “Do I need to answer it? Do you think I would run away?”

“No,” she said gently. “That’s all the answer I need.”

“I’m pleased about that.” Gregg’s voice was gruffer than he had meant it to be because Morna—who was half his age—kept straying in his mind from the role of fostered daughter to that of lover-wife, in spite of the facts that he scarcely knew her and that she was swollen with another man’s child. He was oppressed by the sinfulness of his thinking and by fears of making a fool of himself, yet he was deeply gratified by Morna’s trust. No man, he decided, no Prince, not even the Prince of Darkness himself, was going to harm or distress her if there was anything he could do to prevent it. While he busied himself with getting a fire going, Gregg made up his mind to check the condition of his Remington as soon as he could do so without being seen by Morna or Ruth. In the unlikely event that he might need it, he would also inspect the percussion caps and loads in the old Tranter he had taken from Wolf Caley.

As though divining the turn of his thoughts, Morna said, “Billy, have you a long gun? A rifle?”

He puffed out his cheeks. “Never owned one.”

“Why not? The longer barrel would allow the charge to impart more energy to the bullet and give you a more effective weapon.”

Gregg hunched his shoulders and refused to turn round, somehow offended at hearing Morna’s light clear voice using the terminology of the armourer. “Never wanted one,” he said.

“But why not?”

“I was never all that good with a rifle, even when my arms were all right, so it’s safer for me not to carry one. There’s no law to speak of in these parts, you see. If a man uses a revolver to kill another man he generally gets off with it, provided the man he shot was carrying a wheel gun too. Even if he didn’t get a chance to draw it, it’s classed as a fair fight. The same goes if they both have rifles, but I’m none too good with a rifle—so I’m not going to risk having somebody I crossed knock me over at two hundred yards and claim it was self-defence.” The speech was the longest Gregg had made in months, and he expressed his displeasure at having had to make it by reking the ashes in the fire basket with unnecessary vigour.

“I see,” Morna said thoughtfully behind him. “A simple duello variation. Are you accurate with a revolver?”

For a reply Gregg started slamming the renge’s cooking rings back into place.

Her voice assumed the imperious quality he had heard in it before. “Billy, are you accurate with a revolver?”

He wheeled on her, holding out his arms in such a way as to display the misshapen, knotted elbows. “I can point a six-shooter just like I always could, but it takes me so long to get it up there I wouldn’t be a match for a ten-year-old boy. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“There is no room for anger between us.” Morna stood up and took his outstretched hands in hers. She looked into his face with searching grey eyes. “You love me, don’t you, Billy?”

“Yes.” Gregg heard the word across a distance, knowing he could not have said it to a stranger.

“I’m proud that you do—now wait here.” Morna went into the bedroom, took something from an inner part of her cloak and returned with what at first seemed to be a small square of green glass. Gregg was surprised to see that it was as pliable as a piece of buckskin, and he watched with growing puzzlement as Morna pressed it to his left elbow. It was curiously warm against his skin and a tingling sensation seemed to pass right through the joint.

“Bent your arm,” Morna ordered, now as impersonal as an army surgeon.

Gregg did as he was told and was thrilled to find there was no pain, no grinding of arthritic glass needles. He was still flexing his left arm, speechless with disbelief, when Morna repeated the procedure with his right, achieving the same miraculous result. For the first time in two years, Gregg could bend his arms freely and without suffering in the process.

Morna smiled up at him. “How do they feel?”

“Like new—just like new.”

“They’ll never be as good or as strong as they were,” Morna said, “but I can promise you there’ll be no more pain.” She went back into the bedroom and emerged a moment later without the transparent green square. “Now, I think you said something about food.”

Gregg shook his head. “There’s something going on here. You’re not who you claim to be. Nobody can do the sort of …”

“I didn’t claim to be anybody,” Morna said quite sharply, with yet another of her swift changes of mood.

“Perhaps I should have said you’re not what you claim to be.”

“Don’t spoil things, Billy … I have nobody but you.” Morna sat down at the table and covered her face with her hands.

“I’m sorry.” Gregg was reaching out to touch her when, for the first time that morning, he noticed the curious gold ornament on her wrist. The imprisoned splinter of light was pointing east as usual, but it was brighter than it had been yesterday and was definitely flashing at a higher rate. Gregg, becoming attuned to strangeness, was unable to avoid the impression that it was pulsing out some kind of warning.

True to her word, Ruth arrived early in the day.

She had brought extra supplies, including a jug of broth which was wrapped in a travelling rug to retain its warmth. Gregg was glad to see her and grateful for the womanly efficiency with which she took control of his household, yet he was discomfited at finding himself made redundant. He spent more and more time in the shack, tending to his stills, and that bright moment in which there had been talk of love between Morna and him began to seem like a figment of his imagination. He was not deluding himself that she had referred to husband-and-wife love, perhaps not father-and-daughter love either, but the mere use of the word had, for a brief span, made his life less sterile, and he treasured it.

Ruth, in contrast, spoke of commodity prices and scarcities, dressmaking and local affairs—and, in the aura of normalcy which surrounded her, Gregg decided against mentioning the fantastic cure which Morna had wrought on his arms. He had a feeling she would refuse to believe, and—by robbing him of his faith—neutralize the magic or unwork the miracle. Ruth came to visit him in the shack in the afternoon, covering her nose with her handkerchief, but it was only to tell him privately that Wolf Caley was not expected to last out the day, and that Josh Portfield and his men were reported to be riding north from Sonora.

Gregg thanked her for the information and gave no sign of being affected by it, but at the first opportunity he smuggled his Remington and Caley’s Tranter out of the house and devoted some time to ensuring they were in a serviceable condition.

Portfield had always been an enigmatic figure in Gregg’s life. The big spread he owned had been passed on to him by his father, and it was profitable, therefore there was no need for Josh to engage in unlawful activities. He had, however, acquired a taste for violence during the war, and the troubled territories of Mexico lying only a short distance to the south seemed to draw him like a magnet. Every now and then he would take a bunch of men and go on a kind of motiveless unofficial ‘raid’ beyond the border. Portfield was far from being a mad dog, often leading a fairly normal existence for months on end, but he appeared to lack any conception of right and wrong.

For example, he genuinely believed he had been lenient with Gregg by merely ruining his arms, instead of killing him, for interrupting that fateful drinking spree. Afterwards, on meeting Gregg on the trail or in Copper Cross, he had always hailed him in the friendliest manner possible, apparently under the impression he had earned Gregg’s gratitude and respect. Each man, Gregg had discovered, lives in his own reality.

There was always the possibility that, when Portfield learned of Caley’s misfortune, he would shrug and say that any man who worked for him ought to be able to cope with an ageing cripple. Gregg had known him to make equally unexpected judgements, but he had a suspicion that on this occasion the hammer of Portfield’s anger was going to come down hard, and that he was going to be squarely underneath it. In a way he could not understand, his apprehension was fed and magnified by Morna’s own mysterious fears.

During the meals, while the three of them were seated at the rough wooden table, he was content to have Ruth carry the burden of conversation with Morna. The talk was mainly of domestic matters, on any of which Morna might have been drawn out to reveal something of her own background, but she skirted Ruth’s various traps with easy diplomacy.

Late in the evening Morna began to experience the first contraction pains, and from that point Gregg found himself relegated by Ruth to the status of an inconvenient piece of furniture. He accepted the treatment without rancour, having been long familiar with the subdued hostility that women feel towards men during a confinement, and willingly performed every task given to him. Only an occasional brooding glance from Morna reminded him that between them was a covenant of which Ruth, for all her matronly competence, knew nothing.

The baby was born at noon on Sunday, and—as Morna had predicted—it was a boy.

“Don’t let Morna do too much,” Ruth said on Monday morning, as she seated herself in the gig. “She has no business being up and about so soon after a birth.”

Gregg nodded. “Don’t worry—I’ll take care of all the chores.”

“Do that.” Ruth looked at him with sudden interest. “How are your arms these days?”

“Better. They feel a lot easier.”

“That’s good.” Ruth picked up the reins, but seemed reluctant to drive away. Her gaze strayed towards the house, where Morna was standing with the baby cradled in her arms. “I suppose you can’t wait for me to go and leave you alone with your ready-made family.”

“Now, you know that’s not right, Ruth. You know how much I appreciate all you’ve done here. You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Jealous?” Ruth shook her head, then gave him a level stare. “Morna is a strange girl. She’s not like me, and she’s not like you—but I’ve got a feeling there’s something going on between you two.”

Gregg’s fear of Ruth’s intuitive powers stirred anew. “You know, Ruth, you’re starting to sound like one of those new phonographs.”

“Oh, I don’t mean hanky-panky,” she said quickly, “but you’re up to something. I know you.”

“I’ll be in to settle up my bill in a day or two,” Gregg parried. “Soon as I can change one of those gold bars.”

“Try to do it before Josh Portfield gets back.” Ruth flicked the reins and drove down the hillside.

Gregg took a deep breath and surveyed the distant blue ramparts of the sierras before walking back to the house. Morna was still wearing the flowered dressing gown and, with the shawl-wrapped baby in her arms, she looked much like any other young mother. The single unconformity in her appearance was the gold ornament on her wrist. Even in the brightness of the morning sunlight, its needle of crimson light was harshly brilliant and its pulsations had speeded up to several a second. Gregg had thought a lot about the ornament during his spells of solitude over the previous two days, and he had convinced himself he understood its function, if not its nature. He felt the time had come for some plain talking.

Morna went indoors with him. The birth had been straightforward and easy for her, but her face was pale and drawn, and there was a tentative quality about the smile she gave him as he closed the door.

“It feels strange for us to be alone again,” Morna said quietly.

“Very strange.” Gregg pointed at the flashing bracelet. “But it looks as though we won’t be alone for very long.”

She sat down abruptly and her baby raised one miniature pink hand in protest at the sudden movement. Morna drew the infant closer to her breast. She lowered her face to the baby, touching its forehead with hers, and her hair fell forward, screening it with strands of gold.

“I’m sorry,” Gregg said, “but I need to know who it is that’s coming out of the east. I need to know who I’m going up against.”

“I can’t tell you that, Billy.”

“I see—I’m entitled to get killed maybe, but not to know who does it, or why.”

“Please don’t.” Her voice was muffled. “Please understand … that I can’t tell you anything.”

Gregg felt a pang of guilt. He went to Morna and knelt beside her. “Why don’t we both—the three of us, I mean—get out of here right now? We could load up the buckboard and be gone in ten minutes.”

Morna shook her head without looking up. “It wouldn’t make any difference.”

“It would make a difference to me.”

At that, Morna raised her head and looked at him with anxious, brimming eyes. “This man, Portfield—will he try to kill you?”

“Did Ruth tell you about him?” Gregg clicked his tongue with annoyance. “She shouldn’t have done that. You’ve got enough to …”

“Will he try to kill you?”

Gregg was impelled to tell the unvarnished truth. “It isn’t so much a matter of him trying to kill me, Morna. He rides around in company with seven or eight hard cases, and if they decide to kill somebody they just go right ahead and do it.”

“Oh!” Morna seemed to regain something of her former resolve. “My son can’t travel yet, but I’ll get him ready as soon as I can. I’ll try hard, Billy.”

“That’s fine with me,” Gregg said uncertainly. He had an uneasy feeling that the conversation had got beyond him in some way, but he had lost the initiative and was in no way equipped to deal with a woman’s tears.

“That’s all right, then.” He had got to his feet and looked down at the baby’s absurdly tiny features. “Have you thought of a name for the little fellow yet?”

Morna relaxed momentarily, looking pleased. “It’s too soon. The naming time is still above him.”

“In English,” Gregg gently corrected, “we say that the future is ahead of us, not above us.”

“But that implies linear …” Morna checked her words. “You’re right, of course—I should have said ahead.”

“My mother was a schoolmarm,” he said inconsequentially, once more with an odd sense that communications between them were failing. “I’ve got some work to do outside, but I’ll be close by if you need me.”

Gregg went to the door, and as he was closing it behind him he looked back into the room. He saw that, yet again, Morna was sitting with her forehead pressed to that of her son, something he had never seen other women doing. He dismissed it as the least puzzling of her idiosyncracies. In fact, there was no pressing work to be done outside—but he had a gut feeling the time had come for keeping an eye on all approaches to his house. He walked slowly to the top of the saddleback, threading his way among boulders which resembled grazing sheep, and settled down on the eastern crest. A careful scan with his telescope revealed no activity in the direction of the Portfield ranch or on the trail running south to Copper Cross. Gregg then pointed the little instrument due east towards where the Rio Grande flowed unseen between the northern extremities of the Sierra Madre and the Sacramento Mountains. Visibility was good, and his eye was dazzled with serried vistas of peaks and ranges on a scale too vast for comprehension.

You’re letting yourself get spooked, he thought irritably. Nothing crosses country in a straight line like a bird—except another bird.

He contrived to spend most of the day on the vantage point, though making frequent trips down to the house to check on Morna, to prepare two simple meals, and to boil water for washing the baby’s diapers. It pleased him to note that the child slept almost continuously between feeds, thus giving Morna plenty of opportunity to rest. At times Ruth’s phrase, ‘ready-made family’, came to his mind and he realized how appropriate it had been. Even in the bizarre circumstances which prevailed, there was something deeply satisfying about having a woman and child under his roof, looking to him and to no other man for their welfare and safety. The relationship made him something more than he had been. Although he did his best to repress the thought, the possibility suggested itself that, were Morna and he to flee north together, she might never return to her former life. In that case, he might indeed acquire a ready-made family …

Gregg shied away from pursuing that line of thought too far.

Late in the evening, when the sun was dipping towards the lower ranges beyond far Mexicali, he saw a lone horseman approaching from the direction of the Portfield ranch. The rider was moving at a leisurely pace, and the fact that he was alone was an indication there was no trouble afoot, but Gregg decided not to take any chances. He walked down the hill past the house, took the Remington from its hiding place in the shack, and went on down to take up his position on the spur of rock where the trail bent sharply. When the horseman came into view he was slumped casually in the saddle, obviously half asleep, and his hat was pulled down to screen his eyes from the low-slanted rays of the sun. Gregg recognized Cal Masham the young cowboy he had spoken to in the town on Friday.

“What are you doing in these parts, Cal?” he shouted.

Masham jerked upright, his jaw sagging with shock. “Billy? You still here?”

“What does it look like?”

“Hell, I figured you’d be long gone by this time.”

“And you wanted to see what I’d left behind—is that it?”

Masham grinned beneath the drooping moustache. “It seemed to me you’d leave those big heavy crocks of pulque, and it seemed to me I might as well have them as somebody else. After all …”

“You can have a drink on me any time,” Gregg said firmly, “but not tonight. You’d best be on your way, Cal.”

Masham looked displeased. “Seems to me you’re wavin’ that gun at the wrong people, Billy. Did you know that Wolf Caley’s dead?”

“I hadn’t heard.”

“Well, he is. And Big Josh’ll be home tomorrow. Max Tibbett rode in ahead this afternoon, and as soon as he heard about Wolf he took a fresh horse and rode south again to tell Josh. You just shouldn’t be here, Billy.” Marsham’s voice had taken on a rising note of complaint and he seemed genuinely upset by Gregg’s foolhardiness in remaining.

Gregg considered for a moment. “Come up and help yourself to a jar, but don’t make any noise—I’ve got a guest and a newborn baby I don’t want disturbed.”

“Thanks, Billy.” Masham dismounted and walked up the hill with Gregg. He accepted a heavy stone jar, glancing curiously towards the house, and rode off with his prize clasped to his chest.

Gregg watched him out of sight, put the Remington away, and decided he was entitled to a shot of whisky to counter the effects of the news he had just received. He crossed the familiar ruts of the buckboard’s turning circle and looked in through the front window of the house to see if Morna was in the main room. He had intended only to glance in quickly while passing the window, but the strange tableau within checked him in mid-stride.

Morna was dressed in her own blue maternity smock, which appeared to have been re-shaped to her slimmer figure, although Gregg had not noticed her or Ruth doing any needlework. She had spread a white sheet over the table and her baby was lying in the centre of it, naked except for the binder which crossed his navel. Morna was standing beside the table, with both hands clasping the baby’s head. Her eyes were closed, lips moving silently, her face as cold and mask-like as that of a high priestess performing an ancient ceremony.

Gregg desperately wanted to turn away, convinced he was guilty of an invasion of privacy, but a change was taking place in Morna’s appearance, and the slow progression of it induced a mesmeric paralysis of his limbs. As he watched, Morna’s golden hair began to stir as though it was some complex living creature in its own right. Her head was absolutely motionless, but gradually—over a period of about ten seconds—her hair fanned out, each strand becoming straight and seemingly rigid, to form a bright, fearsome halo. Gregg felt his mouth go dry as he witnessed Morna’s dreadful transformation from the normalcy of young motherhood to the semblance of a witch-figure. She bent forward from the waist until her forehead was touching that of the baby.

There was a moment of utter stillness—and then her body became transparent.

Gregg felt icy ripples move upwards from the back of his neck into his own hair as he realized he could see right through Morna. She was indisputably present in the room, yet the lines of walls and furniture continued on through her body as if she was an image superimposed on them by a magic lantern.

The baby made random pawing movements with his arms and legs, but otherwise appeared to be unaffected by what was happening. Morna remained in the same state, somewhere between matter and mirage, for several seconds, then quite abruptly she was as solid as before. She straightened up and Gregg could see that her hair was beginning to subside into its previous helmet-shape of loose waves. She smoothed it down with her hands and turned towards the window.

Gregg lunged to one side in terror and scampered, doubled over like a man dodging gunfire, for the cover of his buckboard which he had left on the blind side of the house. He crouched there, breathing noisily, until he was sure Morna had not seen him, then made his way to his customary spot at the top of the saddleback where he squatted down and lit a cigarette. Even with the same reassurance of tobacco, it was some time before his heart slowed to a steady rhythm. He was not a superstitious man, but his limited reading had taught him that there was a special kind of woman—known from Biblical En-dor to the Salem of more recent times—who could work magical cures, and who often had to flee from persecution. One part of his mind rebelled against applying that name to a child like Morna, but there was no denying what he had just seen, no getting away from all the other strange things about her.

He smoked four more cigarettes, taking perhaps an hour to do so, then went back to his house. Morna—looking as normal and sweet and wholesome as a freshly baked apple pie—had lit an oil lantern and was brewing coffee. Her baby was peacefully asleep in the basket Ruth had left for it. She had even removed her gold bracelet, as though deliberately setting out to make him forget that she was in any way out of the ordinary. When Gregg glanced into the darkness of the bedroom, however, he saw the ruby glow, flashing so quickly now that its warning was almost continuous.

And it was far into the night before he finally managed to sleep.

Gregg was awakened in the morning by the thin, lonely bleat of the baby crying. He listened to it for what seemed a long time, expecting to hear Morna respond, but no other sound reached him from beyond the closed door of the bedroom. No matter what else she might be, Morna had impressed Gregg as a conscientious mother and her prolonged inactivity at first puzzled and then began to worry him. He got up out of his bedroll, pulled on his pants and tapped the door. There was no reply, apart from the baby’s cries, which were as regular as breathing. He tapped again, more loudly, and pushed the door open.

The baby was in its basket beside the bed—Gregg could see the movement of tiny fists—but Morna had gone.

Unable to accept the evidence of his eyes, Gregg walked all around the square room and even looked below the bed. Morna’s clothes, including her cloak, were missing too, and the only conclusion Gregg could reach was that she had risen during the hours of darkness, dressed herself and left the house. To do so she would have had to pass within a few feet of where he was sleeping on the floor of the main room without disturbing him, and he was positive that nobody, not the most practised thief, not the most skilful Indian tracker, could have done that. But then—the slow stains of memory began to spread in his mind—he was thinking in terms of normal human beings, and he had proof that Morna was far from normal.

The baby went on crying, its eyes squeezed shut, protesting in the only way it knew how about the absence of food and maternal warmth. Gregg stared at it helplessly, and it occurred to him that Morna might have left for good, making the infant his permanent responsibility.

“Hold on there, little fellow,” he said, recalling that he had not checked outside the house. He left the bedroom, went outside and called Morna’s name. His voice faded into the air, absorbed by the emptiness of the morning landscape, and his horse looked up in momentary surprise from its steady cropping of the grass near the water pump. Gregg made a hurried inspection of his two outbuildings—the distilling shack and the ramshackle sentrybox that was his lavatory—then decided he would have to take the baby into town and hand it over to Ruth. He had no idea how long a child of that age could survive without food and he did not want to take unnecessary risks. Swearing under his breath, he turned back to the house and froze as he saw a flash of silver on the trail at the bottom of the hill.

Morna had just come round the spur of rock and was walking towards him. She was draped in her ubiquitous cloak which had returned to its original colour, and was carrying a small blue sack in one hand. Gregg’s relief at seeing her pushed aside all his fears and reservations of the previous night, and he ran down the slope to meet her.

“Where have you been?” he called, while they were still some distance apart. “What was the idea of running off like that?”

“I didn’t run off, Billy.” She gave him a tired smile. “There were things I had to do.”

“What sort of things? The baby’s crying for a feed.”

Morna’s perfect young face was strangely hard. “What’s a little hunger?”

“That’s a funny way to talk,” Gregg said, taken aback.

“The future simply doesn’t exist for you, does it?” Morna looked at him with what seemed to be a mixture of pity and anger. “Don’t you ever think ahead? Have you forgotten that we have … enemies?”

“I take things as they come. It’s all a man can do.”

Morna thrust the blue sack at him. “Take this as it comes.”

“What is it?” Gregg accepted the bag and was immediately struck by the fact that it was not made of blue paper, as he had supposed. The material was thin, strong, smooth to the touch, more pliable than oilskin and without oilskin’s underlying texture. “What is this stuff?”

“It’s a new waterproof material,” Morna said impatiently. “The contents are more important.”

Gregg opened the sack and took out a large black revolver. It was much lighter than he would have expected for its size, and it had something of the familiar lines of a Colt except that the grips were grooved for individual fingers and flared out at the top over his thumb. Gregg had never felt a gun settle itself in his hand so smoothly. He examined the weapon more closely and saw that it had a six-shot fluted cylinder which hinged out sideways for easy loading—a feature he had never seen on any other firearm. The gun lacked any kind of decoration, but was more perfectly machined and finished than he could have imagined possible. He read the engraving on the side of the long barrel.

“Colt .44 Magnum,” he said slowly. “Never heard of it. Where did you get this gun, Morna?”

She hesitated. “I’ve been up for hours. I left this near the road where you first saw me, and I had time to go back for it.”

The story did not ring true to Gregg, but his mind was fully occupied by the revolver itself. “I mean, where did you get it before? Where can you buy a gun like this?”

“That doesn’t matter.” Morna began walking towards the house. “The point is—could you use it?”

“I guess so,” Gregg said, glancing into the blue bag which still contained a cardboard box of brass cartridges. The top of the box was missing and many of the shells had fallen into the bottom of the bag. “It’s a right handsome gun, but I doubt if it packs any more punch than my Remington.”

“I would like you to try it out.” Morna was walking so quickly that Gregg had difficulty in keeping up with her. “Please see if you can load it.”

“You mean right now? Don’t you want to see the baby?” They had reached the flat area in front of the house, and the child’s cries had become audible.

Morna glanced at her wrist and he saw that the gold ornament was burning with a steady crimson light. “My son can wait a while longer,” she said in a voice which was firm and yet edged with panic. “Please load the revolver.”

“Whatever you say.” Gregg walked to his buckboard and used it as a table. He cleared a space in the straw, set the gun down and—under Morna’s watchful gaze—carefully spilled the ammunition out of the blue bag. The centre-fire shells were rather longer than he had ever seen for a handgun and, like the revolver itself, were finished with a degree of perfection he had never encountered previously. Their noses shone like polished steel.

“Everything’s getting too fancy—adds to the price,” Gregg muttered. He fumbled with the weapon until he saw how to swing the cylinder out, then slipped in six cartridges and closed it up. As he was doing so he noticed that the cardboard box had emerged from the bag upside down, and on its underside, stamped in pale blue ink, he saw the brief inscription—OCT 1978. He picked it up and held it out to Morna.

“Wonder what that means.”

Her eyes widened slightly, then she looked away without interest. “It’s just a maker’s code. A batch number.”

“It looks like a date,” Gregg commented, “except that they’ve made a mistake and put …” He broke off, startled, as Morna knocked the box from his hands.

“Get on with it, you fool,” she shouted, trampling the box underfoot. Her pale features were distorted with anger as she stared up at him with white-flaring eyes. They confronted each other for a moment, then her lips began to tremble. “I’m sorry, Billy. I’m so sorry … it’s just that there’s almost no time above us … and I’m afraid.”

“It’s all right,” he said awkwardly. “I know I’ve got aggravating ways—Ruth’s always telling me that—and I’ve been living alone for so long …”

Morna stopped him by placing a hand on his wrist. “Don’t Billy. You’re a good and kind man, but I want you … right now, please … to learn to handle that gun.” Her quiet, controlled tones, somehow gave Gregg a greater sense of urgency than anything said previously.

“Right.” He turned away from the buckboard, looking for a suitable target, and began to ease the revolver’s hammer back with his thumb.

“You don’t need to do that,” Morna said. “For rapid fire you just pull the trigger.”

“I know—double action.” Gregg cocked the gun regardless, to demonstrate his superior knowledge of firearms practice, and for a target selected a billet of wood which was leaning against the heavy stone water trough about twenty paces away. He was lining the gun’s sights on it when Morna spoke again.

“You should hold it with both hands.”

Gregg smiled indulgently. “Morna, you’re a very well educated young lady, and I daresay you know all manner of things I never even heard of—but don’t try to teach an old hand like me how to shoot a six-gun.” He steadied the gun, held his breath and squeezed off his first shot. There was an explosion like a clap of thunder and something struck him a fierce blow on the forehead, blinding him with pain. His first confused thought was that the revolver had been faulty and had burst open, throwing a fragment into his face. Then he found it was intact in his hand, and it dawned on him that there had been a massive recoil which had bent his weakened arm like a piece of straw, swinging the weapon all the way back to collide with his forehead. He wiped a warm trickle of blood away from his eyes and looked at the gun with awe and the beginnings of a great respect.

“There isn’t any smoke,” he said. “There isn’t even …”

His speech faltered as he looked beyond the gun in his hand and saw that the stone water trough, which had served as a backing for his target, had been utterly destroyed. Fragments of three-inch-thick earthenware were scattered over a triangular area running back about thirty yards. Without previous knowledge, Gregg would have guessed that the trough had been demolished by a cannon shot.

Morna took her hands away from her ears. “You’ve hurt yourself—I told you to hold it with both hands.”

“I’m all right.” He fended off her attempts to touch his forehead. “Morna, where did you get this … this engine?”

“Do you expect me to answer that?”

“I guess not, but I sure would like to know. This is something I could understand.”

“Try it at longer range, and use both hands this time.” Morna looked about her, apparently more composed now that Gregg was doing what she expected of him. She pointed at a whitish rock about three hundred yards off along the hillside. “That rock.”

“That’s getting beyond rifle range,” Gregg explained. “Handguns don’t …”

“Try it, Billy.”

“All right—I’ll try aiming way above it.”

“Aim on to it, near the top.”

Gregg shrugged and did as he was told, suddenly aware that his right thumb was throbbing painfully where the big revolver had driven back against it. He squeezed off his second shot and experienced a deep pang of satisfaction, of a kind that only hunters understand, when he saw dust fountain into the air only about a yard to the right of the rock. Even with his two-handed grip the gun had kicked back until it was pointing almost vertically into the sky. Without waiting to be told, he fired again and saw rock fragments fly from his target.

Morna nodded her approval. “You appear to have a talent.”

“This is the best gun I ever saw,” he told her sincerely, “but I can’t hold it down. These arms of mine can’t handle the recoil.”

“Then we’ll bind your elbows.”

“Too late for that,” he said regretfully, pointing down the slope.

Several horsemen were coming into view, their presence in the formerly deserted landscape more shocking to Gregg than the discovery of a picnic hamper.

He began cursing his own carelessness in not having kept a look-out as more riders emerged from beyond the spur until there were eight of them fanning out across the bottom of the hill. They were a mixed bunch, slouching or riding high according to individual preference, on mounts which varied from quarter-horses to tall stallions, and their dress ranged from greasy buckskin to gambler’s black. Gregg knew, however, that they constituted a miniature army, disciplined and controlled by one man. He narrowed his eyes against the morning brilliance and picked out the distinctive figure of Josh Portfield on a chestnut stallion. As always, Portfield was wearing a white shirt and a suit of charcoal grey serge which might have given him the look of a preacher had it not been for the pair of nickel-plated Smith & Wessons strapped to his waist.

“I was kind of hoping Big Josh would leave things as they were,” Gregg said. “He must be in one of his righteous moods.”

Morna took an involuntary step backwards. “Can you defend yourself against so many?”

“Have to give it a try.” Gregg began scooping up handfuls of cartridges and cramming them into his pockets. “You’d best get inside the house and bar the door.”

Morna looked up at him, the hunted look returning to her face, then she stooped to pick up something from the ground and ran to the house. Glancing sideways, Gregg was unable to understand why she should have wasted time retrieving the flattened cartridge box, but he had more important things on his mind. He flipped the revolver’s cylinder out, dropped the three empty cases and replaced them with new shells. Feeling sad rather than afraid, he walked a few paces towards the advancing riders. They had closed to within two hundred yards.

“Stay off my land, Josh,” he shouted. “There’s a law against trespassing.”

Portfield stood up in his stirrups and his powerful voice came clearly to Gregg in spite of the distance. “You’re insolent, Billy. And you’re ungrateful. And you’ve cost me a good man. I’m going to punish you for all those things, but most of all I’m going to punish you for insolence and lack of respect.” He sank down in the saddle and said something Gregg could not hear. A second later Siggy Sorenson urged his horse ahead of the pack and came riding up the hill with a pistol in his hand.

“This time I got a gun, too,” Sorenson shouted. “This time we fight fair, eh?”

“If you come any further I’ll drop you,” Gregg warned.

Sorenson began to laugh. “You’re way out of range, you old fool. Can’t you see any more?” He spurred his horse into a full gallop, and at the same time two other men went off to Gregg’s left.

Gregg raised the big revolver and started to calculate bullet drop, then remembered it was practically non-existent with the unholy weapon fate had placed in his hands. This time the two-handed, knees-bent stance came to him naturally. He lined up on Sorenson, let him come on for another few seconds then squeezed the trigger. Sorenson’s massive body, blasted right out of the saddle, turned over backwards in mid-air and landed face down on the stony ground. His horse wheeled to one side and bolted. Realizing he would soon lose the advantage of surprise, Gregg turned on the two riders who were flanking him to the left. His second shot flicked the nearest man to the ground, and the third—fired too quickly—killed the other’s horse. The animal dropped instantaneously, without a sound, and its rider threw himself into the shelter of its body, dragging a red-glinting leg.

Gregg looked back down the trail and in that moment discovered the quality of his opposition. He could see a knot of milling horses, but not men. In the brief respite given to them they had faded from sight behind rocks, no doubt with rifles from their saddle holsters. Suddenly becoming aware of how vulnerable he was in his exposed position at the top of the rise, Gregg bent low and ran for the cover of his shack. Crouching down behind it he again dropped three expended cartridges and replaced them, appreciative of the speed with which the big gun could be loaded. He peered around a corner of the shack to make certain that nobody was working closer to him.

Shockingly, a pistol thundered and black smoke billowed only twenty yards away. Something gouged through his lower ribs. Gregg lurched back into cover and stared in disbelief at the ragged and bloody tear in his shirt. He had been within a handsbreadth of death.

“You’re too slow, Mister Gregg,” a voice called, frighteningly close at hand. “That old buffalo gun you got yourself don’t make no difference if you’re too slow.”

Gregg identified the speaker as Frenchy Martine, a young savage from the Canadian backwoods who had drifted into Copper Cross a year earlier. The near-fatal shot had come from the direction of the upright coffin which was Gregg’s primitive lavatory. Gregg had no idea how Martine had got that close in the time available, and it came home to him that a man of fifty was out of his class when it came to standing off youngsters in their prime.

“Tell you something else, Mister Gregg,” Martine chuckled. “You’re too old for that choice piece of woman-flesh you got tucked away in your …”

Gregg took one step to the side and fired at the narrow structure, punching a hole through the one-inch timbers as if they had been paper. There was the sound of a body hitting the ground beyond it, and a pistol tumbled into view. Gregg stepped back into the lee of the shack just as a rifle cracked in the distance and he heard the impact as the slug buried itself in the wood. He drew slight comfort from the knowledge that his opponents were armed with ordinary weapons—because the real battle was now about to begin.

Martine had assumed he was safe behind two thicknesses of timber, but there were at least four others who would not make the same fatal mistake. Their most likely tactic would be to surround Gregg, keeping in the shelter of rock all the way, and then nail him down with long-range rifle fire. Gregg failed to see how, even with the black engine of death in his hands, he was going to survive the next hour, especially as he was losing quantities of blood.

He knelt down, made a rectangular pad with his handkerchief and tucked it into his shirt in an attempt to slow the bleeding. Nobody was firing at him for the minute, so he took advantage of the lull to discard the single empty shell and make up the full load again. A deceptive quietness had descended over the area.

He looked around him at the sunlit hillside, with its rocks like grazing sheep, and tried to guess where the next shot might come from. His view of his surroundings blurred slightly, and there followed the numb realization that he might know nothing about the next shot until it was sledging its way through his body. A throbbing hum began to fill his ears—familiar prelude to the loss of consciousness—and he looked across the open, dangerous space which separated him from the house, wondering if he could get that far without being hit again. The chances were not good, but if he could get inside the house he might have time to bind his chest properly.

Gregg stood up and then became aware of the curious fact that, although the humming sound had grown much louder, he was relatively clear-headed. It was dawning on him that the powerful sound, like the swarming of innumerable hornets, had an objective reality when he heard a man’s deep-chested bellow of fear, followed by a fusillade of shots. He flinched instinctively, but there were no sounds of bullet strikes close by. Gregg risked a look down the sloping trail and what he saw caused an icy prickling on his forehead.

A tall, narrow-shouldered, black-cloaked figure, its face concealed by a black hood, was striding up the hill towards the house. It was surrounded by a strange aura of darkness, as though it had the ability to repel light itself, and it seemed to be the centre from which emanated the ground-trembling, pulsating hum. Behind the awe-inspiring shape the horses belonging to the Portfield bunch were lying on their sides, apparently dead. As Gregg watched, Portfield himself and another man stood up from behind rocks and fired at the figure, using their rifles at point blank range.

The only effect of their shots was to produce small purple flashes at the outer surface of its surrounding umbra. After perhaps a dozen shots had been absorbed harmlessly, the spectre made a sweeping gesture with its left arm, and Portfield and his companion collapsed like puppets. The distance was too great for Gregg to be positive, but he received the ghastly impression that flesh had fallen away from their faces like tatters of cloth. Gregg’s own horse whinnied in alarm and bolted away to his right.

Another Portfield man, Max Tibbett, driven by a desperate courage, emerged from cover on the other side of the trail and fired at the figure’s back. There were more purple flashes on the edge of the aura of dimness. Without looking round, the being made the same careless gesture with its left arm—spreading the black cloak like a bat’s wing—and Tibbett fell, withering and crumbling. If any of his companions were still alive they remained in concealment.

Its cloak flapping around it, the figure drew near the top of the rise, striding with inhuman speed on feet which seemed to be misshapen and disproportionately small. Without looking to left or right it went straight for the door of Gregg’s house, and he knew that this was the hunter from whom Morna had been fleeing. The pervasive hum reached a mind-numbing intensity.

His previous fear of dying was as nothing compared to the dark dread which spurted and foamed through Gregg’s soul. He was filled with an ancient and animalistic terror which swept away all reason, all courage, commanding him to cover his eyes and cringe in hiding until the shadow of evil had passed. He looked down at the black, oil-gleaming gun in his hands and shook his head as a voice he had no wish to hear reminded him of a bargain sealed with gold, of a promise made by the man he had believed himself to be. There’s nothing I can do, he thought. I can’t help you, Morna.

In the same instant he was horrified to find that he was stepping out from the concealment of the shack. His hands steadied and aimed the gun without conscious guidance from his brain. He squeezed the trigger. There was a brilliant purple flash which pierced the being aura like a sword of lightning, and it staggered sideways with a raucous shriek which chilled Gregg’s blood. It turned towards him, left arm rising like the wing of a nightmarish bird.

Gregg saw the movement through the triangular arch of his own forearms which had been driven back and upwards by the gun’s recoil. The weapon itself was pointing vertically, and uselessly, into the sky. An eternity passed as he fought to bring it down again to bear on an adversary who was gifted with demonic strength and speed. He worked the trigger again, there was another flash and the figure was hurled to the ground, shrilling and screaming. Gregg advanced on legs which tried to buckle with every step, blasting his enemy again and again with the gun’s enormous power.

Incredibly, the dark being survived the massive blows. It rose to its feet, the space around it curiously distorted like the image seen in a flawed lens, and began to back away. To Gregg’s swimming senses, the figure seemed to cover an impossible distance with each step, as though it was treading an invisible surface which itself was retreating at great speed. The undulating hum of power faded to a whisper and was gone. He was alone in a bright, clean, slow-tilting world.

Gregg sank to his knees, grateful for the sunlight’s warmth. He looked down at his chest, was astonished by the quantity of blood which had soaked through his clothing, then he was falling forward and unable to do anything about it.

It is forbidden for me to tell you anything … my poor, brave Billy … but you have been through so much on my behalf. The words will probably hold no meaning for you, anyway—assuming you can even hear them.

I tricked you, and you allowed yourself to be tricked, into taking part in a war … a war which has been fought for twenty thousand years, and which may last for ever …

There were long periods during which Gregg lay and stared at the knotted, grainy wood of the ceiling and tried to decide if it really was a ceiling, or if he was in some way suspended high above a floor. All he knew for certain was that he was being tended by a young woman, who came and went with soundless steps, and who spoke to him in a voice whose cadences were as measured and restful as the ocean tides.

We are evenly matched—my people and the Others—but our strengths are as different as our basic natures. They have superior mastery of space; our true domain is time …

There are standing waves in time … all presents are not equal … the ‘now’ which you experience is known as the Prime Present, and has greater potential than any other. You are bound to it, just as the Others are bound to it … but the mental disciplines of my people enabled us to break free and migrate to another crest in the distant past … to safety …

Occasionally, Gregg was aware of the dressings on his chest being changed, and of his lips and brow being moistened with cool water. A beautiful young face hovered above his own, the grey eyes watchful and concerned, and he tried to remember the name he associated with it. Martha? Mary?

To a woman of my race, the time of greatest danger is the last week of pregnancy … especially if the child is male and destined to have a certain cast of mind … in those circumstances the child can be drawn to your ‘now’, the home time of all humanity, and the mother is drawn with it … usually she can assert control soon after the child is born and return with it to the time of refuge … but there have been rare examples in which the male child resisted all attempts to influence its mental processes, and lived out its life in the Prime Present …

Happily for me, my son is almost ready to travel … for the Prince has grown clever and would soon return …

His enjoyment of the taste of the soup was Gregg’s first indication that his body was making up its losses of blood, that his strength was returning, that he was not going to die. As the nourishing liquid was spooned into his mouth, he filled his eyes with the fresh young beauty of his daughter-wife, and was thankful for her kindness and grace. He forced into the deepest caverns of his mind all thoughts of the dreadful dark hunter who had menaced her.

I’m sorry … my poor, brave Billy … my son and I must travel now. The longer we remain, the more strongly he will be linked to the Prime Present … and my people will be anxious until they learn that we are safe …

I have been schooled to survive in your ‘now’, though in less hazardous parts of it … which is why I am able to speak to you in English … but my ship came down in the wrong part of the world, all those thousands of years ago, and they will fear I have been lost …

A moment of lucidity. Gregg turned his head and looked through the open door of the bedroom into the house’s main living space. Morna was standing at the table, her head surrounded by a vibrant golden halo of hair. She stooped to rest her forehead against that of her child.

They both became hazy, then transparent—then they were gone.

Gregg pushed himself upright in the bed, shaking his head, reaching for them with his free hand. The pain of the re-opening wound burned across his chest and he fell back on to the pillows, gasping for breath as the darkness closed in on him again. An indeterminate time later he felt the coolness of a moist cloth being pressed against his forehead, and his crushing sense of loss abated.

He smiled and said, “I was afraid you had left.”

“How could I leave you like this?” Ruth Jefferson replied. “What in God’s name has been going on out here, Billy Gregg? I find you lying in bed with a bullet hole in you, and the place outside looking like a battleground. Sam and some of his friends are out there cleaning up the mess the buzzards left, and they say they haven’t seen anything like it since the war.”

Gregg opened his eyes and chose to give the sort of answer she would expect of him. “You missed a good fight, Ruth.”

“Good fight!” Ruth clucked with exasperation. “You’re more of an old fool than I took you for, Billy Gregg. What happened? Did the Portfield mob fall out with each other?”

“Something like that.”

“Lucky for you,” Ruth scolded. “And where were Morna and the baby when all this was going on? Where are they now?”

Gregg sorted through his memories, trying to separate dream and reality. “I don’t know, Ruth. They … left.”

“How?”

“They went with friends.”

Ruth looked at him suspiciously, then gave a deep sigh. “I still think you’ve been up to something, but I’ve got a feeling I’ll never find out what it was.”

Gregg remained in bed for a further three days, being nursed to fitness by Ruth, and it seemed to him a perfectly natural outcome that they should revive their plans to be married. During that time there was a fairly steady stream of callers, men who were pleased that he was alive and that Josh Portfield was dead. All of them were curious about the details of the gun battle, which was fast becoming legendary, but he said nothing to dispel the notion that Portfield and his men had annihilated themselves in a sudden quarrel.

As soon as he had the house to himself, he searched it from one end to the other and found, tucked in behind his whisky jar, six slim gold bars neatly wrapped in a scrap of cloth. In keeping with his expectations, however, the big revolver—the black engine of death—was missing. He knew that Morna had decided he should not have it, and for a while he thought he might understand her reasons. There were words, half-remembered from his delirium, which seemed as though they might explain all that had happened. It was only necessary to recall them properly, to get them into sharp focus in his mind. And at first the task appeared simple—the main requirement being a breathing space, time in which to think.

Gregg got his breathing space, but it was a long time before he could accept that, like the heat of summer, dreams can only fade.