The Law of the Trigger

Chapter Seven

Two days later Owen was surprised to see Arch Deland riding across the farmyard toward the barn. It was near sundown, that time of long shadows and of pine-smelling breezes sweeping down from the wooded hills.

Owen came forward with two large buckets heavy with strained milk.

“Pretty late for you to be riding these hills alone, isn't it?” he kidded Deland.

The deputy grinned. “I'm not as thickheaded as some people think. Since I had to come this way on business, I figured I might as well make it close to suppertime.”

Owen was always glad to see his old friend. He helped Arch stable his horse in the barn, then the two men took the buckets of milk back to the house. Arch joked with Elizabeth, and teased the children until they were almost wild before finally handing over a bag of striped peppermint sticks. The old man seemed perfectly at ease and happy, but Owen, who knew him well, could look behind those pale blue eyes and see that Deland was worried.

At last, when they were alone in the parlor, smoking their pipes, Owen said, “You mentioned you had business out this way, Arch. What kind?”

“Routine investigation of a gunshot wound. Your patient still here?”

Owen shook his head, then told the deputy everything he could remember about the girl and the boy who called himself Dunc Lester.

“To tell the truth,” he finished, “I was glad when we woke up that morning and found that Leah Stringer had left us. She wasn't the easiest girl in the world to live with.”

“What about the Lester boy?” Arch asked. “Have you seen any more of him?”

Owen shook his head. “And I don't expect to.”

“Was this boy a member of the Brunner gang?”

The bluntness of the question surprised Owen. “I don't know. What makes you ask?”

“Doc Linnwood's report that he turned in to the sheriffs office. He said the boy looked suspicious, and the girl was spouting some pretty queer things while she was out of her head. He recommended that both of them be held for investigation.”

Owen was puzzled and faintly angry. “Linnwood didn't say any of this to me.” Then he felt the cold finger of uneasiness on his neck. Had Linnwood thought that he was deliberately giving aid to members of the Brunner gang? Was that the reason he had kept his report to the sheriff secret?

Now he could understand the worry behind Arch Deland's eyes. “Well,” he said, “you've waited too long to make an investigation, because they're both gone. Why didn't Will Cushman go to work on this sooner?”

The deputy smiled. “The report was put on the sheriff's desk, but Will was off visitin' in Talequah until this mornin'.”

“That's Will's bad luck. There's no way I can help him now.

“I know,” Arch said heavily. “But I wish there was...” There was something on his mind and he was searching for a way to say it. At last he said, “Owen, do you figure to come to town next Saturday?”

“Yes. The Stringer girl had us tied down this week, but we'll have to go in Saturday to buy supplies.”

Deland shook his head. “Don't do it, Owen,” he said soberly. “Anyway, don't bring Elizabeth and the children. You don't know how worked up the town is gettin' about this thing.” He chewed on his pipestem, his face bleak and expressionless.

Owen could feel slow anger tighten the muscles of his throat. “What are they saying?” he asked quietly.

The deputy shifted uncomfortably in the chair, avoiding Owen's eyes. Then, showing his own anger for the first time, Deland blurted, “It's a raw deal all around! Ben McKeever started it, I guess, but he couldn't have kept it goin' by himself. The people wanted to believe it. They have to have somebody to be mad at, so they picked you. If they're mad enough at somebody, I guess they figure they can forget the wide yellow stripes down their own backs!”

“What are they saying?” Owen asked again, softly.

“They're sayin' that you're still mad about Will Cushman beatin' you out for the sheriff's office. They're sayin' that you're givin' help to the Brunners just to make Will's job tougher.”

That was as far as Arch Deland could go. He looked up and saw Elizabeth standing in the doorway, her eyes flashing with indignation and anger. She came into the room and stood behind her husband's chair. “Mr. Deland,” she said icily, “did you come here to start trouble?”

The deputy blinked. “No, Elizabeth. I came to stop the trouble before it started, if I could.”

“It doesn't sound like it, from what I heard. It sounds to me as though you're more interested in spreading McKeever's lies than in stopping trouble.”

Owen looked sharply at his wife and then at Arch. “That's enough,” he said flatly. “It looks like you're the only two friends I've got left in this county. I don't want you fighting each other.”

But there was tenseness in the room and fear in Elizabeth Toller's eyes. When she turned and left the room, Owen said, “I'm sorry, Arch. Women get upset sometimes and say things they don't mean.”

“I know.” Deland smiled sadly. “You're a lucky man, Owen. Elizabeth loves you and that makes her protective. She thinks I'm with the others, tryin' to get you to go after the Brunners.” He shook his head, still smiling, then stood up. “It's later than I thought. I guess I won't be able to stay for supper, after all.”

Owen did not try to stop him, for he knew that they would only be uncomfortable now. They walked together to the barn, where Owen helped his friend with the rig.

“Elizabeth will see this in a new light tomorrow,” Owen said.

“Sure.” Deland nodded and rode off into the gathering dusk.

Where is it going to stop? Owen wondered angrily. He had never been faced with this kind of problem before. His enemies had always been in the minority and on the wrong side of the law; but now he felt like an outlaw himself.

At that same moment, several miles to the east, another man had his own and angry thoughts. From his place on the high, rocky shelf of the Cooksons, Dunc Lester gazed down on a small, irregular clearing that had once been his family's farm. A few days ago there had been a fine stand of young corn on that sheer slope; there had been a sturdy cabin, stockade sheds, a brush arbor. Now there was nothing.

Now there was only a scattering of ashes and a shapeless pile of charred logs where the cabin and sheds had been. The young corn had been trampled to death under the hoofs of many horses. The Lester cow lay near one of the burned sheds, a bloated, stinking corpse being picked at by a cluster of sluggish buzzards.

For days Dunc had prowled these hills like some maddened animal, looking for Ike Brunner. But Ike and the gang had disappeared. They had vacated Ulster's Cave without a trace, and had vanished into the darkness of the hills.

And now, exhausted with fatigue and the knowledge of his own helplessness, Dunc had returned to this shelf overlooking the clearing. Incredibly long shadows of the hills stretched out over the land, and a blood-red sun settled slowly behind the edge of the western world. It had been almost eleven days since he had left the girl in the hands of the ex-marshal and his wife, it seemed more like eleven years. He felt like an old man, his bones aching, his clothing torn and filthy, his brain numb with fatigue. All the Lesters were strong, stubborn men, but Dunc was almost ready to admit that he did not have the strength to fight Ike Brunner alone.

Still, his anger kept him going. For all he knew, his entire family might be dead; his ma and pa, his married sister and brother-in-law, his two young brothers and baby sister. There was no sign of life at all down there, except for the buzzards.

Dunc rubbed his sagging face and swore softly. He had not dared go down to the clearing itself because the Tanis family lived just around the slope, and Gabe Tanis was a member of the gang. A lifelong friendship with the Tanises meant little now, for there was no telling what kind of lies Ike had spread among the hill people.

And yet he couldn't just sit here on this shelf and do nothing, Dunc told himself. Damn that girl, anyway! he thought. But he knew it wasn't the girl he hated. He'd do the same thing all over again if he had to.

And he couldn't hate men like Gabe Tanis, either, for they all had their own reasons for wanting to fight, and they thought the Brunners were helping them. Dunc had thought it himself. But if they had seen the things he had seen, heard the things he had heard...

Wearily he got to his feet as darkness closed down on the hills. No use thinking about that, he warned himself. They wouldn't believe me.

And now, Tanises or no Tanises, he had to go down to that clearing and see for himself what had happened. Maybe, he thought, there'll be something down there that'll tell me where Ike has taken the gang.

Leading the shaggy, brush-scarred little bay down the rocky slope, Dunc tried to prepare himself for whatever he would find down there among the ashes. The buzzards heard him coming through the timber and beat the air frantically with their heavy wings.

As he broke out of the woods a pale high moon shone down on the clearing, and Dunc Lester stood there for a moment, sick and heavy within his soul. There was nothing familiar in this silent place heavy with the smell of death and charred logs. It was impossible to believe that this was where he had lived out most of his young life, that he had helped his pa plow and plant these fields, that he had helped build the house and sheds. In this place his oldest sister had been married, here the youngest had been born. Now there was nothing.

He tramped the fields that he had hoed a hundred times. He scattered the ashes and burned timbers of the house and sheds. He found nothing but the dead cow; even the work mule was gone.

For a moment he felt lighter and breathed freer. At least the family was still alive somewhere. But where?

Suddenly all caution vanished. Dunc turned sharply to the edge of the clearing where the bay was waiting. He took down his shotgun, broke it to make sure that it was loaded, then climbed to the saddle and took the rocky, deep-rutted trail toward the Tanis place.

Soon he could smell wood smoke from the Tanis chimney, then the orange glow of the coal-oil lamp burning in the Tanis cabin. Riding to the back of the cabin, Dunc called sharply:

“Gabe, you there?”

Almost immediately the back door was thrown open and Gabe's woman stood in the cabin entrance holding a long-barreled rifle in her two big hands.

“Who is it?”

“Dunc Lester, Sarah Sue. I want to talk to Gabe.”

“Dunc Lester!” The two words told Dunc all he needed to know about what the hill people thought of him. “Gabe ain't here,” she said harshly. “And a lucky thing for you he ain't!”

“I want to find out about my family.”

Sarah Sue Tanis was a long-faced, leather-tough woman in her early forties. She had often cared for Dunc when he was little more than a baby, but she wasn't remembering that now. “There ain't no Lesters in these hills,” she said, her voice filled with hate. “We're decent, God-fearin' folks up here, and there ain't no room among us for preacher killers or their families!”

“Preacher killers?”

“I reckon you know what I'm talkin' about, Dunc Lester. Ike Brunner told us how you shot old Mort Stringer down in cold blood and then shot young Cal in the leg when he tried to stop you! All over that no-account girl of the preacher's.”

Anger welled up in him until he felt limp and sickish. But all he said was “Is that the reason you people burned us out?”

She said nothing, but grinned in self-righteous hatred.

“Where's my family? Where'd you run them off to— you and all the other decent, God-fearin' folks around here?”

“You might look in Arkansas,” she snapped. “I don't reckon you'll find them in Oklahoma.”

An overpowering sense of helplessness dulled the edge of Dunc's anger. He knew there was no use talking to Sarah Sue Tanis o/her husband. Because Ike Brunner had brought them corn in dry years, because he had brought doctors for their sick and filled their heads full of lies, they now believed everything he told them.

Sarah Sue hadn't shot him with that long-barreled rifle because it would be too much like shooting one of her own kin, but that wasn't saying that she wouldn't shoot him the next time he came. He reined the bay around and rode toward the dark timber.

He camped that night under a sandstone overhang not far from Ulster's Cave. Wolflike, he crouched under the shelter of rock listening to the sounds of the night, wondering what he was going to do next. If he was smart, he told himself, he would light out for Arkansas and look for his folks. He would forget that he had ever lived in these hills or had been hooked up with the Brunners. That would be the smart thing to do. The only healthy thing.

But he didn't feel smart. And he didn't think he would soon forget the Brunners in Arkansas or anywhere else. And besides, there was that girl of Mort Stringer's, who had haunted his mind since the first moment he had seen her.

It was a funny thing, saving a person's life like that. It made a man feel almost like God to hold a life in his hands, knowing that it was within his power to save it or let it go. Dunc wondered if that was the reason Leah Stringer was so constantly in his mind these days, in spite of all the other things he had to plague him.

At last he untied a small gunny sack that he had brought behind his saddle, took out a handful of parched com, and began to eat. The corn had come from Owen Toller's barn, and Dunc had parched it himself when he got back to the hills. On long hunting trips or forced marches, Indians could live for weeks on corn like this. And so could a white man, if he had to.

Dunc cracked the hard, half-burned kernels between his teeth, chewing and swallowing automatically, his mind on other things. When, several days ago, he had first discovered what the gang had done to his family and to the farm, a wildness had seized him, and he had been driven by it ever since. Now, at last, fatigue had subdued the wildness. Hopelessness had blunted his anger. What was left was a quiet, pulsating hate that he knew would be with him always. All these hills were now his enemies. And Ike Brunner could not be found.

Now that he could be more rational in his mind, Dunc realized that he was probably lucky that he had not been able to find Ike Brunner. In a fight with the gang, he wouldn't have lasted five minutes.

But this knowledge did not ease the tension within hint, or put down his lust for revenge.

And still it was not revenge alone that drove him and would not let him rest. At last he was beginning to understand a little of what Ike and Cal Brunner were doing to these hill people. If the Brunners would lie to them about one thing, it stood to reason that they would lie again. Dunc thought about this. For the first time in his life he began to wonder if the hillfolks necessarily had to be always right, and the lowland people always wrong. Ike Brunner's argument that they had the right to plunder from the rich sounded good to people who were hungry and tired of being pushed around, but how much real truth was there in the argument?

To a hill boy like Dunc Lester, this was a strange trail for the mind to take. It was like a deer trace in the woods that twisted and turned and circled in upon itself and led nowhere. Still, he had glimpsed something here that bothered him. He had set out with hate for the Brunners alone, but now he was beginning to doubt the motives of his own people. His own family, for that matter.

Had his pa tried to stop him when he decided to join the Brunner gang?

Dunc smiled with vague bitterness as he remembered. His pa had given him his blessings and the only saddle horse that the family owned. “Son,” he had said, soberly shaking Dunc's hand, “we're proud of you. These Brunner boys, they've got the right idea on how to handle these outsiders!” Dunc's ma had made up a grub sack for him, and her faded eyes had glistened with pride. Her son was joining the gang. Dunc's father had presented him with his most prized possession, the, shotgun, and his brother-in-law had pitched in with a saddle.

Oh, it had been quite a day, Dunc remembered, when he first rode off to join the Brunners. He had never seen soldiers marching off to war, but that was the way it must have been, on a smaller scale.

This was a shocking line of thought for his mind to be taking, but the facts were much too clear to be ignored. A monster of the people's own making was loose in the hills. This, Dunc knew, was the core of the matter that had been gnawing at his conscience.

Then from some dark room of his mind came the memory of how, long ago, Gabe Tanis had found a young wolf pup in the woods and had brought it home. Wolves were bad in those days; they would come right up to the cabin and attack the livestock. Gabe claimed he was going to bring this wolf up like a pet and teach it to fight off the other wolves. He fed the pup the best of everything and spent hours every day training it, and people came from all over to see the pup and praise Gabe for his ingenuity. The only way to fight a wolf is with another wolf, Gabe said. But when the pup grew up it turned on Gabe and bit him through the hand, and finally it had to be shot.

Maybe, Dunc thought, the Brunner gang is working out like Gabe's wolf. At first it seemed like a good idea, but now it had turned. In one quick bite it had devoured the Lester farm and family. The harmless pup that everybody liked to pet and feed had grown into a full-sized wolf.

Dunc Lester slept fitfully that night beneath his roof of stone, and awoke the next morning stiff and sore and still bewildered in his mind. He swore at himself for showing himself to Sarah Sue Tanis. His position was much more dangerous now, for members of the gang would be out looking for him.

After a brief breakfast of more parched corn, he un-hobbled the bay and got the animal saddled. Where he would go now, he was not sure. He felt empty and defeated.

The small sound of a distant rifle punctured the quiet of the morning. Dunc came erect in the saddle, listening hard. Had some of the gang spotted him? Were they shooting at him?

This prospect did not seem likely, considering the distance separating him and the rifleman. Possibly it was a hunter after small game, but it was pretty early in the day for that. After a moment Dunc reined the bay around and headed cautiously in the general direction of the sound, and after a few minutes he heard a second shot and this time was able to pin-point the direction as due north, somewhere in a heavily wooded draw between his hill and the neighboring one.

Cautiously Dunc dismounted near the bottom of the slope, studying the woods about him. Now he saw that he was close to what had been the second outpost when the gang had occupied Ulster's Cave. He thought about this for a moment. Could it mean that the gang had moved back to this neighborhood?

Now he heard the sound of hoofs and falling rocks as another horse made its way down the side of the opposing hill. Dunc led his bay deeper into a stand of timber and tied it there. Unbooting the shotgun, he moved forward to some high ground where he could lie on his stomach and look down on the draw.

He could see nothing, but he could still hear the horse coming through the woods. Suddenly the sound of a coyote lay on the still morning air, and Dunc flattened a little harder against the ground as the voice echoed and reechoed between the hills.

For a moment there was complete silence. Then a voice called out, “I seen you, goddamn it! There's no use tryin' to hide!”

Although Dunc could not see him, he knew that the voice belonged to Wes Longstreet, the young Arkansas hellion that had belonged to the gang since its beginning. Dunc peered hard into the green umbrella of leaves and branches that spread out below, trying to see who Wes was after. He could see nothing, and the forest was quiet.

Then there Was the sound of a second horse, and a second voice called, “You got her spotted, Wes?”

Dunc heard his breath whistle between his teeth. That voice belonged to Cal Brunner! Wes called back something that Dunc couldn't understand, and then there was silence again and Dunc guessed that the two men had met and were planning what to do next.

Now he heard the two horses moving aimlessly and knew that Wes and Gal had dismounted to make the hunt on foot. But who were they hunting? As far as Dunc knew, he was the only one the gang had it in for. Maybe, he hoped, one of the other members had found out how the Brunners were using the gang for their own ends and had made a break for it.

But he doubted this, knowing how stubborn a pack of hill boys could be when they got their heads set on something. Right now they were set on the idea that Ike and Cal were their friends, and it would take a Jot more than guesswork to jar them loose from that.

He could hear the two men thrashing around in the brush at the bottom of the deep draw. “See anything yet?” Cal shouted.

“Not yet,” Wes called.

“Goddamn it!” Cal swore, and this time Dunc heard the rough edge of anxiety in the younger brother's voice. “Ike'll be fit to kill if he finds out we let her get away!”

Her? This was the first time Dunc had noticed that they were referring to the hunted person as a woman. He pondered on this, a certain tenseness straining at his nerves, a vague new worry appearing in the lines of his hard, young face. On his belly, he slipped over the top of the ridge and began crawling forward.

At last Wes Longstreet called wearily, “Hell, we'll never find her in all this brush.”

“We've got to find her!” Cal shouted angrily.

“I don't understand this. Why's Ike so het up about Mort Stringer's girl, anyway?”

“None of your goddamn business!” Cal snarled.

The two took up their search again, cursing and thrashing among the tall, tough saplings and thick weeds. Dunc Lester lay flat on the cool ground, the chill of winter spreading through him.

He told himself that it couldn't be Leah Stringer that they were looking for. Leah was back at the ex-marshal's place, where he had left her; shehad to be there!

But all the time he knew that she wasn't. She was down there in that draw somewhere, hiding in the weeds like a frightened rabbit. How she got there, Dunc didn't know. But he could feel her presence now in the singing of his nerves.

Damn it to hell! he thought angrily. I'm not goin' to take any more chances on account of that fool girl. She gets herself into these messes; let her get herself out!

And even as he thought it he began crawling forward again, dragging the clumsy shotgun along at his side. At the bottom of the draw he rolled quietly into a deep gully and lay there for a moment, listening. The gully, which had recently carried the runoff of spring rains down to the mouth of the Canadian, was still muddy and soft at the bottom, and Dunc took a moment to clean the sticky clay from his shotgun and revolver.

His common sense told him to stay right where he was and let the girl shift for herself, but he could no more do it than he could stop breathing. Because of him, Leah Stringer was still alive, and some stubborn streak in his Lester nature would not let him lie still and see all his effort go for nothing.

So he continued his crawling, this time to the north, along the sides of the boggy wash, cursing himself and the girl every inch of the way.

He could hear the two men clearly now, their swearing and tramping in the tangle of underbrush. Sooner or later, if they kept it up, they would flush Leah, no matter what kind of hiding place she had. Dunc thought of this and knew that the chances were a hundred to one against his being able to help her.

Suddenly he stopped his crawling, holding the shotgun hard in his two big hands. “Wait a minute!” Wes Long-street called.

The hills fell silent. Even the tall pines seemed to hesitate for a moment in their eternal swaying to listen. “There she is!” Wes shouted.

Dunc came suddenly to his feet, clawing his way up the slick side of the gully. The blunt, hard punch of a rifle jarred the stillness, and now Wes and Cal went crashing through the brush, converging toward a single point.

Dunc glimpsed Leah Stringer's faded short dress flashing among the trees. He yelled to her, but she was too intent on her flight to hear the warning. Swearing again, Dunc fought his way back to the gully, slipping and sliding as he struggled to get downstream fast enough to cut her off. Once more he glimpsed the fleeing girl and yelled again.

This time she saw him. She paused for a moment, her eyes wide and senseless with fear. “Down here!” Dunc yelled. “Get in the gully!”

Poised on tiptoe, breathless and frightened, she reminded Dunc of a young doe, or some white exotic bird about to take flight.

“It's me!” Dunc yelled again. “Get down in the gully!”

She must have acted on animal instinct, for there was no recognition in her eyes. She wheeled, turned toward the wash, and fell gasping with her face pressed to the wet, sticky clay. Dunc took her arm and tried to bring her to her feet, but she turned on him snarling, baring her teeth like a cornered timber wolf. Hell's fire! Dunc thought savagely as she clawed him. He heard Wes and Cal crashing down on them, only a few yards from the gully, and then he did something that no Lester had ever done before. He struck a woman.

With studied, controlled violence, he lifted the girl with his left hand. He dropped the shotgun for a moment against the bank of the gully and struck her quickly, feeling the tingle in his hard knuckles as his fist cracked sharply against her chin. He let her drop face down in the mud and did not think about her again for several minutes.

Calmly now, he recovered the shotgun and wiped the side plate on his trousers as Cal and Wes broke into the clear by the gully, Cal in front but limping badly on his wounded leg. He did not shout to them, for he knew that this was no time for talking. Methodically he lifted the shotgun and fired quickly from the shoulder at Cal Brunner.

With strange unconcern, Dunc watched Cal crumple against the thin air as though he had run into a stone wall. His arms flew out as the heavy buckshot tore into him.

Wes Longstreet was a dangerous hothead, but he was no fool. He jumped sideways with the instinct of a wild dog, fell in the heavy brush, and clawed his way back toward the trees. After a moment he yelled, “Goddamn you, Dunc Lester, you killed Cal!”

Dunc reloaded the shotgun and waited to see if Wes was going to force the play.

“Ike'll get you for this!” Wes cried wildly.

“I reckon,” Dunc said mildly, “I'm in no more trouble than I was before.” He spoke more to himself than to the man in the brush.

Wes fired once, twice, three times with his pistol, and Dunc lowered his head and let the bullets scream harmlessly over the gully. Carefully he lifted the shotgun again and fired into the brush. Wes swore and beat a hasty retreat into the woods.

Dunc stood still for a moment, thinking. He and the girl had to get out of here, and they had only one horse to do it with. There wasn't much chance of getting one of the horses that Wes and Cal had come on unless he could kill Wes first, and that was not likely. Wes Longstreet would stay where he was and come after them later, when he got his nerve worked up again.

Then Dunc began thinking in another direction. If they had to use just one horse, then it would be a lot better if Wes had no horse at all! Without looking at the girl, he hurried upstream again, stopping every few paces to listen.

Soon he heard the horses that Wes and Cal had set free to graze. There was little chance of getting to them, because he would have to cross a clearing and give Wes a „ clear shot with his rifle. But there was something else he could do.

Dunc drew his pistol and methodically emptied it at the horses, and the animals stood erect, quivering nervously, as the bullets whined like bees about them. Then Dunc raised his shotgun and fired. The horses bolted as the heavy slugs ripped through the brush, and Dunc smiled faintly as he watched them racing toward the higher peaks. That should keep Wes Longstreet grounded for a while.

Now he went back to the girl and saw that she had recovered from the blow. He thought for a moment that she was going to run from him. When he got close enough, he grabbed her.

When she began to fight him, Dunc took her by the shoulders and shook her angrily. “Ma'am,” he said tightly, “if you're just bound and determined to get yourself killed, it's all right with me. Now, do you want to go with me or do you want to wait here for Wes Longstreet to come after you? Wes ain't as good a shot as Ike Brunner, but then, maybe he'll have a better target.”

The fight seemed to go out of her. She dropped her head, leaning against the bank of the gully, and great hopeless tears welled up at the corners of her eyes and flowed down her muddy face.

It made Dunc uncomfortable to see her crying like that not making a sound, as though she were the last person left in the world. To give himself something to do, he loaded the shotgun again and blasted once more at the brush where Wes Longstreet had been, but he was sure that Wes was no longer there. At last he turned back to Leah Stringer. “I guess it's Cal Brunner,” he said heavily. “You hate me for killin' him, even though he was tryin' to kill you.”

She made no sound at all.

“Well,” he said with as much gentleness as he could summon, “I guess we might as well get out of here.” He put one arm around her, clumsily, and fed her like a small child to the far end of the wash.

The two of them camped that night in a wild-plum thicket, a full day's ride to the west. They were in the foothills now, far below and to the west of Ulster's Cave, about half a day's ride to Reunion. This was a mild country of gentle slopes and rounded peaks, of broad meadows and green valleys and not so much timber. Low-country farmers were beginning to cultivate the land up here, and occasionally you could see one of those sturdy Cherokee houses built of logs and stone, with their enormous outside chimneys, and those big rugged barns that the Indians had built here before the Civil War.

Dunc Lester was not comfortable here among all this evidence of modern civilization, but it was better than being in the hills, waiting for Ike Brunner to kill him.

He had cleared out a place in a dry wash for him and the girl, and hobbled the weary bay in the thicket. There was no use in building a fire, for there was nothing to cook. As the sun disappeared and night came down on them, Dunc opened the sack of parched corn and they ate silently. Leah Stringer had not said a word since he had brought her out of that gully almost twelve hours ago; neither had she fought against coming with him after that first outburst, nor had she cried. It was almost as though she had stopped caring what happened to her.

She had ridden behind the saddle with Dunc for twelve hours with a wound that had opened and started to bleed, but she did not complain; she did not even notice it until Dunc stopped and rebound it for her. For twelve hours he had felt the nearness of her; he had felt her cold arms around his waist and wondered what he was going to say to her when this time of silence ended.

Now the girl lay as still as death at the bottom of the wash, and Dunc sat uneasily with his back against the red-clay wall.

“Leah,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“We're pretty well out of the hills. I guess it'll be a while before Ike can find us. Is there any place in particular you want to go when we start out tomorrow mornin'?”

“No.”

In his awkward, manlike way he could guess at the bitterness that was choking her. He felt the impulse to reach out and touch her, to comfort her as he had seen his ma comfort the young ones when they got hurt. But he had never had much to do with girls before, and he was shy.

“Leah?”

She said nothing.

“Leah, my ma used to say that hate is a poison that you have to spit up or it will kill you. I don't reckon it would actually kill a body, but I've seen it do some pretty funny things.” He was thinking of burned-over fields and buildings on his home place, and his family forced to flee. “If you feel like talkin',” he said, “I reckon I'm a pretty good listener.”

For a long while she made no sound at all. Then she turned over and her pale face looked up at the darkening sky.

“He was the only thing I ever loved,” she said at last, her voice toneless and dead. “The only thing I ever got a chance to love. My pa went out of his head almost whenever he saw a boy look at me. He said I was evil, and maybe he was right. He said I was born to sin, and maybe he was right about that, too. When I laughed it made him mad. When I wanted to have a good time he claimed the devil was tempting me. So we moved away from the Indian mission, to the hills, where he claimed temptation would be removed.” Her eyes moved and she looked at Dunc for the first time. “I wanted to die,” she said.

“My whole world, my whole life,” she went on flatly, “was locked up in that clearing, walled in by trees and hills. When Ma died there was nobody but Pa, and I think he died a little, too. And then Cal came. He came ridin' out of the woods one day, tall and handsome, and when he smiled at me I didn't care if it was sin or not. And I guess it was. Sin, I mean.”

Dunc swallowed and looked up at the darkness.

“He said he'd marry me,” she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. “He said he'd take me to Arkansas and we'd live in a town where there was lots of people. But he never did it. He kept sayin' wait, and then one day Pa caught us together and shot Cal.”

The way she said it, it sounded completely impersonal, as though she were reading it from a book. Then she seemed to think of something. “Did you know that Ike Brunner killed my pa?”

Dunc nodded. “That's why Ike wanted you dead. He didn't want you to tell.”

“But Cal,” she said, still bewildered. “He tried to kill me too. I came back to the hills to find him, but when I did, he tried to kill me.”

“Cal always did what his brother told him.”

“But not any more.”

“No.”

“You killed him.”

“Yes.”

She turned her face away from him. She made no sound, and he could not see very well in the darkness, but somehow he knew that she was crying again, and he hoped that some of her bitterness would be lost in the tears.