The Lonely Men

"There are men in this town, Hadden, who would kill a man for fifty dollars, and there are others all along the border. I will give you two hundred dollars if you will bring me evidence that Tell Sackett is dead. I don't care whether you kill him or somebody else does. All I want is proof."

Hadden rested his palms on the saddle horn and chewed on his mustache. He had heard that Sackett had ridden south, but he also knew that Spanish Murphy, who had ridden with him, had told some friends in Mex town that he would be back in a few weeks.

Arch Hadden was a hard, tough man, and a bitter one. He had ridden into Tucson hunting John J. Battles, an old enemy. He had decided to kill Tampico Rocca, knowing nothing about him, because Rocca was Battles' friend and it would bring Battles out of hiding. Tell Sackett had simply been a stranger of whom he had known nothing. Since the gun battle in which Arch Hadden had been so roughly treated and one of his men had been killed, another seriously wounded, he had heard a lot about the Sacketts. He wanted to kill Tell Sackett, but he was no longer at all sure he could kill him in a stand-up gun fight. On the other hand, here was an offer of two hundred dollars, representing six months' hard work on the cattle ranges, for killing him, money it would be a pleasure to earn.

Slowly, he dug out the makings and rolled a smoke. Laura Sackett seemed in no hurry, and Arch wanted to think this thing through.

"There would be no trouble for you, Hadden," she persisted. "You have already had a fight with him. If there is another fight and you kill him, nobody would be surprised."

"Why'd you pick on me?"

"You're the obvious one. He bested you. You want him beaten or dead. You are the one who can do it and no questions asked."

"How you figure to pay me?"

"I will give you one hundred dollars now, and the other hundred will be left at the Wells-Fargo office to be delivered to you by my order."

"Won't folks wonder why you're payin' me money?"

"No. You will be rounding up and breaking four horses for me, to be delivered in El Paso. The money would be in payment for that."

Grimly, he stared at her. The derringer was still in her hand, and now he knew she would shoot if need be. Not that there would be any cause for it, but this was a dangerous woman.

"Supposin' I was to take your hundred dollars an' ride off?" he suggested.

She smiled. "Hadden, my father and I were in the land grant wars in New Mexico.

We had occasion to hire men who could use their guns. I have told you there are plenty of men along the border who would kill for fifty dollars. If you took my money without trying to make good on it, I would hire four separate killers and send them out with good rifles to get you -- and they would, Hadden."

He chuckled. "I just wondered. All right, ma'am, I'll take the hundred. I been figurin' on killin' Sackett, an' this here will pay expenses while I do it."

She rode back to town with Hadden trailing behind, and at the livery stable, before witnesses, she said, "I do not like the sorrel, Hadden, but I do want four horses delivered to me in El Paso. I will pay you one hundred dollars now, the other hundred to be paid by Wells Fargo on my authorization when the horses are delivered."

Arch Hadden stabled his horses and went outside. He rolled another smoke, lit the cigarette, and drew deeply. This was money he was going to enjoy earning. He looked around and saw Wolf approaching. "Wolf, we got us a job," he said. "We got us a good job."

Chapter 11

We passed a quiet night. Until the last of the twilight was gone I could still hear the quail. These were the Mexican blue quail that run along the ground more than they fly, oft times thirty or forty of them in a covey. Around a small fire, we talked it over. We had invaded Apache country and taken prisoners from them, so they would be on our trail, they would never let up. The horses needed rest. The deserted ranch had water and plenty of good grass, and there was a good field of fire. We decided to stay put, and that was all right with me. I'd seen no such beautiful place in all my life, and I said as much to Dorset.

"It is beautiful," she agreed, "and peaceful. I wonder they ever left ... the people who lived here."

"Apaches. They devastated this whole stretch of country. Folks tried again and again to build homes here, but they couldn't make it.

"When we leave here," I went on, "we're going to have to run. It is going to be pure hell betwixt here and the border towns."

"Why did she do it, Tell?" Dorset asked suddenly. "Why did she want you killed?"

"I don't know that she did."

"There was no Orry Sackett, Tell. Can't you see that? She lied to you. All the children are accounted for. There were the Creed youngsters and my sister. Harry had been taken long before, and there simply were no others."

This idea about Orry worried me. It was something that needed contemplating, but there was another worry in what Dorset said, for if there was no child, why send me skyhootin' into such dangerous country? Unless she did want me dead? And if she wanted me dead, would she stop with this? Suppose she tried again to kill me when I showed up alive ... if I did?

I never was much good at thinking complicated things out. Mostly I studied on situations and then went ahead and did what I would have done, anyway. When it comes to work and travel or a fighting situation, I can come up with answers, but I never was any good at figuring out why folks turned to evil.

"Dorset," I said, "I can't think of a reason why anybody should want me killed like that. Why, she might be the death of these men with me, too."

"Maybe she wants to get back at your brother. Maybe she hates the name of Sackett."

It made no kind of sense, but I had one thought a body couldn't get around. And that was that she had sent me off to Mexico after a child who I now felt sure never existed.

You might figure I could have looked around more, but not if you knew Apaches.

If any Apaches had a white prisoner it would be known to all of them. They had few secrets among themselves. So I was left with the almost certain knowledge that I'd been sent down here on a wild-goose chase that would be almost sure to get me killed.

Nor was there much I could do about it if I got back. She would simply say that I lied, that she had told me no such thing -- if she was even around to be accused.

And she would know I wasn't going to beat up a woman or shoot her. We Sacketts treated womenfolk gentle, even when they didn't deserve it.

Had it been only me, I'd have figured I'd been played for a sucker and I'd have let it go at that, though it wouldn't have been a pretty thought. But she had risked the lives of my friends.

We laid up at that deserted ranch for three days. It wasn't only that we needed the rest, or that our horses did. It was because a man who doesn't travel doesn't leave any trail. And those Apaches would be looking for a trail. They would figure that we would naturally high-tail it for the border, and when the trail was lost they'd head for the border by several trails, exchanging smokes to talk across the country. So by laying low at this ranch we left them with no trail to see, and the feeling that we had taken some other, unknown route. On the morning of the fourth day we moved out Tampico Rocca knew of a ranch twenty-odd miles west, and we headed for that, keeping off the ridges and using every trick we knew to cover our sign.

But we weren't trusting to that. We rode with our eyes looking all around all the time, and our rifles across our saddles. We rode loose and we made pretty good time all the first day, wanting distance behind us.

It was rough country. You've got to see some of that country to believe it.

Water was growing scarcer, there were fewer trees except along the river bottoms, and there was more cactus. We saw antelope now and again, and once, passing through a rugged stretch of bare rock mountains, we saw some desert bighorns. They're pretty near the finest meat the country offered, but we weren't about to shoot a rifle.

When we reached the ranch we found that it was a big one, and it lay right out in the open country, with a small stream winding past. There was a dam across the stream and a fair-sized pond had backed up behind it. Cottonwoods and other trees grew around, and a big Spanish-style ranch house was set amongst them. And it was occupied.

We drew up on the crest of a low ridge among some ocotillo and other growth and studied the layout. We weren't going to ride up to any place without giving thought to what lay before us.

Slow smoke was rising from the chimney, and we could hear the squeak of a windlass as somebody pulled water at a welL We could see a couple of vaqueros riding out of the back gate, heading for the hills to the southeast of us. They were riding relaxed and easy, sitting lazy in the saddle as if neither of them had ever known a care or the name of trouble.

We came down off the slope, riding scattered out a little until we were channeled by a lane through wide fields of planting.

"Somebody watches us." Rocca indicated a low tower, and we could see sunlight gleam on a fieldglass or telescope.

Whoever it was must have seen the children and decided we could be trusted, because the big wooden gates opened, although nobody was in sight. But as we drew closer we could see the black muzzles of the rifles that covered our approach.

We rode in through the gates and they closed behind us. At least six vaqueros were now in sight, and standing on the wide veranda, a thin Cuban cigar in his teeth, was a tall old man with white hair and an erect, proud figure.

He came down two steps to greet us, his sharp eyes taking us in with quick intelligence. I think he knew our story before I spoke, for the hard-ridden horses, and the children, one of them dressed like an Apache boy, told it.

"Buenos dias, senores," he said, and then added in English, "My house is yours."

"You may not wish us to stay, senor," I said. "We have taken these children from the Apaches, and they will be looking for us."

"They have visited us before, and with less reason. You are my guests, gentlemen. I am Don Louis Cis-neros."

"I am Tell Sackett," I said, and introduced the others.

He greeted them and then turned his eyes to me. "Yours is a familiar name," he said. "There was a Sackett who married the granddaughter of an old friend."

"That would be my younger brother, Tyrel. He married into the Alvarado family."

"Come in," he said, and as we walked into the dim coolness of the interior, he added, "We are old friends, my family and the Alvarados. I have heard much of your family, amigo. Your brother stood between Alvarado and his enemies."

Hours later, when we had bathed and eaten a good dinner at his table, we sat about smoking the Don's Cuban cigars. I was never much of a hand to smoke, but did from time to time, and this was one time I joined in.

Dorset and the children had gone off with the Don's daughters, and the boys and me we stayed with our host.

"You have a dangerous road before you. I can let you have a dozen riders," he said.

"No. You may need them. We've come this far, and we'll ride on." Sitting back in the big cowhide chair, I told him the whole story, and he listened without comment. At the end he said nothing for several minutes. "I have news of your family. I wish you could have known it sooner. The woman you speak of was married to your brother Orrin, but they have separated. She was the daughter of Jonathan Pritts, the man who led the men who tried to seize the Alvarado Grant.

It was your brother Tyrel who led the fight that defeated him, and when Orrin found his wife was involved, he left her. She has hatred for all who bear the name of Sackett. You were to be killed, amigo."

It seemed unreasonable that a woman would go to such lengths to get a man killed, a man who had done her no harm, but it all tied up into a neat package.

And there wasn't much I could do about it. Maybe the best way to get even would be just to get back alive, so all her plotting would come to nothing.

In the quiet of the lovely old hacienda, all that lay outside seemed far away, not something that lurked just beyond the adobe walls. But deep in our hearts not one of us thought himself free of what was to come.

The miles of the desert that lay between us and the relative safety of Tucson could be nightmare miles. They were ever-present in our minds, but they were a fact of our lives to be taken in stride.

Old Don Luis talked quietly and easily of the problems of living among the Apaches. As Pete Kitchen had survived north of the border, so had he survived south of it. He had his own small army of tough, seasoned vaqueros, fighters every one of them.

As he talked he glanced over at Rocca. "If you ever want a job, senor," he said, "come to me here. There is a place for you. I have two vaqueros here who grew up with the Apaches."

"It is a good place," Rocca said. "It may be that one day I shall come riding here."

Long after the others had turned in, I sat in the quiet of the old Don's study and talked with him. The walls of the room were lined with shelves of leather-bound books, more than I had ever seen, and he talked of them and of what they had told him, and of what they meant to him.

"These are my world," he said. "Had I been born in another time or to another way of life I should have been a scholar. My father had this place and he needed sons to carry on, so I came back from Spain to this place. It has been good to me. I have seen my crops grow and my herds increase, and if I have not written words upon paper as I should like to have done, I have written large upon the page of life that was left open for me.

"There is tonic in this." He gestured toward the out-of-doors. "I have used the plow and the Winchester instead of the pen and the inkstand. There is tonic in the riding, in the living dangerously, in the building of something.

"I know how the Apache feels. He loves his land as I do, and now he sees another way of life supplanting his. The wise ones know they can neither win nor last, but it is not we who destroy them, but the times.

"All things change. One species gives way to another better equipped to survive.

Their world is going, but they brought destruction to another when they came, and just so will we one day be forced out by others who will come. It is the way of the world, the one thing we know is that all things change.

"Each of us in his own way wars against change. Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.

"I have lived well here. I should like to see this last because I have built it strong and made it good, but I know it will not. Even my books may not last, but the ideas will endure. It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy."

He paused and looked at me. "You are bored with an old man talking."

"No, sir. I am learning. We are a people who have hungered after learning, Don Luis, and who have had too little of it. I mean we Sacketts. Our mountain lands had thin soil, and they gave us nothing more than just a living until we came west."

I looked at him and felt ashamed. "I can barely read, sir. It is a struggle to make out the words, and what they mean. Some I hunt down like a coyote after a rabbit. I look at those books with longing, sir, and think of all the things they might say to me."

I got up, for of a sudden there was a heavy weariness upon me. "My books have been the mountains," I said. "The desert, the forest, and the wide places where the grass grows. I must learn what I can from the reading I can do."

Don Luis got up also, holding out his hand. "Each of us must find wisdom in his own way. Mine is one way, yours another. Perhaps we each need more of what the other knows.... Good night, senor."

When I went outside I walked through the gate to smell the wind, to test the night. By the wall near me a cigarette glowed, cupped in a hand. "How goes the watch?" I asked in Spanish.

"Well, senor." He held the cigarette behind the wall in the darkness. He bowed his head and drew deep, the small red fire glowed and faded again. "We are not alone, senor. Your friends and ours, they are out there ... waiting."

So they had caught up with us. Now there would be hell to pay in Sonora.

Turning on my heel, I went back into the house. The old Don was just leaving his study.

"You have many horses?" I asked.

"All you need," he assured me.

"Can you give us three apiece? I can't pay you now, but -- "

"Do not speak of pay," he interrupted. "Your brother is the husband of my old friend's granddaughter. You may have the horses." He looked closely at me. "What will you do?"

"Your vaquero says they are waiting out there now. I think he is right. And so I think we will take our chances and run for it. We'll switch horses without stopping ... maybe we can outdistance them."

Don Luis Gsneros shrugged. "You might," he said. "I will have the horses ready at daybreak."

"An hour before," I said. "And gracias."

Chapter 12

The horses were ready and we were mounted, the children with us. The Don's men were posted on the walls to cover our going. My horse was restive, eager to be away, but I glanced around at Dorset. In the vague light her face seemed pale, her eyes unusually large. I suspected mine were the same.

"The tall pine yonder," I said, and pointed in the direction. "Ride for it, ride hard. They will be close around, with their horses well back from where. They wait. With luck, we can ride through them and be away before they can get off more than a shot or two."

Sixteen men were on the walls, rifles ready for firing. Other men stood by the gates, prepared to swing them open.

Don Luis walked over to me and held up his hand, and I took it. "Vaya con dios, amigo," he said gravely, and then he lifted a hand to the men at the gates and they swung them wide.

We went through the gates with a rush at the same instant as all sixteen men fired. Some had targets chosen, having spotted lurking Apaches, others fired at bits of likely cover.

We hit the trail running, with Spanish Murphy and myself in the lead. I saw the dark form of an Apache rise up almost directly before me and chopped down to fire with my pistol, but the horse struck him and knocked him rolling. A hoof spurned his body, and then we were past and running, with the vaqueros on the wall picking targets from those we drove from hiding.

The tall pine was a mile off, and we rode directly for it through the half-light of the early dawn. We covered that mile at a dead run, slowing to a trot as we neared the tree. I glanced around swiftly.

"How is it? Are we all here?" I asked.

"I was the last one," Battles said. "We all made it."

"Anybody hurt?"

"They burned my shoulder," Rocca said. "It is nothing."

So I led them away at a fast trot for a little way, then I ran the horses again for a good half-mile, slowed to a trot and then a walk, then ran them again.

At noon we drew up at a small seep that came from the base of a grass-covered dune. We watered our horses, exchanged saddles to fresh horses, and pushed on.

We kept a good pace, riding wide of any places of ambush, and watching for dust clouds. There were bandits as well as Indians to be feared, and there were soldiers, too, who might resent our being here. All this while the children did not cry, they did not once call out. The Apaches had taught them that, if nothing more.

At midafternoon we rode into a deserted village. The ruins of a large adobe still stood, and a half-completed church. There was water running in an irrigation ditch.

In a corner of one of the houses was a skeleton, still half-clothed, of a Mexican who had died fighting. The left arm of the skeleton showed a break that had mended badly, leaving the arm shorter and crooked.

Tampico looked at it then at the dried leather of the holster on which an initial had been carved. It was a large B.

"So this is where it happened, Benito," he said, and then glancing around at me, he said, "I knew him. He was a bad one, but brave."

We made coffee there, and a hot soup from the jerked beef, and some corn, potatoes, and onions found in the deserted fields, now gone to weeds. We ate quickly, but we ate well.

Spanish wiped his hands on his chaps and looked at me. "Let's be gettin' on," he said. "There's a smell of death about this place."

John J. Battles was already in his saddle, waiting. We mounted up and moved out, riding fresh horses again, so as to use none of them too hard.

It was hot and still in those late hours of the day, and the dust did not rise.

Suddenly Murphy indicated a place on the horizon where a blue-gray finger of smoke made a question mark against the mountains. It was ahead of us off to the east. We knew what it meant, and we pressed on, picking up the north star for guiding, following it as best we could, with what the terrain offered. After midnight we stopped among some willows and made dry camp in an arroyo.

Short of daybreak we were in the saddle again, and pushing on. We passed a village off to our right.

"Tres Alamos," Rocca said. Three Cottonwoods ... it was the name of many villages. Later we passed near another village, but avoided it, for there was no time for answering questions, and they would not like us bringing the Apaches on them. This was Senokipe -- hollow tree. I loved the names the country gave, the sound of them made music to the ear. Santa Rosalia ... Soledad ... Remedies ...

Soyopa ... Nacori ... Chimala ... Kiburi. Okitoa, a sparrow hawk's nest, Batuco, a waterhole, Cumuripa, a rathole ... Matape, the red cliff, and Bacadeguatzi, meaning "at the white mountain." The men who came first to this land used the names descriptive of it, the names that grew as naturally from the land as the cottonwood, the willow, or the ocotillo. Dawn came up in crimson light over the eastern mountains, it flushed the mountainsides with a kind of dull flame.

"I don't like it," Rocca muttered gloomily. "It looks like blood."

In the next hour we counted three smokes ... three and an answering smoke.

We stopped at a small creek, watered the horses, and shifted saddles.

"If anything goes wrong," I said to Dorset, "you take the children and ride for the border. Harry can handle his own horse and one of the youngsters."

Rocca turned in his saddle. "I can smell Apaches. They have been by this way, and not long since."

Murphy chuckled. "You're dreamin', boy. Nobody can smell that good."

"They have been here," Rocca insisted. "And they will come again."

Now that we were further north, the grass was sparser, there were bare sandhills, and the bare brown-red rock of the mountains was streaked with the white of quartz. The sun was hot two hours before noon. The air was still, nothing stirred anywhere. Dancing heat waves emphasized the dead quiet.

My skin crawled. Again and again I shifted my rifle to wipe the sweat from my hands. Sweat streaked the dust on the faces of my companions, and the sweat trickling down my spine was cold and clammy under the slight stir of wind. I tried to assay our chances and came up empty.

John J. Battles suddenly spoke. "I'd like to see the leaves turning red and gold again, and hear the wild geese honk."

"You're thinking of a northern land," Spanish Murphy said. "I remember a time like that in Wyomin'. I drove a herd east from Oregon."

Dorset edged close to me. "Tell," she said softly, "do you think we'll make it?"

I did not want to talk, it was a time for listening. "We've had luck so far," I answered.

We switched horses again and pushed on through the nooning time -- four bold but lonely men, a girl scarcely become a woman, and the youngsters, four of them.

With the spare horses, three per rider, and our pack horse, we made a solid bunch. Our other pack horse had long since been lost.

Somewhere, still far off to north of us, lay the border, a thin line drawn on maps, and a thin line in our consciousness, but a strong one across our lives.

North of it there might be help. And further north still there was sanctuary.

We slowed the horses to a walk. It was very hot. The sun was lost in a brassy sky.

I think we all knew that the Apaches would come. We could elude a few, but we could not elude them all. The Apache had no regard for horse flesh. He would ride a horse to death and then eat him, so he rode often at a killing pace. And there were the talking smokes, speaking across the distance.

I did not hate the Apache. He was my enemy as I was his because of the time and the circumstances, but he was a fighting man, and a strong man who endured much to live in this country. If they captured us they would kill us. There would be torture for the men, worse perhaps for the girl, but it was their way of life, and you judge each man by his time and his way of life.

We walked our horses while the saddles creaked, and we blinked our eyes to see past the sting of the salty sweat trickling into them. Dark stains showed on our shirts. We drank water from our canteens, and kept on.

We knew there was a waterhole ahead. Rocca knew where it lay, Spanish knew, and I knew. We thinned out as we rode nearer, and we cut for sign, but found none.

We could see a cottonwood up ahead, and a small clump of willows. Off to the east, fifty yards or more from the waterhole, rose a bare upthrust of rocks perhaps half a mile long, and not more than a hundred yards wide for most of its length.

Pulling up, I studied those rocks. "That waterhole now," I said. "If somebody was up in those rocks anybody at the waterhole would be a sitting duck."

"We got to have water," Murphy said.

Glancing around, I saw a separate small island of rocks rising perhaps from a buried spur of the ridge. "You folks hole up over younder," I said, "and I'll take three horses and the canteens and ride over there for water. You cover me.

If any shooting starts, you open up on the ridge over there. I'll water the horses, and fill the canteens."

Leading the horses, I rode to the waterhole. There was a desert wren singing in the willows, and the cotton-wood leaves were rustling, as they do in the slightest breeze. Some quail sifted away through the low brush as I approached, the horses quickening their pace as they neared the water.

If there were Apaches near they would surely have seen my friends take their rifles and get down among the rocks, and they would be almighty sure to know that meant trouble if they opened fire. But it was a shaky business, a-setting out there on a horse, letting the other ones take the time to drink, and just a-waiting for a bullet.

After a bit I got down, went around the waterhole, and began filling canteens.

First off, on coming up to the waterhole I'd taken notice of the ground, and saw coyote, bighorn, and wild horse tracks, and the track of a desert fox, too, but no tracks of anything human. That didn't mean a whole lot. An Apache, if he figured there were white men around, would never go near a waterhole unless he was dying of thirst. He would just hole up some place close by and wait.

One by one I filled the canteens, getting a drink myself in the meantime, and then I mounted up and rode back and took the rest of the horses.

It was an eerie sort of thing, watching the horses dip their muzzles into the water and drink, and listening to that wren in the brush. I could see a place where some javelinas, the wild pig of the desert, had been bedded down.

When the last horse had drunk his fill, I gathered the reins on the black and put a boot into the stirrup. I started to swing up, but something glanced sharp across my eyes and I let go the pommel and dropped.

The bullet, timed for my swing into the saddle, clipped a twig where my head would have been, had I not been warned by that flash of sunlight on a rifle barrel.

On one knee I aimed and fired, my shot echoing those fired by my bends among the rocks, and they all hit within inches of where the Apache had been. Then I was in the saddle and racing the horses back to the rocks. In an instant we were all riding, and another shot hit the sand behind us.

"Only one," Rocca said, "but he'll send up a smoke."

"Maybe we got him," Spanish said.

"We'd have to have luck. We worried him, but I don't think we got him."

We glanced back, and in another minute saw a thin column of smoke rising. We looked at it, but nobody made any comment. The horses were slowed to a walk -- they might need to run later. We traveled down an arroyo that left no tracks to speak of, the deep sand obliterating all but indefinite hollows.

We went down across a desert flat and into several parallel ranges of bare ridges, their slopes partly covered with the drift sand. The ridges gave us a little cover, and we stepped up the pace.

The children were very tired now. The endless motion of the horses had lulled them into a state where nothing mattered but a longed-for end of it. As for the rest of us, we lived by the moment, counting on nothing more, knowing that the worst might still lay before us.

Dorset came close to me, and for some time we rode side by side without speaking. Suddenly, about half a mile off to our right, we saw a rider. It was an Apache, but he made no effort to close the distance, simply holding a course parallel to our own. A few minutes later another appeared, to our left.

"They're closing in." Battles lit a cigar, squinting his eyes through the smoke.

"I think they've got some place in mind, somewhere up ahead."

Tampico stood in his stirrups, scanning the country around. "We'll turn west," he said.

We wheeled quickly and charged in that direction, spurring our horses for speed, and drove right at the man on that flank.

For a startled instant I think the Apache had no idea what to do, and then he fled off to the northwest as fast as his pony could carry him.

We kept on west at top speed, wanting to cover ground before they could adjust to our change of direction and pace. We dipped into a hollow dotted with clumps of ocotillo and prickly pear, and charged down it, out of sight of the Apaches for at least a mile. Then we rode up a shallow wash and out on the flat above.

There were at least a dozen Apaches off to the east, riding on a course that would join with ours somewhere ahead. Others were coming up behind, and to the west we could see another party coming along fast to head us off.

Me, my eyes were taking in the country around. We were being boxed. "All right,"

I said, "we'll run!"

And we ran.

I figure we all knew we were up against it then. They knew we had been swapping saddles, but now they weren't going to give us a chance to do that. They were going to run us the way they'd run wild horses, in relays. If we stopped they'd move in and surround us, so we had to run. And they knew where we were running to.

Oh, they were sly, all right, cunning as wolves. Ahead of us a canyon mouth suddenly opened, a wide, shallow canyon like some of those in western Texas, with sides sloping steeply up to a sheer rock wall about thirty or forty feet high. The Apaches closed in on the sides, driving us into that canyon like into a trap. And we knew it would be a box canyon, with a dead end somewhere up ahead.

"Slow down," I said. "Rocca, we got to find us a place up on the slope, somewhere open to the top."

A shot rang out and one of our horses stumbled and fell. I swore. Nobody ever likes to see a good horse die, but this one would be eaten by the Apaches.

They had fallen behind now, but they were in the canyon top, which was over four hundred yards wide at this point. There was a thin trickle of water in the bottom, at the east side.

We were almost abreast of what looked like a means of escape before we saw it -- hollow up near the rim, a sort of half-basin scooped out by some fall of rock, followed by erosion. Pulling up, I pointed. "We're going up there."

"It's a trap," Rocca said. "We'll never get out of it."

"It's a place to stand and fight from," Battles answered, looking up. He wheeled his horse and started up the slope.

He rode left for about fifty paces, leading the pack horse, then back right, riding a switchback trail he was making himself.

Tampico Rocca was already down behind some rocks, and I dropped beside him. "Go on up," I told Dorset. "At the top you'll have to lead your horse, but keep going."

She was not one to ask unnecessary questions. She knew what Rocca and I were set to do, and she wasted no time. John J. Battles was already halfway up, and he was on his feet, leading his struggling horses. Harry Brook, with one of the Creed boys, was right behind him, but being lighter they could stay on the horses.

Spanish Murphy was waiting. Winchester in his hand, and when Dorset passed him he followed, leading the other horses. They strung out on the trail, making quite a cavalcade.

"Tamp," I said, "there's a steep fall of rock, a sort of watercourse, to the left of where they are going up. It will be steeper but faster."

"Bueno," he said, and looked around at me. "It has been a good race. A very good one, I think."

The Apaches were coming closer -- there must have been at least thirty of them.

Again I glanced at the slope, checking out the route, the possible cover, the quickest way to the hollow up under the rim. It was farther up there than it looked, and already the others were looking a lot smaller, but they still had a way to go.

One of the Apaches was trying to climb the slope behind us. Rocca tucked the butt of his Winchester against his shoulder, held his aim for an instant, and fired. We saw the Apache slip, half fall, then catch himself and turn his horse away from us.

We waited. The other Indians were scattering out now. We fired, choosing our targets, but we could not see whether we scored or not. But all the Apaches in sight went to the ground.

Rocca ducked back, running swiftly from rock to rock. He was an Apache again himself, swift and daring, yet sure. He paused once, shot quickly, then ran on.

I balanced my Winchester in my hands, took a quick glance toward a bunch of brush and rocks about thirty feet away, and ran for it. A bullet kicked dust just ahead of me ... another ricocheted off a rock with an angry snarl, a nasty sound, the flattened bullet could have made an ugly wound.

Crawling a dozen feet, and scrambling through the brush, I got up again, rounded a boulder, and was in plain sight of them. I brought my rifle up swiftly. An Apache was running straight toward me when I stepped out, but before he could stop or hunt cover, I squeezed off my shot.

He was not seventy yards away and was facing full toward me, and there was no way I could miss. The bullet caught him running, and he took two steps before he pitched on his face in the gravel of the slope.

Up the watercourse I could hear scrambling feet, and I ran that way. I was taking long strides, leaping from rock to rock like a mountain goat, with lead spattering around me. Once I lost my footing, my heel skidded off a water-worn boulder, and I was pitched into the sand. I came up fast and felt a bullet snatch at my hat as I fired ... and missed.

The Apache I'd seen was gone. The one I had killed was still lying back there on the gravel.

My breath was tearing at my lungs but I scrambled on up, crawling over boulders, pulling myself from rock to rock. From time to time I was out of their sight.

Suddenly Rocca was right ahead of me. He turned to speak and I saw the bullet catch him. It dusted him on both sides, and he squatted suddenly on his haunches with blood coming from his side, staining his shirt.

He let go of his rifle and started to fall forward, but I caught him.

Ahead of us was about sixty yards of talus slope, and then the hollow toward which we'd headed.

When I caught Rocca I just naturally let him fall across my shoulders, catching hold of his collar with my right hand. My Winchester was in my left, and I reached down and got a finger through the lever on his rifle and lunged up straight. Then I started up the slope.

That struggle up, with Rocca across my shoulders, my breath most gone, and those bullets coming toward us from behind ... I never want to do that again.

Somehow I made it, and then stumbled and sort of fell into the hollow. Somebody lifted Rocca off my back, and I saw he'd been hit at least one more time.

Gasping for breath, I stared around me. They were all there, Dorset, the children, Murphy, and Battles, and the horses. And now there was us two.

"The trouble is," John J. Battles said, "we're trapped. There's no way out."

Chapter 13

The hollow was nowhere more than seventy or eighty feet across, and the side up which we had come spilled over in a slope of broken rock and gravel. Elsewhere the sides sloped up steeply in banks of blown sand and gravel, littered with broken rock from the escarpment above, and dotted with sparse brush. The sheer wall above varied from eight feet in height to twice that.

Our rifles could command the slope down to the canyon where the Apaches now were. With no trouble, one or two men could prevent them from reaching us. On the other hand, if they reached the top of the mesa above us, we could be picked off at their leisure.

My eyes searched the rim. It was cracked and broken, and there were places where a man might be able to reach the top, but no place where a horse could go up.

Dorset was working over Rocca, she had him resting as easy as he could, and she was stopping the blood. Harry Brook, needing nobody to tell him, had bunched our horses at the back of the hollow, out of rifle shot from below. The children were huddled together, watching with wide eyes. Nobody was saying anything, but our situation looked bad. We had water enough for a day, perhaps two.

Slowly, I got to my feet. I said, pointing to the rim, "I'm going to find a way out of this hole."

"Wings." Rocca spoke around the cigarette Dorset had lighted for him. "You would need wings."

"Spanish," I said, "you an' Battles stand 'em off. I'm going up yonder."

They studied the wall. "That's more of a climb than it looks," Spanish said.

"But we'd better have somebody up there to hold them back."

I started up the slope, angling across it for easier going. It took all of ten minutes to get to the foot of the escarpment.

On the rock wall I came to one of the cracks I'd seen from below. It was a foot wide at the bottom, widening above to maybe three feet. Here and there a few broken slabs of rock had fallen into it and become wedged. A man could climb out of it all right, but he surely couldn't take a wounded man up that way, so I worked my way along the face.

First thing I saw was a lion track, or maybe it was a jaguar's. There were a lot of those big spotted cats in Sonora, you even saw one in Arizona or California time to time.

The tracks, which were several days old, led right along the face and I followed them, studying every break in the rock that I came to. When I'd gone almost around the basin, the tracks suddenly disappeared.

Now, even a cat, tricky as they may be, can not vanish into thin air, so I contemplated the problem.

That cat had come up from the canyon below, and he surely wasn't going back down. The last set of tracks showed the hind feet dug in a mite, and it looked as if the cat had taken a jump. Then I saw a rock where he might have landed.

From where I stood the rock's face was sheer, but the edge, about six feet above my head, was broken, and the cracks were filled with talus.

I realized I couldn't, even by jumping, reach the edge, but when I climbed up on a small rock I could see scratches on the big one I wanted to reach, and there were so many scratches that it looked as if that cat had used this trail a good many times.

Hunting for foot-holds, I found a couple and managed to scramble onto the big rock. There was a crack in the rock that led to the rim in a steep slide, filled with broken rock. In a few minutes I was up on top of the mesa, which stretched away for miles. Here there was thin grass, a few clumps of prickly pear, and the cat tracks, fading away to the northwest.

From where I now stood I could not see the hollow, but only the further rim of the canyon and some of the bottom. There were no Apaches in view, and it was likely none of them could see me.

I went back down into the crack and studied it. It would be a steep scramble, but I'd taken horses up worse places. If I could just get them over that first rock ...

As I was easing down bit by bit so as to keep out of sight of the Apaches, I heard a rifle shot from below. That worried me none at all. No Apache was going to climb up that slope with a rifle up there, no Apache was fool enough to try.

Chances were some Indian showed himself to test us out and Spanish or Battles let him have one to know we weren't asleep.

What I needed now was to be able to figure out a way to get the folks out of that hole. And it was surely up to me. Dorset and the children aside, the boys with me had come just because they were my friends and knew I needed some help.

That big rock was the thing. There were cracks in it, but none very deep that I'd noticed, so I worked my way back for a closer look. On one side it was cracked and broken, and I began digging at it, hoping to dig out enough so that a couple of horses might scramble up or be hauled up.

First, I pulled out several chunks of rock that were in the crack, big pieces of fifty or sixty pounds. With a call to look out below, I tumbled them over. For almost an hour I worked at it.

The Apaches had taken no action against us, and that gave me hope. None of them had taken off to ride around and get up above us, and as they knew the country, maybe they knew it was miles before there was a way out of that barranca.

Down below me occasional shots sounded, and the Apaches fired a time or two. The way I was fixed they couldn't see me, nor what I was doing. They knew better than anybody that there was no help I could can on, and no matter what I did they'd have my scalp sooner or later. But I planned to make them work for it. If they wanted my hair they'd have to get it the hard way.

So I kept on at the rock, and unloaded a good many chunks of it.

A long, thin slab formed one side of the crack I was digging into. It was all of six or eight feet long, and must have weighed a ton or more, but as I dug down around it I could see it was a free slab, broken clean off the main rock.

There were a few loose rocks at the base, and I climbed down and pulled them free. I had me an idea now, and I didn't figure to give up on it. In a time and place like that, you gamble on any wild-haired chance. We were boxed in, the Apaches were down below, and they were willing to wait. We had water enough for a while, and ammunition enough for quite a fight, but that wasn't going to get us out of here.

The sun beat down on my back and my shirt was wet with sweat, but I'd never done anything much in my life but work hard, and didn't know any different. Besides, we Sacketts were a right stubborn folk. We just didn't have much give-up in us.

We always kept plugging away, and that's what I was doing this time.

Finally, when I'd done what I could in the hole, I climbed up and did what I'd been figuring on. I got into the top of that crack, put my back against one side, and my feet against the other, which bowed up my knees. Then with my hands braced against the rock behind me, I began to push.

The sweat broke out on my face and rolled down me in streams. Nothing happened -- nothing at all. I rested a mite and then I tried again. It was on the third try that I felt her give a mite. So I buckled down and tried still another time, and she gave a bit more.

Rocks and gravel trickled down into the hollow below, and then Battles climbed up there to help.

He studied the layout and shook his head. "I don't believe it. Even if you can do it, what then?"

"I figure our number's up," I said. "Not that I don't figure to make them earn it with blood, but that girl now -- she's got to have a running chance. She's got to get out, and those children."

He squatted on his heels and looked at me. "So?"

"That little buckskin, now. That's a mountain horse, a mountain mustang, and I figure she could climb a tree if need be. The girl's horse is another. Both of them are small, both are quick and smart. I think we might, if we can make any sort of a way to, get the girl and those youngsters out of here. Might even be a chance for us."

He studied the layout again. If that slab toppled over, it would leave a steep slide of gravel and broken rock. With a couple of husky men pulling and a horse scrambling, it might work. With one horse on top and a rope around the pommel, we might get another out.

Battles got down into the crack and scraped some good footing for himself, and then put his shoulder against the slab. Together we pushed, we strained. Of a sudden she gave. I slid lower to get a better purchase, and we tried it again.

She tilted a bit, then stuck. Try as we might, we couldn't push that slab any further.

We backed off and studied the situation, and John J. kept looking at that crack.

It was a whole lot wider than it had been, and slanted steeply down to the gravel slope below.

He looked at the crack, and then he looked at me again. "Shall we try it?" he asked.

Well, now. It was almighty steep, but it was all we had. I'd seen wild horses scramble up some steep slopes, but none as bad as this -- but with a little help ...

We went back down into the hollow below where the others waited, and I took a long pull at a canteen. When I looked up to where we'd been it fairly turned my stomach. What we needed was a set of wings.

I saw that they had rigged a little shade for Rocca -- a poncho over a couple of rocks, propped up with a stick. I went over and squatted down beside him. "I'm hit pretty hard, amigo," he said.

"You'll make it."

He looked up to the rock where I'd been. "What you got in mind?"

"That's the only way out for the two little horses, the girl and the youngsters.

That girl's got savvy. Get them out of here, and she's a good bet to make the border."

"I keep thinkin' of that ranch back yonder," Rocca said, "of those trees, an' the grass."

"It was quite a place."

"If a man had to die, that would be the best he'd be likely to find. I figure heaven must be like that. Not that I'm likely to make it." He looked at me.

"When you going to try it?"

"It's coming on for evenin'. I think we'll try then."

He closed his eyes. "Wish I could help."

Dorset came over and I laid it out for her. We were going to try to get them out, and she was to light a shuck for the border, hiding out by day, riding in the evening or early morning. But she already knew what she needed to do.

She didn't ask any foolish questions, either. She knew what was likely to happen here, and she knew what we needed was a miracle.

"When you get back," I told her, "you might write a letter to Tyrel Sackett, up in Mora. You tell him about it. Tell him about Laura, too -- how she sent me down here on a wild-goose chase."

"I'll do that," Dorset said quietly. "When it comes to that, I may go to see her myself."

"Leave her be. She's poison." It was no trouble for Dorset, Harry Brook, and the other youngsters to get to the top. Children are good at scrambling in rough places, and they took it as a lark. While Battles stood guard after, it was up to Spanish and me to get the horses up.

The little buckskin was quick and nimble. She climbed the gravel slope with me leading on the bridle, and though she went to her knees once, she made it. But when I looked up at that crack in the rock, I had my doubts.

Knowing the route, I went ahead, leading the buckskin. Spanish came along behind, but when I climbed into the crack the mustang pulled back and just wasn't having any part of it.

Spanish, he was right behind her, and he took off his sombrero and hit her a lick across the behind. She was almighty startled and gave a big jump, and before she knew what had happened she had her front feet on the crack and her hind feet scrambling for a grip on the slope.

Me, I tugged at the bridle. Spanish hit her another lick with his hat and she scrambled into the crack. There we held up for a mite, to catch our wind.

It was the cool of evening now, with the sky still pale blue in the far-off place where the sun had gone down, but overhead there were a few stars. Sitting back there on a rock, holding the bridle, I took long, deep breaths of that cool air.

All of a sudden the mare decided she wasn't too almighty comfortable standing spread out on the steep side of a hill, so of her own notion she scrambled a few steps higher, then stopped, and we let her be. It was still a far piece to the top.

After we'd all caught our breath we started on, and it was a struggle. But little by little we scrambled up until at last we got on top. By that time it was full dark and we still had the other horse to bring up.

Battles was down there alone, or as good as. Rocca was in no shape to lend a hand, and might be asleep. The Apaches didn't attack at night as a rule, for they had the notion that if a man was killed in the darkness his soul would wander forever in darkness. But if they did try coming up that slope in the dark, Battles could never hold them.

Leaving Dorset with the mare and the youngsters, Spanish and me made our way back into the basin. By the time we reached the bottom we were so almighty tired we were staggering, and we just naturally caved in. John J. reported no movement as far as he knew of. Rocca was sleeping. He had lost a lot of blood, and we had no way of treating a wound. Up on the mesa we might find one of the herbs the Indians used, but down here there was nothing.

Spanish worked a hollow for his hip in the sand and went to sleep. After I took John J.'s place, he did the same.

It was still, and overhead the stars were bright as they can only be in a desert sky. A coolness came up from the barranca below, and I listened for any whisper of sound, struggling against my own weariness and the need for sleep. But a few minutes of sleep might mean death for all of us. Only my wariness stood guard, and the thought of them trusting me.

A long while later, Spanish came to me. "You better get a little sleep," he said, "but if we're figuring on getting that horse up the mountain, it won't be much."

There was no need for me to move. I just let go and closed my eyes, and when I woke up it was with a hand on my shoulder.

"They're stirrin' around down there," Spanish said, "and it's gettin' on toward dawn."

"You two hold 'em," I said, getting up. "I'll take that other horse up the mountain."

"Alone? It can't be done."

"It's got to be," I said. "The Apaches will figure it out if we wait. Maybe they already have."

John J. was on his feet, his gun belted on and his Winchester in his hand, a spare cartridge belt draped over his shoulder.

"If it gets bad, pull back to Rocca here, and make a stand," I said. "I'll get back as soon as I can."

He indicated the horses. "Do you think we could make a break for it? Down the slope and right into them, shooting all the while?"

It was a thought, and I said so, but I told him no, not yet. Then I went and caught up the other mustang and headed for the slope. Oddly enough, Dorset's horse took to it as if it was home country. More than likely she could smell the other horse, and knew it had gone this way. Maybe she could also smell Dorset.

Wild horses can follow a trail as good as any wolf -- I've seen them do it many a time. And the other horse, with us working to help, had maybe made the trail a little better.

The horse had to struggle, and I tugged and braced myself and pulled, and that game little horse stayed right with it. With daybreak tinting the sky, we made it to the rim.

And then we heard the shots. Somebody down there was using a Winchester.

We heard the chatter of the rifle, then a few slower, paced shots. There was silence, then another shot.

The children were wide-eyed and scared, but they were pioneer youngsters, and no telling the trouble they'd seen before this. Dorset stepped into the saddle and I taken her hand.

"Ride," I said, "and stay with it. Hide out by day, ride by night," I told her again. "Don't shoot unless they get close, and then shoot to kill. I figure you're going to make it. We can hold them a day or two."

She put her hand on mine. "Tell, thank them for me, will you? All of them?"

"Sure."

The shooting down there was steady now. They needed me down there. I knew how Apaches could come up a slope. Nothing to shoot at but a few bobbing, flashing figures, you scarce saw them when they vanished, appeared again elsewhere, and came on.

Dorset knew it, too. She turned her horse, lifted a hand, and they rode off into the coming morning. I taken one look and then I hit the slope a-sliding. Far below I could see the Indians.

Battles was on the rim, bellied down behind rock slabs. Far off, near the stream, I could see the Apache ponies, but nothing was moving on the slope.

Behind Battles I could see Spanish, and he was rolling some rocks into place, lifting others, making a sort of rough wall from where John J. was firing to where Rocca was lying. He was getting set for a last-ditch fight, and the lay of the land sort of favored our position by being a mite lower than the rest of the hollow.

Of a sudden an Apache came up from behind a rock and started to move forward, and my Winchester came up as if it moved of its own will, and I taken a quick sight and let go.

High on the slope the way I was, right under the rim, I had a good view of what lay below. That Apache was a good three hundred yards off and lower down, but I held low a-purpose and that bullet caught him full in the chest.

He stopped in his tracks and Battles shot into him, getting off two fast shots before he could drop, but when he did drop he just rolled over and lay sprawled out, face up to the sun.

A number of shots were fired at me, but all of them hit the slope a good fifty feet below me, and I decided right then I was going to stay where I was.

It stayed quiet then, and slowly the afternoon drew on. Our horses had been bunched by Spanish so that they were close to Rocca, and the position seemed pretty good unless the Apaches decided to attack by night. But I kept on thinking about what we might do. There had to be a way out.

Now, my pappy was always one for figuring things. He told me time and again that when in a difficulty a body should always take time to contemplate. "The only way folks got to where they are," he'd say, "was by thinkin' things out. No man ever had the claws of a grizzly nor the speed of a deer -- what he had was a brain."

Right now we had here a stalemate, but it worked in favor of the Apache. It worked for him because he had access to plenty of water and grass, which we did not have.

And I knew the Apache would no longer wait. He'd be scaling that rimrock himself, and without horses he could get up there all right, although it would take some doing. We could figure on having them above us by the next daybreak, and then that hollow would be nothing but a place to die in.

We had to make it out of there, and right now. Nobody expects to live forever, but nobody wishes to shorten his time. Of course, a body never knows which turn will shorten it. Like when a bunch of us boys went off to the war we left a friend behind who paid a substitute. We all came back, safe and sound, but the one who stayed home was dead -- thrown from a horse he'd ridden for three years ... scared by a rabbit, it jumped, and he lit on his head. So a man never knows.

Only if we didn't get out of this place we weren't going to be laying many plans.

Up there where I was, I began to give study to the country around.

I knew that getting the rest of those horses up to the top was an unlikely chance. In the first place, most of them were larger and heavier, and altogether harder to handle than the two we had got out. We might just possibly get one horse up, or even two. We would never make three or four.

So I cut that out of my thinking. Somehow we had to get out by going downhill, and that meant riding right through that bunch of Apaches ...

Now, wait a minute, I told myself. There to the right ... that's a slide of sand, but there's a mixed lot of growth in it There don't seem to be so many large rocks. I studied it as carefully as the light would allow.

If we could just ... I began to see how we, or some of us, might make it. If we stayed here none of us would make it through tomorrow.

I was going down there right now and face them with it. Only first there was that Apache off to the left. He had been coming up the hill for the last half-hour, creeping, crawling, out of sight more than two-thirds of the time, but always getting closer. Now when he moved again ...

Settling myself into the sand, I braced my elbow and taken a careful sight. Then I waited. His foot moved ... I waited.... Then he lunged into view and I squeezed off my shot. He never even twitched.

Chapter 14

When I came sliding into the hollow Spanish looked at me. "Was I you, I'd still be travelin' " he said. "It don't look like we're goin' no place down here."

"I've got an idea," I said.

He searched my face. "Well, you Sacketts have come up with some good ones. I hear tell whenever one of you boys are in trouble, the rest come a-runnin'. I'd like to see that now. I surely would."

"They don't know where I'm at."

John J. was stuffing a pipe. He looked haggard and honed down. I hadn't the heart to look at Rocca yet.

"What's this idea?" John J. asked. "Right about now I'll buy anything."

"Yonder," I said, "there's a corner of slope that's mostly free of big rocks.

There's some grass and some brush, but it's low stuff, and the sand looks as if ifs packed."

"So?"

"Come nightfall we mount up. We stampede the horses down that slope into the Apache camp and we go with them. Only we keep on riding."

Battles gave study to it Spanish, he just looked at me. "How many do you think would make it?" he asked.

"Maybe none ... maybe one."

Battles shrugged. "Well, it's no worse than here. At least we'd be trying."

"What about Tamp?" Spanish asked.

"He isn't getting any better, is he? How much chance has he got here?"

"None at all."

"All right. So we get him into a saddle. You put that Mex on a horse and he'll ride it to hell and gone. I know him. If we get him up in a saddle he'll stay there as long as any of us, dead or alive."

"All right," Battles said, "I'll buy it. What do we do?"

"Pick your best horse. We'll load the pack horse. Maybe he can stay with us, maybe he can't. Maybe hell follow and catch up. You know how horses like to stay together."

We sat about there, chewing on jerked beef and trying to see all the angles, but there wasn't much we could do but trust to luck. We could hold to the far side of the bunch away from the Apache camp, although that might be the worst thing, for there'd likely be Apaches sleeping around, or watching from everywhere.

Time was a-passing, but we daren't do anything to let those Indians know what we were planning. Saddling up had to be done after dark, and all we could do would be to pray none of them got up on the rimrock before night came on.

Tampico Rocca was lying there with his eyes open when I sat down beside him.

"You don't have to tell me," he said. "I heard you talking."

"You reckon you can set up there like I said?"

"You get me into the saddle, that's all I ask. That and a couple of shotguns."

"You'll have them."

We sat quiet then for a quite a spell. It was almighty hot, and even sitting still the sweat trickled down my body. We drank and drank again, and we all ate a little more ... no telling when we'd get to eat or drink again, if ever.

Finally I taken my rifle and climbed up on the rim. We had to make those Apaches think they had us, and after my helping in two kills from up there, they'd be sure I'd stay there.

Up on the rim I could see no cover for an Apache up there, no way one could come on a man except by night, and if anybody rode from their camp, I could see him.

The camp was too far for a rifle shot, but I could see their cook fires, and see them moving around. Our horses, if we could start them slow, might get within easy distance of their camp before we had to stampede them. And we might be lucky enough to stampede their pony herd, but I wasn't betting on anything.

When it was fairly dark I came down off the rim and we lighted a small fire to make coffee. They knew where we were, and we wanted them to think of us as staying put, although the idea of us trying to break out probably never came to their minds. They knew we were boxed in.

Over coffee we just sat around, keeping an ear tuned for movement. Rocca was propped up by his saddle atop a couple of rocks.

John J. Battles was quiet, saying nothing much until suddenly he started to talk of home. It seemed he'd come from New England, of a good, solid family. He had made a place for himself in the town and was a respected young businessman, and then he got involved with a girl, and another young man from a respected but high-riding family had come for him with a gun. This fellow had been drinking, and threatened to kill Battles on sight. When they met again Battles was armed, and in the exchange of shots, he killed the man.

There had been a trial, and Battles was cleared of the shooting, but he found himself no longer welcome at the girl's house, or anywhere else in town. So he sold his business, went west, and had drifted. He had driven stage, ridden shotgun for Wells Fargo, during which time he killed a holdup man and wounded his partner. He had been a deputy marshal for a time, had driven north with a cattle drive, and scouted against the Cheyenne.

"What happened to the girl?" Spanish wanted to know.

Battles glanced up. "What you'd expect. She married somebody else, not as well off as I'd been, and he got to hitting the bottle. A couple of years later his horse ran away with his rig and he was killed.

"She wrote, wanted me to come back. Offered to come west to me, and you know something? Try as I might, I couldn't even remember exactly what she looked like."

"You didn't have a picture?"

"Had one. Lost it when the Cheyennes ambushed a stage I was traveling on." He paused for a moment. "I'd like to have seen the leaves change color back in the Vermont hills again. I'd like to have seen my family again."

"I thought you had no family," I said.

"I've got a sister and two brothers." He sipped some coffee. "One brother is a banker in Boston. The other one is a teacher. I'd gone into business, but a teacher was what I really wanted to be, only when the moment came I was steadier with a gun that I should have been." Nobody talked there for a time, and then Battles looked around at me. "Any of your family ever in New England? There was a man named Sackett made quite a name for himself up in Maine during the Revolution. Seems he was wounded or hurt or something, and he spent the winter on the farm with my great-grandparents, helped them through a bad time."

"Uh-huh. My great-grandfather fought in the Revolution. He was with Dearborn at Saratoga, and he was in Dearborn's command when they marched with General Sullivan to destroy the towns of the Iroquois."

"Likely it's the same man." Battles put down his coffee cup and began to stoke his pipe.

Spanish walked in from the lookout "All quiet," he said. "There's still one fire goin' "

Quiet as could be, we saddled our horses, and loaded what grub was left on our pack horse. Overhead the stars were very bright, and the night was still. Whilst the others got Rocca ready for traveling, binding his wounds tighter. I crept over to the place where we were going to try to ride down.

The ground was packed pretty good, and there was no slide sand.

The place was narrow, just a strip that might ordinarily have gone unnoticed, except that in our desperation we had looked for any possibility at all. Of course the Apaches might have seen it, too, and might be waiting for us down there, for it was the only place where we could come off the mountain with any speed. But we had not seen it from below, only from the view on the rimrock.

We gathered near the edge, the loose horses before us, held by me and Spanish.

Tampico Rocca was in the saddle, John J. Battles beside him, holding our two horses.

It was near the middle of the night when we released our hold on the horses and went back to step into our saddles. "All right," I said, "let's go."

We started the horses forward. We made almost no sound in the night, there was a whisper of hoofs in the sand, a slight creak of saddle leather. I could feel a tightness in my chest, and I gripped hard on the pistol butt in my hand. This would be close, fast work -- no chance for a rifle here.

The lead horses disappeared over the edge before us and started down, and as they reached a point about a third of the way down we let out a whoop and each of us fired a shot.

Startled, the half-broken horses lunged into a run. They went down the slope in a scattered band and hit the flat below running all out. A rifle flashed, somebody shouted, and a fire flared up. The Apaches had prepared fires for light, and they lit the wild scene with a dancing glare.

Low down on the black horse, I charged into the night, gun held low and ready.

The wind whipped my face, and the horses thundered into the Apache camp.

Off to my left Rocca's gun was blazing. I saw a wild Apache face spring at him out of the dark, saw the flash of the pistol, and the face vanished into the darkness. Somewhere a horse screamed, and I heard a shout from Battles as his horse spilled head over heels, and John J. hit the sand running. I saw him slide to a stop and slam two fast shots at the running Apaches. Then he wheeled and, bolstering his pistol as he moved, he made a wild grab at the streaming mane of one of our horses, somehow turned aside from the first rush. He was almost swept from his feet, but he went astride the horse, clinging to his hold on its mane.

Flames stabbed from every side, and then we were through the camp and racing away down the bottom of the barranca.

My black was running all out, and I turned a little in my saddle. Rocca was still coming, riding loose in the saddle, his hat on the back of his neck, held by the string of his chin-strap which had slipped to his throat.

Spanish was off to my right -- or so I thought -- and we charged on into the night, some of the horses running wild ahead of us, others scattered to left and right.

We raced on, and somehow the horses found a winding trail to the cap rock and slowed to climb it. I called out, but there was no reply. Finally the black struggled over the rim onto the mesa. There was more light there, under the high stars.

I drew up. Here and there I glimpsed a horse, but none that carried a rider.

Slowly I rode on, talking to the horses and hoping the others would follow.

Daylight was still far away, but none of us would dare to stop. If they were alive they, too, would keep on.

There was no use to try to find anybody. In the darkness a body could be missed, and any one of us would shy from any other rider for fear he was facing an Indian.

Through the night I rode, once lifting my horse to a trot for a few miles, then slowing again to a walk. I reloaded my gun, checked my rifle. Once, worn out as I was, I dozed in the saddle.

Finally, in the gray light of day, I stopped. Carefully, standing in my stirrups, I looked in every direction. I could see for a good distance on all sides, but there was nothing but desert and sky. Wearily, I started the black horse on again, heading north.

By noontime, with nothing in sight, I got down and stumbled on, leading the horse. There was no telling when I might need all that horse had to make a run for it.

There were no tracks. There was only silence. Overhead a buzzard swept down the sky, returned and circled widely above me. After that he stayed with me, and I figured a buzzard had pretty good judgment about where he might get a meal.

The sun was hot, and no breeze stirred. My canteen had been holed by a bullet and was empty. I stumbled along like a sleepwalker, dead on my feet, yet not daring to stop. Finally I gave up and climbed into the saddle again.

Ahead of me, almost lost in the blue of distance, the cap rock seemed to break off. There were mountains beyond, behind me and to the east there was nothing.

Water ... I had to have water, and so did my horse. Under a desert sun a man cannot live long without water.

The mesa ended abruptly, but there was no trail to the rough, rolling land below. Here there was another stretch of the rimrock, nowhere less than thirty feet of sheer wall, then a steep, rock-strewn slope.

Far off I thought I could see a patch of green in a fold of the earth. Skirting the cliff, I rode on. Suddenly I saw the tracks of shod hoofs.

The tracks were familiar. They were the tracks of a horse that Spanish Murphy had ridden, a tough, mountain-bred horse, larger than the average mustang, and weighing almost a thousand pounds. Turning into the trail, I followed it along the rim. We came abruptly to a cleft where the rock wall had broken away and there was an easy though steep descent to the valley below. We made it.

We rode on, the black and me, with the black quickening his pace so as to come up with his friend. Sure enough, we'd gone not over five miles when we saw the bay mustang ahead of us. He had stopped, and was looking ahead, ears pricked.

Well, I shucked that Winchester before you could say aye, yes, or no, and I eared back the hammer and walked the black right up alongside that mustang. I spoke easy to him, and he didn't do more than side-step a mite, knowing my voice. Then I looked where he was looking.

There was a thick clump of ironwood beside the way we were taking, and a horse was standing head down there, just waiting, and sitting up on its back was a man. He was sitting there, hands on the pommel, head hanging like the horse's, and when we started forward, he paid us no mind.

Good reason why. It was Tampico Rocca, and he was dead.

Even before I got to him I could see by the blood on his vest that he'd been shot at least twice, but he'd lived long enough to lash one hand to the saddlehorn and tangle the fingers of the other hand in the turns of the rope.

Rocca had said that if he got into the saddle he would stay there, and he meant it.

Chapter 15

There was no need to stay close to him, and I was wary. Had the Apaches seen me coming, it would have been like them to leave Rocca there, and I wanted no traps.

An arroyo offered some shelter, and after a quick glance I rode into it and waited there, listening.

For several minutes I watched Rocca, the horse, and the rocks around. Mostly, it was the horse I watched, for the actions of the horse would warn me if there was anyone close by.

Following the arroyo a little further, I saw a clump of brush and low trees near the lip of the draw, so I rode up the bank in their shelter. After a while, reasonably sure that it was safe, I went back to the horse and its burden.

The trailing bridle had caught in the brush, and I let it stay there while I lifted Rocco from the saddle after freeing his hands. There was nothing with which to prepare a grave, so I found a shallow watercourse, placed him in it, and covered the body with brush and rocks.

But first, I had taken his guns and ammunition, to leave nothing for the Apaches if they found him. There was a full belt of ammunition as well as some loose cartridges. And there was a swallow of water in the canteen.

In his pocket I found a stub of pencil and some old papers on which he had been learning to write his name. He had gotten somebody to write it for him, or had taken it from something addressed to him, and had practiced, over and over again, on many different surfaces. I had never seen him do so, nor likely had anyone else, for he was a proud man, ashamed to let us know he could not write, and that he cared.

There was no address, nothing to show that there was anyone to whom he belonged.

But there had been a girl he had talked of, so I took what money he had, only a few dollars and some pesos, to give to her.

Scarcely twenty minutes was used in burying the body. Then, leading the spare horse, I went back to the arroyo and followed it for perhaps a mile, the soft sand leaving no tracks that could be recognized. When I came out I started across country.

The sun had gone down by now and the desert was cool. Off in the distance I could hear a quail call ... I hoped it was a real quail.

I felt stiff and cold now, and I worked my fingers to keep them easy for my gun.

Shifting to Rocca's horse, I rode on into the night. There was no trail, but I went ahead, all the time looking for water. The green place I'd seen from afar should be near.

The black horse pulled up alongside me, and Rocca's horse quickened its pace.

They smelled it.

An arroyo opened on my right and I found my way into it, listened, then walked the horses on, knowing the arroyo would end where the water was. The arroyo gaped, and I looked into a small oasis darkening with the cool of evening.

There were a dozen cottonwoods, some mesquite and willows, and slopes green with grass, and through the trees a glimmer of water. I could hear birds twittering.

The horses tugged at their bits, wanting to go forward. Winchester in hand, I walked them slowly, ready with a spur if need be.

Suddenly my way was blocked by a low stone wall that looked to be a part of one of those trincheras the ancient people built to terrace and till their land, or sometimes for dams. I'd seen a lot of them in Mexico.

Dismounting, I led the horses around it and down to a broken place in the wall, and saw something dark and shadowy through the trees. There was no sound but the water, and the rustle of the cottonwood leaves. I walked ahead to an opening among the trees, and came to an ancient ruin. It had once been a considerable structure, built right from the edge of the pool back to the cliffs where it joined the native rock.

Only the floor remained, and a corner of a wall that reached up to six feet, slanting down to no more than three feet near the water. There was green grass all around, and a stillness that came from utter isolation.

First off, I let the horses drink sparingly, and drank myself, and then filled Rocca's canteen. All the while I kept my ears tuned for any sound. But there were no tracks around that I could see, no signs of campfires, nothing to show anybody had been here at all in years.

Picketing the horses, I found a corner of the wall that protected me on two sides. A pile of fallen adobe bricks mingled with chunks of rock that had been used in the walls formed a partial breastwork on the other sides.

Tired as I was, there was no sleep in me. Places like this made a man sort of sad. Somebody had lived here, and judging by the look of the place, different people at different times. There had once been a building of native stone. It had fallen in and been rebuilt with adobe and rock, and it looked as if the last time was no more than thirty, forty years back. Indians had perhaps built the place first, and rebuilt it, too. Later white people had settled in here until driven out.

It was a quiet place. A small garden patch had been worked at one time, and there was a meadow where hay might have been cut, but nobody could live long in such a place with the Apaches on the rampage.

I settled down, and after a while I slept. I awoke when the morning sun began to filter through the leaves. Everything was as quiet as before. I watered the horses, saddled them, and prepared to move out, but first I had scouting to do.

There were crude steps cut from the rocks at one side, taking advantage of natural steps left by the erosion of rock layers. Climbing these, I found a natural hollow that had been shaped by hand into a lookout of some comfort, with a view in all directions.

For several minutes I studied the desert, but saw nothing. Back down below again, I dug into my saddlebags for the small packet of coffee I always carried for emergencies. Often I carried some jerky and flour, but now there was only the coffee.

I built a small fire, and rinsed out an old clay jar I found. When I'd made coffee I filled a cup and prowled around, and finding some chia, I gathered a handful of the seeds and ate them. Then I went up for another look.

Off to the north I glimpsed a buzzard. There might be a dead steer, or it might be one of my friends, and buzzards do not always wait for a man to die.

Due north I rode, then I swung wide to the east, cutting for a sign. Whatever was up ahead must have left tracks getting there, and I wished to find out what I was up against.

"Tell," I told myself, "you better ride easy in the saddle. I think you're headin' into trouble."

That black nicked an ear at me as if to show he agreed. A lonely man a-horseback in wild country gets to carryin' on conversations with his horse, and some horses become right knowledgeable and understanding.

No tracks. I rode up on the east of where the buzzard circled, and swung in closer. Standing in my stirrups I looked the country over, and at first I saw only a lot of prickly pear around, and some clumps of cholla, all white thorns on top, brown underneath.

Then I saw the horse -- a horse down, a saddled horse.

Circling around it, rifle in hand, I taken a chance and called out: "Spanish? Is that you?"

A couple of buzzards roosting in a palo verde tree nearby looked mighty upset with me, and one of them dropped his wings as if to scare me off or stampede my horses.

No answer came back. So I cut a little closer, then drew up and looked around.

It was all just as it should be, sunlit and still.

My black was curious, too. He could sense something I could not, and though it made him curious, it was something he shied from. Probably it was the dead horse.

I walked him slowly forward, the hammer of my Winchester eared back for trouble.

The shirt was what I saw first, men the boots, and the Mexican spurs with the big rowels. It was Spanish.

I swung down and, having tied the black to a mesquite, I walked up to him.

He was lying face down in the sand, but he had pulled his saddlebags across his kidneys, so he'd been alive and conscious when he hit the ground. He knew that buzzards went for the eyes and the kidneys first, so he'd rolled on his face and pulled those saddlebags over him. They might not help much, but getting them off him might bring him to enough to fight the buzzards off.

Lifting the saddlebags free, I rolled him over.

There was blood all over the front of him, dried blood that seemed to come from a shoulder wound. And there was blood lower down that came from some place in his middle. But he was breathing.

We were right out in the open, and those buzzards could attract more than me, so, good for him or not, we had to move.

He muttered something, so I tried to let him know who was with him. "It's all right, Spanish," I said. "You'll see that girl in Tucson yet."

There was no time for fixing him up at all. Gathering him into my arms, I went with him to the spare horse and put him in the saddle, then I lashed his wrists to the pommel and his boots into the stirrups. I taken his saddlebags, although what was in them I didn't know. Then I checked his horse, but the animal was dead. There was a rifle in the saddle scabbard, so I took it along. There was no canteen.

We rode out of there at a good clip. The country ahead promised nothing. We had two, three days to cross the border, but we'd not be safe until we got to Pete Kitchen's or to the settlement on the border.

Taking advantage of every chance to mask my trail, and trying to keep down the dust, I rode north, leading Spanish on Rocca's horse. The wind was picking up a mite, which might drift enough sand to cover my tracks, but there was small chance it would be in time. Several times I slowed down, checking animal tracks, and watching for any sign that might indicate water.

The trail behind was empty, and the trail ahead looked clear. I rode in my own small world of sunlight, the movement of horses, and the smell of dust and sweat. Ahead of me, on the right, a sawtooth range showed itself above the flatter country around us.

I slowed my horse to a walk, for there were dark streaks of sweat along his flanks. An arroyo opened ahead of me, and I rode into it and found a way up the opposite bank. A towering butte was ahead for destination.

The bullet smashed against the pommel of my saddle, then ricocheted away with a nasty whine, and the heavy report of the rifle followed. Slapping spurs to my horse, I started to run him as three Apaches broke from cover to my right. They had waited in ambush, but my dip into the arroyo had fooled them and now they came running.

Turning in the saddle, I taken aim as best I might and fired ... once, twice ... three times. I saw a horse stagger and go down, spilling head over heels in the sand.

Ahead of me three more Apaches had come from right out of the desert, it seemed.

I turned my mount a little away from them and raced on, holding my fire. Behind me Spanish rode like a sack of grain in the saddle, his body lurching with every jump, yet somehow he remained upright.

They came at me, and suddenly I wheeled the black and charged into them, firing my Winchester with one hand as if it was a pistol.

The sudden switch surprised them and one of them turned so sharply his horse spilled into the sand. Another was right ahead of my rifle barrel and not thirty feet away when I shot into his chest, dusting him on both sides. He went down, and then we were through and riding for that butte.

Behind me there was a shot and something brushed at my shoulder, but we were off and away. Sliding my Winchester into its scabbard, I drew a six-gun and fired, slowly and deliberately, trying for a score. The first shot missed, so did the second. Then an Apache elected to swing his horse around a small cedar just as I thumbed back the hammer. He was broadside to me and I let go, heard the slam of the shot, and saw the Apache lurch in the saddle, then swing off to one side, barely clinging to his horse.

Suddenly, from ahead there was the hard bark of a rifle, and glancing back, I saw another Indian falling. I raced forward, scarcely daring to believe it could be help, but the Apaches, wily fighters always, were swinging away. And Spanish was still riding behind me.

The desert fell away in a long slope ahead of us, and on the rim stood John J.

Battles, dusty, bloody, his hat gone, his shirt torn. He got up from the ground as we approached and swung into the saddle ... and he had the pack horse.

"She found me," he said. "Came trailing along the desert, part of her pack gone, the rest hanging under her belly."

"Did you see anything of the youngsters?" I asked.

"No, not a sign." He looked back at Spanish. "He hurt bad?"

"I haven't had time to look. I think so."

We pushed on, praying for the night to hurry, and finally it came. Our horses slowed to a walk, and Battles and me, we swung down to save them as much as we might.

"How far d'you think to the border?" Battles asked. "Maybe sixty miles," I said. "Might be less." He stopped to work his toes around in his boots. I knew the signs, for I was doing the same thing. We were, both almighty tired. I figured I was stronger than him, and I'd been running on nerve. I seemed to have been hot, tired, and sore as long as I could remember. My muscles ached, my eyes hurt from the glare, and felt all the time as if they had sand in them. I was wanting to stop with every step, and I knew the horses didn't feel any better.

But we kept on, because neither of us was smart enough to quit. Finally Battles stumbled and went to his knees, and he was slow getting up.

"You better get on your horse and ride for it," he said. "Ride that horse to death if need be, but get to safety. We just ain't a-going to make it like this."

I didn't answer, but kept on going. Every time I put one foot ahead of the other I figured I'd gained just that much. Then when I had stumbled a couple of times myself, I realized the black horse was tugging at the bridle. He wanted to go off to the east.

"Mount up, John J.," I said. "Maybe we've found something, but you hold ready to shoot, because we may find trouble." I was so dry I had to try twice before I could make the words come.

Once in the saddle, I just let the black have his head, and that horse started off at a good clip, considering the shape he was in. And the others came on behind, Spanish Murphy still a-setting up there like a preacher pronouncing sentence on Satan, his head bowed but his shoulders hunched as if he figured maybe Satan was aiming to get in one more blow.

It wasn't long before we felt a coolness, and the horses lurched down into an arroyo and all of a sudden we came up to a small fire where there were four or five Apaches gathered around, eating a fresh-killed horse.

No telling who was the most surprised, but Battles got off the first shot and he drilled one of those Injuns with meat in his teeth, and the rest of them fell away into the shadows like so many ghosts. I slammed spurs to my black and jumped him across the fire in time to see one Apache snaking into the brush, and I cut down on him. Something slammed alongside my head and I felt myself hit ground, bounce, and fall free, losing a boot in the stirrup.

I rolled over, my Winchester gone in the brush, and I clawed for a six-shooter.

And then I froze right where I lay, because an Apache was standing astride of me and he had the razor edge of his blade right across my throat. He was looking me right in the eyes, and I could see the firelight on his scarred face, and we knew one another at the first glance. It was Kahtenny, the Indian I hadn't been willing to kill, way back there in my fight with the Apaches.

"You better hold back on that edge," I said. "You're liable to cut somebody."

Chapter 16

He still stood astride of me, that knife edge against my throat, and he never moved it one mite. He kept looking right into my eyes and I looked right back at him, and I knew all he had to do was make one quick slash to end my days.

Then easylike, to give no false notions, I lifted my hand to his wrist and pushed the blade away, very gently.

"That's a good knife. Got quite an edge to it," I said.

"You are brave man. You are warrior."

"We are warriors together," I said. "It is enough for you and for me that we know each other."

The other Apaches were filtering back out of the darkness, and their black eyes were reaching to me in anticipation, I expect, for the torture of a strong prisoner was a pleasure not to be missed.

Right off I recognized Toclani among them. He had served in the army under Emmet Crawford as one of his company of Apache scouts. Toclani and me, we had ridden together, shared our grub, and fought side by side against other Apaches. Now I had no idea whether that would help me any at all, for Toclani might have returned to the wild ones, the broncho Apaches who fought whoever stood in their way.

They had me dead to rights. What lay ahead I knew full well, as any man along the border would know, but what worried me now was what had become of Spanish and Battles. Had they got clean away? Spanish was more dead than alive, anyway, and Battles was neither as good as Spanish or me when it came to desert travel.

Nobody had made a move to tie me, but they had taken my knife and my guns, and there was not much of a chance to run for it. Moreover, I was in mighty bad shape. I needed a drink, and my stomach was growling at the smell of the meat on the fire.

We had accounted for a couple of the Apaches, but there'd been at least a dozen out under the brush before the shooting started, and now they came up to the fire, and kindled another one close by.

I could see my Winchester lying over yonder beside my Colt, but they were thirty feet away and I'd have no chance to go after them. Kahtenny was off to one side, beyond the fire, and he was talking to the others, but I couldn't make out a thing they were saying. All I could gather was that some kind of an argument was going on, and I had an idea it concerned my hide.

While the Apaches ate, at least three of them kept a watch on me all the time, but seeing I wasn't going anywhere anyway, I stretched out and, using my hat for a pillow, I went to sleep.

When I woke up it was maybe two hours later and the fire was down. Most of the Apaches lay around sleeping, and I still wasn't tied, which made no sense at all unless they figured on having some fun when I made a break for it.

Thirst was about to strangle me and the waterhole was right beyond the edge of camp, so I got up, making no special try at keeping quiet, and I walked over to the waterhole, lay down and drank. Then I went back and stretched out again.

I knew as well as anything that at least four or five pairs of eyes had been on me all the while, and had I jumped for a gun or a horse they'd have had me. So I just stretched out quiet, feeling a whole lot better for the drink.

Presently Kahtenny got up and walked over to me and sat down. He rolled himself a smoke as easy as any cowpoke you ever did see, and he sat there smoking until half of it was gone before he spoke. "Somebody want to kill you."

"Me?" I chuckled. "Maybe a lot of folks." I sized him up as having something puzzling on his mind. "You mean your boys?"

"Other man. White man."

"A white man wants me dead? What makes you think so?"

"He have my squaw. He say, you dead he give her to me. I bring your body, he gives squaw."

"So why haven't you done it?" Kahtenny looked puzzled. "Why he want you dead? I think somehow it is a trick."

"How'd you get the news? Did Toclani bring it?" He showed no surprise that I knew Toclani. "Yes ... he bring it. My squaw ... she talk to sister at San Carlo. She go quickly in the night, but when she leave these men take her."

"Did they hurt her?"

"No. Toclani say no." He looked at me. "Me fight Toclani, but Toclani good man.

My squaw good woman. Toclani puts Apaches to watch out for my squaw."

"Who are these white men?" "Their name is Hadden. There are several. Toclani sees them. Why they want you dead?"

"I shot them up. Rocca ... you know Tampico Rocca? They called him greaser and were going to kill him. We fought Rocca and me, we kill one ... maybe two of them.

He still was not satisfied. "Toclani says you good man. Great warrior."

There wasn't much I could say to that, so I kept my mouth shut and waited, but my mind was working as fast as I could make it. I lay no claims to being a thinker or a planner. I'm just a mountain boy who grew up to be a free drifting man, but it didn't take much figuring to see I had a way out of this if I could come up with the right ideas. Trouble was, I had to play my cards almighty careful, because I surely didn't have any hole card. One thing working for me was that Kahtenny was suspicious, and feared a trap.

To kill me of his own idea would be simple enough, and likely that's what he would have done, after some torture to see what kind of a man I was. But now somebody else wanted me dead, and he was puzzled.

From what I gathered, Kahtenny's squaw had slipped back into the reservation to see her sister and that was when the Hadden boys caught her ... waiting until she started to leave.

It was nothing unusual for a wild Apache to return to the reservation, stay a while, and then leave. The Army was always trying to get them to return, and often the squaws would come back first to look over the situation.

Now they had Kahtenny's squaw and he wanted her back, but he was like a wild thing that sniffs trouble at every change, and there was a lot about this offer that he did not like.

He sat smoking and waiting, and finally I said, "I think you can not trust them."

He looked at me. "They will kill her?"

"They are bad men. They would have killed Rocca for nothing. I think if you take my body to them they will kill her and you also ... if they can."

He waited a while, and I poked sticks into the fire. Then I said, "Give me my guns. I will get your squaw for you."

For a long time he said nothing, then abruptly he got up and went to the other fire, where he remained, occasionally in low-voiced conversation. After a while he came back and sat down on the sand. "You can get my squaw?"

"Kahtenny is a warrior. He knows the ways of war. Much can happen, but this I promise. I shall get her safely if it can be done."

After a pause, I added, more quietly, "The Haddens are not Apaches. They are fierce men, but they are not Apaches. I can get your squaw."

"She is a good woman. She has been with me for many moons."

"Do you know where they are?"

"We take you there. It is near the border." Nobody needed to warn me that my troubles were only beginning. Kahtenny might use me to get his squaw back, and then shoot me down in my tracks. It wasn't that an Apache wasn't grateful, he just had different ideas than we folks had. If you were not of the tribe you were a potential enemy, and killing you was in the cards.

There had been no sign of Spanish or of John J. Nor in the little I could overhear was there mention of them. It seemed likely that they had gotten clean off. Well, luck to them.

At daybreak they led my black horse to me and I saddled up, taking my time, but when I started for my guns, they stopped me and Toclani took my Winchester and hung my gun belt over his shoulder. They let me fill a canteen, and then we started out.

All the time we were riding I kept thinking about Neiss, who was one of five men on a stage near Stein's Peak when it was hit by Cochise and his band. The driver and a man named Elder were killed right off, the stage capsized, and the men were preparing for a fight when Neiss talked them out of it. Cochise, he said, was an old friend, just let Neiss talk to Cochise and all would be well, so they tried it. Cochise roped Neiss and dragged him up the canyon over the rocks, cactus, and brush, while two other warriors did the same for the others. Then they were tortured to death. That happened in April of 1861.

Thinking of this, I was placing no great faith in my chances with them, and although they watched me like hawks, I kept a wary eye out for any chance of escape. There wasn't any.

My black horse was gaunt and worn by hard travel. To break and run, even if the chance came, would get me nowhere. I had no weapon and there was no place I had to go ... no place I could reach in time.

The sun glared down on us as we walked our horses across the parched, rocky hills, weaving amongst the cactus and the greasewood. It was rolling land, broken by short sawtooth ranges of dull red or brown rock, and occasional flows of lava marked by the white streaks of dry washes. Indians rode on all four sides of me, always alert, always ready.

Nobody talked.

Each step my horse took seemed to be carrying me closer to death ... escape would be too much luck.

I could expect no help from the Haddens. I had no idea how I was going to get the squaw away from them, and I felt sure they had no intention of letting her go free. Even among good men the depredations carried on by the Apaches had created the desire to exterminate them, one and all ... and the Haddens were not good men.

Me, I always had great respect for the Apache. He had learned to live off a mighty bleak and hard country, and he had none of the white man's ways of thinking, and you had to reach out to try to understand how he felt and what he wanted to do.

After a while we began to see more cholla, great stretches of it, all pale yellow under the bright sun, with the dark browns and blacks of the old branches down below. Jumping cactus, we called it, because if a body passed too close if seemed to jump out to stick you. The Apaches thinned out to single file as we went through it.

All of a sudden we drew up. Kahtenny turned and pointed out a low mountain ahead of us, off to the east. "It is there they are," he said, "at Dead Man's Tank.

They are six men, and my squaw, and they want you."

They wanted me dead.

Though Kahtenny would have killed me without waiting if he figured that would be enough, he was no more trusting of the Haddens than I was. They would get my body, but that didn't mean he would get his squaw.

"You're going to have to give me my guns," I said. "If I ride in there without them, they'll kill the both of us if they can. I figure to handle the Haddens.

Without them, the others aren't likely to cut up no fuss."

The funny thing about it was, all day my mind had been miles from that hot desert and back in the hill country of the Cumberland. They say a man's whole life passes before him when he's about to die. I can't say that mine did ... only those times back in the mountains, so long ago.

All day my mind kept going back to turnip greens, and to wild-hog hunting in the hills on those foggy mornings when the forest dripped and a body prowled through it like a red Indian, scouting for wild hogs to give us bacon to cook with turnip greens in an iron pot. Me and Orrin used to go out, or sometimes Tyrel, though he was younger. Never knew Tyrel to miss, though on occasion I did.

I'd never seen that country since. Never seen it ... but I hankered for it. Many a time on the desert I looked up to the stars and wished I was back there, seein' the kitchen door open with its light shining out and me coming up from the milking with my pails full to overflow.

You wouldn't hardly think my mind would be on that now, with the trouble I was in right this minute, but that's the way it was ... as if I had to give my mind some ease with good rememberin'. So all the time, as we rode along, my thoughts kept going back to that green and lovely country.

I thought of the time I floated down the Big South Fork on a flat-boat to New Orleans, taking what we had to trade -- corn, sorghum molasses, and maybe some tobacco. We Sacketts never had much to trade except muscle, because our poor ridge-land didn't raise more than enough to feed us, even if we hunted the forest too. But folks liked to have a Sackett along going downriver through some country where unruly folks were liable to be. My thoughts came back to where I was, and I saw that Kahtenny was pointing out the land. "You go," he said, "you go get my squaw."

He handed me my gun belt and Winchester, and I checked them for loads. My mouth felt as dry as one of those empty creek beds.

"You keep an eye out," I said. "Maybe I won't be comin' back with her."

We sat there a moment, and then I held out a hand. "Loan me a spare," I said. "I may need it bad."

Well, sir, he looked at me, and then he taken out his six-gun and passed it over. It was a Navy .44, and a likely piece. I shoved it down in my waistband back of my vest.

Toclani rode up. "I will go with you," he said.

"No, thanks. You stay here. If they see me comin' alone maybe they'll let me get close enough to talk. If they see two of us comin' they might just shoot."

So I spoke to that ga'nted-up black horse and we started down, and back behind me Kahtenny said, "You bring back my squaw."

I'd be lucky to do it. I'd be a whole sight luckier if I rode out with a whole hide.

"All right, horse," I said to the black, "let's go talk to them."

And we rode through the cholla toward Dead Man's Tank.

Chapter 17

The vague blue feather of smoke lifted faintly above the rocks of an old lava flow. I could hear my horse's hoofs strike stone, or his muffled hoof-falls in the sand. I sat tall in the saddle, Winchester in the scabbard, my mind open and alert.

There can be no planning in such a situation. Until a man is in the midst of it, he has no idea of the lay of the land, no idea of how the ones he's going to meet will be strung out. You just have to ride in and handle it by main strength and awkwardness, with maybe the salt of a little luck.

The men up ahead wanted me dead. No doubt they had me in their sights right now.

No doubt they were holding off to crow over me and mine, or to see what I had to say. As to that Apache squaw, they didn't care one whit. But the Haddens were new in Apache country, and they had no idea what they were up against. If Kahtenny didn't get his squaw, nobody was riding out of there with a whole skin ... not if Kahtenny could help it There was a little thorny, scraggly brush growing amongst the rocks, but the land around was mostly slabs of broken rock, falls of talus off the slopes, or ridges shoved up through the sand.

Glancing back, I could see two Apaches back there, and only two. That meant the others had scattered out and even now were moving in, getting in position for the kill.

Now, I'm a peace-loving man, inclined to easy riding and talking around a fire, and the more Apaches I get around me the more peace-loving I become. Riding up there to those rocks around Dead Man's Tank, I could feel my scalp a-prickling as if it guessed it was going to be lifted.

I taken the thong off the hammer of my Colt, and I rode up a narrow trail through the rocks and looked over into a shallow basin.

Dead Man's Tank lay before me, a pool of water maybe ten feet across, each way.

Beyond it was a mite of fire, with the thin line of smoke losing itself in the sky. I could see half a dozen horses, and what might be the ears of a couple more beyond the rocks.

The Haddens were standing wide-legged facing me, and there was a man higher up in the rocks with a Winchester across his knees. Two more were by the fire, and likely another might be somewhere about.

Right beyond the fire was Kahtenny's squaw, and even at this distance I could see she was both young and pretty. She looked straight at me, and I was betting she was counting on Kahtenny to get her loose from this setup.

And then I saw Dorset.

Dorset, and one of the youngsters. I gave a quick look around, but saw neither hide nor hair of the others. Maybe they were dead now, or else were crossing the border to safely.

Arch Hadden was looking right at me, and he was smiling, but there was nothing you'd call friendly in that smile. "Well, look who's here," he said. "That would-be tough Sackett."

"Got a message for you, Arch," I said, resting my hands on the pommel, left hand on top. "Kahtenny is out there, and he wants his squaw."

"We told him to send you dead."

"Must have been some mistake there," I said. "I'm still alive."

"Not for long," the other Hadden said, sounding mighty savage.

"I take it you boys haven't had much doings with the Apaches," I said, "so listen to some reason. No matter what's between you boys and me, you'd better listen real good.

"That Kahtenny is poison mean, and he's a fighter from way back. You see him out there almost alone, but he isn't alone. He's got a dozen Indians in these rocks, and more a-coming. If you want to get out of here alive you'd better turn loose his squaw."

The one in the rocks, he ups and says, "We've fought Injuns afore. We ain't turnin' her loose. That there's a right tasty bit of Injun."

Now I knew the chips were down and their cards were on the table. I was sort of watching everything, thinking about how long it had been since I practiced a left-hand draw, and thinking how they were probably counting on that right hand, far from the gun and resting on the pommel, under the left one. I had done that a-purpose, and was hoping it was going to give me the margin I needed. There was this thing of reaction time ... it takes an instant to see what's happening and for it to register on the mind and dictate a move.

"If you boys are as smart as I think you are," I said, "you'll let that squaw loose, and the same for the young lady over yonder. You know what will happen if you bother a white girl out here."

"Nothin' " That was the man with the rifle up in the rocks. "Ain't nobody goin' to tell."

"You're forgetting about my boys," I said. "They'll know and they'll be telling the story about now."

"Not Spanish Murphy," Arch Hadden said. "He won't tell nobody nothin'. We found him tied on his horse and he didn't look like he was going to make it, so we shot him. We just naturally finished him off."

Dorset was right behind the squaw now, and I never had any doubts about her doing what was best. That little lady had a head on her shoulders and the chances were that right now she was unloosing the squaw.

I knew I had to stall. I had to play for time. "No use you boys building up for trouble," I said. "Turn that squaw loose, and the lot of us have got a fighting chance. We can make it out of here if we move fast, before Kahtenny gets fifty, sixty Injuns out yonder."

"You ain't got the message," Wolf Hadden said. "We're goin' to kill you, boy."

Me, I smiled at him. Somehow I had to keep those boys talking, get their mind off the moment to give myself an edge. If I was going to do anything at all against the lot of them, I'd need all I could get.

"Most men who try to fight Apaches only learn by losing ... and when you lose a fight to an Apache you never get no chance to use what you learned. You boys take my advice and turn loose that squaw, and Kahtenny might just ride off and leave you be."

"You scared?" That was that one up on the rocks. He was beginning to get kind of irritating, like a mosquito around the ear.

"You bet I'm scared. I've seen these boys work. Now, I -- "

All of a sudden one of those boys yelled, "Arch! That damn squaw -- "

She was loose and she was moving, and she was moving almighty fast. The man up in the rocks swung his rifle and when he did I forked out that waistband gun with my left hand and my shot was a hair faster than his.

He fired at the squaw and I shot him right through the brisket, and then swung the gun to Wolf, who was coming up with a Remington Navy.

Dorset, she suddenly threw herself at the man nearest her and she hit him right behind the knees. He was standing on a bit of a slope, and when she hit him he buckled at the knees and fell forward on the gravelly hillside.

The man who'd been alongside the fire, instead of grabbing his gun, turned to lay hold of Dorset, and at the same time that I cut loose at Wolf I jumped my horse at Arch.

He made a quick step back to get out of the way, and a rock rolled under his feet. He fell as he drew, jolting the gun from his hand.

I swung my horse and got in another shot at Wolf, who burned me with one alongside the shoulder. He was just setting up to take a dead shot when my second bullet caught him, and he backed up a full step. My black was on him, and he rolled aside, and I felt bullets whipping around me.

Somehow Dorset had a gun. She fired at one of those boys and then taken out running, the child in her arms, for the pony string.

About that time I saw an Apache up on the slope, and he was shooting down at us.

I swung my horse again and went after Dorset.

She wasn't wasting any time, and fortunately they had left a couple of horses saddled. She pulled the drawstring on one of them and swung the child to the saddle, then she went into the saddle herself with a flying leap and we were off, running our horses across that desert like crazy folks.

Maybe we were a mite crazy. I had an idea we weren't going to make it, but every jump we took gave us a better chance. Behind us I could hear a fight taking place, and somebody else was running a horse off to the right.

Suddenly the desert split right open ahead of us, a deep cut maybe eight or ten feet across. I saw Dorset jump her horse, and I slapped spurs to mine and that black took to flying as if it was second nature. We both landed safe and swung down into a hollow, raced across it and up the other side, and into a forest of cholla where our horses swung right and left and about through that prickly stuff.

We leveled out in the open and put them to a run, and when we finally got them slowed down we had made it away ... for now.

Looking back, I could see nothing behind us. We had come several miles, and now we walked the horses under some cedars whilst I unlimbered my Winchester, checked it again, and returned it to the scabbard. Then I reloaded both my six-shooters. I could remember shooting four to five tunes, but eight shots had been fired, showing I'd been doubling up. I had no recollection of having drawn the second gun, but I surely had. When I'd reloaded, I moved alongside Dorset.

She was holding the youngster on the saddle in front of her. "What happened to the others?" I asked. "They got away. Harry is like a little Apache himself.

When those men came up he just disappeared into the brush with the others."

"Let's hope he made it."

The country was changing now. It was much more broken, but there was also more growth. There had been a desert shower, one of those sudden rains that sometimes deluge only a small area and then vanish. This one had left water standing in the bottoms of the washes and in hollows atop the rocks. It had filled the desert tanks, so we watered the horses.

My eyes felt like hot lumps in my skull, and they seemed to move with incredible slowness when I turned to look around. My fingers felt stiff, and I worked them and tried to loosen them up. My mouth was dry, and after I'd drunk it was dry again in a few minutes.

All of a sudden I was dead tired again. All the days of driving ahead, running, fighting, and worrying a way out were beginning to catch up with me. But we started on.

The horses plodded ahead, dazed with weariness. Several times I found myself dozing in the saddle, each time I'd wake up with a start of fear, and look all around. My mind seemed to be in a state of despair. Spanish was dead ... Tampico Rocca was dead ... where was John J.?

It would soon be dark, and if we expected to make the border we had to find a place to stop for rest. If it had to be, we ourselves could keep going, but not the horses, and without them our chances were gone. "Do you think they're following us?" Dorset asked. "I don't know," I answered, and said no more. The sun disappeared and shadows gathered in the folded hills. The shadows lifted questioning fingers, stark against the yellow sky. The quail began to talk across the silences, the wind stirred, rustling the dry leaves on the parched brush. Our horses' hoofs whispered in the sand.

A lone coyote showed for an instant, then like a shadow was gone, leaving no more sign than an Apache. A few stars began to appear ... one bright one was low in the sky, and held steady. Time to time I looked at it, and finally I said, "That there's a light. A fire, maybe." Dorset turned her head to look. "It's not an Indian fire," she said.

We drew up, and I turned, standing in my stirrups to look back.

"It might be the Haddens," I said. She glanced at me. "After you finished with them? What you didn't get, the Apaches got. You took two of them, I'd swear.

Maybe three."

Well, maybe. I wasn't making any claims. I never was one to file notches on a gun ... a tinhorn trick.

"Shall we try for it?" I said. "It's closer than the border. And the border never meant anything to an Apache except that south of it he was free of the American troops."

"We can scout it," Dorset answered. She swung her pony and headed toward the fire.

The yellow sky faded into gray and velvety dark. Even before we came up to it, I could see it was an Army fire ... it looked big because there were three of them in line. It was a Cavalry troop of maybe forty men. We pulled up and I hailed the camp.

"Howdy, there. Is it all right to come in? There's a woman and a child with me."

Silence ...

It was a long moment, and I guess somebody was trying to make us out with field glasses, though now there was not much light.

"All right," came the answer. "Ride in. Ride carefully."

I knew that voice. It was Captain Lewiston. Lieutenant Jack Davis stood beside him.

Lewiston looked from me to Dorset Binny. He tipped his hat "How do you do, ma'am. We have been worried for you."

"I'm all right. Thanks to Mr. Sackett."

"Did you come upon any other youngsters, Cap'n?" I asked. "Harry Brook and the Creed youngsters?"

"They're here, and they're safe. That's why we waited for you."

We walked our horses into camp and swung down. I staggered when I hit ground, and Lewiston was beside me. "Here, man, you'd better sit down."

"Got to care for my horse. You take the lady and the child, Cap'n, I -- "

"No." Lewiston's tone was suddenly stern. He turned. "Corporal, take this man's horse. See that it is cared for just as mine is. The others also."

He turned back to me. "Sackett, I regret to inform you that you are under arrest."

Me, I just looked at him. "For crossing the border? Cap'n, Laura Sackett told me her son had been taken by the Apaches."

"She has no son!" Davis spoke sharply. "Sackett, that's a damned -- "

Lewiston's voice cracked like a whip. "Lieutenant!"

Davis stopped, his face flushed. "I tell you, Captain, this man is -- "

"Silence! Lieutenant Davis, I suggest you inspect the guard. Whatever needs to be said to Mr. Sackett, I will say."

Davis turned on his heel and stalked away. "Forgive him, Sackett. He's young and I'm afraid he's smitten by Laura Sackett. He is very proud, and he feels he must defend her honor."

"Let him defend it, Cap'n, but keep him away from me. Him being new to the country I might not shoot him, but I am afraid if he said what he started to say he'd be shy a good many teeth."

"There will be no fighting. You seem to have forgotten, Sackett. You are under arrest."

Well, I just walked over to the fire and sat down. Then I dug into my gear which had been dropped there and got out my cup. Reaching for the pot, I poured coffee.

"All right, Cap'n," I said, "you tell me about it. Why are you arresting me?"

"You are under arrest for murder. You are under arrest for the murder of Billy Higgins."

"Higgins?"

"We found his body out on the Yuma road. He had been shot in the head."

"Among other things," I said, "the Apaches wounded him, and then they shot him full of splinters." "But you killed him."

"That's right, I did." Carefully, with several men standing about, I told him what had happened that day. Some of it I'd told him before, back in the Shoo-Fly when he told me about Kahtenny.

"He begged me to shoot him. Under the same situation I'd have done the same, more than likely."

"Perhaps." Lewiston looked hard at me. "Sackett, is it not true that your family feuded for years with a family named Higgins? That you hunted each other and killed each other on sight?"

"That was over years ago," I said. "Anyway, I ain't been back in that country since the war. As for this Higgins, I never gave it no thought. It's been a good while since I've had any cause to think of it."

"Nevertheless, Billy Higgins is dead, killed by your bullet. I have to warn you, Sackett, the story is out, and there's considerable feeling in Tucson. Higgins had friends there."

"But I tell you, I -- "

"Don't tell me. Tell the jury." He walked away from me, and I sat there by the fire, a-staring into it. I'd run a long way. I'd fought some hard fights. I'd stood off the Apaches and the Haddens, and now here I was, arrested for a crime that was no crime, but a crime they could hang me for.

And there was only one person in Tucson likely to know about that old Higgins-Sackett feud.

Laura Sackett ...

Chapter 18

You can take it from me that no jail cell is a place for a mountain boy. I was raised up where folks looked to the hills, only up where we came from you hadn't chance to look much higher, we were that near the top of the ridge.

This cell they put me into had one small window, too small for me to crawl out of, and a door that was as barred as could be. When I heard that door clang shut I wasn't at all happy. Only thing I knew, I was going to catch up on my sleep, and at least I could eat. And right about that time I was hungry enough to eat an old saddle, stirrups and all.

Captain Lewiston was my first visitor. He came early in the morning, and brought a chair into the cell with him. He also brought the company clerk.

"Sackett," he began, "I want you to give me the whole story, in your own words.

I want to help you if I can. Right now the people are divided. Some want to hang you for killing Billy Higgins, and some want to give you a medal for saving those youngsters."

So I gave it to him. How the bunch of us, unknown to each other until then, had banded together to ride to Tucson.

The story of our fight with Kahtenny's Apaches I repeated for him, as I'd told him the whole story before, except the part about me killing Billy Higgins, which I didn't like to think on. Then I told him about my meeting with Laura Sackett, and her story of the lost boy.

"This much I have learned since your departure," Lewiston said. "Laura Sackett was divorced from your brother, and your brothers and her father had been deadly enemies."

"If I ever heard of that, I'd forgotten. We Sacketts were never much on talking of troubles when we were together. It never does any good to go worrying your thoughts about things gone by."

"I approached her last night about your story," Captain Lewiston said. "She denies ever mentioning a child to you, or giving you any cause to ride into Mexico."

I just looked at him. It was no use to say she was lying, although she surely was.

"As a matter of fact, she says you ran away to Mexico for fear somebody would discover you had taken advantage of an Apache attack to kill Higgins."

"Those boys I was with knew better. Why else would they come with me?"

"I am afraid that won't help you at all. I believe you told me that they are dead."

"I buried Rocca with my own hands. Spanish Murphy was finished off by the Haddens. By their own say-so. John J.... well, I guess he never made it that far."

"You have no witnesses then?"

"No, sir. Nary a one. You see, Cap'n, none of those men saw it anyway. When I shot Billy Higgins there was just him and me. Nobody was close enough to hear what was said."

Well, we talked a while, and he asked a sight of questions, but after that neither of us had much hope. That feud was ten years out of my mind when I met those men in Yuma, and the name Higgins meant nothing at all to me.

So here I was in jail, and Laura Sackett, who'd been the cause of the deaths of at least three good men, was walking free.

After the captain left I sat on my cot and stared at the blank wall, trying to see my way clear, but nothing came to me, so finally, tired as I still was, I rolled over on the cot and went to sleep.

When I opened my eyes again it was nigh on to sundown and the jailer was at the door. "Lady to see you," he said.

"All right." I got up, staggering with sleep and trying to get my bearings. This would be Dorset, I figured. Only it wasn't. It was the last person in the world I expected -- Laura Sackett.

She turned to the jailer. "May I talk with my brother-in-law alone?"

When the jailer had gone, she turned those big blue eyes on me.

"I never expected you to get back," she told me coolly, "but I am glad you did.

Now I can see you hang, with my own eyes."

"Now that isn't what you'd call neighborly," I said, determined not to let her get any more satisfaction than I could help.

"I only wish Orrin could be here to see you hang," she said, staring at me. "And Tyrel ... I hated him the most."

"Maybe that's because you couldn't fool him," I said. "But ma'am, do you really want to see me hang that much? I never did you any harm. Never even saw you until I came up the trail from Yuma."

"I want to see you hang, and I will. I only wish I could see Orrin's face when he gets the news."

"Maybe you will see him," I said. "Orrin's a right good lawyer. If he can be free of his duties that long, I'll maybe get him to defend me in court."

She did not like that. Orrin was a mighty impressive figure of a man, and he could talk. He had the Welsh gift for talking, and she knew how persuasive he could be.

"He'll never get here. If you send for him I'll get Arch Hadden to kill him."

"Arch? So that's why he was in Mexico, a-hunting me? I wondered how he knew we'd be there, when we were so all-fired careful that nobody knew."

"Yes, I sent them after you. And I'll send Arch after Orrin, if he comes here."

"So Arch is in town, is he?" That was something to consider, and of a sudden those prison walls began to seem as if they were crowding in on me. Arch Hadden would know I was in jail, and he would come for me. I glanced at that high-up window, and was suddenly glad it was so small and so high up.

"Send for Orrin. I would like that. I will have him killed." As she spoke it seemed to me there was something in those blue eyes that looked mighty like insanity.

"You mistake Orrin. He won't kill easy, and Arch Hadden never saw the day he could draw with Orrin."

I was talking to the wind. She didn't hear me and would have paid it no mind if she had, for I knew she had no such idea as them drawing against each other. She meant a rifle from a hilltop at some stage stop, or something of that kind.

After she had gone I studied about it a mite, and then called the jailer.

"You get word to Cap'n Lewiston, will you? I got to see him."

"Sure." The jailer eyed me thoughtfully. "Did you really shoot that Higgins feller?"

"If you were lying out in the glare of the sun, and you were gut-shot and dying and the Apaches were shooting flaming slivers of pitch into your hide, wouldn't you ask to be shot?"

"That the way it was? I heerd he was an enemy of yourn."

So I explained about the old Higgjns-Sackett feud. And I said again, "But I haven't given thought to that fight in ten years, Besides, when a man's hunkered down on a ridge alone, and the Apaches are around him, do you think he'd waste a shot to kill a man the Indians were sure to get?"

"No, sir, I surely don't," he said.

He went away then, and I was alone until the door opened and Dorset came in. She was carrying a plate all covered over. "The lady over at the Shoo-Fly sent this," she said. She lifted her chin defensively. "I didn't have any money or I'd have brought something for you."

"You've done enough. How about you and your sister? Have you got a place to stay?"

"With the Creeds. They'll be coming to thank you. Dan Creed said he'd bust you out of here if you wanted."

"I'll stay. Maybe I'm a fool, but no Sackett aside from Nolan ever rode in flight from the law."

We talked for a spell, and then she left. The jailer returned, but he'd not seen hide nor hair of Captain Lewiston. Lieutenant Davis had been walking out with Laura Sackett, so he had avoided them.

Alone again, I did some right serious thinking. Tampico Rocca and Spanish Murphy were dead. Battles probably was, but even had they been alive there was nothing any of them could tell that would speak for me, because when I shot Higgins I was alone. I'd been a fool to mention it to Laura, but it lay heavy on my mind, and at the time I figured her for family.

What really stood against me was that I'd shot a man who carried the name of a family against which my family had feuded. The man had been wounded several times before, but there was only my say-so that the Indians had done it. The pitch-pine slivers was Apache work, nobody denied that. But the way the talk was going made it seem as if I'd taken advantage of Apache trouble to kill an old enemy, and a thing like that is hard to down.

Billy Higgins had a sight of friends around Tucson, and nobody there knew me except by name. A good part of the talk going around was carried on by Lieutenant Davis, who believed whatever Laura told him.

Two days passed slowly, and I just sat on my cot, and played checkers with the jailer. One thing had changed. That jailer never went off and left me alone any more, and he kept the door to the street locked.

The sheriff was out of town, and wasn't due back for a week, and I began to get the feeling that the quicker they tried me the better. If they didn't hurry, some of those boys outside might be figuring on a necktie party. I began to wish for the high-up country away out yonder, where nobody goes but eagles and mountain sheep. By the wall outside the cell I could see my own outfit -- my saddle, bridle, and saddlebags, my rifle and pistol belt. I wanted a horse between my knees, and a Winchester.

Dan Creed came to see me. The jailer knew him and admitted him without hesitation. "You'd better let me get you a gun," Creed said when the jailer had gone back to the office. "They're surely figuring on stringing you up. I've talked until I'm blue in the face, but they pay me no mind. They say, 'Sure, he brought your youngsters out of Mexico. You'd speak for him no matter what kind of a coyote he is.' "

"What else are they saying?"

"Well, they say they've only your word for it that the Apaches were still there when you shot Higgins. They say when the Injuns pulled out you just figured to be rid of another Higgins."

Lewiston, who seemed to have been my friend, was gone. Even if I could get word to Orrin and Tyrel, they were too far away to do much good. It began to look to me as if my number was really up.

In matters such as lynching there's always toughs who are ready for it, and there are always people who don't want to be involved. There are men who would stop such things, but it takes a strong man who will make the attempt. I'd never expected to be on the end of the rope myself, although anybody who packs a gun runs that risk.

Again night came, and outside I could hear the mutter of voices, and angry talk.

There was no telling if it would come to more than talk, but lying on that prison cot in the darkness I wasn't willing to bet on it.

Suddenly, from out of the darkness outside my window, a voice spoke. "We're going to get you, Sackett. We're going to see you hang!" My feet swung to the floor, and I was mad clear through. "Come an' get me, Yellow Belly," I said.

"I'll know your voice when I hear it. You just come asking, and you'll get it!"

There was a grate of boots on gravel, and a sound of retreating footsteps.

Suddenly I realized that I was no longer tired. I'd come to this place physically exhausted, but now I'd had three good days of rest, and I was ready.

I got up and went to the bars.

"Jim!" I hailed the jailer. "Come running! I got to see you!"

There was no answer, and I yelled again.

There was still no reply. But I heard a mutter of voices.

The jailer was gone, and they had come for me.

Chapter 19

Tucson was for the most part a town of law-abiding citizens. I knew that, and so did that crowd out there. The trouble was, would those citizens get here in time to help me? I knew what those men outside wanted most was quiet, but I aimed to see they didn't get it.

Getting up from my cot, I gave a look around. There was nothing there that would make a weapon except the frame of the cot, which was of half-inch pipe. So I just wrenched the cot clear of the wall, breaking it enough to unscrew two sections of it, one about seven feet long, the other an end piece that was about three feet in length, with an elbow on it.

Standing both pieces close by, I waited. Outside I could hear somebody by the window, then the door from the outer office opened into the prison section. Men came crowding through, and I could see others in the office.

I stood up then. "You boys huntin' something?" I spoke careless-like. "If you are, you've come to the wrong place."

"We're a-goin' to hang you for killin' Billy Higgins."

"I killed him -- he asked me to. In his place or mine, you'd have done the same."

I could smell the whiskey on them. This bunch had been drinking to get up the nerve to come after me, but they were tough men nonetheless. I heard somebody fumbling with keys, and knew there was no time to lose.

"I'm going to tell you once, and that's all," I said. "You boys get out of here, an' get fast."

They'd come without a light, and it was dark as a pit in there. They hadn't figured they'd need a light to take me out of the cell, and they didn't want to draw any more attention than need be. I was only one man and they were twenty.

"Look who's givin' orders!" somebody said. "Get that lock open and let's get him out of here!"

Now, there's a time for talk and a time for action, and I never was much gifted with oratory. I picked up the long pipe, and when I heard them trying to get the key into the lock I gripped that pipe with both hands shoulder high and, holding it tight, I jammed it between the bars. At close quarters and in the dark it was a terrible weapon. The passage outside the cells was narrow and they were packed in tight.

With all the power that was in me, I jammed that pipe into the crowd beyond the bars. I heard the crunch, then a horrible, choking scream.

"What was it? What happened?" somebody yelled, and there was panic in the voice.

Drawing back on the pipe, I held it waist high and jammed it through again, further into them.

Another scream, then a cry, "Back! For God's sake, let us out of here!"

Somebody else yelled, "What's the matter? You gone crazy? Let's get him!"

Jerking the pipe back, I smashed hard at the voice and heard a scream. Then came a shout, "Get out! Get out!"

Men were fighting and struggling to get out of the narrow passageway. Thrusting my pipe through the bars this tune at ankle height, I heard several of them go sprawling. Somebody jerked a gun and fired blindly through the bars, the shot missing me by several feet. I drove my bar at the flash and heard a grunt, then anguished cries of pain, and stampeding feet. Suddenly the passage was empty except for somebody who lay groaning on the floor.

"Serves you right," I said calmly. "Whoever you are, you got what you had coming."

"Help! For God's sake, help me!"

"How am I going to do that?" I said. "I'm behind bars. You just crawl outside and get some of those murdering friends of yours to help."

There was another shuddering groan and I heard the sound of dragging. I stood my pipe against the cell wall, and waited. If they came again it would be to shoot, but I had a hunch they wouldn't come.

Now I heard angry questions outside in the street, and then the outer door opened. A match scratched and somebody lit the lamp. Men appeared in the passageway. One of them was Oury, whom I knew to be a reputable man.

"What's happened? What's going on here?" he said.

A man was lying on the floor, and a trail of blood showed where another had dragged himself. A loose coil of rope and a six-shooter lay just outside the cell.

"Seems I had visitors," I said, leaning on the bars. "They wanted me for a necktie party. Only I didn't think it ought to go on without some sort of official plannin', so those folks, they taken off."

Oury's face was grim. "I am sorry, young man. Those were a bunch of drunken teamsters and drifters, not citizens of Tucson."

"I figured as much," I said. "Mr. Oury, do you reckon you could get somebody to bring me a pot of coffee from the Shoo-Fly, and something to eat? I'm getting almighty hungry."

"I will do more than that. Jim" -- he turned to one of the others -- "get me the keys. I am taking this young man to dinner."

He looked around again. The man lying on the floor was being examined. The doctor looked up. "This man has three broken ribs and a punctured lung," he said quietly.

"That's his problem," I said harshly. "Anybody who fools around with the bandwagon is likely to get hit with a horn."

"Those are my sentiments," Oury said crisply. The keys jangled, the door swung wide. "Come, Mr. Sackett, you are my guest."

"I don't mind if I do," I said, "but I warn you, I'm an eating man, just getting my appetite back."

The Shoo-Fly was almost empty when we went in, but a few minutes afterward it was crowded to the doors.

When I'd eaten, I sat back in my chair. One of the Tucson citizens came in with my Winchester and gun belt. "If you're staying in town," he said, "you'd better go armed."

"I am staying," I replied, "until this matter is cleared up. I did nothing wrong out there. I killed a good man, a tough man. He might have lived for hours in that boiling hot sun with those slivers burning into him. He was not a man to die easy."

"I might have asked for the same thing," somebody said.

I was quiet after that. I'd eaten well, and I had my guns on again, and all I wanted was to get this affair cleared up and pull out for Tyrel's outfit in New Mexico. As for this town, it was no place for me until my enemies had drifted, and being drifters, I knew they'd soon be gone.

The doctor came in and gave me a hard look. "I'll say this for you," he said, "you're a bad man to corner. You've put four men in bed. One of them has a smashed cheekbone, his face is ripped open, and he's lost nine teeth. One has a torn shoulder muscle, another has a dent in his skull and his scalp is ripped right across the top, laid open for five inches. The one with the punctured lung will live if he's lucky. All said and done, you put four men out of action, and injured six or seven more."

"They came after me," I said. The outer door opened then and two men came in.

One was Captain Lewiston, the other was Toclani, the Apache scout. They looked around until their eyes spotted me, and they came over to my table.

"Sackett," Lewiston said, "Toclani has talked to Kahtenny. They verify your story. Kahtenny told us in detail, as did several other Apaches, what was happening out there during the attack when you shot Higgins."

"You talked to Kahtenny?" I asked Toclani.

"He, too." He indicated Lewiston. "We ride together to Apache camp."

I looked at Lewiston. "You taken a long chance, man."

"It was simple justice. I knew that the people who would surely know what happened were the Apaches. I did not know they would talk, but Toclani came with me, and Kahtenny had much to say of you, Sackett. He said you were a brave man, a strong man, and a warrior."

"Did he get his squaw back?"

"Yes, and he thanks you." Lewiston looked at me. "He may come in. All because of that, he may come in."

"I hope he does," I said. "He's a good Indian."

And so it was over. Nobody wanted me back in jail any longer, but I figured to stay around until the sheriff came back so as there'd be no argument. Around town folks stopped to speak to me on the street, and several thanked me for bringing the youngsters back.

But I saw nothing of Laura ... had she left town? Or was she still there, waiting, planning?

My mind kept turning to Dorset Although it was in my thoughts, I'd no right to go a-courting, for I'd no money and no prospects worth counting on. Mr.

Rockfellow, who had a herd he wanted pushed over into the Sulphur Springs Valley, hired me and some other hands, but it was a short job, and left me with nothing more than eating money.

The sheriff came back to town, and after hearing what had happened he gave me a clean bill on the charges against me, so I figured to saddle up and show some dust, only I hadn't enough cash to lay in supplies to take me anywhere.

Then at the Shoo-Fly I heard that Pete Kitchen had located himself a mining claim down in the Pajaritos, so I rode down. When he found out I was a hand with a pick and shovel, as well as with a cutting horse and a rope, he hired me for the job.

When he was laying out the grub for me to take along he put in a couple of hundred rounds of .44's. "With your kind of luck, and that being Injun country, you're liable to need them."

Well, I almost backed out. I'd had my fill of Apache fighting, and wanted nothing so much as a spell of setting and contemplating.

The Pajaritos are not much when it comes to mountains. They are named for an odd birdlike formation on the butte. I rode down there, leading a jack mule, and I found the mining claim.

There was a wash where run-off water had cut down among the rocks and laid bare some ore. It wasn't of much account, but gave promise of growing richer as it went deeper.

On the back side of a knoll, partly screened by brush and boulders, I made me a camp. On some rough grass nearby I picketed my stock. Then I sat down to contemplate what lay before me.

Now, I'm no mining man, but you don't prospect around, work in mines, or even loaf around mining towns without picking up some of the lingo as well as a scraping of information.

This whole place was faulted. Movements of the earth in bygone times had tilted and fractured the crust until you had a good idea of what lay under you as well as in front of you. The gold, what there was of it, occurred in quartz veins. It looked to me like what they call a cretaceous bed that had rested on diorite, but some of the dikes that intruded offered a chance of some likely ore.

My job was to cut into that, do enough work to establish a right to the claim for Kitchen, and maybe explore enough so as he'd have an idea what lay below.

Doing the work I was going to do wasn't going to help much, but I wanted to do the best job for him I could. I never did figure a man hired to do a job should just do it the easiest way. I figure a man should do the best he knows how. So I taken up my pick and went to work on that bank.

While I had a little blasting powder and some fuse, I had no notion of using it.

Blasting makes an awful lot of noise, enough to bring every Apache in the country around, and I hoped to do my work quietlike, by main strength and awkwardness, and then pack up and light a shuck for Kitchen's ranch.

After working a couple of hours I sat down to take some rest, and began to notice the bees. Some had gone past while I was working, and now I noticed more of them. I left my pick and shovel and, taking up my Winchester, which I kept ready to hand, I went off up the mountain. Just over the shoulder of it I picked up tracks of a desert fox, just enough to indicate direction.

Between occasional tracks and the bees, I located a rock tank, nigh full of water. Two streams of run-off water coming down off the butte had worn places in the rocks. With a branch from an ocotillo, a dead branch I found nearby, I tried to measure the depth of water in the tank. I touched no bottom, but it was anyway more than six feet deep ... water enough for my stock and me. It was half hidden under an overhang, and the water was icy cold and clean.

Next morning, after a quick breakfast, I got at my work again. Here and there I found a good piece of ore which I put aside. Now I was doing the same thing most prospectors do. I was putting aside the best pieces, an easy way to lead others to invest, and to lead yourself into believing you've got more than you have.

Using water from the tank, I washed out a couple of pans from the dry wash below the claim and picked up a few small colors, nothing worth getting excited about.

Unless that vein widened out below where I'd been digging, it was going to cost Pete more to get the gold than it was worth.

By nightfall the cut I'd made was beginning to look like something. I'd sacked up three sacks of samples and had crushed a few of them and panned out the fragments, getting a little color.

The next two days I worked from can-see to can't-see, and had enough done to count this as a working claim. One more day for good measure, and I would saddle up for Tucson.

This spell had given me some time to think, and it showed me there was no sense in saddle-tramping around, riding the grub line or picking up a day of work hither and yon. It was time I settled in for a lifetime at some kind of job, or on a place of my own.

It meant hard work, and lots of it. Living a life is much like climbing mountains -- the summits are always further off than you think, but when a man has a goal, he always feels he's working toward something.

The next morning, when I'd been working an hour by sun, I hit the pocket.

It was a crumbling ledge of decomposed quartz, seemingly unrelated to what was on either side, and the piece that I found was no bigger than an upright piano, but it seemed to be only the top of a larger ledge. Anyway, in the next three hours I broke up enough of that quartz to get out maybe two thousand dollars' worth of gold.

Pete Kitchen was going to be almighty pleased. I dumped one of my other sacks back in the hole and filled the sack with the rich stuff. I was just loading the last of it and was too busy to be rightly paying mind to anything else when I hear a voice saying, "Looks like this trip is going to pay off mighty handsome."

Laura Sackett was there, and three men were with her -- Arch Hadden, Johnny Wheeler, sometime gunman for a smuggling outfit, and one of the gents who had been with Hadden in the fight at Dead Man's Tank. They had come down here for only one reason, and that was to kill me, and they wanted to tell me about it.

There was no call for conversation, not having to stall like before, so I just peeled back my forty-five and wasted no time.

I turned and saw and drew and fired, all kind of in one breath. My first shot took Johnny Wheeler, whose hand was lingering around the butt of his six-gun as if he was minded to use it.

That shot hit right where the ribs spread apart. My second shot was for Arch Hadden, but it missed. Arch had suddenly whipped his horse around and was running like all get-out.

Laura's horse reared up and she toppled from the saddle, and of a sudden the other gunman was shooting past me. I turned to see the Apaches coming down and recognized one of them as Kahtenny.

Me, I dove into that hole I'd been digging and had sense enough to grab the picket ropes of my horses, which I'd had up, loading for the homeward trip.

The Apaches swept by and I saw that third gunman go down. I heard the bark of Apache guns and saw the dust jump from his vest. He came up shooting, only another bullet nailed him.

They caught Arch Hadden.

I saw them catch him. It was Kahtenny and two others, and I saw him turn to fight as they rode up, but a rope sailed out, and then another, and the Apaches had themselves a prisoner.

Well, I'd told him. He had stolen Kahtenny's squaw, and he had been warned. With Apaches, nothing much was doubtful from here on -- only how long Hadden had the guts to stick it out.

This was a hard land, and the rules were written plain in the way we lived. If you overstepped the rules you had bought yourself trouble, and from now on it was going to be settled between Hadden and Kahtenny.

Me, I got up and went to my horses. I fed shells into my six-shooters again, and then I walked over to the man I'd shot to see if he was alive. He wasn't. Johnny Wheeler was buzzard meat.

I taken his guns off, and what he had on him for identification. Might be somebody, somewhere, who'd be wishful to know what happened.

And then Laura Sackett got up off the ground and we just looked at each other. I never did see such hatred in anybody's eyes.

"Downright mis'rable, ain't we?" I said calmly. "You'd think one of us Sacketts would be considerate enough to die so's you could get some of that bile out of your system."

"I suppose you're going to kill me?" she said.

"No, I ain't. It would be a kindness to the world, but I never shot a woman yet, and don't figure to now. No, I'm just goin' to leave you. I'm just goin' to mount up and ride right out of here."

"You'd leave me here?" She was incredulous. "There's a horse yonder. You get on that horse and ride."

Putting my foot in the stirrup, I swung into the saddle, and you can just bet that before I swung a-straddle of that horse I swung the animal around so I could keep an eye on her whilst I was doing it.

I taken a turn around the saddlehorn with the lead rope of the pack horse, and she said, "What if those Indians come back?"

"It's their tough luck, ma'am," I said, "but I hope not, for their sakes.

Apaches aren't bad folks. They have trouble enough without wishin' you on them.

Only it might work out for the best. A session with some of those Apache squaws might teach you some manners." I touched my hat, "I hope I won't be seein' you, ma'am. Good-bye!"

That black of mine went down into the arroyo as if he knew what was behind him, and when he topped out on the rise beyond we were out of rifle shot. I pulled up then and looked back.

She had caught one of the horses and was trying to mount. The horse was worried by her skirt, and was sidling around.

That was the last I saw of her, of Laura, who had been Orrin's wife.

I rode east, with the sun going down behind me, the feel of a good saddle under me, and a horse between my legs. The trail dipped into a wide hollow, shadowy with evening, and somewhere a quail called. Across yonder hills, miles away, was Pete Kitchen's. I'd make camp before I got there, because nobody in his right mind rode up to Pete's in the nighttime.

He was paying me twenty dollars for the job, and might cut me in for some of the profits. Anyway, it was a road stake, and maybe before lining out for somewhere across the country I'd just ride around and call on Dorset.

I liked that little girl. She was pert and she was pretty, and she had nerve.

A star came out, the desert night was soft, and a coolness came over it.

It came on me to sing, but my horse was carrying me along nicely, and I was not wishful for trouble.