The Sacket Brand

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THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE SACKETT NOVELS

SACKETT'S LAND circa 1600

TO THE FAR BLUE MOUNTAINS circa 1600-1620

THE WARRIOR'S PATH circa 1620's JUBAL SACKETT circa 1620's RIDE THE RIVER circa 1840's-1850's (bbf Civil War)

THE DAYBREAKERS circa 1870-1872

SACKETT circa 1874-1875

LANDO circa 1873-1875

MOJAVE CROSSING circa 1875-1879

MUSTANG MAN circa 1875-1879

THE LONELY MEN circa 1875-1879

GALLOWAY circa 1875-1879

TREASURE MOUNTAIN circa 1875-1879

LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN circa 1875-1879

RIDE THE DARK TRAIL circa 1875-1879

THE SACKETT BRAND circa 1875-1879

THE SKY-LINERS circa 1875-1879

Chapter one.

Nobody could rightly say any of us Sacketts were what you'd call superstitious.

Nonetheless, if I had tied a knot in a towel or left a shovel in the fire nothing might have happened.

The trouble was, when I walked out on that point my mind went a-rambling like wild geese down a western sky.

What I looked upon was a sight of lovely country. Right at my feet was the river, a-churning and a-thrashing at least six hundred feet below me, with here and there a deep blue pool. Across the river, and clean to the horizon to the north and east of me, was the finest stand of pine timber this side of the Smokies.

Knobs of craggy rock thrust up, with occasional ridges showing bare spines to the westward where the timber thinned out and the country finally became desert. In front of me, but miles away, a gigantic wall reared up. That wall was at least a thousand feet higher than where I now stood, though this was high ground.

Down around Globe I'd heard talk of that wall. On the maps I'd seen it was written Mogollon, but folks in the country around called it the Muggy-own.

This was the place we had been seeking, and now I was scouting a route for my wagon and stock.

As I stood there on that high point I thought I saw a likely route, and I started to turn away. It was a move I never completed, for something struck me an awful wallop alongside the skull, and next thing I knew I was falling.

Falling? With a six-hundred-foot drop below me? Fear clawed at my throat, and I heard a wild, ugly cry ... my own cry.

Then my shoulder smashed into an outcropping of crumbly rock that went to pieces under the impact, and again I was falling; I struck again, fell again, and struck again, this time feet first, facing a gravelly slope that threw me off into the air once more. This time I landed sliding on a sheer rock face that rounded inward and let me fall again, feet first.

Brush growing out from the side of the mountain caught me for just a moment, but I ripped through it, clawing for a grip; then I fell clear into a deep pool.

Down I went, and when I thought to strike out and swim, something snagged my pants leg and started me kicking wildly to shake loose. Then something gave way down there under water, and I shot to the surface right at the spillway of the pool.

My mouth gasped for air, and a wave hit me full in the mouth and almost strangled me, while the force of the water swept me between the rocks and over a six-foot fall. The current rushed me on, and I went through another spillway before I managed to get my feet under me in shallow water.

Even then, stepping on a slippery rock, I fell once more, and this time the current dropped me to a still lower pool, almost covered by arching trees.

Flailing with arms and legs, I managed to lay hand to a root and tug myself out of the water. There was a dark hole under the roots of a huge old sycamore that leaned over the water, and it was instinct more than good sense that made me crawl into it before I collapsed.

And then for a long time I felt nothing, heard nothing.

It was the cold that woke me. Shivering, shaking, I struggled back to something like consciousness. At first I sensed only the cold ... and then I realized that somebody was talking nearby.

"What's the boss so wrought up about? He was just a driftin' cowpoke."

"You ain't paid to question the boss, Dancer. He said we were to find him and kill him, and he said we were to hunt for a week if necessary, but he wants the body found and he wants it buried deep. If it ain't dead, we kill it."

"You funnin' me? Why, that poor benighted heathen fell six hundred feet! And you can just bet he was dead before he even started to fall.

Macon couldn't miss a shot at that distance, with his target standing still, like that."

"That doesn't matter. We hunt until we find him."

The sound of their walking horses faded out, and I lay still on the wet ground, shaking with chill, knowing I'd got to get warm or die. When I tried to move my arm it flopped out like a dead thing, it was that numb.

My fingers laid hold of a rock that was frozen into the ground and I hauled myself deeper into the hole. The earth beneath me was frozen mud, but it was shelter of a kind, so I curled up like a new-born baby and tried to think.

Who was I? Where was I? Who wanted me dead, and why?

My thoughts were all fuzzy, and I couldn't sort out anything that made sense. My skull throbbed with a dull, heavy beat, and I squinted my eyes against the pain. One leg was so stiff it would scarcely move, and when I got a look at my hands I didn't want to look at them again.

When I'd hit the face of the cliff I'd torn nearly all the skin off grabbing for a hold. One fingernail was gone.

Somebody named Macon had shot at me, but so far as I could recall I had never known anybody by that name. But that sudden blow on the head when I started to turn away from the cliff edge must have been it, and that turn had probably saved my life. I put my fingers up and drew them away quickly. There was a raw furrow in my scalp just above the ear.

The cold had awakened me; the voices had started me thinking. The two together had given me a chance to live. Yet why should I try? I had only to lie still and I would die soon enough. All the struggle, all the pain would be over.

And then it struck me.

Ange ... Ange Kerry, the girl who had become my wife. Where was she?

When I thought of her I rolled over and started to get up. Ange was back up there on the mountain with the wagon and the cattle, and she was alone. She was back there waiting for me, worrying. And she was alone.

It was growing dark, and whatever search for me was being carried on would end with darkness, for that day, at least. If I was to make a move, I had to start now.

Using my elbow and hand, I worked my way out of the hole and pulled myself up by clinging to the sycamore. At the same time I kept my body close to it for concealment.

The forest along the stream was open, almost empty of underbrush, but the huge old sycamores made almost a solid roof overhead, so that where I stood it was already twilight.

My teeth rattled with cold, for my shirt was torn to shreds, my pants torn, my boots gone. My gun belt had been ripped loose in the fall and my gun was gone, andwith it my bowie knife.

There was no snow, but the cold was icy. Pounding my arm against my body, I tried to get the blood to flowing, to get some warmth into me. One leg I simply could not use, but from the feel of it I was sure it was not broken.

Shelter ... I must find shelter and warmth.

If I could get to the wagon, I could get clothing, blankets, and a gun. Most of all, I could see Ange, could be sure she was all right.

But first I must think. Only by thought had man prevailed, or so I'd heard somewhere. Panic was the enemy now, more to be feared than the cold, or even that nameless enemy who had struck at me, and now was searching for me with many men.

Who could it be? And why?

This was wild country--actually it was Apache country, and there were few white men around, and nobody who knew me.

So far as I knew, nobody was even aware that we were in this part of the country. ... Yes, there was somebody--the storekeeper in Globe of whom we'd made inquiries. No doubt others had seen us around Globe, but I had no enemies there, nor had I talked to anyone else, nor done anything to offend anyone.

Now, step by careful step, I eased away from the river and into the deeper forest. The sun was setting, and gave me my direction.

Movement awakened pain. A million tiny prickles came into my numbed leg, but I kept on, as careful as I could be under the conditions, wanting to leave no trail that could be followed.

As I crawled up a bank, my hand closed over a rounded rock with an edge. It was a crude, prehistoric hand-axe.

I remembered that Leo Prager, a Boston college man who had spent some time on Tyrel's ranch near Mora, had told me about such things. He had spent all his time hunting for signs of the ancient people who lived in that country before the Indians came--or at any rate, the kind of Indians we knew.

For several weeks I'd guided him around, camped with him, and helped him look, so naturally I learned a good bit about those long-ago people and their ways. When it came to chipping arrowheads, I was the one who could show him how it was done, for I'd grown up around Cherokee boys back in the Tennessee mountains.

What I had found just now was an oval stone about as big as my fist, chipped to an edge along one side, so I had me a weapon. Clinging to it, I crawled over the bank and got to my feet.

I could not be sure how far downstream the river had carried me, but it was likely no more than half a mile. And I knew that after I left Ange and my outfit I had ridden five or six miles before reaching that point where I'd been shot.

So I made a start. Under ordinary conditions I might have walked the distance in two to three hours, but the conditions were not exactly ordinary.

I was in bad shape, with a game leg and more hurts than I cared to think on. Andwith every step I had to be wary of discovery. Moreover, it was rough country, over rocks and through trees and brush, and I'd have to climb some to make up the ground I'd lost in the fall.

How many times I fell down I'll never know, or how many times I crawled on the ground or pulled myself up by a tree or rock. Yet each time I did get up, and somehow I kept pushing along. Finally, unable to go any further, I found a shallow, wind-hollowed cave almost concealed behind a bush, a cave scarcely large enough to take my body, and I crawled in, and there I slept.

Hours later, awakened by the cold, I turned over and worked myself in a little further, and then I slept again. When at last the long, miserable night was past, I awoke in the gray-yellow dawn to face the stark realization that I was a hunted man.

My feet, which had been torn and lacerated by the fall and the night's walking over rocks and frozen ground, seemed themselves almost frozen. My socks were gone, and probably the shreds of them marked my trail.

Numb and cold as I was, I fought to corral my thoughts and point them toward a solution. I knew that what lay before me was no easy thing.

By now Ange would know that I was in serious trouble, for I'd never spent the night away from her side; and it could be that my horse had returned to the wagon. My riderless horse could only mean something awfully wrong.

From the trunk of a big old sycamore, I hacked out two rectangles of bark. Then with rawhide strips cut from my belt with my stone axe and my teeth, I tied those pieces of bark under my feet to protect the soles.

Next, I dug into the ground with the hand-axe and worked until I found a long, limber root, to make a loop large enough to go over my head. Then I broke evergreen boughs from the trees and hung them by their forks or tied them to the loop, making myself a sort of a cape of boughs. It wasn't much, but it cut the force of the wind and kept some of the warmth of my body close to me.

With more time, I could have done better, but I felt I hadn't time to spare. My right leg was badly swollen, but nothing could be done for it now.

By the time I finished my crude cape my hands were bleeding. Using a dead branch for a staff, I started off, keeping under cover as best I could.

If I had covered one mile the night before, I was lucky, and there were several miles to go. But I was sure that at first they would be hunting a body along the river--until they found some sign.

By the time the sun was high I was working my way up a canyon where cypresses grew. On my right was the wall of Buckhead Mesa, and I'd left Ange and the wagon on the north side of that mesa. I thought of the rifle and the spare pistol in that wagon ... if I could get to it.

Then, far behind me, I heard a loud halloo.

That stopped me, and I stood for a moment, catching my breath and listening. It must be that somebody had found some sign, and had called the others. At least, I had to read it that way. From now on, they would know they were hunting a living man.

If they knew of the wagon--and I had to take it they did--they had little to worry about. How many were hunting me I had no idea, but they had only to string out and make a sweep of the country, pushing in toward the wall of the mesa. Using the river as a base line, they could sweep the country, and then climb the mesa and move in on the wagon. It left me very little chance for escape.

My mind shied from thinking of my condition after that fall. I knew I was in bad shape, but I was scared to know how bad, because until I reached Ange and the wagon there was just nothing I could do about it. Right then I wanted a gun in my hand more than I wanted medicine or even a doctor. I wanted a gun and a chance at the man who had ambushed me.

Using the stick, I could sort of hitch along in spite of my bad leg. It didn't seem to be broken, but it had swollen until the pants seam was likely to bust; if it kept on swelling I'd have to split the seam somehow. My hands were in awful shape, and the cut on my skull was a nasty one. I had a stitch in my side, as if maybe I had cracked some ribs. But I wasn't complaining--"rights I should have been dead.

When I was shot I had been standing on a point on Black Mesa, which tied to Buckhead Mesa on the southeast. The canyon where the cypress grew seemed to reach back toward the west side of Buckhead, and from where I was now standing it seemed to offer a chance to follow it back up to the top of Buckhead. So I started out.

You never saw so much brush, so many trees, so many rock falls crammed into one canyon.

Fire had swept along the canyon a time or two, leaving some charred logs, but the trees had had time to grow tall again, and the brush had grown thicker than ever, as it always does after a fire.

One thing I had in my favor. Nobody was likely to try taking a horse up that canyon, and if I knew cowpunchers they weren't going to get down from the saddle and scramble on foot up the canyon unless all hell was a-driving them.

A cowhand is a damned fool who will work twenty-five hours out of every day if he can do it from a saddle. But put him on his feet, and you've got yourself a man who is likely to sit down and build himself a smoke so's he can think about it.

And after he thinks it over, he'll get back in the saddle and ride off.

It was still cold ... bitter cold. I tried not to think of that, but just kept inching along. Sometimes I pulled myself along by grasping branches or clutching at cracks in the rock. Cold as it was, I started to sweat, and that scared me. If that sweat froze, the heat in my body would be used up fighting its cold and I'd die.

Once I broke a hole in the ice and drank, but most of the time I just kept moving because I'd never learned how to quit. I was just a big raw-boned cowboy with big shoulders and big hands who was never much account except for hard work and fighting. Back in the Tennessee hills they used to say my feet were too big for dancing and I hadn't any ear for music; but along about fighting time I'd be there--fist, gun, or bowie knife. All of us Sacketts were pretty much on the shoot.

By noontime I was breasting the rise at the head of the canyon. Only a few yards away the rock of the mesa broke off sharply and dipped into another canyon, while the great flat surface of Buckhead lay on my right. It was several miles in area and thickly forested.

Crawling back into the brush, I settled down to rest a bit and to try thinking things out. My head wasn't working too well and my thoughts came slow, and everything looked different somehow. I kept passing my hand over my forehead and scowling, trying to rid my eyes of the blur.

Near as I could figure, Ange and the wagon were now about three miles off, and moving as I had to, it might take me to sundown to cover that distance. Long before that, every inch of the mesa top would be scoured by riders who would seek out every clump of brush, every tree, every hole in the rocks.

Nobody ever denied that I was a tough man. I stand six feet three in my socks, when I own a pair, and I weigh a hundred and eighty, most of it in my shoulders and arms. I ain't what you'd call a pretty-built man, but when I take hold things generally move.

But now I was weak as a sick cat. I'd lost a sight of blood, and used myself almighty bad. The way things stood, I couldn't run and I couldn't fight. If they found me they had me, and no two ways about it ... and they were hunting to kill.

There was no way across that mesa but to walk or crawl, and there was no place a rider couldn't go.

It looked to me as if I needed more of a weapon than that hand-axe I had in my pocket.

Turning around, I crawled deeper into the brush and burrowed down into the pine needles. My head ached, my eyes blinked slowly. I was tired, almighty tired. I felt wore out.

Ange, Ange girl, I said, I just ain't a-gonna make it. I ain't a-gonna make it right now.

I was trying to burrow deeper, and then I stopped all movement when I heard a horse walking on frozen ground, but the sound faded off in the distance.

My head felt all swelled up like a balloon, and I couldn't seem to lift it off the ground.

Ange, I said, damn it, Ange, I

...

Chapter two.

Leaning my shoulder against the rough bark of a tree, I stared at the empty clearing, unwilling to believe what my eyes saw.

The wagon was gone!

Under the wide white moon the clearing lay etched in stillness. The surrounding trees were a wall of blackness against which nothing moved. Within the clearing itself, scarcely two acres in extent, there was nothing.

To this place I had come after hours of unconsciousness or sleep, after hours of fitful struggle for some kind of comfort on the frozen ground, in the numbing cold.

Only when darkness had come had I dared move, for riders had been all about me, searching relentlessly. Once, off to the right I heard faint voices, glimpsed the flicker of a fire.

How many times they might have passed nearby I had no idea, for only occasionally was I even fully aware of things around me. Yet with the deepening shadows some inner alarm had shaken me awake, and after a moment of listening, I rolled from the pine needles in which I had buried myself, and taking up my stick, I pushed myself to my feet.

All through my pain-racked day I had longed for this place and dreamed of arriving here. In the wagon there would be things to help me, in the wagon there would be weapons. Above all, Ange would be there, and I could be sure she was all right.

But she was gone.

Now, more even than care for my wounds I wanted weapons. Above all, I was a fighting man ... it was deeply grained in my being, a part of me. Hurt, I would fight; dying, I would still try to fight.

A quiet man I was, and not one to provoke a quarrel, but if set upon I would fight back.

I do not say this in boasting, for it was as much a part of me as the beating of my heart. It was bred in the blood-line of those from whom I come, and I could not be other than I am.

This it was, and my love for Ange, that had carried me here. Ange, who had brought love and tenderness to the big, homely man that I am.

Ange knew me well, and she knew I was not a man to die easily. She knew the wild lands herself, and she would have believed that she had only to wait and I would return. She would not willingly have left this place without me, knowing that even if I suffered an accident I would somehow return.

And now a curious fact became evident to me. This place, to which I would be sure to come back, was not watched. None of the searching men were here in this most obvious of places. Why?

The simplest reason was that they did not know of it, though a wagon is not an easy thing to conceal, nor are the mules by which it was drawn, nor the cattle. But now they were not here.

Hesitating no longer, and using my staff, I limped into the clearing and stopped where the wagon had stood.

There were no tracks.

I looked to where the fire had been, and there were no coals, no ashes. The stump that I had dragged up for a backlog, which should have been smoldering yet, was gone.

Had I then come to the wrong place? No ... the great, lightning-struck pine from the base of which I had gathered dead branches and bark to kindle our fire stood where it had been. The rock where I had sat while cleaning my rifle was there.

But the wagon was gone, the mules, the cattle ... and Ange.

Ange, whom I loved. Ange, who was my life; Ange, whom I had found in the high mountains of Colorado and brought home to the ranch of my brother, in Mora. [. Sackett, Bantam Books. 1961.]

The numbness seemed to creep into my brain, the cold held me still. Leaning on my crude staff, hurting in every muscle and ligament, I looked all around me for a clue, and I found none.

I knew she would not have left without me, and if someone or something had forced her to leave, there should still have been tracks.

Horror crept over me. I could feel its ghostly hand crawling on my spine and neck muscles. Some awful thing had happened here, some terrible, frightful thing. The ruthless pursuit of me, the wiping out of tracks here, all of it spoke of a crime; only I refused to allow myself to think of what the crime might be.

Stiffly, I began to move. I would find the camp of those men and see if Ange was there; in any case, I would see who my enemies were.

The wagon and the stock must surely be there.

Turning, I started with a lunge, only to have the end of my staff slip on the icy ground. I fell heavily, barely stifling a scream. My hands fought for a grip on the frozen ground and I struggled to get up, and then I must somehow have slipped over on my face and lost consciousness, for when I awoke the sun was shining.

For a time I lay there, letting the sun soak away the chill in my bones, but only half aware of my surroundings. Slowly realization came to me: I was a hunted man, and here I lay almost in the open, at the foot of a pine tree.

Carefully, I started to turn my head. A wave of sickness swept over me, but I persisted.

My eyes came to a focus. There was no sound but the wind in the pines. The clearing was there before me, and it was empty.

My mind was alert now, and in the broad daylight I carefully skirted the clearing. There were no tracks anywhere, none to show our arrival, none to show how the wagon had left. It had simply vanished.

I was without weapons, without food, without clothing or shelter, but all I could think of was Ange.

Somebody had been so desperate to have her disappear that every evidence of our presence there had been wiped out.

An hour later, I was at the clearing where their camp had been the night before, but now all were gone.

At least a dozen men had slept there, and there were tracks in profusion. Cigarette butts were scattered about, a coffeepot had been emptied, and a crust of bread lay upon the ground.

But there were no wagon tracks, no tracks of small boots for which I searched. And knowing Ange, I knew that she would somehow have contrived to leave a track. She knew me, knew my methods, knew my thoroughness when on trail ... and yet, there was nothing. Wherever she was, Ange had never been in this camp.

How could a wagon loaded with more than a ton of supplies, drawn by six big Missouri mules, disappear from a mesa that offered only two or three possible ways by which a wagon might leave it?

Somehow my impression was growing that these men knew nothing of Ange or the wagon. So what then? What had happened? Where was Ange? And who had shot me, and why?

Andwith these questions there were the others: Why were these men hunting me to kill me? Had they gone for good?

Or would they be back?

My hunch was that the search had only begun.

Such a desperate search would not be ended that quickly.

I moved off through the trees, hobbling painfully, crawling over fallen logs, occasionally pausing to rest.

When I had left the wagon to scout for a route off Buckhead Mesa, a route into the Tonto Basin, I had skirted the mesa itself and had seen a deep canyon leading off to the southwest. It was all of five hundred feet deep, and it appeared to be wild and impassable, but there was a creek along the bottom. There would be water there, there would be game, there would be fish.

I could no longer look to the wagon for relief. From now on I was completely on my own, alone and without any possible help. And I was surrounded by enemies unknown to me.

By nightfall of a bitterly long day I had found a cave under a natural bridge. The bridge was a tremendous arch of travertine at least a hundred and eighty feet above the waters of the creek, and the cave was a place where a man might hide and where no trouble would come to him unless from some wandering bear or mountain lion. It was a place hidden by brush and the rock slabs all about, a place littered with dead trees brought down by flash floods.

Using the bow and drill method, I started a small fire, and felt warmth working into my muscles. The warmth of the sun had brought some relief from the chill, but not very much.

Making a basin by bending together the corners of a sheet of bark, I heated some water and carefully bathed my hands, then lowered my pants and looked at my leg. It was almost black from bruising, and it was swollen to half again its natural size.

For perhaps an hour I sat there, soaking my wounds with a washcloth made from the remnants of my shirt. Whether it would help I did not know, but it felt good.

Then after carefully extinguishing my tiny fire, I put together a bed of evergreen boughs and crawled onto it. I fell into a fitful, troubled sleep.

Hunger woke me from a night of tormented dreams, but first of all I heated water and bathed my leg again, and drank warm water to heat my chilled body. It began to seem as if I would never be warm again, and though I was hungry, what I longed for most was clothing--warm, soft, wonderful clothing.

Sitting there, applying hot cloths to my wounds, I got to thinking on the reason for that attack on me.

As a general run, motives weren't hard to understand there on the frontier. Things were pretty cut and dried, and a body knew where he stood with folks. He knew what his problems were, and the problems of those about him were about the same. A man was too busy trying to stay alive and make some gain, to have time to think much about himself or get his feelings hurt. It seems to me that as soon as a man gets settled down, with meat hung out to smoke and flour in the bin, he starts looking for something to fuss about.

Well, it wasn't that way on the frontier.

A man could be just as mean as he was big enough to be; but if he started out to be bad he'd better be big enough or tough enough, if he figured to last.

Such folks were usually given time to reach for a gun or they were tucked into a handy noose. I've noticed that the less a man has to worry about getting a living, the more time he has to worry about himself.

Folks on the frontier hadn't any secret sins. The ones who were the kind for such things stayed close to well populated places where they could hide what they were. On the frontier the country was too wide, there was too much open space for a body to be able to cover anything up.

But now somebody wanted me dead, and it was apparently that same somebody who had taken my wagon away, and Ange with it.

I could understand a man wanting a wagon, or a man wanting Ange, and it wasn't ungallant of me to think it was more likely to be the wagon and outfit than Ange. And there was reason for that.

One thing a man didn't do on the frontier was molest a woman, even an all-out bad woman.

Women were scarce, and were valued accordingly. Even some pretty mean outlaws had been known to kill a man for jostling a woman on the street.

Pretty soon my leg was feeling better.

It was easier to handle, and some of the swelling was gone.

Toward noontime I found me a rabbit. I twisted him out of a hole with a forked stick, broiled him, and ate him. But a man can't live on rabbits. He needs fat meat.

Several times I saw deer, and once a fat, healthy elk, a big one that would dress two hundred and fifty pounds at least. But what I hunted was something smaller. I couldn't use that much meat, and anyway, I had nothing with which to make a kill.

The afternoon was almost gone and weariness was coming over me when I fetched up at a rocky ledge below a point of Buckhead Mesa. Pine Creek and its wild canyon lay north and west of me, the mesa at my back.

Night was a-coming on, and I wished myself back at my cave. Just as I was fixing to turn back, I smelled smoke. Rather, it was the smell of charred timber, a smell that lingers for days, sometimes for weeks after a burning. That smell can be brought alive again by dampness or rainfall. I knew that somebody had had a fire, and close by.

The ledge was behind some trees and close against the face of the cliff. At this point the cliff was not sheer, though it was very steep, and ended in a mass of rubble, fallen trees, brush, and roots.

I started working my way through the trees. The smell of charred wood grew stronger, andwith it the smell of burned flesh.

For the first time I felt real fear, fear for Ange. Andwiththe fear, came certainty. I was sure that when I found that fire, when I found that charred wood and burned flesh, I would find my wagon, and I would find Ange.

Chapter three.

The wire-like brush was thick, and there was no getting through it in my present condition, half naked as I was, without ripping my hide to shreds. What I had to do was seek out a way around and through, and finally I made it. My heart was pounding with slow, heavy beats when at last I came in sight of the burned-out fire.

I had found my wagon, and I had found my mules. But there was no sign of Ange.

The wagon and all that was in it had been burned.

The mules, I discovered, had each been shot in the head, then dumped over the cliff one by one.

Afterward, somebody had come around and piled brush over the lot, then set fire to it. The killing of those fine big mules hurt me ... there'd been no better mules west of Missouri, if anywhere.

A fine gray ash had been left by the burning of desert brush. And it was obvious that anything that scattered when the wagon struck bottom had been carefully picked up and thrown on the heap.

Whoever had done this had made a try at wiping out all sign, just as no tracks had been left on the mesa top. Suddenly it occurred to me that whoever had done this might well come back to make sure the destruction had been complete. If they returned and found me, I would be killed, for I was in no shape to defend myself, nor had I any weapon.

For several minutes I stood there, trying to think it out, and studying that heap of charred wood and burned mules, trying to figure out who could have done this, and why.

The destruction was not total, for all the work somebody put to make it so, and in thinking about it I could see why. This had been a hurried job.

Careful to disturb things as little as I might, I worked my way around the fire. A big wagon like that, made of white oak, doesn't burn so easy, in spite of the dryness of the wood. The hubs of the wheels were solid, the wagon bed was strongly made. ... And then I thought of our secret place.

It was a box hollowed out of a block of six-by-six timber and bolted to the underside of the wagon, and in it we kept a few odds and ends of keepsakes and five gold eagles for emergency money. By lifting a wooden pin inside the wagon-box a section of the bottom lifted out.

It made a lid for the box.

The canvas top of the wagon and the bows were gone, of course; the wheels were badly charred but almost intact, the body of the wagon was largely destroyed. Poking around in the mess that remained, I found the box, charred, but still whole. Breaking it open, I found the gold money, but whatever else had been inside was charred to ashes.

Poking around where the grub box had been, I found a can of beans that had tumbled from the box when it busted open, and had rolled down among the rocks. And there was also a charred and partly burned side of bacon. What I had hoped to find was some kind of a weapon--a kitchen knife or anything--but whatever there was must have been buried in the rubble.

There was no telling when the ones who had done this might come back, for they had been bound and determined to destroy all sign of me and my outfit, and I was feeling convinced they would return to make sure the job had been done. I'd been taking care all the time to leave no tracks; now I took a last look around.

There lay the ashes not only of my outfit, but of my hopes as well. Ange and me had planned to start a ranch in the Tonto Basin, and I'd spent most of what I had on that outfit and on the cattle to follow.

It was plain to see from the ways things had been piled up that somebody had stood here, carefully putting into the pile everything that was scattered, and it made no sense. In this wild country, who would ever know about what had happened here? Many a man had been murdered and just left for the buzzards, and nobody was the wiser. No, whoever and whatever, they not only wanted me dead, but everything wiped out to leave no slightest trace.

So what did that spell for Ange?

Always she was there in my thoughts, but I kept shoving those thoughts of her to the back of my mind.

There was nothing I could do to help her, or even to find her, until I could get a weapon and a horse. To think of her was to be frightened, to let myself waste time in worrying--time that I'd best spend doing something. One thing I'd learned over the years: never to waste time moaning about what couldn't be helped. If a body can do something, fine--he should do it. If he can't, then there's no use fussing about it until he can do something.

The day was almost gone. Every move I made was hurting me, and I had to move almighty slow.

I wanted to get back to that cave under the stone bridge, but before I'd gone a dozen yards I realized I just didn't have it in me. Like it or not, I was going to have to find somewhere close by, and go without a fire.

The ground was hard and my foot slipped on an icy rock, and I went down. The fall shook me up. It took me a minute or two to get up again. I realized that the cold was growing worse. The river, which had been open water when I'd taken my fall off that lookout point, would be frozen over by now.

Finally, when I was only a hundred yards or so from the ruins of my outfit, I found a place where some slabs of rock had tumbled off the mesa's edge, high above, and in falling had formed a low cave, not over five feet deep and just about large enough for me to curl up inside. There was dead brown grass near the cave, so I tugged on it and pulled enough for ground cover, and I crawled in.

And then I just passed out.

In the night, I awakened. My first thought was that of course I knew the names of two of my pursuers. The man who shot me had been called Macon, and then there was Dance, or Dancer. That name had been put to one of the men I'd overheard talking.

I was lying there shivering, when I heard them come back. Only it was not several men, it was only one. The horse came walking along, passing within a few yards of where I lay ... I could hear the creak of the saddle, and a faint jingle of spurs.

I was too cold and stiff to move, too badly hurt to be of any use to myself. I heard him rousting around in the dark, and once I heard him swear. Then there was a faint glow, and I thought I could detect the crackle of flames. Some little time went by, and finally I must have dozed off again, because when my eyes opened it was daylight.

For a while I just lay still, and then I half-crawled half-rolled out of my hideaway and, using my staff, pushed myself to my feet. It was not until then that I remembered the rider in the nighttime.

Going down to the dim trail, I found his horse's tracks, coming and going. They were sharp, well-defined tracks, made by a horse whose shoes were in good shape. I studied those tracks for a while, and I was not likely to forget them. Then I want back to the wagon.

I saw that he had piled on more brush and lighted it again. Everything was gone now except those black gum hubs for the wheels. They burn mighty hard, and these had only charrred over. The fire still smoldered, so I stayed there a few minutes, warming myself.

I didn't need anybody to tell me that I was in bad shape. Somehow I had to get out of that country and get to where I could be cared for, and where I could get a horse and some guns. And then I recalled talk I'd heard of Camp Verde.

Judging by what I'd heard, it could be not much more than thirty miles or so as a crow would fly; but to get there by covering no more than thirty miles a body would surely have to have wings, just like the crow.

None of us Sacketts ever came equipped with wings, and weren't likely to acquire any, judging by the way we lived or the company we kept. The least likely was me, William Tell Sackett, born in the high Cumberland country of Tennessee.

One thing I did know. I wasn't likely to get to Camp Verde by sitting here thinking about it.

So I heated that can of beans over what was left of my own wagon's fire, and split the can open with my stone axe. Then I made shift to eat that whole can. After that I took out, walking.

Starved, half-frozen, and sick from the fever of my wounds and lost blood, I made a start.

Pa taught us boys there was never to be any quit in us. "You just get goin' an' try!" That was what he used to say, and that was all I could do.

Somehow or other I had to keep myself alive and cover the forty or more miles it would be to Camp Verde, over the roughest kind of country. I was going as direct as a body could, for I knew the direction, and I didn't have a horse to hunt trails for.

Somehow I got out of Buckhead Canyon, and then I made myself another pair of bark moccasins--I'd already worn through two pair--and crossed over the ridge.

From the top I could see a dim trail going up the hogback leading to the mesa northwest of Buckhead, and that was my direction. It must have been almost a thousand feet from the top of the ridge to the bottom of Pine Canyon, and I did most of it sitting down, sliding or hitching my way along with my hands and one good leg.

The sun was in mid-sky by the time I got down to the bottom of the canyon. And then by crawling up the other ridge I found that trail.

My hands were bleeding again, and I was light-headed. One side of my brain recognized that fact, just as if it was standing off to one side watching the whole show. But I kept on going, because I hadn't sense enough to lie down and die.

This was an Indian trail, and in this country that meant Apaches, and I knew a good bit about them. Not as much as my brother Tyrel, but I knew a-plenty. I knew if they found me I might as well throw in my hand.

The Apache was a fighting man. He was a warrior, and that was his pride. His reputation was based on how many horses he could steal and how many coups he could count. By the white man's standards this was all wrong, but the Indian had a different way of looking at it. Mercy to your enemy would be evidence of weakness and fear, and the Indian respected only bravery.

He himself had courage, and he had his own viewpoint of honor. I had respect for the Indians. I'd swapped horses with them, fought with them, hunted with them ... but the last thing I wanted to see now was an Indian.

On top of the mesa, I drank deep and long at Clover Spring, and then I set out again. Time and again I fell down, and each time it was harder to get up, yet each time, somehow, I managed it. Camp Verde, I knew, was off there to the northwest, and it was on the Verde River, or close to it. The only thing I had in mind was to get to the East Verde River--the same one that saved my neck when I fell--and follow it along to the Verde, then follow that north to the Camp.

All my sense of time was gone. Several times I heard myself talking, and once or twice even singing. My feet didn't seem to work the way they should, and walking seemed to mean stumbling and falling and getting up again.

And then all of a sudden I was no longer alone.

There was an Apache riding on either side of me.

They rode on past and two more came up. They slowed down, walking their horses. They were lithe, bronzed men, dusty from travel, and some of them carried fresh scalps. They did not speak, they did not make any move toward me, they simply watched me out of their flat black eyes. When I fell down they watched me get up. One Apache laughed when I fell and tried to get up, but that was all.

A mile went behind us. I don't know how many times I fell in that mile, maybe nine or ten times. Each time they waited and let me get up, and I just kept on a-going. The trail finally left the mesa for the East Verde, and the Apaches stayed with me.

When the trail reached the end of Polles Mesa they turned, and one of them rode a horse across in front of me. When I tried to go around him, he backed the horse in front of me again and, sick as I was, delirious as I was, I understood I was a prisoner. One of them pointed with a lance, and I turned north up the gorge.

After maybe a mile we came to a rancheria.

All the Apaches came out, women and children, staring at me. I saw them standing there, and then I took another step and my knee just bent over and threw me on my face.

Something in my mind was for an instant clear and sharp, and something said, "Tell, you're through. They will kill you."

And then I passed out. I just faded into a black, pain-filled world that softened around the edges until there was no pain, nothing.

Chapter four.

My eyes had been open for some time before my thoughts fell into place and realization came to me.

Over my head was some sort of a brush shelter and I was lying on a couple of deerskins.

Turning my head, I looked down the gentle slope and saw the Apaches. There were six or seven men and twice that many women gathered around a small fire, eating and talking.

It all came back to me then, the Apaches moving up on either side of me, the falling down, the getting up. How long, I wondered, had they followed me?

One of the squaws said something, and a squat, powerfully built Indian got to his feet.

He came up the slope, wearing only a headband, breechclout, and the knee-high moccasins favored by the Apache.

He squatted beside me, gesturing toward my leg, the wound on my skull, and my other injuries. And he made the sign for brave man, holding the left fist in front of the body and striking down past it with the right.

"Friend," I said, "amigo."

He touched the bullet scar on my skull.

"Apache?"

"White-eye," I replied, using the term they gave to the white man. And I added, "I will find him."

He nodded, and then said, "You hungry?"

"Yes," I said, and after a moment asked, "How long have I been here?"

He held up three fingers, and added, "We go now."

"To Camp Verde?"

For a minute there I thought he was going to smile.

There was a kind of grim humor in his eyes as he shook his head. "No Camp Verde." He waved his hand toward the Mogollons. He studied me carefully. "Soldier at Camp Verde."

He paused while I lay there wondering what was going to happen to me. Would they take me along as a prisoner? Or let me go?

"I need guns," I said, "and a horse. I can get them at Verde."

"You very bad," he said. "You all right now?"

Now that there was a question. To tell the truth, I felt as weak as a cat, but I wasn't telling him that, so I told him I was all right. He stood up suddenly and dropped a buckskin sack beside me and then walked away. What would come now I didn't know, and I was too weak to care. So I closed my eyes for a moment and must have passed right out, because when I opened them again it was cold and dark, and there was no smell of fire, no sound or movement.

Crawling from the deerskin bed where I had been lying, I looked all around. I was alone.

They had cared for me, left me, and gone on about their business. I remembered something Cap Rountree had told me once up in Colorado--t there was no accounting for Indians.

Most times, finding a white man alone and helpless as I was, they would have killed him without hesitation, unless he was worth torturing first. It was a good chance that they had followed my trail for miles before they caught up, and they were curious about me. There's nothing an Indian respects more than endurance and courage, and to them that was what I was showing on that trail.

Then I thought of the buckskin sack, and I opened it. My hand, and then a taste, told me it was pinole, so I ate a handful of it and hobbled to the spring to wash it down. When I had eaten another handful or two, I crawled back in my lean-to and went to sleep. When I woke I was ready to go on.

Weak I might be, but I was better off than I had been, and on the fourth day after leaving the Apache rancheria, I made Camp Verde. That day I was on the last of my pinole.

The camp was on the mesa some distance back from the river, and the valley right there was six to seven miles wide. They had a few acres of vegetable garden cultivated, and the place looked almighty good. There was a company of cavalry there, two companies of the Eighth Infantry, and forty Indian scouts under a man named Also Seiber, a powerfully muscled scout who was as much Indian as white man in his thinking.

Well, I was in bad shape, but I made out to walk straight coming up to those soldiers. After all, I'd served through the War Between the States myself, and I didn't figure to shame my service.

Folks came out of tents and stores to look at me as I came in, and I must have looked a sight. I'd thrown away my pine-branch coat, and was wearing those deerskins around my shoulders. What I'd left of my pants wouldn't do to keep a ten-year-old boy from shame.

As I came up, there was a man wearing captain's insignia coming out of the trading post.

He was walking with a bull-shouldered man in a buckskin shirt. When the captain saw me he pulled up short.

"Captain," I began, "I--"

"Mr. Seiber," the captain interrupted, and he turned to the man by his side, "see that this man is fed, then bring him to my quarters." After a second glance, he added, "You might find him a shirt and a pair of pants, too."

All of a sudden I felt faint. I half fell against the corner of the building and stayed there a moment. I was like that when a sergeant came out of the store, and I never saw a man look more surprised. "Tell Sackett! I'll be damned!"

"Hello, Riley," I said, and then I straightened up and followed off after Also Seiber.

Behind me I heard the captain speak.

"Sergeant, do you know that man?"

"Yes, sir. He was in the Sixth Cavalry during the war, and he was a sergeant there at the end, acting in command through several engagements. A sharp-shooter, sir, and as fine a horseman as you will be likely to find."

Seiber made me sit down, and he poured a tin cup half full of whiskey.

"Drink this, man. You need it."

He rustled around, finding some grub and clothes for me. "Apaches?" he asked.

"White men," I said, and then added, "The only Apaches I saw treated me decent."

"They found you?"

So I told him about it as I ate the food he dished up, and he had me describe the Indian.

"You must be shot with luck," he said. "That sounds like Victorio. He's a coming man among them."

Captain Porter was waiting for me when I walked in, and he waved me to a chair. Beat as I was from the days of travel, my hands just beginning to heal, my head in bad shape, I was still too keyed-up for sleep. The Apaches had treated my wounds, how andwith what I had no idea.

Taking as little time as I could, I told him about Ange, the unexpected shot, the burned wagon, and the mules.

"If I can buy a horse," I said, "and maybe a pack mule, I'd like to get myself some guns and go back."

"You must feel that way, I suppose," he said, "but your wife must have been killed ... murdered, if you will. I understand how you feel; nevertheless, if there are several men against you, as you seem to believe, I am afraid you'll have no success."

He paused. "And that brings me to my problem.

I need men. All units here are in need of recruits, and I am allowed six officers.

We have only four."

"I was never an officer."

"But you acted in command ... for how long?"

"It was two or three times. Maybe four or five months in all."

"And the Sixth Cavalry participated in fifty-seven actions during the war, am I right?

You must have been in command during some of those actions."

"Yes, sir."

"I could use you, Mr. Sackett. In fact, I need experienced men very badly, particularly those who have done some Indian fighting.

You have, I presume?"

"Yes, sir. But I have to go back to the Tonto. My wife is back there, Captain."

We talked for almost an hour, and by then I was beginning to feel everything that had happened to me. The three days in the Apache rancheria had helped to bring me out of it, but sitting there listening to the captain talking of old wars and far-off places, I suddenly knew I was a long way from being ready for a fight. And yet there could be no delay. Even now Ange might be somewhere needing help, needing me.

"Are there any new outfits in the country?"

I asked him abruptly.

He looked at me sharply, and I thought his face stiffened a little. "Yes, Mr. Sackett, there are. Three or four, I think. All of them big, all of them recently come into the Territory." He paused. "And all of them owned by honorable men."

"That may be, Captain Porter, but one of them saw fit to burn my outfit and try to murder me."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps? I was there ... I lived through it."

"Of course. But what can you prove against anyone? You would have to have proof, Mr.

Sackett." He hesitated again. "In a court of law--"

"Captain, I'll find the man. I'll find proof before I act, but when I act I'll be my own law." I stopped him before he could interrupt.

"Captain, nobody has more respect for the law than i. We boys were raised up to respect it, but there's no law in the Territory that can reach a big cattleman, and you know it. Not even the Army."

"Mr. Sackett, I must warn you not to take the law into your own hands."

"What would you do, sir?"

He shot me a quick, hard look. "You must do as I say, Mr. Sackett, not as I might if I were in your place." And then he asked, "Why do you suppose they tried to kill you? Why do you suppose your outfit was destroyed?"

"That's what puzzles me, Captain. I just don't know."

He walked to the window and stood there with his hands clasped behind his back. "Was your wife a pretty woman, Mr. Sackett?"

There it was, what had been worrying me all the time, but it was the thing I wouldn't let myself face.

"She was beautiful, Captain, and this isn't just what a man in love would say. She was really, genuinely beautiful. All my brothers would tell you the same. Tyrel, he--"

Porter turned around sharply. "Tyrel Sackett?" he was startled. "Tyrel Sackett, the Mora gunfighter, is your brother?"

"Yes, sir."

"That would mean that Orrin Sackett is your brother too."

"Yes."

"Orrin Sackett," Captain Porter said, "helped us get a bill introduced in the House. He is a very able man, and a good friend of mine."

"And mighty near as good with a gun as Tyrel, when he wants to be."

He returned to Ange. "Mr. Sackett, I do not wish to offend, but how were things between you and Mrs. Sackett?"

"Couldn't be better, sir. We were very much in love." Right there I told him something of how we met, high in the mountains of Colorado. "If you are suggesting she might have left me, you can think again."

He smiled. "Never, Mr. Sackett. The woman who would leave you would certainly not destroy her wagon or those valuable mules, and you have told me of the money ... she would have taken that.

No, what I was thinking of was something else.

"Your wife," he went on, "was an attractive woman, and she was alone. This is a country where there are few women, fewer beautiful women."

"Captain, it just doesn't figure. You know how western folks feel about molesting a woman.

Nobody'd be fool enough--"

"Suppose he did not stop to think until too late?" Porter walked over to me. "He would have been wild with panic. He would have been desperate to cover up, to remove any possibility of what he had done ever being discovered."

"What about those men hunting me?"

"When you find them I think you will discover they were looking for you for some other reason. I think one man--someone able to command others--is responsible, and only he or they know the real reason you are to be killed."

Of course, it made sense. Also it meant that Ange was dead, and that her death must have been ugly. Suddenly all the fury that was in me came welling up inside until I was almost blind with it.

I stood there, my head down, my whole body shaking with it. Inside me there was only one thing left, a terrible will to destroy, to kill.

After a moment I looked up. "Captain, I got to have some rest."

"Also Seiber will take care of you." Porter paused. "Sackett, this conversation is between us.

If it is ever mentioned I shall deny that it ever took place. However, in the morning you will have a horse and a mule at your disposal, and I shall speak to Mr. Seiber about the guns."

"I have money. I can buy them."

He nodded. "Of course. But you will want good weapons, and I am afraid what you would find at the sutler's ... at the trading post ... would not be adequate."

When I stepped outside, he stood in the doorway. It was dark now, and he stood there framed against the light. "Remember, my offer holds. If you want to join up, return here.

I am sure I can arrange for your old rank, perhaps for a commission."

After the door closed I stood there a while alone in the darkness. The stars were bright in the desert sky, the night was cold ... and Ange, my Ange, was dead.

Suddenly I knew she must be dead, and that all Captain Porter had suggested was true. The chances were her body lay somewhere not far from that wagon.

I was going back to look, to give her a decent burial. And then I was going to hunt a man.

It was a long time before I knew what happened inside that building after I left it ... a long, long time.

Captain Porter went to his table and took out a sheet of paper. He put down the place and the date, and then he wrote out a letter and addressed it, a letter that would be in the mail before I ever left the post.

And that letter was to make all the difference to me.

Whether it was to be life or death for me was decided by that cavalry captain putting pen to paper in his quiet quarters that night at Camp Verde ... but that is another story.

Chapter five.

One thing I'd learned a long time back. When traveling in enemy country, never return by the same trail you used in going out ... they may be laying for you.

Also Seiber told me of an Indian trail that left the Verde at the big bend below Fossil Creek, so I took it and rode across the top of Hardscrabble Mesa and made camp at Oak Spring.

My hands were only partly healed. I could use a rifle well enough, but would hesitate to draw a Colt against anybody. It was two weeks since I'd taken my fall, and I was still in bad shape, but I could wait no longer. Right now I was no more than two miles from Buckhead Mesa and the canyon where the ruins of my wagon lay.

Two to three miles away to the north there was a Mormon settlement--not a town, just a bunch of folks settled in there who had come down from Utah ... or so I supposed.

From all I'd heard they were God-fearing folk, and it was there I planned to go when I needed supplies, and it was also where I hoped to get information. For the present what I needed was rest, for I tired easily, and I was still in no condition for what lay ahead.

Oak Spring was a good hide-out. It lay in a canyon, and I'd seen no tracks on the Indian trail leading in here. My good treatment by Victorio, if that was who it was, would mean nothing if I met other Apaches, and the Tontos were some of the worst of the lot.

Over a hatful of fire I made coffee and a good meal, for I had a feeling the meals ahead would be few and far between. At daybreak, back in the saddle, I rode over the mesa, crossed Pine Creek above the canyon and rode back onto Buckhead Mesa.

There were plenty of tracks, most of them at best a week old, all well-shod horses like you'd find on a well-run cow outfit. Nowhere was there the slightest sign there had ever been a wagon on this mesa.

When I reached the site of the burned wagon I got a surprise. Aside from some blackened brush there was no sign there had ever been a wagon here, or a fire. Somebody had done a piece of hard work, doing away with all trace of what had happened. Even the hubs were gone, dragged off somewhere and buried, I figured.

After scouting around and finding nothing, I rode back to where the wagon had been. All the time I was riding with the rifle across my saddle-bows, and keeping a wary eye for riders. I was alone, and how many enemies I had against me I didn't know, but my life wasn't worth a plugged two-bit piece if they found me.

Sitting there by that fire, I was a mighty lonesome man, my heart a-hurting something awful for thoughts of Ange. I'd long been a lonely man before I saw her, and nobody ever had a truer, finer wife.

Being the oldest of the Sacketts, I was first out of the nest when trouble came, and off I'd gone to the war. We were Tennessee folk from the high-up hills, but we had no truck with slavery or looking down the nose at any man. Many a man in my part of the country fought for the South, but while my heart was with her, my head was not, and I rode north to join the Union.

Leaving slavery aside, it was that I was fighting for--the Union. This was my country, and like Sacketts and their kinfolk for many a year, I was ready to take up my rifle and trail it off to the fightin'. Besides, none of us Sacketts were ever much on missing out on a fight. It was just in us to step in and let fly.

So I joined the Sixth Cavalry in Ohio and rode through the war with them, and then when it was over I started west to seek out my fortune, wherever it should take me.

Tyrel and Orrin had already gone, leaving about the time of the war's end, or just after. They'd gone west seeking a home for Ma, and they found it, and meanwhile Tyrel had won him a name with his shooting and had become a lawman. Orrin, he studied law and had been elected to office.

Here I was with nothing. Ange and me, we had us a gold mine in the high-up Colorado mountains, but getting the gold out was not easy, and we'd have only a couple of months each year in which to work. I'd brought some out, but what I really wanted was a ranch of my own. With what gold I had, I bought some stock and my outfit and we headed west for the Tonto Basin. Now Ange was gone, and my outfit was wiped out, and me ... I was a hunted man, sought after by Lord only knew how many. And not a friend to side me but my Colt and Winchester.

Not that there weren't plenty of Sacketts around the country, and we were a feudin' and a fightin' family, but they were scattered wide and far, and no chance for any help to me. There was Lando, Falcon, Tyrel, Orrin, and many another of our name, and all good men.

After I'd put out my fire, I crawled into the place under the trees close to my horse, and there I stretched out my tired body and closed my eyes in sleep.

The sun was high when I rolled out and led the horse to water. Then I left him on a small patch of grass whilst I made coffee and chewed on some jerky. I had a restless, irritable feeling, and I knew what it was. Being a man slow to anger, and one who can fight his anger back for a while, I knew it was working up to a point where all hell would tear loose ... and that's no good.

That was the morning I found Ange.

It was only a few rods from where the wagon had been left, and I was scouting around when I saw that crack in the rock. For a moment I stood there, fear climbing up inside me, for all the while my feelings had been fighting against reason, telling me that Ange was still alive, that Ange had somehow gotten away, and that I'd find her.

That crack was no different from others. It was a place where the rocky edge of the mesa had started to break off, and this crack had broken far back into the table rock of the mesa. After a minute I walked over there. Somebody had scooped dirt in there and heaped rock and brush around it. The job had been done in a tearing hurry. Under the brush and the debris, I found Ange.

She had been strangled, but not before she had put up a terrific fight. Her fingernails were stained dark with blood, and there was flesh under them. She had fought, and she had gouged deep.

The bitter cold had left her just as she had been, but I could not bear to look at her face.

After what seemed a long time, I got my blanket and wrapped her in it. Then I rode down to where the fire had been; for one thing I'd seen left behind was my shovel. The killer had used it in controlling the fire, and thrown it aside and forgotten it.

Up on the mesa I found a place where the earth was deep and I dug a grave for her, and I buried her there. When it was over I covered the grave with rocks, and then went to work with my new bowie knife and cut a cross for her.

Using the heated edge of the shovel, I burned ^ws into this crude cross.