The Thing in the Stone : And Other Stories

CHAPTER ONE Delayed Payment

Sheriff Clint Parker reined his buckskin gelding to a halt on the ridge above the little coulee that sheltered the Atkins ranch buildings. He stared at them, remembering every nook and cranny.

They were small and weather-beaten, with a look of poverty about them. There was the barn where he and Luke had played as youngsters, the creek in which they had gone fishing and the fence, that old Matt had sworn he’d fix, but was still sagging with a tired and drunken look.

An old ranch dog spotted the intruders, and limped down off the porch. He stood at the gate barking furiously.

Frank Betz, foreman of the Turkey Track, growled at Parker, “What you stopping for—losing your nerve?”

Parker snapped at him angrily. “Those people are folks to me, Betz. Old Matt Atkins and his wife took me in when the cholera killed my real folks. They treated me like a son and Luke was like a brother to me.”

“So now you’re going soft,” sneered Betz.

Parker’s hand slid to his holster. “Betz,” he said softly, “I don’t think Luke Atkins killed your boss, but the evidence says he did and I’ll arrest him on that. Got any more to say?”

Betz, red-faced and squat, hunched forward in the saddle. “Not another word,” he said. “That’s good enough for me.”

Parker touched the buckskin with a spur and they cantered down the hillside. The old ranch dog came out at a rheumatic lope to meet them, bawling as he came. The bawling changed to welcome when he sighted Parker and he galloped toward the house, tail wagging them forward.

Old Matt Atkins, stubby pipe sticking from his graying whiskers, struggled from the rocking chair on the sagging porch.

“Howdy, son,” he hailed and then stopped in mid-speech, eyes widening at the sight of Betz.

“Hello, Matt,” said Parker. “Luke around?”

“Guess he is somewhere. I’ll go in and tell Ma you’re here. She’s taking her nap.”

Parker raised his hand to stop him. “Not right yet,” he said. “How is she?”

The old man puffed stubbornly at the pipe, smoke drooling from his whiskers.

“Right poorly,” he told Parker. “Neither of us young as we used to be. She misses you, Clint. Don’t stop by as often as you used to.”

“I’m busy,” Parker replied, but even as he said it, he knew how lame an excuse it was. Not the way to act with folks who took you in when you were an orphan and treated you like you were their own.

The front door opened and Luke came onto the porch.

“Thought I heard you out here,” he said. “Looking for me, Clint?”

Parker nodded, moistened his lips with his tongue.

They know there’s something wrong, he told himself. Just Betz being along would tell them there was something wrong. They knew he wouldn’t ride with scum like Betz.

“What’s the matter, Clint?” asked Luke.

“Nothing much,” said Betz, speaking for the first time. “Just a little killing!”

Old Matt’s hands went out and clutched the railing of the porch. “What’s that damn land-grabber doing along with you, son?” he demanded. “Him and his yarn of killing?”

“He’s right, Matt,” Parker said. “There has been a killing. Byron Campbell was bushwhacked in Calf Canyon.”

“Hell,” Old Matt spat across the railing, “is that all. The man that done it ought to get a bounty.”

“They think Luke done it,” Parker told him quietly. “They found a .45-70 cartridge not thirty feet away from the body.”

Old Matt straightened, hobbled forward. “You’re joking, Clint,” he said. “Too early in the day for that kind of—”

“Killing,” snarled Betz, “is a damn poor kind of joke.”

Luke shook his head, befuddled. “If you found a .45-70,” he said, “it must be from that old gun of ours. Only one like it in the country. But there must be some mistake. I ain’t been off the place all day.”

“Luke ain’t had that gun down for a week,” Old Matt yelled at them. “Last time he shot it was a week ago last Sunday when he went out to get a wolf that had been hanging ’round.”

“Ah, hell,” snarled Betz, “let’s cut out the jawing. Luke’s the one that did it, all right.”

Parker swung on Betz angrily. “Damn it, keep your mouth shut!”

He turned to Luke. “We can’t try it here. Afraid you’ll have to ride to town with us.”

“You mean you are arresting me?”

Parker nodded. “I guess that’s what it amounts to.”

“So you’ve turned against us!” Old Matt bellowed. “Against the ones that raised you. The ones that’s always been your friends. You’ve tied up with the dirty, thieving land-stealers. Since you took to running around with Horton’s daughter, you—”

Luke’s hand reached out and grasped his father’s shoulder, swung him around.

“You keep out of this, Pa,” he said. “This is between Clint and me. I’ll go with him, but I’ll be right back and I’ll bring Clint home to supper with me.”

“That’s what you think,” growled Betz.

Parker was lighting the lamp against the first dusk of evening when Ann Horton stepped into his office.

She looked very slender in her checkered shirt and Levi overalls. He thought he detected a frown of worry on her pretty, freckled face.

“Good evening, Ann,” he said, soberly, suddenly glad that she was there, glad that here was someone he could talk to.

He placed the chimney on the lamp, tossed the burned-out match into the coffee-can ash tray.

She came to the desk swiftly.

“That was an awful thing to have to do, Clint,” she said.

He nodded. “Guess it was something I asked for when I took up this job of sheriffing.”

“But Luke!” she protested. “Luke is your best friend, why he’s almost like your brother.”

“That’s right,” Parker agreed. “The Atkins never treated me like an orphan. Whenever Luke had a pair of new overalls, I had a new pair, too. And old Matt gave Luke more lickings, seems like, than he gave me, although usually I was the one that got the two of us in trouble.”

He stared at the lamp, remembering. “We did all the fool things that boys will do,” he said. “We even had a secret cave where we dug for treasure and played at hiding from Indians, never telling a soul about it.”

“I know,” Ann told him, softly. “You showed me where the cave was. Remember?”

He shot a quick glance at her and saw the brightness of her eyes, as if tears were just behind them. One of his hands reached out and closed on hers atop the desk.

“Yes, I recall it, Ann. You’re the only one, but Luke and me, that knows about it to this very day.”

The girl’s voice was almost a whisper. “What are you going to do about it, Clint?”

Parker’s face hardened in the lamplight. “Luke didn’t do it,” he said. “I’m sure he didn’t. And yet they found that cartridge there behind the tree and the only gun that shoots that sort of cartridge is the one old Matt brought to this country with him. I remember it from the time I was a kid. It always hung in the sitting room and once in a while old Matt would take it down and let Luke and me sight along the barrel. But he never let us use it, not then, because he said it was a man’s gun. Even now, Luke doesn’t use it often, only when he figures on some long distance shooting.”

“But Campbell was shot close, from ambush.”

“I know,” said Parker. “And that’s what I can’t understand. The bullet went in the chest and never came out. Almost as if the shot had come from far away and the bullet was kind of petered out before it hit him. But the cartridge was behind the tree, not more than thirty feet away.”

He stopped as he heard the sound of footsteps, but they continued past the door.

“Can’t say I’d of blamed Luke much if he had shot him,” he went on. “Campbell had been crowding him considerable. Shoving stock over into Luke’s meadow and down onto the creek. Kept Luke busy shoving the critters back.”

“I don’t suppose that now you’ll think any more about that job up north?”

He shook his head. “I can’t. Not with this coming up. I got to keep on being sheriff, as long as I’m needed. There are so many folks depending on me. There’s Luke and George Lane and Jack Kennedy …”

His voice ran thin and stopped, embarrassed.

“You mean,” Ann told him levelly, “you got to back the little ranchers against the folks like us.”

“If all the big fellows were like your dad,” said Parker, “I wouldn’t have to worry. Your dad gets along tolerable well with all his neighbors, just little ruckuses now and then, but nothing serious. It’s the land and water hogs like Campbell and Hart out at the Hashknife and Danielson’s Bar C that cause all the real trouble. If I stepped out of office and let them elect Gibbs, the little fellows wouldn’t have a sheepherder’s chance. They’d be wiped out before the year was over.”

“And yet,” said Ann, “your little ranchers hate my father just like they do Hart and Danielson.”

“That’s only because he’s one of the big owners, Ann. They don’t quite trust him yet.”

“So you’re going to run for another term?”

Parker nodded. “Looks like I have to. That job up north was tempting because, as your dad told me, there’s very little future in this sheriffing.”

“Maybe they’ll all get together and give you a gold watch with a nice inscription on it when you’re through,” Ann told him, bitterly. “Or they’ll all turn out to your funeral and give you a big sendoff.”

Parker said softly, “You want me to take that job awful much, don’t you, Ann?”

Her eyes were bright again and she drew her hand away. “It’s for you to decide, Clint,” she said.

He followed her to the door and she paused for a moment looking at him intently.

“Who found that cartridge?” she asked. “The one that killed Campbell.”

“Why, it was Kennedy. Betz and Egan went out to look for Campbell when he didn’t show up and they stopped at Kennedy’s place and took him along. Betz found the body and they looked around for sign. It was Kennedy who found it.”

“And Kennedy’s one of your little ranchers.”

Parker nodded glumly.

Her voice sank to a whisper. “Dad says he wouldn’t blame you if there was a jailbreak. Says he don’t think anyone else would, either.”

Parker shook his head. “Couldn’t do that, Ann. That would put the owlhoot mark on Luke and I’m sure he didn’t do it. He’ll just have to take his chances with the jury.”

He watched her cross the sidewalk and swing into the saddle.

He raised a hand to her and she waved back, then galloped down the street.

Back in the office, Clint sat down at the desk, rolled a cigarette and blew smoke at the lamp, watching it coil above the chimney.

It would be nice to take the job Ann had spoken of. Paid a good deal more than sheriffing and had a future to it. Would mean that he and Ann could get married right off. Old Hank Horton, last time he had seen him, had been downright insistent that he take it, but Parker remembered that he had put the old man off with a feeling that the job may have been engineered as a means of getting him out of office. Getting him out and getting Gibbs in.

There was no one but himself, he knew, that the small ranchers could put up who would have a chance at the polls. And that meant the Hashknife and Bar C and Turkey Track, maybe even Horton’s Bent Arrow would start crowding, pushing in their cattle on land that wasn’t theirs, building up to a gunfight or an ambush or just a few hot words that would be an excuse for range war to flare across the land.

And once that happened, the little men were finished. The Atkins ranch, the Kennedy outfit, George Lane, old Jim O’Neill and all the rest of them would be snowed under the thunder of hoofs, the bark of guns, the smoke of flaming buildings.

As long as Clint Parker was sheriff they wouldn’t try it, but the minute he was out….

Feet crunched outside the door and Parker looked up. His deputy, Bob Sawyer, was coming into the room, a plate piled high with food in each hand.

“I’m mighty hungry,” Parker told him. “What you got? Better be good, took you plenty long to bring it.”

Sawyer belched good naturedly, set the plates down on the desk.

“Chicken,” he said. “Stopped to get a drink.”

Parker reached for one of the plates. “I’ll take Luke’s in to him.”

Sawyer sat down in a chair, tilted it against the wall, started to roll a smoke.

In the cell block back of the office, Parker unlocked a cell and walked inside.

“Something to eat, Luke,” he said.

Luke stirred in the darkness. “Plumb forgot to light the lamp you left me,” he said. “Just sitting here pondering.”

A match snarled across the seat of his trousers and flared into flame. Luke bent and removed the lamp’s chimney, touched the match to the wick, replaced the chimney. Parker put the plate on the table.

“You get someone to go out and take care of the place?” asked Luke.

“I’ll get someone in the morning,” Parker said. “Ernie Jackson may be the best I can do, but he can do the chores.”

Luke reached out for the plate, dragged it in front of him.

“Hope it won’t be for long,” he said. “I ain’t got too much money to be paying hired hands.”

“Don’t worry about that, Luke,” said Parker. “I’ll take care of it. Figure I sort of owe you something for hauling you in here. Safest place in the world for you right now. If you wasn’t here, the Turkey Track would be out gunning for you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Luke told him, suddenly sullen.

“I’ll see the county attorney in the morning,” Parker said, “and get him to set an early hearing. Maybe the judge will make your bail reasonable …”

Luke snorted. “Fat chance,” he said. “Both of them polecats are owned by Turkey Track.”

Parker tried to soothe him. “We’ll see what we can do. If you want anything, extra blanket or something, just sing out. I’ll be in the next room.”

Luke swallowed a piece of chicken, stared up at Parker.

“Honest, Clint,” he said, “you don’t think I done it.”

“You know damn well I don’t.”

“Sure thought about it plenty often,” Luke admitted. “Figured that if I ever had the chance maybe I would. But I never went hunting for that chance.”

“If you had,” said Parker, “you’d shot him face to face. You’d never hid to do it.”

Luke went back to his chicken and Parker fidgeted for a moment, embarrassed, then turned to leave.

“Remember,” he admonished. “Sing out if there’s anything you want.”

He closed the door, heard the lock snap into place and went back to the office.

Sawyer was tilted in a chair against the wall, smoking, staring at the ceiling.

“Any news in town?” he asked the deputy.

“Not much,” Sawyer told him. “Everybody stirred up about this shooting. Folks talking some about passing the hat for Luke. Kennedy feels right bad about finding that cartridge. Seems to think it’s his fault Luke was dragged into it. Says Luke was his friend and neighbor and if he’d never found the cartridge or if he’d had brains enough to keep still about it once he did find it, Luke wouldn’t be in a tight.”

“Kennedy in town?”

“Over at the Silver Dollar. Getting all oiled up.”

Parker considered. “Maybe I ought to go over and sort of steer him home.”

“Ah, hell,” said Sawyer, disgusted. “He’s a grown man. He can take care of himself. Another hour and they’ll roll him out in the alley to sleep it off.”

He thumped forward in the chair, pitched the cigarette butt into the cuspidor.

“How about a game of checkers?” he inquired.

“O.K.,” agreed Parker. “You get the board set …”

He paused, stiffening at the sound that came from the street—the muffled, slow sound of many horses’ feet pounding through the dust.

Sawyer was listening, too, head canted to one side.

“Powerful lot of folks must have decided to ride into town,” he said.

The hoofs came on. No other sound. No voices. No shouts. Just the steady sound of plopping hoofs.

Parker strode toward the door, stepped out on the sidewalk.

Coming down the street were the horses, moving at a slow walk, bunched together and the men who rode them were sedate and solemn, with rifles balanced on their thighs.

Business-like, the cavalcade swung around and bunched in front of the jail, the men sitting their horses silently, staring at Parker.

Parker’s eyes switched from face to face and a cold ball grew and turned to ice in his stomach’s pit. Red-faced Betz and black-bearded Egan and behind them Fred Taylor and Del Vickers, Pete Wheeler and Spike Hubbard. There were others, too—all men from the Turkey Track.

Parker hitched up his gun-belt, moved one step to the side to get out of the light that streamed from the door.

Betz broke the silence. “We’ve come for Luke,” he said.

CHAPTER TWO Hemp For Your Prisoner

The men still sat their horses, watchful, waiting, eyes and faces grim.

Sawyer called from the door. “We better let them have him, sheriff. We can’t buck—”

The look that Parker gave him silenced him as effectively as a slap across the mouth.

“Betz,” said Parker, speaking to the red-faced man, “as long as I’m sheriff of this county, Luke gets a trial, fair and square—and there won’t be no necktie party!”

The mob sat silently, unmoving, waiting for whatever would happen.

Betz stirred in his saddle, as if getting ready to dismount.

“Sheriff,” he declared, “we’d hate like hell to hurt you, but we’re coming in.”

Parker slid his hands to the butts of his guns, half lifted them from leather.

“You fellows are my friends,” he said quietly. “I’ve known you for years …”

A jeering voice interrupted. “We don’t want no speech, sheriff. All we want is Luke.”

“… but the first man that moves,” said Parker, “gets a bellyful of bullets.”

Hair trigger tension crackled in the air. One stir, one move, a single word, the flicker of an eyelash, Parker knew, would turn hell wide open in the street of Cedar City.

Betz was the man to watch. He was the one who would decide. Even now, behind the red face that glared at the sheriff, the cunning little brain was working, weighing chances …

Out of the corner of his eye, Parker caught a sense of motion, for a second he tore his gaze from the men before him.

Jack Kennedy had come out of the Silver Dollar, was standing unsteadily on the sidewalk, one hand groping for a non-existent post.

Parker’s eyes came back to the men bunched in the street before the jail, fists tightening on his sixguns’ grips.

A sudden note of warning rang inside his head and he moved swiftly, spinning on his heels, stopped in astonishment.

Kennedy was striding drunkenly up the street, sixgun in each hand and his face was twisted into a terrible scowl of hate.

“No,” Parker yelled at him. “Kennedy, you are crazy …”

But it was too late. The gun in Kennedy’s right hand came up and blasted, spitting flame and smoke. And then the gun in his left hand—and then the right again. Staggering, but plodding forward, Kennedy kept coming, first one gun, then another, firing point blank into a target where there was no chance of missing.

Pandemonium exploded in the street before the impact of the bullets. Frightened horses reared, fighting the bits, kicking up clouds of dust. One man screamed and another slumped from the saddle without screaming. A horse broke loose and rushed past Kennedy, his rider swaying in the saddle, fighting to keep his seat. Sixguns spat with vicious hate and one man cursed, a steady, terrible cursing that rose above the crack of guns, the shouts and screams, the sounds that frightened, fighting horses made.

The first bullet struck Kennedy and he stumbled, but his guns kept coming up. Then another bullet struck him and spun him half around and another smashed him to his knees. He fought to rise, mouth working into a mask of hate, but the bullets had their way, smashing into him, beating him down into the dust, tearing him to ribbons.

The guns were silent now, but the street was cloudy with kicked-up dust and the blue drift of powder smoke.

Betz spurred his frightened horse toward Parker, gun half lifted. Parker’s guns came out of the holsters, tipped up toward the Turkey Track foreman. Betz let his gun arm droop.

“Damn you,” he roared. “You had him planted on us. You had it all worked out.”

“Pick up your dead ones and get out of town,” snapped Parker. “And do it fast.”

For a moment Betz sat staring at him, slack mouth drooping.

“Leave the ones that aren’t dead,” said Parker, “and we’ll have Doc patch them up.”

Feet were pounding on the sidewalk and people were shouting.

“Get out,” Parker shouted, “before the whole town’s down here gunning for you.”

Betz swung his horse around, shouted to his men.

“Get moving, boys! Get moving fast!”

Feet thundered toward Parker and he swung around. Newman, the blacksmith, was pelting down the street, sawed-off shotgun tucked beneath his arm.

“Need some help, sheriff?” he bellowed, but Parker shook his head.

“The boys,” he told him, “are already leaving.”

Bunched together, the Turkey Track mob was getting out of town, horses at the gallop. In the street lay five motionless forms, huddled close together, and a little ways beyond lay another.

Slowly, Parker walked out into the street toward the body that was apart, stood for a moment looking down on the bullet-mangled man.

Sawyer spoke softly at his elbow, “Who in hell would ever thought that he had it in him.”

Parker said, “If he figured that he owed Luke anything, he sure has paid it now.”

Slowly he turned away. “Bob,” he said, “you take over here. Clear this mess up.”

A crowd was gathering and Parker pushed his way through it, went into the office.

Luke’s cell was dark and Parker called out softly.

Luke’s voice came out of the darkness: “What was it, Clint? Rope party?”

“That’s what it was, Luke. Betz and some of the boys from the Turkey Track. But it’s all right, now.”

“Got something to tell you,” said Luke. “But I don’t want to shout. Can’t you come in?”

Parker found the key, fumbled with it, hands shaking, finally got the door open.

“You’re running a lot of risk keeping me here,” said Luke. “Betz will try …”

Parker sensed the quick movement in the dark, started to duck, but he was too late. His head leaped to a sudden explosion of stars that burst within his brain and he groped endlessly through a darkness that poured in and overwhelmed him and pressed him down.

Slowly knowledge crept back and he grew aware of the dull ache that hammered in his head, remembered the blow that had sent him spinning into unconsciousness.

His groping hand found his hat where it had tumbled on the floor and put it on his head. Slowly, foggily, he gathered his legs beneath him and wobbled to his feet, clutching at the bars to keep his balance.

For a long moment, he stood there, mind groping back, piecing together the little bits of knowledge that surged to the surface of his brain.

Luke had tricked him into opening the door and then had slugged him, presumably to make his getaway.

Did this mean that Luke was guilty? Or did it simply mean that Luke would no longer place Parker, his friend, in the dangerous position of being his jailer? He was all confused.

Low voices came from the office and Parker felt his way along the bars to the cell door, stood there groggily, listening to the buzz of words that grew into sentences and had meaning.

Sawyer was saying, “… not a thing. He don’t suspect a thing. He feels Luke didn’t do the killing, but he’s not sure.”

Another voice said, “We got to sell him on the idea. Whether Luke did it or not, we got to make him think he did. This is the luckiest break we’ve gotten thus far.”

Gibbs’ voice—Gibbs in there talking to Sawyer. Gibbs, the man the big outfits wanted to be sheriff, talking with his deputy.

Parker’s hands became fists at his side as he stood stiffly, listening.

“I’ll do my best,” Sawyer said.

“He won’t help Luke make a break?”

“Nope, he’s too square a shooter for that. If it was his own brother, and Luke is damn near that, he’d hang him if he thought that he was guilty.”

Gibbs’ voice was wishful thinking: “Kind of nice if Luke would escape. Sheriff that can’t keep a prisoner, once he’s got him, don’t amount to shucks. And if a posse should have to go out and bring Luke back dead it wouldn’t help him to speak of, neither.”

The voices were fading and Parker knew that they were moving to the door.

Fists bunched at his side, he slid out of the cell door into the corridor, took a step toward the office, then stopped.

My own deputy, he thought. My own deputy against me. Working for Gibbs, bought off by the big outfits. Plotting against me in my own office. Sawyer thinks I’m down at the hotel or he’d never let Gibbs in.

He slid along the wall of cell blocks, moving swiftly past the door into the office, catching sight of Sawyer standing in the door talking to the man outside.

He let himself out the back door, closed it behind him. He stood leaning for a moment against it, staring up at the stars that blazed in the sky above, drawing in deep breaths of the fresh air. His head still ached, but he wasn’t dizzy any longer and his legs were sure and swift beneath him. He checked his guns. Both of them were in the belt and had not been tampered with.

The town was quiet again. Apparently Luke had made his getaway without any trouble, without being seen and, suddenly, Parker was glad of that.

In the stable back of the jail the buckskin gelding was chewing a mouthful of hay and stamping his feet. As Parker opened the door the smell of hay and leather, the cozy warmth of the place rushed out at him.

“Whoa, boy,” he said, and stepped swiftly inside, pulling the door behind him. He found the saddle in the dark and cinched it on.

The single light in the kitchen of the Atkins ranch house was a friendly beacon in the night and Parker, heading for it, recognized the softness of the moonlight and the contour of the country, the smell of sagebrush and the squat blackness of the buildings crouching in the coulee as old, familiar things. Things that had a special meaning here as nowhere else.

The old dog exploded from beneath the porch and rushed to him, across the yard, baying like an angry lion.

“Hi-yah, Shep,” said Parker and the baying changed to friendly barking as the dog bounced up and down like a rocking horse.

The door swung open with the faint gleam of light from the kitchen seeping along the hall and in it stood the bulky figure of old Matt, a heavy cartridge belt around his bulging middle.

“Who in hell is there?” he thundered.

“It’s Clint,” said Parker. “You can put up your shooting iron.”

Parker swung off the buckskin, strode up the porch steps.

“Luke with you?” asked the old man.

Parker shook his head. “Luke broke out. Hit me over the head and got plumb and slick away.”

“And you’re hunting for him. Figure he came here.”

“Not hunting him, exactly. Think I can put my hands on Luke anytime I want to. Just came to tell you folks.”

Parker moved past the old man and into the hall. Matt closed the door behind him, shuffled back toward the kitchen, Parker following.

A woman’s voice, quavery, came out of the darkness.

“Who is it, Pa?”

“It’s Clint,” the old man told her. “Come to tell us that Luke broke out of jail. Danged scamp. Never could keep him locked up. Used to lock him in a closet when he was up to devilment and he always managed to get out somehow.”

“Drag up a chair and rest your guns,” Matt told Parker. “I’ll stir up the fire and we’ll have a cup of coffee.”

Parker pulled a chair back from the table, dropped his hat on the floor and sat down heavily. Looking through the door into the sitting room, he could see the glint of the light on the old .45-70 hanging on the wall, hanging where it had hung as long as he could remember.

“Wouldn’t happen,” asked old Matt, “that you kind of helped Luke get away? Like I figure maybe you must of helped him out of that closet off and on.”

“No, I wouldn’t do a thing like that to Luke. That would brand him as the man who did it. It would turn him outlaw.”

“Maybe he figures that he can track down the killer.”

“Maybe,” said Parker.

Slippers padded softly out of the darkness and a woman stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

Parker rose from the chair. “Hello, Mother,” he said.

Tall and thin, white hair smoothed back tightly against her head, she stood stiffly in the doorway, one hand clutching at the jamb.

“You know Luke never done it, Clint,” she said.

Parker shook his head. “Of course he didn’t. I had to take him in because the evidence was against him and because it wasn’t safe to let him stay here. Betz would have had his men around this place like coyotes around a dying steer.”

She walked towards him and smiled wanly.

“You were both good boys,” she said. “Remember how every Sunday we had our Bible lessons out in the living room.”

Parker reached out and hugged her close.

“And now,” she sobbed. “And now…”

Old Matt stood staring at them, eyes blinking rapidly, beard trembling just a little, coffee pot in one hand, stove poker in the other.

“Now, Ma,” he said. “Clint ain’t chasing Luke. He just come to tell us.”

The old clock on the wall ticked heavily, marking off the seconds with a solemn face. A vagrant gust of wind moaned in the chimney corner.

“You’re staying the night with us, ain’t you, Clint?” asked Matt.

Parker nodded. “Might as well,” he said.

Mother Atkins drew away from Parker, dabbing at her eyes, reached for the coffee pot.

“Standing around,” she snapped. “Standing around all the blessed time. Here, get out of my way. Can’t you see the boy is starved.”

In Luke’s attic room, Parker undressed slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots, remembering the time when he and Luke had shared this very room. An orphan lad, taken in by neighbors who never let him feel that he was an orphan. Licked by old Matt as his dead father would have licked him when he did wrong, cried over and babied by the woman he had learned to call Mother, sitting solemn-eyed and very straight with Luke every Sunday morning for the Bible lesson.

He hung his gunbelt on the bedpost, slipped out of shirt and trousers, blew out the light and slid into bed, felt the old familiar mattress yielding to his body.

The wind marched across the roof, rattling a shingle here and there, came back to rattle them again. A low hanging tree branch scraped against the side of the house and downstairs he heard the mumble of voices as the old folks talked themselves to sleep.

Shut your eyes, he told himself, and pretend that it is ten years ago. Pretend that Luke is lying here beside you and that tomorrow the two of you are going fishing down in the big sucker hole just above the drift fence. Shep is a young dog and Mother has fewer wrinkles in her face than she had tonight. Old Matt’s beard is just starting to turn gray and maybe, in the morning he will take down the gun and let you sight along its barrel and brag about all the game that you could get if he’d only let you use it.

But it would be no use, he knew. No use to try to purchase even a moment’s forgetfulness. For Luke was not in this bed, but somewhere out in the night, a hunted man, hunted for a thing that he never could have done. And Shep was old and had rheumatism so bad that of winter nights he was allowed to come in and sleep beside the kitchen stove. And Matt never could look at that gun again without remembering.

Parker lay, staring into the darkness, listening to the wind walking on the roof and tripping on the shingles.

Suddenly he sat straight up in bed, jerked upright by something that had come out of the night. Rubbing his eyes, he waited for it to come again.

“Must have been asleep,” he told himself, surprised.

Thunderous knocking rumbled through the house, the insistent beat of fists hammering on a door.

Throwing back the covers, Parker swung his feet out of bed, hand reaching in the darkness for the gunbelt on the bedpost.

The knocking came again, a hollow rolling sound.

Feet shuffled through the darkness below and Matt’s querulous voice came floating up the stairs.

“I’m coming, dog gone it. I’m coming. Just hold your horses.”

Parker felt the cold of the floor biting into his bare feet as he stalked softly, gun in hand, to the top of the stairs. The knocking had stopped, but outside old Shep was barking viciously.

CHAPTER THREE Bushwhack Boomerang

A lamp chimney rattled in the living room and the flare of a match splashed across the darkness.

Gun gripped tightly, Parker squatted on the top stair step, shivering in his underwear, eyes watching the front door.

Slippers slapped across the floor and he saw old Matt, nightshirt flapping at his ankles, shuffle across to the door. In one hand he carried the monstrous sixgun that he had worn earlier in the evening when Parker had ridden up.

The latch clicked and the door creaked open and in it loomed a red-faced man. Behind him, on the porch, were other dark shapes.

“Where’s Luke?” snarled Betz.

Matt stood still, gun hanging at his side, half hidden by his nightshirt.

“Luke’s in jail,” he said. “You should know about it, Betz. You helped put him there.”

“Luke broke out,” Betz told him. “We figured that we’d find him here.”

“Ain’t seen him,” Matt said softly.

“Him and that chicken-livered sheriff both are missing,” Betz bellowed. “More than likely went off together. When we find them we aim to hang them on the same tree.”

Old Matt stood unmoving.

“Get out of my way,” snarled Betz. “We’re coming in to search.”

The old man did not move and Betz stood undecided.

Slowly, deliberately, Parker brought his gun up, lined the sights with cold accuracy on the point straight between Betz’ eyes.

“You’re not coming in,” said Matt. “You aren’t even staying.”

His hand moved swiftly, the huge sixgun glinting in the lamplight. From where he squatted, Parker heard the grunt of surprise that was driven from Betz’ lungs as the gun’s muzzle jammed into his belly.

Slowly Betz took a backward step.

“I’ll be back,” he snarled. “I’ll make you sorry that—”

“Get a move on,” croaked old Matt. “Get out of here before I dust you off!”

Betz backed away and the dark shapes backed with him, across the porch and down the steps, watching the steady menace of the gun held in the old man’s hand.

Parker released his pressure on the trigger, let the hammer fall back gently.

Hoofs pounded outside, drummed into the distance.

Old Matt closed the door and swung around and in the lamplight his face was drawn and haggard.

Parker called softly: “Matt.”

The old man moved to the bottom of the stairs, stood looking up.

“Clint,” he said, “you were backing me!”

“Betz,” Parker told him, “never came closer to dying in all his crooked life.”

He rose and came down the stairs.

“Matt,” he said, “I been thinking. I have to go find Luke.”

“You know where to find him, son?”

“I think I do.”

The old man’s eyes crinkled for a moment in the lamplight.

“Clint, I lied to you tonight. Luke was here, just before you came.”

Parker nodded. “I figured that he was.”

“Seems to me you got yourself in a tight as well as Luke.”

“It wouldn’t have made no difference,” Parker told him. “If it hadn’t been Luke, they’d figured out some other way. They are out to get me, one way or another. They aim to either kill me or discredit me as sheriff. They want to get their own man in!”

“But the girl,” protested Matt. “How about the girl—old man Horton’s daughter.”

Parker shook his head. “She’s pretty much disgusted with me. Don’t figure she’ll have much to do with me from now on. Her and her dad wanted me to take a job up north…”

“I said some harsh things to you this afternoon,” Matt told him. “You know, Clint, that I didn’t mean them.”

For a moment they stood facing one another.

“Sure,” said Parker. “Sure, I know you didn’t mean them.”

A voice called from the bedroom.

“That’s Ma,” said Matt. “You hustle upstairs and get into your clothes. I’ll rustle up some coffee.”

Outside the moon was low and the morning crisp. The stars in the east were paling and the first sleepy chirps of birds came from the grove down by the spring.

Just beyond the porch, Parker stood for a moment, listening, but there was no sound but the birds and the wind rustling in the trees.

A western window in the barn let in a slash of moonlight across the stall where the buckskin stood, slack-hipped, head hanging in the manger, asleep or dozing. He lifted his head at Parker’s step and the man spoke to him softly, strode to the peg where the saddle hung. Swiftly he lifted it off, half turned—and heard the sound.

The sound of a foot scuffing through the bedding, the sharp indrawn whistle of a human breath.

“Stand right where you are,” a voice said. “And keep your hand from your gun.”

Slowly, carefully, still holding the saddle in front of him, Parker pivoted, saw the man standing just at the edge of the shaft of moonlight—huge and burly and black-bearded.

The moonlight highlighted the gun held in the hairy fist and the man’s teeth gleamed through the tangle of his beard.

“Hello, Egan,” said Parker. “So you stayed behind.”

“Told Betz you would either be here or be coming here, but he didn’t figure that you would. Said both you and Luke had too much brains for that.”

“And you figured that we didn’t.”

Egan grunted in disgust and as he grunted, Parker moved … one quick step forward, arms straightening, heaving the saddle with all the power of his twisting body.

The gun in Egan’s fist barked, splashing fire, and Parker heard the muffled chug of the bullet smashing into the leather of the saddle.

Parker leaped, hand slashing at the waving gun wrist as the saddle crunched into Egan’s body, felt the impact of his fist crack against the arm and send the sixgun flying.

And even as his left fist struck the wrist, his right was coming back, gathering power for the blow that whistled forward, straight and clean. The fist spattered with a crunching sound and Egan staggered, blood spurting on his beard.

The bearded man was slowly rising. Parker stepped forward. Deliberately, mercilessly, he swung his fist, smashed Egan down again.

Bewildered, eyes half glazed, Egan struggled to his feet, lurched one uncertain step. Bending forward, almost as if fighting for his balance, he stared at the man before him.

“I’ll kill…” he mumbled and tried to rush. Parker stepped aside and Egan, legs folding beneath him, tumbled to the floor.

Parker strode forward, reached down and grasped Egan’s collar, hauled him to his feet, twisted him around. The man’s battered lips made moaning, pleading sounds behind the blood-soaked beard.

“Egan,” said Parker, “I want to talk to you.”

“Don’t hit …” Egan mumbled.

Parker cocked his fist, shook it in Egan’s face.

“Listen first,” he told him. “Then talk!”

Parker let go of the collar and Egan slumped to the floor, sat upon it with his legs sticking straight out in front of him. Parker squatted beside him.

Egan lifted a hairy hand, rubbed his beaten face.

“What you want?” he asked.

“You remember about Campbell being killed?”

“Sure,” said Egan. “Sure, I remember. Luke done it.”

“Luke didn’t do it,” snapped Parker. “Campbell was either shot from far off or with a small caliber gun. If Luke had shot him from behind the tree where the cartridge was found, the bullet would have gone through his body. Would have torn a hole straight through him. That gun of Luke’s is a heavy job. Bone would never stop one of its bullets, fired at thirty feet.”

Egan sat mumbling.

Parker reached out and shook him savagely.

“Do you understand?” he snarled.

Egan repeated, “Luke done it.”

Parker slapped him, an open-handed blow that rocked his head.

Egan stared at him in dazed terror.

“Got to say Luke done it,” he declared.

“Why?”

“Betz said so. Said for me to say …”

“Betz was the one who did it?”

Egan hesitated and Parker lifted his hand. Egan recoiled.

“Go on,” said Parker. “What about Betz?”

“Betz did it,” mumbled Egan, clawing at his beard with one jerky hand.

“Shot his own boss. What did he have against him?”

“Nothing. Just shot him. Paid to do it.”

“Why?”

“Good way to start a fight.”

“Figured the little outfits would rise up,” said Parker, “and it would be an excuse to wipe them out.”

“Sure,” said Egan. He leered through the bloody beard. “Smart, eh?”

“Smart enough to hang you,” said Parker, viciously.

“It was coming anyhow,” said Egan.

“Sure, it was coming, anyhow,” said Parker. “Only Betz helped it along a bit. Tell me, who paid Betz?”

Egan’s mouth clamped shut and defiance crept into his eyes.

“Who paid him?”

Egan shook his head. Parker slapped him, first one side of his face, then another. Egan moaned.

Parker waited.

“It was Hart.”

“And Danielson?”

“That’s right, sheriff. Hart and Danielson.”

“What about Horton? Did Horton pay him, too?”

Egan shook his head.

“You’re sure of that? Horton wasn’t in on it?”

“Horton didn’t even know about it,” mumbled Egan. “Couldn’t trust him. Too damn soft-hearted.”

Parker rocked on his toes, staring at the man.

So the Hashknife and Bar C were the ones that had engineered it. Hart and Danielson had signed the death warrant of their fellow-ranchman to touch off a range war, using the Turkey Track as a cat’s-paw to do the dirty work. Hart and Danielson had deliberately murdered Campbell to carry out their plans. Not that either of them, likely, had anything against him, but it was an easy way, a simple way to do it.

And it had one extra angle—Campbell and Luke had been at guns’ point for months. If it could be made to seem that Luke had done it, they figured, it might compromise the sheriff—might drive him out of office. And with the small outfits wiped out and the sheriff gone, the whole range would be theirs.

Egan made whining, mewing sounds.

“Look, sheriff, you ain’t going to hold this against me. You’re going to let me go. After all, I helped you. I was the one that …”

“Shut up,” snapped Parker.

His hand reached out slowly and gathered in Egan’s shirt front, twisted it tight.

“And now tell me about the cartridge that was found behind that tree.”

“Oh, that,” said Egan. “That was put there. I found the cartridge …”

“You mean you hung around and watched until Luke shot the gun, then sneaked in after he was gone and picked it up.”

“I found it,” protested Egan. “I just was riding along one day …”

“And you saw something shining on the ground.”

“That’s right, sheriff,” said Egan, pleased. “You hit it right on the head.”

“You’ll have a hell of a time making a jury believe that,” said Parker.

Feet crunched outside and Parker swung around, reaching for his gun.

Old Matt’s shadowy form blotted out the moonlight in the doorway.

“Thought I heard a shot,” he said.

“You took your sweet time coming,” Parker told him.

“Hell,” said Matt, disgustedly, “I had to get my pants on. Couldn’t come out just in my shirttail. I came just …”

He stopped, staring at Egan.

“Tried to bushwhack me,” Parker explained.

“Sort of looks like it backfired on him.”

Parker nodded. “Spilled his guts,” he said. “Told me Betz was the one that killed Campbell. That .45-70 shell was planted so it would look like Luke had done it.”

“And now that you got the varmint, what are you going to do with him?”

“Got to take him along with me while I hunt up Luke,” said Parker. “Can’t let him out of my sight.”

“Take him back to jail,” said Matt.

Parker shook his head. “Sawyer’s in with them. He’d get word to the Turkey Track and they’d either have him out or kill him before I could get back.”

Matt shucked up his gunbelt. “Leave him here with me,” he suggested. “I’ll take downright good care of him.”

“Not a chance,” said Parker. “You got other things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like getting together a bunch of the boys to wait for me in town. When I get back I got work to do.”

CHAPTER FOUR Hideaway in Hell

Dawn was breaking over the Rattlesnake hills, the darkness rising from the ground against the inroad of thin morning light that revealed the shapes of trees and boulders.

Riding at a low jog, Parker searched the jagged tangle of the towering cliffs, hunting for the almost hidden mouth of that one small canyon which sprang out from the tumbled hills.

It’d been a long time since he had been here. Things somehow looked different than they did those days when he and Luke were hunting pirate gold and fleeing to safety before the imaginary thunder of pursuing redskins.

Gnarled, wind-whipped trees, twisted and maimed like cripples, clung to the tawny hills and it was one of these that he was looking for—one maimed and crippled tree that looked like an old man walking with a cane.

The lead rope tugged at his saddle horn and he twisted, shot a glance behind him.

Egan, hands tied behind him, sat hunched over in the saddle of the led horse. In the pale morning light his face was puffed and swollen and one eye was almost closed by the ring of black and battered flesh around it.

“How do you feel?” asked Parker.

Egan spat awkwardly. “Like hell,” he said.

“We’re almost there,” Parker told him. “I’ll let you rest a while.”

“Look,” asked Egan, “why don’t we make a deal?”

Parker laughed harshly. “No deals, Egan. I’ll need you on the witness stand.”

“I could fix it up with Betz,” said Egan. “He’s a friend of mine. Pardners, see. All I got to do is say the word. We’ll cut you in. Keep the job for life, get a rake-off on the side.”

Parker did not answer, still sat half turned in the saddle, staring at the man.

“Betz would treat you right,” Egan declared.

“Yes, I know. A bullet in the back.”

Deliberately, Parker turned in the saddle. Egan was silent. They rode on into the dawn.

Suddenly, as if it had risen from the ground, the tree was there on the cliff rim, a tree that walked with a cane along the skyline.

Parker reined the buckskin in toward the cliff, saw the tree-masked opening that marked the canyon’s mouth. Slowly, picking their way, the horses advanced, sheer walls towering far above them, boulders scattered along the stream bed through which trickled a tiny flow of water.

Suddenly the canyon widened and a grove of trees appeared.

This was the place, Parker remembered. The place where he and Luke used to leave their ponies and climb to the cave.

His hand tightened on the reins, brought the buckskin to a halt. Parker sat, wide-eyed, staring at the two horses tethered in the grove. One, he knew, must be the one that Luke had ridden, but the other one was white.

A white horse! Only one person in this whole range rode a white….and that person was Ann Horton!

Behind him Egan growled at him: “What’s the matter, sheriff?”

Parker did not answer, but spurred his horse forward, jerking at the lead rope.

There was no doubt the white horse was Ann’s. Parker, squinting at it, recognized the saddle. He swung off the buckskin, tied it to a nearby tree, walked back to Egan’s mount.

“Get down,” he told the man.

Egan swung off awkwardly, stumbled a little when he hit the ground, then straightened, standing silently. Parker tied Egan’s horse beside his own.

“Walk ahead of me,” he told Egan. “That path over there.” He pointed.

Egan nodded, trudged toward the path. Behind him, Parker wondered, mind groping for an explanation of the white horse.

Why should Ann Horton be here? What had brought her?

Warning signals jangled in his brain, but they were not clear. A trap? That was hardly possible. Egan had said that Ann’s father knew nothing of the scheme and even if he had Ann would not lend herself to any part of it.

And yet the horse was there—tied beside the one that Luke had ridden.

Parker shrugged off the questions, gave his attention to the climbing trail ahead.

It angled sharply up the hillside, ran close against a sheer cliff that suddenly broke off, gave way to tangled rock and shrub.

“I hope,” growled Egan through his battered lips, “that you know where you’re going.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Parker, “I …”

A buzzing thing spun above Parker’s head, hit the cliff and screamed. From ahead of them came the angry coughing of a sixgun.

Ahead of Parker, Egan hurled himself flat on the trail, wriggling like a snake toward a covering bush.

The sixgun coughed again and Parker threw himself to one side, hunkered against the wall of cliff, masked from the gun ahead.

Silence dripped through the morning, a brittle, fragile silence.

Parker called softly: “Luke!”

There was no answer. The single word came back in muted echoes from the hills, whispering echoes that called Luke’s name again, getting fainter and fainter, as a dying man might call.

Hunched against the wall of rock, Parker gazed out over the rolling country that lay beyond the hills, a silver country in the morning sun … an empty country except for one bunch of cattle, dwarfed by distance. Nothing stirred. No moving horsemen, no smoking chimney signaling breakfast-making. Just rolling prairie and the silver grass.

Egan’s whisper came to him, a mocking thing:

“Luck playing out, sheriff?”

Parker made no answer, but instead he called out again, raising his voice: “Luke! Luke, it’s Clint!”

An answer came this time, Luke’s voice:

“Come on up, but I got you covered. Keep your hands away from your guns.”

“Luke, you locoed fool, I want to talk to you.”

Luke yelled back: “Don’t try for your guns.”

Parker stepped out into the trail, prodding Egan with his foot.

“Up we go.”

Egan protested violently. “He’ll pot us soon as we show ourselves,” he screamed. “He’ll …”

Parker prodded him viciously, shutting off the words.

Slowly, Egan got to his feet, scrambled up the trail, body tensed, eyes searching the ground ahead.

The path ran along a ledge that clung close against the cliff wall and suddenly it twisted and they were there—in front of the cave.

Luke, long and lanky, stood to one side of the cave mouth, sixgun hand lifted, lips twisted into a smile that was grim and careful.

Against the wall of rock next to the cave opening stood Ann Horton, wide-eyed, hands behind her as she pressed herself against the cliff. Parker stopped in his tracks and stood staring at her in the morning light.

“She came because she thought you’d be here,” said Luke. “Cripes, can you beat that!”

“She thought that I was with you?”

“Sure, figured you had turned me loose. Some of the Turkey Track outfit rode out to the Bent Arrow. Said both you and I were missing. She jumped to conclusions, Clint.”

Ann stirred away from the wall, took a slow step forward.

“I know I shouldn’t have done it,” she said and her eyes saw only Parker. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t let you ride off without me.”

“You couldn’t—” Parker choked on the words, was suddenly striding forward—and the girl was in his arms.

Luke chuckled. “I didn’t believe her, Clint. But now damned if I don’t.”

“You showed me where the cave was,” murmured the girl. “Remember, Clint, that day you told me how you dug for buried gold …”

“And you figured this is where we’d head?”

She nodded against his shoulder.

Luke broke in. “What was the idea of dragging Egan here?”

“Because he’s the hombre that’s going to spill the beans,” said Parker. “He coughed up his…”

“Good morning,” said another voice.

Parker swung around to face the direction the words had come from.

Betz stood on the trail, gun in hand, laughing at them without the sound of laughter.

One hand came up and he tipped his hat to Ann.

“It was nice of you, Miss Horton,” he said, “to show us the way.”

“To show you the way!” Luke bellowed.

“Why, certainly,” said Betz. “We took the news to the ranch and waited for her to leave. Then we followed her.”

“You never miss a single bet, do you,” Parker commented bitterly.

“Never, sheriff,” declared Betz.

His eyes narrowed and the bantering tone had vanished from his voice. “So you brought Egan with you.”

Egan yelled in sudden panic. “I didn’t tell him nothing, Frank. Not a single word. I never opened…”

“He just got through saying,” Betz told him, grimly, “that you spilled your guts.”

And the words were soft, too soft.

The gun steadied in Betz’ hand.

“Damn you,” said Betz. “I never liked you. I always knew that you were yellow.”

“No, Betz!” screamed Egan. “Please Betz! I’m your friend…”

Eyes wide with terror, he backed away, mouth working and no words coming out.

Behind Parker, Ann screamed at him. “Look out!”

But it was too late. For a moment Egan tottered on the edge of the precipice, face twisted with fright, arms straining at the ropes behind his back, fighting to keep his balance. Then with a long, thin scream he toppled over and plunged out of sight.

Betz’ hard voice rapped out an order.

“Drop them!”

Parker’s fingers loosened on the sixgun and let it slide back into his holster. Too slow, his mind told him, too slow. Watching Betz, he heard Luke’s sixgun clatter on the rock.

Betz chuckled.

Parker held his arms half lifted, mind racing.

A slow grin spread over Betz’ face, a leering grin of triumph.

“How do you want it?” he asked. “Gun or rope?”

Parker’s lips moved and his mouth was dry. “What about the girl?” he asked.

“Never mind,” Betz told him. “We’ll take care of her.”

His face was not a very pretty thing to look at.

An unseen hand knocked Betz’ hat off his head and sailed it through the air. A bullet chugged against the cliff and from somewhere in the tangled terrain that lay across the canyon a rifle barked—a full-throated, growling bark that set up a chain of echoes.

Parker’s hand dipped swiftly for his gun as Betz spun around to face the hidden rifle.

The rifle barked again and rock splinters flew from the cliff wall just above Betz’ shoulder, while the bullet howled into the sky, tumbling end for end.

Betz ducked swiftly and was gone, back along the trail. Parker stood, gun in hand, staring foolishly.

Luke’s voice chattered at him suddenly: “Clint, you recognize that gun! That’s the old .45-70! The old man’s out there, backing us!”

Another rifle rattled, three quick shots, flat, cracking, spiteful sounds. The .45-70 talked back.

Luke was running for the ledge.

Parker turned swiftly to Ann.

“Quick,” he told her, “get into the cave—and stay there.”

His left hand dipped to his belt, hauled out the second gun, thrust it at her.

“Use it if you have to.”

Swinging around, he raced after Luke—but Luke already had disappeared.

From far below a rifle spanged and a sixgun answered. The .45-70 was silent.

Running swiftly, bent forward, Parker left the cliff wall behind him, reached the tangled land that plunged down toward the canyon. Ahead of him a tiny puff of smoke plumed from behind a tree and a rifle hammered.

Diving off the trail, Parker slung a quick shot at the tree, then was skidding through the underbrush, driving deep beneath it in a flying, feet-first plunge.

The rifle churned and bullets clawed savagely at the bushes beneath which the sheriff lay. Body pressed tight against the ground, with the smell of leaf mold in his nostrils, he lay unmoving and watched the tree through the net of branches.

The canyon was quiet—no sign of the men who skulked through rocks and bushes to kill or be killed. No sign of the hidden, waiting guns. Somewhere a bird sang to the morning and far overhead the sun’s first rays were painting the cliff tops.

Parker clutched the sixgun savagely. Everything had been going well—too well, he told himself. And now a thing like this would happen. Egan dead at the foot of the cliff—the one man who could have cleared Luke of the charge against him. Egan, with his hands tied behind him, falling from the ledge, falling to the rocks and trees below—killed by Betz as surely as if Betz had fired a bullet through his head.

And now—odds of five to one or more. Two sixguns and a rifle in an old man’s shaky hands against a band of well armed men. Men who had to kill or be exposed for what they were. Men who would let nothing stop them …

Down the trail a sixgun hammered rapidly, shots rolling together until they seemed to be one long rattle.

The shots cut off and silence came again.

Parker let his breath out slowly.

His lips moved soundlessly. “One,” he said.

Luke had gotten his man, for there had been no answering shot. But a man couldn’t keep on doing that, couldn’t keep on killing without being killed himself.

Something moved beside the tree beyond the bushes, a dark thing against the dark green of the shaded brush. Tensed, Parker watched. The dark thing projected farther and there was a sullen gleam, the gleam of light on steel.

Parker sucked in his breath, slowly raised the sixgun. The glinting thing was a rifle barrel and that dark projection would be the elbow of the man who held it.

His finger tightened on the sixgun trigger and the hammer eased back slowly. Then the gun leaped in his hand and a man sprang, howling, from behind the tree. The rifle struck the ground and slid slowly down the slope and the man was running, left hand holding the elbow of his right arm.

Parker’s wrist bucked to the impact of the coughing gun and out on the canyonside the man was folding up, folding and falling as he ran, knees bending beneath him, feet scuffing in the leaves. Slowly he pitched forward upon his face and rolled.

On the hillside above Parker a rifle clamored, hacking and spitting and the whistle of lead hissing through the bushes above him was like the sound of a sudden summer thunder storm.

Breath caught in his throat, Parker squirmed away, crawling on his belly.

Another rifle caught up the chuckle where the other one left off, chattered and yammered. The bushes swayed and rippled and leaves cut by the storming bullets fluttered down on Parker’s back.

Parker’s throat was dry, dry with sudden fear.

Two rifles bearing on him, others sneaking up, attracted by the sound of shooting and closing in on him.

A voice came to him through the underbrush.

“Better come out, sheriff.”

He hugged the ground, red fury in his brain.

“Come out,” said Betz’ voice, “or we’ll open up. We’ll chop you all to hell.”

He can’t see me, Parker told himself. He can’t see me or he’d have me shot. It’s just a trick. A trick to make me move and tip off where I am.

One bullet plowed ground not six inches in front of Parker, throwing a shower of dirt into his face. Another clipped his hat with a tearing sound as it ripped through the cloth. Something stung his left leg.

Up the hillside a man was screaming and a sixgun was talking in jerky, tortured bursts of sound.

A sixgun! That would be Luke!

Parker came to his feet, lowered his shoulders like a battering ram, charged through the brush, heading for the sixgun sound.

A rifle chugged, but the shot was wide and Parker kept on going, scrambling up the hill in leaping bounds that sent loose rocks clattering down the slope.

The sixgun was silent and the man who had screamed was moaning, moaning and sobbing somewhere among the trees.

A woman’s shrill cry rang out: “Clint … Clint!”

And then choked off, as if a hand had come across her mouth.

Breath sobbing in his throat, Parker leaped toward the sound. A rifle chortled and whining lead sang above his head.

He stumbled, bursting through a screen of brush, and there before him was Ann—Ann in the grip of one of the Turkey Track riders, an arm tight around her waist, holding her in front of him while he backed away.

At the sight of Parker the man’s arm came up and the gun exploded in a belch of fire and smoke. Parker jerked to the impact of the bullet as it scraped along his side.

Ann was struggling, fighting, eyes wide, lips tight and straight.

Parker jerked up his gun and as the girl bent forward, straining to break the grip of the arm around her, he pressed the trigger.

Ann stumbled forward, falling to her knees as the arm relaxed and towering over her, his throat ripped out by Parker’s bullet, the man stood for an instant like a graven statue and then fell backwards, crashing like a falling tree.

Parker spun around, sixgun ready. Figures were storming up the hill, swiftly plunging forms moving from one tree to the next. The sheriff’s sixgun hammered and down on the hillside a man spun in midstride, went rolling down the slope.

A rifle barked in steady tones and Parker felt the wind of winging death whisper past his cheek. Bullets chunked into the rising ground behind him.

He swung around and saw Ann running for a nest of boulders. He whipped two quick shots at the barking rifle and then the hammer clicked on an empty shell.

The girl was calling to him: “Quick, Clint—quick.”

Bullets plowed the ground around him as he ran, but he reached the boulders, flung himself behind them, lay listening to the howl of ricocheting lead screaming off the rock.

A hand reached out and touched him.

“Clint, you all right …”

He stormed at her. “You little fool! I told you to stay back in the cave!”

“But they were shooting at you and I had the gun.”

He sat up and fed cartridges into his Colt.

“Where’s the gun you had?” he asked.

Her voice shook a little. “I dropped it.”

On his knees, he stared across the little space that separated them, saw the tremble of her lip.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry that I talked like that.”

“Where’s Luke and Matt?”

Parker shook his head. “Down the canyon somewhere, I guess.”

He nodded at a niche between two boulders. “Get in there and stay,” he told her. “Pure hell is apt to break loose any minute.”

She slid into the niche and Parker crouched, sixgun ready, watching the trees and underbrush. They’ll be working up the hill, he told himself, to get above us, and when they do, this nest of boulders wouldn’t be worth a damn as a thing to hide behind.

Up the hill a rifle spat. A man’s shriek rose above the din of the shot and then chopped off.

Parker tensed. That gun!

It spat again and a man was running through the trees, twisting and doubling like a hunted deer.

Deliberately, Parker lined him in the sights and pressed the trigger. The runner stumbled, crashed to the ground and bounced, flapped against a tree and then lay still.

The gun took up again, deliberate, steady, like a cornered bear.

“Matt!” yelled Parker. “Down this way, Matt!”

The old man whooped at him from up the hillside: “We got them on the run, lad. Open up!”

The bark of the .45-70 cut off his words and snapping, snarling rifles answered back.

A new sound came in, far off to the left—the steady rattle of a rasping sixgun.

Luke! That’s Luke, Parker told himself.

He slid around the corner of the boulder, snapped his gun down on a bush overhung with powder smoke, triggered rapidly. A man burst from the bush, went zigzagging down the hill in wild, plunging leaps.

Other men were running, too. Scurrying down the hillside, plunging and sliding, running to escape the withering fire that was pouring from above them.

Parker leaped from behind the boulder, smoking sixgun snapping at the heels of the fleeing man.

His boots bit into the sloping ground, leaving long skid marks behind him as he strode down the hill, while above him old Matt’s rifle growled and Luke’s sixgun played a constant tune.

A bullet whipped past Parker’s head and a gun crashed off to the left. Parker checked his stride and swung around, saw the man standing beside the scraggly tree at the foot of the cliff.

Red-faced, bull-necked, lips twisted with bitter hate, Betz raised his gun for another shot.

Parker shot from the hip, a quick snap shot that sent the bark flying from the tree. Betz’ gun drooled fire and Parker staggered under the smashing power of the bullet that took him in the shoulder.

Numbed, Parker lifted his gun, took a slow step forward.

This one has to be good, his mind told him through the ache that spread across his body—this one has to count. If it wasn’t, he knew that he would never had another chance.

Feet planted, he held himself upright and rigid for the moment, everything else blotted out but the red-faced man and the ugly snout of Betz’ sixgun poised for another shot.

The gun in Parker’s hand spat fire, bucked against his wrist. In front of him Betz jerked as if hit by a red-hot iron. His gun dropped from suddenly limp fingers and the man bent in the middle, as if he had hinges in his stomach. When he hit the ground he was still—very still and limp.

Through a foggy haze, Parker drove his legs forward, walking toward the dead man—and stopped in astonishment.

Something rolled out from under the tree beside which Betz had stood, something that flopped and thrashed like a chicken with its head cut off.

Parker’s legs were running and his mouth was shouting:

“Egan! Egan!”

Egan struggled to a sitting position, stared at him, blood-matted black bear working as his jaws made words.

“Afraid I’d never get out,” he said. “Damn rope was fouled up with a branch.”

“But you fell,” gasped Parker. “I saw you …”

“Sure,” said Egan. “I fell into a tree. Knocked me out for a while, but it saved me. When I come to I kicked around a little and then I fell the rest of the way.”

He jerked his head at Betz.

Egan was swinging to and fro and the trees were dancing. Parker felt his knees giving way and suddenly he was sitting on the ground, face to face with Egan. He shook his head to clear away the fog and the trees stood still, jiggling just a little.

“He got you,” said Egan viciously. His eyes were on Parker’s blood-soaked shoulder.

“I hope to hell it’s bad,” said Egan. “I hope you croak, right along with Betz.”

Parker clenched his teeth. “Don’t worry,” he told the man. “I’ll live to see you behind bars …”

Feet pounded behind him and he twisted his head around. It was old Matt and Ann, tearing down the hillside. Ann a running deer, Matt a lumbering grizzly, beard floating in the wind, rifle waving in his steady hand.

Parker staggered to his feet, stood waiting them.

“We beat them, son!” yelled Matt. “We beat the britches off them!”

He stopped in front of Parker, looked soberly at the shoulder.

“Hurt bad, son?” he asked.

Parker shook his head. “Left arm won’t work for a while,” he said. “But the right’s O.K.”

To prove it, he held it out for Ann.

Old Matt was chuckling. “You and Luke thought you had the old man fooled,” he said. “Never figured I knew where you sneaked off every Sunday afternoon.”

Parker choked. “You knew about the cave all the time, then?”

“Hell, yes,” Matt told him, “but I kept my big mouth shut. Spoiled all your fun if you knew I knew.”

Parker tightened his arm about Ann, saw Luke coming through the woods.

“Everything’s all right,” he said to Ann. “Everything’s all right.”