“WHY DON’T YOU shut up?” Ben Majors said, turning in the saddle to face his foreman.
Riley persisted. “Not until I find out what the hell this is all about. I’d as soon sleep with a rattlesnake in my bunk.”
“Ever hear that the pen was mightier than the sword?”
“Sure. So what?”
“Sid’s signature on that partnership agreement is worth a hell of a lot more than ten dead Spur men. If I had to go into the Yellows after Sid I’d lose half my crew.”
Bones hauled his horse to a stop. “If you’re plannin’ what I’m thinkin’, maybe I better just pull out.”
Majors snorted. Presently they arrived in the Spur yard, unsaddled and drove their ponies into the corral. Bones was scowling as they mounted the front steps—and hoofbeats behind spun them around.
Sid Vivian swept into the yard at a disdainful lope and stepped down with the air of a familiar visitor.
“Thought I’d have a look at our outfit,” he grinned, and entered the house before them. He made himself immediately comfortable in a heavy, leather-covered chair and observed, “This furniture is as overstuffed as the foreman.”
He smiled at Bones, who glared back silently. Majors still stood, nettled by Vivian’s easy intrusion, and let the uncomfortable silence lengthen.
Vivian heard Sara’s footsteps coming along the hallway. His lips curved into a slow smile and he drew the cigarette from his mouth, deliberately flicking its ashes to the floor. Majors frowned. “Well?”
“Don’t get edgy with me, Ben. You need me for the weight I can swing against these valley people. That’s why you made your peace with me. My bein’ here strikes at your pride. But it’s your only way of keepin’ anything to be proud of. So don’t ride me when you see me on Spur.”
Majors threw his heavy glance on Vivian. “You’re on pretty risky ground yourself,” he said. “I can remember a time four years ago when you were spendin’ a lot of money you never earned. And I remember seein’ you take your boys onto the desert road that night Chavis was bushwhacked. I said nothing. So you owe me a few things, too.”
“Gratitude is a fool’s virtue. I owe you nothin’.”
Majors stepped forward and Bones moved along the wall, habit bringing him along Vivian’s flank to back his boss’ play.
Vivian stood up and smiled. “Idle talk is no cause for breakin’ up a partnership. I came here to plan out this Chainlink business. And to point out that Tracy Chavis is no man to fool with. He sleeps light and his thinkin’ is a lot faster than yours or mine.”
“Only takes one bullet,” Majors said. He didn’t notice Riley’s darkening scowl.
“It ain’t that simple. Niles and Craycroft and the whole Mogul are watching this. We’ve got to drive the whole bunch off Chainlink and get rid of every one of them. Then people can ask questions all they want. They’ll get no answers—and I don’t give a damn what they guess.”
“I won’t be a party to killin’ that girl. Chavis is our only threat on Chainlink. With him gone I can talk right-of-way out of the girl.”
Vivian laughed, throwing his head back. “You made yourself top dog in this country by wipin’ out all the other dogs. But now there’s a new litter of pups barkin’ at you—and you want peace.” He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed, and spoke quietly. “If I pull out my support now, you’re finished.” His thin lips stretched away from his teeth, and he stood up. “We’ve got to hit Chainlink with every man who can ride. I thought to trap Chavis by stealin’ that draft. Then Pete taunted him with a Chainlink cowhide. Neither worked. Then you hired the Crews boys—and they wind up dead. So did a couple of your riders who tried to stop him buildin’ fence. We’ve got to quit this playin’ steal-the-bacon with him.”
The hall door swung open and Sara Majors entered. Vivian turned to look at her and removed his hat. She kept silent, staring back at him. Soon he left the house and rode from the yard.
Sara saw her father’s thick-lipped mouth turn down beneath the ragged mustache. His expression and his eyes showed his unbending pride and the self-absorption which left him little interest in anything but his own private thoughts and schemes.
She said, “Does Vivian have to come here?”
Majors made a vague gesture of annoyance, showing that no man wants to take advice or complaints from a woman. She crossed the room, feeling that familiar frustration in not being able to reach him. She remembered how Sid Vivian had turned to look at her. She had never before seen him so close and the animal brutality in his eyes had startled her—direct and hungry and without moral. No one could know what schemes he nourished. She watched Bones leave the house. Something was on his mind. She followed him to the tool shed, impulse bringing her toward this man in whom she had often caught the kindly wisdom she never found in her father.
Bones noticed her troubled eyes. He said slowly, “A man that makes a friend of a skunk usually winds up smellin’ like one I hate to see your dad doin’ this.”
She nodded. “Will you saddle up for me, Bones?” As he brought out her horse, she saw her father standing on the porch. This troubled her, but she quickly mounted.
“Just a minute.” Her father stood before her, his anger plain. “Where are you going?”
“A ride.”
“See that you stay on Spur.”
She didn’t answer.
“Speak up, or unsaddle that horse!” When she still kept silent, he swung to face his foreman. “Take her off the horse, Bones.”
Bones studied him. “No,” he said. “I guess not.” He had his own horse and now he stepped aboard and sat regarding Majors, an inner violence freezing his heavy shape.
Majors caught the bridle of Sara’s horse.
Bones, watching with suppressed fury, said, “Ben, step aside.” Majors, startled, swung to Bones, who said, “Take your hand off that horse or I’ll run you down.”
Majors saw that Bones intended doing exactly as he had promised and, glowering, he stepped back.
“Go on,” Bones said. He slapped Sara’s horse and it rocked out of the yard. He turned to Majors. “You’ve played me along for a considerable time, Ben. But I think I’ll draw my time. A few weeks ago I’d have thought you was human. But now you’re stoopin’ to Sid’s level—and it’s blindin’ you to your own daughter.” Bones pulled his hat down tighter. “I’ll just take what’s comin’ to me and ride on.”
In the late afternoon, having drawn his pay, Riley rode into the Chainlink yard. There his horse stopped dead center in the yard, with three armed men surveying him from various comers.
Chavis walked forward from the corral, reserve in his tone. “How, Bones.”
Bones stepped down. “You want another rider, Tracy?”
He became aware of Chavis’ suspicion and said, “I quit Ben.”
“Why?”
“When I went to work on Spur, I had a good job, good pay, and respect for the boss. But this business with Sid has changed him. I quit before he got me to doin’ things I didn’t want to do.”
Chavis thought it over. He nodded. “Pitch your roll in the bunkhouse. And grease up your gun.”
He turned to the water olla hanging on the porch, had his drink and started to step off. It was then that the hard, flat echo of a rifle shot clipped up dirt close on his heels and ricocheted into a support post near his elbow.
He dropped flat to the porch and rolling rapidly to its edge, dropped off. He scrambled up against the house wall, peered around the comer and swept the brush and timbered slopes beyond. The shot’s echoes still rolled out and he saw Bones in the bunkhouse door. Niles had leaped back within the barn and McCaig was running into the bunkhouse for a rifle. Then Chavis caught the quick flash of sun on metal. It was up some hundred yards, in a litter of rock. He bunched his legs and made a run for the corral.
The unprotected distance was about a hundred feet, and he took it fast, expecting a shot at every step. But none came, and he made the safety of the barn wall, ran straight along it and threw himself in the saddle of Bones’ horse. He charged out of the yard and hurled himself directly toward the ambusher, stung and angry and reckless. His horse clattered across a rocky patch and then he was climbing the slope, his Colt raised, spurring the horse savagely.
The second shot chipped splinters off a rock immediately before him, and whined off, followed directly by another which jarred his horse, set it back on its heels, dropped it. He rolled free, cursing, and made a dash for the nearest cover, a scanty manzanita ahead.
The rifle was going again, the bushwhacker methodically raking the brush with his fire, and Chavis spread himself as thinly to the ground as he could. There was a lone boulder about thirty feet to the right, with only grass between.
He gathered himself and let go, putting three fast shots on the ambusher’s position before starting his run. From here he was as protected as the ambusher, but the other didn’t like these odds and slid back. Chavis rose and ran forward, having reloaded his gun, and when he caught a glimpse of a weaving shadow, he raised his sights on the checkered shirt and let go.
There were too many intervening branches. His bullet was deflected on one of these and spun harmlessly off while the running figure disappeared over the crest. Chavis continued after him, running hard; but when he reached the hilltop all that was left to him was a weaving horseback shape a quarter-mile off. The rider was too far off to recognize.
All these things added up to boil his temper but he could do nothing. He carried his gear back to the yard and dumped it on a fence rail. Bones came forward “Figured he was your meat.”
“I owe you a horse, Bones.”
“No hurry.” Bones held his hand out palm-up. Resting in it was a misshapen lump of metal. “Dug this out of the porch post,” he said.
Chavis picked it up. It was a hundred-grain bullet out of a small-caliber rifle, most probably a .32-20. “That’s two,” he said. “He did better on Carter.”
“We got half the day left,” Bones said. “Let’s get on the trail.”
Clouds were moving across the sky. The land was turning cool, swept by breezes receiving no warmth from the clouded-over sun. As Chavis and Riley entered Chainlink’s pass a midnight blackness closed around them. The covered sky was hurrying the end of the day.
“Time we get out of this gulch it’ll be too dark to follow tracks,” Bones said. “We know he’s got to go through the pass but he could go anywhere from the other end. Maybe best we hole up for the night on the Mogul.”
Chavis hated to lose the time but admitted that his partner was right. The vertical walls, where they reflected any light at all, showed a cold purple. They crossed the creek and continued upward until they came out on the Mogul. There would be little light left in half an hour, so they used the time to pick a sheltered camping spot.
They rose early and continued into the rolling pine-covered land that marked the edge of the Yellows. The day was gray and drizzly. The wet, dank odors of the forest were heavy upon them and wind hummed a steady monotone through the branches above. But it was light enough to see tracks and so far the drizzle hadn’t obliterated them.
“Bones, who do you know that owns a .32-20 rifle?”
“Uncommon sort,” Riley said. “I recollect one. A Chainlink man—Wate, his name was.”
Chavis nodded. He hadn’t seen or heard of the man since the night he’d downed the Crews brothers. But now it figured. “Sid must be paying him.”
“Very possible,” Bones said. He looked up. “Looks like the clouds are breakin’ up.”
It was true. The blue of clear air was showing through the cloud cover in patches as they prodded their horses deeper into the Yellows. Neither of them knew where Wate had been hanging out lately, but they found from an old rancher who lived a few miles below Vivian’s that he had seen Wate several times in a shack up the Oro.
Corey Wate’s cabin, a ramshackle, tilting structure, had been built years before Wate’s time and would be there long after. The partners rode boldly up to the door. Bones kept his eye out and his gun ready while Chavis dropped from the saddle.
“Wate!”
No answer. “Ain’t any horses around,” Bones observed.
Getting a fair view of the inside of the cabin, he nodded, and Chavis wheeled in, his gun up.
The room was dank, cobwebbed and apparently deserted. Chavis came back outside. “He’s been gone three or four days. Afraid to camp where anyone might find him.”
“I’ll circle around for sign,” Bones said, and drifted into the trees.
Chavis re-entered the shack and searched it more carefully. He came up with a result of nothing. A faint squall warned him of the doors movement. He whirled, tipping his gun forward.
“Saw your horse,” Pete Vird explained mildly, his eyes wide and innocent. “Know where Wate is?”
“No.”
“Well,” Pete said, “he does a lot of driftin’. He was by the ranch two days ago and bummed some bacon.”
Pete was awfully friendly, Chavis thought. The information he had dropped could mean something, but Pete was too free with it. “What are you doing here?”
“Came back for the bacon,” Pete said, and stepped across the room to pull down a hunk of meat wrapped in oiled paper. He bounced it on his hand as he walked forward.
“See you,” he said, and walked out.
Something was decidedly wrong here. Chavis heard Pete’s horse as it ran out of the hollow and that sound jarred his mind. Pete wouldn’t be coming over for a hunk of bacon unless he knew Wate wouldn’t be here to use it. Pete might be taking the food to Wate, hiding out where Pete could find him.
He ran to his horse and got aboard and signaled Bones, across the canyon, to come along.
The easiest way to find Corey Wate was to follow Pete. Vivian’s rider was out of sight and earshot, but had not bothered to hide his trail, which struck Chavis as odd. Then the reason for Vird’s apparent carelessness became obvious. Pete was returning to the Flying V.
Could Wate be hiding there? Chavis doubted it. But Pete Vird was no fool, and Chavis decided to gamble. He explained Pete’s apparent errand to Bones.
“That breed might be foolin’ us into something,” the bulky rider ventured.
“I don’t think so. We’ll leave the horses here and put an eye on Vivian’s. I’m pretty sure Pete will ride out as soon as he figures we’ve left.”
They tied up to a pair of saplings and continued on foot to a hill above Vivian’s. With a start Chavis realized that this was the same spot from which he had shot out the Flying V windows. From here they could see any rider depart in any direction.
They settled down to wait.
The sky never cleared that afternoon. Clouds kept building up in the west and rolling by overhead, while shadows moved around from one side of a tree to the other. Chavis stretched on the ground, his glance turned to the Flying V and his thoughts traveling to a number of connected questions.
The unknown man who’d held him and Jim Boyce up four years ago was somewhere in this country. He was sure of it. But he was no closer to solving that mystery than before. And now other questions rose up: What was Corey Wate’s stake in this war? And what would be Majors’ and Vivian’s next move? And when?
“Look here!” Bones spoke softly, bringing his mind back.
Chavis looked. He saw a rider sweeping downhill, away from the Flying V. Pete Vird, sure that the coast was clear, was heading on some sort of errand. Chavis nodded to Bones, and they mounted and hit Vird’s trail, then kept at an even distance behind.
Vird, feeling safe, wasn’t bothering to cover his trail as he rode across streams and over rock-strewn ridges, into rougher country. It was a much more barren land and they had to drop farther behind Pete Vird to avoid being spotted. They came to a creek making a bubbling racket. Vird’s tracks went into the water but did not come out.
Bones swore. “He’s onto us.”
“No,” Chavis said. “He’s just making sure.”
He examined the prints more carefully, getting a hint from the angle at which they entered the stream. That sign took them along the bank, Bones following. They searched all the pockets nearby, the hidden angles and tortuous canyons. Finally, they aimed for a high hilltop.
“There he is,” Bones said. Vird was just now coming out of the water, over a mile to the west. Chavis and Riley headed that way.
Twilight was dimming the high pastures when a clatter ahead warned them. They hid, waiting among the dark pines until a rider came past at a quick trot.
When he was gone Chavis said, “That was Pete.”
“Then he’s delivered his message and is goin’ home.”
Bones dismounted and hitched his horse to a pine. Chavis did the same thing and they followed Vird’s double track into a narrowing canyon. By the time they were half a mile into the cut the sun had disappeared. They lost sight of the trail but continued along the gulch, seeing no other way to go. They rounded a bend and caught sight of a fire.
“There,” Bones said.
From about fifty yards they had a good view of the lighted area, but saw no sign of life. Wate, crafty and scared, wouldn’t expose himself by remaining close to his fire. They split up, Bones circling the camp on the right flank and Chavis, the left.
Chavis moved forward at a crouching walk. Cover was thin here and the man would probably hole up in one of the tiny groves of scrub that littered the floor. Nearing one such spot, Chavis palmed his Colt and threaded the trees.
He found nothing and headed for the next grove when a commotion broke loose across the canyon. Something broke from the trees there and ran clattering back toward the canyon mouth. Chavis recognized it—Wate’s horse, riderless. Somebody yelled, and gun flame lanced out. A running figure emerged from the trees and scrambled into rocky cover. Chavis ran toward that position and Bones loomed out of the brush. Chavis said, “That him?”
“Nobody else. We’ve got him trapped on the wall.”
“A lot of good it will do. We can’t get him any more than he can get us. Because I want him alive.”
He walked out of the trees and called: “Wate! Give up or well starve you out. Throw down your gun.”
His answer was a shot that kicked up rocks to his left. He said, Tm going to try climbing up. You keep him busy on the wall until you hear me yell.”
Bones nodded and laid his sights on Wate’s position, sending out a covering fire at irregular intervals. Chavis meanwhile roved stealthily down-canyon, finally halting behind a heavy-boled pine. He felt a few isolated drops of rain and started cautiously advancing. A slight sound caused him to glance upward. On the rim, for the briefest instant, a silhouetted figure immediately dropped from sight.
He called to Bones, “He’s gone over the top on foot.” He ran to the base of the rise. Riley reached the same point quickly.
“Think he’ll try to make the Flying V?”
“One way to find out,” Chavis said. “Cover me.”
He began the climb, his gun ready. Near the rim he dropped belly-flat to squirm over. Wate was below him somewhere he was sure, probably off to his right, and he angled that way. The rain fell heavier now, drowning out the crunch of his boots. The murmur of a running creek drifted up from below.
He was low along the creekbank when the shot sang out. He couldn’t tell how close it came but he saw the muzzle flash and aimed himself directly at it, breaking into a crouching, dodging, clattering run. He gained a nest of boulders and began a quiet stalking game. Then a slight sound froze him beside a rock. A barely visible shape came swinging down past the boulder. Chavis’ powerful form leaped at him. He hit Wate in the legs, and capsized the man.
They tumbled down the steep slope and ended shoulders-first in the stream’s knee-deep water. Wate was beneath him. He caught the man’s neck and felt the barrel of Wate’s gun hit his jaw. Before Wate could use the gun again, Chavis plunged on Wate’s throat to carry him under.
He remembered Hal Carter and the Crews boys and knew he intended to kill Wate. But as he let the last bubble of air through his lips he knew he could not do what he wished to do. He let go Wate’s throat and stood up. He hauled the unconscious man to the surface, dragged the limp body to the bank.
He heard horses. Bones loomed up in the darkness. “Brought your horse. Did you get him?”
“Yeah,” Chavis said. “We’d better pump his lungs out.”
He turned Wate, knelt astraddle him and put pressure on the man’s back, easing and pressing to the slow rhythm of Wate’s burbling breathing.
“First bath he’s had in months,” Bones said. He handed a rifle to Chavis. “This is his .32-20.”