SHANDY TAKES THE HOOK

---

FOR THREE DAYS Shandy Gamble had been lying on his back in the Perigord House awaiting the stranger in the black mustache. Nichols, his name was, and if they were ever going to start cattle buying they had better be moving. The season was already late.

Shandy Gamble was seventeen years old and tall for his age. In fact, he was tall for any age. Four inches over six feet, he was all feet, hands, and shoulders. With his shirt off you could count every rib in his lean body.

Perigord was the biggest town Shandy had ever seen. In fact, it was only the third town he had seen in his life. With the cattle buyers in town there was most a thousand head of folks, and on the street Shandy felt uncomfortable and mighty crowded. Most of his time he spent down at the horse corrals or lying on his bed waiting for Nichols.

He had come to town to buy himself a new saddle and bridle. Maybe a new hat and shirt. He was a saving man, Shandy Gamble was, despite his youth. Now he not only was holding his own money but five hundred dollars belonging to Nichols. Had it not been for that he wouldn’t have waited, for by now he was homesick for the KT outfit.

Nichols was a big, powerful man with a smooth shaved face and black, prominent eyes. He also had black hair and a black mustache. Shandy had been leaning on the corral gate when Nichols approached him.

“Good afternoon, sir!” Nichols thrust out a huge hand. “I understand you’re a cattleman?”

Shandy Gamble blinked. Nobody had ever called him a cattleman before and his chest swelled appreciably. He was a forty-dollar-a-month cowhand, although at the moment he did have five hundred and fifty-two dollars in his pocket.

Fifty-two dollars was saved from his wages, and the five hundred was half the reward money for nailing two horse thieves back in the cedar country. Shandy had tracked them back there for Deputy Sheriff Holloway, and then when they killed Holloway he got mad and went in after them. He brought one out dead and one so badly mauled he wished he was dead. There was a thousand dollars on their heads and Shandy tried to give it to Mrs. Holloway, but she would accept only half.

Shandy shifted uneasily on the bed. It was time Nichols got back. The proposition had sounded good, no question about that. “You can’t beat it, Gamble,” Nichols had said. “You know cattle and I’ve the connections in Kansas City and Chicago. We can ride over the country buying cattle, then ship and sell them. A nice profit for both of us.”

“That would take money, and I ain’t got much,” Shandy had said.

Nichols eyed him thoughtfully. No use telling the boy he had seen that roll when Shandy paid for his room in advance. “It won’t take much to start,” Nichols scowled as he considered the size of Shandy’s roll. “Say a thousand dollars.”

“Shucks,” Shandy was regretful. “I ain’t got but five hundred.”

“Fine!” Nichols clapped him on the shoulder. “We’re partners then! You put up five hundred and I’ll put up five hundred! We’ll bank that here, and then start buying. I’ve got unlimited credit east of here, and when the thousand is gone, we’ll draw on that. At this stage you’ll be the one doing most of the thinking, so you won’t need to put as much cash into it as I do.”

“Well—” Shandy was not sure. It sounded like a good deal, and who knew cows better than he did? He had been practically raised with cows. “Maybe it would be a good deal. Old Ed France has a herd nobody’s looked at, nice, fat stock, too.”

“Good!” Nichols clapped him on the shoulder again. From his pocket he took a long brown envelope and a sheaf of bills. Very carefully he counted off five hundred dollars and stuck it into the envelope. “Now your five hundred.”

Shandy dug down and hauled out his bills and counted off the five hundred dollars and tucked it into the envelope.

“Now,” Nichols started to put the envelope in his pocket, “we’ll go to the bank, and—”

He stopped, then withdrew the envelope. “No, you just keep this on you. We’ll bank it later.”

Shandy Gamble accepted the fat envelope and stuck it into his shirt. Nichols glanced at his watch then rubbed his jaw. “Tell you what,” Nichols said, “I’ve got to catch the stage for Holbrook. I’ll be back tomorrow night. You stick around and don’t let this money out of your hands, whatever you do. I’ll see you at the hotel.”

Shandy watched him go, shrugged, and went back to watching the horses. There was a fine black gelding there. Now if he was a cattle buyer, he would own that gelding, buy the new saddle and bridle, and some fancy clothes like Jim Finnegan wore, and would he show that outfit back on the KT!

The wait had dampened his enthusiasm. Truth was, he liked the KT and liked working with the boys. They were a good outfit. He rolled over on the bed and swung his feet to the floor. Reaching for his boots he shoved his big feet into them and stood up.

To blazes with it! He’d open the envelope, leave the money in the bank for Nichols, and go back to the outfit. He was no cattle buyer, anyway. He was a cowhand.

Taking out the brown envelope, he ripped it open. Slowly he turned cold and empty inside, and stood there, his jaw slack, his shock of corn silk hair hanging over his face. The envelope was stuffed with old newspapers.

---

THE SPRING GRASS faded from green to brown and dust gathered in the trails. Water holes shrank and the dried earth cracked around them and the cattle grew gaunt. It was a hard year on the caprock, and that meant work for the hands.

Shandy Gamble was in the saddle eighteen to twenty hours most days, rounding up strays and pushing them south to the gullies and remaining water holes. When he had returned without his saddle there was a lot of jawing about it, and the boys all poked fun at Shandy, but he grinned widely and took it, letting them believe he had drunk it up or spent it on women.

Jim Finnegan rode out one day on a gray horse. He was looking the situation over and making estimates on the beef to be had after the fall roundup. Shandy was drifting south with three head of gaunted stock when they met. Gamble drew up and Finnegan joined him. “Howdy, son! Stock looks poor.”

“Yeah,” Shandy dug for the makings, “we need rain plumb bad.” He rolled his smoke, then asked quietly, “You ever hear of a buyer name of Nichols? Big, black-eyed man?”

Shandy’s description was accurate and painstaking, the sort of description a man might give who was used to reading sign and who thirty seconds after a glimpse of a horse or cow could describe its every hair and ailment.

“Nichols? You’ve forgotten the name, son. No, the hombre you describe is Abel Kotch. He’s a card slick an’ confidence man. Brute of a fighter, too. Brags he never saw the man could stand up to him in a fist fight.”

“Seen him around?”

“Yeah, he was around Fort Worth earlier this year. He rousts around with the June boys.”

The June boys. There were five of the Junes—the old man, Pete June, and the four outlaw sons: Alec, Tom, Buck, and Windy. All were gun slicks, bad men, dirty, unkempt drifters, known to be killers, believed to be horse and cow thieves, and suspected of some out and out murders.

Two nights later, back at the bunkhouse, Johnny Smith rode in with the mail, riding down from Tuckup way where he had stopped to ask after some iron work being done for the ranch by the Tuckup blacksmith. Tuckup was mostly an outlaw town, but the blacksmith there was the best around. Cowhands do most of their own work, but the man at Tuckup could make anything with iron, and the KT boss had been getting some fancy andirons for his fireplace.

“Killin’ over to Tuckup,” Johnny said, as he swung down. “That Sullivan from Brady Canyon tangled with Windy June. Windy bored him plenty.”

Shandy Gamble’s head came up. “June? The rest of that outfit there?”

“Sure, the whole shootin’ match o’ Junes!”

“Big, black-eyed fellow with ’em? Black mustache?”

“Kotch? Sure as you know he is. He whupped the blacksmith. Beat him so bad he couldn’t finish the old man’s andirons. That’s a rough outfit.”

The boss of the KT was talking to Jim Finnegan when Shandy strolled up. “Boss, anything you want done over Tuckup way? I got to ride over there.”

The Boss glanced at him sharply. It was unlike Gamble to ask permission to be away from his work. He was a good hand, and worked like two men. If he wanted to go to Tuckup there was a reason.

“Yeah. Ask about my irons. Too, you might have a look up around the water pocket. We’re missin’ some cows. If you find them, or see any suspicious tracks, come ahootin’ an’ we’ll ride up that way.”

---

SHANDY GAMBLE WAS astride a buckskin that belonged to the KT. He was a short coupled horse with a wide head, good at cutting or roping, but a good trail horse, too. Johnny Smith, who was mending a bridle, glanced up in time to see Gamble going out of the door with his rifle in his hand. That was not too unusual, with plenty of wolves and lions around, but Shandy was wearing two guns, something that hadn’t happened for a long time. Johnny’s brow puckered, then he shrugged and went back to work on the bridle.

The Tuckup Trail was a scar across the face of the desert. It was a gash in the plateau, and everywhere was rock, red rock, pink rock, white, yellow, and buff rock, twisted and gnarled into weird shapes. By night it was a ghost land where a wide moon floated over the blasted remains of ancient mountains, and by day it was an oven blazing with heat and dancing with dust devils and heat-waved distance.

Tuckup was a cluster of shabby down-at-heel buildings tucked back into a hollow among the rocks. It boasted that there was a grave in boot hill for every living person in town, and they always had two empty graves waiting to receive the next customers.

Tuckup was high, and despite the blazing heat of the day, a fire was usually welcome at night. The King High Saloon was the town’s resort, meeting place, and hang-out. Second only to it was the stable, a rambling, gloomy building full of stalls for sixty horses and a loft full of hay.

Shandy Gamble stabled his horse and gave it a good rubdown. It had a hard ride ahead of it, for he knew that there would be no remaining in town after he had done what he had to do.

Lean, gangling, and slightly stooped, he stood in the stable door and rolled a smoke. His shoulders seemed excessively broad above the narrow hips, and the two .44’s hung with their butts wide and easy to his big hands. He wore jeans and a faded checkered shirt. His hat was gray, dusty and battered. There was a hole through the crown that one of the horse thieves had put there.

There was the saloon, a general store, the blacksmith shop, and livery stable. Beyond and around was a scattering of a dozen or so houses, mostly mere shacks. Then there were two bunkhouses that called themselves hotels.

Shandy Gamble walked slowly across to the blacksmith shop. The smith was a burly man, and when he looked up, Shandy saw a deep half-healed cut on his cheekbone and an eye still swollen and dark. “KT irons ready?” Shandy asked, to identify himself.

“Will be.” The smith stared at him. “Rider from there just here yestiddy. Your boss must be in a mighty hurry.”

“Ain’t that. I had some business over here. Know an hombre name of Kotch?”

The smith glared. “You bein’ funny?”

“No. I got business with him.”

“Trouble?”

“Uh-huh. I’m goin’ to beat his head in.”

The smith shrugged. “Try it if you want. I done tried but not no more. He durned near kilt me.”

“He won’t kill me.”

“Your funeral. He’s up at the King High.” The smith looked at him. “You be keerful. Them Junes is up there, too.” He wiped his mustache. “KT, you better think again. You’re only a kid.”

“My feet make as big tracks as his’n.”

“Goin’ in, they may. Comin’ out they may be a sight smaller.”

Shandy Gamble’s eyes were chill. “Like you said, it’s my funeral.”

He hitched his guns in place and started across the street. He was almost to the hitch rail in front of the King High when he saw a fresh hide hung over the fence. It was still bloody. Curiously, he walked back. The brand had been cut away from the rest of the hide. Poking around in a pile of refuse ready for burning, he found it, scraped it clean, and tucked it into his pocket. He was turning when he looked up to see a man standing near him.

He was several inches shorter than Shandy, but he was wide and blocky. He wore his gun tied down and he looked mean. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes small. “What you doin’, pokin’ around here?”

“Just lookin’.” Shandy straightened to his full height. “Sort of proddin’ around.”

“Whar you from?”

“Ridin’ for the KT.”

The man’s lips tightened. “Git out of here!”

“Don’t aim to be in no hurry.”

“You know who I am? I’m Tom June, an’ when I say travel, I mean it!”

Shandy stood looking at him, his eyes mild. “Well, now. Tom June, I’ve heard o’ you. Heard you was a cow thief an’ a rustler.”

“Why, you—!” His hand swept for his gun, but Shandy had no idea to start a shooting now. His long left slammed out, his fist balled and rock hard. It caught Tom June flush on the mouth as his hand swept back for his gun and his head came forward. At the same time, Shandy’s right swung into the pit of the man’s stomach and his left dropped to the gun wrist.

The struggle was brief, desperate, and final. Shandy clubbed a big fist to the man’s temple and he folded. Hurriedly, Shandy dragged him into a shed, disarmed and tied him. The last job he did well. Then he straightened and walked back to the street.

A quick glance up and down, and then he went up the steps to the porch in front of the King High Saloon, and through the batwing doors.

Five men sat around a poker game. Shandy recognized the broad back instantly as that of Nichols, who he now knew was Abel Kotch. At least two of the others were Junes, as he could tell from their faces.

Shoving his hat back on his head he stood behind Kotch and glanced down at his cards. Kotch had a good hand. The stack of money before him would come to at least two hundred dollars.

“Bet ’em,” Shandy said.

Kotch stirred irritably in his chair. “Shut up!” he said harshly.

Shandy’s gun was in his hand, the muzzle against Kotch’s ear. “Bet ’em, I said. Bet ’em strong.”

Kotch’s hands froze. The Junes looked up, staring at the gangling, towheaded youth. “Beat it, kid!” he said sharply.

“You stay out of this, June!” Shandy Gamble’s voice was even. “My argyment’s with this coyote. I’d as soon blow his head off as not, but if’n he does what he’s told the worst he’ll get is a beatin’!”

Kotch shoved chips into the center of the table. The Junes looked at their cards and raised. Kotch bet them higher. He won. Carefully, he raked in the coin.

“This is Shandy Gamble, Kotch. You owe me five hundred. Count it out before I forget myself an’ shoot you, anyway.”

“There ain’t five hundred here!” Kotch protested.

“There’s better’n four. Count it!”

“Well, what do you know, Windy?” The thin man grinned across the table. “Ole Kotch run into the wrong hombre for once! Wished Buck was here to see this!”

Reluctantly, Kotch counted the money. It came to four hundred and ten dollars. Coolly, Shandy Gamble pocketed the money. “All right,” he said, “stand up mighty careful an’ unload your pockets.”

“What?” Kotch’s face was red with fury. “I’ll kill you for this!”

“Empty ’em. I want more money. I want a hundred an’ twenty dollars more.”

“You ain’t got it comin’!” Kotch glared at him.

“Five hundred an’ interest for one year at six per cent. You get it for me or I’ll be forced to take your horse an’ saddle.”

“Why, you—!”

The gun lifted slightly and Abel Kotch shut up. His eyes searched the boy’s face and what he read there wasn’t pleasant. Kotch decided suddenly that this youngster would shoot, and shoot fast.

Carefully, he opened a money belt and counted out the hundred and twenty dollars which Gamble quietly stowed in his pockets. Then he holstered his gun and hitched the belts into place. “Now, just for luck, Mr. Cattle Buyer, I’m goin’ to give you a lickin’!”

Kotch stared. “Why, you fool! You—!” He saw the fist coming and charged, his weight slamming Shandy back against the wall, almost knocking the wind from him. Kotch jerked a knee up to Gamble’s groin, but the boy had grown up in cow camps and cattle towns, cutting his fighting teeth on the bone-hard, rawhide-tough teamsters of the freight outfits. Gamble twisted and threw Kotch off balance, then hit him with a looping right that staggered the heavier man.

Kotch was no flash in the pan. He could fight and he knew it. He set himself, feinted, and then threw a hard right that caught the boy flush on the chin. Shandy staggered but recovered as Kotch rushed and dropping his head, butted the heavier man under the chin. Kotch staggered, swinging both hands; and straightening, Shandy walked into him slugging.

They stood there wide legged and slugged like madmen, their ponderous blows slamming and battering at head and body. Shandy’s head sang with the power of those punches and his breath came in gasps, but he was lean and hard from years of work on the range, and he fell into a rhythm of punching. His huge fists smashed at the gambler like battering rams.

Kotch was triumphant, then determined, then doubtful. His punches seemed to be soaked up by the boy’s abundant vitality, while every time one of those big fists landed it jarred him to the toes. Suddenly he gave ground and swung a boot toe for Shandy’s groin.

Turning, Gamble caught it on his leg, high up, then grabbed the boot and jerked. Kotch’s other foot lost the ground and he hit the floor hard. Gamble grabbed him by the shirt front and smashed him in the face, a free swing that flattened the bone in Kotch’s nose. Then, jerking him erect, Shandy gripped him with his left hand and swung a looping blow to the wind. Kotch’s knees buckled, and Shandy smashed him in the face again and again. Then he shoved him hard. Kotch staggered, brought up against the back wall, and slid to a sitting position, his face bloody, his head loose on its neck.

Shandy Gamble drew back and hitched his belts into place again. He mopped his face with a handkerchief, while he got his breath back. There were five men in the room now, all enemies without doubt. Two of them were Junes—obviously from earlier conversation they were Windy and Alec.

Shandy hitched his gun belts again and left his thumbs tucked in them. He looked at Windy June. “Found a cowhide out back,” he said, casually, “carried a KT brand.”

Instantly, the room was still. Windy June was staring at him, his eyes ugly. Alec was standing with his right hand on the edge of the bar; the others spread suddenly, getting out of the way. This, then, was between himself and the Junes.

“What then?” Windy asked, low voiced.

“Your brother Tom didn’t like it. I called him a rustler, and he didn’t like that.”

“You called Tom June a rustler?” Windy’s voice was low with amazement. “And you’re alive?”

“I took his gun away an’ tied him up. I’m takin’ him to the sheriff.”

“You’re takin’—why, you fool kid!”

“I’m takin’ him, an’ as you Junes ride together, I reckon you an’ Alec better come along, too.”

Windy June was astonished. Never in his life had he been called like this, and here, in his own bailiwick, by a kid. But then he remembered the job this kid had done on Abel Kotch and his lips grew close and tight.

“You better git,” he said, “while you’re all in one piece!”

The bartender spoke. “Watch yourself, Windy. I know this kid. He’s the one that brought the boys in from Cottonwood, one dead an’ one almost.”

Windy June smiled thinly. “Look, kid. We don’t want to kill you. There’s two of us. If you get by us, there’s still Buck an’ Pop. You ain’t got a chance with me alone, let alone the rest of them.”

Shandy Gamble stood tall in the middle of the floor. His long face was sober. “You better come along then, Windy, because I aim to take you in, dead or alive!”

Windy June’s hand was a blur of speed. Guns thundered and the walls echoed their thunder. In the close confines of the saloon a man screamed. There was the acrid smell of gunpowder and Shandy Gamble weaving in the floor’s middle, his guns stabbing flame. He fired, then moved forward. He saw Alec double over and sprawl across Windy’s feet, his gun sliding across the floor.

Windy, like a weaving blade of steel, faced Shandy and fired. Gamble saw Windy June’s body jerk with the slam of a .44, saw it jerk again and twist, saw him going to his knees with blood gushing from his mouth, his eyes bitterly, wickedly alive, and the guns in his big fists hammering their futile bullets into the floor. Then Shandy fired again, and Windy June sprawled across Alec and lay still. In the moment of silence that followed the cannonading of the guns, Windy’s foot twitched and his spur jingled.

Shandy Gamble faced the room, his eyes searching the faces of the other men. “I don’t want no trouble from you. Two of you load the bodies on their horses. I’m taking ’em with me, like I said.”

Abel Kotch sat on the floor, his shocked and bloody face stunned with amazement at the bodies that lay there. He had taken milk from a kitten and had it turn to a raging mountain lion before his eyes. He sat very still. He was out of this. He wanted to stay out. He was going to make no move that could be misinterpreted.

Slowly, they took the bodies out and tied them on the horses of the two June boys. Shandy watched them, then walked across to the stable to get his own horse, his eyes alert for the other Junes.

When he had the horses he walked back to the shed and saw Tom June staring up at him.

“What happened? I heard shootin’?”

“Yeah.”

Shandy reached down and caught him by his jacket collar with his left hand and coolly dragged him out of the shed, his feet dragging. He took him to the front of the saloon and threw him bodily across his horse. The bound man saw the two bodies, dripping and bloody. He cried out, then began to swear, viciously and violently.

“Look out, kid.”

Who spoke, he did not know, but Shandy Gamble glanced up and saw two other men who wore the brand of the June clan—Pop and Buck June—wide apart in the street. Their faces were set and ready.

Shandy Gamble stepped away from the horses into the street’s center. “You can drop your guns an’ come with me!” he called.

Neither man spoke. They came on, steadily and inexorably. And then something else happened. Up the street behind them appeared a cavalcade of riders, and Shandy recognized his boss, leading them. Beside him rode Johnny Smith and Jim Finnegan and behind them the riders from the KT.

“Drop ’em, June!” The boss’s voice rang out sharp and clear. “There’s nine of us here. No use to die!”

The Junes stopped. “No use, Buck,” Pop. June said, “the deck’s stacked agin us.”

---

THE BOSS RODE on past and stopped. He stared at the dead Junes and the bound body of Tom. He looked at Shandy as if he had never seen him before.

“What got into you, Shandy?” he asked. “We’d never have known, but Johnny told us when you heard the Junes were here you got your guns and left. Then Jim remembered you’d been askin’ him about this here Kotch, who trailed with ’em.”

Shandy shrugged, building a smoke. “Nothin’. We’d had trouble, Kotch an’ me.” He drew the patch of hide from his pocket. “Then there was this, out back. Tom started a ruction when he seen me find it.”

Shandy Gamble swung into his saddle. “I reckon the Junes’ll talk, an’ they’ll tell you where the cows are. An’ boss,” Shandy puckered his brow, “could I ride into Perigord? I want to git me a new saddle.”

“You got the money?” The boss reached for his pocket.

“Yeah,” Shandy smiled, “I got it from Kotch. He’d been holdin’ it for me.”

“Holdin’ it for him!” Finnegan exploded. “He trusted Kotch—with money?”

Kotch had come to the door and was staring out at them. The boss chuckled. “Well, trust or not, looks like he collected!”

NO MAN’S MAN

---

I

HE CAME TO a dirty cantina on a fading afternoon. He stood, looking around with a curious eye. And he saw me there in the corner, my back to the wall and a gun on the table, and my left hand pouring tequila into a glass.

He crossed the room to my table, a man with a scholar’s face and a quiet eye, but with lines of slender strength.

“When I told them I wanted a man big enough and tough enough to tackle a grizzly,” he said, “they sent me to you.”

“How much?” I said. “And where’s the grizzly?”

“His name is Henry Wetterling, and he’s the boss of Battle Basin. And I’ll give you a thousand dollars.”

“What do I do?”

“There’s a girl up there, and her name is Nana Maduro. She owns a ranch on Cherry Creek. Wetterling wants the girl, and he wants the ranch. I don’t want him to have either.”

“You want him dead?”

“I want him out of there. Use your own judgment. When I hire a man for a job, I don’t tell him how to do it.” This man with the scholar’s face was more than a quiet man; he could be a hard man.

“All right,” I said.

“One thing more”—he smiled a little, quietly, as though enjoying what he was about to say—“Wetterling is top dog and he walks a wide path, but he has two men to back him.” He smiled again. “Their names are Clevenger and Mack.”

The bartender brought a lemon and salt, and I drank my tequila.

“The answer is still the same,” I told him, then, “but the price is higher. I want five thousand dollars.”

His expression did not change, but he reached in his pocket and drew out a wallet and counted green bills on the dirty table. He counted two thousand dollars.

“I like a man who puts the proper estimate on a job,” he said. “The rest when you’re finished.”

He pushed back his chair and got up, and I looked at the green bills and thought of the long months of punching cows I’d have to put in to earn that much—if anybody, anywhere, would give me a job.

“Where do you fit in?” I asked. “Do you want the girl or the ranch or Wetterling’s hide?”

“You’re paid,” he said pointedly, “for a job. Not for questions.…”

---

THERE WAS SUNLIGHT on the trail, and cloud shadows on the hills, and there was a time of riding, and a time of resting, and an afternoon, hot and still like cyclone weather when I walked my big red horse down the dusty street of the town of Battle Basin.

They looked at me, the men along the street, and well they could look. I weighed two hundred and forty pounds, but looked twenty-five pounds lighter. I was three inches over six feet, with black hair curling around my ears under a black flat-brimmed, flat-crowned hat, and the brim was dusty and the crown was torn. The shirt I wore was dark red, under a black horsehide vest, and there was a scar on my left cheek where a knife blade had bit to the bone. The man who had owned that knife left his bones in a pack rat’s nest down Sonora way.

My boots were run-down at the heels and my jeans were worn under the chaps stained almost black. And when I swung down, men gathered around to look at my horse. Big Red is seventeen hands high and weighs thirteen hundred pounds—a blood bay with black mane, tail, and forelock.

“That’s a lot of horse,” a man in a white apron said. “It takes a man to ride a stallion.”

“I ride him,” I said, and walked past them into the bar. The man in the white apron followed me. “I drink tequila,” I said.

He brought out a bottle and opened it, then found lemon and salt. So I had a drink there, and another, and looked around the room, and it all looked familiar. For there had been a time—

“I’m looking for a ranch,” I said, “on Cherry Creek. It’s owned by Nana Maduro.”

The bartender’s face changed before my eyes and he mopped the bar. “See Wetterling,” he said. “He hires for them.”

“I’ll see the owner,” I said, and put down my glass.

A girl was coming up the street, walking fast. She had flame-red hair and brown eyes. When she saw Big Red she stopped dead still. And I stood under the awning and rolled a cigarette and watched her, and knew what she was feeling.

She looked around at the men. “I want to buy that horse,” she said. “Who owns him?”

A man jerked a thumb at me, and she looked at me and took a step closer. I saw her lips part a little and her eyes widen.

She was all woman, that one, and she had it where it showed. And she wore her sex like a badge, a flaunting and a challenge—the way I liked it.

“You own this horse?”

One step took me out of the shade and into the sun, a cigarette in my lips. I’m a swarthy man, and her skin was golden and smooth, despite the desert sun.

“Hello, Lou,” she said. “Hello, Lou Morgan.”

“This is a long way from Mazatlán,” I said. “You were lovely then, too.”

“You were on the island,” she said, “a prisoner. I thought you were still there.”

“I was remembering you, and no walls could hold me,” I said, smiling a little, “so I found a way out and away. The prison will recover in time.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “Remember? I killed a man for you and you left me, with never a word or a line. You left me like dirt in the street.”

And when that was said I walked by her and stepped into saddle. I looked down at her and said, “You haven’t changed. Under that fine-lady manner you’re still a tramp.”

A big young man who stood on the walk filled with the pride of his youth, thought he should speak. So I jumped the stallion toward him, and when we swept abreast I grabbed him by his shirtfront.

I swung him from his feet and muscled him up, half strangling, and held him there at eye level, my arm bent to hold him, my knuckles under his chin.

“That was a private conversation,” I said. “The lady and I understand each other.”

Then I slapped him, booming slaps that left his face white and the mark of my hand there, and I let him drop. My horse walked away and took a trail out of town.

But those slaps had been good for my soul, venting some of the fury I was feeling for her! Not the fury of anger, although there was that, too, but the fury of man-feeling rising within me, the great physical need I had for that woman that stirred me and gripped me and made my jaws clench and my teeth grind.

Nana Maduro! And that thin-faced man in the cantina hiring me to come and get you away from this—what was his name?—Wetterling!

Nana Maduro, who was Irish and Spanish and whom I had loved and wanted when I was seventeen, and for whom I had killed a man and been sentenced to hang. Only the man I killed had been a dangerous man, a powerful man in Mexico, and feared, and not all were sorry that he had died. These had helped me, had got my sentence commuted to life imprisonment, and after two years I broke out and fled to the hills, and after two more years word had come that the records had been lost and that I was a free man.

At fifteen Nana Maduro had been a woman in body and feeling, but untried yet and restless because of it.

And at seventeen I had been raw and powerful, a seasoned Indian fighter knowing mining, hunting, and riding, but a boy in emotion and temper.

It was different now that seven years had passed. Nana now was full-flowered and gorgeous. But they had been seven hard, lean years for me, a man who rode with a gun and rode alone, a man who fought for pay, with a gun for hire.

Three days I rode the hills and saw no man, but looked upon the country through eyes and field glasses. And I saw much, and understood much.

Cherry Creek range was dream range, knee-deep to a tall steer with waving grass and flowers of the prairie. Even on the more barren stretches there were miles of antelope bush and sheep fat, the dry-looking desert plants rich in food for cattle. There was water there, so the cattle need walk but little and could keep their flesh, and there was shade from the midday sun.

And this belonged to Nana Maduro, to Nana, whom I’d loved as a boy, and desired as a man. And did I love as a man? Who could say?

She had cattle by the thousand on her rolling hills, and a ranch house like none I had ever seen, low and lovely and shaded, a place for a man to live. And a brand, N M, and a neighbor named Wetterling.

The Wetterling ranch was north and west of hers, but fenced by a range of hills, high-ridged and not to be crossed by cattle, and beyond the ridge the grass was sparse and there were few trees. A good ranch as such ranches go, but not the rolling, grass-waving beauty of Cherry Creek.

Then I saw them together. He was a huge man, bigger than I was, blond and mighty. At least two inches taller than I, and heavier, but solid. He moved light on his feet and quickly, and he could handle a horse.

Other things I saw. Nana was without friends. She was hemmed in by this man, surrounded by him. People avoided her through fear of him, until she was trapped, isolated. It could be a plan to win her finally, or to take her ranch if the winning failed.

But they laughed together and raced together, and they rode upon the hills together. And on the night of the dance in Battle Basin, they came to it together.

For that night I was shaved clean and dusted, my boots were polished, and though I went to the dance and looked at the girls, there was only one woman in that room for me.

She stood there with her big man, and I started toward her across the floor, my big California spurs jingling. I saw her face go white to the lips and saw her start to speak, and then I walked by her and asked the daughter of a rancher named Greenway for a dance.

As the Greenway girl and I turned away in the waltz I saw Nana’s face again, flaming red, then white, her fine eyes blazing. So I danced with Ann Greenway, and I danced with Rosa McQueen, and I danced with the girls of the village and from the ranches, but I did not dance with Nana Maduro.

II

NANA WATCHED ME. That I saw. She was angry, too, and that I had expected, for when does the hunter like for the deer to escape? Especially, the wounded deer?

Two men came in when the evening was half gone, one of them a thin man with a sickly face and a head from which half the hair was gone, and in its place a scar. This was Clevenger. His partner Mack was stocky, and bowlegged and red of face.

Both wore their guns tied down, and both were dangerous. They were known along the border for the men they had killed. They were feared men who had not acquired their reputations without reason.

They were there when I stopped not far away from where Wetterling was talking to Nana. I saw Wetterling move toward her as if to take her for a dance, and I moved quickly, saying, “Will you dance?” and wheeled her away as I spoke.

Wetterling’s face was dark and ugly, and I saw the eyes of his two killers upon me, but I held Nana close, and good she felt in my arms. And she looked up at me, her lips red and soft and wet, and her eyes blazing.

“Let me go, you fool! They’ll kill you for this!”

“Will they now?” I smiled at her, but my heart was pounding and my lips were dry, and my being was filled with the need of her. “You’ll remember that was tried once, long ago.”

Then I held her closer, her breasts tight against me, my arm about her slim waist, our bodies moving in the dance.

“To die for this,” I said, “would not be to die in vain.”

It was my mother’s family that spoke, I think, for poetic as the Welsh may be, and my father was Welsh, it is the Spanish who speak of dying for love, though they are never so impractical. My mother’s name was Ibañez.

When the dance was finished, Nana pulled away from me. “Leave me here,” she said, and then when I took her arm to return her to Wetterling, she begged, “Please, Lou!”

My ears were deaf. So I took her to him and stopped before him, and, with his two trained dogs close by, I said, “She dances beautifully, my friend, and better with me than with you—and what are you trying to do with that fresh cut trail through the woods? Get your cattle onto her grass?”

Then I turned my back and walked away and the devil within me feeling the glory of having stirred the man to fury, wanting that, yet desolate to be leaving her. For now I knew I loved Nana Maduro. Not prison nor time nor years nor her coldness had killed it. I still loved her.

At the door as I left, a red-faced man with bowed legs who stood there said, “You’ve a fine horse and it’s a nice night to ride. Cross the Territory line before you stop.”

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

“Have a gun in your hand, if you do,” he said to me, and went back inside. Mack, a brave man.

In the morning I rode the hills again, doing a sight of thinking. Wetterling wanted both the ranch and the girl, and no doubt one as much as the other. Another man wanted the place, too, and maybe the girl. But why that particular ranch?

Lovely, yes. Rich with grass, yes. But considering the obstacles and the expense—why? Hatred? It could be. A man can hate enough. But my employer was not a hating man, to my thinking. He just knew what he wanted, and how to get it.

Small ranchers and riders with whom I talked could give me no clue. I did not ask outright if they knew my employer, but I could tell they must know the man.

The trail I had found through the woods was guarded now. Two men loafed near the N M side of it, both with rifles across their knees. Through my glasses I studied that trail. It was wide, and it was well cut. When I got into my saddle I saw something else—a gleam of sunlight reflecting on a distant mountainside. Distant, but still on Maduro range.

Big Red took to the trail and I rode for so long that it was after dark before I returned to Battle Basin. I left Big Red stabled in a small, outlying two-horse barn, and, with my guns on, I walked down into town. I moved quietly among the buildings until I reached the street. Merging with the shadows I looked to right and left.

A drunk cowhand staggered along the boardwalk across the street. He lurched against a building, then went on. Starting to step out into the light I froze, for it suddenly had come to me that the drunken cowhand had not been talking to himself, but had spoken to someone in the shadows!

Moving back into the darkness I worked my way along in the shadows toward the corral. There were horses there, saddled, bridled, and tied—an even dozen of them, all wearing the Wetterling brand. I traced it with my finger.

In another hour I knew the Wetterling crew would be all over the town, in ambush, waiting for me. No matter where I showed up, they would have me in a cross fire. There had been some good planning done! They were figuring I’d spoil their beautiful plan and were out to stop me, but they’d forgotten the life I’d lived, and how I’d lived the years I had only through caution. I was an Indian on my feet, quiet and easy.

From the cover of the darkness, I studied the saloon, the roofs of the town. And then I walked up to the back door of the saloon and went in.

Mack was there, at the bar with another man, not Clevenger. One man could be deadly, two were poison, but as I entered I said, “All right, Mack. You looking for me?”

It startled him. I saw his shoulders bunch, then he turned. I was standing half in the shadows, and it was not right for him. His partner was more foolish. The instant he saw me he grabbed for a gun.

Two guns were on my hips, but I had another in a shoulder holster, a Wes Hardin rig. When both moved for their guns, I shucked it.

Strange how at times like that minutes seem hours, and the seconds are expanded unbelievably. Mack’s gun was coming up fast, faster by far than that of the other man. In the background the bartender was transfixed, his mouth gaping, eyes bulging. Another man who had started through the door and was directly in the line of fire stood there, frozen, and in that instant the room was deathly still.

My shoulder gun slid true and easy. My hand rolled outward as I brought my elbow down, and the gun jumped in my hand. The flash from Mack’s gun came a breath later. I saw him bunch his shoulders forward as if he’d been struck in the stomach, then my gun muzzle had moved left and the gun bucked again.

Mack’s companion pulled his feet together, went up to tiptoes and fell. Mack caught himself on the table corner and stared at me, aware that I’d killed him. With that awful realization in his eyes, his gun fell.

Then I was out the back door, going up the outside stairs, running lightly and through the door, ducking into the first room, luckily empty. I climbed out the window, stood up on the sill and, catching the roof edge, pulled myself up and over.

Men rushed by between the buildings, footsteps pounded in the hallways below. The chase was in full cry. Lying there, stone still, I waited.

Movement in the room below alerted me. Then voices spoke, near the window, and I could hear every word plainly.

“You knew him before?” That would be Wetterling.

“In Mexico,” Nana’s voice answered. “He rode for my father, and when Sanchez killed my father and took me away with him, Lou Morgan followed. He killed Sanchez in the street, then took me home. He was tried for it and sent to prison.”

“You love him?”

“Love him?” Her voice was careless. “How could I? I was a child, and he was a boy, and we scarcely knew each other. And I don’t know him now.”

“You’ve been different Since he came.”

“And you’ve been insistent.” Nana’s voice was edged. “I’m not sure which it is you really want—my ranch or me.”

He evidently started toward her, for I heard her move back. “No!”

“But you told me you’d marry me.”

“I said I might.” She was right at the window now. “Now go away and find some more gunmen. You’ll need them.”

He started to protest, but she insisted. I heard the door close then, and I heard Nana humming. She came to the window and said distinctly:

“Next time you use my window for a ladder, please clean your boots.”

Swinging down by the edge of the roof, I went through the window and away from it.

She was wearing a blue riding outfit, her hair beautifully done. I’ve never seen a girl look more desirable. She saw it in my eyes, for I was making no effort to conceal what I felt.

“What are you, Lou?” she demanded. “An animal?”

“Sometimes.”

My blood was heavy in my pulse. I could feel it throb, and I stood there, feet apart, knowing myself for what I was—a big, dark man hunted in the night, looking at a woman for whom a man would give his soul.

“When I’m close to you I am,” I added.

“Is that a nice thing to say?”

“Maybe not. But you like it.”

“You presume too much.”

I sat down, watching her. I knew that the amusement which must be in my eyes bothered her. She knew how to handle men and she was used to doing that. She had been able to handle me, once. That was long ago. I’d left tracks over a lot of country since then.

“You’re not safe here,” she said. “Twenty men are hunting you. You should go—ride on out of here.”

“Know a man with thin hair, nice-looking, like a college professor?”

The question startled her, but the sharpening of her attention told me she did. “Why do you ask?” she said.

“He hired me to come here. To stop Wetterling.”

“You lie!”

It flashed at me, a stabbing, bitter word.

An angry word.

“It’s true.”

She studied me.

“Then you didn’t come because I was in trouble?”

“How could I? How could I know?” I smiled. “But the idea of a job to keep a man away from you was attractive. I liked the idea.”

Despite her wish not to show it, she was disappointed. She had been seeing me as a knight-errant, come to her rescue. As if she needed it! Most men were toys for her. Yet she did need rescue, more than she guessed.

It was not Wetterling who made me jealous now, but the unknown man, my employer.

“He would not do such a thing,” she insisted. “Besides, he doesn’t even know about—about Henry.”

“He knows. That isn’t all he knows. He’s after your ranch, too, you know.”

She was wicked now. “Oh, you liar! You contemptible liar! He’s not even interested in ranching! He’s never been on a ranch! He wouldn’t think of hiring a—a killer!”

The name had been applied before. To an extent, it was true. I shoved my battered hat back on my head and began to build a smoke, taking my time.

“Wetterling doesn’t care about the ranch, either,” I said slowly. “He’s interested in only part of it.”

It went against the grain for her to believe that any man was interested in anything but her. Yet she accepted the accusation against Wetterling, but against the other man, no.

That was why the other man bothered me most.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“Nana Maduro,” I said thoughtfully. “It’s a lovely name. An old name. So old there was a Maduro among the first to come to New Spain. He had a brother who was a Jesuit.”

“There were Jesuits in your family, too.”

“How’d you come to buy that ranch? Because of your grandfather, wasn’t it? He left you the money and told you to buy it? That if you did you’d never want?”

She was genuinely puzzled.

“And so?”

Sitting with my big forearms on the back of the chair I straddled, I could see somebody down below, between the buildings. I lit my cigarette and inhaled, tensing slightly.

“Have you forgotten the old stories?” I asked. “Of the conducta?”

She paled a little. “But that was just a story!”

“Was it? Your grandfather insisted on this place. Why? When it was so far from all you knew?”

“You mean—it’s on this place? My place?”

“Why do you think they want it?” I shrugged. I heard a boot grate on gravel and got up, keeping back from the window. “Wetterling, and your scholarly friend?”

“That’s ridiculous! How would they know? How could he know?”

I moved toward the door, but stopped suddenly. “So beautiful!” I said softly. “Little peasant.”

Her face flamed. “You—you call me, a Maduro, a peasant! Why, you—”

My smile was wide. “A Maduro was a mule driver in the expedition. My ancestor was its capitán!”

III

DUCKING OUT THE door before Nana could throw something, I glanced quickly up and down the hall, then swiftly stepped back through. Before she realized what was happening I had an arm about her. I drew her quickly to me. She started to fight, but what are blows? I kissed her and, liking it, kissed her again. Was I mistaken or was there a return of the kiss?

Then I let her go and stepped quickly out and shut the door. “Coward!” I heard her say, as I ran lightly down the hall.

Then they were coming. I heard them coming up the back stairs, coming up the front stairs. I dodged into the nearest room, put down my cigarette and dropped two more cigarette papers upon the glowing end; then, ripping a blanket from a bed, I touched the end to it. Instantly, it flared up.

Quickly I crossed the room. The fire would give me only a moment of time before they put it out. I was at the window when I heard a yell as somebody smelled smoke.

“Fire!”

Running steps in the hall outside, then stamping feet. Glancing out the window, I saw only one man below. He had turned his head slightly. Swinging from the window, I dropped the eighteen feet to the ground.

He wheeled, swinging up his rifle, and I grabbed the barrel end and jerked it toward me. Off balance, he fell forward. On one knee I grasped his shirt and crotch and heaved him over my head and into the wall. Then I was up and running.

A shot slammed at me. I grabbed the top pole of the corral and dropped over it. Horses scattered. Running to the gate I ripped it open and, swinging into a saddle, lay far down on the other side of the horse I had grabbed as we came out together. All the horses in a mad rush, and me among them.

Shots rang out, curses, yells. The horses charged down the alley. A guard tried to leap aside, almost made it, then we were racing on. Swinging the horse I rode from the crush, I headed for the stable where Big Red was waiting.

Dropping from the horse, I had started forward when, too late, I saw them waiting there—three men with guns. I felt a violent blow, my leg went from under me, thunder broke around in a wave, and then—pure instinct did it—my guns were shooting, shooting again.

Then somehow the men were gone and I was in the saddle on Big Red, and we were off and running and there was—odd, so close to town—the smell of pines.…

Only it was not close to town when the pine smell came to me. The pines were on a far mountain, and I was on the ground. Not far from me Big Red was feeding. Rolling over, I sat up, and the movement started me bleeding again. My head throbbed and a wave of pain went through me. I lay back on the grass and stared up at the sky where clouds gathered.

After a while I tried again, and got up to the stream which had attracted Big Red. I drank, and drank again. Under the low clouds I ripped my jeans and examined my wounds. Then I bathed and dressed them as best I could, thankful that I knew the ways of the Indians and the plants they used in cases like this.

Back in my saddle I rode deeper into the hills. Far behind and below me was the ranch, but I kept riding, looking for a rock shaped like the back of a head. Twice I stopped to look back. Riders were spread across the country below, searching for me.

A spatter of rain came. It felt cool against my face. Lightning darted, thunder crashed. Feebly I struggled into my slicker. Humped against the pound of the rain, I went on.

The rain would wash out my tracks. I would be safe. Big Red plodded on, and thunder rolled and tumbled among the great peaks, and once an avalanche of rocks roared down ahead of us, but we kept on. And then in a sharp streak of lightning, I saw the head!

Rounding it, I rode right into the tumbled boulders, weaving my way among them. Twice I ran into blind alleys. And then, after retracing my steps, I found the right one and a way opened before me.

Trees, their blank trunks like bars of iron through the steel net of the rain. My body loose in the saddle, somehow guiding the red horse. A dip downward, a mountain valley, a steep trail. Then grass, water, trees—and the arched door of an ancient Spanish mission!

In an adobe house we took shelter, Big Red and I. From amolillo and maize I made a poultice for my wounds and rested there, eating only a little at a time from the jerked beef and bread in my saddlebags.

Here I slept, awakened, changed the poultice on my wounds, then slept again.

I would be safe here. No one had found this place in two hundred years, and no one was likely to find it now. And then night came and the wind howled and there was a long time when the rain beat upon the ancient roof, leaking in at places and running along the ancient floor.

There was a long time when there was only lightning, thunder, and the wind. Then came a time when hands seemed to touch me and caress me, and I dreamed that I was not dead and that the lips of my loved one were on mine again.

Morning came and I was awake. Sunlight fell through the ancient door. Outside, I could hear Big Red cropping grass, and his saddle and bridle were in the corner. I could not even remember taking them off.

My head was on a pillow of grass, and a blanket covered me. My wound would need care and I rolled over and sat up. But I saw then that the dressing was fresh and of white cloth that I had never seen before. There were ghosts in this place.

And then I heard someone singing, and a shadow was in the door, and then Nana came through it, bearing an armful of flowers.

She stopped when she saw I was awake.

“So,” I said, “you came.”

“Who else would come? Who else could find you?”

“You told no one?”

“Not anyone at all.”

She came over to me, remaining a respectful distance away because despite my illness there was a hunger in my eyes when I looked at her.

“I’m going back now,” she said. “You must rest. I brought food, so there is plenty. Rest, recuperate, then ride away.”

“Away?”

“Wetterling has hunted you like a wild animal. He will not listen. You killed Mack. You killed two other men and wounded several. He is determined to hunt you down.”

Then I told her quietly and honestly that I would not ride away, that I would stay there, that her kisses were so rich they had spoiled me for other kisses. I must remain.

She was furious. She told me I was a fool. That she had never kissed me, would never let me kiss her again, that I must go away. She did not want me dead.

“You love me?”

“No!” she spat at me. “Love you? A killer? A hired gunfighter? A no-good? Go away! I just don’t want you dead after what you did for me long ago.”

Sadly I shook my head. “But if I am gone I will not be able to make love to you. That is bad.”

She got up, holding her chin high. It was lovely to see her like that, but she went away and left me.…

Days passed into a week, and a week into another. I walked, I snared game. I ate what food was left. I searched the old mine, looked about. I found a place under the floor where—

I heard them coming too late. My guns were across the room.

It was my employer, and he was not alone. With him were two Yaqui Indians. Two of the wild ones. They all had guns and they were definite with them.

“I did not know,” he said, “that you are an Ibañez.”

“How did you get here?”

“Watched Nana. It was simple. You vanished. You had to be somewhere. What more likely place than here? So I watched her, for if anyone knew, she would. And now I have you.”

He sat down. The Yaquis did not. “You failed in your job. Now tell me where the silver was buried, and the mission vessels.”

“Who knows?”

His smile was not nice. “You have heard of pinning needles of pitch pine through the skin and lighting them? The Yaquis understand that sort of thing. That is the way we will start unless you talk.”

It was a bad way to die. And I was not ready for it. Yet how strong was I? How much recovered?

“We might make a bargain.”

“Only one. I’ll give you your life if you tell me.”

Of course, he lied. The cold ones are the dangerous ones. He would kill me when he had picked the meat from the shell of my story. It was better to die. “All right,” I said. “I’m not anxious to die.”

He would be difficult to fool, this one. Wetterling would have been easier. I looked at my hand upon my knee. How much of my strength had I lost? How much of my agility? During the snaring of game, the walking, the searching, my strength had seemed to come back, but two weeks was not much, and I had lost blood.

“It is late,” I told him, “for we need the morning sun.”

He frowned. “Why? This is the place.”

My shrug was tolerant. “Here? Such an obvious place? How could they know it would not be found? The trail was good then. No, the silver is not here, nor are the vessels.”

Reluctantly, he listened. More reluctantly, they began to bring in blankets and food for the night. They allowed me to help with the fire, and I remembered Nana saying that Wetterling was searching for me feverishly. His men were scouring the country. I thought of that, and of the fire.

It was late afternoon, an hour before darkness. The air was still. Moving slowly, to make them think my strength had not yet returned, I helped gather wood.

So you know the ocotillo? Candlewood, it is called. A rare and wonderful plant. Not a cactus, although it is thorny, its stems are straight like canes, and it blossoms with brilliant flowers of scarlet.

We of the desert know it also as strong with resin, gum, and wax, that it burns brightly, fiercely, and has still another quality also.

Rarely does one find a dead ocotillo. This plant knows the secret of life. Yet sometimes single canes die, or sometimes one is broken off, or blown down by winds. There was a dead one near, uprooted in a slide. Gathering fuel, I gathered it. Helping to build the fire, I added the ocotillo. The Yaquis were not watching, and Borneman, for that was my employer’s name, did not know the ocotillo. And we were inside the building.

On the fire it crackled, fierce tongues of flame ran along the canes, the fire burned high, and up the fireplace went billows of intensely black smoke!

IV

WE ATE WELL that night, for Borneman traveled well. He had plenty of blankets, for he was a man who liked comfort. As who does not? But there are times and times.

They bound me well. He did not trust the Yaquis to do that. Not Borneman. He bound me himself and the Yaquis could have done it better. A blanket was thrown over me, and soon I heard them breathing regularly in sleep. Borneman and I slept near the fireplace. The Yaquis were near the door.

Large as I am, I am nimble, and my insides are resilient. And there was a trick I knew. My wrists were bound behind my back, but by spreading my arms as wide as possible, I backed my hips through them. Like most riding men, my hips are narrow, but it still was a struggle. I got through, though, then drawing my knees high under my chin, I brought my bound hands under my feet so they were in front of me. My teeth worried the knots until they were loose. Two hours it took me, and careful work.

Then I was free. The breathing of my captors was still even, regular. In my blanket I got to my feet and, like a cat, moved to the door. As I moved to the open space a Yaqui’s breathing broke. I heard a muffled gasp, and he started to rise. But my right fingers quickly had his throat and my left sank into his wind. He was slippery, like a snake, but I had him off the floor.

He struggled desperately, silently, but my hand remained at his throat and the struggles grew weaker. I took him outside, dropping his body like carrion where they would find it. A killer he was, one who would have tortured me. I felt no regret.

And then I fled—into the trees and to the grassy park where Big Red was concealed. With a hackamore made of the ropes they had used to bind me, I bridled him. My saddle was back there, but I had ridden bareback many a time. I crawled upon, him, and rode into the darkness of the night.

After awhile, I heard riders and held myself from the path with a hand at my horse’s nostrils until they were by. One was a huge man. Wetterling. They had seen the smoke then.

A gun! I must have a gun.

Big Red ran like the wind, and I loved his easy movements. He ran and ran, and when day was not yet gray in the eastern sky, I was riding into the trees near the ranch house of Nana Maduro. Was she here, or in the hotel room above the saloon?

In the last of the darkness I found her window, heard her breathing inside, and put a leg through, then another. I touched her arms, and her eyes opened. Her head turned.

She did not cry out, but she sat up quickly. It was enough to take a man’s breath.

“Lou Morgan!” she exclaimed in a startled whisper. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ll need a gun,” I said, “or better, a pair of guns. Your lovers are snarling at each other at the mission where you left me.”

Then I told her of the pitch slivers and the Yaqui. At first her eyes were hot with disbelief, but gradually changed to doubt. Then I told her of the ocotillo smoke that had brought Wetterling, and I laughed at my enemies.

She dressed swiftly while I watched out the window and saw dawn throw crimson arrows into the sky. Out in the cool halls of her house she took me and got a pair of pistols, ornamented, beautiful—two Russian .44s, a pistol made by Smith & Wesson. A masterpiece!

With these belted on, plus a Winchester .76 and a belt of ammunition, I was ready.

With her own hands she quickly made breakfast. I drank black coffee, and ate eggs and ham, and looked upon her grace and beauty, and forgot. Until too late.

We heard them come. From the window we saw them. A half-dozen horsemen, one with a bandaged head, one with an arm in a sling, and three horses with empty saddles. But Wetterling and Borneman were riding together, side by side. My enemies had joined hands.

What to do?

It had to be quickly, and it had to be now. These men were conscienceless. They would kill Nana Maduro as soon as they would kill me, and if they forced from us the secret of the mission gold and silver, then we would die.

Into the gray of morning I stepped, and saw the blood of dawn on their faces. My rifle stood by the door, my two guns lay against my thighs.

“Good morning,” I said. “The thieves ride together.”

Wetterling’s eyes were ugly, but those of Borneman were only cold. I made up my mind then—Borneman must die. He was too cool, with his scholar’s face and his quiet voice, and his thin, cruel lips.

“Let’s be reasonable,” he said quietly. “You and Nana are alone here, except for two riders who are old men, and even they have gone to a line camp. Your Indian woman cook is as helpless as you. Tell us where the gold is and we’ll leave.”

“We’ll tell you nothing!” I said.

“He speaks for me,” Nana said. “I hope he always speaks for me. And to think I had always believed you—a famous scientist my grandfather called you—were his friend!”

Wetterling’s hatred was obvious. He still wanted Nana. “I’ll change you!” he said. “I’ll break you!”

“With the gold,” Borneman said, “you can buy fifty women.”

There was a silence then, while a quail called. Silence while dawn made a glory of the sky; and the dark pines fringed against the hills; and the air was cool and good.

Six men, and one of them Clevenger, whose partner I had killed. One of them a Yaqui, hating me. And a girl behind me whom they would not spare even if I died, and whom I knew would suffer the tortures of hell before she’d die, for she had courage, and would not tell.

That decided me. Numbers give courage, but they give it to the enemy, too. They gave it to me. Six men, and growing in me a terrible rage and a terrible fear. A rage against them, and a fear for her, for Nana Maduro whom I had loved since she was a child on her father’s ranch.

“You want gold and you’ve come prepared to buy it,” I said, “with your blood.” I took a step forward. “The price will be high, my friends, and Borneman, you will owe me, in a few minutes, the five thousand you offered me to kill Wetterling.”

Wetterling’s big blond head snapped around. “What?” he barked. “You paid him to kill me? Why, you—”

He struck at Borneman and my guns came up shooting. As he struck, his horse swung broadside, cutting off a rider whose gun came up fast. That gave me an instant I desperately needed. Three men were out of the picture, but I saw Clevenger’s eyes blazing and shot into them. His scarred head seemed to blast apart as he slid from his horse. Behind me the Winchester barked and another rider was knocked from the saddle, not dead, but hurt.

The Yaqui slammed his heels into his mount and charged me, and I stepped aside, grabbed his arm, and like a cat was in the saddle behind him with a left forearm like a bar of iron across his throat. The plunging horse swung wide and, with the Yaqui’s body for shield, I shot again and again.

Wetterling’s horse went down and he was thrown free. Borneman hit the ground and rolled. I threw a quick shot at him and sand splashed his face and into his eyes. He screamed and clawed at his face, then the Yaqui twisted and I felt a knife blade rip my hide. With a great effort I tore him free of me and threw him to the ground. He started up, but the plunging, bucking horse was over him and his scream was drowned in the sound of the Winchester.

I hit the ground, guns empty. Borneman still pawed at his eyes. Clevenger was down and dead. Wetterling was getting to his feet. Another rider was sprawled dead or injured, and still another clutched a broken arm and swore.

Wetterling looked at me and shook himself, then started for me. Suddenly I felt the fires of hell in my blood and I swung for his chin.

It missed. He came in low and hard, grappling me about the hips, so instead of resisting, I went back quickly and the force of his tackle and my lack of resistance carried him past and over me.

On our feet, we walked toward each other. I feinted, he stepped in, and I hit him with a right that jarred him to his heels. He swung, and then we walked in, punching with both hands.

It was a shindig! A glorious shindig! He swung low and missed me, and I brought my knee into his face. His nose crushed to pulp and I hit him with both hands as he straightened back. He fell, and I walked close. As he started to get up I slugged him again.

My wounded leg was burning like fire, my breath was coming in gasps, my head felt dizzy. Somehow he got up. He hit me again and again, but then I got him by the throat and crotch and threw him to the ground. He started up and I hit him. Blood splashed from his broken nose and he screamed. I hit him again, and he blubbered.

Then I walked back to Nana. “If he moves,” I said, “shoot him. I’m going to sit down.…”

---

IF YOU SHOULD, in the passing of years, come to the ranch on Cherry Creek, look for the N M brand. You’ll find us there. I’ve tequila in the cupboard and brandy on the shelf, but if you want women, you’ll have to bring your own, for Nana’s mine, and we’re watching the years together.

The gold we gave to the church, the silver to charity, and the jewels we kept for ourselves.

My hair is grizzled now, gray, and I’m heavier by the years, but Nana Maduro Morgan says I’m as good a man as I ever was.

And Nana should know.

RIDE OR START SHOOTIN’

---

CHAPTER 1

The Bet

TOLLEFSON SAW THE horses grazing in the creek bottom and pulled up sharply. “Harry,” his voice was harsh and demanding as always, “whose horses are those?”

“Some drifter name of Tandy Meadows. He’s got some fine-lookin’ stock there.”

“He’s passin’ through?”

“Well,” Harry Fulton’s reluctance sprang from his knowledge of Art Tollefson’s temper, “he says he aims to run a horse in the quarter races.”

Surprisingly, Tollefson smiled. “Oh, he does, does he? Too bad he hasn’t money. I’d like to take it away from him if he had anything to run against Lady Luck.”

Passman had his hat shoved back on his head. It was one of those wide-across-the-cheekbones faces with small eyes, a blunt jaw, and hollow cheeks. Everybody west of Cimarron knew Tom Passman for a gunfighter, and knew that Passman had carried the banner of Art Tollefson’s legions into the high-grass country.

Ranching men had resented their coming with the big Flying T outfit and thirty thousand head of stock. Passman accepted their resentment and told them what they could do. Two, being plainsmen, elected to try it. Harry Fulton had helped to dig their graves.

It was Passman who spoke now. “He’s got some real horses, boss.”

Tollefson’s coveting eyes had been appreciating that. It was obvious that whoever this drifter was, he knew horseflesh. In the twenty-odd head there were some splendid animals. For an instant a shadow of doubt touched him. Such a string might carry a quarter horse faster than Lady Luck. But the doubt was momentary, for his knowledge of the Lady and his pride of possession would not leave room for that. Lady Luck had bloodlines. She was more than range stock.

“Let’s go talk to him,” he said, and reined his bay around the start down the slope toward the creek.

Within view there was a covered wagon and there were two saddled horses. As they rode down the slope, a man stepped from behind the wagon to meet them. He was a short, powerfully setup Negro with one ear missing and the other carrying a small gold ring in the lobe. His boots were down at heel and his jeans worn.

“Howdy!” Tollefson glanced around. “Who is the owner here?” The tone was suited to an emperor, and behind the wall of his armed riders, Tollefson was almost that. Yet there is something about ruling that fades the perspective, denying clarity to the mind.

“I’m the owner.”

The voice came from behind them and Tollefson felt sudden anger. Fulton, who was not a ruler and hence had an unblunted perspective, turned his head with the thought that whoever this man was, he was cautious, and no fool.

As they came down the hill the Negro emerged just at the right time to focus all their eyes, and then the other man appeared from behind them. It was the trick of a magician, of a man who understands indirection.

Tollefson turned in his saddle, and Fulton saw the quick shadow on Tom Passman’s face, for Passman was not a man who could afford to be surprised.

A tall man stood at the edge of the willows. A man whose face was shadowed by the brim of a flat-crowned gray hat, worn and battered. A bullet, Fulton noticed, had creased the crown, neatly notching the edge, and idly he wondered what had become of the man who fired that shot.

The newcomer wore a buckskin vest but had no gun in sight. His spurs were large roweled, California style, and in his hand he carried a rawhide riata. This was grass-rope country, and forty-five feet was a good length, yet from the look of this rope it was sixty or more.

“You the owner?” Tollefson was abrupt as always. “I hear you’re plannin’ to race a quarter horse against my Lady Luck.”

“Aim to.” The man came forward, moving with the step of a woodsman rather than a rider.

“I’m Tollefson. If you have any money and want to bet, I’m your man. If you don’t have money, maybe we could bet some stock.”

Tandy Meadows pushed back his hat from his strong bronzed face, calm with that assurance that springs from inner strength. Not flamboyant strength, nor pugnacious, but that of a man who goes his own way and blazes his own trails.

“Yeah,” Tandy said slowly, digging out the makings, “I’ve two or three quarter horses. I figured to run one of them. It isn’t much point which of them.” He scratched a match on his trouser leg. “What made you figure I had no money? I got a mite of change I aimed to bet.”

Tollefson’s smile was patronizing. “I’m talking about money, man! I like to bet! I was thinking,” he paused for effect and he deliberately made his voice casual, “five thousand dollars.”

“Five?” Meadows lifted an eyebrow. “Well, all right. I guess I can pick up a few more small bets around to make it interesting.”

Tollefson’s skin tightened over his cheekbones. He was no gambling man, but it built his ego to see men back up and hesitate at the thought of five thousand dollars in one bet. “What do you mean? You want to bet more than five thousand dollars?”

“Sort of figured it.” Meadows drew deeply on his cigarette. “I heard there was a gambling man down here who liked to bet enough to make it interesting.”

Tollefson was deeply affronted. Not many men could afford to bet that kind of money, and he liked to flaunt big bets and show them who they were dealing with. Yet here was a man who calmly accepted his bet and hinted that it was pretty small potatoes. Somewhere in the group behind him he thought he detected a subdued snicker, and the casual indifference of this man Meadows irritated him.

“Whatever you want to put up,” he snapped, “I’ll cover! Name your price! I’ll cover all you can get at two to one odds!”

“Now you’re talkin’,” Tandy said, sliding his thumbs behind his belt. “Aren’t you the Tollefson from the Flying T? How about bettin’ your ranch?”

Art Tollefson was shocked. He was profoundly shocked. This down-at-heels stranger offering to cover a bet against his ranch! Against the Flying T, sixty thousand head of stock and miles of rolling grassland, water holes; and buildings!

Lady Luck was his pride, a symbol of his power and money. She was the fastest thing he had ever seen on legs, and he liked to see her win. Yet his bets were merely for the sake of showing his large-handed way with money, of making him envied. At heart he was not a gambler and only put his money up reluctantly, but he was rarely called. Yet now he had been, and he knew that if he backed down now he would become the laughingstock of the range. It was a humiliation he neither wanted nor intended to endure.

“That’s a rather large bet, my man,” he said, for suddenly he realized the man must be bluffing. “Have you any idea what you’re saying? You’d have to show a lot of money to cover it.”

Meadows smiled. It was the first flicker of expression that had come to his face, but the smile was pleasant. Yet there was a shadow beneath it that might have been faintly ironic. “What’s the matter, Tollefson?” he taunted gently. “Gettin’ chilly around the arches? Or were you bluffin’ with that big money talk? Back down, if you like, and don’t waste my time. I’ll cover your little spread and more if need be, so put up or shut up.”

Tollefson’s fury broke. “Why, you impudent chump!” He stopped, his jaw setting hard. “All right, get on your horse and come to the bank with me! John Clevenger knows my ranch, and he knows horses! If you’ve got the collateral, you can put it up, and you’ve made a bet!”

Tandy swung astride one of the saddled horses. Tollefson’s quick eyes saw the build of the animal. Arab, with a strain of Morgan by the look of it. If this horse was any evidence.…He shook ova momentary twinge of doubt.

Meadows turned his horse, then hesitated. “Don’t you even want to see my horses? I’ve not decided which to run, but you’re welcome to look ’em over.”

“It’s no matter!” Tollefson’s fury was still riding him. He was bitter at the trap he had laid for himself. If this fool didn’t have the money, why he would.…Just what he would do he wasn’t sure but his face was flushed with angry blood.

Art Tollefson was not the only one who was feeling doubt. To Harry Fulton, who rode behind him, this seemed too pat to be an accident, and to Tom Passman it seemed the same way but with an added worry. Gifted at judging men, he knew Tandy Meadows should have been carrying a gun; yet there was none in sight, and it worried him.

Tandy Meadows looked straight down the road, aware that the crossroads of all his planning had been reached, and now everything depended on John Clevenger. He knew little about the banker except that the man was known and respected on the frontier, and that he was one of the original breeders of quarter horses. He was hard headed, yet a Western man to the very heels of his boots, and a man with the courage of his convictions. It was rumored of him that he had once accepted four aces in a poker game as collateral for a bank loan.

The bank at El Poleo was a low, gray stone building that looked like the fort it had to be to survive. Situated as it was, across the street from the Poleo Saloon, half the town saw Art Tollefson and the stranger draw up before the bank. It was in the nature of things that in a matter of minutes everyone in town knew what they had come for. The town was aghast.

CHAPTER 2

A Trap Closes

JOHN CLEVENGER SAW them coming with no idea of what they wanted. He had opened his bank against great odds and against even greater odds had kept it going. He had faith in his fellow man and his judgment of them, and was accustomed to the amazing ways of Western men. More than once he had loaned money on sheer courage and character. So far he had not lost by it.

Tollefson was a shrewd, hard-headed business man, yet one of overbearing manner who carried things with a high hand. Tollefson dealt in force and money power, Clevenger in character and self-respect. That Tollefson should make such a wager was beyond belief, yet Clevenger heard them out in silence.

“You have collateral for such a bet?” Clevenger asked. He studied Meadows thoughtfully and approved of what he saw.

Tandy drew a black leather case from his hip pocket and extracted a letter and some legal-appearing papers. Clevenger accepted them, started as if struck, then looked again and became very thoughtful. Twice he glanced up at Meadows. At last he got to his feet and pulled off his glasses. There was the ghost of a twinkle in his eyes as he studied Meadows. “I hardly know what to say, Mr. Meadows. I—” His voice faltered, then stopped.

“That’s my collateral,” Tandy said quietly. “I think you’re the best judge. Tollefson seems to want a big bet on this race. I’ve called him. We came to see if you would accept this as collateral and put up the money to cover the bet.” He glanced toward the flushed face of the rancher. “Of course, if he wants to Welsh on the bet, now’s his last chance.”

“I’ll be double slathered if I do!” Tollefson’s fury was increased by his panic. He wanted nothing so much as to be safely out of this, but could see no escape without losing prestige, as important to him as life itself.

Clevenger stared thoughtfully at the papers. “Yes,” he said at last, “I’ll put up the money. Your bet’s covered, Tollefson.”

“Here—let me see that!” Tollefson’s hand shot out, grabbing for the letter, but steely fingers caught his wrist.

Tandy Meadows jerked Tollefson’s hand back and their eyes clashed. Half-blind with fury, Tollefson stared at the younger man. “Take your hands off me!” he shouted.

“Willingly,” Meadows replied shortly, “only you have neither the need nor the right to touch those papers. Its contents are confidential. All you need is Clevenger’s word that he will put up the money.”

Stiffly, Tollefson drew back his hand, rubbing his wrist. He stared hard at Meadows, genuinely worried now. Who was this man? Where did he get such money? What had so astonished Clevenger about the papers? And that grip! Why, his fingers were like a steel trap!

Abruptly, he turned and walked from the bank followed by Fulton and Tom Passman. Together they entered the saloon. Fulton rubbed his jaw nervously, wanting to talk to Tollefson. This was a crazy bet! The equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars on a quarter horse race against an unknown horse!

Of course, Lady Luck had consistently beaten all the horses that west Texas, New Mexico, and southern Colorado had found to race against the filly. There was no escaping the fact that she was fast. She was very fast.

“Boss,” Fulton began hesitantly, “this bet ain’t good sense. If I were you, I’d reconsider.”

“You aren’t me, so shut up!” Nobody needed to tell Tollefson that he had made a foolish bet. That was what pride could do for a man! The thought of withdrawing had rankled. He might have done it had Meadows not appeared so contemptuously sure he would. And in front of John Clevenger? The one man he had always failed to impress? Never!

He could just hear the laughter of the small ranchers whom he had forced back off their range. There was one thing he could not stand, and that was ridicule.

Outside the bank, Tandy Meadows stood and stared thoughtfully up the street. Now he had done what he had started out to do, and it remained only to win. Tollefson had deliberately forced Jim Whitten from his water hole, giving him only the choice of giving up his ranch or dying. And Gene Bates was now slowly recovering from a bullet wound from Passman’s gun. That had been the only time Tom Passman had drawn a gun at El Poleo that he failed to kill. His shot had been high, but he had walked away from Bates believing him dead.

Suddenly, Tandy saw a girl come from a store, then turn and start toward him. It was Janet Bates!

At the same moment, within the saloon, Art Tollefson saw Janet, and saw her walk up to Tandy holding out her hand! He downed his drink with a gulp. Who was this Tandy Meadows?

Tom Passman was leaning on the bar alongside of him and he turned his head slightly. It rankled Passman that Tandy Meadows had gotten behind him. He had always said that no man could without him knowing it. He lifted his glass and his cold eyes studied the liquor. “Boss,” he whispered, “let me handle it.”

Relief broke over Tollefson. Yes, that was the way. It was the best way, but not yet. Only as a last resort. It would be too obvious, altogether too obvious.

Anger hit him then. What was he worrying about? When had Lady Luck failed him? Why should he be afraid that she might now? After all, suppose she did win? The idea came to him that if she did, he would have twice as much money, and it gave him a sudden lift. And so easy, for Lady Luck was fast. She had never been beaten. She had never even had a hard fight to win. Her last quarter had been in twenty-three, and she had done equally well on at least two other occasions.

Janet Bates was staring up into Tandy’s eyes. “Oh, Tandy! I was never so glad to see anyone in my life! But is it true? That you are going to race against Lady Luck?”

“Sure, I’m going to run Cholo Baby.”

“Tandy, you mustn’t! Dad says there isn’t a horse in the country can touch Lady Luck.”

“Your dad’s a good cattleman, Janet, but he’s never seen Cholo Baby. She’s fast—fast enough to beat—” He stopped, then shrugged. “She’s a runnin’ little horse, honey. She really is.”

“I hope Tollefson doesn’t think so!” Janet said gravely. “If he did, he would stop at nothing. He’s not a man who can stand losing, Tandy! He forced Dad off his range and then had him shot when he made trouble. He has a gunman who rides wherever he goes.”

“I saw him.” Meadows was serious. “Tom Passman’s no bluffer. I know that. He doesn’t remember me because I was just a kid when he last saw me, but I’ve seen him sling a gun, and he’s fast.”

“Are you having dinner with us? Dad will want to see you even though it isn’t like it used to be on the ranch.”

He hesitated, searching her eyes. “I might come, Janet.” His eyes wandered up the street toward where Passman was loitering. “Are—are you married?”

“Married?” She was startled, but then her eyes crinkled with laughter. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Seems to be fairly a common practice”—he was grinning his relief—“when a girl gets to be your age. I figured I’d come back and see if you’re still as dead set against a man who tramps around the country racing horses.”

“Tandy,” she said seriously, “you’ll have to admit it wouldn’t be much of a life for a girl, even though,” she added reluctantly, “it might be exciting.”

“It isn’t so important where folks are,” he commented, “as long as they are happy together.”

“I’ve thought of that.” She studied him. “Tandy, are you ever going to settle down? Haven’t you enough of it yet?”

“Maybe. We’ll see. I figured when I left I would never come back at all. Then I heard what happened to Jim Whitten and to your dad. Why, your father took me in when I was all shot up, and if you two hadn’t cared for me, I would sure enough have passed in my checks. As for Whitten, he never made trouble for anybody. So I had to come back.”

There was quick fear in her eyes now. “Don’t think about it, Tandy. Please don’t. Nothing is worth what they could do to you. Tollefson’s too strong, Tandy; nobody has a chance with him, and there’s that awful Tom Passman.”

“Sure. But why is he strong? Only because he has money, that’s all. Suppose he lost it?”

“But how could he?”

“He could.” Meadows squeezed her arm gently. “Believe me, honey, he could!”

Turning, he started down the street, aware that Tom Passman was watching him. He knew one reason for the man’s curiosity. He was wondering if Meadows carried a gun, and if so, where it was. And if not, why not?

Snap was sitting on the wagon tongue when Tandy rode up to the camp in the creek bottom. Snap got to his feet and strolled out to meet Meadows, the shotgun in the crook of his arm. He was grinning expectantly. “You got a bet?” he asked softly.

Meadows nodded, smiling. “We sure have, Snap! And a lively hunch Tollefson would like nothing so much as to be safely out of it! We’re going to have to be careful!” Meadows paused, then added:

“The man’s no gambler. He’s got a good horse, we know that, A mighty fast horse. We’ve got to hope ours is faster.”

Snap nodded gravely. “You know I’ve seen that Lady Luck run, Mistuh Tandy. She’s a mighty quick filly.”

“Think she can beat Cholo Baby?”

Snap smiled. “Well, now. I reckon I’m some prejudiced about that! I never seen the horse I figured could beat our baby. But it will be a race, Mistuh Tandy! It sure will!”

The race was scheduled for the following Wednesday, three days away. By the time Meadows rode again to El Poleo, the town was buzzing with news of the bet. Tandy had done much to see the story got around, for the more who knew of it the less chance of Tollefson backing out. Yet the town was buzzing with more than that, for there was much speculation about Tandy Meadows, where he came from and where he got the money to make such a bet.

Nobody in town knew him but several had seen Janet Bates greet him like an old friend, and that in itself was puzzling. Art Tollefson was curious about that, and being the man he was, he went directly to the source, to Bates’s small ranch forty miles north of El Poleo. Johnny Herndon, a Bates hand, was hazing a half-dozen cattle out of the brush, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Tollefson.

“You off your home range, Tollefson?” he said abruptly. “Or are you figurin’ on pushin’ us off this piece, too?”

Tollefson waved a hand. Yet his eyes had noted the grass and that some of it was subirrigated. It was an idea, at that. “Nothing like that,” he replied shortly. “Just ridin’ around a little. Saw a puncher down to El Poleo with some fine horses, a man named Meadows.”

“Tandy Meadows?” Herndon had heard nothing of the bet, and he was instantly curious. “So he came back, did he? I sort of reckoned he would. Does he have some racin’ stock with him?”

“Some, I reckon. Is he from around here?”

“Meadows? He’s from nowhere. He rode in here one night over a year ago, shot to doll rags and barely hangin’ to his horse. That was the first any of us ever saw of him. Gene Bates took him off his horse and they spent two months nursin’ him back to health. Then he loafed around another month, sort of recuperatin’.

“Personally, I never figured he’d leave, for Janet sort of took to him, and the way they acted, it was mutual, but he finally pulled out.”

“You said he’d been shot up? How did that happen? He doesn’t even carry a gun now.”

“No? Now, that’s funny. They tell me he was some slick. I heard of him after he left here, but it was the story of some shootin’ scrape down to Santa Fe before he drifted this way. Good two years ago. He never did say who shot him up, but some of us done some figurin’ an’ we reckoned it was the Alvarez gang. Story was they stole a bunch of horses off him, and that must be so. He got me to help him ride north and haze a bunch out of a canyon up there, and mighty fine stock.

“He’d evidently left them there when he was shot up, but he just had to close the gate as they were in a box canyon hideout with plenty of grass and water. They were somewhat wild but in fine shape.”

“You mean the Alvarez gang had taken the horses there? Did you see any of them?”

Herndon shrugged, rolling a smoke. It was a bright, sunny morning and he had talked to nobody in three days. “Didn’t figure I would. Meadows told me there wouldn’t be any trouble, and he’s the sort of man who would know.

“No, we saw hide nor hair of nobody. At the up end of that canyon there was an adobe, and Tandy advised me to stay away from it. But once I did get sort of close and there was somethin’ white lyin’ there that I’d swear was a skeleton.”

“Has he got any money?”

“Who, Tandy?” Herndon chuckled. “I doubt it. He’s a saddle tramp. Thinks of nothin’ but what’s the other side of the hill and racin’ his horses. If he ever had more than a thousand dollars in his, life it would surprise me.”

CHAPTER 3

Trickery

ART TOLLEFSON WAS a cautious man, and he had been very lacking in caution when he had allowed his pride to trap him into the bet with Meadows, but now he was doing a lot of serious thinking. The following morning he mounted up, and saying nothing to anyone, he rode north, avoiding the Bateses’ range and heading for the area in which the box canyon had been.

From Herndon’s comments it was not too hard to find, although had he not been expecting it, a man could have ridden by within a dozen yards and never guessed its existence. The bars were up, but he took them down and rode into a pleasant little canyon, grass covered and shady with probably two hundred acres of rich land in the bottom, and a good spring at the head of it.

Nearing the adobe he rode more cautiously, and when several yards away, he drew up. Obviously, no one had been this close to the cabin for a long time, and Herndon’s surmise had been correct. It was a skeleton.

Buzzards had stripped the bones bare since, but the chaps and gun belts remained, their leather stiff as board from weathering. Not far from the bones lay a rusted six shooter.

Tollefson trailed his reins and walked up to the door. He stopped there, his mouth suddenly dry. Here three men had died, and they had died hard. The table was turned on its side and nearby lay another skeleton, face down on the dirt floor. Another slumped in the corner with a round hole over the eye, and the third was sprawled under some fallen slickers in a corner.

The scene was not hard to reconstruct. They had been surprised here by a man who had walked in through the doorway. The fourth man had evidently been drawn by the gunfire or had come up later. It was a very thoughtful man who turned his horse toward El Poleo somewhat later. If Tandy Meadows had walked away from that cabin alive, he was nobody with whom to play games. The sooner Passman knew, the better.

At four o’clock on the afternoon of the day before the race, Tandy Meadows watched Snap prepare an early supper. He was as good a hand with food as with horses, and he worked swiftly and surely, yet his eyes were restless and he was obviously on edge. “You reckon he’ll make trouble, Boss?”

“I’d almost bet on it,” Meadows replied, “but you can’t tell. His pride might keep him from it. He figures Lady Luck will win, I know, but he’s not a gambling man, and he’d like to be sure.”

“You’d better watch that Passman,” Snap advised. “He’s a bad man.”

Tandy nodded. He was the last man in the world to take Tom Passman lightly, for he had seen him throw a gun, and the man was deadly. Moreover, he was a tough man with a lot of pride in his skill, no braggart, and, no four flusher. Only death itself would stop his guns.

Cholo Baby, a beautiful sorrel, lifted her head and whinnied softly as he approached. She was fifteen hands high, with wide-spaced and intelligent eyes. She stretched her velvety nose toward his hand and he touched her lightly. “How’s it, girl? You ready to run for me tomorrow?”

Baby nudged him with her nose and Tandy grinned. “I doubt if you ever lived a day when you didn’t feel like running, Cholo. And I hope there never is!”

He strolled back to the wagon, his eyes alert and searching the mountainside, the willows and the trail. He ate without talking, restless and disturbed despite himself. So far everything had been too quiet. Much too quiet.

He could neither rest nor relax. A hint of impending danger hung over the camp and he roved restlessly about. Snap seemed to feel it, too, and even the horses were alert as if they sensed something in the air. Of course, Tandy reflected, if anything happened to Cholo Baby, he could ride Khari, the half-Morgan, half-Arabian horse he usually rode. Not so fast as Cholo Baby over the quarter, but still a fast horse for one with so much staying power.

He still carried his rawhide riata. He was a California rider, and like them he valued the use of the riata, and was amazingly proficient with it. The California riders always used rawhide riatas of great length, and used them with such skill they were almost part of them. Suddenly, Tandy Meadows stopped. Hard upon the trail he heard the pounding hooves of a hard-ridden horse!

Snap was on his feet, leaning against the off wheel of the wagon, his shotgun resting over the corner of the wagon box to cover the trail. Tandy fell back near the wagon where his Winchester stood, and waited, his lips tight, his eyes cool. Yet when the rider drew nearer he saw it was Janet Bates.

She drew up sharply and dropped to the ground. “Oh, Tandy!” Her face was pale. “What have you done? I just heard today you’d made a bet with Tollefson for his whole ranch! Tandy, you know you haven’t that kind of money! If you lose, what will you do? One man did fail to pay off Tollefson once and he had been lashed to a tree and whipped by Tom Passman! He’d kill you, Tandy!”

Meadows smiled at her anxiety. “So you do worry about me? You do like me a little, then?”

“Be serious.” Her eyes flashed. In the dusk she seemed even more lovely than ever. “You’re in trouble, and you don’t even know it. Lady Luck always wins, Tandy. He’ll kill you!”

“He must have figured my bet was all right,” Meadows replied. “Clevenger backed me.”

“Oh, I know, Tandy! But you fooled him somehow. I just know you fooled him! If you don’t win, what will you do?”

“I’ll win,” he replied simply. “I’ve got to win. I’ve got to win for you, Janet, and for your father and Jim Whitten. I came back here to force Tollefson out of the country, and I’ll not rest until I do! Your dad was mighty kind to me when I was all shot up and dyin’. Without you two I’d not be here, so when I heard of what had happened, I figured this out. I’d heard of Lady Luck, and I knew Tollefson was a mighty big-headed and stubborn man, so I deliberately worked on his pride.”

“That isn’t all I heard,” Janet persisted quickly. “Tollefson was up near our ranch twice. He talked to Johnny about you, asking all sorts of questions. He seemed very curious about how you’d been wounded that time, and the next day Johnny Herndon saw him riding north toward the box canyon where you left your horses that time.”

Meadows scowled. What did that mean, anyway? The Alvarez gang had been notorious outlaws, and the killing of them would be considered a public service. Or would have at the time. Yet with such information a man of his influence might find some way to do him harm.

“Boss,” Snap’s voice was, urgent, “somebody comin’.”

Tandy Meadows turned and watched the horsemen. There were four in the group and one of them he recognized instantly as Tom Passman. When they drew nearer he saw that another was Fulton, while the two riding with them were Sheriff George Lynn and his deputy Rube Hatley.

“Meadows,” Lynn said, “we rode out here after you. You’ve got to come back to town and answer a few questions.”

“Always glad to answer questions, Sheriff. Can’t I answer them here?”

“No.” Lynn’s voice was testy. “You can answer them in my office. There’s a place for such things and this isn’t it!”

“All right, Sheriff,” Meadows agreed. “But how about lettin’ Hatley stay here to guard my horses?”

Lynn hesitated, disturbed by the request. It was reasonable enough, but when Art Tollefson had told him what to do, George Lynn had been reasonably certain what lay behind it. If he left Hatley he would be defeating the purpose of the trip. “Sorry,” he replied abruptly, “I need Hatley with me!”

“Then of course you’ll be responsible for my horses?” Meadows persisted. “I don’t think they should be left alone.”

“They’ll be safe enough.” Lynn was growing angry. “The responsibility is your own. Are you coming,” he asked sharply, “or do we take you?”

“Why, I’m coming, Sheriff I’ve never suggested anything to the contrary.” He put his foot into the stirrup, then swung aboard Khari. “Snap,” he said loudly, “if any varmints come around, don’t take chances. Shoot to kill.” Then he added, “You’ll be perfectly safe because nobody would be fool enough to come near racin’ stock on the night before a race. So don’t forget, shoot to kill!”

“Sure thing, boss. I got me a shotgun loaded for bear!”

Nothing more was said as they rode back to town. Several times Tandy saw Passman watching him, but when they reached town only a few loafers noticed them ride down the street to the sheriff’s office.

Inside, Lynn came to the point at once. “I’ve brought you in to ask you questions about a shootin’ scrape, some time back.”

“Why, sure!” Meadows dropped into a chair. “I didn’t figure Tollefson rode all the way up to that canyon for nothing. He must be really worried if he’s tryin’ this hard to find a way out of his bet. But aren’t you and Passman buckin’ a stacked deck? Who will you work for if I win?”

“I work for the county!” Lynn said sharply. “That horse race has nothing to do with this inquiry!”

“Of course not! That’s why Fulton and Passman were with you, Sheriff! Because the race has nothing to do with it! That’s why you waited to bring me in until the night before the race! I hope somebody tries to bother those horses tonight! Snap’s a whiz with a shotgun!”

He turned his head. “Passman came along hopin’ I’d make some wrong play so he could plug me.”

Passman’s eyes were flat and gray. “You talk a lot,” he said shortly, “but can you shoot?”

Lynn waved an irritated hand. “Who were those hombres you shot up north?”

“I shot?” Meadows looked mildly astonished. “Why, Sheriff, I didn’t say I shot anybody. I did hear something about the Alvarez gang catching some lead over some horses, they stole, but beyond that I’m afraid I don’t remember much about it.”

“You deny you shot them? You deny the fight?”

“I don’t deny anything, and I don’t admit anything.” Tandy’s voice was cool. “If you’re planning to arrest me, by all means do it. Also, get me a lawyer down here, then either file charges against me or turn me loose. This whole proceeding, Sheriff, is highly irregular. All you have is Tollefson’s word that he saw some skeletons somewhere. Or some dead men, or some bullet holes, or something. You know that I was wounded about the same time, but even if they were not horse thieves, you’d have a tough time proving any connection.”

Lynn was uneasy. This was the truth and he knew it, but this was what Tollefson wanted, and what he wanted he got. Yet for almost three hours he persisted in asking questions, badgering Meadows with first one and then another, and trying to trap him. Yet he got nowhere. Finally, he got to his feet. “All right, you can go. If I want any more questions answered, I’ll send for you.”

Meadows got to his feet and let his eyes, suddenly grown cold, go over the four men. “All right, Sheriff, I’m always glad to answer questions, but get this: if anything has happened to my horses while I was in here, I’m coming back, and I’ll be looking for each and every one of you.

“And that, Lynn,” his eyes turned to the sheriff, “goes for you, sheriff or no sheriff! I’m a law-abiding man, and have always been, but if you’ve conspired with that fat-headed Tollefson to keep my horse out of that race, and through it harm comes to my horses, you’d better start packing a gun for me! Get that?”

George Lynn’s face whitened and he involuntarily drew back. Worriedly, he glanced at Fulton and Passman for support. Fulton was pale as himself, and Passman leaned against the wall, nonchalantly rolling a cigarette. Rube Hatley stood near the door, his position unchanged. Meadows turned and walked past him, scarcely hearing the whispered, “Luck!” from Rube.

After he was gone, Lynn stared at Fulton. “Harry, what will we do?”

Rube Hatley chuckled. “Only one thing you can do, Sheriff. You can light a shuck out of the country or you can die. Either way, I don’t care. I wanted no part of this yellow-bellied stunt, and if they were my horses I’d shoot you on sight.”

“Passman?” Lynn was almost pleading. “You’re the gunslinger.”

Passman shrugged. “When I get my orders. Until then I don’t make a move.” He turned on his heel and walked out into the night.

Lynn stared at Fulton. “Harry,” he begged, “you know. What did they do?”

“Do?” Fulton’s hand shook as he lighted his smoke. “Tollefson’s too smart to pull anything too raw. He just had some of the boys take those horses out and run them over the desert for three hours, that’s all! By daylight those horses will be so stiff and stove up they wouldn’t be able to walk that quarter, let alone run it!”

“What about the black boy?”

Fulton shrugged. “That’s another story. Who cares about him?”

“Meadows might.”

“Yeah.” Fulton was thoughtful. “He might at that. But you can be sure of one thing, after the runnin’ his horses got this night, through cactus, brush, and rocks, they’ll do no running tomorrow. I can promise you that! You leave the rest to Passman!”

“Did Tollefson actually see those skeletons?”

“He sure did.” Fulton’s voice was dry, emotionless. “And from what he said, if that was Tandy Meadows who walked into that shack after the Alvarez boys, he’s got nerve enough to crawl down a hole after a nest full of rattlers, believe me!”

CHAPTER 4

Gilt-Edged Collateral

MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT and still, and for the better part of two hours it remained bright and still, and then the boys from the ranches began to show up in El Poleo. Hard-riding youngsters, most of them, with here and there older men whose eyes were careful and wary with the sense of trouble.

Buckboards, a fringed surrey, a Conestoga wagon, and many horseback riders, all coming in for the races, and all curious about what would happen. Some had heard there had been trouble the night before, but what or when, they did not know.

Art Tollefson came in about noon. The covered wagon stood in the creek bottom disconsolate and alone. No horses were in sight, nor movement of any kind. His lips thinned with cruelty and his eyes were bright with triumph and satisfaction. Try to buck Art Tollefson, would they!

He was walking into the saloon when he saw a buckboard draw up between two buildings, and Gene Bates and Jim Whitten got down. His lips tightened and he walked on into the saloon.

The usual jovial laughter stilled as he entered. With a wave of the hand he invited all and sundry to join him at the bar. Each year this was his custom at this time, but now there was no concerted rush for the bar.

This time, not a man moved.

Impatiently, he stared around the room but all eyes avoided his. Then Fulton stepped to the bar followed by several of his own Flying T riders. His face and neck crimson, Tollefson stared down at his drink, his jaw set hard.

Gene Bates and Jim Whitten walked into the saloon and to the bar. “Tollefson’s buyin’,” the bartender explained hurriedly.

“Not our drinks!” Bates’s voice was flat. “I’ll drink with no man who hires his killin’ done and hires other men to ruin a man’s horses so he loses a race!”

Tollefson whirled. The truth was hard to take, he found. “Who said that?” he demanded. “That’s a lie!”

Bates faced him. The white-haired old man’s blue eyes were fierce. “Better back up on that, Tollefson,” he advised coldly. “Passman’s not here to do your shootin’ for you this time!”

Tollefson’s fingers stiffened, and for an instant he seemed about to draw, but at Fulton’s low-voiced warning, he turned back to the bar.

Sheriff George Lynn pushed through the doors and walked to the bar. He spoke under his breath to Tollefson. “They did it all right! They ran those horses half to death! I passed ’em out on the flat not thirty minutes ago, and a worse lookin’ bunch you never did see! I couldn’t get close, but it was close enough!”

“What will Meadows do now?” Fulton asked, low voiced.

Rube Hatley had come in. He overheard Fulton’s remark and leaned both elbows on the bar. “Do?” Rube chuckled without humor. “If I were you hombres I’d do one of two things. I’d start ridin’ or start shootin’!”

The course was the same straightaway course they had used for this race for several years. There were several two-twenty and three-thirty races to be run off before the quarter races began.

Tollefson watched nervously, his eyes roving the crowd. He saw neither Tandy Meadows nor Snap. Janet Bates rode in with Johnny Herndon, and they joined her father and Jim Whitten.

Fulton sat with Tollefson and Sheriff Lynn, and the last to arrive was Tom Passman. He dismounted but kept free of the crowd. Tollefson noted with relief that he was wearing two guns, something he rarely did. When he walked to the edge of the track, people moved away from him.

The quarter horse race was announced, and Tollefson touched his lips uneasily with his tongue as he watched. Lady Luck walking into place in the line. Three other horses were entered in this race and they all showed up. All, but one had been beaten by the Lady in previous races, and Tollefson began to breathe easier.

What a fool he had been to take such a chance! Well, it was over now, and he was safe. But where was Meadows?

Fulton grabbed his arm. “Look!” he gasped. “Look there!”

Another horse had moved into line, a sorrel, and beautifully made. The rider on the last horse was Snap, Meadows’s Negro rider.

Tollefson’s face flushed, then went white. He started forward, but stopped suddenly. Gene Bates was standing in front of him with a shotgun. “Let’s let ’em run,” Bates suggested. “You keep your place!”

Tollefson drew back, glancing around desperately. Sheriff Lynn had disappeared, but Rube Hatley loafed nearby. “Do something, man!” Tollefson insisted.

“For what?” Hatley grinned at him, his eyes hard. “Nobody’s busted any law that I can see. That shotgun’s in the hollow of his arm. Nobody says he can’t carry it there.”

Now the horses were moving together toward the far end of the course. As in a trance, Art Tollefson watched them go, watched most of all that sorrel with the squat black rider. Suddenly, he felt sick. If that horse won, he was through, through! It was unthinkable.

He turned sharply. “Tom!” he said. Passman looked around, his eyes level and gray. “When you see him! And there’s a bonus in it for you!”

Passman nodded but made no other reply. Fulton felt a constriction in his chest. He had heard Tollefson order men beaten, cattle driven off, homes burned, but this was the first time he had actually heard him order a man killed. Yet nowhere was there any sign of Tandy Meadows.

Tollefson sat his horse where he could see the race, the full length of the course. His eyes went now to the far end where the horses were lining up now, and his heart began to pound. His fingers on the saddle horn were relaxed and powerless. Suddenly, the full impact of his bet came home to him, and he realized, almost for the first time, what losing would mean.

How had he ever been such a fool? Such an utter and complete fool? How had he been trapped into such a situation?

His thoughts were cut sharply off by the crack of a pistol, and his heart gave a tremendous leap as he saw the horses lunge into a dead run. Lady Luck had seemed almost to squat as the pistol cracked, and then bounded forward and was down the track running like a scared rabbit.

Tollefson, his breath coming hoarsely, stood in his stirrups, his agonized stare on the charging horses, and suddenly he realized he was shouting his triumph, for the Lady was well off and running beautifully. Then, even as he cheered, a sorrel shot from the group behind the Lady and swooped down upon her!

His pulse pounding, his eyes bulging with fear and horror, he saw that rusty streak of horse come up behind the Lady, saw its head draw abreast, then the nose was at the Lady’s shoulder, and the Lady was running like something possessed, as if she knew what great change rode with her. Tollefson was shouting madly now, almost in a frenzy, for out there with those running horses was everything he owned, everything he had fought for, burned for, killed for. And now that sorrel with its crouching black rider was neck and neck with the Lady, and then with the finish line only a length away the sorrel seemed to give a great leap and shot over the finish line, winner by half a length!

Tollefson sagged back in his saddle, staring blindly down the hill. Tricked—tricked and beaten. Lady Luck was beaten. He was beaten. He was through, finished!

Then he remembered Tom Passman, and saw him standing down by the finish line, away from him. Pass-man! Tollefson’s eyes suddenly sharpened. He could still win! Passman could kill them! He could kill Meadows, Whitten, Bates! Anyone who fought or resisted him! He would turn his riders loose on the town, he would—

Then a voice behind him turned him cold and still inside. “Well, you lost, Tollefson. You’ve got until sundown to get out of the country. You can load your personal belongings, no more. You can take a team and a buckboard. Get moving!”

Passman seemed to have heard. He turned slowly, and he was looking at them now from forty yards away. In a daze, Tollefson saw Tandy. Meadows step out toward the gunman, holding in his hands nothing but the rawhide riata.

Tom Passman crouched a little, his eyes riveted on Meadows, his mind doing a quick study. If he drew and killed an unarmed man, there was a chance not even Tollefson could save him. Yet was Meadows unarmed? At what point might he not suddenly flash a gun from his shirt-front or waistband?

Meadows took another step, switching the rope in his hands with seeming carelessness. Again Passman’s eyes searched Meadows’s clothing for a suspicious bulge, and saw none. Surely, the man would not come down here without a weapon? It was beyond belief. “What’s the matter, Tom?” Meadows taunted. “Yellow?”

As he spoke, his hands flipped, and as Passman’s hands swept down for his guns he saw something leap at him like a streak of light. He threw up a hand, tried to spring aside, but that rawhide riata loop snapped over his shoulders and whipped taut even as his hands started to lift the guns, and he was jerked off balance.

He staggered, trying desperately to draw a gun, but his arms were pinned to his sides. Meadows took two running steps toward him, throwing another loop of the rope over his shoulders that fell to his ankles. He jerked hard and the gunman fell, hitting hard in the dust. He struggled to get up, and Tandy jerked him from his feet again. Tandy stood off, smiling grimly.

Then, stepping in quickly, he jerked the guns from Passman’s holsters and tossed them aside. Springing back, he let Passman fight his way free of the noose. As the loop dropped from the gunman, he wheeled on Meadows, and Tandy struck him across the mouth with the back of his hand.

It was deliberate, infuriating. Passman went blind with rage and rushed. A left smeared his lips and a roundhouse right caught him on the ear. He staggered sideways, his ears ringing. Meadows walked into him then and slugged two wicked underhand punches into the gunman’s body. Passman sagged and went down, landing on his knees.

Tandy jerked him erect, struck him again in the stomach, and ignoring the futile punches the man threw, stepped back and smashed him full in the mouth with a right. Passman went down again.

Bloody and battered, he lay gasping on the ground. Meadows stood over him. “Tom,” he said coldly, “I could have killed you. You never saw the day you were as fast as I am. But I don’t want to kill men, Tom. Not even you. Now get out of the country! If you ever come north of the river again, I’ll hunt you down and kill you! Start moving!”

Tandy stepped back, coiling his rope. He glanced around. Tollefson was gone, and so was Fulton.

Rube Hatley gestured toward Passman. “He means it, Tom,” he said, “and so do I. I’d have run you out of here months ago if it hadn’t been for Tollefson and Lynn. Take his advice and don’t come back, because I may not be any faster than you, Tom, but if you ever ride this way again, you’ve got me to kill, and I sort of think we’d go together!”

Hatley glanced at Tandy. “You had me fooled. What happened to your horses?”

“Janet and Snap figured something would happen, so they drove them back into the hills a mile or so, and then they moved in a bunch of half broke Flying T broomtails down on that meadow. In the dark they never guessed they were drivin’ some of their own remuda!”

Janet came up to Tandy, smiling gravely, her eyes lighted with something half affection and half humor. “I was glad to help. I thought if you won this race you might settle down.”

Meadows shrugged, grinning. “I don’t see any way out of it with a ranch to manage and a wife to support.”

Janet stared suspiciously from Meadows to Clevenger. “Now tell me,” she insisted. “What would you have done if Cholo Baby had lost? How could you have paid up?”

The banker looked sheepish. “Well, ma’am, I reckon I’d have had to pay off. That was my money backing him.”

“Yours?” she was incredulous. “Without collateral?”

“No, ma’am!” Clevenger shook his head decisively. “He had collateral! In the banking business a man’s got to know what’s good security and what isn’t! What he showed me was plumb good enough for any old horseman like myself. It was Cholo Baby’s pedigree!

“Why, ma’am, that Cholo Baby was sired by old Dan Tucker, one of the finest quarter horse stallions of them all! He was a half brother to Peter McCue, who ran the quarter in twenty-one seconds!

“Like I say, ma’am, a banker has to know what’s good collateral and what ain’t! Why, a man what knows horses could no more fail to back that strain than he could bet against his own mother!

“And look,” he said grinning shrewdly. “Was it good collateral, or wasn’t it? Who won?”

LONG RIDE HOME

---

BEFORE HIM ROLLED the red and salmon unknown, the vast, heat-waved unreality of the raw desert, broken only by the jagged crests of the broken bones of upthrust ledges. He saw the weird cacti and the tiny puffs of dust from the hooves of his grulla, but Tensleep Mooney saw no more.

Three days behind him was the Mexican border, what lay ahead he had no idea. Three days behind him lay the Rangers of Texas and Arizona, and a row of graves, some new buried, of men he had killed. But Tensleep Mooney of the fast gun and the cold eye was southbound for peace, away from the fighting, the bitterness, the struggle. He was fleeing not the law alone, but the guns of his enemies and the replies his own must make if he stayed back there.

Here not even the Apache rode. Here no peon came, and rarely even the Indians. This was a wild and lonely land, born of fire and tempered with endless sunlight, drifting dust-devils and the bald and brassy sky. Sweat streaked his dust-caked shirt, and there were spots flushed red beneath his squinted eyes, and pinkish desert dust in the dark stubble of his unshaven jaws.

Grimly, he pointed south, riding toward something he knew not what. In his pocket, ten silver pesos; in his canteen, a pint of brackish water remaining; in the pack on the stolen burro, a little sowbelly, some beans, rice, and enough ammunition to fight.

Behind him the Carrizal Mountains, behind him the green valleys of the Magdalena, and back along the line, a black horse dead of a rifle bullet, his own horse lying within a half minute’s buzzard flight of the owner of the horse he now rode, a bandit who had been too optimistic for his health. And behind him at Los Chinos, a puzzled peon who had sold a mule and beans to a hard-faced Yanqui headed south.

Mooney had no destination before him. He was riding out of time, riding out of his world into any other world. What lay behind him was death wherever he rode, a land where the law sought him, and the feuding family of his enemies wanted vengeance for their horse-thieving relatives he had killed.

The law, it seemed, would overlook the killing of a horse thief. It would even overlook the killing of a pair of his relatives if they came hunting you, but when it came to the point of either eliminating the males of a big family or being eliminated oneself, they were less happy. Tensleep Mooney had planted seven of them and had been five months ducking bullets before the Rangers closed in; and now, with discretion, Mooney took his valor south of the border.

Two days had passed in which he saw but one lonely rancho; a day since he came across any living thing except buzzards and lizards and an occasional rattler. He swung eastward, toward the higher mountains, hunting a creek or a water hole where he could camp for the night, and with luck, for a couple of days rest. His stock was gaunt and he was lean in the ribs and hollow cheeked.

The country grew rougher, the cacti thicker, the jagged ridges sloped up toward the heights of the mountains. And then the brush was scattered but head high, and then he saw a patch of greener brush ahead and went riding toward it, sensing water in the quickened pace of his grulla.

Something darted through the brush, and he shucked his gun with an instinctive draw that would have done credit to Wes Hardin—but he pushed on. He wanted water and he was going to have it if he had to fight for it.

The something was an Indian girl, ragged, thin and wide-eyed. She crouched above a man who lay on the sand, a chunk of rock in her hand, waiting at bay with teeth bared like some wild thing.

Mooney drew his horse to a stop and holstered his gun. She was thin, emaciated. Her cheekbones were startling against the empty cheeks and sunken eyes. She was barefoot, and the rags she wore covered a body that no man would have looked at twice. On the sand at her feet lay an old Indian, breathing hoarsely. One leg was wrapped in gruesomely dirty rags, and showed blood.

“What’s the matter, kid?” he said in hoarse English. “I won’t hurt you.”

She did not relent, waiting, hopeless in her courage, ready to go down fighting. It was a feeling that touched a responsive chord in Tensleep, of the Wyoming Mooneys. He grinned and swung to the ground, holding a hand up, palm outward. “Amigo,” he said, hesitantly. His stay in Texas had not been long and he knew little Spanish and had no confidence in that. “Me amigo,” he said, and he walked up to the fallen man.

The man’s face was gray with pain, but he was conscious. He was Indian, too. Tarahumara, Mooney believed, having heard of them. He dropped beside the old man and gently began to remove the bandage. The girl stared at him, then began to gasp words in some heathen, unbelievable language.

Mooney winced when he saw the wound. A bullet through the thigh. And it looked as ugly as any wound he had seen in a long time. Turning to the trees, Mooney began to gather dry sticks. When he started to put them together for a fire the girl sprang at him wildly and began to babble shrill protest, pointing off to the west as she did so. “Somebody huntin’ you, is there?” Tensleep considered that, looked at the man, the girl, and considered himself, then he chuckled. “Don’t let it bother you, kid,” he said. “If we don’t fix this old man up fast, he’ll die. Maybe it’s too late now. An’,” here he chuckled again, “if they killed all of us, they wouldn’t accomplish much.”

The fire was made of dry wood and there was little smoke. He put water on to get hot. Then when the water was boiling he went to a creosote bush and got leaves from it and threw them into the water. The girl squatted on her heels and watched him tensely. When he had allowed the leaves to boil for a while, he bathed the wound in the concoction. He knew that some Indians used it for an antiseptic for burns and wounds. The girl watched him, then darted into the brush and after several minutes came back with some leaves which she dampened and then began to crush into a paste. The old man lay very still, his face more calm, his eyes on Mooney’s face.

Tensleep looked at the wide face, the large soft eyes that could no doubt be hard on occasion, and the firm mouth. This was a man—he had heard many stories of the endurance of these Tarahumara Indians. They would travel for fabulous miles without food, they possessed an unbelievable resistance to pain in any form. When the wound was thoroughly bathed, the girl moved forward with the paste and signified that it should be bound on the wound. He nodded, and with a tinge of regret he ripped up his last white shirt—the only one he had owned in three years—and bound the wound carefully. He was just finishing it when the girl caught his arm. Her eyes were wide with alarm, but he saw nothing. And then, as he listened, he heard horses drawing nearer and he got to his feet and slid his Winchester from its scabbard. His horse had stopped among the uptilted rocks that surrounded the water hole.

There were three of them, a well-dressed man with a thin, cruel face and two hard-faced vaqueros. “Ah!” The leader drew up. He looked down at the old Indian and said, “Perro!” Then his hand dropped to his gun and Tensleep Mooney drew.

The Mexican stopped, his hand on his own gun, looking with amazement into the black and steady muzzle of Tensleep’s Colt. A hard man himself he had seen many men draw a pistol, but never a draw like this. His eyes studied the man behind the gun and he did not like what he saw. Tensleep Mooney was honed down and hard, a man with wide shoulders, a once broken nose, and eyes like bits of gray slate.

“You do not understand,” the Mexican said coolly. “This man is an Indio. He is nothing. He is a dog. He is a thief.”

“Where I come from,” Mooney replied, “we don’t shoot helpless men. An’ we don’t run Injuns to rags when they’re afoot an’ helpless. We,” his mouth twisted wryly, “been hard on our own Injuns, but mostly they had a fightin’ chance. I think this hombre deserves as much.”

“You are far from other gringos,” the Mexican suggested, “and I am Don Pedro,” he waved a hand, “of the biggest hacienda in one hundred miles. The police, the soldiers, all of them come when I speak. You stop me now and there will not be room enough in this country for you to hide, and then we shall see how brave you are.”

“That’s as may be,” Mooney shrugged, his eyes hard and casual. “You can see how big my feet are right now if you three want to have at it. I’ll holster my gun, an’ then you can try, all three of you. Of course,” Mooney smiled a pleasant, Irish smile, “you get my first shot, right through the belly.”

Don Pedro was no fool. It was obvious to him that even if they did kill the gringo that it would do nothing for Don Pedro, for the scion of an ancient house would be cold clay upon the Sonora desert. It was a most uncomfortable thought, for Don Pedro had a most high opinion of the necessity for Don Pedro’s continued existence.

“You are a fool,” he said coldly. He spoke to his men and swung his horse.

“An’ you are not,” Mooney said, “if you keep ridin’.”

Then they were gone and he turned to look at the Indians. They stared at him as, if he were a god, but he merely grinned and shrugged. Then his face darkened and he kicked the fire apart. “We got to move,” he said, waving a hand at the desert, “away.”

He shifted the pack on the burro and loaded the old man on the burro’s back. “This may kill you, Old One,” he said, “but unless I miss my guess, that hombre will be back with friends.”

The girl understood at once, but refused to mount with him, striking off at once into the brush. “I hope you know where you’re goin’,” he said, and followed on, trusting to her to take them to a place of safety.

She headed south until suddenly they struck a long shelf of bare rock, then she looked up at him quickly, and gestured at the rock, then turned east into the deeper canyons. Darkness fell suddenly but the girl kept on weaving her way into a trackless country—and she herself seemed tireless.

His canteen was full, and when the girl stopped it was at a good place for hiding, but the tinaja was dry. He made coffee and the old man managed to drink some, then drank more, greedily.

He took out some of the meat and by signs indicated to the girl what he wanted. She was gone into the brush only a few minutes and then returned with green and yellow inflated stems. “Squaw cabbage!” he said. “I’ll be durned! I never knowed that was good to eat!” He gestured to indicate adding it to the stew and she nodded vigorously. He peeled his one lone potato and added it to the stew.

All three ate, then rolled up and slept. The girl sleeping close to her father, but refusing to accept one of his blankets.

They started early, heading farther east. “Water?” he questioned. “Agua?”

She pointed ahead, and they kept moving. All day long they moved. His lips cracked, and the face of the old man was flushed. The girl still walked, plodding on ahead, although she looked in bad shape. It was late afternoon when she gestured excitedly and ran on ahead. When he caught up with her, she was staring at a water hole. It was brim full of water, but in the water floated a dead coyote.

“How far?” he asked, gesturing.

She shook her head, and gestured toward the sky. She meant either the next afternoon or the one following. In either case, there was no help for it. They could never last it out.

“Well, here goes,” he said, and swinging down he stripped the saddle from the horse. Then while the girl made her father comfortable, he took the dead coyote from the water hole, and proceeded to build a fire, adding lots of dry wood. When he had a good pile of charcoal, he dipped up some of the water in a can, covered the surface to a depth of almost three inches with charcoal, and then put it on the fire. When it had boiled for a half hour, he skimmed impurities and the charcoal, and the water below looked pure and sweet. He dipped out enough to make coffee, then added charcoal to the remainder. When they rolled out in the morning the water looked pure and good. He poured it off into his canteen and they started on.

Now the girl at last consented to climb up behind him, and they rode on into the heat of a long day. Later, he swung down and walked, and toward night the girl slipped to the ground. And then suddenly the vegetation grew thicker and greener. The country was impossibly wild and lonely. They had seen nothing, for even the buzzards seemed to have given up.

Then the girl ran on ahead and paused. Tensleep walked on, then stopped dead still, staring in shocked amazement.

Before him, blue with the haze of late evening, lay a vast gorge, miles wide, and apparently, also miles deep! It stretched off to the southwest in a winding splendor, a gorge as deep as the Canyon of the Colorado, and fully as magnificent.

The girl led him to a steep path and unhesitatingly she walked down it. He followed. Darkness came and still she led on, and then suddenly he saw the winking eye of a fire! They walked on, and the girl suddenly called out, and after a minute there was an answering hail. And then they stopped on a ledge shaded by towering trees. Off to the left was the vast gorge; somewhere in its depths a river roared and thundered. Indians came out of the shadows, the firelight on their faces. Behind them was the black mouth of a cave, and something that looked like a wall with windows.

The old man was helped down from the burro and made comfortable. An old woman brought him a gourd dish full of stew and he ate hungrily. The Tarahumaras gathered around, unspeaking but watching. They seemed to be waiting for something, and then it came.

A man in a sombrero pushed his way through the Indians and stopped on the edge of the fire. Obviously an Indian also, he was dressed like a peon. “I speak,” he said. “This man an’ the girl say much thank you. You are good hombre.”

“Thanks,” Mooney said, “I was glad to do it. How do I get out of here?”

“No go.” The man shook his head. “This man, Don Pedro, he will seek you. Here you must wait…here.” He smiled. “He will not come. Here nobody will come.”

Tensleep squatted beside the fire. That was all right, for awhile, but he had no desire to remain in this canyon for long. He could guess that the gorge would be highly unsafe for anyone who tried to enter without permission of the Tarahumaras. But to get out?

“How about downstream?” He pointed to the southwest. “Is there a way?”

“Si, but it is long an’ ver’ difficult. But you wait. Later will be time enough.”

They brought him meat and beans, and he ate his fill for the first time in days. Squatting beside the fire he watched the Indians come and go, their dark, friendly eyes on his face, half-respectful, half-curious. The girl was telling them excitedly of all that happened, and from her excited gestures he could gather that the story of his facing down Don Pedro and his vaqueros was losing nothing in the telling.

For two days Mooney loitered in the gorge. Here and there along the walls were ledges where crops had been planted. Otherwise the Indios hunted, fished in the river, and went into the desert to find plants. Deeper in the canyon the growth was tropical. There were strange birds, jaguars, and tropical fruit. Once he descended with them, clear to the water’s edge. It was a red and muddy stream, thinning down now as the rainy season ended, yet from marks on the walls he could see evidence that roaring torrents had raged through here, and he could understand why the Indios suggested waiting.

“Indio,” he said suddenly on the third day, “I must go now. Ain’t no use my stayin’ here longer. I got to ride on.”

The Indian squatted on his heels and nodded. “Where you go now?”

“South.” He shrugged. “It ain’t healthy for me back to the north.”

“I see.” Indio scratched under his arm. “You are bueno hombre, Senor.” From his shirt pocket he took a piece of paper on which an address had been crudely lettered. “Thees rancho,” he said, “you go to there. Thees woman, she is Indio, like me. She ver’…ver’…how you say? Rico?”

“Yeah, I get you.” Mooney shrugged. “All I want is a chance to lay around out of sight an’ work a little for my grub. Enough to keep me goin’ until I go back north.” He rubbed his jaw. “Later, if I can get some cash I might go to Vera Cruz and take a boat for New Orleans, then back to Wyomin’. Yeah, that would be best.”

Indio questioned him, and he explained, drawing a map in the dirt. The Indian nodded, grasping the idea quickly. He seemed one of the few who had been outside of the canyon for any length of time. He had, he said, worked for this woman to whom Mooney was to go. She was no longer young, but she was very wise, and her husband dead. Most of those who worked for her were Tarahumaras.

They left at daybreak, and the girl came to the door of the house-cave to motion to him. When he entered, the old Indian lay on the floor on a heap of skins and blankets. He smiled and held up a hand whose grip was surprisingly strong, and he spoke rapidly, then said something to the girl. When she came up to Mooney she held in her hands a skin-wrapped object that was unusually heavy. It was, Mooney gathered, a present. Awkwardly, he thanked them, then came out and mounted.

Once more his pack was rounded and full. Plenty of beans, some jerky, and some other things the Indians brought for him. All gathered together on the ledge to wave good-bye. Indio led him down a steep path, then into a branch canyon, and finally they started up.

It was daylight again before they reached the rancho for which they had started, and they had travelled nearly all day and night. Lost in the chaparral, Tensleep was astonished to suddenly emerge into green fields of cotton, beyond them were other fields, and some extensive orchards. And then to the wall-enclosed rancho itself.

The old woman had evidently been apprised of his coming, for she stood on the edge of the patio to receive him. She was short, like the other women of her people, but there was something regal in her bearing that impressed Mooney.

“How do you do?” she said, then smiled at his surprise. “Yes, I speak the English, although not well.” Later, when he was bathed and shaved, he walked into the wide old room where she sat and she told him that when fourteen, she had been adopted by the Spanish woman who had lived here before her. She had been educated at home, then at school, and finally had married a young Mexican. He died when he was fifty, but she had stayed on at the ranch, godmother to her tribe.

Uneasily, Mooney glanced through the wide door at the long table that had been set in an adjoining room. “I ain’t much on society, ma’am,” he said. “I reckon I’ve lived in cow camps too long, among men-folks.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “There will come someone tonight whom I wish you to meet. Soon he goes north, over the old Smuggler’s Crossing into the Chisos Mountains beyond the Rio Grande, and then to San Antonio. You can go with him, and so to your own country.”

Suddenly, she started to talk to him of cattle and of Wyoming and Montana. Startled, he answered her questions and described the country. She must have been sixty at least, although Tarahumara women, he had noticed, rarely looked anywhere near their true ages, preserving their youth until very old. She seemed sharp and well informed, and he gathered that she owned a ranch in Texas, and was thinking of sending a herd over the trail to Wyoming.

Suddenly, she turned on him. “Señor, you are a kind man. You are also a courageous one. You seem to know much of cattle and of your homeland. We of the Tarahumara do not forget quickly, but that does not matter now. You will take my herd north. You will settle it on land in Wyoming, buying what you need, you will be foreman of my ranch there.”

Mooney was stunned. He started to protest, then relaxed. Why should he protest? He was a cattleman, she was a shrewd and intelligent woman. Behind her questioning there had been a lot of good sense, and certainly, it was a windfall for him. At twenty-seven he had nothing but his saddle, a horse and a burro—and experience.

“I am not a fool, señor,” she said abruptly. “You know cattle, you know men. You have courage and consideration. Also, you know your own country best. There is much riches in cattle, but the grass of the northland fattens them best. This is good for you, I know that. It is also good for me. Who else do I know who knows your land of grass and snow?”

When he gathered his things together, she saw the skin-wrapped package. Taking it in her graceful brown fingers she cut the threads and lifted from the skin an image, not quite six inches high, of solid gold.

Mooney stared at it. Now where did those Indians get anything like that?

“From the caves,” she told him when he spoke his thought. “For years we find them. Sometimes one here, sometimes one there. Perhaps at one time they were all together, somewhere. It is Aztec, I think, or Toltec. One does not know. It is ver’ rich, this thing.”

When dinner was over he stood on the edge of the patio with Juan Cabrizo. He was a slim, wiry young man with a hard, handsome face. “She is shrewd, the Old One,” he said. “She makes money! She makes it like that!” He snapped his fingers. “I work for her as my father worked for old Aguila, who adopted her. She was ver’ beautiful as a young girl.” His eyes slanted toward Mooney. “This Don Pedro? You must be careful, si? Ver’ careful. He is a proud and angry man. I think he knows where you are.”

At daybreak they rode northeast, and Cabrizo led the way, winding through canyons, coming suddenly upon saddles, crossing ranges into long empty valleys. For two days they rode, and on the second night as they sat by a carefully shielded fire, Mooney nodded at it, “Is that necessary? You think this Don Pedro might come this far?”

Cabrizo shrugged. “I think only the Rio Grande will stop him. He is a man who knows how to hate, amigo, and you have faced him down before his vaqueros. For this he must have your heart.”

There were miles of sun and riding, miles when the sweat soaked his shirt and the dust caked his face and rimmed his eyes. And then there was a cantina at Santa Teresa.

Juan lifted a glass to him at the bar of the cantina. “Soon, señor, tomorrow perhaps, you will cross into your own country! To a happy homecoming!”

Tensleep Mooney looked at his glass, then tossed it off. It was taking a chance, going back into Texas, but still, he had crossed the border from Arizona, and they no doubt would not guess he was anywhere around. Moreover, he had crossed as an outlaw, now he returned as a master of three thousand head of cattle.

“Señor!” Cabrizo hissed. “Have a care! It is he!”

Tensleep Mooney turned slowly. Don Pedro had come in the door and with him were four men.

Mooney put down his glass and stepped swiftly around the table. Don Pedro turned to face him, squinting his eyes in the bright light. And then the barrel of Mooney’s gun touched his belt and he froze, instantly aware. “You’re a long ways from home, Don Pedro,” he said. “You chasin’ another Indian?”

“No, señor,” Don Pedro’s eyes flashed. “I chase you! And now I have caught you.”

“Or I’ve caught you. Which does it look like?”

“I have fifty men!”

“An’ if they make one move, you also have, like I warned you before, a bellyful of lead.”

Don Pedro stood still, raging at his helplessness. His men stood around, not daring to move. “Perhaps you are right,” he admitted coldly. “Because I am not so skillful with the gun as you.”

“You have another weapon?”

“I?” Don Pedro laughed. “I like the knife, señor. I wish I could have you here with the knife, alone!”

Tensleep chuckled suddenly, the old lust for battle rising in his throat like a strong wine, stirring in his veins. “Why, sure! Tell your men we will fight here, with the knife. If I win, I am to go free.”

Don Pedro stared at him, incredulous. “You would dare, señor?”

“Will they obey you? Is your word good?”

“My word?” Don Pedro’s nostrils flared. “Will they obey me?” He wheeled on them, and in a torrent of Spanish told them what they would do.

Cabrizo said, “He tells them, amigo. He tells them true, but this you must not. It is a way you would die.”

Coolly, Mooney shucked his gun belts and placed them on the bar beside Cabrizo. Then from a scabbard inside his belt he drew his bowie knife. “The gent that first used this knife,” he said, “killed eight men with it without gettin’ out of bed where he was sick. I reckon I can slit the gullet of one man!”

Don Pedro was tall, he was lean and wiry as a whip, and he moved across the floor like a dancer. Mooney grinned and his slate-gray eyes danced with a hard light.

Pedro stepped in quickly, light glancing off his knife blade, stepped in, then thrust! And Mooney caught the blade with his own bowie and turned it aside. Pedro tried again, and Mooney again caught the blade and they stood chest to chest, their knives crossed at the guard. Mooney laughed suddenly and exerting all the power in his big, work-hardened shoulders, thrust the Mexican away from him. Pedro staggered back, then fell to a sitting position.

Furious, he leaped to his feet and lunged, blind with rage. Mooney side-stepped, slipped, and hit the floor on his shoulder. Pedro sprang at him but Mooney came up on one hand and stabbed up. He felt the knife strike, felt it slide open in the stomach of Don Pedro, and then for one long minute their eyes held. Not a foot apart, Don Pedro’s whole weight on the haft of Mooney’s knife. “Bueno!” Don Pedro said hoarsely. “As God wills!” Slowly, horribly, he turned his eyes toward his men. “Go home!” he said in Spanish. “Go home to my brother. It was my word!”

Carefully, Tensleep Mooney lowered the body to the floor and withdrew the knife. Already the man was dead. “What kind of cussedness is it,” he said, “that gets into a man? He had nerve enough.” But remembering the Indian, he could find no honest regret for Pedro, only that this had happened.

“Come, amigo,” Cabrizo said softly, “it is better we go. It is a long ride to Wyoming, no?”

“A long ride,” Tensleep Mooney agreed, “an’ I’ll be glad to get home.”