The sun was coming up bright and warm when Sam Lacey topped the same grassy knoll he had watched the Frank cabin from eight hours before. Only now, there wasn’t much of a cabin. Or much of anything, except some black smoke ... and bodies. Lots of bodies.
Even from a distance, Sam could see scattered limbs from broken, torn corpses. One of those dead men might be Cort, he realized. Sam had stopped first at the cave, hoping to find his brother there. But no luck. If Cort was anywhere, he had to be here at the Frank place—or celestial parts unknown.
Once day reached the high part of afternoon, death would smell as ghastly as it looked. Even now it was none too good. Sam’s horse needed a lot of encouragement before he’d head down toward the stench of dead human flesh.
Sam wasn’t conscious of how brash he was acting. A cautious, careful man was what he had always been, but now he threw caution to the wind. It didn’t seem to enter his mind that Cliffords might station men behind the rubble to pick off riders from the Five Fingers. His only concern was Cort, and so he rode on, straining to hear the suggestion of his life—his brother’s life—among all this ruin.
He heard nothing.
“Must be dead,” he whispered to himself. But his own whisper made him nervous. He had hoped against hope that he’d find his brother alive, only he was unable to believe anyone could be living in this gunman’s graveyard.
“There isn’t a bird in sight—though vultures ought to be showing up soon enough.” When the full impact of this idea came home to him, he shuddered. Best to find Cort and bury him in the cave, he figured.
After finding his brother’s dun along with ten Double C mounts, he was completely certain that Cort was dead. So Sam Lacey got off his horse and went from corpse to corpse, trying to identify a body as his brother’s amid the blood and guts of what had once been men. Each time he turned over a body, he prayed it wasn’t Cort. And each time he turned over a body he prayed that it was Cort—at least then there would no further need to brush the flies off half-destroyed faces that looked back at him, begging him to close their eyes ... which he did. If only he might close Cort’s eyes and take him out of this hellish place. But where was Cort? Until he could find him, Sam had to hold his breath and tighten his stomach in order to continue the search.
Because Sam had known Cort’s battle plan, the shattered cabin seemed the least likely place to discover his brother. Finally, there was no other place to look.
The first thing to catch his eye was Big Al. He lay dead, clutching his belly, on what had been the parlor floor. Sweeping his gaze upward, Sam saw the upper torso of a man with some of his brains slipping down an open forehead. The lower part of the man’s body was crushed by a beam.
Sickened beyond belief, Sam turned away. It was then, in the shadow of a fallen piece of wall, that he saw the still form of his brother.
A crumpled heap and bleeding badly, Cort was in bad shape indeed. But he was alive. And Sam was astonished ... happily astonished.
“Rusty was right,” he said fervently to his unconscious kin, “you’re as tough as they come. I shoulda known you could do it. By God, I’ll try to keep you alive, boy. I just found me a brother I can believe in, and I don’t want to lose him.”
While Sam spoke, he worked feverishly to try and stop the bleeding in Cort’s leg. He bound Cort’s wound as best he could, which was none too well, and then slung his brother’s seemingly lifeless body over the back of the dun gelding. While clearly glad to see his old friend, the dun also sensed the nearness of his master’s death. With Cort on his back, the horse was impatient to be out of this place, but Sam had one more errand.
Before mounting up to lead his wounded brother to safety, he wiped out all traces of Cort’s blood. Whether Cort would live or die was up to God. Whether William Cliffords would enjoy life without knowing the stranger’s fate, was up to his fear of an unknown avenger.
Cliffords had sent Lou Harris to the Frank place about an hour after dawn. His scout returned at a gallop some three hours later.
Deep within the big ranch-house, out of sight of any windows, William Cliffords waited for the pale Harris to give his report.
“Spit it out!” Cliffords demanded.
“Boss,” Harris said defensively, “I already spit it out a couple of times. If I have to tell you everything I saw, I’m gonna have to spit it out again.”
Cliffords anxiety was eating away at him. “What happened at the Frank place, damn you, what happened?” he raged.
“Can I have a drink, Mr. Cliffords?” Harris pleaded.
“Okay, okay, have your whiskey—then talk!”
Instead of calming his nerves, the slug of Cliffords’ bonded scotch whiskey turned his stomach again. It was with the greatest of will power that Harris forced the swill in his throat back down to where it had come from. Then, steeling himself against another wave of sickness, Harris described the awful carnage.
“Every single one of ’em is dead. Boss ... some is blown to pieces ... I mean to pieces, boss. I could hardly recognize some of the boys—they were that bad. Boss ... ”
“Did you find the stranger’s body?” Cliffords heatedly interrupted.
“No sir, Mr. Cliffords, didn’t find hide nor hair of that galoot. I just can’t see how one gunny could do that to ten top men like Big Al and the others. They wasn’t no amateurs, neither. And this here stranger just ups and walks away. Why that man must be meaner than a rattler. If I was you, boss, after what I seen, and knowin’ about that warnin’ and all, why I’d dear outa’ here, pronto.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Harris, so keep your damn mouth shut! And get out! Now!”
Then as an afterthought, a moment before Harris stepped out of the house, Cliffords piped up loudly, “Fetch me Wilson and Nash.”
Men like Nash and Wilson, who worked gun wages and managed to stay healthy ’til their late twenties, were a mighty scarce breed of folk. It wasn’t that they were any tougher or faster than other hired guns, they were just a whole lot smarter.
Cliffords noted that Wilson and Nash hadn’t volunteered to go along with Big Al on last night’s mission of death. “Could be they know real trouble when they see it. Men that’ve been around like those two might be of some real use,” Cliffords reasoned.
“You send for us, Mr. Cliffords?” the tall, skinny one asked easily as he and his partner, Nash, stood in the foyer.
“Yes, I did boys,” Cliffords answered cordially. “Take yourselves a drink and sit down. I want to talk something over with the two of you.”
Nash, a husky man who seldom smiled, threw down a shot of whiskey and asked with a touch of derision, “You wouldn’t be worried about that stranger now would you?”
Cliffords stiffened, but otherwise ignored the caustic edge of Nash’s jibe.
How easy it is to lose respect among men when all you do to earn it is grease palms with double eagles. “As a matter of fact,” the Double C owner said with nonchalance, “the stranger is the subject I had in mind. You boys saw him yesterday at the Frank place when you were with me ... ”
Nash coughed. Wilson looked down at the floor.
“ ... and I take it you know what happened to the men who were supposed to kill the stranger. Okay, he’s tough.
“For a special fee—a very special fee—would you two hombres take the job Big Al bungled?” he asked haughtily, but unable, nonetheless, to hide the element of pleading in his voice.
“No thanks,” Wilson said earnestly. Nash nodded in agreement with his partner.
“All right, you fellers have been around, seen a lot, know a lot—what do you think it would take to get rid of this damn saddle-bum?”
“First thing you better realize Mr. Cliffords,” Nash said tightly, “is that this feller who’s huntin’ your ass right now ain’t no kind of saddle-bum.”
Wilson cut in before Nash’s big mouth lost them both their easy money jobs. “That’s right, the stranger has got to be one of the best. No way his moniker is Dan Evans. If it was, we’d surely have known his name long before this. Well, whoever he is, it seems to me that huntin’ a wolf with sheep ain’t gonna get you much in the way of results. What you need, Mr. Cliffords, is a wolf of your own. Now, Nash and me, we know a guy down in the Tonto Basin who’s more wolf than man. He could hunt this stranger down, no sweat. We seen him work, and he’s as good as they come ... a genuine hunter and killer of men. But he don’t work cheap.”
“I’ll worry about the money,” Cliffords said. “What’s this man’s name and can you get him here quick?”
“Goes by the handle of Wassin,” Wilson responded.
“We’d have him here in three, four days’ time if you sent us right off to get him. Wouldn’t we Nash?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s his usual price for a job like this?” Cliffords questioned Wilson.
“Be somewheres around five thousand. Ain’t that right, Nash?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Get this man Wassin. Tell him about the stranger and tell him I’ll meet his price. Get him here as fast as you can. Take whatever you need for the trip to the Basin. I’ll expect you back with this wolf of yours within a week.”
Wilson started to leave but his partner didn’t move. He seemed to be mulling something over in his mind.
“Is there something you want to say?” Cliffords asked Nash.
“Yeah, but I’ll let it ride for now.” And then he turned on his heel and walked out ahead of Wilson.
Cliffords was puzzled by Nash’s parting comment, only it didn’t seem so very important. It certainly wasn’t as important as Cliffords self-congratulations. Yes, he had been right ... these two men had been of use. Their knowledge was valuable. He would’ve never known of this man Wassin.
Outside the house, though, there was a bit of knowledge Cliffords should have also known ...
“When we walked out of there, was you holdin’ back what I thought you was holdin’ back?” Wilson asked his friend Nash.
“Sure. Cliffords is a yellow-bellied scum and it shames me sometimes to take his money.”
“But you take it.”
“Yeah, I take it, only I can’t help likin’ that stranger for makin’ Cliffords squirm. If there was some other place payin’ gun wages, I’d be gone before you could tighten the cinch of your saddle.”
“I guess I’d go with you, Nash. I feel the same way. Too bad Wassin’ll get rid of the stranger. Sure will hate to see Cliffords off the hook.”
Nash nodded his silent agreement.