HAWK HAD RUN most of the way up the steep road, pacing himself, keeping to the balls of his feet to make a minimum of noise. It was some five miles, Hawk judged, before the road began to level off and the canyon to widen. Here the sun was warmer, not blocked by the towering canyon rims. And here he came to a walk. Clumps of mountain sage and thick growths of pines could conceal an ambusher.
At a long bend in the road he suddenly glimpsed three men huddled in some junipers twenty yards south of the road. He pulled up, staring. Two of the men were seated on the ground, the third kneeling. It took Hawk a minute to figure out that they were playing cards on a blanket. One of them laughed, made some ribald remark, then drank deeply from a jug. Beyond the men in the trees, three horses were tied.
Quickly, Hawk gauged the wind, found it in his face and sighed with relief. Making sure he kept downwind from the horses, he pressed his body against the canyon wall opposite the one where the card players crouched. He crept through wild heather toward some buildings he could see in the distance. Years of experience enabled him to move so that hardly a twig was stirred by his heavy shoulders.
He had gone some seventy-five yards when a distant thud of hoofbeats reached him. A horse was up canyon from the portal, not at a gallop because of the steep stretches of caprock, which provided treacherous footing. The rider came at a fast walk.
Hawk pressed deeper into the undergrowth and glanced back. The three men had also heard the rider. They hastily swept up their cards, whisked the blanket out of sight, and kicked the corked jug into the brush. They reached the road, rifles at the ready as Thomas Spate appeared on a lathered horse. Although it was too far to see the yellow eyes, Hawk knew they were filled with rage. His voice reflected it.
Spate drew rein. “Seen anybody?” he demanded of a thin-faced man. And when the man shook his head, Spate snarled, “Damn it, Teale, you let somebody get past you!”
“Not us, Colonel,” Teale answered.
Spate leaned over, his face close to that of a tall bearded man. “Burke, what the hell have you been drinking?”
“Not a damn thing, Colonel—”
Spate straightened in the saddle. “Never mind for now.” He looked around at the trees and the tangle of brush that sprouted from the base of each sheer canyon wall. “With any luck, the bastard is between here and the gates. But how the hell I ever missed him—”
“Who you huntin’, Colonel?” asked Teale. Spate told them, and the men exchanged startled glances.
“Seems they never hung him after all,” muttered the bearded Amos Burke, clutching his rifle and peering at the brush clumps.
“You three go down canyon,” Spate ordered. “Search every possible hiding place. And this time, do a job. If you let him get past you, it’ll be your necks.”
The men ran for their horses and Spate spurred his sweated mount on toward the largest of the buildings in the compound, yelling for Kyle Keegan.
Hawk could barely hear Spate’s voice over the roar of a creek that tumbled down from the heights, then became placid as it curved across flat lands where cattle grazed.
As he crept forward he spotted two females walking along a footpath through the pines. One, a redhead with a saucy swing of hips, was talking to a sullen brunette.
Hopefully, he moved up as close as he dared, rifle in hand, heavy revolver bumping his thigh. He accidentally stepped on a dry stick. The redhead whirled. “What was that, Trudy?”
But by that time Kyle Keegan was bellowing from the porch of the big house across the clearing.
“I don’t like it,” moaned Trudy, looking at a smaller house set deep in the pines. “Stealin’ cattle is one thing. Stealin’ a woman is risky—”
“Never should’ve brung her here,” Meg said, and turned to stare at a log house set apart from other buildings.
As the girls hurried away, Hawk wheeled toward the small house, sensing that it was where Amalie Hitchburn was being held.
By now the clamor from the main house had increased. Men were hurrying in that direction. Somebody began beating on a triangle.
Running now, Hawk counted on the trees for partial cover. If somebody spotted him he’d have to start shooting. He reached the rear of the house, saw a window open. He threw a long leg over the sill, climbed into a small room. It was furnished with chest of drawers and canopied bed, this piece of furniture surprising in such an outpost.
There was a woman’s blue wrapper across the back of a chair, a scent of rosewater in the air. He heard horses in the distance, apparently heading down canyon. A man was yelling orders. He thought it sounded like the colonel, but he couldn’t be sure. His main objective now was Mrs. Hitchburn.
Hearing footsteps approach the bedroom door, he stepped quickly to the wall. The door opened and in the opening was Mrs. Ralph Hitchburn, prettier than in the faded daguerreotype he carried in his shirt pocket.
As she stared out of shocked blue eyes, he whispered, “I’ve come to rescue you, Mrs. Hitchburn.” Her mouth was pink, the lower lip pushed out and trembling.
“Who are you?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“It doesn’t matter. I made a bargain with your husband—”
“My … my husband sent you?”
He nodded. “Can you ride a horse?”
“Yes, but—” Her pale yellow hair, unbound, fell to her waist. No wonder Hitchburn wanted her back, Hawk thought. Such a wife would be an asset to a man with ambition.
“We’ll have to steal horses and try to get out the north passage,” he said. She just stood there staring at him out of wide eyes, and he shook her by the arm.
From nearby came a shout, the sounds of a hard-ridden horse. Valuable time was being wasted. Through the front window he glimpsed men on foot running along a path. It was too late for daylight escape, he told her quickly. “Is there someplace I can hide?”
“Go away,” she said, her voice tight with strain.
“How often do they come to the house?” he demanded quietly.
“I … I wish you’d leave—” Even then he should have guessed it. But he didn’t, attributing her confusion to fear. Shouts and the sounds of men running were closer now. They were running not toward the house, but away from it.
“You think they’ll search here?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she faltered. “I … I’ll go to the porch to see if anyone’s coming this way—”
“No you don’t.” Something in her voice alerted him, but it was too late. She suddenly spun around and raced to the front door.
“You’d better leave, whoever you are,” she said in a shaking voice. “This is your chance.”
And in that moment Colonel Thomas Spate, teeth gleaming through the trimmed beard, lightly vaulted the veranda rail and appeared in the doorway behind Amalie Hitchburn.
“Amalie, I came to warn you—” Spate began.
“Stand aside, Mrs. Hitchburn!” Hawk cried. But she stood rigid in the doorway, her body a shield for Spate. When Spate saw Hawk for the first time, he ducked low.
Amalie gave a strangled sound of relief. “Tom, I’m so glad—”
Hawk leveled the rifle and stepped to the small parlor. All the old hatreds, the brutal memories surged through him.
But Spate had solidified his position by hooking a long left arm about Amalie’s waist. He pulled her tight against him.
“Drop your rifle, Hawk,” he ordered.
“And if I don’t?”
“There’ll be a dead woman on your conscience.”
The girl stiffened. Pressed against her skull was a .38, the barrel deep in the mass of golden hair. She made a whimpering sound of fear.
“Tom, you don’t mean—”
Hawk knew he had blundered badly. Even though the years between Amalie and her husband indicated that theirs had been no mad love affair, he had assumed the girl would want to return home. That she might acquire a fondness for Tom Spate had not occurred to him.
“I’ll count to three, Hawk,” Spate said in the quiet room. Outside in the distance horses pounded and men shouted. When Hawk hesitated, Spate added, “You know I mean it.”
Hawk nodded. “It won’t be the first woman you’ve killed.”
Amalie gave a small cry of terror and tried to twist around to stare incredulously at Spate. But she was powerless to move in his grasp. “Tom, you’d kill me?”
“Don’t be a little fool,” Spate snapped irritably.
“My God, it’s not like you, Tom!”
Spate said, “Well, Hawk!” Then he laughed as if he could see inside Hawk’s mind. “Sure, maybe you can snap off a shot and hit me. But I swear to God her brains’ll be on the floor the instant you touch that trigger.”
“Please, Tom … no!” Amalie shuddered.
“One … two …” Spate began to count.
Amalie started to sag, her eyes rolled back in her head. Before she could fall and expose him, Spate tightened his arm. Hawk glanced at the unconscious girl with hair spilled across her pale face. Crouched at her back, only a wedge of his face showing as possible target, was the man he had hated for so long.
“I’ll kill her,” Colonel Spate said again. “I’ve never bluffed, have I?”
Hawk had to admit the truth. “No, you haven’t.”
He started backing slowly, feeling his way into the bedroom. “I’m going out the window. If you shift that gun from her head to me I’ll have you, Spate.”
“Now who’s bluffing?” Spate’s laughter was cold. He raised his voice. “In here!” he shouted. “Surround the house!”
The bearded face was grinning. “I won’t kill her, no. Not unless you force it. But you’re dead, Hawk.”
Spate taunted him as sounds of men running toward the house could be heard. Somebody shouted, “It’s the colonel!”
Hawk knew he was beaten. Someone was entering the house by the same bedroom window he had used. He tensed, knowing if he whirled to face the new menace Spate would withdraw the revolver from Amalie’s head and shoot him in the back.
Spate laughed. “You didn’t count on true love.”
“The girl’s a damned fool,” Hawk hissed, aware of soft footsteps at his back.
“So was Lila, if you recall.”
Spate’s calculated remark brought an icy chill to Hawk’s spine as he remembered the terrible way the lovely spy had died at the colonel’s hand.
Hawk lunged without thinking, inflamed by old memories. As the yellowish eyes tightened, he sensed he had gone too far, that Spate would actually murder the girl. But he didn’t.
Before Hawk could reach him he was aware of swift movement at his back. And then something smashed against the base of his skull. It was as if gunpowder had exploded inside his head. In one instant he was engulfed with blinding white light, the next, absorbed into complete and soundless darkness.
Spate dropped Amalie onto a sofa. The man who had struck Hawk down with the long barrel of a revolver stared at the crumpled figure face down on a rag rug. A trickle of blood oozed from Hawk’s thick black hair and down the back of his neck.
“Is he dead?” the man, Clyde Birnham, wondered.
“He will be soon,” Spate answered savagely. He turned from Amalie, who was beginning to stir on the sofa.
Kyle Keegan stormed into the house, rage twisting the large round face with its broken nose, the shaggy brows above small and murderous eyes. Keegan waved a .44 as he came to stand over Hawk.
“This son of a bitch has cost us,” Keegan said angrily. He aimed the .44 at the bloodspot on the back of Hawk’s neck.
Spate knocked the arm aside as the gun crashed in the small room. A bullet fired into the ceiling.
“I don’t want an easy death for this one!” Spate clung to Keegan’s thick forearm.
Keegan glared, then pulled free. “Mebby it’s time you learned it ain’t always what you want!”
“In this case, I’ll have my own way!” Their eyes held while Keegan, chest heaving, swung the revolver to cover Spate. Spate did not flinch. “You’ll never get one nickel out of Hitchburn for that female.”
“Don’t be too damned sure.” Keegan’s voice shook.
“You know how to steal cattle and horses and rob a mine. But kidnapping a woman is new. You need me.”
Keegan debated inwardly, then lowered the gun. He glared first at Hawk, unmoving on the floor, and then at Amalie. The girl sat up, pale and frightened, long hair loose about her shoulders.
Spate said, “Hawk has killed some of our best men. If he dies in a horrible way, it’ll impress the rest of the boys. Burke had whiskey on his breath. He and the other two let Hawk slip past them. They need a lesson!”
“Teale was with Burke,” said Keegan softly; Teale was one of Spate’s favorites.
“I know. We’ll take a rope end to the three of them. Let Mrs. Hitchburn watch. It’ll prove to her that we mean business.” He shifted his gaze to Amalie, who looked at him out of shocked blue eyes.
“A whippin’ is for women who don’t behave,” Keegan said. “I’ll figure punishment for them three.”
Before Spate could reply, Keegan lumbered from the house, holstering his .44 with Birnham, a squat, powerful man, ambling along in his wake.
Amalie’s lips shook. Spate was glaring at Keegan’s back. She said, “You’d let him beat me?”
He wheeled on her. “Keep a grip on your nerves. Don’t go into hysterics and you’ll be safe enough.”
“I thought you … cared for me, Tom.”
“We’ll discuss it later.” He went out and got Meg and gave her a pistol. She was to stay with Amalie and guard her. “If you let her get away,” Spate warned, “I’ll break your spine.”
Meg fingered the small revolver, then looked up at Spate and said what had been on her mind since Amalie had been brought here. “How much’re you asking for her?”
Of all the members of the gang only Spate and Keegan knew the amount of ransom. They had agreed that news of half a million dollars might cause some men to start making desperate plans.
“Whatever we can get,” he said, looking down into her freckled face. “Twenty thousand, if we’re lucky.” If he hadn’t had other things on his mind, he would have back-handed her for the insolent question,
Spate whistled up two of the men who entered the house just as Amalie began walking on shaky legs to the bedroom. She closed the door.
He ordered the two men to carry Hawk to a basement under the headquarters building. Two cells cut into the cliff were already occupied by the three men who had been playing cards and drinking while Hawk had got into the camp.
Hawk was thrown on the floor of the cellar, a room over ten feet square with a stout iron-bound door and one window covered with heavy bars.
Keegan had come to the doorway. “Think he’ll die from that smash on the head?”
“Not that one,” Spate said confidently. “It’ll take more than that to kill him.”
Keegan had calmed since the outburst at Amalie’s quarters. “What happens to the woman now?”
“What I always intended,” Spate said shortly. “Get money for her hide. Or see her dead.”
Keegan eyed him a moment, then said, “You’re a cold-hearted bastard.”
Spate agreed. “That’s why I survived the war and the years after. And remember this, Kyle. Without me you’d be in prison by now. Or hanged.”
Keegan started to bluster, then got a grip on his temper. Several times recently Spate had made similar remarks. But by holding himself in, Keegan was able to assure himself of getting the half million in gold that would be collected for Amalie Hitchburn. And beside the mound of gold coins he imagined the dead body of Colonel Thomas Spate.
Forcing a grin, Keegan said, “Whatever you say.”
“I’ll want a small steer butchered,” Spate was ordering. “And I’ll have the blacksmith fashion some short spikes. I’ll have to show him what I’ll need.”
“Spikes for what?” Keegan asked.
“The death cage,” Spate said, and the two men left the small cell-like basement. The heavy door was slammed shut and secured with a large padlock.