It didn’t work. There was no way to ask at the breakfast table which one of the ladies present might have crept into bed with him the night before. Even the hired help acted as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. Only one of them looked chubby enough as she served the flapjacks. The pretty landlady at the head of the table looked too slender. Sister Bertha, across from him, looked a mite more qualified and didn’t seem to want to meet his eye. On the other hand she acted shy with everyone, and didn’t seem as well rounded as he fondly remembered. The trouble with that was that none of ’em looked, fully dressed, the way they might feel, and there was no way a man could steal even a little feel in mixed company.
After breakfast Stringer caught the chastized Willy the Death alone in the garden, weeding on his hands and knees. Stringer hunkered down beside him and yanked a sprouting chickweed as he said, “Don’t look so glum, old pard. At least you got milk and a sandwich to sleep on, right?”
The kid scowled and said, “That’ll be the day. When my mom sends me to bed with no supper, she means it, and as soon as I get big enough, I’m going to run off and join the Apache!”
Stringer said he felt sure the little rascal would make a fine Apache, and stood up with a puzzled frown. Then he shrugged and let himself out the gate, muttering, “Perfidity, thy name is woman.”
He headed for the center of town, meaning to ask directions to the county courthouse. Then he spotted a newspaper establishment across the street and went over to see if he could save some time. Small-town newspapers only kept newsworthy items in their morgues. Pawing through dusty county records could get tedious unless one really cared about the births, deaths, marriages, and such of all sorts of uninteresting strangers.
As he entered, a bell above the door tinkled and an old gent wearing glasses and a smudge of printer’s ink came out from the press room to ask what Stringer wanted. He looked disgusted to learn Stringer didn’t want to place an ad, and dubious when Stringer told him who he was.
The old man said, “I have read and admired features written by Stringer MacKail. You can’t be him. He writes literate.”
Stringer smiled sheepishly and said, “I majored in writing, not oration. You talk sort of cow yourself, no offense, and I imagine you still spell most of the words right when you stick a galley.”
The old man cocked an eyebrow at the newspaper jargon. Then he said, “My devil talks about cowboys too. I wish I knew where the hell he is this morning. Can you stick type, or are you just showing off, son?”
Stringer said, “The Sun uses union-set linotype these days, but I reckon I’ve worked on a few more modest papers in my time.”
The old man said, “We’ll see about that. Come on back and give me a hand. If you don’t make too much pie, I might let you look through my morgue once we get this damned issue out.”
Stringer followed him back to the press room. It was a typical small-town layout. There were Edison bulbs hanging above the work table, but the one press was an old hand-cranked antique. The old man handed Stringer a sheet of foolscap covered with handwriting or chicken tracks, depending on whether one held Palmer Penmanship in esteem, and said, “Stick this. Don’t galley it until I see how you mind your P’s and Q’s.”
Stringer hung up his hat and jacket, stepped over to the case table, and picked up an empty stick, muttering, “P’s and Q’s, for God’s sake.”
The partitioned wooden type trays, or cases, were set at a handy slant. Capital-letter type was stored in the harder-to-reach upper case. The more frequently used small letters were, of course, in the handier lower case. Stringer held the composing stick, which was really more like a flat metal box with a sliding margin block, in his left hand as he picked type with his right. Reading the handwritten copy, he stuck, not set, the type upside down and backward with the top line at the bottom of his stick. The old saw about P’s and Q’s derived from the simple fact that a lower-case P could be mistaken for Q, reading it backward, and vice versa. Stories about the notion deriving from Pints and Quarts or Peeps and Quacks had actually appeared in print, stuck by printers who surely should have known better.
The copy Stringer was sticking was a news item about a record head of lettuce grown by a local lady gardener with plenty of time, water, and the Arizona sun to work with. When he’d filled the stick, Stringer showed it to the old man, who’d been working on another item, of course. The old man examined his work, said, “Galley it,” and added, grudgingly, “You can call me Tim, Stringer.”
They got on even better after Stringer set, not stuck, the paragraph in the flat cast-iron frame, or galley, on a nearby table without spilling the type. As they worked side by side, old Tim was willing to talk more, now that he knew they were both old pros. Neither was distracted by discussing other subjects as they stuck from copy, because while both stuck at about the rate of a slow typist, reading that slow left plenty of time for thinking about other matters.
Stringer was glad he’d come, despite the ink he was getting on his left thumb because the missing devil was apparently a slob who broke type without cleaning it good before putting it back in the cases. Old Tim was a font of local information, and being an old timer in the territory, remembered lots of things that might not have been in any morgue. Papers only kept what they’d once published, and a lot of details hadn’t seemed important enough at the time.
By the time he’d helped the old man put the edition to bed, or had all the type bedded down in the galleys for the press to run off one at a time, he’d learned more minor details of the Pleasant Valley War and Sheriff Owens’s career in general than Sam Barca would have let him run, even if it had sounded more interesting. Old Tim didn’t make a liar out of anyone he didn’t already have down as a sneak. So as they washed up with naphtha and soft soap at a corner sink, Stringer said, “Whether it was John Tewksbury Junior or Indian John himself that got shot on his way to the creek for water, seems less important now than it might have years ago. The point is that all the Tewksbury and Graham boys wound up dead or scattered to parts unknown, right?”
Old Tim shook his head and said, “Wrong. Old Ed Tewksbury lives right here in Globe. Or he did the last time I saw him. He’s not just getting on in years, he’s been sick a spell.”
Stringer started to ask which Tewksbury they were talking about. Then he nodded and said, “You mean the one they called Big Ed? I thought Sheriff Owens arrested him years ago for murder.”
The older man said, “He sure did. He was suspected of killing Tom Graham, among others. They couldn’t hold him up in Navajo County though. The higher court held it was an unlawsome arrest. Owens had no real jurisdiction over Pleasant Valley matters, bad as they got. Big Ed knew better than to ever go back there once they had to let him go. He did better down this way, where he belonged. Served as a town deputy a few years back as a matter of fact. Reckon he reformed, whether he was a killer in his wild west days or not.”
Stringer whistled and asked if Jim had the old gun slick’s address. Old Tim said he didn’t, but that it would surely be in the city directory. He had one handy, and it was. As Stringer was writing it down he asked what old Tim might know about the mysterious Sol Barth. The old timer frowned, said he’d heard the name but couldn’t place it, and asked if Stringer had time for a beer.
Stringer didn’t. He’d spent close to three hours getting to know old Tim and this part of Arizona Territory better. So they parted friendly, and he legged it up to the current residence of Big Ed Tewksbury, assuming he was still there.
He was, seated on his porch in a rocker with a blanket over his lap, even though it was pushing high noon and felt like it. It was easy to see why he’d been called Big Ed in his day. He was a ruined giant with the features of his Indian mother and the rangy build of the Anglo-Saxon Indian John. Stringer introduced himself and told the sickly-looking old timer why he’d come to interview him, slanting the story some to avoid insulting an elder who’d once been tamed considerable by the true object of Sam Barca’s esteem.
The last of the Tewksburys was soft spoken, friendly enough, and sort of embarrassed by his eventful past. He said, “I’d like to think we’d lived all that feuding and fussing down, son. It was our elders who started the feud in the first damn place, and anyone here in Globe can tell you I’ve lived decent and peaceful a good ten years or more. It’s not true that me and Johnny Rhodes bushwacked the last of the Grahams. That tale about Tom Graham saying we was his killers as he lay dying was a spiteful lie, either by a man who hated ferocious enough to lie as he lay dying, or by an overly-eager sheriff who couldn’t tell where county lines might run. Rhodes proved in open court he had a perfect alibi for the time they say Tom Graham was bushwacked. I didn’t, I’ll allow. But here I am. So let’s say no more about it.”
Stringer said soothingly, “I reckon a lot of the gossip both sides were subjected to must have vexed you some. Do you know a man in Saint John’s called Sol Barth?”
Big Ed rocked back and forth as he gathered his memories together before he nodded and said, “Sure. Mexican Sol. Owned a general store, and just about everything else in Saint John’s by the time he was through. Married into a big Mex family and sided with ’em against everyone else. What about him?”
Stringer said, “He says he’s looking for me. Or, that is, he says I might know something about two gun slicks he used to have working for him.”
Big Ed shot him a canny look and asked, “Since you say they was gun slicks, I don’t reckon I want to know how come they ain’t on his payroll no more. Was they Mex?”
Stringer shook his head and said, “Both Anglo. Both sort of old timers as well.”
Big Ed frowned and said, “That don’t sound like Mexican Sol. I can’t say for sure he’s still in Saint John’s. I ain’t been up that way in years, and never spoke to the son of a bitch when I was there. He didn’t have many Anglo pals. It was one of the few things me and even Pear Owens agreed on. Barth is, or was, a moody hard-to-get-along with cuss.”
“Was he an enemy of Sheriff Owens as well?”
“Enemy might be too strong a word. I know Pear warned Barth to keep his Mex friends in line, more than once. Whether we was picking on them or they was picking on us depends on who recalls what, from which dance that turned into a free-for-all. Owens had to save many a Mex from an Anglo lynch mob, and vice versa when they come after one of our boys with a rope. I don’t recall Pear ever arresting Barth whilst the country up yonder was all one big county. It got quieter after Navajo County split off, with Holbrook as the county seat. I’d steer clear of Barth and old Saint John’s if I was you, son. Both the town and old Barth is half Mex and unfriendly to strangers.”
Stringer said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Unless he’s inviting me to a showdown by public telegraph wire, he wired here crazy as hell. Do you know a deputy called Ed Nolan, Big Ed?”
The old timer chuckled and said, “Ed is a common name for deputies in these parts. Can’t say Nolan means much to me. But it’s been a spell since I packed a badge. What about him?”
“He says he doesn’t know Sol Barth either. Yet Sol Barth wired him about me, by name, asking what I might know about his missing gun slicks. I know he only told Nolan they were hired hands. But he must have known if I knew anything at all about them, I’d know he’d sent him after me. Does that make sense to you, sir?”
Big Ed Tewksbury said, “Nope, and I told you I didn’t want to hear about any recent feuding. I told you Sol Barth had always had a rap for acting odd as hell. So go ask him, or better yet, stay the hell away from him.”
Stringer said, “Saint John’s is out of my way home, and I don’t want to tire you, sir. So I’d like to ask you just one question about that range you once fought over, up in Pleasant Valley.”
The sickly giant scowled up at him and snapped, “That war’s been over for years. I’ve never been back. There’s a curse on that land. The devil led us all into blood and slaughter up that way, and the devil is welcome to it all.”
Stringer insisted, “Someone even meaner seems to be out to hog it, sir. You must have heard all the tales they tell about new settlers being driven off by haunts and worse. I’d like to hear a real Tewksbury offer an educated guess as to why things stayed so mysterious after both you and the Graham faction just packed it in and moved away.”
The last of the Tewksburys shrugged and said, “Some of us just got sensible, I reckon. There’s nothing up that way worth fighting that hard over. There never was. I’m ashamed to say now that it took both sides so long to see that. It ain’t like Arizona is crowded, you know, even today. There’s open range enough for one and all. None of it’s worth spilling blood for. It don’t rain all that much out here.”
Stringer nodded and said, “I noticed how fast the chaparral moves in when you graze Arizona hard. You’ve been mighty helpful, and I thank you, sir. One more question. Do you still hold a title to the water rights up yonder?”
Big Ed looked startled, laughed, and said, “Hell, no. That’s all federal land now. You could file on that water yourself, if you wanted to.”
Stringer said, “I don’t want to. Someone else doesn’t seem to want anyone else to either.”
So Big Ed asked, “Why don’t he just claim it for himself, then?”
And Stringer said, “I don’t know. I said it was crazy as hell.”
Stringer was coming out of the feed store across from the livery when Deputy Nolan caught up with him again. The somberly dressed Nolan nodded at the big sack of oats on Stringer’s left shoulder and said, “I see you’re really going.”
Stringer said, “I’m going north after sundown. First I got to go across the street and put this sack down. Unless they just cheated me, I’ve got forty pounds of oats here.”
As they crossed to the shady side together, Stringer explained, “Now that I know the trail, I mean to travel mostly at night, with more speed, comfort, and supplies. I’ll let you know if I see any haunts in the dark, or any candle stubs in mason jars if they get too close to me and mine.”
Nolan followed him into the tack room. As Stringer dropped the feed sack at one end of the long wooden saddle horse, Ed Nolan said, “I hear you just paid a call on old man Tewksbury.”
Stringer said, “I’d sure hate to have a secret vice in this old town. I’m not sure Big Ed is that old. But he sure looks sick as hell. Do you know what ails him?”
Nolan said, “Some say it’s a bum ticker and others say it’s a guilty conscience. Either way, the docs only give him a year or so more to live. What else did you two talk about?”
Stringer said, “Old wars and recent haunts, of course. He was unable to offer any sensible suggestions. He said no survivors on either side had any interest up that way now, and he pointed out another odd thing. He pointed out that anyone who wanted that abandoned range could have it free, off Uncle Sam. It sort of makes one wonder why anyone would run about acting loco in the cabeza when all he’d have to do is fill out a few papers and pay a modest filing fee to the land office.”
Nolan nodded and said, “I’ve always said a man would have to be loco to haunt a house a lot closer to civilization. How do you put it all together, MacKail?”
Stringer said, “I just told you. I can’t. I might worry more about it if I was a lawman. But I doubt I’ll ever figure out how high up might go, or who created the creator. Unsolved mysteries don’t sell newspapers, as my boss, Old Sam, keeps pointing out to me every time I got bogged down on a story.”
Nolan asked, “Then you’re just giving up?”
Stringer said, “I just said that too. I should think you boys who get paid to worry about sinister local doings would show more interest in those haunts than anyone has, up to now.”
Nolan grimaced and said, “If I had a dollar for every time I’ve poked around up that way, I’d buy everyone a drink. Plenty of folk have filed complaints with Gila, and hell, Navajo and Coconino counties. But nobody packing a badge has ever seen a thing up there. We thought the first nesters chased out by haunts were drunks. We still can’t prove anyone’s ever really seen or heard anything up that way. Though it does seem odd their stories match, if they were just making up excuses for not sticking out a claim.”
Stringer said, “The riders from the Hash Knife I ran into said they didn’t believe in haunts either. You could be right. Some nesters hate to admit they just couldn’t cut it with a nagging wife in a nagging climate. I know I can’t wait to get back to the cool fogs of Frisco, and if you boys don’t care, I don’t care why some raving lunatic seems to want to preserve Pleasant Valley in a pure state of nature.”
Nolan smiled thinly and said, “Maybe he thinks it looks more pleasant that way.” Then he said, more seriously, “I don’t know if I ought to tell you this—it being privileged information between us and the sheriff’s department up to Saint John’s—but as you mean to head north again, alone, I’d better tell you anyway.”
Stringer waited. Nolan looked away and said, “We seem to have been slickered. That wire from Sol Barth was a fake. They say he ain’t in business in Saint John’s no more. They don’t know where Barth, his Mex wife, and all their half-Mex kids went. But it’s been some time since any of ’em was in a position to send wires from there. So who do you figure wired us about you and a couple of other mysterious travelers?”
Stringer said, “Someone who didn’t want to sign his own name, of course. He knew Barth was known up that way, figured you might not check with the law, and may be waiting for a reply to that wire, still calling himself Sol Barth.”
Nolan said, “We already thought of that. We got the Western Union office in Saint John’s staked. So far he ain’t showed. The fool kid clerk up there can’t even describe the cuss who sent that wire for us. How do you like the notion he was just trying to make trouble for you, MacKail?”
Stringer said, “Has he made any trouble for me, Ed?”
And Nolan replied, “Not as far as we can see. You’re free to ride on out anytime you like. But if I was you, I’d take some pals with me. It’s starting to look more and more like you got a lunatic showing considerable interest in you, MacKail.”
Stringer hadn’t checked into Prue Reynolds’ boarding house with any luggage. So, tempting as her suppers were, he never went back there. At least one of her boarders was at least a mite odd, too, and he had enough to figure out in these parts.
He ate at a beanery, swore he’d never do that again, and made a few last calls to tie Globe up neat enough to forget as he left it. He rode out after sundown, riding the paint and leading the buckskin, this time packing more grub and less water. Remembering little Concepción with more than fondness, he reined in from time to time to study his back trail. But nobody seemed to be following him in the moonlight.
That left ambushes ahead. So when he got back to the mouth of Cherry Creek, with the sky pearling gray to the east again, he crossed over to the far side and holed up in some palo verde to let the sun and anyone else out to kill him figure out where he might be.
He didn’t sleep all day. Nobody could have, even in the late-afternoon shade. He made himself wait, watering his ponies from time to time and reading all the notes Patty Stern had given him over and over, along with his own notes taken down in shorthand during his recent travels. He had more pieces of puzzle to work with than he likely needed, for try as he might, he couldn’t get them all to fit just right. From time to time he’d come up with an almost good notion. Then he’d see there was no proof, or worse yet, other details that shot the notion full of holes.
He put all the fool paper away, grubbed himself good, smoked too much, and headed out again before the sun was all the way down, but at least a cooler shade of tomato red.
It wasn’t so bad. That unseasonable rain they’d had was starting to show interesting results now. The chaparral looked greener, and the desert pavement between all but the poison-rooted creosote bushes was spangled with tiny little multicolored flowers that looked like microscopic daisies and would go to seed and die within days. A lot of desert flowers got by being seeds instead of anything more alive most of the time. As the shadows lengthened, critters who’d been hiding out were taking advantage of the modest green-out. Gaudy orange and black pelican bugs were feeding on fresh mesquite leaves. Nothing was feeding on them because they tasted awful, even to a lizard.
He spotted a big fat chuckwalla feeding on the little flowers. A baby dragon eating baby nosegays sure looked funny. He knew the snakes would soon be at their most dangerous time of day, so he stopped to swap horses in an open expanse of gray gravel, and it was still close, according to the skittish paint. He spotted the pretty little critter that had spooked her, peeking out from under some yucca, and calmed her down, soothing, “It ain’t, Paint. Red next to black is all right, Jack. It’s red next to yeller that can kill a feller. Haven’t you ever seen a false coral snake before? They’re a lot more common than the real thing, and hell, neither bother you much if you leave ’em alone.”
He mounted up and rode on, knowing the heavier tread of his ponies would warn any snake that wasn’t dead drunk that they were coming. Even the nasty desert diamondback fed on nothing larger than jack rabbit, and had no reason to strike at anything bigger, as long as it wasn’t taken by surprise.
An hour or so later it was too cool to worry about snakes. The next time he stopped to water and swap, he dug out his sheepskin coat. It was even colder tonight than that gal back in Globe had complained about. The air was drier each night after a rain, and couldn’t hold as much heat after sundown.
He stared up at the cold, black star-spangled sky to make sure of his bearings as he cut through the chaparral where no trails ran. His plan was to follow the western rather than eastern high ground this time. He had two reasons. He knew he might spot something looking east that he’d missed looking west, and he knew anyone laying for him would expect him to take the same trail back.
They made good time once they found another deer trail and rode along it at a trot now and again, where it was easy to see. He had to keep warning himself not to let his guard down as mile after mile passed under him with no sign of trouble. He holed up again at dawn amid a nest of boulders topped by mesquite aspiring to be real trees instead of glorified bushes. Things went as well all the way to the head of Pleasant Valley, and as he made camp that one last morning, the view down there looked pleasant as hell.
The grass was still yellow, save at the roots, of course, but the whole valley was now an oriental carpet of tawny grass, golden poppies, and purple desert lupine. Here and again a clump of cotton wood or willow rose from the rug to brag about all the water at their roots. The creek itself was now running low, and its bed was braided with lots of exposed sand. But there was still enough running water to glitter like fool’s gold in the dawn’s slanting sunlight. Stringer was sitting with his back to a boulder, enjoying the view as he rolled a smoke, when he heard hoof steps coming up the slope behind him and spun to his feet, .38 in hand.
He saw it was a shabby little gent on foot, leading a heavily laden burro. The old timer waved at him and called out, “Howdy. I don’t suppose you have any coffee to spare.”
Stringer called back, “No, but I’ll share with you anyways. Where in hell have you come from with that poor jackass?”
The old timer pointed back at the distant Ancha hills dividing this basin from the Tonto, and replied, “She’s a jenny. My name is Mo Glass, and I’ve come from Prescott, bound for the Zuni pueblos to the east.”
Stringer said, “You must like to walk a lot, cutting across the grain like so.”
As he tethered his burro near Stringer’s ponies and broke out a nose bag to water her, old Mo said, “I hate walking. But I’m an Indian trader, and I can’t get the savage bastards to live near railroad tracks. This may be the hard way, but it’s still the short way. I know because I have to torture myself this way all the time.”
As they hunkered down by Stringer’s pot, waiting for it to come to a boil, the old trader told him his simple story. He was headquartered in Prescott, where he could order shipments by rail and from whence his wife refused to stir whether he was there or not. He confided that he had a Zuni gal farther east, and that it served his white woman right. The Indians had learned to trust him over the years. So they depended on him for German coal-tar dies for their blankets, abalone shell and cinnabar for their coin-silver jewelry, and patent medicines for what ailed them. He confided, “My Zuni gal is the daughter of a medicine man. He don’t let on, but you’d be surprised how much of them new aspirin powders he mixes in with his feather shaking. On my way back I’ll be loaded up with mighty fine silver work. In my opinion Zuni work has that gaudy Navajo crap beat hollow. I ain’t as easy about hailing strangers when I’m packing silver. But you don’t have to shoot me if you want some aspirin or coal-tar colors.”
Stringer said he hardly ever murdered his elders, and added, “I’ve heard the same can’t be said for others in these parts. Do you come through Pleasant Valley often, Mo?”
The old man nodded down at the fine view and said, “Just to cross it. I water at the old abandoned homestead down among them willows. Why do you ask?”
Stringer answered, “I’ve been told the Tewksbury who once lived there was picked off carrying water a much shorter distance. Yet you say you’ve never had any trouble down yonder?”
Old Mo nodded and said, “Hardly ever meet anyone this far from all over. I meet a young hand like you, out after strays or whatever, now and again. None of you have ever throwed me down and robbed me of my virtue, or even aspirin powders. I hope you don’t have someone gunning for you, son, for if you do, I’ll just be on my way and you can drink all your coffee. I’m a man with a better head for business than fighting.”
Stringer said, “Simmer down, Mo. I don’t think anyone is out to gun anyone this morning. I did have some trouble going the other way a few days ago. Now nobody seems interested, and you say they let you pass through regular. If I could figure that out, I wouldn’t feel so dumb.”
As they shared Stringer’s coffee and some interesting salami from old Mo’s pack, he brought the old timer up on his recent adventures. The old timer agreed it was a poser. He said, “I’ve often wondered how come nobody ever saw fit to reclaim this range. That’s not my line. But even I can see it’s a handsome spot for a homestead, and you should see some of the dumb places to homestead I’ve passed in my travels across this dusty land. We heard a little in Prescott about the range wars over this way. But I thought they’d been settled years ago.”
Stringer said, “They were. All the participants are long gone. But though others have tried to move in, they’ve all been driven out, like I told you.”
The canny old trader said, “Try it this way. With nobody living within miles, your mastermind can’t be guarding it all the time. He just checks from time to time, or hell, he can get it at the land office whenever someone means to settle anywhere down there long enough to matter.”
Stringer stared at the old man in admiration and said, “That works. That’s why gents like you and Hash Knife riders aren’t bothered when you pass this way. The mastermind neither knows nor cares about casual visitors.”
Old Mo said, “Hold on. We may not be so smart after all. You didn’t file any claims at any land office, did you, son?”
Stringer said, “No. I didn’t even come out here to do a story on the damned old range. But let’s try another tack. What if all this time they’ve been after me not to keep me from lookin down at all that grass, but because they’re afraid I might discover yet another dirty secret they’re trying to hide?”
Old Mo sipped more coffee, commented on how fine it tasted after two whole days without, and decided, “You say they tried to get you smack in town. Yep, if I wanted a man gunned, and he just refused to stay in town, I reckon I’d just try to have him gunned anywhere I could get at him.”
“What about those Mexican cow thieves?” Stringer asked.
The old man laughed bitterly, and said, “Let’s not get into racial prejudice. When a man hires his gun hand out to kill total strangers for pay, who’s to say who he might kill free when he sees the chance? I don’t think we’re talking about nice people, son.”
Stringer nodded and said, “Yeah, old Ed Tewksbury told me there was still some hard feelings between Anglos and Mexicans in these parts. The last of the gang I met up with was a mean old buzzard with the look of a natural killer. That Mex gal I told you about might have gotten more direct revenge than we thought at the time.”
Old Mo finished his coffee, put the tin cup aside with a sigh, and got to his feet, saying, “That was grand, and I’m much obliged. But I have to get going.”
“With the sun coming up instead of going down, Mo?”
The old man nodded firmly, and said, “Heat doesn’t bother me as much as bullets. I like you, son. You seem like a decent young cuss. But, no offense, you seem to draw trouble like a turd draws flies, and whatever you’re mixed up in, it ain’t my fight.”
Stringer didn’t argue or blame him as old Mo repacked the nose bag, untethered his burro, and headed down the slope, not looking back. Stringer could watch them turning to smaller and smaller dots for a long time. He watched the old man fill his canteens at the creek down below. Then he watched them trudge on into the shimmering heat waves until he couldn’t make them out anymore. He walked around his day camp, peering off in all directions until he was sure he had this high spot on the ridge to himself. Then he found some shade, covered his face with his hat, and tried to catch some shut-eye. He wasn’t really sleep, but he knew he’d have to keep his wits about him from here on back to Holbrook. For if they ever meant to stop him out here, where only the gun was law, it would be soon. The Mogollon Rim would be a hell of a place to lay for a man, if you knew he was coming. There were lots of folk in Globe. He’d told lots of ’em where he was going too. If even one was a pal of the mastermind, they had to know he was coming.