A brazen sun beat down against the trackless floor of Skeleton Canyon until the heat waves rising from the parched sand formed a buttery haze in the rock-walled gorge. There was no sound except the fretting crackle of wind through baking creosote bushes. The sweat lay like oil on the shoulders of Brian’s Steeldust stallion and dripped steadily from beneath his hat brim to make clammy tracks in the dust-caked mask of his face.
The party the night before had lasted into the wee hours and Brian was still half-sick from his hangover. In a vile mood, he had started out to the Gillettes’. Wolffe had told him that they were staying on their property in defiance of the foreclosure. The next move would be for the sheriff to evict them again and post a deputy on the place.
Brian’s horse balked, whinnying sharply. He pulled it in, staring at its twitching ears. He turned his squinted eyes up to the glittering rimrock of the canyon. Somehow it made him think of what Arleen had, said last night about Pa Gillette’s threat: “There won’t be a road safe for you to ride in all Arizona.”
He shook his head angrily. He was being stupid. He gigged the horse on, wiping sweat from his face. Heat devils danced before his eyes. A sharp pain ran through his temples. He had been out this way before, but hadn’t remembered it was such a grueling ride.
Approaching a sharp turn, the horse began to fiddle again. Brian began to pull the reins in. He was filled with an insidious reluctance to round the ‘turn. He looked about him again. Glaring sand in the bottom, a blinding rim of red rock high above. Nothing else.
He put heels to the nervous horse and forced it into a canter. They wheeled around the turn and the canyon narrowed ahead. He was thinking of Arleen again and of his proposal last night. It had been almost as great a surprise to him as it had been to her. He certainly hadn’t planned it when he had invited her. Yet at the time he had been more certain of his need for her than he’d ever been of anything.
And now?
He grimaced. Maybe doubt was always a part of the morning after. Was a man ever sure of anything when it came to a woman? Maybe only when she was in his arms. And maybe that was all that mattered—
His shadowy thoughts were shattered by the roaring crack of a gun from above. Its echoes rocked the gorge and Brian saw chips kicked out of a rock a foot to his right.
The horse reared up, pitching him off its rump. He hit heavily and flopped over on his belly. There were shooting pains through his right leg and that whole side of his body seemed numb. Desperately he crawled on his belly, through the sand to the partial protection of the boulder. He was sweating and trembling from shock. Sprawled in the sand, he pulled his Bisley. He squinted his eyes against the sun searching the rimrock. The strata of sandstone and shale up there gleamed crimson in the sunlight. He could see nothing. His horse was gone, out of sight and out of earshot. Then there was the glitter up on a ridge like sunlight on metal. He realized how exposed he was here. The glitter had come from across the canyon, and he had to cross to that side.
Since they had not shot again that could mean they were getting into position. It gave him a small chance. His right leg was no longer numb, though the pain was still there. He rose to his knees, throwing himself into a lunging run across the sandy floor. He dropped behind the protection of a rock on the other side, surprised that there had been no shot. Then he began the climb to the rimrock.
It was a treacherous, exhausting struggle up to the top, squeezing through rocky fissures, scrambling laterally across the face of loose talus slopes. He reached a ledge halfway up and sank exhausted against a sun-baked rock. It seemed he could not get enough air. He was so dizzy from the exertion that he could not focus his eyes. Why should he be this played out? It hadn’t been that hard a climb.
Still dizzy and panting he pulled himself up for the rest of it. He reached the top so drained he had to sprawl on his belly behind the shelter of a lava uplift, unable to get to his feet. Finally he crawled to hands and knees, looking over the uplift to see that he was on an immense plateau that ran northward beyond sight. He crouched there until he saw a vague movement a few hundred yards down the rim of the canyon. He crawled on hands and knees out of the lava, using jagged rocks and twisted junipers for cover. He was within fifty yards of the spot when a man suddenly appeared, working his way along the rim of the canyon. It happened so fast that Sheridan could not make out who it was.
All he saw was the dim form rising suddenly from behind a black clump of creosote, the glitter of sun on metal again. He jumped to his feet in his excitement, firing the first shot. His bullet kicked sand up in front of the man, obscuring him even more.
Sheridan ran thoughtlessly toward him, firing again and again. There was a shout and the man disappeared. Sheridan kept running until he reached the edge of a gully that ran back into the plateau from the rim of the canyon. He was going so fast he couldn’t stop himself from running over onto the steep slope of the gully. He danced wildly to keep his feet as he slid down through the shale. He hit the bottom at a stumbling run with a vague impression of motion ahead of him where the gully made a turn. He fired again, twice, and then his hammer clicked on an empty chamber.
He brought himself up short, panting, dizzy again, realizing how foolish he had been, running in on the man this way. Like some fool kid with buck fever. Again he sought the cover of a jagged rock and crouched there on one knee, reloading his gun. His hands were shaking so badly he could hardly punch the shells from their chambers. Finally he got it reloaded and began to work his way down the canyon again. He reached the turn and moved around it with his gun cocked.
The gully pinched off here and he could see the prints of a horse in its sandy bottom. Brian halted, defeat dragging at his shoulders, as he realized the man was gone. Finally Brian turned and walked back through the gully till he reached the rim of Skeleton Canyon. His exhaustion forced him to admit at last how weak and soft these last years of rich living had left him and he wondered seriously if he had the strength to make it alive out of this desert on foot.
* * * *
It was night when Brian reached the Double Bit. The featherweight soles of his bench-made boots had been cut to ribbons hours ago by the sharp rocks of the desert; his feet were swollen so badly that each step was an agony. His tattered clothes hung slack and dust-filled on his stumbling body and he went to his knees once under the row of poplars before finally gaining the porch. His strange, stumbling figure startled the horses hitched at the cottonwood rack and they began whinnying and pulling at their reins. This must have been heard from inside for the door was swung wide. In the lamplight streaming out Brian saw Arleen standing there, lustrous black hair framing the pale oval of her face.
“Brian!” she said sharply. Then she gathered up her full red skirts and came hurrying across the porch to keep him from falling. He sagged gratefully against the soft warmth of her body. He felt her stiffen.
“George—” she said. There was a strange, brittle tone to her voice. “Come and get him.”
George Wolffe and Ford Tarrant were already coming out the door. They caught Brian under the arms. He was vaguely aware of Arleen stepping back, brushing the dust off her red dress.
“Somebody took a shot at me,” Brian said, as they helped him through the door. “My horse spooked and threw me.”
Tarrant helped lower Brian to the sofa and then stepped back, taking a long black cigar out and thrusting his portly belly forward expansively. “If I was mayor, things like this wouldn’t happen. That damned Prince is letting our town fill up with riffraff—”
“Riffraff, hell,” Wolffe said. “We all know who did this. There were a dozen people who heard the Gillettes threaten Brian.”
Arleen poured a drink from the decanter on the desk. Brian took it and downed it neat, seeing that Charlie Casket was in the living-room also. He sat in the big wing chair by the fireplace shuffling a pack of cards and had not offered to rise. He held the cards out, poker-faced.
“Take one?”
Brian started at him, too sick and beaten for clear thought. “What are you doing here, Charlie?”
“He thought you might like a little game tonight,” Tarrant said. “Didn’t know you’d gone out on that fool’s errand to the Gillette’s. Are you convinced now that the foreclosure’s got to stick?”
Brian settled back in the chair. “I can’t quite believe they’d do something so cold-blooded.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Tarrant exploded. “You’ve got to put Pa Gillette out of the game. The Salt River bunch will fall apart without him. And we can’t be sure of Prince’s recall unless he loses their support. The whole thing stands or falls on this Gillette deal.”
Brian looked at Wolffe. “And you were the one who foreclosed on the Gillettes.”
“Damn it, Brian, it’s for your own good,” Wolffe said. “They try to kill you twice and you still can’t see that. You’re a big man. As long as that’s true, men like Gillette and his crowd will be trying to pull you down. You’ve got to fight back.”
Brian frowned at Tarrant. “You said if you were mayor. I thought you were putting Conners up against Prince on this recall petition.”
Tarrant looked at his cigar. “Conners has backed down. I think the Salt River bunch reached him somehow.”
“We nominated Tarrant at a special meeting today,” Wolffe said. “Now, Brian, it’s time you grew up and met your responsibilities. Give us your word you’ll let that Gillette foreclosure stand. It’s the only way we can protect ourselves.”
Brian shook his head. “Not till I see the Gillettes.”
“Brian’s in no shape to talk politics,” Arleen said. “Can’t this all wait?”
Tarrant shook his head. “This has to be settled.”
“Then you’ll be here for hours,” Arleen said. “I’ll take the buckboard back to town, George. You can come in with Ford.”
Wolffe nodded without looking at her. She sent Brian an oblique glance. He started to rise.
“No need to see me out,” she said. “You’re too shaky.”
He sank back, smiling gratefully. Tarrant waited till she was out the front door before he spoke.
“You force us to do this, Brian,” Tarrant said. “Will you come in the study?”
Frowning in puzzled apprehension, Brian dragged himself from the chair and followed him down the hall, with Casket and Wolffe behind. The study door was open and Latigo sat with one leg on the desk, a pile of tally books beside him. He was still in his dust-grayed jeans and red underwear.
“We might as well start with Casket,” Tarrant said.
The gambler pulled a sheaf of papers from his pocket. “They’re checks and I.O.U.’s, Brian,” he said. “You’d be surprised how much you’ve lost to me in those card games over the last couple of years. It amounts to around thirty thousand dollars.”
Brian felt hot anger well up in him at the implications. “You mean you’ve been saving those things—” He broke off, staring at Tarrant. “You have a motley collection on your payroll, Ford. We’ll go to the bank tomorrow. I’ll get the cash.”
“Your personal account is overdrawn,” Wolffe said. “I got the bank statement today.”
“Then we’ll get it from the business account.”
“That well’s dry too,” Wolffe said, tapping a pile of papers on the desk. “With no money in your personal account, I had to put these through the business account. They’re the bills for this year. Over fifty thousand dollars.”
Brian wheeled on him. “There was more than that in the business account the last time I went over the books with you.”
Wolffe shook his head. “You forget the parties. Last night cost over four thousand dollars. You’ve thrown a dozen of them this year already.”
“Damn you—” Brian started to say they’d sell some stock. Then he sensed what Latigo was here for, and stared down at the beef books.
“I tried to tell you last night,” Latigo said. “We’ve still got a herd, but it’s all too young to ship for beef. You bled us white on three-year-olds to pay for that trip East last year.”
“Then we’ll sell the stuff right here,” Brian said, desperation entering his voice. “Every man in Gila County would give his right arm for some Double Bit cattle.”
“And pay you with a note,” Tarrant said sarcastically. “Nobody has that kind of cash around here.”
Brian looked helplessly at Wolffe, who shook his head. “You’ve gotten yourself into this hole, Brian.”
“And you let me! You knew what they were up to!”
Wolffe flushed. “How many times did I try to stop you from having these parties, Brian, from gambling, from wasting your money on whims?”
“If Charlie presses these gambling debts, it’ll ruin you,” Tarrant said. ‘He’d have to slap an attachment on your property to get the money and it’d be around town in five minutes. You’d have a hundred creditors up here pounding your door. You wouldn’t have the shirt left on your back.”
Brian stared around the circle of their faces, physically sick with the realization of how they had used him.
“All you have to do is give us your word you’ll let the Gillette foreclosure stand,” Tarrant said. “And Charlie won’t press these gambling debts.”
Brian realized he was trembling with his anger. “Get out,” he said.
“They didn’t want to do it this way, Brian,” Wolffe said. “You made them. It’s for your own good, don’t you realize that?”
Brian had not reacted to anger this violently in a long time. Face white with rage, he yanked open the desk drawer and whipped out the old Colt dragoon his father had always kept there.
“If the whole bunch of you snakes isn’t out of here in one minute this is going off in somebody’s face!”