Stryker hoisted his big frame into the saddle before sunrise. Bulky and hard, he made a brutish silhouette against the blood-red dawn—this morning he also felt brutish. Animal-like. He drew out his snap-lid pocket watch and checked it against the thin rind of sun that appeared over the eastern horizon.
As he put the watch away a buckboard came rattling loosely around the house from the barns beyond. Young Vern was on the driver’s seat.
Stryker said, “Thought I told you to send one of the hands along to drive the rig.”
“I thought I might deal myself in.”
Stryker gave him a long look.
Finally he said, “Suit yourself.”
He was lifting his reins to ride out of the yard when Howard Cotten appeared at the head of the stairs in front of the house.
“Vern. I want a word with you before you go.”
Vern lashed the reins around the brake handle and leaped off the seat with a show of impatience. He glanced bleakly at Stryker and followed his father into the house. The door shut behind them.
Sitting his saddle, Stryker eased a matchstick out of his pocket and poked it between his teeth. He let his glance ride around the yard. He had spent yesterday afternoon inspecting the buildings and had taken a four-hour ride around the high points of Circle C land, guided by Howard Cotten, who had proved an expert horseman and a sound cattleman. Stryker was more than ever convinced that the Circle C was worth defending—and worth a share in.
Adriana appeared at the head of the stairs. Outlined in the doorway she looked slim and fresh.
She said, “Don’t let Vern get into trouble in town.”
“One day he’ll have to learn to stand on his own feet.”
“He won’t get a chance if you let him be railroaded into a fight with Rafter Cross. This time of day a lot of them are just crawling out of the woodwork in town and waking up from their hangovers.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Stryker said casually, avoiding commitment.
She said, “I suppose you’re happy now that you’ve made my father sign over a big piece of the ranch to you. Do you know how many years he’s worked to build this home for us? And in one day you ride in and take part of it away from him. It’s like cutting off part of his body.”
“How much of him do you think Madrid would have carved off?”
She said, “You took advantage of us. Don’t look for my forgiveness.”
His face was grave. He leaned forward, relaxing on crossed elbows on the saddle horn.
He said in a musing voice, “What I’m thinking this morning is that this is the first time I’ve had a chance to fight for something that’s my own.”
“You own by blackmail.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
He was still chewing on the matchstick. When Vern appeared in the doorway he straightened, tossed the match away and picked up his reins.
Howard Cotten came out with his son, put his thin arm over Vern’s shoulders and walked him to the buckboard. Vern climbed up without looking at his father or his sister. Evidently his father had given him a lecture. Flushed and subdued, Vern glanced at Stryker, cracked the reins over the buckboard team and broke the wagon into a lurching start.
Howard Cotten walked back toward the steps. Stryker glanced at Adriana and touched a finger to his hat brim. She made no response but made a point of looking away from him. Stryker pulled his horse around and cantered after the wagon.
The violent breaks of the shattered mesas lay to the north like massive wrecks on the plain. The sun climbed the horizon, casting long shadows. Bit chains jingled at the buckskin’s jaws and the buckboard made an unholy clatter. Its wake of turbulent dust hung in the air.
They rode several miles without talking. At last Vern’s hat brim tilted back and he called Stryker’s name. Stryker reined close to the wagon and matched his pace to the buckboard’s.
“What?”
Vern said petulantly, “Just don’t forget who your senior partners are.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Last spring when Madrid started the trouble,” Vern said, “my father deeded over a share of the ranch to me and Ad—just in case anything happened to him. So you talk to all of us, not just the old man. You understand me?”
“I’ll bear it in mind. Anything else in your craw?”
“Yeah. You can quit treating me like a kid.”
Stryker eyed the sullen youth with doubt.
“Vern,” he said, “there is one important thing you ought to learn. A fellow gets treated like a grown man when he acts like one.”
Vern stiffened in anger.
“You didn’t want me along today. You figure you got to nursemaid me. I don’t take to that.”
“Nursemaid?” Stryker said. He was looking ahead toward the river glistening in the shortening rays of the sun. He said without turning his head, “No. But I don’t believe in fetching water with a pail that has no bottom.”
“You bastard—”
“You’ve got sweat all over your face, boy,” Stryker murmured, his voice soft, deeply resonant. “Rafter Cross may be in town today. They’ll be fixing to get Ollie Pryor out of the calabozo one way or another. You keep your voice down and stay wide of them.”
It was mid-morning. They entered the tangled and dusty streets of Espanola. Stryker’s alert glance pried back the shadows, seeking some sign of Rafter Cross in town. He saw no evidence of it. When he rode into the central square he looked at the window of Ollie Pryor’s jail cell. No face appeared at the bars.
The vacant window did not have to mean anything. Stryker dismounted at the well and tethered the buckskin.
“Gunshop?” he asked and saw Vern’s arm rise to point to a small building wedged between two larger ones.
Stryker walked to it, scuffing up dust, and waited for Vern to set the hand brake and jump down.
Stryker said, “Let me do the talking.”
“Afraid I’d say a dirty word?”
Stryker pushed into the gunsmith’s without answering. He paused momentarily in the doorway, saw two faces draw back from windows on the square—two people who wanted to see but not to be seen. It meant something.
The gunsmith, stout and bald, sat at his workbench, filing a long hammer spring. Tiny shavings of steel gleamed faintly on the battered bench. The gunsmith lifted his bald head and placed his eyes on Stryker with guarded interest. When Vern stepped in the gunsmith nodded civilly.
Boots scraped past the front of the place and Stryker’s big head swung around. A pedestrian paused outside the doorway to take his measure of Stryker, strolled on by. Stryker thought irritably that he was getting spooky.
A breathless kind of pending excitement had put a thin shine on Vern Cotten’s features. Stryker gave him a straight glance, said “Howdy—” to the gunsmith and turned to run his eyes over the rifles racked in hooks on the side walls.
“Something I can do you for?” the gunsmith inquired.
Stryker lifted down a big rifle—a .50-90 Sharps Special, chambered for a 473-grain bullet backed by ninety grains of black powder. He snapped open the breech and had a look.
“How many of these have you got?”
“Buffalo guns? Ain’t much call for them nowadays. I still got maybe six I ain’t sold.”
“How much for the lot?”
The bald man’s eyes grew wide.
He said tentatively, “Let’s say a hundred and eighty dollars. That’s giving you a break. I’ve been pricing them at forty dollars apiece. Take them all off my hands and they’re yours at thirty.”
“All right. I’ll take these three Ballard Big Fifties too. And the Remington rolling blocks.”
The gunsmith’s broad face had closed up.
Displaying no surprise, he merely asked, “All four of them?”
“That’s right.”
“You want ammunition to fit all them guns?”
“A hundred rounds each.”
“Big order,” the gunsmith said. He did not stir from his workbench but closed his eyes momentarily to add figures in his head. “I’ll make you a bargain. Three hundred and twenty-five dollars for the lot. That’s dirt cheap. Before the panic of ’seventy-three those rifles would’ve cost you seventy dollars apiece. You’re getting them for less than thirty. And ammunition thrown in.”
“A dozen shooting sticks,” was Stryker’s only reply. “Some Fisher brushes and cleaning patches, rods, the usual things.”
“You figure to find enough buffalo for all this artillery?” the gunsmith asked.
Stryker turned his hooded glance on Vern, who answered with a stare from beneath sullenly lowered brows. The youth stepped up to the bench, drew out his deerskin money pouch and poured out a stream of gold coins—almost die last of Howard Cotten’s cash reserve.
Stryker said, “Let’s just call it three hundred even, Vern. Give the man fifteen double eagles.” He looked at the gunsmith. “Make the receipt out to Circle C ranch.”
“Three hundred and twenty-five,” the gunsmith said quietly. “Or three hundred even—if you’ll sign a return slip.”
Vern said, “A what?”
“A paper that says if you all get your heads blowed off I get the rifles back.”
Stryker said, “Sounds fair enough—” with a crooked little smile. “Write it in.”
The gunsmith rummaged through his piles of springs and bolts, found a quill pen and inkpot and dragged out a soiled pad. He shook his head in disbelief as he wrote out the bill of sale.
He spoke as if to himself: “If I’d figured you people for idiots enough to fight a war with Buck Madrid I’d have sent Denver an order for a regiment’s worth of guns. I’m missing out on a fortune in profits. Ain’t got but a dozen long guns left. Madrid already bought up my whole stock of six-guns.” He looked up without rancor and added, “Mainly to keep you folks from buying them, I expect. His hired gunslingers—they all come equipped with their own iron. You’re lucky he didn’t figure you to come in here like Pueblos all fogged up on peyote and buy all these worthless single-shot cannons.”
Stryker said, “I expected he wouldn’t have thought of it.”
Vern said, “I still don’t see what good they’ll do us.”
“Good,” Stryker said. “If you don’t see it maybe Madrid won’t either. Until it’s too late.” He turned toward the door, speaking over his shoulder: “I’ve got a few minutes’ business to take care of. You get those loaded into the buckboard and stick close. Anybody shows up, keep your head down.”
“I don’t need advice from you,” Vern shouted at his retreating back but by then Stryker was out on the street.
He walked across it, turning his head both ways to survey the town. Unhurried hoofbeats echoed from one street. The sound was that of only two or three horses. The plaza was quiet. Stryker walked as far as the jail and turned in.
Diego Cruz was sitting back, his feet on the desk. He was reading a penny novel. His cynical eyes lifted lazily. He did not smile.
Stryker said, “Let him go yet?”
“Not yet,” Cruz said equably. “Lloyd Handy was in town last night—had to go back to the ranch for the cash to bail Ollie out. I expect them any time now.” He swung his feet down. “Look, Stryker, I don’t know how you got me pegged but don’t make no mistakes. I do what the badge says for me to do. Ollie stays here until he’s got his bail paid, all nice and legal.”
“In that case,” Stryker said, “I’ll just have a look to make sure.”
Not giving Cruz time to react, he strode past the deputy through the back door. Cruz scrambled out of his chair.
“Wait up. You can’t—”
Stryker swung down the barred corridor between the banks of cells. He saw Ollie Pryor come up to the cell door and wrap his fists around the bars. Pryor’s lips peeled back from his teeth.
“If it ain’t the man himself,” Pryor said.
Cruz’s squat frame filled the doorway behind Stryker. Then, prompted perhaps by curiosity, Cruz stayed put and kept silent, merely watching.
Stryker said, “Take my advice, Ollie. Jump your bail when they buy you out of here. Hit for Mexico and don’t look back. Otherwise yours will be just one more funeral nobody will go to.”
“Big talk for a man that died yesterday,” Ollie said. He turned his face and spat on the floor. “You don’t know it yet, Stryker, but you’re just a corpse walking around—you even rattle when you walk. I get out of here, next thing you know you’re gonna be picking up your teeth with two busted arms.”
All Stryker said was, “Take my advice, Ollie.”
He went back along the corridor. Cruz stepped aside to let him through, closed the door and went back to his desk.
He said caustically, “Satisfied he’s still here? Or do you want an affidavit?”
Stryker looked back at him from the front door.
“I’ll give you a piece of advice too, Deputy. Don’t figure Buck Madrid to come with all aces, not any more. He won’t win this thing. If you haven’t got the sand to decide right from wrong you’d be smart to take a pole and go fishing in the river until the smoke clears. Because if you take Madrid’s side you’re just bound to get cut to pieces in the crossfire.”
Stryker turned through the doorway without waiting for a reply. He was just in time to hear the sharp, deep crack of a gunshot and a high-pitched yell that was unmistakably Vern Cotten’s.