The river ran in its banks beside the road. Soft echoes of the water lapped against the stillness. The wind was freighted with a touch of damp coolness that carried down from a bank of clouds to the west. Massive, indifferent, beginning to become familiar to Stryker, the sprawling plain scented the wind with the strong spice of sagebrush; the mesas loomed.
Stryker’s eyes moved steadily. His head turned at intervals. He was aware of the two horsemen as soon as they appeared on the horizon behind him. And within a very short time after that he was alerted still more by the fast and heavy pace of the two pursuing riders, half-hidden in their own pluming dust cloud.
“Heads up,” Stryker said without undue emphasis.
Vern Cotten twisted to look back along the road. He stiffened. The two riders were not more than a mile back, perhaps less. They were coming at a hard gallop.
Vern swore and asked, “Rafter Cross, you reckon?”
“Most likely,” Stryker said. He pulled back on the reins, halted the team and jumped off the buckboard seat. He trotted back to his horse at the tailgate and loosed the knot in the reins. “You’ll have to make it home from here by yourself, kid.”
Vern’s wide eyes stared back at the rapidly advancing horsemen.
“What about you?”
“I’ll draw them off you. You get those rifles to the ranch, Vern. They’re important.”
Stryker gathered the reins in a single quick movement synchronized with his swing to the saddle. He gigged his horse around to the head of the team, swept off his hat and whooped.
The wagon broke away at high speed, bucking and rocking toward the river ford. He heard Vern’s shout, saw Vern’s face flash toward him and then turn forward, attentive to the road. Vern’s good arm rose and fell with the reins and his rump bounced against the plunging high seat.
Stryker wasted no time watching. He wheeled his horse in the middle of the road and reached down to draw from its scabbard the heavy .45-90 Winchester. Sunlight raced dully along the flat faces of the thick octagonal barrel. He steadied the buckskin and lifted the monumental weapon to his shoulder.
The range was long, still a good half mile. The horsemen were driving forward at full tilt. Stryker laid his cheek along the stock and kept both eyes open to sight. He drew the hammer back and squeezed his shot.
Intended to delay, not to kill, the heavy bullet screamed off the earth less than a yard wide of the leading rider’s horse. Stryker worked the loading lever quickly and placed a second bullet symmetrically on the other side of the galloping horse—a gesture calculated to inform the two riders that his aim was accurate. He could not make out their faces from this distance. But if they were Rafter Cross gunmen they knew who he was and they knew the reputation that had followed Nat Stryker from border to border.
You can always tell where Stryker aims by what he hits ...
The shots had their effect. The two horsemen separated and veered to opposite sides of the road. The country was open and there was little cover for them to seek. But they did not seem inclined to run or hide. They simply deployed more widely and, riding at a gallop, each raced across the plain on a semicircular course to converge on Stryker.
Trying to rig me for a crossfire ...
Stryker yanked his horse off the road to the west. To lead the two pursuers away from Vern and the precious wagonload of long rifles he deliberately raced toward the tortured broken patch of country that lay to the northwest of the road. A look over his shoulder told him that his scheme was having its effect. The rider who had broken toward the south was now bending his course sharply. He crossed the road at full gallop, a few hundred yards behind his partner.
Stryker held the rifle in one fist and leaned low over the buckskin’s withers. He urged the big horse down toward the river. In the cottonwoods that lined the banks he brought the buckskin to a sliding halt and raked the stream with quick scrutiny. If the horse bogged down in a quicksand bottom he was finished.
The two pursuing horsemen were gaining at high speed. Stryker leveled the big rifle and put a shot between them to slow them down. He turned, holding the rifle at waist level across the saddle, and put the horse into the muddy flow.
The buckskin plowed forward in uncertain footing, fighting a bottom that sucked at its fetlocks. A backward glance through the trees showed Stryker that the pursuit was closing the gap. By the time he was midway across the river, they were beginning to shoot at him from the backs of their running horses. The range was extreme for their saddle carbines—perhaps five hundred yards—and they had no hope of achieving a hit except by luck or accident. Stryker did not dare to halt his horse in midstream to shoot back at them—standing motionless, the buckskin might easily sink up to its chest in the soft, soggy bottom.
Urging the animal forward, he calculated the distance to the far bank and knew this one was going to be close.
A carbine bullet made a crease in the water not ten feet from him. Two shots whined through the trees. The buckskin humped and scrambled for footing.
The pursuing riders were within three hundred yards of the river when the buckskin heaved out of the water and clawed its way up the north bank. After smashing through bushy undergrowth Stryker paused to breathe the animal and look back. The buckskin snorted and sneezed.
On the other side of the river the two riders were once again fanning apart. Evidently they planned to cross over at two places, upstream and downstream from Stryker, to prevent his turning either way along the river course.
Stryker saw no profit in making his fight on this ground. He put the buckskin forward, not bothering to shoot at the two riders. Too many branches and trees could deflect a bullet from its path. He ran northwest, straight away from the river, keeping the horse to a steady canter that gave it a chance to regain its wind. The two men chasing him still had to get across the river—fording would slow them down, as it had slowed him. He could spare a few seconds to give the deep-chested buckskin a chance to gather its energy. It would be needed.
He had recognized his pursuers—Ollie Pryor and Jules Meecham. He was hardly surprised. Their identities told him nothing he did not already know.
At last they swept from the cottonwood banks and began to close the distance, converging toward him from either side. Speaking softly to the horse, Stryker let it out. Ahead rose the jagged tilts of the broken country—he lined out across the flats, holding his lead on Pryor and Meecham. He skirted a patch of mesquite. The grade swung upward in a stiff pitch which put his buckskin to hard labor. He achieved the top and made a long slant through the open growth. From behind and below him came the crack of a gunshot. The echo rolled across the hills. He saw the puff-cloud of sulphur smoke drift back from Ollie Pryor’s rifle.
The shot was an expression of anger—like a shouted curse. The range was far too long for Pryor’s weapon.
Sunlight struck through the clouds. The beams sliced down. The buckskin was beginning to act winded from the climb. It dropped its head and grunted as its hoofs struck the earth.
The slope was more gradual now. Deep coulees and cutbanks blistered into the gnarled earth flanked Stryker’s course on both sides. He reached level ground, stopped and stood up in his stirrups to look back.
The bones of his face seemed to press more firmly outward against his skin. His eyes were slitted in concentration. When Ollie Pryor again fired a useless shot at him he swung to his left and down a slope to put a hump of land between himself and pursuit.
He abruptly turned ninety degrees to the right and ran through rough breaks of land, jumping the horse across an eight-foot arroyo. Again he made a sharp swing downgrade and gigged the buckskin to a quicker pace. Sunlight streamed down in fibrous beams, filtered by fast-moving clouds.
He struck the deep dust of a soft patch and flailed across, found hard ground and fled at full speed. He was still out of their sight but that soft sand he had blundered into could ruin his efforts—if Pryor and Meecham looked in the right place they would find his tracks.
The buckskin brought him to another arroyo, wider and deeper than the first he had jumped. He put the horse cruelly down the talus bank. The buckskin slid down on its haunches. At the bottom, hidden from the level ground above, he put the horse forward.
The echo of his travel shot ahead of him through the narrow earth corridor. For a time it was the only sound he heard.
The arroyo made a fork. He turned left, and was riding north and west again. After a short ride he reached the base of a long and gradual slope formed by a cave-in. He stopped before climbing out of the arroyo, breathed the horse for a moment and listened intently.
He thought he heard the grunt and pound of a running horse—only one horse. He listened carefully but the sound faded and did not recur. The cool smell of rain falling somewhere not too far away drifted on the wind.
The cloudburst two days ago had been an annoyance. A storm today could make his escape easier. But the clouds had been building all day without hurry and without much force and he had seen no real signs of heavy rain. More likely what he scented was a litter of drifting showers.
He could not linger here. The breeze ruffled the bushes above the cutbank. If Pryor and Meecham were in the vicinity, they were lying low. But they might have lost him. He took a chance and moved the horse forward at a walk, riding up the slope at an angle that would let him swing back down with minimal effort if he had to.
He emerged from the arroyo. Across a mile of brakes, on the side of a low mesa, he saw a mounted man—probably Meecham. At the distance he could not be sure. The man’s horse had dropped to a walk on the tough grade but it was moving upward. The rider could be seeking elevation from which to spot a fugitive.
Stryker’s good fortune was that the distant rider seemed to be moving away from him. His healthy lead was increasing with each step of the other horse. He was no longer anxious about whether he was spotted or not and circled out of the brakes.
He saw the second rider at the base of the distant mesa. An arm signal seemed to pass between the two men.
Both riders turned and came toward him. They had seen him.
He had a mile on them and he was beyond the brakes. He could widen his lead almost at leisure. He struck out toward the timber shadows of peaks that hovered six or eight miles to the northwest. He settled down, holding the buckskin to a steady ground-eating canter, prepared for a long ride.
After dark, under stars cushioned by drifting clouds, Stryker circled out of the hills near Buck Madrid’s ranch. He had lost his pursuers hours ago by riding a mile in the shallows of the Chama and then leaving the river on a path of broken shale. By the time they picked up his trail in the dark, they would be hopelessly out of any race. He had time for a visit.
He made his approach to the ranch on foot, leaving the horse tethered in the trees several hundred yards from Madrid’s buildings. A tiny rain squall slipped under the stars, moving slowly across the mesa, obscuring what remained of the night’s pale contrasts. Under that cover, his shirt pasted by rain against his shoulders, Stryker achieved unseen the back corner of the U-shaped main house and slipped along the wall into the open end of the patio.
A lamp burned in the west wing. He glanced into the windows. An old Mexican woman with a neck like a chicken was scrubbing the greasy surface of a kitchen stove. Stryker moved forward through the silent patio to the parlor window, a fine stream of rainwater runneling down from the trough of his hat brim.
The parlor was well lighted. Madrid was alone in the room, sitting lapless in an overstuffed chair, eating bread and cheese.
The window was partly open. Stryker opened it fully and stepped across the sill, bringing up his gun.
Madrid neither heard nor saw him at first. He went on chewing, his heavy jowls wobbling. His attention lay casually on an open newspaper at his elbow on the table.
Finally, stirred by some small disturbance, Madrid looked up. His eyes focused on Stryker. The swollen surfaces of his face underwent no change whatever.
He glanced at Stryker’s ready sixgun and said, “You ought to learn to relax, my friend.”
Not in the mood for banter, Stryker stepped forward. He stopped ten feet from the fat man. Here he could speak softly.
He said, “This time I’m only showing you I can kill you. Next time I come your time’s run out. Understand?”
“Not completely,” Madrid said. He stirred. “I admire courage. You’re an idiot to come back here—but you’ve got courage. You realize you probably won’t get out of here intact this time. All I have to do is yell.”
“Go ahead.”
“You’d shoot me?” The puffy lips moved, perhaps in a smile. “I think not. I have one great advantage over you, Stryker. As I told you, I carry no gun. That hamstrings you, doesn’t it? I feel quite safe right now, knowing you won’t shoot me when I’m unarmed. And I have an edge on you—because you know you can’t trust me to live by your code.”
Now Stryker was sure Madrid was smiling. The sleepy eyes regarded Stryker like those of an old wolf who had just eaten his fill but who knew where his next meal would be when he wanted it.
Stryker remained silent
Madrid said, “You came here to threaten me. You took me by surprise to show me that it can be done—and if I don’t stay away from Howard Cotten’s land you’ll get me alone again and kill me?”
“You’ve saved me the trouble of saying it.”
“There’s only one difficulty. I don’t believe you’ll shoot me.”
“You could be making a bad mistake,” Stryker murmured. “Touch one blade of Circle C grass and you have an appointment to be killed. Think it over.”
“No need. You won’t shoot me as long as I refuse to fight back.” Madrid tipped his massive head an inch to one side and looked up curiously. “What did you hope to gain by coming here? You’re likely to spend the rest of your life all shot to pieces if you get away alive at all.” Madrid sat still, his granite will wrapped in layers of fat No fear showed through his insulation. His left hand rose slowly to raise a napkin to his lips. The corner of a silk handkerchief showed at his sleeve cuff. He glanced with measured contempt at the gun in Stryker’s fist and again a slow smile warped his swollen mouth.
Stryker said, mildly, “I’ve delivered the warning. Believe it or don’t believe it. But don’t count on my being as soft as you think I am.” He put his gun away and pushed back the heavy drapes that covered the front window.
The rope pull hung behind the drapes. He yanked it down and turned to face Madrid.
“I’ll just tie you up and stuff that handkerchief in your mouth. Hold still.”
Madrid’s tiny eyes glittered faintly in their recesses but he said nothing. He merely grunted as he pushed himself to his feet and crossed his thick wrists behind him without waiting to be told.
Stryker began to make a loop around Madrid’s wrists. A steady bass voice rolled into the room.
“Your first mistake will be your last, Nat.”
Stryker heard movement at the window he had used to ‘ enter. He turned his head enough to see Lloyd Handy’s gaunt frame stepping inside. Handy’s gun was up, leveled and steady.
Buck Madrid said, “I guess you’re not going anywhere after all. You’ve made all your journeys except one.” Handy gestured with his revolver.
“Your gun, Nat. Use your left hand and use it slow.” The hawk face was full of somber gravity. “And don’t try to fight the drop. You’re quite a stem-winder but I always could keep up with you.”
Stryker reached around slowly, picked up his holstered revolver with thumb and forefinger. He let it fall to the chair in which Madrid had been sitting.
Handy came forward.
“Now back off.”
Madrid had brought his hands around in front of him. He was holding the drape cord with which Stryker had begun to tie him up.
Madrid said without audible emotion, “This man has lived too long, Handy. Take him away from here and dispose of him.”
Handy was as grim as a pallbearer. He relieved Madrid of the rope, turned.
He said to Stryker, “Turn around.”
Bleak and silent, Stryker turned slowly. He kept Handy in sight from the corner of his eye. Handy worked a noose into the end of the rope and stepped forward to loop it around Stryker’s wrist.
Stryker’s powerful hand shot back, jamming down against the top of Handy’s cocked revolver. The stabbing move was precisely aimed. The thin flesh between Stryker’s forefinger and thumb slammed down across the back of the Colt’s recoil plate and Handy, reacting swiftly, pulled his trigger. The firing pin snapped down—causing blinding pain—against Stryker’s hand but the weapon did not go off.
Turning, Stryker ripped the gun out of Handy’s bony grip so quickly that Handy did not have time to tighten his fist on the gun. The weapon came free. Stryker circled away, bringing his free hand around to loosen the Colt hammer’s pinch against his flesh. The gun was cocked and ready to fire before Handy or Madrid had time to move.
Stryker’s hard, battle-marked face had not changed expression.
He said, “You’re getting slow, Lloyd.”
“Getting old, maybe.”
“All right. Tie him up.”
Handy gave his own gun a jaundiced glance and turned with the rope.
He said, “Nat, you’re hanging on by an eyelash. Riding around like General Custer—how long do you figure to last?”
“Long enough. Tie him.”
Madrid said tonelessly, “You’ll pay for this with the only thing you’ll have left, Stryker. Your life.”
Lloyd Handy’s dismal obsidian eyes stayed on Stryker.
“Remember what I said? It’s open season on you from here on in.”
“Ask Pete Voss and Seeley about that,” Stryker replied. “Hurry up and get it done, Lloyd, and I’ll tie you up.”