The bellowing sounds of a .44 being touched off filled the alleyway, and wood exploded from the holes being bored into the wagon’s side planks and whined off the metal brace straps. Taken completely unaware, Sage Paxton dove for the ground, slapping Gwen’s legs out from under her to bring her down as well. Wriggling aside a little more, Sage glanced at Gwen to see that she was all right and simultaneously slicked his Colt from his holster.
Lying prone, peering into the shadows of the alley he could see nothing, no one. Gwen was clinging to his arm and he shook her off. There was nothing but the rolling clouds of black powder smoke rising toward the clear sky and the insistent lingering echoes of the gun.
And then there was. Still peering from his position beneath the freight wagon, he caught sight of a man’s legs as the attacker raced toward the foot of the alley. Sage triggered off three rapid rounds. His first shot flew wide, his second caught the man in the leg and, as he doubled up, Sage’s third bullet caught him high on the shoulder. The gunman buckled to the damp earth, and Sage knew that it was over.
Gwen was gibbering meaningless sounds. Her hands were clawing at the earth, her face frantic. Her dark hair was now draped across her forehead and eyes.
‘What happened?’ she demanded in a shaky voice. ‘Who was it?’
‘I don’t know. Stay here; I’m going to find out.’
Rolling out from under the wagon Sage approached the downed shooter cautiously, his Colt still in his hand. Gwen had come off the ground as well and she plodded along behind him in short, nervous steps.
‘You don’t mind very well, do you?’ Sage asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I wanted to see who it was. Do you think it’s Austin Szabo?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sage answered. The gunman had been his first guess as well, but if it was Szabo he didn’t deserve his reputation. The man had not been a good shot at all. He had not been more than fifty feet away when he had started firing, and he had missed with every shot.
As Sage suspected, the man was dead. The bullet he had taken in the shoulder had passed through and penetrated his upper ribcage, stopping his heart. Sage turned the man partly over with his boot toe and discovered that it was not Szabo who lay there. Gwen gasped.
‘Do you know this man?’
‘Yes,’ she said shakily, ‘it’s Caleb Hornblower.’
‘Who in blazes is Caleb Hornblower?’ At the head of the alley a few men, drawn by the gunshots, had gathered, muttering among themselves.
‘He worked for my father,’ Gwen told him. ‘He wasn’t a very nice man.’
‘What was he doing here?’
‘Looking for us, I’d imagine. Can we get away from him now?’
‘We’d better, I suppose. The law is bound to show up. If anyone asks neither of us knows who he was.’
‘All right.’ Gwen nodded solemnly.
‘I’ve got to get my horse, Gwen. I don’t intend to stay around this town any longer than we already have.’
Mutely she followed him back toward the stable. Sage said not a word to the gathered bystanders. To Gwen he hissed, ‘How many others have you brought along to trail us?’
‘Me... ? Sometimes you make it hard to like you, Sage Paxton,’ she said, affronted.
‘I don’t need anyone to like me,’ he said as they entered the barn under the curious stableman’s gaze.
‘A little trouble out there?’ the man asked.
‘The marshal can take care of it.’
‘All right, then,’ the man said, ‘but—’
‘How’s my horse looking this morning?’ Sage asked, ignoring the stableman’s eyes and unasked questions as he walked to the stall where the big gray stood, Gwen’s horse beside it.
He wasted no time in outfitting his gray. It showed no sign of continuing disability, which was for the better. Otherwise Sage, as much as he liked the animal, would have considered trading it off, and he hadn’t the money for a good horse—not as good as the gray, anyway. He thought of purchasing supplies for the trail, but he was now halfway to Trinity, and he had no extra money. He contented himself with filing his canteens from the rain barrel outside the stable, which was overflowing with the recent rain, unhitching his mount, and emerging into the clear sunlight.
To find Gwen Mackay, already mounted, waiting for him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Sage demanded.
‘I’m continuing on to Trinity, and we both agreed that it was not safe for me to travel alone out here.’
‘We did? When was that?’
‘We discussed it several times, Sage. Is your memory that bad?’
‘No, but my mood is.’ He yanked the gray’s head around and started toward the west end of town. The crowd in the alley still had not dispersed which could mean that the town marshal had arrived to investigate. Sage wanted no one noticing him and lifting a pointing finger in their direction. He had had enough of Drovers’ Springs and all he ever meant to see of it. He rode on, careful not to look back.
Soon they were out on the wide, red-soiled land, which was still slathered with rainwater which glittered dully beneath the sun hanging in the empty sky at their backs.
‘They’re not coming fast enough to be after us,’ Gwen said.
‘Who?’
‘Those men on horseback behind us.’
‘We must be well past the town limits,’ Sage said, now looking back himself. He could see two, possibly three men trailing them.
‘Does that mean they’ll give it up?’
‘It should, unless the marshal is the type who just doesn’t like to give up—or unless they’ll be happy enough not to try closing ground until after we’re farther from town.’
‘Why would they do that?’ Gwen asked.
‘It would save them the trouble of bothering with a trial,’ he told her.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Gwen said, turning her eyes back again. ‘I think they’ve turned off or halted,’ she said.
‘Good. Let’s not count on it, though.’
‘Sage—some men spend their whole lives looking over their shoulders, don’t they? How can they do it?’
‘Beats me,’ Sage grumbled, but he knew very well why. They had made crime the most important thing in their lives. And, Sage reflected, that was the way the rest of his life would be—if he was lucky enough to survive. But, retribution could not be withheld simply because of a fear of the consequences. Then Sage fell into a glum silence again, and Gwen felt that she had said the wrong thing once more, though she didn’t know what that was.
They passed through a small oak grove and then out on to the seemingly endless land. Sagebrush and nopal cactus dotted the landscape, but nothing larger flourished there. Glancing at Sage Paxton, Gwen took a slow breath and then decided to ask the question that had been lingering in her mind.
‘Well, Sage, it’s a long trail ahead of us. Won’t you tell me about it now?’
‘Tell you about what?’
‘About what’s made you so angry. I can’t believe you’re normally like this. What has made you so determined to kill?’
‘I can’t see that it’s any concern of yours.’
‘I suppose it’s not. That doesn’t keep me from wondering.’
‘All right.’ Sage looked for a long minute into the distance while his pony rocked under him. Finally he answered her. ‘My parents have been murdered, and my brother is responsible.’
‘Does he have a name?’
‘Of course! I just dislike sullying my tongue with it; it’s Brian. Brian Paxton. He’s now the Marshal of Trinity.’
‘My goodness,’ Gwen said.
‘I know. It’s not clever to make a lawman your target. They’ll hang you sure, to teach people to respect law and order.’ Sage sighed, ‘But that means nothing to me. I wouldn’t care if he was the pope. I know what he did and he has to be punished for it, mortally punished.’
‘How can you be so sure that Brian did it, were you there? What happened exactly?’
‘Mom and Dad were at an age when minding the ranch just wasn’t that appealing any more. They wanted to sell off the property and move into town someplace where things would be easier for them. Apparently they shared this thought with Brian, who was counting on assuming control of the ranch.
‘Then they told him that it would be a year or two in coming, that they weren’t quite ready yet. And there was the possibility of portioning the land with his brother.’
‘You.’
‘Me,’ Sage nodded.
‘It doesn’t seem that should be too unexpected,’ Gwen said. ‘Parents try to be even-handed in seeing that everyone shares in their legacy.’
‘No, it doesn’t seem that unreasonable,’ Sage agreed. ‘I don’t even know if I would have wanted to share the ranch with Brian—we didn’t always get along that well. But Brian couldn’t wait for two years, and he couldn’t stand the thought of having to share with me. I was always away, concerned with various other endeavors like most young men of ambition. And there he was, laboring on the ranch day after day. As I said, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go home again. Things hadn’t worked out especially well for me. It would have been admission of failure.’
Gwen nodded as if she at least partly understood the rather complicated telling.
‘If, to me, to return would have been an admission of my own inability, it was Brian’s burning ambition to have the property for himself, and make some changes Dad was reluctant to make in his advanced years, and improve the land and the way business was done.’
He went on, ‘Brian wanted everything, and he wanted it now. He bridled at laboring day after day, under Dad’s restraints, for a cowhand’s wages. Brian wanted to be a landowner and respected cattleman. And besides, he wanted the house to live in as he was courting Beryl and had virtually promised that it would be her bridal gift.’
‘Who was Beryl?’ Gwen asked, and watched as Sage’s eyes hardened and he turned his face away.
‘No one. Just Brian’s new love.’
‘I see,’ Gwen said, understanding more from Sage’s expression than she could have gleaned from his words.
‘Then Brian made his move,’ Sage continued. ‘There was a fire in the house one night. Mom and Dad were savagely burned. Dad died instantly; Mom clung to life for a few days.’
‘But why was it assumed that Brian was responsible?’
‘It wasn’t, not by the townspeople. But I knew. I knew because he was selfish: he wanted the land for himself and he wanted the house for Beryl so that she would agree to marry him.’ Sage’s voice was low, but far from calm.
‘The fire scorched only one room of the house—my parents’ room. It did not spread. So the damage to the house was not widespread. How could that happen? It was not some murderous passing vagrant. The dogs would have torn him apart. It had to have been Brian.’
‘That’s all you know of it—and that all secondhand?’ Gwen asked. ‘I have told you before that I felt you were subject to hasty judgments—’
‘I have other proof, positive proof,’ Sage answered in a steely tone. ‘There is the letter,’ he said, withdrawing a much-folded piece of paper from his vest. ‘Do you want to read it? It’s from someone who knows what happened!’
Gwen declined the offer. ‘Just tell me how anyone who was not there when the fire started could be sure,’ she said. ‘And tell me who the letter is from.’
‘All right,’ Sage said. ‘It’s from the one person who could know, someone who is sick at heart over it. It’s from Beryl.
‘She says that Brian arrived all smoky one night, burst in and told her that it was done; now they could be married.’
‘Did they marry?’ Gwen asked.
‘No, of course not!’ Sage answered, with a touch of indignation. ‘Beryl is made of finer stuff; she couldn’t wed a man who had murdered his own parents believing that he had done it for her.’
‘And she wrote you all about this?’
‘I was in Socorro, working on a deal to transport copper ore from the mine to the refinery. I’d been there for quite some time and meant to remain there until matters were settled. Beryl had been answering my parents’ correspondence for them. She got my address off the envelope of a letter I had sent to Mom and Dad.’
‘And she wrote to you to accuse your brother?’ Gwen said, somewhat astonished.
‘It was no good telling anyone in Trinity, was it? Brian had hired the judge’s brother as foreman of the ranch while he got himself appointed to the vacant town marshal post. That must have been just to delay any real investigation.’
‘You still have the habit of making too many speculative decisions,’ Gwen commented. ‘Have you given any real thought as to why Beryl would condemn your brother? Why would she write to you?’
‘She knew that above anyone else I would demand retribution,’ Sage said with certainty. ‘Now you’re the one making various assumptions, Gwen. That’s because you don’t know Beryl like I do.’
‘You trust her that much?’
‘I trust Beryl more than anyone on this earth. That’s one of the reasons why I was going to marry her when I came back from making my fortune in the world.’
‘You were engaged to her?’
‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’
‘But—’
‘But I was long out in the world and unsuccessful in my attempts to position myself. I suppose eventually her hopes for me and even her memories of me were bound to fade.’
‘You would have been better off as a ranch owner,’ Gwen told him.
‘I’ve thought so too at times,’ Sage admitted glumly.
‘The need to do the right thing is what prompted her to write, not the promise of the ranch which if Brian were gone would then be entirely yours and the house?’
‘I resent that implication,’ Sage said harshly. ‘It is not possible at all—not with a woman like Beryl.’
Gwen shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s only that I like to remain open to all possibilities. I’m not given to rash judgments.’
‘Like me,’ Sage growled.
Gwen didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the land behind them. She said, ‘They’ve gotten closer again, and this time they appear to be coming with a purpose. The three of them have their rifles unsheathed.’