Coming in on the upper road, Toby Tippett slowed his dun horse as he started down the crest of the hill and came into sight of Patman’s Lake. At first glance he thought the town hadn’t changed much in four years. Pretty much the same—spread out a little more in the small Mexican settlement way down in the south. But when he got closer, he could see that there had been changes, a good many of them. A man couldn’t be away from a place four years and expect it to remain the same.
There were three or four big houses up on Silk Stocking Street. Two-story houses they were, the kind a man saw in the prosperous cotton towns back in East Texas. Times must have been pretty good in the cow business lately, Toby decided. There were a few new buildings along the business street, too. They had torn down the old Mustang Saloon. Another one stood in its place, a big outfit with a conservative little sign up front that read Equity Bar.
A grin formed on Toby’s face as his memory ran back to things he had seen and done in the old Mustang. He had been too young to go in there, really, but the way people looked at things then, a man was old enough if he was big enough. And Toby had always been a stretchy, overgrown kid for his age.
They hadn’t gotten around to building a new courthouse. The old frame one stood just as always on the big courthouse square. It was a couple of years late for a paint job. Saloons always did seem to do better than the county, when it came to taking in revenue.
Sight of the courthouse brought back some other memories, memories that made the grin fade. What had happened to him there would be with him as long as he lived. It showed in the lines, carved years early in a face that still was youthful in other ways. It showed in the solid maturity of his blue eyes, eyes which should still shine with mischief.
The homesickness came sweeping over him again, hard. He wanted to keep riding until he got to the ranch, until he had ridden through the last familiar gate and closed that familiar old door behind him. But the sun was dropping low over the cedar-covered hills west of town.
At the end of the street old Roper Finney’s livery barn stood just as it always had. It never had had a coat of paint, and the frame walls were sun-bleached to a dull gray, the boards warped and cracked. Toby dismounted in front of it and stretched his long, saddle-weary legs.
A short, middle-aged man came out and squinted at him.
“What’ll you have, cowboy?”
“Like to put up my horse. And I reckon old Roper’ll still let a man make his bed in the hay, won’t he?”
The little man peered closer at him. “You been gone a long time, ain’t you? Old Roper ain’t been here in two years or more. Sold this place to me and went back to East Texas. Had an itch to farm some cotton.”
Toby acknowledged the information with a nod. “Been a good year for cotton back there. Hope he’s making a crop. How about that bed?”
“Sure,” the stableman replied, “help yourself. Unsaddle, and I’ll feed your horse.”
Something was working at the little man. Toby could see it making a fever in his pale eyes. Presently, dipping oats out of a bin with a five-gallon bucket, the stableman spoke.
“You live here?”
Toby said, “The old home place is twenty miles out of town, south and west.”
“Well, if this is your home, where you been so long?”
Toby hesitated, then shrugged. No use in trying to make a secret of it. The word would spread quickly enough, soon as anybody who knew him spotted him here in town.
“I’ve been in jail,” he said. “For four years in the state penitentiary.”
He thought the stableman was going to spill the bucket of oats. But the little man got control of himself and hurried on out the back door to the corral. There wouldn’t be any more questions out of him, Toby knew.
The washstand was still where Roper had always kept it. Toby washed the trail dust off of his face and hands. He had shaved this morning. Feeling his chin, he decided that would do till he got home.
One big job was ahead of him right now. He dreaded it in a way. All the long ride across more than half a state, he had thought about it, and knew it was something he had to do. He worried over it now, wondering if he could find the words he wanted.
Toby started down the wheel-rutted street, afoot, toward the courthouse. It seemed to him that he could feel the eyes staring, the fingers pointing, and he knew it was his imagination running away with him. This had been one of the things he had dreaded most, his first time in Patman’s Lake, not knowing how the people were going to receive him.
A cowboy came riding down the street toward him. Toby knew the face, although he couldn’t tie a name to it. He knew where the puncher had worked four years ago.
Toby managed a smile and a quick howdy.
The rider slowed, and recognition brought shock to his face. He stared at Toby a moment, muttered something in answer, and hurried his horse on down the street.
No, Toby knew, it wouldn’t take long for word to get to the Damon Frost ranch. They wouldn’t be happy out there, some of them.
Toby half hoped he would find the sheriff’s office empty, that he could put off the visit for a while.
A girl was seated at the rolltop desk. She looked up quickly as Toby walked in the door. She was nineteen, maybe, or twenty. She stood up, a slender girl, almost thin. Her oval face lacked a little of being pretty. But a man would never let that bother him. Her eyes made up for it. They were wide, gray, expressive eyes. And because of them, he knew who she was. Sheriff Cass Duncan had the same kind of eyes.
“I was looking for Cass,” he said.
She was studying him with a quiet friendliness. “He’s down the street. He’ll be back in a minute. Won’t you sit down, Toby?”
Her calling him by name brought momentary surprise. She knew who he was, all right. But more than that, it was the first time anybody had called him by his first name in years. Always it was just, “Hey, Tippett!”
Seating himself, he stared at her. It was pleasant to look at a girl, especially when he had seen so few for such a long time.
“You’re Cass’s daughter, aren’t you?” he asked.
She nodded. “That’s right. I remember when they had you and Dodd Parrish here, in the jail out back. I used to bake a cake or a pie every day or two and take it to you.”
Toby smiled at her. “I remember, too. I haven’t had any cooking like that since. But you’ve changed a lot. You weren’t more than fifteen or sixteen.”
Her gaze was level, appraising. “You’ve changed a lot too, Toby. And all for the better, I’d guess.”
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway. Toby stood up as Cass Duncan walked in through the door. The sheriff stopped short.
“Toby,” he said. “Toby Tippett.”
He lifted his hand uncertainly. Toby stepped forward and took it.
“You’re looking good, son,” the sheriff said, the surprise fading.
“I had a chance to do outside work most of the time. You’re looking good too, Cass.”
The sheriff smiled. “My daughter’s cooking. She doesn’t believe in throwing anything away.”
Cass Duncan was nearing middle age. His coarse black hair was shot with gray, and his mustache no longer was the raven black which Toby remembered from his boyhood. Cass had always been a kindly man. He could bawl out an unruly boy in a way that took the hide off. But there was always a grin and a handshake later, if it looked as if the boy deserved it.
He had always been able to handle men, too. Not many of the backtrail kind ever stayed in Cass’s county long.
“You figuring on staying here, Toby?” he queried.
The young man nodded. “This is home, Cass. Folks may not take to me anymore. But I want to stay. I’m hoping they’ll let me.”
The sheriff’s eyes appraised him. Toby felt the friendliness in them, yet he was still ill at ease.
“Depends some on how you take the folks, Toby. I hope you didn’t come back with any grudges.”
Toby shook his head. “No grudges, Cass. That’s what I came to tell you. I wanted you to know that I’ve got no hard feelings for what happened. I’m old enough now to realize that I got what I had coming to me, and no more.
“I was just a wild kid then, young, dumb, and too well fed. I made my mistakes, and I’ve paid for them. What’s more, I’m glad I did.”
Now came the hard part. He dug deep for the words.
“You did me a big favor when you brought me in, Cass. If you hadn’t, I might have kept going on the same way. I was just rustling cattle then. But later it might have been killing. You stopped me in time, and I’m grateful to you. Now the account’s all squared. I intend to ride a straight road from here on out.”
Cass Duncan’s eyes studied him. A warm smile came up into them. “I believe you, son. You don’t know how tickled I am to hear you say it.” He hesitated a moment. “There’s one thing that still bothers me, though. At the trial you and Dodd Parrish maintained all along that there wasn’t anybody involved but just the two of you. Everybody knew there had to be more. But you two boys went on and took all the punishment. Maybe now you’d like to tell me the rest of the story.”
Warily Toby shook his head. “No, Cass. Even if there had been anybody else with us—and mind you, I’m not saying there was—don’t you think they’d have learned their lesson from what happened to Dodd and me?”
The memory of Dodd Parrish was always painful to Toby. He’d taken sick and died the second winter.
Cass shrugged, still smiling. “I reckon so, Toby. Leastways, the cow stealing stopped around here after you two boys went up.”
Toby nodded. That was the way he had hoped it would be.
“Now, Cass, let’s talk about something else. Tell me what has happened since I’ve been gone. How’s Ellen Frost?”
Mention of the name brought a slow frown to the sheriff’s face. “Ellen? Oh, she’s doing fine, I guess. Got half the young men in the country after her—after her and her dad’s money. You were going with her, weren’t you?”
Toby nodded again. “Yes. We had sort of an understanding that someday we were going to get married. She wrote to me for a while, but the letters finally stopped.”
There was pain in his face now. He had tried for a long time to reconcile himself to the idea that she was lost to him. But he never had been able to. The memory of her was as fresh as if he had seen her yesterday. It had always been so.
Something was troubling Cass Duncan. He frowned and tightened his fist, studying the toes of his old scuffed-up boots. The girl was watching Toby, her eyes saying nothing.
“Look, Toby,” Cass said, “I know how you feel. But you better stay away from the Frost place. It’ll only mean trouble for you if you go out there.”
Toby peered closely at him. “Old Damon Frost?”
Duncan’s eyes said yes. “He was awful bitter about you, son. He’d have gotten you two hung, if he could have. He’ll never in a hundred years believe you’ve reformed. Give him the slightest excuse and he’ll hound you till he’s got you back in jail—or dead!”
Toby pondered that. “I don’t want trouble, Cass. Not with old Damon or anybody else. I’ll watch out, I promise you. Then he changed the subject. “You seen Dad lately?”
Cass nodded.
Toby said, “He never was much of a hand to write letters. I got a few from him, but they were always short. Looked like he sweated blood, just writing that much. I’m sure anxious to see him.”
Duncan avoided Toby’s eyes. “Toby, there’s something else. You’re going to find that your dad has changed some.”
Fear hit Toby like the strike of a club. “He’s sick or something?”
“Not sick, exactly. It’s just that—well, he’s had it pretty hard since you’ve been gone. It’s taken less than that to break some men. And Sod Tippett’s old.”
Toby’s throat swelled. He looked at the floor, and remorse burned in him like a banked fire. Toby had been the only son born to a man already in middle age, the son who had become everything to Sod Tippett after his wife died. Sod had drudged for years on the little ranch that was half his and half the bank’s. He had done it for his son, and all be had ever asked in return was Toby’s love.
And Toby repaid him for those years by leaving his father to face his old age alone, with nothing remaining to him but his smashed dreams and misery of soul.
The knowledge of this, and the bitter driving of his conscience, had been with Toby a long time now. They had done much to carve the lines in his face and burn the foolish gleam of kid wildness out his eyes.
“It may be too late, Cass,” Toby said with sincerity. “But if there’s any way I can, I’m going to make it up to him. I’ll work till I drop in my tracks, if I have to. I’m going to repay him for all those wasted years.”
Cass Duncan and his daughter watched through the window as Toby walked out the big frame courthouse and down the street.
The girl asked, “What do you think, Dad?”
Cass placed his hand on his daughter’s slender shoulder. “I think he means it, Betty. I think he wants to go straight.”
She frowned. “What about the people here? Will they let him?”
The sheriff shook his head. “I don’t know, Betty. I don’t know.”
* * *
Ahead of him, bathed in the cherry glow of the newly risen sun, Toby Tippett could see the house where he had been born. His heartbeat quickened. His throat tightened to the quick rush of memories, and anticipation seeing his father again.
The thought of it had kept him awake all night, lying in the livery stable’s hay and watching the twinkle of stars through the big open door. Sometime after midnight, unable to contain himself, he had saddled up and hit the road south.
He dropped the reins over a picket in front of the house. There was a sag to the fence, and the house had fallen into poor repair in four years’ time. The barn is missing some shingles, too, he saw at a glance. Well, he’d fix that. Maybe it was a good thing. Lots of work was what he needed.
His hand trembled as he reached for the knob and pushed the door inward. He blinked at the sting in his eyes. Sod Tippett was faced away from him, stooped over the woodstove where bacon sizzled in a frying pan, and coffee boiled in a smoke-blackened pot.
“Hello, Dad,” Toby spoke tightly.
The old man straightened a little and froze there. Then, slowly, he turned, his faded eyes wide in unbelief, his jaw agape.
“Toby!” he whispered. “Son!”
Toby took three long strides across the room and threw his arms around the stooped, frail shoulders.
For a long time no words passed between them. They just looked at each other, throats too tight for talking. Hunger had been gnawing at Toby for a long time, because he had never gotten around to eating any supper last night. Now, with breakfast in front of him, he was just content to sit and look at the man across the table.
Sod Tippett was old now, old even beyond his years. Toby had been expecting it, but the shock had staggered him, actually seeing the change that four hard years had beaten into his father.
“Son,” the old man asked finally, “you’re out for good? You’re going to stay?”
“Yes, Dad. I’m here to stay.”
He thought he could see the thin old shoulders heave with controlled emotion, and he looked to the warped plank flooring that hadn’t been clean in a long time.
After a bit, Sod Tippett had a grip on himself. “Son,” he said, “I knew you’d be coming home soon. I could feel it. Just the other day, I was telling your mother, ‘Toby’s on the way home.’”
Toby’s jaw fell, and suddenly there was ice at the pit of his stomach. Now he realized fully what Cass Duncan had been trying so painfully to tell him.
“I was telling your mother…” old Sod Tippett had said; but Toby’s mother had been dead for fifteen years!
Sod had finally loosened up, and now he was talking freely. Toby sat there nodding, hearing little of what was said. He covered his face with his hand.
The riders came in the early afternoon. Toby was up on the house, checking the cracked shingles and trying to find the spots that would have to be patched. He heard the clatter of hooves and looked out across the big corral. He saw the four horsemen rein through the wide gate and head up toward the house. At the distance, and with four years’ absence behind him, it was hard to recognize most of the men, but there was no mistaking the man who rode in the lead.
This was Damon Frost, and the grim set of his square shoulders made it plain that he wasn’t here to say howdy.
Toby eased down off of the roof and waited in front of the house.
As the riders reined up, he stepped forward and held out his hand toward Damon Frost.
“It’s been a long time, Mr. Frost,” he said pleasantly. “You’re looking good.”
Frost made no move to grip Toby’s hand. Instead, he pulled his right hand even farther back, near his belt. His square face was set in a hard scowl. The years hadn’t changed him much. A little more gray in his hair and his thick mustache, maybe, and a little more weight around his middle. Nothing like the changes in old Sod Tippett.
Toby glanced at the other three men. One was the cowboy who had seen him yesterday in town. Another was Marvin Sand. Sand was two or three years older than Toby. He had worked for Damon Frost a long time. Toby remembered lots of things about Marvin Sand, few of them with pleasure.
The fourth man was Damon’s son, Alton Frost. Alton was just about as old as Toby. They had been friends since they had both been in the paint pony and marbles age.
“Howdy, Alton,” Toby smiled. “It’s sure good to see you.”
Alton Frost glanced uncertainly at his father. Yes, old Damon still ruled his family with an iron hand. Or he tried to. Alton flashed a quick, uneasy grin at Toby. “How’ve you been, Toby?”
“Tolerable. How’s Ellen? I’m sure anxious to see her.”
It was Damon Frost who replied to that. “That’s one reason I came over here, Tippett. Ellen doesn’t want to see you. You’ll leave her alone.”
Toby tried hard to keep some trace of pleasantness in his face. But it was draining fast, and anger was seeping in. “Did she tell you to tell me that?”
Frost’s face darkened. “I’m telling you, stay away from her. I’ll have no cow thief even talking to my daughter.”
“I’ve paid my debt, Mr. Frost. I’m a free man.”
Frost’s eyes bored into him. “To me, Tippett, you’re a cow thief, and you always will be.”
He waited to see if Toby was going to say any more to that. Toby didn’t. Frost leaned forward on his saddle horn, his eyes like cold steel.
“I wouldn’t advise you to stay here, Tippett. You’re not wanted any more. They tell me a man has been trying to buy this place from your dad. You better get him to sell, and both of you move on.”
In stubborn anger Toby replied, “This is our home place. I was born here, and intend to stay. I made a mistake. I’ve taken my whipping and learned my lesson. I’d like to be friends with you if I can. But friends or not, I’m going to stay!”
Hatred stood raw and deadly in Damon Frost’s square face.
“No, you won’t,” he said in a quiet voice harsh as two rusty steel blades rubbing together. “I’ll see that you go, or I’ll see you dead.”
He jerked his horse around and started him for the big corral gate. Just then old Sod Tippett came hobbling in from the barn.
“Howdy there, Damon,” he said, beaming. “Been a long time since you were over here. My son’s home. Did you see him?”
Damon Frost held up uncertainly, evidently not wanting to hurt the old man. They had been good friends a long time ago. “Yes, Sod,” he said, “I saw him.”
To Toby, Frost warned darkly, “You tell your dad what I told you. I’m giving you a week to clear out. After that, you better watch yourself.”
He spurred away then, sitting straight and proud in the saddle, his broad shoulders squared. Without a backward glance, Marvin Sand and the cowboy rode out a length behind him. Young Alton Frost held back a moment, looking at Toby. He winked, then spurred on to catch up with his father.
Sod stared after them, not comprehending. “Damon wouldn’t even light and talk,” he murmured. “What’s the matter with him, son?”
Toby’s mouth twisted in bitterness. “I’m what’s the matter with him. I didn’t expect he’d ever like me again. But to hate me like that…”
The old man stood watching the riders trot their horses away on the trail that angled off across the flat toward the Frost ranch.
“I heard him tell you to leave, son. You figuring on going? You fixing to leave me again?”
Toby’s jaw set grimly. He put his arm around his father’s shoulder. “No, Dad. I’m not going to leave you.”
Well past midafternoon, Alton Frost came back alone. He reined in at the front of the house and stepped down. Leisurely, he grinned up at Toby, who was on the roof, pulling out some bad shingles.
“Better climb down from there cowboy, before you fall off and mess up the front yard.”
Grinning broadly, Toby climbed down. He clasped Alton’s hand. “Say, you’re a sight for sore eyes. I had a hunch you’d be back.”
Alton laughed. “Sure. Had to wait till I could get loose from Pa. He’s peculiar about some things, and you’re one of them.”
Toby’s grin left him. “Alton, how come he’s so bitter about me? I wouldn’t expect him to greet me with open arms, but…”
Alton shook his head. “Like I said, cowboy, he’s peculiar about some things. He’s kind of a puritan, in a way. He hates anybody who steals anything. You were stealing from him; that makes it extra bad.”
He grinned again. “Kind of funny in a way, ain’t it? We all know how Pa got his start when he was our age. If it hadn’t been for moonlight nights, a fast horse, and a wide loop, he’d still be working for somebody else, for wages. But nowadays, you let anybody steal something from him and he’s like a grizzly bear caught in a trap.”
Uncomfortably, Toby said, “You oughtn’t to talk about your own dad like that, Alton.”
Alton Frost shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
Toby frowned and changed the subject. “Tell me about Ellen.”
“Oh, she’s doing fine. She’s got more brainless boys chasing after her than there are cattle in Tom Green County.”
Toby hesitated with the question he really wanted to ask. “What about me, Alton? Reckon she ever thinks about me anymore?”
Alton smiled. “Sure she does. The minute Pa heard you were back, he laid down the law to her. Said he’d shoot you if he caught you near her.”
“And what did she say?”
“She told him she would see anybody she had a mind to, and she would sure be wanting to see you.”
Toby’s heartbeat quickened. He sat down on the little front porch, trying to keep from grinning as foolishly as he felt.
“When can I see her, Alton? When had I ought to go?”
Alton shook his head. “She said tell you not to risk coming over there. She’ll come to you.”
Incredulously, Toby stared. “To me? That’s even riskier.”
“Not really. Our ranch adjoins yours on one side. She’ll find some excuse to be riding in the next day or two. She’ll slip across the east pasture and come over … Ellen’s gotten to be a lot like us, Toby. She likes a little risk in everything she does. It’s like the sweetening in coffee. Take it out, and the pleasure is gone.”
Toby was disturbed by something in Alton’s talk. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on it; maybe it was the realization that the old wild spark still burned in his friend, unquenched by the years that had drained the last of it from Toby.
For a while Toby sat on the edge of the porch, staring past Alton, to the tall gate posts at the far end of the corral, and even beyond them to the rolling rangeland that stretched on and on until it disappeared out of sight in a vague green line of cedar.
“Alton,” he said, “there’s something been bothering me. Since I’ve been gone, have you been…” It was hard to say. The words were right on his tongue, but a man couldn’t just come right out with a thing like this. He had to go at it from the side, and halfway cover it up. But underneath, it was still the same. “Have you been doing anything that you wouldn’t want to tell Cass Duncan about?”
Alton laughed, but he didn’t meet Toby’s eyes for a moment. “Nothing serious, cowboy. Nothing serious.” He looked behind him to be sure Sod Tippett was nowhere around. Then he leaned forward.
“Toby,” he said excitedly, “we been hoping you’d get out soon, Marvin and I have. We’ve run upon a real good proposition. You ought to be in on it.”
A coldness was growing in Toby.
Alton went on, “It’s this, cowboy. You know they’re building a new railroad down south of us. It’s seventy miles away, but that’s not too far. There’s a man down there that’ll take all the fat cattle we can drive to him. Splits the profits with us and doesn’t look at any brands. He comes up and meets us halfway. He butchers the cattle himself and sells the meat to construction workers on the railroad.
“It sure cuts down the risk, Toby. It’s not near as bad as it used to be when we had to drive the cattle all over hell and half of Texas, and always take a chance on running into somebody. Now we cut out a few good ones here, a few there, make a fast night-and-day drive, and they’re off of our hands.”
Disappointment was like a cold, wet blanket dropped across Toby’s shoulders. “You been doing this very long?”
Alton nodded. “A good while.”
“Your dad’s cattle along with the rest, I guess.”
“He’ll never miss them. He’s got so much money now he doesn’t know what to do with it. It makes him miserable, just thinking about it. In a way we’re doing him a favor. Marvin and me have talked it over a right smart. You went to jail for us and never let out a peep. You’ve got something coming to you. How about it? The gravy’s thick, and we’ve got a big spoon.”
Toby stood up, stiff with the coldness he held inside him. He stared out across the pasture before turning back to Alton, his face clouding.
“You’re not going to like this, Alton. But I wish they’d caught you. I wish they’d caught you and sent you up the way they did me.”
Color leaped into Alton’s face. His eyes glittered for a brief moment. “You don’t mean that, cowboy.”
“Yes, I do mean it. I hoped that what happened to me would be enough to teach you something. I learned, and now that it’s over, I’m glad of it. But you never learned anything.”
Alton stared in surprise and half anger. “That’s the way it is, huh, cowboy?”
Toby nodded. “That’s the way it is.”
Woodenly Alton Frost walked out and swung up onto his horse.
“I’m sorry, Toby.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
Toby stood watching until Alton had ridden out of sight. An emptiness ached in him. There had been a close bond between them ever since they had been kids, playing together on a school ground and slipping over to the neighbors’ ranches to rope their calves on the sly. Neither boy had had a brother, so they had been brothers to each other.
Now Toby sensed that this was all over, that it was being shoved behind him like the closing of a book.
He sat down once more on the edge of the porch, looking out across the ranch and not seeing any of it.
Ellen Frost came just as Alton had said she would. Toby’s breath came short as he hurried out to help her down from her horse.
She was a beautiful girl, more beautiful even than he had remembered her, if that was possible. She had dark, laughing eyes and soft, full lips that made a man’s pulse quicken. She wore a tight-fitting white blouse that swelled outward, then pulled in slim and narrow at the waist. She was the kind of girl who made men stop and look back, and she knew it.
Toby would have crushed her to him, but she pushed him back, smiling coquettishly. “Let’s not be in too big a hurry,” she said, looking into his eyes.
His heart was pounding. “I’ve waited four years, Ellen. Would you say that I’m in a hurry?”
Her only answer was another teasing smile. “Four years. That’s a long time, Toby. Lots of things can change.”
In sudden worry he asked, “Have you changed, Ellen? Do you feel different about me now than you did four years ago?”
She parried the question. “I took a big risk in coming over, didn’t I?”
He replied, “Yes. And I’m glad you did. If you hadn’t, chances are I’d have gone over looking for you. It wouldn’t have mattered if your dad had been waiting with a cannon.”
That pleased her. “That’s one thing I always liked about you, Toby. You were bold. You didn’t let anything scare you. A little risk never bothered you at all.”
Toby started to frown.
She went on. “And that’s something that has worried me. Surely at some time or other you must have had a chance to break out. Why didn’t you?”
Surprised, he asked. “Break out? Why?”
“Why, to be free, of course. You must have hated it there.”
A sudden darkness began to come over him, like the one he had felt talking to the girl’s brother.
“You’d have wanted me to do that, Ellen?”
“Why not?”
Bitterly he said, “Because I’d never have been free. Loose, maybe, but not free. Everywhere I’d turn, I’d be looking for somebody with a gun. I couldn’t have come home. All I could’ve done would be to run and keep running. Just like a coyote. It’s better to wait. Now I can go to sleep at night and not lie awake wondering if they’ll catch up with me tomorrow. I can look anybody in the eye and not have to flinch.”
He looked levelly at her. “Isn’t that a whole lot better, Ellen? Isn’t it worth four years of my time?”
She smiled and touched his hand. “Sure, guess you’re right.”
The way she looked, he couldn’t help himself. He grabbed her and kissed her, hard. She finally drew away from him, smiling teasingly.
“Four years have changed you, Toby.”
He was almost pleading with her. “Four years haven’t changed me in what I want, Ellen. I want you. I want to marry you and bring you here to live. This is a good place. We can make it good. You won’t be sorry. Please, Ellen, what do you say?”
The same smile lingered. “Like I said at first, Toby, let’s not be in too big a hurry. Let’s wait and see.”
Disappointment brought a slump to his shoulders.
“Come on,” she said, “get a horse and ride back to the boundary fence with me.”
He rode along beside her, hoping for her to break down and say at least part of the things he had dreamed of her saying through the four long years he had been away. She never spoke. Sitting straight in her saddle, she was only an arm’s length away from him. Yet that lingering, teasing smile was like a barrier between them, making her as unreachable as a star.
They came to the fence that divided Sod Tippett’s old place from the Frost ranch. Toby swung down and opened the wire gate.
Ellen said, “I’ll be thinking about what you asked me. Watch for me. I’ll be back to see you.”
She leaned over then and touched her lips to his forehead, a kiss that wasn’t really a kiss at all. It only brought an ache to Toby as he watched her ride away.
Another man was watching her ride away, too. Marvin Sand stood hidden in a thicket of mesquite, his face dark. He dropped a half-smoked cigarette and ground it beneath his boot heel. He stepped into the saddle and rode out of the thicket, angling across to meet Ellen Frost.
She pulled up in surprise, her face flushed. “Marvin! What are you doing here?”
His voice was flat. “Waiting for you to come back.”
“You trailed me?”
He nodded. “And I saw what happened yonder by the gate. Stay away from him, Ellen. He’s going to draw lightning.”
She began to smile, the same teasing smile she had used on Toby. “Maybe I like the kind of man who draws lightning.”
Marvin Sand edged his horse up against hers. “He’s not your kind.”
“And maybe you are?”
Angry color began to seep into his face. He reached for her, grabbing her arms. “You’ve seemed to think I was. I’ve stood by and let you run after other men because when it was over you always came back to me. But I’m not going to let you make a fool of yourself over some ex-convict.”
Her tiny mouth dropped open. Her voice sharpened. “You’d have been a convict yourself, Marvin, only you never got caught.”
In sudden fury Sand drew back and slapped her so hard that she reeled in the saddle. “Don’t ever say that!”
Ellen’s nostrils flared. She grabbed the quirt that was looped on her saddle horn. He threw up his arm to take the sharp bite of it. An angry cry swelling in her throat, she spurred away from him. She put her horse into a hard lope toward the Frost ranch headquarters.
Marvin Sand held back, the color still high in his face. He glanced once back toward the gate, where he had seen Toby Tippett. His fists clenched. Then he swung his horse about and followed in a stiff trot along the trail left by Ellen Frost …
Toby Tippett was pleasantly surprised by the good shape his father had managed to keep the herd in. Toby spent a lot of time in the saddle, riding around over the ranch, looking at the cattle. It wasn’t so much that they needed any care. The year was good. They were putting on a lot of tallow for the coming winter. And there was little doctoring to be done.
It was just that it felt so good to be riding out in the open, breathing the good air of the range country and knowing that he was free.
Riding back to the house late one morning, he saw the dun horse hitched out front, standing hipshot and switching flies. He read the brand as he rode by, but it was a new one to him. After unsaddling, he walked back to the house, curiosity working at him.
He recognized the gray-haired man seated in the house with his father. Paul English stopped puffing his pipe as he saw Toby enter. He stood up, leaving the big old rocking chair to rock by itself.
“By George, Toby,” he said with genuine pleasure, “it’s sure good to see you.” He grasped Toby’s hand.
Grinning at him, Toby warmed inside.
He would remember Paul English till the day he died. English had been Damon Frost’s foreman for many years. Toby had hired out to him many a time for extra cow work. English was a good man, the kind a growing boy watches and tries to follow.
A lot of friendly talk passed between them. Finally English pointed the stem of his pipe toward the door, and Toby caught the hint.
Outside, away from Sod, English said, “Toby, I’d like you to tell me something. Where were you last night?”
Toby frowned, puzzled. “Why, I was here, Paul. With Dad.”
“All night?”
“Sure.”
English nodded. “I’m glad. I asked your dad in a roundabout way, and he said the same thing. So I know it’s the truth.”
Toby asked, “What’s the matter, Paul?”
Grimness crept into his gray eyes. “Somebody was trying to run off some Long S cattle last night. Just happened that a couple of cowboys were on their way back from town and jumped them. The rustlers lit out.”
“Anybody see who they were?”
English shook his head. “Too dark. Never got that close, anyway. All they could tell was that there was two of them.” He paused, drawing deeply on the pipe. “I was in town this morning, son. I imagine you can guess what people were saying.”
A quick rush of despair hit Toby. “I reckon I can. But I didn’t have a hand in it, Paul. I hope you believe that.”
“I believe it. But not many will. Damon Frost will be calling for your scalp.”
Toby clenched his fist. Damon Frost. The man’s implacable hatred had long been a puzzle to him.
“Paul,” he said, “you were just about the only one that ever spoke up for me during the trial. You even went in the face of Damon Frost to try to get me off light. I’ve always appreciated that. But I never understood it.”
Paul English smiled. “Mainly, I reckon, because I knew there wasn’t really anything mean about you. You were wild, but that’s the kind of thing that generally wears off in time. I was pretty wild myself, once.
“There was something else, too. I knew that you and Dodd Parrish were protecting Alton Frost.”
That came as a shock. “You knew? But how?”
“Working with a bunch of kids like you were, a man gets to where he knows them pretty well. He can figure out lots of things for himself. That was another thing that made me try to hold Damon back. I knew that if he kept digging, his own son was going to be drug in, too.”
“You still working for Damon?”
English shook his head. “No. It never set well with him, me talking up for you. Pretty soon I got a chance to buy the old Murchison place, so I quit the Frost outfit and went to work for myself.”
“Then who’s Damon’s foreman?”
“Marvin Sand.”
“Marvin?” Toby’s eyes widened. A sudden, unpleasant picture came into his mind. As foreman, Marvin would know where to find the kind of cattle the butcher wanted, know when it was safe to get them, probably could even get by with false counts which would cover up the stealing.
English was eyeing Toby sharply. “Any reason Marvin shouldn’t be foreman for Damon Frost?”
Evasively Toby said, “I don’t know. I guess not.”
But he could tell that he had planted a seed of suspicion in English. It showed in the man’s face.
Beside his horse English paused a moment. “Toby, you’ve served your time. Don’t let them get you sent back for something you didn’t do. You better stop covering up for other people and think about yourself.”
A knot of anger grew in Toby as he watched Paul English ride away. He had come home looking for a new start. He had asked nothing of anybody, except to be left alone and given a chance. Now he wasn’t going to let a couple of careless cow thieves spoil the chance he had earned.
Sod Tippett came hobbling out to the barn as Toby saddled a fresh horse.
“I’m going to town, Dad,” Toby said. “I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”
The minute Sod spoke, Toby knew the man’s mind had dropped back into a worried time that had been gone for years.
“All right, son. But you hadn’t ought to be going so much. Paul English was just telling me you’ve been making a good hand over at Frost’s. He’d like to hire you full-time, only he says you’ve still got a little too much wildness in you. You run around a lot. Maybe you ought to stay home…”
With a tug at his throat, Toby said, “I will, Dad. I promise you, I will.”
Toby had no real plan. There wasn’t much he could do except talk to Sheriff Cass Duncan, and lay the cards on the table. He wasn’t going to implicate Alton Frost and Marvin Sand—not unless he had to. But he knew with a stolid certainty that he would do it, if it was the only way to keep out of jail.
He felt the brooding hostility in the faces of the men he rode past on his way to the big old courthouse. A nagging worry started. Maybe he had done wrong in coming here. Maybe he should have waited until they came after him.
But deep within him he knew he was right. He was sure he could make Cass Duncan believe him. And it would be better to convince Cass now than to wait until the suspicion had worked so deeply in him that it could not be dispelled.
Walking into Cass Duncan’s office, he saw someone working behind a big shelf, cleaning out stacks of old papers.
“Cass,” he called.
It wasn’t Cass. Betty Duncan stepped out from behind the ceiling-high shelf. Her eyes warmed at the sight of Toby. It struck him again that they were beautiful eyes, gray and vital.
Flustered, he said, “Excuse me, Miss Duncan. I thought you were Cass.”
She smiled. “So I gathered. But I’m not.”
Her long brown hair, he noticed, was combed up and rolled into a tight, pretty bun at the back of her neck. “He went out to the Long S this morning with a bunch of men. He ought to be getting back pretty soon.” Her eyes continued to smile at him. “I’m glad you came, Toby. Maybe you can help me put some of these papers back on the top shelf. It’s hard for me to reach.”
He climbed up onto a chair. She handed him some papers. Their hands touched, and a peculiar tingle ran through him.
Toby said, “You know what Cass went out there for, I reckon.”
Her eyes told him the answer.
“I was home last night,” he said urgently. It was suddenly important to him that this girl believe him. “I didn’t know a thing about it till Paul English stopped by and told me. I came in to tell Cass I had no hand in it. I promised him I was going to stay straight. I meant it.”
He looked down into her eyes and found them searching his face. He was glad he hadn’t lied to her. He sensed that she would have known it.
“Dad’ll be pleased to hear that from you,” she said. “He didn’t want to believe what some of them were saying about you this morning. You really convinced him the other day, Toby.”
Her words brought him relief. He relaxed. Looking down at her, he said, “How about you, Betty? Were you convinced?”
She looked past him, her eyes pensive. “You didn’t notice me much four years ago, Toby. I guess to you I was just a little girl then. But I noticed you. I was pulling for you all the way, and I’m pulling for you now.”
Then, a tinge of red color in her face, she turned away from him and busied herself with the stack of papers and books.
A sudden stirring inside him, Toby watched her wonderingly. She had seemed only a kid then in her starched, schoolgirl dresses, her long brown hair braided and tied behind her head. He had often wondered why she was so eager to bake cakes and pies for him. Now he thought he knew.
The knowledge left a warm glow in him. Betty Duncan was no little girl now. He could see how a man could lose his heart to her in a hurry, if he hadn’t already lost it to someone else.
Cass Duncan returned about half an hour later. The heavy sound of his footsteps preceded him down the courthouse hall. He stopped abruptly in the doorway as he sighted Toby sitting there.
Cass pitched his big dusty hat at a rack and missed. He paid no attention to that. He settled himself heavily into his chair and looked across at Toby, his gaze steady and questioning.
“I’ve been listening to everybody else all day,” he said. “Now I want to hear what you’ve got to say.”
Toby told him about Paul English’s visit. “I haven’t stolen anybody’s cattle, haven’t tried to, and don’t intend to try to.”
Cass Duncan stared at him, his gray eyes as inescapable as his daughter’s had been. “You know something, Toby? I believe you. But you know something else? I believe you know who was trying to run off those cattle. You ought to tell me.”
Toby looked away from him. “I’ve told you all I know.”
The sheriff frowned. “All right, Toby, if that’s how it is.”
Then he gave the same warning which Paul English had made. “You’re fixing to get hung on somebody else’s rope, son. Don’t let it happen.”
It was seldom that Toby Tippett ever took a drink. He felt that he needed one now, bad. Stepping into the saddle, he swung around and angled down the street to the new place which was called the Equity Bar. He walked up the steps, then stopped short at the door. A good-sized bunch of men was inside, and among them was Damon Frost.
Toby knew he didn’t want any trouble now, and stepping in there would be a sure way to get it. Slowly he started back down the steps, dismissing his need of the drink. He saw two men riding up the street toward him, and he hauled up short again. They were Alton Frost and Marvin Sand.
He swung into the saddle and pulled out to meet them. The anger built in him. He saw surprise flush into their faces.
“I want to talk to you two,” he said shortly. “Let’s ride out a ways.”
Sand’s gaze nervously swept up the street. “This isn’t the time to do it, I don’t think.”
Angrily Toby said, “We’ll do it now, and we’ll do it right here, unless you turn around and ride out to a better place with me.”
Resentment smoldered in Sand’s face as they rode out around a hill just south of town. Once he looked back over his shoulder.
“Afraid somebody’ll see you with me, Marvin, and get the idea you might be a crook?” Toby asked acidly. Sand didn’t answer.
Toby felt an old dislike swelling in him. He never had thought much of Marvin Sand, even when they had ridden together years ago. With Toby and Dodd and Alton it had been mostly just wildness that pushed them into rustling cattle. Wildness and a thirst for adventure.
But with Sand, two or three years older than any of them, it had been something else.
It had been the money that had attracted him, a love of money that amounted to greed.
And with it had been a mean streak that had sometimes frightened the other boys. That streak had made him kill cattle for spite once when a posse had closed in and the young rustlers had had to abandon their stolen herd. And another time it had been all Toby could do to keep Sand from shooting Cass Duncan from ambush. Malice had burned in Marvin Sand, a malice beyond Toby’s understanding.
“This is far enough, I reckon,” Toby said when they were behind the hill. He swung his horse around to face them. “You knuckleheads! Don’t you know what you’re doing to me? I don’t intend to stand around here with my hands in my pockets while you two fools get me sent back to prison for something I didn’t do.”
Alton Frost stammered. “N-now, Toby, it wasn’t our fault. There wasn’t a chance in a hundred that we’d get caught. It was just bad luck. It’s not going to happen again.”
Furiously Toby exploded, “It better not happen again. There’s something I want you two to get straight, right now. I covered up for you once, because I was as guilty then as you were. But I’m not going to cover up for you now. Get my tail in a crack and I’ll spill the whole story.”
Sand’s eyes narrowed. There was poison in them. “You wouldn’t, Toby.”
“Yes,” he said levelly, “I would.”
Sand leaned toward him, grabbing Toby’s shirt. “You ever say a word about us, Toby, and I’ll kill you.”
Toby’s anger burst free. He drove his fist into Sand’s ribs so hard that Sand almost fell out of the saddle. Sand took a futile swing at him. Toby hit him again, and this time Sand fell.
Instantly Toby was on the ground, just in time to see Sand get up. Sand rushed him. Toby faltered under the savage impact of Sand’s hard fists. But he managed to hit Sand in the face, twice. Sand slowed a little.
Alton Frost had dismounted and was standing there helplessly.
He pleaded, “Let’s stop this. You got no call…”
Rage boiled up in Marvin Sand’s face. He drove into Toby again, his fists striking like sledges. Toby staggered backward and fell. Sand drew back a foot to kick him.
Alton grabbed Sand’s shoulder. “Marvin,” he cried, “you can’t…”
In blind fury Sand smashed Alton in the face. Young Frost fell to one knee and stayed there, holding his hand to his bleeding mouth.
Sand whirled back on Toby. But the brief break had given Toby time to get part of his breath back. He never gave Sand a chance to balance himself. He dived into him, punching, slashing, pounding until Sand went down on his hands and knees.
Toby stood over him, his chest heaving. “You boys just … remember what I told you. I’m not going to jail … for anybody.”
Sod Tippett was asleep when Toby got home that night. Hungry, Toby found a few cold biscuits without lighting the lamp. He went to bed.
Next morning he ached from the fight, and the bruises and cuts on his face were burning like grass afire. He walked out by the cistern and hauled up a bucket of water to wash his face. The water cooled him, but the fire soon came back.
Sleepy-eyed old Sod saw the bruises first thing.
“Horse fell with me,” Toby lied.
The old man didn’t believe him. Over his coffee, Sod said quietly, “Not taking to you very well, are they, son? I was afraid they wouldn’t. It ain’t the same now as it used to be. It’ll never be the same again.”
He sipped long at the scalding coffee. “Son,” he spoke again, “what do you say we just up and leave? We can sell this place. We’ll find us something somewhere else, where folks’ll leave you alone.”
Toby studied his father closely. “You think we could ever find a place we liked as well as we do this one?”
Sod didn’t answer that directly. “That ain’t the point, son. The point is…”
Toby interrupted him. “The point is that we wouldn’t. So we’re not going. They may try, but they’ll never chase me off. Don’t you worry yourself about it.”
He rode out again that morning. When he came in at noon, he found Ellen Frost waiting for him. She sat in Sod’s old rocking chair on the front porch, impatiently rocking back and forth. At sight of Toby she stood up quickly. Toby heard the clatter of cooking utensils inside the house.
Ellen hurried out to meet Toby as he swung down and looped one rein over the fence. She took Toby’s arm and headed him toward the barn.
“Let’s get out there where we can talk,” she said quickly.
At the barn, out of sight of the house, Toby turned her around into his arms and kissed her. She gave little response, but she didn’t try to stop him.
Huskily he said, “I’ve been thinking about you ever since you left.”
She smiled, reaching up to pinch his skin. He flinched, because the bruises there sent pain knifing through him.
Ellen laughed. “You don’t look so bad,” she said. “Marvin’s face is half blue.”
Displeasure stirred in him. “They told you?”
“Why not? There aren’t any secrets between Marvin, Alton, and me.”
He turned loose of her. “You know what they’ve been doing?”
“Certainly. Sometimes I have to cover up for them with Pa.”
Toby’s face fell. A sickness started in the pit of his stomach.
Ellen went on, “Why do you want to be so hardheaded, Toby? Why don’t you go along with them? Alton told me he made you a good proposition the other day. As long as people are blaming you anyway, you’d just as well be getting something out of it.”
A sense of disgust swept him. He turned away from her. “I was surprised enough at Alton,” he said. “But you…”
“Surprised to find out that I’ve got some nerve, that I don’t just sit at home and be a proper little girl with a pink ribbon in my hair? Maybe that’s the kind of washed-out girl you want.” Her voice rose angrily, “Well, that’s not what I want to be. You’ve seen my mother. A dried-up, miserable little woman who shivers in fear every time Pa stomps into the house. She’s scared to death of him all the time.
“You think I want to be like that? God knows Pa has tried hard enough to whip me into being that kind of a woman. But he hasn’t been able to do it. No man ever will.”
In despair, Toby said, “I think you better leave, Ellen. And maybe you’d better not come back.”
Anger flared in her eyes and settled into disgust. “You’re a fool, Toby.”
He nodded. “Maybe. But I’m not a thief.”
She slapped him so hard he stumbled back against the barn wall. She turned sharply and struck for the house in a fast, sharp stride. He stepped out and watched her. And suddenly he wasn’t very sorry anymore.
Rubbing his burning cheek, he wondered why it didn’t hurt him more, watching her leave. She had shattered a dream that he had built through four long years. There was some regret, sure. But there wasn’t the kind of ache he might have expected. Instead, there was almost a feeling of relief. Maybe the shock Alton Frost had given him helped inure him. Then his mind went back once again to a pair of wide gray eyes, and he thought he knew.
He had gotten no more than halfway back to the house when the horsemen came—Damon Frost, flanked by Marvin Sand and a dozen cowboys. With them they were bringing back Ellen Frost, her shoulders squared defiantly. Toby knew they had trailed her here. He sensed what was coming.
For a moment he considered running for the house and getting a gun. He might be able to make it. But he knew they wouldn’t leave until they had him. And they might hurt old Sod.
They reined up in front of him. Damon Frost leaned forward, his face clouded. “I gave you a warning the other day, Tippett. I told you to leave my daughter alone, and I told you to clear out of the country. You’ve done neither. Well, I made you a promise then. And now I’m going to keep it.”
Marvin Sand and two cowboys stepped down. They rushed Toby. He stepped forward to meet them, his fists swinging. But in the space of two quick breaths they had grabbed him. Marvin Sand was standing directly in front of him, hate smoldering behind the dark blue splotches on his swollen face.
Frost glanced severely toward his daughter. “I warned you, Ellen. Now sit there and watch.” To Marvin Sand he said, “Go ahead with it.”
Sand’s first fist plowed into Toby’s stomach. Nausea swept him. The second blow struck his bruised face and brought slashing pain. For just a moment he saw Ellen’s face and he found no sympathy there.
Malice leaped into Sand’s darkened eyes. Then Toby’s own eyes were closed by the merciless pounding of hard, hate-driven fists. He struggled vainly against the strong arms that bound him. Each blow drove him back a step nearer the deep, dark pit that yawned just beyond the whirling bursts of fire.
He heard Sod Tippett’s enraged voice, but then Toby slumped, falling backward into that great pit.
Sod Tippett rushed out and down the steps, his old .30-30 rifle in his hands. “Damon Frost,” he shouted hoarsely, “you leave my boy alone.” In fury Sod Tippett stopped and pointed the gun at the ashen-faced cowboys. It clicked harmlessly. Cursing, the old man fought at the lever. But the rifle had jammed.
He came running then, grasping the rifle by the barrel. The two cowboys made a rush for their horses. Marvin Sand stood there. Sod Trippett’s gaze furiously fell upon him. He rushed Sand, swinging the rifle viciously. Sand caught the blow on his left forearm. His right hand grasped the barrel. For a moment he struggled with the old man.
Then he wrenched the rifle free and gave Sod Tippett a savage glancing blow on the forehead. The old man fell heavily. He got up on his knees again, blood trickling down the side of his face. Sand smashed the rifle against a rock.
Suddenly Sod Tippett was babbling incoherently. He swayed to his feet and staggered toward the unconscious Toby.
“Martha!” he began calling hoarsely. “It’s our boy. Come help me with our boy.”
Puzzled, Sand looked up at Frost. Damon Frost sat rigid in the saddle, his widened eyes on the staggering old man.
“Martha,” Frost said, shaken. “That was his wife.”
Sand swung into the saddle. “The old man’s as crazy as a loon. Let’s get out of here.”
They reined their horses around and rode out in a stiff trot.
Pain awakened Toby; his head throbbed as if someone was pounding on it with a sledge. He pushed himself onto his elbows and tried to open his eyes. He winced at the sharp pain of the bright sun, but he managed to get to his knees. His eyes were swollen almost shut. He could see the vague form of the house ahead of him. He tried to get there, but he stumbled and fell weakly. Pain rushed through him with sickening force.
He heard Sod Tippett’s voice. “What’s happened to you, son?” the old man said, almost whimpering. “That old Socks horse throw you again? I told you to be careful about him. He’ll really hurt you some day.”
Toby realized vaguely that Sod’s mind had gone astray again. Socks was a mean horse Toby had ridden when he was about ten years old, one that had caused him many a skinned face and bloody nose.
Sod got hold of Toby and helped him up again. With the old man’s support Toby got to the house and swayed over to the cistern. He pulled up a bucket of water and doused his face in it. After a while he could open his eyes enough to see. He saw the dried streak of blood on his father’s face, and the broken rifle lying out there. He could imagine the rest.
Tenderly Toby reached up and touched the wound on his father’s head. “They hurt you, Dad?”
Sod shook his head. “You and your mother, always worrying about a man. It’s nothing. Horse took me under a low limb is all.”
But that wasn’t all. From the tracks Toby could tell pretty much what had happened. And the excitement had been a little too much for his father. Toby saw him grip his chest. He managed to rush forward in time to catch Sod Tippett as the old man fell.
It was after dark when Toby pulled the heaving team to a halt in front of the doctor’s house in town and climbed down from the wagon. He tried to lift Sod out by himself. But he was still too weak to manage it.
“Doc!” he called. “Doctor Will!”
In a moment Doctor Will Chambers came out onto his porch with a lantern held high.
“It’s me, Doc, Toby Tippett. Dad’s had a stroke.”
Together they carried Sod into the house and eased him onto a cot. The physician took out his stethoscope and listened to Sod’s heartbeat.
“I’ve been afraid of this,” he said, “ever since he had that sick spell three years ago.”
Toby had never heard about any sick spell. But his father wrote but seldom, and never much even then.
“It’s all my fault, Doc,” Toby said. “Maybe if I’d been here, if I hadn’t caused him so much worry…”
The doctor glanced up at Toby. It was the first time he had really looked at him, and his eyes widened at the bluish, swollen face. But he never mentioned that.
“There wouldn’t have been much you could’ve done about it, one way or the other. He caught pneumonia and it almost killed him. He was out of his head for a week. He hasn’t been the same since, Toby. You’ve seen what that spell did to his mind. No, there wouldn’t have been much you could do about it. He was old, and it just happened.”
Toby sat in silence, letting that soak in. Somehow it left him feeling better. It lifted some of the guilt from his shoulders.
He hadn’t been there long before Betty Duncan came in. She paled at the sight of Toby’s swollen face. Then sympathy came into her eyes.
“I just heard, Toby. I came to see what I can do.”
Toby shook his head. “There’s not much any of us can do but wait.”
She took hold of his hand. Warmth rose in him.
“I’ll wait with you,” she said. She sat down beside him.
It was two days before the doctor decided Sod Tippett was going to pull through. During those two days Toby saw Betty Duncan a number of times. Each time he came near her, he felt a little lightheaded, like he used to when he’d been in the old Mustang Saloon too long. He knew what was the matter with him, and it wasn’t anything the old saloon had had to offer.
Toby noticed something else, too. Cass Duncan was seldom around. He was always gone at night. Toby thought he knew the answer to that. The sheriff was staying out in the country, hoping to jump those cattle thieves if they made another try. So far as Toby knew, they hadn’t tried. He hoped they had been scared for good. But he knew within reason that they would try again.
In town, Toby was conscious of the half-hidden hostility which followed him wherever he went. He felt it when men broke off their conversations as he walked by. He sensed it when women passed him on the street and kept their eyes averted.
Only with Betty Duncan could he put aside the growing bitterness in him. So he was glad to return to the ranch when the doctor told him it would be all right.
The sharp thud of hoofbeats brought him straight up in bed. He was wide awake in an instant, and one thought stabbed him.
It’s gone bad with Dad, and they’re coming to tell me.
He pulled on his boots and the pants which he had left hanging on a corner of the iron bedstead. He was fully dressed and waiting on the porch when the riders came up. His heart was pounding hard.
Silver moonlight splashed upon the men, and he saw that he had been wrong. They were Marvin Sand and Alton Frost. Alton was slumped over the saddle horn, wounded.
Toby grabbed hold of him. He eased him out of the saddle and onto the porch. His hand came out from under Alton’s back warm and sticky, and even in the moonlight he could see the dark smear of blood. The boy’s throat rasped as he struggled to breathe. He was dying—there wasn’t much time.
Sand never dismounted. “They jumped us over on Paul English’s place. There was a bunch of them, and they were on us before we knew it. After they hit Alton, I managed to get him away. But they’re close behind us. You can hear them now, if you listen hard.”
Toby’s heart leaped. Yes, he could hear the hoofbeats. Anger swept through him. “You led them here? You fool, don’t you know how that’ll look for me?”
He could feel the hard grin on Marvin Sand’s hat-shadowed face. “Sure, Toby, I knew how it would look. That’s why I led them here. Keep them company. I’m riding on.”
Wheeling his horse around, he spurred away. In the first flush of helpless rage Toby dashed for the door, wanting a gun. But he stopped, realizing that it would be useless now.
He dropped on his knees beside Alton Frost. He could hardly hear the breathing now. Desperate, he knew he had to keep Alton alive, had to keep him alive until the posse got here. Only Alton’s word could clear him of the implication which Marvin Sand’s coming here had made.
The posse rode in cautiously, guns ready, a circle of men drawing a tight noose around the little ranch house. Toby waited quietly, standing in the moonlight where they could all see him.
“It’s all right, Cass” he called. “Come on in.”
Cass Duncan stepped down from his horse, the gun in his hand catching a glint of moonlight. “Better raise your hands, son.”
Toby did. “I haven’t got a gun on.”
He pointed his chin toward Alton Frost. “You better see after Alton, Cass. He’s about gone.”
Someone exclaimed, “I told you we got one of them. I told you I saw him almost fall.”
Instantly Cass was on his knees beside young Frost.
Toby said, “They rode up here just a couple or three minutes ago.”
“They?”
“Alton and Marvin Sand.”
Cass said, “There’s nobody here but you and Alton. And we were chasing just two men.”
Panic rising in him, Toby tried to explain. But he could see disbelief and disgust in the dark, shadowed faces that surrounded him.
“Alton will tell you the truth of it, Cass,” Toby exclaimed in desperation. “Ask him. Ask him before it’s too late.”
Cass Duncan’s voice was flat and hard. “It is too late. Alton has just died.”
Riding in, he felt the sheriff’s eyes upon him, hard as flint. “You oughtn’t to’ve come back, Toby. Cattle stealing was bad enough. At least they couldn’t do anything worse than send you to prison for it. But murder is something else.”
“Murder?” Toby’s chest tightened. “What murder?”
“You shot Paul English tonight. He got a little too close, and your slug caught him. We sent him to town in a wagon. But he looked like he didn’t stand much chance.”
Paul English! Toby slumped in the saddle. The only man left who would have believed him, would have fought for him.
Toby became angry with himself. It needn’t have happened this way. If he had told what he knew the first time Cass asked him, this wouldn’t have happened. But he had held back. Minding his own business, he had told himself. Hoping Alton Frost would come out all right.
Now it was too late to talk, because there was no one who would listen, no one who would believe.
But he found himself wrong. Betty Duncan was standing in front of his cell door ten minutes after Cass had clanged it shut. Her gray eyes glistened. Her slender hands trembled if she did not hold them tightly together.
“Toby,” she said, and then stopped talking because she could not hold down the tremor in her voice. But her eyes told the rest of it. He reached through the bars, and her hands came into his.
“Betty,” he whispered, “they won’t believe me.”
“I believe you, Toby.” Cass Duncan finally came back from the doctor’s. Toby asked him, “What about Paul English?”
Cass shot him a hostile glance and turned his back, shrugging. “Fifty-fifty chance.”
The sheriff sat down heavily in his chair, his shoulders slumped. He and Paul English had made many a cow camp together in years past. They’d gone off hunting together many a time.
Toby waited a while before he tried talking to the sheriff again. “Look, Cass,” he said, “I feel as bad about this as you do. I didn’t have many friends left, but Paul English was one of them. I didn’t shoot him, Cass. Believe me.”
Cass Duncan sat there for a time in thoughtful silence. Finally he said, “I wish I could believe you.”
Toby pressed, “I’ve told you it was Marvin Sand who was with Alton last night. You don’t have to take my say-so on it. Make Marvin prove where he was. He won’t be able to do it. Then maybe you can find his gun and see if it didn’t fire the bullet that hit Paul.”
Cass Duncan swung around. His hard gaze probed Toby’s face. “All right Toby. But you better not be making a fool of me this time.”
He was gone all day. He came in late in the afternoon, when the reddening, bar-crossed sunlight that entered Toby’s cell window was easing up toward the plaster ceiling. The sheriff’s shoulders sagged, and weariness cut deep lines into his beard-shadowed face. But a dangerous fire smoldered in his tired eyes.
“You lied to me, Toby.”
Heartbeat lifting, Toby stood erect.
Cass said, “I found somebody who vouched for him, Toby. He was at the ranch all night.”
A cold numbness gripped Toby. He sensed the rest of it, even before Cass told him.
“Ellen Frost. She said he was with her.”
The word came next morning. Paul English was going to live.
Betty Duncan was the one who told Toby. He turned away, standing in front of the window a long moment, swallowing down the tightness in his throat.
“He’s not conscious yet,” Betty told him. “But his heartbeat has gotten stronger. Doc Chalmers said he’s sure Paul will make it all right.”
Toby faced back toward the girl. “Betty, maybe Paul got close enough to know who it was that shot him. When he wakes up and tells, they’ll have to turn me loose. They’ll know I wasn’t lying.”
Suddenly a grim realization came to him. His face fell. “Marvin Sand will think of that, too.”
Betty’s eyes widened. “You think he might try to kill Paul?”
Toby said, “I know he would. You better get Cass, Betty.”
Cass Duncan stared at him in cold disbelief. Contempt lay coiled in his eyes as he listened to Toby’s desperate plea.
“You’ve got to get somebody over there to guard Paul,” Toby cried. “Everything I’ve told you is the truth. You can’t just stand by and let Marvin kill him.”
Cass said flatly, “You’ve lied to me too many times, Toby. You’re not going to make a fool of me again.”
He turned his back and started to leave the jail.
“Cass,” Toby called after him, “I swear I’m not lying to you. You can’t just turn your back.”
Cass whirled on him, his eyes ablaze. “Toby, I’ve got one solitary confinement cell back yonder, padded all around, without any windows. Say one more word to me and I’ll throw you in it!”
He stomped out. Toby sank back onto the cot, face fallen in despair.
Cass Duncan’s lean, stoop-shouldered deputy came in a while later. “Hungry?” Toby shook his head.
“Betty Duncan’s bringing you some supper anyway,” the deputy said. “Was I her, I wouldn’t even give you a burnt biscuit. But then, I ain’t her.”
The deputy unlocked the cell door when Betty came in. She gave Toby a quick, half-scared smile, then uncovered a platter with biscuits, fried beef, and some dried fruit on it. She had also brought a small pot of coffee.
Toby’s heart went into his brief smile. “Thanks, Betty.” Then his chin sank. “I guess you know Cass won’t listen to me. He won’t put a guard on Paul. Marvin’ll kill him, and there’s not one thing I can do to stop him.”
Betty touched Toby’s hand, a quick, fleeting touch that left a warm glow.
“Maybe there is something you can do about it, Toby. Don’t worry. Just eat your supper and drink all your coffee. All of it.”
He soon had eaten all he could of the supper. He was pouring the third cup of coffee when he heard the metallic click inside the pot. Betty’s words came back to him in a rush. “Drink all your coffee.” He looked up quickly to see if the deputy had heard the faint noise. But if he had, he gave no sign.
Cautiously Toby took the lid off the pot. There, sticking up out of the remaining coffee, was one end of a long key. Toby fitted the lid back in place and looked up again, hoping his sudden excitement didn’t show in his face.
After a while the deputy took a heavy old watch out of his vest pocket. “Well,” he said, jokingly, “I got a few rounds to make. I won’t be long. You just stay here till I get back.”
Toby’s heart was in his throat. He waited a long minute after the deputy was gone. Then, quickly, he took the key out of the coffee pot. He stepped up to the door and fitted it into the lock outside. He fumbled a moment, a choking fear rising in him that this wasn’t the right key, that Betty had made a mistake.
Then he heard a click, and the door swung open under his weight. He looked longingly at the gun chest in a corner. But it was locked, and he couldn’t afford to spend time in hunting for a key. There were no loose guns around.
Lamplight bathed the front door. He couldn’t go out that way. He hurried to the back door and tried it. It was unlocked. He knew he could thank Betty for that. He stepped out into the darkness.
“Toby!”
He spun around. He made out the shadowy form of the girl hurrying toward him.
“Betty,” he breathed.
She came into his arms, and he held her tightly. He found her lips.
When they stepped apart, she put something heavy and cold into his hand. A six-shooter.
“One of Dad’s,” she said. “Now let’s move away from here before John comes back and finds out you’ve left.”
They kept to the shadows, moving quietly but hurriedly along at the backs of the town buildings toward the doctor’s house.
Once somebody stepped out of a door. Toby flattened against a wall, holding his breath, while Betty held tightly to him. The man flung a panful of water out onto the ground and stood there a minute, biting off a fresh chew from a plug of tobacco while he looked around. But the lamplight inside evidently had blinded him against the darkness. He never seemed to notice the man and the girl.
In a few minutes they reached the back of the doctor’s house.
Pointing, Betty said, “That’s the room where Paul is. Your dad is in a room on the other side.”
Toby studied the house. He figured what he would do in Marvin Sand’s place. Safest thing would be to shoot from outside through a window. That way, he could get away in a hurry.
Next to the doctor’s home was a house set up on wooden blocks. The bottom was boarded up, but a big open space was left unboarded beneath the high front porch, probably to let the family dog sleep under there. Toby motioned toward it.
“I’m going to wait under there,” he said quietly. “It gives me a good view of Paul’s window, and it’s in range. It’s dark enough that nobody can see me. You better get along now, before Cass misses you.”
Betty shook her head. “I’m staying here with you.”
Firmly he said, “I don’t want you getting hurt. Go on.”
She started to argue with him, but stopped as they heard a plodding of hoofbeats. Somebody was riding down the street toward them. Without hesitation Betty ducked under the high porch. There was nothing else Toby could do. He followed her.
The rider went on by. Then sounds of excitement burst over toward the courthouse square. Toby could hear running feet, and someone shouting. Old John had returned to the jail and found Toby gone.
It wasn’t many minutes before searching riders and men afoot began working up and down the streets and alleys, nosing into all the dark places. Toby crawled farther back under the house, and Betty crawled back with him. He knew he ought to make her leave, but she didn’t want to. And touching her warm, slender hand, he didn’t want her to leave now.
Presently the search died down.
“I reckon by now Cass knows how I got out,” Toby whispered. “You ought to’ve gone home when I told you.”
She shook her head and touched her cheek to his arm. “I’m where I want to be, Toby, with you.”
There was no warning before the shooting started. Toby and Betty knelt together, watching carefully where they thought the killer might come. But they never saw him before the two sudden shots shattered the night stillness. The man and the girl exchanged one swift, terrified glance, then both burst out from under the porch in a hard run.
More shots sounded from inside the house. A rider spurred out from the other side of the building. A quick shaft of moonlight touched him—Marvin Sand.
Heart hammering, Toby dropped to one knee and fired. Sand leaned low over his saddle horn. His gun came up, and dust leaped at Toby’s feet. Toby squeezed the trigger again.
He saw the second flash of fire just as Sand’s bullet sent him reeling, to sprawl in the sand.
Betty screamed and rushed to him. She grabbed up the fallen gun and fired futilely at the horseman who was spurring away. The darkness swallowed him up.
Toby fought for breath. The girl dropped to her knees beside him and sobbed, “Toby, where did he hit you?”
Toby pushed onto his knees, supporting himself with his left hand. His right hand felt along his ribs, searching for the source of the hammer-like throbbing.
“My ribs,” he gritted finally. “Creased them a little. Knocked the breath out of me.”
Running feet thudded on the soft ground, and from somewhere came the sudden clatter of horses’ hooves. A shadow fell across the man and the girl. Cass Duncan stopped there, a smoking gun in his hand.
“You hit, son?”
Toby didn’t answer the question. Instead he asked fearfully, “What about Paul? Did he get him?”
The sheriff was slow in replying. “No, Toby, he didn’t get Paul.”
Cass Duncan helped Toby to his feet. Betty’s arm went around Toby, supporting him. She was trying to keep from crying.
“This clears him, doesn’t it, Dad?” she begged in a breaking voice.
Cass said, “Well, it does put a different complexion on things. It doesn’t clear you all the way. But at least it shows you weren’t lying about Marvin Sand. The funny thing is, I had a notion you were going to try to kill Paul yourself, when we found you had gotten out. I was in Paul’s room, waiting for you to try it.”
A dozen or more men were crowding around the trio. They made room as Cass, Toby, and Betty started toward the doctor’s house. Toby felt his strength seeping back into him, and the pain in his ribs was easing down to a dull throbbing. Just a crease.
At the front door, Cass Duncan stopped. “Toby, before you go in, I better tell you Marvin Sand picked the wrong window, and he got the wrong man.”
Toby choked, a sudden rush of panic sweeping through him. Betty’s hand tightened quickly on his arm.
He whispered, “Dad?”
Cass nodded, his head down. “I’m sorry, Toby.”
The first rush of grief passed, and in its place grew a burning anger. Toby sat motionless while the doctor bound his ribs. But his fists were clenched, and his lips were drawn flat and hard. With his returning strength came determination.
Betty Duncan laid her hand on his arm. “Lie down and try to get some rest, Toby. Dad has taken a bunch of men out to the Frost ranch. If Marvin tried to go back there, they’ll get him.”
Toby shook his head. “I’m not going to rest, Betty, till I’ve gotten Marvin Sand.”
A nagging worry kept working at him. What if Marvin didn’t go back to the Frost ranch? He had seen his plan blow up in his face. Chances were good that he would not dare return to the ranch. Where would he go?
And suddenly Toby thought he knew. Marvin and Alton had been taking their stolen cattle to somebody down south who was selling the beef to railroad construction workers. The three of them were splitting the profits, Alton had said.
What if there were still some unsplit profits down there? Toby knew Sand’s greed. He knew Sand wasn’t the kind to go off and leave any money behind him.
The idea became a certainty with Toby. Half an hour later he was on a horse and heading south …
He found the railroad. There was still a shiny newness to the rails. Although the ties already were beginning to show dark stains from coal and dirt-laden steam, they were fresh and new, the ends not scored or cracked. Toby headed west, following the tracks toward a drifting trace of coal smoke far ahead.
Up near the end of track he found the settlement. There had been a little trading post and post office down here for years. They called it Faraway, because the man who first established it moved off in disgust, declaring that it was too far away from civilization ever to amount to anything.
Faraway now was a booming little construction town. Later on, it probably would die again. But right now it was living high. Tents, slapped-together shacks, and wheel-mounted business houses set off on side tracks had all but swallowed up the original old trading post. There were lots of men here. A good market for beef, Toby mused, watering his horse in a wooden trough and taking a wide, sweeping look.
A saloon would be the best place to pick up information. He sought out the crudest, meanest-looking one of the lot.
It was about as bad inside as it was outside. The saloon was really a big patched tent, the sides walled up with old warped boards which still had some loose nails sticking out of them. The bar was two more such boards nailed down across four empty kegs. And behind the bar slouched a bartender who likely hadn’t had a bath since the last time he got caught out in the rain.
Toby ordered a drink and sat down at a crude scrap-lumber table with it. Nervousness prickled him. He didn’t want to seem eager, but he didn’t have any time to waste.
After a while he sidled back up to the bar.
“Say,” he asked quietly, “where could a man sell some fat cattle around here? Who’s the butcher for this outfit?”
The bartender scratched his chin under a mat of whiskers which could not properly be called a beard, even though they were long enough.
“Well, there’s an outfit owned by John Pines that has a contract with the railroad. Then, there’s a couple of old boys that do butchering to sell beef around the camp.”
Toby looked back over his shoulder as if making sure nobody was listening.
“I need to find me a butcher who can keep his mouth shut.”
The bartender’s eyes lighted. “Stolen cattle?”
“Now,” Toby drawled, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. Just say there’s a little room for argument about them, and I don’t especially enjoy arguments.”
The bartender grinned and poured Toby another drink. “The man for you to see is Bud Spiller. He won’t pay as much as the others, but he can’t tell one brand from another. And he don’t watch over his shoulder as you leave.”
Bud Spiller’s camp was south of the railroad, out in the brush, according to the bartender’s directions. Spiller had some holding pens down there, and some Mexican workers to skin and dress the beef. He hauled it to the construction camp in a tarp-covered wagon.
The wind was out of the south, and Spiller’s place wasn’t hard to find. First thing Toby located was a Mexican dragging offal and cattle’s heads away on a mule-drawn sled. At a rotting, stinking dump ground the man stopped, tipped the sled over, and headed back toward camp in a long trot, getting away from the foul stench.
At sight of Toby riding up to camp, a Mexican shouted something. A man stepped out of a big shack and strode forward. This, Toby guessed, was Bud Spiller. Spiller was a medium-tall, soft-bellied man with a stubble beard. His hairy arms were bloody most of the way to his rolled-up sleeves. Dried blood speckled his dirty clothing. He scowled darkly at Toby.
“What do you want here?”
“You Bud Spiller?”
The man nodded. “And I got lots to do. If you got business, get it over with.”
Toby took his time, getting a good look at the camp. “I got some cattle to sell,” he said. “I heard you might be the man to buy them.”
Spiller grunted. “I ain’t interested.” He turned away. He took a couple of steps, then turned around again. “I might be, if they was cheap enough.”
“I’d make them cheap enough,” Toby said, “if I knew you’d keep your mouth shut about where they came from.”
Spiller’s eyes widened a little. “They stolen?”
Toby rubbed his chin. “Well … I come by them awful easy.”
He thought he saw a face behind a window in the shack. But as he squinted for a better look, the face disappeared. His heartbeat quickened.
Spiller’s whiskered face frowned darkly. “Where’d you get the idea that I’d buy stolen cattle?”
Toby hesitated, then decided to throw in the whole stack of chips. “Friend of mine told me. Man named Marvin Sand.”
In one unguarded moment the name brought a quick leap of surprise into Spiller’s muddy eyes, and his mouth dropped open a little. He glanced quickly back over his shoulder, toward the shack. Then, as if realizing this had been a trap, he gripped himself. His face tightened.
“Get out of here,” he snarled.
Toby’s gun leaped into his hand. He swung to the ground, keeping the gun muzzle on Spiller. “I’ve got a hunch he’s in that shack yonder,” he said. “You’re going to go in front of me. If he makes a wrong move, I’ll kill you.”
Spiller’s jaw was bobbing. His throat swelled as he tried to force the words out. But fear choked them off. He turned woodenly and started toward the shack.
The Mexicans had all stopped work and were watching. Toby didn’t think they would try to interfere with him. They were hired laborers, probably being paid just enough to eat. Chances were they wouldn’t risk injury by interfering.
“Come on out, Marvin,” Toby shouted. “Don’t try anything, or I’ll shoot Spiller.”
There was no answer from inside. Toby repeated his order, and still he heard nothing. A doubt began to work at him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Marvin wasn’t here at all. But he had to be.
Toby heard a sharp whirr, and he jerked around too late to dodge the hatchet flying at him. The flat edge struck the brim of his hat and flattened it against Toby’s head. He saw a blinding flash of light, then dropped limply to the ground.
In a dreamy, half-real world, he sensed the tread of boots in the sand. He forced his eyes open enough to see the boots halted in front of him, swaying back and forth, back and forth. A voice broke through the fog.
“You’ve killed him.” Fright lifted Bud Spiller’s voice to a high pitch. “You’ll get me hung, Marvin.”
Even in half consciousness, Toby knew the other voice.
“He’s not dead. But we better kill him. He’ll talk, and you’ll do a stretch where he just come from,” Marvin Sand said.
“No,” Spiller said, his voice wavering, “we’re not going to kill him. I can stand a stretch for butchering stolen cattle, but I don’t want to hang.”
Sand shrugged. “Have it your own way. But I’m leaving. Give me my money. I’m getting out of the country.”
They walked into the shack. His head clearing, Toby tried to push himself up onto his hands and knees. He could hear the voices inside the shack.
“Here’s for that last bunch you and Alton brought me. I reckon you get his share now,” Spiller said.
There was a brief silence, then a chuckle. “That’s a right smart of money you got there, Bud. Ain’t you afraid to keep that much on you?”
“There’s no better place that I know of. I couldn’t leave it lying around this camp. I sure wouldn’t take it to Faraway. Too many crooks around there. Best thing is to keep it on me. I always got a gun to … Marvin, don’t point that thing at me.”
Sand chuckled again. “I won’t hurt you, Bud, not if you don’t give me any trouble. Just hand over that money.”
Spiller’s voice was shrill with outrage. “It’s mine, Marvin! My share of what we made together. We split the profits even, you and me and Alton.”
Toby heard a sharp cry, then a clubbing sound like a butcher axing a steer.
A moment later Marvin Sand strode out of the shack, his pockets bulging. He stopped beside Toby. Toby’s heart hammered in helplessness. He knew Sand was considering whether or not to shoot him.
Then Sand turned away. He walked out to a small shed and reappeared astride a horse. He touched spurs to the animal and swung northward in an easy lope.
Toby pushed himself up and swayed toward a bucket he saw on a bench by the shack. The bucket was half full of water, and he splashed some of it on his face, soaked a handkerchief in it, and held it to his swollen forehead, where the flat side of the hatchet had struck.
The cool water cleared his head. He went back to where he had fallen and picked up his gun. He heard a scraping sound at the door of the shack. Bud Spiller was dragging himself out. Blood trickled down his face from a ragged wound.
“Where was he going, Spiller?” Toby demanded.
Spiller sagged, bracing himself against the door. Despair was stamped in the heavy lines of his face. “Train. Going to catch the evening construction train east. Go get him, friend. He’s all yours.”
Toby lifted himself stiffly into his saddle and spurred out, heading north after Marvin Sand. For a moment or two he thought he might fall, but he gripped the horn, and soon there was little weakness left. From the north he heard the whistle of a train.
He broke out onto a hilltop that gave him a long look down toward Faraway. And yonder, just starting to pull away, was the eastbound construction train. A cold certainty gripped Toby. Marvin Sand was on that train.
Toby slanted his horse a little eastward. It took a while for the train to begin working up speed. A mile east of town the road made a bend around a rocky hill that had been too mean to blast out. The train would travel slowly until it passed the bend, Toby thought. Counting on that, he headed for the bend.
He hauled up at the bend, moments ahead of the train. He held his winded horse alongside the track and waved his hat frantically.
The frightful racket of the engine bearing down upon them threw the horse into a frenzy. He fought back away from the tracks. In desperation, Toby kept on waving his hat. But as the train passed, the grinning engineer waved back. Some cowboy seeing his first train, he probably thought.
Still yelling, Toby touched spurs to the horse and broke into a long-stretching lope alongside the train. The cars were rapidly pulling away from him. He crowded in, trying to grab hold of something and pull himself up onto the train.
The cars were passing him, one and then another, and then a third. It was a short train, and there weren’t many more left. Toby kept spurring hard, the rough ground flying by beneath him. One misstep could throw him under the wheels.
He caught a flashing glimpse of a face as an empty flat car went by. Marvin Sand.
The grade flattened out, and the train was picking up speed. Yelling at his horse, fighting at the reins, Toby crowded him in once more. He grabbed at an iron bar. It jerked out of his hands. He grabbed at another. This time he got a good hold. He kicked his feet free and let the train pull him away from the saddle.
His body slammed hard against the side of the car, and for an agonizing moment he thought he would fall. He glimpsed the railroad ties whisking by beneath. He held onto the bar, and found a foothold.
He pulled himself up onto the swaying car and looked behind him. Way back yonder his horse was still running, pulling away from the train. Another moment and he would have lost the race.
Toby drew his gun and started moving forward, crouched low. Marvin Sand must have been watching him, hoping he would fall. Now, he would be waiting.
A bullet tugged at his sleeve, and the sharp blast of a gunshot burst almost in his face. Without time to aim, Toby squeezed off a hasty shot at the hat which was ducking beneath the top of the next car. Splinters flew. Toby rushed forward.
Another bullet reached for him from beneath the roof of the car. Marvin was between two cars, holding onto a ladder and shifting positions for each shot. Toby sent a second bullet at the edge of the car and kept pushing forward. He jumped the space between the two rumbling cars, and then he was on the car behind which Marvin was waiting. Sand bobbed up. He fired rapidly, one shot, two, three. Toby sprawled flat, the bullets singing over him.
Sand stopped shooting then, and Toby knew why—his gun was empty. Toby lurched onto his feet and ran ahead, toward the end of the moving car. Sand was fumbling with his gun, trying to reload it. At the sight of Toby rushing toward him, he hurled the gun.
Toby ducked it. Sand climbed up onto the car and came rushing to meet him. He grabbed at Toby’s gun.
Toby was aware that the train was slowing down. Aroused by the crash of gunfire, the engineer was putting on the brakes. Up ahead, just behind the engine, someone climbed onto a car and was coming on the run. He had a shotgun in his hands.
Toby’s feet slipped, and he fell backward. Marvin crashed down on top of him. Marvin’s knee drove into Toby’s bound ribs. Toby cried out in pain. His hand involuntarily relaxed, and Marvin wrenched the gun from his fingers. Sand jumped back onto his feet. He brought the gun down into line, his face twisted in hatred.
Then the brakes grabbed hold. The car lurched suddenly and Sand’s feet slipped. He struggled for footing, then he plunged backward between the two cars. His wild scream cut off short.
Ribs aching, Toby was down off the side of the car the moment the train stopped. He trotted back down the tracks toward the twisted form he could see lying there.
He stopped short, his eyes widening. His face drained white, and he turned back.
Two smoke-blackened train men came hurrying. One of them held the shotgun on Toby, but he paid little attention to it.
“What’s this all about, boy?” one of the men demanded.
Toby motioned toward the body. “He killed a man over in Patman’s Lake yesterday. I was trying to take him back.”
The trainman lowered the gun. “Well,” he commented, “there ain’t hardly enough left now to take back.”
Despair bore down like a leaden weight in Toby as he rode northward to Patman’s Lake. Ahead of him was the grim task of burying his father.
Toby’s consuming anger had burned itself out after the fight on the train. No longer was there any hatred in him. But the grief remained, and he had the whole trip in which to think about it. There was so much he had wanted to do for old Sod Tippett, so many wrongs to make up for.
Something else was eating at Toby as he rode back across seventy far-stretching miles of cow country. A cloud of suspicion would always hang over him now. Marvin Sand could have cleared him, but Sand was dead. So was Alton Frost. As for Bud Spiller, the man had cleared out, just as Toby had figured he would. Toby had ridden back to Spiller’s slaughtering camp and taken Faraway’s marshal with him, but Spiller was gone. The country was big, and Spiller had his start.
Toby never even went by the ranch. He rode on into Patman’s Lake. His shoulders sagged, and his body ached all over. He paid scant attention to the men who watched him from a dozen porches and doorways. Stiffly he swung down at the courthouse square and walked to the big, open doors.
Betty Duncan was waiting for him. Her wide eyes shone as she rushed forward to meet him. He folded her in his arms, pressing his cheek to her soft hair while she buried her face against his chest.
Later Cass Duncan shook Toby’s hand with a genuine pleasure. “We got the news from Faraway by telegraph,” he said. “Sure glad you weren’t hurt.”
Toby nodded, murmuring his thanks.
“I didn’t want Marvin to die, Cass,” Toby said. “I wanted to bring him back to clear me. Now there’s no way to do it. As long as I live, people will be wondering if I was with Marvin and Alton.”
Betty shook her head. “No, they won’t Toby. They know the truth.”
Toby stared at her. For the first time he noticed the thin blue color that ringed one of her eyes, and the red-tinged, angry-looking mark that reached down her cheek.
“I had a hunch Ellen Frost could tell the whole story if she wanted to,” Betty said. “So I went out there. We had a long talk. When we got through, she told everything, Toby. She cleared you.”
Relief washed over Toby. Gratefully he squeezed the girl’s hands. “How about Ellen?” he asked, smiling. “Does she look as bad as you do?”
Betty smiled back. “Worse.”
“And Damon Frost?” Toby asked. “How’s he taking this?”
Cass frowned. “Pretty hard. I think he knew all the time that Alton had outlawed on him. And Ellen had gone wild, too. Damon wanted to blame somebody for it, and so he blamed you. He never guessed about Marvin Sand. He took out all his vinegar on you, Toby. He tried to get you the stiffest sentence he could, hoping that what happened to you would be a lesson to Alton. He thought it had. But when you came back, he was afraid it would start all over again. He didn’t know it already had.
“That’s why he hated you so much, son. He wanted to blame somebody for ruining his son and his daughter. But I think he knows that it was really nobody’s fault but his own.”
Soberly Cass studied the floor. “I reckon we’re always fighting ourselves, never ready to accept our own responsibility.”
“And that’s where you’re ahead, Toby. You can ride a straight road now and never have to look back,” the sheriff said. He stood up then, placing his hand on Toby’s shoulder. “You’re tired, son. You ought to rest. Come on over to the house with us. We’ll fix you a bed.”
Toby nodded. “Just one thing first. I’d like to see Paul English, if he’s conscious.”
Cass said, “Yes, he’s all right now. Funny thing, too. You might never have been cleared if Marvin hadn’t gotten scared and tried to kill him. But he didn’t need to do it. Paul never saw a thing that night we jumped the cow thieves. He never got a look at the man who shot him.”
Together the three of them walked out of the courthouse and headed down the long, dusty street. Toby glanced down at Betty, and tightened his arm around her.