DEADLY HOMECOMING

“Two riders come,” Enrique said.

Kyle Rayford turned at the warning and squinted down the grassy slant of the hill. The horsemen were still only two black dots out on the broad prairie past the deep green line of trees along the creek. They hadn’t wasted much time. His fist clenched near the gun at his hip.

Enrique Salinas spoke again, his voice almost casual. “Is still time, hijo. We can still go.”

Kyle Rayford shook his head, a grim set to his square jaw. “We didn’t come back to run.”

Salinas shrugged, a great patience in his ageless black eyes that might have seen fifty years or seventy years—no man could ever guess their exact age.

Kyle turned back to what had been the Slash R headquarters, so long ago. Bitterness rode him the way a restless man rides a horse. There wasn’t much left after four years. He found where the dugout had been, all tumbled in now and grown over with grass. It was now a rattlesnake den inside, more than likely.

Lying there, rotted on the ground, was the heavy ridgepole he had helped his father and Enrique haul in from miles down the creek. The mob had tied a rope to it that night four years ago. Then they had jerked it out to cave in the dugout and destroy what little home the Rayfords had.

The only thing still there was the set of corrals they had built. Somebody had added onto them and made them bigger. A Bar E iron had been burned into one of the posts, probably by some cowboy testing the heat of it.

Bar E. That was Ebeling. Kyle realized suddenly that they’d even built a corral over his father’s grave. He swore softly to himself. He couldn’t even be sure any more exactly where it had been.

“They wouldn’t let him alone while he lived,” Kyle Rayford said aloud. “You’d think they’d let him lie in peace now.”

It was a long and bitter story, one hard to think about. Yet now he wanted to think about it. He wanted to keep the memory fresh and vivid and raw until he had evened the score, wiped the slate clean …

Hope had ridden high with Earl Rayford and his young son Kyle when they had come up to the high plains from the brush country of South Texas with a string of longhorn cattle, a worn-out wagon, and not much else. Up here, people said, a man could carve himself a place out of virgin range. He could do anything he felt big enough to. He could grow as big as he wanted to because there was room up here for everybody.

So they came and pushed out the buffalo and traded out the Indians. But in time there were too many people. The elbows got to rubbing a little too close, and some got careless with other men’s range and other men’s cattle. Accusing fingers pointed one way, then another. And more and more they pointed at Earl Rayford, his son, and the gaunt old Mexican vaquero who had come up the trail with them.

They had been wrong. One man who had come up with a hunger for land and cattle was Clint Ebeling. He saw what the Rayfords had and wanted it. So he saw to it that the fingers kept pointing.

It hadn’t meant much to Kyle then because he was eighteen and full of beans and didn’t give a damn what anybody thought. It had all blown up in his face the Sunday afternoon he had gone over to the Half Circle B to pay court to Jane Emmett, daughter of Brook Emmett.

Jane Emmett. Even after four years the picture of her was still bright and clear in his mind. He had courted her quite a while, and they’d begun making plans about building a place of their own up at the head of the creek. Eighteen wasn’t too young in those days.

But that afternoon Jane didn’t come out to meet him at the cedar picket gate the way she always had. Brook Emmett was standing there, and his huge shoulders were squared for trouble.

“Don’t get down, Kyle,” he had said. His voice was almost soft. But men had learned that when Brook Emmett talked soft, it was time to start backing up.

“Don’t get down and don’t come here anymore. If you ever speak to my daughter again, I’ll kill you!”

The big explosion came a few nights later. Kyle was alone in the dugout, still worrying over the sudden change, puzzled by the way Jane had turned from him and walked away when he had slipped back after old Emmett had gone riding off.

Enrique was across the creek, helping their friend Sam Whittenburg brand a bunch of calves. He wasn’t expected back till the next day. But Pa had been due back hours ago, and Kyle was beginning to worry.

The sound of hooves sucking at the mud finally came to him in the dugout. He lit the lantern and stepped outside in the drizzling rain. The flickering yellow light splashed upon a dozen riders, sitting their horses in a half circle around the front of the dugout. In a glance, Kyle caught the grim purpose in their hard faces. He whirled away.

A gun barked. A bullet plunked into the rough-hewn wooden door. “Don’t do it, Rayford,” a rough voice said.

The lantern light winked against silver gun barrels. Uncertainly Kyle set the lantern down on the muddy ground at his feet. Only then did he see the horse outside the circle, and the slack body hanging across the saddle. A man pulled the horse up and gave the body a shove. It made a soft thump in the mud.

He didn’t have to look at the face. He sank beside his father’s body, his shoulders heaving.

“We caught him this time, kid,” somebody said. The voice belonged to Clint Ebeling. “He was running his brand on a Bar E calf.”

Kyle looked at Ebeling and saw a trace of a satisfied grin on the man’s face. A terrible fury roared through him. He leaped at Ebeling, jerking him out of the saddle, driving at him with his fists. “It’s a lie, a lie!”

A gun barrel slashed across the back of his hatless head, driving him to his knees. He rubbed a muddy hand across his face, trying to clear his head. One thing was clear. This was what Clint Ebeling had been working up to. He’d planned it. He’d framed it.

Desperately he tried to tell them that. Nobody listened. A fist struck him behind the neck and sent him face down into the mud. He heard the ragged voice of Benny Ahrens.

“Shut up, or I’ll stomp your brains out!”

Wet and muddy from his fall, Ebeling said harshly, “Let’s stop playing with him and get it over with, before we all die in this damp.”

Benny Ahrens’s feet clomped into the dugout, then out again. “Wonder where that Mexican is? We ought to hang him, too.”

A big man, broad of shoulder and a little heavy, swung down from his saddle, grunting at the effort. “No, Ahrens. We’re not hanging anybody.”

It was Brook Emmett. They all listened to him because he was a man of strength and dignity. Emmett helped Kyle to his feet. Once Emmett had liked him, had liked the idea of hard-working Kyle Rayford for a son-in-law. Now there was only contempt in the big man’s eyes.

“He’s a kid, Ebeling,” Emmett said. “We’ll let him go.”

But the big man’s eyes burned into Kyle. “You’ll bury your father, then you’ll leave. If you ever come back, I’ll not stand up for you again.”

Kyle tried to talk, tried to tell him the truth, but Emmett wasn’t listening. He turned his back and remounted his horse. He rode away, two of his cowboys with him. Only Ebeling was left now—Ebeling and his own two men, and some other ranchers who usually leaned on Ebeling’s counsel.

For a moment now, with Brook Emmett gone, Kyle feared the others might hang him anyway. But Emmett carried a lot of weight in this country.

Benny Ahrens blurted, “If we ain’t going to hang him, then we ought to leave our mark on him!”

Benny was Clint Ebeling’s dog, trailing in Ebeling’s shadow, lolling his tongue at everything Ebeling did. A coward in a fight, but a tiger when he knew nothing could hurt him.

They ripped off Kyle’s shirt and tied him flat against the rough door of the dugout. It wasn’t easy, for he fought like two men, and while he fought he tagged every man in the bunch. Not all their faces—it was too dark for that. There are other ways to know a man. There is the set of his shoulders, the way he sits his horse, the way he stands, the sound of his voice. Kyle marked every man.

Clint Ebeling dropped a coiled rope into muddy water to wet it. He handed it to Benny Ahrens and stepped back, that mean grin on his mud-flecked face again.

The doubled rope sang wickedly. Kyle choked off a cry and hugged the flat door. Again and again the lash sang and struck him, cutting, biting, searing.

Then someone cut Kyle loose and he fell in the mud, the world spinning crazily about him, his body afire.

“We’ll, be back, Rayford,” Clint Ebeling said. “If you’re still here, we’ll kill you!”

Kyle lay helpless in the mud while they tied onto the ridgepole and pulled it out, caving in the Rayfords’ home. Out of his pain grew a burning hatred, a bitter purpose that was to drive him through the years ahead.

“You’ll wish you’d hung me. Because now I’ll get you—every one!” Kyle had said, making this a promise.

He lay in the rain an hour or more before he finally was able to crawl to a shed. The next thing he knew, Enrique was holding a bottle to his lips, and the fire of the whisky burned hotter even than the fire of the lash.

It all cleared up then. The rain was gone, and the full moon played hide and seek behind the drifting clouds. Kyle looked past Enrique and saw Sam Whittenburg standing over him, his friendly face full of concern. Kyle saw the body still lying where it had been dropped. Sam’s slicker covered it.

“How did you—”

Sam Whittenburg spoke quietly. “Some of them came by my camp after it was over. They told me about it. I kept Enrique hidden.”

The Mexican’s face was without expression. The years had stretched his dry skin across jutting Indian cheekbones and given it the color of saddle leather. His face was patient and neutral. But his brown fingers moved restlessly, pulling at each other, tightening and loosening, tugging at the knees of his old trousers like angry dogs tearing at quarry.

“Ebeling?” he asked finally. “He was the leader?”

Kyle nodded. Enrique left him the bottle and hobbled to what was left of the dugout. He managed to dig out some supplies and some rain-soaked clothes and bedding. Somewhere he found a shovel.

They almost had to tie Kyle to get him into Sam’s wagon. With the bottomless patience of his race, Enrique listened to Kyle’s raging. When that had run out, he spoke half in Spanish, where his thoughts more easily were shaped into words:

“Muchacho. I am an old soldier. I have fought in many battles, in many places. I have learned long ago that one mark of a good soldier is to know when to pull away, when to give up a battle that one may live to win a war.”

His long, slender fingers dexterously rolled a cigarette in thin brown paper. His black eyes touched Kyle as his tongue flicked across the edge of the paper to seal the cigarette.

“Our enemies are too many. There are only two of us. Me, I might be able to kill a few of them, but they would get me, in time. You, you are not yet a man, as they count a man in years. How long would you last?”

Kyle Rayford’s eyes were dull and gray with pain and loss. But a fever burned in them. “I can last long enough to get Clint Ebeling. After that, I don’t care.”

Salinas shook his head. “That shows you are still a boy, mi hijo.”

For three days then, Sam Whittenburg kept Kyle and Enrique at his camp, risking the fury of his neighbors, risking the suspicion that this action was likely to cast upon him. Even before those three days were up, Kyle learned that Clint Ebeling had taken over the Slash R range, had begun rounding up the Slash R cattle and venting his Bar E brand on them. If the other ranchers objected, there was no sign of it. Few men spoke against Clint Ebeling.

*   *   *

Now Kyle Rayford was a boy no longer. Now he was a man, a bitter man with a gun at his hip. And in these four years he had learned how to use it. In South Texas men spoke his name with a touch of awe, for his name had become well known down there.

Enrique Salinas, the old soldado, had taught Kyle all he knew about a gun, and that was considerable. When Enrique had no more to teach him, Kyle had practiced and experimented and taught himself. Now he was the master, the pupil become better than the teacher.

The two riders were almost upon them now. Kyle stepped out away from the corral fence to be in the clear. He let his hands settle to his hips, the fingers not far from the gun.

His lips flattened in a dry grin as he recognized the men. Benny Ahrens, loud as a mongrel dog but without a bit of courage, and the other man was an Ebeling cowboy he remembered, a rawhide-tough rider named Thatcher. He, too, had been at the dugout that night.

Benny Ahrens reined up, his eyes worried until he recognized Kyle, grown taller and broader now, with tanned skin and the face of a man.

“The Rayford kid,” he said. He relaxed, the bullying confidence coming back to him. “Thought we told you to never come back. You ain’t going to like it here.”

Kyle didn’t worry about Ahrens, as long he faced him. But his eyes stayed on the other man. Thatcher wasn’t a loudmouth.

“Like it or not, Benny, it’s my ranch. I’m back to stay.”

Ahrens sat straighter, beginning to feel a brush of worry at this show of defiance. “Looks like he forgot what we done to him, Thatch.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything, Benny. The rope scars are still on my back.”

“You’re asking for one on your neck.”

“I’m not asking anything. I’m telling you. I’m taking back my land. Go tell Ebeling the Rayford kid’s come back. He’s here to stay. This time, I’m driving him out.”

Ahrens laughed, but his laugh was hollow. He glanced quickly at Thatcher, asking him with his eyes what had gone wrong here, asking him what to do.

“Tell him something else, Benny,” Kyle said. “Tell him I know every man who came here that night. I’m going to make every one of them answer for it. You, Benny. And you, too, Thatcher.”

He saw fire leap into Thatcher’s face. “Big talk, Rayford. But you’re going to find it too tough to slice.”

Kyle shook his head. He started baiting Thatcher, the excitement playing in him. “You were mighty brave in a mob. But you won’t be any trouble one at a time, and that’s the way I’m going to take you. Cut you off from the bunch and you’re all cowards.”

Thatcher’s voice was strained. “You think I’m a coward?”

“A dirty, yellow coward!”

He hadn’t planned to bait Thatcher, but he was doing it. He saw the warning in Thatcher’s eyes as the man swallowed it. When Thatcher’s hand darted, Kyle was ready.

The crash of Kyle’s gun sent Thatcher rocking back in the saddle. For a second or two the cowboy clawed at the horn. He tumbled and lay quivering in the grass, his horse plunging away in panic.

For one brief fraction of a second, as Kyle had brought his gun up, he had looked at the spot just above Thatcher’s belt buckle. That was where he intended to shoot him. But then he tipped the gun up just a little more.

Now Kyle stood with the smoking gun in his hand and looked down at Thatcher. The cowboy’s face was twisted in pain, and his right hand was held to his left shoulder, where crimson quickly spread down through his shirt.

For a moment, Kyle was angry with himself. Why hadn’t he killed him? That was what he had come for, wasn’t it? He had all the reason a man would ever need.

Benny Ahrens’s face was white as flour. His hands were held high away from his belt, his eyes pleading as if to say, “I’m not going to draw. Don’t shoot me!”

“Go catch his horse, Benny,” Kyle said curtly. Benny nodded, greatly relieved that Kyle didn’t intend to shoot him, too. He chased after the horse.

Kyle kicked Thatcher’s gun away. Enrique knelt beside the cowboy and opened the shirt. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and put it against the wound, stanching the flow of blood.

“You don’t die,” he told the cowboy. “But that arm, she won’t ever be much good.”

Thatcher didn’t reply. His face was drained white from shock. His teeth were clenched tight, holding down a groan. Thatcher had guts, Kyle had to give him credit for that.

But he didn’t feel sorry for him. He remembered another man who had lain there four years ago, an innocent man. And Thatcher had helped kill him.

Benny came back. Kyle stood aside while Enrique helped put Thatcher on his horse.

Kyle said to Benny Ahrens, “Tell Ebeling what happened. Tell him I’ll get him, too, by and by.”

His eyes narrowed. “And I’m not through with you yet, Benny.”

Benny Ahrens rode away as fast as he could go and still hold Thatcher in the saddle.

Watching them, Kyle was acutely conscious of Enrique’s critical gaze.

“This was not good,” Enrique said softly.

“It’s what I came to do.”

“I saw your eyes. It was not a good thing to see. You wanted him to try. If you had seen yourself, hijo…”

Kyle said subbornly, “It’s what I’ve been waiting for, for four long years.”

Enrique said, “Better we had never come back. This hunger for vengeance is driving you the way a man drives cattle. Your father wouldn’t know you.”

A numbness spread over Kyle Rayford, and he didn’t argue any more. It had started now. He had drawn first blood, and it was like being pulled out into the center of a roiling, flooded stream. It had started, and he couldn’t stop it now until it was done.

“Come on, Enrique,” he said. “We’ve got one friend left in this country. Let’s go see him.”

Sam Whittenburg’s ranch had grown some. It wasn’t so big as Sam used to dream it would be in three or four years. Kyle had used to like to sit and listen to Sam make glowing plans. Dreams, they had really been. He guessed the easy-going Sam had gotten over the dreams and become realistic.

Like I did, Kyle thought.

Sam no longer lived in the leaky dugout where he had sheltered Kyle and Enrique until Kyle’s back had healed enough for travel. In its place was a picket house of cedar, chinked to keep out the howling winter of the high plains.

“Sam’s come up in the world,” Kyle observed. “There must be two rooms in it, it’s so big.”

The corrals covered more ground now, and there was a new picket shed. Sam had done a heap of work these four years. An old man stepped out into the doorway, flour sack around his waist.

“Looking for Sam,” Kyle said. The old man was a stranger. Many people had come into this country since Kyle had left it.

“Gone out to where they’re drilling the water well.”

“Water well?”

“Fixing to set him up a windmill on the south end, back away from the creek. Good grass over there, only Sam’s never been able to use it much because there ain’t been no water.”

Growing, growing. Big enough to hire help and to drill wells. Good for old Sam, Kyle thought.

Following directions, they headed south. It took about three hours. The drilling camp was scattered over a lot of ground, the big wooden drilling rig in the center. The long mast-pole stood twenty feet up into the air directly over the hole. Off to one side, two horses trudged around and around in a circle, furnishing the power that lifted the drill bit at the end of the long well pipe and dropped it again to gouge the hole ever deeper into the ground.

Kyle and Enrique halted a bit to watch. In a few minutes the drilling crew hauled up the heavy steel bit from deep down in the hole. They carried it to a makeshift blacksmith set-up they had, with furnace and anvil. While one of the men prepared to forge a new point on the blunted bit, the others dropped a bullet-shaped slush bucket down into the well to clean out the mud and rock that the bit had broken loose since the last slushing.

Kyle recognized Sam Whittenburg’s back. Sam eagerly watched the hoisting of the bucket. Sam caught hold of the bucket and swung it away from the hole, his fingers quickly sampling the mud.

He turned grinning, then spotted Kyle and Enrique coming down the slope. He stared a moment, unbelieving. The grin broadened across his friendly, sun-reddened face. He strode forward, rubbing the mud off his hands onto his pants.

“Kyle Rayford! Enrique Salinas!” Kyle swung down, a warmth inside him. They shook hands, Sam’s grip as tight as a vise. Kyle felt a swelling in his throat. Not in years had he been so glad to see anyone.

He noted with pleasure that there hadn’t been much change in Sam Whittenburg. Sam was crowding forty now, and a touch of gray glinted in his tousled mop of sandy hair. But his laughing eyes still showed the sparkle of a youthful spirit. He shook hands with Enrique, rattling at him in Spanish. Like Kyle, Sam had come from South Texas, and Spanish was second nature with him.

“By George, I’m glad to see you two.” He pushed Kyle off to arm’s length and looked at him. “You’ve sure changed. A man now, by jingoes. What is it, twenty-two? You look thirty.”

There had been a lot to age a man in four years, Kyle thought without saying it.

Sam was jubilant. “Enrique doesn’t look a particle different. He’ll look just like this the day he’s a hundred and six. Come to think of it, he may be, already.”

Sam went serious then. “I think folks’ll be glad to see you back, Kyle.”

“Will they?” Kyle’s voice held a raspy edge.

“They were wrong four years ago. Most of them know it. You’ve been riding on their conscience a long time now.”

The irony of it brought a bitter twist to Kyle’s mouth. “So now they’re sorry. That makes everything just fine.”

The sparkle had left Sam’s eyes, crowded out by a sudden worry. “Kyle, it was mighty tough, what you went through. But after four years I thought—”

“You thought I’d forget? No, Sam, I didn’t let myself forget.”

Sam was fishing for words and having trouble finding them. “The country has changed. It’s settled, and so have most of the people. They’re not like they were when you left.”

“Neither am I, Sam. Neither am I.”

Sam’s brow furrowed. He was silent a moment, thinking while he dug the mud out from under his fingernails. Unflinchingly, he looked up into Kyle’s hard eyes. “What made you come back?”

“I told them I’d be back, and I told them what I’d do. Well, I’m here. And I’ll do what I said I would.”

Sam rolled a cigarette, frowning deeply and spilling some of the tobacco. “What do you figure on doing?”

“I’m going to put them off their land, the way they put me off mine.”

“We still don’t have any organized county here, but the Rangers come around now and again. They’ll be on you, soon as you step out of line.”

“No they won’t, Sam. What I’m going to do will be legal. I’m working for a man who has bought deeds to just about every mile of creek and river country here, except for yours. These people are squatters. I’m going to move them off.”

Sam’s mouth dropped open. Kyle went on:

“The day of the open range is about over. Don’t you know that, Sam? There’s state, school and railroad land going on the market every day, and people are buying it. You, and everybody else up here are using free state land, just like Pa and me were. The land’s been too cheap to bother with, and the state hasn’t laid any claim to it, up to now.

“But it’s beginning to get valuable. John Gorman’s the man I’m working for. You ought to remember the name. He used to be spread out big, down in South Texas, using free grass. But then the twenty-cow nesters started coming in with a breaking plow and a land deed, and they finally squeezed him out.

“Now he’s fixing to do up here what they did to him down there. He got hold of some land promoters in Austin and bought up a bunch of land certificates.

“I helped him pick the sections, Sam. I got him those that are on the water. And I did it on purpose. Without water, these people will have to quit. The rest of their land won’t be worth a dime to them. It’ll be there for John Gorman to take, the way they took the Slash R land.”

Kyle clenched his fists. “You see, Sam, I can square it for Pa. And the law is on my side.”

Sam Whittenburg turned his back and stared a while over the rolling plains, the knee-high grass that waved like wheat in the wind.

“What are you getting out of it, Kyle?”

“Title to the land Pa and I had. But mainly I’m getting even. It’s been a long time coming.”

Sam turned back to him. “Do you really think you’ll enjoy it, Kyle? You won’t. Revenge is a mighty narrow thing to live for. Once you’ve had it, do you think you’ll be satisfied? You won’t. You’ll hate yourself for it, the way these people hate what happened four years ago.”

Warmth surged into Kyle’s face. He hadn’t expected this from Sam. “Let’s go, Enrique.” He turned back abruptly toward his horse.

“Kyle,” Sam spoke quickly, “How about Brook Emmett? Are you taking his land, too?”

Kyle spoke firmly. “He was there the night they brought Pa home.”

“Go see him first, Kyle. Maybe you’ll change your mind. He’s aged a lot. It’s been conscience that’s done it to him. Before you start this, go see what conscience can do.”

“It’s too late, even if I wanted to. Gorman has got the deeds.”

“What about Jane, Kyle? Do you think about her anymore?”

Jane. He had thought about her every day for four years.

“No, I don’t.” It was a lie, and he sensed that Sam knew it. “I don’t think about her,” Kyle said again. “That was all finished four years ago. Done with.”

Sam’s eyes pleaded with him. “Before you do anything, go see her.”

Kyle swung into the saddle and headed toward town. Gorman was bound to be there by now, waiting for them.

Enrique held back a moment, looking regretfully at Sam. Then he shrugged and followed after Kyle.

Before they had ridden a mile, Kyle began to bear to the north. Enrique rode with a puzzled look. Then after a while they topped over a rise and slanted down toward Brook Emmett’s ranch headquarters, and the puzzled look left him. Enrique came about as near to smiling as he ever did.

From the moment he had left Sam, Kyle had known he was coming by here first, even though he had told himself he didn’t want to. The first glance showed him that Brook Emmett’s place hadn’t changed much. It hadn’t grown. Where Sam Whittenburg had improved his ranch and added to it, Brook Emmett evidently had stood still.

Kyle wondered at that. Old Emmett had been a man of drive and ambition. Kyle wouldn’t have told Sam for a million dollars, but he had always thought Emmett to be the better ranchman, to have the better prospects. Down there was the rock house Emmett had built, having found a good rock out-cropping nearby as a source of building material. It used to be that Jane could see Kyle from half a mile away as he rode in across the open, rolling land. She would stand by the picket fence there and wait for him. He didn’t see her now. But he could see that the fence needed fixing.

It was not that the place had gone to pieces, but it lacked the well-kept look it always had in the old days. It was as if Brook somehow had just kind of let go. A dog barked at the two horsemen. Kyle heard Jane before he saw her.

“Kyle!”

She stood at the gate of a small chicken yard, which had been net-fenced against the visitations of the coyotes which still roamed the prairie. Setting down the basket of eggs she carried, she walked hurriedly to meet him. He stepped out of the saddle and dropped the reins.

Two paces from him she stopped, her oval face pale from the sudden surprise of seeing him. The wind was picking up the curled ends of her long black hair, and it brushed softly against her slender neck. Her lips parted, and Kyle knew that to him she was still the prettiest girl he’d ever known.

“Kyle,” she said again, almost in a whisper.

He wanted to step forward and sweep her into his arms, and he knew she wanted him to. But four years had taught him restraint.

Weaken now and he might jeopardize the whole purpose of his return.

But he knew he already had weakened it when he had ridden by here instead of going straight to town.

“I’ve always hoped you’d come back, Kyle,” she said after a long moment of silence, while they stared at each other.

For a minute or two there, watching her, he had lost his bitterness. Now it began to come back to him.

“You gave me no sign of that.”

“I didn’t know where you had gone. I didn’t know where to write, or where to look.”

“You could have tried. Most anybody in South Texas could have told you about me, the last couple of years.”

That wasn’t a brag. It was a statement of fact.

She stared silently at him, and something in her eyes seemed to die. He realized that she had carried a hope with her for four years, and now it was gone.

He felt his heart tighten. Yes, he’d lied to Sam Whittenburg. He never had forgotten Jane Emmett. He wouldn’t, if he lived to be a hundred. We could start it all over again, and try to forget, he thought hopefully.

But he knew it was too late for that. The die was cast. He still remembered his father, lying in a lifeless heap in the mud, and Brook Emmett had been there. Emmett would have to pay, like the rest of them.

“Is your dad here, Jane?” he asked.

Her voice was hollow. “He’s in the house. I’ll go with you.”

She picked up her basket of eggs and walked ahead. Kyle followed, still fighting within himself, still wanting her.

A sense of shock stopped him in his tracks at his first glimpse of Brook Emmett. Emmett had aged fifteen years in the last four. His hair was almost totally gray. The big frame was still there, but he was no longer a heavy man. At sight of Kyle he leaned forward in his chair, starting to rise. Then he sank back again.

A hopelessness seemed to hang over him.

“I knew you’d come back someday. You were bound to.”

He extended his hand. “Will you shake hands with me, Kyle?”

Kyle started to, then checked himself.

Brook sighed. “I shouldn’t have expected it. I can guess why you’ve come back again. You want to even the score.”

Kyle nodded gravely. “That’s right.”

“And what do you want of me? Do you want to shoot me, and get it over with?”

“I’m not going to shoot you. But I’m going to put you off this land.”

Jane Emmett cried, “No!” and stepped up beside her father. Emmett patted her hand. “It’s all right, Jane. It’s less than I would have expected.”

He smiled wanly. “It’ll almost be a relief. For more than three years, I’ve lived with a shadow hanging over me, ever since I decided for sure that we’d been wrong about Earl Rayford.”

Kyle demanded, “If you knew, why didn’t you send for me? You could have found me.”

Brook Emmett sadly shook his head. “A coward, I guess. Scared of you, scared of myself. I tried a long time to convince myself it wasn’t so, that I hadn’t been wrong. But I knew better, and it gave me no rest.

“Something else, too,” he said. “I guess I was like the others. I didn’t want you around, reminding me every day of the mistake I’d made, staying here close to me like a living conscience.”

Emmett said wearily, “We’ll let him have the land, Jane. It’s little enough to pay for a clean conscience. I’ve had no heart in it anyway, the last few years.”

Kyle stood openmouthed, taken aback by the old man’s resignation. He had expected a fight out of Emmett. He had hoped for it. Emmett, who once had been their friend but had become an enemy. Emmett, who once had stood by the picket gate at the front of the house and told him he would kill him if he ever came back. Emmett, who had turned his back on him, refusing to hear the truth, and had left him to be whipped with the double of a rope.

Kyle’s held breath eased out of him, and he felt a vague disappointment. There was no revenge in it if you didn’t squeeze a man. Emmett didn’t seem to feel any loss. If anything, he looked relieved.

Kyle said, “The man I’m working for has bought the sections along the creek. You’ll have to move your cattle off of them.”

Jane stared at him, anger and disbelief in her eyes. “Then we’d just as well move off all of it. The rest of the land is no good to us without water.”

“I know,” he said without sympathy.

Tears welled into her wide eyes. He couldn’t be sure whether they were from hurt or anger—or both.

“This isn’t you, Kyle. I knew you’d change some, you were bound to. But this—.” She bit her lip. “You’re not the Kyle Rayford I used to know. Get out, Kyle. Get out before I fetch a gun.”

He backed up. “You don’t need the gun. I’m leaving.” To Brook Emmett he said “Five days, that’s all I can give you. Get off the creek, this home and all.”

From somewhere Jane Emmett brought a rifle. She swung it up and poked it at Kyle. “Get out!” she said. She followed him to the door and stood there watching while Kyle remounted and turned away.

Kyle found John Gorman waiting in town, just as he had expected. Gorman had been restlessly pacing up and down the hard-packed earth in front of the squatty adobe hotel for two days. His unlighted cigar was chewed down to about half its original length. He was a big-boned, restless ranchman with a drive and a ruthlessness about him that had made men in South Texas call him “the bull”—but never to his face.

Gorman saw Kyle and Enrique coming. It had been three weeks since they had parted in San Antonio. But there was no greeting, no handshake.

“Well, now, are you through fiddling around?” Gorman asked curtly. “Are you ready to go to work?”

Kyle Rayford eyed him levelly. He didn’t like Gorman—he never had. To him, Gorman was only a means of getting done what he wanted to do. And he had no delusions. He knew that in Gorman’s sight, he was nothing more than that, either.

Kyle said, “We’ve already started.”

Gorman frowned as Kyle told him about Thatcher. The big man finally nodded. “Probably a good thing. It might have been better, though, if you’d killed him. It would’ve thrown a scare into the rest of them, and we wouldn’t be so apt to have much trouble.”

“I’m not afraid of trouble,” Kyle said.

Gorman grunted. “So I’ve noticed.” He motioned with his chin and turned back toward the hotel. Kyle handed the reins to Enrique and nodded toward the wagon yard. Enrique was looking daggers at Gorman’s retreating back. Gorman had always treated him like a servant, and Enrique didn’t like it. Enrique Salinas, the old soldier, the old insurrecto extraordinary.

Kyle followed Gorman to his gyprock-plastered room. Gorman waved his hand toward three men who lounged there. “You know the boys. Jack Dangerfield, Irv Hallmark, Monte Lykes.”

Kyle nodded, resentment smoldering in him. They were strong men, gunslingers. He didn’t need that kind for what he was fixing to do. He didn’t want them. Then he asked himself harshly what he is turning up his nose for. That’s all I am, too. Just one of Gorman’s gunslingers.

Gorman said, “They’re here to help you.”

Stubbornly, Kyle said, “I won’t need that kind of help.” He caught the look of hatred from sallow-faced Jack Dangerfield. He had once shot a gun out of Dangerfield’s hand when Dangerfield came into camp roaring drunk, looking for a fight.

“Maybe you won’t need them, maybe you will. They’ll be here, anyway.”

Then Gorman said, “I’ve been listening a little while I’ve been here. I don’t think we’re apt to have a lot of trouble, except from this man Ebeling, maybe. He sounds to me like one who won’t take it lying down.”

Kyle said, “He’ll take it lying down. Dead, I hope.”

Gorman grunted again. “This Ebeling sounds like a man after my own heart. I almost wish I had him with me.”

Kyle shot him a cutting glance. “You try to make a deal with Ebeling and you’ll both be dead. I promise you that.”

The color rose in Gorman’s face, and he knew that Kyle meant it. Dropping that subject, he reached into a handbag and took out a map and a sheaf of land certificates. He handed them to Kyle.

“Which one do you figure on starting with?”

Kyle studied the map, seeing every ranchman in his mind’s eye. Brook Emmett. Well he had already told Emmett. Lester McLeod. Lester might fight. Yes, he probably would. Milt McGivern, maybe? Thomas Avery? Ferman Olds? They weren’t likely to fight. They would stampede easy, with just a little push.

His finger traced down the creek to Clint Ebeling’s ranch. There it stopped. Ebeling. Kyle’s fist tightened, crumpling the land certificates.

“Careful there,” Gorman said sharply. “They’re valuable.” Then he looked at the map and saw the name penciled above Kyle’s finger.

“Ebeling, eh? You’re starting with him?”

Kyle shook his head. “I’ll save him for the last.”

Gorman shrugged disinterestedly. “Makes no difference to me where you start. I’m interested in the finish. We’ve got no time to fiddle. I’ve got a herd already on its way up from the Rio Grande. They’ll be here in two weeks, three at the most. These people have got to be off the land. I’ll need every acre they’ve got.”

Kyle said, “They’ll be off.”

Gorman didn’t offer to get them a room at the hotel. Probably because of Enrique, Kyle thought with a touch of anger. So they’d sleep at the wagon yard. Enrique didn’t care, anymore. He had been at the top, and he’d been at the bottom.

As a boy Kyle had thrilled at Enrique’s stories of his years as a rebel in Mexico. It seemed that whenever there was a revolution, Enrique was in it, always as a rebel. There was so much to fight about, a man could always find a reason. But mostly it had been the adventure, the wild freedom, that had called Enrique.

“Insurrecto or bandido,” Enrique had once said. “The difference is not always a great one.”

But time had tamed him down, and he had escaped across the Rio Grande one night with nothing but his horse and saddle, the clothes on his back, and an old hat with two fresh bullet holes in it.

He liked to talk about the old times, but to go back to them—that was no longer to be considered.

Enrique seemed always to be able to take it in stride when men looked down on him the way some were wont to do with a Mexican. But somehow it was different when the man was someone like John Gorman.

“Don’t ever be bothered with what another man thinks or says,” Enrique had advised Kyle a long time ago. “You live with yourself. Listen to your conscience, not to other men.”

Kyle didn’t sleep much that night, thinking about what he would do. In the morning, when he and Enrique shook the hay out of their blankets, he said, “We’ll start with Lester McLeod.”

He rode into McLeod’s ranch yard shortly before noon. Enrique followed two lengths behind him, like a reluctant soldier following his lieutenant.

Kyle swung down and looked around for McLeod. A cotton-headed boy of seven or eight came poking out from behind a shed. He looked just like McLeod.

“I’m hunting your pa,” Kyle said. “Where is he?”

“Out getting a horse. He’ll be in directly,” the boy answered.

Waiting, Kyle led his horse down to the creek and watered him. McLeod, like Sam Whittenburg, had done a lot of work since the last time Kyle had been here. There was a new house now, built of rocks hauled from farther down the creek. Out in back, a small irrigation system had been gouged out of the earth, and vegetables stood green and fresh. A woman’s work, no doubt.

McLeod wouldn’t want to leave this place, Kyle knew. That made it better. He had felt something of a letdown at the way old Brook Emmett had taken the news. There was no satisfaction in running out a man who didn’t care anyway.

Kyle watched the boy playing with a matty-haired little brown dog. The boy was swinging a slingshot back and forth while the dog trotted ahead, testing every bush and weed. Presently he flushed a jackrabbit. The boy quickly fitted a rock into the sling, swung, and let fly. The rock kicked up dust at the rabbit’s heels, and the dog kept on coming. Then the rabbit darted down a hole. The dog stood over it, barking furiously.

Then he gave it up and went trotting on after the boy, who was looking for fresh game. Watching them, Kyle was able to relax, at least a little.

Enrique saw it. “Like this, hijo, you are the boy who used to live up the creek. This way, I like you. But this bitter Kyle Rayford, this boy eaten up with hate—I don’t know what to think about him.”

Kyle didn’t answer, but the spell was broken. He was frowning again when McLeod finally came riding in, leading a horse at the end of a rope. McLeod put the horse in a corral and slipped the rope off its neck. It wasn’t until he was close that he recognized Kyle.

They stared at each other, Kyle afoot, McLeod still on his horse. Kyle could well remember, and a hard knot grew inside him. This was the man who had pushed his father’s body out of the saddle, letting it fall in the mud. Kyle’s voice was edged with steel.

“I’ve been waiting for you, McLeod.” McLeod could see the smoldering in Kyle’s eyes and misread its meaning. “I’m not armed, Kyle.” He raised his hands so Kyle would see there was no gun at his hip.

“I didn’t come to shoot you, McLeod.”

McLeod loosened, letting out a long breath. “What did you come for?”

Kyle didn’t answer directly. “How much land you running now, McLeod?”

“About thirty sections.” McLeod’s voice was wary.

“You’ve got about six sections along the creek, isn’t that right?”

McLeod nodded.

“I’m here to tell you to get your cattle off the creek. That land belongs to another man now.”

McLeod’s face fell, then flushed red. For a moment he was obviously turning this over and over in his mind, desperately looking for a hole in it.

“I can’t do that. The rest of my country would be worthless.”

Kyle nodded grimly. “I know that.”

McLeod sat numbly staring at him. “Look, Kyle, I know you got it pretty raw four years ago. I know you’ve got something coming to you. But not this. Everything I’ve got is here—home, cattle, years of work. I’ve even got folks buried up yonder on the hill. You don’t think I’m going to pull up and leave all that!”

“You’re going to leave it, McLeod. You’ve got three days. Get your cattle off the creek by then or we’ll put them off. And if you’re not gone from here, we’ll put you off, too. The same way you did it to me.”

Kyle turned his back then, stuck his left foot in the stirrup, and mounted his horse.

McLeod sat straight in his saddle. He was a tall man with a sharp, strong, determined face, a hard eye. Of all the bunch, besides Ebeling, Kyle knew McLeod was the most likely to fight.

McLeod said, “You’ll have to kill me first.”

Kyle answered evenly, “It’s your choice.”

He turned his horse around, glancing once back over his shoulder. “Three days, McLeod. We’ll be back.”

From McLeod’s, he angled across to the Ferman Olds place. With Olds, it was much the same except that he could see the fear crawl in behind the man’s eyes, and he knew there would be no trouble with him.

That day, and the next, he saw the rest of them. Thomas Avery, Milt McGivern, and the others.

Then Clint Ebeling.

Kyle’s stomach drew up in a knot as he rode through the open gate that led to the Ebeling headquarters. It wasn’t fear; it was an excitement that had grown from the long anticipation.

Even Enrique didn’t seem to object to this visit. He had hung back on the others, taking no part except just to be there, and keep his hands clear. He would have helped Kyle if there had been trouble. But he had made it plain from the start that he didn’t like it.

Now Enrique rode beside him, stirrup to stirrup. And early this morning Kyle had awakened to find the Mexican cleaning and polishing his old Colt.

Kyle smiled. This was the Enrique of old, the fearless vaquero who had helped Earl Rayford rear and train Kyle, who had taught Kyle how to hold and throw a rope, and more than once had busted Kyle’s britches when Kyle had been thrown off a horse and didn’t want to get back on. This was the old warrior, the old rebel, not anxious for battle any more, but ready for it if it came.

Clint Ebeling was waiting for them. He stepped out in front of his sod house and stood there, thumbs in his gun belt. He rocked back on his heels a little, defiant, evidently not worried. He was even grinning. Ebeling always had that grin. It used to remind Kyle of a wolf.

Kyle looked at him, and an ancient hatred seeped through him like the spread of a poison.

Warily then he glanced around him for sign of any of Ebeling’s men. He saw only one, a dour cowboy who had worked for Ebeling a good many years. This man walked out from behind Ebeling and halted beside his boss, standing clear, his face tense.

“I’ve been looking for you, Rayford,” Ebeling said. “Heard what you’ve been telling the others, and figured you’d be here today.”

“Then you know what I was going to tell you.”

Ebeling nodded. “And you know the answer. I’m not leaving.”

Gravely Kyle said, “Suits me. I’ve been kind of hoping you’d want to put up a fight.”

Ebeling was still grinning. “The years haven’t taught you much sense, have they, Rayford? You know that was just a lucky fluke with Thatcher. You couldn’t do it again. You may bluff the others out with it; they’re a bunch of runny-nosed cowards anyway. But you’re not bluffing me.”

“It’s no bluff, Ebeling. Try me, if you think it is.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Kyle saw Enrique’s hand dip and come up. A split second after the blast, he heard a surprised yelp and a cry of pain from a window to his left, and a clatter of a rifle to the floor.

The man beside Ebeling started to move, then froze in place. Ebeling never budged, but his grin was gone.

Kyle’s gun was out. He saw a movement and squeezed the trigger. Splinters flew from the corner of the picket shed. Benny Ahrens jumped out, terrified, his hands in the air.

For a moment they all froze there that way, looking at each other. A deep anger purpled Ebeling’s face.

Kyle cocked the hammer of his gun back, the ominous click as loud as thunder.

“You see now it’s no bluff, Ebeling. The old Slash R is mine. Everything else on the water belongs to John Gorman. Be off of it with your stock in three days, or we’ll put them off. And we’ll run over anybody who gets in the way.”

They backed their horses a few steps, then turned quickly and left in a fast trot. Even when they were well out of six-gun range, Kyle half expected someone to send a bullet searching after them. It never came.

After they had ridden a while, Kyle turned to Enrique. “Thanks, compadre. I’m glad you were with me.”

Enrique shrugged. “Por nada. The other places, I was not glad. This place, it is different.”

The day of McLeod’s deadline, they left town before sunup. Riding with Kyle and Enrique, somewhat against Kyle’s will, were the three gunmen, Dangerfield, Hallmark and Lykes. John Gorman had not elected to go along.

“That’s what I hired you for,” he growled.

It was easy to see that McLeod had not attempted to meet the deadline. Riding to the creek, Kyle could see McLeod cattle up and grazing in the cool morning wind. The heat of midday would drive them to shade.

The corners of Kyle’s mouth turned down. If that was the way the hand was dealt, that was the way he would play it.

“If he won’t move them, we will,” he said. He made a signal with his hand. The riders fanned out and began to push the cattle ahead of them.

By the time they reached McLeod’s headquarters, they had three or four hundred head of longhorn cattle strung out in a dusty line, cows and calves bawling for each other, men shouting and pushing them on.

McLeod’s rock house rose into view as they worked down a gentle slope. Kyle looked toward the sheds and pole corrals, and his hand dropped to his hip.

Several horsemen stood their mounts there waiting. Even at the distance, he knew them. In the center, squared and straight in the saddle, Lester McLeod sat with a rifle balanced in front of him. The other men were McGivern, Avery and two more who had been given their notice.

Kyle was not surprised to see them here. He had half expected them. But he hadn’t expected to see Sam Whittenburg. Yet there he was.

Enrique pulled his horse up close to Kyle’s. “It is as I told you. They do not go without a fight.”

Kyle’s lips flattened. “Then that’s what we’ll give them.”

Enrique’s black eyes narrowed. “Wait, ichacho. Hear me first.” His voice was even and deliberate. “Too long I have ridden with you and kept the silence. Now you will listen. This is wrong. It has been wrong from the beginning. Will this mistake you are making bring back your father? Would he be proud of you today? He wouldn’t be. I’m not proud, either.

“Look, hijo, it has been four years now—four years. These people have changed, what happened here is past. Leave the past where it belongs. Bury it with the dead.”

Kyle started to pull away. Enrique pressed after him. “Sam is here. What if something happens to Sam?”

Kyle’s fist clenched against the saddle horn. What business was this of Sam’s? What did he want to come poking in here for?

“He shouldn’t have come.” Kyle turned away from Enrique and motioned to the nearest man, Jack Dangerfield. “I’m going on up to talk to them. If there’s trouble, you know what to do.”

Dangerfield nodded sullenly and turned back. Kyle said, “Coming, Enrique?”

In Enrique’s eyes was the same look Kyle used to see as a kid when he hadn’t done something the way Enrique had taught him. But the old man touched spurs to his horse and came up alongside Kyle. Together they loped ahead of the herd, to where the horsemen waited. They hauled up ten feet from them, the dust swirling into the riders’ faces.

Hostility passed like a spark between them. Sam Whittenburg was the first to speak. “You’re making a mistake, Kyle.”

Kyle shot him a quick, annoyed glance. “You shouldn’t be here, Sam. This is none of your business.”

“They’re my friends, just like you’re my friend. They made a mistake once. You’re fixing to make a big one now.”

“Looks like I’m entitled to it.”

Sam leaned forward, grasping for words. “It won’t right the wrong that was done before. It’ll just add to the misery that’s already been. You’ve still got time to stop it, Kyle. These men could be your friends. They could help you get back what you’ve lost, if you’d give them the chance.”

Enrique touched Kyle’s arm. “Listen to him, hijo. Sam talks good sense.”

But Kyle could still remember four years ago. And he could hear the bawling of the McLeod herd pressing in close behind him.

He shook his head. “It’s too late, Enrique. We’ve already made our deal.”

McLeod said, “Then I’m going to stop you.” His spurs tinkled as he touched them to his bay horse and started forward.

Kyle turned quickly in the saddle and waved his hand. The three gunmen fired their guns into the air and began to shout like uncaged demons. A shock wave of fear struck the herd like a bolt of lightning. In an instant the plodding cattle jumped into a run. For the space of two seconds the five horsemen in front of Kyle stared, uncertain as to what to do.

There was nothing they could do. With that start, and the three men still chousing them like the furies, the cattle wouldn’t stop running for anything.

Kyle caught the raw hatred in McLeod’s eyes. Then McLeod jerked his horse away and made a run toward the cattle. The other men followed him, but it would be futile.

Sam Whittenburg held back a moment. “You won’t be proud of this day, Kyle,” he said regretfully.

Kyle and Enrique drew aside, letting the flood of cattle pour past them. They watched the five horsemen in front feverishly trying to turn the cattle. But they were like rocks in a flooded stream. The cattle poured around them, unheeding.

The drags passed. Gorman’s men were still riding hard, shouting and firing their guns.

“Keep them running,” Kyle said. “Don’t stop till you’ve got them miles off the creek.”

He saw McLeod coming back in a lope now. McLeod’s face was purple with rage, and he had the rifle in his hand.

“Don’t do it, McLeod,” Kyle shouted. But McLeod jerked his horse to a stop and raised the rifle. There wasn’t time to think. Kyle ducked low and grabbed at his own gun. He heard the heavy crash of the rifle and the whine of the bullet going past him. As McLeod levered another cartridge into the breech, Kyle raised his gun and squeezed the trigger.

McLeod jerked back, dropping the rifle, then slid out of the saddle. Instantly Kyle was on the ground, running toward him. He kicked the rifle aside, then knelt by McLeod. He saw the splotch of red where the bullet had smashed through, high in the shoulder.

In fury McLeod weakly swung at him with his left hand, then slumped over, moaning. Kyle caught him and eased him to the ground.

“What did you do that for?” Kyle said, reproach in his voice. “Look what you made me do.”

From the house he heard a scream. A woman burst out of the door and ran toward him, her skirts flying. Another woman followed after her, trying to call her back. From somewhere McLeod’s boy appeared. He had the slingshot, and he reached down for a rock. Kyle heard the singing of it, then the rock struck him in the chest, taking the breath out of him and almost knocking him over. The youngster came running, crying and cursing in the imitation curse words a boy uses.

Sam and the other men got there first. Sam gently took the slingshot and eased the boy away. Kyle heard the boy sob, and suddenly it was himself he heard, as it had been four years ago.

McLeod’s wife got there then. She fell on her knees, crying and praying.

Kyle said tightly, “I didn’t kill him, ma’am. He’ll pull through that all right.”

He stood up, looking into the faces of the two men, finding surprise and shock there. In Sam Whittenburg’s face he saw a deep regret. Enrique Salinas looked at Kyle a moment, then turned his back. Enrique rolled and lighted a cigarette and stood there smoking it, his gaze on the ground.

Kyle heard a girl’s voice behind him and turned sharply on his heel. It was Jane Emmett. “You’ve had your revenge now, Kyle Rayford. Does it give you satisfaction to shoot a man, run off his cattle, take the home from a woman and a little boy? Is that what you came back here to do?”

She didn’t touch him, but her voice stung him like a whip.

“He was there when they killed my father,” he said.

“He wasn’t there,” Jane declared tightly. “Neither was my dad, or any of these other men. Ebeling killed your father. Ebeling and his riders.”

Kyle felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. “He wasn’t there? But they were all there. I saw them.”

“You saw them after it had already been done. Ebeling sent riders to get them. Said he was about to catch Earl Rayford red-handed. When the men got there, your father was already dead. Ebeling had shot him. He claimed your father went for his gun.

“Sure, they condoned it, and that was wrong. But there was a calf tied down and half branded with a Slash R. Its mama was standing there. She had a Bar E on her. It looked like an open and shut case at the time. So they all rode with Ebeling and his men to your place.

“It was a long time before they began to see the truth, Kyle. Then it was too late to do anything. Nobody wanted to face Clint Ebeling. They all dread him.”

Kyle turned away from her, suddenly sick inside. He had to get away, had to think.

Yes, he had done what he had come here to do. But there was no satisfaction in it. There was an emptier feeling than ever before. And there was the guilt, spreading through him like a burning infection. Guilt! Why should he feel guilty? They had done far worse to him.

“Come on, Enrique,” he said tightly. “Let’s go.”

Enrique shook his head, his dark eyes firm. “No, hijo. The pupil has learned all the teacher can teach him, and more. Too much more. You do not need me now. I will stay here.”

This was Kyle’s moment of triumph. The culmination of four years of training and planning. And the bottom had dropped out from under him.

He swung into the saddle and turned away.

They pushed the McLeod cattle completely off the sections which Gorman had bought. They went ahead and cleaned out neighboring Avery sections as well, before darkness dropped down upon them and started them back to town.

Kyle rode along with his shoulders slumped and his gaze mostly on the ground. He wasn’t much help to Gorman’s three men.

Jack Dangerfield loped up to him once, looking as if he could bite a .45 caliber bullet in two. “What’s the matter with you, Rayford, riding along like you’ve gone to sleep? Pitch in here and make a hand, why don’t you?”

Kyle’s eyes raked him like a hot iron, “Shut up and leave me alone!”

Next morning they started out again for the McGivern place to clear the creek sections there. But they found McGivern and some of the neighbors already doing that. McGivern rode out to meet them. Avery was with him. McGivern was a tall, graying man who had always reminded Kyle of a storekeeper, the kind who takes a lead in the community, a man with enough push and imagination to make himself a success. But he wasn’t the kind to do much fighting.

Avery was short, nervous, a little fat. He was a hard worker when he had to be, but usually he had rather not. He had four kids and a strong-willed wife, and he wasn’t a man to risk his life doing anything.

“You can take your gunhands and go, Rayford,” McGivern said stiffly.

Kyle didn’t see fear in McGivern’s face. But he knew McGivern was a realist, too wise to sacrifice himself in a cause that was doomed at the start.

“We’re moving my cattle off the water, just like you said. Everybody is—Brook Emmett and the others. We can’t fight hired gunmen and land deeds.”

Kyle nodded. “Suits me,” he said. And it did. Since yesterday, somehow, he had lost stomach for this fight. He was glad to see it working out this way.

“How about Ebeling?” he asked.

McGivern frowned. “We don’t know about Ebeling. He rides his own road—doesn’t help anybody, doesn’t ask any help. I imagine he’ll fight.”

McGivern pulled his horse around and went back to the herd, the other men following him. Kyle squinted at the herd. He could see Enrique Salinas there, pushing cattle beside Sam Whittenburg. Enrique saw Kyle, but he didn’t come out.

Kyle winced. Then he shrugged. “Well, boys, looks like we’re out of a job here. Let’s head back to town.”

Gorman took the news the way he took everything—with a dark scowl. He chewed on his cigar as if he were mad at it.

“I already knew it,” he said. “Man came in this morning and told me.”

Kyle straightened suddenly. “What man?”

Gorman didn’t answer the question. Angrily he said, “You fools, don’t you know what’s taking place? Sure, they’re moving their cattle off the creek sections I bought. They’re moving them onto those I didn’t buy.”

Kyle demanded, “How can that be? You bought everybody’s but Sam Whittenburg’s.”

“That’s where they’re going with them!” Gorman declared.

“That can’t last long,” Kyle said. “They’ll have Sam’s grass tromped out all up and down the creek.”

“It won’t have to last long,” Gorman blazed. “I’ve got a herd coming in. Damn you, Rayford, why didn’t you tell me Whittenburg had a well-drilling outfit?”

Kyle began to sense the rest of it.

Gorman said, “He moved it over to McLeod’s place yesterday. They’ve already started drilling for water back away from the sections I bought. You can see what that means, can’t you?”

Kyle nodded. Gorman went on, “Soon as they get water on McLeod’s land they’ll move the rig to Avery’s, or McGivern’s. They’ll drill till they’ve got water enough and can get along without the creek.”

Kyle sat down. Somehow the load which had been so heavy on his shoulders began to lift away. Somehow it got almost funny. He began to chuckle, and the chuckle became a laugh.

Gorman snarled at him. “I don’t see what’s so damn funny about it.”

Kyle said, “Just thinking how I used to short-change old Sam. I liked him better than most anybody, but I never thought he was as smart as a lot of them. Now he’s outsmarted the whole bunch of us.”

Gorman paced the floor, raging like a caged lion. “It’s your fault, Rayford. You didn’t let me buy the creek sections Whittenburg holds. Good friend, you said. Sam’d be all right, you said. He wouldn’t give us any trouble. Good friend, hell!”

Good friend. Yes, Kyle realized, Sam was a good friend. He had thrown a monkey wrench into this whole scheme, which had begun to turn sour to Kyle anyway.

Gorman kicked a loose boot out of the way so hard that it knocked plaster from the adobe wall.

“Trail herd is due in a few more days. These people have got to get off this land—do you understand that? They’ve got to get off or there’ll be no place for my cattle.”

He hurled his cigar to the floor. “I’ll teach that Whittenburg to get in my way!”

A cold knot started in Kyle’s stomach. “You’ll leave Sam alone.”

Gorman’s eyes were ablaze. “Not to let him spoil this deal.”

“We made a deal, Gorman, before we ever came up here. I helped you move the others off the creek, and you were going to leave Sam alone. I got them off the creek. I’m holding you to what you promised about Sam.”

Gorman’s eyes were like the muzzles of a double-barreled shotgun. “Our deal’s off, Rayford. Your way didn’t work. Now I’ve got a man whose way will work. Your old friend Clint Ebeling came to see me today. He wanted to make a deal. He’s going to run those squatters out of the country.”

Kyle jumped to his feet. “You know Ebeling’s the main reason I came back here, Gorman. You’re not going to cross me and make a deal with him.”

“I’ve already made it, Rayford!”

Kyle leaped at him, knocking Gorman against the wall. He struck Gorman again across the mouth. The blood trickled down Gorman’s lips.

Strong hands grabbed Kyle, spun him around. Jack Dangerfield jerked him away. Dangerfield’s fist struck Kyle like a sledge. He staggered, then went after Dangerfield in a rush. His right fist flattened Dangerfield’s nose, bringing a spurt of blood. His left drove high into the man’s belly, and the breath gusted out of Dangerfield.

Irv Hallmark and Monte Lykes had been watching, stunned by surprise. Gorman cursed at them, and they jumped in. They grabbed Kyle’s arms. He shrugged wildly, almost tearing loose from them, kicking the heel of his boot at Hallmark’s knee and nearly folding him up. But they held onto him, twisting his arms, bringing him down.

Dangerfield was up again, wiping his bloody face, murder in his eyes. Kyle saw his fist coming but couldn’t dodge it. He was locked in the grip of the other two gunmen. It was as if a charge of dynamite went off in his head.

Dangerfield’s murderous rage drove him on and on, beating at Kyle, hammering at his head, his stomach. Kyle’s struggling weakened little by little, and then there was none. He hung limp.

The two men let him drop. Dangerfield pulled his foot back to kick Kyle in the ribs.

“Hold it,” Gorman said. “No use killing him. I got no use for killing unless it’s necessary.”

Hallmark said, “That Ebeling sounds to me like a man who’d do it, necessary or not.”

Gorman grunted. “We’re going out to Ebeling’s ranch. Throw Rayford on a horse. We’ll drop him off out there somewhere afoot. He can’t hurt anything that way.”

Hallmark frowned. “The whole town’ll see us.”

“Let them!”

Kyle was dimly conscious of being carried somewhere, lying facedown across the saddle. The pressure of blood on his brain made him struggle to straighten up. Someone hit him over the head, and he fell spinning back into darkness.

When consciousness finally did come to him, Kyle found himself alone, afoot, out on a wide expanse of rolling prairie. His head was splitting, and he ached all over from the beating they had given him. For a while it was all he could do to sit up. After a quarter of an hour he was on his feet, lurching about, trying to figure where he was. But it was no use. Out here on this open plain, the land all looked alike. He might have been anywhere.

He knew they had carried him here and dropped him off. He had no idea how far they had brought him. He found the tracks of the horses. No telling where they were going. He hadn’t heard that. Wouldn’t do any good to follow them. He had no gun. But by back-tracking, he would reach town, sooner or later.

Painfully he set out, following the tracks back toward their starting place. At first it was tough going. He would walk a couple of hundred yards, then have to sit down and rest. As he walked, however, his strength began to come back to him. Strength and a throbbing anger.

Before long it would be dark. He had to keep going. He cut down the rest stops until was taking almost none. The sun sank low. And Kyle’s heart sank with it.

Then he heard something. He stopped abruptly, listening. There it was again. A dog barking. The sound came on the wind, out of the north. A ranch. There had to be a ranch yonder somewhere. He started walking faster now. Hope surged back into him. If he could only make it. If he could only get word to Sam.

The sun dropped out of sight over the rim of the prairie. Dusk settled over him. Hurry, Kyle, he kept telling himself. Hurry. Get over that rise yonder. Maybe you can see it then.

He struggled up the rise, sinking to his knees in exhaustion as he reached the top of it. And there it was. Brook Emmett’s place. Half a mile or more away. But he knew where it was now. He’d make it, even though it was dark.

A sudden fear struck him. What if they had already left? No, they hadn’t done that, he’d heard a dog. But maybe the dog had slipped away and come back to the only home it knew, the way dogs will. That fear fastened itself to him as he kept on walking, fatigue bearing down on him like a two-hundred-pound weight on his back.

He was conscious of turning into a wagon road. It wouldn’t be much farther now. Keep on going, Kyle. Don’t quit yet. He tried to yell, but it wasn’t in him. So he kept walking, dragging. He dropped in exhaustion at the picket fence. He sat there, unable to move, the dog warily walking back and forth in front of him, barking loudly.

Kyle saw lamplight in the house. Suddenly it winked out. He heard footsteps at the door. Jane Emmett’s voice demanded, “Who’s out there?” He heard the ominous click of a rifle hammer. The dog kept barking.

“It’s me, Jane,” Kyle said weakly. “Kyle Rayford.” He was afraid she couldn’t hear him. He said it again.

“Kyle?” She still didn’t see him in the darkness. “Come on, Kyle, but keep your hands up.”

Putting his weight on the picket fence, he pushed to his feet. “Help me, Jane. Help me.”

For a moment she waited, fearing a trap. Then the rifle clattered against the door jamb, and she ran out to him. Leaning on her, he made it into the house.

“Is anybody with you?” she asked sharply.

“No,” he said. “I’ve walked for miles.”

Evidently believing him then, she lighted the lamp. She gasped at the sight of his bloody, battered face.

“Kyle,” she exclaimed, “what happened to you?”

“I had a falling out. Gorman’s thrown in with Ebeling. I tried to stop him.” He paused for breath. “They’re out to wreck Sam’s drilling rig. They may kill Sam. We’ve got to warn him.”

Jane had a teakettle of water on the big woodstove. She poured steaming water into a pan and dipped a cloth into it. “Do you know where the drilling camp is?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Somewhere on McLeod’s. That’s all I know.”

It struck Kyle suddenly that old Brook Emmett wasn’t here. He asked Jane where he was.

“He’s out with the cattle,” Jane said in reply to his question. “He and a couple of men have pushed them over to Sam’s. They’re holding them there on the water.”

“Jane,” he said, “I’ve been wrong. Wrong about a lot of things. Enrique tried to tell me, and I couldn’t see it.”

“Don’t blame yourself too much,” she said. “A lot of people were wrong. Sometimes we have a hard time learning a lesson.”

“Funny how it was,” Kyle spoke. “Like a man wanting a drink. He wants it so bad he can taste it. He thinks about it, dreams about it. Then he gets to town and gets the drink, and it wasn’t what he really wanted after all. It goes sour on his stomach. That’s the way it was with me, Jane. For four years I’d looked forward to this. And somehow it went sour.”

The wet rag was so hot that Kyle almost cried out. But Jane was quick and sure in the use of it. She cleansed the cuts and bruises on Kyle’s face and hands. Then she brought some antiseptic. Kyle flinched at the searing pain.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s all right,” he answered. “I’ve hurt you enough.”

He touched her hand. The warmth of it, the nearness of her, brought a rush of blood to his face. “Jane, I—”

Suddenly he pulled her to him, crushing her as if to make up at once for four lost years. Kissing her brought a hammering of pain to his bruised lips, but he didn’t let her go.

“Kyle, Kyle,” she whispered, the flush high in her cheeks, “it’s not too late for us, is it?”

“I don’t know, Jane,” he said. “I don’t know.”

He caught up the Emmetts’ rustling horse and saddled him with an old rig he found in the shed. The stirrups were a notch too short, but he didn’t have time to let them out.

The moon came up, only a half moon, but it cast enough light that he could follow the wagon down the creek toward the McLeod ranch. The place was dark as he approached but it wasn’t vacated. He was still a hundred yards from the house when a woman’s voice suddenly spoke behind him.

“Stop right there and put your hands up.

He raised his hands. “I’m Kyle Rayford,” he said. “I’ve got to get word to Sam Whittenburg.”

“Rayford?”

Kyle lowered his hands a little.

“Put them back up there!” He raised them quickly.

“I’m by myself,” he assured the woman whom he hadn’t yet seen.

“You better be. Get off easy and come in.”

Inside the rock house he found it wasn’t really dark. Blankets had been draped over the windows. Lester McLeod lay on a bed in a corner. He raised up on his good elbow at the sight of Kyle.

“You’re not welcome here, Rayford,” he said. His voice was none too strong.

“I didn’t expect to be. But I’ve got to find Sam. Somebody’s got to help me.”

He quickly explained about Gorman and Ebeling. It took a good while to convince them. It was his bruised face that finally did it. McLeod nodded. “I believe you’re telling the truth. Johnny, saddle your horse. Take him to the rig.”

McLeod’s boy said grudgingly, “All right. But if he makes a false move, I’ll pop him with my slingshot.”

They rode about two hours. At times Kyle was afraid the boy would get lost in the dim moonlight. But the youngster knew the way.

“We ought to find it any time now,” he said.

They found it, but too late. A sudden crackle of gunfire started ahead of them. They heard excited shouts, the screams of horses.

Fire leaped up in the darkness.

Kyle’s heart sank. “Hold up, sonny. No use going in there now. I haven’t got a gun and that slingshot wouldn’t help much, either.”

The gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had begun. A rumble of hoofbeats moved toward them. Kyle stepped down quickly and motioned the boy to do the same. They stood there, holding their horses’ noses to keep them from nickering. The raiding party passed by no more than three hundred yards away.

The two rode on in after that. They had no trouble finding the camp. Even after the flames had stopped leaping into the air, the steady glow of fire lighted their way. Excited men were throwing water on the drilling rig, where stubborn flames clung, flickered low, then flashed bright again. But the last of them was snuffed out. Around the camp, the scene was one of almost total destruction. A burning wagon collapsed, sending a shower of sparks into the air while one of the wheels rolled down the slope twenty feet and came to clanking rest against a water barrel. The barrel was shot full of holes, the last of the water pouring out the punctures at the bottom. A short way from the rig, a mule lay screaming, threshing in agony. Rage roared through Kyle as he realized the raiders had shot all the animals.

One of the men put the mule out of its misery with a pistol bullet as Kyle and the McLeod boy rode up. Someone recognized Kyle and swung a rifle around. Sam Whittenburg’s voice stopped him. “Hold on there! Let him come in.” Kyle rode in with his hands well away from his sides, so they could see he carried no gun.

“What’re you doing here, Kyle?” Sam demanded. His voice was grim.

“I came to warn you. But we got here a little late.”

The boy piped in quickly. “Pa told me to come with him. Pa said he believed him. And it all happened just like he said it would.”

“Ebeling was with your friend Gorman,” Sam said. “I guess you know that.”

Kyle nodded. “I knew it. That’s why I came.”

In the firelight Kyle saw the angry splotch of red on Sam’s sleeve. “You better take care of that, Sam,” he said, reaching to touch the arm.

Sam pulled away. “There’s worse here. A lot worse. You better come with me, Kyle.”

Kyle followed him to where a man lay on a blanket. Another man bent over him, working by lantern light, trying to stanch the flow of blood from a chest wound.

Kyle’s breath broke off short. Enrique!

He fell to his knees, his throat tight. “Enrique. Compadre.”

Enrique’s eyes fluttered open. His lips moved, but no words came.

Kyle looked up quickly. “We’ve got to get to a doctor.”

Sam shook his head. “It’d kill him to move him now. And we’ve got no wagons left. Buster McLeod, how’s that horse of yours? Fresh enough to make it to town? Go fetch us a doctor. Hurry.”

The boy left.

Even as the youngster rode away, Kyle knew it would be no use. A few hours, a day, maybe two days, Enrique was done.

The world came crashing down about him. He closed his burning eyes. His throat swelled and choked him.

Sam said, “You’d have been proud of him, Kyle. I never saw a man like him. He saw Ebeling, and he seemed to turn into a tiger. Ebeling rode in, and the old man jumped out after him. His gun was empty, but he went on anyway with a knife in his hand.

“They were all shooting at him at once, but just couldn’t seem to hit him. He grabbed hold of Ebeling’s leg and started pulling him out of the saddle. Ebeling shot him, then, in the chest. It wasn’t till then that Enrique stopped.”

Sam walked away, leaving Kyle alone with Enrique. Kyle bent low over the old Mexican, hoping Enrique could understand.

“You were right, Enrique,” he said, almost pleading. “I was wrong. You tried to tell me and I wouldn’t listen. Forgive me, Enrique.”

Enrique’s ancient, wrinkled hand lifted. It was a terrible effort, but the old man managed to lift it and place it on Kyle’s hand. Kyle felt a gentle pressure there, and he saw Enrique’s lips pull into a thin, weak smile. He had to bend low to hear the whispered words.

“Once—I was young, hijo, just like you. That’s why I understand you. You are Enrique—fifty years ago. Nothing to forgive, my son. Nothing to forgive.”

Daylight came, and the word spread. The ranchers began riding in to look around, to take inventory and see what the others were thinking. The drilling camp was a litter of dead horses and mules, burned wagons and camping equipment. Every water barrel was shot full of holes. Oats were scattered all over the ground.

The well driller was talking to Milt McGivern, shaking his head. “The rig there, it’s built out of oak, and it didn’t burn bad. We got the fire put out. But we can’t drill again till we get some new teams and camp gear, and some new rope, too. And we got to dig that drill bit out of the hole by hand. Weighs five hundred pounds.”

He squinted. “Something else. We got to have better protection than we had, or we don’t even start.”

Thomas Avery, the family man, worriedly shook his head. “I don’t know. It ain’t worth it, risking our lives this way. Getting shot at for land that don’t even belong to us. If Gorman don’t get it, somebody else will buy it out from under us anyway.”

Ferman Olds said, “What kind of a life is it when you got to live with your guns twenty-four hours a day, wondering when they’re going to come next? It might last for months.”

Riders came by during the day, and the news gathered. Gorman and Ebeling had raided several ranches after leaving the well site. They had burned buildings or caved them in. They had run off cattle from all over the range. Over at the Johnson place they had shot old man Johnson. He wasn’t even in Gorman’s original plan. And at the Hendersons’, one of the horsemen had run over Mrs. Henderson and left her lying there with a broken leg.

Thomas Avery looked as if a mule had kicked him in the stomach. “That settles it,” he said. “If they want it that bad, they can have it.”

Ferman Olds nodded. “That’s the way I see it, too.”

But Milt McGivern still had some fight him. “Wait a minute, now. We’re not going to tuck our tails between our legs and run off like mongrel dogs, without even putting up a fight. We’ve spent years building what we have. Are we going to let somebody take it away from us in one night?”

Jealous of McGivern’s strong spirit, Avery said irritably, “What do you expect us to do? I’m not a gunfighter. I’m a rancher.”

“You’re a coward!” McGivern declared.

Kyle had been staying close to Enrique. Enrique had lapsed into unconscious last night, and he hadn’t come out of it. Kyle knew he never would.

Still stiff and sore from the beating, Kyle stood up and walked over to where the men were arguing.

“Look,” he broke in, “if you can hold out through the next couple of weeks, you’ll have Gorman whipped.”

They looked at him in surprise. “What you know about it?” Avery demanded.

Kyle explained about the trail herd Gorman was expecting.

“A week, ten days at the most, and it’ll be here. It’s a big one. Gorman has got to have your range for those cattle—all of your range. If those cattle come piling in here on him and he hasn’t got it, he’s sunk. He’ll have to send them on north somewhere, west to New Mexico. Or even back to South Texas. Whichever he does, he’ll have to do it quick.”

Avery scowled. “How do we know you’re not still with Gorman? How do we know you’re not setting us up for a licking?”

Kyle said, “Gorman’s got Ebeling with him now. And they’ve shot Enrique. You know I wouldn’t ride with Ebeling.”

McGivern had been eyeing Kyle critically. Now he said to Avery, “I believe him, Thomas. And I’m not going to quit. I’m going to stick, like he says.”

Kyle felt the touch of McGivern’s hand on his shoulder. “We’ve all made mistakes, son. I’ve made them, and you’ve made them. I don’t blame you for yours. I hope you’ll forgive me for mine. Let’s call it square and see what we can do to set it right.”

Avery’s eyes were still hostile. They were still scared. “Stick if you want to, Milt. But I’m through.”

He turned and started walking for his horse. Ferman Olds called, “Wait for me, Thomas. I’m going with you.” Sadness was in McGivern’s eyes as he watched them go. “I reckon we’ll lose the rest, too. Let two pull out and the others will follow. Just like a row of dominoes falling down. One goes and they all do.”

Kyle turned to Sam. “You were telling me the other day about the Rangers. Where are they?”

Sam shrugged. “No telling.”

“Sam,” Kyle said, “I think the law would stick with all of you now, whatever you did. Gorman had it on his side when he started. He owned those creek sections. But now he’s over-reached himself, he and Ebeling. He’s raided and burned and even killed.

“He’s desperate for time now. That’s why he cut the dogs loose. He’s hoping to get this thing wound up before the law finds out about it. He wants to get you all run out or buried. Once he’s got possession of the land, even the law’s going to have a hard time rooting him out.”

Sam said, “So we send somebody to hunt the Rangers. What if it takes weeks to get them here? If the rest of the ranchers stampede like Avery and Olds, there’s not much we can do. And they’ll stampede, Kyle.”

Kyle said, “Maybe we’ll find a way. We’ll just have to keep looking.”

As Kyle had known he would, Enrique died the morning of the second day. Kyle sat beside him numbly, holding the red, wrinkled old hand that would never love again.

Brook Emmett and Jane were there. Ebling had made a lightning raid on Emmett, taking away in one sweep the cattle he and a couple of cowboys had been holding. Now McGivern was trying to talk Emmett into staying. Emmett was about ready to give it all up.

“It doesn’t mean much to me any more, anyway,” he was saying.

McGivern said, “I know what’s been bothering you, Brook. Would it help you any if Kyle Rayford told you he no longer held anything against you? Would that wipe the slate clean?”

Emmett turned slowly to face Kyle, not knowing exactly what to expect. For a moment he stood in silence, the hope almost painful in his eyes.

Kyle said, “You asked me the other day if I would shake hands with you. I’d like to do it now.”

Later Kyle turned back to Enrique. Jane sat down beside him. No words passed between them. None were needed.

After a long while she asked, “Where are you going to bury him?”

“He belongs on the Slash R,” Kyle said. “I’m going to take him there, if you’ll lend me one of your wagons.”

Her hand touched his. “Sure, Kyle. I’ll go with you.”

He shook his head sharply. “No. We might run into Gorman or Ebeling.”

She said, “I’m going with you, Kyle.”

He didn’t have it in him to argue. He shrugged. “All right. We’d better get started, or we won’t be back before dark.”

Sam was gone, trying to talk others into staying a little longer. So just Kyle and Jane went with Enrique’s body. For an hour they sat together on the spring wagon seat, and not a word passed between them as the wagon bounced along. But Kyle could feel Jane’s worried eyes upon him.

Jane said, “You’re still confused, aren’t you, Kyle? You don’t know which way to turn.”

He nodded solemnly. “For four years I was so sure what I wanted. And when I got it, everything blew up in my face.”

An emptiness left a terrible ache in him. “Even the Slash R. I dreamed of getting it back. Now I don’t know if I want it or not. There wouldn’t be anything left there but memories—a lot of bad memories.”

She took his hand. “You’ll want it, when this is all over.”

At the Slash R he picked a spot of high ground and took out the shovel. The summer sun bore down with a vengeance, and sweat soaked his shirt. But the ground was soft. The digging went fast.

While Kyle dug, Jane walked up and down the creek, among the trees which Earl Rayford had set out as soon as he had reached the place, and which now had grown tall and strong. Presently she came back.

“You know,” she said, “there’s a wonderful spot down there for a house. All that shade, and not far from the water. You could find all the rock you’d need just a little way up the creek.”

Kyle stopped digging and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I know. Pa had him a spot picked out down there. He used to always dream about the house he’d build someday.”

“You’ll build it, Kyle,” she said. He didn’t know. He didn’t know if he’d ever want to see the place again.

Gently Kyle lowered Enrique’s blanket-wrapped body into the grave. He stood with hat in his hand while Jane read from the Bible she had brought with her. She finished with a prayer. Kyle’s throat was so tight he couldn’t join in with her.

He wished, for Enrique, that he had had a priest. There wasn’t one up here anywhere. Someday, maybe, he could find one and bring him here.

He picked up the shovel and let the first shovelful of dirt slide back into the grave. He blinked away the stinging in his eyes.

“Hold it, Rayford!”

The voice cracked like a whip from within the trees. Kyle grabbed at his hip and then remembered. He had taken off his gun while he was digging. It hung on the wagon, fifteen feet away.

Thatcher, Ebeling’s man, stepped out from the trees. His left shoulder was bound because of the wound Kyle had given him, and his left arm was in a tight sling. But his right hand was all right, and it held a gun.

“I’ve been watching this place,” Thatcher said. “Had a notion you’d be back over here, sooner or later.”

Benny Ahrens was with him. Benny walked out behind him. Thatcher said something sharply to him, and Benny hurried up beside him. Benny also held a gun.

Thatcher’s face was white and sick. He didn’t seem strong on his feet. But his hand was firm, and the gun barrel held steady. That was what counted.

Thatcher’s eyes still showed signs of fever. “Look at this shoulder, Rayford. Crippled. It’ll be crippled as long as I live. You done it to me, and you’re going to pay for it.”

Kyle’s heart was hammering. He glanced once again at the gun and knew he couldn’t make it. His hands were beginning to tremble a little on the handle of the shovel, stuck down into the mound of fresh earth.

“What about her?” Kyle asked, nodding toward Jane.

“We’re not here to kill women,” Thatcher said.

Thatcher turned to Benny Ahrens. “Go pick up that gun on the wagon yonder.”

Benny hesitated, his face a shade green. He had lost all stomach for this kind of thing.

Thatcher whirled on him in fury. “Go on, you sniveling coward. Get that gun or I’ll kill you, too.”

For a second, then, Thatcher’s eyes went on Benny Ahrens. Kyle brought up the shovel and heaved dirt at Thatcher’s face. It caught Thatcher in the eyes. The bullet whined past Kyle.

Kyle spun and raced for the wagon. But Jane was already there. She grabbed the gun and threw it to him. He whirled back as Thatcher rubbed the sand from his eyes and brought his gun into line again.

There wasn’t time to aim. Kyle cocked the hammer and squeezed the trigger fast—once, twice, three times. Thatcher doubled over and staggered two steps. The life was gone from him before he hit the ground.

Benny Ahrens quaked like a sapling in the wind. He dropped his gun. He had never fired it. His eyes pleaded.

“Please, Rayford, I didn’t want to come. You got to believe me. I didn’t want to come.”

The sudden burst of action and its sudden end had left Kyle numb. He stared through Benny as if he couldn’t see him. For the full space of ten seconds he had held his breath. Now he let it go. He relaxed, the gun still in his hand hanging at his side.

“I believe you, Benny. Only kick that gun out of the way. Where are your horses?

“Back in the trees.”

Jane said, “I’ll go get them.”

Kyle nodded. “Benny, you take the shovel and finish filling the grave.”

When Jane brought the horses, Kyle lifted Thatcher’s body across the saddle and tied him on, facedown. He slipped the bridle off and gave the horse a slap across the rump. It would head home, he knew.

Kyle turned back to Benny Ahrens. “You want to go home the same way?”

Ahrens shook his head, his eyes wide and white.

“Then tell me. What are Ebeling and Gorman planning to do?”

Benny said fearfully, “I don’t know. They ain’t been telling me.”

Kyle grabbed Benny’s collar and shook him soundly. “That’s a lie. You follow Ebeling around like a hound dog.”

Tears brimmed in Ahrens’s eyes. “He’d kill me if I told you.”

Kyle took the rope off Benny’s saddle and threw it out to full length, then drew it up again, doubled.

“Does this bring back any memories, Benny?”

Benny trembled. “Rayford, that was a long time ago.”

“Not long enough for me to forget it.”

Kyle swung the rope sharply, so that it wrapped around his boot with a loud slap.

Ahrens lowered his head, his fingers flexing rapidly. “Alright. They’re making a sweep of the whole country. Rounding up every hoof they can get their hands on in a hurry. Throwing them together on that old lake over on the Bar E. Day or two, when they’re finished gathering, they’ll run the cattle west, back into the dry country.”

Kyle swore lightly under his breath. “There’s no water there except a few wet weather lakes. They’d starve to death.”

Benny shrugged. “They ain’t Ebeling’s cattle.”

*   *   *

Gloom hung like a cold, wet blanket at Sam Whittenburg’s picket ranch house. Inside, Jane Emmett silently fixed a pot of coffee. Kyle Rayford sat on the front step, whittling on a stick, each stroke of the knife as savage as if he were cutting Clint Ebeling’s throat.

Sam Whittenburg squatted on the ground beside him, drawing brands in the sand with a pointed stick and rubbing them out. Mil McGivern and Brook Emmett were there too, both grave.

“I don’t know if we can do it, Kyle,” McGivern was saying. “Not many of us left. McLeod’s laid up. Thomas Avery and Ferman Olds have pulled out. They threw up their hands and quit. Smith’s going, and I think the Callenders have left.”

Sam jabbed the stick into the ground. “Together we could whip that bunch. They aren’t that many of them. But we can’t hold together. They’ve been afraid of Ebeling too long.”

Kyle gestured with the knife. “There are still you, Sam, and Milt, and me. And you, Brook Emmett, if you’ll go along.”

Emmett squared his shoulders, and hope had come alive in his eyes again. Once more he seemed to be the proud Brook Emmet Kyle remembered from long ago.

“Three days ago I wouldn’t have walked across the yard to save the whole ranch. Now I’ll go where you go, Kyle—all the way.”

Kyle nodded. “Glad to hear you say that, Brook. That’s four of us. We can scrape up four or five cowhands.”

Sam shook his head. “That’s not enough.”

Kyle said, “It might be, if we went at it right. If we aren’t going to try, we’d just as well pull out like Olds and Avery.”

Interest grew in McGivern’s eyes. “What have you got in mind?”

“The same thing that worked for Gorman the other day, over at McLeod’s. We’re going to stampede that herd right over Edeling’s camp!”

At dusk they let Benny Ahrens out of the old dugout where they had been holding him. Kyle led him to where they had his horse saddled and ready. “Get up there, Benny. You’re going to be our guide.”

He shook down his rope and slipped the loop over Benny’s neck. “If you let your foot slip anywhere down the line,” he said bitterly, “I’m liable to jerk this thing.”

They started out then, a string of nine horsemen working quietly down the creek in an easy trot, grim-faced, silent. It would be a long ride to Ebeling’s. There was no way of knowing for sure where the cattle would be. This would all depend on Benny Ahrens. There was always a chance Benny might try a trick. But riding alongside him in the moonlight, Kyle could see the fear which clutched Benny’s throat. No, he felt sure, Benny wouldn’t try a thing.

It took more than three hours. Ahead, Kyle could see a flickering pinpoint of a burned-down campfire. He held up his hand. The other riders pulled in close beside him. Kyle dismounted, handing the reins and the rope to Sam. He walked ahead fifty or seventy-five feet to listen, where there would be no squeaking of saddle feather.

This late at night, the cattle had bedded down. There was no bawling. But listening a while, he made out a shuffling of hooves as some animals moved restlessly.

Returning to the others, he said, “Camp’s on this side. We’d best circle way around.”

He wondered worriedly where Ebeling’s remuda of horses was being held. Let them smell these mounts and start nickering, and the lid might blow off in a hurry.

Quietly they made a wide circle around the camp, coming in at the far side of the herd on the edge of a huge natural basin which in wet weather made a fine lake of water. The water had shrunk back far from the outer edges of the basin now.

Kyle studied the herd a long while in the pale moonlight.

“There are three men on guard around the herd, near as I can make out,” he said.

The nighthawks were slowly riding back and forth along the edge of the huge herd. Several thousand head were bedded down here. They belonged to Emmett, McLeod, McGivern, Sam Whittenburg, and many others.

“It’s your deal, Kyle,” Sam said quietly.

Kyle said, “Scatter out, and ease up toward the cattle. You know what to do. When you hear me start, then all of you open up.”

He rode straight ahead, leading the quaking Benny Ahrens, while the other riders fanned out. Kyle stopped a hundred yards from the herd, giving the other men time. He reached up and took the loop off Benny’s neck.

“You’re on your own now, Benny. If I were you, I’d get clear of this country. If Ebeling gets away, he’s liable to go looking for you.”

Benny’s voice was tight. “Don’t you worry. I’ve always kind of wanted to see Arizona. I think I’ll go take a look.” Benny faded back into the pale moonlight. Kyle waited, giving the others a little more time. Excitement played up and down in him. What if it didn’t work out? These men would lose everything they had.

But something had to be tried, or they would lose everything.

He drew his gun and touched spurs to his horse. Squeezing the trigger, he let go a rebel yell like his father had taught him a long time ago. Then noise rushed down upon the herd of cattle like an avalanche. Guns crashed, men yelled, and a herd of cattle jumped to its feet. In an instant the cattle were running, fear whipping the sleep-drugged beasts into a frantic dash for escape from the sudden thunder of men and guns and horses. The ground trembled beneath the gouging, grinding hooves of thousands of longhorn cattle.

In the near darkness and over the deafening drum of hooves, he couldn’t see or hear the Ebeling-Gorman camp, but he knew what must be happening. The men would be scattering in panic, trying desperately to escape this sudden avalanche of horns and hooves and choking dust.

Kyle was at the edge of the herd now. Ahead of him he saw a man cutting across, fast as he could spur, trying to reach safety outside the path of the run. Another man went by. He saw Kyle. They were close, and Kyle recognized this one. Jack Dangerfield.

Dangerfield fired a quick shot at him. Kyle fired back. Dangerfield’s horse fell, then the man was lost in the darkness.

Kyle knew then that it was going as he had hoped it would. Ebeling’s and Gorman’s men were scattering in every direction. They couldn’t organize again tonight in any effective kind of force. Tomorrow it would be too late.

Ahead of him, Kyle saw another rider, spurring. It was a losing fight, for the man’s horse was limping badly and dropping back. In a moment he would be swallowed up among the panic-stricken cattle.

The horse fell, and the rider went rolling. Kyle swung toward him. The man saw him coming and screamed for help. He was on one knee, and Kyle knew that his leg had been broken.

He swung in beside him, only then realizing that this was John Gorman. Gorman, in sock feet and without pants, just as he had rolled out of his bed, was more afraid of the cattle now than of Kyle Rayford. “Help me, Rayford,” he cried. “Get me out of here.”

Kyle pulled up beside him and reached down. Gorman gripped his leg, and Kyle took a fresh hold under the man’s arm. With momentum from the nervous horse, he managed to swing Gorman up behind him. Then he spurred up again as the cattle surged around them.

Before long the cattle began to run down. They had covered two miles or more in the first surge of panic. Now some were beginning to drop out. A few would run another mile or two, but without the speed or terror of the first few minutes. By morning they would be scattered out over much of Ebeling’s land.

“It’s going to be a real mess for somebody to straighten out.” Kyle said.

Gorman groaned. “I’ve got to have help, Rayford. My leg is broke.”

Kyle said, “I’ll take you to camp, if there’s any camp left. But it’s a question whether they’ll set your leg or stretch your neck.”

At the demolished camp, the riders began drifting in. Three of the Ebeling-Gorman men were there, huddled for safety behind the ruins of an overturned chuckwagon. Most of the food had been trampled into the ground. The campfire was scattered all over the place. Bedrolls and clothing were beaten into the dust.

As the riders came, they brought several of the Ebeling-Gorman men they had picked up. These were herded into a bunch. Gorman’s face fell at the sight of them.

He had lost. He could tell that now. More than half of his and Ebeling’s force had been neutralized. And he, too, was a prisoner.

Gone was the driving bull force which Kyle had always seen in him. Gorman’s shoulders slumped with defeat, and the pain of the broken leg was rapidly breaking him down.

“Somebody do something,” he groaned.

Kyle scowled at him. “I should have left you. I ought to shoot you now. We made an agreement, and then you fell in with the very man I came up here to get.”

Gorman didn’t try to rise too much of a defense. “You didn’t go through with it. I had to get somebody I thought would do it.”

“I went through with what I said I would do. But we both got outsmarted.”

He felt along Gorman’s leg until the big ranchman cried out in pain.

“That’s it, I reckon,” Kyle said. “Somebody come give me a hand.”

By the time they had Gorman’s leg set and bound in splints, the man was limp, clammy with cold sweat. “What’re you going to do with me now?” he pleaded.

“Keep you till the Rangers come. Men have died here because of you. I reckon they could hang you for complicity in it.”

Whatever courage the big man had had, it was gone now. In the shadow of a hang rope he was no longer the blustering, driving man who had controlled some of the biggest acreages in South Texas.

“I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t tell Ebeling to kill anybody. He did it on his own. Listen, Rayford, let me go and I’ll give you anything you want.”

A sudden feeling of triumph swept Kyle. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll sell you your freedom for those land certificates.”

Gorman nodded quickly. “Sure, I always intended to give you that ranch of yours, Kyle. You know I always intended to.”

Kyle shook his head. “Not just the deed to my ranch. The deeds to all the land you bought up.”

Some of the fire leaped back into Gorman’s face. “Lord, Kyle, I paid thousands of dollars for that land.”

“And you’ve burned out a lot of people. You’ve destroyed homes and barns and caused the loss of cattle. Men have died here because of you. A few thousand dollars isn’t much to pay for all that.”

Gorman swallowed hard, looking away, “I won’t do it.”

“Then we’ll wait for the Rangers.”

For a little while Gorman sat there, nervously chewing his heavy lip in lieu of one of his cigars. At last he went slack.

“I have the certificates in town. Take me in, and I’ll sign them over.”

With daylight Kyle and Sam and McGivern and most of the others fanned out over the country, looking for the rest of Ebeling’s men. They picked up two or three. Only one put up a fight. A bullet in his leg took it out of him in a hurry.

They found what was left of Jack Dangerfield where the cattle had overtaken him after his horse had fallen.

But they never found Clint Ebeling.

“He’s finished,” Kyle said. “He must know that the Rangers will be here, and that when they come, they’ll be out to get him.”

“Let’s let him go,” said Sam Whittenburg. “I think we’ve all had a bellyful of this anyway. The Rangers will find him.”

Kyle shook his head. “They won’t get him. He’ll clear out. Besides, the Rangers can’t square the debt I owe him.”

Kyle caught up a fresh horse, checked his guns and rode off alone. Sam wanted to go with him, but Kyle had shaken his head. “This is my fight now, Sam.”

He headed straight for Ebeling’s ranch headquarters. After losing last night, Ebeling must be getting ready to leave the country, Kyle figured. He would be the rankest kind of fool not to.

But he would need food and a fresh horse or two, and chances were he had some money hidden away somewhere around the ranch. He was bound to go back for that.

Kyle made no effort at concealment. He wanted Ebeling to see that he had come alone. He knew the fear and the desperation and the loss and the hatred that must be chewing at Ebeling now, the same that Kyle had felt four years ago.

He felt sure Ebeling would come out to meet him, to try to kill the man who had precipitated this final disaster.

Boldly Kyle rode through the open corral gate and up toward the sod house. Hand on his gun, he halted fifty feet from the door and yelled, “I’ve come for you, Ebeling.”

For a minute he sat there watching and listening. He heard nothing, saw nothing. He began to wonder if he had been wrong. Or if not wrong, if he had come too late.

Then the wooden door swung outward, and Clint Ebeling stepped out in front of the sod house. He left the door open.

“I’m here, Rayford,” he said.

He kept his hand away from the .45 at his hip. For the space of a minute or more, he and Kyle stood watching each other. The range was a shade long for accurate pistol fire. Somehow Kyle was wary of closing it.

Ebeling said, “There was a job I should have finished four years ago, Rayford. If I had, there wouldn’t have been all this trouble. Now you’ve ruined me. I hope you’re satisfied.”

“I am,” Kyle said. “For four years I’ve worked and planned for it.”

“Did you figure on dying for it too, Rayford?”

Kyle’s mouth went dry. Why didn’t Ebeling go ahead and reach for that gun instead of standing there talking? Ebeling was grinning at him, grinning with that supreme confidence of his.

Kyle caught the tiny flicker of movement inside the sod house. He threw himself from the saddle just as a rifle exploded and a streak of flame lanced at him from the darkness beyond the open door. He triggered a fast shot through the door and another at Ebeling, who was bringing his gun into line. Then Kyle sprinted like a jackrabbit, running desperately for the side of the house. Ebeling’s .45 barked after him. Fire touched Kyle’s leg, almost making him fall.

He gained the safety of the sod house. Above him was a small glass window. It shattered under a blow from inside, and the rifle barrel poked out. They were trying to get him in a hurry.

Kyle raised up, quickly shoved his gun through the window and fired. He heard a gasp, then a groan and the thud of a man falling to the floor.

Only one left now. Ebeling.

Kyle looked about him, his heart racing. He was exposed to fire from almost anywhere here on the open side of the house. He eased the window up and propped it with a stick. Then, the broken glass cutting into his hands, he lifted himself oyer the sill and into the house.

He paused to check the fallen man. Dead, all right. Kyle had gotten him through the throat.

There was no back window, and Kyle couldn’t see out. But he knew Ebeling must be stalking him. Ebeling wouldn’t know Kyle was in the house. He would be coming around, taking one side at a time.

Kyle waited just inside the door. The sun was behind the house now. He watched the shadow for some kind of movement. Then it came.

Ebeling was creeping up the side of the house where Kyle had been. Kyle shrank back against the wall, gun leveled on the window in case Ebeling looked through. But he didn’t. The shadow moved stealthily forward. Then Ebeling jumped around the corner, gun ready, expecting to see Kyle there.

Through the crack between the door and the jamb, Kyle watched the surprise in Ebeling’s face turn to something else. The realization had struck Ebeling that he was no longer the stalker.

Fear crawled into the man’s wide eyes. He whirled, looking behind him. He seemed not a bit relieved to see that no one was there.

He visibly began to tremble. His eyes darted to the door, and Kyle could read the desperate thought behind them.

Ebeling saw safety inside the sod house. A temporary safety, at least. Better to be hemmed into four protective walls than to be trapped in the open.

He made a dash for the door. He grabbed the door as he came through and pulled it shut behind him. Then he turned, breathing heavily.

He saw Kyle there waiting for him, and he seemed to sag. For a long moment that was almost eternity, he stared at death, his face blanched white. Then he raised his gun. Kyle pulled the trigger, and it was eternity …

*   *   *

Kyle finished the carving and carried the wooden cross up to the high point where he had buried Enrique. With the back of a rusty old axe he had found, he drove the point of the upright solidly into the soft earth.

The sound of a horse’s hooves brought him slowly around. Such a thing a few days ago would have made him whirl about, gun in hand. Now there was no worry, no fear. The time for that was past, and need not return.

Jane Emmett pulled her horse to a stop. Kyle helped her down from the sidesaddle. He kept holding her hand even after it was no longer necessary, but he didn’t want to let it go. She made no effort to pull her hand away.

She turned and looked back down the green blanket of grass toward the creek and at the trees which cast their deep shape along the banks there.

“It’s really beautiful from up here, Kyle.” she said.

He nodded.

She turned back to him, worry in her eyes. “You’re not going to go away and leave it again, are you, Kyle? This is your home. This is where you belong.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m not going to leave. There’s too much here now to keep me—Pa, Enrique, all the work and the sweat and the fighting we went through. I can’t ride off and leave that again. I thought I could, but I can’t.”

He picked up her bridle reins, and they started down the hill together, leading Jane’s horse.

“Jane,” Kyle said, “we used to talk about building a house, you and me. Where’s that spot you found the other day?”

The grip of her hand suddenly tightened and the sunshine broke out in her eyes. Her pace quickened, and then she was almost running.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you.”