Czytaj książkę: «The Wild Bunch»

Ernest Haycox

The Wild Bunch

Published by Good Press, 2022

goodpress@okpublishing.info

EAN 4066338075826

Table of Contents

I. — THE OWLHORNS

II. — VOICE OF HATE

III. — SUN RANCH

IV. — TURN OF THE SCREW

V. — FIRST WARNING

VI. — DEATH AT NIGHT

VII. — THE WILLFUL WAY

VIII. — AT ROSELLE

IX. — TIME FOR WONDER

X. — WOMEN MEET

XI. — WRONG TURN

XII. — DEEP IN THE. OWLHORNS

XIII. — THE HAUNTS OF LITTLE. MEN

XIV. — THE TASTE OF A. WOMAN'S LIPS

XV. — ACTION AT ROSELLE

XVI. — THE LAST. DECISION

THE END

"

I. — THE OWLHORNS

Table of Contents

GOODNIGHT crossed the river at a ford whose bottom sands were scarcely covered by water and made noon camp under the shade of a lonely willow. Heat was a burning pressure upon the gray and burnt-brown desert and heat rolled back from the punished earth to make a thin, unseen turbulence all around him. The smell of the day was a rendered-out compound of baked grass and sage and bitter-strong dust.

He lay belly-flat and drank on the upstream side of his horse; he let the horse drift to graze while he built a smoke and stretched out in the willow's spotty shade with his hat drawn over his eyes. Suddenly the sun came around the willow and burned against his skin and he sat upright and knew he had been asleep. He rose up then, a limber man with gray eyes half-hidden behind the drop of his lids. He had a rider's looseness about him and the sun had scorched its layers of tan smoothly over his face. All his features were solid and his shape was the flat and angularly heavy shape of a man who made his living by horse and rope.

When he stepped to the saddle he turned east, as he had been doing for many days—all the way out of Oregon's high range. The Idaho desert lay behind him, and the black lava gorges of the Snake, and the Tetons, and Jackson Hole and the Absarokas. Looking rearward across the leagues of rolling grass and flinty soil, he saw the shadow of great hills lying vague behind the heat haze; forward stood the darker and closer bulk of the Owlhorns. Sundown, he figured, ought to put him into Sherman City at the base of those hills.

Once during the last week he had met a rider and they had said six words apiece and departed on their separate ways. Otherwise travelers were to be seen only as fragments of dust-smoke in the great distance and ranch quarters were small-shaped blurs, like ships hull-down on the horizon. There was such a ranch headquarters now before him, directly upon his route to the Owlhorns; and there was also a pattern of dust on his right, signal of one or more riders moving. He watched that dust for half an hour before he decided it was a single rider heading for the same ranch toward which he pointed.

When a man had long distances to cover, the best way was the slow way; and therefore Goodnight let the horse pick its own gait. He sat easy in the saddle for his own comfort, and even- balanced to save the horse. As he rode, his eyes three quarters lidded to shield off the glare, he saw all there was to be seen and he speculated long upon the course of a creek or the shape of a vagrant track upon the earth, or the distance from point to point; and sometimes he whistled a little and sometimes he sang a song, and sometimes he rode many miles in steady silence—drawn inward to those strange thoughts which ride close to a man alone. At twenty-nine, these thoughts had tempered him, had fashioned a private world with its images and its long thoughts and its hopes of what might be.

The rider south of him made a sweep through the early afternoon, and curved in until he was directly ahead, two or three miles away. In another half hour the man had reached the ranch house toward which Goodnight also moved at a steady pace. The middle-down sun burned like an open flame on his back and the horizons turned blue-yellow. He crossed the bottom of a bone-dry creek, he saw the flash of bright tin reaching out from the ranchhouse windmill. He thought of something funny Niles Brand had once said and he smiled; and he remembered a woman's voice he had heard at some strange place back in the mountains. He had never seen her face; it was only her voice coming out of a house—sleepy and low—and it stayed with him, like one short piece of music whose name he wished he knew.

House and barn and yard came into view and when he got nearer he spotted two men on the porch, face to face with ten feet between them. The nearest man was chalked with alkali dust and his florid face puffed with heat; therefore he was the rider who had just come off the desert. He was quite tall and had a heavy, high-bridged nose and sharp blue eyes which now came around and fastened a coolly inhospitable glance on Goodnight. The other man likewise turned his attention and for an instant Goodnight thought he noticed strain and the distant show of fear on that one's face. Meanwhile he waited for an invitation to dismount.

It was a considerable time in coming. The second man looked back at the tall rider and seemed to speculate upon him. Afterwards he swung his glance to Goodnight again and said, "Get down, man, and come out of the sun."

Goodnight dismounted. He stood at the base of the porch and rolled himself a smoke and he thought: "The small fellow is glad I'm here—I wonder why." He had seen an expression of relief noticeably show on the man's mouth. He finished his cigarette and licked it. But his mouth was dry and so he held the cigarette unlighted, watching the tall man with a greater degree of interest. He had, Goodnight thought, a maverick smell about him. He was painted the same dusty color as were all men in this country but the paint came from another brush. This was Goodnight's quick judgment. It was subject to revision, but he always placed weight on his first impressions.

The tall one said with unconscious arrogance: "If you've got business here, get it done with and be on your way."

The man's words were too sharp and distinct, the tone too clear. A Western man had a looser and easier way of speaking. Goodnight said: "Your outfit?"

"Hardly," said the big-nosed man. "But does that matter?"

"Always like to get my walking papers from the boss," said Goodnight.

The big man smiled in a wintery, indifferent way. He didn't bother to answer. It was the other one who said:—

"Water's in the back of the house."

Goodnight nodded. He led his horse around the house to a big trough in the rear. He let the horse drink a little. Then he pulled the horse back and himself drank the small trickle of water coming out of the pipe; then he gave the horse another short drink, and moved back to the front yard. It was not as much as he wanted and not as much as the horse wanted, but they still had the worst of the day to ride through and it was better to make a dry march than to sweat out a lot of water. He stopped at the porch steps, before the two men. He still had his cigarette and now took time to light it. He thought he saw relief once more break over the small man's cheeks. He looked at the tall rider and met the steady onset of the latter's impatient glance.

"Now you can dust along," said the tall one.

The shorter man said: "Cut that out, Bill."

The big-nosed Bill showed an amused grin. "This man's no recruit for you, Harry. He's another bum, another fugitive in a land full of fugitives. There's probably a charge against him somewhere and he's running from it. Just one more crook trying to reach the shelter of the Owlhorns before a bullet catches up with him." He gave Goodnight a stiff jolt with his glance, now losing his idle amusement. "You can make timber by night. Go on, move."

Goodnight dragged in the cigarette's strong sweet smoke and blew it out. He dropped the cigarette and ground it under his boot. He lifted his head on Bill, meeting the man's pushing glance. He said to Bill in the softest voice: "You talk too much."

Bill gave him a prolonged study. The remark seemed to interest him more than to anger him; and that was a reaction to which Goodnight was not accustomed. It quickened his attention and he watched the tall man's face steadily for a sign of change.

Bill said in a half-interested manner: "Have I misjudged you, friend, or are you simply making a demonstration for the sake of your pride?"

"Put in your chips and find out," said Goodnight.

Suddenly the high-nosed Bill laughed. "That's typical," he commented, turning to the smaller man. "An arrival, a word, a threat and a showdown. It never varies. There's damned little originality in this country."

"Is that another speech?" asked Goodnight.

"Don't be proud of your ultimatum," said Bill. "Now I shall surprise you very much. I am going to leave you standing right there, high and dry with your gallant attitude."

"That's one way of saying it," said Goodnight.

Bill left the porch and walked to his horse. He stepped to the saddle and laid his hands on the horn. He gave Goodnight a short smile. "Don't be proud. If I felt like fighting I should certainly fight you. But why should I spend that energy and take that risk on a man who means nothing to me, and probably means less to himself?"

"Let me give you some advice," said Goodnight. "Don't make statements you have to crawl out of."

But it didn't touch the tall man. The tall man's smile simply pushed it aside. He lifted his reins, and nodded at the smaller one on the porch. "He's no good for you as a recruit, Harry. None of these stray riders are. You'll hire him, but all he'll ever do is run for a hole when somebody strange comes up. I'll see you later."

By habit he set his horse into a run, through the blasting heat of this day; and kept up the run for a hundred yards or more. The arid dust boiled around him and hung motionless in the air and laid its suffocating smell across the yard. The sky was overcast with heat fog, like the smoke of a forest fire. Eastward, the Owlhorns showed dim. Goodnight turned his glance back to the man on the porch.

"What was his name again?"

"Bill—Boston Bill Royal."

"So," murmured Goodnight.

"Don't let the words fool you." The man on the porch rested back on his chair and let his arms hang loose across his thighs. He relaxed as though he had been under strain. He patted his shirt pocket and found a cigar. He lighted it and closed his eyes a moment; he was small and dark and his shoulders had begun to fatten up. He looked harmless in the chair and Goodnight turned half away to study Boston Bill, now in the distance. When he swung around again, the little man's eyes were open and watching him, keenly and sharply.

"You want a job?"

"Riding or fighting?"

"Less of one thing and more of the other."

"Where's Sherman City?"

"Over there," said the man, and waved a hand toward the Owlhorns. "My name's Harry Ide. I owe you a favor."

"Maybe I missed something," said Goodnight.

"He caught me alone," said Ide.

"He was gettin' set to talk you to death?" drawled Goodnight.

Harry Ide removed his hat and wiped its sweat band. A small bald spot showed at his scalp lock and the edges of his hair were turning from coal-black to gray. He had the beginnings of a bay window and he seemed to have no danger in him. Still, now and then something seemed to spring out of his eyes at Goodnight, very bright and very calculating. "I wouldn't jump at conclusions," Harry Ide said. "The man's better than he sounds."

"Thanks for the drink," said Goodnight and stepped to his saddle.

"About that job—"

"Maybe I'll be back," said Goodnight and rode off.

Boston Bill had reached Harry Ide's ranch house half an hour before Goodnight arrived. He stepped quickly to the ground and got to the porch and stood with a shoulder against the wall. He said, "Harry," and waited. Somebody moved from the back room slowly and came across the front room. Boston Bill held himself still, and so caught Ide by surprise as the latter stepped through the door. Ide saw him a little too late to put himself on the alert. Therefore he stopped still, facing Boston Bill. His face hardened as he waited and he held Bill's eyes with his own guarded glance.

"You see," said Bill, "I have you on the hip."

"So," said Harry Ide, very dry.

"This is just to show you that you can't always be surrounded and safe. If I want to reach you I can always do it. You didn't even see me coming. Or if you did see me, you never thought I'd be fool enough to walk straight at you."

"Was unexpected," agreed Ide. He was listening to Boston Bill with the gravest kind of care. He remained motionless.

"Your head is full of quick ideas," pointed out Bill, now amused. "You're trying to think of some way to protect yourself. You've got no gun. Very careless."

"That's right."

"It ought to occur to you," pointed out Boston Bill, "that no man is ever safe."

"It occurs to me now," said Ide.

"Then," said Boston Bill, "it should further occur to you that a bargain is better than a burial."

Harry Ide slowly reached up with a hand and scratched the end of his nose. He held Boston Bill's complete attention. Suddenly he turned and walked ten feet away, and turned back to face Bill again.

Bill said: "Why did you do that?"

Harry Ide shrugged his shoulders. He said, "What's this bargain or burial business?"

"You're doing no good fighting me. You may get killed at it. In any event you're getting poorer at it."

"You're a bright lad," said Harry Ide. "What's the idea you're bringin' me so kindly?"

"Why should we fight at all?"

Harry Ide gave out his dry answer. "I like to keep my beef. I guess I always will fight to keep it."

"I can raid you any time I please. I have done so. Fighting does you no good."

"Show me somethin' better," said Ide. He had been standing. Now he sat down, still making his motions slow.

"Why did you do that?" asked Boston Bill, again curious.

"I was tired of standin'," said Ide.

"No," said Bill, "you did it for another reason. You figure it would be harder for me to shoot a man sitting down."

"Wouldn't it?"

"No," said Boston Bill. "But I'm not thinking of that right now. Listen to me. I'll leave you alone. I'll never come near your range, if you'll stay out of my way."

"You're hurtin' a lot of my friends. I'll stick with them."

"Never mind your friends. Here's another idea. You want a chunk of the hills for summer grass. Go ahead and take it. Just tell me when and where you intend to move in and I'll stay out of your road."

"You are offerin' to sell out your friends if I sell out mine," said Harry Ide. "Now why?"

"Your friends expect you to hunt me down and get rid of me. My friends expect me to dispose of you. That's silly, isn't it? We can both do better."

"I see," said Ide. "You're wantin' more safety than you got."

"Exactly," said Bill.

"I will think of it," said Ide.

"Do so," said Bill. "It is always better to be reasonable. It is also much more profitable." He turned to meet Goodnight as the latter crossed the yard.

The afternoon was half gone and the heat had reached its piled-up intensity as Goodnight rode east. Nothing relieved it. Long as he had followed the trail in all its climates, this day was punishment to him, making breath a labor, turning him nervous. "Hundred and twenty out here," he thought. The edges of his saddle were too hot for comfort and the metal pieces of the bridle sent painful flashs against his eyes. Two miles ahead, Boston Bill kicked up a dust that clung to the air and got into Goodnight's nostrils. He reversed and raised his neckpiece over his nose.

At five o'clock the country lifted from its flatness into rolling dunes of sand and clay gulches; here and there a pine tree stood as advance sentinel to the hills. The hills were before him, black and bulky and high, with the yellow streak of a road running upward in crisscross fashion and vanishing inside the timber. He crossed a shallow creek, pausing long enough to let his horse have a short drink; he reached the road and started the roundabout climb into the benchlands.

His shadow ran before him longer and longer as the sun dipped; five hundred feet from the desert floor he turned to catch the last great burst of flame as the sun dropped below the rim, like unto the explosion of a distant world. After that the land was another land, blue and still and a-brim with the smell of the hills. Coolness flowed against Goodnight, taking the sting of the day's heat from him, and he murmured, "Promised land," and whistled into the forming shadows. The horse increased its gait and at dusk Goodnight rounded a bend and came upon Sherman City, whose main street was this road running through.

The town sat upon a bench, facing the desert but facing the hills as well—a double row of buildings on either side of the road and other buildings scattered through the water-blue dusk. Beyond these buildings, the road met a canyon and vanished into the swift rise of the Owlhorns, the shadows of which lay hard upon the town. A plank bridge carried him over a creek. He rode beside single-story houses squatted side by side, their lights blooming through open doorways, through windows coated with dust. Half down the street another road cut out of the hills to form an intersection. On the four corners thus formed sat a hotel, a store, and two saloons diagonally facing each other. One was "The Trail"; the other's faded sign said: "Texican." Beyond the Texican was a stable into which he rode.

A man drifted out of the stable's rear darkness and looked closely at him, and said, "Third stall back." Goodnight gave his horse a small drink at the street trough, removed his gear and hung it up. He stood a moment in the stall, his hand lying on the sweat-gummed back of the horse, and afterwards walked to the street. Here he paused, rolling up a cigarette. The smoke had no flavor in his parched mouth and suddenly he felt the rank need of his dried-out tissues, and bent down over the drinking trough's feed pipe and let the water roll into his throat and fill up his belly until it would hold no more. Presently he strolled to the Texican and went in.

This was supper hour and slack time. He stood at the bar with no company except the barkeep, and took his whisky quick and returned to the street; and once again he stopped and rolled a smoke. He had no need of the cigarette but it served to cover his idleness as he looked upon this small town crowded against the bulky, night-blackened Owlhorns. A cooler current flowed out of that darkness and the smell was a different smell, stiffening him and sharpening his senses. He thought: "This may be the end of the journey."

He caught a sudden odor of food from the hotel across the street, its effect on him so sharp that a pain started in the corners of his jaws. Men moved idly in and out of the hotel, bound to and from supper, and men strolled by him, each and all of them giving him a quick glance as they passed; it was a noticeable thing. Three men came from the second saloon diagonally over the four-cornered heart of the town—from the Trail—and moved together toward the hotel. One of them was Boston Bill. Boston Bill saw him and Boston Bill's face showed a small grin as he went on into the hotel with his two partners.

One more man moved out of the upper darkness of the town, his body alternately clear and dull as he passed through the lamplight beams shining from the houses. He was a tall one with sharp edges to his shoulders and a hard-brimmed Stetson sitting aft on his head. When he reached the town's center he paused and looked idly around him and his glance moved to Goodnight, and moved away. He teetered on the edge of the walk, like a man undecided, and at last cut over the dust toward him. He had yellow hair and a light skin blistered by the sun and when he came by Goodnight the light of the saloon hit his eyes and showed the bright-green glint in them. He passed Goodnight within arm's reach. He murmured: "Eat your supper and meet me at the foot of this street."

Goodnight tarried until the other man had swung into the Texican; then he crossed the dust to the hotel and signed the register and climbed a set of squealing stairs to an upper room. He took off his shirt and filled the washbowl from the pitcher; when he washed he felt the sudden cracking of the mask of alkali dust on his face and tough as his skin was the soap burned its freshly scorched surface. It had been that hot a day.

He shook the dust from his shirt and put it on and he upended the water pitcher and drank all he could hold, still unable to slake the thirst in him; he was, he thought, like a board that had lain out in the sun too long, brittle and warped. He passed the open door of another bedroom, inside which six men sat packed around a poker table, and saw Boston Bill there. He cruised down the stairs and found a place in the dining room and ordered his meal; he sat back with all his muscles loose, fully enjoying the laziness and the luxury that followed a long day's ride. He ate his meal when it came and afterwards he remained at the table, a strange thing for him, and built himself a cigarette. He had been tired. Now the energy of his supper was a stimulant that lifted him, and the goodness of being alive made him smile and brought his eyelids together until shrewd lines appeared below his temples. Restlessness bubbled up and little things out of the past weeks came into his mind, little pictures and little sounds, the feeling evoked by starlight, the smell of rain against the hot ashes of his campfire, the sing of wind through the high peaks of the continental divide—and the sound of that unseen woman's voice again.

Maybe the urges of a lone man always at last moved like the needle of a compass to the thought of a woman, or maybe it was because of the woman who came into the dining room at the moment he rose to leave; at any rate, all his attention closed upon her as she paused at the door and looked around her. She was still young, with black hair and a roundness to her upper body, with a filled-out completeness that sang over the room at him and excited all his male interests. Her lips lay together, almost willful, and her eyes were cool and her manner indifferent.

She had found a table when he went by. She was behind him, but the thought of her stopped him at the doorway and he swung to look at her, and he saw that her glance had risen to him. She didn't look away; she caught his glance and held it, as direct as he had been, as though she challenged him to break that composure on her face, or as though, weary of indifference, she wanted to be lifted from it. Her eyes were black-gray and her hands small and square as they rested on the table. She knew she was beautiful and she knew she was a picture framed before his hungry glance. Her assurance said as much as she watched him. He was a man like other men, with all the old impulses. Her manner said that too, but she continued to watch him and he thought he saw a break of interest in her eyes as he turned away.

He returned to the stable to water his horse; then he went into the saloon and bought a cigar, and stood with an elbow hooked to the bar, watching the crowd drift in. Presently he left the saloon and walked idly past the lighted houses on into the darkness at the foot of the street. There was the sagged image of a shed before him.

He paused here and he turned as though to go back. Niles Brand's voice came out of the shed's shadows. "Been waiting a week for you."

"Any news?"

"Ain't picked up any trail of him yet."

"I'm guessin' he's here somewhere. These Owlhorns seem to be where they all hide."

II. — VOICE OF HATE

Table of Contents

GOODNIGHT made a slow swing to search the roundabout shadows. The nearest house was two hundred feet away, showing no light. Farther toward the center of town a pair of men stood momentarily on a corner and then walked into the Trail, leaving the street empty. Goodnight stepped behind the shed, coming close by Niles Brand. Starlight and a thin slice of a moon sent down a glow upon the sharp, small smile of his partner and the ruddy face with its pleasant irony.

"How long you been here, Niles?"

"A week. Just layin' around, watchin' men come and go. Keepin' my ears open. This is a hell of a town. Frank."

"He's around here somewhere," repeated Goodnight. "A man will only run so far. Then he stops runnin', like a stampeded steer with no more steam to run on. These Owlhorns have got a reputation for shelterin' wild ones. He's probably here."

"If he didn't stop somewhere else before he got here."

"I raised a smell of him back on the other edge of this desert. He had put up at a line camp, nursing a bad leg. Man described him—young and gray at the edges of his hair. He pulled out after two days, headed east across the desert."

"That sounds like him," said Niles.

"If he started over the desert," pointed out Goodnight, "he wouldn't stop until he got to the next set of mountains. That's here."

"These hills," said Niles, "are two hundred miles long and fifty miles deep. How you goin' to cover all that?"

"Pretty soon he'll get awful tired of living alone. Then he'll come into town for a bust. We'll stick around and wait."

Niles said again: "This is a hell of a town, Frank." He searched for his tobacco and he rolled a smoke blind, and struck and cupped a match to his face. His skin was of the florid kind, burned to a violent red. His eyebrows were bleached to the shade of sand. Momentarily the match light danced frosty and bright in his eyes. He breathed deeply on the cigarette. "Everybody walkin' around, watchin' for somebody else to make a false move. Never saw anything like it."

"Why?"

"The big outfits in the desert summer-graze their beef up in the hills. Last few years smaller outfits have started in the hills, cutting in on the range the desert bunch used to have. Been some battles on that. Then these hills are full of crooks hidin' out, and they been nibblin' away at the desert stuff, drivin' it into the timber and sellin' it to the hill people. As I get it there's a fellow named Boston Bill who's got a dozen wild ones together. They're in the business. Talk seems to be that this Bill delivers the desert beef to a hill ranch run by a man named Hugh Overman. There's a lot of these small hill ranches and they all stick tight, figurin' the desert crowd to be legal game."

"We'll just stay around here and wait," said Goodnight.

"Move easy," said Niles Brand. "All strangers cornin' in here are watched. A man's on one side or he's on the other and they'll peck at you and me until they find out. Every time I walk down the road I wonder when somethin' is goin' to bust."

"If we have to meet to talk," said Goodnight, "make it here at night."

"I been offered a job," said Niles. "Chambermaid in the stable."

"Take it," said Goodnight. "That gives you a reason for staying here."

"Oh, my God," groaned Niles. "Me doin' that. What'll you do?"

"I'll find something."

"Be careful who you mix with," said Niles. "Awful easy to get with the wrong crowd."

"All we want is a man," said Goodnight.

"If I ever get a decent bead on him I'll shoot him—and that's the end of it."

"No," said Goodnight, soft and final. "Not that easy for him, Niles." He stepped aside from the shed and gave the street a careful study. A sudden shout came from the heart of town and two or three riders appeared, lifting the deep dust around them; they halted at the saloon on the far corner. Goodnight stepped forward, moving idly back toward the hotel. He passed two dark houses and he passed a third with a light shining out of an open door; he looked through the doorway and saw a woman inside, her back turned to him. Her dress was brown, edged with some kind of metal thread that struck up a sharp shining; and then he remembered the girl who had been in the hotel's dining room. It was the same dress, the same girl.

Beyond her house stood the back side of the hotel, with a narrow alley between. A man sat on a box in the alley's mouth, an old man with white whiskers short-cropped and a narrow goatee. He had his legs crossed, one leg swinging on the other with a quick up-and-down rhythm, and his glance slanted up at Goodnight from beneath the tilted brim of his hat. Goodnight went by him, but a sharp warning struck through him and he turned back to face the old man. He watched the old fellow and wondered how much the latter had seen.

The old man's head came up. He had a sly humor on his face, a bright and beady wisdom in his eyes. He said: "You know why I sit here in the alley? There's always more wind comin' down an alley on a hot night. That's why I sit here."

"Good place to see a lot," said Goodnight.

"I see a lot and I know a lot," said the old one. "I know more'n I ever tell. If I told what I knew I wouldn't be an old man. I'd be a dead one. I guess I'm the only one in town that ain't lined up."

"Lined up how?"

"Lined up," said the old one with a touch of impatience. "On one side or the other side. I'm so old nobody cares where I am. But if they knew how much I knew, they'd care. So I keep still. You ain't lined up, either?"

He made it as a hopeful question, a magpie curiosity glittering in his eyes. His leg stopped teetering and he bent forward and waited for the answer.

"No," said Goodnight. "I'm not lined up," and moved away. He heard the old one's odd chuckle, half wise and half foolish, and he thought: "He saw Niles and me." That was something to remember. He reached the hotel and put his back to its corner and rolled a smoke to demonstrate his idleness. The Trail saloon was before him. The other saloon, the Texican, stood over the dust to his right; before it the newly arrived riders now stood. He lighted the smoke, his interest lifting little by little, prompted by things which he could feel but could not see; and he noticed a man ride out of the hills on a huge bay horse—a little man with a pock-marked face and a set of elbows flopping up and down to the horse's gait. The little man reached the hotel and dropped off, and then he looked around him in all four directions and his glance stopped longest on the men posted in front of the Texican. They were watching him with an equal interest and after he vanished through the hotel's doorway they disappeared into the Texican. In a few moments they returned with three others and all of them stood in a close group; softly speaking; then the group broke and the various men spread into the shadows, one man remaining in front of the saloon.

He had about finished his smoke. He dropped it and ground it out, hearing quick steps behind him. The girl who had been in the hotel's restaurant passed him and looked at him, and went on. He crossed the dust to the Trail, feeling the effect of her nearness, and looked around as he shoved the saloon's door before him; she had reached the front of a store and she had stopped, her glance on him.

He stepped into the Trail. He lifted one finger and laid his elbows on the bar and put his weight on them; and suddenly he felt fine, with a fresh current of interest running through him as he thought of the girl's face and the steady expression in her eyes. The barkeep was a little slow in the way he brought the bottle and glass. The barkeep gave him a head-on glance. "You drank your last drink at the Texican, didn't you?"

"That's right."

"Bob," said the barkeep, calling down the room. "He drank his last drink at the Texican."

Four other men were in this saloon. One of them stood at a small window and looked out toward the Texican; the other three stood by, silent and attentive. The man at the window turned about, solid of shoulder and wearing a bristle-sharp mustache. He came forward, the other three immediately following him. He got directly in front of Goodnight, who had made a turn-about from the bar. Suspicion lay in the room. Tension held the men tight.

Bob said: "Don't you know enough to keep in your own back yard?"

"Whose yard is this?"

One of the others said: "He rode into town before supper."

"Maybe you're strange," said Bob. "Where you from?"

"That's my business, Bob."

"Is it?" said Bob, very soft. "Now maybe." He searched Goodnight with a glance that believed nothing. "And maybe you're not strange. Maybe you know what you're doin'."

"Let's all have a drink and find out what I'm doing," suggested Goodnight.

"Easy won't do it," said Bob. "If you've come over from the Texican to pull a stunt . . ." He stopped and he gave that idea some thought. He walked to the door and slightly opened it, looking toward the Texican. He came back. "You go back there and say we'll meet anything they start."

"You go tell them," said Goodnight. He had this Bob in front of him, with the three others on his flank; they boxed him in and he saw the growing thought of action in Bob's eyes. He made a quarter turn toward the others and he noticed the instant hardening of Bob's face. "Bob," he said, "back up . . ."

A man outside yelled, long and full, and immediately afterwards a gun shouted. Bob dropped his hand toward his gun and made half a pull before Goodnight's right hand came off the bar with the whisky bottle standing there. He aimed it high, grazing it across the top of Bob's skull Bob's knees buckled and he dropped on his hands. Goodnight jumped past him, to face the others.

But the others were rushing for the street, no longer thinking of him. He gave a quick look at Bob, who rested on his hands and knees and tried to shake the fog out of his head. He reached down and seized Bob's gun lying near the bar; he bent and hooked an arm under Bob and hauled him to his feet. Sense came swiftly back to Bob. He battled down Goodnight's arm and stepped away. "Hell with you."

"If you want a fight there's one on the street. Let's both go look at it." He returned Bob's gun muzzle first and ran for the door, Bob behind him. He pushed through and stopped on the edge of the walk so abruptly that Bob ran into him and pushed him aside. Then Bob's voice called over the dust to a man—to the pock-marked man who had recently arrived in town—now slowly backing away from the Texican and away from a little group of men standing hard by the Texican. "Come here, Slab." Bob ran past Goodnight into the dust, reached Slab and took stand with him, backing away as Slab backed away.

The old ways of violence, never changing, never different, slowly worked through this town and this little stretch of time. The group now forming at the Texican had been patiently building a trap for Slab and now were about to spring it. He saw two other men deep down the north end of the street sitting a-saddle, as though waiting a signal; he discovered Niles Brand posted at the hotel corner, looking on at all of this with his half-smiling interest, and he saw the girl come out of the store which adjoined the hotel. She walked forward to the hotel corner, glanced quickly at the men face to face over the dust, and deliberately cut between them on her way to the diagonal corner.

Bob and Slab had retreated very slowly, one reluctant pace at a time, until they were within twenty feet of the Trail. There had been three others waiting here, but now, out of one dark corner and another of this town, more men had come to place themselves in support of Bob and Slab until there were half a dozen waiting. A voice anonymous and unlocated, yelled "Hep," and suddenly the two horsemen far down the street shot forward on the dead run, headed for the intersection.

Goodnight shouldered through the men grouped together and ran for the girl who still was in the street. The pair of horsemen rushed forward. Bob's voice cut cold and confident through the night: "Run us down and you'll never live!" The sound of those two riders was dull and heavy and seemed to grow out of all proportion, and then Goodnight lifted his glance beyond the girl, to the black end of the cross street, and saw a line of men spill out of the timbered canyon into town. He thought: "Somebody laid this trap—and somebody's going to get fooled."

He reached the girl and seized her arm and hurried her on, across the dust to the far walk. He pushed her against the wall of a building and held her there, feeling the even strike of her heart against his arm. She looked up at him and her lips drew back from her teeth in a smile. "Ah," she murmured, "nothing will happen to me. But it is nice to have your concern."

The group from the hill rushed full into the heart of the town. He heard Bob crying out, now lost somewhere in the rush of horses. A great figure of a man, blackly whiskered, led this bunch and his voice was a hammer blow against iron. "Knock them down—knock them down!" The quick, lean report of a rifle followed on his words and one rider gave a great cry and rolled like a drunk on the leather. Lifting his eyes, Goodnight saw a man in the window of the hotel's corner second-story room, both elbows on the window sill, his face hidden as he snuggled against the rifle stock and took aim.

The big bearded one shouted and pointed, and fired at the window. The horses milled, swung wildly around and came onto the walks. A horse backed full into Goodnight and lashed out with its feet and broke a board beside him, and swung again, pinning the girl against the wall. Goodnight reached up, caught the rider at the elbow and hauled him from the saddle.

The firing burst up with a sultry violence. The unhorsed rider struggled around and struck out with a fist, catching Goodnight in the throat. Goodnight hooked a punch straight up from his belt into the man's chin and drove him away in a spinning turn. He drew his gun then, expecting more of a fight, but the man never turned back; he ran and ducked through the confusion, trying to reach his horse. Goodnight heard Niles Brand's voice somewhere near. He turned and discovered his partner working a zigzag way across from the Texican. Niles reached him, softly growling, "There he is—with this new bunch!"

"Get away from me," said Goodnight. "You damned fool—get away!" The confusion grew greater and the horses were again breaking under the sudden fire of other rifles thus far hidden. He had his back to the girl, sheltering her body with his own as the horses reared around upon the walk and moved at him. He saw a thin, straight face move through the crush, a young face stretched thin by the heat and the lust of the fight. A rim of gray hair showed below his hat and he was grinning, and in a moment disappeared in the shadows. The big man with the rough black whiskers was calling them all out and the bunch ran back toward the head of the street and at last faded back into the canyon.

Dust was a silver screen through which he saw the turned shape of a man on the ground. Men, many men, came out of the town's black spots, walking toward the Texican. Bob was gone, and the pock-marked Slab, and all those who had stationed themselves by the Trail. He saw Harry Ide step from the hotel and he guessed it had been Ide who fired from the second-story room of ihe hotel. The hill crowd had set a trap, but the desert bunch had known of it and had set one of their own. He thought: "A hell of a lot of shootin' for no results," and Temembered he had the girl behind him. He turned on her.

She watched him with the same expression he had noted in the dining room—direct and speculative, barely showing interest, barely giving him hope. He watched her lips change and form a new shape; he saw her smile spread warm over her face.

He said: "Who was the big fellow with the whiskers?"

"Hugh Overman."

"That his crew?"

"They all came out of the hills," she said.

Harry Ide had gone into the Texican, the crowd drifting with him. Niles Brand stood over in the stable's archway, smoking a cigarette.

"I'll walk back with you," said Goodnight.

She gave him a studying glance and for a moment some answer was balanced in her mind; then she shrugged her shoulders and turned with him, walking over the dust toward her house beyond the hotel. Goodnight threw a glance at Niles; he made a small motion with his hand.

She saw that. She said: "You'll have to be more careful—you and your friend. This town has nothing but ears and eyes. You are being watched now. You'll always be watched."

"Kind of an uneasy town."

"This town," she murmured, and shook her head. She kept in step with him, across the dust and down the street. The old man, he noticed, still sat in the alleyway. The girl gave him a swift look and a sharp word. "Go somewhere else, Gabe."

Gabe murmured, "Yes'm," and faded back. When she reached the small porch of her house she stopped and faced him. He was full in the beam of her doorway's light, and by impulse she touched his chest and pushed him back until he was in the shadows. "You must be more careful," she said.

He came near her, looking down at her lips. They lay closed but without pressure, full at the centers. She had to lift her head to meet his eyes, and suddenly her eyes were heavy and the veiled expression broke and he saw want come to her. He put his hands at her hips and swayed her against him and kissed her full and heavy on the lips, and stepped back.

Her eyes turned blacker and the self-confidence grew oddly bitter. "You did it very easily, didn't you?" she murmured. There was the power of hatred in her and he felt it burn against him now, shocking him and shaming him. He came to her again, not touching her but so near to her that he caught the fragrance of her hair.

"I guess I've been alone too long. When I saw you in the dining room you were the strongest thing in this town."

"Any woman can do that to a hungry man."

"You're not any woman."

"What am I?" she said, letting her voice drop to a whisper.

"Not like anything I've ever seen before."

He turned to go and was stopped by the quick soft murmur of her voice. "What is your name?"

"Frank Goodnight."

"Do you know mine? Have you asked about me?"

"No."

She came near him, whispering in his ear. "Rosalia Lind. Will I see you again?"

"Yes."

She stepped back and he saw her self-assurance return. She had gone beyond her pride and she was annoyed at herself. "Be more careful than you have been," she told him. "The men in the Trail are all hill people. The Texican is only for men from the desert. You went to both places."

"You saw me?"

She watched him, her face shadowed and soft. "I have watched you," she murmured and turned into her house.

He looked both ways on the street and saw nothing to warn him; and moved down the street idly to the shed. He paused here, making up a smoke. He heard Niles grumbling at him from the blackness behind the shed. "You're doin' mighty well for yourself as a pure stranger. You know who she is?"

Goodnight said: "Who you talkin' about?"

"The girl. That girl walkin' through this town like a dyin' man's vison of Paradise. She's Rosalia Lind."

"So she said."

"You see that hotel just the other side of the saloon? That's hers. You see the store next to it? That's hers. She had a father who started this town. I guess he owned the town. He's dead, and it is all hers. Her dad came from Kentucky. There were some other Kentucky men that came with him—and these people hang together awful tight. If she lifted her finger six men would show, up from nowhere and cut your throat. The boys from the desert know that and so do the riders from the hills. They step around her pretty soft and easy."

"All right," said Goodnight. "You almost tipped over the cart, comin' to talk to me on the street."

"There he was. One bullet would have ended all this wandering around."

"I'll find him. The one with the sharp face—smiling?"

"That's the man. But try to get him out of those hills. He's smart. He got himself in with Overman. Try to get him away from Overman. It's the same as a bodyguard."

Goodnight drew his cigarette down to a bright butt and flicked it to the dust. "Stick around here, Niles. I'm going up in those hills."

"Doin' what?"

"Don't know yet. I'll catch him off first base. Sooner or later. You stay here until I shout."

He turned back. He walked to the corner of the Texican and rounded the corner, and came upon Harry Ide standing there.

Ide grinned at him. "Well," he said, "you see what the town's like."

"That's right," answered Goodnight.

"Stayin' around," said Harry Ide, "or coming back to my place?"

"I'll be ridin' around," said Goodnight.

"Go ahead and ride," said Harry Ide. "But you see how it goes. A man can't stay in the middle."

"This Overman dug a hole for you," commented Goodnight.

"So he did," said Ide. "And we saw him dig it."

He kept his smile as he talked. It was a hard smile; it had weight and threat. He looked about him, keening the night for its treachery, and gave Goodnight a short nod and crossed the street, going into the darkness beyond the hotel.

Goodnight moved into the stable; he paid his bill and saddled the horse. He rode out and gave the horse a drink and afterwards started toward the hills, but within a dozen feet he turned squarely about and rode back, turning the saloon's corner. He stopped in front of Rosalia's house and got down, and saw her on the porch. He went to the porch steps and halted. There was no particular reason why he had returned, or if there was a reason he could not drag it out of his head. He stood puzzled before her, watching the door light make its streaming shine along the smoothed blackness of her hair. She watched him and she waited for him to speak; she was round-shaped in the light, she was still, with her lips lying together in gentle fullness. Her eyes were shadowed to him and he could not see the expression in them. Her breasts lifted softly and softly fell to her breathing. He came up the steps to her and he had the impulse to seize her, and fought it back with difficulty. The pull of her presence was that urgent, straining him forward against his sense of propriety. A woman had not done this to him before.

She said in a small, murmuring tone: "Why are you here?"

"You can pull a man against his wishes," he said. "You know that?"

"Is it against your wishes?" she asked him. He saw her draw together and harden her spirit against him.

He said: "Turn around."

She held herself still. She whispered. "What interests you?" But he didn't answer and in a moment she swung until her face was in the light. He looked at her eyes, at the glow which seemed to lie below the dark coloring. It came out of her from deep places. It wasn't just the lamplight shining; it was part of her spirit. He said: "A man can ride a long way on the memory of that."

Her answer came at him swiftly: "How far are you riding?"

"I don't know."

He returned to his horse and stepped to the saddle. He heard her say: "You can't escape anything by riding. It rides with you."

"I will see you again," he said and went on. At the corner of the Texican he had a view of the main road running back through town. Harry Ide had vanished in the darkness, but at this moment Boston Bill Royal stepped from the dark side of the store opposite and looked up at him, now not amused or indifferent.

"You scatter yourself in too many places, my friend," he said.

Goodnight said curtly: "You had better judge your own actions," and rode straight for the canyon's mouth, leading into the Owlhorns: A mile from town he felt the weariness of his horse grow greater and he pulled into the timber, made cold camp and fell asleep.

Boston Bill listened to the sound of Goodnight's horse rattle against the stony underfooting of the road and entirely die in the timber above town. Afterwards he circled the Trail and walked quickly along the back end of a row of houses and came again to the street at the north end. He stopped here, watching the shadows for sight of Harry Ide. He saw nothing and in a little while he grew tired of the wait and moved back toward the saloon. When he passed the edge of the adjoining building Harry Ide's voice struck him from the rear.

"Just a minute, Bill."

Bill stopped, one foot in advance of the other. He waited, not turning and not drawing his feet together until Ide spoke again.

"Step back here. I want to talk to you."

Bill turned about and faded into the space between the two buildings. He reappeared ten minutes later and paused to look around him. He had not been seen, he thought, and he pulled his shoulders together and crossed over and moved down the inside wall of the hotel, thereby coming into the rear of Rosalia's house. He knocked on her back door and let himself in. She was in the front room; her face changed when she saw him.

He had sharp eyes and a quick mind. He saw the change and thought he knew its meaning. He said irritably: "Better be careful of strangers. You know nothing about that man."

"Next time," she said, "wait until I open the door before you come in."

"What did he want?" he demanded. "What brought him to you? How did he come to know you?"

She lifted her shoulders, facing him with a cold sureness. "Did you hear what I said?"

He came to her, smiling; he lifted his arms to her. She stood fast, commanding him by the stern expression on her face. She brought him all the way down from his careless confidence; she made him sober and restless and unsure. He turned irritable again. "I can't keep up with your changes. You're warm, you're cold. One time you're charming. Now you freeze me with dislike."

"I never change," she said.

"You're something all covered over. I never am able to tear the covering aside."

"What do you think is inside?"

"Heaven or hell. In a woman there's little distinction between the two."

"You always want to explain things," she said. "Nothing's ever that mixed up. Everything's much more simple."

"When I first met you," he recalled, "you were charming. You liked me."

"Perhaps I saw something in you."

"Why have you changed?"

"Perhaps I see something else."

He flushed. His pride was injured. "Now you see something in a new man. But you will see something else in him. Let him alone."

"Who are you to say that?"

"Rosalia," he said, "I want you."

"Wanting's not enough."

"What is enough?"

She shook her head. "That is for you to find out."

"There's never been a soul in this world I cared enough about to change for. There's never been one for whom I'd give up all that I am, or have, and do what was asked of me. Not until I came here. You have that power."

"I don't want it," she said.

"There's cruelty in you," he said.

"Honest people are always cruel."

He studied her, his mouth small, his eyes half-shut. The color of his face was stronger than usual and pride caused him to keep his injured feelings hidden. He brought on a smile. "You are accustomed to a high hand. You've always had your way. You've used the whip when you wanted. But remember this—you're a woman and a whip won't do if you want a man."

"Perhaps," she said.

Irony came quickly to him. He bowed to her, still smiling. "This seems to be a one-sided conversation."

"You use so many words to say so little."

That touched him and he grew openly angry. "I've heard that said before, today. By your friend—by the man who just visited you."

She said, spare and dry: "Pull out, Bill. If you don't know it, Harry Ide's in town. Better watch him."

"I have known that for an hour."

"Have you?" she commented, and looked closely at him. He met her glance until he was warned by the things she might be seeing, and turned sharp on his heels and left by the rear door.

She was thinking: "He gave himself away. He has seen Harry Ide—talked to him. I did not know he would betray his people." She thought of it, but not for long. A sweet, sharp feeling ran through her. She stood still, letting all of it warm her and trouble her—and remembered the power of Goodnight's arms. He had come back to look again upon her, and she knew why he had come back. He had been uncertain of her. He still was. She thought: "I should not have let him kiss me." Her expression darkened and momentarily she disliked herself. "Why did I do it?" She tried to answer the question and could not, and turned impatient. "I did it," she decided, "and that's enough. If it isn't enough for him, let him never come back." She moved to the porch and she stood in the shadows, feeling the first coolness of night come. "How else could I have acted? If a thing happens, it happens. I hope he comes back."

III. — SUN RANCH

Table of Contents

AT daylight Goodnight saddled and returned to the road, traveling steadily higher until he reached a creek boiling violently down the breast of the mountain. He crossed a gravel ford and now left the road, not intending again to use it this day. Deep in the pines he made up a short fire, cooked bacon and coffee and shaved; and resumed his journey.

The first sun was high beyond the stiff tops of the pines; this western slope was still gray and cold. There was almost no underbrush. The red-bodied pines lay heavy around him, the almost solid mat of their branches trapping the shadowy pearl light of dawn long after full day had lightened the sky. A thousand years of needle-fall made a spongy surface upon which the horse's feet dropped with scarce a sound; and except for the slight jingle of the bridle metal and the occasional chukkering of the horse's lips, and the now-and-then sharp beat of a woodpecker's bill, a churchly stillness lay all along the aromatic timbered reaches.

Occasionally he passed over a small cattle trail; twice he came upon a wagon's course. Traffic between desert and mountain summit moved in errant zigzags through the pines. He traveled without haste, and frequently stopped to let the horse take a blow. Far back in Oregon he had felt haste, but with all the weeks behind him he had developed a patience so that now time didn't matter very much. In the beginning he had felt a great wild anger; but that kind of anger could not sustain itself and had hardened into a fixed and patient purpose. The immediate desire to destroy Theo McSween in one swift stroke seemed now, after these weeks of chase, less than enough. All the days of thinking about it and all the nights of remembering his sister—whom McSween had betrayed and destroyed—made it necessary that McSween should face his crime, should suffer from the image of it, should have it as a weight on him that grew greater and greater until it carried him down in one long slow fall, he knowing his ruin as it came to him—forseeing it and suffering with it to the bitterest end.

He had never seen McSween until, on the previous night, Niles Brand had pointed him out in the group of horsemen. Born and raised in the Oregon high desert, Goodnight had frequently drifted from home. While he was returning from his last wandering, the story had started and had ended. This McSween, also a drifter, had come into the country, had made his gallant display, and had ridden away with Goodnight's sister. Goodnight's parents had objected to the man and so, the oldest tale in the book, his sister had run away, to make a marriage. There never had been a marriage insofar as Goodnight could discover; following the trail to Nevada he had found his sister listed in the cemetery under her own name. He had located the doctor in the case. The doctor had said: "Looked to me like both of them had just kicked around without money, sleepin' any place and eatin' any place. Your sister was run-down and pneumonia did the rest. The man pulled out." Then the doctor looked thoughtfully at Goodnight as he added: "In fact he left her before she died. You could tell she had been a fine and pretty girl."

It was that last phrase which even now turned its knife point in Goodnight's bowels. Niles, being a home-town boy, had seen the man. Now Niles had identified him and Niles's part was over. The rest of it was his own burden, and that burden had changed him, it had burned away his carelessness and most of his easy faith; it had made him tough and disbelieving and sometimes sad. A simple world had turned into one with a thousand sides, with shades and colors he had never before seen, with questions that rang like footsteps in vast empty corridors.

He threw off before another creek beyond noon, rested and resumed his way. After the first quick rise, the Owlhorns began to break into benches where short-grass meadows and finger-shaped valleys lay between the green tree masses. He crossed these openly, reached timber and climbed again to the next higher bench. The road which he had been paralleling at a distance all day suddenly swung around toward him. Thus far the timber had furnished good traveling, but at this point the land began to break into canyons and sharp-backed ridges, through which the road made the only comfortable passage; therefore he took it. Sunset found him beside a creek and here he stopped, put his horse on picket in a small flat of grass, and made his meal. He built the fire larger than his needs, drew his blankets beyond the reach of the light and watched the world plunge into darkness. Against the utter black heavens the stars swirled in the universe's yeasty ferment and a small wind, chilled by this elevation, moved against him and a moon hung lilted low to the southwest, so thin that it had only a faded glow.

He was not far from the road, and he was now near the summit plateau of the Owlhorns. Somewhere there would be ranch quarters and at some time or another travelers would pass and see his fire, which was as he wished. He smoked his cigarette in content, the ease of a long day's end coming upon him like softness. When he heard the run of a horse far down the grade he turned in his blankets and threw a handful of pine stems on the fire, lifting the blaze.

He listened to the horse come on as he had listened to the like sound on many another night in many another place, interest and caution rising together. He lay flat on his back, his head against the saddle and his feet to the fire. Sound and rider came quickly around a bend of the road, reached abreast, and stopped. He saw the rider's shape bend in the saddle and straighten back. He heard the leather squeal. A woman's voice came easy at him. "Hello," she said, and followed her call into the firelight.

She sat still on the side saddle, her arms folded on the horn. She wore a tan shirt and a long dark riding skirt and a man's hat sat back on hair the color of dark honey. When she looked directly at him he saw the lovely turning of her throat. She was on guard; not so much afraid of him as alert to his presence and skeptical of him. She said so at once. "Your story doesn't make sense. You ride away from the road all day, as though you were on the run. Then you camp where everybody can see you. Then you build a fire big as a house, and sleep back in the shadows."

He sat up. "How do you know I kept off the road?"

"Bob Carruth followed you for a while."

"Nothing better to do with his time?"

"You didn't think you could ride this far into the Owlhorns without notice, did you?"

"Why not?"

She said: "You must be green." Then as he got slowly to his feet her attention came close upon him. His smile was a white streak against the shadows and the fire threw its bronze high lights on his face, making it bony and rugged. Her eyes narrowed on him in appraisal, and opened wider, She looked quickly around, as though wondering if he were alone. "This is no place to camp. You'd get a bullet in that fire before another hour. You're running I suppose."

"No," he said, "just riding."

She listened to his voice, she weighed it. She had started out cool and suspicious of him, and she wanted to remain that way. Still, he saw the change of her lips and he saw a small gust of expression go over her face. "You're not green," she murmured. "And you're probably lying." She turned the horse, intending to move on. She reached the road and swung and stopped; she was beyond the firelight, deep in thought, and at last she spoke from the shadows. "Saddle up and come to the ranch. You'll have no luck here."

"What ranch?"

"Sun Ranch. Were you the man in town last night that hit Bob Carruth with a bottle?"

"He was a little suspicious."

"He had a right to be. You visited the other saloon."

He chuckled. "He had his rights. I had mine. So we're even."

Downgrade was the heavy murmur of horses moving fast. The girl said impatiently: "Saddle up and kick out the fire."

He made up his blanket roll in quick turns, threw on the saddle and lashed his roll. He gave the fire a sidewise kick with his boot, sending the sticks into the nearby water. He said: "Still, they'll smell smoke and stop," and rode beside her.

"You're not green," she repeated and set the pace up the grade. "You would have been picked up and brought in anyway and you might as well sleep in a bunk." At the top of the grade she turned into timber, leaving the road behind. Presently she halted. "If we go ahead of them they'll catch our dust and know we're around."

"That's all right, isn't it?"

"If you stay in the hills," she said, "you'll learn nothing's all right." There was, he recognized, a swing of regret and dislike in her voice but he thought little of it at the moment, being more interested in the sound of the horsemen coming along. They had not stopped at his camp, which made him murmur: "A careless lot. If they can't smell smoke . . ."

She reached out through the darkness and touched him; her hand squeezed down, commanding his silence. A group of riders ran by on the road and a little gust of talk fell behind from them, and then they faded on. The girl waited a moment before riding forward to the road. Goodnight came beside her; both horses traveled at a walk. "That was Boston Bill," she said. "He'll be at the house when we get there. When they question you, just say that you saw me on the road and asked for a night's shelter."

"This Boston Bill is full of questions," he said.

"It will be my father who asks the questions," she said. "My father—Hugh Overman." Then she remembered Goodnight's remark and commented on it. "How would you know about Boston Bill?"

"I met him out on the desert."

"He was out there in daylight?" Her voice came at him with a lift of interest. "Where was he?"

"At a ranch."

"Near Sherman City?"

"That's right."

"Ide's ranch," she murmured, and said nothing more for a long interval, apparently turning over the information in her mind. The road reached through another shallow canyon still rising. The canyon reached a level area surrounded by the shadow of ragged hills; a creek made its smooth run directly before them. Lights sparkled ahead and he saw shapes cut over those lights, moving around a yard. A plank bridge boomed a warning of their approach and in another minute they were at the front of a log house built low and long across the yard.

He saw first the huge square shape of a man in the doorway, the same black-bearded one who had led the hill crowd into Sherman City on the previous night. With him was Boston Bill, seeming small beside the older one's great shape. There were other men, Boston Bill's men, apparently, waiting by their horses along the yard. Goodnight passed among them as he walked forward with the girl to the huge one at the door.

The girl said: "I picked this man up on the road, Dad. He wanted a sleep and a meal."

Hugh Overman was a cold and distant spirit lost in thought. Goodnight watched the man pull himself into the present and look upon him, neither interested nor disinterested. He lifted his hand and made a strange, stiff upward jerk with it. "Strangers are welcome," he said. "Show him the bunkhouse, daughter. Show him the cookshack. See he gets a cup of coffee."

Boston Bill observed Goodnight with a small thin smile, and he sent a quick side glance to the girl. He must have noticed something on her face, for his smile broke off and he spoke to Overman in a lightly provoking tone. "Charity is blessed, Hugh, but it might be well to consider this stranger."

"You know him?" said Overman.

"I've met him and there's some things about him I don't understand."

Overman placed his severe and powerful eyes on Goodnight. "You come here with honest intentions?"

Boston Bill broke in. "He was at Harry Ide's place when I saw him."

Overman's eyes grew agate-still and in their depths a great wrath slowly moved. "You're on my place and I have offered you puttin' up. But we'll see. Daughter, give him his coffee and bring him to the dining room."

The girl touched Goodnight's arm and turned him. He followed her to an ell of the main house, through the door into a kitchen. A light burned on a table and a pot of coffee sat on the back edge of the still-warm range. Virginia Overman lifted a cup from a hook, poured his coffee and pointed to the condensed milk and sugar box. She continued to watch him; she was puzzled and she was uncertain and this expression softened her face and gave it a sweetness.

"I wish," she said, "I knew what you were doing at Ide's place."

"I stopped for a drink of water."

"And I wish I knew what Bill was doing there."

She watched him as she asked it and when he only shook his head and smiled her expression grew lighter until she was smiling back. "You're like all the crowd. Never say anything."

"What crowd?"

"The drifters and the fly-by-nights and the line jumpers who hide in every canyon and behind every tree of these hills. I like to go on quick judgment—and I wanted to think you were not one of those."

"Stay with your judgment," he said and finished his coffee.

She pointed toward an inner door. "Now you can go in and stand your trial." She followed him to the door and her voice called him around before he opened it. "There are two things to remember. These men all have past records. They'll be afraid you're after them, or they'll think you might be one of the desert men laying a trap."

She waited again for some sort of answer and he saw that she was anxious for him to speak and clear himself. She had some kind of hope in him, the reason for which he could not understand. And when he shook his head and turned to open the door he noticed the let-down of that hope. She followed him through the door into a room with a long table, flanked by a backless bench on each side. Hugh Overman sat at the head of the table, stiff and massive, his burning glance coming to Goodnight and staying there. Boston Bill was near him, and his nearness made a tremendous contrast. Overman was a solid one whose convictions were as thick as the polar ice, whose temper, was a deep, constant flame; against him Boston Bill became a thin character with his small disbelieving smile and his sharp, agnostic eyes. A dozen or more other riders stood around the room.

Overman said: "I'll tell you at once that if I thought you were a spy I'd shoot you down. Now, man, what are you doing here?"

"Riding through," said Goodnight. "Or maybe staying if I like it."

"Your answer turns around upon itself and means nothing," said Overman. "There is a reason which drives every man. What drove you here?"

Goodnight pointed his finger at Boston Bill. He turned it, indicating all the group. "You know what drove these men here?"

Boston Bill said: "Maybe you better answer questions instead of asking them."

"Still," pointed out Overman, "it is a fair answer. I have taken all of you at your word. I can do no less with this man."

"What was he doing at Harry Ide's place?" asked Boston Bill.

"I stopped for a drink of water," said Goodnight. "What were you doing there, Bill?"

Overman answered that for Boston Bill. "It may have been to warn Harry Ide or it may have been to destroy him. Either thing would have been welcome to me."

"Except for his interfering," said Boston Bill, "Harry Ide would have been destroyed."

"I like to see a man get an even chance," said Goodnight.

Overman gave Goodnight a bright-black glance. "Fairness is a good thing and pity is blessed. But there are ways here you do not understand. The desert is an evil land inhabited by evil people. Evil is to be done by as it does, keep your pity for better things. You interfered from good motives, but you were mistaken."

"He was in town last night," added Boston Bill, "steppin' around like a stray dog with its tail up. What was he doing there?"

"He dragged me off my horse," said a voice, and then a man came out of the crowd and walked on until he faced Goodnight. He was a solid shape burned black by weather, he was a hard one, scarred by trouble and still wanting trouble. Along the trail Goodnight had seen many like him, restless and narrow of mind and governed by passion.

"Brother," said Goodnight, "you ran your horse into me and missed a woman by six inches with its kickin'."

The man was hungering for a fight; it was a shine in his eyes and a shape around his mouth. He looked aside to Boston Bill and a thought passed between them. He squared himself at Goodnight. He said: "I didn't have time last night to take care of you. No man can drag me off a horse . . ." He never finished the sentence. It was a feint to cover what he meant to do, for he swung his hand all the way from his belt and missed Goodnight's face and fell against him. He caught Goodnight around the waist to protect himself. He lowered his head and shoulders and struck sharp up, his head cracking Goodnight's chin. The blow roared through Goodnight's brain; he heard Boston Bill say in a casual way: "Bust him up, Ad."

Ad's weight carried him back toward the wall, other men swiftly sidestepping to avoid the fight. But one bystanding man—Goodnight never knew which one—reached out and hit him on the jaw and backed away. Ad had him tackled around the waist and Ad's shoulders slammed him full force into the wall. He shifted his body, knowing what Ad would next do, and thereby avoided the jolt of Ad's knee as it aimed for his crotch. The maneuver threw Ad off balance, so that his grip around Goodnight's body relaxed, and at that moment Goodnight whirled free of the man and swung and caught him on the back of the neck with all the driven-down weight of his forearm. A thinner neck would have cracked; as it was, Ad emitted a small wince and fell in a curling drop to the floor, knocked out by the blow.

Goodnight stood away from Ad, feeling blood in his mouth from the butting of Ad's head. The fight broke his restraint and a wildness grasped him and he made a quick circle on the balls of his feet, watching the others; he had lost his hat and his long hair dropped over his eyes. "Anybody else," he said. "Anybody at all?"

He heard the girl speak behind him. "You should not have permitted that, Dad."

Old Hugh sat stone-still in his chair and Goodnight then noticed something new in the room. All the crowd had stood in a scattered way around the table before the fight, but in the half minute of action they had shifted and now he saw four men placed shoulder to shoulder against one side of the room, facing Boston Bill and Boston Bill's group across the table. The fight had shaken them apart, or distrust had shaken them apart—the ranch crew to one side and Boston Bill's riders to the other. One of the men in the smaller group was Bob Carruth. Then the door opened and another rider came in and put himself with the ranch four. It was Theo McSween.

Overman still had his daughter's reproach in his mind and now spoke: "Right makes right. If a man is just and honest he will have more strength than the man who is not. This young man whipped Ad. Therefore he is honest."

Boston Bill gave Overman a cynical grin. "Suppose two dishonest men got in a fight. You'd say the one that won was honest?"

"Less dishonest than the other," stated Overman.

Boston Bill ceased to smile. The arrogance that lived around his mouth and in his eyes suddenly jumped to his voice. "I don't want this fellow around."

Overman looked at Boston Bill and then Goodnight saw a flaw in the old man's complete self-assurance as Overman said: "I will not turn a man off Sun Ranch without reason."

"My say-so is reason enough," stated Boston Bill. "You do it or I'll do it."

Overman lifted his great head and his temper flared; yet he held his feelings down and his answer was less than Goodnight expected. "Never mind, Bill," he said, and he flung his arm stiffly up and stiffly down.

Goodnight nodded at Boston Bill. "You have talked too much again. Now it is put up or shut up."

Boston Bill's pride was yeasty in him. His color burned in the light and his big beak nose tipped hawklike at Goodnight. The crowd waited for him to move, to answer; the compulsion of their judgment was on him as he stood brooding in his tracks, trying to beat Goodnight down with his glance. Then he shook his head. "You're on Sun Ranch. I won't touch you here. This is the second time you have called me, friend. You're a clever man in pickin' a safe spot to call."

He nodded at his partners and went quickly out. In a moment Overman rose and followed him through the door, and the other crew members one by one disappeared until only Goodnight and the girl and Theo McSween were here. McSween showed a puzzled interest in Goodnight.

"I've seen you before, ain't I?"

"No," said Goodnight. "Maybe it was somebody that looked like me."

Theo McSween said, "Maybe," and started for the door. He turned in it, looking back with a rapid flip of his head, as though prompted by suspicion or a fresh thought. He stared steadily at Goodnight and he murmured, "Somewhere," and left the dining room.

Goodnight thought: "Why not have it over with now—I've caught up with him?" But he knew it had to be another way, for the memory of the doctor's words in Nevada was a fresh scar in his mind. He watched the door, nothing on his face; he listened to Boston Bill's men run out of the yard. The girl stepped around him and faced him.

"You're not green," she said. "You've got a lot of experience—the same dirty kind all the rest of them have."

He said: "Do you know that your father's afraid of Boston Bill?"

"Yes," she said. She looked long at him, something half formed on her lips. He saw caution hold her back. Then she said: "So am I."