dozen feet above the floor. This would give a man cover, and if he cut west behind it and observed proper caution he should be able to come back on his tracks in a circle. It would mean being stuck out here for the night. It would waste a lot of time he wasn't sure he could afford. But he couldn't afford to be drygulched, either, and he was getting damned tired of being played for a fool.
There was a dip in the terrain just beyond the ragged outcrop and, once out of sight in the trough of this sink, Rafe turned the mare west at a lope, hauling his pack horse along willy-nilly.
He kept up this pace for almost a mile, watching the lather come out on Bathsheba, watching the dwindling height of the spine. The lowering sun pitched their shadows behind them, and in a far play of pale blues and purples now revealed a low huddle of hills off ahead that he had not previously been even vaguely aware of. He stopped again, peering narrowly, not learning a thing but rather nervously wondering if they were actually hills or piles of drifted sand like the dunes in which he had been found by Bunny's dad. He began to wonder if maybe these weren't the very ones.
Not that it greatly mattered. Sand can drift considerable distances if a big enough puff of wind gets under it, and the winds out here were freaky for sure. And he might have come farther behind this spine than he'd thought. The ridge was still with him, lower, less rugged, barely shielding him now from the view he'd abandoned.
With a yank at the lead rope he kneed Bathsheba again into motion. He didn't dare push them any more in this heat with the ground so heavy underfoot; without a horse in this country a man was soon dead. Going forward at a walk he kept one eye peeled for trouble while the other eye probed the mysterious hills which might prove, if he reached them, to be some weird trick of light and shadow, a mirage.
Suddenly Rafe went stiff in the saddle. A puff of smoke showed above those hills and, while he stared, another, and another. In alarm and fury he swore like a mule skinner as, twisting around, the eyes seeming about to pop from his head, he spied a standing column of smoke in the south.
It made no difference if these signals were the work of Indians or Spangler. They were talking about him!
He twisted the lead rope about the horn and kicked Bathsheba into a gallop. It wasn't the smoke he was afraid of, but the person or persons to whom it was sent. They might be riding now to block off both ends, to fix up an ambush that could bury him here!
He jerked Bathsheba's head around and in the cold sweat of panic stampeded straight south.
It was the mare that finally brought him to his senses. She abruptly set back on her heels and stopped. The ground dropped off into a lemon and brick-red crisscross of gullies and arroyos, a veritable badlands maybe ten miles across.
In a maze like that a man could lose not only his pursuers but himself as well. Rafe thought about this, knowing he didn't have much choice. It was only a question of time before, guided by those smokes, they would nab him. Down there the watchers couldn't point him out.
He took a good look around, fixing marks in his head. Then he threw in the steel and they were on their way. Bathsheba, snorting, showing her distrust, kept trying to hold back, but he forced her down. Slithering, twisting, at times even sliding, they reached the gulch floor in a scramble of rubble. The pack horse coughed in the swirling dust, and the mare, seeming frantic, almost unseated Rafe.
'Now, here!' he snarled, cuffing her laid-back ears, 'you'll go where I say whether you like it or not!' and gave her another jolt with the spurs.
Bathsheba snorted, fought her head, but when Rafe shook out a length of rope, the mare, who had sampled such persuasion before, abandoned her stand and trotted sullenly ahead. It was hotter than the hinges down at these lower levels; not a breath stirred and what there was smelled like metal coming off a blast furnace.
Rafe pulled his animals down to a walk. Now that he had managed to drop out of sight those watchers would likely be expecting him to head southeast; they would anyway if they were some of Spangler's crowd, because southeast was the shortest way to reach his father's ranch.
Rafe looked up. About another hour to sundown. The animals needed rest and he could do with some himself. When the walls twisted around to where the floor was draped in shadow Rafe got off Bathsheba, relieved the gelding of its pack and unsaddled the mare. Next thing he did was dig the carbine out and examine it; it wasn't what he'd asked for but it would serve till he could come onto something better.
He found the glass and tucked it into his waistband and checked the foodstuffs, flour and beans and salt and sowbelly. He found two boxes of shells and loaded the saddle gun, dropping the rest of the cartridges in his pockets. He checked his belt gun and then sat down with his back to a wall to better consider strategy and figure out his chances.
They'd be expecting him back. Nobody was in this thing for laughs. What they had going was too profitable and desperate to put up with the risk represented by Rafe. Next time he got in their way they would kill him—or damn well try! Duke, especially.
It was while he was moodily chomping salt pork that it come over Rafe he might not be giving this guy Spangler his due, might be selling him short. A man who could hold off Alph Chilton like he was, sure wasn't no kind to go stamping your boot at. Spangler would be playing for keeps. Duke was into this up to his eyeballs, but Spangler was the one who'd be passing out the orders, and any guy smart as him would be too shrewd to think a feller who'd taken the beating they'd give Rafe would come charging back by the shortest route. Spangler would think Rafe had learned more caution. The one place they wouldn't be like to look for him now was the part of these badlands closest to the ranch.
This decided, Rafe got busy. Within five minutes he was on his way, riding with the carbine ready across his knees. The shadows around him had thickened up considerable. Be some pretty tough
He kept turning left every time he reached a fork. Twice, going into blind canyons, he was forced to come back. It was full dark now with not much showing but the stars. Rafe reckoned he had come about five miles. It was fairly open here but he kept to a walk, thinking he could better afford time than noise.
Another hour slipped by, then another thirty minutes. Rafe, by this time jumpy as a cat, began uneasily to wonder if he'd got turned around. Ground underfoot seemed to be still slanting down when, by his calculations, they'd ought to be climbing up out of this. Wall seemed to be pinching in again, too. What few stars he could see failed to offer any notion of which way he was pointed.
His disquiet grew. The mare, ears flat, moved as though she were trying to step between eggs. Now the ground commenced climbing in a spiraling twist, and there was a lot of cold air coming up through Rafe's pantslegs.
