In this swirling stillness the drop of each hoof was like a tiny explosion, the skreak and pop of straining leather scratching against Rafe's ears with all the stridence of a yell.
Bathsheba stopped, both ears jerking forward. Rafe, peering ahead, couldn't see a thing but the goddamn black that was everywhere about them. He could feel the mare tremble. With a shake of the head and a sudden snort she spun on bunched legs and would have frantically bolted if Rafe, hauling hard on the reins, hadn't stopped her. He reined her about and kicked with one heel.
Bathsheba squatted. You'd have thought, by grab, there was somebody up there!
It didn't make sense. This would be the east rim—some part of it; there hadn't been time for them to reach any other. This was the one place Spangler wouldn't be looking for him.
The mare was blowing like she had rollers in her nose. Catching hold of the lead rope he booted her again. Whickering, she went stiff-legged forward, her evident reluctance rankly steeped in distrust.
With the lead rope, his carbine and a balky mare to hold onto, Rafe had his hands full but kept going; and now, against the stars, he saw the rim's ragged flip. He could feel the mare stiffening up again.
He let her stop and got out of the saddle. She stood there, trembling, ears flat against her head. The feel of this place tightened his grip on the carbine. It was too stinking still. Forced to believe he'd miscalculated somewhere he twisted the reins about the pommel so that if trouble was up there she wouldn't get tangled. He let go of the lead rope. With both hands damply clamped to the carbine he started cautiously putting one foot before the other.
Another three steps would have put his head above the rim when a stone twisted harshly under his boot. A rifle belted flame across the dark a yard above him. Someone viciously cursed. Behind Rafe, with a panicked snort, Bathsheba slammed into the pack horse. Squealing and kicking it was knocked off its feet, the wail of its whimper wildly diving through a space as the mare, in a scramble of hoofs and loose rock, tore off down the backtrail like hell emigrating on cart wheels.
XI
With his belly squeezed flat against the wall's rotten rock, Rafe listened to the racketing of rifles being emptied so close he wondered they didn't take the top of his head off. In such a deafening bedlam there wasn't much chance for scuffing the wrinkles out of plans gone to pot. Like some rattlebrained kid he'd come bumbling right into Spangler's trap, and none of the things that were flapping inside him even remotely held out much hope.
The guns had quieted but their clamor was still caterwauling and tumbling around through the gulches. Left afoot against the face of the cliff, Rafe knew better than to imagine the bugger responsible was about to go off without a good look around.
His bunch was listening, stretching their ears to lay hold of Rafe's whereabouts. The stillness throbbed like a toothache. Then someone said, 'Hell! He's prob'ly piled up down at the bottom with them broncs.'
Spangler growled, 'I wouldn't bet on it. That peckerneck's got more lives than a cat! Get some brush stacked along the edge here.'
Boots tramped off, began scuffling around. It was hard for Rafe to stay where he was, never moving a finger, while his carbine got heavier and time inexorably moved nearer to the moment when inevitably they would find him. Yet to move was to bring the whole pack hellity larrup. He scarcely dared breathe with Spangler standing right over him. One false step, one sound....
With careful pressure, infinitesimally applied, a rounded stone from the wall came loose in his fingers and, with a silent prayer, he tossed it into the black that had swallowed his pack horse. About the time he was ready to burst from held breath, a rattle came up off the rocks far below. Flame came out of the dark above him. The crew came running. 'You see him?' Duke cried.
Spangler, not answering, said, 'Get that brush blazin'.'
'Ain't no brush,' grumbled one of the other. 'Couldn't find—'
'Get some of that dead grass then.'
'Think you got him?' That was Duke again.
'We're stayin' right here until we know for damn sure.'
Even if he could have found one Rafe wouldn't have risked plopping another rock down there. He thought of taking off his boots and trying to ease back down the trail, but the hazards looked worse than the risk of remaining; right now they thought he was down there. Boots clomped again. 'Brill,' Spangler growled, 'you and Fentriss light them grass twists. Rest of us'll clobber anything that moves.'
A fine kettle of fish! Rafe reflected, inwardly groaning. His fingers were giving him plenty of hell in this twenty degrees drop in temperature that often, in the thin air at this altitude, came with the bullbats and cricket chirps accompanying full dark. With a jumpy care he passed the carbine from aching right hand to cramped left, flexed the emptied fingers and dug out his belt gun.
It came to him then, with a crochety wonder, there must be a heap more behind what was happening than anyone so far had seen fit to mention. All this over a bunch of stole broncs! It just didn't seem natural. Not even the land—big as maybe it was, looked important enough to inspire so diverse and deadly an interest on the part of so many incompatible elements. A man's own kin telling him straight to his face—and his only sister who'd run after him barefooted clean to Beckston's Four Corners! And that saloon jasper, Dahl—where did he come in?
Chilton, the banker, you could understand. Even Duke. But the rest of it.... Rafe, shaking his head, cautiously turned himself around, getting his back against the prods of the wall so that when those buggers started making a sieve of him he might, with luck, take a pair or three along.
It wasn't so dark now; the rim stood out against a brightening glow; and he braced himself, pistol lifting, belatedly remembering a number of things he had meant to take care of but never got around to; also fleetingly thinking with regret of things he might better never of put his hand to. Wisps of blazing grass came down, twisting and swirling as the fire ate into them, and hats appeared along the lip of the rim, the barrels of rifles with the light skittering off them.
But there weren't any shots. And Rafe, suddenly trembling, lowered his six-shooter, limp with the shock of execution postponed.
The why of it was evident, peering up with his mouth open. It wasn't lack of initiative on the part of
