pole cowboy fell soddenly onto the overhang in front of the general store from the roof above. The body didn’t roll and Jack’s squinted eyes looked for the killer. A wisp of a black hat showed down the deserted street from him, on his side of the road. He cocked his pistol and waited. The black hat’s curled edges came out a trifle, and Jack carefully brought his gun up. A rash of sudden firing in the neighbor-hood of the Longhorn drove the gunman back to cover again. Jack waited patiently until the hat came into view again. This time there was enough for a target. He fired methodically and the hat went sailing off into space like a frightened bird and its own-er looked down the road at Jack for one startled second and disappeared. Jack moved, too.
Inside the livery stable, Caleb took a breather be-hind a jag of aromatic mountain hay. The cut along his ribs had bled profusely but the mud caking he had acquired while rolling around in the alley had pretty well staunched it. His fringed shirt was a wreck. Grimly he wiped his .44 off as best he could and reloaded it. Suddenly he heard a board creak lightly, too lightly to be moved by any of the softly snorting, excited horses in the stalls. He tensed un- consciously and let his eyes roam familiarly through the eerie gloom of the building. Again he heard it and flattened out on his stomach, poking his head around one ragged corner of the haystack. A big Texan was quietly stalking through the barn looking for him. Smiling bitterly, Caleb’s pistol came up slowly, steadied, and fired with a thunderous explosion. The Texan’s rifle went off unpredictably as Caleb’s slug tore its stock into a gust of splinters. The big man staggered forward as the gun was wrenched out of his hands. He roared in pain and insane fury and hurled himself toward the haystack. Caleb cocked his gun again, but the big man, de-spite his bulk, was upon him before he could squeeze off the second shot, his ornate boot toe lashing out instinctively and sending Caleb’s gun flying. The scout barely had time to get to his feet before the cowman was on him. A sizzling fist the size of a small ham roiled the air past Caleb’s head and another gigantic hand slammed him backward, striking him fully in the chest. Caleb gasped and rolled away from the behemoth of ferocity that was boring in, roaring mad.
Caleb found an inner well of energy somewhere and came back on the balls of his feet. He recognized this fight as one for his life. The Texan was insanely angry and his tremendous body was capable of deadly force. He lashed out and the Texan took the blow without an effort to side-step. Caleb had struck hard, but the Texan smothered the shocking force as though he hadn’t felt it. A little awe surged through the frontiersman as he back- pedaled. The stranger charged, head down, roaring oaths, his big arms flailing like a thresher. Again Caleb gave way, but this time he went a little sideways and chopped two stunning blows under the Texan’s ear that staggered the big man. Following up what he thought was an advantage, Caleb drove in with a rain of piston-like shots that caromed off the hard body of the other man like rubber balls.
A big fist lashed out in a looping, overhand shot and Caleb went down. The Texan stood over him, legs apart, breathing heavily for a second. Caleb shot one boot toe behind the big man’s calf and darted the other foot out like the tongue of a snake, pushing it abruptly against the Texan’s kneecap. With a look of surprise, the big man went over back-ward, hard. Before he could regain his feet, Caleb was up and poised. When the Texan came up off the floor, a one-two lash out of bony, knuckled fists belted him like the explosions of a bullwhip in the face. He teetered for a long second and went down again, a bubbling, ragged sound of breathing coming out of his smashed nose.
Caleb felt weak as he scooped up his .44 and walked heavily toward the front of the barn. The firing was getting faster now and he edged carefully up to the yawning maw of the front entrance, risked a quick peek that drew no fire, drew in his breath, and made an erratic, reckless rush for the opposite side of the road. Dust devils kicked up mud behind him as the Texas cowboys swung to gun him down, but he made it to the back of the apothecary’s shop with only one boot heel missing and two holes through the back of his tattered hunting shirt that he knew nothing about. Leaning against the soggy wood of the building, he caught his breath as his narrowed eyes studied the immediate locality with-out seeing a single fighter. Knowing the Texans on his side of the road would be moving in on him, he reluctantly pushed himself off the wall and began a weary advance down past the Longhorn Saloon to Sally Tate’s cafe.
V
Almost before his slippery pistol butt rapped on the thick back door of Sally’s cafe, the door opened and Caleb shoved through. Sally’s violet eyes were wide in alarm. “Caleb, you’re hurt!” She went forward, but he backed away with a tired shake of his head and a tight smile.
“No, just scratched. Are you all right?”
Sally’s tension relaxed as it had the night before when Caleb had left the now defunct Texan on her floor, unconscious. Sparks flashed from the deep blue eyes and her lips trembled. “Look at you! You’re mud from the top of your head to your boot toes. Don’t stand there and drip that slime all over my clean floor…get over there by the stove.” Caleb moved to obey and caught the flicker of a swift movement out of the corner of his eye. Instantly his muscles jerked into action as he whirled and his gun came out and up with incredible speed. Sally stood horrified, her mouth open and one hand at her chest.
“No shoot.”
Caleb let the breath come out of him in a rasping sob. “That was close, Bull Bear. Damned close.”
The Crow leader nodded wryly. “Too close. You hurt?”
“No, tired and filthy from wallowing in the mud out there.” Caleb nodded toward a rain-flecked window where the slippery, dark earth was shiny with water. “But not hurt.”
“You stop fight, then.”
“Huh?”
“You stop fight. Crows let Texas cows go to the Platte if cowmen let Crow warriors guide them through Crow land by way of Canon del Muerto.”
Caleb looked thoughtfully at the scarred warrior before he answered. Canon del Muerto—Dead Man’s Canon —was aptly named. The trail was narrow above a deep canon. Many emigrants had been am-bushed there in the early days. Now, even with the Crows to guide them, the canon trail would be a treacherous, slippery quagmire. Still, it was preferable to the fighting at that time still echoing through Lodgepole. Anything, Doom thought, to get rid of the Texans and their cattle. He nodded abruptly. “I’ll see what I can do.” He turned and opened the door a crack before Sally Tate caught his slippery, mud-covered arm.
“Caleb, don’t go. They’ll kill you. Oh, Caleb.…”
“Sally, I’ve got to try an’ stop the killing. Bull Bear’s offer to cross…. ”
“I don’t care, Caleb. You’re hurt. Stay here and let me bandage your side and wash the mud off you. Let someone else go.”
Caleb fixed her with a critical look. “Who?”
She looked around her for a desperate moment, saw only the blank, disapproving look of the Crow chieftain, and let her arm drop as Caleb slipped out of the cafe into the drizzle and mud.
The rain was coming down in a steady, persistent sheet of water now and Doom was thoroughly drenched and streaked with the cloying mud before he managed to get to the Longhorn. A bullet came out of nowhere, smashed into the rear door of the saloon, knocking it violently inwards. Caleb jumped frantically into the room, crouched and ready, but saw no one. He swung over to the stairway leading upstairs and mounted them two at a time, a filthy, grim figure of a man, hair straggling over his grimy, hollow-eyed face, the wet .44 glistening in his muddy paw.
Caleb searched each room until he found what he was looking for, a small trap door in the ceiling leading up onto the roof. With surprising ability, he leaped up, caught on with his powerful fingers, and shoved the wooden cover away so that he could wiggle through. The rain hit him like a hundred cold little fists as he clambered out onto the roof. Straightening up, he was startled to see a crouched rifleman over be-side the edge of the building’s false front. Apparently the drenching rain had muffled his noisy ascent. Stealing forward, he raised and cocked his six- gun. “Drop it
The lean back tensed but the rifle fell into the pool of clear water at the man’s feet. Caleb risked a quick glance down over the town. He could command the front of the livery barn easily from up here and it dawned on him where the gunman had been who had first shot at him as he had emerged from the stable.
“Turn around, but don’t raise up too high or you’ll get it from down below.” The man turned. Doom recognized him as one of the men who had been with the gunman foreman at the saloon. The man’s eyes widened
