than the mill run of folks.
And that lousy stagecoach had turned out not to have one damned mail pouch on it. Nothing, not even a good watch, because the only passengers had been an old man and his little bird-like, frightened wife, and, hell, a man wouldn’t take an old man’s watch right there in front of his wife. Like-wise the driver. He’d had three $10 gold pieces he’d been hoarding to buy his boy a speckled pony for Christmas.
They had ridden away fast, and empty-handed, and from the first high hill they had seen the cowman posse boiling up dust in flinging pursuit. So— becoming outlaws hadn’t proven any more profitable than mustanging had been, or than range riding had been, or than horse-breaking had been, except that outlawing created reverberations, and they hadn’t dared go back west of the Gila country where they’d been range riding, so they kept heading northeast, skirting around the worst of the desert country profanely assuring one another that the whole damned planet couldn’t be that bad. And now, by God, it turned out that the whole damned planet
Jud drew rein, stepped to earth, peered steadily out across the golden sun smash, then turned and beckoned for Rufe to join him. “There’s a big old log ranch out there, all by itself. That’s where the smoke’s rising up…out back behind the barn where the corrals are. You see?”
Rufe saw. The air was as clear as crystal glass, so the Cane place looked two miles closer than it was. Even so, those mighty log structures would have been visible from an even greater distance.
“That,” announced Rufe, after thoughtful consideration, “is a pretty big outfit.”
Jud said: “But the fire isn’t. Maybe they only got one or two riders.”
Rufe started back for his horse. “In that case, they sure need a couple more, this being marking season.”
Jud went to his horse more slowly, inhibited by all the days and nights of secrecy and hiding. They understood one another better than brothers. Rufe leaned atop his saddle horn. “Jud, this can’t last for-ever. Anyway, we’re so far off even if those cowmen were still trailing us, their damned clothes’d be out of style by the time they got over this far. And those folks down there probably never even heard of the Gila country.”
Jud wagged his head and climbed back across leather looking worried, but he offered no objection when Rufe struck out past the final tier of huge old shaggy trees into the dazzling sunlight, heading for the log buildings. They had a considerable distance to cover. That clear air did not delude them, although they had been traveling through it this time of year all their lives, going one place or another. In fact, limitless horizons had from boyhood conditioned them both, and a large army of similar men, to half believe that the traveling was the important thing, that goals, or the arriving at some destination, were for people who had to have goals.
They were two miles closer when Rufe said: “Things have been better for that outfit.” It was finally possible to note the signs of gentle neglect and decay, the patched corral stringers, the weeds flourishing along the back of the huge old barn, the bare places up above where winter wind had carried away fir shakes in patches, letting rainwater drop straight through to the barn’s interior.
Jud stood in his stirrups, hat brim pulled low, and said nothing until he eased down, then he sighed. “One man at the branding fire in the corral, Rufe. This time, we’d have done better to stay in the trees.” He turned slightly, movement far out catching his attention. He raised an arm. “Three riders. Maybe they’ve been hunting more cattle to put into the corrals.”
Rufe looked, saw those three horsemen suddenly haul back to a sliding halt and stare hard down in the direction of Rufe and Jud. “Must not get many strangers up on this mesa,” Rufe said, watching those three distant horsemen, and Jud’s reaction was wary.
“We shouldn’t have left the damned forest.”
The three riders came on, more slowly now, in an easy lope, erect in the saddle with an unmistakable, sharp interest. Jud yanked loose the tie-down on his holstered Colt and leaned to loosen his Winchester in its boot.
Rufe watched, said nothing for a long while, and, when he finally turned in the direction of the log barn and those old log working corrals, he saw a hatted dark head come up over the topmost corral stringer. He also saw sunshine dully along gray steel.
“Caught between the rockslide and a hard place,” he said quietly. “Look yonder, Jud, at the corral.”
They had little choice, being completely exposed out on the grasslands, but to keep right on slowly riding toward the buildings. Whatever they had stumbled into, they were certainly not going to be able to shoot their way out of, so the alternative had to be talk.
Jud said: “Sure a fine day for sighting down a rifle barrel. That feller in the corral doesn’t have a carbine. He’s got a rifle. If he’s any kind of a shot, he could knock my hat off from right where we are now.”
Rufe, watching the three horsemen, swore quietly. “Damn it all, they’re fanning out. This is like riding into a nest of Apaches.” Rufe kept watching the rid-ers. They fanned out, for a fact, but the closer the pair of strangers got to the buildings, the less those three riders seemed inclined to come closer, and that didn’t make sense to Rufe. If he and Jud had stumbled onto some old mossback’s private domain where trespassers were badly treated, it seemed that his mounted men would cut off all retreat and herd the strangers down that other fellow’s rifle barrel.
Rufe tipped down his hat, rubbed his jaw, and finally said: “Jud, there’s something wrong here. You know what I think?”
“Right now,” replied Jud, alternately squinting at the rifle barrel resting atop a corral stringer and those three distant horsemen, “I’m not interested in what you think, unless it’s got to do with us cutting back and making it to those damned trees before we get shot.”
Rufe was scowling. “I don’t think those horsemen got anything to do with that feller in the corral with the rifle. I think they’re deliberately staying beyond his range.”
Jud leaned a little also to study the range men, and in fact it was at about this time that they hauled to a halt, conferred briefly, then one man stepped down from his saddle, shielded by the other two, so that neither Jud nor Rufe could see what he was doing— until he fired.
Rufe’s stocky little bay horse, a companion of many a hard trail, as honest as the day was long, gave a huge lunge high into the air, folded all four legs, and dropped, stone dead.
Rufe barely had time to kick his feet free before he hit the ground, rolling, the wind half knocked out of him, dimly hearing Jud’s roar of rage as his partner rolled from the saddle dragging out his saddle gun, but those distant riders were already turning tail.
Jud fired three times, elevating his sight each time, and cursing with helplessness because no carbine could reach that far.
From the corral, that rifle roared. It had a sound like a light cannon, and, because its range was much greater, Jud lowered his weapon to watch. But the horsemen were also beyond rifle range.
Jud stood up, looked from the dead horse to his partner, who was sitting there blinking and feeling around for the ground in order to push upright, then Jud turned in the direction of the corral and saw that rifle still trained in the direction of those fleeing horsemen. He shook his head in complete bafflement, stepped over, and lent Rufe a hand.
“You all right?”
Rufe picked up his hat, said nothing, went over and leaned down to put a hand upon the bay horse’s neck, and after a moment, still saying nothing, he straightened up, gazing far out where the racing range men were still in the easterly sun blaze.
III
She was long-legged for a woman, and flat every-where hard work made people flat, but she was also round in all the places Nature made women round. She had thick, absolutely straight, black hair in two braids past her shoulders, very dark blue eyes, and skin the color of new cream. She looked to be maybe twenty or twenty-two, and not even the boots, the faded trousers, the old work shirt, and the streaked old wide-brimmed hat could detract from something else men immediately noticed about Elisabeth Cane. She was beautiful.
But beauty being a relative term, even Tomen who had not see a beautiful woman—
