Out here in this big, mostly empty country, only one of those things was a possibility. The closest buffalo herds were hundreds of miles away, in western Texas.
There were some ranches in these parts, though, and the punchers who worked on them might be moving some cattle.
Matt wished he was out there on a good horse, getting a close look at whatever was going on. He didn’t have any particular reason for feeling that way, just curiosity and restlessness. He watched the dust cloud until it finally moved out of sight to the northwest. The wall of the canyon itself cut the cloud off from his vision.
He turned to walk back toward the hogans. As he did, his instincts told him he was being watched. He looked along the creek and thought he saw a flash of movement from the brush that lined the stream. Matt headed in that direction, but when he got there he didn’t see anyone.
Maybe it was his imagination, he told himself, although he didn’t really believe that. He had never been the sort to see things that weren’t there.
No, it was more likely that someone had been spying on him, he decided. Elizabeth, maybe? She could have noticed him leaving the hogans and followed him out here, even though she had to know by now that wouldn’t be a wise thing to do.
Or maybe somebody who
Matt didn’t like the feeling that crawled along his spine when he thought about somebody watching him. Most of the time, when somebody spied on an hombre like that, they were up to no good, he thought.
He would just have to keep his own eyes open for trouble.
No one bothered him during the rest of his walk. When he got back to the hogan, he told Juan Pablo’s wife, “See, I’m doing better. Getting stronger. I walked halfway out of the canyon and back, and I’m fine.”
Some of that was bravado on his part. He was pretty tired. But he was convinced that he was getting stronger with each passing day. Another couple of days, he told himself. Then maybe he could start thinking about riding out on Sam’s trail ... assuming that his blood brother hadn’t returned by then.
“Still no sign of Juan Pablo?” he asked the woman. She ignored him, which came as no real surprise. He was starting to think that she understood more of what he said than she let on, but she didn’t want him to know that.
During the afternoon, the woman left the hogan on some errand. That was all right with Matt, because he’d gotten drowsy. He stretched out on the blankets to take a nap, and he was asleep almost as soon as he closed his eyes.
He slept lightly. That habit had kept him alive on more than one occasion. And like a wild animal, he had the ability to go from sleeping to being fully awake in an instant, which also came in handy.
In this case, it allowed him to realize something was wrong as soon as a faint noise came to his ears and his eyes popped open. Even in the middle of the day, the interior of the hogan was dim and shadowy. Matt caught a glimpse of an indistinct figure looming over him. That was all it took for his muscles to burst into action and send him rolling to the side.
At the same time, the intruder’s arm swept down, driving a knife through the buffalo robes where Matt had been a split second earlier.
Chapter 21
Matt snapped a kick at the man and caught him in the side. The impact knocked the man across the hogan.
He was able to hang on to his knife. As Matt started to scramble up, the intruder bounced off the far wall of the hogan and came at him again, slashing back and forth with the blade.
Since Matt was still kneeling, he stayed low and threw himself forward in a diving tackle. The knife sliced through the air above his head, missing him as he caught the attacker around the knees. The man yelled as Matt knocked him off his feet.
Matt levered himself up and made a grab for the man’s wrist. Before he could catch hold of it, though, the intruder struck again. The knife had a brass ball at the end of the handle to keep a man’s grip from slipping off it. The intruder smashed this ball against the side of Matt’s head.
Stunned, Matt fell to the side. His muscles refused to respond to his commands.
Which meant he was as good as dead, he thought, because the intruder would need only a second to slash his throat from ear to ear.
Amazingly, that didn’t happen. As the world spun crazily around Matt, blurring his vision, he realized that somehow he was still alive. The man hadn’t killed him after all.
Footsteps thudded on the hard ground somewhere nearby. Matt rolled onto his uninjured side, got an elbow under him, and lifted himself so he could raise his head and look around.
He was alone in the hogan.
The knife-wielding intruder was gone.
Matt was baffled why the man had fled instead of completing his mission of murder. The only explanation he could think of involved the involuntary yell the man had let out when Matt tackled him.
The would-be assassin must have worried that his outcry would draw attention to the hogan, and he didn’t want to be seen emerging from the dwelling where Matt’s murdered body would be found later. So he had abandoned his plan and gotten out quickly.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again to kill Matt later on.
Matt sat up and took stock of himself. The bullet holes in his side hurt from all the activity, but as far as he could tell, they hadn’t opened up and started bleeding again.
He was still sitting there when a figure loomed in the doorway, blocking the light. Matt looked up and saw Elizabeth Fleming standing there.
She hurried into the hogan and dropped to her knees beside him. Juan Pablo’s wife followed her. The older
