'Are you taking Morgan's side?' Ned asked.
'I'm not takin' any side but my own. My main purpose now is to stay alive.'
'Me too,' Billy added.
'Same goes for me,' Lyle muttered. 'This Morgan feller is a handful.'
'Are you boys yellow?' Ned demanded.
'Nope,' Lyle was the first to say. 'Just smart. If a man is a manhunter by profession, he's usually mighty damn good at it if he lives very long.'
'I never met a man who didn't make a mistake,' Ned said, coming back to the fire to warm his hands.
'So far,' Slade said quietly, 'Morgan hasn't made very many mistakes.'
'One of you saddle a horse and ride back down the trail to see if you can find Rich and Cabot,' Ned ordered, his patience worn thin.
'I'm not going,' Slade said. 'That's exactly what a man like Morgan will want us to do.'
'What the hell do you mean?' Ned inquired, knocking snowflakes from the brim of his hat.
'He wants us to split up, so he can take us down a few at a time.'
'Slade's right,' Lyle said.
'We oughta stay together,' Billy chimed in. 'At least until we join up with Vic an' his boys.'
'Morgan!' Ned spat, pacing again. 'That son of a bitch is a dead man when I get him in my sights.'
'That'll be the trouble,' Lyle offered. 'A man like Morgan don't let you get him in your gunsights all that often, an' when he does, there's usually a reason.'
'He'll come after us tonight,' Billy said, glancing around at forest shadows. 'He's liable to kill us in our bedrolls if we ain't careful.'
'I'm not goin' to sleep tonight,' Slade said.
'Why's that?' Ned asked.
Slade grinned. 'I want to make damn sure I see the sun come up tomorrow mornin'.'
Ned was fuming now. Even his two best gunmen, Lyle and Slade, showed signs of fear.
'You ride back a ways, Billy,' Ned said. 'Just a mile or two.'
'I won't do it, Ned.' Billy was certain it was a death sentence.
'Are you disobeying a direct order from me?' Ned demanded as he opened his coat.
'Yessir I am,' Billy replied. 'If Morgan's back there, he'll kill me from ambush someplace.'
Ned snaked his Colt from a holster. He aimed for Billy's stomach. 'Get on one of those horses and ride southwest to see if you can find Rich and Cabot. If you don't, I'll damn sure kill you myself.'
Billy's eyes rounded. 'You'd shoot me down for not goin' back?'
'I damn sure will. Get mounted.'
Billy backed away from the fire with his palms spread wide. 'You let this Morgan feller get stuck in your craw, Ned. I never seen you like this.'
'Get on that goddamn horse. See if you can find their tracks.'
Billy turned his back on Ned and trudged off to the picket ropes.
'You may have just gotten that boy killed,' Slade said tonelessly.
* * * *
Bud felt something pierce his chest, pinning him to the ground. The last thing he saw before his eyes batted shut was the Indian, holding a bow with a quivering bowstring.
Was the Indian Morgan's sidekick? he wondered.
But the Indian, who called himself Anasazi, wasn't carrying a rifle.
Bud felt his body rising off the ground, spinning in lazy circles.
'What the hell is goin' on?' he mumbled, then fell silent.
* * * *
A slender figure dressed in deerskin leggings and a deerskin shirt bent over Bud, jerking his arrow from Bud's rib cage with one savage pull.
'Sleep, white-eyes,' he said, turning away quickly with the bloody arrow in his fist.
He mounted a piebald pony and disappeared into the pine forest as dawn brightened the eastern horizon.
--------
*Twenty-seven*
'Show me where you found the three men,' Frank said, clinging to his saddle horn, shivering inside his coat
