The Law of the Trigger

Once more they started their dangerous descent, and this time Dunc carried Deland's rifle as well as his own shotgun. Owen saw that they were going to enter the timber several hundred yards below the trace that Gabe Tanis had taken, which made him breathe a bit easier. If that was the trail the gang used, he'd just as soon wait a while before exploring it further.

Once in the green, clean-smelling stand of pine, the three felt more at ease. They found a green mossy clearing deeper in the woods, and from this place they could see most of the valley and the rocky slope they had descended. Here they dropped their packs and sprawled in the dark shade, gasping for breath.

Owen was struck by the sorry sight they made. But this was the game as it had to be played, as the wolf played it, as he had played it himself many times. Three men could not possibly meet the Brunners head on in battle, and more men would scatter the gang and the game would be lost. There was just one way to take Ike Brunner, and that was to isolate him from his men and take him alone. It was not a good system, for it eliminated plans, and too often the hunter became the hunted, as they were now. But it was the only system possible when the hunters were few and the hunted many. And by this system a small handful of government marshals had managed to keep control of the entire Indian Territory for almost eighty years, and men like Owen Toller and Arch Deland knew its strength as well as its weakness.

So now they waited. And they watched the valley below and after a while they heard the clatter of hoofs and the clang of iron shoes against the rocks, and soon a cluster of horsemen broke into the open where Gabe Tanis had entered the woods.

They did not look like much, these horsemen. Most of them were kids near Dunc Lester's age, with a scattering of bitter-faced old-timers almost as old as Arch Deland. Some of them wore homespun, which was becoming more and more rare in this new state, but most of them wore bib overalls and hickory shirts and heavy sodbuster shoes. They were dirty and patched and ragged and did not look like much of an army, despite a formidable array of shotguns and rifles and pistols..

But you could not judge an army by its dress. Lee's Virginians had fought in bare feet and rags. The Quahada Comanches wore breechclouts and feathers, but Custer had called them the finest light cavalry in the world.

So Owen did not judge these horsemen by their clothing, but by their faces and what he saw written in their eyes. He did not like what he saw there. Anger and hopelessness and violence. Owen had seen that look before, but at first he could not remember where.

Then his memory took him back all the way to his childhood, and he knew where he had seen that look before. His father had been a trader at Camp Supply and Owen had been very young. But he still remembered those times oftrouble, when the Plains Indians began to feel the white man's civilization closing tighter and tighter around them, and they rebelled.

Of course, Owen hadn't understood it at the time, but he could still see that helpless anger in the eyes of Comanches and Kiowas and Cheyennes who came to the post to trade. It was the same look he saw now in the faces of these hillpeople, and the look that he had seen more than once in Dunc Lester's eyes.

He felt that he understood these people better. For perhaps these people were the last of the rugged individualists, outlasting the Indians even, but now they saw that they could not hold back the outsiders forever. Perhaps they knew they could not win, which would explain the hopelessness of their anger. But that would not stop them from fighting.

Owen continued to search the distant faces of the horsemen as more of them came out of the timber, and now he recognized the gangly figure of Gabe Tanis, who was talking excitedly to a tall, big-boned man astride a gawdy paint. Dunc Lester made an abrupt, animal-like sound.

“There he is!”

“Ike Brunner?”

“The one talkin' to Gabe.”

Arch Deland had watched quietly, saying nothing. Now he turned to Owen. “He's got quite an army with him. Eighteen men, by my count.”

“Eighteen good men,” Dunc said tightly, to no one in particular. Then, to Owen, “Ike must of sent out the call. Usually he doesn't keep more'n six or eight men at the hideout.” He wiped his hand across his mouth. “So I guess they knew all about us, even before Gabe flushed us.”

Now Tanis was pointing up at the slope where they had been a short time ago, and Ike Brunner kneed his paint to the head of the column. Arch Deland was squinting thoughtfully over the sights of his carbine. “The range is too much,” he said regretfully. “If I had a long barrel it would be easy.”

“It's just as well,” Owen grunted. “We couldn't handle all of them.”

Soon the horsemen had disappeared on the other side of the slope and Owen knew that they would soon find the dead saddle animal and pack horse and figure out what had happened. He stood up wearily and lifted his pack. “We'd better move back into the timber. I doubt if they'll think to look in this direction for a while.”

They started east again up a hard, steady grade. Here the timber became more scattered, and giant boulders reared up out of the ground. Ahead of them they could see the bleak, scrubby line of Killer Ridge, and the broken land in between. They continued their march for almost two hours before they heard the Brunner horsemen returning.

They took cover behind rocks and counted the riders as they topped a crest far to the south. “Ten of them,” Arch Deland said. Owen nodded. “Including Ike Brunner. That means there are still eight of them out there somewhere looking for us.” He looked up at the sun and sawthat dusk was drawing near.

They went on a short distance until they came on a gaping cave in the side of a hill. The place was grown up in blackjack and spruce, and they broke through the thicket and stood for a moment, gaping in wonder at the dark hole that seemed to reach endlessly back into that great mound of rock.

“We'll wait here till dark,” Owen said. The three of them sank to the ground near the mouth of the cave, and long, cool shadows lay over them as they rested. Dunc Lester was the first to get up, and he stood off at a distance, gazing darkly at the ridge. At last he said, “It won't be easy gettin' up there.”

“We'll have to find a way,” Owen said. “Ike's not going to get far from his headquarters by himself.”

Arch Deland fought his breathing back to normal, but he made no attempt to get to his feet. “Sayin' that ridge is where Brunner's got his hideout,” he said, “and sayin' we manage to get up there somehow without gettin'