killed... suppose we do all of that, and get our hands on Ike Brunner in the bargain. Then how're we goin' to get back again? Have you thought about that, Owen?”
Owen shot the old deputy a quick glance. “Yes, I've thought about it.”
“You figured how we're goin' to do all that without gettin' our fool selves killed?”
“No.” Deland laughed. “I haven't either. It poses an interesting problem, doesn't it?”
Owen grinned, showing his relief. Arch Deland might not be so strong in body, but you didn't have to worry about his nerve.
Dunc Lester said shortly, “I think I'll take a look around.”
Owen and Deland glanced at each other as the boy picked up his shotgun, swinging it like an ax to clear a path through the thicket. They watched him climb quickly from rock to rock up the side of the hill until he had disappeared.
Chapter Eleven
Dunc Lester lay as still as a sunning I lizard as the three horsemen passed less than a hundred yards away. The lead rider was Wes Longstreet; the others were Pat Fulsom and Homer Clinkscale, two boys from up Verdigris way. Warily Dunc watched them over the knobbed front sight of his shotgun, but they did not look in his direction. They were headed toward Ulster's Cave, probably thinking that was where he had taken the marshal and the old deputy.
Wherever they were headed, Dunc was thinking, they sure meant business. Wes Longstreet looked fit to be tied, and Dunc guessed that the young Arkansawyer had caught the brunt of Ike's rage when Cal was killed.
Dunc glanced about him to get his own position straight. Over to the east, in the general direction in which the three riders were headed, a hill farmer named Manley Cooper had a cabin and a little piece of ground. But, as far as Dunc knew, Cooper had never had anything to do with the gang. Cooper came from hardheaded Dutch stock and didn't have much to do with anybody, which was why he lived up there so far away from anybody.
Dunc was vaguely puzzled when he saw the horsemen ride straight on a course that would take them across Cooper's land, and he thought, Ike ain't goin' to like that at all!
At last the three riders disappeared around the far side of the slope, still holding their course, and Dunc shrugged. It was no skin off his nose. He turned his mind to other things.
From a distance he could have been mistaken for part of the great sandstone slab on which he lay, and the working of his mind seemed almost connected to the immobility of his lean, hard body. Dunc Lester was thinking, and the process was difficult and slow.
For the entire day he had been cussing himself for a damn fool. The three of them didn't stand a chance in a thousand of cutting Ike Brunner away from the herd; and even if they did, it could easily turn out that Ike was a better man that all three of them put together. The marshal was all right, but to Dunc's way of thinking Owen Toller did not have the steel it took to fight a man like Brunner. A wife and family and five years of inactivity had softened him.
Then, as so often happened these days, he found himself thinking of Leah Stringer. It was a funny thing how a man's thoughts could get stuck on something and fix him so he could hardly think of anything else. That was the way it was with him. He could close his eyes and right off he could see her; he could almost feel the silkiness of her hair and the warmth of her hard young body.
That's the way it was and there was very little that he could do about it. It was a fact that he wanted Leah Stringer, and he wanted a cabin of his own here in the hills, and maybe a piece of ground. And he also wanted his folks to come back and live in peace with their neighbors. It didn't seem like so much to ask. A few weeks ago it would have been a simple thing, only of course he hadn't known Leah then.
What it all boils down to, he thought angrily, is Ike Brunner. That was the knowledge that always stopped him when he began to think that the job was foolish and impossible. He had much to fight for. And this made his understanding of Toller and Deland all the more difficult. What were
This thing worried him, for it was beyond his understanding why these two outsiders should risk their lives hunting Ike Brunner.
Dunc lay there until he became aware of the long shadows and failing light. Quickly he took up his shotgun, dropped like a cat from the stone slab, and began beating his way once more toward the east. He moved quickly and silently, so intent in his study of the ridge that he forgot for a moment about the Cooper place.
Not until he was almost upon the clearing did he begin to sense that something was wrong there. He was instantly aware of his position, and the silence here was unusual, in some way disturbing. Darkness was coming quickly and Dunc knew that he should be starting back for the cave, but this deathlike silence bothered him. Suddenly he reversed his direction and started climbing toward a point from which he could see the Cooper clearing.
When he reached it he knew what it was that had bothered him, and he knew the reason for the uneasy silence. Manley Cooper's cabin and log outbuildings had been burned to the ground, his small field of tobacco and potatoes trampled. There was no sign of life anywhere.
Well, Dunc thought wryly, it looks like somebody else got in Ike Brunner's way. He did not feel any particular emotion on viewing the ruins, for the Coopers had stayed to themselves and Dunc hadn't known them very well. But it did set him to thinking. First the Lesters, now the Coopers.... Maybe some of the folks were beginning to doubt that Ike Brunner was their savior, after all.
It was well past dark by the time Dunc made his way back to the cave. Arch Deland was there by himself.
“Where's the marshal?” Dunc asked.
“Went out to look around, like you. Did you find anything?”
Then they heard movement in the brush below, and Dunc and Deland wheeled around, shotgun and rifle at the ready. “Owen?” the deputy called quietly.
