to trial. Do you think Ike is going to forget a thing like that?”
“I don't care whether he forgets or not! Leah and I can go where he can't find us.”
Owen looked at him. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I guess maybe you could.”
“All right,” Dunc went on, dropping some of his anger. “This is what I've been thinkin'. Harve had his brother take a load of the stuff and the womenfolks down to the foothills yesterday, and he's supposed to bring the wagon back today and pick up the rest of it. The furniture and stuff they've got piled outside. Now Ike's got nothing special against Harve and Morris, so he'll probably let them get through. What's to keep us from hidin' in the wagon and goin' with them?”
“The ride would kill Arch,” Owen said.
“He's goin' to die anyway, Marshal! I tell you this is our one chance to get out of these hills alive!”
Owen walked to the door and stared out at the green peaks. They did not frighten him now, and he knew that he was not going back without Ike Brunner. He had reached a point—because of exhaustion, perhaps—where he was no longer angered at people who would not fight for their own rights, but this did not lessen the drive within him. The actions of the Coopers and the Lesters could not change him from the kind of man he was. “All right, Dunc,” he said. “You go with the Coopers.”
“What about you?”
“I'll come later.” He was weary of explaining his actions and motives to others who never understood. Elizabeth had understood; that was the only thing that counted. He said, “There'll be no hard feelings, son. You go on with the Coopers.” And he walked outside.
Dunc Lester felt a slow, warm shame crawl over him. He hated what he could not understand, and he could not understand the first thing about this man Owen Toller. And the old deputy who lay dying—why? For what reason?
Slowly his sense of shame overrode and subdued his hatred. He thought of Leah and wondered what he could say to her if he went back. How would it be, living out the rest of his life looking over his shoulder and expecting to see Ike Brunner there?
Several minutes must have passed before he became aware of a certain uneasiness, a kind of unnatural silence in the cabin that made his skin crawl. Some slight, unnoticed sound that had been in the cabin a few seconds before was now absent, and a long moment passed before he realized that the old deputy had stopped breathing.
Dunc stood very still. He had expected this, but you had to meet death face to face before you could actually believe it. Good-by, old man, he thought, and he felt a bit harder and older than he had an instant before.
Dunc stepped to the door. “Marshal,” he said quietly.
Owen turned and from the expression on his face Dunc knew that Owen understood without being told that his friend was dead.
Dunc stood to one side as Owen walked heavily into the cabin. Very gently Owen covered the old deputy's lax, gray face with the piece of tarp that had formed the stretcher, and then he stood quietly for a long while, saying nothing.
Dunc Lester moved uneasily. “Anything you want me to do, Marshal?”
“Yes. See if you can borrow a shovel and a grubbing hoe from the Coopers.”
The Coopers knew that they had no part in this play, and they stood quietly beside the cabin as Dunc and Owen hacked and dug in the root-filled ground beyond the clearing.It was a long job and a hard one, but both men worked steadily, pausing only to wipe the sweat from their eyes. As he labored, Owen did not let himself think beyond the immediate present. The very least that Arch deserved was a good grave, and he meant that he should have it.
When at last the job was over, when the grave was deep enough and the sides reasonably even and smooth, the two men stood swaying, resting on their tools.
At last Owen broke the silence. “I never heard Arch say where he wanted to be buried, but I think he'd like this place as good as any.”
“It's just as well,” Dunc said. “The sooner the buryin's done, the better. In this kind of weather.”
When they got back to the cabin they found that the body had been neatly wrapped in glistening white sheeting and that Arch's boots had been removed. Harve Cooper said, “I could have made a box if there had been more time.”
Owen nodded his thanks for the wrapping, for he knew that white sheeting was rare in the hills. Gently they lifted the body, which was amazingly light, and carried it slowly across the clearing, but the Coopers kept their place and made no move to follow.
While Dunc and Owen were filling the grave they saw a rickety mule-drawn farm wagon rattle noisily up to the Cooper cabin. As Owen rounded the grave mound with the shovel, the Coopers were hurriedly loading their belongings into the wagon.
Dunc Lester gazed thoughtfully at the hills, and then at the wagon. He recognized the driver as Sam Contrain, a distant cousin of the Coopers' from the south. Ike had nothing against the Contrains, and nothing in particular against Harve Cooper, so there was no reason why the gang should try to stop them. It would be the easiest thing in the world to hide in the bottom of that wagon and get out of these hills alive.
But, for Dunc, the prospect of running had lost its glitter. He couldn't explain why, except that somehow he had got himself in debt to Owen Toller, and he knew that the time for paying was at hand.
Now he looked at Toller and saw a thin, tight line of a mouth, a steellike glitter to his eyes. Dunc Lester thought that he had never before seen a face so grim and hard, and yet there was little bitterness in it. Once before, when he had first seen Owen Toller, the dangerous potential of the man had occurred to Dunc, and it occurred to him again now. But he knew that it was no longer a potential, but a reality. As Owen stood there gazing at Arch Deland's grave there was a deadliness in his eyes that made Dunc cringe a bit within his own
