'I don't need it, Carlotta. Joe Stovers has enough for me to start all over again, if I get clear tonight.'
He shifted the food package underneath his left arm and padded to the back porch, tall even in the moccasins. He turned and a smile softened briefly the harsh outlines of his embittered face, and to Carlotta Wilkerson the brown eyes weren't cold and penetrating and hostile as they had been down in the hotel hallway at Yuma. She had felt sympathy for him there; her heart went out to him now.
'Things weren't in the cards, I guess,' he said, and then he was gone. Running low down the trail to the gap in the wall, crouched over like an Indian. The two women stood in silence as a red horse and an Apache pony shot into view and went out at a gallop; out past the tiny cemetery with its well-kept grave and bright flowers.
Kerrigan turned and waved once to them and then he and the Indian were swallowed up in the forest on the floor of Thompson Canyon; heading north to put the torch to an all but abandoned mining camp in a gulch stripped bare of its gold.
They must have been under observation from over in town, for almost immediately five men went trotting on foot to the fort; Jeb Donnelly and Ace Saunders to saddle their horses, the three men who'd ridden guard to hook up Tom Harrow's red coach.
'Something has happened,' Clara said as she began unlocking the front doors. 'Here comes Harrow walking as free as you please. Why isn't he in jail? And I wonder what happened to Joe Stovers? Carlotta, something is wrong!'
'Very much wrong,' Carlotta replied, looking unhappily at the other woman. 'Lew is gone and won't be back.'
Harrow reached the long porch with its rough pole handrail. 'Why the unhappy countenances, ladies? Lew got out of Pirtman without being arrested, and that's what the two of you and Kitty wanted, wasn't it?'
'You're not welcome here any more, Mr. Harrow,' Clara informed him coolly. 'I thought you would have known.'
'Just waiting for my coach, the last time I'll ever pain you with my presence, I assure you.'
'What happened? Where's Joe?'
'Joe,' he laughed softly, his eyes dancing, 'is temporarily incarcerated in his own log jail to prevent him from doing anything foolish. Because of his actions, or lack of them, in not arresting Kerrigan, Judge Eaton has stripped him of his marshal's badge. To put it briefly, he's finished. Jeb Donnelly is now United States marshal for this district, with Ace and three other men as deputies. Here they come now.'
Two horses flashed up from the fort at a hard gallop, one of them white and carrying the former Yuma marshal. They spurred by and disappeared among the trees along the road north to Dalyville. The red coach was following at a fast trot, three men up on top. Harrow laughed softly.
'Lew swore he'd burn Dalyville, but he completely overlooked the fact that Judge Eaton is a determined man when it comes to exterminating outlaws. When he gets there, he's going to walk into a trap… Where's Kitty? Oh, there you are, my dear.'
'What is it?' Kitty asked. 'What's happened?'
'Nothing at all, my dear,' Harrow said fondly. 'Merely that you're going back home to Dalyville. Go upstairs and pack a few things. Quick!'
Kitty glanced at Clara in bewilderment and then shook her golden head. 'I just won't go with you any more, Tom. I—'
'Hurry!' snapped Harrow at her. 'Don't you want that big mansion again? Do you wish to stay out here on the frontier alone and with nobody to turn to? I'm going to
'I don't know,' she said doubtfully. 'I— Oh, all right, Tom. I guess I'd better.'
He walked on through the parlor and into the dining room, his eyes flicking around as though he owned the place. They fell upon the black valise still on the kitchen table. He snapped it open and then smiled as he closed it. This saved the bother of forcing his way into Carlotta's room to take it.
'I'm sure you won't object if I 'borrow' this from you, Carlotta,' he said, smiling at his former fiancee. 'If it will make you feel better, it's only temporary. I happen to need it at the moment.'
'That money belongs to Lew Kerrigan, as I've already told you,' Carlotta said calmly. 'But I'm powerless to prevent your taking it. It's rather amazing, now that I look back, that I didn't see through your suave manners and fine clothes long before I came.'
'Perhaps you were blinded until you met Lew.' He grinned lazily as the red coach crackled to a harness- jangling halt outside and a man bellowed they were ready.
'I saw through him because he had nothing to hide,' she answered. 'And I liked very much what I saw.'
Kitty came downstairs with a single bag, her face flushed but something in her eyes Clara perceived instantly. Instinct was telling the girl she mustn't go. But she was still grasping at any straw, even marriage to the man who'd deserted her.
'Ah, there you are, my dear.' Harrow smiled at her reassuringly. 'We'd better be going. There's much to be done tonight.'
Clara spoke up and her words startled him. 'Somebody might need help up there before this night of devil's work is at an end. We'd like to go with you, Tom, Carlotta and I.'
'And try to talk Kitty into changing her mind? But—no, I don't suppose you would. Not two women following a man, both probably in love with him, who's going to get what is coming to him tonight. By all means come with us,' and Harrow bowed with a sweep of his hand toward the front door.
They rolled away from the place five minutes later. Beneath the green branches of the tall pines and over to the road; across it to the front of Joe Stovers' yard. Judge Eaton came out, looked in surprise at the three women inside with Harrow, frowned and pulled his long, gaunt frame in with them. A few men stood watching in the distance and from somewhere out in the back came muffled shouts of anger.
'Joe isn't used to being locked in his own jail.' Harrow's grin faded in the face of Judge Eaton's icy glare. 'Some of the people will probably let him out.'
They got under way along the twisting mountain road down which the coach had come that morning with an escort of cavalry troopers. The team trotted and pulled by turns, the driver working them to the utmost.
Darkness came down and in the coach five people, three women and two men, sat mostly in silence. What little conversation passed back and forth had nothing to do with the thoughts uppermost in the minds of them all. Judge Eaton had sternly forbidden it.
And he'd said to Clara, 'Don't forget that I am a U.S. District Judge, Clara, sworn to uphold justice and the law. It is my intention to see justice done tonight if we get there in time.'
They got there in time. About ten that night the completely exhausted team of six strained up the side of a final ridge and stood panting on trembling legs while the eight people who weighted down the coach looked below. The moon that had been early when Kerrigan rode north from Yuma more than a week before was late now, but it threw dim silver light into the gulch where in the past furtive Apaches had come like flitting shadows when they needed money for Tom Harrow's guns and cartridges; where an old man wearing an ancient bear skin and claw on his left arm had come alone, leading a burro and carrying food from Lew Kerrigan's well-stocked ranch cabin.
The shacks stood out like black humps and a light breeze was blowing down the dark funnel below. A half- dozen lights twinkled here and there where womenless miners still hung on. Only one building was lit up in the deserted street below. From it emanated the tinkle of a mechanical piano and a man's voice singing in a drunken bellow. One of Cherokee Sam Blaze Face's customers.
The words held no relation to the music.
