From out on the bottom land someone called out, 'Well, what happened?'
Somebody moaned, but there was no other reply.
Anybody who was alive wasn't about to make a target of himself by speaking.
I dragged myself back further, feeling sick and empty, and my head humming with hurt. I couldn't understand why I felt as I did.
Men appeared between me and the light--three of them.
It took a mighty effort to get the rifle around, but I made it. They were coming closer ... I guess they thought everybody was dead. So I fired, and dropped the one who lagged. I did not think I had killed him, for his leg buckled, but the others ran left and right but not quickly enough that I did not nail another one. I heard him yelp, and he dived away into the darkness.
And then for a time all was still. Maybe I passed out, I do not know. Only when my eyes opened I was looking to the stars and it was quiet all around me.
The fires still flared, but nobody moved that I could hear. I lay there in pain, and felt terribly alone. There was no will in me to move ... only a wishing to hear the wild turkeys calling on the Big South Fork, or to smell the dogwood in April above Crab Orchard.
The night smelled of pine and blood, and there was a wafting of wood smoke from the fires that lighted my way to dying. Only somehow I knew then I was not going to die until I had killed Van Allen. Until I had faced that shadowy figure, that somebody out there whom I had never seen, but who had struck down the girl I loved.
It was a feeling of foolishness that came over me that finally made me move, a realization that no man as tall and tough as I was had a right to die with such melancholy on him.
So I moved, and endured the swift pain that followed, and the sickness. I'd been hit in the side, I thought, when scarce beyond the knock on my skull from Sonora Macon's bullet, and the hurts of my fall.
There was another one I owed ... Sonora Macon. Where was he?
My enemies all seemed beyond me, out of my reach, and even with me running so hard and so long, I could not come upon them.
The fires burned bright out there. No doubt their light was reflected from the face of these rocks where I lay, and a movement here could be seen. Perhaps some of them still lay living among the rocks, waiting for me to move, so they could kill me.
But I knew that somehow I had to live long enough to meet Allen, somehow this must be done. It was the knowledge that other Sacketts might come that helped me then ... that they might even be close by.
I was a man who had always stood alone, aware of my family though far from it, aware of their instinct for pride of family and their readiness to die for it. No matter that it made little sense to some ... a man must have something in which to believe, andwith us who were Tennessee Sacketts the family came first. Everything--life, food, shelter--all came after.
For a hundred years my family had told stories of Sacketts who came running to help Sacketts, often men they had never known. It was the way of our kind, the way of the hills in which we were bred.
The place where I now crouched among the rocks was only a few miles from where Ange had been killed ... maybe five or six miles.
Buckhead Mesa was almost due north.
There were steep canyons to the right and left of the cliff, canyons that allowed water to fall off the mesa in quick cataracts ... when there was water to fall. I did not know if I could climb, but I must try, for in the morning they would come at me.
If I was going to make a stand I'd have to get well up among the higher rocks, above the bottom land.
Inch by inch, I began to work my way back and up. There were cracks in the rock, and there were clumps of brush, a few small steep slopes, and some ledges. My side hurt me, and my head ached heavily. I could scarce pull up my own weight, but I made it up a few feet, waited a bit, then edged on. Certainly no Apaches were close by, or they'd have heard me.
Once I'd started, there was brush enough on the slope to give me a little cover, but it was steep and I needed special care to keep my rifle from hitting against a rock, for the sound would be heard by any watchers below.
In the reflected light against the wall, I could see a little space beyond a juniper that grew out from the rock. Pushing past it, not without some noise, I found a space not over three feet wide, but it evidently ran along the cliff for some distance.
Here was a layer of sandstone that had remained when softer rock had been eroded away--there were many such places in these hills. It gave me a place to rest, and some cover from the men down below.
I had panted and struggled, I had tugged and hauled my way up the side of the mountain, and now that I'd found even this small shelter, I just hadn't anything to go on with. The bitter hard days of riding, my wounds, and the exhaustion suddenly closed in on me. I lay down and the darkness closed around me. The night was fresh and the stars clear, and I slept.
A shout awakened me. I came out of the darkness of sleep ... I came out a-clawing and a-grabbing, and then I sat up, soaked in cold sweat. It was full daylight, and there were men down below, among the rocks where I'd been.
They were that close, and they were hunting for me. I started to get up, but I couldn't make it. My legs were too weak to hold me, and I just sat down again there where I'd been. By leaning a mite I could see them ... there were maybe twenty of them down there. I could see their horses back toward the river, in the bottom land. They were held in a rope corral by a wrangler.
Reaching out, I fumbled a grip on my Winchester and drew it to me.
'All right,' I said, 'you got me. But you're gonna pay to collect.' I said it to myself as I eased the Winchester up where I could use it.
And then I heard a rattle among the rocks above me, and a pebble bounced down, struck my shoulder, and fell away among the rocks. A little dust trailed after.
So they were up there too. They were above me as well as below. This time they figured to make it a certain thing.
Chapter fourteen.
Bob O'Leary looked through the glass he was polishing, then added it to the stack on the back bar.
He was worried and scared, and he was anxious for the night to end. Nobody was talking, although the saloon was half full.
Also Zabrisky was there, seated at a table in a corner with Burns and Briscoe. O'Leary knew them all, and not favorably, from Mobeetie and Tascosa. He wanted them to leave, but was far too wise a man to order them out. Zabrisky was drinking, and O'Leary knew what that meant, though as yet he had not had much.
Swandle was at the bar, standing alone. He looked thinner, older, and tired. O'Leary knew part of the story and could guess the rest.
Swandle had every cent he owned invested in cattle in partnership with Van Allen, and those cattle had just finished a long desert drive a few weeks before. They had lost cattle on that drive and the stock needed time on the lush Tonto grass to recuperate. Swandle wanted no part of the fight Allen had brought on them, but he was unable to get out without losing everything.
O'Leary had just picked up another glass when the door opened. He looked that way and felt something freeze up tight within him. At first glance he thought the newcomer was Tell Sackett, but this man was heavier. He wore his hair down to his shoulders, and there was a scar on his cheekbone.
He wore two tied-down guns and his fringed buckskin jacket was open, showing the butt of a third. He was dusty and unkempt, and he paused momentarily in the door to let his eyes grow accustomed to the light. His nose had been broken in more than one fight, and there was a wild, reckless look about him that made O'Leary's heart miss a beat. He came on to the bar, spurs jingling, a powerful big man with the movements of a stalking lion.
'Rye,' he said, then let his eyes drift over the room. They found Zabrisky and rested there, then examined both Burns and Briscoe.
Briscoe, who was the youngest of the three, saw him first, and spoke in an undertone to the others.
Zabrisky turned his eyes toward the bar.
Nolan Sackett looked down the room at him and said, 'Folks down the trail said somebody up here was
