rifle was steady on Patman's chest. 'What the hell's the matter with you!' Patman repeated. 'Remember me bringing you your bait for sixty days at Thomas?'
Rondo's beard separated when his mouth opened slightly. 'You were on the outside, if I remember correctly.'
Patman swore with a gruff howl. 'You talk like I passed sentence! You damn fool, what do you think a Corporal of the Guard is--a judge?' His head turned to Fallis. 'This bent-legged waddie shoots a reservation Indian, gets sixty days, then blames it on me. You remember him in the lock-up?'
'No. I guess--'
'That's right,' Patman cut in. 'That was before your time.'
Rondo looked past the two men.
'That wasn't before my time.' The voice came from behind the two men.
He was squatting on a hump that jutted out from the slope, just above their heads and a dozen or so feet behind them, and he looked as if he'd been sitting there all the time. When he looked at him, Fallis thought of a scavenger bird perched on the bloated roundness of a carcass.
It was his head and the thinness of his frame that gave that impression. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull, brushed forward low on his forehead and coming to a slight point above his eyebrows. The thin hair pointed down, as did the ends of a shadowy mustache that was just starting to grow, lengthening the line of his face, a face that was sallow complexioned and squinting against the brightness of the afternoon.
He jumped easily from the hump, his arms outstretched and a pistol in each hand, though he wore only one holster on his hip.
Fallis watched him open-mouthed. He wore a faded undershirt and pants tucked into knee-high boots. A string of red cotton was knotted tight to his throat above the opening of the undershirt. And with it all, the yellowish death's-head of a face. Fallis watched because he couldn't take his eyes from the man. There was a compelling arrogance about his movements and the way he held his head that made Fallis stare at him. And even with the shabbiness of his dress, it stood out. It was there in the way he held his pistols. Fallis pictured a saberslashing captain of cavalry. Then he saw a blackbearded buccaneer.
'I remember when Rondo was in the lock-up at Fort Thomas.' His voice was crisp, but low and he extra- spaced his words. 'That was a good spell before you rode me to Yuma, wasn't it?' Patman shook his head. The surprise had already left his face. He shook his head wearily as if it was all way above him. He said, 'If you got any more men up there that I policed, get 'em down and let me hear it all at once.' He shook his head again.
'This is a real day of surprises. I can't say I ever expected to see you again, De Sana.'
'Then what are you doing here?' The voice was cold-clear, but fell off at the end of the question as if he had already made up his mind why they were there.
Patman saw it right away.
It took Fallis a little longer because he had to fill in, but he understood now, looking at De Sana and then to Patman.
Patman's voice was a note higher. 'You think we're looking for you?'
'I said,' De Sana repeated, 'then what are you doing here?'
'Hell, we're not tracking you! We were mustered out last week. We're pointing toward West Texas for a range job, or else sign for contract buffalo hunters.'
De Sana stared, but didn't speak. His hands, with the revolving pistols, hung at his sides.
'What do I care if you broke out of the Territory prison?' Patman shouted it, then seemed to relax, to calm himself. 'Listen,' he said, 'we're both mustered out. Dave here has got one hitch in, and I've got more years behind me than I like to remember. But we're out now and what the army does is its own damn business. And what you do is your business. I can forget you like that.' He snapped his fingers. ' 'Cause you don't mean a thing to me. And that dust-eatin' train ride from Willcox to Yuma, I can forget that too, 'cause I didn't enjoy it any more than you did even if you thought then you weren't going to make the return trip. You're as bad as Rondo here. You think 'cause I was train guard it was my fault you got sent to Yuma. Listen. I treated you square. There were some troopers would have kicked your face in just on principle.'
De Sana moistened his lower lip with his tongue, idly, thinking about the past and the future at the same time. A man has to believe in something, no matter what he is. He looked at the two men on the horses and felt the weight of the pistols in his hands. There was the easy way. He looked at them watching him uneasily, waiting for him to make a move.
'Going after a range job, huh?' he said almost inaudibly. 'That's right. Or else hunt buffalo. They say the railroad's paying top rate, too,' Patman added.
'How do I know,' De Sana said slowly, 'you won't get to the next sheriff's office and start yelling wolf.'
Patman was silent as his fingers moved over his jaw. 'I guess you'll have to take my word that I've got a bad memory,' he said finally.
'What kind of memory has your friend got?' De Sana said, looking hard at Dave Fallis.
'You got the biggest pistols he ever saw,' Patman answered.
Rondo mounted behind Patman and pointed the way up the narrow draw that climbed from the main trail about a quarter of a mile up. It branched from the pass, twisting as it climbed, but more decidedly bearing an angle back in the direction from which they had come. Rondo had laughed out at Patman's last words. The tension was off now. Since De Sana had accepted the two men, Rondo would too, and went even a step further, talking about hospitality and coffee and words like this calls for a celebration, even though the words were lost on the other three men. The words had no meaning but they filled in and lessened the tension.
Chapter Two
De Sana was still standing in the pass when they left, but when Fallis looked back he saw the outlaw making his way up the hollow.
When the draw reached the end of its climb they were at the top of the ridge, looking down directly to the place where they had held up. Here, the pines were thick, but farther off they scattered and thinned again as they began to stretch toward higher, rockier ground.
De Sana was standing among the trees waiting for them. He turned before they reached him and led the way through the pines. Fallis looked around curiously, feeling the uneasiness that had come over him since meeting De Sana. Then, as he looked ahead, the hut wasn't fifty feet away.
It was a low structure, flat-roofed and windowless, with rough, uneven logs chinked in with adobe mud. On one side was a lean-to where the cooking was done. A girl was hanging strips of meat from the low ceiling when they came out of the pines, and as they approached she turned with a hand on her hip, smoothing a stray wisp of hair with the other.
She watched them with open curiosity, as a small child stares at the mystery of a strange person. There was a delicateness of face and body that accentuated this, that made her look more childlike in her open sensitivity. De Sana glanced at her and she dropped her eyes and turned back to the jerked meat. 'Put the coffee on,' De Sana called to her. She nodded her head without turning around. 'Rondo, you take care of the mounts and get back to your nest.'
Rondo opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it and tried to make his face look natural when he took the reins from the two men and led the horses across the small clearing to the corral, part of which could be seen through the pines a little way off. A three-sided lean-to squatted at one end of the small, fenced area.
'That's Rondo's,' De Sana pointed to the shelter. Walking to the cabin he called to the girl again. This time she did not shake her head. Fallis thought perhaps the shoulders tensed in the faded gray dress. Still, she didn't turn around or even answer him. The inside of the cabin was the same as the outside, rough log chinked with adobe, and a packed dirt floor. A table and two chairs, striped with cracks and gray with age, stood in the middle of the small room. In a far corner was a straw mattress. On it, a blanket was twisted in a heap. Along the opposite wall was a section of log with a board nailed to it to serve as a bench, and next to this was the cupboard: three
