saying. 'No telling the amount of sneaky acts he's committed.'
The man who had gone to the corral came out, leading a saddled and bridled dun horse. He looked back over his shoulder, then at Mr. Kergosen, and called, 'He's coming now!'
Ellis was aware then of the steady cantering sound. She saw Leo Pyke and the two men with him--Sandal, who was a Mexican, and Grady, a bearded, solemn-faced man--look out past the corral, and she said, 'In a moment you can say it to his face, Leo. About being sneaky.'
She looked up in time to see her husband swing past the corral, coming toward her. She watched him dismount stiffly. He let the reins drop, passed his hand over his mouth, then up to his hat brim, and loosened it from his forehead. He turned his back to the three men in the ramada shade as if intentionally ignoring them; then looked from Ellis to her father and said, 'Well?'
And now Ivan Kergosen was faced with the calm, deliberate gaze of this man. He saw that Phil Treat was not wearing a gun; he saw that he was trail dirty and had moved slowly, to stand now, tall but stooped, with his hands hanging empty. He could handle this man. Kergosen was sure of that now, but he respected him and he had planned this meeting carefully. Leo Pyke, who openly disliked Treat, and Sandal and Grady, who had been with him longer than any of his other riders, would deal with Treat if he objected. No, there would be no trouble. But he formed his words carefully before he spoke. Then he said, 'You made a mistake. So did my daughter. But both mistakes are corrected as of this moment. Ellis is going home and you have ten minutes to pack your gear and get out. Clear?' 'And my stock?' Treat said.
'You're selling your stock to me,' Kergosen said, 'so there' be nothing to delay you.' His hand went into his coat and came out with a folded square of green paper. 'My draft on the Willson Bank to cover the sale of your yearling stock. Thirty head. When you draw the money, the canceled draft is my receipt.' He extended his hand. 'Take it.' Treat did not move and Kergosen's wrist flicked out and the folded paper floated--fell to the ground. 'Pick it up,' Kergosen said. 'Your time's running out.'
He looked at Ellis then. 'Mount up.'
Ellis almost spoke, frightened, angry, and unsure of herself now, but she looked at her husband and waited.
Treat stood motionless, still gazing up at Kergosen. 'You have five men and I have myself,' he said. 'That makes a difference, doesn't it?'
'If this is unjust,' Kergosen said, 'then it's unjust. I'll say it only once more. Your time's running out.'
Treat's eyes moved to Ellis. 'Do what he says.'
He saw the bewildered look come over her face, and he said, 'Go home with him, Ellis, and do what he tells you.' Treat paused. 'But don't speak one solitary word to him as long as you're under his roof. Not till I come for you.' He said this quietly in the brittle silence that hung over the yard, and now he saw Ellis nod her head slowly.
He looked up at Kergosen, who was staring at him intently. 'Mr. Kergosen, we can't argue with you and we can't fight you, but take Ellis home and you'll know she isn't just your daughter anymore.'
'You don't threaten me,' Kergosen said.
'No,' Treat said, 'you've got iron fists, a hundred and thirty square miles of land, and you sit there like it's the high seat of judgment. But you live with Ellis now, if you can.' Kergosen said, 'Pick up that draft.'
Treat shook his head.
'As God is my judge, I mean you no harm,' Kergosen said. 'But you don't leave me a choice.'
He nodded to Leo Pyke as he reined his bay in a tight circle and rode out. Ellis had mounted and now she followed him, looking back past the two riders who fell in behind her as she passed the corral and started across the meadow. They were not yet out of sight, but nearing the aspen stands when Pyke said to Sandal and Grady, 'So he won't pick it up.'
Treat looked at him, then stooped, without loss of dignity, unhurriedly, and picked up the draft. 'If it bothers you,' he said.
Pyke grinned. 'He's not so big now, is he?'
The Mexican rider, Sandal, said, 'Like a field hand. I thought he was something with a gun.'
'A story he made up,' the third man, Grady, said. Pyke said to Sandal, 'Move his horse out of the way.'
Sandal winked at Grady. 'And the Henry, uh?'
He led Treat's claybank to the corral and lifted the Henry rifle from the saddle boot as he shooed him in. He walked back to them, studying the rifle, holding it at belt level. Without looking at them, as if not aiming, he flipped the lever down and up and fired past them, and the right front window of the adobe shattered.
Sandal looked up, smiling. 'This is no bad gun.'
Across the meadow two of Kergosen's riders were moving the herd away from the stock tank. Treat watched them, turning his back to Sandal. There was time. These men would do as they pleased, whether he objected or not. Wait and say nothing, he thought. Wait and watch and keep track of the score.
He remembered a patrol out of Fort Thomas coming to a spring, and a Coyotero Apache guide whose name was Pesh-klitso. The guide had said to him in Spanish, 'We followed the barbarian for ten days; two men died, three horses died; we have no food and we killed no barbarian. Yet we could have waited for them here. Our stomachs would be full, the two men and the horses would still be alive, and we would take them when they came.'
He'd asked the Coyotero how he knew they would come, and the guide answered, 'The land is not that broad. They would come sooner or later.'
Which meant, if not today, then tomorrow; if not this year, then the next.
He had known many Pesh-klitsos at San Carlos, and at Tascosa, when they carried Sharps rifles and hunted buffalo--hunted them by waiting, then killed them. And the more patience you had the more you killed. Treat waited and watched. He watched Grady go into the adobe and saw the left front window erupt with a spray of broken glass as a chair came through. He saw Sandal break off two of the chair legs with the heel of his boot, then walk into the adobe, and a moment later the Henry was firing again. With the reports, the ear-ringing din and the clicking cocking sound of the lever, he heard glass and china shattering, falling from the shelves. Then the sound of a Colt and a dull, clanging noise; sooty smoke billowed from the open doorway and he knew they had shot down the stove chimney. Grady came out, fanning the smoke in front of him. He mounted his horse, sidestepped it to the ramada, fastened the loop of his rope to a support post, and spurred away. The post ripped out, bouncing, scraping a dust rise, and the mesquitepole awning sagged partway to the ground. Sandal came out of the adobe, running, ducking his head. He watched Grady circle to come back, went to his own horse, fastened his rope to the other support post, and dragged it away. The ramada collapsed, swinging, smashing, against the adobe front, and the mesquite poles broke apart.
Watching Treat, Leo Pyke said, 'You letting them get away with that? All this big talk about you, and you don't even open your mouth.'
Grady and Sandal walked their horses in. Treat glanced at them, then back to Pyke. 'I don't have anything to say.'
'Listen,' Pyke said. 'I've put up with that closemouth cold-water way of yours a long time. I've watched men stand clear of you, afraid they'd step too close and you'd come to life. I watched Mr. Kergosen, then Ellis, won over to your sly ways. But all that time I was seeing through you--looking clean through, and there was nothing there to see. No backbone, no guts, no nothing.'
Sandal was grinning, leaning over his saddle horse. 'Eat him up, Layo!'
Pyke's eyes did not leave Treat. 'If you were worth it, I'd take my gun off and beat hell out of you.'
Treat's eyebrows raised slightly. 'Would you, Leo?'
'You damn bet I would.'
Sandal said, 'Go ahead, man. Do it.'
'Shut your mouth!' Pyke threw the words over his shoulder.
'The vision of being segundo returns with the return of the daughter,' Sandal said, grinning again. To Grady, next to him, he said, 'How would you like to work for this one every day?' Grady shook his head. 'She can't marry him now. And that's the only way he'd get to be Number Two.'
'I think she married him,' Sandal said, nodding at Treat, 'to escape this one.'
'I said shut up!' Pyke screamed, turning half around, but at once he looked back at Treat. 'You ride out, right
