Jeff frowned. “Who's your friend?”
A match suddenly blazed in the stranger's hand. He held the flame to the end of a thin cigarette and shot the matchstick into the street. “He's your friend, too, kid,” he said. “You saved his neck yesterday when you turned that posse off his trail.”
Amazement was in Jeff's voice. “Bill Somerson? The one that shot Costain?”
Smiling thinly, the tall stranger nodded. “He's got a message for you—from your pa.”
Jeff shot quick glances up and down the street. “Maybe we'd better go somewhere else to talk.”
The man shook his head. “I've got nothin' else to say. Somerson does his own talkin'. If you want that message from your pa, you'd better hightail it down south. Do you know where Rifle Creek forks with Little River, across the county line? About a mile north of the fork there's a shack, and that's where Somerson's waitin' for you.”
Jeff shook his head, not in rejection of the proposition, but because it was hard to believe. “Can't you give me an idea what the message is about?”
“Just that it's important; that's all Somerson would tell me. Straight from Nate Blaine to his kid, he said. Bill's kind of taken a personal interest in the matter, I guess, after the way you steered the posse off him. Have you got a horse?”
When Jeff shook his head, the stranger laughed. “I guessed as much, seein' the way they cleaned you in that stud game. Take that claybank at the rack; it's mine. If I have any ridin' to do, I can hire one at the stables.”
Jeff looked closely at the stranger, seeing hardness in the bony face, a kind of brutal humor in the pale eyes. As the man talked, Jeff instinctively tensed up, not liking what he saw. He didn't trust the stranger's words any more than he trusted his smile.
Jeff said bluntly, “It seems like you're going pretty far out of your way to do me a favor. Why?”
The smile disappeared; blankness took its place. “I told you Somerson wants to talk to you, kid. If you don't want to know what your pa has to say, then I'll go back to where I come from.”
“Wait a minute,” Jeff said quickly, knowing that he had to go. He had to know what message Nathan had sent that was so important. “A mile north of the fork. All right, I'll go.”
The stranger nodded shortly. “Be careful nobody trails you. I'll take the claybank around to the alley and you can take it from there.” Jeff stood in the shadows as the man went to the horse and rode lazily around the corner of the bank building. Jeff felt that hand of caution firmly upon his shoulder; a vague uncertainty nagged at him as rider and horse disappeared into the darkness of the alley.
Common sense told him that a wanted man like Somerson would not expose himself simply to relay a message for a friend. And this tall stranger was branded a hard-case in every move he made. Still, five long years had passed since he had had direct word from Nathan. He was sick of the town and would be glad enough to put it behind him for a while. He headed for the alley.
“Remember to cover your trail,” the stranger reminded him, as Jeff stepped up to the saddle. “The name's Milan Fay,” the tall man added as Jeff was riding away. “Somerson will want to be sure who sent you.”
As he rode to the south, the lights of the town grew small, the singing of fiddles became threadlike whispers of sound, the laughter of drunken cowhands dissolved in the night. Soon the town and its sounds had disappeared and a blanket of silence enveloped the prairie.
A vague uneasiness mounted within him as he rode deeper into the darkness.
But in the bigness of the night, details did not seem important, and he soon put uncertainty behind him and rode at ease. Nathan had not forgotten him—that was the important thing. Nathan's strong hand could still reach him and comfort him, even from Mexico.
Jeff could almost imagine that Nate himself was waiting for him somewhere to the south, in the darkness, and he urged the claybank to a quicker gait. He let himself smile as he remembered Nathan throwing back his head, holding the world at bay with the violence in his eyes— and for a little while he forgot to be angry and loosened the band of hate that squeezed his brain.
It was almost sunup when Jeff approached the forks. The lip of the eastern prairie seemed etched in blood and the sky became a skillful blend of brilliant blues and subtle grays. Suddenly a great orange sun appeared and the prairie blazed as though with fire.
In this new light Jeff paused for a moment and studied his backtrail; then he nudged the claybank through a thicket of salt cedar, crossed the dry bed of Little River and headed north.
This was a raw, red country of eroded clay and dwarfed trees and sage, as barren as the floor of a dried ocean. Not many men would pass this way, not even drifters.
Soon Jeff saw the weathered outline of an abandoned shack, a sorry affair of sod and scrub oak logs with the roof half gone, the chimney crumbling. Cautiously now, he eased the claybank forward. Suddenly the doorway of the shack was filled with the thick-set form of a man.
“Somerson?” Jeff called.
“Who wants to know?”
“Jefferson Blaine. Nate Blaine's my father.”
Somerson stepped through the doorway, a snub-nosed carbine on his hip at the ready. “Who sent you?”
“A man called Fay. Milan Fay.”
Somerson laughed and slung the carbine in the crook of his arm. “I would of knowed you anyway, kid; you've got the Blaine mark stamped all over you. Tie your animal to a brush and climb down.”
Somerson waited by the corner of the shack as Jeff left the claybank in a thicket of blackjack. He held out a big hand as Jeff came up to him. “By hell, you're Nate all over again. I'm proud to shake hands with you, son; that
