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  Bound in Life or Death
  caret caret HE HEARD A shot. It was far
off, but the sound VJ'SLAPPED against the cliffs and
went echoing off down the wall of rock. Her heart
pounding, Kris started forward, standing in the stirrups
for a better view. She felt almost sure it was
Mart's horse. ...
  There was dust down there; and then there were more shots.
She was too far away to get there in time if help was
needed. If Matt could escape at all, he would
be escaping to her, coming to her for help, for food, for
ammunition. She went on steadily along the narrow
bench. And then something made her look back.
  Three riders!
  The face of the cliff curved back suddenly, and
there in the notch she saw the deep cut of the beginning
canyon, and a heavy growth on the far side.
Swiftly she herded the pack mules into the gap and,
grasping her rifle, she dropped to the ground.
  This was where Matt had said he would come; and this was where
she would stay until either he came or she knew beyond
doubt that he was dead.
--------------------------------------i
  Bantam Books by Louis L'Amour
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  NOVELS
  Bendigo Shafter
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  The Cherokee Trail
  Cotnstock Lode
  Conagher
  Crossfire Trail
  Dark Canyon
  Down the Long Hills
  The Empty Land
  Fair Blows the Wind
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  The Ferguson Rifle
  The First Fast Draw
  Flint
  Guns of the Timberlands
  Hanging Woman Creek
  The Haunted Mesa
  Heller with a Gun
  The High Graders
  High Lonesome
  Hondo
  How the West Was Won
  The Iron Marshal
  The Key-Lock Man
  Kid Rodelo
  Kilkenny
  Killoe
  Kilrone
  Kiowa Trail
  Last of the Breed
  Last Stand at Papago
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  The Lonesome Gods The Man Called Noon
The Man from the Broken
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  The Man from Skibbereen Matagorda Milo
Talon
  The Mountain Valley War North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side Passin' Through The
Proving Trail
  The Quick and the Dead
  Radigan
  Reilly's Luck
  The Rider of Lost Creek
  Rivers West
  The Shadow Riders
  Shalako
  Showdown at Yellow
  Butte
  Silver Canyon Sitka
  Son of a Wanted Man Taggart
  The Tall Stranger To Tame a Land Tucker
Under the Sweetwater
  Rim
  Utah Blaine The Walking Drum Westward the
Tide Where the Long Grass
  Blows
  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS Beyond the Great
Snow
  Mountains Bowdrie Bowdrie's Law
Buckskin Run The Collected Short
  Stories of Louis
  L'Amour (vol. 1) Dutchman's Flat
End of the Drive From the Listening
  Hills
  The Hills of Homicide Law of the Desert
Born Long Ride Home Lonigan
  May There Be a Road Monument Rock
Night over the Solomons Off the Mangrove
Coast The Outlaws of Mesquite The Rider of the
Ruby
  Hills
  Riding for the Brand The Strong Shall Live
  The Trail to Crazy Man
  Valley of the Sun
  War Party
  West from Singapore
  West of Dodge
  With These Hands
  Yondering
  SACKETT TITLES Sackett's Land To the
Far Blue
  Mountains The Warrior's Path Jubal
Sackett Ride the River The Daybreakers
Sackett Lando
  Mojave Crossing Mustang Man The Lonely
Men Galloway Treasure Mountain Lonely on the
Mountain Ride the Dark Trail The Sackett
Brand The Sky-Liners
  THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS The
Riders of the High
  Rock
  The Rustlers of West Fork The Trail to Seven
Pines Trouble Shooter
  NONFICTION Education of a
  Wandering Man Frontier The Sackett
Companion:
  A Personal Guide to
  the Sackett Novels A Trail of
Memories:
  The Quotations of
  Louis L'Amour,
  compiled by Angelique
  L'Amour
  POETRY
  Smoke from This Altar
  BANTAM BOOKS
--------------------------------------ii
  THE KEY-LOCK MAN
  A Bantam Book
  PUBLISHING HISTORY begreater-than
  Bantam edition published December 1965
  New Bantam edition still May 1971
  Bantam reissue still February 1999
  Bantam reissue still March 2005
  Published by Bantam Dell
  A Division of Random House, Inc. New
York, New York
  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and
  incidents either are the product of the author's
imagination or
  are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual persons, living
  or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
  Photograph of Louis L'Amour by John
Hamilton-Globe Photos, Inc.
  All rights reserved
  Copyright [*copygg'1965 by Louis andc
Katherine L'Amour Trust Cover art by torn
Hall
  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should
be aware that this book is stolen property. It was
reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher,
and neither the author nor the publisher has received any
payment for this "stripped book."
  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
  ISBN 0-553-28098-8
  Printed in the United States of America
Published simultaneously in Canada
  www.bantamdell.com
  OPM 60 59 58 57 56
  To Dutch Sam who missed when it mattered

  The MAN CALLED Key-Lock was a man
alone, and before him lay wilderness. Behind him were
searching men, and each was armed, each carried a rope.
Each rope was noosed for hanging, and each man was
intent on the purpose of the chase.
  The solitary rider did not fear his aloneness, for
he had the companionship of the mind. He had strength
also, patience beyond that of most men, and some knowledge of the wild
lands into which he rode. If the men who pursued knew
nothing of him, he at least knew their kind, and was
stronger because of this.
  They were men shaped and tempered to the harsh ways of a
harsh land, strong in their sense of justice, ruthless in
their demand for punishment, relentless in pursuit. In
the desert and the wilderness they had built their homes,
and from the desert and the wilderness they drew their courage
and their code. And the desert knows no mercy, the
wilderness shows no kindness.
  Before the man called Key-Lock lay a land
fragmented and torn, a magnificent land, gnarled and
ancient. It was a land of shattered battlements,
broken towers, and the headless figures of vast and
shapeless gods. An empty land, yet crowded with
epics in stone, harried by wind and thunderstorm, ripped
by flash floods, blistered by summer's heat, frozen
by winter's cold.
  He rode now in Arizona, but beyond the horizon
to the north lay Utah, and between himself and the border, a
desert. Between himself and escape-if he chose
to escape-lay an almost waterless waste in which he must
trust to his ingenuity to keep him free.
  The border lay ahead, but the border was merely a

  line on a map, and did not exist in the minds of the
men who pursued him. If they knew of this border,
it would have no place in their thinking, for to them he had
already crossed another border, a border between the law
and the lawless, between the right and the wrong, between what was done
and what was not done.
  To kill a man who faced you with a gun was in their
minds no crime, nor was it a crime in the
customs of their period. In the East and in Europe
men settled affairs of honor with pistols, but according
to plan and ritual. In the West, in what was a new
world, where men were often strangers to each other, the
settling of such an affair was immediate, and without
ritual.
  To shoot a man in the back, however, was a
crime, and this they believed he had done, and for this he
must be hung.
  But it was not enough for the man called Key-Lock
to understand the philosophy of the hunters; the
important thing for him was to escape them.
  Though he knew none of the men back there
personally, he knew there must be good men among them,
and on a different occasion he might have been riding as
one of them, the pursuer instead of the pursued. For he
had worked beside such men, fought beside them, and he knew that
they were hardworking men, stern but just, according to their code.
When such men come to a new land the law comes with them, for
they are builders of homes, builders of towns,
layers of foundations.
  And now he must escape or fight. If he
fought, he must be prepared to kill, and he had no
enmity for these men . . . not yet.
  Where's HE BOUND?"
  "Home, more'n likely. He'll need an
outfit if he aims to run far ... if we don't
get to him first."
  "Where's he live?"
  "He was a stranger, and had no trail outfit with
him. Over to the store they said that when he taken out to

  get away, the one thing he latched onto was a
woman's comb."
  "A comb?"
  "Seems daft, but that's what was told us. One
of those fancy combs like Spanish women wear in their
hair. He rummaged through all that grub and truck
in the store just for that."
  Kimmel's eyes narrowed against the sun's hard
glare. "He's got him a good horse. Moves
right along."
  "Big buckskin," Chesney said. "I seen the
horse. Wears a Key-Lock brand. A key
alongside a keyhole- never seen it before."
  For a few minutes silence rode among them,
except for the beat of their horses' hoofs and the creak
of saddle leather.
  "He's covering ground, all right." Neill was the
youngest of them, and he felt the need of words. He was
also the latest to arrive in this part of the country-only
four years ago.
  Hardin was the best of them at reading sign, and from the
first he had been disturbed that the rider had not put his
horse to the run. He held him to a steady,
distanceeating gait, but showed no inclination to make a
sudden dash to get away. Studying those tracks, and
reading what they indicated, Hardin had an uneasy
feeling that they had brought themselves a packet of trouble.
  "He's no tenderfoot." Chesney expressed
the thought Hardin held. "He's covering ground, but
he knows how to save a horse, and he knows wild
country."
  Dust lifted from the hoofs of their horses. The
sun was hot upon their shoulders. The land was parched and
baked. Dancing heat waves promised water that was
not there, and the distant blue of mountains a coolness they
would not provide.
  The trail lay straight before them. Only at
clumps of rock or thorny brush did it swerve.
Like a thrown lance, it seemed to thrust at the distant
heart of the hills. The six men of the posse rode
warily, their thoughts uneasy about what lay in the mind
of the man they pursued.

  You can know a man if you follow his trail, if you
follow long enough. By his tracks on the land the
ways of a man are made plain-his kindness or his
cruelty, his ignorance or his cunning, his strength
or his weakness. Many a man who could read not a word of
print could read character, story, and plot from a pattern
of tracks, and from the building of fires.
  In the hours of riding since leaving the town of
Freedom, these men had learned much, but they had much
still to learn.
  "What started it?" one of them asked now.
  In the vast hollow of silence the words hung
empty and alone.
  Hardin turned his head in the manner of a man who
rides much in the wind, and let the words drift
back. As he spoke he shifted the rifle from one
hand to the other to dry his sweaty palms upon his shirt
front.
  "Loose talk. He was buyin' grub in the
Bon Ton an' took offense at something Johnny
said. Johnny was wearin' a gun, an' the
Key-Lock man wasn't, so Johnny told him
to go fill his hand or he'd hunt him down anyway.
  "Johnny was in the saloon when he came back
an' pushed the door open an' shot Johnny
twice in the back whilst he stood drinkin' at the
bar. Third shot busted a bottle of whiskey."
  After a moment's silence, Neill asked slyly,
"We hanging him for killing Johnny, or for busting
the whiskey?"
  It was a fair question, but the dignity of the riders and
their mission was not to be lightened by humor. They offered
no reply, nor any acknowledgment that he had
spoken.
  Neill's eyes wandered over the white and copper
land, cut here and there by deep arroyos or ridged by the
raw backs of ancient lava flows. He held
no liking for the lynching of any man, and he knew
nothing of the one for whom they hunted, beyond what had been
told him. The men he rode with were his friends and
neighbors, the men with whom he shared work and their few
pleasures.

  Like himself, they had come to this wild land bringing the
potential of home, and homes demanded order and
consideration for the rights of others, a recognition of the
necessities of regulations and law. Their
womenfolk came with them or followed after, bringing their
own desires, among them the need for church and
school, for human association.
  The town of Freedom had only such law as its
citizens chose to provide. If lawlessness was wary
of Freedom, it was due to the fact that, as in most
western towns, the butcher, the baker, and the banker were
veterans of the War Between the States and the Indian
wars. Every citizen had grown to manhood handling
guns, and all were prepared to use such weapons when
need be. The idea of some gunman or band of
outlaws "treeing" a western town was known, but here it
had never happened.
  The James-Younger band tried it at Northfield
and they were run out of town, shot to doll rags and
leaving their dead behind; the Daltons tried it at
Coffeyville, and the one man who survived had
sixteen buckshot in him. There were a few other
attempts, no more successful- often to the regret
of the townspeople, for such attempts came under the
head of entertainment in towns where there was not much of any
other kind.
  The gunman stayed to his side of town, like the
gambler and the lady of light company, and was tolerated
as long as he offered no trouble to the established
citizenry.
  Freedom was scarcely old enough to have the need
to draw such a line, and as yet there was no law
except such as was administered by themselves. However, they
had all known Johnny, and Johnny had been shot
in the back.
  "Who saw the shooting?" Neill asked.
  "Nobody saw it, actually. Sam was tendin'
bar, but he was down at the other end and it happened
too fast. But this Key-Lock man couldn't have
given Johnny a chance. Johnny was too good with a
gun."
  Johnny, Neill recalled, was far better
than just good with a gun. He was damned good, and prided
himself on the fact. Neill felt a twinge of
uneasiness, and then a faint

  sense of guilt that he should for an instant doubt
anything that was said of Johnny; but he couldn't help
recalling that Johnny was a little less than friendly
to strangers.
  The dust grew thicker, and Neill pulled his
bandana up over his mouth and nose as the others had.
His eyes sought the shimmering blue of those distant
lakes. Enticing and lovely, they lay across the
trail ahead and in the bottoms off to the right. They were
mirage, but many a man had been led to his death
by their ever-retreating shorelines.
  Maybe there was water in those heat waves if a
man only knew how to extract it. The thought drew
his hand to his canteen, where the slosh of water was
inviting, but he knew that by this time the water was warm and
brackish, and too little of it remained. Moreover,
none of the older men had yet shown any inclination
to drink.
  "Will you know him if you see him, Kimmel?"
Chesney asked.
  "He's a big man, maybe on the lean side,
but strongmade. Maybe thirty-five. No hand
to talk about his business, but over to the store where he
did his buying folks said he shaped up like a mighty
hard piece of merchandise."
  Chesney himself was a wiry man with strong brown
hands. He was hard as a whipstock, with bits of sharp
steel for eyes. He had built his outfit
carefully, driving in a few head when he first
came, and tending them like a dairy herd through the first
season. He was a good man and a good neighbor, but
there was no give in him. He was stubborn in his
opinions and a driver, pushing hard on himself and all
about him. He had been the first to reach NeilPs
place that time when a prairie fire threatened.
  Kimmel had been a close second, racing his
wagon as if it was a buckboard, and it was filled with
sacking already wet, and with shovels. Last year when
Hardin was laid up with a broken leg, Kimmel fed
Hardin's stock and

  his own, too, all through a hard winter, and he had
a long ride every day to do it.
  Chesney and Johnny had been saddle partners
on the old Squaw Mountain roundups, and when
Chesney drove his small herd into this part of the
country, Johnny had come along to see him through, then
located a place of his own and stayed on.
  Johnny Webb had been a daredevil and a
hellion, but he was well liked for all of that. He
laughed a lot, played practical jokes, and was
ready to break a horse for anybody just for the hell of
it. He was fast with a gun, and no man was likely
to beat him in a fair, stand-up shooting.
  When Neill had come into the country, he had quickly
realized the kind of community he had entered and he
built solid friendships. There was a lot he did not
know about the West, for back in Ohio he had been a
farmer, but he was catching on fast. When they invited
him to be a posse member he knew he had been
accepted and was one of them. It was an honor to ride
beside such men into what might become a shooting affair.
  Neill stared at the tracks of the big buckskin
and felt a queer sensation when he realized the rider
of that horse might soon be dead, hung by the neck,
and NeilPs own hand would be on that rope.
  He had never killed a man-not even an
Indian-nor seen one killed. He was probably
the only man in the group of whom that could be said.
  Now Johnny Webb was gone, Johnny with his
laughter and his jokes, brightening more than one day's work
on the range. And Neill was feeling guilty at
remembering that he had never really liked Johnny,
and that there had been strain between them when Neill first
came into this part of the country. It was only after
Chesney accepted him, and after Johnny apparently
realized that Neill was not a potential rival that a
sort of friendship developed.
  Johnny might have been a little overanxious with that
gun, Neill thought, but he deserved something better
than a shot in the back.

  "He's afoot," Chesney said suddenly,
"leadin' his horse."
  "He's a big man," Hardin said, "and he
figures to give us a long chase."
  "His horse has gone lame, maybe,"
McAlpin suggested.
  "No, that horse doesn't limp. He's just a
canny one, that's all."
  A mile fell behind them, and then another mile.
The deep dust gave way to a parched dry plain of
desert sand. Hardin indicated a couple of flecks
on the sand-crust where something had spilled. "Water,"
he said.
  "He'll need that water," Neill said. "He'd
best go easy with it."
  "Bet you a dollar he was wipin' out his horse's
nostrils," Chesney said. "Dust interferes with a
horse's breathing, and a man could kill a horse,
runnin' him on this flat."
  The man they pursued was not running his horse, but
if they caught up with him, he would have to run.
Neill mopped his brow, and wiped the sweatband of his
hat. He thought of his wife and the milk she kept in
a stone jug in the well. It would taste almighty
good about now.
  Suddenly he looked at the sun. It had been
on the left, but now it was on the right, for the trail had
swerved sharply. Hardin, who was riding point,
swore.
  Riding up beside him, the men found themselves looking
into a draw that cracked the desert's face only a
few rods away. There was a place where a horse
had been tethered, and a bit of white fluttered from a
rock.
  Chesney rode down into the draw to pick it up,
and they heard him swear again. Scrambling his horse
back up the draw, he passed the paper to Hardin.
It looked like a leaf torn from a tally book. On
it a message was scrawled.
  That was a fair shootin anyway six ain't
nowhars enuf. go fetch more men. man on the gray
better titen his cinch or heel have him a sore
backed hoss.
  The note was unsigned.
  "Why, the low-livin' skunk!" Short spoke
half under his breath. "Not forty yards off, and him with a
rifle."

  Neill, his face flushed with anger, was tightening
his cinch. Nobody appeared to notice him; they were as
embarrassed as he was himself. The note was an insult
to all of them, even if the advice was good. They were
angry men, but they were frightened men, too. It gave
them an eerie feeling to realize that the man they were
hunting had been lying within easy range, close enough
to kill one or more of them before they could either attack or
take shelter.
  The man was playing Injun with them, and they did not
like it. Their dignity was offended, but more than that, they
realized they had been grossly negligent. They
had taken it for granted the man was out there in front
of them, running.
  "Fair shootin', hell!" McAlpin said.
"Right in the back!"
  They went ahead now with increased caution. Their
quarry had circled about and allowed them to pass, and
he might be watching close by even now. Until this
moment they had been the hunters; now they felt that they
themselves were hunted.
  Deliberately, the man they sought was using every
trick to make pursuit more difficult. The note
had the effect of slowing them to the slowest of walks.
They must pause, circle each place of possible
ambush, proceed with utmost watchfulness. Each time
they took these precautions they found nothing, yet
each time they might have been met with a bullet.
  Now the trail took them into the bottom of a wash
where the fitful puffs of wind they had met occasionally
on the flat desert were gone. The wash was an oven,
its floors and walls reflecting savage heat.
They seemed to be riding through flames that seared and
burned. Eyes smarting from the salt of their sweat,
skin itching from the dust that caked the stubble on their
jaws, they clung to the trail. As they went along,
Hardin studied each wall with care, searching for some
point at which their man might have escaped.
  Suddenly the wash turned into an apron of sand that

  went down into the vast basin of a dry lake, white
with alkali. Yet the lake was not entirely dry, for
in the center was a sheet of water, the result of
recent rains. The dead water was heavy with alkali.
  The man called Key-Lock had ridden his
horse into the water. The tracks were there, and they stared
at them, blinking the sweat from their eyes.
  "He daren't ride across that," Hardin commented.
"Out there in the middle it would be too deep, and he
could bog down."
  Their party split, three circling the lake in either
direction, seeking tracks. They had gone only a
few hundred yards when Neill glanced back
to see Chesney's uplifted arm, calling them
back. He had found where the horse and rider had
left the water.
  The ruse was a simple one, but it was a delaying
tactic that gave advantage to the pursued.
Neill felt his anger rising. The man was playing
them, playing them like fish on a line.
  In the beginning Neill had hoped to have it over and be
back at the ranch tonight, but as the hours went by it had
become obvious that their chase was not to prove so
easy. The time consumed, even their choice of a camp,
would not be left to them. It would be dictated by the man
they hunted. He knew where he would go, and when,
while they did not know and could not know. It was clear now
that his intent was to discourage them. Deliberately, he
was choosing the roughest country, the worst trails.
  The line of hoof prints veered sharply to the left,
pointing through thick brush toward the shoulder of the
mountain.
  "Where the devil's he goin'?" Chesney demanded
irritably. "This doesn't make sense."
  No one answered him. Strung out in single
file, they rode on, sagging with weariness. Suddenly
Kimmel, who was in the lead now, pulled up short.
Before them a thread of water trickled from the rocks
into a basin of stones.

  "I'll be damned for a coyote!" Hardin
exclaimed. "I never knew this was here."
  Kimmel swung down, and the others followed. "I
can use a drink," he said. Indicating the small
stone basin, he added, "Somebody put in a sight
of work here. This hasn't been built long."
  Hardin had been scouting around, studying the
tracks, old and new. All were made by the same
horse and the same man. "Fixed it himself. Wonder
how he located it in the first place?"
  "Looks to me like he knows this country," Short
said.
  Hardin chuckled, eyes glinting with a hard humor.
"We hooked onto a real old he-coon, boys.
This one's from the high timber. Now, we know it
takes no time for a man and a horse to drink, but it
takes a while for six horses and six men
to drink. That little basin will need time to refill before we
can all water up."
  "He ain't missed a trick," Kimmel said.
  "D'you think he'll stand and make a fight of
it?" McAlpin asked.
  "He'll fight," Chesney said. "This one will
fight, and I hope he does."
  Hardin shot him a glance. "You read that sign like
I do?" he asked quietly. "If you do, you know
what's comin'."
  Neill put his tongue to dry lips. He
looked from one to the other. A change had come over them
now, and fear touched him with cold fingers.
  This man was sure of himself. He had told them it
was a fair shooting, but that note had been a warning
if anything ever was. The fact that he could have had them
within easy range told them what he might have done.
He could have shot them like fish in a barrel, but when he
chose to fight he would choose his ground, and theirs.
  Neill was no coward, but when he thought about his
wife alone on the ranch, he felt sick. He
might die today, and she could never make it alone.
She would have to give up the ranch, and all their plans
together. She would have to go back to her folks, and would have
to sell

  everything to raise money for the trip. How long
since he had seen any cash money?
  By now the glare had faded and softened. The desert
sunset bathed the land in a pastel radiance mingled with
fingers of shadow. Out on the desert, a quail
called. Another, somewhere to their right, replied.
  We could quit, Neill thought. We could quit
now before it's too late.
  But he did not speak this thought aloud, nor would
any of the others, even if they thought it. Something had
been started, and they must carry it through. The law must not
be flouted, the sinful must pay for their sins.
  "It's like he had a goddam string on us,"
Chesney complained.
  From the beginning the hunted man had been in command, from
the beginning he had led them on. Most escaping men
think only of escape; they do not make plans for the
pursuers. This man should have been running scared, he
should have been hunting a hole somewhere, but he was doing
no such thing. He was desert-wise, and he was in no
hurry. He was borrowing time when he felt it necessary,
but he was choosing his own course and his own gait.
  Into the minds of each man crept an uneasy
thought: Sooner or later he would have them where he
wanted them, and then what? How many would die?
  But now their pride was involved, their pride as
well as their code, and their code said that for a life
taken as Johnny's had been, a life must be paid.
  Neill's thoughts turned again to his wife. She
would be feeding the baby now, wondering where he was, and
keeping the food warm. None of them had expected this
to be anything but a short chase, with perhaps a brief
gun battle at the end.
  Regretfully, Neill realized that now it might
be a week before he got home-if he ever did.

  The TRAIL THEY followed led across starkly
eroded foothills dotted with clumps of cedar and
Spanish bayonet. It was a weird and broken land
where long fingers of black lava stretched out toward the
dry lake they had left behind. Ahead of them rose
a low mesa.
  The Key-Lock man was in no hurry, and he
traveled like an Indian, taking the longest route
if it was the easiest on his horse. Each of the
pursuers was worried by this in his secret mind. What
could lie before this man that gave him such confidence?
  Chesney topped out on the mesa and drew up
to give his horse a breather, and they all gathered about
him, studying the country. Hard-working men, they had
been held to their own range by the demands of water and
cattle, and the need to get something started; none of them
had ever ridden so far to the north as this.
  "Hardin, what do you think he's got in his mind?"
Chesney asked. "So far's I know, there's nothin'
off where he's bound. Just nothin' at all."
  "He can't go west. . . the canyon's
thataway, and without wings he couldn't go any
further." Hardin rinsed his mouth with a meager gulp of
water, then swallowed it. was We don't think there's
anything up there, but maybe he knows different." He
hung the canteen carefully on the saddle horn.
"We've sure bought ourselves an old hecoon, and
he ain't goin' to be took easy."
  "Took, hell!" Chesney exploded. "I'll
see the man hang! I'll see him hang before ever
I ride into Freedom again!"
  Chesney meant just what he said, and it showed in

  each line of his hard-boned face. A good friend,
he was a bitter, unrelenting enemy. And the man
called Key-Lock had killed his best friend.
  Neill was puzzled by his own feelings. He
knew the need for law and order, and where no official
law existed the citizens themselves were responsible,
unless they wished to live in complete anarchy. He
accepted the logic of the idea, but held no
enthusiasm for the immediate situation. Like many another man,
he preferred going about his own affairs, sitting at
supper with his wife, smelling the good cooking
smells, feeling the slow comfort of evening, the
welcome release of the bed that awaited.
  He looked almost enviously at Chesney,
Hardin, and the others. Why didn't he feel as
dedicated as they did?
  Certainly, no man's life or property could
be safe unless there was a rigidly enforced law, and
he realized almost with shame that he wished this job was
being done without him. He knew the law was every man's
concern, but it was high time they elected a marshal.
  This mesa on which they stood was at least a quarter
of a mile square. Here and there a horse's hoof had
left a white scar upon the surface, but it took
them more than half an hour to find where their man had
left the rock.
  Hardin chuckled in appreciation as they followed the
trail down. "Took him only a few minutes,
so he gained good time on us. Long as he can do that,
he don't have to run."
  Shadows gathered in the low places as the sky
took on a pattern of amazing colors. This was a
corner of what was called the Painted Desert.
Crossing a wide wash, they came out onto a
desert of almost endless dunes. Beyond, rock
pinnacles rose, and a mesa that loomed a good thousand
feet above the desert.
  "Lucky he ain't layin' for us. We'd get
picked off like flies," Hardin said.
  At that moment there came a smashing report
followed by an angry whine, and the men broke and fled
for shelter.

  Short simply rolled from his saddle, and crawled
behind a hummock of sand. His horse stood where his
master had left him, and the canteen made a large
hump behind the saddle. Suddenly the horse leaped to the
solid thud of a bullet.
  Short swore viciously. "If he's killed
that horse, I'll-was
  But the horse, shifting nervously, stood
groundhitched where the reins had fallen. A trickle
of water ran from the punctured canteen.
  There was nothing at which to fire. Their eyes searched
the dunes, but there was no movement, no sign of
life. The setting sun glared full into their eyes.
Their trail had swung around a dune, the shot coming
from their rear. Had he circled around them? Or had
he been lying in wait when they rode past?
  The trickle of water slowed to a slow drip. A
bullet that could puncture a canteen could do as much
for a man's skull.
  Every man among them thought of what that emptied
canteen might mean. They had filled their canteens
at the spring, and it should be water enough, but only the
man they pursued knew where they would be going, and he
would not have emptied that canteen without reason.
  They lay where they had dropped, and they waited.
It was hot, but the creeping shadows brought a measure
of coolness to the men in the shelter of the dunes.
  "He's long gone," McAlpin said at last.
Nobody showed any inclination to test the matter, so
he thrust his own hat just past a rock. Nothing
happened. But when he gave up and withdrew the hat,
a bullet struck the sand nearby, a message from the
Key-Lock man that he was still there, but that he was not
to be fooled by such an obvious trick.
  Their horses dozed in the sun. The warm sand under
their bodies made it seem warmer still. Neill was
bonetired and he was glad of the rest. He had worked his
body into a thin edging of shadow and was trying to relax.
  When half an hour had gone by, Hardin began
a

  flanking movement, crawling around the dunes. He
vanished from sight, and after what seemed a long time,
Neill was started from a doze by a long halloo.
He could see Hardin standing where the shots had been
fired, waving them on. One by one they went to their
horses and mounted, then rode to the dune where Hardin
waited for them.
  On a bare shelf of sand stood three brass
cartridge shells, neatly lined up. Nearby was a
crude arrow formed from stones, and beside it, scratched in
the hard-packed sand, were the words: Foller the signs.
  Chesney jerked off his hat and threw it to the
ground. "Why, that dirty, no-good-to " The words
trailed off as he scuffed his foot through the message
written in the sand.
  "He's makin' light of us," Short said
bitterly. "That damn' back-shootin' killer's
goin' to pay for this!"
  They started on again, their quarry's horse leaving
a plain trail, here and there deliberately marked
by an arrow of broken branches or stones.
  They were serious men riding on serious business,
and the seeming levity, if not contempt, added to their
irritation. Now the matter was becoming personal with
each of them, for not only was the man evading them with
success, but he was taunting their inability to catch
up. The worst of it was, such a horse as the
killer rode, handled with such care, might go on for
days, even for weeks.
  The vast basin was now behind them, lost in the misty
purple of distance. The sun was going down, but all
could see ahead of them the message chalked on the
rock wall in big, sweeping letters. The flat
piece of chalk rock with which it had been written
lay in plain sight below:
  Shade, so you won't get sunstroke.
  Tired and surly, they merely stared at it without
comment. The shadows lengthened, and their horses moved
on without eagerness. In the desert air was a growing
chill. Neill, riding at the end of the line, turned
in his saddle to look back.

  Behind them lay an enormous sweep of country, the
mountain ridges and the edge of the escarpment touched
by gold, the sky shot with great arrows of crimson.
The desert's purple had grown deeper, and black
shadows crouched in the open jaws of the canyons. Far
away back there his wife would be at the door,
looking up the trail toward town. Soon,
despairing of his return, she would feed the stock they
kept in the corral and then would go inside and feed the
baby. She would eat alone, still watching the trail.
  Before them, he thought, the days might stretch on and
on, and suddenly he was shaken by a strange
premonition that none of them would ever see Freedom
again.
  Who was this strange man who rode ahead of them,
taunting them, but never deliberately trying to kill?
Was it logical that a man who had shot another in the
back would act in this way?
  Kimmel and McAlpin, who had been riding
side by side, halted suddenly, and the others rode
up and gathered around. Before them on the trail an arrow
of stones pointed down to a narrow, forbidding cleft in
the rock; a chill wind blew from it, adding to their
misgivings. Once within that cleft, where the walls
lifted several hundred feet on either side, there
would be no turning back, nor could more than one man
at a time ride into the narrow space.
  Kimmel dug into his shirt pocket for the makings
and rolled a careful cigarette, his narrowed eyes
studying the cleft, the cliffs above it, the rocks
around.
  "What do you think, Hardin?"
  "Well, he ain't tried it yet, but if he's
goin' to make a stand, this could be the place. A good
man with a rifle could do about as he had a mind to,
once he got us in there."
  "I don't think he wants to."
  Neill spoke without thinking, and the words hung in the
still air.
  "What's that mean?" Chesney sounded
belligerent.

  "I don't know." Whatever Neill's reasons,
they weakened under Chesney's hard stare. "Only
he's had chances. Seems to me if he wanted
to kill somebody he could have done it. I'd say
he's wasting a lot of time."
  The others ignored him, and he withdrew into himself.
Nevertheless, having said it, he wanted to bolster his
argument with facts. Only he did not speak them
aloud. Why, he told himself, he had us dead to rights
when he left that first note. He could have killed at
least some of us, and when we hunted cover he could have
taken out.
  That canteen shot... he had been a good three
hundred yards off when he fired, and it was a clean
hit. No sooner had Neill considered this idea
than he asked himself how, at that distance, he could have
known it was a canteen? Did he have field
glasses? And as soon as this occurred to him he was
convinced of it. Not many men had field glasses, but
here and there some ex-soldier had them, or might have
picked them up by swapping around an army post.
  It gave him a queer feeling to think that the man
might even now be looking right into their faces, or
reading their lips as they talked.
  "The hell with it!" Hardin exclaimed suddenly,
and shucking his Winchester he rode down into the gloomy
cleft. There was nothing to do but to follow.
  Immediately it was dark. The rock walls crowded in
on either side. Neill's stirrup brushed the wall
from time to time, and he could see nothing either before or behind
him. Only when he looked up could he see the
narrow strip of sky, far above, and occasionally a star.
  Momentarily he feared the racketing boom of a
shot in the narrow passage, but it did not come. After
riding for some time and after several winding turns, they
saw gray light before them, and then a bright star.
Only it was not a star-it was a campfire.
  As they emerged from the passage they spread out
quickly and advanced in a mounted skirmish line,
rifles ready.
  There were scattered trees about, and some low brush,

  rendering their view indistinct. Chesney was the first
to reach the campfire, and the sound of his swearing shattered
the stillness like the splintering of glass.
  Beside a running stream a small fire had been
built, and near it was a supply of additional
fuel. On a bit of paper, weighted with two
stones, was a small mound of coffee, and a smaller
mound of sugar.
  They stared at the scene, choked by bitterness. The
taunt was obvious. They were being nursed along like a
pack of tenderfeet.
  "I'll be double-damned if I will!" Short
exclaimed angrily.
  Hardin was more philosophical. "Might as well
make the most of it. We can't trail him at night
anyway."
  Kimmel brought a coffeepot from his gear and
dipped water from the stream. Kimmel was a
practical man, and he liked his coffee.
  They stripped the rigs from their horses and
picketed them on the grass of a meadow close by.
There was little enough in their saddlebags, for none of them had
expected a long chase, and they must ride on short
rations to make them last. Neill looked at the
small pile of sugar enviously, wishing he might
hide some of it to carry home to his wife. It had
been a long time since she had tasted real sugar.
  Short, his burst of anger gone, was staring about in
an odd manner. He looked from the flowing water to the
pool into which it fell. "Boys, I know this place,"
he said. "I've heard tell of it many's the time.
This here is Mormon Well."
  Hardin had been feeding twigs into the fire. Now
he stood back and looked carefully around, measuring
what he saw against what he had heard in the towns
and the cow camps. Towering cliffs on three sides
of a bowl, the clustered trees, the meadow. "Yes,
I think you're right," he agreed. "It could be."
  "Now, why do' you suppose he led us here?"
McAlpin asked.

  "What's Mormon
  Neill glanced from face to face. "What's
Mormon Well, I never heard of it."
  Nobody replied, but Short walked around the
pool. "Why, the damned fool!" he said. "He's
led us right to it! I'd lay a dollar to a doughnut
he's never even heard the story."
  Hardin's eyes were grimly amused. He
repeated McAlpin's question. "Why do you suppose
he led us here?"
  Chesney was sour. "That Mormon Well story
is just whiskey talk."
  "Like hell it is!" Short's temper flared.
"I've seen gold from that cache-seen it with my own
eyes! Held it right in my hand!" He thrust out an
open hand, then closed it to a hard fist. "Within a
few miles of this place there's more gold than a
man's likely to see in a lifetime!"
  "Gold?" Neill's voice was startled.
  "You know the story better'n any of us, Bill,"
McAlpin suggested. "You tell him."
  "I ain't about to. Damn it, can't you see what
he's tryin" to do? If we start huntin' that gold
we'll split up and forget all about him, then he's
gone scot-free."
  "A dozen men have died huntin' for this well, and
here we are, Johnny-on-the-spot."
  Johnny. . .
  They fell silent, but after a while Short said,
"Well, we can always come back to it. We can hang
him and then come back." There was an obvious lack of
enthusiasm in his tone.
  McAlpin stirred. "You ever heard of anybody
who left this place and ever found it again? Not even the
ones who hid the gold. This here Mormon Well
has always been the joker in the deck."
  "Use your heads!" Chesney was irritable.
"Who would lead us right to the gold when he could have it
all for himself?"
  "I don't know what you're talking about,"
Neill said. "Is there gold buried somewhere about?"

  Hardin chuckled ironically. "He's going to get
clean away. He surely is."
  "What are you?" Chesney demanded angrily.
"A passel of youngsters who'll go chasin' after any
red wagon comes along? We started out to hang a
man!"
  "I wish somebody would tell me the story,"
Neill protested.
  "Bill," Hardin suddenly said to Chesney, "do
you remember Gay Cooley?"
  "What about him?"
  "Gay knew this country, and he spent years
huntin' the Lost Wagons. He knew this country
better than the Navajos did. Now, if this here
is Mormon Well, then right over there is Marsh
Pass." Hardin drew a rough pattern on the sand
with a twig. "If this Key-Lock man is going
east or northeast he will head for that pass.
Otherwise he has to cross the river, and there's
only two places he can do that, both of them west of
here.
  "Lee's Ferry," he went on, and indicated it
on the map, "is away over northwest, and the
Crossing of the Fathers is northwest, too, only not
so far. My hunch is he's about to double back and
make for the Crossing of the Fathers."
  Neill started to interrupt, then held his peace,
watching Chesney, who was studying the sand map. Either
way, their man was reaching for the wildest kind of
country, but he was hemmed in by the canyons of the
Colorado and the San Juan.
  "We might head him off," Short suggested.
  "In this country?" Hardin said. "We lose his
trail and we've lost him entirely."
  "Maybe not," Neill suggested. "I'm thinking
of that comb."
  "Comb?"
  "Sure . .. the one thing he took out of all those
supplies he had to leave behind so's he could run.
The one thing he chose to take was that fancy comb.
Seems to me that means he's got him a woman
somewhere, and that he figures to see her, chased as he
is, or not."

  Hardin looked at Neill. "Now, that's a good
thought. You're right, Neill."
  Neill was embarrassed, but he was pleased.
Chesney was staring at the map, but now a new thought was
in his mind. Hardin hunched over the map, too.
"If he has a woman cached up here somewhere,
he'll surely go to her. Now, where would a man be
likely to have a woman? One who would treasure a
fancy comb?"
  "That's any woman, Hardin." Neill had
gained courage. "Womenfolks have a liking for
fancy things. Some woman set her heart on that
comb, you can bet, or else he set his heart on
giving it to her."
  "I don't agree," Kimmel said. "No man
in his right mind would leave a woman alone in this
country. Not if he had to leave her for maybe a
week or more."
  "What else could he do?"
  They were thinking now. They knew the problems of a
man with a woman on a lonely ranch. They understood
his problem, but with them it was different-they had each
other. If one of them had to leave the ranch there was
always a neighbor to stop by and see that all went
well. They were together even when alone, for they shared their
dangers, their emergencies. But what of this man?
Who was there in the country ahead who might stand by in
case of need?
  Reluctantly each one of them began to harbor the
thought that if this man was alone he was no ordinary
man; and if he left his woman alone, she was no
ordinary woman, either.
  "When we find him," Hardin suggested, "he may
not be alone. Maybe he's leading us right into an
ambush. Maybe that's why he ain't worried."
  Short looked up at Hardin, his face revealing
his shock. The same thought was suddenly in the minds of
all. They had started out to hang a man-suppose
all of them were killed in the process? Neill
felt a queer coldness in his belly at the thought of
his wife back there alone on the ranch. What had
he gotten himself into, anyway?

  After a while Chesney spoke. "Boys,
we've got to look at it this way. We've got
to have law in this country. We've got to serve
notice that we take care of our own. If we
don't, there ain't no one of us going to last out the
year."
  NeilPs mind had slipped away from the chase,
seeking refuge in a dream of what might be, when
he knew he could not escape what was. He was
thinking of those wagonloads of gold. Why, with his
share he could build a fine house, buy fine
furniture. They could have sugar in the house, and
tea. Emma felt the need for tea-tea was
elegant, to her way of thinking. Out here a body had
mighty little that was nice, let alone elegant; and
Emma was forever talking of how her Boston
ancestors had done things.
  "I wonder who he is-the Key-Lock man?"
Neill said.
  "It don't make a passel of difference,"
Chesney said. "Far's I'm concerned, he's just a
man we're fixin' to hang."

  she CAME UP from the water and stopped at the
edge of the pool to wring out her long blonde hair.
She moved with a natural grace and with no shrinking at
her nakedness. Her body was white, and
unbelievably lovely in the cool morning air.
  Never had she known such stillness. Even the
waterfall seemed only to rustle faintly as it
dropped into the pool and lost itself in widening
ripples.
  It was music she missed most of all, but music
of the kind she wanted to hear was gone from her life.
She had left all that behind in that other world that seemed
so far away, almost as if it were on a distant star.
Music was gone, unless she learned to listen as he
did.
  "Listen, Kristina," he had said, "you have only
to listen. There is music on the wind."
  One heard it best on the high plateaus, on
Skeleton Mesa or over by Tall Mountain. The
canyons had music of another kind. And wherever the
winds blew, they smelled faintly of cedar or
sage, but sometimes only of heat.
  All this land, she felt, was haunted
by memories; not memories of her own, for she had
come only lately to this region of stark and lonely
cliffs, nor were they memories of his, for he had
been here only once before. The memories were those of the
long-vanished people who had lived in this place, whose
dwellings lined each almost inaccessible crack in the
canyon wall. She thought of them often, and felt
somehow akin to them. What would he say when she told
him that?
  She had been a silly fool, a wild, silly
fool to go riding off with a man she knew not at all,
into an utter wilderness.

  With a man who had come in out of the night and the storm,
and had merely looked at her across the room and
claimed her for his own.
  "Who are you?" she had asked that night.
  His eyes never wavered from hers. "That is a
foolish question," was his answer. "You have known for two
minutes who I am, and what you are going to do."
  "And what am I going to do?"
  "Ride away with me before the sun rises," he
said, "and be married when we find a minister worthy
of the name."
  He had shouldered past her, so close she could
smell the woodsmoke that clung to his buckskins,
the woodsmoke of cedar, mingled with the smell of pine and
horse.
  He had crossed to the fire and held out his strong
brown hands to the flames, and she had seen Neerland
look at him with a cold, still attention, and she had
been afraid.
  Afraid not for herself but for this stranger, who could not
know Neerland, as she herself had not known him when she
came west to meet him.
  She had crossed the room then, and sat down behind
Neerland's shoulder, telling herself that this was the man she
had come to marry. Yet although her eyes were cast down
toward the flames, her mind followed the movements
of the stranger.
  Behind her someone asked, low-voiced, "Who's that?"
  "Never saw him before. Horse wears a
Key-Lock brand." And then after a moment, "Never
heard of that, either."
  Her eyes lifted her heart from the lonely place
where it had held itself during these past days. Her
heart in her eyes, she looked at the Key-Lock
man, his hands reaching toward the flames.
  He was tall, with powerful shoulders. She was a
girl from a land of strong men, and she knew the
bodies and the movements of men from seeing many at work
or climbing beside her in the mountains. She looked at
him,

  appraising the strength of him. He was not so big as
Neerland, but he would be strong, she knew, very strong.
She noted the way the muscles of his shoulders
bulged the buckskin jacket. He wore a gun,
but so did they all, and a bowie knife. Both
knife scabbard and the gun holster were tied down.
  There were nine men in that room, and three women besides
herself, and she knew the men stared at her, but she was
accustomed to that. She was pure blonde, and taller
than many men. Her body was lithe and strong, for since
childhood she had climbed mountains, skied down the
long mountain slopes in her own nothern land, and
ridden horses in every country of Europe, even with the
fine horsemen of Hungary.
  She knew what she was and who she was, but she
did not know where she was going, nor what was to become of
her. And the life from which she had come was a far cry from this
one into which she was going.
  These people had their pride, a pride of being and of
doing, a pride of having chosen to go west,
to challenge the country, the Indians, and the wilderness.
Her pride was an ancient one, so much a part of her
being that she was not even conscious of it. She was of the
nobility . . . how foolish that sounded here!
  Her father had been a diplomat, a man known and
respected both for his ancient lineage and his own
abilities, a man of importance in all the
capitals of the Continent. And now he was dead, and the
fault lay with her, if fault there was.
  Of course, it was a man. She had met him in
Vienna, and again in Paris, and she had fallen in
love with him. Or she thought she had, which amounted to the
same thing. The trouble was, the man was married, but this
she did not know. He had spoken of her in a
slighting manner and her father heard. A challenge
followed, and her father was killed.
  It was then that she fled Europe, fled all she
knew and loved. There was no more family, although there were

  estates. She had fled . . . but not before she had
gone to see her lover one last time.
  She had gone to him, and she had entered by the door
he often left open. He was standing there at the
sideboard.
  "Kristina!" He was amazed, and turned
slightly toward her, holding a bottle and a
glass. He started to speak again, but she interrupted.
  The night was bitter cold, and she closed the
door behind her. She held her head high and looked
at him across the room.
  "My father had no son to horsewhip you as you
deserve," she said, "and my father was an old man,
whose hand was not steady."
  "Kristina!" he exclaimed again, staring at her.
  "Mine will be steady," she said; and raising the
pistol, she looked coolly down the barrel, and
shot him. She threw the pistol on the floor and
left.
  A friendly fisherman, with whom she had often gone
on the sea as a child, carried her across to the coast of
Denmark. And from Denmark she had sailed
to America.
  And now she was here in this strange place. She was
here at this stage stop where she had come to meet the man
she had agreed to marry. She had first met Oskar
Neerland in the East; he had spoken her
language, guessed what she might have been; and, with
her money gone, she had accepted his proposal.
He must go west first, he said, then she would come to join
him and they would be married.
  The room they were in now was long and low, with a
fireplace at one end. The room had a stuffy
warmth. In here there was a crude bar, and in the two
adjoining rooms were a few beds . . . one room was
for women, one for men. Out back were corrals and a
lean-to stable.
  She had turned her eyes away suddenly from the
back of the Key-Lock man, and Neerland was watching
her. She had seen that same look in his eyes that
afternoon, shortly after her arrival. She had seen that
expression

  when he battered his horse with a gauntleted fist,
striking it cruelly while he gripped the bit
tight in his hand.
  He looked at her, then looked away, his eyes
going to the stranger who now turned and walked to the bar.
For an instant she had believed Neerland would speak
to him.
  "So you like his looks, do you?" Neerland said with a
sneer. "He's nothing. Just a drifter, a saddle
tramp."
  She kept silent, and her silence angered him.
  "When I get you out to my place I'll knock
some of that fancy feeling out of you," he said, "and
take pleasure in it."
  "I may not go."
  He laughed. "You'll go, all right. You came
here to marry me, and there's nobody to stand between us. Not
even if they wanted to ... nobody."
  She looked at him directly with her wide
blue eyes, and she said quietly, "I can look
after myself. I need no help."
  "You?" The word was contemptuous.
  She merely continued looking at him, her smooth
face revealing nothing. Then she turned her back
on him and went over to the fire.
  He lunged from the bench where he sat and grasped
her shoulder, spinning her hard around, his hand drawn
back.
  "Leave her alone."
  Neerland's hand held, and slowly lowered. Then he
turned, his eyes holding a hot eagerness. The
Key-Lock man was turning toward him, but Neerland
realized with a shock that it was not he who had spoken, but
the manager of the station.
  He was a slender man, no longer young, with a face
in which only the eyes seemed to live. A shotgun
lay across the top of the bar, and one hand rested on it.
  "You talking to me?"
  "To you. I said leave her alone. No man
mistreats a lady on these premises."

  Neerland shrugged contemptuously. "She won't be
here long. I am taking her with me."
  The station manager's eyes did not leave Neerland
when he spoke to her. "Ma'am, if you don't
want to go, you don't have to. Is he your man?"
  "No."
  "Ask her how she got here," Neerland said.
  "I came to marry him. I did not know he was the
way I saw him today, and a man who beats a horse
would try to beat a woman."
  Neerland turned his eyes on her. "Try?"
  "You would try, I am sure, and then I would
kill you."
  There was silence in the room. Something in the way she
spoke told everyone present that she meant
exactly what she said.
  Though she continued to look at Neerland, her words
were for the man in the buckskin hunting jacket. "I
am a stranger to your country, and I have never known
hardship, but for a man who would love me and be
gentle, I would face anything. You, Mr.
Neerland, are not that man."
  The stranger straightened from the bar and swept off his
hat. "Ma'am," he said quietly, "if you'll
ride with me in the morning, there's a sky pilot-a
minister-about sixty miles west. I should be most
honored."
  Across the room their eyes met and held for a long
moment of silence, and then she said, "I will ride with
you, sir. I will ride beside you in the morning."
  Neerland started to speak, then was silent, and turning
abruptly away, he went outside.
  The station manager returned his shotgun to its
place under the bar. "You've got a good woman there,
mister," he said. "Give her time to know the country."
  Suddenly embarrassed, the Key-Lock man
crossed the room to her, and the others turned away,
granting them what little privacy the room allowed.
  "I am going into new land," he said. "I have no
ranch, no home. I am going to a place I know,
a place where a man can build."

  "All right."
  "You have your things with you?"
  "Yes." She gestured to the pile in the corner.
Surreptitiously the eyes of the women followed her
hand's movement. "It is too much, I am
afraid."
  The Key-Lock man looked at the expensive
valise, the small trunk, the other things. "We will
manage," he said.
  That WAS GOOD advice," he said, as they rode
westward. His eyes were on the trail before them.
"To give you time to know the country."
  He gave her time, and she needed it, for everything was
strange. There was nothing here that in any way
resembled the life she had known, that in any way
reflected what she had been. These stark and lonely
mountains were not like the mountains of her own beloved north
country.
  "Give them time, too," he said, "and they become
a part of you."
  He had bought three extra pack mules for her
things alone, as many as for their whole outfit. But he
had not complained, and he had packed her things with care.
  "You may throw them out if you wish," she had said.
"What they represent is behind me."
  "They are yours," he replied gently. "It is
good to have familiar things with you."
  They were married in a quiet ceremony in a bare
desert town. The minister was a quiet man, and a
sincere one, and he was part of this land, too. And that
night they slept side by side, but not together.
  When they rode on again next morning, she
noticed that again and again he turned to look behind him.
  "You expect someone?" she asked.
  "In this country? But you must always expect someone
or something."
  The long riding tired her but it did not sap her
strength, and after the third day she was no longer even
tired.

  She had known enough of camping to appreciate his
skill, and she came to realize that no move was
wasted, that nothing was left to chance, that all of his
constant awareness was so much a part of him that he no
longer even thought of it.
  On the fourth night he looked across the fire at
her. "Some day there will be a visitor," he said.
  She waited, for she had never been given to unnecessary
words.
  "Neerland," he said.
  With sudden fear, she knew he was right. She had
almost forgotten Neerland. He was not far behind them,
only a few days away, but all her feelings,
all her thoughts, all her own awareness had been
given to this country and this man. And she was coming to know
him.
  "You have not asked where we will go," he said.
  "I go with you."
  He added a few sticks to the small fire. "It
is a place where no one comes, only the Navajos
sometimes."
  "They are Indians?"
  He nodded. "Long ago, perhaps several hundred
years ago, there were other Indians there. In the
cliffs they built houses that are still there. After a
long time they went away, I do not know why."
  "What will you do there?"
  "Run some cattle, when I can afford them.
Build a place of my own-a place for us."
  He talked of this, and of the land toward which they rode.
He talked easily, and well. She, who had known
so many men of education, men adept with words, saw that
he, too, knew their uses.
  He seemed to understand what she was thinking, but he said
nothing of himself; he only said, "Don't misunderstand
the men you meet. Many are uneducated in your way, but
they know much else. They have an education that fits them
for living here. There will be others who may have traveled
widely ... I hunted buffalo with a man who
attended Gottingen University, and I

  soldiered with a graduate of the Sorbonne. Yet
both of them talked "western," using all the easy
phrases, the rough talk of the cow camps."
  Later, when they had left the trail that went west
and were weaving their way north into the wild land of desert
and canyon, she asked, "Do you think he will find
us?"
  "Sooner or later," he answered.
  How long ago had that been? Weeks now, but she
had forgotten time. In this place it seemed a
meaningless thing.
  Now SHE STOOD beside the water and dried herself
on a piece of torn blanket that she used for a
towel, and then she dressed herself, taking her time.
Close beside her was the Winchester he had given her.
  "Can you shoot?" he had asked her.
  "Yes," she had said. Then after a minute she had
added, "Do not be afraid. I shall not shoot until
I see what I am to hit, and when I shoot, I
shall hit what I am shooting at."
  Two days later he had ridden away.
  He had paused at the last. "If anything
happens to me that I cannot return, ride out of here and
ride west. It is a long way, but stay on the
trail until you see the sign for Prescott."
  "All right," she said. And then she lifted her
blue eyes to his. "How long shall I wait?"
  "Two weeks, at least. I could almost crawl it
in that time."
  He had been gone for fifteen days. So time
meant something after all.

  HESNEY DREW UP to study the country.
Behind them lay the gigantic wall of cliffs through which
they had ridden the evening before. To the north the ridge
stretched away as far as the eye could follow, and on
the east of it, where they now were, the rugged country was
dotted with cedar. To the south, beyond more cedar breaks,
lay miles of sand dunes.
  "You suppose he could have doubled back and gone
north along the cliffs?" Short asked.
  "Not unless he knows another way through that wall,"
Hardin replied; "and if he did he left no
tracks. I scouted for sign first thing after
daybreak."
  Neill waited, enjoying the warmth of the morning
sun. He had slept badly, even tired as he
was, for he had too few blankets for the cold
night, and he kept worrying about his wife.
  This was lonesome country. Since daybreak they had
seen nothing that lived except a lone buzzard,
prospecting them for future attention.
  Kimmel drew up beside Neill and dug into his
pocket for his plug tobacco, sized it up, and bit
off a small chew. "Beats me," he said, "what
a man would want to live in this country for.
Especially if he's got a woman."
  "She'll be Navajo," Short speculated.
"He's got him a squaw."
  To the frontier way of thinking, nobody was lower
than a squawman . . . and such men were not to be
trusted. Not that anybody would trust a
back-shooter, anyway.
  Their suspicions had mounted as they rode north.

  They looked narrowly at the hills. It seemed
unlikely that an honest man would hide out so far from
other people.
  "He might be a Mormon," McAlpin
suggested. "Looks like he's ridin' right
into Utah."
  "If he is, we might as well turn ourselves
right around and head for home. We'll be running right
into a war. Anyway, ain't there some Mormon or
other runnin' Lee's Ferry?"
  "Was," Hardin agreed, "but I think he left
the country. Too lonesome for him."
  They waited upon the decision that would be made
by Hardin and Chesney. Finally Hardin spoke.
"Bill, we've got to gamble. We've got
small chance to pick up that man's trail. I
mean, he's like an Indian, and he knows this country.
It might take us days to find it, even if we ever
did. If he headed south into the sand dunes, we've
lost him. There's stretches down there where the sand never
stops moving, and the past couple of days there's been a
wind-not much, but enough to cover any tracks."
  "How do you mean . . . gamble?"
  "We've got to guess where he's headed for, and
light out and run, try to beat him to it."
  "And if we guess wrong?"
  "Then we've lost him. We'll have to go back
home and wait for him."
  "Could be a damn' long wait," Kimmel
replied. "I figure he kept on going
northeast. If he was a Mormon he wouldn't have
come south; he'd have gone north into Mormon country
when he wanted supplies.
  "And if he was a squawman he'd be apt to go
east toward the New Mexican villages and the
Santa Fe country. You take my word for it, that
Key-Lock man lives right around here, right in this
country. Although," he added grimly, "it's a
damned big country!"
  Bill Chesney made up his mind. "We'll
head for the Crossin' of the Fathers. If he ain't there,
or doesn't show up soon, we'll drop back
downstream to Lee's Ferry. I can't see him in this
country, Kim. He's a no-good

  drifter ... a man would have to have sand in his craw
to live around here."
  "If he hadn't any when he got here,"
Neill commented, "he'd get it mighty soon
by living here."
  Chesney led off, circling back to a dim
trail they had seen earlier, a trail passed by when
they had seen no tracks.
  Now their travel was swift. But when they reached the
Crossing on the following day, they found no tracks
there. Scouting upstream and down, they found much
evidence of the high water resulting from a sudden rain
several weeks back, but they found no tracks
made since that time.
  "We've lost him," McAlpin said. "He's
got off, scotfree."
  "Not by a damn' sight!" Chesney said. "He
ain't never goin' to get off!"
  "Well," Hardin said, "that may be so, Bill,
and it may not. One thing I know: if we don't
high-tail it down to Lee's Ferry and get us some
grub we won't live long enough to find him."
  "I'm for that," Short agreed.
  So, though he grumbled, Chesney led the way
south, in a line with the river, but back far enough from it
to avoid its twisting course. Hardin glanced back
at the looming bulk of Navajo Mountain. "From up
there," he said, "a man could see just about all over this
country."
  The KEY-LOCK MAN, who lay flat on a
rock near the crest of Navajo Mountain, trained
his field glasses on the distant riders. One
by one he counted them ... six men. It was the posse,
all right, and they were heading south for Lee's Ferry.
Undoubtedly they would buy supplies there; but how
long could they remain away from their own crops, their
own cattle?
  He dared not watch them any longer. That they had
lost his trail was obvious, and they would have trouble
finding it, but he was overdue back home where
Kristina

  waited for him, and she knew little of this land. He was
a good thirty miles from there, by the way he must
ride.
  He went back down the steep, dangerous trail
to War God Spring and refilled his canteen. Again
he allowed his horse to drink.
  Once off the mountain, he rode southeast along
the plateau. It was good going for the first twelve
miles, until he reached the breaks of Piute
Mountain, and by that time the sun was painting the mountains with
lavish reds and cresting the ridges with gold.
  The big horse was weary, and he himself was as tired
as man could be, but he pushed on through the rough country
until he came to the fork of the trail. This was the way
he had come, and it would be easier, although longer, to push
on south. But he feared to leave tracks that searchers
might find, so he swung again toward the north, and
by moonrise he was skirting Tall Mountain.
  Slowing to a walk, he looked for the turn-off that
would take him along the canyon that cut deep
into Skeleton Mesa. He could not go through-if a
way existed, he had not found it-but must head the
canyon and then double back.
  Thinking of the trail off the mesa near the cliff
houses, he broke into a cold sweat. No doubt
the trail had been a good one hundreds of years before
when the mysterious Indians had used it, but erosion and
slides had left it a chancy thing even by daylight.
  The night was more than half gone when at last he
drew rein at the lip of the cliff trail and felt
the coolness rising from the pools below, and heard the
distant sound of the waterfalls.
  He put a gentle hand on the horse's neck.
"That's home, boy. Right down there. You've got
to be careful now."
  Once, by daylight, he had taken the big horse
up the trail, but never had he attempted to come down
in the darkness. "All right, boy," he said at last,
"just take your time."
  The big horse tugged at the bit; he was
worried yet

  eager. Tentatively, he put a hoof down the
trail, snorted a time or two, and then
delicately, as if walking on thin ice, he
picked his way down the narrow trail. From time to time
a rock rattled off down the cliff and fell among
the rocks below.
  THE NIGHT of the sixteenth day, Kristina rode
her horse down the canyon to its junction with the main
canyon and sat her horse there in the darkness,
watching an occasional bat circling in the sky above,
and listening for some sound.
  He would come. Somehow, deep within her, she knew
she was not deserted. Earlier there had been moments of
doubt, but with the coming of darkness all her fears of being
abandoned left her. If he had not come, it was because
something had happened. Perhaps Neerland had found him.
  She had little doubt now that Neerland would follow
them, for he was a man to whom hate was a driving
force. Hate was as necessary to Neerland as the blood that
flowed in his veins. And somehow she was sure that when he
came he would not come alone.
  She had not been idle during this time, for being idle
had never been her way. The life was new to her, but
some of it was not entirely strange to her. She had
hunted before this, and she had dressed game, so when she
killed a deer she skinned it, dressed it, and cut
some of the meat into strips for smoking. She had never
done this before, but she had seen it done.
  She had moved their things to a place under an
overhang of the cliff, a place masked by willows
and manzanita, and she had carefully made two
beds of slender willow boughs and leaves. And then,
she had moved the beds together, so that they were one bed.
  The dwellers in the cliff houses had thrown their
refuse over the edge and it had piled into a mound.
She had climbed over this, looking at the odds and
ends she

  found there, or the things she pushed out of the earth with a
pointed stick.
  There were fragments of pottery, some of it black and
white, some orange, some red, and mixed with it were
chunks of charcoal or discarded stone flakes chipped
off in making arrowheads. There were bits of worn-out
sandals, and broken knives of stone, and all these
things gave her some idea of the people who had lived in this
place. She wandered, too, through the long-deserted
rooms, trying to visualize the ones to whom this had
been home.
  Oddly enough, she was happy. The thought came to her
suddenly on the fourth day of her being alone. She was
alone, but her man was returning soon, and the
solitude did not depress her. She had lived
much among people, but she had loved the days on the high
mountain slopes, loved the cold, icy
solitudes, loved the dark forests. And just so she was
coming to love this country.
  Now that she looked about her, she realized that much of
her life prepared her for this-skiing, climbing,
riding, swimming . . . but with all these activities
she had always returned to the high, lonely places in
the mountains whenever possible.
  Surprised as she was by the realization of her
happiness, she was equally amused at the thought of what
some of her friends might think if they could see her now.
She, who had moved in court circles, happy and
at home in this lonely canyon, far from the easy,
gracious life she had known.
  She discovered a small patch of level ground which
was grown to grass and brush, but which could easily be
cleared and planted. They would have a vegetable garden
there. It was close beside the small stream, so there would
be ample water. She had always loved gardening, although
until now it had been a thing to do merely for
pleasure; now it would be work that held meaning.
  She found that she could not remain long away from the
pile at the foot of the cliff. When she was a child, a
frequent visitor in her home had been
Christian

  Jurgensen Thomsen, the Danish archaeologist
who had first divided prehistory into the ages of
Stone, Bronze, and Iron. Many times he had
taken her through his museum in Copenhagen, and she had
seen its counterpart in Stockholm as well.
  By family tradition as well as by training and
education, her father had been a diplomat, but his
preference was for study and research, and his home was a
stopping place for most of the scholars of Europe.
Both Boucher de Perthes and William Pengelly
had visited her home, and had talked to her about the
origins of prehistoric
  man.
  Fascinated by these strange ruins here of which she had
previously heard nothing, she collected hundreds
of fragments of pottery, bits of sandals,
arrowheads, and other evidence of the people long gone. But
always in the back of her mind was the growing fear that
something might have happened, that Matt had met
Neerland again, or been killed by Indians, or been
thrown from his horse.
  But on the sixteenth night her doubts had somehow
left her, and she knew he would come. Somewhere out there
in the darkness he rode under these same stars, he
smelled the desert as she was smelling it, he felt
the coolness of the night.
  At last she rode back, unsaddled her
horse, and led him to water; then she picketed him
on the grass nearby.
  Hours later, she woke suddenly, hearing him
nicker. Swiftly she rose from where she lay and
took up the rifle Matt had left with her.
  She listened for the sound of hoofs, and heard them at
last, a walking horse, coming along surely and
steadily. With her rifle in her hands she waited,
her lips dry with excitement, her heart beating
heavily.
  And then she heard him speak. "All right, boy,
we made it. We're home."
  She sank down on her knees, trembling.

  The KEY-LOCK MAN rode up Skeleton
Mesa on a black horse. He rode to a high
point east of a cliff dwelling and due north of
Marsh Pass. Dismounting there, he climbed up the
rocks to a slightly higher spot.
  There was no actual peak here, but the place was
high enough to allow him to look across the canyons and down
the valley toward Castle Butte and the sand dunes.
He had a fair sweep of country before him, and he
sat down with his field glasses and waited.
  It was not yet daylight, but what he hoped to catch
was a drift of smoke or dust, or the glint of
dawning light on metal. Or rather, it was what he
hoped not to catch. He wanted to be left alone.
  He remained right where he was for almost an hour,
while the sun rose behind him and swept the shadows from
the broad land. He saw the Echo Cliffs, many
miles away, turn to gold; he saw the valley
become white and still under the sun, and saw Thief
Rock standing straight and still and dark, as though no sun
could reach it.
  He saw a buzzard ... he saw a band of
wild horses . . . he saw a few quail
nearby. But he saw no riders, nor any sign
of human life. Not even an Indian.
  As he watched he was thinking of Kristina. He
perhaps had been a fool to bring her here, a fool
to marry her. He only knew that from the moment he
saw her he knew she was his woman, that she was born
for him.
  Kristina was better educated than he, and she had
known well a world of which he knew little. She had,
to be sure, climbed mountains in Europe, she had
camped out, she had even roughed it on boats, but she
had no idea what she faced here.

  He was sure he loved her, and in her own way and
her own time, she was coming to love him. But love was not
enough. A marriage is as much a product of
thoughtfulness and consideration as of love, and he was thinking
now of what he must do. The primitive surroundings
he could accept were not right for her. Nor was the life
of the frontier quite what she would prefer, although she had
accepted it and was adapting as if born to it. But he
did not want to see her become toughened by work, by the
sun and wind.
  His thoughts veered. Neerland, he was sure, would come
looking, and Neerland would not come alone. Moreover,
his every instinct warned him that though he had been lucky
with Neerland, he could not depend on luck again. For
Neerland was a dangerous man, a man who knew how
to hate; and he was no coward. ... He might come
at any time.
  He relaxed, waited, and taking up the glasses
once more, he saw again the band of wild horses,
drifting restlessly through the scattered brush toward the
water near Thief Rock. He had seen their
tracks there, and he intended to look them over.
Sometimes there were good horses among them, but the
Navajos and Piutes had weeded them out, taking
most of the good ones.
  After some time he returned the glasses to the case
and rode the horse down into the canyon. He was
eager to be with Kristina, yet strangely
reluctant, too. As yet he knew so little about
her, for she did not talk of herself- at least, she had
not yet.
  He saw the smoke rising from the fire, but it was a
thin smoke . . . that she had learned quickly enough.
Smoke could be either a warning or an invitation, and in
this country where he had many enemies and no friends, the
only kind of an invitation it could be was an invitation
to trouble.
  "Nothing," he said, in reply to her unspoken
question. "I think they have gone back."
  "Will they come again?"
  He considered that, recalling the faces of the men as

  he had seen them when lying close behind the bank of the
arroyo. "Yes . . . one of them, at least."
  He had never known freedom from danger, never
since he was a child, and he had grown accustomed
to watchfulness. It was something that had ingrained itself
deeply. It did not show, but it was there in all his
actions, and he was forever alert.
  She showed him her collection now, and he was
fascinated. "In Europe they study things like this,
and it is beginning to be a science. I knew a man
..." She went on to tell him about Thomsen and the
others and about some of the things they had told her as a child.
  Then she continued: "There's a bit of ground over
there where I thought we might plant some vegetables.
The Indians grew corn, and some kind of melons
or squash, so maybe we can."
  They went down to the patch she spoke of. He
took an axe along and began clearing the ground. The
growth was sparse, just brush and canyon growth, and
by late afternoon they had cleared a good little corner. The
next day he dug it up, and she raked it over and
planted some of the seed-corn, beans, peas, and
pumpkins. By the end of a week, they had cleared and
planted half an acre.
  By this time the supplies he had been forced to abandon
in Freedom were desperately needed, yet he
held back, reluctant to ride away again.
Meanwhile he rode, at least twice a day, to the
lookout points on the hills around.
  SKAR NEERLAND WAS standing on the street when the
posse rode in, and he watched them as they swung
down tiredly from their horses and trooped into the
saloon for a drink.
  Sam took a bottle from the back bar and placed
it out for them. He needed to ask no questions.
  "Lost him," Chesney said. "He just dropped
off the edge of the world."
  "He'll be back," Kimmel said. "That man
needed

  grub. He rode out of here with nothing, nothing but a
woman's comb."
  Neerland had followed them in, and he was leaning on
the bar, not looking at them, but listening. He had
trailed the Key-Lock man this far, and he had
listened to talk of the shooting, and to descriptions of the
man who had killed Johnny.
  "Know where we lost him?" McAlpin said. Short
looked up at the words. "At Mormon Well!"
  Sam was polishing a glass, but his hand froze.
"Mormon Well?"
  "Uh-huh." McAlpin could not hold back the
story. "Led us right to it, then just clean dropped out of
sight."
  "You talk too damn' much," Short growled.
  Sam rested his hands on the bar. "Mormon
Well- that's the key to the Lost Wagons. Why, you
could be rich men! When you goin' back?"
  "Well, now ..." McAlpin put his glass
down. "Seems to me-was
  "You let him get away, then," Neerland
interrupted.
  Their eyes turned to him, a stranger, and their
faces were blank, noncommittal. Except for
Chesney.
  "Not by a damned sight!" he said in an ugly
tone. "I'll follow him to hell, if need be."
  "You've all got outfits that need care and
attention," Neerland suggested. "Me, I'm
footloose."
  "What's that mean?" Chesney demanded.
  "It's cheaper to hire somebody to hunt that killer.
You men could work your ranches, let me do the hunting.
I'll find him. In fact, I know who he is."
  "You know him?"
  "Uh-huh-his name is Matt Keelock.
That's why he uses that brand."
  "We won't need any help," Hardin said.
"We'll find him."
  "My name's Oskar Neerland, and I've come west
hunting a place to light." He waved a hand.
"Seems like a nice town here, and I'm favorable
to taking this chore off your hands. Of course, I'd
want some sort of right."

  "Right?"
  "Well, I don't want to just start hunting a
man, not just off-hand. I'd want the right to hunt him,
like as if I was marshal."
  It was a new idea, and their faces showed it.
Hardin started to speak, then held his peace. Bill
Chesney was saying nothing. The others waited,
looking to Chesney or Hardin for a lead.
  "We've had no trouble here," Hardin said. "I
don't think there's any need for a town marshal."
  Neill had not spoken. He wanted nothing so much
as to get back to his wife and his ranch and stay there.
Right at the moment he did not care if he ever left
it again, and the idea of having the pursuit taken off
their hands was appealing. At the same time, he did not
trust this coldlooking stranger-he did not trust him
at all. And he had a feeling that Hardin felt the
same way.
  "There'd have to be a town meeting," Chesney said
after a moment; "we're just a few." Sam looked
at him in surprise, as did Neill. Hardin was
obviously not at all surprised. "I mean,"
Chesney went on, "there's others to vote besides us."
  "I'll be around." Neerland tossed off his drink
and put the glass down on the bar. "I'm camped
over by the creek."
  He walked out, and the wings of the door fanned themselves
shut. The room remained silent behind him until
Neill said, "I've got to get home. My
wife will be worried."
  "Me, too," Hardin said.
  Chesney straightened up. "Well, why not? Why
not hire this man? We could go back to our places and
let him carry on ... only I want in on the
hanging when we take him. Let this man find him,
then we can all move in and make it official."
  "We don't know him, Bill," Hardin
suggested. "We don't know who or what he is."
  "Aw, hell!" Short said, "we can always call
a town meeting and throw him out. Just because we hire
him, we

  don't have to keep him. Fact is, I don't
think he'd stay on. He just wants the job long enough
to find this man."
  "How do you figure that?"
  "Look at it. He knew who we were talkin'
about, even knew the man's name. I'd guess he
rode in here huntin' him."
  "Then why pay him?" Hardin said. "Come on,
Neill. I'm riding your way."
  Chesney threw a hard look at them as they
started for the door. "You mean you're against it, Hardin?
You're against hirin' this man?"
  Hardin stopped, considered the matter for a long,
slow minute, and then he said quietly, "Yes,
Bill, I am against it. I don't like the man, and
I don't trust him. I say we scotch our own
snakes."
  Deliberately, Chesney turned his back on
them, and after a moment they walked out.
  At the hitch rail Neill tightened his girth.
"I don't know what to make of Bill," he said.
"He's changed."
  "He'll be all right, kid. He's just tired and
sore, like all of us."
  Yet Neill was sure that Hardin was worried.
Chesney was different. He was sour, bitter. He
had always been a hard man, but with a certain tough,
genial humor that was no longer there. Neill had
always respected Bill Chesney, and admired him,
too. But he had always been a little uneasy around
him, watchful for fear he would say or do the wrong
thing. A man had a feeling about Bill Chesney,
a feeling that there was little leeway in him. He was a
man who was utterly sure of his own Tightness . .
. not that he was cocky or assertive, simply that
once he had made a decision he could not conceive of
there being any other way that could be right.
  SKAR NEERLAND, IN his camp by the river,
watched them ride out of town, and smiled after them. It
was not a nice smile.
  He knew the opposition when he saw it, and
knew

  what a mistake they had made. They felt
by riding out they would break up the meeting, put an end
to the whole idea ... at least, the older one would
think that.
  Usually when one man made a move, such a
gathering broke up, and all of these men were tired and
ready to ride home. Neerland, with a quick grasp of the
situation, had rightly judged the man who counted was
Chesney. Hardin was easygoing, and perhaps the brightest
of the lot; but the very fact that he was intelligent would
tend to make him a middle-of-the-roader. Chesney,
on the other hand, was of the stuff that fanatics are
made of. Short and McAlpin-he had learned all
their names before ever returning-would follow Chesney's
lead.
  Kimmel... he was the doubtful one. A solid,
tough man. In a last-ditch fight, Kimmel would
be there, among the fighters. Oskar Neerland decided
to avoid any contact with Kimmel, to sidestep any
issue on which Kimmel might oppose him.
Sometimes the best way of eliminating a fighter was
by simply not providing the chance for him to fight.
Neerland could handle the tough ones when he had to, but
in the meantime it was best to circle away from them,
giving them no grounds for opposition.
  He went over to the fire. His coffee water was
boiling.
  He dumped in the coffee and waited, still thoughtful.
He was going to snare two birds in the same trap.
He was going to wipe out his score with the Key-Lock
man, and he was going to take this town and wrap it up.
There was not much to be had here, but enough to make it
worthwhile, and it would be like taking candy from a baby.
And then he would ride on west with that blonde and a good
big stake to start him out somewhere else. From the hour
when he rode into Freedom he had known what he was
going to do.
  There was no finesse about Oskar Neerland. He had
no involved or complicated plan, for the simple
reason that he was not a complicated man. He was
big, tough, and brutal. . . and completely
devoid of any feeling for the rights of others.

  Now he dropped some cold water in the pot
to settle the grounds, and never gave a thought
to Neill.
  Nor did he consider Kristina, beyond what he
planned to do to her. Had he been able to raise the
spirits of the dead, he might have had good advice from a
certain Austrian military attache, who had also
misunderstood Kristina.

  MATT KEELOCK WAS a man with a lot of
hopes and few illusions. He had a clear and
definite idea of what he wanted from life. At
least, he knew what he wanted first.
  He wanted a ranch with good grass and water, and
he wanted cattle to make money, and horses
simply because he loved them. He was not waiting around
to fall heir to a fortune, nor to marry a rich
wife, nor to steal enough to get by. He knew there was
no easy way, and he was not looking for one. It was his
pride that he walked his own trail, saddled his own
broncs, and fought his own battles. And he earned his
own money.
  That he faced a fight now, a fight that might come
at him from several directions, was a fact he
understood and accepted. If they wanted his kind of
trouble, they could have it. He had measured himself against the
land and against other men, and he stood prepared to give
as good as he got, and a little more.
  Kristina had been unexpected. In the back of
his mind there had been a picture of the woman he
wanted, a woman to walk beside him, not behind him. The
face was indistinct, but the character was not. He knew the
life he planned to lead would not be easy, and he
knew what manner of woman was needed for it. When
he saw Kristina he knew she was the one.
  He had planned the home he would take her to,
this girl of whom he had dreamed, but now that he found
her he had no such home for her. He had only a
rock overhang near a pool of water in a raw,
harsh land.
  Each day he spent here on the mountain was a day of
searching, not only searching the country for the

  approach of enemies, but searching his own mind for a
plan of action.
  A man needed a plan, he needed direction.
If he did not have that, he had nothing. A man, like
a ship at sea, might change course many times in
getting to an eventual destination, but he must always be
going somewhere, not simply drifting.
  Matt Keelock did not plan to remain in
Navajo country. The area he favored was south and
west, in the timbered country of the White Mountains and
west of them. But he had known of a band of wild
horses running in the breaks of the Colorado, and
he wanted these. He had seen them once, and among
them a colt.
  The Navajos or Utes might have captured them
by now, but he did not think so. Even the Indians who
came into this far and lonely land were few. With any
luck, he would ride away from here with some fine
breeding stock.
  Most wild horses weren't of much account, but
among the thousands that ran on the plains and in the
mountains, there were many splendid creatures. Time and
careless breeding would change them, the best would be
captured, the breeding would become less good, and before
many years they would be scrubs. But for the present this was
not so.
  This particular bunch of horses had a particular
origin, however, and a reason for being the stock they
were. And he knew about where to look for them. Tomorrow they
would ride north toward the river, and try to locate
the herd.
  The worst of it was, he desperately needed
supplies. When he had raced away from Freedom
ahead of a hanging posse, he had left behind the
supplies he had ridden so far to get.
  They needed meat, too, and there was a good chance that
they might kill a bighorn or a deer on their
trip tomorrow.
  Kristina waited for him by the pool. "I have fixed
our supper," she said; but neither of them moved. The
sun

  was setting in the red gorge and the walls were like living
flame. They stood there watching the light change,
listening to the quail calling mournfully, and hearing the
replies.
  "I love the stillness," she said. "Somehow it
seems to soak through me, smoothing out all the rough
places, making all my troubles seem as nothing."
  When they ate their supper it was in near silence.
They talked a little of commonplace things, each
alive to the presence of the other.
  Before turning in, he made a last stroll around,
walking to the corral-merely a brush corral with a
rope strung from tree to tree. The buckskin, already
rested, nickered and plucked at his sleeve.
  Their camp was well hidden. For anyone riding
by way of Marsh Pass-and not many did-there was no
reason to turn off and ride up the canyon. The
entrance was wide, but promised nothing, while Marsh
Pass opened ahead and seemed to draw one on.
  He glanced toward the great open-faced cavern that
sheltered the mysterious ruins. The bulge of the cliff
face above them was streaked with dark stains left
by unnumbered ages of rain. The great ruins lay
ghost-like and still, dwarfed by the immensity of the cavern and the
towering cliff above.
  This was a good place, and he would regret leaving
it. There were ghosts here, he felt, but he could not
disturb them, and they seemed to know that his way was their
way also, as if they could sense his love for the silent
land.
  Kristina came quietly and stood beside him in the
stillness.
  "After all you have known, this must seem another world,"
he said.
  "I am glad that it is, Matt, but somehow when
I look out there now it is hard for me to believe I
ever knew any other. My people were a mountain people in their
time, and we take naturally to the wilderness."
  In the morning, by way of a devious trail masked
by

  brush and the fallen rocks below the cliffs, they
rode out of the canyon and headed north. Twice, far
off, Keelock saw antelope. A jack-rabbit
leaped from under his horse's hoofs and sprang away,
and he timed its third jump and got it with a bullet
from his Colt.
  "A man can starve to death eating rabbits," he
commented, "but we'll have this much meat at least."
  Twice he saw the tracks of wild horses,
and studied them with care. Once they followed the
tracks for several miles, but when the horses
drifted down a trail into the deeper canyons, he
let them go.
  "The band I want runs further north," he
said. "We will ride on."
  They were skirting the base of Boot Mesa when
they saw the horses at last. The band had come down
the canyon of Moonlight Creek and out on the
flatland, where they walked slowly along, grazing from
the brush and grass as they moved.
  Several minutes passed before they saw the golden
stallion. He had topped out and was standing motionless
on a knoll, head up, ears pricked.
  They were more than a mile off, but the air was clear
and his glasses brought the horses close. "He's
the color of a gold coin," Matt said, "and there
seems to be a splash of white over the rump. I
think this is the band that I want."
  He turned the glasses to examine the other
horses. There were twenty-five to thirty head, most
of them mares, and several of them had splashes of
white over the shoulders or rump. He could not see
if they were otherwise marked.
  He passed the glasses to Kristina. "Look
at the stallion. I want him, and some of the others.
  "There was a Mormon came into this country a few
years back," he went on, "and he brought some of the
finest horses you've ever seen. His name was Ed
Linnett, and his father came west with the original stock
from Virginia and Kentucky. Then Ed picked up a
fine stallion and some mares from the Nez Perces up
in Idaho."

  "Aren't these wild horses?"
  "You bet they are-wild as they come. Ed came out
on the wrong end of a fight with a grizzly. He was
hunting a colt one of the mares had hidden and he found
it the same time this she grizzly did. He wounded the
bear and it charged him. He killed the bear, but it
killed him, too."
  "He must have been quite a man."
  "He was all of that, and he never weighed over a
hundred and thirty pounds, soaking wet. When that
grizzly tackled that colt of his, he tackled
Ed Linnett. Ed was all torn up by grizzly
teeth and claws, but that bear had nine or ten stab
marks in its hide where Ed got home with his hunting
knife. Ed never did take to anything worrying his
stock."
  They rode along a wash that would intersect the one
followed by the wild horses, going warily so as not
to come suddenly upon the herd. And Matt Keelock was
careful, even now, to check his back trail. Long
ago he had learned the way to survive was to watch
your back trail and keep a gun handy.
  He did not plan to try catching the golden
stallion now. He only wanted to estimate the
limits of its range, to find out its watering holes
and its favorite grazing places. Most of all,
he wanted the horses to become familiar with him,
to get the idea that his presence did not imply
danger.
  Twice, just before sundown, they were within half a
mile or less, but each time they veered off, giving
the stallion ample time to see them, and to know that he was
seen. Head up, nostrils distended, he watched them
as they rode by the last time, only a few hundred
yards off.
  That night they camped in a cove of Hosk*i
Mesa, their fire hidden from observation by the cove and
its brush and boulders.
  During the night they heard the horses pass,
pause in their passing to test the man smell, then
walk on. One horse lingered after the others.
  "Now that one," Matt said in a low voice, "that
one

  might be a horse that's just gone wild. Could be it
remembers the smell of man and of woodsmoke."
  Long after Kristina slept, Matt lay
awake, looking up at the stars and thinking about the
posse. They had been determined men, pursuing him
for what they believed was rightful cause, and they would not
soon give up. He fell asleep wondering what
the next move would be.
  NOBODY IN FREEDOM or the country around
wanted to make an enemy of Bill Chesney. They
respected him for his energy, his honesty and courage,
but were also aware that he was a hard man and an
impatient one. He entered into everything with drive and
purpose, and whatever needed to be done was done without
delay if he had anything to do with it.
  Consequently, when Chesney came into the saloon
the next morning, shortly after opening time, Sam was
wary. Sam had tended bar and operated saloons
long enough to know the smell of trouble, and he had caught
the scent of it the night before.
  "Neerland been around?" Chesney asked.
  "Leave him alone, Bill. He's trouble with a
capital T."
  Chesney threw him a hard look. "He's
trouble for that Key-Lock man."
  "Maybe . . . and maybe for us."
  Chesney ignored this. He had made up his mind
and was not to be disputed. "You don't have to like him. I
ain't seen that he's runnin' for any popularity
contests."
  "You puttin' him up for town marshal?"
  "He wants it like that. If he catches that man
I don't care what he calls himself."
  "I don't like it, Bill."
  Chesney looked at him irritably. "Maybe
it just don't matter what you like! You want to go chase
him yourself?"
  Sam's lips tightened, and abruptly he
turned his back on Chesney. Yet a man had
to make allowances. After

  all, Johnny had been Chesney's friend, and a
friend counted for something in this country.
  Taplinger came in, and after him, George
Benson, and the two of them sat down at a table.
Neither man spent much time around the saloon, and Sam
had a good idea why they had come now. Chesney
turned away from the bar and carried his drink to their
table.
  Taplinger had built a house on the edge of town
and had a few cattle running on the hills
nearby. He talked of building a sawmill, but so
far it had been just talk. George Benson was a
partner in the general store, a selfimportant man
who talked politics and let it be known that he had
held office back east.
  Sam carried their drinks to the table and returned
to the bar to pick up the glass he had been polishing.
Mitchell would be the next one . . . and then they would
start talking about a town marshal. He glanced out the
window and down the narrow, dusty lane that led toward
Hardin's place. Now, why the hell wasn't
Hardin here? If ever the town of Freedom needed his
quiet way and his brains, it was now.
  "Of course, we need a marshal," Taplinger was
saying. "There's too many troublemakers adrift these
days. Look at that man who did the shooting the other
day. Just a no-account drifter."
  "I'm not too positive about that." Benson
took the cigar from his teeth. "Over at the store they
said he ordered a big lot of supplies ... a
big lot."
  Taplinger laughed. "George, you know better
than that. Another minute or two and he'd have been
asking credit. We have had too many of that kind around.
It wouldn't be as if he owned something about the country."
  Joe Mitchell came in and went to their table.
He ordered a beer and leaned his skinny forearms on
the table. "That there man of yours, Chesney. You
reckon he's right for the job?"
  Chesney glanced at him. "He's asked for it.
He sizes up like a tough man in any crowd."

  Sam put a glass on the back bar, and looked
out the window and down the street. Where was Hardin? Or
even Neill. Neill didn't stampede, he would
say that for him, and he had a way of resisting without
making an issue of it.
  John Ware was out of town, over at
Prescott, and John would not stand for this, Sam was
thinking, not for a minute. It was a foolish thing to do
... there had been no trouble here the townspeople
couldn't handle.
  Only occasionally could Sam hear a word, but he
could guess at those he did not hear. Well, he
might make an enemy of Bill Chesney and he
certainly would make one of Neerland, but he was going
to cast his vote against it. The worst of it was, according
to the town laws they had drawn up, only a third
of the property owners need be present to vote on
any issue affecting the town itself, and that meant just
twelve men were needed to appoint a marshal. And with
Taplinger, Chesney, Mitchell, and Benson
to head the list, the others could be found.
  Short and McAlpin came into the saloon then and
went to the bar. Chesney called to them.
  "Later," Short said. He looked over at
Sam. "Give me that bottle."
  Sam pushed the bottle and two glasses over the
bar. He nodded toward the table. "I don't like that
deal. I don't like it a damn' bit."
  Short shrugged. "What the hell? It's no skin
off your nose."
  Taking the bottle, he went with McAlpin
to another table. Sam saw Short drawing a
design upon the tabletop. He held a pencil in his
fingers, and he was making an X. "Now right there," he
was saying, "is Mormon Well. If we ..."
Short's voice lowered and Sam could hear no more.
Nor did he need to hear more. It was the Lost
Wagons again.
  Chesney came over to the table. "Damn it,
Short!" he said. "I want to talk to you, I
want-was
  "I know what you want. You want to make
Neerland

  town marshal and let him go manhunting. All
right, you've got my vote."
  "Mine, too," McAlpin said.
  Chesney turned on his heel and went back
to his own table. Sam had listened and heard. . ..
Where the devil was Hardin?

  Matt KEELOCK MADE his plans with care.
He wanted that golden stallion and he wanted some
of the mares, so he held aloof, letting them become
used to his presence, and he studied their grazing and
watering habits. Within a week he knew the track
of each of the herd. He had killed an antelope
on the first day, a deer on the fourth.
  He and Kristina were never apart. She rode beside
him, hunted beside him. The whiteness left her skin and
it became brown under the wind and the sun. The wilderness
began to give her its awareness; she began to feel that
its stillness was a part of her. Far, far behind her now
were the places in Europe that she had known. She
scarcely thought of them anymore, so demanding and so
exciting was the day-to-day living.
  On the tenth day, their coffee gone, they rode
back to the camp in the canyon near the great ruin.
  For a long time Keelock studied the place before
they approached it. He skirted the cliffs, looking
down into the basin from every aspect, searching for anyone
who might have hidden nearby. Only after some hours
did he descend into the canyon, and then he went
alone.
  They packed their things, and after that was done he left
the pack animals and rode alone to the mouth of the
canyon. Where it opened into Marsh Pass he
dismounted, changed to moccasins, and walked down to the
trail to check on the travel.
  The tracks were few, mostly those of Indian
ponies or wild horses, and he had turned to go
back when he saw a boot print, the mark of a
large, heavy man. Near by were the hoof marks of a
shod horse ... a freshly shod one.

  The traveler had paused there, dismounted, waiting and
no doubt listening. He had then ridden on along
Marsh Pass.
  Keelock had never seen Neerland's tracks, but
he had a feeling these were his. The weight and height
were about right-the man's height estimated by the length of
his stride. When Matt returned to his horse he
walked on rocks, careful to leave no tracks
behind.
  Kristina was standing waiting when he came up the
trail. She came to him quickly.
  "Out there," he gestured, "I saw some tracks.
I think they belong to Oskar Neerland."
  "Will he find us?"
  Keelock shrugged. "Maybe he'll find the
camp. There's too much sign there. But he won't
find our trail out of it, not unless he's a tracker
of ghosts. I fixed the lower part of the trail, made
a blind over the approach ... it looks as if it's
been undisturbed for years. And there's no way
to leave a track on the rock of the trail itself."
  They RODE STEADILY north until they were
back in the domain of the golden stallion, and they
camped that night on Moonlight Creek near the
point of rocks. Those rocks, in a vast jumble,
stretched away to the north, to the San Juan and beyond.
Westward the land was gathering shadows as they built their
fire.
  Taking her arm, Matt pointed to the west where, a
dozen miles away, a vast bulk blocked off their
horizon. "No Man's Mesa," he said. "The
highest part is a good thousand feet above the country
around, and the cliffs are nowhere less than five
hundred feet high.
  "It's all of nine miles long, and from a quarter
of a mile to a mile and a half wide on top. They
call it No Man's Mesa because there's supposed
to be no way to the top. I think there is a way.
If we get separated, you go to the western side.
A bit over two-thirds of the way along

  there's a place I want to try. Stop where the
cliff curves away toward the east. I'll meet
you there."
  The next morning they saw the stallion, saw him
suddenly, and close up.
  They were riding westward, passing Organ Rock,
when the stallion emerged from a draw and scrambled up
the bank. He stopped, head up, nostrils
distended, not fifty yards away. Had they been out
on a flat, or at least on good ground, Matt
might have tried to make a catch right there. A quick
run and a good cast of the rope and he might have him.
On the other hand, the slope was soft sand and the ground
bad for running. His horse might break a leg, and
if he failed to make his catch, all the work leading
up to this would be lost.
  The sheer magnificence of the stallion arrested him.
At close range he was even more splendid than
at a distance. He was the color of a bright gold coin
with a splash of white across the hips, the white
flecked with spots of gold. He had a white
nose and three white anklets. His neck was arched,
his head held proudly.
  He stood, ears up, looking at Matt and
Kristina. His mares, following swiftly, came
up out of the draw and drew up around him.
  For just an instant the tableau held. "Hello,
boy," Matt said. "Want to make friends?"
  The horse tossed his head, and then with a snort,
led the way by a devious path through the rocks and into the
open again, the mares trailing close behind. Of the other
horses following, several were young stallions, but
whether mares or stallions, they were fine stock. The
stallions, Matt noticed, trailed at a
respectful distance.
  As they disappeared into the flatland below, Matt
glanced at Kristina. "What do you think?" he said.
"Is it worth it?"
  "It is," Kristina answered softly, "it really
is! Oh, Matt, isn't he wonderful!"
  Together, they trailed along behind the horses, moving
at a fast walk.
  "Kris," Matt said, "there's a story about some
lost

  wagons in this country, and all the gold they are
supposed to contain. Well, they can have it. All I
want is that stallion and a couple of those mares."
  He drew up suddenly, sharply, swinging his
horse to stop hers from moving further. Her eyes,
already accustomed to looking for trail sign, followed
his.
  In front of them, partly obliterated by the
passage of the wild herd, were the tracks of three
shod horses, and they were fresh tracks.
  "Made last night," he said. "Kris, we've
got to get under cover."
  Wheeling his buckskin, he rode back along the
trail made by the mustangs as they left the draw.
He backtrailed them swiftly, following the
draw, with Kris and the pack mules close behind.
  They followed the trail back, then cut off and
rode westward along the base of Hosk*i Mesa
and into the mouth of Copper Canyon. Turning there,
they looked back, but there was no dust, no evidence
of movement in all the wide country that lay there in
their view.
  "Three men," he said, "on freshly shod
horses."
  "Are they looking for us?"
  He shrugged. "Maybe."
  For a long while they watched the plain, and then,
riding up Copper Canyon, Matt cut off to the
westward. By early afternoon they had made camp in
Cattle Canyon under the towering rim of Piute
Mesa.
  Over a small fire, in a sheltered place
among the rocks and brush, Kristina broiled
venison while he rubbed down their horses and
scouted the country around them.
  "Matt, tell me about the Lost Wagons," she
said when they were ready to eat.
  "All right." But what he said then was,
"Kris, I think one of those men made the same
tracks I saw in Marsh Pass. We've got
to hole up somewhere and wait it out."
  "We haven't much to eat."
  "No . . . can you stick it?"
  She smiled. "Of course, Matt. As long as
you can."
  When they had eaten they put out the fire and drew

  back into a thick nest of rocks to which there was no
easy approach. In a hollow, they picketed their
horses.
  "About Lost Wagons," he said when they had
settled down. "It's an old story. The West
is filled with buried treasure of one kind or
another, and some of it has been found. In any
country where there is danger, as from the Indians, or
where folks have to travel light and fast, they are apt
to bury gold or whatever they treasure. Sometimes the
owners get killed, and sometimes they lose their nerve.
Gold can look almighty nice, but a few
hundred miles of sun-blistered desert full of
Apaches can look mean enough to take the shine off the
gold.
  "There were seventeen men started out of California with
two carts and six mules to each cart, which was
a-plenty. All seventeen had saddle horses, and
all were seasoned, well-armed men. In the carts,
aside from provisions of one sort or another, they
had a lot of gold.
  "How much? Well, it was enough. Nobody rightly
knows now how much it was, because those stories grow
mighty fast. The gold was in bars, and there were several
sacks of nuggets, and of Spanish and French coins.
  "They lost a man near the Colorado.
Mohaves killed him. Somewhere near what is now
Beale Springs another one died. He'd been
poorly, and he caught an arrow in the fight near the
Colorado, but nobody expected him to die.
  "They could see San Francisco peaks off to the
northeast, and were getting set to bed for the night when a
party of Coyotero Apaches closed in on them. It
was a three-day fight, and the whites lost another man
and had a couple wounded, but not bad.
  "That night one of the wounded men died, and nobody
expected him to go, either. By now they were getting
worried. They had some bad country ahead and they
needed every man; but what worried them most was those two
men dying, unexpectedly, like that. There just didn't
seem any way to account for it, and they were getting
superstitious.
  "With just thirteen men left, hampered by the slow

  movements of the carts, they were in trouble, and they
knew it. The other wounded man was well enough to ride,
although he was carrying one arm in a sling. But he was a
scared man, Kris. Two wounded men had died, and
he was scared .. . and he had a right to be.
  "Three good days of travel they had, without
incident, and then that other wounded man died during the
night. One of the party, a Frenchman named
Valadon, was keeping a journal, and when he was
fixing to bury the body he noticed a tiny spot of
blood in one ear. He touched it, and found the end of a
wire, like. Somebody had murdered that wounded man
by pushing a needle-like piece of steel through his brain.
Inside his ear like that, it could have gone unnoticed. So
far as Valadon was concerned, that accounted for the deaths
of the others, too. And it was being done by somebody in the
company."
  "How long ago was this, Matt?"
  "Fifteen-maybe sixteen years ago. That's a
long time, out here. Anyway, Valadon was scared,
and he said as much in that journal. The murderer could be
any one of them, and of course, nobody had to look
for a motive. It was the gold.
  "He told them at the fire that night. He
laid it out before them all, telling them one of them was a
murderer. The next morning, they went on, but by that
time nobody trusted anyone else.
  "Valadon and another man were scouting ahead when
they saw the Coyoteros. They were some distance off, and
there was a large party. He didn't know if they had
been seen, so they slipped away quickly to warn the
others.
  "They decided to take a dim trail that led off
to the northeast, and for the time being they lost the Apaches,
who had probably not seen them, anyway. They also
lost the gold.
  "The trouble began with a sandstorm in which they lost the
trail they had been following. A mule broke a
leg on the rocks, and they had to kill him. They
fought and

  struggled and worked their way on toward the east, and
then they found Mormon Well.
  "It wasn't called that then ... if it had any
name it was some Indian name, but they only knew it was
water, and enough water. But that night one of the men
disappeared. He went out to the edge of camp after some
fuel and it was some time before anybody realized he
hadn't come back.
  "Nobody ever saw him again. They found some
tracks, but the trail just petered out near some
rocks."
  Keelock paused to listen to the night, his ears
sorting the sounds.
  "Eleven men left, and they were lost in a
wilderness of rocks and canyons. They tried
several ways through, but each time they ran into a
dead-end canyon and had to backtrack. With the
wagons, that was a mean job. And then they lost
another mule.
  "Tempers were short, and several times they came
near to fights. There was a youngster with them, fourteen or
fifteen years old. He'd latched onto them before
they left California, wanting to work his way east,
and it was he who found the way through. It was a high,
narrow pass that opened out into desert, but they made it
through to the desert and then turned south along the
mountains, following a dim Indian trail.
  "Nobody knows how far they had gone when the
Coyoteros hit them, but it was a complete
surprise. One man fell in the first fire, and then
they dropped behind rocks and fought back. The
Indians ran off most of their stock, and when the
fight was over there were just four men left, four men and
that youngster.
  "One of the men left alive was Valadon, and that
was a fortunate thing, because he had kept the account of the
trip. After the big fight there was almost another one
among themselves, for Trim Newhall, one of the men,
wanted to kill that youngster, the one they called
Muley. It was all the others could do to stop him."
  "But why, Matt?"

  "Because when the fight with the Indians started the kid
dug out and hid ... he never helped one little bit."
  "But he was just a boy!"
  "In this country boys of that age usually do a
man's work, and if they travel with men, they share
alike in fighting or any other trouble. Valadon
and Camp Foster managed to talk Newhall out of
it, because they needed all the help they could get.
  "With most of their stock gone, they had to abandon the
wagons, so they loaded the gold on the mules and
horses, and trailed them back into the rugged hills.
  "They could not have gone far, for they were in a hurry.
The Indians might return at any moment, and they
were too few to resist an attack. So they hid the
gold, returned to their cache of supplies near the
wagons, and then headed south.
  "Trim Newhall, Camp Foster, a man
named Ben Hollenbeck, and that kid . . . aside
from Valadon they were the only ones left. . . .
Nobody ever called the kid by any name other than
Muley.
  "They had kept enough gold to pay their way, and
to outfit and return for the rest of it, and as you can
imagine, it was a-plenty. Twelve men gone of the
original lot, and gold enough hidden away to make those
who remained rich men. Only there was a joker in the
deck for Muley. Before the others hid the gold they
tied him up and left him behind; then after they'd hidden
it, they returned for him. After all, he'd no share
in it.
  "Yet one among them had murdered at least two,
and perhaps three of the others. Was he among those killed?
Or was he still one of those living?
  "They rode together and they rode hard, and they
switched horses from time to time. It was a brutal
ride, but they got through to Santa Fe. They split
up there, for no one of them trusted the others, but the
following morning Valadon and Foster together went
looking for Trim Newhall. They found him . . .
with a knife thrust in the ribs.
  "They had been planning an immediate return for the

  gold, but Valadon had had enough. He slipped
away, got his gear together, and before sundown had ridden
out of town, en route for Las Vegas and then for
St. Louis. He never returned, and he heard
nothing of the others after that."
  "But surely they went back for the gold?"
"Maybe. Of course, no treasure-hunter
wants to believe they got it, and in this case there is
good reason for not believing it.
  "Actually, but for Valadon's journal nobody
would have known of the lost wagons, for so far as could be
discovered the others were also killed." "All of them?"
  He took his pipe from his pocket and tamped it
full before replying. "All of them. All but
Muley." "Did they ever discover who did it?"
"No."
  "Matt, let's look for it! You know this country.
Maybe we could find it!"
  "Honey, that stallion I'm chasing looks
better to me than that gold, and in the long run,
might be worth more. And don't you get started on that.
Too many have died looking for that gold." "Wasn't
it buried near here?"
  He listened into the night before replying. It was a
way he had, and she did not hurry him. She also
noticed that he watched the horses continually,
observing their every reaction, for they might hear something
approaching before he did.
  "Gay Cooley hunted for that gold and never found
it and he knew more about it than anyone. When
Valadon died, the journal fell into the hands of his
nephew, who came hunting it. Gay went with him."
"They couldn't find it?"
  "They found a bunch of Piutes. A war party
came down the Dirty Devil and crossed the
Colorado at the Crossing of the Fathers. They wounded
Valadon's nephew, scratched Gay a couple
of times, and ran off their horses.

  "It took Gay and that nephew a couple of
months to get a decent meal, and by that time the nephew
had had it. He simply took off for the East and
left the journal with Gay. Aside from Gay,
I'm the only man west of the Mississippi who
ever saw that journal."
  He rose and went down through the brush to listen.
She could never understand how he moved through the brush without
a sound, but he did.
  For some time he simply stood there alone,
listening. As he listened, his mind reviewed their
situation.
  The posse from Freedom would not give up. He
had seen their faces, and there were driving men in that
lot. He had them to consider, as well as Neerland and
whoever might be with him, and there was a good chance the two
parties might find common cause. It was a big
country, but not big enough if they really kept looking for
him.
  Deliberately, he had led them to Mormon
Well, hoping their lust for gold would start them
looking for it, but so far as the evidence indicated, the
ruse had not worked.
  He needed that stallion and some of the mares, and he
had a feeling he could get them if time allowed. He
needed time to locate their water holes, to find the
best place to trap the herd. He needed thirty
to forty days without interruption . . . and perhaps longer.
  So what he needed was a delaying action, something
to cause them to believe that he had left the country.
  And he had an idea how it could be done.

  UNTIL NOW HE had deliberately put
aside all thought of the trading post at Tuba
City. It was nearer than any other, much nearer even
than the tiny settlement of Freedom, but to ride
into Tuba City was enough to put the news of his presence
on the grapevine. Within a short time after he
arrived, the news would have reached the farthest corner of
northeastern Arizona.
  And that was exactly what he wanted now.
  "We'll pack up," he told Kris, "and
we'll ride out of the country, heading for
Prescott."
  At her inquiring glance he added, "At least,
we will make it look that way. We'll point for
Prescott, and lay a fair set of tracks
southwest until we can swing around through the sand hills
where we'll leave no trail."
  "You want them to think we've gone?"
  "All we can lose is time."
  "Suppose they are at this Tuba City
place?"
  There was that, of course; and if they were there the showdown
would come there and then. So be it.
  There are tides in the affairs of men, tides of
restlessness and awareness; there are thin threads of thought that
reach out across the distance and, like the threads of a weaver,
are drawn together tight. In his faraway ranch-house
bed, Bill Chesney awoke suddenly, and lay
there, hands clasped behind his head, staring up into the
darkness.
  Neerland was up there, but he'd be damned if he
would leave the job to him. Tomorrow . . . Kimmel was
fancy-free again, and he would get Neill.
  He hesitated over the name. Neill had
irritated him a little with his occasional flippant
remarks, and then

  toward the end there had been his seeming unwillingness
to go along. The hell with him. . . . Still, Neill
was a solid man, a good man.
  His thoughts veered off to the north again. Tuba City
... he would ride north to Tuba City, and if there
was anyone in the Navajo country, it would be known
there. Sooner or later the Key-Lock man would have
to come out for supplies, and Tuba City was the
closest place. What they should have done was ride
back there and just wait.
  Though it was dark, he rolled out of bed and got
into his clothes. He stirred up the fire and lighted
a candle. Then he got his Winchester down and began
to oil it. The firelight flickered on his
hard-drawn features as his hands worked knowingly over
the weapon.
  At this hour, far to the north, where the hills made
a cove of rocks, a campfire flickered.
Oskar Neerland sat beside it, hunched in thought. He
glanced over at the two men. Mitch was asleep, but
the other one was still awake.
  "We'll ride back to Tuba," Neerland said.
"We'll start at sunup."
  "All right." The rider was a lean-faced young man
with bright blue eyes. "We catch them two," he
said, "who gets the woman?"
  Neerland turned his big head slowly around. His
eyes leveled at the other man, cold and steady.
"I do," he said. "I get her, and when I'm through,
you can have her if you like. After I'm through with her, only
one thing matters. She never leaves us alive."
  The younger man shrugged. "Suits me," he said.
He walked away from the fire and stood still, looking
off into the darkness. That needle-rock off to the north,
now . . .
  He glanced back at Neerland, stirring the
fire. He gave no thought to Neerland. The big
man had motives of his own, and they were of no interest
to him. He felt no loyalty, nor need for any.
He had his own plans and his own ideas.
  Neerland stepped out into the darkness. "I'm turning
in. Check the horses, will you, Muley?"

  TUBA CITY WAS an adobe trading post and a
couple of uninhabited hogans that had been built
by nomad Navajos. The place was named for a Hopi
chief who had been guide to the Mormon, Jacob
Hamlin, when he explored the region.
  Matt Keelock slipped the rawhide thong from
the hammer of his six-shooter and freed the Winchester in
its scabbard for easy use, if need be.
  They approached the post from the sand hills to the
north, circled to the west, and studied the situation with
care. Only one tired, crow-bait of an Indian
pony stood at the hitch rail. All was quiet.
It was early morning and a slow smoke lifted from the
chimney of the trading post.
  Inside, it was shadowed and cool. The adobe
walls kept the coolness in and the heat of the sun out.
A tall lanky man with a cowlick of hair over his
forehead sat on the counter plaiting a rawhide
belt. In a chair beside the unused stove, sat a
stocky, muscular man, feet propped up. He
had a hard brown face marked by a deep line, like a
scar, down each cheek.
  "Ain't used to keepin' store," the tall man
commented, "but it sure gives a man a chance to set.
The Navajos have mostly gone back inside to the
high country with their sheep. I ain't seen an
Indian in two weeks."
  The stocky man tamped his pipe with a middle
finger, and looked out the window. He always sat where he
could see outside, for it kept him from the cramped
feeling he got from being bottled up too tight.
He was unused to buildings except in their ruined
state.
  "You goin' back in, Gay?" The lanky man
was glad of company, for he was the gregarious sort
who liked to talk even when he had little to talk about.
  "Uh-huh." Gay Cooley was watching the two
riders he could see through the window. They had come from the
north, but were now approaching from the west; obviously
they had wanted to see what horses might be at the
hitch rail before they came on in. One of the riders

  was a woman, riding sidesaddle. A woman in
this country was an uncommon sight.
  After a few minutes, Gay Cooley struck a
match. When he had inhaled deeply, then exhaled,
he commented, "Visitors, Skin. Better dust off
your manners. There's a lady."
  Startled, the tall man slid from the counter to stare
out the window. "Well, I d'clare! A real,
live lady."
  The riders walked their horses to the rail and the
man dismounted, offering some low-voiced comment to the
woman, who remained in the saddle.
  "Skittish," Gay commented.
  "What's that? What did you say?"
  "Nothing. Talking to myself. Just pay me no
mind."
  Matt Keelock pushed the door wide with the
barrel of his Winchester, then stepped in. The
movement allowed him to have the muzzle of the gun pointed
into the store, at hip level, without it seeming in
any way discourteous to those within.
  Gay Cooley's eyes glinted at the gesture
and he started to speak, then closed his lips on his
pipe. Matt Keelock had looked at him as
though he were a stranger.
  "Place around here for a lady to freshen up? My
wife's ridden a far piece."
  "Sure as shootin'." Skin gestured toward a
door behind the counter. "Boss lives back there, and
he's got it fixed for his own woman. You go right
to it."
  Matt spoke over his shoulder, then walked on
in. To have helped Kris down would mean to turn his
back on the store and the men within, and that he was not
prepared to do. He was not worried much about Gay
Cooley, although he had not seen him for several
years.
  "We'll need supplies." Matt placed a
carefully written list on the counter. "Nearest
place west will be Prescott, won't it?"
  "Uh-huh." Skin glanced at the door, then his
eyes went wide as he saw Kris. Her beauty
brought a change to the plain room.
  "Goin' to Californy?" he asked.

  "No . . . somewhere around Prescott. Maybe
Skull Valley."
  Kris went through the door behind the counter, and Skin
started moving around, picking up items. Matt
Keelock walked over to the stove.
  "How's the trail west of here?" he asked
Cooley.
  The older man glanced up, mildly amused.
"Good enough . . . I've been that way a time or
two."
  Under his breath Gay said, "You the one shot that man
down to Freedom?"
  "Yes."
  "Description sounded like you. The shootin'
didn't."
  "He was facing the bar, half-turned and drew.
My first shot got him back of the left shoulder, the
second in the spine. He'd been standing left side
toward the door, and he drew from his waistband and fired
from under his left arm. It was a fair shooting."
  "Never doubted it."
  Skin was busy piling up packages, measuring.
"They've hired themselves a marshal. Stranger ... a
big, cold-faced man."
  "Neerland?"
  Cooley glanced up sharply. "You know him?"
  "We had words." Matt gestured toward the back
room. "Over her."
  There was a moment of silence, during which Skin
continued his ambling about the store, searching for the various
things. Unfamiliar as he was with the stock-for he had
been asked to care for it only while the trader was
over in Prescott on business-he was slow, but
Matt was in no hurry, now that he had found
Cooley.
  "Three men back there," he said. "Do you know
them?"
  Gay Cooley hesitated, then replied, "No
. . . don't think I do. One of them might be
Neerland, as you call him."
  "There will be others. I led that posse to Mormon
Well."
  "Heard so." Cooley lowered his feet to the
floor. "Do

  "em no good. I've known where it was for years, and
it never did me any good." He glanced up at
Matt Keelock. "You huntin" the Lost
Wagons yourself?"
  "Me? Hell, no! Only kind of gold I
want is on four hoofs ... a stallion."
  "Seen him a time or two," Cooley said.
"That's a lot of horse, man."
  "Anybody should ask you, I'm riding out for
Prescott and Skull Valley. I'm going
to locate over there."
  "Good country."
  Gay Cooley was not a man either to comment or to ask
questions, but he was well aware that Keelock would not be
going to Prescott. Keelock was about horses the
way he was about that Lost Wagon treasure.
  Kris came back into the room, and Cooley
stared. God! he thought. What a woman!
  Matt Keelock picked up his sacked
supplies and carried them outside to his pack
animals. As he packed up, he watched the
trail. He would be uneasy until he got clear
away and into the hills again.
  Gay Cooley and Skin went to the door, watching
him.
  As he drew the last hitch tight, Kris came
from the door and he helped her into the saddle.
  "You get over around Skull Valley," he
said, "you boys look me up. You'll be most
welcome."
  "Somebody comin'," Cooley remarked. "Two
riders."
  Kris spoke urgently. "Matt!"
  "It's all right." They were only a couple of
hundred yards off, coming in from the west, which could mean the
south and, possibly, Freedom. They were riding
easily, and seemed unworried about anything. Almost
without movement, Matt shifted his position just enough
to keep Kris out of the line of fire.
  The men were coming on, trotting their horses now as
they drew near. Keelock made a show of tightening
the cinch on his horse, keeping the animal between himself
and them.
  They rode up, glancing sharply at him. He
knew them both, for he had seen them from the dry wash
. . . they

  were from the posse that had trailed him after the shooting
in Freedom.
  Short turned his horse to the hitch rail and got
down. He looked toward the door and saw Gay
Cooley step aside. Something in Cooley's
manner made Short turn his head sharp around. And
in that instant, his instinct warned him-this was the man.
  He stood flat-footed, feet slightly apart,
looking over his shoulder. It was an awkward position
from which to start a draw, for he must turn completely
around in order to bring his gun to bear on the target.
And he could not see McAlpin, who was behind him and
to his left.
  Keelock's shift of position had both men under
his gun. McAlpin, all unaware, had stopped
to loosen his cinch, and Short was sweating.
  "That's what I like," he said abruptly. "A
man who's so damn' careful of his horse!"
  "Now what's eatin' you?" McAlpin's tone
showed his astonishment. "I-was
  Then his eyes registered on Matt Keelock and
he was still, for the readiness in the man was obvious.
  "You boys better unbuckle," Keelock
suggested mildly. "This here's a mighty peaceful
place, and we'd hate to get it all over with
blood. You boys just let those belts fall."
  He was holding the Winchester, and the range was
perfect. At that distance, there was no chance at all of
his missing, and they both knew it.
  "Now, see here!" McAlpin began. "I-was
  "Shut up," Short said, "and drop your belt!"
  Both gun belts fell, and then Keelock
gestured to Skin. "You there, storekeeper, move in
and snake those guns away from there, and don't get
lined up between us. I might mistake your intentions."
  When the gun belts were out of the way, Keelock
came out from behind his horse. "Now you boys back up
and sit down. I'm going to read you from the Book."
  Briefly, concisely, he told them of the gun
battle forced on him by Johnny Webb; and when he
had finished, he

  added, "I don't blame you boys for hunting me
the first time because you didn't know no better. Now you
do."
  "What's that mean?" Short demanded
belligerently.
  "It means that if I ever catch you on my trail
again I'm going to take it as unfrly."
  "We ain't huntin' you," McAlpin protested.
"We figured to have a look for the Lost Wagons."
  "That's your privilege. Only keep this in
mind: If I catch you on my back trail, no
matter what you're hunting, I'll stake each of you
to six feet of northern Arizona that nobody will ever
take away from you."
  Deliberately, he turned his back and walked
to his horse. He stepped into the saddle, then
turned his horse. Neither man had moved.
  But it was not in Short to keep still. "We don't
give a damn what you do. If Bill Chesney
doesn't get you, Neerlandwill."
  Matt Keelock ignored the remark and started
off, following Kris. He glanced back once.
Neither man moved from his seat until they were crossing
the low hill, and then there was no hurry in them.
  "They were afraid of you," Kristina said.
  "No, Kris, they weren't afraid. Only I
had them dead to rights, and only a damned fool would
gamble at such a time. Under other conditions, and if they
wanted me bad enough, they'd not hesitate."
  "That took nerve."
  "A man does what he has to."
  They rode steadily westward. Keelock studied
his back trail from time to time, but there was no dust, no
indication that they might be followed.
  "You knew that man back there."
  "Gay Cooley? Yes, I've known him for quite
a while. If anybody ever finds the Lost
Wagons, it will be him."
  "Nobody can be sure about a thing like that. It could be
anybody. It could be found by accident." Then her
mood changed. She looked back quickly, suddenly
worried. "Matt, did they believe us? Will they
believe we left the country?"

  "We'll hope so. We'll just have to hope so. And
in the meanwhile, we're going back after those
horses."
  "But if you get the horses, won't you go
to Prescott? Won't they find you then?"
  "Maybe. I'm figuring they'll look there, they
won't find us, and they'll give up on that part of the
country."
  He glanced toward their shadows, estimating the time.
There was a stretch of blown sand ahead, and he wanted
to reach it at nightfall; for that sand would hold no
tracks that could be identified, and if it was dark enough
there would be no eye to see when they turned off.
  In the west the sky was ablaze with the sunset glow.
Over there lay the Painted Desert and the Canyon
of the Colorado, north lay Echo Cliffs, where the
trail lay. But they would not take that known trail;
theirs would be an ancient Indian trail, old before
time began, a trail that led northward toward the
Crossing of the Fathers, but a trail no longer used.
  Such trails he had always known, and such were the
trails he loved the best.

  From THE RIM near War God Spring, Matt
Keelock studied the vast broken land to the south.
Using the field glasses, he ignored no patch
of shadow, no fold or crack in the land. In the ten
days since leaving the trade store at Tuba City
they had seen no evidence of pursuit, nor had they
seen the tracks of the golden stallion.
  Obviously, something had frightened the mustangs from
their accustomed haunts, but where had they gone? That they
occasionally came here to War God Spring, Matt
knew. There was lush grass, plenty of good water,
and there was the shade of aspens and tall pines.
  All morning he had had the feeling of being
watched, the sense of something happening of which he was
unaware, but he had seen neither smoke nor dust,
nothing to give a reason for his worry. At last he
lowered the glasses and went back to camp.
  Behind him, and many miles off across the country he
had been studying, a small puff of dust appeared,
faded, then grew and maintained a course toward the
northeast.
  At the fire, Kris looked up. "Matt,
I've been thinking. Let's ride back to Organ
Rock where we saw them last."
  "Why there?"
  "That stallion was going somewhere, Matt. I think
he was taking his herd to some particular place, but when
they saw us they veered off. If we go back we
might find some tracks."
  It was good thinking, and he told her so. Animals
were notional, and if they took a notion to go somewhere,
they would usually keep trying until they made it.
  The trouble was, he knew of no direct route,
although

  there might well be one. He disliked going back
toward the south and the proximity of any searchers,
while to the north the country was crossed by the San
Juan River and its deep, winding canyon. War
God Spring was good water, and it was the perfect
hideaway. Getting out of it toward the south would
take him right into the trail through Marsh Pass, the
last place he wanted to be.
  He had come to War God Spring half expecting
to find the stallion there, but the only tracks were old
ones. Only the Navajos knew the place-unless
perhaps, Gay Cooley knew of it... but every hour
increased their danger.
  The coffee tasted good. He nursed a cup in his
hands and looked across the fire at Kris. "How about
it? Have you had enough of this? I mean a girl like you . .
. used to so much."
  She smiled. "Matt, I left nothing behind me
that mattered. Oh, I will admit that once in a
while I think of what all my friends may be doing,
but I've no desire to be back there again. Father said
I was a throwback to the Vikings, that there was wildness
in me."
  She looked around, then her eyes went back
to Matt. "You must believe this. I am happier
than I have ever been before."
  Before daylight the next morning they abandoned the
spring, taking a faint Indian trail across
Rainbow Plateau. They descended to Piute
Creek by a switchback trail.
  Matt was worried, and said as much. "I don't
know this part of the country, Kris. Unless we can find
a way to get down off Piute Mesa, we may have
to turn south."
  When a man had a woman riding with him he asked
for trouble, for his attention was distracted in planning for
her, thinking of her welfare. For himself, it mattered
little. He was accustomed to hardship, accustomed
to thirst, hunger, heat, cold, and trails that made
the hair crawl on the back of his neck. Now he
must hesitate . . . not that Kris would be willing
to receive privileged treatment if she became aware of
it.

  There was a trace of water in the bottom of
Nakia Wash, left over from a recent rain. He
allowed the horses a breather, for the trail was hard,
and might be harder. At this point there was a trail
coming in from the south, a well-marked trail, which must be
one he had heard of that led to ruins farther along the
mesa.
  Leaving the water, he walked the horses for a
short distance, then returned and brushed out their
tracks and sifted dust over the brushing.
  Another trail, a dim one, completely
vanished in places, led them to the rim of the cliff.
Below them lay the gap toward which the wild bunch had
been pointing. Across Nakia Canyon to the north was
No Man's Mesa, lifting its ominous bulk
against the sky.
  Here again they waited while he studied the land below
them. There must be a place below to rest. They had come
at least thirty miles that day, and the animals were
tired.
  Directly across the canyon, and perhaps a thousand
feet lower, was the top of Nakia Mesa. Beyond the
canyon there appeared to be a cove among the
trees, which looked to be a secure place. And there
they would be within a short distance of the trail the wild
horses had followed.
  Usually such bands of wild horses follow a
route they establish over a wide sweep of
country, a route that may make a circle of forty
or fifty miles, but that constantly returns
to grass and water.
  The stars were out when they reached the cove. When
Matt reached up to help Kris from the saddle she
almost fell into his arms.
  "I am sorry," he said, and he held her in his
arms for a moment. "Truly sorry."
  "For better or worse, Matt. . .
remember? I asked for this. I bought it with my eyes
wide open." She drew back her head to look at
him. "But I am tired!"
  He left her with the horses and went off into the
night, but he was back almost at once. He led them
through the

  brush and up a steep trail to a small bench
among the rocks and trees above the cove.
  With a fire going in a corner of the rocks, under a
shelving ledge, Kris prepared a meal. While she
worked by the fire, Matt cleaned and oiled his
Winchester, then his six-gun. Then he went to his
pack for his spare Colt, and cleaned it.
  When they sat down to eat, Kris said, "Do you
think they'll find us, Matt?"
  "They will."
  "What will we do?"
  "When the waiting is over, we will do what we can."
  Shortly before dawn he woke suddenly, and his
eyes went at once to the horses. They were standing,
heads up, listening.
  At first he heard nothing; then came a rustle of
far-off movement. The sound grew louder and he heard
horses, many horses, passing in the night.
  At daybreak, while Kris prepared breakfast,
he went to the canyon and found tracks-thirty or
forty unshod horses, among them the tracks of the
golden stallion. They seemed to have gone north, up
Nakia Canyon.
  They ate swiftly, then saddled up and rode out
on the trail of the wild bunch.olll CHESNEY
WAS irritable. He glared at Neill. "Sometimes
I think you don't care whether we find that
Key-Lock man or not."
  The hard riding of the past few weeks had put an
edge to Neill's temper, too, and he was growing
up. Too long he had worried about what Bill
Chesney thought, and a man earned respect not
by following in another man's tracks, but by making his
own.
  "I am not riding to kill a man. If he shot
Johnny in the back he deserves hanging, but he
should get a chance to tell his side of it. He
claims it was a fair shooting."
  "Claims?" Chesney's tone was ugly. "What
did you expect him to do-confess?"

  "He had his chance if he wanted to kill. He
could have had one or more of us and gotten off down that
wash. And when it comes to that, Bill, you know as well
as I do that Johnny was a trouble-hunter. He
fancied himself with those guns of his."
  "You tryin' to tell me about Johnny? Why,
you-was
  "Take it easy, Bill." Kimmel spoke with
quiet authority. "You've got no call to ride
Neill."
  Chesney wheeled on Kimmel. "You, too?"
  Neill might be an uncertain quantity, but
Kimmel was not. Whatever else he might be,
Kimmel was definitely a dangerous man
to tangle with in any kind of a fight. Now, through the
heat of Chesney's anger blew the cool wind of
sanity. Kimmel, relaxed, rested on one elbow,
saying nothing more.
  The fire crackled in the night's stillness, and
Neill added fuel to it. Then he commented, "I
came along because I intend to see fair play. We
don't know the circumstances of the killing and we
don't know this man. If you ask me, he shapes
up like somebody to ride the river with, as Sam would
say. It might just be that Johnny tackled too much
man."
  "Hell, nobody was as fast as Johnny,"
Chesney declared but with less heat.
  "Nobody? Not even Jim Courtright, or
Clay Allison? Or Wild Bill?"
  "That Key-Lock man is no Wild Bill."
  "You can't be sure, Bill. If you can read
anything at all from a man's trail, this one is a
curly wolf."
  In the silence that followed this remark, the leaves were
restless, and the flames leaned before a puff of wind.
  "Before this here is over," Kimmel said, "somebody
is sure going to buy chips to make him show his hand."
  "Look at it this way, Bill," Neill said
quietly. "We're starting a new town. Sure,
it isn't much of a place yet, but it can be. You and
me, we'll raise our families there, and we
don't want it to start off with the lynching of an
innocent man."

  Chesney made no reply, but his jaw was set
hard and his face seemed closed to reason.
  Neill got up to gather more fuel, but he paused
for several minutes, hands on hips, and looked up
at the stars. Well, he had asserted himself, at
least. He had said what he had to say, and he felt
better because of it. He wanted friends, of course, but
the friends a man had must accept him on his own terms,
and not because he merely stepped in their tracks.
  Half the trouble in the world, he thought, was
probably caused because right-thinking people kept their mouths
shut instead of speaking up and saying what they
believed.
  Nobody knew what had happened in that saloon
except Johnny and the man they hunted. All
agreed that the Key-Lock man had to go get his gun
from his pack, and that did not argue that he was a
trouble-hunter. It could be that Johnny had tried
to run up a score against the wrong man.
  Some men would naturally back down. Neill himself
had kept his mouth shut more than once in the past few
years. He was a stranger and he did not know the people
or the country, and it was good to wait until you knew
what you were talking about. But Kimmel had stood his
ground against Chesney, and you could bet that the next time
Chesney rode out he would want Kimmel with him.
He had sand, and they all knew it.
  Neill was some distance from the fire when he heard
Chesney grumbling. "... too big for his
britches."
  "You lay off him," Kimmel was saying. "That
boy's solid. You push him and you're goin' to have
to shoot him or get shot."
  "Him?"
  The incredulity in Chesney's voice made
Neill flush with anger and shame.
  "Don't be a damn' fool, Bill. He was
new to the country, so he's walked soft and listened.
Well, he's eaten the dust and tasted the salt, and
from here on he'll make his own tracks."

  When they bedded down for the night, they were just eleven
miles from Neerland and his two men; and the two fires
formed the base corners of a triangle at the point
of which were Kris and Matt Keelock.
  The desert wind that stirred the smoke of their two
fires moved north and, channeled by the canyons,
stirred the smoke of the Keelock fire also. And
only a little farther north, that smoke was smelled by a
golden stallion that tossed his head irritably,
staring uneasily into the wind.
  MATT KEELOCK WOKE from a heavy sleep
with the lemon light of day showing faint across the eastern
sky. The snort of a horse had awakened him and his
eyes went, as always, toward his buckskin, whose ways
he knew well. The animal had his head up,
nostrils distended, and was staring toward the mouth of the
cove.
  "Quiet, boy! Quiet now!" Rifle in hand,
Matt moved to the trees at the edge of the bench.
Moments passed, and he saw nothing, heard no
sound.
  His boots were back at camp, and his shirt. He
hesitated, wanting to go back and get dressed. A
man caught without boots in this country was in trouble.
He was about to turn away when some suggestion of
movement arrested his attention. It was no more than a
shift in a shadow-an outline that had not seemed to be
there before ... or was he imagining things?
  Suddenly Kris was beside him, carrying his boots,
his shirt and gun belt. "Watch that," he said,
indicating the place, and he handed her the rifle.
Then he sat down swiftly and tugged on his
boots. When he stood up she gave back his
rifle.
  "Nothing," she said.
  But there had been something down there. He stared,
looked away, then looked past the spot to put it in
the outer limits of his gaze. Yes, there was something
or somebody down there. He put down his rifle and
calmly got into his shirt.

  All right... so they were here. He had done what
he could to avoid trouble, so if they came to him now
they had to put their bullets on the line. From here on
out, it was pay to play.
  Then suddenly a man appeared in sight, and he was
both young and a complete stranger.
  He wore a battered hat, a cowhide vest,
and a pair of tied-down guns. He carried a
Henry rifle in his hands, and he seemed to be
looking for something-some landmark, some object.
  They stood silent, watching as the man came
nearer to where they stood. He looked at the mesa
opposite, then turned and looked up, straight
toward them. They were back under the trees, fronted
by brush, and there was scarcely a chance that they could be
seen-and in fact the man did not see them.
  "He isn't hunting tracks," Matt
whispered, "so whatever he's looking for, it isn't
us."
  "What else would he be hunting?"
  The Lost Wagons . . .
  But surely not way up here! The Lost Wagons
were south of here a good many miles . . . ten or
fifteen, anyway. Or were they? Something in the
stranger's manner implied knowledge, for he was not looking
about at random. He was searching for some definite thing,
or some particular place.
  If he was looking for the Lost Wagons he should have
been searching for wheels, or for some remnant of the
wagons themselves, for the bolts or the hubs of the
wheels, which were of hardwood and virtually
indestructible in this desert country. But it seemed
obvious that he was looking for some landmark, some sign
on the mountains themselves.
  And then Matt heard another sound, the faintest
whisper of rough material against rock. It came from
behind him. He turned swiftly, dropping to one
knee, Winchester lifted for firing.
  A man stood just inside the rim of brush, hands
lifted. It was Gay Cooley.

  Matt remained where he was, the rifle held
steady. Gay came toward them, keeping his hands
high. Behind him walked his horse, followed by a
pack horse. When he was within twenty yards,
Matt stopped him.
  "Lost something?"
  Gay grinned. "The Lost Wagons. You know
me."
  "I don't take kindly to folks who come up
behind me."
  "Don't blame you. But you'd better take
to me, because I may be the only friend you've got."
  "So?"
  "After you left, Bill Chesney showed up.
Neill and Kimmel were with him. Short and
McAlpin told them about you two, but Chesney
wouldn't buy the Skull Valley story."
  "We tried."
  "Neerland is already up here with two other men."
  Matt gestured toward the man below them. "That one
of them?"
  Gay Cooley stepped nearer, then leaned forward
and peered. He swore softly. "Matt, that's
Muley. That's the kid who was with the gold wagons."
  Lost to his surroundings, Muley moved along the
foot of the mesa near them. "Look at him!"
Cooley whispered hoarsely. "He knows where he
is! He's found something!"
  It did look that way, for Muley was moving
along more rapidly, his excitement obvious. If
he had not found a sign or landmark, he certainly
believed he had.
  At that moment there was a rattle of hoofs and a
shout. "Muley! Damn it, man! Where you going?"
  The rider was a stocky, barrel-chested stranger,
who must be the other man with Neerland.
  "You better hightail it back. He's sore as
a galled mule, you traipsing off like that. What you
huntin'?"
  "Scoutin' tracks. Thought I seen something."
  "All right, let's go back."
  The newcomer turned his mount and for an instant

  his back was full on Muley. The Winchester
lifted slowly, then halted.
  Gay Cooley glanced over at Matt. "That
gent will never come closer and not get killed," he
said. "OP Muley was ready. You could see it in every
line of him."
  "That could be the man-The one who killed all those
men," Matt said.
  "Muley?" Gay Cooley's tone was not as
incredulous as it might have been. Evidently the thought
had occurred to him, too. "He was only a youngster."
  "How old do you have to be?" Keelock inquired
dryly. "I was fightin' Indians when I was
twelve."
  The two riders turned and rode away, and Gay
Cooley slowly relaxed. Matt could see the
beads of sweat on his forehead.
  "You see what that means? Everybody's been
wrong. Everybody believed it was south of here, and
everybody has looked to the south. You can just bet
Muley saw something he recognized, and whatever it
was told him he was close to the Lost Wagons."
  He looked at Kris, then back at Matt
Keelock. "I'm goin' to be a rich man, you
see that, don't you?"
  "I see you aren't alone. Those boys out there are
huntin' me, but if they get the smell of gold
they'll forget all about me. You find that gold now,
Gay, and you're chewin' on grief."
  Gay Cooley was not listening. "Matt, look
at it this way. That Muley boy, they left him
tied when they went off to hide that gold. So what could
he recognize? Either the place where he was tied
up, or something he saw before or after." Cooley
looked around, dazed with the shock of it. "Matt,
I'd make a fancy bet that gold ain't a mile
from us right this minute . . . and maybe closer!"
  Matt was looking in the direction in which the two men
had disappeared. If Muley was truly the boy who
had been with the wagons, he would not want to leave the
area, now that he was so close to the treasure. So
what would he do? Would he lose himself and let them go
on without him? Would he resort to murder again,

  as he seemed to have done before? In any case,
Matt Keelock knew that the noose was slowly
tightening about his own neck.
  There was no place to go from here. To the north lay the
canyon of the San Juan, only a few miles
away. Towering cliffs were all about, and all travel
was channeled by them. To the east lay the valley of the
weird monuments, but miles of open country were all
around them.
  With a woman to think of, there was only one thing
to do-stay where he was, make no tracks, and hope
they would pass him by.
  "I'm goin' down there," Gay Cooley said, and
he was on his feet, rifle in hand.
  But before he could take a step, Matt spoke
up. "I can't let you go, Cooley. You've got
to stay with us."
  In his hand, Matt Keelock held a
six-shooter.

  SHOCKED, KRIS STARED at her husband.
Gay Cooley, his Winchester in his hand, measured the
chances and did not like them. He would have to swing that gun
up and grasp the trigger, cock and fire. No, he
did not like the chances at all.
  "What is this, Matt? You and me ... I
figured we were friends."
  "We are. You never had a friend better than me,
Cooley, but you've the gold fever on you. If you
go down there now they'll see you, or they'll find your
sign, and they'll come hunting. When they do, they'll
find Kris and me. I can't let you go down there,
Gay."
  Cooley relaxed. "Hell, man! You had me
scared. I figured maybe you wanted that gold for
yourself." His eyes probed Matt's. "You sure that
ain't in your mind?"
  "I'm after horses."
  "All right, put that gun away. I'll stand
by until they pull out, or until one of them finds
that gold. If they do, all bets are off."
  "Why, that's right enough, Cooley. You've hunted
that gold long enough to lay claim to it, as far as I'm
concerned. If it comes to that, you can go down there
shootin', and Kris and me will take our chances.
Only let's not buy anything until it's offered
us."
  Gay Cooley sat down in the shade of a tree
and placed his rifle beside him, butt on the ground.
He was too experienced a man to leave room for
misunderstanding.
  He looked at Keelock. "Matt, you
surely forked that gun out of somewhere mighty fast. I
didn't know you could handle a Colt like that."

  Keelock shrugged. "Gay, a man has it, or
he hasn't. I mean, you can practice, you can
better yourself, but if a man has the right coordination
. . . well, it's a comenatural thing, I say."
  "You could put notches on that gun."
  "That's a tinhorn's trick, an' well you know
it."
  Kris sat down, her legs trembling. She had
been shocked and frightened. Now, despite the swift
clearing of the air, she knew trouble was coming, and both
men knew it also. Would there be trouble from Cooley?
Would he resent what had happened?
  They waited while the hours went by. Bees
buzzed under the trees ... it seemed almost peaceful.
From time to time the horses stamped, switched their
tails at flies, or snorted a little. Nobody
spoke, and the morning worked its way into afternoon.
  "Do you think they have gone, Matt?" Kris
asked.
  "No."
  "That Muley ain't gone-not far, anyway."
Cooley spoke with assurance. "Not with all that
gold waiting."
  He leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and
stared at the cliffs. Now, where could that gold be?
Supposing there was little time, and that gold had to be
taken where horses could go, and buried or hidden.
Wild as the country was, and broken up as it was,
there were only a few directions in which a man could
travel.
  Now, if he knew how long they had been gone .
. . Muley surely knew that. They would scarcely
have gone to the towering cliff opposite, the cliff of
Piute Mesa. No, the gold must be behind them, or
to the north or south. And he favored the Nakia
Mesa, right behind them.
  Despite himself, studying the country for signs of
movement, Matt Keelock was thinking in the same
way. He was also thinking about Gay Cooley.
  Somewhere out there were Neerland, Muley, and that other
rider. Somewhere out there, too, were Bill Chesney

  and those with him . . . there'd be five in that lot
now, with Short and McAlpin joined up.
  Nobody spoke of food, though all of them were
hungry. The smoke of a fire might bring down the
very trouble they sought to avoid.
  Gay Cooley had recognized Muley. The
thought came suddenly to Matt, and he scowled.
Cooley noticed the scowl and glanced away, but
Matt turned the idea over in his mind. How could
Cooley have known Muley?
  He must have been one of the original group, or he
had seen Muley in Santa Fe.
  And Matt Keelock, with enemies all about,
realized that here in his own camp there might be another.
Whatever happened, he must not forget about Gay
Cooley.
  "Matt ?"
  He turned and followed Kris's pointing finger.
The horses were there, the wild bunch led by the golden
stallion.
  "Look, Gay." All else was forgotten. "You
can have your gold. That's what I want."
  The wild bunch were moving along a sunlit
trail not fifty yards away. The wind was from them and
toward the watchers, and the horses showed no awareness
of the presence of men as they moved slowly but steadily
along the valley floor. The stallion was
magnificent, but scarcely more so than several of the
mares.
  "By the Lord Harry," Gay Cooley exclaimed
reverently, "I don't blame you!"
  Suddenly tense, he went on, "That there mare .
. . the one with the three white stockings and the scar on the
shoulder . . . now that one's no youngster."
  Matt Keelock shrugged. "She's old, no
doubt about it, but there's plenty of young stuff in that
bunch."
  He was oblivious to everything but the horses; but
Kris, watching Cooley, was struck by the man's
sudden interest. Cooley was not looking at the
stallion at all, but at the old, scarred mare that
followed him.
  "We'll wait," Matt said, "and let them get
a lead on us. I want to trail along and see where
they go."

  BILL CHESNEY, RIDING north, drew rein
when he saw the Indians. There were five of them,
including a squaw and two children. Of the two men, the
younger was known to Chesney as Cheap Jim from his habit
of offering his services "cheap." He was a first-class
rider, and had often worked for Chesney. A hard man
in so many ways, Chesney demanded hard work from
anyone employed by him. On the other hand, his table
provided the best food in the country, and his chuck
wagon never lacked for extras.
  "Jim, you want a trackin' job?" Chesney
asked now.
  The Navajo shook his head. "I ride to Tuba
City." His black eyes went from one to another, then
back to Chesney. "You hunt?"
  "A white man . . . might be a woman with
him."
  Jim hesitated. It was never the Indian way
to offer information. On the other hand, this man was his friend,
and not many white ranchers were eager to employ an
Indian rider.
  "Back there," he gestured toward Piute
Mesa, "I see trail. . . five, six
horses, two riders."
  He explained they had been camped at the old
ruin, and when starting south had seen the dust, and later
had found no trail. Curious, they had scouted
around, picking up the trail farther along and following
it until it went down the cliff into the canyon.
  When the Navajos had gone on, Chesney
expressed his triumph. "There it is, boys!
We've got "em now!"
  Neill looked at him, and started to speak, but
hesitated. There was no need to make an issue of
it now. Wait until they had met the Key-Lock
man and faced him. A man could buy trouble by trying
to cross bridges before reaching them, and many an issue
disappeared before it actually became a matter of
trouble.
  What he had started to ask was whether Chesney
planned to hang the Key-Lock man right in front
of his wife. He had desisted, but now the feeling of
doom was

  on him again. He looked around uneasily. So
far, the Key-Lock man had not chosen to make a
fight of it, but there was a limit to any man's
patience.
  From the rim of the cliff, they saw far below them a
moving dust cloud. Not large, but enough to indicate
several horses.
  "What do you make of it, Neill?" Chesney
asked.
  "Wild horses." Neill had the best
eyesight of the lot. "Quite a bunch of them, and they are
taking it easy."
  Bill Chesney's common sense told him it was
unlikely that a pursued man would ride further
north. The San Juan River cut across the
country and, so far as Chesney knew, there was no
crossing for many miles. No Man's Mesa
split the country in half, but the man they sought should
be right down there somewhere. He could not be far.
  He was just about to give the word to start down the trail
when he saw them.
  Three riders and several pack animals. They
came down off what appeared to be a bench and started
north, following the wild horses, intentionally or
by accident.
  "We've got 'em, boys!" Chesney fought
back his excitement. "There they go!"
  "There's three of them," Neill objected.
"If that's the Key-Lock man and his wife, then
who is the other one?"
  Nobody answered. Chesney had turned his
horse down the trail. Now, by the Lord! Now! he
was saying it over and over as he went down the trail.
  Short, remembering Keelock at Tuba
City, felt a coldness inside him, and a tightness
at the back of his neck. Keelock had told them
what he would do if he found them on his trail again,
and here they were, with him down there.
  "I've got to kill him. Short said the words
softly to himself. I've got to get him before he gets
me. To hell with hanging! I'm goin" to shoot.
  He dropped back alongside McAlpin.
"He meant what he said, Mac. That Key-Lock
man surely meant what he said."

  "What'll we do?"
  "Kill him . . . shoot first and quick."
  "Bill wants to hang him. He's set on
usin' that rope."
  "The hell with him!"
  "What'll we do? What can we do?"
  "He's got a woman with him. He'll want
to talk, to get her out of it. Well, we'll let
Chesney talk. We'll shoot."
  "Wonder where that Neerland is," McAlpin said.
  Short had forgotten him, but it did not seem
to matter now. "He's out of it now. This is
Keelock and us."
  The five men went down the switchback trail in
the prime of the morning. The sun was upon them, warm and
pleasant after the night's chill. Neill rode
third, right behind Kimmel, and he knew he was in
trouble. It was all well and good to make a stand,
to speak your piece and have it listened to; but now, perhaps
within a few minutes, certainly within a few hours,
he would have to make his stand in the face of armed men. And
past friendships would not count now. With Chesney feeling
the way he did, it might become a matter of
shooting between them, and he shrank from that. And that was where his
weakness lay, the weakness of a man who wants to stand for
what is right and just. For Neill would hesitate
to kill, while the fanatics never hesitated.
  But there were just men who had not hesitated. Who was that
vigilante up Montana way? Beidler ...
he had killed, and rightly so, for there had been no
other way. Yet had he ever been asked to shoot
down a friend, or a man he respected?
  Neill glanced at Kimmel. Where would he stand?
He was a tough man, a veteran of several shooting
scrapes, and as many Indian fights. If anyone
among them could restrain Chesney it would be
Kimmel, for he had done it before. He would not
hesitate to kill, but he did not seem to possess
the hatred that Chesney did.
  A stone fell away and rattled long among the
rocks below. They turned another bend of the
switchback and

  faced the way the three riders had traveled, but
they were no longer visible.
  The low-voiced talk between McAlpin and Short
had ceased. Neill felt his mouth becoming dry, as
it always did in tense moments. How far away were
they, he wondered.
  One more switchback and they touched bottom.
Bill Chesney touched a spur to his horse and in
a long lope he led off, riding northward, up the
valley. On their left were the sheer cliffs of
Piute Mesa; on their right, Nakia Canyon,
and beyond it the ominous black bulk of No Man's
Mesa.
  "We've got him!" Chesney was hot with
eagerness. "We've got him now!"
  Neill closed in beside Kimmel. "These cliffs
run to the river?"
  "Almost." Kimmel spoke loudly, over the sound
of rushing hoofs. "Piute swings away to the west and
closes in on the river. It's a death trap
thataway." "How about No Man's Mesa?"
Kimmel pointed with the barrel of his Winchester. "She
heads up about a mile this side of the river. There's
a trail around the end into Copper Canyon!"
  Chesney turned in his saddle. "Damn it, why
can't you shut up? He'll hear that yelling all the
way to the San Juan!"
  The level ground ended, narrowing down a good bit,
and they slowed their horses to a walk and rode single
file. The sun had grown hot and the dark shadows below
the western wall of No Man's called to them of
coolness, but their eyes were ahead, restless with the nearing
danger.
  Between the towering walls where they rode was a space
of nearly three miles, but talus slopes at the
base of the walls narrowed it down, and the cut made
by Nakia Canyon narrowed the area which they must
search.
  Neill felt the sweat trickling down his chest
under his shirt. He wished again that Hardin was here,
Hardin with his cool head and his sense of balance, his
quiet

  words that always seemed to take the sharp edge off
things. Neill was riding alone, and he knew it.
No one in this lot was surely on his side, for
Kimmel was only a doubtful chance. Nobody ever
knew what he thought or believed.
  They were riding to kill a man, and with each step they
drew nearer to their aim ... to kill a man who
might be innocent, a newlywed man who rode with his
bride.
  And who was the third party with them, and where did he
stand?
  Matt KEELOCK DREW rein. The wild
horses were close ahead now. He had first to see
where they were going, for he had no wish to stampede them
over the cliffs into the San Juan. He had never
touched the river at this point, but for most of its
miles it lay between towering walls.
  He felt jumpy inside, but not because of the
horses. He turned in his saddle and looked
back.
  Nothing. . . .
  He glanced at his wife. "You all right,
Kris?"
  She nodded, but behind the stillness of her face he
read worry, for he was coming to know her moods now. A
branch canyon opened on their right, and suddenly,
without a second's hesitation, he turned into it. The
others followed.
  "Now, what was that for?" Cooley asked. "I
thought you wanted those horses?"
  "I've got a hunch."
  Kris merely looked at him, but Cooley
grumbled, "You were right on those horses, Matt.
Why leave them now?"
  Keelock ignored him. He was looking around
quickly for an escape. His sudden move might have
run them into a box canyon, one from which there was no
way out. The canyon seemed to head up on No
Man's itself. He rode slowly, and when the wall
on the south became

  low at one spot, he drew up. "Wait here,"
he said and, turning the buckskin, he went back
down the canyon.
  There were few tracks, and little enough he could do about them
except in a place or two. He did what he
could to obliterate their trail, then rode back and
led the way up the wall.
  "You ain't much better off," Cooley said.
"Now you've got that canyon behind you, and there's
another one south. Only way you can get out of here that
I know of is back across Nakia."
  Where they had stopped there was desert growth and
slabs of broken rock, but no good shelter. They were
on rising ground where the country sloped steeply
back to the abrupt cliffs of No Man's Mesa.
  And then he saw them, and almost at the same moment
the man riding the lead horse turned his head and
glanced up the mountain. He reined in so sharply that his
horse reared, and as one man the others turned their
heads and looked up toward Keelock.
  Kris ... I've got to save Kris.
  "Stay here," he ordered brusquely. Then he
turned his buckskin and rode down the wall to meet
them.

  MATT KEELOCK rode to the combat through a
backslash Jr sunlit morning, sitting lazy in
the saddle, right hand resting on his thigh. He rode
down with his mind empty, his ears hearing only the hoof
falls of his horse and the creak of his saddle leather.
  The buckskin knew. Matt could sense it in every
movement of the horse. The buckskin knew, just as a
good cutting horse knows what is about to happen as it
approaches a herd of cattle. The buckskin was a
good cutting horse, but he was more. He was a horse
with a genuine zest for combat.
  Matt Keelock had not wanted a fight, but they
were bringing it to him, and if the shooting had begun with
Kris beside him she might have been killed. So he
rode to meet them, giving no more thought to Gay
Cooley. He expected no help from him, because this
was not Cooley's fight... it was his, and his alone.
  The distance was narrowing down. He looked at no
man in particular, his eyes holding them all,
to register each movement. Two of the riders held
back and to one side. Now what did that mean? were
they drawing out of it? were they getting out before shooting
started? Or did they plan a flanking movement?
  When no more than a hundred yards off, he drew
up suddenly. On his left were several low, gnarled
cedars that grew up from a ledge of rock perhaps three
feet high. On his right was a cleft in the rock that
dropped away steeply into the canyon that cut down
from No Man's Mesa.
  Loosening his boots in the stirrups, he held
himself still and ready, and moved forward a little farther.

  At fifty yards he suddenly called out,
"All right, hold up there!"
  They stopped, and he said, "I told you that was a
fair shooting. Your trouble-hunting friend jumped me
unarmed, told me to heel myself and come back, and when
I started in the door he drew and shot across his
body and under his arm at me. I returned his fire,
and the shots took him in the side and back."
  "Like hell!" Chesney shouted. "You murdered
him, and you'll hang!" He came on a few
steps, then drew up again. "You never saw the day you
could beat Johnny with a gun!"
  "How about it, amigo?" Matt Keelock said.
"Just you and me. Let's you and me see if I'm
fast enough. The others are out of it."
  Bill Chesney was shocked. He had fought his own
battles, and he was no coward; but in this he had always
thought of the action as a concerted action-of the posse finding
this man, executing him, and making an end of it. Or
of a gun battle in which all of them took part. None
of his thinking had allowed for the chance that suddenly he and this
man might come face to face in a shoot-out- just the
two of them.
  The Key-Lock man was shrewd. He had
placed the burden of the fight squarely on
Chesney, leaving the others out of it. Nor was there
any decent way they could come in if Chesney was
killed.
  "All right, damn you!" Chesney yelled.
"I'll show you for a cheap tinhorn! I'll-was
  Behind Matt somebody shouted, and then a smashing
blow struck him in the chest. At the same instant his
horse reared and he went out of the stirrups and hit the
ground hard.
  With a frantic eagerness to survive, he
scrambled for the crack leading into the canyon. Something
was wrong with one of his legs, and his chest felt numb.
There was blood on the rocks.
  When he reached the crack, he hastily pulled out
a handkerchief and packed it tightly over the hole in
his

  chest. Luckily his shirt was snug, and did much
to hold the handkerchief in place. He was hurt, but
he had no idea how badly.
  In the swift instant of action and reaction when he
heard that shout, he had seen what had happened. The
two men who had pulled off to one side had shot
him. He had seen their rifles come up ... but he
had seen it too late.
  Somebody yelled, "What the hell did you do that
for?"
  "We came to kill him, didn't we? Well,
he's dead," Short answered.
  Neill, furious, stared at Short and
McAlpin. "That was a dirty-was
  He never completed the sentence. From far up the
hill, a rifle was talking. He heard the sharp
whap of a bullet and saw Short go back out of his
saddle; and then another shot and McAlpin's horse
was buck-jumping all over the place.
  They scattered for shelter.
  Kris lowered her rifle, her calm blue eyes
studying the terrain for a target.
  "Ma'am," Cooley said, "you better let me
take you out of here-was
  "Get out," Kris said coldly. "Get away
from me."
  "Now, you see here!" Cooley grabbed at her
bridle rein.
  Her rifle was in her hand and she swung the
barrel, smashing him across the face. He fell
back, lost a stirrup, and struck the ground. As
he started to get up, blood flowing from his smashed
lip, Kris pointed the muzzle of the rifle at
him. Gay Cooley held himself very still. "Look
here, ma'am. I didn't mean-was
  "Get on your horse and get out. I don't
want to see you anywhere around."
  "Those men will kill you. You shot at them. They'll
kill you, sure."
  "Matt's down there," she said, "and I'm going
down. You sat there and let them kill him. You saw
those men. You knew what they were going to do."

  Gay Cooley sat up slowly, putting a hand
to his lip. Then he said, "Ma'am, Matt's
dead. You saw him go, and those men had him under their
guns at short range. You're goin' to need a
man, ma'am. Nobody like you can get out of this
country alone. I tell you, I-was
  She walked her horse around behind him, then
suddenly spurred her mount into the brush. Gay
lunged to his feet, but she was already out of sight.
  He got himself straightened up, and looked
carefully around. Keelock's buckskin had run a
few feet, then stopped. There was no sign of
Keelock's body, nor of any of the other men.
  Keelock's pack horses had dashed after
Kris, but they were scattered out and running. There was not
much chance she would stop for them; and presently they would
be scattered over the country from hell to breakfast.
  Well, he could round them up himself. There must be quite
a lot of grub ... a man could hunt desert
country for weeks on what was aboard those pack
animals.
  He got into the saddle. His lip hurt badly,
and he poured water into his palm and bathed his face
gently. That damn' woman! She'd been so quick .
. . and it was the last thing he had expected. Who
did she think she was, anyway? And what could she
do now, away to hell and gone back in the mountains like
this?
  He glanced down the slope, where Matt's
horse stood fast. Too bad about Keelock ...
a good man . . . but a bullet will take the good as
well as the bad.
  Why couldn't that fool woman see that Matt was out
of it? The dead don't matter.
  Gay Cooley had seen a lot of life and of
death, and on the dead he wasted no time. He and
Keelock had always gotten along all right, only
this had been Keelock's fight, not his. He
kept telling himself that, and knew it was true, but it
shamed him to think of it. But the man was dead, and there was
no use letting all that grub go to waste. Nor the
woman, either.

  He rode his horse away along the hill toward
the south.
  It was past midday, and the afternoon was warm, sunny,
bright. The solitary buzzard had been joined by a
second, and then by a third. A cicada sang in the
brush, a desert wren flipped about among the
rocks. The last echoes of the gunfire had long
since died away. Above the scene, No Man's
Mesa loomed ominous and silent, its western shadow
thinned to a mere line.
  DOWN THE hill Neill slowly gathered himself
together and lifted his head warily. He looked up
to where the shots had come from, but there was nothing in
sight-there was no movement, no sound.
  Suddenly Kimmel was beside him. "Short's
hurt. . . he's in bad shape," Kimmel said.
  Neill turned himself around and sat down. He
removed his hat and ran his fingers back through his
hair. His face was drawn and hard. "We played
hell, Kim. That man was no back-shooter."
  "No."
  Something scrabbled on the gravel slope, and
Chesney appeared. He looked older, and somehow
smaller. He glanced at them, his eyes avoiding
theirs. "You-you boys all right?"
  "Short caught one. Mac's with him."
  Chesney looked up. "What in God's name
got into them? Why did they shoot?"
  "Mac said down to the store at Tuba that the
KeyLock man warned them off him. They figured
they had to get him first."
  "I could have taken him."
  Kimmel looked hard at Chesney. "Bill,
you played in luck. That man would have killed you."
  "Is he dead?"
  "Ain't seen him. But they had him cold."
  "He had sand. I was wrong-I took him for a
coyote." Chesney straightened up. "We've
got to find that

  woman," he said, "and get her out of here. Only
decent thing to do."
  Neill glanced at him. It was late to think of
doing the decent thing now, but Chesney was right. They
must not leave that woman here for Neerland.
  "We've got to call off our dog," he said.
"We've got to stop Neerland."
  Chesney looked blank, then suddenly sounded
irritable. "All right, call him off. The job's
done, anyway." He started for his horse.
"We've got to find that woman and take her out of
here-see she gets to safety."
  "Maybe she won't want to be found,"
Kimmel said. "Or she might find us first."
"What's that mean?" "She was the one that shot
Short." "You're crazy!"
  "It's true." Kimmel looked straight at
Chesney. "Bill, that woman lifted a rifle and
looked right down her sights at Short, and if
Mac hadn't hit the dirt he'd have caught one,
too."
  Chesney led the way down the slope toward the
horses of the others. Twice he glanced over his
shoulder. Then he drew up. "Maybe that
Key-Lock man was just wounded. We'd better find
him."
  "Leave him alone," Kimmel replied
shortly. "If he's alive he'll shoot, and if
he lives through this we'll all have to fort up."
  When they reached McAlpin he was on his feet,
standing over Short. "He'll make it," he said,
"but I'd say he cut it thin. If that bullet had
been a mite further to the right it would have broken his
spine."
  He shifted his rifle. "You boys take care of
him. I'm goin' after the Key-Lock man."
  "Leave him alone," Neill said. "We've
done enough." McAlpin looked around at him. "You
do what you've a mind to. I'm goin' to make
sure that man's dead. Else he'll be huntin'
me . . . and all of us."
  "We've got to get that woman safe to town,"
Chesney objected. "We can't leave her out here."

  McAlpin's anger was mingled with astonishment.
"Damn you, Bill! It was you wanted this man's
scalp more than anybody. Now you're pinchin' off the
fuse. Why, it was that woman that shot Short an'
damn near got me. Look at my horse!"
  A livid wound from a grazing bullet lay across
the gray's shoulder. "I'll take Short's
horse, Bill, and if you're any kind of a man
you'll come with me. You got to finish what you started."
  "Leave it alone, Bill," Neill advised.
  Chesney was torn between quitting a bad job and
carrying on with it because of his obligation to finish what he
had begun. He started to go, then hesitated. He was
sure now-sure ever since the Key-Lock man had
offered to face him in open combat-that he had been
mistaken. He was positive Johnny Webb had
been killed as the Key-Lock man said.
Moreover, there was a woman involved; and he had
nothing but distaste for the way the man had been shot down
while talking it out with Chesney himself. But what
McAlpin said was true. He had been the one who
built the fire and kept it alive.
  "The man's dead, Mac. You saw the way he
fell. After all," he said bitterly, "it was you and
Short who shot him down."
  "Are you callin' me on that?" McAlpin was
bitter. "You didn't see him down to Tuba. He
told us what would happen if we followed him and
by heaven, I believed him then and I do now. If that
man lives, no one of us will ever sleep easy
again."
  Chesney hesitated. Kimmel took his plug
from his shirt pocket, examined it carefully, and bit
off a small corner. "He's right, Bill,"
Kimmel said. "We started it. Like it or not,
we've got to finish it."
  "Count me out," Neill said. "I never liked
it. And I like it less now."
  "You are out." Chesney's anger at Neill had
been growing. He was an upstart. He had no right
to be so damned sure of himself. "You're out of
everything, as far as I am concerned," Chesney said.

  "Of course. That's the way you would be." Neill
reined his horse around. "I'll find her and take
her back to town if she will come. You do what you've a
mind to."
  He turned his back on them and rode away, and
Kimmel looked after him thoughtfully.
  Together, the three men rode to where the buckskin
stood. A bullet had hit the saddle horn and
glanced off. No doubt it was the shock of this that had
made the horse rear. There was blood on the leather
of one stirrup, and on the ground where Keelock had
fallen.
  A thin trail of blood led into the deep crack
that split the rim of the canyon. All three eyed the
crack with distaste. Only a few feet down the
crack took a sharp turn under a shelving ledge.
Beyond that point they could see nothing. If anybody
wanted to find Keelock they would have to go down into that
hole. They all knew it, and not one of them wanted
to do it. Keelock might even have reached the floor
of the canyon.
  Kimmel walked to the rim and peered over. The
canyon was not deep; the floor of it was sand, broken
by ledges of rock or fallen boulders or slabs of
stone.
  He came back to the others. "If he's down
there he's well hidden . . . All right, I'll go
down and have a look."
  Nobody spoke up, and he added, "One man can
watch this hole-you watch it, Mac." He looked
at Chesney. "Bill, you comin', or you goin'
to sit this one out?"
  "Let's go!" Challenged, Chesney led off, and
they rode up the canyon to where the wall was low. Then
they rode down.
  When they reached the spot below the crack they found
blood on the rocks. There was no blood on the
sand, but the Key-Lock man had a way of covering
his trail. In the deep, loose sand there were too many
hoof prints for anything definite to be distinguishable.
But they did find one boot track that looked sharp
enough to be recent.
  Kimmel paused with his hands on his hips. "What
d'you think, Bill?"
  "He's alive. He's out and away." Chesney
was not as

  positive as he sounded, but it was what he
believed most likely. How else could those blood
spots have reached the bottom? "Which way do you want
to go?" he asked.
  Kimmel shrugged. "Makes no difference. Down
canyon, I guess." He considered it. "He'll
want water. I think he'll go down to Nakia
Canyon."
  He started down canyon, then drew up.
"Bill, Mac's right. We started it-we've got
to finish it."
  They rode on, watching for tracks or trail
sign.
  And presently the canyon was empty, and there was
no sound, no movement.

  MATT KEELOCK STRUGGLED against the awful
blackness, fought against it until his eyes opened
slowly ... to more blackness. He lay perfectly
still.
  Where was he? Was he dead? Had he been buried
alive?
  The pain was there, so he must be alive. He tried
to move and found a new source of agony in his
side. He lay still again, eyes wide open. He was
looking up in!complete darkness.
  He lifted a hand. Inches from his face was rock.
He lay upon more rock, and rock pressed in upon his
side. The searching hand reached out to his right...
nothing. So there was space on his right, space up,
out, and down.
  Slowly, his thoughts assembled and sorted themselves out.
He had been shot. He was in the crevice he had
crawled into when he fell. He had passed out there,
but not before he had done something . . . oh, yes, the
blood. He had squeezed blood from his soaked
handkerchief on the rocks below, and then he had
crawled back in here.
  He felt for his six-shooter and found it. Somehow
he had gotten the thong over it before he lost it. His
bowie knife was there, too.
  It was night... he could smell the coolness of the
night air.
  Kris ... He must get to Kris. He had
told her if anything happened to meet him at that
certain place at the base of No Man's
Mesa, only a few miles from here. And he
knew, knew positively, that if she were alive
she would be there . . . alive and free, that is.

  He had to move, he had to get out of here. They
must have searched for him, and if they didn't find him
they would return to this place. That was common sense.
  Had they left somebody behind? Yes, vaguely
he seemed to remember overhearing some talk,
remembered the scrape of a boot on rock not far
above him.
  It was farther to go down than to go up. Besides, he
would need a horse, and his buckskin was somewhere on
top. As carefully as he could, he lowered his hand and
tried to ease the weight of his body off the rock.
Little by little he worked his way-soundlessly, he hoped-out
of the space beneath the shelf where he lay.
  He could see the stars above, the cloudless sky.
He smelled smoke.
  Somehow he had the impression that one or more of their
men had been shot by Kris or Cooley. If so,
a wounded man might be close by and might have a
fire. That would account for the smoke. His hands and arms
were all right. He caught hold of the rocks and
lifted himself, feeling his way with infinite care,
toward the surface. Before thrusting his head over the
top, he listened. Presently he heard a
subdued movement that seemed to be some distance away.
He permitted himself a careful lifting of his head.
  About twenty yards off, was a campfire. He
could see the glow of light above it, and the reflection
on a man's face, but the fire itself was hidden from his
view. He waited, watching . .. and considering.
If he attempted to crawl out, and the man by the fire
turned his head, Keelock would be in full view.
  Carefully, he looked about, searching for the
horses. He had tried to avoid thinking of his
injuries, but his throat was parched and a wetness on his
chest told him) his wound was bleeding again. Something had
happened to his side, perhaps to his hip. It was
stiff, and in crawling only the few feet he had so
far managed, he had to favor it. Quick movement of
any kind was out of the question.
  The others, he thought, could not be far off and they

  would presumably return here, and by daylight they
would examine that crevice thoroughly. They might
try smoking him out, if the wind was right.
  He had no choice, then-he must try to get out
now. He could not risk a shot, for a shot might bring
the others down on him all the faster.
  He held himself there an instant longer, then using
his hands and arms, he lifted himself onto the rock.
Then, favoring his side, he began to ease himself
across the ground.
  He was sweating with fear. At any moment the man
by the fire might choose to turn his head. Matt
Keelock would be in full view for all of thirty
or forty yards, although during the last few feet he
would be in partial shadow.
  The moments dragged with the dragging of his body. A
dozen times he felt sure the man must turn, must
see him or hear him. His rough clothing rasped
lightly against the rocks beneath him, and he could do nothing
to prevent it.
  Now he was halfway. Using his hands and one
knee, he crawled a little farther. A long wedge of
shadow showed itself close by, the shadow of a bush or
tree, and he veered aside to make for it. He was
gasping for breath, and there was a knifing pain in his
chest.
  The bullet had not touched a lung, or it would have
showed in his breathing; and he had not bled as badly as
he would have expected. But he had lost a good bit of
blood, and it had weakened him.
  His hands reached the shadow, then his body. For an
instant he rested, and glanced back. The man was
standing up, stretching. Now, at last, he turned his
head. His face was visible enough for Keelock
to recognize him as one of the men from Tuba City.
He looked in Keelock's direction, then looked
away. He walked around the fire, picking up
sticks and breaking them.
  He must have been looking into the flames,
Keelock thought, and because of that his eyes were almost
useless for the darkness.

  Matt Keelock lifted himself over a rock, and
eased himself through a wall of cedars. Now he was behind the
low parapet he had seen just before being shot. He
crawled along it, intent only upon distance.
  He smelled the horses before he saw them,
gathered in a little copse. He crawled nearer, and
one of the horses snorted. He swore deep within
himself, and then very softly he spoke. "Here, boy!
Here!"
  The horse tugged and the bushes rustled. He
crawled nearer, trying to distinguish the animals. The
next thing he knew a horse was snuffling at him.
He reached up and caught it by the mane and pulled
himself up to a standing position. His hand felt the
bridle, then his exploring fingers searched for the brand.
He was sure this was his horse, by its very manner, but in
that darkness he could see hardly at all, for the trees
made the night's darkness still deeper. He traced out
the brand-it was his own- and then he felt along the
bridle to the bushes and, balancing himself by a grip
on the mane, he untied the knot with one hand.
  By the time he got a grip on the pommel he was
so weak he was afraid he might fall. If he
did, he would never have the strength to get up again. He
hesitated, resting his head against the horse's side.
  He took a fresh grip, put the wrong foot
in the stirrup and lifted himself to the saddle, sitting
down in a sidesaddle position. Clinging to the saddle
he worked his boot loose from the stirrup and swung his
leg across the saddle. Then he spoke very softly to the
buckskin and together they walked away into darkness.
  Matt made no effort to guide the horse, for it
required all his strength just to stay in the saddle, and the
buckskin had of his own accord started downhill.
  He felt faint and sick, and he leaned far
forward, clinging desperately to the pommel. His body
lurched with the movements of the horse, and each lurch
brought a stab of pain. Yet somehow he stayed in the
saddle.

  Her FIRST INSTINCT was to get away. Only when
she had a mile behind her did she think of the pack
animals. She slowed up then and turned in the
saddle. They were scattered out behind her, running
to catch up ... at least, some of them were.
  She waited until four of them had come up to her,
and then started on. They were used to following her
horse, and they managed to stay up with her pretty
well. There were three more back there, but she was not
worried about them. The food and the ammunition, as
well as their essential outfits, were carried on the
four she now had with her. The question was where to go.
  Matt had told her that if they were somehow parted to go
to the head of the canyon that he believed might offer
access to the top of No Man's Mesa. But the men
who had hunted him, as well as Gay Cooley, were
between her and that rendezvous. She would ride around the
mesa.
  Matt had showed her the trail up Copper
Canyon, and she had only to ride around the south end
of No Man's and then go due east to reach that
trail. She stopped, dismounted, and ran a lead line
to the pack mules, then she rode on.
  At sundown she had reached Copper Canyon
trail and was starting north. At this very time Matt still
lay unconscious in his hiding place.
  The night was coming on. A lone star appeared ...
a bat swirled above her head, and somewhere far off, a
coyote called into the empty desert.
  Her rifle was reassuring in her hand, and she
held it ready. She was alone now in a vast and
empty land, and she rode into uncertainty, with no
Matt beside her. The horse alone seemed confident.
He was on a trail and it held to the trail.
  The walls of the canyon rose on either side.
Darkness had closed in, and now it was a relief
to look up at the narrow band of sky, with its stars.
The night was still.

  The tired horse kept on, and the mules followed
reluctantly now. None but a tough mountain horse
such as she rode could have taken the beating this one had.
She herself was exhausted from the long hours in the
saddle.
  She lost all sense of time. Suddenly the horse
lurched, staggered, then lunged upward, scrambling
hard on the lip of the cliff. Then a cool night
breeze was blowing in her face, and they were out of the
canyon.
  She paused once to water the horses, to fill the
canteens they carried, and to prepare some food for
herself. At this place she rested, and for a couple of
hours she slept.
  When dawn was breaking, she rounded the end of No
Man's Mesa and drew up to listen and to study the
sand for tracks. Then she rode on.
  The mesa curved inward, so that her route led her
toward its gigantic wall that lay ahead. Here she
was riding with the wall towering above on her left, and she
was completely in the shadow.
  She went forward with extreme caution, pausing
often to listen. At any time she might come upon Gay
Cooley, or the party who had attacked them, or
Oskar Neerland and those accompanying him. But somewhere
ahead was Matt, if he was still alive.
  The morning air was still. She was quite sure she could not
be seen by anyone unless they were very close, because of the
deep shadow of the wall. From what Matt had told
her, she recalled that it was all of two miles from the
corner ahead to the point at which he believed the mesa
might be climbed. There was a notch in the mesa there
from which a stream occasionally emerged, but the rest of the time
the bed of the stream was dry.
  Nervously, she drew her rifle again, brushed a
wisp of hair back from her face, and started on.
There was no sound but the walking of her horse and the
pack animals following, the twittering of birds,
and the singing of cicadas out in the sunlight.
  Suddenly, she heard a shot. It was far off, but
the sound slapped against the cliffs and went echoing off

  down the wall of rock. Careful to raise no
dust, she rode up to the corner. Below her and half
a mile away, she saw a wildly running
horse, and the saddle was empty.
  Her heart pounding, she started forward, standing in the
stirrups for a better view. She felt almost sure
it was Matt's horse-she would have known him anywhere.
But she kept telling herself that she might be mistaken
... at that distance she could be.
  There was dust down there; and then there were more shots.
She was too far away to get there in time if help was
needed, and there would be nothing she could do. If Matt
could escape at all, he would be escaping to her, coming
to her for help, for food, for ammunition. She went
on steadily along the narrow bench. And then something
made her look back.
  Three riders!
  There had been two men with Oskar Neerland,
Matt believed. Somewhere they had picked up her
trail and they were coming on now behind her. They might have
seen her already, though there was just a possibility they
had not.
  The face of the cliff curved back suddenly, and
there in the notch she saw the deep cut of the beginning
canyon, and a heavy growth on the far side, which was
only a few yards off. Swiftly she herded the
pack mules into the gap and, grasping her rifle,
she dropped to the ground.
  This was where Matt had said he would come; and this was where
she would stay until either he came or she knew beyond
doubt that he was dead.
  Within her there seemed to be a vast emptiness, for every
moment of the long ride she had been hoping against hope
that he would be here, that she would find him waiting for her.
Hurt, perhaps, but here.
  And now he was not here, nor was there any sign of
him.
  It was a good place. Behind her the cliff rose
steeply. In wet weather there was probably a
waterfall at this place; now there was a small
pool of water, five or six feet across, a
dark, cold pool in a natural catch-basin.

  A trail marked by the hoofs of unshod horses
led to this spot, and someone had placed stones to make a
crude parapet, a defense against attack, or
perhaps against the wind. Behind this she knelt on one
knee, waiting. Beside her on the rock, she placed
a row of cartridges.
  Suddenly Neerland came in sight, but a little way
off. Without hesitation, she lifted her rifle and
put a bullet into the earth right in front of him. His
horse leaped and went into a wild fit of bucking.
The two men behind him ducked back out of sight.
  When the horse quieted, Neerland stared toward where
she stood hidden. He was sure enough who it was.
  "It's no use, Kris," he said. "You might
as well come, give up. I won't leave without
you."
  She did not reply.
  "I know you're there. You come out, or we come after
you."
  From down on lower ground, among the maze of
rocks and broken ground, she heard faint shouts, and
then a shot.
  Oskar Neerland took out his tobacco and started
to build a cigarette. "It's no use," he said
again. "They will kill him, if he is not dead already.
And if they do not, I shall. You are alone now, unless
you come to me."
  She realized that he was easing his horse toward
her. The horse seemed to be moving restlessly, but
somehow each move brought him closer.
  She fired again.
  Neerland swung his horse quickly, scattering
gravel as he leaped back to safety. She had
put that bullet within an inch of his skull, the
bullet notching his hat brim, and the hat lay there
upon the ground to prove it.
  She could hear the horse plunging, and she heard
Neerland swear, and regretted what trouble she might
have caused the horse.
  But there was something else ... or had she imagined
it?

  When that gravel scattered, hadn't there been a
sound from below, from down in the gully?
  She looked to right and left. With the coming of night she
could not possibly keep them from closing in on her.
If they kept to the walls, they might even manage
to get behind her.
  The mesa rose up on three sides-behind her and
to her right and left. She did not dare leave this spot
to try to find a way up the cliff, if any way
did exist. She waited, listening.
  Time passed ... an hour . . . two hours .
. . but nothing happened. The warmth of the sun relaxed
her muscles, her lids grew heavy. Several
times she changed position. She was very tired, and her
head nodded. Then she straightened up, and saw that the
distant cliffs were growing brighter with the red glow of the coming
sunset.
  She realized that she would need all her wits when
darkness came. For just a moment she leaned her head
against the trunk of a cedar. Then her eyes closed, and
she slept.
  Over the canyon the buzzards swept in slow,
lazy circles. Under the low branches of the cedars the
pack mules waited, heads hanging. Kris's
horse walked across the open and dipped his muzzle in
the cold, still water of the pool.
  MATT KEELOCK HAD required two hours
to stagger and crawl the mile into the canyon. He had
remembered the soft sand at the canyon's opening
into Nakia, and as his horse raced by it he had
kicked his feet loose and, rifle and canteen in
hand, had taken a fall into that sand.
  Now he was less than a quarter of a mile from the
notch in the canyon wall. He was there when the first
shot sounded, and when he heard Neerland's voice
call out, but he could not distinguish the words. He had
heard the second shot not long after that, and then there was
silence.

  He was dragging one leg, and that pants leg was
stiff with blood. However, he doubted if any
bones had been broken. As for his other wound, although the
bullet had gone clear through him, it seemed that no
serious damage had been done to any bone or
vital organ. He knew he was in bad shape, but
he had the iron endurance of a man who has lived a
hard life in a hard country, and he had a choice
of moving or dying. There was no other alternative.
The heat in the canyon was terrific, but the shadow in
the lee of the mesa was not far off.
  In the packs that Kris would have there was medicine,
there was food . . . what he wanted most
desperately was a good cup of scalding black
coffee. And there was ammunition. He had done little
shooting, and still had about thirty rounds of rifle and
pistol ammunition.
  He managed a hundred yards of fairly easy
going, and pulled and dragged himself up a
sixteen-foot dry waterfall, which luckily was not
straight up, but in a series of three- and
four-foot drops. The canteen kept getting in the
way as he crawled, but if he were pinned down among
the rocks it might mean the difference between life and
death. Food he could do without-he had done it before.
  At the top he lay still for a time, panting and trying
to regain some strength. He permitted himself a gulp
of water, holding it in his mouth and allowing a little at
a time to trickle down his throat.
  He knew they would have guessed where he was by now.
They would have followed the riderless horse for some
distance, would have discovered the trick, and would have come
back, looking for the place where he had dropped off.
They would have found it soon enough, but would hesitate
to advance rapidly up a winding canyon where he
might be lying in wait.
  Long since he had lost all count of time. He
had fallen down again and again, scrambled up, kept
going. Now it was no longer a matter of will, for it had
become an almost mechanical process.
  "Kris . . . Kris, for God's sake,
wait for me!" He

  whispered the words hoarsely. How many times did
he say them?
  She had to be there. It was life or death to him
now. She had to be there, with the food, the medical
supplies. He wanted to live, he wanted
desperately to live.
  He knew they were back there behind him, and they were
good. He had found that out during the day. They were tough
men, and they were out to kill him.
  He moved on-and fell and lay gasping. Why not
just stay right there? What could they do to him that he was not
doing to himself? They can kill you, Matt. The words
came unbidden into his mind. Of course they could
kill him, and they would. He started to get up.
  In the sand beneath him there were horse tracks . . .
tracks of unshod horses . . . wild horses.
How could they have gotten to this place? There must be an
easier route that he had missed. And why had they come
here?
  He pushed himself up, using the rifle, and limped
on, staggering at every step, half falling. He
crawled up through some boulders and, looking beyond, saw
the great split in the wall of No Man's Mesa,
seemingly narrow at the top, wider toward the
bottom, and several hundred feet high. In
another stretch of sand, he found the horse tracks
again.
  There must be water up there . . . that was it. The
water in the pool where Kris would be.
  He fell down again, and when he started to push himself
up, he saw red blood on the sand. The wound had
stopped bleeding some time ago, but now it was open again.
  Behind him he heard a clattering among the rocks
and glanced back, panic-stricken. Something . . .
somebody was coming.

  A BOOT GRATED in the sand, and Kris
woke. She saw the boot, close beside her, and then
another boot, and somebody laughed.
  "Now ain't that funny? No trouble . . . jest
none a-tall! She a-layin' there, fell
to sleep!"
  "Man, that there's a woman! Neerland says after
he's through with her he'll leave her to us. I say
that's mighty nice of him. She's no skinny little
whisper of a woman . . . this one should last!"
  She lay perfectly still, in a half-reclining
position against the parapet of rocks. She had
failed. Utterly and completely failed. She had
been so careful, she had tried to do everything right. She
had found this place and she had arrived in good time. And
they had somehow followed her, and then . . . then she
had fallen asleep.
  How many sleepless hours had there been? How many
nights before that, of too little sleep? How much
bone-weary traveling? She did not really ask these
things of herself, for she sought no excuses. The only
thing now was to find a way out of this.
  Her rifle was not beside her ... they had taken it from
her. Although only two had spoken, she knew there were
three of them. What could she possibly do against them?
  She heard boots strike on stone. Then Oskar
Neerland spoke. "No sign of him. He's dead,
or he would have been here."
  "She ain't."
  Neerland looked down at her, and nudged her with his
boot. "Get up. There is no use pretending."
  She got up quietly, coolly. She made
no protest, no demand to be let alone. She
simply looked from one to the

  other. But she was thinking . . . and she found no
help in Muley's face.
  The other one, the stocky, thickset man-now there
might be a possibility. A moment later, feeling
his eyes on her, she was less sure. He was
certainly a tough man, a killer, but she thought he
was a man of temper rather than one with the cold
brutality of Oskar Neerland or the sadistic
evil of Muley.
  She knew she was in desperate trouble, but she was
thinking clearly. Above all, she must divert them from
any expectation of Matt's arrival, and she must
keep their attention away from the canyon up which he
must come-if he came at all.
  "Where is he?" Neerland asked the question as if he
did not really care.
  "They killed him. Those other men did. He
rode down to meet them, and two of them were off to one
side. They shot him. I think I killed one of
them."
  "You did?" The heavyset man showed his
surprise. "How?"
  "With this." She indicated the rifle. "I would
kill the other one if I could."
  He chuckled, and glanced at Neerland. "We
better watch this one, Oskar."
  "I will watch her. Do not worry, Bob."
  Neerland walked away a few steps, looking
around curiously at the cliffs, and at the brush and
trees. The notch at the back where water fell after
rains was partly screened by trees and undergrowth, and beyond
it a white scar of bared rock could be glimpsed.
He merely glanced that way, then walked back.
  "If he is dead, why did you come back here?"
  "Why?" She seemed astonished. "Why, I mean
to find the body and bury it, of course. When those
others have gone, I will go down and bury him." She
looked Neerland straight in the eyes. "I could not
think of him left for the coyotes or buzzards."
  "Maybe he is dead . . . maybe he is not.
We will wait." Neerland watched her. "You will help
us to wait."

  Her eyes were on the far-off valley; there was one
small area of open flat down there that was clearly
visible. Her eyes were there when the horses came
into view, and the golden stallion was leading.
  Suddenly her heart began to pound. The wild
horses! The faint breeze was from them and toward this
place. If nothing turned them aside they would be
coming here!
  What would happen then? Would they turn aside
first? Or would they rush into this little area, suddenly find
it occupied, and dash away? Would they swirl around in
a panic? Or charge on through?
  "I was just going to fix something to eat," she said
calmly. "Do you mind?"
  "All right."
  She went to the pack horse and began selecting
what she would need. She took her time, wondering how
long it would take for the horses to get here, if they were
coming. They did come to this place, she knew, for she
had seen their tracks, and Matt had told her so.
  The men who had been looking for Matt would be down
there somewhere, she was thinking; all the more reason for the
horses to turn up the canyon.
  She left the few things where they were and went about,
picking up sticks. Nobody offered to help, and she
knew they enjoyed watching her. They were anticipating
. . . but so was she. Down inside the pack for
emergency use was a knife.
  She put the sticks together for a fire, then
returned to the pack, delaying lighting the fire as
long as she could. She put her hand down into the pack
and felt the knife hilt. Her own mount was close
beside her.
  Just then there was a wild shout from down the canyon,
and then a thunder of rushing hoofs. She turned
swiftly, knife in hand.
  She saw the cloud of dust, and suddenly with a burst
of inspiration she grasped the pommel and threw herself
into the saddle.
  Neerland shouted at her, and at that moment the wild
horses rushed into the camp. Neerland wheeled and

  sprang back, stumbling and falling among the
rocks. Muley was out of the way, up in the cedars, but
Bob was right in the line of the charging horses.
  He grabbed wildly for his gun, but another gun
rapped a sharp report and Bob, whirling, fell
under the pounding hoofs.
  Kris, her mount caught in the rush of horses,
was swept along. The wild horses, led by the great
stallion, plunged through the cedars, straight toward the
sheer wall of rock, then swung abruptly around a
boulder and rushed up a narrow track. Kris's
horse, frightened by the stampede, was running all out,
right up the path with the others. He switched back into the
trees and she ducked just in time to go under a low
branch. Suddenly her horse was scrambling over the
rim, and then he was running free. They were atop
No Man's Mesa!
  Taking a tighter grip on the rein, she swung
her horse around.
  Matt was there!
  He was not only with her, but he was astride the
buckskin. Dropping to the ground, she ran to him, and
he almost fell from the saddle into her arms. The front
of his shirt was covered with blood, and he looked
ghastly. "Rifle," he gasped. "Stop them!"
He clung to the buckskin, and taking the rifle from his
hands she ran to the head of the path. She saw no one,
but she fired anyway, fired a warning shot to let
them know what to expect.
  He came to her, walking his horse beside him. He
dropped to one knee, the other leg extended, then
pulled himself to the rocks.
  The wild bunch had scattered away under the
trees. The top of the mesa was covered with pine and
cedar, and other trees with which she was not familiar. There
were open meadows here and there, and from the droppings it was
easy to see the horses came here regularly.
  One horse, with three white stockings and a scarred
hide, had lingered not far away, watching them with
pricked up ears. Nothing stirred below.

  Kris passed the rifle to Matt, then turned
toward the pack animals. All of them, caught in
the stampede, had been swept along the trail.
  Quickly, she built a fire, starting with dry
grass and bits of bark and twigs from the trunks of
nearby trees. When the fire was going she put
water on to boil; then she unbuttoned Matt's
shirt and stripped it off.
  The chest wound was inflamed and looked ugly, but she
bathed it carefully with warm water. The wound on his
hip was less serious, though it was a gash that had cut
to the bone. The leg was black and blue from a heavy
fall, and the wound looked bad. She started to bathe this,
too, but he stopped her.
  "See that plant?" he said. "The one with the
creamcolored flowers? You get some of that, crush it
up, and boil it in the water."
  "What is it?"
  "Cliff rose. It grows all over some of these
mesas. The Hopi wash wounds with it, and it seems
to work."
  She did as he directed, and noticed that to the
westward the great wall of Piute Mesa was bright with
sunset colors. In the valley below the shadows were
reaching out from No Man's Mesa.
  "What will we do?" she asked him later.
  "Keep the fire going, then pull back from it."
A lightning-struck tree some fifty yards away
offered some cover and a good field of fire. "Over
there. You let me sleep until trouble comes, or
until two hours pass. Then wake me up, and
I'll watch, but we've got to keep that fire
going. Nobody can top that cliff without showing themselves
in the light."
  They waited a while, and she reached out for his hand,
and held it tightly.
  "Old Buck," he said suddenly, "he fell in
with the wild bunch and trailed along behind. They were
horses, and they were company, and he may have figured
we had stayed close to them before, so there must be a
reason.
  "I was all in ... I couldn't have made it
another foot.

  You should have seen him when he found me ... like a
playful pup. It was all I could do to get up on
him."
  "Will they try to come up here, Matt?"
  "Kris . . . you watch. I..." His words
trailed off into a mumble, and he was asleep.
  The sun had gone. Far away across the desert land
the sandstone ridges and cliffs still held the sun's
fire, but here on the mesa the light was a dusty
lemon. Under the trees it was shadowed and still. She
went to the mules and loosened their packs, letting them
fall; then she removed the saddles. The grateful
animals rolled in the grass, shook themselves, and
rolled again. Keeping a careful eye on the head of the
trail, she unsaddled the horses and picketed them
on the grass.
  It was very quiet. She carried several armloads
of fuel to the fire and placed it within easy reach.
Around the lightning-blasted tree there was a good bit of
fuel-broken limbs, dried and seasoned, as well
as a good-sized piece of the tree itself that had broken
off and fallen to the ground.
  The horse with the three white stockings showed no
disposition to leave them. This was an old horse, and
some nostalgic memory of campfires and the man
smell kept it close to them. Running with the wild
bunch was probably growing increasingly difficult.
  She checked his rifle, reloading the fired
cartridges, and checked her own. She got his
pistol and reloaded the empty chambers. She was
somewhat frightened of what might come, and yet it was not
really fear. Injured he might be, but this was her
man, and where he was there could be no real fear.
  The sky became a deep, dark blue; the first
stars came out. The nearby ridges were black,
mysterious. The coolness of night had come, and it
felt good. She got a ground sheet from the packs and
ever so gently drew Matt onto it; then she got
a blanket and covered him.
  She was restless, and walked away from the fire to the
dark edge of the cliff to listen. There was a fire down
there.

  Her eyes moved off toward the south, remembering
the great, silent cave houses where they had stayed, and
where she had so hopefully planted a garden....
  They would come tonight, she was sure they would. And when
they came, she would be ready.

  NEILL RODE INTO FREEDOM with Short
tied over a saddle.
  Somebody shouted, and people came out into the street.
Sam, drying his hands on his apron, emerged from the
saloon just behind Hardin and John Ware. Taplinger
was there, too, and George Benson.
  Neill drew up. "Yes, it's Short.
He's dead, and we've played hell. If we
don't stop them, they'll murder that man
Keelock, and his wife, too."
  "Wife?"
  "She's with him. In fact," he added grimly,
"she was the one who killed Short. Keelock was
talking to Chesney, and it looked as if they were going
to settle it between them, and then McAlpin and Short
cut loose and shot Keelock out of the saddle."
  "They didn't kill him?"
  "Not by a long shot! But if we don't get
back in there and stop them, they will; and if they do, they
will have to kill her."
  Neill saw Taplinger then, and his fury mounted.
"Yes, and that damned marshal you hired is in there with
two murdering thieves."
  Taplinger's face flushed, and he started
to protest, but Neill broke in. "You'd no right
to hire that legal murderer and give him a right
to kill a man and his wife." His tone was harsh, and his
voice carried a new authority.
  "Now, see here!" Taplinger began. "I-was
  Neill turned his back on him. "Hardin," he
said quickly, "if you'll come with me, we'll go back
in there

  and stop this. If they kill those two it will be a
disgrace this community will never live down."
  "Tell me just what has happened," Ware said.
"I've heard little about it."
  Neill dismounted and Taplinger started forward, but
Neill pointedly ignored him and went into the
saloon, followed by Ware and Hardin. As briefly
as possible he outlined the trouble from the beginning.
Finally he said, "By the time we get back it may be
too late, but I could do nothing alone short of
killing some of them myself."
  Hardin studied Neill thoughtfully. After a moment
he said, "You've changed, boy. This business has
changed you."
  "Maybe . . . and maybe that's why I spoke
out against it. And while I tried to get Short back
here alive, I thought more and more about it. We've got
to get back in there and stop this."
  "Do they still believe Keelock murdered
Johnny Webb?" Hardin asked.
  "No, and that's the worst of it. They know he
didn't, but they are still trying to kill him. Partly
because they are afraid of what will happen if they
don't."
  "What about this man Neerland?" Ware asked.
  "That's a grudge affair. What Neerland may
have in mind, I don't know or care, but he simply
wanted a legal cloak to cover him while he
committed murder. The man's far from a fool, and
he's dangerous."
  "What about Mrs. Keelock?"
  "Skin told me at Tuba that she was a lady,
every inch of her. We were for getting her out of there. At
least Bill and I were for it-yes, and Kimmel,
too, I think. I looked for her, I didn't
find her."
  "All right," Hardin said, "we'll ride back
in there and put a stop to it." And Ware agreed.
"You're right, Neill. It must be stopped."
  Nine men rode out of Freedom, nine men with just
one idea, to reach the scene before their community could be
branded for murder. They left in the cool of the

  evening and they rode fast, changing horses twice
before they reached Tuba City.
  Neill, hoping and expecting that the men of
Freedom would be with him, had arranged for horses
to be waiting for them at Tuba. Yet swiftly as
they rode, he knew there was hardly one chance in a
thousand that they would arrive in time.
  But he was banking on the courage of the man
Keelock, and of a woman whom he had never met.
  TWO HOURS HAD passed, but she did not
wake Matt. He was resting easily for the first time
since he was wounded. He did not even wake when she
gently changed the dressing on his chest, using more of the
crushed cliff rose. He muttered in his sleep,
but slept on.
  Twice she added fuel to the fire near the cliff
edge, approaching it with care, and each time she listened
from the dark rim beyond the range of the firelight, but she
heard no sound.
  The night wore on, and her weariness grew. It
was long past midnight when she at last knew she
could wait no longer. If she fell asleep again,
as she had when on watch below the cliff, it would be the
end-they would be killed in their sleep. She dared not
chance it. She went to Matt and touched his shoulder.
"Matt? Matt, wake up."
  He stirred under her hand, then his eyes flared
open. When he sat up, she went to the fire and
filled a cup with coffee. A soft wind stirred the
fire, bending the long flames.
  He took the coffee, and when she looked down at
him as he sat there on the ground she was shocked by the
gauntness of his features. But when he had finished the
coffee, he got up by himself.
  The wind guttered the fire again, and off in the distance
thunder rolled. Matt turned his head around sharply.
A great bank of black clouds had rolled up; and
even as he looked, a streak of jagged lightning
struck a

  distant ridge and made a vivid, momentary
fringe of light along the crest.
  He caught up the rifle. "We've got to get
the horses in and keep them close," he said. A
few spattering drops of rain fell. "This will put
out our fire."
  Limping to the buckskin, he led the animal
close, and then on a sudden inspiration he picked
up the saddle and threw it on the horse's back.
Swiftly he tightened the cinch and slipped on the
bridle. Then he saddled Kris's horse. When
she brought the pack animals in, he strapped on
the pack saddles and loaded up.
  He heaped more fuel on the fire, and then pulled
himself into the saddle and they started north along the
mesa. Moving over close to her he leaned nearer and
said, "From down below I saw some rough, broken
country about a mile north of here. We might find
some shelter there." And he added, "There's less chance
of getting struck by lightning on lower ground."
  The few spatters of rain had turned into a quick
downpour, but both of them had donned slickers, and
they rode on in the rain, the mules on a lead
rope.
  In the light of the lightning flashes, they found a
place where the surface rock broke off, and
descended almost two hundred feet by an easy
route. To the east they could see where the break was
sharper, and turned that way to get under the lee of the
escarpment.
  Once there, they found another descent and went
lower still to a place where the ledge of rock had been
undercut by water and wind to make a deep shelter.
  The rain ceased, and in the quiet that followed they
secured the horses under the shelter, and the mules beside
them. Then they stripped off the packs and saddles.
Kris was just shaking out a bed for them when the rain came
again.
  It came with a roar. The sky was weirdly lit
by lightning, and the thunder crashed and rolled. Sure that
they would never be found in such a storm, they drew together
for warmth and lay staring into the wild night. And lying
so, they slept.

  CHESNEY, KIMMEL, AND McAlpin came
up to the camp at the foot of No Man's Mesa
in the bright sunlight of the morning after the rain. They
had waited out the flash flood that filled the canyon
with a rushing river, and when it had run its way on
into the desert and the natural catch-basins below, they
rode up on the hard-packed sand.
  There was no pleasure in Oskar Neerland's eyes
when they appeared, and even less in those of Muley
when he saw Gay Cooley was riding with them.
  "They got away?" Chesney asked, almost hoping
they had.
  "Up there." Neerland jerked a thumb toward the
mesa's rim.
  "You mean there's a way up?" It was Cooley
who spoke. His eyes went to Muley's, then he
looked around him very carefully. It was hard to tell
what he was thinking.
  "They found a way," Muley said. "Followed
some broomtails, an' they went right up."
  "You haven't been up there?"
  "They had a fire going right on the rim until the
rain put it out. It has not been lighted again, so they
must have gone."
  Kimmel interrupted. "I thought there was three of
you."
  "Bob Mitchell's dead. Matt Keelock
shot him, then the horses ran over him. We
dragged him over yonder."
  They looked in that direction, but did not ride
over. Bob Mitchell had been known to them as a
hard character and a dangerous one. The country, they felt,
was better off without him.
  "All right," Chesney said, "let's go get
them."
  Neerland did not move. "You have given the job
to me," he said. "I will do it."
  "We're all here," Chesney said. "We might
as well help."
  "I shall need no help."
  "There's a woman up there," Chesney said, "who
had

  no part in the killing of Johnny Webb. We
want to take her back to town."
  "I will take care of the woman."
  For the first time in many years Chesney was unsure of
himself. Oskar Neerland was a dangerous man, but he
did not fear him. The trouble was, he himself had been
one of those who appointed this man the marshal. He
himself had directed him to hunt down Matt
Keelock.
  "That woman must be protected," he objected
now. "We will see that she gets back to Freedom
and the stage line."
  "I will take care of her, and I do not want your
help. Go away."
  "To hell with her!" McAlpin exclaimed. "She
killed Short. She tried to kill me."
  "We're riding along, Neerland," Chesney
said. "We want to see that woman is safe."
  "I am the law." Neerland spoke in a flat
tone. "If you interfere, I shall arrest you."
  "I don't think so," Kimmel said.
  "You're fired, Neerland," Chesney said. "You
ride back to Freedom."
  Neerland did not even smile. He was
contemptuous. "You cannot discharge me. You do not have the
votes. I know your rule of voting."
  Muley had drawn off to one side, and Chesney
was aware that he had a corner on them. But he was not
going to back down now.
  "Count me out," McAlpin said. "I don't
care what happens to her."
  "Why argue?" Muley said. "There's enough woman
there for all of us."
  Chesney's face showed his shock. "By-was he
began, but Kimmel's cool voice interrupted.
"Forget it, Bill. She's no affair of ours.
Let's get out of here."
  "Kim, why you-to "
  "Bill, let's get out of here!"
  Kimmel's tone brought a breath of sanity
to Chesney's

  anger. He turned to Kimmel and saw his eyes,
saw the warning in them.
  He took a quick grip on himself. "Oh, the
hell with it!" he said, and they rode away.
  When they had gone no more than fifty yards, he
turned on Kimmel. "If you think I'm-was
  "Shut up, Bill. They can still hear you."
Kimmel's low tone was persuasive. "Why get
yourself killed and do no good? That other fellow had him
a shotgun."
  "If you think I'm afraid, you've got another
think coming!"
  "You ain't scared," Kimmel said, "you're just a
damn' bullheaded fool. You get an idea
crossways in your skull and nothin' in God's world
can get past it. All we've got to do is let them
go on up, then follow them. It's simple as that."
  Chesney felt like a fool. Of course.
Anybody should have realized that, and there he was, about
to walk bullheaded into a shotgun.
  "Where's Cooley?" he asked, suddenly thinking
of him.
  "He stayed back there, with them."
  McAlpin had not stayed behind. He rode with them,
but neither man looked at him or recognized his
presence. Angered by being ignored, he broke in.
"If you think I'm goin' back up there, you're
crazy!"
  Kimmel looked around at him. "Mac, we had
no idea you'd go along, and if you'll take my
advice you'll go back to Freedom, you'll sell
those scrubs of yours to whoever will buy "em, and you'll
pull out. I don't care where you go, but I've got
an idea you aren't goin" to like it around Freedom
any more."
  They walked their horses away and left him
sitting there staring after them. Short was gone and nobody
was talking about the Lost Wagons any more, and of a
sudden he realized what Kimmel had said was true.
He was not going to like it around Freedom after this.
  "Kim," Chesney said, "I've played the
fool. All I could think of was Johnny dead and
some rawhider

  had shot him in the back. I was crazy to hang that
Key-Lock man."
  "You weren't alone."
  "I was the worst. I was drivin' after it. That was
why Hardin pulled out. And Neill."
  "They're good men, Bill."
  Chesney gathered his reins. "All right, Kim,
let's ride back and get that woman out of there,
anyway."
  He was silent for several minutes. "I don't
like it, Kim-that Neerland going after that man."
  "You leave "em alone," Kim replied
calmly. "That Key-Lock man is an old
lobo. He's from away back at the forks of the
crick. Anybody who gets that man in a corner
has bit off a chunk, believe me, and he'd
better have the jaws to chew it!"
  The camp was empty when they reached it, but the
tracks showed them the trail up the mountain. It was
tucked away behind a thick clump of cedars, and there
was no indication of a trail until you got right to it.
Hidden below by the thick growth and by broken rock, it
led up steeply.
  At the top they found themselves standing with all the world
spread out around them.
  "We've got to find that woman, Kim,"
Chesney said urgently. "Else something will happen
here that will bring us shame to our last days."
  Kimmel's horse switched his tail restlessly.
The rain had destroyed the tracks. If they chose
the wrong way, they might easily arrive too
late.
  And then they heard a shot.

  MATT KEELOCK WOKE with the first light.
He clasped his hands behind his head. For the first time in
days he was thinking really clearly. Tentatively,
he moved his leg. The wound on his hip had never
been much more than an annoyance, but the fall had
made his leg one great bruise from hip to knee. This
morning it felt better.
  He eased from under the blankets and pulled on his
boots. Then he put on his gun belt, took out
his Colt, and spun the cylinder.
  From the overhang, he looked out over what was in
essence a hanging valley, approximately a
mile long and, at the head where their camp was, not
over a quarter of a mile wide. It was green and
beautiful under the warm morning sun, fresh after the
fall of rain.
  He went to the horses, checked their hoofs, and
looked them over generally. The mules seemed cheerful
enough, and he released them to wander down on the rich
grass not far away.
  Then he went back to their shelter, where he looked
down at Kris. Her face looked tranquil and
unbelievably lovely in repose. He
hesitated to wake her, knowing what was to come. He
knew too much about the sort of men who pursued him
not to realize that it would all be over, one way or
another, before this day was past.
  They would be coming soon. It would take them a while
to locate him, and much as he wanted a cup of
coffee, he was not going to make it easy for them
by lighting a fire and lifting a smoke.
  He went to one of the packs and got out a thick
wad of rawhide strips that he had planned to use
in plaiting a

  riata. He tied several of them end to end, then
walked to a boulder some fifty feet away, found a
chunk of rock of the right size, and made a four-way
wraparound tie. Then he trailed the rawhide
along the ground under the grass and dust, to the
overhang.
  After that he dug around in his gear and found a can of
peaches, which he opened. With his Winchester close by,
he sat down on a rock and began eating them. He
speared each half, cut it in half, and lifted it
to his mouth with the point of his knife. When he had
eaten the peaches he drank the juice.
  He heard Kris stirring in the blankets, and was
about to turn when he saw one of the mules look up
suddenly. He got to his feet.
  "What is it, Matt?" Kris said.
  Without turning his head, he replied, "What
we've been expecting, Kris. I think we'll
make an end to it here."
  "What can I do?"
  "When I say, 'Jim, don't shoot," you
pull on that string. Pull good and hard."
  "Is that all?" she asked, and he nodded.
  Three riders had stopped on the rim above them.
He knew there were three, because they had the sunrise
at their backs and their shadows fell on the wall
opposite.
  Three?
  He had seen Bob Mitchell go down before his
gun, had seen some of the stampede sweep over him.
Who, then, was the third?
  "Stay out of this," he said softly to Kris. "I
do not want to think of you now."
  "All right," she said. And then she added, "Here
they come."
  He could see them working their way down the slope
at almost the place where he and Kris had descended.
They were a good three hundred yards off, and he
might have taken one of them out, but he was not sure who
they were, nor did he want to turn this into a
sniping operation. He wanted to see them face
to face, and win or lose that way.

  When they were almost abreast of the overhang, he
stepped into view. On his left was a thick cedar,
gnarled and ancient. On his right a broken slab from
one of the ledges above.
  "You came a long way for it."
  They brought up short, and he said casually,
"You've played the fool, Gay. You've wasted your
life hunting that gold."
  "Like hell! It's here. We've found it."
  "You mean you've swapped it for a belly full of
lead."
  Muley had the shotgun, and that shotgun worried
him. At the distance it was a dangerous weapon. But
he had given it thought. And Muley had an instinct
for survival.
  Oskar Neerland was looking for Kris, and she was not
in sight. His eyes returned to Matt. The sneer
his face always wore was deeper now.
  "You have to die," he said. "I promised it. I
promised myself to kill you, and then to take the
woman."
  He was going to draw. Matt saw it clearly, and
he shouted, "Jim, don't shoot!"
  Something crashed in the brush and Muley pivoted,
his shotgun lifted toward the brush.
  Neerland drew, and Matt stepped forward and down.
He had planned it nicely, believing Neerland
to be a dead shot, and hoping for it. A wild shot
might have wasted his strategy, for the forward step took
him two feet down. He had studied that spot,
planned for it; and when his foot landed, he fired.
  And missed!
  Neerland's bullet had whipped by over his head, but
now the gun muzzle lowered, and Matt went forward and
down another step, and then he fired once more. A
bullet whipped by near him. He was thinking that would be
Cooley, and then he fired and fired again.
  A shot spattered bark into his face, half
blinding him, and he let himself fall forward onto one
knee. His left forearm came up, his gun barrel
lay across it, and he fired again. Fired into the widening
crimson blot on the front

  of Neerland's shirt. He saw the big man start
to fall, and he swung his gun to Cooley, who
traded shots with him. Both men missed, and then
Matt lunged to his feet and fired again.
  The bullet knocked Cooley sidewise in the
saddle and he yelled, "I quit!"
  "The hell you do!" Matt fired again, and
Cooley fell off his horse.
  A rifle roared, then another. Muley brought his
shotgun to bear at last, but he dropped it and
slapped the spurs to his horse. Another shot, and
he was racing like a madman down the valley with
bullets dusting him at every step.
  On the rim were half a dozen riders, all with
rifles, but there was no scoring a hit at the distance.
The horse, stung perhaps, and frantic with fear, was
now a runaway.
  He was still running when he reached the rim. They
all saw it clearly enough. The maddened animal
took one enormous leap out into space, seemed
to hang suspended for an instant, then dropped from
sight. At that point there was a drop of five
hundred feet.
  The riders from the rim above were coming down.
  Matt Keelock walked forward and stood over
Neerland. The man was alive, his eyes fastening on
Matt in a fixed and awful stare. But he was dying,
dying hard and slow.
  "You came of your own will," Matt said, "I had
no strings on you."
  Deliberately, he turned away, and went over
to Cooley. He held his gun ready, but there was no
fight in the man.
  "It was the Lost Wagons," Cooley said. "That
gold ruined me. Right from the day we left
California."
  "You did all that killing?"
  "Me? No, that was Muley. We thought he was just
a youngster we were helpin' out. Instead, he figured from
the first day that he'd kill us all."
  "When did you find out?"
  Gay Cooley threw him a guilty look.
"That was the

  worst of it. When the second man died, I was
pretty sure."
  Matt looked down at him, reflecting at the
curious turn things could take. There were two
bullets in him, but he was going to make it. Right now
this man was in better shape than he was himself. He
backed up a step and sat down, careful to keep his
gun up.
  Kris was talking to the men who came off the rim.
They were all approaching now; he could hear their
voices.
  "It was those Lost Wagons," Cooley said.
"I was a pretty good man until then. Muley,
he wanted all that gold for himself, and I was just as
bad."
  "Cooley wasn't your name?"
  "It was Hollenbeck . . . Ben Hollenbeck.
I dropped out of sight and let everybody think we
were all dead. The trouble was, all this country
looks alike after a few years, and I'd have taken
oath that gold was seven or eight miles south of
here. That much, at least.
  "I figured I could come right back to it, but the
way things worked out, it was a couple of years. The
worst of it was, when I went out of this piece of
country I never took time to look back, and it all
looks different coming at it from the south.
  "Four or five times I knew I was within a
short distance of it, but every time I turned south. I
couldn't believe we had come north any further.
  "Then I saw that place at the foot of the mesa.
That was where Muley was left, all tied up, and I
recognized it on sight. I knew it was the
place, but it still didn't look right."
  "Did you ever think that Valadon deliberately
wrote his directions wrong?" Matt said. "You could
have been influenced by that."
  The men had all ridden up now, and he knew four
of the faces as those of men who had hunted him. The
others were strangers.
  Neill swung down. "Keelock, I'm
Neill, and I'm sorry. We had the wrong idea
about you."

  "It was me," Chesney said. "I ramrodded the
whole thing. I figured you for a yellow back-shooter
and I wouldn't listen to anything else. I was wrong."
  "It was a fair shooting," Matt said quietly.
  "I know, and I played hell."
  Matt turned away, resting a hand on Kris's
shoulder. "I've got to lie down, Kris." He
looked back at the men and gestured toward
Cooley. "You do whatever you've a mind to with him.
He won't be looking for the Lost Wagons any
more."
  Cooley twisted toward him. "Why is that?"
  "Because I found "em." Matt took a
wagon-bolt from his belt. "Ever see that before,
Cooley? It was your marker, stuck into a crack in
the rock wall."
  His hand on Kris's shoulder, he limped to their
shelter. When he reached it, he almost fell onto the
bed.
  "In a couple of days we'll ride out of here,
Kris."
  "What about the stallion?"
  "We'll come back for him."
  He stretched out, easing his bruised leg to its
full length. "Kris," he said, "make some
coffee, will you? I'm tired."

  "I think of myself in the oral tradition-
  as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the
man
  in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way
  I'd like to be remembered-as a storyteller.
  A good storyteller."
  IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as
at home in the world re-created in his novels as
Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he
physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he
wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters
walk." His personal experiences as well as his
lifelong devotion to historical research combined
to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of
people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier
that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
  Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour
could trace his own family in North America
back to the early 1600's and follow their steady
progression westward, "always on the frontier." As
a boy growing up in Jamestown, North
Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his
family's frontier heritage, including the story
of his greatgrandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
  Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire
to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left
home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide
variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack,
elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner,
and an officer in the transportation corps during
World War II. During his "yondering" days he also
circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on
the Red Sea, was shipwrecked

  in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave
Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine
fights as a professional boxer and worked as a
journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious
reader and collector of rare books. His personal
library contained 17,000 volumes.
  Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time
I could talk." After developing a widespread
following for his many frontier and adventure stories
written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour
published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in
the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than
100 books is in print; there are more than
  270 million copies of his books in print
worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in
modern literary history. His books have been
translated into twenty languages, and more than
forty-five of his novels and stories have been made
into feature films and television movies.
  His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome
Gods, The Walking Drum (his
twelfth-century historical novel), Jubal
Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted
Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man,
was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio
dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour
stories are available on cassettes and COULD'S
from Random House Audio publishing.
  The recipient of many great honors and awards, in
  1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist
ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the
United States Congress in honor of his life's
work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of
Freedom by President Reagan.
  Louis L'Amour died on June 10,1988.
His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and
Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward
with new books written by the author during his
lifetime to be published by Bantam.
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  backslash DEADLY FREEDOM
  had led the posse for miles through the desert, but now
Matt block was growing desperate. He was
worried about Kristina. ji trip to the town o
backslash Freedom tor supplies had ended in
a kn-out. It caught he would hang. Even though
Kris could (idle a horse and ritle as well as
most men. the possibility of kar Neerland finding her
made Matfs blood run cold, phcly
embarrassed when Matt had stepped in and stolen
Kris liy. it given half a chance Matt knew
the violent and obsessive erland would try to kill them
both. Matt tried to convince fiself that Neerland
had returned to the East. But Matt was png.
Miles away in the town of Freedom. Oskar
Neerland K accepting a new job. In his first
duty as marshal, he would d the posse that was
tracking down Matt Keelock.
  LOUIS L'AMOUR
  r foremost storyteller of the authentic West.
L* Amour has [lied a nation by chronicling the
adventures of the brave men bar women who settled
the American frontier. There are more n 270
million copies of his books in print around the
world.
  Visit the I inns L Amour uehsite at
wwwddlouislamour.com.
  US$4.99 still $6.99 CAN
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