His five listeners all wore strained or bemused expressions as they listened to the astounding proposal that was being made to them. It was utterly preposterous and unreal, yet the judge’s soft assured voice made it seem quite plausible. What he proposed was the cunning and ruthless and wholesale rape of an entire community of people whom they did not know and who had done none of them harm. His plan would loose calculated murder in Powder Valley; would send five agents of destruction into the unsuspecting community to worm their ways into the confidence of its people and wrest from them what was rightfully theirs.

  “I want you to note the simplicity of my proposition,” the judge told them quietly. “Each of you will work alone—except for Gilbert and Mr. Gut-Luck, of course—yet all will be working as a unit. You can’t fail. All of you can’t fail. Where any one of you might hesitate because of the odds against you, not one of you can afford to stay out of this because the eventual split will be well worthwhile. I like to think of it as one of the greatest coups ever attempted,” he went on happily. “Broad in scope and magnificent in conception. Never before, I think, has such a co-operative effort been attempted. All for one and one for all,” He splashed champagne in his glass. “Shall we drink to Powder Valley—to the division of spoils one year from today?”

  He waddled up to his feet and lifted his glass.

  Slowly, the others rose also. Each of them slowly touched a glass to his lips as though hypnotized by an evil spell cast over the room by the fat man’s purring voice. It was like the kiss of death to Powder Valley, to four trusting persons who had had the misfortune to arouse the cupidity of Judge J. Worthington Prink and whose destinies were now inextricably linked with his.

  3

  After the long cool evening of early autumn, night darkness fell gently upon the Lazy Mare ranch in Powder Valley. There was no definite change from day to night. It was a slow-thickening haze that gathered on the horizons and crept stealthily across the pleasant valley, softening the harsh contours of the rugged landscape with caressing fingers, bringing velvety silence and a sense of snug security after another day of hard work on the open range.

  It was the time of year and the time of day that Pat Stevens liked best of all. There was a sting in the coolness of the night air presaging the bleak winter to come, yet it was tempered by a sensuous warmth given off by the earth itself which had been gratefully absorbed throughout the long hot summer.

  Pat had a habit of stepping outside the ranch house at the end of a long evening like this, to stand on firm feet in his own front yard and watch the night come on. He pretended to himself and Sally that it was for the purpose of testing the weather, predicting how much longer it would be before snow would fly, to plan the fall round-up so that the sleek herds would be moved safely down into the haven of the valley before a blizzard trapped them in their high summer pasturage; but actually he did it for the sheer pleasure of watching the stars come out one by one, for the feeling that came to him as night closed down on the valley.

  Tonight Sally finished the supper dishes early and came out to stand beside him. There hadn’t been many dishes because their son, Dock, had ridden into Dutch Springs with one-eyed Ezra that afternoon and the pair hadn’t returned.

  Sally came up lightly beside her husband and rested her hand on his shoulder. He put his arm about her slender waist and drew her closer to him, his gaze fixed steadily outward into the gathering darkness. He said, “We’ve got three weeks more, maybe.”

  “To get the stock down?” Sally Stevens nodded her bright blond head. “With Ezra and Dock to help it won’t be any job at all.”

  “That’s right.” Pat’s voice was strong with pride. “Dock’s turnin’ into a mighty good cow-hand.” He chuckled happily. “Sure does take to Ol’ Ezra too.”

  “He’s picking up some awful language from Ezra,” Sally sighed. “I do wish a new teacher would come and get school started. Dock’ll forget all he’s learned if he keeps on tagging around after Ezra.”

  “I wouldn’t worry ’bout that, Sally. He’ll learn plenty from Ezra that ain’t in any schoolbooks.”

  “It has been good for both of them, I guess. I don’t believe Ezra would ever have been satisfied to stay here after you got back from that Texas trip if it hadn’t been for Dock.”

  “It’s kinda hard on Ezra,” Pat Stevens reminded her gently. “With Sam an’ me both married now an’ with places of our own.”

  “I know. I do hope he’s able to lease the K Bar ranch. It’ll be nice having him for our neighbor, and Ezra is a wonderful hand for raising horses.”

  “He’s seein’ Judge Prink about the ranch today. I reckon he’ll get the lease all right, Sally. I sent a letter along with him saying I’d go on his note for any cash he needed to swing the deal.”

  “I’m glad you did that, Pat.” Sally’s hand tightened on her husband’s shoulder. “I hoped you’d help him.”

  “Yo’re the dangedest woman.” Pat’s voice was wondering, almost awed. “Ain’t many wives would want their husbands to go on a note for an old no-good like Ezra.”

  “You know I always want you to do anything for either Sam or Ezra.”

  “I know it, Sally,” Pat said humbly, “but I can’t get over being surprised every time you say it again.”

  “They’re like—like parts of you,” she told him softly. “What we are and what we have here … the ranch and our place in the Valley. Our marriage and Dock … none of them would have been without Sam and Ezra.”

  Pat Stevens pulled a deep breath of the clean night air into his lungs. Sally was right of course. There wasn’t any way to measure what he and Sally owed to his two gun partners. Like she said, things just wouldn’t have been but for Sam and Ezra fighting alongside him those times in the past when the West was younger and Powder Valley was still in its swaddling clothes.

  Memories came crowding over him as he and Sally stood there together. They had been a trio to reckon with in those older days when Judge Colt was the only law on that untamed frontier. Huge Ezra with his scarred face and his single eye gleaming happily when the going was the toughest, with his mop of crimson hair and huge body that held the strength of three ordinary men. And Sam Sloan! Small, dark and wiry, with loose-holstered guns and a way of driving on into danger with a grim ferocity that made lesser men quail and back away. And Pat Stevens himself. Leader of the trio. More cautious and faster thinking than his two companions and packing the fastest pair of guns in Colorado.

  Yep. They’d seen a lot of things together. But that was all in the past now. Pat had been married for twelve years and was proprietor of one of the finest ranches in the Valley besides having had the job of sheriff forced on him a couple of years ago. And Sam was settled down too. Married to pretty Kitty Lane and riding the Pony Express route into Dutch Springs, he had put his guns away and was more scared of forthcoming fatherhood than he’d ever been of leaden death.

  Only Ezra remained untamed. After Sam’s marriage he had tried to settle down with Sam and his wife as keeper of the Express station outside of Dutch Springs, but the inactivity had soon palled on the big one-eyed man. Lately he had been induced to move into a spare room at the Lazy Mare ranch, but both Pat and Sally had realized he wasn’t really happy helping with the ranch work and sort of keeping an eye on Dock. That’s why Pat had been glad when the small K Bar spread on the south of the Lazy Mare had been vacated by Sy Tarnish’s death a few months previously, and he had been encouraging Ezra to take a lease on it as soon as the estate was settled.

  With these thoughts in his mind, Pat Stevens bent his head slightly to press his hard, bronzed cheek against Sally’s bright hair. “You’re right, honey. Powder Valley wouldn’t be what it is today without Sam an’ Ezra.”

  “It’s wonderful,” she told him, “to stand here like this in the night and look out over the valley and sort of feel the peace and quietude. It’s sort of like listening to a prayer in church.”

  Pat said, “I’m not much on churchin’, but I reckon I know what you mean. Well, we’ve got it comin’ here in Powder Valley, Sally. We’ve fought hard enough and worked hard enough to make it what it is an’ keep it that way.”

  “But it’s been worth it, Pat. Every minute of it has been worthwhile.”

  He nodded with sincere conviction. “I reckon we’ve got right here what a sight of folks dream about and hope for all their lives without never finding. I sort of get the feelin’ that the whole rest of the world can go hang, but us folks in Powder Valley will go right along the same as we are.”

  “It’s a wonderful place for a boy to grow up in,” she whispered softly. “Dock is lucky that he doesn’t have to know any of the bloodshed and horror that we’ve known.”

  Pat lifted his face from her hair and gazed out through the darkness toward the south. “Riders comin’,” he reported. “Two of ’em at a lope.”

  Sally had learned not to question Pat at a time like this when he heard or sensed things hidden from her. She took it for granted that he was right, and she said, “That’ll be Dock and Ezra back from town. I’d better go in and warm things up for them.” But she didn’t move away from Pat’s arm, and he didn’t relax it from about her waist.

  Soon even she could hear the clop-clop of ridden horses through the night silence. They came loping up the slope and swerved in toward the pair, pulling up in front of them.

  “Hey there, Mom … and Dad,” Dock’s young voice called happily as he flung himself out of the saddle. “Betcha didn’t wait supper for us, an’ me, I’m plumb starved. I’m so doggoned hongry,” he went on, “that I betcha my stomach thinks my throat’s done been split.”

  “Dock!” Sally reproved him in a shocked tone. “You’re picking up a lot of mighty rough slang these days. I don’t like it.”

  “I do,” he told her unabashed. “I’ve been gettin’ Ezra to teach me to talk like he does.”

  “I’m right sorry, ma’am.” Ezra swung his huge body lightly out of the saddle. “I been tellin’ Dock you wouldn’t take kindly to him patternin’ after me.”

  “He needs a good britches-quirting,” Pat said with a chuckle. “Take both hawses down to the barn, son, and put them up.”

  “You bet. I’ll shore do that.” Dock caught up the reins and led the two saddled horses away before Ezra could protest or his mother could correct him again.

  Sally laughed ruefully and said, “Shore! Did you hear him, Pat? Whatever are we going to do with him if school doesn’t start soon?”

  “It’ll be startin’ right soon now,” Ezra comforted her as the three of them moved toward the ranch house. “Jedge Prink told me today that he had a teacher acomin’ from Denver purty quick. Next week, I reckon.”

  “So you saw the judge?” Pat stopped on the pathway. “How about the ranch, Ezra?”

  The big man shook his red head dolefully. “Nothin’ doin’,” he reported. It was too dark to see the expression on his scarred face, but Pat could plainly hear the deep disappointment in his voice.

  “Why not?” Pat asked angrily. “Isn’t the estate settled yet?”

  “Yep. That’s the trouble. It’s done settled an’ the ranch has been sold again.”

  “But you told him you wanted it,” Pat said hotly. “He knew you were just waiting to make an offer.”

  “I tole the jedge that, but he said I hadn’t put no money down—no option money, he called it—so I didn’t have no legal claim. He used some mighty big words in the tellin’, an’ made it sound all right.”

  “Perhaps the new owner will be willing to lease it to you,” Sally suggested.

  “Nope. I reckon not. I stopped by the K Bar on my way home an’ ast him. He’s done moved in, bag an’ baggage. Purty nice feller too. Name of Crane. An’ he knows hawses. He figgers on runnin’ the place his ownself. Even ast him fer a job,” Ezra went on haltingly, “but he don’t want no han’s neither. Brought two with him. One of ’em looks whiskey-sick an’ t’other looks too mighty much gun handy fer a plain wrangler, but Mr. Crane reckons they’ll be all the help he’ll need. Right off, anyhow.”

  “That’s a damned shame,” said Pat hotly. “I don’t trust Judge Prink. Haven’t from the first. He knew you had your eye on that ranch. He should have notified you as soon as the heirs were ready to do business.”

  “I dunno,” Ezra sounded as though he’d given up, as though he’d lost the ability to feel anger. “I got a sorta hunch that this Crane feller is mebby a friend of Jedge Prink’s. Yuh cain’t blame him fer he’pin’ out his friends.”

  “The hell you can’t,” said Pat hotly. “That’s exactly what a judge has no right to do.”

  “Please, Pat. Don’t get upset about it.” Sally tugged at her husband’s coat sleeve. “There’ll be another chance for Ezra to get back on a ranch of his own.”

  “But not on a place like the K Bar,” grated Pat. “Right next to us, an’ all set up for hawse raisin’. I tell you, Sally, I got a feelin’ we’re riding for trouble with Judge Prink in the saddle. It’s invitin’ trouble when we let an outsider come in an’ take a responsibility like that in the Valley.”

  “We didn’t have any local man qualified,” she reminded him. “He’s the first real lawyer that ever settled down in Dutch Springs. You know that, Pat.”

  “I still don’t like it,” he growled. “I distrust a man as fat as that. An’ now we’ve got a friend of his saddled on us for a neighbor.”

  “I didn’t go to say that. I don’t rightly know he’s a friend of the jedge’s. Mighty nice feller anyhow. An’ he shore cottoned up to Dock. They got to be right good friends jest while I was stopped by there talkin’ to him.”

  “See, Pat? You mustn’t hold it against Mr. Crane that he took the opportunity to buy a good ranch while he could get it.”

  “That’s right,” Ezra said wistfully. “Me, I reckon mebby I’m gettin too old to run a ranch nohow. Mebby I’d best go back to the Express station an’ settle down to feedin’ hawses the rest of my life.”

  “Don’t do that, Ezra. Stay around here for a while. Till after the fall round-up anyhow. We’ll see if we can’t work something else out.”

  “Mercy,” said Sally. “There’s Dock coming back from the barn and I haven’t got supper warmed. Are you two coming in?”

  Pat said, “We might as well.” He and Ezra slowly followed her up the path. Pat stopped with his foot on the porch step and turned for a last lingering look across the darkened valley.

  A curious change had come over the placid sky while they stood there talking. There was an angry glow high up in the heavens which might have been the reflected afterglow of sunset but was different from anything Pat had ever seen before. And a great black cloud had rolled up from the horizon and was spreading forward, extending long black tentacles over the Valley. The air was oppressively still, but it seemed to Pat Stevens that there was a new chill in it, a chill that struck through his flesh and into the very bones of his body. He shivered, but it was more from a foreboding of evil than from actual cold. The angry light in the sky above was fading now, being obscured by the spreading blackness of the cloud, and the bright stars were winking out one by one.

  As he stood there it seemed to Pat that the whole Valley must be shivering with him, that the earth cowered before the mantling shadow from the black cloud that rolled inexorably onward. He turned to say something to the others, but Sally and Ezra had gone on in.

  He hesitated a moment, with one more look back over his shoulder, and then followed them inside to the cheeriness and warmth of his own living room.

  4

  It was early dawn on Sunday morning. Crimson flame climbed upward from the eastern horizon, spreading soft radiance over Powder Valley and seeking out the open window of Mrs. Myra Jenkins’ bedroom with lambent fingers of light.

  A mockingbird came from somewhere and settled on a high leafless branch of the gnarled cottonwood growing on the east side of the weatherbeaten ranch house. The tiny bird fluttered its wings and seemed to shiver in the cold from which its fellows had fled southward, then it lifted its head and swelled its throat with glorious song.

  Inside the sparse bedroom Mrs. Jenkins awoke instantly. She threw back the covers and sat up in bed, reaching out for a man’s shabby gray bathrobe on a chair beside her. Her thin, tired features were lighted with a queer sort of exultation. She slid out of bed and stood up on bare feet, wrapping the robe tightly about her scrawny body. She padded across the room to the open window, and the red light of dawn softened her sharp features, seemed to smooth away the ugly wrinkles in her thin neck as she lifted her chin and slowly lifted her arms and clasped work-roughened hands high above her head.

  She stood like that for a long moment while the lone mockingbird poured out its morning rhapsody, then she slowly lifted herself on her toes and drew in a deep breath simultaneously. She held herself taut like that, her eyes wide open and staring, thin bloodless lips parted a trifle, a strained look of intense concentration tightening her face.

  Then she relaxed down onto her bare heels, letting out her breath audibly while she nodded and smiled at the mockingbird. She repeated this again and again, an even dozen times, as had been recommended in the pamphlet entitled Get Your Body in Tune with the Infinite which she had received through the mail a few days previously.

  The rim of the sun climbed above the flat horizon as she finished, and as though in response to a soundless signal from the Infinite, the mockingbird ceased its song at that exact instant.