All of them around the poker table had divested themselves of their guns before starting play, and their belts and holsters hung on nails over their bunks. Mart started to snarl an angry “No,” then changed his mind and asked with a leer:

  “Whatcha wanta gun for tonight?”

  “Les Edwards just rode out lookin’ for Pat an’ that Mex girl,” Charlie explained swiftly. “I aim to follow an’ try to stop any trouble an’ I reckon I’ll feel better with a six-shooter handy.”

  The bearded puncher guffawed loudly and urged Mart, “Loan him yore gun an’ let him get his fingers burnt for tryin’ tuh play nursemaid.”

  “Shore,” Mart agreed instantly. “Go to it, hayman. There’s both my guns … hangin’ over yonder bunk.”

  “I won’t need but one,” Charlie told him placidly. He stepped around the poker table and got Mart’s belt carrying the right-hand holster, strapped it about his waist and hurried out without another word. A wave of derisive laughter followed him out to the corral, and he thought to himself angrily that he didn’t blame them any. A fellow that horned into another man’s business in Arizona was always a fool … but this was one time when another man’s business was his own.

  He grabbed up his bridle and went through the gate, whistling softly to his roan who came forward to nuzzle him.

  The other two horses that had been penned with the roan were gone now. Ridden, Charlie supposed, by Pat and Tonita.

  He slid the bit into his horse’s mouth and led him out, threw the saddle on and mounted. Not more than twenty minutes behind Les Edwards, he followed the young sheriff into the vast emptiness of the Arizona night.

  7

  The Rio Kid rode alertly down the long slope, with shortened reins that held Thunderbolt to a jumpy lope, head up and vigilant gaze raking the moonlight-drenched terrain for signs of trouble ahead.

  He had ridden into danger often like this in the past three years, driven by a sharp unease of spirit that found a sort of anodyne in physical combat, goaded by a reckless daring that could be assuaged only by the pitting of his own life against heavy odds.

  He was motivated by no such mood as he rode down into the Bar L pasture tonight. He knew that reckless daring would avail him nothing here where the odds would be a hundred guns against one if he were seen and recognized. He had promised himself he would use the utmost caution on this return to Chapparell, but the challenge of the locked iron gates and the single mysterious shot in the night had been too strong for him to resist. The old impulse to dare boldly everything had hold of him again, and his only concession to caution was a tight rein on Thunderbolt and open-eyed vigilance as he rode onward.

  He sensed rather than saw movement on his left and in front of him. Mesquite and catclaw grew sparsely here, and in the moonlight the single stunted bushes assumed all manner of grotesque shapes so it was difficult to distinguish the real from the imaginary.

  He reined Thunderbolt down to a walk, leaning forward along his satiny neck and speaking soothing words into the black stallion’s sensitive ears while his gaze searched ahead and to the left where he had discerned movement.

  He saw it again. A rider on a fleet horse streaking through the brush at an angle away from him. The horse was dark, but had a blazed forefoot that showed clearly in the moonlight when gaps in the bushes allowed clear view.

  There was a suggestion of terror in the swift flight of the horseman, or so it seemed to the Rio Kid whose perceptions were sensitized by the danger into which he rode. He didn’t know what made him feel that way. A fleeting instinct came to him, perhaps the actual scent of panic in his keen nostrils, a vibration of fear cast off by the fleeing rider who was swiftly drawing away from him without being aware of his presence.

  He touched Thunderbolt’s smooth sides with blunt spurs to send the black lunging in pursuit, again impelled by instinct rather than by conscious thought.

  Astride the fastest mount in the Southwest, the Rio Kid rapidly closed the gap separating him from the galloping rider. He rode erect, loose in the saddle, exultant with the rush of air against his face, suddenly eager to make his first contact with the old life.

  He drew a gun and urged more speed from Thunderbolt when he saw the white blur of a face turned back toward him from the rider ahead and knew that his pursuit had been noted.

  Momentarily he expected a flash of fire from the unknown rider who was being rapidly overtaken and he was prepared to return the fire, but no lead came singing back at him.

  There was only the rhythmic thud of eight hooves spurning the ground, and as he and Thunderbolt drew nearer, the wheezing breath of the hard-ridden horse ahead.

  The rider looked slim and youthful in the moonlight, leaning over his horse’s neck to urge a last burst of speed from the tiring animal, and the look of grim resolution on the Kid’s face changed to one of blank amazement as Thunderbolt ranged up alongside the other horse and he caught his first real glimpse of the rider’s face.

  The thin oval of Tonita’s face was pale and strained as she darted a despairing glance sideways. Her eyes were dilated and enormous, tortured with fear, and the recollection of them was to torment the Kid for days to come.

  Discovering the night rider to be a beautiful girl gave a touch of unreality and of madness to the whole scene, and the Kid’s thoughts reeled under the impact of surprise. He checked Thunderbolt to gallop beside the girl, holstered his gun and lifted his fingers to the brim of his hat, stammering, “Howdy, Miss. I reckon … well, howdy.”

  Her horse was faltering in his stride, wheezing brokenly and rapidly slowing to a trot. When the girl made no reply but looked straight ahead, tossing her head as though in anger or contempt, the Rio Kid leaned forward from his saddle and caught her bridle rein, firmly pulling her horse down to a walk and then to a full stop, saying soberly, “No use runnin’ him plumb off his laigs, Miss. He’ll be awright if you let him blow a bit. I’ll just keep these here reins till he catches his breath.”

  It wasn’t until she spoke to him in Spanish that he realized the girl wasn’t an American. She angrily demanded his reason for interfering and stopping her ride, and her dark eyes flashed sultry wrath while the Spanish sibilants sizzled from her lips.

  When the Rio Kid replied to her in Spanish as fluent as her own some of the outraged anger left her face though her young bosom continued to heave up and down while her breath panted in and out between tight lips.

  He had just been riding through, The Kid explained smoothly, when he heard a pistol shot. Then, when he had seen her fleeing away through the night, well … he shrugged his shoulders. Being a stranger and all, he had thought he’d better investigate. That was all. And would the Señorita be pleased to explain?

  Tonita’s slender shoulders drooped wretchedly beneath the Kid’s searching gaze. He saw that she was a mere child, and horribly frightened. But her full lips gamely tried to form a smile that was meant to be coquettish and she impulsively laid a trembling warm hand on his arm.

  “Es nada, Señor,” she breathed rapidly. “It is nothing at all. I was riding with a … a friend and he shot at a coyote. That was the sound you heard.” And her horse was gun-shy, she went on to explain rapidly, and had bolted and run away. That was all. Truly it was. “Es verdad, Señor,” with a tremolo in her voice that implored him to believe her story.

  The Rio Kid knew she was lying. Her voice held nuances of fear that would have told him she was lying even if he hadn’t seen her desperately trying to outpace him on a horse that certainly had not been running away out of control.

  He said nothing, however, but drew his off-gun and fired it into the ground without warning. Her jaded mount reacted to the gun-shot with only a weary twitch of his ears. The Kid holstered his gun and said matter-of-factly, “Your horse seems to have got all over being gun-shy.”

  Crimson flooded her pale cheeks. She caught her lower lip between firm teeth that glistened white in the moonlight. Then she tossed her head and said stiffly, “If the Señor chooses to disbelieve me, Tonita cannot help that. I will go now.”

  The Kid shook his head and caught her bridle rein again. “I don’t think it’s safe for you to be riding around alone. I’ll go with you. Has a Mexican outfit taken over the Bar L?”

  Her face showed fear again, and rising anger. But she repressed both, replying to his question, “But no. Señor Pelham owns this ranch. My father and others have come from Mexico to work in the hay-field.”

  “Pelham? Hay-field?” The Kid repeated stupidly. He came to a sudden decision, started to turn both horses about. “I reckon we’d better back-track you and see just what’s what back there where the shooting was.”

  He jerked his head up and listened intently as he turned the horses about. A furtive sound drifted through the night silence from behind. Something was moving almost soundlessly on their trail; a four-footed animal from the sound, yet not heavy enough for a horse.

  Tonita glanced at him swiftly when he checked the horses. She saw the look of questioning on his face, heard the sounds too, and recognized them.

  She swayed in the saddle toward him, and before the Rio Kid was aware of her intention two soft arms clasped him about the neck and she was clinging to him tightly, half-lifted out of her saddle.

  He started a confused protest, but warm lips were seeking his, the soft flesh of her young breasts was crushed against his body and when he unwillingly lowered his eyes to hers he saw a starry brightness reflected from hers that swept his mind of every other thought save an answering passion to possess the lips offered to him.

  The blood pounded hotly through his veins, blacking out every other sound. He was young and lonely, and his youth responded to Tonita’s. There was a freshness and a virginal purity about her lips that no man could mistake, and his arms went around her lithe body, crushing her closer and closer while the madness took full possession of his senses. He was, after all, only a young man who had been denied the normal companionship of decent girls, and there was a fierce hunger within him that was not easily sated.

  Tonita was young and unversed in love. She had seen lust in the eyes of men when they looked at her, and she knew those men and their desires were bad. But she knew instinctively that this tall lean-featured young rider was not bad. Though she had first given her lips to him as a desperate sacrifice to draw his attention from those queer sounds on the trail behind them, she found her first kiss from a man far from an unpleasant experience. She let herself go lax in his tight grip, and the strength and resistance were drained out of her body. Her lips were responding to the pressure of his, fervidly and without shame. She wondered confusedly why her parents had warned her against giving her caresses to a man, and in the splendor of the moment she was fiercely glad she had chosen this method of covering her father’s approach on his soft-footed burro.

  The Kid held her tightly in the moonlight for many minutes with his mouth pressed tightly down upon her lips. When he slowly relaxed his grip and she slid back into her own saddle a sense of high exaltation gripped him. It wasn’t love. He was far too cynical and understanding to fall into that trap on the spur of the moment, but there was a shaky feeling of emptiness inside of him, and every other consideration was swept away by the poignant realization that this something had been stolen out of his youth when he rode into Mexico on the renegade trail.

  While he stared at Tonita, seeking to form words that would express his true feelings, she breathed a soft, “Adíos Señor,” that had a lilting note but nothing of mockery in it, then clapped silver spurs to her rested mount and galloped away without another word toward the Bar L.

  The Kid started to follow her, then checked his first impulse. He moodily rolled a cigarette while his gaze watched her erect figure merge with the haze of moonlit radiance. He didn’t dare ride into the Bar L. Not yet. And there was still the unexplained mystery of that gun-shot back along the trail from whence she had come.

  He had forgotten all about the queer pattering sound behind them when he wheeled Thunderbolt into Tonita’s back trail and began following it at a fast trot. He leaned from the saddle to watch for the tracks kicked up by her galloping horse, and it wasn’t until a few hundred yards away when the tracks of an unshod burro joined those of her horse that he recalled the sounds he had heard just before she flung her arms about his neck.

  He pulled Thunderbolt up sharply and frowned down at the message written for him to see in the soft sand. The burro had followed Tonita, had turned off from her trail at that point, angling off toward the Bar L on a wide circle to avoid the point where he had held Tonita in his arms.

  It was all as clear to him as though he were reading a letter with everything explained in words that he could read. Someone had been following Tonita on a burro. She must have heard the light hoofbeats when he did, and instantly recognized what they meant. To prevent him from seeing the burro-rider, she had thrown her arms about his neck and pulled his lips down to hers.

  The Rio Kid grinned down wryly at the burro tracks. So, that explained her action. Somehow, he wasn’t wholly displeased. It gave reason and meaning to the madness of the scene. And he couldn’t rid himself of the thought that no matter what had prompted her to do it, she hadn’t pulled away from him quite as fast as she might after the danger was averted. In fact, he reminded himself that she hadn’t pulled away from him at all. It wasn’t a bad beginning for his home-coming. He started up again on the back-trail, humming a little tune as he rode, more at peace with himself and with the world than he had been for three harrowing years.

  Thunderbolt tossed his head and snorted nervously when they had followed the trail of horse and burro not more than half a mile, about to the point where the shot had sounded, the Rio Kid guessed.

  He pulled the nervous stallion to a walk, standing in the stirrups to peer ahead through the moonlight.

  A horse nickered in front of them and the Kid’s pulse leaped with excitement. Maybe that would be Charlie Barnes. He called out softly but received no answer.

  Then he saw the horse, saddled but riderless, standing patiently with drooping head beside the trail.

  And a little beyond there was the dark blur of a figure lying on the ground.

  The Rio Kid swung out of the saddle and dropped Thunderbolt’s reins, strode forward with his hands on his guns, alert for any sign of a trap.

  But the man who lay face down in the trail was not likely to bother anyone again. There was a bullet hole in his back under the right shoulder blade, and blood had soaked into the dry sand under him.

  The Kid turned the dead body over—and stared down with wide disbelieving eyes at a silver star that reflected moonlight from the dead man’s vest.

  For a long time he stared at that star as though hypnotized, not daring to look at the man’s face, fighting back a crazed feeling that this was three years ago, that he was a frightened kid kneeling in the trail by Sheriff Edwards’ body again.

  Things blurred before his staring eyes and went out of focus. He gritted his teeth and wondered if he was losing his sanity.

  This wasn’t three years ago. This was now. But that star! He could swear it was the same silver badge.

  His hands were clenched so tightly that the fingernails dug into the calloused flesh of his palms. Though there was a cool breeze on his face, streams of sweat ran down his cheeks and dripped off his chin.

  He forced his eyes to open wide, and he made them turn away from the hypnotic influence of that lawman’s star of silver that blinked up at him malignantly.

  His gaze slid up to the dead man’s face and remained riveted there.

  Les Edwards! Son of the man whom he was accused of murdering three years ago.

  And here he was, the first night of his return, kneeling over the son’s body—shot through the back as his father had been.

  8

  For a long time the Rio Kid knelt, unmoving, beside Les Edwards’ dead body. The shock of the corpse’s identity left him numbed, without the ability to think or to act.

  He hadn’t known Les very well in the old days. There was no grief in suddenly coming upon him dead. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he wore that silver star—his father’s star—the Kid would have been totally unmoved by his discovery. Violent death was nothing new to him. He was on intimate terms with Death in all its various guises.

  Suddenly he found that his breath was coming in rasping jerks, that he was cursing in a slow, cold monotone there alone in the moonlight.

  This was too much, by God. Once before, three years ago, fate had tricked him in exactly the same way. He had given in that time. He had been a frightened kid who didn’t know any better. Now, he wasn’t a frightened kid any longer. This time he wouldn’t flee across the Border without defending himself.

  Then all the ghastly implications of the affair burst upon his senses like an exploding bombshell. He was trapped now, tighter than he had been that previous time. With the old charge of murdering the father still hanging over his head, who would believe he had not also murdered the son—shot from behind on the moment of the Kid’s return?

  The numbness slowly went out of him and he relaxed back on his haunches. He made himself a cigarette with nimble fingers while his thoughts followed trails of cold remorseless logic. No use cursing the fate that had drawn him here at this precise moment. The harm was done now. What came next?

  He put away all thought of flight. He had traveled a long trail back and he’d be damned if he’d give up his dream without a fight.

  But every turning from this point was fraught with unknown perils. If he simply rode away and left Les Edwards lying there to be discovered later—what then?

  What about the Mexican girl? Would she tell of meeting him there in the night? The mere proof of his presence near the scene of Les Edwards’ death would be enough to hang the crime on him in the minds of all those already convinced of his previous guilt.