Sam Sloan didn’t know what any of it was about, but he knew Pat Stevens had a mighty good reason for asking him to keep his eyes open around town like he had.

  So Sam fiddled with his drink and moved down a little closer when Crane went straight to Windy and asked him something in a low voice—just like he knew Windy, it looked like to Sam.

  He couldn’t hear the question, but he did hear Windy’s curt reply: “Upstairs.”

  Crane didn’t say anything else. He drew back from Windy and looked around as though he had just recollected something—to see if anyone had noticed him. He acted relieved when he saw that no one seemed to be paying any attention, and he sauntered out into the lobby and upstairs.

  Sam finished his drink and strolled over after him. Crane was just disappearing out of sight at the top of the stairs when Sam started up.

  The upper hallway was deserted when he reached it. Sam made his steps as soundless as possible, tiptoeing down the hall until he came to a room with light shining out under the door and the faint sound of voices coming from inside.

  It was number 14. He knew it was the room occupied by Judge Prink—and he knew that Pat had guessed right. There was some connection between all these newcomers in Dutch Springs and Judge Prink.

  Crane had gone right to Windy Rivers when he entered the hotel, and it was evident that he’d asked the judge’s whereabouts and Windy had told him the judge was in his room.

  Sam hesitated, and then put his head against the thin upper panel of the door and listened intently. He heard Gilbert Crane saying:

  “So the damned fool has got us in a jam right when things were beginning to work the way you planned. If he’d left the boy alone—”

  Sam heard footsteps on the stairway behind him. He moved away stealthily and unlocked his room, one door down and across the hall.

  He stepped inside and peered out as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs.

  It was Windy Rivers.

  The gambler came straight down the hallway and stopped outside number 14. He rapped lightly and then turned the knob and went inside.

  Excitement gripped Sam Sloan. He wondered what Pat would want him to do in a case like this. It looked like an important pow-wow was going on behind the closed door of number 14. Pat had asked him to keep an eye open. He hadn’t said anything about eavesdropping, but Sam felt that he’d give a pretty penny to know what was being said inside.

  He took a chance and tiptoed across the hall again. But this time he could catch only a low confused murmur from inside the room. He couldn’t distinguish any words, and guessed it was the soft-voiced judge talking. He kept on listening and was finally rewarded by hearing Crane say:

  “Might work that way. If I can get Tim drunk enough—” Then the judge’s soft voice cut in again, and Sam heard the warning sound of a chair being scraped back on the bare floor.

  He ducked back into his room across the hall and lit his lamp. He heard the door of number 14 open, and Crane’s boot heels going down the hall to the stairs, and a little later he heard Windy come out and go into his own room.

  Sam undressed thoughtfully and went to bed. He had to ride the Express route back south in the morning. There was hardly time to get out to the Lazy Mare to tell Pat what he’d seen and heard. And it wasn’t much anyhow. If Pat hadn’t said what he did that evening, Sam wouldn’t have thought anything about it.

  Gut-Luck was still waiting up at the K Bar when Crane got back after midnight. The gunman was drinking whiskey out of a tin cup and he’d gotten himself into an ugly mood. He glared at the horse trader when Crane came in, and growled, “Look here. I been thinkin’—”

  “Let’s let the judge do the thinking,” Crane interrupted him. He stripped off his, gloves and stuffed them in a pocket, then poured himself a drink. “The judge is smart. He saw right away how to turn this thing about the boy around so it would work out just right.”

  “How?”

  Crane finished his drink before replying. Then he reminded Gut-Luck: “You know your end of it is finished after you gun Pat Stevens. That’s all you’re here for.”

  “Shore. I know that.”

  “And I’ve got to stay and make up to the widow. So it don’t matter whether the boy keeps on liking you or not.”

  “All right. So—?”

  “So you and Tim take a ride out to the shack tomorrow evening. On the way out you talk to Tim about kidnaping the boy and holding him for ransom. With a few drinks under his belt, and the way he already hates Sheriff Stevens, Tim will like the idea.” Crane paused to take another drink.

  “You want Tim an’ me to hide him out for ransom?”

  “Not you and Tim if you can help it,” Crane directed him. “No use getting mixed up in it if you can keep clear. Take an extra horse along for Dock and tell him Tim is going to help him get started out for Mexico. Then you leave them and come back. Soon as you’re gone, Tim can go ahead and kidnap the boy, and chances are Dock won’t connect you with it at all. Then we’ll fix it in a day or two for me to find the boy and turn him loose to go home. He’ll tell his daddy about Tim kidnaping him and chances are he won’t mention you in it at all. Then Stevens will come helling over here to get Tim—and you’ll handle him like we planned. When I tell my story about Tim getting in the first shot and me killing Tim right afterward, everybody will believe it.”

  “Sounds all right,” Lasher muttered. “But it’s mighty damned mixed up jest for a simple shootin’. I never worked this way before.”

  “You never had Judge Prink to figure things out for you, that’s why. The only danger is that Dock might tell his mama about you coming out with Tim and give people the idea you were mixed up in it too. So the judge wants you to pull up stakes as soon as Stevens is taken care of. He’ll fix up where you’re to go.”

  Lasher shrugged and poured more whiskey into his tin cup. “It’s all right with me. All’ I want is my cut when it’s all over.”

  “You’ll get that—and it’ll be a big one or I miss my guess.” Crane lifted his cap in a salute and said, “Here’s to Judge Prink,” and they both drank deeply.

  11

  Pat Stevens came awake abruptly and fully half an hour before the first light of dawn. He started to turn back the covers cautiously, planning on how he could get out of bed and the bedroom without wakening Sally, when he suddenly realized that he was alone in the big four-poster bed.

  He threw back the covers with a snort of disgust and reached for his pants. When he opened the bedroom door the smell of coffee and frying bacon came to him from the kitchen. Sally turned from the stove to smile at him wanly when he came in.

  He said sternly, “You should of kept right on sleeping, honey. I told you last night I’d fix breakfast for Ezra an’ me.”

  “I haven’t been asleep,” Sally admitted. “I just couldn’t keep on lying there, Pat. I had to do something.”

  She looked young and fragile in a big woolen bathrobe with her hair combed straight down and tied back from her face with a pink ribbon. Pat put his arms about her and held her tight for a moment and said gruffly, “You got to quit worryin’. Ezra an’ I’ll be on Dock’s trail soon as it’s daylight. We’ll have him back here before night.”

  “I know.” Sally pushed him away and turned back to the stove. “You’d better get washed up because I’m going to start frying your eggs.”

  Pat started to say, “I’ll call Ezra,” but the back door opened just then and the big one-eyed man came in. He scowled when he saw Pat, and growled, “It’s time you was gettin’ up. I got two hawses saddled an’ it’ll be daylight ’fore we can get breakfast eat.”

  Pat said, “I suppose you didn’t sleep either. You’re as bad as Sally. Both of you act like Dock was the first boy that ever tried to run away from home.”

  “I reckon you ain’t even int’rested,” Ezra returned sarcastically, glancing at the two guns on Pat’s hips. “You figgerin’ on shootin’ it out with Dock when we ketch up with him?”

  “Yes, Pat,” Sally put in with her back turned. “I wondered why you were wearing your guns this morning. You don’t plan to arrest Dock, do you?”

  Pat said, “These guns haven’t got anything to do with Dock. I’m wearin’ them from now on.” He went out the back door to the wash basins on a wooden bench against the rear of the house.

  When he re-entered the kitchen, Ezra was already seated at the table wolfing down a big plate of bacon and eggs and hot biscuits. Pat cleared his throat loudly and sat down opposite him. He caught hold of Sally’s hand and held it for a moment when she set his breakfast down. She told him, “Don’t worry about me. I think I’ll be able to get some sleep as soon as you an’ Ezra are actually on the trail. Just promise me one thing, Pat.”

  “What is it?”

  “That you won’t come back without Dock. Please. I don’t think I’d be able to stand it if I saw you riding up without him. As long as you don’t come back I’ll know you’re still on his trail.”

  Pat said, “We won’t come back without him.”

  He and Ezra finished their breakfast in silence. Pat kissed Sally and went out to the two horses which Ezra had saddled. It wasn’t yet daylight when they rode away from the ranch, but Ezra reminded him that it would be by the time they reached the place where he had lost the boy’s trail the preceding night.

  And Ezra was right. By the time they reached the fence marking the south boundary of the Lazy Mare ranch the first streaks of dawn were already in the sky. Pat swung off his horse to open the wire gate, and as Ezra rode through the opening they heard a horse nickering eagerly from a little way down the fence line.

  They both turned to listen, and heard a horse trotting toward them jerkily, emerging as a vague shape from the semi-darkness, and then revealed as a saddled horse without a rider, holding its head high and trotting jerkily as the trailing bridle reins were caught again and again under nervous forefeet.

  Ezra began swearing in a low monotone and Pat’s face became grimly set when they recognized the riderless horse. It was Dock’s favorite. A stocky pinto. The horse he had ridden away from home twelve hours before.

  Pat closed the gate slowly. He stood there like a statue while the pinto slowed to a walk and then came up to nuzzle him confidently. He tangled his fingers in the pony’s mane and demanded huskily, “Where’s Dock? What happened, boy?”

  The pinto tossed his head and snorted loudly. Ezra had slid off his horse and he came over to examine the animal.

  “He ain’t a mite hot,” he pointed out to Pat. “That means he ain’t traveled far. More’n likely he’s been waitin’ around the gate here most of the night for somebody to let him in.”

  Pat Stevens suddenly began to look old and sick. For the first time in his life he was up against something he didn’t know how to handle. He asked brokenly, “What coulda happened, Ezra? If he threw Dock he wouldn’t run off an’ leave him. You know that. And he was trained to stand ground-tied.”

  Ezra’s one eye glanced queerly in the early morning light. He studied the saddle intently, running his hands over the stirrup leathers and latigo strap as though to assure himself they were real. Then he lifted the trailing reins and examined them carefully.

  “Looky here.” He pointed out a hard knot tied near the end of one of the leather reins. “An’ here.” He showed Pat the other rein, with the end broken off to make it at least a foot shorter than the knotted one. “Plain enuff what happened,” he grunted. “Dock musta tied the reins together an’ left ’em looped over the saddle horn when he sent the hawse home. Dock’d know that’s the only way he’d come. An’ they slipped off the horn an’ off his neck sometime in the night. He tramped on ’em an’ broke this ’un at the place where it was tied.”

  “Why?” Pat asked desperately. “Why would Dock knot the reins and send him home? How else would he figure on getting anywhere, except on hawseback?”

  Ezra shook his big head. He didn’t look at Pat as he rumbled, “Only way I kin see it is somethin’ happened to Dock so’s he couldn’t ride no more. So he made out to tie the reins an’ send his pinto home to sort of guide us back to him.” He blew his nose loudly between his fingers and wiped it on the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Can you back-trail the pinto?” Pat demanded.

  “Shore. I trailed him way on past here last night like I tol’ you, till I lost his tracks in a bunch of others that was all mixed up. See here.” Ezra bent over and lifted the pinto’s left front leg, pointed out a small broken place in the rear part of the hoof. “Dock showed that foot to me two or three days ago an’ we talked about mebby shoein’ him. That broken place makes a clear track that anybody could foller.”

  “All right.” Pat didn’t argue with the big red-headed man about it. He’d long ago ceased trying to understand how Ezra accomplished his seeming miracles in following a trail that no ordinary man could see. “What’ll we do with the pinto? We can’t let him go on home. If Sally saw him come trottin’ up with Dock’s saddle on his back—” He left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

  Ezra nodded agreement. “She’d have a conniption fit,” he agreed. “Don’t you reckon you’d better lead him along, Pat? If we find Dock it might be we’d need a hawse to bring him back on—for him to ride back,” he amended hastily.

  Pat shivered at the implication in Ezra’s words. He nodded and caught up the pinto’s reins. “I’ll bring him along.”

  Ezra was already striding along the fence line with his head hunched forward, his one eye studying a maze of hoofprints in the sandy ground.

  “He’s been trottin’ back an’ forth along here in front of the gate like I thought,” he announced over his shoulder. “You wait there with him while I spread out an’ find his trail where he came up to the fence.”

  Pat waited with three horses while Ezra cut away from the fence line and then turned back on a line parallel with it and a couple of hundred yards away.

  The big man walked along rapidly and then stopped with a grunt of satisfaction. He looked up and waved to Pat, announcing, “Here’s his trail comin’ in from the southwest.” He waited until Pat came up to him. “See there.” He pointed to the ground and then in a southwesterly direction. “Plain as the nose on yore face. You kin easy see ’twas a hawse movin’ jumpy-like to miss steppin’ on the reins even if you can’t see the track of that busted front hoof.”

  The tracks he pointed to looked like any other set of hoofprints to Pat’s eyes. But he nodded and said tersely, “Let’s start ridin’ the back-trail.”

  They set out at a trot with Ezra slightly in the lead. He kept scanning the ground ahead, and kept up a steady pace, with Pat riding beside him and leading Dock’s pinto. Neither of them spoke of what they feared they would find at the end of the trail, nor of the sickness that was inside them. In all their imaginings, neither of them could figure out what had happened to Dock to cause him to tie his reins and send his pony back. If he had been thrown and hurt so badly that he couldn’t ride, it wasn’t likely he’d have been able to loop the reins over the saddle horn. It just didn’t make sense, and they both tried to avoid thinking ahead.

  When they had ridden in silence as long as Ezra could endure it, he told Pat gruffly, “The way these here tracks are headin’ will take us somewheres a couple of miles west of where I lost the trail las’ night.”

  “How old is the trail?” Pat asked through tight lips.

  “Four—five hours old mebby. Looks like the pinto musta jest about follered me back after I rode in last night. If I’d stayed out a little longer I mighta seen him then.”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good,” Pat told him sharply. “You couldn’t have followed the back-trail at night.”

  Ezra muttered, “I follered it from the ranch easy enuff.” He sat erect in the saddle, scanning the landscape ahead and frowning. “I don’t savvy this. Them tracks made a bee-line south from the ranch to where I lost ’em. Now, this set follers straight back to the Lazy Mare only from a place more’n two miles west of the other trail. Why’d Dock turn off west an’ waste time when he musta knowed I’d take out on his trail soon as we found out he’d left?”

  Pat said savagely, “It’s no use guessing what a boy might do. Are we still on the trail?”

  “Shore. Why else d’yuh think we’d be ridin’ along?” Ezra asked indignantly. He bent forward and began to slow up his horse. “Hol’ it, though.” He pulled up his horse abruptly and slid out of the saddle. He stood motionless a moment, frowning down at the ground, and then carefully began to swing around in a wide circle, bent forward from the waist so his one eye was not more than two feet away from his toes.

  Pat sat in the saddle and watched him and tried to roll a cigarette. His shaky fingers tore two papers before he got one rolled. Ezra had completed a wide circle and was angling in toward the center of it. He seemed to be sniffing his way like a dog, and Pat watched him, fascinated.

  When Ezra straightened up and came toward him, his scarred face gave no clue to the story he had read there in the maze of hoofprints on the ground.

  He came up beside Pat’s horse and began talking slowly, as though he didn’t want to believe what he was saying, but it was something that had to be said:

  “Here’s where the pinto started out from with an empty saddle, Pat. Somethin’ funny happened here. There ain’t a single sign of a footprint, but I’ll swear to God the pinto had a rider up when he got this far—an’ didn’t have a rider when he took out from here towards the Lazy Mare.”

  He paused to gulp in a long breath. “There was another rider here at the same time las’ night. His hawse an’ the pinto did a lot of circlin’ right here. His hawse went off loaded double, Pat.”