Six shook his head. His fists were knotted tight. “I wish I could believe you.”

  Sarasen nodded. “It was a mistake. My fault. If I’d ridden on in the first place—”

  “But you didn’t.” Six’s eyes lifted and met Sarasen’s unflinchingly. Was this it? Was this the hour when they would face each other over gunsights?

  “Try not to think worse of me than you have to,” Sarasen murmured. He dipped his hatless head morosely toward the corpses and went toward the door. “Adios,” he said, and pulled it open.

  Outside, the crowd’s murmur rose in pitch when Sarasen appeared. Six was too stricken to move. He heard a saddle creak and hoofs move slowly away, and presently the crowd went quiet.

  His gaze lingered on the dead Manny Gutierrez. A friend, trusted and close. Now there were his brown-skinned wife and their children: a widow and four dark-eyed half orphans. They all stood back in the shadows and Six saw the woman’s lifeless gaze lie upon his face. She was not blaming him and he knew she never would, but that did not lessen his guilt or his responsibility.

  Clarissa came in. She said, “What did you do to him?”

  “He’s brought blood on us all,” Six intoned bitterly. “Now he’s gone.”

  “You fool,” she said. “You need him now more than you ever did.”

  “I can’t trust him. I can’t be sure he didn’t rig this whole thing up with Madden.”

  She said nothing more; she went back beside Mrs. Gutierrez, holding the woman’s arm as if to support her, talking softly to the children, who were not old enough to understand.

  He turned around, sickened, and went outside. The posse stood like hounds straining at the leash, each man by a fresh saddled horse. Shopkeepers, bartenders, cooks, clerks, a few cowboys, miners—even Nimble-Finger Buchler, a gunbelt clumsily buckled over his frayed suit coat: gaunt, sick, eyes hot and round. At the head of the crowd stood Six’s night marshal, Bill Dealing, tall and lanky with curly red hair and a pointed face, looking very much the Texan he was.

  Six said, “I intend to run Oakley Madden down if I have to chase him ten thousand miles.”

  Bill Dealing nodded. “I reckon he knows that, too. He ain’t going to be easy to find, not after this.”

  The noon sun pulsed in a blazing sky. Six felt the dampness of sweat between his shoulder blades. To the west marched a wall of blackness—storm clouds building, coming toward them. He wondered if Madden had counted on that; it was diabolical luck for the outlaw. A strong west wind would bring the rain before mid-afternoon, to wash out tracks. Already Six could make out the lined, shadowy streaks of rain falling at a slant over the western desert.

  Hal Craycroft, right arm in a white triangular sling, led a horse forward. He had two huge revolvers belted at his waist. His face was lined with the tracks of pain, but he said, “I’ll ride along, Jeremy.”

  “No,” Six added. “You’ve done your share and more, Hal. If I’d done my job properly and stayed within my own jurisdiction, it might have saved you that wound. You need rest to heal that arm.”

  “I’ll come along,” Craycroft said stubbornly. “It’s my town too, Jeremy, and Manny was my friend as well as yours.”

  Six said gently, “You’d only slow us down, Hal,” and Craycroft, instead of arguing further, nodded reluctantly, muttered something, and turned away to lead his horse back toward the stable.

  The posse was growling impatiently, men shifting from foot to foot, anxious to move. But Six knew it would, in the end, lose them precious time if they just galloped out of town without organization. He said to Bill Dealing, “We’ve got to weed this gang down. This many amateurs making a racket, and we’ll scare Madden off before we get within five miles of him. I want only men who can ride and shoot. We won’t need more than half a dozen, but I want every man provisioned for a long ride. Get a pack animal loaded and make sure every man has a sound horse.”

  After issuing a few more instructions, he went back into the office. He had to steel himself against sight of the bodies on the floor. At the gun rack he selected a Sharps .45-90 rifle, a powerful long-range gun. Loading his pockets with ammunition, he took a box of matches and his folded oilskin slicker from the desk drawer and hooked down his canteen from its wall peg.

  Clarissa stepped away from Mrs. Gutierrez and came over to him. He saw wordless concern in her eyes; she murmured, “Take care, Jeremy. I want you to come back. That’s more important to me than catching Oakley Madden.”

  He didn’t know how to answer without being blunt. “I may find Sarasen with them, Clarissa.”

  “I don’t think so. You see, I trust both of you, Jeremy.”

  He nodded, not sure of anything. Bill Dealing’s tall thin shape filled the doorway and Dealing said calmly, “All set.” Six, gathering his supplies, felt the pressure of Clarissa’s steady glance; he could not fathom its meaning. He turned and walked to the door.

  It was Mrs. Gutierrez who stopped him there. She only put her hand on his arm and her enigmatic dark eyes on his. Six nodded mutely and went out, behind Dealing, into the midday heat.

  They were mounted, waiting. Someone handed over the reins of Six’s horse and he gathered them in quick synchronization with his smooth rise to the saddle. Tugging his hat down, he lifted one arm in the cavalry signal, dropped it smartly forward, and led his small column up the street. Behind him on the porch of the office he saw Clarissa and Gutierrez’ widow standing straight, watching them go. The boardwalks were lined with men, standing grim and armed to the teeth in the savage hope that Madden might return to town in the posse’s absence. Spanish Flat was no town to be fooled twice by the same gambit.

  Storm clouds advanced at breakneck pace from the west. Somewhere out there were Madden and his cutthroats, and somewhere out there, too, rode the tall graceful figure of Ben Sarasen. Was Sarasen riding to meet Madden, to divide the spoils? If so he would be disappointed: the loot was poor. But it was Sarasen’s gun that worried Six. If Sarasen rode with Madden—

  Six rode on, in his eyes pinpoints of wicked flame.

  Chapter Eleven

  At the Chainlink mailbox, big Tracy Chavis rode out to meet them. Hawk-nosed and big-boned, Chavis was the owner of Chainlink, and years ago had owned a reputation of some significance along the Circuit as a hard man to tangle with. Six accepted Chavis’ reinforcement and then, nine men strong, they thundered up the road toward the cutoff into the Mogul Rim. Shortly thereafter, Larry Keene and Bones Riley of Spur ranch, respectively owner and foreman, added their guns to the party. Six had a glimpse of Bill Dealing’s worried look, and knew what was on the Texan’s mind: the posse was becoming unwieldy. But the three newcomers were all respected fighting men, and when Six looked back along the chain of riders there was not a single weak link in it.

  The thunderstorm, rushing up from the west, came at breakneck speed. Six watched it anxiously over his left shoulder while they advanced along the base of the escarpment, eleven men with loaded guns and grim taut faces. The storm would break any time now, washing out whatever tracks might be found. Thus far they had not sought tracks, except to make sure that no one had ridden off the main road into a side trail. They proceeded under the assumption that Madden would make an immediate retreat to his mountain stronghold, and then perhaps divide his gang and scatter them through the wilderness. There was a need for urgency, if the posse meant to catch the gang before it dispersed. But Madden already had a few hours’ start, and as soon as the rain came it would increase the outlaws’ margin of safety. Six chafed and mutely cursed the storm.

  It marched forward relentlessly, throwing tall lances of black cloud forward from its crest, by now entirely obscuring the western half of the sky. Forks of lightning made vivid tracks across that black mass; thunder roared. A fine sprinkle began to needle Six’s skin and then, just as they reached the fork in the coach road, the weight of the storm hit. Slashing knives of heavy rain fell upon them.

  The posse halted to don slickers and ponchos. The rain came down in heavy sheets, obscuring vision, bringing darkness upon the world. As soon as Six had his head poked through the slicker’s center hole, he lifted the reins as if to go on, but a thought restrained him. He said, “Hold on a minute. I just thought of something.”

  “What is it?” Bill Dealing said.

  Six lifted an arm, pointing toward the Mogul and the Yellows. “If I were Madden, I’d expect the posse to chase me up there.”

  “Well, I guess so. What about it?”

  “Well,” Six observed, “I wouldn’t tend to go where I expected to be chased.”

  Dealing pulled down the reins, stopping his horse’s impatient fidgeting. “I see what you mean.”

  “A smart man, willing to take a risk, might turn west into the desert and try to get across it. Meantime the posse would waste so much time prowling around in the mountains, he’d have time to get scot free. I wired Tucson and Bisbee, but by the time they get help to the Smoke, Madden would be long gone.”

  The others, clustered round, took this in and worried it around. Six pondered it; the idea had suddenly come to him, and now he had to stand off to look at it.

  He couldn’t afford to chance that Madden had actually gone into the desert. If he took the posse that way, and Madden was really in the Yellows, it would give Madden’s crew time to split up and get hundreds of miles behind them. The frustrating thing was, with the rain washing out sign, it would be impossible to test either possibility without committing himself, unless—

  Finally he said, “I see only one way out, and it’s a tight chance.”

  Dealing’s mind had evidently been working the same way, “Divide,” he said.

  “Yes. It will mean we’re outnumbered, no matter where we find Madden.”

  “Not badly,” Dealing said. “All told, there were nine of them, including one badly wounded man.”

  Maybe ten, was Six’s dismal thought. Maybe Sarasen’s with them. It was a fear he dared not communicate to the others. He said, “If we split up we’ll still have five or six men in each group, against Madden’s eight.”

  When he looked back through the driving rain at the vaguely visible faces of his men, he knew none of them lacked pluck. Madden had issued his challenge, and to a man the members of this posse would answer it willingly. None of them would think of turning back. Sure of that, he divided the posse, taking with himself four men: rancher Larry Keene, Spur foreman Bones Riley, and two sharp-eyed Flying V cowhands whom he knew were good fighters. The other six, led by Bill Dealing and big Tracy Chavis, would thread the mountains to Madden’s stronghold. Six chose the desert trail on the strength of his hunch.

  He issued orders accordingly, and the posse was about to divide, when a cowboy at the edge of the group let his call sing out: “Hey, look here!”

  Six swung that way, pushed through the crowd, and saw what had attracted the cowboy’s attention. It was a fresh, oblong hump of earth.

  “Fresh grave,” Bones Riley murmured, at his shoulder. Quickly, Six dismounted two men and told them to dig. It was not long before their prodding sticks uncovered the dead, upturned face of Luke Holliday, the younger of the two brothers, who last night had drawn his gun against the Mexican poker players.

  Six let air whistle out through his teeth. “I was hoping that wouldn’t happen,” he said. “If he’d stayed alive, it would have slowed them down.”

  “Not Madden,” Dealing said. “Probably it was the brother who dug this grave. I’d guess the rest of the bunch left him behind. He’s probably not far ahead of us, riding alone, trying to catch up with the others.”

  It was a shrewd guess, and Six had to agree with it. The two cowboys pushed dirt back into the grave and mounted up in the downpour. Six nodded to Bill Dealing, and the lean redheaded Texan led his party off to the right, into the Yellows. Six wasted no time watching them go. His saddlebags filled with provisions from the packhorse, he lifted his arm and led his four men westward, into the muddy flats of the desert.

  In the Southwest it was rare for a thunderstorm to last more than a few hours before moving on, wind-driven from the west or southwest. It was not yet three in the afternoon when the rain quit and, without slowing their trotting horses, the five horsemen slipped out of their oilskins, folded them and tied them across their saddles. By four o’clock the desert hardpan was already crinkling and cracking under the hard slap of the sun. To the east, the full force of the storm battered against the peaks, and Six knew that Dealing’s party would be running into hard going up there.

  It was almost fifty miles across the sand flats to the Arrowheads, and the valley of the Smoke River. In summer heat, a rider could not push his horse fast on the desert, or it would give out; on horseback a man had to count on at least an eighteen hour trek. With a sudden rain just past, the desert would be full of treacherous cutbanks where rushing flash-floods had undermined the earth. It was necessary to watch every step.

  On the assumption that, if Madden had chosen the desert crossing, he would head straight west across the bottleneck to Tilghley’s Ford on the Smoke, Six led his men by the sun. As soon as the rain had stopped, he had spread them out in a fan almost a mile wide, on the thin chance that they might pick up tracks. There was no chance of individual posse members being ambushed unawares; here in the middle of the desert the brush-cover was scanty and low, and the earth was pancake-flat, offering no concealment. That, in part, was what made it such a daring maneuver, for a man on the run to cut across the desert: if caught, he had nowhere to hide.

  As the hands of his pocket-watch drew near five o’clock, Six had the sinking feeling that they must have guessed wrong, that the outlaws had, after all, gone back into the Yellows. But it would be useless to turn back now. He looked at the riders thrown out on either flank. In the far distance, half a mile to his left, bobbed fat Bones Riley. Then, midway between them was the cowboy Elias. To his immediate right rode the other Flying V cowhand, Manuel Redondo; and on the far right, eyes sweeping the ground diligently, was the tall silhouette of Larry Keene. Good men, all of them; had the circumstances been different Six would have enjoyed their company.

  Off to his left, Bones Riley suddenly flung up his arm and waved his hat. Riley did not call out, for sounds carried great distances in the desert; but everyone recognized his signal and turned to run toward him.

  When Six came up, Riley was sitting fat-hipped in the saddle, and nodded toward the ground.

  “Fresh tracks,” Six murmured. “Put there since the rain stopped—two hours at most. One horse only.”

  Riley nodded. The others came up, and Six pointed along the line of distinct horseshoe marks. It led straight west. He said, “Most likely that will be Chris Holliday. He got left behind to bury Luke, and then his horse is probably pretty jaded from carrying double. With any luck, he’ll lead us right to the rest of them. He’ll want a cut of that bank loot, even if he wasn’t in on the holdup.” Maybe it was Holliday; maybe it was Sarasen.

  “Sure,” said Bones Riley, his voice a deep growl. “But what if Madden don’t see it that way? I don’t picture Madden sittin’ around waiting for Chris Holliday to catch up.”

  It was true enough, Six supposed; nonetheless he resolved that they would follow the tracks, as the best means of ascertaining Madden’s direction of travel. He waved his posse forward and set out over the tracks at a canter.

  As the afternoon waned, he felt himself spurred by a grim excited anticipation; the single set of tracks dotting westward convinced him that he had been wise in trusting his own judgment, that Madden was ahead of them.

  Behind, the storm climbed the Yellows; ahead, the sun descended, a red globe spreading vivid arrows of crimson-yellow cloud along the jagged horizon of the Arrowheads. At seven, with the sun just above the mountains and sinking fast, Six was sure they had gained considerably on the worn-out horse that had left the trail of slurred tracks. Was it Sarasen’s buckskin or Holliday’s stolen horse? Increasingly they passed stretches where the tracks showed that the rider had been forced to get down and lead the horse, to rest the animal. Then, along the trail, they found a litter of dead weight that yonder rider must have discarded from his saddle: blanket-roll, coiled rope, saddlebags full of the accumulated random junk of a cowboy’s carefree nomadic existence.

  Bones Riley and Larry Keene inspected the loot; Riley said, “That belongs to one of our men,” and tied the stuff across his own saddle.

  A measure of relief passed through Six’s heart: this was a stolen horse they followed—Holliday’s. It was Chris Holliday’s trail, not Sarasen’s.

  Twilight, then dark. The previous rain had washed the air clean to a purity, and the stars shone through with brittle clarity; there was plenty of light for tracking on the pale, flat surface of the plain. A spindle tracery of yucca and greasewood and catclaw spotted the land. Not more than an hour after dark, Manuel Redondo’s sharp straining eyes picked up the bobbing silhouette of a moving figure ahead of them.

  Shortly the moon rose, and with that aid they were sure their quarry was in sight. Six halted the group and spoke in low tones, “No telling if he’s spotted us yet. But in any case we can’t afford to slow down to his pace, just to keep behind him. Madden’s still got too long a lead. We’ll have to pick Holliday up and keep going. Don’t run your horses if you can help it. Spread out and box him.”

  They split away, Riley and Elias moving off to the left, Keene and Redondo to the right. Six kept his horse straight ahead at an easy gait until he felt the others had had time to advance on the flanks; then he kicked the horse up to a lope, disregarding the racket he made, knowing that in this moonlight there was no way to surprise Holliday on the open desert.

  Holliday soon recognized pursuit. With sudden energy he leaned forward and lashed the tired horse, urging it into an effort of speed. Clods of dried mud threw up behind the running hoofs.

  Bones Riley shouted lustily across the dark. Six gigged his own horse to a gallop, but restrained it from running full-out; Holliday was not the essential target of this chase, and it would be a bad mistake to windbreak his horse on a too-quick dash.