Sammy got up, pushing the chair away with the backs of his knees. “Nobody asked for your damned advice,” he said angrily, and tramped across to the bar to pour a drink.

  Hal Craycroft murmured in a voice too low to reach Sammy’s ears, “The kid’s had troubles lately. I’d appreciate it if you’d give him some rein.”

  January answered without changing expression. “What do you think I’ve been doing, friend? If I’d decided to take him seriously he’d have been dead by now.” January’s bleak eyes lifted unhurriedly and met Craycroft’s. The bartender felt the force of January’s stare: it chilled him down to his boots.

  The front door latched open and Marshal Jeremy Six appeared there, outlined in a half-obscurity of slowly falling snow. “Getting bad out here,” Six said to no one in particular, and closed the door. He stayed by the door, evidently not intending to stay but just looking in. He glanced at Sammy Preston, at the bar, and something about Sammy’s sweaty, excited face made Six look around, frowning. “Everything all right, Hal?”

  “I reckon.”

  But then Six’s eyes swept past Craycroft and settled against Will January. January was sitting very still with one hand out of sight under the card table. His head was thrown back a little and pinpoints of lamplight glittered on the frosty surfaces of his eyes. January and Six looked at each other with recognition and with wary alertness. And after a moment’s drawn silence, Jeremy Six said:

  “Well, now, look what we’ve got here.”

  January inclined his head very slightly. “Jeremy.”

  Six walked straight up to the poker table, drawing the glove off his right hand. Craycroft and Keene slid their chairs apart to make room for Six to stand between them. January’s attention never left Six’s face but a slow smile, ironic and lopsided, settled on January’s mouth. He murmured, “Bounty-hunting, Jeremy?”

  “Have you got a bounty on you?” Six answered.

  “Not in Arizona.” January’s left hand played with a stack of chips. He seemed distantly amused. “In fact, I’m not wanted for a thing down here, Jeremy.”

  Sammy Preston came forward with a tumbler half-full of whisky. He was frowning, puzzled. “What’s he done, Marshal?”

  Six ignored him. His heavy glance lay against January and there was little trust in it. He said, “You won’t be going anywhere for awhile.”

  “Not with the weather you serve up,” January said.

  “Maybe I’ll just check through to Prescott.”

  “Do that, Jeremy.” The thin smile was steady.

  With evident dislike, Six studied the gambler for a further moment before he turned and went out of the saloon.

  Sammy Preston said immediately, “What the hell was that all about?”

  Hal Craycroft said, “Mind your manners, Sammy.”

  January said calmly, “Sit down, sonny, and let’s pick up this card game.”

  Chapter Four

  Six batted at a snowflake on his cheek as if it had been a mosquito. He was angry. As if he hadn’t already had enough trouble, the storm had had to blow Will January into town. January and Trouble meant exactly the same thing. Six turned down a side street and a gust of wind almost tore off his hat. He passed a horseman headed for the stables and then turned in at the telegraph office. He filled out a Western Union blank and addressed it to the Territorial Attorney General at Prescott. His handwriting was swift but crabbed. He thought out the message for a moment before he wrote it; Six insisted upon efficiency in his office and held himself to the same code. Only once in his life had he been known to send a telegram of more than ten words. Finally he wrote:

  Is Will January wanted for felony or subject to extradition?

  He put the wire on the town bill and went back outside. The sky was still lowering: the clouds seemed almost at the rooftops. It wouldn’t be long now. He went back into the main street and turned down to his office.

  There was a thin coating of snow on the street. He went inside and found Dominguez hulking over the stove, warming his face and hands. Dominguez looked around and grunted and watched Six go to the gun rack and take down a spare belted revolver. Six buckled it around him so that the second revolver rode butt-forward high on his left side. It meant both guns were right-handed draws, but that was the way he intended it. Nobody had yet convinced him that a man could fire two guns at once and expect to hit anything with either of them. The second revolver, for Six, was merely insurance—against malfunction or running out of ammunition or a wound in the right arm or hand: the backhanded revolver at his left hip could be drawn with his left hand if necessary.

  Dominguez watched him belt it on. “What’s that for?”

  “Ballast,” Six said. “And nothing else, I hope.”

  He told Dominguez about the arrival of Will January and saw Dominguez’ lips purse up in a soundless whistle. Dominguez said, “Judas Priest, that’s all we need.” He put his back to the stove and toasted his rump. “But maybe he’ll mind his business and just ride on when the norther’s done.”

  “Sort of like finding a rattlesnake in your bedroll and hoping he’ll move on in the morning without biting you, isn’t it?” Six said dourly.

  “Want me to go over there and keep an eye on him?”

  “That might be a good idea.”

  Dominguez nodded and got into his coat. When he went out he had to bend down to clear the doorway. Six put on his gloves and went out after him, secured the door and turned back toward Cat Town. It was getting on toward three o’clock and time for his first rounds.

  Fat Annie gave him a hot toddy and her chins shook with chuckling when Six’s bland glance surveyed the girls lounging around the parlor. A cowboy came down the stairs, buttoning his shirt, and when he reached the floor the cowboy looked out through the windows and stopped dead still. “Sweet God,” he said. “I ain’t going out in that. How much it cost to put me up till the storm blows over?”

  Fat Annie said judiciously, “That depends on whether you want company, cowboy.”

  The cowboy looked at Jeremy Six and grinned. “What a place to get snowed into, hey, marshal?”

  “Take care of yourself, cowboy,” Six said, stifling a grin. He gave Fat Annie a playful punch in the shoulder and went outside. Going down the street, he thought, That cowboy’ll have something to brag about around cold campfires the rest of his life, and it made Six smile briefly until he thought once again of the gathering blizzard and the gunman-gambler over at the Drover’s Rest. He had a premonition, amounting to a certainty, that there was more than a snowstorm brewing in Spanish Flat.

  He put his head into a dozen saloons and finally reached the Glad Hand. He went inside through the tunnel-doorway and found Nimble-Finger Buchler at the keyboard. The piano was slightly out of tune and Buchler was trying to tighten some strings with a rusty wrench. The piano-player looked up sourly when Six came in. Six nodded to him and glanced around the room. There were only two or three customers, all at one table, sitting with half-lidded resignation and obviously prepared to wait out the storm aided by whisky and the warmth of the black stove in the corner. The barkeep was sitting on a stool with his back to the wall, arms folded and head down over his chest like a peon at siesta-time. Six went over to the piano and said, “You missed some excitement here the other night.”

  “I heard. I can do without that kind of excitement.” Nimble-Finger was a gaunt consumptive with hollow sad eyes and an incredible amount of talent in his spidery fingers.

  Probably he had a first name somewhere in his past, but the frontier had a way of saddling men with appropriate nicknames and Six had never heard the piano-player called anything but Nimble-Finger Buchler.

  Nimble-Finger said, “I don’t know which I hate worst in this God-forsaken country, the summers or the winters. Why does everything have to be extremes out here?” He shrugged and turned back to his wrench-tuning. “I guess I shouldn’t complain. The desert’s kept me alive long past my allotted time. You ever had to live on borrowed time, Marshal?”

  “Every day,” Six murmured. “Every bullet that misses adds to the interest.”

  Buchler nodded without looking at him. “I guess that’s right, too. Well, we’re all of us just passing through. I guess nothing matters too much. You’ve got to get killed someday, Marshal, one way or another.”

  “I guess so,” Six said. “Take it easy.” He went back through the saloon to the office. As he passed, the bartender lifted his head an inch and opened one eye, and went back to sleep. Six rapped on the office door lightly with his knuckles and when he heard Clarissa’s voice he latched the door open and stepped into the office.

  Clarissa had a Louis XVI divan in one end of the old office which she used occasionally as a napping place. She was lying back against the faded tapestry of the upholstery, a pillow under her shoulders. Evidently she had been reading, but the book was now on the floor, face-down. She gave Six a smile and did not bother to rise or adjust the skirt around her legs. Six closed the door and took his time reaching for the straight-backed chair in front of the desk. He reversed it and sat down with his legs straddling the back of the chair and his elbows folded across the top. He hooked his boot heels in low rungs of the chair-legs and tipped his hat back. That he did not remove the hat in her presence was an indication of the strict code of courtesy according to which he treated people. He granted that exact shade of politeness which was required by the standing of the person involved: and since Clarissa ran a saloon on the wrong side of town, Jeremy Six did not take off his hat. It had nothing to do with his personal feelings for her.

  Neither of them had spoken. Finally Clarissa said, “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “When you’re just paying a social call, you offer to buy me a drink and then you tell me I don’t belong in a dump like this. I suppose it must make sense to you—offering me a drink and then telling me I don’t belong around whisky. It doesn’t make any sense to me. But you didn’t say a word when you came in this time. What’s wrong? The storm on your nerves?”

  “More than that, I’m afraid,” he said, and gave her a brief smile. “But it’s not your headache.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. She sat up and swung her legs down to the floor. “Every so often you need a shoulder to cry on. I’m always here, Jeremy. You don’t need to beat around the bush with me.”

  He turned his palms up, Indian-style, acquiescing; he told her about Will January. As he talked he watched her face. Clarissa had been in love with a man not too unlike January. The man she had loved had died in a gun battle and Six had been there: the man had sacrificed himself to save Six’s life. In a way it had put Six’s life in Clarissa’s hands. In another way he had to wonder what effect the arrival of a man like January might have on her. Would it revive all the old memories?

  He could not tell, from her face. All that he saw was her cool beauty, which had never failed to stir him.

  She said, “You tend to push people when you don’t trust them, Jeremy. Maybe if you just leave him alone he’ll stay quiet.”

  “Maybe,” he said, and brooded upon it.

  Clarissa came over to him and stood behind him. She was a slim woman but her hands were strong. She gripped his shoulders from behind and kneaded his back, relaxing him. He could smell her clean scent. After a while he stood up and turned to her, lifted one hand to the back of her head and drew her gently toward him. He kissed her mouth softly, without pressure, and murmured, “I’ve got a town to take care of,” and went out.

  Snow flurries whipped around the advancing horsemen. The afternoon was midnight-dark. Peso was cursing under his breath in Spanish. In the lead, Jack Lime got down and led his horse, feeling out the road with his boots: it was impossible to see in the thick, wheeling snow. His nose and earlobes were numb with frost. After five minutes he stopped and let the others bunch up around him. He said, “Better dismount. Well go single-file. Lead your own horse and hang onto the tail of the horse in front of you.”

  “Like elephants in a circus,” Quirt Ross said bleakly.

  Peso pushed his face forward and Lime could see Peso’s teeth. Peso said wickedly, “I will tell you one thing, amigo, and it is this. If we get lost out here and the storm catches us, I will kill you before I die.”

  Lime answered imperturbably, “If we get lost and caught in the open, Peso, it won’t make much difference to any of us how we get killed. Now let’s get going.”

  Orozco, still nursing his hangover, said painfully, “How far it is to the town?”

  “We’ll know when we get there,” Lime said. “Can’t see any landmarks in this muck. But were on the road—we’ll get there.”

  Quirt Ross snorted. “Circus elephants.”

  “Shut up,” said Lime. “Quit bellyaching, all of you. A little snow won’t hurt you. Come on—let’s get moving.”

  Peso said, “Un momento, amigo. I don’ think I want to go into this town before I know what it is you plan.”

  Quirt Ross said, “He’s right, Jack. Better let us know what you got in mind.”

  “We’re heading for the Glad Hand Saloon,” Jack Lime said, and laughed at them. “Come on, you bozos.” He stepped away, leading his horse into the wheeling snow. In sudden confusion the others spun to follow him, abruptly afraid of being lost alone in the cold obscurity.

  Amy Preston wiped a hand across her eyes and tried to peer through the snowfall. She couldn’t see anything. Fear had a grip on her: it knotted like a cold fist around her heart. But she had been raised in bad-weather country and she knew enough to trust her horse. The horse had made the trip back and forth from the mine to Spanish Flat countless times. There was a lot of snow and it was impossible to see, but the wind had not come up yet, the hard-swinging steel-fisted wind of the blizzard. That would come soon—perhaps too soon. If it came before the horse got her to town, the horse would turn against the wind and run. Amy had to sit her saddle, give the horse free rein, and pray the wind held off long enough for her to reach Spanish Flat.

  She wore a parka that had been her father’s, with the wool-lined oilskin hood up over her head and a bandanna across her nose highwayman-fashion to cut the cold and make breathing easier. Only her eyes were exposed to the snow and now even they were useless: she held one mittened hand before them and felt a slow spark of anger fan itself into hot flame within her. It was worry about her brother Sammy that had brought her out into the storm, and she had a feeling she would find him cozy and warm wrapped around a whisky bottle somewhere in town. He deserved a horsewhipping, she thought hotly. But then the anger dissipated: what if Sammy were lying somewhere along this road with a broken leg, crying for help?

  But she heard no cries. She only heard the jingle of bit chains, the squeak of saddle leather, the thud of the horse’s lonely hoofs against the snow-surfaced road. And she heard the distant moan of the wind. How long would it be before the wind rushed forward to engulf her?

  She felt the numbness of chill work its way into her extremities and she batted her arms together to stimulate the circulation. She had put on an extra pair of socks before squeezing her small feet into the fleece-lined boots and now she berated herself impatiently: it was ridiculous to be afraid of frostbite on a mere half-hour ride. But she had already been riding more than a half hour—it seemed many hours since she had left the mine. And where was the town? She had the awful fear that somehow she had turned onto the wrong road, that she was riding out into vast emptiness where the storm would swallow her. She spoke an oath loud. She was made of tough mettle and she ought to know better than to give way to unknown fright. The road pitched downward and that, in itself, was evidence enough she was on the right road.

  But where was Spanish Flat?

  In that manner she alternately reasoned with herself and gave way to unreasonable terrors. The road seemed endless and she could see nothing of it at all: only the tilt of the saddle under her told her that the horse was still plodding downhill. Hopefully the horse knew the way. She said, “Damn you, Sammy Preston!” and heard the moan of the wind rise to a cry. The first fingers of it touched her, flapping the cloth that swathed her. The snow, which had been circling down, suddenly grew rigid and slanted across her vision, driven on the wind. It was not yet a powerful wind but she could hear the advancing shriek of the norther’s full force. A cry was torn from her throat: “Oh, God!” Her boot heels flapped against the horse’s flanks as she urged it to greater speed: but the horse refused to go faster. Head down, it continued to pick its way methodically through the impenetrable darkness.

  Blinded, alone, chilled through, Amy clutched the saddlehorn with both hands and stared round-eyed, hardly blinking when hard-driven snowflakes whipped against her eyes. The sound of the horse’s hoofbeats was lost in the climbing song of the wind. Amy locked her jaw tight and heard herself speaking earnestly to the horse, pleading with the horse.

  There was a brief stillness in the wind, like a broken instant of time. She was aware that the horse was moving on level ground now, and in that instant’s lull she thought—she could not be certain—that she saw the distant gleam of a lamplit window ahead of her. It was only a moment’s vision, quickly swallowed by the resumed rush of the wind and snow.

  Within the Drover’s Rest, Will January’s bottle-green coat hung on its peg by the door and January himself sat sleepy-eyed over his deck of cards, occasionally responding in a monotone to someone’s bet or raise. January’s luck seemed moderately poor: his stack of chips was somewhat smaller than it had been an hour earlier. Around the table the other players talked desultorily, mainly about the storm. The wind was easily audible from outside. Over at the bar, Hal Craycroft stood talking idly with Dominguez, the deputy; and every now and then Dominguez would look around at January.