Carson listened with half an ear as Potter spun his wild stories. Daniel gobbled them up like a hungry chicken pecking at grain. It was confounding to think he and Potter had lived those adventures together. The way his friend told the stories, they were the most desperate desperadoes in the Lone Star State.

  “How much farther?” Joe rode, knee to knee, and spoke in a low voice.

  “Not far. A half hour at the outside.” Carson saw the worried expression on his friend’s face.

  “Somebody’s been dogging our heels all day long,” he said.

  Carson sat straighter in the saddle. He hadn’t noticed and said so.

  “Here I thought you were the suspicious one. There’s no way Daniel would notice, not hanging on Simon’s every word the way he’s doing. And Simon?” Joe chuckled. “He’d never notice until somebody stomped on his toes. He enjoys being center stage with a new audience for his yarns.”

  “That’s probably how he got caught back in Boone,” Carson said. He twisted about and studied the road behind. “I don’t see anything.”

  “One man, not on the road. He’s riding to one side, to keep from kicking up much dust.”

  Carson ground his teeth together. That meant whoever trailed them didn’t want to be noticed.

  “There’s no law in Elbow Bend. Simon may have made some husband mad by making a pass at a flirty wife.” Joe chuckled at that.

  “That’s what happened in Boone,” Carson said.

  “There,” Joe said, voice almost cracking with the strain. “I spotted him. A lone rider.”

  “I saw him, too,” Carson said. “Big, ugly galoot. Dressed like a mountain man.”

  “He’s riding with his rifle across his saddle. He’s ready for a fight.”

  Carson thought about their situation. Riding ahead and joining with Lemuel and the others was out of the question if they were being tracked. Better to deal with the man on their heels than to involve an ailing Lemuel Jones.

  “That’s not necessarily so,” Carson said. “He might be a hunter.”

  “A buffalo hunter from the size of that rifle. A Sharps? Good for long-range hunting,” Joe said.

  The large-caliber rifle designed to take down buffalo at a hundred yards wasn’t something he wanted to tangle with. The man following them had only to find a place to make a stand and take them out, one by one, if they tried to attack him. A decent hunter could fire a Sharps with deadly accuracy four or five times in a minute. There were only the four of them—and depending on Daniel Easterly in a fight wasn’t something Carson wanted to think about. The boy hadn’t shown good sense or much bravery when they’d held up the stage. How much he had learned from that experience was yet to be tested.

  “What do you want to do, Clay?”

  “You and Daniel ride ahead slowlike. Let Potter and me see to this gent.”

  “The chance he’s only another traveler along this road doesn’t look too good,” Joe said. “He’s being too cagey.”

  “You and Daniel keep on the road. I’ll go south, and Simon can go north. Let’s see who he follows.”

  Joe Easterly nodded in agreement, then trotted ahead to talk to his brother and Potter. Carson waited for Potter to cut away before he headed south. He had a bad feeling about this.

  The air was thick with that late-afternoon heat that made a man feel heavy in the saddle, sweat pooling at the small of the back. Carson rode in a slow arc, putting mesquite and low scrub between himself and the trail, flanking wide. The kind of move they used to make during ambushes, back when the gang was tighter, leaner, and younger.

  He kept his eyes on the man, now visible on a low rise, cutting a silhouette against the hard blue sky. The figure didn’t follow Joe and Daniel. He was watching—waiting. Carson didn’t like that.

  A half mile north, Potter rode casually, his horse kicking up dust with lazy disinterest. But Carson saw the way Simon adjusted in the saddle, his right arm hanging just a little too easy near his holster.

  The rider crested the hill.

  Then he vanished.

  Carson blinked. One minute the man was there, the next gone. With his eyes scanning the horizon, he urged his horse into a trot. The slope of the land must’ve hidden him, but it was still eerie.

  He turned his mount to intercept Potter.

  “He’s gone. Just dropped outta sight like smoke.”

  Potter frowned. “You sure? That hill’s not steep enough to hide a man for long.”

  “Unless he knows the land better than we do. Or he ain’t alone.”

  Potter turned in the saddle, scanned behind them. The sun was dropping, casting long shadows that reached like fingers across the prairie.

  “Clay,” Potter said, voice lower now. “You think Sutcliff would come after us alone?”

  “No. But he’d send someone who doesn’t mind dying in the dirt. Someone meaner than a rattler with a sore tooth.”

  They rode back toward the trail in silence, rejoining Joe and Daniel just as the land turned a golden-red hue, the air filled with cicadas and distant bird cries.

  Carson didn’t say it aloud, but the old feeling was crawling back over his skin. They were being hunted.

  And this time, he wasn’t sure they’d outrun it.

  Not without blood. Maybe not at all.

  CHAPTER 20

  The man trailing them had chosen to keep after his partners while he guarded their back trail. The tracker’s identity worried Carson. Was it Potter who drew such attention? What had his friend done in Elbow Bend? Or had Joe and Daniel’s rustling caught up with them?

  The burly rider showed how expert he was at tracking by the way he chose to move across terrain that not only wouldn’t kick up revealing dust but also left the barest of tracks.

  The rocky ground gave him a path that Carson would never have found if he hadn’t kept the man in sight. Occasional glimpses at the ground failed to give any hint as to a trail.

  The land here had a cruel, broken feel to it—dry gulches like open wounds, brittle brush snapping under hoof, greasewood and mesquite twisting up from soil that was more rock than earth. Carson had spent enough years wandering places just like this to know when a man belonged to the land and when he didn’t. The man ahead moved like he was carved from it.

  As he rode, Carson made sure his six-shooter was fully loaded. He tugged the Winchester from its saddle sheath. Rather than returning it once he was sure the magazine carried a full load, he rested it across the saddle in front of him just as the man he followed did. If there was going to be a shoot-out, Carson wanted to get in the first shot. The man ahead was an expert tracker. There wasn’t any reason to think he wasn’t also a sharpshooter with that cannon he carried.

  Carson wasn’t sure if Simon Potter knew he was the one the rider sought. After a half hour of playing cat and mouse, he decided Potter had to know. He made no change in the direction he rode. That took him farther away from where Lemuel Jones and the others had camped. But eventually Potter would tire of leading his stalker astray and do something stupid.

  Potter always had a way of walking that line—half crazy, with a boot in the grave, yet slick enough to live another day. That was what made him dangerous, and sometimes valuable. But if he didn’t stop drawing attention like a bleeding steer in a pack of coyotes, they were going to end up dead or in irons before they got within spitting distance of the gold.

  Heels raking the flanks of his horse, Carson closed the distance between him and the burly rider. The closer he got, the more he thought the man was a buffalo hunter. He wore a skin shirt with fringes and had what looked like deerskin trousers. Rather than boots, he wore moccasins decorated with shining beads. On his shaggy head, he wore a large hat with a broad, floppy brim. A big bushy mustache and a black beard so thick it looked like grizzly bear fur covered a goodly part of his face.

  He looked like a man who’d been raised more by wolves than by people—hair gone wild, fingers thick as fence posts, face half covered in the grime of the trail. But there was something calculated in the way he moved, not feral exactly, more like a predator who knew just how far he could press without springing the trap.

  By speeding up, Carson made more noise. The hoofbeats weren’t muffled when he crossed a stony path. He remembered that not far away, there were deep arroyos that ran into a larger canyon. The entire region was cut with crisscrossing canyons, none as deep as the one where the Double Diamond herd had been swapped for the healthy Three Squares beeves.

  He wasn’t surprised that the man ahead of him suddenly vanished. There were any number of gashes cut through the flat prairie land where he might have dipped down into a shallow canyon.

  There was also one place where the man could set up a sniper’s nest. And had.

  The thunder from the Sharps warned Carson. He jerked to the side as a heavy slug blasted past his arm. The mere passage of the .50-caliber bullet felt like a powerful hand shoving him away. He tumbled to the ground. And lay still, clutching his rifle. The fall had jarred him, but he kept his senses. When the sniper came for him, he’d get at least one shot at him.

  He played dead, although a long wall of nearby rocks provided partial shelter. If he revealed he was still alive by the smallest movement, the sniper would put a better-aimed round into him.

  Carson was taken by surprise when his attacker never showed … not where he expected.

  “You move a muscle and it’ll be the last thing you do.” The raspy voice came low, level, and calm. This wasn’t a man who got excited. This wasn’t a man who bluffed.

  Carson twisted around and saw that the buckskin-clad man had his rifle leveled.

  “There’s no need to shoot,” Carson said. He pushed his rifle away reluctantly. The weapon might be his only chance to remain alive and it lay a yard beyond his grip now.

  “Who’re you?” The stocky man saw how Carson looked sideways at the rifle and kicked it farther away.

  Carson had to find a way to get to his six-gun, in spite of lying on his side and pinning the weapon underneath his hip.

  “Since you’re holding the rifle, I reckon I’m whoever you want me to be.”

  “You got a reward on your head?”

  The question sent shivers down Carson’s spine. He sat up and spun about, staring at his captor. He felt emboldened when the man didn’t plug him. Now his six-shooter was more accessible, but whipping out the hogleg from a sitting position was hard. He’d never beat the Sharps bullet.

  There had to be some way out of his predicament, and using his six-gun wasn’t the way. The man was two hundred pounds of gristle and mean. Gray streaks cut through his bushy black beard and half of his greasy mustache had turned color. His scowl showed no hint that he had ever smiled in his life. Permanent frown lines etched his forehead like furrows in a cornfield. A deep scar on the side of his head glowed pink amid the weathered skin. Not even a thick layer of dirt hid that scar.

  There was something about men like this—Carson had seen them before. They were wounded souls who had long since given up any claim to decency and had replaced it, instead, with lawless patience and a taste for coin. Here was a man who didn’t need a badge to chase you—just a name, a lead, and a bullet big enough to split a man in half.

  “Buck.”

  “What?” Carson got to his feet. He considered how a slug from the buffalo rifle would feel as it ripped through his gut when he went for his six-gun. Dying out here on the prairie was better than being turned over to a lawman. Spending his life in jail wasn’t anything a man used to limitless horizons and bright sun shining on his face could ever endure.

  The memory of Simon Potter standing in the buckboard with the noose around his neck only made it more important to throw down on the bounty hunter.

  “You was starin’ at my face.” He lifted a grimy paw and brushed across the scar. “I wounded a seven-point mule-tail buck. Before I could reload, he charged me. This is his present.” The bounty hunter snorted. “He done it on my birthday.”

  He moved clockwise around Carson, forcing him to turn. That made it harder for him to draw and shoot accurately. He’d have to shoot away from his own body, out to his right side.

  “I’m not a deer. There’s no need to shoot me.”

  The bounty hunter grinned broadly, showing a busted tooth in front.

  “That’s good. I ate the buck. Cleanin’ you isn’t a chore I’d enjoy.”

  “Can you lower the rifle? It’s making me nervous.”

  “Now, about that. Havin’ Ole Sarah here aimed at you don’t seem to scare you like it would a man who’s never had a gun pointed at him before. Why do I get the feelin’ that you’re used to it?”

  “It’s nothing I have done to me every day, but it’s happened often enough.” Carson saw the bounty hunter thinking this over.

  “My name’s Benjamin. My friends call me Benjy,” Carson said. He watched the bounty hunter’s reaction to see if he objected to the lie.

  “And my name’s Brody, but I think one of us is fibbin’, just a little. What’s your real name?”

  “You’re a suspicious galoot. That’s not a good way to ride out every day.” Carson flexed the fingers on his gun hand. He caught his breath as Brody hiked the rifle to his shoulder.

  “You twitch like you’re goin’ for that hogleg and you’re dead. I ain’t seen a poster on you, but you’re actin’ like I was careless and missed it. Is that so? Did ole Brody miss the reward on your head?”

  Carson shifted his gaze from the rifle to a spot behind the bounty hunter. The small shift in attention sent Brody into action. He pulled the trigger as he jerked to one side.

  Again the powerful passage of the heavy slug rushing past Carson’s head felt as if a mule had kicked him. But he had avoided the killing shot. His hand flashed to his holster. His Colt slid free and he started firing. He was off balance and every round missed, but it kept the bounty hunter on the move.

  “Dang it!” Simon Potter called. “He moved!”

  Carson pointed to the shallow arroyo where the grizzled bounty hunter had fled. He reloaded, then picked up his rifle. Even fully armed again, he felt uneasy. Brody had shown how sneaky he was by coming up unnoticed when Carson had been alert after falling from his horse.

  “He had to go that way.” Carson began following the dry and crumbling arroyo bank. The man had to have fled in this direction. Otherwise, he would have revealed himself.

  “If he pokes his lie-ridden head up, blow it off,” Potter said. He hopped down into the dry riverbed and poked at the ground, hunting for tracks.

  “No need to find his spoor.” Carson took a deep whiff. “The wind’s blowing into our faces.”

  “Smells like an old goat,” Potter agreed. He stopped and canted his head to one side, listening hard. “I don’t hear him. Nobody can move along this rocky bottom without making a noise.”

  “He steps along like he’s made of feathers. No sound to his tread,” Carson said.

  “He’s not made of feathers. Or smoke.” Potter dropped to his knees and pointed to a crusty spot on the arroyo bottom that had been broken through. “If we—”

  Carson waved his partner to silence and pointed ahead.

  “He’s ready to ambush you,” Carson whispered. “There’s a bend a dozen yards ahead.”

  “I see it. The banks pinch down close there. Which side do you reckon he’s staked out?”

  Carson tried to move his lips to reveal the real location of the bounty hunter. Potter shook his head. He didn’t understand how Carson was trying to dupe Brody.

  Carson signaled to his partner that the bounty hunter had somehow headed in the opposite direction and was behind them. The only way Brody could have done that was to go to ground immediately when he jumped into the arroyo. He reversed his steps and stared hard at every possible spot where Brody might have found a hiding place.

  Potter made an impatient gesture and ignored Carson, continuing up the arroyo to the bottleneck. Every step he took let Brody gain a better position behind them.

  “Simon, he’s behind us!”

  “You’re wrong this time, Clay. You’re jumping at shadows. The boot print shows he came this way, running fast.” Carson looked behind them and realized he spent so much time looking for phantoms trailing him that he was missing actual proof.

  Potter was right about where Brody had run. There wasn’t time for the bounty hunter to lay a false trail. They’d come after him too fast. He turned his attention forward again, to the narrowing banks in the arroyo. He spotted the place where Brody would set up an ambush. After one last look back down the arroyo to satisfy his uneasiness, he turned his full attention forward.

  “Hold up!” he called to Potter. He pointed. “There’s a deeper hole with rocks stretching for about six feet.”

  “Enough to hide even a smelly carcass like his,” Potter said.

  He stepped to the far side of the arroyo so they could get the bounty hunter in a cross fire.

  Carson drew a bead on the spot, then signaled to his partner to move in. Potter tossed a rock into the crevice. No reaction. The two men worked closer, Carson retaining the high ground, while Potter poked at the area with a dead tree limb washed down from higher ground.

  “He’s not here.” Potter dropped the stick and spun, checking every direction.

  Carson turned back toward the upper part of the arroyo, near the bend. As improbable as it seemed, the beefy Brody had outpaced them and run like a rabbit to safety. By now, he would be a mile away.

  “His horse. He came up behind me from that direction.” Carson didn’t wait for Potter. He ran flat out for the rocks where the bounty hunter must have tethered his horse.

  He slowed as he approached a few tall rocks near the arroyo. Rapidly running water during the rainy season had washed away much of the ground around the rocks. He spotted horse’s tracks. After waving off Potter’s help, he climbed up into the rocks and looked down on the other side.