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  Instead of replying, Wilson put up a hand and pushed Ray back inside the barn out of sight. Then he dropped the hand and said swiftly: “Because George sent one of the boys off right after you whipped him and I got the notion someone’s going to dry-gulch you as you ride back down toward Welton.”

  “Why?”

  “Darned if I know…except that maybe George don’t like being butted in the mouth.”

  “That’s no reason to kill a man.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows how a feller feels about things like that?” Wilson started forward again, and Ray arrested him once more.

  “Why are you warning me?”

  “I just don’t like the idea of fellers getting dry-gulched, that’s all. I got no reason to like you, either, but if I wanted your scalp, it’d be out in the open.” Wilson pulled free and walked swiftly out into the lowering evening.

  Ray got astride the horse and rode across the yard, down across the creek, and up along the crooked road. He rode slowly and loosely, thinking of George Fenwick and Joe Mitchell. About Joe there was little to consider. Of the people he had known five years earlier in the Welton country, Joe had changed the most, and it had been a bitter thing to stand there in Joe’s house and see how much the cowman had changed.

  As for Fenwick, he had not struck Ray as a dry-gulcher. He had, in fact, left an entirely opposite impression, he was not a man who believed in a loose rope or a running iron, and he had made it very clear. Then how could Wilson, who must have known him better than Ray did, think he would try to get Ray killed?

  Tentative understanding did not come for an hour. Not until Ray was cutting southerly into the forest a long mile east of the regular trail down out of the mountains. Fenwick did not intend to get him ambushed, but Wilson obviously knew something Ray had only just guessed. Fenwick reported the arrival of strangers on the JM to Salter. Salter, Wilson must also know, was not above having a man dry-gulched.

  He came out on a limestone ridge and halted to look and listen. There was no sound of pursuit, and, as far ahead as he could see in the limited evening, nothing moved. He urged the horse forward over a twisting, unused old game trail.

  What a mess Joe Mitchell had gotten himself into. It was difficult to believe it could have happened to Joe, who had never, to Ray’s knowledge, been equaled as a cowman and as a loose-rope artist.

  He got safely down onto the plain north of Welton without seeing or hearing anything unusual, struck out for the town on ahead, and made good time as far as some old buffalo wallows before halting again to listen. This time he heard riders, but only briefly, then they, too, stopped. He smiled thinly; this was not a game he had not played before, the pursued and the pursuit riding the night by sound. He waited fully five minutes before the horse men started forward again, and he moved out, too, riding with his head cocked for the next stop they would make, and bending far to his left to avoid contact, for the horse men were approaching from the direction of Welton.

  It took two hours to accomplish it but he finally lost them, and rode on into town, put up the livery animal, and went to the hotel for a room. The desk clerk handed him a key, waited until he disappeared up the stairs, then scuttled out into the night.

  Beyond the solitary window of his room, Welton glowed with orange lamplight. For a while he stood looking out and smoking. Riders jingled past and strollers on the plank walks slow-paced the night finding in night’s coolness relief from daytime heat. A fist rattled across the door and Ray spun around.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Perry. Open up.”

  He crossed to the door and drew it back. The sheriff entered without looking up, went to a chair, and dropped down. He bent a long, critical look upon Ray.

  “Dog-gone you, anyway,” he growled. “Who’d you think that was out there north of town?”

  Ray’s face brightened. He almost smiled. “Was that you? It sounded like a posse.”

  “It was a posse, damn it, and I was leading it. We were looking for you.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Yet,” the sheriff said bitterly. “I wasn’t after you, Ray. I was simply trying to prevent you from being put on ice.”

  “Oh…?”

  “Word came this afternoon that Salter knew you were back and had put a thousand dollars on your head…dead.”

  “How’d you know where I was?” Ray asked.

  Perry looked pained. “Do I look simple-minded? When the liveryman told me you’d left town, I knew where you’d gone, dog-gone it. You’d have gone up to see old Joe yesterday if the stage hadn’t pulled in late.” Sheriff Smith removed his hat and dumped it on the floor beside his chair. “Listen, Ray, you’ve got to leave Welton. I’m sorry but that’s it…you’re to pull out and not return.”

  “Who says so?”

  “I do.”

  “That’s not good enough. You’re drawing to a busted flush. An old poker player like you knows better than that. I haven’t done anything…haven’t broken any laws.”

  “Like I said…not yet. But I can still jail you. I’ll call it keeping the peace.”

  Ray eased down upon the edge of the bed. For a moment he did not speak, then he said: “I’m not going, Perry, and you’re not going to jug me, either. Last night you said we’d shared our last cigarette. Well, that’s all right with me, if you want it that way. If Salter’s paying your wages, too, then I’ll just have to avoid you. But I’m not pulling out. I didn’t intend to yesterday, and today I’ve got more reasons than ever to stay?”

  “Such as?”

  “For one thing a fellow named George Fenwick.”

  “And?”

  “Joe!”

  Sheriff Smith took up his hat, turned it in his hands, and regarded the uneven sweat stains. He got up out of the chair and raised his eyes to Ray’s face. “You’re going to get killed,” he said, making the words into a statement of fact.

  “I doubt that, Perry, but, if it happens, I’ll tell you one thing…Mort Salter’ll be lying right beside me.”

  “That,” the sheriff growled, “was a tomfool thing to say. You’re going to get killed before you even see Mort Salter again.”

  “By you, Perry?”

  Smith’s face flushed darkly. “He doesn’t own my gun and you know it.”

  “Then who’s going to down me?”

  “Don’t be so dense. Mort’s got two of the fastest guns in the Southwest on his payroll. He’s also got fifteen doggoned tough riders working for him who’d try anything for a thousand dollars. If that’s not enough, every saloon bum in Welton’ll be lyin’ in an alley, waiting for you to show your back.” Smith put on his hat and tugged it angrily forward. “Did they teach you how to live through odds like those down in Yuma?”

  “That,” exclaimed Ray, also arising, “is exactly what they taught me!” He crossed to the door and held it open.

  As the lawman went forward, he said with hard finality: “Ray, if you’re still in town come morning, I’m coming after you. And not because Salter’s got his hand on my shoulder, either. Simply and solely to keep the peace.”

  Ray closed the door and leaned upon it, thinking. Perry Smith, he knew, did not bluff, and, despite the coldness now existing between them, Ray had no fight with the sheriff.

  He thought, too, of the information about Mort Salter’s gun hands Perry had dropped, and this, he told himself, was going to be just as hard as everyone said it was going to be—this shoot-out with Mort Salter. He returned to the window and resumed his speculating there where cool night air came across Welton’s rooftops to leach away the tiredness that was beginning to seep into him.

  Later, he rolled up two blankets off the bed and went back downstairs. At the desk he threw down a $5 bill, exchanged a smoky stare with the clerk who he deduced correctly had informed the sheriff he was at the hotel, got no argument at all, and strode outside, across the roadway, and into the livery barn. When the night man shuffled up, he told him to saddle his toughest h
orse. While that was being done, he rolled the blankets, and afterward lashed them behind the cantle, handed the hostler some coins, and stepped astride.

  Beyond Welton he cut easterly across the range, riding with both familiarity and wariness. A $1,000 bounty was, as Sheriff Smith had intimated, a strong incentive. One day back in Welton and the fire he had known his return would spark was raging. He smiled coldly and took the measure of the ugly, ewe-necked buckskin ridgling he was riding. If a mean little eye, a hammer head, and a sloping rump meant anything, he had exactly the mount under him he would need. Not simply for his present ride to Salter’s Rafter S Ranch, but for the chase that was sure to follow.

  There was no moon this night and the stars were dimmed out by rising heat waves from the plain that obscured their wet brightness. It was a good night for manhunting, providing the hunter knew where to find his man.

  Easterly, bulking large against the lighter murk of sky shadow, loomed a mountain range. Northerly, also, solid blackness carved chunks from the fainter horizon. Where the range flowed a rusty yellow, there was only to be seen that which lay immediately ahead; a man had to know his destination this night and know it well, or he could ride in a circle until dawn.

  Somewhere on ahead a swift fox yapped, evidently catching the scent of an oncoming horse man, and farther along a rodent-hunting owl that was skimming low veered frantically with beating wings, frightened by the looming fast-walking rider.

  Past midnight Ray slowed to listen, not expecting to hear anything really but making no mistakes, either. He was then within sight of the Rafter S and by dismounting, lying flat and looking upward, could skyline the cottonwoods, the ugly squareness of blackened buildings, and feel within himself that sharp sting that inched out along a man’s nerves when he was closing in on the kill.

  He left the horse anchored to a stump less than 100 yards from Salter’s buildings and glided forward as far as the bunk house. There he paused before attempting the long trot across Salter’s yard toward the main house. There was no other way to get where he wanted to be than by crossing that clearing, and, perilous as this was, he did not think now, so late at night, the danger was very great.

  But caution on the part of the hunter is often less than the fear of the hunted; he did not see the dark shadow rise up off the ground on his right until he was twenty feet from the house, then the quick discord of a gun being cocked in all that stillness was as loud almost as the actual firing and Ray flung himself sideways and downward at the same time.

  A flash of flame came fractions of a second ahead of the explosion and the bullet sang past. Ray was rolling when he fired back, twice, heard the carbine fall, and afterward saw the sentinel’s body curl to the ground. He sprang up and ran hard back where he had left the buckskin ridgling, threw himself pantingly into the saddle, and whirled away. Behind, the Rafter S yard was boiling with men whose weapons glinted evilly in that vague, weak light.

  Chapter Six

  By daybreak he was back in the mountains considerably north and west of the JM and hungry enough to eat a bear. He knew every foot of the country around, and, although there were several ranches not too distant, he did not head for them to get food for the simple reason that, if Salter had succeeded in humbling Joe Mitchell, Joe’s neighbors, he thought now, would also be intimidated. If this was so, they would certainly hear soon enough that Ray Kelly was back and they would also hear of the attempt by someone to break into Salter’s house. It would require no great genius to deduce who had made this attempt, and, when Salter’s men came into the mountains as they surely would now, if the upland cowmen knew where Ray was, they might inform against him. It was hard for Ray to believe Salter had been able to intimidate those mountain cowmen until he reflected on Joe Mitchell for a moment. Afterward he decided that if Joe could be harassed, the other mountain ranchers could, also.

  He had no trouble locating an empty meadow where the buckskin horse could stand knee-deep in red-top and recoup, but the problem of provender for himself was a different matter. He dared not shoot game, and, after he had fashioned a number of snares, it was a long wait before they produced anything. He filled up on tobacco smoke and sought out a rocky bluff to lie upon watching his back trail and the distant, murky plain north of Welton. There was nothing to see even after the sun was riding high, but when it approached the zenith, he sighted a lazy dust banner beating onward toward the foothills. He smoked and watched.

  The riders were coming from the east; they would be Salter’s men. They struck the first lifts with the sun directly overhead and faded out in the broken country and tree cover. Seven of them and every man armed to the teeth. Ray smiled to himself, returned to his park, gathered two valley quail from the snares and one rabbit, made a dry-oak fire that gave off no smoke, and cooked his first meal in the uplands since returning to them. After that he slept.

  With evening well advanced, he finished what had been left from his earlier meal, saddled the tough buckskin, and leisurely started easterly through the mountains until he sighted Mitchell Meadow. There, he pressed onward, skirting the open country until, hours later with darkness fully down, he came in behind Joe’s log house. He smoked a cigarette there, with the buckskin dozing behind him in the tree fringe, and waited for the bunk house lights to die. Then he went quietly forward, came down behind Joe’s house, groped for an open window until he located one, slipped over the sill, and cat-footed it forward through the stillness of the house.

  Joe was in bed. When Ray roused him, the cowman sat up and reached for a lamp at the bedside table. Ray stopped his hand. “We don’t need light to talk by,” he said. “It’s Ray.”

  Mitchell sat up straighter. “Boy,” he whispered, “you sure kicked a hornet’s nest this time. What the devil did you try and assassinate Mort for anyway?”

  Ray let the question go past unanswered. “What did his men want up here this afternoon, Joe?”

  “Want? Why, what’d you expect them to want…you, of course. They knew you’d head for JM when you got back into the country.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t know much to tell them, son. You were here and you rode off. They wanted to know where you might hide out. I said I didn’t know, which was the truth.”

  “Anything else, Joe?”

  “Yeah,” he answered dryly, “they said Mort sent me word that, if you made another try for him, he’d clean me out lock, stock, and barrel.” Mitchell reached for his shirt, rummaged for a tobacco sack there, and began twisting up a cigarette. “Got a match?” he asked, and, when the smoke was rising, he said: “Kid, I thought you’d know better’n try something as risky as ridin’ into Mort’s yard like that.”

  Ray, smelling the tobacco, made a smoke of his own. “I didn’t intend to kill him, Joe. Not really, but I wanted him to think I was going to.”

  Mitchell exhaled. “You succeeded,” he said succinctly.

  “Was Duncan with the men he sent up here?”

  “No. His men said Duncan was bringing up a drive out of Mexico.”

  Ray’s eyes brightened with interest. “Did they say where he was now, or how long he’d been gone?”

  “One of ’em said Mort’d sent Duncan word somewhere down by Tanque Wells about you bein’ back in the country.”

  “Tanque Wells.” Ray got off the edge of the bed. He was thoughtfully silent for a moment, then he nodded. “Joe, did Mort’s message scare you?”

  Mitchell scratched his head, rumpled his hair, and screwed up his face before replying. “Something you younger fellers don’t know!” he exclaimed. “When a man’s getting up in years, he don’t scare too easily. Like I told you before, Ray, I don’t want to end up in a shack behind town like a saloon bum, so I walk soft where Mort Salter’s concerned…‘specially since he’s got me roped and tied with his bank…but scairt? Nope, son, he didn’t rightly scare me.” The raffish eyes lifted. “We know each other pretty well, boy. You ought to know old Joe Mitchell might keep
the peace a mite…but he don’t run scairt from any man.”

  Ray made a wolfish smile. “Then I want you to do something for me.”

  Mitchell’s gaze blanked over and his eyes left Ray’s face. “What?” he demanded.

  “I want you to help me bust Mort Salter.”

  “How? You know…if you fail, you’ll be dead, but I’ll be worse’n dead. You thought on that, haven’t you, boy?”

  “I’ve thought on it, Joe. I also know it’s a sight better being dead than livin’ on your knees, too.”

  Mitchell considered. He smoked a moment in absolute silence. “I never heard it put that way before,” he said. “Go on. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Get word to Mort you saw me down near Welton with five ridge runners, all as hard-lookin’ as any gunmen you ever saw.”

  After waiting a moment Joe said: “Is that all?”

  “For now, yes. Will you do it?”

  “Sure, that’s not much of a chore.” Mitchell, whose spotty background had included a little back-trail riding, grunted. “You’ll have to be awful careful, Ray. Mort’ll have spies out all over the country now.”

  “I’ll be careful, don’t worry about that.”

  “They’ll be watching JM from now on, too. You figured that, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Mitchell fixed the younger man with his shrewd gaze. “Have you really got friends ridin’ with you?” he asked.

  Ray shook his head. “No. I want Mort to split up his men.”

  “I see. I reckon you don’t want to tell me any more’n that….”

  Ray was moving off when he said: “That’s right. What you don’t know no one is going to sweat out of you, Joe.” At the doorway he paused. “I’m going to raid the kitchen for a bag of leftovers, Joe. Don’t get a chance to drop in at restaurants riding like this.”

  “He’p yourself, son.” Mitchell put out his cigarette. From the room’s darkness his voice sounded slightly louder now. “George’s girl hung around here to night after the boys had eaten and headed for the bunk house, son. She was full of questions about you.”