Walt Deacon was a punk kid the first time he drew on a man -- and that first shot marked him for life. 

He was the son of a nester, born in the country that wasn't ment for farming and he grew up hating the ranchers around him, who flourished while his father tried to claw a living out of dust and pebbles. Deacon taught himself to shoot, figuring this was the fastest way to rise out of the rubble of his childhood. 

He learned quickly -- too quickly. Before he was twenty, the law wanted him for murder. For eight years, Deacon lived on the vbacktrails and in the greasy boarder towns -- until he learned that a fast draw was not the only mark of a man. 



Tom West. 

Lobo Lawman. 



I

Soggy as a sack of oats, the body of Nels Haugen, boss of the Box H, slid down the porch steps, plunking from tread to tread, until it finally thudded to a stop in the mud of the yard below. Pelting rain matted the hair on his chest and washed away the sluggish blood as it welled out of a neat hole, high and center. 

Haugen had lived by violence and died as violently as he had lived, cut down by a slug that whined out of the night. If he had a soul -- and there were plenty men around Kiowa Valley who would have laid long odds that he hadn't -- its passing had a fitting requiem. Storm clouds that had been ominously circling the valley since sunup, penned by the towering Sulphurs to the east and the jagged Kiowa Peaks to the west, were on the rampage. Lightning split the churning masses of moisture overhead and winked through the blackness of the turbulent night. Curtains of rain lashed the earth, thunder crashed and caromed. Siesta Creek, suddenly swollen from a placid trickle to a raging destroyer, roared down valley, to spew its debris upon the desert. 

In the Box H bunkhouse, thick with tobacco smoke and pungent with the stench of damp gear and sweaty bodies, one Melon Marks opined that it was the doggoned grandfather of all gullywashers outside. 

Across the yard, rain beat a frenzied tattoo on the porch roof and plastered the dead man's sparse gray hair against the skin stretched shiny across his skull. A quirt was still grasped in his lifeless right hand and the bulging muscles above his belligerent jaw clamped it tight as a trap. Beyond the body, rain lashed at the spare form of a youth in ragged bib overalls. Brown as an Indian's, his lean features were as tensed as the fist that grasped the butt of a Colt .45, set in a swiveled holster at his hip. Slowly, like a sleepwalker, he backed up, his bare feet sinking ankle deep into the slush of the yard. Jaw slack with surprise, he eyed first the form flopped in the mud, then the swiveled gun, from the muzzle of which smoke still 'curled. 

" 'Tain't so!" he muttered. "I threw at his feet." His tangled blond hair watersoaked, the thin shirt plastered slick against his back, he stood transfixed by sheer incredulity. He stared, trying to grasp the fact that Nels Haugen was lying there in the mud and that he, had killed him.A yellow-haired girl appeared in the ranch doorway, her slim form silhouetted by the lamplight within. For a moment she stood taut, horror in her blue eyes, staring down at the sprawled form. Full realization came to the ragged guntoter when her shrieks drilled into his ears. 

The bunkhouse door banged open and men poured into the yard, slipping in the sticky mud, hastily buttoning slickers, yanking hat brims low against the beat of the rain. 

He heard the girl's shrill voice, honed by hysteria, "Walt Deacon shot uncle!" Moving fast, he darted around the angle of the ranch house and heard the foreman's hoarse shout as he ran, "Go get that nester rat. It's a hanging job!" 

Beyond rose the bulk of a barn. The fugitive crossed its front to save time, taking a chance that the intermittent lightning would reveal him to the crew, dashed past an overflowing water trough and slipped between the rails of the corral. A quick glance showed that the corral was empty. The saddle stock had been turned out to graze. He raced across the corral, slid between the further rails and ran for the pasture, bending against the wind that buffeted him and the rain that sprayed his face. Behind him, he could bear men shouting and cursing in the storm-wracked night. Maybe they'd spotted him. 

At the pole gate of the pasture he checked. A glistening tarp, bulging from the saddles it covered, was spread on the ground, anchored by rocks. He peeled it back, flicked a coiled rope loose from its nigger-catcher. Rope in hand, he lifted down the pole that barred the gate. 

Water squishing between his toes, he moved at a jog trot across the close-cropped hummocky ground. Thunder had died to an uneasy mutter, but the rain still drummed in solid, sullen sheets. Night walled in the hard-breathing fugitive, night black as a tomb, illumined at intervals by desultory flashes from the dying storm. 

By such a flash he focused the horse herd, bunched solidly, rumps to the weather, in a' corner of the pasture. He was well among the blotch of gleaming wet coats before the animals took fright, and scattered. By then he had a rangy bay by the mane and was slipping a hastily contrived rope bridle over its head. He swung up on the nervous bay and clung like a cat, neckreining it across the pasture and pounding its barrel with his heels. 

Rope's end swinging, he rounded up the cavvy, chowsing it toward the open gate. Panicked by lightning and thunder, the ponies were in a mood to stampede. They streamed through the gateway at a wild gallop. Yelling like an Apache, the youth urged them to greater speed, his rope end swinging and snapping. Punchers, plugging moodily through the murk toward the pasture, hastily scrambled out of the path of the stampeding. cavvy as it cycloned past. Before they recovered their wits, the Box saddle stock was no more than a rumble of pounding hooves, fast dying 'with distance. Walt Deacon, the nester kid, had effectually pinned them to the ranch. 

Out of sight of the ranch, the fugitive allowed the horse herd to slow to a canter. He was safe from pursuit until dawn and by the time the sun edged over the Sulphurs he planned to be beyond the reach of any posse. 

Dan Harvey, the graying town marshal of Longhorn, once said that the hardest work Si Deacon ever did was squat in the sun and scratch, and the veteran lawman was not given to exaggeration. But Deacon scraped the most toe-tickling fiddle in the valley, which was probably the reason why the shiftless nester, his work-worn wife and son were tolerated. The Deacons sheltered in an abandoned Turtle line shack far up on the slopes of the Kiowas. While Si lazed, his wife made rag rugs, which she and the boy peddled. This, combined with bounties from Dave's wolf and coyote trapping, and gifts of cast-off clothing from kindly ranch wives, kept the Deacons alive. 

It was past midnight and the storm had died to a distant muttering beyond the Sulphurs when Walt urged the hard-blowing bay across the benches. A quartering moon peered wanly through scudding fragments of cloud and a few faint stars pricked through the overcast. 

When the outline of the shack he knew as home was blotched among pinons at the mouth of a draw, the fugitive slipped off his mud-splattered mount, slipped off the rope bridle and slapped the pony on the rump. With the balance of the Box horse herd, he knew it would wander back to the ranch before sunup. 

Water dripped forlornly from the spreading branches of the pinons as he strode silently toward the darkened cabin. The door, sagging on one rawhide hinge, was always ajar. Checking in the doorway, he stood hesitant. His ears caught uneasy movement from the bunk at the far end, above the sound of a man's raw snoring. That would be Maw, he thought; she never did sleep when he was out after sundown. 

"That you, Walt?" came a woman's whisper. 

"Yep, Maw!" he replied, low-voiced. 

"What kept you out half the night in this weather?" she inquired with sharp querulousness. "You must be soaked to the skin." 

"Reckon I .killed a man, Maw!" 

"You what?" Her voice, hoarse with shock,  broke off. 

Standing in  the darkness, he heard the bunk creak  and knew she was fumbling for a block of stinkers. 

A match flared. He watched her push a ragged quilt aside, slip out of the bunk, a flickering match held high. The light played upon her thin, lined features and luster-less hair straggling over her shoulders. A voluminous nightgown dragged the dirt floor and lay loose upon her narrow shoulders. It had plainly been discarded by a bigger and heartier woman. 

She touched the match to a twisted string that protruded from a chipped cup, filled with tallow. It burned weakly, a faltering light that scarcely dispelled the shadows. The bulky nightgown gathered like a train in her right hand, his mother crossed the damp dirt floor. 

With a quick pang, realization came to the fugitive of the trouble he had brought home. Too well, he knew what the Valley thought of the Deacons -- no-goods, as pesky as coyotes and useless as jack rabbits. After tonight "they would be run out like mongrel dogs who had suddenly shown a vicious streak. And his too-ready trigger finger had been the cause. 

He could work up no deep compunction over the death of Nels Haugen. Haugen had always been a tyrant in Kiowa Valley. Right- and wrong meant nothing to the burly rancher; he was always right and the other man wrong. He grabbed what and when he chose; those who opposed him he crushed. He'd horsewhipped young Micky Lopez, whose father owned the Bar L, for the crime of riding across Box range; he'd crippled Tom Watson of the Turtle over a boundary dispute; he'd run a slew of S-Bar-S steers over the cutbanks of Siesta Creek, claiming they were using Box graze. If hate could kill, his headstone would have long decorated boot-hill. He'd survived only through threat of gunsmoke and a tough, well-armed crew. Not many would mourn him, but they'd hang his killer, particularly if that killer was a despised nester. 

The accents of his mother's voice, tight with anxiety, dispelled the fugitive's musing, "Did you say you -- you killed a man, Waif?" 

"Yep, Maw --  Nels Haugen." 

"Haugen!" Her breath released with a quivering sigh. 

"He come at me with a quirt, Maw." The words gushed out now. "All I craved was a job. I figure I kin punch cows. He called us dirty nester trash. Said that if he as much as caught any of us on Box range he'd shoot us down like the skunks we was. Then he made at me with that quirt." The boy's voice hardened. "I don't take a quirting from no man, not when I pack this!" He touched the swiveled gun with the arrogance of youth. 

"Hush!" the woman cautioned and glanced quickly at the form of her sleeping husband. "It was murder, Walt," she quavered. "Did you have to kill -- " 

"I didn't shoot to kill, Maw," he cut in earnestly. "I figured on throwing a slug between his boots, to scare him. Guess I was buffaloed. It took him dead center." He smiled crookedly. 

"Lord of Mercy! Do you have to laugh at a time like this?" His mother's voice was brittle. 

"I was thinking of the Deacon luck," he told her wryly. "Guess we always get the short end." 

For moments there was silence, broken only by Si Deacon's nasal snoring. The woman stood irresolute, nervously plucking at her nightgown. "You better go, Walt," she said, at length. 

"If I don't hightail, they'll string me up higher than a kite," he agreed, with that same mirthless grin. 

His mother moved around silently, dropping necessities' from their scanty store into a gunnysack. "Where you heading for, Walt?" she, inquired, setting the bulging sack at his feet. 

"Over the rim, into the1 barrens. No posse will ever get me there," he returned promptly. He paused, then added, "Sorry I brought this trouble, Maw." 

She said nothing, just stood watching him worriedly by the faint light of the string dip! He fidgeted, itching to hit the trail, but somehow reluctant to leave. A fellow couldn't snap home ties like he would a leather whang. This weathered shack was the only home he'd ever known. He was conscious, too, of tears silently coursing down his mother's thin cheeks. The Deacons had never been long on affection. He never could remember kissing his Maw, or seeing Paw less her for that matter. Impulsively, he stepped forward and pressed his lips fiercely against hers. As if ashamed of softness, he whirled quickly away, grabbed the gunnysack and slid through the doorway. Behind him, he could hear sobbing, deep and muffled. Maw had balled her nightgown to another the sound. 

Silent as an Indian, he moved between the slender trunks of the pinon. He fancied he could see lights around the Box H, far below. At sunup, he reflected, they'd catch up their ponies and hit his trail. By then, he'd be where no pony could ever find foothold. 

Padding along a bouldery trail in the faint starlight, the calloused soles of his bare feet impervious to sharp-edged rock, he dwelt upon Haugen's death. His right hand sought the butt of his gun and he swung it speculatively upon its swivel. How in heck had he come to cut down Haugen? He'd drilled with the .45 until he could knock down a zigzagging jack rabbit at twenty paces or blast a scurrying squirrel off a branch, without wasting a shell. He'd got so he scarcely had to aim. Doggedly, month after month, he'd worked with that gun, to prove to himself that in one thing at least a despised nester kid was better than any man in the valley. Yet he'd thrown a slug at Haugen's feet at less than ten paces and took him in the heart. The fugitive shook his head in bewildered self-condemnation. He sure must have been rattled when Haugen took after him with that quirt. 



II 


His chair tilted back against a side wall of an adobe salon known as The Legal Tender, a young rider sat, a bottle of bourbon and a half-empty glass on the table before him. Eight years had toughened and transformed Walt Deacon. The overalled, shoeless nester boy had grown into a lean, tough rider, in whose cool, slate-grey eyes lurked the eternal wariness of the lobo. A weathered Stetson, pushed back off his damp forehead, revealed close-cropped blond hair. A scrubby, sun-bleached mustache decorated his upper lip and the left corner of his mouth was puckered by a blue bullet scar. Silver-plated spurs, with three-inch rowels -- he could buy no larger -- were buckled upon glove-fitting Justins and a smooth-worn gun butt protruded from the open-toed holster, swiveled at his hip. 

Sultry heat shrouded the saloon like a heavy blanket, and the hills around trembled through the blinding sun-glare. The rumble of talk roiled around him like a turbulent stream, gutteral Yacqui mingling with the soft drawl of Texans; liquid Spanish flowing through the harsh accents of the north. Sombreroed vacqueros, bearded renegades, soft-handed confidence men, they lined the long plank bar, or bunched at tables strewn across the butt-littered floor. Hardcase was stamped upon every one of them. 

The Legal Tender was the center of social life at Corrick's Crossing, a huddle of adobes and tin-roofed shacks blotched among the willow breaks of the broad, shallow Rio Grande. Corrick's Crossing appeared on no map. It needed no post office, school or lawman. Its denizens asked but one boon -- to be left alone. In short, it was a renegade hideaway. Across the river, in Mexico, sullen hills bulged out of the sun-scorched earth, emphasizing the comforting thought that, in minutes, a wanted man could take shelter In Mananaland, and thumb his nose at reward dodgers, sheriffs and constituted law in general. 

Vest hanging loose, Deacon chewed a brown paper quirley and idly watched the patrons who crowded the low-ceilinged saloon, hazy with thick-coiling tobacco smoke and thick with buzzing flies. His thoughts drifted back through the years. He saw Kiowa Valley -- his ever-lazing father-bis ever-anxious mother -- Micky Lopez, hotheaded son of the Bar L boss -- the purpled peaks of the Kiowas -- Dan Harvey, the town marshal, the only hombre in Longhorn who'd ever treated him like he was human. 

He remembered how he'd dreamed, stretched out on a ledge far above the valley floor, dreamed of the day when he'd own a ranch himself and could meet the best of them with head held high; when he would show the world that at least one Deacon was something better than "white trash." He'd cached half of every dollar he'd made from trapping, with a vision of a future half-section and the she-stuff and the bull he'd own. Nels Haugen, men claimed, started with a running iron and ended by grazing two-thirds of the valley. He'd start with a spread -- legal -- and he'd trade lead for lead with Nels or anyone else who tried to rough-arm him off. Then, the first time he'd ever leveled a gun at a man, he'd got buck fever and blown his dreams to dust. 

He'd paid plenty for that nervous trigger-finger -- eight years on the dodge, eight years on the Border, fighting to survive among the wolf pack that infested the Rio Grande. Those eight years had left their scars. Unconsciously, he fingered the old puckered wound beside his mouth. But he'd survived, he'd matched guns with the toughest and wits with the wiliest and he hadn't been downed yet. But, deep inside, he knew it was just like bucking the tiger in a gambling joint. Sooner or later, fate would fool him and they'd nail up his hide -- a rurale bullet in the sun-baked hills across river; a swarthy greaser's knife between the ribs; a slug from a cat-eyed gunny -- who knew how the reckoning would come? But as sure as the sun set he'd get his, just like they all did. This wasn't the way he had planned it as a •"•a barefoot boy on the benches, but this was the way Lady Luck had laid it out. He moved his hips slightly to ease the weight of the money belt beneath his shirt. The heavy belt chafed. Even the gold for which he fought and schemed and risked his life was a burden, he considered, with wry' humor -- and poured himself another drink. 

A shrill "yippee" knifed through the rumble of talk and quick quiet held the saloon. The rider's head swiveled and his appraising glance rested upon a slightly-built, stoop-shouldered youth, resplendent in yellow shirt and scarlet bandana, who pushed through the batwings. A scarlet sash circled the newcomer's narrow waist, tiny silver conchas decorated the brim of his steeple-topped sombrero and a buscadero belt was buckled around him. A casual observer might have branded him a strutting peacock, if he overlooked the menace of the twin .45s, set each side of the six-inch wide gun belt. 

"The Cactus Kid," breathed a man huskily, at a nearby table. 

Deacon had heard of the Kid. Men said he carried a notch on his gun butts for every year of his life, and every notch marked a killing. His blazing guns had blasted him a notch high in the esteem of the border pack. Killers all, they paid homage to a master of the craft, a scorpion who slew for the sheer joy of killing. 

In striking contrast to the sun-blackened features of the men around, the Kid was pallid, with thin querulous lips and pale eyes that gleamed with a queer consuming fire. He swaggered across the floor, every eye following his progress with tight anticipation. When the Kid was on the rampage anything might happen. 

But the Kid was in a genial mood. He tossed a clinking buckskin pouch on the bar, swung around and with the sweep of an arm gestured to the silently watching patrons. "Step up and gargle, you bastards," he yelled. "The drinks are on me." 

Chairs scraped and spurs jingled as men left their tables and crowded the bar. It didn't pay to cross the Kid, not if you craved to stay above ground. 

The Kid stood back, grinning. He glanced around the disorder of deserted tables and empty chairs, sighted Walt Deacon, chair still tilted back against the wall, calmly smoking. 

"Hey, feller!" he shouted. "Liquor up!" 

"I ain't drinking," Deacon drawled. 

"When the Cactus Kid says you drink -- you drink!" spat back the pallid gunman. 

"Not when I ain't thirsty, Kid!" 

The other's querulous lips twisted. "You're ordering a headstone, mister," he wanted, with thin relish. 

Deacon rose lazily, his arms hanging loose. "For you?" he mocked. 

There was a quick surge of men from the vicinity of the Kid. Drinks forgotten, they shuffled away. Clear of the line of fire, they waited, tense with anticipation. No one ever called the Kid's hand and got away with it. 

The two faced each other across empty tables -- the Kid, sift-eyed, edge as a spitting cat; his challenger warily alert. 

Poised, fingers flexed above a gun butt, the Kid's right hand dabbed down. An ebony-handled gun was up and out » one swift motion, blurred to the eye. But before it leveled, Deacon's .45 roared. The Kid's thin body twirled, as though span by an unseen hand. The fingers, latched onto the gun butt, loosened and the weapon thudded to the floor. 

Shoulder smashed and right hand numbed by the shock, lie Kid straightened and stared unbelievingly at the man who had beaten him to the draw. Blood began to spread lie a rusty stain over the yellow shirt. 

"Next time, Kid," said Deacon, matter-of-factly, "it'll be high and center." His right hand dropped away from the butt of the smoking gun. Like a striking snake, the Kid whirled into action, flicking out his left-hand gun. But he'd guessed wrong a second time. His opponent's eyes had never left him. Again the deadly swiveled gun belched fire and thunder. Slammed back by the lead, the Kid's thin body hit the bar, swayed uncertainly, then collapsed and sprawled in a muddled heap. He didn't move again. ,   Talk cascaded as tension released. The bloodied remains were packed  outside.  Killings  were  commonplace  in  Corrick's Crossing. 

A squatty, saddleworn puncher in faded hickory shirt drifted up and dropped onto a chair at the table where Deacon had resumed his seat. His eyes were friendly and his grin genial. When he shoved back his shapeless Stetson he revealed a skull as smooth as a brown eggshell. "That sure was a sight for sore eyes," he chuckled. "Doubt if the Kid's ever been shaded before." He eyed the bottle. 

"Lubricate!" invited Deacon. 

The bald-headed puncher tilted the bottle, set it down again and began to build a smoke. "Y'know," he said, "your swiveled gun reminds me of a nester kid in Kiowa Valley, Arizona Territory. He was a gun tipper, too. Cut down the biggest cowman in the valley. Sure could handle a .44 slick." -".45," corrected Deacon, and could have bitten his tongue off. The comment was a clear giveaway. 

"Mister," replied the other patiently, "I ain't locking horns with a gent who can outshoot the Cactus Kid, but I rode for Nels Haugen, the said cowman. I was present at the inquest. I lamped the slug after Doc Kinkier dug it out, and, begging your pardon, I am here to state that it was a .44." 

"Say," said Deacon, who had been studying the puncher with puzzled intentness, "you wouldn't be Melon Marks?" 

"In person," admitted the cowpoke. "I don't recollect crossing your trail, pard." 

"Walt Deacon -- hereabouts they call me Fiddlefoot." 

"Jumpin' grasshoppers!" Marks yelped. "Well," he added as an afterthought, "you ain't the only gent who craved to salivate Nels." 

"But I packed a .45!" 

"A .44 took Nels," reiterated the puncher. 

His brow creased, Deacon considered this statement. If a .44 slug killed Nels Haugen, he was innocent. But how could 'another man have shot Haugen when he -- Walt Deacon -- had stood alone in the yard, leveled his gun, felt the slam of the recoil and watched the big man roll down the porch steps? It just didn't make sense. Slowly, he shook his head in negation. 

"Gordamit!" exploded the cowpoke, "You don't have to take my word. Ain't there a court record?" 

"You wouldn't recollect, Melon," questioned the rider now called Fiddlefoot, "if anyone left the bunkhouse before you heard the shot?" 

"We didn't hear no shot," returned the puncher. "Thunder was arolling, but we did hear the gal screaming. I'll swear the bunkhouse door never opened "til then." 

If thunder had muffled the sound of his gun, there might have been a second shot, cutting down Nels the moment he fired, Fiddlefoot reflected. It was possible, but mighty unlikely. But how else could the .44 slug be accounted for? If Melon spoke the truth, he had been on the dodge for eight years because of another man's killing. "You know what this means?" he asked slowly. 

"Sure, there's a louzy bushwhacker sitting pretty in Kiowa Valley." 

"Yep, the .44 clears me." 

"Can you prove you was packing a .45?" 

Fiddlefoot sensed a lingering doubt in the puncher's voice. Everyone in Kiowa Valley had branded him killer. His guilt had been taken for granted. He had believed himself a killer, and behaved like one. Only one man knew different -- the hombre who had fired the .44. He smiled cheerlessly at the puncher's question. "Nope," he admitted, "I can't prove a thing." 

From habit, he made a cigarette and cast around in his mind, seeking some clue to the real killer. His lips quirked in ironic amusement. More men than could be counted on the fingers of both hands had reason to beef Haugen. 

"Figure folks would read my brand, if I rode back?" Melon started at the abrupt query. 

The puncher looked him over, took in the puckered scar, the scrubby mustache, the close-cropped hair, and shook his head decisively. "Your own mother wouldn't kill the fatted calf," he declared. 

"How my folks doing?" 

"They -- pulled out. Some claim they headed for California." 

"You mean they was run out!" 

Melon shrugged and said nothing. 

For awhile they smoked in silence, both deep in their own thoughts. Even if Haugen had been cut down with a .44 slug, -that fact did not prove his innocence, Fiddlefoot speculated. There was a warrant out for him. No law--man -- and no jury -- would take his word that he only packed a .45. There was just one "out": find the real killer and wring a confession out of him. After eight years! He could take that slim chance and risk a noose, or remain a fugitive as long as he lived. 

He turned his attention to Melon and inquired with dry humor, "What brought you to Corrick's Crossing -- punching cows?" 

"I got a deal with some greasers," admitted the cowpoke. 

"Wet stock?" 

Melon's left eyelid descended, and he looked away. It was plain he wasn't anxious to go further into the subject. Fiddle-foot let it drop. He could guess the rest. There were plenty rustled cows driven across the Rio Grande. Buyers with cash were always available, willing to ignore such formalities as bills of sale-providing the price was right. But it was dangerous work, mighty dangerous. Again he fingered the puckered scar. He knew! 

Two days later, a mestizo, salvaging driftwood downstream, pulled the remains of a bald-headed rider out of the water. He had been knifed. The mestizo stripped the body and threw it back. Long before that, Fiddlefoot was beating northward across the burning plains, heading for Kiowa Valley. 



III 


Hock-scarred and gaunted, a leggy buckskin jogged along the trail that clung to the curves of Siesta Creek. Thick-powdered dust clung to its rider's garb and matted the pony's sweated coat. Fiddlefoot, in the saddle, reined across a wooden bridge, and checked the pony as its hooves drummed hollow on the planks. Forgetful of fatigue, he grinned as he watched a group of small boys, their bodies white against the green chaparral, splashing beneath the willows. He remembered days when he, too, had stolen away to swim in the warm, turbid pools of the creek. 

The deep-rutted wagon road angled away, passed the poky little railway depot with its flaking red paint. The buckskin shied in quick fright when the hoarse screech of an engine whistle hacked through the dry, thin air. Shunting cattle cars crashed and the mournful bawl of steers drifted from a maze of pens. 

Unpainted shacks showed through breaks in the brush and, more distant, white-painted bungalows, slumbering beneath drooping cottonwoods, came into view. A twist of the road and Fiddlefoot stared straight down the main street of Longhorn. His pulse quickened. Would some sharp-eyed citizen connect a stranger with a puckered scar and a swiveled gun with the nester kid who had been dodging a warrant for the past eight years? Well, he told himself, a trifle grimly, there was one sure way to find out. 

Slowly, he jogged between two rows of square-facaded stores, facing each other across the broad stretch of the street. The town hadn't changed a mite, he decided, as his alert glance flickered from side to side. There were the same old splintery plankwalks and chewed hitchrails. The windows of The Corral, against which he had often flattened his nose, gazing awe-struck at the silken women within and absorbing the heavenly music of a tinkling piano, were grimy as ever. 

Outside The Buckhorn he wheeled to the rail and tied his mount. It was early in the day and the saloon was empty except for two oldtimers listlessly playing checkers, and a bored barkeep swatting flies. 

"Bourbon!" he told the apron shortly, then focused on a notice in block letters pasted on the backbar mirror: 

CHECK YOUR GUN! 
IN TOWN LIMITS ALL GUNS MUST BE CHECKED AT NEAREST SALOON OR MY OFFICE. 
DAN HARVEY, TOWN MARSHAL. 


With a murder warrant outstanding, Fiddlefoot craved no trouble with the law. He unbuckled his gunbelt and slid it across the mahogany. 

The barkeep, setting out bottle and glass, stared. He looked puzzled. Fiddlefoot nodded at the notice. 

"Hell!" ejaculated the barkeep. "That don't mean nothing." 

"Then why in creation don't you yank it down?" 

The other shrugged.  "Dan made the order stick -- once." 

Thirst  satisfied,  the visitor  stabled his pony  at  Olsen's Livery, hefted his saddlebags and hit for the boxlike Jackson Hotel.  Portly "Specs"  Porter,  the  clerk,  still  stood behind the desk, unchanged, except that Fiddlefoot observed that he'd   quit   trying   to  button   his   vest.   He   stood   solemnly eying the  guest  through the  thick  lenses  of  steel-rimmed spectacles,  as the newcomer inscribed "Fiddlefoot" in the dogeared register, adding "Texas." 

"A fighting state!" commented the clerk', with a stock smile. "What  gives  you  that  idea?"  inquired   Fiddlefoot,   and dropped a dollar on the cigarette-scarred counter. Specs  glanced  meaningly   at  the   gun   swiveled   at  the visitor's hip.  "We've had  several Texans  as  guests.  They usually move out to the Box H." 

"The Box hiring gunhands?" 

The clerk looked quickly at several ranchers sitting around the lobby, removed his glasses and became engrossed in polishing the lens. "I hope you will find your room comfortable, Mr. -- er -- Fiddlefoot," he said stiffly. It was plain he had no desire to pursue the subject further. 

Fiddlefoot mounted the creaking stairs to his room, discarded his spurs and boots, hung his gunbelt on a post of the brass bed, and flopped on the sagging mattress. It was a relief to relax after days of dragging across thirsty wastes, a relief, too, to realize that no one had read his brand. 

Shots crackled down street. A bunch of punchers celebrating, thought Fiddlefoot, and drifted off to sleep. 

When he awoke, the sun was dropping toward store facades across the street and he was reminded by an emptiness beneath his belt that he hadn't eaten, since sun-up. He yawned, slid off the bed, and spilled water into a cracked wash basin. 

Dropping down to the lobby, he found it empty, except for Specs, who stood at the doorway, peering out. Fiddle-foot followed his glance and focused on a knot of riders gathered under the wooden canopy of The Corral, down street. Women bunched like flustered hens in the doorway of Brunner's Mercantile Store. Something seemed to be afoot, just what he couldn't fathom. 

He pushed outside and hit for Ah Sing's "Good Eats." 

Right then, Dan Harvey, the town marshal, bobbed out of an alley and began to walk with slow deliberation toward him. 

This was it, thought Fiddlefoot, checking a swift surge of panic. This is what Specs, the women, the punchers, were waiting for. The lawman had read his brand as he rode in. 

He resisted an urge to angle across the street and avoid Harvey. That would be a plain confession of guilt. Stoically, he plugged on, the distance between himself and the lawman lessening every moment. It was too late for retreat now. He'd have to try and bluff this thing through. 

As the marshal drew closer, the tensed rider noted that Harvey's weight was heavy on the creaking plankwalk and his wide shoulders sagged. Dewlaps quivered beneath his jowls and his belt bit into a bulging belly. 

Suddenly, with a flood of relief, Fiddlefoot became aware that the marshal didn't even see him. The lawman's eyes, bedded in folds of fat, held a glazed stare. He moved stiff-legged, as though sheer will alone impelled his bulky form. Sweat glistened on his beefy features like hot grease. 

Almost abreast of the close-watching Fiddlefoot, the marshal's head swiveled with a nervous jerk and he glared fixedly across the street at the silent knot of riders outside The Corral. 

When he had passed, Fiddlefoot became aware that Main Street was tight with tension. The plankwalks were deserted. Hunkered riders, drowsing Mexicans, saloon loiterers were gone. Except for the punchers and the lawman, there was not a human being now in sight. 

Fiddlefoot pushed into Ah Sing's steamy restaurant, and was slapping his hat on a peg when a Colt boomed up street. A second shot, then a third. Fiddlefoot dove for the doorway. 

Life suddenly erupted on Main Street. Men ran out of Stores and alleys, gestulating and shouting. Punchers still packed tight under the canopy of The Corral, impassive yet sparking silent hostility. Across the street from them, a few paces distant from the plankwalk, a limp form was botched black against the grey dust. 

When Fiddlefoot reached the body, yammering townsmen were already clustered thick around it. He shouldered through the press, glimpsed the dull metal of a star and stared down at the slack features of Town Marshal Dan Harvey. A gun had spilled from the lawman's right hand and lay half-buried in gritty sand. It was a sure thing, decided Fiddlefoot, that Dan would never use that gun again. 

A square shooter, Harvey, he mused, and goodhearted. It was just that he had gone to seed. 

"Who plugged him?" 

"Them Box H gunhawks," returned the shirt-sleeved townsman he addressed. "Dan ordered 'em out of town when they started throwing lead promiscuous -- busted the windows of Brown's saddlery. They holed up in The Corral. Dan was crossing the street to set them on their way when that Cheyenne hombre calls him out. Dan's slowed up some. First slug took him in the guts; second stopped his clock." 

"This Cheyenne beat it?" 

"Heck, no!" The townsman spat in disgust in the direction of the silent group across street. "He's with the pack, just itching for more trouble. Micky Lopez is sure king-pin now." 

"Mickey Lopez!" Interest quickened in Fiddlefoot's voice. He remembered Micky, the dandified, hot-tempered son of the Bar L owner. "He rod the Box H?" 

"Yep, married to Hilda Larsen, Nels" ward. Threw the Box and Bar together when his paw died." 

"How come he hires gunslicks?" 

The townsman eyed him suspiciously, "You stringing me?'' 

"Nope, I'm a stranger, riding through." 

"Wai, Nels pushed his neighbors around, but Micky just naturally kicks 'em in the face. He's hellbent to throw and hogtie the whole valley." 

While Fiddlefoot was digesting this surprising information, a wiry man, with sharp, smooth-shaven features, pushed through the throng with the briskness of authority. An apron was tied around his waist, he carried a pencil behind one ear and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. Fiddlefoot recognized him as Al Brunner, who ran the Mercantile Store and owned most of the buildings on Main Street. A shrewd trader and close-fisted, Brunner had always been a go-getter. 

"Who cut down Dan?" he asked sharply. 

"Cheyenne!" threw back a bystander. 

Brunner eyed the body and fingered his chin. 

"There's no law in Longhorn now," put in a townsman. 

"Warn't much before," contributed another. 

"That means the Box runs Longhorn from now on," commented a bearded man, who Fiddlefoot knew for the blacksmith. "Hell, them gunslicks will go hog-wild and scare every decent man away. This'll be a ghost town." 

Brunner's shrewd glance weighed the men bunched around. "Tod's dead right," he snapped. "We got to clip their wings. Well, there's two dozen guns right here, plenty to round up the lobos. You folks game to stage a showdown?" 

An uneasy mutter ran around the group. Dust stirred as feet shuffled uncomfortably. There was plainly no eagerness to tackle the Box's hired gunhands. Men avoided Brunner's questioning eyes. 

"You ain't allowing this Cheyenne hombre to get away with this?" cut in Fiddlefoot. "Ain't no-one got the sand to brace him?" 

Brunner pivoted to face the stranger. "Have you?" he demanded. 



IV 


Fiddlefoot met the storekeeper's belligerent scrutiny. "Sure!" be replied coolly. 

"Then well back you!" Brunner transferred his attention to the townsmen grouped around. "Go get your Winchesters, shotguns, whatever arms you have," he directed briskly. "Meet outside my store. This is the showdown. Well decide once and for all time who runs Longhorn." 

Slowly, the group began to dissolve, plainly indecisive, dragging reluctant feet. "Hustle!" snapped Brunner, his voice brittling with impatience. 

Fiddlefoot checked them, "Say, this don't call for no army. I'll handle Cheyenne and his pards." 

"You'll arrest that wolf -- alone?" Brunner eyed the lean-faced rider. 

"Arrest him!" echoed Fiddlefoot, with grim humor." Heck, I'm no lawman. Where's my authority?" 

"Right here!" barked Brunner. He bent, removed the corroded star from the dead marshal's shirt, wiped off a bloody smear, and pinned it on Fiddlefoot's vest. 

The rider picked up a handful of sand and vigorously polished the dingy metal until it shone like a newly minted dollar. Then, fingering his holster, he eyed the tight knot of men across street. "Guess 111 need a man to watch my back," he decided. 

A rawboned rider had drifted up. "You got him!" he said offhand. He was tall and loose-jointed, with long, deadpan features. His garb was shabby, his boots cracked, but there was a glint of steel in his cool glance that took Fiddlefoot's fancy. "What's your moniker, pard?" he inquired. 

"Pecos Pete," came back the down-at-heels rider, adding, with a wry twist of the lips, "tumbleweed." 

"They call me Fiddlefoot." The man from the Border grinned. "A natural pair, eh? Wal, let's go!" 

He yanked his Stetson lower to better shade his eyes from the glare" of the sinking sun, pulled out from the huddle of townsmen and paced slowly toward the close-watching group, tight-bunched outside The Corral. 

A solitary figure, his lean form patched against long shadows inching across the street, made an unhurried advance, arms dangling. Against the drabness of his vest, the badge reflected white fire. The townsmen scattered hastily along the plankwalk, while, to one side, the man called Pecos stood out in the sunlight, right thumb hooked in his gunbelt. 

Tight silence held Main Street as men watched, eying the tiny eddies of dust that marked each deliberate step of the man who had volunteered to avenge Dan Harvey. 

From beneath the shadowed canopy of The Corral another man emerged -- a squatty fellow whose bleak eyes were as cold as those of a codfish, and as expressionless. A tangle of jet-black hair made a ragged fringe beneath the roll brim of his sombrero. He wore dark pants and the sleeves of his blue shirt were drawn up and held clear of his wrists by beaded armbands above the elbows. The only splotch of color about him was the bright red bandana around his neck. His mouth a thin gash against his swarthy features, he ducked beneath the hitch rail and advanced to meet the new-made marshal. He shuffled rather than walked, his bony hands poised like talons above the wooden butts of the twin guns hung low at his hips -- a somber, menacing figure. Gunplay was nothing new to Cheyenne. 

Midway across the street, Fiddlefoot stopped, his right hand dropped to the butt of his swiveled gun and he stood still as a statue -- waiting. The swarthy gunhawk, inching out from the opposite plankwalk, checked too. Dust from their scuffling boots slowly settled as they faced each other, tensed as cougars about to spring, not twenty paces apart. Fiddlefoot was aware of his opponent's eyes, gleaming beneath his hat brim, but he was watching the killer's right band, poised above the tied-down holster, ready to dab down and flick out the gun with split-second timing. From the plankwalks men watched tautly, sensing that death hovered above the sun-swept street. 

"You Cheyenne?" challenged Fiddlefoot. 

"What's it to you?" spat back the gunman. 

"I want you!" Fiddlefoot touched the badge with his left hand. 

"Come and get me!" 

"I'm acoming!" Again Fiddlefoot began to move forward, his progress now a stealthy slide. 

He saw the fingers of Cheyenne's right hand twitch. Abruptly, his holster swiveled and belched fire. As the impact of Fiddlefoot's bullet pounded him backward, the swarthy rider's gun was already up and out. It roared and the slug whined high. Then his gun arm wavered, he staggered, fell forward. Dust flew as he hit the ground, his black sombrero spilling off. Dank hair awry, he levered his body up with his left hand, his right fist still latched onto the gun butt. Desperately, he strove to align the sagging barrel. Again, Fiddlefoot's Colt lanced flame. The dark-clad form slammed down into the dust. It quivered, then lay still, very still. 

Fiddlefoot moved forward cautiously, looked the limp form over and kicked the gun away from the slackened hand. Then he passed on toward the knot of riders standing motionless beneath the canopy of The Corral, mute with astonishment. 

"Check your guns, boys -- or leave town," he told them shortly. 

For a long uncertain moment five pairs of hard eyes met his in cold challenge. "Check your guns!" he repeated, an edge on his voice. "The first hombre who draws on me gets ft -- in the guts." 

A spur chain tinkled softly. As if it were a signal, the group broke up. The Box gunhands turned away and began to shoulder through the batwings of the saloon. All but one, a bitter-faced hombre, with deep-sunk eyes. With a muttered curse, he pulled away and jingled down street, his bolstered gun bumping his leg. 

Fiddlefoot followed the last man inside, watched as the four stepped up to the bar, silently unbuckled their gunbelts and pushed them across the mahogany into the custody of an amazed barkeep. One of the four, a burly fellow with rusty-red hair and reckless, twinkling eyes, pivoted and eyed the newly-made marshal. "I sure feel as naked as a skinned steer," he declared. "Step up, marshal, let's wet that new badge!" 

Fiddlefoot grinned and threaded between tables. He knew the type of men he was dealing with -- reckless, irresponsible, hard-living. Callous killers, but square according to their code. With them, life was a game of poker, and they threw down a busted hand as casually as they raked in a big pot. When they took a drink with a man they made an unspoken compact -- the hatchet was buried until they met again. 

Townsmen and punchers from the other saloon were drifting in, curious to get a glimpse of the new gun-fighting marshal. Tension slackened. The pile of guns stacked behind the bar steadily grew. 

Pecos eased his long form beside Fiddlefoot at the bar. The latter glanced meaningly at his gunbelt. 

"Heck!" said the grub-liner, "Me too?" 

"Ain't you a law-abiding citizen?" 

"I guess I will be, -- in Longhorn." Pecos ruefully slipped the buckle of his gunbelt and slid it across the bar. His voice lowered, "There's a vinegar-faced gent skulking outside. Watch your step -- marshal!" 

Fiddlefoot broke away and pushed outside. Cheyenne's body still lay in the dust, flies swarming black around it. The dead marshal's remains had been removed. The sour faced gunny who had pulled away was propped against the saloon front, glooming morosely at the street. At sight of Fiddlefoot he straightened quickly. 

"Say, what's itching you?" inquired Fiddlefoot softly, and stepped close. 

The bitter-faced gunman backed, his lips twisted into a snarl. 

"Check that gun or beat it -- pronto!" 

The Box rider's right hand streaked for his gun. 

As quickly, Fiddlefoot's leg swung and a sharp-toed riding boot took the snarling gunman low in the belly. He doubled up with a hoarse grunt of pain. The marshal straightened him with a slashing uppercut that took him beneath the jaw. His head snapped back and Fiddlefoot's left fist pistoned full into his pug nose. Stunned, his smashed nose spouting blood, the gunny slid down and sprawled in a huddled heap. 

Fiddlefoot bent, slid the fallen man's gun out of the leather, and was about to toss it aside, when a precise voice, quivering with indignation, twirled him around. 

"You brute!" The owner of the voice drew herself up to the full extent of her five-feet-five inches as he faced her. Her appearance was as precise as her articulation. A neat dark dress, buttoned high in the neck, with flared sleeves gathered tightly at the wrists, topped a sweeping skirt that barely exposed the toes of buttoned shoes. A sedate bonnet crowned her brown hair, combed back and severely gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck. Right" then, her dark eyes illumined her homely features with blazing indignation. Fiddlefoot noted several books resting in the crook of one arm and mentally tagged her "school ma'am." 

"Ma'am," he explained apologetically, "that lobo was set to gun me." 

"That's no excuse to cruelly mistreat the poor man," she reproved primly. Her angry eyes focused on the gunny's slack form. "You may have killed him." 

"That kind don't die easy," he assued her laconically. 

She sniffed, pushed past him and bent to wipe off the blood dripping from the unconscious man's bristly chin. 

"Call the doctor!" she directed crisply, over a shoulder. 

"I'll doctor the sidewinder!" Fiddlefoot growled and strode to the water barrel set at the angle of the building and filled the crown of his Stetson. 

"Stand back!" he said curtly, and threw the water full into the gunny's face. 

The battered man stirred and groaned. "Wai, he's alive!" commented Fiddlefoot dryly. 

"Little thanks to you," snapped the woman, then caught sight of Cheyenne's dark form, bulking on the street. She gestured, "Is that man -- intoxicated?" 

"Nope!" Fiddlefoot's lips twisted. "I plugged the lobo --  ten minutes back." 

"He's not -- dead?" she gasped. "Deader'n a can of corned beef." 

She shrank back, her eyes distended, "You horrible murderer!" 

Fiddlefoot shrugged, realizing the futility of wasting words upon this prim spinster of uncertain age. 

"I shall make it my business to report these episodes to the sheriff of the county," she said tautly. "You are nothing more than -- than a ravening tiger." With that, she tip-tapped away. 

Chuckling, Fiddlefoot crossed the street, heading for Brunner's Mercantile Store. 



V


Hunting Brunner, the new marshal glanced around the long, low-ceilinged store, crammed with every conceivable item of merchandise, from plows to pills, piled on shelves that lined the walls, heaped on long counters, stacked in corners. Across the floor, showcases displaying cheap jewelry, notions, purses, a score of items, made square, class-enclosed islands. In the rear, well-worn chairs were set around a potbellied stove, now cold, and a checker board lay open upon a small table. The fragrance of ground coffee mingled with the ripe aroma of cheese and the lingering odor of kerosene. 

He glimpsed the storekeeper's balding pate through the glass-paneled door of a small rear office and stepped toward it, past a clerk stacking bolts of gingham. Knuckling the door, he pushed it open. Brunner was seated at a well-worn rolltop desk, crowded with catalogues and price lists, working on a ledger. The storekeeper looked up, then reached out and swept accumulated newspapers off a chair. 

"Have a seat!" he invited, dropped his pen and swung around in his swivel chair to face the visitor. 

"Longhorn is in your debt, Mister -- " he paused. 

"Fiddlefoot!" 

"Mister Fiddlefoot. That gun of yours is chain lightning." 

"Practice!" supplied Fiddlefoot, with a faint smile. He unpinned the metal "Marshal" badge and tossed it onto the desk. "Wai, the job's done. Guess 111 resign." 

Brunner interlaced his long fingers, whistling softly and appraising his visitor. He cleared his throat. "Is there -- er --  any reason why you should not remain in town?" 

Fiddlefoot's lips twitched at the implication behind the carefully worded question. "Nope!" he replied shortly. 

"In that case," suggested  Brunner amicably,  "why not consider wearing the star permanently? Going ranch wages are $30 and found; Micky pays his gunhands $100 a month; Longhorn pays its marshal $150 a month." 

Fiddlefoot studied the ceiling, his eyes blank, considering the proposition. He had ridden back to hunt the killer of Nels Haugen and clear himself of a murder charge. He'd have to take some job as an excuse to stick around. As a ranch hand he would be pinned down. Who'd have a better chance to dig into things than the town marshal? Then sudden doubt assailed him -- would they check back on his record? 

"Reckon your marshal is deputized by the county sheriff?" he questioned. 

Brunner nodded. 

"Some sheriffs are finicky. My back trait-" he paused and shrugged. 

"I understand!" smiled Brunner. He didn't have to be told that a man with a bullet scar on his face, who could out-shoot Micky Lopez's star gunman, had used his iron aplenty. Probably Texas or New Mexico had grown too hot for his comfort. "You'll find Jack Farley, our sheriff, a reasonable man," he assured the rider. "My word goes a long way with Jack." 

Fiddlefoot still rasped his chin doubtfully. "So a feller's past is -- " 

"Forgotten!" Brunner told him promptly. "We need a strong man to enforce the law in Longhorn. You are that man. Poor old Dan was good -- once. But Dan's been going to seed for years, allowing Micky's hired killers to terrorize the town." He slid open a desk drawer, picked up a ring of keys and dropped them beside the badge. "The job is yours, marshal! Here are Dan's keys -- office and jail. Doc Kinkier is coroner. I am justice of the peace. Just keep order, that's all I ask." 

"Suits me!" said Fiddlefoot and gathered up the keys and badge. He rose, but the storekeeper checked him with upraised hand as he turned toward the door. "Just one thing, Fiddlefoot! This no-gun ordinance -- I approve of it, thoroughly, but it has been a dead letter for years. This is a shipping point. We get a lot of business -- good business --  from trail crews. Two herds were thrown on the flats outside town today. The drovers will be in tonight. They will probably be -- er -- exuberent. Longhorn's prosperity depends upon the goodwill of such men. A little tolerance is advisable. Understand?" 

The new marshal smiled slightly. "I get it, mister. Ill ride 'em with a slack rein." 

Shadows were thickening in the alleys and the ragged silhouette of the Kiowas was etched sharp against the deepening scarlet of sunset when Fiddlefoot left the store. He remembered his postponed meal and again headed for the restaurant. 

"So you're the new marshal! Well, you seem to have the right idea -- outshoot the lobos." Fiddlefoot paused in the act of demolishing a thick steak and eyed a townsman in a baggy, unpressed suit who had dropped a black bag on the floor and climbed on the stool beside him. The stranger was unshaven and fatigue was plain in the droop of his shoulders and the slackness of his gaunt body. His eyes, somewhat weary and set in eroded features, met the marshal's scrutiny. A lunger, registered Fiddlefoot. Aloud, he said, "Guess all I've got is gunspeed. Say, you look a mite gaunted." 

"Ready to drop," confessed the other, in a wryly humorous voice. "The name is Kinkier. Haven't closed my eyes for twenty-four hours. They keep a doctor busy in Kiowa Valley -- fractured leg on the slash, Mrs. Morgan out on Rattlesnake Creek just had her fifth, a smallpox scare in the adobes across the creek." He ordered black coffee, then turned his attention to Fiddlefoot again. "I trust you are a good tightrope walker." His lips quirked at the perplexity mirrored in the marshal's eyes. "You will find yourself between Scylla and Charybdis," he explained. "To control the ungodly you must perforce shock the godly. If you spare the feelings of the godly, then the ungodly will just naturally kick your pants up between your ears. Do I make it plaint Fiddlefoot remembered the prim school ma'am outside The Corral. "Plain as plowed ground, doc," he grinned. 

Rinkler stretched and smothered a yawn. "There are three phases in the evolution of a cowtown, marshal. At first it is purely masculine -- excepting, of course, for prostitutes --  and wholly wild. Then 'good' women arrive and a period of reformation ensures. Finally, the town is tamed; for the 'good' women inevitably triumph. Right now, Longhorn is in the throes of reformation. The virtuous are determined to abolish the gunmen, the gamblers, the harlots -- poor souls." He smiled and slid off his stool. "So endeth the lecture! Cynical as hell, aren't I? Well, see you at the inquest in the morning!" 

Fiddlefoot raised a hand in farewell. He felt he was going to like Doc Rinkler. Alone, he fell to musing over the events of that crowded day. A few hours before he had slipped into town, leary of the law. Now he was the law, and he had the most powerful man in town -- Al Brunner -- solidly behind him. Lady Luck had sure smiled. Then he fell to considering Brunner's broad hints about the gun ordinance. The storekeeper wanted order but no violence. How in heck did he expect a lawman to close-herd a bunch of wild punchers when rotgut befuddled their brains and six-guns bumped their legs, except through powdersmoke? The only way to head off trouble was to make that gun-toting ordinance stick. Dan Harvey had done it -- once -- it could be done again. 

The tempo was already speeding up outside. A knot of riders hurricaned past, yippeeing joyfully. Somewhere down street a gun blared. Broken glass fell in a jangling tinkle. The new marshal rolled a cigarette, glumly thinking of the evening that lay ahead, then slid off his stool and lifted his hat off a peg. Seemed it was time he began to get busy. 

As shadow veiled Longhorn, ladies of the Sewing Circle were converging sedately upon the home of Mrs. Brown, wife of the saddler, for their semi-monthly meeting. The placid residential section was a world apart from the turbufence of Main Street. Here frame bungalows slumbered amid soothing quiet, a quiet unbroken save for the creaking of a porch rocker, the squawling of a fretful child, the faint murmur of voices through open windows. The original purpose of the Sewing Circle had long since been forgotten. Community uplift held far more fascination, particularly elimination of the brothel for which The Corral was notorious. Miss Agatha Tomkins, a new but enthusiastic member, had suggested that the name of the organization be changed to Longhorn Uplift Society, a suggestion that was still being debated. 

Usually, there was little to discuss at meetings, apart from the iniquities of The Corral and minor indiscretions of those members who chanced to be absent. On this occasion, however, talk gurgled like boiling water on a hot stove; for had not Dan Harvey, veteran town marshal, been shot down on Main Street and a youthful successor appointed. Ten feminine tongues licked at the toothsome morsel while sipping Mrs. Brown's excellent coffee and nibbling her homemade cake. The newly appointed marshal was young enough to be interesting and sinister enough, with his fast gun and bullet-scarred mouth, to be intriguing. His prompt action in avenging Dan Harvey's death was applauded. 

Miss Agatha Tomkins, the school teacher, sat primly balancing a hand-painted cup and fingering a piece of cake while conversation flowed smoothly around her. The longer she listened to the encomiums heaped upon the new marshal the tighter her lips compressed. Though they would have been 'loath to admit it, the good ladies of Longhorn were a little awed by the precise Miss Tomkins, with her "big city" ways and unconscious air of superiority. No one disputed her efficiency, but as greying Mrs. Makepeace confided to her husband, "the woman's so swelled up she's liable to bust a surcingle." 

Miss Tomkins' crisp tones cut through the ripple of talk as forcefully as a sharp knife through cheese, "I propose that the Sewing Circle draw up a letter to the county sheriff, vigorously condemning the brutality of our newly appointed marshal and suggesting that a man of more mature years and judgement be appointed."

Shocked into abrupt silence, her fellow members could only stare. 

Plainly determined to do her duty, the teacher set her cup aside and carefully brushed the cake crums off her lap into the saucer. The deck thus cleared for action, she reported, "I was passing that horrible saloon, The Corral, today when I distinctly saw this alleged peace officer kick a much older man violently in the -- er -- stomach. Then he battered his victim unmercifully until the poor fellow collapsed, unconscious. It was nauseating! The ruffian admitted that he had just killed another man whose body lay on the street. Poor Mr. Harvey never killed or assaulted a fellow creature during the entire six months I have been in Longhorn. Personally, I am utterly shocked by such brutality. Is this, or is it not, a civilized community?" 

Abashed silence followed her accusation, broken by a dry cough in the doorway. Dr. Kinkier, newly shaved, toting his familiar black bag, stepped into the room. "Pardon my intrusion, ladies'." He embraced the company with a tired smile. "How are the children, Mrs. Brown?" 

"As lively as young puppies, doctor." 

"Excellent!" He set his bag down and dropped onto a chair, while his sunken eyes focused on the indignant school teacher. "I could not help overhearing your arraignment of our new marshal, Miss Tomkins." 

"Isn't his conduct outrageous!" She regarded him with pert expectation. 

"How would you handle a mad dog -- shoot it, subdue ft, or pet it?" 

"I don't consider the analogy appropriate!" she retorted, her thin lips tightening. 

"Hired gunmen are even more dangerous than mad dogs, Miss Tomkins. They'll kill as casually as you would crush a fly. As a matter of fact, this man you claim was assaulted was loitering outside the saloon for the express purpose of shooting the marshal. As for the body on the street, that man had just killed Dan Harvey." 

Miss Tomkins straightened. "There is no excuse for a brutal assault!" 

Dr. Kinkier raised his shoulders, "You can't reason with a rattlesnake!" He rose and picked up his bag, "Now I'll take a look at the young rascals upstairs." 

No one spoke as the doctor's footsteps died on the carpeted stairs. Then Miss Tomkins returned to the attack, "Now how about our letter to the sheriff?" 

"I think, my dear," returned Mrs. Brown firmly, "the matter should be postponed." From the quick chorus of acquiescence, the school ma'am knew her cause was lost Angrily, she jerked to her feet and stalked out of the house, without apologies. 

Outside, the lighted windows of surrounding homes peered softly from the darkness and tall cottonwoods dropped ghostly arms. From the direction of Main Street came a muffled confusion of sound -- the deep boom of a gun, excited yelling, a brisk fusilade. 

That terrible man was killing again, thought the teacher, and those foolish women inside defended the monster. Dr. Rinkler's reproof rankled her. Now was the chance to obtain evidence no one could ignore. Brutality could never be justified. Stiffening with determination, she angled across a lot, heading for Main Street. 



VI 


Unwritten law in Longhorn decreed that no respectable woman should ever walk down Main Street alone after nightfall, and no dancehall girl should ever be seen upon it during daylight hours. Overwhelming desire to prove her case against the new marshal, overpowered Miss Tomkins' rigid conventionality. 

She stole down an alley that opened upon Main Street. At its mouth, standing in shadow, she surveyed the wide sandy street. Close by, naked kerosene flares bathed the front of The Corral and a long line of tied ponies with flickering light. Men milled around the saloon and drifted past, dim in the darkness. She thrilled with' unaccustomed exhileration as riders tornadoed up and down street, raising roiling curtains of dust, A gunshot punched through the confusion of pounding hooves and yelling men. Unconsciously enthralled by the color and excitement, the school ma'am stepped out onto Main Street and slipped along the plankwalk in the obscuring shade of store canopies. Arms interlocked for support, two addled punchers wabbled on bowed legs, caroming from hitchrail to store fronts, blocking her path. Stifling quick panic, she stepped into the doorway of a store,- stood unmoving, her body pressed hard against the locked door. Well liquored, hilarious and pungent, the two punchers came abreast and rolled into the doorway. A shriek of terror tore from Miss Tomkins' throat as her soft body cushioned the force of impact. Open-mouthed with astonishment, the two waddies crowded her, staring at her fear-twisted features with owlish gravity. 

"Jumpin' jackrabbits!" ejaculated one, "A filly done broke out of The Corral." 

"She busted out of her gilded cage, Shorty," agreed the other sadly. "She's a poor lost maverick." 

Frantically, the school ma'am tried to push between them. A hand slammed her back against the door. Shorty thought he was gentle, but he was accustomed to handling steers. For the first time in her life Miss Tomkins knew stark fear. 

"I reckon," decided one puncher, after due deliberation, "we should chowse this little heifer back to where she belongs." 

"You're dead right, Shorty," agreed the other. "If we leave her loose, one of them Triangle wolves will just naturally pull her down. Let's buy her a drink!" 

"We'll buy the poor little maverick two drinks," declared Shorty generously. Each grabbed an arm. Helpless, shriek-Ing hysterically, Longhorn's prim school ma'am was hauled straight for The Corral. 

A lean figure stepped out of an alley. The star upon his vest glinted faintly in the light of the flares upstreet. "Get that gal off the street and check your thumb-busters!" he ordered crisply. 

"Marshal!" wailed the school ma'am. "Help! Get me away from these horrible men." 

Fiddlefoot stepped closer, eying Miss Tomkins' dishevelled form -- hair tumbled down, dress wrinkled, bonnet awry. "You!" he said incredulously. 

"They -- seized me!" 

"Loose that woman!" directed the marshal sharply. Miss Tomkins felt the arm grips tighten like bands of steel. 

'This is our li'l maverick," declared Shorty firmly. "We aint' shaking our ropes loose -- no siree!" 

Fiddlefoot's fist took him full in the mouth. He staggered back, spitting teeth. His pard grabbed for a gun butt. Before his .45 cleared leather, the marshal's eight-inch gun barrel cracked through the brown felt of his Stetson. He grunted and collapsed like a punctured waterbag. Meanwhile, Shorty had recovered his balance and advanced, his arms flailing wildly. The marshal kneed him and clipped him again as his square form jack-knifed. 

Forgotten, the school ma'am watched the brief fracas. Fiddlefoot swung to face her. "How come you're on Main Street after sundown -- alone?" he demanded harshly. 

Miss Tomkins was recovering her aplomb. "Most certainly not for the reason you have in mind," she snapped. 

"Wai, you sure lack good sense," he bit back. 

Hairpins clenched between her teeth as she gathered her loosened hair, the school ma'am merely glared. Thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, the marshal stood surveying her. 

"I don't need an escort," she told him frigidly. 

"I'm seeing you off the street," he retorted thinly, "hoping you got sense enough to stay off." 

She sniffed and they moved along the plankwalk in chilled silence. 

As they pushed past lounging groups outside the light-bathed front of The Corral, the batwings rasped and a slim rider, in puncher's garb, blundered out, teetering uncertainly, an unlit cigarette drooping from his lips. He was little more than a boy, a lurking devilment on his bronzed features, sharp-hewn as an axe. But the impression of tough recklessness was belied by his mouth, the mouth of a weakling, as soft and effeminate as a girl's. 

Fiddlefoot heard a quick gasp from the woman beside him. "Bill!" she shrieked and rushed forward. The slim rider stiffened like a poker and the cigarette spilled from his parted lips. He darted a frightened glance at the woman flying toward him, gathered his muddled wits, charged across the plankwalk and ducked beneath the hitch rail. The agitated Miss Tomkins had scarcely swung around to follow when he was in the saddle, his pony whirling away. Goaded by steel, the animal leaped forward. The school ma'am stood staring into fast-rising dust that effectually shrouded the fleeing rider. 

"Friend of yourn?" Fiddlefoot inquired curiously. 

He heard her choke back a sob. Then, wordlessly, she began to walk along the plankwalk again, while he paced beside her. All the belligerence had oozed out of her. She seemed to have wilted, lifelessly dragging her feet. When they reached a small bungalow, fronted by a neat picket fence, she lifted the gate latch and left him with a spiritless "Good-night!" 

When Fiddlefoot hit Main Street again, it howled like the father of all curly wolves, and the disorder centered around The Corral. The marshal hitched up his belt and headed straight for the saloon. One fact was plain in his mind -- if he couldn't make the "no-gun" ordinance stick he might just as well turn in his badge. The mavericks were stampeding. They had to be dehorned before they really went on the prod. 

He stepped inside the ever-swinging batwings and eyed the scene through a swirling haze of tobacco smoke. The air was pungent with the stench of spilt liquor and sweating humans; clamorous with the deep rumble of men's voices, the shrill laughter of painted women, the squawking of fiddles. Punchers clustered in yammering groups around tables, staggered over the butt-littered floor and were lined thick at the bar. Through a wide archway in the rear, spurred riders whirled short-skirted, silk-stockinged women. On a low platform a tired looking townsman pounded a piano and two bearded fiddlers sawed industriously. 

There was only one jarring note, from the marshal's viewpoint -- every man in sight toted a gun. Before midnight, when the rotgut really began to take effect, when brains were befuddled, tempers heated to fighting pitch and common sense completely drowned, those guns would begin to smoke. Elbowing a path across the crowded floor, the marshal headed for the orchestra. 

At- the touch of a hand upon his shoulder, the piano player turned his head, his fingers still mechanically thumping out a tune. 

"Quit!" Fiddlefoot directed curtly. The fellow focused on the star and his hands slid off the keys. The fiddlers slowed, Stopped. Indignant shouts arose from the dancers and squeals of protest from their partners, but the torrent of sound from the saloon continued to flow unabated. There was one sure way to get attention. Fiddlefoot loosed a slug into the wooden platform. Noise chopped off at the roar of the explosion. Every head pivoted. Even card players swung around in their chairs, ready to flatten if lead began to fly. 

"Check your guns, gents!" he yelled. 

No one moved. He could read the astonishment in their eyes. Many were fresh from the trail and were used to Dan Harvey's easy ways. The no-gun ordinance had been dead and buried so long that they had forgotten it. Who was this young rooster with a shiny new star who figured he could ram it down their throats? A lanky cowpoke, Stetson awry, with ropey mustache and bleary eyes, rolled to the front. Just drunk enough to be dangerous, Fiddlefoot figured. The cowpoke came to the edge of the platform and glared up. "I don't shuck my smoke-pole for nobody," he declared thickly. 

"Then beat it -- out of town!" came back the marshal. He could hear men prodding the beanpole on, their voices pitched low. 

"I'm gonna cut your comb!" declared the cowpoke, and clawed for his gun. 

Fiddlefoot's right hand snaked down and the .45 bellowed again. The beanpole yelped and stared stupidly at blood dripping from his lacerated gun hand. The marshal saw men's bodies tauten and eyes chill with anger. "Check your guns!" he repeated, "Or I close the joint." 

A low buzz of talk arose, sparking resentment. Fiddlefoot was reminded of a fuse, hissing toward a powder barrel. Seemed the explosion was due, pronto. He stood alone on the platform, tight-lipped and defiant. The piano player dropped onto hands and knees and squirmed behind his instrument. The fiddlers eased away. Then a girl jumped onto a table. "Listen, you shorthorns!" she cried. Bleak eyes switched from the marshal to her shapely form. 

"You tell 'em, Myra!" shouted a puncher. 

Fiddlefoot, tense with strain, watched and wondered what was coming next. The girl made a picture to catch any man's eye.' Every curve in her body was molded by a shimmering green down, cut almost down to her full breasts and slit high above the knees, exposing silk-sheathed legs. Heavy coils of raven-black hair were wound around her head, pyramided high, and secured by jeweled combs. The pale cream of her well-formed features made striking contrast to the vivid make-up of the other girls. There was a frankness in her flashing black eyes and a cordiality in her husky voice that seemed to set her apart from her hard-eyed, scented sisters. 

She raised bare arms, jingling with bracelets, for silence. "The marshal's a good guy, boys," she cried, "let's give him a break. The law's the law. Who wants to- pack a load of hardware around anyway? I'm checking my gun, who's with me?" Amid a chorus of yells and whistles, she hoisted her silken skirt, slipped a tiny derringer from beneath a flowered garter, jumped down from the table top, and tripped toward the bar. Tension let down. Roaring with laughter, men followed her example. Quickly, a stack of gunbelts built up below the backbar mirror. 

Fiddlefoot stepped off the platform. The music struck up again. He stood back against the wall, his brow wet under the hat brim. The green-clad siren had sure eased him out of a jackpot, he reflected. With less luck, his body could have been lying on that platform, so full of holes it would have sunk in brine. 

A big-framed man, immaculate in the sober black and spotless white linen affected by gamblers, approached. A hawkish beak of a nose protruded out from features blasted by the fires of past excesses. As he strode, big-chested, he oozed self-confidence and his eyes held a harsh intolerance. 

"So you're the new marshal?" Contempt iced his chilled tones as he stopped in front of Fiddlefoot and surveyed him with a glance as hard as the diamond scintillating on' his shirt front. "I'm Ace Arlow. I run this joint. You pull another fool play like that and I'll have you run out by the seat of your pants." 

"You run me out!" derided Fiddlefoot, weighing the big man. He decided there was nothing he liked about Arlow. 

"Yep, like a bum! Don't get the idea you can stage grandstand plays in this saloon because you pack a tin badge. If Myra wasn't a smart gal, we'd have had a riot. Get out of here -- and stay out!" 

"Or you'll have me thrown out?" The marshal's voice was soft. 

"You're damned right I will." 

"Wai, mister," Fiddlefoot's voice was bleak. "I promise this -- you'll go out, too -- feet first." 

"Trigger-happy, eh?" sneered the other. 

The marshal smiled thinly. "You hit the bull's-eye -- a .gun's all I got. And chew on this, if I find another ranny packing a hogleg in this joint I close it -- drum tight." 

"Who in hell do you think you are?" 

Fiddlefoot tapped his badge. "The law! And Al Brunner will back my hand." 

"Don't bet on it!" Arlow advised, and turned away. He seemed to be amused. 

Myra was sitting on the bar, displaying a generous length of silken leg, when Fiddlefoot headed for the batwings. The girl caught his eye, smiled and held up a bottle of bourbon. "Have a drink, marshal!" she invited. 

"Maybe I will," be threw back. He needed a drink, he thought, to wash away the sour taste Arlow had left in his mouth. 

Bottle and glasses in hand, Myra slid off the bar and met him halfway across the saloon. He pulled back a chair at a vacant table and she dropped onto it. As he took a seat opposite, she poured. "Well, Walt," she said, raising her glass, "Jong time, no see."' 

His stomach knotted. "The moniker's Fiddlefoot, ma'am," he said quickly. 

Myra laughed out loud. "Don't try and run a blazer over me, Walt Deacon." 



VII 


Edgy as a lobo, Fiddlefoot stared full into the snapping dark eyes of the green-gowned Myra. "Ma'am," he assured her in a voice brittle as thin ice, "you misread the brand." 

Again her laugh mocked him. "Don't hurrah me, Walt. You still carry my scar!" She flicked his nose playfully with one finger. Absently, he raised his right hand and touched an almost imperceptible white nick on the bridge of his nose. It took his thoughts back to school days. A precocious tag of a girl, one Milly Ferguson, had inflicted that scar, hurling a rock in a flare of temper when he refused to take her hunting with the treasured .45. Milly, as spirited as a wild colt, had been the adopted child of "Frosty" Ferguson, the railway agent, and his wife. But how would this bold-faced dancehall beauty know about that? 

"Don't tell me that you forget dear little Milly," she taunted, "your shadow!" 

Then understanding came. "You -- ain't -- Milly?" 

Her white teeth flashed in a quick smile. "And I thought you had a quick eye for a brand," she twitted. "Sure I'm Milly! Aren't you going to say 'Hello?" 

But words failed Fiddlefoot. It was difficult for him to grasp that this sophisticated queen of The Corral could be the scrawny, pigtailed tomboy who'd pestered him 'way back. 

"Your paw still station agent?" he asked at last. 

"I guess so!" she replied indifferently. "We haven't traded a word since I skipped out when maw died, six years back. Guess he figures me dead, too." 

Fiddlefoot remembered Ferguson as a crabbed, short-spoken railroader, with an abhorrence of cardplaying, drinking and all forms of joviality. The girl's voice tightened. 

"Paw and me never did get along, he was too free with his razor strop." 

"So you became a dance hall whore!" Fiddlefoot's voice was deep with disgust. "If I had a quirt handy, I'd take some skin off your rump." 

Fire flashed in Myra's dark eyes. "Watch your words, Walt Deacon! I take just so much and no mote." Then she shook with wholehearted amusement. "Can you beat that? We haven't seen each other for a coon's age and the first thing we do is fly at each other's throats. Drink up!" 

He tilted his glass, while the girl sat watching him intently. "What brought you back?" she inquired. 

He said nothing. 

"You haven't forgotten that warrant?" 

"Nope!" 

"You're safe!" she said carelessly. "You've sure changed plenty. Gunslick, eh? Well, you always were fiddling with a gun." 

"You know what 111 draw if they wise up?" Fiddlefoot rolled a smoke, striving to control a ferment of thought. 

Myra nodded, "A rope!" 

"Then button up! Quit naming me Walt. The moniker's Fiddlefoot." His tone was brittle. He couldn't forget the girl's trade and -- for no good reason -- it hurt. "How come you located in this -- cesspool?" he persisted. 

"It's none of your business," she snapped. 

"I'm asking!" 

Myra straightened, meeting his demanding stare. "What else could I do? It was this or slave in a restaurant or wash floors. I'm no drudge!" 

"You could scrub floors and keep your self-respect." 

"Respect!" She laughed shortly. "You should talk of respect. Who ever respected the Deacons? To hell with respect. I like it this way." Her bracelets tinkled as she smoothed the silk gown over a rounded thigh. "Give me the music, the bright lights, the dinero. You can have the self-respect-rand the dirty dish water." The smoldering anger left her voice. She leaned close, her tone urgent, "Ditch that star! It's sudden death. No marshal can buck Micky Lopez." 

Fiddlefoot smiled and scraped back Ms chair. "Guess II drift." His voice hardened, "Remember -- button up!" 

She looked at him, an unwonted softness in her dark eyes. "Do you think I'd talk, Walt-Fiddlefoot?" 

"Nope!" he threw back tersely, and sauntered away. 

A clock on the wall said 11:20. He'd been on his feet since sun-up and was bone-weary. The Corral wouldn't quiet down for hours. This lawman's job wasn't the cinch it had promised to be. 

He hit for the law shack, moving tiredly under the store canopies. When he reached up and touched light to the wick of a stable lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling, yellow light bathed a lanky, grey-shirted form sprawled on the floor. 

Nerves tightening, he dropped on his knees beside the slack form, then rolled it over. It was the beanpole who had called his hand in The Corral. The cowpoke was plainly dead drunk. Dry blood caked his dirty red bandana, roughly wrapped around the damaged hand. Fiddlefoot slapped the fellow's leathery cheeks smartly. The gawky cowpoke stirred, groaned, then sat up awkwardly. "I got a corn-complaint," he mumbled. "A feller shot me -- without prov -- prov -- for no reason at all, in the beer joint." 

"You're drunk," said the marshal. "Straddle your cayouse and hit for camp." 

"I wanna lay a complaint!" insisted the cowpoke. He levered to his feet, tettered toward the desk, grabbed the padded chair and sank into the seat. His long body drooped over the table, his head1 dropped. He began to snore. 

Fiddlefoot stood eying the relaxed form with annoyance. Again he slapped the befuddled beanpole into wakefulness. "Say," he demanded forcefully, "what's your pony's brand and color?" 

"Triangle," muttered the other. "Paint -- paddles." 

The cowpoke's mount was probably tied outside The Corral, considered Fiddlefoot. Seemed the wise thing to do would be to bring it to the law shack, hoist its owner into the saddle and head him out of town. 

Breathing deeply of the cool night air, the marshal paced past silent stores. Ponies crowded the rail outside the saloon and men chowsed around. He walked slowly along the rail, hunting a paint carrying the Triangle brand. A gun roared down street. Another whisky-happy puncher shooting stars, he thought. There were several paints among the array of horseflesh but none was branded Triangle. Disgusted, Fiddle-foot headed back to the law shack. Chances were, he reflected, the beanpole was a drover with a string of mounts. Drunk, he'd named the wrong pony. 

Dim in the mellow light of the lamp overhead, the drunk still flopped across the table. Roughly, Fiddlefoot grabbed a shoulder and shook. The cowpoke's body moved lifelessly, slack and unresisting. Impatiently, the marshal gathered the slack of the puncher's grey shirt at the back, released it with a quick exclamation, and held his hand up to the light. His fingers were smeared with blood. Pulse speeding, he raised the rider's lolling head and looked into dull, unseeing eyes. The man was dead, shot as he slacked across the table. Dead and still warm. Wary now, Fiddlefoot remembered the shot he'd heard and eyed the window. A lower pane was shattered. Then he gave attention to the limp body again. A slug had entered between neck and shoulder and emerged midway down the man's back. It was plain enough. Flopped across the table, face down, in plain view of passers-by, the unlucky puncher had likely been mistaken for himself --  asleep. The killer had lined on him from the street. 

Nagged by uncertainty, the marshal paced the little shack. Who would be gunning for him? His thoughts flew to Cheyenne's pard -- the sour-faced gunny he had clouted earlier that day. Then to Ace Arlow's .hawk-beaked features. It could have been either, or any other of the four Box H gunmen he had disarmed. All had reason to hate his guts. Or it could have been an accident, plenty of promiscuous lead had whined down Main Street that evening. 

But something told Fiddlefoot that this was no accident. 

When the killer learned of his mistake he would try again. From now on, death might whine from any dark alley. In a bitter mood, he blew out the lamp and locked the door upon the grisly occupant. 

Plowing through the ankle-deep dust of the street, he shouldered through the glass-paneled street door of Jackson's Hotel. The lobby was empty, faintly lit by an oil lamp high on the wall, turned low. Drearily, he mounted the stairway to his room. Inside, not bothering to light the lamp, he scaled his hat into a corner, unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it on the worn carpet, yanked off his boots and dropped gratefully onto the bed. Now that the strain had finally let down, all vitality seemed suddenly to have drained from his body. He closed his eyes. This had sure been one hell of a day, he reflected. A gunfight, an attempted bushwhacking, a discovery that a pert kid who'd tagged after him at school had turned dancehall whore. Trouble, nothing but trouble. The heritage of the Deacons. Fatigue-drugged, he sank into leaden sleep. 



VIII 


Longhorn yawned as it sluggishly prepared to meet a new day. Fiddlefoot led a pony to the old adobe that served as mortuary. Clerks sweeping off store fronts blinked with surprise as they eyed the body roped across the animal. When the marshal returned, Pecos Pete uncoiled his loose-jointed form from where he was hunkered outside the law shack. "Sent another gent to hunt for a harp?" he inquired gravely. 

"Nope," replied the marshal, with a wry grin, "If I hadn't been packing aces last night, they'd be packing me on that pony." He told of the attempted bushwacking. 

"I'd say you ain't exactly popular in some quarters," commented Pecos, and followed Fiddlefoot inside the shack. 

The marshal dropped onto the padded chair and rolled a smoke. He didn't feel as nonchalant as he looked. "Hell," -he came back defensively, "was there ever a lawman that someone didn't feel an urge to salivate?" 

Pecos subsided against the rear wall. "Odds around town are ten to one you'll be pushing up daisies before you draw your first month's pay," lie commented casually. 

"I reckon, mister," retorted Fiddlefoot morosely, "you'd be better employed hunting a hole in a spread than hanging crepe around here." 

'"I got a job!" There was no expression on Pecos' deadpan features. 

"Yeah!" derided the marshal. "Propping up a bar?" 

In silence, Pecos stretched out a long arm, fist closed. His fingers opened, revealing a small metal badge. Fiddlefoot leaned forward, with quick curiosity and read the inscription, "John Peters, #45, Arizona Cattlemen's Protective Assn." 

"Range dick, eh?" He eyed the other, masking cold caution. "Rustlers on the rampage?" 

Pecos nodded. "Hog wild. They been chewing big chunks out of the trail herds." 

"Wai," came back the marshal pointedly, "they sure don't blotch brands on Main Street, or over at The Corral." 

Pecos accepted the reproof with an amused twitch of the lips. "You'd be surprised, pard, what • a feller can pick up around saloons. But I wasn't figuring on corraling the rope-and-ring boys in town. I'm hunting me a sidekick. My regular pard busted a leg down Yuma way. I need a cold-jawed hombre to side me, a gent who don't spook easy -- we'd make a good team, Fiddlefoot!" 

The marshal chewed his cigarette, his forehead furrowed. The offer had its attractions. It would give him a wonderful chance to sniff around the valley. And who would ever suspect a Cattle Association detective of dodging a warrant? "Maybe," he threw out carelessly, "there's a little dust rising on my back trail." 

"I never look back," returned Pecos blandly. 

Still Fiddlefoot pondered, weighing the idea. "I kinda fancy this job," he demurred. "No saddle sores, good eating, good sleeping. And, when I shake down, doggoned peaceful." 

"So's boothill!" Peco said dryly. "You took Cheyenne, but as sure as sundown, some hombre will take you -- maybe between the shoulder blades. No one man can buck Micky's gunslicks." 

Fiddlefoot smiled faintly. "You got me plumb scairt," he murmured. 

"Like hell I have," grunted Pecos. He straightened. "Wai, chew on it! I got to take a paesear around the valley. And button up about the badge. Lady Luck may smile on you but she'd laugh out loud if some bushwhacker lined his sights on me." 

A torrid sun licked Main Street when Brenner's spring wagon bumped over the ruts, three pine coffins sliding around in its bed. Behind the wagon straggled a ragged procession -- bearded old-timers, bonneted women, townsmen stiff in store suits, conveyed by saddle ponies, ancient buck-boards, squeaky buggies -- all gathered to pay final tribute to their veteran marshal, Dan Harvey. 

Its trail marked by slow-settling dust, the procession wound out of town, pausing at the desolation of boothill --  just a square on the brushy flat, outlined by a three-strand wire fence that enclosed somber rows of weed-grown graves, from which weathered markers projected like grey fungus growths. 

Clods rattled hollow on the coffins as the Mexican grave diggers began to leisurely ply their shovels. Fiddlefoot tapped one on the shoulder as the crowd streamed back to saddle horses and vehicles outside the fence. "Say," he inquired, "you dug four graves. Who else you going to plant?" 

The Mexican shrugged. "Quien sabe?" he said indifferently and resumed his shoveling. 

Then the marshal saw that the open grave already had its marker, two box staves nailed crosswise. He stepped closer and studied the inscription, crudely lettered with black paint: "Fiddlefoot -- Town Marshal." 

It was a grim and significant threat. Despite the heat, the marshal's shirt was cold against his back. Dr. Rinkler sauntered up. "A grim jest, eh, marshal?" he commented, eying Fiddlefoot's sober features. "Don't take it too seriously. It's probably some fool's crude notion of a joke. Remember the old Italian proverb: 'Longer lives he that is threatened than he that is hanged.' " 

That didn't sound too good, either, Fiddlefoot considered. Well, he couldn't quit now, not after that challenge. If he did, every man in Longhorn would label him yellow. 

Anyone's business is everyone's business in an isolated cowtown. The story of the open grave quickly spread and that of the attempted bushwhacking. Everywhere a great debate raged: would the new -marshal have the sand to stick it out, and if so how long would he stay above ground? Bets were laid freely. Barkeeps' pockets bulged with stake money. Meanwhile, the object of their discussion was strolling casually along the plankwalks, checking the saloons, enforcing the "No Gun" law, with a deadly .45 bumping his hip, and giving no clue to his intentions. 

One drowsy afternoon, through the law shack window, Fiddlefoot watched three riders job into town. The first forked a magnificent grey, long-barreled and sleek, its breeding plain. It was well matched by its rider, who rode as if he knew it. Tall, with dark, lean features, a wisp of black mustache above a thin-lipped mouth, he sat the saddle with the arrogance of a Caesar. Hard as onyx, his eyes were shaded by the stiff brim of a dove-grey Stetson. An embroidered leather vest hung loose over a silk shirt and an ivory-butted gun was bolstered around his narrow waist. His saddlery glittered with elaborate silverwork. 

In comparison, the two escorting riders were as drab and colorless as prairie wolves and their bleak eyes held the eternal wariness of the wolf. 

Fiddlefoot didn't need to guess the identity of their glittering boss -- he knew Micky Lopez, son of a Spanish father and Irish mother, at a glance. Even in the old days Micky had been a dandy, a young hellion forever chasing women and riding fast horses, with a Sneering contempt for all mankind, nester trash in particular'. The dandified son hadn't changed a mite, he thought, except to swell with self-importance. So the kingpin of Kiowa Valley had come to town. 

And something told the marshal that trouble, big trouble, was afoot. 



IX 


Outside the corral, Micky Lopez swung gracefully to the ground, looped his reins around the rail, but gave no indication of entering the saloon. With the two gunnies lounging behind lam, he stood in the shade of the wooden canopy, stroking his wisp of mustache and eying the sleepy stretch of Main Street. 

Fiddlefoot buckled on his gunbelt, yanked on his Stetson, and stepped outside the law shack. Moving unhurriedly, he sauntered along the store fronts toward the three riders --  and became conscious 'that many eyes were following his progress. The entire town was watching and waiting-Lopez had ridden in for a showdown. He'd had old Dan Harvey buffaloed. The shooting of Cheyenne had been a blow at his prestige. Now the time had arrived to bring Harvey's successor to heel. 

This would be a showdown, all right, the new marshal determined grimly. This was one time Micky Lopez wouldn't order a piece of white trash to get from under his feet. 

He eased up quietly. Red, one of the gunnies, glimpsed him first. The fiery-headed desperado grinned and hitched op his gunbelt, as Fiddlefoot stepped up to Lopez's side. 

"Check your guns, gents'" It was the routine order, given with no emphasis. 

Lopez spun around, as fast and graceful as a panther. Still caressing his mustache he surveyed the marshal slowly and insolently from dusty boots to battered Stetson. He might have been appraising the points of a horse. The inspection finished, his white teeth flashed in an amused smile. 

"So this is the saddlebum they made marshal!" he commented. 

"Check your gun!" Fiddlefoot repeated. 

The cowman half-turned toward the two slit-eyed men behind him, "Tell this knothead who I am, Larkin!" 

"That's Micky Lopez, bud," grated the gunhand standing beside Red, a wiry, calloused fellow. "He rods the Valley," the gunny added. 

"He don't rod me!" came back the marshal. His voice hardened, "Check your gun, Micky, or beat it out of town --  pronto!" 

"Quit dribbling, you two-bit lawman," snapped Lopez. "I give orders in Kiowa Valley -- you take "em!" 

Fiddlefoot tautened. His quick glance flicked past Lopez's spruce form toward the two gunnies, alert as predatory wolves. Micky's body covered him. In a flash -his right hand dropped and the oiled holster swung smoothly upon its swivel, the eight-inch gun barrel aligned on Lopez's shining silver belt buckle. "Shuck that smoke pole," he directed thinly, "or I punch a hole in your belly." 

Lopez stood hesitant, his lips compressed, fury glinting in his dark eyes. "Start marching!" growled the marshal, "Out of town or into the saloon." 

"You wouldn't dare shoot -- me!" The cowman's voice was hoarse with rage. 

"You got just five seconds to find out," came back Fiddle-foot, mockery in his grey eyes as he focused on the fuming Lopez. 

Abruptly, the cowman wheeled and pushed through the batwings. Fiddlefoot dogged him, gun still leveled. The few mid-morning patrons forgot their drinks and stared wide-eyed as Lopez stepped up to the bar, unbuckled his gunbelt and threw it angrily across the mahogany. 

"You forgot the hideaway," Fiddlefoot prompted. 

With tight-lipped fury, the cowman jerked a derringer out of the shoulder harness beneath his left armpit and spun it after the gunbelt. 

"Now give Mister Lopez a nice cool bottle of beer," Fiddlefoot told the gaping barkeep, "the gent looks like he's all burned up." 

The apron darted a frightened glance at the fuming cowman, then glimpsed a challenge in Fiddlefoot's cold stare and hastily set a bottle on the bar. 

The marshal swung away and headed for the street. Red and the gunny known as Larkin stepped back from the bat-wings, from where they had been watching the play. 

"Do I have to make it plain with gunsmoke?" inquired Fiddlefoot caustically, eying their bolstered .45s. 

"Not with me you don't," grinned Red, and eased inside. Larkins' pale eyes locked with- the marshal's in silent hostility-   ' 

"Wai?" challenged Fiddlefoot, fingers caressing his gun butt. 

The gunny ducked inside and followed his pard across flic floor, unbuckling his gunbelt. 

Micky Lopez's sharp voice, quivering with anger, pulled the marshal up short as he was about to move away. "You take this trick, marshal, but I'll rake in the jackpot." 

"You reckon so?" drawled Fiddlefoot. 

I'm dead sure!" Micky's thin lips drew back and his voice was almost a snarl, "You're holding a dead man's hand." 

The marshal chuckled and lifted a hand in derisive farewell For the first time since he rode into Longhorn, he felt teal good. The humiliations he suffered as a boy had lanced deep arid still festered in him. Begging left-off clothing around the ranches never had seemed to bother his mother, but he would sooner have taken a quirting than ask alms. Even now, the thought of old Pete Lopez's spread, the Bar L, left a nasty taste in his mouth. Pete, a shrewd Mexican, had always a kindly nod, but Micky, spoiled by an indulgent father and adoring Irish mother, always took malicious delight in pestering him when he padded barefoot into the yard peddling homemade rag rugs. Micky was five or more years older, bigger framed and better clad. 

Fiddlefoot almost laughed aloud at the realization that he had made the Bar L scion crawfish. Within the hour it would be all over town, within a week all over the valley. 

But, knowing Lopez, men shook their heads dubiously. 

That evening, in The Corral, Ace Arlow was offering twenty to one that the new marshal would occupy the open grave in boothill before the week ended. There were few takers. 

Near noon, the following day, the marshal paused outside the Mercantile Store and eyed a dun, loose-tied to the rail, lazily flicking flies. Like most range-bred men, he had a good memory for horses. This was the mount of the rider who had set the school ma'am in a tizzy. Fast, and a stayer, he registered, shod all round. Must use him in rough terrain, Fiddlefoot figured; most valley riders tacked shoes on forefeet only. For no particular reason he decided to take another look at the young rider with reckless eyes and soft mouth. He strolled into the store. Mounting heat had begun to scorch Main Street and housewives had long since done their marketing. Dipping a couple of crackers out of a barrel, he stood by the cold stove. Through the dusty glass partition of Brunner's office he could see the crown of a Stetson and beyond it the storekeeper's balding pate. 

He was munching the crackers when Pecos' elongated form bulked in the doorway. "Don't you ever do nothing but eat?" drawled the stock detective, drifting down the aisle. 

"I'm dogging the hombre who forks that dun outside," explained Fiddlefoot. He nodded toward the office. 

"Do me a favor -- lay off!" begged Pecos. Answering the marshal's questioning stare, he explained. "The gent packs a sticky rope. I've got the deadwood on the jasper; his moniker's Bill Tomkins. I want the gang. Left alone he'll likely lead me to "em." 

Another surprise, reflected Fiddlefoot. Surely the prim Miss Tomkins could not be tied up with a rustling outfit. 

The object of their talk emerged from the office. 

"No guns in town, mister!" called out Fiddlefoot. 

The youth's lips twisted into an impudent grin. "I'm heading out of town," he came back cockily. "This hole's deader'n boothill." He swaggered toward the street. Pecos dropped an eyelid in the marshal's direction and lazed in his wake. 

Brunner stepped briskly to his office door and beckoned. Wshitling through his teeth, he watched the marshal make a leisurely approach. 

"Ain't that the school ma'am's brother?" inquired Fiddle-foot casually. It was a random guess, but it hit the bull's-eye. 

"Sure," said Brunner. Then his eyes questioned. "You acquainted?" 

"Kind of," admitted the marshal. "What's the maverick doing these days?" 

Brunner lifted his shoulders. "Homesteading I guess, back in the hills. He rode in to talk credit." 

The storekeeper led the way into his office, abruptly gestured at a chair and plunked down into his own. His manner changed, annoyance was plain in his sharp eyes. "Did you have to brace Micky Lopez?" he said. "Micky pulls plenty weight around here. Then the killing of that puncher, after you disabled him in The Corral. He rode for the Triangle, a big outfit over in Skeleton Valley. They ship plenty beef out of here and they won't like it." 

"Did I beef the waddy?" drawled Fiddlefoot. 

Brunner ignored the query. "You should have handled him without shooting," he snapped. "You are too free with that gun. The talk around town is that you're a born killer." 

"Who have I killed -- outside of Cheyenne?" 

"Quit quibbling!" The storekeeper, reflected Fiddlefoot, was sure on the prod. "Disarming Micky was another fool play," continued Brunner irately. "He's got plenty pride and a kick like a mule. Keep his gunmen in line, yes, but you should lay off Lopez. You're breeding trouble." 

"Which adds up you crave I should quit?" 

"Yes!" came back Brunner promptly. "You lack judgement. Longhorn needs an older man, a man with tact." 

Fiddlefoot rose. "Sure I'll quit, but not before I serve out my month. I've got pride, too, Brunner. And I'm not backing away from Micky Lopez," 

Whistling softly between his teeth, the storekeeper eyed the marshal he'd appointed with a frown. "Well," he directed shortly, "leave The Corral alone!" 

"For what reason?" 

"I own it!" 

"Can you match that!" murmured Fiddlefoot, gazing down at Brunner's smooth features. "Rod the law but don't spoil your take! That's why you wanted Cheyenne killed --  to booger his pards. They were hurting business. Keep order, but don't dent your bankroll. Wai, get this, mister, as long as I wear this star I enforce the law -- and to hell with your pocketbook." 

Brunner shrugged and turned to the papers on his desk. 

Seemed he was playing a lone hand now, mused Fiddle-foot, and the odds were stacking too high for comfort. If he had any sense he'd quit, but when, he thought wryly, did a Deacon show any sense. The whole town was watching him. He just couldn't quit and be tagged yellow. 



X


Supper under his belt, the marshal stepped out of the restaurant and eyed Main Street, shrouded in shadow. The cattle pens beyond the red-painted railway depot were empty; the trail crews had left for their home ranches and there was little stirring, even around The Corral. Seemed as though it would be a quiet night, considered Fiddlefoot. He strolled to the law shack, draped an old slicker over the window and closed the door before he lit the stable lamp. He couldn't forget the bushwhacker who had plugged the Triangle puncher. There was no percentage in giving the rattlesnake a plain target. 

He dropped onto the padded chair and rolled a smoke. Outside, as darkness deepened, peace wreathed Longhorn. His thoughts went to Micky Lopez. Micky would kick back, he was convinced of that, and kick like a bay steer. And he would be playing a lone hand now that Brunner had soured. Maybe he should have shown a little horse sense and teamed up with Pecos. 

After a while, he turned down the lamp wick and took a turn down Main Street, moving warily past darkened alleys. On the front of The .Corral the kerosene torches made bright wavering patches on the shrouded street. Windows winked wanly on the second floor of Jackson's Hotel. There was no sound beyond the hollow drum of his boots on the plankwalk, the subdued thud of hooves as shadowy riders drifted past, the occasional grating of dusty hinges on swinging saloon batwings. 

Yet the premonition of gathering trouble seized the marshal and clung as persistently as a saddle burr. The town was just too doggoned quiet. 

Irked by a perverse restlessness, he probed the gloomy caverns that were alleys, scouted the debris-strewn waste land behind the stores -- and turned up nothing beyond slinking cats. Finally, he headed back to the office again, turned up the lamp and idly scanned the "Monroe Recorder." 

He was half dozing when the patter of bare feet on the planks outside startled him. The door eased open cautiously, a tousled mop of black hair thrust through the gap and a Mexican youth glanced quickly inside. At the sight of the seated marshal, he tossed a folded slip of paper toward him and bobbed out of sight. Fiddlefoot reached and picked the paper off the floor, unfolded it and scanned what was plainly a hasty scrawl: 

"Bar H bunch fixing to get you in Corral -- Myra." 

So this was it. Micky hadn't wasted any time. The lobo was sure anxious to fill that open grave in boothill. Just what kind of a trap would he set and how would he bait it? Chewing a cigarette, the marshal paced the shack. He had a hunch it wouldn't be long before the Bar bunch made its play. 

It wasn't. Before the cigarette had burnt down to a stub, the sallow-faced barkeep he had previously braced came bustling through the doorway. "You're wanted at The Corral marshal," he panted. "Some locoed hombre's threatening gun play." 

It was well acted, considered Fiddlefoot, eying the hard-breathing apron. "Does Ace have to call in the law to dehorn a lone maverick?" he demanded. 

"Ain't that what you're paid for?" replied .the man surlily. 

Wordlessly, Fiddlefoot stepped outside, the barkeep at his heels.- With the shadows fretted around him, he gazed down street at the flickering flares of the saloon. The silence could almost be felt. The sallow-faced apron fidgeted beside him. 

"I don't hear no gunplay," said Fiddlefoot. As though to refute his assertion, a .45 began blaring, it's muffled report loud in the night. Once, twice, three times it roared, as regular as a drumbeat. 

"Wal?" inquired the barkeep, belligerently. "

"Tell Ace I'll be down." 

"Keeno!" said the apron, with visible relief, and hastened away. 

It didn't call for much savvy to figure the play, reflected Fiddlefoot, watching the barkeep's dim form as it faded along the plankwalk. They'd toll him into the saloon and cut him down as he entered. It would be easy to stage a fracas and claim he had been accidentally shot. 

He stepped inside again, lifted a sawed-off shotgun from its pegs, and blew the dust off the twin barrels. The ten-gauge scatter-gun would be a death dealer loaded with buckshot. He checked the action, yanked open the table drawer and fingered through age-worn dodgers, old pipes, loose cartridges. Finally, he dug out two shotgun shells. A' muttered curse left his lips. They were blanks. He hesitated, then with a shrug slipped them into the chambers. Blowing out the lamp, he stepped outside. 

Padding silently in the dust of the street, he headed for the saloon, the sawed-off shotgun tucked under his left arm. Mid-street, outside The Corral, beyond the quavering halo of light spread by the flares, he paused. There were only three ponies tied to the rail. Earlier, he remembered, there had been a dozen or more. The saloon's interior lights were dimmed, the piano was silent, the place was as quiet as boothill. To the tensed marshal it seemed as sinister as a sleeping sidewinder. 

Stealthily, he headed for the alley beside the building, moved quickly down the narrow passage and came out beside piled empties at the further end. He picked a path through stacked cases and empty barrels, stopping before a closed door in the rear of the building. This, he guessed, would give entrance to Arlow's quarters. 

Shotgun gripped in his left hand, he cautiously turned the doorknob with his right. The door eased open and he slipped inside. As he had figured, the saloon man was out in front to be in at the kill. 

This was illegal entry, but he wasn't watching fine points of law, not when there were probably three gunnies waiting to blast him as he pushed through the batwings in front. 

He plucked a match from his hatband, struck it and saw a bed, bureau and chairs. A small steel safe stood in a corner. This was Ace's room, the gaudy lithographs of voluptuous beauties that ornamented the walls told him that. 

Another closed door lay straight ahead. He dropped onto one knee and applied an eye to the keyhole. As he anticipated, he looked right into the back of the bar. 

Gripping the shotgun firmly, he straightened, threw the door wide open, jumped through and vaulted onto the bar top. 

Only two lamps were burning in the saloon, one over the bar and the other over the batwings. Three men were scattered around the room, all facing the batwings and all rigid with expectation. In the half-light, he almost missed Ace Arlow's dark-clad form stiff against a side wall. 

For a moment he was undetected, then an amazed yell from the sallow-faced apron, down the bar, brought four heads around with startled jerks. When they focused on their quarry balanced on the bar top, the ugly twin-barreled shotgun swinging from side to side, promising swift and bloody death, disgusted oaths ripped from the startled gunhands. 

Fiddlefoot recognized the wiry Larkin and Cheyenne's bitter-faced pard. The third gunman, a squatty, pock-faced fellow, was a stranger. Red was absent, and the marshal was not surprised. The ruddy-haired gunman was not the type to take a hand in a dirty bushwhacking. No girls were around and there was no sign of the musicians. He guessed that all had been herded upstairs. The fewer witnesses the better. 

Despite taut nerves, Fiddlefoot could not suppress a tight smile at the expressions of startled surprise on the would-be assassins' faces. "Wai, gents," he challenged. "You know the law -- no guns in town. Shuck 'em!" 

Arlow was the first to move. He stepped away from the wall, scowling. "Are you drunk or loco?" he demanded, his voice hoarse. "Get off that bar! I'll have your badge for this." 

"Quit dribbling!" snapped the marshal. "The boys were set to blast me when I came through the batwings -- and you're in on the deal. Shuck your guns, you lousy bastards, or I'll touch you up with a charge of buckshot." The double click of the twin triggers was ominous in the quiet. 

Well acquainted with the hash a greener could make of a man, the three began to shuffle reluctantly toward the bar, eying the squat weapon as three hound dogs might eye a whip when brought to heel, yearning to slash if chance offered. 

A quick gleam of expectancy in Arlow's eyes warned the marshal. His head turned. The barkeep had crept close, ghosting up below the bar top, a heavy bung-starter gripped in his right hand. Standing on the bar, above him, Fiddlefoot spun around and launched out with his right foot, kicking at the apron's pale features. But, like a club, the heavy mallet smashed down on the marshal's left knee. A sharp spasm of pain shot up to his groin. The leg buckled. He crashed down, atop of the crouching barkeep. The shotgun slipped out of his hands and clattered against the mahogany bar top. Even as he plummeted through the air, the triumphant yells of the gunnies hit his ears. 



XI 


Fiddlelfoot's falling body landed squarely atop the bar-keep, flattening him. Sprawled across the squirming apron, the marshal groped for the other's throat. The man heaved and kicked and twisted in frantic efforts to break free, but Fiddlefoot's fingers quickly found his scrawny neck. Like an enraged terrier worrying a rat, he pounded the barkeep's head savagely against the plank floor. He felt the form beneath him slacken and become limp. It was all over in seconds. 

From the further side of the bar he heard the quick jingle of spur chains that told of fast-moving men. High above him swung a brass lamp, its rays yellowing the unconscious barkeep's features. Fiddlefoot groped for his .45. Lead clanged like a gong against the metal reservoir of the lamp. Oil spilled in a soft-rippling stream, splashing off the polished bar top. The light dimmed, died. Now semi-darkness clothed the saloon, its sole illumination the lamp suspended over the batwings. Fiddlefoot dove for the doorway through which he had entered. A gun roared from beyond the bar and a bottle on the backbar shelf tinkled into fragments. The fugitive flung the door open, his damaged knee gave way and he went down in a sprawling heap. Almost in his ears, it seemed, the shotgun bellowed -- once, twice. Burnt powder, hot and stinking, seared him. He - rolled into the welcome darkness of the rear room, slammed the door, clawed up and shot home a bolt. From beyond the door he heard Arlow's exaltant yell, "I got him! I got him! Both barrels!" 

Worming across the floor, the crippled marshal reached the open door at the back, grabbed it and hauled to his feet. His left knee burned as though seared with a branding iron. Vigorously, he rubbed it with both hands, flexed the leg, cautiously placed his left foot on the ground and found -- with heartfelt relief -- that it would support his weight. Limping, he moved out into the starlit night. If that shotgun had been loaded with buckshot, he thought wryly, his remains would sure have made a sticky mess behind the bar. A fellow never knew what cards Lady Luck would deal. Favoring the injured leg, he limped slowly up the alley, toward Main Street, rounded the angle of the saloon and peered through a dusty front window. 

A lighted stable lamp sat on the bar and around it were gathered the gunmen, watching Arlow, who was throwing his bulky form against the door to his quarters, striving to break it open. Apparently, the would-be assassins were satisfied that their quarry lay on the other side, dead or severely •wounded. 

The first intimation of their error was the roar of Fiddle-foot's .45 from the batwings. The overhead lamp flicked out. 

The wan light of the stable lamp silhouetted the forms of the men at the bar. One collapsed with a gasp as the marshal's next bullet took him in the chest. Another was pounded back against the bar with a slug above his belt buckle-before Arlow swung around and swept the revealing lamp off the mahogany, plunging the saloon into darkness. Flame stabbed orange, as Fiddlefoot, crouched low, fingered a path between the' tables and chairs across the floor. He triggered once again at a powder flash, then his gun yielded no more than a metallic click. Dropping full length, he hastily plugged out the empties and refilled the cylinder from his belt loops. 

There was no sound in the darkened saloon now save the convulsive rat-tat-tat of a wounded man's heels against the floor boards. Just two left who .could sting, reflected Fiddle-foot, prone on the floor -- Arlow and the surviving gunny. Picking himself up silently, he continued his cat-toed advance. A spur chain rattled faintly at the far end of the bar. Fiddlefoot bellied to the floor again, reached out, felt the rungs of a chair, gripped it by a leg and flung it ahead. As ft crashed, flame lanced from the spot he was watching. His .45 belched flame and thunder -- twice. He heard a gasp, a heavy thud, then silence closed in again. Once more, he slithered ahead and came up against the solid bulk of the bar. Somewhere a door slammed. Then there was a blundering behind the bar and bottles spilled off the shelves. 

He straightened, slammed a shot across the mahogany. Glass jangled as fragments of the backbar mirror spilled down. 

"F'r Gawd's sake don't shoot!" the barkeep's reedy voice whimpered. 

"Light a lamp -- pronto!" snapped Fiddlefoot. He backed away in the darkness, working toward a side wall. His back was against it when a match spluttered and revealed the apron's pale features, his slick hair disordered and smeared over his forehead. With shaking hands, the barkeep levered up the glass funnel of a lamp and touched the match to the wick. 

As light blossomed, a disorder of tables and chairs was revealed. One gunny slacked on the floor, his back propped against the bar, head lolling, the front of his grey shirt blood soaked. At the end of the bar Cheyenne's bitter-faced pard feebly threshed on the floor. A third man sprawled motionless across an overturned table. 

Fiddlefoot limped forward. "Get the sawbones!" he told the barkeep curtly and watched the man scuttle for the batwings. 

The marshal climbed over the bar, grabbed the stable lamp and quested around, seeking sign of Ace Arlow. But the saloon man had vanished. In his embittered mood he felt an urge to set the joint afire. Then he remembered the girls upstairs, set the lamp back on the bar and slipped out through the batwings. 

Townsmen, attracted by the gunfire, were bunched thick in front of the saloon. Unrecognized in the darkness, Fiddle-foot limped across the street, heading for his room in the hotel. The bruised kneecap ached worse than a sore tooth and he was suddenly very tired. 

Ten minutes later he lay on his bed, a wet towel wrapped around the damaged knee. Through the open window he could hear men's voices raised in excitement and the thud of boots on the plankwalk below. Seemed the whole town, was astir. 

Sunlight bathed the room when he was awakened by a persistent rapping on the door. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, winced as he flexed the injured knee and padded to the door. 

"Specs" Porter, the hotel clerk, stood in the corridor, his eyes animated behind his steel spectacles. "There are some gentlemen waiting to see you in the lobby, marshal." His voice was carefully modulated. 

"For what?" 

The clerk coughed. "The affray in The Corral, I believe. Three men are dead. Mr. Arlow is quite upset." 

"That coyote should be dead, too," growled the marshal. 'I'll be down." 

In no haste, Fiddlefoot washed and shaved, buckled on his gunbelt, punched the crown of his battered Stetson into shape and descended to the lobby, favoring his stiff left leg. 

Sitting side by side in the leather rockers that lined the wall were Brunner, Dr. Kinkier, Chris Brown, the saddler, and Tod Jones the blacksmith. Beyond them, Ace Arlow's rocker moved restlessly back and forth like a pendulum, but less steadily. Close by, another man, in rider's garb, was hunched in a rocker. His right hand was bandaged and he was apparently fast asleep. His wide-brimmed hat had fallen over his face, but there was something vaguely familiar about his form. 

When Fiddlefoot limped across the threadbare carpet of the lobby he saw that Arlow nursed the most beautiful shiner he had seen for months. The gambler's left eye was almost buried behind yellowy-black flesh. He seemed to be short several front teeth, too. 

At sight of the marshal everyone perked up. 

"Wai?" demanded Fiddlefoot, and waited. 

Doc Kinkier smiled tiredly, Brunner whistled softly between his teeth, Brown seemed embarrassed and the blacksmith stared stolidly. 

"You look like you've been in trouble," commented Fiddle-foot, eying Arlow's damaged features. 

"You made trouble aplenty last night," snapped the saloon man, "shooting three men and wrecking The Corral." 

"It should have been four," retorted Fiddlefoot blandly. 

"You see, gents!" Arlow spread his white hands. "The lobo's trigger-happy, crazy as a bedbug." 

The doctor ignored him. "Suppose you give us your version of this affair, marshal," he prompted. 

"Sure!" Fiddlefoot eased gratefully into a rocker. Building a smoke, he told of the call to the saloon and what he found. 

"Why enter through Mr. Arlow's private quarters?" inquired Kinkier. 

"I was tipped off I'd walk into lead," explained the marshal shortly. 

Brunner quit whistling. "Who tipped you?" 

Fiddlefoot smiled bleakly, "A little bird!" 

"Windies -- all windies!" snapped Arlow. "We had trouble with a drunk. I sent Root -- a barkeep -- for the law. This --  killer -- busted in like a wild steer and started shooting. In self-defense, three patrons, Box H riders, pulled their guns. You know what they got! I hurried for assistance." He regarded Fiddlefoot with scowling malice. "I demand that this maniac be run out of town, before he kills again." 

"Doesn't the law require that your patrons check their guns?" asked Kinkier. 

"They just came in!" returned Arlow promptly. 

"You sure had a quiet night," commented Brown, "just three punchers and a drunk. Were was the usual crowd?" 

The saloon man shrugged, "We get dead spots." 

Fiddlefoot shuckled. "You're so doggoned crooked, Ace," he said, without rancor, "you could swallow nails and spit out corkscrews. My guess is that you and Micky set me up for boothill." 

Brunner whistled softly, his sharp eyes focusing first on one and then the other. "My guess," he decided, "is that we don't crave a trigger-happy gunman rodding the law in Longhorn. You better turn in that star." 

"When my month's up!" returned Fiddlefoot coolly. 

"Right now, I said," came back the storekeeper sharply. He appealed to the men seated beside him, "Isn't that the way you gents feel?" 

But the doctor ignored him, addressing Arlow. "Why were your girls all absent? Don't they usually -- er -- ply their trade in the evening?" 

"I sent them upstairs to keep out of trouble," Arlow replied. 

"So you anticipated trouble?" 

Arlow said nothing. 

"And, by sheer coincidence, there were only three armed men -- Box H gunmen -- in the saloon when the marshal entered," murmured the doctor. "In my nostrils, the whole affair stinks to high heaven." He rose. "This is a personal feud, Brunner, and I think we are well out of it." 

"I second that!" said Brown promptly, and the blacksmith nodded. 

Brunner whistled, no expression in his eyes. "Suits me, if that's the way you feel, doc." When the three left the lobby, followed by Arlow, Brunner weighed Fiddlefoot and there was cold fury in his shrewd eyes. "I don't pull many boners, marshal," he rasped, "but I sure pulled one when I appointed -you. Don't forget, a month's your limit -- if you're still alive. 



XII 


"Tch! Tch! Marshal, trouble again!" Fiddlefoot's head cane around at sound of the amused voice. The rider who had apparently been asleep thrust his hat back and sat erect. It was Pecos, the stock detective. 

"Perhaps the marshal, being a stranger to these parts," continued Pecos, poker-faced, "would not know that when he crossed Micky Lopez he had maybe one chance in three of living out the month. With Ace Arlow on the prod, the odds stretch to six to one. Now, without Al Brunner's backing he has less chance of survival than a wax cat in hell." 

"Croaking again!" grunted Fiddlefoot. 

"I still need a sidekick." 

"My month ain't up." 

"Can you wait that long -- and live?" 

"Maybe so!" Fiddlefoot eyed the bandaged hand. "You busted your paw?" 

"Yep," replied the detective grimly, "on Ace's fat face. Caught the bastard baking the hide off a greaser kid with a quirt." 

After sundown, the marshal patrolled Main Street, with a sharp eye for gun toters. It was hard to believe that this sleepy cowtown could spawn trouble so fast, he reflected, eying the wide stretch of street, empty now save for a few slow-moving townsmen lounging along the plankwalks and a scattering of ponies tied to hitch rails. What would be Micky's next move? Or maybe Arlow would be the first to kick back. That brought his thoughts to Pecos' damaged hand. Arlow beating a Mexican boy. A young Mexican had tossed Myra's note into the office. Had Ace got wind of the warning and quirted a confession out of him? If so, what about Myra? Arlow was no respecter of women. 

The marshal's nerves tautened. Uneasiness fermenting in his mind, he headed for The Corral, his pace quickening with every step. 

Nothing seemed amiss as he stepped into the glare of the swinging oil lamps. The three-piece orchestra ground out its usual melancholy music, a few punchers swung rouged partners, and the usual intent group sat around a poker table, where the black-garbed Ace was dealing. Root, the sallow-faced barkeep, attended the needs of a sparse array of drinkers. 

Fiddlefoot strode up to the bar. The apron, he noted with satisfaction, still bore finger marks, dull-red, on his scrawny throat. "Myra around?" he inquired shortly. 

"She's -- sick." The barkeep cowered before the hard scrutiny of the marshal's grey eyes. Root was lying, thought the marshal, and he was plenty scared. He hit for the stairway that led to the cubicles upstairs. 

Halfway  up,   Arlow's  voice   swung  him   around.   "What you doing up there?" There was panic in his harsh voice. "Checking!" flung back the marshal. He went ahead. 

At the top of the stairway he found himself in a narrow passage, lit by a solitary oil lamp bracketed on the wall. The air reeked of cheap scent and odors from the saloon below. 

Doors opened along one side, crudely numbered with red paint. From behind one he heard the mumble of a man's voice, a woman's giggle. He moved down the passage. A door opened and a girl's head bobbed out, her face expectant. At sight of the law badge she attempted to slam the door, but his boot blocked it. 

"Where's Myra?" he inquired curtly. 

"Number five!" she whispered, fear in her eyes. 

He found it and turned the knob1. The door was locked. He threw his weight against it. Wood splintered and the door flew open. 

"Myra!" he called urgently, standing on the threshold and staring into blackness. No sound came from the darkness. 

Wary of a trap, he walked down the passage and lifted the lamp off its bracket. Holding the lamp high, he again peered into the room -- and stiffened with shock. Spread-eagled on the mattress of a brass bed, was Myra. Strips of linen, tied around her ankles and wrists, tethered her securely to the bedposts. Another strip was bound tightly over her mouth. Framed in a disorder of black hair, her face was marred by a savage beating. 

For a horrified moment, the marshal stood numbed by the sight of the .girl's blackened, bloodied features. Only her eyes, still spirited, moved. Her silk dress was ripped and stained. 

With a bitter curse, he hastily set the lamp on the floor, yanked out his jackknife and ripped off the lashings. He attempted to raise the girl's shoulders, but she flinched. "Better leave me lay, Walt," she whispered huskily. "Feels like that brute broke me up inside." The beaten girl mouthed the words slowly, her puffed lips moving with painful effort "Arlow?" he gritted. 

Myra nodded. 

"Gordamn his rotten soul!" muttered Fiddlefoot and eased her battered body down. "Ill get the sawbones -- pronto." 

Women peered from behind partially opened doors as he hastened down the passage. He took the stairs three at a stride and made a beeline for the bar. 

"Hightail for the doc and take him to Myra," he barked at the shrinking Root. "Cross me and I'll tear you apart." A glass slipped through the apron's fingers and he shrank back fearfully. "I had no hand in that beating, I swear it!" he said. 

"Vamoose!" bit back the marshal as he charged for the poker table. 

But Arlow's seat was empty. 

Drinks and cards forgotten, men watched the marshal with speculation in their eyes. The story of the previous night's saloon fracas was all over town. They had seen Ace drop his cards and, without explanation, dash for his quarters. The girls on the dance floor pulled away from their partners and gathered in a tight, apprehensive knot. They knew what was wrong. 

Fiddlefoot slid across the bar top and threw open the door behind it, jumping to one side. Light from the saloon showed the room was empty. The desk drawers were yanked out, the contents spilled and scattered. The rear door creaked on gritty hinges as it moved gently in a draft. It was plain that Ace Arlow had beat a hurried retreat. 

Through the night rolled the notes of the bell on the engine that hauled the daily local to Monroe, the county seat, forty miles distant. The bell served notice that the clanking , old locomotive was about to pull out, hauling a Wells, Fargo Express car, mixed freight cars and a lone passenger coach. 

Realization flashed into the fuming marshal's mind that the train provided a made to order getaway for Arlow. No rider could reach the county seat in double the time the train would take. 

He wheeled and ran for the bat-wings. Outside, he loosed the reins of the nearest pony, swung into the saddle, whirled the pony and lifted it to a gallop -- heading for the railway depot. 

He knew that his hunch had come too late before he swung off Main Street. Plain on the night air, came the hiss of steam and the chug-chug-chug of the engine as it began to move. 

When he threw himself out of leather at the dismal little depot and raced onto the humming track, the train was no more than a mocking red eye, growing fainter as it receded into the distance. 

"Frosty1' Ferguson, ticket-agent and telegrapher, leaned against his office door, his green eyeshade uplifted. 

"Arlow pull out on the hooker?", yelled Fiddlefoot. 

"Yep!" 

"Any chance of stopping the train?" 

"Nope!" 

"Thanks for nothing," growled the marshal, with disgust, as he strode back to the saddlehorse. 

When he returned to the stinking cubicle at The Corral, Myra was propped up against a pillow. Broad bandages swathed her chest and Doc Kinkier was busily treating cuts on her face. The doctor looked up as Fiddlefoot entered. "Well, marshal," he said whimsically, "it's never dull when you're around." 

"You get Ace?" asked Myra, her voice stronger now. 

"Nope!" admitted Fiddlefoot ruefully. "The bustard hopped the night train." He turned to the doctor, "She hurt -- bad?" 

"Nothing time won't cure," Kinkier assured him cheerfully. Myra winced as he applied antiseptic to a torn cheek. "Three broken ribs, a few cuts and bruises. She'll be as spry as ever in a few weeks. In the meantime she must have rest and quiet." 

"Quiet!" echoed the girl, with a flash of her old spirit. "In The Corral, doc? You're crazy!" 

Fiddlefoot eyed the girl, sensed the pain and weariness that lay behind the mask of self-assurance that she wore, and determined that he'd get her away from the saloon. But where could he take her? The door of every home in town would be closed to a dancehall jade. Her father, old "Frosty" Ferguson, apparently reckoned her dead. The Jackson Hotel seemed to be the only solution. He could hire a room for her and perhaps persuade a Mexican woman from across creek to act as nurse. 

"Specs" Porter was snoozing behind the showcase that served as hotel desk, his steel glasses thrust up upon his thinning hair, when the marshal crossed the fading carpet of the lobby. 

Fiddlefoot's sharp tones brought him to his feet, "I want a room -- for a woman." 

"A woman, marshal?" The clerk adjusted his glasses and peered curiously through the thick lenses. 

"Yep, Myra from The Corral." 

Specs gulped. "How very unfortunate," he murmured, "we haven't a room available." 

"Hell, the joint is half empty," snapped Fiddlefoot. 

"Marshal," came back the clerk, distress plain in his manner, "you compel me to speak frankly. We do not accommodate that type of guest." 

"I'll pay double, triple rates." 

The clerk shook his head decisively. "We have the reputation of the hotel to consider. Ranchers' wives and other reputable women stay here. Why that girl would ruin us." 

Quick anger flared in Fiddlefoot's eyes. He restrained an urge to grab the narrow-shouldered clerk, and slam him • through the showcase. "Who owns this joint?" he rasped. 

"Mr. Brunner!" 

Brunner! Well, that killed all hope of getting Myra into Jackson's Hotel, considered Fiddlefoot somberly. 



XIII 


The Marshal stood for a moment, pondering a solution to the problem. For no reason, thought of the school ma'am's little bungalow drifted into his mind. He would need more gall than an elephant if he asked the prim Agatha Tomkins to take in one of her soiled sisters, he thought. He'd get a sure turndown, too. Chances were that she'd faint, then wire the sheriff. But he remembered Bill Tomkins, the cocky young rustler, and the school ma'am's near hysteria at sight of him outside The Corral. Her brother, he had figured. Just how close were they? 

He could try a bluff. It was a gamble. Odds were he'd never pull it off. Spurred by desperation, he swung away from the desk and headed for the quiet of the residential section. 

Light glowed softly through the cream shades of Miss Tomkins' neat bungalow. He lifted the latch of the gate and crunched up the walk. His rap brought the school ma'am to the front door. At sight of him she stiffened. "Well, marshal?" Her voice held cold hostility. 

Fiddlefoot removed his Stetson and stood fumbling with the brim as he "fished for words. "You -- know -- Myra, ma'am?" he finally blurted out. 

"Only by repute. Isn't she a notorious dancehall woman?" Miss Tomkins stared, frowning with perplexity. 

"She needs a room, bad." 

"Why come to me?" 

"I thought, maybe, you could put her up." 

"Stark amazement in her eyes, the woman gasped. "Are you insane?" she said. 

"Nope,"  returned  the  marshal,   with  dull  hopelessness. 

"She's been beaten up, bad. I've got to get her out of The Corral. The hotel won't take her, and I thought -- " 

"That I would!" she snapped. "Why, how monstrous! I have never been more insulted." She swung the door violently, slamming it shut. It rebounded; Fiddlefoot's right boot was planted on the threshold. 

"Go away!" panted Miss Tomkins, ineffectually fighting to close the door. "I'll scream -- I'll arouse the neighborhood." 

The marshal's voice hardened. "Quit arching your back, ma'am," he growled. "You made the point plain. Guess I was loco to bother you. Figured you'd understand since your own brother Bill ain't worth a barrel of shucks." 

It was a shot at a venture but he saw that it hit the mark. The school ma'am abruptly quit wrestling with the door and eyed him, startled, her breast heaving with her exertions. 

"What do you know about my brother?" she demanded. 

"Enough to set him in the pen at Yuma for ten years-juries ain't partial to brand-brothers." The marshal turned away. "Wai, I know just where to pick up the jasper and I'm hitting his trail right now," 

"Wait!" 

Me turned to face her again. 

"I have a spare room and I'll be happy to take your --  friend." The woman's voice was toneless, dull with weary resignation. 

"That's mighty nice of you, ma'am!" he commented ironically.

At the livery, he roused a grumbling hostler, hired a buggy and drove to The Corral. Abrupt silence draped the saloon when he entered and mounted the stairs. Myra was lying in bed, a twittering circle of rouged women around her. "Git!" he told them curtly. When the last had scurried out of the cubicle, he turned to the injured girl. "How you feeling?" 

"How would you feel after a big buffalo had used you for a punching bag?" came back Myra sprightily. 

"I'm moving you out of this joint." 

"To the livery, to bed down with the horses," her voice was caustic. "Where else could I go?" 

"Miss Tomkins -- the school ma'am's." 

"You're kidding me!" Myra stared, her blackened eyes sparking with amazement. "Why, that she-saint from Chicago wouldn't touch me with a prodding pole." 

"She's fixing a room right now." 

"What you got on her?" 

"You'd be surprised!" Fiddlefoot chuckled and picked up a shabby carpet bag and began tossing in bottles of scent, boxes of powder, other articles that cluttered a dressing table. 

The dresser cleared, he gathered an armful of dresses off hooks and headed for the door. "You're next!" he threw over a shoulder. 

Clothed in a wrap, the girl was sitting on the bed when he returned. She rose carefully. "All ready, boss! Give me your arm, like a gentleman." 

Surprise smothered the saloon when the two descended the stairway. Pop-eyed patrons watched them cross the floor. At the batwings Myra could not resist a final gesture. "Goodbye, boys!" she cried huskily. "Hist one to little Myra." 

Scarcely had the buggy rolled away when Micky Lopez kneed his grey to the rail, tailed -by his customary escort. The three men tied their ponies and entered the saloon. Lopez stepped up to the bar, hesitated momentarily, then unbuckled his gunbelt. "What's stirring, Root?" he asked the barkeep, sliding belt and bolstered gun across the mahogany. 

The man nervously smoothed back his greased hair. "Plenty!" he returned emphatically. He could feel the pressure of the marshal's hard fingers on his throat even now. Maybe Fiddlefoot wasn't through with him yet. His eyes strayed nervously in the direction of the batwings. 

"You act like you're hobbled," said Micky derisively. "Spill it!" Frowning, he heard of Myra's beating, Arlow's flight and the various doings of the marshal. 

A townsman's excited voice from the batwings cut into the barkeep's recital and the rumble of bar talk, "Get a load of this! The marshal done unloaded Myra at the school ma'am's."

"You're crazy as a coot!" accused an unbelieving patron. "Like hell I ami" protested the informant. Men jostled around him as he imparted the details. 

Miss Agatha Tomkins was in a dither. She sank onto a chair in the little living room and glanced helplessly at the clock ticking on the mantel. It was far past her usual time for retiring but she was too distracted even to consider sleep. What had started out to be another placid addition to a long succession of quiet evenings had been rudely transformed into horror. Were it not for the unfamiliar creaking of bed-springs in the next room she could easily have persuaded herself that it was all a nightmare. She shuddered when she considered the storm that would assuredly break on the morrow. 

Tinkling spur chains on the path outside diverted her attention. A tap on the door followed. Heavens, she thought, has that revolting marshal returned to plague her again? 

But plain in the lamplight when she opened the door was a tall, dark rider, with silver decorations sparkling about his person. He removed a Stetson of fine quality and bowed. Micky could be very impressive when the occasion demanded. 

"My name is Lopez, I run the Box H." He smiled down at her pleasantly. "I understand a girl named Myra from the dancehall is staying with you." 

"Yes!" she admitted, with plain distaste. Mr. Lopez, she registered, was a remarkably handsome man and quite gentlemanly. 

Micky played with his smudge of mustache. "I was not aware that you were -- er -- acquainted with Myra." 

"I certainly was not," Miss Tomkins assured him vigorously. "I had no choice, I just can't explain. From what she says, she and the marshal played together as children. He insisted that she leave the saloon and stay here." 

"Played together?" Micky's forehead corrugated, then suddenly cleared as understanding leapt into his mind. 

"Schoolmates," supplied the woman. 

"Thank you," he said courteously, and withdrew. 

Astride his pony, Micky jogged away. "What a bonehead I turned out to be," he told himself. "I should have read the lobe's brand at first sight-the swiveled gun was a clear giveaway. Well, Mister Walter Deacon, we won't have to take care of you after all; the sheriff can handle the chore much more effectively. It will be a pleasure to' watch you dangle at the end of a rope -- damn you!" He spat out the final two words with such concentrated venom that the pony crow-hopped nervously. 



XIV 


Fiddlefoot was slumped in the blanket-padded chair in the law shack, gazing thoughtfully at the' slicker draped over the window. His mind was on Myra. Outside, night wreathed the cowtown and the street was a canyon of darkness. At sun-up, he considered, he'd have to ferret around the Mexican adobes across the creek and try to dig up a woman to tend the girl. Or maybe Doc Kinkier could help. He'd hated putting pressure on the school ma'am, but what else could he have done, he thought. Myra had saved his life. He just couldn't have left her -- ribs broken, beaten up -- in that stinking cubicle at The Corral. 

Steps sounded outside and the door opened. A townsman stuck his head around the jamb. "Frosty, at the depot, craves a word -- pronto, marshal," he said. 

"What's itching Frosty?" 

"Maybe he wants to pin a medal on you for hauling his gal out of The Corral." 

The marshal saddled his buckskin at the livery and hit for the depot. Frosty Ferguson was hunched over a stuttering telegraph key. He pushed up his eyeshade and turned when Fiddlefoot jingled in. Frosty had the reputation around town of being an unfriendly cuss with a disposition guaranteed to sour milk. Deep lines of repression radiated from his tight mouth and his eyes held a lurking somberness. 

"What's on your mind?" inquired the marshal curtly. 

Without speaking, the station agent picked up a spike-file upon which yellow flimsies -- copies of telegrams -- were skewered, tossed it to his visitor and turned back to his key. With a puzzled glance, Fiddlefoot picked up the spike and eyed the topmost flimsy, tautening as he read: 


FARLEY, SHERIFF, MONROE. 

WALT DEACON WANTED FOR MURDER OF NELS HAUGEN ON OLD WARRANT IS BACK IN LONGHORN. KNOWN AS FIDDLEFOOT. HAS BEEN APPOINTED TOWN MARSHAL. DEADLY KILLER. BRING POSSE. WILL MEET TRAIN TOMORROW, THURSDAY. 

LOPEZ, BOX H. 


Fiddlefoot set the file down. "Frosty," he said fervently, "I'm sure thanking you!" 

The staccato tapping of the agent's busy finger never wavered. "You helped my gal," he growled. "Now beat it!" 

His brain busy, the marshal raised his pony to a canter as he headed back to the law shack. He had only one thought in mind -- flight. The alternative was a rope. He was through in Longhorn. The lone daily from Monroe reached town around noon, he reflected. That gave him plenty time to make a getaway. The swiveled gun had probably tipped Micky. The Box H boss would probably keep his discovery to himself -- and claim $500 bounty money. That's what the dodger said, he'd looked it up: $500-Dead or Alive." 

To his surprise, Pecos was slumped in the padded chair when he hastened into the law shack. Warily, he eyed the stock detective. "What's on your mind?" he inquired shortly. 

"A trip." drawled Pecos lazily. "Figured I'd drop in to say 'adios'. I'm hitting for Rattlesnake Valley. Them brand-blotchers are running wild again." He eyed Fiddlefoot imperturbably. "It's a lonesome ride." 

"You've got a sidekick -- as of now!" The marshal unpinned his badge and dropped it on the table. 

"That month slipped by mighty fast," commented Pecos, rolling a smoke. 

"I always was fiddle-footed." 

"Wai, one reason's as good as another." The detective rose and stretched lazily. "Hunky-dory to pull out at sun-up?" 

"Nothing would suit me better," replied Fiddlefoot emphatically. 

"You sure soured on Longhorn sudden," commented Pecos. "Wai, you're sidestepping boothill." Quizzical humor in his deep-set eyes, he rose and stepped toward the door. 

Now just what did the hombre1 mean by that, wondered Fiddlefoot, with quick unease, as the lanky Pecos stepped across the threshold. 

The sun licked the Valley with a fiery tongue when the pair, bedrolls lashed behind their cantles, headed toward the ragged Kiowa Peaks, beyond which lay Rattlesnake Valley. Fiddlefoot wriggled his shoulders to loosen the shirt that stuck to his sweaty ."back. "A sensible man would have pulled out after, sundown," he commented. "These flats are hotter than hell's half acre." 

"Could you have waited that long?" drawled Pecos. 

Fiddlefoot's head jerked around. "Why not?" His challenge was curt. 

"My guess is that you're dodging trouble," returned the detective amiably. 

"Bigger trouble than you'd ever guess," Fiddlefoot told him tightly. "I'm dodging a warrant -- for a murder I didn't commit." That's what brought me back to Kiowa Valley. I figured on corraling the guilty gent." He told of the storm, the shooting, his meeting with Melon Marks, and the ,44 slug! 

"So this Haugen gent was standing on his porch steps and you lined on his boots," Pecos said. 

"Yep, and I was so doggone close I couldn't miss." 

"Guess you never looked for the slug?" 

"Heck, I figured I'd bored him' and beat it like a bat out of hell." 

"You know," said Pecos thoughtfully, "I've got a notion to head for the Box H. It ain't but two whoops and a holler from here. Micky will be in town. You make camp at Splinter Spring. HI look them steps over, just to ease your mind. I admit I'm a mite curious myself." 

"Suits me!" said Fiddlefoot. 

Pecos wheeled northward. Fiddlefoot watched horse and rider until they were no more than a dot, dancing through currents of heated air, then he kneed the buckskin into motion. 

As he rode alone, a speck in an infinity of sun-blasted space, crawling toward the stark peaks of the rugged Kiowas, unease began to ferment in his mind. Was the waggish? faced Pecos playing a crooked game? Had the tall man been scared to brace him in town and tolled him away to await a more favorable opportunity? Was his real reason for riding to the Box H to get word to Micky and maybe make a deal? There was a price on his head. It was a sure thing that if a sheriff's posse had rounded him up Pecos could not have cut in on the blood money. Odds were the stock detective was tolling him into a trap. 

When Pecos rode into the Box H yard, it was mid-morning and the ranch was apparently deserted. He stepped down at the water trough, watered his skewbald pony and eyed the drowsing spread. Smoke drifted lazily from the stovepipe chimney of the cook shack. He sauntered over and swung the door open. Sack tied around his bulging belly, a fat man lumped on a box, peeling potatoes. 

"Micky around?" inquired Pecos. 

"Nope, he hit for town, with the gunnies." The cook pitched another potato into a bucket of water. "Something big brewing, I'd say." He indicated a sooted coffeepot. "Pour yourself a mug of dip." 

Pecos swallowed the coffee, wandered outside and unhurriedly surveyed the ranch house. It was a rambling, clapboard structure, unpainted and greyed with age. A wide porch, railed waist high, spanned the front, to which a wide flight of five steps, worn smooth with long usage, gave access. He moved up to the steps, bent and began examining the risers carefully, one by one. At the third, he paused, pulled out his jackknife and began digging in the wood.. He was extracting a shapeless chunk of lead when a startled exclamation brought his head up. A woman, still young, stood on the porch, attractive in white shirtwaist and dark skirt. She was slimly built and graceful, with yellow hair thick-plaited around her head. An ugly bruise marred the smooth skin of her forehead and a brooding unhappiness lurked in her blue eyes. A face made for laughter, registered Pecos, but she didn't look as if she got much practice. This must be Haugen's ward, the girl Micky Lopez had married. Talk around town was that Micky really coveted the big Haugen ranch and accepted marriage as a necessary adjunct to its possession. A wife certainly didn't cramp his style with the fancy women in The Corral. 

The woman's voice broke into his thoughts. "Who are you and what on earth are you doing?" she inquired, with a puzzled frown. 

He smiled and it transformed his long features. "Guess I was trying to clear an innocent man, ma'am." 

"What do you mean?" 

He dropped the chunk of lead into a vest pocket and sank down onto a step. "Rest your legs, ma'am," he invited. This is a long story." 

Her eyes questioning, she perched on the porch rail. He retold Fiddlefoot's account of the shooting, and concluded, "A .44 took Haugen, Deacon packed a .45. Now who beefed the gent?" 

"Walt Deacon!" she replied quickly. "I was the only witness. I saw him shoot." 



XV 

Pecos ignored the young woman's decisive answer. "Guess a good-looking gal like you had plenty beaus," he drawled. 

She sighed,, then smiled. "Well, they did come around." 

"And I hear your uncle treated 'em rough. Maybe one nursed a grudge, was skulking in the shadows and gave Haugen what he figured was due." 

"I'd say the idea is quite fantastic," she retorted. "Walt's guilty. He knew he killed uncle -- he ran away!" 

"Could be Deacon made the same mistake you did," insisted Pecos. "Thunder was rolling and drowned the sound of both shots. All that the men in the bunkhouse heard was your screams." 

"Why are you so determined to prove that Walt Deacon is innocent," she asked. "He disappeared, years back. The whole affair's as dead as -- as an old calendar." 

The detective shook his head. "Not for Deacon. Hell be . dodging a murder warrant for another man's killing as long as he lives." 

"You have no real proof he's not guilty," she threw back, with a touch of impatience. "I saw him shoot!" 

"Sure!" agreed Pecos. "A ,45! And here's the slug!" lie pulled out the piece of lead. "I dug that out of a riser, just about where your uncle was standing. Could be a Winchester took Haugen," he added thoughtfully. "Wai, ma'am," he uncoiled his long form, "it was sure nice meeting you. Guess I'll drift. Pass word to Micky that Pecos dropped by." 

At the name "Micky" the woman's hand mechanically rose .toward the bruise on her forehead. Then, guiltily, as she caught Pecos' intent gaze, she dropped her arm. That would be Micky's style, knocking a woman around, he thought, a doggoned nice woman, too. Lifting his stained Stetson, he turned to leave. 

"Wait!" The woman's voice quickened with excitement. "I've just thought of something!" She ran down the steps, yanked open a sagging door that opened onto a. storage place beneath the porch, then stooped and wriggled through the small aperture. Pecos could hear her moving boxes around. Presently she emerged, breathless, carrying a rusted Winchester. "I found this in the brush, a month after uncle was killed," she told him, brushing cobwebs from her hair. "I thought it was Walt Deacon's and he had cached it before coming to the house. He had trouble enough, so I hid it in the cellar. I'd entirely forgotten it until you mentioned a Winchester." 

Pecos took the rifle. The action grated harshly as he levered and a spent shell tinkled to the ground. ".441" he murmured, retrieving the empty case. "Ma'am I gamble this is the gun that killed Nels Haugen." 

"But who could have fired it?" 

"Your guess is as good as mine." He eyed the gun, thinking. "Reckon you won't need this?" 

"Of what use could it be to anyone -- now?" 

"Who knows?" He ran a hand over the corroded barrel. "Guess I'll freeze onto it." He looked up and grinned, "What say we share a secret, you and me? Just keep all this to ourselves, ma'am." 

"Certainly, Mr. Mystery Pecos," she smiled. "If Walt is really innocent I do hope you can help him. He was the only Deacon who amounted to a hill of beans. Poverty hurt him -- I could read it in his eyes." 

Not more than I can read misery and hopelessness in your eyes, he thought. Aloud, he said jocundly, "So long -- pard!" She held out a small hand and his big fist closed tightly upon it. The clasp lingered and there was a flush upon her cheeks when she turned quickly and hurried up the steps. 

Pecos moved thoughtfully back to his pony, tied by the trough, seeing only a pair of troubled blue eyes and an ugly bruise disfiguring a white forehead. How could any man mistreat a woman like that, he wondered, and lay "up with sluts in The Corral. 

As his pony jogged away across the flats, he turned and looked back at the grey bulk of the sprawling ranch house. He glimpsed a lone figure on the porch, her shirtwaist patched white, gazing after him, and raised a hand in farewell. When Hilda Lopez waved in return, he was tickled beyond good reason. 

His head nodding, Fiddlefoot's buckskin labored along the steep trail that angled up to the notch in the Kiowas that was Lobo Pass. Higher and higher the pony plugged, hooves slipping and striking sparks in the loose shale. Finally, the trail leveled off and battered cliffs closed in on either side. The rider pushed ahead through a gloomy corridor of rock in which the debris of the centuries, eroding from the heights above, lay thick. Dust fogged ahead and the bawling of steers made a low mournful rumble that filled the pass with whispering echoes. He pulled to one side, halted among heaped rock and jerked his bandana up over his nose and mouth. A rider drifted past, grey and ghostly in the murk. Behind him streamed the herd, horns clacking and coats heavy with grey-white dust stirred up in choking curtains by padding hoofs. 

When the last steer straggled past, Fiddlefoot raised a hand in greeting to two shadowy figures walking their ponies in the dusty fog of the drag. 

"Any trouble?" he shouted, remembering the rustling gang Pecos was stalking. 

"A skinful!" grumbled one, his voice muffled by the red bandana that flapped over his mouth. "Herd stampeded at Splinter Spring. Count showed more'n a hundred short when we gathered 'em in." 

"Apaches?" 

"Apaches, hell! Rustlers -- they bite a chunk off every herd that comes through." 

"What's your iron?" 

"Terrapin. The ol" man's ahead, mad enough to bite hisself," 

Fiddlefoot pulled off and rode through slow-settling dust. The confining cliffs began to drop away and a great plain stretched ahead and below, patched with white alkali and scabbed with salt brush, lapping to distant blue-shadowed mountains. Northward, it erupted into a chaos of hills, somber and sullen, heaped against the backdrop of the horizon -- the Barrens. 

Fiddlefoot stepped down, loosened cinches and rocked his saddle. Building a smoke, he eyed the sweep of Rattlesnake Valley below. Made to order for rustlers, he reflected. Footsore and thirsty after crossing the glaring flats, every herd was compelled to water at Splinter Spring and bed down overnight. Longhorns spooked easily -- a flapping slicker, a gunshot, even the howl of a coyote was liable to start a mad stampede. It would be a cinch for a few reckless riders, questing out on the darkened plain, to cut out a bunch and haze them into the heat-ridden, waterless Barrens. Once hidden in that maze of hills and canyons, they would be harder to find than ducks in the desert. But who would be loco enough to figure that cows could be held in the Barrens? Even rustlers could offer the critters no substitute for water. So trail crews rounding up their scattered herds always combed the plain to the south and west. His dust-coated features creased in a slow smile. 

He tightened the buckskin's cinches and dropped down onto the trail that curved up from the flats, a rock-girt track splattered with the droppings of passing herds. When it flattened out on the valley floor, he kneed the pony toward a spot where chaparral showed green against the grey expanse. Brushing through a screen of desert willow, he drew rein beside a rippling pool that, reflected the brilliant blue of the sky. Behind it rose a sheer rock wall, polished by the elements and split as though with a mighty axe. From the fissure gushed a sparkling stream that splashed musically into the poof below. Blackened remnants of old camp fires rimmed the pool and, around it, seepage from the spring gave sustenance to a tangle of brush, smothered with the delicate blossoms of the wild rose that cast over it a fragrant mantle of color, from snow-white to deep rose. Slender aspens thrust above this riot of blossom, pale leaves softly pattering. 

When Pecos rode in shadows were marching across the darkening plain and a mountain lion's sobbing scream reverberated among the crags above. Fiddlefoot set the coffee pot on the reddening ashes of the camp fire and watched as the tall man shucked his saddle and hobbled his mount. 

"Wai," drawled the stock detective, "I dug a slug out of them steps." 

"Mine?" 

Pecos shrugged. "Who's to say? Maybe you loosed it, maybe not." 

"Guess it doesn't help much," agreed the fugitive moodily. 

"You sure said a mouthful." Pecos' voice was non-commital. Offhand, he inquired. "You pack a Winchester?" 

"A Winchester!" Fiddlefoot laughed shortly. "Heck, it took every dime I could gather to buy ammunition for that old .45." Again suspicion flamed in his mind. Had Pecos crossed him? 

"Micky around?" he queried, watching the detective closely. 

"Micky's in town, with his 'gunnies." As an afterthought, Pecos added, "He sure don't deserve that nice wife." 

The coffee began to boil. Pecos filled a mug, then sifted sugar into it from a paper sack. His mind still churning with unease, Fiddlefoot watched, as edgy as a hunted animal. Had Pecos arranged with Micky to hold him at the spring? 

He'd try the tall man out, he decided. If Pecos refused to budge from Splinter Spring it meant he had left word for the posse to follow him. Then, when it rode in, he could claim credit for the capture. 

"Terrapin lost a hundred head last night," he offered. "I met up with the herd on the pass." 

"You don't say!" Quick interest gleamed in Pecos' deep-set eyes. 

"And I figure I could locate 'em -- right now."

"Yeah!"  With  quickened   attention,   the   stock   detective eyed him across the fire. "Where?" 

Fiddlefoot jerked his head in the direction of the darkening hills to the north. "Plumb in the Barrens!"

"What would they use for water?"

"There's water up there." 

"Quit hurrahin' me." Pecos' voice was derisive. "That country's drier'n jerked beef. As for grass, I doubt if there's enough to chink the cracks between the ribs of a sandfly." 

"There's a waterhole in there," asserted Fiddlefoot. "A "breed put me wise when I was trapping coyote and wolf." He indicated a distant butte that rose square above the darkening horizon. The rays of the setting sun glowed scarlet, high on its flank. "Black Butte!" he explained. "The water lays in a canyon four-miles west." 

"You ever lamp it?" Disbelief still lingered in Pecos' voice. "Hung out there for a spell when I beat it from Kiowa Valley." 

"We'll give it a once-over at sun-up," decided the stock detective. He swung around and eyed the notch that marked the pass. 

Again suspicion flooded Fiddlefoot. "Why not pull out right now?" he demanded. "It's cool riding at night." 

"The skewbald's gaunted," threw back Pecos. "Them cows will keep." 

"Just what are you hatching up?"  Fiddlefoot's voice was as brittle as thin glass. 

Pecos stared, the coffee mug sagging in his hand. Covering him was the black muzzle of a .45; behind it, Fiddlefoot's eyes slitted in bitter challenge. 



XVI 


With slow deliberation, Pecos set the mug down and fished the makin's out of a vest pocket, while Fiddlefoot watched cat-eyed. 

"Just why would I hatch up anything?" inquired the detective mildly. 

"There's a five hundred dollar bounty for my capture." 

"So you figure I'd sell you out for five hundred smackers!" Geniality had left the rangy Pecos' voice, his tone became brittle. "For gosh sakes use what little brains Gawd gave you. If I craved to grab that dinero would I have let you ride this far?" 

"Maybe," said Fiddlefoot, less sure now. 

Pecos regarded him with weary patience. "I could have got the drop on you a dozen times," he pointed out. 

That made sense, thought the fugitive. He was acting as panicky as a rabbit in a wolfs mouth. Fear of a noose could sure play heck with a man's nerves. Years of sojourning among border riffraff had soured him. He had rubbed shoulders with treachery too long. His hand dropped away from the gun butt. 

"Guess I tangled my spurs," he admitted wryly. "I'm sure asking your pardon." 

Pecos shrugged. "You're just techy, techy as a teased snake. Guess any man on the dodge for eight years would feel likewise." He yawned. "Let's spread our soogans and make an early start." 

The fire guttered to ashes. Below the spring, the ponies cropped steadily at the coarse grass. The moon rode high, silvering the ridges, but still the fugitive lay awake, stating into the shadows. 

He glimpsed a grey old wolf slink up to the edge of the pool, lap water and then noiselessly fade away. When a man had a price on his head, he reflected somberly, he became a lobo, every man's hand against him. With a noose dangling over him he was loco to trust anyone, least of all a lawman. Could be Pecos was jigger-rooing him. He reached out and his groping fingers found his gunbelt and closed on the smooth butt of the .45. He eyed the shadowy form of the detective, bulging beneath his tarp, near by. There was one sure out and it wouldn't take but one shot. No one. would hear the report at that lonely waterhole. 

With a revulsion of feeling he loosed his grip on the gun butt. Not that. He'd never yet killed a man who wasn't staring straight down his gun barrel. 

In the chill of dawn, the two saddled up and hit northward, skirting the rugged ramparts of the Kiowas. The sky lightened as they rode and shadows fled from the draws. As they wound through the arid hills the sun crept slowly above the peaks and blasted them with fire. 

Before noon, their mounts, muzzles dust-caked and coats plastered with dry sweat, plodded through the talus that lay, hock-deep, around the flanks of Black Butte. Dismounting in the shade of the eroding pile, the riders spilled water from canteens into the crowns of their Stetsons and gave the ponies a short drink. 

"I'd say it hadn't rained here since Noah," commented Pecos, squinting at the vista of sun-blasted hills and bare rock pinnacles, contorted through currents of heated air. His glance swerved to Fiddlefoot and the fugitive read doubt in his eyes. 

"Quit stewing!" advised the ex-marshal shortly, and set a foot in the stirrup. He led the way westward, dropping down into a maze of canyons'. Stinging sun rays, deflected from the bare rock walls, lanced like white-hot needles. 

Finally, below the hogback of a barren ridge, Fiddlefoot checked his pony and stepped down. "You got a spyglass?" he inquired, ground hitching the buckskin. Pecos nodded. 

Afoot, they clambered up the crumbling slope, then belBed down and wormed between scattered rock when they reached the skyline. 

A shallow valley, grey and cheerless, was outspread below, jagged boulders protruding like broken teeth from the sandy soil. At the far end, a patch of green stood out in verdant contrast. Beside it -- an irregular shadow against the grey earth -- a herd bulked. Antlike, a rider circled the cows. 

"Jumpin" grasshoppers!" said Pecos. "We sure hit the jackpot." He leveled a small brassbound telescope. "Two corrals and a branding chute," he reported. "Some jaspers heating irons. We sure caught 'em with their pants down." 

"Now they've got to be thrown and hogtied," reminded Fiddlefoot dryly. 

Pecos continued to study the rustlers' camp. "Five gents in sight," he reported, and glanced dubiously at his companion. "I sure don't crave to blister my buttocks riding back to Longhorn for more gunhands." 

"We could rush em -- after sundown." 

"That's my idea," agreed the detective. "In the dark they'll figure it's a posse." He closed the telescope and they eased back from the skyline. 

Peering through interlaced branches of squat chaparral, Fiddlefoot eyed four men hunkered around a camp fire. Light from the flames flickered upon dark, sun-scorched faces and hard eyes, alert with the unceasing vigilance of the renegade. Out on the valley floor the night guard lay gagged and trussed. 

Fiddlefoot crept closer, waiting for Pecos' challenge from the far side of the camp. At last it came, deep-voiced and distinct from the darkness, "Hist 'em, boys, you're surrounded." 

Around the fire talk chopped off. No one moved a muscle. Only the eyes of the rustlers swiveled, searching the night. Fiddlefoot straightened, outside of the circle of light. "You heard it!" he barked. "Reach!" 

With a flurry of motion, the rustlers exploded into action. Lead whined and whistled as they stabbed for their guns and triggered. The ex-marshal's gun bucked and spouted fire. Another joined in the mingling roar as Pecos went into action from the gloom beyond. Silhouetted by the fire, the rustlers made plain targets, while their assailants were cloaked by the night. Lead smashed one rustler backwards and sparks showered, glinting like gold dust, as he crashed across the fire. Droning lead pounded down another. The two survivors dropped their guns and their arms reached high. Blood dripped from the bare arm of one, laid open from wrist to elbow by a gouging bullet. 

Pecos stepped into the firelight, his smoking gun leveled. "Grab their hardware," he told Fiddlefoot. The rider collected the guns, then ran his hands over the prisoners for hideaways. Pecos hauled the scorched body of the dead man out of the scattered fire, raked the smoldering ashes together and added dry brush from a nearby pile. 

Fiddlefoot stood watching the captured "rustlers as the unwounded man wrapped his bandana around the other's lacerated forearm, and repressed an exclamation of surprise as he saw that the wounded man was the rider with the soft mouth he had last seen in Brunner's store. Then he gave Pecos a hand, lashing the pair to the trunks of two jack pines. "I'll bring in the jasper we left out on the flat," said the detective. 

When  Pecos  jingled  away,  Fiddlefoot  stepped  close to the wounded prisoner. "What's your moniker, feller?" he demanded. ,    "What's it to you?" growled the other. 

Fiddlefoot knotted a fist. "Want I should beat it out of you?" 

Tomkins -- Bill Tomkins," came back the other sullenly. 

"Brother to the school ma'am in Longhorn?" 

The wounded man locked his lips, but admission was plain in his eyes. 

Arms securely lashed behind him, the remaining rustler trudged heavily into camp, Pecos tailing him. He, too, was roped to a tree trunk. 

The   two  victors   hunkered   beside   the   fire.   The   stock detective was in high humor. "Never figured on a. break like this," he told Fiddlefoot, with satisfaction. "We rounded up the whole gang, bar one, and we've got the evidence complete. Cleanest job I ever handled. Them gents will sweat it out in Yuma so long they'll trip over their beards." 

"Who'd we miss?" inquired Fiddlefoot, puzzled. 

"Sure wish I could answer that one. The jasper I brought in let fall they took orders, but he buttoned up when I prodded him for more." Pecos raised his voice so that it carried to the three silent prisoners. "Maybe someone will sing when we get 'em in the bird cage. Yuma ain't no hotel. I'd sure spill my guts to keep out of that hell house." 

Fiddlefoot said nothing. He was thinking of Agatha Tom-kins, the prim school ma'am. The tongue of every woman in Longhorn would be blistering her reputation for shacking up with a dancehall hussy. He had blasted her good name to get Myra out of a bawdy house. This price she had paid to ensure her brother's freedom. Now. because of him, the sacrifice was in vain. When word got around that her brother was a rustler, she would be through in Longhorn. It looked like a doublecross on his part -- it was a doublecross. 

And there was nothing he could do about it, he thought gloomily, except -- the idea leapt into his mind -- engineer Tomkins' escape. That was a loco notion, he told himself. If he loosed the school ma'am's brother, Pecos would turn sour, label him a doublecrosser and turn him over to the sheriff. Unless he split the breeze, too! 

Pecos' voice broke into his uneasy thoughts. "Guess we've got to set a night guard. Toss you for first sleep!" He pulled out a silver dollar and spun it. 

"Tails'" called Fiddlefoot. without interest. 

"Heads!" chuckled the detective. He rose and moved out into the darkness, returning with their spooled bed rolls. When he pulled off his boots and slid beneath his tarp, Fiddlefoot was smoking and moodily staring into the fire. 

After a while, the fugitive rose arid walked toward the three prisoners, dimly visible in the firelight, tied . upright against the pines. Two sagged against their lashings, fast asleep. The third, Tomkins, stood tense, his face haggard and twisted with pain. 

Fiddlefoot stepped close, making a pretense of inspecting the rawhide lashings that secured the wounded man. With a quick glance back at the vague bulk of Pecos' outstretched form, he pitched his voice low, "I'm gonna cut your rope. Beat it for the border." 

Hope dawned in the young rustler's eyes, then faded as fast as it had appeared. Futility leaded his husky whisper. "Think I'd swallow that windy? I know you, you're the trigger-happy marshal from Longhorn. You plug me as I beat it and carve another notch in your gun butt." 

Fiddlefoot smiled bleakly, "Mister, I wouldn't waste a slug on a young rooster like you; I'd just wring his neck and. save lead. I'm doing this for your sister -- to hell with you!" He whipped out his jackknife, bent and quickly severed the rope. Uncertainly, as the lashings dropped away, the prisoner stood rubbing his galled wrists. 

"Grab your gun!" growled Fiddlefoot, thrusting the weapon at the amazed prisoner, "and dog me." He picked up several lengths of the severed rope and began to ease silently through the brush. They'd have to ride bareback, he reflected, and fashion rope reins. The saddles and bridles were heaped near the fire. He just couldn't take a chance of waking Pecos. 

The ponies, hobbled, were scattered over a patch of rocky ground beyond; lumpy shadows that stood dozing or cropped at patches of stringy grass. 

• Fiddlefoot paused in the fretted shadow, turned to Tom-kins and handed him a length of rope. "Fix yourself a bridle," he told the youth, low-voiced, "cut out your bronc and ease away -- quiet-like." 

The rustler, still doubting his good fortune, moved reluctantly out into the faint moonlight. Fiddlefoot watched him fashion a macarty, slip it on, then bend and unbuckle the horse's hobbles. Then, in a flash, he straddled the pony, drummed, its flanks with a wild yell and tornadoed into the night. 

"You dogblasted jackass!" Fiddlefoot muttered as he hit for his own mount. While running, he heard the stock detective's shout of alarm through the screen of brush. Unheeding, ho panted up to the buckskin, bent and loosed the hobble, grabbed its mane and swung across its buck. 

Brush crashed behind him as he heeled the bridleless pony into motion. A gun blared. The pony quivered then went down in a smother of dust- Its rider Hew through the air and catapulted over its head. He hit the ground with a jarring shock, his head smashing into a projecting outcrop of rock, Stunned, Fiddlefoot lay spraddled out, his limbs slack. 



XVII 


Fiddlefoot's eyes blinked open. His head splitting with pain, he tried to collect his thoughts. Slowly, recollection flowed back -- the yelling rustler, the shot, the collapse of his pony, the swift heave through the air. He tried to move, and became aware of tightly bound rawhide rope that bit into his ankles and wrists. He saw that he was lying near the camp fire, which burned high. Pecos stood beyond it. The stock detective looked down. "You two-timing Siwash," he said evenly, "I should have plugged you, not the cayouse." 

A melancholy procession wound through the heatridden canyons, heading back to Lobo Pass. First rode Pecos, saddle-horn festooned with gunbelts. Behind him on the lead, trailed a string of ponies, each with a prisoner slumped in the saddle, his wrists lashed to the horn. Left behind, the herd of rustled steers ranged the barren valley. Pecos knew that they would not stray far from water. 

A halo of floating dust hung over the cavalcade, glinting in the glaring sunlight. Itching and smarting, it reddened the prisoners' irritated eyes, prickled their ears and noses, and sifted inside their shirts -- a form of exquisite torture from which there was no respite. The prisoners endured it stoically, well knowing that it would continue for endless hours. For Fiddlefoot, this was the end. At Longhom, a sheriff's posse awaited him. The charge of murder, added to the part he had played in siding the rustler, meant the rope -- or "life" in Yuma. The luck of the Deacons, he considered wryly. It never changed. 

He quickened to startled attention as the boom of a .45 shattered the brooding silence of the Barrens. Ahead, a faint cloud- of powdersmoke drifted over tumbled boulders. 

Pecos' skewbald crashed down. The three lead ponies, their riders helpless, bunched and milled. Fiddlefoot saw that the detective was striving desperately to wrench his right leg free of the fallen pony's barrel. Again the hidden gun threw lead. Pecos yanked at the stock of his Winchester, projecting from the saddle boot. A third shot zipped through the air. The detective fell sideways, blood coursing red down his forehead, and lay unmoving beside his fallen mount. 

The two rustlers yelled joyful greeting as Bill Tomkins rose out of the nest of rock, his .45 leveled, and began to ease cautiously towards them. He looked over the detective's limp form, prodded it with a boot toe, then, reassured, bolstered his gun and began cutting the prisoners loose. 

"I figured you were hellbent for the Border," drawled Fiddlefoot. He eyed the bandana wrapped around Tomkins' right forearm. It was blood-soaked and filthy with dirt. "Watch that wound don't get infected." 

"It bums like a branding iron," confessed the youth, and Fiddlefoot could see the pain in his eyes. "Seems my arm's afire, right to the shoulder." 

The two released rustlers were happily buckling on their gunbelts. Tomkins led his pony out from where it had been concealed in an arroyo. "Well, do we ride back for the beef?" he inquired. 

"Beat it, pard!" advised Fiddlefoot curtly. "There's a sheriff's posse on my trail, packing a murder warrant. It ain't healthy to linger in these parts." 

"Who might that jasper be?" Tomkins indicated Pecos' limp form. 

"A stock detective!" 

"Guess we best light a shuck," decided a wiry rider, "or they're liable to pin a murder charge on us, too." 

"You ain't leaving him?" Fiddlefoot nodded at the detective's slack form. 

"We sure ain't packing the hombre," threw back the wiry rustler, "and we've got no time to plant him." 

The three rustlers bunched and began to jog away. 

Fiddlefoot watched  their  trailing  dust  plumes,   streaming southward, until they faded into the haze of distance. Then he gave attention to the man lying prone across the trait. He had thought Pecos dead, but the detective's pulse was strong. 

He eased the fallen man's leg from beneath the dead pony's barrel. Cutting away matted hair, he found that the bullet had gouged a furrow in the tail man's skull. Beyond the beating of his heart, he gave no sign of consciousness. 

Fiddlefoot bound up the wound as best he could and led the pony he had straddled beside the inert form. Sweating in the sun glare, he tried to hoist Pecos into the saddle. But the detective was big-boned and his slack form seemed as heavy and hard to handle as quicksilver. 

After three unsuccessful attempts, Fiddlefoot paused to regain his breath, propping the limp form against the dead skewbald. His own head began to pulse with quivering spasms of pain. One hand fingered a bulging lump over his left ear, memento of contact with hard rock, and the other smeared sweaty grime off his face. Common sense told him to follow the fleeing rustlers south and leave Pecos for the buzzards, but he just couldn't bring himself to leave the detective to die. 

As Fiddlefoot stood thinking, Pecos' eyes blinked open and the wounded man stared stupidly around. With vast relief, Fiddlefoot lifted the detective's canteen off the saddle and trickled water into his slack mouth. Pecos spluttered and choked. Comprehension began to flow into his vacant eyes. "Gawd!" he groaned, "My head! What conked me?" . "Gent parted your hair with a slug," growled Fiddlefoot. "A shade lower and you'd be shaking hands with St. Peter." 

"The prisoners?" Pecos said as he struggled to rise. 

"Relax!" grunted Fiddlefoot, "they skeedaddled." 

The detective levered slowly to his feet and stood swaying on rubbery legs. He eyed- his dead mount and the pony standing ground-hitched close by. Then his glance lit on Fiddlefoot. 

"How come," he demanded, "you didn't leave me for buzzard bait?" 

The fugitive's features creased. "Maybe," he said, "I been chewing loco weed. I never did anything yet that made good sense. Wai, let's get out of here!" 

Unsteadily, Pecos set a foot in the stirrup and the other hoisted him into leather. "Grab the horn!" advised Fiddle-foot. He reached for the reins and began to lead the pony toward distant Splinter Spring. 

The sun was slanting westward when a trail-weary pony, led by a dusty figure hobbling painfully on blistered feet, neared the spring. Pecos drooped across the pony's withers, and the knuckles of his hands, frozen onto the horn, showed white. Added to the pain of his injured head was dejection at loss of his prisoners. "I just can't figure you," he told the plodding Fiddlefoot. "You coulda hightailed with the brand-blotchers. Right now you're likely heading for a noose." 

"I got no use for the jaspers," retorted Fiddlefoot, "and I sure don't qualify for that noose." 

"Then how come you loosed the sidewinder who blasted me?" 

"You wouldn't understand, amigo," said Fiddlefoot wearily. "There's a woman tied up in it. Now button up and freeze onto that horn. You slide out of leather and the coyotes will have a high old time cleaning our bones. I'm as weak as a newborn calf and my dogs are yelling blue murder. Yep," he murmured, stumbling over the rough, sun-baked terrain, "I never felt more like the frazzled end of a misspent night." 

Splinter Spring, with cool water cascading into the rock-bound pool and birds twittering in the greenery, seemed like a glimpse of Paradise to the' footsore, sun-blasted Fiddlefoot. He eased Pecos out of the saddle, settled him in the shade, then filled the canteen and placed it beside him. As he hobbled toward the sweated, leg-weary pony to strip off its gear, a flash of sunlight upon metal caught his eye. A cold chill chased down his spine as he focused on a string of riders -- six, seven, eight -- jogging down the trail from the pass. A posse! With sinking heart, he eyed the gaunted pony. Then his gaze went back over the barren expanse they had traversed that day. He was trapped. There was just no out.



XVIII 


No flock of geese ever created such a cackle as the ladies of the Sewing Circle when they gathered at Mrs. Brown's for their latest meeting. For once, they really had something to cackle about -- the marshal had fled, rumor said he was dodging a murder warrant; a grim posse of deputy sheriffs had arrived from the county seat; and -- prime morsel -- the prim and proper Miss Agatha Tomkins, formerly considered a model of rectitude, was living with a dissolute woman from The Corral, and men had been seen visiting the house. Nothing quite so shocking had occurred since the Sewing Circle had been formed. 

By the mellow light of Mrs. Brown's new table lamp, with hand-painted glass reservoir and ruffled silk shade, they proceeded to rip the delinquent school ma'am's reputation to shreds. 

"I always did say that still waters run deep," puffed stout Mrs. Colly. 

"The school ma'am -- living in sin!" chirped Mrs. Masters, with gusto. "Think of our children -- and their morals." 

Only greying Mrs. Makepeace, shrewd wife of a retired rancher, said nothing. The school ma'am's conduct perplexed her, but she was convinced that much smoke was rising from very little fire. True, men had visited Miss Tomkins' neat bungalow. Their purpose, Mrs. Makepeace suspected, was merely to say "Hello" to Myra and wish her speedy recovery. She knew that the girl, now up and around, had steadily refused to return to her cubicle at The Corral. 

She smiled slightly as Mrs. Myrtle Olsen announced determinedly, "I am withdrawing Alice and Angie from school." 

"That will be very helpful, Myrtle," she said sarcastically, "for the children." 

"But she practically runs a brothel," wailed Mrs. Olsen. 

"Nonsense!" snapped Mrs. Makepeace. 

The unexpected entrance of the school teacher herself, prim and well-groomed as ever, brought a sudden and stupified silence. Mrs. Brown was the first to regain her voice. "I was not aware, Miss Tomkins, that I invited you to my home!" she challenged. 

"I do not intend to stay," retorted the teacher coolly. Her glance ranged scornfully over the room. "In comparison with 'good women' may I say that I find Miss Ferguson congenial company." 

"A harlot!" interjected someone, with stinging contempt. 

"A former harlot!" corrected Miss Tomkins coldly. "You ladies, I presume, read your bibles. 'To those that are afflicted, pity should be shown' -- the Book of Job. 'She that despiseth her neighbor, sinneth' -- Proverbs. 'As we forgive, so shall we be forgiven'. There are other references you might study with profit." 

Her amused glance ran over the indignant women. "To relieve your feelings, however, I called to inform you that my resignation will be submitted immediately." 

Blank silence, which held an element of consternation, greeted the bombshell. Teachers of any type were as scarce as proverbial hen's teeth in the pioneer Arizona Territory. The assembled mothers thought of old Mrs. Tighmann, her predecessor, almost stone deaf and subject to fits; the flighty Miss Haycroft, before her, who had never progressed beyond the sixth grade herself and had an annoying habit of 'dismissing class to entertain passing punchers. Where would they find another teacher -- of any caliber? 

Mrs. Makepeace filled the gap. "Why resign?" 

The school ma'am's eyebrows raised. "An associate of harlots!" 

"Nonsense!" replied Mrs. Makepeace, crisply. "Speaking as a school trustee, I suggest you remain at least until the end of the term -- which is customary. The welfare of the children must come first. Don't you agree, Miss Tomkins?" 

"Naturally!" The school teacher's brittle smile embraced the company, "It's been so nice seeing you all," she said, and left, When Miss Tomkins picked her way through the darkness back to her bungalow, the taut veneer of composure she had presented to the ladies of the Sewing Circle; melted and tears trickled unashamedly down her cheek;-. Pride prevented her admitting her bitter disapproval of the spirited Myra, whose advent had transformed the quiet, orderly routine of her life into a seething chaos of perturbation. 

The night train for Monroe tolled its melancholy warning of departure and Miss Tomkins wished with all her heart that she were aboard, leaving the quagmire of trouble behind. 

Approaching the bungalow, she glimpsed Myra through the unshaded windows, relaxed in a comfortable chair and clad in a sheer wrapper that left little to the imagination. Miss Tomkins hurried up the walk, banged the door open and jerked down the shades. 

"In Chicago you would be arrested for indecent exposure," she snapped. 

"Who's to know a girl has a figure if she doesn't give the world a chance to see it?" murmured Myra lazily. 

Miss Tomkins removed her bonnet and stabbed a. hat pin viciously through it, "I think you are well enough to leave!" 

Myra eyed her with amusement. "You know, dearie, I just had the same idea." 

"I suppose you'll return to that sink of iniquity?" 

"Well, not exactly," mused Myra. "Dad dropped in. You know, Frosty, the depot agent. We hadn't spoken for years. Dad's getting kind of old. I think I'll just keep house for him awhile." 

"You amaze me!" 

"Well," returned Myra good-humoredly, "here's another shock -- a young man called to see you." 

"How foolish can you get?" 

Knuckled tapped on the front door. "I bet he's back," chuckled Myra. "Don't worry, dearie, little Myra never tattles." 

Again the door was rapped, more urgently. The teacher hastened to answer the knock. A man in rider's garb, his right arm in a rude sling, was leaning against the door. He stumbled and almost fell when it opened. He stood swaying on the threshold. "Sis!" His voice was almost inaudible. 

"Bill!" Miss Tomkins' arms enveloped him. 

Weaving as she supported his weight, the teacher brought him into the living room. He dropped onto a chair, as heavily as a sack of wet sand. -In the lamplight his condition was plain. He was trailworn and dirty, his eyes deep sunk in haggard features and unnaturally bright. His unshaven beard stubbled his chin and creases of pain crisscrossed, his forehead. The teacher dropped on her knees and touched the bandaged forearm. He flinched. 

Myra stepped out of the room and returned with a bottle of bourbon; "This is what you need, bud," she said, removing the cork. 

He grabbed die bottle and drank avidly. The raw liquor brought color to his drawn features. "You got to fix this arm, sis," he told the teacher huskily. 

Myra retrieved the bottle. "You've had enough rotgut," she commented. "Let me look at the arm!" 

Gingerly, he slid off the strip of torn shirt that served as a sling. His sister brought a pair of scissors and cut away the bandage, stiff with dirt and dry blood. She paled at the sight of an inflamed mass of swollen flesh, with purple-blotched veins radiating above it. 

"Jimmy!" murmured Myra. "What a mess! We can't doc tor that, mister -- it's infected. You go get Doc Kinkier, dearie, at a canter."

"No!" shouted the wounded man and fear showed stark in his eyes. "He'll lead that range detective here. I shot him, left him for dead, but he's in town. I saw him on Main Street." 

"So you're one of the gents who's been milking the trail herds!" Myra glanced at the teacher's face, deadly pale. "Well, dearie, you should throw stones!" 

Miss Tomkins ignored the shaft. "Listen, Bill," she pleaded. "We must get medical attention for that awful wound, or you'll lose your arm." 

"You fix it!" he insisted stubbornly. 

The teacher sighed and eyed Myra. "Go ahead and fix It," advised the latter, with a shrug. "He'll feel happy then." 

When the arm was rinsed off and bound with clean linen, the injured rider slumped in his chair. Outside the room, Miss Tomkins whirled to face Myra. "What shall I do?" she begged. "That arm is horrible." 

"Get the sawbones, dearie. That boy's burning up with fever. Doc Rinkler's a good sport. He'll button up." 

The school teacher didn't know that when she hurried down the walk her brother watched furtively from behind a shade, consumed by the corroding suspicion that eats into a hunted man. 

His teeth gritted against the throbbing agony of the infected arm, he crept stealthily out behind her. Hauling onto his pony, he kneed it into motion. 

Al Brunner's wife awoke in the bedroom over the store and prodded her husband into wakefulness. "Go down and chase that drunk away before he wakes the whole town," she told him sleepily. "The fool's been pounding on the front door for ten minutes." 

The storekeeper yanked on his pants, tucked his nightshirt inside them, and picked up a shotgun that was propped in a corner. Whistling beneath his breath, he descended the stairs. Rats scurried as he padded the length of the gloomy store and slammed back the bolt on the front door. 

A rider, his right arm bandaged, teetered outside. 

"Git!" ordered Brunner irately, "before I fill you with buckshot." 

"It's Bill, Mr. Brunner. Remember -- I work for you." The visitor's voice rose high and shrill. "I killed a range dick, but he's here. He'll get me and hang me. You're the boss. You got to ease me out of this tight." 

Brunner cursed, softly, savagely. He stepped past the wavering form and glanced quickly up and down the shadowed stretch of Main Street. "Bottle up, you knothead!" he ordered urgently. 

"You've got to help me -- you've got to!" shouted Tom-kins, raving as delirium took hold. 

"I'll help void" growled the storekeeper. He raised the shotgun, cocked both hammers. . . . The wounded rider shrieked as bud-shot tore through his body. He went down, a. squirming, bloodied heap. 

Whistling softly, Brunner stepped inside, cradling the smoking shotgun. The door banged and the bolt shot into place, At sound of the deep, double roar, men spouted from the two saloons. When a greener gave voice it usually meant a killing, A puncher who had been jogging down street in the darkness pulled toward the store. Dismounting, he ducked under the hitchrail and bent over the fallen man. Men began to gather around, staring. 

"Dead drunk!" said one. 

"He may be drunk but he sure ain't dead," replied the puncher. 



XIX 


Longhorn was a ghost town the day the trial of Walt Deacon, alias Fiddlefoot, on a charge of murder, opened in the old brick courthouse" at the county seat. It seemed that the entire population had migrated to Monroe. 

There was not a vacant seat in the high-ceilinged courtroom when snowy-haired Judge Ridgeway rapped his gavel and silenced the buzz of talk. Men crowded in back, lined the side walls and even hunkered in the aisles. Myra, wearing a sleek satin dress that did full justice to her curves, and a beflowered straw hat set at a perky angle atop her raven hair, drew male eyes. Beside her, Frosty Ferguson, her father, sat dour and silent. In the front row, Micky Lopez, Box H' boss, resplendent as always, was attended by a wedge of gunhands -- with empty holsters. On the bench reserved for witnesses, his wife Hilda nervously twisted a tiny handkerchief. At the end of the bench, Pecos Pete stretched his long legs. 

All eyes focused on the prisoner when he clanked into the courtroom through a side doorway -- steel handcuffs upon his wrists and shackles on his ankles. Stories of his exploits in Longhorn, which had lost nothing in the telling, had circulated around the county seat and Sheriff Farley was taking no chances. But there was no hostility in the array of eyes that followed the prisoner's labored progress, if Micky Lopez' gloating gaze be excepted. Men admired the iron nerve and steady hand that had avenged the veteran marshal's killing and cowed the Box gunnies who had threatened to take over Longhorn. 

Oldtimers remembered the barefooted nester boy who scorned charity. Even if he had shot Haugen, they argued --  and that fact was undisputed -- the brutal cowman had asked for it. Haugen had ridden roughshod over everyone and finally got what he asked for. 

But murder was murder, and the solemn atmosphere of the court reminded them that he who killed without legal justification must be prepared to pay the penalty. 

Fiddlefoot's demeanor reflected the hopelessness that possessed him, but his grey eyes still were defiant. He sat straight-backed, flanked on each side by an armed deputy. It was sticky hot in the stuffy courtroom, packed tighter than any shipping pen, but Fiddlefoot was cold, cold right through, chilled by the thought that he was already condemned and as good as hanged True, folks had been mighty kind. Myra had moved into a Monroe hotel and had visited his cell daily, never lacking a quip and a cheerful smile. He had been amazed, too, at the number of ranchers and townsmen who had made the long trip from Kiowa Valley to wish him well during those weary days of waiting in the steel-barred county jail. Good wishes warmed a fellow, but they couldn't obliterate grim reality -- and he knew that in the minds of the men and women massed on the benches behind him he was a doomed man. 

Stonily, he eyed the bench as the proceedings droned on, and read no mercy in Judge Ridgeway's appraising eyes-eyes that were a little world-weary from long gazing at murderers, rustlers, renegades of every hue. 

The prisoner's glance shifted to the jury, twelve stolid citizens whose blank regard reflected studied disinterest. They, too, he thought, could be depended upon to render the anticipated verdict. What else could he expect -- with his flaming reputation as a cold-blooded gunman and killer? 

Mark Stone, the county prosecutor, was on his feet now, a thin, nervously-alert man, with a high-pitched, penetrating voice. He smiled with sympathetic understanding and dabbed his own damp forehead with a wilted handkerchief when a juryman removed his coat, folded it carefully and laid it over the back of his chair. 

Then  he  addressed  the  twelve   perspiring  jurors.   They would not, he promised, swelter in discomfort long. Proof of the prisoner's guilt was as plain as the proverbial ears on a mule. That guilt could be very quickly proven and he was confident that they would as -quickly return the only possible verdict. The trial itself was largely a matter of form; for had not Walter Deacon, the accused, admitted firing a shot and further proved his guilt by fleeing from the scene of the crime. Had he not, too, remained a fugitive, beyond reach of United States law, for many years, until he mistakenly believed that the crime was forgotten and returned under an assumed name? But the law had a long memory and the accounting was finally due. He would lay before them the findings of the coroner's jury, which were conclusive, and present the sole witness to the killing, who was fortunately still available. The facts were undeniable; he would only ask their indulgence while he presented those facts. 

As he droned to the end of his presentation, feet were shuffling in the crowded courtroom, men were stripping off coats to pad. hard benches, and an epidemic of yawns swept the room. Sensing a growing restlessness, the prosecuter hastily placed his only witness, Mrs. Hilda Lopez, on the stand. 

Duly sworn, the young woman told how she had heard her uncle's angry tones, hastened to the door, glimpsed Walt Deacon's crouched form, seen the flash of his swiveled gun and her uncle's collapse on the porch steps. 

Mr, Jonathon Groat, an urbane gentleman, was counsel for the defense. He handled the witness with graceful ease and seemed principally concerned with weather conditions at time of the shooting. 

"Is it not a fact," he inquired, "that thunder rolled incessantly and that you were dazzled by lightning flashes as you stood behind your uncle?" 

Mrs. Lopez agreed that she had never seen a more terrible storm. 

"And the accused carried but one gun, a Colt .45?" 

The prosecuting attorney was on his feet. "Objection! The witness had no knowledge of the caliber of the defendent's gun." 

Mr. Groat smiled gently and turned to the bench. "Your honor, I am prepared to introduce at least three witnesses who will testify that Walter Deacon customarily packed a Colt .45." 

"Objection sustained!" barked the judge. 

"Mrs. Lopez," inquired Groat, "did the accused carry more . than one gun?" 

"No! Just the swiveled revolver." 

"You are positive of that fact?" 

"Absolutely!" 

"Is it a fact that, after the shooting, you found a Winchester rifle concealed in the brush near the ranch?" 

"Yes!" 

"And how did you dispose of that weapon?" 

"I threw it into the cellar, under the house." 

"Why?" 

The witness hesitated. "I -- I thought it was Walt's and he had trouble enough." 

"Did you connect it with the crime?" 

The prosecuting attorney was on his feet again, "I protest, your honor, the witness's opinion -- " 

"Objection sustained," droned the judge. "Proceed, counselor!" 

Mr. Groat smiled benignantly. "You did not suspect that this rifle, firing a .44 caliber bullet, might have been the murder weapon?" 

Angrily objecting, the prosecutor bobbed up. 

"Sustained!" Judge Ridgeway eyed the offending Mr. Groat with asperity. "Counselor, you should know better!" 

"Will you tell the court when you next handled this weapon?" requested the defense counsel, unruffled. 

There was no restlessness in the court now. Every eye focused on the young woman's pale features. The jurymen's indifference fled. A tight expectancy gripped the tight-packed rows' of spectators. 

"Several weeks ago," replied the witness, "Mr. Peters," she indicated the detective, "visited the ranch. He told me that Walt Deacon had carried only  a .45 Colt,  1  was  amazed because I knew that wide was killed by a .44 bullet. It was then that 1 remembered the Winchester I had thrown into the cellar many years before, I hunted through the rubbish under the house, found it, and handed it to him."

"What action did Mr. Peters then take?"

"He ejected a spent shell." 

The jurymen sat stiff on their chairs, their discomfort forgotten. Sweat glistening upon his dark features, Micky Lopez rose from his seat and made his way toward the side of the courtroom, where a row of tall, narrow windows were wide open. He looked as' though he badly needed a breath of fresh air, Groat lifted a sheet of newspaper spread over the table behind him and revealed a rusted Winchester, He held it up, .facing the judge. "I propose later, Your Honor, to furnish definite proof that the decedent, Nels Haugen, was slain by a .44 bullet fired from this rifle. With this in view, I beg the court's permission to establish ownership of said weapon, immediately prior to the crime. First, I would call Mr. Peters to the stand," 

Pecos attested that he was deputized, had an honorable record of service with the Arizona Cattlemen's Protective Association and had been assigned to Kiowa Valley to break up a rustling gang. He had heard of the crime and, out of curiosity, examined the porch steps at the Box H. Embedded in one was a .45 slug. He produced the chunk of lead and Mr. Groat placed it in evidence. 

"I understand, Mr. Peters, that you took steps to ascertain the ownership of this Winchester?" Groat indicated the rusted weapon. 

"I did -- it was sold by a Chicago mail order house to the son of a Kiowa Valley rancher one week before Nels Haugen was killed." 

"Was the identification positive?"

"It was! Every gun is individually numbered." The courtroom was tense with attention now, and so quiet that the monotonous tick-tock of the big Seth Thomas clock, high on the wall over the judge, seemed to drum in every ear -- like a pendulum of fate. 

"And who was the buyer?" 

"Micky Lopez, son of the owner of the Bar L." 

Every eye swiveled to Micky, backed against the side wall. His lips tight, he glared back, his slitted eyes gleaming like a cornered lobo's. Men around moved toward him, silently hostile. His gunmen pushed through and formed a tight protective ring; In seconds, he was the center of a vortex of snarling men, fighting to get at him. In vain, the judge pounded his gavel and deputies fought to force their way down the packed aisles. Excited shouts echoed through the courtroom. The tight little knot of gunmen was overwhelmed. Micky jumped upon a chair and leaped for an open window. He had one leg across the sill when a puncher reached and grabbed a dangling foot with both hands, hauling the fugitive down. Kicking desperately, Micky slid a hand beneath his fancy vest and came out with a snub-nosed derringer. Across the courtroom another gun roared. Micky slowly slumped. Headfirst, his body dropped back into the courtroom and thudded down to the floor. But the fall didn't bother Micky -- nothing would ever bother him again. 

Pecos slipped a long-barreled Colt back into its holster. 



XX 


A marshal's badge pinned to his vest, Fiddlefoot relaxed in the padded chair in the law shack, while Pecos perched on the table, dangling his long legs. "I guess I just about cleaned up on this Kiowa Valley job," said the stock detective. "The rustling gang's busted up, we recovered a slew of steers at Black Butte and the mastermind, Mr. Whistling Brunner, is awaiting trial. Yes sir, that was a foal clean-up!" 

"Whoever would have figured Al Brunner for the king pin?" Fiddlefoot said. 

"Not me!" admitted Pecos. "But young Tomkins spilled the beans afore he checked out. Brunner's a slick hombre, made a deal with the sheriff -- he'll plead guilty to cattle theft and Farley will drop the murder charge." 

"And you'll be moving on!" Fiddlefoot eyed the tall man. "Sure sorry to see you go, Pecos." 

The detective grinned. "You ain't shut of me yet. Keep this under your hat! I'm resigning. Me and Hilda figure we'd run well in double harness. Guess the Box H will take all my time from now on." 

Impulsively, Fiddlefoot thrust out a hand. "Say, I'm tickled pink! That gal deserves a good husband. You two will make a real matched team." 

"I got one more little thing on my mind." Pecos fished in his hip pocket and coming out with a folded document, which he dropped carelessly onto Fiddlefoot's lap. "With Hilda's compliments!" 

Curiously, the marshal opened the crackling sheet and scanned it briefly. Perplexed, he eyed the other. "This is a deed to the Bar L, the old Lopez spread!" 

"Transferring said spread to Walter Deacon!" Pecos' long features crinkled into a grin. 

"You loco?" came back Fiddlefoot incredulously. "Set tight and listen!" chuckled Pecos. "Hilda takes blame for the fact that you been on the lam for eight years. She figures that if she'd handed that Winchester to the marshal things might have been different. It weighs on her conscience. Her Idea is that the Bar L will kinda level things up." 

"I still claim you're both loco!" declared Fiddlefoot. "Mrs. Lopez owes me nothing. In fact, I figure the two of you saved me from the rope." He held the deed toward Pecos. "You just hand that deed back," 

"Pard," said the detective solemnly, "ain't a thing I can do about it. Women are stubborn critters. What's more, the Bar L is legally recorded in your name. You tear up that deed, you're still legal owner. You're sure stuck with the Bar L." 

He slid off the table and swung away, leaving the dumbfounded marshal still holding the  deed   At  the  door,  he turned, "Reckon you and me, Fiddlefoot, will make real good -neighbors. Be seeing yuh!" 

When the door closed behind Pecos, the marshal still sat staring at the deed. His own ranch! A boyhood dream come true. Then, abruptly, he thrust the deed into a drawer and reached for his Stetson. 

Frosty Ferguson bent over his clicking telegraph key in the railway depot. In a boxlike shack, beyond die depot, a raven-haired girl busied herself around a sheet-iron stove. She wore a crisp cotton dress and a white apron was tied around her slim waist. 

Fiddlefoot dismounted outside the shack and trailed his reins. His lean form bulked in the doorway. "Howdy!" he greeted. 

Myra turned quickly. "My," she exclaimed, "this is a surprise." 

She didn't say that she'd sighted him half a mile distant, jogging from town, and had dashed into the little bedroom to pat her hair into place and wipe off flour clinging to her white arms. 

With a sweep of a careless hand she indicated  the stack of pots on the stove. The drudge at work," she cried dramatically. "Paw's supper! And we can set a place for a third." 

"I sure like you better -- this way," he said slowly. 

"Just training!" she explained, teeth flashing in a quick smile. "Paw's innards are having an awful hard time, but he figures on keeping me on permanent." 

"I've got a better idea." 

"Don't tell me that Ah Sing needs a waitress in his greasy spoon!" 

"Quit funning!" 

"Or maybe they can use a chambermaid at Jackson's Hotel -- I make beds, too!" 

"Nope," he said shortly, "I need a wife -- marry me!" 

Levity suddenly left her eyes. "Walt," she said quietly, "you don't know what you're saying." 

"Guess I know my own mind!" 

She plucked nervously at her apron. "Who'd want me after -- what I've been?" 

"I don't give a damn what you've been," he threw back, walking toward her. "I want you just for what you are." 

Gently, very gently, he took her unresisting in his anus. Their lips met, and lingered. "Oh Walt," she whispered, "I've been so lonely, so long." Then she began to weep, deeply, convulsively, her whole body shaking. Finally, she pulled away, smiling through her tears. "Dammit," she said, with a flash of her old manner. "I rake in the jackpot and I have to bawl like a kid!" 



The end.