The Blue Basin Country [181-142-181-4.9]

By: Lauran Paine

Category: Fiction Western

Synopsis:

Abel Morrison, the Holtville saddle man Alexander Smith, one-eyed owner
of the Holtville gun works, and Foster Bullard are logging in the Blue
Basin Country, when their horses are stolen.  The thief turns out to be
Jumping Mouse, a sixteen-year-old Indian orphan.  Once they have their
horses back they take pity on him and allow him to offer them help in
their work.  When they run into trouble the boy turns out to be a more
valuable companion than they would ever have imagined.

But life is not easy for Jumping Mouse.  He faces tough tests in big
Blue Basin Country and a cruel blow from fate as he struggles to prove
himself as a friend, a son and a man.


Last printing: 08/27/02
`>083' ISBN: 0-5458- 7090 3482 2

6.50 net

A Black Horse Western

ROBERT HALE LONDON

By the same author

Frontier Doctor

The Hammerhead

Adobe Wells

The Lord of the Lost Valley

Scarface

Punchbowl Range

Thunder Valley

The Trail Drive

The South Desert Trail

High Ridge Range

The War Wagon

Tanner

Trail of the Hawks

The New Mexico Heritage

The Horseman

Spirit Meadow

THE BLUE BASIN COUNTRY

LAURAN PAINE

A Black Horse Western

ROBERT HALE LONDON

Lauran Paine 1987 First published in Great Britain 1989

ISBN 0 7090 3482 2

Robert Hale Limited Clerkenwell House Clerkenwell Green London EC

Photoset in North Wales by Derek Doyle & Associates, Mold, Clwyd.

Printed in Great Britain by

WBC Print Ltd."  Barton Manor, Bristol.

Bound by WBC Bookbinders Limited.

ONE

The boundaries of the Blue Basin country were vaguely defined, as
calculations made by eye often are.  The Army Engineers who had passed
through years earlier surveying and mapping had missed it entirely. The
entire region could not possibly be surveyed, so the conclusion was to
only chart and map areas which were seemingly important.

The Blue Basin country had been insular even back then.  Towns emerged
slowly without planning, ordinarily as wattle-roofed low buildings with
log walls.  They began as points of rendezvous for trappers, hunters,
soldiers.  Later they expanded to accommodate the traffic of roadways
used by wagons, coaches, pack-trains, horseback men

Holtville, which served the Blue Basin country, was a community with
such a heritage.  In some ways vestiges of those rough earlier days
still showed, in other ways the change was complete in the middle of
miles of open grassland Holtville's Main Street was lined on both sides
with large, handsome sycamore trees.

Unlike a number of communities with similar beginnings, Holtville made
each required transition without the wrenching adjustments that
commonly troubled other towns.  And because changes appeared to answer
pressing needs, not even the old hide hunters and packers did much
complaining.  For example, since there was an overabundance of
grassland no one used anyway, no one objected when cattlemen drove big
herds into Blue Basin.  As the cattle ranches needed

Holtville as their base for supplies, inevitably the economy grew and
stabilized; the arrival of the stock men was viewed as a godsend, not
as a cause for resentment or grumbling.

In the Blue Basin country manifest destiny meant that people were
there; the land was there; it was free, abundant, available for
whatever people wanted to do with it or make of it.  Therefore, with
winter fading and woodsheds low, it was the right in fact the
obligation of people to head for the mountains for firewood logs with
wagons stripped to their running gear.

Springtime was supposed to arrive in late March or April.  But some
years there were black frost, frozen troughs, and snow flurries right
on up into late May.

It was that kind of a year when Abel Morrison and two other men set out
to cut some wood.  Abel, the Holtville saddle and harness maker, had
something called vaguely 'heart trouble."  Alexander Smith who only had
one eye and hid the adjoining empty socket behind a white patch, was
owner of the Holtville Gun Works.  The third man was Foster Bullard,
who was irrepressible, defiantly good-natured and had a bad lower
back.

They loaded Abel's old wagon bed with tools, grub, and a tent of rotten
canvas with dozens of patches, put Alex Smith's two
eighteen-hundred-pound draft horses on the pole, and headed northeast
toward a high prairie which was surrounded by huge fir trees, sprinkled
throughout with snags.  They went for the snags, those standing dead
trees.  Snags were dry wood.  If people needed wood to burn, green fir
was as useless as teats on a man.  It wouldn't burn, and sometimes it
wouldn't even smoulder or smoke; it simply filled a stove or woodshed
with something no one could use until it had dried out.

The three knew where the snags were.  It was a daylong drive to get up
there, so the old men had left town well ahead of sunrise, when it was
cold, as well as dark.  They were almost to the old military road
leading upward before Foster fished in a croaker sack and handed around
a bottle of pop skull and ten minutes later had insulated each man
against the chill.  Then they covered the areas of rumour and gossip.

The year before, John Holbrook who owned thousands of acres, ran
red-back cattle, kept four full-time riders and was known to be both
wealthy and short-tempered had been operated on for an obsidian
bird-arrow that had been lodged in a vertebra for over fifteen years.
What intrigued the woodcutters was Holbrook's decision to have the
surgery when the best doctors up in Denver had told him if it failed,
he might never walk again.

The woodcutters were Holbrook's age or thereabouts; each of them knew
him and, as Abel said, before the operation old John hadn't been able
to straddle a horse or work at the marking grounds in years.  Nor had
he ever been entirely free of pain.  Abel also said, "Course a man
can't come right out an' say what he'd do but I think he did exactly
right."

Alex, who was favouring the big horses that were all the family he had,
nodded thoughtfully.  "Yes, he done right.  It seems to me when a man
gets old enough to know something's not goin' to get better, only maybe
worse, and he's already done everything at least once when he's no good
to himself or anyone else takin' that kind of a risk don't measure up
to but one choice.  An' if he'd come out of it paralysed from the
middle down, well, there's worse things than suicide."  No one
replied.

Alex did not take his one good eye off his horses when he said, "I'm
still cold.  How about you fellers?"

Abel punched Foster in the ribs.  He leaned, groped in the sack again,
and handed Alex the bottle.

The pop skull made another circuit as Alex said, "Old John had a good
year.  Got his back patched, married that pretty girl of his to that
horse breaker who's got a scrub-ranch west of the Holbrook place a few
miles ..."  Alex interrupted himself to call quiet encouragement to the
big horses; they had one last hard pull up over the lip of the slope to
the big meadow.

Foster Bullard screwed up his face.  "I can't remember that horse
breaker name."

"His name is Bart Templeton," the harness maker said.  "Decent feller.
Works hard, pays on the barrelhead, turns out good horses."

Alex tooled the team a short half mile before stopping to rest them
their heads pointing southward away from the cold air coming from the
high northward mountains.

The men stiffly climbed down to spring their knees a little.  The sun
was climbing now.  This large, grassy plateau was part of a
heavily-timbered and black-shadowed series of stair-stepped serrated
mountains which culminated about a hundred miles away, up where dirty
snow lay year-round in the form of glacial ice among the crevices of
granite rims and peaks.

While Foster and Abel stamped around, walked a little, Alex remained
with his big horses adjusting straps, talking to the animals, making
sure there were no galled places from traces or collars.

When Abel and Foster returned, they mentioned fresh wild-horse signs
out yonder, and Alex, always protective of his team, scowled. "Remember
a couple of years back when we come up here and that roman-nosed,
coon-footed, rump-spring stud come nosin' around tryin' to pick a
fight?  Let's get across to the timber and set up camp."

Driving across the big meadow was a pleasure.  Alex did not yank on the
lines when his horses shot their heads out for slack, then snatched a
mouthful of grass-heads.  When someone reproached him for babying his
big horses, he would explain that they were the children, the family he
didn't have.  But he did not spoil them; they obeyed, were tractable,
and seemed to like their owner.

It was getting warmer, so they shed their coats.  It took hours to
cross the meadow.  They saw more fresh wild-horse sign.  They also had
their attention brought to a gnawed deer carcass when both big horses
snorted and edged far out and around the smell of death.

Abel leaned and squinted.  "Not too old a kill," he remarked.  "I'd say
a bear done it."

They came into shade finally, over near the creek.  Making camp was a
simple chore.  Finding exactly the right place, though, would have
required more time if they had not used the same site for a number of
years.

Everything made of leather that had salt from horse sweat was pulled
high into the trees and tied there.  Porcupines and other varmints
would try to get to it.

Their old stone ring was pretty well intact.  They rearranged the
stones, tossed down their bedrolls, draped booted Winchesters from low
fir limbs, put their grub box and personal saddlebags close to the
bedrolls, turned the big horses loose even though Alex had brought
along two sets of army chain-hobbles.  His horses never wandered.  At
least they never had, but Foster was gently putting aside his croaker
sack, and scowling.  But he said nothing.  Where those big bay horses
were concerned, trying to talk sense to Alex was like spitting against
the tide.

Abel off-loaded the sack-wrapped coal oil bottle, the big crosscut
saws, the wedges, mauls, and trimming axes.  While the other two fussed
at preparing a meal, Abel sat on an ancient deadfall examining the saw
teeth.

If Alex was an old granny about his horses, Abel Morrison was a crank
about saw teeth.  He hadn't always been.  He was crowding seventy and
he got exactly the right 'set' when he filed and dressed saw teeth.

Foster stood erect by the nearly smokeless dry-wood fire and smiled
widely.  "I never envied In'ians," he said to no one in particular, his
eyes bright, 'but livin' in country like this, hunting' when they was
of a mind to, Icafin' and makin' babies on full moon nights, bein' as
free as the wind ..."

Abel looked up from wiping the saws with coal oil.

Like Alex Smith, Abel was woman less  Foster had never been married.
"The hunting' and loafin' is fine, but I'll tell you something about
makin' babies," he said quietly.  "There's some kind of natural law
about that."

Foster chuckled.

Abel ignored him and said, "Makin' them is pleasurable.  But every
damned heartache you get for the rest of your life, you get from your
children."

Neither of the men looked around or pursued this topic.  It was the
first time they had ever heard Abel even hint that he'd had children.

TWO

Something Unexpected

The first fir snag was uphill a half mile from camp.  They brought it
down without snapping it in the middle, put the team on it, and skidded
it to within a stone's throw of camp.

Over the years they had developed a system.  Abel and Alex started the
cut; then Foster took over from Abel.  Foster and Abel took turns on
one end of the saw and Alex, who was as strong as a bull, worked the
opposite end.  Alex's problem was that while he could see reasonably
well, with one eye, he could not for some reason get a saw started
straight.  Foster had a bad back so he could run the saw for only short
periods.  Abel, with a bad heart, spelled Foster until his chest felt
tight.

The splitting was accomplished roughly the same way, but in a more
leisurely fashion so that neither Abel's chest nor Foster's bad back
created problems.  Alex and Abel cooked and did most of the chores.

After nightfall, they passed the bottle back and forth.

Foster was lying flat out the ground, when he laughed, propped himself
up, and looking at his companions, said, "If some stranger was to come
onto us workin', he'd sure wonder.  A one-eyed man tryin' to hold a saw
straight through a log, another feller lookin' peaked after runnin' one
end of the saw ten minutes, and the third feller unable to straighten
up after sunset."

Alex's eye twinkled by firelight.  "If a man had a one-eyed horse,
another one busted down in the back, an' still another one that'd fall
down if he was run hard for a quarter mile he'd shoot the lot."

Alex fed broken limbs from the snag into their fire.  It blazed up
blue-hot and smokeless.

Abel had raised his head.  He was peering beyond their firelight in the
direction Alex had taken the big horses to graze.  He sat motionless
for a long moment before speaking softly.  "Somethin' out there, over
by the horses.  Listen."

Alex didn't listen.  He came up off the ground as though he had been
sitting on a coiled spring.  He had his Winchester in hand as he turned
away from the firelight.

Foster sat up painfully, watched Alex Smith fade out in the moonless
night.

A solitary gunshot brought Foster Bullard up off the ground as though
his back was as sound as new money.  He covered the distance to his
saddle boot in three strides and yanked out the Winchester.

When he wanted to, Abel Morrison could move very fast for a man with a
bad heart.  He was already striding in the direction of the gunshot,
carbine in hand, by the time Foster got untracked.

When they reached a grassy place where the horses had been, they found
neither the horses nor Alex.  While Foster looked for sign.

It was a moonless night, which made it nearly impossible for Foster to
find tracks.  He went over to where Abel was straightening up with his
carbine in the crook of his left arm.  Foster pointed.  "Damned horses
been trampin' around here for several hours.  Even in daylight, it'd be
hard to read their sign, but the only marks I found headin' out of here
went in that direction: southerly."

Abel nodded fumbling for his plug.  After he had a cud in place, he
said, "Somethin' spooked them.  Most likely a bear or a cougar.  I told
Alex fifty times to hobble his damned horses."

Foster waited until the anger was spent before quietly saying, "Abel,
it's dark.  It's late at night.  There's no cougar or bear on earth
hunts in the dark when he can't see."

Abel spat, eyeing Foster irritably.  Foster was right, but Abel did not
admit it.  He simply jerked his head and started walking.

Fifteen minutes later they were down at the timber stand that bordered
the open grassland, and even without a moon they could see a fair
distance out over a tundra of ghostly soft tan.  Foster said, "Nothing.
They couldn't just disappear."

Abel held up his hand for silence.  Moments later both men heard horses
far southward.  The rhythm of the echoes was not that of thousand-pound
saddle animals; it was more like the rocking-chair, heavy stride of
very large draft horses.  It rose and fell with the clumsy awkwardness
of big animals who were unaccustomed to running.

Foster pushed ahead and Abel caught his arm.  Once they abandoned the
timber they would have no background protection.  "Let's just figure
for a minute," he told Foster.  "If it wasn't a varmint of some kind
that run off Alex's horses, what was it?"

Foster brightened.  "Wild horses.  Sure as hell they picked up the
scent a long time ago, maybe before sundown.  A stallion came skulking
around, spooked Alex's horses, and they're still running."

Abel grounded his Winchester as he sighed.  "Then how's it come we can
only hear the big horses?  If that was a wild stud out there bitin'
their rumps as he kept 'em going, how come he's not makin' any noise
and where in hell is Alex?"

Foster had no answer, but standing close to the trees as the echoes
diminished irritated him.  "You hang back an' ponder," he said shortly.
"I'm goin' ahead.  If we lose those horses, we might just as well
abandon everything and start walking."

Abel did not hang back.  As they spread out and walked away from the
forest, it appeared that Alex's big horses were heading for the trail
they had come up on earlier that day.  What mystified them both was
that the draft horses were still running.  That certainly was not
common with horses that large and heavy; for that matter, it wasn't
common even among much lighter, more active and agile saddle animals.

And where the hell was Alex?  In broad daylight he could not judge
distance very well.  In darkness, assuming there might be some kind of
peril, one-eyed Alexander Smith would be at a terrible disadvantage,
Winchester or no Winchester.

Foster sashayed to keep his course set according to the distinguishable
marks and trampled tall grass left by the big horses.  Only once did
Foster beckon Abel over, when he had picked up a knitted cap.  It was
pale blue everywhere except where it had been turned up around
someone's ears and forehead.  Abel examined the thing and handed it
back.  "Hasn't been lyin' here very long, Foster, or mice would have
been to work on it.  They like wool awful well."

Foster turned the cap in his hands.  He stretched it, turned it inside
out, then wagged his head.  "Right smack-dab in the tracks."  He gazed
at Abel as he punched the wool cap into a rear pocket.  "They don't
fall off easy, if a man's got the sense to pull 'em down low ... This
feller was too busy stealin' two big horses to bother with his cap."

Abel stood gazing southward for a long while before he spoke again.
"It's hard to believe, Foster.  I had some such idea back yonder, but
it just seemed, well, unlikely as hell."

Foster was getting impatient again.  "We can make better time out here
in the open."  He started forward as Abel made a dry remark.

"Foster, have you ever gone after horse thieves before?  Let me tell
you that us two are out here in the open, an' even in the poor light
he's goin' to catch sight of us eventually.  An' lying in the grass
like an In'ian, he won't even have to shoot; he can just lie there
until we walk up, then throw down on us."

Carbine held by the barrel over his shoulder, Foster kept right on
walking, his full attention southward.  Abel wagged his head and
followed.

They could no longer hear the big horses.  In fact, they heard nothing
at all, and that made Abel uneasy.  He swung his head from left to
right like an old sow bear.

Foster Bullard was unable to walk for any considerable distance, but
tonight, with a chill creeping into the late night, he only
occasionally glanced over where Abel was trudging along and did not
once appear to be slackening his stride.

Far back a wolf sounded.  Both men halted and turned.  After a while,
the wolf sounded again.  Abel grounded his Winchester, chewed as he
squinted up their back trail and said, "I'll be damned to hell."

Foster twisted to look southward, then gave it up with a shrug and sank
to one knee in the grass leaning on his carbine.  Foster never sulked;
by nature he was even-tempered.  "We must have walked right past him,"
he said.

"And why didn't the old fool make his bad wolf call then?"

They started back.  When they met Alex Smith, both Foster and Abel were
so relieved they did not complain;

they just sank down on the ground, guns across their laps, and
listened.

"I saw him," said Alex.  "He was havin' one hell of a time tryin' to
spring from the ground onto the back of one of the horses.  He fell
twice and got up to try again when I whistled, then fired.  That time
he went up and almost over.  He had the other horse on a shank and
busted out through the trees ridin' so low I couldn't risk another shot
for fear of hittin' the horse."

Foster tugged at the cap, tossed it over to Alex, and said, "Was he
wearing that thing?"

Alex held up the cap for better light, then lowered it.  "Yes.  Where
did you find it?"

Foster gestured vaguely.  "Back down yonder a ways ... He's still goin'
south, Alex.  If we got any hope of getting' your horses back, we
better quit sittin' here and cover ground."

Abel raised a hand.  "I'll track him.  You two head on back to camp. If
no one is up there for a couple of days, we'll lose more than the
horses; varmints will eat everything we got, ruin our harnesses, chew
holes in everything with the smell of salt-sweat on it, gnaw off the
saw handles ... You two go back.  I been in worse situations than this.
If he goes anywhere near town with those horses, I'll get some help an'
run him down on horseback."

Alex said, "An' hang the son of a bitch, Abel."

As Abel walked away he squinted ahead, but visibility was limited.  He
did not have much hope of seeing Alex's horses before sunrise.  What he
had in mind was to track them if he could until he was down off the
plateau, then angle toward town and round up some riders.  He was
confident about finding them once he was on horseback.

He settled into an easy stride.  Walking never seemed to bring on the
chest-ache that bucking a cross-cut saw, or other form of strenuous
upper-body activity did.  In fact old Abel Morrison could walk a hole
in the daylight; he had been doing it for more years than he liked to
think about.

With plenty of time to speculate, he thought about that knitted cap. It
was springtime, not winter, the wrong time of year for a man to be
wearing that kind of a cap.  And what was the horse thief doing up
yonder?  As far as Abel knew, no one had lived on the mesa since the
Indians were rounded up years ago.

One thing seemed clear; the thief had probably watched them drive
across the meadow from a hiding place back in the forest.  He must have
also spied on them as they set up camp and went to work.  Unless he was
already a fugitive, or unless he'd already made up his mind to steal
the horses before Abel and his friends had established their camp, the
normal thing for a man to do was walk into camp, eat supper, and visit.
Loners in country like the big plateau usually were glad for company,
even fugitives.  This one had a good reason for staying away.  He had
planned to steal Alex's big horses.

Abel studied the sky.  Dawn was on the way.  He was almost to the wagon
ruts.  If daylight arrived before he started down, he would probably be
able to see the thief and the big horses.

THREE

Foster and Alex stirred up the fire, set the coffee pot in place, and
sat glumly waiting.  Each man laced his coffee with whisky.

Foster did not use tobacco but Alex did.  He rolled a cigarette, lit it
from the fire, and sipped from his coffee cup before speaking.

"You don't expect he followed us up here, do you?"  Foster asked.

Alex did not think so.  "We'd have seen him behind us when we drove
across the meadow.  Naw, I'd say he was already up here and watched us
arrive."  He sipped laced coffee and squinted.  "I shot high, Foster. I
hoped it'd scare him, but it didn't.  It was dark as hell among them
trees."

Foster was sympathetic without saying so.  "Come daylight we'd ought to
scout a little.  He had to have a camp.  What did he look like?"

"About like everyone else, I guess."  Alex sipped and relaxed a little;
the whisky was doing its work.  "He tried to jump astraddle.  He jumped
like a man with rubber legs.  He was in a hurry.  Maybe if I hadn't
shot, he wouldn't have been able to mount up.  That gunshot acted like
a physic; that son of a bitch come up off the ground with a jump you
wouldn't believe."

Foster considered the bottom of his empty cup.  "Abel will catch
him."

Alex was squinting into the fire.  "Yeah.  Once he gets a horse under
him in town, he'll catch him.  Only it bothers me to think of someone
abusin' my horses, ridin' 'em too hard and all ... I wish I'd been able
to get a sighting on him when he wasn't right next to one of my
animals.  I'd have blowed him to kingdom come."

Foster was tired.  All three of them had put in an arduous day.  Abel
was the oldest, he was seventy.  Alex at sixty-five was the youngest.
Foster was sixty-eight, but the fact was that men between the ages of
sixty-five and seventy were just plain old.

Alex refilled his cup with black Java and whiskey and without raising
his face from the fire he said, "I must have had fifteen chances to
sell them horses ... When I bought them horses they was galled an'
wormy and bony as hat racks.  I must've been asked a hunnert times why
a gunsmith who lives in town an' has got no reason to own horses bought
them two."  Alex's one eye rose to his friend's face across the fire.

"Yeah ... Why did you buy them?"

Alex dropped his head again.  "Why?  They needed a friend real bad ...
I ... a long time ago I had two little boys.  I was freightin' back
then.  Sometimes I'd be gone a month or more ... Anyways, I was gone
seven weeks and come back to an empty house.  Gone.  My wife and my
boys."

"Where did they go?"

Alex shrugged and spat lustily into the fire.  "Never found out where
they went.  Those boys is about twenty, twenty-five years old by now."
The solitary eye came up again.  "Why don't they come, Foster?"

Foster was shaken and very uncomfortable.  He had never heard a word of
this before.  All he knew was that Alex had said he was a widower.

"Why, Foster?"  Alex asked again.

"Maybe they don't know where you are, Alex.  How many Alex Smiths do
you reckon there might be in the world?"

Alex drained his cup.  "Yeah, maybe.  Maybe their mother made
gawd-damned sure they'd never be able to find me."

"Aw, a woman wouldn't do that."

Alex made a faint death's-head smile.  "Naw, a woman wouldn't do
something like that ... We was talkin' about my horses.  I guess I
needed them as much as they needed me.  One's named Ned for my oldest
boy.  The other one's named Bugler for my youngest boy."

"You named your youngest son Bugler?"  asked Foster.

"No.  What'n hell kind of a thing would that be to do a boy?  His name
was Henry.  One time I brought him back an army bugle I traded for.  He
drove everyone crazy learnin' to blow that thing.  We started calling
him Bugler ... Foster, I got to bed down."  As Alex arose unsteadily to
head for his bedroll he said, "I got to have my horses back."

Foster watched Alex feel along his bedroll for the opening.  "You'll
get 'em back."

Foster, who had been drowsy a half hour earlier, was no longer drowsy.
He and Alex Smith had been friends for many years and this was the
first time during all their shared experiences Alex had ever talked
about his personal life.  Right now, though, staring into the fire and
listening to Alex snoring, he just simply could not raise his spirits,
so he went off to his blankets, too, leaving the fire to dwindle to
pink coals just before dawn.

It had been a long night, one that none of them could have anticipated
or even imagined.  When dove-gray dawn stealthily arrived Foster and
Alex slept on, blissfully unaware that an old bear had picked up the
camp scent.  Moving intuitively without haste, the bear had arrived at
the site of the deadfall snag the men had been working on as the sky
faintly brightened.  He was sitting up there now, making an evaluation
of what lay below him.

One of the bear's ears was halfway gone, testimony to a fierce battle
he no longer remembered.  A milky cast over one eye was the result of a
raking lion claw during another battle.  He was scarred and arthritic.
It had been a long time since he'd been able to run down prey.  Long
guard-hairs on his underside meant he had belly worms.  He smelled of
the carrion he'd been reduced to living off for several years, and he
had not been without hunger pains for a long time.  His sense of smell
was still very good.  He wrinkled his nose at the smell of food coming
from the boxes and saddlebags lying close to the dying fire.

He knew man-smell.  He had encountered men before.  He had a severed
tendon from a glancing bullet that made his gait even more awkward than
it normally would have been.

The bear sat for a long time, moving his head slightly in an effort to
determine exactly where the food was.  In his prime he had feared
nothing, not even men with rifles.  He still feared nothing as he
raised up on his hind legs.  The food aroma did not seem to come from
one particular place, which meant he would have to rummage.

As he eased back down onto all fours, one of the bedrolls shifted and a
man-sound came from it.  He watched that particular bedroll with his
one good eye, then started ambling toward it, roughly cuffing a round
of unsplit snag wood aside.  The round rolled toward the camp,
gathering downhill momentum.  It bounced off a fir tree, slewed
sideways, tumbled ahead, struck the stone cooking ring, and landed in
the hot ash.  Coals beneath the round seared woodpecker holes until the
acorns stored in the holes began exploding.

Foster opened both eyes, wide awake, then eased up very slowly and saw
the old bear swaying in an ungainly amble directly toward Alex's
bedroll.  For three seconds he was too petrified even to breathe; then
he jerked clear of his blankets reaching for the Winchester.

He was on the bear's blind side, but when he rolled to get the carbine
the bear heard him moving, rocked back, and began to push upright
looking from side to side.

Foster froze.  He would not have time to raise the gun, cock and aim it
before the bear saw movement, so he became rigid.  The old bear sensed
danger and stood up to his full height.  He could not retreat.  Even if
that idea had occurred to him, he had committed himself to a course of
action that would, hopefully, lessen the hunger agony in his belly.

His eyesight was poor.  Even if he had not had the filminess over one
eye he still would not have good eyesight.  He hunted by scent and
movement, not by visual contact.

Foster was white to the hairline waiting for the bear to turn away.

Another grunt of coughing came from Alex's bedroll.  The bear wrinkled
his nose and turned away from Foster.  Alex moved sluggishly.  The bear
put his flat head close the ground sniffing.

Foster very gently snugged back the carbine, rested a thumb on the
hammer, and held his breath because the moment he cocked the gun that
bear would hear the sound and turn on him.

Foster had never shot a bear before in his life, but he had listened to
a great many men who had, and he remembered one thing: shooting a bear
head-on against his very thick, sloping skull, would only bring down
one bear out of a dozen.

He lowered the barrel a fraction.  If the bear had been sideways, he
could have tried a heart shot directly behind the shoulder.  He pushed
the blankets away and came up very slowly until he was in a high
crouch.  The bear was beside Alex's bedroll now, pushing gently at the
blankets with one front paw, and making guttural sounds.

Foster thought he saw Alex stiffen in his blankets.  His spine flamed
with pain because of his slightly forward crouch.  He locked his teeth
hard together and ventured two steps sideways.  The bear was pawing
Alex's bedroll again, concerned only with what he was doing.

Foster took two more steps sideways.  He had a good sighting of the
bear's right side at the shoulder, and slightly behind the shoulder.
Sweat made his palms slippery as he knelt, fought off the pain, took
careful aim, and cocked the gun.  The bear's head came around
instantly.

Foster fired, levered up and fired again and again.  The old bear was
sitting back on his haunches looking squarely at the man who had shot
him.  He was capable of absorbing the impact without flinching.

Foster had salt-sweat stinging his eyes as he methodically levered up
his fourth bullet.  The bear coughed once; blood mixed with saliva
spilled down his front.

Alex shot out of his bedroll like the seed from a grape.  He did not
even look back until he was behind a fir tree,

then he yelled, "The throat!  Shoot him in the throat!"

Foster shouldered the carbine, blinked at the sweat, and pulled down a
deep, shaky breath.

The old bear turned to swing down onto all fours and his legs folded
beneath him, letting the foul-smelling, mangy-coated body settle to the
ground without even raising dust.  The bear's head sank forward on both
front paws, the good eye and the milky one looked blankly up the
hill.

Alex came cautiously from behind his tree, and Foster sat down on the
ground holding the Winchester in his lap.  He did not hear a high,
far-away shout back down across the big meadow behind him.  He did not
even hear Alex speak from beside the bear where Alex was gingerly
poking the carcass with a long stick.

"I was sleepin' like a log ... Jesus but he stinks ... How the hell did
you know he was over here?  Foster, are you all right?  I'll get one of
those bottles of whisky.  Just set there."

FOUR

They drank cold whisky on empty bellies and watched with puffy eyes as
a considerable cavalcade approached from far out across the meadow.
Alex rubbed his eye and tipped his head to squint harder.  "Foster?  Is
that my big horses them folks are leading?"

Foster had his back resolutely to the dead bear when he replied. "Looks
like it.  I'll bet new money on it, Alex.  There aren't no other horses
that big in the country, that I know of."

Alex still squinted.  "How many do you make?"

Foster counted.  "Four on horseback."  He leaned slightly.  "Tell you
what I think, Alex.  You see that feller in the drag leading the big
horses: that'll be Abel."

"Who are the others?"

Foster did not reply for a full two minutes, by which time the riders
were closer.  "I'll tell you who two of them is that horse breaker who
married John Holbrook's girl last year."

"Bart Templeton," stated Alex.

Foster nodded.  "Bart Templeton.  The one ridin' beside him sure as
hell is a woman.  Alex, by golly that's John Holbrook's daughter.
What's her name?"

"Nan.  Nan Holbrook.  Now it's Nan Templeton."  Alex ran a rough hand
over his stubbly face.  He did not share Foster Bullard's surprise
about Nan.  Foster stood staring as he said, "Why would a man bring his
wife up to a place like this?"

Alex was annoyed.  "Why wouldn't a man do that?  She's almost as handy
with livestock as her husband.  She's been her pa's eyes an' ears since
she was in pigtails."

Both men stood up.  Alex was able to distinguish individual riders.  He
scowled.  "Who is ridin' that leggy bay horse he's bareback ain't
he?"

Foster stared before he gradually stiffened.  "It's an In'ian," he
exclaimed.  "Alex, he's wearin' an old sweater the same color as that
cap we found.  I'll lay you big odds he's the feller stole your
horses."

Alex remained standing, his leathery dark face getting grimmer as
Foster knelt at the stone ring to start a fire.  The visitors would
need hot coffee and food.

Foster was enormously relieved at having visitors.  He went to the
creek to scrub, then arranged the iron fry pans for cooking.  He did
not once look around at the dead bear.

The lead horseman raised his gloved right hand.  Alex did the same, and
when the riders came up Bart Templeton, a handsome, lanky man
accumulating gray at the temples, gestured back where Abel Morrison was
untangling lead shanks to Alex's two big horses.  "Brought your friends
back," he said, and was turning toward his wife when Alex fixed his eye
upon the fourth member of the party.

"Who is he?"  Alex asked darkly.  "We got a cap that matches his
sweater."

Templeton paused, then turned back.  Abel was walking up leading the
draft animals, and he spoke before Templeton answered.  As he passed
over the lead ropes, Abel said, "That there is Jumping Mouse.  He's a
Shoshoni-Piute."

Alex's eye did not waver from the Indian's face.  He was not interested
in anything Abel had said.  "Shoshoni-Piute!  I don't care if he's King
Solomon: did he steal my horses?"

Abel accepted a cup of coffee from Foster and winked.  Foster did not
wink back; he turned quickly to fill other cups.

Abel blew on the coffee because it was hotter than original sin.  He
eyed Alex over the cup's rim.  "He's sixteen years old an' got no
family.  He's been livin' off squirrels and whatever else he could
snare up in here since his folks an' a lot of other In'ians died from
the cholera on the reservation up north."

Alex refused a cup of coffee from Foster and put his eye upon Abel as
he said, "Did he steal my horses?  That's all I want to know."

For a long while there was not a sound except for the crackling of
Foster's breakfast fire, not until Abel Morrison tasted his coffee,
swallowed, then said, "Yes."

Alex moved in the direction of his bedroll and the dead bear.  His
Winchester was over there.  The Indian, standing beside the horse he
had been riding, dropped the reins and hurled around to flee.  He ran
into Bart Templeton's open arms, and although he struggled desperately
he was unable to break away.

Alex glared as he straightened around holding the carbine.  Abel was
blocking his view of the struggling

Indian.  Abel looked directly at Alex and sipped coffee.  Alex snarled
at him.  "Get out of the way!"

Foster arose slowly from beside the stone ring.  "Alex, what d'you
think you're doing?"

"I'm going to settle with a horse thief.  Stand aside, Abel."

Abel continued to sip coffee without saying a word, but his gaze never
left Alex Smith's face.

Alex raised the carbine.  "Abel, get the hell out from in front of
me."

Abel lowered the empty cup.  "You are makin' a damned fool of
yourself," he told the one-eyed man quietly.  "What's Miz Templeton
goin' to think, the way you're acting an' all?"

Alex's breath whistled out.  "Are you goin' to get out'n the way,
Abel?"

Foster's ivory teeth were showing through a ghastly smile.  "Alex, if
it wasn't for me you wouldn't even be here.  You wouldn't have got your
damned horses back.  If I'd run into the trees like you done, that bear
would have strung your guts out for a hundred feet ... Put down that
gun!"  Foster's tongue made a circuit of his lips.  "Alex you owe me
an' you know it!  Now put that gun down or you're goin' to have to
shoot your way through men Abel both ... Put it down!"

No one moved or made a sound; every eye was on Alex's livid face.

Nan Templeton moved to the stone ring, leaned to fill a tin cup,
straightened up, and walked in front of Abel.  She stopped six inches
from the Winchester barrel and held out the cup.  "Please," she said.

Alex's mouth loosened, his expression of righteous wrath faded
slightly, and he lowered the carbine.  He was beginning to feel
slightly ill.  That was the only time in his sixty-five years he'd held
a gun that was pointing at a woman.

He let the Winchester fall and accepted the cup of coffee.  Abel turned
aside, saw the rigid expression on

Foster's face, and lightly slapped him on the back as he said, "You're
goin' to burn the hoecakes."

Bart Templeton still held the Indian youth, but not as tightly because
the Indian was no longer struggling.  He felt limp in Templeton's arms.
Bart leaned and said, "Go sit by the fire; get something to eat.  And
don't try to run again."

The youth obeyed but approached the fire ring from the west side.  Alex
was standing on the east side.  As the Indian squatted, he did not take
his eyes off the darkly tanned man with the white cloth eye patch.

While the others stood around the stone ring, Alex walked over to his
horses, went over each one meticulously by hand, then led them out
where the feed was strong.  At the fire Abel Morrison shook his head
because even now Alex did not put hobbles on the animals.

Alex remained out with the horses until Foster filled a tin plate and
took it out to him.  As he squatted beside Alex he said, "I told you
last night you'd get them back."

Alex, with his back to the fire ring, gulped food and growled around
it.  "A horse thief is a horse thief and you know it.  Don't matter if
he's sixteen an' an orphan or sixty with ten kids."

Foster worked up a smile.  "Alex, they are horses.  Nice, big handsome
ones for a fact, but they're still horses.  They're not Ned and Bugler.
I'll go get you a cup of Java."

"Wait.  I'll get my own coffee."  Alex would not meet his old friend's
gaze, he chewed and squinted southward and changed the subject. "What's
Templeton doin' up here?"

"He come up to scout for wild horses, him and his missus.  They was
ridin' up with two pack horses an' saw the In'ian boy ridin' your
horses.  The horses was tired.  They split up an' come in on him from
both sides.  They didn't have much trouble.  They was on their way up
here anyway an' they could tell by the tracks this was where your
horses had come from, so they started along and come onto Abel.  They
left both pack outfits down yonder, put Abel on one horse, the boy on
the other one, and come up here ... They got to go back shortly and get
the packs before varmints find them and tear up everything."

Alex finally turned his head, just enough for his right eye to see
Foster's face.  "I wasn't runnin' into the timber to hide.  That bear
was square astraddle of both my guns.  There wasn't anythin' else I
could do."

Foster continued to smile.  "Yeah, I know.  I didn't mean you run
because you was scairt

The solitary dark eye remained on Foster's face.  "I was scairt
pee-less.  I've seen a lot of bears in my time, shot my share, but by
gawd that's something' I never imagined: openin' my eye out of a sound
sleep and there, less'n two feet from me, was that son of a bitch
lookin' right down at me.  I could smell his breath.  Foster, for two
or three seconds I couldn't even move."

Foster laughed softly, slapped Alex on the shoulder, and arose.  Alex
said, "Wait ... Abel was right, I looked pretty foolish, didn't I?"

"Well, you sure had everyone's attention, Alex."

"You know what those horses mean to me."

"Yes, I know.  Now finish eatin' and come back.  It's over and
finished, like the damned bear."

Alex twisted to look straight up.  "You and Abel still want to stay
here until we got a load of wood?"

"Hell yes," responded Foster.  "That's what we come up here for, isn't
it?  One lousy bear and a raggedy-pantsed, half-grown buck ain't goin'
to change anything."

Alex remained out with his horses until he had finished eating, then
walked back with a self-conscious shamble.

The Indian boy still looked wary; the others acted as though nothing
had happened.  Foster began portioning out the food.

They hitched the big horses to the bear carcass and dragged it away,
and that was so much like a three-ring circus no one, including Alex,
remembered the bad moments.

Horses feared bears and mountain lions and this particular bear smelled
overpoweringly bad, not just from boar-bear scent, which was rank
enough, but from carrion stench which arose from his carcass in the
warm sunshine in nearly visible waves.

In order to get the horses anywhere near the carcass, the men had to
fill the distance between with every length of chain and rope in the
camp.  Alex went up front and led the horses then.  Abel went with him,
chewing on a fresh cud and keeping an eye on the bloating carcass far
back.  When they were a fair distance out, where there was an
unobstructed neck of open land leading into the timber, Abel suggested
they make a big circle, and leave the bear for the scavenging critters.
When they eventually cut loose and started back, Alex put a sidelong
look on Abel and said, "That was a tomfool thing to do, Abel, get
smack-dab in front of me."

Abel spat.  "You wouldn't have yanked the trigger."

"Well, of course I wouldn't have but if that In'ian had busted loose
and run I couldn't have got a shot at him with you in front of me like
you was."

Abel nodded, chewed, said nothing.  Alex said no more either.  They had
settled something they both would like to forget.

With the camp in sight, Abel said.  "Templeton and his wife are
gone."

Alex peered from beneath his floppy hat brim  "Probably went back down
for their packs."

Abel nodded.  "Yeah."

"Foster said they was on there way up here to look for wild horses."

"That's what he told me on the ride up here.  Seems he's built a couple
of salting traps a few miles eastward.  He had some sacks of rock salt
in his pack he figured to put out, then him and his wife figured to
make a high camp where they can keep watch, and come back later to do
the real trapping."

Abel was squinting up ahead where Foster was cleaning up around the
stone ring.  Then he looked around and smiled gently.  "Miz'
Templeton's a looker.  I remember seein' her drive into Holtville with
her paw years ago.  Pretty as a speckled bird even then.  Now ..." Abel
wagged his head.  He could not find words to describe beautiful Nan
Templeton.  Foster had the camp in order, but the smell of the bear
remained, and would for several days.  The three old men went over into
the shade to sit for a spell.

Abel finally stretched out in fir shade, punched his hat into a pillow
and got comfortable as he said, "I must have walked five hundred miles
last night.  I'm goin' to sleep for a spell.  If anything more crops
up, like maybe a mountain lion this time, wake me."

Alex was looking down in the direction of the stone ring.  "What do we
do with the In'ian pup?  I thought the Templetons would take him with
them.  He's sitting down there like a stone.  Why didn't he come up
into the shade with us?"

"Because," said Abel drowsily, 'he's scairt peeless of you."

"What are we going to do with him?"

Abel sighed loudly.  "Put him to work makin' firewood tomorrow."

Foster arose and jerked his head for Alex to follow him as he walked
back down to camp.  The Indian youth was eating scraps he had hidden in
his filthy old sweater and glanced up as they walked past.  Alex put a
flinty look downward but kept on walking.

They pulled the grub box back up into a tree and made several small
piles of dry wood near the stone ring.  They also went over to the
creek to wash, and while he was kneeling over there Alex twisted to
look back.  The Indian youth was still chewing.  He had not taken his
eyes off them since they had walked back.  Alex bent forward to scoop
water with cupped hands as he said, "Foster, don't it make you uneasy,
him starin' at our backs?"

Foster was shaking off water as he replied.  "No.  His daddy, maybe,
and sure as hell his grand-daddy, but not him.  All he's got is a
busted old rusty clasp knife."

Alex said no more until they were arising from the creek bank  "All
right, we'll feed him in exchange for him helpin' us make wood then
what?  Turn him loose up in here?"

Foster cleared his throat twice before answering.  "We could do that,
for a fact, an' maybe with summer comin' he could kill deer an' rabbits
and whatnot, an' then again maybe he might break a leg or get sick."

The one good eye came around with a sulphurous glow.  "No you don't,
Foster Bullard.  Not behind my horses, you don't take him back with us.
No horse-stealin' mangy In'ianF

FIVE

The Cap Log

They put in two strenuous days snaking down four more snags and working
them into manageable lengths to be loaded on the running gear.  Jumping
Mouse worked as hard as any of them, and he never once volunteered a
single word.  He would answer a question or obey an order, but
otherwise he might as well have been mute.

On one score he rated higher than the older men.  When it came to
eating, Jumping Mouse could outdo all three of them.  Alex ruefully
wagged his head.  Abel was amused, and Foster was fascinated that
anyone could hold so much food.

They did not begrudge him.  They had brought along enough grub for ten
days, and the way things looked now, they would be able to load logs
and head out in another three days, so there would be grub left over.
They had brought Winchesters along for the express purpose of getting
camp meat, it did not seem to be something they would have to do, which
would be a mild disappointment because all three of them liked to
hunt.

After the second day of very hard physical labor, Foster had difficulty
rolling out in the morning.  His best effort to conceal the fact that
he could not stand erect without gritting his teeth was noticed by Abel
and Alex.  They mentioned at breakfast that the two of them and Jumping
Mouse could block-and-tackle the trimmed logs onto the running gear;
Foster could help more by striking camp.  Foster had to accept this
because he could not have walked back up to where the logs were ready
to be loaded.  But he was morose enough to lace his coffee, something
he never did for breakfast.  Abel and Alex trudged back up where the
work had been done trailed by Jumping Mouse, who said nothing, but when
the matter of pulling on the chain-block made Abel's knees wobble, the
Indian youth elbowed in to pull the chain in front of Abel, who
gratefully went to sit down.  Alex and the youth strained, paused to
rest, and resumed straining in absolute silence.  Once a log was in
place on the running gear, Alex would use an arm-sized green fir limb
to jockey it into position.  It was hard work; they sweated and
occasionally rested.  Alex surreptitiously eyed the Indian, and shortly
before noon when they went up into the shade to drink from their
canteens and sit with their backs against trees, he finally said, "Boy,
you speak English pretty well, do you?"

Jumping Mouse nodded his head and afterwards raised a hand to push his
long hair back as he gave Alex a swift sidelong look.

Alex scratched, looked dourly at the half-loaded running gear and
squinted his eye nearly closed.  "Stealin' horses can get you hung, do
you know that?"

The youth nodded again.  He looked toward the wagon.

Alex reddened.  "Listen to me.  When someone talks to you, answer back,
don't just bob your head.  You understand?"

Jumping Mouse squirmed a little.  "I understand."

"That's better.  Now then, tell me why you tried to steal my horses."

The youth looked at the ground, and picked up a small stone to gaze at
as he replied.  "I wanted to go far south.  The teachers at the
reservation school showed us a map where the tribes were.  I wanted to
go south and find them.  It is a very long way.  On foot someone would
have stopped me, maybe some sheriff or cattleman."

Alex plucked at a patch of pitch on one callused hand.  "Why didn't you
stay where you come from?"

"My parents died from a sickness.  I didn't want to die too.  I left at
night and walked."

"Walked from where?"

Jumping Mouse raised a ragged sleeve.  "North, far to the north."

"All your folks is dead?"

"I had two brothers.  They left a long time ago."

"Well, maybe them In'ians down south wouldn't want you."

"I had to take that chance because no one would want me."

Alex continued to pick at the pitch.  "You had a camp up in here?"

Again the youth gestured.  "Up the same creek you get water from."

"What you been livin' on?"

"Berries.  Sometimes I could catch some meat.  Roots like I used to
help my mother gather."

Alex raised his eye, still narrowed, to study the thinness of the boy.
"No deer or wapiti?"

"No, I tried snares, but the deer broke them."

Alex went back to picking pitch.  "Where'd you get such a name as
Jumpin' Mouse?"

"From my mother."

"Is that what they called you at the In'ian school?"

"No.  They called me Jim Moore.  They said it sounded better, but I
like Jumping Mouse."

Alex raised his head to look around and blew out a big breath.  "What
do you figure to do after we finish makin' wood up here and head for
home?"

"Go back to my camp."

"What if you busted a leg, or got sick?"

Jumping Mouse did not reply.  Alex looked quickly at him then away,
down toward camp where Foster was puttering noisily, then to their left
where Abel was sound asleep and snoring in the fragrant shade.  Jumping
Mouse surprised him by asking a question.

"That lady named Templeton is she Indian?"

Alex could not recall having heard much about Nan's mother, but he knew
her father, who certainly had no Indian blood.  What caused him trouble
was that Nan could have had Indian blood; she had some of the color for
it.  "I can't say.  I don't know.  Did you talk to her on the ride up
here?"

"No.  I didn't talk to any of them.  She looks Indian."

Alex scoffed.  "Naw, she don't.  Not real In'ian."

"Breed-Indian," the boy said.  "We had many of them on the
reservation."

Alex had an uncomfortable feeling of having heard something about Nan's
mother.  He struggled to remember and failed.  He said, "I don't know
as it makes any difference."

Jumping Mouse started to arise.  "Them logs won't climb onto the wagon
by their selves

Alex sighed and grunted up to his feet.  He and the boy walked about
thirty feet when Alex stopped.  "We better go down an' get something to
eat.  You go on ahead, I'll shake Abel awake."

The youth obediently walked away, Alex stood motionless watching him,
then turned to go rouse Abel.

Foster had coffee and hoecakes waiting for them.  His back was a little
better.  He sat on the ground with them and ate as he said, "I just
remembered what they call this big plateau up here.  Wild Horse
Mesa."

Abel did not even look up from his tin plate.  Alex grunted.  They both
knew this.

Foster watched the youth eat and wagged his head.  "You keep that up,"
he said, 'an' you won't have no pleats in your belly for the rest of
your life."

Alex's head came up.  "He's earned it, Foster."

Both the other older men looked at Alex but said nothing.

Near the end of the meal one of the big horses raised his head gazing
westward, and made a loud whinnying sound.  Alex turned to stare as
Foster said, "Most likely he picked up the scent of the Templetons'
horses.  Bart said him an' his wife was goin' to scout up the mesa."

Alex went back to eating, finished, put his tin plate aside, and shoved
upright to hitch at his britches and wait for Jumping Mouse.  He led
the way back up where the logs were, and Abel, who hung back a little,
watched Alex and the boy briefly, dropped a sly look to Foster and
said, "He's got himself a mascot."

Foster shook his head.  "No, he told me he wouldn't have no bronco ride
back behind his horses with us."

Abel shrugged and walked away.

"Rain weather," Alex said to Abel, who leaned on his trimming axe to
look upward.  "If that road goin' down is wet, those big horses won't
be able to hold back the load and using skid chains won't help much."

Jumping Mouse learned quickly.  He knew how to set the tackle chain
with just enough slack to give the pullers a fair start before they
came up even with the log.  He was nimble and quick, and could
disengage the chain choker quicker than Abel or Alex.  The older men
continually cautioned him not so much he really needed to be warned of
the deadly danger of loading logs, but because they were worried about
him.

When the three of them trooped back over into shade to tank up and rest
for a while, Abel grinned at the youth as he said, "Boy, you're wastin'
your talents livin' in the Blue Mountains.  You'd ought to go to work
in town or maybe for one of the cow outfits."

The Indian seemed embarrassed by Abel's rough praise.  As though to
make less of his work he said, "I done this before, with my father and
some of the old men.  But we didn't have a very good chain-fall.  The
blocks was wood and they broke a lot."

"Did you split the logs before loading them, like we're doing?"

"No."  The boy looked at Abel.  "We should have, huh?"

"Makes 'em easier to handle, and they aren't as likely to roll back and
maybe hurt a man."

Jumping Mouse said mockingly, "Dumb damned Indians."

Alex looked at him.  "No such a thing," he exclaimed.  "If folks aren't
showed the easy way to do things, how they are supposed to know?"

The sun was slanting away, which increased the shadows in the forest.
It also made it a little cooler.  Now, rising dust from the work was
more noticeable, which it hadn't been during full daylight.  Alex
paused occasionally to wipe his eye.  The dust bothered it a little.

They had leveled the load, which allowed for the positioning of two
smaller, unsplit round logs on top, and one more final round log atop.
They ratcheted the two lower logs into place; Alex grunted up to use
his fir limb like a peavey, and left it between the logs to hold them
slightly apart to make a good nesting place for the cap log.

Abel and Jumping Mouse watched from below, resting until Alex scrambled
down, then Jumping Mouse leaned to warp each end of the last log high
enough off the ground to get the chain under and around it.  Alex and
Abel evened up the chain and fastened it to the chain-blocks.  Abel
smiled and said to Alex, "This here is the log we been lookin' for
since we started.  The last one."

Alex spat on his callused hands and gripped chain.  Abel moved behind
him to do the same thing.  Jumping Mouse looped a rope to one end of
the log to keep it from turning right or left as it went up the
skids.

Alex spoke over his shoulder.  "You set, Abel?"

"Yep."

They began pulling on the chain.  When the slack had been taken up and
the log moved against the skids, Jumping Mouse watched closely because
this was where it would twist if it was going to and it did, so he sat
back, waited until the log was off the ground, then pulled to
straighten the log as it started up the skids.

Alex shook off sweat.  The log was neither large nor particularly heavy
but it had to go all the way up the side of the load and over.  He and
Abel had to work steadily.  When the cap log was midway up the skids,
which was about where they had been able to ease off on the other logs,
it was still only halfway up.  As Alex re gripped the chain, his eye
stung from sweat and his muscles bulged from strain but worked
smoothly.  He swore under his breath.

Jumping Mouse looked back because the log had stopped moving.  He let
out a curse.

Alex, his legs locked hard and his muscles bunched along his arms and
shoulders, gasped, "What is it?"

The youth's face was contorted.  "Mister Morrison.  He's sagging to his
knees."

Abel's face was ashen, his lips had lost color.  His legs were
crumbling beneath him, but he stubbornly clung to the chain with both
hands.  He had both eyes closed and breath was gusting past his lips.

Alex heard breath rattling behind him and stared whitely at Jumping
Mouse.  "Get out of the way," he croaked.  "I can't hold it."

The Indian dropped his rope.  Instead of running, he leapt straight at
Alex, whirled in front of him and locked both hands on the chain, which
was beginning to pay back as Alex's strength waned.

Jumping Mouse was rigidly braced.  "Let it slip slow," he said.
"Slow."

The log began to slide back down.  Jumping Mouse's neck was red from
straining, his eyes did not leave the log as he allowed the chain to go
through his hands inches at a time.  Behind him Alex said, "Can't do
it."

The youth strained harder, sweat poured off him, his jaw was locked.
"You got to.  Slower ..."

It seemed to take a lifetime before the log came down the skids and
bumped against the ground.  Jumping Mouse risked a look back.  Alex's
mouth was wide open, his shirt was soaking wet.  He met the Indian's
stare with blurred vision.  "Throw a kink in the chain," Alex gasped.
The youth obeyed and as the chain could no longer pass through the
blocks, effectively halting the log, Alex eased up very gradually.

Alex felt slack and let the chain fall.  He waited until Jumping Mouse
shoved a sawed round under the log, then, chest on fire, lungs pumping,
slowly sat down.

Abel was lying on his face.  If they had been unable to halt the log's
descent it would have rolled over all of them, but especially Abel
Morrison, who was unconscious.

Jumping Mouse ran for a canteen, handed it to Alex, who drank some
water and doused what remained over Abel.

SIX

The of the Matter

Foster struggled up to the loading site where he saw Alex easing Abel
Morrison over onto his back.  With a deeply furrowed brow, he leaned a
little as he said, "Is he dead?"

Alex did not respond; he was loosening Morrison's neckerchief and
putting his hat under Abel's head.  The unconscious man had blue lips,
and there was a hint of a bluish tint under his eyes.

Foster wrung his hands and made a little clicking sound with his ivory
teeth.  He looked around at the youth.  "Boy, go fetch that bottle of
whisky behind the grub box."

Jumping Mouse ran.

Alex sat back on his haunches.  While looking at Abel's face he said,
"Damned shallow breathing, sort of fluttery ... Foster, he had no
business comin' up here.  He ain't up to this sort of work."

Foster said, "It's his wagon."

Alex turned a fiery eye on Foster.  It was his wagon, but what the hell
did that have to do with Abel overdoing it just now?

Foster said, "I'll get some water.  Cool him off."

Alex continued to sit back like an old squaw in mourning.  He was
irritable, rumpled and very worried.

Jumping Mouse returned with the bottle, put it beside Alex, and moved
to the opposite side of Abel Morrison.  The youth dropped to both knees
and, with Alex watching with a widening expression of bafflement,
inserted a hollow dry reed into Abel's mouth, working it gently so far
down Alex was about to snarl at him.  The Indian leaned over, filled
his lungs and blew steadily into the reed.

He continued to do this until Abel's fingers began to twitch.

Witnessing this, Alex exclaimed, "Gawddamn!"

Jumping Mouse raised his eyes and continued to work at the hollow reed.
Abel's eyelids flickered, his nostrils flared, and finally he feebly
raised an arm and with quivering fingers tried to brush something away
whatever was gagging him.

Jumping Mouse withdrew the reed and sat back, as Alex was doing, to
watch.

Foster returned with a canteen full of water.  He halted to watch as
Abel sucked down huge, slow inhalations of mountain air, both eyes
open.  Foster put the canteen down.

They were silent and still for a full ten minutes watching Abel
Morrison struggle to recover.  His color still did not improve much,
and he was clearly too weak to move; but he was breathing, and
occasional little twitches showed that his limbs had blood pumping to
them again.

Alex slowly reached for the whisky bottle.  He drank from it and
offered it to Foster, who also drank.  Alex looked across Abel at
Jumping Mouse.  "Where'd you learn that trick?"  he asked.

The youth stared at Abel's face when he answered.  "From my mother. She
learnt it from her grandfather, who was a Navajo."

Alex finally trickled whisky down Abel's gullet.  Not much, but it
brought back the color and at least a false sensation of renewed
strength to the sick man.  Abel rolled his eyes sideways.  "Alex, what
happened?"

"You passed out.  Abel, you god damned half-wit, you scairt the hell
out of me.  And I'm going to tell you, you pig-headed old billy goat,
this is the last time you're goin' to come up here to make wood."

"No, Alex.  I'll be all right an' next year'

Alex's neck swelled.  "If you do," he retorted fiercely, 'you do it
without me ... an' that means my horses.  Abel, you come within an ace
of dyin' right here, today.  If it hadn't been for the lad there, you
would have as sure as I'm settin' here."

"The lad?"  He rolled his eyes in the opposite direction.  "What did
you do?"  he asked the Indian boy.

"Put a hollow reed down your throat and breathed hard for you because
you couldn't breathe for yourself

Abel continued to gaze at the youth through a long period of silence,
then he struggled to sit up and reach for the bottle, but Alex firmly
pushed him back.  "Lie still.  Foster, hand me that bottle will you?
Abel, don't you do anythin' but swallow."

Eventually Abel slept.  Alex, Foster, and Jumping Mouse sat close and
watched him.  After he was sleeping, Alex stiffly got upright, swung
his arms, and raised his old hat to run bent fingers through his coarse
gray hair.

He looked at the Indian youth.  He wagged his head and showed a
lessening of the strain in his face.  He smiled and turned toward
Foster.  "You wasn't here.  He grabbed the chain when Abel passed out.
If he hadn't, I couldn't have held that damned log by myself an' it
would have rolled back real fast.  Maybe him and me could have jumped
clear, but Abel was unconscious.  That log would have squashed him
flatter'n a pancake."

Foster gazed at the boy.  "What was that business about a reed?"

Alex explained, then raised the bottle for two more swallows of its
gut-searing contents.

Foster did not gaze at the youth; he looked at Abel.  "Wasn't his time,
is all I got to say."

They were through for the day even though it was still early.  They sat
like three morose crows on a fence watching Abel sleep.

One of Alex's big horses whinnied.  As Alex turned to squint out where
the horses had been grazing, Foster said, "If they wasn't geldings, I'd
swear one of them was horsing."

Alex turned fully around and swore.  "Damn it, look out there.  Wild
horses."

The mustangs were not easily seen through the dust banner that rose in
their wake.  Alex started toward camp with long strides.  Foster said,
"If that horse hadn't bellowed, they'd have run on past."  He was
right.  Some of the mustangs continued eastward, but one particular
horse rammed down to halt with his head high.  They heard him whistle
up as far as the wood-making area.  Foster said, "Stud-horse.  If he
comes for Alex's horses, he's goin' to get shot."

Alex was already rummaging for his Winchester.  He straightened up,
legs wide apart, squinting with his one good eye out where the wild
stallion was still obscured by dust.  The range was too great for a
carbine.

Alex's big horses were coming around, heads forward.  They saw nothing
but the stallion.

Foster said, "Stay with Abel," to Jumping Mouse, and went swiftly down
in the direction of camp.

Alex was already walking southward, keeping the bulk of his bays
between himself and the stallion.  He was not a good shot and had no
illusions about hitting the wild horse, unless he could get close.

One of the bays made a little sashay in the direction of the stallion,
stopped and flung up his head to whinny again.  It could have been a
challenge or it could have been a demonstration of curiosity, but to
wild horses it was a battle signal.  The stallion bobbed his head
several times and pawed until dust flew, then he cake walked before
lining out in the direction of the team animals.  He halted once,
proudly erect, head high, and made his challenging whistle again.  It
was a sound that carried a great distance.

He was not a large horse in comparison to the draft animals; he could
have been at the most fifteen hands high, and because the feed was
abundant and strong this early time of year, he was rounding out after
a hard winter.  Right now he was about eight hundred and fifty pounds
all bone, muscle, sinew, and fighting horse.

The rough-looking old rump sprung mares watched from farther back.  One
of them looked over her shoulder westward, then came around with
coon-footed springiness, bobbed her head and snorted.  The stallion
paid no attention until the mares whirled in unison and ran, heads up,
tails straight out, going eastward.

The stallion turned his head to watch their flight, then turned back to
look at the draft horses, and flaunched a little with indecision.
Finally, as Alex raised the Winchester, the stallion whirled on sprung
hind legs, front legs clear of the ground, and came down lining out
eastward in a dead run.  Wherever the bullet went, it was nowhere near
the running wild horse because he did not even change leads.  But the
explosion from behind startled his big horses; they swung clumsily and
went lumbering in panic in the same direction as the wild horses.

Alex watched, then swore so loudly Foster could hear him very clearly.
Even Jumping Mouse, much farther away, also heard him.

He was still standing out there glaring after his horses and red as a
beet when two riders came down-country in a long lope.  As one of them
raised his arm in a high salute, they began to separate as they closed
swiftly on the big lumbering bays.

Alex turned and watched.  Foster leaned to fill a tin cup with coffee,
but his interest was not in the bays.  It was in the pair of centaurs
coming up on the bays from each side.  Foster smiled, sipped coffee,
and as Alex turned back toward camp, laughed to himself.  Alex walked
up in a sweat, leaned his Winchester aside and held out his hand as
Foster handed him a cup of coffee.

"Good thing the Templetons come along, Alex, or that stallion would
have ambushed your team an' skinned 'em alive ... Alex?"

"What!"  he answered grumpily.

"Ever since we been comin' up here Abel's been after you to hobble your
horses when you turn them loose.  Now maybe you'll do it."

Alex emptied the cup, tossed it aside, and watched as the Templetons
came around on his big horses, then began driving them back.  He was a
hard-headed man, and he would not have enjoyed having to eat crow, but
quite possibly getting his horses back uninjured had something to do
with his reply to Foster.

"All right, I'll hobble them," he growled, went looking for hobbles and
walked down where the Templetons were coming up with the bays.

Bart Templeton was on the ground talking soothingly to the draft
animals when Alex got there.  Bart's wife was still in the saddle,
because she wanted to be ready if the big horses tried to run again,
but also because she had caught sight of someone on the ground and it
looked like an injured man to her.

Bart grinned as Alex went up to his nearest bay horse, and disgustedly
buckled on the hobbles.  "We were on the trail," he said to the
one-eyed man.  "It never crossed my mind your horses would be loose out
there."

"Well, they won't be loose no more," stated Alex, going over to hobble
the other bay horse.  As he arose he said, "You was after that band?"

"We'd finished fixin' up one of the salt traps when they came through
the trees.  When they busted around and ran for it, we decided to get a
look at them."

Nan Templeton interrupted.  "Is someone injured up there where the
wagon is standing.  Is that someone on the ground?"

Alex mopped sweat as he replied.  "Yes'm.  It's Abel Morrison.  We was
chain-falling a log an' his heart gave out.  He's better now, but I'll
tell you, there he had me scairt half to death.  That In'ian boy saved
his bacon.  Stuck a hollow reed down his gullet and.  blew into it.  I
never heard of such a thing before."

Nan's large, liquid dark eyes went to Alex Smith's face.  "Heart
trouble?  Has he ever fainted like that before?"

"No ma'am, not that I know of.  But for a fact he's got heart trouble,
had it for years."

She frowned slightly.  "Then what is he doing up here doing this kind
of work?"

Alex looked from Nan to her husband as he said, "Don't ask me, ask him,
the darned fool ... You folks come on up an' we'll eat.  I'm real
obliged for you bringing back my horses.  It won't happen again.  I'll
keep them hobbled."

Nan dismounted and with her husband led her horse up to the camp.  They
cared for their animals, then thanked Foster for the cups of hot coffee
he handed them.  Nan took hers with her as she started up where Abel
was sleeping.  She smiled at the youth and said, "Hello, Jumping
Mouse."

"Hello, Missus Templeton.  You can call me Jim Moore that was my name
at the reservation school."

She accepted that.  "How is he?"  she asked, jutting her chin
Indian-fashion toward the sleeping man.

"Sleeping now.  I guess he is better.  He fell down an' passed out when
he was loading a log."

Nan knelt and looked closely at Abel.  He was breathing deeply and
rhythmically.  She smiled at the Indian.  "Mister Smith said you saved
his life."

His eyes darted away from her face.  "He maybe would have been all
right anyway."

She sipped coffee, regarded the Indian boy for a long moment, then went
thoughtfully back to camp.  Foster, and Alex were deep in a discussion
of trapping wild horses, which only Bart had ever done with consistent
success over the years.  Alex and Foster, like a great many men, had
tried their hand at it at one time or another, but neither of them had
been successful enough to choose horse-trapping to make a living.

Nan sat and listened, sipped her coffee, and when

Foster eventually rummaged in the grub box, she helped him prepare a
meal.  As they worked apart from Bart and Alex, she asked about the
Indian boy.  Foster told her what he knew.  She was interested in what
they intended to do about him when they left Wild Horse Mesa.

Foster glanced at Alex's back before lowering his voice as he replied.
"Well, at first Alex was so mad about him takin' the horses he didn't
care if the lad stayed up here and starved.  I've known Alex Smith a
long time, ma'am.  Now I got a hunch he'll take the lad with him when
we head down out of here."

"And the boy?"

Foster smiled.  "He's a strange youngster.  For a couple of days he
wouldn't talk, least of all to Alex.  Now, him and Alex talk together.
I think the boy's goin' to follow Alex around like a puppy."

Nan sat down with a dented old wash pan in her lap as she started
peeling potatoes, and asked if Alex was married.

Foster shook his head.  "No.  Widower I expect."

"What does he do for a living?"

"Owns the gun shop down in Holtville."

Nan let the discussion end there.

SEVEN

On Idle Day

Bart Templeton listened as Alex told him they weren't going to put a
cap log on the wagon; he was not going to risk another accident.

Bart said, "You're through up here then?"

Alex nodded.  "Yep.  We can head for home tomorrow."

"What about your partner up yonder?"

Alex flung the dregs from his coffee cup.  "We'll make him a soft bed
atop the rig, where that cap log was supposed to go."

Bart looked pensive.  "It might be better to wait a few days.  If you
need more grub, we brought up quite a bit and you're welcome to some of
it.  Seems to me from what I've heard, this heart trouble is
serious."

Alex grew thoughtful.  "He's sick all right.  Dang near died."

There was a commotion out there where the hobbled big horses were. They
were looking southward, the direction the wild horses had taken. Alex
muttered, "They're comin' back."

Bart shook his head.  "I doubt it.  Maybe tomorrow but not this
soon."

Alex continued to watch his horses.  When they eventually dropped their
heads to crop grass, he settled forward and picked up the conversation.
"We could wait a few days, an' thanks but we got more than enough
grub."  The big horses squared around again standing like statues
looking westward, ears up and bodies tense.  "It's something," Alex
muttered.

Bart walked down away from the trees with him.  When they were far
enough southward to have an unobstructed wester ward view, there was
nothing to be seen.  Alex puckered his good eye.

Bart raised an arm.  "Horsemen.  Up closer to the timber.  Watch up
there near that leaning big old snag."

Alex tipped down his hat and watched.  "Sure enough," he said, sounding
puzzled.  "Looks like four of 'em.  I wonder who they are an' what
they're doin' up here."

The distant riders reined northward up through the timber and were lost
to sight.  Alex shrugged them off.  "At least it wasn't them damned
wild horses again," he said, and led the way back where Foster and Nan
had put together a meal.  She took two tin plates of food up where Abel
and the Indian boy were sitting comfortably,

talking.  "Sit there," she said, kneeling and handing each of them a
plate.  She smiled at Abel.  "How do you feel?"

He made a rueful grin.  "About like someone who's been pulled through a
knothole.  Jim was telling me about the ruckus over Alex's horses
runnin' off."  His smile faded.  "I've told him at least fifty times to
hobble them.  They are his pets, like children to him.  If the Angel
Gabriel come along and told Alex to hobble those horses, he wouldn't do
it."

Nan smiled.  "They're hobbled now."

Abel glanced southward, out where the big horses were grazing, then
back at the beautiful woman.  "About time," he growled.

She watched them eat and offered to go back for coffee, but Abel shook
his head.  "No.  Jim here'll do it, won't you?"

The youth arose, smiled, and walked down the slope.  The moment he was
gone, Nan brought up the subject of what was to become of him.  Abel
spoke between mouthfuls.  "We'll take him down out of here with us.  I
got the harness works in Holtville.  I can teach him a trade."

Nan said, "How old do you suppose he is?"

"Sixteen.  He told me."

"Mister Morrison, have you talked to him about going to town?"

"No.  We've talked about everything else, though: his folks, life on
the reservation.  His troubles."

"I wonder," Nan said thoughtfully, 'if he's ever lived in a town."

"I'd guess he hasn't, ma'am."

"Mister Morrison, he might be happier out in the country away from
people.  He's been a blanket Indian."

Abel studied her face.  "You got something in mind, ma'am?"

"Do you know my father, John Holbrook?  His ranch adjoins our place my
husband's homestead.  There are miles of deeded land, open country, not
many people."

"You want the boy?"

"Mister Morrison, we could give him a good home, and in time we could
bring him into ranch life, give him a basic education along with some
values he's going to need someday, when he's older."

"Does your husband like the idea, ma'am?"

Nan looked uncertain for the first time since the discussion had
started.  "I haven't mentioned it to him yet.  First, I wanted to know
what you and Mister Smith thought of the idea."

Abel raised the plate and resumed eating.  The youth was approaching
with a tin cup in each hand.  Abel smiled.  "I can't answer for Alex,
but for myself- I think you got a real good idea.  I could ride out now
an' then?"

"You'd always be welcome."

"Well now, Miz' Templeton, before you bring this up with Alex, let me
sound him out.  He can be pretty stubborn at times, an' he's taken a
shine to the boy."

She returned to the camp after the youth arrived.  Down there, her
husband, Alex, and Foster had reached an agreement.  Because it would
be unwise to move Abel for a few days and their work up on Wild Horse
Mesa was finished, they would go over to the Templeton camp and help
Bart catch some wild horses.  It was only a couple of miles; they could
come every day and see how Abel was making out.

Bart seemed pleased.  Foster and Alex liked the idea.  It would take up
their time until Abel was well enough to travel.  Nan asked what they
would do with the Indian boy.  Alex did not even hesitate.  "Take him
along.  He's right handy."

Later, when Foster and Alex went up to explain the plan to Abel, Nan
Templeton sat down beside her husband.  He said, "It'll help.  Two more
sets of hands can make the work of patching the trap a lot easier."

She smiled.  "Three sets of hands.  Jim Moore, too."  She explained.
"Jim Moore is the Indian's name."  His expression brightened.  "All
right.  I thought his name was Jumping Mouse."

"He told me it is also Jim Moore.  We should get back before a bear
scents up our supplies."

He went for their horses, and Nan trudged up the slope and told the
older men they were going to leave.  She thanked them for the meal and
the company.  Eventually Foster said, "That's a lucky horse breaker
Abel and Alex solemnly nodded.  Jim Moore walked over to stand beside
the loaded wagon looking at it.  When Alex joined him, the youth said,
"We could have got Mister Templeton to help us chain that log up on
top."

Alex fidgeted.  "Yeah, we could have; only we don't really need that
log.  We got more'n enough firewood as it is.  You know anything about
catchin' wild horses, Jim?"

The youth turned.  "No.  My father went out with the others sometimes.
I never went along."

Alex nodded his head.  "Then I expect you're goin' to learn how it's
done.  We're goin' to help Mister Templeton catch some."  At Jim's
questioning look Alex said, "Can't move Abel for a few days.  It might
put a strain on his heart, and he'd not likely survive another one of
those failings so soon after the other one.  We'll come over every day
and look after him."

Jim accepted that.  He and Alex started down to the camp to do the
chores.  On the way the boy asked Alex if Nan Templeton was part
Indian, and Alex shook his head.  Then he said, "Ask her, if it means
that much to you.  You don't feel easy around folks that ain't Indian;
is that it?"

Jim's answer was short.  "No, that's not it.  People are people."

Foster came down to stir up the fire and start a meal, and Alex pitched
in to help.  The three of them got along in an easy sort of way.  The
Indian seemed to have accepted the older men, and they had certainly
accepted him.

When the food was ready and Jim was to take some up to Abel, Foster
restrained him with a hand on the arm, a scowl, and a wag of his
head.

Alex trudged up there with the plate and cup of hot coffee.  Abel was
chewing.  Alex squinted.  "Maybe chewin' isn't good for folks with bad
hearts," he said.

Abel spat out his cud, because he was hungry and Alex was kneeling to
hand him the plate and cup.  He said, "A lot of things aren't good for
folks with bad or good hearts.  Alex, when my time comes nothing can
prevent it, an' until it comes nothin' is goin' to kill me."

Abel raised the plate and began to eat, watched Alex get comfortable,
then between mouthfuls said, "About Jim."

"What about him?  He's pullin' his weight."

"It's not that, Alex.  If we take him to Holtville with us.  Neither
one of us is set up to raise a boy.  He'd have to sleep on the floor at
my shop or at your place.  He's not a town In'ian."

Abel ate a while marshaling arguments, then he put the plate aside. "We
owe him, Alex.  Me especially for savin' my bacon.  He's a good boy,
In'ian or not."

"I agree, Abel; I've known you a long time.  When you get to talkin'
like this you're up to something.  What is it?"

Abel was not going to be rushed.  "Blanket In'ians are used to open
country, the wind in their faces, game to hunt, mountains to'

"Abel, you missed your calling.  Instead of patchin' harness an'
saddles you should have taken to writin' poetry.  Get to the damned
point!"

Abel turned his head.  "None of us got any business tryin' to raise a
child, even a half grown one.  You know it."

Alex squirmed to get more comfortable on the fir needles.  He emptied
the tin cup then said, "Miz' Templeton could give him a decent home, in
big open country, an' they could teach him a trade."

"She really wants him, Abel?  Her husband, too?"

"Alex, she is a woman not one man in a million could say no to."

Alex sat for a long time in thought.  "I was kind of thinkin' of takin'
him on myself.  Make a lean-to room on the back of the shop."

Abel understood.  The big horses were fine, but they were still horses.
Jim Moore was a person.  Abel leaned and rapped his friend on the arm.
"We could ride out.  Miz' Templeton said we'd be welcome any time.
Alex, be honest about it.  They got a lot more to offer him than we
have, an' what's important is how he's goin' to make out in the
future."

Alex arose and brushed himself off.  "Now you're beginnin' to sound
like a preacher," he muttered.  "What does Jim say?"

Abel had no answer.  Alex's squint tightened.  "You haven't told him,
have you?"

"No.  I haven't an' I don't think Nan did."

"Well now, Abel, you're all fired up about what's fair, wouldn't you
say the first thing would be to leave it up to the lad?"

Abel nodded half-heartedly because he knew how sly old Alex could be.
"All right, but neither one of us will mention it to him."

"Then how in hell is he going to find out?"

"Let Miz' Templeton tell him.  That's fair and proper."

Alex fished for his makings and rolled a cigarette.  He had been
thinking some very private thoughts since the youth had saved Abel's
life and might even have saved Alex's, too, by refusing to abandon the
chain-fall and run for it.

Abel interrupted his sombre thoughts.  "Help me up.  I'll go down near
the fire and roll into my blankets."

"Abel, you confounded idiot," Alex exclaimed in exasperation.  "You
never learn do you?  Four hours back you was standin' with one boot in
the grave an' the other foot on a banana peel.  You're a sick man."

Abel sat there as his friend went back to camp.  He smiled as he said,
"Maybe I'm an idiot but, by gawd, I know enough to hobble horses.  And
you just give the best argument why neither one of us had ought to take
over Jim Moore.  You can't see worth a damn an' one day I'm not goin'
to wake up in the morning."

EIGHT

The Templeton camp was up in the timber, high enough so that by a
scabrous old prehistoric rock three times as tall as a man on
horseback, it was possible to look down upon about half of the mesa and
a short distance farther westward.

It occurred to Alex that his bay horses could not thrive in the
forest.

Bart offered a solution of sorts.  He said, "Nothing's spoiled the
grass in the corrals very much.  The feed's tall and strong in there.
On the hike up here, you saw that the pole partition between the two
corrals had rotted.  We can fix that bad section, then put your big
horses in the far corral."

Alex had considered this suggestion.  "Those horses can eat all the
grass in there in one day."

Bart nodded.  "Maybe after one day we can turn them loose outside the
corrals.  We put two sacks of rock salt in the salt log you saw in the
first corral."

Alex nodded.  "That should bring 'em," he said, meaning wild horses.

"It should," agreed the horse breaker  "And the smell of your horses
ought to do the rest, make them willin' to come right on in."

Foster began to smile as understanding arrived.  Alex had reservations
about the log partition being stout enough to prevent some orry-eyed
wild stallion from getting at his bays.  He said, "We better get an
early start and snake down some pretty big logs."

Foster asked why Bart bothered with wild horses at all, when he was
known to have a fair-sized domestic herd of his own.

"It's real simple," Templeton stated.  "I got a remount stud, Big Ben,
he minds our mares very well.  Sometimes he comes up here to try an'
steal some wild mares.  Ten days ago a wild stallion from up here
reversed the process.  He fought Big Ben to a standstill, and herded
about six of my open mares back up here.  Nan and I were over at her
paw's place and didn't even know the mares were gone."

Foster grinned and said, "Now you want your mares back."

Bart laughed.  "With interest.  I don't want the stud.  I want my mares
and a few of the wild ones, too."

Foster got into his blankets, settled low, then sat up to place his
Winchester and Colt no more than ten inches from his ground-cloth. Alex
saw him do this and grunted.  "That's not goin' to happen twice the
same week."

"Yeah?  How do you know?  This is bear country."

They all settled in and did not awaken until the hour before sunrise.
Jim was already pushing dry twigs into the coals and blowing on them.

Breakfast was not a noisy time.  Afterward, the men picked up tools and
went into the timber to select poles for the corral.  It required the
entire day, right up until the sun was setting, to cut, limb, and snake
the logs down there, then to lever them into position and make them fit
tightly between two uprights at one end, another pair at the opposite
end, and a final pair in the middle.  They had to make a gate where
there had never been one.

The last thing they did before walking wearily all the way up to the
camp where Nan was preparing supper was put Alex's two bay horses in
the partitioned-off corral.

Tired, the men said little at supper.  Later, before bedding-down time,
Nan Templeton managed to manoeuvre Alex away from the others, and said,
"Jim takes hold, doesn't he?"  And before Alex replied, she went on,
"It's as though he's been searching for a place to fit in, isn't it?"

"I expect he has been, ma'am.  Being alone is bad enough for an adult,
for someone his age, suddenly orphaned and movin' God-knows-where, it's
a hard time.  You're worryin' about the boy.  He'll be all right.  He's
tough an' savvy and In'ians just naturally adapt, like coyotes or wild
dogs."

She searched his face for the signs of denigration his remark had
implied.  All she saw was a lined, permanently roughened and darkened
skin, and an expression of absolute candor.

"Alex ... do you suppose living on a horse ranch, with freedom and
substitute parents who care, would help him?"

"No doubt about it at all," he told her and waited for whatever came
next.

"I talked to my husband about Jim.  He was surprised at first.  But he
likes the idea.  He's a kindly man, Alex.  He has more patience than
most horse breakers have."

"Ma'am, I got to admit I'd figured on adopting Jim myself.  But I don't
really have a place for him, and maybe comin' to live in town after
bein' a reservation In'ian, he wouldn't be happy ... But the lad earned
our likin' up here, and he sure earned our respect, so if you folks
take him home with you, Abel, Foster, and I'd like to know we'd be
welcome to come visit him."

As Nan studied the lined old face, she found faint signs of
disappointment.  Impulsively, she kissed Alex on his beard-stub bled
cheek, and smiled at him.  "You would be welcome any time, even if it
weren't for Jim."  She paused.  "He'll need uncles.  Alex, I don't
think he could have three better ones."

Alex hadn't moved or blinked since that kiss.  She had caught him
totally off-guard.  He had time to recover so when she finished he
said, "Who is goin' to ask the boy, ma'am?  It's up to him."

Her liquid-soft, very dark eyes were on his face as she said, "Would
you do it?  He respects you very much."

Alex grinned.  "He's the first horse thief I ever come onto I didn't go
after tooth and fang.  Yes'm, I'll talk to him."

He watched her walk back through the soft night toward the fire.  For a
confounded fact Fate was a meddling, devious, sly-acting son of a
bitch.  A man came up to an isolated, uninhabited big plateau to cut
firewood, and everything under the sun that could infuriate him scare
the hell out of him annoy and upset him then make his heart ache
because he had found, and lost, something that would have filled his
remaining years happened.

A man went to these far places for a little serenity.  Alex sat down on
the bedroll.  He was tired, he was also sad when Foster came along
showing ivory teeth by starlight.  Alex glanced at him.  "What the hell
are you so happy about?"

"That's my natural disposition.  It makes me feel good to be with
people I like."

Alex wanted to snarl at someone but after Foster's last remark he
couldn't do it.  As an afterthought he said, "You reckon those wild
horses will come tonight?"

Foster was getting ready to roll in.  "If that wily stud horse doesn't
smell us up here."

"We're too far for that," Alex said drowsily.

Foster chuckled.  "I wouldn't be too sure of that."

Jim came to hunker at the fire ring poking for coals next morning, and
when he found them he placed thin, very dry twigs in a careful
fretwork, then bent over and blew until a pencil-sized blue flame
arrived.

He went back up through the trees for an armload of more dry kindling.
Nan turned and reached to roughen the hair of her husband until he
awakened.

Bart glanced at his wife.  "Did you hear horses last night?"

She hadn't.  "No.  Did you?"

He was reaching for his boots when he replied.  "I didn't hear anything
last night."

She eyed him fondly.  "You work too hard."

He smiled at her, then leaned to pull swollen feet into cold boots.
"People die from not working enough; I never heard of anyone dyin' from
doing his share."

"Yes, you did.  Abel Morrison.  He almost died."

He stood up to watch the Indian youth approaching from the forest.  He
was carrying something, but it wasn't kindling wood.  "We'd better ride
over and see how Abel's doing today ... What's Jim carrying?"

For five seconds she did not speak, then she said, "Hobbles," with a
sudden rush of breath.

Bart went quickly to meet the boy.  Jim did not say a word, he simply
held up four sets of Mormon hobbles and looked steadily at Bart, who
reached, took the hobbles, and turned with them toward the firelight.

Bart let the hobbles hang at his side as he faced the youth.  Jim
pointed.  "They're gone.  All four of them."

Bart gazed up in the direction of the small glade where he had left the
animals.  His mind was perfectly clear.  He handed back the hobbles and
started up the trees.  Jim hesitated, then followed.

When Bart stopped, he saw the glade was empty.  Jim walked out and
around, making a circuit of the glade.  When he was nearly opposite
Bart Templeton, he leaned, finally sank to one knee, and this time when
he raised his head Bart was already walking toward him.

The tracks were identifiable as the marks left by shod horses; four of
them walking in a row.  It was impossible to make out much more until
the dawn widened the scope of its penetration.

Jim paralleled the tracks, which were faint, and Bart moved with the
youth, but upon the opposite side of the tracks.  Bart stopped
abruptly, dropped to both knees and leaned close as he traced out a
boot-track with one finger.

Jim continued to scout for signs.  Eventually he found boot tracks, and
by the time Bart caught up, he had found something else: a place among
the trees where a number of men had been with horses.  They must have
been there quite a while, judging from the droppings of their
animals.

Jim picked up something moist and sticky, held it up on his palm for
Bart to sniff, then dropped it as Bart said, "Cud of chewing tobacco.
We've been raided by horse thieves."

The Indian was almost apologetic as they started back.  "I didn't hear
anything last night."

Bart looked down and roughly slapped Jim on the shoulder.  "Neither did
I. Horse thieves like this bunch don't make noise.  Yesterday when
Alex's horses were acting skittish, he and I walked down there; west of
us riding up close to the timber, we saw four horsemen."

Jim looked up.  "Them?"

"Wouldn't surprise me none," Bart said, and widened his stride at the
sound of activity down at the camp.

Jim had to almost trot to keep up.  Normally he had a big appetite.
This morning as he followed Bart down into camp, he had no appetite at
all.

NINE

Wild Horse Mesa

Alex wasn't there to drink hot coffee with them, and he did not appear
until they were toying with their food.

He stopped a hundred or so feet from them and bellowed.  "They're gone!
My horses are gone!"  He panted to the stone ring and sank to the
ground.  "We tied that gate closed from the outside.  There's not a
horse alive with a neck long enough to reach over that far and worry
that knot loose."

Bart nodded, but he took the loss of Alex's horses as a serious blow
because now they were on foot.

Alex raised his bloodshot eye to Bart.  "Sure as I'm setting here it
was those riders we saw yesterday.  Four of 'em.  Remember?"

Bart remembered.  He was past shock and was already thinking ahead.

Jim slipped away, climbed that scabrous old rack northwest of camp, and
for a long time lay belly down atop it.  When he came back to camp he
said, "I saw them," and jutted his chin southward.  "A long distance.
Four riders driving four small horses and two big horses."

Nan had a flicker of hope.  "Southward?  They will cross our range and
my father's range.  If my father's riders see them, they'll know the
Templeton brand."

Horse thieves driving branded horses would not go anywhere near ranch
buildings, neither would they risk being seen by riders if they saw the
riders first.  Perhaps luck would intervene, but that was not anything
a man wanted to hang his hopes on.

Bart looked a long time at the Indian's cracked, broken old worn-down
boots before he said, "You up to a little dog-trotting?"

Jim understood at once.  He stood up, picked up three soggy hoecakes,
dropped them into a ragged pocket, and nodded his head.

Nan said, "The ranch is almost thirty miles, Bart."

He turned, leaned to kiss her, and said, "We don't have to go that far.
You're forgetting about the Wiltons, Nan."  He turned toward Alex and
Foster.  "Might be a good idea if you went over to see how Abel's
getting along.  We'll get back as soon as we can ... Jim?"

The others watched Bart and the Indian strike out downhill.  The old
men were silent, but Nan wasn't.  "I'm afraid," she said.  "One man and
a boy against four outlaws."

Foster asked, "What did he mean you forgot about the Wiltons?"

"Last year some emigrants got stranded on the north range.  Their baby
was ill and the woman almost died.  They couldn't move on.  Father gave
them a hundred acres up there."

Foster's eyes widened.  "How far from here?"

She guessed.  "Six, maybe eight miles."

Foster smiled at Alex.  "Well, now, that's better'n thirty miles to the
ranch."

Alex asked Nan, "Do they have saddle animals?"

"One," she replied, watching her husband and Jim Moore break clear of
the timber and strike out across the wide plateau.  "One saddle animal
and two team horses."

She turned away from the seated men and became busy putting the camp in
order.  Alex and Foster put some food in a cloth and struck out through
the timber in the direction of their old camp.

Their hopes had been resurrected with the revelation that Bart would
not have to go all the way down to the Holbrook place.  Two men, a man
and a boy, good physical specimens, could probably reach the emigrant
camp a little past noon.  If Bart borrowed the settler's saddle horse,
he could cover the distance to the Holbrook yard in good time, and take
up the pursuit on a fresh horse, with John Holbrook's riders to back
him up.

Abel was over at the creek shaving with cold water, and lye soap.  He
had a steel mirror propped against a rock.  When he heard them coming,
he twisted, then went back to finish shaving as Foster arrived first,
with Alex a few yards behind.  Foster blurted the story, and Abel
turned slowly to stare at him.

Alex told Abel about the Wiltons and they discussed Bart Templeton's
prospects.  At first Abel had been shocked; now he said, "Last night,
real late, I thought I heard horses walkin' along up above in the
timber.  Wild horses wouldn't go up in there, especially at night.  I
guess I should have gone up to look around, but I didn't."

Foster said, "It's a danged good thing you didn't.  Sure as hell
they've had shot you ... We brought you some grub."

Abel took the little bundle and led the way back to the shade of his
bedroll area on the east side of the loaded wagon.  It was ready to be
pulled back down off the plateau, but there were no horses to pull
it.

Abel sat down, looked at the food that had been rolled all together,
and began eating.  Occasionally he glanced at Alex, who was rolling a
smoke, grim in the face and dourly silent.

Abel asked where Nan was.  Alex trickled smoke as he replied.  "Wanted
to be alone."

The thieves had stolen all their horses, which meant any pursuit would
be on foot in a very isolated area.  They were probably very satisfied
with themselves, and they would have had a right to be if there had not
been an emigrant camp where their victims could get help only a short
distance from the mesa.

Abel thought he would go back to the horse camp with his friends, but
Foster very quickly came down hard in opposition.  So did Alex.

Abel did not argue.  His friends split enough wood to keep him warm for
several days, rested for another hour or so, then told him they would
return the next day and departed.

When Abel got back to town he would go see Doctor Mailer but he really
did not believe he had to; a man was as good a monitor of his own
physical workings as a medical man would be.

It had been borne in upon Abel last night while he was lying
sleeplessly in his blankets that this would be his last visit to Wild
Horse Mesa.

Abel suddenly felt hungry.  He strode across the little glade and
emerged upon the upper rim of the camping site where Foster saw him and
stopped feeding wood into the fire in astonishment.

Alex looked around.  So did Nan, but she arose and walked forward
smiling.  She took his blanket roll and led the way back where Foster
and Alex were making a point of working with pots and pans so they
would not have to look up.

Nan got Abel a cup of coffee.  Alex refused to look up, but Foster did.
"Suppose," he said, 'you'd had another of them seizures back yonder in
the trees?"

"I didn't, Foster," replied Abel as he sat down beside Alex.  "Good to
see you again," he said.

Alex turned and said, "Yeah.  You're damned lucky."

Nan changed the subject by saying she thought that her husband and Jim
Moore should have reached the Wiltons' camp.  "On horseback they can
get down to my father's yard by suppertime."

Foster smiled broadly.  "They'll overtake those men."

Nan's expression underwent a subtle change.  Abel noticed this and
said, "How many riders does your paw keep, ma'am?"

"Four full-time, Abel.  During the busy season sometimes another two or
three."

Abel spread his hands.  "That sure evens up the odds."

Nan and Foster got the meal.  Alex helped, but he had never been very
handy at cooking.  Abel was much handier, but he sipped coffee and
watched.

There was, they all knew perfectly well, not a thing any of them could
do except wait.  Worrying was inevitable but it was also useless.  As
Abel told Foster and Alex as they were rolling into their soogans well
across the fire ring from where Nan would bed down, "What it boils down
to is how long do we set up here like crows on a fence?"

Foster made a guess.  "Two more days."

TEN

A Dark Trail

Emily Wilton was bathing her baby, too engrossed to hear anything but
the child.  Her husband, who was patching harness, heard someone
coming.  He reached for his rifle as Bart and Jim emerged from the
trees, red-faced from exertion and soaked with sweat.  Emory Wilton
froze for five seconds, then left the rifle as he said, "Mister
Templeton!"

Bart smiled at the woman and began to explain who Jim Moore was, and
why they had arrived at the camp.

Emily listened.  Her husband reacted quickly.  "I'll go fetch the
saddle animal, and one of the team horses."  As he went for lead ropes
he said, "Yesterday Mister Holbrook's range boss came by."  The lanky
emigrant eyed Jim with frank interest as they hiked out where three
hobbled horses were grazing.

They were docile animals in good flesh.  As Emory Wilton went up to rig
them with lead ropes, he said he'd done a little riding this spring so
his horses weren't exactly green.

He knelt to remove the hobbles as Bart and Jim held the ropes.  Bart
fashioned two squaw bridles from the lead ropes, one on the saddle
animal, the other on the draft horse, and told Wilton they would ride
bareback and see the horses were returned.

Bart had been watching the pudding-footed big harness horse.  Not all
draft horses were broke to ride; while many were docile enough to
submit to a man on their backs, they neither reined well nor responded
to heel pressure.  Wilton's big animal responded to Jim's heels, but it
had to be squaw-reined, and even then the horse was hard to keep
heading in a straight line.

They walked the horses the last mile to the Holbrook ranch to have them
arrive in the yard cooled out.  The yard was empty.  Bart went directly
across to the main house, tied up, and headed for the porch.  Jim
decided to remain with the horses.

Bart started talking and John Holbrook went for two glasses of whisky,
handed one to Bart and took the other one with him as he went to the
far end of the large room.  He said, "It'll be dark in another hour or
so."

Bart sipped the whisky and nodded his head.  "They were going due
south," he said.  "I hope they feel safe enough by now to make a camp
for the night.  I'd like to ride south, too.  Maybe they'll have a
cooking fire."

Holbrook thought about this.  "It'll be chancy in the dark, Bart."

"I know.  But they've got a hell of a lead on us.  If we can't nibble
away at that, they're going to make it out of the country."

Holbrook's eyes widened.  "We?  You got Nan with you?"

"No, an Indian boy we found up in the mountains."

"Well, suppose I send the cook and one man up to the mesa to help those
folks, and you take my range boss and the other three men.  You got any
idea who those horse thieves are?"

"There were four men riding west up close to the trees the day before
the stock was stolen.  They were too far off to see much about them.
Just four men on horses."

"But you think it's them?"

Bart nodded, "I think it's probably them, but I don't really care.  I
just want to catch up to whoever it is."

Holbrook turned to place his half-empty glass on the log mantel.  "I'll
go down to the cook shack with you.  Why not leave the Indian boy here?
This isn't goin' to be something a person had ought to be involved with
unless he's grown and armed and handy."

Bart was not sure he should leave Jim, and he was equally uncertain
about taking him along, where there could very well be a gunfight.

John Holbrook halted by the emigrant's horses.  He said nothing about
the animals, and turned his attention upon the youth.  "What's your
name, lad?"

"Jim Moore."

"Jim, what's shaping up is likely to last all night and into tomorrow,
an' you already been without sleep a long time.  From the looks of you,
you been without food longer.  It would be best if you stayed here at
the yard until Bart comes back."

Jim's thin face lifted, the dark eyes seeking Bart's face.  Bart smiled
slowly and shrugged wide shoulders.  Jim looked at John Holbrook.  "I'd
like to go along."

Holbrook shrugged.  "All right.  You come with us, and we'll fill a
sugar sack with grub."

The riders had finished eating and all knew Bart Templeton, but he
appeared different from usual.  They eyed the skinny Indian youth with
equal interest.  Charley Lord, the tough, rawboned range boss smiled at
Bart.  "Find any horses up there?"  he asked.

Bart smiled back.  "Yeah, we saw a band, and we lost six of our own
horses."

John Holbrook explained to the listening range men  "It's up to you.
You been in the saddle all day, an' I've got a feeling this is goin' to
be a long trail with trouble at the end of it."

Lanky Charley gazed at the four men behind him, and said, "It'll take
us fifteen minutes to snake out fresh horses.  Bart, you'n the lad
better go and fill up while we're at it."  He squinted in the direction
of the ma inhouse tie-rack, then dryly said, "You'll need another
animal."

Bart said, "Two, Charley," and although Lord looked without much
enthusiasm at Jim Moore, he said nothing.

John Holbrook led the way into the cook shack.  "Got a couple of
starve-outs, Henry," the cowman said.  The cook nodded to Bart, then
considered Jim Moore and said something guttural and waited.  Jim's eye
widened and he answered in the same guttural language, and the cook
laughed.  "Set," he said in English.

John Holbrook filled a cup with coffee for himself and the cook piled
two platters with food and put them on the long, littered table.  Jim
Moore followed the cook with his eyes.  When he turned and saw him
doing this, he spoke again in that guttural language, and Jim Moore
grinned at him without replying.

As John Holbrook faced around, the cook said, "Shoshoni-Piute.  Years
back I spent a trappin' season with 'em up north.  They got a real
fondness for white dogs.  I never ate so much dog meat before nor
since."

Holbrook said, "Horse thieves, Henry.  Raided Bart's horse camp up on
the big mesa.  Got his four animals and two big ones that belong to the
gunsmith over in Holtville."

The cook continued drying his hands.  "Got Alex Smith's big team?"  He
wagged his head.  "Where is Alex?"

Bart answered.  "Back up at the camp with Abel Morrison and Foster
Bullard.  They were making wood."

The cook pursed his lips.  "I'll tell you if I was the one that stole
Alex's horses, I wouldn't even look back for five hunnert miles.  He
thinks more of them horses than he thinks of money."

Bart arose.  Jim was still eating.  The three older men watched as he
ate, glanced around at one another, and rolled their eyes.  But nothing
was said.

Charley appeared.  "Ready, Bart.  We fixed you'n your partner up with
everything couple of blankets behind the cantle and two Winchesters
under the fenders."

John Holbrook went down.  When the men were ready to ride, there was
one less range man  Inside the barn, a disgruntled rider was stripping
a horse.  He was the man Holbrook had almost forgotten to keep back to
go up to Wild Horse Mesa with the cook.

Bart watched Jim climb astraddle and even up the reins.  John Holbrook
said, "Charley, you an' Bart be careful."

The lanky man nodded and turned to follow Bart.  A quarter of a mile
they swung southward, but on an angling southwestern course.  Bart had
no idea where the horse thieves had passed, but he was sure it had not
been within sight of the Holbrook buildings.  He knew the country they
were riding over very well.

Charley drew ahead to ride beside Bart.  He was wearing an old
horsehide coat with red blanket lining.  The coat had once been
smoke-tanned pearl gray, now it was dark with age, scuffed from hard
use, and stained from a hundred cooking fires.

Each winter Bart Templeton had encountered the range boss wearing that
coat.  As they rode along now, Bart gave Charley most of the details of
what had happened up on the plateau.  When he mentioned Abel Morrison's
heart seizure, the range boss shook his head and said, "That's not the
first one."  At Bart's look Charley said, "I know about two others.
Once I was standin' in his shop, he slipped and fell ... He flopped
around like a fish out of water, like to scairt me to death.  I
carried him to his bed in the back and ran for help."

"What happened?"

"He was sittin' on the bed when I got back with that woman who did
midwifin' around town before Doc Mailer came.  She snorted and stamped
out to go home.  Seems she'll Abel been through that once before.  He
wouldn't listen to her that time neither.  One of these days ..."

Jim and two of the riders were getting along well.  The range men
teased the Indian, and they all laughed.  Charley Lord watched this
then asked Bart about Jim.  "He's an orphan.  Left some reservation up
north because everyone was dying of some illness.  Nan wants us to take
him in."

The range boss eyed his companion.  "How about you?"

Bart smiled.  "I like the idea."

Charley wondered about how far ahead the outlaws were.  Bart could not
offer much of an estimate.  His main hope was that wherever they were
on the south range, since they had got no sleep last night because they
had been too busy stalking horses to steal, and since by now they were
a considerable distance from the mesa where they had stolen the horses,
they might decide to bed down.  If they did, Bart and the Holbrook
riding crew were probably going to either find them or get close enough
to see them by dawn.

The stars brightened, and darkness lay in all directions.  Occasionally
they encountered cattle, and once they stopped because one of the
riders held up his arm, saying he could smell wood-smoke.

He was correct.  They quartered for high ground, found none, and had to
seek the source of that fragrance by fanning out and scouting where the
smell was strongest.

An itinerant peddler and professional fix-it who travelled from town to
town soldering broken kettles, sharpening scissors, and selling pots,
pans, and medicines had a camp in a slight swale.  His box-like light
wagon with the shafts lying on the ground, was faintly silhouetted by a
dwindling fire as the horsemen came up out of the night and halted. The
peddler arose very slowly from his fire and stood as stiff as a
ramrod.

He stood wide-eyed staring at the six riders five yards distant,
shadowy and sinister as they studied his camp.  One of the men, who
looked tall and rangy even at that distance, said, "Good evening," in a
deceptively mild, deep voice.  "We're lookin' for some men driving six
head of horses.  Two of the horses are pretty close to a ton; real big
animals."

The peddler, whose terror was genuine, was convinced as long as he
lived that he had encountered the James gang with the Younger boys.  He
raised a shaking arm to point.  "Before sunset," he quavered.  "There
was four fellers went past headin' south drivin' some horses ahead of
them.  They was too far for me to make much out about them or the
horses.  There could have been two big horses.  Them horses was plumb
worn down."

Charley thanked the peddler, and raised a gloved hand in parting salute
as he called back.  "My friend here, Wild Bill Hickok, says he's much
obliged."

Bart slouched along in silence trying to come up with a reasonable
evaluation.  If the peddler had seen the horse thieves before sunset,
and it was now getting along toward midnight, and if the outlaws were
driving exhausted horses, which they probably were, then they would be
unable to make good time.

Charley was of the opinion that the outlaws would camp for the night.
Bart hoped he was right.  The previous night the outlaws had got no
sleep.  They had been in the saddle all day today, their stolen horses
and probably their individual saddle horses as well, were wearing down.
They could not hope to keep pushing tired horses indefinitely, but if
they rested the animals overnight, they could make good time again
tomorrow.

ELEVEN

Bart set the pace from here on, and it was slower than it had been.
Everyone was alert.  There was less hope now that they would see a
campfire.  Tired horse thieves were not likely to sit up until
midnight, and campfires dwindled fast if they were not fed.

Occasionally he glanced back at Jim Moore.  If the youth was tired, he
was hiding it well.  He had ridden straight up in the saddle from the
time they had left the Holbrook yard.  Bart watched the saddle booted
Winchester under the right-hand rosadero of his saddle sway with the
horse and thought that was probably the main reason the boy sat his
saddle with pride.  Bart had said nothing when he had seen the gun in
place as they were mounting back at the yard, but he had not liked the
idea.

Charley Lord speculated on the distance they had covered, and someone
farther back made a hissing sound.  It was one of those sounds that
were meaningless, except for its tone of urgency.  Charley stopped
speaking as he and Bart swiveled in their saddles.

Jim Moore was pointing with an upraised arm.  "Smoke smell," he said.

They halted.  The men tested the air, and for a while there was no
scent, then a faint hint of a breeze came to them from the southwest.
It had a barely discernible but identifiable smell of woodsmoke to
it.

Bart swung off.  The other riders followed his example.  Charley leaned
on his saddle gazing out into the darkness.  "Could be quite a
distance," he opined.

Bart peered around the area where they had stopped.  There were no
trees but there were patches of flourishing brush and rocks, mostly
head-size and scattered, but occasionally there were much larger rocks
clumped together in piles.

One rider said, "It's a campfire.  Maybe it's them an' maybe it's
pot-hunters, or emigrants."

Bart smiled at the rider.  "Let's find out," he said and led his
Holbrook horse toward a big buck rush bush.  They pulled out the
Winchesters as they finished securing the animals, and Bart looked for
Jim.  He too had pulled out the Winchester and was standing now with it
butt-down, peering in the direction of the smoke smell.  Bart was going
to say something, but Charley Lord cut across his thoughts with a
suggestion.

"Fan out; commence walkin' like the soldiers do."

They left the horses and moved without haste.  It was getting colder by
the hour, which would have helped them remain awake and alert if they
hadn't just now found an even more compelling reason to be alert.  If
that dying fire belonged to four outlaws, what John Holbrook had said
back in the yard was probably going to prove true: there was going to
be trouble at the end of this trail.

Charley Lord was discernible on Bart's right, walking with his carbine
slung in the bend of one arm, head up and moving.  Beyond Charley it
was possible to make out the next man only when starlight bounced off
the barrel of his carbine.

He wondered where Jim was.  He did not worry about Jim doing anything
that might alert the sleeping men up ahead.  He had seen the young
Indian in situations that had required a good head, and the boy had not
once made a mistake.  But a sixteen-year-old with a carbine in a
situation that was probably going to be a lot worse before it got any
better, was not something Bart Templeton felt comfortable about.

Finally, the scent of smoke grew stronger.  It no longer came and went
with the moving air, which meant the riders were on the right course.
At least until they got farther along, but smoke spread widely; they
could be as much as three-quarters of a mile above or below the camp.

What resolved this issue for them was the fact that this far south
there was more brush and rocks than horse-feed.  Bart had paused to
kneel and skyline the onward territory.  He detected movement ahead but
could make out nothing except that it was too large to be a man.  He
arose, closed with the range boss and pointed without saying a word.

As they advanced, the large moving creature stopped dead-still.  It was
one of Alex Smith's big bay horses.

The condition of the big horse would have brought tears to its owner.
It was scratched and cut, tucked up from being unable to eat, and when
it put its big head down for Bart to rub, the dark eyes were
listless.

Charley warned the other men they had found one of the stolen horses,
and from this point on, to move very slowly and be particularly
quiet.

As Bart started past the big horse, he was coldly angry.  There was no
reason under the sun to abuse an animal as that big, gentle horse had
been abused.

Charley was back in place, now holding his Winchester in two hands
across his body.  The smoke scent was stronger.  Bart flagged for
Charley to bend more northward, which he did.  Moments later they came
upon the other big horse and two of Bart's animals.  They were in no
better condition than the first horse had been in.  Bart's anger
increased.

They walked up a gentle low incline, beyond which it was possible to
see three large old shaggy trees.  Now, the smoke scent was very
clear.

They had located the source of the smoke scent.  He caught Charley's
attention.  When they were kneeling together, Bart said, "See if you
can get someone around the low place and back about where those trees
are."

Charley nodded, then asked a question.  "Did you make out any
bedrolls?"

Bart hadn't.  "I'll bet you a new hat they're down there."

Charley slipped away, and Bart continued to kneel until his
concentration was broken when a human voice coughed, and lustily
expectorated.

Bart exhaled soundlessly.  John Holbrook's guess had been right.  Even
though the horse thieves were down in that tangle it was not going to
be simple to get at them.

Charley returned, jutted his jaw in the direction of the trees, and
said, "Sent one man.  Your kid went with him."

Bart looked up sharply.  Charley saw the look and spread his hands.
"Cuff wanted him along and he wanted to go.  Don't worry, there are no
slugs in his carbine, and Cuff will watch out for him.  How do we get
down in there and catch these bastards without rousing them up?"

Bart said, "Crawl.  You better bring in the men north of you so we can
be together down in there and stay together so we don't shoot each
other."

Charley scuttled away.  Bart considered the low place from the
standpoint of men trying to escape from it.  If they tried it, they
would be on foot if they didn't get shot trying.  Men on foot in this
kind of country could be walked down by mounted men.

With one loaded Winchester and one unloaded one where those shaggy
trees were, there would be no escape in that direction, so all he had
to worry about was someone escaping either southward or northward.  As
Charley came back with two riders, Bart had completed his plan.  He
told the two range men to crawl into the undergrowth to the north.  He
and Charley Lord would do the same at the southward end.  One cowboy
said, "If there's a fight down there, and those fellers open up, a man
could end up in hell a lot earlier than'd ought to."

Charley wagged his head.  "You know who's over there, Fred.  Cuff will
fire if someone jumps out of that place and runs toward him."

The rider named Fred did not look entirely mollified, but when his
companion turned northward, Fred went with him.

Charley leaned and said, "He's a good hand, he's always got to come up
with a damned argument."

Bart brushed mosquitoes away with his hand, thrust into the tall
undergrowth, felt his hands and knees turn chilly with water, and
looked back.  Charley was coming but more slowly.  Bart guessed the
outlaws would be across the low place, where the ground sloped slightly
upward, toward the trees.  He set a direct course in that direction and
got steadily wetter until he came out where the spring actually was.

A horse whinnied somewhere behind them to west.  Bart had to drop flat
in the mud.  He heard nothing, then a man seemed to rise up out of the
ground about seventy-five feet from him.  All he could make out was his
chest, shoulders, and head.  He stood for a long time staring in the
direction of that horse sound.  When it was not repeated, the man
turned to look southward and northward, then sank down out of sight.

Bart craned around.  Charley was also hidden by the wild growth, on his
belly in the mud.  He saw Bart looking back and wagged his head in
disgust.

Crossing around the sump-spring was not particularly difficult, except
that Bart could not see ahead, and it was muddy traveling.  He raised
up very cautiously until he could see through the tall weeds and grass
stalks.

There were two bedrolls up ahead where the ground was high enough to be
dry.  He sat on his haunches like a rodent, wondering what had
motivated those horse thieves to sleep down where there were hordes of
mosquitoes.

He looked back.  Charley was watching him.  He dropped down and resumed
crawling across the mud to ground that was not dry, but was more firm
than that behind him.

There was not a sound.  He pushed carefully ahead, using his carbine
barrel to ease aside the tangled undergrowth.  A frog as large as a
man's hand sprang up in alarm, bounced off Bart's chest, and went
floundering in the direction of the water.

Bart could see two bedrolls clearly.  There were men in them, hats on
their heads and bandanas up over the lower parts of their faces.  Both
bedrolls had Winchesters lying atop saddle boots less than six inches
distant.  There were also a pair of coiled gunbelts even closer to the
sleeping men, holsters up and gun butts arranged for instant
gripping.

The guns worried Bart less than the other two bedrolls.  He risked
sitting up on his haunches again to find them.  He was successful.  The
other two horse thieves were farther up the slope, lying about a
hundred feet apart.  If those two men sat up, they would be able to see
everything happening down closer to the soft ground.

Bart crawled back to Charley.  "Two in front of me.  We can take care
of them, but the other two are farther up the slope.  There is no cover
for us to use crawling up there, and if we make any sound at all taking
out the first two, those bastards will wake up sure as hell.  They have
a clear view of the whole sump area."

Charley's response was consistent with his mood.  "You sure didn't
expect this to be easy; it hasn't been since we struck out on foot.  I
can crawl back the way we came, sneak plumb around and get over to the
cottonwoods.  Cuff can slither down to the edge of the slope and wait
for those outlaws down below to sit up and blow their scalps off."

Bart did not see any alternative, but he did not like making Charley
crawl back again, so he said he would go, and the range boss placed a
muddy hand on Bart's shirtfront and shook his head.  "I'll do it, only
that leaves you in here to face two of them."

Bart was not worried.  "I can take care of one of them by the time the
other one wakes up ... Good luck, Charley."

The range boss grunted and Bart watched him briefly before going back
toward that place where he had an unobstructed sighting of the two
bedrolls.  He thought one of these men had stood up when the horse had
whinnied.  That meant one of those horse thieves was a very light
sleeper.

He wiped off the carbine as well as he could, then eased out of the
dense undergrowth into the grazed-off place.  Darkness was not going to
last much longer.  At the faintest hint of dawn, his presence, and the
two riders northward would be detectable by the outlaws.  He had no
doubt that as soon as it was light enough the horse thieves would be up
and moving.

TWELVE

He had quite a distance of grazed-off stubble to cross before he could
reach the pair of sleeping men.  If he decided to make a more cautious
approach by going far above he might still be crawling on all fours
when false dawn appeared.

Bart started forward, crawling until he was thirty feet from the
nearest bedroll, pausing for a close-up examination before moving
soundlessly to his left in order to be on the left-hand side.

The sleeping man was hidden except for a thatch of black hair.  Bart
put down his Winchester, drew his sidearm, studied what little of the
outlaw's head he could to determine which way the man was facing, and
lifted the covering blanket and canvas with his left hand.  He brought
the gunbarrel down hard with his right hand and saw the outlaw's body
abruptly stiffen then go slack.

Bart got the man's weapons and started in the direction of the second
man.  He was hoping the second attack would go off as well as the first
one.  It didn't.

Up the slope where the most distant outlaws were sleeping, a night bird
squawked.

Bart froze, and when neither of those bedrolls up there showed any
life, turned back.  The man he had been stalking was awake, watching
Bart with black-eyed intensity as he stealthily groped on his right for
the holstered six-gun he had placed there.

Bart did not say a word, simply aimed at the dark man's chest and
waited.

The outlaw's arm stopped moving.  Bart whispered,

Tut your hand back outside the bedroll."

The horse thief obeyed and darted a glance at the other bedroll, behind
Bart.  If his companion awakened, he would shoot the stranger in the
back.

Bart crawled close enough to see that the man was an Indian.  He
whispered again.  "Roll over back to me."

Bart moved within arm's length and raised the six-gun.

The man lunged desperately upward, moving frantically, trying to grasp
the saw-handled butt of his holstered Colt.

Bart sprang, chopping downward with the gunbarrel as he moved.  The gun
had not been cocked.  The Indian was hampered in his attempt to get
both feet squarely set for a leap, but he had reached the gun.  Bart
launched himself at the man, struck him in the back knocking him
forward, face first.

The Indian clutched his gun even as he instinctively flung both arms
forward to break his fall.  Bart clubbed at the man's gun arm, struck
it hard before the `>083' outlaw arched his back.

The Indian's arm had been injured.  It moved but awkwardly and
slowly.

Bart lashed out with his left hand and with his right hand struck
violently at the rising gun.  He missed the weapon but connected with
wrist-bone.  The Indian pulled his right arm in, cradling it as he
said, "No more."

A troubled voice said, "Hey, Axel, you'n him stop that damned
fighting."

Bart jutted his gun, and he said, "Tell him, "all right"."

The Indian obeyed, but the second outlaw was awake and snarled at the
man beside him.  "I told you ten times they wasn't worth the powder to
blow them to hell."

The first one's retort was testy.  "All right.  Where was I supposed to
find men?  Frank, it's time to get up.  Dawn's coming."

Bart jerked his head and gestured with his gun for the Indian to walk
down toward the wet ground.  As the Indian started to obey, Bart
whispered.  "Tell them you'll go bring in the horses."

The Indian obeyed, then he and Bart stood up and went threshing back
down the soggy underbrush.

The thieves were still arguing, when behind them someone said, "Shut
up!"  The men in their bedrolls were stunned.  Two Winchesters were
pointing directly at them, but the men behind them were little more
than dark humps.

Someone was groaning in his soogans.  The outlaw with the angry
disposition said, "What'n'ell do you think you're doin'?"

The reply he got was equally ornery: "We was waitin' for the Second
Coming up here.  Both you gents come out of them bedrolls and the first
man who even looks at them guns is never goin' to leave this place.
Come out -careful now."

He was convinced he and his companions were going to be killed.

He did not need to have the men aiming weapons at him identify
themselves.  They were stock men and his enemies.  He looked down where
the Indian had gone for the horses.  There was no help there.  He
looked to his right.  Jake was pushing himself up out of the bedroll
like a moth, out of its cocoon.  The Winchesters were still there, but
it was too darkly gloomy for him to make out the men holding them.

He felt swiftly and surely for the cold gun butt with his right hand.
He fired directly at the gun pointing squarely at him, and rolled
frantically.  His bullet struck steel and made a screaming sound as it
shattered and whined away.

Jake was still climbing out, but the moment he fired, Jake dropped and
rolled sideways.  There was now just one gunbarrel up there.  As the
angry man rolled, he snapped off a shot at that gun too, and knew he
had missed even before the red-orange muzzle blast with its deafening
sound of an explosion came and went.

He sprang up into a crouch and ran northward,

weaving and ducking.  Jake had his gun, too, and fired wildly as he ran
in the opposite direction.  He ran directly into someone's Winchester.
The flame limned him for a second, arms up flung head back, knees
curling outward.  Jake was flat down.  A man shouted.  Charley Lord
could be heard for a half mile.  "Got one!  Cuff, you all right?"

There was no answer.  The man who had been groaning had crawled out of
his bedroll.  He crawled over his guns before realizing what they were.
He twisted for the handgun, and went charging across the muddy place.

The pair of Holbrook riders who had been stationed to the north could
skyline the crouching, fleeing man because there was just enough dawn
light  They both fired at the same time.  The stumbling man was punched
so hard sideways both his arms flew over his head before he disappeared
in the undergrowth.

The angry man got clear of the low place and hesitated to look back.
The low place became unnaturally silent.  One of the two Indian horse
thieves was out there dead in the mud, and there was another dead man
Jake.

Bart shoved his captive to the ground with considerable force when the
firing started.  The Indian horse thief was less concerned about the
shooting than he was about the man who had captured him.  He thought he
had a broken arm, but he still had one usable arm.  He narrowed his
eyes to pull in more light and looked for Bart's gun hand

Bart was concentrating on the firing.  He heard Charley Lord's shout,
and with a sudden intuitive warning swung his head toward the Indian
nearby, who was rising up off the ground with the aid of one arm,
twisting as he came to be in a position to lunge for the Colt.

Bart started to move about the same time the Indian kicked savagely and
swung his thick body sideways to pin Bart's gun hand to the ground.

Bart wrenched his arm away as the horse thief came down on him.  He
rolled and brought up a knee.  The

Indian's air burst out in raw agony when the knee connected, but he
still struggled.  Bart punched him twice, got clear of him and got to
his feet as he cocked the six-gun.

Bart let his breath out and gestured.  "Stand up.  Now walk, you son of
a bitch."

The Indian could not straighten up, but he neither made a sound nor
looked around at the man driving him from behind.

Charley Lord yelled again.  "Bart?  You all right?"  He also called to
the men who had been fired upon at the north end.  They answered him.
So did Bart.  He did not take his eyes off the uninjured outlaw when he
asked about Cuff and Jim Moore.  When Charley answered it was with less
of a roar.  "The boy's all right, but Cuffs bleedin' bad.  His carbine
come back and hit him in the face.  Bart?"

"Yeah?"

"I'll stay with him.  You fellers can bring the horses."

Bart was heading for the horses when the Holbrook riders who had been
fired upon by the angry man walked out of the pear ling light.  He
turned his Indian outlaw over to them.

He had not gone more than ten yards when someone up ahead of the pair
of Holbrook riders and the Indian fired.  Bart winced and turned back.
Both the Holbrook riders were firing from the ground.  But whoever had
fired at them did not fire again.

When Bart reached them, the Holbrook men were on their feet but the
captive Indian outlaw was not.  The Indian was dead.

Bart put up his gun and knelt.  The Indian had been struck squarely in
the centre of the forehead.

As Bart was rising he looked ahead where visibility was increasing but
was still a long way from being very good.  Whoever had fired, had
aimed at the first dark silhouette he had been able to make out.

He was still out there.  Bart told the riders to leave the

Indian and go far northward.  Then he changed his mind and sent one of
them back toward the cottonwood trees to stay with Charley and Cuff
while he and the remaining rider made the northward sashay.  What
worried Bart was that the escaping horse thief would continue running
east.  He would eventually see the tethered horses.  If he got astride,
he probably would escape.

The cowboy said, "I seen him shoot up the bank.  Then he ran northward.
He got past an' behind us, and when we shot that feller in the low
place, this other feller shot at us from behind."

Bart saw that the animals were standing stiffly erect and staring
slightly southward, their attention being held by something they had
seen.

He changed course again, slackened his gait a little, and led the
cowboy past the buck rush and turned west when he had the big thicket
between himself and the horses.

His carbine was back where the fight had started and right now he
wished he had it.  Handguns were not exactly worthless at any
considerable range, but they were a lot less accurate than a
Winchester.

He halted behind the big, flourishing thicket where he and his
companion could hear the horses moving uneasily on the far side.  The
cowboy brushed Bart's arm and jerked his head.  "I'll go around from
here."

Bart nodded and turned in the opposite direction.  He was down where
the big bush rounded a little when he thought he heard leather grate
over rock.

He sank low to peer out beyond the bush.  The man who came stealthily
around from behind a smaller thicket was moving on the balls of his
feet.  He had no hat, his hair was awry, and he was holding a cocked
six-gun out front.

The man was watching the saddled horses.  Northward, the Holbrook rider
moved and was seen instantly by the man stalking the horses, who
snapped off a shot that made every tethered horse sit back on his tied
reins in panic.

Bart came upright, aimed and fired.  The stalking man had seconds to
turn a coarse, beard-stub bled face in Bart's direction, surprise
etched deeply upon it, before his legs sprung and he fell.

THIRTEEN

Men a Horseback

Cuffs nose had been badly lacerated but it was not broken.  He had cuts
and some purpling bruises.  He looked much worse than he could have
been from those facial injuries.  He was in pain, his features were
lopsided with swellings, and his eyes barely showed through.  The men
made him as comfortable as they could and left Jim Moore with him, led
saddle horses down into the mud, and retrieved the first dead horse
thief.  By the time they had them all, the sun was up.  It washed away
the dismalness, but when the men went after the loose horses and
returned with four more, it required another hour to bring in the
saddles, get them rigged out, and re lash the dead outlaws across the
horses' backs.

Bart kept Jim Moore up in front with him.  Some of Cuffs blood had
splattered on the youth, and he had turned his back as the dead men had
been tied into place.

He was silent for an hour.  Bart did not press him.  Even an Indian
youth who had grown up in the presence of death would not have been
prepared for what happened back at the sump-spring.

Jim looked steadily ahead where the horses plodded along, rested but
still lethargic.  Bart glanced back occasionally.  Charley Lord rode on
one side of Cuff, and another man upon the opposite side, but it did
not appear to Bart that Cuff was likely to faint and fall.  He looked
like the wrath of God, but he sat loosely erect in his saddle, in full
control.

Bart was tired, filthy, sore all over, and as reaction set in, he also
became doggedly silent.  He and Jim Moore had been a long while without
rest.

The boy glanced at the man beside him and Bart could feel the boy's
distress and bewilderment.  Jim did not ride back as straight-up in the
saddle as he had coming down and he did not once look at the Winchester
beneath his leg.

The sun was climbing, before long they would be able to see the
Holbrook rooftops.  Bart said, "Bad."

Jim Moore turned to face him and nodded.

"Nothing good ever comes out of stealing horses or anything else.  They
didn't help matters by making a war out of it."

Jim rode along in silence.

"Two were whites an' two were Indians."

Jim responded to that, "Mr.  Lord told me, and to stay with Cuff, that
way I wouldn't have to look at them."

Bart spat aside and considered the slightly bobbing ears of his horse.
"Cuff got pretty badly hurt."

"Yes.  There was blood like someone had cut the throat of a deer.  I
never saw a man bleed out before."

Bart smiled.  "You've had to grow up pretty fast, Jim."

Charley Lord rode up.  He was smoking a brown paper cigarette which
surprised Bart, who had never seen Charley use tobacco before.  Charley
removed the quirley, then lifted his eyes to Templeton's face.  "I used
these things years ago, quit when I was sick and just never started up
again until this morning."  Charley smashed the cigarette atop his
saddle horn and dropped it.  He grinned.  "All right, I guess it was
being fired-up for so long back there.  Sort of shreds a man's
nerves."

Charley had ridden up because he had been thinking about the dead men.
"They most likely are worth some bounty money, Bart.  They sure as hell
wasn't on their first raid, judgin' from the looks and the age of
them."

"You'd have to take them over to town and hunt up Deputy Morris, have
him identify them, find out where they're wanted."

The range boss had thought of that.  "Or have whoever takes the supply
wagon in tomorrow tell Morris what we got, and he can ride out."

Bart had not known the supply wagon was going to head for town
tomorrow.  He nodded his head, "Yeah, but you can't have them above
ground too long."

Charley nodded.  "You'd ought to be put in for at least a quarter of
the bounty, Bart."

"Not me.  It's bad enough having to live with a killing, justified or
not.  Accepting money for it would make it a lot harder."

They could see the rooftops in the distance when Jim Moore said, "Mr.
Smith isn't goin' to like the looks of his horses."

Bart wanted to keep the boy talking so he agreed.  "Yep.  But at least
he'll get them back, an' he can take them home and spend a coupla
months getting them back into shape.  That part he'll be happy
about."

Jim was watching the big horses plod along.  "Indians use horses, they
don't make pets of them."

Bart answered very dryly.  He had seen how Indians used horses.  "Yes,
I know.  But most Indians got families.  Alex doesn't even have a wife,
let alone kids, so those big horses are his family."

Jim seemed to have no difficulty with this.  He'd once had a brindle
dog.  They had been inseparable right up to the day his dog stepped
into someone's wolf trap and bled to death.

Charley sent a rider ahead to the yard so there would be hot water and
clean cloth to bathe Cuffs face.  It was too much to hope that Dr.
Mailer would be visiting from Holtville.

They would have to send Cuff to town tomorrow with the supply wagon. It
would be a long trip.  Sixty miles just one way with a team and wagon
took two days.  And two days back.  Coming back probably wouldn't be so
bad; Dr.  Mailer could dose Cuff with a painkiller.  Doc Mailer was
very good, if anyone could patch Cuff up, he could.

Jim Moore spoke.  "After your wife and the others come home are you
going back to the big mesa?"

Bart thought over his reply.  "Maybe not for a while.  We just went up
there to see if the bands were still there.  We didn't figure to trap
any.  Not for maybe another few weeks."

"Does your wife help you trap wild horses?"

"She never has, but then we've only been married about a year.  I
expect she will when we go up there again in a few weeks."

"Is your wife Indian?"

Bart turned his head slowly.  Indians were direct, not given to
subtlety.  "Part," he replied.  "Her mother was Indian."

Jim inclined his head as though Bart's answer had confirmed something.
"What kind of Indian?"

"Tell you what, Jim, why don't you sit down with her and talk.  She
likes you."

"Did she tell you that?"

"Yes."

"I like her.  I think she's the best-lookin' woman I ever saw."

Bart's eyes crinkled.  "Jim, did you know that you and I are a lot
alike?"

"No," Jim said, before he got Bart's meaning.  Then he smiled.

Charley Lord loped past in the direction of the yard.  The rider he had
sent ahead had undoubtedly told his tale.  Bart watched the range boss
and when they were a little closer he and Jim Moore began easing up
alongside the loose horses so they could be herded into one of the big
pole corrals up ahead.

Bart and the others were silent.  Clearly, there was a bustle of
activity.  John Holbrook, in the absence of his range boss and riding
crew, had gotten the wood makers down off Wild Horse Mesa because Bart
saw the old running gear of Abel Morrison's wagon with its load of dry
logs in the middle of the yard.

Jim jutted his chin in the direction of the wagon.  "How did they get
down without the big horses?"

"Mr.  Holbrook's my wife's father, got big harness horses, too."

"Do you like him?"

"Yes, you will, too, when you get to know him."

"I won't get to know him unless he comes up where my camp is, and I
don't think he would do that."

Bart said nothing.  He waved Jim farther to their right so he could
turn the loose horses in the direction of the wide-open gate of the big
gathering corral.  Jim reined clear, then came in from the drag.  It
was simply a matter of showing the horses where to go.  They were too
worn down to do anything other than obey.

Alex Smith appeared, accompanied by Abel Morrison and Foster Bullard.
Alex got his first good look at his big horses as they listlessly
plodded past.  He let out a groan that could be heard by the riders
entering the yard from a different direction.  Then he ducked inside
the corral as Bart swung off to close the gate.  He went from one horse
to the other passing his hands over their injuries.  He did not make
another sound until he had thoroughly examined both horses, then he
turned toward Bart as he said, "Where are the sons of bitches that
treated my horses like that?"  He pushed the gate open, and left it to
Bart to close the gate, pushing back his old coat to expose the
holstered Colt, his eye searching among the dismounted men for
strangers.

Jim Moore caught his sleeve and tugged.  "They're dead," he said.
"That's them bein' led toward the barn."

Alex turned and looked fiercely at the youth.  "How many was there?"

"Four.  Two Indians an' two white men."

"They're all dead, Jim?"

"Yes.  They was all killed down where we caught up with them."

Alex stood a moment gazing at the youth, then faced in the direction
the burdened horses were being led.  John Holbrook was walking with
them.  Alex very slowly yanked his coat free and let it drop back to
cover the holstered Colt.

There was only a little conversation while the riders cared for their
animals, but when the paunchy cocinero appeared to announce that he'd
had stew simmering in thick gravy all morning, and six crab apple pies
he had baked waiting for anyone who was hungry, the talk became more
lively.  The men finished their chores and went straggling across the
yard, carrying the Indian youth with them.

That left Bart Templeton and John Holbrook to unload the dead men, lay
them out side by side in a cool, dark place, and cover them with wagon
canvas.

FOURTEEN

When Bart entered the main house behind his father-in-law, the aroma of
cooking almost overwhelmed him, and when his wife appeared, he felt his
weariness diminish, along with the sensation of hunger.

She went into his arms.  He held her very close.  Her father turned his
back on them in embarrassment.  Nan herded them both into the kitchen
to listen to what her husband had to say while she kept an eye on the
stove.

He told them everything.  During pauses he sipped whisky with
predictable results, since he had not eaten in a long time.  His wife
noticed the signs.  She immediately filled two plates with food and
placed them in front of her husband and her father.

After supper Bart took a towel and some brown soap out to the
bathhouse, soaked and scrubbed until drowsiness arrived, then dried off
and after dressing, and returned to the house.  His father-in-law was
alone in the parlor.  Nan had gone down to the bunkhouse to do what she
could for Cuff.  Bart and his father-in-law talked for a while; then
when Bart could not keep his eyes open any longer, John Holbrook
accompanied him to a bedroom door and left him.  When Nan returned a
half hour later, her father jerked his head.  "Dead to the world in
your old bedroom."

Bart was not the only one who slept like a log.  Down at the bunkhouse
only Alex Smith remained awake, his good eye fixed on the ceiling in
darkness, his heart still full of fury, but everyone else down there
slept like the dead.  It had not been much easier on Foster, Alex, and
Abel.

Before daylight the range men stirred.  Charley and another range man
went down to the barn to pitch feed and were surprised to find that
someone had gotten down there before them.

It was Jim Moore.  He was standing in the poor light at the foot of the
row of dead outlaws.  He had pulled back the canvas a couple of feet
and was standing completely still.

Charley looked long at the youth, then jerked his head for the cowboy
to start feeding the stock.  Charley approached the Indian boy.  Jim
did not move.  He was staring at the dead men from a rigidly
expressionless face.  Charley leaned to look at him closer in the poor
light.  "Jim?  You all right?"

He got no answer.  He too looked at the dead men.  They were not
something even a man as seasoned and hardened as Lord was would want to
gaze at very long.

Yesterday, he had told Jim to stay with Cuff, which he did.  Charley's
reason was because the dead men were filthy, ragged, with dead eyes
showing dull behind the half droop of lids.  It was nothing a youngster
should see.

By the weak light of early dawn, some of the details of violent death
were mitigated but there was still blood.  Dried black now and caked,
as was the mud.  Charley sighed finally, brushed Jim's shoulder
lightly, and said, "This isn't any good, son.  Come along, we'll go out
front and breathe fresh air."

Jim turned slowly, black eyes pain-deadened.  "That one on the left,
that's Axel.  The one next to him.  That's Johnex."

Charley nodded.  He had heard the thicker of the two dead men called
Axel.  There had been no mention of the other one's name.  "Jim?  You
knew them?"

"Yes ... They were my brothers."

Charley raised his head, then lowered it.  "Are you plumb sure?"

"Yes."

Charley shifted stance again.  "I don't recollect hearing that you had
any kin.  Someone said you were an orphan."

"I am.  Before my mother and father died Axel and Johnex left the
reservation.  Maybe four years ago."  Jim looked at the dead Indians
again before adding, "They ain't changed.  They look the same as when I
last saw them."

Charley stepped ahead, leaned, and slowly drew the old wagon canvas
back over the heads of the dead outlaws.

Charley turned and walked out into the yard on his way over to the main
house.  John Holbrook admitted him with a quizzical look, Charley could
see Nan and her husband in the lighted kitchen.  He considered his
employer from an advantage of several inches, then jerked his head and
stepped away from the door.

"Fred and I went down to feed.  The In'ian boy was standing there like
a statue.  He'd pulled the canvas off them outlaws," stated the range
boss

"What the hell did he do that?"

"Wait, John.  Those two horse stealing In'ians that got killed
yesterday was his brothers."

Holbrook looked blank.  "Brothers?  He's an orphan.  Nan told me
that."

"Yeah.  His folks are dead but his two older brothers left the
reservation before they died and until this mornin' he hadn't seen
them.  One was called Axel.  I heard someone usin' that name in the
dark down where the fight started.  The boy said the other one's name
was Johnex."

John Holbrook looked over his shoulder in the direction of the barn. As
he was turning back, the cocinero rang his triangle.  The men emerged
from the bunkhouse on their way to have breakfast.

He faced his foreman as his daughter opened the door looking around for
him.  She smiled.  "Good morning, Charley."

Charley brushed his hat brim.  "Morning."

She turned the smile to her father.  "Breakfast is ready."

Holbrook nodded.  After his daughter had closed the door, he said, "Is
he takin' it hard?"

Charley thought about his reply before offering it.  "I'd say he is.
But with them you just can't ever be dead certain.  He wasn't cryin'.
He was just standin' there.  He didn't even hear us comin' into the
barn, I don't think.  Just standin' there.  I'd say he's takin' it
hard."

Holbrook nodded, moved toward the door, and turned to say, "Charley,
take him over to breakfast.  I'll tell Nan and Bart.  They want to keep
him."

The range boss nodded and started down the steps on his way to the barn
to find Jim and walk him over to the cook shack for breakfast.

Holbrook went toward the light kitchen, pulled out a chair, sat down,
and said, "Those dead In'ians you brought back they are the brothers of
that boy you want to take home with you."

The only sound for some seconds was the crackling of frying meat.  Bart
leaned with both hands clenched atop the table.  "Who told you that?"

His father-in-law gave them a verbatim account of what Charley had just
told him.  Finally, he looked at his daughter.  She turned slowly, like
a dream walker turned the frying meat, stirred more pepper into the
golden brown frying potatoes, and said nothing.

Bart looked up once at his wife, then back to her father again.  He
dragged his hat off the rack on the back of the door, and put it on as
he went through the parlor on his way outside.

Bart went to the barn, but there was no one there.  There was no one in
sight, so he went back to the bunkhouse, where Jim had slept last
night.

He was not there; the building was empty.

He was on his away toward the cook house when he thought he very
distantly heard a moving horse.  But he did not stop for that.  He
stopped because Charley Lord had emerged from the shoeing shed.  He
walked over to Bart wagging his head.  "I've looked everywhere."

Bart's heart sank.  "For Jim?"

"Yeah.  John wanted me to take him with me to the cook shack and to
kind of keep an eye on him."

Bart was briefly silent, straining to pick up that moving horse sound
again.  He heard nothing.  Charley said, "I can see now I never should
have left him down at the barn.  Four dead men horse thieves or not
that's a hell of a load for even a grown man to carry, let alone a
skinny orphan kid."

They parted, Charley to eat breakfast with the riders, Bart to return
to the house.

When Bart walked in, both Holbrooks raised searching eyes.  He sat down
and picked up a coffee cup as he said, "Gone, I guess.  Charley's been
lookin' for him and can't find him."

There was a sturdy knock on the front door.  Abel Morrison was standing
out there when John Holbrook opened the panel.  Abel smiled feebly.
"It's about the lad," he said.  "Alex and I was out back putting bacon
grease on his bay horses.  We saw the lad lead a horse out of the barn
with just a bridle on him.  We didn't think much about it, but when he
stepped up onto the corral stringers and vaulted over onto the horse's
back I called to him.  Asked where he was goin' before he'd even eaten.
Didn't say a word, Mr.  Holbrook.  Just aimed the horse north along the
back of the barn and rode away."

Holbrook turned.  "Bart, he's gone north on horseback."

Both the Templetons came to the door.  Abel nodded solemnly at them.
Then he added something else.  "We didn't know about those dead In'ians
bein' related to him until Charley came in a while back and told us.
The riders knew, but we didn't get over there to eat until they was
about finished."

Bart said, "Thanks, Abel," and moved past on his way to the corrals.
Nan followed him.  Her father and Abel watched them until they were
lost to sight in the barn, then he faced Holbrook again and shrugged.
They'll fetch him back.  Mr.  Holbrook Foster, Alex, and me is obliged
for your hospitality, and for your help in getting' us down here with
the wagon.  We're going to hitch up now and head for Holtville.  Thanks
again."

John Holbrook nodded absently, eyes fixed on the corrals out behind the
barn where Bart and Nan were opening a gate to snake out a pair of
saddle animals.  "Glad to help, Abel.  Any time."

Nan rode the flashy chestnut with the flaxen mane and tail Bart had
given her before their marriage.  In fact, it had been her acceptance
of the horse that clinched things.

Her husband rode his own horse, a gelding of about sixteen hands who
had once ruled a band of mares on

Wild Horse Mesa.  Bart had nearly been killed on that horse one time,
but they worked perfectly together now.

They rode for a while watching fresh shod-horse marks on the ground,
but after an hour they rode with their heads up.  Jim was not in sight,
which was odd because he had not had that big a head start, and for the
most part the land ahead was open not flat.

Nan thought he might have seen them coming and had hidden.  Bart had a
different idea.  "I doubt that he even thought of pursuit.  I think I
know him fairly well.  And I've known other In'ians.  He is just
riding.  Looking straight ahead with his mind dead-still."

"Then where is he?"

Bart swung an upraised arm.  "Northeast."

Nan leaned to study the ground.  "The tracks are still heading north,"
she said.

"Yeah, I know, but it's thirty miles to the mesa and the best way to
get up atop it is that old military road Alex and his friends used. And
that is northeast."

He was right.  At least another few miles onward the shod-horse sign
did begin to angle off toward the northeast.

Nan looked at her husband.  "What can we tell him?"

He faced her thoughtfully.  "We?  I think it'll be you.  He told me he
thought you were the best-lookin' woman he had ever seen.  He also is
interested in whether you're part Indian or not.  I think you're the
one he'll listen to.  If he listens at all."

She settled down in the saddle.  "But I don't know what to say.  The
shock must have been terrible."

Bart remained silent.  They had brought nothing in their haste.  Not
even a canteen.  But the Wiltons' camp was close to the rough country
eastward.  He and Nan could perhaps get a bundle of food over there
before heading up toward the old military road.

If they had to ride that far.

FIFTEEN

They were following the tracks because in this open country they should
have had a sighting by now.  Jim hadn't had more than perhaps a half
hour's head start, at the very most an hour.

Bart examined the onward flow of land.  But he still did not believe
Jim was up ahead somewhere watching them from hiding.

There was a meandering creek that came off the mesa on the east side
and cut its way through stirrup-high grass.  Nan rode away from the
creek a short distant and halted.  She called to her husband and
pointed.  Jim had made good time.  He was northward staying close to
the willows.  One thing seemed sure; he was indeed heading for the big
plateau where he'd had a hidden camp before the wood makers had arrived
up there to tempt him with Alex's big horses.

Nan said, "The only place he has," and watched the distant rider until
her husband jerked his head.  "Back to the opposite side.  He'll see us
over here."

Nan said, "It's so sad."

Bart nodded.

"Not just this, but all the rest he's had to live through.  Bart, will
we ever be able to reconcile him?"

He did not know.  "The best we can do is try.  I don't know anything
about children, even half-grown ones."

She eased away through the willows and emerged on the far side.  She
saw nothing.  Up where Jim should have been there were only meandering
stands of creek willows on both sides of the creek.  She was about to
return to her husband when a horse ambled out of the willows about a
mile ahead, distinctly visible because it was moving.  But there was no
one on its back.

She returned to the west side of the creek, her face flushed, her upper
lip damp.  "The horse is grazing.  There's no sign of Jim."

Bart nodded.  "Resting in the shade of the willows.  Maybe he's got
something to eat.  It's goin' to be a blow to his pride to have us come
up on him.  Whites aren't supposed to be able to track Indians."

From this point on they walked the horses.  Bart worried that if the
grazing horse up yonder didn't catch the sight or smell of their horses
and nicker, Jim might catch a glimpse of them moving along the west
side of the creek, or he might hear them coming, although by that time,
they would be very close.

When they thought they had gone as far as they ought to on horseback,
they left the animals tied and went forward on foot.

Bart stopped twice.  Once when a dozen furious blackbirds rose into the
air up ahead a fair distance.  He winked at Nan and covered another
dozen yards, then halted again.  She said, "I'll cross the creek. Maybe
I can get close enough to catch the horse."

He did not believe her idea would work.  Even if the horse didn't see
her, Jim probably would.  Bart said nothing.  He just waited until she
was on the far side of the watercourse, then increased his own haste in
getting up where the irate birds were still diving at something on the
ground among the willows he could not see, but felt certain it would be
Jim.

Bart came to a narrow opening among the willows, probably made by large
animals coming to drink, looked across it and saw the Indian boy
sitting with his head slightly cocked, listening.  He saw Bart about
the same time Bart saw him.

Jim sprang to his feet and spun away in the direction of the sunshine
and grass where his horse had been eating.  Bart plunged across the
creek in pursuit.

Jim was standing about seventy-five feet ahead.  He was staring at his
horse.  Nan was astride it, one hand stroking the animal's neck, the
other hand holding a leather belt she had fashioned into a war
bridle.

She smiled as she said, "Jim, you didn't have to run away."

The boy said nothing.  He did not even look around when Bart came up
behind him.

Nan continued to stroke the horse when she spoke again.  "Nothing will
change what happened.  Running to the mountains won't help.  You can't
run from grief any more than you can run from guilt.  It runs right
alongside you."  She slid off the horse and walked toward the boy
leaving the horse to crop grass.  Her eyes moved to Bart then back to
Jim.  She stopped fifty feet away.  "Jim, you can handle grief a lot
easier with people who are fond of you than you can by yourself."

Bart felt rather than saw the tightness begin to leave the boy.  He had
been poised to run.  But he still said nothing, not even when Nan
walked much closer and smiled with her liquid black eyes, the same
color eyes that the boy had.  "Did Alex say anything to you?"

The boy's gaze wavered.  "About what?"

"About us wanting you to come live with us."

Jim said, "Why?"  with the kind of abrupt directness that would have
made Bart stammer.  Nan answered easily.  "Because we need you and I
think you need us.  We want you, Jim.  Later, if you want to, you can
leave.  We won't stop you."

The boy twisted from the waist to look steadily at Bart for a long
time.  Bart did not smile, did not even speak, but he gravely nodded
his head.

Jim faced Nan again.  "Did you know they killed my brothers?"

Bart finally spoke.  "Jim, the man who killed one of your brothers was
one of the other horse thieves.  Your brother was walking in front of
two of Mr.  Holbrook's men.  That dead man back in the barn with the
ginger whiskers, he ... you remember how dark it was ... he must have
thought the man walking ahead was one of us.  He shot your brother."

"How do you know that's how it happened?"

"I saw it, and later when I came around that bush where we'd left the
horses, there he was with a cocked gun in his hand.  He made a wild
shot and I didn't."

Jim raised a hand to brush at a flying insect.  He looked out at the
grazing horse, then he looked northward.  "That was Axel," he said,
"Johnex got killed too."

Bart knew he had been killed, but he had not seen the killing.  "Jim,
remember when we rode out of Mr.  Holbrook's yard?  You had a carbine
and a good horse.  You were riding with the rest of us, and you looked
proud about that.  Well, I didn't want a fight down there any more than
anyone else did.  We wanted the horses back, and to catch the horse
thieves if we could.  You were there when one of them shot uphill and
hit Cuffs gun.  They made it into a fight, we didn't."

Jim turned slowly toward Bart, dark eyes steady.  "I wasn't runnin'
away."

Bart made a rueful little grin.  "You sure fooled me, partner."

"I wanted to go up to the mesa to my old camp for a few days."

Nan came around to them.  "You can go.  I think it would be easier for
you to be with others right now.  For a while anyway.  Then you could
go back up there if you wanted to."

Jim looked at the ground and shook his head.  "Alone.  My father said
men take their grief to the lonely places."

Nan considered the slouch and the lowered head.  "Do you know why?
Because not only your father but many other men think it is a weakness
for men to cry.  Do you think that way?"

He did not raise his head when he replied.  "He said to be alone so a
man can talk to spirits, his forefathers, and even to the stars because
among them all up there, one star belongs to you; it is yours to look
at and talk to, and if it is the right star, it will help you in
everything you do."

"And to cry, Jim.  To beat the ground, to let the grief come out
without anyone watching."

He brought his head up, finally, and studied Nan's face for a long
while.  "Is that what your mother told you?"

Nan answered quietly.  "She told me many things, but she died before
she could tell me everything ... Jim?"

"Yes."

"Won't you please come back with us?"

"No."

"All right.  We know what you have to do because you just told us, but
Jim when the mourning time is over, then what?"

"Then I will bring back the horse," he said.  "I didn't steal it.  I
just borrowed.  I'll bring it back."

Nan started past the youth to join her husband.  As she passed Jim
Moore she paused, kissed his cheek lightly, and smiled into his
wide-open eyes, then walked down through the willows with Bart.

When they were astride, riding back the way they had come, Bart turned
in the saddle, braced himself with one hand atop the cantle, and looked
for a distant rider.  He saw him, loping slowly northward.

SIXTEEN

Something Different

John Holbrook had disagreed with the notion of having the Holtville
deputy ride to the ranch to look at the dead horse thieves, so they had
been loaded into the supply wagon, covered, and sent to town with the
cowboy named Fred, who drove, and the cowboy named Cuff whose face
looked terribly lopsided, purplish and scabbed over.  Actually, Cuff
felt better on the second day than he had felt on the first day.  He
was unhappy because he could not chew, but John Holbrook had stowed a
bottle of rye whisky in the jockey-box to tide him over.

When Nan's father had listened to his daughter's explanation about the
Indian boy, he had neither smiled nor said much, only that he would be
glad to get the horse back.  His last remark to the Templetons as they
were ready to leave was: "If he returns, it'll surprise me.  Not just
because he probably associates us with the death of his brothers, but
because Indians don't feel required to stay in one place; they roam.
That's their nature.  I've been around them all my life.  They're free
spirits.  I suppose for ten thousand years they've been wondering
what's beyond the next hill.  Well, you two go on home."  He looked at
his daughter longest.  "But don't forget I live over here."

On the ride west to Bart's horse ranch, Nan had trouble with a mild
feeling of guilt.  When Bart broke across her thoughts, it was as
though he had read her mind.  He said, "It's going to take time for him
to readjust to being able to do his own bossing.  He couldn't ride for
so many years, once he got to depending on you, and Charley, and even
me to some extent."

She quietly said, "He is not a young man."

Bart scowled at her.  "Your pa?"  He snorted.  "John Holbrook's tougher
an' younger in heart and spirit than anyone I ever knew who was half
his age."  The scowl smoothed.  "We'll ride over."

They were off-saddling in front of the log barn where Nan looked
northward where a distant barranca appeared to rise straight up for a
considerable distance before it flattened on top.  "How long?"  she
said.

Bart shot her a look then resumed his work with the horses.  "Want a
guess?  Ten days maybe."

They started for the house when a banner of rising dust caught Bart's
eye.  It was Big Ben, his remount stallion, bringing in his flock,
which consisted mostly of mares, but there was also a strong percentage
of colts, large and small ones.

They returned to the area of the corrals to watch Ben, with his scarred
forehead and thick, arched neck stop out a ways, pass back and forth in
front of the mares to impress upon them that they should not come any
closer, then he whirled and trotted stiffly, head up, tail out, to the
west side of the corral to make challenging sweeps for the benefit of
Nan's handsome chestnut and Bart's big, somewhat rawboned, muscled up
bay, both of whom were eating timothy hay off the ground and did little
more than lift their eyes to watch Big Ben.

Nan went out back to the wash house while Bart lighted kindling in the
cook stove.  Even though it was warm out, sultry warm in fact, inside
the house it was chilly.

He had three colts started, a grulla and two bays.  After they had
eaten, Nan went down to the breaking corral with him.  She did not make
suggestions although there had been times over the last year when she'd
had to bite her tongue to keep from it.  As her father had warned her,
most men but especially horse breakers did not take it kindly when
spectators gave advice.  Especially female spectators.

Just once she had volunteered to come inside the round corral to help.
His response had precluded the possibility of her ever making that
offer again.  It was based on something she did not completely
understand, although since childhood she had never seen two men in a
corral breaking the same horse.

She returned to the house to start supper when he had worked both the
bays, had housed them into a square corral leaving the grulla alone in
the round corral.

Inside, with a lamp glowing in the kitchen and a fire on the hearth of
the parlor, she forgot everything but the meal she was beginning to
prepare.  Only once did she pause, and then only briefly because she
had been listening to thunder all of her life.  It was usually
accompanied by lightning.  Not this time.  The rumble seemed to roll
directly overhead and die southward.

When she stepped to the veranda to look for her husband, a blinding
slash of white lightning that tore apart the dusk from high above all
the way down to the earth, momentarily outlined the distant barranca at
the top of Wild Horse Mesa.

She saw Bart turn in front of the barn and look, then he started for
the house as the first rowel-sized raindrops struck.  When he reached
her side, he removed his hat to consider the big drops and laughed.
"Gully washer sure as hell... What are you looking at?"

"Did you see that lightning strike?"

"Couldn't help but see it.  I'd guess everyone for a hundred miles saw
it."

She jutted her chin.  "It struck on the mesa."

He turned her toward him by both arms.  "He'll be all right.  They know
how to look out for themselves."

"At sixteen?"

He dropped his hands from her arms but continued to gaze at her.  Ever
since the idea had surfaced that they would take Jim Moore in, she had
been acting like a genuine mother.  He did not know much about women,
but he'd spent his life around mares and cows.  She wouldn't have liked
the comparison, but it seemed the most natural thing in the world to
him.

"Well," he said lamely, 'there's plenty of timber up there, plenty of
places to get shelter."

"Bart, that lightning struck up there."

The storm seemed to be directly above them, and the sounds he had
mitigated by closing the front door came through the roof.  He waited
until she was seated then said, "It's been building up for days.  I'd
guess we're in for a real gully-washer."

After supper he stoked up the fire, took a glass of two-thirds water
and one-third whisky with him to the hearth where he stood with his
back to the blaze, listening to the storm, gauging its intensity, and
waiting for signs that it was moving.

Nan joined him in front of the fire.  The house was snug and warm, but
it was human nature, perhaps something residual from prehistoric times,
to back up to a hearth fire when a storm was abroad.

He offered her his whisky glass.  She declined.  He did not doubt at
all that the Indian boy had found a safe place from the storm's fury.
At sixteen he would have.  At sixteen she probably would have, too.

He sipped, remembered how she had opened her heart to the boy, and
nodded to himself about his own feelings, different from hers, but in
emotion, not in substance.  Jim was terribly hurt right now.  A man
needed to be alone.  Healing took time.

Jim was a good boy a smart, quick, and perceptive one, as he had proved
at the woodcutters' camp.  And a troubled one, as he had also proved.
Bart had thought about their taking him in.  He had been wary at first,
but not later.

He turned and said, "What do you want me to do?"

Nan's very dark eyes softened as she welcomed the question.  "There is
nothing we can do.  Not right now.  Maybe, if it passes by morning
..."

He was gently wagging his head.  "Not this one, Sweetheart.  We'll be
lucky if it slacks up by day after tomorrow."

Even as she had suggested that the storm might pass, she had known in
her heart it wouldn't.  Not this kind of storm.

"When it does, we could pack a horse and ride up there."

He smiled at her.  "Sure.  Just as soon as we can."

In the morning she arose first and had the cook stove popping when he
came through for his hat on the back of the door before going down to
do the chores.  It was still coming down.

The corralled horses resembled drowned rats.  They were anxious to be
fed.  There was no sign of Big Ben and his herd, but if any creatures
on the range had weathered it since last night, it would be his loose
stock.

Bart turned just before entering the house for a final look northward.
A sliver of pewter light showed through a slit in the undercast.  Up
north anyway, the storm was weakening.

Nan raised her eyes to him as he draped his old hat from the peg on the
door.  He smiled at her.  "Maybe tomorrow.  If it's goin' to slack off,
we'd ought to see some sign of it by this evening."

It occurred before that.

SEVENTEEN

Return of the Sun

Even early in the summer, when the air was scrubbed clean and the sun
broke through an undercast, the wet earth steamed and burned hotly
against rooftops.

Bart was down at the barn, fuming over a whittled elm handle that would
not fit into the thin steel collar of the pitchfork he had whittled it
for, and Nan was cleaning house with an impatient woman's fury when the
world was abruptly drowned in pale golden brilliance.

Nan hurried to the barn where Bart had finally whittled enough to force
the new handle onto the old fork, and said, "I'm going to make us
something to eat."

He looked up.  "Nan, we had dinner not an hour ago."

"Not to eat now," she explained, 'to take with us."

Bart went out back to bring the horses in to be saddled.  He worked
without really thinking, but his mood was less than exhilarated.  The
boy was all right.  They were going to bust their buttons getting up
there, and he was going to be hunkering at a fire looking annoyed and
resentful.

They left the yard with heat on their backs and mud down below.  But
rising steam meant the ground was drying.  With this kind of sunlight
it would dry fast.

Nan said, "We can make it up to the Wiltons' camp by nightfall, can't
we?"

He thought they could.  "Maybe," he replied, then waved his arm to
indicate the dozens of shallow pools, some nearly as large as small
lakes.  "But we can't make very good time."

They did, though, because they only paused twice and those times were
to rest the animals, neither of which really needed much rest.  They
were both ridden down to tough, muscular condition.

The heat bore down.  Bart shed his coat and shook his head.  There was
shade, but scattered and infrequent, none of it on the trail they were
riding.

Nan smiled each time he looked in her direction.  Once, she said, "I
think he'll be glad to see us."

Bart doubted it, so he changed the subject.  "Supposing he comes back
with us; where do we put him?"

She gave him a very grave look.  "Bart, you don't really want him, do
you?  Tell me the truth."

He looked steadily at her.  "I'll tell you the truth.  Yes, I want him
to come back with us.  But I'm not sure he'll want to, and it makes me
uncomfortable to see you building up a lot of hope."

She smiled a little.  "If he doesn't want to, it won't be the first
disappointment I've ever had.  But he needs us.  More than he
realizes."

"Yeah," he agreed dryly.  "That's my point, Sweetheart.  More than he
realizes."

She rode a while in thoughtful silence, then spoke again.  "We could
build a room onto the house, couldn't we?"

He wanted to throw up his hands.  Instead he nodded his head.  "Sure.
And he'd learn something about draw-knifing logs, notching them, and
chinking the places where they don't fit real good."

She was pleased.  "You see, you think about him as someone you can
teach things to.  Like a son."

They had crossed two little creeks, swollen now to nearly river-size,
and were heading more east than north in the direction of that old
military road, which was also in the direction of the Wiltons'
wagon-camp.

He had not thought about Emily with her baby and rawboned Emory up to
this point, except to speculate about being able to reach their camp
before full dark.

They saw smoke rising above treetops long before they saw the wagon,
which meant that whatever the emigrants had gone through last night
they had survived it.  Later, with dusk spreading, they rode through
the timber and smelled not just the wood-smoke but also food cooking.

As they came forth into the little open place where the forlorn old
wagon stood, tongue kept off the ground by a round of firewood, they
saw Emory batting at smoke with an old hat while reaching the full
length of his long arms to stir stew with a wooden ladle.  He was too
preoccupied to notice them until Bart whistled; then he stood up to
wipe his eyes on a soiled cuff.

Emily was in the wagon.  She came down over the tailgate as nimble as a
squirrel, and smiled broadly as she came forward, automatically drying
her hands on her apron, although they had not been wet.

After the greetings Emily took Nan to the wagon where the baby was
bone-dry and wrapped like a cocoon.

Emory remained out with Bart until the horses had been hobbled and
turned loose.

They strolled back to the fire.  On the way Bart explained about Jim
and why they were heading up through this area.  Emory looked at him
and said, "They have a hard lot, don't they?"  Bart nodded while
letting his gaze wander around the crude, primitive wagon-camp as Emory
continued, "But seems to me they brought most of it on themselves,
killin' women an' children, burning folks out, lifting hair and all."

Emory Wilton said that one of the Holbrook riders had returned his
horses yesterday, leading them behind the tailgate of a light wagon. He
had also left six sacks of seed grain Mr.  Holbrook had sent along. He
was pleased and gestured down toward open country.  "I made a
sod-buster out of a red fir log, drove harrow spikes through it three
inches apart.  It's not a plough, but I think it'll work.  Maybe I'll
have to crisscross the land four or five times to break up the sod and
uproot the native grass, but I got the time."  He dropped his arm.
"With that much grain, a man could harvest more than enough to see him
through."

It was a comfortable time, pleasant, warm, and relaxed.  So relaxed
that Bart was fighting off sleep for an hour before he and Nan declined
an offer to sleep in the wagon, took their bedrolls among the trees to
dry ground, and rolled in.

They did not wait for breakfast in the morning.  This close to the high
plateau, Bart was anxious to be in the saddle.

As they rode through a dense stand of thorn ping and emerged in an area
of pine stumps and flourishing second growth, he saw the old road.  He
looked back as he said, "Two hours more."

In fact, unless someone took the time to come up here and chuck rocks
into the worst of the gullies, it would even become hazardous on
horseback, if there was another storm like that one night before
last.

He was still thinking about this, from the standpoint of a wild horse
trapper, when Nan said she smelled smoke.

He smelled it too when they were about midway.  "Lightning strike," he
said, and did not add that it must have been a particularly bad
lightning strike to start a fire that had burned through that downpour
and seemed to still be burning.

They rode across the huge meadow side by side, silent and apprehensive.
Not because of the smoke but because of a shared feeling neither of
them could explain.

There was absolute silence.  The only moving thing they saw was that
lazy spindrift of rising smoke.

Nan asked where Jim'd had his camp.  Bart could not answer because he
had never asked the lad, and Jim had never volunteered this
information.  He thought the camp was northwest, but he did not mention
this because that was the direction of the rising smoke.

Bart stopped abruptly with an upraised gloved hand.  His wife drew rein
behind him.  There was a horse cropping grass in a little clearing
where sunlight reached.  The animal had not seen them.  It was
thoroughly enjoying the increasing heat after what it had gone through
last night.  It was also enjoying being able to selectively pick grass
heads, something it was not often able to do on the lower range.

When Bart said he recognized the animal, the horse threw up its head at
the sound of a human voice and froze.  Nan also knew the horse.  "The
camp can't be far," she said.

It wasn't far.  Neither was a wide area of black scorch.  To one side
lay the huge old rotting deadfall from which the smoke was rising.  It
was smouldering deep in its heart where the wood was still hard, red,
and flammable, but water had so thoroughly soaked in that a flaming
fire would not break out although the log could smoulder for weeks.

They knew it was a human camp because of the bridle hanging from a tree
limb, and the other things, mostly handcrafted, lying in the trampled
grass.

They dismounted and while Bart walked carefully through the grass and
weeds to the left.  Nan was doing the same to their right.  The smell
of sulphur was strong even now, almost two days after the lightning had
struck.

Nan probably realized it without Bart commenting; what she had seen
from thirty miles distant and had been impressed with because it had
been an unusually massive and blinding flash, had clearly been one of
the most violent strikes of lightning either of them would ever
experience.

EIGHTEEN

They searched hard but found no trace of Jim Moore.  When they came
together beneath the tree holding the bridle, Bart raised his hat to
scratch.  "Hell of a poor place to camp anyway," he said, looking
around.  "There's no shelter, he'd be exposed if it rained or if a big
wind came."  He looked puzzled, with justification.  Nan's reaction to
failure was more emotional than practical.

"Wouldn't there be something?"  She gestured.  "If he had been out here
when it struck, wouldn't there be -something?"

He did not want to say what he thought: if Jim had been out here, he
would probably have been incinerated.

To get her mind off the worst of the possibilities, he suggested
widening the scope of their search.  They got back astride and reined
off in different directions.

As Bart rode along the rocky rim of a deep place he thought that this
would be ideal bear-hunting country.

If a bear had got the boy, it was unlikely that there would be clothing
out where they had searched on foot.

He dismounted beside a craggy, high plinth of rough dark rock, climbed
it, and was disappointed that the view from the top let him see nothing
but more miles of timber in all directions.

He rode away from this place more concerned with finding his wife than
Jim Moore.  When he got back to the burned tree where the bridle was
hanging, he dismounted, hobbled his horse, lifted off the outfit, and
went after armloads of dry limbs.  By the time he had enough firewood
to last the night, dusk was approaching.  He killed more time by making
a small fire, which burned with an intense blue flame and no smoke.  He
finally stood up and called.  Nan should be within hearing, and it was
getting too dark to search.

But she did not arrive.

He worried and called several more times.  She still did not ride
toward his little fire from the timber.  As his fear mounted and
daylight continued to wane, he went to his saddle, freed the old riding
coat from behind the cantle, shrugged into it, took his Winchester, and
went on foot in the direction Nan had taken.

He was approaching one of those jumbles of blackish rock when a
startled cow elk saw the man with the gun.  She turned to stone.  They
eyed each other.  She looked back, until Bart tilted his head and
yelled his wife's name again.  That made the elk go plunging blindly
through the darkening forest.  She made so much noise Bart barely heard
what he thought might be a human shout.

But it had come from the southwest.  He was certain of that, so he
turned slightly down-slope, bearing westward as he walked.

He halted in near darkness, listened, then threw back his head and
called her name again.  This time as he was preparing to continue
walking, the call came distinctly.

"Bart!  I found him!"

He made a slight change in his course and took longer strides.  When he
was uncertain he called, and she answered him.

His judgment was confirmed when he saw her flashy chestnut horse
standing tethered to the lowest limb of an old fir tree, looking
thoroughly bored.

The last time he called, he did not raise his voice very much.  When
the answer came back, it startled him.  It seemed to come from directly
below his feet.

In front to his right, where the foremost boulders were strewn and
stacked, there was what appeared to be a bear den, an old one, probably
long abandoned.  He approached it, and detected the scent of stale damp
air.  He said, "Nan?"

Her reply was in a normal tone.  "In here.  Watch your head."

He got down on all fours.  For about fifteen feet it was a tight fit.
Beyond that the cave became wider and high, not high enough for a man
to stand erect, but high enough for him to stand up bent over.

Nan's face showed eerily in what little light there was.  When she saw
him, she stood up in a crouch and gestured for him to go back the way
he had come.

"How in hell did you find that cave?"  he asked.  She ignored the
question.  She had something much more important on her mind.  She
looked steadily at him and spoke in almost a whisper.

"He's blind."

Bart was prepared for almost anything but this.  He gazed blankly at
her.  "Blind?"

"Yes.  I was riding through here.  He called.  It sounded like a puppy.
He's huddled in there like an injured animal.  I gave him water from my
canteen.  But when I went after some food in my saddlebags, he wouldn't
eat.  He's been in there ... he told me he was returning from that
glade about a mile south where he left the horse when the lightning
struck.  It lifted him in the air.  He remembers that when he came to,
his side hurt where he had evidently been slammed against a tree."

"Broken ribs?"

"No.  I felt for that.  He couldn't see and it was raining hard.  He
knew where this cave was because that's where he slept at night when he
lived up here before.  Bart, he crawled on his hands and knees to hole
up in there.  He told me he thought he was going to die was waiting to
die when he heard my horse.  He thought it was the animal he'd come up
here on, so he talked to it."

Bart looked for something to sit on.  "Plumb blind?  Can't see at
all?"

"Yes."

He groped for a straw as he said, "It's dark in there, Nan.  He hasn't
come out so he don't think he can '

"Bart, he is blind."

He accepted that without further comment.  "Well, we can get him out of
there; put him behind you on the horse and take him back to camp."

That is what they did, not without difficulty because the boy was not
willing.  He had a fatalistic temperament, like many Indians.  He'd had
two days to decide it was his time to die, and was resigned to dying.
They had to talk hard to convince him that if it had indeed been his
time, then why did his private star send Nan riding to the cave?

He was weak, and his clothes, including the ragged old sweater, had
that peculiar sulphur scent and were torn.  But when they reached
Bart's little fire and had fed it up into a bright blaze, they could
find no sign of burns.  A couple of bruises but no burns, which Bart
thought was in itself a miracle.  He must have been very close to the
strike to be flung off his feet by it.

Nan made a meal.  Jim did not seem to want to talk, so Bart abandoned
the effort until they were all warm and fed.  He was refilling the
lad's cup with coffee, when he began to ask questions, and the words
tumbled out.  Bart and Nan exchanged a glance.

But Jim retold his experience, speaking slowly and adding details he'd
neglected to mention to Nan, and several times he raised a palm to pass
it in front of his eyes because, although he could hear the bright fire
burning and crackling and could feel its heat, he could not see it.

By the time they were ready to bed down, Nan's initial shock had
passed.  By firelight Bart could see her brimming tears.  They made Jim
comfortable beside the fire, wrapping him in two blankets, one each
from their individual blanket rolls then they walked out a short ways
and Nan said, "I can't remember ever having anything hurt me like this.
Blind?  Sixteen years old, and so blind he can't even see the fire?"

Bart had nothing to say.

He kissed his wife's cheek.  "We'll head down at sunrise and go
directly home with him."

She shook her head.  "I'll take him home.  You ride to Holtville and
bring back Dr.  Mailer."

He turned toward the fire when she stopped him with a hand on his arm.
"Bart, I can't do this to you."

"Do what?"

"We wanted to take him in, to raise him

He looked hard at her.  "He didn't do that on purpose.  It wasn't his
fault, an' he's still a kid, a damned badly scairt one right now, I'd
say, without a single human being on earth to hold out a hand to him.
We're going to take him back, an' if we got to tie ropes from the house
to the barn to the springhouse, we'll do it."

She threw her arms around him briefly, then walked back with him.

Nan led Jim's horse, and Bart picked a different trail down, one wide
enough for two horses abreast to pass without interference from big
trees.  Jim knew when they were out of the timber.  He could feel the
heat.  He had been especially quiet since last night.

The horses were tired, so were their riders, and finally Jim offered to
talk.  He mentioned his fear while hiding in the cave.  He knew,
because he now had fleas, that the cave had once been a bear den.  And
although the smell was not strong, which meant no bears had used the
cave in a long while, it was always possible that a bear might seek the
cave during a bad storm.

Bart and Nan exchanged a glance during this recital.  Bad enough to be
unable to see, but to live in dread of an encounter with a bear inside
a cave where he would not have been able to escape, must have made
Jim's terror very great.

Then he smiled and said, "I was going to come back.  I was going to
start down this morning and return the horse."  He groped through
ragged pockets and produced Nan's belt.  "And bring this to you."  He
pushed the belt toward where he had been listening to her voice.  She
took it and thanked him with a lump in her throat the size of a rock.

He looked ahead where he could distinguish the separate sound of Bart's
horse up ahead.  It required a little time for him to say it, but he
tried.  "I could go back to my cave.  I might even be able to find the
reservation again.  But now I don't have anyone."

Nan reined close and leaned with an arm around his shoulders.  "Will
you do us a favor, Jim?"

He replied without hesitation.  "Yes'm."

"Will you live with us?"

Bart was riding twisted in the saddle.  He saw the lad's mouth quiver
and reined back to ride upon his opposite side as he said, "Jim, we can
build a leanto bedroom and you can'

The words were torn out of him very loud.  "I can't see!  I'm blind!  I
couldn't even find the lean-to!  If I go back to the cave, I can sit in
there and wait."

Bart met his wife's swimming eyes over the boy's head then he spoke
loudly.  "You can do just about anything you set your mind to do, Jim,
and we'll help you do it.  Boy, eyes aren't everything.  Suppose you'd
lost both your legs.  Or maybe busted your back so's you'd have to
spend the rest of your life sittin' in a chair without being able to
move.  Listen to me; we need you with us.  You've got a family, and
families work together for one another.  Now smile at me, boy.
Smile!"

It was a wet-eyed, quavery smile but it rose to his face and when Bart
leaned to take his hand, and squeezed, Jim squeezed back.

NINETEEN

A Time f Trial

Nan cooked a meal.  The house was warm, and Jim sat in the parlor
motionless until Bart was kneeling at the hearth to build a fire and
said, "Darn good thing you weren't closer when that bolt struck."

The lad said nothing.  His expression suggested, though, that he wished
he had been closer, so there would be no blindness.

Bart fed in the kindling, lighted it, rocked back for a moment, then
eased in two large quarters of a red fir round.

It was very late, later than Bart had been up and around in years. When
Nan called them to the kitchen, Bart did not take Jim's hand; he put an
arm around the youth's shoulders and guided him that way.

Jim's depression did not go as deep as his hunger.  After Nan and Bart
had finished, the young Indian went right on scarfing up just about
everything he could eat.

Bart went down to the barn to look in on the animals.  Nan made a bed
on the sofa for Jim.  He was drowsy; it was hotter in the house than he
was accustomed to, and he had eaten as much as a much larger man.  He
was also emotionally exhausted whether he would allow it to show or
not.  Nan made him comfortable, turned down the lamp without
remembering that it would not keep him awake, then left the house on
her way to the barn.

Her husband was rigging out a fresh horse.  When she appeared, he spoke
before she could.  "It's a long ride.  Twice as long as it was up to
Wild Horse Mesa, so I better leave right now."

"But you haven't rested, Bart."

He grinned at her in the gloom.  "We're tough.  Jim an' I are tough. We
trotted most of the way from the mesa to Wilton's camp, remember, then
rode darned near another twenty miles southward after those horse
thieves, and we hadn't had much rest then either."  He dropped the
stirrup, shoved the tag-end of the latigo through its little holder,
and turned to lead the horse out of the barn.  Nan followed, and said,
"I don't like you doing this, Bart.  I wish there was another way."

He trailed the reins to get close enough to kiss her, smiled, and
turned back to swing into the saddle.  He said, "Take care of
yourself."

In the morning when she passed through the parlor on the way to the
kitchen, she glanced at the couch.  It was empty.  With a sinking
feeling, she hurried to the front veranda.  He was not in sight.

She returned to the house as Jim came in from out back where he'd
groped his way to the wash house.  She could have dropped she was so
relieved, but instead she went over to help him find the kitchen door.
As he sat at the table, she talked, he listened, and when the meal was
ready, so was he.  Again, she was astonished at how much food he could
put away.

Later, she walked with him hand-in-hand down to the barn.  He asked
about her husband.  She told him where he had gone, and Jim turned his
face toward the sound of her voice.  "Medicine won't make new eyes," he
said.

The horses nickered because they had not been fed, so Nan left Jim out
there and went back for forksful of hay, which she pitched with an
experienced toss.

Jim leaned on the peeled-pole stringers.  "What does your husband do
with all his horses?"  he asked.

"Breaks them to sell when they are old enough."

"Doesn't he trap the wild ones, too?"

"Yes, but we have a fairly large herd of brood mares of our own.  He
goes up there to trap wild horses because he likes to do it."

"Where are Alex and Foster and Abel?"

"They've gone back to town with their wood.  If you'd like, one of
these days we'll ride in and visit them."

"Yes."  Then he hesitated and said, "What will they do with my
brothers?"

She said, "Probably bury them in the Holtville cemetery."

He looked in the direction of her voice.  "Indians?"

She said it might be better if his brothers were buried over in her
family cemetery.  Jim had a different idea.  "Couldn't they be buried
here?  I could memorize how many steps it was out to their graves."

She replied before she thought.  "Yes."

While she worked in the kitchen, he sat at the table following her
movements by sound.  Later, he startled her by announcing that someone
was driving into the yard in a buggy.  She went out front and met her
father who was already tying up in front of the barn.  He waved to her,
then squinted in the direction of the corrals.  He had recognized the
horse the Indian lad had ridden away on.

Nan came down to him and before he could ask questions, told him
everything that had happened since the night of the storm.  His
reaction to Jim's condition was identical to Bart's reaction.  He
stared at her.  "Blind?  Can't see?"

John Holbrook leaned on the hitch rack gazing at her.  She made a
quavery little forlorn smile.  "Bart's gone to town for Dr.  Mailer."

Holbrook gazed at her.  "Blind ... What can anyone do about that?"

"He worked a miracle for you last year."  She said, "Would you like
something to eat?  I was just making dinner when Jim heard your rig."

When they entered, Jim cocked his head and said, "It is your father. He
smelled the same way over in his yard before we went after the horse
thieves.  He smelled of whisky and tobacco."

John laughed, pulled up a chair as his daughter went out to the
kitchen, and leaned to tap Jim on the knee as he spoke.  "If there's a
way to fix your eyes, we're goin' to find it."

Jim said nothing.

The older man straightened back in the chair, looking gravely at the
youngster.  "I once knew a man who couldn't see.  He lost his sight in
the war.  He was so good at getting' around and doing his work it was
two weeks before I realised he was blind."

Jim remained expressionless and silent.

The last thing he told the young Indian, just before he picked up his
hat on the way toward the door, was: "Don't give up, son.  I expect
it'll be a long fight, but you got to keep your heart strong.  I know
what I'm talkin' about.  I was in pain more years than you are old
before Dr.  Mailer came along and fixed my back."

As he and his daughter strolled in the direction of the barn, his tone
of voice was different.  "How old is he?"

"Sixteen."

"Gawddamn, Nan, that's awful young to be blind."

"Yes.  We'll keep him.  He doesn't have anyone else.  His brothers are
dead, his parents are dead."

John Holbrook looked closely at his daughter.  "Pity don't stand up as
long as this thing may last."

"It's not pity," she replied.  "We wanted to have him before this
happened."

Holbrook freed his buggy horse and backed the rig clear of the rail so
that when he climbed in the horse would be able to turn completely
around.  He blew out a big breath.

"You're tough.  You always were.  Think you three can come over
Sunday?"

Jim's face came around when the door opened and closed.  His mood was
different; her father had given him hope.  He said, "He don't have to
help an Indian."

She took both his hands in her hands, and said, "Listen to me, Jim.  My
mother was Indian.  I want you to start thinking of people as just
people."

He nodded.

She reached to brush back his long hair.  "Tell me about your mother.
Was she tall?"

"About a head shorter than you.  But my father was tall.  And he was
strong.  He hunted a lot.  He taught me to use a bow and arrow and to
shoot his old rifle."

He told her of his childhood, of the soldiers and missionaries who came
to the reservation, of his life up until he decided to leave the
reservation.

She was an attentive listener, occasionally asking questions.  Then he
asked her a question.  "Did your father marry your mother off the
reservation?"

"Jim, there were no reservations when my father and mother were
married.  She was a spokesman's daughter, so it cost my father a lot of
horses.  They were married twice, once at my mother's rancheria and
again by a minister my father sent for."

He did not make a sound.  His head was cocked a little.  She arose to
go quickly to the door.  But it was not a horseman, it was Big Ben the
remount stallion bringing his mares into the yard.

But Big Ben had a memory like an elephant.  He was poking here and
there looking for that rangy big wild stallion who had knocked him
senseless last year, the big horse Bart had left in the corral before
leaving for Holtville.

But the big horse was no longer a stallion, so when Ben finally located
him and cake-walked toward the corral bowing his neck and whistling a
challenge, the big horse inside the corral merely walked over until
they could touch muzzles, then turned away.

Big Ben took that dismissal as an act of cowardice and came off the
ground pawing at the corral stringers.  His sudden, violent display
startled the mares and colts.  They spun and left the yard in a
belly-down rush.

Nan went down toward the corrals searching stones.  When she had a
handful she got close enough to the thick-necked stallion to hit him
hard several times before he stopped making challenges and turned to
face her.  She threw two more stones, high overhand.  One missed by
inches, but the second one struck Big Ben squarely in the middle of the
back.  He sprang ahead and sideways, making a loud snort.

Nan raised her arm with an empty hand and that was all the remount
stallion needed to see.  He went out of the yard flinging mud in all
directions, tail out, head up and swinging from side to side.

She turned to peer westward, the direction from which her husband would
arrive with the doctor.  There was only empty space, miles and miles of
it, and a sky turning burnished red-gold.

TWENTY

Dr.  Mailer

The morning dragged.  When her father had visited the previous day, she
had been provided with a diversion from her pain and sadness.  Today
she could not shake off a feeling of depression.

An hour before noon, Jim told her someone was coming from the east. She
had coaxed him to the veranda where he had been sitting when he called
her, and as before, although he was facing that direction, she marveled
at his ability to detect sounds at a distance.  And he was right, two
horsemen were loping toward the yard.  One she recognised by the way he
sat his saddle as her husband; the other man was thicker, heavier, and
older.  By the time Bart raised a hand to her in a high salute, she
recognised Dr.  Mailer.

Frank Mailer was a quiet, thoughtful man with the physique of a
blacksmith.  Today he was carrying a small black leather satchel.
Otherwise, he looked the same slightly rumpled, darkly tanned,
steady-eyed.  But he smiled as he came up the steps and she greeted
him.

Bart mentioned something to eat, and Frank Mailer declined.  But when
Nan mentioned coffee, he trailed after her into the house, leaving Bart
on the porch with Jim.  He considered Nan for a while in silence, then
in his direct manner asked if there had been any improvement in the boy
since her husband had left for town.

She brought him his coffee and shook his head.  "None that I can tell
and he doesn't say much."

Dr.  Mailer was raising the cup when he said, "Indian," as though that
explained the boy's reticence.  He did not looked at her when he said,
"Bart said the bolt lifted him and flung him against a tree."

Nan nodded.  "That's what he told us."

"Bart also said the lad was several hundred feet or more from where the
bolt struck."

"Yes.  I think that's what we figured the distance had to be."

"Burnt clothing, Nan?"

"His clothing smelled of sulphur, Frank, and some of it was torn."

"Scorched, Nan?"

She thought back.  He had looked so terribly injured and bedraggled. "I
think so ... No, I don't remember seeing any signs of scorch."  She sat
down slowly, placed her arms atop the table, and gazed at the older
man.

The doctor brusquely said, "Well, we'd better fetch him in so I can
have a look at him."  She was arising when he asked another question.
"For the last couple of days you've been with him?"

"Yes."

"Does he try to stay in the dark, or avoid sunlight?"

"No, not particularly, but then except for going down to the barn to do
the chores, we've pretty much remained inside.  I'll get him."

He smiled, nodded his head absently and watched her cross the parlor
toward the front door.  Nan, her husband, and Jim Moore entered the
kitchen.  The Templetons stood expectantly by the table.  Jim felt for
a chair back and held it as the bull-built man studied the youth.

Dr.  Mailer pulled out two chairs, pulled Jim toward one, and pushed
him down.  He took the other chair and leaned close as he said, "Jim,
tell me everything you remember up on the mesa when the lightning
struck.  Everything.  Don't leave anything out."

"I was coming back from putting the horse I borrowed in a little grassy
place, maybe a mile from the bigger grassy place where I'd lived for a
while before other folks come up there.  I knew it was going to storm.
It was dark an' there was a high wind howlin' farther up in the
mountains.  There was rain starting about the time I was halfway along.
But I had an old bear-cave I'd used other times so I figured to head
for that an' was turning toward it down on the south side of the
camping-meadow, walking through the trees.  There was black rock down
there stickin' up out of the ground.  In daylight that didn't mean
much, but as the storm got worse there got to be less an' less
daylight.

"I was maybe three, four hundred feet along, walking west among the
trees, when all at once there come this lightning.  The sound was like
a hundred men tearing bed-sheets.  That's about all I remember except
for a light so white you couldn't face it everywhere.  The trees looked
like unlit candles.  Terrible white ... That's all I remember."

Doc Mailer said, "I'm going to cover your eyes with a bandage.  You
understand?"

Jim nodded his head.

"An' put some medicine on the bandage.  I don't want you to take the
bandage off, or raise it to let any light in."

Jim nodded again.  He was sitting stiffly in the chair as Frank Mailer
put his satchel on the table as he asked Nan if she had some hot water.
"You can wash his face, with soap, especially up around his eyes."

Nan moved to obey and Jim raised his head slightly.  Bart remained
standing as Frank Mailer removed several items from his medicine bag.
One was a pale green, square tin that had small flowers printed over
the pale green.  Bart recognized the tin.  In fact he had several just
like it down at the barn.  He used the salve to help heal cuts on his
horses.

He watched Doc Mailer unroll a length of heavy black cloth and use his
finger to grease part of the cloth.  Then Mailer straightened as Nan
finished wiping Jim's face dry, and moved forward.  "There's nothing to
this," he told the boy.  "It won't sting.  It won't hurt at all.  It's
just to keep light out of your eyes for a few days."

Frank Mailer was an expert at bandaging.  When he was finished after
testing the tightness of the cloth, he said, "How does it feel?"

Jim answered quietly.  "Like something is wrapped around my head."

"Tight?"

"No.  Well, not tight enough to hurt.  I can smell the medicine.  Will
it cure me?"

Frank Mailer's expression changed for the first time.  "I don't know. I
hope so.  We won't know for a few days.  Maybe by Sunday we can take it
off and see if it's helped.  Can you feel your way around until
then?"

"Yes."

"And you won't lift the bandage or take it off?"

"No."

"Because it's very important, Jim, that you don't."

Mailer raised his eyes to Bart, made a little gesture with his hands,
and was putting things back into his satchel before buckling it closed
when Nan said she would make dinner.  It was past noon, in fact, so it
was reasonable to think everyone would be hungry.

Frank Mailer smiled at her on his way out of the kitchen.  Bart
followed him.  They walked down to the barn where Dr.  Mailer tied his
satchel to the saddle.  Bart was curious about that salve and pointed
to an identical can on a shelf.

Frank Mailer gazed over there, then finished with the satchel, and
faced around.  "It's good stuff for cuts and scratches on horses,
cattle, or men, but it can't make one damned bit of difference with
that boy's eyes."  Dr.  Mailer added a little more to what he had
already said.  "It smells like medicine.  Maybe Jim's never been to a
redskin medicine man, and maybe he has, but anyway, they use herbs that
their people associate with cures medicine.  Bart, healing folks is
maybe as much as fifty percent in their minds.  I know that from years
of experience."

Bart's grave look did not change.  "We're talkin' about a blind boy,
Frank."

Dr.  Mailer regarded Templeton for a moment, then said, "I'd feel
better if we'd been able to keep the sun out of his face immediately
after you folks found him in that dark cave.  Still, it's too late to
worry about that, so we'll hope for the best."

"How much hope is there?"  Bart asked, and the burly older man leaned
across a saddle-seat on the pole as he replied.  "Just as much as folk
want to indulge in.  But the rest of it's out of my hands as well as
yours.  I'll drive out next Sunday and remove the bandage.  Meanwhile,
make him keep that bandage on.  And there's one other thing you can do.
Take him around the place with you.  Stay with him.  Talk about
everything under the sun but mostly, make him feel like this is home
and you want him to stay here for as long as he lives or for as long as
he wants to anyway.  Bart?  Keep his spirits up."

Dr.  Mailer wagged his head and straightened up.  "I forgot to tell
you.  We buried those two Indian thieves day before yesterday.  His
kinsmen?"

"His brothers."

"Well, I wouldn't mention them if I were you, unless you can't keep
from mentioning it.  Y'know, it's a hell of a trip out here."

Bart understood.  "I could bring him to Holtville."

Dr.  Mailer shook his head.  "Naw.  But next time I'll use my buggy.  I
haven't looked in on John Holbrook in months.  I'll stop by his place
on my way over here next Sunday."

Nan called, dinner was ready.  There was nothing more Frank Mailer
could tell Bart about Jim's sight.  He had not raised much hope, and
that was bothering Bart.

Nan told them her father had invited them over for Sunday dinner.  Doc
Mailer raised his eyes.  He told her what he had told her husband down
at the barn.  She said she and her family would probably be over at her
father's place on Sunday, and that would shave a few miles off Doctor
Mailer's drive.

The doctor laid a hand lightly on Jim's shoulder.  "If the bandage
slips or gets loose, ask Nan to snug it up again."

While they were rigging out Doc Mailer's big seal-brown mare, Mailer
said, "I see Nan's about to worry herself sick over that boy.  I don't
have any medicine for that sort of thing; it'll be up to you."

Bart nodded in silence.  As they were leading his horse out into the
sunlight, he said, "She's got a hell of a mothering instinct, Frank."

Mailer smiled about Bart's statement.  "Then maybe someday you'll fill
up the yard with youngsters."

Bart went down into the barn, kicked an empty horseshoe keg around, and
sat on it, thinking.  He was still perched like that when his wife came
searching for him.  She studied his face before saying, "He must not
have been very encouraging."

Bart looked up at her.  He said, "About half of what he told me I don't
understand.  He said to keep Jim with me, take him around with me, keep
his mind off things."

She leaned beside him.  "Probably because he thinks it will help later
when the bandage is taken off, if he's felt good for a few days."

Bart accepted that as a possibility and stood up.  "They buried his
brothers in the Holtville cemetery."

She mentioned Jim's wish that they could have been buried on the ranch.
She also said, "I told him it might be possible.  Now I'll have to tell
him they have already been buried sixty miles from here."

"Well, don't tell him before Sunday, unless he asks.  I expect we'd
better do as Frank said, make him feel thoroughly at home, make him as
happy as we can."

She said, "Sunday.  When my father rode over to invite us to supper, I
liked the idea.  All of us being together, good food, a pleasant
time."

"And now?"

She looked at him with pain-shadowed eyes.  "And now we'll ride over,
the bandage will come off ..."

He recognized his remount stallion out there.  She had not told him of
his visit to the yard with his mares and foals.  He thought of the time
he had been riding the big wild horse from the mesa when his remount
stud had started a battle.  The only ultimate casualty of that horse
fight had been Bart, for although Big Ben had been knocked senseless,
he had recovered much faster than Bart had.  Ben had got a dent in his
forehead as a result of that fight, but Bart had been forced to do
everything with one arm until his broken arm had healed.

TWENTY-ONE

Living With It

Bart had several chores to take care of involving his team and wagon.
He loaded poles and tools, handed Jim up beside him on the seat, and
left the yard heading northwesterly.

They talked about horses, something Bart knew about and the Indian boy
was interested in.  Bart told him horse stories until they reached the
first silted-up spring where his horses watered.  As he climbed down to
lift out the tools he needed, he said, "When I was about your age, an
old man gave me a chew of molasses-cured cut plug."  He said no more
until he was over at the spring ready to dig out silt.  He finally
returned to his narrative.  "I'd watched the old man tear off a corner,
so I did the same.  Thing is, the old man had been chewing all his
life.  He knew exactly how to tear off a small piece.  Me, well, when
it came loose I had a piece of chewing tobacco about as big as a couple
of fingers are wide.  The old man was watching, nodding approval. Well,
that stuff stung the inside of my mouth, so the saliva built up and
directly I had such a mouthful of tobacco juice my cheeks was puffed
out like a chipmunk."

Jim said, "Why didn't you spit it out?"

Bart said, "That was the problem.  You see that old man said he didn't
buy good Kentucky twist just to spit it on the ground.  So I dassn't
spit."

"What did you do?"

"Swallowed the juice.  I felt like a mule had kicked me in the middle
of the chest.  I couldn't breathe.  I was sitting down or I'd have
dropped.  Then I got sick.  The sicker I got, the louder the old man
laughed.  I got so sick and felt so miserable I thought I'd die."

Jim was leaning forward on the wagon seat in the direction of Bart's
voice.  "What happened?"

"Not much.  I couldn't even keep water down for the rest of that day,
but the next day I was all right.  From that day to this I never, ever,
took another chew of tobacco."

"What about the old man?"

"Oh, he told everyone he came across about it and was still laughin' a
year later when I left that country."

Jim was quiet for a long time.  Bart was pitching the tools back on the
wagon bed before he spoke.  "Did you ever smoke?"

Bart shook his head, remembered Jim could not see that, and said,
"Nope.  I just never cared for the smell of smoking tobacco.  Did you
ever try it?"

Jim had.  "Yes, my father kept shag in a pouch he wore on his belt.
He'd hang the pouch on a pole when he went to bed.  I liked the smell
of his smokin' tobacco, so I stole some one time while he was sleeping,
and the next day rolled a cigarette.  I didn't throw up, but I got so
dizzy I kept falling down.  My mother thought I'd got hold of some
whisky.  She scolded me real bad and sent me to bed without supper."

Bart laughed, and came up beside the youth.  Jim did not laugh but he
was smiling as they drove southward.  Bart racked his brain for other
interludes in his youth, and finally got Jim to laugh as he told him
about the Sunday when everyone had just finished a big dinner and the
older men saddled a four-hundred-pound steer in a corral and shoved him
down into the saddle.

He had been afraid to allow himself to be bucked off for fear the steer
would trample him, so he had used both hands to hang on with while his
head snapped like an apple on a string as the steer bawled and bucked
every way but straight ahead.

Jim laughed.

"Then," stated Bart, 'the confounded thing decided that since he
couldn't shake me off, he'd brush me off.  He ran completely around
that corral leaning as hard as he could against the stringers.  I
thought he'd busted my leg about ten times before he quit and someone
jumped down, grabbed his head, and tipped it up until I could unload. I
couldn't stand up."

"Was the leg broke?"

"No, but every time one of the men would touch it I'd scream bloody
murder.  Eventually my ma came down there because of the yelling, and
when she was finished with my paw and the others, they slunk down into
the barn like whipped dogs.  You know, Jim, I limped on that leg for
two weeks.  I was so pitiful my ma took me into town and made me fried
chicken.  I sure hated to give up that limp."

The boy laughed again, then raised a hand to his face.  "Were you ever
unable to see?"  he asked.

Bart looked sideways before answering.  "No, I never was.  I had a
cousin who was real fat.  He was bigger and older'n I was.  He used to
whip me about two, three times a week.  Right up to the time we was in
a hayloft at his folks' farm, and I slipped his suspenders over the
tines of the Jackson fork and gave him a boot in the rear.  You could
have heard him holler all the way to Kansas as he sailed out the barn
maw and hung out there, flappin' like a bird."

Jim smiled and looked around.  "Did you get him down?"

"Nope.  That time it was my maw and paw, and after he was on the ground
and told them I'd hooked his suspenders over the fork, they went after
me like the Devil after a crippled saint."

Jim laughed.  "What happened the next time you met him?"

Bart sighed.  "He whipped me."

Bart climbed down for the tools again, and this time Jim also climbed
down.  He felt along the sideboards to the tailgate and asked if he
could help.  Bart handed him a shovel, helped him through the mud, and
showed him where to dig.  They talked as they shovelled silt.  When
Bart said the water was flowing again, they returned to the rig, and
climbed back to the seat.  Jim asked if there were any more springs
that needed cleaning, and Bart, aiming the team for home, said they had
cleaned the only two his horses used.  He did not mention the mud on
his trousers and his shirt where Jim had unknowingly flung mud.

As they were entering the yard, Jim turned his bandaged eyes and said,
"I helped."

Bart looked around, put a powerful arm around the boy's shoulders and
agreed.  "You sure did, Jim.  Remember that story Mr.  Holbrook told
you about the feller he knew who was blind?"

"Yes.  If you go out tomorrow, could I come along?"

Bart lied.  "I was just goin' to ask if you'd ride with me tomorrow.
I'd sort of like to know where the mares and colts are."

"Ride?"  the boy said with a fading voice.

"Sure.  You know how to ride and rein a horse.  I know you do because
we rode together before."  He ended it lamely, then hurried ahead so
Jim would not remember where they had ridden together before.  "The
horse can do all the seeing you got to do ... I'd like to pass by some
salt logs, too.  If they're empty, I expect day after tomorrow we can
hitch up the wagon and haul salt out there."  He was watching for the
shadow that did not appear.  He had successfully prevented Jim from
thinking about their last horseback ride together.  He said, "If a man
puts out salt, he don't usually have too much trouble finding his
livestock.  Cattle and horses love salt.  They never get enough from
natural sources."

Nan came around the side of the barn and looked in at the horses. "What
happened?"

"Well, he wanted to help shovel the mud out.  He pitched mud on me
twice before I could get un-tracked and get out of the way."

She looked him up and down, then leaned on the corral stringers
laughing.  He eyed her ruefully.  "I was supposed to get Jim to
laughing, not you."

She raised up and wiped her eyes.  "Why not me?  I need it too."  She
touched his cheek.  "That's the most life I've ever seen in him, Bart.
He says you're going to take him out on horseback tomorrow."

"Yeah.  Ride around in a big five-mile circle and pretend like I'm
lookin' for the horses."

She turned back to watch the corralled horses.  "It breaks my heart."

He nodded.  "Yeah, I understand.  But you know, there really are things
he can do when he's not thinkin' about being blind."

Jim's light mood remained until bedtime.  Nan turned to her husband in
bed and smiled.  "You never told me those stories; the one about your
fat cousin and the one about the old man and the chewing tobacco."

He chuckled.  "You're lucky.  Maybe after we've been married a long
time you'll flinch when I start reminiscing."

She watched moonlight dapple the far wall.  "You have never told me
where you grew up, or anything about your family."

"Missouri," he said, 'until I was a couple of years older'n Jim.  Then
I hired on with that old man who gave me the lesson about chewing
tobacco.  He was a traveling cattle dealer.  I did the herding for him.
When I got as far as Council Bluffs, I quit the old man and hired on
with a freight company hauling goods out here.  I left the freight
outfit and worked the ranges from Montana on south.  The rest of it you
know.  I quit riding for other people, took up on this land, and here I
am.  Nothing very colourful, and it don't take long to tell it."

"What about your family?"  she asked, and he turned his head on the
pillow.  "How come you're not sleepy?  I am.  I dug mud today.  That
tires a man."

She suddenly said, "I don't want to go over to the ranch Sunday."

He opened his eyes, collected his wits, and said, "Why not?"

"I just don't."

"You don't want to go because you don't want to be there when Frank
Mailer takes the bandage off."

She did not deny it.  She sounded defiant when she said, "Do you?"

"Well, not exactly, but not goin' or not seeing the bandage come off
won't change anything.  And if we don't show up Sunday, sure as hell
he'll ride over here, so what would we gain by stayin' home?  Maybe a
couple more hours of not knowing."

In the morning Jim had groped his way to the wash house before anyone
was stirring.  He was out in the kitchen building a kindling wood fire
in the stove when Nan came to the doorway to watch, and he looked
toward the door as he said.  "Am I doin' it right?"

"Exactly right," she said.

"Then I'll go fetch a bucket of water," he said, as the stove began to
crackle.  She watched him go unerringly toward the rear door, open it,
and disappear outside with a bucket in one hand.

Bart fed the horses, watched Jim crank up a bucketful of water from the
well, thought the bandage over his eyes should be tightened, and went
back down into the barn.

Nan went to the single parlour window and watched them striding side by
side in the direction of the barn.  They were talking; her husband
laughed a couple of times, and Jim looked up at the sound of his voice
and smiled.

She was finishing in the kitchen when she heard a horse nicker and
returned to the parlour window.  Her husband and Jim were leaving the
yard side by side, her husband watching the boy's horse and
occasionally gesturing as he spoke, neglecting to remember that Jim
could not see him do that.

TWENTY-TWO

She dreaded every step of the horses pulling the wagon in the direction
of her father's yard on Sunday.  Her silence infected both Bart and
Jim.

Jim was facing forward, his face expressionless, his mouth held closed
without pressure, his hands in his lap like dead birds.  Bart tapped
Jim's leg as he said, "Darned few guarantees in this life, Jim.  Darned
few answers about why things happen, as well.  But here we are and here
we'll stay until our rope runs out.  Some folks are luckier'n others
an' no one knows why that is, but every one of us has got something'
special, an' that's what we got to find out about, then make it work
for us."

But it was hard not to want to at least try to prepare Jim for what
probably was up ahead in John Holbrook's yard.

They had rooftops and tall old trees in sight when Jim suddenly said,
"The happiest days I remember have been since I came down off the
mesa."

John Holbrook's lanky range boss Charley Lord, loped out to meet them.
As he swung in beside the wagon, he leaned from the saddle as he said,
"Hey Jim, you ever eaten turkey with stuffing?  It's waitin' up
yonder."

The boy turned in the direction of Lord's voice, and smiled, but he
said nothing.

Two riders came to the barn to help Bart with the outfit while Nan
climbed down and held up a hand to Jim, who hesitated before allowing
her to steer him down to the hub.  After that he released her hand and
turned as a rough voice said, "Boy, you been puttin' on weight.  Last
time I saw you there wasn't enough of you to cast a shadow."

Jim knew the voice.  "How is your face?"  he asked, and Cuff answered
in the same warm, rough tone of voice.  "Pretty as a picture."

The rider named Fred spoke up.  "He's lyin', Jim.  He don't look one
bit better'n he ever did."

John Holbrook arrived and with him Dr.  Mailer.  Nan had to force
herself to look at Mailer.  Her father took Jim's arm and started in
the direction of the main house.  Frank Mailer smiled at Nan as she
moved past him to follow.

The doctor looked at Bart across the old wagon and said, "How has he
been?"

Bart shrugged.  "Happy, I guess.  Leastways when we ride out together
he talks and laughs.  On the drive over he said the happiest times he
can remember have been since we brought him home with us."

Charley Lord and Cuff came out of the barn and stopped at the hitch
rack  Bart faced them uncertainly.  "It's pretty damned hard," he told
them, and they nodded.  Charley reset his hat before speaking. "Does he
set around?"

"No, he goes out with me in the wagon an' on horseback."

"I expect then that maybe he's accepting it.  To tell you the truth,
Bart, he don't really act In'ian most of the time."

Cuff had a comment to make about that.  "He hasn't been around 'em
lately."

Charley did not quite accept that as the explanation.  "Sixteen years
around them," he said.  "I don't think that's it, Cuff.  I think he's
just not a hell of a lot like some In'ians I've run across."

"Well, there's no reason why they got to all be alike," replied the man
with the faintly scarred face.

Bart looked at Charley.  "Have you talked to Frank?"

Lord hadn't.  "He just got here maybe an hour back, an' since then he's
been up at the main house.  But sure as hell he's talked to John."

Charley straightened up, waiting for whatever else Bart had to say.
Cuff asked a question.  "How's your wife takin' it?"

Bart looked at the shorter, older man.  "About like you'd expect a
woman to take it.  Good days and bad days."

Charley jutted his chin.  "Why don't you go over and talk to Frank?"

"Because," Bart answered honestly, "I'm afraid to."

Mailer did not smile as he came up and said, "John's sweating.  He's
got a big turkey dinner over there."

"We'll eat," Bart told him.

"Yeah, but there's a hell of a cloud of tension, Bart.  John asked me
whether I should examine the lad before dinner or after."

Bart looked at the ground for a moment before answering.  "Either way
there's likely to be a hell of a lot of turkey left over."

Mailer agreed with that.  "If it'd been up to me, I wouldn't have done
it like this.  I'd just have driven to your place with only you and
Nan, the boy and me.  But John's different."

Bart made a wooden smile.  "He is for a fact.  Well, which is it going
to be before or after?"

"That's why I came down here.  It's not just the boy that stands to
lose, it's you and your wife.  Which way would you prefer?"

Bart straightened up gazing in the direction of the main house.  "To
tell you the truth, Frank, I don't think Nan can stand much more of
this, an' I know for a fact I can't."

Mailer nodded.  "Now, then?"

"Yes.  And get it over with."

Dr.  Mailer was already turning when Bart stopped him with a question.
"Any hope at all?"

Mailer turned back.  "We discussed that business of hoping before,
remember?  But, well, let's go get this damned thing over with."

They approached the main house side by side, went up the steps of the
porch, and entered the house.  Dr.  Mailer crossed to the fireplace,
nodded to John Holbrook, and laid a hand upon the boy's shoulder as he
said, "Jim, let's go in a back room and take the bandage off."

The adults stopped moving, but Jim raised his head in the direction of
Mailer's voice, and allowed himself to be steered away by the doctor's
hand on his shoulder.  Dr.  Mailer looked back.  "Bart?"  he said.
Templeton exchanged a look with his father-in-law, then dutifully
followed Doctor Mailer and Jim.

Mailer put his back to the little window and looked gravely at the boy
for a moment, then he turned him so that his back was also to the
window and guided him to a chair.  He ignored Bart's presence entirely
as he opened his leather bag.  When he spoke, it was to the boy.

"Have you taken the bandage off?"

Jim's back was to both the older men when he replied.  "No."

"Maybe just to tip it up a little?"

This time the answer was slower coming.  "I had to scratch a couple of
times."

Dr.  Mailer continued to grope in his satchel without looking up from
what he was doing.  "And maybe there was a little light came in?"

Jim did not hesitate this time.  "No."

Finally, Doctor Mailer raised his head in the boy's direction, and cast
a fleeting glance toward Bart.  He did not speak again until he was
behind the chair ready to cut the bandage off.  "Now then," he said,
'it's been dark under there for quite a spell, so when we remove the
bandage it's going to seem different.  What I want you to tell me is
how much different.  What kind of a difference there is."

Jim answered without moving.  "Yes."

Mailer worked carefully at removing the bandage.  His hands were as
steady as stones.  It dawned on Bart now how Frank had managed to be so
successful last year in removing that bird arrow point from John
Holbrook's spine.

Jim was facing the wall when the bandage was finally taken off.  He had
his eyes closed, perhaps from dread, perhaps because he was accustomed
to having them closed beneath the black bandage.

Frank Mailer put the bandage beside his satchel on a small table,
stepped around between Jim and the wall and looked surprised.  "Why do
you keep your eyes closed?"  he asked.

"Because I think they hurt."

Mailer looked at Bart with an expression Bart had not expected.  It was
a look of guarded triumph.  He leaned and said, Jim, look at me."

For five seconds there was not a sound in the room, then Jim quietly
said, "I can see you.  Not real clear, but I know what you're doing."

"What am I doing?"

"Smiling."

Frank straightened up very slowly looking over the chair back to the
man sitting at the foot of the old bed.  "Go get your wife," he said.
"I'll be down at the barn."

He rummaged beneath the buggy seat, brought forth a small pony of
brandy, took two swallows that burned all the way down, capped the
bottle, and put it back inside the folds of his buggy robe beneath the
seat.  Then he walked out back as far as an old stone water trough and
sat down with hot sunlight on his shoulders and head, and closed his
eyes with his lips barely moving.  He only looked up when he heard boot
steps approaching down the barn runway.  When Bart appeared, Frank
nodded at him.

"You knew, didn't you?"

Mailer blew out a fiery breath and wagged his head.  "No.  There wasn't
any way to know, but I'll explain something to you I could have told
you a couple of weeks ago.

"Over at your place he told us he was walking in some trees at the
south end of the glade.  It was raining, he said, and there were rocks,
and it was dark or getting dark.  And he said he was a fair distance
from where that lightning struck; he was walking west to find his
cave."

Bart nodded.

"Well, I made a guess.  He wasn't facing the lightning when it flashed;
he was looking among the trees.  And he wasn't struck by the lightning;
he was probably in a hurry to get out of the rain and into the cave,
he took a hell of a fall over some rocks.  That's how he hurt his side.
I had to look it up to find out just how close someone had to be to
lightning for it to lift him and fling him through the air.  There
wasn't anything definite in the books I read, but the idea seemed to be
that a person had to be real close and he wasn't, was he?  So it had to
be that he was hurrying in the dark and fell over one of those big
rocks, bounced off a tree and bruised his side."

Bart sat perfectly still, saying nothing.

Frank Mailer turned toward him.  "Remember what he said about the trees
looking like white candles after the bolt hit?"

"Yes."

"If the lightning had blinded him, it would have done it then and
there, immediately.  He wouldn't have been able to see what the trees
looked like unless he was looking at them, and if he did that, why
then, he wasn't facing the lightning when it struck."

Bart sat back looking at the older man.  "Frank, he was blind.  When we
found him up there, we had to lead him around.  We still had to right
up until today."

Mailer did not dispute this.  He arose because the sun was hot out
where there was no shade, and took Bart with him back to the buggy.
There, he rummaged for the pony of brandy, offered it to Bart, who took
a swallow, then Mailer took another two swallows, and this time he
panted like a dog as he stoppered the little bottle and shoved it back
under the buggy seat.

"Nothing worse for a man on a hot day than brandy," he said, and saw
the expressionless look on Templeton's face.  He hung fire for a
moment, frowning to himself, before he finally started speaking
again.

"I've been at my trade a long time, Bart.  Back east I did a lot of
studying.  I had quite a reputation back there.

"I've got to explain this so's it makes sense, so bear with me.  All
right?"

Bart woodenly nodded.

Dr.  Mailer frowned in the direction of the yard for a moment, clearly
ordering his thoughts so that when he expressed them they would make
sense.  Still looking toward the yard, he finally said, "I expect this
is going to sound like something straight out of Alice in Wonderland,
but it isn't.  I've read of this happening, and I've seen it happen
twice."  Frank finally brought his gaze back to Templeton and held it
there.  "The boy's had a series of jolts lately.  First up there with
Abel, Foster, and Alex.  He saw Abel darn near die.  Before that he saw
Alex point a gun at him.  Then the two of you ran yourselves ragged
down to that emigrants' camp.  From there you came here and got horses,
guns, and some men.  He went with you on a hell of a hard ride after
some horse thieves.  He was down there with you when the killing
started."  Frank paused, still looking straight at Bart Templeton.
"Then you came back here.  John and Charley told me all this, blow by
blow.  The next morning he went down to the barn, looked at those dead
horse thieves, and got another shock, only this one was probably the
worst shock he'd ever had in his life.  Two of those dead thieves were
his brothers."  Frank paused again, looked out into the sunshine and
back before finishing what he had to say.

"I'd guess he didn't sleep at all that night.  Shock can do strange
things to people.  I've seen them drop everything and go running
wildly, screaming at the top of their voices.  I've also seen them get
a glassy look and drop to the ground unconscious.  In this case, the
effect was building up all night.  In the morning he took a horse and
went riding toward the only place he knew of where there was peace and
got up there right when a hell of a storm hit.  The lightning struck. I
think that completed the shock, the deep-down, paralysing shock.  He
was hurt, stunned, and absolutely alone.  His system reacted in this
way: after the lightning struck, it was completely overwhelmed. Instead
of sending him wildly screaming through the night, it turned inward. 
Sure, the lighting temporarily blinded him, but in the same way it
would someone who didn't have all those internal things building up to
an internal explosion.

"He was on his hands and knees still blinded by the flash, but when you
or I would have recovered from the brilliance, he didn't.  He was
crawling, probably whimpering, and scared to death.  His system reacted
by keeping him blind ... Sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it?"

Bart said nothing, but he turned to find something to lean on.

Frank Mailer kept on.  "In wars men get so terrified and overwhelmed,
they drop to the ground unconscious.  But twice in my lifetime I've
seen an uncontrollable inner shock to the nervous system manifest in
physical ways.  This time, it manifested in an outlet of inner
screaming by perpetuating what already aided the final shock.  It kept
him blind long after his eyes would have recovered from the oblique
brilliance of lightning."

As Dr.  Mailer finished speaking, both he and Bart heard loud voices
coming from the direction of the main house.

Bart leaned on a saddle pole, gazing at the physician.  He finally
smiled.  "Tell you something, Frank.  If I was a praying man, I'd get
down on my knees."

Mailer's response was dry.  "You could try it anyway.  It never hurt
anyone, and occasionally it helps.  That's what I was doing out back on
the trough when you came along."

"Will it last?  Will his vision stay clearj!"

"I'd say it would, Bart.  In fact from what I know about things like
this, it doesn't happen twice to the same person, without the same set
of circumstances cropping up, and hell, I'd say that's such a remote
possibility that it'll never happen."

"I was wondering about damage to the eyes, Frank.  Something that may
not show up for a few years."

Dr.  Mailer flapped his arms and looked exasperated.  "There is no way
I can tell you any more than I already have.  I can't give you any
guarantees, Bart.  Maybe, by the time he's my age he might need
glasses, and maybe that won't have anything to do with his experience.
Bart, I just don't know."  Mailer eyed the robe beneath the buggy seat
but made no move toward it.  "I'm not even certain my diagnosis about
the return of his eyesight is correct.  I just know that the boy can
see, and I for one will accept that as a blessing, whatever in hell
caused it."

Someone was striding loudly from the direction of the main house.  It
was John Holbrook looking slightly flushed.  He stopped at the solemn
expressions of the two men down by the saddle pole, then approached.
"Frank, you made another miracle," he said, looking from one of them to
the other.  "Is something wrong?"

Bart pointed to a small keg.  "Sit down, John.  What Frank has been
tellin' me made my legs weak."

Holbrook did not sit; he went over and leaned on the buggy, though,
waiting for Doc Mailer to explain.

TWENTY-THREE

It was more than a feast.  It was a genuine thanksgiving, and it lasted
until sundown when Nan and her husband had to leave.  There were chores
waiting at home.  Everyone came to the barn to see them off and Cuff
was .  nudging Charley Lord as the Templetons climbed to the wagon
seat.  Charley went briskly to the bunkhouse and came back briskly
carrying a new manila lasso rope, properly coiled and with the
Turk's-head knot already braided in the dally end, and the braided
hondo at the other end.  He leaned and placed the rope on Jim's lap.
"From the riders," he said and got red in the face as the boy picked up
his lariat and held it tightly as he looked at the range man  His chin
quivered and Cuff said, "It ain't much.  We just thought we'd keep it
around until maybe someday you could use it.  Boy, I never been happier
about something' turning out right than I am right now."

The range man smiled, and one of them said, "But if you really want to
learn to use that thing, Jim, you got to come back over here an' we'll
teach you.  Horse breakers don't keep their hands in like us fellers
who work cattle an' got to work with lasso ropes every few days.  So
you come back, hear?"

John Holbrook and Frank Mailer stood in unsmiling silence.  When Jim
said, "Thank you," in an unusually high tone of voice, Nan smiled at
her father and Dr.  Mailer.  "I can't tell you how I feel.  You are
wonderful, both of you all of you."

John repeated what he had said earlier in the barn.

"Frank, you made another miracle."

Mailer reddened.  He stopped where they could all see and hear him and
said, "Miracle my butt.  If I'd never opened my mouth, if I'd never
come out here this morning, the lad still would have had his eyesight
back.  I had nothing to do with it except to take off that damned
bandage an' an idiot could have done that much."

Nan came to the barn with a lantern while Bart and Jim took the horses
off the pole, draped the harness and turned the animals into a corral
out back where other horses were waiting impatiently to be fed.  Bart
sent Jim to the house with his wife and fed the horses by himself. Then
he removed his hat and took Frank Mailer's advice about giving solemn
and prayerful thanks.

He hiked to the house where Nan was boiling coffee and talking to Jim,
who had his new lariat on the kitchen table in front of the place where
he was sitting.  When they both turned as he entered, he saw the
shining happiness in their eyes.

Nan filled a cup for him and put it at the place where he usually sat.
He winked at Jim.  "They was right when they told you cattlemen use
lariats a lot oftener than horsemen do.  But then, I was a range man
for a long while before I settled down to the horse business, so maybe
I can teach you how to use that thing."

Nan made a statement that had nothing to do with roping.  She said, "He
wants me to cut his hair.  He wants to wear it like you do, like my
father's riders wear theirs."

Bart had an abrupt and inexplicable twinge.  There were white Indians,
redskins who wore white men's clothing and had their hair cut to match
the way white skins wore their hair.  He had seen them ridiculed in
towns.  He gazed at Jim thinking that ahead, perhaps before too long,
he was going to encounter that.  Among range men Indian riders were
teased but there was no ridicule, unless, of course, they missed a cast
with their ropes, or got bucked off a horse, but the same hooting was
used against other riders, white or Mex or whatever they were.  If Jim
spent his life on the range, he would encounter a minimum of that
ridicule.

He drained the cup and put it aside, sat gazing at the rapidly growing
boy, and allowed Jim's and Nan's unquenchable happiness to carry him
along.

Nan knelt at bedside.  He had never seen her do that before.  When she
climbed in beside him, she said, "I had to thank someone."

He did not comment.  The difference was that he had not knelt, and it
had been corral stringers not a bed he had leaned upon when he had done
the identical thing.

"Bart?"

"Yes."

"I thought on the drive back that if I live to be very old, no matter
what happens to make me happy, it probably can never make me as a happy
as I've been today."

He felt for her hand and held it beneath the blankets.  "We put a lot
of salt in those logs up on the mesa," he said.

She was totally silent for as long as it took her to make the
adjustment to his comment, which had been about as alien to her comment
and the feelings she had felt, as any words could be.

He took her silence for interest.  "It's a shame to leave that salt up
there for every varmint under the sun to eat."

She turned her head on the pillow, studied his profile by the weak star
shine and finally said, "You want to go back up there and trap some
horses."

"Well, Jim'd get a chance to use this rope, maybe, and we did go up
there with the salt to scout for wild horses, didn't we?"

She had no objection; it was just that he was being practical at a time
when she was being emotional.  "Yes," she murmured.  "I wonder about
the wisdom of taking Jim up there so soon."

He faced her on the pillow.  "I don't think it'll bother him.  I'll
keep him busy."

"When?"  she asked.

"In a couple of days.  After he and I've ridden the range to make
certain Ben and his mares are all right."

She lay still, looking at a square of white light on the far wall.  "We
really should go over to Holtville, Bart.  We're getting very low on
just about everything but meat."

It was his turn to be silent for a long moment.  But she was probably
right.  It would use up the best part of a week going to Holtville and
back.  He had never been enthusiastic about that trek, but he agreed
with her as another thought came to him.  "All right.  We can leave
real early day after tomorrow.  And there's something' that needs to be
done in town."

"Yes?"

"Get him some new boots an' some decent pants and shirts.  Maybe a
jacket or a coat to replace that old sweater."

She said, "Day after tomorrow.  Good night."

"Good night."

"Bart?"

"Yes."

"Do you suppose he's ever been in a town as large as Holtville
before?"

"Maybe not, but better now than when he's much older.  I never cared
much for towns either, but they got their uses."

"Good night."

"Good night, Nan."

"Bart?  I love you."

He squeezed her hand and hitched over onto his side.

Thirty miles northward the aura of a pale moon amid clusters of stars
outlined Wild Horse Mesa as though it were a mirage.

TWENTY-FOUR

The Holtville Interlude

Two days later after an early start and a long drive, they made camp
for the night at a common ground where most people who lived far west
of Holtville stopped after the first day.

Jim was making such an elaborate effort to appear calm, as though he
visited towns every month, that Bart and Nan winked at one another. But
in fact they had been wrong in assuming he had never been in a large
town before.  Because neither of them knew much about reservations,
they were unaware that every Indian reservation has at least one
sizable town on its fringes.  The town adjacent to the reservation Jim
had lived on was larger than Holtville.

But Jim's parents had gone there only very reluctantly.  Although
they'd never had much money, they usually had trading goods; still,
that was not the reason they had rarely gone there.  In reservation
towns, Indians were scorned as a necessary nuisance.  It was a galling
experience for Jim's parents and brothers, but he had been very young
then and had been too round-eyed over the size of the place and the
displays of merchandise in store windows to notice much else.

Finally, about noon of the second day, with Holtville in sight, Jim
told Nan and Bart of that other town.

They approached from the southwest in order to enter Holtville down at
the public corrals.  There, Nan waited while Jim and her husband cared
for the team and parked the old wagon.  Holtville was a thriving
community.  This was particularly noticeable during the earlier hours
of the day.  There was considerable roadway traffic and freight
outfits, huge and weathered, drawn by strings of mules or horses. There
were shoppers on both sides of the road and horsemen, singly or in
groups, weaving in and out of the wagon and buggy traffic.

A number of ranch wagons were strung out near the general store.  Nan
noticed one wagon she knew from childhood.  It was old but
well-maintained and had her father's brand burned into both sides below
the spring-seat.

They were making a diagonal crossing when a large, dark man sang out
Bart's name.  He was standing in overhang shade, grinning.  Nan said,
"Deputy Jeff Morris' to Jim, and smiled as they came up onto the
duckboards beside him.  Bart introduced Jim.  The massively large man
shoved out a hand the size of a dinner plate.  "Heard about you," he
told the youth.  "Just this morning Charley Lord was tellin' me about
what happened to your eyes.  You're very lucky."

Morris raised smiling eyes to Bart.  "You'll likely run into Charley
and Cuff.  They got in last night.  Last I saw, they'd finished loadin'
the wagon and went up to the pool hall."

Nan had a question.  "Did you talk to Alex after he and Abel and Foster
came back from making wood?"

The big man nodded.  "Yep, sure did."  His eyes dropped to Jim again.
"He told me about you keepin' a log from smashin' em up yonder."

Nan's head was slightly to one side as she said, "Did he mention Alex's
horses?"

The deputy shifted his stance.  "Yes'm."  He seemed reluctant to pursue
this subject.  "Just that your pa's riders went with Bart after some
'

"No," she interrupted swiftly.  "Did he mention anything happening to
the horses while they were up at Wild Horse Mesa?"

Deputy Morris looked blankly at her and shook his head.  Then he said,
"Did something happen up there?"

She smiled sweetly.  "Nothing important.  The horses got loose is
all."

As they were aiming for the large general store, Jim made a remark that
indicated Nan's swift change of subject had not escaped his notice.  He
said, "Later, maybe he could tell us where my brothers are buried."

Jim tried on new clothing with the obedience of any sixteen-year-old
who understood the necessity of pleasing those who were buying them for
him.  He actually had an Indian's indifference to attire, requiring
only that it prevented him from freezing in winter and roasting in
summer.  But the boots had him breathless.

The old man wearing the candy-striped shirt and rimless glasses who
waited on them looked up with twinkling eyes.  "Walk across toward the
stove," he said, 'an' walk back.  We got to be plumb sure they ain't
too tight.  Too loose don't mean much.  Extra socks'll take care of
that."

The old man, Nan, and Bart watched Jim cross the room and start back. A
freckled face youth, slightly taller than Jim and quite a bit heavier
who had been standing with his mother at the dry goods counter,
watched.  As Jim started back he curled his lip and said, "Hey, war
whoop you got splayed feet.  Them boots wasn't made for In'ians."

Jim stopped, turned, and looked steadily at the larger, freckled boy.
The old men in the candy-striped shirt came around from behind them
with his mouth clamped hard like a bear trap.  He got between the boys
and shook a bony finger in the face of the freckled youth.  "Lem, you
had no call to say that."

The large, massive woman standing beside the freckled youth reddened.
"Amos, you aren't nothing but a clerk here.  You better remember how to
treat customers, or I'll have a talk with Mr.  Jenkins and you'll be
out of a job."

The old man straightened up.  Bart could see him waver and crossed to
Jim, smiled and said, "Come on,

son, walk.  Are they tight?"

As soon as Jim walked back toward the boot counter, people became busy
again, mostly with their backs to the room.

The old man did not smile as he knelt to feel Jim's feet inside the
boots and to gruffly ask if they pinched.  They didn't, so he struggled
up to his feet, pale eyes behind the rimless glasses still angry.  Then
he smiled.  "Your name is Jim?  Now then, Jim, don't pay no mind to
that boy.  He's got bad manners."

Nan asked who the large woman was.  The old man glanced across the room
and lowered his voice as he replied.  "Miz Stuart.  That's her son,
Lem.  Biggest bully around town, that boy."

Bart paid for their purchases, handed the old man his list for
supplies, said they'd be along with the rig in the afternoon, and led
the way out to the roadway.  He blew out a big breath and looked at his
wife.  Between them Jim was looking at the new boots.  He seemed to
have forgotten the incident, but Bart knew how good Jim was at hiding
his feelings.

Someone called from up the road upon the opposite side.  Abel Morrison
was standing in the door of his harness shop wearing an old stained
apron.  He was grinning from ear to ear.

They walked over there.  Abel took them inside, then stopped and stared
at the new boots.  As he slowly raised his face he said, "Darn, I was
figuring on buyin' you a pair.  I would have, only I hadn't no idea
what size you'd need."  He cuffed Jim roughly on the shoulder and
jerked his head.  "Come around behind the counter.  I want to show you
something."

He had been working on a new saddle with a twelve-inch seat, too small
for a man.  The skirts were semi-round and fully hand-carved.  It was a
beautiful piece of craftsmanship, and Abel was proud of it.  He
gestured.  "Climb up and set in it, Jim."

It fit, Jim admired it almost with awe, and Bart asked who Abel was
making it for.  The older man wiped both hands on the old soiled apron
as he replied.  "For Jake Stuart's boy, Lem."  The silence this
announcement evoked and the blank looks made Morrison stop wiping this
hands.  "Something wrong?"

Nan told him of the interlude at the emporium, and Abel did not look
surprised; he looked disgusted.  "Couldn't wait, eh?  New kid so he had
to get in his licks.  Well, it's a nice saddle, anyway, don't you
think?"

They all agreed that it was a beautiful saddle.  Abel was
uncomfortable.  "You'd ought to go over to Alex's gun shop an' let him
show you his horses.  They look as good as new.  He'd sure be pleased
to see you folks."

He even went with them, leaving his shop open and unattended.  Alex had
just finished bluing someone's six-gun and had blue hands but he shook
with Bart and Jim anyway because the stain did not come off.  He took
them out back and across the alley where he had a large shed and an
even larger old corral.  His big bay horses were drowsing in shed shade
over there.  They knew Alex's voice, so their ears were up when he came
around the shed.  He stopped and shook his head.  "Biggest pair of
beggars this side of the Missouri River.  Look at 'em, they got on
their pitiful expressions.  That's to make me feel bad and pitch them
more feed."

Alex fixed Jim with his one eye.  "Now don't get no notions, boy."

Jim smiled because he understood that he was being teased.  "Do you
like my boots?"  he asked.

Alex made an exaggerated motion of stepping back and bending to look
down.  He pursed his lips and wagged his head.  "When I was your age,
I'd have give everything I owned for a pair of boots like them."  He
straightened up.  "Abel and I was talkin' a while back ... Well, it
don't matter."

Abel winked.  "We'll have to come up with something' else."

Someone hooted from across the alley.  Charley Lord and Cuff were over
there.  Alex led the way, and as they were walking he brushed Jim's
shoulder, lowered his voice, and said, "We heard from Dr.  Mailer what
happened up yonder.  Son, now you listen to me," he touched the white
patch over his eyeless socket.  "Don't ever take no chances with your
sight.  No matter what.  The Lord looked after you this time, but don't
count on Him being handy every time."

Charley smelled slightly of whisky as they all trooped back to the
front of the shop with its racks of guns, pistols hanging from wooden
pegs, and its smell of oil.  Cuff did exactly as Alex had done: he
looked at the new boots, widened his eyes, and seemed to be holding his
breath in shock.

Jim laughed at him.

From out in the roadway a boy's taunting `>083' call came clearly.  "Hey, war
whoop  You forgot to braid your hair."

For a moment there was not a sound as the people inside turned to find
the source of that shout.  Abel growled under his breath.  "Jake
Stuart's kid."  He told Charley, Cuff, and Alex what had happened over
at the general store.

But it wasn't just the beefy freckled face boy; there were three other
boys with him, grinning but silent.  Lem Stuart was standing in the
roadway with his legs wide, hands on his hips.  He had very pale blue
eyes and a loose, heavy mouth.

From inside the gun shop it was not possible to see much, but the
shouts had caught the attention of a number of people up and down the
roadway.  They turned to watch as Lem Stuart yelled again.  "Is that
lady your maw?  How come you're darker'n she is?"

Alex started for the doorway.  He had the quickest temper of anyone in
the shop.  But he did not quite reach the opening before Charley Lord
shouldered past.

The boys in the roadway lost their grins instantly.  Charley was a
large, rough-looking man even without his shell belt and holstered
Colt.  He stood upon the edge of the plank walk to say something when
Jim passed him so rapidly he could not even raise a hand in time to
grab him.

Bart was directly behind Jim, but Charley threw up a large arm and
growled at Bart.  "Leave him be."

Nan had both hands to her mouth as Jim, thin but tall, wiry and
unthinking, plowed into the large, freckled boy, fists beating the air
like windmill paddles.

Lem Stuart did not give any ground even though he was hit several
times, but he shifted slightly, turning his side to the flailing fists
until the surprise had passed, then he came back around, face red, eyes
slitted, waited until Jim rushed him again, and lashed out hard with
his right fist, then with his left.

Jim was stopped in mid-stride.  His mouth opened and his eyes widened.
Nan moaned and Bart ground his teeth.  The Stuart boy was large and
heavy.  Someday he would be a man of impressive size.  Right now he had
successfully used his advantages to either beat or bully most of the
other boys in Holtville.

Jim shuffled back from the heavy hands of the freckled boy, and Alex,
who was beside himself, yelled at him.  "Move.  Move left an' right.
Jim, don't stand still."

Jim moved, but the larger boy was after him.  His friends who had
retreated to the far plank walk called shrill encouragement.  Lem did
not move fast, he was too heavy to move rapidly, but he could evidently
hit very hard.

He staggered Jim with a blow over the heart, and that was almost too
much for Cuff, who yelled, "Jim back away, left an' right an' get
around him."

Jim retreated.  The boys on the far sidewalk hooted at him in derision.
Nan grasped her husband's arm.  "Stop it.  He could be hit in the eyes.
 Bart..."

Charley, Abel, and Alex yelled.  Jim had finally started weaving from
left to right.  Cuff said, "By gawd, he learns fast."  Then he raised
his voice.  "That's right, Jim, keep it up, move and hit an' move."

Jim was finally marking his opponent's face, but he did not seem to
have the ability to stop him.  Still, he made the Stuart boy keep away
instead of boring in like a bull as he had been doing.

Nan had an iron grip on Bart's arm, but she no longer implored him to
intervene.  Jim crouched now, kept his body swaying, his black eyes
narrowed to slits as he fought.  He was not angry, which made it
possible for him to calculate the Stuart boy's movements, and shortly
before the fight ended, Lem Stuart, who had been struck three times in
the mouth, withdrew in a flat-footed walk, let his arms drop, and
panted for breath.  His mouth was swelling, his shirtfront was bloody,
his face was as red as a beet, and sweat dripped from his chin.

Alex called again, his voice lower this time.  "You got him, Jim.  He's
punky soft.  Now just stab an' keep stabbin'."

But it was finished.  Two large, portly men came running down the
roadway from the direction of the bank.  Behind them was that portly
woman who had been in the emporium, but they had out-distanced her
handily.  The larger of the two men, wearing a vest with a massive gold
chain across the lower part of it, had a coarse-featured, round fat
face.  It was normally pale, but right now it was pink as he bawled at
the boys.  He got between them, and Jim moved well away as the big man
looked at his son, at the blood, the smashed swelling mouth, the
baffled look in his son's eyes, and turned in a fury.  "Gawddamn you,"
he yelled at Jim, and started forward with balled fists.  But that was
not only an oversight; it was a very bad mistake.

Bart moved swiftly in behind the banker, who was raising a club-like
fist, caught the back of the big man's vest, and whirled him around.
They were less than eighteen inches apart, and the big man still
holding his fist in the air, when Bart said, "You touch that boy, Mr.
Stuart, and I'll skin you alive.  Put your arm down."

The banker did not begin to lower his arm until he saw Alex, Abel,
Cuff, and Charley walking toward him in the middle of the roadway,
spreading out as they advanced.  None of them was smiling.  He lowered
his arm as he said, "Is that damned In'ian kid with you, Templeton?"

Bart answered softly.  "Yeah, he's with me, Mr.  Stuart.  You want to
know who started that fight?"

Charley Lord, thumbs hooked in his shell belt, spoke up.  "That damned
fat bullyin' kid of yours started it, Mr.  Stuart.  I'm goin' to give
you some advice.  You better break the kid of yours to lead, because in
another couple of years he's goin' to be old enough to get himself shot
when he tries bullyin' someone."

Jake Stuart looked fiercely at them.  "I'll remember you.  Every damned
one of you."

Nan spoke from the sidewalk.  "And my father, Mr.  Stuart.  Remember
him too, because on our way home I'm going to stop by and tell him
exactly what happened here and what you said about remembering people."
Nan did not smile, but she could have.  Jake Stuart's face got pale as
he stared at her.  She and Jake Stuart knew who the largest depositor
and shareholder was in the bank Stuart managed.

He turned slowly, still slightly out of breath, and regarded his son,
who still looked dazed, probably less from being outfought than because
he'd never seen his own blood on his shirtfront before.  Stuart said,
"Get home.  You and your maw get home ... Lem, someday it was bound to
come to this.  Now you get home and I'll be along directly.  Get!"

TWENTY-FIVE

The opportunity for Jim to visit the graves of his brothers was
overlooked in the excitement following the brawl in the middle of the
roadway.  Shortly before the Templetons left Holtville with their
supplies, accompanied by Cuff and Charley Lord with the laden Holbrook
rig, the men had pumped Jim's arm and cuffed him across the shoulders
inside the harness shop, pleased as they could be over the results of
the fight.  Nan remained in the background, watching.  Her expression
was equal parts bleak satisfaction at the way the fight had ended, and
womanly irritation over the hooting and laughing and back-slapping of
her husband and the other men.

They were a mile out with the Holbrook wagon up ahead a hundred or so
yards when Bart put a sidelong glance upon Jim Moore.  That was what he
had been convinced the lad was going to have to learn: how to settle
with the bullies who would over the years sneer at his redskin
background.  He had thought he might have the time when they were up on
Wild Horse Mesa to teach Jim what he had himself learned from
experience about that sort of thing.  Now, as he eyed the lad askance,
he was not certain that Jim needed a whole lot of instruction.  As Alex
had said, the boy learned fast.

It was Nan who finally put a hand on Jim's arm and smiled as she said,
"My father has always said it's best to avoid a fight if you can, and
if you can't, to bore in and never look back until you've won."

Jim's hands were sore, his ribs ached, and his mind was full of the
details of that encounter back in town, so he said nothing for a long
while, in fact, not until the sun was directly above and they halted to
water the horses in willow shade beside a creek.  Then while he was
helping Bart, Jim said, "When I was growin' up on the reservation,
there was always someone who wanted to fight."

Bart listened and looked around for Nan.  She was over where the
Holbrook men were also watering their team.  He said, "I figured you'd
got into tangles before.  You did right well.  Thing is, with those big
ones that can't get untracked as fast as you can, you got to keep
moving from side to side.  That ties 'em up because they can't shift as
fast as you can.  Keep 'em always off-balance, then you can whittle on
'em like you was cutting down a tree.  You did good, son."

The lad held up two swollen hands.  Jim laughed and pointed to the cold
water.  "Soak 'em.  It'll help, but they'll hurt for a day or two,
until the puffiness goes down."

As Bart whistled up his horses, Nan said, "They're proud of you, Jim,"
and that all she said about the fight for a long time.

The two outfits made a common night camp, and because the subject of
the brawl had been pretty well exhausted also because of the look Nan
put on her father's men when the topic came up they searched for other
things to discuss.  Jim gave the campfire talk its best impetus when he
mentioned Wild Horse Mesa and the possibility of catching mustangs up
here.

That was always a worthwhile subject because eight of every ten range
men had tried mustanging at one time or another.  Charley reminisced. 
When he had finished, Cuff began.  Of the two men Cuff had clearly done
the most.  He held his small audience spellbound relating experiences
he'd had south of the border, trapping what the people down there
called me stenos

Bart Templeton, who had mustanged more than most range men recognized
in Cuff his equal.  As the fire died those two were down to discussing
techniques.  By bedtime, although Charley and Nan were tired and Jim
probably should have been except that he hung on every word Bart and
Cuff said, the choice came down to hunting for more firewood or turning
in.

The following day was as beautiful as most of its predecessors had
been, but by the time they reached the Holbrook yard there was enough
heat to convince any doubters that springtime was gone and summer had
arrived.

Nan and her father walked a little apart as the wagon Charley had
tooled from town was backed to the side door of the cook shack to be
unloaded.

Bart freed his team, but left their harness on as he and Jim led them
out back to the stone trough.  After they were tanked up, they took
them back inside the barn and left them in separate stalls, still
wearing their harness.

John Holbrook was waiting out near the hitch rack.  When Jim emerged
accompanied by Bart, the old cowman squinted at him and smiled. There's
always at least one like the Stuart boy, Jim.  As old as I am, every
now an' then I run into one even yet.  You did exactly right. And I'll
tell you something: if that boy ever bullies you again, I'll be
almighty surprised.  Next time I'm in town, I'll discuss a few things
with his pa.  Now, I'm not protecting you.  You got to fight your own
battles; no one can do it for you.  But in this case, it's different. 
That boy made a remark about my daughter, and neither you nor I set
back and listen to someone do that about our ladies, do we?"

Jim shook his head.

John Holbrook took them to the main house for a meal.  Nan had already
gone up there to start preparing it.  When she looked out into the
parlor and saw the three men of her life enter, she smiled.

During the meal, Jim brought up wild horses again, and when he had
finished he went back down to the barn.

By mid-afternoon the Templetons were ready to roll again, this time
over the few miles separating the big cow outfit from the smaller horse
ranch.  Her father, as he always seemed to do, stood alone in the yard
for a long while watching them travel west.  Charley Lord sauntered
over, squinted against the westering sun in the direction of the rig,
and said, "You should have been there."

Holbrook nodded without speaking, watching the distant wagon.

"Nan was sort of betwixt an' between.  When Jim was getting' hammered
on, she wanted Bart to stop it.  When he commenced catchin' on how
things was done and began pepperin' that big fat kid, she did not say
another word about stoppin' it."

Holbrook turned finally.  "That's the way they are, Charley.  If you
ever get married, you'd ought to learn to look at their expressions
before you do something' because nine times out of ten, that look'll
tell you whether you're goin' to get a big smile of approval an' maybe
a kiss, or get snatched baldheaded when they get you alone ... It keeps
a man busy.  I can tell you."

Charley turned his squinted gaze to his employer.  "Now then, I know
that is good advice, but the day I get married it's goin' to rain
snowballs in hell ... They're goin' up to the mesa after mustangs."

Holbrook already knew that.  "Yeah.  Nan thinks it's too soon to take
the lad up there."

Charley wagged his head.  "Naw.  He's tough an' he's resourceful.  As
long as he's with Nan and Bart, he most likely won't hardly even
remember."

Holbrook thought his range boss had made a very good argument in favor
of the boy riding to the mesa with his folks.  He looked up at the
taller man.  "Too late for you'n Cuff to ride out an' find the other
men.  I'll go up to the house and fetch a bottle down to the bunkhouse
and we can set and swap lies for a spell.  Tell me something, Charley.
Can he hit hard?"

Charley laughed and shook his head.  "No.  But he sure as hell can hit
often.  He's as fast as a strikin' snake."

"I'll go get the bottle."

The range boss looked again out where the buggy was no longer visible
in slanting sunlight, smiled to himself, and went toward the barn to
find Cuff.