"Yeah, I suppose. Grin and wish him luck. I have never taken a licking in my life but now I've got to take the worst of all. There never was a man who could match my muscle till he came along. He smiled when he did it, and I could have used the gun on him for that. Sherry, I've got my weaknesses. Some you've never seen. Pride, ambition. Here he comes and cuts the ground from under me without lifting his voice. Lord. I never thought any man on earth would do it to me."
"But you'll be his friend, Buck?"
"Yeah," he muttered dryly. "Much as it's possible to be."
She switched the subject. "You've heard about Haggerty?"
His interest flashed up sharply. "What about him?"
She seemed to debate something in her mind. "He—hasn't come back yet."
"That's all?" he demanded, studying her.
"No-o. Clint managed to get into Angels and overheard Haggerty talking with Shander and Studd and Curly. Haggerty's crooked, Buck."
"Crooked? I don't believe it! Well, hold on. It may be so at that. Haggerty's not an open-handed man. Funny streak in him. You're sure about it?"
"Clint heard too much to doubt it."
"That means there may be others about the ranch then," muttered Manners. "You'll have to be careful. Keep your crew on hand all the time. Don't let them go on any wild-goose chases. You weren't planning on any attack, were you?"
She stared at the fire thoughtfully; and committed her first deliberate evasion. "I don't know what Clint's plans are."
"You trust him too much," fretted Manners. "Where is he now?"
"He took a fresh horse—" admitting it reluctantly, "and rode toward Dead Man alone."
Manners rolled a cigarette. Silence came over the broad room; these two people, so long friends, so long without secrets, were slowly drifting apart. A heavy wall of constraint fell between them.
Manners spoke sadly. "See, you don't even trust me as you once did. When it comes to that pass, Sherry, the old times are gone. Yet you ask me to like Charterhouse and support him, even when I doubt his wisdom and know nothing of his past. And there's nothing for me to do but say I will. Whatever happens, any time, any place, you only have to call and I'll come. A sorry ending, after all I'd hoped. Let it be so. I'm riding home."
He strode for the door and was on the verge of passing out before her answer caught and stopped and turned him. "I had not meant to break off our engagement, Buck. Not tonight. I wasn't sure of myself. I couldn't decide. Yet in the past five minutes I know it best. Only—you won't think bad of me because of it, will you?"
"I'd be a putty man if I said it didn't hurt, if I didn't want to fight this thing out and make somebody suffer. But there will never be a time in my life when I don't consider you the sweetest, finest—"
He broke off. She saw him then as she was never to see him again. The lamplight reached out to touch his slim, symmetrical body. The corn-yellow hair was a little disheveled, and his clothes were dusty; but he stood there a man, vital instincts surging in him, eyes flashing, and all his features set in fighting lines. A gentleman of the land, every inch. The door closed and he was in the saddle and the drum of his pony's flying hoofs came rhythmically back, fading into the eastern edge of the world. Sherry's small hands gripped the arms of the chair as she listened, and her cheeks paled perceptibly. In that headlong tempo of a man and beast there was something ominous, something dreadfully disturbing.
––––––––
XI
IN the rolling mists that preceded dawn, Clint Charter-house woke from his short sleep and moved on to the east. Desert cold cut through his clothes, the stars glimmered frostily and the slim silver crescent of the moon began to fade slowly from the sky. Visibility increased by slow degrees as be traveled—still keeping to the arroyos that ran into one another all the way toward Dead Man's Range.
The range itself was a darkling, irregular bulk in the foreground, but Clint paid it scant attention; more immediately interesting was the nearing outline of Fort Carson, a deserted and empty relic of the Indian fighting days. It made a very good tenement for the lawless band troubling Casabella. Clint half suspected Curly's men to be hidden in those small frame buildings that ranked evenly all the way around a rectangular parade ground; yet he rose from the protection of the arroyo and came flanking in toward the fort for a closer view.
This last hour of the night was a time when almost all men slept, no matter what danger confronted them and no matter what devices they might be up to; it was the lax hour, the hour of low ebb in courage and vitality. So he drifted quietly along a lane of poplar trees leading to the parade ground and stopped in the convenient gloom created by one of them.
From his post he looked directly upon the buildings, the offset barns and sheds. To one side were the larger buildings—company barracks, he surmised—in a crumbling state of disrepair; to the other sat those smaller, neater houses meant for officers and their families. Some of these, too, were sagging at hip and eave, and their doors and porches were ripped away by passing punchers in need of wood for fire; yet other structures seemed to have been kept up. But nowhere did he see a horse, nowhere a sign of present occupancy. As a matter of self-interest he trailed his horse all about the fort and looked at it from opposite angles.
"Deserted," he mused. "Curly figures it too exposed a place to camp. He must be hiding in the hills."
Light was perceptibly creeping over Dead Man and filtering through the desert gloom, the fog dissipating. The world would be awake presently and hidden men again be on the watch; so Clint took up his march for the hills, reached the bench land within fifteen minutes and filed up a rocky, barren draw. At an elevation of about five hundred feet he found himself in a maze of bowls, pinnacles, rock cairns and animal trails. From his vantage point he surveyed the western flatlands rise through the fog.
Leaving his horse in a depression, he went back to the rim and swept the scene with careful attention. Dawn suddenly surprised the world; the eastern light grew stronger and then the first shaft of the sun streamed like a golden banner over the prairie, bringing all objects into view with startling clarity; at about the same moment Clint saw two or three riders dusting out of the southwest—from the direction of Shander's.
He rolled a cigarette contemplatively while time passed. "Bit by bit this crooked scheme coils tighter," he reflected. "Here's a fine, bright day which was meant for men to enjoy; yet if ever hunches played me right, these next twelve hours will be Casabella's worst memory for years to come. And those fellows yonder open up the ball."
They swung on their course and pointed for Fort Carson. Three of them loping along at their ease. Clint waited stolidly as the sun began to beat upon his back and all the crisp freshness of the small hours was sucked out of the air by the burning ball of fire riding up the sky. The riders quested into the fort parade ground and were temporarily lost. Ten minutes later they emerged and came straight on for what Clint recognized from description to be Dead Man Range. Clint ran his eyes along the foot of the hills carefully. A main road seemed to cut directly into Dead Man Ridge a mile south of his location, and this road the three riders too, presently going around a shoulder and disappearing.
Clint hitched up his belt and started afoot across the rough terrain. It was confusing country and a little way off he turned to identify the bowl in which his horse was hidden; then he pressed on, rising and falling with the rugged pitch. Dead Man was a naked, treeless ridge with a series of spines divided by deep depressions; thus it was Clint had only a partial view of the country immediately about him. Going to the south, he came upon a round and grassy bowl fit to hold fifteen or twenty head of cattle compactly; skirting it, he observed the charred circle of an old campfire at the bottom.
But he refused to go down for a closer look. Taking to a runway gouged out by winter's rain, he fell into a jog trot until warned by a