taking care of us."
He looked sharply at her. "How long have you been thinking that?" was his quick question.
"Oh, for the last three or four nights. Why?"
He shook his head. "Just wondered. See you later." Raising his hat he cantered away. Eve rested against the post and watched him go, with grave attention. Long after, when he reached the high bend of the road and was about to swing from sight, he turned and lifted an arm; and she answered the farewell hail with quick pleasure. As he disappeared the last ray of sun drew away from the hills, and purple twilight shaded the land. She turned inside.
Dave Denver did not go directly home. Instead he paced along the curving road for a few miles and left it to climb a tall ridge adjoining. From the summit he commanded a good view of the cupped-in pockets and the narrow valleys roundabout. Here was a house, there a bunch of cattle, and occasionally a rider questing down some trail. Yet as high up as he was he could not gain a clear sweep of the hills; the broken land formed a thousand dark and isolated patches, and ridges kept cutting in to shield whatever went on yonder.
"Perfect layout for the wild bunch," reflected Denver. "There's spots in this country yet unsurveyed and untouched." Rolling a cigarette he considered Eve Leverage's last remark. The intuitive truth in it had startled him; twice in the last few nights he had made a night patrol around the Leverage section. "Two things," he mused thoughtfully, "I never will understand if I live to be a thousand. First, the whispers that cross this country like light flashes. Second, the way of a woman's mind."
There was but a brief interval of evening left him, and so he brought his mind back to its original thought. To his right, or east, ran the stage road; to his left and nine miles deeper in this cut-up country, lay the Wells. At some point Redmain's renegade riders, driving out of the Sky Peak country, had crossed the highway and headed for the evil shell of a town that was their stronghold. He wanted to find the marks of their path to satisfy his own curiosity and to answer a question slowly forming in his head.
"They were out on a hunt the other evenin'," he murmured. "What did they take home with 'em? I might hit straight for the Dome and look around; but I doubt if they'd return the same way they came. That'd require too much ridin' on the stage road. My guess is they cut over more southerly."
He pushed his horse down the rather steep slope and presently was threading a tortuous trail that undulated from draw to ridge and down into draw again. Rather roughly he paralleled the stage road, curving as it curved, and all the while watching the soft ground beneath. At every mark of travel he stopped to study and reject it, and so pressed on until the waning light warned him. Thereupon he abandoned the patient method and made a swift guess. "If I was leadin' that bunch and on my way to the Wells I'd use the alley of Sweet Creek—providin' I was bashful about bein' seen."
Sweet Creek was on another tangent. He ran down a draw, crossed the succeeding ridge via a meadow-like notch, and veered his course. The tendrils of dusk were curling rapidly through the trees and the ravines were awash with cobalt shadows. The breeze stiffened; far up on the stage road he heard the groaning of brake blocks; then he was confronted with fresh tracks in the yielding earth. He reined in.
The tracks were made by a solitary beef followed by a lone rider; they led out of the west—out of the Wells direction—and seemed headed toward the east. This he considered slowly. His own range was just over the stage road, and from all indications one of his own riders had found a stray and was pushing it back to proper territory. "But who would that be?" Denver asked himself. "All the boys are workin' the Copperhead side today."
He changed his mind about reaching Sweet Creek and pursued the tracks as they went upward, crossed the road, and kept on. A freighter's lantern winked from a hairpin turn of the road above him; a creek purled and gurgled down the hillside. It was dark then, and he had lost all clear sight of the spoor he was tracing, but he kept going and never hesitated until there came a place in the ravine where the trail forked. Dismounting, he struck a match and cupped it to the earth. Rider and cow had turned north; and north was the way to his own D Slash quarters.
"Must be one of the boys," he decided. "But who the devil's been straying away off here? If it ain't that—"
Pungent odors told him he was not far behind the preceding rider. Another mile, and he caught a faint sound in the thickening fog. Reaching a high point, he had the wide mouth of Starlight Canyon looming beside him; and at the head of that long sweeping space were the blinking lights of his house. The sound of advance travel was more distinct; in fact, it seemed to approach him rather than follow ahead. Puzzled, he kept a steady pace, not wishing to draw too swiftly upon one of his own riders. In the darkness D Slash men were apt to be ticklish; he had taught them to be so.
The rider seemed to be having trouble with his stray. The lash of a quirt arrived distinctly, followed by a grunt of anger. Brush cracked; quite without warning, cow and rider were dead ahead. A horse whinnied.
"Who's that?" drawled Denver.
"What the hell—!"
A warning chill pricked at Denver's scalp. He announced his name abruptly and pulled off the trail, then called again: "Who are you?"
"THE SKY IS THE LIMIT"
For answer he had the smash of a gunshot and the flicker of muzzle light. The stray cow plunged deeper into the brush. A second shot cracked his ears; and the weaving outline of the unknown man came against him, striking him flank and flank. An arm reached out and slashed at his coat, and for a moment there was nothing but an aimless snarl of two horses bucking free of each other and two men coming to grips. Denver's gun was out; the unknown man pulled free and fired as Denver opened up. The man screamed, and Denver saw his form sprawl out of the saddle and strike ground, horse's feet plunging over him.
Denver jumped down and approached, hearing a mighty suction of breath. After that silence fell; when he lit a match he saw a dead man's face glaring up from the earth.
"Redmain rider," grunted Denver tonelessly. The trail quivered with men racing out from home quarters. He stepped back and waited until they were within hailing distance. Then called, "Hold on, boys."
"What's up?"
"Ran into a snag. One of the wild bunch is on the ground here. Look around the brush. He was driving a beef up the trail, and I overtook him. I want to look at that beef."
They rounded the stray from the underbrush. Somebody closed in and dropped a loop about the brute's neck. Denver went over and lit a match, looking for the brand. When the light went out he was swearing disgustedly at himself. "Why in the devil didn't I take a tumble to that half an hour ago? It's a plant. They've took one of Fee's critters and blotched my mark on it."
"Mighty awkward job," opined one of the men. "Too poor a switch to fool anybody. Who is that fella?"
"Some stranger," said Denver. "Redmain's got a whole bunch of new hands in his string this year. Pick him up and bring him to the house."
"Then what, Dave?"
Denver was racing for quarters, the power of speech lost to him. All that cool control which had carried him like a machine through the encounter was gone. The black devils of his temper clutched at his throat, poured fury through his veins, and made of him a mad conscienceless killer. It stripped him of every last kindly instinct, it tore away his sense of safety, it made the muscles of his body tremble as in a spasm of pain. So he flung himself off his horse and ran up the porch, not the David Denver of normal life, not the responsible ranchman, nor the drawling figure welcomed by men and loved by women. Not any of these now. Tonight the dominant, long repressed instincts rode him unmercifully. Tonight he was Black Dave Denver.
The blurred face of a hand appeared in his pathway. He swept the man aside, he ripped out an order—"Get my saddle on the gray gelding"—and tramped across the living room to where a rack of guns stood. He unbuckled his belt and threw it aside; and from a high peg he took down