"We better be gettin' on," Clanahan said, straightening. "Them shots will be callin' more Injuns. I reckon you two got to get to Kitchen's all right, and this is no country to be travelin' with no girl, no matter how good a shot yuh are. That Victorio's a he-wolf. e better get on."

"Won't do no good, Red," Smith said suddenly. "Here they come!"

"Gleason?"

"No. More 'Paches!"

A shot's flat sound dropped into the stillness and heat, and the ripples of its widening circle of sound echoed from the rocks. Joe hit the ground with his face twisted.

"Got me!" he grunted, staring at the torn flesh of his calf and the crimson of the blood staining his leg and the torn pants.

Clanahan rolled over on his stomach behind a thick clump of creosote bush and shifted his Winchester. The basin echoed with the flat, absentminded reports of the guns. Silence hung heavy in the heat waves for minutes at a time, and then a gun boomed and the stillness was spread apart by a sound that was almost a physical blow.

Sweat trickled into Red's eyes and they smarted bitterly. He dug into his belt loops and laid out a neat row of cartridges. nce, glancing around, Red saw that the little girl was bandaging Joe's leg while the Yaqui stared in puzzled astonishment at her agile, white fingers.

Out on the lip of the basin a brown leg showed briefly against the brown sand. Warned by the movement, Clanahan pointed a finger of lead and the Apache reared up, and the Dutchman's Henry boomed.

It was very hot. A bullet kicked sand into Red's eyes and mouth. His worn shirt smelled of the heat andof stale sweat. He scratched his jaw where it itched and peered down across the little knoll.

Across the basin a rifle sounded, and Smith's body tensed sharply and he gave out a long "Aaahh!" of sound, drawn out and deep. Red turned his head toward his friend and the movement drew three quick shots that showered him with gravel. He rolled over, changing position.

Bronco Smith had taken a bullet through the top of the shoulder as he lay on his stomach in the sand, and it had buried itself deep within him, penetrating a lung, by the look of the froth on his lips.

Smith spat and turned his eyes toward Red. uc1"Anyhow," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "we put one over on Gleason."

"Yeah."

Red shifted his Winchester, and when an Apache slithered forward, he caught him in the side with a bullet, then shifted his fire again.

Then for a long time nothing seemed to happen. A dust devil danced in from the waste of the desert and beat out its heart in a clump of ironwood. ed turned his head cautiously and looked at the boy. "How's it, son? Hotter'n blazes, ain't it?"

Later, the afternoon seemed to catch a hint from the purple horizon and began to lower its sun more rapidly. The nearby rocks took on a pastel pink that faded, and in the fading light the Apaches gambled on a rush.

Guns from the hollow boomed, and two Indians dropped, and then another. The rest vanished as if by a strong wind, but they were out there waiting. lanahan shifted his position cautiously, fed sh.e.l.ls into his gun, and remembered a black-eyed girl in Juarez.

A lizard, crawling from a rock, its tiny body quivering with heat and the excited beat of its little heart as it stared in mute astonishment at the rust-red head of the big man with the rifle.

Sheriff Bill Gleason drew up. When morning found the posse far into the desert, he decided he would ride forward until noon, and then turn back. The men who rode with him were nervous about their families and homes, and to go farther would lead to ou-and-out mutiny. It was now mid-morning, and the tracks still held west.

"Clanahan's crazy!" Eckles, the storekeeper in Cholla, said. He was a talkative man, and had been the last to see and the first to mention that Big Red was on a trail. uc1"What's he headin' west for? His only chance is south!"

Ollie Weedin, one of the Cholla townsmen, nudged Gleason. "Buzzards, Bill. Look!"

"Let's go," Gleason said, feeling something tighten up within him. The four they trailed were curly wolves who had cut their teeth on hot lead, but in the Apache country it was different.

"Serves 'em right if the Injuns got 'em!"

Eckles said irritably. "Cussed thieves!"

Weedin glanced at him in distaste. "Better men than you'll ever be, Eckles!"

The storekeeper looked at Weedin, shocked. "Why, they are thieves!" he exclaimed indignantly.

"Sh.o.r.e," someone said, "but sometimes these days the line is hard to draw. They took a wrong turn, somewheres. That Clanahan was a good man with a rope."

In the hollow band of hills where the trail led, they saw a lone gray gelding, standing drowsily near a clump of mesquite. And then they saw the dark, still forms on the ground as their horses walked forward. No man among them but had seen this before, the payoff where Indian met white man and both trails were washed out in blood and gun smoke.

"They done some shootin'!" Weedin said. "Four Apaches on this side."

"Five," Gleason said. "There's one beyond that clump of greasewood."

A movement brought their guns up, and then they stopped. A slim boy with a shock of corn-colored hair stood silently awaiting them in sun-faded jeans and checkered shirt. Beside him was a k.n.o.bby-kneed girl who clutched his sleeve.

"We're all that's left, mister," the boy said.

Gleason glanced around. The eyes of Yaqui Joe stared into the bright sun, still astonished at the white fingers that had bandaged his leg in probably the only kindness he had ever experienced. He had been shot twice in the chest, aside from the leg wound.

Bronco Smith lay where he had taken his bullet, the gravel at his mouth dark with stain.

The Dutchman, placid in death as in life, held a single sh.e.l.l in his stiff fingers and the breech of his rifle was open.

Gleason glanced around, but said nothing. He turned at the excited yell from Eckles. uc1"Here's the bank's money! On these dead mules!"

Ollie Weedin stole a glance at the sheriff, but said nothing. Eckles looked around and started to speak, but at Weedin's hard glare he hesitated, and swallowed.

"It was one buster of a fight," somebody said.

"There's seventeen Injuns dead," the boy offered. "None got away."

"When did this fight end, boy?" Gleason asked.

"Last night, about dusk. They was six of 'em first. I got me one, and he got two or three with a six-shooter. Then they was more come, and a fight kind of close up. I couldn't see, as it was purty dark, but it didn't last long."

Gleason looked at him and chewed his mustache. uc1"Where'd that last fight take place, son?" he asked.

"Yonder."

Silently the men trooped over. There was a lot of blood around and the ground badly ripped up. Both Indians there were dead, one killed with his own knife.

Weedin stole a cautious look around, but the other men looked uncomfortable and, after a moment of hesitation, began to troop back toward their horses. Gleason noticed the boy's eyes shoot a quick, frightened glance toward a clump of brush and rocks, but ignored it.

Ollie shifted his feet. "Reckon we better get started, Bill? Wouldn't want no running fight with those kids with us."

"Yuh're right. Better mount up."

He hesitated, briefly. The scarred ground held his eyes and he scowled, as if trying to read some message in the marks of the battle. Then he turned and walked toward his horse.

All of them avoided glancing toward the steeldust, and if anyone saw the sheriff's canteen slip from his hand and lie on the sand forgotten, they said nothing.

Eckles glanced once at the horse that dozed by the mesquite, but before he could speak his eyes met Ollie Weedin's and he gulped and looked hastily away. They moved off then, and no man turned to look back. Eckles forced a chuckle.

"Well, kid," he said to the boy, "yuh've killed yuh some Injuns, so I reckon youh'll be carvin' a notch or two on your rifle now."

The boy shook his head stiffly. "Not me," he said scornfully. "That's a tinhorn's trick!"

Gleason looked over at Ollie and smiled.

"Yuh got a chaw, Ollie?"

"Sh.o.r.e haven't, Bill. Reckon I must have lost mine, back yonder."

THAT PACKSADDLE AFFAIR.

Red Clanahan, a ma.s.sive man with huge shoulders and a wide-jawed face, was no longer in a hurry. The energetic posse which had clung so persistently to his trail had been left behind on the Pecos. Their horses had played out and two of them were carrying double.

Red had pushed on to Ljncoln, where he'd swapped his sorrel for a long-legged, deep-chested black with three white stockings. Then with only time out for a quick meal and a changing of saddles, he'd headed west for the Rio Grande and beyond it, the forks of the Gila.

Packsaddle Stage Station was a long, low building of adobe, an equally long, low stable, and two pole corrals. There was a stack of last year's hay and a fenced-in pasture where several stage horses grazed, placid in the warm morning sun. Three saddled horses stood three-legged at the hitch-rail, and a drowsy Mexican, already warming up for his siesta, sat in the shade alongside the building.

Slipping the thongs from his pistol b.u.t.t, Clanahan rode down the last hundred yards to the station and dismounted at the trough. Keeping his horse between himself and the station, he loosened the cinch a little and then led the horse to a patch of gra.s.s in the shade alongside the trail. Only then did he start for the station.

A narrow-shouldered man with a thin wolf's face had come from the stage station and was watching him. He wore a gun b.u.t.t forward in a right-side holster, which might be used for either the left or right hand.

"Come down the trail?" he asked, his narrow eyes taking in Clanahan with cool attention.

"Part way. Came down from the Forks and across the Flat."

"Stage is late." The tall man still watched him. "Wondered if you'd seen it?"

"No." Clanahan walked on by and opened the station door. It was cool and shadowed inside. There were several tables, chairs, and a twenty-foot bar at which two men lounged, talking to the barkeep. Another man sat at a table in the farthest corner. Both the men at the bar looked rough and trail-wise.

Red Clanahan moved to the end of the bar and stopped there where he could watch all the men and the door as well. "Rye," he said, when the bartender glanced his way.

As he waited, he rested his big hands on the bar and managed a glance toward the silent man in the corner. The man just sat there with his hands clasped loosely on the table, unmoving. He wore a hat that left only his mouth and chin visi ble at this distance and in this light. He wore a string tie and a frock coat.

There was a situation here that Red could not fathom, but he realized he had walked into something happening or about to happen-probably connected with the arrival of the stage.

The man from outside came back in. His hips were wider than his shoulders and the holster gave him a peculiarly lopsided appearance.

Red Clanahan had a shock of red hair and a red-brown face with cold green eyes above high, flat cheekbones. Once seen, he was not easily forgotten, for he was six feet three and weighed an easy two hundred and thirty pounds. And there were places where he was not only known, but wanted.

There was a matter of some cattle over in Texas. Red's father had died while he was away, and when he returned he found that the three thousand head his father had tallied, shortly before his death, had mysteriously been absorbed by two larger herds. With no legal channels of recovery open to him, Red had chosen illegal methods, and one thing had led to another. Red Clanahan was high on the list of men wanted in Texas.

He finished his drink and had another. Then he looked over at the bartender. "How about some grub?"

The bartender was a big man, too, with a round face and two chins but small, twinkling eyes and a bald head. He removed his cigar and nodded. "When the stage comes in- most any time."

The two men turned to look at him. Then the tall man looked around at the bartender. "Feed him now, Tom. Maybe he wants to ride on."

Red glanced up, his cold green eyes on the speaker. "I can wait," he said coolly.

One of the other men turned. He was short and thickset, with a scar on his jaw. "Maybe we don't want you to wait, ' he said.

Red Clanahan looked into the smaller man's eyes for a long, slow minute. "I don't give a royal d.a.m.n what you want," he said quietly. "Whatever you boys are cookin', don't get it in my way or I'll bust up your playhouse." - He reached for the bottle and drew it nearer as the short man started toward him. "Listen, you-"

He came one step too close and Red Clanahan hit him across the mouth with the back of his big hand. The blow seemed no more than a gesture but it knocked the shorter man sprawling across the room, his lips a b.l.o.o.d.y pulp.

Red met the gaze of the other men without moving or turning a hair. "Want in?" he said. "I'm not huntin' trouble but maybe you're askin' for it."

The tall man with the narrow shoulders looked ugly. "You swing a wide loop, stranger. Perhaps you're cuttin' into something too big for you."

"I doubt it."

His cool a.s.surance worried Ebb Fallon. They had a job to do, and starting a fight with this stranger was no way to do it. Who was the man? Fallon stared at him, trying to remember. He was somebody, no doubt about that.

Shorty Taber got up slowly from the floor. Still dazed, he touched his fingers to his crushed lips and stared at the blood. Pure hatred was in his eyes as he looked up at Clanahan.

"I'll kill you for that," Taber said.

Red Clanahan reached for the bottle and filled his gla.s.s.

"Better stick to punchin' cows," he said. "Quit goin' around pickin' fights with strangers. You'll live longer."

Taber glared at him and his right hand dropped a fraction. Red was looking at him, still holding the bottle. "Don't try it," he warned. "I could take a drink and shoot both your ears off before you cleared leather."

Taber hesitated, then turned and walked to his friends. They whispered among themselves for a few minutes while the bartender polished a gla.s.s. Through it all, the man at the table had not moved. In the brief silence there was a distant pounding of hoofs and a rattle of wheels.

Instantly, two of the three turned to the door. The third stepped back and dropped into a chair near the wall, but facing the door. The bartender looked nervously at Red Clanahan. "We'll serve grub when the pa.s.sengers arrive," he said. "They change teams here."

The stage drew up out front and then the door opened. Two men and a woman came in, and then a girl. She was slender and tall, with large violet eyes. She looked quickly toward the bar. Then her eyes touched fleetingly on Red's face, and she went on to the table and seated herself there. Obviously, she was disturbed.

Red Clanahan saw her eyes go to the third of the three riders, the fattish man who had remained indoors. Red happened to turn his head slightly and was shocked by the expression on the bartender's face. He was dead-white and his brow was beaded with sweat.

The pa.s.sengers ate quietly. Finally the driver came in, had a drink, and turned. "Rolling!" he called. "Let's go!"

All got to their feet, and as they did, Ebb Fallon walked to the door, standing where the pa.s.sengers had to brush him to get by. The girl was last to leave. As she turned to the door, the man at the nearby table got up.

"All right, Ebb," he said, "tell 'em to roll it."

He moved toward the girl. "My name's Porter, ma'am. You'd best sit down."

"But I've got to get on the stage!" she protested indignantly. "I can't stay."

She started past him and Porter caught her wrist. "Came to see your father, didn't you?" the man said. "Well, he's here."

That stopped her. Outside, the stage was in motion; then they heard it go down the trail. When the rumble of wheels had died away, the door of the station opened, and Taber stepped in. He looked at the bartender, then at Red. His eyes shifted on to the girl.

"Well, where is he?" she demanded.