Joe shrugged. "We could find out by makin' Saygar talk."

"Providin' we could find Saygar. And providin' he talks in his sleep. Or maybe we should go to him and say . . . 'Please, Mister Saygar, tell us who you're workin' for?'"

"We'll have a try anyway." A grin broke across Joe's pallid, lean face.

"When?"

"Why not tonight?"

Blaze laughed. "You ain't strong enough to hold a cup steady, let alone stick a saddle. A lot o' help you'd be. Besides, I've got to be back at the layout tonight to keep Yace quiet. If he suspected anything, it'd be tough on both of us."

"He's ready to turn me in?" Joe asked tonelessly.

"I can't make him out, and that's a fact," the redhead said. "First I think he's thinkin' one way and then he'll do somethin' to make me wonder if he isn't thinkin' the other. But we can't take any chances on him."

"Then you can come back tomorrow night with a spare horse. We'll see Saygar then."

"I'll try to make it," Blaze agreed.

"How about the girl?" Joe asked softly, looking across at Jean. "She's on our side, friend," Blaze said quickly. "She'll do whatever we ask."

"Even to keepin' quiet about me?"

"If she thinks it'll help, she'll tell her old man anything we say. No one was at Diamond when I went after her but the cook, and he was asleep. I told her away with a story about John Merrill bein' sick. She left a note for her father. It was just plain fool luck that she didn't mention me in it. So there's nothin' to connect us with where she's been."

Something Blaze had said had taken Joe's attention. He appeared reluctant to mention it, but asked finally: "How's Ruth?" "Haven't seen her." Blaze's tone was curt. "Old John's had another stroke. I reckon she's pretty busy takin' care of him." He studied Joe closely. "Don't stick your neck out by tryin' to see her," he advised. "The farther you stay from the mesa, the better off you'll be."

"Did I say I wanted to see her?" Joe bridled.

"No. But you were a sucker for that honey-colored hair o' hers once, and you're actin' like you'd like another try." Blaze came slowly erect. He glanced toward the pile of firewood, down at Jean, finally to the corner where the provisions he'd brought from Diamond lay. He was obviously embarra.s.sed at having said too much. "I'll have to be goin'. Can you get along?"

"Easy enough," Joe drawled.

"About Jean. See if you can't figure out a story for her to give Vanover."

"I'll think of something."

"Then I'll see you tomorrow night. Could I get you some grub before I pull out?"

Joe shook his head, still stung by Blaze's outspoken condemnation of Ruth. "Couldn't eat it right now."

Blaze hesitated, knowing that his uncalled-for indictment of Ruth had put a barrier between them. His impulse was to get out of here, now, before he really had to. He should be staying a little longer to make sure that Joe was able to take care of himself. But that reminder that Joe still cared for a girl who had once made a fool of him, and that Ruth herself might encourage him if she were given the chance, had filled Blaze with a savage anger. He had tried to hold it in check, but couldn't. So now he said abruptly-"Be seein' you."- and went out along the short tunnel, stooped over, and not looking back.

It wasn't until he was out of the caon and halfway down across the basin, with his rancor toward Ruth Merrill gradually lessening, that the let-down hit him. He started trembling. At first, he thought it was the biting chill of this late hour, then he realized he was quite warm, and that it was something else. His rein hand shook so that he had to rest it on the horn to steady it. A weakness. .h.i.t his knee, and it was easier to sit the saddle than to stand in stirrup as was his habit.

He knew he was tired. But this was something else. Without a clear awareness of the surge of feeling that was in him, yet knowing it was this feeling and not his fatigue that was making him feel this way, Blaze was for the first time struck by the full significance of Joe's being alive and not dying. Things seemed all right now, d.a.m.ned fine in fact! Two hours ago nothing had been right. Looking back on those hours tonight and last night while he and Jean sat waiting for something to happen, yet dreading that it should happen, Blaze felt momentarily ashamed of the way he'd unburdened himself to the girl. No, he wasn't ashamed, he decided. Jean Vanover was a fine woman. So fine, in fact, that tonight he had forgotten who she was and talked to her the way he'd have talked to a man, a close friend. And now Joe was going to live. Together they'd lick this thing, whatever it was, whoever it was. He and Joe Bonnyman, the lanky kid he'd seen grow into manhood, would take this thing by the horns and throw it. Throw it hard and clean. They'd be a hard combination to beat.

Suddenly Blaze felt good, so good he rammed his spurs to his horse's flanks and raced across the last, flat open stretch of the lower basin. The chill wind knifing against his face braced him; the excitement of having come through as bad a two days as he'd ever lived drove out his weariness. He didn't want to wait for another night to get started at this thing. Right now he could walk up to Mike Saygar and beat the truth out of him, the truth about whom he was working for, what lay behind his men homesteading the basin. But, more importantly than this, and something that must come first, was a heart-to-heart talk with Yace. The hard-headed old fool needed to be told a few things, such as that his son was worth two of him, and that he couldn't any longer hide behind that high and mighty way of his and expect to get away with it. From now on Yace was either going to have to throw in with them to lick this thing, or lose his foreman. Blaze decided that definitely, where never before had his threats to quit Anchor been anything but a soon regretted impulse. Now it was the real thing. Yace would back his son all the way or to h.e.l.l with him.

Blaze was thinking this as he rode clear of the trees flanking the rim of Porcupine Caon and saw, far to the west, the lights of Anchor ablaze. He came a little straighter in the saddle, a quick glance at the wheeling stars showing him it was past two, lacking a couple hours of dawn. The crew was always up and about early, but not this early. Something was wrong at Anchor.

As he rode down toward those lights signaling danger, Blaze was gripped by a grim sense of foreboding. Things were moving fast toward a showdown on this dynamite-packed range, and without anything definite to back up his feeling the red-headed Anchor foreman had a premonition amounting to conviction that tonight would see that showdown.

Murder at Brush.

Clark Dunne rode in on the lights of John Merrill's Brush Ranch a little before midnight. The two hours it had taken him to make the slow fifteen miles out from town had brought some sobering thoughts and much worry. First off, he'd tried to puzzle out the answer to the disappearance of Joe Bonnyman's body and his death not being reported to Bill Lyans. Secondly, he wondered if his talk with Mike Saygar at the cabin yesterday had been convincing. Would Saygar come in on this thing for the money he was to get out of it? Clark had no illusions where the outlaw was concerned. Saygar could be trusted only so long as he stood to profit from a thing; beyond that point, he would sell out to the highest bidder. Just now the outlaw looked to Clark for those profits. Soon-maybe sooner than Clark knew- Saygar might transfer his loyalties. It was up to Clark to keep that from happening.

It took a man like Mike Saygar to see the possibilities in taking a long shot like the one he was taking tonight, or, rather, Clark hoped he was following orders. It might take several months for Saygar to cash in on the partners.h.i.+p he had joined. Until then, Clark decided, the outlaw was to be trusted. What happened after that was another thing. If worse came to worst, a man could always use a gun. Saygar bore no charmed life; a bullet would stop him as quickly as the next man.

Clark eyed the night-shadowed layout as he rode in toward the house lights, near now. He couldn't see plainly in the darkness but his mind's eye built the picture of the spread from the few scant details that showed through the obscurity. The lights were coming from the house, the big tile-roofed stone house with the two long wings that was crammed with tasteful furnis.h.i.+ngs s.h.i.+pped out from the East.

John Merrill was unlike these other mesa ranchers; he came from a moneyed, aristocratic family, and Brush had always seemed an outpost of culture and refinement, untouched by the cruder life of this cattle frontier. The Merrill family's tradition was in part responsible for Ruth's aloof ways. In a poorer land, John Merrill's extravagance would soon have impoverished him. But here on Mesa Grande wealth grew up out of the ground faster than a man could spend it. So Brush remained a fairly prosperous outfit even for the expensive taste of its owner who had been bred to the purple. If John Merrill had had the drive of a Yace Bonnyman, Brush would have been a more powerful outfit than Anchor.

That Brush would one day be the power on this range had long been a dream of Clark's. Until lately, it had been a far-fetched dream, one that included himself and Ed Merrill as partners in a vast, hazily developing enterprise. Now Ed was dead and there remained only old John Merrill to share what Brush represented. Thinking of it in this new light, Clark was all at once struck by the wish that old Merrill would die quickly. But once that wish materialized, he put it down quickly. Even though he had killed twice in two days, his sense of decency was not yet dulled to the point where he could tolerate such a thought.

He was challenged as he crossed the yard toward the tie rail near the house, and he recognized the voice of the man who called out. "You're up late, Mel," Clark said. "How's the old man?"

The Brush man sauntered up and waited until Clark had swung aground before replying: "Bad, I reckon. They ain't told us much. Doc Nesbit and the girl are stayin' up with him. Go on in. She'll be glad to see you."

Ruth answered his knock on the door. As Clark stepped into the lighted, low-ceilinged main room, he saw that her face was lined with care and weariness.

"I came as soon as I could, Ruth," he said. "Lyans has had me up coverin' the pa.s.s road. How's your father?"

"No better and no worse, Clark. What . . .?" She hesitated and her eyes were afraid. Then her words came in a rush. "What about Joe? Did they find him? Is he . . . ?"

"Not a sign of him yet." Clark tried to overlook the quick relief that brought tears to Ruth's eyes. "My hunch is he's left the country."

The gladness that had been in her faded. "That would be safest for him, wouldn't it?" she said lifelessly. "But I . . . I hoped he hadn't."

Again he had to overlook her betrayal of a more than casual interest in Joe. He said: "You're tired. Why don't you turn in for a while?"

As he spoke, he heard the door at the far end of the room open. Before the girl could answer, Doc Nesbit was saying: "I've been tryin' since dark to tell her that, Clark. She hasn't had a wink in twice 'round the clock."

The doctor appeared to be in little better shape than Ruth. His old face looked haggard; there were dark circles under his eyes, his coat was off, and his collar and tie loosened where ordinarily he was fastidious about his appearance.

"You could stand some sleep yourself, Doc," Clark declared. "Why don't both of you turn in for a few hours and let me take over? Is there any reason why I couldn't?"

Nesbit scratched his head and ran a hand over his beard-stubbled face. "It would be nice to shave and lie down a bit. How about it, Ruth?"

"Is he still asleep?" the girl asked.

The medico nodded. "Will be, until time for his medicine. Clark could give it to him." He paused only a moment before he decided. Then, coming across, he took Ruth by the elbow, gently urging her toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms. "So we needn't worry. Come along, Clark. I'll show you what has to be done."

Ruth turned to Clark as she came abreast the open door to her room. Lifting her face to him, she said softly as the doctor went into the room opposite: "Put your arms around me, Clark. Kiss me. I'm . . . I'm so lost."

He took her in his arms, gently, and kissed her on the lips. She smiled as she drew away. "Thanks," she said wistfully. "I needed that. So much has happened that I can't take it all in. You're sure Joe's safe? Hasn't anyone seen him?"

Her concern at this moment for another man dulled the quickened interest that had been in Clark as he held her yielding body in his arms. "Don't worry about Joe," he said levelly. "He can take care of himself."

Ruth's door closed softly, and Clark entered John Merrill's room, going quietly across to the sick man's bed as the doctor motioned him to silence. Nesbit indicated a bottle and a teaspoon on a small table beside the bed.

"He's to have a spoonful of that every hour, on the hour," he whispered. "You may have to wake him to give it to him. It's what keeps his heart goin', so be sure you don't miss. Another thing. He seems to want to talk, thinks he's going to die and that he has to get things squared away before he does. Don't let him talk. Tell him he'll be better in a couple of days."

"And will he?" Clark asked.

Nesbit shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. If the medicine takes effect, he has a good chance." He took his watch from his pocket, wound it, and laid it on the table. "Twenty minutes until he gets the next dose. Well, I'll turn in. If anything goes wrong, if his breathing or color changes, wake me. I'll be in the next room."

Alone with the sleeping man as the sounds in the next room, the doctor's, finally quieted, Clark sat in the rocker by the bed and tried to keep his eyes from straying to the bottle of medicine close to his elbow. He tried to think of other things, of Jean Vanover's strange disappearance, of what Saygar and his men were doing tonight, but always his eyes would go back to the bottle and his thoughts would turn to what it represented-life or death for John Merrill.

He hadn't until now seriously considered Merrill's dying. It came to him quite suddenly, and for the first time, that, should the old man's stroke prove fatal, Ruth would inherit Brush. All that went with it, social eminence, prestige, and power, would be hers, to be shared by the man of her choice.

Clark remembered the kiss Ruth had given him. What had followed had made her gesture of turning to him less symbolic than he would have liked it. But wasn't Joe dead? And after Joe, wasn't he the man of Ruth's choice? Wouldn't she be alone after this was over? Wouldn't marriage ease her grief?

Staring at the bed, at the man who illness seemed already to have wasted away, Clark saw the blankets move and John Merrill's gray-haired head turn. Merrill's eyes were open, looking at him.

With an effort, Clark put the vicious thoughts that were d.o.g.g.i.ng him from his mind and forced a smile. "h.e.l.lo, John," he said quietly. "Feeling better?"

"Clark." The old man's whisper was barely audible. The faint trace of an answering smile came to his sunken-cheeked, pale face.

Clark leaned closer. "Ruth and Nesbit have turned in for a little rest. I'm going to sit up with you. Try and sleep again."

Merrill's mouth came open. He seemed to he trying to swallow, unable to do it. His breathing became audible, very labored. He gasped a whispered word: "The medicine!"

Clark looked at the watch. It was already fifteen minutes past the hour. A wicked and concise impulse struck him and he said easily: "Not time yet, John. Ten minutes to go. Try and rest."

John Merrill's eyes widened with alarm. He tried to speak again but couldn't summon the strength. A beady perspiration stood out on his forehead. He lifted a hand and reached out, fastening Clark's wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. Clark drew his hand away, wrenched loose from the old man's hold.

"You'll tire yourself, John," he said soothingly, unable to keep from smiling.

He felt a cool draft on his neck and only then realized that the door to the room was open. He turned quickly in his chair, panicked by the thought he might have been overheard. Rising quickly, he went to the door and peered out into the hall. Ruth's door, directly opposite, was closed. Clark tiptoed along the hall to the next room's entrance. It was open. Standing there, breathing shallowly, he listened.

The doctor was asleep. Clark could hear his breathing, deep, even, the breathing of an exhausted man. Soundlessly he returned to John Merrill's room and closed the door, every muscle in his body taut as the hinges grated.

When he looked down into John Merrill's face again, the old man's eyes were closed. The mouth was still open. The paleness was gone and now the parchment-like skin bore a bluish tint. And Clark couldn't hear the sick man breathing any longer. He leaned down and listened and then could hear it, faintly.

Clark sat in the chair once more, and now the silence was oppressive. Gradually a panic rose up in him. It became so strong that he reached for the bottle and spoon. He uncorked the bottle, thinking: There's still time to save him, to let him live. Then, because the vision of the power that could be his for the asking came to him at that moment, he placed the cork back into the bottle and set it back on the table.

He wasn't going to look at the bed now. He got up and paced the length of the carpet, his glance picking out details of the room's furnis.h.i.+ngs he hadn't noticed before. On the dresser was a daguerreotype of a handsome woman, no doubt Ruth's mother. Clark had never known her. She had that same exotic beauty as her daughter. The picture's frame was of intricately wrought gold, somehow symbolic of John Merrill's quiet, tasteful affluence. A set of military brushes with engraved silver backs lay near the picture. Another sign of wealth. It quickened Clark's pulse to think that countless other objects in this luxuriously furnished house were of great value. Just thinking of it, of all this wealth that was to be his one day, made him want to shout.

In this moment, Clark Dunne was half crazed with the l.u.s.t for power. He had nearly forgotten John Merrill. Returning to the bed, he leaned down over the man, seeing that the bluish tone to the skin had deepened. He listened for Merrill's breathing. There was no sign of it. Hurrying across to the dresser again, he took one of the brushes and held its silvered back close to the old man's nostrils. No telltale fogging of breathing showed on the cool, polished metal. Clark felt of Merrill's pulse. Feebly- or could he feel it?-came the beat of the old man's fighting heart.

Clark returned the brush to the dresser and started for the door. Halfway there, he paused and came back to the table. He uncorked the bottle, poured some of the syrupy liquid into the spoon, then poured it back from the spoon to the bottle again. Then, sure that he had thought of everything, he laid the spoon on the table again and went out the door.

Nesbit was awake at the first touch of his hand on shoulder. "Better get in there, Doc," Clark said, low-voiced. "I think something's happened."

His tone brought the medico quickly out of bed. Clark followed Nesbit's nightgown-draped figure along the hallway and back into John Merrill's room. Reaching for the old man's wrist, Nesbit felt of it. He stooped quickly and took his black kit bag from beneath the table. Out of it he brought a cedar-necked stethoscope and a small vial of a char-colored liquid. "Pry his mouth open, Clark," he said curtly, Together, they managed to pour some of the liquid into Merrill's mouth. But Nesbit slowly shook his head. "Too late," he said. "How did this happen? Why didn't you call me sooner?"

"I wouldn't have had it happen for anything," Clark said in a voice heavy with regret. "I gave him his medicine at one. He wanted to talk. I told him not to, but there were some things he thought he had to say. Then, when he was through, he dropped off to sleep. I reckon I was sittin' here daydreamin', not watchin' him very close. Then just now I saw his color had changed. I listened to his breathin', couldn't hear it, and called you."

Nesbit gave a weary shrug of his shoulders. "I don't suppose anything could have saved him. Don't take it too hard, Clark. It would have happened, even if I'd been . . ."

"Clark, what is it?"

Ruth's low cry sounded from the door. They turned to her as she slowly advanced into the room. She had thrown a robe about her shoulders. Coming to the bed, she stood staring dully down at the face of the dead man. All at once she turned to Clark, put her head on his shoulder, and sobbed: "I knew it! I knew he wouldn't live till morning! Clark, I'm so alone!"

He took her by the shoulders and pushed her a little away from him, looking down into her tear-br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes.

"He wanted me to wake you, wanted you to hear what he had to say," he said quietly. "Now I wish I had."

"He . . . he said something? What, Clark?"

"He made me promise we'd be married. Tomorrow, he said. He was sure he wasn't going to live. He wanted to be sure there would be someone to look after you. He . . . he said you love me, Ruth."

The girl's choking sobs came as Clark drew her to him once more. Nesbit turned from them and busied himself at repacking his bag. As an afterthought, he reached over and pulled the sheet up over John Merrill's face. Then he left the room.

When they were alone, Ruth lifted her head. "He said it was to be tomorrow?" she asked.

Clark nodded to the watch on the table. "Today," he corrected her. Tilting her chin up so that he could look into her eyes, he asked gently: "Are you as sure of it as he was, Ruth? That I'm the man you want?"

"Yes, Clark," she answered after a moment, and in that slight pause he knew she was thinking once again of Joe. "Yes, he was right. I do need you."

Six-Gun Parley.

Two and a half hours ago Luke Sherman and two other Anchor crewmen had ridden the Troublesome toward the herds' bed ground, curious over the sound of distant gunfire heard by a wakeful cowpuncher. They had come across half the answer to what had happened, a thin scattering of cattle where the main herd should have been. The darkness had hidden the rest.

Now, as dawn's light strengthened in the east, Blaze and Yace and nine other Anchor men-all but the cook-sat their horses at the edge of the rim and looked downward the 400 feet to the edge of the flats to see the final answer. The gorge lay off to the right, obscured by the lack of light. Below, at its mouth, lay evidence of destruction beyond any man's imagining. Some fifty of the carca.s.ses dammed the creek and diverted it in a quarter-mile-wide pool beyond which the swollen muddy waters swirled back into the main channel. As far back as they could see, clear to the gorge mouth, other bloated carca.s.ses lined the banks of the stream or turned lazily in the side pockets out of the current. Occasionally they would glimpse the scarred Anchor brand on a distended belly, but more often it was a Singletree-branded animal. No one bothered to ride to the gorge rim and look down into the roaring chasm deeply gashed by the stream; it would be the same there, they knew, maybe even worse.

Only five minutes ago Blaze had taken a careful look at the small bunches of grazing steers and told Yace: "I make it a slim half hundred, boss." Last night nearly 500 cattle had been left near the junction of the Troublesome and the Porcupine to graze.

"This is the d.a.m.nedest thing I ever set eyes on," Sherman drawled as he turned and put his horse far enough back from the rim so that he wouldn't have to look any longer.

"In a few days it'll be the d.a.m.nedest stink your nose ever got hold of." For once, Yace's tone lacked bl.u.s.ter and was one of outright incredulity. He took his last long look at what would undoubtedly mean ruin to Singletree, although Anchor would not be so hard hit, and turned to Blaze. "This is nice, comin' right after I find I've got a son that takes a fancy to carryin' off women."

"Blast it!" Blaze said savagely. "If you weren't an old man, I'd lick the livin' daylights out of you for that! Joe no more carried off that Vanover girl than I did."

As soon as he'd spoken, amus.e.m.e.nt tempered Blaze's anger. There was a moment in which he wondered what Yace's reaction would be if he knew that Blaze had in fact been the man who had taken Jean Vanover from Diamond night before last. Then both his amus.e.m.e.nt and anger were gone before the look he caught on Yace's face. The old man was baffled, the fight gone out of him. The news of Joe's note found in the post office last night had been hard for him to take. Now this other was piled on top of it. Yace Bonnyman was hard hit, too troubled with his own loss and what he considered a second betrayal by his son to take Blaze's words seriously.