Clark was nearly caught off guard but saw the danger in time. "I could've helped, couldn't I?"

"He had all the help he needed. It was me that got the Vanover girl. She's been up there with him in that cave east of the basin where we smoked out the mountain cat that time. Remember?"

"Was he hurt bad?"

"Bad enough. The slug dug a nice groove in the side of his head."

Just then Yace called stridently from out in the yard: "You and Clark get across here, Blaze!"

"Count us out, Yace," Clark answered.

"We're not askin' you to side us!" Yace called back. "It's somethin' else."

So Blaze and Clark went out to where the men, ready to go, waited. The horses milled restlessly and a thin fog of dust lifted over the yard. Workman cursed deliberately but in a gentle voice as he tried to quiet his black gelding to a stand so that he could tighten his cinch. The attention of the riders was divided between his difficulty and what Yace had to say to Clark and Blaze.

"We figured someone ought to keep an eye on Diamond while we're gone," Yace began. "You willin' to go over there for the rest of the day and lay on your bellies in some nice cool shade and see what goes on?"

Clark looked at Blaze, and, in a moment, the Anchor foreman drawled: "Suits us."

"We want to know how many men Harper can count on besides his own crew of hired fighters," Yace said. "And keep an eye out for Vanover. He's been with Lyans. When he hears about this, he'll probably head for home. It wouldn't hurt if you stopped him on his way in and brought him here. We'll get back as soon as we get our man . . . or as soon after dark as we can make it. Meet us back here."

Clark frowned. "I oughtn't to let Ruth stay alone so long," he objected. "Blaze can tell you whatever's necessary. I'll get back to Brush when we leave Diamond and meet those extra men and wait till I hear from you. It won't take you long to get the word across if we're needed."

Yace nodded. "What matters is that we know what we're headed into tonight. Find out if you can." He glanced around at the others. "Let's ride!"

A long broken line of grim-faced men, they boiled out of the yard, Yace Bonnyman in the lead, heading north toward the foothills, to scour the country for one who stood condemned by all of them as a thief, a murderer, and a kidnapper of women.

Bullet Bait.

Joe Bonnyman spotted the Yoke riders from a distance of better than a mile and cut down out of the timber so that they could see him. Presently they angled over in his direction and he held the bay to a slow trot, close to the edge of the timber, pretending he hadn't noticed them. When they were less than 200 yards away, he suddenly spurred the bay into a lope and reined over toward the trees. Workman's cowpunchers had been close enough so that Joe recognized two of them, Jim Lansing, the foreman, and Ed Bundy. Joe heard Lansing shout and then a gun exploded flatly, its echo slapping back down off the timbered slope ahead. He climbed the spa.r.s.ely grown incline and put some trees behind him before he looked back. He was in time to see five of the riders come on, Lansing in the lead, while the sixth man headed out across the mesa at a fast run.

During the next hour and a half Joe played a game to which Shorty's bay horse seemed a perfect partner. The horse was a stayer and fresher than Joe had hoped. When he thought it necessary, it wasn't hard to draw away from his pursuers. Occasionally, as he gradually climbed higher along the tangled hills toward Aspen Basin's eastern boundary, he would slow his pace to breathe the bay and let the men behind get a glimpse of him. Once, while he walked his horse along the crest of a hogback, clearly skylining himself, a bullet kicked up an exploding puff of sand barely a foot ahead of the bay, and, as he quickly dropped down the far side of the small ridge, the sharp crack of a rifle sounded from below. After that he kept more distance between himself and the Yoke men.

Joe purposely changed direction time and again so as not to get too far from the mesa. Only when he caught a far downward glimpse of many riders crossing an opening in the timber did he ride point for the basin. He was better than two miles across it when rider after rider raced from the margin of the trees behind and lined out after him. From this distance he couldn't accurately tell how many newcomers had joined the chase. But his guess put the count at upward of twenty and he was satisfied, for he judged that these were the men who would otherwise be riding now for a shoot-out with Diamond. By the time he had put the bay across the belly-deep Troublesome, he was riding in earnest.

By late afternoon Joe had swung abruptly north, toward the higher hills. With the sun's last light a reddish blaze on the new snow of the peaks directly above, he was pounding up the stage road at a hard run, pausing only briefly to breathe the bay. Now, he told himself, was the time that counted. He wanted to be seen pa.s.sing Klingmeier's stage station.

Close below the station's clutter of log buildings, as dusk was settling, Joe pulled the bay down to a steady trot. He came abreast the corrals and windmill, then the squat log building of the station itself. Lights showed at the windows. A man sitting tilted back in a chair on the roofless stoop by the main door eyed him speculatively. Joe lifted a hand and got an answering wave. To all appearances, he was a rider trying to cross the pa.s.s before making camp.

But, to give the lie to that judgment of him, he spurred the bay to a fast run once he was out of gunshot of Klingmeier's, knowing the man back there would see something odd in his hurried flight. He held the bay to the lope until he judged he was out of hearing. Then he pulled in, reined steeply downward off the road into the trees, and rode point for the basin. Crossing it two hours ago, he had spotted in the distance the makes.h.i.+ft lean-to Mike Saygar's men had thrown up to the west of a clump of timber cresting a knoll that flanked the Troublesome.

This morning Joe had told Blaze to meet him at the cave at dark, that he would have company when he made his call on Saygar. But time was too pressing now to make the long ride across to the cave, then back to the outlaw camp. Blaze would have to wait. Joe was going alone to meet Saygar.

"So you're to meet Joe up there at dark." Clark gave Blaze a sideward glance. "What good does he think it'll do to see Saygar?"

"He figures he can make Saygar talk. You'd better come along."

Clark deliberated the suggestion. He would have liked to be present when Joe Bonnyman saw Saygar; not that he didn't trust the outlaw, but because he wasn't too sure of Whitey or Pecos. Thinking on it, though, he decided Saygar was capable of looking out for both himself and his men. Besides, his wasting half the night riding the basin would mean he would be out of touch with things below, and what was to happen down here tonight was the more important.

So he told Blaze: "You go with Joe like you planned. I'll get back to Ruth. Yace won't make a move before he sends a man down to find out from me what happened across here this afternoon."

Blaze's look became worried. "It'd be a heap better for everything to wait on what Joe and I run onto. Don't you see? If Joe's hunch is right, and if he can get Saygar to talk, we'll be huntin' only one man instead of goin' off half-c.o.c.ked after Harper's crew. Harper's nothin' but an understrapper. He can come later."

Clark shrugged and lay back, hands locked behind his head. "We'll have to take things as they come. Maybe you can get down before things open up tonight."

"I don't like it, Clark. For a fact, I don't."

Seeing that Blaze wasn't looking his way, Clark permitted himself a meager smile. He had found the last few minutes' conversation quite profitable. Blaze knew just enough to bear watching, not enough yet to represent a serious threat. And Clark sincerely hoped the redhead wouldn't become one; he was really fond of Blaze and hated the prospect of having anything interfere where another friend was concerned. Time and again today, before learning Joe was alive, Clark had lived through those last few moments of that rainy afternoon in the upper basin as he laid his sights on Joe's back and squeezed the trigger of the Winchester. Now, since finding that his shot had been high, that Joe was still alive, he put off thinking of having to do the job again.

He and Blaze had picked this spot high on the hill that backed Diamond for the reason that from here, a good 200 yards above the nearest outbuilding, they could get an un.o.bstructed downward view of both the bunkhouse and the house yard beyond the trees. The house itself was hidden by the locust grove. Only one thing marred the perfection of their look-out; they couldn't see the line of the trail striking out across the mesa and thus spot Vanover coming in, provided he wasn't already down there.

The two men didn't speak for several minutes, Clark lying back on the soft cus.h.i.+on of pine needles, Blaze sitting with hands locked about his knees and doing the watching. Finally Blaze looked around, a wide grin on his face.

"Shucks, I ain't even given you my sympathies on gettin' hooked," he said. "Goin' to let me stand up as best man?"

"Like the devil! This'll be a respectable weddin'."

Blaze's look sobered. "All jokin' aside, friend, I'm wis.h.i.+n' you well."

"Glad you approve," Clark drawled.

Blaze went on, speaking more to himself than to Clark: "It's a funny thing, but I always reckoned Joe and Ruth would get hitched. He was sure gone on her there for a while. But she never felt quite the same as he did."

A faint uneasiness laid its hold on Clark. Supposing Ruth heard that Joe was still alive and had been seen? Suppose she still cared for him, as she had seemed to last night, cared for him enough to postpone the wedding? She was capable of it, Clark knew. Then he remembered how much Joe knew, how close he was to discovering the answer to all this trouble, and felt easier. This time he'd have to make sure of Joe for the simple reason that with Joe alive he'd always be in danger.

Clark wondered, idly, how much Whitey would take to do the job for him. Whitey or Harper. Either man could be bought at a price, although he doubted that either had ever stooped to bushwhack for other than purely personal reasons. Later tonight, at Saygar's camp, when this other was over, he'd feel out Whitey. Saygar himself needn't know anything about it. Mike already had too much on him; no sense in letting him in on more.

"Y'know, I'm sort o' glad it happened this way," Blaze said, startling Clark from his preoccupation. "Not that it's anything ag'in' you, understand."

"What?"

"You and Ruth. Joe and her never hit it off right. Now take that Vanover girl. If Joe ever settles down here again, there's my idea of a good match. She's the salt o' the earth, Clark. Pretty as a pure-bred filly, too."

"Aren't you the matchmaker." There was irritation in Clark's tone. He was as well aware of Jean Vanover's attractiveness as he was of Ruth's shortcomings.

"Funny thing is, she seems sort of soft on Joe. Up there in the cave, while Joe was layin' there, I'd catch her lookin' at him in a funny sort of way, like . . ." Blaze straightened a little, glancing fixedly at something below. "There's Vanover. We're already too late to stop him. What'll we do?"

Sitting up, Clark peered down through the trees to see Fred Vanover crossing the clean-swept graveled yard toward the house. In a moment, Middle Arizona's manager was out of sight.

Clark shrugged. "Nothin' we can do." He looked off through the trees into the west where the sun already edged the low spur of hills that marked the mesa's far limit. Then he thought of something that made him look sharply at Blaze. "How about takin' a last look-see and then headin' for the cave? You work off to the left and down as close behind the house as you can. I'll take the bunkhouse and try to get that count Yace wanted. Meet you back here in half an hour."

"What good'll it do us?" Blaze plainly didn't like the idea of going so far afoot.

Clark shrugged. "We can't miss any chances."

Blaze agreed grudgingly and they started down the slope, the redhead soon out of sight among the trees off to the left. As soon as he was sure he couldn't be seen, Clark broke into a run. He moved carelessly, so that when he neared the lower margin of the trees a Diamond crewman who had been standing at the front of the blacksmith shop had stepped around the building and was looking toward the hill, attracted by the sound of his coming.

Clark advanced boldly a few steps into the open and beckoned to the man. He was impatient over the other's slow approach and showed it when he snapped: "Get Harper up here. Right away, Tillson."

"He's over at the house with Vanover." The man's face bore an ugly scar over the right eye. He wore a holstered gun, b.u.t.t foremost, high at the left side of his waist.

"Get him anyway."

Crossing the back lot toward the trees that screened the house, Tillson's stride was no longer indifferent, proof of how much weight Clark's curt order had carried.

Tillson was gone nearly five minutes. When he reappeared, he went across toward the bunkhouse and out of sight. Clark was about to call to him when Harper walked out of the trees.

"Anyone see you come out here?" was Clark's first question.

"No. Vanover and the girl are still talkin'."

"She's back?" Clark asked, for Blaze hadn't known when Jean was to return to Diamond.

"Rode in around noon. When I asked her where she'd been, she looked kind o' funny and told me I needed a shave." Harper ran a hand over his freshly shaven and hawkish face. "Didn't want to talk. You know anything about it?"

"You'll get that later," Clark said. "Bonnyman's goin' to raid the layout tonight. It'll probably be late. I'll try and swing it so he'll split his men. Maybe I'll get the chance to send word over on exactly what to expect. In case I don't, take halfyour men and . . ." "There won't be no powder burned," Harper drawled. "Vanover's gettin' ready to go see Bonnyman and make his peace with him. If I'm guessin' right, he'll try and have me jailed. Or at least Tillson. He's the one who cut down that Anchor man this mornin'."

"Don't let Vanover see Bonnyman," said Clark. "Keep him and the girl here. This fight has to come off, Neal. And you won't lose a man if we work it right. After it's over, later on tonight, you and your bunch can ride the pa.s.s across to Junction and hop that early morning express."

"How do I keep from losin' my men?"

"Easy enough. How many can you count on?"

"Only six. The regular crew is actin' a little shy." Harper smiled wryly.

"Then put four men about half a mile out the basin trail, the other two in the timber east of the house. They can pick off Bonnyman's crew as they come in. Stick to that arrangement unless I get word in to change it."

Harper's smile broadened. "So it's that easy, eh? Any particular scalps you'd like to collect?"

"Bonnyman's." Clark was going to let it go at that when he added, on impulse: And Charley Staples's." He could make doubly sure of getting the Singletree by having only Staples's widow to deal with.

The gunman nodded. "This ought to call for sweetenin' the kitty, hadn't it?"

Clark unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt and reached under it to unfasten a money belt. He let Harper see the bulging pouches of the belt but opened only one. He unwadded the bills he removed from it. "Here's four hundred. You get four hundred more from Saygar on your way out. I'll get it up to him later tonight."

Harper frowned. "I don't trust that jasper, boss," he said, but took the proffered banknotes.

"You'll get your dinero. Mike's too deep in this to try a double-cross. Here's another thing. You're to head up to Saygar's camp now. Get there as quick as you can and tell him Coyle and Joe Bonnyman are droppin' in on him in a couple hours. Tell him Bonnyman's primed to make him talk. He'll know what to do." "Bonnyman! I thought you said you . . ."

"I know," Clark cut in. "But he's still alive. We'll make sure of him tonight. Got everything straight?"

"Do I get back down here before the ball starts rollin'?" "You'll have plenty of time. And remember to keep Vanover here. You can do it without bein' rough with the girl, too. Don't let a man like Tillson handle it."

"Gentry gets that job," Harper said. "That's all?"

"That's all."

Clark waited until Harper had walked back as far as the trees, out of six-gun range, before he turned his back and started up the slope. He had caught the narrow-eyed way in which the gunman eyed his money belt.

Saygar Wins a Hand.

It was from across the Troublesome, the west bank, that Joe made his careful inspection of the outlaw camp. He was out of the saddle, holding the bay's bridle close on the chance that the animal might try to signal the horses he knew must be across there somewhere.

It was obvious that Saygar's men were making no attempt to hide their presence here, for a big blaze lit the shoulder of the timber-crested knoll, throwing into dark relief the nearest jack pines and glinting dully from the oily, mounded swells of the creek. Pecos worked by the fire, spending some minutes over a batch of biscuit dough that he finally dropped into a Dutch oven lifted above the coals by a forked stick. Several times Reibel and Whitey crossed boldly before the fire. Joe, well acquainted with the habits of men on the hoof, realized that they must be enjoying this brief relaxation from their wary ways that had put them here for the outwardly legitimate purpose of homesteading.

Knowing that they had relaxed their vigilance, and also that the roar of the stream would hide the approach of a rider, Joe rode downstream a short distance until he came to a point where the creek split up into two channels around a narrow neck of high ground. Here he put the bay across to the east bank, the water rising above the stirrups. Less than five minutes later he looked down from the timber above the camp to see Mike Saygar's arrival.

Joe felt a keen disappointment at sight of Saygar, having hoped that he could talk with the others in the absence of their leader, whose shrewdness he respected highly. So he waited a long moment before he started down toward the camp, rearranging his ideas on what he was to do.

Chuck Reibel, who had led Saygar's horse over to the rope corral, saw him first as he rode into the light and called to the others: "Heads up! We got company."

Joe came on, reining in close to the other three at the fire. He caught Whitey's angry scowl and the lift of the gunman's hand that put it within finger spread of holster. Saygar's look was the same impa.s.sive half smile of the other afternoon at Hoelseker's cabin. Pecos merely turned and looked up at the newcomer, not bothering to stand, his expression politely curious.

"You again," Saygar drawled.

"Yeah." Joe got aground deliberately, moving slowly, keeping his hands in plain sight. "Where can I turn this horse in and feed him?" he asked as Reibel sauntered over into the light.

His question obviously surprised them. "Did we ask you to stay?" Saygar asked.

Joe tried to school his face to an expression of puzzlement. "Didn't he tell you?" he asked.

"Didn't who tell us what?" Saygar's tone was cool, suspicious. "That I was to meet you here and wait until he showed. It's set for tonight."

Saygar's glance narrowed. "This's the first I've heard of it." Joe shrugged. On impulse, he turned and handed his reins to Reibel, saying: "Grain him. He's had a real workout this afternoon."

Reibel hesitated only a moment, then took the reins. As he started off toward the corral, Saygar said flatly: "Stay set, Chuck!" Then to Joe: "What kind of a sandy you runnin', Bonnyman?"

"Sandy?" Joe asked blandly. He laughed. "I see. He didn't get the word to you. Well, it doesn't matter. I can give you the set-up. Diamond and Anchor swapped some lead this mornin'. Harper came out on top. So Bonnyman's goin' back with more men tonight. That is, if his crew's in shape to." He nodded in the general direction of the pa.s.s road. "He's up there somewhere lookin' for me. That was part of the job, to toll him up there after me until we could get ready for him. We're supposed to go down to Diamond tonight, soon as we get the word. Harper doesn't have enough men to handle this."

It was Whitey who drawled into the following silence: "This must be what Clark was after when he had us push that herd into . . ."

As the youth spoke, Saygar wheeled, quick as a cat, and struck him across the mouth with an open hand. "You loose-mouthed pup," he breathed. Ignoring Whitey, he faced Joe again. "Who let you in on this?" he asked tonelessly.

Joe was only vaguely aware that the outlaw had spoken, so intent was he on Whitey's mention of Clark's name. "What about Clark?" he demanded. "What's he got to do with this?"

"Something Dunne told Chuck the other day when Chuck held the gun on him," Saygar explained hastily.