The clerk argued, reasoned, and finally lost his temper. But in the end he wrote the names of Henry Jordan, Cyrus Smith, and Edward Tolley in his recorder's book, their t.i.tles to their quarter-sections being subject to their proving up on their basin homesteads in the next three years.

When Reibel, Pecos, and Whitey left the office, the clerk ducked out the back way and told the first man he met about the three strangers who were homesteading Aspen Basin. If Saygar's men hadn't stopped in at the Mile High for a drink before they went to the hardware store, they might have had better luck with Whitlow, the store owner. As it was, Whitlow knew who they were when they came back to his office and wanted to buy a wagonload of barbed wire.

The storekeeper's expression was sympathetic as he shook his head. "Sold my last spool yesterday, gents," he told them. "And that fool son-in-law of mine forgot to order any last week. So you'll have to wait."

"How long'll it be?" asked Reibel.

Whitlow shrugged. "Two weeks, maybe three. I'm sure sorry about this. Where you plannin' on puttin' up your fence?" "Aspen Basin," Reibel answered.

Whitlow lifted his brows and said merely: "That's nice country up there. Closes in a little early in the winter, though. Thought about that?"

"We've thought about it," Reibel a.s.sured him. "Then we'll see you when the wire gets here." He led the others out of the store.

Bill Lyans was waiting for them on the walk out front. The deputy had had only four hours' sleep the night before, and his voice showed it as he stepped in front of them, asking brusquely: "You the three gents that're homesteadin' the basin?"

"That's us," Reibel said.

The deputy's stony glance appraised each one for a longer than polite moment. "You know what you're lettin' yourselves in for?" he asked sharply, finished with his inspection.

"Just what the devil is this?" Whitey drawled, and his voice wasn't pleasant. "We see a notice posted that good land's open to homestead. We look it over. We decide to file on it. Now every jasper we talk to warns us off. This is a free country, ain't it?"

"All of it's free but the basin," Lyans said.

"And why isn't it free?"

"Because for twenty years the basin's been summer range for the mesa outfits."

"Meanin' there ain't room for us?" Reibel queried.

"Meanin' Yace Bonnyman and Workman and a few others will swarm over you like a pack o' dogs on three crippled rabbits. You're playin' against a pat hand, gents. My advice is to forget the basin."

Reibel's glance narrowed. "These range hogs hire you, do they?"

"The county pays me." Lyans's face darkened under the insult.

"Then it's up to you to enforce the law," Reibel said easily. "Which means you arrest anyone that takes a notion to run us out. Correct?"

Lyons was on the spot and knew it. He didn't like the looks of two of these three; the third appeared to be a harmless enough cowpuncher. He was trying to find the patience to explain exactly how he stood in the matter when someone hailed him from out on the street.

Looking that way, Lyans saw Fred Vanover reining a sweat-lathered horse in toward him. Because he couldn't think of anything to say to the three strangers, he purposely ignored them and stepped out under the tie rail as Vanover came up.

The look on the Middle Arizona man's face warned the deputy that something more serious than the trouble he had just postponed was in store for him. Vanover looked tired and worn as he stared bleakly down at the deputy and said: "Lyans, something's happened to Jean. She's been kidnapped."

Before the deputy could say anything due to his surprise, Vanover was going on: "She left a note last night, saying she was going across to Merrill's, that the old man was worse, and the doctor had sent for her. I got home late and didn't think much about it. This morning I went across to Brush and found she hadn't been there, and hadn't been sent for. The rain last night washed out all the sign there was in the yard. I don't have a thing to go on."

"Come up to the office, Fred," Lyans said wearily. "Either the devil's got a hand in this or I've been on a straight diet o' locoweed."

Clark Dunne knew something was wrong several minutes after he got to town and stopped at the jail, where he saw Bill Lyans. That something was that there was no word of Joe's body having been discovered.

Two hours ago Clark had followed the Troublesome into the upper end of the basin and seen that Joe no longer lay where he had last night. About an hour before that a Brush rider had brought him and Bill Murdock the news of Jean Vanover's disappearance, along with orders from Lyans that one man was to stay on duty above Klingmeier's station in the pa.s.s, while the other came down to Lodgepole to join the hunt for the girl. On the ride down here, Clark had swung over to Diamond, Middle Arizona's layout, and had had the luck to talk briefly with Neal Harper.

Now, a little after five in the afternoon, as Clark relaxed in a barber chair and let Sid Ordway begin work on his three-day beard, he had time to think things out-or thought he did. The net result of his thinking was only a heightening of his uneasiness.

Joe's body had been moved-that much Clark had seen with his own eyes. Yet no word of this had reached Lyans. Someone, for some obscure reason, was hiding the fact that Joe was already dead.

The more he thought about it, the more puzzled Clark became. Added to this puzzlement was irritation at Sid Ordway's insistent talk. Ordinarily the barber was a quiet man. But too much had happened today for Ordway to maintain his usual reserve, and he told about being on the street when Fred Vanover rode in to talk to Lyans. He became eloquent. "There was Bill, madder'n a pup with a new-docked tail, talkin' to these three strangers that say they're movin' into the basin. Then along comes Vanover with fresh trouble. You should've seen Bill. Fit to be . . ."

"What about the strangers?" Clark interrupted.

"Ain't you heard?" asked the barber. "There's three of 'em. Goin' to homestead along the Troublesome in the basin."

"You don't say!" Clark suppressed a smile with an effort.

He had momentarily forgotten his plan for Mike Saygar and his men, forgotten the arrangements he had made with the outlaw while talking with him at Hoelseker's cabin yesterday, before Chuck Reibel brought him into the cabin with a rifle at his back. He should have known. Saygar and his men had come down to the basin early this morning. Of course. They were the ones who had found Joe's body. Because of what was to happen tonight, Saygar would naturally want to keep the posse at work, keep as many men as possible away from the thinned roundup crews working the country in back of the mesa.

As Ordway finished shaving him, Clark became quite genial. If the barber noticed the difference in his manner, he gave no sign of it. It was with an effort that Clark kept from laughing outright when Ordway told him of the sensation created in Lodgepole by the appearance of Reibel, Whitey, and Pecos.

"There'll be h.e.l.l to pay if they fence in that water," the barber predicted.

Out on the street a few minutes later, Clark wondered how to take advantage of this newest development of Saygar's hiding the fact that Joe was already dead. It would be hard for him to get up to the basin and see either Saygar or his men, for Lyans was gathering everyone available in the search for Vanover's daughter. This afternoon close to fifty men had set out for the high country in what Lyans himself admitted was a pretty feeble effort.

"Trouble is," Lyans had said, "we don't have anything to go on except that note she left her father. Who do you reckon the man could have been that came after her, Clark?"

Clark hadn't been able to make even a guess. Engrossed as he was with his one problem, he hadn't given the circ.u.mstance of Jean Vanover's disappearance much consideration. Now he did, seeing in it that same mysterious quality he had first a.s.sociated with the disappearance of Joe's body.

He was sauntering up the walk toward the hotel, having decided to use this extra hour before he was due at the jail over a leisurely supper. His stride broke and he halted abruptly. For a full minute he stood at the edge of the walk, deep in thought. From a hard concentration, his face eased into a smile. Presently, when he went on to the hotel, he was whistling softly.

Before he went in to the four-table dining room to eat, he climbed the stairs to his room. There he tore the back from an envelope and, sitting at the washstand, spent several minutes laboriously printing out a message on the segment of raggedly torn paper. Finished with that, he blew out the lamp and went to the window; he touched a match to the remainder of the torn envelope. When the match burned down to his fingers, he dropped it out into the alley.

He spent some forty minutes over a steak supper, topping it off with a piece of pie and three cups of black coffee. During this interval, several men came up and spoke to him. Most of them were men joining the posse tonight. One, Sam Thrall, wore a bandage on his head.

As Thrall approached the table, his face was set in a heavy scowl. Clark, seeing that scowl and knowing the reason for it-the Brush crewman this afternoon had told him about Joe's theft of Thrall's horse-schooled his expression to one of concern.

"Tough luck about your horse, Sam," he told the Emporium owner.

"To the devil with the horse," Thrall said. His hand went to his bandaged head. "This's what Bonnyman's goin' to answer for."

"Hurt, does it?"

"Plenty. I've already spoken for a seat in the jury box when they try that jasper."

"Think they'll bring him in?" asked Clark.

"They will," Thrall said flatly. "Even with you and Blaze tryin' to hide him."

Clark looked at the store owner levelly a moment. "What makes you think Blaze and I are hiding him?"

"You're his friends, ain't you? And wasn't Blaze in here this afternoon lookin' for you?"

"Was he?"

"He was." Thrall shook a finger at Clark. "Watch your step, Dunne." He glared at Clark and, turning, went out of the dining room.

Clark lingered over his last cup of coffee, considering the inference to Thrall's remarks. He decided finally that nothing in what the man had said could influence the thing he had set out to do. He was sorry he hadn't been able to see Blaze this afternoon. The redhead might have had something important to tell him. What that could be, beyond the fact that Blaze had possibly been up to Hoelseker's cabin this morning and found it deserted, Clark didn't know.

Paying for his meal, Clark left the hotel, crossing the street to the Emporium. He went to the back end of the store, stopping at the counter alongside the wire cage with the window placarded Post Office. Behind the counter a clerk in thick-lensed spectacles sat on a stool.

"'Evenin', Brad," Clark said. "Any mail for me?"

"Ought to be. You ain't been in for a couple days." The clerk stared near-sightedly at Clark, left his stool, and stepped behind the wicket, turning his back as he reached into the rack of pigeonholed compartments making up the far side of the cage. A similar rack occupied the side of the cage nearest Clark.

Glancing quickly behind him and up toward the store's front, Clark made sure that no one was watching him. While the clerk's back was still turned, he took the torn piece of envelope from his pocket, reached around the end of the cage, and thrust it in the pigeonhole numbered 4. That compartment, he knew, was for Acme's mail.

By the time the near-sighted clerk faced around, Clark was leaning idly on the counter, well out of reach of the cage.

"You made a good haul tonight," Brad said, handing a thick packet of letters across.

Clark thanked him and left the store.

A good half hour later, Sam Thrall burst in through the door of Lyans's jail office. He was out of breath and red in the face. Half a dozen men, Clark among them, were there with the deputy. Thrall tried to speak, couldn't get his breath, and instead tossed a sc.r.a.p of paper onto the desk before Lyans.

"What's ailin' you, Sam?" the lawman asked, picking up the paper.

"Read it!" Thrall managed to gasp.

Lyans looked at the paper and straightened suddenly in his chair, his face losing color. He glanced quickly up at the store owner, asking tonelessly: "Where'd you find this?"

"Acme's mailbox."

"Who found it?"

"Brad." Thrall wiped his perspiring face. "Vanover got his mail right after the train come in at noon. So the box should've been empty. Brad always takes a pretty careful look at things before he closes up the cage. He found this just now as he was lockin' up for the night."

"What is it, Bill?" one of the others asked.

Lyans handed the sc.r.a.p of paper to the speaker, not saying anything.

They all gathered about the man. Clark, looking over his shoulder, read his own crudely penciled message: Vanover: Have Lyans call off his dogs, or you don't get the girl back.

Bonnyman For the interval it would have taken a man to draw in a slow breath and as slowly exhale, no one spoke. Then Clark gave a toneless laugh.

"What's so funny?" Lyans growled.

"Nothing. Only Joe Bonnyman didn't write that."

"Yeah? How come you're so sure?"

Clark hesitated, as though lost for an explanation. At length he said lamely: "It just isn't like Joe. He'd never lay a finger on a woman. He . . ."

"He clubbed Merrill to death!" Sam Thrall cut in. "He meant to do the same to me! Why the h.e.l.l wouldn't he do this?"

The man to whom Lyans had given the note looked at Clark, and there was open hostility in his eyes. "Sam's right, Dunne. Joe and me used to get on pretty well, and up to now I ain't been sure about him. Right now I am. If it ever comes to hangin', I'll take the job of springin' the trap out from under him!"

An angry murmur of agreement came from the others. Then, seeing Clark properly silenced, their attention came back to Lyans.

The deputy knew it was being left to him to make a decision. From the deadly serious expression on his face, it was obvious that he was weighing all the possibilities. Finally he stood up, reaching around to take his sh.e.l.l belt and holstered gun from the back of the chair. As he cinched the weapon to his waist, he said: "We'll go see Vanover. But we'll do it on the quiet, just in case Bonnyman's here in town watchin' us. Split up when you go out and let on like you're goin' home. Half an hour from now meet a mile out the trail." His glance rested briefly on Clark. "You needn't come along, Clark."

Rustlers Work at Night.

That late afternoon saw Charley Staples's main Singletree s.h.i.+pping herd, along with 150 head of Anchor steers, bunched far and near the mesa's edge in the triangle formed by the confluence of the Troublesome and the Porcupine. Sherman, the Anchor straw boss, took a look at the swollen waters of the two creeks, at the white water, racing into the mouth of Rainbow Gorge close ahead, and opined: "I'll let the seat o' my pants take root right here before I try a-crossin' through that water, Charley."

An hour ago Staples had come up with the herd to see what luck his crew was having. He had already made his decision, which coincided with the Anchor man's. But, because he was an owner, he pretended to give the matter more careful deliberation, especially in view of the fact that tomorrow a thirty-car freight was due on the siding ten miles west of Lodgepole to take his first beef s.h.i.+pment.

He glanced off south to the head of the gorge. Rainbow was little better than a mile long, but even with the Troublesome at its lowest, the waters foamed along the steeply dropping and rocky bed of the gorge with a swiftness neither man nor animal could stand against. From a certain angle at the foot of the rim, where the deep notch emptied out onto the flats 400 feet below, a man could most always see a rainbow thrown up by the water spray along about sunset.

Noticing where Staples was looking, Sherman said: "Wonder what that'd do to a critter that got swept into it?"

"Ground beef and bone meal," was Staples's spa.r.s.e but eloquent answer. He turned in the saddle and looked out across the mesa, along the line of the Troublesome.

Again the Anchor man read his mind. "There ain't even footin' for a horse, Charley. I know. I tried it and didn't think I'd get out alive. Horse is still bloated with all the water he swallowed."

Staples nodded, reining around and speaking to his men as he went away: "You boys are due for some sleep. There's plenty of gra.s.s and water here, and these critters won't drift overnight. If I was you, I'd get back to the layout."

Which advice his men and Sherman acted upon at once. By nightfall, Singletree's cook was back in his shack at headquarters and serving up a meal for nine men.

From a high point in the timber above the mesa, Mike Saygar observed all this across a distance of some three miles. He saw the dark smear of the herd drift into the wedge of land between the two creeks, saw it pause there, and then, along about dusk, spread out and away from the creeks. Before the light completely failed him, he spotted a chuck wagon going in along the trail leading to Staples's spread, two miles to the east. and nestling close in to the hills, out of sight.

An hour later, Saygar drifted in on the fire before the lean-to close to a pine-topped knoll along the Troublesome at almost the exact center of Aspen Basin. He could see no one around the fire, so, as he approached, he called: "All right, you rannies! It's me." Whitey and Pecos, and, finally, Chuck Reibel drifted in out of the shadows. Pecos hunkered down by the fire and pulled a Dutch oven out of the coals with a forked stick, putting a half-gallon coffee pot in its place.

"Come and get it," he drawled, tilting the lid from the oven.

Mike Saygar liked to eat. Tonight, as usual, he relished the meal Pecos had prepared, an onion-and-tomato-flavored beef stew. Along with this there was pan bread and coffee. As he wolfed down his heaping plateful of the stew, the rustler chief listened idly to the talk of his men that was concerned chiefly with the minor sensation they had created in town this morning in taking out their homestead papers.

Saygar rarely spoke when he ate. But once, when Whitey turned to him and queried-"What's all this addin' up to, boss?"-he took pains to answer carefully: "A nice stake for us, if we work it right. What we're doin' tonight ought to split the ranchers and the cattle company again. Each outfit'll think we're workin' for the other. If they don't start usin' their guns after this, we'll give 'em even a better reason for it."

Whitey's look was still skeptical. Presently he drawled: "The thing that's itchin' me is Dunne. What's he gettin' out of it?"

"Don't be nosy, feller," Saygar said quietly.

Whitey's look turned sullen, but he was through with his questions. After that they ate in silence.

When Pecos returned from the creek after sand-was.h.i.+ng their tin cups and plates, Saygar said without preliminary: "Let's go."