Well, when I rode out of there I didn’t waste any time. I headed south and moved right along, and when night fell I camped in Bearhide Canyon about a mile above the spring.
Truth of the matter was, they’d kept me so busy taking care of my hide that I’d had no chance to hunt around to find the man responsible for Ange’s death, but every time I tracked Lazy A cattle or riders, they seemed to come from a place over on Cherry Creek.
Could be I was wrong, but as I went along those tracks became many when I worked over in that direction. So, taking my time, I went on, working along the ridges under cover of the trees, easing myself in closer and closer, and all the while I saw more of the cattle wearing that brand.
There was the taste of anger in my mouth, the taste of a deep, abiding hate within me. I didn’t like the feeling, but it was there, and these were days when the land where I rode had no law beyond what each man could deliver with his own hand.
Somewhere ahead of me a man waited, a man shaken by a terrible fear, a fear that sweated him at night and knotted his belly. It was not so much fear of me, as fear of what I might say. Already some would be looking askance at him, but not so many would have seen his clawed face … what had he done about that?
As long as I lived I would be a threat to him, as long as I lived he would not know when I might not suddenly appear to destroy all that he was or might have been. The man who molests a woman in the West is despised by all, and is hung as fast as ever they can get a rope on him. That man knew it. And all the time he knew deep in his gnawing guts that I was coming for him.
As I rode, I kept thinking of the man who had turned to look at Ange as he rode past us, leaving Globe. That might be the man.
So I rode my horse through the pines, hearing only the soft hoof-falls on the needles that cushioned the trail. Like a shadow we moved along the high ridges with the clouds close above. I rode him through the chill of morning and the damp of gathered fog. I carried my Winchester across my saddle, and the lead in its bullets were meant to find a place in his flesh, in his heart, at the source of his life’s blood.
In the cool of a morning I came at last to Apache Ridge, and saw smoke rising from the valley beyond, so I rode down into Salt Lick Canyon and followed down the Tonto, and up through the breaks to Diamond Butte. Hunkered down on top of the butte, I studied what lay below, and within me my heart began to pound.
There were canvas-topped wagons there, and some tents, and a layout like an army camp, and there was a herd of horses watched by two riders.
Slow smoke was rising, and there was the distant clatter of pots, and the friendly movement and sounds of a cattle outfit on the move. Only this one had stopped, and with the fine grass they had found I did not wonder at it. This was a cattleman’s heaven, but the man who had brought that herd here had, in one brief moment, turned his life into a hell. Nobody had to tell me that this was a well-run outfit. A body could see it plain enough. The stock was in good shape, and so was all the gear I could lay eyes on. I studied that place, studied it and every move that was made down there.
There was a cook and his helper, there was a horse wrangler, and there was a man who sat with a rifle over his knees near the biggest of the three tents. He sat some distance away from a smaller tent, but facing it, and it was to that tent that I gave my attention. And all the time my mind was full of its dreadful thoughts.
Swandle and Allen . . . that was the name one of the men back there had said. These were the men who owned the Lazy A brand, and one of them anyway was the man I sought … the man who had killed my Ange, who had destroyed all that life meant to me.
We had come to this western country with hopes of our own place, a place where we could build, raise a family, and have the land of home we’d never had. She had never had a real home at all, and I’d not had one since I was a youngster, and it was little enough I’d seen of my folks. There were Sacketts scattered all over the country, but I’d seen none of them until I came down to Mora to see Ma and the boys. It had been a long spell … since before the war.
There was not one chance in a thousand that I would live beyond the death of the man I meant to kill. Not one chance that I could escape after the job was done, and at the moment I did not care.
Swandle and Allen … Swandle or Allen? I had to know which was the guilty man, and I had no idea how to find out, except that I had the feeling that when I found him I would know him.
I thought it was a wonder they had not posted a man up on this butte, for from here a body could watch the entire layout and see every move that was made. I hunkered down to wait, and I kept my rifle down so it would reflect no sunlight, nor was I wearing anything that would.
Of course, not many cowhands wore such truck on the range. Some of them had town outfits they wore to dances and the like. Most of them wore the best they could afford. I even had a broadcloth suit one time, myself.
The next thing they measured me for would probably be a wooden overcoat. But before they did that, I was going to get me a man.
Waiting up there on the butte, I got to thinking further on this thing that filled my mind. Up to now I’d been supposing whoever had done it had just happened on Ange there alone, but supposing it was that man we saw down in Globe, and he followed us?
Supposing, even, this wasn’t the first woman he’d left dead behind him?
chapter eleven
About mid-morning four riders rode in from the west and dismounted. They stripped their gear from their horses and, leaving them to the wrangler, strolled over to the chuck wagon. One of the four was a man I recognized from Montana, where he had been riding for a cow outfit.
Al Zabrisky was a gunman, a warrior with a gun for hire. He was the sort of man a cow outfit hired when trouble was expected from jayhawkers, homesteaders, or herd-cutters, and he was good at his job.
He was tall, slightly stooped, and sour-looking. Sober, he was a shrewd and calculating enemy, but when drinking he was apt to go completely berserk. At such times he was mean, and a trouble-hunter. The other men were all strangers to me, but they were of much the same sort, the way I figured.
After a bit the wrangler returned with four fresh horses, all saddled up and ready for riding.
Just then the flap of the guarded tent was thrown back and that square-jawed man whom I’d talked to in O’Leary’s saloon in Globe came out. He ignored Zabrisky and the others, but crossed over to where the man sat with the rifle across his knees. The guard stood up and they talked together.
All of a sudden, I began to feel uneasy. The two men looked all around, the guard pointed toward the far-off rim, but never once did they look toward Diamond Butte … and in another instant, I was moving.
When the notion took me I was squatting on my heels. I did not straighten up, but just turned on the balls of my feet and scooted into the brush behind me. Once hidden, I hesitated, taking time to listen, but there was no sound. Skirting the top of the butte, I came to the trail I’d made coming up. There I crouched among the rocks and waited.
It just didn’t stand to reason that two men could look all around and ignore the biggest thing there was nearby. They had been discussing terrain, and if they ignored that butte it was because they had a reason for it. The only reason that came to mind was that they knew I was up there and they were fixing to surround me.