She stepped back quickly, and he went out into the cabin, gun in hand. She was alone, or seemed to be, and she was frightened.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know … something. Ben Janish retained last night, angry and swearing. Something had gone wrong and he was furious, so I got up and dressed in the dark.”
“Did he come to the house?”
“I don’t know. I thought he would, and so did Hen. Hen came and tapped at my window, and told me I had to get away. He had your horse and he told me to let the horse take me, that the horse would go where you had gorie.”
“What about Arch Billing?”
“I don’t know. I did as Hen told me. I was afraid Arch would try to defend me, and they would kill him. There were others there who came back with Janish. I think there were several, and one of them was a girl.”
“Peg Cullane?”
“What has she to do with all this? What is happening?” ‘
He went to the window and looked toward the trail. She would not have covered her tracks, she could not have, and how long would it take to find them? He went to the shelf and filled his pockets with .44’s, then went back to the window and kept his eyes on the trail.
“They are money-hungry,” he told Fan, “all of them. Peg Cullane most of all.”
“But what is there? Pa left nothing except the ranch.”
“There is more, and they know it. Peg Cullane learned – I don’t know how – that your pa had some money hidden. Janish knows, too. I don’t know if the rest of them do or not.”
“What about you?”
“Tom Davidge trusted me. I don’t know why.”
“And you know where the money is?”
“I’ve told you. I remember almost nothing, but nobody would believe that I don’t remember. I am beginning to remember some things, and maybe I will recall more.”
Her eyes searched his. “I don’t care about the money,” she said finally, “but I do love the ranch. I want that.”
“You’ll have it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“It is my business, or so I have been told. I shall have to play by instinct, and I hope it works.”
Silent then, they watched the trail. There was little they could do. He felt closed in, trapped, and he did not like the feeling. The money might be here, but he did not like waiting inside.
He cared nothing for the money, either. He was a man lost, and he wished to find himself. That he was Jonas Mandrin seemed certain, but who was Jonas Mandrin? With his loss of identity he had lost the troubles of that identity, and also the hatred of crime that had led him to kill.
The amnesia might be an attempt of his mind to escape all that, and he saw little reason to go back now and try to recover the past, but he did wish to know what he was. What he needed now was a chance to begin again.
As they waited he told her a little of what he had learned about Jonas Mandrin, and how he believed he had become Ruble Noon.
Bitter with anger over the murder of his wife, he had drifted. When attacked he had struck back hard, and when the rancher had recruited him to make war against rustlers he had accepted at once, for they represented the evil that had robbed him of his wife and his happiness.
Suddenly he felt angry with himself. “I am a fool to wait here, to be pinned down,” he said. He took a rifle and a shotgun from the rack and loaded them. “You keep these,” he told her. “If they start to break in, go through the closet the way I did. They’ll find it, but it will take time. Save the shotgun for then.”
He pulled off his boots and put on a pair of moccasins from the closet; then, taking his rifle, he turned to go out.
She stopped him. “Jonas – or whatever your name is – be careful.”
He put his hand on her arm. “Fan . . . you know about me. Don’t have any illusions.”
“My father fought rustlers, outlaws, and bad Indians when he came west,” she said. “If only the evil men are willing to use force, what will happen to the good men? Some of these bad men understand nothing but violence. It seems to me that there is a time to use a gun, and there is a time to put it down.”
“You think I could put the guns away?”
“Why not? You were a newspaperman, then a businessman. You can put down your gun and take up your pen. It is as simple as that.”
He went down the trail with the long striding walk of a woodsman, but when he was among the trees he waited and listened. Mountain air is clear, and sound carries. Now he was at the top of a steep bluff up which they must come, but at first he heard nothing.
He could glimpse the ranch, but he saw no movement there, nor were there any horses in the corral. That meant that all of the riders were out.
He moved among the trees, ears tuned for the tiniest sound. He was feeling better now. His headache was gone, his senses were alert. He liked the clear, cold air, and he felt keenly the excitement of the hunt. For he was both the hunter and the hunted.
He skirted a clump of aspen, moved through its outer edge, heard a hoof strike stone, and held himself still. The sound came from somewhere down the mountain.
Near the trail he squatted on his heels and studied the ground over which he must travel, looking to left and right where he might retreat. The rock on the far side of the valley stood up like a great stone loaf, with only one long diagonal crack seaming the surface. They were coming.
He arose soundlessly and moved ghostlike among the trees, where there were occasional boulders and rock slabs. Close to the trail, he listened for the creak of a saddle, the grunt of a climbing horse, the rattle of gear.
Only the aspen leaves whispered in the wind until … something else.
He turned swiftly, drawing as he turned. It was Dave Cherry, and he had come up, Indianlike, through the trees. He was smiling as he aimed his rifle.
The gun bucked in Ruble Noon’s fist, and he saw Dave Cherry’s face stiffen with shock. Ruble Noon fired again, and saw the gunman’s shirt marked where the bullet struck.
Cherry backed up a step and sat down hard, a look of stunned surprise on his face, and then his rifle went off, the bullet digging dirt at his feet.
The echoes richocheted among the rocks, died away, and left only silence.
In the silence Ruble Noon thumbed two cartridges into his gun.
Chapter Thirteen
He waited for a slow count of twenty, listening. Then he moved, swiftly and silently, shifting position along the mountainside, choosing a place of concealment where there seemed to be none.
There was no sound. The sudden burst of gun shots had silenced the forest. Even the aspen leaves seemed to cease then- trembling. Sunlight falling through the leaves dappled the earth.
He felt good. He was ready. He could feel it in his muscles and in his even, easy breathing. He liked the feel of the rifle, and he knew he was facing the fight of his life.
How many men were there? Ben Janish, of course, and probably half a dozen others. Dave Cherry had been one of their best, and he was out of it now, but they did not know that yet, though they might guess. He had seen many good fights among top-notch marksmen where nobody scored any hits, for a marksman was often adept at choosing cover, at moving. Even to a skilled rifleman, light, shadow, and movement can be deceptive.
He took his tune, waiting, thinking it out. Cherry must have left the trail and come along the mountain on foot to try to outflank him. The others were no doubt still on the trail, and there were not many places they could leave it except on foot.
He studied the slope, his eye out for places for cover, with alternates in the event he was fired upon.
Ben Janish was in no hurry. He had heard the shots up on the slope, and he waited a few minutes, standing beside his horse. Then he walked off the trail and squatted on his heels behind a tilted rock slab, close to Kissling. “Dave’s bought it,” he said. “Ruble Noon’s killed him.”
Kissling looked up. “What makes you so sure?”
“Dave would have yelled if he could. He’d have called us up there.”