Wild Heart (A Laramie AU)

by Sevenstars

When a Texas cow outfit tries to push its way into the Laramie Basin, the homesteaders and small ranchers must look for leadership to Matt Sherman, his grown son Slim, and a wandering Texas gunfighter named Jess Harper who's been taken in by their family.

Wild Heart

A Laramie AU

by Sevenstars

SUMMARY: In a slightly alternative reality, Jess Harper rides into the middle of an attempted land grab.

The original concept of Laramie, to which some fanwriters have referred (although it was never canonically mentioned), had it that Matt Sherman was killed by land-grabbers; not till late 4th Season was this changed to a wartime death involving Confederate raiders. But I wondered: what if Matt and Mary hadn't died when they did? What would they have thought of Jess, or he of them? How might his relationship with Slim have looked, if Slim hadn't been forced into the head-of-the-household role at 22? What about Andy, whose restlessness and discontent (at least part of which was probably a reaction to Slim's rather overbearing style of foster-parenting) were so emphasized in the first episode? And what if there had been a land grab? Hence this tale. Thanks as always to that peerless beta-reader of jumbo-sized fics, my best pard Gloria.

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...Lost in the night all alone,
With nowhere to hide, crying inside
A wild heart looking for home.
—"A Wild Heart Looking for a Home,"
by John Denver & Joe Henry

He had first crossed the trail back in Nebraska, and it had caught his eye immediately. It was clearly a trail herd, but by the amount of chips it had to be the biggest one he'd ever heard of. Most bosses reckoned 2500 to 3000 head to be about the maximum number that could be safely handled: when cows reached a river, they spread out up and down it in a single line, drinking, and 3000 head took up more than a mile of bankside; it was all eight or ten cowboys (about the minimum crew for that many) could do to bunch them together after their drink and get them started across. Since that was also about as many as the chuck wagon could carry thirty days' grub for, 3000 head worked out as the best top size for a herd—and close to the bottom too, since beef in small herds got more excited and were harder to handle. He'd seen bunches as small as 550 to 700, some as big as 4000, and one or two that had hit 6000, but this one, he reckoned, had to be at least twice that, maybe more.

Having nothing better to do, no place he had to be in any particular hurry—Bannister wasn't going anywhere, unless he managed a prison break, and he'd need some time to get used to the routines of the place before he could do that—he'd quartered around some, finding and studying the tracks of the remuda and the accompanying wagons, then idling along the track for a day or two. Chuck wagon, bed wagon, even calf wagon he wouldn't have been surprised to find, and find them he did, but he soon figured out that there were others, big two-and-a-half-ton emigrant-type rigs, a couple of buckboards, even what looked like a buggy. He ruminated on it, and on the size of the herd, and eventually concluded that somebody must be moving his entire outfit—family and household goods, breeding stock, everything. And from the bits of throwaway he found at some of the campsites, it was a Texas outfit. Likely had come up through Abilene or Ellsworth (not Dodge; that was where he'd started out from, and folks would have talked of such a big herd passing through), then kept on north, skirted the Smoky Hills, picked up the Solomon and then laddered its way up across Prairie Dog and Sappa and Beaver Creeks, over the Republican River, then maybe up Red Willow Creek till it could make an easy day's dry drive to the Platte, which was where he'd cut its sign, rolling along south of the river so's not to get tangled up with the emigrant trains.

By the age of the droppings, he was pretty fair sure it had come through here last season; no way it could have trekked all the way up from Texas this early in the year. He wondered where it had been bound for. Maybe someplace around Fort Collins; there was vacant range at the foot of the mountains, or so he'd heard tell, and timber in them for buildings and fences, and the Army always needed beef, and it wouldn't be even seventy-five miles' drive to Denver and the camps scattered round about it, less to Cheyenne and the railroad east. A rancher could do worse, he reflected. Still, it seemed like a long ways to come. From his service in the U.S. Volunteers he knew that eastern New Mexico—what had once been called "Santa Fe County" when Texas claimed it, back before the Annexation—was good cow country too, not unlike west Texas in character, and a lot shorter drive than this one would have been; in fact there'd been Texans moving into it in numbers ever since '66, four years now.

Somebody sure had called it right, though, he told himself. Things were bad in Texas—he'd picked up enough talk to know, though he'd stayed clear of the place himself these last couple of years, ever since giving up on finding the fellow who'd cut him down when that mob in Laredo came near to lynching him. The state had been readmitted to the Union in March, but that probably hadn't improved its situation. It had been last summer that news had come out from Washington and Austin that a man named Edmund J. Davis, a Texan veteran of the Union Army (and therefore, to most Texans, a traitor), was running for Governor on the Republican ticket and was committed to a policy of forcing former Confederates to knuckle under. President Grant had issued a proclamation postponing the election to November 30 (nearly a month from the usual time) so Davis could have more time to organize. At once a systematic removal of all Texas public officials not on Davis's side had begun, and Governor Pease, who'd been installed by General Sheridan in '67, resigned because he was tired of the mess in the capitol. Great confusion had followed, with each politician ready to shoot every other one, and soon there was no civil government in the state at all; of necessity the military had taken over, with General J. J. Reynolds becoming absolute dictator. He'd ordered revision of the registration lists of voters, named new registrars, and had registration points (and later polling places) guarded by troops, most of whom were black. Ex-Confederates, naturally, figured they wouldn't be allowed to express their will, and stayed away in droves, so Davis won handily. What he'd done since then Jess Harper hadn't heard, having been out on the prairie ever since the weather got decent enough to travel and the grass high enough to feed a horse, but the young gunfighter sincerely doubted it was anything good.

And, Lord knew, the situation as he'd last heard of it had been nothing to write home about (assuming you had a home, which Jess didn't). In East Texas, some of the ranches had had their buildings burned by Yankee troops, and the Reconstruction deputy sheriffs weren't much better, being sometimes prone to torch the houses of Texans they suspected of breaking the carpetbagger laws. Men forged false title claims to force veterans of the War for Independence from the land bounties they'd been given; riding by night, they burned down people's cabins and improvements, destroyed some courthouse records, and killed a few Texans who resisted or tried to, even stripped and beat some women. Confusion and insurrection reigned, and the Ku Klux Klan rode; if a member was caught, or even if the white robe and hood were found in his home, he was certain to be hanged, yet honest, sincere men took that risk when some unendurable outrage occurred. Every judge had to answer to the wishes of the military commanders, and juries could be hand-picked with virtual instructions in advance. All of which was a good part of why Jess had spent his time elsewhere; who knew what a damnyankee would make of the Western fighting code by which he lived and worked? (Although in fact, to be fair, the occupationists, like the law in the trail towns, didn't seem to be too upset when Texan killed Texan; they were more focused on making sure nobody molested them, or the tax collectors. It was why they'd taken no part in the war he'd helped King Bartlett fight, three years ago; they probably figured the more of each other the Rebels killed off, the better for them.) And to make matters worse, the Indians, who'd made free all through the war, were still doing it, and the occupation government offered Texans no protection against them, or against the outlaws who were nearly as bad, if not so numerous, since they didn't congregate in tribes and breed their own replacements. There were plenty of Yankee soldiers in Texas, but they weren't there to fight Indians; they'd come as conquerors to enforce bluebelly law on a defeated people. Besides, they were garrisoned in central, populous areas where Indians hadn't come in years. Isolated in their fight for survival, the border communities asked for Rangers—organized companies of veteran Indian fighters who could carry the war to the redskins—but their appeals went unheeded: Confederate veterans mustn't even vote, let alone be armed for fighting.

All in all, Jess decided, he couldn't blame his people for getting out if they had the chance. He didn't hold any bitterness over the war himself, in part because he had no vested interests in his home state—no land, not even any family, apart from his sister Francie, who was married now, starting a life of her own—and in part because he'd been drafted rather than enlisting; growing up as he had on an isolated Panhandle ranch, the causes of discontent had seemed remote and irrelevant to him, and in any case by the time the fighting actually broke out he'd had... another obligation. The way he saw it, the Confederacy had done its best and had nothing to be ashamed of; it had lost, but that happened in wars. It was time to move on... if the carpetbaggers would let you.

Fine one you are to talk about movin' on, Harper, he told himself with a mental snort. Here you are ridin' all the way up to Rawlins just to take a look at the Wyoming Territorial Prison, when you know good and dadgum well they ain't fixin' to let you into it to have a crack at Bannister, even if you do got a prior claim to him.

/Ain't the same thing,/ he argued back. /Them Reconstructionists ain't done me no hurt—they tried, that time down by Soho, and they come close, but close don't count 'cept in horseshoes. All that hurt was done ten years back, and I swore to settle the score for it. All I'm wantin' is to get a look at the ground. One of these days they'll let Bannister out, or maybe he'll break out on his own. Comes that time, I want to know how I can use the country. He ain't gettin' away from me this time./

If you're fixin' to stay close enough to do any good once you hear of him doin' either, his mind pointed out, might be you best be thinkin' of lookin' for a job up this way.

/Oh, right,/ he retorted. /Kansas this last winter was bad enough, what'd it be like this much farther north? Ain't ever passed a winter above the Platte and ain't honin' to./

Better think about it, just the same. Plus which, this ain't above the Platte, 'least not the north one, so it don't count.

That exchange had taken place a good three days and a half ago, just before he left the South Platte and pointed straight west. He still hadn't decided about the issue. He'd worked his way into the higher country that straddled the border between the Colorado and Wyoming Territories, following a creek as it swung around the end of the Laramie Range, then picking up a second that led more or less north, and finally coming across what he thought must be the stage road out of Denver. Off to his left, in the distance, he could make out the northernmost section of the Medicine Bow Range, which he'd heard tell were the highest peaks in southern Wyoming. He'd have to swing around the north end of them, and then west; most likely this road would take him there, so he might just as well keep on following it. Another couple of days and he'd make Rawlins. There was a town between here and there, Laramie, but he wasn't exactly sure how far it might be. When he came on it, maybe he'd stop, replenish his supplies, maybe get a restaurant meal or two. Money wasn't a problem; he had over $230 in the buckskin money belt under his clothes—no thanks to Pete Morgan, that was. Jess's lips twisted as he thought of the man who had pretended to be his friend. After he'd extricated himself from Laurel DeWalt's clutches, up by Casper, and persuaded Pete to ride along with him, they'd drifted back down to Dodge, through which they'd come a few months earlier with a trail herd of stocker cattle, part of which had been consigned to the Diamond D (that being how they'd come to be working there), and there they'd hired on to help winter-over some Texas beef whose boss had heard the railroad was coming through in the summer. Not three weeks ago, Jess had ridden into town one night, gotten into a poker game, and come away a hundred dollars to the good—not a notable figure for a man who'd been taught cardwork by Dixie Howard, but some three-quarters better than he'd started out with. What he hadn't known till it was almost too late was that Morgan had followed him in and was lying in wait in the alley when he left to get his horse. If he hadn't heard the telltale squeak of the holster as the man grabbed his gun-butt to draw... The gun barrel had swished past his head as he turned, barely missing his ear, and he'd been pulling his own Colt as he moved, not even knowing who was there. At that range, one bullet was all it had taken. He'd been shocked near speechless when somebody fetched a lamp from the bar and he saw who it was. Looking back on it, he reckoned Pete must have been figuring on cracking him one over the head and making off with his bankroll and his winnings. Good thing the man had had his gun in his hand and been shot in the front; even Marshal Stryker's deputy, Matt Dillon, who had a reputation as having a pretty narrow view of the law, hadn't been able to maintain that it could possibly be other than a fair fight, especially when he heard about Jess's lucky evening at cards.

Oughtta quit takin' on trail-partners, Harper, he told himself sourly. It just don't ever seem to work out. Always somethin' happens.

You don't need nobody. You ain't since Dixie got done with you. You've killed four of them Bannisters, ain't you? Took you a spell, but you done it, and all by your lonesome too. Didn't need nobody to back you up them times.

Still, he could never forget that he'd been born one of nine, and growing up as he had on the isolation of a Panhandle ranch, he'd learned perhaps more keenly than many youngsters might the importance of having people around that you could count on. He reckoned he was still looking for that. Probably always would.

If only Johnny hadn't died of the cholera, back in '63, there'd at least be two of them on this trail.

Jess grunted to himself. Might just as well say, if only the Bannisters hadn't come. If they hadn't, there'd been three Harper brothers—Billy would be near eighteen now; maybe four, though Davy would only have been fifteen. On the other hand, he'd been fifteen, if barely, and already a veteran cowhand, that day his world fell apart...

He shook his head sharply and snorted, like a horse trying to drive away the flies. No point thinkin' on it. It was done and over and no amount of regret or wishin' could change it. He was Jess Harper, gun for hire, and it appeared that ridin' alone was the way his life was meant to take.

Still, he wished Morgan hadn't made him do that. Killin' never came easy to him, as it did to some who earned their bread by the gun, but killin' a trail-partner—even one who'd shown that he had no notion of loyalty—that came harder than the generality. Seemed he couldn't stop thinkin' about it. It had added a new episode to his collection of regular nightmares. He sighed. How could a feller his age have so dadgum many of 'em?

He knew he'd acted on instinct and training, knew he'd really had no choice if he wanted to survive. Knew Dixie would have said so, and even Hal Owen. But he didn't like the way it made him feel.

His bay Traveller took the road with his usual eager spirit, head held high and ears up and working and taking in every sound, clipping along at a smooth, steady, ground-eating, clean-footed trot. Jess might not own very much, but Traveller he was proud of. He'd taken the horse in trade for some gun-work he'd done just before he cleared out of Texas the last time, and it had been a good deal for him. Trav was willing and easy-gaited, with a steady nature and no hint of shadow-jumper or switch-tail about him. He carried his head high, watching as he went, and he paid heed to both his surroundings and Jess's wishes. Jess reckoned they were covering a good nine miles to the hour, and Trav was naturally light-footed too, which made his trot—ordinarily a good gait for a horse, but a bad one for the rider—easy on both Jess and himself. He could get out and move when called on, and he was a stayer, not just a sprinter, and if Jess put a loop over anything that walked, he'd hold it, no matter what it was. He was alert, too, and loyal—he'd stood like a dog over Jess those four days on the prairie after shying at the rattler and throwing him, and Jess couldn't blame him for doing that: all horses, even the best of them, were scared green of snakes. If a man had to take the trail with no one to side him but his horse, then a horse like Trav, Jess reflected, was the kind to have.

There was weather on the way: last night the stars off to the east had been obscured by a low bank of clouds, and this morning towering thunderheads had lain massed high above that horizon and there was a heavy sultriness in the air that could mean nothing but a storm in the making. The place where he'd broken his left leg last year was telling him the same thing. The sun was barely a hand above the western horizon, and he was wondering whether he ought to try to find a sheltered spot to make camp in, or keep going and take the chance that he could make it to Laramie before the rain hit, when he sprang the ambush.

Like any man who rode the wild reaches, Jess knew to watch his horse, which was likely to see or smell trouble long before he could; horses, so one of his officers in the war had told him, had started out as plains herd animals, much like buffalo or antelope—that was probably why they throve in the West as they did; it was just the kind of environment their ancestors had lived in—and being subject to wolves and such had developed keen senses and an alertness to their surroundings in order to survive. All the same, the Indians very nearly caught him. They'd set themselves in ambush in a patch of hackberry scrub on the west flank of the road, where they couldn't be easily spotted, and while the wind was out of the west, as it commonly was, it was light and fitful, making their scent hard to catch. Still, Trav got it and snorted, and Jess looked around, and the Indians, seeing his head move, realized something was up, and broke cover perhaps a minute or two sooner than they'd planned on. They came at him at an angle, northwest to southeast, blocking his forward progress, and he spun away and hit Trav with his spurs and got out of there.

If he'd been asked what he'd been thinking, in those first desperate seconds, he'd have been hard put to answer. The fact was, he probably wasn't thinking at all, not in any logical, point-to-point way; he reacted by reflex, instinct, and years of training and experience, backed up by a hundred hearthside and campfire stories about Indian-fighting told by his pa, his Uncle Cam, and men he'd ridden with or for over the years. Looking back on it, long afterward, he saw that it was really the best thing he could have done, and not only on account of what it led him to. Most men might have passed by the scrub and taken off north up the road when the redskins sprang their trap, figuring that this would give them a good chance of meeting someone who could help them, or of passing by a farmstead or a ranchhouse or—most likely—a stage relay where they could take shelter. But the Indians would know this country, and might well have located themselves specifically because there was no such shelter near enough for most horses—white men's horses, that was, loaded with the forty-plus extra pounds of stock saddles and gear—to make before they were run down. They might even have some partners a ways farther up, into whose arms they meant to drive their quarry. Cutting off across the plain, on the other hand, took Jess away from that putative backup, and still gave him some prospect of cover where he could fort up. There were, he thought from the one fast look he got, seven braves—too many for one man to fight unless from a good defensive position. Till he found one, it was a race.

He set off with a jump, not needing to whip Trav with the rein-ends—Trav was a Texas horse and knew what war whoops meant. He figured maybe he could take a long subtle half-circle swing and come up on Laramie from the east or southeast; Indian war parties very seldom ventured into towns, least of all small and middle-sized parties like this one. Trav was used to rough country and the offhand style of cow-camp racing; when the road took a jog he'd cut through the rocks and mesquite and come out running where a hotblood from the East would pull up lame. He hadn't had any grain these last few days, so he wouldn't have the extra energy it gave, but he was a bit bigger than most Indian ponies, having some Kentucky blood as well as the usual mustang and quarter strain, and that gave him longer legs and a greater stride. He had the wind and toughness of his wild range forebears, yet he could summon early speed too, and right now that was what Jess needed; if he could get far enough ahead of his pursuers to give himself time to find a fort-up or circle back to the road, his chances would more than double.

He knew better than to waste lead popping at the redskins: shooting to the rear from a racing horse and hitting anything was close to impossible, most of all with a sixgun, even more if your hoped-for target was moving too. The Indians for their part were armed mostly with bows and arrows, and they were accustomed to using them from horseback to hunt buffalo, but Trav and Jess didn't make quite as big a target as a buffalo, and they weren't about to aim at Trav anyway—they knew a good horse when they saw one; a couple of the shafts whizzed by Jess's ears before he could gain some distance, but none of them hit. It wasn't good weather for a hard run, not sultry and thick like it was, but you couldn't pick the weather.

In a chase like this one, Jess knew, the biggest peril was twofold: one, the possibility of your horse hitting a dog-hole or other irregularity in the ground and falling with you; two, the possibility that your pursuers would have the sense to behave like wolves when they got after a buck or a bull elk. The buck or the elk could run faster than a wolf, and he'd get away if they all went at the same pace, but half the pack would hang back, loping easy, and half run on ahead, keeping up the pressure. By the time the game started to wear down, that half would be tiring too, but its partners would still be fresh enough to take the point while it dropped back. If it had been white outlaws he was dealing with, they might have done just that. But Indians liked to count coup; even if they killed you, being first to touch your body got them points as they reckoned it, so each of them wanted to be the one to do that, which meant they all had to keep up speed.

He fled, resisting the temptation to look back more than once every five minutes or so, keeping his attention fixed on the landscape before him, watching for cover—a gully, a clump of mesquite or thorny buffalo-berry or wild plum, a little barranca, a rainwater ditch, a rock half the size of his horse—he'd trained Trav to lie down; a good outcrop or clay cutbank that would stop a howitzer, or best of all a little butte with some chunks of rock broken off by frost and rain and scattered out around the base. All he needed was a spot where he could keep most of himself out of sight and bring his carbine level. Even if whatever it was left his back unprotected, the Indians would have to split up and circle to take advantage of it, and while the second group was working its way around he'd have some chance of reducing the numbers of the first...

He picked up a buffalo trail and swung northwest to follow it: buffalo, like the cows they were related to, were natural surveyors and always took the route that was easiest on a hoofed critter. It almost outdid him, all the same, for there was a ten-foot-wide gorge cutting across it, and only Trav's alertness saved them both from toppling into it; the bay plowed to a stop, snorting and slinging his head. Jess took one look, saw the situation, and in half a heartbeat knew the chance he had to take. He wheeled Trav in the bay's own length and slashed him with the reins, charging back toward the Indians, who were now about half a mile behind him. Never expecting this, they in turn jammed to a confused stop, each pony fouling the rest, and he whirled and took off again in his original direction. He'd never tried to leap Trav over such an obstacle, but he had no other options; if he swung to the side and tried to follow it, up or down, he might have to run for miles before he found a place where it was shallow enough, or its sides broken down enough, for a rider to cross. The wind had changed and was out of the east now, banners of dust blowing in; Jess noted the ominous blackness of the sky off that way, and knew, even though he didn't know this country, that two hours from now it would be raining buckets. If I can get far enough ahead of 'em, he thought, I can lose 'em in the storm; they won't be able to see in it no better than me, the rain'll wash out my sign, and Indians don't like gettin' wet no better'n nobody else does—less, likely, bein's they ain't got slickers...

He felt Trav's front end lift, felt the spring of the powerful hindquarters, and at almost the exact moment the horse reached the top of his arc, felt the blow halfway up his right arm; it slammed him forward in the saddle, almost disbalancing the horse in mid-air, but somehow Trav recovered himself and came down, hind hooves scrabbling for purchase an instant, then taking off again, his lungs going like a bellows. The Indians, who had regained their self-possession when they saw their quarry turn, raced in pursuit—but they were so hot to get him that they didn't pay attention to the ground, and the blowing dust and peculiar slant of late-afternoon light obscured their vision. Jess heard a horse shriek behind him and knew that at least one of them had gone over the edge.

And then he was away, clinging on for dear life with his head spinning and his weight heavy over Trav's neck...

**SR**

Andy Sherman checked his mahogany bay Chaps and squinted under his hatbrim at the sky ahead. Off southeast, a half-dozen broad-winged shapes wheeled and circled in the air with a patience known only to one breed of bird. Somethin' in trouble, he told himself. Not dead yet, but they think it might be soon.

He stood in his stirrups, looking all around, orienting himself by landmarks. Andy had been born, so he'd been told, in Illinois, but his family had settled here when he was less than a year old; he'd known no other home, and he'd been riding around their range in front of his father's and big brother's saddles since he was four, aboard his own Indian pony at eight. Only this year he'd graduated to a full-size horse—two, actually; one Pa had given him, one he'd picked for himself when it was only a colt—of his own. He'd fished and hunted, explored and helped work stock, all over the lower ranges, the 15,000-odd acres of Sherman Ranch that lay between the southwest ridges and the mountain spur, and he knew every foot of them. Those buzzards were down the far end of the lake, near where Home Creek ran out of it and the ranch boundary fence was, where his brother had put up the No Trespassing sign last year. Whatever they'd found might or might not be on Sherman land, but Andy figured he'd best make certain.

Springtime was the big season for bog-downs: the seasonal rains and runoff created ponds and mudholes in every depression, and trapped water under the sand in every creek. The cattle would get accustomed to drinking at pockets of standing water which eventually began to disappear; not wanting to give up the convenience, they'd wade into the gooey slop that was pond bottoms a month before, searching for drink and finding mostly mud. Or they'd get pushed into a waterhole by their fellows and not be able to get out. Or the footing that had been solid along the creeks and permanent holes would turn soft and boggy as the snows melted, and they'd get stuck when they went to drink, or venture onto boggy flats in search of the first green grass. Or they'd deliberately flee into the deep mud of the bogholes to wallow and protect themselves from bugs—especially heel flies, which attacked them in swarms, biting them about the ankles and laying their eggs under the skin—and get stuck, sometimes all the way to their withers. Or maybe they'd hit a sand patch, in which case (being, as Andy's brother often said, "just about a little bit dumber than rocks") they'd stop to find out why they were sinking, and down they'd go, struggling, to the level of their bellies, then stop because their bodies gave sufficient resistance to support their weight. Most would flounder around and finally hit solid ground and lunge out, but sometimes they sulled up and refused to move, and sometimes, too, if they were out of condition from short winter feed, they might not have the strength to get out on their own. And on occasion Andy had seen one that had gotten panicky and started thrashing around until it was stuck at two or three points along the length of its spine, though that was likeliest to happen when it saw a bog-rider coming: having already been fighting to get out, and only sunk deeper into the sucking mud, it would be on the prod and would fight some more, maybe get on its side and then throw its head till its horns went back in the stuff too. That kind of stuck critter was the hardest of all to get out. Andy sighed and shook his head. Slim was right: cattle were dumber than rocks. Horses seemed to know if you meant to help them, and stayed quiet as long as you talked easy to them. (They didn't bog, either, or at least he'd never seen one do it.) Cattle, well, no amount of talking got through to them. Maybe, when he was grown up and a partner in the spread, he'd try to turn them to raising horses instead. Pa had never wanted to be anything but a rancher, even when he was younger than Andy was now and didn't know that word (he'd learned it after he was grown up and went to Santa Fe as a trader), and what he'd wanted to ranch was cattle, because he'd started out driving them for the Army, back in the second big scrap with England. But horses were easier—they had "horse sense," after all—and if you had a good breed, they sold at higher prices too: fifty dollars for a Thoroughbred-Spanish gelding, $140 for a four-year-old with real cowhorse potential (not just a decent all-around circle or trail horse), $200 for a six-year-old that had proved itself. If you could get a contract with the Army, ready-broke remounts could bring in a steady sixty dollars each; sometimes it spiked, like a couple of years ago when it had hit ninety. The highest Andy had ever heard of cattle going for was forty a head, last spring in Kansas.

It had rained last night, one of those ferocious thunderstorms you got in this country any time from mid-April onward, depending on the temperature and the wind. The sound of crickets had shimmered in the evening air as Andy and his pa finished up the barn chores, and as they went in from washing up he'd seen the clouds swimming toward the early-risen moon on a warm wind, and heard a sort of shuddering in the air, far, far away, hardly a sound at all. But soon the wind picked up, carrying the storm with it, the trees churning under it along the creek bottom behind the ranchhouse, and a tongue of lightning split the sky, followed by the slam of thunder. Pa had gone out to get a few buckets of water for dishes and drink, and made it inside just as the rain started to fall. At the storm's height the thunder had barely stopped; sometimes it rolled and grumbled, sometimes it burst with a bang. Andy took some pride in the fact that he was old enough, at twelve, to know better than to be afraid of thunder. Lightning was, after all, much the more dangerous of the two: no thunder, however loud, had ever killed a man or set fire to a building or to the range grass. Like Pa always said, lightning did the work, but thunder took the credit.

"I hope Mort doesn't have Slim out on the perimeter in this weather," Ma had said.

"Not likely," Pa had replied. "Carlin and his boys won't care to get wet any more'n anyone else does, plus ridin' at a trot or a canter in mud, let alone at a gallop, is a good way to have your horse slip, or lose a shoe. No, they'll stay holed up till it clears, and Mort's worn a badge long enough to know that."

Andy had been allowed to stay up a little past his regular bedtime, since nobody could reasonably be expected to sleep with the commotion the storm was making. He and Pa had played some checkers while Ma worked at her mending and Jonesy scanned the latest Frank Leslie's, and then when the storm began to abate he'd been sent off to bed. By that time the thunder seemed to have spent itself; the rain, still pouring down, sounded peaceful and industrious, and it soon lulled him off to sleep. In the morning everything seemed fresh and new and the air smelled sweet and moist the way it always did after a good cleansing rain. But Pa knew cows and knew that a rain like that one would worsen all the bog spots on their low range, so he'd decided they should make a circuit of it and see if any of their stock had gotten caught in some place that had been crusted over the day before.

A steer could stick in a bog like a fly on gluepaper, and by the time you found him he might be half crazy with fear. And getting him out wasn't as simple as throwing on a rope and using your spurs. Men had pulled horns, legs, even heads off cattle they were trying to save—Andy had never seen this himself, but Slim had told him about it. So you had to get close in and work it scientifically—which put you in range of the animal's horns, hooves, and crushing weight. This was why bog riders—regular grown-up cowboys, anyway—usually worked in pairs. Still, if what was stuck was only a yearling, even a boy Andy's age had a good chance of saving it by himself; whereas if it was a full-grown critter, it would take longer to sink, long enough for Andy to find his pa and bring him back to help.

Having reviewed these facts, he decided his best course was to go and have a look. He took his marks, estimating where the buzzards' hoped-for meal was, and gave Chaps a little nudge with his heels—he wasn't allowed spurs yet—and the bay moved out willingly.

Though he'd never yet seen their high range—he hoped Pa and Slim might take him along this year when they moved the cattle up to summer graze—he didn't see how any of it could be more beautiful than their lake. It was oriented roughly northwest to southeast, a long narrow pocket of vivid blue water folded within low hills, full of trout and perch and watercress, and a favorite drinking spot for deer and even elk when they came down off the heights for the winter. At the southeast end Home Creek flowed out of it, running almost straight for a couple of miles, then turning sharp back at a right angle as it met the lift of land that ran up to the high breaks along the edge of Baxter Ridge. Beyond the creek, down a branch trail, was Cemetery Road, which had started out as an old Indian trail—probably a buffalo trace before that—and would take you to Laramie eventually, though most folks now used the stage road. Pa, knowing that water (or access to it) was literally life on the plains and in the basins, had acquired title to a strip of land along the creek bank, which gave him control of the contiguous grazing land for as far back as his cattle were willing to walk for a drink (usually five to ten miles), and put up his fence just beyond. There was only one gate along that side of the ranch, used chiefly to drive cattle to town in season, that being easier than chancing getting them tangled up with the traffic along the other route.

He followed the hills down the length of the lake, checking the sky occasionally; the buzzards were still circling. It looked like they were just over the far side of the creek, and he consulted his mental map of the place, trying to remember whether there'd been any bogs over that way last year. He couldn't call any to mind. Maybe they'd found a dead deer, or a cow—maybe there'd been a lion down off the high range that Pa and Slim hadn't realized was around, or a bear... no, it wasn't dead, whatever it was, or they'd be swooping down. Maybe some cow had died soon after her calf was born, and the calf, not knowing any better, had lingered by her; or maybe the calf had been born dead and she was keeping guard over it. Either way he should find out.

Chaps picked his way cautiously down the slope to the bottoms, then plunged into the thick shady growth that lined them—hackberry, chinaberry, wild rose, wild plum, currant and chokecherry bush, wild gooseberry, and tangles of wild cherry, with Gambel oak, dogwood, valley cedar, redhaw, thickets of sandbar willow, and cottonwood most of all rising above them. Andy kept alert, depending mostly on his ears, since anything could be hidden in the shrubbery. He could hear the buzzards' peculiar creaking cries now. He paused to line himself up again, then sent Chaps scrambling over the creek. It was beginning to look like the birds were over the gate, or very nearly.

They were.

He saw the horse first, a light bay with a white star, one rein dragging, its head rising and lowering at intervals as if it were investigating something in the grass. It heard him coming and looked up, ears pricking toward him. "Easy, boy," he soothed it, observing the brand on its hip—not one he recognized—and the saddle still cinched to its back, the blanket roll and saddlebags, canteen and grub sack, lariat and stake rope, and the rifle butt poking out of the boot. "Easy... where's your boss?"

And then he saw.

The man had gotten the gate open, somehow, and being a proper range man he'd tried to close it, but he hadn't been able to keep his balance and had slid or fallen out of the saddle. He lay face down in the thick grass, and at first Andy thought he was dead, he was so still. His clothes were soaked through, his hair plastered close against his head by the recent rain; his hat lay tumbled alongside him. An arrow stood up from his right arm, about halfway between elbow and shoulder, and blood stained the jacket sleeve all around it.

Andy checked, his heart thundering, even though he knew that Indians wouldn't have left the horse—or the man's scalp, either, and he still seemed to have all his hair, thick and matte-black, with a deep wave in the long lock above his brow. Like the good cattleman he was, he rode first to the gate to shut it and drop the bar, checking to see whether there was any sign of stock having gotten out. Then he turned back and slid down from his saddle to kneel beside the fallen man and carefully turn him on his left side. "Mister? Hey, mister, you hear me?"

The man groaned once, softly, when Andy touched him, and his eyelids flickered briefly but didn't open. He was pale except for a hectic flush on his cheeks, and through his wet clothes his skin felt hot; Andy remembered what Jonesy had taught him, that this meant fever building. Like as not he'd been out in the rain all night, and the soaking, coupled with the blood loss from the arrow, had fetched it on. He had a good face, Andy thought—not rounded and fullish like Pa's and Slim's, but lean and angular, with a tapering jaw, flat-planed cheeks, and thin-lipped flexible mouth. There was an ivory-handled sixgun strapped low on his right leg, the holster carefully cut down to give quick access to the trigger guard. Andy had seen men who wore their guns like that, in Laramie—men who thought, maybe, they'd have need to get at the weapons fast.

It didn't matter. This was a human critter in trouble, and none of his family—not Ma, nor Jonesy, nor Pa nor Slim—would have left him here to die, even if he was trespassing.

Andy sat back on his heels and thought about what to do. He knew how to build a travois, but he didn't think he could pull a full-grown man aboard it, not a wounded one, not without hurting him worse. He'd better get Pa.

The horse put its head down, nuzzling anxiously at its human partner's wet hair. "Yeah, I know," Andy told it. "He needs help, and I'm gonna go find some. You'll have to stay here and take care of him till I can get back. But I better put somethin' over him first or that fever's likely to get worse." He hadn't brought his slicker, but he could use the man's own blankets. It wasn't polite, or safe either, to meddle with a stranger's gear, but this was about saving a man's life.

Forty-five minutes later and almost five miles northwest, Matt Sherman looked around at the sound of hoofbeats and his younger son's voice. "Pa! Pa! Come quick!"

He turned his tall black horse Bowie and rode to meet Andy and Chaps, who were coming across the range at a high lope. The boy must have found more than one bog-down, or maybe one of their good bulls was stuck.

"There's a rider, Pa—a man down—near the no-trespassing sign—he's got an arrow in his arm—"

That explained his pace and his excitement. Matt didn't waste time asking questions. "Lead the way, boy."

**SR**

Jonesy came out of the little back bedroom, moving stiffly, but with a weary, satisfied smile on his face, just as Mary Sherman was setting out the breakfast and Matt and Andy were settling into their chairs. "Something smells mighty good," he said.

"Oyster omelet and grilled ham," said Mary, and, with a shrewd look at his expression: "Is he better?"

"Fever's broke," Jonesy replied. "He's gonna make it, I reckon. Sleepin' easy now. Figured I could leave him long enough to sit down at the table like a civilized man." He slacked carefully into his customary chair across from Andy. "Doggone, I should know better'n to sit up all night like that. No good for my sacroiliac."

"I offered," Mary reminded him, "and so did Matt."

"But who'll do the range work or the house chores if one of you's half dead for sleep?" Jonesy retorted with his usual practicality. "I'll slather on some of my liniment after I eat, take a nap, and I'll be okay by suppertime."

Mary finished setting out the food—a big platter of omelet and another, nearly as large, of pink ham slices; fried potatoes, steaming sweetened cornmeal porridge, a basket of white-flour biscuits, cold stewed apples; an assortment of "put-ups" from the preserve cellar—apple butter flavored with quinces and molasses (an old Bryan family recipe), gooseberry jam, tart buffalo-berry jelly, rhubarb marmalade made with lemons and almonds; a pitcher of milk for Andy, a pot of coffee for the rest of them. Matt said his usual neat little grace, since he knew she thought it positively indecent to eat unblessed food, and they set to with the hearty appetites of country people. "He'll be hungry when he wakes up," Mary observed, with a glance at the door behind which their guest slept. "I'd better start some soup, and maybe a custard or an egg pudding."

Andy saw his chance and seized it. "That'll mean you'll be busy a while. And it's Thursday, so you've got bakin' to do. I can sit with him, Ma." When all three of the grownups looked at him in surprise: "Well, I can! I'm twelve years old now. And anyhow, I kind of feel responsible for him. I found him, after all."

"Boy's got a point, Mary," Matt pointed out easily. "And he's right—you've got your own work and Jonesy's to do, and I want to start gettin' things checked and overhauled for roundup. Time and calves don't wait, not even for a man with a bad wing."

It had been three nights and two full days, plus parts of two more on either side, since Matt and Andy had brought the wounded man in, tied to a travois and restless with his fever. The arrow had gone half through his arm and stuck there, with the head projecting on one side and the fletching on the other; when he fell off his horse it had broken partway along, moving within the wound and tearing it, starting the blood flowing again. As a result he was very weak, and the chill he'd taken from the rain hadn't helped, nor had whatever foreign matter had been on the arrowhead or gotten into the wound before Andy found him. Matt and Mary had carried him into the house between them—Jonesy's bad back wouldn't let him lift anything much over thirty or forty pounds, and then only briefly—and Jonesy had stripped him and dried him off, removed the arrow shaft, cleaned the wound throughly, stitched it and dressed it with purple cone-plant paste. He'd been feverish ever since, sometimes deep in stupor, sometimes tossing and rambling in delirium, sometimes moaning and mumbling and rolling his head to and fro on the pillow, and a few times crying out in shrill terror as nightmares roiled their way through his mind; talking of Johnny and Pete, Dixie and Francie, and a dozen or more others. They'd tried their best to get some nourishment and liquid down him—herb tea, chicken broth and hot meat broth—and dosed him with Jonesy's best boneset-yarrow-and-echinacea potion, wiped him down with cool water and tried to calm him when his dreams got bad. But not till now had they dared to believe he might live.

He wasn't a big man, the way Matt and Slim were: an inch or so under six feet, lean and wiry, maybe a hundred and seventy pounds, maybe less, but the depth of his chest and the extraordinary thickness of his lower-back muscles, twin indices of a man's strength, were notable, though his skin was marred by many scars. He had the flat hips and belly and flexible waist of someone who'd spent most of his life riding, and his middle was a washboard of more muscle tissue. It was difficult to tell through the way the fever slurred his speech, but he sounded like a Texan. Mary thought him a handsome boy in his way, though far too lean of face. His bold dark eyebrows had a peculiar kink or quirk in each, and when he dreamed they angled together in a way none of the three adults had ever seen before.

They'd looked, reluctantly, through his clothes and his gear, hoping to find out who to write to if he didn't make it, but all they'd found was a bill of sale for the bay horse, which gave its price as eighty-five dollars and its buyer's name as Jess Harper. They'd hung his saddle in the barn, turned his horse out in the pasture, piled his baggage in the corner of the little bedroom. And waited.

Mary Sherman hesitated a moment, but she had already raised one son and knew something of how important it was to a boy to be allowed to do a man's part; Slim, after all, had gone with his father on his first trail drive when he was only a year older than Andy was now. Andy was very precious to her precisely because she had lost no less than eight babies between him and his brother, but she no more wanted to make a mollycoddle of him than his father did, and certainly she approved of his willingness to take on an important task. "All right," she said, "but do your chores first, and in the afternoon you'll have to put some time aside for your lessons. And if he wakes up, call me right away."

"I will," Andy promised, "and I'll take a book in with me and do some reading while I'm there—that'll count toward lessons, won't it?"

He took care of his menagerie of "critters" in the side yard while his father got the first team change ready. Sherman Ranch had been a relay station for the Overland stage company these last three years, ever since the line changed its route and dropped the old Tolliver Station cutoff. Matt Sherman wasn't the oldest settler in this part of the Laramie Basin—that honor went to the rancher next door, Reed McCaskey, who'd been the first man to bring cattle in, even before Laramie (then called Dancytown) had been founded—but he was situated at almost exactly the optimum distance from town, and he was a highly respected (if still small-scale) cattleman and something of a local hero: during the war, while his older son was off fighting for the Union, he'd been instrumental in foiling a Confederate attempt to hijack a shipment of gold dust being transported by an Army detachment he was guiding through the mountains. He was known as a hard worker, a solid citizen, and a good and generous neighbor, always ready to lend a helping hand, and his son Slim, now twenty-seven, had grown up the same. Usually, with Andy and Jonesy to help out and most of the perimeter of the lower range fenced, two men could handle the Sherman stock with little enough trouble, except at roundup time, and still do their part in the stage-line work, though right now, with Slim off deputying for Mort Corey in town, things sometimes got a little hectic, especially with a wounded man in the back room who had to be sat with and tended.

At eight A.M. old Mose Shell, the senior driver on this division, brought the coach from town—it was bound for Cheyenne—roaring in at thirteen miles to the hour and drew his four-up to a halt with the door precisely opposite the front one of the low-built five-room ranchhouse. "Morning, Matt!" he shouted. "Say, Andy, I got some news about your big brother."

"Slim? Is he comin' home?" Andy demanded. It was sometimes hard for anyone on the place, Andy himself included, to say whether it was his father or his brother whom he most worshipped.

"Well, no-o-o, not right away," Mose admitted, "but in a few days now. Carlin made his try, yesterday, but Mort's plan worked. They got the gang in a crossfire and more or less wiped 'em out—only two didn't end up with at least one hole in their hides, and Carlin's dead. Slim'll be helpin' split up a pretty sizeable pie of a reward—the only way Mort could get the commissioners to agree to all them special deputies was to arrange for 'em not to be paid out of county money, just boarded and fed till the trap got sprung. But he did take a bullet just over the left knee, and it come mighty close to the bone, so Doc wants him to stay in town and out of the saddle for a spell. I can bring him home if you want him before that," he added, "just tie his horse on behind."

Matt considered this for a minute as the passengers climbed out and made for the house: even this soon after breakfast, the coffee and baked goods offered at Sherman Ranch had attained a legendary status on the Denver-to-Sheridan division. "We're obliged for the offer, Mose," he said at last, "but Slim's earned a rest. We'll send in a note and a basket by the noon stage. And his ma will be pleased to have the news; I thank you for fetchin' it."

Bud Carlin's outlaw gang had been seen up near Rock River a couple of weeks ago, and Sheriff Mort Corey had figured it that, after a long cold Wyoming winter, the outlaws would be looking to knock something over—maybe several somethings. Laramie and Medicine Bow were the two biggest towns in Laramie County, so he'd sent word to the marshal at the latter to be on the alert, and assembled a sort of impromptu roster of special deputies, men he knew well and trusted. First among them had been Slim Sherman, with whom he'd worked in Kansas soon after the war, cleaning up Ed McKeever's outfit. He'd sent out trackers, a couple of Indians and a retired mountain man, and had known where the gang was almost as soon as the gang did. He'd had them under surveillance, and the town prepared for their coming, within three days of getting the news of their presence in the vicinity. "We can't do anything about 'em till they make a try for us," he'd told his posse, "but since we know they're around, we can be ready for 'em when they do." Apparently his strategy had worked.

"Pleased to've done it," Mose said now. "Oh, say, you'll like this, though Slim got pretty het up about it. Reed's girl Celie got wind of what was goin' on and sneaked into town just in time to get in on the fun. Fetched down two of them owlhoots herself—broke one's ankle, put a hole through t'other's shoulder. When Mort asked her what she thought she was doin', she said her pa had a fair-sized chunk of money in the Laramie bank, so she figured he ought to have someone there to look after his interests."

Matt roared with laughter. His friend's youngest daughter—the last still unmarried and at home out of four girls—was a notorious tomboy with a redheaded temper. Like her sisters before her, she'd been working her father's stock since she was nine, a full decade now, and could brand calves, build fences, and break horses for pay as well as most men in the neighborhood. She was also an expert with both Colt and Winchester and thoroughly at home in a saddle, and only last year had ridden alone ("recklessly," her father admitted) in pursuit of a trio of cattle rustlers, killing the leader and one of his men. If she was ladylike enough to do all this in a divided skirt, she was no less competent for it.

With the horses changed and the driver, guard, and passengers refreshed to the tune of coffee and their choice of popovers or fresh warm doughnuts, the stage went its way, and Matt set to work stripping the used team, rubbing them down, watering and feeding them and checking the harness over, while Andy went inside and took up his post in the back bedroom, taking along Beadle's latest dime novel, Guy Greenwood's The Phantom Foe; or. The Maid of Montmorenci. It was a thrilling historical tale, in some ways not unlike The Last of the Mohicans, being set during the French and Indian War and featuring the rescue of a supposed Indian girl, the plots of an English spy with the Indians, General Wolfe, the last stand of Montcalm, the storming of the Heights of Abraham, and the fall of Quebec in 1759. Mary was sometimes a bit dubious about the Beadles, not because they were in any way ethically questionable—on the contrary, they were quite sound, teaching lessons of manliness and avoiding scenes of vice; no expression used in them would have shocked even the most prudish, and sex was almost entirely excluded; the hero was always everything a hero should be, and the unbelievably bad villain was always confounded in the end—but because they were, of necessity, hastily and therefore often carelessly written, and sometimes lurid too. But Matt and Slim both defended Andy's right to read them. Sensational they might be, Matt admitted, but only in the same way that Cooper and Mayne Reid, Ivanhoe and The Three Musketeers (all of them maternally approved—"dollar-size dime novels," Matt called them), were sensational: stories of combat and adventure. He pointed out, too, that Mary never objected to Andy's reading Leon Lewis's Kit Carson's Last Trail, or the many novels of Sylvanus Cobb in parts, out of the barrel of old New York Ledgers in the attic, and they were certainly no less thrilling and sensational. Slim reminded his mother of what he had written her during the war, about how the pickets and even men in opposing camps had often exchanged things between armies, and the Beadles had been in great demand. More than once he'd found blood-stained copies of dime novels on dead men in the field, or seen men buried with their Beadles in their pockets. "If they were good enough for the men who were fightin' and dyin' for their country and their beliefs," he'd said, "they ought to be good enough for Andy. Seems to me, Ma, that what's important is that he's reading, and for pleasure, not just out of a sense of duty or because he needs to look somethin' up. I think boys like Beadles because they can see themselves in the hero, and hate so many of the books they're told to read because those books are too remote from what they know about life and what they hope it's goin' to be like when they get out where they can see more of it." So Mary, seeing herself outnumbered—even shrewd old Jonesy had nodded approvingly at the points Slim made—had surrendered, and Andy was free to use his pocket-money for dime novels when a new one came out, which was every couple of weeks.

He settled himself in the cane-bottomed armchair at the bedside, opened his book, and began to read, looking up at the end of each page to check on his patient. Through the half-open door he could catch the sounds of his mother bustling around in the kitchen, and presently the wonderful aromas of baking day. Distantly from the yard came a clangor of metal on metal: Pa had stoked up the portable forge and was repairing something.

"J—Jo... Johnny?"

Andy looked up quickly. The wounded man was awake, staring at him with wondering eyes—eyes blue as fire yet almost as dark as indigo, muddy from the fever but aware and knowing. He let out his breath in a slow sigh as the boy's face turned up. "No," he said softly, with a note of sadness in his voice, "no, you ain't Johnny. His eyes wasn't dark like yours, and his jaw didn't taper so sharp. But seein' you like that, with your head bent over that dime novel, and your hair so dark and smooth, I almost thought, just for a minute—" His head moved side to side on the pillow in a slight shake.

"No, sir. My name's Andy—Andy Sherman."

"Sherman?" The man's lips quirked. "Any relation to that Yankee general?"

"No, sir. My big brother had to answer the same question about a hundred times, when he was in the Army, but we're not, at least not that we know about."

"Don't matter, I reckon," the patient observed. His eyes moved slowly about the room. "Where'm I at?"

"Our ranchhouse. Sherman Ranch, outside Laramie. Twelve miles by the stage road, eight over the cutoff and down Cemetery Road."

"Laramie, huh? Was kinda aimin' to get there, 'fore them Indians jumped me..." He paused, then, quickly: "My horse—?"

"He's okay. He's in our pasture. I might'a' not found you, if he hadn't been standin' guard over you. You got through our south gate somehow and then fell out of the saddle."

The man smiled, briefly, and Andy saw that there was a little gap between his two top front teeth. "That's Trav," he said approvingly. "He don't give up, not on me nor on the job he's asked to do. Proper Texan, same as me." Then: "You found me?"

"Uh-huh. I was ridin' bog, saw the buzzards circlin' and went to look, and there you were."

"Then I owe you one," the man said gravely, "and I won't be forgettin' it, neither. So you're Andy? Who else lives here?"

"My ma and pa, and Jonesy—Nathaniel Dunstan Jones, his real name is; he's been Pa's friend since the war with Mexico, and when Pa decided to move us out here he came along. And my big brother, only he's not here just now. And usually an extra hand or two, at roundup and hayin' time, but not permanent." He suddenly remembered his promise. "I gotta tell Ma you're awake. I kinda gave my word I would. You stay there, I'll be right back."

"Man should always keep his word," Jess Harper observed, and watched as the youngster rushed out of the room, leaving his book lying on the seat of his chair. He turned his head on the pillow to stare up at the ceiling, thinking about what he had just had a vague, shadowy memory of cold and rain and darkness and thunder, of feeling Traveller come to a sudden halt under him, of seeing by the flare of lightning a gate blocking his path, of clutching desperately at his saddlehorn with one hand while with the other he reached for the bar, and then of slowly overbalancing and tumbling into a silent blackness. After that, nothing was clear; a confused impression of dreams, of hands on his body, hands lifting and supporting him, vessels of warm liquid being held to his lips, occasional murmuring voices out of the thick hot dark. He felt wrung out, exhausted and weak, but cool and clear-headed.

He remembered the blow he had felt on his right arm. A bullet? An arrow? Andy hadn't said. He'd seen many men lose a limb, in the war, from a wound that didn't at first look serious. Tentatively, he reached over with his left, across his chest, groping, his heart in his throat. He touched the upper arm, wrapped in a dressing, and winced at the pressure. But it was still there, and that was what mattered.

He heard footsteps and turned his head awkwardly; the door was to his left and behind him, he couldn't get a clear sight of it, which worried him a little. Andy came back in, and behind him a full-bodied, square-shouldered woman with dark hair and a rosy-beige skin tone. Her eyes were like her son's, large and round and black-brown. Her hair was dressed with an unfashionable simplicity, clubbed behind her neck with a scarlet ribbon; she wore a full blue skirt with a lighter blue blouse, a bibbed checked apron tied over. She was, he thought, in her middle fifties—about the age his own mother would be, if she'd lived—and he remembered that the boy, who looked maybe twelve, had spoken of a big brother.

"Well, good morning," she said. "It's good to see you taking notice, if maybe not sitting up just yet. I'm Mary Sherman; I think you've met my son Andy."

"Yes, ma'am. You'll hafta excuse me for not gettin' up... name's Jess Harper, out of the Texas Panhandle, and I'm much obliged to you and your family for takin' me in."

"Don't speak of it," said she, "at least not just now. You've scarcely had a bite since Andy found you; do you think you could take some soup? I've got some on the stove—ham and bean, and there are a couple of biscuits left over from breakfast. Later, when the bread's made, you can have some fresh."

He thought for a moment of baking day in the old foreman's house on Wind Vane Ranch, of hot bread with butter and wild-grape jelly, of fresh gingerbread and sugar cookies and the Texas cookies known as "stickies"—round crusty circles sprinkled liberally with cinnamon and sugar. "Yes, ma'am. That'd be right fine."

"Andy, you help him sit up," she ordered, and vanished out the door again. The boy, with a wiry strength that surprised him—or maybe not; Johnny had had the same kind, ranch boys tended to develop it early—half lifted his shoulders and stuffed several pillows behind them, gradually bringing him to a half-sitting, half-reclining position. He realized he was bare to the waist. Well, if he was remembering right about the rain, his clothes had probably been soaked through, and they'd had to strip him so he wouldn't get a chill, or rather no worse of one than he'd likely already had. Andy had spoken of his pa, and of the man called Jonesy; he hoped they'd been the ones to do it.

Mary Sherman came back with a plain rectangular tin tray, a shaped "hand hole" at each end, a painted floral motif spreading out from its center in natural colors on a dark ground. A transfer-printed china bowl sat on it, along with a bone-handled steel spoon, a red-and-white napkin, a steaming cup that matched the bowl, and a plate with two or three biscuits on it. Andy moved the chair so she could sit facing the bed at an angle, fetched a neat little enamelled table from the corner and put it alongside. She put the tray on the table, sat down, spread the napkin over his lap and took the bowl in her own, and said, "You had an arrow through your right arm, and I doubt you can use it yet. Are you going to make a fuss, or will you let me feed you?"

She had him pegged, sure as Ma would have. "Let you feed me, I reckon."

The soup was thick and good, and there was elderberry tea in the cup. She fed him deftly, as if she'd had experience with the routine—well, she had a husband and two sons, and this was a ranch; likely one or another of them had been laid up at various times. The biscuits and the tea he managed for himself, left-handed. She observed him with approval. "Good, your appetite's improving. You'll need to have several small meals a day till you get used to having something in you. Whenever you get hungry, just tell whoever's with you; I'll make sure there's something on the back burner or in the warming cupboard for you."

"Yes, ma'am." Then: "I been here long?"

"This is Thursday. Andy and his father brought you in Monday afternoon. Your fever broke just this morning." She changed the subject. "Jess. That's a good Bible name. Jesse?"

"Yes, ma'am, Jesse Devlin, though I've gone by the other as far back as I recollect. All us Harper boys was named out of the Bible, 'cept Billy; he was after Ma's pa. Pa too; he was Sam." Then he wondered why he'd confided so much.

"We'll call you Jess, then." She wiped his lips and chin with a damp washcloth. "You should rest a while. Andy can help you lie down again—"

"Just as soon stay like I am, if you don't mind, ma'am," he said. "You was sayin' about fresh bread."

"Yes, and I'd better get back to my baking. Andy will stay; remember, tell him if you get hungry again."

"Count on it, ma'am," he said, and smiled. He knew women found his quick, lopsided, gap-toothed smile charming, though he wasn't sure why.

It worked even on older women, for a hint of color came up in her cheeks before she pulled the covers up to his throat, gathered up the remains of his meal and left the room. He tipped his head back on the pillows to watch her go, again wishing he could face the door. Under the bedcover—it was a Pomegranate quilt, with deep orange fruit and green stems and leaves on a white ground—his hand flexed uneasily, itching for his gun. He knew—he sensed, with the keen perceptions to which Dixie Howard had trained him, nearly a decade before—that these people meant him no ill, but old habits were hard to break. He was too used to having his weapon within reach. Maybe he'd talk to Andy's pa about it.

She'd said his fever had broken just that morning. He wondered if he'd talked. He was pretty sure he'd dreamed; he did it two, three nights a week, and fever likely would have made it worse.

Somehow it troubled him that these people might have heard about... all that.

He lay back, more wrung out than he'd wanted her to know, and let his eyes roam slowly around the room. The house-shell seemed to be of frame; there was a single high-set window directly opposite the foot of his bed, a four-drawer chiffonier, a washstand, a closet alongside the door, and on the other wall a second bed—home-carpentered from the looks of it, more like a bunkhouse bunk than anything, except for not being double-decker. Maybe he could get himself moved into that, with his head toward the outer wall, so he could face the door. A slat ladder was fastened against the wall at the end of it, leading up to a trap in the ceiling—attic, maybe. It took him a minute or two to make out, in the shadows of the corner, his baggage stacked neatly in the angle of the walls—blanket roll, saddlebags, carbine. He couldn't see his gunbelt.

A large yellow cat appeared out of nowhere, leaping up onto the bed and stepping carefully over his ankles, poking its nose into the folds of the quilt. "Jeremiah!" Andy scolded. "You weren't invited!"

"Let him stay, he ain't doin' no hurt," said Jess; somehow it was comforting to think that an animal was willing to be so closely associated with him. Human folks so often weren't. He wondered how long the Shermans would let him stay, once they knew. He didn't want them to know; he needed time to pay them back for what they'd done for him. And yet, if he asked to be moved so he could face the door, if he asked to have his gun, they'd know then, wouldn't they?

He felt suddenly very tired, not just physically but spiritually. The cat had settled down beside his right ankle; its body warmth could be sensed through the quilt, along with the vibration of its contented purr. He sighed and closed his eyes.

**SR**

The cabin stood just less than fifty miles due south of Laramie and half as much west of Fort Collins, at the edge of the 9000-foot mark, in the shadow of Clark's Peak, which reared another three-quarters of a mile above it, more than two miles above sea level. From the town, you took a climbing trail through a light stand of tall timber that covered the slope below the high benchland pastures. It levelled off and the timber went on for fifty yards before the meadow opened out. Across there, two miles away, you could make out the deep slash that was the mouth of a six-mile canyon that dead-ended in a sheer 200-foot rise of granite, its one opening blocked by a pole fence. To the north of it, cut back into the mountain wall, was a roomy cave, eighteen feet deep, twelve wide, and ten high, which had served as a horse barn over the winter past, partly walled up with rocks and poles to keep the weather out; a hundred yards east stood a one-room, 20x30-foot combination bunkhouse, cookshack, and dining hall, the fruit of four or five days' hard work for two men; and to the south, the headquarters, which was a single large room, built of native stone, with a hard-packed earth floor, a peaked roof of poles covered with earth, a loft underneath it, and a large fireplace. The wagons were parked against the rising wall of the mountain, the buggy and lighter buckboards staked down against the winter winds.

As Jarrod Lydacker came in view of the place, he saw that the fence-rails had been taken down, releasing the cattle from the sheltered canyon that had served as their winter home. They spread out over the open bench, tearing eagerly at the new spring grass, scarcely bothering to look up as he rode by; in among them new calves wobbled or frolicked, new life. With satisfaction he noted that, even after the winter they'd just been through—colder than anything they'd known in South Texas—they had already begun to put on weight, as Texas cattle were known to do when transferred to the northern territories. That canyon, he reflected, had been a godsend, providing shelter from the winds and snow; its existence, and the presence of the stone cabin, had been the primary reason they had decided to winter here.

He made out Martha's savina, a distinctive light reddish-roan with a pure white belly, three or four hundred yards to his right, and alongside it the copper buckskin Paul liked to ride. He turned that way, weaving between the bunches of grazing cattle. He saw the arm of the buckskin's rider come up, pointing him out, and knew they'd recognized him as surely as he had them, partly by the palmetto gelding he'd picked for his journey, partly by the flash of sun off the woven silver-wire band of his hat.

Martha Farity was no longer a spring filly, he reflected as he got closer, but she made a hell of a beautiful mare. She was thirty-eight, an Amazonian woman of the outdoors who had retained the firm, well-proportioned lines of her youth. She sat her saddle with easy grace and handled the reins deftly. She wore a corduroy divided skirt, checkered cotton blouse, crimson scarf thrown across one shoulder, and a fringed white leather vest decorated with handsome silver conchas. A conchaed holster on her hip held an eight-ounce Smith & Wesson .32 six-shooter with a five- or six-inch barrel—not a heavy gun, but thoroughly deadly at close ranges; looped over her wrist was the thong of a three-foot stitched-buckskin quirt, its six-inch butt loaded with an iron spike. Her boots were as fine as any man's on the crew, with the Lone Star set into their red tops in filigree work, and the spurs that hung off them had full Mexican rowels, four inches in diameter. Almost the only hint of feminine fancy about the outfit was the felt riding hat, slanted to one side, with embroidered flowers on the brim. She had straight blue-black hair, parted smoothly in the middle and gathered back into a plain knot, and wide-set, smoky gray eyes, and the rounded contours of her high cheeks were still smooth and tight despite a life spent at least half the time in the open.

When her father, old John Sevier Tennison, died twenty years ago, he'd left little but his land, the stock grazing on it—something less than 4400 cattle, a working remuda of around ninety, and one stud bunch, stallion and thirty mares—and three children: Martha, then eighteen and a half, and her two brothers, Paul, who was almost exactly seven years younger, and David, who was just more than ten. She stuck it out, running the ranch alone, for two years, as if just to prove she could (and, from what Lydacker had heard, she'd done more than adequately), before marrying her foreman, Will Farity. At twenty-one she bore a son, John Will (named after his grandfather and father), and when he was five twins, Tommy and Bess. They were three years old when their father was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. With her brothers gone too, once again Martha hung on, battling Indians, bandidos, rustlers, drought. But none of those things could literally steal the land out from under you the way the government—carpetbagger or native-grown—could. It was the prospect of Governor Davis's victory at the polls that had been the last straw. She'd packed up her goods and chattels, rounded up as many cattle as she could lay hands on—about seventy per cent of what showed in the ranch tally books—and headed north.

He pulled up the palmetto gelding—a gray with small black Arab spots on its flanks—and touched the brim of his wide-brimmed Cavalry hat, its crown reshaped flat and round like a planter's. "How's it looking, boss-lady?" he asked. Martha had no patience with small talk.

"Good so far," Martha replied. "I don't think we lost five hundred since January, and the calf crop looks normal, though I won't be sure of that till we can brand and tally. Paul," she added to her brother—he was thirty-one now, and acted as foreman of the outfit, "I think we should start hiring hands for the summer work. Ride into Collins tomorrow and see what you can shake out."

"Better pick up some extra men while you're at it, Paul," Lydacker amended. "It's time."

"Are you sure?" Martha asked quickly.

"That's what you sent me up north to find out, isn't it?"

Martha turned the savina back toward the stone cabin. "Let's get inside and you can tell me more," she said.

There wasn't room in the cabin for all the furniture out of the old Tennison ranchhouse, but Martha had insisted on having what would fit; the rest was still packed in the wagons. Most of it was homemade of rawhide, horsehide, loblolly pine, and other native Texas woods. Indian-blanket portieres had been hung up to make a private retreat of one corner; past them Lydacker could catch just a glimpse of the delicate carved pieces that had graced Martha's bedroom since she was a girl—they had been, so he'd heard, one of the first luxuries old John Sevier had bought when his spread finally began to show a decent profit. A ladder spiked to the wall led to the hatch through which Tommy and Bess, now eleven, reached their sleeping quarters in the loft; sixteen-year-old John Will, like his uncles, bunked with the crew, and proudly. An old cast-iron hot-air circulator that dated back almost to the Texan War of Independence, with a figure of Hebe in a niche under an American eagle, drapery festoons suspended over vases, and decorations of griffins, paterae, and anthemions, supplemented the heat from the fireplace, which was used mostly for cooking. And there were plenty of small things that pointed to the fortune Martha's father had been building on beef as early as '45: a "Tabernacle" mirror, with pilasters on all four sides and square corner blocks centered with rosettes; prints of famous steamboats, an engraved copy of the Madonna and Child, a motto that proclaimed He Will Lead Us (Lydacker occasionally wondered, in his more ironic moments, whether Martha interpreted this to mean God, or perhaps her father's rugged spirit); red damask curtains, with yellow linings and black stripes, hung not only on the few windows to make them look bigger, but even in places where there were none; Rookwood vases in various naturalistic designs, a Parian Psyche standing on a bracket, a row of conch shells; lamps with bowls of clear or opaque glass in a Venetian looped pattern, round, square, or oval, with metal mountings and round or square bases; a steeple clock; a paisley shawl used as a chair-throw, Berlin-work pillows, doilies, and antimacassars; a Turkish cloth in soft reds and golds on the round table that anchored the seating group.

Lydacker unrolled the map he'd sketched of the southern Laramie Basin, weighting it with small objects—a gold-and-enamel patch-box with a design of Napoleon's bees, a gold-and-white china jar of potpourri, a standing frame of heavy Mexican silver from which Old Man Tennison's weathered face glared out at the temporary home of his children and grandchildren. "It's just the way I told you," he said, pointing out the rough boundaries that showed who claimed what ground. "There's only one really big rancher down this end, and even he'll be too busy with his spring gather to pay much attention to us. The rest are small and scattered; they won't have the men or time to spare to keep cases on who's coming in, and if they make trouble we can pick them off one at a time. There's not one has more than maybe three dozen hands on his payroll in high season; most have fifteen or less. We'll have fifty or more. Send in the steers first, start 'em spreadin' out over the range, then bring up the breeding stock once you've run your tally. Most of these outfits don't fence, except around their horse pastures and hay meadows."

"How big is it, all told?" Martha asked.

"Laramie County's about 120 miles east to west, close to 100 north to south. That's some over seven and a half million acres. I figure with the stock we've got, allowing for the winter die-off, we'll need at least 300,000 of that, plus room for the horses. Then, of course, as the brand grows, we'll have to take more, but that can wait."

Paul was frowning. "Why take it at all?"

"What do you mean?" his sister demanded.

"Well, figure it out for yourself," Paul challenged. "300,000 out of 7,500,000 acres, that's not but about four per cent. There's got to be at least that much unclaimed land between the Laramie Range and the Medicine Bows. How long has it been since they started settling these parts?"

"The first cowman in the southern half brought his herd in back in '49," Lydacker told him. "The town was founded the next year, but it didn't really start to grow till after the war. A few settlers, mostly people bound for California who decided they'd rather not deal with the desert or the High Sierras, came in over the next ten years. Then after the strikes were made around Denver, more began filtering in, a lot as '59ers who became traders to the miners, realized the demand for beef, and started to run herds. They've only had ten years or so to get established; next to the time you've been in this business, they're barely even started."

"But they were here first," Paul pointed out, "and by all the range custom I know, that gives them first claim."

"So had we," said Martha rather viciously, "back in Frio County. And what's more we had title, which most of these northerners barely bother with. Did the Reconstructionists let that stop them? Would Davis have?"

"You can't blame these people for that," Paul argued. "They didn't have anything to do with it. They don't deserve to be shoved off their land just because you've got a mad on at some dishonest officials back home."

"I think I'll decide that," Martha retorted. "Keep in mind, when Pa died you were only eleven, and David was eight. Who raised you? Who held the place together till you were old enough to start working on it? Who ran it while you were off at war? Who did Pa leave in charge?"

"You," Paul allowed, "but that was twenty years ago. We're grown now—don't we have some say? Just because we couldn't stay on our own land, does that give us a right to take somebody else's?"

"If there's anything I learned in the last twenty years," said Martha, "it's that you keep, or get, only what you're willing to fight for. We couldn't fight the Army and the carpetbaggers, not with Washington to back them up, but we can fight to make a place for ourselves in Laramie. You know what Jarrod told us about that country. If we have to make a fresh start, why not do it in the best place we can find?"

"I'm not arguing that," Paul told her, "only the need to push others out when there's got to be land available that we could settle on without disturbing anybody else."

Her lips compressed. "You're grown up, like you said, and I won't fight you. But I'm still the head of this family; I earned it. If you or David want to take 4000-odd head each and make a place for yourselves somewhere, I won't stand in your way. It's just that much more land for me and John Will and the twins. Land's all there is, Paul. It's the start of everything, it doesn't rust or burn and it gives you back what you put in it. These folks who settled the Basin before us had their choice of the land; you think they didn't make sure they had the best of it? Do you want it said that Tennisons were content to take someone else's leavings? I don't."

Lydacker followed the exchange with carefully concealed glee. Paul and David might be the ones who'd fought in the war, but Martha was the brains and the heart of the outfit, always had been. She was more like him than any woman he'd ever met—strong, proud, resolute, competent, clear-minded and intelligent, uninterested in frippery and gossip, and never afraid to do what she saw as necessary. As an only child for the first seven years of her life, the focus of all the hopes and ambitions of a coming cattle baron who desperately needed an heir to carry on his work and had half begun to fear he'd never have a male one, she'd developed a fierce and disdainful pride in who she was, in her family and its accomplishments, and she'd also learned to be tough and strong-minded, though in public she concealed it in a velvet glove.

It's not gonna be easy, he told himself, not for the first time, working around her—or persuading her it's time she gave her kids a stepfather. And she's older than I am, of course, by a good six years, though she doesn't look it. But she's never fought a land war, and I have.

Lost the last one, but that wasn't entirely my fault. This one I won't lose. All I have to do is go on makin' myself indispensable. She's got brains and guts and spirit, and I like that, but she's still a woman, and she wants all the same things all women want.

The appeal to family pride—almost the only reason Paul and his brother had enlisted for the Confederacy—had done the trick. "No, I don't want that. And you're my sister, and I won't go off and leave you when you need me. This family's always stood together—or retreated together, when it came to that last year. I just wanted you to know that I don't like thinkin' of myself as a bully."

"Tell that to the Yankees," said she. "Go on, Jarrod. Tell me about these ranchers."

**SR**

There was fresh-baked bread about midafternoon, as Mary Sherman had promised, with butter and brown sugar on it, and oatmeal cookies to fill in the cracks. Jess could hear a man's voice in the kitchen, maybe Andy's pa getting in on the treat as well. He half expected Sherman to come in, but it didn't happen. He waited a while, then slipped off into a doze that became a nap; a man as weakened by blood loss and fever as he must have been would need time and rest to build himself back up, and while confinement and inactivity grated on his Panhandle-bred mentality, he was pragmatic enough to know it.

For supper he had something rather more substantial than soup: a stew of chicken, tomatoes, and canned beans with pork, in the richest of gravies, with more fresh bread to mop the plate with, and bread pudding with fat blue raisins in the custard and a pink sauce over it. He'd been hoping for coffee, but there was only hot lemonade. It was after Andy took the dishes away that his host came in to visit him. Matt Sherman was a tall, grave man with a decided way of talking and moving, a face seamed by sun and wind, and eyes alive as a boy's yet wise with years. His face was the clear bronze of fair skin long exposed to the elements; his hair and the fringe of beard that circled his chin from ear to ear were a silvery gray with the faintest hint of blue. His back and shoulders were held as straight as those of a man twenty or thirty years younger; Jess reckoned his age at somewhere in the mid-sixties. He wore black broadcloth pants and a checked shirt, a doeskin vest held together with a silver chain across the belly, a Chinese charm holding pride of place on it. To Jess, who'd been trained to notice such things, the slight trace of polished fabric across his middle and along his right leg, and the distinctive way he moved and held himself, testified that this was a man who wore a gun regularly—but not a professional; well, most ranchers weren't, that was why they hired people like Jess.

"I'm Matt Sherman," he said, offering his hand. "My wife and boy tell me you're Jess Harper."

"That's right," Jess agreed. There was no hesitation in the tall man's handshake, and his eyes—the soft blue of the sky at noon, yet full of shrewdness and experience—met his guest's squarely. "I told them already, and I'll tell you—I'm obliged to you, all of you. I ain't plumb sure what happened after I got away from them Indians, but I reckon I might not be alive if Andy hadn't found me or you hadn't took me in."

"Let's talk about them Indians," Sherman suggested, settling himself in the armchair. "If there's hostiles in the neighborhood I want to know about it; sometimes they kill my beef, and of course they've always got an eye for good horses, which you bein' a Texan I reckon you know. I sent word into town by the stage that I had a man here who'd come to me with an arrow in him; Sheriff Corey'll see that the news gets out without startin' a panic, but I'd like some details, all the same. Where'd you meet 'em?"

Like any cowhand, Jess had learned early on to observe and retain, and he reconstructed his experience as far as he remembered it, telling about how he'd been coming up the south trail, describing how and approximately where Traveller had warned him of the war party's nearness, how he'd fled and how, in the end, he'd escaped. Sherman nodded. "I know that place," he said. "You sure had the luck ridin' with you, boy. If your horse hadn't been so strong and agile, you'd both have fallen to your deaths; that gorge is a good hundred feet deep."

"So much?" said Jess in surprise. "I couldn't tell, with all the dust, and the light goin' the way it was. All I could see was somethin' in the way that Trav couldn't step over."

"Yep," said Matt, nodding. "I'll go take me a ride down that way tomorrow, maybe. Lay you odds I'll find a dead pony or two down in the bottom, though the riders' friends'll likely have pulled them out, alive or otherwise. That explains why they gave up on you. Must have reckoned your medicine was too strong for 'em, you comin' on that spot just when you most needed a way to shake 'em."

"Medicine?" Jess echoed.

Sherman's blue eyes twinkled. "Somethin' about the way you said that tells me you know what it means."

"I do. Learned how to track from a half-Indian boss wrangler. How to break a horse, too. Just didn't reckon on you knowin' it."

"Did some freightin' down the Santa Fe Trail when I was about your age," said Sherman, "and some tradin' with the Indians later on—right around here, that was; it's how I first found the spot we're at now. Fetched my family out here in '58. Andy was only a baby; his brother was past fifteen."

"That's the brother who ain't at home?"

"He's in town for a spell. Got himself shot up a little, helpin' the sheriff. Be back in a few days." He was watching Jess keenly.

"I ain't wanted," Jess told him. "So it don't matter if you're friends with the law." It did matter, just a little; he had a tendency not to be especially comfortable around lawmen. But not that way.

"Don't recall askin'," said Matt.

"But you wanted to know, and you got a right, with a wife and a boy and a place to think about. I ain't fixin' to lie to a man I owe a debt to. Not even if it ain't what they call a lie of commission." His palm was itching again. It made him feel just a little bit guilty. He told himself it shouldn't. Matt Sherman's main concern would be whether he was giving sanctuary to an outlaw—not to a gunfighter. Anyway, he'd be guessing at the other soon enough. "So. Andy tells me it's twelve miles to Laramie by the stage road and eight by somethin' he called Cemetery Road. Like there was an important difference."

"Well, I reckon you might say so," Matt agreed. "Cemetery's the way you got to us—I know that for certain, now that I know where you got jumped. You must've took the left fork in the dark and the rain, which was lucky for you; ain't much of anything beyond for quite some ways, the lake and creek you were close to are the only water between that spot and Laramie."

"And you own 'em."

"That I do. As for the other way, we make a distinction partly on account of bein' a change station for the Overland—a relay. Now that you're likely to be awake more, you'll be hearin' the stages come in, four a day, and the passengers comin' in for coffee and a bite. Figured you might as well know to expect that."

He's guessed, thought Jess. Well, he'll have seen my rig. "I was meanin' to ask you where my sixgun was."

"On the rack by the door, along with mine," said Matt. "You want it?"

"It ain't nothin' against you," Jess tried to explain. "It's just... I been livin' by it some time now. A man gets habits. Now that I'm awake enough to know it ain't where I can put my hand on it—I get nervous, and I don't sleep." He tried to twist-turn toward the door. "And it don't make it no easier not bein' able to see who's comin' in. Bad as standin' at the bar with your left side facin' out."

Matt eyed him shrewdly. "You know that right hand of yours likely won't be much good to you for a while. You shouldn't even try to lift with it; you might break the wound open again."

"Don't matter. I been taught to draw and shoot with my left. Ain't so fast that way, but I can still hit what I'm aimin' at, most times."

"Sounds like you're pretty good," Matt observed.

"I'm alive," Jess answered flatly.

"So you are. Well, then—" and the man stood and moved the armchair out of the way— "let's get you shifted. There's no sheets on the other tick, but I don't suppose that matters much to you. Might as well let you use the thunder-mug too."

Fifteen minutes later, Jess was in the other bunk, turned with his face toward the door, which opened on that side of its frame. The operation had left him rather breathless—seventy-two hours plus as a bedbound invalid, not to speak of the fever, didn't do much for a man's condition—but he felt much more at ease, and when Matt went out (moving, Jess noticed, almost as quietly as he could himself) and came back with his Colt and rig, that was even better. "You shouldn't need it, of course," the man said. "You know that. I'll make sure everybody knows to call out before they get close enough to the door to set off your instincts."

"I don't want to hurt nobody here," Jess tried to assure him. "It's just... like I said. I can't exactly help it." He had pushed himself up on his good elbow so that the pillows supported him, and was awkwardly settling the belt over the bedpost.

"Let me help you with that. Hold your hand the way you'd have to, and I'll get the gun where you can reach it."

It took a little experimenting, but they worked out the best angle for a draw. As Matt had said, Jess knew, with the thinking part of his mind, that nobody here had any reason to want to harm him. It was just reflex. It had saved him so many times, it would have taken longer than he reckoned he had, to train himself not to act on it.

Which reminded him. "How long till I can get up? Ain't used to lazin' my life away in a bed, even one as good as this."

"Nice mattress, ain't it? We stuff 'em with sweetgrass. Well, your legs aren't hurt and you don't have a body wound, so I'd say maybe as soon as tomorrow you can join us for dinner, or at least supper. Though you might be short of breath right at first; fever will do that."

"Reckon I know that," Jess agreed, rather bitterly. "Had my share of 'em." He figured by now they'd seen at least some of his scars.

"Speakin' of which," Matt added, reaching into his vest pocket, "I've a notion I'd better clear out and let you get some sleep, before Mary comes in here and starts scoldin' both of us for keepin' a sick man awake." He produced a watch—it looked like a good sixty-dollar stem-winder—which, when he pressed the spring, chimed three-quarters past eight. "Yep. Gettin' late. You bein' from the Panhandle, you'd know how early the day starts on a workin' ranch."

**SR**

"A boy like that," said Mary Sherman quietly. "I can't believe it. Why, I don't think he's even as old as our Slim."

"Boys grow into men fast in this country—or even in Illinois," Matt reminded her. "You know that, Mary."

"But still," she said, "just look at him. When he's asleep, and not fighting nightmares, he looks like something out of a Renaissance painting. He spoke gently to Andy, and with me it seemed like every other word out of his mouth was 'ma'am.' "

They lay in their darkened bedroom, off the back of the sitting room, side by side in one of the very attractive ornamental brass beds that were made late in the '40's, under the double-width Kentucky spice-pink quilt that had been a wedding gift from Matt's mother almost thirty years ago. "Politeness in itself," said Matt, "don't make a man good. Some of the worst men unhanged are polite, and can carry on a conversation that no lady would ever take offense at. Nor good looks or youth neither. They say Clay Allison is a fine figure of a man. And John Wesley Hardin, I hear tell, was only fifteen when he killed his first man." It wasn't, he reflected privately, that he wanted to persuade his wife that young Harper was past saving. It was just that he wanted to make sure she was approaching the issue in the right frame of mind. It was very easy, he knew, for women to get the notion stuck in their heads that they could reform a bad man, or repair a broken one. Not that his own gender was completely free of that weakness, as countless preachers and missionaries amply proved. But they were usually doing it out of religious conviction, whereas with women it just seemed to be part of the maternal instinct, as if they thought that just by being women, like the mother every man (no matter how bad or broken) must once have had, they could take up where she'd left off, or correct the mistakes she'd made. He knew that his wife had an instinctive feel for character, an ability to judge people accurately; it was a gift on which he had often depended. He wanted to get her to tell him why she thought about Jess Harper as she did.

"All right," said Mary, "suppose I grant you all that. Any man can change. Good to bad is easiest, but some have gone the other way. You've heard Mort, and his father too, talk of former outlaws and killers who've reformed, and turned into regular watchdogs of honesty."

"That usually comes after prison terms," Matt observed. "Though I agree, I've heard of other things doin' it, like a close brush with death... or the love of a good woman. The way I figure it, a man has to want to make somethin' better of himself, in morals as in money. It's like emigrants goin' West. They want new lives, and they're willing to take the risks and face the hardships to do it."

"Well, then," said Mary, "how can you know that this boy doesn't want the same? It seems to me that if he were irredeemably lost, he wouldn't have the nightmares; he'd have accepted what he's become. I think they're his mind's way of telling him that there are other possibilities."

"That's a point," Matt agreed. "A man can change, like you said. But it can't be imposed on him, Mary. It can be suggested, and offered, and he can be helped to find the way. But in the end it has to be his own wish, his own determination." He paused, then: "I don't want to see you hurt if you don't have to be."

She reached over and slipped her hand through his. "That's sweet. But I do know what I'm doing, Matt. I'm not some... lovesick girl, after all."

"No," said he humorously, "you're a mother of boys, and that can be even worse; there's a reason we talk of she-bears and mother hens!"

She chuckled, then sobered. "There's a saying, isn't there, that a man's eyes show what he was born with, and his mouth what he's done with it? Look at his. Look at those clear blue eyes, the way they change their tint, the way sometimes he can't meet yours. Look at his mouth, still soft and mobile; look at the shy, boyish way he smiles. He's not bad. He's only trying to survive, the best way he knows. Something, sometime, maybe when he was very young, set him on this trail, and the longer he rides it, the harder it gets for him to stay alive. Maybe he's almost forgotten what it's like to live any other way. Maybe he thinks he's past redemption. But I don't think so—and I don't think you do either, Matthew Jacob Sherman!"

He snorted softly in amusement. "Reckon you know me too well for my own good, after all these years. No, I don't. And I'm thinkin', he's said he's obliged to us. That means he wants to settle the debt, and he can't do it but by stayin' around. You didn't see his gear. It's quality, but plain and practical, like any cowhand might have. Maybe I'll offer him a job for roundup. He'll see that that might give him the chance he's lookin' for, and meanwhile we can get to know him better."

"I think that's a good idea," said she. "And now that we've got that settled, let's get some sleep."

In the big bunkroom that took up most of the side wing, Jonesy snored softly and steadily in the bottom bunk of the double set, and Andy slept curled under his covers in a knot, like a puppy, alongside his big brother's empty bed, dreaming about Texas.

In the little back bedroom, Jess Harper—left unattended now that he was no longer fighting infection and fever—writhed and twisted in nightmare, moaning softly, grieving in his sleep as his experience of the people who had taken him in awakened his memories of his lost family.

And in a bedroom in the boarding house in Laramie, Slim Sherman, dosed with paregoric against the pain of the bullet wound in his leg, slept heavily, unaware of the changes taking place at his home.

**SR**

"Jess? Who's Johnny?"

Jess, awkwardly managing his fork left-handed—Mary had sensibly decided that if he could draw his gun that way, he could feed himself—looked up quickly from his plate. "How come you to ask, Andy?"

" 'Cause when you first woke up yesterday, you thought I was him. You called me by his name," the boy answered.

Jess paused, looking down at his breakfast of fluffy omelet and cracker cream toast. He was silent for a long moment, struggling with his memories. "Johnny was my kid brother. Was, not is. He died."

"Oh," said Andy softly. "I had brothers and sisters that died. I never knew any of 'em, 'cause they came in between Slim and me, and the last of 'em was gone before I was ever born. But you knew Johnny, or you wouldn't'a' thought I was him."

The Texan sighed. "I knew him. He was twelve, last I seen him. Looked like you, some ways—that's why I made the mistake. 'Bout your size, he was, and dark hair. But his eyes was blue, same's mine, and his face was like mine had been, back when I was his age. We both took after my ma's side, y'see, or that's how she reckoned it, anyhow."

Andy hesitated a moment before he asked his next question. "When did he die?"

"Durin' the war. He was fifteen, and it was cholera. I didn't find out about it till after the surrender."

"I'm sorry," Andy said quietly, his voice subdued. "I shouldn't've asked."

"Why shouldn't you?" Jess demanded, with a sharp look.

" 'Cause it made you sad to think about him. Pa says you should never make people sad, not if you like 'em."

Jess took a deep breath. "Yeah, I get sad when I think about Johnny. Just the day them Indians jumped me, I was wishin' he was still alive so's we could ride together. But it don't mean you shouldn't asked about him. Don't never be scared to ask questions, Andy. That's somethin' my ma used to say. That's how you learn, she said. 'Course," he added, "then Pa would say that there's questions you shouldn't never ask—the unmannerly kind."

Andy nodded. "I know. Like seemin' to doubt the name a man gives you, or askin' where he comes from, or who he wants to see, or where he's headed. Or askin' a cattleman how many head he runs, or how big his ranch is." He was silent a minute, while Jess wolfed down a couple more mouthfuls of omelet: he was developing a convalescent's raging appetite. Then: "Jess, what's it like in the Panhandle?"

The man looked up again, this time with a grin. "Ain't you never been there?"

Andy snorted a giggle. "No. I've been to Cheyenne a few times, 'cause the stage goes there, and we can ride on it free any time we want, on account of Pa havin' the relay contract with the line. And Denver once, the same. And Pa was in the war with Mexico and told me about the border country, and he and Slim drove trail herds up to the river towns before I was born, so I know about East Texas—the piney woods and the cotton country and even San Antonio. But I never met anybody who came from the Panhandle, till you."

"Well, there ain't a whole lot of us yet," Jess admitted. "If you was to ask the Army, they'd say it's still Indian country and we hadn't even oughtta be there. But that kinda thing don't stop Texans. You know, when Mexico first started lettin' Americans go into Texas and settle, it was 'cause they'd heard we was better Indian fighters than them, and they was havin' a sight of trouble with the Comanches and wanted somebody to help keep 'em in line." He tilted one eyebrow curiously. "That's the second time you've mentioned Slim. Who's he?"

"My big brother. I told you about him. His whole name's Matthew Jacob Jr., after Pa, but we all call him Slim. You'll see why, when he comes home and you get to meet him." Then: "What about the Panhandle?"

Mary Sherman, standing quietly midway between the back-bedroom door and the bookcase on the rear wall of the sitting room, smiled to herself as she listened to Jess's warm gravelly drawl describing his native country—the treeless flatness of the Staked Plains, the strong steady winds and the blizzards that roared down from the Pole in season with nothing to break their force; the sky, unimaginably bright and blue and clear under a blazing hot sun; the crashing thunderstorms with their great bolts of lightning; the heat lightning that sometimes tore the sky at night, even when there was no storm; the buffalo and antelope, whitetails and mule deer, that mingled freely with the ranchers' cattle and horses. And Wind Vane Ranch where his father had been foreman, 300,000 acres of fenceless range straddling the Pease River Valley and spreading more than twenty miles along it east and west. "Nearest place to us was Wagon Fork, thirty-five miles downriver..."

No man who can deal so gently with a boy, who can remember his brother with so much love and regret, can possibly be bad, she told herself, and hurried on about her chores. It was Friday, and the house had to be cleaned and the beds stripped and changed.

Matt came home just before noon dinner, bringing with him a quillwork-trimmed Indian bridle and a heavily beaded buckskin hood, designed to cover a pony's neck and head and serve as armor, with raccoon tails and eagle feathers tied along the line of the mane. "Took these off the ponies that fell into that gorge you jumped," he told Jess. "Sioux work, which is what I figured on. Figured you might like to have 'em for trophies."

"I 'preciate the thought," Jess replied, "but a drifter can't afford to weigh his horse down with a lot of gear. Maybe Andy'd like to have 'em." It was the first time he'd seen the man in full range dress; he took note of the pearl-gray hat with the brim rolled to a point in front and a leather band studded with ornamental nails circling the crown, and the horn-handled knife at his waist with a black-handled Walker Colt .44 balancing it, converted to take metallic cartridges—an old gun, but very sturdy and powerful. He remembered that the first Colt guns to come into Texas, more than thirty years ago, had been .36-caliber; the new .44's hadn't appeared till the middle '40's. That was a lot of gun, too much for some folks. The Rangers, like Jess's Uncle Cam, got those first .44's, and they were picked men, so people started calling them ".44-caliber men," something special. As more of the new guns became available, the name came to mean someone who was all man and could be relied on in any situation. It was a Texan idiom, and he wasn't sure whether Matt had ever heard it. But he found himself reflecting that he'd like to believe the rancher was such a man.

"Well, talkin' of driftin'," said Matt, "I was thinkin'. That arm of yours'll take a spell to come back, and it don't seem quite right somehow to send a guest off without knowin' he's got his health together. We'll be startin' to round up our stock soon as my boy Slim gets home. I us'ally hire another man or two for that, so we can work in teams. Brandin', earmarkin', makin' steer calves. Forty a month and your grub. You interested?"

Jess pondered the suggestion. About his arm he knew Matt was right; it wasn't the first time he'd had a limb compromised, though far from the worst, and while he knew he healed faster than many men did, he was also well aware that deliberately going into the kinds of situations his profession often demanded without being sure you were a hundred per cent was just asking to be taken down. And it was his gun arm; he'd need time to get it back in condition. He didn't need the pay exactly, but even a month at cowhand wages would only do his money belt good. And they fed better here than a lot of places he'd been, even if he ended up in the bunkhouse. "Reckon so," he agreed. "Trav and me, we can do most kinds of stock work."

"I'll be bringin' the remuda down after dinner," Matt said. "Get 'em shod Monday maybe into Tuesday, and when we go into town tomorrow see if I can line up at least one more man. Then we can set to on Wednesday. By then it'll be more than a week since you were hit, and you should be up and about."

"Suits me," Jess told him, and they shook hands on it.

**SR**

On Saturday the Shermans headed into Laramie to do their weekly shopping and visit their convalescent son, while Jess stayed behind with Jonesy for company in case he needed something he couldn't manage on his own. He was out of bed now, at least most of the day, and one of the first things Jonesy did was to strip the dressing off his arm, examine it carefully, and take the stitches out. The wounds—two of them, front and back—were still a fresh angry pink, and the limb was sore when he moved it, but he stoically ignored the pain and began working it to and fro, cautiously at first. "Who patched me up?" he asked the old man.

"I did," said Jonesy. "Didn't figure it was worth sendin' into town for a doctor—not even if you ended up with pneumonia, which you could have after that soakin' you got; not much a doctor can do for pneumonia, or most other sicknesses for that matter, that an ordinary man can't that knows his business."

"Seems you know yours," Jess noted. "I been looked after by certificated doctors that didn't treat me no better."

"I was a trail cook for a long lot of years," Jonesy told him. "A man learns to cope with all kinds of trouble."

Jess nodded. "That what you do around here, trail-cook?"

"Well, not exactly," Jonesy admitted. "Place isn't big enough to keep a full crew, not even in high season. We got sort of a division of labor, Mary and me. I do the plain cookin' and wash the dishes, she does the preservin' and fancy bakin', and we both make up the shoppin' lists. She washes the laundry, I wring it and hang it up. She cleans the house, I change the beds and look after the truck patch—though Andy helps out with the weedin' and hoein' and such, on account of my sacroiliac. She takes care of the chickens, I see to the cows. She tears bandages, I do the doctorin'. It works. 'Course when I was sittin' up nights with you, before your fever broke, things kinda fell on her."

"Reckon that's one more I owe y'all," said Jess, and went out to sit on the porch and enjoy the sunlight and fresh air.

Jonesy watched him go, his expression thoughtful. Matt Sherman, like most cattlemen, never hesitated to stop in at the Stockmen's Palace—the best of Laramie's saloons—when he was in town, for in cow country a saloon was much more than just a place to get a drink: it was a meeting place, a club, a center for male sociability much as church groups and dressmakers' shops were for women; the place you went to loaf, to read a paper (or even a month's supply of them), to sit and talk with friends, to make business deals, to learn about local trails, grazing conditions, business and political considerations, whether the Indians were out or who had cattle for sale, who had jobs available or was looking for work. And because men gathering informally together naturally talked of places they'd been and men they'd seen or heard about, it was also a place to learn about other towns, trails, notable peace officers, outlaws, card men, and gunslingers. Without maps or books of information, most Western men became skilled observers of detail, and their descriptions of people and places were extraordinary in their clarity and attention to particulars. A cowhand from Texas might know the exact appearance of a rancher or town marshal in Montana. A man down in the Live Oak country who had never left it knew how the sheriff looked in Julesburg and exactly where to find the corrals in Abilene. Tales were told and retold at bars and gaming tables and over campfires, of gunmen and trackers, tough town marshals and crooked gamblers, till each man's mind was a storehouse of information. Especially Western people talked about gunfighters, as Easterners talked about actors, politicians, or prizefighters. Everyone knew about the most notable of them, and would recognize each even if they'd never met him.

Jonesy wondered just how much his old friend had known about Jess Harper before the young Texan came bumping into the yard on that travois. Jonesy himself wasn't a drinking man—he honestly didn't like the taste of whiskey, let alone what it could do to you—but he enjoyed sociability and gossip, and being the likelier of the two of them to be on hand while the stage passengers were enjoying a snack in the kitchen, he had a lot of opportunities for both. He'd known, even before they'd found the bill of sale in Jess's vest pocket, who he was, just by looking at him. Young Harper had a name for ruthlessness when he was working, but he chose his jobs with care, never killed in cold blood, never pushed a fight, just took care of business when it came up, and was known, also, for startling generosities to people he considered deserving, and for sometimes taking bottom dollar—or no pay at all—just because he thought one side in a disagreement was in the right. And there were sizeable gaps in his history, periods during which no one could say with certainty that he'd been hiring that ivory-handled gun out—though of course, with what he could make when he did take a properly-paying job, he didn't need to work every month of every year, like most men did. It was said, with some certainty, that he'd been taught the trade by Dixie Howard, who'd been a legend since at least the early '50's. And there was a hint of rumor that he'd lost his family, or most of it, to some outlaw gang down in Texas, though details were wanting: the only person who could provide them was Harper himself, and he didn't.

What bothered Jonesy was that the man had enemies. You'd think, with his kind of skill, that they'd be mostly dead, but the ones that were had had kin, some of them, or friends, who might seize an opportunity to balance the scales if it came up. Jonesy had heard that sometimes Harper had been working someplace, not as a gunhand, and been politely asked to leave when his identity became known, because folks didn't want to risk getting involved in something like that. The Shermans were Jonesy's family, as close as he had now; he'd been with them a full dozen years, almost as long as young Andy had been alive, setting aside the seasons he'd followed Matt up the trail. He knew that no man with any pride would try to settle a score by harming someone unconnected to it—but there were a lot of men around who didn't have that kind of pride, and then there was accident too.

He had nothing against Jess as a man. From what Mary had told him, he was half inclined to like the youngster. But bad back or no, he took his responsibilities as a member of this household seriously. He hadn't tried to argue Matt out of taking Jess in, had never even seriously thought about it; it was the only right thing to do. And he could see why Matt would have offered Jess the job: the Texan was in no condition yet to be out on the trail, exposing himself to Indians, old enemies, and anyone else who might want to take him, yet at the same time he had the right to be accorded an opportunity to keep his pride and earn his way.

Still, Jonesy had the feeling that this thing was going to lead to trouble for somebody.

He just hoped it wouldn't be his family.

**SR**

Slim Sherman descended the boarding-house stairs cautiously, saddlebags slung over his shoulder and carbine in his hand. From the parlor came the sound of Mrs. Mortimer's reed-organ; it was Sunday evening, and the long-term guests always gathered for a sing at this time.

Favoring his leg just the least bit, he carefully eased around the end of the flight, into the shadows of the passageway alongside. Slim was twenty-seven—he'd have his birthday in January, about a month after his brother Andy—and except for the color of his hair, which was the same sandy blond Matt's had been at that age, and the fine scar on his left cheek, he could scarcely be told from their father: both he and Matt had the same height, the same features, the same clear-blue eyes and erect carriage and strong, square-shouldered, near-hipless horseman's build. And, like his father, when he wasn't coping with a healing wound, he walked with the long, quick strides of an alert man who knew where he was going and wanted to get there in a hurry. His hearing was just a bit better than Matt's, and Matt's distance vision just a bit better than Slim's, but apart from that they were pretty equally matched, and though he was going on sixty-six Matt could still keep up with his oldest boy for long days in the saddle, pitching hay, or stringing fence. Slim was proud of him for that. He and Matt were very much alike in most ways, and had been a genuine team ever since Slim had gone on his first cattle drive with his father, the year he was thirteen. Matt had made him a full partner in the ranch two weeks after he got back from his service with the Union Army.

"Slim Sherman! Where do you think you're going?"

With a guilty start, Slim turned quickly, halfway to the kitchen door, to find himself confronted by his landlady's daughter, Caroline Mortimer. She was going on twenty-one, with the gray eyes and ruddy coloring typical of the Scots—along with that nationality's stubbornness, perversity, and firm belief in the rightness of their own thinking. "I'm goin' home, Carrie," he said firmly, knowing she hated the nickname.

"You're doing no such thing! Dr. Hanson hasn't released you yet."

"I think Doc knows that I know when I'm ready to go home," Slim retorted. "Carrie, it's nothin' against you or your mother. You've treated me fine, all down the line, while I've been here. But I'm not an invalid, and Pa wants to start roundup on Wednesday. He'll need me."

Being a hard-working person herself, Caroline had a great respect for anyone who showed a faithful devotion to the job—and her Highland clannishness responded automatically to his loyalty to the family enterprise. A hint of uncertainty appeared on her rather angular features. "Are you sure?" she asked. "Sheriff Corey and the doctor put you in our charge. We wouldn't want you to go before you're ready."

"I'm a little stiff," he admitted, "but that'll work itself out—the only way I know of to get rid of it is to get movin'. Besides, Alamo will do the work, not me."

He wasn't a Scot, but he had Irish blood through his mother, and Caroline knew it—and knew that the Irish are perhaps the only nationality (possibly because both are Celts) who can match the Scots in stubbornness. She hesitated, and was lost. "How would you stop me?" he challenged. "Call for some of your other boarders? They won't get involved; it's not their business. And I can get to the door long before you can; my legs are longer."

"Oh, very well, then—go, and if you fall out of the saddle don't blame me!" And with a swish of her lilac-spray chintz dress, she vanished into the butler's pantry from which she'd come.

He chuckled to himself. He knew he shouldn't tease her that way, but he'd been doing it almost as long as he'd known her, and old habits were hard to break. He'd been seventeen and she eleven when her family first settled in Laramie (or Dancytown, as it was still called then), and she'd gotten something of a pre-adolescent crush on him and made such a pest of herself following him around, every time he came to town, that he'd had to resort to gentle mockery in hopes of fending off her attentions.

He slipped quietly out the back door, circled around the side of the house and carefully descended the slope to the level of Front Street. It was just dusk, and lights were going on in the cabins and houses to either side of the town's commercial strip, which was almost deserted; even the saloons made a short day of it on Sunday—one till five. He crossed the hard-packed street to Dennison's livery barn, edged the big door open and slipped in. His tall blaze-faced chestnut nickered softly as he spoke to it; he'd been around horses all his life and knew that you should never fail to give warning when you were coming up behind one, if you didn't want to get kicked. "Easy, boy," he said. "We're goin' home."

In ten minutes he had the saddle and bridle on, the carbine in its boot and the saddlebags tied on behind the cantle, and was quietly leading Alamo out of the barn. Just hope Mort isn't out patrollin', he thought— I don't know if I could get around him as easily as I did Carrie. But there was no sign of his family's friend the sheriff; on Sundays Laramie was so quiet that it usually wasn't even worth his time to go down to his office, let alone make the rounds.

Slim threaded his way through the belt of evergreens at the top of the street and set off at a jog; it would take him longer to get home at that pace, but it would be easier on him than a trot and safer (in the dark) than his usual lope. The moon was at half phase, more than enough, given his familiarity with this road, to provide him with adequate visibility. The evening was cool—he guessed around fifty; it would probably drop at least another ten degrees by dawn. At this altitude you couldn't count on last frost before mid-May, and the snow clung to the mountain peaks from September into July, but that didn't necessarily mean that every April night was frosty: only one week ago, he remembered, they'd had a regular toad-strangler, a cloudburst right out of July or August.

Thinking of that rainstorm reminded him of what his folks and Andy had told him when they stopped by to visit him yesterday, about the man Andy had found out near the south gate with an arrow through his arm. "Wetter than a frog, he was," Matt had said, "and Jonesy was gloomin' around sayin' he'd most likely get pneumonia, but he didn't, just fought fever for three days. Toughest youngster I ever saw."

"His name's Jess," Andy had added, "and he's from Texas. I like him, Slim. I hope you will too. Pa's hired him to help out with roundup while his arm gets better."

Roundup, Slim thought. Last year they'd tallied a bit over 1500 cattle of all ages and genders, branding a total of 343 calves and sending 152 head—four-year steers and old cows—to market. Allowing for normal die-off and an eighty per cent birth rate, they should count close to 1600 this year, which, since "small" ranchers were generally held to be those running between 100 and 2000, put them close to the top of their class. If the market held steady—and prices had gone up every year since '65—they might realize $4000 or better for the year. And then there'd be his share of the rewards. Bud Carlin alone had been worth $2500 in bounties from sundry outraged victims, and most of his men had had multiple prices on them as well; Mort figured the dozen special deputies would be splitting up pretty close to $100,000. Jonesy can have his piano this year, for sure, Slim told himself contentedly, and his icebox too. We can run pipe into the kitchen and put in a counter pump and a sink. We can take a trip to Cheyenne or Denver and pick out more books, have 'em shipped up by freight. We can look for a couple of good stallions, another bull or two, maybe start buyin' up some more land. Maybe take on one permanent hand; with that many cattle, besides the horses and the stage work, we'll start to need one. For a moment it occurred to him to wonder what their situation would have been if Pa hadn't survived that tangle with the Reb raiders in '63. Sure thing they wouldn't have been able to go on buying worn-out cattle along the emigrant road, some to keep for breeding stock, some to swap the next year for more of the same, after they'd been brought back to condition; that would have meant their herd would be a lot smaller than it was now. Like as not, too, Ma would have had to sell off a lot of the beef to keep going till Slim could come home and take over. They might even have had to take out a note once Mr. Wilson started his bank, though Wilson was a cowman himself and not likely to make it hard for fellow ranchers even if they weren't on his scale.

He shook his head at his own uncharacteristic fancies. He'd always tended to be a bit more of a worrier than Pa, which was about the only major difference in style between the two of them; what if this or that happens, he'd say, and Pa would grin and reply, well, what if it don't? Even Ma couldn't figure where he got that from. But he'd never before been prone to look back and wonder what might have been. The present reality was enough to keep him thoroughly occupied.

It was too early yet for the flowers, but there was a good smell to the damp night air—fresh new grass, cottonwood buds forming, earth moist with melt, rotting leaves, the faint whiff of skunk far enough off that it only added a tangy counterpoint to the rest. Pa had been right, he reflected; southeast Wyoming was the best country on Earth.

Alamo splashed daintily across Stone Creek (Maybe we could put in a bridge, Slim thought; maybe the stage company would go half the cost if we offered to cover the rest) and started up the shallow rise walling off the square mile or so of valley that was the heart of Sherman Ranch. Slim checked him at the crest and looked down on his home. There were lights still ablaze from the front window and the door pane—well, it was early yet, only about eight—and a trailer of smoke rose from the chimney; Slim sniffed the air—dry pine knots and split oak, it smelled like, Pa's favorite for the fireplace. As he started down the slope he caught a hint of melody—his family was having a Sunday-night sing, something they often did. Give him ten minutes more to get to the barn and another ten to get Alamo stripped down—he could turn the chestnut out in the corral for the night—and he could go in and surprise them and join in. It would be good to be home.

**SR**

Sherman Ranch wasn't a fancy place, Jess had seen early on, but neither was it devoid of all comfort. The chairs in the sitting room might be homemade, with rush seats and simple ladder backs, but they were sturdy and well-crafted and surprisingly comfortable, and two of them were rockers; one was Mary's, and Jess had gotten into the way of using the other, which was apparently kept in reserve for guests and made him think of the old red Boston one his own mother had brought from her girlhood bedroom in East Texas. There was a tufted leather couch, with one end slightly raised to make a headrest, under the front window; Matt liked to stretch out on that in the evening, with his boots off and a pair of buff deerskin slippers on his feet. Andy usually ended up sprawled on the big buffalo robe that covered a good half the floor, and Jonesy tucked himself into the chimney-corner in a tall-backed straight chair that he said was the easiest on his sacroiliac; Jess hadn't quite dared to ask what a sacroiliac was, but it didn't sound good.

He was feeling an unaccustomed sense of comfort, of safety, of rightness, such as he hadn't known in more years than he could well remember. The Shermans knew what he was, but they hadn't turned him out, hadn't even taxed him over it. They seemed willing to accept him for who and what he'd been since they'd known him. They acted almost as if he was just an ordinary drifter who, like any man who spent a lot of time alone on the trail, had of necessity developed his alertness and response time to a degree unusual in town folks, or even people who spent most of their nights within ranchhouse walls, just because he knew he might be faced at almost any time with Indians, or horse thieves, or wild animals.

They hadn't made an issue of his Texan-ness, either, although they were Yanks: there was a framed tintype on the mantelpiece of a light-haired young man—similar enough in feature to Matt that he almost had to be the big brother Andy had talked about—in a blue Union uniform, with the boots and saber of a cavalryman and a second lieutenant's shoulder-straps. Since Jess himself held no ill feelings over the Confederacy's defeat, and disliked overbearing winners almost more than he did bad losers, he appreciated this.

His arm still hurt him a little when he moved it too fast or tried to lift something, but it was improving, and he knew it would do so faster as he exercised it more. He had a job, which would give him not only some time out of the public eye to regain his condition and speed, but a chance, maybe, to show how much he appreciated all they'd done for him—though not to pay them back: he was pretty sure he'd have died, out in that far corner of the ranch, if Andy hadn't found him. Best of all, they treated him less like a guest than like one of the family. Just this morning Mary had given him back the clothes he'd had on the day the Indians jumped him, all laundered and the jacket and shirt and undershirt so neatly darned that you almost couldn't see where the arrow had gone through. He was given a seat at their table at meals, and welcomed into their circle in the evenings just as if he'd always lived here. It was almost like—he hardly dared think it—like having a home again. He hadn't had such treatment from anyone in ten long years, except Doc and Melly Pennybuck, and of course the Bradys at the beginning, before he left Amarillo on his hunt for Frank Bannister.

He scarcely knew what to make of it, or how to react. Why were they being so kind, so accepting? There was no pity in it; he could sense that. It was just a simple, honest affirmation of his worth as a human being, and, he thought, of a genuine liking for him. If he'd been as cynical as he thought he was, he'd have wondered what angle they were playing. He wasn't used to kindness, or to acceptance; he'd been so many times used, or cast off, or betrayed, or simply disappointed in his hopes, that to have the other unsettled—almost frightened—him. Yet even after a decade of hard-learned wariness, he found himself basking in it, like a man whose cold-stiffened muscles loosen and relax under the gentle kiss of the sun.

Tomorrow, he decided, he would ask Jonesy to show him how to rig up the stage horses. Then he could do the changes, maybe with Andy to help, and that would leave Matt free to spend the day shoeing his remuda.

He tried not to think about the fact that the Wind Vane crew had been doing that same job, getting ready for the spring work, when the Bannisters came and his whole world crumbled into ashes.

After Sunday supper—a simple meal of canned-oyster patties, cold smothered chicken, and baked macaroni and cheese, garnished with an assortment of vegetables and relishes and topped off with a spice cake (with stewed rhubarb piled atop each slice as a sauce) and custard pudding—Andy vanished into the big bunkroom at the left front of the house and came out with a guitar. He handed it to Jonesy and looked over at his mother. "Ma?"

"All right," she said with a laugh, "you know where it is," and the boy darted into what Jess supposed was Matt and Mary's room and fetched out another. Matt sat up and swung his long legs over the side of the couch while his wife and his old friend bent over their instruments, adjusting the strings. "What shall we have first?" Mary asked. "Whose turn is it to pick?"

"Mine," said Matt. "How about 'Greenland Whale Fisheries'?"

Mary struck a chord from the strings and began in an almost dirgeful tone:
When the whale gets strike, and the line runs out,
And the whale makes a flunder with its tail,
And the boat capsized and I lost my darlin' man,
No more, no more Greenland for you, brave boys,
No more, no more Greenland for you.

She picked up the tempo, Jonesy's guitar fell in alongside, and his untrained baritone and Andy's clear boy-alto joined in:
'Twas in eighteen hundred and fifty three,
On June the thirteenth day,
That our gallant ship her anchor weighed,
And for Greenland sailed away, brave boys,
For Greenland sailed away.

Then Jonesy took it up in solo voice:
The lookout on the crosstrees stood
With a spyglass in his hand,
"There's a whale, there's a whale, there's a whale-fish," he cried,
"And she blows at every span, brave boys,
She blows at every span."

He played one verse without singing, and Jess, who had seen his share of cow-camp musicians, watched admiringly as his fingers danced over the strings as lightly as those of a man forty years younger. Andy stood alongside his chair, whistling an accompaniment. Then he and his mother added their voices and the singing took up:
Well, we struck that whale and the line played out,
But she gave a flunder with her tail,
And the boat capsized and four men were drowned,
And we never caught that whale, brave boys,
We never caught that whale.

Then Jonesy again:
"Oh, to lose that whale," my captain cried,
"It grieves my heart full sore,
But to lose four of my gallant men,
It grieves me ten times more, brave boys,
It grieves me ten times more."

Andy came in for support, and they sang together:
Oh, Greenland is a dreadful place,
It's a land that's never green,
Where there's ice and snow and the whale-fishes blow,
And daylight's seldom seen, brave boys,
And daylight's seldom seen.

Then a closing chord, and all three repeated the sorrowful opening verse:
When the whale gets strike and the line runs out
And the whale makes a flunder with her tail,

The man and the boy hummed softly under Mary's soaring, grieving voice:
And the boat capsized, and I lost my darlin' man,
No more, no more Greenland for you, brave boys,
No more, no more Greenland for you.

"Ain't never heard that one," Jess observed. He didn't have to ask what a whale was; he'd read about them, and about the men who hunted them, in the illustrated papers, and seen pictures of them too.

"I learned it from a Yankee peddler during the war," Mary said. "Now, let's see—it's Andy's turn next, isn't it?"

The boy thought for a moment, then: " 'The Trees They Grow High,' " he said.

"That one's all yours, Mary," Jonesy told her, and she began delicately picking out a melody on her strings. Her voice was a clear, steady soprano, flexible and true, and she sang:

The trees they grow high, and the leaves they do grow green,
Many's the time my true love I have seen,
Many an hour I've watched him all alone,
He's young but he's daily growin'.

Father, dear Father, you've done me great wrong,
You've married me to a boy who is too young,
I'm twice twelve and he is but fourteen,
He's young but he's daily growin'.

Daughter, dear daughter, I've done you no wrong,
I've married you to a great lord's son,
He'll make a lord for you to wait upon,
He's young but he's daily growin'.

Father, dear Father, if you see fit,
We'll send him to college for one year yet,
I'll tie blue ribbons all around his head,
For to let the maidens know that he's married.

The tempo picked up a bit, the strings thrumming in an almost ominous way:
One day I was lookin' o'er my father's castle wall,
I spied all the boys a-playin' with a ball,
My own true love was the flower of them all,
He's young but he's daily growin'.

And then, quietly, almost in a whisper, she sang:
At the age of fourteen he was a married man,
At the age of fifteen, the father of a son,
At the age of sixteen, his grave had all gone green,
And death had put an end to his growin'.

Silence fell. "That's pretty," said Jess, "but it's kinda sad." Shyly: "Miz Sherman... d'you know 'The Leather-Winged Bat'?"

Andy grinned at his mother, and Matt chuckled. "Best believe she knows it," he said. "I fetched that tune up from Texas myself. It's been Andy's favorite ever since he was old enough to know words."

Mary and Jonesy began picking out the dancing, tinkling melody of a song that had been popular when Jess's pa was a boy, and Andy and his mother sang together:
"I," said the little leather-winged bat,
"I'll tell to you the reason that,
The reason that I fly by night,
Is because I lost my heart's delight."
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Hey-da-lee-di-li-di-lo

"I," said the blackbird sittin' on a chair,
"Once I courted a lady fair,
She grew fickle and turned her back,
And ever since then I dressed in black."
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Hey-da-lee-di-li-di-lo

Without consciously realizing, at first, what he was doing, Jess found himself humming along with the chorus, his boot softly tapping out the rhythm, the rocking chair moving gently in counterpoint to the song.

"I," said the woodpecker sittin' on a fence,
"Once I courted a handsome wench,
She got scary and from me fled,
And ever since then my head's been red."
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Hey-da-lee-di-li-di-lo

Jonesy joined in the singing now, laying down a pattern of chords while Mary's guitar carried the tune.

"I," said the little turtle dove,
"I'll tell you how to win her love,
Court her night and court her day,
Never give her time to say 'O, nay!'"
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Hey-da-lee-di-li-di-lo

"I," said the bluejay and away he flew,
"If I were a young man I'd have two,
If one were faithless and chanced for to go,
I'd have another string for my bow."
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Al-di-dal-di diddle-um-day,
Hey-da-lee-di-li-di-lo

"Thanks," said Jess quietly as the music faded. "Been a long spell since I heard that one. Ma taught it to us. She didn't have no guitar, but Pa used to play the mouth harp."

"It's a while since we've sung it," Mary told him. "We should more often. It's Andy's favorite, just as Matt said."

Jonesy tipped a wink at his two fellow musicians. "One for you, boy," he said to Jess. "You know 'The Fox'?"

Jess pondered. "Don't reckon."

Jonesy nodded to Mary and they both began to play. It was a light, dancing tune, a little like the "Bat," but not quite the same, and Jonesy began:
Oh, the fox went out on a chilly night,
Prayed to the moon to give him light,
For he'd many a mile to go that night,
Before he reached the town-oh,
Town-oh,
Town-oh,
Many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town-oh.

Andy came in on the next verse:
Well, he ran till he came to a great big pen,
Where the ducks and the geese were kept therein,
He said, "A couple of you are gonna grease my chin
Before I leave this town-oh,
Town-oh,
Town-oh,
Couple of you gonna grease my chin
Before I leave this town-oh."

Then Mary took over:
He grabbed the gray goose by the neck,
Threw the ducks across his back,
He didn't mind the quack-quack-quack
And the legs all danglin' down-oh.

Jonesy and Andy joined her for the chorus:
Down-oh,
Down-oh,
He didn't mind the quack-quack-quack
And the legs all danglin' down-oh.

Then Old Mother Slipper-Slopper jumped out of bed,
Out of the window she popped her head,
Cryin', "John! John! The gray goose is gone,
And the fox is on the town-oh!

Jess, beginning to see the pattern now, joined them, a little tentatively:
Town-oh,
Town-oh,
John, John, the gray goose is gone,
And the fox is on the town-oh."

Jonesy took over again:
John he ran to the top of the hill,
Blew his horn both loud and shrill,
Fox he said, "I better flee with my kill,
Or they'll soon be on my trail-oh."

And then all four of them:
Trail-oh,
Trail-oh,
Fox he said, "I better flee with my kill,
Or they'll soon be on my trail-oh."

Again everyone gave way for an instrumental interval, and then Mary and Andy sang:
Well he ran till he came to his cozy den,
There were the little ones, eight, nine, ten,
Cryin', "Daddy, Daddy, better go back again,
'Cause it must be a mighty fine town-oh!

And all four:
Town-oh,
Town-oh,
Daddy, Daddy, better go back again,
'Cause it must be a mighty fine town-oh."

Jonesy took over, slowing the tempo just a bit:
Then the fox sat down with his hungry wife,
And they did very well with both fork and knife,
They never had such a supper in their li-i-i-ife...

Jess grinned at the exaggeration of the word as, with a sudden bright crash of chords, the other two came in:
And the little ones chewed on the bones-oh!

And Jess joined in for the last chorus:
Bones-oh,
Bones-oh,
They never had such a supper in their life,
And the little ones chewed on the bones-oh!

They all dissolved in laughter for no particular reason, even Matt. And that was when the door opened and a tall shape filled the frame of it.

**SR**

Jess came out of the rocker with a lurch and a scramble, the breath hissing out between his teeth as his healing arm, out of years of habit, tensed and dropped to his side, where his gun should be—but it wasn't there. Anyone could understand and forgive a man, especially one who'd been a long time on the trail with no backup, hanging his rig on his bedpost in case of a sudden alarm in the night; but it was customary to remove it before entering another's house, or at least immediately afterward, as proof that he wasn't looking for anyone. For an instant something almost like panic clawed at his chest as he saw the newcomer fall into a fighting stance, his own hand sweeping down to the sixgun on his hip. Then he heard Andy's joyful shout—"Slim!"—and saw Matt get to his feet and move smoothly in between the two of them, his hand out in welcome. And he realized this was the man in the picture, the one wearing the Yankee uniform, Andy's big brother, Matt's older son. Heart pounding as he understood what he'd been about to do—what he would have done, if his Colt had been at hand—he forced himself to relax, to hook his thumb through his waistband and stand at ease while he watched the reunion. The rancher and his son were just about of a height and size; their eyes were the same clear, light blue, their features and complexions alike. The son had sleek sandy-blond hair and there was a fine scar on his left cheek, but otherwise they might almost have been twins.

"We weren't figurin' on seein' you so soon," Matt was saying as he shook hands, then gave way to his wife, who had set her guitar aside, to put her arms around her elder offspring. "If Doc thought you were ready to go home, why didn't he send you back with us yesterday?"

"He doesn't know I've left," the younger man answered. "I was tired of bein' a patient. Carrie and Mrs. Mortimer mean well, I guess, and I've got no fault to find with their cookin', but it was time for me to go. You said you wanted to start branding in a couple of days, I figured you'd be needin' help with the horses first."

Andy joined his mother, followed a moment later by Jonesy, who shook hands with the young man in his turn. Jess looked on with a sense of sadness and envy. What must it be like, to know there were people in the world who'd be this happy to see you? He'd had the same thing himself, once, but it had been so long, he'd almost forgotten; when he recalled it at all, it was the way you might remember a vivid long-ago dream, with the sense that it had never been really real.

"Close the door, Slim," Mary said suddenly, "that air's getting crisp."

"Sorry, Ma." Her son moved out of the doorway, shutting the panel behind him with one hand and sweeping off his light-brown hat with the other. He shot an unreadable look at Jess, who felt a familiar sinking in his chest.

"This is Jess Harper, son," Matt said. "We told you about him. Jess, this is my son Slim."

"Howdy," Jess offered briefly, and held out his hand. Slim Sherman hesitated just the barest instant before accepting it. Should'a' reckoned on it, Jess told himself. It ain't gonna work. He don't trust me, and he won't like it the way his folks've been to me. Maybe I best just tell Matt I've changed my mind. Westerners didn't have time to consider a man: they had to judge him quickly, by his looks and actions, simply because they couldn't be sure when they might be called on to face some threat together, or (given the deep respect accorded a man's privacy) whether and when he might turn out to be a threat to them. Getting up like that, going for a gun that wasn't there... it wouldn't have been a way to make a good impression on a peaceable rancher—or, for that matter, a man recently off a stint as a special deputy.

"Have you had anything to eat, Slim?" Mary asked—second nature for any Westerner suddenly faced with a newcomer to the house, known or otherwise.

"Sunday dinner with the Mortimers and their boarders," Slim replied, reaching down to loosen the tiedown string of his holster, then hanging it on the rack by the door alongside his father's and putting his jacket and hat with it.

"But that was hours ago," Mary objected—which was true, two o'clock being the traditional hour for that meal; it was when Jess and the family had eaten theirs. "I'll warm something up for you." With a swish of her skirt she vanished through the archway into the kitchen.

Andy, having given his big brother a chance to get his "outside gear" off, had slipped an arm around his waist and was leaning companionably against him, while Slim's—his left—draped itself casually around Andy's slender shoulders; Jess noted that they fit well together, the slight, dark-eyed boy and the solid-built blond. Don't look a thing alike, he thought, but you can tell there's blood there, and more'n that too. Like what I had with Johnny. Feeling suddenly at loose ends, he withdrew and leaned against the mantelpiece, wordlessly offering the rocker to the man it would one day belong to.

Matt, observing the silent byplay, pulled a chair away from the dining table and turned it to face the seating group. "Sit down, son," he said, and for a moment his eyes met Jess's, making it clear that the invitation was meant for him as well.

"No, you all got family catchin' up to do," Jess told him. "And I'm feelin' kinda tired anyhow. I reckon I'll turn in." He looked over at Andy, who was suddenly frowning in puzzlement as he picked up on the wordless messages winging to and fro about the room. " 'Night, Tiger. Sleep well."

" 'Night, Jess."

He paused in the kitchen archway to wish Mary the same, then slipped quietly into the little bedroom and shut the door softly. He stood in the middle of the floor, in the square of moonlight cast by the window, and felt himself trembling. Should'a' known, he told himself bitterly. This kind of life... it ain't for me no more'n it was when I was thinkin' on it on the trail, and there ain't no point wantin' it, 'cause I won't be gettin' it.

/Don't you reckon you still got a right to want it?/ something insisted insidiously from out of the depths of his mind. //You know you got cheated of it by what the Bannisters done. You might'a' not had much, but you had that, and you always knew what a great thing it was. You know even better, now that you ain't got it./

This is their home, their life, their family. I ain't got no place in it.

/You could have.../

No! You shut up! I ain't gonna listen to you!

Ain't gonna break my heart another time...

**SR**

After breakfast the next morning, at Jess's request, Jonesy and Andy took him out in the yard to demonstrate the workings of the heavy Hill Brothers "fast-hitch" coach harness. Matt saddled up his black gelding Bowie and rode out into the pasture to bring in the remuda he'd left there overnight and fetch them in to have their feet seen to. The first stage came in on schedule, with Mose on the box again, and Jess was introduced. Jess was courteous but cautious, as if the old man's notable exuberance overwhelmed him; Mose for his part clearly knew or guessed who he was dealing with, but unlike Slim he wasn't standoffish. He had known Matt Sherman for a lot of years, ever since Matt and his family had first come into this territory; he had watched them build their place, watched them work and struggle, and though he wasn't a cattleman himself, he knew that they were now coming to a point where they were beginning to turn the corner and would need another man, a dependable permanent hand, to help out as their herd grew. He had spent more than forty-five years on the frontier in one capacity or another, twenty-eight of them in this part of it, nineteen of those driving for various lines and dealing with practically every human type there was, and he had an insight into character that nearly equalled Mary Sherman's. And, since his job gave him a perfect opportunity to pick up gossip, he had a very firm idea of Jess's reputation, just as Jonesy did. That boy would be good for them, he thought, watching over his coffee cup as Jess and Andy switched out the teams, the lean young Texan listening and watching and nodding, patiently attentive, as Andy demonstrated on live models just how it was done; working a bit slowly, because the weight of the harness pulled at his injured arm, but carefully and conscientiously. Good for himself too, if he'd take what they have to offer.

With his brother occupied helping Jess, Slim had been impressed into a brief turn at kitchen work: the stage was full today, six passengers, and Mary couldn't keep up with all of them by herself. As they trooped out satisfied, thanking her for the good food and coffee, and began climbing back on board, he looked across the yard at Jess and Andy, holding the leaders' heads while Mose got up and settled onto his seat, and said quietly, "You should have told me, Ma."

Mary didn't have to ask what he thought she should have told him. He was her son, her firstborn; she knew him better than she knew anyone else alive, except perhaps for his father and brother. "Would it have made any difference if I had?"

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe if I'd known, I wouldn't have come in like that."

"But if you'd known, you'd have mistrusted him before you ever saw him."

"Wouldn't I have had some cause?" he retorted. "You saw how he was. You know what he is—don't you? You and Pa both. A man like that... he could bring a lot of trouble here, even if he didn't mean to. And you can see how Andy's takin' to him. What happens when he begins to see what Harper really is?"

"Andy has the same instincts I do," she reminded him. "Always has had, ever since he was just beginning to stagger around on his own. He sees there's more to Jess than his reputation, even if he can't explain what he knows or how he knows it. Slim," she added, her tone changing just a bit, "you know how many people have left bad pasts at the Missouri towns, and gone on to make good new lives for themselves. Why, I'd be willing to guess that a quarter of the people out West today have something along their back trails that won't bear close scrutiny, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad; it hasn't kept hundreds, maybe thousands, of them from becoming honest, valued members of their communities. Now I grant you, Jess probably hasn't been east of the Missouri in his life, unless he fought in the war, but doesn't he deserve the same courtesy we give those people, the same chance to make a change?"

"How do you know he wants to?" Slim demanded.

"I know," she said calmly. And then: "Try to think, son—what if you'd made the same kind of misstep he must have, sometime? What if you decided that you were tired of being what you'd become, and wanted to make a change? Wouldn't you hope that the people you went to—the people you chose to help you—would accept that wish at face value? All of them?"

"He didn't choose us," Slim pointed out. "His horse brought him, from what I understand. And maybe he's just stayin' for now because he knows he's not up to facin' anyone else with a gun, not yet. I give him points for wantin' to earn his keep, that I'll admit. But I can't trust him, Ma. You all mean too much to me. I don't like to think of you gettin' caught in the crossfire if his past shows up here some day."

The stage had scarcely pulled out when a cloud of dust and a rising mutter of hoofbeats heralded the return of Matt and the remuda. "Jess, you get the corral gate," Jonesy ordered. "I'll open the pasture one. Andy, stand between us and wave back any that try to turn toward the house."

The boy and the Texan hurried to obey. Over the crest of the ridge the horses came streaming, more than two dozen of them, not the almost-pure Spanish horses of North Texas—under fourteen hands, 600 pounds or a trifle better, with brains, stamina, and a susceptibility to gentling in good hands, sometimes passing for Arabian in looks—but the newer mustang-quarter crosses, fifteen hands or so, around 875 pounds, speedy, intelligent, agile, with stamina and "cow sense," in every color of the equine rainbow, from bay and black through buckskin, roan, and even one palomino. Jess swung the gate back, perching on the cross-rail between it and the corral fence, and watched them pour past him. He'd always had an eye for a good horse—Pa, he recalled, had said more than once that there was Irish blood in the Harper line, way back, and that the Irish were known for being judges of "good whiskey, fine horses, and fair women;" "An Irishman always knows a thoroughbred, horse or human, when he sees it," he'd say. A hint of an appreciative smile touched Jess's lips as the horses thundered into the pen; he could hear Andy yelping warningly at the bunch-quitters—"Yah! Yah! Get back there!" Then the boy raced over to join him on the tails of the last ponies, and together they pushed the gate shut and dropped the bar. The bunch circled, whinnying and snorting, their pace gradually slowing as they realized their situation. Matt brought Bowie to a halt beside the gatepost, swung down, whipped the reins around the corral rail, and came to stand with them. "Well?" he asked Jess, grinning through the dust and sweat on his face. "What do you think?"

"Fine-lookin' stock," Jess answered honestly. "What blood?"

"They're out of mustang mares off the mountain, mostly," the man told him, "but by good Steeldust studs—one I fetched out here when we first came, cost me $250 unbroke in St. Louis, and the other I got as a colt just after the war, went down to Denver for him—one-eighty with papers. Slim's got some reward money comin' from his deputy stint; we had a talk after you went to bed last night—thinkin' we might look around for a Thoroughbred. I've heard the half-breds make good stock horses."

"They do," Jess agreed. "Seen 'em down East Texas. They got plenty of spirit, pretty fair speed, good bone and stamina, and they can take to range life. Like to be big, too, bigger'n these—sixteen hands and up, 1150 pounds; give 'em a stout rope and they can bust a full-size bull. That's the ones with range dams. Army likes 'em for remounts, though they go for Morgan and quarter blood on th'other side. Could do way worse." He hesitated, his eyes on the bunch, trying to decide how to say what he felt he must. Abruptly: "I'm thinkin' maybe I should go. I... kinda had an errand I meant to do, before I run into them Sioux; I oughtta get on with it."

Matt looked at him, his gaze at once mild and shrewd. "Now, what kind of talk is that? Didn't we have a deal that you'd work roundup?"

Jess's eyes slid away from him; a nerve twitched in his cheek, one of the involuntary tics he'd developed soon after the fire. "I reckon. Only..." He moved his good hand in a vague gesture.

"Now listen, boy," Matt began. "I can't afford to lose you just now. I hired another man on Saturday, and he'll be comin' out tomorrow evening, but if you go we'll have an odd number, which never works right when you're handlin' cattle. I'd have to use up half a day or better tryin' to hunt up somebody to replace you, and likely not find him in the end—by this time everybody who was lookin' for work has already found it. Who'd take over for you? Jonesy sure can't, and Andy just don't have the skills or the heft yet; he can help hold a bunch if he's needed, and he's turnin' out a fair hand with a rope, his brother's been teachin' him, but he'll need another year or so before he makes a hand. We had an agreement, you and me, and we shook hands on it. I took you for a man of your word—a man of honor, bein' a Texan." Jess looked up sharply, his eyes alight. "And besides, given your line of work, headin' out with an arm that don't work a hundred per cent right isn't a lot different from suicide."

That stopped him. He knew, all too well, how true the assertion was. If it hadn't been for Bannister, maybe he wouldn't have cared. But he'd made a promise to his pa and the littl'uns, and he meant to keep that promise if it took him the rest of his days. I'll see Frank Bannister dead, he'd said. I'll kill him myself if I can, or put him in the way of a noose if I can't, but either way he'll pay for you.

He sighed resignedly, knowing that on some level he'd never really believed Matt would let him go, and knowing he could no more walk away from a cattleman who needed his help for roundup than he'd ever been able to walk away from beleaguered folk who needed his skill with a gun. "I reckon," he said again, quietly. "All right. I'll stick."

"Good," said Matt, not making a big thing out of it. "Now, I got some youngsters in this bunch that need startin'. Ten, fifteen maybe. Don't know as we'll have time to begin before the cow-work starts—would have if Slim hadn't gotten himself deputized, but that's how she runs sometimes. How are you with youngsters?"

Jess grinned briefly. "Human, or horse?"

Matt slapped his good shoulder lightly. "I can see how you are with the two-legged kind, right, Andy?"

"Right, Pa." Andy, who'd been listening to the earlier exchange with a worried look, had relaxed now, knowing Jess wasn't going; he grinned up at the young Texan who was already becoming a friend.

"Well," Jess replied thoughtfully, "I ain't one to boast, but I told you once before—I was taught breakin' by a halfbreed boss wrangler, and his ma was a Comanche; you'll have heard about them." Jack Henry Milburn had begun teaching him the slow Indian way of breaking while he was still nothing but a cook's louse and general chore boy, and his father had had him breaking cowponies when he was just a squirt ten years old, a means, Pa had held, of building character, self-reliance, and self-respect. "It was the saving of me when I was your age, boy," he'd say. With his scouting skills, this knowledge was still Jess's primary fallback for when he wearied of the gun trade, as he did regularly.

"I've heard," was all Matt said. "We get the beef tallied up, you can start in. Now, Andy, you and Jess see to the teams, and Slim can give me a hand with the shoein'."

**SR**

The other new hand Matt had hired was a kid of nineteen or so, who went by the name of Try—a good name, Jess thought, whether it was his own or not. He was probably out of the Midwestern farm country, since he rode a Morgan saddle—horned and double-cinched like a Western one, but lighter weight, without the big skirts—and his hat was flop-brimmed in the Southern style, its once white felt darkened to the color of dried mud by sun, wind, and dust. After supper Tuesday night, which Try shared with the family, he and Jess and Slim leaned over a map of the Sherman holdings spread out on the dining table while Andy peeped in between his father's and brother's arms, and Matt showed his hired hands how he planned to work the gather. Jess had spent most of his career on big spreads, open range, or both, and was accustomed to roundups that covered from 1400 to 67,200 square miles, with most in large districts clocking in around 4000 and taking seven or eight weeks for two or three hundred cowboys to adequately cover, the biggest ones employing as many as a thousand. That was springtime, of course: cattle strayed more in winter, and so took longer to straighten out afterward.

He was surprised to discover that the Shermans effectively took part in two: one within the boundaries of Sherman Ranch itself, whose low ranges were mostly fenced around the perimeter, and the other, the big formal co-operative one, which started at about the same time but took longer because it covered the entire southern half of the Laramie Basin (the northern, or "upper," half had its own, which was done simultaneously and was dominated by two or three large cowmen, where the "lower" part was mostly small and middling ones). "Mostly, we'll send a rep to that one, and one of us will go in person in the fall, so we've got an in when the time comes to choose the crew that drives the beef to Cheyenne," Matt explained. "Fence is a big help, but it can fail, especially in winter, and stock can stray." He showed Jess and Try how his range was laid out, the north half with its hills and ridges separated by pine groves and valleys, the south on the far side of Home Creek, terraces of level plain, interlaced with hollows, brush-filled draws, and hills with steep-cut south-facing banks. "It can make for rough ridin'," he admitted, "and it's full of places where cows can hide, but it's the best winter range I ever saw; that's one reason I settled here." Each day the little crew—four men and Andy, joined at midday by Jonesy, who would come out with the buckboard and a load of grub for their dinner—would work a "quarter" of the ranch, five or six square miles; their goal was to get the job done by Saturday night. Similar gatherings took place on all the other small spreads, many of which, as in the valleys of western Montana, were wholly or partly fenced: with trees everywhere on the mountains, and poles in ample supply, quite a few men coming in had quickly enclosed their acres, if only around the edges; one such enclosure was measured at thirty square miles, or about twenty-two miles around its perimeter.

Matt demonstrated where each man would ride, working inward from the fence line and sweeping the cattle before him, making for a central point where dinner would be eaten and the branding would be done. They would leave early, to be ready to start as soon as the sun was properly up, and Andy would follow after them, more slowly, with the remuda, and be waiting at this spot when they arrived. Jess figured each man would have around a thousand acres of range to cover, and at the outer edges of it he'd have to do a lot of weaving back and forth, scaring the cattle up out of their hidey-holes. It would take a tough horse with good legs and plenty of wind, he reckoned.

And so it did. They ate breakfast by lamplight, and the four men were saddled up and on the way before the sun was even up. Matt and Slim, who knew their own stock best, had made sure, when they cut strings to Jess and Try, that each had a couple of just such horses and knew them at sight, so they could pick them out even in that uncertain light. Since "circle" horses were of two main kinds—the "colts," or those just broken to ride and not yet trained to more intricate kinds of work, and the veterans, not trained cowponies but good tough "drifters." some of them spoiled or cold-jawed, some with little interest in handling cattle but able to cover country well, others showing a real aptitude for the job—they were likely to be, in range parlance, "snaky," and took some time to settle down, so the men started off at a trot and held to it till they reached their assigned starting points, then stopped long enough to have a smoke, check cinches, and straighten saddle blankets before they began. That also gave the light time to improve enough that they could see where they were going.

There were, as a general thing, two styles of making a gather. The most practical was to divide the range into subdivisions represented by the various parts of the drainage system, so each day's work usually encompassed the watershed of a particular creek, with riders being dropped off in pairs or small groups every two miles or so around its outer edge to comb each of the smaller laterals down toward the main channel. Sometimes the party remained intact till it reached the head of the divide, whence they were "scattered," or turned off. In other cases the men would be sent fanning out in all directions from a central point, turning back after an agreed-upon distance and herding before them all cattle they could find; as they rode, they wove back and forth, creating a gradually tightening "cowproof net," sometimes covering as much as seventy miles in a day (although on a straight line it would have been considerably less), often over rough, rocky terrain, through creekbeds and down steep embankments. On the open range, circles ran from ten to forty miles across and, depending on the season and the character of the ground and the grazing, could yield from 1500 to 10,000 cattle in a day. Matt's method was a kind of hybrid of the two, and involved considerably less head, owing chiefly to the fact that his range was enclosed; the object was to move inward from the edges, pushing the cattle toward the selected ground, but because of the shape of the Shermans' holdings and the character of the ground, this entailed a good deal of zigzagging, especially in the earlier stages.

Jess had chosen a ginger gelding with the long legs and easy gait of a distance horse, the deep bottom that indicated the ability to lope all day if called on, wide nostrils to gather wind on a long run, and long, full, smoothly muscled forequarters. He started from the south line, where he found the land high and sloping inward—a good thing, since no horse could run up steep slopes—and set out northwesterly, knowing from last night that Try would be somewhere off to his left, Matt to his right, and Slim directly opposite him.

Draws, brush, and coulees shed cattle before him as he began his advance. A cow with a big, husky, friskily independent calf lurched to her feet from a nighttime rest among some hackberry scrub and looked wonderingly at the disturbance streaming by the spot. Jess gave the ginger horse a touch with his spurs and galloped toward her, shouting and waving his hat. "G'wan, you!" he hollered. "Git goin'!"

The cow stood a moment undecided, debating between the urgings of experience and her own wishes and the pugnacious counselling of her indignant offspring, which, Jess could see, was last year's, branded and earmarked; this particular cow must have been one of those—you could reckon on two out of every ten—that either hadn't met up with a bull, hadn't caught if she had, or had lost her calf at birth or soon after, and her well-grown infant had stuck with her out of habit. Deciding on experience, she wheeled and moved away; the calf followed, protesting with heel-kicks and a defiant erectness of tail. "The devil you say," Jess told it with a grin. "You're big enough to be out on your own, you overgrown baby!"

Out of a brush-clump popped a bunch of two-year-olds who'd probably formed a mutual-defense society against predators over the winter, heads up, curious and mildly frightened. Like the cow, they stood, uncertain and defiant, till Jess was nearly on them; then his sudden whoop sent them away with a whirl, heading down the valley. He let them go, knowing they'd continue to travel unless crowded overmuch. As he advanced, and the morning aged, he began finding more and more cattle which had emerged from their nighttime resting spots and begun to graze, and while he still frequently had to "round in" isolated beasts or small groups and urge them in with the driven herd he was forming, most animals joined it voluntarily; they'd be feeding quietly, hear or scent the approaching procession, gaze inquisitively at it for a moment, and then, obedient to the instinct of gregariousness which rules so many herbivores, trot across country and fall into line. In short order the outpouring of cattle from winter cover had put a respectable number in front of him, and as others were routed they went forward more willingly. Occasionally one, more spirited than its fellows, would wheel around and try for liberty, but always Jess and his pony were in close pursuit, the ginger's speedy dash heading the delinquent and turning it back. Always except once: a five-year-old steer, doubtless missed in last year's market gather (for most steers were sold at four, unless they were longhorns, and these, he'd seen from the first, were good mixbreeds, the product of crosses between Texas and Midwest stock), crusty and sullen, with a scarred hide that bore witness to a belligerent spirit. He planted himself on rigid legs, lowered his horns, and without even a grunt of warning charged straight for the rider.

Jess laughed softly and twitched his mount aside, knowing that a charging bull or a steer invariably shuts its eyes before it goes. The steer didn't need branding, and Jess would have let him go, but knew that to do so would have a bad effect on the rest of his little herd, some of which had turned to see how the affair would resolve itself before they decided whether or not to duplicate their brother's tactic. He took down his rope, swung it once, twice, and sent it darting up and out; his horse settled back on its hindquarters as the flying loop snared a bovine rear leg; there was a blur of overturning steer, a bellow of rage, surprise, and injured pride, and a resounding thump. Jess rode forward, taking up slack as he went, then suddenly checked again, with a grin, and down went the steer with a second thump. The waverers meanwhile made up their minds, and broke for freedom. Jess, with a yell, drove the dazed and now compliant steer after them, and with a bit of hard riding managed to get them back on course; they might not need to be worked, but Matt would want to know how many of his stock had survived the winter, so it was best to sweep up everything he found—easier to handle in the end, too.

Several weaners shot out of a draw, and he had much ado to bring them into his bunch. A cow, shaggy about the flanks and cruelly thin, lumbered to her feet, spread her legs apart, and moved her low-held head slowly from side to side. Locoed, he thought with pity, and left her alone, and as he rode past saw her shy at a weed swaying in the breeze and go cautiously around it. She would be dead in a week or less, he reckoned out of years of cowboying, and made a mental note to tell Matt to tally her as such.

A sudden bellowing from up ahead sent him shooting forward to the pair of bulls who were pawing streams of dirt into the air as they met head-on in the dust cloud, locking for the fight with broad muscular backs bending under the power of their straining legs. This was no time for such duels, and he broke it up with hat and coiled rope, driving the testy combatants apart; in the rising dust of the drive they quickly lost track of each other and turned their attention to the trail. Cows lowed and calves bawled. Jess kept the pace as easy as he dared, knowing that the female of the species could be safely chased only until she got hot and winded; after that she stood her ground and got emphatically "on the peck."

A rattler coiled swiftly and darted its head at the ginger horse, which reared up with a snort of terror. Jess's gun was out of its holster in a snap, and though the noise of the cattle muffled the shot, a headless splotched body writhed in the dust behind him. His arm protested the move, but he took some satisfaction in his success. Shortly after this a gray streak flashed out of a bit of thick brush, and again Jess brought his Colt up, but this time in vain: the coyote drilled a hole in the air and disappeared as if it had never been. "Maybe that slug'll catch up with you when you stop," Jess told it.

Sooner than he had expected, he came in view of the flat that had been designated as the branding ground. Andy was already there, circling the waiting remuda aboard his tempery palomino Cyclone, and Jonesy and the buckboard were just coming into view down the creekbed. Four small herds met, blended, slowed, and stopped, individual cattle weaving in and out as they searched for familiar grazing partners. Calves went bawling their panicky way in frantic search for lost mothers, butting and worrying their way through the herd, getting rebuffs and impersonal chastisings from disturbed elders. One stood outside the press bawling like a spoiled child (which, in a sense, it was), head and tail both held high. From the herd came an answering call, and a frantic mother shot out of the press to nose the squaller—a cow knows her calf by scent and sound, not sight—whereupon both became instantly silent, contented, and at peace with the turbulent world around them.

Jess checked, locating his roundup mates by height and horse color. The cattle, tired and hungry, were willing enough to stay where they were: Matt had chosen the place precisely because there was grass and water there, good and in plenty. Jess picked the rancher out—he was riding a spotty-rumped blue roan with three white socks—and saw him signalling to Try to keep an eye on the cattle while the rest of them ate. Satisfied, he turned and rode the half-mile from the herd to the campsite, where Jonesy had a small fire started for the coffee.

Three dusty riders—two Shermans and Jess—rode first to the remuda to rope out their best cutting horses, change saddles, and turn their tired circle mounts loose, then pegged the fresh animals and washed up from the water barrel on the buckboard's side before sitting down to eat. The food was cold, but there was plenty of it: thick sandwiches of pickled pork, corned beef, baked ham, roast chicken, apple butter, egg salad, tomato preserves, pink crabapple jelly; cold roast potatoes, canned tomatoes sweetened with sugar and filled out with little squares of bread, corn pudding, sauerkraut, pickled beets, pickled snap beans; two big pies, one apricot, one stewed-raisin, and an apple pudding sprinkled with cinnamon. Washed down with gulps of hot coffee, it restored the inner man quite satisfactorily. The men traded reports of what they'd seen, Jess mentioning the locoed cow; Matt shook his head regretfully and pulled a canvasbound tally book out of his vest pocket to mark her down.

By eleven o'clock all four men had changed mounts and eaten, and the real work of the day—the cutting and branding—began. Andy pushed the remuda closer to the cattle, so that if a man needed a remount he wouldn't have to go all the way back to the firesite to get it. Since the herd was small—Jess estimated 400 or a little less—it required only one man to hold it, one to cut, and two to keep the fire: one flanker to help throw and hold the bigger calves and the young mavericks, one "iron man" to do the actual branding. The dinner break had given the herd time to settle down and the cows and calves separated during the driving the chance to find each other again—a necessary thing in branding calves, for the man doing the roping had to be able to see the mother's burn so he would know how the offspring should be marked. On a fenced range like the Shermans' this was less of an issue than out in the open, but you could always count on finding at least a few stray cows with unbranded youngsters, interlopers who'd come in by way of some break in the fences and given birth on Sherman property, and these had to be found first and worked before they could get separated from their mothers again in the shuffle.

One of the Shermans was always at the fire: being the biggest men in the crew, they were the best suited to help wrestle calves, and as the owners of the stock it made sense to have one of them at hand to keep the tally book. Too many cutters would disturb the cattle needlessly, separate calves from their mothers, and make the herd harder to handle—plus the fact that truly expert cutting horses for them to ride and work with were rare. At frequent intervals the man currently doing the job would go over to the remuda to get a fresh one, for it didn't take them long to tire at the weaving pace they used, and cutting horses were the best of any bunch, not to be ruined. Cow-mothers weren't allowed to approach the branding fire too closely, lest they should make trouble; all that was necessary was for each one's mark to be positively identified so it could be put on her calf. The men changed off regularly, for branding was a sweaty, dusty business, with sweat making rivulets down dust-coated faces, and it was noisy too: the bawling of indignant mothers (who had long since forgotten their own calfhood experience) mingled with the frightened blatting of their infants, red-hot irons sizzled on hides, horns rattled, loops sang. Dust, woodsmoke, and animal odors filled the air. Freshly-earmarked calves usually slung their heads around as they scrambled up, splattering everybody with blood. And every so often a mother would get past the herd-holder and come charging in, and everyone had to drop what he was doing and dodge. Since a cow keeps her eyes open when she charges—which was why a cow on the prod was more feared than any other beef critter—this required waiting, matador-like, until the strategic moment, then throwing a handful of dust into her face and simultaneously jumping or rolling out of her path. The dust tended to prevent her from dodging with a dodging man, and also to discourage her from promptly wheeling and returning to the attack.

The man doing the cutting and roping caught the calves by the heels whenever possible, for in this way they couldn't put up as much fight as they could if roped around the neck. Forefooting, too, was popular and effective: the noose caught the calf by the feet and spilled it in a belly slide. But sometimes a lusty calf could only be necked, and then it usually had to be forced to the ground by tail-twisting or "bulldogging"—catching it in the midst of swift movement, throwing an arm over its head, and twisting its neck. If it was moving fast enough, it could be overbalanced and dropped to the ground. Given the size of the crew, this required that the roper play the header part, keeping his rope taut and the calf immobile, while the man on the ground braced a foot against one of the victim's hind legs and stretched the other out to full length. For a yearling—and there were always some of these that had been missed the previous season; by custom any youngster not following its mother was branded with the mark of the man on whose land it was found—two men were usually needed to throw it, though one could bring a calf down with reasonable ease, especially at this early season when all were still small.

It took about four seconds for a good crew to brand a calf, and allowing time to bring in each and get it flipped, they could handle more than a hundred in an hour. As this was a small bunch, there was no need to hold them together more than a half-day. By midafternoon all the beasts in the morning's gather had been branded and counted, the tally book updated, and everyone headed back to the ranchhouse, leaving the cattle to their own devices; at this season, with the grass getting better every day, they would break up and scatter in bunches ranging from two dozen to a hundred-odd, grazing sometimes up to a mile apart. At the headquarters, the men took turns using the double outdoor shower stall that Slim had built in the side yard after he came home from the war, with a big copper tank on top for a gravity feed, in which the sun warmed the water that had been pumped up from the creek. Dirty, sweaty clothes were hung on the line to air out overnight, and everyone changed into clean ones for supper. Andy turned the horses out in the pasture to roll and graze, stabled Cyclone—if he was penned with other horses he had a way of kicking or biting them or sometimes even breaking out the rails of the corral—and went in to help his mother get supper on the table. Undistracted by her men, Mary had assembled a big meal, and everyone ate with a will. It was, Jess mused, the best of two worlds, though not a style familiar to him: the work got done, quickly and efficiently, but everyone got to eat a good home-cooked meal twice a day and to sleep in a proper bed. If you got to work beef for a livin', he thought, I reckon this is the way to do it.

Then, angrily: Quit it, Harper. You ain't layin' yourself open again. This is just for now, till your arm's healed.

As dusk settled about the buildings, the tired but satisfied men scattered to rest. Jess walked over to the pasture fence, where Traveller had gotten into the habit of coming to the gate a couple of times a day, to have a visit with his only dependable friend. Matt and Slim sat on the porch and watched the dark shape leaning on the bars. "Well," Matt challenged, "what do you think of him now, son? Seems to know his way around cows and ropes, don't he? Fetched in as many head as any of the rest of us, and he don't know our range; that says he understands the way cows think and has an eye for the land. Granted, till that wing of his heals up, we won't get to see what kind of touch he has with a brandin' iron, but he seems to promise good."

"Maybe," Slim agreed in a dubious tone. "But I noticed he took time to clean his gun after he ate. I know he said he fired at a snake and a coyote, and I can believe it—I took a shot at a skunk myself, and had to kill a steer that took a fall and broke its leg; I told you about that. But I didn't clean mine; I still had three rounds in it, so I figured, why bother. What is he, Pa?"

"Mostly what he's run into," Matt replied. "With some help from himself. Like most of us."

"Looks like a murderer to me," Slim muttered.

"Many a rough husk holds a sweet nut. A fine gem may be ill-set, and many a white egg has come from a black hen."

"Maybe," said Slim unwillingly, still thinking of the possibility that trouble might follow a man like Jess close on his heels. And he couldn't help thinking that he'd seen the younger man's face somewhere recently. Could it have been in Mort's poster file, when he was helping dig out all the dodgers on Carlin and his gang, so Mort would know who to contact about the rewards?

Matt wasn't the kind of man who insists on being right all the time. He'd been mistaken about men in his day, and doubtless it would happen again. But Mary hadn't. He'd been depending on her perceptions for most of twenty-eight years of married life, and she'd never led him wrong yet. "Don't look at things with your mind made up, son," he advised. "If you do, it's like a bottle of muddy water, and you can't put fresh in it till you empty the muddy stuff out."

Slim swallowed a sigh. He both respected and liked his father; they'd had some rough times nine years ago, when he'd insisted that he had to enlist for the Union and Matt had tried to turn him from it, but since he'd come home they'd patched it up, and now operated as two equals, grown men and partners, friends as well as father and son. Matt never tried, any more, to deal with his elder offspring by fiat; they might disagree, as they were doing now, but it was always mild and usually settled to the mutual satisfaction of both after some discussion. That didn't mean, though, that Slim was blind to his father's faults. Matt made enemies easily by his bluntness and hot temper—and friends just as easily, for he was honest, brave, and high-principled. He inspired loyalty. He was a man of powerful mind and great force of purpose, which people who didn't like him called pigheadedness. Once convinced, he never had any doubts; doubtless the legacy of a Scot or two somewhere in his ancestral woodpile. He was a fanatic, but he got things done. And if he didn't like you you didn't stay around long, but if he had confidence in you, he would open his heart to you and rally instantly to your defense if you got into difficulties. It seemed that Slim's doubts about Jess Harper qualified under his definition of "difficulties." Slim approved of the older man's loyalty—of course a man should take care of those who worked for him, support them at times of need. But still... what did they really know about this man Harper? True, he'd made it clear, one way and another, what his profession was; at least he'd been that honest. He hadn't tried to pretend he was something else, and for that Slim was grateful. Deception, apparently, was no more in him than it was in Matt, which might be part of why Matt accepted him so completely. Birds of a feather, and all that.

All the same, he told himself, the next time we get a chance to go to town... I think I'll stop by Mort's office.

**SR**

The gather went smoothly and quickly, and by Saturday night Matt's tally book showed eighty-nine calves branded (with four baby bulls left intact to insure the upcoming generation), plus a total count of 420 cows aged two and up (267 of them pregnant), nine bulls, 323 yearlings, 124 two-year-old steers, 121 three's, and 107 four's. "Normal losses," Matt said. "There'll be a few more between now and fall, and a spate of calves still to come, most of 'em probably in the next month or two, but we can guess on how many we'll have for market. I figure sixty-five or so old cows to be culled off—that sound about right to you, son?" he asked Slim.

"I'd say so," Slim agreed, and Jess saw, as he had during the work of the roundup, another of the sides of this man—a hard-working cattleman who knew his business and wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He might'a' noticed that I ain't neither, the Texan thought. If he only wasn't so dead set against me—if I hadn't made that one big blunder the night he got home—maybe there'd be a chance...

It ain't that I'm ashamed of what I am. Life and Bannister didn't give me much choice. It's just... it's... I want... I don't know what I want.

Matt provided Try with a packhorse, a riding string, a couple of branding irons, and a letter of authorization for the roundup boss, and sent him off to join the open-range crew and pick up any Sherman stock that had gotten out through a broken fence, or past a drifted-over one, in the past few months. Mary hadn't been able to go into Laramie for supplies on Saturday: with all her men out on the range, she'd had no one to hitch up the buckboard or offload her purchases, though the clerk at the store would willingly have loaded them on. With this eventuality in mind, she and Jonesy had made up a double shopping list the week before, and there was no need for her to go in—and no point in doing so on a Sunday, since the stores would be closed and the town had, as yet, no church of its own, only a circuit preacher who stopped by every two or three weeks. But because neither she nor Jonesy believed in using alcohol except "for medicinal purposes," Matt and Slim had to do their (generally very moderate) drinking either in secret or at a saloon, and Matt felt that the trend of his tally indicated that they deserved a small celebration. In any case, in town they would perhaps be able to pick up some early word of how other spreads' gathers had gone. So, late in the morning, he and Slim began saddling up for a ride in. "Come on with us, boy," Matt said to Jess. "You had as much part in makin' the tally as we did, and you worked hard. Andy and Jonesy can see to the Sunday coaches."

Jess hesitated. "It's your spread, your party. I ain't askin' to be part of it."

"No, but I am," Matt retorted. "Anyhow, you haven't had a chance to see anything of Laramie up to now. It's no Denver or Cheyenne, but it's not a bad little town. Come on." Slim didn't say anything.

I won't have to stay with 'em, Jess told himself. I can take a table by myself, or go to another saloon. "All right," he agreed. "Gi'me a few minutes to change my shirt."

They rode in as Slim had come out, by the stage road, which was longer but easier of grade. A Sabbath peace enfolded the town as they dropped down through the evergreen belt to the top of Front Street; most citizens were in their own homes or visiting friends and neighbors. But under local ordinance the saloons were free to open from one until five, mostly for the convenience of single men, passing-through drifters, and those married men who simply had to get away from their wives for a few hours. The girls usually didn't bother to come down, and there were no hot meals, but the free lunch was available, along with drink and sociability.

As they came even with Dennison's barn, Slim checked his tall chestnut, Alamo, and spoke to his father. "You go on, Pa, I'll join you in a while. There's somethin' I want to do."

"Go on, if you want to," said Matt, and smiled as the younger man turned his horse off up a lane that led to a double row of houses. "About time, too," he added. "Not healthy for that boy to grieve so long. Been more'n two years since he lost Abby O'Neill and he's scarcely looked at a girl since."

Slightly embarrassed at overhearing something so personal, Jess asked no questions. The two of them rode on till they came to a neatly white-painted saloon filling two or three standard business lots, right about halfway along the street; the sign above its awning read Stockmen's Palace. Inside, despite the name, the décor was simple, almost plain: this was a range club, a place for working ranchers, their foremen and top hands, business owners and professional men to get together and relax, not a place to whoop it up.

At a table in back, almost directly opposite the door, three men in range dress, all more or less of an age, were conferring quietly over tumblers of whiskey, with a bottle of good Old Overholt rye in the center. They all looked up at the slap of the batwings, and one of them stood. "Care to join us, Matt?" he invited.

"Thanks, Joe, don't mind if I do. Come on, boy, meet some of the neighbors," he added to Jess, who trailed after him. Another of the trio got up to get more glasses from the bartender. "This is Joe Shefflin of Two Bar Cross—" that was the man who had spoken— "and Jud Coberley of Broken Box, and his brother Seth—" the one who'd gotten the extra glasses. "This is Jess Harper, fellers; he's been helpin' Slim and me out with roundup, and he's agreed to stay on and do some breakin'."

Jess shook hands all around, murmuring acknowledgment. Shefflin was the oldest of the lot, probably around thirty-five, fair-haired and of average height, a bear's-claw pendant on his watch chain. Jud Coberley was about thirty, taller, a mahogany-redhead with an outdoorsman's deep squint, his shimmering blue silk bandanna threaded through a slide made from a braided leather knot; his brother was two or three years younger and had dark-brown hair and gray-green eyes, and wore a dust-colored hat with a brightly-colored horsehair band and a hand-stitched buckskin tunic. "Glad you stopped in, Matt," Jud said. "We've just been sittin' here wonderin' if we ought to go visit Mort, or ride out to your place first."

Jess remembered that "Mort" was the name of the sheriff here, and felt something prickle along his shoulders and the back of his neck as well-honed instincts woke up. He pulled out a chair next to the one Matt had selected, facing the door, and accepted the drink Seth poured and passed to him. "Here's how," said Shefflin, and tossed his down with a speed that precluded any real enjoyment of it. Jess, remembering Dixie's lessons, sipped more slowly. Something was going on here, something maybe not good, and till he knew what it was, he didn't want to do anything that might impair his thinking.

"Trouble?" Matt guessed.

"That's what we're not plumb sure about," Jud admitted, "and why we been tryin' to make up our minds what to do. You're new in these parts, Jess," he added, "so you might not be able to understand the issue without we give you some background." The Laramie Basin, he explained, was divided for convenience, if not geographically, into two main districts, upper and lower. Up north, where the basin spread out toward the North Platte, were the bigger ranches, the Prescotts, the Wilsons, the two Lake brothers. At this end, except for Cole Rogers's Double Circle, it was mostly small and medium-sized family places: the Bateses, the McCaskeys, the Millers, the Morgans, the Shermans, the Shefflins, the Coberleys, and others, some of them fifteen to twenty years on the ground, besides a score or so of homesteaders trying to make a go of government quarter-section claims—and usually hedging with little bands of cattle. They'd heard of Dancytown (as Laramie had been called in the beginning) and dropped off the Oregon Trail and come through Crow or Horse Creek Passes, or they'd come up from Colorado or west from Nebraska.

The Territorial line, as Jess already knew, lay a little over twenty miles south of Laramie as the crow flew. It was along this that the Coberleys and Shefflin had their ranches, with Double Circle to the west of them. There were four Coberley boys, Jud, Seth, Hiram, and Josh, ranging in age from thirty down to seventeen, and their twenty-year-old sister Ruthenia, who had brought a small herd up from Texas right after the war; they were all partners in the ranch they'd started, and Ruthenia worked the cattle side-by-side with her brothers, riding astride in cast-off men's trousers. Their herd, they estimated, was slightly larger than Matt's now. Jud was married, and had a son four or five years old. Shefflin, whose east boundary rubbed elbows with their west one, had bought a bull and twenty heifers out of the small heritage left him at his father's death. Good luck, hard work, and his savings had built the herd to 520 critters in the ten years since. This, Jess reflected, was close to three times the natural increase for such a number, so he must have swapped bull-calves for heifers, bought stockers when he could get a good deal on them or trade work for them, and probably swept up mavericks and unbranded yearlings too, though Matt gave no hint that the possibility bothered him—most small stockmen weren't above taking a calf or ten from bigger neighbors, especially those owned by absentees or locally unpopular men, if the opportunity presented itself, and even if they didn't, were likely to be sympathetic toward those unable to resist the temptation. Like Jud he was married, and had three young children, a boy and two girls.

All three men, along with the two younger Coberleys, had been taking part in the big open-range roundup while Sherman Ranch was doing its own. This gather generally began near the line, because Colorado cattle often strayed over it and had to be separated from the locals and pushed back down into their own country, and then worked its way north until it met up with the crew coming down from the upper basin; there strays from each half were swapped across, and the crews turned homeward.

From their very first day working the ranges near the line, Shefflin and the Coberleys had been finding strange cattle in numbers—longhorns, but putting on height and weight beyond the Texas norm, as longhorns (and Southern cowhorses too, for that matter) were known to do when transferred to the northern ranges. Apart from the fact that it was unusual for cattle to drift north in winter, these strangers were all steers, which didn't make sense; while young beeves of either sex were far likelier to stray than were older ones who had their range established, these were of all ages up to six or seven. And they all bore the same brand, one that none of the threesome had seen in this country. Jud Coberley took his tally book out of his pocket, flipped to a back page covered with random notes, and drew it for Jess and Matt to see: a figure 10, a letter E, and a rayed sun, all in a line.

The prickle along Jess's back became a chill. "I know that one," he said softly. "It's what they call a rebus, I hear tell. It's Tennison. They're a Frio County outfit, a big one—tallied close to 14,000 head three springs ago, in '67; must'a' sent 1500 to market that year."

"Tennison?" Jud echoed. "Is that old John Sevier Tennison's brand? Him and our pa fought in the War for Independence together."

"What would a Frio County outfit be doin' way up here?" Shefflin demanded. "They got to be nine hundred miles from home on a straight line. Their beef wouldn't wander that far north in winter, so it's got to've been drove."

"It was." Jess's reply was quiet. And he told them about the trail sign he'd found in Nebraska, what he'd pieced together about the outfit making it, and how it had seemed to be making for the neighborhood of Fort Collins. "S'posin' they left some stock behind, 'cause they was in a hurry or the huntin' was too rough, the track I found was just about enough for three years' increase on the tally they had back last I heard," he said. "I reckoned they was movin' house, herd and all. But I kinda had it figured they was meanin' to settle somewheres around Collins."

"That's only about forty miles from the line," Matt noted. "You could push a steer herd that far in less'n two days."

"Yeah," Jess agreed, "I was thinkin' that myself. These Tennison steers you're findin'," he said to Shefflin and the Coberleys, "they been together, or not?"

"Little bunches," said Seth. "Twenty-five, thirty, one or two as big as fifty. My best guess, we found better'n 1200 all told, just us three and Hiram and Josh. And I can't guarantee we was the only ones that come on any." He eyed Jess measuringly. "If like you say the Tennisons were figurin' to relocate, and I can't hardly blame 'em after all that to-do with Davis last year, they'd sure had time enough to get settled on new range before snow hit. If their stock was gonna wander on its own, makes sense it would'a' headed south, or maybe southeast, movin' ahead of the wind or tryin' to get home, or both. Not north."

"They could be followin' the new grass," Matt observed easily. "Beef don't recognize territory lines."

"One way to find out," said Shefflin. "This was just why we talked about comin' to see you, Matt. You and McCaskey are about the biggest and longest-settled cowmen in this part of the basin, except for Cole Rogers, and even he hasn't been here as long as Reed has; all us little fellers look to you when there's trouble."

"We don't know there is any, yet," said Matt. "Fights great and small are inclined to commence as much by accident as design. I've been in more than my share in a long life, and I've learned not to go lookin' for 'em." He glanced toward Jess, whose lips had tightened down to a thin line. "Tell you what you do, you boys. You go on back down, and tomorrow Jess and Slim and me'll come meet you at Joe's place. You show us where you been findin' these beef, and we'll see can we figure how they got there."

I got a notion I know, Jess thought, and I reckon you do too. But you're the one payin' my wages, so I'll play it your way for now.

Suddenly the idea of celebrating the Shermans' good gather seemed to sour in their mouths. After a little more discussion, Matt's plan was agreed to, and the three lineside cattlemen finished off their drinks and trooped out to find their horses. Matt and Jess stayed on, not talking much, waiting for Slim, who arrived about an hour later. He had a look on his face that Jess wasn't sure he liked, though he couldn't quite interpret it. Before he could speak, his father said, "Sit down, son, and have a drink. Joe Shefflin and two of the Coberleys were just here, and what they had to say don't promise good."

Frowning in puzzlement, Slim took a chair, accepted the glass of rye Matt poured for him, and listened as the situation was laid out for him. Jess saw his expression shift and knew that he understood, as surely as Matt did, what this might mean; the news seemed to distract him from whatever he'd had on his mind when he came in. "I think you're right, Pa," he said when Matt had finished. "We need to be sure of our ground before we start makin' any kind of move, or suggestin' that anybody else do it. Tomorrow, you said? Good. No point lettin' this develop any more momentum than it's got already."

Matt nodded. "Let's get on home, then. And, boys—nothin' of this to Mary or Andy. If it looks like anything's liable to come out of it, time enough to tell 'em then."

**SR**

The next morning, after breakfast, Jess and the two Sherman men set out from the ranchhouse to keep their appointment. Mary was willing enough to have them out from underfoot, since it was Monday and she and Jonesy had the washing to do; she gladly provided them with generous provisions for a range meal at midday.

Bowie in the middle, Alamo and Traveller to either side, the threesome clip-clopped at a steady trot down the stage road—passing the morning outbound on the way—and through Laramie without a pause, then picked up the same trail that Jess had been taking, only from the other direction, the day he'd tangled with the Sioux war party. After about three and a half hours, Matt turned off by a side road, which presently passed under a high crossbar with the Two Bar Cross brand burned into it. A quarter-mile on, they rode into Joe Shefflin's yard. Jess could see that this was an outfit still getting itself well started—not quite a "poverty spread," as they were sometimes called, but nowhere near as established as the Shermans. There was a twenty-by-eighty foot slab-lumber barn, a slab-rock hogpen built against a corncrib, a clay-chinked coolhouse dug into a well-drained slope behind the house, chickens scratching around and ducks paddling in a large clay-lined tank, whose water, he observed, wasn't muddy like most—spring-fed, he guessed, the spring being probably the reason Shefflin had chosen this spot. An open-faced, tin-roofed lean-to held an anvil and a collection of elementary smithing gear. A saddle-brown pet longhorn—one of those staid, steady characters you find in any bunch of cattle, even the wild-bred kind, that show a disposition to be friendly toward man—shared the corral with a little bald-faced, white-footed buckskin pony, the two of them associating in easy comradeship despite the fact that the steer, which Jess guessed was around three and a half years old, must have weighed 1500 pounds and had a horn-spread of fully three and a half feet from tip to tip. ("That's Pardo," Shefflin explained later, when Jess asked. "His ma bred late and didn't have him till November, and she was young, and he was big, and it took so much out of her that she died. I fetched him in, bawlin' bloody murder, and Judy and Eddie brought him up. I think he thinks he's a horse with horns, since horses are mostly what he's grown up with. Eddie can ride him same as he can his pony. He says one day he means to ride right into Laramie on a bridle-wise steer. It'll be the talk of the town.") The house was a little low cabin, about sixteen by twenty, each log hewn flat on two sides and left rounded on the other two, which made the walls tighter and needed hardly any chinking. The eaves stood no higher than five and a half feet, and three or four little steps led down to the front door, which suggested that the floor had been dug out; the windows were six-pane, horizontally oriented and swinging open on a central pivot. Two Broken Box horses, a dark Appaloosa with tiny white flecks scattered all over it and a light roan with black stockings and tail, were tied to the corral rails, and Jud and Seth were sitting in the sun by the barn, smoking and talking with Joe Shefflin.

Joe's wife Judy insisted that they all come in for midday dinner, though it was likely to be both scant and cold, this being washday. She was eight or nine years younger than her husband, a strawberry blonde with rosy cheeks and clear-blue eyes; she wore a ruffled bright-pink sunbonnet with a cape, and a striped cotton dress that hung only to her shoe-tops and probably had, judging by the hang of the skirt, no more than one or two petticoats underneath. Inside, the house was both clean and quite crammed with furniture—a big black nickel-trimmed range with a warming oven and reservoir, much like the one in the Sherman kitchen; an oval black-oak dining table with a meticulously embroidered cloth and a caster in the center; spindleback chairs set about it, and a high chair near one end, presumably the one where Judy usually sat; a large cupboard, with cabinets up and down, on which a complete service of blue-and-white Cantonware and a few treasured pieces of silver were displayed; a couple of rush-bottomed rocking chairs facing the fireplace; a two-drawer blanket chest set at the foot of a double cottage bed with low head- and footboard. Tucked off in the far back corner was a pair of homemade bunks for the children, one over the other, with a green calico curtain hung on a pole to make a privacy partition. Curtains made from bleached flour sacks embroidered with pretty motifs hung not only at the actual windows, but in places where there were none to create the illusion of more. A banjo hung on the wall beside the fireplace, and on the mantelshelf stood a clock with a little ship rocking on painted waves where most clocks would have a pendulum; behind it was a mirror with little gilt flowers around the edges, set among framed photographs of distant loved ones. Chromos and books, like the vines and flowers and transplanted cottonwood saplings outside, were meant to speak to children and parents alike of places left behind and values carried forward. Potted plants lined the sills. The walls and window wells were whitewashed to counter the tendency all log cabins have to be dark inside. Jess's breath came a little quickly; it was almost too much like the old foreman's house on Wind Vane where he'd passed his first fifteen years.

There were three children: Eddie, the oldest and only boy, a fair-haired youngster of eight or nine, who for two or three years had been riding about the neighborhood on errands or to inspect Joe's water sources, and dressed range-fashion like his father, in a miniature cowboy hat and bench-made half-boots; Jane, a bright-eyed five-year-old in a red-and-blue-plaid linsey-woolsey; and Sally, the baby, kicking and crowing in a cradle made by cutting out one quarter of a barrel and cleating on rockers underneath. Augmenting what Judy could offer them with the food Mary had packed, the guests ate a good dinner, and then the Coberleys tightened their cinches, Joe saddled a yellow chestnut with a cream mane and tail, and they rode out again, taking a range gate out through the south fence of the yard.

They hadn't gone more than a couple of miles from the house before they began seeing Tennison steers. The strangers' tracks crisscrossed with those of the legitimate residents, sometimes underneath, sometimes on top. After a short time it became clear that Jess was the best of the six of them at unravelling complicated trails, and the others hung back and let him work. The trail wound onward as he backtraced it, with others forking off it at intervals, and got broader and bigger as the riders followed it toward its source; you could see that many cattle had been driven onto Shefflin land in a bunch, and scattered as they went. Shod horse tracks showed on either side of the band of cloven cow-prints; as Shefflin had said, this had been a deliberate thing, not a mass drift.

They came to a cairn of whitewashed rocks, with more rocks, set at hundred-yard intervals, leading off from it, right and left. Shefflin checked. "This is my boundary with Broken Box," he said, "and the Territorial line. That's Colorado just the other side."

Jess swung out of his saddle and quartered around, examining the sign. "Big bunch come over here," he said after a minute or two. "My best guess, close on 2500. You can see for yourself how they tromped the grass down on th'other side. Whoever was drivin' 'em kept 'em tight together till they hit this line, then pushed 'em on another two, three miles 'fore they started breakin' the bunch up."

Matt looked serious. "No sign of the men stayin' on this side?"

Jess shook his head. "This many head, you'd want seven riders minimum, plus remounts, and somethin' to carry the camp outfit—ain't no wheel tracks, no chuck wagon. Here's a band of shod horse tracks goin' back over. I make it seven, eight rode, a couple mules, and maybe fifty-sixty loose head."

"Which way'd they go?" asked Seth Coberley.

Jess pointed. "South, straight as a brandin' iron, good range pace, six mile to the hour or better. Ain't makin' no try to hide it, neither. Ridin' off to one side of where the cows went up." He looked up at the Shermans. "They had to know somebody'd follow, soon or late, and it don't look like they care."

Matt traded glances with his son, then with Shefflin and Jud. "How about we just take us a little ramble that way and see where they went," he suggested.

Everyone, by unspoken common consent, took a moment to draw sixguns and check loads, loosen rifles in saddle boots, then get down and make sure of cinches. That done, they walked their horses across the boundary line and started down the riders' trail.

**SR**

They'd left the Wyoming line not quite an hour to their rear when Jess checked, lifting a hand. "Hold it. Smell that?"

"What?" Slim asked. "Wind's at our backs."

"You can't, maybe, but I can," Jess told him. "Wood burnin', sweet and resinous together. Aspen, maybe willow, and pine. Somebody's got a fire, and he don't care if we know it."

"Look there," said Seth suddenly. Several large black objects on wings had abruptly exploded from, as it seemed, the very earth a mile or two ahead.

"Crows," Jess identified them. "And they don't nest on the ground, nor in flocks like that. Gotta be a canyon or a big ravine just ahead. Bet you money that's where that fire's at."

"Let's go slow," Matt directed. "If it's a canyon, we should see some hint of it before we can fall into it."

Inside half a mile they could make out a ragged line of tall weeds, leggy wild rose, lemonade sumac, and the almost-straight-up limbs of wild currant, covered, according to its habit in spring, with masses of red, pink, and nearly-black berries. "That's it," Jess guessed. "The ground breaks right there. Let's leave the horses and go the rest of the way on foot."

They moved on, getting down on all fours as they came up on the growth. The last twenty or thirty feet were covered on their bellies. As Jess had predicted, the earth just the far side of the shrubbery fell abruptly straight down, fifteen or twenty feet, to a grassy canyon floor perhaps a mile across and four or five long. Seventy-odd horses and a couple of mules grazed down toward the foot of it, while at the head a spring burst out of the rocks, ran down into a broad pool, and sank away out of sight within two hundred feet of the rim; near the pool a camp had been set up—a fire, bedrolls and saddles laid out, men lazing about. Jess counted under his breath. "Six. Might be a couple are back up by the line, watchin' to make sure none of the stock drifts back over."

"Pass me your field glasses, son," said Matt, and Jess realized for the first time that Slim had a binocular case slung over his shoulder on a strap. He remembered that the tintype on the mantelpiece at the ranch showed the elder Sherman son in a Union officer's kit; probably the glasses had been part of it—a lot of men kept their equipment as well as their weapons when they were mustered out.

The binoculars moved down the line from Matt, to Shefflin, to Jess, then back across to Slim and the Coberleys. "Mules are carryin' the same brand as the steers we found," Jud observed, "and some of the horses are too, though I can't see all of 'em."

"There's the connection," said Slim. "If their remuda's got that brand, they have to be the outfit that drove the cattle across."

"You ever have any doubts?" Jess couldn't resist the dig, even though he knew it wasn't prudent. Then he sucked in a breath as a rider on a palmetto horse pushed his way through the grazing animals and made for the camp, doubtless to unsaddle and water his mount before turning it loose to feed. Sun flashed off what appeared to be a woven silver-wire band on his hat. "Who's got them glasses?" Jess demanded, his voice suddenly low and harsh. "Pass 'em here, quick."

They were put in his hand and he raised them and focused, holding his breath, as the rider came clearly into view. Straight-backed and arrogant, with an insolent grace, the kind of man who feels confident of what the day will bring. Jess noted the tall, spare figure, the cold face with its mocking smile, and the eyes above all, the kind of eyes that saw everything. He looked like he knew exactly what he was going to do and was always calculating the angles. "Lydacker," Jess hissed.

"Who?" asked Seth Coberley.

Jess swallowed hard to get his voice steady. "Jarrod Lydacker. Don't know if he's known up this way; I never heard of him goin' no further north than Santa Fe, or maybe Taos."

"Somebody you know?" Slim guessed, not in a pleasant tone.

"Not if I can help it," Jess grunted. "Me and him was on opposite sides in a dispute down Texas about three years back. I was ridin' for King Bartlett, Lydacker and Tom Wade for V-Bar."

"Bad blood between you?" Matt guessed quietly.

"Not so much. We won," said Jess. "But I just don't like the way Lydacker operates. We was both workin' for rough outfits, but he had a way of pushin' things a little bit past what's considered fair and proper."

"Is he workin' for Tennison, then?" Jud asked. "What I hear of the old man, he was tough, but he always fought fair. Pa spoke well of him."

"Tennison's dead," Matt observed. "Died soon after the Mex war; I recollect hearin' about it the first spring I ramrodded drives up out of Texas. Not sure what heirs he left."

"Odds on, whoever they was, they're around these parts somewheres, with the breedin' stock, waitin' their time to move in," said Jess. "And if they've hired Lydacker, they ain't like to be carin' how they do it."

"Trouble," Matt rumbled, "just like you figured, Joe."

"So what do we do about it?" That was Slim.

"Nip it in the bud, if we can," his father replied, "but that's gonna take more'n just us six. Let's get back over the line."

**SR**

They left Shefflin and the Coberleys off at Two Bar Cross with instructions to pass the word around—mainly by way of rejoining the roundup crew—to the other small and middling ranchers, to Cole Rogers, and to the homesteaders if they'd listen, that a meeting would be held at Sherman Ranch two evenings hence. Slim didn't object where the others could hear, but once it was just him and Matt and Jess, he spoke up. "I'm with you no matter what, Pa," he said— "you shouldn't have to be told that; but why do we have to do this ourselves? Why not leave it to the law? We could stop in Laramie and have a talk with Mort."

"Mort's got no authority in Colorado, son; you know that," Matt replied. "We may not have badges to back us up, but that means we got no command structure to answer to, no jurisdictional lines we got to keep inside of. Besides, cattlemen are likelier to listen to other cattlemen than to badge-toters. Havin' a badge lay things down to 'em makes 'em feel like they're bein' penned in. And apart from that, there's been no law broken; there's nothin' says you can't drive your own cattle across a boundary if you feel inclined to. Not like rustlin'. No, what we need is to try to defuse this before it can come to shootin', and the best way to do that is to deal face to face with whoever's in charge."

"Tennison's trespassing," Slim argued.

"No, his cattle are," Matt replied. "There's no man of his on our side of the line, or at least not that Jess could find any sign of. Now of course it's true the beef didn't cross over on their own, and any man who can read sign would see that right off. It wouldn't be all that hard, I reckon, to match up some of them tracks with the horses in Lydacker's remuda. But how would you prove who'd been ridin' 'em? Plus which, like I said, there's no law forbiddin' cattle from bein' pushed onto a range. 'Customary range' law provides fines and jail sentences for anyone who drives stock off its customary range without the owner's permission, but nobody's drivin' Wyoming stock off; they're just drivin' more on."

"But they've got to have water," Slim pointed out, "and we were here first." Under the prevailing range doctrine of prior appropration, the man whose stock first drank at a water source—or his heirs—had the right to that source thereafter; he didn't have to share it unless he wanted to, and if he did choose to, he could fence it off at any time.

"That don't always signify," Jess put in. "I don't know how it's been up in these parts, but I been in arguments enough to know. Tennison's one of your big operators, same as Bartlett was. Ain't no cowman that size can buy or lease enough land for his needs as he sees 'em, no matter how much he wants to or how hard he tries, so he just takes it—from the Indians, who raid him back, and from the public domain or his neighbors, fightin' 'em for it."

Matt nodded solemnly. "That's just about what I'm afraid of, boy. That's why we need to show Tennison that we won't be pushed around—that we're onto his little game and we'll push back if he makes us."

**SR**

It was Matt who told Mary how things were shaping up, that night after they'd gone to bed. He took pains to make it clear that there'd been no violence yet and might not be; that John Sevier Tennison had had a good reputation and might well have raised his heirs to the same ethics. "But we've worked hard for what we have—Slim and me and all our neighbors," he said, "and we'll not have outsiders pushin' their way in and usin' our grass and water. If they want to take up the land that's not claimed yet, they'll be welcome. Ours they can keep off of."

Though she'd been raised in the Midwest, Mary had lived in Wyoming long enough—and, before that, heard stories enough brought back from Texas by her trail-driving husband—to know that the question was less about grass than about water. In the semiarid West, there was never quite enough of it for everyone who wanted to graze stock on adjoining lands—and while stock could somehow scramble along when only grass was short, water it had to have, daily for preference, and in quantity: a single horse drank four to twelve gallons a day, depending on the weather and how hard it was working, and a cow-critter could easily consume five at a time. Back East the English doctrine of "riparian rights" gave each landowner along a flowing stream equal rights to the water in it, and no one could take so much that the supply was depleted, but west of the Missouri it was drastically modified in favor of the principle of priority. In its most extreme form, which was often followed in mining regions, this held that the first person to reach a stream and appropriate its water could draw out as much as he could use, even if his ditches and flumes drained it dry. In cow country, control of water gave control of land: filing a claim on any water source, or any part of one, or even establishing a camp on a stream or waterhole, gave the person doing so water rights, controlling all range adjacent to and surrounding the stream, on one or both banks as he preferred, with the usual backstretch running five or ten miles—as far as most breeds of cattle would walk to water—plus another five to fifteen for elbow room, to the ridge that formed the water divide, on the other side of which was another stream and the land of another rancher. He claimed as far up and down as he dared, with fifteen to twenty miles being the norm for larger-scale cattlemen (though smaller ranches, like the Shermans', were often closer together, some separated by as little as a couple of miles), and for each quarter-section he owned, he controlled 1600 acres—two and a half square miles—or more of pasture. He placed a notice in a newspaper listing his brand and fixing the extent of the range he claimed by naming boundary creeks and similar landmarks, recorded his claim and brand in Territorial brand books, and thereafter maintained control of the claim under "customary range" law. If the courts had trouble (and they often did) deciding what was customary range for stock that often wandered afar, many ranchers didn't hesitate to enforce the law themselves. As a natural extension of this principle, they would also fight to keep what they used, and to keep strangers out, because the quantity and quality of grass, as well as of water, in a given section determined the number of cattle it could support.

Wednesday night the lower-Basin ranchowners, leaving their foremen and hands at the roundup camp, began riding into the Sherman yard, where Andy and Jonesy stood ready to help provide water and food for horses, ease their cinches, and tie them along the rails of the corral and the big home pasture across from the house. Inside, Mary had her biggest coffeepot on the stove and cold food laid out, for custom required that any visitor to a house should be offered sustenance. There was Bill Bates with his grandson George, going on nineteen, the oldest of the four grandchildren he and his wife were raising; Old Man Morgan and his sons; the three oldest "Miller boys," Alec (thirty and the head of the family), Gage (twenty-six), and Royce (just turned eighteen); all four of the Coberleys plus sister Ruthenia; the Burkharts, Jim and Alice (whose ranch, like many, was a partnership between husband and wife); Joe Shefflin; shaggy gray-haired Reed McCaskey, who was seventy but didn't look it, with his youngest girl Celie in her usual garb of big bright-colored bandanna, long leather gauntlets, deep-necked blouse and calf-length riding skirt, an old Colt Navy revolver belted at her side and a Winchester in her hand, and his oldest boy Joe, who was coming up sixteen and still looked a bit awkward with the sidearm he'd just started carrying; Cole Rogers of Double Circle; and half a dozen others. Even a few of the homesteaders had accepted the invitation, though they seemed a bit uneasy in a houseful of cattlemen: Wesley McCarroll and eighteen-year-old Franklin, the oldest of his five sons (Jefferson, fourteen, Jackson, twelve, and their twenty-year-old sister Indiana had been left in charge of the place, with their mother, in case the summons turned out to be a trick); some of the Rayners, an extended clan comprising grandparents and great-aunt, three sons with wives and children, and a widowed daughter and her young daughter, who between them had claimed over a full section of land; graying, balding Horace Yale and his fifteen-year-old son William; and Liam Delaney, the head of an Irish family which, somewhat untypically, had joined the march to settle the frontier. He had built a solid-looking log cabin, low but broad-shouldered, with a sliding glass window to one side of the off-centered door, for his wife and three young children, about the age of Joe Shefflin's, and with the typical Irish pugnacity took no nonsense from any beef critter or anyone who ran them, which had gained him a certain amount of respect. He was descended from the Irish tenant farmers brought to America by Sir William Johnson and settled in the Mohawk country of northern New York, which perhaps accounted somewhat for his enterprise. And back in the corner by the fireplace, nursing a cup of coffee, was Jess Harper, because although he neither owned nor claimed land, he'd been a part of the initial investigating party and had knowledge of the other side to contribute.

Matt laid out what they knew, calling on Jud Coberley and Joe Shefflin to explain what had first aroused their suspicions, describing what his party had found on Monday and asking Jess to provide some background about the trail he'd found and about Lydacker. "Now, I'm not sayin' that this is bound to come to trouble," he wound up, "but it seems to me that if Tennison wanted to avoid it, he wouldn't be pushin' his beef onto range other men have claimed. It's true that Joe and the Coberleys don't fence, and they run their stock on open range, but they were there first, which, as you all know, gives them prior right, and any outfit coming into country that's new to it should at least have the courtesy to send someone ahead and inquire about such things. There's still unclaimed land enough in this part of the Basin that if they really want to settle here, we can find room for them, and good neighbors are welcome anywhere. It's just that the way they've begun shoving their cattle in—all steers first, and keepin' their riders south of the line so they can't technically be called on trespassing—don't bode good for whatever they have in mind. Still, rashness is a ladder that might break the climber's neck. Nothin' ought to be done in a hurry except catchin' fleas. Most of us have families, and we all have buildings and stock; we don't want a war, and I say we shouldn't be the ones to start it. It's just barely possible that Tennison has made an honest mistake. I say let's talk first, and decide afterward what's to be done. I say let's send a delegation down into Colorado to talk to this Lydacker and to his boss, and see just how the wind blows. Who's with me?"

A quiet rumble of agreement went around the room, and Reed McCaskey, who was perhaps Matt's closest friend among the local stockmen, spoke up firmly: "Matt's got the right of it, and I'll support him."

"So will I," said Bill Bates.

"We'll go along," agreed Alec Miller.

The homesteaders circulated a look, and Liam Delaney stepped forward as their spokesman. " 'T'is a seldom thing for farmers and cowmen to make common cause," he said, "but 't'is clear that this Tennison is a threat to us all, or could be. What aid we can be to the rest of ye, with only ourselves and our sons and little knowledge of guns, I'm not knowin', but on this ye can count: that we'll not shoot ye in the back whilst ye're facin' this invasion in your front."

Matt eyed Cole Rogers, the most considerable stockman in the district. "You've been pretty quiet, Cole. What's your thinkin' on this?"

Rogers chose his words carefully. "I've got more to lose than the rest of you," he said, "and more men to defend it. But I'm no youngster, and I've seen this kind of thing before, like yourself. I agree that we need to try to negotiate first. But what if Tennison won't go along? You all know we've got a roundup under way. Can we stop it at this point to fight a war?"

"You might not have much choice," came a gravelly baritone growl, and Jess stepped out of his corner. "How it looks to me, there's a reason them Tennison steers got pushed in here when they did. We're dealin' with a cattleman, a big one; he knows about spring roundups—down Texas where he comes from, that's mostly the only kind they got, 'cause you gotta pick out your sellin' stock and get it on the trail right after. He's got to've known his stock'd be spotted and remarked on pretty quick. He ain't tryin' to hide what he's doin', and that says he figures he's got an even chance, anyhow. I'm new in this country, but I hear tell you mostly have two roundups, one spring, one fall. Cows in summer don't stray much; any you got to leave unbranded for a month or two likely won't wander too far off whatever grass they're on just now. Might be Tennison and Lydacker are figurin' on you not bein' too eager to stop work to deal with 'em. But how it looks to me, if you don't, it pretty quick won't matter how many new calves you got, 'cause you'll be shoved right off the land they feed from, and maybe some of you 'll get dead. Beef without land to keep 'em on don't earn nobody money, and money ain't no good to men in their graves."

"But why," asked Bill Bates, "would an outfit the size you're describing—twelve, maybe thirteen thousand head all told—want to take over the entire lower Basin? Seems like more sense they'd go after, say, Cole; he's the biggest stockman down this way, and his holdings would best suit a herd that big."

"I gotta admit, it don't make a lot of sense, lookin' at it with what we know now," Jess admitted. "But if they just wanted that, why'd they push the beef over by way of Shefflin's range? Maybe for all we know they're nothin' but an advance guard; maybe there's more big outfits like 'em comin' up the trail this year. All I know is, I been in a few disputes here and there, and this one don't smell right to me."

Slim listened with a frown, but a low murmur ran quickly through the gathering as the logic of the young Texan's argument was seen. "All right!" Matt cut it off—not loudly, but his presence was such that loudness wasn't needed. "There's no need jumpin' ahead of ourselves here. Let's first find out whether Tennison is willing to talk. Then, if it looks like comin' to shootin', we can meet again and decide on our strategy. But we don't want to waste time. If Jess here guessed right at the size of the drive that passed through Nebraska last year, and if that drive was Tennison, then there's still a good four out of five of their critters somewhere down south of the line, and the longer we wait, the better the chance more of 'em will be pushed over it. Since we're all here now, let's decide on who's to be in our delegation, and send it out first thing tomorrow."

"I think Matt should head it up," declared McCaskey, "since this was his idea to begin with. And I think one of the Coberleys, anyway, should go, because their father was with old John Sevier Tennison in the War for Independence, like Jud told us, and his bein' in the party might make a difference; Tennison's heirs, whoever they are, might balk just a bit at fightin' a family their pa knew, and if they don't, at least Jud's a Texan and knows how they think."

There was a general sentiment for agreement, and Bill Bates added: "I say Reed should go. He's got more years in this part of the country than any of us, if not more cattle."

Again the conclave approved. "And I think," said Matt, "that as a matter of courtesy we should have at least one homesteader with us, a man who can report back to the rest, tell 'em the truth of the situation and have it believed. Liam Delaney, will you join us?"

"I will that," the Irishman agreed promptly, "and grateful of the gesture. 'T'was always I'd thought ye were a man of breedin' and gentility, Matt Sherman."

"Good enough," said Matt. "With my boy Slim, and young Jess here for his knowledge of Lydacker, that's six. Now the rest of you, I think it's best if you stay in town or at your own places for tonight, so it'll be easier for us to get together again afterward. You all have men on the roundup crew who know the work well enough to carry on without you, and Reed's foreman is bossin' things; he doesn't need anyone lookin' over his shoulder."

It was soon decided who would sleep where, and McCaskey invited the other emissaries to pass the night at his place, which was only five miles along the stage road from Shermans'. "We'll meet you at our gate at eight tomorrow morning, Matt."

"That's fine," Matt agreed, and the meeting broke up.

Standing on their little front porch watching as the riders streamed out of the yard, he and Mary automatically slipped their arms around each other's waists, so that from a distance they looked like the single organism their behavior often suggested. "Do you think this can make a difference, Matt?" Mary asked.

"I think no cowman who's had time enough to build up a herd the size Jess found the track of, is likely to be a fool," her husband replied evenly. "It's not like we were dealin' with some youngster who might feel a need to prove he was just as tough as his old man; old J. S. has been dead these twenty years—if his sons don't know their own capacities by now, they never will. And regardless what I said in there, I'd bet that Tennison did send in an advance man or two before he picked this basin to move into; we just didn't notice 'em at the time. He knows we're a checkerboard down here—all sizes of cowmen, farmers, townfolk. Maybe when he sees us standin' united—farmers too—it'll give him pause."

She sighed. "I don't want to sound like a woman, but I can't help it. I've had enough ado to raise two sons out of the ten children we might have had; I don't want to lose them in a land war. What Jess said—was he right?"

"Slim said himself, we know what the boy is, you and me. I misdoubt this is the first, or the second, or the tenth fight he's seen brew. Truth came out when he spoke, and anyone knows nothing can come out of a sack but what's in it."

No attempt had been made to send Andy to bed early, even if he could have gotten to sleep with the sound of argument and debate filling the room just the other side of his door; Sherman Ranch was his home too, and Matt had reasoned that at the age of twelve he had some right to know what he and his family might be facing. He had kept out of sight, in the kitchen corner, throughout the meeting, but had listened closely, and as he helped the guests get their horses ready to go had thought about what he'd heard. Over by the corral he stood with Jess, watching as the last riders jogged off toward the Stone Creek ford. "Jess? Do you really think there'll be trouble?"

Jess took a deep breath before he answered. "I'm hopin' not, Tiger. I'm hopin' your pa's got the right of it, and we can nip it in the bud 'fore it gets too much momentum goin'. Wars is a lot like stampedes. You do all you can to keep 'em from happenin', 'cause of the losses you can have if one gets goin'. But once one does, you can't waste no time doin' what you got to, or you can lose everythin'."

**SR**

When Jess and the Shermans reached McCaskeys' gate the next morning, they found waiting for them not the four riders they'd expected, but five: at her father's flank was Celie, riding a deep liver chestnut with a reddish mane and tail. Slim colored when he saw her. "Don't you think buttin' in on that Carlin thing was enough for one month, Celie?" he demanded. "I don't ask or expect you to sit at home with your hands folded, I've known you long enough to know that's not in your nature, but this could come to shootin', and you won't have cover the way you did in town."

"Pa doesn't think so," said she serenely. "Ruthenia Coberley and I had a talk last night, before she headed home. Jess said there were buggy tracks in that trail he found. Buggy usually means a woman. We think our delegation should have one along. Ma agrees."

Slim looked to his father, who was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Jess wasn't even making an effort to hide his amusement, and Celie's father was grinning the way he often did when his favorite girl was involved; Slim didn't think he'd ever refused her anything. Cheeks flaming, he snorted in disgust and spun Alamo down the road. "Let's go, then," he growled.

They paused by the side of the trail just short of the Colorado line about half-past eleven for coffee and a light feed, then rode on, setting course for the canyon where Lydacker and his fellows had been camped three days earlier. But well before they reached it, they knew that something had changed. A steady noise of cattle—lowing, bellowing, bawling, the click of horn against horn—drifted toward them, and with it the distinctive smell of a large herd. Jess's face settled into a cold fighting mask. "Don't seem we're none too soon," he growled.

"It's no trail herd," said Slim. "Not enough dust."

"Don't mean it ain't a herd fixin' to move," Jess retorted, and loosened his sixgun in its holster.

A rider appeared about half a mile ahead, checked a moment, and came on. The horse wasn't a palmetto—it looked like a pale yellow dun—but silver flashed around the base of the rider's hat crown. "Hold here," ordered Matt, "and let me do the talkin'."

They halted and waited for the dun to come up to them. Jess slowly nudged Traveller out of the pack so his aim wouldn't be blocked by any of his own companions. Matt and Bowie were out in front by six or eight feet; it was clear that he was the leader of the group. The dun's rider—it was Lydacker, as Jess had guessed—pulled up facing him, about ten feet away. "Didn't think we were crossin' anybody's range," he said, "or at least not grazed enough to matter."

"Not yet," said Matt. "We're from the Laramie Basin, just over the line. Like to talk to your boss."

Lydacker seemed to consider this. "Might be my boss wouldn't want to talk to you." His eyes—they were a pale, clear green, not the light blue hue sometimes called "killer's eyes," but neither of the Shermans was fooled—flicked to the side and his lips curved in a sardonic smile. "Howdy, Jess."

"Lydacker." It was bare acknowledgment; no friendship, and little respect.

"Didn't know you were in these parts," said the other.

"Didn't know I had to keep you posted where I was," Jess replied flatly.

"You don't, of course," Lydacker agreed. Then to Matt: "If you're from over the line, you're a little off your range, aren't you?"

"Seems that's our business—unless you're claimin' this one," Matt returned, his voice calm.

A quick spark of glee flashed in Lydacker's eyes and was gone again. "Can't fault your brass, Mister. All right—come along." He turned the dun and led off.

After about three miles they came over a low rise and their guide checked a moment to let them absorb what lay on the other side. It was a shallow valley with a stream down the middle, rising on the south to a low but abrupt line of breaks, and spreading perhaps three miles on either side of the water. Cattle—literally thousands of cattle, more even than had made up the first and biggest trail herd Slim had ever seen, the year he was thirteen and made his maiden journey up the Shawnee Trail—spread out on both banks, not as cattle spread over a bedground, compact and easily managed, but not as they graze when left to their own devices either. Jess spotted the pattern: the style of a crew holding its herd on grass, as was sometimes done outside a trail town to fatten them or wait for a good price. Young calves could be seen dancing about, and on the far bank a couple of big bulls were fighting in bull-style, chiefly a contest of pushing power and agile footwork, plus plenty of grunt. As the party watched, one of them, a spotted brindle, decided he was whipped and took off like a locomotive, at which his fawn-colored rival swung his head in an effort to gouge him in rump or flank, then chased him a hundred yards or so before pulling up with a satisfied snort and a shake of his head.

Lydacker chuckled, then turned his horse and led the way at an angle down the slope, making for a shady cottonwood motte about half a mile upstream from the westernmost fringe of feeding cattle. In among the trees the canvas covers of half a dozen big freight wagons could be made out, slightly discolored as if from a year or so of exposure to weather, and with them, a little off to one side so the crew could more easily settle down around it to eat, a smaller one with the rear-mounted chuck box that marked it as the cook's domain. Upstream again, a mass of horses, in every color of the equine rainbow, fed peaceably; the visitors, except perhaps for Delaney, were long experienced in estimating the numbers of stock, and each of them came to approximately the same conclusion: seven hundred or more. If Jess had guessed right about the size of last year's drive, he figured, it would have required a trail crew of anywhere from thirty-five to eighty men for safety's sake—some were undermanned, some just the opposite—plus the boss, cook, and wranglers, each with a string of as many as fifteen horses, averaging nine on a well-run outfit. Once settled on a range—as it would probably have been over the winter—it could have been held by a dozen or two, depending on the terrain, but with the heavy-work season beginning, there would have to be more: twenty at least, more likely close to seventy. Either way, that cavvy was too big for the size of the crew: Tennison was overmanned, which meant it was expecting to have a need for extra men, like for fighting. Jess was also willing to bet that the men they could have seen, if they'd been bold enough to try to count them, would be one breed of cat, and the ones they wouldn't another; the minimum for a deal like this would be three or four good well-known gunfighters—the kind who charged $100 a month or more—plus six or seven average-tough hardcase riders, but an outfit that overhired for straight cow-work might well binge some on the other kind; Jess had heard of at least one instance in which thirty, mostly Texans, had been hired at a clip. Like Jess himself, most professional gunfighters—and common gunmen too—were farm or ranch boys who'd been handling firearms since they were old enough to lift one, gaining their early practice behind their fathers' barns or corrals and later sharpening their killing instincts and capabilities by experience in buffalo hunting, Indian fighting, cowpunching, soldiering, scouting for the Army, or some combination. But whether because of their reputations—the best of them were always in control and not quarrelsome, but nobody wanted to take unnecessary chances with them—or the fact that, being no longer in the business of nursing beef, they had little left in common with the class from which they had risen, the two groups tended not to have much to do with each other. Moreover, Tennison, knowing that it might have a fight on its hands, might be unwilling to give the other side the opportunity to know just how strong it was, or just who it had on its payroll. There was also the possibility that at least some of them were on dodgers, which meant they'd want to keep out of sight of strangers, at least until they could be sure the strangers weren't lawmen.

Lydacker led on, across the flat toward the trees, past the chuck wagon and into the half-circle formed by the big ones, along with a couple of buckboards and a handsome buggy with a blue top and gold-painted wheels. Here stood a couple of wall tents, such as Army officers used, one about seven feet by seven, the other twelve by fourteen with a fly stretched over the ground in front of its entrance. Twenty feet away a couple of Mexican women were working under a second fly, with a folding field-table and a camp stove under it—obviously an outdoor kitchen—and just to the side of the first a savina horse, light red roan with a pure white belly, was picketed, cinches eased, bridle dangling around its neck as it fed from a heap of fresh grass hay. A young boy, maybe eleven, was throwing practice loops at a pole rammed upright into the ground, and a girl about the same size was watching, with a couple of dogs and a big tabby cat sitting beside her. In front of the tent, under the shade of the fly, stood a dainty little mahogany table with graceful carved legs; pulled up to it was a Louis XV side chair with an oval medallion back, its walnut frame carved only at the crest. A little to the side, still well under the shade of the fly, was a painted iron rocker in a contour model, with button-tufted velvet upholstery. And in the side chair, working over what looked like several big ledger books, was a woman with straight blue-black hair, parted smoothly in the middle and gathered back into a plain knot. She wore a purple corduroy riding habit with a split skirt, a white blouse, a bright yellow scarf furled gaily behind one shoulder, boots with the Lone Star set into their red tops in filigree work; spurs with full Mexican rowels, four inches in diameter, hung off them. A felt riding hat with embroidered flowers on the brim hung down her back by a string. She looked up at the sound of hooves; her eyes were wide-set, smoky gray, and the rounded contours of her high cheeks were still smooth and tight, though the look of experience and competence about her suggested she was no longer young. Jess was aware of Celie McCaskey coming fully alert at her father's side.

"Got some folks here say they'd like to talk to the boss, boss-lady," drawled Lydacker, a mocking light in his eye as he glanced at the delegation.

"Do they, now?" said she. "Thanks, Jarrod. See if you can find Paul and David for me, will you? John Will too, if he's not on guard." She carefully marked her place, wiped her gold-tipped pen and laid it in the little groove in the base of her crystal inkwell. "Get down, gentlemen—and lady," she invited. "Coffee?"

Matt, at least, recovered his aplomb without undue delay. "Thank you, ma'am, we'd be obliged."

"¡Constancia! ¡Café para trece, sin retardo!" the woman called in the direction of the field-kitchen, and with a faintly mocking smile, as her callers dismounted and dropped their reins, "I apologize, I don't have chairs enough for all of you; most of my furniture's packed in the wagons for now. The lady can take my rocker, if she cares to."

"Thanks just the same," said Celie lightly, "but the ground will do me."

"Jarrod's finding my brothers and my son," the woman went on, "so it might be easier to wait for introductions till he brings them. Sit down and refresh yourselves."

The Mexican women brought a big coffeepot, a basket filled with graniteware cups and plates, bread and butter and cheese; they poured and served silently, then discreetly withdrew. The two youngsters watched solemnly from a polite distance, boy and girl alike squatting on their heels cowboy-fashion. After ten minutes or so Lydacker came back, bringing with him two young men, one perhaps thirty, the other in his late twenties, both fairer in coloring than the woman, both with her same smoky-gray eyes and narrow-bridged nose flaring out to disdainful nostrils, the younger carrying his sixgun for a cross-draw (which often indicated a man who fancied himself fast, or thought he might need to be), and a youth around sixteen who, like Joe McCaskey, didn't quite seem fully at ease with his sidearm yet. The younger of the men wore a Philippine shirt and bobtail black jacket with silver buttons and silver-thread embroidery over red broadcloth Spanish-cut trousers—Mexican style—with an American Stetson banded with a beautfully-marked snakeskin; the older a vest of Indian-tanned buckskin over a brown-checked calico shirt, and black leather pants so worn and soft that they'd assumed the contours of his thighs. The youth's fawn-colored trousers were tucked into boots with elaborate scrolls embroidered on the top bands, and though he was much too young to have fought in the war, a Confederate cavalry cap, defiantly garnished with full insignia, rested on hair the color of ripe corn; perhaps it had belonged to his father or one of his uncles.

"Now," said their hostess, "we can begin. I'm Martha Farity. This is my son John Will, and my brothers, Paul and David Tennison. You've met Jarrod, I think."

"Matt Sherman, ma'am, of Sherman Ranch," responded Matt, who hadn't missed the fact that she'd assumed command for herself—and secondarily her son—from the start. "My son Slim... my neighbor Reed McCaskey, Tumblin' R Block, and his daughter Celie... Jud Coberley... Liam Delaney... Jess Harper." David Tennison's eyes sparked briefly at the sound of the last.

"Coberley," Martha Farity repeated thoughtfully. "I remember my father mentioning a man by that name, someone he knew in the War for Independence."

"That was my pa, ma'am," Jud told her, "and I'm pleased yours spoke of him. Might be it'll help this go a bit easier."

"Well, we'll see, won't we?" she replied. "You seem to be the man in charge here, Mr. Sherman. What brings you?"

"We're from the Laramie Basin, ma'am, just over the line into Wyoming," Matt explained. "Our roundup crews have found a fair consideration of longhorn steers with the Tennison brand on 'em roamin' around our land—no cows, no calves, just steers. And from the sign we've found, we don't figure they got there on their own. Now we see a big herd of what looks like mostly breedin' stock, not even five miles from that line, and held up like they're to be pushed on pretty soon. We don't know you well enough to think ill of you, and your pa had a good name in Texas, but we can't help thinkin' it looks a little like you might be plannin' to move in on us."

Again she smiled in that faintly mocking way. "And if I said we were," she responded easily, "what exactly would you—could you—do about it, Mr. Sherman? Jarrod and David spent some time in Laramie over the tail end of winter while our beef was tucked away safe in a box canyon about fifteen miles south of here, though David had to come back sooner. Most of you south-basin stockmen are open-range, or so I hear. In any case, Laramie County is a big place—7,500,000 acres is the figure that was told to me. Some of that has to be available to newcomers."

"Some of it is, ma'am," Matt agreed. "And it's more like 7,680,000, all told. It's been a spell since I had any occasion to look at the county plat books, but I'd say a good thirty per cent of it hasn't been claimed yet. I won't be so unmannerly as to ask how many head you've got, but I can tell you it's entirely possible to support fifty cows to the section in these parts; the snowpack on the mountains to either side of us keeps the streams runnin' most of any year, and the rain clouds hang up on the Laramie Range and dump their loads regular. It's good land—the best for cattle west of Big Muddy, except up in the Dakotas and the Powder Valley."

She nodded. "So Jarrod and David have told me."

"Thirty per cent, did you say, Mr. Sherman?" put in Paul Tennison, and shot a significant look at his sister. "Didn't I say we shouldn't need more than two or three, Martha? If we looked up along the Medicine Bows, say, we could probably find some good canyons for winter range, like the one we just left, and then spread the stock out in the open in the warm weather."

"Or drive 'em up high," added David. "I heard a lot of the Basin ranchers do that."

"Just exactly," Matt agreed. "I can see you've got a feel for this kind of country, young feller, even if you've never lived in it before—and havin' spent some time ramroddin' trail herds up from Texas, I've a good notion you haven't." Back to Martha: "Ma'am, I reckon any man can see how, with the mountains crowdin' you on the left the way they are, it would be sort of natural for you to push your steers more or less straight north. And I reckon, too, it makes sense you'd want to bring your brood stock over slower, maybe brandin' calves as they show up, not bein' quite sure how we'd react to seein' a lot of strange cows with new babies on our range. The grass is greenin' up on the flats, and a good few of us, like your brother says, will be movin' our stock up to the higher ranges as soon as we've finished our brandin'. There'd be room for yours for a while, if you wanted to take some time findin' a permanent place to settle. But you're a cowman's daughter, and you know that first in time means first in right. We won't start trouble, but if it's brought to our door we'll speak our piece, and it'll be a language the other fellow understands."

She pondered that a moment. "First in time," she said presently. "Mr. Sherman, do you know how my pa got started? He came into Texas in '22, with Austin's first settlers. You've been to Texas, you say. You'd know, maybe, that back when it was Mexican, the land laws provided one labor—that's a bit over a quarter-section—to each family engaged in farming, and a sitio, which was twenty-five labores, or about 4428 acres, to each planning to raise stock. Most of Austin's people were planter farmers, but they weren't stupid either, and they called themselves stock-raisers on their applications even if they had no such plans. Pa had. He took his 4400-odd acres and started branding anything with horns that he could find. Came the War for Independence, he was a captain, and since the Republic was broke, it paid its veterans in land grants. His was for 8000 acres. Then, back in Missouri, his father died and left a farm and an interest in some lead mines. Pa took a chance, sold that legacy for what he could get, and went visiting an old Mexican, Don Leandro Ferrera, who was past sixty and wanted to live out what time he had left in San Antonio. He had a Spanish land grant, 23,000 acres. Pa bought it, two dollars an acre, then swapped his original sitio and his war scrip for adjoining land, acre for acre, even up. Fifty-five square miles and a bit.

"Now you think a minute, Mr. Sherman. Don Leandro was first in time, or so the King of Spain said. Before him were the Indians; did the King give any mind to them when he deeded all that land to one of his subjects? Better bet he didn't. Did Mexico, when it got independent of him? You know otherwise. The reason Americans were let into Texas at all was that we were good at fighting Indians, and Mexico needed people like that, to push the Indians out of the way. We came, and we pushed, and when the Mexicans got too big for their britches, we pushed them too, even though they'd been there before us.

"Pa, and later my husband and me, we took that land grant and we built on it. We fought the Indians, who'd been there first, to keep it. When my husband and my brothers went off to the war, I fought the Indians, the weather, bandits, rustlers, and I kept it. Maybe I wasn't 'first in time,' and maybe I only had a right to the land grant that Pa had bought, but I earned it, Mr. Sherman. When the Occupation came in and the Union tried to take it, I fought them too—not with guns, but every other way I had. If it meant I sent my men up the trail, risking everything, to get money to pay the ruinous Yankee land taxes, I did it. If it meant I sent them over the Rio in the winter to pick up more cattle, without bothering to look up their owners beforehand, I did that too. And I outlasted the Occupation, but a time came when I saw I couldn't outlast my own fellow Texans. For the first time in my life, I had to back off. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, leaving the land Pa had fought to earn and the ranch I'd lived on since I was six years old.

"Land belongs to whoever's strong enough to hold it—or to take it. That's what I've spent my life having taught to me, by Pa's actions and my husband's and my own, and by what Edmund Davis made it pretty plain he meant to do. And I'll never again allow someone else to tell me what land I can keep and what I can't.

"I hear some of you have been in the Laramie Basin fifteen years or more. I figure you took the best land you could find, just because you were there first. Do you think that after almost fifty years west of the Big River, the Tennisons are going to accept someone else's leavings? 'First in time,' you said. If anyone was first in time, it was us, the first Texians, and I figure we have the right to pretty much anything we want."

It was all said very calmly, very evenly and reasonably, but there was a blaze of passion in the smoky-gray eyes that belied it. Lydacker had his eye on Jess and Slim, the two youngest, and presumably fastest, of the delegation. Paul Tennison looked torn, David simply accepting. Matt gave it a minute or two, then let his breath out slowly and nodded. "I reckon you've made your thoughts on the matter pretty clear, ma'am. And I'm sorry you feel that way, because it's goin' to mean bad trouble. But just you keep in mind that it wasn't us who asked for it."

"I'm not asking for anything either, Mr. Sherman," Martha retorted. "What I get, I'll earn, good or bad, one way or another. That's how it's been all my life—even the Occupation: I hated them, as a Texan patriot, but I could understand them in a way, because my family made a choice and it turned out to be the wrong one, at least as they saw it. I can understand you too. I can even respect you. I can wish we could be friends. But my first obligation is to myself, my children, my brothers, my crew, my stock. What I have to do so I and they can prosper, I'll do." She rose from her chair. "I think, maybe, we've said all there is to say. I think you'd better go back over the line."

"I reckon so, ma'am." Matt stood too. "Come on, all of you, we've done what we came here for."

**SR**

"That's some lady," said Jess.

"You sound almost like you admire her," Slim snorted.

"I kinda do," Jess admitted. "Not what she's got in mind, but her, the person she is. I'm Texan too, remember. I got some notion what it was like for her." He met the older man's light-blue eyes. "I ain't on her side. I ride for the brand. But I see why she feels the way she does."

"Did she mean it, you figure?" wondered Reed McCaskey. "Celie, what did you think of her? As a woman lookin' at a woman?"

"I think she's just what we saw, Pa. Smart, experienced, not afraid of anything, except failin'. Very cool, thinkin' all the time, and lookin' out for number one above all. And as ruthless as Mary Read and Anne Bonney put together."

"Who was they, Miss Celie?" Jess asked, a bright spark of interest and curiosity flashing through his eyes.

"A couple of female pirates who sailed with Calico Jack Rackham, about a hundred-fifty years back or so," Celie told him. "Managed not to get hung in the end, too, so you might say they won."

"She could too," said Jud Coberley, "if she's anything like her pa was, as my pa spoke of him."

"We'll see," was all Matt said.

**SR**

"So that was Matt Sherman," mused Paul Tennison. "I'd say he fits that old Walker he carries. He sure fits the stories we heard of him, growin' up."

"Didn't you say, David," his sister asked, "that it was Cole Rogers who was the big man at this end of the Basin?"

"He is, as far as stock," the youngest Tennison agreed. "But a man doesn't need a lot of land or cattle to be big in his neighbors' eyes. And you're not likely to find out who is till a real test comes along. Laramie Basin's never faced anything like us, till now. I reckon we know now who the leader is, up there."

Martha nodded. "Matt Sherman."

"It won't do to underestimate his son, either," Lydacker put in. "He didn't have much to say, but sometimes that in itself can tell you something. He was listenin' all the time, and not just to words on the surface. I'd say he's learned somethin' about men, and about leadin' 'em, maybe from his father, maybe some other way."

"What about Harper?" asked David.

"Well, what about him?" Paul retorted.

"He had a name in Texas, for a couple of years right after the war," David pointed out. "How does he fit into this? It can't be that long they've been findin' our beef on their range; it hasn't been more than ten days since we started pushin' 'em over the line. So they can't have hired him a-purpose because they thought there might be trouble with us. He must have been in Wyoming before that."

"Seems to me," Martha mused, "that I've heard he has a way of giving up the gun trade and working straight jobs now and then. Maybe that's what he was doing. Or, just maybe, some rumor went out ahead of us and he beat us in and offered himself to all the Basin cattlemen—it's said he's done that kind of thing, worked for a combine, had them all chip in for his pay. And I've also heard he rides for the brand—which is almost too bad, or I'd be tempted to try to hire him away from them. He's not a planner like Jarrod, but he's smart and tough and experienced, and good with that sixgun too, if his reputation has him right."

"It has," Lydacker agreed. "I butted heads with him once, in San Saba County a few years ago. If he's workin' for you and gets the notion you're in the wrong, he won't betray you, but he'll draw his time and get out. If he thinks you're in the right, dynamite won't shake him loose."

"I remember when I headed up our first drive to Abilene in '65," said David thoughtfully. "I didn't exactly see what happened, but the way I heard it, he was with another herd, and a fellow by the name of Brevard Cottrell got in a quarrel with a friend of his, Christy, they called him. The friend had a reputation of his own, and Cottrell didn't think he could beat it, so he made up his mind to ambush this Christy out of an alley. Harper was passin' by at the other end, spotted him, and called him. We heard two shots that sounded almost as one. When we went to look, we found Cottrell's hand on his half-drawn gun and two bullets in his heart. Harper had hit him twice in the breast pocket of his shirt, the bullets only an inch apart. He must have been dead when he hit the ground."

The other four gave this due consideration. When a man is shot, the impact and shock of the bullet will make him jerk away or stumble, and often the second wound is inches apart from the first. For Cottrell's to have been as David described them, somebody would have had to put them there very quickly, and that took a trained, accurate gun hand. "He must be quite a hand with a gun," mused Paul.

"Chain lightning and thirteen claps of thunder, is what they were sayin' about him in the saloons before the night was out," his brother agreed. "And Cottrell was no turtle himself, when it came to getting his iron into action; I heard he was in town after taking a herd up the trail, and on the way he was stopped by some trail cutters, faced 'em down, killed their fastest man, and told 'em to break up and scatter. They did."

"That was the start of Harper's reputation, as I heard it," said Lydacker. "He'd ridden with Dixie Howard before the war, and it's said Howard was the one who taught him, but he didn't have much chance to build a name before he joined the Army and went East."

Paul looked to his sister. His feelings toward her were ambivalent at best. Like most Western men and all Southerners, he had a deep, ingrained respect for women, and what was more she was ten years his senior and the closest thing to a mother he could remember, since his own had died when David was barely two and himself only a little over five. He had watched her run the ranch singlehandedly after their father's death, and help her husband do it after her marriage; he had seen, when he came home from the war, how well (at least in comparison to many ranchers) she had contrived to survive the perils and tests of Texas over those hard four years. He knew she was clever and resolute, a good planner, farsighted and not inclined to give up. Western women, moreover, lived under fewer restrictions than their Eastern sisters; they weren't fashionably weak and dependent, had more freedom from childhood on, and were encouraged to be self-reliant and autonomous at a young age. On prairie farms and small ranches struggling to grow herds, they often learned to ride so they could patrol the family's fences, mend them when broken, inspect waterholes, and evict strange cattle; they also helped treat wounded cattle and tended new calves. Expected to spend much of their time laboring at physically demanding jobs typically assigned to men, many came to identify with this work more than with the essential, complex household tasks of their mothers, enjoy the freedom of movement involved, and take pride in their highly visible accomplishments. Later, when husbands were away on business, in the legislature, or at war, or were disabled by accident or illness, the women—some almost unaided—took over the work of running the farm or ranch, as Martha had done, and had real authority over the family and hired hands. Throughout the West they competed with men in almost every field of endeavor, from running businesses to outlawry; everyone admired their courage and energy, and they were valued everywhere because there were far fewer of them than of men. Paul was no exception to this rule, and he understood why, given how young he and David had been at the time, their father had made Martha their guardian and put her in charge of the ranch when he died. Yet as he'd said the day Lydacker came back from his fact-finding expedition to Laramie, that had been twenty years ago. He was grown up now, tested on both the range and the battlefield. He was willing to grant Martha's intelligence and experience, and would have had no objection to sharing power with her, but he sometimes wished—more often since she had made it plain that she intended for the outfit, not to settle peacefully in Colorado, but to push its way north—that she would concede more of it to him. He was, after all, the oldest surviving male Tennison, with a responsibility not only to his late father but to his brother and nephews. On the other hand, habit and earned respect were both strong, and the possibility of pushing his way into a position where he could claim an equal share of the decision-making seemed somehow to taste of ingratitude for all she'd done. "So," he said, "what do we do now?"

"It's a chess game," said Martha. "We pushed our steers over the line, and that was the first move. Sherman and his neighbors came here for a talk—and to see just what they were facing; that was looking over the arrangement of our pieces. Now it's their turn to make a countermove. We want to see just how far they're willing to go. Every chess player has a style, and you can begin to get an idea of it from watching how he handles his first opportunities. Let's sit back and watch."

"It might not hurt, though," Lydacker offered, "if we had somebody planted up there, somebody they didn't know was ours. The more people you have involved in something, the harder it is to keep secrets, and there are a lot of ranchers on Sherman's side. I think I'll have Lonnie take a ride north—if that's all right with you, boss-lady," he added deferentially.

"Lonnie?" she questioned. "Can he handle it?"

"Maybe better than you think, for just the reason that makes you ask," Lydacker replied. "And if it comes to that, he'd be about the best suited of us—next to me, maybe—to get Harper out of the picture. I know what he looks like, but I've seen him in action, and he's hell on wheels with a sixgun—a fast draw and a dead shot."

Martha considered that. "All right. But make sure he knows to keep his head down and stay out of trouble unless he has no choice. A dead spy gathers no intelligence."

**SR**

By the time Matt Sherman and his party got back to Laramie, dusk was falling. Matt checked Bowie just below the first of the business buildings and waved the others in. "I said we should talk first, see how the wind blew, and then make up our minds how to meet this," he said. "I know what I think, but I won't presume to decide for the rest of you. Day after tomorrow is Saturday. Let's bring in some of the senior hands from the roundup crew, get the homesteaders in too—that'll be your job, Liam; go around to your neighbors, tell 'em there's a real threat to be faced, and get their word they'll join in the talk—and have another meeting. We'll gather at the hotel dining room when it closes up after the dinnertime rush—say two o'clock; that'll give us three hours before they need it for the supper crowd. And I think we should get Mort in on it too. We know we're in the right, but he deserves the courtesy of bein' told what's in store, and he might have some suggestions to make."

No one objected to this plan, and the party broke up, with Reed and Celie McCaskey riding along with Jess and the Shermans till they reached their own gate, then turning off. Mary and Jonesy had kept supper for the returning trio; they listened as Matt recounted what had happened and what was planned next.

"I don't understand it," Slim said when his father had finished. "What threat are we to anyone? We're too small to be competition. You take this place: even after all this year's calves are born, we'll still be runnin' less than 1600 head, besides our brood mares. Most of the other ranchers around here are no bigger, except for Rogers and the McCaskeys and one or two more. All right, maybe we've got a better breed of cattle than a big new operator just up from Texas, but they have more to sell. Maybe we run more broodstock in horses, well, they need horses; they should want us to stay in business, on that end of it."

"But you got land, ain't you?" Jess retorted. He looked to Matt. "It ain't mannerly to ask, but this ain't for curiosity. How much property you got?"

The old man answered slowly. "I came out here with soldier scrip for 2730 acres that I earned in the Mex war, besides what I got for sellin' my land in Illinois, over $17,000. I filed on this valley, on the shores of the lake, on Stone Creek and Home Creek, and on some of the good meadows up on the mountain, about five miles from here; then I started in filling the spaces between. Put it all together, I control a touch over 30,000 acres in two main parcels—this down here, our winter range, and the high summer grazin'. When Slim came back from the war, he started filin' on more of it with the money he'd saved out of his pay and his re-enlistment bounty and the bonus money he got when he mustered out, couple hundred, it was. Got better than 3000 acres in his own name, first to last, just takin' up what we already used; mostly around the boundary lines, like a fence. We figured if we had a legal right to say that folks couldn't cross that, there wouldn't be much prospect they could get hold of any of the rest, since they wouldn't have access to it."

"I reckon that was good thinkin' as far as it went," Jess admitted, "but you got to keep it in mind that you're dealin' with Texans here, and down south, most of all Texas, cattlemen have got used to not just controllin' their land, but ownin' it, holdin' legal title 'stead of dependin' on public domain. In New Mexico and California and even part of Arizona some've gotten whole or partial ownership of Spanish land grants, all kinds of ways—lawsuit, marriage, foreclosure or purchase. In Texas there was liberal land laws on their side—twelve and a half cents an acre back in Mexican days, twenty-five to fifty afterward, outside of two sections free to every family comin' in after independence, and one to every bachelor. Then there was bounty warrants from the War of Independence or from servin' in the Rangers, and school lands, and state scrip from—from just recent. And in Republic days there wasn't nothin' harder to come by than cash money; if you had some, you could pick up valuable property at bargain prices. Well, you heard Miz Farity tellin' how her pa come to be so big: it adds up. The place I was fetched up on, down the Panhandle, it was 300,000 acres, and it wasn't nohow the biggest spread in that neighborhood."

"Your point bein'?" Slim prompted.

Jess gave him the narrow eye. "Point bein', this is the way these fellers—and anybody who's learned from 'em, like a daughter—is used to. To them, if a man don't own all the land he uses, it's carelessness or stupidity, and he likely don't deserve to have it. It don't stop 'em from tryin' to take what they can't afford to buy, but buyin's always what they got in mind when you come to the end of it, though they'll buy cheap if they can—a penny to a quarter on the dollar's the usual. And they ain't fools, neither; you don't get where they have without you got brains and you know how to use 'em. They know not ownin' your land is a quick ticket to havin' it took from you—maybe by your neighbors, maybe by the government. So, they come up this way, they'll want to do the same thing—get title. And if they see somebody else has beat 'em to it, even partly like most you all done, that'll leave 'em with just one way to go: get it away from 'em, push 'em off it—or make sure they're too dead to dispute ownership. I seen it before," he declared, his lips grim. "This is how it starts. Somebody gets greedy, or ambitious, or just too plumb big for his britches. He starts out with the small fry first, clears 'em off; they're a dozen or more men, with a dozen or more places to defend, and none of 'em's got the size crew he does even if he don't bother bringin' in guns, plus he ain't but one, in a central place, which makes it easier to defend if it comes to that. A lot of times they don't even know the danger they're in till it's too late, don't see the pattern or can't get together and make a stand. He knows he can't give 'em a chance to do that, 'cause small as they are, a fight like that could turn out like a bear against a dog pack—sooner or later one of them dogs is gonna think to go 'round in back, where the bear can't see him. So he goes after 'em one at a time, mostly the smallest and weakest first. Then when it's down to him and another big auger, with plenty of money to be spent on both sides, then it really gets down to a shootin' war. Times, th'other big one don't even expect it; he reckons they're too even matched for the troublemaker to want to take him on—but troublemakers don't never think that way; they always count on comin' out on top. If they're both big spenders locally, which mostly they are, the town and the law don't know which to support, 'cause they don't want to end up backin' the wrong one and leavin' the winner mad at 'em; that's how come, if the law gets called in at all, it's most like to be Federal, without no local connections or re-election worries. Meantime a lot of powder gets burned, a lot of good men get killed or crippled, and all the off-scourin's of the range for five hundred miles around start easin' in and runnin' off the stock that the outfits fightin' are too busy to watch or take care of, so in the end even the last man standin' ain't as well off as he'd figured on bein'; often as it happens, they never seem to reckon on it goin' that way.

"Bates asked why all of you had to be afraid of what Tennison would do. I reckon I know, now. They got pushed out of one place, and they don't aim to get pushed out of another. They know there's no Reconstruction up here, but like she said, it wasn't Reconstruction that done for 'em in Texas, it was Pease. So they want to make sure they got enough power and money to stand up to the whole Territorial government and maybe even the U.S. Army if they got to. Out here, the way to get that kind of power and money is through one of two things, minin' or cattle and land. Cattle and land's what they know, so that's what they'll use. And the longer we wait about stoppin' 'em, the stronger they'll get and the harder it'll be to hold our own, let alone make 'em willin' to talk terms."

"But we're ready for 'em now," said Matt, rather grimly. "They can't take us unawares, the way you're talkin' about. We know the danger, and we'll meet it together, if I got anything to say about it."

Slim eyed Jess thoughtfully. "They didn't seem to know you. I'm guessin' you never had to do with their outfit."

It came perilously close to an unmannerly question, but Jess ignored the discourtesy. "Never done. Wouldn't matter if I had. I told you before, I ride for the brand, always. And besides that, you all saved my life, or have you forgot that? Seems like lettin' you have the use of my skill and experience might be a way for me to balance that debt."

**SR**

Slim still wasn't at all sure about Jess Harper, though he had to admit, out of his basic fair-mindedness, that the man had seemed to know something about the kind of situation they faced, and might for that very reason be valuable. Experience on trail drives and in the war alike had taught him, sometimes bitterly, that there really was such a thing as the lesser of two evils. Yet he knew what he knew; there might be a very good reason for Harper's insight. Ever since Sunday afternoon, when he'd first learned about the Tennison cattle coming over the line, he'd been struggling internally with what he ought to do.

Jess for his part, after four days of rounding up and roping Sherman cattle, had managed to get his wounded arm limbered up nicely. Now, with the prospect shaping up of major trouble, he felt that it was time to make sure he hadn't lost his edge. So, after breakfast Friday morning, he quietly packed his saddlebags with a cold dinner, his reloading kit, and every round of ammunition he owned, and headed out to find a good spot to practice—ideally someplace where the wind wouldn't carry the sound of gunfire back to the house.

He began by simply dry-shooting, practicing his fast draw and snapping the hammer on empty air. Every lesson Dixie had taught him, about how to stand, how to breathe, how to aim before he went for his gun, was brought into play, and while he had no poker chips with him to put on the back of his outstretched hand and check up on himself by, a silver dollar worked even better. By about eleven o'clock, though his shoulder was getting a bit sore from the repetitive motion, he felt confident that he hadn't lost any of his speed. He stopped, ate, and rested for a while, kneading the tired muscles back into shape and thinking about the visit to the Tennisons' camp and about what their not-quite-self-proclaimed enemy might be planning to do next. At this time of year Texas-bred cows especially, which could give birth earlier than those farther north, would be dropping calves left and right. Holding in one place as they were, it wouldn't be difficult for an alert crew that knew its stock to spot each new mother-and-calf pair, cut out the calf, and brand it before it was more than a day or two old. And once having their brand on the youngster, they could shove it and its mother over the line, confident that their mark would remain unchallenged. Of course cattle were social, and especially now, with the onset of spring and more plentiful food, would naturally congregate in small bunches, so they would probably be driven into the Basin that way, maybe a few hundred at a time—not a big herd like the steers. Many small bunches would be harder to keep track of, or keep out, than one or two big ones. A lot would depend, he decided, on whether the Basin cattlemen opted to continue with their roundup, or drive their cattle up into summer range untallied and unbranded, or set up some kind of deadline, or a combination of two or three of these things.

After an hour or so, Jess set up an array of improvised targets, loaded his Colt with live shells, and began serious target practice, trying not only to get the gun out of the holster at his best possible speed, but to put his shots where he wanted them. It's not about the first shot that's fired, Dixie had said. It's about the first bullet that goes where it's supposed to. It doesn't really matter, in the end, how fast you can get your iron into action; what matters is whether you can be the first man to hit what he's aiming at.

He practiced snap shots and aimed shots, straight-up and side-on, dropping shots and rolling shots and his standby jump-and-roll, trying to duplicate as many possible situations as he could, although moving targets, without anyone to get them started, were difficult. He shot right- and left-handed, with the sun at his back, in his face, to his left and his right; fired from sun into shadow and vice versa, at targets below his own level and above it. The sunny little hollow he had chosen as his practice spot, almost two and a half miles from the ranchhouse, resounded and echoed with the thunder of his shots, and sometimes he had to stop and give the smoke time to disperse so he could see—and breathe—properly.

What he hadn't thought about, or perhaps even consciously realized, was that Matt Sherman and his sons, knowing that their attention might be focused elsewhere for some time to come, had decided to spend the day at fence patrol, and that Andy had drawn this side of the range. For much of the afternoon the wind was in the wrong direction for him to pick up the sound of Jess's practicing, but as he drew nearer the spot, he could hardly fail to realize that someone on their property was burning up a lot of powder. He checked, trying to make up his mind what to do, then slid out of the saddle, tied Cyclone firmly, and began eeling through the brush toward the sound, using all the little tricks Slim had learned from his Cheyenne friends, back before the war, and passed on to him when they began to go hunting together afterward. Presently he found himself looking down into a well-lit little bowl of ground, where Jess was standing, just settling his feet, his head tipped slightly downward, his hand hanging near the butt of his gun. Andy followed what he thought the direction of the man's gaze might be, and made out the bright-colored label of a baked-bean can lying on the ground about a hundred yards away. He frowned; Slim, who carried the same kind of gun, had told him that its fixed sights were set for fifty, though it could be effective at seventy-five or better, provided you knew enough to allow for the fact that the bullet would drift to the left about one inch in every thirty feet, owing to the twist of the rifling. Was Jess going to try for the can at such an extreme distance?

He was. He dropped his hand fast, thumb straight, fingers curved just a little; it whipped to the pistol butt, catching it on the way up, three fingers turning underneath, forefinger extending as the gun began to rise, sliding into the trigger guard, outstretched thumb spreading over the hammer, second joint drawing it back as tightening fingers pulled the weapon free. The muzzle travelled only inches, barely enough to bring the barrel level, before the trigger was snapped from the hip and a long continuous stuttering roar filled the hollow. The five shots followed one another without a discernible break, and the tin can jumped, then rolled and bounced along the ground as if prodded by an invisible stick. Sudden silence fell like a stage curtain.

Andy knew that at that distance his gasp of awe wouldn't be audible, yet Jess suddenly brought his head up sharply, then dived off to the side, rolling fast, coming to rest behind a clump of hazel. "Who's up there?" came his harsh demand from the cover.

He's out of bullets, Andy knew. He tried to think whether there had been fresh rounds visible in the cartridge loops on his new friend's belt, but at that distance, and focused as he was on Jess's shooting, he hadn't really noticed. "It's me, Jess... Andy," he called back.

"Andy?" Slowly the crown of Jess's black Stetson came into view, then the silver-cockled band, then the face beneath, the dark kinked bars of his brows drawn down much the way Slim's got when he was angry, only more clearly noticeable because of their color. "Who's with you?"

"Just Cyclone, honest," Andy told him, wondering why it mattered.

Pause, then: "Fetch him down, then." Jess sounded resigned, almost sad.

Andy doubled back through the growth to where he'd left the palomino, scrambled aboard, and worked his way carefully down the slope into the hollow. Jess was standing free of the hazel shrub now, his gun still in his hand but hanging loose by his side. The boy pulled up, studying the Texan. Having lived his entire remembered life surrounded almost entirely by grownups—there was no school in Laramie for him to go to, even if the weather had always allowed it, and like all the other kids in the Basin, any education he'd acquired had been entirely home-given, mostly in winter when there was little need of his help for ranch work; his few interactions with people of his own age had taken place on Saturday shopping trips to Laramie and occasionally at dances and parties thrown by neighbors to celebrate things like weddings and house-warmings—he'd naturally become expert at reading their moods, their faces and body language, but Jess wasn't giving him much to get hold of. His lean features were a cold mask, but there was a weary look in them, and the faintest hint of a slump to his shoulders. "Jess?" the boy ventured tentatively.

"How long you been watchin'?" Jess asked.

"I just got here," Andy told him. "I saw you draw and fire at the can—that's all." He couldn't conceal the admiring note in his voice. "I never saw shootin' like that, Jess. I always thought Slim was pretty good, but I don't reckon he could do what you just did."

A muscle twitched in Jess's cheek. "I'm out of shells," he said. "That's why I hit for that bush. 'Less I could'a' got to Traveller and got hold of my rifle, all I could'a' done was wait till you come down and try to get close enough to use my boot knife. And there ain't but one round in that." Andy realized, with a little shock, that Jess was talking as if he'd thought an enemy had crept up on him. "Help me gather up my brass, will you? I'll wanta reload it later."

Silently Andy dismounted, took Cyclone over to a shady spot and tied him, and began quartering around, picking up the spent casings that had been punched out of the cylinder of Jess's Colt. He knew that a box of .44 or .45-caliber cartridges held fifty rounds, a cartridge belt between thirty-five and fifty, besides the five that most men kept in the chambers. Keeping count, he figured he picked up seventy-six. If Jess had found roughly the same, that meant he'd not only shot his belt dry, he'd used up two full boxes.

"Do you always reload your empties, Jess?" Andy asked as he fetched a last bandanna-full of them over to the shade of a couple of medium-sized Gambel oaks.

"Any time I can," Jess agreed. "When I was your age and learnin' how to shoot, I didn't have a lot of money to spare for ammunition—I was only gettin' paid twenty dollars a month then, cowboyin', and I give a lot of that to Ma, for household money—plus it was better'n seventy miles to Amarillo to buy 'em, so I got in the habit real quick."

"You learned to shoot when you were only twelve?"

"Belt gun, yeah. Long gun soon as I was big enough to keep both ends of it off the ground. Had to. Time I was as old as you, I'd been wranglin' horses two good years, and huntin' for my family's table longer'n that. And remember, the Panhandle's Comanche country—I told you that. Everybody has to know how to use a gun—a knife too, if he can. It's about stayin' alive." He glanced toward the battered bean can still lying where it had come to rest after his last shot. "What you just seen me doin'—so was that."

Andy gazed at him solemnly. "I know there's trouble comin', Jess. I'm not a little kid people keep things from. Ma and Pa don't think that's fair. Pa says if we lived in a big town, instead of on our own land, I'd probably be workin' for pay by now, so I should be allowed to know about things that might affect my family. That's why I got to stay up and listen at the meeting."

"All the same," said Jess cryptically, and went off to find some firewood.

He dragged up a log for them to sit on while he worked, went over to where Traveller was tied to get his saddlebags, built a small, neat, but very hot fire, and produced a couple of one-pound pigs of bar lead from the left bag and a melting ladle and bullet mold from the right. Andy watched as he cut the soft lead into equal-sized chunks with his knife, put several into the ladle, and set it on the fire. "Can get somethin' like sixty rounds out of a pound of lead," he said casually, "so what I got here is near enough to make up what I used. I'll make more 'fore we go into town tomorrow, or maybe Sunday." Presently, when the fire had burned down to white-hot charcoal, he wrapped a bandanna around the ladle's handle, lifted it off the fire, and, holding the pliers-like bullet mold in his left, carefully poured some of the hot lead into it. A wisp of smoke curled up; Jess let it set just a few seconds, holding the mold quite still, then opened it and rapped it smartly against a stone, dropping out the completed bullets, six of them connected by a "neck" of lead. Immediately he closed the mold and poured it full of lead again. He worked steadily, neatly, as if it was a familiar routine. "Maybe oughtta soak the brass in vinegar twenty-four hours, to get all the burnt powder out of it," he said, "but mostly I only give it overnight. Reckon your ma'll let me have some vinegar, Andy?"

"If she won't, I know where she keeps it," said Andy gravely, watching as his friend's black-gloved hands moved deftly through the cycle of pour, hold, empty and refill.

By the time all the lead had been melted and molded, the earliest batches of bullets had cooled enough to handle. Jess drew his knife again, carefully trimmed off the necks and put them aside, shaved away the sprues—the rough lead left behind by the mouth of the mold—and rubbed each bullet with a piece of chamois to get all the dust off it, handling them gently so as not to mar their shape, putting imperfect ones aside and dropping the good ones into a soft buckskin sack. "When I get some more bar lead," he said, "I'll throw them necks and sprues in the ladle with it and re-melt 'em down along with the spoiled rounds. Saves money that way."

"But lead's only four cents a pound," Andy observed.

"Uh-huh," Jess agreed, "and best-grade powder's forty, which is enough to charge about ten or eleven rounds at forty grains per. Costs me a little under four cents a round, figurin' everythin' in. Ain't really cheaper, 'cause I gotta pay storekeeper's profit and the factory don't, but it's habit, so I save wherever I can." He scoured the ladle out with soft sand, set it aside, and pushed his hat back, resting his elbows on his knees and knotting his gloved hands together. "What you seen me doin'," he said abruptly, "reckon you thought that was some punkins, didn't you?"

"I said, didn't I?" Andy replied.

Jess sighed softly. "I know that when I was stuck in bed, your pa told you to always call out 'fore you come in the room, so's I wouldn't draw on you," he said. "And I reckon you done lived long enough in these parts to know why."

"Yeah, I know. You're not just a cowboy. You kinda look like one, but you're not. When I rode down here, I saw your gun's got no front sight. You filed it off so it wouldn't get hung up in the stitchings of your holster."

"That's right." Jess was silent a moment. "First man I killed, not countin' rustlers and Indians and such, cowboyin', I was fifteen," he said. "Next couple years, there was maybe six more, maybe eight, and then the war, which wasn't the same thing but still killin', and then in '65, late summer, I was in Abilene and took a feller down that was lookin' to backshoot a friend of mine. Didn't know till afterward that he had a pretty fair tall reputation. Killin' him like I done, that put his rep onto me, like throwin' a coat over what you already got on. After that, there wasn't no gettin' away from it—and I've tried, Andy, more'n once." Again he sounded sad. "Times I've tried to go th'other way—scouted and rode dispatch for th'Army, hunted wild horses, busted broncs, drove trail, cowboyed, even tried once to make a go of a homestead claim. Never quite works out. Times I been workin' at some ranch, like your pa's place, keepin' out of trouble, and somebody finds out who I am, and—most often if there's young boys around, like you—I get asked to leave."

Andy knew that his father had fought in Mexico, and his big brother in the more recent war; that both had fought Indians, rustlers, outlaws of assorted stripes. Only last year Slim had gone after a horse-thief who'd made off with Cyclone, and fetched the fellow back wrapped in a blanket and thrown across the saddle. Andy had always thought that both wars had been just and right, and growing up on the frontier as he had, he knew that fighting was often necessary to preserve your own life or property or those of people you cared about. He found it puzzling that anyone would think Jess somehow unfit to stay with them just because he was better at it than most. "Why?"

" 'Cause boys when they get around your age, or a few years younger, they're startin' to try on pictures of what they want to be, in their heads, like. And a lot get the notion that there's somethin'... glorious... about bein' able to use a gun the way I can. And their folks don't want 'em doin' that, for fear maybe they'll go the same way I done." He turned his head, looking Andy full in the face. "That's why I don't make a fuss about goin', 'cause I don't want to be the cause of some kid followin' in my tracks. Ain't nothin' excitin' or thrillin' about a gunfight, Andy. Ain't no glory in it neither, no more'n there is in war—and I been in both, so I know. It's a mighty cold proposition for both parties. One or th'other of you is sure to be killed or bad hurt—maybe both.

"You listen to me, Andy. You listen real good, and don't you never forget. A man, a real man, never uses a gun unless he has to. He don't go around shootin' heedless-like. He only shoots when he's got to, and then he don't miss. A gun carries a responsibility, and that's to never use it against another man unless it's in defense of your life or home or the lives or homes of folks you love. Don't never go lookin' for a fight, Andy. Make the other feller bring it to you first, whether it's on a street, or in a saloon, or out on the range like now with them Tennison cattle. That makes it self-defense, and then it's right, 'cause you got to. A man that kills when he don't got to is just plumb crazy."

Andy frowned in thought. "In the Bible," he said slowly, "it says, Thou shalt not kill. That's a Commandment."

"I know," Jess agreed. "I had a—a trail-partner one time, an educated man. You know what he said about that? He said that when they made the Bible into English, they made a mistake right there; that what it should have said was, Thou shalt not do murder. And then he reminded me of all the wars them old-time Jews was in, and how many folks they must'a' killed in 'em. He said, didn't David kill Goliath, and ain't David a Bible hero, somebody that folks still name their sons after, all these years later? Didn't Samson kill all them thousands with a donkey's jawbone, and ain't he a Bible hero too? That's just two; there's more I can't bring to mind just now. Point is, them folks was God's chosen people, and He don't seem to've cared as long as it wasn't each other they was killin'. This that we got in front of us now, it's kinda the same thing. It's a range war, and there's a reason they call 'em that.

"This partner of mine, he said there's a place in the Constitution where it says that the right of an American to keep and bear arms 'shall not be abridged'—which means nobody's allowed to say he can't. They put that in there so's a man would always have a gun to defend his home or his liberty. He said that if they hadn't, we'd'a' maybe ended up the way they done in France, with things festerin' away for hundreds of years till it all blowed up like a siege gun and people was gettin' their heads chopped off right and left—he had a word for it, an 'orgy,' he called it. This country ain't like that, he said; it's big enough for everyone, and free enough too, but times there's men that get greedy for money or power or land and try to take the liberty and freedom of other men away from them, or take what they've worked for—cattle or money or whatever—or maybe hurt 'em or kill 'em, and when that happens and there ain't no law to help, or it can't 'cause of all the rules it's hobbled with, then you ain't got no choice but to fight to hold onto what you got, not if you want to keep your self-respect, and maybe your life. A man who does that and dies, dies in a war for freedom just as much as if he was killed on a battlefield somewheres. Whenever a brave man dies for what he believes, he wins more'n he loses. Maybe not for him, but for men like him that want to live honest and true. I've killed men, and it ain't a good thing. But I never killed a man unless he deserved killin' or forced me to a corner where it was me or him.

"You'll hear folks say that such-and-such a man is good with a gun. Mostly them that say it mean he's fast on the draw and hits what he aims at. To me, it means another thing besides. It means he deals straight off the top of the deck, gives the other man an even break, never does anythin' that would lose him his self-respect. He knows that what he's got is a gift, and it's got to be used right, or it's an insult to the giver."

Andy listened carefully, well aware that all this was something Jess thought very important. "I done told you about my brother Johnny, you recollect? When he was as old as you are now, he looked up to me the same way I can see you're doin'; that's how come I do see it, 'cause I been there before. He used to say there wasn't nothin' he wanted but to be just like me. Maybe if I hadn't ended up bein'... what I am... I wouldn't mind if you thought the same way. But I did, so I do. There's lots of men carry guns, and there ain't nothin' wrong with that; I ain't tryin' to say there is. But that gift I talked about—that special match-up between hand and eye that lets a man use a gun the way I can—that don't come to more'n one man in ten thousand; maybe not to more'n one in a hundred thousand. That's why, at any particular time, out of all the men out here that carry a gun, the number of what you'd call for-sure-real great gunfighters don't even tally a hundred. You see how that stacks the odds against you, Andy?"

Andy thought about it, because he saw that Jess was cold serious and meant every word he was saying. He remembered reading that back when they had the last census, just the year before the war, there'd been almost 31,500,000 people in the United States, not counting the Western Indians, most of whom didn't stay in one place long enough to be counted, and that about 7200 of those had been living in Wyoming. He also knew that in all the Western territories, the population leaned heavily to the male: of all the people in a given locality, over half of them were likely to be adult men. He tried to work it out in his head and guessed that, if Jess's figures were right, there wouldn't even have been one "for-sure-real great gunfighter" in the Territory ten years ago, not permanently, anyhow. "I guess I do," he said softly, not even noticing that he was using his mother's and big brother's word rather than his father's as he usually did.

"A man that follows my trade," Jess proceeded, "can do a lot of good if he picks his jobs right. Towns'll hire him to wear a badge and keep the peace; mines and express companies'll hire him to make sure don't nobody make off with what they got; cattlemen's associations'll hire him to run down cow thieves, and when folks get into... difficulties... with the kind of people I talked about before, the kind that don't care who they got to shove aside to get what they want, they'll hire him to protect their interests. But all the time he knows—he has to know—that it can't last. Your pa told me Slim was fifteen when you all come out here to live; I reckon that makes him twenty-seven now. Me, I was twenty-five fourth of this month. A man makes it to thirty, he's reckoned old for gunfightin'. If he's luckier'n most, he can last till he's thirty-five or -six. So you see, I likely ain't got even as many years left as you been alive—and I got somethin' important I need to do, 'fore I come to the end of my string."

He sounds like... like he's given up all hope, Andy thought. Like he doesn't think there's any way he can find a place that'll let him stop and stay and "go th'other way." "Jess..." he ventured, "Jess, everybody isn't like those people who've asked you to go away. Ma and Pa aren't like that. You could stay here..."

Jess smiled sadly and reached over to press his shoulder. "You ain't got no notion what it means to me for you to say that, Tiger, but it ain't up to you. It ain't even up to me, exactly. Like I said, I got a job to do..." For a moment his features turned cold and bleak. Then: "Gettin' late. Best we get on back. Jonesy's had to see to the stages all by himself; reckon that sacroiliac of his is givin' him a pretty hard time by now."

They rode into the yard in time for Jess to take over the last change and send Jonesy indoors to rest. Andy turned Cyclone and Traveller out, then went looking for his mother. He found her in the kitchen, setting a pan of cornbread for supper and stirring a pot of beans flavored red with peppers and tomatoes and perked up with chopped onions, a good chuckwagon recipe she had learned from Jonesy. "Onions!" she exclaimed, smiling at him through her tears as she wiped her arm across her face. "I wonder why they make you cry?"

"I've been talkin' to Jess, Ma," he said, "and he told me some things that would'a' made me cry, maybe, if I wasn't so near bein' grown up. Can I talk to you about 'em?"

She gave him a searching look, then poured a cup of coffee for herself and nodded toward the oilcloth-covered kitchen table. "Let's sit down."

When they were settled, she said, "First of all, Andy, grown-up people cry too. There's no shame to it. Your pa cried when we lost Slim's other little brothers and sisters. I cried when your Grandpa and Grandma Bryan died, and so did your Uncle Edward and Uncle Richard, and they were even older than Slim is. Tears are a precious gift. If we couldn't cry sometimes, I think we'd all end up mad as hatters. Now, what did Jess tell you?"

Andy described what he had seen the Texan do, and did his best to repeat what he'd said. "I was thinkin' about it all the way home," he finished. "The way he talked, it was almost like he was ashamed of bein' so good at fightin'. But most of the books I read have fightin' in 'em. Ivanhoe, and The Three Musketeers, and all the dime novels, and even Moby Dick, with Captain Ahab fightin' that whale. If folks aren't fightin' each other, or animals, then they're fightin' to survive some other way, like in Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre, or to gain a quest, like in Don Quixote or The Arabian Nights or the fairy tales or even Uncle Tom's Cabin, or to get money or position like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair. Even history books have fightin' in 'em, wars and such; the Crusades, and the Revolution that made the United States, and lots of others. And the Bible has fightin' in it too; Jess said so, and he's right, I know. If it's in all the books, how it can be so wrong?"

Mary considered her response with care. "It's true, I guess, that if there were never any conflicts, there'd be no stories, because nothing would happen," she said. "And Jess was right about the Constitution, too, and about that Commandment; your Grandpa Bryan, you know, was a doctor, and he studied Greek and Latin and could read the Bible in the original. You know it says, also, that we should do unto others as we'd have them do unto us. But many people who quote that part of it don't stop to think that it works the other way too. If someone attacks us, they can't be surprised if we fight back. They did unto us first, so that says they don't care if we do them back the same way."

"What about turnin' the other cheek?" asked Andy.

His mother hesitated. "I've always had a little trouble with that," she admitted at last. "You know your pa never says he's 'a Christian;' he says he 'believes in Jesus as his Savior,' but he doesn't try to 'live like Jesus,' because Jesus was only half human—He was God's Son, wasn't He?—and so holiness and perfection came naturally to Him. 'All in the blood, you might say,' your pa says, thinking like a stockman, which he is. It doesn't to us. And I know a person who can turn his cheek is higher and holier than I am, but I despise him too, and wouldn't have him for a doormat. I don't think God means us to be doormats, Andy. I think there's a reason He gave us pride and the ability to conceive of the thing we call honor. I think if He'd really wanted us to be perfect, He'd have made us that way—because surely He could. What He wants is for us to just do the very best we can, to do right as we understand right; that's why He gives us a conscience. There's such a thing as chance, of course—what we sometimes call bad luck—but I think that many people, bad people, earn what happens to them. And I think, too, that when God gives land, or animals, or other people into our care, He expects us to be good stewards of them. The merciful man regardeth the life of his beast, remember? And sometimes—as Jess told you—that means we have to fight."

"Like what's comin'?"

"Yes, like that. We didn't look for the fight; they brought it to us, because they—they covet the good land we have, and you know that one of the other Commandments is not to covet our neighbors' possessions."

Andy pondered all this in silence, then looked up. "Bein' grown up is awful complicated, isn't it, Ma?"

"Yes, it is, love. That's why your pa and I—and sometimes Slim too—tell you not to be in such a hurry to grow up. You're grown for a long time, Andy—much longer than you get to be, well, not grown. Enjoy it while you've got it." She suddenly turned her head. "Here comes the last stage. Go help Jess switch the team out."

Matt and Slim rode in just as Jess and Andy were turning the stage horses into the pasture; each of them had found a couple of places where fence rails were down, and had had to put them back, a difficult task for a man working alone and one that sometimes took a while. Jonesy's milk cows, as they usually did except on the hottest days, had wandered down to the gate, wanting to have their bags relieved, and Andy led them off to the barn while Jess pitched hay to the weary team and poured grain into their trough. The two men stripped their horses and rubbed them down, then turned them out. Meanwhile, since milking even two cows took less than twenty minutes once you knew what you were doing, Andy had finished his chore and taken the milk in to his mother, then gone back to feed. And Jess, discovering that he'd torn the sleeve of his shirt in trying to get to cover, shook his head regretfully and headed for the little back bedroom to get a new one before he was summoned to supper. "Jess?" Mary called from the kitchen as he started across the main room.

"Yes, ma'am?" he responded politely, stopping midway.

She summoned him into the kitchen with a flutter of fingers, put her hands on his shoulders despite his little automatic flinch. "Andy told me what you said to him—about gunfighting, and war, and all that," she said. "I wanted to thank you. I knew it was something he needed to have explained to him, but I didn't quite know how to get it across."

Jess lowered his eyes. "Ain't nothin' to thank me for, ma'am. I been in this line a long time. It ain't somethin' I'd wish on another—least of all a kid like Andy."

"All the same," said she. "I know there'll be times he has to fight, because—well, because there'll always be evil and misfortune and injustice in the world. But he needs to know the difference between fighting a righteous war and being a... a glory-hunter." Suddenly, and to his complete surprise, she took his lean face between her two hands and kissed him.

He flushed deep red, shook free of her and backed away. "Ma'am—Miz Sherman, you hadn't oughtta—"

She looked at him a moment, not understanding, then: "It wasn't what you think, Jess—haven't you known women enough to know that?"

"No—I mean yes. I mean... it's just..." It's just I ain't been kissed like that since the last time Ma done it, he thought. And you're plumb right—it ain't the same as no other way. It's just—that's for family, and I ain't.

She smiled, a little sadly. "You're a brave, good, honest boy who's trying hard to do right as you understand it," she told him firmly, "and that's why I kissed you. And don't let anyone tell you you're not, either." She reached down to the tear in his sleeve. "What have you done to your shirt? You're harder on your clothes than Slim is, I do believe. Now don't you dare stuff that under your bedtick or somewhere! Put it in the basket by my chair, and I'll stitch it up for you."

"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, and resumed his interrupted progress toward the bedroom, thinking hard about what had just happened.

What neither of them realized was that Slim had finished washing up just a little sooner than Matt had, and had been just outside the kitchen door, reaching for the knob, when through the thin white curtain he'd seen his mother kiss Jess as he'd never known her to kiss anyone except himself and Andy. He couldn't hear what they said, but the sight was enough. Suddenly he was angry. That does it, he thought. I'm tellin' what I know, as soon as we can get some privacy.

**SR**

After supper, while Mary and Andy were clearing the table and Jonesy was preparing to wash the dishes, Slim spoke quietly to his father. "Pa, there's somethin' we need to talk about—in private, out on the porch." And with an unreadable look at Jess: "You'd better come too; this concerns you."

The three of them trooped outside; Matt settled in his favorite homemade rocker, Jess sideways on the porch rail—Slim noticed that he positioned himself in such a way that his right leg was held straight, even though he wasn't wearing his gun, having courteously removed it, according to range custom, when he came in from seeing to the last stage. He rolled a cigarette slowly and carefully, his eyes on Slim, who was pacing back and forth between the step and his father's chair.

"Well, son, what is it that's got your garters in a knot?" Matt inquired after a minute or two; and when Slim abruptly ceased pacing and looked at him in surprise, "I've known you all your life, remember. You're actin' almost like a man with a guilty conscience, which I don't reckon I ever knew you to have, not even when we were goin' through all that trouble about you signin' up for the war."

Jess said nothing, but his eyes were bright and alert. Slim remembered what he'd seen earlier, remembered his resolve, and took a deep breath. "You remember when we rode into Laramie on Sunday, Pa, and I told you two to go on to the saloon and I'd join you later?"

Matt grinned. "I remember. Who'd you go courtin'? Just out of curiosity, you understand."

"Courtin'?" Slim echoed in surprise. "I wasn't courtin'. I went up to Mort's house and asked if he'd let me have another look through his file. I said that after sleepin' on it I thought I remembered seein' another poster I should'a' brought to his attention. He gave me the keys, told me to let myself in, find it if I could, lock up after I was done and bring 'em back. So I did."

He reached into his vest and brought out a sheet of thin, rough paper folded into neat quarters. "Mort probably thought I meant I might have missed handin' him a flyer on one of Carlin's boys, which was what I hoped he'd think. It wasn't a lie; there was a poster I should'a' pointed out to him, and I would if he'd come with me. This one." He handed it to his father, who eyed it curiously for an instant, then slowly opened it out.

In the light of the reflectored lantern mounted beside the door, Jess's face stared up at him from the poster's surface, sullen and angry beneath a low-pulled black hat. The lettering read: WANTED - $500 REWARD – JESS HARPER. And underneath the picture, a description ending with the words: This man is a known associate of the Doleman Brothers and their gang, and has a name as a gunman, a fast draw, and a ruthless hired killer. He should be considered armed and dangerous and approached with extreme caution. It was signed, Harry O. Stedman, Deputy Sheriff, Soho, Texas, October 19, 1866.

Matt read the description twice through, then looked mildly up at Jess and passed the poster to him. Jess scarcely glanced at the words, but his face darkened and his mouth pulled tight. "You two gonna turn me in?" he demanded, his voice flat.

"Says in the Constitution, as I recall it, that a man's got a right to answer charges brought against him," Matt observed calmly. "Suppose you explain just what you did to get this reward on your head."

Jess breathed deeply through his nose, clearly struggling for control. "That poster shouldn't even be around no more. All them was s'posed to've been called in almost three years ago. You write to U.S. Marshal Branch McGarry—he was stationed in Austin the last I knew—and you ask."

"You didn't answer the question," Slim pointed out.

Jess glared at him. "Stedman, the feller that signed it, he wasn't no legitimate deputy. He was one of them Reconstructionists that got wished on Texas by the Occupation. I'd come up to Soho from Laredo, lookin' for a man who hadn't stayed around to be thanked after he saved my life—never did find him—and an outfit that'd set me up, but mostly the first. Rode into what you might call a tax revolt. Mel and Harvey Doleman was plumb in the middle of it, almost the leaders—they had a little ranch their pa had started..." He trailed off. "Ain't much point goin' into the details; what matters is this time the Redcoats won. The Dolemans lost their place and took to the outlaw trail. Me, I come to see that them and me hadn't nothin' in common 'cept for one head and two legs and maybe a kind word for motherhood, and I broke away. 'Bout eight months later I was workin' for King Bartlett in San Saba County—I told you about that—and Branch, Marshal McGarry, got called in to settle the fight. He must'a' seen the poster, 'cause he took an interest in me, heard my story out, and pulled rank on Stedman and the local judge—you know, I reckon, that a U.S. Marshal's got authority over all local officers—to get the charges quashed. Couldn't do nothin' for the Dolemans," he added, " 'cause by then they'd already pulled a bunch of robberies—if they could'a' stayed outta trouble, he might'a' tried to fix their records too. Stedman and his judge was removed from office and most of the posters they'd issued was s'posed to've been revoked, like I said. I ain't what it says I am."

"And next you'll tell us that Colt of yours doesn't have the front sight filed off," said Slim, a scornful note sounding in the words.

"It does, you know it does, and the sear too, and the action's honed down, but that don't make me no—no—gunman!" Jess spat, as if the word were unspeakably profane. "I might be called a pistolero, or a shootist, or even a gunslinger, or but I ain't—I ain't—that! I was trained by a man who had pride, and he taught me to have it too—in my name, in my skill. One of the first things he said was, 'Killin' ain't for fun, and it ain't a game. It's for survival—yours, or someone else's. There's them that do it just 'cause they can, just for the pleasure of seein' blood spilled or of knowin' they're better'n the other man. Don't ever be like that.' I ain't been—not even in the war. I killed 'cause it was the other feller or me."

"And this about you bein' a hired killer?" Matt prompted gently.

"I ain't that neither," said Jess, almost sullen now. "I can be hired, and so can my gun, if the job fits my notions of right and wrong. But not to flat-out kill a man. If it happens in the course of a war, or if he calls me, or if I see somebody else in danger and not up to fixin' it for himself, that's different. But you don't buy my gun for that. You try and you might just find out what kind of killer I am."

Matt extended his hand for the poster, scanned it again, and looked thoughtfully from one young man to the other. "I've always been a man to bide by the law," he said carefully, "but we're a long way and a good few years from Soho, Texas, in 1866. The law down there don't have one flake of authority here in Wyoming, as you both know; that's why posters and rewards get issued, so men who've gotten over a county or state line will maybe get brought back to face charges. Now it seems to me, son," he told Slim, "that if Jess here tells us this Marshal McGarry got the charges dismissed, which is a thing we can check up on if we care to, it's likely to be true."

"Gettin' a reply from Austin could take weeks, if McGarry's out of his office when our inquiry gets there," Slim argued. "He might not even be stationed there any more; Federal Marshals get moved around almost as much as Army officers."

"Still and all," Matt insisted, "I've lived a lot more years than you have, and met a lot more men, and come to be, maybe, a better judge of human character. And I reckon we've both read enough of the sentiments of them radical Republicans that got in the saddle in Washington after Abe Lincoln was shot, to know that likely there's many a man who got on the wrong side of some corrupt or overenthusiastic minion of theirs, and was forced into outlawry. Now if Jess is tellin' it straight, any fault here, so far, is Mort's for not keepin' his files up to date better, and I reckon he gets dodgers enough comin' through his office that it can get pretty hard to keep abreast of all of 'em. Come to that, by the date on it, this is one he inherited; he might not even have ever known it was in there. So I don't lay no blame against him, and neither should you, Jess. And as for you, son, you made an honest mistake. I think maybe I will write to this McGarry and ask him for the story. Meanwhile, Jess, I'm hopin' you'll make some allowances for human fallibility, and stay on, 'cause I've a notion we may be needin' you—if you're willin' to take a hand. And you, Slim, you might want to keep in mind that when you joined the Army you swore to uphold the Constitution, and one of the things it guarantees is that a man is counted innocent till he's proved guilty. I won't ask you to apologize to Jess—I wouldn't even if I thought he'd be willing to accept it—'cause I've raised you and your brother in the notion that a man don't need to apologize for mistakes or accidents, both of which befall the best of us; only for things he does a-purpose. But I will ask you to call to mind that little scrape you got into down in Kansas, you and Mort, just about the time Jess was havin' this trouble in Soho. Not all law officers are anywhere near as honest or as competent as they should be; we're lucky in Mort, but he's not necessarily a typical example. It don't necessarily have to do with Reconstruction; Kansas didn't."

He turned his full attention to Jess, whose face had assumed a look, not of guilt, but of harried unease. "Now, boy, I reckon you're feelin' like you'd been betrayed, and I can't exactly say that I blame you. And bein' as this poster's got no real legal force up here, I can't make you stay on while I find out if you're tellin' the truth—but I think you are, and I think, too, that you've got experience we might have use for, same as you said just last night. I'm askin' you to make allowances for Slim, the same as I'm askin' him to make allowances for you. Ever since he was old enough to start makin' his own decisions, he's had a strong notion of duty and of what he has to do, for his country, his family, his own self-respect; that was at the heart of the trouble we had over him enlistin'. Maybe he felt that a man who'd had charges laid against him was somebody he didn't want to have around his ma and his little brother, and maybe—I hope—you can understand that."

Jess's eyes shifted quickly toward the younger Sherman, whose face was stonily unreadable. He was silent for a minute or two, then said in a low voice, "I reckon I can."

Matt turned his attention to his son. "Got anything to say, Slim?" he asked—not demanding, almost gentle.

Slim's lips tightened a moment, then he said quietly, "No, Pa. Nothin' to say."

"All right, then," and Matt's voice was firm, a last-word sort of tone. "Now, we don't mention this to the others, agreed? And we don't tell Mort about it, or any of them that'll be at the meeting in town tomorrow. Of course if one of 'em happens to know already, that's another side of the mountain."

Slim lay awake in his bunk that night, struggling to get a handle on his feelings. He could understand his father's viewpoint; only last year Matt had told him, You think more like me than any man I know, and the natural corollary to this was that each of them could see just why the other would take a given position. He didn't feel that he had done wrong; even if Pa was right and Jess had told the truth, it was only to be expected that he would have made the assumption. He didn't feel guilty, or ashamed of himself. He had nearly as much responsibility toward Ma and Andy and Jonesy as Pa did; he had acted to protect them.

At least, that was what he told himself. Yet he couldn't shed the feeling of discomfort he had over Matt's making excuses for him to Jess, and he couldn't stop replaying in his mind what he'd seen in the kitchen, or thinking about how Andy had latched onto the young Texan, almost like he was some kind of long-lost relative. Pa and I used to be his heroes, he thought, turning his head on the pillow to look at the tight little mound of covers on the other bed that was his brother. I never knew him to take to any of our other hired hands this way. What's so different about Jess? And why does Ma treat him almost like another son?

It hurt, more than a little, and it baffled him. Yet maybe he had been unjust, at that: Pa was right, he'd once sworn to protect and defend the Constitution, and nobody had annulled that oath; Jess was supposed to be treated as innocent until shown in court to be otherwise. Slim had always taken a certain pride in the fact that he stood strong for the law, yet he wasn't such a fool as to think it infallible; Adobe Wells and its vigilantes had shown him otherwise.

All right, so he's a fast gun, he told himself, and Pa was right—I don't like to think of my little brother hero-worshippin' somebody like that, and I sure don't like to think of him, or Ma, gettin' caught in a crossfire on that man's account. But he worked hard on the roundup, he's so polite to Ma it almost hurts to watch him, he keeps himself decent, he's good with the horses and he takes his gun off in the house. He didn't try to lie his way out of the charge; like Pa said, that story he told us can be checked up on, though it might take a while. And he's a drifter; once he settles this debt he feels he owes us, probably he'll take off and we'll never see him again.

But what if he doesn't? He needs to understand, early on, now, that there's a hierarchy in this household, and he's at the bottom of it. He's not family. He's got no right to behave as if he was.

I shouldn't have to share my folks and my brother with him, and I won't.

In the room next door, Jess too was finding sleep hard to come by. He hadn't said anything to Matt about it, and he wondered if the rancher had thought of it, but the way Slim had spoken of how he happened to have that dodger in his possession sounded like the actions of a man who had deliberately gone looking for a reason to challenge the newcomer to his family's spread. An honest mistake, Matt had said, and maybe in a way it was. Certainly Jess could see how Slim might have come to the conclusion he had. Yet he wouldn't have survived in the gun trade without a keen insight into character: a man who earned his living by his fast draw and straight shooting couldn't last long unless, very early on, he developed an eerie genius at sensing human emotions. Dixie had taught him that: you not only had to beat your opponent's draw, but to sense the very moment when he had reached his crisis, that being the instant when he was liable to make his move; a true gunfighter never reached for his iron till the other man had, because that made it self-defense. So you needed an intuitive ability to gauge human anger or anxiety or distress. He felt, somehow—he had felt ever since the night Slim came home—that the younger Sherman didn't like or trust him. And he wasn't unused to that; it had gotten him invited to leave more than one place, just as he'd told Andy earlier that day. Yet what he was beginning to sense now off the man wasn't merely dislike or distrust; it was anger. He couldn't understand that. What had he done to make Slim Sherman angry at him?

Matt had spoken of something that had happened in Kansas. Jess didn't know the details, but he wondered if dealing, apparently successfully, with whatever it had been had somehow led Slim to believe that he had what it took to deal alone with the threat the Tennisons represented. That he was smart enough and tough enough—and experienced enough—to lead his neighbors against the Texans' attempt at a land grab.

Not that Jess himself saw his own role as that of leader. Advisor, maybe. Someone who had much more experience in this line than anyone else in the Basin, except maybe the sheriff, could claim, and who for that very reason should be valuable to them. He was willing to leave the final decisions to other men—Matt, McCaskey, Rogers. The mantle of command sat uneasily, if at all, on his shoulders; the weight of that responsibility wasn't something that came naturally to him. All he wanted—he told himself—was to be in a position where his knowledge and familiarity with such situations could, maybe, make the crucial difference in who came out on top, because in that way, by guaranteeing that Matt and his family got to keep their ranch, he'd be coming as close, maybe, as he'd ever have the chance for, to balancing the scales for their help and kindness. He couldn't go away and leave that debt unpaid; it was his life that they had saved—which, in a very real sense, meant that they might also have made it possible for him to settle with Bannister.

He hadn't forgotten Bannister.

When this thing was over, when his debt was paid... he'd resume his interrupted journey to Rawlins.

Though what he'd do when he got there was more than he knew.

His hand knotted on the quilt. Bannister. Never in ten years had he knowingly been so close to the man who had destroyed his family, his home—his world.

No, he would never forget Frank Bannister, never if he lived to be a hundred.

But he owed a debt here, too, and Jess Harper paid his debts...

**SR**

Saturday in Laramie, as in most country towns, was always the busiest in the week, with people from the outlying ranches and homestead farms driving in to shop, most starting as soon as chores and breakfast (often hasty) were done, arriving by ten o'clock or so, and getting home again by sundown to do the evening tasks. (The town-dwellers, hoping to beat the crowds, tried to run any errands they had before nine-thirty or so.) At this season, with most ranchers and their crews out on the range, the crowd tended to be somewhat thinner and the saloons considerably quieter, though that would be made up for in a few weeks, as owners and working men alike shook the place with their celebration of a successful gather, one that showed average or lower losses and the promise of a good calf crop. But many noticed, on this particular Saturday, that a small but steady stream of dusty, grim-looking riders filtered in from the south, and all who did recognized more than one of them—ranchers large and small, foremen, a few straw bosses.

Jonesy drove the Shermans' one-ton buckboard in, with Mary on the seat alongside him and Andy dangling his legs over the tailboard; Matt rode Bowie barely an arm's length from his wife, with Slim at his flank on Alamo, and Jess and Traveller jogging along even with the off rear wheel. And while no one was surprised to notice the wary expression on the Texan's face—for by now the word had begun to get around, thanks in part to Mose and his overmastering tendency to gossip, that Sherman Ranch had taken in a young man with all the marks of a gunslinger—the grim, preoccupied looks of the Sherman men gave rise to much excited murmuring. When they peeled off and dismounted before Sheriff Corey's office, the buzz of talk picked up. As for Jess, he stuck close to the rest of the family while they went to Benson's general store, then on to other errands, scowling at the world from under dark brows and never letting his hand get too far from his Colt.

A little before two o'clock, somewhere between sixty and eighty cattlemen, along with thirty or so homesteaders and eight or ten of their half- or mostly-grown sons, began moving toward the hotel, where the Shermans, after their visit to Mort Corey, had stopped to reserve the dining room for that hour. They crossed the lobby without so much as a word of greeting to the desk clerk, the doors opening and shutting in regular rhythm. Among the last to enter the building was Jess Harper, who waited quietly until Matt, Slim, and the sheriff came in, exchanged brief cautious introductions with the lawman, and followed them into the room, shutting the doors firmly in the faces of the few curious lobby-idlers. Everyone heard the bolt fall into place behind him.

Inside, he put his back against the doors, folded his arms, and watched and listened as the meeting got under way. The homesteaders who hadn't attended the first one, at Sherman Ranch, had been given a rough outline of the situation by Liam Delaney; the ranking hands called in from roundup had had the same from their bosses. The cattlemen, of course, already knew something of it, though not yet of how the journey south had gone. Matt reported on that first, giving his impressions of Martha Farity and her brothers, describing the size of their herd and the numbers of men he'd seen, calling Jess up to provide a history of Lydacker to those who hadn't yet heard it and to sketch the way in which Texas land laws would influence Tennison's behavior. Jess watched him, making mental comparisons with other cattlemen he'd known. Like David Tennison, he knew that sheer size or wealth didn't make a rancher the "big man" in his district; certainly they helped, but what mattered most was character. Matt Sherman had the knack of quiet authority. He was shrewd, brave, hardy, and honest; men respected him—even frontiersmen, who were rough-and-ready individualists, jealous of their independence. Maybe, Jess thought, that was what leadership—real leadership, not just the kind conferred by, say, military rank—was all about: the ability to inspire each person to do his part.

He gave his own opinions when requested, speaking bluntly, in the fashion his life's experiences had led him to assume. "Even if you own every inch of this land, you still got to be ready to defend it," he concluded, " 'cause there'll always be them wantin' it, and the better it is the likelier and more they will. Land is the start of everythin'. You got to have it to farm, or raise stock, or even build a house or a store. It's a prize to be won. A man's got to be willing to fight for what he wants—fight to get it, and then fight to keep it. If he ain't, he probably don't deserve it. That's how the world is, or how I've seen it, anyhow." And he shot a challenging look at Slim.

Predictably, it was a homesteader—Horace Yale—who asked, "What's the law got to say about this? Sheriff Corey?"

Corey joined Matt at the back of the room while Jess wordlessly gave way to him. He'd done the best he could to influence the decision that would be made here, but he knew that too much pushing from a man who was essentially a hired hand—one with no real stake in the country—might bring on a backlash against the Shermans, who were his sponsors, and that he didn't want. He owed them too much; he couldn't behave in a way that might leave them facing Tennison by themselves.

Corey was speaking now, carefully. "If fraud, coercion, or any other criminal act can be proved to have been employed to facilitate a land transfer, that transfer is null and void, and if the claimant's already taken possession, the courts will declare against him," he began. "It's sort of the way that the acts of one felon in the course of committing a crime are generally attributed to all co-conspirators as well, and a killing in the course of a robbery is 'felony-murder,' not just manslaughter, and may be subject to capitol punishment. But the key concept is 'proved.' There has to be evidence, or a witness. If there isn't, the accused can say pretty much anything he pleases, and no matter how fantastic it is, there's at least an even chance that a jury will accept it, ot at least hang itself or deadlock over the issue. That's why, even if it was a criminal act to shove cattle over the Territorial line—which it's not; legitimate trail drives do it all the time—nobody could bring Tennison to book for what they've done up to now, because nobody's seen the cattle driven into Wyoming. There are tracks, but as Matt said, how would you prove who made 'em, who was riding the horses involved? Tennison could claim they'd been rustled from and the thieves just hadn't had time to change the brands.

"Some of you have read in the papers about the Ku Klux Klan. I hear Congress is trying to pass laws against it, but unless it can get the victims to speak up, or find good material evidence against the accused, anyone trying to enforce those laws is going to have a hard row to hoe—and scared people often aren't eager to testify. Our laws are written the way they are so people can't just be thrown summarily into prison, but when a smart, experienced person takes it into his mind to do something illegal, those same laws can work in his favor. From what Matt says, I'd say that in the Tennisons and their sister, not to speak of Lydacker—who, by the way, has taken a hand in more than one of this kind of dispute, from what I've heard—you're facing just that kind.

"I'm not saying you don't have a right to protect what's yours, because you do. What I'm saying is that I can only be in one place at a time, and I can't make an arrest unless I find material evidence or a live, willing witness. Oh, I can arrest on suspicion, but I can't make it stick—and even if I can, any offense short of murder is legally bailable. I can hold a man in jail forty-eight hours on each separate charge, but after that, if his lawyer so demands, he can be freed on bond. People like the Tennisons don't do their own dirty work—they don't have to; they can afford to hire all the human tools they care to. If I arrest one, all they have to do is get him bailed out, then turn their backs while he slides back into Colorado, and my hands, and the courts', are tied; our only option would be to issue a dodger, and without a pretty substantial reward, nobody's likely to act on it."

"So what rights have we got?" someone demanded.

"The same as I said. The right to defend your own lives and property, including any land you hold title to, all livestock carrying your brands, and your dependents. The right to file a complaint if anyone drives your stock off its customary range, which can be interpreted as rustling. The right to fire on anyone you find breaching your fences: even if the land you fence is technically open range, the fence itself is yours, paid for with your money and erected by your labor. The right to fire back if fired on, and to push strange cattle off your owned land or away from water you hold rights to." He paused and looked around the room. "I know that may not sound like much, and I wish I could give you better. You're all my neighbors, and I don't like this situation any better than you do. But you asked, and that's my answer. Now, the law is supposed to be impartial. And I can't arrest a man for talking, unless he disturbs the peace or makes a threat. Even then, I have to hear the threat myself; otherwise it's hearsay. So I'm going to walk out of this room now, and leave you to decide on your own course. But let me tell you this: I'll worry the life out of the first side that steps out of line. I can't lift a finger till something is done against the law, and when it is, if I don't happen to be close by, anyone who acts to defend himself and his rights has nothing to fear; he may be arrested, but no jury I know of would convict him, because most jurors can imagine themselves in a similar position. And the law, as I've told you, works two ways. As long as a man—any man, from Wyoming, Texas, or anyplace in between—doesn't leave any tracks I can trace to his door, he's safe as the old Bank of England."

Everyone waited till Jess had let him out and bolted the doors behind him, and then the debate started up. Cole Rogers suggested that they simply follow a classic tactic for when late arrivals shoved new herds into a region: in such cases, established cowmen often refused to work their cattle, which meant that the newcomers couldn't take part in the common roundup, and in the face of such a boycott the invader was likely to take his herd elsewhere. Reed McCaskey pointed out, in return, that an outfit the size of Tennison didn't necessarily need to wait for common roundup; it could afford to hire a crew and fight the earlier claimants by conducting a roundup of its own ahead of the district one—which would give it the chance to brand all the mavericks for itself. "And in any case," he concluded, "all the beef they've pushed over the line up to now is branded, and I somehow doubt they'll move anything else in till they get a mark on it."

"Their brand's not registered in Wyoming, is it?" asked Joe Shefflin. "I don't see how it could be, when they haven't chosen a range."

"Don't matter," Matt put in. "Some of you came up here from Texas; you're used to findin' stray beef down from the north mixed in with your own herds every spring. If some of it happens to be she's with calves, you brand the calves with their mothers' mark; that's courtesy and custom. Then, if some rider comes down with a letter of authorization to prove who he works for, you give him the stock and he drives 'em home. Don't signify if it takes him six months to get there. The cattle are his, or rather his boss's, no matter where they are in relation to where their brand is recorded. Keep in mind what Mort said. Unless we can prove them cows are bein' driven over the line a-purpose, we got no recourse. We can accuse Tennison of anythin' we want to, but without that proof for the courts, they can just say that the critters must have strayed or been rustled, and no matter how off-color it looks or sounds, chances are even a judge would take their word for it and not even award us damages for grass et off our ranges."

"And if we act first," added Old Man Morgan glumly, "we're in the wrong."

"True enough," Slim agreed, "but we're not actin' first. Tennison started this ball rollin' by movin' cattle onto our range. We can't prove they did it. So how are they goin' to prove anything against us if we move 'em back?"

"What do you have in mind, Slim?" Bill Bates asked.

"Except for the youngsters—yearlings especially—cattle aren't much inclined to wander in the warm weather, when they can find all the grass they want without havin' to work too hard for it," Slim pointed out, while Jess listened with interest, recognizing a slightly altered form of his own earlier argument. "And all of us know and respect one another's brands and boundaries. You know that when we find mavericks at roundup, we usually divide 'em pro rata—the ones a man's hands come across on his land in between gathers are another matter altogether, since custom holds that they belong to the rancher whose range they're found on. We have our crew, and we know which direction Tennison has to come from. Reed—" addressing McCaskey— "your foreman is roundup captain this year, isn't he? Has he told you how many men we've got, total count?"

"He figures three hundred seventy-five or so," his father's friend replied, "with the owners, like your pa, and their grown sons."

"All right," said Slim, "from the Laramie Range west to the Medicine Bows is just about forty miles, and over good level open country. Let's work it like a deadline. Push as many of our own beef north as we can, and keep a steady patrol along the line, just like we'd keep line riders on our own spreads. That's the equivalent of four line camps; even if we send the riders out in groups of four, that's only sixteen to a shift, less than five per cent of the men we've got. Joe and the Coberleys and the others who have places down that way can let the men camp at their headquarters when they're off duty, and whoever they're workin' for can provide grub for 'em. Whenever a patrol finds sign of cattle comin' over the line, they shove 'em back. Tennison's showin' its pattern—it doesn't keep men with the beef it pushes north, because that's trespassin'. The way it looked to me when we had that talk with Mrs. Farity and her brothers, their main hope is that we'll look at the size of their outfit, which is bigger than most things down this end of the Basin, and decide we're overmatched. Let's show that we don't think so. Most of you have had to deal with a bully or two in your lives—I know I did, when I was a kid goin' to school in Illinois. If you face up to a bully, more often than not, you can back him down. Meanwhile our own cattle will be back away from the disputed zone, and we can get 'em straightened out in the fall. It might mean we'll have to start that gather earlier, but we can agree then on how we'll apportion the mavericks—I'd go for a percentage, bigger ranchers gettin' more in proportion to the number of branded head they can show. It'll also mean that some of us may have to share our water and grass with others' stock for a while, just to keep temptation out of Tennison's way. But as long as we don't overgraze the range consistently, it'll come back, and meanwhile our patrols can feel pretty certain that any cattle they see are strangers to be chased back where they came from."

"Do you think we can get this thing settled before we have to start that gather?" asked Morgan.

"I won't try to make guarantees," Slim told him gravely. "If I did, you'd know I was lyin'. But Tennison can't keep all those cattle in that one little valley for more than a couple of months before they eat all the grass off. One way or another, they'll have to act—either ramp it up some, which puts us in the right because we'll just be reactin' to what they do, or withdraw back to wherever they spent the winter. I know Texans are a stubborn, hardheaded bunch—" with a quick glance at Jess— "but these are people lookin' to settle somewhere, businessmen, and a woman, just like the rest of us. They don't want to spend the rest of their lives dukin' it out with us. We have to hold firm and push back a little. Yeah, it's a risk. They might just bring in some of those human tools Mort talked about. But we know what will happen if we don't—they'll behave just the same as any bully in a schoolyard when he finds someone too little to fight him. They'll stomp all over us. We figure their herd is twelve, maybe thirteen thousand head all told, plus the comin' calves. Absolute top, their crew would run ninety men or so, for that number. That puts the weight of numbers on our side, better than four to one. They probably hoped to take us unawares, filter their cattle in here while we were workin' roundup to cut down on the chance of bein' found out, then begin puttin' pressure on us one at a time. We have to keep 'em on the other side of the line, and ourselves organized for mutual protection, so they can't."

Jess frowned to himself. It was all very good logic, and he respected, even admired, Slim's ability to think clearly and present his arguments with precision and force. But keeping cattle out, or pushing them back to where they'd come from, was one thing; keeping out men, night riders, was another. Still, maybe Slim had the best of it. Jess had seen more than his share of range troubles, but never one in which the theoretically weaker side had gotten organized so early or had such a weight of numbers on its side. And the land itself, from what he knew of it, would help: if the Basin ranchers blockaded the whole of the Territorial line between the Laramie and Medicine Bow ranges, Tennison, if it really wanted to move north, would have only two options: go through them, or make an end run around the mountains and try for the country around Cheyenne, where it would have another set of established cowmen to deal with.

Much would depend on the Texans' resolve, and on how much cash money they'd managed to bring with them. Jess knew they'd shipped a herd in '67, well, part of one—about half a standard trail herd, enough to make it worthwhile for one of the brothers to go along to the railhead to keep an eye on his interests. Likely they'd done the same the year after—and now that he thought about it, he seemed to remember hearing of a Tennison being in Abilene that year he'd killed Cottrell. They might, just maybe, have shed some cattle in Abilene or Ellsworth last year, on their way north. All that meant money, but a lot of it had to go for wages, supplies, and such. Had they sold their land, or just abandoned it? If the former, had they been forced to let it go cheap, or gotten a good price? Had they had anything cached from before the war, cash or valuables they'd managed not to let the tax collectors find out about? A lot of ranchers accumulated a surprising amount of backup money; he'd heard of sizeable fortunes in it, and jewelry too, being found on the premises of some who'd died.

A buzz of quiet debate had been circulating among the gathered cattlemen as he pondered these things. As for the homesteaders, they had congregated in a group by themselves, off toward the left front of the room, and taken little part in the discussion up to now. But while they might describe themselves as farmers, many—certainly those who'd been in the country for any length of time—were also, of necessity, small-scale cattlemen, of the hybrid breed often called "stock farmers;" even in the Midwest, before the enactment of the Homestead Act, and still more westward and since, they had discovered early enough that the semi-arid climate and the difficulty of fencing off one's acreage and getting one's crop to market mitigated in favor of hedging one's bets by raising cattle in fair numbers. Cattle had the great advantage of being saleable locally—to the town butcher or the nearest military post or Indian reservation—and of being able to get to market on their own four feet, in a co-operative herd under charge of a trail boss if their owner didn't want to take the time himself; they also required much less labor, could be herded by children as young as eight, and were less subject to the vagaries of weather and insect pests, if not of market prices. Many of these small stockmen were specialists, some focusing on breeding and calf production, others bringing in yearling steers, which could cost as little as six dollars per head (and could very often be acquired free from a trail herd, in exchange for permitting it to graze on their land a night, or for providing fresh food for the cook's stores), and fattening them for sale as lucrative four-year-old beef. Even a man with only fifty head to his name would need a section or two to graze them on—$80 to $320 or more at government prices, far more than many of that cash-strapped breed could afford—which led them naturally to the use of the free range, and therefore these men had come inevitably to larger views than their counterparts back East. They too had been conferring among themselves, and now Liam Delaney stood up. " 'T'is plain to see," he began, "that all of ye, who've far more land than any of us, are troubled sore over what these newcomers may have in their minds. I'd not wonder if, havin' forced ye out, Tennison would set to squeezin' us, cuttin' off our access to grazin' land, forcin' us to give up our wee herds and depend on crops alone. Small as we are, what chance would we have, if ye stronger ones had been taken out first? 'T'is a threat to us all that we face—not to ranchers alone. Countin' all our men, and the lads of twelve and over, we're not but forty or so; but if there's use ye can make of us, we're willin' to lend our aid."

Matt and Reed McCaskey looked at each other with perfect understanding. "Is this how you all see it?" the former demanded. "Horace, you too? Mrs. Reinheimer?"

Olivia Reinheimer had come out to Wyoming from a town just west of Omaha after her husband went missing in the Battle of Gettysburg, leaving her with an eight-year-old daughter and two sons, ten and four. Fearful that she couldn't support them in town without accepting charity, she'd sold her house, packed up her goods and chattels, and headed west. Settling about a mile south of Laramie, she took up a 160-acre homestead claim, acquired nine cows, started a dairy, and was able to support the family nicely. She eventually added hogs to help consume the milk, slaughtered them herself, butchered them, cured the meat, and sold it in town, and though her husband never returned home, raised her children alone. She sold the majority of her bull-calves for veal, kept her heifers and bred them, and sold the surplus increase; she fed her stock entirely off her own land, on hay and grain she grew herself, and any she didn't need found ready buyers. Her oldest boy was going on seventeen now, a husky well-grown specimen of young frontier manhood, her daughter almost fifteen, and her younger boy close to Andy's age. Having to make her own way, and theirs, for nearly half her adult life had developed in her a brisk self-confidence and a willingness to speak her mind. "I was forced out of one good life by a war," said she, "and I don't mean to let another force me and my youngsters out of a second, not without making a stand." She glared around at her neighbors. "They say the cowards never start west. Maybe getting here takes up all the courage you can muster, but I hope not. I'm staying and I'm fighting. It's well enough to talk of law, but you heard Sheriff Corey: the law can be twisted and misused. We can't depend on it to keep us safe. God helps those who help themselves, Ben Franklin said, and that's why I brought my family out here to begin with. I plan to go on helping myself."

"I'm a peaceful man by nature," said Horace Yale slowly, "and I'm not young either. But I had ancestors who fought the Indians in York State and Ohio to make their farms, and my father was killed in the Black Hawk War. I know the value of standing together against a common enemy—and Liam's right; if we stand by and let you cowmen do all the work, and then you don't win in the end, where does that leave us? I won't say I'm happy about the situation, but I'll go along with the others."

It was Slim, again, who shouted down the clamor that followed. "All right, then! We need to decide who'll patrol where, which determines who'll provide their food, and where they'll stay. I think each group should have some extra horses, plus at least one really fast one and a messenger to ride it, ideally a youngster who doesn't weigh much. I'll undertake to make copies of Pa's maps so every group can have one and know where it has to be and where the others can be found in an emergency. I'd suggest that if a messenger has to be sent, unless there's an immediate threat like a direct attack, he make for the most centrally located point, and from there others can be dispatched in all directions."

Practicality being something that appeals to all men who make their living from the land, the truth of his words was seen at once, and the rest of the meeting was consumed with arrangements such as he'd described. Although no shooting had taken place yet, and the Basin ranchers genuinely hoped they could avoid it, they knew better than to bank on the possibility, and everyone was told to supply themselves with as much ammunition as they could afford before they headed home. "You homesteaders, especially, won't see much hard money before fall," Slim acknowledged, "but Benson and the hardware have carried you this far, and they shouldn't make much of a fuss over extending credit for shells. If they do, some of us will make up a cash pool and you can borrow from it; we're more liquid than you are. We'll take your promise, and you can settle up when you sell your crops and cattle in the fall—supposin' we make it that far; if we don't, we'll all be takin' losses, and not just in money."

Matt looked on with a benevolent and proudly satisfied expression as his son maneuvered himself, almost unnoticed, into the position of chief strategist and tactician for the resistance effort. Jess, remembering that Slim had been an officer in the Yankee cavalry, nodded thoughtfully to himself as he listened; the man might not have had experience of range wars himself, as Jess had, but he knew cattle and cattlemen, knew how to use terrain and handle men, and was familiar with the area, and he obviously had a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish. Once again Jess found himself thinking how much he wished the two of them could be friends. But at least until Matt heard from Branch McGarry, that wasn't likely to happen—and even then, a man who was conscious of having misjudged another might for that very reason be reluctant to get into any kind of close relationship with him, feeling that he'd be at a constant disadvantage.

Most of the cattlemen, it was agreed, would head back to the roundup camp and begin dispersing the crew, leaving some to push as many of the Basin cattle north as they could, assigning others to patrols and camps along the line. Once the cattle were well back from the possible combat zone, the men would split into parties, keeping on the move in hopes of spotting raiders or strange cattle before they could get very far. Matt, Jess, and Slim would take turns riding up and down the line so they would be available in case a question came up or the situation changed unexpectedly. Ranch and farm work would be done insofar as it could, by women and younger kids if necessary. "It may turn out to be a short year for some of us," Slim acknowledged, "but it's better we have one short year than lose everything, including our lives."

It was also decided that forethought should be given to the possibility of arson. "It ain't likely Tennison'll go that far so early," Jess observed, "but if this thing drags on long enough, it'll happen, soon or late. Likeliest targets are the biggest and most valuable, like barns and feed storage and haystacks; most men won't touch a house, not without they give the women and kids time to get out, but a man can be killed in a barn fire, or shot by the light of the flames at night when he goes out to try to save his stock. So turn your horses, dairy stock, whatever, out into corrals or pastures at night—they'll be safest there—and if you got any tools or gear you want to be sure of savin', move 'em out of your barn. Put 'em in your house or in a shed; most night riders don't bother with sheds."

The meeting finally broke up, and most of the cattlemen, including Jess and the Shermans, wandered over to the Stockmen's to consider the future over a glass or two. They didn't carouse, but held their liquor, their tongues, and their tempers. They had real trouble on their minds and were touchy and they seemed to know that any fight that started that night would be a dilly, and they avoided making it.

Jess, with his long experience in such situations, found that the air of anticipation in the place made him uneasy, and he took his glass of beer and went out to sit under the awning. After a little while Matt joined him. "Still broodin' on that Wanted poster, boy?" he asked.

"Not really," said Jess. "Like you said, I reckon it was a natural mistake. It ain't the first time I've had somethin' the like happen to me, and I reckon it won't be the last."

Matt settled into a captain's chair next to his own. "It ain't so much the mistakes you make, as what you learn from them," he said thoughtfully. "That goes for Slim, and for you too."

"Ain't about mistakes," said Jess shortly. "It's about... the way folks get things set in their minds. It don't bother me no more. I'm used to it."

"Maybe you think so," Matt replied. "Maybe you're just foolin' yourself—or thinkin' you can fool everyone else. Either way, things can change. A man can change; it's what makes him different from the rocks and the trees—and come to think of it, even they change, though they take longer about it than we do."

Jess eyed him sidewise. "Meanin' what? I ain't stayin' where I ain't welcome. I know right now you need me 'cause I been in scraps like this before. Time'll come you won't. Anyhow, I told Andy yesterday, there's... somethin' I gotta do. I'll stay for now, but not for always. I can't."

"That... 'errand' you spoke of?" Matt guessed.

Jess only nodded and said nothing. Matt watched him out of the side of his eye and reflected on how different the boy was from his own son—and on how the two of them were alike. Jess had a way of cutting through the foliage and getting right to the trunk. Matt liked that in a man. He also had a certain air that any man with Matt's years and experience could see for what it was: not arrogance so much as a well-earned self-confidence, as though he had survived any number of trials that would have destroyed mere mortals. And seeing how he was with Andy and Mary and the horses told Matt that, no matter what he'd done or been pushed into doing over the years, there was still a solid core of decency hidden behind that tough exterior. Maybe he'd been wrongly used so often that he was afraid to trust, yet he still wanted to, and it came out with those least likely to tax or betray him, women and children and animals.

"Seems to me," Matt mused, "that back when I was headin' up trail drives in the '50's, and passin' regular through the country from Santone up to Dennison, I heard somethin' of a Harper family."

Jess's lips tightened. "Don't doubt it. What I hear, we're kinda notorious in East Texas. Most seem to think we ain't worth the powder it'd take to blow us out of the state."

"The way you say that," Matt noted, "I get the feelin' you don't see yourself as one of 'em."

Jess shrugged. "Ain't got much reason to. Never met any of my kin, 'ceptin' Ma and Pa and one uncle—and he was from her side, not Pa's. I ain't from East Texas; I already told you that. I'm Panhandle born and bred. Never hardly got east of the Shawnee Trail till the war."

Matt looked benevolently at him and observed that many an ill cow has a good calf. "In any case," he added, "a man ought not to be faulted for things that wasn't his doing; and no well can be tainted that comes from a clear spring. And I think, too, that you know a man by the company he wants to keep."

Jess looked away quickly, a flush coming and going in his cheek. Before Matt could say anything else, he tautened a bit, his head angling as if his eye had lit on something that troubled him. "Reckon you must know most folks in these parts," he said, "after twelve years. Who's this comin'?"

Matt looked, carefully. Coming up the street on a bright orange dun with a white mane and tail—the color that was called bayo naranjo further south—was a young fellow of maybe twenty-two or -four. His gray trousers were tucked into boots inlaid with a row of white leather diamonds along the upper edges of the tops—probably custom-made, the kind that would run fifty dollars and up for a pair—but on his head sat not the proud, jaunty cowboy Stetson, but a crumpled felt hat, official U.S. Cavalry issue, faded to drab gray and with a hole worn in the crown, with a string of Indian beads for a band, and an eagle tail-feather stuck into it. And instead of a conventional shirt he wore an Indian one of blacktail deerskin, rich with tassels and fringe, beads and porcupine quills and squares of black velvet, with a beaver collar. One side of the fringe had been lined before it was cut with red flannel, to give a striking effect as it stirred to the wearer's movements, and at intervals along the seams were tufts of bear fur set in feather quills, so they'd swing freely. Matt had seen such shirts in his Indian-trading days, had even owned one that he'd bought at a trappers' rendezvous; it was a Ute ceremonial shirt, which suggested that the youngster was out of the Colorado mountain country, maybe the diggings around Denver. You might almost have taken him for a halfbreed, except that he had sandy hair, rather in need of barbering, and freckles. His big ears stood out like the handles on a sugar bowl. He sat his horse all knees and elbows, like the big old farm boy he'd probably been. He flashed a foolish grin, full of buck teeth, at Matt and Jess as the bayo walked past, and at first look, Matt figured, he'd impress a lot of people as being about half simple. But there was a sort of secret, sly look about his eyes that hinted he was smarter than he looked; and though they were narrow and not easily made out, especially in the shade of his hatbrim, they seemed to Matt rather like stone chips, angry and hard. In a scarred tan holster worn high in front of his left hip, the butt angled sharply to the right for a cross-draw, was what Matt thought might be an English Tranter double-action .44—one of the Confederate "imitation-type" guns intended to substitute for the Colts that had been sold only to the Union, and equally as common in the West as the originals.

"Never saw him before," Matt admitted. "Not anybody you know, I'm guessin'."

"Nope," said Jess, "but I know his kind. Seen it often enough. Word must be startin' to get out. We'll be seein' more—the kind of gun-crazy kid that kills for the sport of it. But they won't be no good at all without a gun to hand." He snorted softly as the bayo passed them and headed on toward Dennison's barn. "That one less'n most.

Somebody poured his brains in with a teaspoon, and got his arm joggled at that."

"No, I don't reckon," Matt replied. "I've seen his sort before—they're not frequent, it's true, but you do find 'em, from time to time. It doesn't do to sell 'em short. I'd bet he's a lot smarter than he'd like most folks to know; that's his edge, that and the fact that he don't hardly look old enough to be wearin' that sixgun."

"Everybody needs an edge, in this trade," Jess acknowledged, "but we ain't up to hirin' guns yet, and I'm hopin' we won't need to. Once that starts there ain't hardly no stoppin' it; that was why McGarry stepped into that one fight I was in. He'll move on soon enough, when he hears nobody's got a welcome mat spread for his breed."

Matt pushed to his feet with a grunt. "Speakin' of welcome mats," he said, "we ought to be headin' on home. I'll go in and get Slim."

**SR**

For the next week or ten days, things went on quietly. Jess and the Shermans, each taking his turn to ride along the line and pick up the reports of the patrols—it took three or four days to make the trip, contact all or most of their men down that way, and return—heard of bunches of Tennison steers found and thrown back into Colorado, of a few small groups of breeders headed off and turned, but not of any sign of men coming across without stock, which suggested that Tennison wasn't yet to the point of dispatching spies, agents, or hired guns to clear its path. For now, it was a waiting game. Meanwhile, range work got done as and how it could, often by women (especially older girls, like Celie McCaskey) and kids, although the patrols often spotted unbranded calves and took the opportunity to mark them in their mothers' style before shoving them north.

Matt packed his blankets and a few days' supplies and rode up to the upper basin to see one of the big ranchers, Wilson, the owner and founder of the Laramie bank. Since many farmers and ranchers had mortgages, whether to buy land or stock or to finance improvements such as wells or fence, and since a mortgage was legally negotiable tender and could be bought and sold, a very popular grift in land disputes was to buy up their paper from the bank, then foreclose if they didn't pay up—and sometimes, to hurry them along, rustle their stock till they went broke. Any rancher, no matter his size, could be vulnerable to such a tactic, but in Laramie they had a big advantage: their banker was a cattleman and knew something about the tactics of grabbers and other pirates. He was also farsighted enough to recognize that if he allowed his neighbors to be pushed out, eventually, as Jess had noted, he or his son would find themselves standing alone against the invaders, with the weight of numbers probably on the other side, and no one they could call on for help. Matt laid out the situation for him in detail, including what Mort Corey had said and what the lower-Basin ranchers and 'steaders had made up their minds to. "With luck," he finished, "we can keep 'em out, and you boys up here'll never even have to deal with 'em. But we want to feel sure they won't be able to slip around and knife us in the back—which they could if they got hold of enough of our mortgages."

Wilson nodded gravely. "I'm glad you came and told me this, Matt," he said. "First thing in the morning, I'll send a rider down with a note to Abel Ferguson—" that was the vice-president/manager who ran the bank day-to-day— "instructing him not to let go of any of the paper we hold without consulting me first. After all, a man can make offers, but there's no law says we have to accept them. The more legal avenues we can close to this outfit, the likelier they'll have to start using the illegal kind, and when they do that, we might be able to stop 'em."

"That's what I'm hopin' for," Matt agreed. "Of course, even them that's got no mortgages can be rustled from till they've lost anything worth sellin', and with no money to pay their taxes or support their families, they can be forced out; but that sort of thing takes time, especially when the other side's tryin' to operate on land it don't know. What's a lot more likely, if our turnin' back of their cattle don't discourage 'em, is that they'll start in with terror tactics—burnin', bushwhackin', poisonin' stock."

"And if they do?" Wilson inquired.

"If they do," said Matt grimly, "we got better'n four hundred men with guns, and I got a son who fought four years in the Union Army—besides a Texas youngster on my payroll who's seen more of these kind of ructions than I think he likes to think about. They want to play rough, we can do the same. The one thing I'm afraid of is folks on my side gettin' scared, losin' heart. Our strength is in our unity. If that starts to crack, we can still be picked off one at a time."

"Well, I wish you good luck," Wilson told him, "and if you start feeling the pressure, I've got a hundred and fifty or so riding for me; like you've already pointed out, I don't want to end up the only man left to face these people, so if I can help, you get word to me."

"That means a lot to me, and I'm obliged," said Matt. They shook hands, and he headed home.

**SR**

It had been just under two weeks since the meeting when Jess and Andy rode into Laramie. Slim, taking salt blocks out to the cattle in the buckboard, had run the vehicle over a rock, and the axle had cracked; Matt wasn't sure whether they had enough strap iron—even if they dipped into what the Overland provided for maintenance work on its coaches—to fix it, though they had started to work on the job, so he had decided that the best move was for Mary and Jonesy to make up a list of the items they thought they absolutely couldn't do without, and send Jess in with a packhorse to get them. Andy asked permission to go along, pointing out that if their purchases proved too much for one packhorse, two ridden ones would be better than one at getting the extra stuff home, and Mary, who had promised the week before to lend one of her dress patterns to her friend Rosina Whitmire, the milliner, and didn't want to make the younger woman wait another full week to get it, consented on condition that he'd take it with him and drop it off.

Jess's relationship with Slim remained cool, more formal than not; Jess figured the older Sherman son might not think much of him, but respected his father's authority too much to make anything of it, and was moreover practical and experienced enough to understand that the Basin might still need his skills and knowledge. To make it easier on both of them, Jess spent most of his time, when he and Slim weren't taking their turns to ride the line, out on the range, checking up on the cattle, the fences, and Matt's little stud band of mustang-quarter crosses; or, if Slim planned to spend the day away from the headquarters, he'd work on some of the young three-year-olds Matt had wanted started, the Comanche way being a nice break from the tensions of the situation they faced. Matt had spoken of taking the beef up to the high pastures soon: it was May, and the snow had drawn back enough to make grass easy for them to find. Since this part of the ranch wasn't familiar to Jess, he'd said, he and Slim would take on the job—it would only take a day to go up and back once they had the cattle all in one spot and ready to go—and Jess, Jonesy, and Andy could take charge of the chores and the stages till they got back.

Matt, as he'd said he would, had written a letter to Marshal McGarry at his last-known posting, in the hope that his reply, when it came, might make things easier between Slim and Jess; he valued both of them, was sure they would both be needed as time went on, and wanted them to be sufficiently comfortable with each other that they could work together with some degree of trust. Slim for his part, while he'd seen no more open displays of affection toward Jess on his mother's part, still wasn't happy about Andy's deepening friendship with the young Texan, or Matt's obvious trust and confidence in him; and he had noticed, too, that Mary had a way of dishing out the best and largest portions to Jess at mealtimes, or preparing special treats for him on baking days or when she packed a dinner for him, claiming she wanted to feed him up and "get some meat on those bones." Slim had known many a woman to be attracted to boyish charm or even the hint of dark, reckless danger, but those had been mostly the young, inexperienced ones; he'd thought his mother more sensible. Jonesy was no better, and seemed even more inclined to trust Jess than Matt was, though he never said exactly why. All of this fed into Slim's continuing resentment of the gunslinger, and Jess, of course, sensed it, though he didn't understand it.

Andy occasionally used Cyclone for fence- and bog-riding, as he'd been doing the day he came upon Jess practicing, but not ordinarily, for the palomino's testy personality made him get easily bored at such quiet work. He was much better at holding a cavvy, because he was alert and quick on his feet and didn't hesitate to use his teeth if one of the other horses tried to get past him. Slim had said he might have the makings of a cutting horse, though it would take two or three years of working him around cows to be sure. "Cheyennes say a good war pony should be very spirited, even a little mean," he'd said, "and I think maybe a cutter needs the same." But the boy also liked to employ Cyclone as his "town" or "Sunday" horse, because he was so showy and handsome. And so, that morning, he'd saddled the palomino up for the ride into Laramie.

"I tell you what, Tiger," Jess suggested as they dropped down through the evergreen belt. "Your pa give me a note to pass on to Sheriff Corey, and there ain't no point makin' this poor old horse—" with a nod back toward the rose-gray gelding haltered on behind Traveller— "stand around with a full load while we finish up. So how 'bout I stop at the jail first, and you drop him off by Benson's, go take that pattern to your ma's lady friend, and meet me. Shouldn't take neither of us more'n five or ten minutes to do them two little errands."

"Okay," Andy agreed. They parted as they passed the first buildings, Jess turning toward the jail, Andy continuing down-street to the general store. He stopped just long enough to lean down from his saddle and fasten the packhorse's halter rope to the rack there, then crossed over to the millinery shop and tied Cyclone outside.

Neither he nor Jess noticed the man lounging on the boardwalk in front of Dooley's saloon. There were four saloons in Laramie: the Stockmen's, the Casino (which was, in fact, the bar attached to the hotel, though it had a street entrance and separate false front of its own), Windy's, and Dooley's, and they were ranked, by the knowledgeable, in just about that order. Dooley's was very definitely a workingman's bar, a place for common cowboys, laborers, and the occasional small-time outlaw or average-tough gunman; its girls were noted for their brass and flash, and Mort Corey could count on at least two fights breaking out there on any given Saturday.

But the man in front of Dooley's noticed Jess and Andy, because he'd been watching for any of certain men, but most particularly for Jess Harper. His name was Lonnie Beal, and Matt or Jess would have recognized him immediately as the rider on the bayo naranjo who had passed them as they sat on the Stockmen's porch after the meeting.

When Andy came out of the milliner's shop, it was to find a stranger standing beside his horse, patting Cyclone's neck and shoulder and dropping to a heel-squat to feel down his legs. As he stopped on the boardwalk, surprised, the stranger looked up at him with a foolish grin that revealed his buck teeth, and stood up in an awkward-looking way, all knees and elbows. He was young, maybe not even as old as Jess, with rather over-long sandy hair and freckles and big ears that stood out like the handles on a sugar bowl. He wore a crumpled felt hat, official U.S. Cavalry issue, faded to drab gray and with a hole worn in the crown, but dressed up with a string of Indian beads for a band, and an eagle tail-feather stuck jauntily into it. His gray trousers were tucked into boots inlaid with a row of white leather diamonds along the upper edges of the tops. And instead of an ordinary cloth shirt he wore an Indian one of blacktail deerskin, tasselled and fringed, worked with beads, porcupine quills, and squares of black velvet, and collared in beaver. One side of the fringe had been lined before it was cut with red flannel, to give a striking effect as it stirred to the wearer's movements, and at intervals along the seams were tufts of bear fur set in feather quills, so they'd swing freely. Andy had seen such a shirt, once, on his only visit to Denver; his pa had told him it was a Ute dress-up shirt.

Cyclone wasn't behaving as if the man's attentions troubled him, but Cyclone, in his way, was a very sensible horse; he had no issues with people, just with other horses, and then only the ones that didn't have riders, which was why he'd jogged along so meekly alongside Traveller for twelve miles—and why he made a fuss when he had to share the corral. "Your horse, boy?" the stranger asked in a twangy Missouri accent.

Andy's lips twitched; something about this fellow made him uneasy, he wasn't sure what. "Yessir," he said, brief, but trying to be polite.

"Always have admired palominos," the man drawled. "Might say they go with my shirt—you reckon?"

"Uh... yessir," said Andy again.

The man reached into the front of his shirt and pulled out a beaded drawstring "poke" of buckskin, which jingled in an unmistakeable way when he tossed it casually from one hand to the other. "Give you fifty dollars for him."

That was good money: a first-class unbroken horse went for no more than half as much, and even the highest-quality all-around cowponies seldom fetched more than seventy-five, with thirty being the fair average normal. The offer startled Andy enough that for a moment he couldn't think of anything to say; he just opened his mouth and shut it again. He didn't notice the three or four men who'd drifted out through the batwings onto Dooley's porch and stood leaning against the front wall, watching.

The stranger perhaps took his silence for refusal. "Don't suit you? All right. Make it a hundred." He opened the poke and slowly counted out five gold double eagles, his lips moving silently as he did.

Andy recovered his sense and shook his head. "No, sir. I'm sorry, but Cyclone's not for sale. I couldn't ever sell him. My big brother went after him last year when he was stolen and killed a man to get him back."

The other considered a moment, and a sly gleam showed in his eyes. Suddenly Andy noticed how pale and hard they were, like chips of galena lead, and he licked his lips nervously and took a step backward. "This brother of yours around now, is he?"

Andy shook his head again. "But it doesn't matter. I still couldn't sell Cyclone, not after that."

"Sure you could. Man can sell anythin'. Why, I've seen them that sold away their courage and self-respect." He counted out five more double eagles. "Two hundred. Last offer."

"No," said Andy, a little louder than he'd planned to.

A soft whistle sounded from Dooley's porch. The stranger didn't look around, only grinned and slowly poured the money from his hand back into the poke. Andy was just about ready to start breathing again when he said calmly, "Well, in that case, I reckon I'm just gonna have to take him. 'Cause he's 'way too much horse for a squirt like you." And with that he pulled the knot out of Cyclone's reins and stuck his toe in the stirrup.

For a second Andy was too astonished to move. Surely nobody would steal a man's horse like that, right out in broad daylight on a public street. But the man in the Ute shirt was swinging up, and Cyclone was beginning to dance a little, the way he did when he knew he was going to be asked to move. Andy took a deep breath, lunged, jumped, and got hold of the man's right leg just before it could go over the palomino's back. The man, like a horse fighting flies, kicked, and Andy landed on his back in the dust of the street.

About forty yards up, Jess Harper, who'd just come out of the sheriff's office, located the milliner's, and started toward it, paused as he saw what was going on, frowning in angry bewilderment, equally as unbelieving as Andy.

Andy for his part, after Slim had risked his life to get the horse back for him, had made up his mind nobody would ever take Cyclone again, and he'd trained the palomino to a couple of pretty snaky tricks. He let out one shrill descending whistle that drained the last air from his lungs. Cyclone's ears went up, his head jerked down, and he rose in the air as if someone had just set off a charge under his belly, switched ends and came down stiff-legged. Andy rolled and scrambled for the boardwalk as his horse hit the ground with all four feet bunched and bounded up again. The man in the Ute shirt was hauling at the reins, trying to get his head up, but Cyclone didn't even seem to feel it. He went high and straight into the air as if to go over backwards, then recovered and crashed back onto all fours as the unauthorized rider loosened in the saddle. He reared up again, then threw himself forward, kicking up his heels, and the man left his back, hitting the ground hard and rolling.

Andy whistled again, on a rising note this time, and Cyclone immediately stopped pitching and stood still. He gave a shake, looked around, and stood blowing but quiet and peaceful. Andy gave a two-note call and the horse turned and walked over to the edge of the boardwalk to meet him as he got to his feet, stepping carefully to avoid his own dragging reins, lowering his head for the forehead-scratch that always rewarded him when he did one of his tricks well. "Good boy," Andy whispered. "Good boy." His back was turned to the up-end of the street; he didn't see Jess watching in astonished admiration, then starting quickly toward the scene of the tableau.

He didn't see the man in the Ute shirt, either, till it was too late. A hand fell on his shoulder and a blow struck his cheek, slamming his head sideways. Cyclone squealed and danced away as his master went down a second time.

"You done that a-purpose," growled the would-be horse thief, standing spraddle-legged over Andy's sprawled form, a swaying ominous shape against the sun-glare. "Boy, nobody shows me up like that, not even somebody your age." He reached down with one long arm, knotted his fingers in the front of Andy's shirt, and hauled him up. Andy's knees were still rubbery; he couldn't stand on his own. He saw the stranger's free arm go back and flinched away reflexively, anticipating the blow—

and then Jess was there, his right hand shooting in between the two of them to clamp onto the offending wrist, squeezing and twisting so that Andy's assailant yelped and let go, then bringing his left around in a full backhand swing with all the power of his chest and shoulder muscles behind it. The stranger turned a half-flip as he fell, rolled about ten feet and came to rest, his hand going toward the English Tranter double-action .44 at his side. Jess dropped back a pace or two, eyes flashing, his own fingers bare inches from the ivory handle of his Colt. "Don't try it," he warned softly.

Lonnie Beal hesitated an instant, then reached sideways with his right to get hold of a nearby tie rail and slowly pulled himself up. Jess never took his eyes off him. "Touch that boy again and I'll kill you where you stand," he said, not loud, not showy, just even and slow.

Front Street was suddenly very quiet. Beal eyed his opponent, let his pale-gray eyes range past him a second to Andy, then returned his attention to Jess and grinned, broadly, mockingly. "Well, now, hear the man! By any chance are you shakin' a stick at me?"

There was a note of anticipation, almost of glee, in the words, and Jess suddenly saw that he'd been manipulated, that this whole incident had been planned almost to the second; out of the side of his eye, with the gunfighter's trick of splitting vision, he could see the range-dressed quartet watching from under Dooley's awning. If they were friends of Beal's, if they decided to jump into this, they'd have him in a crossfire, and maybe Andy as well. But he didn't dare move. Beal was the keystone here; it was his actions that would determine what happened next. With a sinking feeling the young Texan knew that Matt had been right in his estimate of the kid, that Beal wasn't just a common gun-crazy killer, that he was a lot smarter than he wanted anyone to know... till it was too late for the knowledge to do him much good. "No," Jess said, firm and steady. "A fair warnin'."

"Nobody lays a hand on me, Mister." And Beal's voice had gone flat, all good humor leaching out of his expression.

"Seems to me," said Jess, "that I just did."

"Then you better back it up, here and now."

Jess was calculating variables in his head, fast, the way Dixie had taught him. The two of them weren't more than twenty-five feet apart, which was an odd distance, halfway between the short-range, seven-yards-and-under interval in which speed was the most important thing, and the ten-yards-and-up space that true gunfighters, like Howard and himself, preferred because you had to be able to aim. Beal's Tranter was worn for a cross-draw, which meant he wouldn't need that extra second or two to bring it up and level; it would come level on its own as it left the holster—and it was a double-action, which was faster on the uptake: you squeezed the trigger and the hammer rose, tripped, and fell, all in one smooth progression of movement, eliminating any need to wrestle with it, letting you get off successive shots just a hair faster than a man with a single-, like Jess. But doing this required a longer trigger pull and could throw your aim off, so often it cancelled out. Not at such a close range, maybe. Jess kept a tight hold on himself, breathing the way he'd been taught, watching Beal's eyes. It was as it had been for him in many fights before: they said nothing, and yet they spoke a silent language; Jess said, I'm tellin' you to back down, and Beal said, You'll have to be big enough to make me.

Andy backed slowly away from the edge of the boardwalk, trying to watch both men at once. Neither of them gave any hint that they were even aware of him any more. Their concentration was on each other. His eyes flicked back and forth between them. Yet even as close as he was, not even he could ever say with certainty which of them moved first; he would almost have said that they drew at the exact same instant—and at that, very possibly, they did. The first two shots sounded as one, followed by two more a fraction of a second apart, then a third. Andy heard a bullet sing by over his head, heard the chunk as it struck the edge of the hanging sign above the shop door. Beal was wavering a little on spread feet, a red stain disfiguring the front of his handsome shirt. Jess stood like a statue, his Colt level and solid as stone, narrowed eyes peering keenly through the white fog of powdersmoke. Up the street, Mort Corey's office door banged open as the sound drew him out.

Beal's knees gave way and he collapsed forward, almost in slow motion. He hit the ground at full length, his gun still in his hand. His hat fell off. He didn't move.

Jess immediately spun to face the men on Dooley's porch. This was more his style, even if he was badly outnumbered: Front Street was sixty feet wide, true gunfighter's distance, though the interval between himself and the saloon was more like forty, and if necessary he could fall back and take cover in the alley. Well-honed instincts spotted the man who was likely to be the guiding spark of the pack, a hard-eyed individual in a red corduroy vest. Again he calculated: he had two shots left; if he could put them in the right places he could take down half the enemy, then break and find a place where he could fort up for just the few minutes necessary to reload. But he'd have to make sure of Red Vest first, and then hope that the second he took out was the next natural leader...

He spoke, evenly, his eyes switching quickly from one of the group to another, just in case his estimate was off.

"He called it after he was notified. You agree with that?"

Red Vest hesitated only a breath. "I didn't see it no different from what you say. You gave him a chance to back off and he didn't take it."

"All right," said Jess, his voice harsh and deep. "If he meant anythin' to any of you, now's the time to make somethin' of it."

The other shook his head. "You'll get no trouble from us. But that man you killed had friends."

"He bought his ticket," Jess retorted, "and I've got more rides on the same train. You can tell 'em that, if they ask you."

"All right, what happened here?" demanded Corey, Comin' up too dang late, Jess thought, like the law mostly tends to.

The shop door opened, and Rosina Whitmire came out. "I saw the whole thing through my window, Sheriff," she said. "That man—" she nodded toward Beal— "tried to ride away on Andy's horse. Andy made the horse buck him off, and the man slapped him across the face. He was going to do it again when Mr. Harper got here and hit him. It wasn't till afterward that they drew on each other."

Corey considered that, eyeing the darkening blotch of bruise forming on Andy's cheek. "Yes," he admitted, "I can see that somebody left his mark on the boy, sure enough. And you being on the Sherman payroll, Harper, I guess defending Andy and his horse comes under your job description. Are you hurt badly, Andy?"

"I—I don't think so, Sheriff," the boy replied, gingerly probing at the injury with unsteady fingers. "I don't... it's not bleedin', is it?"

"No, it's not," the lawman agreed, "but you look a little shaky, son. Miss Rosina, could you take him inside and fix him a cup of hot tea? I know his ma and Jonesy both swear by it when a body's had a bit of a shock."

"I'll be pleased, Sheriff," the milliner declared, and extended her hand— "Come on with me, Andy."

The boy hesitated, looking from Corey to Jess, reading the unabated tension in the Texan's posture, the uneasy look in his eyes. "Jess isn't in trouble, is he, Sheriff?"

Corey had caught sight of the quartet in front of Dooley's. "I don't think so, not with a good witness like Miss Rosina to speak for him," he assured the boy, "though I'll want a word with those others over there. And you'll probably have to come in and testify at the inquest, young fella," he added to Jess.

Gradually Jess's shoulders relaxed and he carefully slid his gun into the holster. "Wouldn't be the first time, Sheriff."

With a gasp, Andy threw himself at Jess and hugged him hard around the middle. "You're okay, aren't you, Jess?He didn't—you're not—?"

"No, Tiger," Jess assured him quietly, "ain't got a scratch on me. You go on with Miss Rosina, now, I'm thinkin' Sheriff Corey wants a few more words with me. I'll be along for you in twenty minutes or so." He eased an arm around the boy's shaking shoulders, gently tousled his hair with his other hand, and then carefully peeled Andy off him, turned him, and gave him a light push into the woman's waiting arms.

**SR**

"Lonnie Beal, huh?" said Jess. "Heard of him. Never run up against him; he used to do some scoutin' in between gun jobs, which you'd guess from that hat he wore, reckon that's why."

Mort Corey nodded. "I heard his father was a scout for the Army and Lonnie was riding with him when he was only fifteen. Heard Lonnie's stepmother was a Ute, and he learned the trade from her kin. Where he learned to handle a gun I don't know."

"How's it come he's still hangin' around town?" Jess asked. "Me and Matt Sherman seen him ride in, it'll be two weeks tomorrow. Seems like by now he'd have figured it out that nobody in these parts is hirin' his sort."

Corey gave him an unreadable look. "If you're as smart as Matt thinks you are," he said, "you shouldn't need to ask that question. Not after what just happened out there."

Jess eyed the lawman in turn. "Maybe I'm waitin' to hear you say it," he replied, with a hint of challenge in his tone; his experience in Soho, particularly, and in '68 when he'd tried to file on a homestead in Colorado with Will Tibbs, had soured him considerably on badge-toters, and while he knew there were plenty of good ones around—McGarry and Jim Tenney, to take two notable examples—the small-town kind still made him uneasy. He wanted to trust Corey because he knew Matt did, but bitter memories took a long time dying.

"He's been staying at the hotel," said Corey, "which isn't cheap—five dollars a week, plus an extra dollar a day for supper and breakfast. I noticed him, of course, soon after he got in; with that flashy Ute shirt he was hard to miss. He did the circuit of all the saloons in town, stayed a couple or three evenings at each, then settled at Dooley's, though I was sure he could have afforded better. Kept to himself, pretty much, and didn't cause trouble."

"Huh," said Jess, "that don't come natural to most like him."

Corey nodded. "I know it. Makes me think, in hindsight, that he was under orders. And I found $289 in that money pouch of his, ten bright new double eagles and the rest mixed change that he'd gotten for his purchases around town. That suggest anything to you?"

Jess struggled briefly with his arithmetic. As he'd told the Shermans, he didn't hire out to kill, but that didn't mean he didn't know the kind of money it fetched: anywhere from $100 to $2000, most commonly, varying according to the importance, gun skill, or both of the designated victim, and usually paid half in advance, half on completion. Supposing Beal had been promised $600, he'd have had three of it when he arrived in town, plus whatever he might have been carrying at the time of hire. Figuring in drinks, maybe a bath or two, horse keep, and likely a roll or two in the hay with one of Dooley's girls—they weren't for hire, strictly, but like many saloon and dance-hall girls, they reckoned that their morals outside working hours were their own affair, and while they might pick or reject partners as they pleased, they certainly wouldn't turn down a gratuity if it was offered after the fact—he'd have spent maybe forty, maybe fifty dollars since he got here. It worked. But he wasn't after me, not special, Jess thought. It wasn't that he was vain of his skill, but he knew how good he was, knew his own reputation—a man taught by Dixie Howard wouldn't come cheap, not least because Jess himself was the only such that he knew of—and he figured he'd be worth a thousand, at least.

Tennison knows I'm with these folks, he reasoned, but maybe they was thinkin' that if they was to take down my boss, I'd move on. Only they wasn't sure just whose payroll I was on; Matt didn't say when we went to see 'em. So they sent Beal up here with orders to keep his head down, find out just who was runnin' things and who in particular I was workin' for, and take one or both out. Likely figured they'd end up bein' one and the same, which of course they are. Six hundred's a bit the south side of average for a single kill, and if they guessed Matt was it, they'd reckon a plain cowman ain't worth what, say, a lawman might be. Only Beal got too eager. He wanted me, for my rep; he figured that'd be worth not gettin' the higher price, 'cause if he could claim to've killed me, he could charge more next time, or just get hired for better jobs. Or else maybe he reckoned he'd go back, tell 'em he'd took me down, and hold 'em up for more pay.

He'd worked for men like Matt before, and invariably it had been a good experience, as good as gun work could be. The rancher was a solid, hard-working man with a will of his own; he wouldn't give an inch when he knew he was in the right, wouldn't turn down a call for help from anyone as long as he had anything to give. The kind that people like the Tennisons had to get rid of; you couldn't buy them and you couldn't scare them.

Something of this—not all—he shared with Corey, watching the man's shrewd eyes as he processed the information. "I don't reckon you found anythin' on him that'd prove any of this," he guessed in conclusion.

"No, the Tennisons are too smart for that," the sheriff agreed. "And, let's face it, boy, you've got a name; nobody'd be surprised if a feller like Beal, wandering casual-like into a new town and hearing you were in the vicinity, decided to try you."

Jess nodded briefly. "Thought of that. So what now?"

Corey shrugged. "No proof, my hands are tied. I can't even show there was a connection between Beal and Tennison. For all I know there wasn't, at least not directly: Lydacker, as I suspect you know, has something of a name for independent thought, and a way of interpreting his orders pretty generously. He might well have hired Beal entirely on his own. So we'll hold an inquest and bury the man, and after that we'll just have to wait and see what happens."

"Huh," said Jess. " 'Bout what I reckoned on."

"Don't you give me a hard time, boy," Corey told him sternly. "You were at the meeting when I explained how the law reads. I can't act pre-emptively or without some kind of evidence or the statement of a witness. If I could, well, so could any other lawman, and you, to take one example, would probably be in prison by now, or hung, just on suspicion."

Suddenly the vinegar went out of Jess and he sighed. "I know it," he agreed. "I'm sorry, Sheriff, it wasn't nothin' against you personally. Like you said, it's how the law reads; ain't nothin' we can do about it." He pushed off the jail bars against which he'd been leaning during their exchange. "If you won't be needin' me no more, I best be pickin' up Andy; we still got some things to get at Benson's. When you want me for that inquest, how 'bout you send a message out by the stage; I'll get it by suppertime, 'less I'm down south." He started toward the door, then paused a moment and turned back. "One thing, Sheriff..."

"What?"

"Well, I know anythin' Beal had that was worth somethin', like his horse or his guns, you got to hold till you can find out if he left any heirs," Jess observed. "But that banged-up old hat of his, now—that wouldn't have no value, would it?"

"Not of itself, no, unless he's got a treasure map or something tucked away inside the band," Corey agreed. "Why?"

"Can I have it?"

Corey frowned a bit, puzzled. "Never heard you had the habit of taking trophies, boy."

"Ain't a trophy," said Jess, and grinned. "Just wanta leave a little message, next time it comes my turn to run the patrol."

**SR**

Jess knew better than to suppose he could keep Andy's parents and brother from finding out what had happened in town; they'd see the bruise on the boy's face first thing. But he didn't want Andy telling them about it the way a boy would, blowing it up with that hero-worship he knew Slim hated. So, as they rode up the stage road with the packhorse plodding along behind them, he extracted Andy's promise that he would leave the telling to Jess.

It went just about as he had thought it would. They no sooner started carrying groceries into the kitchen than Jonesy and Mary spotted the bruise. To save himself having to tell the story twice, and to get the hard part over quickly, Jess asked Andy to call his father and brother in from the little roofed-over space alongside the barn where they'd set up the portable forge to repair the axle. He recounted the incident without emotion, in simple words, including Rosina Whitmire's testimony on his behalf and what Corey had known, and discovered, about the dead man. Then he brought in the rest of the day's purchases and led the horses to the barn, where the fresh team for the day's last stage was already tethered up to the corral rails, and began stripping off their gear and rubbing them down.

"Well," said a voice behind him, "are you satisfied with yourself now?"

He knew who it was, of course, so he managed to keep himself from reaching for his gun, but privately he thought bitterly: You're goin' slack, Harper. You should'a' heard him comin'. You need to get out of here as fast as you can, or you won't be no good at all. "Don't know what you're talkin' about," he muttered.

"If you don't," retorted Slim, "you're nowhere near as smart as Pa thinks you are," and Jess remembered that Corey had said almost exactly the same thing. "You know what Andy thinks about you. He's probably wanted nothin' better, ever since he found out what you are, than to see you in action. Now he has, and we'll have a hard time of it keepin' him from dreamin' of followin' in your footsteps."

The worst of it was that Jess knew there was justice in the remark, though he was far too clever to try to explain that Andy already had seen him in action, just not against another man. This was even worse than those other situations when he'd been handed his time and told to move on. He'd never been in a shooting with a kid looking on, up to now. "I got no control over what he dreams of, nor you don't neither," he pointed out.

"No, but he wouldn't be doin' it if you weren't around. This was a nice peaceful place till you showed up."

"I didn't come here on my own, y'know!" Jess argued hotly. "If you're gonna blame anybody for that, blame them Sioux, or Trav, or even Andy and his pa—they was the ones fetched me in off the range. I didn't have no plans to stop anywhere, 'cept maybe Laramie for a night or two, when I first come into this country. I had business of my own to see to. But once I was here, I couldn't go without tryin' to pay back at least some of what I owed you. Anyhow, he'd still have got a pretty close look at trouble, one way or another. Tennison's been loiterin' around south of the line since last fall, just waitin' till they knew enough about what they faced to come in. You ain't gonna stand there and tell me your pa wouldn't'a' done just what he did, once he saw what they was up to, are you? 'Cause if you are, you ain't near so smart as I reckoned you for."

Slim colored up, just a bit. "That's not the same thing."

"How ain't it?" Jess persisted. "Trouble's trouble, and a war's a war. You was in one, you know." His eyes narrowed as he saw that the older man seemed about to speak. "You figure I'm a pretty hard man, don't you? Plumb suspicious, unreasonable, and a little wild in the way my thinkin' runs? Well, you ever stop to think maybe I got reason?"

"I never doubted it," said Slim. "But when you drag my kid brother into your trouble—"

"I ain't dragged Andy noplace, and least of all into trouble!" Jess snapped.

"You don't think so? What about that bruise he's got on his cheek? Would he have had it if he hadn't been with you? If Beal hadn't figured that jumpin' him was the quickest way to make you take a hand, without stoppin' to think if it was a setup?"

"Beal was actin' for Tennison," Jess growled. "He might'a' gone for Andy even if Andy'd rode into town with you, big man, 'cause he was wantin' a chance to take down the main men standin' in his bosses' way."

"Can you prove that?" Slim demanded. "Just havin' a couple of hundred in new-minted gold doesn't mean Tennison gave it to him. Money looks the same no matter who handled it last. He could have had it from a job he did before. He could have been after you."

He was after me, but not the way you mean it, Jess thought but wasn't fool enough to say. "No, I can't prove it, but ain't it a pretty fair chunk of a coincidence that he'd'a' been hangin' around Laramie two whole weeks and visitin' every saloon in town, like a man might who wanted to make sure he didn't miss none of the gossip? Me and your pa seen him the first day he rode in—you ask Matt if he didn't tell me right out that Beal was a lot smarter'n he looked. Or, like Corey said, maybe he was under orders."

The flush on Slim's face deepened. "You're a real talker when you want to be, aren't you? I figured men like you did their talkin' with their guns."

"Only when somebody makes me," said Jess evenly.

"So you say," Slim flashed back. "I guess you think you could have a pretty good deal here, bein' the only professional gun on this side. I guess you think that with all us smaller ranchers to kick into the pot, plus Rogers and McCaskey and the other big and middlin' ones, you can hold us up for a really nice bankroll before you're done."

"That's a lie!" Jess exploded before he thought, and Slim hit him.

The blow took him by surprise, snapping his head back and shoving him half off his feet; if he hadn't stumbled into the packhorse's side he might have fallen. He felt the skin split over his cheekbone and the blood come, and he stood for an instant, shaking his head and gasping in shock and rage, his Harper temper flaring, half ready to draw. But Slim, like most men lolling or working around their own outfit's buildings, wasn't wearing his gun. "You been wantin' this ever since that night you come home," Jess growled. "All right, then, you got it." He reached down, unfastened the tiedown of his holster, then straightened to free the buckle and hung the rig over the nearest fencepost. "Only let's get away from these horses 'fore we get our brains kicked out."

Slim snorted out a breath through his nostrils, not saying anything, but he moved with Jess as the Texan retreated toward the pasture bars. Jess was thinking about something he'd once heard old Claudio Gutierrez, the Wind Vane saddlemaker, say: An intelligent man tames a wild horse with a good deal of respect, because he knows the horse is able to kill him. The same was true of fighting somebody who had half a head of height and a good twenty pounds on you—especially when he was working off a long-standing dislike, and even more when he was thinking his kin had been endangered by something you'd done, or were. Jess had been in his share of brawls over the years, and he'd built up a good repertoire of tactics—something Slim might not be expecting, if he knew that most gunfighters were reluctant to risk injuring their vital gun hands; and better yet, he knew that to duck and dodge was highly important, just as he would do when dealing with an untamed horse or an obstinate steer. If he kept his head, he would find a moment when the spot where the breastbone ended was exposed, for that was the place; he was clear about it now. It was the spot where a colt had kicked him once and taught him the deadly effect of a blow there. What Slim offered as unguarded he must not take; he'd only smash his hand on the other man's chin or head. Above all, he must keep cool and hang onto his temper. Dixie had taught him about that too. What excites destroys judgment. Keep away from excitement, and you're obedient to yourself.

Slim got him once on the chin, once in the mouth, and a second time on the cheek, but Jess didn't go for the places that would show, and he used his natural advantage of smaller size, less mass, an ability to maneuver quickly. He'd go in quick and hit, and be out again before Slim could hit back. And he went around Slim like a fly going around a lamp chimney. After a while, he figured, the big fellow would start to get pretty dizzy, turning around and around trying to keep up with him, and begin to look groggy. When he saw that, that was when he'd fly in with both arms working like the Pitman rod on a mowing machine, get his head right up against Slim's wishbone, and hammer him in the midsection till he went down yawping for air like a mudcat when you toss him up on the bank.

That was his plan, but it didn't turn out that way: in his concentration on the man he faced, he'd forgotten they weren't alone. Suddenly there were strong hands clutching his arms from behind, pulling him away, and through the haze of battle that hung before his eyes he saw Mary and Andy hanging onto Slim, holding him back too, and Jonesy with both hands shoved up against Slim's chest and glaring up at him, ordering him to come to his senses and quit here and now. "All right, what's goin' on here?" demanded Matt's voice from just behind Jess's right ear. "What started this? Don't you two boys have enough to think about, with chores and range work and Tennison? 'Cause if you don't I can find you some!"

Jess struggled reflexively, but Matt, of course, had the advantage of size, besides being behind him. As the adrenalin rush began to subside, he realized that technically he'd probably been in the wrong—he'd as good as called Slim a liar, which was one of the four worst things you could call a Western man, and an invitation to get yourself shot if he happened to be heeled. He shook his head and blew out air, glaring at Slim, and Jonesy looked back at him and said, "You settle down—both of you, or I'll get a bucket of water and throw it on you! Best thing I know of for dogfights."

"Put a cork in it!" Matt added. "I know we're all tense and worried, but fightin' amongst ourselves is just gonna play right into Tennison's hands. Now, boy, have you got your sense back, or do I tell Jonesy to get that bucket?"

"Ask him," Jess panted, "he hit first."

"You started it!"

"Did not!"

"That's enough!" Mary commanded, sweeping in between them like a frigate under full sail and turning her broadsides on son and hired hand equally. "Calling names like a couple of schoolboys—I'm ashamed of both of you, and your mother would be of you, Jess."

That took the steam out of him in a rush, and he sagged back suddenly against Matt, shaken and dizzy. "Mary," he heard the rancher saying, "take Slim inside and see to him; me and Jonesy'll try to get this Panhandle mustang cleaned up before the stage gets here."

**SR**

Slim sat at the kitchen table, wincing with every breath he drew, while his mother swabbed a liniment of arnica flowers and oil onto the bruises forming on his chest and belly. "Jess has a heavy hand, from the looks of you," she observed mildly.

"He'll remember me just as well," Slim retorted, "and anybody who looks at him for the next week or so will know he's been in a fight—but not me: my clothes will cover it."

She paused in her ministrations and looked at him thoughtfully. "Did you stop to think that there might be a reason he hit where he did?"

That reminded him of what Jess had said, and he demanded, "Are you on his side, Ma?"

"I'm on nobody's side until I know what you were fighting about," she said, and went back to her swabbing. "Your pa was right, you know. This danger we're in, it's as real for one of us as another; isn't that why you and he wanted to get all the ranchers together to deal with it?"

"That's not the same," he said.

Mary's lips tightened a bit and she continued working. Slim watched her and reflected on how well she could hide her emotions when she wanted to, especially considering that her ancestry was mostly Irish—she'd been a Bryan before she married, but the name had originally been O'Briain, and the whole clan of them, mostly skilled craftsmen, had come over en masse from the area of Dublin in the 1600's. From Matt's side had come the blood of sturdy Saxon thanes and franklins, freemen and freeholders, English Baptists, and through his mother Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Covenanters and the humbler class of Huguenots, though their height and their blond hair was the legacy of the Danish Vikings who had conquered all the English kingdoms except Wessex in the ninth century, and settled in the eastern half of the country—later the eastern third, after the victories of Alfred the Great—and later still, under Sweyn Forkbeard and King Canute, reconquered the island and ruled it from 1016 to 1042. That was what Matt called "the fightin' side of us," though Mary too had had Viking blood to contribute, going back to the Norwegian raiders who terrorized Ireland and founded Dublin. Either way, Slim remembered, both families had doubtless had their fair share of warriors, which perhaps accounted for their grit and courage.

He knew her well enough, all the same, after twenty-seven years, to know she disapproved of what he'd done, and he wanted to say something to justify himself. Matt had told him, more than once, "No man ever knows anything, no matter how old he gets. There's always somebody with longer experience, or a different kind of it, than he has. So he should never feel ashamed to ask advice of someone he trusts. I hope that even when you're grown, you'll always be willing to bring your troubles to me or to your ma, for as long as you've got us, just as I hope Andy will be willing to bring his to you when we're gone." Yet he remembered what he'd seen through the kitchen door-pane, and wondered whose side she'd really be on. And that troubled him almost as much as the things he'd taxed Jess over.

I can't pull out, he told himself, not and leave them to deal with Tennison alone. I couldn't even if I weren't the oldest son. And since I am, I don't intend to let that—that Panhandle mustang push me out of the place that's mine! He thought of what Jess had said, that the Sioux, and his horse, and Matt and Andy, were more to blame for his being here than he was. And out of his native devotion to truth, he had to admit that it was true. It's not that I wish the Indians had gotten him, he thought. I'd never wish that on any white man, not even my worst enemy, if I had a worst enemy. I just wish... that he'd taken some other way to get wherever he was goin', or blundered onto somebody else's land, or... I don't know what I wish.

He's trouble. I knew that from the start.

And yet... he's a hard worker, he knows cattle and especially horses, he minds his manners in the house, and—and even though I can't approve of his gettin' into a gunfight in front of Andy, I have to give him points for courage; it takes a special kind of grit to stand up to a man like that, one on one, no cover, not knowin' for sure if he's faster than you are. And... and if I couldn't be there myself, I'm glad he was, to take Andy's part. Maybe I owe him somethin' for that...

No. Beal set it up, to egg him into drawing. Whether he was workin' for Tennison, or just lookin' to better his own reputation, the fact is that if Andy hadn't been with him, it wouldn't have happened that way, and Andy wouldn't have had to see it.

But still... Pa's right. We've all fought rustlers, Indians, what have you, but never anything as—as ruthless and coldly organized as the Tennisons and their sister represent. We don't have the experience he has. He can tell us what they're likely to do, how we can best protect what's ours. And when it's over, if he's still alive, he'll go; what did he say out there, that he 'had business of my own to see to'?

He didn't like Jess; at least, he didn't want to. He'd lived long enough in the West to know the Texan's kind. Yet he found that he could respect the younger man, especially after what had just happened. He was, after all, half English—any Englishman respects the man who conquers him, and if Jess hadn't quite managed that, still he'd held his own—and half Irish (an Irishman forgives easiest that enemy who fights back best).

"Are you going to tell me what you were fighting about?"

He came up out of his private broodings with a start. "Does it matter, Ma?"

"It might," said Mary. "Neither of you won, as far as I can tell. Or did it clear the air between you just to go as far as you did?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe you should ask him." Or yourself, he thought, inwardly flinching, once again, at the mental image of that mother-to-son kiss. He thought he could almost have borne it better if it had been the kind of kiss a woman gives a lover; at least he wouldn't have felt so...

Jealous.

There, he'd thought the word.

Well, don't I have a right?

Mary pulled back a little, watching her older son from almost his own eye level, something she couldn't have done if they weren't both sitting down. There was something gnawing away at him, she could tell, but she wasn't sure what it could be. To an outsider, this afternoon's incident might have looked spontaneous, but she knew better. Slim wasn't the kind to simply explode. He didn't overreact to slights, and it took a lot of provoking to set him off, though he could take emotional losses, like what had happened with Abby O'Neill, very deeply to heart and hug his hurts to him, bleeding quietly inside, perhaps because he didn't think it was right to saddle others with his pain.

They were so very different, Slim and Jess, she thought—and perhaps for that very reason, she wished they could be friends. They would have complemented each other so perfectly. Jess was nothing like Slim—cool-headed, practical-thinking Slim. But he was very much like Andy, passionate, restless, adventuresome, likely to jump headlong into a situation either because that was what "felt right" to him (which usually meant it was what he thought justice demanded) or because it appealed to his innate character. Maybe that accounted, at least partly, for the bond that seemed to have sprung up between the boy and the Texan; maybe it wasn't just a case of hero-worship on Andy's part, or nostalgia for a lost brother on Jess's, but of two sympathetic souls finding each other. Slim reasoned things out before he acted—sometimes, she admitted, he reasoned too much; Andy, and Jess, followed their hearts. And much as he loved his brother, Slim couldn't relate to him as he could to Jess, simply because of that fifteen-year age difference.

If only I could have given him more brothers... or even a sister or two close to his age...

"You wouldn't remember your brother Ben, Matty," she said, using her old nickname for her elder son. "He was named after your pa's favorite brother, and he was born when you weren't yet two—and died a month before his second birthday. You were only three and a half at the time..." She sighed. "He'd have been about the age Jess is, if he'd lived—a little older, maybe. He might have looked a bit like him, too—he had my coloring, except for his eyes; they were more like your pa's."

"But he wouldn't have been a—a gunslick," said Slim, rather viciously.

"Matty!"

"Well, he is," Slim protested. "You know he is, Ma. We don't need that kind around here, leadin' Andy astray. We don't need a hired gun to help us hold what's ours. Pa and I can do that."

"It isn't about being a hired gun," she said. "I'd have thought you'd understand that. He feels he owes us, and he can't walk away and leave that debt unpaid when he sees we're... not overmatched, exactly, but facing a kind of challenge we've never had to deal with before."

"That's what he said, out there," Slim admitted.

"Well, then," she said, and knew immediately that she'd lost him, as she saw the way his jaw muscles bunched up and his light-blue eyes shuttered off. "Slim..."

"Don't, Ma," he said, his voice tight. "Just... please, don't. It isn't... somethin' I can talk about."

Out on the porch, Jess hissed in pain and flinched reflexively as Jonesy dabbed iodine onto his cuts and applied a court-plaster dressing to the gash on his cheek where Slim's fist had laid it open. "Hold still," the old man barked, "and don't be such a baby."

Jess glared at him. "If you wasn't old enough to be my pa, and skinny besides, you'd never get away with that."

"Well, I am, so I will. And hold still, or do you want this in your eye?"

Jess clenched his teeth, knotted his hands around the armrests of his chair, and concentrated on counting to a hundred. Matt watched from the porch rail on which he was perched. "Got anythin' to say for yourself?" he asked mildly.

Jess's eyes flicked to him and away. "No," he said flatly.

"You sure? I know you're a Texan, which makes you hot-blooded and hard-headed by definition, but you never struck me as quarrelsome, and I take some pride in my ability to estimate what's inside a man; maybe I'm not as good at it as Mary is, but I've lived this long, mostly workin' with my hands and my back among others of the same kind, and I've had to learn, most of all after I worked up to bein' a trail boss."

"I'm sure. And I ain't quarrelsome; it don't pay in my line. It just... happened, that's all."

"Nothing just happens."

"This did."

Jonesy began putting things away. "There, done. That wasn't so bad, was it, once you made up your mind to take it like a man?"

"Jonesy, you're—" He stopped, took a deep breath, and finished carefully: "—about to shred my last nerve. You leave me be, hear? I just ain't in the mood, ain't that enough?"

Jonesy traded glances with his oldest friend and shrugged. "Guess it has to be, though I think Matt's wrong about you. You're not a Panhandle mustang; you're a mule!" And with that he sniffed and headed off toward the barn to make sure the new team was ready.

Jess took a breath, then let it out slowly. He could feel Matt watching him. He hadn't been so reluctant to meet someone else's eyes since the last time he'd snitched cookies from his mother's weekly baking. "I'm thinkin'," he said quietly, "you was s'posed to go out ridin' the line today, only you stayed behind to help Slim repair that axle. How about if I go instead, tomorrow? Maybe if he don't have to look at me for a few days, he'll calm down some. Anyhow, there's somethin' I need to do, down that way, and it ain't somethin' nobody else can handle."

"Well," said Matt, "it's true, that job's likely to hold us well into tomorrow at the rate it's goin'; begins to look like we'll have to shape a whole new one. I reckon you might as well go. Stop by Joe's and the Coberley place and see if the men headquarterin' there need their grub refreshed."

Jess nodded, glad at the shift in subject. "I will."

Matt's head turned as the distinctive sound of the approaching inbound reached him. "There, there's the stage. I've noticed it seems to ease you to deal with the horses, but your hands are probably a little sore just now, so Jonesy and I'll change the teams out; you can see to the used ones after. Take your time, get yourself calmed down and your head straight. We'll keep a plate of supper by for you, if you want to hold back till we've finished."

**SR**

About twenty-four hours later, Jess checked Traveller some five hundred yards from the Territorial line and gazed southward, letting his eyes roam side to side like a slow lighthouse beam, taking his time, watching for what didn't fit. All the riders he'd spoken to so far today had agreed that they'd seen no Tennison riders, nor any new batches of cattle, in three or four days. That, he reflected, made sense. By now Lydacker—who, given his reputation, was almost certainly Jess's counterpart on the other side—would have realized that the Basin ranchers had a halfway decent deadline organized, and might have decided that there wasn't much point wasting the labor of horses and men by pushing his stock over the line when it only got pushed back (and lost weight in the process) almost as fast as it crossed. He'd be thinking, maybe, that it was time to up the ante. And he might be wondering why he hadn't heard anything from Beal. Jess had stopped briefly in Laramie on his way down and questioned the owner of the livery barn, who had told him that, just about one week after arriving in town, Beal had taken his horse out early one morning and not returned till almost nightfall. The horse had been warm, he remembered, but not hot, and sweaty but not lathered; it hadn't been worked hard, just given a good long day on the trail. Jess couldn't prove it, of course, but he was willing to bet that Beal had taken a ride down over the line—it wouldn't have been difficult for a man trained by the Indians to slip by between patrols; Jess knew he could have done it, and he'd only learned from a halfbreed—and reported to Lydacker on whatever he'd learned, and maybe what he planned to do.

Jess didn't delude himself into thinking that what he had in mind would give Lydacker pause. After all, he'd fought the man before—not one-on-one, but closely enough to have gotten some picture of how his mind worked—and he knew, in any case, that a man with Lydacker's kind of rep couldn't afford to back off. Still, he did deserve some warning.

Having assured himself that there didn't seem to be any enemies within eyeshot, Jess gave Traveller a little nudge with the spurs, and the bay walked slowly forward, following in the tracks of a bunch of Tennison cattle—whether coming over or being driven back he wasn't quite sure, owing to natural weathering. The way it looked, the ranchers' patrols had managed, up to now, to find and throw back all the strange cattle that had been introduced over the line; it was just about impossible to hide the sign of even a few hundred head, and most men moving stock wouldn't try, not even rustlers—they'd just make their move after dark or in or just before a good steady soaker of a rain. This, however, didn't mean that there wouldn't be Tennison riders making little northward feints or surveillances every so often. He was willing to bet that there would—that there had been all along; that was why he'd stopped for a look. And that was why he figured that what he was about to do would have at least something of a signal effect on the other side.

About a quarter of a mile into Colorado, he came upon what he'd been looking for: a lone boulder about stirrup-high, with a crack splitting its top about halfway across. He checked, swung down, and slipped from under the bindings that held his slicker (you never knew when a rain would blow up at this time of year) a ten-foot willow pole he'd cut on his way down. He leaned it against the rock and took from his saddlebag a fire-engine-red cotton bandanna, which he knotted firmly to the end of the pole by two corners, so that when the wind caught it it would stand out square, like a flag. He found a couple of small loose stones, each about the size of his fist, and put them on top of the boulder. From his vest pocket he took a tally book—any man who'd ever done range work developed the habit of carrying one—and a stub of a pencil. He flipped to the back of the book, found a blank page, and carefully block-printed his initials, JH, and Friday's date. Then, out of the same saddlebag, he took Beal's battered Cavalry hat. He tore the page out of the book and held it on top of the boulder with one hand while he used the other to thumb a cartridge out of one of the loops on his shell belt. He set the round neatly on top of the paper, covered both with the hat, and set the two small stones on the brim to keep it from blowing away. Last he stepped back into the saddle, bent to pick up the pole, and rammed it down into the crack as deep as he could, leaving six or seven feet of it standing free. The wind immediately snapped the bandanna out. Jess turned quickly and urged Trav into a fast trot. He kept going till he was well back over the line, then paused and looked back. The bandanna stood out like the well-known sore thumb, which was exactly what he'd hoped for.

Now, he thought, next move is yours, Lydacker, and he lifted Trav into a lope. By his reckoning he wasn't more than four or five miles from Joe Shefflin's place. He'd spend the night there, finish his run tomorrow or the next day, and be back at Sherman Ranch in time for supper.

**SR**

"We need to talk, boss-lady," said Jarrod Lydacker without preamble.

Lounging in her painted iron rocker with the tabby cat in her lap, watching as Tommy and Bess played cat's-cradle in the shade of the wagon, Martha Farity looked up and came immediately alert as she noted his expression, or rather lack of one; after more than a year in close association with him, she'd become familiar with his tells. "Something's happened," she said, not questioning.

"John Will found this on a boulder about a quarter-mile south of the line," the gunfighter replied, bringing a battered gray hat out from behind his back. "Whoever left it there weighted it down with a couple of rocks and marked it with a bandanna on a pole."

"So it wouldn't blow away before we found it, and so we would find it," she guessed, and he nodded. She looked the hat over. "That's Lonnie's, isn't it?"

"Pretty hard to mistake it," he agreed.

Having grown up on a ranch, Martha was well aware that range men found going bareheaded almost unendurable, and therefore you were ill advised to take liberties with another's hat. To find a hat separate from the man you knew it belonged to was almost the same as getting a letter or telegram edged in black. "He's dead," she said, again stating it as fact.

"And I reckon I know who made him that way," said Lydacker. "These were underneath it." He handed her a single .44-caliber cartridge and a little scrap of paper.

" 'J.H.,' " she read. "Jess Harper?"

"Knowin' I'm with you, it's the kind of thing he'd do," Lydacker agreed. "Servin' warnin', you might say. I've heard of him markin' a kill this way a time or two."

She nodded. "So. Well, I said I wanted to get an idea of Sherman's and his neighbors' style, and I think now I do. Cautious opening game, defensive mostly, but they're not afraid to act when they're pushed to it. They've been turning our cattle back almost ever since their delegation was here, and now they've shed the first blood. They shouldn't be surprised if we raise the stakes."

"Figured you might say that," he said. "I've got some moves in mind, though it's best you don't know what, exactly; what you don't know you can't be forced or tricked into admitting to."

"Do we have enough men?" she asked.

He pondered. "It's not a question of how many, so much; it's a question of who, and of where they'll stop. From what Lonnie told us when he came down last week, those Basin ranchers can muster a lot more than you can possibly hire, boss-lady."

"Four hundred or so, as I remember," Martha mused. "Of course, they've got a lot of ground to protect, and a small group, if it avoids any head-on clashes, can do a lot of damage; anybody with experience of Indian war parties knows that. Still..."

"There's one notion I've got," he said, "that might make a difference. Like I said, it's better you don't know the details, but there's a man I've heard is in Wyoming who could be a big asset."

"Can you hire him?"

"I can try. No guarantees, of course, and it'll cost."

"The laborer is worthy of his hire," said she. "What will you need?"

He thought it over. "This will only be a down payment," he cautioned. "You know how it goes. I'd better have at least a couple of thousand to start out, though I hope I can bargain him down some."

"Come by tonight before supper," she said without hesitation, "and I'll have it for you."

**SR**

It was somewhat over a hundred miles from Tennison's camp to Lydacker's goal. He started out that same night, about an hour after sunset, so he could be pretty sure of eluding the deadline patrols, and by first light was snugly holed up in a cove—a kind of dead-end valley—at the edge of the Medicine Bows, a good forty miles northwest of the line. He rested there till midday, then set out again, hugging the skirts of the range till he could jump twenty miles or so across to the stage road that linked Laramie to Medicine Bow, Rawlins, Rock Springs, Fort Bridger, and eventually Salt Lake City.

A little upstream from the junction of Sage Creek and the North Platte, he found a deserted claim shack—perhaps a failed homestead, perhaps the remains of a cattleman's fraudulent filing—and there left off the packs he'd brought, well stocked with food, ammunition, and clothing, before riding on into Rawlins. It didn't take him long to make the kind of connection he wanted. Being a prison guard was a stressful job, and most men coming off shift would stop first for a drink or two to settle their nerves.

To a man who was paid about $150 a month, the promise of even $900—less than half what Lydacker had brought—was big money. He tried to up the ante, arguing that he was the one taking the risks; if the warden found out he was trying to smuggle a message in to one of the prisoners, let alone anything else Lydacker wanted, he'd be lucky if all he did was lose his job. Lydacker smoothly pointed out that a man who knew all the routines and schedules of the place shouldn't find it hard to do what he was asked. "And there's as much again for you in it, if you can pull the job off," he added. "That's a year's pay, for—what?—an hour's work? Two at most? If you won't take it, I'm sure I can find somebody else with less... aversion to risk."

It was, in fact, a buyer's market, and the guard knew it: the kind of men who took his brand of work weren't known for their high moral standards. He agreed to the bargain, and Lydacker used the next day to find and purchase a horse that suited him and draw a map that would enable his intended agent to find the shack and its cache. That evening they met again. "Well?" Lydacker prompted. "Is he interested?"

"What do you think?" retorted the guard. "But he says he might need some help. His cellmate's a good long-distance man with a rifle—which is the only reason he's here instead of long since hung: ambush is his specialty."

"I didn't bring a rifle," said Lydacker. "I can get another horse, but the kind of gun a man like that would want... if a stranger buys one, as soon as the word of the break gets out, somebody might put two and two together."

"He thought of that. The law doesn't allow a man's effects to be confiscated before he starts his sentence, unless he's been ordered to make restitution, and this fellow hasn't. His rifle's in the safe room off the warden's office. I don't have that key, but I can find it."

"It would make the job easier," Lydacker admitted. "All right. Here's another note for him. I suggest you don't try to sneak a look at it; there's a map to where I want him—them—to go to meet me, and if you don't know where that is you can't tell anybody."

He watched the guard go out and smiled thinly to himself. Of course as long as the man followed his suggestion, he wouldn't know—until it was too late—that the postscript attached to the note sealed his own doom. Which will save me $1800, he thought, and make sure nobody will ever know I was connected to the break.

**SR**

Jess hadn't been surprised when Tennison reacted to his defiant gesture by stepping up the intensity of its tactics. A man had been killed; the wraps were off. And, in a way, the Basin ranchers had a couple of important advantages. Matt's conference with Wilson had eliminated any possibility that the invaders—assuming they had the money to spare—could send in a blind or two to buy up their paper; and being outsiders, Lydacker and Paul and David Tennison would find it difficult to have themselves or one of their men deputized, so they'd have the legal right to force entry to a house where an enemy was hiding, something many grabbers did if they could manage it. Moreover, as Matt had pointed out to the banker, they couldn't spare the time to draw things out, because their cattle would run out of graze before too long. They also couldn't hope to try this dodge a second time, next year, say: the Basin would be warned and watching. They had to either force things through to a conclusion before the fall, or retreat back to wherever they'd wintered and resign themselves to settling in Colorado. And while they might want to push their way into the Laramie Basin, most of their men weren't warriors; they were cowboys, men whose first job was handling stock. They'd fight readily enough to protect what belonged to their bosses, or to get it back if it was stolen, but except for the hired guns, aggression wasn't something they were comfortable with. A man had only one life, and thirty or forty dollars a month wasn't money enough for him to risk it by riding into the guns of men trying to hold onto the only real wealth they had, the source of their livelihoods, the homes where in many cases their children had been born and one or more had died and been buried. Cowboys rode for the brand, but it had no chains on them; if they didn't like their boss, or the outfit's policies, sooner or later they would draw their time and move on—and hired guns had their points, but in a situation like this they needed men under them who weren't guns, to back them up, drive stock, and so on. Without them, the guns would be no use at all. This too Jess had figured on. The Confederacy, after all, had fought a largely defensive war, dealing with invaders of its homeland, and it had held out for four long years against a much bigger, better supplied, better equipped enemy; surely the ranchers could do similar, or at least have a pretty fair chance, given their greater numbers and their knowledge of the terrain.

The first strikes, not surprisingly, were made at unliving targets. Three or four horses milled around in a dug stock tank for ten minutes or so, churning up the tamped-clay liner so it wouldn't hold water. Fence cut or broken down. A well blasted. A line shack looted and burned. But the Basin ranchers caught on fast, and changed their tactics. Soon every likely standing target—ranch headquarters, line camps—was garrisoned (even three or four men with rifles could hold off a good-sized party of attackers till someone heard the shooting and came to help) and patrols were shuttling steadily to and fro in a crisscross pattern over the southernmost ten miles or so of their country. There were two or three short, sharp fights, but the defenders knew the terrain, could guess pretty accurately at the kinds of targets the enemy was likeliest to choose (at least in this early stage), and had numbers on their side. And the invaders, having to get in and out fast because there were so few of them, couldn't spare the time to learn the best routes to take to hide their tracks. All it took was for one patrol to find fresh horse sign, and a messenger would be sent on the gallop for help, while his fellows followed up—more than once, in the end, driving the enemy into the arms of a second group before it even reached whatever target it had in mind. Exactly how many casualties Tennison suffered Jess wasn't certain; four or five dead, maybe more, but mostly wounded men who were gotten away by their friends and might, very possibly, want a rematch as soon as they were fit.

The leaders of the ranchers' efforts were most often those who'd been in one army or another—men like Jess and the Shermans, who, having dealt with trained military officers (and in Slim's case been one), would remember how to give orders and use their men and the country to best advantage. And, after the first few acts of vandalism, the defenders saw that they didn't dare hesitate to defend what was theirs. What Jess worried about was that his side might get too flushed with success, and get careless. He'd been through too many of these things. The goal was to get people to sell out for as little as you could manage—from a penny to a quarter on the dollar, say. To do that, you had to go one of two ways: get a financial stranglehold, as by rustling their stock, or scare them. And men with families were easy to scare, in the final analysis: he'd seen it, and what he hadn't seen, he'd heard of. If your grabber was unprincipled enough, he might wait till one of his more stubborn victims was away from home, then have "some rough characters drop in" on his wife while "no one was there to protect her;" range men generally shied away from harming women, but there were always a few—primarily roughs out from the East, or border Mexicans if available—who could be persuaded to do the dirty deed. An owner could be eliminated by a stampede or a fire, and his family pressured to sell out; if they wouldn't, you could see to it that a daughter just disappeared—it would be said she ran away with someone, "and who'll disprove it?" A really stubborn family could be dealt with by making it look as if they'd been wiped out by renegade Indians. The only hope Jess had was that Martha Farity, being a woman and a mother, would be reluctant to give orders that would result in harm to women and children. But he couldn't be sure she would. Frontier women were often almost as tough as their men; they had to be. Some were tougher.

Surprisingly enough, even with Jess's duties as a ranking defender and the demands it made on him, he had a lot of time to think. In the last ten crowded and often violent years of his young life, he had known many men; fought some, worked with or for others, called a precious few his friends. He respected Slim Sherman, as he respected Matt; even admired him, in some ways. Slim was a savvy cattleman and a hard worker, not afraid to get down in the dirt and even endanger his own life to get the job done. He was practical and honest; he loved his family, and they loved him. And once he'd become convinced that fighting was necessary, he'd showed himself neither afraid of it nor uncreative in the way it had to be done.

And it wasn't just about Slim, either. In Jess's line, a man had to be honest with himself, and the young Texan suddenly realized that, over these last six weeks or so, all the ranch family—Matt and Mary, shrewd old Jonesy, Andy perhaps more than any—had come to mean more to him than anyone he'd known in all his time adrift. That thing with Beal, though he hadn't really been thinking what he was doing at the time, had made him see, in looking back on it, that he'd lay his life on the line for any of them, without question or pause—not just because he was taking Matt's pay, but because he cared what happened to them.

Family had been at the core of his value system for as long as he could remember, perhaps because on Wind Vane Ranch the crew changed and shifted annually (except for the Mexicans), and therefore the Harpers had learned to depend on themselves and each other, as being the only people they could be sure would always be there. It had been the biggest, most permanent thing in his life—an unbreakable bond. Its obligations had forced him out on this vengeance trail, forced him to leave Francie and Johnny behind, been responsible, at root, for everything that had befallen him since, from Dixie to the war to Soho and beyond—even, maybe, for Johnny's death: since cholera was caused, or at least spread, by rotten food and foul water, its outbreaks tended to be localized, and he'd probably never have gotten it if he and Francie hadn't had to go live with the Bradys after the raid. Family. It was time, maybe, that he found a new one. For years, dreading the kind of pain he had suffered in the wake of his losses, he had resisted becoming attached to people or places. All this had done was leave him empty and achingly lonely. That ain't how I'm meant to be, he told himself.

For the first time in too many years, he found himself wanting something—something more than to destroy the man who had murdered his pa and his three youngest siblings. He wanted to make a new place for himself in the world, wanted to help the Shermans build something—something good and lasting. Wanted to watch Andy grow up, maybe help him learn some good skills, like horsebreaking and tracking. (He remembered something Dixie had said, early on: ...every young man should learn a useful trade—and every man who already has one should feel an obligation to pass on the secrets he's learned, so they don't die with him.) But most of all, he wanted Slim to take his hand, to look at him with acceptance... even if only for a moment.

If I lose my life, he thought, it won't be 'cause I let it pass me by. I see now that to have somethin', you got to want somethin'.

It was an epiphany (though he didn't know that word), like that night on the Bradys' back porch in Amarillo when he'd suddenly understood the difference between being a grown man and a child. But how to make it real? There was still Bannister; he couldn't just forget his first family, his blood kin, the promise he'd made to his dead.

He thought about it. Bannister had been sentenced to ten years. Sometimes men got time off for good behavior, as much as two years from every five; that would mean he'd have to serve at least six, and wouldn't be set free before '75. Maybe, after this trouble with Tennison was finished, Jess could take a ride up to Rawlins like he'd planned, track down somebody who worked in the prison, and extract a promise to contact him if that happened. Bannister, like himself, had lived most of his life in the open; being locked up would be hard on him—and he wasn't stupid or he wouldn't have stayed uncaught so long: maybe he'd have the sense to realize that making a model prisoner of himself would be better than raging against his situation, upsetting the routines and likely getting more time piled on his sentence. Otherwise, Jess could just wait till the full ten years were up. Bannister would be, what, past fifty by then, Jess himself still only in his thirties—and Bannister would be out of practice; Jess wouldn't have to be. It would be quick—quicker than Bannister deserved.

But then, he thought, there was also Slim, who didn't like him, couldn't accept him, hated the influence he was on Andy, the possibility of danger to the boy and his mother that Jess represented. Matt was still head of the family, and as long as he said Jess could stay, Slim would have to go along—but Matt wasn't a young man, and if he died, Slim would be the one in charge. If he made up his mind to drop Jess from the payroll, there'd be nothing Jess could do about it. Jess's only option was to somehow change Slim's opinion of him, and how was he to do that? He knew—as he'd already told Andy—how boys could hero-worship figures like himself, men who seemed glamorous, who were famous for skill and bravery, who stood up for themselves. He could hardly keep Andy from admiring him, though he'd tried that day in the hollow. And he could be a danger to the family, if some of the people out of his past found out he was here—not that any man with pride would use women and kids as tools, or deliberately do them harm, but accidents happened, and a lot of men (like Frank Bannister) didn't have that kind of pride; wasn't there something in the Bible about knowing them by their works? Jess thought about Clint Wade, who'd have very little reason to love him after he'd killed Clint's brother Roy for shooting a friend of his—and in the back, at that, which suggested a pretty low moral tone in the family; thought, with a little shudder, of Roney Bishop. Would he dare expose people he cared about to that kind of man?

It was on a Thursday late afternoon that the last inbound stage found Jess and both the Shermans all at home simultaneously, something that had happened only once or twice since the war began: Matt and Slim had spent the day driving the cattle up to the summer ranges, and Jess had stayed behind for defense and to help Jonesy and Andy with the relays. This stage came from Salt Lake by way of Fort Bridger, Rock Springs, Rawlins, and Medicine Bow, and Mose was driving: most drivers and guards, though they might stay with a single line for years, swapped routes back and forth continually because they got sick and tired of running the same stretch of road all the time.

"What's the news, Mose?" Matt asked. He and Slim had gotten in only half an hour earlier and were still in the process of seeing to their horses. Jess and Andy shuttled to and fro with the stage teams while the passengers (only two this time) went into the house for a snack.

"Well, one pretty big story," the old driver told him. "There was a prison break up at Rawlins three days ago—nights, to be exact about it, sometime between lights-out and the late bed check; you wouldn't have heard yet, I reckon, seein' the Gazette don't come out till Friday afternoon. They're pretty sure it was an inside job, somebody bribed a guard to let a couple of fellers out. They found the guard just inside the warden's office, with his head bashed in by a chair and a bullet through his heart—shot at such close range there was burn marks on his clothes—and the safe open."

Jess looked up from the tug chain he was unhooking and frowned. "Why'd the guard 'a'been in the warden's office? Wouldn't be no prisoners there."

"Because of the safe, boy, ain't you listenin' to me?" Mose retorted. "Never havin' been in prison you might not know, but when you go in, they take your personal effects and give you a receipt, and when you're released you get everything back. It looked like the fellers this guard let out didn't fancy leavin' without the things they'd fetched in with 'em."

"Who escaped?" Matt inquired.

"Couple of cellmates; nobody's sure whether the idea was to let 'em both out, or whether the guard was paid for one and the other come along for the ride. Feller that was in for a mail robbery last year, this line, in fact—you'll remember hearin' of it—Frank Bannister..."

Jess went dead white. A roaring filled his ears, obscuring whatever else Mose had to say; he felt dizzy. Through the clamor in his head he vaguely heard voices: "Hey, what's wrong with Jess?... Why, he looks about ready to keel over... Help me get him to the porch... Mary, fetch your bottle of salts... Jonesy, where's your bottle?"

When his vision cleared, he found himself in one of the porch chairs, with everyone gathered around him and Matt's big hand on the back of his neck, forcing his head down between his knees. "Stand back," the rancher ordered, "give him some air. Mary, hand me them salts."

The pungent fumes of spirits of ammonia filled Jess's nose and he jerked back, his eyes watering. "Lemme be!" he gasped. "Mose—them prisoners that got away—which way'd they head?"

"That I didn't hear," Mose admitted. "There was still a pursuit out, tryin' to find their trail; it looked like somebody had horses waitin' for 'em. The warden telegraphed to Cheyenne, to Trim Stuart, the U.S. Marshal that brought Bannister in. But the talk in Rawlins is that he'd likely hit for Canada, if the other one don't. He was in for robbin' the mails, and that's a Federal charge; he won't be safe anywheres between the borders."

Jess wiped his eyes with his bandanna and nodded, looking grim. "I'm obliged for the word, Mose. C'mon, Andy, let's get this job finished so Mose can get on his way."

When the coach had left, Matt hesitated a moment, then gently laid his hand on Jess's shoulder, ignoring the almost reflexive twitch of the muscles beneath it. "You gonna tell us what that news meant to you, boy?"

"Leave me be, Matt," said Jess quietly.

"No, I reckon not," the rancher replied, just as evenly. "We've got an investment in you, and you've come to be a big part of this household these last six weeks or so. A man don't go chalk-white and near faint when he hears news of a jailbreak unless the men doin' the breakin' mean somethin' to him. If you're in danger—"

"No." Jess looked around slowly at the rest of the family: Slim frowning, but in puzzlement more than mistrust or anger; Mary concerned, Andy troubled, Jonesy thoughtful. "Maybe you got a right to know, at that," he admitted with a sigh. "Only it's a long story, so let's go inside and sit."

Around the dining table, they listened in stunned silence as he slowly, painfully told the story of the raid, of his father's murder, the fire, the littl'uns' deaths, how he and Francie and Johnny had survived and made it to Wagon Fork and eventually Amarillo, how he'd realized, after much pondering, that he had a job to do, and had set out to do it. Of how he'd killed two members of the gang before he was drafted into the Confederate Army, and two more—brothers of Frank's—in Kansas two years ago. He spoke softly, quietly, almost without emotion, keeping his eyes mostly on the tabletop, though his voice shook from time to time. "This ain't but the third time I ever told anybody," he finished. "First was Dixie Howard, the man that trained me; I met him just less'n a year later. Second—well, that don't matter; let's just say I had an offer for another kind of life, and it didn't rightly seem fair not to explain why I couldn't take it." He looked around at their faces, even Slim's full of shocked disbelieving comprehension. "You all heard Mose; they figure Bannister'll make for Canada. That makes sense; it's a lot closer'n Mexico, though he's likely a lot more familiar with there. If we don't hear of him bein' taken..." He trailed off, paused, and said quietly: "This trouble with Tennison, that comes first. I ride for the brand. I always have. But when it's settled... I'll have to go. I ain't been so close to payin' off what I owe in ten years. I'll need to get after Bannister while his trail's still half fresh. I made a promise, and I got to keep it."

"Well," Jonesy murmured, "I reckon this explains a lot of things."

Mary's eyes were full of tears; she extended her hand to Jess's and he pulled it away. "Don't, ma'am," he said softly. "Like I told my sister Francie the night before I left, a man's got to live with himself, and to do that there's things he can't escape from."

"You were only a boy," she protested.

"Not after that, not no more," he replied. "I couldn't be. Ma'am... Miz Sherman... if your men was all from home and a mad dog was to wander into that yard out there, you'd take down the rifle and kill it, wouldn't you? You know you would. That's Bannister. A mad dog. He's been askin' for it close to twenty-five years. And I'm almost the only one that's come out of one of his raids and lived to talk of it, so it's down to me. I... I'm grateful for all you've done for me here... you'll maybe never know how much." For the first time, he thought but didn't say, the first time in ten years, I could almost—almost—let myself believe I'd found a place I could belong; maybe almost start to think I wanted to quit what I been doin' and settle down. Should'a' known it couldn't be. "But this is... it's just somethin' I got to do."

Matt considered the situation for a minute, then said quietly, "If you want to go now..."

But Jess shook his head. "No. I can't do that. I owe you my life; Bannister, he just owes me his. And you need the kind of knowledge I got. I been this long at it, another month, two, three, won't make that much difference. I'll stay till this war's over, then I'll move on." He took a deep breath. "I reckon you can all see how I ain't got much appetite. You eat, I'll see after them stage horses and talk to Trav a spell. But I ain't goin' nowhere, not yet; you got my promise on that."

**SR**

Nobody at Joe Shefflin's Two Bar Cross saw anything suspicious in a single man approaching—and from the northwest, at that—leading his horse behind him. Nobody thought anything of it when he asked if he might borrow the use of the smithy to replace the lost shoe—or when he asked if one of the three cowhands garrisoning the place (they happened to be from Cole Rogers's crew) would kindly show him where things were kept. Nobody saw him wait till the man's back was turned and drive a Bowie knife silently into it.

Joe himself was off on patrol duty, along with the one cowhand he'd hired for the summer; his son Eddie, taking over much of the range work as more than one youngster had had to do since the war began, had gone off on his little buckskin pony to check the various water sources and make sure none had been tampered with. Judy was busy with her weekly housecleaning; like most of the lower-Basin women, she'd been trying hard, for her children's sake, to keep to normal routines despite the situation. Her elder daughter Jane was helping as best a five-year-old can, dusting, tidying up shelves, making the beds her mother had stripped, pausing occasionally to distract baby Sally for a minute or two so she wouldn't fuss.

Nobody—except Pardo, Eddie's saddle-brown pet longhorn, waiting in his corral for his buddy the pony to return—saw the stranger quietly stalking the second of the garrison cowboys, bringing him down with a gun barrel to the head. Nobody saw him splashing kerosene onto the outer walls of the cabin from the can that was kept in a corner of the smithing shed to start the forge when it got finicky. Nobody—including the last surviving cowboy, stepping inside for a late-afternoon cup of coffee—thought anything of it when he wandered in too. And nobody, an hour or so later, saw him come out with a clinking gunnysack over one shoulder and a second, well stuffed with food, over the other, tie them to the saddle of his waiting horse, close the cabin door and angle a half-shaped beam, gleaned from the pile of scrap lumber behind the forge, against it. Nobody except the victims themselves knew that two dead men and three bound live people—a man, a woman, and a little girl—plus an oblivious infant in a barrel crib, were inside.

Nobody saw the smoke, until fully half an hour after the fire had been set, and by that time it was too late for the Coberleys to get across the range in time to do any good...

**SR**

Jess rolled out of his bed in the little back room, wide awake and alert, his gun in his hand as it slid out of the holster on the bedpost—he'd changed its angle for a cross-draw since his arm had been healed and limbered up. It took him a moment to realize what had wakened him. Someone was pounding on the front door, shouting through it: "Mr. Sherman! Slim! Mr. Harper! Wake up!"

He heard the door of Matt and Mary's room open as he crossed the floor to his own. Slim appeared out of the bunkroom as he stepped into the main room, which was lit only by the faint glow of the banked fire; all of them had taken to keeping weapons close at hand overnight, and his Colt, like Jess's, was in his hand. So was Matt's big Walker as he cautiously moved toward the front door. "Who's there?" he demanded.

"Josh Coberley, Mr. Sherman. Let me in—somethin's happened, somethin' awful—"

The two Sherman men swapped glances, then Slim fell back across the room to cover his father, and Jonesy positioned himself on the threshold of the bunkroom with his long double-barrelled shotgun in both hands. Matt went to the door and slid the bolt aside, then cautiously pulled it open. Josh—Jud and Seth's seventeen-year-old brother, the youngest of the five siblings—all but fell into the old man's arms, his face white with shock. Over Matt's shoulder Jess could make out a horse standing in the yard, head down, legs spraddled, sides heaving like a bellows and lather white on its coat in the moonlight.

Slim moved quickly to close the door. "Jonesy," Matt ordered, "get your bottle."

They gathered around as Matt helped Josh settle into one of the chairs, splashed whiskey into the cup Mary brought him, and put it in the young man's shaking hands. Josh gulped it desperately, so fast that he almost gagged, and Jess pounded him on the back. Andy stood back in the bunkroom door, his eyes big.

"It's Joe's place," Josh gasped at last. "His cabin's burned. His wife and his two little girls—they were inside."

Jess paled as the news brought old memories flooding back. "Was it Tennison?" Matt demanded quickly.

"No, sir, we don't think so. Not enough horse sign in the yard. Accident maybe. But Jud said I should come tell you, just the same, and stop for Sheriff Corey too."

In a time and place when open hearths, and occasional Franklin stoves and "airtight" heaters, provided most heat, cooking was done on wood stoves, and light was provided almost exclusively by oil lamps whose kerosene fuel was so highly combustible, and had such a low flashpoint—less than 125o—that the heat from a lamp's flame could ignite its reservoir and create a dangerous little bomb, house fires were all too common; and on an isolated ranch, with no near neighbors to help fight the blaze, it was only too possible for a family to be trapped and killed, especially if the fire spread rapidly and blocked the exit. "What about Rogers's men?" Slim asked.

"Them too. We think maybe they'd all just sat down to supper—we sighted the smoke from our place just about sundown."

"What about Joe and Eddie?" Mary wanted to know.

"Joe's on patrol, or he was—Jud sent Ruthie to find him, she's the lightest weight of us after me. Eddie got there just about the time we did, he'd been checkin' his pa's waterholes. Hiram took him to our place; Lillian will look after him." That was his sister-in-law, Jud's wife.

Matt looked around at the others. "There's not much we can do," he said slowly, "but Joe will need his friends. We'll go first thing in the morning—you and me, Jess; Slim will stay here in case of trouble and to help Jonesy and Andy with the stages. Josh, you can sleep in the back room with Jess—Mary, get him a cup of camomile tea, he'll need some help droppin' off after this." His wife turned toward the kitchen without a word.

**SR**

Matt and Jess were mounted and gone by six-thirty, supplied with cold food so they could eat in the saddle. Josh rode with them on a borrowed S R sorrel, his own mount being just about ruined by his desperate full-speed thirty-mile-plus ride. They found Jud Coberley at Two Bar Cross, directing things, and half a dozen men from one of the patrols doing what they could to help, which amounted chiefly to digging graves. Six tarpaulin-wrapped bodies lay alongside the barn, two of them pitifully small. A shocked Joe Shefflin was picking through the wreckage of the cabin, salvaging what he could; nobody had tried to stop him—at a time like this a man needed to feel he was doing something, needed a task to concentrate on so he could keep from thinking about what it must have been like for his wife and daughters.

The only casualties had been human: the dogs had been out in the yard, as they generally were, and the family's two housecats had made it out through an open front window. The barn, being set to the north of the house, had been untouched, though the earliest-emerging vegetables in the half-acre truck patch had taken some damage from flying sparks and flaming debri. The dogs seemed uneasy, though they might simply have been picking up on the emotions of the stunned humans; Pardo was walking around and around his pen, tossing his horns and grumbling to himself. Matt and Jess conferred with Jud and Mort Corey, who'd been looking for sign ever since it was light enough for him to see what he was doing. "It looks like a lamp started it," Coberley speculated— "we could smell the kerosene as we rode into the yard. We made a circle around, lookin' for sign, but all we found was single lines, Joe and Eddie and that hired hand of Joe's, like as not; there wasn't anythin' to suggest that any big group, or even a small one, had been here ahead of us." The sheriff nodded silently, affirming that contention.

"Where'd you find the bodies?" Matt asked.

"On the floor, like they'd tried to get under the smoke. Near as we could figure it, one of the roof beams came down almost first thing and blocked the door. They couldn't get out that way, and the flames spread so fast they couldn't reach any of the windows."

Matt nodded thoughtfully. Jess's nose wrinkled at the powerful odor of kerosene still lingering on the dampish morning air. "Seems like an awful lot of oil," he muttered. "I'm gonna look around, Matt."

"All right, boy." Matt figured he understood: so soon after telling—reliving—the story of the Bannister raid, a tragedy like this would be bound to make the young Texan restless and upset.

Jess picked his way slowly around the ruin of the cabin. It did look as if the fire had started inside; the windows appeared to have blown outward from the confined heat, and though it was difficult to be sure, given the way the walls had collapsed, he thought it was the inner surfaces that showed the most fire damage. In any case, once the flames began licking out the windows, they'd scorch the outer ones too, and as the roof and walls crumbled inward, they'd be bound to sustain damage.

Still... that kerosene smell seemed awfully strong near the two back corners...

He shook his head, glancing toward the nearby truck patch. There were potato plants in there, he recognized them—his own family had had them. Potato plants were prone to bugs, and kerosene was often used to fight them. Maybe whoever had been using it had spilled some and figured all they could do was just let it evaporate.

He looked over toward the barn, watching as the patrol riders began gently picking up the bodies and moving them to the waiting graves, scowling a moment at Pardo's restlessness, not unlike his own. Longhorns were more wild than tame, they picked up on things and they remembered. Pardo might simply be disturbed by the lingering fire smell, but what if he wasn't, or not just? What if he'd seen something? Wisht you could talk, feller, Jess thought.

Still troubled, and not feeling that he'd known the family well enough to join the others at the burying, he widened his circle, poking randomly around the remaining buildings. He didn't know what he was looking for till he found it. In the tin-roofed smithy shed, not far from the forge, the earthen floor showed scuffled places—and a dark, crusty, dried splotch that Jess recognized.

Blood.

He knelt, examining the splotch carefully, trying to gauge its age, to guess at the size of the wound that had shed it. In a smithy a man was much likelier to suffer burns than open wounds. Could that mean something? The packed earth showed sign poorly; he couldn't tell if there had been one man here or more. But still...

Still... what if...?

No, he told himself. Couldn't be. Mose was right. Bannister most likely took off for Canada as fast as a horse'd carry him.

All the same, he'd be wantin' supplies for the trip, and maybe money, or somethin' he could sell to get it. After a fire like that, Shefflin won't hardly expect to find all his valuables... there was some pieces of silver on that cupboard at the end of the dinin' table, I recollect seein' 'em, and like as not some cash money hid somewheres, in a dresser drawer or the blanket chest or under the mattress...

No. Why would he come so far south? He'd have to double back afterward—waste of time; he'd gotta know they'd be after him, and that Marshal Stuart might be fetchin' in a posse over the pass from Cheyenne too. There's ranches north of Medicine Bow—Diamond D, for one.

But would one man alone chance hittin' a big ranch? If he still had his gang he could, but the way I heard it, time he was took last year, there wasn't nobody left of it but him and a couple other fellers.

No, he might sooner try for a small place, like this.

Still, he could find that kind up north as well. They got to be built like forts against the Indians, but nobody'd be likely to suspect one white man alone—or two, if that cellmate of his is travellin' with him.

He frowned, thinking about what he knew of the Bannister tactics. When the gang had hit Wind Vane, they hadn't bothered to loot any of the buildings, but then they probably hadn't figured there'd be much in them worth looting: the main ranchhouse wasn't occupied till the spring roundup got under way, and otherwise there'd been nothing but the bunkhouse, cookhouse, barn and outbuildings, the foreman's house where the Harpers had lived (and from which Jess and Francie and Johnny had been firing on the outlaws), and the little adobes of the Mexican staff families, which any outlaw would figure unlikely to yield anything valuable enough to be worth the effort. When they didn't plan to loot, the Bannisters' usual style had been to pile up brush against the exterior walls of a building—or splash something flammable on it, if they could find any such—and light it, or throw flaming torches in the windows, as they'd done to his family's home. When they did, of course they'd go in first, take what they wanted, set their fire there, and leave the bodies inside to burn. They didn't ordinarily leave witnesses; you almost knew when they'd been there by the lack of any, and of course the shod horse tracks, which tended to suggest that it hadn't been Indians. All this Jess had learned over the years of his search; he'd made it his business to find out everything he could about the gang—its record, its methods, who was in it.

Could it be?

No. It don't make sense.

And yet...

If he killed them cowhands, one at a time as he could catch 'em alone... one of 'em could account for this blood sign, Jess told himself. After that, it'd be easy enough to take Miz Shefflin and her kids... kill 'em, put 'em on the floor, fetch in the men's bodies, set it up so they'd be found like Coberley said...

But still... why'd he be this far south?

You're obsessed, Harper. You see folks burned in a house fire and right away you think Bannister. For all you know somebody killed a chicken here, and it bled, maybe days ago.

Likely that's just what did happen. It was an accident. Sad and terrible, but an accident all the same.

Ain't got nothin' to do with you. Just... one of them bad things that happens.

Can't have been Bannister. Don't make sense.

He was waiting by the horses when Matt came back from the burying. "Find anything?" the man asked quietly.

"Nothin' that couldn't be explained away," said Jess. "It looks like an accident, and I want to think it was. And I ain't ever heard of no war that ramped up this high, this sudden, so early on; they oughtta still be probin' at us, testin' us, strikin' at fences and waterholes and stock. Anyhow, s'posin' there was an attack and a stray bullet smashed a lamp, and maybe the fire got goin' so slow that the folks in the house didn't know their danger till it was too late, there'd be more sign—horse mostly—and we'd find brass, spent shells. And things like that us'ally happen by night, 'cause the raiders need the darkness for cover."

Matt nodded. "I can see that. So you think it was just what it seems to be?"

But Jess frowned and shook his head. "I dunno. Somehow, somethin' don't smell right, and I ain't just talkin' about that kerosene stink. I almost thought, just for a bit... but why would a man runnin' from a posse, maybe two posses, come all the way south here, losin' time, when he could just as easy break north, like Mose said?"

"Bannister?" Matt guessed.

"Yeah, but that don't make sense."

He kept telling himself that.

**SR**

Jess had heard of the mysterious "moccasin telegraph" by which news could spread across the Indian Territory with such speed that a trail boss generous in his tributes could easily find his herd decimated by the time he crossed into Kansas, but the word of the tragedy at Shefflins' moved with scarcely less, as the patrols met one another and passed it on. Though Cole Rogers and Reed McCaskey agreed with him that the fire was almost certainly an isolated incident unrelated to the war, a thrill of unease ran through the lower Basin, with the homesteaders, who had less prospect of defending themselves from a raid, being worst affected. Liam Delaney managed, somehow, to shame them into staying on, but several, especially those with young families, sent their women and children to stay in or near Laramie, where they could camp out beside their wagons and cook over open fires, as they'd done on the wagon trains that had brought them west. Olivia Reinheimer gave most of these sanctuary on her land in exchange for help with chores, but apprehension for the men and older boys left behind made for a difficult time for all of them.

Meanwhile, as if aware that morale had been severely shaken by the incident, Tennison quickened its tempo and its tactics became rougher. Two or three strikes were made every night, doubtless with the idea that even the Basin patrols probably couldn't catch all of the parties responsible before they reached their targets. Stock was run off, mules poisoned, young crops destroyed in the field by fire or stampedes, poison sprinkled on salt licks to kill cattle; beef was driven into bogs, slaughtered on its bedgrounds, run over a bluff. A waterhole was salted, fence wire cut. The Coberleys' breeding stud, out with his brood mares, was shot from a distance—a severe blow, for the stallion was almost always the most valuable horse on the place. Haystacks were set afire, although at this season they weren't a great loss, and one barn went up in smoke, though thanks to Jess's counsel the building itself was the only real casualty, and the owners, firing from their house, drove the arsonists off with heavy losses: responding the next day, Jess discovered two dead horses and five large splotches of blood that suggested humans had been struck. The horses, however, didn't carry the Tennison brand, which, of course, meant that nothing could be proved—and even if it could, Mort Corey would have had no power over the line; he'd have had to contact the law in Larimer County, which would have been well within its rights to point out that no laws had been broken there, so it had no real brief to interfere.

And then, quite without warning, after two weeks, everything stopped. A sudden peace fell over the disputed range. Everyone waited, tensely, for the next stage in the conflict, but two days, three, four passed, and nothing happened.

Exactly seven days after the last incident, a rider crossed the line bearing a white flag. One of the patrols spotted him from a distance and quickly surrounded him. It was Jarrod Lydacker, and he had a note that he asked them to deliver to Matt Sherman. The leader of the patrol took it and had him escorted back into Colorado, then sent his messenger up to Sherman Ranch with the note. It proved to be an offer to negotiate. Martha Farity, it said, had lost too many men; the ones she had left were getting restive, some slipping away in the night without even bothering to collect their pay. She was also troubled about the condition of the graze in the valley where she was camping. And she needed time to get buildings up before fall. She still wanted to settle in the Laramie Basin, but was beginning to see that she couldn't just elbow her way in and push the earlier comers aside. She wanted to talk about damages, and about where she might be permitted to locate. The note was signed by Lydacker himself on her behalf. He said she was reluctant to hold council in Laramie, where others could see, and understood that the Basin ranchers' leaders might be equally unwilling to come to her. Lydacker suggested that they meet—the Shermans on the Basin's behalf, himself and Martha on Tennison's—in a neutral spot, about fifteen miles southwest of Sherman Ranch; the location he described was, in fact, a failed homestead from two or three years ago, and both Slim and his father knew it well.

"Could be a trick," mused Matt, as he and his son and Jess sat on the ranchhouse porch pondering the offer in the cool of dusk. "There's still part of an old sodhouse on that tract; they could be meanin' to have an ambush set up in it."

"Still," Slim pointed out, "it's been a week since we had any trouble. Maybe it took Paul and David Tennison that long to talk their sister into agreein' to back down. And I can understand how her pride might not let her come into Laramie for a peace council. I met a good share of Southern women in the war, and they've got no less of it than their men."

"How many casualties do you reckon Tennison's taken?" Matt inquired of Jess. "You been keepin' track, I know."

Jess pondered. "Hard to say. They been gettin' better at slippin' past our people, but when they do they tend to run up against defenders behind walls, or else one of our patrols cuts their sign after and they get in a runnin' fight as they retreat. Either way, they 'most always seem to lose one or two dead and a few wounded. Word of a war like this one fetches in the buzzards every time—guns for hire hear of it and come flockin', hopin' to get hired by one side or th'other. And I got a notion Tennison overhired anyhow. But my best guess, they've had a good twenty killed since the start, countin' Beal, and more no good for fightin' for a spell. That's a lot. Could be, like the note says, the survivors are gettin' restless; a hired gun takes chances for his money, but he ain't in the business of suicide—can't spend his pay from the grave. Could be the word's spreadin' about how hard we're fightin' back, how well we're organized, and Tennison can't hire any new guns to replace the ones we've took out of action."

"That makes sense," Slim agreed, although Jess thought it hurt him to admit it.

"So," Matt, "you're sayin' this offer is for real?"

"I dunno," Jess admitted. "It could be. Like I said once, you don't get where Tennison is—least of all you don't triple what was left you over twenty years—unless you got brains and can use 'em. But that's somethin' that cuts two ways, and it ain't just Miz Farity and her brothers we're facin'; it's Lydacker. He's smart. Word has it he comes out of a good family in Mississippi or Alabama, went to a military school, was an officer in the war and didn't hardly lose no more'n fifteen per cent of his outfit in four years' time. He's got to've lost better'n a quarter—guns and cowhands—in just this last month or so. Seems to me I heard somewheres that if you've lost one man out of ten, even, and you reckon you can reach any kind of bearable agreement, it makes sense to stop. Bein' schooled like he was, Lydacker would know that."

"It's true," said Slim. "It's one of the cardinal principles of military science."

"But still," Jess went on, frowning, "somethin' don't smell right. Seems almost like Lydacker's been tryin' to get his men killed, the way he's been sendin' 'em at us. I ain't sayin' he ain't smarter'n most of 'em, 'cause he is. And it don't seem likely they can see what he's up to, whatever that is; like enough some of them we've killed had friends among the survivors, and if any of those realized the truth, one of 'em at least, likely more, would'a' called him on it. But all that bein' true, you run up against the why. He ain't in business to lose; he can't afford to, least of all after what happened in San Saba County. Plus which," he added, "how'd Tennison happen to know about that failed homestead? It's way north of anyplace they been up to now."

"We know that Lydacker and David Tennison spent some time in Laramie over the winter, spyin' out the ground," Slim noted. "Mrs. Farity said so right out when we were there. It's almost certain they had a good look at the county plat books, which are public documents—anybody can have access to 'em, whether they live in the county or not. That would be how they figured out which of us owned what, and where. They might've made a map. And a deserted homestead would show there, and in the tax records too, because it's not open to filin' again until the five-year term is up, and can't be taxed till after final proof's been made and a patent issued."

"I reckon," Jess agreed, after a moment's thought; he'd consulted a plat book or two himself, in his career, on behalf of whoever he happened to be working for, and he'd certainly been legally transient at the time. "Still, I don't like it. Before Lydacker took to ridin' with the Tennison outfit, they say he never travelled back from anywhere the same way he come. I don't reckon he's changed any. You won't find him gettin' into a hole where there's only one way out, neither. Bannister, on the other hand, you might find in any of a variety of holes."

Slim gave him a sharp look. "What's Bannister got to do with it?"

"Nothin', likely," the Texan admitted. "Just sayin'."

"What we could do," Matt suggested thoughtfully, "is agree to talk, but make sure we get there well ahead of 'em, maybe even the day before. If we see anything that looks like an ambush bein' set up, we just pull back and don't let 'em know we were there."

"That would work," Jess agreed. "You know the country better'n they do. Seein' somethin' on a map ain't nowheres the same as seein' it for real, with the contours of the land and all."

"We didn't ask for this fight," said Matt. "We never wanted it. We told Tennison that, right at the start. If like you say they're findin' it hard to hold the men they've got, or hire new ones... well, they know they're outnumbered, most of all if they had a gander at the tax records and know how many head we run up here, 'cause that determines the size of our crews. It takes a smart man—or woman—to see when they're whipped; it only takes a stubborn one to keep on fightin' against odds they can't buck. And there's times you have to take a risk to get what you want—which, in our case, is peace. I think this is one of those times."

Jess knew him better, by now, than to argue with him once his mind was made up. "You want me to ride along?"

"No, Lydacker might see three against two as a trick or worse," Matt told him. "We'll ride out the day before, like I said, and keep an eye. We can even take over the soddie and be ready to beat off any attempt that's made to set up a trap for us. If nobody does, then that's probably a sign that Tennison is sincere."

And so it was decided. A messenger was sent to Coberleys' with a note for Lydacker. The Shermans rode out fully thirty hours before they were due at the rendezvous, leaving Jess to help Jonesy and Andy with the stages. But as the hours wore on, Jess found himself becoming, as he put it, "buggy as a cow with bots," meaning jumpy and apprehensive. He couldn't stop feeling that something was off kilter, yet he'd agreed not to follow them, and he couldn't break his word. At breakfast on the day appointed for the meeting, he finally said, "I got the crawlin' fidgets. I need to take a ride or somethin'. Can you all manage without me for a few hours?"

"Sure," said Jonesy. "We've done it before, when Matt and Slim was both out on the range." He squinted thoughtfully at the young Texan. "What's goin' on in that head of yours, boy?"

"I dunno," Jess admitted. "I just can't shake the thought that there's somethin' I'm missin'. Maybe it's just knowin' that Bannister's on the loose and gettin' farther away every hour that goes by, but..." He shrugged helplessly. "I can't explain it."

"Go," said Jonesy, with a note of compassion in his voice. "You're no good to yourself or us in this state. Nobody's troubled us this far north, and things are quiet now anyway."

So Jess saddled Traveller and headed out, up the stage road, away from the meeting site and the pull of temptation. Needing quiet and solitude to try to get a handle on what was bothering him, he guided the bay slowly into the higher country, gradually encountering little bunches of Sherman beef as they ate their way upslope. The animals looked sleek and untroubled, and there were many calves. The sight of new life soothed him somewhat, and the silence of the wilderness was like balm. He dipped down into a draw, waded a branch, and started up the opposite slope through some aspen timber. A Steller's jay called him foul names and accused him of unspeakable practises; its voice was quickly joined by the scolding of a gray squirrel disturbed in its quest for food. His nostrils were filled with the pungent odor of spruce and pine, and the pure ozone of the hills. Tracks of deer and elk were everywhere, varied with those of wild horses, once a cougar's pug marks, and twice he saw sign of a grizzly. A hawk spiralled upward on a rising air-current, seeming not to fly at all, but simply to drift like a youngster's kite. He paused near a small stream to watch a dipper bob up and down on a rock. He saw a school of trout lurking in a shady place where a branch hung low over the water.

Almost under Traveller's feet, a quail with half a dozen chicks broke out of the wayside brush and started across the trail. The deep litter muffled the hoofbeats for a few seconds, and then the quail saw him and gave the alarm. She scurried across the trail, running fast, looking like a fat old lady hurrying to church; four of the chicks followed, strung out behind her in a line, legs pumping frantically to keep up; the other two hesitated and dived back into the brush. Passing them, Jess could see them huddled there, utterly still, their topknots unmoving. He rode on, smiling to himself. He jumped a doe with a pair of fawns and listened to their almost noiseless flight into the timber. As he crossed the creek a whistle pig on the far bank scolded him and gave the alarm, and he could hear it passed on down the line by others. He took a deep pleasure in all of it. No amount of seeing ever made nature old to him, and he was conscious of every movement and every sound. It was very still. Sitting his horse among the trees he could look up above the mountain peak at the clear blue sky, tumbled with banks of fleecy white clouds. He began, gradually, to feel calm. Matt had been right: he and Slim would have gotten to the appointed spot in plenty of time to foil any attempt at an ambush. And Jess himself had said that Lydacker was smart and a strategist. The Tennisons would know that—it would be why they had hired him. If he told them they were losing men—and they would see it themselves, by the amount of pay that went unclaimed—and advised them to sue for peace, odds were even, at least, that they'd go along. It's just Bannister, he told himself. I know I got a better chance at him now than I've had since I started out, and I'm wantin' to get after him... and not wantin' to leave what I got here... what I could maybe make of it. I got to go, I know that, same as I knew it in Amarillo—but I don't gotta like it, no more'n I done there.

He remembered something Dixie had told him: It'll come, Jess, I guarantee you it will. One day you'll find something or someone—a town, a woman, a cause, a friend—that'll touch that lump of ice you call your heart, and bring you back to life again. He wondered if a ranch, a hero-worshipping young boy, an aging but very much in love couple, a shrewd old man with a gift for music and doctoring, and a tall stubborn fellow with a set mind should count.

Maybe, after it's done, I can come back. Try to make a new start with them... with Slim. What's he got against me, anyhow? I don't savvy. If he'd say... how can a man know what he's done wrong if nobody tells him?

The trail he was following forked, and he took the right-hand branch, which began to climb through scattered pine foothill timber until it brought him to an open ridge. Below him, to the west and south, lay the wide expanse of the Basin, divided by the Laramie River. Burkharts' place to the south was hidden by the enfolding hills, but he could see Reed McCaskey's headquarters to the west and beyond it, and almost out of sight Shermans' against the first pitch of the mountains. He could make out a dark dot with a dust cloud trailing after it, moving along the road he'd left far below, and fished his silver-plated watch out of his vest pocket to check. Noon inbound, and on schedule, by what he could estimate, though being so high up probably skewed his sense of distance. He lifted his gaze and looked south, toward the place where Matt and Slim were supposed to meet Lydacker and his "boss-lady," but the contours of the country were such that he couldn't see it. Hope it's for real, he thought. Hope they can work somethin' out. This land... it don't need to be scarred by war. He let his eyes travel across the vast sweep of the basin, the rolling green grasslands, the countless waterholes and seeps and creeks. It was a cowman's paradise. He would always be a Texan, always love his fierce southern homeland, but this... this was the best he'd ever seen. He thought about the things he'd picked up, over the years, about land laws and purchase. More than a decade ago, before the war, Congress had passed a law—what was it called? the Graduation Act?—that regulated the price of land based on its quality, with some parcels considered unfit for farming selling for as little as ten to twelve and a half cents an acre, and much grazing land for fifty. With that, plus the homestead law that gave you 160 acres in return for five years' work and eighteen dollars cash, a man could start small, yet not have to depend on the public domain—and Jess, being a Texan, was equally as unwilling to use land without owning it as the Tennisons must be. File on some good bottom land, sell hay and break folks' horses for expenses—with the $270-odd that he had, he could make a good beginning toward a little spread of his own... horses, maybe; fifty or sixty of them would be enough. There were wild ones up on this mountain, Matt had said so, and he'd seen their tracks himself. The bank in town was owned by a cowman, he'd likely be willing to give good terms on a loan for land title and a couple of blooded studs and a little equipment...

He turned away and dropped down the other side of the ridge, spooking a big buck mule deer from its daytime bed. It exploded out and down the slope with the stiff-legged bounce peculiar to the breed. Jess checked a minute, watching it go, marvelling at the speed it could attain at such a gait and wondering (not for the first time) why deer moved that way instead of one leg at a time like horses and cows, then started up a wide-mouthed canyon, following the creek that ran down it. He was climbing now, and from the looks of it he'd climb a good three thousand feet by the time he got to the rim.

It took him a little while to register what he was seeing: horse turds, strung out along a line. He checked immediately, his skin prickling. A loose horse always stopped to relieve itself; a ridden one didn't. Slowly, looking all around, he eased out of the saddle. No, not one horse: two. They'd both come down here at a walk, the riders making allowance for the pitch of the trail, and he could see clearly that one had a nail missing out of the off fore shoe, and the other didn't. They'd been shod about the same time, judging by the wear, he reckoned—a good three weeks back, maybe four, which was about as long as a discriminating horseman would go in between visits to the blacksmith. And they'd been done by the same man, too; each smith worked a little differently, putting his own discernible trademark on the shoes he created. But they hadn't been together; one had come down very early in the morning, maybe as soon as the light let him, and the other not more than a couple of hours ago, maybe less. He frowned, puzzled and disturbed. He wasn't sure if he was still on Shermans' high graze, but even if he wasn't, who would be coming down out of this canyon? He'd heard tell there were people living up in this high country, hillmen who'd come out from the Ozarks and the border up-country and gravitated to it because it reminded them of home, but would people like that choose to settle in a canyon?

He studied the tracks with care, committing their appearance to memory so he'd be able to pick them out as soon as he saw either set again, estimating from their depth the weight and size of the riders—one, the early one, had been heavier than the other by maybe fifteen, twenty pounds, assuming they'd both had stock saddles and similar gear. He stood, breathing in, searching for any hint of smoke—if it was hillmen, hunting maybe, they'd have left families at home, like as not, and that would mean a fire. No. No scent of it. He moved his shoulders uneasily. Something wasn't right. "C'mon, Trav," he murmured, and started up the trail afoot, reins in his left hand, the bay following.

A little tongue of timber angled across his path, flowing out of a side-canyon; the tracks he was following turned to go along it. He flipped the bucking thong off the hammer of his Colt, loosened the weapon in the holster and went on. After about a hundred yards the timber thinned, and he slowed, stopped, tied Trav in some thick oak-brush and went on alone. Abruptly the woods opened out, the trees ending as if they'd been cut off with a hoe. Here the canyon ran up to the scarp that formed the mountain face, and at the end of that open space, almost under the lift of the rock, was a deserted log cabin. The roof had fallen in on one side, there were no windows and the door was gone, but somebody had been camping there: he could see where some aspen poles had been lain across the broken part of the roof and thatched over with pine boughs to shed rain and spring snow. The chimney appeared intact. Trapper's, maybe, he thought; there'd been mountain men in this country as long as forty, fifty years ago. He watched from just inside the screen of trees, and after a minute or two saw a rat scurry along the ledge of a broken window and then sit still, looking outside. Inside, two or three others squealed as they raced across the floor, their voices reaching him clearly in the mountains' cathedral hush. Nobody home, he knew, and walked boldly into the open. The rat saw him and dived out of sight. By the time he reached the threshold, it and its mates had vanished.

He passed a couple of spots where the grass had been grazed down and the neat little holes of picket pegs could still be seen: two horses, sure enough. Inside, he found sign of two men, clear and plain: not merely two bedrolls, neatly rolled and tied and stacked in a corner, but two kinds of smoking sign—one of the men had used hand-rolled cigarettes, like himself, and the other long black Mexican cigars with sweetened tobacco. He's a long ways from home, Jess thought. Clearly they were planning to come back: not just the beds, but the presence of camp gear, told him that. A pile of cut firewood was neatly stacked in the corner nearest the fireplace, beneath the soundest part of the roof, where it would be likeliest to remain dry. Glancing out one of the glassless windows, he saw a large sack swinging by a length of wire from a tree limb, high enough to be out of reach of grizzlies, far enough out that a climbing black bear wouldn't dare venture out to it. That would be a food cache: they'd put their grub out there to keep the rats out of it till they returned. He found no weapons, no personal items, no ammunition—nothing that could be packed into a saddlebag or carried easily on one's person. But the ashes in the fireplace were still warm; there'd been a fire here within the last six hours. Nothing about any of it was in any way outwardly suspicious. Maybe a couple of drifters had stumbled on the place and stopped to fatten their horses up on the good grass for a few days before they went on over the mountain crest.

Maybe.

Somehow, he didn't think so. He felt prickly all over again, just as he had this morning when he'd asked if the folks at the ranch could get by without him.

He looked around slowly, letting his eyes range into every corner, then upward along the walls. And that was when he saw it. A heavy gunny sack, tucked up into a corner where the intact beams would hold it.

That didn't make sense. It wouldn't keep the rats out, and anyhow the dwellers had obviously put what the rats would want out in that tree cache.

Urged by an impulse he didn't stop to question, Jess looked around till he found the ten-gallon hogshead that had probably been used as a step to get the sack up there, moved it and pulled himself up onto it, reaching up to probe with his fingers against the surface of the sack. The contents felt hard, smooth, but not angular, at least not entirely, and they clinked. Metal. He wrestled the sack down from its hiding place; its weight almost overbalanced him. He dropped it hastily to avoid falling, and it hit the earthen floor with a jingling crash. He stepped down, knelt, took out his pocketknife to cut the thongs that held it shut.

In the dim light the contents gleamed softly. Silver, or maybe the cheaper electroplate. Slowly he drew several of the pieces out. A coffeepot, a little molasses pitcher, a small platter such as might be used for a tray, a jelly server and spoons. A salt-cellar in the shape of a shell, with a little spoon of its own. And a butter knife with a pearl handle. He knew those last two. He'd seen Judy Shefflin put them out on the table the day he and the others had stopped for dinner at Two Bar Cross on their way down to the line.

And why would anyone have Shefflins' silver unless they'd taken it out of the cabin before the fire?

Unless... unless they'd set that fire.

Suddenly his heart was hammering and he could barely breathe. Long black Mexican cigars with sweetened tobacco. Lots of men smoked them, of course, especially down near the Border. One man who did was Frank Bannister. It was one of the things Jess had made sure of knowing about the outlaw, because what a man smoked often showed in the sign he left.

I was right. I was right all along. That blood in Shefflins' smithy shed... it was human. Bannister was there, that day.

And he ain't here now, which means...

He lunged out of the cabin and down the meadow toward the timber, leaving the sack where it lay. He had to get home.

Fast.

**SR**

The noon inbound had been scarcely fifteen minutes out of the Sherman yard when the rider came jogging slowly down the stage road. Andy and Jonesy glanced up from stripping and rubbing down the stage horses and looked him over with interest. He was maybe forty-five, around six feet, lean, lantern-jawed, with pale eyes and a jutting prow of a nose like an outcrop of desert rock, dressed in standard range fashion and riding a good golden-bay gelding. The first thing Jonesy noticed about him was that there was no bedroll on his saddle, only saddlebags and a slicker, which suggested he was off some nearby ranch, though the old man couldn't immediately place him. Looks familiar, somehow, just the same, he thought.

"How do," the rider greeted, as he pulled up. "Any chance a man might get a cup of coffee here?"

"Coffee, and I think there's some bakin'-powder biscuits left too," Jonesy replied. "Dinner won't be on a spell—we can't sit down till we finish with these teams—but you'd be welcome if you care to wait. Andy, take him on inside."

"Okay," the boy agreed. "You can leave your horse here, Mister, and Jonesy'll water him as soon as he's cool."

The stranger followed him to the house, long legs eating distance the same way Matt's and Slim's did. "Got another one, Ma," Andy announced as he opened the kitchen door.

"Ma'am," the man acknowledged, touching his hat, but Mary noticed how his eyes shuttled restlessly about the room and on toward the archway on the left. Relay stations drew a good many dubious characters, but there'd be no point in such a one getting here after the stage had gone—or better than three hours before the afternoon outbound was due.

She was too well versed in range etiquette to ask questions. "Sit down," she invited, "and I'll pour some coffee. Would you care for some biscuits and apple butter?"

Suddenly the stranger's pale eyes hardened. "No, thank you, I reckon not." And without warning his gun was in his hand. "Don't scream, ma'am. Boy, you stand where you are."

Mary drew her younger son quickly up to her. "What are you doing?" she demanded. "There's nothing here worth your time, except the horses, and the next stage won't be in for hours yet."

"Got no interest in the stage," the man replied, "just in you. Anybody else here?"

Mother and son traded uneasy glances. "Only Jonesy," Mary admitted reluctantly.

"Into the other room, both of you," ordered the stranger, "and keep still."

**SR**

Jess spurred Traveller recklessly along the canyon, across the ridge, through the pine timber, picking up the trail he'd followed before and racing down the slope through the aspens. The bay's hoofbeats hammered in rhythm to the words tumbling through his mind: Not again... not again... please God, not again... got to make it... got to get home in time...

**SR**

The stranger watched keenly as Andy tied his mother to her own rocking chair, his fingers fumbly with unease and confusion. What could this mean? Who was this man, and what did he want? Was he one of Tennison's? No, that didn't make sense. Hadn't Jess said that even in range wars, women and kids were usually off limits?

"Come here," the man said when he'd finished, and when Andy obeyed, grasped his shoulder painfully with his free hand while he walked over to the chair and checked Mary's bindings. "All right," he said, "now, boy, go to the door and call your friend in—Jonesy, is it? And hold it in mind I got your ma here; I hear anythin' I don't like, and she gets a bullet right through her head."

Andy was too scared even to think, much less to make a break or try to warn his father's old friend. He did as he'd been ordered. He saw Jonesy look around, raise his hand in a brief wave of acknowledgment, feel under the crest of the nearest stage horse, and having satisfied himself that the animal was cool enough to safely drink, lead the foursome over to the trough. Leaving them with muzzles plunged eagerly into the water, he crossed the yard toward the porch.

**SR**

Traveller plunged over the branch, sheeting water on either side; lunged out of the draw with a grunt and a scramble, and hurled himself across the open meadows, scattering Sherman cattle in all directions. Jess leaned low over his neck to cut wind resistance, eyes narrowed, lips tight. Got to make it... got to get home in time...

**SR**

Jonesy grunted as Andy tugged at the bonds that held him to his favorite straight-back chair. "I know now where I've seen you," he gritted, glaring at the tall gunman. "On a Wanted poster in Santone, better than ten years ago. You were younger back then, of course, which is what fooled me."

"That so?" the other replied mildly. "And what was the name on this poster?"

Jonesy looked quickly to Mary and Andy. He didn't want to frighten them any worse than they already were, but he figured they'd guess what was coming soon enough. "Frank Bannister," he said harshly, and heard Andy's breath catch. Mary's eyes widened.

"Not bad recollectin', after so much time," Bannister acknowledged. He gestured to Andy with his gun barrel. "All right, boy, same drill as before."

"I never heard you needed hirin', to kill folks," Jonesy taunted.

"Mostly I don't," Bannister agreed. "And it's nothin' personal, you understand. But I need road money, and once you all are out of the way, my partner and me have been promised five thousand between us."

"Partner?" Jonesy echoed in surprise—and then he understood. His cellmate. He's gone to take Matt and Slim while Bannister does for us, burns the house around us like he did with Jess's family.

Jess was right—there was somethin' off-kilter about this whole thing. It was a trap, all along. Lydacker and his boss-lady won't be within twenty miles of that old homestead all day.

Was this his idea, or hers? I hate to think a woman could be so cold-blooded, but from what Matt and the others said of her...

What are we gonna do? If we're all dead—Matt and Slim above all—that's gonna throw the whole lower basin into confusion. Then Rogers and McCaskey and the Coberleys can be picked off too, and Tennison can do just what it likes...

**SR**

Jess brought Traveller to a halt, rearing, at the top of the ridge, eyes sweeping over the scene below. Thank God, it looked like he'd made it. The house was still standing, and there was a strange horse, a golden bay, drinking at the trough with the four-up from the noon stage. He could see no sign of Andy or Jonesy or Mary, or of whoever belonged to the bay; just the tiny forms of chickens scurrying about the yard.

He patted down Traveller's sweat-soaked shoulder, soothing him. "You done real good, partner," he murmured. "Now it's up to me." He scanned the scene again, plotting his course. Down the ridge-side till he could get into the ravine, then around to the back of the barn...

**SR**

"All right, boy," said Bannister, having satisfied himself that Jonesy's bonds were secure. "Your turn."

Andy hesitated, his eyes big with fright, looking from Jonesy to his mother and back again. "No," he managed.

Bannister didn't speak; he just thumbed back the hammer of his Colt and trained the weapon on Mary. Andy hesitated, wavering.

"BANNISTER!" came a harsh, raw-voiced bellow from outside. "FRANK BANNISTER! You come out that door and face me or I'm comin' in after you!"

The outlaw whirled to face the front window. "It's Jess!" cried Andy, relief sweeping through him in such a wave that it nearly threw him to his knees.

Bannister turned back, looking at him. "Who's Jess?"

The boy glared at him defiantly. "Jess Harper, and you better run!" he snapped, his tone belligerent. "He's been lookin' to kill you for ten years. You burned his family. He told us all about it." He dodged deftly as the outlaw grabbed for him, ducked around his mother's chair and watched with bright, angry eyes as Bannister hesitated.

Bannister moved quickly to the couch under the window, put a knee up on it, and cautiously peered out. He saw no new horses, no sign of the man calling him. "BANNISTER!" the summons came again. "Bannister, I'm waitin' on you!"

Andy darted a look at him, then at the poker in its rack beside the fireplace, then to Jonesy. The old man shook his head quickly. Andy understood the unspoken message: He belongs to Jess.

Bannister slid sideways to the door, opening it a cautious crack. "I got hostages in here, Harper!" he yelled hoarsely. "A woman, a kid, and an old man!"

"I know you do," Jess retorted, and now his voice had gone cold and flat. "And I know that unless you burn yourself with 'em, you'll have to come outta there soon or late. And when you do... if you've so much as bruised one of 'em... I won't just shoot you, Bannister. I'll kill you Comanche-style, the slowest way I know how."

Frank Bannister had been around long enough to know when a man was blowing hot air and when he meant what he said. He hesitated again, debating his next move, and Andy taunted: "You should'a' run for Canada! You should'a' never come troublin' this family! 'Cause Jess is one of us now and he won't let us come to harm!"

Mary sucked in a breath, fearing for an instant that her younger son had gone too far. But Andy knew what he was doing even if he couldn't explain it: the same instinctive ability to gauge character that had drawn him to Jess now told him exactly how to get Bannister out of the house where Jess could get a clean shot at him.

"I'm gonna count twenty, Bannister!" Jess shouted. "After that I'm comin' in!"

One, Andy thought. Two. Three. Four...

At five Bannister spoke again. "I don't see you. How do I know you won't bushwhack me the minute I step out the door?"

"You don't," Jess snapped, "except that I'm a better man than you ever were, Bannister, and I'd admire to prove it."

Eight. Nine. Ten.

"Show yourself, then, and I'll come out."

Through the window Andy saw a flicker of movement by the barn, on the corner where the corral was. Jess's compact shape slid into view, hesitated just a bare instant, then ducked through the bars and paused again.

Thirteen. Fourteen...

Bannister lifted his gun.

"JESS, LOOK OUT!" Andy screamed, as loud as he could.

Jess ducked, dropped, and rolled as the outlaw's gun barked, once, twice. He fired in return, and the pane in the door shattered in an explosion of flying glass, some of the shards cutting Bannister's forehead and cheek as he ducked back.

Bannister threw one look back over his shoulder, as if calculating his chances of getting out the side door, maybe with Andy for a shield, then hurled himself out onto the porch in a desperate lunge...

**SR**

Jess felt hot and cold together, rage flaming in his chest, yet tempered, controlled, focused somehow by two years of Dixie's training, another at war, one fighting Mescaleros in the U.S. Volunteers, and five on the drift. Now, now, now, the word beat in his mind, as Bannister suddenly rushed out the door, and he rolled again, came to his feet, and stood. "Bannister!"

The outlaw raised his sixgun, and Jess fired, once, twice, three times, as Dixie had taught him to do against a single foe. He felt the buck of his gun against the heel of his hand. Bannister looked at him and shook his head as though what was happening was beyond belief. Then his eyes turned vacant, his knees came unhinged, and he slumped down.

Jess stood absolutely still for a slow count of five, then moved cautiously forward, his Colt cocked for another shot. The outlaw didn't move. Carefully, balanced, ready for anything, knowing what his next move would be if the man was shamming—fall back, kick hard, and fire—Jess extended his left foot and pushed the gun away from Bannister's slack hand. His enemy made no attempt to grab at it or at his ankle. Jess slid his boot toe under the man's middle and flipped him over. He rolled as a half-bag of apples might, loosely. His eyes were open, staring, glazing. There was a small neat wound about two inches over his left nipple, a second as far to the right of it, and a third directly to the left of the base of his neck.

It's done.

I kept my promise, Pa. Billy... Davy... Julie... I done what I swore...

I wanted to find out if he remembered us...wanted to ask him why. But maybe it's just as well I didn't get the chance. If I'd told him the where and the when of why he was dyin', and he didn't even recollect bein' there... that would have cheapened your deaths. At least now you're paid for.

"Jess! Jess, come help me!"

His head snapped around. Bannister forgotten, he shoved his empty gun into the holster and bolted across the yard, up the step and through the open door. Andy was struggling with the bonds that held Jonesy to his chair; he looked up and hurled himself into the Texan's arms, sobbing in relief.

"Everybody all right?" Jess demanded, sweeping a hand down to his boot-top for his knife.

"Never mind us," Jonesy told him. "Bannister had a partner—he's gone to kill Matt and Slim."

The cellmate, Jess realized. The other horse, the one that went down earlier.

It was a setup all along. A way to get Matt and Slim away from here so Bannister could do his dirty work, and th'other one could take 'em down on the way back, when they're likest to be off their guard.

He thought fast, calling to mind the report of the break that had run in the Gazette, the day after Mose told them about it. The man had been named in it—no one he knew—and described as a "suspected bushwhacker" and "former buffalo hunter" who was said to be "an expert long-distance rifle shot." If he's meanin' to take 'em, Jess thought, he must know where they are. And somebody like that, he won't face 'em—he'll cut 'em down from cover. He looked at the mantel clock. The supposed meeting had been set for ten A.M. It was now past one. Matt and Slim had probably figured it out that their opposite numbers weren't coming, though they might not understand why. They'd be on their way home. His only chance was to intercept them before they passed the spot where the killer was waiting. But where would that be? He wasn't yet familiar with this country; he knew the Sherman low range in a general way, knew the road to town, but that was about all.

He turned back to Jonesy, one hand absently rubbing circles over Andy's back as the boy clung to him, shaking as the adrenalin rush subsided. "Where would a man set up an ambush on the trail Slim and his pa would be ridin'?" he asked. "It'd have to be a place where he'd be well enough hid he could take both of 'em down—"

Jonesy shook his head. "I'm sorry, Jess, I just don't know. I don't get out on the range much any more, on account of my sacroiliac."

Andy's head snapped up. "I know!" he broke in. "I bet he'd be up on Baxter Ridge!"

"Where's that?" Jess demanded.

"Just south and east of here, about five or six miles," Andy told him. "You go out the lake trail and down Cemetery Road—there's a turnoff, it's got a sign. The ridge stands a good fifty feet above the lower valley, risin' to a hundred, and it's got all kinds of good hidin' spots along the top of it. Nobody could get up it in time to stop a second shot."

Jess squeezed the boy's shoulder. "Thanks, Tiger, that's just what I needed to know. Jonesy, you take care of things here." Then he hesitated a moment, thinking of Traveller. He'd asked a lot of the bay already, on that desperate race down from the mountain. "I'll need a fresh horse."

"Take Cyclone," Andy offered at once. "He's fine as long as I don't give him his signal, and you can ride him bareback if you have to."

Three minutes later Jess tore out of the yard, the palomino dressed only in a bridle and a rope surcingle.

**SR**

"What do you suppose could have happened, Pa?" Slim wondered, as the horses jogged slowly past the lowest reaches of Baxter Ridge.

Matt shook his head. "I don't know, son," he admitted. "If anybody had come along lookin' like an ambush, and we'd taken 'em down, I could see it; it might mean that Lydacker, at least, was close enough to hear the shots, and figurin' he hadn't tricked us took off. But nobody did, and we were there on watch all last night and all this mornin'."

The younger man nodded. "That's the way it looks to me. What's the point of lurin' us down there if he didn't try to take us out of the picture?"

"Maybe," Matt went on slowly, "we misread Martha Farity. Maybe her brothers too. Maybe when she told 'em what she had in mind, they weren't willing to go along. That outfit's invested a lot of men and money in this fight; it might've been enough to stiffen their backbones some."

"Could be," Slim agreed. "Could also be Lydacker got disgusted enough by the disagreement that he quit 'em. Which can only help us."

**SR**

Jess brought Cyclone to a skidding hind-foot halt at the fork a mile or two below the Shermans' south gate. He hesitated a moment, eyeing the painted signboard. Baxter Ridge, read one arm of it, and the other, Laramie, 6 miles.

He looked up the Ridge trail, debating. If Andy was right, Bannister's cellmate would have taken a position somewhere along it, overlooking the valley. And if the description of him was accurate, he'd have the skill and experience to at least wound one of the Sherman men before they knew he was there, then finish the job before they could get to cover.

I could follow along here, he thought, and try to find him. He might be watchin' the valley so close, he wouldn't notice me till too late.

But Andy said there was all kinds of cover; I can't count on spottin' him before he does me. And it'd take longer that way, 'cause I'd have to move slower, keepin' watch for him.

No. Ain't but one thing to do.

He spun Cyclone to the left, down the Laramie fork.

**SR**

"Who's that comin'?" Matt wondered, checking Bowie. "Why, if that don't look like Cyclone—"

"It does," Slim agreed, and frowned in puzzlement. "But that's not Andy ridin' him; Andy's hat isn't black."

To their left, and some seventy feet above them, a dark-bearded man in a brown wool shirt and red-blue-and-green halfbreed sash flipped the breechblock of his Remington Rolling-Block .44-77-470 into place, squinting through the telescopic sight, calculating drop and windage, gravity and mirage, debating briefly over which man to take first. The nearer one had a fringe of gray beard; that would be the father. He was the one Lydacker most wanted out of the picture, and maybe seeing him go down would disorganize the son enough that he wouldn't run. The Remington was a single-shot, though it had a range of as much as a thousand yards, which was why he favored it. An expert—which he was—could load and fire as many as seventeen shots to the minute, or about three and a half seconds each. Plenty of time, he thought, and drew in a breath.

**SR**

There they are, Jess thought in relief— luck's with me again...

And then, almost exactly above the two riders—barely two hundred yards ahead of him now—he saw the flash of sunlight off the Remington's sights.

He gasped and spurred Cyclone on in a last desperate dash, variables tumbling through his mind—distance, angle, wind—

"Get down!" he yelled. "Ambush!"

And drove the palomino in between Bowie and Alamo, hurling himself off his mount's bare back, full against Matt Sherman's body, just as the man on the heights squeezed the trigger...

**SR**

Slim heard the warning and the shot at almost the same instant, followed immediately by Bowie's startled whinny as his master left the saddle in a sprawling tumble, with Jess on top of him, and Matt's breathless shout. He looked around wildly, his hand automatically yanking his Winchester from its boot, and saw a flicker of movement on his left, at the crest of the ridge. He spun Alamo and left the saddle, using the two horses as a shield, resting the rifle barrel across the chestnut's back, angling it upward, many years' hunting experience coming to his aid as his mind automatically estimated height, range, angle. The shooter up above might have expected to go high on such a steep downward shot, but he was surprised at Jess's hurtling advent, and stood up reflexively, confused. It was all the chance Slim needed. At that angle, it was easy to undershoot—but that still meant he hit the man, just not where he'd hoped to. The bullet went low, taking the fellow's leg out from under him. He skidded, wobbled, and went over the rim in a headlong dive, his despairing scream trailing him. He hit the ground with a very final-sounding thud.

Slim knew nothing human could have survived that fall. Dismissing the unknown from his mind, he gave Alamo a quick smack on the rump with his palm, ducked under Bowie's nervously tossing head, and knelt beside the two men lying on the grass. "Pa? Are you all right?"

"Never touched me," Matt grunted, "but how's Jess?"

"Jess?!" Slim echoed. It had all happened so fast, he hadn't really seen who Cyclone's rider was. He reached for the younger man's shoulder and jerked his hand back at sight of the blood welling from the wound just under his left shoulderblade. Quickly he stripped off his glove and felt under the angle of the Texan's jaw. There was a pulse, but rapid and uneven. "He's alive, but he's hit bad, Pa."

"Turn him over, son," Matt ordered, cautiously pushing himself up, edging sideways, out from under Jess's slack weight. "We need to see if the bullet's still in him." He positioned himself to support the Texan's body as Slim gingerly lifted and turned it.

The hole in Jess's back had been small and neat, almost not noticeable at all. The one in front was larger, more ragged, and lower down; perhaps the bullet had struck a rib and bounced. Blood pulsed steadily from it. The Texan's head rolled loosely; he was unconscious, his face pale. "It went through."

Matt leaned forward, looking over Jess's shoulder. "No blood on his lips. If he was holed through the lung, there would be. We can be thankful for that, at least. We got to stop the bleedin' or he won't make it back to the house."

Without even stopping to think, Slim peeled out of his leather vest, yanked out the tails of his shirt and began unbuttoning it. "We can tear this up. It's not a proper bandage, but it's better than nothing. Should I make a travois, Pa?"

"No," Matt said. "Too slow, and the bumpin' might kill him. Besides, there's no trees around here for it, and we can't take the time for you to find some. No, once we get that bleedin' under control, I'll get up behind my saddle and you hold him upright and pass him up to me. I can hold him on Bowie's back and you ride ahead, let Jonesy and your ma know what's comin'." He looked gravely at his son. "We won't have to go diggin' around for a bullet, and that's a good thing, but a shot through the body like this is nothin' to make light of. He may not live. But he saved my life and likely yours, and by the Great Eternal I aim to do my best to see he does."

They were cinching the dressings in place, Matt holding Jess's body off the ground and Slim bending over him to wrap the improvised bandages around, when the Texan stirred and moaned. "Easy, Jess," Slim warned. "Keep still, let me work."

Jess's eyes flickered open, hazy with pain; he blinked up at the figure above him. "Huh... S—Slim?"

"I'm here," Slim told him. "Take it easy. Don't try to move. You're hit, Jess."

"Know it..." Jess's voice was rough, his word-strings broken by labored gasps for breath. "Your pa—he okay?"

"He's fine." Slim's voice caught. "You took the bullet that should have killed him, Jess."

The dark head moved in a nod. "What I planned on..." He paused, grimacing, struggling for air. "I got—I got Bannister... I took him... like I swore... he... he won't be... burnin' no more families, Slim..."

Bannister? Slim wondered. Is he just delirious? How would he have met up with Bannister? Something hard and painful seemed to have settled itself on his stomach. "Hang on, Jess. We'll get you home—"

"Don't," Jess husked. "I ain't... ain't worth your beatin' yourself up... for... I... been livin' on... borrowed time now... ten years... it don't... it don't matter... I done... what I had to..."

But I didn't, Slim thought. "You listen to me," he said tightly. "Are you listening? Don't you dare give up on us, Jess. You have to give us a chance to thank you."

Jess grinned weakly. "No... thanks needed. You saved... my life... I... paid you back. We're... even..." He sighed. "All... even now... don't... owe... nothin'... no more..." His voice faded; his eyes slid shut again.

You don't, maybe, Slim thought, but we do. We only saved one life—yours. You saved two. "I think that's about the best I can do, Pa," he said. "Let's get him up on Bowie."

**SR**

"Ma! Ma! Jonesy, Slim, they're comin'!"

All three of the adults rushed out of the house at Andy's alert, to see Matt's big black coming around the barn at a slow, careful walk, with Matt holding Jess's limp form in front of him on the saddle; Cyclone jogged after them on the end of Matt's lariat. "All right, everybody," said Slim, taking command, "get back out of the way, clear the door. Jonesy, get around on Bowie's other side so you can lift Jess's leg over—Andy, get the saddle back on Alamo for me..." He was standing by the porch step, waiting, when his father drew the horse to a halt. "How is he, Pa?"

"Still breathin'," said Matt tightly.

"Once we get him in the house, I'm ridin' for Laramie," Slim told him. "Remember what he said, under the ridge, about Bannister? He wasn't dreamin', Pa. Bannister was here. He meant to leave Ma and Andy and Jonesy tied up in the house and set it on fire, but Jess killed him—Jonesy and I dragged the body into the feed shed. We need Mort—and maybe Doc Hanson too."

**SR**

Mort Corey shook his head. "It's not proof," he said.

Slim's fair complexion reddened with outrage. "Not proof!" he echoed. "What more proof do you need? You heard Andy. Bannister said he and his partner had been promised five thousand dollars to get us out of the way."

"And I'm not saying I doubt it," the sheriff replied, "but Bannister didn't say by whom."

"Well, who else would have done it?" the younger man demanded. "Shaw and the Elkinses, John Cole, most of McKeever's outfit, are all still in prison. And in any case, none of them would go so far as to murder a woman and a boy and an old man who doesn't carry a gun; they'd come after Pa or me."

"As a private citizen, I agree with you," Mort told him. "But as an officer of the law, I have to have more than that. Andy's testimony, and Mary's and Jonesy's, would almost certainly be admissible in court: a witness on the stand can tell what he heard someone say right after something happened, so boasting before the fact would probably come under the same rule, especially since Bannister obviously didn't plan to leave them alive. But he didn't name any names, and we didn't find anything on his body except that map." It had clearly been copied by hand from the ones in the county plat books, with the various ranches marked with their owners' names; Shermans' had been circled and a notation added alongside of the times the various stages were due. "I'm sorry," the sheriff finished. "I understand that—especially after what Jess did—you want to see justice done. I'll tell you plainly, I do too. But even if I had the authority to ride down to Colorado and question Lydacker and the Tennisons, all they'd have to do is claim they'd never even heard of Frank Bannister, much less had anything to do with him in person, and I wouldn't have a leg to stand on."

Slim and his father exchanged glances, and Corey could see the message passing silently between them. "All right, Mort," the older man said then. "We understand the place you're in. That leaves it up to us."

"You'd better go back to town, Mort," Slim added. "What you don't know we're plannin' to do, you can't make trouble about."

The sheriff looked from one to the other and thought, not for the first time, how very much alike father and son were. Still, he had to try. "You two have always stood firm for the law. It's one of the things I respect most about you. Don't take it into your own hands now."

"It's not that we want to," Matt told him. "But what Bannister almost did... that goes too far. There are times a man's got no choice but to kill his own snakes, if he hopes to go on callin' himself a man."

"And sometimes," Slim supplied, "he's the only one who can, because the law protects the snakes too, either actively or by the way it's written. You know that, Mort, from what you and I had to do in Adobe Wells."

Corey was silent a moment, then sighed and nodded. "All right. Ask Doc to stop in at my office when he gets back, will you, and let me know how Jess is doing? That was a brave thing he did."

"I don't think it was bravery so much," said Slim in a slow, thoughtful way. "I think—from what he said before he passed out—that it was just... sort of his way of tyin' up loose ends. I think he felt his life didn't matter, set against ours, so it was no loss if he put it on the line to save us—least of all after he'd taken Bannister down."

"Could be," said Corey. "Oh, one thing—could one of you show me where I can find that bushwhacker's body? If it was Bannister's cellmate, I need to let the prison authorities know."

"Sure," Slim agreed. "I'll take you, and you can borrow a couple of our horses to pack the bodies. I need some time to think anyway."

**SR**

As the next morning aged toward noon, an explosion of mounted messengers fanned out across the lower Laramie Basin, stopping at every ranchhouse, every homesteader's shack, every garrisoned line camp, hailing every patrol as they sighted it. As each one moved on, grim-faced men loaded their guns, saddled their horses, and began streaming toward a central point about five miles north of the Colorado line and midway between the Laramie and Medicine Bow ranges.

At Sherman Ranch, Jonesy shook hands with Matt and Slim, and Mary and Andy hugged them both, then watched as they rode out of the yard. "Well," said Jonesy when they were out of sight, "time and the Overland wait for no man. Mary, you go in and sit with the boy; Andy and me'll see to the stages and the passengers."

**SR**

The Tennison horses heard it first, then the cattle; heads horned and otherwise lifted, swung around, and turned from north to south, ears cocked. Uneasy hooves pawed the ground; calves pushed close to their mothers, their inexperience and the unease they picked up from the older animals around them suggesting that something dangerous was coming. The men on herd guard looked around in puzzlement, then alarm, as the soft steady rumble in the distance swelled and broke apart into the hammering of hoofbeats—hundreds of hooves. At the wagon camp, the cook and the Mexican women paused in their tasks, and Martha Farity emerged from her big tent just as a line of riders appeared on the north rim of the valley and another on the south. They pulled up and stood, staring down into the lower ground. A sudden silence fell, broken only by the uneasy lowing of the cattle and the shouts of the crew.

Paul Tennison thundered into the wagon camp, leaving the saddle of his copper buckskin before the animal had stopped moving. "There must be three or four hundred of them," he told his sister. "It's got to be the Basin ranchers, and every man they could muster."

Martha looked from north to south and back again. She'd heard enough stories to know that even the most bitter of range wars almost never came to a shooting fight between large groups of men; more usual was a solitary one being bushwhacked from a doorway or caught off guard with the weight against him and killed or severely injured—or killed in a "fair shootout," usually in town where there were plenty of witnesses. Something, clearly, had happened to arouse the Basin folk into being ready to break that rule. "Where's Jarrod?" she demanded.

"Around somewhere," her brother replied. "He'll be here if he's in the valley at all—he can't miss them any more than we did. Here comes John Will," he added, "and David's right behind him."

**SR**

Up on the rim, Slim panned his field glasses from side to side, his military experience allowing him to estimate the numbers of the other side with fair accuracy. "I'd say we've got them at least six or seven to one, Pa," he said.

"Sounds about right," Matt agreed, "with what Jess figured they'd took in casualties. All right—Reed, Cole, you know the plan. Let's go, son."

**SR**

Lydacker had just joined his employers when the two riders moved forward out of the north-rim line and began skidding their horses carefully down the side of the valley. With the sun on the southwest, it could be plainly seen that one horse was a glossy coal-black without a white mark showing, the other a bright chestnut with a white blaze. The riders were of a size, tall men with straight backs and broad shoulders. "The Shermans, I'd bet money," said David Tennison.

If Martha was at all frightened, she didn't let it show. "Let's find out what they want," she said.

**SR**

They met about five hundred yards from the nearest fringe of the uneasy herd: Lydacker and the four senior Tennisons on one side, Matt and Slim on the other. Slim noticed that Martha Farity was dressed for riding, as she'd been on the day of the council, and that a conchaed holster on her hip held an eight-ounce Smith & Wesson .32 six-shooter with a five- or six-inch barrel. Looped over her wrist was the thong of a three-foot stitched-buckskin quirt, its six-inch butt stiff enough to suggest that it was loaded with an iron spike, not the equally popular buckshot.

He had to give her points for coolness, he told himself, and the men as well. They had to see how outnumbered they were. If they'd had cover—buildings or entrenchments—or even a hill or rise to which they could retreat to put themselves above their attackers, they'd have an even chance, but they were out in the open, and at the first sound of gunfire the cattle, at least, would probably break and stampede down the valley, possibly catching some of the men in their flight, forcing many of the rest to pursue in hopes of turning them. He knew, too, that up on the rim behind him, half a dozen men would by now be down out of their saddles, kneeling for steadier firing platforms, rifles ready to provide cover if it looked as if the enemy was about to make a try for the Shermans; all it would take would be a word of command from Cole Rogers or Reed McCaskey and they'd cut the whole lot down.

"Well, Mr. Sherman," said Martha evenly, "to what do we owe this... dubious privilege?"

"This is a citizens' posse, Miz Farity," Matt replied. "We're here to arrest you, your brothers, your son, and Jarrod Lydacker for conspiracy and attempted murder."

Lydacker snorted. "You've got no authority in Colorado."

"We wouldn't," Slim granted, "if we were wearin' badges. Do you see any?"

"And if we do what we mean to on this side of the line," Matt added, "and then go back over to our own, Colorado law can't touch us. Our sheriff up home told us flat out that when a smart, experienced person takes it into his mind to do something illegal, the law can work in his favor. Anyone who wants to make trouble for us after the fact will have to have witnesses or evidence, and we don't plan on leavin' either one."

"The way we look at it," Slim went on, "you five are the brains here. Any plans that were made against us were made by you. Even if you weren't all present at the time, the fact that all of you attended the last meeting with our side tends to mark you as what's legally called co-conspirators. And, to quote our sheriff again, 'the acts of one felon in the course of committing a crime are generally attributed to all co-conspirators as well, and a killing in the course of a robbery is 'felony-murder,' not just manslaughter, and may be subject to capitol punishment.' We figure that killings, and attempted ones, in the course of a land grab come under the same umbrella."

Matt's expression was grim. "I never thought the day would come when I'd be ready to hang a woman," he said, with a note almost of regret in his voice. "But a woman who orders my wife, my twelve-year-old son, and my oldest friend burned alive in their home don't deserve courtesy."

Martha came up straight in her saddle, frowning, brows drawing together. "What are you talking about?"

"I guess the news wouldn't have had time to get down here yet," Slim granted. "Frank Bannister did his best, Mrs. Farity, and so did his partner, but they didn't count on Jess Harper. He killed Bannister, but not before three witnesses heard the man state that the two of them had been promised five thousand dollars to put us five out of the way."

He saw the confused, questioning looks that circulated between the two elder Tennisons and their nephew before their masks went back up; saw a slow light of understanding dawning in their sister's eyes, and above all the cold unreadability of Lydacker's face, even the mocking smile gone, only the eyes alight, flicking rapidly from his employers to the Shermans and back again, calculating the angles. He remembered what Jess had said of this man—a military education, experience as an officer. Would a man like that act completely on his own, not letting his supposed superiors know what he had in mind? He could feel just the faintest hint of doubt radiating off Matt and knew that his father, with some thirty years' advantage over him in dealing with people of all ages, both genders, and three or four different races, was picking up on the possibility too.

"Jarrod," said Martha Farity in a very quiet, very deadly voice, "what do you know about this?"

"What makes you think I know anything about it?" Lydacker replied, his tone easy, himself anything but.

"Because I just heard a name any Texan would recognize," Martha told him. "Frank Bannister. And I seem to remember hearing, when we came through Fort Collins last year, that he'd recently been locked up in the Wyoming Territorial Prison for robbing the U.S. Mails. Now you told me there was a man in Wyoming who 'could be a big asset.' You asked me for a couple of thousand dollars, which I gave you, and you disappeared for a good week. What did you do, Jarrod? Did you get him out of prison somehow? Did you order this thing Mr. Sherman says almost happened to his family?"

The gunfighter's eyes flicked again toward the Shermans. "Who are you going to believe, boss-lady—me or them?"

"That depends on what you tell me now," said she, evenly.

He took a slow, careful breath. "The last time they were here, you said yourself that your first obligation was to yourself, your children, your brothers, your crew, and your stock. You said that what you had to do so you and they could prosper, you'd do. We all heard you—them as well. You knew this was a war. Whatever I did, I did for you, Martha." No one missed the fact that it was the first time he'd called her by her name.

"War is one thing," said Martha quietly. "Murder's another."

"Innocent people get killed in wars," he snapped. "Ask the Confederacy."

"All the more reason for us to be better than the enemy," Martha retorted. "I never ordered any harm done to women or children or old men. I thought you understood that."

"I understand I got hired to do a job, and I did it, or at least I tried. I didn't think you were the same as most women, Martha. I figured we were a lot alike, you and me—strong people who did what we had to. I figured we'd go together well—and maybe after I got you the Basin, you'd want more from me than just paid services."

She stared at him a moment in utter disbelief. "Not like that," she said. "Never like that." And her arm came around, slashing at him with her quirt.

Lydacker's profession had trained him to quick reactions; he threw up his left to defend his face, jerking at the bit in his horse's mouth. The horse reared, crashing sideways into Martha's savina. Her son and brothers reined back, trying not to get caught in the confusion.

The savina staggered, losing its balance as the weight of the gunfighter's mount hit it. Martha left the saddle with all the agility of a born horsewoman, found her feet and went for the S&W .32 at her side. She wasn't a fast draw, but the fact that she tried at all almost defeated Lydacker. He drew on reflex as he saw her gun's muzzle clear the holster, probably not even thinking consciously that he was about to fire on a woman.

Slim swung Alamo hard sideways, bringing his right side to face the gunfighter. Their shots blended sound. Martha gasped and crumpled; Lydacker pitched out of his saddle and hit the ground hard. The cattle, already skittish, took off in one great surge, eastward down the valley, for frightened people and animals, given any choice at all, always flee downward, downhill, downstream. The crew raced after them. The Basin cattlemen on the rim let them go; this was no threat to them or to the Shermans.

Matt and Slim were out of their saddles almost as fast as the Tennisons. Martha lay in her elder brother's arms, blood trailing down the side of her mouth. "Jarrod...?" she whispered.

"He's dead, ma'am," Matt told her. "My boy Slim got him dead center."

"Thank you... for that," she said. "I'd... have taken him down... myself... if I could..."

"We saw that, Mrs. Farity," Slim agreed. I guess she wasn't quite as ruthless as Celie thought, after all, he told himself, though with no feeling of vindication. Jess, Joe's family, Martha herself, plus all the damage that had been done, the working time that had been lost... that had been more than enough.

"I'm sorry," she continued. "Even in... a war... there have to be... rules... things you don't do. I never... would have... wanted anyone harmed... who didn't carry a gun. Tennisons... aren't murderers." Her eyes searched the solemn faces bending over her. "Your family, Mr. Sherman... you said... they weren't...?"

"They're fine, ma'am. Young Jess saw to that."

"That's... good." Her voice was fainter now, and the blood was running down her chin now, an ugly red dribble, thick and thicker. Then: "Please... don't... don't blame... Paul or... David... or John Will... they... didn't know... I... didn't know..."

"We could see that, ma'am," Matt assured her. "It was all Lydacker's grand notion."

"It wasn't any of your fault, Mrs. Farity," Slim added, "except that you hired the wrong man. Jess could have warned you, I think, if he'd known sooner."

She nodded weakly, her eyes glittering. Her hand tightened on Paul's vest, tugging at it, and he lowered his head to hear clearly what she had to say. Her lips were almost against his ear; Slim and his father couldn't make out her last words to him. Then her back arched and her head fell back.

"She's gone," said Paul unnecessarily, gently closing her eyes. He looked up. "Well, what happens now?"

"We both heard what was said here," Matt replied. "We'll see to it our people know the truth. Lydacker was the main one to blame, and he's dead. I reckon we can work somethin' out."

Paul nodded. "She told me she wanted us to settle up with you," he said, "and find someplace in Colorado to make our home. Middle Park, maybe; it's basin country, like yours, well watered, good grass, mountains to shelter it. And she asked me to look after her kids, not that I wouldn't have. I'll be obliged, Mr. Sherman, if you'd send me a reckoning of the damages we owe you. We may not have cash enough to pay it all, but we can make up the difference with cattle."

"That'll suit us," Matt agreed. "I'll send a rider down in a few days, once we get our losses reckoned up."

Paul stood. "I wouldn't blame you if you said no," he said, "but—" He offered his hand. Matt took it, then Slim.

"All right, son," the older man said, "let's go home."

**SR**

The Basin ranchers scattered to their homes and their interrupted roundup. Slim and his father rode back to their own headquarters in silence, thinking about what had happened and half fearing the news that might greet them there.

Jess was alive, but he spent the next four days fevered, and often delirious. Mary and Jonesy cared for him; Slim and Matt helped restrain him, which was often necessary, for Bannister's death, instead of making his memories more tolerable, had apparently brought them to the forefront of his mind. He talked in his sleep, tossed and writhed and fought his bedclothes, sometimes yelled... and sometimes sobbed.

They kept him clean, sponged his overheated skin, forced broth and water and Jonesy's herbal brews down his throat, watched the nightmare shadows chasing each other across his face, listened as he moaned and talked, patiently folded the quilt back over him when he tossed it off. They sat by his side and tried to soothe him, capturing his flailing hand, reassuring him that he was safe, that he'd paid his debt. But they weren't sure he heard them, or understood if he did.

Jonesy's shrewd old features were deep-lined with mournful anticipation. Andy was very quiet and flinched at every sudden sound. Matt spent a lot of time flailing away at the woodpile, and several times said he wished Lydacker and Bannister and the cellmate were still alive so he could kill them all over again. As for Mary, at least once Slim looked into the little bedroom and saw her sitting at Jess's side—it was during one of his intervals of quiet stupor—and stroking his hair, her eyes full of tears.

It was hardest on Slim. Helping pin Jess to the bed, listening to his delirious ramblings, sitting by him in his rare moments of stillness and realizing for himself how like "something out of a Renaissance painting" he looked, and thinking about all the sides of this amazingly complex man that he had seen, he began, slowly, to understand how his family might have grown fond of the young Texan. And he saw, too, how unjust he had been. He'd allowed himself to be prejudiced by the first thing he had seen, when he should have realized that Matt wouldn't have let Jess stay if he'd thought him a threat to the family—should have remembered how much his father leaned on Mary's ability to estimate character—should have thought that what a man had been didn't have to irrevocably determine his future. He remembered—or perhaps consciously realized for the first time—how Jess had reddened and backed away when Mary kissed him. What's grown between him and them isn't somethin' he looked for, or did anything to encourage, he thought. It caught him just as much off guard as it did me. Only I felt threatened and got angry and jealous, and he... he was just confused and embarrassed. He didn't know what to make of what was happenin' any more than a green bronc knows what to make of a saddle.

I should have tried harder to understand. I know Ma and Andy see things about people, better than I can, better than Pa, even... I should have known he couldn't be just what he shows to the world. He's just like a bronc... scared half out of his skin and fighting.

And he saved my family. Saved five lives, not just mine and Pa's. We—I—owe him for that.

He remembered what Jess had said as he lay in Matt's supporting arms, bleeding and in pain: I ain't worth your beatin' yourself up for...

But you are, he thought. You're worth so much more than you think. I know that now. Pa was right—I shouldn't have looked at you with my mind made up. And I want—I want to tell you I'm sorry. You have to live, Jess, so I can tell you that when you're able to understand me. So I can ask you to forgive me.

Even if you want to sock me in the face, or draw on me... I have to ask.

Doc Hanson came out every day, but there was little he could do that Jonesy and Mary weren't already doing. "I don't think it's the wound so much," he said, "or the blood loss, or even the shock of that big Remington bullet—" Slim had recovered the bushwhacker's rifle when he took Mort Corey to get the body— "though Heaven knows that was bad enough; those things are no bigger around than a standard Colt round, but they weigh almost twice as much and have a powder load to match. It's almost as if he doesn't care whether he lives or dies."

On the fifth day he came out of the little back bedroom and shook his head sadly. "He's fading fast," he said. "I'll be surprised if he's still alive by breakfast time."

Andy hid his face against Jonesy's shirt, his shoulders hitching with silent sobs; Jonesy laid a hand on the back of his neck, trying to comfort him. "Is there nothing we can do?" Mary asked.

"There's always prayer," said Doc. "I believe in calling in a qualified consultant when one is available."

The remainder of that day passed in a taut silence as each of the five took a turn by Jess's bedside. The Overland drivers, who had heard the news, took the coaches in and out of the yard as quietly and easily as they could. A mourning pall seemed to hang over the whole headquarters.

"I'll stay with him tonight," Slim said at supper. "No—Ma, it's all right. I want to."

"If there's time," said Matt, "you call us—will you, son?"

"If I can, Pa," he promised.

When the rest of them had turned in, Slim settled himself in the cane-bottomed armchair, watching Jess's still face in the light of the low-turned lamp. His delirium had abated at last, but he was very quiet, almost ominously so, and clearly very weak. From time to time his head rolled side to side on the pillow and he would let out a soft, low moan, but that was all. At least, Slim thought, he seems to be at peace for now; he's not raving. Maybe he just hasn't got the strength for it.

He thought about all the aspects he'd seen of Jess Harper in the last couple of months, ever since the young Texan had so unexpectedly dropped into their lives. About his anger when he was brought to task for the duel with Beal, his gentleness and skill with the horses, his hard work on the roundup, his ability to seem almost as young as Andy when he and the boy were together, his chivalry toward Mary; his grim practicality at the ranchers' meetings, the selfless unthinking courage with which he'd saved Matt's life. About the fists that had marked Slim's body—two of the heaviest, and maybe fastest too, that Slim could ever remember being in front of. About the deep pain and grief that had radiated from him when he told them the story of his family's deaths and his long years of searching for Frank Bannister. Mary and Andy had been right about him, Slim realized. He had courage and toughness enough for two bull longhorns, and his loyalty was literally without limit. He had proved himself reckless and stubborn, but he had also shown foresightedness when he'd taken time for thinking. He had strength in him and the makings of a good man, except for his constant bitterness.

It suddenly occurred to Slim to wonder whether Jess was dying, not so much of the wound, as of his own will. He had settled the score for his family, he had repaid the Shermans for saving his life and taking him in... did he now feel, somehow, that there was no further need or reason for him to go on living? Slim tried to imagine how he would have felt if his parents, Andy, Jonesy, had all been taken from him. What a bleak, barren, lonely life he must have led, these last ten years, he thought, his heart suddenly filling not with pity, but with sympathy and grief. Nothing to live for but his revenge... now that he's had that, maybe he thinks it's time to join them.

It's not, Jess. It's not.

"Listen to me," he whispered, taking the slack hand in his own. "Are you listening, Jess? I understand that you miss them dreadfully, that you want to see them again. But they've got eternity to wait for you, and to them it won't seem long at all. Life is a precious gift, Jess. You don't have a right to let go of it. It's yours—maybe the only thing in the world that's totally yours. And... Jess, you haven't lost your family, not really. Or rather, you've lost one, but you've found another. It's here, in this house. We all want you to live. We care about you." He swallowed hard. "Even me. You've proved, more than amply, how well you fit here. Don't go, Jess. Give us a chance to help you find out what life can be, to help you find a new purpose. I've seen the scars you carry, the ones on the outside, and I've got a little notion of what the others are like. You lived through all that—you didn't let it destroy you when you could have—and you can live through this, if you only make up your mind to it." He suddenly realized that his eyes were filling with tears. "Ma was right. I need another brother, the one—or the two, or more—who should have lived to grow up between me and Andy. I love Andy dearly, just as I do Ma and Pa, but I need someone who can look at life from something of the same spot on the road that I am. Someone who can help me help Pa run this ranch and teach Andy the business. And... and I need to apologize to you, to make it right to you for the way I behaved. I owe you, Jess. Please, please... don't die..."

He would have sworn Jess wasn't conscious, yet suddenly the younger man's lips parted and he spoke, calmly and evenly, a low murmur like a man talking in his sleep: "So... tired... Slim... so awful... tired... don't... know if... I... can..." His voice trailed off; his breathing was light, uneven, as if each breath would be his last.

And Slim suddenly knew what to do. "Not by yourself, you can't," he said in a tight, even voice. "But we can. Together. You and me..."

**SR**

He heard the soft click of the door latch and looked around, not surprised to see his whole family crowding the opening, not one of them having bothered to get dressed. Outside the window he could the morning birds were in full voice, and the sky was growing brighter as the sun rose over the mountain.

He gave them a broad, weary smile of exhausted contentment. "His fever's broken, and he's breathin' better. I think he might make it after all."

"Wahoo!" yelled Andy, hugging his mother around the waist, then Jonesy.

Matt grinned. "How'd you do it, son?"

"I just told him—and God too—that it wasn't time for him to go yet. That we needed him more here." Slim looked down at the lean hand interlaced with his own, clinging to it as to a lifeline. "It took a while, but we settled it."

Jonesy had come into the room and was checking Jess's pulse and temperature. His skin was warm, but normally so, and pale, not flushed. He was breathing evenly, in easy, rhythmic inhalations. His heart beat steadily, stronger now, no longer random and thready. The old man's creased face transformed from mournful to near laughter. "Can't wait to hear what Doc will say when he sees this," he said.

"Maybe we should have my salts handy when he comes," Mary suggested. "Matt, go kill a chicken, will you? I think this calls for chicken and waffles for breakfast. And, Andy, as soon as you're dressed, get me as many of the early strawberries as you can find, so I can make a shortcake."

"You'll have to bring mine in," Slim told her. "I'm not sure I can get him to let go."

**SR**

Doc Hanson was, indeed, dumbfounded to see the alteration in his patient's condition, though Mary's salts weren't necessary. "Any doctor, once he's been at it for a few years, realizes that miracles do happen," he said, smiling. "Now you'll have to watch him closely and build him up; he shouldn't get out of that bed for at least another week, and ten days would be better. I'll come by every two or three days and see how he's coming along, but I think I can safely leave him in your care. It's obvious that you were able to do something for him that I couldn't."

Around midafternoon Jess opened his eyes for the first time in a week. They were muddy from the fever, but alert and aware. He grinned sleepily at sight of the relieved and happy faces gathered around his bed. "Reckon I... fooled you good... this time," he managed in a faint, uneven voice.

"Not really, son," Matt told him. "Don't forget I've spent a fair share of time in Texas. You can't be sure you've killed a Texan till you've got him buried, and even then he's likely to climb up the handle of the shovel and clout you one."

Jess chuckled weakly, wincing as his wound reminded him of its presence. "That's right," he agreed. "That's us."

After that he improved steadily, seeming to double his strength every twenty-four hours. His wound, which had already begun to heal during the bad days, faded until there were only two round pinkish scars to add to his collection. His appetite would have done credit to a bear just out of hibernation, and Mary and Jonesy happily catered to it, plying him with the best examples of their cooking. Andy read aloud to him and played endless games of checkers with him, and Matt sat with him and exchanged impressions of Texas.

Once Andy asked, "Jess, how did you know Bannister was here?"

Propped up against his stacked pillows, Jess pondered the question. "I ain't rightly sure if I knew it, Tiger, or just was scared of it." He told about the sign he'd found, how he'd backtracked it to the deserted cabin and found the Shefflins' silver. (Slim later took a ride up the mountain and recovered it.) "I knew, soon as I saw it, that one of them two campin' there had set that fire at Shefflins'. And them bein' on your range, or just off it, well, I dunno, maybe... maybe it just come to me that I—I couldn't bear to lose—to lose you all as well. I don't reckon I thought, just then, that it had anythin' to do with Tennison; I couldn't get my mind around them givin' orders to murder folks that way, and from what your pa's told me I reckon I was right, halfways anyhow. All I recollect thinkin' was that I had to get back here, fast as I could."

Andy leaned gently against his arm. "I told Bannister you were one of us now," he said. "I didn't exactly say part of the family, but I reckon it's what I meant. You'll stay now, won't you, Jess? You won't go away?"

"That ain't just my choice to make, Tiger," the Texan told him. "A man don't always get to do the things he wants to in life; that's somethin' I learned after the fire."

The boy thought about that for a moment. Then, somewhat tentatively: "Do you reckon Bannister burned Mr. Shefflin's house because that Lydacker told him to?"

"I don't reckon we'll ever know that for sure," Jess replied. "Maybe. Maybe Lydacker hoped to scare a lot of folks out, which he almost did, or maybe he hoped we'd all be focusin' on defendin' the places nearer the line 'stead of watchin' our backs up north here. But lettin' it look like an accident, that kinda defeats the purpose, seems like. Maybe Bannister was just wantin' supplies and travel money. There wasn't too many places around here that he could go to buy the one, 'cause of half the country knowin' about the prison break, and he likely didn't want to hit a bank or nothin' for the other, 'cause that ain't easy for a man alone to do, and anyhow folks might'a' realized he was still hangin' around here. So maybe, havin' that map and knowin' Shefflin was one of us, he threw him in at no extra charge, just to get the chance at them things he needed, and to make sure he still had it in him." He shook his head. "Like I said, we'll likely never know; the only two that might'a' told us won't be talkin' to anybody much now."

On the sixth day after he regained consciousness, Jess was strong enough to be helped out to the sitting room and settled in "his" rocker, a milestone that Mary and Jonesy marked with smothered chicken and a marbled angel cake for dinner. On the seventh he begged to be allowed to sit out on the porch, and with Matt and Andy out on the range, it was Slim who took him there, with the younger man leaning on him in a way he doubted Jess had done very often in this last difficult decade. The convalescent settled contentedly into the rocking chair and breathed in deeply, though carefully, filling his lungs with the wonderful perfumes of full spring.

"You know," Slim told him, "this really is good country, in case you hadn't noticed it. Finest cow country in Wyoming. Like Pa said when we visited the Tennison camp—best, maybe, in the whole West, except the Powder country and the Dakotas."

"Was thinkin' about that, up on the mountain," Jess agreed.

Cautiously Slim settled himself on the porch rail, making sure not to block the sun from Jess's face. I don't guess I can put it off any longer, he thought. "Jess? There's somethin' I need to say to you."

A heartbeat or so of silence, then: "So I'm listenin'."

Slim struggled a moment. "I just want you to know... I realize I've treated you shabbily since you've been here. I know it's no excuse, but I saw the way Ma and Andy took to you, the way Pa trusted you, even Jonesy, and I... I handled it very badly. I guess I was... jealous. I thought you were... goin' to take my place with them. And that was stupid, I know; it could never happen. And I want to apologize for the way I've behaved toward you. I want to ask you—to beg you—to forgive me."

Jess said nothing for such a long time that Slim wondered if he'd heard. Then, softly: "Ain't nobody... nobody my whole life ever... ever asked me to do that. I ain't plumb sure I know how."

Slim's heart sank. He knew he'd lost any chance he might ever have had to make things right, and in knowing that he understood how very much he had wanted to. "Jess, I—"

"No, now you let me finish," Jess interrupted. "A man comes from a big family, like I done, and he never quite... feels right, bein' alone. When my big brothers left home, I was too little to go with 'em. I was thinkin' serious of takin' my brother Johnny with me, just before... well, you know... but I never got the chance. Seems like ever since then I been tryin' to find a... a friend who'd stick, like I reckoned they'd'a' done. Never seemed to work. Some... they died. Some, well, things didn't... work out. Most, I reckon, we just kinda... drifted apart." He sighed quietly. "The Big Open's a lot of things, but it ain't a friend. Now a man in my line, he don't live long if he don't get good at figurin' people, readin' what they're likely to do. I been watchin' you, seein' how you are with your family, and I got a notion you're a man to tie to. I reckon you ain't one to give up, not on a job and not on a man, not once you've taken him on. Hard-rock stubborn, that's what you are. And I'm thinkin'... I'd be right plumb honored if I could say you was my friend."

It took a moment for Slim to understand what he'd heard. Then his face lit up with the beaming Sherman smile and he thrust out his hand. "I think that's the best forgiveness anyone ever offered me."

Jess seized the hand in his own and wrung it with all his diminished strength, a broad grin revealing the little gap between his front teeth. "Of course," Slim went on, "you realize what this means. You have to stay around. I can't leave Ma and Pa and Andy, and I'm not too good at bein' a long-distance friend."

"I figured that," Jess agreed. "I reckon you all are gonna be stuck with me."

"Somehow, I doubt anyone's likely to kick about it," Slim told him. "Ma's been hinting for all she's worth, this last week. Even Jonesy's been talkin' about how much bigger the grocery order will have to be if you stay on. And as for Andy, he can't wait for you to be strong enough to ride, so he can take you around the place and show you all his favorite spots."

"And what about you and your pa?" Jess asked him. "What do you got in mind for me?"

"We," Slim told him, "are gonna break your back with good honest ranch work. There are still a dozen three-year-olds waitin' for you to get around to them."

"Been lookin' forward to it," said Jess.

Slim felt a great weight lift off his heart. If he stays, he thought, maybe in time he'll come to see what he really has here. I know the others will do their best to show him. I just wish... I wish I could tell him myself...

Jess sat in silence for a time, rocking gently, basking in the warm morning sun. Presently he slid his eyes in Slim's direction and spoke slowly, almost as if debating whether to continue. "Funny thing... seems like I can remember... seems before I woke up, there was a time I could hear Pa's voice, and Johnny's, and the littl'uns'... and then another one. Yours. You was tellin' me I wasn't to leave. That you wasn't fixin' to let me."

Slim watched him. "Did your family have anything to say about that?"

Jess's lean features wore a wondering look that made him seem no older than Andy. "I thought I heard Pa say... You go on back, boy. You got two families now, us and them, and they need you more. We can wait." He was eyeing Slim with a hint of uncertainty. "Maybe he was right. Seems like... almost since that first day I knew I was here, after Andy and your pa found me... seems like there's been somethin' between me and... and your folks. I mean all your family, your ma and pa, and Andy and even Jonesy. I don't understand it, but I know it's there. Like... like I could trust 'em; like I was safe. Like I... belonged." Then, very slowly and quietly: "Bein' friends... that's a great thing, and I don't want you thinkin' I don't know it. I know—I know I ain't got no right to say this, and when I do you'll likely want to hit me again, but that's just the reason I got to get it said, so's I can get it off my chest and see just how plumb foolish it is... it's just—when I was racin' down that mountain, hopin' I'd make it before Bannister could do what he meant to, I kept thinkin'—" his voice became almost inaudible— "I kept thinkin', I got to get home in time."

...You haven't lost your family, not really. Or rather, you've lost one, but you've found another. It's here, in this house... You've proved, more than amply, how well you fit here. Don't go, Jess. Give us a chance to help you find out what life can be, to help you find a new purpose... Ma was right. I need another brother, the one—or the two, or more—who should have lived to grow up between me and Andy... someone who can look at life from something of the same spot on the road that I am. Someone who can help me help Pa run this ranch and teach Andy the business... Slim's own words, that desperate climactic night, came back to him. Maybe he heard more of what I said than I thought he did. Home, after all, is the place your family lives.

Hastily, Jess added: "I ain't lookin' to take nobody else's spot—"

"I know that," Slim interrupted. "Didn't I already tell you I know it? And as for the other, I think it happens a lot more than most people might be willing to admit. We don't exactly have any room for it in our language or our vision of family, but the Sioux do. They have a word, hunka, that means 'chosen,' or 'relative-by-choice.' Maybe they're wiser than we are." A pause, then: "You said it was 'foolish' and you 'had no right'—but that's not true. If any man ever earned his place in a family, it's you, because if you hadn't been around and done what you did, there wouldn't be a family, any more."

Jess examined that concept. "Reckon I didn't think of that."

"Then you're the only one who hasn't," said Slim.

"It don't bother you none?"

"It's gonna take some gettin' used to," Slim admitted, "and I don't say I won't get on your back sometimes. But isn't that what older brothers do?"

"Ain't had none around since I was six—reckon I'll have to take your word for it," Jess replied. "But I'm willin' to go along, all the same. 'Course, little brothers can be a regular pain, but then you got one already, so you'd know."

"Maybe I shouldn't have been so hasty," said Slim, with a teasing half-smile.

"No, you got me now, you better make up your mind to it," Jess insisted, grinning. "Texans don't let go easy."

That I can believe, Slim thought, after watchin' you fight your way back to life. All you really needed was a reason. "There's a lot of dreams Pa and I have for this place," he said. "Dreams that maybe three men can come closer to makin' real than two. This could lead to something—"

"Yeah, it sure could," said Jess with a grin. "Trouble."

"Why don't we take that chance? I'm game if you are."

"Ain't nobody gonna claim a Texas Harper wasn't just as game as an Illinois Yank," Jess retorted. "And I ain't in the habit of givin' up."

"You just try it, and I'll drag you back like I did a week ago."

"It's a deal."

...A vision to have and to hold
My spirit still sings, I'm flying again
A wild heart looking for home
A wild heart looking for home
—"A Wild Heart Looking for Home"

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Note: In our world's history, at the time Laramie is set, the Wyoming Territorial Prison was, in fact, located in (or just outside) the town; it didn't move to Rawlins till 1901, having taken 15 years from appropriation till opening. But since we never see any hint of its presence in the series, I'm assuming that in Slim and Jess's world, and any variation thereof, it was always sited in Rawlins.

David Tennison's story of the gunfight Jess had in Abilene in '65 is my version of the incident described by Christy ("...a dirty backshooter...") in the Fourth-Season episode "Lost Allegiance." Similarly, Jess's story of his experiences in Soho takes off from the hints given in "Broken Honor" and "The Marshals;" I hope to eventually provide a fic with greater detail.

The songs Jess and the family sing on the night Slim comes home can be heard, respectively, on the albums Peter, Paul & Mary: Weave Me the Sunshine, Joan Baez: Joan Baez 2, PP&M: Peter, Paul & Mommy, and (in a slightly different form—I used the last verse as I first heard it sung, in the '50's) PP&M: Peter, Paul & Mommy 2.

Apart from Matt and Mary's survival, and Pete Morgan's earlier death, you should assume that everything in this alternate Laramie Universe occurred as hinted in the various episodes or told in any of my pre-series fics, all of which you can find at this site.