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  Rico muttered in Spanish in his fevered sleep. Thoughtfully, Kettle considered the man’s words, then put down his own glass and continued:

  ‘I’m not a coward, Jack but I’m not a brave man, either. I bought this spread because it was near three hundred miles from Flagstaff . . . seemed safe enough. You’d think my past was dead and buried, but every day of my life I half-expected to see him when I turned around. Every time a stranger rode in I died a little. I hired Bishop and Fishback because they were bad enough to match the son of a bitch. That is something you’ll understand, eh Jack?’

  Long after he’d left Kettle, as Jack lay in the bunkhouse, he could hear the pathetic tone of Kettle’s voice, confessing in the hope that maybe a problem shared would be a problem halved.

  ‘Hah! Closer to telling me, in the hope I’ll take care of it,’ he muttered into the darkness.

  Kettle’s wife had died about three years after the family had arrived in Mexico, but Constanza had gone back across the border to find work in Whitewater. Consequently, Kettle got older and more frightened, remaining in hiding from an ironic fear. Why the hell should I understand that? Jack thought.

  But he slept fully clothed, the fingers of one hand pinching the lucky acorn, the other beneath the pillow, holding his Colt.

  Jack wakened from a fitful sleep. The wind had dropped, his railroad stemwinder said 4.30. He dressed quietly, carrying his boots past the row of sleeping men, eased open the door to the rudimentary stoop. The rain had stopped, but the early morning was bitterly cold, extraordinarily quiet. Innumerable stars illumined the muddy yard, horses inside the corral moved and snorted expectantly as he approached the stables.

  ‘Raul?’ he called quietly. Kicking gummy mud off his soles, he called again.

  A match struck behind him and he whirled, pointing his Colt at the spark of flame.

  ‘Easy, feller,’ John Fishback said. ‘Lookin’ for your crazy Mex friend?’

  ‘If I put a bullet in you right now, Fishback, I’d be saving a lot of people a lot of time and trouble,’ Jack snapped back. ‘Last night Chama was running from your goddamn lynch rope.’

  ‘We were roostered,’ the foreman said quietly. ‘Hell man, we were scared . . . nervous enough to bite anythin’. So where do you figure he is?’

  ‘Not far. It was too dark for safe riding.’

  ‘Then he’ll probably make for the line shack. It’s near to where him an’ Walt were brandin’ yesterday . . . where I’d head if I wanted cover away from the ranch.’

  ‘He’ll ride as soon as he can see,’ Jack said.

  ‘Daylight’s about thirty minutes off. I can show you where it is.’

  ‘Is this your way of showing regret for something, Fishback?’

  ‘That’ll be the day,’ the foreman spat. ‘There ain’t too much I like about you, Finch, but I got it wrong about you backshootin’ Rico. Perhaps there’s somethin’ else. Let’s saddle up.’

  Stars were fading from the eastern sky as they rode from the yard, picking up a trail between south and west of the ranch. Jack felt uneasy riding with Fishback, but in his own basic way the man had apologized. All the same, Jack rode well to the rear and kept his right hand free.

  They rode across the low foothills for several miles before reaching a clearing studded with white oak. Winding their way through, they reached a broad, grass-covered rise where RK longhorns moved leisurely at their graze.

  ‘There,’ Fishback said, pointing a gloved hand at the ramshackle structure.

  ‘He wouldn’t have walked here,’ Jack muttered. ‘Where’s his horse?’

  ‘Maybe we didn’t see it back in the trees.’

  Both men became guarded, as if a warning had been mooted. They nudged their horses on to the line shack, dismounting quiet and vigilant. Fishback’s hard features just about showed in the interior gloom.

  ‘Not here. He’s not here,’ he breathed.

  Jack could make out an empty bunk, a handful of branding irons in a bucket, some old cigarito butts littering the floor.

  ‘But someone’s been here,’ Fishback continued. ‘There’s no chill in these blankets yet, so they’re not too far away.’

  Jack thought for a moment, then stepped back into the fresher air. He was reaching for his saddlehorn when a rifle shot banged and rolled out across the clearing.

  Fishback ran out, cursing; stood staring at Jack while the reverberations headed off across the quiet country. Then he ran for his horse, heeling the mount straight into a gallop towards the trees.

  Jack followed, trying to grasp the significance of the single shot.

  As they ran their mounts clear of the oaks they saw the horse with its neck lowered. It was nosing the body of Raul Chama, who lay motionless at its feet.

  They dismounted, pushed the horse aside, knelt either side of the body. There was no need to feel or look for a pulse, a big-calibre bullet had punched out most of the man’s throat.

  The sky was getting bluer and, east of the trees and rising timber line, they could see for miles, almost back to the ranch house.

  Nothing moved other than an early lark and more RK cattle. Fishback was the first to speak.

  ‘Rustlers,’ he grated.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Jack said, his voice heavy with apprehension.

  ‘Where’d it come from?’ Fishback wondered, staring around him. Jack indicated a point somewhere low on the timber line.

  ‘A long ways off. Up there I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Fishback pulled his rifle from its saddle scabbard and fired six rounds into the distance.

  ‘Come on, show somethin’,’ he yelled. ‘It’s different when you got a man facin’ you – eh, you murderin’ scum?’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ Jack shouted at him. ‘And you’re wasting your breath as well as your bullets. He’ll not show himself till he’s ready.’

  Fishback was already shoving more rounds into the magazine. His eyes narrowed. ‘Sounds like you know him,’ he yelled.

  ‘It’s odds on,’ Jack replied. ‘Give me a hand with Raul.’

  CHAPTER 14

  When the two riders walked the horses into the yard most of the ranch hands moved out to see whose body was being led in. The Mexicans gathered around, looking, reaching out a hand. When they saw Raul Chama was dead, they made the sign of the cross.

  ‘Vamonos,’ one of them said. ‘There’s a curse to this place.’

  ‘Sí,’ another agreed. ‘I want my time made up.’

  John Fishback dismounted, his eyes glaring towards Jack. He raised a hand for attention.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he started. ‘We’ve had ourselves a little trouble here, but that’s it now. I’ll bring in some law from Aqua Cajon. It won’t be long before—’

  ‘Law from Aqua Cajon?’ someone broke in with a throaty spit. ‘You joke, señor? The viejo who carries two squirrel guns because he can’t see good enough to point a pistol?’

  ‘Yes,’ another voice joined in. ‘Why should he care what happens? Do you not comprende, señor? Gringos were never welcome. We were foolish to come here. Now we are leaving.’

  Fishback cursed, shook his head in hopelessness.

  ‘All right, I’ll see Mr Kettle about your pay,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, that isn’t a gringo lying across the back o’ that mare. He’s one o’ yours, so take his body to the bunkhouse.’ The foreman took a few strides towards the house and stopped. ‘Later, those who want to move on, come to the house. You too, Finch,’ he added.

  The men carried Raul Chama to the bunkhouse, laid him on the bunk nearest the door. The man’s eyes were still open and Jack leaned in to close the lids.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it takes that much to die, does it?’ one of the punchers said. ‘Why do you do that?’

  ‘What?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Close his eyes.’

  ‘It’s a custom, I guess. I think it’s to stop them seeing if they’re headed for a bad place.’

  Gloomily the other pu
nchers spoke among themselves as they packed their traps. Jack sat on his bunk, looking at Raul Chama. When the men walked into the yard, he followed on.

  ‘Are you leaving?’ he asked Hector Bream as he passed the cookhouse.

  Bream shrugged, watching as they approached the house where Ralph Kettle, Fishback and Walter Bishop waited on the veranda steps.

  ‘Whoever stays’ll need some sort o’ grease belly,’ he muttered to himself.

  ‘I’m not a man to plead,’ Ralph Kettle said when they were gathered in front of the house. ‘I can start over, same as before. I know two of you’ve been shot, and one’s dead. But it’s the work of one man, and John tells me he’s still somewhere in those hills. You hear me? You’re all fear-struck over a lone backshooter.’

  Jack caught his eye. ‘Maybe it’s about time I said something . . . told what I know,’ he said.

  The rancher didn’t seem to need the interruption.

  ‘I think I know what you’re wanting to say Jack, and it don’t make a scrap of difference. Who wants to talk about why a scorpion stings? It just does. The only way to deal with them and other poisonous vermin is to stamp on ’em hard.’

  ‘Maybe. But it’s me who’s meant to take the sting,’ Jack said.

  ‘Not any longer. If any of you men run out today you’ll run again tomorrow and the next day. I know because I did it once, hoping hundreds of miles would make me safe. But that’s a sort of death too. A living death.’

  ‘It’s the dying death that worries us,’ another of the Mexicans said. ‘Sorry, Señor Kettle, we are going.’

  ‘OK. Pay them off, John,’ Kettle told his foreman after a moment of thought.

  The men pushed up and Fishback paid them from a wad of banknotes.

  ‘It’s not fightin’ wages,’ he said almost scornfully.

  Jack studied the foreman’s face. It hadn’t occurred to him before that Fishback and Bishop might have motives other than loyalty for not heading south with the Mexicans. Of a sudden, he saw the pair for the opportunists and bottom-dealers they really were.

  Ralph Kettle had money in the house. With every one else gone, Fishback and Bishop could do what they wanted. They might even wait until Connie arrived and include her in their family plunder.

  ‘Here’s yours, Finch,’ Fishback said, counting out a few bills. ‘Ain’t much but, like I said . . . an’ you’ve only been here three days.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Jack watched the foreman’s features suddenly darken. ‘I’m staying with Mr Kettle – if he’ll have me, of course,’ he replied.

  ‘I wouldn’t have expected less,’ the rancher said. ‘If you’d been with me in Arizona perhaps I wouldn’t be here now. Well, we’re none of us alone in this. There’s me, John, Walt and Hec.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Hector Bream called out. Striding across the yard, the cook pushed through the discomfited Mexicans, thumped a big fist on the hitching pole. ‘If it’s any o’ you that rifleman wants, he’ll get you. You ain’t goin’ to get away from him. As for me, I’m too old an’ out o’ shape to run anywhere. Besides, I’ve kind o’ got to like livin’ here.’

  Kettle nodded. ‘And I kind o’ got used to having you around, Hec. That’s the five of us. This hombre who’s set on stiffing you, Jack. What can you tell us about him?’

  ‘Not much,’ Jack started, having asked himself the same questions many times. ‘I don’t even know why he wants to kill me. I know why I want to kill him, though. But right now that don’t seem like an advantage. I think they call people like him devil-ridden.’

  The sun was starting to be overcome by cloud as the Mexicans rode out. Ralph Kettle stood in the middle of the home yard, gazing at the distant Sierras above the heavily wooded foothills.

  ‘Curious, ain’t it?’ he said to Jack. ‘That’s what I thought of the feller who chased me across the goddamn Plateau. Sometimes I’d wonder if it was the old boogerman himself.’

  ‘Well, just in case you’re wondering, they’re not one and the same,’ Jack said.

  A strange smile turned the rancher’s mouth.

  ‘Not the same, but not unalike either. Do you reckon he’s up in the hills?’

  ‘Yes, and I think he’ll come back down again after dark. He obviously wants to stretch this thing out a bit. He could have killed me last night.’

  ‘Do you know why he didn’t?’

  ‘No,’ Jack said. ‘It’s like he’s playing out some evil game.’

  ‘Should we hunt him or wait?’

  ‘Wait. That way we have the advantage of surprise. I’d say he’s watching, maybe using a glass atop that big cannon. He’ll have seen the Mexes ride off.’

  ‘So what do you propose?’

  ‘I’ll move off . . . wave my arm as if I’m not taking what you’re offering,’ Jack explained. ‘Fishback and Bishop take a threatening step towards me, then stop. I’ll carry on to the stables. It’ll look as though we’ve had an argument . . . that I’m walkin’ from a fight. It might draw him in.’

  CHAPTER 15

  The weird, unsettling time of day, in Jack’s view, was the hour about first dark. The day was gone and night hadn’t yet started. The country looked flat, with little colour or definition. In the stables he sat on a flour barrel, on the same spot he’d been tied the previous night. The ranch looked and sounded like a graveyard. He very slowly rolled the chamber of his Colt with his thumb, wondered if he’d got enough ordnance.

  Hector Bream had made him a batch of corn dodgers earlier. They were on a plate near his feet, next to a bottle of Kettle’s good whiskey. John Fishback and Walter Bishop had reluctantly agreed to the plan to lure the dry-gulcher down to the ranch. Bishop was positioned inside one of the small outhouses behind the livery stable. His job was to guard any approach from the rear.

  Fishback occupied the bunkhouse, waiting for full dark before taking a position near the corral.

  Got to be some boogerman to get past that lot, Jack thought, especially if whoever it was also saw Hector Bream sitting under the cookhouse roof with a shotgun across his knees.

  The house lights were burning early, but the blinds were drawn. Behind one of the windows Rico tossed and turned in a restless sleep. He was unaware of the hour; at times his ailing growls could be heard across the deep stillness of the yard.

  Ralph Kettle sat in a chair on the front veranda. He had two guns, an old army Colt and a fine, over-and-under shotgun. When the strain got too much he walked to the corner of the building, looked towards the distant mountains.

  They’d expect to see the ranch taking steps to protect itself, Jack considered. None of those left would want to be murdered in their sleep.

  It was full dark when Jack heard the horses snorting and nickering, telling him Fishback was taking his position near the corral. Quiet returned after a few seconds. All it needed was for Dawson Cayne to arrive.

  Jack took another mouthful of whiskey. In his mind’s eye he saw his father’s weather-worn face, as it had been during his boyhood in San Simon. A time of games, hunting and fishing, hanging around the ranch where his pa worked. Funning with Will Morgan and little Bean Decker, watching their fathers’ exploits, rounding up cattle.

  Jack suddenly frowned at his own thoughtful memories. There was a morose straw-haired kid who hung back, watching, never joining in. That was Dawson Cayne as a child. The bright, good-natured boy all the kids admired was his brother, Lew. It had been a bad day indeed when the balky claybank had thrown him.

  Jack heard a sound and sat up, eased the hammer of his Colt back slowly. His childhood memories disappeared fast as he confronted the darkness.

  ‘Ease off the trigger, Jack,’ a voice called in a whisper. ‘It’s me, Kettle.’

  ‘Pheew, you should have stayed where you were,’ Jack said. ‘I could’ve shot you for being him.’

  ‘Yeah, but I guessed you’d want to see the whites of his eyes before pulling the trigger. I thought I’d seen someone over this way and came to
find out . . . to give you this.’

  Kettle stepped forward and handed Jack a Henry repeater.

  ‘Finest rifle in these parts,’ he said. ‘I’ve no real need for it; thought you might put it to use. I’ve noticed the piece you’ve been hanging on to.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Kettle, that’s real thoughtful,’ Jack said. ‘But hell, you were taking a chance. It was probably Fishback you saw. You best let him know you’re here. And act normal. We don’t want our guest to know we’re ready and waiting for him.’

  Jack heard an exchange of words between Kettle and his foreman. He meant well, Jack thought. Could have spooked Cayne, though.

  He holstered his Colt, picked up and chewed on a corn dodger, was contemplating another when a big-bore rifle barrel jabbed him hard below his ear.

  ‘I’m back. Don’t choke yourself just yet,’ the voice of Dawson Cayne rasped.

  Jack felt the man’s hand lift his Colt.

  ‘Playing games again?’ he said. ‘If you’re not going to shoot me, Cayne, what the hell sort of game are you playing?’

  ‘It’s not much of a game that’s soonest over,’ the man replied. ‘No, this is somethin’ that needs time. When we were in Cerro Cubacho you asked me why. Well, killin’ you without you knowin’ it, ain’t an agreeable vengeance, is it?’

  ‘There’s only one person who vengeance belongs to, and you ain’t him, you crazy son of a bitch.’

  ‘It’s for the death of my brother Lew, and my pa.’

  ‘I just said you were crazy, Cayne. I didn’t know it, just guessed. Now I know.’

  ‘You know nothin’, Jack boy. Hell, why do you think I didn’t kill you when you were huntin’ them lost cattle? I had you cold in my sights . . . could’ve lain you to rest real easy. But it wouldn’t have served. I shot your big Mex friend to let you know I was around.’

  ‘He wasn’t a friend, Cayne. But Chama was. Or as near to one as damnit.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I knew that.’