The Glorieta Grudge
Date: 2018-10-14 05:00:00+00:00
Description: On the eve of battle, Rab Sinclair decides to cut a trail. And Frank Cosgrove never forgave him for it. Now the man known as Bad Eye Frank is toting a vendetta, and he won't let it go until someone puts Rab Sinclair in a grave. Francisco Tebone wants to be a known man. He wants respect. He wants other men to fear him. And he knows the easiest way to get what he wants is by gunning down a known man. Don Conchos just wants to get paid. He earns his living as a gunman. In the plaza of Mesilla in 1869, these men will all come together, and they're comin' shootin'. If you love quick-draw Westerns,
Publisher: Independently published

The Glorieta

Grudge

◊

Robert Peecher

For information the author may be contacted at

PO Box 967; Watkinsville GA; 30677
or at mooncalfpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual events in whole or in part are purely accidental. None of the characters or events depicted in this novel are intended to represent actual people.

Copyright © 2018 ROBERT PEECHER

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781728747064

For Jean.

Table of Contents

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-1-

March 1862

The three scouts sat their horses on the trail that cut out through the pines on the rocky hillside overlooking a brown valley dotted in green. The mesa opposite them loomed like a fortress.

Down below them a long dark line snaked its way in single-file through the valley floor.

"That's Yankee cavalry," one man said.

"That's a lot of Yankee cavalry," Rab Sinclair responded, twisting in the saddle of the blue roan and craning his neck for a better look to see if he could find the end of the line of riders.

Neither men nor horses moved from their perch over the valley. They were well hidden at this distance, behind the pines and rocky outcroppings. The Union horsemen, even if they looked up, would never see the three Rebel scouts.

"They's a battle coming," the first man said. "We best get on out in front of them Yanks and let Gen'l Sibley know."

Of the three men, two were a bit older, both pushing thirty years, give or take. The younger man was barely twenty, but of the three it was the youngest who was most prized among the Confederate officers because Rab Sinclair was by far the more experienced man. Sinclair spent his childhood riding across this land many times. Already he had guided wagon trains and scouted trails. He had grown up the son of a Scotchman who considered himself a Presbyterian missionary to the heathens, and most of Rab Sinclair's youth was spent living in Indian villages of one tribe or another. Some men said he was more Indian than white.

Rab Sinclair pointed farther along the path of the column. "That spot down there, right at the bend of the column, that's where our trail comes out if we're to get back to the army. Ain't no way we beat it down this trail and come out in front of that column. They ain't even moving fast, and we can't beat them. And if we let them pass and come out behind them, we're cut off from the army. It's called a pass for a reason – it's the only way through."

The older man who was in charge spat black tobacco juice on the ground.

"Might as well die today," he said. "We got nothing better else to do."

Rab Sinclair narrowed his eyes.

"Huh," he said. "I believe I'm gone cut a trail."

"How's that?" the older man asked.

"I ain't sure I'm going on back to Gen'l Sibley," Rab Sinclair said.

The two older men took their eyes off the column of Union cavalry for the first time since it came into view.

"How's that?" Frank Cosgrove repeated. Frank Cosgrove was known as "Bad Eye Frank." He despised the nickname and took some pride in the fact that he'd shot dead the man who gave it to him. But the name persisted, at least behind his back, because of the tendency of his right eye to wander off in directions unattached to the direction his left eye took.

"I think I'm done with soldiering, boys," Rab Sinclair said. "I look at that train of men down there, and I can't think of a single reason to kill any of 'em. I also cannot think of any good reason to let them kill me."

In a flash, before Rab even realized what was happening, Bad Eye Frank drew his Colt Dragoon and cocked back the hammer.

"I'll shoot a deserter."

Rab grinned at him. For a young man, he had an easy confidence that sometimes irritated older, less confident men. Rab's easy confidence always irritated Bad Eye Frank. Frank didn't like having a younger man prove himself more capable, and too many times Sinclair had showed him up in front of the officers.

"Put that thing away, Frank," Rab said. "You ain't going to shoot me. You spit a bean out of that can, and the entire column of Colorado cavalry will be hell for leather on your back door."

"You ain't going to cut no trail, neither," Bad Eye Frank said. "You're the scout. You figure how we're going to get back to Gen'l Sibley and the army, or I'll take my chances making a run from them Colorado cavalry boys."

Rab Sinclair squinted at Bad Eye Frank's good eye, and he saw determination there.

"Come along then," Rab said.

They worked their way back along the path they'd taken up the ridge, but instead of going back down into the valley along the path, Rab found a narrow way through some rocks that took them higher up the ridge. They were more exposed here with fewer pines to hide their ascent, but the rocks were big and the distance down into the valley growing, and Rab had no fear that the Yankees would see them.

The horses moved slow along the rocky, sandy climb.

"You got any idea whar you're goin'?"

This was "Jackrabbit" Dozier. Jackrabbit's nickname was more prominent for he earned it outrunning a band of Apache warriors. The story, told by Jackrabbit himself, was he rode sixty miles with the Apache flinging arrows at him the whole way. Rab Sinclair, who was at the fort when Jackrabbit rode in, knew his horse hadn't even worked up a sweat and suspect it was closer to sixty yards that the Apache chased him before Jackrabbit came under the protection of the fort's guns. But Rab was never a man to assert truth into a good story, so he kept silent when Jackrabbit told the story around the army campfires.

"I know where I'm going."

He'd picked a deer path to follow. It would take them somewhere useful. Maybe to water, maybe somewhere their horses could graze. Maybe to the Rebel army. Rab didn't care where it took them, so long as it kept Bad Eye Frank from squeezing the trigger of that Dragoon.

The deer path weaved in around some rocks, and Rab saw the dry and cracked layers of mud that showed where rainwater had pooled. That water, when it was there, is what brought the deer up here.

As they continued, they lost sight of the valley below them. Bad Eye Frank and Jackrabbit Dozier knew nothing of where they were. Hired on as scouts for the army, the men were as lost in this territory as they would have been on the streets of New York City. They were not scouts. They weren't even pioneers. They were just a couple of backshooting ruffians with reputations as Indian fighters.

Rab reached his decision to leave the army several days before, and it had more to do with Jackrabbit Dozier and Bad Eye Frank than it did with fear of a Yankee bullet. Rab Sinclair carried with him the liberty of youth. He rode with men he respected or he did not ride. And he did not respect Jackrabbit or Bad Eye Frank.

Some of the boys in the army were all right, but most of them were too eager for war. The whole thing seemed ridiculous to Rab Sinclair. He never could understand why men who had nothing personal against each other would line up on opposite sides to fire off volleys.

The blue roan, with a black face and black mane, picked its way carefully and slowly among the rocks. These big boulders would crush a knee if the rider wasn't careful, so Rab kept his roan Cromwell at an easy pace.

The trail started back lower again, and after some time they were back in among the big pines. They'd cut a wide arc and were descending down to the valley now, but a ledge farther down prevented them from having a good view of the trail where the Yankee column was riding.

But Rab Sinclair had a feel for the land and distances, almost as if by riding it he could see it in his mind as if looking at a map.

The lay of the land could not have worked better for Rab Sinclair if he'd set the rocks and trees there himself. The three men continued along the path for another half hour before it began to level out and Rab knew they were entering the lower valley.

He reined in his horse and spun Cromwell around to face the other two men.

"Why're we stopping?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"Keep following this path," Rab said. "In about two hundred yards you'll come out of the trees onto the road. Ride like hell and you'll beat the Yanks to Gen'l Sibley."

"You're coming with us," Bad Eye Frank promised.

"I'm not," Rab said. "I brought you this far, but this is as far as I'm going. You go for that Colt again, and this is as far as you're going, too. You know me Frank. You decide."

"You draw on me, and Jackrabbit'll split you in two with his saber," Frank said.

Rab did not move his eyes off of Bad Eye Frank. "Jackrabbit ain't got no part in this," Rab said. "This is twixt you and me. You throwed that gun on me once, and you'll not do it again. Y'all boys ride on if you want to beat the Yankees. Or sit here jabberin' at me. Makes no difference. But I'll not go farther. I'm done with soldiering. It don't suit me."

Bad Eye Frank glanced over at Jackrabbit Dozier.

"I ain't gonna cut him down if that's what you're wonderin'," Jackrabbit said. "Rab's done me a turn afore, and I ain't got no fight with him."

"I'll report you," Bad Eye Frank said.

"I expect you will," Rab said. "And if you're wondering, I'll not turn and ride the other way until you're gone. So if your thought is to backshoot me, you won't have the opportunity."

Bad Eye Frank swore some oaths at Rab Sinclair, but he and Jackrabbit Dozier rode on.

Rab sat the trail for a few minutes, waiting. Shortly, he heard a smattering of gunfire.

That was either the Yankee cavalry putting an end to Bad Eye Frank and Jackrabbit Dozier, or it was the Yankee cavalry taking them prisoner. He'd judged the distances and knew that he was putting the two Rebel scouts off the trail and onto the road right in front of the Colorado cavalry. Maybe it was a cruel trick, but Bad Eye Frank was a dirty backshooter, and Rab Sinclair wasn't going to leave him wandering around loose.

Rab laid a rein across Cromwell's neck, and the horse wheeled. They rode back up the deer path to the high rocks, leaving Bad Eye Frank, Jackrabbit Dozier, Gen'l Sibley and the Yankee cavalry from Colorado in their past.

Up in the high mountains was a young Indian chief who Rab Sinclair knew from his childhood. The son of a Comanche chief and a Ute woman, Rab's friend was raised in a Catholic mission but had now become a Ute chief. Rab figured he would sit out the war with the Ute people.

-2-

June 1869

The violence was sudden and absolute.

Five men walked into the hotel lobby and spread out. Two went one way and two went the other way. One stayed by the door. All the men were gray with trail dust, their faces battered by sun and wind that kicked up the sand and flung it at a rider so that it stung his face. A ride through the rough country, battling wind and heat, left a man feeling ornery, and these were five ornery men.

The man they sought was seated in the middle of the hotel lobby on a leather couch. Though he held a newspaper up in front of his face, he was aware when they walked in: Aware of their numbers, aware of the guns on their belts, aware of how they walked deliberately around him, aware of their positions in the wide lobby. The man behind the newspaper could not read it anyway. He only picked it up when he heard the men's heavy footfalls on the boardwalk outside.

The hotelier was behind his counter.

A woman on the couch watched a young child playing at her feet. Her husband was at the counter talking to the hotelier. A Mexican maid in the service of the hotel dusted a table in the lobby. Another man, a drummer of some kind with a carpet bag and a small suitcase full of samples, stood waiting his turn to give his key to the hotelier.

All those in the lobby not employed by the hotel were waiting for the stagecoach when the five men walked in.

They were not the men who could avoid notice. Broad shouldered and tall, except for one who was broad shouldered and short. They were men whose noses had been broken, men who had scars on their faces and unseen scars under their clothes. All five had been under a doctor's scalpel at one time or another to have a bullet removed from a shoulder, a leg, an arm. One had scars where a bullet passed through his chest but remarkably avoided any organ necessary for life. Another bore the scar of a knife that went through his cheek, leaving him forever disfigured with the left side of his face sunken.

They were rough men and mean, and every one of them wore a gun on his hip and another, cross-draw fashion, at the front of his belt.

Five men with twelve shots each.

The man on the couch behind the newspaper was still a young man with a young man's reflexes. About thirty years, give or take. He was philosophical about killing. He took no pleasure in taking another man's life, and tried to do it sparingly. But he was good at it, and often when a man is good at a thing, other men will set their sights to try to best him.

The man behind the newspaper spoke softly.

"Ma'am, you should snatch up your young'un there and go stand with your husband." Though he spoke softly, the woman heard a tone in his voice that frightened her and made her do exactly what he said without question.

When she picked up the child, the tension in the room rose so that the maid, hotelier, and the husband felt it. For his part, the drummer was already aware and had started up the stairs.

"We've come for you Sinclair," the man at the door said.

The man on the couch did not move from behind the newspaper. He knew as soon as a hand turned loose of the side of the paper it would start. None of these men would wait for him to stand up or go for his own gun. This was never going to be a fair fight. No rules or code was invoked here.

He carried just the single revolver on his thigh, a Colt Dragoon. It was loaded with five shots, the sixth cylinder below the hammer being empty to avoid an accident.

Five men. Five shots.

Still holding the newspaper out wide in front of him, the man on the sofa lunged forward. Later, the woman's husband would say the man behind the newspaper came off the couch like a mountain lion and struck like a rattlesnake. He would describe it in those terms.

He flung the newspaper out of his way and went for the heavy Bowie knife on his belt. He closed the distance between sofa and door with surprising speed.

The only thought that went through the mind of the man at the door was that he'd expected there to be some talking. Most doomed men bought for time. They postured. They talked it out. Some begged.

By reflex, and not by thought, the man at the door went for the gun on his hip, but he reached too late.

The Bowie knife caught him with force smack in the middle of his chest.

Steel had not cleared leather when he dropped the gun, but it was out far enough that the pistol hit the floor rather than falling back into the holster.

After driving the Bowie knife into his victim, the man from the sofa spun the other out of the way, dropped to his knee and lifted the gun on the floor. It also was a Dragoon.

He had just a moment to evaluate his remaining adversaries – two to the right of him and two to the left.

All four men were going for their guns, but they'd been too slow to react. They also had expected conversation.

The man from the sofa picked the two on the right simply because he held the Dragoon in his right hand. With his thumb he brought back the hammer, took aim and fired one shot that caught one of the men in the face.

In the space of just a few seconds, the man from the sofa had ended two lives.

A shot from his left dinged the door frame just over his head, but the man kept his attention on the other shooter to his right. Rather than dive for cover or flee the hotel lobby, he held steady and searched to get his aim.

The one they called Sinclair snapped off a second round, the explosion of it filling the room, the white smoke smelling strong of sulfur in the confined place.

The second shot merely clipped its intended victim, but it was enough to put him out of the fight. He now darted through an open doorway at the back of the lobby, into the hotel's dining room.

The two men to his left were getting their aim.

Sinclair felt a punch and knew he'd been shot in the left arm.

He cocked back the hammer on the dead man's Colt and fired a wild shot in the direction of the two men to his left. Just enough to get them to put their heads down so he could find a better position.

He rose up from his crouched position and fired another shot. It struck the wall between the two shooters and sent them scrambling. One went over the hotel clerk's counter where the clerk, woman and child and husband were all crouched for cover. The other went to the corner of the lobby where there was no protection.

Sinclair saw an easy opportunity. He thumbed back the hammer and shot the man trapped in the corner. He'd tried for a chest shot, but the man bent forward in a crouch and the bullet ripped into his abdomen. Sinclair followed that one with another, and it also busted into the gut. The pain in his shoulder prevented him from feeling any remorse over the man. This was the one who'd shot him in the arm.

It would likely take a couple of days for the third to die, but that was three men now killed.

Sinclair tossed down the borrowed Colt and drew his own Dragoon from its holster. He had command of the room. The man behind the counter would not break cover. The man in the dining room was likely gone out a back door.

Most hired killers didn't have to be killed. If they were shot they retreated.

Sinclair held the cocked Dragoon in the direction of the hotel desk, but he back stepped to where he could see into the dining room. He did not want to get backshot if the injured man who fled into the dining room had no scruples about earning his pay.

The dining room was empty and the back door was standing open.

"It just you and me now," Sinclair said to the man behind the counter. "Toss out both them pistolas. Let me see your empty hands, and I won't kill you."

The man on the ground in the corner was spluttering blood. He knew he was dying. His position left him in view of the people hiding behind the hotel desk. Sinclair regretted that the woman and child could see his death throes, but he was glad the other shooter could see. It gave him something to think about.

"I ain't going to wait all day," Sinclair said. "I'll give you about ten seconds to think it over, and then I'm going to walk over there and shoot you in the head. I'd rather not do that in front of the child."

The heavy thud of gun hitting carpet sounded, and Sinclair saw the man's Colt on the ground near his dying partner. Then the other gun came out from behind the hotel desk.

"Hands," Sinclair said, and two hands rose up. The shooter's head and face followed the hands. Then he was standing erect. He was the shortest of the five men, but even behind the tall counter there was still plenty of target hanging out.

"Y’all that ain't a part of this come on out from behind that desk and go up the stairs," Sinclair said. "Ma'am, you might want to cover the child's eyes."

The man and woman came out from the desk. The man had hold of the child and was pressing the child's face into his chest. The woman gave a gasp when she saw the two dead bodies on the ground, but she kept going up the stairs with the hotelier behind her. The maid, for her part, had stood stock still through the entire shootout, hiding behind her feather duster as if it conquered dust and repelled bullets. Now she too made a rush for the stairs.

They could hear shouting from the street outside. The gunfire had drawn a crowd.

"I ain't going to ask who paid you," Sinclair said, stepping back toward the doorway but keeping the gun leveled at the man. "I already know who's behind this. But I'm going to give you a message to take back to him."

Sinclair reached the body of the man he'd run through with the Bowie knife.

"Step out from behind that desk," Sinclair said.

The short shooter, believing now that he was not going to be killed, did as he was told. He kept his hands in the air and his back pressed against the wall of the hotel lobby.

Sinclair kneeled down and grasped the handle of the Bowie with his left hand. He didn't have a lot of strength from where the bullet had torn into his upper arm. He put a foot on the man's chest and wrenched the knife from the body.

With the Dragoon and his eyes still on the short shooter with his hands in the air, Sinclair wiped the blade of the knife on the dead man's coat.

"I didn't seek none of this, and I take no pleasure in it. But I'm not a man who takes it easy when folks set out to kill him. You tell your employer that he's crossed the line. This is the third time he's sent hired guns after me, and there won't be a fourth time. You tell him to hire all the guns he can, but to keep them close. Because now I'm coming after him. He's started a feud with me, and it ain't likely we'll both survive it."

Sinclair stepped toward the man against the wall, closing the distance slowly, watching the man to see if he showed fear. The moment the man's hands started to tremble, Sinclair darted at him, closing the distance in three big steps, and Sinclair bashed him hard in the face with the heavy barrel of the Colt Dragoon.

Stunned, the man dropped his hands and tried to fight back, but Sinclair hit him a second time, smashing the rosewood grip of the Colt into the man's ear.

The shooter slumped to the floor, still conscious but too queasy to keep his legs.

Sinclair holstered his gun and took the knife from his left hand. He dropped down, putting his knee in the chest of the man who'd come after him. Then he took the blade of the Bowie and carved it deep into the side of the man's face.

The man screamed as the blade cut into his face and curved along his cheek, opening him up from temple to jaw.

"I'm marking you," Sinclair said. "If I ever see you again I'll kill you. I won't ask what you're doing or how's the weather. I see you, and you will get killed."

The man kicked and screamed on the ground, his face now covered in blood. Moving quickly, Sinclair emptied the pistols in the room and dropped their cartridges into his pockets. He ejected the spent shells of his own gun and then reloaded it. He snatched his saddlebags – the only luggage he carried – from the sofa where he'd been sitting. He left the newspaper on the ground.

There were five horses tied up outside, each horse had a rifle on the saddle. A bay gelding looked the likeliest of the five.

There was a crowd growing in the street. Just five or six men, but more were coming.

"What's going on in there?" a man asked. Seeing the bloodied shoulder, the man said, "Are you shot?"

"I killed three men in self-defense and left two more with something to think about," Sinclair said. "I'm riding out of town so I don't have to kill any other men today. Someone go and fetch the marshal and tell him what I said."

Sinclair quickly drew in turn four of the rifles from their scabbards, running the action on each gun until all the shells were ejected. He left the shells on the ground. As he emptied each gun, he tossed it up onto the boardwalk in front of the hotel.

As he worked, he scanned the crowd. He was looking for more shooters or the man who'd fled out the back door. That man was not so injured that he could not still wield a gun.

Finished with the rifles, he turned to the bay. He removed the saddlebags and replaced them with his own. Then he untied the bay and jumped up into the saddle.

Sinclair drew out the rifle and made sure a round was in the chamber. It was a good Henry rifle, the make Sinclair preferred.

"When you get the marshal and bring him here, you tell him it would be a damn fool mistake to send a posse. This was done in self-defense. You tell him that. And you tell him this was done by Rab Sinclair. That'll make a difference to him."

-3-

"Don't squirm too much," the old man said. "You go to squirming around and I might cut something important. You'll never use that arm again."

Rab Sinclair threw back two more whiskey shorts. He was sweating like the devil, but it was easy enough to blame that on the heat.

The boy sat in a corner of the dark cabin. His eyes wide.

"How bad does it hurt, Rabbie?" the boy asked.

"The bullet don't hurt at all. It's your grandpap's doctorin' that scares me. Shaky as his hands is, I'm nervous he'll slice my arm right off."

"Hush up now and bite that belt."

Rab let out a sharp breath and put the leather flap of his gunbelt between his teeth. He laid down on the table. The old man adjusted a lantern, then another. He'd put on his spectacles.

"Get it done," Rab said.

The old man poured a liberal helping of whiskey onto the bloody shoulder, then he dug into the wound with the knife. When the knife tip pricked metal, he began sliding the ball up and out of the shoulder.

Rab bit hard on the belt. Tears welled up in his eyes. He clenched his fists. Every muscle in his lean body seemed so taut it would burst.

"Sorry to hurt you, Rabbie."

The knife slipped from the wound, and with it the lead rolled out. The old man poured more whiskey.

"Hand me that jar of honey," the man said to the boy.

The boy looked at the bullet wound when he walked close enough, but then he looked away. It was red and white inside Rab Sinclair's shoulder, and it made the boy's stomach turn.

The old man now poured honey down into the wound, and then he bandaged it.

"I ain't going to sew you up yet. That honey'll pull out any infection. If we sew you up, the infection stays. I think you'll be all right. Strong as you are, the bullet barely got through your muscle. Hard work pays off, Rabbie."

Rab Sinclair spit the belt from his mouth and rolled onto his back. He was drenched in sweat. His face had gone chalk pale.

"Sorry to hurt you, Rabbie."

Rab Sinclair took a deep breath and let it out. "Ain't no need to say you're sorry. I came here and asked you to do it."

"Who shot you Rabbie?" this was from the boy.

"A dead man shot me," Rab Sinclair said.

"You killed him?" the boy asked.

"I reckon I did. He was breathing when I left him, but that's a temporary condition."

The old man was looking at the bullet in the light. "Did you say it was five that jumped you? Was they fellers you knew?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. Five of them. But I didn't know 'em. Never seen them before."

The old man tossed the bullet out the open door to the log cabin. "Hired men?"

"They were. All of them was killers by trade."

Now the old man poured himself a drink of whiskey and a second for Rab.

"If you can sit up, I'll give you a drink of medicine."

"I reckon I'll just lay here," Rab said. "Moving don't sound like a thing to do right now."

"Then I guess I'll have two drinks of medicine," the old man laughed.

Rab was breathing in short breaths, trying to push through the pain. For a moment, when the knife touched the lead bullet, Rab saw white hot light and thought he'd gone blind. But it passed.

The boy was watching him with a mix of curiosity and awe.

"Hand me that handkerchief," Rab said.

The boy handed it over, and Rab used it to wipe his eyes. "I guess I got sweat in my eyes."

The old man laughed and threw back the second whiskey drink.

"You'll have to light here a spell," he said. "You're welcome, of course."

"I'm obliged to you Grady."

Old Grady was a freighter, a stagecoach driver, a mail rider, a gold prospector and storekeeper, but these days he was just playing grandpap to young Caleb Morgan. On the verge of becoming a man, Caleb needed Grady. The boy had lost his own folks. Caleb's pa died after an accident when a couple of horses pulling a wagon were spooked. Caleb's pa had been standing in the back of the wagon, lifting a crate, and he took a spill when the wagon lunged. The doctor called it a "freak accident," but all Caleb knew was that his pa was dead. Caleb and his mama moved in with Grady, who at the time was driving freight wagons with Caleb's pa. But less than a year after the boy lost his father, his mama took a fever and died. Some folks said she died of a broken heart at the loss of her husband.

For the past couple of years, Old Grady was all Caleb Morgan had, and Caleb was likewise all Grady had. And Grady, who'd never been anybody's pa, was now trying to bring the boy up into a man.

Rab had known Grady for some years and had met Caleb a handful of times.

After being shot, Rab Sinclair came here to Grady's cabin because the old man was the only person Rab knew and trusted within fifty miles, and he also knew that Grady had done more doctorin' of bullet wounds than most doctors.

"The only question left, I reckon, is who hired them."

Rab narrowed his eyes and looked at Grady. "It's a history with the man what hired 'em," Rab said. "I know who it is, and I know why he done it."

"You aching to settle it?" Grady asked.

Whether it was the whiskey or the distance from the tip of Grady's knife, Rab felt the pain backing down some.

"It ain't the first time he's sent men to kill me, and I'm getting tired of adding dead men to my account. I don't see a way forward without settling it."

The old man went over to the rock fireplace at the back of the cabin. There hung a Springfield muzzle-loader. He looked it over. "I always like to make sure they's a bean in the can if I'm expecting trouble."

"They won't come out here," Rab said. "Nobody followed me, and those men won't be coming for me. I only left two of them alive. One of them was scared out the back door, and the other is nursing a cut face."

Grady laughed. "Marked him, eh?"

He put the Springfield back up on its hooks. Then he opened up a chest and took out an old Walker Colt. He examined this one, too. "Six beans in the can," Grady said.

"Caleb, you run out and see to Mr. Sinclair's hawss," Grady said. "Rub him down real good and turn him out with the others."

"Yes, sir," Caleb said.

When the boy was gone, Grady said, "I don't know I've ever seen you ride anything but that blue roan. Did they shoot your hawss?"

"No," Rab said. "Cromwell is at my place up in Las Vegas. I'd been down here on some business and was taking the stage back home. Someone must have seen me at the hotel and sent them men."

"You don't want to tell me who it is you're having troubles with?" Grady asked.

Rab was finding it tough to stay awake.

"You got a cot for me, Grady?"

"Sure, son," Grady said. "Let me help you down from the table."

Rab didn't wait for the help. He sat up and swung his legs around and all but jumped from the table. But his legs went soft beneath him and his head spun. "Maybe one more drink of whiskey," Rab said.

Grady poured him another glass, and Rab threw it back. Then Grady walked him over to a cot where Rab laid down and the old man covered him up with an Indian blanket.

"You know a fellow used to be called Bad Eye Frank?" Rab asked. "If I remember right, last name is Cosgrove."

Grady let out a long, slow whistle. "I'll hand it to you, Rabbie. When you make an enemy, you make a big one."

"You know him?" Rab asked.

"Sure I know him. Frank Cosgrove runs one of the biggest freighting operations in New Mexico Territory. I drove a wagon for him a few times not long after the war."

"He ever mention to you that he spent two years of the war in a Yankee prison?"

Grady laughed. "Mention it? He didn't talk about nothing else."

"Well, he blames me for putting him there. Based on this hole in my shoulder, I'm judging he ain't forgiven me yet."

-4-

A man did not make his way in Mesilla without being tough, and Bad Eye Frank Cosgrove had made his way there as well as any.

When he came out of a Union prison after the war, Bad Eye Frank went to the place that had been the Confederate's territorial capital in New Mexico, and that's where he stayed.

He ran freight wagons from Santa Fe into El Paso del Norte, just across the Rio Grande in Mexico, and all the way to California. He made his fortune by lifting a crate or two out of every wagon for his own personal use. Whether it was rifles or whiskey, he could always find someone willing to buy whatever he stole from his own wagons.

He kept an office in his warehouse north of Mesilla, and that's where the man with the fresh scar across his face found Bad Eye Frank.

"You're telling me he killed three men who draw their wages from gun work, chased off a fourth, and cut your face in two? And he was alone when he did it?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"That's what I'm telling you," the man said.

"Where is he now?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"I don't know. I got the doctor to stitch me up and rode back here. He left out on one of our horses, and I never did know which way he went."

Through a window in his office, Bad Eye Frank had a view of the wagons outside where the men were loading freight. Crates and burlap sacks of supplies going off in one direction or another. One of the forts, he thought. A man had to be careful when skimming off the top from the army because there was always some corporal somewhere who took his job seriously and counted everything leaving a wagon. Short a sack of grain or a crate of ammunition? He'd send out a search party to find it. So manifests had to be altered somewhere along the route. But for every corporal who was dedicated to his job, there were two who would change a number for an extra ten dollars.

Bad Eye Frank hired Mexicans, mostly, to work the warehouse, all of them from families who lived here when this territory was still part of Old Mexico. They spoke English and they minded their own business. If he told them to load all the crates except one into a wagon and to put the other crate in the corner of the warehouse, the Mexicans didn't ask why the one crate stayed or what happened to it. They drew their wages for loading and unloading, and they didn't bother with questions. Frank Cosgrove was careful to make sure that once or twice a year every Mexican who worked for him was given a gift of a bottle of mezcal.

Even with the windows on opposite walls of his office, sweat beaded on Frank's forehead and under his shirt. There were only two ways for a man to cool off – a swim in the Rio Grande or a buggy ride under a canopy. Otherwise, he just had to sweat and bear it until sundown.

In the Union prison in California, Frank's leg was broken in an accident and never healed right. Bad Eye Frank believed the Union doctor set it wrong on purpose. Bad Eye Frank would live the remainder of his life with a stiff leg and a limp that prevented him from riding horseback for far distances. He also medicated the pain with laudanum and mezcal.

Frank Cosgrove had most everything a man could want. A flourishing business that provided him wealth. A large adobe house that was a short walk to one of the best swimming holes the Rio Grande offered in lower New Mexico Territory. He had three women, and sometimes four, that he spent time with. The fourth had a temper, and he had to be careful about when he went around to see her. Men called him "sir," and even if they didn't care for him they respected him.

But there was one more thing he wanted, and it blunted all else that he had.

"That man put me in a Yankee prison," Frank Cosgrove said. "He set me up, sent me down a trail where he knew the Yankee cavalry was going to be waiting. I spent the better part of three years suffering in that prison. I ain't going to rest until Rab Sinclair is showed a grave for what he done to me. I spent a long time looking for him, leaving out word and trying to get word back. And when I finally found him, I paid you and them others good money to go and kill him. Now, I don't care about the money, but the job wasn't done."

The hired killer leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other.

"So you go and find four more men. Or find ten. I don't care how many, and I don't care what it costs. And you get back and find that man and you put some more bullets in him. You put enough bullets in him that they put him in the ground."

"Mr. Cosgrove, I understand you want the man dead. But I ain't going to be the one who kills him for you."

"What does that mean?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"It means I ain't going back for the man." The gunman reached into his vest and removed from his pocket a roll of money that he sat down on Cosgrove's desk. "That's your money back, minus my expenses and the doctor's fees. That man, Sinclair – he marked my face so he would recognize me, and he said if he ever sees me again he'll kill me. And I believe him. I believe he will. So I'm going to make certain sure he don't never see me again."

"Is he that fast?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

The killer shifted and scratched his chin, but his fingers did not stray to the stitched cut across his cheek where the itch originated.

"It ain't a question of fast," the man said. "I've killed fast men before."

"Then what is it?" Frank asked.

"In a gunfight, when you go to kill a man, you usually have to shoot him two or three times," the killer said. "A man doesn't usually die right away. But when you shoot him the first time, that's when you know you've got him. That's when he drops his gun or falls to the ground or starts crying out for mercy. He's shot and he wants to go somewhere and have somebody take care of him, because now he's thinking about dying. But not this man. We shot him, and he kept on coming. I ain't scared. It's just that this one has too much sand."

Bad Eye Frank spat through the open window. "Get out of my office. Don't come around here looking for work again."

-5-

Francisco Tebone stretched out his legs and planted the heels of his boots on the rickety table in front of him. His ankles were crossed, and the big sombrero sat so low over his face that anyone passing by might expect him to be asleep. He wore a plain shirt and britches and a cloth vest, and his clothes all wore a layer of dust and patches that proved him a wastrel of meager means. But the boots bore no scratches and were made of good leather, and in his gunbelt he carried a .44 caliber Remington Army Model five-shot revolver, converted to use cartridges.

The gun, gunbelt, and boots all belonged to a dead man, and Francisco Tebone decided to use them for himself now that the dead man no longer needed them.

He sat at a table outside a cantina in the Plaza in Mesilla, and he was working on a plan.

From under the wide brim of the sombrero, Francisco Tebone watched men loading wagons at the warehouse down the street.

Flies buzzed around him and around the table, but Francisco Tebone ignored them. Two young girls went running through the Plaza, and Francisco ignored them. A drunk man inside the cantina began shouting, and his shouts were answered by the breaking of glass. A woman screamed loudly, and Francisco heard a commotion that could only have been the bartender and maybe two or three others beating the drunken man for whatever offense he had given to the cantina girl.

None of this distracted Francisco Tebone. When three men bodily tossed a fourth man from the cantina and the man landed in the dirt near Francisco's table, he did not even glance in the direction of the man.

At last he saw what he was watching for.

A man standing in the back of a wagon lifted his hat and waved it a couple of times. The man disguised the signal by wiping his face on the sleeve of his shirt, but Francisco knew this was what he had waited for.

The man in the back of the wagon jumped down and a driver climbed aboard with a shotgun rider. The driver lifted the reins and gave them a snap, and the mules lurched the wagon forward.

Francisco eyed the horse hitched to the post not far from him. Like the boots, gunbelt, and gun, the horse belonged to a dead man. It was a good horse. Older than he'd have liked, and a bit slower, but it could catch a wagon drawn by a team of four mules.

The wagon drove past on the road going south to El Paso del Norte, but Francisco Tebone held his seat.

"Tebone," the drunk man on the ground said, but he did not pronounce it in the way Francisco pronounced it. Francisco gave his last name a Spanish flair, making it sound like "Tay-bonay." But this drunk man said it in the English way, "tee-bone."

"What did you call me, amigo?" Francisco asked.

"I know you, Tee-bone," the drunk man said, still flat on the ground but looking up through squinting eyes. He slurred his words, but Francisco understood him well enough.

"Where do you know me from, amigo?" Francisco asked.

Though he spoke only a little Spanish, Francisco slowed his speech and gave it flourishes to make himself sound like a Mexican. His dark features and black hair often led people to conclude that Francisco Tebone was from south of the border. But the fact was that Francisco's father was the half-breed Comanche who raped his mother, and his mother was a no-account whore who drank herself to death when Francisco was just a boy. The man who raised him always said they'd have not had to hang Francisco's half-breed father if he'd just given the boy's mother a silver dollar or two.

Francisco grew up with no last name, no one even knew his mother's last name to give him that one, but back in his village they called him Francisco Tee-bone because when they tossed him the bones from their steaks he would gnaw at them.

So they called him "Frankie T-Bone," when he was a boy, but he left that name and that village in his past. And particularly today he did not want anyone to use that name or recognize him.

"You are drunk, amigo," Francisco Tebone said. "Let me help you up."

Francisco dropped his feet and stood up. He reached down a hand and the drunk man accepted it, stumbling to his feet as Francisco pulled his one hand and he planted the other on the rickety table to steady himself.

"Too much mezcal," he said. "But I know you, Frankie T-Bone. Do you remember me?"

"I think I do, amigo," Francisco said. "I know a place where you can sleep that off.

Francisco helped the man away from the cantina and down toward an alleyway. "There is a nice spot in the shade here between these buildings," Francisco said.

The man patted him on the shoulder. "You grew up to be a good boy, Frankie T-Bone," the man said, his tongue too fat from mezcal to speak the words clearly. "You are a good boy."

The man's face was dirty, and his clothes were dirty, and to Francisco he looked exactly like the village that the boy had longed to escape. His beard was matted and unkempt. His hair was a greasy mess, full of dirt. His boots had worn soles and the left one had a hole where the man's big toe had worn through. A stain on his shirt showed where he had vomited on himself inside the cantina.

At the back of the alley were some stacked wooden boxes and a barrel. Francisco looked over his shoulder to be sure that no one from the street could see him. Satisfied that there were no witnesses, Francisco steered the man behind the stacked crates, and there he plunged his hunting knife into the drunken man's chest. The man stumbled backwards and fell to the ground. He started to make a complaint to Frankie T-Bone, but the younger man planted a boot over the drunken man's mouth to quiet him and hold his head back, and then Francisco Tebone slide the blade of the knife deeply across the drunken man's exposed throat.

The man convulsed and shook for a moment, and when he was finished, Francisco wiped the blood from his knife blade on the man's shirt.

Frankie T-Bone, restored to Francisco Tebone, walked back out the alley. He stopped as he came to the front of the buildings and looked through the Plaza. It was still too hot for anyone to be out, though there was a second horse now tethered to the post where Francisco's sorrel stood. The only person in the Plaza who saw him walk from the alleyway was Lopez, now seated at the table in front of the cantina.

"Amigo, where did you go?" Lopez asked.

"Dealing with a small problem," Francisco answered. "It is nothing. Is this your horse, Lopez?"

"Si."

"Then let us ride to catch the wagon."

***

The Organ Mountains rose high and gray over their left shoulders as the two young men rode south out of Mesilla toward El Paso del Norte.

"This is a wagon that is not on the manifests?" Francisco Tebone asked Lopez. "You are sure of this?"

"I am sure," Lopez said. "A crate of guns. Sacks of flour and sugar. Three barrels of mezcal. Four crates of cartridges. Rolls of cloth. All of it off the manifests. All of it Bad Eye Frank has stolen from the people who paid to have it shipped to them. All going to his buyers across the border in El Paso del Norte."

Francisco Tebone had killed three men – now four. All had been petty crimes to steal a wallet or a pair of good boots and a gunbelt or to silence a man who could identify him. But now Francisco Tebone intended to make a start at gaining real wealth, and there was no better way he could think to do it than by stealing stolen cargo. Bad Eye Frank the freighter could never go to the U.S. Marshal or the sheriff to report a crime, because he would be telling tales on himself.

Francisco and Lopez were not far outside of Mesilla when they saw the dust coming up off the trail from the wagon.

"You keep your gun on the driver," Francisco told Lopez. "I'll deal with the shotgun rider."

They did not push their horses over hard. They steadily gained on the wagon so that a dark shape beyond the dust began to emerge on the long, straight road. And then they could see the freight stacked high. Francisco Tebone wanted to be far enough away from Mesilla that there was no chance of anyone hearing the shots.

"No one gets hurt, si?" Lopez said.

"I told you, no one gets hurt. Now pull that bandanna up over your face and come on."

The two riders covered their faces and gave spurs to their horses. Now they were running and would overtake the wagon in moments.

The driver was on the right, so Lopez rode up that side of the wagon. Francisco rode to the left.

The noise of the mules and the constant clattering and banging of the wagon over the rough road drowned out the noise of the two riders, and by the time the shotgun rider heard Francisco racing up behind him it was too late. Shotgun leaned out to his left to look back over his shoulder, and all he saw was the flash from Francisco's Remington almost close enough to his face to taste the gunmetal.

The driver never heard the riders, never knew that Shotgun had leaned out to look at something. He heard the blast from the gun so close it was almost deafening, and he panicked. It probably would have done no good to snap the reins and try to get the mules to run, but dragging the reins to get them to stop did no good neither.

Both riders passed by the wagon, but Francisco already had the Remington cocked and ready to shoot. As he raced past, he leaned out and pointed the Remington behind him. He fired once and caught the freight driver in the chest with the .44 bullet. Now both riders wheeled their horses and Francisco charged back to the wagon. He dragged reins and leapt from horse to wagon.

The driver was shot but not dead, and he was reaching for his saddle gun that he kept in the driver's box beside him.

Standing on the driver's seat, Francisco kicked the man hard across the face. Then he leaned down and pushed the driver right off the wagon and into the dirt road. Francisco pulled back the brake on the wagon.

"You said no one would be hurt," Lopez shouted from behind his bandanna.

Lopez knew both the driver and the shotgun rider. He'd worked alongside them for these past two years. He'd worked with them all morning loading up this same wagon. And now one of them was dead and the other was dying.

"They was both going for their guns," Francisco said. "It was them or us."

The driver was on the ground moaning and crawling away from the wagon. Francisco cocked back the hammer on the Remington and fired one more shot into the man's back. Lopez shouted an oath. "For what?" he demanded.

"He's heard you talk. He can identify you if he lives."

Francisco jumped down off of the wagon and rolled the driver over. The man seemed to be dead now, or would be before anyone got to him.

"Tie your horse to the back," Francisco said. "Let's get this wagon out of here before someone rides up on us."

Lopez was furious over the way this had gone. He had made Francisco swear to him that no one would be hurt, and he had now watched the murders of two men he considered friends. But there was nothing to do. He dismounted and tied his horse's lead to the back of the wagon, and then he got up in the driver's seat. In a big arc, he turned the wagon around and started back toward Mesilla.

Francisco dragged both bodies away from the road. The driver was a heavy man, and Francisco was not very big. He was still only eighteen years old, and not a big man with much weight, so he had to work to drag the driver.

When the bodies were a ways off the road, Francisco Tebone jumped into his saddle and started back toward Mesilla.

***

By the time Lopez drove the wagon into his father's barn, night had spread across the dry and dusty desert. Francisco Tebone rode behind the wagon, taking random, wide sweeping routes off the road. Francisco was certain no one had seen them bring the wagon back up the road.

The only concern was Lopez's father. If he came into the barn, or saw the mules in the corral, he might ask questions.

Lopez had the mules unharnessed from the wagon by the time Francisco rode into the barn, so Francisco dealt with his horse, unsaddling it and turning it out.

"Should we worry about your father?"

"He will not come to the barn," Lopez said. "He's at the cantina now. He will be so drunk that he does not see the mules or your horse in the corral."

"You're sure?" Francisco said.

"He drinks at the cantina every night. I will hurry him out in the morning so that he does not notice the animals."

Francisco piled some hay into a stall and laid down his bedroll. He had spent two weeks in the barn, but every morning he rose before dawn and left to be sure that Lopez's father would not find him.

"Tomorrow when we are at the warehouse, I will make an excuse to come home," Lopez said. "I will be back by mid-morning. Have the mules and wagon ready to go."

The plan was to drive the wagon to Santa Fe. Neither Lopez – who had never been much outside of Mesilla – nor Francisco knew anyone in Santa Fe, but they believed it would be a small thing to find someone who would buy the supplies in the stolen wagon.

Lopez left Francisco to go into his home. Francisco set his gunbelt beside his bedroll and extinguished the lantern light.

He had no qualms over the two murders. He felt nothing for those men. If he considered whether they had families or dreams or hopes, it was not a thought that disturbed him. His conscience did not keep him awake. The two men he killed were simply obstacles to be overcome, barriers between him and what he wanted. He did not see them as men with dreams and hopes and memories. He did not consider that these men might have loved someone or been loved by someone. Francisco Tebone fell asleep quickly.

Francisco Tebone was deep asleep a few hours later when a noise within the barn woke him.

There was light, and before he even focused on the shapes in front of him, his instincts drove him to reach for his gun. But his hand fell on the empty floor of the stall, and then a boot was on his wrist, pressing his arm uncomfortably against the ground. Francisco struggled to sit up, but a large fist smashed into his face, and he fell backwards.

"Wagon is in here, boss," a man's voice called from near Francisco.

His face stung, his nose and forehead. He did not think his nose was broken, but his head reeled from the punch. Now Francisco opened his eyes. There were three men, big men, and one of them was carrying a rifle. Another had a lantern in one hand and Francisco's gunbelt in the other. The third still had his foot pressing Francisco's arm against the floor.

A fourth man walked into view behind the other three.

The first thing Francisco noticed was that the man's bulging eyes did not focus on the same spot. One seemed to drift off far too far to the wrong side. Francisco knew, though he had never seen him before, that this was Bad Eye Frank.

"So you're the little bastard that shot my two men?" Bad Eye Frank said, stepping forward.

"I didn't," Francisco started to say, but Bad Eye Frank stomped the breath out of him.

"Don't you lie to me, and don't you try to deny it," Bad Eye Frank said. "We've already talked to your partner in the house and he's confessed everything."

Bad Eye Frank stepped back away from the stall.

"Get him on his feet," Frank said.

The man holding the rifle leaned it against the wall of the stall and bent forward, clutching Francisco by the shirt front and dragging him to his feet. Francisco was surprised to find that his legs did not seem to work. The man who'd put his foot on Francisco's arm and the one who dragged him to his feet now held him upright with his back against a post.

Bad Eye Frank smashed a fist into Francisco's stomach, but the two men holding him did not let him double over.

"Let me give you some advice, boy," Bad Eye Frank said. "When you kill a man, drag him far enough off the side of the road that he's not easily seen. And also, make sure he's dead. When they found my driver this afternoon, he lived long enough to tell them that it was Lopez's son who was involved. Finding you and your partner was the easiest thing I've ever done."

Bad Eye Frank walked with a limp, but he now paced around near the stolen wagon.

"A man in my position expects some loss," Frank said. "You know, whether it's Injuns or bandits or even a flood or some other damn thing, there's always a chance that a wagon or two will be lost. But you don't think it's going to be a couple of eejit boys playing outlaw."

Frank made an awkward lunge, swinging his bad leg way out, and punched Francisco in the jaw. Francisco's head spun, and Bad Eye Frank swore and shook his hand.

"I'm not boy playing outlaw," Francisco said defiantly, though in his own mind his voice sounded small and weak.

"Oh, is that right?" Bad Eye Frank asked derisively. "Are you a real outlaw who doesn't even bother to kill his victims? You left a man alive by the side of the road who could identify you."

Francisco did not bother to respond.

"Who were you going to sell the wagon to?" Bad Eye Frank asked. "Give me a name and I might not hang you from the rafters."

"There is no name," Francisco said. "We were just going to drive it to Santa Fe and find someone to buy it. Or sell the items one by one if we had to."

That was the same story Lopez gave inside the house as Bad Eye Frank questioned him and his men beat him. They had left Lopez inside with one of Frank's men, the boy bloodied and unconscious.

Frank slapped Francisco across the face. "Stupid. You steal a wagon full of merchandise and you don't even have someone lined up to take it. Stupid."

"Tie him up," Frank said. "Tie him and Lopez and take them both to the warehouse. Put them in the back room and two of you stand guard over them through the night. Do not let them get away. I'll decide how I'm going to kill them in the morning. And take the wagon back to the warehouse, too."

-6-

In a cot in the corner of the front room, Rab Sinclair woke from a deep sleep when the old man with the boy came into the cabin.

"Sorry to wake you, Rabbie," Grady said, shuffling over to a table with both arms full of supplies. "Just come in from town. Picked up some salt and sugar and flour. Caleb, mix up some of that laudanum with a little water and give that to him."

The boy took a bottle from his pocket and poured some of the liquid in a cup.

"We stopped by to see the druggist, too. Ain't good to just keep pouring whiskey in you to kill the pain. Laudanum will help you sleep and beat down the pain a bit."

"I appreciate that, Grady," Rab said, sitting up and taking the cup with the medicine from Caleb.

The two men had fallen into a routine of chores and cooking and washing. They sometimes went hunting or fishing, or together they tended the small garden that helped them get through. On Saturdays they went to town. They took whatever vegetables they had from their garden or meat from their livestock that they had smoked, and they sold these things at the market in town.

Rab Sinclair had disrupted their routines, and though it was a Wednesday they had just come in from town.

"We had a look around town," Grady said. "Wanted to see what folks was saying. That shootout in the hotel lobby is still the talk of the town. You've made yourself famous, Rabbie."

"Did you talk to the sheriff?" Rab asked.

"Didn't talk to him directly, but I went to see the right folks to know his thinking. What witnesses there was to the shooting in the hotel told him them men came gunning for you. He'd like to talk to you, but there ain't no warrant sworn out."

"Anybody know I came out here?" Rab asked.

"Rumor going around town is that you rode on back toward Las Vegas. I reckon somebody must know you're from up there, or maybe just because that's where the stage was going. But folks reckon that's where you went."

"Let them think it," Rab said. "I don't want anyone to come looking for me here."

"You just lie still and rest up," Grady said. "I'll check that wound in a bit. We need to make certain you ain't got no infection."

The laudanum began to have its effect, deadening his senses, but Rab remained awake and watched the old man and the boy. There existed between them a fondness. Old Grady who'd only ever had himself treated the boy with fatherly attention. Every small chore was an opportunity for a life lesson.

"Never let your stores set," the old man said as they put away the provisions bought in town. "Leave a sack of sugar settin' on the ground, and next thing you know you've got rats gnawin' holes in it, or you'll get bugs in your flour. Have yourself a good canister and put it up right away."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Grady," Caleb said obediently, whether he heard the old man's lesson or not.

"I'll tell you something else, son," Grady went on. "We went into town today looking for information, and we found out everything we wanted to know. But we didn't go nosing around and askin' a bunch of questions. We just stayed quiet and listened. If you want to know something, you just set still and listen and pretty soon somebody'll come around and tell you. Folks that know things can't help but tell other folks. And bein' quiet like that, we didn't let on that we knew anything."

"If the marshal ain't lookin' for Mr. Sinclair, why do we care if folks know he's here?" Caleb asked.

"Because them men that came huntin' him in the hotel was sent by somebody that's got a grudge against Rabbie," Grady said. "That man is likely enough to send other men. We don't want them kinds of troubles, and Rabbie didn't come here to lay his troubles at our door."

Caleb stood thoughtfully and looked at Rab Sinclair. All he knew of Sinclair was that sometimes he showed up with stories of spending time with the Indians up north or guiding travelers or riding out to far off places in Texas or the mountains. Rab Sinclair was the only person that Caleb knew who would set off in the early summer and ride to some far off place just to hunt or trap for a couple of months in the fall. The man seemed exotic and fascinating to the boy, and there were times when Caleb Morgan wished that he could ride off with Rab Sinclair just to see what it was like.

"Why would anybody want to kill you, Mr. Sinclair?" Caleb asked.

"Hush now, boy," Grady said. "A man's business is his business, and we don't go prying like that."

"It's all right," Rab said. "I ain't got nothing to hide. The man that wants me dead is angry about something I did to him in the war. You've heard of the battle of Glorieta Pass?"

"Yes, sir."

"Not long before that battle I was up in that area scouting for the Rebels," Rab said. "I'd grown tired of the war, and it didn't make much sense to me to stay in it because it weren't my fight. I didn't have no part in any of it. So I decided to ride on to the mountains and spend some time with a Ute chief who I was on good terms with. But this feller they call Bad Eye Frank, who was with me, started talking about desertion and said he would shoot me. I played a bit of a trick on him and rode him out where the Yankee cavalry would catch him. They put him in a prison, and there he stayed for the war. I rode off to the mountains and sat out the rest of the war with a pretty squaw who kept me warm come winter. I reckon he hasn't forgave me yet."

Caleb gave Rab a slant eye look. "So you were a deserter?"

Rab Sinclair knew his star shined less bright for the boy. "I reckon I was, Caleb."

Though the laudanum was dulling his mind, Rab saw the boy struggle to reconcile what he knew of Rab Sinclair with this new information. It was his own pride that made him try to help Caleb.

"Caleb, in a man's life he'll be given lots of choices to make. He'll make some good ones, and he'll make some bad ones. Some will look worse from the outside, and some will look a little better. But the only answering a man has to do for the choices he makes is with his own conscience. Can you rest easy knowing you done your best with the choices you had to make? Whether I sleep out in the woods with my head against my saddle or in Grady's cot, when I lay my head down at night it rests comfortable on my peace of mind. I done what I done, e'ry time, with honest intentions. I try not to harm another man if I can help it. I'm truthful with my intentions, and I don't turn my back on a friend. Like your grandpa Grady, there. A friend with a bullet in his shoulder comes to his door, Grady don't talk about the law or the danger. He opens up the door and shares his whiskey and digs the lead out of the arm.

"I reckon it's true that I deserted on that army, but that weren't my fight and them wasn't my friends. My mistake was in joining up in a thing I couldn't see through to the end. But my mistake wasn't in leaving."

"But you got a man arrested by the enemy," Caleb said.

"That man drew a gun on me," Rab said. "I could have killed him. The way I saw it, I was doing him a favor getting him taken prisoner."

Caleb still didn't seem satisfied, but the laudanum had taken all Rab's care out of it.

"I'll tell you a thing about war," Old Grady said. "War is thing waged by rich men and politicians. Young men, and mostly poor, pay the costs. If you're going to pick up a rifle and fire it at another man, you should have good cause to do it. I ain't sayin' there ain't a time for it. But ending a man's life ain't somethin' you should take to lightly."

"You fought in the war with Mexico, didn't you Grady?" Caleb asked.

"I did my share in that war," Grady said. "That's why I never went back to Tennessee and settled instead here in New Mexico. I reckoned if I fought and bled for this here land, I should keep a part of it."

"Is land worth killing a man for?" Caleb asked.

"Sometimes," Grady said. "The same as Rab ain't bothered by leaving an army, I was never bothered by doing my part in one."

Grady had cut potatoes and beefsteak that he was just getting in the skillet on the stove. "It'll still be a minute 'fore this is ready. Go on out and see that there's water in the trough and then come in and supper will be ready."

Rab leaned back against the pillow and shut his eyes.

"Boy don't mean nothing, Rabbie," Grady said.

"I know that."

"He's still young, trying to figure out how to be a man in this world."

"Seems to me he's got a good teacher," Rab said, his eyes still shut.

"Me? Ha! I ain't teachin' him much about bein' a man. Just trying to give him a place and keep him safe. I knew Caleb's pa before he died, and brought him and his ma to live with me here after. They didn't have nothing."

"You're a good man, Grady. A boy couldn't want a better example of how to be a man."

"I don't know about that," Grady said, cutting potatoes. "I do what I can for him, but a boy needs someone younger than me to raise him up. He wants to go hunting, and my old knees can only get me so far into the hills. He wants to spend a day at the fishing hole, and all I ever do is pester him about chores."

Rab Sinclair muttered something that Grady couldn't hear. The old man looked up from his potatoes and saw that Rab was asleep.

-7-

Across his back Francisco Tebone believed he could feel within the cut flesh the threads of hemp left by the lash.

They tied Francisco to a wagon wheel and removed his shirt to expose his back. Bad Eye Frank wielded the whip himself, and those who watched believed that he took extreme pleasure in every swing.

By the tenth lash, Francisco's back was cut open in diagonal stripes. By the twentieth lap, there was more shredded meat than skin.

By the thirtieth lash, the boy known in his home village as T-Bone because he ate the scraps off others' plates, passed out from the pain.

An old woman who did some doctoring applied a salve to the open wounds, and they left him on the bare floor of a locked room inside the warehouse.

Now, lying on the plank boards of the floor, Francisco Tebone ached from the stinging in his back. His eyes were out of tears, and he was thankful because he did not want them to see him cry. He believed they would kill him, but he did not want them to mock him for his tears. The boards held the heat and seemed to burn his cheek, but Francisco could not roll onto his tattered back.

He sweated and bled on this floor for at least a couple of days, but he did not know how long exactly. His pants were soiled and the room stank from it. They brought him water and bread, and other than that he saw no one, and there was no window in the room. He was too weak to try to escape, but he did not know how he could even if he had the strength.

Now the door opened and boots reverberated against the planks, and Francisco knew from the odd gait that it was Bad Eye Frank come to see him.

"Are you going to kill me now?" Francisco asked, his voice sounding strange with his cheek still pressed against the floor.

"I ain't going to kill you, not now and maybe not never," Bad Eye Frank said. "You're an hombre muy malvado, ain't you boy?"

Francisco did not answer.

"Tough boy, wants to be a tough man. Ain't that right? I've asked around about you. They say you're out trying to make a name for yourself. A fledgling gunfighter."

"You give me a gun, and you will see for yourself," Francisco said.

Bad Eye Frank laughed. "You got sand, boy. I'll give you that. Here I could stomp your head to pulp, and you're still a big talker."

Whether he brought it in with him or someone handed it to him from the door, Francisco could not see, but Bad Eye Frank now planted a stool on the ground near the boy's head and sat down.

"Fact is, I sometimes find myself in need of a tough hombre. I've hired some gunfighters before, and I'll do it again. So here's the question I got for you. The way I see it, after what you done, I'd be a smart man to stretch your neck and be done with you. But I see a little bit of fight in you, and I like that. So I'm going to give you a choice. I'll either hang you from a tree as a warning so that everyone know what happens to people who try to steal from me, or I'll hire you on. You want to come work for me as my gunfighter?"

Bad Eye Frank sat quietly for some time, watching the boy on the ground. Francisco Tebone didn't move.

"That back looks like it's healing up pretty well," Bad Eye Frank said. "Another day or two, you ought to be able to sit up, maybe walk around a little."

With the toe of his boot, he touched Francisco's back, and the boy let out a scream.

"So you can make a noise," Bad Eye Frank laughed. "What do you think? You want to die, or do you want a job?"

With all his heart, Francisco wanted to throw a gun and shoot dead this man Bad Eye Frank. He wanted to put a bullet through the good eye and the bad. But he also wanted to live. He'd have taken a hanging when Bad Eye Frank was whipping him. He'd have gladly taken a hanging over that. But now, even as miserable as he was, Francisco Tebone knew the pain was subsiding. He knew he would be better. And if his choice now was to live or die, he wanted to live.

"Who do you want me to kill?" Francisco asked.

Bad Eye Frank clapped his hands together. "That's a good answer, boy. I can't stand the smell of you no more, so we'll talk later. I'll send somebody to come and clean you up and take you to a decent bed. We'll get your back looked at again, maybe get a decent meal or two in you. And then, when you're feeling better, we'll talk. But I'll tell you this. You want to be a gunfighter? I'm going to send you after a man with a reputation. You kill him, and everybody will fear the name of Francisco Tebone. How does that sound to you? You want to be a famous man? You kill Rabbie Sinclair, and folks will know your name."

Bad Eye Frank stood up and limped across the room. Francisco did not move, but he spoke with his cheek still pressed against the plank floor.

"What happened to Lopez?" Francisco asked.

Bad Eye Frank stopped. "What's that?"

"Lopez. What did you do to him?"

"His father worked for me for a long time. Out of respect to his father, I didn't want to whip the boy. Instead, I just hanged him. And then I hanged his father, on account of the man should have raised a better son."

After cleaning him up, they moved Francisco Tebone into a room in Bad Eye Frank's adobe house. The room had a window and a breeze and a bed with a good stuffed mattress. They chained Francisco's ankle to the bed frame to prevent him from leaving the room. But here they fed him and cared for him. The woman who first put the salve on his back now came to see him twice a day.

This was where Francisco Tebone got his strength back.

-8-

Rab Sinclair looked along the barrel of the Hawken rifle at the front sight. A still coolness filled the morning air, a pleasant calm before the heat of the day became exhausting. His breathing was easy. His left hand held the front stock steady, though his wounded shoulder ached to do so. He squeezed the trigger and the hammer dropped.

The big bull elk reared and ran thirty yards before skidding head first into the dirt.

Rab took up the Hawken rifle in his right hand and stretched out his left arm, raising it high above his head.

"How's that shoulder, Mr. Sinclair," Caleb asked.

"I'm feeling more like myself," Rab said.

"That was a great shot," Caleb said.

"It got him," Rab said. "Let's go and have a look."

They had driven Grady's wagon sixty miles to find a good place to hunt. There among the craggy hills of the Rio Grande valley they found the sort of grassland and cover that the elk prefer. Once they were at a place that Rab liked, they put up a camp. For three days in a row they had scouted around the countryside, only finding tracks. But now a large bull elk with a big rack still covered in velvet wandered near where they sat waiting. Rab offered Caleb the shot, but the boy worried that he would miss.

"The next one is yours," Rab said. "It's like I told you, an elk needs food, and they prefer grass. They have to have water, so they're close to streams. They need room to roam, and they need cover for protection. When you can find these things together, and you see tracks, it's just a matter of finding the right spot and waiting."

They dressed the animal there where it fell.

"We'll get good steaks from this one," Rab said.

When Rab started to feel better and could get some movement from his arm, Grady insisted that he take Caleb Morgan hunting.

"I can't do it anymore," Grady told Rab. "But the boy should know how to hunt."

Along the way, Rab Sinclair showed Caleb other things. He showed him how to read terrain and find water. He showed him what plants were edible and which ones to stay away from. He taught the boy how to read tracks, how to tell a cat's print from a wolf or coyote, how to distinguish elk from deer.

These were things Rab Sinclair grew up knowing.

"My own pa didn't teach me much of this," Rab told the boy. "He called hisself a missionary, and he liked to preach the gospel at Indians. Most of the tribes believed he was off his head, and so they accepted us in and we would stay with them for a while. But my pa liked Indian women pretty well, and most of the time that got us run off. But along the way, I learned a good bit from the tribes people. I learned to hunt and fish and ride and fight from the different people we lived among. Most of the Western Indians ain't much for living in towns or working for wages like decent folk do, but they sure do know how to make a good place for a boy to grow up."

"Did you have to do chores?" Caleb asked.

"Oh, some," Rab said. "My pa wasn't much of a stickler for chores. I cared for our animals, whatever we had at any given time. That was the biggest chore I remember. And when we traveled, it was usually up to me to find us meat for supper. Rabbit and squirrel, mostly. Especially squirrel. I ate a lot of squirrel growing up."

"We eat a lot of squirrel," Caleb said. "I wonder why that is."

"Squirrel are plentiful, that's why," Rab said. "Just about any place you go you can find a squirrel to shoot for supper."

"Grady sometimes shoots 'em from the front porch, and then sends me to fetch them out of the yard."

Rab chuckled.

"Grady's a smart man. You bread it and fry it up pretty good, and a squirrel don't taste no worse than an elk. And the thing about a squirrel is that it ain't quite as hard to get it back to your camp. You're going to have to help me with this elk. My shoulder's still a bit weak."

For several days Rab Sinclair and Caleb Morgan made their way along the Rio Grande valley, moving up into hills and forests around the river. Two days after Rab Sinclair shot the big elk, Caleb shot his first elk. They came across fresh tracks, and rather than sit and wait, Rab and Caleb tracked the animal through the early morning.

"He's seeking cover and shade for the hot day,"

He had both the thrill of winning a hunt and the regret of taking a life, and Rab could see in his expression that he wrestled with the competing emotions.

"That your first time shooting an elk?" Rab asked.

"It was," Caleb said. "I've shot squirrel and rabbit for supper. But never an elk or a deer."

"Them elk is big critters, and beautiful to see. They're strong and proud. This one has a good set of antlers under that velvet, so you know he's seen some days. It's right to feel the loss of the animal that's dead. You appreciate the life he gave so that you can feed yourself and those who depend on you."

"Nobody depends on me," Caleb Morgan said.

"That ain't true a'tall," Rab said. "Old Grady depends on you. You're all the family he's got, even if you ain't blood kin. Think what a gift this'll be to him. How long's it been since he's had good elk steak? Old man like him deserves something other than squirrel and fish when he can get it."

Caleb nodded but did not speak.

"Your pa must have been a right decent man," Rab said. "I've known Grady a long time, and what I know for sure about him is that he's a good judge of character. If he felt compelled to take in you and your ma, it must have been driven by a powerful respect for your pa."

"Mr. Grady tells me often that he thought highly of my pa. The truth is, I only remember a few things about him. He drove a wagon, freighting, and he was gone an awful lot. It's hard for me sometimes to remember even what he looked like."

Rab nodded. "You remember how he made you feel when he came home?"

"Oh, sure," Caleb said. "I remember how excited ma would be that he was getting home, and we'd do extra things around the house to get ready for him. She always made sure when he was due that she had fixins for a big supper to welcome him home. And he'd set me on his knee and tell me about the places he'd been driving the wagon or the things he'd seen on the way. He always told jokes and made up stories, and ma would laugh."

Rab put a hand on Caleb's shoulder and patted the boy. "What a man looks like don't matter much. What matters is how he makes you feel when he's around. That's more important to remember."

"Do you remember what your pa looked like?"

Rab tried to think on it.

"He wore a big coat that I remember. Big brown coat. Must have been a deerskin, similar to mine, I reckon. I remember that being a warm coat, and I remember a chilly night by the campfire when he put it over my shoulders. I remember he was a big man, very strong for someone given to preaching. But he did his preaching in Indian villages, and that takes a powerful sort of man to do that. But if you're asking if I can call up a portrait in my mind, I reckon I'd have to say that I can't do that. But I remember some of his kindnesses to me, and I remember being sad when he was dead. But he raised me up to tend to myself, and so even thought I wasn't much older than you are when he died, I just took off on my own."

"I reckon it won't be long before I need to go off on my own, too," Caleb said.

"You'll need to do that, sooner or later. But Old Grady will always give you a place to call home so long as you want it."

"He's been kind to take me in," Caleb said. "I can't repay that."

"You've been good for him, too. Been like a family to him. A man gets to Grady's age, it's good to have something like a family."

***

Grady rocked on his chair on the plank boards of the front porch while Rab Sinclair smoked a pipe and watched the heavy rains of late summer. Rab had a foot up on the porch rail and the fingers of his left hand curled around a timber beam above his head. He winced as he dropped his hand down.

"Shoulder still hurting, Rabbie?"

"A bit stiff, truthfully," Rab said. "I reckon this may be one of those aches that lingers."

"The hurt from a bullet wound don't typically pass quick. And if it does, you prob'ly didn't survive it."

"True enough."

Rab struck a match and covered it over with his left hand as he puffed on the pipe to get the tobacco going again. "I reckon I'm well enough to start for home."

Grady nodded and chucked a rock into the rain.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Been a nice visit. I'll be sorry to see you go. And the boy'll be sorry, too. I know that hunt y'all made meant quite a bit to him. A lot of pride in taking your first big elk."

"He's a good boy, Grady. You've been a good grandpap to him."

Grady scoffed and scratched at his beard. "Weren't my doing. His mama raised him up. I just cared for him after she passed."

Rab started to return his hand to the beam overhead, but then thought better of it.

"Just keep on stretchin' it out," Grady advised. "It'll give you trouble, but maybe less over time. When will you leave?"

"I was thinking in the morning."

"You need me to take you into town to catch the stagecoach?"

Rab shook his head and bent to where he could look at the clouds overhead. It was too dark in the evening to see much.

"I think I'm going to take that horse I rode here on and just ride north. Last time I tried to catch a stagecoach it did not go so well."

Grady stopped his rocking and gave Rab an appraising look. "What about Bad Eye Frank?" he asked. "Have you decided to let that lie?"

Rab turned to face Grady and sat against the rail. "I'm not sure what I've decided to do about that. I've never encountered a man who held a grudge as tight as Frank Cosgrove is holding onto this one. I understand that he's angry, and I understand why, but that was some time ago, now, and the man should give some thought to getting on with his own life. I'm hoping if I ride on home I'll be far enough away that he won't worry me."

"Maybe," Grady said doubtfully.

"You think I should ride down to Mesilla and put an end to it?"

"Maybe," Grady said again.

Rab knocked the bowl of his pipe against the rail and then refilled it with more tobacco. He struck another match and puffed on the pipe.

"I have no interest in killing Bad Eye Frank or anyone else," he said. "Maybe knowing his hired guns put a bullet in my shoulder will be enough for him. It's possible, I suppose, that he'll even think I'm killed."

"If he does, that won't last," Grady said. "You're known well enough all through these parts, and a man who makes a living as a freighter hears everything that's happening. It won't be long before he knows you're still kicking around."

"I suppose. Either way, my intention now is to go on home. If I have to deal later with Bad Eye Frank, I'll deal later with him."

"Unless he hires a better gunman," Grady said evenly.

"Unless he hires a better gunman," Rab agreed.

Grady sought to change the subject. "While you were off on your hunt I went into town. Word in town is they finished that Pacific Railroad. Trains from east to west now. I reckon that means we'll be overrun by tenderfoots afore long."

"Trains go back east. I'd wager a fair number won't overstay their welcome."

Grady laughed and slapped his knee. "I seen a lot of easterners put their chins to the morning sun over the years. Can you imagine being in New York on the first of the month and San Francisco by the tenth?"

"I've taken half the year to go less distance," Rab said. "It's hard to believe."

"They won't need men like you and me much longer," Grady said. "A man driving a wagon a hundred miles to deliver goods will be a forgotten thing. And ain't no call for folks to guide a train of wagons out across the plains."

Rab shook his head wistfully. "I reckon I'll have to add some steers to my herd if I'm to earn a living at anything."

"Well, come on in and get your sleep in on a good mattress while you can. Way this rain is coming down, with no end in sight, I reckon you'll be sleeping in the mud for the next few days."

-9-

The shirt pressing against the wounds from the lashes irritated Francisco Tebone. It wasn't a pain as much as it was an uncomfortable reminder of how Bad Eye Frank tenderized his back. So he sat forward in the chair, not leaning against the back.

"I don't care how you do it. Shoot him, gut him with a knife, choke the life out of him. Whatever suits your purpose. But you bring me his scalp so I can see that it's done."

Bad Eye Frank Cosgrove lifted up a .50 caliber Sharps carbine from behind his desk. "You ever shot one of these?"

"No," Francisco said.

"Take some shells and go and practice with it. Your best chance of killing Rab Sinclair is to lay up somewhere and wait for him. Get him from distance with this. If you try him with that Remington revolver, he'll likely get you first."

Francisco took the gun and looked it over. "I'd rather get him in a stand-up fight. It's honest."

Bad Eye Frank shook his head. "Have it your way. I'll find someone else to kill him when you're dead."

"Is he that good?" Francisco asked.

"He killed three of the best gunmen I've ever seen when they was five of them gunning for him in a hotel lobby. He turned the other two to crying babies."

"I ain't never heard of him," Francisco said.

"That's your own fault," Bad Eye Frank said. "People who matter have heard of him. You want to make a name for yourself, you want to be recognized, well, you go around telling folks you shot and killed Rabbie Sinclair. It'll mean something to people who matter. They know who he is and what he's done."

"What's he done?" Francisco asked.

"He's left a trail o' bodies in his past," Bad Eye Frank said. "He's a dangerous man, and a killer."

"He a lawman?" Francisco asked.

"No."

"He an outlaw?"

"Not exactly."

"Who's he killed?" Francisco asked.

Bad Eye Frank had some accounting of Rab Sinclair's gun work, even if not the whole of any of the stories. He knew, though he would not admit it, that the men Rab Sinclair had killed were men who needed killing. And in this land, that was a defense to murder as often as not. The lawmen and others who knew him tended to take Rab Sinclair's judgment on the matter. If he thought a man needed killing, he was probably right.

"Does it matter who he's killed? Does it make a difference to you whether or not you do the job I hired you to do?"

Francisco shrugged his shoulders. "It don't make a difference. Not to me. I'd just like to know what I'm up against."

"You're up against the kind of man who you'd be wiser to take down with a rifle from a secluded location," Bad Eye Frank said. "But like I said, you do it how you want to do it."

Francisco looked over the Sharps rifle again. "I'll take it," he said. "But I ain't planning on using it. I'll make a better name for myself if I get him in stand up fight."

"You've time to think about it," Bad Eye Frank said.

"Where do I find him?"

"He has a place up near Las Vegas."

"I don't know where that is," Francisco said.

"It's just east of the southern tip of the Sangre de Christo Mountains. You get up there, and you can ask anyone and they'll point you to him. But I had a wagon come in from Las Vegas two days ago, and the word up there is that he is not at his spread. The most likely place to find him is in a little village near Fort Craig, right up the Rio Grande. That's where there was the shootout in the hotel, and if he was shot bad, he might have found a place to hole up while he healed."

Bad Eye Frank stood up from his chair and limped over to the window to look out at the empty road in front of his warehouse. There were no freight wagons moving in or out today.

"I've arranged to get you some help. A couple of men I know from that Yankee prison. They're not gunfighters, but they'll ride with you to help you track down Sinclair. You'll take the stagecoach tomorrow to Fort Craig. If he's not there, they'll arrange to get you to Las Vegas. Whatever expenses you have, they'll cover along the way. When it's over, and you've killed Sinclair, they'll bring you back here and I'll pay you. There's one more prize I want, if it can be had."

"What is that?" Francisco asked.

"Rab Sinclair for as long as I've known him has ridden a blue roan with a black face. There aren't many horses that compare with that blue of his, and I want it for my own. But that ain't your concern. These men I'm sending with you, they'll see to the horse once Sinclair is dead."

Francisco Tebone returned to his room. Bad Eye Frank no longer kept him locked to the bed. It was a slow process between the two men to begin to trust each other. Even now, Francisco knew that armed men watched the outside of the house and a man was always inside the house watching the door to the room where Bad Eye Frank kept him.

The two men Frank Cosgrove was sending with him were not to help him but to watch him. Francisco understood this.

But even as Bad Eye Frank made his plans, Francisco Tebone made plans of his own.

He would kill Rab Sinclair because killing this man would get him two things he wanted – prestige among gunfighters and the bounty money Bad Eye Frank offered.

But when he had these things, Francisco Tebone planned to pay back his new employer for each lashing he received. Rab Sinclair was not going to live through the fall, but neither would Bad Eye Frank. Not if Francisco Tebone had anything to say about it.

***

Curly Miller and P.N. Rowe met Bad Eye Frank in the stable where he kept his mules and horses. For the past couple of years Curly and P.N., who everyone called "Pin," had handled business for Bad Eye Frank. They were the men he sent out to sell skimmed merchandise. Because they were valuable to Bad Eye Frank, Curly and Pin never drove stolen freight. They arranged for the transactions, but kept themselves clear of the law. Their current job was much the same, Bad Eye Frank explained to them.

"Let the boy try Rab Sinclair however he wants. If he wants to draw on him or shoot him with a rifle, let him do it how he wants."

"Boss, you really think this boy can kill Rab Sinclair?" Curly Miller asked.

"No," Bad Eye Frank said. "But until I find a real killer, this boy is all I got. And besides, maybe he gets lucky. When he goes to kill Sinclair, make sure you ain't close. I can't afford to lose the two of you. If he kills Sinclair, y'all pay him off and get that blue roan that Sinclair rides. I've always envied that horse."

"If he don't kill Sinclair?" Pin Rowe asked.

"Then come back and let me know where Sinclair is at. By the time you get back here, I'll have hired some new guns to go after him."

Curly Miller picked at his teeth with a dirty fingernail. "Boss, why don't you just leave this alone? You've got a good thing going here. Why let an old grudge put the whole thing in jeopardy?"

"You was in that prison with me at Mare's Island," Bad Eye Frank said. "For nigh on three years we lingered there in them Yankee barracks, held against our will, ordered about and cruelly treated. If you had the name of the man who was responsible for you being there, wouldn't you go find him now?"

"It never was that bad," Curly Miller said.

"You did not leave permanently disfigured," Frank snapped. "If they'd done to you what they done to me, you might say different."

Curly shrugged and looked at Pin Rowe for help in the argument.

"As prisons go, it warn't that bad," Pin acknowledged.

"I don't want him dead because of how good or bad the prison was," Bad Eye Frank said. "I want him dead for tricking me into it."

Curly shrugged, and Pin didn't want to be in the argument anyway.

"How much are we paying him?" Curly asked.

"Two bullets in the back should be plenty," Bad Eye Frank said.

"You want us to kill him?" Pin asked.

"Of course I do," Bad Eye Frank said. "I tore the flesh off that boy's back. You think he's going to let go of a thing like that? He'll take the job now because he needs money and he thinks he can make a name for hisself as a gunfighter if he kills Rab Sinclair. But once he's paid off, he'll put a bullet in me for sure to pay be back for them lashings. So if he gets lucky and kills Rab Sinclair, you shoot him dead."

Neither Curly nor Pin cared one way or another. This wasn't the first time they drew wages from Bad Eye Frank for backshooting a man. One job was little different from another as far as they were concerned, and they had no interest in Francisco Tebone one way or another. They'd been out of town when Bad Eye Frank caught him stealing, and they'd missed the whipping. They felt worse for Lopez and his son because they'd known them. But even so, had they been around both Curly and Pin would have helped to hang both men.

So they climbed aboard the buggy hitched to the horses, and Frank drove them out of the stable and up to the house where Francisco Tebone joined them, and then Bad Eye Frank drove the three of them to town to catch the stagecoach.

When the stagecoach was gone, Bad Eye Frank drove his buggy back home and left it for a couple of workers to turn out the horses and put the buggy up in the stable. Though his mind was on vengeance, hopeful he at last was sending someone who could kill Rab Sinclair, he still had a business to run.

It was true enough what Curly and Pin said about Mare's Island. As far as war prisons went, it wasn't so bad. He'd heard terrible stories about some of the prisons back east.

-10-

Rab Sinclair tipped back his hat so that the rainwater on the brim fell back behind him. He felt it hit his back and slide down off his slicker. He could not see a thing of the trail or the mountains in the distance through the pitch black of night. An occasional burst of lightning was his only way of marking where he was.

But he needed little help. He knew the terrain. This was his range. He did not have many head of cattle, but this was where they grazed, and it was a place he knew pretty well. Somewhere out here, likely sheltered under a grove of trees, Rab had a herd of half-wild horses. Most of them might take a saddle, but it had been so long that he or anyone else had ridden these horses that it was unlikely they'd take it easy. Rab liked having the horses around, though. He liked those mornings when he was riding Cromwell and came up over a ridge and saw them down in a valley, either grazing or running. He was sure it had to do with coming up among the Indians, but Rab Sinclair had a deep fondness for horses. Saddle horses, plow horses, cow horses, stagecoach horses: – It didn't make a difference. Rab was fond of any horse. Many a man had taken a beating from Rab Sinclair for mistreating a horse.

In all the places Rab Sinclair had ever called home – the trails along the prairies and through the mountains – what he knew was that a man needed a good horse. Without a horse, a man could find himself too far from water or food or shelter. To Rab Sinclair, a horse was no different from life itself. A man needed to eat to live, he needed to drink water to live, he needed warmth in the winter to live, and he needed a horse to live.

For Sinclair, having horses grazing his grass was more important to him than the meager herd of cattle that provided him with some small income.

"We'll be to the barn presently, and I'll give you a good rubdown and see that you have some oats," Rab said, patting the neck of the horse he'd stolen outside the hotel near Fort Craig. "You and Cromwell will be good friends, I reckon."

Of all the horses he'd ever seen, Cromwell remained his favorite. Sometimes ornery, mostly patient, Cromwell was a smart horse and loyal. The blue roan didn't take much to other folks riding him, though he was patient with women and children so long as Rab was around. He'd once bucked a horse thief and when the man tried to grab his halter, Cromwell bit the devil out of him. The man's own yelps of agony brought Rab and the local sheriff out of the saloon, and the horse thief was hanged with Cromwell's teeth marks still visible in his forearm.

When at last the trail topped a ridge, Rab could see his cabin off in the distance. Light glowed orange through the grease-paper windows.

Seeing the way, Rab urged the horse forward toward the cabin. The rain came down so loud he was not sure he could make himself heard, so he rode up near the porch and shouted.

"Evangeline Sadler!" Rab called to his own front door. "It's Rab Sinclair outside, and I'm taking my horse to the barn. If you can hear me, I'd be obliged for some coffee when I come in."

He started to ride forward but pulled back on the reins.

"And if it ain't Evangeline Sadler in the cabin, you'd be wise to mosey on before I'm finished with the horse."

Rab dismounted at the barn and opened the big doors wide so that he could lead the horse inside. The bay gelding he'd taken from one of the shooters at the hotel was a good mount. He was an easy going horse on a long ride, but short distances he had some energy in a run. The horse carried no brand, and Rab would be glad to add him to the saddle horses on his spread.

A door leading from the barn out into the corral stood open, and Cromwell and a couple of the other saddle horses were in the barn seeking shelter when Rab led in the bay gelding.

Cromwell came looking for carrots or sugar, and Rab found a carrot in his saddlebag that he gave to the blue roan.

He rubbed down the gelding and gave it oats, and he spent some time scratching Cromwell and talking to his favorite.

But a rumbling in his own belly finally drove him from the barn to the cabin. Up on the front porch he took off his slicker and hung it on a peg. He also beat his hat against a post to knock the rainwater off. At last, with a hand on his holstered revolver, Rab pushed open the door of the cabin.

Evangeline Sadler was standing near the stove pouring coffee into a cup.

"Hello, Rabbie," she said. "I wasn't sure you were coming home."

"I got delayed a bit," Rab said.

"Is it true you were in a shoot 'em up at a hotel down at Fort Craig?"

Rab pushed the door closed behind him. "Word travels."

"It does."

Evangeline Sadler was a long-legged, blonde-haired saloon girl Rab met in Santa Fe sometime back. She'd been raised in a cabin along the American River where her mother cooked meals for the California prospectors and her father panned in the river. Her pa never got much other than dirt and rock from the riverbed, but her mother earned a living with her cooking. Evangeline came to Santa Fe with the man she married. But when he took ill and left her without any money or options, she went to work selling whiskey drinks in a saloon. The life didn't suit her much, and the drunks were sometimes cruel. Rab offered her a chance to get away from working in a saloon and she took it.

They'd talked of getting married, but the custom held no importance for either of them.

Evangeline was good with horses and helped Rab around his spread. They got on well because neither of them had much in the way of expectations of the other. They lived their lives separately in Rab Sinclair's little cabin, and sometimes their separate lives crossed in the way of chores, or a conversation, or supper, or a nighttime embrace. But what Rab Sinclair liked best about Evangeline Sadler was the way she threw in with him no matter what job needed doing. She helped him drive a herd to Fort Craig the previous summer. When they returned, Evangeline helped stack up a store of firewood. She was a good shot with a rifle, and didn't shy away from a hunt even in the dead of winter.

Rab took a seat in a chair and Evangeline brought over two coffee cups.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" she asked.

"I've told you about Frank Cosgrove?"

"That's Bad Eye Frank? The man from the war?"

"That's the one," Rab said. "He sent some men up to Fort Craig to kill me. We shot it out for a minute. That's about all there was to it."

"You were shot?" Evangeline asked.

"In the shoulder," Rab said.

"Can I see it?"

Rab stripped off his shirt and Evangeline pulled a lamp nearer on the table to see his shoulder better. "Somebody doctored you up pretty good."

"I have a friend down there who took care of me."

"It's all healed up," Evangeline said. "Be a new scar, though."

She ran her fingers across the raised, white "X" where Grady had sewn the wound closed after a couple of days of making sure Rab had no infection.

She gently kissed the top of Rab's head.

"I'm glad you're okay," Evangeline said. "I worried some after I heard you was shot."

"Who told you?" Rab asked.

"A couple of men passing through stopped to check on you. They had heard about the shooting, heard you'd been hit. That was all they could tell me. Would have got lonely around here if you never turned up."

Evangeline was sometimes given to periods of sadness, and Rab could tell by the look on her face that she was feeling melancholy. Her mood no doubt exacerbated by the weather.

"Everything is fine," he said. "I'm here now."

"Does it worry you to think that Bad Eye Frank won't give up on you?" Evangeline asked.

Rab took a drink from the coffee. It was good and strong. Hot coffee warmed a man and helped to beat back the tiredness of the trail. If it had a decent taste to it and not too bitter, it was a luxury. But whether it was a luxury or the taste was next to unbearable, coffee was almost as vital to survival as a good horse.

"Bad Eye Frank is beginning to annoy me," Rab admitted. "What is this, the third or fourth time he's sent gunmen after me? I'm growing tired of shooting men I've got nothing against. And, the truth is, I've had a thought of riding down to Mesilla and putting an end to this thing. But that doesn't seem any better than what he's doing. For now, I reckon, I'll deal with what comes when it comes. But it'd be smart of you to make sure you've always got a gun on your hip when you ride the ranch."

"I always do," Evangeline said. "Too many snakes and cats out here to go about unarmed."

"This is a problem like I've never had before," Rab said. "It's not that I have a fear of him. I don't. But it seems wrong to just set out to kill a man."

"Even if he's sending men to kill you?" Evangeline asked.

"You think I should ride after him?" Rab asked.

"I think he needs to stop sending men after you," Evangeline said evenly. "Maybe if you go to him the two of you could talk it out."

Rab laughed at the thought. "I doubt after all this time and what's passed between us that Bad Eye Frank is going to be in a mood for conversation."

"Can you go to the law?"

Rab shrugged and felt the pinch in his left shoulder. "The only way I could get the law in this to deal with Bad Eye Frank is if one of those men who came after me was willing to testify that Frank Cosgrove was the man who paid him. I'd have to put hands on one of those men and convince him to testify."

"I don't much care for the notion of waiting for the next time someone comes along to kill you. But I suppose that's what we're doing anyway. Isn't it?"

"That's what we're doing," Rab agreed.

***

Rab Sinclair slept well that night, and he woke up feeling better than he had in weeks.

He took a hot bath in the tub on the back porch, washing off the trail dust. Evangeline helped with the scrubbing and chastised him for not thoroughly cleaning his wounded shoulder when she found spots of dried blood on his shoulder.

"Old Grady must have poured two gallons of whiskey into that wound," Rab said. "I reckon it was as thoroughly cleaned as it needed to be."

"You're lucky you didn't take a fever," Evangeline said. "It's the sickness from the blood poisoning that kills more men than the bullet hole. Holes can be patched. Even Old Grady can patch a hole. But the blood poisoning is what gets them. You ever seen a man die from blood poisoning?"

"I've seen some men sick with it who died," Rab said.

"It's a sad thing to watch a man who knows he's dying."

Evangeline made up a big breakfast. Steak and eggs, sawmill gravy with sausage and cathead biscuits. Before coming to California, Evangeline's parents had been on an Alabama farm. Her mother was the best Southern cook in California, and so Evangeline learned to make sawmill gravy and cathead biscuits from the best. She had not forgot those lessons, and Rab Sinclair considered himself the fortunate beneficiary.

"Good night of sleep, hot bath, good meal. It makes a man glad to be home," Rab said.

Sinclair had spent most of his life on a trail between one place and another. He'd never much put down roots anywhere. As a boy, he'd traveled from one Indian camp to another with his father. His father claimed to be a Presbyterian missionary, and he did preach to the people. But mostly Preacher Sinclair sought squaws to bed down with. After Rab's mother died, Preacher Sinclair had a taste for Indian women. Rab lost count of the number of wives his father had, and the number of step-mothers he had. But he and his father never stayed more than a season or two in any one camp. Sometimes his father made a chief mad and they were chased out, and sometimes his father just got a feeling to wander.

Even now that he had a place that felt like home to him, Rab found he never could stay put. He always had to be moving. He went hunting for weeks at a time. He rode down to Fort Craig, where he regularly sold cattle. He took jobs as a scout or a guide. No posse out of Las Vegas ever rode after fugitives without a deputy coming to enlist Rab Sinclair as a tracker.

Rab's ranch sat down in a valley surrounded by low but steep hills. The countryside was heavily covered in scrub oak, and a pinyon and juniper forest covered a portion of the property. One border of his ranch was marked by a steep-banked arroyo that now was flowing with water but was usually dry.

After breakfast, Rab saddled Cromwell, and he and Evangeline rode down along the arroyo to make sure no cattle were wandering down into the water. The morning was dry, but low clouds showed that an afternoon shower was coming and would likely be heavy.

The natural barriers of the property kept Rab's herd from mixing with the herds on other nearby ranches, and the half-wild horses stayed around the place as well.

When they found stray cattle near the arroyo, they drove them back toward the rest of the herd. Late in the morning, they caught sight of the horses grazing in a patch of tall grass, and they sat for some time watching the horses.

"I think the thing I like best about a hawss is how free he looks when he goes to run," Rab said. "I'm talking about them mustangs down there, of course. Free as a bird, every one of them. All they care about or worry over is grazing and running and populating."

Evangeline laughed out loud.

"My Lord, Rab Sinclair, you might as well have just described yourself. You ain't nothing but a two-legged mustang."

"Maybe," Rab grinned.

"So if you love the freedom of the mustangs, what is it you love about Cromwell?"

Rab reached up and patted Cromwell on the neck. "This hawss here is just as free as them there," Rab said. "He's just as proud. But we're partners, me and this hawss. He could run with them, but he prefers to run with me."

Evangeline was still smiling as she shook her head. "A saddled hawss don't seem particularly free," she said.

"Maybe not," Rab agreed. "But I've rarely pulled the reins on this one."

It wasn't true, exactly, but Rab liked the idea that he and Cromwell were always going in the same direction.

-11-

Caleb Morgan threw a bucket of scraps out into the muddy yard for the pigs, even as more rain splattered into the muck. The air was still plenty warm, but the rain at night gave Caleb a shiver. He hung the bucket on a peg inside the barn. There he got a pitchfork and started getting hay into the stalls for the horses.

The rain was coming down hard enough that Caleb did not hear the three men ride up to the house. But the men did not announce themselves. Two of the men unsheathed rifles and stepped onto the front porch. A third man, as tall as the other two but leaner, dismounted and walked up to the door. He tried it and it cracked open. The lean man slid the leather loop off the hammer of his Remington six-shooter and then drew the gun out of its holster. He then pulled the door open.

"You done already?" asked an elderly man standing at a stove. The older man had his back to the door.

Francisco Tebone stepped inside the cabin and pulled the door shut.

"I don't know who you think I am, old man, but I ain't him."

Grady turned around with his cooking knife in his hand.

"No, you ain't him," Grady said. "Who are you?"

"My name ain't important to you. The only thing that matters to you right now is whether or not you can tell me what I want to know."

Grady set the knife down on a table. "I don't want you to get nervous with me holding that," he said.

"I ain't nervous," Francisco said. "Where is Rab Sinclair?"

"He ain't here," Grady said.

"I asked around in town," Francisco said. "Finally found someone who could tell me you and him is friends. He came here, didn't he?"

Grady weighed it in his mind. Rab had been gone for a couple of weeks, time enough for him to be home by now. He couldn't see any harm in telling this man the truth.

"He came here," Grady said. "I doctored him some."

"How bad was he shot?" Francisco asked.

"He was shot pretty good," Grady said. "Bad wound."

"But he's all healed up now?" Francisco asked.

"More or less," Grady said.

"Where did he go when he left here?"

"He didn't say where he was going," Grady said. This was a lie. He knew Rab was headed home. But he wasn't going to say it just because he knew it.

"I ain't here to listen to you lie," Francisco said. "I want to know where Rab Sinclair went. You can tell me now without a beating, or I'll give you a beating and then you can tell me."

Out in the barn Caleb Morgan was finishing with the hay. He put the pitchfork back where he found it and looked around to make certain everything was in its place. "Take care of your tools, and your tools will take care of you." Grady had said it to him a thousand times. Always put things back where they belong. It was a habit he could not break.

Caleb picked up the lantern and carried it over to the barn door. He pushed the door open just a touch and stepped out into the night. The lantern is what gave him away. Caleb started toward the house without seeing the two shadows that were men standing on the porch. In the dark and the rain he did not see the horses tied out front, but he also was not looking for them. He did not expect three men to be at his cabin.

Curly Miller and Pin Rowe watched Caleb's lantern as it came down from the barn, and across the field. Both men drew revolvers.

Caleb saw the horses when he almost to the house, but he did not yet see the men. He stopped and lingered a moment, the rain splashing against his hat and slicker. He did not recognize the horses and wondered who would come calling this late in the evening.

He took a step up to the porch, and that's when he saw the two men.

"Come on up here," Pin said. "Don't make to run or we'll shoot you down."

A knot twisted inside Caleb's stomach.

"Who are you?" he asked, and the sound of his own quavering voice shamed him.

"Get on up here," Pin said again.

Curly pulled the door of the cabin open and pushed Caleb inside.

"This one come up out of the barn," he told Francisco.

Francisco looked at Caleb. There was not so much difference in their ages, but the boy's innocence was written all over his face. A tenderfoot with no manliness to him.

"This your grandson, old man?" Francisco asked.

"He is," Grady said.

"Well that makes it easy," Francisco said. "You tell me where Rab Sinclair is, or I'll shoot the boy."

Francisco swung his gun around toward Caleb.

Grady's only intention up to now was to stall this man with the gun who was seeking Rab Sinclair. If he stalled him a little while longer, Grady could decide what to tell him. He already knew he wasn't even going to take a beating. He was just trying to decide if he was going to lie or tell the armed intruder the truth. Grady's first thought was that Rab Sinclair could handle himself, and if he sent this boy off in the direction of Rab's home, it wouldn't bother Rab much. But he also had a thought of sending the boy to Santa Fe and then trying to get word to Rab that someone was looking for him.

But now that Caleb was in it, Grady's caution and good sense abandoned him. Driven by concern for the boy, Grady grabbed up the knife he'd set down and started as fast as he could across the room toward Francisco.

The Remington revolver exploded in fire and smoke as Francisco swung back and shot from the hip. Grady was too close for Francisco to miss. The heavy lead ball smashed into Grady's gut, and the old man halted in his run and grabbed at his stomach with his free hand. Grady looked down at his hand all covered in blood, and without a word he raised up the knife to make another stab at Francisco.

But the young man thumbed back the hammer and gave the trigger another squeeze. This time the gun was up and the aim was true. The lead ball smashed into Old Grady's chest and knocked him off his feet.

***

Old Grady coughed and choked, trying to get a breath. The blood coming from his mouth was frothy.

Caleb sobbed as he bent over the old man. "I don't know what to do," Caleb said to him.

Grady could not answer, but he put a hand on the back of the boy's head, coughing and struggling to say some final words. Grady's last thoughts were of the boy, and whether or not these armed intruders would kill him, too. How he wished he'd been able to warn Caleb off.

"Ain't nothing to do, he's dead," Francisco Tebone said.

He'd walked over closer to where Grady was dying on the floor, and he stood over Caleb and the old man.

"Now if you don't want to join him, you tell me where Rab Sinclair has got to."

Grady stopped struggling, and Caleb knew instinctively that the old man who had taken him in had passed on. He did not hear what Francisco was saying to him, but the barrel of the Remington smashed hard across the back of his head and knocked him to the ground.

Caleb's head swam and he collapsed to the floor.

"Where is Rab Sinclair?" Francisco Tebone asked, and to give weight to his request, he kicked Caleb hard in the ribs.

Caleb said nothing at first, and Francisco drew back the hammer on the Remington with his thumb and fired another shot into Grady's body. Caleb, already sobbing, screamed. "He went home!" Caleb shouted through tears. "He went back to his place up at Las Vegas."

Francisco turned and looked back at Curly and Pin who were still standing, guns drawn, by the door.

"Looks like we'll be getting on the stagecoach," Francisco said.

He looked around the cabin at the burning oil lamps. There were four lamps lit. Francisco walked around the room knocking the oil lamps to the ground. As each glass lamp fell and broke, the oil spread out over the carpets and floorboards, immediately lighting ablaze.

"Let's go," Francisco said when the last of the lamps was smashed and the flames were gaining purchase.

The three men walked out the door and shut it behind them. They mounted and rode off through the continuing downpour.

Caleb struggled to wrestle the old man's body out of the cabin. It seemed wrong to let him burn, but chairs and the table were in the way, and old Grady was not a small man. It shamed him, too, but Caleb could not look at the dead man, and that made it all the harder. And then the flames were spreading fast, fueled by the oil that spilled out of the broken lamps. And the flames licked at everything, and the heat against his arms and cheeks grew immense, and finally Caleb made a dash out the door and out into the rain. The rain did nothing to save the cabin because it burned from the inside out. The roof smoldered even as the windows and open door flashed orange.

The rain mixed with Caleb's tears as it streamed down his face, and the boy stood in the yard and watched the house burn.

When at last the flames chewed up the walls and the roof caved in, the rain broke into the burning cabin and soon the fire died, leaving smoking coals in the hottest places of the cabin.

Caleb went to the barn and laid down on a pile of hay. He stayed there all night, giving into sleep only when exhaustion overcame him.

Shame and loneliness haunted the boy. He played it all out in his mind, wondering what he should have done different. Trying to find the moments when he might have acted bravely and with strength to defend himself and Grady. In his mind, he found those moments, and there were many of them. He replayed the scene on the front porch when he might have struck out against the two strangers who were standing there. He might have punched and kicked and wrestled away a gun. Inside the cabin, when the man who shot Grady first turned his gun on Caleb, that was a moment that Caleb might have ducked the barrel and made a dash toward the man. Or when he turned on Grady, Caleb could have rushed him then.

Caleb found the moments when he might have done a different thing and perhaps saved Old Grady. And finding those moments in his memory – whether they were real or imagined – old increased the shame he felt for not seizing those moments.

At last, though, sleep beat back the torment.

In the morning, the boy gave up chastising himself.

First he saw to the animals on the farm, making certain the horses and mules had hay. He put out hay for the few cows and feed into the yard for the chickens. He guessed that he would be gone for two weeks, but it might take a month, and so he did what he could to be sure the livestock would be fed. He saddled a horse and strapped a pannier on a second horse, filling it with what few provisions he could salvage from the house or could find in the barn. He put a bridle on a third horse that would serve as a second mount and allow him to go as fast as possible, and then Caleb Morgan set out by himself for Las Vegas.

The stage would go first to Santa Fe and then to Las Vegas. There would be a delay in Santa Fe, maybe as much as a day. And the stage leaving for Santa Fe would not set out until later in the day.

If he rode nights and dozed in the saddle, Caleb was sure he could beat the stagecoach to Las Vegas. He could find Rab Sinclair and give him a warning.

So he set out north, swinging wide around Fort Craig so that he would not encounter the men from the night before, and he rode hard along the road that followed the Rio Grande north to Albuquerque.

By switching between the two horses, he stayed in the saddle almost constantly, and when he gained the Abo Pass he cut northeast. Here, at the Abo Pass, he could beat the stagecoach.

It meant riding hard and taking mountain trails, but these were well-worn pathways traveled by salt traders who collected salt from dry lake beds in the area. He rode out past the red-rock ruins of Spanish missionaries who settled here among the Indian tribes two hundred years ago. Though the missions were now deserted and falling apart, there were many small mountain villages where he could get directions when he needed and generous people provided him with small meals that kept him going.

Caleb stopped in three of these little villages and caught a few hours of sleep where he could. When he grew cold in the saddle, he wrapped himself in Old Grady's heavy sheepskin coat that he found in the barn.

He knew that the stagecoach thundered north to Albuquerque and onto Santa Fe with only the briefest of stops, and Caleb understood that he was in a race.

The countryside turned flat after a three days of travel, and the horses made good time. The recent rains, which still came down each day in brief afternoon showers, left plenty of pools or flowing streams in arroyos, so that the horses were never wanting for water. Good grazing was sparse, but available, and when he stopped to sleep or fix himself a small meal, Caleb put the horses on long pickets to give them plenty of range for grazing.

As he rode, he thought about the things Grady had said to him over the years about long travels. He watched for fresh tracks that could be bandits or Apache. He was careful about the fires he made, keeping them small and putting them out quickly. He never closed his eyes near a fire, and he always slept near enough to the horses that if they began blowing a warning it would wake him.

But outside of the small villages, Caleb encountered no one. He saw tracks in some places, and some among the tracks were fresh, but these were mostly tracks that Caleb guessed to be ranch wagons.

When he came back into the hilly country south of Las Vegas, he kept to valley roads and sought out ranchers who might know how to find Rab Sinclair.

At last, six days after Grady's murder and days and nights of hard riding, Caleb found a rancher who could give him directions on how to find Sinclair's small ranch.

Six days was too long, and Caleb worried he was going to be too late.

-12-

The stagecoach limped into Albuquerque several hours late.

A broken pole chain caused the loss of two hours on the road and a nervous, slower journey than usual. The jehu replaced the broken chain with a hemp rope, but that proved a poor substitute and had to be replaced twice more until a new chain could be had at the next relay station. Next they encountered a bridge washed away by the recent rains and flooding, and the jehu had to drive the stagecoach an extra thirty miles out of the way to find a good bridge.

With so many problems, the passengers were irritable, and the coach driver returned their irritability with threats to quit on the spot and let them drive the coach if they were so inclined.

In Albuquerque, a couple of the passengers mutinied and demanded a more polite driver, and the station manager there finally relented to their demands. But the replacement driver had to be roused out of bed, and he refused to drive the coach before having a meal. This resulted in the loss of hours more.

When the coach at last drove into Santa Fe, Francisco Tebone told Curly and Pin that he'd had as much as he could stand of riding a stagecoach. The three men spent the night in a hotel, with Francisco spending half the night in a saloon drinking. That meant that Pin and Curly also spent half the night in the saloon, paying Bad Eye Frank's money for Francisco's drunk.

"I did not know we was going to be settin' watch for a child," Pin mumbled to Curly as they watched Francisco get rowdier by the drink.

"Nope," Curly said. "This ain't what I signed on for."

Francisco gulped mezcal until he wobbled on his stool, and he did not keep quiet about what brought him north.

"Three days, maybe four, and we'll be in Las Vegas," he said. "And I'll kill that man Rab Sinclair. He ain't never seen no gunfighter like me. I don't care how many men he's faced."

Francisco was loud about saying the name, and as Pin watched him, he got the idea that Francisco wanted people to hear him talking.

"You should hush up about what you plan to do," Pin said. "That fellow Sinclair is known through these parts. You could bring on some unwanted attention."

Francisco glared at him.

"I know what attention I want and don't want," he said, and Pin marveled at how clear his speech was. Francisco dropped his voice. "You mind your own business. You pay my way to Las Vegas and watch my back."

And then Francisco turned to look at the saloon. There were only a dozen or so men drinking. At one table there was a half-hearted game of cards. Another table there were five men who looked to all be cowhands who'd come in from a ranch for the day. In a corner of the saloon, three men were standing together talking with beers on the table near them.

Speaking loudly so that everyone in the saloon heard him, Francisco said, "If I want folks to know I'm gunning for Rab Sinclair, that's up to me."

"That's about enough of that," one of the cowpunchers said, standing up from his table and walking toward the bar where Francisco sat. "That's the third or fourth time I've heard you talking about killing Rab Sinclair since I come in here. I rode the line with Rabbie Sinclair two years ago. I spent a winter herding critters with him, and I'll tell you right now you ain't half the man he is. You go gunning for him, and you'll get yourself killed."

The cowpuncher was still coming toward the bar.

"If he's your friend, maybe you ought to do something about it," Francisco said.

Pin and Curly both stood up, and now the other four cowpunchers left at the table rose from their seats. All the attention of the men in the saloon was focused on this drama about to play out.

The cowpuncher backed down. "I'm just warning you," he said. "Rab Sinclair has handled men better than you."

Francisco jumped up from his stool, but when his feet hit the ground, he stood uneasy, swaying a bit.

Pin reached out a hand to steady him.

"We ain't here for no trouble," Pin said.

Francisco shrugged off the hand. "I know what I'm here for. What about it, mister? Is Rab Sinclair your friend?"

"He's my friend," the cowpuncher said, but he hesitated before saying it.

"Well, I say he's a no good son of a bitch. I say Rab Sinclair is a lying scoundrel who turned traitor to the Confederacy. Is he still your friend?"

Bottled courage goes a long way, and the cowpuncher had drank his share.

"He's my friend."

"Well then, that makes you a no good son of a bitch and a scoundrel, too. Don't it?"

The cowpuncher dropped his hand to the grip of his Navy Colt, but that was as far as he went.

Francisco Tebone's hand moved like it was slathered in possum grease. The Remington cleared leather and Francisco pulled the trigger even as he raised the Remington. His left hand snapped back and released the hammer on the Remington, and the cowpuncher was gut shot. The man staggered, his hand just now beginning to lift his Colt. Francisco's free hand smacked down the hammer one more time, his finger still drawing on the trigger, and the gun exploded again. The cowpuncher took the second bullet square in the chest, and it knocked him off his feet and he sprawled across the floor.

One of the men he'd been sitting with drew his gun, but before he could get it raised up, Francisco dropped the hammer and shot the man in the crook of his elbow. A second shot caught him in the shoulder and splintered his collarbone. Like the first man, he staggered backwards with the impact of the bullets. His arm was rendered useless by the two shots, and his revolver fell to the floor.

Francisco waved his Remington at the other men who were with him at the table.

"Anybody else want to try me?" Francisco demanded.

The three remaining cowpunchers raised up their hands to show them empty.

"Oh, come on, now," Francisco said. "I ain't got but two chambers left full, and they's three of you. I'll kill two of you, but the third one can have me. So come on and try me. Let's see who I kill and who kills me."

Francisco pointed the gun directly at one of the men.

"I'll definitely shoot you right in your ugly face. So you other two, you've got an even chance. Reach for them guns."

Curly and Pin both had their guns out now, pointing generally at the table of cowpunchers.

"That one's dead," Curly said, pointing to Francisco's first victim. "That one needs a doctor. If you care anything about him, you'd be wise to take him up and get him to a doctor pronto."

Pin holstered his gun and took Francisco by the arm.

"Put that shooting iron away now," Pin said to Francisco. "Ain't none of these men going to try you. And they's covered anyway."

Now Pin was pushing Francisco toward the door. "We'd best get out of here and now," he said.

Curly kept his gun on the three cowpunchers, and they kept their hands raised up and empty. As he watched them, Curly walked backwards toward the saloon door, following Pin who was dragging Francisco.

Outside the young man let out a celebratory whoop, and he started laughing. "Did you see the way them cowpunchers raised up their hands? They was scared to death. They'll never forget the day they met Francisco Tebone!"

And then he shouted at the front of the saloon, "Francisco Tebone! That's who shot up you cowpunchers!"

"That whole time you was just looking to goad someone into a fight," Curly said angrily.

All the same, Curly was in awe of what he'd witnessed. He'd seen some gunfighters, and some of them damn good, but he'd never seen one as quick as this boy.

"It don't serve me to just ride up to Las Vegas and kill Rab Sinclair," Francisco said. "It serves me if people know I'm going to do it. I want 'em all to know my name and what I done."

***

The three men went back to the hotel, and there they packed their things.

"We won't be taking no stagecoach now," Pin said on the way to the hotel. "The law will be looking for you after tonight."

"Both those men went for their guns first," Francisco said.

"Don't matter," Pin said. "Every man in there will say otherwise in front of a judge."

"We need to find a place to hole up, and quick. Then we need to find some other way to get out of town. I was through here two years ago and saw a shootin' outside the saloon, and a mob formed up quick and hanged the man that done it. That was a fair fight, too, but that don't make the man they hanged any less dead."

The bags, never much emptied anyway with them planning to stay just the one night, were quickly packed, and the three men hurried out of the hotel, seeking out some place to hide before the law came looking for them. They walked some distance outside of town, at least a couple of miles, until they came down into the dark valley of the Rio Grande. The river cut a narrow valley, and the valley there was filled with cottonwoods and undergrowth lining the trail. The place they found to bed down was just up from the bank of the river, an old hay barn of some kind in a low, dark spot out of the way. The building just had a dirt floor. None of the men brought with them any kind of bedroll or blanket, and so they spent the night with their heads on their bags and their backs in the dirt.

Pin and Curly greeted the morning with stiffness, hunger, and irritation.

"The stagecoach ain't an option no more," Pin said. "I don't know, but I'd guess it's too dangerous for us to go back into town to try to get some horses from the livery. And we're going to need food before long. Your gun play last night has put us in a tight fix."

Francisco Tebone just shrugged at Pin.

"I get the feeling the two of you don't much care for me," Francisco said.

"It's just a job for us," Curly said. "We want to get it done with the least amount of trouble."

"I'll be back with grub and horses," Francisco said. "You two just wait here."

He took the Sharps rifle and his Remington six-shooter, cracked open the door to the shed and looked around before stepping out.

As he pushed the door closed behind him, Pin and Curly traded a look. It was their first moment without Francisco around since the shooting in the hotel.

"Let me ask you a question," Curly said.

"What's that?" Pin asked.

"In the saloon last night, did that boy seem drunk to you, the way he wobbled on his stool and running his mouth about shooting Rab Sinclair?"

"He did," Pin said. "He looked right roostered to me."

"But when he jumped up to get in that gunfight, he sobered up before his feet hit the ground," Curly said.

"He sure did," Pin said.

"I got a theory," Curly said. "I think that boy was a mite more sober than he was lettin' on. I think he wanted folks to hear him talking about going after Rab Sinclair."

"I think you're right," Pin said. "Boy is looking to make a name. That's what all that shouting after the shooting was about. He wanted everyone in that saloon to know he's gunning for Rab Sinclair, and he wanted them all to know his name."

"Boy's dangerous," Curly said. "He'll get us killed if we ain't careful."

Pin kicked at the dirt floor of the cabin. "Not much we can do about it, unless we decide to put a lead ball in his back."

"We can always tell Bad Eye Frank that Sinclair got him," Curly said.

"Best play for us is to stay out of the way," Pin said. "Either he gets Sinclair or Sinclair gets him, and when it's over, if the boy wins, we'll shoot him in the back then. And we'll stay well clear of him in the meantime."

Curly grunted disdain. "We'll see. I've got a bad feeling about this kid."

***

Albuquerque was a hub for sheep ranchers, and there were several ranches within a few miles upstream and downstream along the Rio Grande.

Francisco followed the road they'd taken the night before, through the cottonwoods, until it intersected with a cart path that followed along beside the Rio Grande valley. Here above the valley, without the cottonwoods interfering with his view, Francisco got a look at the Sandia Mountains off to the east. The Plaza and the big Catholic mission were somewhere off to the east, also, but well out of sight now.

Francisco followed the trail north. He was not sure what he intended, but he continued walking with a certainty that an opportunity would come along.

Shortly it did, and the opportunity took the shape of an old man on a mule riding along the path toward him.

The man was Mexican in heritage, bent as he rode his mule, with a wide brimmed, straw sombrero shading him from the morning sun.

"Senor!" Francisco called to him, coloring his tone heavily with a Mexican accent.

The old man waved and gave Francisco a skeptical look.

"I am looking for a rancho where I might buy some horses," Francisco said to the old man.

"I do not know," the old man said in good English. "There is a ranch two miles from here, but the man there does not sell horses."

Now the old man's mule was nearly even with Francisco.

"Sell me your mule," Francisco said.

The old man waved a dismissive hand at Francisco.

"She is not for sale," he said.

Now the mule and its rider were an arm's length from Francisco, and the younger man struck quickly. He reached up and grabbed the old man by the arm, and with a violent and sudden jerk, Francisco pulled the old man off the mule's back and dropped him heavily onto the ground. The mule reared and began backing away. Francisco's boot stomped hard on the old man's head, and then the young killer plunged his hunting knife into the man's chest. He withdrew it and stabbed the old man two times more in the chest.

As the old man struggled to get his final breaths, Francisco dragged him off the cart and into thick brush.

"You should have sold me the mule," Francisco said, though he knew he had no money to buy it.

The mule had wandered some way back up the trail, and Francisco had to run to catch it. Once he did, he mounted up into the old man's saddle and rode the mule north.

The path took him past a small vegetable farm where Francisco could see several men out working. He rode on past, deciding that place was too heavily occupied to present a good opportunity.

Another trail cut off to the east, and Francisco now followed that trail, winding up through the hills north of Albuquerque.

He passed by more ranches and farms, three or four of them, and at every one he kept going. For one reason or another none of them seemed right to him. Either he saw men near the houses or too few horses in the corrals.

But eventually he came to what he was looking for – a small cabin on a vegetable farm. Good grazing fields in the distance made Francisco suspect this was probably a shepherd's ranch. He saw in the corral four horses, all appeared fit enough. And there was a woman hanging laundry to a line with two small children playing in the yard near her.

"Senorita!" Francisco called to her, directing the mule down the path that led to the cabin.

The woman started with surprise, having had her back to the trail and not seeing him before. But then she smiled a friendly smile and gave him a wave. She was a young woman, in her thirties. He could not guess the ages of the children because he had no experience with children. But they were young, maybe one was three and the other five. The older one was a girl. The younger one a boy.

"I could use a drink of water," Francisco called.

The woman nodded. "Come on up and help yourself," she said, pointing to the bucket on the porch with the long handle of a dipping gourd sticking out of it. "Water's fresh from the well and cool."

"Obliged," Francisco said.

He rode the mule up to the front of the cabin and dismounted, tying it to a post. He walked up to the porch.

The door of the cabin stood open, and Francisco glanced to be sure the woman was not watching, and he stuck his head in the door. A quick look around told him that there was no man inside the front room.

He drank some of her water while the woman still hung laundry to dry.

"Is your husband home?" Francisco asked. "I am looking for work."

"He's off checking on the stock now, but I can tell you we ain't got money to pay wages."

"You have no hands to help tend your flocks?" Francisco asked, replacing the gourd and stepping down from the front porch.

"It's a small place we got here," the woman said.

The two children were playing a game of chase, running happily through the yard.

"I might work for meals and a place to stay," Francisco said, continuing the lie as he walked closer to the woman. "When will your husband be back?"

"He won't be back for a couple of hours more," she said. "He usually comes in mid-afternoon. He might be willing to –"

But Francisco cut her off.

As he did with the old man, he struck quickly and violently. His fist flew out and back-handed the woman across the face. With his other hand he drew out his knife and jammed the tip of it at her belly without running it into her.

The woman gasped when he struck her, but she stayed calm with the knife tip pointing at her.

"Into the cabin," Francisco said, with a meaningful glance at the children.

"Don't hurt them," the woman said.

"You do what I tell you, and I'll hurt no one."

Inside the cabin, Francisco tore the woman's dress from her. With his knife at her throat, he pushed her down on the table where her family ate the meals she prepared, and he forced himself on her. For fear of her children, she did not fight or scream.

He'd not done such a thing before, but he found that having that ultimate power over her excited him, and he enjoyed it. He enjoyed it in the same way that he enjoyed killing that old, helpless man on the mule. Or shooting the old man who had helped Rab Sinclair. Francisco Tebone grew up weak and helpless, and now he was a man. The weak and the helpless bent to his will now. And the strong, too. Men like Rab Sinclair would fall away before him.

And Bad Eye Frank Cosgrove. Bad Eye Frank was the last man who would ever find Francisco Tebone weak and helpless. The whipping he endured was the last time he would be weak, and the man who gave it to him would suffer for it.

The woman fell away from the table, and on her hands and knees, she wretched and vomited on the floor of the cabin.

Francisco kicked her hard in the stomach, and she sobbed and wretched again.

"When your husband comes back from his sheep and asks who done this to you, you tell him it was Francisco Tebone. And if he feels angry and strong, he should come and find me."

He dragged the woman by her hair to a chair, and there he took a length of rope he'd found on a peg near the door and he tied her to the chair.

"You make a sound while I'm still here, and I'll shoot them two children out there," Francisco said. "Then I'll come back in here and cut your throat in two."

Francisco went out to the yard and told the children to stay outside and play because their mother was ill.

He went to the barn and found only two saddles there. Both were worn but still in decent condition. He roped the three best horses in the corral and saddled two of them with the saddles he found in the barn. He saddled the third with the saddle from the old man's mule, and he turned the mule.

He went back into the house, and without speaking to the woman he checked that she was still firmly tied. Then he rummaged through the hutch, taking some of the food he found there.

As he made to leave, the woman hissed at him. "My husband will kill you for what you done."

"Francisco Tebone," he said. "You send your husband to find me."

Outside, he mounted up on one of the saddled horses and led the other two and started to ride back to Pin and Curly.

"Where are you going with my daddy's horses?" the little girl shouted at him, running along behind.

Francisco gave the horse a kick to speed it along the trail.

-13-

Evangeline made herself small in the swale overlooking the water hole.

She knew every inch of this ranch and knew where to find water on a dry day. But even with water now abundant, the deer returned to the places they knew, and they knew the water holes as well as she did.

After what seemed like days of rain, the morning sun was out and warm. The grass across the ranch was green and full and blew in ripples with the wind. She had laid down a blanket to keep herself dry because the ground in the bottom of the swale was still wet.

Far in the distance she could see a score of critters grazing. Picketed not far away was the buckskin from the corral, a horse Rab had from way back. It was a calm gelding and didn't flinch at a rifle shot, and she usually rode the buckskin when she went hunting. She had also brought with her a mule to tote back the carcass.

Hunting was nothing foreign to Evangeline. She'd hunted deer with her pa back in California, or with the boys from the camp when her father was too busy at the diggings. She could skin and butcher a buck and wrap the meat in the hide to bring it back to the cabin on the back of the mule. Since coming to live at Rab Sinclair's ranch, Evangeline had also shot coyote and wolves and even a mountain lion to protect the livestock.

More than anything, what she treasured here was her independence. She felt good and strong to be in the sunshine in a wide open space and know that in an hour, or maybe two, she'd have dinner at the end of a Sharps carbine.

The horse danced a jig and blew and shook its head, and Evangeline guessed a deer would come along shortly.

But it wasn't a deer.

Not far to the south, Evangeline caught sight of a weary rider coming down off a high hill, one of the natural barriers that kept the cattle from straying off Rab's ranch. With no more than a glance, she could see the man leading two horses was exhausted the way he slumped in his saddle. He might even be dozing, except that the trail coming off the hillside was steep and rocky and required attention.

"Looks like we got us a visitor," she said to the buckskin.

She gave one look out across the valley, out toward the pinyon and juniper stand where she expected the deer to emerge. Seeing no sign of dinner, she let out a sigh of frustration and stood up. She sheathed the Sharps rifle in the scabbard on her saddle and then rolled up the blanket and strapped it to the back of the saddle. Mounting, and leading her mule, she directed the buckskin along a path that would intersect the lone traveler.

"Howdy!" Evangeline called as she neared, and the rider started and looked around. That he'd not seen her was more evidence that he was exhausted in the saddle.

"Morning, ma'am," the rider said, and as she neared him, Evangeline realized the rider was just a boy. Rab's ranch sat well away from any traveled trail, and visitors were a rarity.

"Are you lost?" Evangeline asked.

"I don't think so, ma'am," the boy answered. "My name is Caleb Morgan, and I'm looking for Rab Sinclair."

Evangeline recognized the name. "You and Grady helped Rab when he was shot."

"Grady did, yes ma'am. That's why I've come to see him."

"Did you come all this way from Fort Craig?"

"I did."

"You look like you could use a bite to eat and a bed," Evangeline said. "Why don't I take you down to the cabin, and let's get you fed and watered."

"Ma'am, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to see Mr. Sinclair."

The pretty woman smiled at him. "We'll find Rabbie up near the cabin. You come with me. We'll get some food in you, and you can talk to him there."

The rode up to the barn and Evangeline told Caleb to take care of his horses, and she rode up to where she knew Rab was snaking felled trees down to the cabin where he intended to lay up some firewood ahead of winter.

Rab had an enormous pinyon pine chained up to two mules and he was on foot and leading the mules back toward the cabin.

"This'll make for good firewood late in the winter or next year," Rab said. "It'll need time to season, but this tree alone should get us through half a winter."

"You'll have to hurry it up," Evangeline told him. "You have a visitor."

"A visitor?"

"That boy Old Grady takes care of just rode onto the ranch. I left him with his horses at the barn. It looks like he's come the whole way without stopping. Poor boy can hardly stand on his feet he's so tired."

Rab frowned, and he was immediately concerned what the visit might portend. The entire time Grady cared for him, he worried that his presence in Grady's cabin might put the old man and the boy in jeopardy.

"You best finish up with these mules," Rab said. "Can you handle it?"

Evangeline frowned. "I expect I can handle it as well as you. But if I'm dragging this pinyon back to the cabin, ain't nobody out shooting meat for supper."

"We'll eat potatoes if we have to," Rab said. "I need to go see about the boy."

He took the buckskin back to the cabin. He was less than a mile away. Even so, when he got to the barn he found Caleb's three horses turned out and the boy asleep on a pile of hay.

"Morning, son," Rab said, putting a hand on Caleb's shoulder and giving him a slight shake.

"Mr. Rab," Caleb said. "They killed Grady."

Rab felt a tightening in his chest. "Come into the cabin and tell me about it."

***

Caleb Morgan slept up in the loft of the cabin.

Rab went to work on the pinyon with his ax.

Evangeline waited around there by the tree to see if Rab had anything to say. She'd caught the tail-end of Caleb's story and his warning that the three men were coming to the ranch. When Rab kept his thoughts to himself, Evangeline eventually decided to go and fetch the Sharp's rifle and go back out in search of supper.

But tracking deer wasn't much on her mind. Instead, she thought about Rab and how he would respond.

"He's hard to rile," she told the buckskin, though the horse had known him much longer. "He's as patient a man as you'll meet. But when he's pushed into a corner, he comes on like a wounded bear. I reckon right about now old Rabbie Sinclair is feeling like he's been pushed into a corner."

Rab had spoken to her before of going out in search of Bad Eye Frank to end this feud.

"It was one thing when all the killings were on one side of the ledger," Evangeline said to the horse. "When Bad Eye Frank sent killers to hunt Rab and those men ended up dead. But now there's a killing on this side of the ledger, and I don't reckon that's a thing he'll stand for. A friend getting killed on his account is too much."

At a swollen stream Evangeline found what she was hunting. A decent sized doe was picking her way along the stream bank. The doe was a far shot when she first spotted it, but Evangeline dismounted and tied the buckskin and mule to a couple of branches, and then she crept up through the pines to work her way around closer to the doe. Silent as she could, her moccasins barely making a sound as they lighted on the thick cushion of pine straw, Evangeline moved just inside the tree line. The doe was unaware and unconcerned. She had no fawns, and Evangeline wondered if the babies had fallen victim to wolves.

When she found the spot she wanted, Evangeline stood up against a pine and lifted up the big Sharps rifle. She peered down the barrel, and when she was sure of her shot, she cocked the hammer back.

The doe heard the unnatural noise and perked its ears but did not run.

Evangeline let go a shot that struck the deer in the chest. The doe made a short run and then fell by the stream. Evangeline was relieved to see the animal go down on dry land. She did not relish the thought of having to go into the water after a wounded or killed animal.

She gathered up her horse and mule and took them down to the kill, and after dragging the deer away from the stream she set about to skin it and cut the meat away.

She was glad for the boy that they would have a decent meal for supper.

By now the sun was high overhead and starting to drop a touch toward the west, so it was mid-afternoon. Evangeline wondered if Rab had come to a decision.

"If it was me, I would go and settle this thing," she told the buckskin. "I reckon that's what Rabbie will do, too."

They ate fried venison steak, potatoes, corn, and tomatoes on a table outside of the cabin.

Caleb Morgan looked refreshed after having slept. Rab Sinclair was lost in his own thoughts and did not say much during the meal. When they'd finished eating, Rab lit his pipe and puffed on it thoughtfully.

"Evangeline, I want you to take Caleb into town and get rooms at the hotel," Rab said. "Caleb says they's three men looking to kill me who took the stage from Fort Craig. That means they could be here any time. They might even be in town already. It won't take them long to find someone who will tell them how to find this place."

"If it's all the same to you, Mr. Rab, I'd rather stay here and see if I can't be of some help to you," Caleb said. "I've had a rough time scrubbing some thoughts from my mind, and helping you make a stand here might be of some help to me."

Evangeline grinned.

"I'm of a mind to stay here myself," she said.

"It won't help me none when the bullets start to sing if I'm worrying about the two of you," Rab said. "I'm better dealing with this on my own. At first light, the two of you ride on into town, and I'll come to fetch you from the hotel when this is over. Be best, too, if you laid low while you're there. These men have seen Caleb and know him. They see him in Las Vegas they won't have to think long about why he's here, and they might look to drag him back into it. So you go armed and don't make a spectacle of yourselves."

"Why Rabbie Sinclair, you know I can't go to town without making a spectacle," Evangeline said. "Caleb and I both will be safer here with you than we would be in town."

Rab puffed his pipe and then shook his head. "No. I've thought it through, and this is final. Y'all go to town. Hole up there. Let me handle this the way I know to."

Evangeline started to argue, but before her lips formed a word, Rab gave her a stern look and shook his head.

"I'm grateful to you both, sincerely I am," he said. "I know you want to help. And Caleb, I know you've got a burning inside of you to stay here and face this. But if the two of you are here, I'll be more worried about you than I am about settling this with these three men. It's best if I face this alone."

-14-

Jep Henson left his wagon at the warehouse and went to seek out his boss. He found Frank Cosgrove at the cantina in the plaza sipping mezcal.

"Got news from Albuquerque," Jep said. He took off his hat and twisted it in his hands.

"What's the news?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"It ain't good, boss," Jep said, nervous as hell. Nobody liked handing Bad Eye Frank bad news.

"Did I ask you to spoon feed me? What's the news?"

Jep pulled out a chair across the table from Bad Eye Frank. He liked having the table between them.

"Story in town is that Curly and Pin was there with that boy in the saloon. The stage had some troubles, and they was staying at the hotel. I guess that boy started drinking and flapping his jaws. Ain't many folks left in Albuquerque that don't know some kid named Francisco Tebone is on his way to kill Rab Sinclair. He showed his ass, boss, and everyone in town has heard about it. Worst part is, he got in a gunfight with some cowpunchers and shot and killed one of 'em."

"Shot and killed a cowpuncher?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"That's right. Right in the saloon, in front of witnesses. Then shouted out his name so everyone knew who done it."

Bad Eye Frank leaned back in his chair and looked hard at Jep Henson, and Jep squared his shoulders and got ready for Frank Cosgrove to let loose a tirade at him.

But Frank Cosgrove just started to laugh, a big belly laugh that left tears coming from his eyes.

"I'll be damned," Cosgrove howled. "Boy's announced his intentions."

Jep squinted hard. "You ain't mad?"

"Course I ain't mad," Frank said. "Boy's got spirit. I kind of wish now I'd kept him around to do work for me instead of sending him up there to let Rab Sinclair kill him."

Jep shrugged. "Maybe he'll get lucky and beat Sinclair on the draw."

"If he's smart, he won't even try. I gave him a Sharps rifle and told him to shoot Sinclair from distance. But even if he does get lucky, I told Pin and Curly to backshoot him."

"How come?" Jep asked.

"I whipped the hide off that boy," Bad Eye Frank said. "I know what it's like to carry a hatred for a man. If I don't make sure Francisco Tebone goes to a grave, you can bet a week's wages he'll make sure that I do."

"Maybe you broke him," Jep said. "Like a bad bronc, you whipped all the kick out of him."

Bad Eye Frank shook his head. "Men ain't like broncs. You can't break a man. Even if you beat him so bad every single day of his life that he always does what he's told, somewhere in his mind he's always looking for an opportunity to stab you in the back and cut your throat. That's what the whole of the Old Testament is about. Them Jews was beat over and over and over again, but they warn't never broke. You read your Old Testament, Jep, and you'll figure out in a hurry that if you've made an enemy out of a man the best thing you can do is kill him before he kills you."

"I reckon," Jep said. He'd had some churching, forced upon him first by his mother and then his wife. He could not read the Good Book himself, but he'd never once heard a preacher say that the message of the Old Testament was to strike first and kill your enemies.

Bad Eye Frank trusted Jep Henson pretty well. Jep had driven wagons for him almost since he started his freighting business. But he did not mind sharing his philosophies with the men who drew wages from him. It allowed them to know he was not a man to be trifled with. If his drivers knew that he'd kill a man for stealing from him – the way he hanged the Lopez father and son – then they were less likely to steal. If they knew that Frank Cosgrove was the kind of man who killed his enemies, then they were less likely to become enemies. And if they went out speaking about his philosophies, then the word would spread among others: Do not make yourself an enemy of Frank Cosgrove.

"You're going back to Albuquerque tomorrow?" Bad Eye Frank asked, though he made the itineraries for the drivers and he knew as well as Jep where he was next bound, and when.

"Yes, sir," Jep said.

"Keep your ear to the ground," Frank said. "I want to know everything you can learn. I've not had any word from Pin or Curly – not that I'd expect any – but I'd like to hear some news. If you've got anything good, another saloon shootout, bring it back to me."

"All right, boss."

Four men walked into the cantina. They were strangers, unknown in Mesilla's plaza. They were covered in trail dust, just up from El Paso del Norte in Mexico. Three of the four men had the look of Mexicans, mustachios and ponchos and sombreros. The fourth man was white, and he wore a black coat and black hat with a duster over the coat. Even so, his britches and coat, but especially the hat, were all covered with a gray film of dust. The men all wore six-shooters on their hips and carried repeating rifles. A couple of the Mexicans had Spencer rifles. One carried a Henry rifle with its distinctive brass receiver. The white man also carried a Henry.

Frank smiled. "Go on now, Jep. I need to talk to these men."

Bad Eye Frank stood up from his table and limped a few steps forward.

"I reckon you're Don Conchos," Bad Eye Frank said in greeting.

"You Mr. Cosgrove?" Don Conchos asked.

"I am. Come and have a seat."

Bad Eye Frank made his way back to his seat, and he called to the girl serving drinks. "Elena, come and bring these men a round of mezcal."

Donald Anderson was a wanted man in Texas. While most of the other young men of that state were off fighting a war in Virginia, Donald Anderson was rustling cattle. When the men started to return and cattle were harder to come by, he turned to robbing stagecoaches. It did not take long before Don Anderson had turned to murder, and vigilantes became a concern.

That's when he fled south of the border to the Conchos River and became known as Don Conchos. Now he was a hired gun, traveling with some bad men from Mexico, and taking wages for murder.

The men sat around the table with Frank Cosgrove, but the Mexicans never spoke a word. All the conversation was between Don Conchos and Bad Eye Frank.

"You ever hear the name Rab Sinclair?" Frank asked.

"Never have," Don Conchos said.

"He's a hard man to kill. I've hired some to try, but none of them have been successful."

"You want for us to go and kill him?" Don Conchos asked.

"Maybe," Cosgrove said. "I've hired a man to kill him, but I doubt he'll be successful. But what I expect is that when this man is unsuccessful, Sinclair is going to come looking for me."

"So you want to hire us to protect you?"

"That's it," Cosgrove said.

"We don't usually hire on for long-term," Don Conchos said. "We like to do a job and be done with it."

Bad Eye Frank grinned at him. "Name a price that gets you stay on for a couple of months. Just long enough for me to be sure that he ain't going to show up here gunning for me."

-15-

A warm wind that smelled of rain pushed its way through the Las Vegas plaza, rattling the leaves in the cotton trees and blowing Evangeline's hair into her face. She walked together with Caleb Morgan through the plaza, heading back toward the hotel after having their supper at a cantina off the plaza.

The hotel was small and seldom had many guests. Often, it had none.

It had been two days since they had come to stay in the town, and they'd had no word yet from Rab. He told them he would only send for them when it was over.

"It smells like rain," Evangeline said. She found it awkward to talk to the boy. Caleb still grieved for Grady. The old man's violent death haunted him, and he could not shake the feeling that he should have done something. But he did not talk about it. He did not talk about much of anything. Evangeline did not have much in the way of a mother's instinct, either. She could find no words of comfort to give him. She suspected, too, that the old man's death had opened afresh deeper wounds to the boy's spirit. Evangeline's own pa was never much, but at least he wasn't killed when she was young. And her ma, a good woman saddled with a bad man, left her with an example. Evangeline made the decision what the example was.

She now turned her face into the wind so that it blew her hair back behind her. "A hot wind is better than no wind at all."

Caleb muttered an agreement. "It's nice in the shade."

"It is nice in the shade," she agreed. "Let's go sit in the gazebo. We'll be in the shade and we can enjoy the breeze, and if we get caught in the rain, we can sit there all night."

Caleb liked this woman who seemed to be so easy and free with the way she spoke. She was like Rab Sinclair in that way. They both had an easy way of talking, an honest and straightforward way.

On the gazebo in the center of the plaza, Caleb leaned his head back against the timber rail.

"I don't know what I'm going to do next," Caleb said.

Evangeline nodded and pursed her lips. Here again, she had no easy answers for him.

"I reckon I'll go on back to Grady's and try to rebuild. Work the farm on my own."

"Maybe talk to Rabbie," Evangeline said. "He was about your age when he was left on his own.

Caleb started to speak, but stopped himself and sat up. He was looking to the south where three riders had just come into the plaza.

"What is it?" Evangeline asked, looking from Caleb to the riders.

"That's them," he said. "The man who killed Grady and said he was coming here for Mr. Sinclair. That's the three of them there."

Days of wishing he'd made some action against these men began to boil inside of Caleb Morgan. In the fading light of evening, Evangeline saw the boy's face begin to turn red. He started to stand up from the bench, but Evangeline put out a hand and took him by the wrist. She squeezed with just a little bit of pressure, and in a calm voice she said, "Do not stand up, Caleb. You're not even wearing a gun."

"That one in the black coat, he's the one who killed Grady."

The men were mounted, riding along the main thoroughfare into the plaza. The reined in their horses and spoke to someone who then pointed down the road toward the hotel.

Caleb had stayed in his seat.

"Don't stare at them," Evangeline warned him. "Don't even look in their direction. If they see you, they'll know you rode ahead of them, and they'll know Rab is waiting for them. It will be more dangerous for him if those men see you."

Caleb turned his head and the brim of his hat and the trees in the plaza and the distance from the gazebo to the road gave Evangeline a confidence that the men would not see them.

"They're riding to the hotel," she said, watching the men. "We cannot go back to our rooms if they are in there."

"What are we going to do?" Caleb asked.

"We'll wait here and we'll watch."

The men hitched their horses outside the hotel and went inside.

"They'll have to come out to take their horses to the livery. When they do, we'll go to our rooms. You'll have to stay in your room unless I come to get you, but they do not know me. It won't matter if they see me in the hall or in the lobby."

The hotel was no grand building. Las Vegas was a small village, still caught between Old Mexico and the gringos who now controlled the territory. In the coming years, when the railroad came to town, the city would grow overnight. But now the hotel was a small affair, a single-story, adobe building shaped like a horseshoe with a lobby and small restaurant in the front and rooms down two long wings that extended behind the lobby.

Evangeline and Caleb had rooms next to each other at the front of one of those long wings.

Already Evangeline was considering how she might help Rab. So long as those men did not see Caleb, it was a lucky thing that Rab had sent her into town.

After several minutes, the men came out of the hotel and began looking down in the direction of the livery stable. Evangeline held her breath as they looked across the plaza. They were talking among themselves and showed no obvious sign that they'd seen Caleb. It was darker now even than when they'd first arrived, and Caleb was still purposefully turned.

They stood a few moments in front of the hotel at the hitching post where their horses were tied, and then at last all three of them mounted their horses and rode directly to the livery.

"Now, let's go," Evangeline said as soon as they disappeared into the stable at the far end of the plaza.

They did not run, but they hurried to walk back to the hotel.

Most folks in town knew Rab, and they knew that Evangeline lived out on his ranch with him. Some wondered if Rab had married this girl he'd brought back from Santa Fe, some knew he had not, and most just did not care. The hotel clerk was among those in town who knew Rab, at least by name.

"Go on to your room, Caleb," Evangeline said. "I'll be there presently."

She rang the bell on the counter and clerk came out of his office where he'd been reading a newspaper. He was a balding man with rectangular spectacles and a pleasant smile.

"Ma'am," he said. "Can I help you?"

"Those three men who were just in here. Did they get a room?" Evangeline asked.

"Three rooms," the clerk said. "They're farther down the hall from you and the boy."

"Did they ask you anything?"

"Just asked for their rooms," the clerk said.

"If they ask you about Rabbie Sinclair, I would consider it a favor it you would not tell them that I know Rab or mention in any way that the boy and I are staying in the hotel," Evangeline said.

The clerk grinned at her. He appreciated being brought into her confidence, and that worried Evangeline. Too often, the people who took pleasure in knowing a secret also took pleasure in sharing it. "Yes, ma'am. The affairs of my guests are their own affairs, and I don't go talking about them. But I'll especially not go talking about you."

"Thank you," she said, returning his grin with a skeptical smile.

All the same, the clerk knew Rab Sinclair, and that meant he would likely keep the secret. Most men who knew him counted themselves among Rab's friends.

After speaking to the clerk, Evangeline went to talk with Caleb.

Her concern with Caleb was that he might try something. He burned with a hatred for the man who killed Grady, and Evangeline could empathize with that. But she knew, even if Caleb did not, that these were dangerous men who would easily kill Caleb.

"You must promise me that you will not do anything foolish," she told the boy. "You cannot leave this room. You cannot go looking for these men, or go somewhere that you might be seen by these men."

"I won't," Caleb said.

"I suspect that in the morning they will go out to find Rabbie and try to kill him. I want to try to follow them. I will come for you, and you can ride with me, but you must not do anything that might spoil this. We've been given an opportunity here."

"What good is it to follow them?" Caleb asked.

"We can even out the odds some," Evangeline said. "I'm a pretty good shot with my Sharps. Like as not, they'll try to ambush Rab. They won't want to try to take him in a stand-up fight. If we do this right, one shot might mean Rab only has to face two of them, and it might give him the warning he needs."

***

Rab Sinclair was awake before dawn.

Since he'd sent Evangeline and Caleb into town, he'd left the cabin and was sleeping on a high hill overlooking his spread. The hill was covered in low mesquite and scrub oak, giving him plenty of cover where he could bed down and not be seen at night.

Cromwell was picketed not far from where Rab slept. He trusted the blue roan to alert to trouble. Cromwell stood guard while Rab slept. Whether a threat came in the form of an animal or a man, the roan would blow and dance and wake Rab. He'd done it dozens of times on one trail or another, and Rab knew he could rely on the roan's senses even more than he could on his own.

From what Caleb had said, the men coming for him had gone straight into Grady's cabin. They hadn't scouted. They didn't know Caleb was out in the barn. They just went right on in. Rab assumed they would be more careful coming for him, but they might not. They might try to catch him asleep. So Rab slept outside the cabin where there was little chance these men would find him.

Three nights now, sleeping on ground, and they had all been quiet. Not even a coyote had disturbed Rab's sleep.

From his bedroll he watched the stars overhead until the sky started to turn a shade blue with the coming morning.

In the hollow of a rock formation, Rab built a small fire that could not be seen from down below. He made coffee and heated up some bacon and a couple of biscuits. He cooked the bacon first and heated the biscuits in the bacon grease. He'd learned that a man could eat pretty well on any trail so long as he cooked anything he had in bacon grease. It added a flavor that competed with anything they were cooking in a fancy Chicago restaurant.

As the blue light of early dawn turned to yellow, Rab knocked down his fire so that anyone riding onto the ranch would not see smoke.

And then he sat and waited.

There was too much work to be done to let the daylight get away from him completely.

Winter would be on before too long, and there never seemed to be enough firewood. The cattle had to be seen to. The arroyos and streams were still swollen, and Rab had to make certain none had wandered into the water. He needed to tend to the fire at the smokehouse where he was smoking meat for the winter.

But he would sit here a while longer and watch for signs of trouble. He guessed trouble would come in the morning or at dusk and that the daylight hours were free for work.

Rab liked this spot for camping. It had a smooth, sandy floor where he could bed down. The rock overhand protected from cold winds in the winter and provided shade in the summer afternoons. It was private here, with the mesquite and scrub oak that dotted the hill, and beyond the juniper and pinyon pines that stood big and tall.

Rab wondered how many times over the centuries this little pocket of land served as a campsite for lonesome and wandering Indians who needed a tight place to hide out. The ample water around the place, and plenty of forage for game, made this spot ideal for a man who needed a place to lay low. Rab did not believe he was the first man who had come upon it.

When the morning sun was getting high in the sky and there'd been no sign of trouble, Rab stood up and put blanket and saddle on Cromwell. The rest of his gear he left in place, planning to come back and camp here again.

A deep draw led away from the campsite down the back side of the big hill, and Rab rode Cromwell down through that draw. If there was someone out there watching, he did not want to emerge in the open in a place that might give away his hiding spot.

The draw brought him out well away from the cabin, down through a stand of pines, and he and Cromwell picked their way slowly among the trees. When he emerged from the trees he came to a wide plain that sat down in the bottom of the canyon where he'd staked his ranch, and here he could see most all of his cattle. He rode a perimeter out around them, pushing back any strays that were wandering up toward the hills or too near the swollen streams. But most of the steers were grouped down near a full pond where they could cool off in the sun.

He swung back north toward the cabin, riding easy and keeping his eyes open as he traversed the ranch.

Cromwell deserved oats in his feedbag for standing guard all night, and Rab Sinclair was riding toward the barn, in sight of the cabin, the smokehouse, and the barn, when the crack of a rifle exploded from among the pines up on the hill to his west. The shot was loud, coming from a big rifle, and it echoed out across the valley.

Cromwell danced for a moment, spinning a bit, but he did not rear or run. All the same, Rab stood in the stirrups, sliding his Hawken rifle from the scabbard and his possibles bag from around the saddle horn, and he leapt from the horse's back.

Cromwell now ran toward the barn, blowing and shaking his head as he went.

The blue roan was a big target, and Rab Sinclair had more care for the horse's safety than he had for his own. He wanted the horse safe and away, and that's why he jumped from the saddle.

Neither Cromwell nor Rab had been struck by a bullet.

Now, with the shot still echoing around the valley ranch, Rab darted from the trail to a cluster of scrub oaks, and he slid feet first under the cover of the bushes.

He'd been toting spare ammunition and powder in his possibles bag just in case he found himself in a shooting match. Now, though, he wished he'd had the presence of mind to grab his canteen along with the bag.

He was already thirsty, and there was no telling how long this could last.

It had been seconds since the shot fired and Rab was already dismounted and hiding among the brush.

He pushed some branches away and looked across the high ridge to his west. The shot had come from up there, among the juniper and pinyons. Any cloud of smoke from the shot had dissipated, so there was no clue there to point him to the shooter.

He'd never seen a shot land. No puff of dust, no broken branch, no scuff on a rock.

Rab stayed as still as he could. He did not want to make a movement that would give an assassin a target.

A minute passed. And then another.

Now another shot exploded from the ridge, and this time Rab caught sight of the white smoke as it was caught by the wind and spread and disappeared.

The shot was fired from somewhere just inside the tree line, but whoever fired it was shooting from behind the cover of the trees, and Rab could not see them.

But there was something else odd about it.

He could not see where the shooter could possibly have a good angle on him. And again, he heard no bullet rip through the scrub oaks. It made no sense for the shooter to make a shot that wasn't even close enough to rip up the foliage near him.

The shooter was well outside of any pistol range. Rab had been riding with the Hawken loaded, something he only did when he thought there might be immediate danger. But if he tried to life that big barrel out of the undergrowth, he'd surely give away his position.

Under other conditions, he might fire off a round into the pines just to try to spook his assailant, but now he worried that he would only make himself a better target.

The scrub oak and mesquite offered almost no protection from a lead bullet fired at him. The best it did was prevent him from being an open target.

So he decided to just wait.

But then a voice from the ridge called out, and Rab recognized it immediately.

"Rabbie Sinclair! You have three men among the bald rocks over near the cabin. They've set up an ambush for you. I've got them pinned down, but neither of my shots told."

So it was Evangeline doing the shooting from among the pines up on the ridge.

Rab shifted his attention now, looking up to the rocky ledges behind the cabin. Those rocks were not terribly far from where Rab had been camping the past three nights. There among the shadows, he could see movement.

Whoever was up there was out of easy rifle shot, even for the Sharps rifle. All the same, Rab drew back the hammer on the Hawken rifle.

Under the brush, he spun around and sat cross-legged, and he slid the barrel of the rifle up through the brush.

He used a strong branch to level the rifle, just steadying it with his left hand. He aimed the rifle in an arc, guessing at the distance and the wind. Those men were hidden in rocks maybe three hundred yards away, maybe a little farther. He took a breath and then let it out slowly, squeezing the trigger.

The Hawken rifle spit smoke and fire, and Rab had to wait for the wind to catch the smoke. He thought he could see rock and sand jump right in the place where he'd seen movement among the rocks.

A moment after Rab's shot, he heard the Sharps rifle up among the pines. Evangeline took a shot, and again Rab could see rock and sand kick up near where he'd seen the movement.

Now the movement was easy to see. Three figures emerged from behind the rocks, scrambling out of their hiding place.

Quickly Rab tried to reload the Hawken, putting a pinch more powder in this time.

He watched as the three men scattered and ran. Behind the rocks they had horses, and Rab caught sight of them riding off to the west. He knew the path they were on would take them out to the trail leading back to Las Vegas.

He pushed his way out of the brush.

Evangeline and Caleb were now walking down out of the pines, leading their horses along the steep slope.

"I guess you have a story for me," Rab said.

***

Rab Sinclair took the reins of the buckskin from Evangeline.

"Round up Cromwell and see that he gets some oats. He's been standing guard all night."

"I'll do it," Evangeline said.

Just after sun up, Evangeline heard the three men walking the hall outside her room at the hotel. She followed them out to the lobby and watched them from a window as they walked down to the livery stable. A few minutes later, they rode off to the east, toward Sinclair's ranch.

She hurried to get Caleb, and together they went to the livery and retrieved their own horses. They rode hard out to the east, and soon caught sight of Francisco Tebone, Pin, and Curly. Then they hung back, staying close enough to keep track of where the three men were going, but never so close that one of the riders ahead might turn and notice them.

The men found the trail to Rab's ranch, and then they moved slower, riding out carefully toward the ranch.

Evangeline knew every inch of the ranch, probably better even than Rab himself. She led Caleb along a path through the pine forest on the high eastern ridge. From there, they watched as the three men approached the cabin, guns drawn.

"Rab won't be in that cabin," Evangeline told Caleb. "If I thought he was, I'd fire off a warning shot. But he's not in there waiting for them."

The men circled the cabin, looked around the barn, and finally they rode their horses up to the rocky ridge behind but not far from the cabin. They hid their horses and then crouched in among the rocks, and there they waited.

Evangeline waited, too.

She might have gotten closer where she would have a better shot. But she did not want to make any movement that might alert the men to her presence.

And then when she saw Rab riding toward the cabin, she let loose a shot at the three men. She knew she would not hit any of them, or if she did then it would have been nothing more than a chance shot. But she would also keep Rab from riding within shot of their rifles.

"Are you going to chase them?" Caleb asked.

"I am," Rab said.

"I'm coming with you."

Caleb expected Rab to decline his offer, and he was ready to make an argument.

"All right," Rab said. "Stay with me and do what I tell you to do."

Rab swung himself into the saddle on the buckskin and hurried the horse toward the cabin and up the trail where the men had been. He dismounted and quickly checked the rocks, finding the scuff marks where his and Evangeline's shots had struck. But he did not see what he hoped to find. He hopes there would be blood, some evidence that one or more of those men were injured.

Caleb sat his horse, holding the reins of the buckskin, and watching Rab.

"What are you looking for?" the boy asked.

Rab gave up the search and hurried back to the saddle. Already the three men had been gone several minutes. Rab wasn't worried whether or not he could track them, but the longer lead they had, the easier it would be for them to set up an ambush. If he could push them hard, and fast, he could keep them from dry gulching him.

Though it had been a couple of days since the last heavy rain, the ground was still soft enough that the tracks were easy to find in places. The three men rode out past a stand of pines, circling wide of the trees so they could go at a run. Rab found a spot where they reined in and tried to decide which way to go – the tracks clearly showed where all three horses had circled and shifted their feet before starting back out again.

They followed a deer path down through a flat space full of low mesquite trees, and then they came out to the road.

"They're riding back toward Las Vegas," Rab said. "Follow me."

Now he cut out across a high hill topped with a pine forest. There was a trail that split the trees, but it wasn't one that any foreigner would easily find. They topped the hill and rode down along the opposite side, and when they came out the land ahead was all flat and open grassland, ideal for grazing cattle and sorry for making an escape.

Rab pointed to a spot not quite half a mile in front of them.

"The road circles that hill we just went up and over," he said. "They'll come out around that hill in just a moment, right down along there."

Caleb sat his horse, but Rab dismounted. He drew the Hawken rifle out of the scabbard. The gun fit the scabbard awkwardly, it was the scabbard for Evangeline's Sharps rifle. But Evangeline kept her rifle when Rab took the horse, and he made use of the scabbard. Quickly, Rab loaded the Hawken rifle. He set the back trigger and kept his finger away from the front trigger. A touch would be all it took to fire the gun.

"There they are," Caleb said. "Can you hit them from this far?"

"Never," Rab said. "But this gun sounds like thunder, even at a distance, and I can scare hell out of 'em."

Rab stepped away from the horses and took an aim at the riders off in the distance. He touched the trigger and the gun kicked and a cloud of white smoke drifted in the breeze.

The three riders turned and looked back, and then spurred their horses on faster.

"Didn't even come close to them," Rab said.

He pushed the Hawken back into the scabbard and swung himself up onto the buckskin.

The three riders kept to the roads, but the cut south away from Las Vegas rather than going into the town.

Rab Sinclair and Caleb followed them, sometimes catching sight of them in the distance and sometimes only marking their trail by fresh tracks. By late afternoon, Rab was wondering if they intended to run all the way to Mesilla.

But when they came upon an old Mexican farmer driving a wagon full of fresh vegetables toward Las Vegas, they pulled up.

"You see three men come through here on horseback?" Rab asked him.

"Si," he said in his heavy accent. "I talked to them, a mile maybe two mile back. Their horses are very tired, no?"

"I reckon they are," Rab said. "They still riding south?"

"No, senor. They ask me, how do they get back to Las Vegas. I say to them, 'Turn around. You have missed it.' But they say they want another trail. I send them up the tail to the west, and up to the Puerto del Norte. I tell them to go through there and then into town."

"Gracias," Rab said.

He wheeled the buckskin and started back up the road they'd just come down.

"Are we going back?" Caleb asked.

"The trail the farmer sent them along cuts to the west of those high hills along there. There are two passes, the Puerto del Sur is the first one we'll come to, and beyond it is the Puerto del Norte, the North Pass. That will take them straight back into Las Vegas. They're riding parallel to us now, just on the other side of those hills. There's a good chance we can catch them as they come through the pass."

"Ambush them!" Caleb said.

"That's my thought."

-16-

Francisco Tebone's plan for an ambush at Rab Sinclair's cabin went off about as poorly as it could.

After scouting the place and determining that Rab Sinclair was not in the cabin, he and Pin and Curly found some rocks above the cabin where Francisco planned to shoot Rab with the Sharps rifle.

"I'm going to do it the easy way, like Frank wanted," Francisco said. "Pick him off as he's coming back home."

When at last they saw the rider coming on the blue roan, Francisco raised up the Sharps rifle and waited. Sinclair was too far to make a good shot of it.

But then a bullet scraped across the rock only a couple of feet from where Francisco was perched. The bullet was followed almost immediately by the crack of a rifle from up among the tall pine trees not far from Sinclair.

A few moments later, there was another shot, and Sinclair was shooting, too.

"I don't know how it happened, but they know we're here," Curly said. "This fellow Rab Sinclair is no one to fool around with. We need to high tail it now while we can."

And so they did. Their horses were tied behind the rocks, and the three men scrambled out of their hole in the rocks and then rode off across country to try to escape.

They thought they'd made it away clean until they heard the rifle report and looked back to see that Sinclair had come over a ridge and was firing at them.

They drove their horses hard, now.

When they came to the trail leading into Las Vegas, the men reined in. Pin looked over his shoulder. "I can see him yonder in the distance," Pin said. "He's still coming for us."

"Should we go back to Las Vegas, back to the hotel?" Curly asked.

"Like hell," Pin said. "He'll have us trapped if we go back to town. And who knows how many friends he has there."

So the men rode south, away from town. Their horses, though, were exhausted. These were just farm horses, not conditioned for long rides, and they could not keep the pace the three men wanted from them. Any time they looked back, they saw far in the distance the two riders still behind them.

When they came upon the old man driving the wagon, Francisco rode on ahead and talked to him. The man pointed out how to find a trail that would take them back north and how to find the pass that would lead them directly into Las Vegas. There they could get their fourth horse and the meager supplies they had back at the hotel.

Pin rode down from the ridge along the road.

"Nothing back there," he said. "I can see a long way down through the valley we just come up, and Rab Sinclair ain't back there."

"Then we threw him when we turned back toward town," Curly said.

"Looks that way," Pin answered.

Francisco Tebone sensed the fear from the two older men, and it was infectious. Pin and Curly started this expedition afraid of Rab Sinclair, as if he was some kind of legendary gunfighter. But Francisco had never even heard of him before. And now that they'd come face-to-face with him, or near enough, the two older men were doubly afraid. And though he told himself he was not scared of Sinclair, Francisco found that a creeping doubt was in his mind now.

"So what the hell do we do now?" Francisco asked.

He was riding at the back of the trio. Pin and Curly were about even. So Francisco saw the look the two men gave each other.

Pin spoke for both of them. "You came up here to shoot Rab Sinclair. I reckon that's what you need to do. You're the gunfighter. Figure it out."

"All right, then," Francisco said. "If that's how it is, that's what I'll do."

They rode some distance more, and the western sun was already beginning to touch the Sangre de Cristo Mountains off to the west, and Curly spoke up.

"This here must be the second pass," he said. "The trail cuts this way."

The rode along the trail, curving toward the pass, and that's where they were when the shot rang out.

The lead ball kicked dirt just between Pin's and Curly's horses. Being farm horses, both panicked. Pin's horse reared and threw him out of the saddle. Curly's horse bolted and bucked and tossed him thirty yards away. Francisco's horse caught the panic and bolted, but he managed to hang on and get the horse under control. But once the horse was calmed, Francisco pulled the reins and wheeled the horse back the way he'd come, and he rode hard out of the pass.

Pin fell hard and broke an arm. His head hit against a rock, and he was bleeding heavily with blood pouring down from his forehead. The man was dazed and useless.

Curly staggered to his feet, but Rab Sinclair came charging at him on the buckskin. Curly reached for his gun but was too slow to react. As Rab rode near him, he twirled a lasso above his head. He let the big loop go as he passed Curly, turning it once around his saddle horn, and as the buckskin galloped and the rope went taut, it yanked Curly from his feet.

The man fell hard, and Rab dragged him the thirty yards back to where Pin was bleeding and holding onto his busted arm.

Now Rab swung himself out of the saddle and walked quickly to Curly.

Curly was struggling to get himself out of the lasso.

Rab punched him hard in the face and then pulled Curly's six-shooter from its holster. He tossed Curly's gun away. He also took Pin's six-shooter and tossed it away, but Pin was too beaten to even try to use it.

"Bad Eye Frank paid you to come and kill me?" Rab asked.

"He paid us to look after the one that rode off," Curly said.

"And that one's been paid to kill me?" Rab asked.

"He'll be paid if he kills you," Curly said.

Rab looked up and saw Caleb riding toward him. He'd already rounded up Curly's horse and was bringing it along.

"Might as well sit," Rab said. "The boy will be a minute rounding up the other's hawss. If you have a mind to, tend that wound on his head."

"What are you going to do with us?" Curly asked.

"That there is a reasonable question, and one you should have thought about before coming here to dry gulch me," Rab said. "By rights, I ought to shoot the hell out of you. You and your partner was present when that other feller killed a good and honest man. But killing for revenge is a thing I try to stay away from. So I'm going to take you to the sheriff in town, and I suspect he'll put together a jury that'll decide to stretch your necks on a rope."

Curly did not bother with Pin's wounded head. He just leaned against the side of a rock and waited for Caleb Morgan to round up the other horse.

-17-

Sheriff Juan Romero put Pin in one cell and Curly in another, then he sent a deputy to fetch the doctor to look after Pin.

Sheriff Romero took a statement from Caleb Morgan, and Rab Sinclair gave him directions on how to find Grady's place down by Fort Craig.

"I'll send a telegram to the sheriff in Santa Fe, and he can send a letter by stagecoach down to Fort Craig to have a deputy ride out to Grady's place," Sheriff Romero said. "Once we've got confirmation of the boy's story, I'll send these two back down to Fort Craig to face a trial. In the meantime, I'll hold them on this warrant you swore for trespassing. We won't have court for month, so no worry about the judge turning them loose."

"I'm obliged, sheriff," Rab said. "Ten years ago, and I'd have hanged them myself. But anymore I don't much have the stomach for killing if I can help it."

"Speaking of Fort Craig, I understand a couple of months ago you had some troubles down that away yourself."

"Anybody down there want to talk to me about it?" Rab asked.

Romero chuckled. He'd known Rab Sinclair three or four years now, ever since Rab built his place east of Las Vegas. He knew Rab was the kind of man who sometimes found trouble he wasn't looking for, and he also knew Rab was the kind of man who dealt himself with the trouble he found. He wasn't one to call the law to help him. The word he'd gotten about the shooting in the hotel was that the witnesses all said it was self-defense and the sheriff down at Fort Craig wasn't interested in pressing the issue none.

Romero also knew something of Rab's past with Frank Cosgrove. He'd had some involvement before when Frank Cosgrove sent men looking for Rab.

"If they do, they haven't let me know. But it begs the question, what are your intentions now? Three men jump you in a hotel down at Fort Craig and you kill them. Three more men kill a friend of yours and then try to dry gulch you on your own place. Most men don't let that sort of thing pass."

Rab Sinclair rubbed his chin. "I reckon I ain't no different from most men, Sheriff."

"You planning on going after the feller that keeps sending killers after you?"

"Looks about like I ain't got much choice," Rab said. "I might have left it alone, except for Grady. I can't have my friends getting killed over me."

Juan Romero nodded. He could understand that sentiment.

"Is any of this going to be a problem for me?" Romero asked.

"How do you mean?" Rab said.

"As sheriff of San Miguel County, am I going to have to come looking for you when it's all over?"

Rab shrugged. "Whatever happens next is going to happen down in Mesilla."

Romero took a seat at his desk. "So long as it don't happen here, you and I won't have a problem. If I get any warrants out of Mesilla, I'll lose those on accident."

Rab Sinclair grinned and touched the brim of his hat and left the sheriff's office with Caleb Morgan following him out. Rab unhitched the buckskin from the post, but then handed the lead to Caleb. "Hold the horse for me, I'll be right back."

He walked back into the sheriff's office.

"Sheriff, I've got one more thing I need you to do for me."

"Sure, Rab. What is it?"

"The boy out there. I'm going to leave him to watch my place. Would you mind sending a deputy out once or twice a week to check in on him?"

"I can do that."

"I'll let you know when I'm back in town and all this is over."

Rab and Caleb rode back to the ranch, and by the time they were within sight of the cabin they were riding with only the silver light of moon to show the way.

They went to the barn together and rubbed down the horses. Caleb's bay and the buckskin had gone far and had a long day.

"We asked a lot of these hawsses today, and they answered well," Rab told Caleb. "You always reward a good hawss, and take care of it. I can tell you I've found myself a fair few times in a tight spot where the only thing that kept me alive was having a good hawss. That old blue hawss in the corral, he's warned me of danger more times than any man who was standing watch. These Western lands can find a thousand different ways to kill you. But if you treat your hawss well, you'll find there ain't much out here you can't get through."

Inside the cabin they found Evangeline waiting up, lanterns lit and a stew and a pot of coffee simmering on the stove.

"Did you catch them?" she asked.

"Two of 'em," Rab said. "The one that killed Grady got away, but the other two are in Juan Romero's jail right now."

"I'm pleased to hear it," Evangeline said. "Get yourselves some supper if you're hungry. Coffee is fresh. I heard you ride up to the barn."

The three of them sat at the table.

"I'm going to Mesilla to end this thing with Frank Cosgrove," Rab said.

Caleb didn't miss a beat.

"I'll ride with you."

"Naw, you won't," Rab said. "Grady done me too many favors for me to let you ride into something like that. I need someone to stay here and watch the ranch, look after my cattle and livestock. I'm asking you to do that for me."

"Miss Evangeline can do that," Caleb said.

"If she comes with me, she can't look after the ranch," Rab said, and he looked across the table at Evangeline.

She looked back up at Rab and locked eyes with him. "Are you asking me to ride with you to go after Frank Cosgrove?"

"I am," Rab said.

"She's a woman," Caleb said.

"She handles a hawss as well as most any man I've ever seen," Rab said. "She can cut out a calf or she can drive a herd. But she's also as good a shot as I know with that Sharps rifle."

"What you're going to do ain't work fit for women," Caleb said.

"Yep, I'd agree with you on that," Rab said. "But Evangeline ain't like most women."

Caleb started to raise an argument, but Rab held up his hand to stop the boy.

"Why do you want to go?" Rab asked.

"Because I want to get that man who killed Grady," Caleb answered.

"I need you to forget about that, son," Rab said. "It has to be good enough for you that the man who killed Grady is going to get what's coming to him. Go on and put his murder in your past as something you can't change and something you can't do anything about. A man can't live right if he totes around a vendetta. It's the sort of thing that will fill you up and then eat you from the inside out."

"But aren't you going to kill Frank Cosgrove?" Caleb asked.

Rab studied on it for a moment.

"Yes, I am," he said.

"Ain't that a vendetta?" Caleb said.

"The difference is that I ain't going to kill Bad Eye Frank for something he done to me that I can't forgive him for. You see what I mean? I'm going to do for Frank Cosgrove because he won't stop. Too many people who have nothing to do with what's between me and him have suffered for. And that's all on account of him. Because he won't stop. So I'm going to stop him."

"He carries a vendetta for you," Caleb said.

"That's right," Rab agreed. "And it's going to get him killed."

"What if you don't kill him?" Caleb asked. "What if he kills you?"

Rab grinned his easy grin, the one full of warmth and friendliness that Caleb liked so well. It was the grin that Rab had when Caleb killed the elk on their hunting trip.

"Well then, I reckon he wins. But even if he kills me, the hate he feels won't be satisfied, and he'll just carry that hate over onto somebody else. Because that's what it's like for people who can't let go of the past. It's like an anchor that weighs them down and demands that whatever they do and wherever they go, they've got to lug that big heavy anchor from the past around with them. And it makes them irascible and ornery so that other folks can't stand them. I can always tell a man who cannot let go of the past, on account of it being writ across his face. A vendetta for someone who wronged you that you can't turn loose, it makes you ugly. You wear that hate on your face."

Caleb looked at the floor. "I don't know how I could forgive who killed Grady," Caleb said.

"I understand that, son. But what I'm saying to you is that you have to. Leave it behind you, son. Forgive him, or if you can't, then forget it. Remember Grady for the turn he did you taking you in the way he did. And forget about the way he died. Do Grady a turn by living a good life, being a decent man. Old Grady wouldn't want you riding after this feller."

Caleb looked at the bowl of stew in front of him. It was a thick stew, full of meat and potatoes, carrots, and onions. He was hungry, but he couldn't eat.

"I don't know how I forgive it, or how I forget about it," Caleb said.

"The first thing you do is forget about riding after that man who did it," Rab said. "That's how you start. Watch over my ranch for me, and be satisfied to know that if I catch him, I'll take him to the sheriff. He'll get justice the way the law says he should. And then the way you forgive is to wake up in the morning. Ride out across my ranch and check on my herd. If there's cattle stuck in the river, rope 'em and pull 'em out. If there's coyotes or cats, shoot the hell out of them. Then the next thing you do is take care of my hawsses. Run 'em, feed 'em good hay, make sure none of them throw a shoe or go lame. Then the next thing you do is take care of yourself. Feed yourself. Clean yourself. Brush your teeth.

"You just get up every morning and do the things you need to do. After a few days or a week, you'll find you think about it less. The harder you work, the less time you have to think about it. After a month or so, maybe I'll be back by then. And you'll know that justice is done – or will be. After four or five months of getting up every morning and doing the work you have to do, you'll find the habit of it eases some of the memory. In six months, you the time makes you hate less.

"Forgiving a man don't mean you have to take him on as your partner, ride with him or even be kind to him. It means letting go of that hate. Forgiving someone for a way that they wronged you, that's something you do for yourself. Otherwise, you turn out like Bad Eye Frank, settin' down in Mesilla right now full of hate and scared to death I'm going to come for him."

"How do you know he's scared you're coming for him?" Caleb asked.

"Bad Eye Frank is a lot of things, but he ain't a fool. And only a fool wouldn't be scared that I was coming for him."

***

The sun was still low in the east when Rab Sinclair and Evangeline arrived at the Puerto del Norte.

Before the first hints of light struck the morning sky, Rab and Evangeline were on their way.

"This is where we captured the other two, but the younger one rode off to the south," Rab told her.

In addition to Cromwell and the buckskin, they'd brought two spare mounts and two horses with panniers for their supplies. Rab intended to ride fast to try to catch Francisco Tebone. That was the name he'd gotten from Curly before turning him over to the sheriff.

Rab dismounted and began looking at the tracks in the ground. Not many people came up this way, and finding the right tracks wasn't going to be hard here. But he wanted to find them and know them here so that he could recognize them farther down the trail where there might be more tracks to pick through.

"He's alone and has just the one hawss," Rab said. "Catching him shouldn't be too hard. He'll go for Mesilla. It's the only safety he knows."

Evangeline led the other horses forward as Rab walked along, following the trail, memorizing the stride of the horse.

"Why did you bring me along?" she asked. "I'll own to being a fair cowpuncher when we're driving the herd to Fort Craig, but I ain't a gunfighter and you know it."

Rab gave her a smile and nodded his head. "I reckon that's so."

"So why bring me?"

"That boy needs to work, and he needs to work hard. You heard me tell him all the things I need done around the ranch. Repair the corral fence. Chop wood. Dig some irrigation trenches. All that in addition to the other daily chores. He couldn't get it all done in six months if he had a dozen hands helping him. But Grady raised him up to be the kind who would try."

"You want keep his mind off of what's happened."

"That's right. Keep his mind off it. What I said about forgiving, I meant it. I've been studying on this. It's an awful thing for a man to allow himself to get eat up with hatred. Look at Frank Cosgrove. That man has held this grudge against me for so long, even though he's had all this success running freight. I kept thinking he'd let it go and leave me be, but he kept on sending people to kill me. And now there ain't no choice in it. I'm going to have to do for him. Caleb's a good boy. A really good boy. I don't want to see him turn out like Frank Cosgrove."

"But that doesn't explain bringing me."

Rab nodded. "I reckon not. If you was there, you'd let him come in early from work. You'd fix his supper for him and help him with the chores. You can't help yourself but to stay busy. So that's one reason. And the other reason is because I wanted you with me. I like your company."

Evangeline laughed, and Rab smiled at her laugh.

"You didn't want to be lonely," she said.

"That ain't exactly what I said. I don't mind being alone. But what I want is your company. But when it comes time for shooting, I want you to stay well out of it."

"I thought you bragged to Caleb about what a fine shot I am with the rifle."

"It's true enough, too," Rab said. "All the same, I want you well out of it when the shooting starts."

Rab swung himself up into the saddle and they started the horses at a jog.

"Francisco's hawss was tuckered by the time he took off running from here yesterday afternoon," Rab said. "I've got a feeling he's just the type of man to run an exhausted hawss all through the night. If he's not afoot already, he soon will be."

Evangeline frowned. "What are you going to do when we catch him?"

"If I can, I'm going to take him to a sheriff to stand trial for killing Grady. But I reckon he ain't the kind who's going to go to a sheriff."

"You'll kill him?" Evangeline asked.

"I reckon he ain't the kind who'll stand a trial."

***

Rab Sinclair and Evangeline rode through the day, cutting south on a well-marked trail. There was no need to follow the tracks Francisco Tebone's horse left because the young gunfighter never tried to leave the worn trail.

Through the morning they cut a path over rolling hills and green pastures, the grass thick with the recent rains. Much of the land was dotted with scrub oak or squat mesquite or other bushes. They slipped by herds of cattle and sometimes saw men out working. Most of them were Mexican, or the children of Mexicans, though there were a few white ranchers even this far south of Las Vegas.

Though they kept moving at a good pace, Rab stopped the horses at nearly every swollen creek or arroyo where the rain water still pooled in places.

"Unless he cuts west and goes through the mountains, we'll get south of any good water in a hurry," Rab explained to Evangeline.

Evangeline had never been through this part of the country. When they drove the cattle to Fort Craig a couple of times, they cut west through the mountain trails and passes and then dropped south to the Fort. But now they were going almost straight to the south. Though it was all unfamiliar territory to her, Rab appeared to know it all well. She never ceased being amazed at how much of the land he had traveled.

By late afternoon they arrived at a small village at the Pecos River. Rab paid a Mexican rancher for a meal and feed for the horses, and the rancher insisted that Rab and Evangeline bed down on his floor rather than in the barn.

"That boy Francisco is lost," Rab said in a whisper. The lanterns were all extinguished and the farmer and his family had all gone to bed. Rab and Evangeline unrolled their bedrolls on the floor in front of the fire place, though there was no fire going. Both Rab and Evangeline were exhausted from the day's ride, but spoke for a long time in hushed whispers to that they did not disturb the farmer or his family.

"And I'll say, too, that he may be scared. He's covered more ground than I would have expected on that worn out plow horse. If I had to guess, I'd say he probably kept riding through the night last night."

"Should we be riding?" Evangeline asked.

"It don't matter. He'll probably kill that horse he's on, and we'll find him walking somewhere. But if the horse is sturdy enough to last, we're all going to end up in the same place anyhow."

"You think he's going to Mesilla?" Evangeline asked.

"You said he ain't much older than Caleb?" Rab said to her.

"That's right. He looks mean, but he's just a boy. Maybe eighteen or twenty years old."

Rab sighed heavily. "By the time I was that age, I was a hard man. I'd been toughened up living among the Injuns and traveling with my pa. And by then, I'd been on my own a while. I ain't saying this boy Francisco ain't tough, but I can tell you with some certainty that a boy that age who's lost and just had his riding partners snatched away is looking for something familiar right now. And from what that man Curly said, I reckon Francisco is only going to find familiar down in Mesilla. So that's where he'll go."

In the darkness, Evangeline reached out a hand and put it on Rab's chest.

"Was it hard growing up the way you did?" she said.

"I couldn't say. It was what it was. I didn't grow up in any other way, so I've got nothing to compare it to. I know some folks come up different from the way I did. But I don't know that one way is right and another way is wrong. My pa did for me what he could, and I don't reckon I'd change much of it now. Sometimes I think it might be easier on me if I could read."

Evangeline laughed.

"Is that funny?" Rab asked her.

"It's just funny that the only complaint you have is that sometimes you'd like to read. Most folks would consider what your pa did to you as a terrible thing. You didn't grow up with your own people. You didn't have a place to call home."

"It wasn't so terrible," Rab said. "There ain't nothing wrong with Indians that makes them worse than white folks."

"But didn't you get in fights a lot?"

"Sure. I was different. Here I am, wandering with my pa into their villages. More times than not the elders in the tribe thought my pa was crazy in the head, or they thought maybe he had big medicine, being a holy man. So that's why they let him stay in the camp. And there was always some young brave who wanted to wrestle to prove he could best me. But that ain't no different than it is for boys growing up in a town. White boys, Indian boys, it don't matter. That's just how boys act. I learned to hunt pretty well. And fish. And I learned a fair number of lessons about living off the land that have served me well."

"I can't deny that," Evangeline said. "Even if I am a better hunter than you."

She laughed and gave Rab a gentle, teasing push.

"I don't mind," Rab said. "I'm the one who taught you to hunt. If you're a better hunter than me, that just makes me a good teacher."

"If Francisco gets to Mesilla, Bad Eye Frank will know you are coming. Are you worried what we'll find when we get there?"

"I'd wager Frank already knows that I'm coming. But it's a hard go to get from here to Mesilla, especially on an old plow hawss that ain't likely to make it. That boy picked a hard way to get from here to there. There ain't many villages below us. It's a hot, dry path to the south, and it's going to make for hard riding. And every moment he's out there he'll have to worry about the Mescalero. Tomorrow, as we drop farther south of the Pecos River, we're going to cut through some dry and wide open space where the winds blow hard and there ain't much on the landscape. Ten years ago, if the lack of water didn't kill you then the Apache sure would have."

Evangeline groaned.

"I reckon I should be obliged, then, that you decided to bring me along with you," she said, her tone rich with sarcasm.

Rab chuckled. "I know how to show a lady a good time."

"Are we going near the reservation down at Fort Sumner?"

"Ain't a reservation no more," Rab said. "The Mescalero left a few years ago, and last year they turned the Navajo loose."

"I've heard people say it was bad there," Evangeline said.

Rab bit off a sardonic laugh. "You could say that. Not enough food. Bad water. No timber for fires. And the Apache and the Navajo hate each other, so if they weren't dying from starvation or bad water, they were beating hell out of each other."

"But the reservation is abandoned?"

"I haven't been there since the Apache left, but as I understand it the Fort is abandoned and all the Navajo are gone."

"Will we be in danger?" Evangeline asked.

"Sure," Rab said. "We're always in danger out here. But there ain't no Apache or Navajo left around there, so the danger we face won't come from Indians."

Evangeline scooted herself closer to Rab, wrapping an arm over him and tucking her head into his shoulder.

In a short while she was asleep, but Rab kept awake a bit longer.

He had some qualms about riding to Mesilla with the intention of killing a man.

"I just don't see another way for it," he said out loud.

Evangeline twisted her head a bit and mumbled something that Rab couldn't quite make out.

-18-

As far as he could see in every direction, there was nothing. No hill. No shade tree. No wallow where water might be standing.

Francisco Tebone climbed down off the horse and led it while he walked. The sun seemed to be all encompassing overhead, and it beat down on him without mercy. The grass was gray and grew in clumps flattened by the wind. The trail through here was almost lost to time. Wagons and cattle had made their way south here to the Mescalero reservation at some time in the past, and enough of them that there were ruts still visible. But from all the evidence he could find, it was years since the last thing human had crossed this desolate and forsaken country.

Desolation. Francisco felt it deep in his bones. A hopelessness had overcome him. He was no frontiersman who could plot a course by the sun and stars. He could only follow the vague tracks left by earlier travelers and hope those led where he was going.

If he was the type of man given to self-reflection or if he had religious inclinations, he might have concluded that his present circumstances were the result of Divine punishment. But Francisco Tebone was not that type of man. Instead he just cursed his surroundings, cursed Rab Sinclair, cursed Pin and Curly, and most of all cursed Bad Eye Frank.

"I'll kill e'ry damn one of 'em," Francisco swore to himself. He did not even speak to his stolen horse.

Somewhere off to his east, the Pecos River cut a shallow ditch across the countryside, but unless there was a stand of trees growing at the mercy of river, a man could ride within a hundred yards of the river and never know it was there. The water was not good. The Mescalero and Navajo who depended on it for their survival at the reservation found that out the hard way. Alkaline water that over time and in big quantities turned out to be poison. But right now, Francisco would gladly take his chances. His canteen was perilously shallow.

"I ever find my way out of this, I'm coming for all of 'em. Bad Eye Frank. Rab Sinclair. Them imbeciles sent to chaperone me about."

Francisco had not slept. He'd hardly stopped moving since Rab Sinclair fired that shot and unhorsed Pin and Curly. In his delirium, he'd lost track of time. Was it three nights and four days, or three days and two nights? At one point, the horse refused to keep going and laid down in exhaustion. Francisco did not sleep, though. He stood guard for a couple of hours until the horse could be roused. He'd had every bit of fear he'd ever felt beat out of him when he was young, and the emotion was foreign to him. But he knew what he felt was an excitement caused by worry that Rab Sinclair might come up on him if he slept. So he stood guard while the horse slept.

He did doze some in the saddle, but unaccustomed to riding distances, he was no good at this trick employed by cowpunchers riding herd. He kept sliding and jerking back awake just before he fell out of the saddle.

"It's a misery," Francisco shouted at nothing. "A pure misery!"

But the wind dragged his voice away.

An hour later, or maybe closer to two hours, Francisco Tebone thought he saw a black dot out on the horizon ahead of him. He watched it for some time, and it did not seem to be getting any closer to him. It was nothing at first, and the wind blew dust up in his face and then it was gone, and it was impossible to know. But he kept riding the old plow horse, and the black dot reappeared and then began to take on a shape and grow larger on the horizon until after some time, Francisco Tebone came to realize that what he was seeing was a wagon up in front of him. A simple, covered wagon with the canvas top deformed in the wind.

Now he pushed the horse, trying to gain on the wagon, and it was easy enough because the wagon was going slow.

And as he neared it, Francisco realized that there was a man and a boy out of the wagon walking along beside it, and as he rode he drew his six-shooter from its holster and checked to be sure that all the chambers were filled.

He spurred the horse onward, and the beast grunted with the exertion, and Francisco knew that stolen horse would not go much farther. And then it faltered and fell, and Francisco was thrown forward into the dirt.

The canteen was empty and there was nothing left to eat in the saddlebags, so Francisco drew his Remington revolver, cocked back the hammer and fired a ball into the horse's head.

"Damned old horse wasn't good for nothing," he said.

He was close enough that the shot drew the attention of the man walking beside the wagon. Quickly, Francisco dragged his Sharps rifle off the saddle, and he slipped off the saddlebags where he had powder and ammunition, and he began waving frantically to the wagon up ahead. And despite his lack of sleep and his own exhaustion, he started to run toward the wagon.

The man watched Francisco for a moment, and then he picked up the boy – just a young boy of eight or nine years old – and he put the boy up into the driver's box on the wagon.

Then the man stepped away, and Francisco saw that he had replaced the boy with a rifle.

"Don't shoot me!" Francisco yelled, not sure if they could hear him in the wind. "My horse went lame. I got no water!"

He repeated his exhortations as he ran toward the wagon. "Don't shoot me!" Francisco hollered against the wind. "I'm in desperation!"

The wagon continued on its slow, steady path, but the man stood his ground. He did not level his rifle, but he held it tight and ready.

"Don't come no closer," the man said as Francisco came within a few feet. "What do you want?"

"My horse went lame," Francisco said. "You saw – I had to shoot it. I'm out of water and out of food. I need help."

The man took a long time trying to decide about Francisco. Maybe it was the rifle, but there was something about the young man that made him feel nervous.

"What are you doing out here on your own?" the man asked.

"I'm trying to get to Mesilla," Francisco said.

"Why are you alone?" the man asked.

"I need help," Francisco said. "I haven't had a drink of water or sleep or food."

The man turned and looked over his shoulder at the wagon, still moving along.

"You'll have to walk. Only got two mules pulling the wagon. But we can spare you some water and some food."

"I'm exhausted," Francisco said. "Can't I just ride along for a while?"

"I can spare you water and food," the man said. "We need to stop and rest the mules anyway. You can rest some while we do that. Get up under the wagon in the shade. But if you're coming with us, you'll have to walk."

"If I can get some water, I can walk," Francisco told the man.

"Come on, then," the man said.

Together they started walking. The man was still dubious of Francisco and allowed the young stranger to walk in front of him so that he could keep an eye on Francisco.

"My name's Sam Wilburn," the man said.

"Francisco Tebone."

"My cousin is building a settlement down south of here. My wife Agnes and son Sam Junior are up in the wagon. We're on our way to join my cousin."

Sam waited a moment, wanting Francisco to explain his presence. When the younger man didn't say anything, Sam prompted him again.

"This is rough country to travel through. You're the only person we've seen since we crossed the Pecos River."

Still, Francisco offered no explanation for why he was out on the lonesome plains, traveling alone. And there was something about the young man's look, something in his eyes or the curl of his mouth, or the way he carried himself, that Sam Wilburn did not trust. Francisco did not act like a man who was desperate and needed help.

When they caught up to the wagon, Sam Wilburn handed over a canteen, and Francisco took a few grateful drinks. They went on then, walking beside the wagon, for maybe another mile or so. Sam Wilburn always went another mile after making the decision to stop.

When they did stop, Sam and his son worked together to picket the mules where they could graze. They built a small fire with wood they had in the possum belly of the wagon. Agnes Wilburn made a meal with bacon and beans. When she climbed down out of the wagon and Francisco got his first look at her, he could see that she was pregnant. She wasn't on the verge of giving birth, but she was far enough along that it was visible.

While the family worked, Francisco slid under the wagon and slept. The only comfort under the wagon came from the shade it offered. Even down at the ground, the wind blew dirt into his face. The ground consisted of hard and rocky soil, and it made for a poor bed. But Francisco was exhausted, and before he could even realize how uncomfortable he was, he'd fallen asleep.

Sam Wilburn and his family let Francisco sleep while they ate, but as soon as they were ready to get the animals together, Sam woke Francisco.

"We let you sleep as long as we could. They's food left, and coffee. You eat while we get the mules harnessed back up."

Francisco struggled to clear his mind. The nap was to brief. But he slid himself out from under the wagon and ate the food quickly.

He'd already made up his mind what he was going to do.

When the mules were hitched, Francisco scraped the last of his beans from his plate.

Sam Wilburn kicked down the remnants of the fire and ground the coals into the dirt.

"Don't want to set the whole territory on fire," he grinned.

Francisco Tebone drew his Remington revolver and slowly, as quietly as he could, thumbed back the hammer. Sam Wilburn, who did not keep a gun on his hip, heard the click of the hammer as it locked into place, and he turned just in time to for Francisco to shoot him in the chest.

Sam Wilburn took two steps back and then fell to the ground. He did not feel any pain, just surprise.

"What'd you do that for?" Sam asked.

Agnes Wilburn and Sam Junior were on the other side of the wagon, stowing cooking supplies. She did not need to see her husband dying on the ground to know what had happened.

"Run Sam Junior!" she said to the boy, pushing him. "Run and don't stop running."

His mother's fear gripped him, and the boy started to run, but he stumbled on a rock and fell. He pushed himself up from the ground.

Francisco Tebone was coming around the front of the harnessed mules as the boy passed him. Francisco stuck out a foot and tripped the boy so that he fell again.

Agnes Wilburn reached up into the driver's seat of the wagon for her husband's rifle, but Francisco shot her before she could get her hands on it. The shot spun her around, and Francisco laughed. He drew back the hammer and fired a second shot into her, this one punched her in the back and knocked her face first into the dirt.

Sam Junior was sobbing and running. Francisco cocked back the hammer again and took an aim on the boy. He fired once and missed.

"Damn it all," Francisco swore. He thumbed back the hammer again, held his gun with both hands on the grip, and let loose another shot. That one also missed.

Now Francisco holstered his Remington and got Wilburn's rifle from the wagon seat. He palmed back the heavy hammer, steadied the gun and breathed easy. When he pulled the trigger this time he did not miss. The big .54 caliber ball slammed into the small boy's back and threw him into the ground.

Francisco took the time to reload his Remington.

Sam Wilburn struggled to get to his feet several times, but he could only get up on all fours before collapsing again. He could not get his breath, and he had no strength in him. The bullet to his chest had tore him up inside, and he knew he was dying. He wanted to get to his wife and his son, but he could not even crawl to them.

Francisco used his knife to finish Sam Wilburn all the way, cursing him for being stubborn and not just dying when he'd been shot in the chest. And when Sam Wilburn was dead, Francisco gave the man's hair a pull and then sliced away his scalp.

He stashed the scalp in the back of the wagon and then climbed into the driver's seat.

The mules immediately regretted their change in ownership as Francisco Tebone shouted at them and snapped the reins, driving them much harder than Sam Wilburn and his family had done.

***

Some distance behind Francisco, Rab Sinclair was dismounted. He was examining scuff marks on the ground. It was too dry here for there to be any deep tracks, but the marks left by Francisco's horse were there for a man who could find them.

"He's still going, and that hawss is still going, too," Rab said. "At first sight, I didn't think much of that hawss, but it's got a streak of determination that confounds me."

"It may have more of a streak of determination than I have," Evangeline admitted.

She'd pulled a bandanna over her face to protect her from the blowing dust. But a bandanna didn't do much to ease the conditions.

"I probably shouldn't have made you come with me," Rab said. He stood up and looked out across the bleak landscape. "It's hard for a man to travel this country alone. I've come solitary farther distances through hills and mountains with streams and valleys, and that ain't too bad. But out here, with nothing but the wind and the sun and all this emptiness, a man's spirits turn mighty fast. I bet you right about now our friend Francisco wouldn't mind too much if we caught up with him."

"It's easy enough to understand why there's not villages through here," Evangeline said.

"This ain't no place to try to live," Rab agreed.

"So is this why you brought me? So you wouldn't have to ride through this alone?"

Rab swung himself back into the saddle. They'd been alternating horses fairly regular, but now he was back to riding Cromwell. The blue roan was his preferred horse. There existed between Rab and the blue a bond that almost made one an extension of the other. They'd traveled a long ways together.

"I told you why I wanted you to come with me," Rab said. "For your company. I like having you around. The fact we're riding through this countryside with all its emptiness just means your company is all the more desirable."

Evangeline smiled from behind the bandanna, but Rab Sinclair didn't need to see her teeth to know she was smiling. She smiled with her eyes. Her cheeks lifted when she smiled. Her whole face lit up. He gave her a grin and they kept going.

Rab had the spare mounts and the horses toting provisions on a line tied around Cromwell's saddle horn. The horses all followed along without a problem though. Some horses could be ornery, tugging against a lead or deciding to go off on their own, but Rab chose these horses because he knew he could count on them.

When they stopped for the night to camp, he'd turn the horses loose for a little while and let them run out any energy they had. But they were all mature horses, and they seemed to sense when they needed to be spirited and when they needed to just mosey along.

"Hawsses is fine," Rab said. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather cover ground than stop to eat a noon meal."

"That suits me," Evangeline said.

And so they rode on through the heat of the early afternoon.

Evangeline wore a wide-brimmed hat and trousers, and a shirt she usually wore when working on the ranch. The shirt was one of Rab's and it was too big for her. But with the hat and trousers and the bandanna pulled up over her face, Rab couldn't help but think she looked like an outlaw ready to rob a stagecoach.

The horses kept a steady pace through the afternoon, and they'd covered quite a bit of distance by the time Rab spotted something in the trail up ahead.

"Looks like Francisco Tebone is afoot," Rab said, and he pointed to the distant spot on the road.

"What is that?" Evangeline asked. "Is that a horse?"

"Old plow hawss finally give out."

"What should we do?" Evangeline asked.

"In what way?"

"For the horse. Should we bury it?"

"Ain't no sense in burying a hawss out here in the middle of nowhere. Buzzards'll come along and get it. We ain't too far from the Pecos. Could be coyotes down around the river. I would suppose that carcass ain't going to be there in another week."

Rab half hoped to see Francisco's body lying the other side of the horse, but there was nothing there. As they rode nearer, Rab led Cromwell off the road to give the dead horse a wide berth.

"Ain't no sense in startling our animals," he said, though his real reason was he didn't want to ride Evangeline too near the carcass. She had a soft spot for horses, and Rab didn't want to upset her.

"It's a shame for a man to ride a horse to death like that," she said.

"It is that," Rab said. "But it also now adds a new danger for us. He's walking, and he's a long way from anything. He might lay in wait for us, so we must be vigilant. Keep your eyes on the terrain. Watch ahead and behind. Ride off the trail once in a while and look around. There ain't much here for him to hide behind, no bushes or trees, but he could even scoop some dirt out of the ground and hide in a low spot."

"I'll keep a good watch," Evangeline said.

But they did not ride much longer before their worry over an ambush left them.

When they came upon the three bodies, Rab Sinclair found it easy enough to puzzle out what had happened.

"Either he caught up to them or he was riding with them already," Rab said. "Maybe caught up to them while they were eating. They had a fire here about the size of what you'd need to heat up some beans. He shot the man. The woman and the boy was on the other side of the wagon. Maybe she thought she'd try to fight him. She sent the boy running, and Francisco killed her and then shot the boy. And then he rode off in their wagon. Looks like two mules pulling it."

"It's awful," Evangeline said. "What kind of person shoots a boy in the back? He's just a child."

"Shot a boy and a woman. And, as near as I can tell, an unarmed man."

Evangeline was standing a few feet away with the horses while Rab looked at the bodies and studied the tracks in the ground. He hoped that from her vantage, Evangeline could not see the carved scalp on the man. A scalped man was a gruesome sight for anyone, and it brought back memories for Rab Sinclair that he would just as soon forget.

"I ain't got a shovel," Rab said. "But I'll have to bury them somehow. Why don't you walk the hawsses a way ahead and go on and strip them down. We'll camp wherever you stop. Have some supper, let the hawsses graze. I'll be a while, here."

Rab found a large, flat rock, and he used that as a plow to scrape out some shallow trenches off the trail. It was difficult work in the dry and crusty ground, and he did it from his knees, scraping out enough earth to place the bodies in a shallow grave and cover them over. When he was done burying the bodies, he used his knife to dig out a small trench, and he set the flat stone into the trench, standing up as a marker.

Evangeline rode about sixty yards farther along the trail. She staked the horses on long leads some distance apart so that they had room to graze. There was grass enough, but they would need good hay and oats when they reached a place with a livery.

She poured water into her hat and offered to each of the horses. Between them, they drank an entire canteen, leaving only one last canteen for her and Rab.

She wandered around looking for anything that would burn, but there were no buffalo chips to be found.

So she unrolled the bedrolls and sat and waited for Rab to finish his chore.

She would have preferred to ride on a little farther. Sleeping so near the bodies was too eerie to her. But she also did not want to get too far away from Rab knowing that somewhere on this plain Francisco Tebone was wandering, even though it now seemed that he had taken a wagon.

When Rab walked up to the small camp, Evangeline offered a small smile. His shirt was wet with sweat, and the sweat and dirt were mixed in streaks across his face where he'd wiped his face with the back of his hand.

"No fuel for a fire. How does jerky and a can of peaches suit you?"

Rab gave her a nod. "All the way to the ground," he said. Rab filled his pipe and had Evangeline hold his hat in front of his face as a windbreak while he lit the pipe. The instant he blew out smoke, the wind whipped it away into nothing.

"I wish it was more to eat," Evangeline confessed. "My belly's rumbling."

"You should have gone ahead and ate."

Evangeline nodded. "I wanted to wait for you. We're almost out of water, too."

"The Pecos ain't far to the east of us. If the hawsses need it, we can ride over that way. We'll set off again before daybreak, and this time tomorrow, unless we've caught Francisco Tebone, we should be at some settlement or another."

They ate jerky and canned peaches, and Rab found some biscuits in his saddlebag. Neither of them particularly enjoyed the meal, but beat back the hunger.

Evangeline had positioned the horses near to the camp and Cromwell was closest, and Rab decided it would be a waste of energy for one or the other of them to stay awake to keep a watch. So as soon as the sun was down, they fell asleep there on the plain.

Come morning, there was no coffee, and not enough water to make any even if they had a way to start fire. So they chewed on jerky as they followed the trail in the early morning light.

By late morning they started coming into hilly country. None of the hills were high, but it was sign that the landscape was changing. By mid-afternoon, they could see fuzzy lines out on the horizon to the west that began to take shape and turned out to be distant highlands.

And then they saw a small line of trees.

"That's the Pecos River coming back toward us," Rab said. "Not too distant now we'll come to a crossroads. Might be some water to be had there. Probably be a good place to bed down. When we get to that east-west trail, that comes out of Texas. We'll cut west there and start toward Mesilla."

They rode another hour or so when they at last came near the Pecos, and there they saw two adobe buildings not far from where their north-south trail crossed over a clear east-west trail. One of the buildings was still under construction.

"Them two buildings are new," Rab said. "Let's go and see what sort of eejit comes out to nowhere and builds a house."

***

"I'm Aaron Wilburn, this is my partner Van Smith," the man on the ladder said.

The two men were working on the roof of the unfinished adobe building.

"How do?" the other man said, sweat rolling off his nose.

"Y'all picked a damned unhospitable locale to homestead," Rab said.

"Give us some time, this place'll be thriving before long," Aaron Wilburn said.

He and Van Smith both climbed down from the roof. Rab hitched the horses to a post out front of the finished building, and then followed the two men into it.

"It ain't much, but it's an overnight boarding house for travelers," Van Smith explained. The building had a couple of private rooms and a long line of bunk beds. None of the beds had mattresses yet, and everything inside the building suggested it was recently built and not yet finished. At the front there was a kitchen and a large dining table, but there were no chairs at the table and the stove showed few signs of use.

"Fifty cents apiece gets you a night in a bed. You'll have to throw down your own bedrolls, but we'll also give you supper tonight and breakfast in the morning," Van said. "Another two dollars and we'll take care of all them horses, give them good hay and put them up in our corral.

Rab took a dollar coin from his pocket and set it down on the table. "That'll pay for both of us," he said. "What's the other building?"

"That's going to be a store," Van Smith said.

"You ain't got much in the way of customers," Rab said.

"Cattlemen from Texas are driving their herds through here. Won't be long before the herds are grazing all through these parts. We're going to have a sho'nuff cattletown before long."

Rab Sinclair was skeptical. Cattle drives tended to go north to railheads, and there weren't railheads in southern New Mexico Territory. But having been all over, what he knew for sure was that he didn't know everything. So he kept his doubts to himself.

The men had wives and children with them, living in tents erected in a stand of trees near the Pecos. Aaron Wilburn called them up, and the wives fixed up a meal while Rab and Evangeline had baths in water hauled up from the Pecos.

At supper Rab asked the question he'd been wanting to ask.

"We're tracking a man who would've been driving a wagon. I doubt he had anyone else with him."

"Yeah," Van Smith said. "Yesterday evening he come through. Paid a dollar for a bed and meals and for us to see to the mules. Why're you tracking him?"

"He's wanted by the law," Rab said. "Between me and him it's a personal thing, but I intend to take him to the law if I can catch him."

"Well, he's about a day ahead of you. I wish I'd known he was wanted. I ain't surprised, though. He told us he was a freighter, but that didn't look like no freighter's wagon. Everything about him made me suspect of him. What did he do?"

"I'm disappointed to hear he's so far ahead of us," Rab said, glancing at Evangeline. "He killed a friend of mine, but he also killed a family on the trail north of here. When we started tracking him, he was on an old plow horse. That wagon he acquired on the way."

"A family?" Aaron Wilburn said. "A man and a woman and a young boy?"

"That's right," Evangeline said.

"Oh, Lord," Aaron Wilburn said. "My cousin Sam was bringing his wife and boy here, supposed to help us get the settlement going."

"If I had to guess, I'd say the man was probably about twenty eight years old. Not much of a beard. Looked like maybe he was clean shaven before he got on the trail. Brown hair. Shorter than me by a piece, broad shouldered."

Rab deliberately did not mention that the man's throat was cut and he had been scalped. That was a hard thing for a relative to hear. A cut throat and a scalping were personal, up-close things, and rightfully disturbed folks. But a scalping almost always led to reprisals against Indians, and Rab Sinclair was certain that Francisco Tebone had committed these murders. Also, in front of the women and children, Rab did not want to mention the scalping.

Aaron Wilburn nodded. "That could be Sam."

"The woman had very dark, black hair. I'd have thought she was Mexican, but her skin was too pale for that."

Aaron Wilburn nodded again, a mixture of anger and sadness on his face. "And the boy about seven years old?"

"That would be about right. Brown hair like his daddy," Rab said. "And the woman was some way along, pregnant."

Aaron Wilburn looked at Van Smith. Without a word he stood up and walked outside. Wilburn's wife followed him out.

Van Smith shook his head. "Last letter he had from cousin Sam said Agnes was pregnant. They wanted to get here in plenty of time before the baby was due."

"I hate to bring you bad news," Rab said.

Van Smith shrugged his shoulders. "Truth is, it's better to know than to not know. If you hadn't come along, they'd have been dead up on that trail and we'd have never known what happened to them."

"I buried the bodies," Rab said. "Shallow graves. About a day's ride north of here. We camped last night about where we found them. I put a stone to mark the graves."

"I'll let him know. If he wants to bring them back and bury them here, I'll go with him," Van Smith said.

Rab gave Van Smith a deliberate look and muttered to him where no one else would hear: "If you go to rebury them, you should know before you get there that the man was scalped."

Smith raised his eyebrows but did not say any more. He left it with a thoughtful nod.

Later, after the dishes were cleaned, Rab Sinclair went out to the front porch of the bunkhouse and lit his pipe. There were no chairs, not even a bench, so he leaned against the railing and watched the stars. Evangeline joined him there.

"Van told me you buried my cousin and his family. I'm obliged to you for that. Some folks might have just left them," Aaron Wilburn said, walking up from the stand of trees. "I was outside the tent and saw you light your pipe. I hope you don't mind me intruding."

"You ain't intruding," Rab said.

"You're riding after that boy that come through here? The one that killed my cousin?"

"I am," Rab said.

"You a lawman?" Aaron Wilburn asked.

"I ain't a lawman," Rab said.

"You a bounty hunter?"

"Not that either. If I'm anything, I reckon I'm a rancher. But I do some other things, too."

"What business do you have with this feller that killed my cousin?"

"He was hired to kill me," Rab explained. "Trying to do that, he killed a man who helped me."

"What'd you do that someone was hired to kill you?" Wilburn asked.

"It's an old grudge," Rab said. "The man who carries that grudge has more memory than he has good horse sense."

Wilburn nodded. He understood from the vague answers that Rab Sinclair wasn't going to say more about it.

"You kill that man who killed my cousin and his family, and I'll pay you five hundred dollars," Wilburn said. "It's every bit of what I can pay you. If I had more, I'd offer more."

Rab puffed his pipe a little, thinking over the offer. He'd killed men before. He'd killed men out of vengeance, and he'd killed men who intended to kill him. But he'd never killed a man for money.

"I reckon there's a better than even chance I'm going to kill that man," Rab said. "And I suspect there's a reasonable chance I'll pass through here and you'll see me again. But I won't be coming back here to collect that money, and I'd be insulted if you tried to give it to me."

There wasn't much light other than the orange glow from Rab's pipe and a bit of light coming through the open window from the lantern inside, but Evangeline was interested to see the hardness that had come over Rab Sinclair's face at the offer. The glow from his pipe seemed to cut deep grooves under his cheekbones and through his eyes. That hardness matched the tone of his voice. She felt bad for Aaron Wilburn, felt bad that Rab would take that tone like that with a man who'd just found out his kin were killed.

"Rab ain't like that," Evangeline said, offering some explanation to soothe Wilburn. "What he's doing now, riding after Francisco, he's doing it because it's right. He ain't doing it for money."

"Out here, a man's name is all he's got," Rab said. "I know quite a few folks, and they know me. I don't want a reputation of a man who kills for money."

"I understand," Wilburn said, taking a step back. "I appreciate that. I'll say this then, if you kill that man, I'd like to know about it. And you won't have to pay fifty cents to sleep in one of my beds ever again."

***

The next morning, Rab and Evangeline followed the trail west, and they did not have to travel far before they came within sight of the Sierra Blanca mountain range.

The terrain began to change – hills and trees.

"We're riding into Mescalero territory," Rab told Evangeline. "Don't wander far from me. If you see any Apache, don't show any signs of fright. If they think you're easy pickins, they'll pick at you. But keep that Sharps rifle handy. I don't expect trouble, but you never know what kind of mood folks are in."

The trail they followed west took them after a day and a half of riding through rolling hills of pinyon and juniper with stands of cottonwoods down near creeks and springs. The fresh smell of the pines, the cool breezes and fresh water all made the journey not only easier but also pleasant.

On their third day riding through the mountain trail, they came to an old village, largely inhabited by Mexicans who lived in these places before New Mexico became a territory of the United States.

In one of these villages Rab and Evangeline bordered their horses in the livery for the night and bedded down at the home of the stable owner. The man was an Anglo, but his speech was so colored by his neighbors that he often let Spanish phrases seep into conversation.

"The Apache are quiet right now," the man told them. "They are planning treaty talks in a month or so up near Fort Craig, so they're on their best behavior so that doesn't get messed up."

In another day they were again riding over flat, crusty desert, but in every direction they could see mountains on the horizon. And then the high peaks of the Organ Mountains became their guidepost.

"We'll stay toward those mountains in the distance. And when we're near, we'll swing north through a pass. And then we'll be to Mesilla," Rab told Evangeline. "One more full day of riding, maybe two."

"I feel like I should be relieved," Evangeline said. "This has been the hardest ride of my life. Except that I know what's coming when we get there."

Rab gave her a smile. "When we ride back, we'll go up past Fort Craig. It's an easier way."

Evangeline nodded, but what she did not say was that she worried they would not be going back. At least, not together.

In the years she had known and lived with Rab Sinclair, she knew he came from rough stock. She saw it in the way he handled the cattle on drives, in the way he dealt with cold and snow. She'd watched him rope and pull a calf from a swollen creek. She knew he could sleep with a rock for his pillow when they were out on the trail.

Once, when they were in town, two men came after him. Like Francisco and others before, these men were attempting to collect the bounty Bad Eye Frank had put on Rab's head.

The man she called Rabbie who she thought she loved, pushed her to the ground as the two men went for their guns. They had him beat, but they were close. Rab closed the distance in two steps and tackled both of the men to the dirt. And then he fought them, and it was terrible to see. He drove a knee into one man's groin and then put his boot heel on that man's neck, pinning the man to the ground. The other one he beat. He held the man's shirt front with one hand and pummeled him with the other. The man went unconscious, limp in Rab's grasp, but Rab kept punching. When he dropped that man he turned on the one pinned beneath his boot. Rab kicked that man and then fell on him, punching him in the face with both fists. That man died. She had trouble reconciling what she'd witnessed with the man she knew. The man who patiently cared for her, who was kinder than any man she'd ever known, he had punched a man to death right in front of her.

Not that she could blame him. Those men had come to kill him.

The sheriff, Juan Romero, he brought the man who survived Rab's beating up on charges, and that man was ordered by the judge to be hanged.

Later, Rab told Evangeline that he lost his temper because they'd gone for their guns with a woman present.

With her own eyes she had seen how ferocious Rab Sinclair could become in a fight. He moved quickly, shook his opponents off their guard, and he won.

Though Rab always said that growing up among the Indians was not so different from being among whites, Evangeline assumed he learned to fight the way he did from the Indians. He scoffed at the notion, but he certainly did not fight like any white man she'd ever seen.

So her fear was not that Rab could not handle himself. Rather, she was afraid that one day he would not be fast enough. He would not be strong enough. Or there would be too many. And she did not want to be there on the day when that turned out to be the case.

-19-

Don Conchos narrowed his eye as he leveled the revolver. He squeezed the trigger and watched as the lead ball smashed into the coin, sending it flying up out of the dirt. A crowd of twenty-five men was gathered around to see the exhibition, and they all gave up a big cheer when the ball hit the coin and sent it spinning.

"I'll be damned," Bad Eye Frank said from his chair at the table outside the cantina. "Twenty paces and you hit a coin in the road. Now that's shooting!"

His men were not among those cheering, nor were any of them paying any attention. They had all seen Don Conchos shoot coins. They'd seen him hammer nails with a lead ball from twenty paces. They'd seen him drive a bullet between a man's eyes. They were none of them interested in shooting shows.

Instead, Don Conchos' men were taking seriously their new role as Bad Eye Frank's protectors.

One stood at one end of the plaza, a rifle in his hand and a Colt Army revolver on his hip. Another, equally outfitted, stood at the other end of the plaza. Both men watched the roads leading into the plaza.

The third of Don Conchos' men stood with a double-barrel shotgun about three feet behind where Bad Eye Frank sat. His eyes were on the crowd.

Don Conchos and his men took to their role as guardians reluctantly, but over the course of a month or so, they had grown into it.

Because they were Bad Eye Frank's men, they were treated like royalty in the small village. People moved out of the way when they strode to the bar at the cantina. The whores in town gave themselves at no charge for Bad Eye Frank's men. The men showed them respect.

And there was nothing to do.

Half the town worked for Bad Eye Frank, and the other half feared him.

No one was attempting to threaten him.

They were earning easy wages and living in luxury, and while he enjoyed the fruits of it, Don Conchos privately worried over how it would be to try to get these men to work in the future.

"Glad you enjoyed it," Don Conchos said, returning to the table and taking a seat across from Bad Eye Frank. "Have you heard any more about this man you're worried about? Rab Sinclair?"

Bad Eye Frank shook his head. "Nothing yet. But I believe he will be coming. You and your men just stay alert."

"I agreed to stay on for two months," Don Conchos said. "If we have to stay longer, it will cost more."

Bad Eye Frank shrugged. "Then I will spend more."

"You would be better to pay me a bounty to go and find this man," Don Conchos said. "Your troubles would be quickly over if you hired me to go and kill him, instead of sitting here waiting for him to appear."

Frank Cosgrove nodded. "I understand. But I believe Rab Sinclair is already on his way. If you go to where he was, and he comes here, then I will be dead before you find him."

"You have men here who can protect you," Don Conchos said.

"Not from him," Bad Eye Frank said, and he took a drink of his mezcal. "I have men who can deal with bandits or lawmen. I have men who can deal with thieves. But none of the men who work for me can deal with Rab Sinclair."

Don Conchos grinned and shook his head. "I've never seen a man that good. You say he is, but I'll show you that he ain't as good as you think."

Bad Eye Frank leaned forward, and his face took on a sudden and serious strain. "You listen to me, Conchos. You get that idea out of your head right now. If you don't respect Sinclair and what he can do, he'll kill you twice before you know you're dead. You see Rab Sinclair, or anybody you think might be him, and you don't wait. This ain't no time for a stand-up fight. You backshoot him, I don't care. I need you to be ready for him."

Don Conchos gave Frank a dismissive look. "I'm ready. And I've got three of the fastest guns south of the border who are standing behind me. Don't you worry."

***

Francisco Tebone had no friends in Mesilla. He had no friends anywhere. The long ride to the south, many days on his own riding from his failed attempt to kill Rab Sinclair, gave him time to think. And in that time, a scheme began to form in his mind.

As he drove the stolen wagon through Apache country, Francisco fixated on the idea that his troubles were all down to one man: Bad Eye Frank. And slowly, Rab Sinclair, Pin, and Curly all began to drift from his mind. He told himself that he was not afraid of Rab Sinclair. He convinced himself that if he'd faced him down in the street like he'd wanted to do in the first place, then he'd have beat Sinclair. It was all Bad Eye Frank's fault, for handing him that Sharps rifle, and Pin's fault, and Curly's fault, for being so skittish. Sinclair was just a man, and Francisco Tebone believed he was faster than any man.

"I'd have never been in any of this if Bad Eye Frank hadn't caught me and Lopez stealing that wagon. And then he whipped me and hanged Lopez. By rights, my fight is with Bad Eye Frank."

That's what he told himself as he drove that wagon through the desert, across the white sands, through little villages that should have been in old Mexico because they were all full of Mexicans and no Americans at all.

And when he came through the pass in the Organ Mountains, Francisco Tebone had an idea, or the beginnings of an idea. His idea was still a long way from a plan, but Francisco Tebone wasn't much of a planner. He was an opportunist. What he needed was an idea for a thing to do, and then the opportunity to do it.

As far as he knew, he was still on good terms with Bad Eye Frank.

"I'm just gone to tell him that Rab Sinclair killed Curly and Pin, and then I killed Sinclair," Francisco told the mules. "He ain't gone to know the difference. And then when the chance comes along, I'll kill Bad Eye Frank. Drive a lead ball right through that bad eye of his."

Francisco believed Curly and Pin were too dead to contradict his story. He saw both men unhorsed, and he just figured Rab Sinclair had done for them. That's what he, Francisco, would have done. A couple of men ride up plotting against him, he'd have killed them.

Just as he believed Pin and Curly were dead, Francisco also believed that Rab Sinclair was coming for him. That was a sixth sense, a strong feeling. A man just knew when his trail was being tugged, like a long string tied to a wrist that someone keeps fiddling with on the other end. Francisco just sensed a gentle tug on his backtrail.

And that tug on his backtrail meant that if he was going to do for Bad Eye Frank and con him out of the money, then he was going to have to do it quickly.

Bad Eye Frank promised one hundred dollars for Rab Sinclair's scalp. Francisco had a scalp he'd gladly pass off as Rab Sinclair's. Even though he'd not yet begun to form up his plan when he took Sam Wilburn's scalp, Francisco Tebone knew all along that when he returned to Mesilla he needed a scalp. And at the time, it seemed unlikely he was going to have the right one.

So he had taken the top of Sam Wilburn's hair and now intended to pass that off as proof of Rab Sinclair's death.

In his mind, he saw himself sitting in Bad Eye Frank's office at the warehouse. He saw the scalp on the desk between them. He imagined Bad Eye Frank's shock that the young gunfighter had managed to take Rab Sinclair's hair. He saw in his imagination as Bad Eye Frank turned to the safe behind his desk. "Just let me get you that hundred dollars I promised." And when the safe was open, Francisco Tebone imagined himself leaping from his seat. Maybe he would beat Bad Eye Frank. Maybe he would shoot him or drive a knife into his back. Maybe he would scalp Bad Eye Frank, and he wouldn't wait for him to be dead yet, neither. Then Francisco intended to empty the safe and ride out of Mesilla a wealthy man.

Francisco's plan went no farther than what he imagined playing out. There was no alternative plan if his interaction with Bad Eye Frank didn't go as he imagined it would. Whatever happened, Francisco would seize whatever opportunity came along.

All he really cared about was killing Bad Eye Frank. Getting the bounty or emptying Frank Cosgrove's safe – those would be ideal situations. But the one thing that was important for Francisco now was taking the first opportunity that came along to kill Bad Eye Frank.

The smaller village of Las Cruces four miles north of Mesilla came within sight in the late afternoon, and Francisco decided to stop there for the night. He would face Bad Eye Frank in the morning.

***

Rab Sinclair and Evangeline made better time through the mountains than Francisco Tebone, and they might have been surprised to know just how close they were behind him.

As Francisco put his mules up in the livery in Las Cruces for the night and found himself a spot on the edge of town to bed down, Rab and Evangeline were picking their way along a ridge in the Organ Mountains east of Mesilla.

"This is a good spot," Rab said, pointing up ahead. A long, narrow waterfall dropped in free fall through a "V" cut in the rock about fifteen feet above a pool. From the pool, a narrow creek meandered down the ridge and out across the valley until it found its way into the Rio Grande.

But the creek offered enough water that here on the ridge, near the pool, there were a few cottonwood trees that offered shade. The ridge was dotted with yucca plants, but there along the pool and creek there was grass enough for the horses and soft spots to make a bed. From a perch atop an outcropping, Rab could look west across the valley and see for what seemed like ten thousand miles.

"It's like an enormous ocean bed gone dry," Evangeline said, joining Rab on his perch and looking out across the gray and brown valley.

"That snake of green running through there, near to us, that's the vegetation in the shallow valley of the Rio Grande," Rab said. "That there's Mesilla." He pointed to a just-visible cluster of low adobe buildings to their southeast, this side of the river. The buildings were so small they didn't even look like buildings.

"It seems like your eyes run out before you can see all the way to the end of it," Evangeline said, squinting at the far distant horizon.

"It's a big, flat desert below us," Rab said. "The Butterfield Stagecoach used to cut out that way. I supplied some hawsses once for the remuda at a couple of their relay stations."

"So you've been here before?" Evangeline asked.

"A few times," Rab said. "Mesilla was the capital of the Confederate Territory of Arizona for a time during the war, and I was here for about three months then," Rab said. "Then when I worked for Butterfield that time. And I've come through one or two other times. Nice little village, Mesilla. They have some bailes that folks come up from Mexico to attend, big dances and parties, bull fighting. Folks down there is generally fun loving. I reckon, though, we won't see anything like that while we're here."

"I'd rather be here for a dance than what we're here for," Evangeline said.

"I reckon so."

Rab took a deep breath. "I'm going to ride over to the village in the morning. I want you to stay here. This is a good little spot for a camp. I don't know what I'm going to find when I get there, or what might happen. You wait two days. If I don't come back by then, I won't be coming back. You ride down to that smaller village. That's Las Cruces. You go there and get supplied and ride along the Rio Grande straight north until you get to Fort Craig. Then you can make your way on your own. Or if you like, sell the hawsses and take the stagecoach back. Either way."

Evangeline shook her head. "I didn't ride all this way through some of the most hellish country I've ever seen to wait while you ride into town."

"I expect it's going to be rough going down in that town when I get there. I don't want you to be a part of it."

Evangeline considered it. "I understand," she said, slowly. "You want me to stay out of it, I'll stay out of it. But do me this. In the morning let's ride together to that other little village. What did you call it?"

"Las Cruces."

"I'll wait for you there. That way, I'll at least know. If there's a shootout and you're killed, word will travel up there. Won't it?"

"I'm sure it will."

"So then I'll know. I won't be depending on you to come back or not come back."

Rab nodded. "That seems fair enough. But you promise me you'll stay out of it?"

"I promise," Evangeline said.

They spent the night there by the waterfall and near the pool in the way that a man and woman who loved each other would if they thought it might be their last night together.

***

In the wide open doors of the Las Cruces livery, Evangeline watched Rab Sinclair ride off to the south on the back of the blue roan.

Rab left her with money enough to board the horses, get a room for herself, and – if necessary – make her way back to the Las Vegas ranch alone.

She made a promise to him knowing when she said it that she would not keep the promise.

So Evangeline saddled up the buckskin while Rab rode off toward Mesilla and whatever fate waited for him there.

"I don't know, Buck," she said to the horse, as if it has asked the question. "Maybe I'll find a place to set up with the Sharps and give Rabbie some cover. But I cannot wait here to find out what happens to him. I can't sit around hoping for the best. We know they're expecting him, and we know the numbers will be against him. So maybe there's something I can do to level it out a bit."

When she had the buckskin saddled, Evangeline took a look outside the livery before leading the horse into the street. It would be just like Rab to know what she was planning and double back to catch her. But other than a couple of farmers driving wagons into town, the thoroughfare was empty. So she mounted up and took the road south.

She did not know what she was riding into, nor was she much worried over it.

Evangeline had spent a long time working on Rab's ranch, spending weeks alone when he went off hunting or on one of his journeys south to Fort Craig. She was no stranger to hard work and independence, and it took more than a little to frighten her from a thing she was determined to do.

She took a leisurely pace. She was sure Rab would swing around the village and try to come into it unseen. He wouldn't go riding directly into Mesilla along the main thoroughfare. So she was in no hurry.

Her problem was, she had no idea what she was going to do when she got there.

She just knew that she couldn't wait in Las Cruces, not knowing. And if Rab needed help, he had no one but her who could give it to him.

"We'll figure it out when we get there," she told the buckskin.

She never did notice the man watching the thoroughfare from Las Cruces to Mesilla, and she did not see him ride off toward Mesilla in front of her.

-20-

Francisco Tebone drove the wagon to Frank Cosgrove's warehouse.

"Do something with them mules," Francisco said to one of Frank's drivers who was leaning outside the warehouse, smoking a cigarette and watching as the men from the warehouse loaded up his wagon.

"Do something with them mules yourself," the man said.

Francisco reached into the back of the wagon and took out the small bag where he'd stashed Sam Wilburn's scalp. He tied the bag to his belt.

"Bad Eye Frank in his office?" Francisco asked the driver.

The man screwed up his face and said, "Boy, I don't know who you are, but Mr. Cosgrove, as you ought to be callin' him, ain't here right now. Why don't you go deal with them mules and then you can sit in the dirt over there and wait."

"Where is he?" Francisco asked.

"That ain't none of your business, boy. Now gone and git."

Francisco drew his Remington from his holster. He was fast, faster than anyone the driver had ever seen. The driver didn't even have time to toss his cigarette. Francisco jammed the barrel of the Remington up against the man's face, pushing it against his nostril. Francisco's snarl was as frightening as the gun. Despite his age, he had a crazy look in his eyes, and he was dirty from the trail and smelled foul.

"I ain't interested in now smart answers from you," Francisco said. "Where's Bad Eye Frank?"

The driver held his hands out wide, palms exposed to prove he had no ill intent.

"He's probably down to the cantina," the driver said sheepishly.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" Francisco said.

He lowered the Remington from the man's face, but did not put it back in his holster. But he took a step back away from the driver. "Do something with them mules before I get back, or you better arm yourself. Cause if them mules is still harnessed to that wagon, you and I is going to shoot it out."

The driver watched Francisco walk away toward the cantina, the Remington still in his hand.

"Hey, one of you do something with them mules," the driver shouted to the hands from the warehouse. One of them obediently went to take the mules to Bad Eye Frank's corral.

The Mesilla plaza was a long, narrow rectangle with streets running on all four sides. The major north-south road up to Fort Craig and Albuquerque and south to El Paso del Norte was outside of the plaza. Likewise, the east-west road that was part of the Southern mail route ran north of town.

At the center of the plaza was a large gazebo made of timber and pained white with colorful red and green accents.

In the plaza there were often bailes, big dances that drew people from villages far away. Mexican bands would perform lively entertainment from the gazebo while dancers filled the plaza. There would always be tables full of food and drink lining the brick walks around the plaza. People would ride two or three days to come to these Mesilla bailes. They were highlights of the season, and fondly recalled year after year.

The cantina that Bad Eye Frank favored sat near the end of one row of adobe buildings. Pink with a bright blue door that stayed open most all the time, it was a lively place with tables outside where locals gathered for meals and drink. Bad Eye Frank always held court, with several people around. Usually there were women, but always men who worked for him.

This was not the place Francisco Tebone would find opportunity. He wanted to get Frank Cosgrove in a secluded place. His office at the warehouse would be best. That's where Frank's safe was.

Francisco also worried how long he could keep up his lie.

His show of bravado with the driver at the warehouse made him feel good. All morning he'd been girding himself, getting worked up and angry so that he'd be ready to make the fast move when the time came. Bullying an older man, an adult, made him feel better.

Now Francisco Tebone was ready to find out if he could con Frank Cosgrove long enough to get to a place where it was just the two of them – a place where he could put a bullet in Bad Eye Frank to pay him back for the stripes Frank had put on his back.

Even as he left the loading dock at the warehouse, Francisco saw a cluster of men seated around one of the outside tables at the cantina. He was sure this would be where Bad Eye Frank was sitting, and as he approached the table across the plaza, a couple of the men slid back from the table and Francisco could see Bad Eye Frank, his one eye wandering around aimlessly.

"You look a mess, boy," Bad Eye Frank shouted at Francisco as he crossed the plaza. He seemed to be in a good mood. "Where's Pin and Curly?"

"Pin and Curly are dead," Francisco said, stepping up to the table.

Bad Eye Frank narrowed his good eye, but the bad eye stayed wide.

"What happened?" Bad Eye Frank's tone dropped.

"Sinclair got them," Francisco said, trying to keep the details at a minimum to keep the lie going.

As he stood there talking, Francisco made an appraisal of the other men around. Most of them looked like they worked for Frank's freighter business. And they knew enough to know that this conversation was one they needed to ignore. This was a conversation that didn't have anything to do with them. Some of them made small conversations among themselves. Others leaned back in their chairs and closed their eyes with their faces to the sky.

But one man, a hard looking man, paid close attention.

Francisco did not recognize him. But he carried a gun, and even seated at the table, he was a man who looked like he could use it. There was also a Mexican standing behind Frank, leaning against the pink adobe wall of the cantina. He held a shotgun across his body. This was new. Francisco had never seen a man who looked like he was standing guard over Frank Cosgrove before.

"Tell me about," Bad Eye Frank said.

Francisco felt the sting of doubt penetrate his imagined scenario of a plan as he caught the glance that passed between Bad Eye Frank and the other man.

"Who's this?" Francisco asked, nodding his head toward the man.

"You should know," Frank Cosgrove said. "He's who you want to be when you grow up. This is Don Conchos."

Francisco Tebone took an involuntary step back. He fixed Don Conchos in his gaze.

"I know your name," Francisco said.

"You should," Don Conchos replied casually. "Not many folks don't know my name."

Francisco Tebone didn't have heroes. He'd never known a man who was worth looking up to. But he knew a few names of men he'd never met yet wanted to be, and Don Conchos' name ranked high on that list. A known gunfighter. A feared man. Francisco Tebone found himself speechless as he stood now looking at one of the few men who was close to what he might describe as an idol.

"What happened to Pin and Curly," Bad Eye Frank asked.

The question shook Francisco from his moment of worship, and he turned his eyes back from Don Conchos to Frank Cosgrove.

"Sinclair killed them," Francisco said. Then he remembered his plan, the scalp in the bag, the open safe, the vengeance for those lashes on his back. "But I got somethin' for you, somethin' you been wantin'. Let's go to your office at the warehouse, and I'll tell you all about it."

Bad Eye Frank did not move. He simply sat there, staring at Francisco Tebone for several moments.

"These are all my friends," Bad Eye Frank said, finally. "Whatever story you have to tell, you can tell it here, in front of my friends."

Francisco shifted uneasily. There was something about Frank's attitude that left Francisco uncertain. It reminded him more of Frank's attitude before the lashings than after. So Francisco said nothing. He just shifted his feet.

"You saw Rab Sinclair kill Pin and Curly?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"I saw it," Francisco said. And then he reached inside himself for his nerve. "And then I killed Sinclair."

Bad Eye Frank showed no emotion. Relief, glee, celebration – whatever Francisco might have expected, Bad Eye Frank wasn't showing it.

"You killed Sinclair?" Frank Cosgrove asked.

Francisco wondered if he was imagining it or if Bad Eye Frank's tone dropped.

This wasn't how he imagined it playing out. He expected them to be in the office. He expected Bad Eye Frank to be so overjoyed that he would easily be caught off guard. But they were outside in the plaza at the table in front of the cantina. They were surrounded by men, and one of them was Don Conchos. And Bad Eye Frank's tone had just dropped.

Francisco reached for the bag tied to his belt. Maybe he reached a little fast. He did not tell them what he was going for.

The Mexican over Frank's shoulder, the one leaning against the pink adobe wall of the cantina, jerked up the shotgun and stepped forward. The movement was easy and fast. He had the shotgun pointing directly at Francisco, holding it high over Bad Eye Frank's shoulder.

"I wouldn't make no moves toward that belt," Don Conchos said. "This is Valdez, and Valdez will cut you in half with both of them barrels if you reach toward that belt again."

Francisco stopped his hands and held them out.

"The bag," he said, and his voice sounded strange, sheepish. "I'm just reaching for the bag."

"Go on, then," Don Conchos said, but Valdez the Mexican did not lower the shotgun until the bag was untied and Francisco's hands had moved from the gun.

"What's going on here?" Francisco said.

"What's in the bag?" Bad Eye Frank asked, ignoring the question.

Francisco's hands fumbled with the leather thong tying the bag. He finally got the knot loose. He reached a hand into the bag and slid out the scalp, and he tossed it on the table in front of Bad Eye Frank.

Frank Cosgrove did not move other than to lower his eyes for a glance at the scalp. Then he looked back at Francisco.

"What is that?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"Rab Sinclair's scalp," Francisco said.

Bad Eye Frank's face broke into a wide smile, and for the first time since the interview began, Francisco felt comfortable.

"Tell me what happened," Frank said, the smile still on his face.

Francisco let out the breath he'd been holding.

There'd been no forethought to his story. In the moment, Frank decided to mix truth with lie.

"We rode up to Las Vegas and found his ranch," Francisco said. "We rode out there, intending to take him with the rifle you give me. But someone else was there and started taking shots at us, so we rode out. But Sinclair gave chase."

Francisco tried to tell the story, but in his mind he wondered why Bad Eye Frank was making him stand there and not offering him to have a seat.

"So we ran, but then we doubled back, went back toward Las Vegas on another road. We're riding up to a pass through the mountains, and next thing we know, Sinclair is there laying ambush. He unhorsed both Pin and Curly. We was all trying to get back, get away, when he started shooting, but Pin and Curly was unhorsed."

Now came the lie.

"Sinclair rode in and shot them. He shot Pin and Curly. That's when I saw my chance. I charged, and when he went for his gun I outdrew 'im. I beat him to it, and I got him with one shot. Put him down. When I come back around, he was dead. So I scalped him. And there it is – Rab Sinclair's scalp."

Bad Eye Frank was still smiling, but there was no friendliness nor mirth in his smile, and Francisco wished he would quit smiling.

"Where's Jep Henson?" Bad Eye Frank shouted, still watching Francisco. "Jep Henson, come on out here!"

From the blue doorway of the cantina, an older man stepped forward. He was a round man, heavily tanned. A growth of whiskers in gray and black covered his cheeks. Stuck in his belt were the heavy leather gloves worn by a jehu or a freight driver. Francisco recognized him right away as one of Bad Eye Frank's freighters, even though he did not know the man. They all had a look to them.

"Right here, Mr. Cosgrove. You call me?" the man said.

"Jep, come and join us."

The man called Jep Henson walked up to the table, and Don Conchos slid back in his chair and stood up.

"Here, Mr. Henson, take my seat," Don Conchos said. And then he stood next to his chair so that he was now standing across the table from Francisco, between the freight driver and Bad Eye Frank.

Francisco thought it was strange, a known gunfighter showing deference to a wagon driver. The thought went through his head that if he ever had a name like Don Conchos, he damn sure wouldn't cow to some wagon driver.

"Jep, when did you get back to Mesilla?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"Yesterday night, boss," Jep Henson said.

"And where were you, Jep? Where'd you come back from?"

Still, Bad Eye Frank kept Francisco locked in a stare that felt dead uncomfortable. In fact, Francisco realized that everyone – Don Conchos and the Mexican Valdez, the drivers and the amigos – everyone around the table was looking dead at him. Except Jep Henson. Jep Henson was just looking at Bad Eye Frank, waiting for the next question.

"I was up in Albuquerque, boss. Got a wagon train bound for Chihuahua, and we was taking on freight up that away. We're due to leave out in the morning."

"And Jep, you make that run fairly regular, don't you?"

"I do, boss."

"So you know folks in Albuquerque, and you know that up that away news travels pretty fast from one place to another. Don't it?"

"It does, boss."

"Did you hear any news when you was up Albuquerque way?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

And the question tied a knot in Francisco Tebone's stomach. All of a sudden, he felt a trickle of sweat roll over and around the bulging scars on his back. Those scars still tender after all this time.

"I heard some news," Jep answered.

"Tell us about it," Bad Eye Frank said. "What'd you hear?"

"I heard about some trouble over in Las Vegas, boss. Seems them men Pin and Curly are settin' in the jail over there waitin' on a hangin' or two."

"Pin and Curly are waitin' on a hangin'?" Bad Eye Frank asked.

"Who’s hangin'?"

"Their own, boss," Jep said. "They been tied to a murder down by Fort Craig, and the way I heard it, the trial was any day and everyone in San Miguel County says they're gone to be hanged."

Francisco's mind raced.

"I thought they was dead," he said. "But maybe they wasn't."

Bad Eye Frank didn't even acknowledge the statement.

"What else do you hear, Jep?"

"Well sir, the word around is that feller Rab Sinclair has gone to fetch a third man involved in that killing by Fort Craig. He left Pin and Curly with the sheriff up yonder, and he rode out. Folks is saying how they'd hate to be that third man."

Bad Eye Frank let out a scoffing laughter. "I'd hate to be that man, too."

Frank Cosgrove picked up the dried scalp sitting on the table, and with a flick of his wrist slung it at Francisco Tebone.

"I don't know whose scalp you cut off. Maybe it was that unlucky feller at Fort Craig. Maybe somebody else's. But what I know for sure is that what you brought me ain't Rab Sinclair's scalp. But you did bring me Rab Sinclair. You led him right here."

Francisco Tebone stuttered, trying to find something to say. The knot in his stomach was still there, but another knot tied up in his throat, and he felt like he was choking on it. He felt like he couldn't get air around that knot in his throat.

There was nothing else for it. Francisco Tebone, who wanted to be a known man, was all out of plays.

So he dropped his hand to holster. The speed of the movement surprised even him. He'd never gone for his gun so fast. But he had to thumb the leather loop off the hammer, a half a second of time. A meaningless, half second.

Don Conchos didn't have to thumb the loop of his hammer. He'd done it when he stood up and gave Jep Henson his chair.

And as fast as Francisco was, Don Conchos had him beat.

The older gunfighter's revolver spit smoke and fire once, then twice. The lead punched Francisco in the stomach first, and it was a fleeting and bizarre mental image Francisco had of the knot in his stomach coming untied as the bullet cut it. That queasy feeling of fear that had tightened up in his stomach disappeared when Don Conchos gut shot him. There was nothing left to be afraid of.

The second lead ball punched him in the chest, and Francisco Tebone staggered backwards, trying to stay on his feet. He didn't want the shame of all these men standing around watching him get killed like this. It was no different than the shame of them throwing T-bones at him and laughing as he gnawed whatever meat he could from the bones.

So Francisco tried to stay on his feet. He was dying, he knew that, but he wanted to die where no one would see.

So he turned to walk away. He took a step and there was a burst of laughter from behind him at the table. They were all laughing at him.

And then he realized why. When he'd stuck out his foot to take a step his legs failed him, and he'd fallen to his knees.

He could hear their laughter behind him.

Francisco mustered the strength he had left and he tried to push himself back to his feet. He wanted to get away, to go die in private where he would not hear their laughter, but he did not want them to see him crawl. So he pushed himself forward, trying to get to his feet, but then the ground was coming toward him and his face was settled in the dust of the road.

The whole earth seemed to be turning sideways as Francisco laid in the dirt and listened to the men laughing.

***

"Somebody drag him off and put him in a hole," Bad Eye Frank said. He was standing up now, looking at Francisco Tebone's body in the dirt. "I reckon that's a damn shame, there. Maybe if things had been different, I could've put that boy to work for me. But he didn't know what was good for him."

Frank Cosgrove clapped Don Conchos on the shoulder. "Nice shootin'. Looks like you earned some o' that money I've been paying you."

Don Conchos handed his revolver back to Valdez. "Reload that for me," he said. Valdez drew his own revolver and handed it to Conchos, and the gunman dropped Valdez's revolver down into his holster. He always made sure he had a loaded gun on him.

Then he stepped away from the table and walked over to where Francisco Tebone was dying in the street. Don Conchos pressed the toe of his boot into the boy's armpit and raised him up just a touch to see if he was still alive.

"There ain't no doubt if you're going to make it as a gunman that you got to be fast," Don Conchos said. "But you also got to predict. You got to be ready and know when the shootin' is bound to start. I beat you on account of my predicting. While you was trying to get the thong off your gun hammer, I'd already cleared mine. That's why I'm alive and you're dead, boy. I predicted."

Most of the men at the table, even those who enjoyed the opportunity to see a skilled tradesman at work, blanched at the morbidity of Don Conchos taunting the dying boy. Whatever laughter remained now died away. Conchos did not notice that he'd lost the favor of his audience, but if he had noticed he would not have cared. He wasn't the type of man who worried over much about what folks thought of him. Every day that he went to work and lived through it, Don Conchos counted himself satisfied.

A couple of men who loaded freight in Bad Eye Frank's warehouse lifted Francisco Tebone under the arms and dragged him out of the plaza. Don Conchos and Bad Eye Frank watched them.

"If Sinclair will get here, I'll finish this job and you can pay us off," Don Conchos said. "Then we'll be on our way."

Off in the distance, in the gap between the buildings, Bad Eye Frank saw a man riding hard toward the plaza.

"You ain't going to have to wait long," Bad Eye Frank said.

Conchos turned to follow what Frank Cosgrove was looking at, as did all the other men gathered around.

"That him?" Conchos asked, dropping his hand to the grip of his revolver.

"Naw, that ain't him," Bad Eye Frank said. "That's one of my lookouts. He's riding in because he's seen Sinclair somewhere."

The sorrel horse kicked rocks and sand as it skidded to a stop and then danced in place in the road at about the same spot where Francisco Tebone fell and died. The man on the horse was Jep Henson's cousin Gary Acres.

"I seen him," Acres said, as excited as the dancing horse.

"He's up in Las Cruces, riding that blue roan just like you said he would be. Rode into town this morning with a woman."

"A woman?" Bad Eye Frank asked. "What do you mean a woman?"

"A woman, boss," Acres said. "I don't know how else to say it. He come into Las Cruces from the mountains this morning. And her with him. Trailing two spare mounts and two pack horses."

"A woman?" Bad Eye Frank said again. "That don't make no sense."

"They took their horses to the livery stable, and then a while later he mounted up on that roan and starts heading this way. But he ain't coming down the road, he struck off through the desert."

"Trying to catch me sleeping is what he's doing," Bad Eye Frank said.

But Acres had more to tell. "So I started back, and then after a while I realized someone was riding behind me. So I look through the field glasses, and damn if it ain't that woman. She's coming right down the road, coming right here toward Mesilla. She wasn't running as hard as I was, but she'll be to the plaza here in half an hour."

Bad Eye Frank walked away from the table to where he could see a ways farther up the road north.

"A woman," he said again, this time more to himself. Then, to Don Conchos, "It's time for you to go to work. If Sinclair's coming through the desert, you'd best be ready for him."

"I'm ready," Conchos said. "Where are you going to be?"

"In the cantina," Frank said. Then he turned to speak to his warehouse hands and his wagon drivers. "Every one of you men who's got a gun, you come with me into the cantina. If you ain't got a gun, go and get one, and then come into the cantina."

"You stay in there and out of sight until it's over," Don Conchos said. "When I've got him, I'll come and get you."

"What are you going to do about the woman?" Bad Eye Frank asked, an idea forming in his mind.

"I reckon when she gets here I'm going to shoot her," Don Conchos said. "If she's with Sinclair, she's a threat. Ain't she?"

Frank nodded. "Wing her if you can. I want her alive. If this goes bad for you, she might be my bargaining chip."

Conchos shrugged. "I'll do it, but you won't need her."

He watched as Bad Eye Frank turned and limped into the cantina, followed by half a dozen men.

The others, some armed, drifted away toward their homes or toward the warehouse, unwilling to stand vigil in the cantina with Cosgrove. Don Conchos did not think any of them would be coming back with a gun. Gary Acres dismounted and walked his horse toward the warehouse, Jep Henson walking along beside him.

In a moment, only Valdez and Don Conchos remained in the plaza.

Valdez handed over Don Conchos' gun to him. Conchos stuck it in his belt, but did not return Valdez's revolver to him.

"You stand over there by the door to that cantina, and nobody comes past you," Conchos said.

"Si," Valdez answered, going to take up his post.

"Hector!" Conchos yelled toward the roof of the cantina. In response, one of his other men appeared behind the raised parapet that made the cantina seem more like a fort than a saloon. Hector had been keeping a watch from the roof all morning. He had with him up there a big Sharps rifle. "He's supposed to be coming from the desert," Conchos shouted. "You see him, you shoot him."

The man called Hector waved acknowledgement and went back to his watch. Now Conchos turned and shouted at the gazebo. There, almost invisible among the shadows, his other man Gabriel was sitting on a bench.

"Any time now, Gabe," Conchos said. "Supposed to be a woman riding in soon. Let's take her alive if we can."

-21-

Mesilla had been the capital of the Confederacy's only territory. They called it Arizona, and it consisted of southern New Mexico Territory. This was before the Union had an Arizona Territory, and New Mexico during the war stretched from Texas to Nevada Territory.

By the time the Confederacy abandoned Mesilla and its sole territory and retreated back into Texas, Rab Sinclair was already in Colorado Territory living with the Ute People.

The sin he'd committed against Bad Eye Frank was done by then, and Frank Cosgrove was moldering in a Yankee prison in California, stewing in his desire for revenge. When the war ended, Frank Cosgrove came back to Mesilla because these had been fine days for him. The Confederacy was in the ascendancy. Mezcal and beer flowed free, the women were pretty and willing, the dances in the plaza were thrilling affairs. In the Yankee prison, Mesilla seemed a million miles away.

After the war, Bad Eye Frank achieved some measure of success in Mesilla. He'd built a profitable business, both crooked and legitimate, and he had power in the small village. People feared him, and fear causes respect. But the stewing he'd done in the federal fort with not more than thirty prisoners of war continued even when things in Mesilla were going well for Frank. His hatred of Rab Sinclair did not diminish with time. His success could not appease him. Bad Eye Frank convinced himself that the only way he could go forward in life with any joy was if Rab Sinclair wasn't breathing on this earth.

And so his entire career, everything he built and everything he did, became a means to an end, Rab Sinclair's end.

Anyone could have pointed out to Bad Eye Frank that he was only causing himself unnecessary trouble.

A reasonable man would accept the bountiful fruits of labor that Frank Cosgrove could enjoy and find a way to let the past die in the past. His grudge against Sinclair caused him – and many others – anguish that it need not cause.

Anyone could have pointed this out, but of course no one did. Because the same single-minded determination that led Frank Cosgrove to be successful both as a freighter and a thief also led Frank Cosgrove down a dark path of vengeance from which he could not be swayed.

This personal vendetta had already cost lives – lives of both the guilty and the innocent. Gunfighters, killers, who Frank Cosgrove had hired to kill Rab Sinclair, were piled up in graves because of Bad Eye Frank's meanness. Innocent folks, like Old Grady and Caleb Morgan suffered as collateral casualties.

And now, after all these years, Frank Cosgrove was on the verge of an end.

Outside in the plaza he had four of the best killers that money could buy. Don Conchos was a known man.

Inside the cantina, Frank Cosgrove had six armed men. They might not any of them be killers, but they could all damn sure pull a trigger.

But as he sat there sipping from a glass of mezcal, Frank could not help but feel a sense of dread.

Maybe that dread sprang from a place because Frank knew the conclusion of this thing that consumed him for so long was fast approaching on that blue roan. Maybe it was not Rab Sinclair he feared, but instead he was afraid of losing a thing that was important to him.

Or maybe it was Rab Sinclair he feared.

Maybe, deep down, he was afraid of that young scout who knew the territory better than he did, who despite his youth always bested Frank Cosgrove back during the war. At the dances in Mesilla, the prettiest girls always sought Rab Sinclair for a dance. The officers trusted his judgment more. The other men liked him better. Deep down, Frank Cosgrove knew that he was jealous, and always had been, of the easy confidence Rab Sinclair possessed.

"That low-down, deserting bastard is coming to town," Frank Cosgrove shouted at the cantina, breaking the silence that had come over the place.

His men, his drivers and laborers, all cast their eyes on him. A hollowness had come over the place. Some of the men contemplated life and death. Others, looking at the odds, wondered how much they wanted to be involved in killing a man they didn't know and didn't have anything against. One, or two, who knew a little bit about Rab Sinclair and his reputation, they worried whether or not they would live to see the sun go down over Mesilla one more time.

-22-

After leaving Evangeline at the livery, Rab Sinclair rode out of Las Cruces to the Rio Grande where he could follow the river south. All along the banks of Rio Grande there were farms taking advantage of the water. Most of the corn was harvested now, but there were stands of cottonwoods, mesquite, and even a few pecan groves, and as he rode south Rab was fairly certain his movements were undetected.

The way Rab figured it, Francisco Tebone would have gone on to Frank Cosgrove.

"Francisco had to know I was following him," Rab told Evangeline back at the livery in Las Cruces. "By now, Bad Eye Frank knows I'm coming, and I reckon he and that boy will be waiting for me. I expect, too, that he'll have some men with him. So I'm going to try to get into Mesilla without being seen."

Rab had an addition to his plan that he did not share with Evangeline.

Back during the war, in those few weeks that he was at Mesilla, he met a girl named Juanita. She was married now, with children, but once when Rab was back in Mesilla since the war and did not want to run into Bad Eye Frank, Juanita and her husband had been kind enough to put him up in her barn. Rab intended now to call on her again. Her husband was a Confederate veteran and had a farm in the Rio Grande valley. He had no love for Bad Eye Frank, and Rab was counting on it that nothing had changed.

When he was down near Mesilla, Rab rode out from the river banks and followed a field of harvested corn until he came to the house he recognized. As he was hitching Cromwell outside the house, the door opened and Juanita's husband, Carl Branson, walked out onto the adobe brick patio.

"I guess I ain't surprised to see you, Rabbie," Branson said, walking forward and extending a hand. "Word around town for the last few weeks was Frank Cosgrove's hired some gunmen thinking you was comin' to town to get him."

"I've come to town," Rab said. "How's your family Carl?"

"Good. Juanita and the children are all fine. Juanita's pregnant again."

"Number three or number four?" Rab asked.

"Number three," Carl said. "How can I help?"

"I suspect a feller I've been chasing rode into town yesterday and warned Bad Eye that I'm near," Rab said. "It would be good to know if he's expecting me."

Carl nodded. "I'll saddle a horse and ride into Mesilla. Probably take me an hour or so to get there, learn anything worthwhile, and then get back. Go on in and get yourself something to eat. Juanita will be glad to see you."

Carl took Cromwell to his barn where he unsaddled the horse and gave him hay while Rab went inside.

Had he known that riding into Mesilla along the Rio Grande was going to be as easy as it was, Rab would have brought Evangeline here. He now regretted leaving her in Las Cruces.

Juanita Zapatero Branson was still a pretty woman, and the sight of her reminded Rab of pleasant evenings dancing when the army was at Mesilla. She was one of many girls he danced with during that time, but in conversations after the dancing they formed a friendship. It was never more than that, they both seemed to innately know that their relationship was nothing more than friendship. After Rab rode out, Carl Branson became Juanita's favorite dancing partner.

Seeing her now, pregnant and with two pretty little girls already in the house, made Rab happy for her that he'd gone off on a scouting mission and left the Mesilla encampment. Life had worked out well for Juanita.

"Hola, Rabbie Sinclair. Mi casa es tu casa," she said, her face breaking into a wide smile as she patted him on the cheek. "You look well my old friend."

"Well enough, I suppose," Rab said. "You look very round, Juanita. Will this one be a boy?"

"He kicks like a boy," Juanita said. "Carl is hoping for a boy. He wants someone to help him dig new irrigation ditches."

"If he's as strong as his papa, he'll have them dug before summer," Rab said.

Juanita laughed. "We just ate but there is plenty. Have a seat and let me fix you a plate."

They sat together and talked for a long time, Juanita occasionally interrupting to tend to her daughters for one thing or another.

The whole time, though, Rab's eyes constantly flickered to a clock in a case against the wall. When an hour had expired, he listened carefully for the sound of an approaching rider. But the minutes ticked by interminably. Another fifteen minutes. And then another half hour. Rab felt the tension pull against his easy smile as he spoke with Juanita. When Carl had been gone two hours, Rab found it hard to give her any of his attention.

In the course of their conversation, they only talked of small things. Juanita talked of her growing discomfort as her pregnancy progressed, and she complained of the heat. She talked about the harvests that had been good the past two years. Rab talked about his spread up near Las Vegas, he mentioned Evangeline and Juanita pressed to know if he intended marriage. He told her he did not know, but that he liked Evangeline pretty well. It was the talk that old friends make when they have not seen each other for a long time and do not want to talk of deeper things.

"You are keeping close watch on the clock," Juanita said as Rab's eyes glanced again, and then lingered as he realized that Carl Branson had been gone a full two hours.

"What's that?" Rab said.

Juanita smiled at his agitation. "You are watching the clock very closely, Rabbie. Where has Carl gone for you that you are so anxious for him to be back?"

"He rode into Mesilla to see how things are at the plaza."

Juanita's smile fell. "You are here to settle things with Frank Cosgrove?"

"That's the size of it," Rab said.

"We have heard many rumors. A shooting at Fort Craig. Rumors that Frank has hired men to protect him."

"I reckon he's going to need 'em."

"It's not like you to come gunning for a man. The last time you were here you were hiding from him so you would not have to fight him."

Rab nodded. "It's gone farther," Rab explained. "He sent some men to kill me, and they killed a friend of mine. The thing needs to be settled. It's gone too far."

Rab stood and walked to one of the open windows, looking out to the road for a rider who was not there. "If anything has happened to Carl, I'll never forgive myself," Rab said.

"Carl can take care of himself," Juanita said. She joined him at the window and laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I feel like I should dissuade you from going after him. But I know those words would be wasted. If you've come for him, you'll not be turned away."

"No, I'll not turn back now. I'm decided on this."

A distant sound caught Rab's ear. He craned his neck to see farther down the road. "Here's Carl now."

***

Carl Branson did not unsaddle his horse or turn it out in the corral. Instead, he hitched the horse in front of his own house and hurried inside.

"It's trouble in the town," he said.

"Tell me about it," Rab said.

Juanita fetched a glass of lemonade for her husband, and then she backed off to tend to the children so the two men could speak openly.

"I rode into the plaza just to see what was what," Carl said. "Right away, I noticed the place was deserted. Middle of the day like this, there should have been plenty of people. But all the stores are closed and locked up. The only thing open is the one cantina that Frank Cosgrove makes as his personal watering hole. But even in the square, there ain't nobody around. All I saw was a Mexican standing at the door to the cantina with a shotgun in his hands and a white feller they say is Don Conchos sitting outside the cantina. I noticed another Mexican sitting inside the gazebo, but he's tough to see."

"Good to know," Rab said. "Don Conchos, huh? I know that name."

"He's a hired killer. He's got a reputation around these parts. He's put a fair number of notches in his gun belt just down in El Paso del Norte."

"Also good to know," Rab said. "I'm obliged to you, Carl."

"That ain't all of it, Rab," Carl said.

I rode around the plaza for a minute, saw that everything was closed up, and then I rode over to the cantina. They didn't keep me from going inside, but they made it pretty plain that I was not particularly welcome. Frank was inside with six men. I knew all these men. They're all from around here and work for him. So you're talking men that work his loading dock or drive his wagons. Those ain't gunfighters, not that they can't shoot. But they don't do it regular. The three outside, though. They're hired killers."

"So outside of Frank, I'm looking at nine men?"

"That I saw," Carl said. "I reckon there could be more. But here's what you need to know, Rab. I ordered a beer in the cantina, and while I was there they had a big commotion. A couple of the men from inside went out into the plaza, and there was some shouting, and when I looked out the window, that Don Conchos was dragging a woman down off a horse."

Rab's heart skipped a beat. "What kind of hawss?" he asked.

"A pretty buckskin," Carl said. "In the cantina, it was pretty plain they think this woman was with you. They brought her in, and Frank Cosgrove was taunting her, talking about you, asking why you would send a woman to handle your business. That sort of thing."

"Did they hurt her?"

"No, just the taunts. Bad Eye Frank sat her down in a chair at his table."

Carl dropped his eyes to the ground. "I wanted to do something," he said. "You understand? To intervene. I couldn't stand not doing something. But I thought it was better to come back here and tell you what I knew than to get myself killed in there."

"You did right," Rab said.

Sinclair's first reaction was rage, but he held his temper in check.

"She ride into town on her own?" Rab asked. "Or did they bring her in?"

"Oh, she rode into the plaza by herself. It was out in the plaza they got her."

Rab turned to look back out the window, but his mind was not on the view of the road or Carl Branson's harvested fields. Instead, he was recalling the plaza, seeing it in his mind, considering how he would face three killers in the plaza. Wondering how he would then face six gunmen and Frank Cosgrove inside the cantina, and those men in there with Evangeline. The boy Francisco Tebone, the one who'd killed Grady, Rab figured he was among those six inside the cantina.

As he thought through it, Rab saw the plaza in his mind. He saw the positions of the three men outside. The man in the gazebo and the two men in front of the cantina.

"The cantina, which side of the plaza is it on?" Rab asked.

"The west side. If you ride to town on this road, you will be riding toward the back of the cantina."

Now he was thinking out loud. "So if I ride into the plaza, and turn toward the cantina, the setting sun could be in my eyes?"

"Yes, I suppose it could be."

"That's good to know," Rab said.

A plan was forming. The hired killers were the biggest threat. He would have to deal with them first.

"What do you want me to do?" Carl Branson asked.

"Stay here and take care of your family," Rab said. "This ain't no fight for you."

Carl shook his head. "No, Rabbie. I'll not let you ride into this alone. Tell me how I can help."

"Do you have a shotgun?" Rab asked. "Two barrels would be better than one."

"I have a double-barrel shotgun."

"If I could borrow that, then you'll have done all I can ask. Riding down there and scouting it all out probably saved my life. Letting me know about Evangeline being in that cantina, well, that takes all the surprise out of it."

"I was thinking," Carl said. "They know me in town. The men in the cantina know me. I could get inside the cantina and help you."

Rab nodded. "They would be suspicious of you coming back a second time in one day. Tell the truth."

Carl shifted his weight from one foot to another and frowned. "Yes. Truthfully it would not be common behavior from me."

"Again, I appreciate the offer. But that shotgun would be a big help to me."

"I will get it," Carl said.

"I'm going out to saddle Cromwell. I need to go soon. I don't want the sun in my eyes."

"You can't intend to just ride into the plaza?" Carl said.

Rab grinned at him and shrugged his shoulders. "They won't expect it."

-23-

The blue roan with the black face looked like a demon at full gallop, charging into Mesilla's plaza.

A sweaty froth flashed from the horse as kicked up sand and tiny pebbles from the narrow road running into the plaza from the east.

Rab Sinclair had skirted around the village to the south, and he'd charged into the plaza from the east, riding directly at Don Conchos and the Mexican at the doorway to the cantina. Rab rode quickly as he neared the town, keeping Cromwell at a quick jog, to prevent any lookouts from getting the word to the men at the cantina. But as he neared the plaza, Rab spurred the blue roan into a gallop, and he charged the plaza like he had an entire cavalry regiment at his back.

Coming from the east, Don Conchos's man Hector on the roof of the cantina never saw Sinclair make the charge into the plaza. The first he knew of it was when Sinclair let loose one barrel from the shotgun.

From across the plaza, he fired it at Don Conchos, at the table in front of the cantina, and Valdez who was standing guard at the door.

The distance rendered the shotgun useless, but it served the purpose Rab had in mind. He could fire it single-handed in the direction of the two men and get them to duck their heads just long enough for Rab to clear the distance to the gazebo.

Gabriel, the man hiding in the shadows of the gazebo, believed he had an easy drop on Sinclair when Rab rode into the plaza. Gabe leaned back, better hiding behind one of the big support timbers, and slid his gun from its holster. He was going to come around the support timber firing his revolver and catch Sinclair unaware.

But as Cromwell raced through the center of the plaza, within just a few feet of the gazebo, Rab drew hard on the reins, and the big blue roan skidded out of its gallop.

At the same time, Rab swung the shotgun just as Gabriel came around the thick post.

The shotgun blast at that proximity almost cut the Mexican in two, sending him backwards and bloody to the plank floor of the gazebo.

Rab tossed the shotgun aside, pulled the big Hawken rifle from its scabbard, and rolled out of the saddle. In a swift, fluid motion, he swatted Cromwell's backside.

"Get on, hawss!" Rab shouted, and Cromwell raced away.

When Valdez ducked away from the first shotgun blast, he also stepped inside the cantina where he sought cover. The sudden appearance of the rider and the blast from the shotgun caught Valdez off guard. He did not see Gabriel get killed. Hector, up on the roof of the cantina, scrambled from his position at the back where he was watching the western approaches. He dashed to the front of the cantina and looked over the waist-high facade that seemed like a perfect breastwork. He saw the blue roan as it raced away.

Don Conchos was the first to get off a shot.

He ducked behind the table, but he never took his eyes off Sinclair. When Gabe was shot, Don Conchos came up from behind cover, his revolver already in his grasp.

The first return shot cut a painful gash in Rab Sinclair's left thigh. He'd intended to get into the gazebo to use its railings and posts as protection, but the wound to his leg threw him off balance and the best he could do was dive to the ground and work his way around to the eastern side of the gazebo.

Hector fired a shot from the heavy Sharps rifle that splintered the railing very near where Rab was crawling, and that was the first Sinclair knew of the man atop the cantina. But as he skittered around the base of the gazebo, Rab had no view of Hector above the cantina. He only knew a shooter was there.

"Don Conchos!" Rab Sinclair yelled as soon as he was safe behind the gazebo.

"That's what they call me," Conchos said.

Don Conchos knew his shot had struck Sinclair in the leg, though he did not know how badly wounded the man was. Easily, with his eyes scanning the gazebo for any movement, Don Conchos slowly walked toward it.

"This ain't your fight," Rab called out. "I'm here for Bad Eye Frank, but I'll kill every man who stands in my way."

Rab Sinclair knew that he would never back down Don Conchos with talk. And this talk wasn't for Don Conchos. There were six gunmen inside the cantina, and Evangeline was in there with them. Rab was talking now for the benefit of those men.

"Running from a fight ain't how I earn my living," Don Conchos said. "And letting you kill Cosgrove ain't going to get me hired on the next job. You toss out them guns, and I'll make it easy on you."

While he hunkered down behind the gazebo, Rab took a look at the wound on his leg. It burned like sin, but it was not deeper than a bad scratch.

The base of the gazebo stood about three feet high, giving Rab that much room to hide on the ground. The top of the gazebo protected him from the shooter on the roof. And the other man had ducked into the cantina.

Rab's plan, though, had been to get inside the gazebo. There, the posts and the decorative railing and the benches would all provide protection but also give him the ability to look between the slats and see his adversaries. Here, behind the base of the cantina, Rab was blind. He knew he had to move.

Squatting on the balls of his feet, Rab held his Colt Dragoon in his right hand, the hammer back and his finger on the trigger. In his left hand he had the Hawken rifle with its hammer on half-cock.

Hoping to taunt Don Conchos into replying, Rab shouted out, "Last chance, Conchos! You run out of here and I'll let you live."

"Like hell!" Don Conchos shouted back.

Rab sprang up, directing his shot to the sound of Don Conchos' voice.

The lead ball whistled so near to him that Don Conchos ducked involuntarily.

Sinclair ran up the steps into the gazebo, thumbing back the hammer on the Dragoon as he did.

Now Don Conchos found himself exposed and in danger. He started running toward the cantina. Rab took aim with the Dragoon.

"Valdez!" Don Conchos shouted, and the Mexican appeared in the painted blue doorway of the cantina. He fired a wild shot from the shotgun that sent lead pellets skimming off the timbers inside the gazebo.

Rab ducked his head for just a moment, time enough for Don Conchos to make it into the cantina. But Valdez was still standing in the doorway, looking to make a second shot. But he could not see Sinclair in the shadows.

Rab dropped the hammer on the Dragoon and his shot caught the Mexican gunman in the doorway in his stomach. Valdez stumbled backwards into the cantina.

That had been a true shot, and Rab Sinclair knew it. The Mexican in the doorway was dying inside the cantina now. A gut shot like that would kill a man, even if it took a few days.

"The longer, the better," Rab said to himself. He had no love for the man's suffering, but if he whimpered and whined inside that cantina, dying in the agony of a gut shot, it might be enough to convince two or three of those men inside to abandon Bad Eye Frank when the time came.

"That's two of your men killed," Rab yelled at the cantina. "I'll still give you a chance Conchos. You and your man on the roof, you throw down your guns and walk out of here."

From the shadows inside the cantina a shot erupted, splintering a timber from the top of the railing and ricocheting off to some unknown place.

"That your answer?" Rab shouted.

He watched as two men inside the cantina emerged from the shadows, grabbed up the wounded Mexican, and dragged him farther inside.

Panic was starting to build inside that cantina.

But Rab Sinclair knew that as long as Don Conchos was alive and fighting, the men inside would feel emboldened. They would not abandon Bad Eye Frank until they were the last line of defense. Right now, those men weren't even in the fight.

Rab flattened himself on the plank boards of the gazebo, avoiding the body of the man he'd shot with the shotgun and the bits of blood on the floor.

He did not holster the Dragoon, but kept it near him, as he raised up the Hawken rifle.

He could see nothing inside the cantina, but Don Conchos would be there, in the doorway or at one of the windows.

"Come on, Conchos," Rab shouted. "You drew a losing hand this time, but it doesn't have to be the end of you. Toss out your gun and leave."

The man didn't appear ready to bite on the same trick again.

A white shirt appeared out of the shadows – just a sleeve visible as the man wearing it hugged the blue door frame. Rab took aim at the little bit of the shirt that he could see. Now a man peered around the door frame, looking for him.

It wasn't Don Conchos. It had to be one of Frank's employees.

Rab pulled the cocking trigger on the Hawken and set his finger on the firing trigger. He took careful aim. The big .54 caliber round shot from the Hawken could tear a man's arm half off. He hated to do it to man who wasn't a gunfighter and had no business in this. If Evangeline hadn't been in the cantina, Rab might have given a second thought to it. But she was in there, and his decisions were based on that. He squeezed the trigger and then rolled across the floor of the gazebo, coming to a stop behind the Mexican's body.

Rab didn't need to see the shot land to know he'd hit his mark. Someone inside the cantina was shouting full of pain. "He's shot me!" the man cried out.

He took his small sack of shot for the Hawken and his powder horn and reloaded the Hawken rifle as fast as he could. When it was loaded, Rab slid himself across the plank floor of the gazebo and in a crouch he crawled down off of the gazebo. There, he looked up. An ornate adobe wall was built up like parapets around the top of the gazebo. If he stepped up onto the railing, Rab thought he could shimmy up one of the big round posts high enough to get a hand up to pull himself over the top of that adobe wall. It was risky, he knew, because he would be on a level with Conchos' man on the roof of the cantina. But it was the best position he could find in the middle of the open plaza.

Rab slung the Hawken over his shoulder and stepped up onto the railing.

***

"Somebody else go to the door and see if you can find him," Don Conchos said.

They'd set Valdez down on a table inside the cantina, and Don Conchos was standing over him, looking at the wound in his stomach. Valdez was conscious, breathing hard, but he was taking it with a manly attitude. That was more than could be said for the wagon driver who took a shot in the arm. A couple of men had him over at the bar, wrapping a towel around the scratch on his bicep.

"And shut him up," Don Conchos said to them.

Valdez's stomach was pouring out blood faster than Don Conchos could wipe it away with a towel. He'd seen plenty of wounds like this before, and he knew Valdez would be dead soon. It was bleeding too much.

"Take this towel and hold it there," Don Conchos said to his friend. "You're going to be all right, Valdez. Just hang in there until we can get a doctor in here."

The Mexican nodded his head, just a slightly movement that made him wince. But he knew he was not going to be all right.

"I thought I said for someone to get on that door," Don Conchos said, looking up and seeing that the men were all well back and the doorway was abandoned. He looked at one of Bad Eye Frank's men. "You, go check that door."

The man took a glance over at the bar where the wagon driver was whimpering over his arm. "I ain't going to that door."

Don Conchos spat on the ground. "I don't need cowards right now."

Conchos looked over at Bad Eye Frank. His face showed the same fear as every other man in the place. But sitting on the floor with her hands bound behind her back, Don Conchos saw the ace in his sleeve.

"All right, little lady. You wanted to get involved in a gunfight so bad, well here you are."

Conchos strode across the cantina and grabbed Evangeline roughly by her arm, dragging her to her feet.

He pushed her out in front of him, still holding her roughly, and he rested the barrel of his Colt on her shoulder. In this manner, he pushed her toward the open door of the cantina.

Evangeline stood on the stoop of the cantina. Don Conchos held her tightly so she could not escape. Using her as his own breastwork, Don Conchos shouted at the gazebo.

"Throw out your guns, Sinclair. Surrender now, and I'll let this woman live. She can walk out of here. If you don't I'll backshoot her right now."

Don Conchos paused, watching the gazebo, waiting for Sinclair to show himself. From the little he knew of Sinclair, he was certain this ploy would drive him into the open.

"Now, Sinclair!"

***

Rab Sinclair squeezed back the set trigger on the Hawken rifle, took a breath, and stood up over the adobe wall on the top of the gazebo.

In an easy, quick motion, he drew the Hawken up to his shoulder, lowered the barrel, and looked down the barrel.

Standing with Evangeline held out at arm's length, Don Conchos had left just enough space where Rab, from this vantage point, could get a shot into the gunfighter.

But he hesitated before touching the hair trigger. He was certain of his shot, but a doubt crept into his mind.

Hector, Don Conchos' man on the roof of the cantina, was just as certain of his shot. He'd seen Rab Sinclair slip over the adobe wall and was waiting for Sinclair to show himself above that parapet. And when Rab stood up, Hector fired a shot from the heavy Sharps rifle, a rifle used to bring down buffalo.

Rab felt an almighty shock as the force of the round shot from the Sharps knocked him backwards and he fell down to the plank roof of the gazebo.

He laid still, taking stock of himself.

"I got him!" the gunman on the roof shouted down to Don Conchos.

Rab's hands were numb and his entire body seemed to be ringing. He breathed heavily as he looked at himself. He saw no blood, no wound. The Hawken rifle was beside him, and when Rab started to pick it up his fingers fell on splintered wood and jagged metal. Then he realized what had happened. The lead shot from the Sharps rifle had smacked into the Hawken, damaging the mechanism and the stock.

The shot had rendered the gun useless. The concussion of the impact against the Hawken had knocked Rab down, reverberating through the nerves of his fingers. He shook his hands but could not get the numbness to go away.

"You still alive Sinclair?" Don Conchos called from the doorway of the cantina.

Rab stayed still. He could shoot the Colt Dragoon as well as most men, but it was not a deadly accurate weapon. Not like the Hawken.

He was trapped atop the gazebo without a rifle, exposed if he raised his head to the man with the Sharps on the roof of the cantina.

"Sinclair?" Don Conchos shouted again.

Rab did not answer. At the moment, he had no good idea of what to do. He was blind to what was going on down below him, and it seemed that coming up to the top of the gazebo had been a fatal mistake.

He could hear voices from inside the cantina, but he could not hear what they were saying. Then he heard what he knew was a shout from Evangeline, and it sounded as if she was back inside now.

Rab took a breath. He needed to clear his mind. His plan had been simple in its inception. Thanks to Carl Branson, Rab knew where all of the hired gunmen were – except the man on the roof. With speed and surprise, Rab thought he could quickly kill Don Conchos, the man in the gazebo and the man guarding the door. Then he intended to scare the men inside into abandoning Bad Eye Frank. If they saw three hired gunmen killed, they might be less committed to saving their boss.

But the fourth gunman, the one on the roof, Rab had not counted on him. His shot that sprung the Hawken had thrown apart Rab's plan.

And now he found himself on the roof of the gazebo, pinned down by the man on the roof of the cantina, and no rifle to allow him to take Don Conchos from distance.

There was commotion down below.

"Hector, you watch the top of that gazebo close," Don Conchos called.

Rab could hear men outside the cantina. They were doing something. He could only assume they were mounting some sort of attack.

Without any obvious reason, Rab started thinking of the sawmill gravy that Evangeline sometimes made. She made it with flour and sausage, and it was thick enough it could almost be eaten by itself. Poured over biscuits and with a side of ham, it made a tremendous meal that stuck with a man all through the day, no matter how much work he had in front of him. He'd give anything now for some of that sawmill gravy, and not because he was particularly hungry. He was desperate to get Evangeline safely out of that cantina.

A thud against the adobe broke his thoughts of breakfast, and Rab looked up to see two wooden poles leaning against the adobe wall of the gazebo top. Don Conchos, or someone below, was coming up a ladder.

There were voices, maybe an argument, and a voice Rab did not recognize said, "You go first."

Someone was arguing about coming up the ladder, and it was not Don Conchos.

The Dragoon had two shots left in it. Rab had percussion caps and lead shot, but the gun took time to load. He should have already done it, but his hands were still numb. There was not time now.

Rab pointed the Dragoon at the top of the ladder, waiting for a head to appear.

He could hear each step as the man climbed the ladder. He was coming slow, like a man ascending the gallows.

Rab silently slid himself up against the wall where the ladder was, where in a moment a man would appear. And he waited there, not exactly sure what he intended to do.

And then he saw the barrel of a revolver appear over the top of the adobe wall. The man had his gun out as he climbed the ladder.

Rab Sinclair reached out like a striking rattler and wrapped a hand around the barrel of the revolver. He half stood, trying to keep himself low so that he was not exposed to Hector on the opposite roof.

As he stood, Rab punched out with his other hand, striking the ascending man in the bridge of the nose.

But the man's grip on the revolver was tight. Rab hoped to knock the man off the ladder and secure for himself another gun. Though the man wobbled precariously, he held to the gun with one hand and the ladder with the other.

Then Hector took a shot with the big Sharps rifle. Rab heard the heavy, sickening thud of the .54 caliber lead ball as it slapped into the man's back. Hector had done Rab's job for him. The man's grip on the revolver loosened and Rab jerked the gun clear as the man fell backwards from the ladder.

In his hands, Hector held a useless rifle. He'd fired the one shot and now had to either reload or draw his revolver. But Rab Sinclair never gave him time to make a decision.

In a seamless transition, Rab switched hands with the revolver, fanning back the hammer with his left as he slid his right index finger onto the trigger. He brought the gun level to get a good aim, and shot Hector on the opposite roof. Rab fanned the trigger one more time and put a second bullet in the gunman's chest.

Then he turned his attention down below.

Don Conchos was at the base of the gazebo with one other man.

The other man was kneeling over the body of the man who'd fallen from the ladder, but Don Conchos had his Colt raised. It was a terrible angle for trying to get a shot, and when the Colt spit thunder and smoke, the bullet smashed into the adobe wall.

Rab lowered the gun, releasing the trigger and then drawing back the hammer.

Conchos fired another wild shot and started a run for the cantina. Rab pulled the trigger on the Colt just as Conchos made his last dash into the cantina, and the shot caught the gunfighter in the shoulder.

Rab grabbed his possibles bag that had the spare rounds and stuck the Colt down into his belt. He swung himself out over the adobe wall and climbed three or four rungs down the ladder.

Down below one of Bad Eye Frank's men was still tending to the one who'd come up the ladder the one Hector had shot. Rab jumped onto the man tending him, landing feet first on the man's back and driving him into the injured man.

Rab dragged the man from the ground and punched him hard a couple of times.

"I'm going to kill any man who takes Frank's part in holding that woman," Rab said to him. "You want to live through this day, you face south and run like hell."

The man's eyes were wide with fear. Rab understood what was going through the man's mind. He'd argued about going up the ladder. If it had been him climbing that ladder instead of the other man, he'd be the one lying in the dirt with a Sharps lead ball in him, his blood running all out there at the base of the gazebo.

To heighten the man's fear, Rab slapped him hard across the face.

"Drop your gun belt and get," Rab snarled at him.

The man saw wisdom. His hands fumbled with the gunbelt, and as soon as it was in the dirt he started to run.

It was no use checking any of the buildings. Carl Branson had already told Rab the whole plaza was closed up. All the same, Rab needed to a place he could duck down for safety and start this battle over. Momentarily he had won the field, but he knew any moment the windows of the cantina could fill up with shooters. If he was going to press his advantage he would have to do it from cover.

A quick glance across the plaza told him the only place for him was the church at the north end of the plaza.

The Basilica of San Albino was constructed in the old Mexican way, timber and adobe, whitewashed. It had a big bell tower at the front and was a long, narrow building. But like all churches in the area, it was constructed as a fortress to protect the citizens from Indian raids, and the church was surrounded by adobe walls. The iron gate at the front of the church was closed, but the walls were only about five feet high.

Rab grabbed up the gunbelt and made a dash toward the church.

As he reached the wall, he threw the gunbelt over, and without breaking stride leapt as high as he could, planting his hands on the adobe wall and swinging himself over to the other side. Just as he did ripple of small arms fire erupted from the cantina. Just three or four shots, but they all struck the adobe wall opposite of where Rab was now squatting on the ground.

He took a deep breath and checked the three guns he now had.

The Remington revolver in the gunbelt had six shots. The gun he'd taken off the dead man from the ladder still had three. His own Dragoon had just two shots.

It was ample.

"Hey! Yo! Conchos! How's the shoulder?" Rab shouted toward the cantina.

This time it was Don Conchos' turn not to answer.

***

Don Conchos tore off his shirt and examined the wound as best he could.

The bullet ripped through the muscle at the edge of his shoulder and destroyed his bicep as it exited his arm. The pain was almost unbearable, and he was sweating profusely. He'd been nicked and scratched by bullets in the past, and once he'd had a couple of ribs broken by a bullet that a doctor had to fetch out of his side. But this was a new pain. Worse, his gun arm was rendered useless. He realized in that cantina that he might never raise his arm again. If he lived long enough to get to a doctor, the doctor would probably hack it off.

Inside the cantina there were four men in addition to himself and Bad Eye Frank, and all four men had gone to the windows and the doorway.

"He's behind the wall at the church," one of them said.

Bad Eye Frank moved deeper into the shadows at the back of the cantina.

Frank Cosgrove had the look of a condemned man.

"I'm out of this fight, Cosgrove," Don Conchos said. "I'm out of every fight from now on. I'll never draw a gun again."

"Like hell you are," Bad Eye Frank raved. "I've paid you. Now go out there and kill him like you were hired to do."

Don Conchos, through his heavy breathing and sweating, offered Frank Cosgrove a wry smile.

"Best I can do is offer to give you your money back."

Cosgrove drew a revolver and fired a shot that hit Don Conchos in his exposed stomach. The hired killer fell to the floor, his gut leaking blood in the same way Valdez had. This wasn't how he expected to die.

No one inside the cantina paid any attention to Evangeline.

For the men in the cantina, the likelihood of death had increased considerably. It also was not lost on those that Bad Eye Frank had just murdered one of his own defenders. Nor was it lost on them that four hired killers, bad men with reputations, were dead or dying around them.

So their concerns ran deeper than Evangeline.

When Don Conchos shoved her back inside the cantina, Evangeline fell onto the ground. She decided to stay there, and she slid across the floor, keeping herself low to the ground, in the shadows and behind table legs and chairs. She did not want to be noticed. There was a high window in the back of the cantina, but it was open, and large enough that she could slip out of it. As she neared the open window, she held her breath and slid a chair with her, something she could stand on.

And as soon as the chair was against the wall, Evangeline gave a look across the cantina. No one was looking in her direction. No one cared a thing about her. So she leapt up onto the chair and shimmied her way out of the window and was on the ground behind the cantina. And then she ran as fast as she could until she saw the blue roan munching on some grass in a field near the north end of the plaza.

None of the men inside the cantina even noticed that Evangeline had gone on escape. Their thoughts were deep and dark and centered mostly on their own mortality.

And then they heard Rab Sinclair from behind the wall at the Basilica of San Albino.

"You men inside, you ain't got to die today," Rab shouted. "I've done for four men already. The one that climbed the ladder, that was the feller on the roof that done for him more than me. But understand and believe this: I don't mind killing every man in there if I have to."

He was silent for the moment, and the men inside the cantina exchanged dark looks.

"You're holding a woman, and that's a low-down, scoundrel thing to do. But if you send her out now, unhurt, I'll go easy on you."

One of the men looked around the cantina.

"Where is she?" he asked. Evangeline was nowhere in sight.

But before anyone could answer him or look for her, Sinclair started shouting again.

"I only come for two men," Rab said. "Bad Eye Frank, who won't let me be. And the boy Francisco Tebone who killed my friend. I'm here to take Tebone to the sheriff up at Fort Craig. Anyone else who has a mind to leave that cantina alive, had better get out right now, and bring out the girl unhurt."

"She's gone," another one of the men said, and all of them now started looking around.

Now one of Frank Cosgrove's wagon drivers spoke up. "I'm sorry Frank, but I ain't gettin' killed in here." Before Cosgrove could answer, the man ran out the door of the cantina. He threw down his gun and put his hands in the air.

"I'm gettin' out, mister!" he yelled at the church. "Don't shoot me!"

Rab Sinclair raised up his head just enough to see the man outside the cantina. Then he stood up and showed one of the revolvers over the wall.

"If you stand there, I'll kill you," Rab said. "Get on now!"

The man didn't need telling twice. He turned and ran out of the plaza to the south.

"Anyone else better come on now," Rab said. "Throw out your guns and come on out."

Three guns came through the windows and doorway, and then three men emerged from the cantina. They showed themselves just for a moment before they ran to the south, out of the plaza.

-24-

Rab Sinclair stepped up onto a box and swung himself over the wall of the church. Slowly, he started making a wide, sweeping angle toward the gazebo where he would have a better view if someone was waiting for him in the cantina.

"I want that woman out here," Rab shouted at the cantina.

"She ain't in here!" Frank Cosgrove shouted back, and through the years Bad Eye Frank's voice came back to him, and Rab recognized the harsh voice. "She musta run out the back during the shootin'."

"Been a long time, Frank," Rab said. "Long time to hold a grudge."

"I reckon I held on pretty tight," Bad Eye Frank conceded. "You set me up. Sent me right out there into that Yankee cavalry. I spent the war in a prison cell."

"Could've been worse," Rab said. "They could've shot you."

"I should've shot you, you deserting, cowardly son of a bitch."

Rab was up even now with the cantina, but through the windows and the door he could see nothing among the shadows deep inside. He was too exposed out here, and so he darted to the gazebo and pressed himself up against it.

"A mess of folks are dead because you couldn't turn loose of your hate for me," Rab said. "I should've come to see you and settled this a long time ago."

"Why didn't you?" Cosgrove asked.

"I thought you'd let it go," Rab said. "But I'm here now."

"You're here now," Frank agreed.

"Where's that boy Francisco Tebone?" Rab asked. "I've got some settlin' up to do with him, too. There's a warrant for him, and I intend to take him to the sheriff."

"You'll have to take a body," Frank said. "Don Conchos killed him this morning."

From along the wall of the church, something caught Rab's eye. When he glanced over, he saw Evangeline sitting astride Cromwell. Rab held up a hand so that she would stay where she was. It all got easier now that he knew she was okay.

"You going to come out?" Rab asked.

"You're going to have to come in to get me," Frank Cosgrove said.

"That's fine, then," Rab said. "I'm coming shooting."

Rab knew that when he went into the cantina his eyes would take a moment to adjust, going from sunlight to darkness. He knew, too, that he would be silhouetted and framed in the doorway, an easy target.

He grasped the Remington with its six full chambers and squeezed down the trigger. Then he focused on the window of cantina.

And then he made his run.

With the trigger depressed, Rab fanned the hammer six times, firing all six shots through the open window before he reached the cantina door. He tossed away the Remington and drew his own Dragoon just as he ducked down to a crouch and dashed through the open doorway.

He heard a shot fired from the back as he came through the door, but Rab covered his head with his arms and dove to the floor. He slid across the floor some distance, hitting table and chair legs, and then slid into something sticky.

He realized he had stopped just shy of a dying Don Conchos.

"He's in the back corner, behind the bar," Conchos muttered.

"Obliged," Rab said.

Rab scurried off the floor and knocked over a table, crouching down behind it.

Bad Eye Frank fired off another round that struck the table and knocked a hole through it, sending a stinging splinter into Rab's arm.

Rab dropped the Dragoon into its holster, and he took hold of a wooden chair. It was heavy, but not so heavy that he couldn't fling it at the bar. So he did – the chair crashed across the bar, landing on the other side near to where Bad Eye Frank was hiding. Frank fired off another round and scurried a few more feet farther along the bar into the deepest corner.

Rab darted to the opposite end of the bar, near the front of the cantina, and exposed himself for just a moment.

Bad Eye Frank took a wild shot that slammed into the wall.

Rab swung around the bar once more and fired his next to last shot. It would have hit Frank Cosgrove except for the chair that Rab had thrown. The chair caught the bullet and spared Frank, who was huddled in the corner.

Rab leveled the Dragoon, taking his time to aim it. But just as he made to pull the trigger, Bad Eye Frank fired off a shot that struck the bar, skidded along the decorative brass and caught Rab in the chest.

All the force had gone from the bullet by the time it hit him, and coming up against the heavy leather and fringe of Rab's buckskin coat, the bullet did no more than bruise him. But it threw Rab off his balance, and he stumbled backwards.

Frank Cosgrove saw Rab go down and believed he'd made a better shot than he had. In an instant, he went from cowering and condemned to victorious. Now Frank Cosgrove made his own victorious charge, limping out from behind the bar and strutting the length of the cantina.

The whole way, Bad Eye Frank had his six-gun pointing right at Rab Sinclair.

A dark grin came across Frank Cosgrove's face.

"You made a good try at it, Sinclair," Bad Eye Frank said, still limping closer. "You did some damage, no doubt about that. But here we are, where we were seven years ago. Me, drawed down on you, and you helpless. I'd have spared myself some suffering if I'd pulled the trigger then and there and put you down."

Rab sighed heavily. He still had the Dragoon in his hand, but he knew he'd never lift it in time. Frank had him. He could see the dark hole of Bad Eye Frank's barrel, and he knew when Frank pulled the trigger where that lad ball was going to strike.

"Any final words?" Cosgrove asked.

From the floor of the cantina a few feet away, Don Conchos mustered the last bit of strength he had.

"I have some last words," he said, his voice surprisingly clear for someone who was all but dead.

Rab hoped the distraction would divert Bad Eye Frank's attention, but his one good eye stayed on Rab, and the revolver never flinched.

"What're your last words?"

"You took a shot at Sinclair when he came through the door," Don Conchos said. "You shot at him twice when he was behind the table. You shot and missed once when he was at the end of the bar there. And then you shot and hit him."

"That's a fine story, Don Conchos," Frank said, keeping his revolver level at Rab. "Maybe I'll put some part of it on your tombstone."

"They can put it on your tombstone that you never learned to count, Frank," Don Conchos said. "Did you forget that you shot me?"

Rab slung the Dragoon from the floor, thumbing back the hammer. Even before Frank Cosgrove had run through the math to count to six, Rab had the heavy Dragoon revolver leveled at him.

Frank Cosgrove squeezed his trigger on an empty chamber, and the hammer fell with a deafeningly silent click.

Rab Sinclair squeezed the trigger of the Dragoon with an explosion of sound and smoke, and .44 caliber round shot plunged into Bad Eye Frank's chest, killing the Glorieta grudge in an instant.

***

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Rab Sinclair said, looking at Don Conchos' torn body.

"You killed the bastard that killed me. I reckon that's everything," Don Conchos said.

He coughed and spit blood.

"Well, I'm obliged to you," Rab said. "Counting off his shots let me know where I stood."

"You'd have known soon enough when he pulled that trigger and it rang on an empty chamber," Don Conchos said. "But I took some pleasure in telling him about it."

Rab was kneeling down beside Don Conchos. He found the man's shirt that Conchos had torn off after he was shot, and he wadded up the shirt and slid it under Conchos' head. Then Rab stood up and pulled a chair over and sat down in it.

"I'm plumb tuckered," Rab said. "It's been a hell of a day."

"We didn't hurt that woman," Conchos said.

"I seen her outside," Rab said.

"Must've gone out a back window when nobody was paying attention."

"She's one you got to keep your eyes on," Rab said.

"I reckon," Conchos said. "Why'd you send her here?"

Rab chuckled. "I didn't. I left her in Las Cruces. Told her to stay put."

Now Conchos chuckled, but his laugh turned into a coughing fit, and he screwed up his face in pain. When it passed he said, "She's one you have to keep your eyes on."

The wheezing did not pass. It seemed to get worse, and Don Conchos' breathing became more labored. "Would you squeeze my hand?" he asked.

Rab leaned over and took the man's hand in his. He sat there for several minutes. Don Conchos squeezed against Rab's palm. The wheeze turned to a rattle. Then the pressure left his hand.

When Don Conchos was dead, Rab left the cantina.

The plaza outside was still empty. The shadows were getting long, though, and the sun was going to be down soon.

Rab looked up toward the church. Evangeline was standing now, stroking Cromwell's black face and neck. Even from this distance, Rab could see the worry etched in her face. When she saw him, she abandoned the blue roan and ran the length of the plaza, throwing her arms around Rab. He winced under her embrace, and Evangeline stepped back to look at him.

"Are you hurt?" she asked.

"Bruised a bit, I think. I caught a ricochet in the chest."

"Is it over?" she asked.

"It's over," Rab said.

They rode double on Cromwell until they found the buckskin, still saddled, in Cosgrove's corral. Then they rode together out of Mesilla to the west where Carl and Juanita Branson gave them food and shelter for the night.

-25-

The first snow was late in coming to the ranch west of Las Vegas that year, and it was good that it was.

The chilly air seemed to carry with it the strong scent of juniper and pinyon from the higher places. Though for a week Rab Sinclair cut, scraped, lifted and set pine logs, so the rich smell of pine was already constantly with him. His hands every day were sticky with pine sap.

Those extra days of autumn gave Rab, Evangeline, and Caleb Morgan the time they needed to finish building the small log cabin. When the work was done, Rab examined the walls with some pride. They had thoroughly chinked the spaces between the boards. The rock fireplace would hold fires much larger than what it would take to keep the small cabin warm. There was no stove, not yet, but the cabin had a bed and a table and chair, and it would be an easy thing to add furniture.

"I ain't much of a builder, but this will suffice," he said. "It'll keep the wind out, and give you someplace warm to come back to in the evenings after you've finished riding the line."

"Yes, sir," Caleb said.

"It's your own place, Caleb. I'll pay you wages, and you can look after yourself here. You're at an age where that's what you should do anyway. But you're in sight of us, and if you need anything, or you're feeling lonely, just come on down and see us. And one of these days, when they've got a big baile in town, maybe you can ask the right gal to dance and get yourself someone to keep you company out here."

Caleb blushed and cut his eyes at Evangeline. She smiled at how shy he was. Still a boy, but nearly a man.

"I can't say what it means to me that you took me in like this," Caleb said. "Built me a place, gave me a job. I don't know what I'd have done –"

He stopped short. He didn't have any more words, and Rab Sinclair didn't need to hear any more anyway. Rab just shrugged. "Come on up to our cabin and we'll get you some provisions to get you started. I reckon you might as well have supper with us tonight."

"You can have supper with us anytime you want, Caleb," Evangeline said. "It's not like we're kicking you out. We just thought you needed your own place. But you're welcome at our table any time."

Later, when Caleb had gone to his own cabin, Evangeline snuggled against Rab in bed.

"It's good what you've done for him," she said.

"I feel some of the blame for what happened to Grady. If I'd not gone to them when I was shot, he'd still have Grady and still be on that farm."

"It's good all the same," Evangeline said. "No different than what you did for me. You have a habit of taking in strays."

"Is that what I did with you?" Rab asked. "Were you a stray?"

"Don't you think I was?" she asked.

"Maybe," Rab said. "But I reckon I've always been a stray myself. Peas in a pod is what we are. All three of us."

Over the next few days, Evangeline busied herself with making Caleb's cabin feel more homey. She took spare blankets and cushions from the cabin she shared with Rab and put them in the cabin. She collected a few pans and clay pots and took them to the cabin. And in a couple of days, the inside was a mismatch of decorations and luxuries, but Caleb could not have been happier with it. All his possessions were burned out at Grady's farm, and it gave him a new sense of consequence to be a man who had some things in this world.

When the first snow finally came, laying a thin layer of white across the rocks and bending the branches of the big pines, Rab Sinclair swung into the blue roan's saddle and rode out to check his herd. But he found himself sitting idle in the saddle for a long time, he and Cromwell atop a ridge watching the feral horses that roamed his property. That first snow was not much more than a dusting, so tufts of grass and brush were still easy grazing across the ranch.

For the first time since the end of the war, Rabbie Sinclair was feeling a lightness of spirit. He'd lived easy enough with a price on his head, though that price meant that he lived with a sense of vigilance that only outlaws and lawmen could understand. But now the weight was lifted, the danger was passed.

"Don't the air seem a little sweeter than before?" Rab said to Cromwell. He looked around, almost expecting to find some flower or bush in bloom.

After some time of watching the horses below, Rab realized his toes inside his boots were starting to get numb from the cold.

"I reckon we should go check on them cattle like we meant to, and then get on back before dark, old hawss."

Rab found the herd spread out over a wide valley where a high, rocky ridge covered in pinyon and a stand of cottonwoods down in the valley protected the herd and the grazing from the cold and the snow. He rode once around the herd to be sure none of the herd were wandering too far, and then he started back for the cabin.

The wind was blowing cold, and low, gray clouds threatened another snowfall. Somewhere behind the clouds the sun was getting lower, and a tranquil blue had fallen over Rab's spread. As the trail opened up to the valley where his cabin sat under a rocky outcropping, Rab had a view of his cabin, the barn, and Caleb's cabin. There was smoke coming from the chimneys of both cabins, two tall pillars of gray that rose up to the rocks until the wind caught and whipped them into nothing. There were lights glowing orange through the grease-paper windows of both cabins.

"We've got a right settlement booming up down there now, hawss," Rab said. "Ain't we?"

But it was pretty as a painting, the two cabins, the light, the dark gray of the sky and the black trees and rocks overlooking it all. The buckskin and another horse, sensing Cromwell's return, were running circles in the corral.

Rab brushed down the blue roan and turned him out into the corral with the rest of his remuda, and then he walked to his own cabin.

At the door the glow of the lantern light and the warmth and the smells hit him, and Evangeline was standing at the stove with an apron over her trousers and shirt. She turned away from the stove to look at Rab when he walked in, a spatula in her hand, and a bright smile on her face.

"Ain't those the same trousers you were wearing two weeks ago when we were building that cabin for Caleb?" Rab asked her.

"They are," Evangeline said.

"If those are your working trousers, why would you worry over them enough to cover up with an apron?"

Evangeline laughed. "Habit, I suppose. You were gone longer than I expected you to be."

"I got lost," Rab said.

"I don't believe that," Evangeline said. "But when you were gone so long, I figured you'd need something to warm you up. There's fresh coffee, and I'm making the sawmill gravy you like so well."

If he could have corked this moment in a bottle, Rab Sinclair would have. It was a moment that would stay with him for the rest of his life, haunting and happy in his memory. It was peace and joy and love, warmth and comfort.

Rab took off his heavy coat, lined with fur, and hung it on a peg by the door. He took off his gunbelt and hung it on a peg beside the jacket, and then he put his hat over the gunbelt. He walked over and stood in front of the fire, feeling it bring some life back into his fingers and toes.

"Going to be a cold winter," he said.

"Not as cold as last winter, I hope," Evangeline said. She glanced at him. "Rabbie Sinclair, what are you smiling about?"

"We go through seasons in our lives," Rab said, thoughtfully. "Seasons of war and peace, seasons of hardship and seasons of plenty. We grow old through these seasons, if we are lucky. It seems to me that every season of my life has been one of wandering. And I reckon I'll wander again. But if the winter is harsh, I think I'll be happy for a season of rest. Like the bear and the bees. I think I am ready for a season of rest."

Evangeline stirred the gravy in her cast iron skillet, but she shot Rab a grin.

"Well, that's fine, Rabbie Sinclair, you old bear, but I ain't going to look after the cattle all winter by myself. So you can hibernate if you want, but you'll have to do it around your chores."

the end

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for spending your time with Rab Sinclair and Evangeline in “The Glorieta Grudge.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed the novel.

Rab Sinclair is one of my favorite characters to write about, and he also appears in the novel “Trulock’s Posse” and is featured as the main character in the novel “A Trail Too Far.”

The latest book featuring Rab Sinclair is “A Vast and Desolate Land.” If you have enjoyed the other Rab Sinclair books, I hope you’ll check this one out!

If you enjoy my Westerns, I’d encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter at my website mooncalfpress.com. My newsletter is probably the easiest way to keep track of latest releases.

Again, I’m grateful to you for spending your time with “The Glorieta Grudge,” and if you enjoyed it, I hope you’ll take a look at some of my other novels.

Sincerely,

Robert Peecher