“If something went wrong ... if the stranger is alive ... ” The fresh air of morning sent a cold chill through Mr. William Cliffords.

  What little patience he was capable of was soon exhausted. Cliffords called in one of his men and said, “Ride out to the Frank place and see what’s keeping Al and the others.”

  Deep down, however, he knew what was keeping his ten hired assassins from returning. And he was scared. Even before the rider could saddle-up to leave for the sight of the night’s battle, Cliffords had ordered eight men to stand guard around his house. He had no plans for stepping out.

  Chapter Eight

  The sun was coming up bright and warm when Sam Lacey topped the same grassy knoll he had watched the Frank cabin from eight hours before. Only now, there wasn’t much of a cabin. Or much of anything, except some black smoke ... and bodies. Lots of bodies.

  Even from a distance, Sam could see scattered limbs from broken, torn corpses. One of those dead men might be Cort, he realized. Sam had stopped first at the cave, hoping to find his brother there. But no luck. If Cort was anywhere, he had to be here at the Frank place—or celestial parts unknown.

  Once day reached the high part of afternoon, death would smell as ghastly as it looked. Even now it was none too good. Sam’s horse needed a lot of encouragement before he’d head down toward the stench of dead human flesh.

  Sam wasn’t conscious of how brash he was acting. A cautious, careful man was what he had always been, but now he threw caution to the wind. It didn’t seem to enter his mind that Cliffords might station men behind the rubble to pick off riders from the Five Fingers. His only concern was Cort, and so he rode on, straining to hear the suggestion of his life—his brother’s life—among all this ruin.

  He heard nothing.

  “Must be dead,” he whispered to himself. But his own whisper made him nervous. He had hoped against hope that he’d find his brother alive, only he was unable to believe anyone could be living in this gunman’s graveyard.

  “There isn’t a bird in sight—though vultures ought to be showing up soon enough.” When the full impact of this idea came home to him, he shuddered. Best to find Cort and bury him in the cave, he figured.

  After finding his brother’s dun along with ten Double C mounts, he was completely certain that Cort was dead. So Sam Lacey got off his horse and went from corpse to corpse, trying to identify a body as his brother’s amid the blood and guts of what had once been men. Each time he turned over a body, he prayed it wasn’t Cort. And each time he turned over a body he prayed that it was Cort—at least then there would no further need to brush the flies off half-destroyed faces that looked back at him, begging him to close their eyes ... which he did. If only he might close Cort’s eyes and take him out of this hellish place. But where was Cort? Until he could find him, Sam had to hold his breath and tighten his stomach in order to continue the search.

  Because Sam had known Cort’s battle plan, the shattered cabin seemed the least likely place to discover his brother. Finally, there was no other place to look.

  The first thing to catch his eye was Big Al. He lay dead, clutching his belly, on what had been the parlor floor. Sweeping his gaze upward, Sam saw the upper torso of a man with some of his brains slipping down an open forehead. The lower part of the man’s body was crushed by a beam.

  Sickened beyond belief, Sam turned away. It was then, in the shadow of a fallen piece of wall, that he saw the still form of his brother.

  A crumpled heap and bleeding badly, Cort was in bad shape indeed. But he was alive. And Sam was astonished ... happily astonished.

  “Rusty was right,” he said fervently to his unconscious kin, “you’re as tough as they come. I shoulda known you could do it. By God, I’ll try to keep you alive, boy. I just found me a brother I can believe in, and I don’t want to lose him.”

  While Sam spoke, he worked feverishly to try and stop the bleeding in Cort’s leg. He bound Cort’s wound as best he could, which was none too well, and then slung his brother’s seemingly lifeless body over the back of the dun gelding. While clearly glad to see his old friend, the dun also sensed the nearness of his master’s death. With Cort on his back, the horse was impatient to be out of this place, but Sam had one more errand.

  Before mounting up to lead his wounded brother to safety, he wiped out all traces of Cort’s blood. Whether Cort would live or die was up to God. Whether William Cliffords would enjoy life without knowing the stranger’s fate, was up to his fear of an unknown avenger.

  Cliffords had sent Lou Harris to the Frank place about an hour after dawn. His scout returned at a gallop some three hours later.

  Deep within the big ranch-house, out of sight of any windows, William Cliffords waited for the pale Harris to give his report.

  “Spit it out!” Cliffords demanded.

  “Boss,” Harris said defensively, “I already spit it out a couple of times. If I have to tell you everything I saw, I’m gonna have to spit it out again.”

  Cliffords anxiety was eating away at him. “What happened at the Frank place, damn you, what happened?” he raged.

  “Can I have a drink, Mr. Cliffords?” Harris pleaded.

  “Okay, okay, have your whiskey—then talk!”

  Instead of calming his nerves, the slug of Cliffords’ bonded scotch whiskey turned his stomach again. It was with the greatest of will power that Harris forced the swill in his throat back down to where it had come from. Then, steeling himself against another wave of sickness, Harris described the awful carnage.

  “Every single one of ’em is dead. Boss ... some is blown to pieces ... I mean to pieces, boss. I could hardly recognize some of the boys—they were that bad. Boss ... ”

  “Did you find the stranger’s body?” Cliffords heatedly interrupted.

  “No sir, Mr. Cliffords, didn’t find hide nor hair of that galoot. I just can’t see how one gunny could do that to ten top men like Big Al and the others. They wasn’t no amateurs, neither. And this here stranger just ups and walks away. Why that man must be meaner than a rattler. If I was you, boss, after what I seen, and knowin’ about that warnin’ and all, why I’d dear outa’ here, pronto.”

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Harris, so keep your damn mouth shut! And get out! Now!”

  Then as an afterthought, a moment before Harris stepped out of the house, Cliffords piped up loudly, “Fetch me Wilson and Nash.”

  Men like Nash and Wilson, who worked gun wages and managed to stay healthy ’til their late twenties, were a mighty scarce breed of folk. It wasn’t that they were any tougher or faster than other hired guns, they were just a whole lot smarter.

  Cliffords noted that Wilson and Nash hadn’t volunteered to go along with Big Al on last night’s mission of death. “Could be they know real trouble when they see it. Men that’ve been around like those two might be of some real use,” Cliffords reasoned.

  “You send for us, Mr. Cliffords?” the tall, skinny one asked easily as he and his partner, Nash, stood in the foyer.

  “Yes, I did boys,” Cliffords answered cordially. “Take yourselves a drink and sit down. I want to talk something over with the two of you.”

  Nash, a husky man who seldom smiled, threw down a shot of whiskey and asked with a touch of derision, “You wouldn’t be worried about that stranger now would you?”

  Cliffords stiffened, but otherwise ignored the caustic edge of Nash’s jibe.

  How easy it is to lose respect among men when all you do to earn it is grease palms with double eagles. “As a matter of fact,” the Double C owner said with nonchalance, “the stranger is the subject I had in mind. You boys saw him yesterday at the Frank place when you were with me ... ”

  Nash coughed. Wilson looked down at the floor.

  “ ... and I take it you know what happened to the men who were supposed to kill the stranger. Okay, he’s tough.

  “For a special fee—a very special fee—would you two hombres take the job Big Al bungled?” he asked haughtily, but unable, nonetheless, to hide the element of pleading in his voice.

  “No thanks,” Wilson said earnestly. Nash nodded in agreement with his partner.

  “All right, you fellers have been around, seen a lot, know a lot—what do you think it would take to get rid of this damn saddle-bum?”

  “First thing you better realize Mr. Cliffords,” Nash said tightly, “is that this feller who’s huntin’ your ass right now ain’t no kind of saddle-bum.”

  Wilson cut in before Nash’s big mouth lost them both their easy money jobs. “That’s right, the stranger has got to be one of the best. No way his moniker is Dan Evans. If it was, we’d surely have known his name long before this. Well, whoever he is, it seems to me that huntin’ a wolf with sheep ain’t gonna get you much in the way of results. What you need, Mr. Cliffords, is a wolf of your own. Now, Nash and me, we know a guy down in the Tonto Basin who’s more wolf than man. He could hunt this stranger down, no sweat. We seen him work, and he’s as good as they come ... a genuine hunter and killer of men. But he don’t work cheap.”

  “I’ll worry about the money,” Cliffords said. “What’s this man’s name and can you get him here quick?”

  “Goes by the handle of Wassin,” Wilson responded.

  “We’d have him here in three, four days’ time if you sent us right off to get him. Wouldn’t we Nash?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his usual price for a job like this?” Cliffords questioned Wilson.

  “Be somewheres around five thousand. Ain’t that right, Nash?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. Get this man Wassin. Tell him about the stranger and tell him I’ll meet his price. Get him here as fast as you can. Take whatever you need for the trip to the Basin. I’ll expect you back with this wolf of yours within a week.”

  Wilson started to leave but his partner didn’t move. He seemed to be mulling something over in his mind.

  “Is there something you want to say?” Cliffords asked Nash.

  “Yeah, but I’ll let it ride for now.” And then he turned on his heel and walked out ahead of Wilson.

  Cliffords was puzzled by Nash’s parting comment, only it didn’t seem so very important. It certainly wasn’t as important as Cliffords self-congratulations. Yes, he had been right ... these two men had been of use. Their knowledge was valuable. He would’ve never known of this man Wassin.

  Outside the house, though, there was a bit of knowledge Cliffords should have also known ...

  “When we walked out of there, was you holdin’ back what I thought you was holdin’ back?” Wilson asked his friend Nash.

  “Sure. Cliffords is a yellow-bellied scum and it shames me sometimes to take his money.”

  “But you take it.”

  “Yeah, I take it, only I can’t help likin’ that stranger for makin’ Cliffords squirm. If there was some other place payin’ gun wages, I’d be gone before you could tighten the cinch of your saddle.”

  “I guess I’d go with you, Nash. I feel the same way. Too bad Wassin’ll get rid of the stranger. Sure will hate to see Cliffords off the hook.”

  Nash nodded his silent agreement.

  Chapter Nine

  Cort lay in the cave where Sam had left him, with no memory of seeing his brother or of being moved.

  His feverish mind raced across a violent lifetime. Blurred sights and sounds of the past came hurtling into his numbed consciousness. In his delirium, he glimpsed the silhouette of a woman moving across a bright background. But that was only one of the many shadows that flitted through Cort’s nightmarish mental landscape.

  “They won’t listen to reason, Chuck,” he muttered in his troubled sleep. “If they storm us, we’ll have to shoot into the crowd ... ” Cort suddenly rolled to his left and yelled, “Look out, Chuck!” His wound opened. The pain on Cort’s face, however, came not from bleeding, but from the flash memory that saw his best friend writhing before the door of a sheriff’s office in the last moment of his death throes.

  Then Cort was calm. His thoughts tumbled through him quietly until he grew thirsty. “There’s water at Marcosa. Just ten more miles of walkin’,” he said fiercely.

  Clare Bell, the silhouette against the bright light of the cave’s opening, brought a cup of water to Cort’s lips. Watching him drink, she thought of how bloody and hard this man’s life must have been over the last dozen years. There was a friend who had probably died, a dry march through the desert, and God knew what else. She had known him as a boy. Now he had come back from a self-imposed exile. What kind of man would he be?

  The bullet that hit Cort’s leg was still embedded in his thigh. Having no choice if she were to save his life, Clare chanced a small, smokeless fire inside the cave for boiling water. Then she began to cut, only pausing in her probing for the bullet to pour whiskey on the festering wound.

  There was nothing more she could do now except hope that Cort hadn’t already lost too much blood. She kept herself busy by periodically bathing his wound and mopping the sweat from his brow. And all through the day and into the night, she studied her patient’s face and wondered.

  Long after midnight, Cort’s fever broke. He slept peacefully ’til dawn.

  It was the itch of his bandage that awakened him. He stirred slowly. Opening his eyes, Cort gazed into Clare’s beautiful face as she hovered over him. He said nothing, did nothing, showed nothing. He just looked at her.

  She told herself that she was this close to Cort in order to keep him from moving abruptly and opening his wound. Yet she gave no word of caution, nor touched him to hold him still.

  Because of her near twenty-four hour vigil, Clare was understandably unkempt. Hair fell loosely about her head, a smudge of Cort’s blood was on her right sleeve, and, due to the heat in the cave from the fire, the top buttons of Clare’s blouse were undone.

  Her bust, only partially concealed, heaved against the thin, cotton shirt with every breath she took. It was easy to see how full and firm she was by the press against the fabric. The creamy white of Clare’s exposed breasts, just inches from Cort, made the white of her blouse appear gray. How desirable she was. And how easy it seemed to simply reach out and caress her lovely body. If it hadn’t been Clare, he might have done so.

  This extended, charged moment ended when Clare felt Cort’s gaze upon her breasts. Instinctively, she looked down, and saw, to her shock, how much of herself was revealed. Immediately she buttoned up while blushing a dark crimson.

  Cort was suddenly amused.

  “No need to be embarrassed,” he spoke quietly. “A woman ought to be flattered if a man takes to lookin’ at her.”

  “I’d take it as a compliment if the man was a gentleman, instead of a notorious gunfighter,” she spat back at him.

  “I don’t see a difference between the two,” he responded. “Both a gentleman and gunfighter would see the same things if they looked at you. Anyway, I meant no harm. I guess I couldn’t get over how much of a woman you’ve become. You were a skinny, pretty little thing of sixteen when I pulled out twelve years ago,” he said wistfully. “Now, if you don’t mind my sayin’, you’ve filled out into a mighty handsome woman—and maybe a sight prettier, too.”

  “That’s kind of you to say,” she said brusquely.

  Then the lightness he felt went away, and a cloud came over Cort’s face. He looked away from her and stared at the wall of the cave. Clare watched him, puzzled by the change in his mood

  “Is the bandage too tight?” she asked with some concern.

  “No, it’s okay ... and thanks for patchin’ me up.”

  “I’d do as much for anybody.”

  “Yes, I suppose you would. But thanks just the same,” he said wearily.

  “You must be very tired. Sleep is the best medicine,” she advised.

  Cort ignored her. “Is this the cave Sam was tellin’ me about?”

  “I guess so.”

  “And does anyone beside the two of you know that I’m hurt and laid up here?”

  “No one outside of Sam and now me know of this cave, and no one outside of the Five Fingers knows that you’re wounded.”

  Cort brooded This was information he had to have, yet there was something else that needed to be said. Only he didn’t know how to begin, so he asked those questions ... all the while looking at the cave wall, hoping to find the right words. But there were no right words, and he knew it. Finally, he turned his head to face her and said simply, “I’m sorry about John.”

  Clare turned her glance to the dying embers of the fire. A stick of wood had burned to ash and, falling apart, sent a few sparks into the air. The small flare of the fire brought her reverie to an end, and she asked, “Why are you sorry about John? There’s no reason to be. He was a good man who did what he had to do. Feel sorry for him? No. He acted like a man from the moment I met him to the moment he died. No need to feel sorry for me either, because I was lucky enough to be his wife for twelve years. Now John is gone,” her voice trembled, “and like my Ma told me, living in the past won’t change anything. I loved him—I’ll always be proud of that—and there’s not a thing ... not one thing, for anyone to be sorry about.”

  Cort was impressed. “Handsome female be damned,” he thought, “this woman has sand. If I had as much courage twelve years ago, I wouldn’t have run away ... And if I had been more of a man, and less a reckless kid,” Cort berated himself, “there would never have been a need to run away in the first place.

  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud, “not for what’s happened in the valley over the last few weeks, but for what happened at the Five fingers twelve years ago. I’m sorry for what I did to your man ... .to my friend.”

  “No need for an apology. John was seldom bitter about his leg. When we would occasionally hear of you outgunning some well-known outlaw ... . or well-known lawman, John would smile from ear to ear and crow how he was the only man to ever survive a gun-duel with the famous Cort Lacey. In truth, he knew you could have killed him. While all of us wished that you hadn’t forced him to draw, John, for one, was glad to be alive.”

 

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