Boyd looked at Sam and nodded. He waved a hand to indicate the cattle and the dead rustlers.
“I reckon this proves you didn’t have anything to do with that stock being stolen, Two Wolves. You wouldn’t have done what you did if you were part of this bunch.”
“If you check the bodies, you’ll see that they’re all white,” Sam pointed out. “Not Navajo.”
In his habitual gesture, Boyd rubbed his chin.
“Yeah, I reckon I was wrong about that, too,” he said.
“You ever seen this fella before, Mr. Boyd?” Stovepipe asked as he nodded to the man who had bled to death.
Boyd frowned.
“I don’t think I have.”
“I have,” Wilbur said. “I don’t know who he is, but I remember seein’ him in Flat Rock durin’ the past week or so.”
Stovepipe nodded and said, “I was just thinkin’ the same thing, pard. Let’s have a look at the others.”
“You won’t be able to tell much about one of them,” Sam warned. “He got caught in the stampede.”
“Got to pick him up with a shovel, eh?” Stovepipe hunkered on his heels next to the man Sam had shot in the head. “Well, we’ll let that one go. This one, though, I’ve seen him in town, too. Don’t you think, Wilbur?”
“Yeah, he looks familiar,” the freckle-faced puncher agreed.
“So the gang’s holed up in Flat Rock,” Boyd said. “We’ll go in there and clean out the whole place if we have to.”
“That won’t do any good,” Sam cautioned. “You don’t know who else is part of the bunch. What we need to do is figure out a way to draw them into the open.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Boyd said with obvious reluctance. “I know my boys, though, and they’re gonna want to go in shooting.”
“You’ll have to keep them from doing that.” Sam turned toward the rope corral, which had survived the stampede intact as the cows went around it. “I want to take a look at their horses. Maybe that’ll tell us something.”
“I was just thinkin’ the same thing,” Stovepipe said.
Together they examined the rustlers’ mounts. The brands were ones that Sam didn’t recognize, and neither did Boyd.
“That just means they didn’t come from any of the spreads around here,” the rancher said. “I figured as much.”
All four horses were unsaddled, but as Sam ran his hands over the flanks of a leggy roan, he said, “This one is hotter than the others. He’s been run hard fairly recently.”
“You reckon one of those fellas made a fast trip out here?” Stovepipe asked.
“That would mean the rustlers left three men to keep an eye on the cattle,” Sam said. “That sounds reasonable.”
“Then why’d the fourth man come out here all hell-for-leather?” Wilbur asked.
“To warn the other hombres that we were tryin’ to trail the stolen herd,” Stovepipe answered. “That the way it lays out to you, Sam?”
“Yeah. The men who tried to bushwhack me this morning hurried back to Flat Rock to tell their boss that I wasn’t dead. They must have seen the two of you join up with me, and then Mr. Boyd and his men came along and we all started trailing the cattle. The boss sent word to his men out here, hoping they’d get rid of us.”
“They jumped the gun a mite,” Stovepipe drawled.
“Yeah, one of them has a habit of doing that,” Sam said. He thought it was very likely that the man who had taken that first shot at him and Matt was dead now, one of the four men who had been killed here on top of the mesa.
“Getting those cows down off this mesa is gonna be a chore,” Boyd complained. “I’ll be damned if I’ll leave them up here, though. We’ll wait until morning and see if we can drive them back down that trail.”
“That’s up to you and your men,” Sam said. “Now that you’ve decided that Stovepipe and Wilbur and I are trustworthy after all, there’s something else we need to do.”
“What’s that?” Stovepipe asked.
Sam thought about Matt. The canyon where Caballo Rojo’s clan lived wasn’t very far away. They might not be able to reach it by nightfall, but he thought he could find it even after darkness had fallen.
“Let’s just say I want to go visit a sick friend.”
Chapter 31
This had been one of the longest days of Matt Bodine’s life.
He knew it had been hard on Elizabeth, too, but at least she had been in the shade part of the time. He had been baking in the blistering sun all day, tied to a stake. Standing there like that for hours had caused the wounds in his side to ache like a bad tooth.
But he could tell the bullet holes weren’t bleeding again, just hurting, and that was something to be thankful for, anyway.
They hadn’t really hurt Elizabeth, either, just forced her to sit beside Juan Pablo’s hogan and watch Matt’s torment. That was the only other good thing about this ordeal.
He looked over at her now and saw how her face was pale and drawn with the strain. He tried to summon up a smile to let her know that everything was all right, but he couldn’t quite manage it.
Things weren’t all right, though, and they both knew it. Juan Pablo and his followers intended to kill both of them. It was just a matter of time.
Juan Pablo had at least a dozen men backing his play. Matt didn’t know if Caballo Rojo was one of them, or if the clan headman was just staying out of this for the time being because he didn’t want Juan Pablo challenging him for leadership of everyone who lived in the canyon.
But the Navajo had been drifting in from their homes along the creek all day, gathering here to look at the captive white man, and some of them seemed very happy about it. The men had taken turns standing guard over Matt, although with his hands tied behind his back and his torso lashed to the stake, he wasn’t about to go anywhere.
He supposed it made them feel like they were accomplishing something to stand there clutching their old rifles and glaring at him.
Matt didn’t look directly at them. He didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of letting them see what bad shape he was really in. The sun had baked his brain until his vision was fuzzy, his thoughts were clouded, and despair gripped his heart. He felt like the heat had leached every bit of moisture out of his body. His tongue was swollen and his mouth as dry as cotton.
His head drooped forward, but he wouldn’t allow himself to pass out. Even though he was helpless, he wanted to know what was going on around him.
Because of that, he saw movement as someone approached him late that afternoon. The sun had started its slide toward the western horizon, which gave him a certain amount of blessed relief although the canyon still felt like an oven.
Through slitted eyes, Matt watched as Juan Pablo walked up to him, as haughty, cruel, and arrogant as if he were old Manuelito come back to life.
“Bodine,” Juan Pablo said. “This day has taught you that the Navajo are still a proud people.”
“I never ... doubted that.” Matt had to force the words out through his parched throat and mouth and past blistered lips. “But there is no pride ... in cruelty. You have ... nothing to be proud of ... Juan Pablo.”
The man’s face darkened in anger. He stepped closer and backhanded Matt viciously across the face.
The blow brought a cry of alarm and outrage from Elizabeth. She started to get to her feet, but Juan Pablo’s wife, who stood near her, clamped a hand on her shoulder and forced her back down on the ground.
“For too many years, my people have done what the white man told them to do,” Juan Pablo said. “They have treated us like animals! They have told themselves they are being generous to us by allowing us to live on our own land, while at the same time they try to take more and more of that land away from the Diné. But soon they will all be gone. We will drive them out.”
“A couple dozen of you?” Matt asked. “How are you going to do that? You won’t stand a chance.”