But it was the man’s misfortune that he was astride a beautiful Appaloosa stud.
Harlan rode closer, took his foot from the stirrup, then kicked out from the hip. His boot hit the wounded man high on the left side of his chest and he screamed and tumbled from the saddle. He lay on his back, his legs twitching, but he made no further sound.
Harlan gathered up the reins of the Appaloosa and led it back to the ridge. He drew rein and yelled, ‘‘Hey, McBride!’’
Stunned by what he’d just witnessed, McBride made no answer. Beside him Clare’s face was white.
‘‘McBride, if I see you in Rest and Be Thankful again, I’ll kill you!’’
Harlan kicked his horse into motion, leading the stud. After glaring at the ridge for a few moments, Lance Josephine and the other rider fell in behind him. They disappeared into distance and sunlight, the hills closing around them.
‘‘I could have killed him,’’ Clare said. Her eyes were fixed on McBride, clouding, a cold anger wrinkling her forehead. ‘‘I could have knocked Harlan off his horse at this range but I didn’t.’’
‘‘And now you don’t have to live with it,’’ McBride said.
‘‘There’s already a man dead on the ground, we didn’t need another.’’
Quick tears started in the woman’s eyes. ‘‘I tried to wing him. I shot to wound him . . . I tried . . .’’
‘‘You did wound him, Clare, and maybe with some attention he would have lived. It was Harlan who killed him. He wanted the fancy horse.’’ McBride’s voice was veneered by wonder when he said, ‘‘I could have killed Harlan yesterday. He was lying unconscious at my feet and I let him go.’’
‘‘Lance says Thad Harlan can’t be killed, that he sold his soul to the devil.’’
McBride’s smile was a grimace as pain stabbed at him. ‘‘To a devil by the name of Jared Josephine, maybe.’’
Clare took a step toward him, holding Sammy to her breast. ‘‘Your wound needs more attention than I can give it here. I’m taking you home with me.’’
McBride nodded, then said, ‘‘Do you know who the dead man is down there?’’
‘‘He’s an outlaw, goes by the name of Jake Streeter. Have you heard of him?’’
‘‘Yeah, I’ve heard of him. He’s a kitten killer,’’ McBride said.
Chapter 12
Clare O’Neil told McBride that her ranch lay to the north of Deadman Canyon, where the foothills of the Capitan Mountains finally faded into lower, rolling country. To the west, the thousand-foot, volcanic cinder cone of Sunset Peak cast a cooling shadow over the ranch buildings, and the ponderosa pine on its higher slopes provided a ready supply of timber.
Most of the cone was red in color, contrasting with wide bands of black basalt. The Navajo and Hopi considered the place sacred because from a distance, the red cinders seemed to be on fire.
‘‘The Indians named the volcano Sunset Peak,’’ Clare said, turning to McBride. ‘‘They say it glows with a light all its own, like a morning sky.’’ She was talking to keep him awake, worried that if he fell from the saddle she could never get him on his horse again.
‘‘The Hopi say spirits live on the slopes and Yaponcha, the wind god, dwells in an arroyo at the base of the mountain.’’
McBride nodded, his lips pale. He was barely holding on, every step of the mustang another searing skirmish with pain. He had lost a lot of blood and his head felt like a hot air balloon threatening to drift off his shoulders.
Sammy had stubbornly refused to ride with Clare and was perched precariously on the cantle of McBride’s saddle. Every now and then he rubbed the big man’s back with his head.
‘‘Not far now,’’ the woman said, her eyes clouded with concern. ‘‘After we top the next rise we’ll see the old place. Pa will be there. He seldom leaves his ranch.’’
McBride needed to use words to stay awake. ‘‘I’m obliged to you for getting me the rifle back,’’ he said. He smiled weakly. ‘‘Fact is, I’m no great shakes with a rifle. Most times I don’t hit what I’m aiming at.’’
‘‘I’ll teach you. Most times I do hit what I’m aiming at.’’
‘‘Knew a man once, his name was Bear Miller. He was good with a rifle, real good.’’
They were riding across a high meadow ablaze with spring wildflowers, bordered by stands of gambel oak and piñon. Clouds passing over the sun sent shadows racing across the grass, and the air smelled of pine and the promise of rain.
‘‘Bear,’’ Clare said. ‘‘That was his given name?’’
‘‘Nah, folks called him that because one winter he hibernated in a hollow log with an old she grizzly.’’ A wave of pain hit McBride and he gasped, gasped again, fighting it down.
‘‘John, are you all right?’’ Clare’s face was a frightened mask of concern.
His words were hesitant, tangled up with the remembrance of hurt. ‘‘Sure, sure, I’m fine.’’
‘‘So, tell me about Bear and the grizzly. Did she let him sleep?’’ The girl reached out and steadied McBride in the saddle.
‘‘Not a wink. He said the grizz didn’t take to him being there and she fussed and fretted at him from November through April. He said come spring, he was even more tired than he’d been when he first climbed into that log.’’ McBride made the effort and managed a smile. ‘‘At least that’s what he said.’’
Clare’s laugh was a pleasant, feminine sound for a man to hear. ‘‘And where is your sleepy friend now?’’
‘‘He was hung. By a man just like Thad Harlan.’’
‘‘Oh, John, I’m so sorry.’’
‘‘Bear Miller was all right, a much better man than the one who hung him.’’
The rise was a gradual slope, covered in buffalo grass and scattered clumps of manzanita. It was an easy climb for the mustang, but McBride never made it. He was vaguely aware of falling from the saddle, of landing hard on his back and at the same time being jolted by pain.
Then darkness crowded around him and he was falling, tumbling headlong into a dark pit streaked with fire that had no beginning and no end.
John McBride woke to darkness and his eyes reached, exploring, into a violet sky ablaze with the cool, white fire of a million stars. The wind came up and touched him, but he was burning like a soul in torment and cried out in fear and the wind went away again.
A brown hand rested on his forehead for a moment; then a woman whispered words he could not understand. The neck of a skin bottle touched his lips and he drank, water from the snow-covered top of the earth, so cold it scalded his tongue, steamed like mist in his mouth.
Then he was left alone.
‘‘Got yourself in a pickle, boy, huh?’’
Bear Miller sat on a tree stump, grinning, his hands busy, peeling a lime green apple. ‘‘Tol’ the purty young gal about me, huh?’’
‘‘I told her about the grizzly in the hollow log. It made her laugh.’’
Bear nodded. ‘‘Good to hear a woman laugh. A man should hear a woman laugh now and then.’’