Below, the posse had all dismounted. The men tied their horses to a stunted juniper and left the smallest man among them to guard the mounts. The others spread out to look for a way up. Two of them circled around out of sight while the remaining three set to climbing. As Picky drew closer, Grey could see that they weren’t going about it the right way.
One fellow was trying to climb one-handed while holding his rifle in the other, and he was making a piss-poor job of it. Another was trying to muscle his way up, showing off by chinning himself on edges of rock and making big leaps. It was impressive for a few seconds, but under this sun and wearing jeans, a heavy canvas coat, boots, and a gunbelt, the fellow was wearing himself out. By the time he reached the second of the two highest shelves he was moving at a breathless crawl.
The other two were not climbers at all, but at least they went about it with caution.
While all this was happening the Sioux seemed to be either unconcerned with their approach, or he was looking for something. Or, Grey thought, maybe the man was plain loco.
The Sioux dropped to all fours and began spitting on the ground. Grey could see him suck in his cheeks and hock spit over and over again. Once the Indian took a wrinkled water skin from his belt and upended it, squeezing out the last drops. Instead of swallowing them, he bent forward and let the water dribble from between clenched teeth.
“Yup,” said Grey quietly, “that boy there’s lost it.”
Then something flashed up on the hill.
Bright and sudden and very strange.
As the Sioux spat once more there was a burst of intense blue light beneath him. For just a split second it was like the man knelt over a skylight to a room lit with blue fire. It erased all shadows and was so bright Grey threw a hand up to shield his eyes.
But when he peered between his fingers the light was gone.
From the sides of the hills he could hear the pursuing men cry out. First in fear and then in anger.
“What in the hell was that?” Grey asked the empty air.
Picky nickered uneasily and Grey patted her neck, but he was frowning. What had the Indian done to cause that flash?
He waited to see if there was another flash.
There wasn’t.
However the memory of that one moment of azure light lingered. It burned in his eyes as if he’d stared too long at the sun, and only slowly, slowly faded.
Whatever it was, there was nothing natural about it, he was certain of that.
And there was nothing out here in the desert that could easily explain it. Not amid a pile of ancient rocks dropped by a glacier before the red man even hunted these hills. There wasn’t even any water to reflect sunlight, not that water on brown rock under a yellow sun would flash with a blue as bright as cornflowers.
He pulled Picky up short on the far side of a jutting shoulder of sandstone and slid quietly out of the saddle. The small man guarding the horses was on the other side and he was masking all sound by yelling encouragement up to his companions. He had a truly poisonous mouth and cursed his companions, called them goat molesters and worse. Damned them to hell and wished seven kinds of torment on them.
Grey was bored by the patter, so he screwed the barrel of his pistol into the man’s right ear and said, “Hush now.”
The man hushed.
The man froze solid.
Grey took a fistful of the back of the little man’s collar to keep him from rabbiting. The man held his arms out to his side.
“Good,” said Grey amiably. “Take your pistol out like it’s red hot. Yup, just two fingers. Nice, that’s the way to do it. Put it on the ground. No, no, don’t be moving quicker than common sense tells you to. Good, good. Now back up and let’s go have a quiet chat, shall we?”
With the gun in place, Grey used his hold on the collar to walk the man backward around the shoulder of rock. Then he pushed him toward the wall.
“Hands on the wall, feet wide. Yeah, like you’re trying to hold it up.”
Grey patted him down, removed a small two shot over-and-under derringer and a skinning knife and tossed them into a tangle of cactus paddles. Then he spun the man and thrust him hard against the hot stone.
His prisoner was nearly a foot shorter than Grey’s six-two and easily sixty or seventy pounds lighter. A skinny man with a bad sunburn and worse breath. He had rough, big-knuckled hands, though, which spoke of years of hard labor. A farmer or a miner. Nothing else would do it. His face was young but his eyes were old and they didn’t seem to want to meet Grey’s.
Grey stood very close, the gun barrel an inch from the man’s tobacco-stained teeth. The fellow went crossed-eyed trying to look at it.
“Now,” said Grey, smiling an affable smile, “let’s start with your name.”
The man hesitated for a beat, then said, “Riley.”
“First name?”
“That is my first name.”
“Give me the whole thing, then.”
“Riley Jones.”
“Uh huh. And, do you want to tell me who you are and what’s going on here, Mr. Riley Jones?”
Riley turned his head and snarled. “We’re sheriff’s deputies and you’re interfering with a criminal apprehension.”
“You saying you’re a deputy?”
“Yes I am.”
“Where’s your badge? I must have missed it, or’d you forget to bring it along?”
Riley licked his lips. “We were deputized by the sheriff. This here’s an official posse.”
He pronounced it “O-ficial.”
“Deputized? Ain’t that interesting as all hell. Remind me now… which sheriff’s department has jurisdiction way the hell out here?”
“Reno.”
“Maybe you need to buy a map, son, but you’re a long damn way from Reno.”
Riley Jones licked his lips again. “We… I mean…”
“Take your time,” suggested Grey. “Think up a good answer. Let’s see how much we both like what you have to say.”
On the other side of the rock and above them on the shelf Grey could hear the grunts and curses of the other pursuers. They were discovering that the route taken by the Sioux was considerably tougher than it looked, and it had looked plenty tough to Grey. He would not have tried it without rope and some time to plan.
“Who are you, mister?” demanded the prisoner.
“I’m the ghost of George Washington, father of our country come to reunite these dis — United States,” said Grey. He tapped the edge of the barrel against the man’s upper lip. “I believe it’s your patriotic duty to tell the whole unexpurgated truth.”
“Unexpur… what?”
“No lies.”
“I ain’t lying,” insisted Riley. “The sheriff’s got special powers from the territorial governor himself.”
“Special powers?” Grey smiled. “Bullshit.”
“Hand to God. Like I said, we’re out here on official business.”
Grey kept his smile in place but he began to wonder if he’d made a mistake. The moral high ground felt a little shaky beneath his feet.
“You want to tell me what that bright blue flash was?”
Riley’s eyes shifted away immediately. “I didn’t see no light.”
“Sure you did. Everyone for twenty miles must have seen it. Bright as can be, right on top of that rock. Right under that Sioux you men have been chasing. How could you not see it?”
Riley squared his shoulders. Very carefully. “What’s your interest, mister?”
“In the blue light? Common curiosity.”
“No. Why’d you step into something ain’t your business?”
“I saw six men chasing one. Didn’t look fair.”
“You saw six white men chasing a red injun.”
“I don’t care if he’s bright purple. Six to one?”