Still, his anger kept him going. For all he knew, his entire family might be dead; his ma and pa, his married sister and brother-in-law, his two young brothers and baby sister. There was no sign of life at all down there, except for the buzzards.
Dunc rubbed his sagging face and swore softly. He had not dared go down to the clearing itself because the Tanis family lived just around the slope, and Gabe Tanis was a member of the gang. A lifelong friendship with the Tanises meant little now, for there was no telling what kind of lies Ike had spread among the hill people.
And yet he couldn't just sit here on this shelf and do nothing, Dunc told himself. Damn that girl, anyway! he thought. But he knew it wasn't the girl he hated. He'd do the same thing all over again if he had to.
And he couldn't hate men like Gabe Tanis, either, for they all had their own reasons for wanting to fight, and they thought the Brunners were helping them. Dunc had thought it himself. But if they had seen the things he had seen, heard the things he had heard...
Wearily he got to his feet as darkness closed down on the hills. No use thinking about that, he warned himself. They wouldn't believe me.
And now, Tanises or no Tanises, he had to go down to that clearing and see for himself what had happened. Maybe, he thought, there'll be something down there that'll tell me where Ike has taken the gang.
Leading the shaggy, brush-scarred little bay down the rocky slope, Dunc tried to prepare himself for whatever he would find down there among the ashes. The buzzards heard him coming through the timber and beat the air frantically with their heavy wings.
As he broke out of the woods a pale high moon shone down on the clearing, and Dunc Lester stood there for a moment, sick and heavy within his soul. There was nothing familiar in this silent place heavy with the smell of death and charred logs. It was impossible to believe that this was where he had lived out most of his young life, that he had helped his pa plow and plant these fields, that he had helped build the house and sheds. In this place his oldest sister had been married, here the youngest had been born. Now there was nothing.
He tramped the fields that he had hoed a hundred times. He scattered the ashes and burned timbers of the house and sheds. He found nothing but the dead cow; even the work mule was gone.
For a moment he felt lighter and breathed freer. At least the family was still alive somewhere. But where?
Suddenly all caution vanished. Dunc turned sharply to the edge of the clearing where the bay was waiting. He took down his shotgun, broke it to make sure that it was loaded, then climbed to the saddle and took the rocky, deep-rutted trail toward the Tanis place.
Soon he could smell wood smoke from the Tanis chimney, then the orange glow of the coal-oil lamp burning in the Tanis cabin. Riding to the back of the cabin, Dunc called sharply:
“Gabe, you there?”
Almost immediately the back door was thrown open and Gabe's woman stood in the cabin entrance holding a long-barreled rifle in her two big hands.
“Who is it?”
“Dunc Lester, Sarah Sue. I want to talk to Gabe.”
“Dunc Lester!” The two words told Dunc all he needed to know about what the hill people thought of him. “Gabe ain't here,” she said harshly. “And a lucky thing for you he ain't!”
“I want to find out about my family.”
Sarah Sue Tanis was a long-faced, leather-tough woman in her early forties. She had often cared for Dunc when he was little more than a baby, but she wasn't remembering that now. “There ain't no Lesters in these hills,” she said, her voice filled with hate. “We're decent, God-fearin' folks up here, and there ain't no room among us for preacher killers or their families!”
“Preacher killers?”
“I reckon you know what I'm talkin' about, Dunc Lester. Ike Brunner told us how you shot old Mort Stringer down in cold blood and then shot young Cal in the leg when he tried to stop you! All over that no-account girl of the preacher's.”
Anger welled up in him until he felt limp and sickish. But all he said was “Is that the reason you people burned us out?”
She said nothing, but grinned in self-righteous hatred.
“Where's my family? Where'd you run them off to— you and all the other decent, God-fearin' folks around here?”
“You might look in Arkansas,” she snapped. “I don't reckon you'll find them in Oklahoma.”
An overpowering sense of helplessness dulled the edge of Dunc's anger. He knew there was no use talking to Sarah Sue Tanis o/her husband. Because Ike Brunner had brought them corn in dry years, because he had brought doctors for their sick and filled their heads full of lies, they now believed everything he told them.
Sarah Sue hadn't shot him with that long-barreled rifle because it would be too much like shooting one of her own kin, but that wasn't saying that she wouldn't shoot him the next time he came. He reined the bay around and rode toward the dark timber.
He camped that night under a sandstone overhang not far from Ulster's Cave. Wolflike, he crouched under the shelter of rock listening to the sounds of the night, wondering what he was going to do next. If he was smart, he told himself, he would light out for Arkansas and look for his folks. He would forget that he had ever lived in these hills or had been hooked up with the Brunners. That would be the smart thing to do. The only healthy thing.
But he didn't feel smart. And he didn't think he would soon forget the Brunners in Arkansas or anywhere else. And besides, there was that girl of Mort Stringer's, who had haunted his mind since the first moment he had seen her.
It was a funny thing, saving a person's life like that. It made a man feel almost like God to hold a life in his hands, knowing that it was within his power to save it or let it go. Dunc wondered if that was the reason Leah Stringer was so constantly in his mind these days, in spite of all the other things he had to plague him.
At last he untied a small gunny sack that he had brought behind his saddle, took out a handful of parched com, and began to eat. The corn had come from Owen Toller's barn, and Dunc had parched it himself when he got back to the hills. On long hunting trips or forced marches, Indians could live for weeks on corn like this. And so could a white man, if he had to.
Dunc cracked the hard, half-burned kernels between his teeth, chewing and swallowing automatically, his mind on other things. When, several days ago, he had first discovered what the gang had done to his family and to the farm, a wildness had seized him, and he had been driven by it ever since. Now, at last, fatigue had subdued the wildness. Hopelessness had blunted his anger. What was left was a quiet, pulsating hate that he knew would be with him always. All these hills were now his enemies. And Ike Brunner could not be found.
Now that he could be more rational in his mind, Dunc realized that he was probably lucky that he had not been able to find Ike Brunner. In a fight with the gang, he wouldn't have lasted five minutes.
But this knowledge did not ease the tension within hint, or put down his lust for revenge.