The roan was big and strong and used to the desert. We made time up the trail. I overtook Sheriff Hostler within the first ten miles.
He looked at me with mild surprise. “Going out for something special?” he asked.
“Heard you were going out and thought I’d jog along for a ways.”
He nodded.
We rode along in silence. Most of the way the trail was wide enough for the two of us to ride abreast. I waited for him to say something, but he kept quiet.
We’d reached the summit of the trail and were working down through the colored mountains on the other side when I said to him abruptly: “What are you waiting for, sheriff?”
He turned and looked at me with mild surprise. Then, as he let his eyes lock with mine, the surprise left them, and his face showed a great weariness.
“I’m waiting,” he said, “for somebody to back my play.”
“All right,” I told him, “I’m going to back it.”
He didn’t say anything to that, and I didn’t say anything more.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later I looked back and saw dust on the trail.
“Somebody coming,” I told him. We waited to see who it was. After the horse got closer, I saw that it was a woman riding.
“Probably Doug Drake’s daughter,” I said.
The sheriff squinted his eyes, and I saw his mouth twitch at the corners, then settle into firm lines. After a moment he nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s Bessie Drake.”
She rode up to us and nodded her head as casually as though she had been strolling down Broadway and met a couple of acquaintances.
“I want to go,” she said.
“It isn’t going to be easy, Bess,” the sheriff told her.
“You don’t think I’m a fool, do you?” she asked.
That was all that was said. She swung her horse in alongside of ours, and we went trotting down the trail.
We got to the body along late in the afternoon. Bess knelt beside it and the sheriff and I walked away for five or ten minutes, then Bess came to us, and said: “All right.”
The sheriff had a shovel on his saddle, and I helped him dig the grave. It was hot there in the desert, but the ground was dry and it didn’t take us long.
The girl watched, dry-eyed, as we lowered the body into the grave. She was grim and silent.
After the grave had been filled in she asked me in a calm voice: “Can you show me where the man lay in ambush?”
I piloted her and the sheriff over to the place.
They looked the ground over. Neither one of them said anything. They just prowled around. After a while the sheriff said: “Well, I m going to start back. Are you going with me, Bess?”
She thought for a minute and said: “No, I don’t think I will.”
The sheriff turned to me. “How about you, Zane?”
“No,” I said, “I’m going to wait here for a little while.”
I didn’t want to tell either one of them that I was expecting the pack train to show up for the payroll.
The sheriff turned to the girl and said: “If you want to take your father’s pack in, Bess, there’ll be some packs over the trail. They’re sending some stuff out from the mine, and taking some stuff in all the time, you know.”
“Yes,” she said, tonelessly, “I know.”
The sheriff got on his horse and rode away. I climbed on the roan and went back to the end of the road and sat there watching the shadows get longer, smoking an occasional cigarette, and soaking in the silence of the desert.
After a while I heard the crunch of feet in the sand, and Bess came riding up behind me.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” I told her.
She turned, spurred her horse and started up the trail toward Greasewood.
It was about dusk when I heard the tinkle of bells, and a pack train came down from the mesa country. The man in charge came over to me.
“You’re Bob Zane?” he asked.
I nodded.
He said: “We’re from the mine. We came down to get a load of flour. Atwood said you’d know about it.”
“I know about it,” I told him.
He hesitated a moment, and then squatted down on the desert beside me and rolled a cigarette.
“All alone?” I asked him.
“I’ve got my son with me,” he said. “He’ll be over after a while.”
We sat and smoked and then a young lad about nineteen or twenty, with an eager face and alert eyes, came over and joined us.
“The horses all hobbled, Harry?” asked the man.
The boy nodded his head. “All staked out, dad,” he said.
We sat there and waited.
The sun set and shadows came along the desert. After a while we saw the headlights of automobiles coming along the road, jolting and swaying. It was getting dark by the time they pulled up. There was a truck loaded with flour, and a car filled with men. The men were armed.
The man who had charge of the pack train evidently knew the truck driver. They talked together in low tones for a while, and then the sacks of flour came out on the ground. The boy brought up the pack train and I helped them throw the sacks. The man on the truck gave some papers to the packer, and the packer signed a receipt. Then the cars turned and started grinding their way back over the long desert miles.
“All ready,” said the packer to me.
IV
Rope Law
We started up the winding trail. By that time it was pitch-dark, save for the grayish illumination which covered the surface of the desert from the steady stars.
After we’d gone a mile or so, I rode up to the head of the pack train and spoke to the packer.
“We’re going to stop here for a minute,” I said.
“What for?” he wanted to know.
“I want to know where the money is,” I said.
“It’s in the flour,” he told me.
“I know that,” I said, “but what sacks?”
“I’ll show you,” he said.
He showed me the packhorse that had the marked flour sack with the money in it.
“All right,” I told him, “I’m taking this money out.”
“No, you’re not,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I told him, “but this money is coming out,” and I took out my knife and ripped open the pack and the flour.
He said: “My orders don’t cover that at all. My orders were to bring the payroll in the flour sack.”
“Your orders were to act under my directions, weren’t they?” I asked him.
He hesitated for a moment, and then said: “Yes, I was told that you’d be in charge.”
“All right,” I told him, “I’m in charge,” and took out the money.
It was in sacks in the flour, the sacks filled with bills of various denomination. The entire payroll was in currency.
I managed to get the payroll in my saddle bags.
“All right,” I told him then, “go ahead with the pack just as though nothing had happened.”
He shrugged his shoulders and spoke to his son.
The pack train got in motion.
I waited on the roan until I could hear the bells of the pack train getting mellow in the distance. Then I started poking along behind. I had a theory and I was going to test it.
I’d been moving up the trail slowly for about an hour when suddenly I saw the pinprick of a ruddy flame against the darkness of the mountains. Then I heard the crash of a shot which echoed from rock to rock. Then there were more flames and more reports. I heard the thud of galloping horses, a hoarse voice shouting a command, and then there was no more firing for a few minutes.
I stopped the roan, eased the carbine from the saddle scabbard, and waited, watching the trail ahead.
After a while I heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and got my roan crowded well over to the side of the trail up in a little draw where the trail cut through a dry wash down the side of a mountain.