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  Maybe it could be done. Suddenly he wheeled the big gelding away from the corral and rode obliquely through the clutter of Sabo, heading grimly back toward Slush Creek and the Muller lease.

  He tried to tell himself that he was doing it on Valois' account, because he wasn't the kind to let an innocent man pay for something he'd done himself. But he knew well enough that Valois had little to do with it. No matter what kind of fool Rhea was, she didn't deserve to be left on the lease alone with a man like Lloyd.

  A man had his pride, and a kind of honor that he had to preserve if he meant to go on living with himself. As he rode hunched low in the saddle, his head ducked against the cutting wind, he almost convinced himself that he was doing no more than any other man would do under the same conditions.

  The black skidded down the bank of the creek and the sheet of ice cracked like a pane of glass. In midstream the gelding shied, and Grant swore harshly as his hat fell into the muddy ice water beneath the horse's belly. He swung low and swooped up the dripping hat, and the icy band around his ears did not improve his temper as he jammed the battered Stetson back on his head.

  Now from the other side of the creek he could see the marshal's horse tied up on the protected side of the dugout, and he forgot the discomfort of a soaked hat. He took one deep breath and felt a nervous ripple flutter across his shoulders. This had to be brought off fast and exactly right, or it wouldn't be brought off at all.

  He kicked the gelding roughly, almost as though he were afraid of changing his mind, and rode directly to the dugout. He scanned the high ground for riders but saw no one.

  He left the black tied to a scrub-oak thicket behind the shack, drawing his revolver as he approached the dugout steps. He could hear voices, but the sound was warped and distorted by the wind. Quietly, now, he made his way down to the bottom step and, without warning, kicked open the dugout door.

  Rhea whirled and made a strange, small sound when she saw Grant standing in the doorway. Kirk Lloyd, lounging against the far wall, showed no surprise at all. Turk Valois, standing rigidly near the stove, made no sound, but his eyes were narrowed and bright with warning.

  Whether the warning was intended, Grant didn't know, but he took advantage of it quickly. He kicked the door hard and swung his revolver on Dagget who was standing by himself against the near wall.

  “Drop your gun, Marshall!”

  Dagget's face was a grim, pleased mask showing no surprise. In his hands was a snub-barreled carbine pointed casually in the general direction of Valois, but Dagget didn't appear to have much interest in the runner now. “I can't see that this is your play, Grant,” he said calmly, almost gently.

  “This .45 makes it my play, and I can trigger it a lot faster than you can swing your carbine. So drop it.”

  The marshal looked thoughtful but undisturbed. Valois looked as though he were trying to speak but the words had stuck in his throat; Kirk Lloyd had not changed his lounging position or blank expression, except when he looked at Rhea. For an instant there was complete, roaring silence in the small room, and then Rhea hissed:

  “Joe, you fool! You fool! Can't you see it's a trap!”

  A chill colder than the ice of Slush Creek settled in, Grant's middle. He did not glance around, did not take his eyes from Dagget's satisfied face. The marshal's shoulders moved slightly in an almost invisible shrug, and he leaned the carbine against the whitewashed wall. “Why did you come back, Grant?” he asked with that savage smile.

  Grant's eyes darted about the room, then came to rest on Dagget. “Don't you know?”

  “I want you to tell me.”

  Rhea took one quick step forward but Dagget nailed her to the spot with one savage glance. “Joe, don't tell him anything!”

  Now Grant felt the water from his wet hat dripping down his neck, running slowly over his face. With his free hand he reached up to wipe the water away. And then he noticed the dark brown stain on his hand, the color of the dye that he had used on his hair. Dagget watched thoughtfully and said again:

  “Why did you come back?”

  And now, at last, the picture began to form in Grant's mind. Dagget had guessed all along that he would return because of Rhea. And even as he thought it, the marshal glanced bleakly at Lloyd, then at Rhea. And he studied Valois carefully, measuring him against the gunman.

  Grant took a deep breath, knowing that it was a trap. But he also knew that it wouldn't have changed anything, even if he had known at the beginning. Strangely, he found this thought bitterly amusing. Dagget didn't know how deep his trap had actually been—how inescapable.

  “All right,” Grant heard himself saying. “Valois is innocent. I gave him that money to pay off Battle.”

  “And where did the money come from?” the marshal pushed quietly.

  There was not much sense in lying now, for he would have to fight his way out of this anyway. “Joplin,” he said. “I took it off a banker named Ortway.” He saw Kirk Lloyd's mouth curl in faint amusement, and he saw the gunman's hungry gaze measuring Rhea. Grant looked at the marshal. “Does Valois go clear? Is he free to go on working here for the Mullers?”

  “Sure. If you can prove you're the bandit.”

  “I just told you! You've got a confession, with witnesses. What more do you want?”

  “The money,” Dagget said dryly. “Show me where you hid it and maybe I'll believe you.”

  The money. All it had brought him was trouble, and at the moment he was glad enough to get rid of it. “Then Valois will be clear?”

  “You've got my word on it.” Then the marshal's eyes widened, glittered with outrage when he saw Grant open his windbreaker with his free hand and draw out the money belt.

  “You've had the money on you all the time?”

  “Where else would I have it?”

  Abruptly, Dagget laughed, and the sound was harsh and unpleasant. “I had you pegged for a fool, but not that much of a fool!” He shook his head angrily as he grabbed the money belt and began breaking the pockets open. “To think of all the trouble I went to trying to find out where you had die money hid! Lying about the serial numbers. Lying about Valois. And all the time you had the money strapped around your gut!” There was amazement in his eyes along with the anger. And he laughed again when he saw surprise in Grant's face.

  “Don't think Territory law is less effective than any other kind. That hair, it's getting lighter by the minute, Grant, the color is dripping down your face! But I needed more than that; Ortway's yelling for his money. And all the time you had it in a money belt!”

  Grant's back stiffened. “You didn't get the serial numbers from Joplin? You lied about that?”

  “What bank clerk bothers to take serial numbers?” the marshal asked dryly. “But I knew you'd believe it. I knew you'd come running back when I told you that Lloyd and your girl friend...”

  Without a word Grant shifted his gun to his left hand, stepped in quickly, and struck Dagget in the face.

  Dagget, startled, went reeling back against the wall. Gently, he touched the corner of his bloodied mouth, his eyes blazing. “You don't like to think about that, do you? Lloyd's a hard case, takes what he wants. You don't like to think of him being alone with Miss Muller, do you?”

  “Shut up!”

  But the marshal shook his head and grinned. “Every man has his weakness; yours is a girl. I knew it the first time I saw the two of you together. Well, you never should have robbed that bank, Grant, because you are going to pay for it a long time.”

  “Don't bet on it,” Grant snarled. He glanced quickly at Rhea and said, “Get me some rope, plenty of it.”

  “It won't help you,” Dagget said, his anger cooling. “It'll only go harder when I catch you. And I will catch you!”

  “We'll see about that.” He took a roll of rough hemp binding twine from Rhea, then motioned for the marshal to turn around. “Cross your hands behind your back.”

  The marshal hesitated, then turned slowly, his face, to the wall. G
rant lashed his hands together then, and whipped his feet together with another length of twine. As he finished with the job, he turned to see Rhea standing beside him.

  “Joe, why did you do it?”

  “Why,” he asked stiffly, “does a man do anything?” Then he turned to Lloyd. “As long as you're on the Muller pay roll, you might as well earn your wage. Nobody's watching the fire line, is there?”

  Surprisingly, the gunman showed no anger. He shoved himself lazily away from the wall, still favoring his left side. “Dagget's goin' to be mighty put out about this,” and his thin mouth stretched in a humorless grin. “But it's your show, I guess.” He glanced blandly at Valois, then turned his gaze on Rhea and held it until she colored and turned away. “I'll be seein' you, Miss Muller,” he said dryly. “Later.”

  Turk Valois stiffened with anger of his own as the gunman left them in the dugout. He turned abruptly toward the door, motioning for Grant to follow.

  “I had you pegged right the first time I saw you,” the runner said flatly when they were outside. “You didn't come back here to clear an innocent man. You came because of Rhea.”

  “Do you aim to keep working for the Mullers?”

  “That's the reason you came back, isn't it, to make sure I stayed to keep an eye on Lloyd?”

  Grant nodded, knowing that this was no time for subtleties. “Yes, I guess that's the way it is. He's dangerous.”

  A quiet change appeared in Valois' expression, the old toughness that had not been apparent in the dugout was now set in the lines of his face. “I'm not afraid of Kirk Lloyd, but can you give me a good reason why I should risk getting shot over a girl like Rhea?”

  Grant took a deep breath, risking everything on the turn of the first card. “I can't give you any reason at all. I guess maybe you've got reason to hate Rhea, but she's still a woman. I was hoping you'd do it because it was the decent thing.”

  “If she's afraid of Lloyd, she can always fire him.”

  But both men knew better than that. “You don't fire a man like Lloyd. He stays as long as he likes, and then he quits.”

  A long moment of silence stretched out between them. At last the runner shook his head. “You've got it bad, but I like your guts. Not many men would stand up to Dagget and Lloyd together.”

  “So you'll stay?”

  “Until the well's spudded in. Rhea won't need any protection after that; she'll be able to buy anything she wants.”

  Not until that moment did they become aware of Rhea standing on the top step of the dugout, her eyes wide, listening.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT SEEMED A long time that she stood there, the wind whipping her long dress against her slender body. She did not look so driven now with ambition and greed; she was alone and afraid. Suddenly she uttered a small sound and came flying across the weed-grown lot. At that moment she was more beautiful than Grant had ever seen her, but a core of hard-ness grew inside him, and he stood wooden and unmoving. “Joe, why did you do it!”

  And Turk Valois said, with a kind of amused bitterness, “Because he loves you, Rhea. A man does some crazy things when he's in love—I ought to know!”

  Grant turned sharply to look at the runner's face, but Valois had already wheeled and was walking stiffly toward the dugout. As if from a great distance he heard Rhea's voice, the words strangely stiff and awkward. “Joe, it's true, isn't it?”

  “Who knows why a man does such things?” And with cold deliberateness he said, “Good-by, Rhea.”

  “Joe, listen to me! You can't run from Dagget; he'll catch you, no matter where you go. Give yourself up. When the well comes in we'll have the money to hire the best lawyers in the Territory.”

  He looked at her as though he had never seen her before. “No, thanks, Rhea. I'd rather look after myself.”

  “It's Lloyd, isn't it? That's why you're angry. I'll fire him, I'll put him off the lease!”

  Even in his woodenness he was puzzled. Why was she so concerned? He was through; just one short jump ahead of the law and prison. He couldn't possibly be of any use to her now.

  He could only wonder what kind of trick it was this time, what more did she want of him? He became aware of the cold, and the slashing wind that whipped through the grasses of the draws and the naked thickets of blackjack, and he pulled himself deeper into his windbreaker and fastened the collar with thick fingers. He said again, “Good-by, Rhea,” and turned to go.

  But she grabbed his sleeve. “What do I have to say to make you understand?”

  “Nothing, Rhea. You'll get what you want, with a little luck; all the money you'll ever want. Your gun shark will protect you from Farley, and Valois will protect you from the gun shark. It's a nice arrangement, isn't it?”

  “Valois!” she hissed. “I don't want his protection!” “Then fire him. But you'll find that Lloyd won't be so easy to deal with.”

  Suddenly the fight seemed to go out of her. “What can I say? Once I thought I wanted money more than anything in the world; money and revenge. I wanted security, a place to five that didn't reek of oil; I was tired to death of living in the ground like a wolf, and I wanted to five like a woman. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  Grant said nothing.

  “I love you, Joe.”

  He could not believe her.

  “From the very first I think I loved you, but I wouldn't admit it, even to myself.”

  He looked past her, to where Valois was waiting against the side of the dugout. Then he turned and walked away. And when he turned to look back, she was no longer there.

  So this, he thought, is the way it ends. Filled with doubt and roaring emptiness, he tramped down to the thicket where the gelding was tied. Valois came toward him, calling out as Grant was about to step into the stirrup.

  “Where do you aim to go from here?”

  Grant shrugged. For the moment he didn't care what trail he took or where it led him.

  “Dagget's going to be fit to kill when we turn him loose,” the runner said. “We won't be able to hold him long. We can lie to him, tell him that you kept us at gun point so we couldn't untie him. Even so, we've got to let him go pretty soon.”

  Grant climbed heavily to the saddle. “Give me a few minutes, and then...” He shrugged, and hauled the gelding around to the north.

  “Just a minute,” Valois called. “Dagget's going to be a wild man when he starts after you this time. He'll burn up the telegraph wires—within a few hours the borders will be watched so a coyote couldn't slip through.”

  “That's a chance I'll have to take.”

  “But I thought of something. A few months ago I stumbled onto an old dugout about five miles up Slush Creek. It's dug into the creek bank and grown over with weeds, built years ago by one of Payne's boomers, I guess. Far as I know I'm the only one that knows about it. It might do as a hideout. It would beat trying to cross a border crawling with U. S. marshals!”

  Grant scowled. “Maybe. But I couldn't keep my horse, and I'd need supplies.”

  “Let the horse go; more than likely he'll come back to Sabo, which won't tell Dagget a thing. I can bring you supplies and another horse later.”

  “I'm not asking you to get mixed up in this any more than you already are.”

  Valois grinned. “I'm already in it as far as I can get.”

  Grant hesitated only a moment. “I guess I didn't expect this much help. A fool doesn't deserve it, but...” He lifted a hand in a solemn gesture of friendship. “Thanks. I'll be looking for the squatter's place as I head north.”

  He put iron to the big gelding, and the black wheeled and settled to an easy lope to the north. When they reached the gentle incline that sloped gently up to the rim of the basin, he turned briefly in the saddle and saw Valois still standing there, and he saw Rhea standing straight as an arrow beside the bunkhouse, but he was a long way off by then and couldn't see what her face was like. And he wanted to lift a hand to her, to indicate with some small gesture that he had not ask
ed it to end this way, but his male pride lay hard and cold inside him, and he turned bleakly and raked the gelding with blunted spurs.

  Time sped now; he had never known it to pass so quickly. He ticked off the seconds and minutes in his mind and forced himself to hold the big black to an easy lope. Minutes counted now; time was the lone sheer thread that held him to freedom, and it was running out at an appalling rate. Five minutes he had—possibly ten—and then Rhea and Valois would be forced to let Dagget go. Even so, they would have trouble enough explaining the delay to the marshal.

  To avoid attention and suspicion, he kept to the well-traveled freight trail as long as he dared... but the minutes were flying by. At last he hauled the gelding around and peered down once again on that lacy wilderness of derricks where an endless, twisted chain of wagons crawled like black ants over the frozen prairie. And he could see the slanted roofs and flapping canvas of Sabo, and far to the west the endless chain of wagons disappeared on the horizon where Kiefer lay. But the thing that he was looking for was somewhere else, on the other side of Slush Creek. And he came suddenly erect in his saddle and a faint, fleeting grin split his face as he saw the tiny figure of Turk Valois flogging the marshal's horse. His taut nerves relaxed and he sat easy in the saddle, watching the animal bolt for the lower reaches of the frozen stream.

  Valois thought of everything! And he had guts, risking Dagget's wrath to buy more time for the escape. Grant shook his head in vague bewilderment and wondered how Rhea could doubt a man like that.

  The pale winter sun was falling behind the rolling brown lulls to the west when Grant came upon the ancient dugout that Valois had mentioned. He would not have seen it if the runner hadn't pinpointed the place for him, for it was dug into the side of the claybank and years of slow erosion had brought the earth down on top of it, making it shapeless and inconspicuous. And the covering of earth had grown up with grass and tall weeds, and not even the sagging stockade door was visible to a casual searching, hidden as it was behind a spearlike thicket of mullein.