his horizons if he could find and get away with them.
It was a stake — a real stake, the thing he’d always needed. A chance to begin afresh, to live down the mistakes of a wasted past. He put all other thoughts from his head. He must find the shack, and he must find it before morning. This was the night of the eighth day since he had taken that gold from Descardo’s saddle, and suspicion must soon prod Sierra into action.
A remembrance of Linda stole into his mind and he thought,
Poor kid
. She was starved for affection. He recalled how restlessness had swayed her, how the need for understanding, for justification, had awakened in her the hungers prompting that sudden fierce response which had first shocked and then amused him.
He was not amused now; he felt revulsion and scorn for the way he had used her. She had named him right, a bad lot, he thought bitterly; the ghost of a man filled with malice and mockery which he used like a sachet to camouflage the truth — a defense mechanism built up through the years to wall away the decay engendered by past failures.
He was wrapped in the somberness of these dour reflections when the unmistakable sound of a horse came down the wind to jerk him into full consciousness of danger. He stopped the roan to listen, then swung him right and applied the steel, driving him headlong into the waist high brush, crashing south. A full five minutes he held the stallion to that pace and again pulled up, hearing nothing.
Striking east, he moved on with more caution, narrowly scanning each rockpile and thicket, with the gun the girl had got him held in readiness across the pommel. One rider, he thought. Probably Bennie. Smarting under the chagrin of his recent humiliation.
He began to think he might have come too far in this direction. It was going to be hell to find that place without he waited for the moon to come up. Another hour, perhaps. Should he go on now or wait?
The thought of Sierra made him turn the horse south. The land became more rolling. The rocks and brush gave way to scattered stands of cholla and prickly pear with here and there a gnarled mesquite lifting new growth above its cut over roots. A blood-orange disc climbed above the West Potrillos and picked out the dim far ramparts of distant Mexican mountains. The wind died away and the stars seemed almost near enough to touch.
He rode more carefully still, holding the stallion to a walk and scanning the night in all directions. He saw no sign of the shack and eyed the mountains again, orienting himself and swinging more to the west. He was pretty sure, now, that he had come too far.
The moon, turned butter yellow, crept above the spruce tops that stood like wrought-iron fringe atop the rocky escarpments back of him. Its glow pushed his shadow far out across the argent waste into which the blue roan was carrying him, bending it around the earth’s irregularities and causing him to tighten his grip on the pistol.
He wished now he had been smart enough to let Bennie pass when he had first heard the horse. Then he could have been the stalker and followed Cordray’s gun dog. There was no doubt in Reno’s mind that, having lost his trail, the hard faced Texican would line straight out for that shack.
Perhaps it wasn’t yet too late to translate that notion into action. The ground was soft underfoot but there was plenty of shale to hammer a horse’s hoofs through this cold quiet.
He pulled up by a thicket of catclaw and sat listening, straining to catch any dim sound of travel. He felt the chill biting into him, making his wrenched shoulder ache, but continued his vigil for another ten minutes before, shivering and cursing, he was finally convinced he had missed the shack too far to make further waiting feasible.
He kneed the roan into motion, dropping into a gully, following its twisting course westward with white clouds high above him, his horse’s hoofs muffled in the deep sand of its bed. For a quarter of an
It was a stake — a real stake, the thing he’d always needed. A chance to begin afresh, to live down the mistakes of a wasted past. He put all other thoughts from his head. He must find the shack, and he must find it before morning. This was the night of the eighth day since he had taken that gold from Descardo’s saddle, and suspicion must soon prod Sierra into action.
A remembrance of Linda stole into his mind and he thought,
Poor kid
. She was starved for affection. He recalled how restlessness had swayed her, how the need for understanding, for justification, had awakened in her the hungers prompting that sudden fierce response which had first shocked and then amused him.
He was not amused now; he felt revulsion and scorn for the way he had used her. She had named him right, a bad lot, he thought bitterly; the ghost of a man filled with malice and mockery which he used like a sachet to camouflage the truth — a defense mechanism built up through the years to wall away the decay engendered by past failures.
He was wrapped in the somberness of these dour reflections when the unmistakable sound of a horse came down the wind to jerk him into full consciousness of danger. He stopped the roan to listen, then swung him right and applied the steel, driving him headlong into the waist high brush, crashing south. A full five minutes he held the stallion to that pace and again pulled up, hearing nothing.
Striking east, he moved on with more caution, narrowly scanning each rockpile and thicket, with the gun the girl had got him held in readiness across the pommel. One rider, he thought. Probably Bennie. Smarting under the chagrin of his recent humiliation.
He began to think he might have come too far in this direction. It was going to be hell to find that place without he waited for the moon to come up. Another hour, perhaps. Should he go on now or wait?
The thought of Sierra made him turn the horse south. The land became more rolling. The rocks and brush gave way to scattered stands of cholla and prickly pear with here and there a gnarled mesquite lifting new growth above its cut over roots. A blood-orange disc climbed above the West Potrillos and picked out the dim far ramparts of distant Mexican mountains. The wind died away and the stars seemed almost near enough to touch.
He rode more carefully still, holding the stallion to a walk and scanning the night in all directions. He saw no sign of the shack and eyed the mountains again, orienting himself and swinging more to the west. He was pretty sure, now, that he had come too far.
The moon, turned butter yellow, crept above the spruce tops that stood like wrought-iron fringe atop the rocky escarpments back of him. Its glow pushed his shadow far out across the argent waste into which the blue roan was carrying him, bending it around the earth’s irregularities and causing him to tighten his grip on the pistol.
He wished now he had been smart enough to let Bennie pass when he had first heard the horse. Then he could have been the stalker and followed Cordray’s gun dog. There was no doubt in Reno’s mind that, having lost his trail, the hard faced Texican would line straight out for that shack.
Perhaps it wasn’t yet too late to translate that notion into action. The ground was soft underfoot but there was plenty of shale to hammer a horse’s hoofs through this cold quiet.
He pulled up by a thicket of catclaw and sat listening, straining to catch any dim sound of travel. He felt the chill biting into him, making his wrenched shoulder ache, but continued his vigil for another ten minutes before, shivering and cursing, he was finally convinced he had missed the shack too far to make further waiting feasible.
He kneed the roan into motion, dropping into a gully, following its twisting course westward with white clouds high above him, his horse’s hoofs muffled in the deep sand of its bed. For a quarter of an
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