a head-high hummock of land, so all they had to put up was the sod-brick front wall and the roof. Gordon knew that at this time of day his father would be ploughing in the fields beyond the house. It was why he wouldn’t know about the cattle being held in the wash. Gordon galloped the paint past the house and up the low ridge.
He saw his father in the field. Bob Conners had halted his mule and his bull-tongue plough. He had one hand shading his eyes and was staring at the yellow cloud of dust the riders had lifted in the pass. When he saw Gordon on the paint he walked across the furrows toward him. Bob Conners was a tall man, dusty, stooped with the ague and with a lifetime of labor. He had knobby joints, and a ploughman’s callouses made horny ridges on his immense hands.
“So you come home, tail between your legs,” he said disgustedly. “Maybe now you’ll stand up like a man and shoot a gun—”
Gordon, trying to catch his breath, made an impatient gesture. He and his father had quarreled this morning. Quarreled because Gordon wouldn’t take a rifle and go into the hills after deer.
“Pa, you got to get away,” Gordon said. “They’re comin’ to string you up. Say you rustled some Crazy Moon stuff. I saw it down there in the wash.”
Conners reached the top of the ridge, breathing heavily. He stared at Gordon, the blood draining from his face, and then looked again toward the yellow dust hanging over the pass. Gordon heard the door of the dugout creak on its rawhide hinges. He turned to see his mother coming out, drawn by the sound of his horse, or their voices. Sarah Conners was a bent woman, turned old before her time by her frontier labors. Her hands were corded and dirty—and one of them was held at her throat in a frightened way. Her voice sounded strained.
“What is it, Bob?”
Bob Conners had Gordon’s same hazelnut eyes that seemed to change color according to the light. They had turned a shining green in the bright afternoon sun, as he continued to stare toward the pass.
“Maybe we’re about to pay a debt, Sarah,” he said. “It’s been a long time acomin’. Git inside, both of you.”
He grabbed Gordon’s arm in a grip that hurt, pulling him off the paint and turning him down the low ridge. Gordon followed his mother into the dugout. It smelled of wet earth and the floor was still gluey from the water that had seeped through the sod roof during the last rain. Gordon’s father pulled the door shut and barred it. He crossed the room to take his big Sharps down from its antler rack over the fireplace. Gordon had never seen anything spook his pa, or hurry him. He spoke as deliberately as he moved.
“Now, you listen to me. If they start shooting, you git out the back way. Both of you. Hear me, Gordon? You git your ma to Roland Bayard’s—”
“I’m agoin’ to stand with you,” Sarah said. “All we got to do is wait for Sheriff Simms.”
“Simms won’t come,” Conners said. “You know how they got him sewed up in this county.”
“It don’t matter,” Gordon said. “Ma’s right. We can’t leave you.”
“If you’re bound determined to look so brave, you better have a gun,” Conners said. Gordon couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm in his father’s voice or not. His father held the Sharps out abruptly. Gordon stood as if frozen. It was what his father had done earlier in the day, when they quarreled. Gordon took a step back, away from the rifle. He couldn’t help it. He saw the bitter shape come to the older man’s lips.
“Pa,” Sarah said. “When are you agoin’ to accept the fact Providence didn’t give us a boy like the rest?”
Conners turned his back. He began taking some linen-cased cartridges out of the box, moving so slow Gordon thought he was counting them.
“It may be they’ll follow you to Bayard’s,” Conners said. “They know him’n me were friends. If Bayard can’t protect you—you got one chance left. Find Blackhorn.”
Gordon stared at his father. It was the first time he had heard Blackhorn’s name mentioned in ten years. The man was a legendary figure to Gordon. Someone he had never seen. Gordon never knew whether Blackhorn was Bob Conners’ closest friend or his worst enemy. Something dark had happened between them a long time ago, something Gordon had never been told.
“Pa,” Sarah said. “Why Blackhorn? This ain’t got nothing to do with that.”
“How do you know?” Bob Conners’ face looked sunken, haunted. His eyes made a catlike glow in the dim light from the bottle window. The earth began to tremble beneath their feet and Gordon knew it was the riders approaching. Conners made a motion toward the back door. “Open it, boy.”
Not many dugouts had back doors. It was one of the strange quirks in his father that Gordon had never fathomed. Bob Conners never had a house with only one way out. He had cut his room into the hummock, instead of a sidehill, so that he could dig a rear passage that opened out on the opposite side of the hump of land. Gordon unbarred the waist-high door. It scraped wet clay from the floor as he pulled it open. He realized the earth had stopped trembling.
“Bob Conners!”
The voice was muffled, hollow, coming from some distance outside. Gordon figured the riders had halted among the cover of trees. The breechblock made a soft click as Conners opened the action of the Sharps, shoving one of the cartridges home. Sarah made a sighing sound.
“Come out, Conners,” the man called again. Gordon recognized the heavy voice of Rodger MacLane, the Crazy Moon owner. Conners went to the window, calling outside.
“We can talk from here.”
“Ain’t no talking to do,” MacLane answered. “Tom Union and two other riders o’ mine found some of my beef in your draw. You done a helluva sloppy job changing my Crazy Moon to your Stirrup.”
“If I’d blotted your brand do you think I’d be fool enough to leave the beef around for anybody to stumble across?”
“We didn’t come to argue, Conners. You got a minute to come out.”
“What for?”
“A trial,” MacLane answered.
“The judge with you?”
“We got enough men for a jury.”
“A Crazy Moon jury. That’ll make sure of a hangin’.”
“There’s more than Crazy Moon men here, Conners. The town’s fed up with men like you. I’ve lost half a thousand head of beef in four months. Anvil’s lost cows. So has Seventy-Seven. We’re fed up with men like you. If the law won’t stop it we will. That minute’s just about up.”
“There’s my woman and boy in here.”
“You can’t call Gordon a boy any more. Have you got anything to prove he wasn’t in on the rustling?”
“That’s what I thought,” Conners muttered. He glanced at his wife and son. “Git in that tunnel—both of you.”
Gordon looked at the big gun in his father’s hands. If it came to a shooting . . . a tremor ran through him. He couldn’t control it.
“Ma,” he said.
