He angled across the side of the butte, started down into another canyon.
In the darkness his foot caught in a low-creeping bush and he pitched suddenly forward. His outthrust hands were too late to save him, his head cracked against a stone. Danny Morgan lay limp.
The smell of frying bacon filled the air. Somewhere nearby a bird was singing lustily. Someone was shuffling about.
Danny lay quiet, eyes still closed. His head ached. Slowly he opened one eye, stared up at unpeeled pole rafters thatched with yellow clay. He opened the other eye and turned his head to one side.
He was in a small cabin. The floor, he saw, was earthen. A rickety table, built of saplings and a couple of old boards, leaned crazily against the log walls. Two elk antlers hung on the wall, served as a gun rack, held an oldtime rifle. A pair of dirty trousers and a battered felt hat dangled from a peg.
A man moved into his vision, carrying a cup and plate to the table. He was old. Long gray hair curled over the shoulders of a red flannel shirt, his face was a salt and pepper mass of whiskers.
«Bill!» cried Morgan.
Badlands Bill turned around, grinned with tobacco stained teeth.
«So yuh came to life,» he said.
«My head hurts like hell,» said Morgan.
«It’s got a lump on it size of a goose egg,» declared Bill. «Wonder yuh didn’t bat your brains out.»
Morgan slung his legs off the bed.
«I remember stubbing my toe and falling,» he said.
«Yuh fetched yourself a crack on the noodle that laid yuh out,» said Bill. «Dang near busted the rock, yuh did. I was kind of trailin’ along behind yuh.»
Morgan stiffened. «Trailing along behind me?»
«Shore. I was just coming up the gap into town when all hell bruk loose. I saw yuh running’ and all them jaspers after yuh, so being a peaceable sort of cuss, I just kind of hid in some bushes and watched the goings on. I see yuh ain’t got no shootin’ irons and I figured maybe some of the boys might push yuh kind of hard. So I jogged along with yuh, thinkin’ maybe if they did I could grab me a hand.»
«Do you mean you was siding with me?»
«Bet yore britches,» Bill told him. «Don’t like this here idear of the whole danged town jumpin’ on one guy. Besides, most of them jaspers was Diamond C men and there ain’t nothin’ I hate worser than the Diamond C.»
«Wait a second,» said Morgan, slowly. «You must be wrong on that count, Bill. Crawford himself was over and offered to help me out. Offered to fake a hanging party and let me get away. Maybe that’s what he did. Even after I told him I didn’t …»
«None of them jaspers was bent on lettin’ yuh get away,» Bill declared.
«They was pourin’ lead at yuh like water out of a bucket. And they wasn’t shootin’ at the sky, neither. Them guns was a-pointin’ right at yore back.»
«And most of them were Diamond C men?»
«Bet yore boots they was. Meanest bunch of hombres that ever cluttered up the range.»
Morgan shook his head. «Can’t figure it out a-tall,» he said. «Crawford himself …»
«You come over here and squat,» invited Bill. «Get some meat an’ coffee inside yore carcass and then yuh and me is goin’ to talk.»
Morgan made his way dizzily across the room, took a seat on a packing box covered with a sheep pelt. Bill poured a tin cup full of steaming coffee, forked half a grouse and strips of bacon onto a plate.
With the scent of food in his nostrils, Morgan realized that he was hungry, hadn’t eaten since the noon before. Eagerly he stripped off the leg of the grouse, ate ravenously.
Finished, he pushed his plate away and looked at Bill. The old man had stoked up his stubby pipe. Glowing and sputtering under forced draft, the tobacco seemed in imminent danger of setting fire to his whiskers.
One of the old beaver trappers who had stayed on after the beaver were gone, Bill was one of Buffalo Gap’s characters. Morgan had seen him many times before, had had a drink or two with him at times in the Red Rooster, understood the old man lived in a cabin tucked off somewhere in the badlands. No one seemed to know just where.
«You seem to have your back up at the Diamond C,» said Morgan. «What did they ever do to you?»
«Three or four years back,» said Bill, «I slow-elked one of their critters. Hard winter and no game in miles. I ain’t one that starves when meat walks right up to the door, even if it does tote a brand.»
«I can guess it,» Morgan said. «They raised hell with you.»
«They more than raised hell, mister,» declared Bill, «they were plumb set on doin’ me violence. Me and my gun argued them out of it.»
The old man sat silently for a moment, clouds of tobacco smoke seething in his whiskers.
«I don’t know what kind of trouble yuh are in,» he finally said, «but it must be powerful bad. I been waitin’ for it to happen, sooner or later, ever since I talked to that rock feller last summer.»
«What rock fellow?»
«Feller Crawford had lookin’ over his ranch. Kind of dudish feller. Wore laced boots, he did. From back east. Said he was a geolo … something like geography, though that ain’t it.»
«Geologist,» suggested Morgan.
The old man slapped his knee. «By cracky, that’s the word. Never could remember it. Looks at rocks, he told me, and knows what’s underneath. Crawford had him out sizin’ up his spread for oil.»
«There isn’t any oil in this country,» objected Morgan.
«Feller told me there was,» insisted Bill. «Me and him got drinkin’ one night and he sort of likkered up. Told me lots of things he probably shouldn’t of told. Said there was oil, all right, by cracky, but it wasn’t on Crawford’s land. Said it was in a big pool just north of Crawford’s place.»
«North,» yelled Morgan. «Why, that’s my place!»
The old man nodded. «That’s what I thought, too. Sat around long time tryin’ to figure out if I should tell yuh. Decided not to ’cause it wasn’t none of my danged business.»
Morgan rose to his feet and walked to the door, stood looking eastward to the dim purple of the escarpment. The sun was only an hour or so above the horizon. In the creek below the water babbled with a sleepy sound. A scarlet bird flashed from the top of a dead cedar, skimmed the sagebrush.
Old Bill joined him at the door.
«Goin’ to be another burner,» he opined, squinting at the sun.
«I got business for tonight,» said Morgan, tersely.
«Thought yuh might have,» said Badlands Bill.
Buffalo Gap was quiet, quiet with the cool of night after an August day.
Unlike the night before, there was no movement in the street. The windows of the Red Rooster glowed yellow, but the porch of the saloon was empty.
Only one horse stood at the hitching rail.
Danny Morgan moved like a fleeting shadow from the bushes at the head of the gap, making for the jail. Stooping low and running, he reached the back of the building. Crouching there, he waited for any sound that might announce he had been seen. Putting his hand down on the ground, it came in contact with fresh, damp earth and looking down, he saw that he squatted beside the hole he had clawed open to escape the night before.
Moving cautiously, Morgan slid around the corner of the jail. There was a light in the office. Slowly he edged up to the window, looked in. Kress, the deputy, sat with his feet on the desk, his chair tilted back, hat over his face.
The lamp burned low. There was no sign of the sheriff.
Swiftly, Morgan’s eyes swept the wall, lighted on the double belt and pair of guns slung from a nail. He would have recognized those guns anywhere.
The door stood half open and Kress did not stir when Morgan pushed it easily. For a second, Morgan stood in the doorway, then strode forward.
The deputy jerked in surprise, half swinging his feet off the desk, but before he could utter a cry, Morgan had him by the throat, was bearing him backward to the floor. The chair went over with a clatter.