They struck out at a slightly swifter pace once they had plenty of distance between them and Arlen Chase’s riders. The barn’s high hulking silhouette emerged from the night on their right, and they reined over there, swung off, and led their horses in-side where it was like off-saddling in the depths of an ink bottle.
They conversed only once, very briefly, after the horses had been stalled. Rufe said he would watch the front if Jud would watch out back, then they briefly mentioned the advantage of being practical instead of heroic, and parted with a couple of hard smiles.
The night was as hushed as death, and to Rufe, up near the front of the log barn, whose visibility in the direction of the main house where Elisabeth was blissfully slumbering was totally unimpeded, it seemed most probable that those skulkers—one, two, or all three of them for all he knew—would enter the barn from out back. It did not especially worry him that Jud was alone back there. The interior of the old barn was almost Stygian. Jud had a great advantage—none of Chase’s men knew there was an ambush established—and, finally, Rufe knew for a fact that an angrily aroused Jud Hudson was the equal of just about any two cowboys west of the Missouri.
He listened, relaxed a little with one hand on his holstered Colt, and was reflecting upon Arlen Chase’s strategy—which, to Rufe Miller, appeared needlessly prolonged—when he heard what sounded like the rub of two bits of dry wood, one against the other.
He eased just a fraction more in the direction of the wide front opening and detected the sound again. It was someone’s leather boot soles gliding with infinite care across gritty soil, and it was close by, perhaps slightly south of the front barn opening, but not as far down alongside the log wall as the rear of the barn.
He drew his Colt, thinking that he had been wrong; they weren’t going to slip into the barn from out back, after all.
It was a fair guess, considering he had only heard one sound, that of a man in boots approaching on an angle in the direction of the front of the barn. What changed his thinking was when a man with a carbine in his right fist gradually emerged from the darkness moving to the northeast corner of the barn and halted there, leaning almost comfortably, gazing in the direction of the main house, and also in the direction of the log bunkhouse, which was within the man’s same visionary perimeter.
The man put carbine against the side of the barn, fished forth a plug of twist, gnawed off a piece, pouched it into one cheek, put away what remained of the twist, then nonchalantly lifted his carbine again.
Rufe guessed now that this man was someone else’s bodyguard. He shot a swift look down through the blackness toward the back of the barn. Since the second man did not appear out front, he undoubtedly would be around back. Rufe had no misgivings. Jud was more of an Indian than Rufe was; he would take care of the other one.
Rufe tipped up his pistol barrel, stepped across through the blackness on the balls of his feet, eased around, and without haste projected his entire body out into the night gloom along the front of the barn, no more than twenty feet from that calmly chewing man with the carbine hanging loosely over one bent arm, and cocked his six-gun.
That little, muted but unmistakable sound made the slouching cowboy’s rhythmically moving jaws suddenly freeze. The man did not move anything but his eyes. He saw Rufe, saw the cocked gun aimed straight at his stomach, and seemed momentarily to stop breathing.
Rufe smiled and said very softly: “Not one sound.”
VI
The night was serenely velvet, endlessly quiet, and, except for that tiny space in the vault of the night where Rufe disarmed Arlen Chase’s cowboy, there did not seem to be even so much as a mote of discord anywhere in the universe. He shoved the cowboy’s carbine and Colt away with his boot toe from where they were standing, asked the man quietly if he had a belly gun or a boot knife, got a headshake, then said: “Where’s your friend?”
The cowboy answered in a half husky whisper. “Out back.”
“To fire the barn?”
The cowboy nodded.
“The third feller…where is he?”
The cowboy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Holding our horses. How’d you know there was three of us?”
Rufe ignored the question and motioned for the cowboy to sit down. The man looked warily at the cocked gun, evidently believing the worst, but he obeyed; he sat down with his back to the log wall— and Rufe chopped hard downward, driving the man’s hat over his ears with the pistol barrel. The cowboy loosened all over, then gently toppled sideways.
Rufe returned swiftly to the black interior of the barn, heading through as soundlessly as he could. When he saw the opening, he knelt low, then peered out. Jud was invisible. Rufe surmised he probably was around the corner of the barn, and stood up to ease out into the lighter gloom, then halt and listen. Eventually he heard something. It could have been simply an animal out beyond the corrals drowsily moving, or it could have been a man around the corner alongside the barn’s north wall. He started around there and was almost to the corner, when he heard a soft voice say: “I ain’t moving, mister.”
He stopped and waited. That hadn’t been Jud’s voice. For a moment there was no sound, until his partner growled in his familiar way, then Rufe called quietly: “Jud, you got him?”
The answer came swiftly in the same growling tone: “Yeah, the son-of-a-bitch’s got a bundle of rags soaked in coal oil.”
Rufe walked on around. This range man was tall, half a head taller than Jud but only half as thick. Even if Jud hadn’t had his Colt ten feet from the rider’s middle, it was unlikely that Chase’s cowboy would have been Jud’s match.
The cowboy looked from Jud to Rufe, then back again. He was both badly shaken and frightened. In the poor light he also looked guiltily uncomfortable about the wad of smelly rags in his gloved left fist.
Jud leathered his weapon and ordered the cow-boy to drop the oil-soaked rags, which Chase’s man did, then Jud stood glowering while Rufe asked if the man’s name happened to be Fenwick. The cow-boy said: “No, sir, my name’s Smith.”
Jud sneered. “Mine’s Santa Claus.”
Rufe had another question. “I knocked your friend over the head out front. Is his name Fenwick?”
“No sir,” replied the cowboy, sounding believable.
“Charley didn’t come in. He’s out yonder holding the horses.”
This was all Rufe needed. He turned slightly. “Fetch some chain from the barn, Jud. Let’s lash these two, then go find Mister Fenwick. He owes me for the bay horse.”
After Jud had hiked back toward the barn opening, Rufe studied their prisoner. He was not only tall and thin; he did not look to be more than per-haps twenty years old. He also looked worried.
“You ever see what happens Tomen who burn folks out?” Rufe asked, then pointed upwards where a pole rafter extended from the barn’s sloping roof. “Folks hang them.”
The cowboy involuntarily glanced upwards, then down again very quickly.
Jud returned, dragging some chain harness. With-out speaking, he pointed earthward and Chase’s man sat down so that Jud could chain his arms behind his back, and lash his ankles with the same length of trace chain. When Jud finished, the subdued cowboy was helpless. Unless someone came along to release him, he would rot right where he sat. There was no way for him to get free.