“Put away the gun, kid,” said a voice.
Packard swung around. A man was standing just outside the shadow of a clump of pines, rifle in his arms. “Hurley!” yelled Packard.
“That’s right,” said Hurley. “I’ve just dealt myself a hand.” He stepped out into the trail, seized the reins of Blade’s frightened horse, talked to the animal in a soft, soothing tone.
“Can’t have you runnin’ home, feller,” he said. “Can’t have you going back and tippin’ Randall off.”
“I thought,” said Packard, coldly, “that you ran with Randall’s pack.”
“Sure,” admitted Hurley. “Sure I do. Or did. Now I’m switching back to the Packard gang. Don’t know anyone I’d rather ride with than a Packard bunch.”
“There isn’t any Packard bunch,” said Packard.
Hurley gulped. “Don’t mean to say, kid, that you are on your own?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I be damned,” said Hurley. “The nerve of it … the blessed nerve of it.”
He chuckled. “Just like your old man,” he said. “Never had a big bunch. Said they got in one another’s way. Just you and me and Jim and Charley and the four of us could have given Randall aces and beat him at the laydown.”
Warning bells rang in Packard’s head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Hurley,” he declared. “I’m riding Randall’s trail. None of the lone wolf stuff for me. Randall made a deal and it sounded good to me.”
Hurley shambled forward until he stood close to Packard’s horse, looked up at the younger man, the full light of the moon shining on his face.
“You’re lying, youngster,” he declared. “No Packard would mean a thing like that. You’re figuring on taking over once the gold is where you want it. You’ll be using Randall’s gang to help hold up the coach, but Randall won’t see an ounce of the stuff.”
“And you’re figuring on dealing in with me?”
Hurley spat. “Damn right. I rode with your old man … Say, is Charley coming in?”
“Charley?”
“Sure, Page. Me and Charley Page and Jim Davis, we were the ones who made up the Packard gang. Now Jim is dead and Charley’s got religion and …”
Packard drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “So Page knew who I was all the time. The low down hypocrite!”
“Charley ain’t no hypocrite,” snapped Hurley. “He’s really got religion. Only, I thought maybe Charley might be getting a bit discouraged and he’s only human—”
“But,” said Packard, “Page knew who you were.”
“Sure, but he never said a word about me and I never give him away. Randall knew who I was, of course, but none of the other boys. We never got well known, the way your old man did. He was the front, you see—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Packard, impatiently.
Hurley sighed. “So I guess Charley won’t be coming in. It’s just the two of us.”
“Look,” snapped Packard, “you’re the only one who’s been talking about double-crossing Randall. You’re the one that’s all steamed up about it. I haven’t said a word.”
“Ah, hell,” protested Hurley, “you can talk to me. I was your old man’s pal.”
“I suppose,” said Packard, “that you’ll have to ride along with me. I don’t know the way, you see.”
He pivoted in his saddle, looked at the huddled heap lying in the trail.
“I hope,” he said, “you got a good one figured out to explain why it’s you instead of Blade with me.”
“Shucks,” declared Hurley, “that won’t be hard to do. The boys won’t know who Randall sent along. We’ll not mention Blade at all. They’ll think that it was me who was with you all the time.”
“Somehow,” said Packard, “I don’t like what you done to Blade. He was an O.K. hombre.”
“Tell you the truth,” confessed Hurley, “I’d just as soon it had been someone else. Can think of a couple I would rather it had been. Blade was the one … But you ain’t told me your plans.”
“I haven’t any plans.”
“Look, kid, you can’t fool me. You can’t—”
Packard leaned over from his horse. “Are you riding along or not?” he snapped.
“Oh, sure. Sure, I’m riding along.”
Hurley tied Blade’s mount to one of the pines, got up on his own, trotted up the trail. Packard urged his horse to follow.
Packard’s stomach was a leaden knot of disgust as he watched Hurley’s swaying form.
So this was the way it was, he told himself. You gunned down your own friends, you broke faith with your own gang, you did anything that put your groping fingers into a sack of gold. You had no honor and you walked with your back hunched against a bullet that might come from a man that you called a friend, because in this business there were no such things as friends … just other men that you watched, wondering if the day would come when they killed you or you killed them for an ounce or two of gold, a roll of bills, for anything at all.
Even Preacher Page!
The moon climbed higher and from some far ledge a wolf howled lonesomely. An owl swooped down over Packard’s head, a bulleting soundlessness that floated through the night. Little things scuttered and scampered along the rocky trail.
Their horses turned a sharp bend in the trail and in a pocketed valley a tiny fire was burning.
Hurley turned his head. “That’s the camp,” he said.
Packard nodded.
“How about it, kid?” asked Hurley. “Got anything to tell me?”
“Not a thing,” said Packard.
And his mind thought: I can’t trust you, Hurley. How do I know you’re on the up and up? How can I be sure that Randall didn’t plan it all just to sound me out? If I talked to you, really told you what I had in mind, you might pay me off with a bullet in the head.
But Hurley had played square with Page, hadn’t peeped to Randall about who the Preacher was. And it would have been worth a lot to Randall to have known that, with Page threatening to bring in martial law. It would have given Randall a club that would have either silenced Page or sent him scuttling out of town.
That was the hell of it, Packard told himself. You never could be sure.
The men were waiting around the fire when they arrived. Hard-faced men who stared at them for a long moment without speaking.
Finally one of them strode forward.
“Howdy,” he said. “New man?”
Hurley chuckled. “That’s right, Pinky. A new one that Randall wants us to break in. Name of Packard. Steve Packard’s kid.”
A smile split Pinky’s face.
“Ought to be all right,” he said, “if he’s anything like his old man.”
He walked toward Packard, hand held out. “Name is Traynor, Packard. But the boys all call me Pinky.”
Packard shook his hand.
“Meet the boys,” said Pinky. “This old hombre is Pop Allen. And the one over there is Marks. The fellow by the fire is Sylvester. Hell of a name, ain’t it?”
For a single instant Sylvester’s left eye flashed, picking up and reflecting the flare of the campfire … and there was something about the man’s face that rang bells of recognition in Packard’s brain … a haunting recollection that sent his thoughts scurrying back along the last few days.
The cheeks were flat and the lips were tight, but there was an angle to the chin and the way the hair swept back from his forehead that seemed to fit in with some other face back in Hangman’s Gulch.
Then Sylvester was saying: “Howdy, Packard,” and stepping forward with his hand held out, a chubby hand that did not seem to be made to fit a six-gun grip.