Riding at a low jog, Parker searched the jagged tangle of the towering cliffs, hunting for the almost hidden mouth of that one small canyon which sprang out from the tumbled hills.
It’d been a long time since he had been here. Things somehow looked different than they did those days when he and Luke were hunting pirate gold and fleeing to safety before the imaginary thunder of pursuing redskins.
Gnarled, wind-whipped trees, twisted and maimed like cripples, clung to the tawny hills and it was one of these that he was looking for—one maimed and crippled tree that looked like an old man walking with a cane.
The lead rope tugged at his saddle horn and he twisted, shot a glance behind him.
Egan, hands tied behind him, sat hunched over in the saddle of the led horse. In the pale morning light his face was puffed and swollen and one eye was almost closed by the ring of black and battered flesh around it.
“How do you feel?” asked Parker.
Egan spat awkwardly. “Like hell,” he said.
“We’re almost there,” Parker told him. “I’ll let you rest a while.”
“Look,” asked Egan, “why don’t we make a deal?”
Parker laughed harshly. “No deals, Egan. I’ll need you on the witness stand.”
“I could fix it up with Betz,” said Egan. “He’s a friend of mine. Pardners, see. All I got to do is say the word. We’ll cut you in. Keep the job for life, get a rake-off on the side.”
Parker did not answer, still sat half turned in the saddle, staring at the man.
“Betz would treat you right,” Egan declared.
“Yes, I know. A bullet in the back.”
Deliberately, Parker turned in the saddle. Egan was silent. They rode on into the dawn.
Suddenly, as if it had risen from the ground, the tree was there on the cliff rim, a tree that walked with a cane along the skyline.
Parker reined the buckskin in toward the cliff, saw the tree-masked opening that marked the canyon’s mouth. Slowly, picking their way, the horses advanced, sheer walls towering far above them, boulders scattered along the stream bed through which trickled a tiny flow of water.
Suddenly the canyon widened and a grove of trees appeared.
This was the place, Parker remembered. The place where he and Luke used to leave their ponies and climb to the cave.
His hand tightened on the reins, brought the buckskin to a halt. Parker sat, wide-eyed, staring at the two horses tethered in the grove. One, he knew, must be the one that Luke had ridden, but the other one was white.
A white horse! Only one person in this whole range rode a white….and that person was Ann Horton!
Behind him Egan growled at him: “What’s the matter, sheriff?”
Parker did not answer, but spurred his horse forward, jerking at the lead rope.
There was no doubt the white horse was Ann’s. Parker, squinting at it, recognized the saddle. He swung off the buckskin, tied it to a nearby tree, walked back to Egan’s mount.
“Get down,” he told the man.
Egan swung off awkwardly, stumbled a little when he hit the ground, then straightened, standing silently. Parker tied Egan’s horse beside his own.
“Walk ahead of me,” he told Egan. “That path over there.” He pointed.
Egan nodded, trudged toward the path. Behind him, Parker wondered, mind groping for an explanation of the white horse.
Why should Ann Horton be here? What had brought her?
Warning signals jangled in his brain, but they were not clear. A trap? That was hardly possible. Egan had said that Ann’s father knew nothing of the scheme and even if he had Ann would not lend herself to any part of it.
And yet the horse was there—tied beside the one that Luke had ridden.
Parker shrugged off the questions, gave his attention to the climbing trail ahead.
It angled sharply up the hillside, ran close against a sheer cliff that suddenly broke off, gave way to tangled rock and shrub.
“I hope,” growled Egan through his battered lips, “that you know where you’re going.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Parker, “I …”
A buzzing thing spun above Parker’s head, hit the cliff and screamed. From ahead of them came the angry coughing of a sixgun.
Ahead of Parker, Egan hurled himself flat on the trail, wriggling like a snake toward a covering bush.
The sixgun coughed again and Parker threw himself to one side, hunkered against the wall of cliff, masked from the gun ahead.
Silence dripped through the morning, a brittle, fragile silence.
Parker called softly: “Luke!”
There was no answer. The single word came back in muted echoes from the hills, whispering echoes that called Luke’s name again, getting fainter and fainter, as a dying man might call.
Hunched against the wall of rock, Parker gazed out over the rolling country that lay beyond the hills, a silver country in the morning sun … an empty country except for one bunch of cattle, dwarfed by distance. Nothing stirred. No moving horsemen, no smoking chimney signaling breakfast-making. Just rolling prairie and the silver grass.
Egan’s whisper came to him, a mocking thing:
“Luck playing out, sheriff?”
Parker made no answer, but instead he called out again, raising his voice: “Luke! Luke, it’s Clint!”
An answer came this time, Luke’s voice:
“Come on up, but I got you covered. Keep your hands away from your guns.”
“Luke, you locoed fool, I want to talk to you.”
Luke yelled back: “Don’t try for your guns.”
Parker stepped out into the trail, prodding Egan with his foot.
“Up we go.”
Egan protested violently. “He’ll pot us soon as we show ourselves,” he screamed. “He’ll …”
Parker prodded him viciously, shutting off the words.
Slowly, Egan got to his feet, scrambled up the trail, body tensed, eyes searching the ground ahead.
The path ran along a ledge that clung close against the cliff wall and suddenly it twisted and they were there—in front of the cave.
Luke, long and lanky, stood to one side of the cave mouth, sixgun hand lifted, lips twisted into a smile that was grim and careful.
Against the wall of rock next to the cave opening stood Ann Horton, wide-eyed, hands behind her as she pressed herself against the cliff. Parker stopped in his tracks and stood staring at her in the morning light.
“She came because she thought you’d be here,” said Luke. “Cripes, can you beat that!”
“She thought that I was with you?”
“Sure, figured you had turned me loose. Some of the Turkey Track outfit rode out to the Bent Arrow. Said both you and I were missing. She jumped to conclusions, Clint.”
Ann stirred away from the wall, took a slow step forward.
“I know I shouldn’t have done it,” she said and her eyes saw only Parker. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t let you ride off without me.”
“You couldn’t—” Parker choked on the words, was suddenly striding forward—and the girl was in his arms.
Luke chuckled. “I didn’t believe her, Clint. But now damned if I don’t.”
“You showed me where the cave was,” murmured the girl. “Remember, Clint, that day you told me how you dug for buried gold …”
“And you figured this is where we’d head?”
She nodded against his shoulder.
Luke broke in. “What was the idea of dragging Egan here?”
“Because he’s the hombre that’s going to spill the beans,” said Parker. “He coughed up his…”