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Show and 7r:^0^-im\umt lame cmxim grazing them, stop at the springs for water, and then ride back to his ranch house. A routine morning's work; his wife was expecting him for the noon meal. But the smoke changed all that and he squatted there in the shade, squinting against the glare of the sun, trying to keep the small dots of men in focus long enough to count them. Eight or ten, something like that, and he was sure he knew who they were-Dick Martin and his gang-just as he knew what he was going to have to do about them. The only question was whether or not to go back to the ranch for help. Martin must feel pretty cocky building a fire, probably confident not that they wouldn't be seen but that they could see anyone coming up on them an hour away. Get enough men to make a fight of it and they had only to saddle up and light out, swing around the Butte and scatter in those badlands where no sensible man would follow with less than a small army. So not much point in going back to the ranch for the boys; they'd just raise a cloud of dust. Which left it up to him, and the old man sat there for fifteen minutes patiently watching the rocks above the springs. At the foot of Red Butte where the land first began to rise was a line of rocks running nearly a quarter of a mile to the north; from two miles away they looked insignificant but a sentry up there would be high enough to command the flats. Cardon didn't see the slightest movement though, nor a single flash of sun on a rifle barrel. Maybe Martin felt too safe. Because if he could get across the flats and into those rocks, he could work his way south on foot to the exact place where they should have their lookout, to an ambush among the boulders where he could look right down on them, close enough to see their eyes. His mouth stretched into something like a smile, and he crawled back out from under the pinon. |
