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Show -o- S3 knew mat n ne uuuiu get iuio tiicse rocks, that would be that, the murdering bastards. At forty yards he could drill a dollar, let alone holes in a man's head. At the bottom of the trail, down off the mesa, was a dry wash, which he followed back south and then at an angle across the flats toward Billy Springs. If he stayed in the bottom of the wash, and if there was no lookout up in the rocks, he could ride unnoticed to within a quarter of a mile of their camp. Still burning in him was the pain of his brother's death and he was not concerned that he was outnumbered. Martin was all who mattered. If he could get into the rocks above their camp he could get Martin all right, bushwhack him, and as many more as he could get before they got him-or ran. Shoot them like hogs in a pen, knock them down and slit their throats, butcher them, that's what he wanted. Get them before they could run; with Martin dead they would run all right, run or take cover, but he should be able to get maybe two or three more of them and maybe live to tell about it. If they ran he might come through alive, but that was secondary anyhow: Martin dead is what mattered. Still, even at a trot, it was quite a distance across the flats with him'keeping to the turnings of the dry wash, and his mind did not remain fixed on Martin or even his brother. For one thing, he could not ignore Red Butte Mesa itself, the stark uprise of it, the steep slope up from the desert floor and then the towering perpendicular cliffs of red sandstone. And the soaring top of it, the sheer size and height of it: he had never been unmoved by its beauty, seeing it from a distance or up close, and while he watched it slowly rising up out of the desert floor as he rode toward it, nature as regally indifferent, as serenely there as he had ever seen it, the Red Butte known with awe since childhood and part now of his soul, he felt it tower over him and master him again, take possession until he forgot why he rode toward it, even that other people existed. But when he heard a horse nicker he pulled his own horse up sharply, leaned forward |
