ON A RIDGE above Texas Flat upon a rock shaped like flame, a hand moved upon the lava. The hand moved and then was still. In all that vast beige-gray silence there was no other movement and no sound.

A buzzard swinging in lazy circles above the serrated ridge had glimpsed that moving hand. Swinging lower, he saw a man who lay among the rocks atop the ridge. He was a long-bodied man in worn boots and jeans, a man with wide shoulders and a lean tough face.

It was the face of a hunter but now of a man hunted. A man who lay with his rifle beside him and who wore a belted gun; but the man still lived and the buzzard could wait.

Below and stretching away from the very foot of the ridge to lose itself in shimmering distance lay the glaring white expanse of the playa. Beyond the playa and even now riding up to draws that would eventually open upon the dry lake were three groups of horsemen who rode with a single thought.

To left and right of the hunted man's position the comb-like ridge stretched away like a great wall dividing the dead white of the playa from the broken lands beyond. Once in those broken lands south of the border, a man might lose himself in any one of a thousand canyons and might himself be lost.

It was a land virtually without water, rarely visited by white men and roved only occasionally by Indians for whom this was a last stronghold and at whose hands no white man could expect mercy.

Great tablelands shouldered against the brassy sky, lofty pinnacles loomed higher still and over all that red and broken land the sun lay hot and dead heat gathered in the sullen canyons.

Far and away, beyond the broken land, some great peaks reached at the clouds, purple with distance, cool, remote and lost. In those mountains there would be water and there would be grass. There a man might find shade; there would be wild game; there would be sanctuary. The hunted man had not turned to look but he knew the mountains were there. He also knew what lay between. Yet here and there even in that broken desert land between, if one but knew where to look, there would be water.

Northward, not yet within the range of the man's eyes, moved the searching riders. Yet the buzzard had already seen those moving shadows that stirred not with the wind but of their own choice.The buzzard saw them and after a time saw that these were men.

The buzzard could not reason but he knew the patterns that led to food. His entire life was built upon such fragments of knowledge and he knew that where such groups of men rode, death rode with them.

They were hard men bred of a hard and lonely land, men with eyes red-rimmed from sun-glare, faces whitened by alkali and muscles heavy with weariness. Yet they knew the man for whom they searched could not be far ahead and they pushed on, riding steadily into the hot still afternoon.

Trace Jordan could not see the riding men but he knew they were out there and he knew they looked for him. Once, seven hours ago, they believed they had him and his blood-stained shirt revealed how close a thing it had been.

They had caught him in the rocks above Mocking Bird Pass, brought to bay like a lean and hungry wolf pursued by hounds. And he had fought them there, a lean and hungry man, red-eyed and dangerous, a man driven and battered and hammered but a man not beaten, a man who had never been beaten.

A rifle bullet ricocheting from a rock had ripped an ugly tear through the flesh above his hip and he had lost blood.

They had seen him fall and, not yet knowing the manner of man they fought, they had closed in for the kill. They would be more cautious if the chance came again, for upon the rocks they had left more than blood...they had left a man dead and another sorely wounded and when finally they closed their trap they found nothing, simply nothing at all.

And then they began to see the fiber of the man they pursued, for he had gone soundlessly from among them, leaving their dead behind. Wounded -- for they found his blood upon the rocks -- but gone as if he had never been.

Somehow he had stopped the flow of blood; somehow he had left no trail; somehow he had vanished with the desert swallowing him, taking him back as one of her own into the wild loneliness of canyon and playa.

Lean and fierce and lonely, Trace Jordan was a man of wild places and far countries, a man fitted by his experience as a wild horse hunter, cowhand, buffalo hunter and prospector for the task that now lay before him.

His empty canteen rattled upon the rocks when he moved, so he lay still, trying not to think of water, his heart pounding slowly, heavily against the rock upon which he lay. It was time to move...they would be coming soon. He could not see them but they would seek him out. And he needed rest -- rest and water. He must find a place to hide, to wait them out.

Sliding back on his belly until the ridge covered his rising, he got awkwardly to his feet. He swayed then, trying to focus his eyes, gathering his failing strength. He had taken precious time to climb up here, knowing that if his pursuers happened to swing north or south he could gain distance by riding the other way. And time and distance were now the very stuff of life itself.

When he reached his horse he took time to roll a smoke and while his fingers fumbled at the cigarette he considered his problem.

They knew the country and he did not. They would know the trails and the hiding places and moreover they had with them Jacob Lantz, the best tracker in the southwest.

Jordan knew Lantz by reputation, as such men were always known in the west. Tales were told over the campfire by drifting cowhands and retold at bars and gambling tables, the stories of gunmen and trackers, of tough town marshals and crooked gamblers, until the mind of each western man was a storehouse of such information.

Jacob Lantz was a Dutch Indian -- his father a Dutch trader, his mother a Ute squaw. Lantz was a man who tracked with his mind as well as with his senses. Even as his eyes spelled out the meaning of a trail, his mind would be probing far ahead to seek out the direction and destination of the man he trailed.

A plan was a dangerous thing, yet a plan he must have, a plan would give direction and purpose to his riding; and as soon as Lantz had time to solve the plan, he must shift to another. Yet there was a chance he might lead them off his trail by such a plan.

First, he would need to point himself toward an obvious destination, a way out of the country. There was a river crossing, one of the few crossings of the Colorado, far to the northwest. That would seem logical to Lantz and to the others, for the trail would avoid towns and people who might pass along information of his passing to his pursuers. So that could seem to be his destination.

Well along the road, he could turn suddenly at some point where his trail would be hard to find and take an entirely different track. Otherwise, knowing the trails, they might find a way to get on ahead and wait for him.

Stepping into the saddle, he walked the horse down the arroyo. Westward the country was a series of towering mesas split by deep canyons. The canyons were easy of access and easy to travel, yet any one of them might prove to be a trap. He might ride for miles to find himself up against a dead end and with no way out.

He must seek out a trail to the top of the mesa. He must ride up where the wind blew and the Indians traveled.

Jordan slumped in the saddle, his body smelling of stale sweat, his clothes stiff with sweat and dust. Under him the horse plodded wearily and Jordan knew the poor beast was drawing on his last reserves of strength. Even that splendid animal, the last of his captured horses, was being defeated by the killing pace and the rough country. And they had been all night and most of the day without water.

A faint deer trail led out of the wash and he took it, leaving the heavy sand for the easier travel of the mountainside.

For an hour he climbed steadily, riding up a long ridge of gravel and sand sparsely dotted with bear grass and prickly pear. Before him the shoulder of a vast escarpment had broken down and among the talus, some of it huge blocks of solid rock, the deer trail led steadily upward toward the mesa top. Riding among the rocks and favoring his wounded side, he turned in the saddle and glanced back.

He was amazed at the distance he had climbed. The comblike ridge lay some miles behind and for a second time he marveled at the good fortune that enabled him to pick out the one pass through that wall.

Trace Jordan assayed his position and found nothing to like. His mind now worked with startling clarity, yet he distrusted it, knowing this clarity was the beginning of delirium. He felt his weakness, knowing he needed rest, water and time to treat his wound.

He needed no one to tell him the caliber of men who followed. Ruthless and relentless, they would never leave the trail until they had left him dead. In knowledge of the country and in numbers the advantage was all theirs.

His trail across the playa would be obvious to any eye but his direction along the wash would puzzle them for a while and every delay was important.

His head throbbed heavily. His mouth was dry, his lips parched and broken. He had a fever...he could feel it. His wound would be dirty and he could feel the gnawing agony of it constantly. His hands felt unnaturally large and his head was heavy and awkward.

When his horse crested the mesa at last, he drew up briefly. He could feel the wind. It was almost cold through his sweat-soaked shirt. He turned in the saddle and looked back again.

Faintly, far away still, a wisp of dust hung against the blue backdrop of the hills. A wisp of dust and then another and still another.

The horse walked on...the mesa was flat, stretching away to infinity, broken by few rocks and by a scattering of gnarled and twisted cedars and by a few piñon. Sparse grass, tight-clinging to the sand, showed here and there. At places the rock surface of the mesa had been swept clean by the wind. The horse walked on.

He carried a pebble in his mouth to relieve the thirst. Twice he dismounted and walked to relieve the horse of his weight, to let him rest. There was no telling how soon he might again have to make a break for it and the horse's strength might mean his life.

He walked several miles before he fell...

For a long time he lay where he had fallen, unable to summon the strength to rise. The wind stirred a wisp of hair against his forehead and the horse nuzzled him impatiently. His thoughts no longer clear, he got drunkenly to his knees and got hold of the stirrup, pulling himself erect. Somehow he got into the saddle and, of his own volition, the horse began to walk.

Heat waves shimmered their veil across the distance. A few cottony puffballs of cloud hung against the brassy sky...perspiration trickled down his body and weird dust-devils played across the mesa before him. Above the mirage of a distant blue lake the heads of the cedars peered like strange beings from some enchanted world.

He worked his jaws, his brain throbbed heavily and when he shifted his gaze his eyeballs grated dryly in their sockets, moving with painful slowness. There were passages of delirium then, through which were woven thin threads of sanity.

He must rest soon. If he fell now he could not get up again but must lie helpless until his enemies came upon him and killed him. Yet he had done nothing but what any man would have done. He had done nothing he did not have to do.

Old Bob Sutton was dead...the old bull of the herd shot down in the dusty street, and his sons and nephews would never stop hunting until Trace Jordan had been tracked down and killed.

A few days ago he had been a wild-horse hunter with no troubles. He and Johnny Hendrix had gone broke trying to buck a faro layout and, drifting west, they came upon a herd of wild horses. For a month they lived on the country, finally trapping two dozen horses in a box canyon. One by one they broke them and slapped on their brand, the JH, for Jordan Hendrix. All were good stock, better than they had a right to expect from wild stock. Trace Jordan had gone off to find a market and to buy more grub with their last three dollars, for there were still a few horses they wanted.

A bartender remembered them in Durango and loaned Trace Jordan money for supplies and he returned to camp.

Only there was no camp and there were no horses. All were gone, the camp trampled out by the rush of horses and Johnny lying dead near the water hole with four bullets in him and his gun gone.

The afternoon was still and hot. The sun glared down upon the basin and Johnny lay with his face against the baked earth and two of the bullets in him had been fired into his back while he lay sprawled on the ground. Whoever had done this had wanted to make sure. They wanted to leave nothing behind. Only they hadn't known about Trace Jordan.

There were those back down the trail who knew Trace Jordan as a quiet easy-going man. Hell on wheels with a gun, some said, a man who could follow a trail like an Apache. In the rough-and-tumble brawls of saloon and trail camp he was one of the best. He had killed a man in Tascosa who called him a liar and he killed four Indians who trapped him in a buffalo wallow north of Adobe Walls. And a gun-slinger had died of bad judgment on the Ruidoso. But Trace Jordan was a quiet man.

Slowly, taking infinite pains, he worked out the story of the fight.

Six men had come in from the north. Spotting the horse camp, they had kept back in the brush along the creek and studied the layout.

It must have been about noon. The spilled bucket lay near Johnny and the frying pan lay on the ground near the scattered fire. They had come up, riding slow. Johnny had just filled the bucket and was leaving the spring (his tracks were cut deeper going away from the spring) and he had stopped as they rode up.

Twice in the days that followed Jordan wasted time on streams, yet each time he found the trail again and by that time he could identify the tracks of each of the six horses and those of several of the riders. He had studied their tracks around their camps and around the trails and by that time he knew something of their dispositions and manner of thinking.

One man rarely smoked more than half a cigarette. He occasionally took only a few nervous puffs, then dropped it. Another wore large-roweled Mexican-style spurs that left an imprint when he squatted on his heels.

After a week of such travel he rode into the street of Tokewanna. It was a single dusty street with the usual clapboarded false-front buildings and several of adobe. And a man loitering on the street took one quick, startled glance at the brand on his horse and ducked into a saloon.

Trace Jordan swung down from his horse and loose-tied him at the hitch-rail. Yet when he went into the saloon there was no sign of the man he sought. Trace ordered a drink and looked around at the three men playing cards...another man leaned against the bar. Trace Jordan glanced at his spurs.

"How about a drink?"

The man moved over as he spoke. He was young, rugged-looking, a working cowhand. When their glasses were filled he lifted his and looked at Trace Jordan. "Here's to you and the trail ahead."

They drank and Trace said quietly, "I may stick around for a while."

"My advice," the young man was smiling, "keep travelin'!"

The implication was obvious. To the man in the street the JH brand on his horse had meant something and that had to mean the man knew about the killing of Johnny. He either knew or had been one of the killers. Obviously, in passing through the saloon he had said something to this man. Trace was now being warned away and that implied the six had friends.

"Had some horses stolen," Jordan said. "My partner was murdered. I trailed 'em here."

The young man was no longer smiling. He took the last drop from his glass and stepped back from the bar. "Depends on how much country a man needs."

Jordan waited the explanation, his eyes missing nothing in the room. The men at the table were alert and listening.

"Six thousand miles out there," the man said, "or six feet here."

The harshness of the trail had drawn him fine. He turned from the bar, a big tough lonely man suddenly showing all the danger that was in him. The young man took a step back, suddenly wary.

"I already bought chips," Jordan said. "They dealt the hand."

He turned from the bar and went through the door and then he saw the big old man coming up the street on the steeldust. Trace had gentled that steeldust himself. He had taken time with the horse. Next to the big red horse he rode, it had been the best of the lot.

The old man had a shock of white hair. His eyes were fierce and commanding. When he stepped down from the saddle there was something of the king in his manner.

Trace Jordan stepped down from the walk and started across the street toward the old man, a tall man with an easy woodsman's walk and the knowledge that he was heading right into trouble. Down the street a man stopped...another appeared in the entrance to the store.

The brand on the steeldust had been worked over and an excellent job. The JH had been turned into an SB.

The old man looked across the saddle at him, a strong old man with fierce unrelenting eyes. "What's the matter? Lookin' for something?"

Remembering Johnny lying in the dried mud beside the water-hole, Trace told him: "I'm looking for the man who stole that horse from me. He's mine. I caught him. I broke him. I branded him JH."

Quick temper flared in the hard old eyes. "You callin' me a horse thief?" He stepped around the horse to face Jordan. He was wearing a tied-down gun.

"I'm only saying that's my horse you're riding. He's a stolen horse."

"You're a dirty liar!"

When the old man's hand dropped to his gun, Trace Jordan shot him through the stomach.

Jordan looked over the smoking gun at two bystanders. "Walk out there and lift that saddle skirt, both of you." When they started walking he said, "If there isn't a four-inch white scar under the saddle skirt, I'm a liar."

The scar was there...

"No matter," one of the men told him, "maybe this is your horse but that old man was no thief. You'd better ride before they hang you."

There was an instant then when Trace Jordan looked down into the dying man's eyes. "That was my horse," he repeated. "My partner was murdered when he was stolen."

All time seemed to stop while the old man struggled to speak but blood frothed at his lips and he died. But of one thing Jordan was sure. The old man had believed him.

From up the street a yell, "He's downed Bob Sutton! He's shot Bob!"

And the doors vomited men into the street.

Trace Jordan hit the leather running and took the big red horse out of town at a dead run. Behind him guns talked but no bullet hit him.

And now he was here, high on a sunlit mesa, dying in the saddle. There was nothing to see but distance, nothing but an infinity of far blue hills and nameless mysterious canyons.

The mustang stopped suddenly, head up.

Jordan turned painfully, searching all around, and in all that vast emptiness there was no living thing to be seen but a solitary buzzard. Heat waves shimmered the outlines of the junipers but nowhere was there movement, nor any sign of life...and then he saw the tracks.

The tracks of a pack rat in the dust and the tracks of a deer.

They led to the cliff edge and disappeared there. Why did that seem important? His mind fumbled at the puzzle but the mustang tugged impatiently at the bit and Jordan gave the horse his head. The mountain-bred horse swung at once to the cliff-edge and, reaching it, stopped.

Below him was an eyebrow of trail that clung to the cliff face. To this trail led the tracks. Jordan tried to focus his thoughts on the trail. The tracks of a pack rat alone would mean nothing, yet the deer tracks on the same trail could mean water. And the smell of water would have stopped the horse, for the animal must be half-dead with thirst.

Despite his condition he realized at once the possibilities of such a place. His horse, bred to wild country and only a few weeks away from running wild, might take that trail. A wrong step could send them plunging a thousand feet or more to the bottom, yet those tracks might lead to water and a deer had negotiated the trail. And what had he to lose? Going on was impossible...he spoke to the horse.

Momentarily, ears pricked, the horse hung back, but the urging of the rider and his own promptings decided the matter. The inside stirrup scraped hard on the canyon wall and the outer hung in space but the mustang, walking on delicate feet, went on down the trail, no more than an edge of sloping rock stratum, to a place some forty yards along where the trail widened to ten feet. Here Jordan swung from the saddle and, trailing his reins, he went back up the trail on hands and knees, unable to risk walking in his weakness.

With a handful of bunch grass he brushed out the tracks leading to the cliff-edge and then, taking a handful of dust, he let it trickle from his hand and, caught by the wind, spray over the ground, leaving the earth apparently undisturbed. Then he edged back down the trail and climbed to the saddle.

Concealed from above by the overhang of the cliff, the trail became increasingly dangerous. At one point there was only slanting rock but the big red horse scrambled across while Jordan sat his saddle only dimly aware of what was happening.

Suddenly, after more than a half-mile of trail, it ended in a half-acre of shelf almost entirely overhung by the cliff and entirely invisible from above. The outer edge was skirted by manzanita and juniper that gave no indication from across the canyon of the space that lay behind it. Here, concealed from all directions, was an isolated ledge...and at one side of the ledge, a ruin.

Without waiting to be guided, the horse walked toward the ruin with quickening footsteps...and Jordan heard the sound of running water.

Almost falling from his horse, he staggered to the basin where clear cold water trickled from a crack in the rock to fall into a rock basin some dozen feet across. When he had drunk deep of the water he rolled on his back and tried desperately to think.

Wrinkling his brow against the dull throb of pain, he went back over his trail in his mind. Not even Jacob Lantz would find it a simple one. Much of the mesa had been bare rock, nor was there any indication from above of this place he had found. Nor would any man in his right mind attempt the trail to it.

He drank, and drank again, feeling the slow penetration of the cold water through all his thirst-starved tissues. After a time he stumbled to his feet and stripped saddle and bridle from the horse, picketing it on the thick grass.

He would need a fire...dry sticks that would make no smoke. The ruin would shield the reflection. He must have hot water to bathe his wound. He must...

A long time later he opened his eyes into darkness. Listening, he could hear no sound but the trickle of water. The night was cold.

Crawling to his saddle, he fumbled at the knots and finally loosened them enough to get at his blanket roll. Wrapping himself in his blankets, he lay still, his head feeling like a great half-empty cask in which his brains seemed to slosh around like water. His lips were cracked by fever...outside a lone star hung over the rim of a far cliff.

Through the fog of his delirium Jordan listened to the trickle of water. He must be careful...careful. His enemies might be far away but in the still of a clear desert night, sound carries. And by daylight they would be all around, thirty or forty belted blood-hungry men. And at dawn he must be watching that thread of trail, rifle in hand.

Pain gnawed at his side like a hungry rat...such a little wound but it needed care, it needed cleansing. His eyes found the lone star above the canyon's rim and held to it and a long time later, he slept. A pack rat appeared at the edge of the trail, peering curiously at the sleeping man, then went on, wary but unfrightened, to the water's edge. Out in the canyon a small stone, long poised by erosion, fell into the depths with a faint, lost sound.

On the mesa's top a long wind stirred, moaning among the junipers and fluttering the campfires of the searching men. A man had been slain and it was the law of their time that the killer must die in turn. A coyote yapped at the moon, a weird cacophony of sound suspended a moment, then scattered by the wind and then the night under the lonely moon was voiceless and still. Only the water trickled and the hunted man moaned softly in his delirium and his sleep.

Through the day-long heat that followed the night, Trace Jordan wavered between delirium and a sick exhausted consciousness. Shortly after daybreak he heard the drum of hoofs overhead and later heard the riders return more slowly. He got his rifle and lay quietly, waiting. If they found him, some of them would die.

He had no animosity for these men other than the six who had killed Johnny. The code by which they operated was his own but it was his nature to fight. There was water here and he had two hundred rounds of ammunition. There was no food, so all he could do was to wait until he starved to death or died of his wound.

He dozed or became unconscious...vaguely he recalled drinking and bathing his face and his fever-slaked lips. He remembered getting sticks together for a fire to heat water in the bottom of an ancient jar found in the ruins. He removed the bandage to look at the wound. It was ugly and inflamed, frightening to see.

He never succeeded in bathing it. Somewhere along the line of his planning he lost consciousness again...when he opened his eyes again his head was throbbing, his side a knot of raw pain. He wanted water desperately but was too weak to crawl to it.

The first thing he realized was a sense of movement where no movement should be. He listened, aware of danger, trying to place that faint, mysterious rustling...petticoats! But that was ridiculous.

He felt cool now and comfortable. There was a dull throb in his side but some of the stiffness was gone. His head felt heavy and he did not wish to open his eyes. Something cool touched his brow and he lay still, afraid it would go away. He tried to identify the sounds, fearing he was delirious or dying.

The trickle of water, as always. The horse cropping grass...a faint wind stirring among the junipers. There was a smell of sage and of wood smoke. This was very close but slight. He kept his eyes shut and tried to place the exact location of his gun. He had no friends within many miles, so anything here, man or animal, was dangerous to him.

The coolness on his brow went away but he felt fingers unbuckling his belt, moving his shirt aside. Fingers cool and deft touched the wound and then something comforting and warm was placed against his side.

He opened his eyes and stared up at the rock overhang. The coolness on his brow was a memory but the pleasant warmth at his side remained. He looked down.

A woman knelt beside him but at first all he could see was a smooth brown shoulder, from which the red blouse had slipped, and a wealth of intensely black hair.

He was delirious...he had to be. No such woman could be in this lonely place. He was hiding on a wind-hollowed shelf in the face of a cliff, miles from human habitation. And then she turned her head and looked at him.

Her eyes were large and dark, ringed with long lashes, and in that first glimpse he found eyes that were soft with a woman's tenderness...and then that tenderness was gone and she looked away.

"How you feel?"

She spoke abruptly, her tone giving nothing, neither friendly nor unfriendly.

He tried several times to speak before he could make his lips shape the words. "Good." And then after a pause he indicated the poultice. "Feels good."

She gave no indication that she had heard but arose and went to the edge of the cliff where, concealed by the manzanita, she looked into the canyon. He listened and heard nothing and after a few minutes she returned to his side.

She had built a small fire to heat the water and now she added some tiny sticks to the little flame. There was no smoke, almost no smell.

"Nice," he whispered. "Nice of you."

She looked around sharply. "I do it for a dog!"

And when she removed the poultice the gentleness was gone from her fingers. He watched her as she worked, liking the way her dark hair fell across her shoulders, the swell of her breasts under the thin blouse. Yet her features were sullen and without warmth.

"If they find you've helped me you'll be in trouble."

"There is always trouble."

There was no strength in him and he lay staring up at the overhang and he must have slept, for when he awakened again she was gone. The fire was cold. His side was freshly bandaged and his face had been bathed, his hands washed.

There was nothing he could do so he was glad no effort was required of him. Yet he could wonder about the girl and it passed the long hours when he lay awake with only remote sounds from the canyon or the distant cry of an eagle. She had been gentle when she believed him unconscious but changed abruptly when she became aware of his attention. It made no sense...but neither did her presence in this place.

She asked no questions so she must know what he was doing here. She was neat, her clothes not dusty from travel, so she could not have come far to get here. Yet if she lived nearby, the Sutton outfit must know her. Thought of the Suttons made him remember his guns.

Lifting himself on one elbow, he saw his saddle had been brought nearby and his rifle lay against it within reach of his hand. His two pistols in their twin belts, the one he wore and the spare he carried, had been placed near him, their butts within easy grasp.

The opening of the path down the mountain had been barricaded with brush and branches, all dry so the slightest noise among them would awaken him if he slept. Whoever the girl was, she thought of everything and she could be no friend of the Sutton-Bayless outfit.

Yet how had she reached him if the trail was blocked? The thought of another approach worried him and if the girl knew of this place, others must know. For the first time he gave careful attention to the shelf on which he lay.

That part of the hollow exposed to the sun was thick with grass and there were some bushes and trees. Where he lay no sunlight could reach and no rain unless blown by wind. There was grass enough for his horse unless he had to remain too many days. Looking around, he found his tobacco and papers at the edge of the ground sheet upon which his blankets were now spread. He rolled a smoke and when it was alight he lay back, drew deep, then exhaled.

The girl might be an Indian, yet she was no Apache and this was Apache country. Yet neither her facial structure nor manner impressed him as Indian and her inflections were definitely Spanish. Few Mexican families were supposed to live along this section of the border, yet it could be.

It was very hot. He rubbed out his cigarette and eased his position. Sweat trickled down his face. His mouth tasted bad and he dearly wanted a drink, yet lacked the will to rise. Out over the far canyon wall a buzzard wheeled in wide, lazy circles.

No sound disturbed the fading afternoon and across the canyon a great crag gathered the first shadow of evening. Somewhere a horse galloped and then the hoofbeats drummed away into silence and the heat.

Maria Cristina had heard the riders when they first came into the valley. No such group of riders had come to the canyon since her father's death and it would mean nothing but trouble. When as many as a dozen men rode in a group in this country it meant killing.

Turning from the sheep, she walked to the horse that dozed in the shadow of a cottonwood and took from a holster an ancient Walker Colt. Held at her side, it was concealed by the folds of her skirt.

She had no reason to believe the oncoming riders were friendly. She was a Mexican and she owned sheep but aside from that, she was the daughter of Pablo Chavero, who had died up the canyon to the west, fighting even as his blood wrote its epitaph upon the rocks. Listening to the sound of their coming, she could almost see the faces of the riders. Only the Sutton-Bayless outfit could muster so many.

"Juanito! Stay with the sheep!"

Juanito at eleven was already more like her father and not at all like her older brother, Vicente. She walked away, her hair blowing in the wind, knowing why these men came, and she waited, standing sullen and lonely upon the hillside, expecting nothing.

These would be the same men who had killed her father and driven them to this place. And now if they could find him they would kill the man who lay up there in the rocks, perhaps dying.

It was a vast and lonely land and if her whole family were killed here, there would be none to ask why. Only the restless eyes of the men along the street of Tokewanna would catch fire less often, for she would not be passing, her skirt rustling, her hips moving with the faint suggestion she knew so well how to use.

It had been four years since she had a new dress. Just old things made over. It had been three months since she had been to town to look at the goods in the stores, to finger the cloth she could not buy.

To walk in the town was good. The men stared and made remarks and the women turned away from her, their lips stiff, eyes angry. She was that Mexican girl, "no better than she should be." The women resented her because the men turned to look. Deliberately, she challenged their stares. She might hate them but she was a woman. They despised her but they wanted her too. Among the pale-faced women her dark beauty was an arresting thing. She knew it and liked it so. She knew that the something wild within her was felt by the men. She lifted her chin...other women had beautiful clothes but she was Maria Cristina.

They came over the crest of the knoll in a tight bunch, then walked their horses down the slope and drew up a dozen yards away. There were ten in the group and all their faces were familiar.

Jack Sutton was the worst of them, recklessly good-looking and a man with death behind him. He looked her over deliberately, insolently, head to foot. "You get better-lookin' every time I see you, Mex! By the Lord, some day I'll--"

"Some day!" Her contempt was a lash. "Some day you get keel!"

Ignoring him, she turned to Ben Hindeman. "What you want?"

There was no nonsense about Hindeman. Shorter than the rangy Sutton, he was a blocky powerful man, his broad jaws always dark with a stubble of beard. "You seen a wounded man on a beat-up red horse?"

"I see nobody. Who come here?"

Sutton was staring at her and she knew he wanted her and deliberately, with every move of her body, she taunted him, hating him both for his contempt and his desire. She was a Mexican and she kept sheep, yet she treated him with contempt and it drove him to fury.

"If you see anybody," Jack Sutton said, "send that kid brother to tell us. Better still...I'll come back...alone." He looked her over, grinning with no smile in his eyes. "I think you need a man."

She turned her eyes upon him. "Where is a man?" Contempt edged the insult. "You?"

Anger whipped his face. "Why, you dirty--!" He leaped his horse at her but, even as the horse sprang, Maria Cristina whipped up the heavy Colt, firing as it lifted.

The blast and flash of the gun made the horse jerk aside his head and almost fall; but a bright spot of red showed on Sutton's ear and blood began to well from it in slow crimson drops.

She held the Colt poised, her expression unchanged. "You go. Next time I no miss."

Unbelieving, Jack Sutton touched his ear and brought his hand away covered with blood. His face was white with shock.

Hindeman's eyes were glinting and he studied Maria Cristina with new attention. "If your horse hadn't shied," he told Sutton, not without an edge of satisfaction, "you'd be dead."

"Why, yes, Ben." Sutton's voice was low. "She would have killed me. That dirty sheepherder would have killed me."

Hindeman turned his horse and the rest followed. Jack Sutton turned in his saddle to look back. "Keep that gun handy. I'll be back."

As they crested the knoll one of the riders lifted his hand in farewell. It was Jacob Lantz.

From a pocket in her skirt she took a cartridge and reloaded the Colt. If Lantz had tracked the man this far there was danger. He was a queer, stoop-shouldered old man, more bloodhound than human. He never bathed and prowled around the hills like a strange cat.

What could the man have done? To make them hunt him so, he must have killed a Sutton. Twice during the morning hours riders paused near the spring and she gathered from talk she overheard that they were working all the canyons with care.

Juanito walked toward her, swinging a stick. "Who do they look for?" he asked.

She looked at him, her eyes warm. When she had turned back from her facing of Sutton she had seen Juanito get up from behind a rock. Only eleven, he was already like her father. He had been large-eyed and pale but he had the rifle.

"A man," she said. "They look for a man."

"I don't want them to find him."

"Maybe they won't," she said.

A rider came down the canyon in worn buckskin breeches and a patched vest. He rode a ragged paint pony. It was her brother Vicente, a tall too-thin young man with a weak face.

She stared at him, feeling no kinship, wondering how a son could be so little like the father. Vicente could draw a gun faster than any man she had ever seen, as fast as Jack Sutton, probably, who had killed eleven men. But Vicente had killed no one, nor was he likely to. He was a weak man, without courage.

"What do they do here?" he demanded. "For whom do they look?"

"You afraid?" she asked contemptuously.

"I am afraid of nothing!" He spoke loudly, glaring at her. "Why should I be afraid?"

"Why? Why, I don't know. Only you afraid. You always afraid of everything."

Juanito could not hold back the story. "Maria Cristina shot Señor Sutton."

Vicente was shocked. "You shot him?"

She shrugged. "In the ear, only. His horse jumped."

Vicente stared at her. She would be the death of them all! They had little enough but here they were left unmolested. Why could she not leave well-enough alone? The business of gringos was the business of gringos.

Vicente remembered finding the body of his father. He had worshiped his father and his father had been a strong man and yet for all his bravery and strength they had hunted him down like a crippled wolf and left him dead upon the rocks. What chance then for Vicente?

He stared gloomily at the ridges, wishing they would find the man and go away. Maybe he was a coward. But he was alive and the sun was warm and there was music in the wind.

"I wish they would find him," Vicente said. "Then they would go away."

Maria Cristina stared at him, her eyes black and scornful. "You are a fool."

He started to reply angrily, then rode away, his back stiff with outrage. Did she not know he was the man of the family? To speak so to him! But he could not maintain the outrage for it was she who ran the family affairs and he was afraid of her.

Maria Cristina stared after him but she was already thinking of the other problem. Where could a man hide and not be found by Jacob Lantz?

Yet even if there had been a safer place, to move now was a danger. A man cannot be trailed who leaves no tracks and as long as he could lie quiet on the shelf, he might be safe. But she must be careful...very careful.

It was Maria Cristina who led her family to this valley after the death of her father. She had learned of the shelf long ago and went there sometimes to be alone. So far as she was aware it was known to no one else. The Indians who once lived there had chosen the site with care. It was not an easy place to find.

She had bought their first sheep, she tended them and saw to their shearing and the sale of the wool. It was she who insisted upon the strong well-built adobe where they now lived. And she had sent to San Francisco for the few furnishings left after her marriage.

She had married a gringo cowhand when she was fifteen and after her father was killed and with him she had gone to Virginia City in Nevada. There he struck it rich in the silver mines and they went to San Francisco, but drink and gambling broke him and he died in a gun battle while drunk. Maria Cristina returned to her family with all the fine pride of her Mexican heritage and the memories of brief days of glory in Virginia City and San Francisco.

When she came the second time to the rock shelf it was suddenly. A rustle of petticoats and a brush of moccasin on a stone and she was there. She had come up some trail from behind the ruin. She knelt beside him in one swift graceful motion, placing a pot on the ground. It was a stew, still hot.

"Eat...there is no time for talk."

He ate hungrily while she removed the bandage and examined the wound. It looked little better. She bathed it and replaced the bandage with a clean cloth.

When he had finished the stew she took the pot to the spring and washed it, then returned with a piece of cotton cloth wrapped around some tortillas and some strips of jerked beef. "No fire," she warned, "they look for you."

She started to rise but he caught at her skirt. She looked down at him, her face sullen, revealing nothing.

"Who are you? Where do you come from?" he asked.

"Do I ask this of you?"

"I want to know whom to thank."

"Por nada."

"At least your name."

She said nothing, standing patiently until he released her skirt. She arose with a lithe movement and turned away but he craned his neck to look after her and said suddenly, without conscious thought, "You...you're beautiful!"

"I think you talk too much...you sleep." Yet when she reached the ruined wall she stopped. She did not turn her head but when she had stepped over the fallen stones she said, "Maria Cristina," and was gone.

He listened for some further sound of her going but heard nothing but the trickling of the water. She was risking her life to come here. To most of the Sutton-Bayless crowd the fact that she was a woman would mean nothing beside the fact that she was an enemy.

Jacob Lantz was the man he feared. Lantz was a man with a reputation. He had been one of the mountain men, had scouted for the army against the Indians, had hunted and trapped where his will took him. He had lived much with Indians, not only the Utes who were his mother's people but with Navajo and Apache as well. He would watch the girl, knowing she lived nearby and knowing she was an enemy. The wounded man would need food and care and if he was to get it at all, it must be from this family. And Jacob Lantz was not an easy man to outguess.

"Maria Cristina." He whispered the name, liking the sound of it in his ears. Spanish, certainly. Yet she moved like an Indian and there was about her an innate dignity as typical of the Indian as the Spanish. There was that dignity and a pride of person out of keeping with her surroundings. These things impressed him.

He checked his guns again. There could be no certainty for him. Every moment was a moment of danger. Each hour might be his last. He was leaving no tracks, yet the coming and going of the girl could not long remain unnoticed.

The food he now had was sufficient for a couple of days if he ate sparingly and he knew he must. There was no telling when she could return. Or if she would.

Whatever path she used must be well concealed, yet the fact that his hiding place was known at all worried him. If found, he would have no chance at escape. It was simply a matter of killing until he was himself killed. He could only hope they would come when he was awake.

He lay back, staring up at the rocks. He was very weak and the slightest movement tired him. It must be days, even weeks before he would be fit to travel. And that was long, much too long. Again and again his thoughts reverted to Maria Cristina. A long time ago, in another life, he remembered women who had such poise and bearing. But that had been in the Tidewater region of Virginia when he was a boy.

What could her blood line be? The Conquistadores? Or that even older lineage, of the Toltec kings?

At times he heard riders in the canyon or on the mesa above, so he knew the search continued. And again he watched the evening come, watched the shadows grow long and waited for that lone star above the canyon's rim.

Only tonight there were two. One hung in the sky, the other was lower down, somewhere on the mesa across the way; but this was a fire, the campfire of watching men.

Copyright © 1965 by Louis & Katherine L'Amour Trust