Chapter 1

HE LAY SPRAWLED upon the concrete pavement of the alley in the darkening stain of his own blood, a man I had never seen before, a man with the face of an Apache warrior, struck down from behind and stabbed repeatedly in the back as he lay there.

Two police cars with flashing lights stood nearby, and a dozen shirt-sleeved or uniformed men stood about, waiting for the ambulance to come. But it was much too late for an ambulance.

"Sorry to get you out of bed at this time of night, Mr. Sheridan."

Detective Sergeant Tom Riley had introduced himself at the door of my motel room a few minutes before. He spoke politely, but I had a feeling he could not have cared less about awakening me. He was a man doing a hard, unpleasant job in the best way he knew how, and my own hunch was that he was pretty good at it.

"We thought you might know something about him."

Riley showed me the newspaper clipping and I recognized it as one that had appeared in the local paper the previous morning. It mentioned the fact that I, Dan Sheridan, author of a dozen volumes of western fiction and history, was in the city doing research.

What it neglected to mention was the slip I'd made during a moment of exuberance on a television interview when I said, "Among other things I want to find out what happened to the Toomey brothers."

The interviewer, with less alertness than usual with his kind, ignored the remark and went on to other things.

As a matter of fact, I had planned to keep the mystery of the vanishing Toomeys as my own private story, to be developed by me in my own good time.

The Toomeys had left Texas for Arizona some ninety years before, and up to a point their drive could be documented; beyond that point there was a complete void. Four thousand head of cattle and twenty-seven men had stepped right off into nothingness…or so it seemed.

"I can't be of much help, Sergeant," I said. "I never saw the man before."

"It was an outside chance." Riley was still looking at the body. "Can you think of any reason why he might have wanted to contact you?"

"Sure. I hear from all sorts of people. Some of them just want to talk about a story I've written, but most of them want help with a book they're writing themselves. Once in a blue moon somebody comes up with something I can use in a story."

"The name Alvarez means nothing to you?"

"No, it doesn't. Sorry."

That should have been the end of it, and all I could think of was getting back into bed. I'd had a busy day and a long flight, and I was tired.

Only it was not that simple. As I walked past the window of the motel office the clerk tapped on the glass and I went in. "Some calls for you, Mr. Sheridan. I didn't see you come in earlier."

He handed me a small sheaf of papers. A telegram from my publisher reminding me of our appointment in Beverly Hills, just ten days away. A telephone call from a newspaperwoman who wished to do a feature story on me. The last was a scrawled message in an unfamiliar hand:

I walked back outside. Riley was just getting into a police car, but he stopped when I called. He glanced at the message, and listened to my explanation.

"Why one o'clock in the morning?" he said.

"You've got me. As I said, I never heard of the man. Not that it matters. In my business we meet all kinds."

"Mind if I keep this?"

"Go ahead." Then my curiosity got the better of me. "Sergeant, if you know anything about the man, please tell me. Something might ring a bell."

He considered that for a moment, then said, "He was the only honest one of a very disreputable family. His brothers have been in trouble of one kind or another since they were youngsters."

Nothing came of our talk, and I went back to bed. Morning came too soon. My first appointment was for nine o'clock, and while I waited for a cab I bought a newspaper.

The item was on the inside of the front page and gave only the bare facts of the story. Yet there was one difference, a difference that began with the headline:

Copyright © 1966 by Louis & Katherine L'Amour Trust