“Did he say anything afore he died, Bodie?” the man with Murdock called.
Little Joe gave no answer as he moved around a bend in the trail leading away from the town. When he returned some minutes later, a small bunch of sleepy-eyed half-dressed folks had gathered. From a house up on the top of the hill a baby squalled. All the talking stopped abruptly and the eyes shifted to Joe. The same question was in every one. Hank Ellard, big, wire-tough law marshal of the town, was away on the trail of a horse thief. He, Little Joe Bodie, was the law itself here now.
“Well, what’re you aiming to do, Joe?” one man called harshly. Joe Bodie didn’t need to be told he was one of those who had voted against him at the last election. The Haig brothers who ran the ramshackle hotel stepped forward. One said, “We all knew Solitaire Tice and respected him. We demand something be done. If the law cain’t handle it itself—”
Another man thrust a bony finger at Little Joe who nervously toed the wet earth. It had rained earlier that night. “Well, Bodie, do you wear that purty badge for anything?” It was plain they had little confidence in him. He himself wished like blazes Ellard was on hand.
“Found some fresh hoof marks up around the bend where a pony was left waiting outta sight,” Little Joe said quietly. They pushed around him, jabbering and wanting to know if he was waiting for the killer to walk smack into his jail and give himself up. Joe Bodie gestured mildly up the hill. “Waiting for my pony that’s coming now,” he said. The jailer was leading the bay mare down the road as Little Joe had called to him to do when he ran out of the jailhouse.
Murdock came running out the alley from beside the General Store with a saddled-up horse. He yelled he was coming along. An old man in the party at the bridge grabbed Little Joe’s bridle reins as the latter swung into the hull.
“Better wait till a few more of the boys join you, Bodie,” the man said. “This might turn out to be a man’s job.…”
They pushed harder through the night as the moon got clear of the dissipating clouds to remain out, Little Joe Bodie and the five-man posse at his back. Joe Bodie knew he himself was on trial. There had been a heap of opposition to his candidacy as deputy marshal, and plenty of angry astonishment when he was elected. More than one citizen of Lusker had been waiting for the first test of the retiring dry-voiced undersized deputy. That test had come.
They came to the fork where the smaller division of the trail branched westward toward the flat-topped line of hills. The fresh hoof prints were even clearer in the mud of the little-used fork. Little Joe loosened his Colts in the scabbards nervously. One of the men said if they gave the killer a catching there was no need to take him any further than the handiest cottonwood limb. The words sent a cold shock down the deputy’s spine.
The track wound through the dome-like hills with their sparse fringe of second-growth pine. They began to climb as the newly bared stars waned overhead. A rifle bullet droned past Little Joe’s sombrero up in the front of the column. And the spang-g of a Winchester’s bark followed it. There was another crash on the graying night and bullet lead went screeching off a boulder inches from Ab Murdock’s stirrup. The six hastily scrambled from saddles and sought cover.
“It come from that little rock ledge up there by the lightning-split pine,” one of the men called.
* * * *
Down behind a clump of brush, Little Joe Bodie steadied the rifle he had pulled from the saddle boot as he jumped clear. Then he propped his hat on a piece of dried stick and pushed it out into sight. He wasn’t kept waiting. There was the zing of a slug and a hole gaped into the crown of his Stetson. Little Joe’s rifle answered the shot, blasting twice at where he had caught the muzzle froth up above. One of his bullets sent powdered stone spraying in a cloud from the outcropping ledge.
Murdock lunged out into the open to make a try for the rifle in his saddle. The Winchester up above spoke its piece and Murdock came diving back, a clean-drilled hole in his sombrero, too. Little Joe crept back and they had a war council in the brush.
“Let’s drive right plumb in and smoke him outta there,” one of them suggested.
But Little Joe shook his head determinedly. He wasn’t afraid for himself though it would take more than one man to do it. He was thinking of them. Murdock with three motherless children to raise, and the sharp-chinned Burns with a sick wife. And Charley Chassen who was so short-sighted he could see clearly only ten feet. This was no regular experienced posse.
“We’ll flank him on both sides,” Little Joe decided. “We’ll work around the ends of that ledge and corner him.” Leaving one man to keep a front fire on the fugitive, the deputy took Murdock with him and sent the other three to work around from the north side.
It took them about half an hour to wriggle through brush and over the rough ground to get to either end of the ledge. The moon was nothing but a pale globe in the sky when the two parties met coming in at either end of the ledge. The other bunch almost opened fire on Little Joe and Murdock by mistake in the mist that was beginning to seep from the ground. The hunted hombre had pulled stakes. There were just a few Winchester shells at the spot where he had been crouched.
Murdock swore hoarsely as Little Joe called down to Burns to bring up their ponies. Once again Little Joe wished the marshal himself, Hank Ellard, was along. If Ellard had decided against a frontal rush as he had, there would have been no questioning it. But now that he had and the wanted hombre had gotten away—Joe Bodie had thought of Ellard when the riflemen behind the ledge had centered first his hat and then Murdock’s with bullets. Hank Ellard was a deadly marksman like that, too.
They picked up the trail again and came to level ground. It was a nasty piece of badlands, mostly rock and long tongues of lava outcroppings with little twisting cuts and canyons. The rest of the posse were plainly discouraged as they followed the hoof scratches on the rocks into one of the canyons. Around a bend in it they came upon a shot horse. Aside from the bullets through its head to put it out of its misery, the animal had a wounded leg.
The scratch tracks led on down the canyon. Apparently the fugitive had had a second cayuse hidden here in case of trouble. Little Joe straightened, grim-faced, after having checked the brand mark on the dead animal. Beside him Ab Murdock whistled softly; it was a Loop-Y pony. The Loop-Y belonged to the proud King Riner up east of Lusker.
They followed the trail sign on, until they came to the western boundary of the badlands whence the yellow desert stretched away. Daylight had come, the sun poking over the horizon. The sand was almost dry and the rising wind blurred the hoof prints leading out across it. Within a couple of hours more, they had to admit they were whipped and turn back. The sultry wind combined with the torch of a sun in the coppery sky had obliterated all sign.
“We’d uh got the varmind almost sure had we rushed him when he holed up behind that ledge,” Murdock said dourly.
* * * *
It was afternoon before they rode back into Lusker, weary and trail-stained and empty-handed. The jailer told little Joe that Blackie Sebore had come to the jail early that day to see him. Sebore owned the big Umbrella spread to the south of the town. Even as the deputy walked up the jail steps, Sebore came out of a barroom down the line and came along the walk, two of his tough outfit flanking him. Sebore was a stocky arrogant hombre, always slightly beard-stubbled. He was a big figure in that piece of a country.
“Howdy, marshal! Well—you’re acting marshal anyways,” he said as he came up to the steps. “Fella came up past my place about dawn and brought word how Solitaire Tice was shot. So I come in pronto, Bodie.”
Little Joe nodded, fearing what was to come next.
It didn’t; Sebore looked pontifical. “No sense of mincing matters. Folks know that me and Solitaire had a row not long back. We carried a grudge, so I had a motive, maybe. Under suspicion. All right, I’m putting my cards on the table. These two boys of my spread can swear I was at the ranch all night.” The two slab-bodied hairpins with him nodded