Ben stood with his hat in his hands and something in his face gave way. He had found nothing out there — no herd, no honest trail, only the false one that ended in rock — and he said so in a few flat words. Then he crossed the room and gripped Josiah's forearm with both hands, hard.
"You kept my house standing while I was chasing ghosts," he said. "I will not forget what side of the river I live on now."
Josiah had no answer ready. Through the open door the light was coming up over the ridge east of the Cienega, thin and colorless, promising another day without rain, and he wondered who might have been watching that ridge all night.
Chapter 12
: Rance Killion
Josiah saw him in the late morning, when the light on the ridge was white and merciless. He had ridden back to the Rawlins place with meal and tonic, and was unsaddling in the yard when a stillness in the corner of his eye made him look up. A rider sat motionless on the skyline east of the house, too far for a face, close enough for purpose. No honest traveler stopped up there. The trail to town kept to the low ground by the riverbed.
He finished with the saddle, unhurried, and spoke to Pearl, who was shelling beans in the doorway, in an ordinary voice. "Go inside, Pearl. Tell your daddy to keep his rifle by the window but not to show it."
The girl looked at him, then at the ridge, and obeyed without questions.
Josiah took his own rifle from its scabbard, not raising it, and walked out into open ground where he could be plainly seen. He wanted the watcher to know he had been noticed, and to come near enough to read the man before any word was spoken.
The rider did not move until Josiah was within two hundred yards. Then he touched his horse with his heels and came down the slope at a walk, easy in the saddle, one hand resting on his thigh near a holstered pistol, the other loose on the reins. It was Rance Killion.
Josiah had known him by reputation for six years: a Texan who had left three outfits poorer in cattle and richer in rumor, until Colonel Voss gave him a foreman's wage and, men said, a license to do what others were told not to ask about. Up close he was lean and clean-shaven, with pale eyes that measured everything for distance, and a mouth that smiled without consulting the rest of his face.
"Morning, Merritt," Killion said, and reined in ten paces off. "Heard the Rawlins woman took sick. Voss sent me to ask after her."
"Voss has a sudden care for his neighbors," Josiah said.
"He cares for the valley." Killion's gaze moved past Josiah to the house, to the corral, to the empty pasture beyond where Ben's herd should have been grazing. He took his time looking, as a man might inventory a place he expected to see again under different ownership. "Shame about the stock. Indians, they say. Bold as brass this year, with the drought driving them."
"Bold enough to mend a fence after cutting it," Josiah said.
Something flickered in Killion's eyes — not surprise, exactly. Interest. "You have been studying that trail."
"I have walked it."
"And what did it teach you?" The question was pleasant, almost companionable, and all the more dangerous for it. Killion was not here to threaten him outright. He was here to learn how much Josiah knew.
"It taught me that whoever took those cattle wanted them blamed more than he wanted them hidden," Josiah said. "A man who wants only cattle does not leave a lesson behind him."
Killion smiled his disconnected smile. "You always were a deep thinker for a man with one well and no herd to speak of. Voss thinks well of you, whatever you believe. He says a man who gives water away in a drought is either a saint or a fool, and he would rather deal with a saint."
"You can tell the Colonel my water is not a dealing matter."
"I will tell him exactly that," Killion said, and gathered his reins. "He will be sorry to hear it. Sorrier than you, maybe." He turned his horse, then stopped, as if remembering a courtesy. "Give my respects to Mrs. Rawlins. A fever like that — a woman can turn in an hour. Be a pity if the house needed help some night and nobody was close enough to ride for it."
He rode back up the ridge at the same unhurried walk, not once looking behind him, a man entirely certain no shot would follow him.
Josiah watched until horse and rider were small against the glare. Then he walked the ground where Killion had waited. The horse had stood there a long while, shifting its weight, and the prints were clear in soft sand the wind had laid in a hollow.
He knelt. The left forefoot print was ordinary. The right forefoot was not. Its shoe had a flaw: a notch worn, or nicked, at the outer heel, leaving a small clean bite missing from the curve of the impression, like a letter interrupted.