Copyright © 1959 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.

      Chapter One

      THERE WERE GUNSHOTS in Table Rock. The town was half a mile away but the sound brought Gordon Conners to his feet, trembling. He stood on top of the huge overhanging rock that gave the town its name. From the flat-topped vantage he could see the buildings far below— the gray shafthouses and black smokestacks of the coal mine, the gleaming spiderweb of railroad tracks, the flimsy tarpaper shacks and false-fronted frames clinging precariously to the steep streets. He could see a crowd on Main, in front of one of the saloons, but it was too far away to make out what they were doing. He was still trembling and dry-mouthed. It was what the sound of gun-fire always did to him.

      Shading his eyes he saw a rider leave the outskirts of town and take the trail leading to the rock. He recognized a paint horse and realized it was probably Opal Bayard. She was the niece of Roland Bayard, one of the few friends Gordon’s father had in town. Opal knew how much time Gordon spent on the rock, dreaming a young man’s dreams. His hazel eyes watched the approaching rider. The eyes changed color as the light changed, turned black by the shadow of his thin hand. His face was thin too, almost fragile, topped by shaggy black hair that hadn’t felt scissors for six months.

      Opal forced the laboring paint up the steep trail till it snorted with the effort. She was eighteen—two years younger than Gordon—a girl with sun-colored hair and a woman’s shape to her body that even the yards of her long riding skirt couldn’t hide. Gordon moistened his lips. He wished he wasn’t so abashed with girls. The Bayards were the richest family in Table Rock, and Opal had been educated in a St. Louis Academy. It always made him feel like he was standing up before a schoolmarm. But it was more than that. It all seemed tied up with his daydreaming, his fear of guns, the things in him that didn’t belong to a farmer’s son. At twenty, a man should know more about women.

      “Gordon,” Opal called. “Gordon—it’s your father. They think he rustled some Crazy Moon beef.”

      He started running to meet her. “That shooting— they’re not—”

      “No, no—just some Crazy Moon cowhands. They’ve been drinking in the saloon—working themselves up to this. I was in Uncle’s office when I heard . . . Gordon, they’re going after your father!”

      It kicked the wind out of him. It made his voice sound thick and strange. “Opal—give me your horse. You’ve got to.”

      She pulled the paint to a stop as he reached her. She looked at him for an instant, her lips parted, as though to say something. Then she stepped down. He uncinched the clumsy sidesaddle, jumped on the paint bareback. He gave a last look at the girl, then wheeled the paint and broke into a gallop down the trail. He saw a dozen riders leave Table Rock. They passed the spot where the trail met the road long before he reached it. There were some stragglers still coming from town. As Gordon got to the road a man on a roan passed, carrying a rifle across his saddlebow. Then a pair of younger men. One was Billy Halleck, a big redhead, two years older than Gordon. His front teeth had already been chipped in a dozen brawls and they showed in a wicked grin as he saw Gordon. He hauled his horse to a halt.

      “Better stay here, Gordon,” Halleck said, winking at his companion. “There’s liable to be some shootin’ when they catch your pa. You wouldn’t want to hear any shootin’, would you?”

      Halleck laughed and kicked his horse, plunging on down the road.

      The man with Halleck held in his horse, eying Gordon. The man, a stranger, gave Gordon a long look out of pale eyes. His face was dark, long, his mustache thin. He wore a waist-length blanket coat, the lashes dangling. At his belt was a black-handled gun.

      “So you’re the kid they say is gun shy,” the man said. “I feel sorry for you. Gun shy—in country like this.”

      Shaking his head the man pushed his sorrel on down the road where Billy Halleck was waiting for him.

      Gordon sat his horse, this talk of guns turning him sick with fear. And the sickness grew when he remembered what Halleck had said: “There’s liable to be some shootin’ when they catch your pa.” He tried to swallow and it seemed his throat was swollen with fear. He knew how bad the feeling was among the cattlemen. They had been nearly driven to the wall by rustling this last year. Not a month ago a pair of saddle bums had been caught with a running iron down near Green River and had been lynched.

      The road followed the pass through the foothills into Stirrup Basin beyond. It was the route the Crazy Moon riders had taken. There was still a faint haze of dust that marked their passage. He knew he could never hope to catch them that way. By heading directly over the ridge he could cut off three miles. It was a horse-killing route but the only way he could reach home ahead of the others.

      He sent the paint plunging across the road and up the steep rocky slope. The tall, yellow rabbitbrush whipped against the horse’s legs. There was a throbbing ache between Gordon’s shoulders. It made him realize the muscles had been knotted up ever since leaving the rock, rigid with the tension of anticipating more shots.

      It filled him with helpless fury. There was nothing he could do about it. One gunshot and he was spooked for the rest of the day. It had been with him all his life. His father had told him he was no better than a gun shy horse—and had tried to cure him the way he would a horse. When the whippings and the tricks and the threats and the briberies had failed, his father had taken Gordon to a doctor. The doctor could find nothing wrong. He said the boy would grow out of it. That had been a long time ago.

      Gordon reached the rust-colored rimrock, a sandstone ledge that had been scoured by the wind and the rain till its countless miniature caverns gave it a weird moth-eaten look. The hot breeze brought him the smell of the sulphur springs on his flank.

      Stirrup Basin spread below him—the sage flats and the grama meadows and the green band of willows where Sulphur Creek wound through the wastes to the point where the house and corrals had been built. Gordon’s father, Bob Conners, had brought his family here a few months before, and had filed on a homestead.

      Crossing the creek, Gordon looked to his right and saw the first riders appearing in the pass. He had gotten ahead of them. The paint waded belly-deep across the creek and lunged into the buckbrush of the bottoms. Gordon headed up the dry wash that led to the house. He fought to halt his horse as he caught sight of a bunch of cattle ahead of him, held by a pair of riders. One of the men was enormously tall, with a longhorn mustache and a hard hat. Gordon recognized Tom Union, one of the Crazy Moon hands.

      He realized that this must be where they had found the rustled cattle. One rider must have gone back for the rest of the Crazy Moon crew while Union and the second man held the evidence in the wash.

      Union shouted when he saw Gordon and put spurs to his horse. Gordon drove the paint up out of the wash and headed in a dead run toward the cottonwood grove. He couldn’t believe his pa had brought those cattle here. His pa wasn’t the kind to rustle. It had to be some kind of mistake. Some kind of mixup.

      As he ran into the grove he saw Union appear at the edge of the wash. The man pulled to a halt, silhouetted there, evidently not wanting to get any closer to the house till he had the rest of the crew with him.

      Through the cottonwoods Gordon could see the dugout. Bob Conners had made a single room by cutting a niche deep into a head-high hummock of land, so all they had to put up was the sod-brick front wall and the roof. Gordon knew that at this time of day his father would be ploughing in the fields beyond the house. It was why he wouldn’t know about the cattle being held in the wash. Gordon galloped the paint past the house and up the low ridge.

      He saw his father in the field. Bob Conners had halted his mule and his bull-tongue plough. He had one hand