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“No,” she answered. “Glover hired these. Said he had to take what he could get.” Looking back, she saw that Glover was out of earshot. “Wade Flint and ten wagons are waiting in Council Grove. They may be the wagons your Dragoons were looking for.”

  Bruce nodded gloomily. Stephen Kearny had been right. Flint was playing it the safest way he could. Once the Dragoons had had their look, Glover had figured they were not likely to be back for another. Flint had counted on Bruce’s doing the very thing he had.

  “Glover was nearly crazy when the Dragoons were searching the wagons,” Mick went on. “I never saw him so excited. I think he’s beginning to see what will happen if he fails. He’d like to get out, but he doesn’t know how.”

  “How did he explain the ten extra wagons to you?”

  “He had a little trouble.” She laughed. “I’ve learned more about Curt Glover since we left Independence than in all the time’ I’d known him before. He wants it all, but he doesn’t have enough courage to play for high stakes.” She gave Bruce a straight look. “It takes a certain kind of person to drive a knife into a man’s back when he isn’t looking. Glover isn’t the kind.”

  “You think I am?”

  She looked away then, and took a moment to answer. “No,” she admitted finally, “and that leaves me hanging like a green scalp in a Comanche lodge.”

  They rolled into Council Grove late the following afternoon. Here were water and shade. Both were welcome. More than 100 wagons were scattered in the grove, most of them belonging to emigrants who believed that Kearny would annex New Mexico when war broke out and were anxious to get there ahead of the rush so they could have their pick of home sites.

  It was a scene that never failed to amuse Bruce when he saw it. Men were mending harness, gathering firewood, chopping down trees, greasing wheel hubs. Women were washing, bending over cook fires, sewing. This was the last jumping-off place.

  Ahead was buffalo country, and, where there were buffalo, there would be Indians: Pawnees, Arapa-hoes, Kiowas, Cheyennes, and the terror of every caravan, the Comanches.

  Glover led the train on through the grove to the far end where Flint waited with the other wagons. Bruce, scanning the people who were making their final preparations here, was sobered by what he saw. Many were woefully unprepared for what lay ahead. There were vehicles of all sort, some of them decrepit farm wagons that would never get as far as the Little Arkansas. Many lacked sufficient stock to replace the ones that would die in harness.

  “Wolf meat they’ll be,” Purdy muttered.

  Ababy tottered away from a wagon and fell and began to cry. Mick looked at the sight, her mouth twitching. “Fools,” she whispered. “They should have stayed in town.” Turning in her saddle, she watched the baby until its mother picked it up. Again Bruce smiled when he thought of her boast that she had a man’s instinct.

  “We’ll lay over a couple of days, Shane, and see that everything is in good shape,” Glover said when Bruce swung out of the saddle. “From here on it’s your job to keep things moving.”

  “You’ve got some damned poor men,” Bruce said “You’ve got some damned poor men,” Bruce said bluntly. “Act like they don’t know which end of a mule goes frontward.”

  “You teach ’em.” Glover winked at Flint, apparently in better humor than when Bruce had caught the train. “Part of your job, Shane.”

  “I came in a day or so ago with this other bunch of wagons,” Flint said in his soft, courteous voice. “They seemed competent.”

  Bruce followed Flint’s gesture with his eyes. Most of the men were playing cards on the ground. Some were working on the wagons or repairing harness. They were veterans of the trail, tough and confident.

  “They’ll do,” Bruce said, pondering this thing he’d seen.

  “I believe we met in Mogan’s Saloon.” Flint’s smile went no farther than his lips. “I’m with this caravan as a passenger, but I’ll do my share of the fighting if it comes to that. I trust there will be no ill feeling from our little disagreement in Mogan’s Saloon.”

  “Not if you follow orders.”

  “Then we’ll get along.” Nodding, Flint turned away.

  “Bruce, you heerd?” Purdy bawled, coming in a stiff-legged lope from the emigrants’ wagons. “We got war with Mexico jest like I figgered. We’ll lose hoss ’n’ beaver soon as we show up in Santy Fee.”

  “War?” Glover whispered the word. “How in hell do you know, Purdy?”

  “Some coot jest rode in from Independence. He’s got a Saint Louis Republican.”

  “That’s right.” Mick had come up behind Purdy, her gaze touching Bruce’s face. “It says that Captain Thornton of the Dragoons had been attacked and his command captured.”

  “And Zach Taylor’s sitsheashun is ex . . . ex . . .,”

  Purdy began.

  “Extremely perilous,” Mick prompted.

  “And he’s in a hell of a fix,” Purdy added.

  “And he’s in a hell of a fix,” Purdy added.

  Glover took off his hat and wiped his baldhead. He turned to Flint who had come to stand beside him. “You hear?”

  “I heard, but I doubt if it will affect us,” Flint said smoothly. “Taylor is a long ways from Santa Fé. However, it may be well to hurry our plans.”

  “We’ll roll in the morning, Shane,” Glover ordered tersely.

  “You said we’d lay over,” Bruce reminded him. “Some of your greenhorns will need a few days to get acquainted with their mules.”

  “They can get acquainted on the trail. I said we’d roll in the morning.”

  “Then I reckon we’ll roll,” Bruce agreed mildly.

  “Then I reckon we’ll roll,” Bruce agreed mildly.

  Ordinarily caravans laid over in Council Grove to organize and make whatever repairs were necessary before starting into Indian county. Kearny would figure on that, timing Barstow’s departure from the fort accordingly. If Glover kept the pace he’d set so far-and his mules were good enough to do that-Kearny’s Dragoons would never catch the train this side of Cimarron Crossing.

  There was no way to inform Kearny except to ride back to Fort Leavenworth, and he’d bring on a showdown if he tried that. Later, when the wagoners learned what Flint was doing, they might be led against him.

  Tonight they’d follow him. Even if Bruce did go back to the fort, it was not likely he could get there in time. Before he could return to Council Grove with the Dragoons, the caravan would be miles along the trail to Santa Fe.

  “I wonder what our guide is thinking about,” Flint murmured.

  Flint murmured.

  “If he’s thinking about heading back to Fort Leav-enworth,” Glover grated, “I’ll sure as hell shoot him before he gets out of the Grove.”

  “Maybe you’d like to start shooting now?” Bruce challenged.

  “And foller your nose across the Jornada,” Purdy added.

  “I meant I didn’t want you running out,” Glover said. He strode away with Flint following.

  said. He strode away with Flint following.

  Purdy’s somber gaze followed them. “Wa-al, son, looks like hit’s you ’n’ me.”

  VI

  Bruce called the men together that night. “Some of you have been over the trail,” he said. “You know the importance of obeying orders, of taking your turns at guard duty, and not riding away from the train to hunt or see the country. We’ll have discipline in this train”-his eyes swung to Glover and Flint-“or there’ll be wolf meat along the trail. We’ll move in columns of four when possible and necessary. When corralling from that formation, the outside columns will wheel together in front, the others swinging out. That’ll give us a hollow square, wagon tongue to tail gate. It’ll give us a place to hold our stock after grazing and a place to hole up when we smell Injuns.”

  Agroup of emigrants had joined the circle of men.

  One said: “We’d like to travel with you, Shane. We’ve got nigh onto a hundred wagons, but we ain’t got a plainsman i
n our outfit.”

  “Curt Glover owns this train.” Bruce motioned to him. “That’d be up to him to say.”

  “I say no,” Glover snapped. “We ain’t nursing no bunch of greenhorns. If you don’t have a plainsman, go back to Independence.”

  “We’ll take our chances if we have to,” the man said stubbornly, “but we heard you had two guides. If we could have one. . . .”

  “I think not,” Flint cut in. “Glover is paying both men high wages. We need Purdy because Shane hasn’t been over the Jornada.”

  It was the first time Flint had dispelled the fiction that Glover was giving the orders. The trader threw a straight glance at him, anger sparking his eyes, but he kept his silence. The emigrants moved disconsolately back to their own wagons, muttering about the damned stubborn traders.

  “You got anything to say?” Bruce asked Glover.

  “No.”

  “I have.” Flint’s enigmatic smile was showing at the corners of his mouth. “The question of whether we lose our hair depends on the speed we make. It is our intention to make a record for travel on the trail. If we don’t, we may not find Santa Fé receptive to our entrance.”

  Bruce had noted that the men who had brought the ten wagons were gathered on one side of the fire. Flint had addressed his words to these men.

  “All right,” Flint said. “We’ll get all the sleep we can.”

  Circling the fire, Bruce caught Flint and Glover before they left. He asked bluntly: “Let’s settle one thing now. Are we two outfits or one?”

  “We’re one,” Flint said in his soft voice.

  Glover muttered-“That’s right.”-and stomped away.

  Flint stood there for a moment, black eyes locked with Bruce’s, his bland inscrutable face giving no sign of what was in his mind.

  “I hope everybody remembers that,” Bruce said.

  “We will,” Flint promised.

  When he had gone, Bill Purdy spat into the fire. “Hell of a passel of green scalps in this outfit ready to be lifted, son.”

  They hitched up when dawn was no more than a golden promise in the east. The mules had been rounded up and watered, the loose stock gathered behind the wagons. There were these moments of chaos of plunging horses and kicking mules, of men’s curses and angry yells.

  Bruce, riding Blue Thunder, called: “Catch up!

  More cursing and yells of pain when a kicking mule hit his target and harness jangle. Then a wagoner yelled: “All set!” Another echoed it: “All set!” The cry ran along the line. “Stretch out!”

  There was the crack of whips, the creak of heavily loaded wagons.

  “Fall in!” Bruce bellowed above the clamor.

  The train strung out along the western slope toward the highland, Bruce and Bill Purdy at the head.The last jumping-off place! The sunrise behind them. Indian country ahead. And beyond was Santa Fé in an enemy province with Manuel Armijo slouched at his desk in the adobe Governors’ Palace.

  Riding along the line of wagons to the front was Flint Wade, still smiling, still courteous, his thoughts deep and secret things behind his black expressionless eyes. In distant Fort Leavenworth Colonel Stephen Kearny had no way of knowing that the caravan, loaded with weapons for the inchoate Republic of New Mexico, was on the march.

  The grass came high on the legs of the horsemen. Wind from the distant Rockies touched their faces. The sun beat down with a dry, staggering heat. And wolves prowled hopefully in the distance.

  Mick Catherwood joined them. Bruce, watching Flint, saw the break in the man’s composure, saw the mask replaced, but that second-long wash of passion had been enough. Flint knew that Mick was a woman, that if he could enlist her aid, she could furnish the flesh and blood he needed to give life to the skeleton of his scheming, and another worry was born to plague Bruce Shane.

  The caravan became trail wise in the days that followed, partly because inexperienced men learned by necessity, but mostly because Bruce had the plains savvy and an innate sense of leadership that made men respect him. This was his talent, his choice of life.

  Bill Purdy wagged his grizzled head, and mut-tered: “Book larnin’ didn’t faze him. Takes to this like a Comanche takes to ha’r.” Neither Glover nor Flint interfered. Even Mick Catherwood looked at Bruce with an unconscious respect in her blue eyes.

  The miles dropped behind as the wagon train rolled toward the sunset. Diamond Spring. Cottonwood Creek. On to the crossing of the Little Arkansas, steep-banked and treacherous. They swept across it, the lumbering wagons swaying and twisting like white-sailed vessels in a high wind, the water churned into a brown foam.

  On into the buffalo country, the lush grass behind, the low-growing nutritious buffalo grass around them. Into the land claimed by the Pawnees.

  Bruce, riding ahead with Mick Catherwood, sighted the Arkansas. A great river heading in the high Rockies far to the west, stinking and muddy here, wide of bottom, cluttered with brush and cottonwoods, and, in spots, treacherous with quicksand. Here were wildflowers and dust, prairie dogs and jack rabbits and wolves, a hammering sun and water hardly drinkable and wind that scoured their faces with sand. They had traveled fast, faster than Bruce had expected, but here they stopped, for Purdy had brought word that buffalo were just ahead.

  There was meat the next day, hump steak and tenderloin and marrow, meat eaten nearly raw, blood running down men’s beards, greasy hands wiped on buckskins, bones gnawed clean. They ate until bellies were stuffed, and then slept, forgetting the danger of Indian attack for the moment.

  Bruce watched the first half of the night, Purdy the second. Amoon climbed into a clear high sky, and stars made a swath of light above. Wolves prowled around the wagon circle, eyes emerald gems in the thin light.

  There was a wildness in this land, a wildness that centuries of Indian occupation had not changed. It was here in the great emptiness, in the night breeze, in the presence of the wolves. Bruce Shane, moving silently around the wagons, ears keening the wind, was conscious of it, and stirred by it as he always was when he left human settlement far behind.

  Suddenly Mick Catherwood was beside him. “I couldn’t sleep for the snoring,” she said. “They’re as drunk as if they’d cracked a barrel of Taos lightning.”

  Bruce leaned his Hawkins rifle against a wagon wheel. “Walnut creek ahead. Pawnee Rock. Ash Creek. Pawnee Forks. Then Cimarron Crossing. That’ll be the last chance to stop Flint. Once he gets his wagons across the Jornada, they’ll go on to Santa Fé, and all hell won’t stop ’em.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. The Dragoons are behind us, but they won’t get here in time.”

  “Glover is sick of his bargain with Flint,” she said. “I finally pried the whole thing out of him. Flint knew him in New York when he was in trouble of some kind. He didn’t say what it was, but he was working in a bank, so I guess he’d stolen some money. Anyhow, Flint was going to tell Dad if Glover didn’t throw in with him. He promised Glover that, when the new republic was set up, he’d give him a monopoly on all the trail trade. So Glover ordered the guns without Dad knowing anything about it.”

  “Whose wagons are the ones that were waiting for us in Council Glove?”

  “Flint’s. He hired those men, but I don’t think they know what they’re hauling.” She looked up at him, her head turned so that the moonlight was fully upon her face. “I keep thinking about what you said that day you left Independence for Fort Leaven-worth, about it being up to me now that Dad’s gone. I’ll be beside you and Bill Purdy when you call for the showdown.”

  “Thanks, Mick.”

  VII

  It was the first time he had felt she fully trusted him. She could shoot as well as he could. She had brought down her buffalo that morning. He knew she could have split his heart the day her father was murdered. But those were men’s talents, and Mick Catherwood was a woman.

  “You must have some other name than Mick,” he said softly.

  “Dad
gave me that name.” She was close to him, lips upturned. “I was christened Marian.”

  He knew she had read his mind. Something had happened back along the trail, something she probably did not fully understand herself.

  “You’re not a man,” he said a little roughly. “It’s time you stopped thinking you were.”

  “I thought you were the man who’d stop me thinking it.”

  Her words were an invitation, and he did not need a second. He kissed her, holding her hard slim body against his.

  She was limp for a moment, and then fire swept through her and she was giving his kiss back, fiercely, compellingly, as if she had discovered something that she had not known was in the world.

  He let her go.

  “You see how it is, Marian. You’ve played you’re man, but there’s something in you that won’t let you keep on playing that way.”

  She did not move for a long time. He heard her breathe, rapidly as if she was still riding a high wave of emotion. Then she whispered: “So that’s all it is to you.” Wheeling, she ran from him.

  He understood, then, what he’d done and what he’d lost.

  They crossed Walnut Creek the next day. Then Pawnee Rock loomed ahead, a yellow sandstone cliff ominously shadowing the trail, and tension built until men’s nerves were ready to snap, for all of them knew that this was the bloodiest point between Independence and Santa Fé.

  On to Ash Creek. Glancing back, Bruce saw smoke pillars rise from the frowning top of the rock. He hurried the wagons across the creek, and they made a tight corral, but there was no attack that night.

  “Passin’ the word on to thar brothers,” Purdy said. “We’ll hear more of ’em when we git down the trail a piece.”

  “Too many of us,” Glover said with false confidence. “They took a look and saw we were too strong.”

  Bruce didn’t tell the man how wrong he was. Curt Glover was like a boy whistling at night in a graveyard. Bruce understood him better after what Mick had told him. Aw eak and cowardly man, but he might still be the means of keeping the guns from going through.