And Little Casino’s hoarse reply: “I listened to you one time before. Didn’t pay then, won’t pay now.”

Little Casino’s voice climbed to a shrill screech until Paddock burst out onto the street, face aflame, and stopped to regard the door venomously before he plunged half-running toward Bob Roberts’s place, a need for whiskey visibly howling through him. When Paddock slammed past, Pack felt the ill will in the rogue’s scowl. Pack stifled his smile of amusement until Jerry Paddock was gone.

Very faintly on the wind he heard the crisp notes of Lady Medora’s piano from the hilltop. Liszt, he thought. Beautiful dexterity.

He went into Bob Roberts’s place. Currents of smoke swirled under the low ceiling and stung his eyes. He saw Pierce Bolan at one of the four tables, eating a late supper. Along the bar stood a light scattering of after-dark diehards—merchants, Dr. Stickney, overnighting cattlemen from the Bad Lands, unemployed hunters. The latter group was missing two of its more notorious members; Finnegan and O’Donnell had been lying low since the killing of Riley Luffsey. As for Dutch Reuter, no one had any idea where he had drifted off to.

Also notable by their absence from Roberts’s bar were Johnny Goodall’s cow hands and butchers—indeed, any of De Morès’s employees. These days they did their drinking exclusively at Paddock’s. The town had divided sharply and dangerously into factions; whenever one group met another you never knew when something might ignite the tinder.

Pack did not care for beer tonight. He risked a whiskey, took a sip and felt the sharp burn of it on tongue and palate and throat. It heated his chest as it went down. He closed his eyes tight for a long moment and opened them to see Sewall and Dow enter.

Sewall planted his feet in the middle of the narrow room. Graven-faced, he turned his gaze slowly until men began to look at him in curiosity. When he had most everybody’s attention he said in a flat angry voice, “Jim Hayden’s dead.”

There was the scrape of bootheels as men turned to look at Sewall. Bob Roberts said, “Who shot him?”

Wil Dow said, “He wasn’t shot.”

Pierce Bolan said, “Drank too much bad whiskey, then?”

“No,” said Sewall.

“Then I guess he can’t be dead. That’s the only two ways people die around here.”

A ripple of laughter rolled around the group until Bill Sewall said, “Jim was hanged.”

Everyone went absolutely still. A hush—in fairness Pack had to think of it as a hush—fell over the saloon.

Wil Dow said, “We found a paper nailed on his door. Skull and crossbones, and one word. ‘Vacate.’”

Bob Roberts heaved a great sigh. His deep voice rolled out like lumps of coal down a metal chute. “They’ve come over from Montana, then.”

Pack said, “‘They?’”

“Vigilantes. Give some of the boys a speedy trial under the cotton woods.”

He felt a rush of excitement. His nose twitched. “Who are they?”

“Had hoods over their faces,” said Bill Sewall. “Could’ve been anybody.”

“Masked riders,” Roberts said. “Then it’s likely stockmen, fed up with outlaw thieves. Word I hear, Granville Stuart’s called for a big desperado round-up.”

“Brave enough to kill—but not to show their faces,” Bill Sewall growled.

Wil Dow said stoutly, “No mercy, nor any real justice either.”

Bob Roberts said, “They’ve been saying Granville Stuart’s vigilantes over in Montana are Texas boys—saying he’s brought in gunmen from the Panhandle. Saying he pays them a dollar a day to clean up the range.”

“Now, those are rumors,” Pack said. “Where are some facts?”

“The fact is Jim Hayden,” Bill Sewall said, “hanged by the neck until dead.” He made a gesture of confusion and helplessness, extending his arms out as if to embrace the room. “Cowboys. May the Lord save us. I do fear they’ll find it is a good piece harder to get injustice back into the bottle than it was to let it out.”

Pack said, “Now let’s not jump to confusions. Maybe Jim Hayden moonlighted the wrong man’s calf. Maybe it was bound to happen. Everybody knows Jim had too much talent with a running iron. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of his neighbors caught him in the act and thought to throw the fear of God into other thieves by making it look like the work of an army.”

Bill Sewall said, “I am sorry to dispute you, Mr. Packard, but there’s an army sure enough. At least twenty riders.”

“More like thirty,” Wil Dow said.

“How do you know that?”

“We have seen them, I’m telling you. Wil and I swang off to one side. Otherwise they’d’ve run us down.”

Pack took out his notebook. “Tell me what you saw.”

Dutch Reuter combed the kinks out of both horses on the bank of a tributary creek before he broke camp. It was nearly two hours after sunrise, Dutch being in no particular hurry today, and after he loaded all his worldly goods on the pack horse he stood by his saddle mount and considered the various horizons.

It was a stirring in his loins that finally decided him, against his better judgment, to turn east and head down through the gullies toward the river. He knew of a convenient ford near Bolan’s ranch and from there it would be not too many hours’ ride up out of the Bad Lands to the woman’s dugout soddy on the plateau. Dutch felt sufficiently at peace today to put up, in exchange for the exercise of conjugal rights, with her righteous female harangues.

He passed the rotting maggoty skeletons of a few winter-killed sheep that had been picked over by coyotes and vultures and ants; not quite sure whether to express his scorn with laughter or a snarl, he did neither, since nobody was watching, but simply continued on his way down a long brush-studded coulee. It would serve the swine-hound of a Marquis right to worry himself into an early grave with all his grand ambitions. The swine-hounds were stupid. What could possibly be the value of it when all a man needed for the enjoyment of life was easy free passage through open country with the prospect of hot food and a woman’s moist warmth at the end of the day?

His mood was so docile he refused to allow the intrusion of any thoughts about the sharpness of the woman’s tongue.

Dutch leaned back in the saddle to ease the horse’s downhill passage and tipped his tattered hat back to expose his face to the warm sun. A taste of early spring; it would be a fine afternoon on the prairie. With luck he might shoot a brace of grouse or partridge to bring to the house as a peace offering to the woman.

At the bottom of the river gorge was a wide stretch of tree-shaded flats. He threaded through the groves, enjoying the shade, listening to the birds. Sound and scent of the rippling river quickened the horses’ gaits. Dutch gave them their heads. They trotted to the bank; Dutch stepped down and let them drink their fill from an eddying pool that looped out to one side from the main flow of the Little Missouri. He washed his face and drank. It was fresh and cold the way he liked it—melted snow off the Black Hills, warmed by the spring sun in its shallow journey across the plains; in another week or two, unless there was a new cold spell, the melt would fill the river with a torrent. But not yet. Just now the level was only middle-high.

Dutch filled his canteens and walked out on the rocks as far as he could in order to squint at the ford a hundred meters downriver.

It looked all right; the splashes of white foam were there to indicate that the bottom lay close to the surface. It was always sensible to examine such places before plunging into them because you never knew when a floating log might come along and smash a deep cut through what once had been a pleasant stirrup-high walk across.

He was leading the horses toward the crossing when he spied a strange phenomenon coming toward him from the trees at the base of a rainbow-striped butte to his left: a man afoot.