Bowen only nodded, but Pryde said, “We saw you talking to Renda.”

“Sure. He was sending me over here.”

“You’re talking to him all the time, aren’t you?”

Manring looked over at Bowen. “Your friend don’t trust me.”

“Maybe I don’t either,” Bowen said. He backed the team up to the stump and there was no more said until they had pulled the stump and Pryde moved off with the team, dragging the stump to the nearest bonfire.

Manring said then, “I talked Renda into sending me over here. We got to be working together, Corey, if we’re going to pull it.”

“You can talk in front of Ike,” Bowen said. “I already told him about it.”

“You told Ike!”

“He wants to get out just like you do.”

“We don’t need three!”

“But you need me. And if Ike doesn’t go, I don’t.”

“Corey…it’s different with you and me. We got no business being here in the first place. Ike killed a man. He deserves to be here.”

“I’m not judging him,” Bowen said. “If I go, so does Ike.”

By late afternoon, the road had passed the sycamore grove and was halfway to the horse trail that slanted gradually up the western tree-covered slope of the canyon.

“By tomorrow afternoon the brush cutters will be on the slope,” Manring said. His shovel jabbed at the roots of the stump they were working on. As Bowen went to his knees, Manring stooped, pushing down on the shovel and one side of the stump lifted, popping the roots that held it. Pryde passed the end of the chain to Bowen and they fastened it to the stump. As they worked, their eyes would raise to the tree-covered slant of the canyon wall looming above them.

“More or less,” Manring said, “the road’s got to follow that natural trail.”

Pryde said, “I don’t see any trail. Though it must be there. The girl passes this way and so does Willis.”

“You can’t see it for the trees,” Manring said. “It goes up a shelf, all the way up, that looks like it was put there for the purpose. When the trees are cleared, maybe the shelf would be wide enough for a wagon. But it’d be just wide enough, without any room to spare.”

“So,” Bowen said. “You blast the wall out and use the rock to build up the shoulder of the road.”

“That’s the way I see it,” Manring said.

“Is that the way you and Renda both see it?” Bowen said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You and he surveyed it together, didn’t you? Is that the way Renda said it would be done?”

“Something like that,” Manring said guardedly. “He wasn’t sure and he just talked about it generally.”

“So you weren’t sure either how it would be done,” Bowen said.

“As sure as anybody,” Manring insisted. “There’s only one way to get out.”

“We want to hear your idea,” Bowen said.

“You’re awful damn anxious. We got about a week yet.”

“Earl, I don’t think you have a plan.”

“You’ll find out.”

Bowen nodded. “We’ll find out right now.”

“It’d be easier to tell it once we got up on the slope.”

“Earl, I think you’re stalling.”

“I can’t give you details now! You got to be up there to see what I’m talking about, else it won’t mean anything to you.”

“Try us anyway,” Bowen said.

“Well,” Manring began, “it’s based on three things. We got to do three things else it isn’t going to work.” He spoke slowly, as if giving himself time to think.

“First, we got to take care of the guard that’ll be on us. I figure Renda or Brazil. We get hold of him, but without anybody else knowing about it. Second, we set the charge so as to close the road on anybody coming up from below. Lay a rock slide over it or else blow a hole in it that a horse couldn’t cross. Third, we got to take care of the Mimbres. I figure we can force Renda or Brazil, whichever one we’re holding, to call them out. See, we’ll have another charge planted. All this is timed to the second and just as they come out-boom-they’re blown sky-high.”

“Then what?” Bowen said.

“Then we run for the station. For horses.”

Bowen looked at Pryde. “What do you think?”

“He don’t anymore have a plan than I do.”

“He must’ve just thought it up,” Bowen said.

Manring looked from one to the other. “What’re you trying to pull?”

“You got a lot of holes in your idea,” Bowen said. “That’s all.”

“Well, sure,” Manring said. “You can’t work everything out until you got the stuff.”

“You can’t work anything out,” Bowen said.

“It’ll go like I said, or it won’t go at all.”

“Maybe some of it will,” Bowen said. “You’ve wanted us to believe you had a plan so we’d get it in our heads we need you. You supplying the brains and Ike and me lighting the fuse. But it comes out all you have is a sketchy idea…and now we’re not sure if we do need you, Earl.”

Manring remained calm, as if he had anticipated this and already knew how he would answer it. He shook his head saying, “You won’t do it without me. If you don’t like my idea, think it’s got holes, then figure your own way. But whatever way you do it, I’m going to be along.”

“Now he’s threatening us,” Pryde said.

“You can call it whatever you want,” Manring said.

Pryde shrugged. “I was thinking you wouldn’t want to go up there with us. A man could fall and kill himself.”

“Ike,” Manring said, “I can fix it for you right now.”

“You’re going, Earl,” Bowen said easily. “We might not need your help, but we sure as hell need you in plain sight.”

As Manring predicted, the “brush cutters”-the convicts who cleared the pinyon and scrub brush-were working their way up the slope by midafternoon of the next day. On the morning of the day after that, the crews that followed, including the scraper, had reached the beginning of the trail and could go no farther-not until dynamite widened the narrow, uneven horse trail. But the dynamite had not yet arrived.

By noon, two thirds of the convicts were idle-until Renda devised something for them to do. He was reluctant to put more men up on the slope. That would increase the rate of construction, shorten the job time and consequently decrease his daily profit. Still, the convicts had to be kept busy. So he put them to work clearing the canyon area beyond the point at which the road would begin ascending the west slope.

“Cleaning out the brush is for your own good,” Renda told the convicts. “Then later on when we’re working high up and somebody falls off, we’ll be able to find the body for a decent burial.”

There were three bonfires to consume the brush as it was hacked down and cleared away. Bowen was given the job of tending to one of them. Shirtless in the close, almost unbearable heat, he would throw the dry brush into the flames. Then, waiting for more to be dragged over to him, his gaze would rise to the jagged, climbing trace of the horse trail that became visible, foot by foot, as the pinyon was toppled into the canyon.

Now it was a matter of patience, of waiting and using the time to think it out clearly, to think of every possibility. No, there was not that much time-not time to think of everything-so you eliminated some of the things right away. The things you had thought of already and had seen no hope in. Like Karla…and the lawyer…and walking out with a pardon or a parole or an acquittal or whatever you wanted to call it.

It was nice to think about that. It was nice to think about her. But it didn’t do you any good. And now you think about only the things that’ll do you some good. And it’s the bad things that do you good. Do you realize that? You get good from bad. That isn’t possible, but that’s what you’re getting. From Lizann. And from Earl.

A gun from Lizann and an idea from Earl.

Bowen had hidden the gun in the stable. In the stall where Renda’s chestnut mare was kept, he had pried loose one of the boards against the back wall and slipped the gun behind it. There, because the barracks offered no safe place to hide it. Getting it again, when the time came, would be another problem.