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twisting canyons and arroyos, and beyond them barren mountains that looked like great heaps of ashes spilled on the desert. It was a hard wild land, crisscrossed by rattlesnakes, scalp-hungry Apaches, Mexican smugglers, white renegades, and other varmints, all doing their best to preserve the balance of nature at everyone else’s expense. But although there were times when he hated it, most of the time he loved it. He loved every rock and stunted shrub. He loved the clear clean air, the cloudless blue sky, the hot sun and the dry wind. He loved it all because he was a part of it, and knew this was where he belonged.
    Then he saw the dust ahead and remembered that it was a very dangerous country to travel alone. Apaches were what he thought of first. But Apaches didn’t raise clouds of dust and they didn’t travel the white man’s road, except when being marched from one reservation to another. He slowed the Appaloosa to a prancing trot and soon halted in the road facing six of the meanest white men in the West.
    There was wall-eyed Pike Lefferts and his brother Bear, both big, black-bearded men in their forties. The others, spread out in the road behind them, were all younger men by several years, but every bit as ugly and hard-looking. There was Scar-face Harry, who had once fancied himself an explosives expert. The last bank job had literally blown up in his face, and he hadn’t heard much since except a funny ringing in his ears. Beside him was Rattlesnake Sam, who had a peculiar way of holding his small head like a rattler about to strike. Sticky-fingered Dave was a slight blond fellow with a sheepish grin and gleaming pale eyes that ranged over Curly’s new brown suit and paused on the wide cartridge belt and the walnut-butted .45’s in the tied-down holsters. Mad Dog Shorty was a small funny looking man in a baggy old suit and a derby, with the stub of a cigar clenched between his wide-spaced little teeth. His face twitched when Curly grinned at him, and he rode his horse up abreast of Pike and Bear and sat there bent forward in his saddle peering at Curly with wild hatred swimming in his half-crazed watery eyes.
    “Morning, boys,” Curly said cheerfully. “You’re just in time for the funeral.”
    Pike squinted at him with one small sharp eye, while the other one, wide open and alarmed, seemed to be looking past him down the road toward town. “What funeral?”
    “Yours,” Curly said, resisting the impulse to look back over his shoulder.
    Mad Dog Shorty trembled with anger and fondled the handle of a bowie at his belt. A few of the others let their hands drift toward their guns.
    “You tryin’ to make us laugh, Curly?” Pike asked, and one or two of the others did laugh, though it sounded a little forced. “There’s six of us and one of you.”
    “You don’t like them odds?” Curly asked. “Would you like for me to turn my back and let you boys get over there behind them rocks?”
    They didn’t like that and for a long tense moment they watched him out of cold narrow eyes, ready to grab their guns.
    “You boys are right on the edge of the volcano,” Curly said. “Better back off.”
    Scar-face Harry turned his head about, trying to listen first with one ear and then the other. Finally he leaned his head over toward Rattlesnake Sam and muttered, ‘’What’s he sayin’?”
    “He says we’re on the edge of hell,” Rattlesnake told him.
    “Son of a bitch,” Scar-face Harry said.
    Pike decided to heed Curly’s warning. He knew Curly couldn’t get them all, but he knew Curly could get him, and that was all he was concerned about. So he made himself relax and folded his hands on the saddlehorn in plain sight. “We got more important things on our minds right now than you, Curly,” he said. “Bear thinks he saw Johnny Ringo ride by the ranch goin’ toward town. You seen him, Curly?”
    Curly grinned. “You boys seeing ghosts? You bushwhacked Ringo, remember?”
    “Who says so?” Pike