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horses and quirt them away. They fled, racing down the canyon, sometimes two men to a pony and the gunfire followed them for as long as they were in range.
    The gunfire died away.
    McAllister stood, suddenly bereft of strength.
    A soft whimper drew his eyes around and he saw the Apache he had shot give his last kicks before he died. There seemed dead all around him – men lying huddled between rocks, a man stretched across a boulder, a man lying on his back with his face shot away. Death was everywhere.
    He looked up and saw nothing. No sign of the men who had so miraculously rescued him. Puzzled, he reloaded the Henry and walked out into the canyon toward the still standing canelo, eyes wary for any wounded Apache, because one wounded was as dangerous as a lion. But none lived. The gunfire from above had been totally lethal.
    He wondered who the men were who had saved him and wondered more why they did not show themselves. One thing he was sure of was that the men up there had been the reason why the Apache had attacked him with such resolution.
    As he stepped into the saddle, he wondered if the men up there had anything to do with Sam Spur’s disappearance. Uneasy, he moved off down canyon. As he rode, he kept a chin on either shoulder, not only for the Indians, but for the men who had saved him. There was something here that he did not understand and not to understand is to fear. Healthy fear was what had kept him alive on the frontier for so long.
    He reasoned that, as the men on the canyon wall had not shown themselves, it was possible that their intention had been more to do damage to the Apache than to rescue him. If it had been a normal rescue in Indian country, somebody would have hailed him. But the canyon wall was still utterly deserted. Not even a wisp of dust came from up there. Something was wrong.
    He came to the spot where Sam’s tracks had disappeared. If he had sense, he would have ridden the canelo horse away from there as fast as he could go, but he knew that he would not. Something had happened to Sam and he wanted to know what. Maybe Sam was in real trouble. He had been set afoot here about a week back and he could be dead by now. He could have been injured in a fall, but neither of the horses had shown any sign of having a fall. Besides, there was that bullet graze on the bay. McAllister reckoned that Sam had been fired on and it would not have surprised him to find his body among the rocks. Maybe mutilated by the Indians. That seemed the obvious explanation. But it didn’t explain the wiping out of the sign to his satisfaction.
    Maybe the explanation lay with the men who had rescuedhim … maybe …
    He dismounted and ground-hitched the canelo, finding his way among the boulders to the wall of the canyon, searching it more carefully than he had before. His search was long and patient, broken every few moments for a good watchful look up and down canyon. He could be caught again like a rat in a trap and he didn’t like it overly.
    Then he saw it.
    The edge of a hoof mark in the sand close to a boulder. Somebody had wiped tracks carelessly here. He concentrated now with a fierce intensity, searching to left and right and finding flat rock on both hands. He got down on hands and knees and crawled a dozen yards, examining the rock minutely, and found nothing. He went back and tried the other way, giving the rock the same close attention.
    He was about to give up when he found it. The faint mark of an iron-shod horse’s hoof. He went on.
    Another and another mark. He had no idea how many animals had come this way, but he knew that at least one had. He rounded a giant boulder and there was the trail in front of him, snaking up the side of the canyon, narrow and possibly dangerous, but it could be negotiated by a man leading his horse.
    He went back and fetched his horse, leading it through the rocks and starting slowly up the narrow trail.

Chapter 4
    It was something of a