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bringing the bottle back up to his lips again.
    Above him, on the rock overhang, he heard a sound. A few pebbles clattered down, falling nearby.
    Tahini looked up.
    "Great Spirit. . ." he mumbled. Then, his eyes widening, "No . . ."
    Something tall and wide spread its wings above him.
    "Oh, no," Tahini said.
    As the thing dropped down upon him in a flutter of feathers, he held the empty bottle out futilely in defense and supplication.

Chapter Seven
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    Lincoln Reeves felt more than a sense of annoyance.
    I should have known, he thought. I should have known the old man would take off without me.
    Adjusting himself on the saddle, Lincoln thought about just how long it had been since he had ridden a horse like this. Five years. In the past year, since he had taken over the sharecropper's farm, the only horses he had dealt with had been tied to a wagon or a plow. It made him feel inadequate, settled, and strangely old.
    Old, at twenty-eight.
    He laughed.
    Sore butt tonight.
    He had been lucky to find Marshal Murphy waiting for him at the station. If Murphy hadn't been there, he might have gone to Gates at the hotel, and from what Murphy had diplomatically told him that would have been a bad move. But Murphy had seemed like a decent sort, and the very fact that Lieutenant Mullin had trusted the lawman to meet him and tell him where Thomas was headed was enough for Reeves. He tried to be madder at Thomas Mullin but found himself incapable of more than annoyance.
The old man could have waited for me.
    Thinking on that, he knew how foolish it was. Thomas would have wanted to get moving right away, not hang around in Tucson, pretty as it was. Reeves promised himself he would see the sights before he left, after this business was over.
    Momentarily, guilt assaulted him, thinking of his wife and child. He hadn't even sent the telegram he'd promised when he got in, just picked up the saddled and provisioned mount Thomas provided for him, and headed out.
    I'll have to send that telegram as soon as I can.
    Once again, he was torn between home and here. It was a hard thing to admit to himself that he missed this life. In a way, he even missed the Army. If Lieutenant Mullin had stayed in the Army, he knew he might very well have stayed with him, despite Matty's wishes. But that was something, thank heaven, that he didn't have to agonize over, since the Army eased Thomas out as soon as Grierson retired. Though they'd done it gently enough, and made it look grand, it had been obvious to everyone that Captain Seavers, now back in Washington after his disastrous tenure at Fort Davis, had used all his power — or at least all the power that his own marriage to a general's daughter had given him — to eject Thomas as quickly and ignominiously as possible. It had all left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, since, if there had been any justice in the world, Thomas would have had a command instead of an honorable discharge. . . .
Ride, Lincoln, don't think.
    But thinking was part of what he missed. In the time he had been with Lieutenant Mullin, he had learned how to read, and how to think. Thomas's was the sharpest mind he had ever met, and the man was a marvel. He looked at the world under a microscope, and saw things no one else did.
    Which reminded Reeves that Lieutenant Mullin had ridden out without him.
    Couldn't wait an extra day for me.
    Laughing, feeling already at home in the saddle despite his sore butt muscle, Reeves kicked the mount forward to find his old friend.
    But by nightfall, he hadn't done that. He had found the markers on the map Thomas left with Murphy easily enough, but there was no sign of the old man there. He had expected a camp, but found only saguaro cactus and smooth desert plain. The Baboquivari mountains lay in the distance, rising shadows out of the coming night, and Lincoln felt suddenly alone. His annoyance with Thomas threatened to turn to anger, a feeling easier to deal with than the growing apprehension