He was sliding down the loose bank of the arroyo when he heard a noise that stopped him in his tracks: the slam of a car door. He stood frozen, listening, while his muscles tensed with the instinct to flee. He could hear nothing more, nothing but the whine of cicada and from somewhere down the wash the occasional zoom and groan of a striking bullbat. Quickly but carefully he stepped over the stretch of sand that separated him from the mare, put one hand over her nostrils to prevent a possible nicker and with the other, letting the bridle fall, reached up over the saddle and slid the rifle out of its smooth worn case. He laid the barrel across the saddlebow, leaving the action uncocked, and waited.

For what seemed like a long time, perhaps five minutes, he heard nothing unusual. He could see very little, with the high bank of the arroyo directly in front of him, and the night closing in. Although his cover was good there in the darkness under the trees and between the walls of the arroyo, he was also painfully aware that if he should be discovered he would be pretty well boxed in, with escape possible only by a run down the wash toward the mesa. And he had not even had a chance to bridle the mare. Balancing the rifle with his forearm, he started to untie the rope around Whisky’s neck that tethered her to the picket.

Then he saw and almost felt a beam of light that swung quickly through the air over his head, danced over the leaves of the cottonwoods and disappeared. A few seconds later he heard the crunch and scrape of gravel under heavy, slow feet. He heard no voices, however, and gratefully assumed that he probably had only one man to deal with. The footsteps approached the bank of the arroyo—while Burns stopped breathing, his thumb set firm on the hammer—and then halted, not coming to the edge. Burns listened; he watched the top of the bank but could see only the dark sky and the tall slender black silhouette of a yucca. From down the arroyo he heard the roar of a bullbat again.

Presently, after a minute or so, he heard the author of the footsteps tramping off, this time apparently in the direction of the old house. Listening intently, he heard the steps grow fainter, then the short crash of a dislodged rock, the rattle of a loose board. He lifted the carbine up from its rest on the saddlebow and wedged it between the cantle and the bedroll, and bent down and felt around on the sand for the bridle. He found it without trouble, disentangled the reins from the headstall, forced the bit into the mare’s mouth, slipped the stall over her ears and buckled the throatlatch. He was ready now; he reached for the carbine again and waited and listened, breathing, slowly and quietly.

He heard nothing, nothing human, for another five minutes; then came the second slam of an automobile door and he breathed more freely. When he heard an engine starting he left the mare and struggled up the bank of the arroyo, and saw the car at once, a dull lustre of enamel and chrome backing and turning on the old wagon road below the ruin. He watched the car get turned around, start forward and go bouncing down the rutted, twisted road, rocks clanging on its fenders, brakelights flicking on and off, the headlights sweeping over a forlorn landscape of boulders and cactus and crouching juniper.