He crossed the plain, staying to the east of the small hills, avoiding his most likely threat, which would come from Tucson or Redington if anyone had had time to get to a telephone. It took him nearly an hour from the bosque into the outskirts of the Carlink ranch. He stopped at the first stock tank and drank and filled his canteen and water bags.

He saw the rider coming from several hundred yards away. There was nowhere to go. Even if he untied the horses and spurred the mule toward the lower hills, the rider would see him and know exactly where he had gone. He took the .30-30 from the scabbard on his saddle and stood behind the mule, watching the rider approach.

With one eye it was hard to judge distance. It would be a difficult shot, not knowing exactly how far away the rider was. But a single rider was not a great danger. The danger would come from a group of riders. No one was going to come for fugitives of a gunfight alone. They would travel in groups.

At a little over a hundred yards, he recognized the rider as Poke. And it was Poke he had come to find. It was as though things had somehow turned his way, though he guessed they hadn't. He had had bad days in his life, but nothing like this. The day had simply broke bad, and he guessed it was going to stay on that path for a while. A long while, he guessed.

“Holy God, Tom. What happened to you?”

“Poke. It all tightened down. That thing tightened, just like I figured it was going to.”

“Well, goddamn. It did, huh? That's a hell of a thing. A hell of a thing.” Alvin Blyer was a big, raw-boned cowboy. No one called him Alvin, only “Poke” for his fondness for cards. He was on the bad end of his life, pushing fifty, managing the horses for the Carlink outfit, still in the saddle when he needed to be in an armchair or at least an office chair. Sitting on his horse, he looked all right, but when he dismounted, you could see the wear he had taken in the long years of being a cowboy. He had been broken up more than it was good to think about. He wore a pair of battered spectacles, and his hands looked to be a thousand years old, the fingers all pointing off in different directions from being broken so many times.

“Anyone around here know about it yet?”

“This is the first I've heard of it. How bad was it?”

“Pretty bad. The Old Man's dead or right up on to it. And there's three more up there.”

“Who's that?”

“The Graham County bunch.”

“All of them?”

“I think so,” Tom said.

“Well, I ain't heard a word of it, so maybe not. You killed two?”

“Three. The Wootan kid was there, too.”

“Kane?”

“Yeah. Him.”