Sisson had already slowed to a moderate walk when Tom came springing past him. “They've split up. One's going southwest, and another's going due south.” He didn't need to fill in the information that the third was going southeast.

“Out ahead of us?” Sisson asked.

“Looks like it. We're going to need to find a place to hide out and let them go past. It's our only real hope, to go behind them. Any way you look at it, it's bad.”

John was stopped ahead, waiting for them. “Any chance of just outrunning them?”

“Always a chance of everything. But this don't look good. That truck's coming up fast. There's got to be some kind of road up there. It ain't running across bare ground like that. It would have busted an axle or something by now. You know of any roads out this way, Sisson?”

“Hell. They're all over the place. They just throw their wire and poles and stuff into the trucks now and ride out to do the fences. Just sitting on their asses. It's too easy. They got roads all over the damned place.”

“What are we going to do?” John asked.

“I don't know,” Tom said. “I just don't goddamned know. I been down through this country, but I can't say I know it. We can try to Apache it—go as far as we can, then curl up into the landscape and hope they don't see us. I think we got to keep going forward. I don't much like just sitting here, waiting for them to pick us off.”

“That worked back up in the Dragoons.”

“It's low percentage, and I think we done shot our wad with that one.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1916

In the days before and after the election, McBride thought about his strange encounter with Tom Power. The expected Democratic sweep hadn't happened. He, President Wilson, and Governor Hunt were the only Democrats who won, and Hunt lost Graham County by over two hundred votes. And McBride's election was closer than he expected or wanted. McBride took 730 out of 1,600 votes cast, less than 50 percent. McBride thought he may have to rethink some things, including the offer by Power. Power was an odd figure in Graham County. He was never in actual trouble, but he always seemed nearby when it happened. He was a likeable, good-looking kid. Oddly, it seemed to McBride, Power might have had a point about his value as a deputy. Power did know the southern boundaries of the county, and he knew the cowboys and miners who populated it.