John had run across Kane Wootan when he was riding out to get horses for a pack up to the mine. John had seen the lone rider in a cienega not too far from the Garden cabin, which was their home and base camp, though there wasn't nobody to live there now, except them, and John didn't think it likely he and Tom would be back there soon.

“I thought this might have been my horse,” Kane Wootan had said, indicating the roan he had cornered between some rock and a great pile of deadfall washed down by the creek. Kane had worked out a lasso and was holding it at his far side so that maybe John couldn't see it. But John saw the lasso, and the gun, too.

“It ain't,” John said.

“Yeah. Well, I see that now.”

“I bet you do.”

“Look, Powers. It's a mistake, and it's my mistake. All right?”

“It's ‘Power,’ not ‘Powers.’ I don't even know anyone named ‘Powers.’”

“Well, damn, Power. I'm just full of mistakes this morning, I guess.”

“You got a mistake in your hand over there on the other side. And there's another riding your hip.”

“I made a mistake. All right? A mistake. I'm sorry.”

“You're all full of mistakes, Wootan. The worst one is thinking you can just take one of our horses with not a bit of trouble.”

Wootan brought his right hand up slowly and then carefully looped the rope around his saddle horn as if to show he no longer had use for it. But the same action also freed up his right hand in case he needed to go for his gun. “There,” he said to John. “That make you feel any better?”

“I don't guess I'm going to feel any better until I can't see you anymore.”

“Look. I lost a horse. It's a little roan, just like this one here, only it's got a bit of white under the right eye, which this one ain't. I see that now. You say it's your horse, it's your horse. And I don't mean any harm.”

“What's going on here?” Tom asked, riding up.

“He says he lost a horse.” John nodded at Wootan.

“And so he found one of ours,” Tom said.

“It's yours. I got no argument. I also ain't got no idea who you stole it from, but it wasn't me, so it ain't any of my business.”

“It's a horse thief calling us horse thieves, John. What do you think we ought to do about that?”

Suddenly, John was worried. He was apt to fly off the handle and cause trouble and violence, but when he calmed down, he didn't want trouble. Tom was the opposite. Tom thought about trouble before he started it. He was thinking about trouble right now. John could tell, and he didn't want any of it. “He says it was a mistake.”