“And don't they always say it was a mistake? Life is just one big mistake for some people.”

“Let him go, Tom. Just let him ride off.”

“I ain't looking for trouble,” Wootan said. “Like your brother says, Tom, just let me ride off.”

“You don't want trouble, Kane, don't come out here.”

“You're all talking pretty big, the two of you. If my brothers was here, you wouldn't be talking this big.”

“We don't change our talking because of the company.”

“All right, then. How about you meet us tomorrow down to Klondyke?”

Tom smiled and nodded. “We'll do that, then.”

And they had. Both Tom and John took off at daybreak and made their way down Rattlesnake Canyon and then up Rattlesnake Mesa and back down to Klondyke. Both were armed, and John was about to throw up over the tension of it all. Tom rode easy and took a shot at a white-tailed deer but missed. It seemed like he was on his way to a social.

When they got to Klondyke, there was no fight. The Wootans were there, Joe, Braz, and Kane, and they were armed, too. But no one ever reached for his gun. There was bootleg whiskey there, and everyone had a couple of good drinks of that and talked about the weather, which was unusually dry, and someone, maybe Joe, had said some things about the war, which was pretty much the first time John had heard about the war over in France. And then they all just got on their horses and rode back the way they had come. No one talked about roping horses or cows or goats or anything. It was as though they had all come to town to sample the latest in illegal whiskey, which, perhaps, they had.

There were more antelope, small herds of them, crossing the valley. John badly wanted to shoot one. He was hungry, getting hungrier, and figuring that the prospects for satisfying that hunger weren't good. He had more of the corn bread crumbs in his coat pocket, and there were some beans back at the camp where Tom and Sisson were sleeping. The beans would be eaten cold, but that sounded fine to him.

Then there was another herd of antelope, only as it got closer, he saw it wasn't antelope but riders. He put the binoculars to his eye and glassed them. He recognized a couple of them, cowboys he had worked with a time or two, and Johnny, who worked the Klondyke store on and off. But what really caught his attention was the one riding lead—Braz Wootan, Kane's brother, the one who had been in the truck the night before. If they spotted John or the others, there would be a fight. There was no question. Braz wasn't the sort to wait on justice for Kane. He would try to settle scores right there.