When Jeff returned from the mill in mid-April, only Melvin was at the cabin. The rest were looking for their sorrel mare, which had either jumped the corral or been stolen. They believed the latter. It would be difficult to find a stolen horse in these mountains. Gold and silver had been found at the base of the foothills, and it stood to reason that the horse had come down from the mountain itself. The canyons that drained the mountain's runoff were thick with prospectors and layabouts, trying for an easy strike. Any of a hundred or so could have taken the horse.

Jeff rode down one draw, looking for the horse, and then up the next. Sam and Melvin had given up the search, accepting the loss of the horse against the time spent looking for it, but Jeff was obsessed. The spring runoff was in full force, and he had to pick his way carefully, occasionally riding through streams swollen to near the height of his horse's belly.

On the morning of the fifth day, he came down a ragged little canyon and right up onto the sorrel mare, tied to a bit of scrub oak. A hundred yards farther on, he surprised a miner coming out of the brush, buttoning his fly.

“That horse,” Jeff said.

“That horse, what?”

“Yours?”

The miner tilted his head at Jeff, a set to his jaw. “Yeah. Mine. What of it?”

“I don't think it's yours. I think it's mine.”

“What are you trying to pull here, mister?”

“I ain't pulling nothing. I just want my horse back.”

“That ain't your horse.”

“You think it ain't my horse, but, by God, I know my own horse.”

The miner turned and waved his hand at Jeff as if dismissing him for a fool. He took two steps forward to where his rifle rested against the trunk of a pine. Jeff saw where he was going, and as the miner reached for the rifle, Jeff let go with first one barrel of his 10 gauge, then the other. The miner was slammed into the brush next to the tree. Jeff did not need to look to know he was dead.

It was a hell of a thing. He had come only to collect his rightful property, and now there was a man dead, and there would be law involved. He was within his rights. The man was going for his gun, and he was a horse thief to boot. But the law was a slow and laborious process that was bound to cost Jeff far more than the horse was worth.