Willow saw a stillness come over Caleb, the ingathering of muscle and concentration of a cat about to spring. Far below and off to the left, two riders were crossing the distant park at a hard canter. He levered a shell into the rifle’s firing chamber and began tracking the second of the two riders.

«Are you going to shoot them without even finding out who they are?» Willow asked, her voice strained.

«I know who they are.»

«But —»

«Look up that mountain,» Caleb interrupted savagely. «Do you see any cover, any place to hide a person, much less seven horses, if someone starts shooting from below?»

«No,» Willow said unhappily.

«Think about it, southern lady. Once we leave that grove, we’re sitting ducks.»

Willow laced her fingers together and held on hard, trying not to tremble while Caleb shifted position very slightly, never taking his eyes from the men below.

«How about it?» he asked without looking away from the men. «You want to take a chance on those two being God-fearing, church-going boys who just happened to be taking a long ride over a hard, little-known pass that leads to nothing but another long ride and another little-known pass?»

«No,» she whispered.

Caleb smiled grimly. «Don’t sound so unhappy, honey. At this range I’ll be lucky to get close enough to scare them.» He sighted on the second man but made no effort to take slack off the trigger. «Wish to hell Wolfe was here. That man is pure hell with a rifle.»

A misty rain began to fall as the two riders vanished into the forest that ringed the park. If they followed the tracks, they would emerge again at the bottom of the slope in twenty minutes. Caleb lowered the rifle and turned to Willow.

«You better go back to the grove,» he said. «If one of those men has a big-bore Sharps rifle, things could get real lively in these rocks.»

«At this range?»

«I’ve seen men killed at six hundred yards with a big Sharps. I’ve heard of men killed at eight hundred yards.»

«How far down is it to the park?» Willow asked.

«Less than a thousand feet straight down. Where they’ll come out of the trees, they’re maybe six hundred yards away. That wouldn’t be a problem for Wolfe, but I’m only middling good with a long gun. Get moving, honey.»

Willow started to come to her feet, only to be yanked down by Caleb.

«Those damn fools are coming straight up! They must be afraid they’ll lose us in the rain!»

The men burst out of the trees about nine hundred yards away, spurring their horses in great lunges, climbing diagonally across the mouth of an avalanche chute. Caleb tracked the second man with the rifle but did not shoot. They would have tocriss — cross that chute, and others, several times before they gained the cover of the grove where seven horses were concealed. At a normal pace it would take the men half an hour to climb to where Caleb and Willow were concealed, yet the men were less than three thousand feet away as a rifle bullet flew, and they were closing fast.

«Keep your head down,» Caleb ordered.

Crouched among the cold rocks, Willow watched the only thing she could see — Caleb Black. He was both motionless and relaxed, holding the rifle easily, waiting for the men to come closer. His eyes were those of a bird of prey, intent and clear. No tension showed in his hands or in his face. Willow wondered how many times he had waited like this during the war, utterly still, watching prey that were also men come closer with each instant.

Aiming low to compensate for the steep slope, Caleb squinted into the shifting veil of rain and squeezed the trigger. The rifle leaped in his hands. Before the report echoed away down the mountainside, he fired quickly, repeatedly, levering bullets into the firing chamber without drawing the rifle barrel off target.

The second man yelled and grabbed his right arm. The first man drew his rifle from its saddle scabbard, but was forced to drop the weapon and hang onto the saddle horn with both hands as his horse started plunging wildly down the slope. Bullets whined and ricocheted off stone, sending sharp rock chips flying around the horses’ feet and stinging their bellies. Bucking, sliding on their hocks, fighting their riders every step of the way, the horses tried to bolt back down the mountainside.

Swearing beneath his breath because he had missed one of the men and failed to seriously wound the other, Caleb kept levering in bullets and firing. When a bullet whined off a nearby boulder, the uninjured rider spurred his horse savagely. It panicked, lost its footing, and rolled head over heels downhill. The rider didn’t kick clear of the stirrups in time. When the horse regained its feet and plunged on down the mountainside, the rider stayed sprawled on the rocky slope. The second rider looked back but kept going, abandoning his partner to whatever fate awaited.

Caleb let out a long breath, sighted, and squeezed the trigger very gently. The rifle leaped. The fleeing rider pitched forward for an instant, then struggled upright once more. The forested flank of the mountain reached out, swallowing up horse and rider before Caleb could fire again. The skirmish had lasted less than a minute.

«Damnation.»

Silence came, almost stunning in the aftermath of the rifle fire. Willow looked up and shook her head, dazed by the number of times Caleb had shot. She had heard of repeating rifles, but had never seen one in action. The amount of bullets one man could shoot in a short time was frightening.

«You’re a one-man army with that rifle,» she said faintly.

«Some godforsaken army,» Caleb muttered, scowling bleakly down the slope as he methodically fed shells into the rifle, replacing those he had used. «Can’t hit the broad side of a barn at six hundred yards.»

«In this light you’d be lucky to see the barn.» Shifting so that she could look through a crack between rocks, Willow peereddownslope. «Looks like you hit one of them.»

«His stupidity laid him low, not me. Damn fool spurred his horse when it was already scared enough to jump over the moon. Horse went down and so did he.»

«Is he alive?»

Caleb shrugged and continued peering down the mountainside over his rifle barrel, trying to pick out any motion of a horse returning or a man moving up to the edge of the forest to return Caleb’s fire.

Thedrumroll of running horses drifted back up the slope, thehoofbeats sounding thick and slurred in the silence that had followed the sharp, distinct reports of the rifle.

«Time to go,» Caleb said.

«What about him?» Willow asked, looking at the fallen rider.

«He’s counting the wages of sin. Leave him to it.»

7

Caleb led the way up and across the wet, rocky slope at a pace that was just short of suicidal. Even his big horses were breathing hard before they cleared the ridgeline and began winding down the other side. The forest grew higher on the far side of the mountain, embracing Caleb and Willow almost immediately. Spruce and fir became mixed once more with aspen. The rain diminished to nothing more than a wet whisper. Aspen trunks glowed with a ghostly radiance.

There were many possible paths off the mountain. Caleb ignored the obvious ones as he pressed on around the shoulder, zigzagging through the steepest parts, always descending. As he rode, he pulled out his father’s journal and checked landmarks against those his father had noted.

When Caleb finallysignalled a stop, Willow glanced numbly at the sun. It was several hours until sunset on what had become the longest day of her life. She had gone from exhaustion to a grim kind of indifference. It took her several minutes to realize that Caleb had vanished. She pulled the shotgun from its scab bard, clung to thesaddlehorn, and waited for him to emerge from the shifting play of forest and clearings.

The pale, chill mist of the heights had given way to broken clouds. A restless wind cried softly through evergreens and made aspen quiver with a sound like distant rain. When the sun broke through the clouds, it burned with a pure, intense heat that soon had Willow removing her jacket, unlacing her buckskin shirt and furtively unbuttoning the soft red flannel beneath to allow the breeze to cool her.

The soft, eerie cry of Caleb’s harmonica warned Willow that he had returned. Relieved, she put the shotgun back in the scabbard and urged Dove forward. Caleb emerged from the forest ahead, riding Trey. He had long since shed hisshearling jacket and leather vest, and had unfastened several buttons on his wool shirt as well.

«If there’s anyone around, he’s leaving fewer tracks than a shadow,» Caleb said. «Come on. According to Dad’s journal, there’s a good campsite just ahead.»

«Are we really going to camp so early?» Willow asked, trying and failing to keep the hope from her voice.

«The Arabians are game, but they’re not used to altitude. If we don’t rest them, you’ll be afoot by this time tomorrow. That would be a shame, because by this time tomorrow we’re going to have God’s own storm.»

Willow measured the sky with dazed hazel eyes. It had looked a lot worse and only spit a few drops.

«It will rain, southern lady. If we were still a thousand feet higher, it would snow.»

«Snow?» Willow asked, unconsciously flapping her buckskin shirt to allow more cooling air beneath.

«Snow,» he repeated.

What Caleb didn’t say was that they should push on without resting, for a storm could easily close any of the several passes between them and the San Juan region for a day or a week. But Willow looked too pale for Caleb’s comfort, almost transparent, and there were deep lavender smudges beneath her eyes.