Grotto of the Dancing Deer : And Other Stories

Chapter I SIX-GUN INVITATION

A gust of wind swept up the canyon and set the thing that hung in the cottonwood to swaying. Stanley Packard’s horse shied, skittish, as the rope creaked against the limb. Packard spoke softly to the animal and reached out to pat its neck.

The horse quieted and Packard spurred closer, staring up at the man who hung there. Something familiar in that grotesque shape, something that struck a chord of memory in him.

A cloud sailed clear of the moon and light struck down through the autumn-thinned leaves of the mighty tree … light that for a moment revealed the face bent at an awkward angle against the hangman’s knot.

The eyes were open in terror and the pressure of the rope pressed the jaws tighter than they should have been, but there was no mistaking the face. Too many times had Packard seen that face, leering eyes squinted against the smoke that drooled from a cigarette hanging from its lips. Hanging could not change the tiny, well-cared-for mustache nor death wipe away the old knife scar that ran along the cheek.

The body swayed slowly, like a pendulum, and the dead eyes stared at the moon. The boots dangled pitifully, toes hanging down, as if the man were reaching for the earth. The hands were tied behind the back and a tiny stream of blood had drooled from one corner of the mouth, leaving a dark stain meandering down the chin.

A sudden chill struck into Packard, a chill that was not of the autumn night. Swiftly he looked around, panic rising in him.

But there was no sign of life except the twinkle of the few lights far down the canyon, lights that marked the outskirts of the town of Hangman’s Gulch. Otherwise there was only rock and scrub, and here and there a tree, bare limbs lifted against the night.

Packard’s hand went up to his coat, fingers pressing against the letter in the inside pocket. A rustle of paper told him it still was there.

He let his hand fall back again and shuddered. If that letter had caught up with him a little quicker, if he’d come a little sooner, there might have been two men on that limb instead of one.

Cardway, of course, hadn’t written exactly what he had in mind. But it wasn’t hard to guess, wasn’t hard to read between the lines. Not too hard when Packard remembered the straight thin lips with the dangling cigarette that poured smoke into those leering, squinting eyes.

But now, he told himself, he’d never know for sure what Cardway had in mind. Men who decorate a cottonwood don’t make explanations.

Carefully Packard backed his horse away from the cottonwood, back into the trail, headed once again for Hangman’s Gulch.

The trail broadened out into a street as the canyon flared to make a pocket, with the shacks and tents that were Hangman’s Gulch clambering up the two slopes.

Packard made note of places as the horse clopped down the street. A stagecoach stood, horseless, in front of the express office. The place blazed with light and two men armed with rifles sat just inside the door.

Sounds of revelry came from the Crystal Palace, the tinny tinkle of an out-of-tune piano, the shrill laughter of a woman, the drunken shout of some miner in to drink his dust.

In an empty restaurant a Chinese sprawled across a table, fast asleep. A barber next door trimmed industriously while a long row of men waited for the shears. Two men sat, hiked back in tilted chairs, in front of the livery stable. Just beyond stood a two-story structure, the word “Hotel” painted in a sprawl across one lighted window.

Packard pulled up at the stable, swung himself from the saddle. One of the men thumped down on his chair, clumped forward, picking his teeth with a stem of hay.

“Do somethin’ for you, stranger?”

“Got any grain for the horse?” asked Packard. “He’s been on the go all day.”

The man shook his head. “Nothin’ but hay. Good stuff, though. Can’t get no grain freighted in. Costs too much.”

Packard nodded, remembering the trail that he had covered. Freight would be costly along a road like that.

“If you come all the way from Devil’s Slide,” said the man, “you know what I mean.”

Packard smiled tightly. He recognized the words as a way to ask a question in a country where questions were something one simply did not ask.

“No harm in saying I came from Devil’s Slide, is there?” asked Packard.

The man scratched his chin with dirty fingernails. “Can’t say as there is, stranger. Didn’t happen to see anyone along the way, did you?”

“Aw, hell, Clint,” said the man still tilted against the stable, “he wouldn’t see anyone. The Canyon gang don’t bother with nothin’ except stagecoaches plumb weighed down with dust.”

“Only man I saw,” Packard told them, “was hanging in that old cottonwood just outside of town.”

“Oh, him,” said Clint. “He was a hombre who wandered in a couple weeks ago. The vigilantes got him.”

“Vigilantes?”

“Damn tootin’,” declared Clint. “This here town is plumb going to get civilized or bust a lung tryin’. Been too much hell-raisin’ to suit the citizens.”

“Shoot someone?” asked Packard.

The man tilted against the stable supplied the answer. “Yeah, he killed someone all right. One of the guards down at the express office.”

Packard nodded. “I see. Trying to stick up the place.”

“Hell no,” said the man. “Just met him on the street in broad daylight and let him have it. Never gave no reason.”

“Funny thing,” said Packard.

“Ain’t it,” the man agreed.

“Must of knowed him somewhere else,” Clint opined. “Maybe been followin’ him.”

The stable man moved away, leading the horse inside the barn.

“If you want to wash up,” said the other man, “the horse trough is out in back.”

Packard smiled. “Maybe I will,” he said.

“Crystal Palace is the only bar in town,” said the man, “and that place next door is the only hotel. If you don’t go for hotels, Clint can fix you up a place where you can spread your blanket.”

“Thanks,” said Packard.

A man shuffled off the board sidewalk and moved through the darkness toward them. He was a small man, Packard saw, and he wore a checkered suit of black and white. A gold watch chain glittered across his vest.

His cheeks were puffed out like a gopher’s scurrying home with a load of grain and his lips were puffed out, too, in what seemed an eternal pout. A jaunty mustache rode his upper lip and struck a grotesque note.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the little man.

“Good evening,” said the man in the chair.

“I’m looking for my eye,” said the man. “You haven’t seen it, have you?”

The chair crashed forward and the man in it was aghast.

“You’re looking for your what!”

“My eye,” explained the little man. “It fell out and I lost it.”

He pointed toward the left side of his face, out of which stared an empty socket.

“It was a glass eye, you see,” he said. “It would look something like a marble.”

The man in the chair wheezed in bewilderment.

“No, I haven’t seen it. What makes you think you lost it here?”

“Don’t know where I lost it,” explained the little man. “Got drunk, you see, and when I sobered up it wasn’t there.”

“Oh, I see.”

“It might be most anywhere,” said the little man.

“I’ll keep a watch for it,” the man in the chair promised.

“I wish you would,” the other told him. “I feel undressed without it.” He turned and shuffled off, head bent, as if looking for the eye.

The man in the chair looked up at Packard.

“We get the damndest people here,” he apologized.

Packard stood with his elbows on the bar, nursing his drink and staring in the mirror.

The Crystal Palace roared with life. Through the buzz of voices came the clink of glasses, the whir of gambling wheels, occasionally the soft snick of chips from the poker tables in the back. In one corner an old man with a violin and a younger one with an accordion teamed with the out-of-tune piano, fought a losing battle with the throaty rumble that ran through the place.

So Preston Cardway had shot an express company guard and been hung by the vigilantes, his body left dangling in the tree as a sort of grim warning for any who might come riding down the trail!

Well, it was something anyhow, Packard told himself, staring at the bottle-stacked mirror, to have that kind of warning. Even if Cardway had to die to give it. Cardway, the damn fool, going off half-cocked and shooting down a man. Although he hardly could be blamed for thinking he could get away with it. In his day, Cardway had shot down many men in the main streets of many towns in broad daylight and gotten away with it. What reason could he have had to think it would be any different here?

Only there was something wrong. Something that didn’t click somehow. Hangman’s Gulch didn’t seem the kind of town that was cleaning up, not the kind of place where vigilantes rode to bring law and order.

For one thing, Hangman’s Gulch wasn’t old enough. It still was new and raw, a boom town scarcely dry behind the ears. There was too much yip and ki-yi in it. Towns don’t get civic conscious, Packard told himself, until the shiny newness is worn off of them.

A man elbowed his way through the throng, thrust himself alongside Packard. In the mirror, Packard studied him. A man with a white collar and a black cravat in which a diamond stickpin gleamed, the tie bunched above a fawn-colored vest that sported a slender chain with a dangling golden toothpick.

The man’s mouth moved. “A stranger, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” said Packard, talking to the reflection in the mirror rather than the man himself. “Just rolled in tonight.”

“My name,” said the man, “is Jason Randall. Owner of this place. Saw you here. Wanted to tell you that you’re welcome.”

“Mine is Packard,” Packard told him. “Stanley Packard. Just riding through.”

“Thought maybe you might stick around,” said Randall. “Lots of people do. Hangman’s Gulch is a good town. Won’t find none better between here and the coast.”

Packard studied the man with open interest. A slick customer, he figured. Ruthless and mean. Glossy and soft like a spider squatting in his web.

Randall’s eyes shifted away from Packard’s, stared beyond his shoulder. Packard swung around. A man stood just inside the swinging doors. A tall, straight man who didn’t wear a gun, a man whose silver hair was brushed back from his forehead like a gleaming crown of light, shining in the crystal lamps swaying from the ceiling. His head was high and he looked at the smoke-dimmed crowd with something that was close to pity on his face.

Someone on the floor saw the man standing by the door and shouted at him: “Hey, here’s Preacher. Come on, Preacher, belly up. I’ll stand you to a drink.”

The man did not move, eyes still searching the crowd. A woman tittered, a shrill, high sound that cut across the wheezing music, the rumble of many voices, the clatter of the wheels.

The man saw Randall now, stood staring at him for a moment, Randall staring back. Then, slowly, the man paced forward. The crowd parted to let him pass. Faces turned after him.

He halted in front of Randall. His voice was low: “Mr. Randall, could I see you for a moment?”

“Reverend,” boomed Randall, “anything you got to say to me, you can say right here.”

“It is scarcely—” began the man, but Randall cut him short.

“You want me to close up.”

The man nodded. “Sunday is the Lord’s day,” he said. “It is scarcely right that a place like this—”

“All that’s the matter with you, Reverend,” yelled Randall, “is that you’re sore because I have a crowd and you don’t have one. Because your two-bit sermons can’t compete with what I offer here.”

“It would only be for Sunday,” said the minister. “Say, from Saturday midnight until Monday morning. I have no quarrel with what is done on other days of the week, but on Sunday, certainly, there should be some peace and decorum. Drunken men should not be sprawled on the street so that ladies who come to my church have to walk out in the street to get around them.”

Randall spat on the floor. “Look, Reverend, you’re sticking in your nose where you have no call. I’m attending to my business and you attend to yours. If both of us do that, we’ll get along—”

Packard’s hand reached out, closed on Randall’s shoulder, spun him around with a vicious tug that pulled and twisted his coat tight against his body. With another savage tug, he drew the man close to him, so that their faces were no more than scant inches apart.

“Look,” said Packard, “where I come from we hold some respect for men who wear the cloth. Maybe we don’t agree with them, but at least we treat them decent.”

“Why, you dirty …” Randall’s hand was flashing toward his belt.

The minister moved swiftly, closing in on Randall, knocking his hand aside even as its fingers reached the gun. Deftly, the silver-haired man spun Randall’s gun from out the holster, caught it in mid-air.

“Take it easy, Reverend,” said Packard softly. “No use of you getting mixed up in this.”

He shoved Randall backward, sent him crashing against the bar.

“I had my left fist filled all the time,” said Packard. “If he’d ever got that gun I’d tore a hole dead center through his belly.” He stared at Randall. “I don’t like people who push other folks around,” he said. “If you make a move or any of your men make a move, you’ll be eating sawdust.”

A deathly silence had fallen on the place, a brilliant silence that glittered in the lamplight.

“I don’t care whether you close up or not,” said Packard. “It ain’t no skin off my nose either way around. But the next time you speak to the Reverend, be sure you are polite.”

The silence held, a tense and breathless silence.

“Reverend,” said Packard, “maybe you better get out of here. Seventeen different kinds of hell are apt to bust loose almost any—”

Packard’s head exploded with a mighty roar. Roman candles speared across the darkness and burst with a screaming sound that spewed whirling stars … stars that grew in size and brilliance as they whirled until they were eye-searing balls of light. He was falling into a foaming sea of brilliant light and he hit it and went under and the light was dark.

Chapter II GLASS BALLS—GLASS EYES

Slowly, Packard became aware of himself. Aware of pain that lanced across his head with throbbing, knife-like strokes. He raised his hands to his throbbing head.

“There, lad,” said a gentle voice. “Just lie back again.”

He groped for his belt, found the holster empty.

“Your guns are over on the table,” said the voice.

Packard opened his eyes and light tortured them. He shut them again, but he knew that he was not on the floor of the Crystal Palace nor sprawling in the street nor heaved in some back alley as something that had died.

“The bartender,” said the voice, “hit you with a bottle.”

Carefully Packard opened his eyes again, saw the face of the silver-haired man bending over him.

“Hi, Reverend,” he said.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” the man told him. “My name is Page and they call me Preacher Page. Mostly just Preacher.”

Packard hitched himself erect, saw that he had been lying on an old and battered sofa. Ponderously, he swung his feet to the floor, sat hunched on the sofa’s edge.

“How did I get here?” he asked.

“I carried you,” said Preacher Page. He chuckled. “It was the least I could do for you after what had happened.”

Packard glanced about the room. It was furnished shabbily, but it had a certain touch … a touch of home. A rickety rocking chair stood in the corner and there was an old oblong table with a lamp placed upon an embroidered scarf. There were pictures on the wall and some books on shelves.

His guns, he saw, were on the table beside the lamp.

“So the bartender hit me,” said Packard. “Then what happened?”

“Then one of Randall’s gunmen jerked out his weapon and was pointing it at you and I shouted at him and waved the gun I’d taken from Randall. I told them: ‘Gentlemen, I should regret to shoot you, but if you harm that young man, I shall have to do it.’”

“Would you have shot?” asked Packard.

The minister’s face twisted in a grimace. “Fortunately, I didn’t have to make that decision.”

Shakily, Packard got to his feet, crossed to the table, picked up the guns. Expertly he broke them one by one, spun the cylinders to check the cartridges, slid them into his belt again.

“Thanks, Preacher,” he said. “Thanks for all you did for me.”

“But you aren’t leaving?”

“Sure, I am. I got a date with Randall.”

Preacher gasped. “But you can’t. They’ll be waiting for you. They’ll—”

“If he wants to go, Father, let him go,” said a voice from the doorway.

Packard swung around.

A girl stood there. A girl one would have known anywhere as Preacher Page’s daughter. The same quiet face, the same level eyes. Plain, thought Packard. Plain, but pretty.

“Father,” said the girl, speaking to Packard, “always is bringing home broken-down saddle tramps or young brawlers who happen to get hurt.”

“But, Alice,” protested the old man, “this gentleman stood up for me. He’s the first man since I’ve come here who stood up for me—”

Thunderous knocking hammered at the outside door, and Packard spun around, right fist jerking clear a gun.

Preacher’s voice snapped at him, a voice with the edge of steel. “Put that away. In this house there’ll be no—”

“Preacher,” snarled Packard. “Open up that door. And be sure you stand to one side when you do it.”

“There’ll be no shooting,” said Preacher. “This is my house and there’ll be—”

Packard took a step toward him. “You heard me! Open up that door … quick and fast!”

The gun came up and Preacher moved swiftly, lithely toward the door, swung it open with a jerk. In the fan of light that streamed out into the earth-packed yard stood a tall man, a man with hair graying at the temples, with cheeks that looked like tanned and wrinkled leather, a handle-bar mustache that drooped affectionately over the corners of his mouth.

“Howdy, Preacher,” said the man.

“Hello, Hurley,” said Preacher gravely.

Hurley’s eyes fastened on Packard. “If you’re Packard,” he said, “I got to talk to you.”

“Talk away,” said Packard.

Swiftly the man stepped into the room, slammed the door behind him, stood with his back against it.

“You’d better hit the trail,” said Hurley. “Stover’s on the prod.”

“Who’s Stover?”

“Stover,” explained Preacher Page, “is Randall’s top-notch gun-hand. Deadly shot, I’m told.”

“So am I,” snapped Packard.

Hurley studied Packard quietly. “Just how good a shot?” he asked.

“Good enough for Stover,” Packard told him. “Good enough for any of the two-bit gunmen who hanker for my blood. Learned it in a circus. Fellow rode ahead of me and threw up glass balls, fast. I shot them in the air.”

“You should have stayed with the circus.”

“I was agreeable,” said Packard. “But they didn’t keep me.”

Hurley chewed at the corner of his mustache. “Found out who you were, huh?”

“That’s right,” said Packard. He stared at the man, a tight, grim-lipped stare. “How come you know?” he asked.

“I rode with your daddy,” said Hurley. “Was with him when he died. Would know you anywhere. At that time he looked just like you do now.”

Hurley looked at Page. “One word of this, Preacher,” he warned, “and I personally will plumb tie you into knots.”

“Gentlemen,” said Page, “I haven’t heard a thing.”

Hurley opened the door, asked: “How about it, kid?”

Packard holstered his gun. “Just point out this Stover to me.”

The board walks were frosty beneath their boots as Packard and Hurley climbed the steps that led to the porch of the Crystal Palace. Inside the lights still burned and a dawdling swamper wielded a broom. Back of the bar the bartender was yawning and cleaning up the glassware. A drunk was sleeping it off at a table in the corner.

Hurley led the way across the room toward a door that led into the back. The swamper went on sweeping and the bartender took no notice of them. The drunk snored and sputtered in his sleep, thrashing his arms on the table top.

Packard felt the hair stir at the base of his neck. There was something wrong, he knew. Nothing he could put his finger on, but something that was wrong. The way the swamper went on sweeping, the way the barkeeper yawned and went on polishing his glasses. Paying no attention to them. Almost as if they might have been expecting them.

“Hurley,” said Packard. “Hurley, there’s something …”

A faint sound warned him, the whispery creak of the swinging doors up front. Like a cat, he whirled, guns already coming out.

In the doorway stood a man, a man whose pistoning arms were a blur of motion, whose eyes were gimlets of steel shining in the light. Steel, like the gleam of light on glass balls spinning in the sunshine.

The man’s guns were clear of leather and were swinging up and, behind him, the batwing doors swung gently to and fro, almost robbed of motion, but still swinging.

Flame exploded in Packard’s hands, the blasting flame of jumping guns that bucked and hammered, filled the room to bursting with their roar.

The man in front of the batwing doors was slammed through them, hurled backward through them as if someone had grasped and hurled him with tremendous force. One of his guns was still in his hand, but the other spun from his fingers and skidded through the sawdust.

And then the doors were swinging violently, flapping to and fro and from under them protruded two boots, toes pointing toward the ceiling.

The barkeep stood with both hands spread upon the bar, amazement on his face. “I be damned,” he said. “I be double-damned.”

The swamper leaned upon his broom and stared. The drunk had come alive and was trying to burrow into the sawdust underneath his table.

The door in the back flung open and Randall stroke out. He stopped, staring at the boots, at the flapping doors.

Then, slowly, his gaze switched to Packard and Packard raised his guns.

“You next?” asked Packard.

Randall simply stared.

“By rights,” said Hurley, coldly, “he’d ought to give it to you. You went and double-crossed us. It was supposed to be a fair fight.”

Randall shrugged. “What difference does it make? Packard, here, won out.”

“Four shots,” said the bartender. “Four shots and every one dead center. Four shots before Stover hit the floor.”

“What’s going on here?” asked Packard coldly. “You gentlemen better start to talk.”

Randall laughed shortly. “Hell,” he said, “no use of getting riled. Packard, you just killed yourself a job.”

“A job?”

“Sure, Stover’s job. I’ll need a man to take his place.”

“I told you the kid had the right stuff in him. Just like his old man,” Hurley told Randall.

“I don’t want the stinking job,” said Packard.

Packard turned on his heel and walked away. Through the silence of the room he heard the rasp of the swamper’s broom, the still frightened gulping of the drunken man. At the door, he pushed the batwings wide and walked around the body of the man who’d tried to shoot him in the back.

Outside the air was crisp and new with the coming of the day. The stars were paling and Packard suddenly realized that he was sleepy and hungry.

The frost crunched crisply underfoot as he strode down the walk toward the hotel and suddenly his head felt light and giddy and the throb took up again … the throb of his scalp where the bottle had landed.

He walked slowly past the livery stable, where a smoky lantern burned redly in the office window. Out of the shadows of the alleyway between the stable and hotel a voice hissed at him.

Startled, Packard’s right hand plunged for his gun, but the voice said: “Take it easy, Packard. I’m a friend of yours.”

Hand still on the gunbutt, Packard stepped into the dim alleyway, saw the face of the man before him. A moonlike face, puffy and dissolute, with blubbery lips.

“Craig is the name,” said moonface. “Cardway said you would be coming.”

“Cardway’s dead,” snapped Packard. “I saw him, hanging in a tree. What was Cardway to you?”

Craig stepped closer. “We can get along without him, Packard. Just the two of us to split.”

Packard frowned. “What about this man that Cardway killed?”

“Name of Jett,” said Craig. “One of the express office guards. Same as I am.”

“But why did Cardway kill him?”

The flabby face twisted impatiently in the shadow. “Jett was in with the Randall crowd. He heard us talking.”

Packard’s hand shot out, grasped the man’s vest, twisted it tight and drew him close. “Talk sense,” he snarled. “What has Randall got to do with it?”

Craig wriggled. “Didn’t Cardway tell you?”

“Not a word,” said Packard. “Just wrote to me and said that I should come. Said there was a good thing here.”

“It’s the gold,” wheezed Craig. “Ready for shipment. Randall’s gang holds up the stages. Easier and safer than holding up the office.”

“This Jett was Randall’s man, you say. Tipped him off when a big shipment was on hand.”

Craig nodded vigorously. “You catch on quick. Cardway said you would. Said your dad …”

Packard jerked the man even closer.

“You say that Randall’s gang holds up the stages. Who else knows this? Everyone in town?”

Craig gulped unhappily. “No sir, they don’t. Just me now. You see, Cardway found it out and told me and now—”

“And Cardway figured on beating Randall to the draw. Figured on robbing the office before the stage ever started out.”

Craig gulped again and nodded.

“And how much were you to get?”

“A quarter, Cardway said. Said I’d get a quarter and you and he would get the rest. But now that he’s dead, I figured maybe you could do some better by me.”

“Want me to tell you how much Cardway really would have given you?”

“He said a quarter.”

“Not a damn ounce,” said Packard coldly. “He’d use you and he’d shoot you down. You see, I knew Preston Cardway.”

“But he said—”

“You shouldn’t have stopped me here,” snarled Packard. “Don’t do a thing like this again. Don’t speak to me again. Don’t act like you’ve ever seen me. I’ll look you up when it’s safe to talk.”

He released his hold upon the vest.

“Make tracks,” he told Craig curtly.

A grim smile on his lips, he watched the man scuttle down the alleyway to be swallowed in the shadow.

Back on the street again, Packard sat down on the hotel steps and built himself a smoke.

So it had been gold that Cardway had been after. An inside job, fixed up with the office guards. Probably could have pulled it off, too, if it hadn’t been for Randall. Randall, naturally, wouldn’t have wanted anyone horning in and so Randall had fixed up a vigilante deal.

Packard’s head hurt and it was hard to think and even through the pain of the throbbing head, he was so sleepy that his eyes drooped shut as he nodded over the cigarette.

Steps sounded on the boards and he snapped awake. Before him stood a little man with a checkered suit.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Packard.

The man squinted at him with his one good eye.

“Haven’t seen an eye?” he asked. “A glass eye. I lost it and I’ve looked everywhere …”

“Oh, hell,” exploded Packard. “I’m going up to bed.”

He rose and climbed the stairs to the porch. The little man in the checkered suit stood and watched him go.

Chapter III LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

Jason Randall was sitting in the chair beside the window, smoking a cheroot and with a whisky bottle on the table at his elbow, when Packard awoke. ‘You sleep innocent,” said Randall.

Packard swung himself off the bed, located his boots, stomped his feet into them. “What the hell,” he asked, “are you doing here?”

“Wanted to talk with you,” said Randall, smoothly.

“I haven’t got a thing to talk with you about,” snarled Packard.

Randall did not press the point. “Weren’t taking any chances, were you?” he asked. “Sleeping like that with your clothes on.”

“I was too tired to take them off.”

“Wouldn’t want to be set for a quick getaway?”

Packard shucked his gunbelt to a more comfortable position.

““Look, Randall,” he said, “I’m not making any quick getaway. When I leave this town I ride out, on my own horse, in broad daylight.”

“I hope so,” said Randall. “I most sincerely hope so.” But he sounded as if it was just too much to expect. He reached out for the bottle, tipped it toward one of the two tumblers setting on the table. “Drink?” he asked.

Packard nodded. Watching Randall pour, he saw that the sun was slanting through the window before which Randall sat. It must be late afternoon, he told himself. An hour or so to sundown.

He crossed the room and took the tumbler, sat down on the edge of the table. “Let’s have it, Randall,” he demanded. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s the job,” said Randall. “The one that you turned down.”

“I’m still turning it down,” said Packard.

Randall clucked sympathetically. “And with jobs so hard to get … and keep.”

“I’ll find one,” said Packard.

“Look,” Randall told him, “there’s no use of running a bluff on me. You can’t keep a job and you know it. Your old man was an owlhooter and pretty well known at that. When whoever you’re working for finds that out, you’re hunting another job. You tried to change your name and it didn’t work. Too many people knew your old man.”

“Hurley’s been talking to you,” Packard said.

“Sure, why not? Hurley works for me.”

“I didn’t know, though I should have. So that deal with Stover was all cut and dried. Except maybe that you figured it would work out the other way.”

“Don’t go blaming Hurley,” Randall warned. “If it hadn’t been for him, you’d be buzzard meat right now. I was pretty sore, you see, the way you acted, and I told Stover to go out and finish you. But Hurley told me who you was, and said you should have a chance.”

“A chance! With Stover sneaking in the door behind my back?”

“It wasn’t planned that way,” Randall told him. “It was to be fair and square. But Stover, the dog, double-crossed us all! Well, he got what was coming to him. It probably seemed pretty raw to you, but it wasn’t meant to be. And a man who handles guns like you do is too good a man to let get away.”

Packard shook his head. “I got other things to do.”

“Like holding up the express office?” asked Randall.

The liquor in Packard’s tumbler jerked and slopped, but he held his face steady. “Something like that,” he admitted.

If Randall knew, there was no use denying it. “You saw Cardway out on the trail?” asked Randall. And when Packard nodded:

“Hell of a way to die,” Randall said.

“Never aim to die that way,” said Packard.

“Neither did Cardway,” Randall told him.

He emptied his glass and set it down. “If it’s gold you want, why not come in with me. It’s safe. I run the town.”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Leastwise, I’m still running it. But I been sort of lax. One man I have to tighten up on.”

“Preacher Page,” said Packard, casually.

Randall nodded. “Threatening to ask for martial law,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen. I’ll take care of Page.

“Let’s put down our cards. You came here to hold up the express office. Probably you’d never done anything like that before, but more than likely you figured since you couldn’t keep a job, you might as well be what people thought you were. You figured what the hell.”

Packard nodded soberly.

“Well,” continued Randall, “you can’t hold up the express office, for I’ve got the gold staked out. Anyone that lifts a finger toward it is signing his death warrant.”

He stared hard at Packard. “Agreed?” he asked.

“Agreed,” said Packard.

“All right, then,” said Randall, “let’s get together. You can’t hold any other sort of job than the one I’m offering you, for people always will find out just who you are and then out you go. And I need a man like you.”

“I suppose,” guessed Packard, “that if I refuse you’ll try to fix it up so I don’t leave town alive.”

“Your reasoning,” Randall told him, “is downright uncanny. Of course, if you have some ideas of your own … ?”

“Not a one,” Packard told him.

“O.K.,” said Randall, “you’re on the payroll. Five hundred a month and splits.”

“And my duties?”

“Act as if you aren’t one of us. Build up the idea that you are out to get my pelt. I’ll help the idea along a bit.”

“Outside man,” said Packard.

Randall nodded. “Exactly, except—except you’re going to be on one hold-up. A big shipment is going out tomorrow. You’ll ride out tonight.”

“Just so I’m in deep,” said Packard. “So I’m one of you.”

“In this business,” Randall told him, “we can’t have any pure and holy hombres. Your neck’s got to be nominated for the noose just like the rest of us.”

“You,” said Packard, “don’t leave a single thing to chance, do you, Randall?”

“Not a thing,” said Randall.

“And how will I know what I’m to do? Where I’m to go?”

“You’ll be told,” said Randall, shortly.

He pushed himself from the chair, walked across the room. At the door he turned back. “And you’ll be watched,” he added.

“I figured,” said Packard, “that I would.”

Listening to Randall’s footsteps going down the hall, Packard reached out for the bottle, poured himself a drink and gulped it, set the tumbler back on the table again.

It was the only way that he could play it, he told himself, staring at the door. To have refused Randall’s offer would have meant that he’d be dead before the hour had passed.

Getting up, he shucked his gunbelt, shaped his lips into a twisted grin. First he’d get some food. He jingled the few dollars left in his pocket and grinned. He could use some of that money Randall was paying him. Maybe he’d ought to go and hit him for something in advance.

At the Chinaman’s, Packard hung his hat on a nail, sat down and gave his order.

The Chinaman prattled as he ran with knife and fork and plates. “You new man in town, maybe?”

“Maybe,” agreed Packard.

“Maybe man who shot Stover?”

“Might be,” said Packard.

“Good shooting,” said the Chinaman.

He scuttled into the kitchen and out again.

“Preacher Page, he in to find out if you been in. Ask you go his place soon as you show up.”

“Thanks,” said Packard. He ate hurriedly, gulping his food and thinking.

He was glad that Page wanted to see him, glad that the man had inquired about him. It would be taking a chance with Randall to go and see the minister, but he had to take some chances. If Randall climbed him about it, he could say that in seeing Page he was merely out to create the impression he was not on Randall’s side.

Dusk had fallen on the street outside and the first faint stars were beginning to glitter in the east. Packard leaned against the front of the restaurant and fashioned himself a cigarette, strolled leisurely away.

He recognized the twisting path down which he and Hurley had come the night before and took it, following its windings up the mountain side.

Halfway up, he stopped and rested. The climb was steep and he was not used to walking. Below him were the lights of Hangman’s Gulch, a cluster of sparks in the gathering dark.

Steps came up the path and drew closer. A man stood outlined in the gloom. A hunched, bow-legged man who shambled in the deepening dusk. Five feet away he stopped. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Walking,” said Packard.

The man moved closer. “If you’re goin’ where I think you’re goin’, you better change your mind.”

“Why?” asked Packard, flatly.

“The boss wouldn’t like you goin’ to see Page.”

Packard took a quick step forward and the man went for his gun. But Packard’s fist beat the gun, smacked against the jaw.

The man snapped backward, straight and stiff, rocking on his heels, hit the ground with a thump that bounced him.

Bending over the fallen man, Packard yanked the gun out of his belt, heaved it into the brush. Still squatting, he rolled another cigarette, used the match that he struck to light it to study the man’s face. But it rang no bells. If he’d seen him in the Crystal Palace, he did not remember it.

The man groaned and struggled to a sitting position, rubbed his hand tenderly against his jaw. His eyes found Packard, stared at him. His lips twisted. “The boss will get you for this,” he mumbled.

“He set you to tail me?” asked Packard.

The man nodded.

“He didn’t tell you to stop me from going anywhere or doing anything?”

“No, he didn’t, but—”

“But he wouldn’t want me to see Page.”

“That’s it,” said the man. “He’ll be sore as hell. Sore at both of us.”

“How do you know he didn’t send me to see Page?”

The man gaped. “Did he? Did the boss …”

“That,” said Packard, “is none of your damn business.”

Packard rose. “I’m going on,” he said. “If you want to come, I don’t mind. But see you stay behind … a long ways behind.”

Page opened the door at Packard’s knock, reached out a hand and dragged him in, thumped him on the back. “So you came,” he said. “You saw the Chinaman.”

Packard frowned. “Don’t get your hopes up, Preacher. I know what you have in mind, and I can’t do it.”

The old man’s silver hair was shining in the lamplight and the pictures were on the wall and the books still on the shelves. From the kitchen came the smell of frying meat and the quick, swift tap of a woman’s feet.

“But you killed Stover,” Page protested. “You gunned the fastest gunman this town has ever known. You got him even when he was sneaking up behind you, with his guns half out.”

“What’s your proposition?” Packard asked, flatly.

“A marshal’s badge,” said Page. “A marshal’s badge and other men to back you up.”

“Marshal’s badges,” said Packard, “can’t be picked up anywhere.”

“I can get you one,” Page told him.

“And while you’re talking the authorities into giving me one, what am I to do?”

“You’ll leave town tonight. There’s a trail over the mountain and I have a horse. You can get your men.”

“I haven’t any men,” said Packard.

“But … but …”

“Sure,” said Packard, “you’re just like the rest of them. You’ve got me pegged for an owlhoot rider. You figure that maybe I kill a man every day for breakfast. You figure that I have a band of curly wolves hidden out somewhere and that if you could get me to bring them in, we’d wipe out Randall’s gang in one grand blaze of gunfire.”

“But,” protested Page, “there would be compensations. Blanket pardons and—”

“I haven’t done a thing,” said Packard, “to be pardoned for, except maybe shooting Stover and that was self-defense. And I haven’t any men. So forget your dream of using me to clean up the town for you.”

The old man slumped into a chair, face suddenly haggard. “It was wrong of me,” he said, almost as if he were speaking to someone who wasn’t in the room. “It was not my way of doing, nor my church’s way of doing, but sometimes a man’s vision can be clouded. Force is wrong … as wrong for me to use as it is for Randall. But I was tempted. I saw a way to make this a decent town …”

“I’m sorry, Preacher,” Packard said.

“Don’t,” said a voice from the doorway, “waste any sorrow on us.”

Packard jerked his head around and saw the girl. He took off his hat. “Good evenin’, miss,” he said.

“I wish you wouldn’t come here,” she said, tartly. “It’s bad enough with Hurley seeing father all the time. I’ve told him that he ought to go away where he wouldn’t meet men like that. There isn’t any reason that he should stay out here when he could go somewhere else, some place that’s civilized.”

“Don’t pay any attention to her,” begged Page. “She’s angry. Angry because I’m sending her east to school. This isn’t any place for a woman to stay.”

But Packard scarcely heard the old man. He was looking at the girl. “Miss,” he said, “just to get the record straight, I want to tell you something. You maybe won’t believe me, but it really doesn’t matter. Until I killed Stover I never killed a man. But I am getting tired of two-bit gunmen wanting to add me to their kills so they can brag they killed Steve Packard’s kid. I don’t hanker to become a notch on someone’s gunbutt, miss, and I figure maybe the only way to keep from it is to collect some notches of my own.”

She did not speak, but from where he stood Packard could see the blood beating in her throat, could see her lips half open to reply, then close again.

“You’ve had bitter disappointment, son,” said Page. “And you are too impatient. There is good in the world—”

“I haven’t seen any of it,” snapped Packard.

“You came here,” said Page, “with something in your mind. I don’t know what it is, but you best get rid of it. It will bring you nothing but everlasting sorrow.”

“Save your preaching,” Packard told him, “for someone who wants to listen to it. It’s people like you who shove a man along a path he doesn’t want to travel and then use him as a horrible example when he up and follows it.”

He turned to the door and opened it. Then turned back. “You were right, Preacher,” he said. “I did come here for something and I’m going through with it.”

Out on the path he strode rapidly down the hill. Night had fallen and Hangman’s Gulch was a blur of darkness speared with blinking lights, filled with the hum of a fevered humanity.

It was all, Packard told himself, how you happened to be born. It your father killed men and held up stages and robbed banks, you killed men and held up stages and robbed banks. You might try hard not to do it. You might try to live another kind of life, but it would catch up with you in the end. As it finally had caught up with him. A man, after all, had to make a living somehow.

At the bottom of the hill, just before the path broke out on the street, a man stepped from behind a tree. Packard stopped, hands lifted to his guns.

“The horses,” said the man, “are up this way.”

Packard moved toward him, walking softly. Close at last, he asked: “You’re riding with me?”

“That’s right,” said the man. “Blade is the name. John Blade. Put her there, pardner. I’m proud to be ridin’ with you.”

By impulse, Packard put out his hand, found the other’s in the darkness. The man’s handclasp was swift and sure. Swift and sure and warm … a warmth that sent a thrill through Packard, a feeling of comradeship.

“Blade,” he said, “I’m proud to be riding with you, too.”

Chapter IV DEATH FOR A PINCH OF DUST

The moon was late in rising and the night was dark, dark and chill, with an autumn wind whining along the ridges and whipping down the canyons. Blade seemed to know the way almost by feel and although they went slowly, there seemed no hesitation at the choosing of the path. Packard rode behind him.

Apparently the man who had been set to tail him had not reported back to Randall. For if Randall had known of his visit to Page, he at least would have been called upon the carpet, asked for an explanation.

Randall, undoubtedly, thought that he had him trapped, that he had no choice but to play Randall’s game. Packard smiled grimly in the darkness. Something would happen tomorrow, he felt certain, something that would give him the chance that he was waiting.

Grimly he speculated upon his chance of having defied Randall, knew almost as soon as he posed the question that it would have been no use. There actually had been no choice. Randall had had him dead to rights. Had known who he was and why he came to town. Had known his connection with Cardway. Randall, he knew, would never have let him get out of town alive.

Actually, he told himself, this satisfied him better than the Cardway deal. Even with the connivance of the guard, robbery of the express office under Randall’s nose would have been the height of madness.

Although it wasn’t only the matter of saving his own skin. It was something else as well. A certain bitter hatred that a man like Randall could hold and rule a town, could set up no matter how temporary an empire with the use of six-gun power. That a man like Preacher Page could be placed in danger because he dared oppose such a six-gun empire. That a man could say that if gold were stolen, he was the one to steal it, that he had the right of thievery staked out.

He had not been anxious to tie up with Cardway, he remembered. Only the bitterness of desperation had driven him to fall in with the schemes Cardway vaguely hinted at. Cardway had been all right, of course, but he was a shifty character. Packard found himself remembering the cigarette that drooped from his lips and poured smoke into the squinting eyes.

Cardway, without a doubt, had been ready to use him. Had sat and watched him shooting at those glass balls and sensed the advantage such marksmanship might have. Had found out who he was and worked on that.

“Hell, kid, you haven’t got a chance. No one will ever give you a break, see. The world ain’t built that way. Always looking for someone to kick. And your old man gives them a chance to kick you. Quit being a sucker, kid. With a knack with guns that you live, there’s money to be made …”

There was some truth in what he said. A hell of a lot of truth, in fact. There was the job with the circus and the one before that with the feed store down in Kansas and the two weeks Packard worked as bank guard until the trembling, horrified directors found out who he was.

The moon came up, bulging over the eastern horizon, a huge red ball bisected at the moment by a straggly pine that grew atop a ridge.

Blade drew his horse to a stop and Packard rode alongside and pulled up.

Blade had his makings out and was building a cigarette. Packard sat his horse and stared over the wild and tumbled land, half lighted by the reddish moon-glow, half-buried deep in shadow.

Blade handed over the sack and papers.

“Have one on me,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Packard.

Blade thumbed a matchhead into flame, lit his smoke, tossed the match away.

“So you went to see Page,” he said.

Raising his cigarette to his lips to lick the paper shut, Packard stared across at the other man. Deliberately he tongued the cylinder, put it in his mouth. “Maybe,” he finally said. “that ain’t a question you should ask.”

“Perhaps it isn’t, Packard. But I figured that you would. Randall’s one slick operator.”

Packard nodded, seeking for the meaning in the other’s words. Apparently the man believed that Randall had sent him to Page.

Smoke drooled out of Blade’s nose and suddenly the smoke turned into a bloody spray. Blade opened his mouth to scream, but the scream did not come out and his mouth stayed open, with the cigarette still sticking to his lower lip.

A sound ripped through the night and Blade was falling from his horse, tipping in the saddle and going over and the horse was rearing as if to spill him off.

Packard’s fist drove for a six-gun, whipped it clear of leather, fighting his plunging mount with the other hand.

“Put away the gun, kid,” said a voice.

Packard swung around. A man was standing just outside the shadow of a clump of pines, rifle in his arms. “Hurley!” yelled Packard.

“That’s right,” said Hurley. “I’ve just dealt myself a hand.” He stepped out into the trail, seized the reins of Blade’s frightened horse, talked to the animal in a soft, soothing tone.

“Can’t have you runnin’ home, feller,” he said. “Can’t have you going back and tippin’ Randall off.”

“I thought,” said Packard, coldly, “that you ran with Randall’s pack.”

“Sure,” admitted Hurley. “Sure I do. Or did. Now I’m switching back to the Packard gang. Don’t know anyone I’d rather ride with than a Packard bunch.”

“There isn’t any Packard bunch,” said Packard.

Hurley gulped. “Don’t mean to say, kid, that you are on your own?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I be damned,” said Hurley. “The nerve of it … the blessed nerve of it.”

He chuckled. “Just like your old man,” he said. “Never had a big bunch. Said they got in one another’s way. Just you and me and Jim and Charley and the four of us could have given Randall aces and beat him at the laydown.”

Warning bells rang in Packard’s head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Hurley,” he declared. “I’m riding Randall’s trail. None of the lone wolf stuff for me. Randall made a deal and it sounded good to me.”

Hurley shambled forward until he stood close to Packard’s horse, looked up at the younger man, the full light of the moon shining on his face.

“You’re lying, youngster,” he declared. “No Packard would mean a thing like that. You’re figuring on taking over once the gold is where you want it. You’ll be using Randall’s gang to help hold up the coach, but Randall won’t see an ounce of the stuff.”

“And you’re figuring on dealing in with me?”

Hurley spat. “Damn right. I rode with your old man … Say, is Charley coming in?”

“Charley?”

“Sure, Page. Me and Charley Page and Jim Davis, we were the ones who made up the Packard gang. Now Jim is dead and Charley’s got religion and …”

Packard drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “So Page knew who I was all the time. The low down hypocrite!”

“Charley ain’t no hypocrite,” snapped Hurley. “He’s really got religion. Only, I thought maybe Charley might be getting a bit discouraged and he’s only human—”

“But,” said Packard, “Page knew who you were.”

“Sure, but he never said a word about me and I never give him away. Randall knew who I was, of course, but none of the other boys. We never got well known, the way your old man did. He was the front, you see—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Packard, impatiently.

Hurley sighed. “So I guess Charley won’t be coming in. It’s just the two of us.”

“Look,” snapped Packard, “you’re the only one who’s been talking about double-crossing Randall. You’re the one that’s all steamed up about it. I haven’t said a word.”

“Ah, hell,” protested Hurley, “you can talk to me. I was your old man’s pal.”

“I suppose,” said Packard, “that you’ll have to ride along with me. I don’t know the way, you see.”

He pivoted in his saddle, looked at the huddled heap lying in the trail.

“I hope,” he said, “you got a good one figured out to explain why it’s you instead of Blade with me.”

“Shucks,” declared Hurley, “that won’t be hard to do. The boys won’t know who Randall sent along. We’ll not mention Blade at all. They’ll think that it was me who was with you all the time.”

“Somehow,” said Packard, “I don’t like what you done to Blade. He was an O.K. hombre.”

“Tell you the truth,” confessed Hurley, “I’d just as soon it had been someone else. Can think of a couple I would rather it had been. Blade was the one … But you ain’t told me your plans.”

“I haven’t any plans.”

“Look, kid, you can’t fool me. You can’t—”

Packard leaned over from his horse. “Are you riding along or not?” he snapped.

“Oh, sure. Sure, I’m riding along.”

Hurley tied Blade’s mount to one of the pines, got up on his own, trotted up the trail. Packard urged his horse to follow.

Packard’s stomach was a leaden knot of disgust as he watched Hurley’s swaying form.

So this was the way it was, he told himself. You gunned down your own friends, you broke faith with your own gang, you did anything that put your groping fingers into a sack of gold. You had no honor and you walked with your back hunched against a bullet that might come from a man that you called a friend, because in this business there were no such things as friends … just other men that you watched, wondering if the day would come when they killed you or you killed them for an ounce or two of gold, a roll of bills, for anything at all.

Even Preacher Page!

The moon climbed higher and from some far ledge a wolf howled lonesomely. An owl swooped down over Packard’s head, a bulleting soundlessness that floated through the night. Little things scuttered and scampered along the rocky trail.

Their horses turned a sharp bend in the trail and in a pocketed valley a tiny fire was burning.

Hurley turned his head. “That’s the camp,” he said.

Packard nodded.

“How about it, kid?” asked Hurley. “Got anything to tell me?”

“Not a thing,” said Packard.

And his mind thought: I can’t trust you, Hurley. How do I know you’re on the up and up? How can I be sure that Randall didn’t plan it all just to sound me out? If I talked to you, really told you what I had in mind, you might pay me off with a bullet in the head.

But Hurley had played square with Page, hadn’t peeped to Randall about who the Preacher was. And it would have been worth a lot to Randall to have known that, with Page threatening to bring in martial law. It would have given Randall a club that would have either silenced Page or sent him scuttling out of town.

That was the hell of it, Packard told himself. You never could be sure.

The men were waiting around the fire when they arrived. Hard-faced men who stared at them for a long moment without speaking.

Finally one of them strode forward.

“Howdy,” he said. “New man?”

Hurley chuckled. “That’s right, Pinky. A new one that Randall wants us to break in. Name of Packard. Steve Packard’s kid.”

A smile split Pinky’s face.

“Ought to be all right,” he said, “if he’s anything like his old man.”

He walked toward Packard, hand held out. “Name is Traynor, Packard. But the boys all call me Pinky.”

Packard shook his hand.

“Meet the boys,” said Pinky. “This old hombre is Pop Allen. And the one over there is Marks. The fellow by the fire is Sylvester. Hell of a name, ain’t it?”

For a single instant Sylvester’s left eye flashed, picking up and reflecting the flare of the campfire … and there was something about the man’s face that rang bells of recognition in Packard’s brain … a haunting recollection that sent his thoughts scurrying back along the last few days.

The cheeks were flat and the lips were tight, but there was an angle to the chin and the way the hair swept back from his forehead that seemed to fit in with some other face back in Hangman’s Gulch.

Then Sylvester was saying: “Howdy, Packard,” and stepping forward with his hand held out, a chubby hand that did not seem to be made to fit a six-gun grip.

And Packard, gripping Sylvester’s hand, stared at the left eye which no longer glinted.

Suddenly he knew Sylvester, his mind filling in the face as he had seen it before … a face with some sort of plastic material worked into the cheeks and in front of the gums to puff out the cheeks and lips, to distort the face so that once the silly little mustache had been pasted on no one would ever recognize the man.

He spoke low, lips scarcely moving, so that no one else might hear.

“I see,” he told Sylvester, “that you found your eye.”

Chapter V WE DON’T WASTE LEAD!

From far down the canyon came the faint clatter of wheels, the muffled clop of horses’ hoofs.

Crouched in the clump of juniper beside the trail, Packard stared out across the rock-ribbed cleft that climbed, twisting deep into the mountain range.

Again came the far-off squeal of wheels and Packard, straining his ears, tensed, then relaxed again. Eyes narrowed against the morning sun, he took stock of the situation.

Pinky was across the trail, almost opposite where Packard crouched in the juniper. Marks was farther up. Sylvester and Hurley were between himself and Marks, each on their own side of the trail. Pop Allen was back in the little side canyon, a quarter mile away, holding the horses.

The four of them, Pinky had told them, were to let the stagecoach pass, were to remain out of sight until Marks stepped out and fired a shot, the first one over the driver’s head, the second one in his head if he made a hostile move.

Sylvester was to cover the shotgun messenger up on the seat beside the driver, with Hurley to back him up. Packard and Pinky were to take care of other guards, if there should happen to be any. There probably would be, Pinky had said … up on the roof.

Packard felt perspiration trickling down his face behind the blue handkerchief which served him for a mask.

He was nervous, he told himself, somewhat surprised. And he shouldn’t be nervous. Never had there been a time when he needed the rock-hard sureness of hand and eye that he might need in the next few minutes.

The chance he waited, he knew would come in that first moment of swift action when Marks stepped out into the trail and flung up his gun.

Cautiously, Packard squinted up the trail, trying to make out the positions of the others. He knew where they should be but there was nothing to betray them. No single flutter of a wind-blown handkerchief, no hint of color in the tangled shrubs, no stirring bush.

Hurley would be up there somewhere. Hurley, who had shot down Blade when the man wasn’t even looking and thus dealt himself a hand. Hurley, he knew, would be watching him, waiting for the sign that would send him into action. Hurley was no fool. Hurley knew there was something in the wind, probably was more than a little nettled that the son of his old friend and trail partner hadn’t let him in on it.

And yet, Packard told himself, he couldn’t have let him in on it, for there wasn’t really anything … no well-defined plan, no thought-out course of action. Just a hunch that a chance would come, waiting for the break that would give him the upper hand. And when it came there’d be no time for thinking, no time for planning … he’d have to act by what would amount to instinct.

And there was Sylvester. Just where did Sylvester fit? The man had a glass eye, but one that was so perfect his companions of the owlhoot trail had never found it out. If they had he would bear a nickname that would have marked him as a man of certain distinction. That eye would have furnished more than one jibe, more than one good-natured joke, more than one tall tale.

If Sylvester was a bona-fide member of the Canyon gang, why should he have been in Hangman’s Gulch, tricked out with facial disguise and checkered suit? And even if he did want to promenade around without anyone knowing who he was, why all that ridiculous hoorah about losing his glass eye? A thing like that wouldn’t accomplish a single thing except attract attention to him.

The rattling wheels were closer now and the clop of the horses’ hoofs were distinct sounds in the dust. Around the bend a filmy cloud arose, the slowly drifting dust disturbed by the coach’s passing.

Packard hunkered lower in the juniper, carefully slipped the six-guns from his belt, clasped them with sure, deft hands.

The stage swung around the bend, the horses surging into the uphill pull, harness creaking with the effort. The driver slouched forward easily, reins loose in his hands, but his head darted from side to side, watching the bushes along the trail. Beside him the shotgun messenger sat bolt upright, the butt of the gun planted against his knee, muzzle pointing toward the sky, left hand grasping the barrel. Another man knelt one-kneed on top of the lurching coach, rifle at ready.

The coach lumbered past, one wheel squealing, blobs of dust dropping from the slowly moving tires and spatting in the tracks that still smoked from the passing of the iron-shod wheels.

Breath still caught in his throat, Packard watched it pass. His fingers shifted slightly, taking a new grasp on the six-gun grips.

Carefully, he raised his head a bit, stared after the coach, heard the seconds beating in his head as time slowed to an agonizing crawl.

A man rose out of the bushes, like a jack-in-the-box popping up when someone snapped the catch. A man who yelled and raised a gun and fired.

The driver rose in his seat, hauling on the reins while the horses reared, a tangled mass of leather and striking forefeet and flying manes.

The shotgun messenger half raised his gun, jerked forward as a six-gun bellowed, bending in the middle as if he were on a hinge. For a moment he hung there, etched against the morning sun, a bent over man with the gun tumbling from his hands. Then slowly he pitched forward like a diver slanting off a board, pitched forward between the horses, fell beneath their feet.

The guard on top of the coach had leaped to his feet, his rifle coming to his shoulder in one swift blur of fluid motion. A gun spatted angrily behind him, like a snarling cat, and the guard stiffened and staggered, fell and rolled, slid halfway off the coach and hung there, knee caught beneath the low iron railing that ran along the top. His hands hung down limply and swung slowly to and fro, like unsteady pendulums, while blood dripped from his mouth and spattered in the dust.

Then there was no sound except that of the driver talking to the horses, talking in a soothing tone that trilled with hidden terror, trying to quiet the animals that reared and plunged and fought the bits and kicked and shied at the bloody thing that rolled beneath their hoofs.

Packard had risen from the juniper, but had not moved, had not even raised his gun. The action had been too swift, the deadly six-gun execution too well planned.

He looked across the trail at Pinky and above his red handkerchief mask, Pinky’s eyes glittered with excitement. Smoke still trickled from the gun he held in his hairy hand.

“That’s the way we do it, kid,” said Pinky. “Fast and neat. No time or bullets wasted.”

And what he said was true, Packard realized. Only a few seconds had ticked away since Marks had risen from the bushes, only three shots had been fired and two men were dead.

Marks had stepped to the head of the horses, was fighting them to a standstill while Hurley still held his gun on the struggling driver.

Sylvester was talking to someone inside the coach, talking in a voice that was conversational, almost as if he might be chatting with a next door neighbor.

“There ain’t no cause to be alarmed, ma’am,” he was saying. “The boys don’t aim to harm a hair of your head. Just you step out and sit down in the shade while we get the dust. That’s all we want. We’ll just take the dust and be gallopin’ along.”

But he still kept a gun in his hand and he kept it in position as he moved closer, grasped the handle and jerked the coach door wide open.

“Please ma’am,” he said. “Be sensible. Yelling and screamin’ won’t help you none at all.”

“I don’t intend,” the woman told him, “to do any yelling or screaming. And I’m not coming out. I’m staying here.”

The voice sent a chill of fear through Packard—an icy chill that gripped and held him like a mighty hand. For he knew that voice, had heard it only the night before …

“She says,” Sylvester told Pinky, “that she ain’t a-comin’ out.”

“The hell she ain’t,” snarled Pinky.

Swiftly he strode forward, lunged for the door of the coach, reached in. The woman screamed and Pinky yanked, hauling her out of the door, leaping back to escape her clawing hands. She stumbled and fell in the dust.

“Get them up,” yelled Packard. “Get them up and keep them there. I’m taking over.”

Sylvester and Pinky swung around, stared at the gun-mouths that scowled at them from Packard’s fists. “You’re loco!” yelled Pinky. “You can’t—”

One of Packard’s guns drooled flame and smoke and Pinky’s hat lifted in the air, skidded downward in a rapid glide and plopped onto the ground.

“The next one,” said Packard, “will be right between the eyes.”

Wide-eyed, the two of them lifted their hands, high above their heads.

“Get out of the way, Miss Page,” said Packard quietly. “There might be some shooting if these gents should get uneasy.”

“You’re too considerate,” the girl told him. “Why don’t you shoot them down?”

“Get out of the way,” snapped Packard. “Around here people do what I say for them to do.”

He raised his voice. “Marks, you walk down this way. Hurley, climb up and throw down the gold. Both you hombres shuck your guns.”

A sledge hammer slammed into his shoulder, spun him around, and he was falling forward, the ground rushing up at him with express train speed. Through the roaring in his ears came the sullen clap of a high-powered rifle.

Pop, he thought. Pop Allen. I forgot all about the damn old fool. What did he mean by horning in, anyway? He had no business to. He was supposed to be off in the gully holding them horses.

He hit the ground and exploded, sailing off into space, part of him going one way and part of him another … but finally the pieces came back together and he was whole again and he wallowed in a bed of pain and thirst.

A voice said: “He’s coming to.” Another voice snapped: “Quit champin’ at the bit, Marks. Be a damn shame to string him up and him not know about it.”

“Ought to lug him back and hang him alongside Cardway,” someone else suggested.

The voice that had snapped, protested. “Too far. And anyhow, Randall ain’t anxious to give Hangman’s Gulch no bad name. Hangings right in town got to be legal-like … vigilantes and all the fixin’s.”

The words seeped into Packard’s brain, seeped and simmered, thoughts clawing at their meaning.

Packard’s left shoulder ached with a dull, monotonous thud that beat and beat, as if someone were hitting it with a padded hammer. His throat ached, too and when he put his right hand up to feel it, there was something there. Something that was hard and scratchy and was pressing just a bit too tight.

Feebly he clawed at the thing around his neck, trying to loosen it so he could breathe more easily. He was sitting on the ground, with his legs stretched out in front of him and his back against the hard, rough trunk of a good-sized tree. He pressed his back harder against the tree and felt the scaly bark bite into his flesh.

Sitting against a tree, with a rope around his neck. And probably the other end of that rope went over a limb somewhere above his head. One yank … one good, stout yank by a couple or three men and he would be swinging free. He would be a thing like Cardway was … swinging the way that Cardway swung in the breeze that had swooped up the canyon bed.

“Give me that pail of water,” said a voice. “Damn it, he’s playing possum, that’s what.”

Water sloshed into Packard’s face with stinging force, ran in ice-cold rivulets off his hair and down his neck, sopping his shirt.

Packard shook his head, opened his eyes, stared at the man before him.

Chapter VI A DEAL IN HOT LEAD

Pinky held the bucket in his hand and Hurley stood beside him, one hand on his gun-butt. Marks leaned against a tree, holding the free end of the rope which angled down from the limb above Packard’s head. Sylvester squatted on his heels a few feet from where Hurley stood. Pop Allen was putting wood on a small, newly-kindled fire.

And beyond Pop, hands tied behind her and with the rope lashed loosely around another tree, was Alice Page. There was a streak of dirt across her face and she had lost her hat and her hair had fallen down over one shoulder. Her dress was dusty and bedraggled.

“How do you feel?” asked Pinky.

“Better,” said Packard, “than you’re going to feel when I get through with you.”

“We’re going to hang you,” Pinky told him. “We’re going to string you up and leave you hangin’ here for the crows to eat.”

Marks laughed, showing his teeth through his heavy beard. “You forgot, Pinky. We ain’t going to leave him hangin’. This here is my rope and I ain’t going to lose it. Too good a rope to go away and leave it.”

Alice Page’s face was twisted with horror and across the few yards that separated them, Packard’s eyes caught hers, held them for a moment.

“What you going to do with her?” he asked.

Marks laughed again, a high-keyed, nasty laugh. Pinky said: “We’re holding her until her old man comes to terms. He’s been raisin’ too much hell to suit the boss.”

Packard stared at the girl. Her head still was high, high with that bewitching tilt that he remembered from the other times he’d seen her.

“Don’t pay any attention to her,” Preacher Page had told him. “She’s just angry because I’m sending her away.”

But Preacher Page hadn’t said she was leaving the next morning and he hadn’t asked. He should have warned the old man. Should have told him not to send her on the next coach. But there had been other things to think of, other things to say.

Randall had known, of course. Somehow Randall had found out. Hurley, perhaps. Hurley and Page still were friends and Hurley might have known. And Hurley would do anything that would help himself.

It wasn’t only gold that Randall had wanted off the coach. It had been the girl as well … the girl to hold as a whip over Preacher Page’s head. A way to make Preacher knuckle down, make him forget all about martial law, silence his demands for law and order.

Marks twitched on the rope and it tightened on Packard’s throat with a strangling jerk.

“What the hell are we waiting for?” asked Marks. “We might as well string up this saddle stiff and be on our way.”

“Wait a second,” said Packard.

Slowly he rose to his feet, stood leaning against the tree, his head light and giddy with the effort of standing on his own.

“You’re wasting your time,” snarled Pinky. “You can’t talk yourself out of that rope. We got you dead to rights and if you talked a million years we still would run you up.”

Packard looked at Hurley and the man’s eyes moved away, unwilling to meet the stare. Sylvester still squatted on his heels, scratching at the ground with a stick he had picked up, his broad-brimmed hat shading his face.

“If you got anything to say,” said Pinky, “go ahead and spit it out. We ain’t ones to deny a man a last word. Last smoke, too, if you want it. Hurley will roll you a smoke.”

“The hell with it,” snapped Hurley. His hand plunged for his gun-butt and the gun was coming out, a glare of steel in the brilliant sunlight. Packard, startled, crouched back against the tree, his stomach muscles tightening as if by contracting them they might be armor against the coming bullet.

Sylvester went into action from the ground. Like a compressed spring, he rose and hurled himself at Hurley’s arm. The gun coughed sharply and a bullet chunked with a vicious clap into the tree trunk inches from Packard’s head.

The gun flew from Hurley’s hand and Hurley dropped back a pace, caressing his twisted wrist.

“Damn you,” he snarled. “I’ll—”

“Come ahead,” Sylvester invited him. “Come ahead and do it.” His hand hovered like a waiting hawk above his six-gun butt.

Hurley did not move. “Go ahead and haul him up,” he yelled. “What are you waiting for? What—”

“You seem too anxious to have him hauled up,” Marks said. “Maybe there’s a reason for it. Come to think of it, you’re the one he told to climb up and throw down the gold. Seems like maybe he was pretty sure that you would do it without making any trouble. Seems like maybe we ought to have a talk—”

“Talk!” yelled Hurley. “That’s all you hombres do. You sit around and shoot off your yaps and never get nothing done.”

“Shut up!” snapped Pinky.

Hurley glared at him.

Crouched against the tree, Packard closed his eyes, felt the throb of his wounded shoulder shaking his whole body. He had held hopes that Hurley might step in and help. But that was out now. Hurley had dropped him like a hot potato at the moment when his string had been played out. Hurley was not a man who would back lost causes.

“What Marks says is right,” declared Pinky. “What do you know about Packard, Hurley?”

“Not a thing,” said Hurley. “He’s just a new man, that’s all.”

“I can tell you something about him,” said a new voice.

Packard opened his eyes. “You keep out of this,” he warned.

But Alice Page paid him no attention. She was looking at Pinky and there was a challenging defiance burning in her eyes.

“Mr. Packard,” she said, “is a United States marshal.”

A bombshell of quietness broke upon the group, a bombshell of chill and quietness.

Alice Page’s words dripped through the quietness. “If you kill him,” she said, “you’ll be hunted down like mad dogs. The government never forgets a thing like that. It isn’t just like killing anyone, you see.”

Pinky moved slowly toward the girl.

“You lie,” he snarled. “You know damn well that he’s no marshal. He didn’t act like no marshal back there at the stage. He told Hurley to climb up and throw down the bags of dust and no marshal would do that. And he didn’t say a thing about arresting us. A marshal always shoots off his face about arresting someone.”

He halted and stood squarely in front of the girl, but Alice Page stood unmoved, her chin up.

“Go ahead, then,” she challenged. “Go ahead and hang him and see what happens to you. That’s the surest thing that you can do to break up your rotten gang.”

Pinky hauled back his arm. “I have a notion to slap you down,” he snarled. “You dirty little—”

“Pinky!” yelled Packard.

Pinky whirled around.

“Leave the girl alone,” warned Packard. “She’s not mixed up in this. She’s only doing what she can to help me.”

Pinky sneered. “Sweet on you, eh?”

“Damn you, Pinky,” roared Packard. He dug in his heel and thrust himself out from the tree, but Marks hauled smartly on the rope and he was jerked back, heels dragging, noose tighter around his throat. With his one good hand, he clawed erect against the tree, stood gasping.

Across the space that separated them, he looked at Alice Page.

“It was a good try, miss,” he whispered, “and thanks a lot, but it just won’t hold water.”

Deliberately, Pinky whirled around, arm swinging with him. His palm smacked open-handed across Alice Page’s mouth and drove her back, staggering against the tree. Her body slammed hard into the tree, knees buckling beneath her. She fell forward and the rope jerked up her hands and held her in a kneeling position.

From where he stood Packard could see the white imprint of Pinky’s hand across her face and he moved one foot forward, then brought it back. By sheer power of will, he held himself against the tree, willed his body rigid while the flame of hatred and rage ate through him like a fire.

It wouldn’t do him any good, he knew, to try another lunge. Marks was waiting, watching him, with a grin behind his beard. Marks would like to have him try to reach Pinky or the girl.

“Next time,” said Pinky, savagely, “I’ll break your neck.”

He swung on his heel and looked at Hurley, a scowl twisting at his face.

“Hurley,” Pinky said, “you better talk. And make it fast and straight.”

Hurley didn’t talk. He moved. One second he was facing Pinky, hands dangling at his side and the next he was plunging for the gun that Sylvester had twisted from his grasp. In a single leap he was beside it, stooping over, scooping it up in a lightning motion.

Pinky’s arms pistoned and his guns struck fire in the noonday sun as they came whispering from leather.

At point blank range the guns roared fire and smoke, the three reports blending into one. The handkerchief around Pinky’s throat whipped suddenly as if struck by a tiny gale and out in the sunlight Hurley was tipping over, twisting awkwardly to keep his feet.

His gun slipped from his fingers and feebly he clawed at it, trying to pick it off the ground while his hand was far above it. Then, gently, almost as if he meant to do it, he toppled over and lay huddled on the grass.

Pinky stood on spraddled legs, watching Hurley fall, then calmly tucked the smoking guns back into his belt and turned his back on Hurley’s body.

His face was almost pleasant as he spoke to Packard. “I guess,” he said, “you won’t have time for that smoke, after all.”

He nodded to Marks. “Haul away.”

“Cripes,” protested Marks, “you don’t expect me to do it all alone. Packard there weighs close to a couple of hundred!”

“Pop,” ordered Pinky, “go lend Marks a hand.”

Pop rose slowly to his feet, ambled forward.

Packard straightened, tense against the tree, thoughts racing in his brain. He was going to be hanged. Run up by a brawny bearded man and a shriveled oldster while a man called Pinky stood to one side and watched.

And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it … not a thing.

Pop was grumbling. “Hell, why don’t you shoot him, Pinky. This here is too much work.”

“Just a minute,” said a voice and Packard twisted his neck, saw Sylvester standing almost at his elbow. Sylvester had pushed his hat on the back of his head and both his guns were out.

Pinky stared. “Now what?” he demanded. “Can’t a fellow hang a man without all the hoorah that’s been going on here?”

“Possibly,” said Sylvester, conversationally. “But you aren’t going to do it, Pinky. Right now, you aren’t hanging anyone at all.”

Pinky’s face twisted with sudden, violent rage and his hand twitched up. The gun in Sylvester’s left hand leaped and spat and Pinky screeched as the bullet smashed his wrist.

Out of the corner of his eye, Packard saw Pop and Marks going for their guns, Sylvester twisting on his heel to meet them. Marks, he saw, had dropped the rope. This was his chance.

Packard lowered his head, hunched his one good shoulder, drove with all the power that was in his legs. Above him he heard the soft hiss of the rope running across the limb.

He felt his shoulder and lowered head crash into yielding flesh, felt the lance of pain that knifed through his shattered arm and other shoulder. Then Pinky was going over, backwards, and Packard was staggering, spread-legged above the outlaw leader floundering on the ground.

A spurred boot lashed up at him and Packard danced out of the way, drove in again, hurling himself upon the outstretched body of the man, his right hand spread wide, aimed at the naked throat.

He felt the softness of the throat beneath his fingers and his fingers closed with a vise-like viciousness while a dull and spreading anger glowed within his brain.

Beneath him, Packard sensed that Pinky was clawing for a gun, blindly groping with his uninjured left hand for a weapon in his belt. Savagely he hauled upward on the throat within his grasp as if he meant to tear it out and then crashed it back to earth again with all the power that was in his driving muscles. Pinky’s head sounded like a breaking egg and it bounced and rolled sidewise sickeningly as it hit the ground.

But still Packard’s fingers held their grip, dug deeper as he remembered the marks of a hand across Alice Page’s face.

Behind him he heard the roar and crash of six-guns, but there was a thunder in his brain that drowned out all other sound. He felt himself tipping forward, felt a cloud of red mist move in through his eyes and swirl within his head.

His fingers loosened and his hand fell off the throat and he was crawling blindly, like a dog on hands and knees.

“Get up, man!” a voice screamed at him and he staggered to his feet, stood swaying while his vision cleared. He shook his head and saw Sylvester standing before him, while behind Sylvester loomed a white and misty face that he knew was Alice Page’s.

Sylvester dabbed at his face with a hand and Packard saw that the hair and one side of his face was thick with blood where a bullet had barked him.

Marks lay upon the ground, arms outspread above his head, a red streak soaking through his coal-black beard. Pop Allen sat with his back against a tree and held both hands to his side. Like a kid, thought Packard. Like a kid that’s eaten green apples and has the belly ache.

Sylvester’s face came into sharper focus and Packard spoke to it.

“Mister,” he said, “I’m still wondering what it’s all about.”

“I thought you guessed,” Sylvester told him. “I thought that you knew when you found out about my eye.”

“I knew there was something wrong,” confessed Packard, “but I couldn’t figure it.”

“I’m an insurance dick.”

“Come again?” said Packard.

“An insurance detective. Randall, you see, was working it both ways. He was insuring gold that he shipped out on the stage. Then he’d hold up the stage and get the gold. Then he’d soak us for insurance money.”

Sylvester mopped at his face again, left finger-streaks of red across his cheek.

“We better be getting out of here,” he said. “Get that rope off your neck. Miss Page will fix your shoulder while I catch up some horses.”

“Would you mind,” asked a voice, “staying just a while?”

They whirled, the three of them, stared at the man who sat the big bay horse just at the tiny clearing’s edge. A man in black broadcloth and a fawn-colored vest above which was bunched a white silk cravat. A diamond flashed in the sunlight as the man held the six-gun on them.

“It would seem,” said Randall, “that I have the drop on you. Better shuck those guns, Sylvester, and walk away from them.”

Slowly, Sylvester unbuckled his belt, let it drop to the ground. With his gun, Randall motioned them away.

He chuckled, watching them. “Too bad,” he said. “You almost got away with it.”

“Maybe they didn’t get away with it this time,” said Alice Page. “Maybe these two men may never get away with it. But sometime someone will. You can’t go on forever.”

Randall tipped his hat, but his gun still was unwavering in his hand. “How right you are, Miss Page,” he said. “And now if you’ll just walk away and turn your back …”

“Always a gentleman,” said Packard, bitterly. “You wouldn’t for the world shoot a man in front of a woman’s eyes.”

“Of course not,” said Randall. “There are certain social graces that cannot be ignored.”

He nudged his horse around, lifted the six-gun. “Miss Page, if you please will—”

“No!” screamed Alice Page. “You can’t—you can’t—”

She was running toward him, arms flung up as if to ward off the bullet that the gun was set to throw.

“Alice!”

The bellow was bull-throated and it stopped the girl in mid-stride, swung her around.

“Father!” she cried.

Preacher Page stood beneath the tree where Pinky lay sprawled with a lolling neck and he held a heavy rifle at the ready.

“Get away, child,” he bellowed.

Randall jerked the six-gun up and then stiffened. The rifle muzzle in the old man’s hand was pointing at his midriff. If that gun went off …

“Throw away the gun, Randall,” said Preacher. “Throw it away and get down off that horse.”

Randall hesitated.

Preacher squinted his eyes. “I am not a man,” he said, “who wishes to shed blood, but if you don’t heave that gun away, I’ll let you have it right through your dirty guts.”

Randall heaved the gun away, scrambled off the horse. Sylvester stepped out and picked up the gun.

Slowly Preacher moved toward Randall. “See if he had any other guns,” Page told Sylvester.

Swiftly, Sylvester ran his hands up and down Randall’s coat.

“Not a one,” he said.

Preacher heaved his rifle to one side.

“Get up your dukes,” he told Randall. “I’m going to give you the worst beating that a man has ever taken.”

Randall sprang forward, one fist lashing out, the other cocked for a killing blow. Preacher ducked, slid under the swishing fist, uncorked a punch that skidded Randall on his heels.

Then the two were together, slugging toe to toe, boring in, absorbing punishment, deadly silent. Their feet beat a stolid measure on the grass and there came the sound of flesh on bone, the rasp of heavy breathing, the muffled grunt and panting breath of earnest men fighting with a deadly hatred.

Randall was weakening. Under the sledge-hammer blows of the minister, he was falling back. Once he tried to break away and run, but Preacher chased him, closed in and forced the fight.

The end came swiftly. A blow staggered Randall and Preacher moved in slugging, right to the jaw, left to the heart, another right to the jaw that lifted Randall off his feet and slammed him to the ground.

For a long moment the old man stood in the sunlight above the fallen man, his white hair shining and stirring in the breeze, his chest rising and falling as he gasped for breath.

Then he turned away, walked to the three, brushing off his coat, straightening his shirt cuffs.

“Either of you want that man?” he asked.

“I do,” Sylvester told him.

Preacher looked at Packard sternly. “I was hoping it might be you.”

Packard shook his head. “Not me. I guess I’ll be riding again. No use of going back to Hangman’s Gulch.”

Preacher reached out his arm and drew Alice to his side. “Got to worrying about you, child,” he said. “Thought what a foolish thing it was for me to send you off on that stage. So I got a horse and rode. Thought that I might catch up and sort of ride as guard. See you safely through. But I was too late. I heard shooting …”

He brushed at his eyes with a gnarled hand.

Packard reached up to his throat, was surprised to find the rope still dangling there. Savagely he ripped the noose open, tossed it over his head, turned and walked away.

There was a horse tied up in the timber. It would be an easy matter to get there by just ambling along. Then he’d jump into the saddle and no one, he was sure, would try very hard to catch him.

For after all he was almost as bad as Pinky or any of the others. Not in as deep, perhaps, but not because he hadn’t tried. There was no use trying to fool anyone. He’d tried to get that gold, tried just as hard as any of the others.

“Packard!”

He heard the thump of feet behind him, stopped and waited. Slowly he turned to face the old man.

“Yes, what is it?”

“You’re going back with us,” said Page.

Packard shook his head. “No, Preacher. Hangman’s Gulch is going to be a respectable town now, with Randall and his gang mopped up. And I don’t belong …”

“Look, Packard,” said Preacher. “I want you to listen to me. Next Sunday I’m going to get up in the pulpit and I’m going to tell the people who I am. And I want to make a deal with you—”

Packard gasped. “But you can’t do that. You’re sitting pretty. There’s no reason for doing it.”

“But there is a reason. I’ve got to be square with myself. I can’t go on living a lie.”

“All right,” agreed Packard. “Have it your own way. But I can’t see where it has anything to do with me.”

“I told you I had a deal,” said Preacher. “If the people throw me out, all three of us will leave, you and I and Alice. But if they let me stay, all three of us will stay.”

Packard looked beyond Preacher at Alice and her eyes, he saw, were smiling.

“Is it a deal?” asked Preacher.

“It’s a deal,” answered Packard, not even looking at him.