Last Train to Bannock [Clayburn 02] by Marvin H. Albert Page A

sun was a dull red blob sinking into the jagged horizon, casting long tortured shadows across a landscape that might have been created by the dropping from the sky of a God-sized jigsaw puzzle of stone and clay; a land of flat-topped mesas and twisting canyons and towering masses of rock, of eroded butte spires, dry gullies and monstrous boulders. The wind was not strong, but its breath had become noticeably colder during the day's progress northward.
        Clayburn sat his tall sorrel atop a high flat rock, the collar of his sheepskin coat turned up to warm his ears as he gazed north to the dark, looming range of the mountains. Snow gleamed on those mountains, tinged with a rosy hue by the setting sun. But it only showed in patches, high up, and the clouds above the range were light and fluffy, containing no threat of more snow. Not yet.
        His saddle creaked under him as Clayburn turned slowly, taking one last survey of the other horizons. When he was studying the south, he became very still. Then he raised his field glasses to his eyes, adjusted them to the distance. There was dust rising behind the farthest rim-rock.
        It might be Apaches. But he'd spent most of that day hunting for sign of their presence, without finding any. Besides, it wasn't Apaches that he was expecting at this stage in the game.
        The dust was blown away on the wind. No more rose in its place. No riders appeared over the rimrock. Clayburn waited, watching through the high-powered lenses. Five minutes passed. Nothing further stirred back there. Finally Clayburn lowered the glasses, twitched the reins, and rode the sorrel down off the rock into a deep meandering gully.
        Two hundred yards away, the red-haired Wilks crouched in the dark shadow of a boulder and watched him go…
        The dry gully led Clayburn into a crisscrossing of shallow canyons. He pulled up the sorrel and listened. Then he kicked his mount into motion again, cutting southwest through the canyon maze. Half a mile farther on he found the wagon train filing past the bottom of a vast shale slide, Cora and Roud riding flank and Haycox trailing a quarter of a mile behind the last freight wagon.
        Cora rode up as he approached. She looked tired from the long day's riding, but she straightened on her buckskin and grinned as they met.
        "You're a little late tonight, Clay. I was beginning to worry."
        "About me?"
        "You sound surprised. Are you supposed to be indestructible? Things could happen to you."
        Clayburn nodded. "And have-too many times."
        "Did you find a good place for us to camp for the night?"
        "One that'll serve," he told her, and rode in ahead of the chuck wagon. Motioning Kosta to follow, he angled northeast away from the shale slide.
        Keeping pace with him, Cora said, "I've been studying the ridges all around for two days straight, ever since you told me Adler had somebody watching us. I haven't seen a sign of anybody."
        "Don't get your hopes up. He's there."
        Involuntarily, Cora glanced off to left and right. Then she looked again at Clayburn's hard, impassive profile. "Where?"
        He shrugged. "I don't know-because I've made a point of not looking."
        The wagons were halfway through a deep, wide canyon when Roud caught up to Clayburn and Cora.
        "I like the looks of this place, Clay. Two ways in or out, both real narrow so they'll be easy to defend. Walls too steep for anybody to come all the way down at us. Nice safe spot to camp in for the night."
        "It is," Clayburn agreed. "But it's not where we're camping."
        Dusk was growing into night when they emerged from the other end of the canyon, cut to the right, and came to a dead end. The area was hemmed in on three sides by low cliffs, from the base of one of which a spring trickled into a shallow water hole.
        Clayburn raised an arm to halt the wagons. "This is