Marshal Justice Sterling's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The road climbed into broken hills, and the pinto stopped short. It threw its head and blew hard through its nose. Sterling reined in and put a hand on its neck. He had learned to trust that warning. Somewhere ahead, Ransom and four men waited. Ride straight in, and five guns would cut them down before Sterling ever said the word arrest. "Horse smells them," Sterling said. "They're close." Clyde swung down without a word. He knelt and read the ground. He touched a boot print, then a smear of horse dung, and pointed up the slope. A tall saguaro stood there, arms spread, a bird tucked safe in a hole near its top. Clyde studied the rock behind it. "They're in that draw past the cactus," he said. "Sitting on the road. Waiting for us to walk into it." He wiped his hands on his pants. "I lost a man in country like this once. Never again. We don't take their road." Sterling looked at the wall of rock. "Then which road?" "There isn't one. That's the point." Clyde nodded at a seam in the cliff, a crack too narrow for horses. "Goat track. Comes out above their draw. They watch the low ground. They don't watch the high." They tied the horses in the brush. Sterling drew his Colt and climbed. Loose stone slid under his white boots. Clyde came behind, breathing hard but quiet, quicker on the rock than his size promised. Near the top a gecko darted off a sun-warmed ledge. Sterling froze, then went on. Below them, five men sat their saddles in the shade, rifles across their laps, eyes fixed on the empty road. Sterling picked out Ransom by the bone handle at his belt, twin to the knife the girl had given him. He steadied his aim and called down loud. "Cole Ransom. Marshal of Firestone. Hands off the iron." Heads snapped up the wrong way, toward the road. By the time they found the high ground, Sterling and Clyde had them cold. One man grabbed for his rifle. Clyde fired and knocked it spinning from his hands. The rest went still. "Five to two down there," Clyde said. "Two to five up here. Funny how rock changes math." Ransom stared up, jaw tight. Then he lifted his hands from the saddle horn. His men, watching him, did the same. Sterling came down the slope with the Colt level and took the pistols one by one. He bound Ransom's wrists and pulled the bone-handled knife from his belt. The trial in Firestone had its man and its blade. Clyde looked at the four others, disarmed and sullen in the dust. "Can't march five men and hold one for trial," he said. "Not two of us. Not this far out." Sterling looked north, then back at the long road home. He had his killer. Now he had four more men, and only two sets of hands to hold them all.