threatened.  He had been thinking of her—­even aside from her presence in the patio—­that night when the posse had entered Showdown.  He had thought of her while riding to the Ortez rancho—­and now he was thinking of her again . . .  He raised his head and glanced around.  The starlit desert was as soundless as the very sky itself.  The soft creak of the saddles, the breathing of the horses, the sand-muffled sound of their feet . . .  Directly ahead loomed a wall of darkness.  Pete touched Brevoort’s arm and gestured toward it.

“They call it the Devil’s Graveyard,” said Brevoort.  “A sizable bunch of cactus alongside the road.  We’re closer to Sanborn than I figured.”

“Well, we can’t go any slower ’less we git off and set down,” Pete remarked.  “Blue Smoke here is fightin’ the bit.  He ain’t no graveyard hoss.”

“I notice he’s been actin’ nervous—­and only jest recent.”

“He always runs his fool head off—­if I let him,” asserted Pete.  And he fell silent, thinking of Boca and the strange tricks that Fate plays on the righteous and wicked alike.  He was startled out of his reverie by Brevoort.  “Mebby I’m dreamin’,” whispered the Texan, “but I’m plumb certain I seen somethin’ drift into that cactus-patch.”

“Cattle,” said Pete.

“No.  No cattle in these parts.”

“Stray—­mebby.”

“I dunno.  Jest sit light in your saddle and watch your hoss’s ears.  He’ll tell you right quick if there’s another hoss in there.”

Pete knew that the Texan would not have spoken without some pertinent reason.  They were drawing close to the deeper shadow of the cacti, which loomed strangely ominous in the faint light of the stars.  Brevoort’s horse, being the faster walker, was a little ahead and seemingly unconscious of anything unusual in the shadows, when Blue Smoke, range-bred and alert, suddenly stopped.

“Put ’em up—­quick!” came from the shadows.

Pete’s hand dropped to his holster, but before he could jerk out his gun, Brevoort had fired at the sound—­once, twice, three times . . .  Pete heard the trampling of a frightened horse somewhere in the brush.

“I got him,” Brevoort was saying.

Pete’s face was cold with sweat.  “Are you hit, Ed?” he said.

“No, he missed me.  He was right quick, but I had him lined against that openin’ there before he said a word.  If he’d ‘a’ stood back and kept still he could have plugged us when we rode past.  He was too sure of his game.”

“Who was it, Ed?”

“I got one guess.  We got the money.  And he got what was comin’ to him.”  Brevoort swung down and struck a match.  “I owed you that, Brent,” he said as the match flared up and went out.

“Brent!” exclaimed Pete.

Brevoort mounted and they rode on past the sinister place, in the chill silence of reaction from the tense and sudden moment when death had spoken to them from the shadows where now was silence and that voiceless thing that had once been a man.  “Got to kill to live!” Pete shivered as they swung from the shadows and rode out across the open, and on down the dim, meandering road that led toward the faint, greenish light glimmering above the desert station of Sanborn.