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  After he and Barkley Sweet had run down and killed the last hostile band raiding from the Apache Water, Logan had buried Sweet's body under a rock slide and ridden away. He had resigned his scout's position and headed north and then east into wooded country where the air had a satisfying snap when you sucked in a lung full, and where water ran in springs, streams, and even rivers. Josh Logan had never intended to return to the parched and barren land along the Mexican border.

  This was a bitter land, mostly treeless and with little moisture. Relentless sun baked the clay soil into dust covered adobe that fought the plow and man's puny efforts to tame it. Logan had returned because Erni's friends had been given a calling to settle the arid plain and turn it into a land of milk and honey. Erni wished to join in the calling, and Josh Logan placed his wife's happiness above all other things.

  They had married back east in the old county when Logan had returned from the Indian wars. Josh Logan had been fifty-five back then, and his spinster bride was nearly fifty. She provided roots for Logan the drifter. She gave him reason to put the violent memories to rest. For Josh Logan, Erni offered reasons for living.

  Long before her marriage, Erni Bailey had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

  Because Erni desired it, Logan had accepted the act of baptism, but despite Erni's wish, he had not yet joined the Mormon church. To become a Mormon, Joshua Logan had to believe, and the slaughter he had been a part of in the southern mountains turned him doubtful. Someday, maybe, was the best he could promise.

  The distant territory of Utah was the Mormon hope. There they prospered without the rarely easing ridicule of gentile neighbors.

  No one in the old county laid harsh words on Erni Logan; Josh was known to be too dangerous a man for that, but religious resentment showed, and Josh could appreciate Erni's wish to join her church brethren.

  The old county suited the retired scout best. He had seen the western lands and had found nothing there that was not at least as good in Pennsylvania. Like Erni, he had been born between the mountains in Perry County, and his surviving brother farmed there.

  Josh had invested most of his western earnings in Frank Logan's peach farm just west of Blain, where the orchards were sheltered by the masses of Bower and Conococheague Mountains, and the investment was paying. As an equal partner, he and Erni could have lived comfortably through their years.

  The valleys of the county were rich with nut trees. Turkeys abounded and squirrels were a nuisance. Deer were still plentiful for a good hunter, and bear could be taken at the county's western end. In season, all of the wildlife visited the orchards, and Josh judged the Logans had life just about right.

  The Josh Logan's lived close by the orchards in a squared log home with two downstairs rooms and a useful upstairs, and Josh intended to add on however many rooms Erni believed they should have whenever she was ready for them.

  Frank's sons had left the county just the way Josh had when he was young. Josh had gone west, but Frank's boys had headed for the city. The sons were earning livings in Philadelphia, and the father believed that they would never wish to return to the quieter country life. The aging brothers could have lived out their lives in easy comfort, the way sensible men did.

  Josh Logan also knew Utah. In his earliest western travels, he had wintered in the Great Salt Lake City, and he understood the Mormons. Good people, harder working than any others he knew, but clannish—made that way by the brutalities laid on them before their western migration.

  Because he knew the real Mormons, Logan could chuckle at the commonly shared beliefs that Latter Day Saints were devil worshipers, believers in false doctrines, and worshipers of a false prophet. Josh knew that the Mormons used the same Bible as the rest of Christianity, and he detected no signs of worshiping either the devil or their church's founder. Joseph Smith was admired and respected, but was recognized by the Mormons as simply a specially chosen man who had presented God's teachings, done his best in life, and died--as everyone else did.

  Erni liked to talk about Utah and the ever growing body of Mormons living there. Her husband told all he knew in positive terms because the territory and its people deserved honest reporting.

  And Josh could feel it coming. He could sense his wife's longing to join her new people in their great adventure. Finally she asked, and though he would have preferred to remain in the old county, Josh Logan said simply, "I am ready if you really want to go."

  Utah had been good, and Logan had been sorry to leave, but the Utah time was somehow deep in their past. Their three years in the new settlement made all that had gone before as distant as the moon.

  The new town had been named Micah, very biblical, Logan thought, but to gaze upon their work was not overly impressive.

  Because there were few trees, wood was a valuable commodity, and houses were built of adobe in the Mexican and Indian fashion. Cooking fires were kept small, manure chips were fuel, and trips to the nearest woodlands were carefully planned and calculated ventures.

  Instead of wooden hitch rails to hold horses, the few businesses had large and heavy adobe blocks with iron rings for rein tying. Josh found such innovations clever, but he dearly missed shade trees and flowing streams.

  Micah was placed where trails crossed. The expectation was that the town would become a local market and the people would prosper. Perhaps that would come about, but travelers were still few, and the cattle ranches distant. Into the foreseeable future, the town's citizens would struggle to force the clayish soil into crop yielding fields, producing at least enough corn and beans to sustain themselves.

  Streets had been laid out, and buildings put up, but the homes and businesses were so few that the community appeared nearly empty and half deserted. Only at the crossroads itself were buildings side by side. There a business occupied each corner with one home alongside the general store. The congregation met above the general store, but a proper chapel was planned.

  Josh and Erni Logan's home on the town's outskirts was small but in some ways special. When raising his walls, Logan had created double walls a foot apart. Between the walls he had packed straw and dried prairie grass. Nearly three feet thick, the walls provided almost perfect insulation from temperature changes. Even when blistering heat made things too hot to touch, the Logans were cool in their house.

  The Logans' roof also contributed to temperature stability. Logan had built the typical, slightly slanted adobe roof common to Indian pueblos, but he had then added a second roof, separated from the first by a few inches. The separation forced a breeze and kept the inner roof cool, and if the outer roof leaked a bit here and there, the inside roof made it less likely that water would get through. In a land where rain was a rarity, Logans' roof was a spectacular accomplishment.

  Josh Logan was innovative in other ways. He provided an essential service to the community by bringing to them a steady supply of meat which he traded for staples he and Erni needed. Until enough grain could be raised to support more hogs, Josh Logan's wild game was the community's primary source of meat.

  No one else in the village could have hunted as Josh Logan did. Josh knew the country, and he was recognized as a hunter with few equals.

  Then there was Josh's gun. No one had ever before even seen a weapon like Josh's. Logan's gun, some declared, could kill a jack rabbit at half a mile. Most doubted that wild a tale, but Logan did keep bringing in meat from a land where there seemed to be no concealment to allow sneaking up close enough on an animal to use a conventional rifle.

  When you saw Josh, you saw his gun. The hunter was rarely without his rifle. When riding, Logan usually balanced the heavy weapon on the front of his saddle and against his thighs, but sometimes he slung the rifle across his back by a hide strap rigged along the stock. The gun was huge and more like the war time rifled muskets than the repeating carbines everybody wanted. One man in town owned an almost new Winchester Model 73, but no one doubted that Logan's long barreled single shot would put
the Winchester to shame.

  Logan also owned a Spencer carbine, but the short rifle stayed at home. The carbine fired a weaker cartridge that had little use in the open mountains. The Spencer shot fast, but it was best at closer ranges.

  Josh kept the Spencer for other requirements. The land was not yet tamed, and vicious men still roamed. A Spencer with reloading tubes ready could produce more accurate fire than three men with single shot rifles. Josh believed that every able-bodied person, women included, should be required to have a Spencer or one of the new Winchesters in the home. West of the Mississippi, a household could have need to defend itself.

  On occasion, Logan voiced his opinions, but no one rushed out to buy a gun. Until her eves failed, Erni had been an excellent shot, and Logan felt secure with her ability to defend herself during his absences. Now? Well, now Logan had to hope that if trouble ever came he would be home with both the Spencer and the big gun ready.

  2

  With heat mirage destroying long viewing, Logan was well out on the flat before he saw that there was something wrong with the village. For a moment he thought heat devils were still playing with his vision, but then he recognized the altered silhouette and knew buildings were missing. From this distance it appeared that the center of the town was gone. Fire, it had to be a fire and a bad one. Fire was always a lurking menace in the hot dry country. Relentless sun dried everything burnable into tinder, and there was little water available to fight flames larger than a stove fire.

  Logan's telescope showed little more. He thought the buildings that made up the crossroads businesses were gutted, but the adobe walls still stood. There was no smoke rising, so the fire was over, and he was too distant to help anyway. Logan nudged his horse forward into its comfortable walk. The hunter rarely moved his animals at a faster pace. Arriving anywhere with a run-out horse was not wise, and he had to think hard to remember when hurrying more would have helped a situation. Whatever had happened at Micah was over, and the news would wait until he came in.

  Off and on he worried a little about Erni, but the ladies of the town always saw to her, and she was not likely to have been at the stores anyway.

  At home, Erni did fine. She knew where everything was, and her short vision was not yet gone. She cooked, and she sewed a little, although most of her time was spent in her rocker on their shaded front porch, mostly waiting for him to return, Josh supposed. When he did get in, they sat and rocked together while each told their happenings.

  It had been the same for more than a year now. He would see her in her chair, and he would halloo from far out. Erni would wave, and he would probably come in singing in his crackly old voice one of the grand marching songs from the Great War. That always made her smile. He usually spent a few moments giving her hugs and a kiss or two before he delivered his meat to the butcher. Hmm, where would he take the meat this trip?

  By the time he had the horses settled and got back to the house, Erni would have hot water ready and their old wooden tub would be waiting out back. Josh claimed that a man did not sweat in the high dry mountain country, and that he smelled as good as when he went out, but Erni saw it differently. He had to admit that a good soak and a rinse along with a thorough face scraping with his razor did make him feel good.

  In clean duds with a hot supper stretching his belly, Josh always felt ready to sit. They would rock there on the porch, looking toward the village until it got too dark, sometimes holding hands, just talking and listening away the evening until bedtime.

  There had been earlier times when Josh Logan could not have sat away the hours, but now, just touching his seventieth year, loafing felt good, and if nothing pressed and the weather was not blistering, he even enjoyed an afternoon nap.

  He struck the north/south road only a mile out, and there were signs of horse traffic. The manure was days old, but it had not been in the road when he had gone out. Whoever had come into town must have passed only a little while after he had turned off. Logan guessed at more than a dozen riders, and they would have raised dust. If they had been traveling the road coming in, Logan would have seen their dust cloud. That meant the riders had reached the road from somewhere east or west. Riding straight away, he had been looking forward and had missed them.

  Fire and a lot of horse tracks. Logan felt tension tighten his chest. The horses were shod, so they were probably not Indians, and there were no hostiles around anyway, but the tracks were also not double-columned like cavalry would leave. Who then? Despite himself, Logan picked up the pace a little.

  He had a favored viewing spot a half mile out. When he got there he pulled up and tried his telescope again. He knew that from the slight mound he could see clearly, but when he looked, Erni was not on their porch. Probably she was helping in whatever emergency had developed, but concern washed over him, and Logan had to force himself to keep his pace down.

  Emit Baird saw Logan coming. He called to the bishop and whistled to other men laboring within the burned out ruins. Baird had owned the mercantile, and he was used to leading. He led the others like a point on a triangle toward the approaching horseman.

  Logan saw the committee form and march forward. His gut had already knotted because their house was closed up tight. Without air circulation a building became untenable, and Erni would not have done that. Where then was she? Black dread formed in the soul of Josh Logan.

  Then he recognized the look. In the old days he had seen it often enough, men struggling to explain to stunned families what had happened to their loved ones. Tragedy had a bleakness that settled features and slumped shoulders, and no one ever had found the right words. When the bishop pushed to the front of the approaching villagers, Logan knew with certainty that Erni was gone. He felt himself settling, his mind steeling to hear the worst.

  Mormons had no professional clergy. A man like the Bishop received a church calling, but he still earned his daily living, and he might be a merchant or a farmer. He received no payment from the people or the church for his calling. Logan appreciated the system and respected the men who served.

  Bishop Heber Otis had owned the livery and grain business, now only a blackened rubble pile. The bishop would also have personal worries. It had been a terrible fire, but how could Erni have been caught in it?

  The men came close to Josh's halted animals, and the bishop rested a sympathetic hand on Logan's thigh.

  "Josh, we've the worst of news. The town was raided by devils from hell and people were killed. Josh, your Erni was among 'em."

  The soul of Josh Logan shuddered. He recognized the glow of ferocity beginning small and hot inside him, but he banked the fires and listened closely to Bishop Otis's explanation.

  "They rode in just as the stores were opening, Josh. Billy Hasgrove counted twenty-one of them. They came in shooting off guns, just firing in all directions, and at everything moving.

  "Erni was sitting on her porch, and someone shot her when they first fired. The way it was, they just rode by and shot her square in the chest, Josh. She must never have more than felt the blow." The bishop shifted uneasily, wishing to make his point but hating mentioning the details. "The bullet went clean through, Josh, and left a great exit wound. That's how we know she must have died more or less instantly."

  The bishop faltered, not knowing quite how to proceed, and Emit Baird continued.

  "They killed three other people, Josh, and..." Baird faltered, agony choking off his words. He cleared his throat noisily and was able to go on. "They savaged some of the younger women and carried one off with them. It was Julie Smith they took with them, Josh, you'll remember her."

  One of the other men broke in. "We couldn't fight them, Josh. They had us disarmed and rounded up before we recognized what was happening."

  The bishop quieted everyone. "You can hear all of that later, Josh. We had to bury our dead before..." His shrug was explanatory, and Logan understood. The dead did not last long in the heavy heat. "The ladies dressed Erni, and we laid her to rest along
with the others. Words have been said, and I have been working on markers, but they're not ready yet."

  Logan spoke his first words. "How long have they been gone?"

  "Well, we gathered our dead two mornings ago, and..."

  Logan's voice was cold but still patient. "Not our dead, Bishop. How long have the raiders been gone?"

  "Oh, they only stayed three hours or so then rode out south with most of our livestock. They took everything we had of any value. Took the wedding rings, even watches and chains. We turned over all that we had in hope that they would not harm more people, but they took Julie with them."

  Logan nodded understanding. Again, it was an old story. Bands of raiders had tortured the frontiers ever since the first settlers had arrived, more than fifty years ago now. It had been worst just after the Civil War when countless thousands of displaced soldiers had struggled to survive. There had been little raiding the last decade, but on occasion young bucks broke from reservations or wild bunches of renegade whites sought to strike and flee to far places.

  Logan looked down on the upturned faces and sought to hold his tongue. They could not have saved Erni, who had apparently died in the first burst of gunfire, but they should have defended themselves. Men should grab guns, and women should know enough to dive for cover when trouble started. Their failure was not religious—Mormons would fight—but despite all of the warnings and all of the stories that came in from other places, people would not believe that danger still lurked and that it struck without warning. From now on this village would probably react like stirred panthers, but they had paid a fierce price for their learning.

  Logan said, "Bishop, if they aren't burned up, I'll want a pair of those five gallon wooden canteens some of you have. I'll need a few more boxes of .56 caliber Spencer cartridges that you can probably round up around the town. I'll be riding out in less than two hours, so I'd appreciate it if you'd fill the canteens and have everything ready."