“I expect that would be your best move,” Rock agreed.
He bent over Stack and undid the rope. The man sat up, rubbed his foot gingerly, and drew on his boot.
“Now,” Rock said sternly, “people like you sometimes say one thing and do another. You may change your mind, once you get hold of a gun again and get a horse between your legs. You may figure you’d like to get even with me. I am not letting you go out of sympathy. I haven’t time to bother with you, or I would take you to Fort Benton and throw you in the calaboose and land you eventually in the pen. But I am after Buck Walters—not small fry. It is not going to be healthy for him nor any of his crowd around here very soon. So, I will make you an offer and give you a piece of advice. The offer is that if you will walk out in plain sight on the hill, in about an hour, I will give you back this horse. The advice is that you mount him, head south, and keep going.”
Stack rubbed his wrists where the hair macarte had sunk deep in his flesh.
“That suits me down to the ground,” he said. “I don’t never play in a losin’ game if I get a chance to draw out. You needn’t worry about me changin’ my mind. I don’t want none of your game, no more. But I got stuff at the Maltese Cross I’d like to have.”
“Buck Walters is too clever for a man like you,” Rock declared. “He would get out of you what has happened before you knew where you were at. And I don’t want him to know. He’d probably end up by throwing a bullet into you.”
“Maybe. Only I don’t think he’d be there at the ranch,” Stack declared.
“What makes you think that? Where would he most likely be.”
“I have only got a hunch,” Stack said slowly. “But I think he’s goin’ North for a spell, with a hand-picked crew.”
Rock considered this gravely.