“Damn it . . . who the hell?” K’pow. K’pow. “Don’t hit the ones who’s tied up.” K’pow. “Damn you, Muriday, shoot him!” K’pow. Bladen Cole awoke suddenly to the sound of gunfire and an angry crowd of shouting men in the arroyo beneath his campsite. He had drifted to sleep with the quiet of a starry desert night, with the twinkling lights of Santa Fe in the far, far distance, and with the anxiety of knowing that no more sleeps intervened between this night and the day of finality and reckoning. K’pow. K’pow. Below him now the camp of the four men was a swirling nest of activity. At its center, half-standing and half-crouched, was Simon Lynch with his Winchester in his hands. The gray smoke from the smoldering campfire mixed with the bluish smoke of burnt gunpowder.
