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where it stood like a sixty-mile-long dark wall above the Cimarron breaks, the mesa was unapproachable. Maybe a man on foot could climb it, given the time and equipment, but no horse could.
    If that was where they were going, even Falcon MacCallister would have his work cut out for him to find them.
    But the faint trail he followed turned away from the mesa. Out in the high rolling grasslands the ridershad swung eastward. The tracks crossed a couple of draws that would be creeks farther down, then veered due east. And it was there that he lost the trail.
    The spring storm swept down from the white peaks westward, and brought hail and wind with it. Hailstones the size of musket balls pelted his back and rattled all around him as he guided Diablo down a cut bank and into the slight cover of an overhung bank. The big black pranced and shied, panicked at the onslaught, but quieted once the punishing hail was blocked.
    For nearly an hour, Falcon MacCallister huddled beneath the bank, holding Diablo’s head in a powerfulgentle arm, stroking the horse’s nose and talkingto him, soothing him as the pounding ice fell. Then, when it eased off, the sky darkened still more and there was rain. It passed, as such storms do, but by then the sun was behind the snowy silhouette of the mountains and it was too late to go on.
    He made his camp right there in that brushy draw, first scouting around to get the lay of the land, then taking his time to attend to Diablo. The big black had come a long way, but with a brisk rubdown he was ready to graze for the night.
    By last light, Falcon walked to the top of the highestrise he could find—a long grassy swell a quarter-milefrom his camp—and stood there, turning slowly while his eyes, as clear as those of the bird he was named for, catalogued every visible detail of the surroundingmiles. Standing better than six feet tall, wide shoulders bulging the buckskin shirt above a slim hard waist, he might have been a statue in the dusk—a flaxen-haired statue that barely moved, slowly and methodically fixing the vastness with his gaze.
    When he was satisfied, he returned to the draw and built a hat-size fire right up against the cut bank.
    His buckskins and high moccasins were chilling wet, and he stripped out of them and wrapped himselfin a blanket. Then he made a supper of jerked meat, bannock bread roasted on a little basketwork of sapling twigs, and strong black coffee.
    He knew the trail he was following would be gone, with the hail and the rain. But he knew the direction,and he could reckon the distance. The men with the stolen wagon were a day or more ahead of him, but he would catch up in good time. If they continued eastward, he would overtake them. If they veered off, he would backtrack and find their trail. If they went to ground, he would find them.
    It was a big empty land, these high plains tapering down from the frontal ranges of the Rockies. It was a huge region, so broad and seemingly endless that many a man would turn back—as many had—in the face of such enormity.
    It was big, but not big enough for men who had Falcon MacCallister on their trail. He had seen what they did back there, and he would find them. For Marie’s memory he would find them, and when he was done the wolves and the buzzards could have what was left.
    Falcon MacCallister had seen the place where those men had ambushed the family of westers. When he had buried what remained of the victims, the pitiful graves made him remember Marie. He had been on his way to Valley at the time, with the idea of spending a few weeks in the company of kin. But Valley could wait, now. Those five movers he had buried ... one had been a woman, and two just young girls!
    A limit to tolerance! What the outlaws did to those people reminded him too much of other outrages he had seen—too many, too inhuman, too brutal, to be put aside. He had too many bad dreams alreadyto tolerate any more.
    The nearest law, so