the Quick and the Dead (1983) by Louis L'amour

was no fuel and they cooked with buffalo chips and wood brought from earlier camps.
    On the first day Con Vallian had disappeared, riding off with only a wave of the hand. Nor did they see him again during their camps at Cottonwood or Turkey Creeks. Susanna found her eyes constantly seeking for him. "I wonder where he is?" she asked suddenly. "Where does he camp?"
    "There's no telling. He's like an Indian, Susanna. One day he will ride off and we will not see him again."
    "I suppose so."
    Tom turned toward them from the back of the wagon. "He thinks those men ... the ones back at the settlement ... he thinks they are following us."
    "I doubt it," Duncan said, "they'd not follow us this far."
    "We killed one of them," Susanna said. "Maybe they are vengeful men."
    "It's hard to believe," Duncan McKaskel stared at the horizon, "there was actually a man killed. Why, I never even saw a man killed before! Come to think of it, I did not see that one killed."
    "He was trying to kill you."
    "I know ... although that hardly seems real. I wonder if he really was? Or did Vallian shoot him for reasons of his own?"
    "They had your horses, Pa. They threatened you."
    "Yes," he admitted reluctantly, "yes, they did, but when it comes to killing ... well, I doubt if--"
    "You said you felt the bullet's wind when it passed you. You heard the sound of it."
    "I know," Duncan was having second thoughts, and violence was no part of his ordered plan for living. "But I've heard that if a bullet is fired nearby the report is sometimes heard a second time if you're standing near a tree or post. I could have been mistaken."
    "There was no mistake about the man I hit," Susanna said, rather sharply. "He was an armed man and he was creeping up to our camp. I hit him, and I'm glad."
    Duncan laughed. "I had no idea you were so warlike."
    "One does what one has to," she said simply. "I've begun to realize that the world is not made up of nice, well-mannered people. There are those, of course, but there are others. Back east we had the law to restrain them, out here we have nothing."
    "It's up to us," Tom said quietly. "That's what Con Vallian says."
    Twice they stopped to rest the horses, and Susanna looked carefully around before they started on. She was alarmed at the change in the mules. They had lost flesh and looked gaunt and tired.
    They nooned near a brushy gully and they all took time to pick up sticks to put in the tarp slung under the wagon. Duncan led the mules to water, then let them graze on the buffalo grass nearby.
    The air was very still, the sky impossibly clear. Susanna walked slowly toward a small knoll and climbed it. There were a few rocks there, and after a glance around for snakes, she sat down. The wind blew gently against her face and stirred her hair.
    She realized with a sort of shock that she loved this country and when Tom came up the hill to join her, she said as much.
    "I do, too, Ma. I like to look away there for miles and see all that land. It's marvelous."
    "It is very mountainous where we're going, Tom. It won't be like this."
    "Do you think those men are following us?"
    She hesitated. There was no purpose in lying. When trouble came, he must face it too. "Yes, Tom, I think they are. I think Mr. Vallian was right and that they are very bad men. Your father doesn't like to admit it to himself, he has such faith in people, but he believes it, too."
    "Will we have to fight?"
    "I think so. Unless we find some other people ... good people."
    "Out here? I think we had better get ready to fight."
    She got up, and they stood there a moment, looking at the vast space. And men, far off--
    Tom spoke first. "Ma! Somebody's coming. See?" He pointed. "Away yonder where that draw comes into the plain."
    It was only a dot, a speck in all that vastness, as they watched the speck grew, and was accompanied by a small cloud of dust.
    "It's Vallian," Susanna said. "Nobody sits a horse quite like him."
    Tom strained his eyes, but could not make him