Tin Star

by Jackson Lowry

  “I didn’t get a chance to count noses,” Marta said. “There were three campfires. Usually that’d mean a dozen or so, but nobody’s ever reported the gang having that many riders.”

  “They must be waiting for something. The bank’s been robbed, but they aren’t acting like they have to put miles between themselves and a posse.” Luke pushed Sarah down. She sat on the stump. A bug crawling up a worn strip of cloth on her wedding dress occupied her attention for the moment.

  Marta shook her head. “My best guess is that they’re scattered around. I tried to figure how many were here by the horses in a big corral. It looks as if they intend to ride on soon, each of them taking a spare horse or two and getting as far away as possible from Kansas as they can. There’s no sign of the gold they stole back in Crossroads.”

  “But that doesn’t matter to you, does it? You were after Rhoades and the rest before they held up the bank.” Luke put his finger to his lips when Sarah held up the bug and started to serenade it. Silencing her produced considerable pouting. She would break down and cry or bolt in a few minutes if she wasn’t taken away. Letting her go would be wrong, but not saving Audrey was worse.

  “You’re right. Rhoades is wanted for train robbery and other crimes. And it’s not only him Allan wants brought in.” She nodded slowly, her floppy hat rippling as her head moved. She started to say more and stopped. When she did speak again, Luke thought she was leaving out key details of her assignment. “I don’t know where Rhoades is. I didn’t see either him or his partner.”

  “Crazy Water Benedict.”

  “Yeah, him. Look, I see you’re telling the truth about finding your wife. That’s nothing less than a miracle. Since I didn’t get a chance to arrest Rhoades, here’s my plan. My new plan.” She pointed at Sarah. “I’ll escort her out of the valley. If she keeps on like she’s doing, she’s bound to stir them up. Get her out, don’t give the gang any reason to start shooting at anything that moves.”

  “Like us,” Luke said. “That’s a good plan. You take her out, and I’ll do the same for Audrey. Once we’re out, you can come back in for Rhoades. They won’t even know we’ve been here.” He didn’t add “until they find a passel of dead bodies.”

  Such an explanation wasn’t lost on Marta. She knew all hell would bust loose when the sentries were discovered dead.

  “Go save your wife.” Marta gripped his upper arm and gave it a squeeze. Then she went to Sarah. The two women stood shoulder to shoulder. Luke had no idea what was said but Marta convinced Sarah to come with her.

  Sarah blew him a kiss. He waved, a weak gesture but all he was up for. Stringing her along only made the hurt worse when he left. He wasn’t her Lucas.

  He was Audrey’s Luke.

  They melted into the darkness, leaving him alone. He looked up at the moonless night. Stars began to disappear behind wisps of clouds moving in from the north. A new storm blew in and would pelt the land with rain before morning. That’d cover his and Audrey’s tracks, if they left soon enough.

  He got his bearings and returned to the top of the ridge. Retracing his steps, even in the dark, proved easier than he expected. He even came across the outlaw’s body in the wooded area. Hiding it gained him nothing. Already bugs and a coyote or two had come to dine. There was a reason bodies were buried six feet under. It took that much earth to hide the smell of a decaying body from the keen-nosed scavengers.

  Time weighed heavily on him. He rummaged about and added another pistol to his armament. Search as he might, the knife he had lost in the fight was nowhere to be found. Reluctantly he gave up his hunt for it, but he did check the derringer in his vest pocket. The dead outlaw gave up a cartridge that fit the small hideout gun. Once more primed with two rounds, the gun soothed him as it pressed into his chest over the spot where shrapnel rode within him.

  Both had saved him. If Lady Luck rode at his shoulder, each had served its purpose and only his skill prevailed from now on.

  He kept walking through the trees, growing more tired by the minute. When he found himself stopping every few minutes to catch his breath, panic consumed him. Not having a good look at the sky robbed him of the chance to figure out how long he had until sunrise. He took out his pocket watch but it had been smashed. The only thing he had to go on was the feeling of hours passing. The sooner he saved Audrey and got on the trail back to Crossroads—or anywhere as long as it was away from Rhoades and his “family”—the safer they’d both be. Heaving to his feet, he changed his tactics. Rather than retracing his steps, he’d go to the valley floor. The going had to be easier there and chances of missing the cabin decreased.

  As he came out of the forested area, he worried at the hint of false dawn working its way into the eastern sky. Real dawn was an hour off, but he had spent far too long blundering about saving Sarah Youngblood. Finding Marta and having her escort the crazy woman out of the valley took some pressure off. But not much. Not as much as he expected.

  A small stream meandered along the valley floor. He splashed water on his face. The cold shocked him alert. He drank, then tried to get some of the blood off his clothes. Showing up looking like he’d blundered through a slaughterhouse would scare Audrey. He gave up after a few minutes. Explaining his condition had to be easier than cleaning off the dried blood and gore.

  “At least most of it’s not mine,” he said softly. He almost started laughing hysterically. The strain wore at him from too many directions.

  “Time to get out of here.”

  He checked his stash of six-shooters and hiked along the stream for almost a half mile before seeing the cabin. The weak glow inside showed Audrey had turned down the coal oil lamp to barely a flicker. Emotion told him to rush in. Logic warned him to be sure he didn’t put them both in danger. For all he knew the rest of the gang slept in the cabin.

  A quick circuit showed that they had removed any chance for Audrey riding away. He found an iron ring set in a stump where horses had been tethered, but not recently, not within the last day or two.

  He went to the rickety door and reached out to open it. His hand shook. Months had passed since Benedict had shot him at the wedding and kidnapped Audrey. Months. But he had lived centuries since then. In spite of his bravado and insistence that Audrey was unhurt, some tiny rotted black spot deep inside had told him she was dead.

  Or better off dead than Benedict’s captive.

  The door creaked as he tugged at it. When it came free, almost falling off the hinges, it made an earsplitting, shrill sound. A nail pulled out of rotted wood and the latch fell off. He stepped inside and pushed it closed the best he could.

  The cabin’s darkness stole away his vision. The pale yellow flame in the lamp on the table did nothing to illuminate the corners. And in the far corner a lump under a blanket moved.

  “Audrey?”

  The lump erupted. The blanket went flying and the woman sat up with a start. He made out Audrey’s face in the dim light.

  “Mal!”

  “No, not Mal. Not him,” he said quickly. “Stay quiet. I didn’t see any of them outside, but as still as it is, your voice carries a long ways. They’re camped somewhere near. They must be.”

  “You . . . you’re not Mal.”

  “No, my darling. It’s me. Luke.”

  “Luke?” She shifted in the bed, pressing into the wall. Her eyes blinked. She rubbed them and then squinted to get a better look. “Luke? It is you!”

  “I vowed to find you. I promised till death do us part. I never doubted you were alive.” He rushed on, even though that was only mostly true. “Is there a horse you can ride? I scouted around but didn’t see one. Mine is slow and old, but it’ll carry both of us if it has to.”

  He vowed to go back and pay twice what he already had to the farmer for the use of the plow horse. It had been better than any quarter horse working on the range. Its strong, slow-gaited dependabilit
y would carry him and his wife to safety.

  She shook her head vigorously and said, “We can’t go. Not yet.”

  “We have to!” He went to her. She looked so small and vulnerable. “I can’t fight off the entire gang.”

  “We have to eat first. Food. I can fix you breakfast.”

  “Throw something into a gunnysack. We’ll eat on the trail.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the edge of the bed. She jerked free and shook her head even harder.

  “Let me, Luke. You’re so brave coming for me. Let me do something for you.”

  “We’ll go to San Francisco. Or Chicago. New Orleans! We can have breakfast in bed at some fancy hotel.”

  “You can’t afford that.” Her tone was chiding. She got her bare feet under her. The dirt on the floor made soft brushing sounds as she moved about, going to the Franklin stove in the corner. Audrey opened the iron door and poked at the embers inside, then added a few twigs. Somehow, she got a fire going. Only when she felt the iron side warming did she turn to him. “You can’t afford it, can you?”

  “I sold the farm to the railroad.”

  “For a lot of money?”

  He held up his tattered coat to show the rigid seams.

  “There’s plenty of gold dust here to keep us going for a long time, until we decide what we want to do. Now let’s go!”

  “You carry it around with you? How much?” She came to him and ran her fingers over the seams, moving segments of the dust up and down. A shiver passed through her.

  “You’re going to freeze to death, wearing that.”

  All she wore was a thin muslin undergarment. Gooseflesh showed wherever bare skin poked through. But when she looked up, her eyes were hot and sharp as if she had a fever. He touched her forehead. She grabbed his hand and pulled it down so she could kiss it.

  “I’ve missed you so, my dear. We never had time together because of Mal.”

  “There’s no time to talk here. Once we get on my horse and clear out, then we can talk for the rest of our lives.” He began worrying that their lives would end quickly if they stayed much longer. It was as if an hourglass dribbled sand, and he watched every grain fall. The pile at the bottom soon enough signaled the end.

  “I want to fix you breakfast.” She pushed him down into a chair.

  Luke fought to stand, but his leg gave way. His side ached and dizziness prevented him from focusing his eyes. Food might not be a bad idea, but he’d rather risk collapsing on the trail.

  “You want to know everything, don’t you, Luke?”

  “Hurry it up,” he said. “Nothing fancy.”

  “You know I’m not that good a cook. But then, you don’t really know anything of the sort. I never fixed much for you. Our courtship was so fast, and you never knew much about me at all.”

  “Not even where you came from.”

  “Chicago,” she said. She put a skillet atop the stove and dropped a spoonful of lard into it. Rummaging around, she found a couple eggs in a basket beside the stove. She cracked them and let the eggs begin to hiss and bubble. Taking a spatula from a hook on the wall, she poked at the eggs until they firmed. With a deft scrape she captured the eggs and plopped them onto a dirty plate already on the table. She pushed it toward him. “Fork’s there.” Audrey pointed with the spatula at a dirty fork.

  Luke took it, hesitated, then began shoveling the runny eggs into his mouth. The quicker he ate, the sooner they left.

  “I left Chicago and found you. I thought everything was perfect when I heard how much the railroad wanted to buy the farm.”

  “So you didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife,” he said. “That’s a hard life. A good one, but hard.”

  “How much money do you have left? You must have spent a lot of it to find me.”

  “There’s some left.” He scrapped the plate clean. “Now let’s go.”

  “He found me. I thought I’d gotten away from him in Chicago, but he’s a clever, determined man.”

  “Who? Benedict? You mean you knew him?”

  “Mal would have let me go. But Rollie isn’t the sort to let anyone go their own way like I wanted.”

  He stared at her, not sure he understood. This was Audrey, the woman he’d married so gladly. But she was different. Her attitude was different.

  “What have they done to you? After they kidnapped you, what’d they do? What’d Rhoades do?”

  “Rollie? Not too much once I was back with the gang.”

  “Back? You were in his gang in Chicago?”

  “Of course I was. He didn’t rob banks then. We worked swindles, but it was getting too hot for us there. I got tired of it, but Rollie wanted one more big score. While he was working the sucker, I hightailed it.”

  “You were one of his gang? Did he . . . did he ever—?”

  “Rollie? Of course not. He’d never. Well, let’s say I wanted to go straight, Luke. With you.”

  “Let’s go. Now.” Both hands against the table, he pushed himself standing. His butt hurt and his side ached, but they’d stop hurting when he got on the trail with Audrey. But would he have to watch his back? Luke’s hands shook. She was the woman he married, only that woman was a complete enigma now. He loved her and that was forever, but there was so much more about her he had no idea about. A swindler? A willing participant in illicit schemes with Rhoades? Still, he saw so much to love. He had to come to love, or at least accept, the greater part of her he hadn’t known.

  “Don’t you want to hear what I went through after the wedding? I’m surprised to see you after I watched Mal shoot you. He doesn’t miss. He’s a crack shot.”

  “He hit dead center, but I’m tougher than I look.” He tapped his chest where the shrapnel rested in his chest.

  “You must be. You weren’t killed, and you tracked us down.”

  Luke caught his breath. The way she said “us” put her in with the gang. Again.

  “They’re going to find us if we don’t go.” He wondered what she had to say about that.

  “It’ll be days before they get back. Rollie took the gold north and is hiding it. Mal only got back from decoying the posse to the south.” She looked hard at him. “He didn’t do such a good job of that, did he? I can tell by your expression. Is that how you found us? You tracked Mal? Is he drinking the crazy water again? He promised to stop.”

  “What’s in the crazy water?”

  “He mixes laudanum with alcohol. Or morphine sulfate, he calls it sometimes. If he finds any, he cuts it with branch water. It makes him plumb loco in the head after a shot or two.” She laughed. “It doesn’t pay to be in the same county when he’s tied one on. You can’t believe how ornery that makes him.”

  “It sounds as if you know firsthand. Did he go loco a lot after he took you?”

  “Rollie is hiding the gold and then he and Mal are heading for Indian Territory for a few months, until the ruckus over the robbery dies down.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “They’re going to double-cross the rest of the gang. Maybe that’s why Mal left such a plain trail for you to follow. He expected the law to be hot on his heels and catch the rest of the boys so he wouldn’t need to waste his ammo on them.”

  “You know too much for them to let you live. What if you spilled this to the others in the gang—the ones that are left?”

  “The ones that’re left? Why, Luke Hadley, have you taken out a few of them yourself? And you, not even a lawman.”

  “No,” he said slowly. “I’m not.” He touched the tin star in his pocket but left it where it rested. He wasn’t proud of lying to others. The lies about that star ended now, and he wasn’t going to let on to Audrey all he had said to find her. The outlaws’ dead bodies spoke loud enough.

  He grabbed her and swung her around toward the door. Again he felt time crushing down on him—or the lack of it. They had to l
eave. Now.

  He kicked open the door and dragged her through it. She resisted, then stopped and said, “Lookee there. I reckon I was wrong about how long it was going to take him.”

  Luke released her and faced Rollie Rhoades as he stepped down from his horse.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  NOW, WHO DO we have here?” Rollie Rhoades cocked his head to one side. A slow smile curled the corners of his mouth. His boyish looks carried none of the cruelty Luke knew was possible. But the eyes did. They were dead as they stared at him, cold and black as coal and . . . dead.

  Luke pushed his coat back so his gun rested free and easy to draw. The other pistols he had taken off the dead outlaws weighed him down, but he wasn’t inclined to discard them. Any movement on his part now meant the gunfight began. Rhoades’s reputation was fast, and Audrey had claimed he was a dead-accurate shot.

  “You are actually facing me. From what I’d heard, you really prefer me to turn my back. That’s the way you’ve killed most of the men, isn’t it, Rhoades?”

  “A pretty speech from a man who’s stolen another man’s wife.” Rhoades shooed his horse away. It went only a few yards off before it discovered a watering trough and dipped its nose in for a drink.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dumb and slow. That’s you. I’d heard you were slow bordering on glacial with your six-gun, and it surely does seem that dumb goes with that. Dumb and slow, that’s—what’s his name, Audrey? Never mind. There’s time to figure out what to put on the grave marker.”

  “You talk big. Are you trying to bore me to death?” Luke knew exactly what the gunman was doing. If he got his dander up over the insults, he might make a mistake. If he was as mad as a wet hen, his aim became shaky. More than this, Rhoades enjoyed throwing out the insults. They buoyed his spirits as they tore down his opponent.