For a moment, Craddock had debated putting her on her own horse, still secured by the handcuffs, of course. He knew that riding double, even with her additional weight being fairly light, was bound to slow him down. But her grogginess from being backhanded made it somewhat questionable if she could even sit a saddle on her own. Plus, the thought of having her snugged tight up against him while they rode was mighty tempting. Too tempting, it turned out, especially given the pressure he felt to flee from there as fast and far as he could while the Legion of Fire was still raising hell in the rest of the town.
He picked the sturdiest-looking of the horses available to him, mounted, dragged the girl up in front of him, then spurred hard away.
* * *
After about an hour of hard riding, some concerns started creeping into Craddock’s mind about how ill prepared he was for his escape run. For starters, there was his lack of familiarity with the state. All he knew for sure, based on previous information he’d come by, was that the landscape to the north supposedly turned more rugged, a stark change from the rolling, seemingly endless hills of little besides grass and a few scattered trees. That was the direction he’d been headed to begin with, before his ill-fated stop in Arapaho Springs and the encounter with Jensen. He’d meant to lose himself in that less hospitable setting and come out the other side hoping finally to be able to breathe a sigh of relief from having anyone tight on his back trail.
So, after making a wide loop to the east in order to get clear of the burning town, Craddock again headed north. So far so good.
But the question of provisions started to weigh on his mind. Not only as far as food, except for what odds and ends might be found in the saddlebags of this strange horse he’d climbed onto, but also the matter of shelter gear.
It was going to get cold. That much was certain. Hell, winter was just around the corner. It wasn’t even impossible that a freak early dusting of snow might crop up. Craddock could feel the moisture in the air. And it was only recently when that cold, drenching rain had kept him holed up for most of a day and night. But he’d had his own horse and gear then, everything he’d needed to endure bad weather.
He didn’t know what he had to count on. His confiscated horse had belonged to a member of the Legion of Fire, notorious long-riding outlaws, so it stood to reason that his saddlebags and bedroll would be decently stocked. But there was no way to be certain, not without stopping to check, and it sure as hell wasn’t the time for that, Craddock told himself. Whatever he found, regardless of when he dug into it, that’s what he was going to have make do with.
On top of everything else, there was the girl. He was almost, but not quite, ready to question the wisdom of bringing her along. True, there remained the chance she might prove valuable in bargaining himself out of a tight spot, if it came to that. And it was double-damn sure she was going to come in handy for warming his bedroll later on, no matter what he found in the way of gear. He was really looking forward to that. Pressing her warm, soft curves against him as they rode was a steady, pleasant reminder of how much. Otherwise, though, it went right back to her being a complication. Still, for the time being, one he was willing to put up with.
For the first time, and so abruptly it gave Craddock a bit of a start, the girl spoke. Over her shoulder, she said, “If you keep riding him so hard, you’re going to kill this horse. You need to give him a breather.”
“You let me worry about the damn horse,” Craddock growled in her ear. “I ain’t about to ease up and give some damn posse a chance to close the gap on us.”
“You’re never going to make it anyway, not as long as you’ve got me,” Millie responded. “Let me go and continue making a run for it, you might have a chance. But as long as you have me, my father will chase you to the ends of the earth!”
Craddock snorted derisively. “In case you forgot, sweetheart, we left your ol’ man tanglin’ with the Legion of Fire. They get done with him, there might not be anything left to give chase.”
They continued to ride hard, back to silence after that. Craddock thought he might have heard the girl emit a sob at one point, but wasn’t sure. For a brief time she seemed to sag in his arms, as if in defeat.
But then her body stiffened, grew more rigid. He sensed she was steeling herself, willing herself not to give in. He remembered how mouthy she’d been back in the cell block, warning against handing over the key. So there was some fight in her, he told himself; he’d have to keep that in mind. It made him smile slyly. Good, he liked his women to show some spunk.
Before much longer, Craddock became increasingly aware of how hard the horse beneath them was working, how labored its breathing was becoming. He thought about the girl’s words. He hated to admit she’d had a valid point, but he was forced to face it. The horse did need a breather. And then he remembered his own words, about how they’d left the Legion of Fire devastating the town and its citizens. Given that, the formation of a posse to pursue either them or him would likely be delayed for hours, maybe days.
Having reached that conclusion, Craddock at last drew back on the reins and allowed the horse to slow down. First to an easy jog, then a walk. After a ways, he brought it to a standstill.
“We’re gonna get down now. Stretch our legs, maybe walk for a bit. Let the horse cool. Then we’ll all have a drink.” The one thing he’d taken time to make sure of before riding away from the livery stable back in Arapaho Springs was that he had two full canteens—the one on the horse he chose, plus the one off the other horse that had belonged to a fallen raider.
Wrapping one fist in Millie’s hair and giving it a yank before climbing down from the saddle, Craddock added, “Look around. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. If you try to run, I’ll damn certain catch you. After that, I’ll hog-tie you so tight you’ll barely be able to breathe. Keep that in mind.”
It was true they appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. Several miles north of Arapaho Springs yet still in an ocean of rolling, grassy hills and the occasional cluster of trees. Now and then thrusts of jagged, sun-bleached rocks had begun to appear, but they were still few and far between.
“Sit down and rest a spell. No sudden moves,” Craddock ordered once they were on the ground. He loomed over Millie, glaring, until she obeyed. After she’d settled onto the grass, he edged to the side of the horse and, always keeping one eye on her, began rummaging through its saddlebags. The items he unearthed included a handful of beef jerky, a couple of plugs of tobacco, a clasp knife, three boxes of .44 caliber cartridges, some matches wrapped in oilskin, a thin stack of letters and pictures tied with a shoestring, and a greasy red bandanna knotted around several hardtack biscuits.
After examining these and returning them to where he’d found them, Craddock muttered, “Well, we may not be eatin’ high off the hog tonight, but I guess we ain’t gonna starve neither.”
“No thanks to your brilliant planning,” Millie remarked acidly.
Craddock took a step toward her. “You got a real sassy mouth, don’t you?”
“You expect me to compliment you for dragging me off like this?”
“Oh, I’m expectin’ a lot of things from you, sweetheart,” Craddock said with a lewd smile.
“Having you even look at me makes me want to gag.”
“Maybe you’d like another cuff alongside the head to knock some of the sass out of you.”
“I’d sooner that than the other,” Millie sneered.
Craddock took another step toward her. Then he abruptly stopped. Not because his intentions changed, but rather because he was distracted by something else. A faint sound, a low rumble. And also a faint trembling in the ground under his feet.
Millie heard and felt it, too.
Both of their heads turned to look back up the long slope they had descended only a few minutes earlier. The sound seemed to be originating from beyond that grassy crest. The rumbling grew louder. So did the vibration in the ground. A haze of dust boiled up above the crest.
> Horses. Several in number. Headed directly their way, Craddock realized. His heart pounded, his mouth dropped open in stunned disbelief. Had a posse caught up with them after all? So quickly? How was that possible?
Then the riders, a score of them, came over the crest and started down the slope. After a second, amidst the swirl of dust engulfing them, Craddock could see red bandannas fluttering on the arms of the individual horsemen.
He didn’t know whether to rejoice or be even more fearful. It wasn’t a posse at all. That was the good news. The bad news was that he had inadvertently ridden directly into the path of the Legion of Fire as they thundered away from their raid on Arapaho Springs.
Chapter 18
For the balance of the day, the surviving citizens of Arapaho Springs fought the raging fires. Personal pain and grief over the injuries and deaths that the Legion of Fire also left in its wake had to be put aside for the sake of trying to prevent the town’s total destruction. In the end, the toll was still severe. Seven downtown businesses and buildings, including the bank, general store, and the Brass Rail Saloon, were turned to nothing but piles of ash and a few scorched timbers. Added to that was considerable damage done to another half dozen nearby buildings and homes.
And then there was the human toll. Fifteen lives lost—shopkeepers, tradesmen, shoppers, and ordinary citizens cut down ruthlessly in the act of going about their daily routines. Another dozen with bullet wounds and/or injuries due to getting kicked or gun-whipped. And too many cases to count of burns, scrapes, and near-exhaustion from the struggle to keep the fires from spreading. Doc Whitney’s own tireless efforts to address all of this had been nothing short of awe-inspiring.
But as bad as or maybe even worse than any of this, was the terrible weight of the unknown . . . the fate of the five women who had been hauled off by the Legion raiders.
No one suffered under the crushing weight more than Marshal Burnett, for, on top of the townswomen who’d been taken, one of them being Lucinda Davis, the café owner with whom he’d become romantically involved, came the belated discovery that his own daughter was also gone, evidently at the hands of the escaped prisoner Ben Craddock.
As evening descended on the beleaguered town, hastened and heightened by the thick layers of smoke that still hung in the air over everything, its gloom was more than matched by the mood that filled the jail office where Luke, Burnett, and Doc Whitney sat in weary sprawls. Each man remained coated with a thick layer of soot, streaked by tracks of dried sweat. Additionally, Whitney displayed spatters of blood on the sleeves of his formerly white shirt. The marshal’s bottle of confiscated moonshine was perched prominently on the end of his desk.
“After today,” Burnett was saying in a low, dejected tone, “I’ll never again worry about facing Hell in the afterlife. I’ve already been there.”
“I imagine a lot of folks in our town are feeling that way right about now,” Whitney agreed.
Burnett slowly shook his head. “I heard all the stories about the Legion of Fire. I just never figured they’d bother with little Arapaho Springs.”
“Tell me about them, this Legion of Fire,” Luke said. “What’s the story behind them?”
Burnett took time for a swig of the moonshine. Then, passing the bottle to Whitney, he said, “Nobody knows for sure. They sprung up not quite a year ago. First showed up off to the east, then worked their way west and all across the state. They don’t just rob banks or trains or stagecoaches, they plunder whole towns, as you saw here. They leave ’em in flames and so devastated that it takes days, or never in some cases, for any kind of posse to be formed to give chase. By then the Legion has scattered to the four winds. Some have speculated they have a hideout up in the Pawnee Badlands where they regroup and then ride out to strike again. There’s also been some claims that Sam Kelson, the fella who supposedly leads ’em, used to ride with Quantrill in the war.”
“Every pissant outlaw gang that crops up west of the Missouri is laid at the feet of Quantrill,” Whitney said. “I wore the gray in the late war and can’t say I’m proud to have that association with some of the things Quantrill and Anderson and the rest did. But it’s generally accepted that they seldom rode with more than a couple of hundred men, and usually not even that many. By my rough calculation, if all the outlaw leaders who have since been labeled as being former Quantrill men actually were, that would have put Quantrill at the head of an army equal to Lee’s.”
Burnett shrugged. “Maybe so, but you can’t deny that the fierce way the Legion of Fire hits has all the earmarks of Lawrence, Kansas. The red bandannas tied to their arms might be an original touch, but all the rest makes them nothing but pure savages. And they get better and better—or worse and worse, I guess I should say—every time they strike.”
“Sadly, you’re all too right about that,” Whitney said as he passed the bottle to Luke.
Burnett frowned at the bounty hunter. “I can’t believe you never heard about the Legion before this.”
“I’m a little surprised myself,” Luke admitted. “But until I set on the trail of Craddock and it led me up this way, I spent most of last year down along the Texas border. There were plenty of other bad hombres down that way to keep a fella in my line of work occupied.”
Further discussion was interrupted by a loud groan from across the room. All three men turned their heads to look that way. Russell Quaid, who had been stretched out on the couch where Luke had slept the night before, sat up suddenly and emitted another groan. He raised one hand and held it to his thickly bandaged head, appearing disoriented as well as in considerable pain.
Doc Whitney rose from his chair and hurried over to the young man. “Take it easy, lad. You’d best lie back down. You’ve received a powerful blow to the head and ought not be trying to move around too much.”
In spite of the warning, Russell remained stubbornly sitting up. He tried to swing his legs over the side of the couch but appeared to have trouble getting them to do what he wanted. With his hand still pressed to his head, he said, “Wha . . . Where am I? What happened?”
He clearly had forgotten that when Burnett and Luke first returned to the jail to find him sprawled unconscious in the cell block, he’d come to long enough to spill a rush of words, telling them what had taken place. How Craddock had tricked Mycroft and then used the threat of killing him to con Russell into unlocking the cell in return for sparing the lawyer’s life. After that, he quickly faded again, his final words a mumbling jumble that trailed off unfinished. “He tricked me, too . . . he promised . . . I never should have trusted . . .”
He’d never mentioned Millie at that time, but as he struggled to clear his head, his eyes widened as she leaped to his mind. “Where’s Millie? Where’s Mr. Mycroft?”
Whitney put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, son. Mycroft is dead. Millie is . . . gone. It appears Craddock took her with him.”
Russell’s chin quivered, horrified at what he’d just heard. “My God! What did I do?” His eyes swept the room, touching on Burnett, then Luke, then back to Burnett. “Why are you all still here? Hasn’t anyone gone after her?” he demanded, his voice turning strident. “How long was I out?”
“You’ve been unconscious for several hours, except for a few minutes when the marshal and Jensen first found you,” Whitney explained. “In the meantime, nearly the whole town was in flames thanks to the Legion of Fire. We, along with every other able-bodied person, have been involved since then in saving what we could. Many more besides Mycroft are dead, and five other women were abducted by the raiders.”
Russell dropped back on the couch, clamping both hands to the sides of his face. He groaned again. “Oh dear Lord, let this be a nightmare! Let me wake up and find this is all some horrible, ghastly dream.”
“It’s a nightmare right enough,” Luke allowed. “But it’s one there is no waking up from. The only thing that’s left is to forge ahead and salvage as much as possible out of the ashes.”
Russell
lunged to a sitting position once more. His eyes again went to Burnett. “I know you can never forgive me, Marshal. But I am so incredibly sorry. I let you down and I failed to protect Millie. She warned me not to trust Craddock, but he had Mr. Mycroft by the throat . . . I couldn’t let him . . . I thought . . .”
“Don’t do that to yourself, kid,” Burnett said. “Heaping blame ain’t gonna change a damn thing at this stage, and if we get started with it there’s plenty to go around. I’m a father, and I wear a badge for this town. That means I’m supposed to protect my daughter and my town. I failed at both!”
“And if you stretch it far enough you can blame me for not shooting Craddock when I had the chance,” Luke said. “You see how pointless blame can get? The marshal’s right. It accomplishes nothing except to waste time. And if we have any hope of getting those women back, we can’t afford to lose any more of that.”
Burnett eyed him sharply. “You dealing yourself in on going after ’em?”
“You’d expect any different?” Luke replied. “After all, Craddock was my prisoner. And those Legion of Fire skunks gave him his opening to get away. Call me petty, but I take all that kinda personal.”
“In addition to the bounty you’re looking to claim for Craddock, are you aware there are substantial rewards riding on the heads of several members of the Legion of Fire?” Burnett asked.
A corner of Luke’s mouth quirked up. “Let’s say I’m not unaware of that particular fact. But if you’re implying that’s my main motive for getting involved, I might have to ponder on feeling insulted.”
A tired smile came and went on Burnett’s haggard, soot-streaked face. “Trust me. I didn’t mean to imply anything. It don’t matter what your motives are. As long as you’re willing to ride out with me on this thing . . . well, all I can say is that I’d be grateful.”
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