Outlaw Trackdown

by Jon Sharpe

  Wilkins absently nodded while watching a body being lifted. “Hoby Cotton and his brothers, Granger and Semple. Then there’s Timbre Wilson, Abe Foreman, and Rufus Holloway.”

  “You know all their names?”

  “I should. They’ve been terrorizin’ the territory for goin’ on half a year now. They’re snake mean, every mother’s son. That Hoby is the worst. He’s killed four men that the marshal and me know of.”

  “Why isn’t he behind bars or been hung?”

  “You think the marshal hasn’t tried to catch him?” Wilkins said. “Must be fifty times or more we’ve gotten a tip on where they are and it’s always the same. They’re gone when we get there.”

  “Fifty times is a lot.”

  “Maybe it was only forty. The thing is, they never make camp in the same place twice. They’re always on the move. And they have more hideouts than you have fingers and toes.”

  “Have you tried a tracker?”

  Wilkins nodded. “Jonas over to the general store did some when he was younger but he hasn’t been of much use. We used an old hound once that belongs to a farmer but all the dog did was sniff a lot and run in circles.”

  “I guess that tells me why the marshal wants me to go along.”

  “He does?” Deputy Wilkins seemed to grow concerned. “Listen to me, mister. I don’t know you from Adam but if you’re helpin’ us then you deserve to know. Those men are hard cases.”

  “I reckoned as much.”

  “You have to be careful. If they find out you’re after them, they’re liable to turn on you. They’ve done it before. One time the marshal went out with seven men and he was the only one who made it back.”

  “I don’t die easy,” Fargo said.

  “I hope not,” Deputy Wilkins said earnestly, “for your sake.”

  6

  Fargo was tired of waiting. Over an hour had gone by and the marshal hadn’t returned. With every wasted minute the outlaws and their captive got farther away. Were he the marshal, Fargo would have headed out after them just as soon as he could assemble a posse.

  Coltraine finally appeared, strolling down the street as if he had all the time in the world. He stopped to talk to two women and then stopped to talk to several men. When he reached the jail he stopped yet again to take off his hat and run his fingers through his hair.

  “Took you long enough,” Fargo said as the door opened.

  “I had a lot to do.”

  “The Cottons and their friends could be in Nebraska Territory by now.”

  Coltraine had stepped to a rifle rack. “I don’t need your guff. I’ve worn a tin star for pretty near fifteen years now. I know my job better than you.”

  Fargo decided to drop it. “How many did you line up for the posse besides me?”

  “Wilkins,” Coltraine said, bringing a Spencer over to the desk, “and nine others. They’re to meet here at the bottom of the hour.”

  “That’s another twenty minutes.”

  “So?” Coltraine proceeded to methodically load the Spencer.

  “I’ll fetch my horse and be back,” Fargo said, and turned to leave.

  “Not so fast. You’re forgettin’ somethin’.” Coltraine held out a palm. “The forty dollars.”

  “That’s all you can think of at a time like this?”

  “A fine is a fine and collectin’ them is my job.”

  Simmering, Fargo produced his poke and counted out the forty. “Happy now?”

  “Pleased as punch.” Coltraine hefted the coins and smiled. “The town of Horse Creek thanks you.”

  “I want a receipt.”

  “See me after we get back.” Coltraine resumed loading, and when Fargo didn’t move, looked up. “Anything else?”

  “No.” Fargo got out of there before he said something Coltraine would resent.

  Deputy Wilkins was just coming out of the stable, leading a sorrel. He saw Fargo and waved.

  Fargo was tempted to go into the saloon. Instead he unwrapped the Ovaro’s reins from the hitch rail and led the stallion to the marshal’s.

  More waiting added to his annoyance. It was a full half an hour before the marshal emerged. By then three townsmen had shown up leading their mounts. All wore store-bought duds and looked about as fearsome as kittens.

  “Are you with the posse too?” asked a pudgy man in a bowler who was sweating buckets.

  Fargo nodded.

  “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before. I’m Norman. I work as a clerk over to the Emporium.”

  Fargo noticed that the holster strapped around Norman’s thick waist had a lot of dust on it. “Use that much?”

  Norman touched his six-gun as if surprised it was there. “Mercy, no. Didn’t you hear me say I’m a clerk? I got this years ago but haven’t used it once.”

  “Yet you offered to join the posse.”

  “Offered, nothing,” Norman said. “The marshal came into the Emporium and told me I’m coming along.”

  “Why you? Are you good on horseback?”

  Norman stared at his horse as if it were from another planet. “Not really, no. I rode some when I was a boy but to tell the truth, horses have always scared me.”

  “Scared you how?”

  Norman swallowed. “It’s those big teeth. I can’t help imagining what would happen if one took a bite out of me. And then there’s those hooves. Why, a horse’s hoof can crush a man’s skull.”

  Fargo turned to the second townsman. “How about you? Can you ride and shoot?”

  This one was older and had stubble on his chin and a perpetual scowl. “Sure I can ride. I work at the stable. Not that that gave the marshal any call to come marching in and say I was going with the posse and be ready, or else.”

  “How are you with that six-gun you’re wearing?” Fargo asked.

  “I can hit a barn pretty good.”

  Fargo looked at the third townsman, who brought to mind a mouse in a cheap suit. “Let me guess. You’re hell on wheels with a six-shooter and a horse.”

  The mouse grinned. “Would that I were. I wouldn’t be an accountant. I’d be a lawman like the marshal.”

  “This will be some posse,” Fargo said.

  “Don’t worry,” Norman said. “We might not be much but they are.” And he gestured.

  The cowboys Fargo had tangled with appeared a little the worse for tangling. Nearly all had bruises and one puncher’s nose was swollen.

  “Why, look at them,” the townsman who was afraid of horses said. “They look as if they’ve been in a fight.”

  “That’s cowpokes for you,” Norman said. “Always drinking and fighting and trifling with women.”

  The cowhand called Floyd came to a stop and the rest followed suit. Hooking his thumbs in his gun belt, he regarded Fargo as if Fargo were a bug he’d like to squash. “Look who it is, boys.”

  The tall cowboy in the high-crowned hat surprised Fargo by smiling. “You’re one tough hombre, mister. I haven’t been hit so hard since I was knee high to a calf and my grandpa walloped me for lyin’.”

  “A person should never lie, Mr. Rollins,” Norman said. “It’s not nice.”

  “It’s just Rollins,” the tall cowboy said. “And why are you here? You couldn’t lick a puppy if the pup was blindfolded.”

  Fargo chuckled.

  Norman drew himself up. “I might not be much account as a fighter but I remember prices really good.”

  “How much for outlaws these days?” Rollins asked.

  Several cowboys—and Fargo—laughed.

  “Quit picking on Norman,” the stableman said. “Everybody knows he’s as nice as can be.”

  “A posse is no place for nice,” Rollins said.

  “I must be of some use or the marshal wouldn’t have picked me,” Norman declared. “Although I confe
ss that for the life of me I can’t imagine what use that could be.”

  Floyd continued to glare at Fargo. “This ain’t over between us, mister. Not by a long shot.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Rollins said. “You cracked a tooth when you slugged him and now he has to go to the dentist and he hates dentists.”

  “I like my dentist,” Norman said. “He always gives me a piece of hard candy when he’s done.”

  “Shut up, you infant,” Floyd snapped.

  Just then the door opened and out strolled Marshal Coltraine, the Spencer in the crook of his elbow. “I see all of you have met. You know why you’re here so let’s get to it.” He paused. “Anyone have anything to say before we head out?”

  “This is some posse,” Fargo said.

  7

  The Cotton Gang, it was called, had headed east but only for half a mile. At that point they circled to the northwest and the distant Laramie Mountains.

  “They must have figured to throw us off their scent,” the stableman remarked.

  “I doubt that,” Marshal Coltraine said.

  So did Fargo. The tracks were plain as could be. He was out in front, where Coltraine wanted him. They hadn’t spoken two words since they left Horse Creek but now the marshal brought his bay alongside the Ovaro.

  “So far, so good.”

  “We’ve hardly started,” Fargo said.

  The rolling grassland was dotted with mesquite and, now and then, stands of oak. Here and there ribbons of cottonwoods grew along small creeks, tributaries of Horse Creek itself.

  “With any luck we’ll catch up to them by nightfall,” Coltraine predicted.

  Fargo doubted, that, too. Not at the snail’s pace Coltraine had set. They were to hold their horses to a walk so as not to tire them. “It would help if we went faster,” he mentioned.

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  Coltraine frowned. “The best horse of this bunch is yours. It could go all day and all night, and so could mine if it came to that but it’s not as used to hard travel as yours and would be worn out by mornin’. Those cowhands have good mounts but they rode them hard to town and the horses could use some rest. Norman and Scully and Burt have animals that aren’t worth a damn. Wilkins’s horse isn’t much better. So if I push hard, by sunset the only ones who could still go on would be you and me.”

  “About those townsmen you picked . . .”

  “They’re all bachelors. No wives, no kids. And believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of single gents in Horse Creek. Most are family men, and I wasn’t about to ask a husband and father to go after some of the worst killers in the territory.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Fargo said, and grinned. “You do know what you’re doing.”

  “We’re takin’ our sweet time so our horses will have some wind left when we catch up, and to give those who don’t have much grit to steady their nerves for the shootin’.”

  Fargo was impressed. He’d misjudged Coltraine completely. “Here I reckoned you were dragging your heels because you didn’t want to tangle with the Cottons and their friends.”

  “I want nothin’ more than to buck them out in gore,” Coltraine replied. “But I have to do it smart. And I have to be extra careful because of Amanda Brenner. Any harm comes to that gal, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  After that, Fargo did whatever the lawman asked without question. Along about four o’clock, as they neared the foothills, Coltraine asked him to go on ahead and make sure it was safe.

  “It’s a likely spot for an ambush. The Cottons could lie up there and pick us off, easy. Be careful.”

  The hills were mostly brown from the summer heat and sparse with vegetation. A dry wash suggested to Fargo a way to wend in among them without being seen. The sides were high enough to hide the Ovaro but not him so he hunched low over the saddle horn.

  Each hill he passed, he scanned from top to bottom. He saw no one, glimpsed no telltale flashes. When the wash veered away from the tracks he had been following, he reluctantly gigged the stallion up and out into the open.

  He rode slowly, avoiding patches of rocky ground so the chink of horseshoes on stone wouldn’t give him away.

  The outlaws had slowed from a trot to a walk. Evidently they weren’t worried about being pursued. Which was strange, given Luther Coltraine’s reputation.

  It was only a couple of hours to sunset and Fargo was almost in the shadow of the first mountain when he decided to go back and report that the outlaws showed no sign of stopping early.

  Suddenly he heard voices. Startled, he drew rein and tilted his head to listen.

  He wasn’t imagining it. From not far ahead, the breeze brought a laugh and muffled talk.

  Dismounting, Fargo yanked the Henry from the saddle scabbard and advanced on foot.

  Between the last hill and a mountain grew an oasis of green. An acre or more of tall trees and undergrowth.

  Unless Fargo was badly mistaken, there must be water. It explained why the outlaws had stopped so soon.

  Common sense told him to ride back to the posse and bring Coltraine and the rest on as quickly as they could. But it would help if he could see the outlaw camp and maybe get some idea of how best to go about corralling them.

  Girding himself, he broke into a sprint. He felt uneasy being so exposed but he reached cover without hearing a shout or a shot.

  Sweat trickling down his back, Fargo crouched and crabbed forward. He saw the horses first, and a spring. Six horses, but only five outlaws. Nor was there any sign of the girl.

  Fargo stopped in consternation. He wondered if he was too late, if the owlhoots had already had their way with her. But if so, where was she? Or her body?

  Of the outlaws, Timbre Wilson was easy to peg. Someone in Horse Creek had mentioned a scar, and it was a doozy. A sword or a bowie had cleaved the left side of Wilson’s face, splitting the cheek and just missing the eye. The scar ran from Wilson’s jaw to his forehead. It lent his face a twisted, cruel aspect. He was squatting on his heels and the only one of the outlaws who didn’t talk or smile.

  Two others looked so much alike, they must be kin. Semple and Granger Cotton, Fargo reckoned. They were in their twenties, while their brother Hoby was supposed to be in his teens. Both sported sandy hair, worn long, and sandy beards, trimmed short.

  Fargo had no idea how to tell Abe Foreman from Rufus Holloway. If he had to guess, he’d pick the one in homespun and whose beard fell to his waist as Rufus.

  The bigger question, though, was where had Hoby Cotton gotten to? And where was the girl?

  A horse moved and Fargo saw her lying on her side facing the spring. Her back was to him and her arms in front of her, so he didn’t know if they were tied. Her legs weren’t. Not that she would get far if she tried to run off with the outlaws so close.

  Fargo had an inspiration. If he circled around, he could come up on her from the other side of the spring, catch her attention, and spirit her out of there. It was worth a try. Flattening, he crawled. Dry twigs that might snap and give him away, he moved aside. He avoided a jagged rock and deer droppings.

  Soon he could hear what the outlaws were saying, and listened with half an ear as he went around a boulder.

  “. . . good haul. We have enough to last us the rest of the year if we don’t go hog wild.”

  “Listen to you, Semple. Hog wild is all he knows. Remember Denver? We went there with five thousand in our saddlebags and he spent it inside of a week.”

  “Denver whores ain’t cheap.”

  “Whores, hell. It was the gamblin’ that did him in. It’s the gamblin’ that always does him in. He’d lose the shirt on his back if we let him.”

  Fargo knew they were talking about the missing Hoby. He found out where the youngest Cotton had gotten to when he raised his head to pe
er over a log and found himself staring into the barrel of a cocked revolver.

  8

  A round moon of a face popped above the log, a face with laughing eyes almost as blue as Fargo’s own, and a mocking smile. A face as smooth as a baby’s bottom save for peach fuzz on the chin. A face so boyish it belied the body it was attached to.

  “Howdy, mister.”

  Fargo had frozen with that muzzle an inch from his nose. “Howdy, yourself,” he said.

  “What’re you doin’?”

  “Enjoying the day. You?”

  The boy-man laughed. “Me, too. It tickled me seein’ you sneak up on us. You’re good at it.”

  “You’re not bad yourself,” Fargo said. “I didn’t hear you come up on me.”

  “When it comes to sneaky, I’m the cat’s meow.”

  “You’d be Hoby Cotton?”

  Hoby bobbed his laughing moon face but his Colt stayed rock steady. “I’m plumb amazed sometimes at how many folks know me and I’ve never set eyes on them. Take you, for instance. We’ve never met. I’d recollect if we had. I have a good memory for faces.”

  “Skye Fargo,” Fargo said.

  “Sky what?”

  “My name. Skye Fargo.”

  “Really? Your folks named you after the sky? Mine named me after my great grandpa on my ma’s side.”

  “There’s an ‘e’ on it.”

  “How’s that again?”

  “S-k-y-e,” Fargo spelled it out for him.

  “Well, now. That’s too pretty to be a fella’s name. You ought to be a girl.” Hoby grinned. “As for spellin’, I can’t read or write a lick. Never learned how. My ma didn’t believe in schoolin’.”

  “Your mother didn’t think it might be good to know how to read?”

  “She couldn’t. She always said as how she didn’t need no ABC’s to get through life and we didn’t, neither. We bein’ me and my brothers yonder, Granger and Semple.”

  “You’re from the South, I take it?” Fargo reckoned from his accent.

  “Texas.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around.”

  “I don’t savvy.”