Fifty feet separated them. Bill shouted, “Eden, go back!” but she might not have heard him over the sudden thunder of hoofbeats. The outlaws had made it into their saddles and now they charged along the street, guns still blazing.
Bill’s eyes widened in horror as he saw one of them veer his horse straight toward Eden. His gun was still in his hand, but he couldn’t fire because she was between him and the outlaw.
At the last second she must have realized her danger, because she jerked her head around and screamed. She was too late as she tried to twist away.
The man didn’t ride her down, though. Instead he turned his horse a little, leaned down from the saddle, and threw an arm around her, scooping her right off the ground in one smooth movement.
Then he sent his horse pounding right at Bill.
Chapter 9
In desperation, Bill scrambled to his hands and knees and threw himself into a roll toward the boardwalk. The hoofbeats were so loud they sounded like cannon shots as the outlaw’s horse raced past him, missing him by mere inches. He would have sworn he felt the animal’s hot breath against his face.
Eden screamed again as Bill rolled and came up on one knee. He could see the top of her head and her thrashing legs in a long gray skirt, but the outlaw’s broad back shielded the rest of her from his sight.
Bill lifted his gun and started to fire, but his finger froze on the trigger before he squeezed off a shot. It was possible the bullet would go all the way through the outlaw’s body and hit Eden, too. He couldn’t take that chance.
Maybe Mordecai could stop the man.
But as he looked past the rider who had grabbed Eden, Bill saw one of the other bank robbers thrust his pistol in Mordecai’s direction and pull the trigger. Flame gouted from the gun muzzle, and Mordecai was driven backward by the slug’s impact, away from the barrel where he’d been crouching. The deputy landed on the boardwalk in a limp sprawl.
“Mordecai!” Bill shouted as he surged to his feet. The wild thought that this couldn’t be happening racketed through his brain. In the span of only a few seconds, he had seen his wife kidnapped and his friend and deputy gunned down. He had to stop this somehow, he told himself as he started to run after the escaping outlaws.
Several of them twisted in their saddles and fired back at him. Bill had to hit the dirt again as bullets whistled through the air just above him. That hail of lead would have cut him down if he hadn’t thrown himself to the ground.
The riders were a full block away from him now, he saw to his dismay as he looked up. He couldn’t hope to catch them on foot, nor could he empty his Colt after them without running the risk of hitting Eden.
But if he had a horse…
He leaped to his feet again and headed for the nearest hitch rack. His own horse was down at Josiah Hartnett’s livery stable. He didn’t have time to fetch it. He would just have to take one of the saddle mounts tied up along the street and return it to its owner later on, after he’d rescued his wife and brought the bank robbers to justice.
He wasn’t going to even entertain the possibility of some other outcome.
He was even more hobbled than ever as he hurried along the street, and after a second he realized it wasn’t because of his limp. A glance down at his feet told him that the heel of his right boot was gone. A stray bullet must have caught it and knocked it off as he was running along the boardwalk. That was why he had fallen into the street.
And it was him falling into the street that had drawn Eden out of the mercantile and put her in a position to be swooped up by that damned bank robber, Bill thought bitterly. He had to get her back before she was hurt. He just had to.
He grabbed some reins, jerked them loose, and swung up into a saddle. He didn’t know whose horse he had and didn’t care. He jerked the animal around and kicked it into a run after the fleeing bank robbers. They had reached the western edge of Redemption by now and were galloping out onto the prairie, strung out in a line. Bill tried to find the one who had taken Eden.
A flash of bright hair caught his eye. He raced after that rider. Buildings flashed past him on both sides. The citizens were running out into the open now, and some of them carried rifles they had fetched from their homes or businesses. They started firing after the outlaws, their bullets streaking through the clouds of dust raised by the hooves of the galloping horses.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Bill bellowed the order and hoped they would follow it. He didn’t care how many of the outlaws they killed, but he didn’t want anything to happen to Eden.
The settlement fell behind him. He was riding full tilt over the prairie now, leaning forward over the horse’s neck and urging every bit of speed out of it that he could. The animal responded gallantly. Bill didn’t know if he could cut into the lead that the outlaws had, but he was sure going to try.
He never got the chance. He heard a sharp crack, followed instantly by a scream from the horse, and he barely had time to kick his feet free of the stirrups before he flew through the air above the head of the falling animal.
Once again Bill crashed to the ground, but this time the landing was hard enough to knock all the breath from his body and all the awareness from his brain. Oblivion swallowed him up whole.
Tatum wasn’t sure what had possessed him to grab that pretty blond clerk from the general store. Sure, sometimes a hostage came in handy, and a pretty girl or a kid were the best ones. A posse wouldn’t crowd you too close if they thought they might stumble over the body of a slain prisoner.
On the other hand, a hostage could put up a fight and slow you down, too, and the members of a posse might be more determined than ever to keep going if you snatched one of their own. It was easier to give up when money was all that was at stake.
So there were pros and cons to the whole thing, but even so, when he’d seen her there in the street, ripe for the taking, he hadn’t hesitated. He didn’t regret that decision, at least not yet.
The blonde seemed to have yelled herself out for the time being. She wasn’t screaming in his ear anymore.
But she hadn’t stopped struggling. She still twisted and fought, trying to get free from his grip. She must not have given any thought to the fact that they were galloping across the prairie at top speed. If he let go of her now, she’d fall off the horse and probably break her neck.
“Settle down!” he shouted as he tightened his arm around her. “Stop it! You’re gonna get hurt!”
“Let me go, damn you! Let me go!”
Tatum glanced back over his shoulder. The members of the gang were spread out and a haze of dust a hundred yards wide hung in the air. He wasn’t sure how far they had come, but Redemption was far behind them. He didn’t see any pursuit yet, but it was inevitable.
Other than the young marshal, who hadn’t appeared to be hurt bad, that old-timer with the rifle was the only townsman Tatum had seen go down. Chico was a good shot; he’d drilled the old bastard. But they had thrown plenty of lead around elsewhere during their getaway. Some of the other citizens could have been hurt. The gang had made a good haul at the bank, too. Tatum was experienced enough at this sort of thing to know that.
So the townspeople would have plenty of reason to get a posse together and come after them, even if he hadn’t scooped up the blonde, he told himself.
Anyway, he was the boss. The others knew better than to question his decisions.
They would have a good lead. The trick would be to maintain it.
And the first thing to consider was the strength and stamina of their horses. They made sure they had good mounts. In this line of work, that was vital. Not only that, they had spare horses stashed in a little canyon about ten miles from here. Hannah and the old man were watching them.
Tatum slowed his horse, knowing that the others would see what he was doing and follow his example. It wouldn’t do them any good to ride their horses into the ground before they reached the canyon where they could make the switch.
The blon
de finally managed to twist around enough that she could throw a punch at his face. Tatum moved his head aside and laughed.
“You’re wasting your time and energy, honey,” he told her.
“Damn you!”
“Too late. I reckon the Devil’s already got a corner of Hades all picked out for me, so it doesn’t really matter all that much what I do in this world, now does it?”
She was smart enough to understand the veiled threat in those words. She didn’t try to hit him again, and she stopped writhing in the circle of his arm.
“What…what are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“You’re going to ride with us for a little while,” he said. “Just long enough for us to make sure no posse is on our trail. Then we’ll let you go.”
That was a lie, and she probably knew it. Tatum wasn’t sure what he was going to do with her, but he wasn’t going to be letting her go anytime soon.
In a part of his mind, he wondered if he had actually known that as soon as he laid eyes on her in the mercantile. Had he realized even then that somehow she was going to wind up in his arms?
Maybe, if you wanted to believe in fate…and Caleb Tatum was starting to.
Chapter 10
The first thing Bill saw when he regained consciousness was the flushed, gray-bearded face of Josiah Hartnett, the burly liveryman and one of his best friends in Redemption.
“Praise be,” Josiah said. “For a few minutes there I was worried the fall had killed you, Bill.”
“Wh…where…”
“I brought you back into town in my wagon. You’re laying on the bar in Fred Smoot’s place.”
The smell of stale beer in the air was enough to tell Bill that much. As he struggled to sit up, he finished the question he had tried to ask.
“Where’s…Eden?”
Hartnett rested a big, strong hand on Bill’s shoulder and held him down.
“Take it easy for a minute. You had a really nasty spill. We’ve got to make sure that you’re all right.”
Bill ached from head to toe, but he knew that other than that, he was fine. There had been dozens, if not hundreds, of bullets flying around in the street as the bank robbers found their getaway, but the closest any of them had come to him was blowing the heel off his boot.
“Damn it, Josiah, what about Eden?”
The horrible fear that the outlaws had already killed her and left her body behind as they fled suddenly gripped him.
With a grave expression on his face, Hartnett shook his head.
“We don’t know, Bill,” he said. “We purely don’t. They took her with them when they got away.”
A second of relief went through Bill, followed instantly by an even greater surge of fear. There was a chance that Eden was still alive, but there was no telling what was happening to her now…or would happen to her in the future as long as she was in the hands of those outlaws.
“I gotta get a posse together,” he muttered as he tried to sit up again. “Go after ’em…”
This time Hartnett allowed him to rise, and as soon as Bill was upright, the saloon started spinning crazily around him. He saw that the room was crowded with concerned citizens, but he didn’t have time to recognize any of them before he groaned and felt himself falling. He would have toppled off the bar if Hartnett hadn’t been right there to catch him and lower him gently to the hardwood. Somebody had folded a bar towel and stuck it under his head as a pillow.
“Now, blast it, lay there and rest for a minute,” Hartnett told him. “You won’t be doing anybody any good by falling on your face again.”
Bill supposed he was right. He didn’t want to pass out again. If he did, it would be that much longer before he set out in pursuit of the outlaws who had taken his wife.
Fred Smoot rolled closer to the bar in his wheelchair and said, “There’s a bottle of brandy in my office, Josiah. It might do the marshal some good if you want me to fetch it.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Hartnett said. “Damn, I wish we had a doctor here in Redemption.”
That reminded Bill of how Eden had stepped in to take care of him when his leg was injured. She had patched him up as well as any sawbones could have, he thought, and she had tended to other people’s ills, too. She was as close to a doctor as the town had.
But now she was gone. That thought made him feel hollow, as if fear had whittled away all his insides.
Smoot came back with the brandy. Hartnett lifted Bill’s head and helped take a drink from the bottle. The stuff burned all the way down Bill’s throat and lit a fire in his belly. He tried to draw strength from it.
After a few more sips of brandy, he felt stronger. Knowing that the feeling might not last, he said, “I gotta get up, Josiah. I got things to do.”
“Yeah, I know. Just take it slow and easy.”
With Hartnett’s arm around his shoulders, Bill sat up. He still felt pretty wobbly, but the room didn’t go to spinning this time. He swung his legs off the front of the bar and let them dangle.
Something occurred to him, and he felt sick that he hadn’t thought of it earlier.
“Mordecai—” he began.
“He’s wounded, but he’s alive,” Hartnett said. “I don’t know how bad it is. He was on the boardwalk in front of the newspaper office, so they carried him in there.”
“Somebody go see about him.”
Hartnett nodded to the crowd in the saloon, and a couple of men hurried out.
Bill sat there on the bar taking deep breaths until he felt himself growing steadier. He asked Hartnett, “Was anybody else hurt?”
“Not that I know of. It’s possible, though.”
Bill nodded. It might be a while before everybody in town was accounted for.
The crowd in the saloon parted to let a couple of people through. Bill was surprised to see Annabelle Hudson and Glenn Morley. So was Fred Smoot, judging by the way his eyes narrowed. Even under the circumstances, he didn’t seem happy to have the competition in his place.
“We heard that the marshal was hurt,” Annabelle said. “Glenn’s had some medical training, if he can help.”
“You’re a doctor?” Smoot asked the bartender.
“I never said that,” Morley replied with a shrug. “But I worked in a field hospital during the war.”
Hartnett scowled and said, “Most of those surgeons were no better than butchers.”
“They did the best they could with battles going on around them,” Morley said. “But if you don’t want my help—”
“Nobody said that, Mr. Morley,” Bill told him. “I’m all right, though. What I’d appreciate is if you’d go over to the newspaper office and see if there’s anything you can do for my deputy. One of those outlaws shot him.”
Morley nodded. “I’ll take a look at him, Marshal, if you’re sure there’s nothing I can do for you.”
“I’m sure. Go check on Mordecai.”
Morley turned and hurried out, but Annabelle lingered.
“I also heard that the robbers carried off your wife, Marshal,” she said. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do—”
“There’s not,” Bill said. “I’m feeling better now. I need to put a posse together.” He looked around the room and realized that someone else was absent who should have been there. “Where’s Mr. Monroe?”
Hartnett looked uncomfortable again, and that made a bad feeling go through Bill.
“That’s another thing,” Hartnett said. “Perry went down to my stable, threw a saddle on a horse, and lit out after those bandits. He said they had his daughter, and he wasn’t going to wait for any posse.”
“Damn it! He should’ve had more sense than that. Even if he caught up to them, there’d be one of him and ten of them, and all of them hardcase killers, to boot! Why didn’t somebody go with him?”
Nobody answered that question. Bill glared around the room. Most of the townspeople refused to meet his angry gaze. Clearly, they were embarrassed that they had l
et an old man like Perry Monroe gallop off after those ruthless outlaws by himself…but that didn’t change the fact that no one had volunteered to go with him.
Bill wasn’t really surprised. Twice before he had rallied the citizens of Redemption when violence and destruction threatened the town. They had risen to those occasions, fighting bravely to defend their homes and families and businesses. Some of them had been hurt in those battles, and some had died.
But they were like most people, Bill supposed. Their backs had to be against the wall before they would fight. Up to that point, they would do everything they could to avoid risking their lives. He couldn’t blame them for that. It just made them human.
“I need a posse,” he said, his voice grim. “Any man who can ride and shoot and stick with me is welcome to come along.” He glanced down at his feet. “And I need a pair of damn boots that aren’t missing a heel, too!”
“Bound to be some at the mercantile,” Hartnett said. “Let’s go over there and gather up some ammunition. We’re liable to need plenty.”
“You’re comin’ along, Josiah?”
“You bet I am.” Hartnett looked around the room. “Who’s with me?”
A number of men spoke up, indicating their willingness to join the posse. Fred Smoot said, “I would if I could, Marshal.”
“I know that,” Bill told him. He leaned against the bar to pull off both boots so he could walk without falling over. The crowd moved aside to let him pass. The men who had volunteered followed him out.
Bill glanced to the west along the street. The dust kicked up by the outlaws’ horses had long since settled. But they had left tracks, and he was going to follow them. His wife was out there somewhere, and so was her father.
Bill was going to do everything in his power to see to it that nothing else happened to either of them.
Chapter 11
Tom Gentry knew something was wrong as soon as he rode back into town. People were scurrying around on Main Street and gathering in small groups to talk loudly and excitedly. Men strode along purposefully, leading saddled horses. Tom hadn’t seen the town this worked up since that Indian attack a few months earlier.
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