“I still say I could come with you fellas,” Monroe said as Bill and Hartnett got him on his feet and helped him climb into the saddle on Kellogg’s horse.
“No offense, sir, but you’d just slow us down,” Bill told him.
Monroe frowned, and Bill knew he’d offended his father-in-law, no matter how he’d prefaced the remark.
Well, better that than risking catching up with the outlaws too late to save Eden, Bill thought. He would offend anybody if it meant saving his wife.
Hell, he’d go right through anybody if it meant saving Eden…
Kellogg climbed onto the horse behind Monroe and took the reins when Hartnett handed them to him.
“Good luck,” he said. “I hope you find them.”
“We’ll find them,” Bill said. “You can count on that.”
And if anything happened to Eden, he would kill every last son of a bitch who’d had anything to do with it.
You could count on that, too.
Chapter 15
Virgie didn’t want to leave her parents’ house. She would have been content to stay there and fuss over her father all evening.
Tom was tired and hungry, though, and eventually he persuaded her to return home with him and prepare some supper for them.
Their house was only a couple of blocks away, much smaller than the ostentatious dwelling where her parents lived but still a nice, neat frame home with whitewashed walls. Tom led his horse as he and Virgie walked toward it through the dusk.
“I still think you should have gone with the posse,” she said without looking at him.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Tom told her. “I’m needed here.”
“For what?”
Tom looked over at her then, and she went on, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant that there’s no reason you couldn’t be gone for a couple of days.”
“I’m working with that gray stallion out at the ranch.”
“It would still be there when you got back.”
“And it might be for more than just a couple of days,” Tom said. “I’ve heard of posses chasing outlaws for a week or more. Maybe as long as a month.”
“That would be all right, if it was necessary.”
“You wouldn’t miss me if I was gone that long?”
“Of course I would,” Virgie said, but Tom didn’t think she sounded like she meant it at all.
She wouldn’t have a chance to miss him if he was gone for a month. She’d be busy with her lover the whole time.
“Anyway, there’s no point in talking about it,” he said. “The posse’s already gone, and by now they’re a long way from Redemption. I couldn’t catch up to them, and I’m not going to try. I’m afraid you’re still stuck with me.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
He shrugged, making it clear that he didn’t care how she would put it.
When they reached the house, Tom led the horse around back to the shed, unsaddled it, gave it a good rubdown, and made sure there was grain and water for the animal. When he went through the back door into the kitchen, he saw that the stove was still cold and Virgie was nowhere to be seen.
Unlike her parents’ house, this one had only one story. Tom went through the kitchen, along a corridor, and into their bedroom. The lamp wasn’t lit, but enough gray light remained outside for him to see Virgie as she pulled a nightgown over her head and let it drop around her body.
He caught a glimpse of the clean, sleek lines of her figure and felt an instant reaction inside himself. He didn’t want to react that way to her—things would a lot simpler if he just didn’t give a damn—but he still did and he couldn’t help it.
“After everything that’s happened today I’m just worn out,” she said. “I think I’m going to bed.”
“What about supper?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s not what I—”
Tom stopped short. What was the point in explaining what he’d meant? It wouldn’t make any difference to her.
“All right, go ahead and turn in,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She didn’t say anything. He turned, closed the bedroom door behind him, and went back to the kitchen. There were some biscuits left over from breakfast. They might be a little dry, but he could wash them down with whiskey from the bottle he kept in the spare bedroom where he slept most nights.
As suppers went these days, it wouldn’t be too bad.
He just needed to be careful not to drink too much. If he sank too deeply into a stupor, he wouldn’t hear Virgie when she went to sneak out.
And then he couldn’t follow her to her latest rendezvous with Ned Bassett.
Mordecai Flint shifted a little on the cot, trying to get comfortable. He knew that wasn’t going to be possible, but instinct made him try anyway.
The whiskey he’d drunk earlier in the day had dulled the pain in his arm to a certain extent. That apron from the Prairie Queen who’d patched him up had said that he ought to have some laudanum and even hinted that he could supply it, but Mordecai had turned that down flat. He was the only law in Redemption right now, and he couldn’t afford to be doped up.
Morley had located the bullet lodged in Mordecai’s arm, dug it out, and cleaned and bandaged both wounds, wrapping the strips of cloth tightly. In addition, he had splinted Mordecai’s upper arm to keep the cracked bone from moving around, and the short lengths of wood he had used for splints were bound tightly in place, too. Then he had fashioned a sling for the arm and lashed the whole thing down so that Mordecai couldn’t move it.
“If you don’t get blood poisoning, the wounds should heal and the arm ought to be all right in a few weeks,” Morley had told him. “I’ll have to change the dressings a couple of times a day and you’ll need to be careful not to use the arm. Other than that we’ll just wait and see.”
Mayor Roy Fleming had offered to have Mordecai moved from the newspaper office to the extra bedroom in the mayor’s house. Fleming was still mighty upset about the bank robbery, of course, but he said that as the leader of the town council and the community, it was his responsibility to see to it that Mordecai was taken care of.
“You and Marshal Harvey are the town’s only actual employees, Mr. Flint,” as Fleming had put it.
“Maybe so, but I still got a job to do,” Mordecai insisted. “I’ll sleep in the marshal’s office the way I always do.”
Glenn Morley said, “You’re in no shape to do anything except rest, Deputy. You need to forget about law enforcement for a while.”
That drew a disgusted snort from Mordecai. Folks just didn’t understand. When a man had a job to do, he did it, by God, no matter what.
“The way you got me wrapped up like one o’ them goldang Egyptian mummies, this bad arm can’t go nowhere,” he’d said. “I can stand on my own two feet, and there ain’t a blamed thing wrong with my other arm or my gun hand. So as far as I can see, I’m the law in Redemption right now, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay until Bill gets back.”
Eventually Fleming, Morley, and everybody else quit arguing with him. As he left the newspaper office, walking on his own, he’d heard Morley mutter something about him being a stubborn old pelican, but that was nothing new. He’d been called a lot worse.
Somebody had found his old, floppy-brimmed hat where it had fallen off his head when he’d been shot, and they gave it to him as he headed for the marshal’s office. With his hat on his head and his gun on his hip, he felt mostly human again. A mite drunk, maybe—Morley had been pretty free about pouring the hooch down his throat—but Mordecai’s reflexes were just as good drunk as sober. Sometimes he even thought he was a little sharper once he had a few drinks in him.
He walked around town for a while, letting people see him so they would know there was still law in Redemption.
While he was doing that, Leo Kellogg, who had gone with the posse earlier, rode back into town with Perry Monroe on the horse with him
. Mordecai hurried out into the street to meet them, as did several other people.
Kellogg had explained about them finding Monroe several miles out of town, where he had been thrown by his horse. Monroe had insisted that he was all right, but Charley Dobbs, probably his best friend in town, had taken Monroe back to his house so that he and his wife could look after the storekeeper. Mordecai thought that was a good idea.
Then he went into the marshal’s office and sank gratefully into the chair behind the desk, wincing a little when his arm twinged as he leaned back.
He knew he would have to get used to the pain. The arm was going to hurt, that was all there was to it. Dulling the pain with whiskey was one thing; he could get away with that and still function. Laudanum might take the pain away, but it would knock him out, too, and that was unacceptable.
Anyway, Mordecai thought now as he tried to catch a few winks despite being uncomfortable, he had it a lot better than Bill did. Bill was somewhere out there in the dark prairie night, wondering if his wife was all right or even still alive. That worry would be eating the young lawman’s guts away from the inside out.
Mordecai had never been much of one for praying, but if he had been, tonight he would have been asking el Señor Dios to see to it that both Bill and Eden returned safely to Redemption.
Chapter 16
“Marshal, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Josiah Hartnett said.
Bill knew by the way Hartnett called him “Marshal” instead of by his name that the liveryman was trying to make his comment sound more serious.
“I can still see the trail, Josiah,” he said.
“I don’t see how. It’s too dark to see much of anything.”
Bill didn’t think that was true. In fact, there was still a thin line of fading rose on the western horizon, the last vestiges of the setting sun.
However, the shadows were getting pretty thick over the prairie. Bill thought he could still see the tracks left by the outlaws’ horses, but it was difficult to be certain.
He had known all along that it was unlikely they would catch up to the bank robbers today. He had known as well that sooner or later they would have to stop and make camp for the night.
But he hadn’t wanted to think about that, because it meant thinking about Eden spending the night with those ruthless men, with God knows what happening to her. He was torn between hoping that the outlaws would make camp, too, so they wouldn’t get any farther ahead of the posse during the night, and hoping that they would keep moving because if they were still in the saddle they couldn’t be hurting Eden.
Hartnett was riding just behind Bill and to the right. Jesse Overstreet was in the same position to the left. The young cowboy said, “I sure can’t see much, Marshal. I’m a mite worried that my horse might step in a prairie dog hole or somethin’ like that.”
Bill started to snap a response, telling Overstreet that if he was worried, he could damned well stop if he wanted to. He could even turn around and go back if he didn’t want to be part of the posse anymore.
Bill didn’t say either of those things. He knew Hartnett and Overstreet were right. If he asked the other members of the posse, no doubt they would agree, too.
Tightening his grip on the reins, Bill pulled his horse to a stop. Like it or not, they couldn’t go on. If they did, they would be running too great a risk of losing the trail completely in the dark. Picking it up again in the morning would cost them even more time.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll stop and make camp for the night.”
“That’s the smart thing to do,” Hartnett said.
“But we’ll be on the move again as soon as it’s light enough to see in the morning.”
“Sure.”
Out here on these mostly featureless plains, one place to camp was just about as good as another, so the men dismounted right where they were.
“Should we have a fire?” one of the men asked Bill.
He thought about it for a moment. The glow of a campfire could be seen for a long way. The outlaws might be within sight of it, so a fire would announce that the posse was back here behind them.
On the other hand, they had to know that already. They had cleaned out the bank and taken a hostage. Of course a posse was going to come after them.
“Yeah, build a fire,” Bill decided. “Keep it small, but some hot coffee and food will be good for all of us.”
“Sure thing, Marshal.”
There was no wood to be found, but the prairie was littered with dried buffalo chips from the vast herds that moved through here over the years, millions upon millions of the great shaggy beasts leaving their droppings behind. First the Indians and then later plainsmen had been using those chips as fuel for as far back as anybody could remember.
One of the men soon had a small fire burning. He set a coffeepot over the flames and got some Arbuckles brewing. Another man fetched a frying pan from one of the packhorses and got to work cooking biscuits and frying bacon.
The other members of the posse tended to the horses, picketing and unsaddling the animals. There was enough grass for them to graze but no water along here, so the men would have to pour water from their canteens into their hats and let the horses drink from those.
After Bill had tended to those chores, he found himself standing at the edge of the camp with the fire behind him, staring out into the darkness in the direction the bank robbers had been going. That was north by northwest, Bill judged. He had never been where they were headed.
Hartnett moved up beside him and asked, “Thinking about Eden?”
“Thinking about where we’re going,” Bill lied. Eden was always in his thoughts. But he had forced a part of his brain to remain cool and calculating. That was going to be important. “Do you know what’s up there in that direction, Josiah?”
“Well, if they keep going the same way, they’ll get into the Blue Hills.”
“Are those like most of the hills in Kansas? They don’t amount to much?”
Hartnett let out a grim chuckle.
“Well, I reckon that’s true. There’s a little bluff or a plateau or whatever you want to call it that runs along there and separates the plains from some higher plains. But believe it or not, there’s some pretty rugged country in those parts, too. The Chalk Bluffs, the Castle Rock badlands…it’s not all just prairie.”
“How well do you know it?”
“Hardly at all,” Hartnett admitted. “I went on a hunting trip up there once. You’ve got to remember, it hasn’t been that many years since there were Indians roaming in those parts pretty regular-like. They might not have been on the warpath all the time, but they weren’t hardly what you’d call safe company, either.”
“Any settlements?”
“A few,” Hartnett said with a shrug. “Little places that grew up around trading posts. A few ranchers have moved in here and there, or so I’ve heard. It’s not fit country for farming. Mostly it’s just big and empty.”
“A good place for a gang of outlaws to hole up.”
“Yeah, I’d say so.” Hartnett paused. “But maybe we’ll catch up to them before they get there. If we don’t…we’ll follow them wherever they go.”
Bill nodded and said, “All the way to hell and back if we have to.”
Eden hurt. She had ridden horses before, but never for this far or this long. Her legs and back ached, and the insides of her thighs felt like they were rubbed raw. When the outlaws finally stopped to make camp and she was able to dismount, her legs tried to fold up underneath her like those of a rag doll.
Caleb was right there beside her to take hold of her arm and steady her. He said, “Take it easy. You’ll get your bearings in a minute.”
“I’m fine,” she said as she tried to pull her arm away from his grip. She had already felt his hands on her plenty of times today. Enough was enough.
Hannah came over and said, “I’ll take her.”
Caleb shrugged and let go of Eden’s arm.
“I don’t want her hurt,” he said.
“I’m not gonna hurt her. But there’s no need for you to keep fussin’ over her, either.” She took hold of Eden’s other arm. “Come on.”
They had stopped beside a mostly dry wash. A thin trickle of water ran in the bottom of it. A few stunted cottonwoods grew along the bank, an indication that the creek ran better at other times of year.
Hannah led Eden over to one of those trees. Eden’s steps were pretty unsteady at first, but they strengthened as she went along. When they reached the tree, Hannah told her, “Sit down.” She turned to one of the outlaws and added, “Dave, bring your rope over here.”
“What’re you gonna do, Hannah?” asked the man called Dave.
“Tie this prisoner up so she can’t get away, of course.”
Dave hesitated.
“Hadn’t you better ask Caleb about that?” he suggested.
For a second Eden thought Hannah was going to shoot the man. She looked that angry. But then she snapped, “Forget it. Eugene!”
The old-timer hurried over.
“What do you need, Hannah?”
“Some rope to tie up this prisoner.”
Eugene didn’t argue. He just said, “Sure. I’ll get it right now.”
“Sit,” Hannah told Eden again.
Eden didn’t think there was any point in arguing with the redhead. Anyway, after those long hours in the saddle, it might feel good to rest for a while, even if it meant sitting on the ground. She leaned against the tree to brace herself as she sat down.
Eugene came back with a lariat. Hannah took it and wrapped it around Eden’s body and the tree trunk several times before knotting it on the other side of the tree, well out of Eden’s reach even if she could move her arms.
Caleb stalked up in the gathering darkness and said, “What in blazes are you doing?”
“You don’t want her getting away, do you?” Hannah challenged him, an obvious note of defiance in her voice. “Hell, she won’t do us any good as a hostage if she runs off.”
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