"The only question now," summed up a badly shaken Jonathan Grigg, "is how we proceed from this devastating occurrence. The ransom demands of the note delivered by Mr. Nesbitt are very clear. My brother and I, along with the rest of the race committee, are to return at once to Cheyenne and begin gathering up the sum of one million dollars. In three days we are to be contacted with further instructions on how and where to deliver this money. The safety of my wife and the valuable horses that have been taken is at stake."
"Can you raise that amount in only three days?" a reporter shouted from the crowd.
"Yes," Jonathan said tightly. "I will not contemplate otherwise."
Kate stepped forward at that point and went to Jonathan's side. "I hardly think the discussion and planning of further details involving that much money should take place in front of a crowd," she said. Then, turning to the Ogallala lawman who'd accompanied the crowd from town, she added, "Don't you agree, Sheriff?"
Sylvester Harrup bobbed his head aggressively. "Yes. Yes, I absolutely do." He took a position beside Kate and Jonathan and turned to face the crowd. Harrup was a big man with a finely curled handlebar mustache and a big, booming voice. "You citizens and train folks who've come all this way are welcome to mill about as much as you like. But you're gonna have to stand back a mite and give these folks some room to talk over this mighty nasty problem that's been visited on 'em, you hear?...Now some of you men, for sure, don't go takin' off too soon. We'll need help loadin' up these bodies on the wagons we brought out, and we'll need a hand buryin' these poor horses. But all in good time. Just don't wander too far."
As the discussion group gathered apart from the general crowd, Tom Palcott, a Cheyenne businessman who was a member of the race committee, was one of the first ones to speak up, saying, "When it comes to the slaughtered horses, what I can't figure out is why in the world those villains would choose to kill Midnight Shadow, one of the finest of the lot?"
Edgar Grigg, who had been very sullen and uncharacteristically quiet up to that point, muttered something so low that none of the others could quite make it out.
"What did you say, Edgar?" asked his brother in a tense, easily annoyed tone. "You'll have to speak up."
"That horse...it's not Midnight Shadow."
"What do you mean? Of course it's—"
"No!" Edgar cut him off, now with a sudden sharpness. "It's not, I tell you."
The rest of the group pinned him with bewildered looks. Edgar seemed somehow to shrink back from them, yet without really moving. "This is all my doing. I brought all of this on," he blurted, almost moaning. "Not the killing, not the kidnapping...But I brought that damned Colfax into it...Only how could I know he'd turn it into...this!...Oh, God."
Jonathan grabbed him by his shirtfront, jamming his usually precisely knotted tie up under his chin. "What the hell are you talking about, Jonathan? That's my wife out there with those scum! Whatever you know, you'd damn well better explain yourself."
In a rapid spill of words, sometimes squeezed out between sobs, Edgar told the rest of it. How he'd piled up a smothering level of gambling debts on the riverboats operating on the Missouri River east of Omaha. How he'd seen the race as a means to score some big enough winnings to wipe out those debts. He would wager heavily on Midnight Shadow, who was a local favorite around Cheyenne, but not highly rated by the wider spectrum of gamblers laying down money on the contest's outcome.
To help pull off an odds-against win for Midnight Shadow, Edgar enlisted the aid of local Omaha thug Brewster Colfax. The plan they came up with was to switch Shadow—at this very checkpoint, in fact, where things had instead gone in a terribly different direction—with an almost identical lookalike horse who would run for two days in Shadow's place. Shadow would be transported ahead and then covertly inserted back into the pack, thoroughly rested, while the other horses were bound to be worn down at that point by five grueling days on the course. With this advantage, it was calculated that Shadow would be able to mount an amazingly strong finish and thereby win the race.
With his underworld contacts, Colfax had leveraged or bribed the necessary accomplices (including the two checkpoint attendants who now lay dead) and even found a suitable lookalike horse to run for a couple days in Midnight Shadow's place. Edgar and Colfax were banking any unusual behavior by the phony Shadow that might be noticed by Estelle (who, like Jonathan, was wholly unaware of the planned charade) or the regular handlers would be chalked up to nervousness due to all the frenzy surrounding the race and the toll taken on the animals after the first couple days of hard running.
Why or at what point Colfax had started changing the plan, Edgar had no way of knowing. (Although input from Dykstra regarding the past acquaintance between Colfax and Burt Kanelly suggested a reasonable idea of how it might have gone.) But what the older Grigg had to face for certain was that he'd ruined the race, ruined his name and reputation, contributed to the murders of at least three men, and still had to face the wrath of those behind the gambling markers he owed...Not to mention that of Jonathan.
"When this is over," the younger brother said through clenched teeth once Edgar had finished talking, "you and I will immediately break any shared business interests we have and all that may be pending for the future. After that, I never want to see you again...Except in the event any serious harm befalls Estelle as a result of this. Should that be the case, I will find you and kill you, Edgar."
Chapter Eighteen
It was the middle of the afternoon before things in the cottonwood grove got sorted out and more or less settled.
One of the first things decided was that J.D. and Kate would be riding out after Colfax, Kanelly, and the rest of the bunch who'd taken Estelle Grigg and the prize horses. Sheriff Harrup at first expressed an intent to accompany them but in the end had to hold off due to jurisdictional limits and the fact he still had a wild and wooly cowtown ("the Gomorrah of the plains") to keep tamed down. Jonathan Grigg made an attempt at insisting he go along too, since it was his wife in the clutches of the gang, but cooler heads prevailed and convinced him that the best role for him was to get on back to Cheyenne and go to work appropriating the money for the ransom. Should J.D. and Kate fail in their rescue attempt, going through with the pay-off would be the backup plan.
Once that was settled, the rest of the race riders—Joshua Hope, Curly Nesbitt, Omar Nassir, Earl Dykstra, Pete Blaylock, and Jeremiah Baker—put forth the notion that they intended to join the Blazes. And dissuading them proved not to be so easy.
"We all had a stake in this thing, a big one," Joshua explained, "and what was done to ruin it for everybody—not to mention the killin' and the takin' of Mrs. Grigg and our horses—we take mighty personal. We figure we got a right, maybe even an obligation, to be involved in settin' it straight."
Before coming forward with their proposal, the men had all managed to arrange for the loan of necessary horses and weapons from the crowd that had traveled out from Ogallala and the train. Harlan Hudson had helped by paying out some money where necessary. He also managed to convince the others that young Jeremiah Baker had no knowledge or part in the earlier tactics that Hudson, strictly on his own, had employed against Joshua Hope.
"You've proven you can ride with the best of us," J.D. addressed Jeremiah, feeling himself being won over by the rest of the men yet still having some reservations about the pampered young southerner, "but can you use a gun?"
"I can shoot proficiently," Jeremiah answered. "It's true I've never shot against another man before. But, not so very long ago, an entire war was fought largely by young men no older than me who were thrust into battle also lacking that prior experience. For the most part they all acquitted themselves well and so shall I. When it comes to vermin like the so-called men who committed this atrocity, I have no doubt I can pull a trigger without hesitation."
"Let the kid come," urged Curly Nesbitt. "He's one of us. He has the right."
Once J.D. made eye contact with Kate and got
the nod from her, it was agreed upon. After that there was some added back-and-forth with Nassir's followers, who also wanted to join in. But J.D. managed to convince them that too large a group going in pursuit of the Colfax/Kanelly bunch would run the risk of drawing undue attention and thereby adding to the danger for everything they were trying to save. Nassir understood and agreed, and the matter was put to rest.
As for Edgar Grigg's legal standing based on the things he'd admitted to, it was the consensus of the race committee and Sheriff Harrup that any charges officially brought against him could wait to be decided on until after the immediate situation had been dealt with, one way or another. In the interim, Edgar might even prove to be of some use in helping to secure the ransom money.
With daylight rapidly burning away, J.D., Kate, and the rest headed out on their rescue/retrieval mission. Those remaining at the cottonwood grove had the horse burying to finish and the dead men to load up and haul away before they, too, would be departing the scene where so much had taken such a bad turn.
* * *
"I don't like havin' that woman along," grumbled Burt Kanelly.
"I know," responded Brewster Colfax, riding beside him. "You've said so about forty times."
"Well. That should tell you how much I don't like it."
"Uh-huh. Maybe you could convince yourself to like it a little more if you reminded yourself that without the woman we'd be mighty unlikely to have any chance at a million-dollar ransom. The owners of most of those nags back there" —Brewster jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the small herd of stolen horses being driven along behind him and Kanelly— "set a mighty high value on 'em. But it would never tally up to that big a payout for their return, not without the woman."
"Yeah, yeah, I get that part. I understand why we had to take her." Kenelly made a sour face. "What I don't like is havin' to keep her with us for the time it takes before we make it to that box canyon you got picked out where we'll hole up until the money's delivered. She ain't hard on the eyes, in case you didn't notice—you think this pack of wolves we got ridin' with us is gonna be able to keep their paws off her for that long?"
"They damn well better!" Colfax snapped. "I've made it clear that anybody tries messin' with her will mighty quick find himself to be a wolf minus a pecker. You think whoever shows up to deliver that money ain't gonna want to see that the horses and especially the woman ain't in good shape before they fork over the payoff?"
"Sure. I know that and you know that. But after a couple long, hot days on the trail and cold, lonely nights in camp, all the while lookin' at her and smellin' the all-over woman scent of her...you think they're gonna keep in mind what's smart over the other kind of thoughts fillin' their heads?"
Colfax cut him a sidelong look. "I'm beginning to wonder if it's the other men you're so worried about, Burt, or if it's your own itch that's troubling you so?"
Kanelly grunted again. "That'll be the day, when I let a case of the pecker itch ever get in the way of a chance at a million big ones."
"Good. You keep thinking that way." Colfax set his jaw firmly. "You make a valid point about the others, though. It will take both of us to keep a sharp watch over them in order to make they don't do something stupid where our hostage is concerned."
Chapter Nineteen
J.D. and Kate considered themselves above average trackers, and Curly Nesbitt claimed to also have skills in that area if needed. But the trail left over the grass-anchored dunes by fourteen horses—five riderless animals, Estelle Grigg on Midnight Shadow, and eight mounted men serving as wranglers—was plain enough for practically anybody to follow. It angled off to the northwest and the pursuers were able to stay with it while moving along at a fairly rapid gait. On the other hand, judging by how the span between the hoofprints of the horses they were following didn't appear stretched out very far, like they'd be if the animals were being pushed hurriedly along, it looked like their quarry wasn't proceeding with much sense of urgency.
"The condition they left us in," J.D. explained to Kate, recalling the time frame he and the other stranded riders had originally calculated for word to reach town and then spread to those on the race train about what had happened, "they're likely figurin' that the soonest anybody would be headin' out after 'em—if at all, considerin' the hostage they've got to use as a shield—would be tomorrow morning."
"That could prove to be some mighty unhealthy figuring on their part," said Kate.
"We can only hope," J.D. allowed. He slowed his horse some and twisted in the saddle, motioning for Pete Blaylock to ride up closer. When the man had done so, J.D. said, "Your former career in the, er, stagecoach business gave you reason to get familiar with some of this area, didn't it?"
"Not so much through the Sandhills here where we're at," Blaylock answered. "But on to the north and west, the direction we're headed...Yeah, I conducted some business up that way."
"That'd be the Pine Ridge region, right? The bottom reaches of which we rode through the other day."
"Uh-huh. The way we're aimed now, I'd say, will bring us out right near the town of Chadron in about two days of steady ridin'."
"What's the land like between here and there?"
"Nothing but more of what you see, until you get in to where the rockiness of the Pine Ridge starts breakin' it up...No, wait, I think we might catch one of the branches of the Dismal River up ahead not too far. And then there'll the Niobrara farther up, before we get to Chadron."
Kate could almost, but not quite, hear the wheels spinning inside J.D.'s head. "What are you thinking?" she said.
J.D. tilted his face upward, squinting. "Mighty clear sky up there, not a cloud in sight. Except for last night, that's the way it's been. And my recollection, apart from the storm, is that we've been having a nice slice of moon and plenty of starlight after the sun goes down—enough, I'm thinking, to follow a trail as plain as the one we're on. Agreed?"
"Heck, I could follow this trail by matchlight, even without a bright moon," boasted Curly Nesbitt, who'd ridden up closer behind to hear what was being discussed.
"Okay. So what I'm thinking," J.D. said, "is that we just keep on ridin', right into the night. While we're doin' that, there'd be no reason to think those we're followin' won't stop to make camp. Since we're travelin' at a pretty good clip and they don't appear to be in any big hurry even while they are on the move, what's to stop us from catchin' up to 'em by morning?"
"Not a damn thing, the way it sounds to me," Kate said.
"Same here," agreed Blaylock. "They'll likely stop when they reach the Dismal. That'd give 'em plenty of water and graze for all those horses. After that, if they keep on the way they're headed—hell, no matter what direction they aim, as far as that goes—they got nothing but a long, empty, dry stretch facin' 'em."
"It would be kind of a shame to save 'em from baking their guts out for a while. The men I'm talking about, not the horses or Estelle Grigg," Kate said. "But, with a little luck, it sounds like we got a good chance of stopping 'em from going anywhere past the Dismal."
"What about that?" J.D. said, addressing Blaylock once again. "What's the land like around the river?"
"Any part of the Dismal I ever ran across ain't all that wide or deep. It's spring fed, they say, so it runs steady and a little fast and twists and turns all over the place. Been runnin' a long, long time, though, so even though it's narrow and small by most standards—and again, this is based on only the couple times I saw it—it's cut down pretty deep into the land with high banks covered with a lot of brush and trees on both sides."
"This is takin' shape better and better, if you ask me," piped up Nesbitt. "We catch those varmints still in their camp, it sounds like we'll have good cover for sneakin' in and springin' a trap before they know what hit 'em."
"Be nice to think it," said J.D., feeling more and more encouraged by what they were cooking up yet not wanting to get overly confident. He glanced over at Kate. "What do you say, darlin'."
&n
bsp; Her answer didn't require a lot of pondering. "I say that everything I'm hearing tells me we should go for it."
J.D grinned. "Didn't expect anything different out of you. So 'go for it' is what we'll do. Come dusk, we'll hold up for just a bit. Give the horses a good waterin', let everybody catch a breather. Then we'll set out again...In the meantime, let's pick the pace back up and keep coverin' as much ground as we can now."
Chapter Twenty
Fingers of early dawn sunlight were reaching into the narrow, twisting cut of the Dismal River. Shafts of bright silver-yellow filtered through the leaves of the cottonwood and ash trees that lined the bank, dappling the grassy ground underneath and then reaching farther to stab through the wisps of fog lifting from the water and reflect in brilliant glints off the rippling current.
Brewster Colfax straightened up beside the fire, holding a freshly-poured cup of coffee in one hand and massaging the ache at the small of his back with the other. As he blew a gust of steam off the coffee and then took a drink, the gaze from his still sleep-puffed eyes swept over the camp around him.
Ahead, to the east, the recently vacated bedrolls of the other men still lay strewn on the ground. To one side, her back against the brushy slope that inclined up to the stark Sandhills terrain, the Grigg woman sat with a bedroll blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Behind where Colfax stood, back where the horses had been picketed for the night, men were saddling up for another long day's ride over the bleak, barren route that was in store for them. At the river's edge, a couple members of the crew were conducting the all-important task of filling canteens and water skins.
On the other side of the fire, from where he sat on a flat-topped chunk of boulder, nursing his own cup of coffee, Burt Kanelly said, "Won't be long now before the boys will have everything ready to head out."
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