“Are they far from here?”
“A mile or two,” she said. She swung her legs off the bed and lifted her skirt to midthigh. “Come back to bed, Lucas. You’ve been away so long and I’ve missed you.”
“We need to plan for the future. How many horses are there?”
“A dozen. I don’t know. They looked like bad men.”
“Men? Are there guards? How many?” She shrugged. Then she started singing again. He leaned back in the rickety chair. “Can you draw a map so I can go look?”
“I’ll go with you! That’ll be fun. We can take a picnic lunch.”
“It might tire you out. You . . . you can fix a special meal for when I get back after looking over the horses. I’d like that.”
“A special meal. A homecoming meal!” She got to her feet and clapped her hands like an excited child thinking about her special birthday party. “That will be ever so much fun.”
“It will.” He found a scrap of paper and a pencil stub in a cabinet and put them on the table. “Draw me a map. Go on, Sarah. It’ll be fun. After I get the horses, we can be together.”
“We can be together now. The horses will be there later. They’ve been there forever.”
“Forever? Or just a week or so.”
“Almost two weeks. The bad men brought them then.”
Luke frowned as he considered the times. That would be about the time Rhoades burned down the way station and left three bodies behind.
“Why do you say they’re bad men? What have they done that you don’t like?”
Sarah pouted and shook her head.
“I shouldn’t tattle.”
“Tell me. Tell your Lucas.” The lying words burned his tongue. Taking advantage of a woman not right in the head bothered him, but bigger things were at stake.
“I was picking berries. I hid when I heard them cursing, and one shot another. He shot him in the back!”
Good riddance was all Luke could think, but he saw why Sarah would be so upset. She lived a solitary life. Such cruelty had to shock her.
“Did you know the man who got shot?”
“It was Tommy. I’ve seen him and his sweetheart out in the woods doing . . . things.”
“They were married,” Luke said. “Tommy Zinn and Beatrice Willum.” It took all his concentration to dredge up the names. When he heard their story he hadn’t thought it was important, other than being names added to the list of murders committed by Rhoades and Benedict. What brought the names back was remembering the wedding ring the Preston coroner had taken from the charred body. The initials had proven he hadn’t brought in his own Audrey.
“He was helping them herd the horses. For an hour after they built a big rope corral, he curried and fed and tended the horses. Then when he was done, one of the terrible men drew his gun, walked over and shot Tommy in the back of the head.”
The outlaws had forced Tommy to help them steal the horses and herd them to the hiding spot. Had the boy even known his wife was already dead back at the way station? Beatrice and the couple he’d worked for? Luke hoped the boy had died hopeful and believing he was being set free. Knowing how underhanded the outlaws were, they weren’t above promising him nothing would happen to his loved ones if he cooperated.
“I watched for a long time. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like Tommy’d come back to life. He just lay there drawing flies until a little boy came. He chewed them out and made them bury Tommy.”
“Little boy?”
“He was short and had a face like an angel. Even when he was shouting at them, he looked like a cherub.”
“This angel carried a six-gun?”
“A big one. He ordered the others around and then he and an ugly brute of a man left. I don’t know where they went. They were too far away for me to hear what they said.”
Rollie Rhoades and Crazy Water Benedict. “Cherubic” and “brutish” described each of them well enough if they were seen from a distance.
“Here, Sarah, draw me a map. This is where we are now.”
“This is fun,” she said, taking the pencil and licking the tip. She bent over. She chewed her tongue as she worked, explaining every landmark to Luke as she drew.
“This is a stream, and the clearing in the woods where they have the horses is here.” She made a careful X on the paper scrap. “That’s only a couple miles away.”
He turned the paper around and around to be sure he had all the important landmarks memorized. His camp was a half mile in the opposite direction. Fetching his horse gave him added speed and mobility, but he was anxious to see if everything Sarah told him was right. Trusting her to report faithfully was a big stretch. What she’d seen could be explained in a lot of other, more legal ways. There were ranches all around. Cowboys sent out from one of those ranches to find strays explained everything.
Everything except seeing Tommy Zinn gunned down. She knew the boy and hadn’t said “someone who looked like Tommy Zinn.” Cowboys working to round up horses had no reason to shoot anyone in the back. Even more damning, the description of the angelic man matched too well with Rhoades.
“You get to fixing that fancy meal for us, Sarah. I’ll see to the horses.”
“They’re our future, my darling Lucas. We’ll be rich and those hoity-toity women in Crossroads won’t lord it over me anymore. I’ll be able to buy and sell the lot of them all because you came back to me!” She lunged over the table and threw her spindly arms around his neck. She hugged so hard he lost his balance. If he hadn’t wormed his way free of the embrace, she would have bulldogged him down.
“I won’t be long,” he told her, wondering if that was a lie. If he found and freed his wife, Audrey’s safety came first. If there had to be more tracking, going after Benedict, life got more complicated. He refused to believe it was possible for him to run afoul of the gang and end up like Tommy Zinn. They didn’t know he was coming, and turning his back on those rattlesnakes wasn’t in the cards.
He’d deal with them, and if he couldn’t, Crossroads was nearby. The marshal hunted for the Rhoades gang. Recruiting a posse took less time than Luke snapping his fingers if the reward offered was big enough. If Marshal Wilkes couldn’t put up the money, Luke had enough left to make the fight worthwhile for even the most craven hanger-on at a saloon.
“It’s been so long, Lucas.” Tears streamed down Sarah’s cheeks. “Don’t make it much longer.”
He smiled weakly, then his resolve hardened. He felt sorry for Sarah Youngblood, but she was secondary to his real job of bringing the outlaws to justice. He stepped out of the cabin and studied the stars. It was an hour before sunrise. The map Sarah had drawn showed the horses to be a couple miles off. If he hurried on foot, he’d reach the encampment just before dawn. That was perfect time for scouting the situation. If he had to move then, twilight gave him cover for an attack. Luke was sure he was accurate enough to take out any number of outlaws before they knew they faced only a single gunman.
As he made his way along a narrow game trail, he checked his Schofield. All six chambers carried rounds. A quick touch to his coat pocket reassured him he had a full box to back up the cartridges already loaded. His progress slowed when he lost the trail in the darkness. Closing his eyes, he imagined the back trail and where it headed. He lacked the skills of a real woodsman but he had learned enough to keep a sense of direction, even in dense woods like these.
He plowed through bushes, then slowed when he found the trail. Or another one running in the right direction. Cocking his head to one side, he listened hard. The stream burbled along not too far away. Doubly sure of his directions now, he picked up the pace. By the time he stepped out into a clearing, false dawn lit the trees.
The smell of horses and the sound of two men arguing stopped him dead in his tracks. He backed up to take cover in the thick brush beside the game trail. Straining, he listene
d to the argument over whose turn it was to boil the coffee. After a full minute of swapped invectives, one man agreed to get the water and prepare the morning brew. Luke took this as his opportunity to approach the camp. He thought there were only two men, and if one wandered down to the stream to get water, this gave better odds.
Skirting the clearing, he saw the campfire had burned down to embers. A dark figure poked the coals and added dried oak leaves to bring up the flames enough to eat away at dried twigs. Before Luke got within twenty yards, a decent cook fire blazed. The light revealed the man on the far side of the firepit. The outlaw’s name eluded Luke, but he was certain he recognized him from a wanted poster. He slipped his six-shooter from its holster and sighted in on the man.
Luke let his finger relax when the other outlaw returned with a coffeepot and two canteens.
“It’ll only take a couple minutes to fix the coffee.” He fished in his vest pocket for a watch, snapped open the case and tipped it toward the fire to better read the face. “We got time.”
“I’ll fix the coffee. You go water the horses.”
This sparked a new argument. Luke shifted his attention from the two bickering outlaws to the woods beyond them. A puff of morning breeze came from that direction, bringing the earthy scent of horses mingled with woodsmoke from the campfire. Being downwind served Luke well. The horses wouldn’t get spooked by the scent of a newcomer, and any sounds he made were carried away from the bickering outlaws. He moved closer.
Within ten yards of the fire gave him his first good look at the horses. A quick count showed ten tied down to a rope strung between two trees. This would hardly have been much of a start for a stud farm like Sarah Youngblood thought, but Luke suspected she knew as little about raising horses as he did.
He still worried that these were the only two men in camp. A third or even fourth outlaw posted nearer the horses made sense, both to keep the animals quiet and to guard against predators. He had seen ample spoor warning him how many wolves prowled throughout the Flint Hills. Those horses would make a delicious meal for a wolf pack. After another minute of watching and waiting, Luke decided he only faced two men. They had continued their argument about who watered the stolen horses. He got a better look at the second outlaw. As with the first, he remembered seeing his likeness on a wanted poster but couldn’t remember the name.
If they followed Rollie Rhoades, they were dangerous, killers both. They were likely the men Sarah had seen gun down Tommy Zinn.
Luke found himself hesitant about shooting them down from ambush. That was something Benedict would do, and he wasn’t lowering himself to the man’s level. Another consideration came quickly to deter him. He needed to know where Audrey had been taken. She wasn’t in this camp, so that meant Rhoades’s hideout was elsewhere. Creating a distraction made more sense. If he released the horses, the outlaws had no choice but to go after them. This accident might cause them to send a warning to Rhoades and postpone whatever robbery they had planned. Delay worked for Luke and against the gang.
Edging around even more toward the tethered horses, Luke found himself in thicker bushes. Thorns tore at his coat and then dug into his skin. He bit his lower lip to keep from crying out when a particularly long thorn drove deep into his forearm and opened one of the wounds he’d already sustained from the dynamite explosion. Pulling free caused the bush to rattle loudly. He looked up and saw both outlaws going for their six-shooters.
Discovered!
He yanked free and, ignoring the blood running down his arm, fumbled to draw his own pistol. Then he froze. The two men hadn’t heard him. They reacted to another ruckus from across the clearing.
Luke ducked behind a thick-boled cottonwood. If a shootout started, the sturdy trunk protected him. Poking his head around, he saw the two outlaws separating, moving to get whoever approached in a crossfire.
He heard the singing before he spotted Sarah Youngblood. She came across the clearing, arms flailing about like windmill blades in a high wind and singing “Mister Froggie Went a-Courtin’” at the top of her lungs.
The nearer outlaw aimed carefully as Sarah made her way closer. Luke cocked his six-gun and braced his wrist against the tree trunk. The trigger moved back and then he released it an instant before the recoil.
“Get ’em ready to ride! We got a posse on our tail!”
Luke looked past Sarah to a rider galloping from the woods. He blinked. Crazy Water Benedict had joined the other two. He rode a lathered horse that stumbled and almost threw its rider. Benedict kept his seat and yanked hard on the reins to bring the horse to a halt.
“Who’s that?” Benedict pointed to Sarah, who ignored him and the others.
“She just showed up, Crazy Water. We was gonna shoot her.” The outlaw closest to Luke rushed forward to take the reins Benedict dropped.
“Don’t go shooting. The marshal is right behind us. The boss sent him off on a false trail, but a gunshot will bring that posse down on us like flies to cow flop.”
“What should we do with her?”
Benedict glanced over his shoulder. The second man from the camp dragged Sarah forward. Luke lowered his six-shooter. He had lost his chance to take them out. The woman had been captured and the best shooting in the world wouldn’t save her now.
“You want us to leave her? Or cut her throat?”
“Bring her with us. We got to find out what she knows.” Benedict worked to get the saddle off his exhausted horse. He heaved it over his shoulder and ran to the fresh horses. Without being too choosy, he began saddling the first horse he came to.
“What can she know? She just showed up a minute or two back.” The outlaw wanted to argue the point with Benedict.
Crazy Water Benedict turned from saddling his horse, took a step forward and backhanded the man. The impact of hand against cheek sounded like a muffled gunshot. The outlaw stumbled and sat hard. He rubbed his wounded cheek. He started to draw his six-gun when Benedict turned his back to finish saddling his new mount.
“The rest of ’em is comin’,” called the outlaw dragging Sarah along. He shook his head when he got his partner’s attention and saw he foolishly intended to shoot Benedict. “The boss won’t like it.”
Luke knew what the outlaw meant. Having his right-hand man shot in the back wouldn’t set well with anyone. For Rollie Rhoades such betrayal signed a man’s death warrant.
“Go on, fling her over a horse. Tie her down,” the offended outlaw said, standing. He rubbed his cheek. If looks could kill, Benedict would have been a dead man. As it was, Benedict wheeled his horse around and trotted back into the clearing.
“I can ride. Where are you taking me?” Sarah tried to jerk free. The outlaw who had been slapped passed along the punishment. He started to vent even more anger by beating on the woman, but his partner stopped him again. Silently pointing, he waited for the men to appear from the forested area by ones and twos. Each rider led a horse.
Luke caught his breath. They had robbed the bank of so much gold it required four packhorses to move it. The entire gang came into the clearing. Any chance Luke had before of saving Sarah or even potshotting Benedict was long gone now. The gang hit the ground running and began switching their gear to the rested horses. Moving the gold from the pack animals to others required two men.
Luke drew a bead on the outlaw who kept a sharp eye on Sarah. If he knocked the man from the saddle, Sarah’s escape was possible. But the woman had lost herself in crazy fantasies again. Crying out for her Lucas won her a backhanded swat that missed. She reared back in the saddle to avoid the blow, but as she rocked forward the outlaw tugged on the reins of her horse and trotted away. In seconds they disappeared across the stream.
Turning his attention back to the gang, Luke saw how efficient the outlaws were. Like a well-trained militia, they worked together to transfer the gold in what had to be record time. Rollie Rhoades supervised
the gang from the back of a fresh horse.
“Crazy Water, drive the horses south.” He waited until his lieutenant rounded up several of the horses the gang had ridden into the ground, then threw him a mocking salute. “See you at the hideout.” Rhoades smiled. For a man with such a baby face it should have been precious. On him it carried more than a hint of cruelty.
“Don’t go giving my share to any of those other owlhoots,” Benedict said. He played out a couple yards of rope and applied it to the rump of the nearest horse with a loud whack. He started the small herd trotting along to lay a false trail.
In a few seconds Luke stood staring at the empty camp. All the horses were gone and the gang had ridden off. Benedict was the last of the gang to vanish. The silence tore at Luke.
“Oh, Sarah, why’d you have to follow me?”
Luke peered into the distance where the gang had ridden. That was his trail now. Firing a shot to draw the marshal and his posse from Crossroads was a possible tactic, but he doubted they shared his goals.
Freeing Sarah Youngblood mattered more than all the gold Rhoades had stolen from the bank. And trumping even the brainsick woman’s safety was rescuing Audrey.
Luke slipped back into the trees, found the game trail and jogged along, intent on reaching the ramshackle cabin and then getting to his camp where his horse grazed. He hoped the animal was well enough fed and rested to gallop the entire way to Rhoades’s camp. Catching the outlaw gang was only the first part.
Shooting it out with them would be one monumental firefight. He put his head down and ran hard, in spite of his strength fading with each step.
CHAPTER TEN
LUKE HADLEY KEPT his head down, sucking air into his tortured lungs. He’d been through too much for this exertion. Every muscle in his body told him to stop. He slowed from his stumbling run to walk along the trail back to Sarah’s cabin. His thoughts bubbled and boiled. Following the outlaws only started the chore ahead of him. He had to rescue Audrey and Sarah. He held his breath at the notion of killing the man who had put the shrapnel in his chest, until he gasped and missed a step, stumbling. Keeping a steady pace covered more ground than the way he trooped along. A deep breath settled his nerves. A little. But his chaotic thoughts returned to confuse him.
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