Tin Star

by Jackson Lowry

  “What’s the cost of Mister Gottfried’s ox?”

  Sven shook his head. “More than we have, even with selling the plow horse.”

  “I would like to buy the horse and what gear you have for one hundred dollars.”

  Sven’s and Susanna’s eyes went wide. Before the man could protest, she said, “You have this money? You should check the horse to see what you’re buying.”

  Luke had no other option. Either he rode or used shanks’ mare. His feet already hurt after only a few hours trooping along. More than this, he had to put distance between the Crossroads marshal and himself. Even a slow horse added miles to what he did on foot.

  “We can give him the old saddle. The one left here by that traveling sales fellow. And trail rations. How’s that sound?” Sven looked eager and his wife dubious.

  “If you cook the food, it’s a deal.”

  Luke began opening the seam of his coat to draw out thin tubes of gold dust. Measuring proved difficult, and he probably paid more than the agreed amount, but he knew the family would put the money to good use. And he had victuals fit for a king, even if the swaybacked horse only plodded along at one slow gait.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE PLOW HORSE had one speed—the one used to pull a plow. The clop-clop-clop and rolling gait put Luke to sleep after a few miles. He jerked awake often enough to be sure the swaybacked horse stayed on the trail. Or the trail Luke thought he followed. Marta Shearing had come this direction. That was all the information he had, other than a brief look at Marshal Hargrove’s map filled with guesswork and potential hideouts for outlaw gangs.

  Eyes blurry, he let his chin drop again as the horse soothed him to sleep. When he came awake the next time, his hand flashed to the Schofield at his side. Distant voices alerted him he wasn’t alone on this trail.

  “Whoa.” He tugged harder on the reins. The horse refused to stop. It plodded on no matter how he sawed at the bridle.

  Rather than blunder ahead into an ambush, though how the two arguing men had any chance of laying an ambush for any man with hearing better than using an ear trumpet was hard to say, he jumped to the ground. The horse turned and stared at him. But it stopped. The draft animal was used to obeying commands issued from behind it, not from its back. Luke led it off the trail he followed and down into a gully where a sluggish stream flowed. While the horse drank its fill, Luke crept forward and found a spot behind some black chokeberry bushes. Using a twig, he pushed aside a branch and got a better look at two men crouched beside a small fire where they boiled coffee. Their gear spread around them in wild disarray. If they plotted an ambush, they were careless doing it.

  When the wind changed and he caught a whiff of their witch’s brew, he almost gagged. How any human drank such vile-smelling coffee was a tribute to cast-iron bellies. The men downed the contents of their tin cups, then began matching pennies. It took a few minutes until one accused the other of cheating. This sparked a shouting match between them.

  From all he saw, arguing was all the men did. But something put him on guard. As one of them half turned, he exposed a low-slung six-shooter. The holster was tied down with a rawhide strap. The wood grip showed wear. If Luke had been closer, he’d have bet there’d be notches carved into the pistol grip. This one looked the world like a gunslinger.

  A rabbit exploded from hiding not ten feet from the men. The second gunman came to a crouch, drew and fired so fast that Luke hardly saw a blur. Even more impressive, the shot caught the rabbit just above its shoulder. It let out a high-pitched screech as air gusted from its lungs, kicked once and then flopped over dead.

  “We got ourselves lunch,” the shooter said. He lifted the muzzle and blew the smoke away. “I shot it, you can skin and cook it.”

  “There’s not enough meat on its bones for two of us.”

  “You expected me to kill two rabbits with one shot? I’m good but not that good.”

  The pair continued their petty disputation. Luke backed off, then hurried to his horse, still drinking noisily from the muddy stream. It took considerable tugging to get the horse away. If it’d drunk any more it would have started to bloat. Enough problems piled up around him without having to wait for the bloat to go down. With the luck he’d had so far, the horse would develop colic and die.

  He tried to figure how to circle the two gunmen and get back to finding Rhoades and his gang, but this section of land was flatter than the hilly area he’d just ridden through. Sitting and thinking got him nowhere. He needed a decent map to pull off the run around the two men. Since he hadn’t seen their hoofprints along the soft dirt of the trail he followed, they were coming toward him. If he waited long enough, they’d ride past him and never be any the wiser that he was here.

  But they argued endlessly over fixing lunch. That meant another hour to fidget and hope they—

  “Howdy, mister.”

  Luke jerked upright. Both gunmen stood a few yards away, hands resting on the butts of their well-used weapons. They had sneaked up on him while he was daydreaming about avoiding them.

  “Hello.” He forced himself to sit still and not reach for his six-shooter. The ease with which the one had drawn and the accuracy of his marksmanship warned Luke how close he was to dying. And he wasn’t anywhere near as fast as a jackrabbit.

  “You one of them?” The man on the right fixed a steely gaze on Luke, demanding an answer.

  “I’m not sure who you mean, but if you intend to throw down on me if I answer wrong, let me set your mind at ease. I’m not ‘one of them,’ whoever that is.” He smiled disarmingly.

  The men exchanged looks, then laughed.

  “Wouldn’t matter none if you was a lawman. You out hunting for the ring-tailed varmint?”

  Luke realized then that the men were bounty hunters. They had no quarrel with a posse, other than that the posse might grab their quarry and steal away a reward. In a sense, both they and Luke were on the same side of the law, though he had never heard of a bounty hunter who didn’t steal away a reward from someone more deserving if the opportunity presented itself.

  “I don’t know who you mean.”

  “One of the Rhoades gang escaped from the jail over in Crossroads. The marshal won’t talk none about it, so it must have been real embarrassing for him.” He spat, then asked outright, “You a bounty hunter?”

  The tin star weighed a hundred pounds in Luke’s pocket. More. Showing it to the bounty hunters wasn’t a smart move. He shook his head slowly.

  “Can’t say that I am. I’m out here looking for a woman name of Sarah Youngblood. She’s not got a reward on her.”

  “Looking for a woman?” The men laughed until tears ran down their cheeks. The one who had shown his prowess with his iron added, “The three of us are looking for a woman, I’d say. Only we’re not overly picky. Don’t care what her name is. So far, we ain’t had much luck. Seems the purty ones don’t want to catch our cooties and the ugly ones cost too much.”

  “She’s wearing a tattered wedding dress.” Luke watched their reactions. Neither of them tried to hide what went on between their ears. They were crude and, if he was any judge, devastatingly efficient at their job.

  “She run off during your wedding? That’s rich. If she did, you’re better off letting her go. Any filly who’d change her mind at the last second isn’t fit for any man.”

  The other chimed in, “Soiled doves are cheaper in the long run, and you can pick a different one every time you get the itch.”

  “Get the itch? That’s what you get from a soiled dove.”

  “You, maybe, like you did over in Denver. You remember the big redhead who gave you the clap? I was lucky you got first dibs. The señorita I had was more than I could handle. Almost!”

  Luke held his tongue. The two argued endlessly over anything and everything. When they finally ran down and turned back to him, he realized he
had to get away from them.

  “If you gents don’t mind, I have to be on my way.”

  “That your horse?” The one pointed. Both laughed.

  “Hey, don’t laugh. It’ll hurt his feelings.” Luke patted the horse’s neck. The huge animal leaned into him and almost knocked him over.

  “You’re definitely not a bounty hunter. No self-respecting vigilante rides a nag like that.”

  Luke nodded and gave what he hoped was an agreeable smile.

  “Don’t you go insulting our new friend, Zeke.”

  “Don’t go using that tone of voice with me, Deke.”

  Luke blinked. They acted like brothers but looked nothing alike. From their names, they might have been mistaken for twins. He had grown up with twins named Benjamin and Kenneth, Ben and Ken always, and never their full names. A touch of skepticism made him think that Zeke and Deke were summer names. Bounty hunters changed their names as they went from one part of the country to another because they were as likely to be wanted by the law as the men they caught and shot.

  “It’s about time for me to ride on,” Luke said. He shifted his weight to draw, if it came to that. Neither of the two bounty hunters looked the least bit concerned that he might start flinging lead in their direction. They had already dismissed him as a threat. The sad part was that Luke agreed. He might clear leather but the speed he had seen from both of them would leave him gasping for life. He understood a little better why so many men were killed by getting shot in the back. It was safer.

  “Now, boy, you have to be worried something sick riding around the countryside all by your lonesome.” The one calling himself Zeke spoke. His partner nodded vigorously.

  “Why’s that?”

  “We’re after this escapee, and the Crossroads town marshal says he’s a slippery cayuse.”

  “Dangerous as a stepped-on prairie rattler, too,” added Deke.

  The two might be looking to rob him, but all they would get would be his gun and boots. The few coins he had left in his pockets hardly bought a shot of whiskey. And neither of them would think to rip open the gold-dust-laden seams on his coat, as battered as it was. They had already passed judgment on the plow horse, and Luke had to agree. That horse wasn’t worth leading to the glue factory.

  “I appreciate your concern, fellows, but I haven’t seen anyone out here. This escaped convict isn’t going to be a bother.”

  “The posse we ran into not all that far back is looking for any solitary rider.” The way Zeke dropped that out, as if it was something about it looking like rain or the sun came up in the east every morning, alerted Luke. These two had a good idea he was the man Benson Wilkes was hunting. He had no idea if the marshal had posted a reward, but even a few dollars interested men like Deke and Zeke. That was especially true since they didn’t have to go far or risk much to collect enough money to buy a bottle of whiskey.

  “A lone rider, eh?” Luke looked northwest. “I came across a trail of a single rider headed that way.” He pointed in the direction Marta Shearing had taken. “I’m not much of a tracker and I hadn’t heard about escaped prisoners.” He hated the idea of putting these two on Marta’s trail, but he began to think any subterfuge saved his life. Deke and Zeke had the look of men who took their quarry in dead. Less fuss and they didn’t have to feed a prisoner.

  Luke shuddered, thinking a bullet in the head might be preferable to drinking their vile coffee. He doubted either of them rose above the level of poisoner when it came to fixing victuals.

  “Do tell.” The two exchanged a quick glance. “You think you can find this trail?” They tried to keep eager looks off their faces and failed.

  “I don’t see why not. It was a single rider leading a spare horse.” This caught their attention.

  “Two horses?”

  “One rider, two horses,” he confirmed. “All that meant to me was someone has more money than sense. Or if they can afford two horses to ride like that, they’re in a powerful hurry.”

  Luke fell silent and let the men whisper back and forth. Zeke pointed once in his direction, but the lure of two decent horses to steal rather than a swayback plow horse decided the argument.

  “Three of us riding along together’ll be more than any escapee would want to tangle with. That is, if you’ll throw in with us.”

  He wanted to find out more about where the bounty hunters had run into the posse. Three men riding along attracted no attention at all from a posse. Not like it would if he rode alone. He patted the horse’s neck. Outrunning a posse meant leaving the horse behind and trying to outdistance them on foot.

  “For a day or two. That is, if we can split any reward.” Luke had no interest in rewards, but he saw that the pair expected such a protest. They haggled a bit, them arguing that their tracking skills deserved more. A final split of 20 percent to Luke and the rest split between them was shaken on. But Luke knew he’d have a bullet in the head if that proved the easier road to take for the bounty hunters.

  He mounted and got his horse ambling along. Cutting farther north brought him to a lake. Even he found hoofprints in the muddy shoreline.

  “Yup, two horses,” Zeke said after examining the tracks. “He watered the horses and rode on not more than a day ago.” He stood and scratched himself.

  “What’s the matter?” Luke saw something was eating Zeke, something more than the fleas that infested his clothing.

  “The depth of the prints is all wrong, unless we’re chasing about the skinniest man alive. Or a boy. Neither horse shows that it’s carrying much weight.”

  “Makes sense if the spare trots along all fancy-free without a rider,” spoke up Deke. “Might be the rider’s a boy and not a full-growed man?”

  Luke already knew the answer. The rider was a small woman. He resisted the temptation to toss out this tidbit to play one-upmanship with the bounty hunters. The dumber he played, the longer he stayed alive. They knew the escaped prisoner was a man if they’d talked very long with Wilkes or any of his deputies.

  He let his horse drink from the lake, ready to pull it away if it showed signs of taking in too much. His heart felt as if someone grabbed it and squeezed hard when he saw a line of riders on the horizon. Zeke had already spotted them and saw his worry.

  “That’s the posse from town,” Zeke said. “They either found a trail or are riding in circles. They’re not too far from where we crossed paths with them early this morning.”

  Nervous, Luke stepped up into the saddle and pulled his hat down to his ears. Then he slumped forward to give the impression of a shorter man riding with the other two.

  “We might ride along a spell with them,” Deke said. The way he studied Luke when he made the suggestion spoke worlds about the bounty hunters. Deke needled him. They had no more desire to ride with the posse than he did.

  “You’re within a day of catching up, and you said they’re riding in circles. Why do you want to give up your share of any reward? Has there ever been a posse that’d split reward money? The ones with the most guns get the bounty.” Luke tried getting his horse to a faster gait. It plodded along at the same rate it had since he had first set astraddle. “How much is the reward, anyway?”

  “Twenty-five dollars,” Deke said.

  “It’s fifty, but he’s already split it up betwixt the pair of us. Split three ways, how we agreed, uh, that’d be—”

  “Ten for me and twenty for each of you,” Luke said, doing the ciphering in his head. One of his strengths as a farmer had been figuring out costs and yields. He had been so good at doing sums that Mister Dalton at the mercantile had offered him a job as clerk.

  “Wave to them,” Zeke said. “They’re a friendly bunch.” He followed his own advice.

  “They’re friendly because they each had a pint of whiskey given them before they hit the trail. When the rotgut’s gone, mark my words, they won’t be as s
ociable.” Deke waved.

  Luke joined in to keep from standing out as the only one not greeting the distant posse. He felt the tension flow from him when a couple of the deputies waved back and the entire posse kept on riding. They weren’t looking for three men together. They wanted a single rider.

  That made him wonder if Wilkes had given up on finding Rollie Rhoades and his gang. The marshal hadn’t been too eager to continue the hunt when he had nabbed him and tucked him away in the jail cell. One robber who didn’t shoot it out was safer to hunt than a gang willing to blow up a bank because the leader enjoyed the carnage dynamite created.

  “Looks like we’re on the right track,” Deke said after walking back and forth along the lakeshore. “The rider went that way.”

  Luke tried to see across the lake to where Marta might have ridden. He had to believe she followed the gang’s trail using her own skills while he depended on the bounty hunters to find her. Luke wished he had the chance to swap riding with her for being under the thumbs of the two bounty hunters.

  They mounted and started around the lake. The two rode ahead, eagerly pointing out signs on the ground that Luke barely saw—or had no idea at all what excited his new partners. When he caught up, he asked.

  “We got fresh prints. Not more than six or eight hours old, but there’s other tracks. A whole herd of horses from the way the ground’s all chopped up.” Zeke hesitated, then added, “If I laid a bet on this, the rider we’re following is after the herd of riders.”

  “That means a straggler from the gang that robbed the Crossroads bank is trying to catch up with the rest of his partners.” Deke rubbed his palms on his thighs, then tapped his fingers nervously. “If we bring in the whole gang, there’s plenty of reward to go around.”

  Both men might as well have spoken aloud. Luke knew what they really thought. Kill the bank robbers, keep the gold stolen from the Crossroads bank. That amounted to a whole lot more than any reward, even for notorious outlaws. While they might gun down the crooks, take the stolen gold and try to collect a reward for the dead bodies, they’d come under suspicion if they claimed the gold had been lost or already hidden.