“Will that erase our tracks?”
“Not if they have a good tracker.” She snorted. “Maybe not if they have a lousy frontiersman, but we have to try. Ride fast. Three miles, maybe four, and try to follow the contours of the land.”
He gave the horse its head and rode half turned in the saddle. It took only a few minutes before pain jabbed him in the side, then worked down the length of his left leg. The whole time he saw nothing in the heat haze behind them. Marta worked to keep the grass bundle directly behind her horse for the best effect. Even from his position, Luke saw it wasn’t working well enough to fool anyone.
“Clouds are gathering,” he said, “for a late afternoon shower.”
“That might save us. Head northwest.”
“The direction the gang took when they changed horses.”
He strained his eyes hunting for any spoor left by the fleeing robbers. All he saw were timid creatures peering out of their burrows and more aggressive predators coming out for an early supper. The gentle rise and fall of the land became more pronounced the longer they rode. He began seeking out the hillocks to give some small protection from pursuers’ eyes.
“We might be running for no reason if they decided not to chase after us.”
“Think about that, Mister Hadley. Deke and Zeke will make us out to be the worst of the gang, just to get even with us. The marshal might even get a decent description of you and know you were the one who broke out of his jail.”
“What are the chances they described you well enough for him to identify you as the woman who gave me the derringer?” He touched his pocket. The empty two-shot pistol weighed him down. Marta saw him press his fingers against the pistol in his vest pocket.
“There’s a cartridge or two for that gun in Deke’s gear. When we make camp, I’ll give you a couple shells.”
“We have to keep riding. Put as much distance between us and the posse.”
Luke rambled on, only vaguely realizing how close to exhaustion he came. After a few minutes he realized they were retracing their trail, heading back toward the posse. He protested.
“Let me worry about it, Mister Hadley. You work to keep from falling out of the saddle.”
“Oh, you’re confusing them. Doubling back to make them unsure where we’ve gone.” He swatted at a fly. His hand came away wet. Holding it up as if beseeching the heavens, he hunted for the spot of bug juice. Or blood. Only water trickled down his palm. He pushed his hat back and looked into the sky. He recoiled when a raindrop hit him smack dab in the eye.
“Ride faster,” she urged. “The storm will erase our tracks.” She cut loose the bouquet of weeds she’d been dragging behind to mask their trail. When he didn’t respond, she reached over and grabbed the reins of his plow horse.
Luke clung to the saddle horn. The world spun around him as the horse plodded along. Rain began fitfully, then picked up determination to soak him to the bone. In the back of his mind he rejoiced. They changed direction again. If the posse rode ahead, thinking they weren’t deviating from a straight line, they’d miss them entirely.
“Get down. Don’t fall. I’m not strong enough to carry you.”
“You did back there.” He gestured vaguely. “From the stream when you patched me up. You got me out of the water.”
She laughed at him.
“You may not remember it, but you did most of the walking. I just nudged you in the right direction. Dismount here. We’re going to camp.”
Rocks. He saw rocks suddenly illuminated by a vivid flash of lightning. There wasn’t much shelter, but with the wind kicking up and blowing harder, the rain slanted in. The rocks gave some protection. He leaned forward and slithered from the saddle. Hanging on to the plow horse kept him from collapsing.
“No fire, not in this rain. There’s no dry wood out here anyway, and I’m not going to hunt for buffalo chips.”
“Cow chips,” he mumbled. She looked at him quizzically. He pointed. “Somebody drove a herd of cattle past here.”
“Even half-dead, you’ve got a good eye. Sit. Pull your slicker around you.”
He did as he was told. She tended the horses, hobbling them so they wouldn’t bolt and run as thunder rolled across the prairie. He drew up his legs and bent over them. The slicker created a tent that kept him only a little drier than being out in the storm. He snapped alert when Marta pushed up the edge of his slicker and joined him. Their bodies generated more heat together than either separately.
“Does this mean we’re partners?” He had no idea why he asked. Luke didn’t expect an answer, but he got one.
Marta Shearing snuggled closer, held the edge of his slicker and rested her head on his shoulder. The last thought flitting across his mind as he slipped into a half sleep, half coma was this would be the closest answer to his question that she was likely to give. And that was just fine with him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN MARTA SHEARING moved away from him, he reached out to keep the slicker from falling off his head. Luke came immediately awake when he realized the sun was up and shining brightly. The rainstorm had passed, leaving the air fragrant with prairie and the sky scrubbed of even the wispiest of clouds. He tried to stretch and regretted it. Aches froze his joints. Sleeping all doubled up with Marta beside him through the night froze his knees and elbows into place.
“Move slower,” came Marta’s advice. “Are you hungry? I hope not.”
He moaned softly as he worked his legs straight on the wet ground in front of him. He yawned, stretched his arms and began working shoulders and other joints around. In spite of sleeping in an awkward position in the cold rain, he felt better and moved better. Using the rock that had provided a bit of shelter from the rain, he edged upward until he stood on shaky legs. Walking around, he gained strength.
“Your butt still hurts, doesn’t it?”
He nodded. There was no need to answer such an obvious question. For whatever reason, she tried to irritate him. Then everything clicked in his head.
“Are we partners? Tell me.”
“No!”
Her quick, vehement denial told him she found the notion unsettling—and yet she wasn’t quite able to simply ride away, leaving him behind. She had two sturdy horses. Trying to keep up with her on his plow horse was the kind of thing he read in the penny dreadfuls. All heroism and strutting about and utterly impossible feats. More important than having faster horses, she had better tracking skills. In spite of the rush and crude techniques, he thought her attempt the day before to hide their hoofprints from the posse using dragged vegetation would have worked.
“Why no breakfast? Didn’t Deke and Zeke pack any victuals?” He paced now, testing the limits of his sore body.
“We have to hit the trail ahead of the posse, if they kept coming this way. There’s no way they can find our spoor after the rain, but I’ve never counted on good luck and always assumed others do. It’s kept me alive.” She hesitated, then added, “And those others? Some of them aren’t alive.”
He thought she tried to scare him off with hints of men she had killed and desperate situations she had survived. If it came down to matching story for story, his was more dire. All she wanted to do was make him quit his hunt so she could go after Rhoades on her own terms.
She worked to get their gear assembled. Catching at the yellow slicker, she tossed it to him. Watching her closely, he rolled it up and fastened it at the rear of his saddle. Testing the extent of his healing, he bent and hefted the saddle. Momentary giddiness passed. He slung it up over the plow horse and cinched it down. He was ready to ride.
“Where do we go?”
“We?”
“We’re in this together. You can’t leave me behind. What if the posse caught up with me?”
“You’d set those hounds on me when I’m the one best able to arrest Rhoades?”
“
I want more than that from him and the gang. From Benedict.” His hand twitched and moved involuntarily toward his six-gun. She squared off, as if she thought he was going to throw down on her. They both relaxed.
“I know. You told me about Audrey.” She cinched the belly strap on her horse a little tighter to secure the saddle and mounted. Looking down on him, she said, “Well? Are you coming or not?”
Her attitude irked him, but he needed her. From the way she acted, she needed him, too. Separately, they would have been shot up and left for the coyotes by the bounty hunters. Together, they had escaped. That partnership went further when they came up against an entire gang like the one led by Rhoades.
“How do you know where to go?”
“I’m making a calculated guess. Do you have any better idea?” She looked hard at him.
“Those rolling hills yonder? See them? They showed up on Marshal Hargrove’s map. He had marked them with a circle and maybe an X as if he figured they’d make a good hideout for a gang on the run.”
“If he’s leading the posse, he’ll make a beeline for them, then. We should, too.” She waited for him to object.
“Hargrove’s back in Preston. I doubt he gave Marshal Wilkes a copy of the map. Even if he did, what’re the odds Wilkes will believe in such guesswork by another lawman? He struck me as hardheaded and too sure of his own abilities.”
“I read him the same way,” Marta said, nodding slowly. She lifted her gaze and tapped her horse’s flanks to get it moving. From her attitude she really didn’t care if Luke came along.
Luke settled down in the saddle. He used the spare shirt as a pad beneath him. Riding felt more comfortable today than it had yesterday. Getting the horse moving at its one gait, he started for the distant hills. Oak and walnut trees dotted the landscape, but this region was less hilly and more prairie, where grasses predominated. They rode through hock-high vegetation. With so much rain, the grass would be shoulder-high in a couple weeks. Making their way through grasses like this left a trail.
He stood in the stirrups and scanned the countryside, hunting for the route taken by the outlaws. The rain had caused the grass to spring back up. If the rain hid their trail from the posse, it also disguised the outlaws’ from them. He felt desolate at seeing no distinct direction to explore, but he hadn’t counted on Marta’s skill. Less than an hour riding, she veered from the direct route into the hills and worked her way down into a muddy wash.
“We can get caught by a flash flood in the gully,” he said. “The sides are steep and will crumble if we try to climb back.”
“There,” she said, pointing. “Do you see it? Up against the bank? A couple old firepits. The rain didn’t wash them away.”
“So they were built after the rain stopped. I don’t know when that was last night.”
“You snore,” she said. “So much noise from that honker of yours drowned out the sound of the rain. It stopped after midnight.” She rode back and forth, studying the ground. It had started to dry out already in the morning sun. “Several riders came this way, made camp for a few hours, then moved on well after midnight—recently. You can see faint outlines that were made after the rain stopped and the ground began to firm up. From the look of the campfires, they can’t be more than a few hours ahead of us.”
Luke considered this and how long he and Marta had taken reaching this point. Rhoades should have been a couple days ahead of them by now.
“He waited for Crazy Water Benedict to join him,” Luke said, working through the logic of the situation. “They had an agreed-upon rendezvous. Benedict tried to divert the posse. He must have failed since the posse is likely hot on this trail.”
“For a robbery that big, and blowing up the bank so only a few cracked bricks remained, the marshal would send out more than one posse.” She nodded to herself as she worked over other reasons.
He added one she might ignore.
“Having a prisoner bust out of his jail in the way I did must have made Wilkes hot to recapture me and corral the bank robbers.”
“To his way of thinking, you’re one of them. Catch you, catch one of the gang. Rhoades can’t like it that you helped stir up that hornet’s nest. Wilkes has to be spitting mad. Definitely more than one posse out hunting for the fugitives, you included.” She swiveled around to face him and after a brief thought on the matter said, “This ravine leads to their camp. It starts in the hills. The outlaws follow it this time of year, and any rain wipes out their tracks. There’s no need to see the hills for a landmark if it’s stormy or it’s nighttime. Just stay between the banks. They wouldn’t even need a compass.”
He had nothing to add to her logic. She understood how crooks’ minds worked better than he did. Riding in a gully prone to flash flooding struck him as dangerous, but Rhoades willingly took the chance. Such a tactic had to have worked for him in the past, just as using stolen horses to add distance between the robbery and their hideout had been successful.
“The posse isn’t likely to get down into the gully, either,” she went on. “The risk Rhoades takes getting washed away is less than being spotted by the law, if they got this close.”
Luke rode with his right knee brushing the bank, warily looking deeper into the sprawling Flint Hills for any sign of a storm ahead. Water pouring across the sloping hills there filled up a ravine miles away, even if there weren’t clouds directly above. He glanced up and appreciated the pure azure dome.
“They’ll have sentries out watching for pursuit,” he said. He wanted to bull right in. Waiting for nighttime to mask their approach meant a half day wasted. Still, if he truly believed Audrey was captive in the outlaws’ camp, a few more hours to ensure her safety was minor, but logic be damned. He still wanted to do something. Blazing guns and falling robbers and dead kidnappers meant he had accomplished something.
“Whoa. Hold up.” Marta held up a hand to stop him. That was a good thing since he wasn’t listening to her, lost deep in thought about how best to attack.
He looked to the heights on the left side of the ravine and caught his breath. Her keen eyes had spotted the faint curl of white smoke rising straight into the calm air. A hidden guard sat there, smoking. He betrayed his position as surely as if there had been a breeze sending the scent of tobacco downwind.
Marta wheeled about and pressed close. Faces only inches apart, she whispered, “We won’t get past him if we stay in this ditch. Follow me.”
She led the way a quarter mile back the way they’d come to a break in the bank. Her horse scrambled up amid a cloud of dirt and mud and stones. Luke’s plow horse lacked such agility. He got off and led the animal to the top of the bank. Simply walking caused new aches to bedevil him, but the pain had disappeared. Discomfort he withstood. Being so close to finding the bank robbers’ hideout made this bearable.
“We skirt the sentry and head into the hills. Their hideout can’t be too far off. Are you up for it?” She studied him for any reaction that put her life at risk. Capturing even one of the outlaws posed a real danger. Going after Rollie Rhoades was worse. But Luke had Crazy Water Benedict in his sights. She deserved the accolades Allan Pinkerton would heap on her for a successful job. Getting Audrey back was all he wanted.
“You go first,” Luke said. “I’ll come along at my own speed.” He patted his horse’s neck and was rewarded with a big brown eye winking in his direction.
“The guard’s finished his smoke. Chances are good he will take a siesta. Quiet.” She put her finger to her lips to caution him. Marta turned back and judged the direction, the small valley in the foothills and how to approach it. A quick snap of her reins sent her horse forward.
Luke started to call out to her, then clamped his mouth shut. She left one horse behind. There wasn’t any reason to take a spare. The bounty hunter’s horse was stronger, quicker and broken for riding. He patted his plow horse’s neck again.
“I’m sticking with you, partner. We got this far together. Let’s go the rest of the way.”
He made sure the spare horse was secured to a sturdy bush. Leaving it behind struck him as wrong. Audrey might ride out on it. When he played all the possible problems in his rescue, he knew the horse was better left here. With a quick tap of his heels, he started the plow horse walking. His body ached more than it had earlier, but he knew tension built and caused his muscles to knot in anticipation.
Marta had a few minutes’ head start. He followed her tracks for five minutes, then cut away to make an even wider approach to the shallow valley. The horse plodded along, making enough noise to raise the dead. Luke sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The clop-clop wasn’t that loud. He was keyed up.
He almost jumped out of his skin when he heard voices to his right, from the direction of the ravine.
“. . . reach for the sky, little lady. I’d hate to plug you, you bein’ such a purty filly.”
Luke leaned in the saddle and used his legs to steer the horse while he drew his Schofield. Marta answered, but her reply came muffled. The sentry had been more alert than she’d expected, or there might have been another man on guard duty. Luke got ready for either problem. When he came within a few dozen yards he dropped to the ground and weighed his horse’s reins down with a rock. A simple toss of the head freed the horse, but for the moment it contented itself with munching at some succulent grass.
Marta’s horse reared and pawed at the air. He saw only the top of Marta’s head. She stood to one side, hands raised as she’d been ordered. Rather than rushing forward, Luke cut toward the ravine at an angle. Every word came clearly now. Unless a second sentry remained mute, only one had caught the Pinkerton agent as she tried to ride past. Luke came to the brink of the gully and went along it so the sentry’s back was exposed. The outlaw was too engrossed in taunting Marta to notice she had a rescuer on the way.
“Look, we know what happens to women who get caught by the Rhoades gang,” she said. “I don’t mind one . . . man. Especially if he’s as handsome as you are. But the five others?”
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