“How should I know what she did when I wasn’t there? You’re being silly, aren’t you? She kept going on and on about finding a marshal. Lawmen never treat me good. They try to put me in jail. I wanted to come back to you.”
He walked back to the camp, feeling better and testing the limits of his strength. The new wounds troubled him less than the bullet he had taken in the rump. Now and then he got dizzy, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t work through.
“Fetch us all the food you can find,” he told Sarah. “Pack our saddlebags. While you’re doing that, I’ll gather up some guns and ammunition.” Having an arsenal tucked in his belt and over his shoulder had worked before. His trusty Schofield still hung at his side. Keeping it in reserve made sense. When he needed a reliable gun, he knew where to find it.
An hour later, they left the gang’s hideout. Sarah rode a spirited gelding and he sat astride the plow horse. Finding the trail proved easy.
Then the rain began pelting down to erase the hoofprints.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WE HAVE TO keep riding.” Luke Hadley put his head down so the rain dripped off his hat brim. He had given up hunting for Audrey’s trail a mile back. The rain wasn’t so powerful that it erased hoofprints instantly, but he lacked the skill to figure out which water-filled depressions in the dirt were prints and which were only caused by falling rain.
“I want to stop. I’m cold.” To lend emphasis to her plea, Sarah shivered. Water flew off her like a dog shaking itself.
It was cruel forcing her to continue. She would catch her death of cold. Being such a spindly thing, Sarah had to be prone to any disease that drifted by. Luke felt guilty pressing on, but he worried how much longer his strength would last. Anger and the need for vengeance kept him going now. If he simmered down, his energy would drain away just as the rainwater dripped from his hat.
He glanced up and caught a drop in his eye. The drop had beaded on a hole shot in his hat. When that hole had been put there was a mystery to him since it was a few inches toward the rim from ones he knew already had been there. Never in all his born days had he expected gun battles to melt together in his head. He had been in too many over the past couple weeks to even guess.
“Not what you expect from a sodbuster,” he said.
“Lucas,” Sarah whined.
“Very well. Let’s find a dry place to hole up until the storm passes.”
“It’s going to be dark soon. I want to camp for the night.” She flashed him a shy little smile. He tensed, thinking he knew what she wanted to ask for next. She surprised him. “And supper. Food would be so nice. I’ll fix it for you real good. I promise.”
He said nothing. Scouting for a dry spot dragged on longer than he expected. Sparse stands of trees gave some protection, but once the leaves got wet, the rain dripped endlessly long after the storm cloud passed. He found a bulge in the land promising rockier ground. The rolling hills finally yielded a spot in the lee side that was drier than anywhere else he had seen. Dismounting, he motioned for Sarah to join him.
Silently, they went about setting up camp. He found some branches dry enough to burn. After making a small lean-to, he dug a shallow firepit and got a fire started.
“You learned so much being a soldier,” she said. She sat close to him. Luke didn’t want her getting the wrong idea. She thought he was her long-lost husband, but he wasn’t Lucas Youngblood.
Not for the first time he wished he had figured out how to leave her behind in the gang’s hideout. Tying her up was about the only thing possible. To do so meant she starved to death if she failed to wiggle free or a posse rode past without knowing she was trussed up.
“War made you different,” she said.
“Getting shot up will do that.” He touched the spot on his chest where the derringer had discharged and the shrapnel beneath that still rode under the skin. Riding for most of the day caused his rear end to hurt. It sounded funny, getting shot there, but he found it increasingly difficult to stay on the trail because of that wound.
A tiny smile crept to his lips. He had been close to unconscious when Marta Shearing sewed him up. He had expected to feel humiliated letting a strange woman see his naked hindquarters. More than that, she had patched him up and applied a bandage to her sutures. Nothing about her made him think of her as a dispassionate nurse. She focused on her job as much as he did on finding Crazy Water Benedict. He just felt more at ease with her.
Or shock had dulled his sense of shame letting a woman he hardly knew see him like that.
“It made me different,” Sarah said. “I know what people say about me. ‘That crazy woman,’ they call me. It doesn’t matter. I sing to keep up my spirits. And it works. I knew if I kept singing you’d come back. You always liked my singing and came running for dinner before I ever got to a second verse in most tunes. It worked just fine.” She wrapped her arms around him and pulled herself closer. Her body was as warm as the small fire at the edge of the lean-to.
Luke hardly moved. To do so might give her the wrong idea. She rested her head on his shoulder and stayed like that. Only her gentle breath against his wet shirt told she was there.
He stared out into the drizzle. Any chance of finding Benedict’s tracks were gone, but he remembered the map he had seen in Marshal Hargrove’s office. There had been several places marked with X’s. He closed his eyes and figured out which had been the actual hideout. A smile came to his lips. Another spot to the northwest had attracted Hargrove’s attention. If he assumed Rhoades was a man of habit, that possible hideout turned into a hiding place for the stolen gold. That cache possibly lay only a few miles farther.
Luke moved carefully and disengaged from Sarah. She stretched out so that her feet stuck out into the rain. The gentle drops falling on her ankles caused her to curl up so she was completely under the lean-to. He rolled out into the rain, pulled up his collar and tugged his hat into position. They had camped at the foot of a low hill. He tramped to the top, expecting to get a better idea of the landscape.
Mud sucked at his boots, and the rain turned colder. The sun must be sinking, though the heavy clouds hid that daily occurrence. More than once he considered retreating, but he had already climbed more than halfway. Once he crested the hill, a blast of wind staggered him. He put his head down and found a rock to scale, giving him another few feet of altitude.
He scanned the terrain in the direction suggested by the marshal’s map. The cold gnawing at his bones turned to fire when he saw a curl of smoke on the far side of the hill.
“Luck’s all mine. No matter what’s happened so far, it’s all mine right now.”
He had come across the spot where Audrey and Benedict camped. Moving his coat back, he touched the Schofield at his hip. Darkness and storm masked him. It would take only a few minutes to reach the camp, cock his six-gun and fire twice. Both of them would be turned into worm food as fast as he could pull the trigger.
With a shrug, he let the coat fall back over his six-shooter and sagged in despair. His anger was immense, but gunning both of them down in cold blood wasn’t something he could do. Such murder put him on their level.
“She’d have murdered me in my sleep,” he said. “Benedict has tried to kill me more than once.” Then he remembered how Audrey had begged the outlaw for the chance to shoot him. She had wanted a divorce written in blood and hot lead, not that they were even married. She had married Crazy Water Benedict years earlier.
Everything jumbled in his head. They deserved to die for what they’d done to him, but he wasn’t a killer. The outlaws who had died at his hand—all self-defense. Facing down Rollie Rhoades had been a fair fight. But sneaking up and firing into a bedroll to kill a sleeping Audrey or even Mal Benedict rankled.
“Who am I kidding?” He jumped down from his pinnacle and slipped and slid downhill to where Sarah had roused from her sleep and prepared some oatmeal. She
dipped a finger in and stirred, then licked it clean of the sticky cereal.
“Supper’s all ready. There’s some hardtack, too. I can warm it up on the rocks around the fire.”
He sank beside her. He took a tin plate with a dollop of oatmeal on it and scooped it into his mouth. It needed brown sugar to make the lumps more palatable, but he ate mechanically. On the way back he had worked out a scheme. Now he had to convince Sarah to go along with it.
“I found them. They’re on the other side of this very hill.” He stared at her. She paid him no attention as she fussed about with the small cooking pot. “I want you to ride back and find the posse. Bring them here.”
“When do we leave? It’s still raining.” She put the pot out where the rain spatted into it. At the rate it filled, they’d be here another hour. Luke champed at the bit to get moving. The end of all his woe was at hand. Postponing the confrontation only made him more nervous.
“You’re not listening. I have to go on. You must find the marshal and bring him here. To support me.”
“If we both find the marshal, he can support you sooner.” She frowned. “What’s that mean? ‘Support’ you?”
“This is my fight. You have to tell the marshal where the gold is.”
“But I—”
He hushed her with a finger on her lips. As he eased off, she started to speak again. He pressed his finger back. This wasn’t getting any easier for him.
“If you love me, you’ll do this. For me.” Luke hated himself for taking advantage of her delusions. “You go, then we’ll be back together. Later.”
“But I heard—”
“Please, Sarah. Will you do it?” He considered the dangerous tactic of tying her up, then returning to free her. If anything happened to him, she might die. The chances were good he’d get shot up. He touched his damaged ear and flinched. The rest of his wounds were patched up good enough to keep from bleeding. He felt weak as a kitten from blood loss, but his hand remained firm and steady. That’s what he needed to deal with Benedict.
He had to decide how to deal with Audrey.
“I don’t understand.” She drew up her knees and hugged them. A song rose, low at first, then growing in volume. He shook her until she stopped singing, pointed to her horse and gently pushed her in that direction.
“I used my slicker for the lean-to. You wear it. It’s bright yellow, and the posse can spot you quicker.”
“You’ll get wet.”
He tried to reassure her that that didn’t matter without coming out and warning her of his chances against Crazy Water Benedict. Most gunmen he had heard about ended up being shot in the back. That had always struck him as a cowardly thing to do. Facing Rhoades changed him. At the time he hadn’t felt that nervous. A touch of fear, but nothing that kept him from being deadly accurate. In a way he had more than simple survival on his mind then. He had fought to save his beloved wife. That determination wiped away panic.
The longer he thought about it, and the less he felt for Audrey, the more appealing it came to sneak up on Benedict and gun him down from ambush. Bravery and careful reflection were strangers.
“Here,” he said, shoving one of his captured pistols into the woman’s hand. “You probably won’t need it. If you do, use it. You know how, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. You showed me, Lucas, before you went gallivanting off to war.”
“That was a long time ago,” he muttered.
“I won’t be long.” She settled the slicker around her thin frame, tucked the six-gun into her saddlebags and graced him with a smile.
Sarah rode off into the drizzle. She never looked back but did start singing “Green Grow the Lilacs.” He watched until he no longer saw or heard her. He gathered his gear and stowed it, checked the Schofield to be sure it carried a full load, then made certain the other pistol tucked into his belt was ready for action, too.
Firepower set for use, he led his horse around the base of the hill until he reckoned he was only a hundred yards from the camp.
“The enemy camp,” he muttered. Getting himself prepared for the gunfight mattered now. Calling those two out for their actions helped. He pressed his fingers into the middle of his chest until a stab of pain caused him to suck in a tortured breath. Audrey had done more than shoot him there. She had ripped out his heart, as well.
He advanced slowly until he heard their voices. Luke sank down and tried to figure the best approach to their camp. They were close to the windward side and caught occasional gusts. He smirked. He knew how to pick a campsite, and it wasn’t where the wind blew all night. Storms pounded this side of the hill. Flagging on the few trees marching up the side showed that clear as a bell. He was more skillful than the pair of them when it came to finding a decent campsite.
Buoyed by this small triumph, he crawled forward on his belly through the undergrowth until he was within a few yards. He drew the captured six-gun and made sure the one riding in his holster came out fast and easy. If he ran through six rounds that meant he’d need six more in a hurry.
“You and Rhoades went off together. Back in Chicago. You were gone for a week.” Benedict sounded close to losing his temper.
“We found ourselves a mark. It took time to fleece him out of his money so he wouldn’t go to the police. That was important back then, you know? We had to keep working in one town. It wasn’t like we swooped down, robbed a bank and hightailed it for who knows where.”
“I know where. You don’t,” Benedict said. “And I was sayin’ you and Rhoades were doin’ more than just nobbling some fool out of his money.”
“Are you accusing me of cheating on you, Malcolm Benedict?”
“I reckon I am. We were married then, but you and Rhoades were mighty close a lot of the time. He always found some chore to send me off on, like I was his errand boy. Lookin’ back now, those weren’t anything important but just a way to have you for himself.”
“He was always a better man than you, Mal. In all ways. He was smarter, he was quicker with a gun, he was a lot better than you in—”
Luke recoiled at the sound of a loud slap. Audrey gasped. He moved forward in an attempt to find a hiding spot to spy on their argument. He had to see what went on. If he barged in at the wrong time, they both might shoot him.
He crept closer, aware of the squishy sounds he made in the mud. When he tried to step rather than sneak, the sounds became sucking noises as he broke the seal between his boot sole and the muddy ground. The argument grew louder. The small noises he made were drowned out by the shouts as the two argued.
Crouching low, he parted a chokeberry bush and saw Audrey and Benedict standing almost nose to nose. She stood with balled fists. He reared back, ready to slap her again. Luke caught his breath. They turned into statues, a frozen tableau of anger. His heart almost exploded when he thought they had spotted him spying on them.
Instead, it was just a moment’s hesitation.
“You don’t deserve anything. You cheated on me with Rhoades. And I think you wanted to run off with that sodbuster. Admit it. You weren’t trying to fleece him. You wanted to cozy up to him and—”
That was as far as Benedict got before Audrey punched him. She didn’t even wind up. Her fist came from the side in a roundhouse punch that caught him on the temple. He stumbled and went to one knee. He shook his head to clear it as he looked up at her. The sneer on his lips became forever etched in Luke’s memory. Never had he seen anything quite so cruel, even when Benedict had shot him at the wedding ceremony.
“You’ll never see any of the gold. I’ll make sure of that!” Benedict got to his feet. The punch he intended to deliver would stun a bull. Hitting a woman with such force would kill her. He meant to beat Audrey to death with his fists.
“I don’t need you,” she said, backing away. “I know where Rollie hid the gold.”
“There’s
no way you could. He never talked to you before the farmer gunned him down.”
“He told me before he robbed the bank. He told me everything, how he intended to double-cross the rest of the gang—and you!”
“I figured he wasn’t playing fair. He had a twitch in his eyelid. Every time he lied, it twitched. Was it twitching when he said the two of you were going to run off together? I’ll bet even money that his eye was almost squinting with that tic!”
Luke saw Audrey go rigid. Benedict had wounded her with his words. He advanced on her, ready to do more than wound her with his fists.
He never got the chance. From the folds of her dress she drew a small pistol. It was almost engulfed by her hand.
“I can’t say it’s been good between us, Mal.”
“That toy? It’s not big enough to—”
She fired point-blank into his chest. He staggered. She fired again and again until he fell facedown on the ground. Audrey kicked him once, twice, a third time.
“You died too fast, Mal. I wanted you to suffer.” She stared at him as she raised the pistol to keep firing into his back.
Luke stood, his six-gun in his hand. He realized instantly the mistake he made. Waiting for her to empty the pistol was the smart tactic. When he appeared, she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Instinct rather than skill caused her to whip around and trigger off two more rounds.
Standing still was safer than moving, but lead flying so close to him sent Luke diving into the bushes. He wiggled along like a snake for a few feet, then came up to see Audrey drawing Benedict’s six-shooter from his holster. The way she held it warned him she was a good shot. The heavy iron never wavered as she cocked the gun and widened her stance.
“Whoever you are, come on out.”
“You don’t recognize me, Audrey?” He chanced a quick look up.
The expression on her face was priceless.
“You? You’re dead! I put a slug in your chest, set fire to your vest!”
Tin Star Page 22