Not content, he wandered about, poking into crates and hinged boxes. He found some old bread and a half bottle of whiskey. The bread tasted better than the tenderest steak. Knowing he was sorely out of practice with the vice of drinking alcohol, he only sipped at the bottle before stashing it in his saddlebags. The vile taste told him the tarantula juice was better suited for medicinal purposes rather than drinking.
“Popskull, that’s what it is,” he said, licking the last drop from his lips. Further searching gave him enough gunpowder to load a dozen cylinders. Nowhere did he find bullets or wadding. As he climbed to the loft to explore there, he saw a buggy rattling along the road. He slipped his Colt from its holster.
Victoria drove the buggy. Gerald Donnelly sat beside her, hunched over, holding his hand. Knight smiled. Better to leave the man with a limp and no index finger than to kill him. Every day of his life he would think of the man responsible for his infirmities. That punished him more than being laid in his grave ever could.
Knight leaned against the side of the loft, watching Victoria help Donnelly from the buggy. At one time, the flow of her lustrous brown hair caught on the breeze would have excited him. Her trim figure and smart good looks would have made him love her all the more. Now she was just another woman. Less. She let Donnelly lean on her as she helped him to the house.
She called for the maid to help. Knight noticed that the cane was nowhere to be seen. That pleased him. His bullet had smashed the weapon along with Donnelly’s finger. He stood straighter when Captain Norwood and three soldiers galloped up. The officer ordered his men to wait while he went to the porch where Donnelly sat on the bottom step, being fussed over by Victoria and the maid.
Knight was too far away to hear what was said. The angle of the barn to the house cut off his view of two of the three soldiers, but they had no reason to search the house or grounds. The marshal’s bragging about running off a desperate killer meant nothing to the captain, but not even Norwood thought his quarry lingered in the victim’s barn, tending his horse and stealing whatever he found in old boxes.
A few minutes later, Victoria walked with the captain to his horse. Knight imagined all that was said. A reward was offered. The desperado had to be stopped before he killed and maimed again. And the officer agreed since Knight had become such a thorn in his side. Norwood stepped back, gave Victoria a half salute, mounted and bellowed for his men to follow him as he galloped away.
Knight sagged a little. He had been tense and hadn’t known it until knotted muscles tried to relax. He forced himself to calm down. There wasn’t a safer place in the entire county than where he stood. The only question lay in how long to remain. Donnelly didn’t know his nose was being shoved into his mortal enemy hiding out not fifty yards away from where he nursed his maimed hand.
Another buggy rattled up. Victoria went to greet the man and they exchanged a few terse words. She stabbed her finger into his chest, pointed at Donnelly, then tapped the newcomer again for emphasis.
Knight guessed correctly. The man took a doctor’s bag from the back of the buggy and went to tend his patient.
Somehow, seeing the man who had replaced him in Pine Knob affected Knight more than killing Alton or dodging Norwood and the cavalry patrols. It drove home that he was no longer necessary to anyone in town. If he had returned to Victoria and a one-story house, what he would have done lay unknown to him. The other doctor giving up a practice built while Knight was at war didn’t seem to be in the cards. A small town with two doctors? They’d both starve in short order, just as a single lawyer did until a second hung out his shingle. Different professions, different clientele.
There were only so many ways a doctor can be paid in eggs and bales of hay. Two doctors splitting that meant trouble for them both.
He rummaged around in the loft and found nothing more worth stealing. Not hurrying, he dropped to the barn floor, saddled his horse, led it from the barn, and mounted. The pasture Donnelly had stolen from Fitzsimmons beckoned because it took him away from the house unseen. Instead, he rode past the house. The maid scrubbed at blood Donnelly had left on the lowest step leading to the porch.
She looked up, her eyes went wide, and she started to cry out.
“Matty, have a good day.” His words caused her to swallow her clamor. He touched the brim of his hat and continued to the road, not hurrying. When he reached it, he considered going back toward town, then knew such arrogance tempted fate. He went to the end of the road just past Donnelly’s house, then cut across country, heading back in the direction of Hannigan’s camp.
The closer he got to the camp—or where it had been when he left only the night before—the less confident he felt about the direction his life had taken. Returning to an outlaw gang went against everything he believed, but he had shot down a man in a gunfight. What was the difference between holding up a stagecoach and stealing horses from the army? Of those in the camp, he was the worst outlaw and the most notorious.
At the edge of the clearing, he drew rein and watched the men moving about as they prepared the evening meal. Ben and Seth did most of the work cooking. Porkchop lay sleeping off to one side. Lattimer, Nott, and Hannigan huddled by another fire discussing what Knight believed to be future robberies. No one noticed him sitting in the shadows. He could fade back into the pines and be gone, rid of the men whose only connection with him was incarceration in Elmira.
He rode into camp. Hannigan and the two with him never looked up. Seth came over and laid a hand on his horse’s bridle.
“Where have you been, Doc? Me and Ben have been worried sick. Not sick enough to need you. I mean need your medicine. Aw, shucks. Are you all right?”
Knight dismounted and let Seth hang on to the reins.
“It’s been a crazy day.”
“You smell of gunpowder. You been practicin’? Ben says you’re ’bout the fastest with a six-gun that he’s ever seen, but he ain’t seen that many, if you ask me. That’s not sayin’ you’re slow or—”
“Seth. Stake out my horse, then come on back. I want a word with you and your brother.”
“Sure, Doc, glad to help out.”
He sat on a stump near the fire where a stewpot leaked out a mouthwatering aroma. Somewhere along the trail, Ben had turned into a decent cook.
“Milo wondered where you and Heck got off to. Is he with you?”
“He won’t be coming back, Ben. Ever.” Knight touched the butt of his Colt to give the reason.
“I worried about that, Doc. I really did. There was somethin’ wrong ’bout that gent. I couldn’t put it into words, but . . . wrong.”
“He wanted to bring the whole gang in to collect a reward.”
“He was a bounty hunter? I knew it!” Ben slapped his thigh so hard it sounded like a gunshot.
That attracted Hannigan’s attention and he motioned for his two partners to stay where they were. He went over to tower above Knight. For a moment, he simply stared. Then he said, “Where’d you get off to, Sam? You had us worried.”
“I followed Alton into town. He was a hired gun working for Gerald Donnelly. They wanted to arrest us all for the reward, only you and the others disappointed him. There’s not a price on your heads.”
“There is on yours?”
“A hundred dollars.” Knight looked through the gathering dankness at Nott. “Alton thought there was a fifty-dollar reward out on Nott, but he couldn’t be sure.”
“Hardly seems worth the effort to nuzzle up to us. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Well, Milo, he worked for Donnelly. Donnelly had put a thousand-dollar bounty on me, and that kept Alton sniffing around to collect the money.”
“You don’t sound too worried.”
“I’m not worried about him now. At all.”
Hannigan frowned, started to say something, then thought better of it. He took a deep breath and finally said, “Is there any chance you have the soldiers on your trail?”
“I don’t think so.” K
night held back his suspicion that the marshal had gathered a posse and the town’s citizens might be coming for him. If he wanted to get away from the gang, he needed a diversion. By the time the posse found this camp, he intended to be gone. Dealing with the law would take the wind out of Hannigan if he intended to fetch his errant outlaw back.
Hannigan nodded curtly and returned to huddle with Nott and Lattimer. Those two occasionally looked toward Knight. He ignored them.
“They’re afraid you’re plotting something, Doc.” Ben looked pained. “Are you?”
“I’m riding out as soon as I get the chance. I want you and Seth to come with me. This isn’t any life for you, all the robbing and killing.”
“I worry about Seth. I do.” Ben sampled the stew, made a face, then added more than a pinch of salt to season it. “He’s growed up physically but he’s never lived nowhere but in that small town we were born in. The war changed everything. We lost our family, our town, and all we’ve got is each other.”
“That might make him a tad wild,” Knight said. “He’s like any other boy who wants to cut the cord and make his own decisions, even if they are dangerous.”
“He’d listen to you. He respects you, Doc. So do I. We got through the prison camp together dependin’ on each other. I don’t see no reason to forsake that now.” Ben stirred the stew a bit more and said in a voice almost drowned out by the crackling fire, “I don’t want Seth havin’ a price on his head. Hell, I don’t want one on mine, neither.”
Seth staked Knight’s horse away from camp, then returned to the fire, settled down, and looked from his brother to Knight and back. He took a plate of stew but didn’t start spooning it into his mouth. He stared at the two and finally said, “When are we leaving’? I know that’s what you two have been chewin’ on.”
“You’d go? Leave behind all this glory?” Knight didn’t try to keep the sarcasm from his tone.
“If we stay, we’ll end up dead. What? It surprises you that I see that? It’s as plain as the nose on your face. We ain’t outlaws. Not Ben and me. Not you, Doc. Why pretend to be and get ourselves all shot up?” He ate a spoonful of the stew. “This is real good, Ben. Now when are we sneakin’ away?”
* * *
The three of them quietly left the camp a little after midnight, just minutes before the Pine Knob posse swooped down on the camp.
CHAPTER 21
“I feel kinda bad about sneakin’ away like we did, Doc.” Ben Lunsford kept looking over his shoulder in the direction of the camp. “That was a posse. I heard one of them sayin’ he was a deputy and in charge. He got into a powerful argument with somebody who musta been the Pine Knob blacksmith from the way he talked.”
Knight knew both the deputy and the blacksmith. Alvin Williams had worked iron and made horseshoes in Pine Knob for as long as he could remember. The smithy was a crotchety old man, sure he knew everything better than anyone else. If he had joined the posse, even as a favor to Marshal Putnam, it meant he needed the money.
Like too many towns where Reconstruction ruined businesses rather than getting them upright and profitable, Pine Knob and its people suffered under the carpetbaggers. Now that Gerald Donnelly had a limp and a missing finger, he would take out his anger on everyone more than he had before and call it retribution for the part Texas had played in the war.
The cavalry detachment would keep civil uprising from getting too bad, but Knight knew those who had remained in town—or who had survived the war and returned—were in for a trying time. A touch of guilt turned him sad. What he had done to Donnelly sparked much of the man’s wrath that would be taken out on the Pine Knob citizens. But it was only a light touch.
“Good riddance.”
“What’s that, Doc? You sayin’ it’s not wrong leaving Milo and the others to fight the posse on their own, not even warnin’ them what was comin’?”
“Hannigan hasn’t got a reward on his head. None of them do, except possibly Nott. I saw the poster and matching his likeness with the smeary description isn’t too likely, even if Donnelly has ordered the posse to bring in anyone not living in Pine Knob.”
“You sure about that?” Seth drew even with Knight and rode almost knee to knee. “Milo took us in when we didn’t have nowhere else to go.”
“You do now.” Knight pointed into the night. “That’s where we are heading.”
“Uh, Doc, where’s that?” Seth sounded uneasy. “Ben and me have never been to Texas before, so we don’t know where that is.”
“I don’t, either, but it’s got to be better than where we’ve been. We’re riding into the future.”
“If you say so.” Seth slowed and rode with his brother, letting Knight choose the road they took.
He had no idea where they went, only that it was into a part of Texas where they were unknown and had a chance to start over. Keeping to the countryside and away from the main roads struck him as the best plan. He knew many of the men in the posse. Riding across country wouldn’t set well with them. They chose the easiest road. If he and the Lunsford brothers kept away from such obvious ways of escape, he knew they would be fine.
In spite of what he told Seth, he worried a bit over Milo Hannigan confronting the lawmen. If Nott got a bee in his bonnet, lead would fly. Hannigan had a tight rein on Lattimer, but Nott always showed that uncontrollable wild streak. Violence and gunplay ran just under his exterior all the time.
* * *
It was past noon several days later when Knight began to get antsy. The weather changed from showing a bright, clear blue sky to one littered with lead-bellied clouds promising rain or worse. But the impending storm meant less than the feeling in his gut that they were being followed. He slowed their steady pace and finally signaled for them to halt. “You pitch camp.”
Ben looked at the sky and nodded. “I’ve seen clouds like that open up and soak everything.”
“A real frog strangler,” Seth agreed.
Ben said, “The chance of hail is worse. Some of them hailstones get to be the size of your fist. Get hit in the head with one of them and it’ll knock you into next week.”
“We’ll need some branches to make a lean-to,” Seth said. “Wish we had an ax. All I’ve got is this puny ole knife.” He drew a knife from a sheath in his boot and shook his head. “It’s not up to the task. You got anything better, Doc?”
“What? No, nothing.” Knight hadn’t been listening too closely. His attention was focused on their back trail. Something definitely was not right. “Go on and start some shelter for us. I want to be sure we’re alone out here.”
“Alone?” Ben Lunsford laughed. “I never felt more alone. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of a livin’ soul all day. For a couple days, come to think of it. You see something that passed us by, Doc?”
“Be sure to pitch camp on higher ground.” He looked into the branches of the trees around them and considered telling them to make a nest between a trunk and limb to get off the ground. It wasn’t the possible torrential rain or hail that worried him as much as being found out.
But by whom?
They had been on the trail for almost a week. The Pine Knob posse wouldn’t pursue them that long. Once they had questioned Hannigan, chances were good they had given up. A dollar a day or maybe the promise of a shot of whiskey wasn’t enough to keep them away from their work in town. If Donnelly had offered a sizable reward for him, that might keep a few in the saddle, but the marshal had to tell them the most offered for their quarry was one hundred dollars. Split ten ways, that hardly made it worthwhile to saddle up.
He smiled a little at the idea of Gerald Donnelly offering a real reward for his scalp. Donnelly might have paid off Hector Alton if the bounty hunter had succeeded, but the carpetbagger wasn’t the kind to post a public reward of a thousand dollars. Or even five hundred if it came out of his own pocket.
Victoria’s approval had to be considered, as well. She had abandoned Knight for Donnelly, but unlike him, some feelings had to remain i
n the woman. She wasn’t the kind to carry a grudge, though she might because her new husband had been hamstrung with the cut to his Achilles tendon and then had his trigger finger shot off.
Those iniquities went a long way toward changing the way she thought about her first—and legally, still only—husband.
All this tumbled around in his head as he retraced their trail, meandering through the forest and paying attention to the tracks left on the ground. Even a blind man would have no trouble following them. There had not been any reason to hide their passage, though now he wished they had taken to a creek every so often to erase their tracks for a short while.
He tugged on the reins to halt his horse when sounds filtered through the trees. He canted his head to one side. At least three men came toward him. Rather than face them, Knight cut off at an angle, went down a draw, and slipped his six-shooter from its holster.
He waited only a few minutes before the riders made their way above him. One tall-crowned hat poked up above the vegetation hiding Knight from their sight. It took no imagination to guess where the other two rode—they trailed the man with the hat, making him either their leader or a trusted scout.
If they were a posse, it also put the man at risk of being ambushed first. Knight decided the lead rider ordered the others around. A posse. But not one from Pine Knob. No one in town wore such a fancy, expensive hat. They weren’t soldiers, either, so Captain Norwood had not sent them to find his elusive escaped prisoner.
He let the riders get a ways along the path before urging his horse up the slope and onto their trail. His hope that they merely passed the same way and weren’t tracking renegades died when the one wearing the big hat jumped to the ground and ran his fingers around a slight depression. The man’s words were muffled by distance, but Knight made out their intent.
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