“—within a day. Can’t rightly tell what went on here. Looks as if one doubled back. Three horses went on, one returned.”
“Maybe they dropped something and he rode back to find it?”
“He rode back to see how close we’re gettin’,” said the third. “We better speed up to catch them. They’ll light out and make us work to find them.”
“You’re right about that, Custis. The one coming back’s not good news for us. They’re suspicious.”
“Well and good. They oughta be, after what all they done.”
“That storm’s fixin’ to erase the tracks. Let’s get to work.”
Knight tried to come up with a plan that offered success for him and the Lunsford brothers. The riders knew he wasn’t with the other two, but who were they? Bounty hunters? Owlhoots sent by Donnelly? It hardly mattered if all they wanted were dead bodies to take back to Pine Knob.
If they tried that, there’d be more corpses—and not the ones the riders figured on. He pulled out a small chamois bag with the two spare cylinders for his Colt Navy. Eighteen rounds went a ways toward staying alive, if Ben and Seth also opened fire. Neither was as good a shot as he had become, but trapping the riders in a crossfire improved the odds. If they had no idea how many they really faced, giving up made more sense than fighting it out, especially with a storm coming and night making any arrest chancy. From what he had overheard, these men took few chances. Stack the odds against them and they’d cut and run.
He wished that were so, but if Donnelly had bought and paid for a man like Hector Alton, these would be no less skilled with six-guns.
Knowing where the trio headed helped. He didn’t have to get too close. Being discovered meant death for them all, the three being able to pick him off and then have a numerical advantage over the Lunsford brothers. When he got within a quarter mile of the camp, Knight dismounted, made sure his spare ammo was handy in his coat pocket, then drew the rifle from the saddle sheath. How good—how ruthless—the three men were dictated the result of a protracted fight. Knight vowed they would suffer. If they won, they would know they had been up against worthy enemies.
His long stride slowed as the woods turned into a pitch-black morass. Night made the approach more difficult than he’d anticipated, but when he got within earshot, he hesitated. What he had expected wasn’t happening. Advancing to the edge of the clearing where they camped, he took the measure of the three. He swallowed hard when he saw firelight glinting off badges pinned to their chests as they confronted the Lunsford brothers.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of the Texas State Police,” the man in the tall hat said. “It’s brand spanking new. The governor empowered us to make sure there’s no discrimination going on anywhere in the state.”
Ben looked at Seth, then shrugged.
“We’re not discriminatin’ ’gainst no one.”
“You don’t feel a mite uneasy that my boy here, Custis, is black?” The man wearing the fancy hat bent over so the Lunsfords got a good look at him. The firelight turned him demonic.
Knight rested his rifle on a fallen log and sighted in on the one speaking. That had to be the leader.
“He’s your friend. Reckon you can be friends with anybody you like now.” Seth shifted so that his hand came closer to his six-shooter.
That made all three of the policemen yank their guns out with considerable speed, but only Fancy Hat spoke.
“You just stay where you are. Don’t resist or we’ll gun you down.”
The second man plucked pistols from Ben and Seth’s holsters and passed them to the man in the hat standing beside him. Custis remained in the saddle, looking down on them.
“These ain’t much in the way of six-shooters,” the policeman said. “They ain’t even been fired in a day or two.”
“We use rifles when we hunt, and there’s not been much game,” Seth said. “Fall’s makin’ even the rabbits hide away in their holes.”
“So you’re not much in the way of hunters? Where’s the other owlhoot riding with you? Can’t be out hunting, not in the dark ’less he’s hunting snipe.”
“You ought to know all about that,” Ben Lunsford said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You’re on a snipe hunt if you think we’re crooks. We’re just brothers lookin’ for a place to put down roots.”
“Where’s your partner? There was three of you what rode into this camp.”
Knight held his breath. If Ben lied, he and Seth were dead.
“Well, now, there was another pilgrim what rode a ways with us, but we went to ground early since we didn’t like the chances of bein’ caught in a big rainstorm. He decided to keep travelin’ and outrun it.”
“The strange thing was, he went back the way we came,” Seth piped up. “Never did get a name, but then we never asked.”
The three policemen put their heads together and discussed the matter. The man in the hat straightened and said, “You boys spread out everything from your saddlebags on the ground where we can see it all.”
“Who are you lookin’ for? Whoever it is, he ain’t in our gear.”
Knight saw how one policeman reacted. Ben was lucky he didn’t get a pistol barrel laid alongside his head. Instead, the man shoved Ben toward his tack. Knight forced himself to take his finger off the trigger. Tension rippled through him. If he didn’t relax, he was likely to make matters worse taking a shot into the trio of lawmen.
The two policemen on the ground poked through the strewn belongings, taking what they wanted. When one kicked at the pile remaining, Fancy Hat went back to Ben and Seth.
“You ever see him?” He held out a wanted poster.
Knight knew it carried his likeness.
Ben and Seth both reacted and looked at each other. School was fixing to be out for lunch. Knight put his finger back on the trigger, intending to take out the man closest to Ben before moving on, but again he had underestimated the Lunsfords.
“That’s him!” Seth cried. “That’s the man what rode with us but left. Ain’t that so, Ben?”
“It is. This picture’s not the best, but my brother’s right. He rode with us for the day and then skedaddled when we said we were pitchin’ camp early for the night.”
“Where’d he go?”
Both of them shook their heads and tried to look innocent. Knight hoped they succeeded. Too much depended on convincing the Texas State Police that their quarry had already fled.
“Custis, you got the memory for how men look. You went through that stack o’ wanted posters. Did either of these two show up?”
Custis shook his head. “Nope, neither of ’em. I don’t remember seeing them on any other reward poster, either.”
“You boys might be what you claim.” The two policemen on the ground exchanged looks. “You got any money on you?”
“You took what we had. It was in our saddlebags.” Ben reached to his vest pocket.
This spurred both policemen to reach for their six-shooters again.
He froze, then moved even slower to turn out the pocket. “I got a watch my pa left me, but it doesn’t run. He always told me it was gold but he lied. See? The paint’s scraped off. Don’t know what it’s really made of, but it’s not gold.” He held up the watch, letting it spin slowly.
One man snatched it and examined it. He gave the stem a few turns, held it to his ear, then tossed it back. “Don’t work.”
“Just like my pa.”
This made the trio laugh, and Knight knew the police would believe their story and leave the Lunsfords alone. When the two mounted, conferred, and pointed in his direction, he snaked back on his belly a few feet, stood behind a tree to avoid being seen, and then made his way back to his horse as fast as he could walk. The Texas State Police would be coming this way in an attempt to pick up his trail. Ben and Seth had sold them a fib, and it was up to him to keep from getting trapped in their lie.
Knowing he had to cover his tracks, Knight cut off a length of rope
, tied it to thick bushes and dragged the bundle behind him as he rode at an angle away from the trail he had left. Then it became a moot point. At first only a few drops of rain fell, then the heavens opened and any hoofprints he left would be obliterated.
Even so, he rode on for another hour before curving back toward the camp and didn’t rejoin Ben and Seth until just before sunrise.
CHAPTER 22
“Buffalo Springs,” Ben Lunsford said. “Never heard of the place. It doesn’t look like a whole lot.”
To Sam Knight it looked like paradise. The quiet town showed plenty of activity, and it all went on peaceably. The jailhouse at the edge of town was tiny. If it held two cells inside, they had to be the size of coffins. His guess was that the jail only held drunks on Saturday night and not many other criminals. Those drunks would be flushed out, hungover, and returned to where they belonged before Sunday services. Even a quick ride through town revealed more churches than saloons. A few men walking around wore six-guns at their hips, but nowhere near as many as in Pine Knob, and that had been a quiet town before the war.
Buffalo Springs whispered to him. Settle here. This is the right place.
“It’s more like home than anywhere else I’ve been,” said Seth. “What do you think, Doc? Do we ride on?”
“Folks watched us mighty careful-like,” Ben said. “That’s goin’ to be a problem if the marshal has a poster with your moniker on it, Doc.”
“You’re right,” Knight said. “That’s why I’ll find somewhere outside of town to camp while you and Seth find jobs and see what the people are like.”
“They look mighty good from here,” Seth said, eyeing a young lady walking arm in arm with an older woman, perhaps her mother. The girl and Seth both smiled. The woman jerked on the arm she held trapped and herded the girl into the general store.
“If she has a boyfriend or a protective father, you might find yourself in a world of trouble,” Ben said. “We don’t need that.”
“You’re just sour because your girlfriend upped and married Jed Pendergast. She’d have done better with you, Ben. I ain’t sayin’ different, but you were off to war. When we heard you’d been put in the Yankee prison, Ruby gave up hope. And Jed was there, if you know what I mean.”
“Shut your mouth.” Ben Lunsford scowled and looked down the main street. “It’s only common sense for us to scout this place and see if anyone’s ever heard of Doc. Or us.”
“Nobody’s heard of us, not out here in West Texas,” Seth said. “I want to find a hotel and sleep in a real bed again.”
“Go ask about prices,” Ben said. “Me and Doc will hash this out.”
Seth Lunsford trotted off, grinning from ear to ear.
“He’s happy as a clam,” Knight said.
“I envy the boy, I do, but goin’ along with that happiness is a touch of green. All Seth’s ever seen of the world is wherever we went after we left Georgia. Even ridin’ with desperados like Milo Hannigan and Johnny Nott didn’t sink into his thick head.”
“He’s a good boy.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t. He needs to be more careful, or he’ll find himself in a tangle he can’t get free of. Mark my words, he’ll be in trouble before the end of the week, if we stay that long.”
“I’m in no hurry,” said Knight. “Don’t rush things. We talked about the need to find a town and settle down. I’ve never heard of Buffalo Springs before we saw the signpost along the road. That might mean nobody here’s heard of me—and certainly not the Lunsford brothers.”
“I’m tired of being on the trail,” Ben admitted. His butt hurt and more than one saddle sore kept him squirming every time the horse broke into a gallop. “And being away from Hannigan and the others in his gang gives a chance for me to avoid being locked up again.” He stared at the tiny calaboose. Never again after being prisoner for so long in Elmira would anyone lock him up.
What worried him was the chance that living a good life, a law-abiding one, was all it took to avoid being stuffed into a cage. It had been so long he wasn’t sure he remembered what do and how to behave in polite society. Before the war he had worked on the family farm and hadn’t gotten into town too often. The war put him in the front line with a rifle, shooting anybody wearing a blue uniform. That had been his world for three years until he and Dr. Knight and a passel of others found themselves captives of a fast-riding, straight-shooting ranger unit from upstate Pennsylvania.
“We rode past a stock pond. You remember me pointing it out, Doc?”
Knight nodded.
“You find yourself a place to camp near it. You can water your horse there, and maybe set traps for small animals come to drink. That’ll keep you from wastin’ ammunition and makin’ a whole lot of noise.”
“I can be almost invisible.”
“While you’re there, me and Seth’ll find out everything about Buffalo Springs. You want to know if they have a doctor, I reckon.”
“If you and Seth decide to stay, I can move on if there is a doctor here. No town this size needs more’n one sawbones.”
“Don’t talk like that. If you leave here, so do we. I owe you more’n I can ever repay for what you done in the Yankee prison. I’d be dead and covered with their damned quicklime if it wasn’t for you.”
“Consider the debt repaid, Ben. We have to move on from what happened during the war. You and Seth, do what is best for you. I have a reward on my head, but it’s back in East Texas in the Piney Woods and it’s not all that much to draw bounty hunters.”
“People are starin’, Doc. You get on outta town. And Seth’s ridin’ back like his horse’s tail is on fire. Whatever he discovered is powerful important.”
“I’ll give you a week, Ben. You and Seth do a good job scouting. And I don’t just mean the ladies.” He saw how another young lady wearing an apron had come out from the bakery and was sweeping the same spot on the sidewalk over and over because she had eyes for Ben. Knight wheeled about and rode off.
Ben Lunsford watched him leave and felt all hollow inside. Doc had saved him too many times to remember. He had done the same, but somehow he always felt obligated, as if he were the youngster and Dr. Samuel Knight was the father, the old-timer with the experience and advice he needed to keep going. Doc wasn’t five years older, but the gap in how he experienced that difference ran to decades. Ben smiled ruefully. He felt as young compared to Doc as Seth did to him.
“Is he off already? I wanted to say good-bye to him.” Seth stared after Knight.
“What’d you find out?”
“Without a nickel between us, stayin’ in the hotel’s not gonna happen. The sour old woman who runs the place wouldn’t even talk to me about repair work or cleanin’ up to earn our keep.”
“But? You’re too happy lookin’ not to have somethin’ more to say.”
“Seems a goodly number of the men in Buffalo Springs left in the past month or two. They all lit out to be gold prospectors in the Guadalupe Mountains, wherever that is, so there’re jobs goin’ beggin’ all over town.”
“Did she happen to mention where these might be?”
“She rattled off a bunch of names. I tried to remember what she was sayin’ but didn’t come close, not by half. But the gunsmith’s apprentice took off. He’s got more work than he can handle in a month of Sundays. I was always pretty good with my hands, especially fixin’ tiny stuff.”
“Pa said you should have been a pickpocket with your light touch.”
“He never said that, Ben. You take that back!” Seth leaned over and tried to grapple with his brother. Ben avoided him.
“Simmer down. What else did this sour old woman who wouldn’t give you the time of day have to say?”
“The auburn-haired filly we saw goin’ into the general store? That’s Marianne Yarrow. Her pa owns—”
“Don’t go gettin’ ideas. You know why we’re here. It’s to find out if Doc is able to settle down. I don’t know if this is the kind of place I want to call home.
The dust looks like it gets kinda fierce. I don’t like places without hills covered with trees. If you haven’t looked, this land is sparse when it comes to growin’ things.”
“They run water in acequias, she called ’em. That’s canals, I reckon.”
“You certainly learned more in a few minutes from a woman who wouldn’t hire you than I expected to find out in a week of pokin’ around.”
Ben had to shake his brother to get his attention. The girl and her mother had stepped from the store. Marianne Yarrow, Seth had said. With so many of the town’s eligible bachelors off hunting gold to become millionaires, husband material might be slim pickings. He needed to warn his brother about getting trapped by a girl with feminine wiles and obvious good looks foraging about for a man to support her.
“You want I go with you to talk to the gunsmith about a job?”
“What? No need, Ben. If I can’t convince him, there’s no way you could. That’s what Doc says.”
Such confidence rocked Ben back on his heels. Seth hadn’t shown much in the way of gumption before.
“You go on and see to it by yourself, then. I’ll see what I can find to keep body and soul together while we’re in town.”
“The Golden Gate Drinking Emporium,” Seth suggested.
“You thinkin’ on a shot of whiskey? We don’t have any money.”
Seth heaved a sigh when Marianne and Mrs. Yarrow disappeared around a corner. He made a dismissive motion and said, “They need a barkeep. You know how to make drinks and draw beer. And you wouldn’t drink up the saloon’s profits.”
Ben Lunsford had never been much of a drinker. He didn’t know much about fixing the more exotic drinks that might be ordered, either. The few times he had hung out in a saloon, he had been surprised at the knowledge the bartenders showed. One gent on a riverboat had worked for over an hour and not once repeated a drink ordered by the patrons. They were mostly soldiers on their way north to join their units but had to avoid blockades at Vicksburg and other ports along the river. The barkeep might have taken advantage of the soldiers’ ignorance if they ordered drinks they’d never tried. Who was to say that a claret sangaree, an Allston cocktail, or a champagne flip served up on the riverboat matched anything ever before concocted in the history of man?
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