The Bandit Princess

by J. Roberts

  “They’re dead,” Clint said.

  “Pearl’s gone,” Alice said. “She left before the shooting started.”

  “Randy’s gone, too,” Clint said. “After the shooting started, he probably decided to save himself, and go after Pearl.”

  “And we’re alive,” she said.

  “Thanks to Dave,” Clint said.

  He turned to Dave, who had not gotten to his feet.

  “Dave?”

  The man didn’t answer, didn’t move. Clint saw the blood in the dirt.

  “Damn!”

  Clint and Alice leaned over Dave. Clint turned him over. Bullets had taken him in the belly, and in the chest.

  “Right in the heart,” Clint said. “He never had a chance.”

  “He saved us,” Alice said.

  “Yes, he did.”

  They stood up.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we go after Pearl,” Clint said.

  “She made her choice?” Alice asked.

  “Yeah,” Clint said, “she made her choice.”

  FORTY-ONE

  They didn’t have time to bury the dead so they dragged the bodies into the house and made sure the door was closed tightly.

  They saddled their horses, checked their guns, then rode out after Pearl Starr, and maybe Randy.

  Clint found the tracks of one horse and said, “We can’t be sure if this is Pearl’s horse, or Randy’s.”

  “You mean you can’t tell from looking at the tracks if a man or a woman is riding?” Alice asked.

  Clint looked at her and said, “Nobody likes a smart mouth.”

  “Sorry.”

  “By the way,” he said, “you were great back there.”

  “Me?” she said. “I can’t believe how you caught that gun belt and loaded your gun so fast.”

  “You gave me the time, Alice,” Clint said. “You watched my back real good and I appreciate it.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “That means a lot to me.”

  “No,” Clint said, “it meant a lot to me. You really came through.”

  “If it wasn’t for Dave . . .” she said, her voice trailing off.

  “I know,” Clint said. “Dave made the right decision, though.”

  “And Pearl the wrong one?”

  “Pearl,” he said, “definitely made the wrong one.”

  Randy rode up on Pearl while she was watering her horse. Her head came up and she went for her gun as she saw him riding toward her.

  “Pearl! It’s me!” he said.

  She put her hand on her gun, but left it in the holster. Randy rode up to her, dismounted, and surprised her by grabbing her and hugging her.

  “Thank God you’re safe!”

  She pulled away from him and asked, “What happened?” “They’re all dead,” he said. “Adams and the woman killed them—Hunter, Del and Tate.”

  “And Dave?”

  “He went down, but I don’t know if he’s dead or not,” Randy said.

  “I knew Clint would kill Hunter,” she said. “And after that he’d come after me.”

  “But . . . he’s friends with your mother.”

  “I made my decision and went against him,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who my mother is. He’s gonna come for me. And maybe you led him here.”

  “I didn’t come right after you,” Randy said. “I circled around, so they’re gonna have two trails to travel. They’ll either have to pick one, or split up.”

  Pearl was surprised that Randy had done something so smart.

  “That’s good,” she said.

  “So where are we goin’?” Randy asked. “We gotta gather up another gang.”

  “Randy—”

  “Pearl,” he said, “I’d do anythin’ for you. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, I do know it,” she said. “Look, we can’t travel together. We’ll leave too easy a trail to track. We have to split up.”

  “Okay,” he said, “okay, I understand, but where can we meet?”

  “Mexico.”

  “What?”

  “Old Mexico,” she said. “Just over the border there’s a town called Acuna. Meet me there.”

  “When?”

  “Just get there, Randy,” she said. “If you get there first, wait for me. If I get there first, I’ll wait for you.”

  “What about supplies?”

  “Buy or steal what you can along the way,” she said. “I’m heading south. You continue to do what you’ve been doin’. Circle around to the west, then head south.”

  “All right, Pearl,” he said. “Do you have any food with you?”

  She briefly thought about the beef jerky she’d put in her saddle bags and said, “No, I left in too much of a hurry.”

  “I know, we both did,” he said, then he hugged her again.

  “Be careful,” he told her.

  “You, too,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  They mounted their horses and rode in different directions. Pearl figured she’d ride south for a few miles then head east. With any luck, Clint Adams would follow Randy all the way to Mexico, while Pearl was hiding safely somewhere in Kansas or Missouri.

  FORTY-TWO

  Clint and Alice followed the single horse’s trail until it crossed with a second horse at a water hole.

  They both dismounted and watered their horses while Clint examined the ground.

  “Got to be Randy and Pearl,” he said, “but which is which?”

  Alice took a drink herself and waited for Clint to make up his mind.

  “They met here, but left in different directions,” he went on. “This trail goes directly south, this one to the west.”

  “If they split up,” she asked, “why don’t we split up?” He studied her for a moment.

  “You said I did good back there,” she reminded him. “Let’s split up.”

  He gave it some thought.

  “Are you afraid I’ll follow Randy, or Pearl?” she asked.

  “I think you could handle Randy,” he said.

  “Then give it your best guess,” she said. “Which one’s Randy and which one’s Pearl?”

  Clint studied the tracks a little longer, thought about Pearl, thought about Alice, then stood up.

  “I’ll follow these tracks,” he said, pointing south. “You take those.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I figure Randy wants to go with Pearl, and she wants to get rid of him. She suggested they split up and meet later, and sent him off that way. She’s going south—at least for a while.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then anywhere Randy isn’t.”

  “So I get Randy?”

  Clint nodded.

  “You can handle him.”

  She thought it over, then said, “Yes, you’re probably right. Okay.”

  They walked to their horses and mounted up.

  “Where do we meet afterward?”

  “I’ll see you and Randy in Fort Smith,” Clint said. “Where else?”

  FORTY-THREE

  It didn’t take long for Clint to discover that Pearl was going in circles, and was heading back to where she started—almost. He knew Belle Starr had a house in Younger’s Bend, on the Canadian River. Pearl was headed there. He didn’t know if she expected to find her mother there or not, but certainly her mother’s house.

  Pearl had turned east and ridden about ten miles before she decided to go back. Not to her camp, but to her mother’s house. Some of her happiest memories were there, before her father, Jim Reed, and Sam Starr had both died, or been killed.

  Clint Adams wouldn’t expect her to go back to the camp, and she’d taken precautions to make sure he couldn’t pick up her trail again. And with a little luck, he was tracking Randy.

  She could lie low in her mother’s house until she decided what to do with her life.

  Clint had given Alice a very quick and simple course in tracking, and Randy—or Pearl—was being very cooperativ
e. Whoever it was, the rider was not taking any evasive action at all. Alice figured it had to be Randy. Pearl would be too smart for that.

  She followed the tracks easily, until Randy turned south. She came to a signpost announcing a town ahead called Sumner. Randy probably had to stop and get some supplies. This was her chance to catch up to him. She reached into her pocket, took out her badge, pinned it on, and turned her horse south.

  She wasn’t going to take it off again.

  Randy rode into Sumner, reined in his horse in front of the general store. He just wanted to pick up a few supplies and then head out again. His horse was tired, but he didn’t want to take the time to dicker over a new one. He’d ride a few more miles and then camp for the night and give the horse some rest. By morning the animal would be fine.

  There was really no hurry to get to Acuna, Mexico. Whoever got there first would wait for the other, and then he and Pearl would be together. This time, when they formed a new gang, his position would be clear. He’d be Pearl’s man, her right hand.

  Her Sam Starr.

  Pearl knew she was pushing her horse. By detouring through streams and rocks, she was adding more mileage to her ride. Once they reached the house, though, the animal could rest. If it didn’t recover sufficiently, she’d have to buy herself a new one. That would mean taking a chance on going to either Briartown or Whitfield.

  She wondered how long Clint Adams would keep looking for her. He wasn’t wearing a badge, so it wasn’t his job. She wasn’t sure about the woman with him, that Alice. She was the wild card in this deck. According to Randy, she’d helped him kill the others, so the gun she wore wasn’t for decoration.

  She didn’t care. Clint Adams was just another man to her, and if he caught up to her, she’d treat him that way. And the woman—she was nobody.

  Clint rode upstream and down until he found where Pearl had come out of the stream. She was trying to cover her tracks, but she wasn’t good enough at it. Even riding a horse across hard ground didn’t guarantee covering your tracks. Those iron horseshoes left their mark behind on rocks.

  She was definitely heading back, and he blamed the error in judgment on her youth. She should have just kept heading east. It would have been her best bet to lose him. Going back home was not the smart thing to do. She was acting like a homesick young girl—which may have been what she was.

  But whether she was or not was beside the point. She’d made her decision and she was going to have to live with it. He’d promised Judge Parker he would bring her back to Fort Smith, and that was what he was going to do.

  She led him back to the Canadian River, and at this point she had ceased trying to mask her tracks. Apparently, she felt she was in the clear, with nobody on her trail anymore.

  It was probably a good thing she was so young, because only someone her age would have underestimated him this way.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Alice rode into Sumner, hoping that she had arrived before Randy could outfit himself and leave. At this point she was convinced she was tracking Randy. Pearl Starr would never have been this easy to follow.

  She rode up to the general store and dismounted. There were a couple of horses there already, but she had no way of telling if either of them belonged to Randy. So she went inside to find out.

  Sumner was a small town, but apparently this store did a good business. There were two men and two women inside, all shopping separately. Neither of the men was Randy, so she waited for the people to finish their business before approaching the clerk.

  “I’m looking for a man,” she told him.

  “So are a lot of women—”

  “Do you see this?” she asked, indicating her badge. “I didn’t come here for jokes.”

  “Sure, Deputy,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Was there a man in here today buying supplies, kinda tall, broad shoulders, in his twenties? Probably looked like he’d been riding hard?”

  “There was a feller like that, yeah.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Couldn’ta been more than half an hour.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Said he wasn’t stayin’ in town,” the clerk said, “so I guess he left.”

  “Okay, did he say where he was goin’?”

  “Nope.”

  “What did he buy?”

  “Some beef jerky, coffee, beans, a coffeepot, and a fryin’ pan. Also a new shirt, and some bullets.”

  Coffee, she thought. Coffeepot, frying pan. He’s going to make camp. If he continued south and then made camp, she’d be able to catch up to him.

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Anythin’ you need, Deputy?”

  She thought a moment, then said, “Yes, let me have some beef jerky.”

  Pearl didn’t want to camp for the night, but she figured her horse needed the rest, and so did she. She made a cold camp, ate some jerky, and drank water from her canteen. Then she decided to go to sleep. Camping wouldn’t be worth it if she didn’t get any sleep. She’d taken every precaution. If anyone crept up on her during the night, they deserved to catch her.

  She rubbed her horse down, hoped it would be well rested by morning, then rolled herself up in her bedroll and went to sleep.

  Clint built a fire. Hell, nobody was chasing him, and if Pearl smelled it, she’d know somebody was after her. That would be good. Maybe it would panic her into doing something stupid, like lying in wait for him.

  He watered Eclipse and made him comfortable, then sat by the fire, wishing he had a cup of coffee. They’d left the Starr camp too quickly to outfit at all. Luckily he had some jerky in his saddlebags.

  Sleeping wasn’t really an option, just in case Pearl did decide to double back and find his fire. But he was used to this. He’d gone without sleep for two or three days in the past, only grabbing a nap in the saddle because he trusted Eclipse that much.

  He could even catch a nap now, if he wanted. Eclipse would let him know if anyone was approaching.

  In the end he decided to go ahead and nap, but remain seated by the fire rather than lying down comfortably. He woke several times during the night, looked over at Eclipse each time, and then went back to his nap.

  The morning sun woke him and put him back on the trail.

  Alice knew she shouldn’t travel at night, but if Randy was camped, she wanted to catch up to him. Eventually, she smelled it. Coffee and beans. He really wasn’t very smart, but then Alice doubted Pearl had kept the young man around for his brains.

  Thinking about sex made Alice remember she hadn’t been with a man in a long time—and then she started thinking about Clint. She wondered if Clint ever thought about her that way.

  She shook her head to dispel the image of herself and Clint in a sweaty, naked embrace. She dismounted, tied her horse off, and crept forward until she could see the fire. As she had suspected, it was Randy sitting at the fire, and he was alone.

  Now she had to decide whether to take him now, or in the morning. She wasn’t sure how she’d fare in an after-dark shoot-out.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Randy woke up the next morning bleary-eyed and hungry. He looked over at the fire and saw it had gone out. Then he realized it hadn’t just gone out—somebody had stomped it out.

  He rolled out of his bedroll and started to reach for his gun.

  “I wouldn’t,” a woman’s voice said.

  At first he thought it was Pearl but then he saw the woman and recognized her. He also saw the badge pinned to her shirt.

  “You’re a—a deputy?”

  “That’s right,” Alice said, pointing her gun at him. She’d thought he might wake up while she was stomping out his fire, but it took a little longer than that. “I’m out of Judge Parker’s court, and you’re going to Fort Smith with me, Randy.”

  He stared at her, his hand still hovering near his gun. He had seen what the woman had done back at the camp. She’d grabbed Dave Slaughter’s gun without hesitation and started
to fire immediately. The lady knew what to do with a gun.

  “Go ahead, skin it,” she said. “I’d just as soon take you in dead as alive.”

  That was a lie, of course, but he had no way of knowing it.

  Their eyes locked and she watched as he considered his fate. In the end he stood up straight and moved his hand away from his gun.

  “All right,” she said, “now drop it to the ground.”

  He removed his gun carefully from the holster and dropped it.

  “Now undo the gun belt.”

  He obeyed, dropped that to the ground as well.

  “Now kick them away.”

  He kicked.

  “What now?” he asked.

  She took out the wrist manacles each deputy carried, on orders from Judge Parker, who actually preferred that prisoners be brought back alive.

  She held them out with her left hand and let them dangle. “All that remains now,” she explained, “is for us to decide how you will ride back to Fort Smith—on your butt, or on your belly.”

  FORTY-SIX

  When Pearl Starr came within sight of her mother’s house, she reined her horse in. She sat straight in the saddle and stared at the building. Memories flooded back through her brain—happy ones, sad ones. She relived them all in a moment.

  She hadn’t seen her mother in a couple of years, and their last meeting had not been a good one. Belle had not wanted Pearl to follow in her footsteps.

  “Find yourself a good man, Pearl,” her mother had said, “an honest one. One who will take care of you, and treat you right.”

  “I don’t want a man to take care of me, Mother,” Pearl had said. “I want to be a strong, independent woman, like you.”

  “Independent?” Belle asked. “Perhaps. Strong? Perhaps not as strong as you think, my girl. You see, I do need a man. I needed your father, and when he died, I found I needed Sam Starr.”