To Reap and to Sow

by J. R. Roberts

“I think I’d welcome the change of pace.”

  When she stretched her back and took a few steps to stretch her legs, Lynn looked around and then looked back to Clint. “What’s wrong with this?” she asked while holding out her arms. “It’s a pretty day.”

  “Sure, but…I suppose I don’t like rides where I could fall asleep in the saddle and not be any worse off.”

  She shrugged and replied, “I guess I don’t think about that since I was born and raised in Kansas. It does me good to feel like I’m the only one on the face of the earth sometimes. After dealing with the likes of Mark Rowlett, I’d think you could understand that.”

  “I suppose,” Clint said as he led Eclipse to the lake. “I’m just a little more accustomed to having other things to look at apart from grass.”

  “Like what? Sand? Rocks?”

  Now that Eclipse was drinking, Clint could drop the reins and walk over to Lynn. She had her back to him with her arms crossed and her head tilted up into the breeze. Clint stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Like you, for one thing,” Clint said. “I’d much rather look at you than a field of grass.”

  Lynn didn’t open her eyes, but she did lean back against Clint and smile contentedly. “I guess I can’t fault you for that.”

  The wind blew some of Lynn’s hair against Clint’s face, filling his nose with the sweet scent of her. Just as he was about to lean in and kiss her neck, Clint spotted something moving in the distance that wasn’t just another patch of long, swaying grass.

  When she felt Clint’s arms leave her waist, Lynn snapped her eyes open and looked around. “What’s the matter?” she asked when she saw Clint rushing toward Eclipse.

  Clint didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he took the spyglass from his saddlebag and put it to his eye. The other horses were a ways off, but they were still too close for Clint’s liking.

  “Looks like we’re not the only ones out enjoying this fine day,” he said.

  NINE

  There was no need to hurry away from the lake. If the men riding those horses were following him, Clint knew they would have already spotted him. Then again, if they were simply passing by, they would have moved on by now.

  “Let me see,” Lynn said as she held out a hand.

  Clint passed the spyglass over to her and said, “Be my guest. See if you can recognize—”

  “That’s Mark,” she said quickly.

  “Are you sure? You barely even had a chance to get a look at them. Take a good look. From this distance, it could be easy to see a few things that aren’t really there.”

  Lynn kept the spyglass to her eye and shook her head slightly. “I know it’s him, Clint. Those patches of white on his horse make it look like it’s wearing a fancy shirt. I used to tell him that all the time. See?”

  Clint took the spyglass and looked through it again. Before too long, he had to admit, “I can’t really tell too much. I can see some white on the horse, but that’s about it.”

  “It’s Mark’s horse. And since he loves that horse more than anything else, it’s got to be him in the saddle.” She paced and wrung her hands. “He’s following us.”

  “Probably.”

  Although she just stood there for the next couple of seconds, there was enough tension building up on Lynn’s face to make her seem more like a teakettle that was about to start whistling. When she reached her boiling point, she stormed over to Eclipse and reached for the rifle hanging from the Darley Arabian’s saddle.

  “I’ll finish this right here and now,” she said. “After everything that man’s put me through, I deserve to be the one to put him down like the dog he is.”

  Clint raced forward when he saw what she was trying to do and just managed to catch her hand before she could get the rifle in her grasp. “How about you give me a chance before you do anything too drastic?”

  Lynn nodded. “Sure. You’re probably a better shot than me.”

  “That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “Well, that’s what you’re going to have to do to shake him loose. Believe me. I’ve tried everything else.”

  Since Eclipse had had his fill, Clint took his reins and led him away from the water. “For right now,” he said, “why don’t you just try trusting me and see if I can do something to dissuade our mutual friend?”

  Watching Clint sternly, Lynn let out a frustrated sigh when she saw him climb into the saddle and reach down to help her up. “Fine,” she huffed. “But I get to take a shot at him if this doesn’t work.”

  “It’s a deal. Now, do me a favor and hang on.”

  With that, Clint snapped the reins and tapped his heels against Eclipse’s sides. The Darley Arabian stallion responded as if he’d been waiting for that order all day long, and bolted away from the lake as if his tail was on fire.

  It took Clint a few seconds to get settled and find Eclipse’s rhythm. Once he and Lynn were situated and not about to be thrown from the saddle, Clint looked over his shoulder. At first, he didn’t see a trace of the horses. Even so, he let Eclipse keep running for a while.

  When he looked back again, Clint could see some dust swirling over a spot of the trail that hadn’t been kicked up by Eclipse. Soon, he saw two horses break through the dust and fall into step a ways behind him.

  “That’s Mark, all right,” Clint shouted over the thunder of Eclipse’s hooves. “Either that, or it’s someone else who wants to tag along with us.”

  Lynn tried to get a look behind her, but she wasn’t able to twist around very far without endangering her own balance. Facing forward once more, she said, “I told you so. Now what?”

  “Now you’ll hang on just like I asked before.”

  Lynn didn’t need to be asked twice, especially since Eclipse was already moving fast enough to make her nervous. She cinched her arms around Clint and pressed her head against his shoulder.

  Hunkering down a bit, Clint gave his reins an extra flick and coaxed a bit more speed out of Eclipse. But it wasn’t exactly speed that he was after. Instead, Clint wanted to allow the stallion to build up some momentum for what he had in mind next.

  As soon as he spotted a fairly clear patch alongside the trail, Clint steered away from the beaten path. Eclipse did as he was told, leaving the smooth dirt trail for the rougher terrain alongside it. For the first few yards, there wasn’t a huge difference. Before too long, however, it became clear as to why a trail was meant to be followed in favor of just riding anywhere the wind blew.

  Animals had dug holes here and there, which made the ground a bit unsteady. There were fallen logs as well as a few rocks scattered about. The farther Clint got from the trail, the closer he had to watch the upcoming ground for potential hazards.

  “You’re right,” Clint shouted over his shoulder. “This country isn’t as dull as I’d thought.”

  But Lynn didn’t seem to be as amused as Clint. In fact, she didn’t even try to respond to what he’d said. She simply kept her face down and her arms wrapped tightly around him.

  Eclipse responded to the reins so well, it seemed as if the stallion knew what Clint was thinking. One subtle tug or flick here and there got the Darley Arabian to jump over a log or steer around the occasional hole. Although Lynn seemed to be breathing easier as the ride leveled out, Clint was hoping for a bit more to work with.

  Looking over his shoulder, he spotted the two horses doing a fairly good job of keeping on his tail. Suddenly, Eclipse left the ground and sailed a yard or two through the air to land with a jarring thump on the other side of a large carcass that had been lying in the way. Clint turned around so he could pay better attention to what was in front of him rather than the two shapes behind.

  From what he’d seen, Clint could tell the two riders were following pretty closely in his own path. That gave Clint an idea as to what he should look for. As luck would have it, he only had to ride another quarter of a mile or so before he found it.

  Directly in fr
ont of Clint, a dirty rock lay slightly to the left and a thick tree stump with a splintered top sprung up to the right. Doing his best to alter his course without being too obvious, Clint pointed Eclipse toward the rock and snapped the reins.

  The Darley Arabian was going so fast that the rock and the stump sped up on him within seconds. At the last moment, Clint gave the reins a little pull to the right and Eclipse veered slightly in that direction. They came so close to the rock that Clint was surprised he didn’t feel it brush past his foot. The stump was a little farther off than he’d hoped, but he figured it would still do the trick.

  Clint turned in his saddle to take another look behind him. Sure enough, the two who had been following were racing up at what had to be the fastest their horses could go. As Clint watched, they reached the rock and steered around it. One of them went left and the other went right. The one who went right had to think awfully quickly once he saw the stump threatening to send his horse to the dirt.

  The rider pulled back on his reins hard enough to cause his horse to rear up and pump its front legs into the air. Clint grinned as he and the second rider left that one behind in a matter of seconds.

  Spotting a group of trees, Clint steered toward them and hoped the remaining rider cared enough about his partner to hang back at least for a few seconds to see if the man was all right. Clint made it to the trees, which were just thick enough for Eclipse to stand behind.

  “He’ll catch us,” Lynn whispered.

  “Maybe,” Clint replied. “Maybe not.”

  “At least get the rifle ready. If Mark follows us this far, I want to be the one to—”

  But the rest of Lynn’s threat was swallowed up by the rumble of hooves as they pounded against the ground less than fifteen yards away from them. Although the horse got fairly close, it kept moving and faded away before closing in on them completely.

  When Lynn opened her eyes, she found Clint looking at her with a wide smile on his face. She looked back to the trail behind them, but couldn’t see much through the trees. She looked to either side and saw nothing. When she looked ahead, she saw the dust that had been kicked up by the rider as he had raced past them.

  “How’d you know he would do that?” she asked.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You what?”

  Clint shrugged and asked, “Would you have believed me if I’d told you I knew what would happen?”

  “No.”

  “Then take your good luck when you can get it,” Clint said as he snapped his reins and got Eclipse moving away from the trees in a direction other than the one the rider had taken. “Any self-respecting faro cheat would know that much.”

  TEN

  Despite the confidence Clint showed as he sat upright in the saddle and tossed a few boasts back toward Lynn, he was surprised that the two riders didn’t show themselves for the rest of the day. He was even more surprised when he spent the entire next day without seeing so much as a hint of them.

  Shaking the riders off his trail had been a fun diversion from a boring ride. His blood was racing for the rest of the day, which had turned to an uncomfortable anxiousness soon after. When they made camp, Clint took extra care to find spots that wouldn’t be easily attacked. He stayed up as long as he could to keep watch and slept with one eye open just in case the riders decided to pay him a visit.

  But they didn’t get any visitors.

  As they closed in on the neatly arranged streets and storefronts that were Thickett, Lynn began to act as if some of Clint’s confidence had finally rubbed off on her. Rather than hang onto him for dear life, she kept her arms wrapped around him as if she was simply doing so because she wanted to.

  “Another nice day,” she said.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Clint replied, “things haven’t turned out so well when you’ve talked like that.”

  “Things have worked out just fine,” Lynn told him. “We’re here and it took less time than I thought it would.”

  “That’s because we rode like bats out of hell for most of the way.”

  Clint felt a little slap against his shoulder before Lynn let out a laugh.

  “You can gripe all you want,” she said. “You’re not going to convince me things are anything but perfect.”

  “Perfect may be pushing it a bit,” Clint said. “But I will admit the ride had its good spots.”

  “You mean like last night in camp?” she whispered.

  “Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  Thinking along those lines was enough to put a smile on Clint’s face. Now that he was riding down Thickett’s main street, he figured it was about time he allowed himself to let out the breath he’d been holding since he first realized he was being followed. For all he knew, Mark and the other rider had been scared off after being spotted and had given up on trying to catch up to them. Even if that wasn’t the case, Clint knew it didn’t do anyone any good to fuss about what other folks had in mind.

  The town Clint saw didn’t come close to living up to its name. Considering its name was Thickett, Clint couldn’t think of a better compliment he could pay to the place.

  Thickett was made up of a handful of streets arranged at nearly perfect angles. The boardwalks were straight and level, forming something close to a frame around well-maintained storefronts. Each shop was marked by a freshly painted sign and had some kind of decoration in every window. Even the sheriff’s office was tucked away on a corner so as not to smudge the pretty landscape.

  It was late afternoon when they arrived, so there was a fair amount of activity on the streets. In fact, Clint was surprised at how busy the place was considering its modest size. It was also a bit of a surprise since he had yet to see a saloon or gambling hall.

  “Maybe you should live right here,” Clint said. “I haven’t seen a town this inviting for a while.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing. I wonder where someone would go to get a drink.”

  Clint chuckled and turned around to say, “That’s good to hear. I figured I might get in trouble by asking that question.”

  Lynn winced and looked at the quiet folks watching them ride down the street. “You just might, at that.”

  “So do you want to get a drink?” Clint asked. “I’m sure there’s a saloon around here somewhere.”

  “No. I’d rather look in on Tina.”

  “Tina?”

  “She’s my friend who lives here,” Lynn said impatiently. “The reason why we came.”

  “That’s right. Her father’s the farmer, right?”

  Patting him on the back, Lynn said, “That’s right. Now you remember. I’m amazed you get anywhere other than lost with a memory like that.”

  Clint tipped his hat to a short row of men in battered overalls sitting outside of a bakery. “My memory’s just fine. It’s just that planning things too far in advance doesn’t do me any good. Someone or something always crops up to spoil whatever I had in store for myself.”

  Lynn pulled in a sharp breath. “Is that what I’ve done? Oh, Clint, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Relax,” Clint interrupted before she could get too upset. “I learned to be flexible way before I met you. And if I didn’t want to help, I wouldn’t have offered.”

  “All right, then. I won’t bring it up again.” And, just as suddenly as she’d pulled in that breath, Lynn was on to something else. “Wes’s place is west of here. Or maybe northwest.”

  Clint pulled back on the reins to bring Eclipse to a stop while Lynn thought things over.

  “Definitely west,” she muttered. “Yes. That’s it.”

  “How far west?” Clint asked.

  When he didn’t get an answer right away, Clint asked, “You’re sure this is a good friend of yours?”

  “She’s a very good friend. I’ve just never been here before.” Sliding down from the saddle, she said, “I’ll get us some water and I’m sure it’ll come to me.”
r />   Clint watched her hop onto the boardwalk and approach the men lined up in front of the bakery. Even from his spot in the street, Clint could hear Lynn talk to the men in the overalls.

  “Do any of you fellows know where the Petrowski farm is?”

  ELEVEN

  Wes Petrowski was crawling in a pumpkin patch when Clint and Lynn rode up the road leading to his farm. The spread was actually due south of Thickett and was marked by a tall weather vane that squeaked loudly in the breeze.

  At the first sound of Eclipse’s hooves, Wes stuck his head up like a giant rabbit that had been caught eating a head of lettuce. He looked to be somewhere in his fifties, but could have been a decade older than that.

  Like most farmers, Wes had been toughened up by the elements after spending years working in the middle of them. He wore a blue checkerboard shirt under a threadbare denim jacket. His scalp and neck had a red hue to it, which made the ring of white hair around the back of his head stand out even more. Sharp eyes glared from beneath a furrowed brow. When he stood up, Wes was brandishing a hoe like it was a two-handed weapon.

  “Who’re you?” Wes asked. Although the man’s voice wasn’t exactly threatening, the look in his eyes showed he wasn’t to be taken lightly by a couple of strangers.

  If Lynn took notice of the old man’s eyes or the hoe in his hand, she didn’t show it. In fact, she jumped down from Eclipse’s back and ran up to him as if Wes was waiting for her with open arms.

  “It’s so good to see you!” she shouted. “I’ve heard so much about you!”

  Wes didn’t swing the hoe, but he didn’t drop it either. He stood there like one of his own scarecrows, only with a more confused look on his face. Since Eclipse was facing the direction that gave Wes a clear look at Clint’s holster, the old man kept his eyes pointed in that direction.

  “I’m Lynn McKay,” she finally announced.

  That caused Wes to change his expression as drastically as night suddenly changing to day. “You’re Lynn?” he asked as he shifted the hoe to one hand and wrapped his free arm around her. “What took you so long to get here?”