by Ron Schwab
As she approached The Fremont, Casey saw Emily engaged in conversation with a tall man on the boardwalk in front of the hotel. As she drew closer, she realized the man was Ian, attired in garb which seemed out of character for him. He was wearing a wide-brimmed, black hat, with a slender hatband adorned with gleaming silver concha at the base of the low crown. Several larger concha decorated a black leather vest slung over a bright red shirt that boasted a black string tie at the collar. The outfit was a bit flamboyant, she thought, but he did look dashing, and her heart raced at the prospect of their encounter.
Emily caught sight of her and waved. Ian looked her way and she could sense his appraisal with those steel-gray eyes that seemed uncharacteristically soft. Then she realized Ian was not Ian.
“Casey,” Emily said, “I want you to meet Cam Locke, Ian’s brother.”
Cam tipped his hat with one hand and took hers in the other. “My distinct pleasure, ma’am. Emily’s been telling me about your proficiency in the courtroom. I wish I’d got here for the show. I might have learned something.”
Emily said, “I’ve got to run, Cam. I have to get today’s story to the Bee by telegraph yet this afternoon.” She turned to Casey. “First interview after the verdict? You’ll give me time for a scoop?”
Casey smiled. “I may not be in a talking mood.”
“Win or lose, Casey, you’re the news. A woman lawyer handling a major murder case. This is a first in this state. Maybe in the entire country.”
“I look to the day when being a woman has nothing to do with it.”
Emily departed, leaving Casey and Cameron Locke standing on the boardwalk.
“I thought you were Ian when I first saw you,” Casey remarked.
“How could you mistake us? He’s older.” Cam smiled warmly, and he had a perpetual twinkle in his eyes that she had seen only rarely in Ian’s.
“You smile more.”
“I don’t take life quite so seriously as my brother. The Judge thinks I don’t take things seriously enough. The Judge . . . that’s what Ian and I call our father, behind his back.”
“I know.”
“You know?” Cam cocked his head and studied her with feigned seriousness. “I wonder if you’re the trouble that brought me north?” He shook his head. “Nah, you’re not big enough to cause that much trouble . . . on second thought—”
“What do you mean ‘trouble?’”
“It can’t really be explained. We don’t talk about it much. Most folks would think we’re crazy. But when one of us is troubled, dealing with something serious, the other seems to sense it. You just feel something’s not right and need to check it out before you can rest easy.”
“Is it always something terrible?”
“No, but when Ian was at Gettysburg . . . infantry, of course . . . I had the feeling for a week. I was sick with worry, literally. I nearly puked up my guts for three days. I figured it out once and decided that was when he picked up the medal.”
“Medal?”
“The big one. Medal of Honor. He didn’t tell you? What am I saying? Of course not. He wouldn’t have told even me if it hadn’t been in the newspapers. And we’ve never kept much from each other.”
“Emily told me he’d been in the war, but she never said anything about medals.”
“I doubt if she knows. Wouldn’t have learned it from him.”
“So you’re here because you had that feeling you talk about?”
“It didn’t feel that serious, not like Gettysburg or when the boys took sick, but I thought I should head up this way. He wrote about us getting into the banking business, and I thought we ought to talk about that anyway. But I’ve been more concerned since I got off the train. I don’t like what I’m feeling. As soon as I dropped my bedroll at the hotel I was going to hightail it over to Ian’s office and satisfy myself he doesn’t need a hand with something.”
Casey shuddered. “You’re making me spooky, Cam. I hope you’re joshing me with this talk.”
“I’ve been known to tease now and then, ma’am, but not right now.”
“Cam,” a voice yelled from down the street.
Casey turned to see Will Heasty racing up the street. He arrived out of breath. “Train came in early . . . missed you at the station . . . figured I might catch you here.”
Cam Locke’s face turned grim now. “Where’s Ian?”
“That’s why I was looking for you. I got word from George Washington’s son late this morning. Mandy was taken last night.”
“Taken?’
“A man . . . they think it was Karl Wainwright . . . took her from the barn last night. Ian and George rode out in the storm to find her.”
“Oh, my God,” Casey gasped.
“Who’s Karl Wainwright?”
Will replied. “A snake. I hate to say this, but he was suspected of raping and killing a young girl some five years back. Ian’s come across information recently that lends support to the theory.”
“Christ.”
Casey asked, “Did you report it to the deputy?”
“No. Ian sent instructions. He asked that Cam go to the ranch and wait for word there. If he hasn’t heard from Ian or George by nightfall, he’s on his own.”
“I’m heading for the livery,” Cam said. “I’ll rent a horse and head for the Lazy Key.”
“Rent two horses,” Casey said. “And swing back here. I’m going with you. I’ll change and be ready to ride by the time you get here.”
Cam started to protest, saw the fire in her eyes, and decided against it.
33
Ian
GEORGE WENT OUTSIDE to look around, sensing I needed some quiet time, a chance to pull myself together. Grief and rage boiled within me, and I knew I had to get a handle on it. That kind of stew was no good for the job that lay ahead. I looked around the stark, dirty shack and tried not to imagine the horror Mandy must have endured here. I found her boots and socks in a corner and gathered up her clothes. I would put them in the saddlebags. One way or another we would need them.
Momentarily, George returned. “Come outside,” he said. “You need to take a look at this.”
I followed obediently. Outside the cabin door he pointed to tracks that were now interspersed with our own. There was a pair of bare footprints in the drying mud. “Mandy’s,” I commented.
“Looks like it. And you’ve got her boots in your hands. She must have come out here after the boots came off. Come back here.” He motioned me to the back of the shack. “Did you see the paw prints?”
“I see them now.”
“Cat.”
“Bobcat?”
“Tillie Crump kind of cat.”
I thought of something. “You know, I never saw TJ when I went out to the barn. He was with Mandy. You don’t suppose—”
“Possible.”
“I can’t imagine. We’re a long way from home.”
George shrugged. “Their horses were tied back here. Two of them. One rider rode out ahead of the other. I’d guess Mandy was on that one.” He walked toward the west side of the shack, and then he stooped and plucked an object from the grass. “Blood in the grass near where this horse was staked. And I just found this.” He held out a rusty, blood-caked awl.
I shook my head in puzzlement. “What do you make of it?”
“I think that’s Karl Wainwright’s blood we saw, not Mandy’s. I think she found this awl, and I don’t think she was punching belt holes or fixing a saddle with it.”
“Let’s ride.”
George and I decided to ride the spare mounts and give our other horses a rest, and I rode Dancer now, as Hemlock trailed behind. We picked our way down the canyon, dodging mud holes and avoiding slippery banks. The rain had softened the canyon floor, and George’s tracking skills were not required to follow the trail left by the other horses. The canyon clotted with young cottonwoods and sand willows and other undergrowth as we moved southward, however, and the going got tougher.
No
more than a mile down the canyon, we turned a corner in the canyon wall and came upon a horse flattened on its side and flailing helplessly in the rock and sand. We dismounted and hurried to the mare’s side. She tried to raise her head and stared at us with pain-filled eyes. “Foreleg’s broken,” I said. “Can’t shoot her. Karl would hear and know we’re on his trail . . . if he doesn’t already.”
George slipped his Bowie knife from its sheath and quickly ended the animal’s misery. Then he began to circle the ground and brush around the dead horse, nose nearly to the ground like a damned bloodhound. I did my part by staying out of his way. I lost sight of him for a spell, and then suddenly he materialized silently from the undergrowth not more than a dozen feet from where I stood. The old savage was reverting to his youth, I thought.
“Mandy’s horse,” he said softly. “I found her footprints. Damned if those cat tracks didn’t show up, too, further up the trail. Karl’s on foot now, too, leading his horse. We’d better tie our horses here and follow afoot. They can’t gain ground on us if they’re not moving on horseback. Karl will pick us off like a couple of fat prairie hens if we go crashing through the trees.”
Suddenly, a mournful yowling echoed off the canyon walls. It faded, and a few moments later it erupted again, followed by a gunshot that reverberated like a cannon off the rocky palisades. Undaunted, the creature yowled again.
“That’s TJ,” I said.
We yanked our rifles from the saddle holsters and began working our way downstream. The canyon floor changed to near solid sandstone as we inched southward, and it became more difficult to find sign. When we did, the tracks appeared to be crisscrossing and weaving in no predictable pattern, so we agreed to split again and work separate sides of the stream. Our progress was discouraging until I heard TJ yowl again and knew we had closed the gap significantly.
34
Mandy
AMANDA KATE LOCKE huddled in a fetal position in a concave cavity that had been carved by time at the base of the sandstone canyon wall. Her hiding place extended no more than five feet into the stone, but was protected by a shield of tall switch grass and brush and willows. She had stretched her filthy shirt down her thighs and over her knees, not because it was cold in her hideaway, but because it somehow made her feel safer. The right side of her face was scarlet fading to purple and her eye was swollen shut. Her lower lip protruded like a spoiled grape and leaked blood.
She reached down and stroked the mud-caked cat that was curled up next to her. TJ seemed unruffled by their ordeal and slept blissfully and seemingly unconcerned about the horrid man who stalked them. At least while he slept he was quiet. She had feared the racket TJ was making earlier, as he sought her out, would lead the “albino” to her hiding place, but the man had evidently taken a shot at the cat and scared him into hiding. Mentally, she had anointed Karl Wainwright the “albino” because she did not know his given name and his ghostly-pale skin and bleached-out blond hair made her think of a story she had once read about an albino man. Even his pale-blue eyes were nearly colorless.
TJ had saved her, though, and given her the opportunity she had prayed for. The albino had not even bothered to unsaddle the horses before he drug her into the cabin and threw her on the floor. When she tried to rush for the open doorway, he had struck her again and tossed her on the rickety cot and then gone back outside, presumably to relieve himself. That was when she spotted the awl on the windowsill and retrieved it and slipped it under the straw mattress. When he returned, he was smiling, licking his lips. She had seen that expression before on Victor’s face when he came to her room in the darkness of the night, while he thought she slept, and touched her breasts and private places with one hand and caressed his bloated spear with the other.
She had remained sitting on the cot as the albino crept toward her, loosening his belt as he approached. When he reached for her, she made a final lunge to get past him, but he latched onto her arm like a vise and yanked her back, and his fist came down like a hammer on her mouth. Dazed, she fell back on the cot and only vaguely remembered now that her boots and britches and underpants were being stripped away. As she regained her senses she saw the albino struggling with his own trousers, dropping them to his ankles and then suddenly freeing his erect, swaying monster.
It was then that TJ yowled from outside the door and began rattling it with his paws. Startled, the albino cursed and turned his head toward the door. In that instant she slipped her hand under the mattress. Her fingers closed on the awl’s handle and she pulled it out. The moment the albino turned his attention back to her, she struck at his groin with an underhanded stab that tore into his spear. He shrieked in agony and his eyes widened in horror, and before he could grasp what happened she rose up and drove the awl’s point into his lower abdomen. In his panic to escape the surprise attack, the albino backed away, screaming hysterically, got his feet tangled in his fallen trousers and tumbled over backwards onto the floor with the awl still lodged in his belly, blood oozing around its rusty tine. That was her final image of the albino as she darted out the door and raced for the horses.
Mandy’s thoughts turned now to the horse. It pained her to think of leaving the injured mare alone in her distress. She knew there was nothing she could have done for the animal, but it was sad that there was no one to comfort the creature, sadder still that no one could bring an end to the mare’s misery. Mandy faulted herself for pushing the horse too hard. If she had been more patient, she might have seen the treacherous sinkhole that had been filled and camouflaged by the recent rains. She had only been bruised and shaken when the mare thrust forward in her fall. She had scooped up TJ when she escaped the shack and stuffed him in the saddlebags where he usually traveled, but he had been nearly squashed when the horse went down and had taken off like a thunderbolt after he squirmed free.
Mandy crawled to the opening of the shallow cave and looked out. The sun glowed at high noon. Her father would be searching for her. George and, perhaps others, too. But with all the rain, there would be no trail. She couldn’t count on help. She didn’t know how badly she had hurt the albino, but apparently not badly enough, because she had heard him calling for her, promising her he would take her home, assuring her no harm would come to her. And he had fired a shot at TJ.
She had two choices: run or wait it out. Her father had told her if she ever got lost to stay put for as long as she could. She was less likely to be found if she was on the move. On the other hand, if after taking time to collect her wits, common sense told her she should leave her spot, she should always stay with the water. Come to a stream; follow it. Sooner or later, the stream will empty into a creek, and the creek will make its way to a river. Even if it takes days, the water will flow to people. That’s where folks live: where there’s water.
She had the stream to follow not more than fifty yards away, but it was too risky to expose herself in daylight. If the albino couldn’t find her today, maybe he would give up. If he did locate her, she knew he would do terrible things to her, things she had heard about when she and her friends back in Omaha had laughed and giggled about the wicked things men did with their spears, although she had never found it truly funny, because she knew about sick things that she would never have told her friends. Mandy also knew the albino would kill her when he was finished with her. She would wait till nightfall, she decided. Then she would leave her hiding place and follow the stream.
She started to move further back into the cave when she heard something moving noisily through the undergrowth, something that was making no effort to move quietly. It was the albino. She knew it was. The sound was moving closer and closer. He must have found her footprints. She decided to run.
Too late. The albino stepped from behind the trees, his rifle aimed directly at her. “Don’t run, little rabbit,” Karl Wainwright said in a near whisper. “You’re in my sights. My old man didn’t teach me much, but he taught me to shoot with the best. I’m finished chasing you.”
A
s the albino moved closer, Mandy saw that the front and legs of his trousers were blood-soaked, and he was staggering more than walking, wincing in pain with each step he took. If it were not for his rifle, she could run and he wouldn’t catch her in a hundred years.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mandy saw TJ streak out of the cave. The albino caught sight of him, too, and took a bead on the cat with his gun before the animal disappeared into the tall grass.
“Well, little rabbit, I guess we’ve had a change of plans,” Karl said, as he limped toward her. “You and me got a score to settle before I head for civilization. You hurt me bad . . . real bad. You’re going to hurt, too, before I’m done with you.”
When he reached the mouth of the cave, Mandy backed away, watching for her opportunity. She could hear TJ yowling like a bobcat in the brush a short distance away. She knew the albino intended to kill her and that he did not have an easy death in mind. She had to make a break for it—and soon. When he was within five feet of her, Karl stopped and stared at her for some moments with glazed eyes, and then he shifted his rifle to his right hand and lunged for Mandy, grabbing her arm and yanking her toward him. She feigned surrender before suddenly pulling away and breaking free of his grasp.
“Bitch,” he yelled, as he whipped the rifle barrel around and struck a glancing blow on her head, catapulting her from the cave entrance and onto the rocky ground outside.