Hobart’s eyes narrowed, the insult hitting squarely since she’d been caught.
“And the next time we’ll take her to see Sheriff Corly.”
Hobart had a look in her eyes that said she’d welcome a good fight, but she just didn’t have time. She jerked her chin and headed for the door at a fast clip.
Cheyenne saw Falcon’s muscles bunch like he was going to make a grab for her. But he didn’t.
He stood aside and watched her take off. “We never asked about her being involved with Ralston. Or about being involved with Hawkins.”
Win moaned quietly. Shamed by her father, afraid.
That’s what Cheyenne saw in Win: fear.
She opened her mouth to demand some answers.
Kevin stood up, Win still in his arms. “I’m taking her out of here. She needs time to recover.”
He left the room, and like with Hobart, they didn’t stop him. Andy followed on his heels.
Cheyenne and Falcon turned to each other. Cheyenne felt so grim she didn’t think she could speak.
“We might’ve just let the woman who shot your brother walk out.”
Cheyenne gave a tiny nod of her head. “She told a good tale.”
“Truth or lies?” Falcon shook his head slowly. “I couldn’t tell. But I reckon you’re right. We caught her once. We can catch her again.”
Cheyenne crossed her arms and looked at Falcon, trying to decide if she’d let a would-be killer walk away.
They stood there, studying each other for a long, quiet time.
Finally, Falcon said, “Tomorrow, I’m taking out after Ralston. If he can be tracked, I’ll track him. But the longer we wait, the more I lose the trail.”
“I’ll come too.”
“No, you can’t. Not while Wyatt’s so bad. I’d like nuthin’ better’n to have you. You’re a fine tracker and a likely saddle partner. But Wyatt’s gonna get a fever, you know he is. Molly can do all the doctoring in the world, but he’s gonna need you with him. He’ll fight it off most likely if the wound doesn’t fester, but for a time, he’ll be helpless and confused, and you’re the only one he really knows and trusts. You can’t leave him.”
Cheyenne knew he was right.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Falcon was wrong.
Wrong about most everything.
Wyatt was fine, tougher’n a boot and twice as feisty. Cheyenne only seemed to upset him when she fussed over him and nagged him to stay in bed.
She tended toward insults and was full of well-meaning advice, like, “If you move again, I’m gonna lasso you like a bullheaded Angus and hog-tie you to the bed.”
Falcon knew this because she’d said it at the top of her lungs. Falcon had been in the bunkhouse at the time, and he, along with all the men, had heard every word.
Wyatt reacted to the threats like you’d expect. The two of them had locked horns from the minute Wyatt had awakened in the morning feeling mighty good, or so he’d shouted at his sister.
Molly had been struggling to evict Cheyenne from her own house when Wyatt showed no sign of fever. He was probably gonna be okay, but that wasn’t enough to make Cheyenne leave off her fussin’.
Falcon invited her to come hunt Ralston with him to save everyone’s hearing, if not their very lives. Molly had packed plenty of food. If Falcon was any judge, they had enough to be gone for a week.
Molly was a helpful little thing, but not overly subtle, although Falcon didn’t think she was even trying.
They were on the trail before midmorning and back to the spot they’d left Ralston trussed up like a hog at roasting time. The rain had held off and the trail was clear as day at first.
They were only minutes figuring out which way he went, him and whoever turned him loose. A woman, but now that Falcon had studied Hobart’s tracks, he was sure it wasn’t her. This woman was taller, bigger all over. Her shoes were womanly, but down at the heels, one of the soles left a ragged mark like there might be holes in it.
An hour into their search, they lost what had been a faint but easily found trail. Falcon dismounted to study the rocky stretch.
“We’re going to have to study the edges of this stone wherever dirt’s blown in. It’ll be slow going.” He looked up from where he crouched, scowling at the trail’s dead end.
Cheyenne nodded and swung down beside him. She tied up her horse and went ahead, leaving Falcon to study any place someone had left the rocky stretch. It was well past noon when he found the slightest trace of the horse the woman rode.
“Down this way, Cheyenne.” He called her back from her own endless search.
Studying the sharp, downward slope, Cheyenne asked, “Unless he’s planning to circle back, he’s not headed to that valley where he had the rustled cows.”
Falcon weighed it in his head. “I’m going down. See if there’s more than this one mark and a for sure sign Ralston is still with her. If they split up, we’ll have to pick one.”
“I wonder who she is. Back at the beginning, before we’d studied the woman’s tracks—”
“And before I’d studied Hobart’s tracks in your ranch yard,” Falcon interrupted.
“—we just guessed it’d be Hobart. Now that I’m sure it’s not, it adds weight to her denial of shooting Wyatt, because it doesn’t seem like she’s in league with Ralston. I’m still not happy we let her go.”
“Nuthin’ about this makes me happy.”
“I’ll go get the horses.” Cheyenne headed back.
“Keep a sharp eye.” Falcon hesitated to let her go, just as he wondered if he oughta not go off on his own.
Suddenly, it was more than hesitation. “Cheyenne, wait.”
She wheeled around, gun drawn, pointed up, mindful not to aim at him. “What?”
It startled him and satisfied him right down to the ground to see her so salty, so ready for trouble. ’Cuz he thought that was exactly what was coming.
“It’s not that far to where we left the horses. I think we need to stay together better. You were out of my sight when you got ahead tracking, now you’re going off again. I think we’d better not do that.”
She holstered her gun as she studied him, seeming to weigh what he’d said, read the worry in his belly.
She nodded. “Come on, then. Let’s get our critters and get after that low-down Ralston and whoever’s in this with him.”
They went together. Falcon didn’t see a lick of trouble comin’ from anywhere. But he felt it, and it was better knowing right where she was and her knowing right where he was. Just like her drawing that gun. Best to know where your partner was if you started in to shooting.
As they led the horses on the steep downward slope, a hidden—but not hidden enough—trail was easily followed. The varmints they were trailing were still together.
They were in heavy woods except where the trees were broken up by slabs of solid stone.
“They couldn’t have come on this narrow trail by accident.” Cheyenne was behind Falcon, the trail too narrow for them to walk side by side.
“Nope, they had it figured. Planned ahead. Ralston picked his getaway trail, picked his overlook to stop any pursuit. We caught him, but she, whoever she is, was waiting. He was running to her. They knew exactly what trail they’d be taking and how to slip off it and leave anyone behind that might be coming.”
“Unless,” Cheyenne said smugly, “those coming along behind were highly skilled trackers, better than Ralston and his woman had any hope of being.”
Falcon turned to look behind him, along the length of his horse, and met her eyes, and smiled. “Yep, unless that.”
She smiled back, and he moved out again.
Midafternoon, hours and hours at what seemed to be the pace of molasses in January, he straightened from where he’d been inching along, looking for proof they’d come this way. They’d just turned off a trail more rock than dirt, a wash cut by mountain runoff in the spring but dry now.
“They’re easin’ up, not hidin’ their tr
ail,” Falcon said. “They’re not worrying about pursuit anymore.”
He went down on one knee to study the tracks. He wanted to be able to find them again, find these exact horses, no matter where this trail led.
And now he looked down at hoof marks plain as day. Two horses, riders up top, no longer sweeping away a sign of their passing.
He sincerely hoped a hard job had just gotten easier.
Cheyenne gave a satisfied smile that, he had to say, was just a mite smug. “We did it. We kept after them until they let up.”
“We can go faster now, but before we head out, are we anywhere you’re familiar with?”
Cheyenne studied mountain peaks and the lay of the land. “Nope, we’re off RHR land, and I suspect we’re off Hawkins land.”
“Then we won’t make much better time. We need to ride careful. Before, when he was waiting to back-shoot us, you knew the land well enough to be wary. But we’ll have to be ready for a sneak attack.”
“They probably think they’ve lost any pursuers, so they won’t set up to watch their back trail.”
“Prob’ly.” Falcon nodded and put his hand on Cheyenne’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “We’ll keep after them as long as we’ve got light. But let’s stop and eat some of whatever Molly sent along. We’ve been at this since early morning. It helps me to take a break now and then, get off the horse, stretch, eat. It keeps my attention from slipping. Even if they aren’t watching, and there’s a good chance of that, I ain’t risking my life, nor yours, on a good chance.”
“Let’s look for a spring so we can water the horses.”
They found a spot with some water and a little grass, then switched their horses to halters so they could graze.
They sat and ate a portion of the food Molly had packed. There were thick roast beef sandwiches and apples. She’d chopped up cold cooked potatoes and some boiled eggs and put a good dressing on it. She’d stuck in a jar of beet pickles and a few chunks of cheese. And in a small tin, she’d sent a pile of sugar cookies.
“That woman is a fine cook.” Falcon was near full before they’d eaten a third of it.
“She is indeed. I should probably have her teach me, but I doubt I have the patience for it.”
“All that knitting is yours, isn’t it? The front room is overloaded with it.”
“Yep, and all the bedrooms, blankets everywhere.”
“That takes patience.”
“You’re right. So I have plenty of patience. That must mean I just don’t want to learn to cook.”
“Fair enough.”
Cheyenne crunched an apple and said between bites, “There’s a good chance that whoever’s partnering with Ralston is the one who shot Wyatt. Ralston set up on this trail, his woman set up on the road to town. They probably planned to watch and get rid of anyone following, then meet up. She’s our would-be killer.”
“A pair of dry-gulching skunks. So we ride easy, and that means slow.”
“Let’s go.” She was astride her horse before she finished talking.
Falcon mounted up, and they rode along, two abreast, each of them turned to the side of the trail, splitting the work of keeping watch. Falcon trusted her to know what to look out for, and she trusted him.
Falcon didn’t know nuthin’ about himself much, but trusting someone seemed risky, even stupid. He wasn’t sure what he’d come from that’d make him feel such. He only knew he trusted Cheyenne.
He saw Harvey with a family, hitched up to a cart. A wave of pain tore through his head, and he grabbed hold of his saddle, a dizzy spell making him fear he’d fall.
He tried to widen that picture in his head. Harvey, his mule. Who were those folks that had him?
Patsy. Her face flashed like a bolt of lightning. Her name. What else? His head pounded like someone was inside using his skull like a drum. He was falling. He landed hard, facedown on the rocky ground, and his head bounced.
A hand gripped his shoulder and put pressure on his head.
“You’re bleeding, Falcon. Stay still.”
He smelled blood. Felt a hard hand just above his eyes.
“It’s not serious. Just a deep scratch.”
Cheyenne, she was real. The pain. He clung to the here and now as tight as a man hanging off a cliff, then pain hit again that had nothing to do with Cheyenne and bleeding.
A cabin clinging to the side of a hill.
A fist slammed in his face. No, the memory of a fist. But the pain felt as if it were pounding his flesh.
Patsy Sulky . . . a beating.
Another memory flashed, Harvey going along with someone else.
The cabin.
The beating over . . . over . . .
His head rested on the soft ground. No, the ground wasn’t this soft.
The grave.
“I dug a grave.”
“What?” A callused hand brushed over his forehead.
“A grave. Patsy’s dead.”
Warm hands, strong and steady, gentle. He felt her fiddling with his forehead and knew distantly he’d hurt himself falling from his horse. He heard soft words of prayer.
“Patsy’s dead. Burying her, setting out for Wyoming was . . . it was . . .” He fumbled for more. “I just know I left because there was nothing there for me. Not anymore.”
“Your wife is dead?”
Falcon felt tears burn behind his eyes. The notion that he might cry was a horror, and he fought down the need, focused on the pain in his head.
“Do you remember more?” Cheyenne pressed a kiss on his forehead. “Do you remember your mother?”
“I-I know Ma’s dead. It’s just a strange, deep knowing that when Patsy died, I was alone. I can’t remember when or how, but I know Ma’s dead.” Falcon gathered himself enough to rub at the battering pain in his temples. His hands were brushed aside, and Cheyenne replaced his rubbing with her own.
It was the nicest feeling he could imagine.
“Pa, my pa is dead. And he’s been dead for years.” Falcon tried to sit up. A man needed to stand to face ugly things.
Cheyenne’s hands were too strong in his current shape. She scooted so she held his head in her lap. He relaxed onto her, let himself be treated gently.
The pain eased. The throbbing slowed to a dull ache. He managed to open his eyes and look at her. Those black eyes, only inches above his as she cradled his head.
When their eyes met, she pulled him close into her arms until her cheek rested on the top of his head.
“Do you know what this means, Falcon?”
A swoop of pain made him wince. “Those men you and I killed, I remember them trying to kill me in Missouri.”
“Tuttle and Ross?”
“Yes, I saw them, caught them, left them tied up.” He opened his eyes again to push away from the throbbing pain. He didn’t feel guilty, but he wondered if he should. “I left them with nothing, unconscious, tied up back in the woods. Figured they’d get loose eventually.”
“How did they get back here so fast?”
“I-I was a few days in Omaha selling their stuff and Harvey. And I stopped in Casper to talk to the lawyer. If they got their hands on enough money—”
“Which they could have done if they knew who to send a wire to back here, and they reached someone capable of transferring funds to them.”
“Maybe, but you could be thinking overly on it. They could’ve robbed someone, bought a train ticket. Got here fast by doin’ that. They weren’t no honest men, for a fact. I was long enough in Omaha that if they came on fast, they could’ve beaten me to the train, come out ahead of me. That’s what they had to’ve done.”
“There’s more to remember,” Cheyenne said. “I reckon it’ll keep coming into your head.”
Falcon sat up slowly. Cheyenne’s care gave him enough pleasure it overrode the pain. Mostly.
“I wish . . .” Cheyenne said, frowning. “I wish we could go back to the ranch. Give you a few quiet days to heal so memories wouldn’t come with su
ch pain.”
“If we leave off our tracking now, we’ll be hard-pressed to catch up to Ralston. Time isn’t kind to a trail.”
“It seems to me the pair is quitting the country. With this last turn and the clear tracks, they seem to be making fast time and going straight west.”
Falcon met her eyes. Both of them silent for a stretch as they thought of what they were dealing with.
“I’d say let them go if it was just cattle rustling.” Falcon watched her burr up like an angry wolf. Rustling was serious business in the West, it seemed. “But if they shot Wyatt, then we have to keep after them.”
He was relieved when Cheyenne nodded without going on a shouting rampage about cattle rustlers. He figured he had some to learn on that score, but how far did a body ride to fetch around a man who’d stolen cows? Especially when they’d gotten them back.
“The sky is clear, so we should have no rain to make the trail harder to follow,” Cheyenne said. “It’s late enough in the day. Let’s camp for the night.”
“No, I can ride. We’ll get on after ’em for now. I can rest my poor puny head when we can’t see to ride. If this trail is them lighting out, then it oughta go steady for a long time. If they take to sneakin’ again, we’ll have to stop for the night. Right now, I wouldn’t be much good on a well-hidden trail.”
Nodding, Cheyenne got the horses while Falcon got to his feet. He was surprised at how hard it was.
They set out again. The tracks left by the two riders they chased were as clear as a hand-painted sign.
When the trail was narrow, Cheyenne led the way. Sometimes it was wider, and they’d ride two abreast.
They’d been an hour down the trail in silence, which was good because it was taking a lot for Falcon to hang on to his horse. New memories flashed into his head every now and then, adding to what he’d remembered.
How Patsy could skin a possum. What a woman.
How his heart had broken when she’d died. How he’d ached for that little, unknown child. The loneliness, the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. On and on. His thoughts fully occupied.
His ma, memories about her popped in and out, fast, old, mixed-up with a terrible fear at being left alone.
A Man with a Past Page 18