Long Road to Cheyenne (23 page)

He slapped her hard across her mouth, causing it to bleed. “I told you to behave yourself!” he warned. “You ain’t tellin’ the sheriff nothin’, unless you wanna end up dead. Now, here’s what you’re gonna do. I figure the trouble you cost me oughta be worth about thirty-five thousand dollars, so you’re gonna go to the bank and get it. Then I want that bastard with the red bandanna to bring it to me. You got that straight? Now, you listen real careful, ’cause I’m gonna tell you where he’s gotta bring it. There’s a line of hills about a mile outta town on the road to Laramie. One of them hills has a rock tower stickin’ up outta the pine trees about a hundred feet high. That’s where he’ll bring the money.”

Mary listened carefully, astonished that the man expected her to comply when he surely should know that as soon as he freed her, she would go to the law instead. Amazed by the man’s stupidity, she couldn’t help asking, “Why do you think I’ll do what you say once I’m free?”

His lips parted slowly in a smug smile. “Maybe because I’ve got a little girl tied up in a neat little bundle. I think I heard you call her Emma when she couldn’t quit runnin’ her mouth on the stagecoach.”

“Emma!” Mary gasped, stunned to the point of almost fainting. “No! That can’t be! I just left her!”

His contemptuous grin spread once more across his rough features. “That’s a fact—left her and her sister playin’ on the hotel porch. Only, she ain’t there no more.”

“Oh my God, please!” Mary pleaded. “Please don’t hurt my babies! I’ll get you the money.”

“Well, I ain’t got but one of ’em. The other’n went in the hotel ’bout the time I rode up, but that littlest one oughta be worth thirty-five thousand.” Thoroughly enjoying her distress, he said, “I’ll take real good care of her, unless I see a posse comin’ after me. If that happens, I’ll just gut her like a fish, but I’ll hang her up somewhere where they can find her real easy.” He grinned when he saw her grimace at the thought. “And remember, I want that bastard with you to bring me the money, and nobody else, or the kid gets slaughtered.”

Her heart was pounding so violently in her ears that she feared she would miss his exact instructions. “He’s gone,” she implored. “I don’t know where he went, but he’s already left town.”

“What?” he demanded angrily. “You’re lyin’.”

“No, I swear to you, he’s gone and didn’t tell anyone where he was going, or why.”

He hesitated then, hit by another wave of frustration, while he had to think of how that changed things. He believed she was telling the truth, and his first impulse was to try to find which way he went, for the longer the man who had shot his hand remained alive, the deeper the passion for revenge cut into his soul. But he also felt he was entitled to the woman’s gold. “All right,” he finally decided. “You, and nobody else, can bring the money and I’ll give you the little girl. You got till noon tomorrow, and then I’m leavin’, and I ain’t gonna be botherin’ with no little girl. So if you want her alive, you’d best be there before noon tomorrow with my money.” He grabbed her by the throat and pulled her face up to almost touch his. “I can see about five miles in every direction from that rock, and if I see one extra person with you, you can say good-bye to sweet little Emma. You got that?”

“Yes,” she answered, drained of strength, her knees threatening to collapse. He released her, and she had to catch herself to keep from falling. He took two steps back, planted his feet, and struck her beside her face with his fist. She slumped to the ground, dazed, while he stepped up in the saddle unhurriedly and rode off behind the buildings.

•   •   •

“Mary!” Ardella cried out when she saw her staggering out of the alley, holding on to the side of the building for support. “Oh my Lord,” she gasped, and ran to help her. “What happened?” Before Mary could answer, Ardella blurted, “Emma! She’s gone. Grace said some man grabbed her and ran off with her.”

“I know,” Mary choked out. “He took her, that man on the stagecoach, that Mr. Smith. I’ve got to go in the bank, got to get money to buy her back.” She tried to push by her.

“Wait,” Ardella pleaded, “Mary, the bank’s closed. Tell me what happened.”

“Noon, tomorrow, he’ll kill her if I don’t give him the money,” Mary sobbed. She finally let Ardella put an arm around her to support her, and bit by bit, she related the incident that had just taken place.

Equally concerned, but infinitely calmer in the face of crisis, Ardella took a moment to think the situation over. “Dammit, we need Cam.”

“Cam’s gone,” Mary cried. “The desk clerk said he checked out. I’ll have to carry the money.”

“You’ve got till noon to get that money,” Ardella said. “We need Cam.”

“I’ve got to get my baby away from that man,” Mary sobbed.

“He ain’t likely to do her no harm, not if he wants that money. You go on back to the hotel and stay with Grace. She needs you right now. I’m gonna go to the stable and see if I can find out where Cam went.”

•   •   •

“Yes, ma’am,” Smiley Thompson said. “He sure did, took outta here a couple of hours ago.”

“Did he say where he was goin’?”

“No, just said he was headin’ north.” He paused a moment to recall. “He did say he thought he might strike Lodgepole Creek tonight, and he took outta here on the stage road.”

That at least gave Ardella a chance to find him, but she might have to ride all night. Well aware that she had to be back before noon the next day, she decided it was worth a try anyway. “I’m gonna need to rent a horse from you, that one,” she said, pointing to a sorrel standing near the back of the corral. “That’s the one I was ridin’ before we got on the stage.”

When Smiley brought out a couple of saddles from the tack room, he said, “I don’t remember which saddle was on which horse.”

She pointed to one of them. “That one,” she said. “The stirrups are already set for my short legs.” In a matter of minutes, she was in the saddle and she paused another minute to decide whether to go to the hotel to tell Mary what she was going to do. “No, hell,” she muttered, and wheeled the sorrel toward the road to Laramie.

Darkness was rapidly overtaking her as she pressed her horse to keep up a steady pace, while not pushing it to go too fast. There were rough places in the stage road that could break a horse’s leg in the dark. She hoped that Cam had not been in a hurry when he left town. She had ridden perhaps three or four miles when it became so dark that she reluctantly slowed her horse down to a walk, cursing the fact that there was no moon that night. Her attention was glued to the road before her horse’s feet, so much so that she was surprised by the sorrel’s greeting nicker. Looking up then, she was startled by the dark shadow of a man on a horse right in front of her. Alarmed, she pulled back hard on the reins, realizing too late that she was without a weapon of any kind.

“Ardella?”

“Praise the Lord!” she exclaimed, in great relief. “Cam, is that you?”

“Yeah. Where are you goin’?”

“Lookin’ for you!” she responded.

“What for? Is somethin’ wrong?”

“There’s a helluva lot of somethin’ wrong,” she replied, and related all that had happened in the last few hours.

In the darkness, she could not see the anguish in his face when she told him of Emma’s abduction and the demand for ransom. While he digested all that she told him, many other pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Mary identified the kidnapper as one of the gang that held up the stage—the paint gelding he had seen in Smiley’s stable. When they were at Ardella’s cabin, he had spotted one of the men who came after them riding a paint. The man with the bound right hand in the dining room had to be the same man he thought he wounded at the stage holdup. “Where’s Mary now?” he asked.

“She’s back at the hotel with Grace, and she’s about to come to pieces. She’ll feel better knowin’ you’re back. We thought you were gone for good. Why’d you come back?”

“It don’t matter now,” he said. “We’ve got to get back to town. I’ve got work to do.”

•   •   •

Mary ran to him as soon as he walked in the door, and embraced him. “Somehow I knew you’d come,” she said tearfully. “Cam, he’s got my baby.”

“I know,” he told her calmly, with no show of the distress he felt inside at the thought of his “Skeeter” in the brutal hands of a killer. “I’m gonna do everythin’ I can to get her back, so I want you to tell me everythin’ he told you to do.”

“He said he wants you to bring the money,” she told him. “Cam, I think he wants to kill you! He said you crippled his hand. I didn’t know what to do, but I told him you were gone. I guess I’ll get the money and take it to him, and he’ll let Emma go.”

“I’ll go, but I ain’t gonna wait till mornin’,” Cam said. “If you don’t hear somethin’ from me by the time the bank opens in the mornin’, go ahead and do like he said. Take him the money.”

At once alarmed, Mary questioned him. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m goin’ to get Emma,” he said calmly. Turning to leave then, he told Ardella, “Look after her and Grace.”

“I will,” Ardella assured him, “but I can go with you to give you a little help.”

“No, you stay with them. I’ll have a better chance alone.”

When he left the hotel, he went straight to the stable. Finding the corral empty and the doors locked, he went to the small house behind the stable where Smiley lived, but he found no one at home. Knowing where to look next, he went to the saloon and found the little man seated at a table with two other men. “Hey, I thought you was gone,” Smiley called out when Cam walked in the door.

“I was,” Cam said. “I’m back now. I need to leave my horses at your place.”

“All right. Sit down and have a drink with us. We’ll go over to the stable directly.”

“Thanks just the same, but I’m in a hurry,” Cam insisted. “If you just let me in, I’ll take care of ’em and lock up when I’m done.” The grim look in his eye conveyed an urgency that Smiley couldn’t miss.

“All right,” he said. “I was about ready to go home, anyway.” He got up from the table, paused to tip his glass back to make sure he had gotten every drop, then followed Cam out the door after a quick good night to his two drinking companions.

As soon as Smiley unlocked the door, Cam led his horses in, pulled his saddle off, unloaded his packhorse, and turned them over to Smiley, who said he would feed and water them. “Much obliged,” Cam said, and pulled his rifle out of the saddle sling.

Smiley watched him as he checked to make sure his rifle and handgun were fully loaded, started to ask him why he was so tight-lipped tonight, but decided against it. He walked out to the front door and watched Cam walk briskly up the street, in the opposite direction from the hotel. He had a feeling.
That fellow’s up to something I don’t want to know about.

According to what Mary had told him, the big rock that Smith, or whatever his name was, had picked for the exchange was only about a mile out of town. With what he had in mind, he figured it better to be on foot. He didn’t want to worry about hiding a horse or having it nicker or whinny and give him away. So in the dark of the moonless night, he strode purposefully along the road to Laramie. In what was probably a mile or a little more, he came to the designated meeting place. It was easily recognized. The end slope in a chain of hills, covered for the most part with a thick pine belt, stood apart from the others because of a massive tower of rock that reached up from the surrounding pines. He paused to look at the hill before leaving the road.

He did not expect to find Roach and Emma there. He credited the man with more sense than to camp there where he would run the risk of having someone sneak up on him during the night. No, he was sure that Roach was hiding out with Emma somewhere some distance from this place, and there was little chance it could be found if Cam searched all night for it. After a general scan of the area, he left the road and followed a path that led up to the base of the rock. He could only guess the purpose for the path, for there was nothing there but a small clearing around the rock. He turned to look back at the road, then moved to several spots, deciding on the best one to watch for someone on the road.
This is where he’ll probably stand and watch,
he thought. Using this as his target, he then moved off into the trees to find the best spot to set his ambush. Moving up the slope a little, he tested a couple of places, seeking one that would give him good visibility of the target while providing him with some protection. After he made a selection, there was nothing more to do but settle in and wait for morning.

•   •   •

First light found him asleep, half covered by pine boughs he had cut from the trees to conceal himself. He awoke with a start, alarmed that he had fallen asleep, but he heard nothing beyond the whisper of a morning breeze as it caressed the pines. How soon would Roach show up? He could only guess, but he had to be ready for him to appear at any moment. So he moved up to position himself at the base of one of the larger trees and sat down to wait, pulling the pine boughs up around him.

The time dragged by with no sign of anyone on the road below him. Positioned as he was, he could only see the road from Cheyenne. But to see the road on the other side of the hill, he would have had to move to a spot where his target area at the base of the rock would no longer be clearly seen. So he decided it best to sit tight and wait for Roach to show up with Emma and hope he had hidden himself well enough. Still, there were no sounds other than the wind and some rude arguing among a flock of crows. The sun was well up in the sky now. He had no watch, but he figured it surely close to the time the bank should be opening. He would have thought that Roach would be there by now. Again, the cawing of the crows high over the hill above him shattered the morning quiet. And suddenly it struck him! Without having to think, he dived out of his pine bough cover, but not quick enough to avoid the rifle slug that slammed into his shoulder. He rolled over on his belly on the downhill side of the tree trunk in time to evade the shot that quickly followed the first and ripped off a piece of pine bark.

With no idea how badly he had been hurt, Cam had no choice but to ignore the wound. It was in his left shoulder, and at this point was more numb than painful, and his shoulder still worked, so no bones or joints were injured. He berated himself for not allowing for the fact that Roach might have been holed up in the hills behind the stone tower and, like him, was on foot. He should have been alert the first time the crows scolded the intruder to their forest. His problem now was the fact that he didn’t know exactly where the shots had come from, only that Roach was somewhere on the hill above him. Hugging the ground, he moved to the other side of the tree and tried to scan the trees above, hoping to spot a muzzle flash if another shot was fired. Even if he spotted one, he was afraid to return fire, because he couldn’t chance hitting Emma, if the outlaw was holding her close to him. He was still trying to decide what to do when Roach called out to him, “Hey, rifleman! You bring my money?”

“Where’s the little girl?” Cam yelled back.

“Too bad you moved,” Roach shouted, ignoring the question. “I had a bead on the middle of your back. You hurt pretty bad?”

“Yeah,” Cam returned. “Why don’t you come on down and take a look?”

“Maybe I will.”

The response came from a slightly different direction, so Cam knew he was moving. His best bet was to keep him talking, and he thought he knew how to do that. “Hey, how’s that hand of yours? That was a helluva shot that crippled your hand, wasn’t it?”

“You son of a bitch,” Roach replied in anger. “It was a lucky shot, and it’s gonna be an unlucky shot for you, ’cause I’m gonna kill you for it.”

“Is that a fact?” Cam responded. “How you gonna do that without comin’ down here to get me?”

“Maybe I’ll just slit this little brat’s throat and see what you can do about that—see if you’ve got the guts to come up here to stop me.”

That was one thing Cam did not want to hear. “Anythin’ happens to the kid, you don’t get the money,” he called back, while inching farther away from the tree toward another tree, still trying to locate Roach’s position. It occurred to him that if Roach had Emma with him now, she might have made some noise, a cry, or a plea for help. He decided to try to find out. “Emma,” he yelled, “if you’re up there, let me know. Make a noise, anything.” There was no sound in reply. “Where’s the girl?” Cam challenged.

“Right where I want her,” Roach returned, “and right where she’ll stay till I get what I want from you.”

That last threat came from a spot farther down in the trees.
He’s moving down the hill to try to flank the spot I’m in,
Cam thought. “Why don’t you come on down here and see if you’re man enough to get what you want, you yellow dog?” Cam called out, then quickly slid over farther in the underbrush and crawled up the hill. Moving as quietly as he could manage, he tried to position himself to be above and to the side of the tree he had first taken cover behind. There was no more taunting from the kidnapper, which told Cam that he was moving in for the kill, so he rose to his feet and moved quickly toward a game trail directly above the clearing around the base of the rock tower. Just as he crossed the path, Roach appeared on it a dozen yards below him. Both men were taken by surprise. Both reacted instantly, turning to fire with no time to aim. Both men went down, Cam as a result of the bullet that tore the sole on his boot, Roach with a bullet in his hip. When Cam hit the ground, he immediately rolled over and over to find cover from the barrage of shots from Roach, as the critically wounded outlaw cranked cartridge after cartridge into the chamber. Unable to clearly see his target as Cam continued to roll down the hill, Roach desperately fired away at the bushes between the trees until the click of the hammer against an empty chamber signaled an empty magazine.

It was no more than a moment, but the silence was deafening as Cam got to his feet and stepped out from behind a tree to face Roach, his rifle aimed at the outlaw, who stood painfully favoring a smashed hip. His face twisted with hatred and pain, he cranked the lever on his empty rifle again, then threw it away from him. He tried to straighten up to stand squarely facing his despised adversary, his left hand poised to reach across his body to draw the .44 holstered on his right side.

“You wouldn’t make it halfway there,” Cam told him. “You’re done. Where’s the little girl?”

“Who are you?” Roach asked, trying to stall. “What’s your name?”

“Cam Sutton. What’s yours?”

“Cotton Roach.”

“It suits you,” Cam said, well aware of Roach’s attempt to stall long enough to surprise him. “Pleased to meet you. Now, where’s the little girl?”

“Oh, her?” Roach responded with a smirk. “She’s dead.” He saw the shaken look on Cam’s face that indicated a moment’s loss of concentration, the moment Roach was hoping for. Like a flash of lightning, he reached for the handle of the .44 strapped to his side. In that moment, he was reminded of a well-known law—the fastest draw will always come in second to the squeezing of the trigger on a rifle already cocked and aimed.

Roach crumpled to the ground, gut-shot, still trying to pull his handgun from its holster. As he walked cautiously toward him, Cam quickly chambered another round and silenced the struggling gunman. He stood over the body for a long moment, looking at the man who had hunted him. Then, his thoughts returning to Emma, he determined to find her, wherever this demon had left her. Gazing up at the tree-covered hill above him, he feared that her innocent little body could have been discarded anywhere along the ridges that extended for a mile or more. He looked down at the bullet hole in his new shirt to note that the wound seemed to have stopped bleeding for the moment.
Take care of it later,
he thought, and turned to begin following the game trail on up the hill, assuming that it was the way Roach had come down.
He must have a horse back up there somewhere,
he thought.
I’ll ride it along these ridges until I find Emma
.

The trail led him to the top of the first hill and across a hogback to the next. As he approached what appeared to be a small meadow down the side of the hogback, he spotted the paint horse he had seen at Smiley’s stable, standing saddled and tied to a tree. He left the trail and went down through the trees to the clearing. Not twenty feet from the horse, he saw her. Bound and gagged, she was tied to another tree, and as Cam hurried to her, she looked up at him with eyes completely devoid of fear. As soon as he removed the gag from her mouth, her first words were calmly said. “I knew you’d come and get me. I told that bad man that you would come to get me and that he was going to be in trouble then.”

He almost choked on his emotion. “That’s right, Skeeter, I was gonna come to get you, no matter what.”

•   •   •

Standing in front of the bank, Mary, Ardella, and Grace anxiously waited for it to open. They had been there for almost an hour, and Mary’s pleas with a bank employee to let her withdraw the cash she needed were unsuccessful. She was told that it was too large a sum to be released by anyone but Mr. Proctor, so she would have to wait until he arrived. “Surely it must be nine o’clock by now,” she worried.

“It can’t be long,” Ardella tried to assure her. Her main concern was the fact that there had been no word from Cam since the night before.

“Mama, look!” Grace exclaimed, pointing toward the end of the street.

The two adults turned as one to look. What their disbelieving eyes saw was Cam riding down the middle of the street on a paint horse with Emma sitting in the saddle in front of him. Ardella was handy to catch Mary by the elbow and support her when Mary’s knees threatened to fail her. It was only for a few moments, however, for then she recovered enough from the past sleepless night to run to meet her daughter.

Cam reined up when he saw Mary running to meet them with Grace and Ardella not far behind. It struck him that this was his family, the only family he could remember, and now the family he did not want to lose. He lifted Emma from the saddle and lowered her into Mary’s arms, then sat a moment to enjoy the mother-and-daughter reunion. In the midst of the hugs and kisses she was showered with, Emma managed to whisper something in her mother’s ear. Mary smiled, then looked up at the tall young man in the saddle, and said, “You were right, darling, he is an angel.”

“Well,” Cam declared, “I reckon that pretty much takes care of things, and the family’s all back together again, so I guess I’ll go put my new horse in the stable for the night and see about this hole I just got in my new shirt.”

“It doesn’t seem to be bothering you that much,” Mary said. “Why don’t you come back to the hotel with us? Ardella and I can take a look at that wound. If Ardella can’t fix it, then we’ll go to the doctor.”

“Yeah,” Ardella said. “Let ol’ Dr. Ardella take a look at it.” She realized that neither Cam nor Mary heard her remark. “You never did say why you came back last night,” she said to Cam.

He shifted his gaze from Mary’s for only a moment to reply. “No, I reckon I never did,” was all he said.

Impatient, Emma tugged at her mother’s arm until Mary bent down to hear her daughter’s whispered question. In reply, Mary said, “Why don’t you ask him?”