Pariah (15 page)

Both of the men rode toward the platform and Clint watched them go. Once they were far enough away, Lylah's arms tightened around Clint's midsection. He looked over his shoulder and said, “You can go if you want.”

“I . . . go?”

“If you want.”

Her only response was to hold on to him and press her face against his shoulder in its familiar spot.

“All right then. Where?”

Oddly enough, she understood that portion of a question better than when Clint spoke to her in real sentences. It made sense, considering what little English she knew, but still felt peculiar in practice. Lylah extended a hand around his right arm to give him some of the parchment Chuluun had provided.

Clint looked at the map and said, “I know. We're headed there.”

She tapped a finger against a spot on the map that roughly translated to where they were at the moment.

“Yep,” Clint said. He pointed at the same spot and then toward the stagecoach platform. “Here is . . . here. You're right.”

Lylah's pointing turned into more insistent taps that threatened to knock the map from Clint's hand. He looked down again and noticed she was tracing a line from the platform to the camp where she thought Kyle Morrow could be found.

Just then, a rumbling rattle sounded in the distance. When she spotted the stagecoach rolling down another trail toward the platform, Lylah slapped Clint's shoulder and pointed even more fiercely.

“I see it. So what?” Reminding himself that she didn't understand, Clint performed the exaggerated shrug that at least conveyed the fact that he didn't understand something.

Lylah pointed to the coach, then to the platform, then traced the line on the map. Finally, Clint felt what he swore was Lylah's forehead knocking against his shoulder.

“Don't get too riled up. I wish Chuluun was here just as much as you do.” Just then, Clint wished he had something to knock
his
head against. While the old man might not be there to translate, he'd sent along notes from the long discussion he'd had with Lylah in her native tongue. He'd read through the notes during the night he'd spent in Chuluun's camp, but hadn't committed them to memory. He did recall, however, one particular note that seemed to tie in with what Lylah was trying to tell him now.

Clint found the line he was after without having to sift through too much of Chuluun's chicken scratch handwriting. The section read, “She was taken from a stagecoach bound for California. Morrow took more women from one other coach before she got away from him.”

Although he had plenty to ask her, Clint didn't waste any time trying to come up with a gesture to get his point across. Instead, he tapped Lylah's hands, which was the signal they'd worked out for her to hang on. He then snapped his reins and raced to find Eddie and Tumen.

Fortunately, the two men weren't in such a hurry. Clint caught up with them and kept right on going. Sure enough, Eddie and Tumen did their best to match Eclipse's pace. Since the Darley Arabian had built up a head of steam, they didn't stand a chance.

Clint pulled back on his reins only to keep Eclipse from blazing a trail through the shack beside the platform. He and Lylah had developed a good rhythm with each other while in the saddle, so she knew just when to slide down so both of their feet hit the ground at the same time.

“Have you lost any stages recently?” Clint shouted as he marched toward the shack.

The clerk inside the crooked box was already nervous and became even more so when Eddie and Tumen thundered to a stop. “Please don't shoot!” the little man in the stagecoach office said. “I don't have any money!”

“I'm not here to rob you!” Clint said.

The clerk blinked, stretched his head toward the window that looked out of the shed, and replied, “Oh, yeah. I remember you.”

“And I,” Eddie said as he swung down from his saddle, “remember you. Hello, Lester.”

The clerk winced and backed away from the opening. “Hello, Eddie.”

“You still tipping off robbers when all the lockboxes are being hauled through here?”

The clerk didn't answer, but he squirmed a whole lot more. For Clint, that was answer enough.

So it seemed there was more than one reason why the clerk was so squirrelly. Clint was ready to chalk it up to more obvious things like having a man charge up to his little shed while riding a Darley Arabian stallion on a mission. But the clerk had a lot more to worry about than that. Once Eddie began asking more questions, the little man seemed ready to crawl out through a crack in his wall. He wasn't about to answer those questions, however, until Tumen leaned toward the window as if he was going to pull the clerk straight through it.

“I haven't talked to any robbers for months,” Lester squealed.

“What about kidnappers?” Clint asked. “Or a kidnapper named Kyle Morrow?”

“His boys were just here not too long ago,” the clerk said.

“I know. I was here, too.”

“Oh, yeah. That's right.”

“Where did they go?”

The stage that had just arrived was rolling to a stop beside the platform and a man was already crawling along the top to pick out certain pieces of luggage. Lester glanced toward the platform, but his attention was brought back to Clint when he slammed his fist down upon the little piece of wood protruding just beneath the window.

“Where did they go?” Clint demanded.

“I'm stuck in this damn box all day long! How the hell should I know?” When Lester started to back away from the window, Eddie shoved past Clint, reached through the small opening, and grabbed hold of Lester's shirt.

Pulling the clerk out of his seat until his face knocked against the edge of the window, Eddie snarled, “Let's see the lockbox.”

“You wanna rob me?”

The longer the three men lingered in front of the shed, the more other folks took notice. Tumen did a good job of discouraging anyone from getting too close, but soon there would be more attention pointed at the shed than Clint would have preferred.

Eddie, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind. “I ain't gonna rob a stagecoach company,” the bounty hunter said. “I just asked to see the lockbox.”

“Sure,” Lester sputtered as he reached directly beneath his little counter.

“Not that one,” Eddie snapped. “The other one. The one you keep under the floor.”

“We need to finish this,” Clint said.

“We will, just as soon as I see the other lockbox.”

Before Clint could ask just what the hell Eddie was talking about, he heard Lester start to moan like a tortured spirit.

“Jesus, Eddie. Can't we do this when there ain't so many people around?”

“Sure,” Eddie replied as he pulled the clerk so his chest and his face slammed against the inside of the shed. “I'll just extract you from your wooden box and we can have a nice leisurely chat.”

“Ow! Dammit!”

“The lockbox. Now.”

“You gotta let me go first.”

Eddie released Lester, but he set him free with a shove that was hard enough to bounce the skinny man against another wall. “Work fast. If you make me come in there . . .”

But Eddie didn't need to say another word. The clerk scrambled around inside his shed and had returned to the window by the time Clint stepped close enough to get a look inside. Judging by the redness of the clerk's exasperated face, he could very well have been on the verge of tears.

“I can't have anyone at the stagecoach company find out about this,” Lester whined. “I can't have anyone around here even see this. The law may be around here, and if—”

“Shut up and open the box,” Eddie snapped.

Lester followed his orders and opened the little rectangular box amid the mournful squeal of metal hinges. Inside, Clint could see two stacks of money that must have come to at least a couple hundred dollars.

Eddie nodded and said, “You only get paid when you deliver, Lester. What did you tell them?”

“I didn't—”

“Tell me the truth,” Eddie warned. “There's a crowd gathering out here and they want their tickets. It'd be a shame to make them watch as I blow your brains all over them schedules.”

Lester turned around to look at the schedules posted behind him and swallowed hard. “I told them about a bunch of men in fancy suits who were on their way to Sacramento.”

“That'd be the stage that was robbed last week?” Clint asked. “I read about that.”

“I'm sure that's the one,” Eddie said. “But that job couldn't have been big enough for your percentage to amount to as much as I see there. You gave them something else.”

Clint wasn't inclined to torture a man, but all he had to do was show Lester a scowl and rest his hand upon the grip of his holstered Colt to get things moving again.

“Jesse wanted to know about pretty ladies,” the clerk said, “so I told him about three who had been staying here waiting for the stage bound for Salt Lake City.”

Since Lester wasn't about to stray too far from his money, Eddie was able to reach in and grab hold of him again. “Did the stage leave?”

Lester nodded. “Earlier today.”

“And it was bound for Salt Lake City?”

Lester nodded again.

Eddie shoved the clerk toward the back of his shed and then scooped out a fistful of money from the lockbox. Turning away, he stalked toward his horse with Clint following behind. “Don't worry, Clint. This ain't the stagecoach's money. Lester watches everyone and everything that passes through here and he tells anyone what he knows, so long as the price is right.”

Suddenly, a woman screamed. Clint pivoted on the balls of his feet and saw Lester bring up a shotgun that must have been hidden beneath his window. Tumen ended that threat with a quick jab that went straight through the clerk's window and pounded squarely against his nose. Lester, his shotgun, and even some of his money flew back from the window and landed upon the floor.

The bounty hunter glanced over his shoulder and muttered, “He must've just gotten that shotgun. About time, I suppose.”

“So men pay for Lester to tell them which stages to rob?” Clint asked.

“Yeah. How do you think a robber's gonna know which stage is worth the trouble? But Jesse is one of Kyle Morrow's men, and if he knows that there are a few pretty ladies on one stage, he'll run right after 'em.”

“But they were after us,” Clint explained. “They're after Lylah.”

Eddie patted Clint's shoulder and said, “I know how these assholes think. Even if some men are still trying to hunt you two down, Morrow ain't about to miss an opportunity to get a few ladies to sell. Do you know how much something like that's worth? Seein' as how he already paid Lester for the information, I don't see why he wouldn't act on it.”

If anyone could think like a piece of shit kidnapper, it was Eddie Sanchez. “All right,” Clint said. “Let's go.”

The trail to Salt Lake City was a long one, and there were bound to be plenty of stops along the way. Fortunately, Clint didn't need to know about every stop. All he needed to keep in mind was that a stage would use the main trails and that it would be headed north. According to Lylah's map, that wasn't exactly the direction in which he needed to go, but Clint wasn't about to let Kyle Morrow's gang steal any more innocent women just for the sake of keeping a schedule.

Eclipse led the way on a race that ran for miles along a barren stretch of the Arizona Territories. Dusty winds scratched Clint's face like a set of jagged nails. A harsh sun glared down at them to scorch the backs of their necks and send rivers of sweat rolling down all three men's faces. Lylah kept her cheek pressed against Clint's shoulder as her hair whipped in every direction.

The longer they rode, the more Clint wondered if he'd made the right decision. Even if Morrow's men were going after a stage, getting to them might not do as much good as getting to Morrow himself. And since Kyle Morrow was the one responsible for killing Madeline Gerard, there was no telling what else he was capable of. Putting a stop to a man like that might just take precedence over going after anyone else.

Clint didn't like it when he had too much time to think about something like that. With nothing but empty trail ahead of him and clear blue sky overhead, his mind was allowed to wander a little too much. That was brought to a stop when he and the others cleared a rise that allowed them to see the next couple of miles stretch out in front of them like a map that had been rolled out and laid upon the floor.

“That's them,” Eddie shouted as he waved toward the dust cloud in the distance. “Gotta be!”

Clint shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked ahead. The dust that had been kicked up hung in the sky like a dirty stain, marking the spot where several horses had converged upon a wagon. Judging by the size and shape of that wagon, Clint was certain it was a stagecoach. Rather than try to scream at the bounty hunter over the thunder of the horses' hooves, Clint nodded and tapped his heels against Eclipse's sides. The Darley Arabian poured some more steam into his strides and tore up the trail as if he was on a mission. The other two kept up, but just barely.

Distances might have been hard to gauge in such open country, but Clint, Eddie, and Tumen were riding fast enough to close the gap between them and the stagecoach without much difficulty. With the dust settling around the stagecoach, it was obvious that it was no longer moving. The only problem was that there was no way to get to the stagecoach without being seen from a long ways off. If the horsemen circling the wagon truly did belong to Morrow's gang, that was probably just what they'd been counting on.