Trackdown (9781101619384) (11 page)

“Yeah, I thought the same thing,” Bill said. “But what if she fought ’em so hard they didn’t have a choice? She might’ve gotten her hands on a gun—”

“Let’s just go see,” Hartnett suggested.

That made sense. The body lay in the direction they were headed anyway.

Bill had been trying to pace them starting out, so the posse’s horses wouldn’t get worn out too soon. The outlaws already had a good lead, so catching them wasn’t going to be a matter of speed as much as it was of persistence.

Faced now with this grim discovery, Bill kicked his horse into a run and pulled out slightly ahead of the others. This wasn’t a trap, so he wasn’t worried about that. On these plains, a man could see for a mile or more in every direction, so there was no place for bushwhackers to hide.

As he came closer, a mixture of relief and apprehension flooded through him. The person lying sprawled on the ground was too bulky to be Eden, he realized. But Bill recalled now that Perry Monroe had galloped out of Redemption ahead of the posse, and so far they hadn’t seen any sight of him.

Until now. Bill saw something white moving and recognized it as Monroe’s long beard fluttering in the wind that sighed almost ceaselessly across the prairie.

He hauled his horse to a halt and was out of the saddle almost before the animal stopped moving. After running the last few feet, Bill dropped to his knees beside the still figure. Monroe lay on his back with his eyes closed. Bill looked for blood or other signs of a wound but didn’t see any.

“Is he breathing?” Hartnett called as he reined in. The other members of the posse were right behind him.

Bill thought his father-in-law’s barrel chest was rising and falling, but he laid a hand on it to be sure. When he felt definite movement against his palm, he glanced up at Hartnett, who had dismounted and come over to lean above them with his hands on his thighs.

“Yeah, he’s alive, thank God,” Bill said. “Looks like he’s just out cold.”

“Where’s his horse?”

That was a good question. Bill looked around and didn’t see the animal.

“I don’t know. Maybe Perry can tell us if we can bring him around. Anybody have any whiskey?”

Bill had told the members of the posse to bring guns, ammunition, and a good horse, but he suspected some of the men had slipped a flask or a bottle into their saddlebags as well. He wasn’t disappointed. Jesse Overstreet was actually the first one to speak up.

“I, uh, grabbed a bottle at the saloon before we started out, Marshal…”

“Get it,” Bill told the young cowboy.

Overstreet took the bottle from one of his saddlebags and brought it over. He pulled the cork from the neck with his teeth and handed the bottle to Bill.

Hartnett knelt on the other side of Monroe and lifted the storekeeper’s head. Bill put the mouth of the bottle against Monroe’s lips and tilted it so that some of the whiskey spilled into his mouth. More of it dribbled down the front of Monroe’s shirt.

“Uh…” Overstreet began.

Bill glanced up, figuring that Overstreet was going to say something about being careful with the whiskey and not spilling so much of it.

“Never mind,” Overstreet said hurriedly when he saw the look Bill gave him.

Monroe hadn’t responded so far, but when Bill got more of the whiskey in his mouth and Hartnett held him up so the fiery stuff went down his throat, he began to cough. His eyelids jerked and tried to open.

“Maybe we should have given him some water,” Hartnett suggested.

“Wouldn’t have brought him around as fast,” Bill said. “I want to find out what happened.”

After a minute or so, Monroe was able to open his eyes. He
looked up in confusion, squinting because the sun was in his face. Bill said, “Somebody hold a hat so it shades his eyes.”

One of the possemen complied. Monroe blinked a few more times, then his gaze settled on Bill.

“Wha…what happened?” he asked.

“That’s what I want you to tell me, Mr. Monroe,” Bill said. “We found you out here in the middle of the prairie, and your horse is nowhere around.”

Monroe coughed again, then said, “That…that damned nag! A snake spooked him…and he ran off with me! I tried…to stay in the saddle…Couldn’t do it…”

“You fell off?”

“Yeah. That’s…the last thing I remember.”

Bill wasn’t surprised. Perry Monroe was a townsman, seldom budging from Redemption, and the few times he had gone anywhere while Bill was around, he had taken a buggy. Bill wasn’t sure if he had ever seen Monroe on horseback. He had known right from the start, though, that it was a mistake for Monroe to charge off after those outlaws by himself like that. Some mishap was bound to occur.

Actually, thought Bill, Monroe getting thrown from a runaway horse wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the things that could have happened.

“Did you see the outlaws?” Bill asked. “Did you see Eden?”

“No. Never came…within sight of ’em.”

“How bad are you hurt?”

“Don’t know. Guess it knocked me out…when I fell. I don’t even know…how long I’ve been lyin’ here.”

It had been a while, Bill figured, since they weren’t really that far from the settlement. The accident must have occurred not long after Monroe left Redemption.

And they were wasting time now, Bill reminded himself. Now that Monroe had regained consciousness, he appeared to be all right for the most part, just shaken up. There was no telling where his horse was. Spooked like that, the animal could have run for several miles before stopping.

Bill looked around at the other members of the posse and said, “We need somebody to take Mr. Monroe back to Redemption.”

Monroe struggled to sit up and said, “Take me back! I…I’m goin’ with you boys—”

“No, you’re not,” Bill told him. “For one thing, we don’t know how bad you’re really hurt, and for another, your horse is gone and we don’t have time to look for him. I hate to lose a man so soon, but we don’t have any choice.” Bill faced the posse again, ignoring his father-in-law’s sputtered protests. “How about it?”

For a long moment, none of the men said anything. Then Leo Kellogg spoke up.

“I hate to say it, Marshal, but I came along because I was so angry at those outlaws I couldn’t hardly see straight. But now that I consider it, I’m not sure how much of an asset I’d be. I’ve never ridden much, and I’m not a very good shot. I was already thinking that maybe I made a mistake…”

“I appreciate you bein’ honest enough to say that, Mr. Kellogg,” Bill told the tailor. “And I’m mighty glad you came along because now you can see to it that Mr. Monroe gets back to town all right. The two of you ought to be able to ride double on your horse for that far.”

“Yes, of course,” Kellogg agreed.

“And when you get there, have that fella Morley check him over.”

“The bartender from the Prairie Queen?”

“I reckon he’s the closest thing Redemption’s got to a doctor right now.”

Bill glanced around at the other men and started to ask if it was all right with them for Kellogg to take Monroe back to town, but then he caught himself. He didn’t need to ask their permission. He was the leader of this posse, and he had to remember that. There might come a time when hard decisions had to be made, and he was going to be the one to make them.

“I still say I could come with you fellas,” Monroe said as Bill and Hartnett got him on his feet and helped him climb into the saddle on Kellogg’s horse.

“No offense, sir, but you’d just slow us down,” Bill told him.

Monroe frowned, and Bill knew he’d offended his father-in-law, no matter how he’d prefaced the remark.

Well, better that than risking catching up with the outlaws too late to save Eden, Bill thought. He would offend anybody if it meant saving his wife.

Hell, he’d go right through anybody if it meant saving Eden…

Kellogg climbed onto the horse behind Monroe and took the reins when Hartnett handed them to him.

“Good luck,” he said. “I hope you find them.”

“We’ll find them,” Bill said. “You can count on that.”

And if anything happened to Eden, he would kill every last son of a bitch who’d had anything to do with it.

You could count on that, too.

Virgie didn’t want to leave her parents’ house. She would have been content to stay there and fuss over her father all evening.

Tom was tired and hungry, though, and eventually he persuaded her to return home with him and prepare some supper for them.

Their house was only a couple of blocks away, much smaller than the ostentatious dwelling where her parents lived but still a nice, neat frame home with whitewashed walls. Tom led his horse as he and Virgie walked toward it through the dusk.

“I still think you should have gone with the posse,” she said without looking at him.

“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Tom told her. “I’m needed here.”

“For what?”

Tom looked over at her then, and she went on, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant that there’s no reason you couldn’t be gone for a couple of days.”

“I’m working with that gray stallion out at the ranch.”

“It would still be there when you got back.”

“And it might be for more than just a couple of days,” Tom said. “I’ve heard of posses chasing outlaws for a week or more. Maybe as long as a month.”

“That would be all right, if it was necessary.”

“You wouldn’t miss me if I was gone that long?”

“Of course I would,” Virgie said, but Tom didn’t think she sounded like she meant it at all.

She wouldn’t have a chance to miss him if he was gone for a month. She’d be busy with her lover the whole time.

“Anyway, there’s no point in talking about it,” he said. “The posse’s already gone, and by now they’re a long way from Redemption. I couldn’t catch up to them, and I’m not going to try. I’m afraid you’re still stuck with me.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

He shrugged, making it clear that he didn’t care how she would put it.

When they reached the house, Tom led the horse around back to the shed, unsaddled it, gave it a good rubdown, and made sure there was grain and water for the animal. When he went through the back door into the kitchen, he saw that the stove was still cold and Virgie was nowhere to be seen.

Unlike her parents’ house, this one had only one story. Tom went through the kitchen, along a corridor, and into their bedroom. The lamp wasn’t lit, but enough gray light remained outside for him to see Virgie as she pulled a nightgown over her head and let it drop around her body.

He caught a glimpse of the clean, sleek lines of her figure and felt an instant reaction inside himself. He didn’t want to react that way to her—things would a lot simpler if he just didn’t give a damn—but he still did and he couldn’t help it.

“After everything that’s happened today I’m just worn out,” she said. “I think I’m going to bed.”

“What about supper?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“That’s not what I—”

Tom stopped short. What was the point in explaining what he’d meant? It wouldn’t make any difference to her.

“All right, go ahead and turn in,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She didn’t say anything. He turned, closed the bedroom door behind him, and went back to the kitchen. There were some biscuits left over from breakfast. They might be a little dry, but he could wash them down with whiskey from the bottle he kept in the spare bedroom where he slept most nights.

As suppers went these days, it wouldn’t be too bad.

He just needed to be careful not to drink too much. If he sank too deeply into a stupor, he wouldn’t hear Virgie when she went to sneak out.

And then he couldn’t follow her to her latest rendezvous with Ned Bassett.

Mordecai Flint shifted a little on the cot, trying to get comfortable. He knew that wasn’t going to be possible, but instinct made him try anyway.

The whiskey he’d drunk earlier in the day had dulled the pain in his arm to a certain extent. That apron from the Prairie Queen who’d patched him up had said that he ought to have some laudanum and even hinted that he could supply it, but Mordecai had turned that down flat. He was the only law in Redemption right now, and he couldn’t afford to be doped up.