Kid Calhoun (4 page)

These men were a strange lot, but over the past three years that she had ridden with them, Anabeth had learned to endure their foibles and appreciate their good qualities. Few though they might be.

Reed’s eyes skipped beyond Anabeth, and she turned to see what had attracted his attention. Wat Rankin. Rankin was of average height and weight, but he had a face that, once seen, was unforgettable. Anabeth perused the man as he rode up and tried to decide what it was about Rankin that made her dislike and distrust him.

His eyes
. They had the slitted, too-close look of inbred Tennessee hill folk.

His mouth
. It was so small that his toothy grin appeared almost ghoulish.

His chin
. A deep cleft split it, making him look as though someone had hit him as a child, breaking his face in two.

His hair
. Blond and baby fine, it was obviously a source of pride to the man. He kept an ivory comb in his pocket and used it often.

His voice
. Too smooth, too confident. He sounded more like someone used to giving orders, not taking them. Which only added to Anabeth’s anxiety. Why had he joined the gang? What did he really want?

“Sorry I’m late,” Wat said with an ingratiating smile.

“If you want to stay a part of the Calhoun Gang, this had better be the last time,” Booth warned.

Anabeth was surprised at the harshness of her uncle’s voice. She watched Wat’s mouth pinch shut, but he said, “Sure, Booth. Whatever you say.”

“Now that you’re here we can talk about who does what.”

The gang gathered round as Booth knelt and picked up a stick to draw in the dirt. He outlined where each of the men was to wait for the stage, when the chase would begin, and how it would end.

“I don’t want any killing,” Booth said. “Pick your shots if you have to shoot at all.” Anabeth realized that such an announcement had to be for Wat’s benefit. The rest of the gang knew Booth’s feelings. The law wasn’t as likely to come after robbers as it was to come after killers. Consequently, Anabeth hadn’t seen much blood shed over the past three years.

“Anybody got any questions?” Booth asked when he was done.

“I have one,” Wat said.

“What?”

“After we get the gold, what happens then?”

“We meet back here and divide it up.”

Anabeth was aware of a conscious shifting among the outlaws. They looked at each other and then at Wat, who nodded almost imperceptibly. Anabeth wondered if Booth had seen the same thing she had.
What’s going on here?
she wondered.

“Fine,” Wat said.

But it wasn’t fine, Anabeth realized as she studied Rankin’s face. Why was Wat lying? What had that surreptitious nod to the others meant?

“Let’s get moving!” Booth said.

Once they were on horseback, Anabeth had a hard time getting close to Booth. One or the other of the outlaw gang always seemed to get in her way. Reed stopped her to tell her a story. Solano took time to admire her horse. Grier and Teague had an argument and involved her in it.

Anabeth began to feel frantic. Something was desperately wrong. She needed to speak privately with
Booth, to warn him of her suspicions. Before she knew it, they had topped a rise, and dust from the stage could be seen in the distance.

“Remember what you have to do,” Booth said. He flashed a warning look at Anabeth and said, “Kid, you stay out of the line of fire.”

“Booth, I need to talk to you—”

It was too late. Booth had already pulled his bandanna up to cover his face and kicked his horse into a gallop. Anabeth turned and sought out the newest member of the gang. She felt the hairs stand up on her neck. Her heart missed a beat.

Wat Rankin was wearing his ghoulish smile. And he held his Colt in his hand.

“Is that your wife?”

Sam Chandler looked up from the worn daguerreotype in his hand. His eyes narrowed as he studied the greenhorn sitting across from him on the stagecoach. A Western man would have known better than to ask questions of a stranger, but things had changed some in the years since the War Between the States. The West was rife with pilgrims seeking adventure. Sam’s inborn courtesy prodded him to indulge the young man’s curiosity. “Yes, it’s my wife.”

The Eastern gentleman reached for the photograph. “May I see it?”

Reluctantly, Sam relinquished the picture of Claire.

The young man had difficulty holding the picture steady in the swaying stagecoach but finally announced, “She’s very beautiful. Have you been married long?”

Sam responded “Ten years” in his most forbidding voice. Unfortunately, the tinhorn wasn’t deterred.

“Any children?” the man asked.

Sam swallowed over the sudden thickness in his throat. “A son.”

“How old is he?”

The Easterner could have no idea what agony his questions conjured. Sam felt like doing violence to the man, but forced himself to answer, “Jeff will be—would be—nine next month.” Then, in a snarl intended to silence the tinhorn once and for all, “He was stolen by Apaches three years ago.”

The young man was more curious them ever but chary of offending the now dangerous-looking cowboy. He muttered to himself, “I thought that sort of thing only happened in storybooks.”

Sam turned away to stare out the window. The memories were all too real. He had taken Jeff with him on the roundup, even though his six-year-old son was too young to be of much help. He and several cowhands had been working at the head of a box canyon branding cattle. Jeff had ridden his pony a short distance away, following the trail of a horned toad in the sand. The shrieking savages had appeared from nowhere and were gone just as suddenly. They had taken Jeff with them.

Sam hadn’t been able to face Claire and tell her their son was a captive of the savages. They had both been witness to the recovery of another rancher’s son, thirteen-year-old James Tripley, who had lived among the Apache for four years. During the time the white boy had been gone, he had become a savage himself.

The parents who had welcomed their long-lost son with tears of joy and open arms had been found the next morning murdered and scalped. The Tripley boy had disappeared. Claire had been one of the women who helped prepare the bodies for burial. He had never forgotten the ashen look on her face when she had stepped into his arms after coming out of the house.

So he had lied to her about what had happened to
Jeff. He had told her Jeff was dead. And hoped against hope that he could recover the boy before Jeff adopted the Apache way of life. If Sam had found Jeff within the first few weeks or months of his capture, he knew Claire would forgive him for the lie. And if not … Their son was lost to them anyway.

Sam had never stopped looking for Jeff, but over the past three years he had seen no sign of his son. As far as Claire knew, Jeff was buried in that lonesome canyon. Sam bore alone the burden of knowing that his son—if he was still alive—was slowly but surely becoming a bloodthirsty savage.

He and Claire had not grieved together, but they had grieved. Were both still grieving, to tell the truth. But not for much longer, if Sam had his way.

With the gold he had just received from the sale of fifteen hundred head of prime Window Rock cattle Sam hoped to take Claire north to Montana. There they could make a new start in a place where there were no painful memories. Maybe he could somehow, someday, erase the tragic look from her eyes.

The young man’s voice intruded on Sam’s thoughts.

“The stories I’ve heard about the savages … are they true?”

Sam’s green eyes turned stony. “Don’t know what you’ve heard. Likely the truth is worse.”

“Will I be safe out here?”

Sam snorted. “Safe as any greenhorn can be.”

The young man puffed up instantly at this affront. He pulled a shiny derringer from his vest pocket. “I’ll have you know I’m well prepared to defend myself.”

“Put that away,” Sam said. “Don’t ever pull a gun unless you intend to use it because, believe me, out here the other gent will.”

“Now look here, you—” The Easterner was thrown back against the seat as the stage lurched forward,
tilting precariously as it suddenly accelerated over the bumpy trail. The driver shouted curses at the lagging team, and a thunderous boom sounded just over their heads.

The Easterner’s eyes went wide with terror. “What was that? What’s going on?” He started to lean out the window, but Sam yanked him back.

“Stick your nose out that window and you’re liable to get it shot off.”

“Do you mean to say we’re being attacked?” The young man’s face was frozen in a look of astonishment so absurd it made Sam laugh.

“Surely in one of those storybook novels you’ve read, a stage has been held up,” Sam said with a wry twist of his mouth.

“Why, most certainly. But I never—That is I—Do you mean to say we’re being held up?”

“Looks that way.”

“We’ll be killed!”

Sam’s mouth flattened into a determined line. “Not if I can help it.”

The tinhorn gaped when Sam unrolled the saddle blanket on the seat beside him to reveal a Colt .45 Peacemaker. Sam methodically checked the weapon to make sure it was loaded and added a sixth bullet to the chamber under the hammer that was usually left empty.

Then Sam took aim out the window at one of the pursuing outlaws and fired. He smiled grimly as the Easterner jumped a foot off the seat at the noise from the blast.

Sam hadn’t time to comfort the terrified young man. He concentrated instead on firing at the gang of outlaws chasing them. His eyes narrowed with satisfaction as a heavy-set bearded man clutched his shoulder and abandoned the chase.

The outlaws fell back out of sight so that Sam
would have had to expose himself to be able to get a good shot at them. The stage seemed to be pulling away from the following horde. He felt a surge of excitement as he realized they were going to escape.

Suddenly he heard a warning shout from the driver, and all hell broke loose. The stagecoach careened sharply and Sam didn’t have time to brace himself before the coach began to roll. His head slammed against the side panel, his foot caught under the seat, and his shoulder bounced off the tinhorn’s back as the two of them were tossed and pitched like marbles in the belly of the stagecoach.

When the coach stopped, it took Sam a moment to get his bearings. The traces had broken when the coach rolled, and the horses were long gone. The stage had landed on its side, and the door was above him. His shoulder felt bruised, but he didn’t seem to be seriously hurt. He leaned down to check on the tinhorn and saw at once from its awkward angle that the man’s arm was broken.

“Can you move?” he asked.

The Easterner groaned. “I’m hurt.”

“I know you’re hurt. Can you move?”

To his credit, the tinhorn made an effort and, though pasty-faced, managed to get to his feet. Sam looked at the distance up to the door and worried how he was going to get the injured man out of the coach. Though it was questionable whether they ought to get out. Sam heard horses approaching and realized that he had lost his Colt in the tumble.

He made a quick search but hadn’t located his gun when he heard, “You inside the coach, come on out!”

“There’s an injured man in here,” Sam called back, stalling for time and frantically looking for his gun.

An instant later someone pulled open the door of the coach and stuck a shotgun inside. Finding his gun suddenly lost its importance. Further resistance was
useless now. At this distance, a smart man didn’t argue with buckshot.

When Snake peered over the edge of the coach, he was looking at two defenseless pigeons, ripe to be plucked. “Two men in here,” the outlaw said. “Both unarmed.”

Anabeth breathed a sigh of relief. At least there wasn’t going to be any more gunplay. Already this holdup was something out of the ordinary. Teague was tending to Grier, who had been shot high in the shoulder. She was appalled at the carnage that had been wreaked when the stagecoach overturned. Fortunately the traces had broken and the horses had escaped uninjured.

But the driver lay sprawled on the ground facedown, his neck broken on impact. Nearby, Reed held a rifle aimed at the shotgun rider, whose nose was bleeding. Anabeth was amazed that anyone inside the shattered stagecoach could have survived. As the two men were dragged out of the coach she realized they hadn’t escaped the ordeal unscathed.

The first man Snake and Whiskey pulled from the coach was obviously a greenhorn. Nobody else wore a vested suit, white collar and cuffs to travel out West. To be fair, the Easterner didn’t make too much fuss as he was hauled up out of the coach, even though it was immediately clear that his arm was broken.

His face had paled considerably by the time the second man, much larger and dressed in Western gear, joined him beside the overturned stagecoach. The Western man must be Sam Chandler. He was the one Wat had said would be carrying the gold.

Anabeth remained on horseback, as did Booth, Wat Rankin, and Solano. Anabeth was slightly behind the other three, who faced the two men from the coach.

Wat gestured with his gun and said, “Hands up!”

The Western man obeyed, but the tinhorn moaned and said, “I can’t. My arm’s broken.”

“Then raise your good hand,” Rankin snarled, aiming his gun at the greenhorn.

The Easterner blanched.

Booth turned to Rankin and said, “Put your gun away.” He waited until Rankin had holstered his weapon before turning back to the two men standing before him.

The tinhorn breathed a sigh of relief as he clutched his broken arm with his good hand.

For a man who was carrying as much money as Sam Chandler was supposed to have on him, Anabeth thought the rancher seemed particularly calm. It was more than that, she realized. Chandler seemed ready and willing to confront and defeat whatever challenge was presented to him. Anabeth hoped Booth would not underestimate him.

“You there,” Booth said to Chandler, “unbutton your shirt, nice and easy, and hand over that money belt you’re wearing.”

Anabeth saw surprise and then anger in Chandler’s face. Apparently he had been hoping the outlaws wouldn’t know he was carrying gold.