Mary Connealy (95 page)

“Like as not his partner ran for the hills. It’s a cowardly bunch that rides the outlaw trail.”

“They struck me as a savvy bunch. I’ll ride you out to that canyon sometime. Hard to believe a man ever found it.”

“If they were real savvy, they’d be honest. Being a rustler is just plain stupid.”

“Well, I’m not saying they’re wise, but they just might be smart. I think we need to stay on edge all night. I’ll feel better when we’ve had a chance to question the prisoner a little better.”

“Well, he’s asleep for the night. He’s cut up and so exhausted from being hauled over a horse for two days that he ain’t makin’ no sense.” Nodding, the sheriff said, “In the meantime, let’s see if one of these posters looks enough like him to give us a name.”

Red’s neck still felt cold, like God in heaven was sending a warning. He bent over the posters but kept his ears wide open.

Sid rode side by side with Boog, and the moon was high in the sky by the time they reached the sleeping town. A light shone in the window of the sheriff’s office. Sid nodded toward it. “Sheriff Dean must be keeping watch.”

Boog muttered in the cool spring night, “Looks to be the only light in town.”

“Let’s circle around. Come in through the back. You still got that key that works on most doors, Boog?”

“I got it.”

“Then let’s go in quiet, get the jump on the sheriff, then knock him cold and leave him in a cell. No shooting if we can help it.

We’ll be in and out before he knows we’re there.”

Pulling their kerchiefs over their faces, the two men circled like patient vultures. There was no sign of life anywhere in town. It was long after midnight and even the Golden Butte had closed up.

Sid saw a dim light showing under the back door of the jail. Sid had made a point to know the layout of every building in Divide he could gain access to, always planning for a robbery or escape. He silently swung down off his roan and hitched him beside Boog’s gray mustang and the horse for Harv.

They moved toward the door. Boog quietly produced the key he’d filed down until it would open all but the most expensive locks. The jail hadn’t bothered with expensive.

The lock gave with a single scratch of metal on metal. The door opened with an almost inaudible creak. Boog slipped in. Sid knew his saddle partner well and let Boog lead the way. The man knew more about sneakin’ and thievin’ than anyone Sid had ever known.

It was what Sid liked best about him.

“What’s that?” The voice coming from the front of the jail froze them in their tracks.

A second later, trying to be silent, they slipped out the back, and Boog swung the door shut. He turned the lock with aching slowness, and then they hurried into the shadows, pulling their horses along. An outcropping of rocks that edged the town about a hundred feet to the south was the nearest cover. Sid led his horse with Boog right behind him and they waited.

Looking carefully around the rocks, Sid saw the back door open.

Red Dawson poked his head out. The town parson.

Sid had seen the man once, right after he’d struck Mort down and taken the job. Hard to forget the preacher with his flaming red hair. Sid had heard of the Dawson ranch, too. A well-run operation, and he knew of Cassie Griffin Dawson because the Sawyers used that fancy, neglected Griffin house as a line shack. The older cowpokes on the Sawyer place liked swapping stories about what a worthless, no-account Lester Griffin had been and how beautiful and spoiled his wife was. The stories were laced with envy that Red had gotten her and apparently taken a firm hand, because now she was the hardworking-est woman any of them had ever seen.

Boog nudged Sid then spoke in an almost silent whisper. “He’s who came into the canyon and took Harv. I could look back once I got myself clear. They had two men scale the cliffs outside the canyon and pin Harv down. Sharpshooters, the best riflemen I’ve ever seen. Probably fought in the War Between the States.”

Sid had fought in that, too. Then he’d stayed on and fought after Lee had surrendered because he’d gotten a taste for shooting men, and it suited Sid to take what he wanted. Let weaklings work for their bread.

“I wasn’t on watch, or they’d have had us both. I yelled to Harv to lay low and if they caught him I’d bust him out of jail; then I ran. I saw that red hair for sure.”

“Name’s Red Dawson,” Sid said. “He’s a rancher, but he’s the town parson, too.”

Boog grunted in disgust. “He must be staying the night with Sheriff Dean.”

“You sure it was him in the canyon? Preachers don’t run with riflemen.”

“This one does. Maybe he converts people by threatening to send them to Hades. It was him for sure. How could it be anyone else? You think there’s any chance someone else would offer to stay with Harv, someone with bright red hair?”

Dawson, the sheriff just behind him, stared into the darkness. It was too far to see Red’s eyes, but his whole body spoke of alertness. He wasn’t going to let Harv go without a fight.

“Let’s ease back and wait ’em out.” Sid thought of the long, brutally hard day of work he’d had and another one coming tomorrow. He needed that gold. He was sick of breaking a sweat to earn a living. But to just go charging in there with guns blazing would bring the whole town down on them. “They’ll be easier to take when they’re asleep.”

Sid and Boog faded a bit farther under the trees and settled in.

“I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep. You can spell me later.” Boog sat and leaned his back against a tree so he could keep an eye on the back door.

Sid dozed until Boog jarred his arm. “It’s gettin’ on toward daybreak. We’ve gotta move on the jail now or forget it.”

“Let’s go.” Both men pulled their handkerchiefs up and eased forward in a silence so thick the hoot owls didn’t even breach it.

Boog led the way back to the rear entrance of the jail. Again he unlocked the door with his filed-down key. They stepped into the quiet murmur of voices and the loud roar of Harv’s snoring. Sid stayed close. Despite the narrow confines of the hall running along the front of the two cells, with Dawson and the sheriff to deal with, it was a two-man job now.

The hall was about two feet wider than the door leading to where the sheriff and Dawson sat talking. Slipping up that hall, the sight of the iron bars sent a chill up Sid’s spine. He’d cheated prison so far, and he had no intention of ever spending a night in jail. If he ever found himself cornered by the law, he’d decided long ago to go down guns blazing rather than be locked in a cage like an animal.

Harv lay snoring in the cell farthest forward; the other cage was empty and its door stood slightly ajar.

Sid didn’t wake him, afraid the cessation of the deep roar of Harv’s sleep might be the same as sounding an alarm. Sid ducked behind the slightly ajar door and peeked through the crack between the door and the frame.

The sheriff sat there, hands behind his head, feet propped up on his desk with the ankles crossed, talking cattle. Dawson’s chair was closer to Sid. He sat just inside the door, holding a cup of coffee in both hands, rocking his chair on its back legs.

Sid knew his blow to Dawson’s head had to be brutally hard. Sid wanted him down and out with one quick move. Whether Dawson survived the strike or not didn’t matter much. A witness could bring trouble. Then Sid would get the drop on the sheriff and tie him up. Hoping to avoid the noise of gunfire, Sid knew he’d shoot ’em both, grab Harv, and run if he had to.

Sid glanced at Boog then drew his gun and turned it so the butt end was forward. Boog nodded, understanding Sid’s plan. Dawson’s chair swayed as he sipped his coffee.

Raising the gun butt, Sid prepared to storm into the room and strike.

Dawson stood suddenly.

Sid whirled his gun around to take aim.

“I might as well get some sleep. It’ll be dawn in a few minutes.”

The sheriff lowered his hands and took his feet down off his desk. “I’ll make it the rest of the night.”

“Just remember he had a partner. Someone out there knows we caught him and could be looking.”

“I appreciate the company. Stop by before you head out of town and we’ll try and get some information out of him.” Dawson left without a backward glance, and the sheriff settled back into his reclining position at his desk.

Sid and Boog exchanged glances; then, less than a minute after Red’s exit, a soft snoring sound came from the front. Boog’s cold eyes gleamed. He slipped through the door into the sheriff’s front office.

Sid heard the dull
thud
of something hard striking flesh and bone.

Boog backed into the room, dragging a bleeding sheriff by his feet.

Enough light came from a single lantern in the sheriff’s office that Sid saw the trail of blood. Vicious satisfaction uncurled in Sid to think of hurting any lawman. They were the enemy. “Harv, wake up.”

Dropping Dean’s feet, Boog went back up front and returned with a key hanging from an iron ring as big around as a saucer.

“Sid, that you?” Harv sat up, groggy but jumping to his feet the second his eyes focused.

With a rasp of metal, Boog unlocked the barred door.

Harv rushed out.

“Let’s go. Get clear of town fast.” Sid led the way. The three of them scurried through the night to the horses—they’d brought a spare for Harv from the M Bar S.

The three of them kept to the woods as they swung a wide circle around the town. “You and Boog go stay at the Griffin place. As soon as Boog is healed up, he can come back in. No one’s paying too close a mind to who’s there working because of Wade being back. He don’t know how things were before. So no one’s gonna notice you gone for awhile longer. Harv, you might need to lay low until I get shed of Wade and that wild woman he brought home.”

Staring out of the thick trees of the rugged mountainside Sid studied the trail. It would split about two miles ahead—one trail well traveled, leading to the Sawyer place, and the other only a faint depression in the grass heading toward the abandoned Griffin house.

“The going gets hard in the woods from here on.” Sid nodded at the tumbled stretch of slippery shale ahead. “Let’s get on the trail. We won’t meet up with anyone out this late.”

“Hold it.” Boog’s quiet voice stopped Sid. “Look down the trail.”

In the gray of predawn, Sid heard more than saw someone approaching from the direction of the Sawyers’. “A bunch of riders.”

Harv spoke up. “I heard Red Dawson sent men out to the Sawyer place and every other ranch around. He told ’em to put out the word that he’d brung in rustled cattle and to come claim their stock. The Sawyers must be sending a party into Divide to fetch their cows.”

Either Sid’s eyes adjusted or the sky lightened or both, because he could make out one blazing white head in the midst of five riders. An unmistakable head of hair. That wild woman was riding with them.

“There’s that woman.” Harv had a hungry tone to his voice.

Sid didn’t like the sound. He’d gotten to thinking of that untamed woman as his. “Keep quiet until they pass.”

As the group rode closer, following the trail, Sid realized they’d come within fifty feet of where he hid with Boog and Harv. He could take them now. With Boog’s gun and Harv’s and his own, they could end it in a blaze of bullets, then ride to the ranch, get rid of Mort, and settle into the Sawyer place right away.

“Don’t do it.” Boog must have read his mind. Sid looked sideways and Boog nodded at the group of riders. “That’s the saltiest bunch on the Sawyer place, and look, the woman—she heard something.”

“Quiet!” Sid hissed.

The wild woman stopped. She sat on a barebacked pinto mare that few at the M Bar S ever rode because she was so feisty. The horse paused without any visible direction from that wildflower on her back, almost as if the horse had read her mind. The woman turned and stared into the woods straight into Sid’s eyes.

He knew she couldn’t see him. The woods were too thick, and with the barely lightening sky, the forest was impenetrably dark.

Impossible.

But those eyes. Chills sprang up on Sid’s arms. Her eyes crawled over him then glanced left and right as if she not only saw him but made out Boog and Harv, too.

All three of them sat their horses motionlessly. Even their mounts seemed frozen as if they knew danger lay in the slightest movement.

At last, as the Sawyer hands left her behind, the wildflower looked forward and her horse, as if the two were one creature, started walking again.

Spooky, that woman. Seeing into the dark, maybe seeing into Sid’s mind.

After the Sawyer riders vanished from sight on the winding trail to Divide, the trio stayed still.

“It’s safe.” Boog urged his mount forward. “Let’s go.”

Deciding to trust Boog, because Sid was tempted to stay hidden for a good long time, the three moved on.

“I’ll be in by the weekend. My arm’s almost healed up and I’m sick of sitting around. Should have spent the last few days driving those cattle south into Idaho. Now we’ve lost ’em.” They reached the fork in the road and Boog paused. “Maybe we oughta cut out of here, Sid, and go collect that gold. It’s been long enough for those Indians to bury their dead and go home.”