Red Moon (18 page)

“I sure hope you're talking about a warm fire and some hot coffee,” Tillis said over his shoulder.

“I am,” the Ranger said. He looked at Tillis as they turned their mounts onto the rocky hillside.

They let the horses find their footing and climb toward the ledge, both animals appearing to know instinctively where shelter lay waiting for them out of the rain.

“Did we get lucky or did you know this place was here?” Tillis asked over his shoulder as they managed to ride their horses all the way up and under the overhang. Behind them the wind grew stronger, the lightning brighter in the failing evening light as the two stepped down from the horses and led the animals farther away from the edge.

“We got lucky, I suppose,” Sam replied. He wasn't going to reveal anything about himself or his trail-craft by telling Tillis he had spotted the overhang an hour earlier, searching it out for shelter when it was little more than a black spot on the hillside.

“Sometimes luck overrules knowledge,” Tillis said. He stood looking at his cuffed wrists while the Ranger took out the lantern and the dry kindling the townsmen had left with them. The Ranger nodded toward a blackened circle on the dusty stone floor where others had made camp under the overhang. Beyond it lay some limbs and brush.

“Get us some wood while I strike up this kindling,” Sam said. He watched Tillis walk over, gather the limbs and return with them. He laid the wood down and stepped back and looked at his wrists again.

“I don't want to sound like a worrier,” he said. “But I hope Gans Bradford did give you the keys to these cuffs. I didn't see him do it.”

“He did,” Sam said, listening closely and offering no more on the matter than what he'd been asked.

“Good,” said Tillis. He paused for a moment, then said, “And I suppose you have that key in a safe place, of course?”

“Of course,” the Ranger said flatly, listening, weighing Tillis' possible reasons for asking such questions.

“Okay, I can see you don't want to talk about it,” Tillis said. “So I'm not going to ask you
where
, because I know you'll take it the wrong way. But suppose,
through no fault of mine
, something happened to you. Things being as they are, look at the fix I'd be in.”

“If I were you, I'd do my best to make sure nothing
does
happen to me, things being as they are,” the Ranger said, giving him a look.

The Ranger had laid the blanket he'd gotten in Trade City just outside the small circle of firelight, into the darkness farther back in the overhang. On the other side of the fire, Foster Tillis had done the same thing, a common caution among lawmen, Sam noted to himself. But after an hour, still awake, he waited and listened until he heard snoring from Tillis' side of the fire. Then he left his blanket folded against his saddle, crawled away—in case Tillis was feigning sleep—and took up a position standing back along the inner stone wall.

Before another hour had passed, he heard the roan grumbling and grousing under its breath. Beside the roan, the coach horse stood still and quiet without a care in the world as a silhouette stepped silently into sight against the gray night. The Ranger watched coolly as a hand reached out and tried to settle the roan. But the roan would have none of it, and the silhouette moved away, circled wide around the fire toward his blanket on the stone floor.

Sam watched and eased forward from the shadows as a hand holding a gun rose, the black silhouette moving closer toward his saddle and blanket. But all at once the silhouette froze, seeing the empty blanket outside the circle of firelight.

“Uh-oh,” the voice said quietly, seeing the mistake. But it was too late.

Sam sprang forward, threw his arm around the silhouette's neck from behind, stuck his Colt against the side of the person's head and held tight.

“Drop the gun or go down with it,” he said.

The seriousness of his voice left no room for question. The big gun fell to the stone floor with a loud clank.

“Don't shoot, Ranger! It's me, Jenny Lynn!” the silhouette said fast, her voice shaking. “The gun is dropped, see?”

Sam, hearing Tillis thrash and rise quickly to his feet, swung the woman around to face Tillis.

“Here she is, Tillis,” Sam said, making it up as he went. “Just like you told me she would be.”

“Foster, you bastard,” Jenny Lynn shouted. “You told him I was coming?”

Tillis slumped and shook his head.

“Jesus, no, Jenny Lynn! I didn't tell him, but you just did,” he said, sounding disappointed in her. “He was lying, reaching for anything he could.”

“He didn't tell you I was coming for him, Ranger?” Jenny Lynn said, sounding confused.

“Not in so many words, ma'am,” said the Ranger. “But he told me.” He lowered the gun from her head and uncocked it. “He's been telling me all day somebody's coming for him. I just didn't realize it was you.”

He turned her loose after running his hand up and down her rain slicker for any other gun. As she stepped away with her hands raised, Sam stooped and picked up the bone-handled Colt he'd last seen in the satchel along the edge of floodwater.

“Well, well, look who's here,” he said, looking at the Colt, turning it in his hand.

“I don't want you to get the wrong idea here, Ranger,” said Tillis, moving quick, trying to salvage whatever he could from the failed attempt at freeing him. “She wasn't going to shoot you. Were you, Jenny?”

“No, I wasn't,” the woman said straight-faced.

The Ranger just watched and listened, hefting the bone-handled Colt in his hand.

“The gun is nothing more than an inducement—a stage prop if you will,” she said. “What I was getting ready to do was awaken you, threaten you with the gun and make you take the cuffs off him. But I wouldn't have shot you, I promise.”

“That's comforting to know,” said the Ranger.

“Ranger, I know there's no way for me to prove it now,” the woman said. “But I so hope you'll take my word for it.”

“What's your play in all this?” the Ranger asked.

“Well—” she said, fishing for a place to start explaining herself. “I'm not a dove, as I was pretending to be.” She gave Tillis a glance, then looked back at the Ranger. “I'm what Mr. Pinkerton calls a lady operative. We sort of fill in where—”

“How'd you get here?” Sam asked before she finished.

“I arrived by horse, Ranger,” she said, looking at him as if he should already know that answer.

“A buckskin horse?” he asked, sounding confident in what he said.

She looked trapped, worried.

“Well . . . yes, in fact it is,” she said.

“You stole it from Trade City right before the twister hit there,” the Ranger said.

“Actually, she did not,” said Tillis. “I acquired the horse.”

“Stole it,” the Ranger corrected.

“
Acquired
,” Tillis insisted. “But have it your way.” He dismissed his actions with a shrug. “What else could I do? We're in pursuit of a robber—a killer, in fact. We had to have a horse. We had no money to purchase one. I would have returned it afterward, or given the owner a purchase voucher on behalf of—”

“So you're horse thieves,” Sam said bluntly, getting tired of hearing him justify what he'd done.

“I wouldn't say we're horse thieves, per se,” said Tillis.

“But the man in Trade City whose horse you stole would say you are,”
the Ranger replied.

“Please, Ranger, let's not split hairs over this,” said Tillis.

“I can take the two of you there so you can settle whether or not you're horse thieves,
per se
,” the Ranger said. “Mexico doesn't hang horse thieves. Instead they horsewhip you and stick you in prison for a few years, let you think about what you did, decide how you might have done it different.”

The two looked at each other. Tillis took a breath and tried to release the tension in the air.

“My goodness, I ask you,” he said, “how did things ever get so messed up? Where did we go so far apart on things?”

“I can tell you.” Sam looked at them, not about to let them off the hook. “It all started when you posed yourselves to me as a hardware drummer and a saloon dove instead of being honest.”

“All right,” said Tillis. “I admit it was a mistake, not being honest with a fellow lawman. But we had spent so long, worked so hard. I had gotten so close to Orez, I couldn't risk letting anyone know who we are.”

“How close were you, considering he nearly beat you to death?” Sam asked.

“Something went wrong, Ranger,” Tillis said. “Things that wouldn't concern you.”

“Good enough,” the Ranger said with finality on the matter. “Come morning I'll hand the two of you to the
federales
at Picate, and I'll pick up Orez's trail and track him down.”

“You'll never find him,” Jenny Lynn put in quickly. “We know where he's going. You don't. You need to keep us with you.”

The Ranger shook his head. “I don't usually partner with people who come at me with guns in the middle of the night, then start seeing who can lie the quickest when I get the drop on them.”

“But, Ranger, we're not lying to you now,” Tillis said. “We've told you who we are, what we're doing here!”

“You haven't told me everything, Tillis,” the Ranger said.

“We have told you everything!” said Tillis. “I swear we have.”

“Be careful what you swear to,” the Ranger cautioned him. “If you swear you've told me everything, how are you going to convince me when you decide to add some things to it?”

•   •   •

In the night, the Ranger sat in the shadow of the overhang watching Foster Tillis' and Jenny Lynn's every move without them seeing whether or not his eyes were open. He'd purposely left the two seated beside the fire talking quietly, sorting things out between themselves. The Ranger had escorted them both to where she had left Audie Murtzer's stolen buckskin Morgan hitched along the trail. Now the Morgan stood comfortably beside the roan and the coach horse that Tillis rode.

With his ear tuned to the roan, the Ranger managed to doze on and off, knowing that any attempt they made toward taking the horses and riding off in the night, the cross-natured roan would let him know right away. Besides, he reasoned to himself, Tillis wasn't going anywhere without first getting rid of the handcuffs.

Near dawn when the Ranger straightened and noted that the whispering conversation between the two had ceased, he stood up and walked to the fire.

“Time to go,” he said.

The two went about preparing their horses for the trail. Taking their silence to mean they had decided to leave the situation as it stood and say nothing more on the matter, the Ranger saddled the roan, gathered his belongings and stood waiting until the two led their horses onto the path down the side of the rocky hill.

Once mounted on the trail, they rode toward the hill town until the Ranger spotted the overturned buckboard lying off the trail down the steep hillside to their right. Strewn along the rocky slope, the iron strongboxes lay empty, their tops flung open. No sooner had the Ranger seen the wagon and the iron boxes than Tillis and the woman saw them too. They reined their horses up in front of the Ranger and stared down with solemn expressions.

“It looks like Wilson Orez decided to lighten the load,” the Ranger said. “He must've been getting ready to climb up into the Twisted Hills and disappear up into the Blood Mountains.”

Tillis and the woman looked at each other. After a moment, Tillis turned to the Ranger.

“It's foolish, the three us not working together to get Orez, Ranger Burrack,” he said, his stitched and puffy face appearing to be healing slightly.

“I agree,” the Ranger said, crossing his wrists on his saddle horn. “From everything I've seen of Orez, he'd be hard enough even for three of us.” The Ranger saw Tillis and Jenny Lynn give each other a guarded glance. He saw Jenny Lynn shake her head ever so slightly.

All right,
Sam told himself. He could wait.

He turned the roan back to the trail and gestured them forward in front of him. They rode on until, over an hour later, they stopped at a trail that turned off to the right and snaked across a flat stretch of desert floor to a long row of foothills leading up into a rugged mountain range. Behind them, the familiar black cloud had begun creeping forward at a quicker pace than it had traveled the night before. Pale lightning flicked at the far end of the earth.

“Here's the trail to Picate,” the Ranger said. As he spoke, in the near distance the three of them saw a column of uniformed Mexican soldiers riding in their direction. “If I'm lucky, maybe this patrol will take you off my hands. I can get back under way. Either way, you'll both be in Picate before evening. Odds are you'll both be in a cell waiting for beans and goat meat before nightfall.” He turned the roan toward the trail and gestured the two ahead of him. “They can send for Audie Murtzer in Trade City and have him come claim his stolen horse.”

Without a word, Jenny Lynn gave Sam a defiant look and started to turn her horse. But Tillis looked at the cuffs on his wrists and slumped on his horse's back.

“Hold it, Jenny,” he said. “I didn't come this far to end up in a Mexican prison for horse theft.”

“You've told him all we can tell him,” Jenny Lynn said.

“We both know that's not true,” said Tillis. He turned to the Ranger. “All right, Ranger, you want the truth, here it is.”

As Tillis spoke, the woman looked away, toward the storm closing in from the distant horizon.

“We both
really
are detectives with the Pinkerton Detective Agency,” Tillis said. “We both started searching for Wilson Orez over a year ago—a year and seven months to be exact.” He gave Jenny Lynn a glance. She only stared away more intently.

“I was working under cover,” Tillis said, “posing as a hardware drummer whose scheme was to sell stolen army guns and snake-head whiskey to the Indians. I managed to get closer to Wilson Orez than any lawman so far,” he said. “So close that he began paying me big money for information I could get on valuable rail and stage shipping coming across the border under the new trade agreement.”

Sam quietly watched him and listened, feeling as though the words out of Tillis' mouth this time would be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

“At first even taking money from him and setting up the jobs seemed like a surefire way for me to nail him any time I felt like it. Meanwhile I was hanging on to the money he gave me, telling myself, I should say
convincing
myself, that when the time came I would take him down, turn the money over to my superiors. My intentions were honorable. At first, in any case.”

The woman turned in her saddle, looked at him, then looked away.

“What he means is, until he started trusting me,” she said.

“I never said that, Jenny Lynn, and I wasn't going to,” said Tillis.

“It needs to be said,” the woman replied. “I was the one keeping tabs on the money, Ranger. I was the one to start spending it. At first, just on things I thought we needed to keep the case going—better food, better lodging. Then new clothes for myself. . . .” She let her words trail as she shook her head slowly. “It soon started adding up. I lost control of it.”