Authors: Johanna Lindsey
C
asey was probably as glad to see Coffeyville the next morning as Damian was. She preferred traveling alone. She couldn’t relax and be herself when she had to be constantly on guard. She couldn’t manage a quick bath if water was at hand. She couldn’t even see to nature’s needs without slinking off to hide, while her companions just found any old spot with no thought to who else was around. But she couldn’t get annoyed about the embarrassment it caused her, since they all thought she was one of them.
And that was her fault. Not that she went to any concerted effort to appear other than she was. It had never occurred to her when she left home that pretending to be a boy would make things easier on her.
She hadn’t exactly been looking for “easy” at the time, just the opposite actually, if she wanted to get her point proved soon. The only thing she had done was hack off her hair to shoulder-length, and only because, with the clothes she needed to wear for the trail, that long braid dan
gling down her back would have drawn more notice, and she’d never liked being the center of attention.
The male attire that she wore was necessary, suitable as it was for riding, which was how she did most of her traveling. But it was the thick woolen poncho that fooled folks, hiding all her bumps and curves. And she wore that by preference. The poncho, wide in front, was easier to lift out of the way to draw her weapon than a jacket would be. A jacket, typically shoved behind the gun before it was drawn, would sometimes fall forward again or get in the way, and that could be detrimental to one’s health.
So folks looked at her and, as tall as she was, just naturally assumed she was a boy. She saw no reason to change that misconception. It kept her from being bothered when in towns. It kept her prisoners from thinking they could take advantage of her because she was of the fairer sex. Funny; how they would have less problems accepting apprehension from a young boy than from a woman. But it was true. Some men just didn’t take women seriously at all.
If asked, she’d be honest. After all, she wasn’t masquerading, she was merely letting folks keep their first impressions. And if no one wanted to get too close to her, which might help that person notice things he otherwise wouldn’t, that wasn’t intentional either. That she stank a bit, well, there was a good reason for it.
She had to hunt her own food, and critters could sniff out humans too easily. Masking her scent she’d learned from her father. She could
occasionally get right on top of a critter that way, before it sensed danger.
Which was why Casey didn’t bother to wash her clothes unless she was staying in a town for more than a day, though she did bathe herself as often as possible. Right now, though, she knew she reeked, because her woolen poncho stank to high heaven every time after getting wet, and it had been drenched in the downpour the area had had a few days ago.
None of which would cause her any grief if she didn’t have company, but she did, and she’d been extremely embarrassed a number of times since Damian Rutledge III had walked into her camp.
She’d never met anyone who’d held her attention as much as that Easterner did. He was unusual, to be sure, a big man like that in such a fancy city suit, but he was too damn handsome, too. Brown hair so dark that it looked black in most lighting, broad cheekbones, a very arrogant slant to his jaw, and thick brows made his face very masculine, along with a sharply chiseled nose and a firm mouth. And he had piercing gray eyes that had given her pause more than once, in thinking he could see through to the real Casey.
He distracted her, plain and simple. She’d caught herself staring at him for no good reason, just because he was so nice to look at. He made her feel strange, too, which she didn’t like. And a couple times she’d even had this fool notion that maybe she ought to get prettied up, to let him see what she could be like, which was plain stupid. He’d be going on his way as soon as they
reached Coffeyville, and she was glad of it. Distractions like him she didn’t need.
Casey was doing fairly well for herself, all things considered. For a while, she’d felt really bad about the way she’d left home after that argument with her father, her anger keeping her from leaving her parents any explanation. She’d simply taken off without any good-byes, sneaked off in the night, to be exact.
But she telegraphed notes to her mother every few weeks, to let her know she was fine. She didn’t want them to worry about her, though she knew they would. Still, she wasn’t going home until she had accomplished her goal.
Chandos had made his way on his own. Now Casey was merely doing the same. She was proving that she could support herself without a man’s help, and do it by doing a man’s job.
Yet sometimes she felt like the outlaws whom she tracked. Knowing her father, she assumed that he was out there searching for her, and it wasn’t easy eluding him. But all he had to go on was her description, and her present description didn’t exactly match the one he knew by heart. The irony of the initials she used he hadn’t discovered yet, at least not to her knowledge, but only a few sheriffs knew her as K.C. Most folks really did just call her Kid.
Soon she might be able to go home. At least she’d come north on this trip with that hope.
It had been a prime piece of luck, being in the right place at the right time and overhearing Bill Doolin bragging about a double bank robbery planned in Coffeyville this week. Doolin was a known member of the Dalton gang, and Casey
probably could have captured him with ease—he’d been quite drunk at the time—but had decided to wait and get the entire gang at once.
Casey had done her homework about this bunch of outlaws, talking to people, reading up on past newspaper articles, just as she always did before she set out to apprehend someone. The three Dalton brothers, Robert, Emmett, and Grattan, used to be U.S. marshals out of Arkansas. It was purely a shame when lawmen went bad, but the Dalton brothers surely had.
They’d started their illegal activities only a few years ago in Oklahoma, horse stealing mostly, then had moved up to bigger crimes when Robert, the leader of the gang, moved them to California. Their attempt to rob the San Francisco-Los Angeles express of the Southern Pacific Railroad early last year, a failed undertaking since they couldn’t get the safe open, got them plastered all over Wanted posters in that area, so they hightailed it back to Oklahoma. Grattan did get arrested and tried—one man had been killed in that botched California job—ending up with a twenty-year jail term, but he managed to escape and rejoin his brothers.
Apparently they added to their numbers after that, for there were four newcomers with them—Charlie “Blackface” Bryant, Charley Pierce, “Bitter Creek” George Newcomb, and Bill Doolin—when they robbed the Santa Fe Limited at Wharton in the Cherokee Strip in May last year. No one was killed that time, and they escaped with over ten thousand dollars. Blackface Bryant didn’t live long enough to spend his
share, though, dying shortly afterward in a shoot-out with U.S. Deputy Marshal Ed Short.
Later that same month, the gang got away with a reported nineteen thousand after flagging down the Missouri, Kansas & Texas train at Lelietta. But they’d likely been holed up, living off their ill-gotten gains after that, because the Dalton gang didn’t appear in newsprint again until this past June, when they robbed another train at Redrock. And their last train robbery, in July at Adair, got bloody again, with three men wounded and one dead.
But apparently they were stepping up their operations to include banks now, and not just one, but two at once. Quite an ambitious undertaking for this gang of owlhoots, if it was true. Casey intended to be there to prevent it and collect the rewards.
The combined amounts offered for the gang members would be well over what she’d been hoping to have in the bank when she finished her “point-proving.” She’d be able to go home, which was what she’d been yearning to do only two weeks after she left. Instead, she’d been gone for six months. Six long months and plenty of tears in between.
J
ust one hour further last night on the trail, and they could have slept in relative comfort. But Casey hadn’t known that, this being her first time traveling as far north as Kansas. She hadn’t figured she would run out of food, either, before she reached the next town, but having three extra mouths to feed had seen to that.
They were late hitting the trail that morning because she’d had to go hunting again for breakfast, having gone through the last of her dough and canned goods with the previous night’s dinner. She always bought just enough food staples in each town she passed through to last her to the next town, but that didn’t take into account running into lost Easterners and bungling stage robbers along the way. So even though it had been only another hour along the trail, it was still midmorning when they rode into Coffeyville.
It was a decent-sized mercantile town. Casey had figured it would be, if it had two banks. And as they rode down the main street on the
way to the sheriff’s office, she eyed both the First National Bank and the Condon Bank just across the street from it, then glanced around to find a good place nearby from which she could keep an eye on them.
Workmen were busy on the street and had temporarily removed the hitching rails in front of both banks. As she wound the horses around the men, Casey wasn’t sure she was glad to see that.
Bank robbers tended to count on being able to tether their horses within easy access for their getaways, which meant directly in front of or at the sides of their targets. If the Daltons rode in and saw no rails, they might decide not to hit the banks after all and ride right back out.
That would be good for the town, but it wouldn’t put these particular outlaws out of commission. In that case, Casey would have to depend on the descriptions she had of them in order to recognize them, if she was going to hold any hope of still bringing them to justice.
But presently everything was quiet, so it looked like she would have enough time to dispose of her current prisoners and get prepared to take on the next bunch.
She still hadn’t decided whether to tell the sheriff here what was planned. There was always the chance that he might thank her for the information and advise her to stay out of it from here on, wanting all the glory for himself. As well as the money. There was also the chance that he might scoff, not believing her. After all, the Dalton gang was well known in these parts for train robbing, not bank robbing.
Then there was the fact that she knew what she was capable of, but she couldn’t say the same of others. On the other hand, she’d never attempted to apprehend so many at once before, either. She’d just have to decide after she met the sheriff, she supposed, and she was about to do that, having reached his office.
The group of them had drawn attention, coming in doubled up on their mounts as they were, with Billybob and Vince obviously tied as well, so there was a lot of help from the town’s most curious, getting the two men off their horse and into the sheriff’s office. As it turned out, there was a small reward offered for both men, this not being their first stage robbery, so Damian’s account of what had happened wasn’t needed, other than to report the crashed stagecoach and the missing driver.
There was a bit of confusion, since, for some infernal reason that annoyed Casey no end, it had been assumed by one and all that Damian had done the capturing. Just because he was so damned big, she thought, while she, on the other hand, was so young-looking—stupid first impressions.
But Damian was out the door as soon as the sheriff dismissed him. Casey followed to bid him farewell before she finished her business.
“Good luck on the rest of your journey,” she said, offering her hand in parting.
“I’ll settle for uneventful—at least until I reach Texas,” he replied.
“Ah, that’s right, you’re on a manhunt yourself. Well, good luck with that, too.”
Damian took her hand, giving it a hard
squeeze. “Thanks for all your help, Casey. I would probably still be wandering around lost out there if I hadn’t noticed your campfire that night.”
That was debatable, but Casey didn’t say so. She yanked her hand back, then blushed because it was so obvious that his touch had unsettled her. But he didn’t seem to notice. He was already distracted and impatient to be on his way, looking up and down the street at what the town had to offer in the way of amenities.
“Good-bye, then,” she said, and abruptly turned back into the sheriff’s office.
It would more than likely be the last she would see of the tenderfoot. He’d probably check into the best hotel the town offered, while conserving money was one of her main priorities, so she’d search out cheaper accommodations. She’d spend time in the saloons at night, a good place to gather information. He’d go to the theater, if there was one.
In her opinion, he ought to go home. The Western regions could be very unkind to folks who weren’t raised there. Hadn’t he already found that out firsthand? But had he learned from it? Hell, no. Easterners were like a whole different breed of people. They looked at things differently, knew next to nothing about surviving without the things they took for granted…Casey was doing it again, thinking about that man when she shouldn’t be.
She got back to the business at hand and deciding whether to confide in the sheriff or not. She couldn’t say much for his deputies, having to listen to the usual wisecracks about her tender
age, that she must have come across the outlaws asleep or drunk, that there was no way she could have captured them otherwise. She didn’t try to correct their mistaken assumptions. She never did. The fewer folks who knew what she was capable of, the better.
It was a good twenty minutes more before the sheriff had finished with her and told her to come back the next day to collect her two hundred dollars. It wasn’t much for a couple of stage robbers, but then, Vince and Billybob had only just started down the path of crime.
And then the decision to share or not share her information or not was taken out of her hands. Gunfire was heard, unmistakable, and not just one shot. Ignoring her, the sheriff and his deputies dashed out of the office.
Casey hoped, she really did, that the Dalton gang hadn’t come to town yet. But with an inward groan, she was afraid her hope was a vain one. And from the sound of it, their plans had definitely gone sour.