Trackdown (9781101619384) (10 page)

“Is your horse ready to ride?”

“Yes, sir, he sure is,” Overstreet answered with a nod.

“Then come on. We need to get on the trail.”

Josiah Hartnett had assembled the posse in front of his livery stable. As Bill walked up, he did a quick head count. Sixteen men, counting him and Overstreet. That wasn’t bad. They would outnumber the bank robbers. Some of the faces were familiar and some weren’t, but they all looked determined, if a mite nervous at the same time. What they were setting out to do could easily be dangerous.

Bill took the reins of his horse when Hartnett handed them to him. He mounted, then faced the members of the posse.

“I don’t know how long or how far we’ll have to chase those outlaws, but we’re gonna chase them until we catch up to them,” he said. “And then we’re going to kill them or capture them. If any of you feel like you’re not up to that job, you can fall out now and nobody will think any worse of you.”

None of the men budged.

“We’re all bound and determined, Marshal,” Hartnett said. “I’ve got a couple of packhorses loaded down with ammunition and enough supplies to last us at least a week.”

“Thanks, Josiah. You’ve done a good job getting ready for this.” Bill turned his horse. “Let’s go.”

A lot of people were still on the street. They stopped talking and turned to look as the posse rode out. Somebody started to let out a cheer, but when nobody else joined in, the voice trailed off.

This wasn’t a moment for cheering. These men were setting off on a mission of blood and death.

And there was no way of knowing if any of them would come back alive.

It took every bit of strength and determination Eden possessed to keep herself from giving in to her fear and screaming hysterically.

She didn’t want to give this bastard the satisfaction of seeing her react like that.

His name was Caleb; she knew that because she had heard some of the other outlaws address him that way. He was also the leader of the gang, giving the orders that made them speed up and then slow down to rest the horses.

He had his left arm around her as she rode in front of him. His forearm sometimes pressed against the underside of her breasts, but at least he hadn’t groped her as blatantly as he could have. At this point, Eden supposed she should be grateful for small favors…such as being alive and still relatively unharmed.

The worst part about it, other than the fear she felt for her own future, was not knowing whether Bill was all right. She had seen him pitch head-first off the boardwalk into the street as if he’d been shot. She hadn’t had a chance to see how badly he was hurt. Before she could, this bank robber had grabbed her and ridden off with her.

The hope she clung to was that she hadn’t seen any blood on Bill’s clothes in that brief second when Caleb galloped past him. Eden kept telling herself that he was all right, he had to be all right, and he would be coming after her.

“How are you doing?” Caleb asked her, breaking into her thoughts as they loped along, heading northwest now, Eden thought. This was the first time he had actually talked to her, other than yelling at her and telling her to stop fighting and settle down.

“How do you think I’m doing?” she asked icily. “You
kidnapped
me.”

He chuckled.

“I’d rather think of it as taking you along for the ride,” he said, “although I guess if you want to get down to brass tacks…Anyway, I don’t have any interest in hurting you. You’re a lot more valuable to us if you’re safe and sound.”

“As a hostage, you mean?”

“That’s right.”

Without looking back at him, she shook her head.

“That won’t do you any good,” she said. “My—”

She’d started to say “my husband,” but she stopped herself in time. If Caleb knew that she was married to Redemption’s marshal, that would give him even more reason to think that he could use her as a hostage.

Instead she said, “The marshal is going to come after you and kill you. He’s a gunfighter from Texas, you know.”

“That’s not what I heard. I heard he’s just a kid cowboy.”

“He’s fought outlaws and Indians,” Eden insisted. “You’re no match for him.”

That drew an outright laugh from Caleb.

“We’ll see, we’ll see.” He paused, then asked her, “What’s your name?”

“You don’t need to know my name,” she snapped.

His arm tightened around her. Not painfully, just enough to remind her that she was in his power.

“I don’t like talking to a lady without knowing her name,” he said. “There’s no reason we can’t be polite to each other.”

“You call it polite to grab a woman off the street—”

“Just tell me your name.”

It wasn’t worth making him angry, she decided. She said, “My name is Eden…Eden Monroe.”

She left off her married name, just in case he knew what Bill’s last name was. That seemed possible, since judging by what he had said earlier, he had checked to see who the law was in Redemption.

“Eden,” Caleb repeated. “That’s a mighty pretty name. It suits you.”

“Are you trying to pay me a compliment?”

“Like I said, there’s no reason we can’t be polite to each other.”

Something about the way he spoke struck her as being more educated than she thought of most outlaws as being. On the other hand, what did she really know about outlaws? Nothing, really. She had been acquainted with another cold-blooded killer, and he had been fairly well-spoken, too.

They were riding toward a line of low bluffs that rose from the prairie in an irregular line maybe thirty feet tall. As they came closer, Eden realized they were heading for a gap in the bluffs that led to a small canyon. That canyon formed a little pocket hidden from the view of the surrounding plains.

The gang had been pretty spread out, but they converged on the gap with Caleb in the lead. As he trotted his horse into the canyon, Eden spotted movement up ahead. A dozen horses were picketed at the far end of the canyon.

Someone stepped out from behind a clump of brush. At first Eden thought the person was a man, because of the boots, whipcord trousers, and flat-crowned hat. Also, the figure held a rifle ready for use.

But no man was shaped like that, and when the sentry pushed her hat back so that it hung by its chin strap behind her head, long, fiery red hair spilled down past her shoulders.

“Who the hell is
she
?” the woman demanded as she glared at Eden.

Caleb reined his horse to a stop and grinned.

“A hostage,” he said. The other outlaws came to a halt behind him.

One of them, a darkly handsome youngster with obvious Spanish blood, called, “Yeah, Caleb picked himself up a play-pretty in Redemption, Hannah.”

The redhead continued to scowl.

“Since when do you take hostages?” she asked.

“I thought it would be a good idea.” Caleb’s voice hardened as he went on, “And I don’t cotton to having to explain what I do, Hannah. You ought to know that.”

Hannah sniffed. She lowered the rifle.

“You got the money from the bank?”

“Cleaned it out,” Caleb told her.

“Then I guess that’s all that really matters.” She jerked her head toward the picketed mounts. “Eugene and I brought the horses.”

“Where is he?”

“Up on the rim, checking your back trail.”

“Good idea.” Caleb turned his head to look at the others. “Let’s get these saddles switched. I want to put a lot more miles between us and Redemption by nightfall.”

This made sense to Eden. The gang had stashed fresh horses here. Switching mounts like that would give them an advantage over any posse that came after them, unless the pursuers had extra horses as well. She didn’t know if Bill would have thought of that in his hurry to get started after the outlaws.

Assuming, of course, that Bill was still alive…

Eden banished that thought. She wasn’t going to allow herself to believe anything except that Bill was alive and coming after her.

“Stay where you are,” Caleb ordered her. He dismounted, then reached his hands up toward her. “I’ll help you.”

“She looks like she can get off a horse by herself,” Hannah said. Eden could feel the dislike in the way the redhead looked at her.

But it wasn’t just dislike, she thought. It was jealousy, too. Maybe even a little hatred. It wasn’t hard to guess that Hannah was Caleb’s woman, and she didn’t appreciate even a potential threat to that position.

“She’s right, I can dismount,” Eden told Caleb. She had
felt his hands on her body enough already. She didn’t want any help from him.

He shrugged and stepped back.

“Suit yourself.”

Eden grasped the saddle horn to steady herself and swung down, acutely aware that her dress was hiked up because of the way she’d been riding and she was showing a considerable flash of leg to these men.

But given her circumstances, she thought, a little minor embarrassment wasn’t really much to worry about. With the redhead giving her a cold, baleful, narrow-eyed stare, she moved aside to get out of the way as the men began switching their saddles to the fresh horses.

With a rattle of rocks, a man slid and jumped nimbly down the sloping wall of the canyon. He had a spryness that belied his age, because as he approached, Eden saw the lined, leathery face of an old-timer.

“Anybody on our trail, Eugene?” Caleb asked as he started loosening his saddle cinches.

“Nope,” the lookout replied in a raspy voice. “You know these ol’ eyes o’ mine are still pretty keen. No dust as far back as I could see.”

Caleb nodded in satisfaction.

“That’s good. Those folks back in Redemption won’t give up, though. Some of them will be coming after us. You can bet all that bank money on that.”

“We headed for Castle Rock?”

“That’s right. If we can get there, a posse will have a damned hard time rooting us out.”

Eden had heard vaguely of Castle Rock. It was part of an area of badlands somewhere in the northern part of the state. A long way from Redemption, and she had never been there. It would probably take several days to reach that destination.

Good, she thought. That would give Bill time to catch up to them.

For a second she considered trying to get away, since all the men were busy switching mounts and weren’t paying attention to her. Hannah was still watching her, though, and
from the look on the redhead’s face, if Eden made a break for freedom, Hannah might just shoot her.

Besides, where could she go? They were in the middle of nowhere, and on foot she would stand absolutely no chance of getting away from outlaws on horseback.

No, Eden told herself, she would just have to be patient and hope that nothing too bad happened in the meantime. She would do everything in her power to stay alive until help arrived.

Because help was on its way. She was sure of that.

She just wished she could quiet that nagging voice of fear and despair in the back of her head.

Bill had to admit, being on horseback and moving fast over the prairie made him feel better. He didn’t know if it was the wind in his face or the familiar sensation of sitting in a saddle, but whatever the cause, his head was clearer and he felt less like he was on the edge of panic. Ever since he’d seen that outlaw grab Eden and jerk her off her feet to ride away with her, it had seemed to him like he was on the edge of losing control.

Now that he was taking action, he had reason to hope again.

Those optimistic feelings lasted for a couple of miles as the posse followed the welter of hoofprints left by the bank robbers’ horses.

Then Bill spotted something lying on the ground several hundred yards ahead of them and his insides were suddenly clenched hard with ice-cold fear again.

Could the outlaws have killed Eden and dumped her body this soon, he asked himself? Surely not. If they were going to do that, what was the purpose of taking her along in the first place?

But that sure looked like a body. As Bill slowed his horse and pointed it out to Josiah Hartnett, the liveryman agreed.

“But it couldn’t be Eden, Bill,” Hartnett argued. “They wouldn’t have grabbed her like that and then killed her so soon.”