Trackdown (9781101619384) (15 page)

Eden swallowed hard and said, “I…I just want this to be over with. I just want to go home.”

“Maybe that’ll happen.” Hannah’s cruel grin made it clear she didn’t believe there was a chance in the world of that. “As long as you behave yourself, it won’t do any harm for you to hope. But if I was you I wouldn’t hold my breath waitin’ for somebody to come along and save me. Once we get to the badlands, it’d take an army to get us out of there. You got an army comin’ after you?”

Eden didn’t answer the question, but she knew she didn’t have an army coming after her.

But she had the tough Texan she was married to, along with some friends, and she would have to hope that would be enough.

Roy Fleming came by the marshal’s office that afternoon to check on Mordecai.

“You know, a normal man would be laid up in bed for a week or more if he was injured as badly as you are,” Fleming said.

“Normal is one thing I ain’t been called that often,” Mordecai said. “The fellas like me who went west to trap beaver, back when there weren’t hardly any white men west of St. Louis, we were a hardy breed. If we got hurt, we might be a hundred miles or more from the closest help, so we learned to take care of ourselves. Learned how to keep goin’ and not pay it any mind, too. I’ll be fine, Mr. Mayor.” Mordecai paused, then added, “But I been takin’ it pretty easy today. As long as no more trouble crops up, I’ll make my rounds and that’s about all.”

“Should the town council see about getting some help for you? I’m sure we can afford to hire a temporary deputy.” A frown formed on Fleming’s face. “Or maybe we can’t, come to think of it. Except for a small petty cash fund, the town’s money was in the bank, and those outlaws took it.”

Mordecai’s bushy eyebrows rose.

“You’re sayin’ you can’t pay my wages no more?”

“Now, I’m sure it’s not going to come to that,” Fleming went on quickly. “Marshal Harvey and the posse will catch up to the thieves and recover the money. Even if they don’t, we…we’ll find a way to carry on somehow.”

Mordecai leaned back in the chair and said, “Anyway, I don’t need no help. I told Bill I’d handle things here, and that’s what I intend to do. Who would I hire, anyway? Is there anybody else in town fit to be a lawman?”

“I’m sure we could find someone…”

Mordecai shook his head.

“If I need help, I’ll ask for it. Until then, don’t worry about it.”

“All right. There is one other thing…”

When Fleming hesitated, Mordecai said, “Spit it out.” He was aware that technically he was talking to his boss, since Fleming was the mayor, but he’d never had much patience for dawdling when there was something unpleasant to say or do.

“Were you aware that there’s a gypsy in town?”

“You mean that Gregor Smo…Smoz…that Gregor fella?”

“That’s right. He’s parked his wagon down at the edge of town and is selling pots and pans and all sorts of other things. Plus he says he can sharpen blades and repair things.”

Mordecai shrugged his good shoulder.

“I reckon he can do that. I ain’t seen nothin’ to prove otherwise.”

“Yes, but people of his…ilk…have a rather dubious reputation. It’s well known that most of them are thieves.”

Mordecai cocked an eyebrow and commented, “Some folks say the same thing about bankers.”

Fleming’s round, friendly face didn’t look so friendly for a second. Mordecai thought that maybe he had pushed the mayor a mite too far, especially considering that the man’s bank had been robbed only twenty-four hours earlier. Fleming had to be in a pretty bad mood.

“You’ve obviously spoken to this man.”

“Yeah, he stopped by and introduced himself when he got
to town,” Mordecai said. “Told me his name and why he’s here in Redemption.”

“Do you think he could have anything to do with the robbery yesterday?”

“I don’t see how.” Mordecai frowned. “Seems to me it was just a coincidence that he got here the next mornin’. If he was part of the gang, why would he come
back
here when the robbery’s over and done with?”

“I don’t know,” Fleming admitted. “I just don’t trust him, and I don’t like having his sort in town. Can’t you go down there and run him out?”

“What for? He ain’t broke any laws that I know of.”

“There must be something…”

Mordecai was starting to feel pretty irritated. He had enough on his plate at the moment without Fleming piling on any unnecessary chores. But since Fleming was the mayor, it was sort of Mordecai’s job to do what the man said, he supposed.

“Tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Mayor,” he said. “I’ll walk down there and have a look-see, just to make sure Gregor ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong. If I see anything that strikes me as fishy, I’ll tell him it’d be best for him to move on. That do for now?”

“I suppose,” Fleming said. “I just know I would sleep easier if that man was gone.”

After everything else that had happened, he was going to lose sleep over one lone gypsy? That seemed loco to Mordecai, but he didn’t say anything about it. Instead he got to his feet and reached for his hat.

“I’d go with you,” Fleming said as they left the office, “but I’m in the process of drafting letters to out-of-town depositors informing them of the robbery and assuring them that everything humanly possible is being done to recover the stolen funds.”

“How about ever’thing humanly possible bein’ done to get Eden back safe and sound?”

“Yes, well, that, too, of course. The two things go hand in hand, don’t they?”

Not exactly, Mordecai thought. If it came down to choosing between saving Eden and recovering the money, he knew which one Bill would pick. That was the same decision Mordecai would have made if he’d been in that position.

Fleming turned toward the bank while Mordecai went the other way. There weren’t many trees in this part of Kansas, but there were a few and one of them stood at the end of Main Street. Gregor Smolenski had parked his wagon in the shade of that tree. Part of the vehicle’s side folded down to make a table where Gregor could display some of his wares, Mordecai saw as he came closer.

Maybe half a dozen people were gathered around the wagon, examining the things Gregor had for sale. The colorfully clad gypsy stood there talking to them, not really pressuring them to buy but extolling the virtues of the items. The dog Tip still sat on the wagon seat. Gregor had unhitched the mules and tied them under the tree where they cropped lazily at the grass.

“Hello, Deputy,” Gregor said as Mordecai strolled up. “What brings you here? You have a knife you need sharpened? Or perhaps you’d like to buy some pots and pans?”

“I already got an old fryin’ pan and a coffeepot, and that’s all I’ve ever needed when it comes to things like that,” Mordecai said. “I just thought I’d see how you were doin’ now that you got set up and all.”

“You mean you wanted to make sure I wasn’t swindling the citizens of Redemption,” Gregor said with a smile.

“I never—”

Gregor waved a hand.

“Oh, don’t worry, Deputy Flint, please. I’m accustomed to mistrust from everyone in this world except my friend Tip here. I long since stopped being insulted by that attitude.” He nodded toward his customers. “You can ask these people, or anyone else who has done business with me since my arrival this morning. All my transactions have been honest and aboveboard.”

One of the women who was examining a pot nodded and said, “Mr. Smolenski’s right, Mordecai. I thought he’d be a thief, too, but his prices are very fair.”

“You see?” Gregor said, spreading his hands.

“Yeah, I reckon. Just keep things that way.”

“Of course.” A frown of concern appeared on Gregor’s face. “You know, Deputy, I can tell that you’re in pain.”

“I’ll be fine,” Mordecai said curtly. “I been shot before.”

“I have an herb that’s very good for relieving pain. All you have to do is chew it, or brew some tea with it.”

“I don’t chew plants except tobacco, and I ain’t much of a tea drinker. But I’m obliged to you for the thought.”

“If you change your mind, come and see me. My people have many cures that are quite effective, just like your Indians in this country. You know, some people actually believe that my countrymen and the Indians are related somehow.”

“Is that so?” Mordecai squinted. “You do look a mite like an Injun. You ain’t gonna put on feathers and war paint, are you? We already had to deal with that not so long ago.”

Gregor laughed and shook his head.

“No, no war paint for me. I’m just a businessman.”

“And I’m just a lawman. So you don’t want to have any business with me.”

Mordecai left it at that. He headed back toward the office, and with each step the throb that went through his injured arm and shoulder made him wonder if he should have taken Gregor up on that offer of the herb.

Probably not, he decided. Who knew what other effects it might have?

By midday, the tracks left by the outlaws led the posse to a seemingly endless stretch of rocky ground that didn’t take hoofprints nearly as well.

“I knew that sooner or later they’d try to throw us off their trail,” Bill said as he reined in to study the hard ground.

“I don’t know if that’s what’s going on here,” Josiah Hartnett said, “or if the direction they were headed just happened to have a lot of rocks in it.”

“Either way, this is going to make it harder. This is where I wish we had Mordecai with us. The tracks would probably still be plain as day to him, even on the rocks.”

“We can follow them,” Hartnett said. “We just have to be careful.”

Bill nodded and said, “Which will slow us down.” He heaved a sigh. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.” He turned to face the other members of the posse. “Unless one of you fellas has a lot of experience as a tracker…?”

All he got back in return were blank looks and a few of the men shaking their heads.

“I’m pretty good at followin’ a few thousand head of cattle,” Overstreet said. “That’s about all.”

“All right,” Bill said. “We’ll see what we can do.”

They started forward, moving at a walk now. After a while, Bill had to get down and walk, leading his horse as he searched the ground for fragments of hoofprints, chipped places on the rocks where horseshoes struck them, flat stones with their darker surfaces facing up, indicating that something had overturned them in the past twenty-four hours…anything that told him a good-sized group of riders had moved through here.

More than once, he thought the trail was gone completely and had to come to a stop. He hunkered on his heels and studied the ground closely, all too aware that with each passing minute, the outlaws—and Eden—were getting farther away from him.

Each time he was afraid that he had lost the trail, he finally found something that gave him hope they were still headed in the right direction. But they wouldn’t know for sure if that was true until after they got out of this stretch and the ground was better suited to picking up tracks.

By that time, he thought grimly, the bank robbers might be so far ahead that the posse would never catch up to them.

All the men dismounted and took advantage of this opportunity to rest their horses by walking. That would keep their mounts fresher, longer, so maybe that was a small silver lining, Bill told himself. But the proverbial clouds were still mighty dark, even though the day was clear and sunny.

Minutes crawled past and turned into hours. The delay ate at Bill until he wanted to scream. Those outlaws would have galloped across these rocks at full speed, more than likely, which meant they were picking up miles on the pursuit.

Then things got even worse. They came to the end of the rocks, and there were no hoofprints anywhere in sight.

Bill stared at the ground in disbelief. He had tried so hard, had been convinced that he was still following the trail.

But now it was gone. Whatever he’d been following, it wasn’t the men who had held up the bank in Redemption and kidnapped Eden. Those men were gone.

Josiah Hartnett’s hand fell heavily on Bill’s shoulder.

“We won’t give up,” the liveryman said. “We’ll backtrack—”

“How can we backtrack when we haven’t really been tracking?” Bill asked, his voice raw with emotion. “We took a wrong turn, Josiah. There’s no gettin’ around that.”