Trackdown (9781101619384) (8 page)

She was smart enough to understand the veiled threat in those words. She didn’t try to hit him again, and she stopped writhing in the circle of his arm.

“What…what are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“You’re going to ride with us for a little while,” he said. “Just long enough for us to make sure no posse is on our trail. Then we’ll let you go.”

That was a lie, and she probably knew it. Tatum wasn’t sure what he was going to do with her, but he wasn’t going to be letting her go anytime soon.

In a part of his mind, he wondered if he had actually known that as soon as he laid eyes on her in the mercantile. Had he realized even then that somehow she was going to wind up in his arms?

Maybe, if you wanted to believe in fate…and Caleb Tatum was starting to.

The first thing Bill saw when he regained consciousness was the flushed, gray-bearded face of Josiah Hartnett, the burly liveryman and one of his best friends in Redemption.

“Praise be,” Josiah said. “For a few minutes there I was worried the fall had killed you, Bill.”

“Wh…where…”

“I brought you back into town in my wagon. You’re laying on the bar in Fred Smoot’s place.”

The smell of stale beer in the air was enough to tell Bill that much. As he struggled to sit up, he finished the question he had tried to ask.

“Where’s…Eden?”

Hartnett rested a big, strong hand on Bill’s shoulder and held him down.

“Take it easy for a minute. You had a really nasty spill. We’ve got to make sure that you’re all right.”

Bill ached from head to toe, but he knew that other than that, he was fine. There had been dozens, if not hundreds, of bullets flying around in the street as the bank robbers found their getaway, but the closest any of them had come to him was blowing the heel off his boot.

“Damn it, Josiah, what about Eden?”

The horrible fear that the outlaws had already killed her and left her body behind as they fled suddenly gripped him.

With a grave expression on his face, Hartnett shook his head.

“We don’t know, Bill,” he said. “We purely don’t. They took her with them when they got away.”

A second of relief went through Bill, followed instantly by an even greater surge of fear. There was a chance that Eden was still alive, but there was no telling what was happening to her now…or would happen to her in the future as long as she was in the hands of those outlaws.

“I gotta get a posse together,” he muttered as he tried to sit up again. “Go after ’em…”

This time Hartnett allowed him to rise, and as soon as Bill was upright, the saloon started spinning crazily around him. He saw that the room was crowded with concerned citizens, but he didn’t have time to recognize any of them before he groaned and felt himself falling. He would have toppled off the bar if Hartnett hadn’t been right there to catch him and lower him gently to the hardwood. Somebody had folded a bar towel and stuck it under his head as a pillow.

“Now, blast it, lay there and rest for a minute,” Hartnett told him. “You won’t be doing anybody any good by falling on your face again.”

Bill supposed he was right. He didn’t want to pass out again. If he did, it would be that much longer before he set out in pursuit of the outlaws who had taken his wife.

Fred Smoot rolled closer to the bar in his wheelchair and said, “There’s a bottle of brandy in my office, Josiah. It might do the marshal some good if you want me to fetch it.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Hartnett said. “Damn, I wish we had a doctor here in Redemption.”

That reminded Bill of how Eden had stepped in to take care of him when his leg was injured. She had patched him up as well as any sawbones could have, he thought, and she had tended to other people’s ills, too. She was as close to a doctor as the town had.

But now she was gone. That thought made him feel hollow, as if fear had whittled away all his insides.

Smoot came back with the brandy. Hartnett lifted Bill’s head and helped take a drink from the bottle. The stuff burned all the way down Bill’s throat and lit a fire in his belly. He tried to draw strength from it.

After a few more sips of brandy, he felt stronger. Knowing that the feeling might not last, he said, “I gotta get up, Josiah. I got things to do.”

“Yeah, I know. Just take it slow and easy.”

With Hartnett’s arm around his shoulders, Bill sat up. He still felt pretty wobbly, but the room didn’t go to spinning this time. He swung his legs off the front of the bar and let them dangle.

Something occurred to him, and he felt sick that he hadn’t thought of it earlier.

“Mordecai—” he began.

“He’s wounded, but he’s alive,” Hartnett said. “I don’t know how bad it is. He was on the boardwalk in front of the newspaper office, so they carried him in there.”

“Somebody go see about him.”

Hartnett nodded to the crowd in the saloon, and a couple of men hurried out.

Bill sat there on the bar taking deep breaths until he felt himself growing steadier. He asked Hartnett, “Was anybody else hurt?”

“Not that I know of. It’s possible, though.”

Bill nodded. It might be a while before everybody in town was accounted for.

The crowd in the saloon parted to let a couple of people through. Bill was surprised to see Annabelle Hudson and Glenn Morley. So was Fred Smoot, judging by the way his eyes narrowed. Even under the circumstances, he didn’t seem happy to have the competition in his place.

“We heard that the marshal was hurt,” Annabelle said. “Glenn’s had some medical training, if he can help.”

“You’re a doctor?” Smoot asked the bartender.

“I never said that,” Morley replied with a shrug. “But I worked in a field hospital during the war.”

Hartnett scowled and said, “Most of those surgeons were no better than butchers.”

“They did the best they could with battles going on around them,” Morley said. “But if you don’t want my help—”

“Nobody said that, Mr. Morley,” Bill told him. “I’m all right, though. What I’d appreciate is if you’d go over to the newspaper office and see if there’s anything you can do for my deputy. One of those outlaws shot him.”

Morley nodded. “I’ll take a look at him, Marshal, if you’re sure there’s nothing I can do for you.”

“I’m sure. Go check on Mordecai.”

Morley turned and hurried out, but Annabelle lingered.

“I also heard that the robbers carried off your wife, Marshal,” she said. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can do—”

“There’s not,” Bill said. “I’m feeling better now. I need to put a posse together.” He looked around the room and realized that someone else was absent who should have been there. “Where’s Mr. Monroe?”

Hartnett looked uncomfortable again, and that made a bad feeling go through Bill.

“That’s another thing,” Hartnett said. “Perry went down to my stable, threw a saddle on a horse, and lit out after those bandits. He said they had his daughter, and he wasn’t going to wait for any posse.”

“Damn it! He should’ve had more sense than that. Even if he caught up to them, there’d be one of him and ten of them, and all of them hardcase killers, to boot! Why didn’t somebody go with him?”

Nobody answered that question. Bill glared around the room. Most of the townspeople refused to meet his angry gaze. Clearly, they were embarrassed that they had let an old man like Perry Monroe gallop off after those ruthless outlaws by himself…but that didn’t change the fact that no one had volunteered to go with him.

Bill wasn’t really surprised. Twice before he had rallied the citizens of Redemption when violence and destruction threatened the town. They had risen to those occasions, fighting bravely to defend their homes and families and businesses. Some of them had been hurt in those battles, and some had died.

But they were like most people, Bill supposed. Their backs
had to be against the wall before they would fight. Up to that point, they would do everything they could to avoid risking their lives. He couldn’t blame them for that. It just made them human.

“I need a posse,” he said, his voice grim. “Any man who can ride and shoot and stick with me is welcome to come along.” He glanced down at his feet. “And I need a pair of damn boots that aren’t missing a heel, too!”

“Bound to be some at the mercantile,” Hartnett said. “Let’s go over there and gather up some ammunition. We’re liable to need plenty.”

“You’re comin’ along, Josiah?”

“You bet I am.” Hartnett looked around the room. “Who’s with me?”

A number of men spoke up, indicating their willingness to join the posse. Fred Smoot said, “I would if I could, Marshal.”

“I know that,” Bill told him. He leaned against the bar to pull off both boots so he could walk without falling over. The crowd moved aside to let him pass. The men who had volunteered followed him out.

Bill glanced to the west along the street. The dust kicked up by the outlaws’ horses had long since settled. But they had left tracks, and he was going to follow them. His wife was out there somewhere, and so was her father.

Bill was going to do everything in his power to see to it that nothing else happened to either of them.

Tom Gentry knew something was wrong as soon as he rode back into town. People were scurrying around on Main Street and gathering in small groups to talk loudly and excitedly. Men strode along purposefully, leading saddled horses. Tom hadn’t seen the town this worked up since that Indian attack a few months earlier.

He had stayed out at the ranch, working with that stubborn gray stallion, until he couldn’t stand his father’s constant carping anymore. He’d told Burk that he would be back tomorrow, and he headed for Redemption.

“You’re wastin’ half a day!” Burk had called after him as he’d ridden off. “Is that the way I taught you to be?”

Tom hadn’t answered. There was nothing he trusted himself to say. He didn’t even look back. His father would brood about being ignored like that, but it didn’t really matter. If Burk wasn’t angry and resentful about one thing, he’d be angry and resentful about something else.

Spotting a horse trader he sometimes drank and played cards with, Tom reined in his chestnut saddle horse and called, “Hey, Harry, what the hell’s going on?”

The man came over, looked up at him, and said, “The bank’s been robbed.”

“Again?” Tom said with a wry smile, remembering the incident a few months earlier.

“Yeah, but this time they got away with it. There were fifteen or twenty of ’em, I heard, and they kidnapped the marshal’s wife while they were at it.”

Tom frowned. He knew Eden Monroe—Eden Harvey, now—and a few years back he’d even been a mite smitten with her for a while. She was beautiful, smart, levelheaded…everything that Virgie wasn’t, aside from the beautiful part. He couldn’t help but think for a second about how different his life might have been if he’d married Eden instead of Virginia Shelton.

Of course, Eden hadn’t returned those feelings. When he’d hinted around that he might be interested in courting her, she’d slammed that door in a hurry. He found out later from gossipy mutual friends that she thought he was too quick-tempered.

Well, it was true he had a temper, but he never lost it without good reason.

“I’m really sorry to hear that about Eden,” he said now to the horse trader. “I guess that explains all the commotion.”

“Yeah, the marshal’s putting together a posse to go after them. Perry Monroe already took off.”

Tom frowned.

“By himself?”

“Yeah.”

“That crazy old man’s gonna get himself killed,” Tom said with a shake of his head. “Did they clean out the bank?”

“That’s what I heard.”

Tom’s frown deepened. Burk Gentry had never really trusted banks, so he kept most of his money in a safe in his office at the ranch. But he’d had some cash deposited at the bank in Redemption.

Tom supposed that money was gone now, and they might not ever get it back. That wouldn’t break the family, of course, but Burk would be hopping mad about losing it, anyway.

“That’s not all that happened,” Harry went on with a worried look on his face. “Your father-in-law was right in the middle of that bank robbery, Tom.”