Longarm and the Sweetheart Vendetta, page 7
“Wait.” Handley motioned with his hand for Longarm to stop behind him. “Don’t ride over these tracks. Give me a minute to look them over first.”
“Can do,” Longarm said, settling back in his saddle and pulling out a cheroot. He struck a match and applied it to the cigar, then shook the fire out and tossed the matchstick away once his cheroot was lighted and drawing nicely.
“There are three of them,” Handley said. “This is where they spent the night two nights ago. You can see there where they covered up their fire. It wasn’t much of a fire to begin with, so they must be afraid someone is following.
“That is . . . I’m sorry, deputy, but over there is where they put the girl. She was tied to that tree. Just her hands, though. She was lying full length on the ground. You can imagine what they did to her. It looks like they took turns. Two of them did anyway. I’m not sure about the third.
“Either they stopped fairly early or they stayed here late the next morning because they put the horses on a picket line overnight . . . you can see the droppings there . . . but there was time for the animals to graze too. Which probably means they didn’t think to bring grain along. At least I don’t see any dropped kernels, and there surely would be a few even if they fed from nose bags.”
“You’re sure there are the three plus Emily?”
“Yes. I’m sure,” Handley said.
Longarm was sure of it too. He was a more than fair hand at tracking himself. But he had not seen fit to tell Jack Handley that. It was a small precaution, one of those just-in-case things. There was no real need for the prisoner to know that Longarm was fully capable of tracking him if he chose to make a break for it. And Handley really was quite good. The tubby little fellow had brought them along behind the murderers swiftly and surely.
Longarm looked at this campsite now and could scarcely imagine the hell gentle Emily Balcolm had gone through here.
And this on top of having seen her parents murdered, possibly in front of her eyes. The more Longarm thought about it, the angrier he became.
“Let’s go, Jack.”
“I have to take a piss.”
“All right, dammit, but hurry. Hurry.”
Chapter 17
“What the devil is this doing here?”
Longarm stared down at a patch of tall weeds and sumac.
“Dumped,” Handley said. “I noticed a half mile back that one of their horses started limping. Turned its ankle or got a stone bruise or something. Now this.”
They were both looking at a stock saddle. Cheap to begin with, the saddle had seen hard use. It was thorn-scratched and rope-burned, water-stained and sunbaked. It was a working saddle. And while a saddle of this age and condition would not be worth much, it would certainly be worth something. It most definitely was not the sort of thing a man would choose to discard in the bushes. Not without reason.
“It looks to me,” Handley said, “like one of them dropped his saddle here, then turned his horse loose. It followed along behind the others, but you can see that it wasn’t being led. I’d say it was wandering free. And a lot slower than the other animals. The fellow who’d been riding it moved something . . . my guess would be it was the girl . . . onto the back of a different horse; then he got onto the one she had been riding.”
Longarm nodded. That was the way he read it too, although either Jack Handley was one hell of a lot better at reading sign than Longarm, or the fat man was making some guesses. Probably guessing at least a little, Longarm concluded, but then there was nothing wrong with that. An awful lot of successful tracking involved successful guesswork and a basic knowledge of human nature.
“So the four people and their pack goods are all piled onto just the four horses,” Longarm said. “I wonder why they dumped this saddle instead o’ the pack frame. They could’ve distributed their supplies around an’ switched this saddle onto the packhorse. I wonder why they didn’t.”
“Sometimes people do things without good reason,” Handley said. He shook his head. “Sometimes they do things that are just plain stupid. You can’t always figure that sort of thing out.”
“Whatever their reason . . . if they even had one . . . it looks to be good news for us. They are traveling heavier now. That means they’re apt t’ go slower, stop earlier.” Longarm scowled. “Have more time to share Emily around amongst ’em.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Deputy.”
“Forget the saddle, Jack. Let’s go.”
Handley nodded and bumped his horse in the ribs to send it into a walk again.
“There!”
“What?”
“Stay still,” Longarm ordered, dragging his Winchester from the scabbard slung under his knee. “I want you t’ wait here. Don’t take a step toward me unless I call you, and for damn sure don’t try and move away from me or I’ll have t’ shoot you. D’you understand what I’m telling you, Jack?”
“Yes, of course, but what is wrong?”
“Maybe nothing, but maybe something is. I’m pretty sure I saw something move over there in that thicket of quakies. Could’ve been a deer flicking its ear. Could’ve been some son of a bitch with a rifle. You stay here while I find out.”
“I won’t take a step in any direction,” Handley swore solemnly.
“You better not.” Longarm swung his horse around and put it into a lope. He made a wide circle around the quakies until he could approach through cover, then slowed down and moved in as silently as he could.
He took a good half hour to make his approach. Then he cussed and called out, “You can come down here now, Jack. There’s no danger.”
Handley had sat on his short-legged little animal without moving for the entire time.
At least the man was obeying orders, Longarm thought . . . when he believed he was being watched anyway. The truth, however, was that Longarm had not been able to pay attention to Jack Handley while he was stalking what might have been an ambusher.
If Handley had chosen to make a break for it at that moment, there would have been hell to pay. And he very likely would have gotten clean away, at least for the time being. There was no way Longarm would abandon Emily Balcolm just so he could transport a prisoner to the jail in Manitou. Handley would have had to wait.
“What is it?” the chubby fellow asked, stroking his beard to smooth down the whiskers.
Longarm did not bother to answer, merely inclined his head toward the quakies. After a moment Handley grunted and said, “Oh. Darn.”
They had caught up with the lamed horse the murderers abandoned some miles back. It was peacefully grazing.
“What should we do with it?” Handley asked.
“Nothing. If it’s something minor that’s gone wrong, it will heal over time. If it’s something more serious, well, I ain’t gonna be responsible for putting down some other man’s horse. It don’t bother me a whole helluva lot to shoot men, but I purely dislike having to kill a horse, even out of kindness.”
Handley looked at him for a moment, then grunted again. “This light won’t last very much longer,” he said. “We should make what progress we can before dark.”
Longarm nodded and reined his mount back toward the trail the kidnappers had taken.
Chapter 18
It was nearly dark when they topped a low ridge line overlooking a broad, shallow valley.
“Likely there’s farms down there or some cow outfits,” Longarm said, “but it’s too dark to see very far, an’ anyway I don’t want to risk losing the trail. We’ll sleep out tonight instead o’ looking for a roof to get under.”
“All right. Where?”
Longarm inclined his head back the way they had just come. “South side of this ridge,” he said. “I seen a little seep back there where we oughta be able to collect enough water for some coffee an’ to fill the canteen.”
“Won’t that be going in the wrong direction?” Handley asked.
“Couple hundred yards is all and won’t nobody be able to see our fire,” Longarm responded.
“Do you think we are that close to them?”
“No. But it never hurts to be careful. I expect we’ll catch up with them tomorrow or the day after, depending on how early they stop. They’ll be wanting to get at Emily. You can be sure of that. That’s why they brought her along, don’t forget. And they’ll each be wanting their share of her.”
“You take this calmly enough, Deputy, knowing what those men will be doing to your friend.”
“Calm? No. Not a bit of it. But blustering and roaring and making a show of what I’m feeling won’t do anything for her. Catching up with those bastards will.”
“And then?”
“That will be up to them. Over here.” He turned his horse parallel to the slope and continued a rod or two to a depression in the earth where a trickle of sweet water emerged from the hillside. “We’ll stop here.” Longarm stepped down from his horse. Handley carefully eased down to the ground beside him.
They tended to the animals first; then Longarm found wood and built a fire while Handley unloaded their bedrolls and gear and began putting together a meal, starting with that pot of coffee.
After they ate, Longarm hunkered beside the fire with one of his very few remaining cheroots while Jack Handley sat cross-legged in the grass nearby. “Do you mind if I ask you something, Deputy?”
“Go ahead.”
“What will you do with those men when you catch up with them?”
“Arrest them and take them in for trial, of course. Why?”
“I thought maybe that’s what you would say, but I wanted to hear it from you. I just want you to know that tomorrow or the whenever we find them, you can count on me to help with whatever needs to be done. I don’t countenance rape.”
“Coming from you, Jack, that’s a funny thing t’ hear, you bein’ a convicted rapist your own self.”
“I told you what happened at that farm. If you want to call it rape, feel free.”
“And the fellow in Manitou? You said you shot him.”
“So I did, Deputy, so I did.”
“You never said why you shot him.”
“No, I suppose I didn’t.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“I . . . never mind.”
Handley nodded, then yawned and stretched. “If you don’t mind, Deputy, I think I’ll bed down now. I’m not used to riding so far. Not astride anyway.”
“I’ll have to cuff you again, Jack, like I done last night.”
“That’s fine. Let me fix my bed. At the base of that tree perhaps? Will that be all right?”
“Fine by me.” Longarm pulled the manacles from his pocket and followed the prisoner to his preferred tree. Handley lay down on his belly with one hand extended on either side of a small pine and Longarm snapped the steel bracelets in place.
“Good night, Deputy.”
“G’night, Jack.”
Longarm fell asleep almost immediately. He woke sometime short of dawn, his eyes snapping open and hand reaching for the always present Colt revolver, all traces of sleep driven from him. Something was moving in the grass nearby.
Something . . . “Well, shit.” He sat up and shoved the .44-.40 back into his holster.
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Jack, you . . . Good Lord, man, what are you doing over there!”
“I had to take a piss. Real bad. Sorry.”
“But you . . . dammit, Jack, I handcuffed you around that tree. You can’t be loose now.”
“Really? Then I suppose I am still there.” Handley leaned down to drop a few pieces of wood onto the fire, then went back to his bedroll. He lay down and, yawning, slipped the handcuffs back onto his own wrists. “See? Still there.”
“How the hell did you do that?”
Handley grinned. Slid his right hand out of the hand-cuff bracelet, scratched the side of his nose, and promptly handcuffed himself again.
“For God’s sake, man,” Longarm yelped.
Jack Handley’s grin grew wider. “It’s sort of a parlor trick.”
“Some parlor.”
“I’ve always been something of a prestidigitator, and . . .”
“A what?”
“A magician. Sort of. I’m just an amateur at it really. But between that and tending to be rather good with locks, if I do say so, well, you can see how one thing might lead to another.”
“Could you have gotten out of that cell back in Edwardsville?”
“I am sure I could have, although I didn’t try.”
“And you’ve been able to slip those cuffs all along?”
“Of course.”
“But you didn’t make a run for Canada or anything like that.”
“No, why should I?”
“You were convicted of a serious crime, Jack. You could spend the rest of your life behind bars. Worse, that life might be mighty short if they convict you for murder when we get to Manitou.”
“They won’t.”
“Why would you say that? You yourself told me that you killed the man.”
“But I never said I murdered him. Can we go back to sleep now? We don’t need to get up yet, and I don’t know about you but I for one am awfully tired after that long ride.”
“Fine, but . . .”
“I have faith, Deputy.” Handley rolled over, scratched his belly with a hand that was supposed to be shackled securely around that tree, then returned his hand to confinement again. He looked at Longarm and smiled. “You will think of something to help. I know you will.”
“Dammit, Jack.”
Handley did not answer, and a minute or so later his breathing deepened and soon he began to snore.
It took Longarm considerably longer to drop back to sleep.
Chapter 19
“Over this way,” Handley said, turning in the saddle and leaning on the stool that he continued to use as his stepladder to the stirrup. “The trail is over here.”
“In a minute then,” Longarm said. “I smell something over this way.”
Handley shook his head. “You ‘smell’ something? Does that mean you see some sort of sign or clue that I missed?”
“No, it means I actually smell something, Jack. I hope t’ hell I’m wrong, but it smells like something I’ve come across way too damn often before. Now give me just a minute, will you?”
“Oh, shit,” Longarm grumbled a minute later when he broke through a clump of sumac to find a man’s body lying curled in a fetal position, his clothes covered with blood and old leaf litter. He had been gut-shot and must have been in agony before he died.
A trail of scuff marks showed that he had crawled here from some little distance away, but there was no blood trail to show where that had been. Apparently, he had not hemorrhaged and bled out until sometime after he was shot.
“Well, shit,” Handley agreed.
Both men dismounted, and Longarm leaned down close to the dead man to look him over.
“One of the killers?” Handley asked. “Did they have a falling-out among themselves?”
“It could be, I suppose.”
“Why would he be barefoot? There is no sign that anyone camped here overnight, and we know that the killers did not.”
“If you look around, you’ll probably find a pair of discarded boots. Prob’ly one of the murderers liked this fella’s boots better’n their own.”
“And that is why they killed him?”
Longarm only shrugged. “I tell you, though, Jack, I don’t want t’ take time to bury him, all the more so because he might could be from around here. He might have folks nearby who need to mourn him an’ do the burying.”
“What makes you think he lives . . . lived, I mean . . . close around here?”
Longarm gestured down at the dead man lying pale and cold at their feet. “Clean clothes,” he said. “Underneath the blood and what’s on him from wallowing around on the ground, those clothes are clean. I’d think our fellas would be pretty grimy by now, riding out away from towns and baths and what-not. This man is fresh-shaved and looks like he got a haircut fairly recently too.”
“So you think he is another victim?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are we going to take time to bury him?”
Longarm hesitated. “No. If those sons of bitches are still intent on killing people, we got to catch up with them quick as possible lest they do any more of this.”
Handley nodded. He bent down and plucked a bandanna kerchief out of the dead man’s back pocket, then tied the flaming red square of cloth on a limb as high as he could reach.
“Good idea,” Longarm said, then sighed. “I wish there was something around here we could cover him up with, something to keep the crows and the foxes off him.”
“I could get my blanket to lay over him,” Handley suggested. “I can get along without it.”
“That’s nice of you, Jack, but they’d only slip underneath a blanket or tug it off. We’ll just let the poor son of a bitch lay where he is an’ hope it won’t be long before we get back to him.”
Longarm mounted and waited patiently while Jack Handley set his stool in place so he too could crawl into the saddle. Handley used the cord tied on his saddle horn to lift the stool, carefully coiled the cord, and nestled the stool in his lap. “All right, I’m ready now.”
A few minutes later, when they returned to more open ground, Handley turned and said, “The dead man was not any part of the gang. You can see here where they stopped him. He was on horseback. They shot him . . . I would say right there. You can see where he fell down and rolled on the ground. And he had a horse. They took the horse and whatever else they wanted. Anyway, they have replaced that horse that went lame.”
“Could be why they shot the fella t’ begin with,” Longarm said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I wish I could say that I am shocked. Or even a little bit surprised. I can’t. Not when it comes to this bunch. These are ugly people, Deputy. It saddens me to say that about anyone, but I fear that it is true.” He shook his head. “Ugly, ugly people.”
