Роберт Паркер - Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack

After we drank some coffee and ate a few biscuits, we rode out to meet with the ranch hand that had told Skinny Jack he’d seen the riders headed toward the river.

By seven o’clock we’d met the ranch hand and followed his point in the direction he’d previously seen the riders the day before, and with little effort we found on the river’s edge fresh tracks of three horses disappearing into the water.

“Got to be them,” Virgil said.

Virgil rode into the water, heading for the opposite side, and Skinny Jack and I followed.

We easily found the tracks coming out of the water’s eastern edge fifty yards downriver. The soft ground rising up from the bottomland made for favorable tracking conditions, and for the moment we were able to follow them without trouble.

When we got to the top of the rise the land stretched out for miles in front of us. I took the lead, following the tracks, and we were able to keep a steady pace.

“As long as the wind don’t pick up any more than it is,” I said. “Long as it stays like this, we got a good chance to be knocking at their back door.”

We moved across the dry shrubland with rolling vast swards of yellow short-grass prairie. In between the swards there were long stretches of sandy loam that was laced with clusters of summer coat mesquite and purple sage.

Around noon we came to a spot where the riders had made camp within a spread of dry thickets surrounded by a stand of weeping acacias that lined an empty creek bed.

Left were remains of a fire, some dead ends of cigarettes, and an empty half-pint bottle lying in the ashes. When I got off my horse to check the expired fire I noticed the wind had changed direction and was getting a little stronger.

I leaned down and felt through the ashes.

“They rode to here from midday when they left yesterday, I’d say. Stopped likely when they got dark bit.”

Virgil nodded.

I looked in the direction the breeze was coming, and in the far distance there was darkness.

I nodded to it, and Virgil and Skinny Jack followed my look.

“Wind,” I said.

“Headed this way,” Skinny Jack said.

“Sure enough,” Virgil said.

“Goddamn,” Skinny Jack said. “Wouldn’t you know it?”

I mounted up.

“Ashes are cold,” I said. “Hard to say when they took off.”

“You’d think daylight, wouldn’t you, Everett?” Skinny Jack said.

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Men on the run,” Virgil said, “run.”

We kept on the move, and within an hour’s time the wind had picked up, and not far behind there was a wall of dust that was headed our way.

Skinny Jack looked back.

“This don’t look so good,” he said.

“Road,” I said.

Ahead, less than a half-mile on the downslope before us, was a north-south road.

“Be better than a good idea,” Virgil said, “to get over there. Don’t want this wind coming in and cover things up, and we lose the direction they chose.”

The three of us galloped over to the road, stopping twenty yards shy so not to put our own tracks in the mix. We dismounted and walked up. It was a well-traveled road with fairly fresh wagon ruts.

“Here they are,” Skinny Jack said, pointing to the ground in front of him. “Tracks here.”

Virgil and I moved to Skinny Jack’s trail. The grass was bent and broken over from where the three horses made it up to the road. We followed the single-file path, and when we got on the road it was clear which way they were traveling.

“There they go,” Skinny Jack said. “South.”

“Pretty sure this is the stage route between Benson City and Lamar,” I said.

“I think that is right,” Skinny Jack said. “That way; would be Benson City. Not sure how far.”

“We’ll know when we get there,” I said.

“Four-way stage route,” Virgil said.

“Is,” I said.

“We been through there,” Virgil said. “Benson City?”

“We have,” I said. “More than once, but not from this road.”

“No,” Virgil said. “The other road through there. Goes to Clemmings west and Yaqui the other way.”

“That’s right,” I said.

Since Virgil and I had been living and working out of Appaloosa, we’d at one point or another visited every city within two days’ ride that was connected to Appaloosa by road and rail.

The dust was rolling in, so the three of us untied our slickers from our saddles and put them on. After Virgil got his buttoned he stepped up in the saddle, turned his horse, and moved off the road. He galloped north a ways, then turned and looked closely at the road as he walked his horse back in our direction.

“What now?” Skinny Jack said.

“Just making sure it is Benson City and they didn’t make some effort to double back on us,” I said.

“Think they know of us?” Skinny Jack said. “Know we are after them?”

“Got a suspicion, I’d say,” I said. “They damn sure got out of town and on the move.”

“Where do men run to, Everett?” Skinny Jack said.

I looked at Skinny Jack. He was looking at me with an expectant gaze, and his question had the same quality to it as if he were a little boy asking what’s above the sky or where do we go when we die and what’s Heaven like.

“Good question,” I said.

“I suppose to a better place,” Skinny Jack said. “A better place than where they would be if they were caught.”

“I suppose that’s right, Skinny Jack.”

Virgil walked his horse slowly, looking at the ground, and when he got back to us, he shook his head and pointed south.

“Benson City it is,” I said.

The wind and dust kept coming as we rode. It was not as heavy as I’d expected, but it was steady and it remained with us throughout the afternoon. We stopped a few times to rest our horses and have some hard tack, and by the time we got to Benson City the wind had lightened up as the sun was going down.

“Let’s move off,” Virgil said. “Come in from the back and see what we can see.”

Skinny Jack and I followed Virgil off the road. We circled around, came up on the back of the town, and dismounted behind some outlaying barns. We tied off behind one of the structures. Virgil and Skinny Jack got their Winchesters and I removed my eight-gauge from its scabbard.

We moved off on foot toward the main street. For the moment we saw no one moving about, and with the fading light we could walk about ourselves with a sense of ease that we were not being too obvious.

Benson City was not much of a city. It had a small population and a handful of businesses that catered to the four-way stage route. There were some barns and corrals scattered around the outskirts and a few houses sitting back from the road, but that was the sum of the place.

We came up behind a general store with a loading dock and crouched down behind a row of chicken coops. From where we were we could see a two-story hotel next to the store, with an open back door on the first floor. Next to that, about fifty yards away, was a stage stop building with a connecting corral. A group of mules and horses stood munching on hay that was being pitched to them from someone we could not see in the shadows under a lean-to.

Across from the stage stop was a small travelers’ café, and next to that was a tall windmill that was providing a squeaking cadence.

“Think this hotel here has the only saloon,” I said.

“Could be more, or another by now,” Virgil said.

“Let me walk over there to the other side of that store and have a look, see what I can see on the street, horsewise and whatnot.”

Virgil nodded.

I leaned my eight-gauge up against the coops and walked off through the opening between the store and saloon.