Ed Gorman - Showdown

She hurried on to the livery stable. She needed to get a horse tonight. After supper, she planned to go to visit a patient whom she'd befriended at the hospital, an old miner who was dying of a bad heart.

The stable stank of old hay, road apples, horse, and the rain-soaked wood that had comprised the livery since shortly after the town had been built. She had stopped by here this morning, so the liveryman had a roan all picked out for her. He got it saddled and turned it over. She was good with horses. They generally seemed to like her as much as she liked them.

When she came out into the street, she saw Tom mounting his own horse in front of the sheriff's office. Again, her compulsion was to make him aware of her somehow. Catch up to him as if she didn't know it was him. Or fall in beside him and simply wish him good evening. Just a casual encounter.

But she knew it would be more than that. It always was. And it was always her fault for letting it become more than that.

She just sat on her horse, watching Tom move his animal away from the office. She wondered where he was going. East. Why would he be headed east? She tried to think of whom he might know in that direction.

She sat there for some time, thinking. And then she slowly began moving away from the livery, taking, at a good distance, the same route Tom was taking.

She was barely aware of what she was doing. She was almost trancelike. Her eyes saw but didn't see. Her ears heard but didn't hear. Her breath came in sharp little gasps. Where was she going? What was she doing? My Lord, he would hate her if he ever found out that she'd started following him like this.

He would hate her for sure.

Prine didn't become aware of the rider behind him until he reached the top of the hill that looked down on the farmhouse where Cassie was being kept. Or where he hoped she was being kept, anyway.

No light in the house, of course. Moonlight silvered the windows. An awning swung in the wind, banging against the window frame. A wild dog sniffed around the autumn-scorched grass in the front yard.

He heard the horse before seeing it. A narrow, rock-bottomed creek ran in the distance behind him. Horseshoes clicked against stone, announcing the arrival of horse and rider.

Prine yanked his Winchester from his scabbard, spurred his animal in among the shallow stand of jackpines to hide.

The rider was in no hurry to crest the hill. The horse was loping at best. All sorts of names and faces flashed through Prine's mind. Would the sheriff have followed him? Bob Carlyle? Maybe Richard Neville himself? Had somebody followed him previously and figured out what he was up to?

The scent of pine sap strong in his nostrils, Prine watched as a lone rider appeared in a bald patch on the top of the hill, just about where he'd sat his own horse. He sniffled. Pine sap always played hell with his sinuses.

His eyes refused at first to believe what his mind told him was true. A woman sat on the horse.

She dropped down from her mount, ground-tying her animal and walking closer to the rim of the hill so she could see below.

Why would a woman follow him out here?

He was about to find out, because he sneezed just then. The damned pinecone. Giving away his position.

The woman, bold, turned back toward him and said, "Who's there?" Speaking to the darkened stand of jackpines in front of her.

He recognized her now. "Lucy? Lucy, what the hell are you doing out here?"

"Is that you, Tom?"

He nudged his horse out from the jackpines, dropped down out of the saddle.

As he approached her, she said, "Oh, gosh, Tom. I'm such a fool. I—I swear it was almost like I couldn't help myself. I saw you leaving town. I was leaving, too. And I just started to follow you."

"Then you turn right around and go back to town. I'm working tonight, and you shouldn't be here."

Lucy said, "You think she could be down there? Wouldn't they have checked it earlier today?"

He was angry she looked so lovely in the moonlight. Maybe if she hadn't looked so good—evoking both his appreciative eye for female beauty and his guilt for leaving her—maybe then he would've been able to put her on her horse and send her back. But he couldn't.

Plus there was the matter of what she'd been able to surmise. He had to keep her quiet about this. He said, "I have to trust you with something."

"You know you can trust me, Tom."

"I swung past here this afternoon and I thought I saw three horses in the woods in back of the place. They may be keeping her in there. I wanted to wait till nightfall to find out."

"Why didn't you bring some help?"

"I don't want a shootout. They might kill Cassie if it came to that."

"I guess that's true."

He took her by the waist and drew her to him as he had so many other times. She was woman-warm in the chill night, her flesh feeling right and good beneath her jacket. "This is something that's between us, all right, Lucy? You didn't see me tonight. I'll just tell the sheriff that I was riding out to see Bob Carlyle's house when I saw a light in the place and decided to swing by."

"Sure, Tom."

And then, without any warning, she kissed him. Sliding her arms around his neck. Pulling him toward her with hard, childlike need. And he responded, remembering how good and tender a love she was. How playful she was at times. Again, like a child. And how many nights lying beside her he'd get caught up in her out-loud daydreams of the day when they had two or three children and Tom had gone into some safe business and was making a good name for himself. How easy it had been to share her sense of their destiny then. But always at the back of his mind there'd been a greater dream. And now, with any luck at all, that dream was about to be realized. A hero, a reward, a beautiful, rich girl.

He eased her away from him.

"So I've got to depend on you, Lucy."

"You know you can," she said, still shaken from their kiss.

"Get on your horse and head right back to town." She nodded. And then kissed him as impulsively as she had the first time.

He watched her for a good half-mile, till he was sure she wouldn't double back and surprise him again.

Then he tied his horse to a jackpine branch, grabbed his Winchester, and proceeded to the west, so that he could come up behind the farmhouse when he approached it.

Chapter Ten

Prine found road apples but no horses in the timber behind the farmhouse. He poked the apples with a stick. Fresh—not over three, four hours old. No posse would have put up in the timber here. That meant Tolan and Rooney had been here. But where were they now? And was Cassie all right? Had something happened and they had to flee?

Again, he thought of all the ways kidnappings went wrong sometimes.

He crouched and began his run across the grassy expanse between timber and farmhouse.

Despite the cool night, he was sweating hard by the time he reached the door. Nerves, mostly, and he knew it.

No trouble getting in. In fact, the damned back door nearly fell off its rusted hinges when he opened up. It also squawked like a parrot. It was a good thing he didn't give a damn about making noise.

The stench of the interior gagged him for a moment. Every kind of animal, large and small, that God had ever created had used this deserted place as a toilet. And some of them had died in here, of disease or nocturnal battles. Rain had stenched the wood, too; it smelled—there was no other way to say it—of the grave.

The house: kitchen, dining room, living area. Gutted by time, animals, and most likely hoboes since it wasn't too far from the tracks. For the 'boes this would be like dying and going straight to heaven. A roof over your head every night, even if it was leaky, was hard to beat.