‘There’s eight of ’em. Two to one they’re goin’ eight different directions outa here.’
Without looking at Dwight, Val replied, ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
Wordlessly, as though they had ridden together for years, both men dismounted. Working in opposite directions, they began walking a large circle around the flat bottom of the vale, where the horseless wagon, bereft of its treasure, stood forlorn and deserted.
Odds and ends of everything imaginable were strewn about the area. Several neckerchiefs, tins of Arbuckle, hardtack, boot repair kits, even several guns and boxes of ammunition had been cast aside as the outlaws made all available space in their saddle-bags.
‘I’d bet half of ’em even stuffed their shirts full o’ paper money,’ Dwight mused.
Every little way he spotted where a lone rider had fled, all heading east or south, away from the road that led out from town. ‘Expectin’ someone to be chasin’ ’em pretty soon,’ he mused.
He and Val met almost exactly halfway around the circle. ‘I counted six horses headin’ out this way,’ Dwight offered.
‘Five that way,’ Val responded.
‘McCrae rode in the wagon,’ Dwight mused. ‘Goode and Tighson had horses saddled and ready, and they rode ’em out. One o’ the gang was shot off’n his horse, an’ they took that horse with ’em.’
‘McCrae had obviously planned on bringing the hostage with the wagon, so his horse would most likely have been left here, along with Bandy’s,’ Val added, following Dwight’s line of reasoning.
‘So countin’ the team, they had eleven horses, but only nine people, includin’ Belinda.’
‘I cut two trails with two horses together.’
‘I spotted one.’
‘So two of them have an extra horse, each carrying only half as much money. The other one has Belinda.’
‘MacRae.’
‘Which is the one you’ll be following, I’m sure.’
‘Providin’ I can figure out which one it is,’ Dwight responded. The terror he kept carefully tethered in his mind nonetheless echoed in his voice.
Silence descended between the two for a long moment. It was Val who offered, then, ‘Let’s follow the double sets for a little ways. Maybe we can figure out which extra horses are carrying money and which one is carrying her.’
The suggestion rang hollow in Dwight’s mind. Her weight on a horse would not be different enough from half of one outlaw’s gold. The tracks would not be different enough to be able to tell which was which. Even so, for lack of any better idea, he mounted up and trotted over to where one double trail had left the area. He followed that trail for nearly a quarter of a mile, turned around to go back, when Val’s voice carried on the wind. ‘Over here!’
He jammed the spurs into his horse’s sides much harder than he intended. The horse leaped forward, running flat out in three jumps. He caught up with Val scarcely three minutes later.
‘What’d you find?’ he called out, well before he had advanced to where the Pinkerton detective sat his horse, waiting.
Silently, Val pointed at the ground.
Sawing on the reins to pull his horse to a stop, Dwight stared where the smaller man pointed. Caught in the edge of a clump of sage brush was a piece of beige lace. Dwight’s heart leaped into his throat. He leaped from his horse and walked a swift circle around the sage brush. Then he followed the two sets of tracks for a ways, then turned and ran back. He picked up the piece of lace. It was heavily wrinkled, giving evidence that it had been tightly crushed before it found its way to where they had found it.
‘Is that hers?’ Val asked.
Dwight forced himself to be calm. He relived in his mind the picture of Mac holding the shotgun to the base of Belinda’s skull. He remembered the dress she was wearing. He looked at the lace. ‘Yeah,’ he said, the word catching in his throat.
‘She marked her trail?’ Val asked.
A mirthless smile spread across Dwight’s face. ‘Sure’s anything. She found a way to let me know which set o’ tracks was hers.’
Not wasting the time to ask if that were the set of tracks Dwight would be following, Val said, ‘I would guess that Bandy will be one of the other double set of tracks. He would most certainly commandeer one of the extra horses to aid his getaway. I have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing the right one. Since he was overseeing the division of the loot, that would most likely mean he was one of the last to leave. I will guess it to be the other set of tracks that lead just a little way west from the set you’ll be following.’
‘Makes sense,’ Dwight agreed, already back in the saddle.
‘I’ll mark these two trails,’ Val offered. ‘That way the rest of them will know which ones to follow and which ones we are already pursuing.’
Dwight nodded, impatient to be moving.
‘They will be more easily caught than they realize,’ he assured Dwight.
Dwight frowned. ‘Why’s that?’
Val smiled. ‘I’m sure none of them has ever seen that much gold, let alone tried to transport it. It is amazingly heavy. If it doesn’t tear out the seams of their saddle-bags, it will tire their horses much, much more quickly than they expect. They will either push their horses too hard and exhaust them quickly, or they will have to travel slowly enough to be readily overtaken.’
‘Except the two with a spare horse.’
‘Except the two with a spare horse,’ Val echoed.
Dwight didn’t wait to hear any more. He didn’t wait to watch Val scratch arrows in the dirt pointing toward the tracks they each followed. He didn’t see him scratch a ‘V L’ beside one arrow, and a ‘D S’ beside the other. He didn’t look back to see the dust cloud rapidly approaching from town, as the posse raced to take up the pursuit. All he could see was the image of the woman he loved in the grasp of the outlaw.
He didn’t realize the amount of attention he was paying to the trail of the two horses. He was a consummate tracker. He had tracked so many people so many miles; he watched for the telltale broken blades of grass, the stones kicked out of where they had lain, the occasional faint impression of a horse’s hoof, or the broken small branch of a clump of sage or a smashed branch of a bush, as if it were instinctive to him.
He urged his horse to a rapid trot. After the first quarter of a mile, it seemed as if the horse himself recognized the trail they were following. Whether he saw the same things his rider saw, or whether he could still smell the other horses, didn’t really matter. He was now every bit as much a pursuer as his master.
Stern’s eyes covered every inch of the ground ahead and beside the trail he followed. He spotted the next piece of lace well before they got to it, as it fluttered in the breeze. He didn’t stop to look at it. He just offered a silent prayer that Mac would not catch her leaving the telltale sign.
Every time he approached the crest of a hill he drew his horse to a walk, removed his hat, and stood as high in the stirrups as he could. When he was just near enough to see over the top of whatever rise lay before him, he reined the horse to a stop and studied the land ahead.
‘He either knows the country or he’s scouted it out real well,’ he told his ever-attentive horse. ‘He’s givin’ a wide berth to every minin’ camp an’ town.’
The sun rose to its zenith and began its slow descent toward the distant mountains. Sweat streaked the flanks of his horse. He had long since removed his vest and rolled it behind the saddle, tying it into place with a couple of the strings attached to the saddle. His shirt was soaked with sweat.
Twice, as they crossed a small trickle of water from a spring, he stopped and let the horse drink his fill. Each time he refilled his canteen, poured water over his head and torso, filled the canteen again, and continued on the trail.
At the first place he stopped at he noted with a strange mixture of irritation and pleasure that Mac had not afforded either his horses or his captive an opportunity to drink. That meant Belinda was more than likely miserable with thirst. On the other hand, it also meant he was reducing their horses’ endurance.
At the second place he stopped for his horse to drink, he brought out a bag of oats from one of his saddle-bags. He poured a measure of them into his hat and allowed the horse to eat them. He was going to do everything he knew to stretch the endurance of his own mount.
Darkness settled on to the land just as he came to yet another place to water his horse. He let him rest a while and fed him another handful of oats. He knew there should be a good enough moon to be able to follow the trail as soon as it rose. That gave him and his horse almost two hours to rest. He slipped the bit from his horse’s mouth and picketed him in a patch of tall grass, within reach of the tiny rivulet of water. He lay down without benefit of a blanket. He forced all thoughts of Belinda and the mental turmoil that churned within him aside, willing himself to go to sleep. He’d had almost no sleep the night before, worrying about the possibility of exactly what had happened. Now the edge of his agitation had been worn away by the long day in the saddle, and the conviction that he was gaining on those he pursued. He knew he needed all the strength and endurance he could muster. By long practice and discipline, he actually managed to drop off to sleep.