CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“If Kyle throws in with Dave Shannon, it’s a fight we can’t win,” Clint Cooley said.
“We don’t know that it was Kyle the Kiowa saw with Duran,” Dan Caine said.
Cooley said, “A big man on a two-hundred-dollar horse? Who else could it be? And wasn’t he riding with James Duran, not the most sociable of gents at the best of times?”
“Clint, all you give me are questions and no answers,” Dan said.
“Then ask me a question and I’ll answer it,” Cooley said.
“How do we get at Kyle?”
“We don’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we pull out of here at sunup, and don’t look back until we reach Thunder Creek.”
“You mean, just let him go?”
“I mean try for him again . . . when you’ve got a dozen well-armed and determined men at your back.”
“I’d never catch up with him again,” Dan said. “If he gets back across the Brazos, I’ll lose him. An outlaw like him is a will-o’-the-wisp, here today, gone tomorrow.”
“If you wait here much longer, you’ll see him again right soon . . . coming up this hill with Dave Shannon and his outlaw gunmen. Depend on it, they’ll be a bunch of hard cases not to be trifled with.”
“Anyone else want to say something?” Dan said.
“I’m with Cooley,” Fish Lee said. “I say we skedaddle.”
“Massey?” Dan said.
“I want no part of Caine’s Last Stand,” the newspaperman said. “I guess that answers your question.”
“Holt?”
The boy’s young face bore a worried expression, but he was still game. “I’ll stick with you, Deputy Caine.”
“And what about you, Estella?”
A rising breeze tugged at the girl’s hat, her dark glasses now resting on the wide brim. She placed her hand on top of the crown to prevent the hat from flying away and said, “I’ve done some growing up since we started out, and I’m now much more at ease around grown men. In other words, I’ve learned a great deal. But, Dan, I won’t throw my life away in a hopeless cause. We did our best, but the odds were stacked against us from the beginning. I say we leave Kyle for another day and another lawman.”
“What about Jenny Calthrop?” Holt said. “Are we forgetting about her?”
“No, we’re not forgetting about Jenny,” Estella said. “My heart is broken, and it will never mend.”
Holt put his arm around Estella’s shoulders and said, “Jenny will be all right. I know she will.”
The young man’s words were sympathetic but empty. He knew it, and Estella knew it, but hollow as they were, they brought her a measure of comfort.
“I didn’t mean to put go or stay up for a vote,” Dan said. “I still think we should brace Kyle and do what we came to do.”
“Dan, do what you have to do, but I won’t see you throw away the lives of the people around you,” Cooley said. “Sure, go after Clay Kyle, face-to-face like a man, and die in the attempt. But include me out. I draw the line at suicide.”
“I reckon what Cooley said goes for all of us,” Cornelius Massey said. “You’re trying to hold onto a cause that was lost the day we rode into these mountains.”
“I won’t be here to watch you die, Dan,” Estella said.
“None of us will, and that includes you, Holt,” Cooley said.
The young man’s face was miserable. “We can’t win, can we, Mr. Cooley?” he said.
Cooley shook his head. “No. If we try bucking the odds facing us, all we can do is die.”
“Wait, I’ve got something to say,” Dan said. “I’m not much of a one for speechifying, but it’s been a rare privilege to ride with all of you, and, as much as I hate to admit it, I reckon you’re right. I won’t put your lives at risk any longer. That’s it, all the words I have. Tomorrow at first light, we ride out of these mountains, and as Clint says, we won’t look back.”
“I’ll look back,” Estella said. “I’ll look back and hope and pray that I’ll see Jenny waving to me.”
Later, as the day shadowed into evening, the Kiowa started a small fire and filled the coffeepot with water from the canteens. After a while he stepped to the others and said, “Tortillas and coffee for supper.”
Fish Lee laughed and slapped his thigh. “Damn it all, Injun, I knew there was white man in you somewhere.”