Aurand Forester stuffed a pepperbox .36 into his saddle bags. He was tossing in an extra box of .44 Henry cartridges for his rifle and .44 Russian rounds for his pistols when the door to the marshal’s office opened.
“I would like a word, Marshal . . .”
“Don’t have time,” Aurand said, not looking up from his packing chore. “Got a man to hunt.”
“Precisely why I am here.”
Aurand closed the bags with the “Confederate States of America” stamp branded on the outside. He headed for the door that was blocked by a man taller than he and forty pounds heavier. The deep crow’s-feet under his eyes and his leathered face put him in his late fifties, perhaps early sixties. His gray hair peppered with white flowed down in a neat cascade over the collar of his deerskin shirt, which was sweat stained to the color of yellow phlegm. “I wish to speak with you about the man you hunt.”
Aurand eyed the stranger warily. “What’s Tucker Ashley to you? Unless you’re the man who helped him escape.”
The man waved the air in dismissal as he sat on the edge of Aurand’s desk. He shook out a package of rolled cigarettes and offered Aurand one.
“Been a long time since I had a factory smoke,” Aurand said.
The man lit it with a lucifer he’d grabbed from a pocket inside his buckskins.
“Like I asked, what’s Tucker to you?”
“Nothing. Find and kill the rascal. And good hunting. Who I am concerned with is the missing woman.”
The man unfolded a “Wanted” flier and laid it on Aurand’s desk. A thousand dollars had been offered for Lorna Moore’s return by her father.
Aurand handed the flier back. “Still don’t see the connection to the man I’m hunting.”
The stranger blew interlacing smoke rings upward. “I understand the man you’re after and this Miss Moore were friendly. Perhaps close acquaintances even.”
“I don’t get your drift.”
“My drift, Marshal Forester, is that it was mighty coincidental that she disappeared about the same time your man escaped. Perhaps this young lady helped in his brazen jailbreak.”
“And you think she might be with Tucker?”
The man shrugged and dropped his cigarette butt on the dirt floor. He snubbed it out with the toe of his moccasin. “We may be able to help one another.”
“Look, Mister . . .”
The man remained silent.
“Tucker went one way by the tracks we cut, but nothing indicated Lorna went with him. I understand her father and she have had somewhat of a falling-out recently, if you believe the partner, Maynard Miles.”
“What I do not believe in, Marshal, are coincidences.”
The door burst open, and Philo Brown stumbled into the office. He half-ran across the room to the rack of rifles locked beside the desk when he froze. His jaw dropped, and he backed up. When he hit the wall, he stood, shaking, as he pointed at the stranger. “Simon Cady,” he breathed.
Cady tipped his hat. “I am at a disadvantage. You are?”
“Philo Brown.”
“Ah, yes. I thought I recognized you. The very bad cheating gambler.”
“You’re Simon Cady?” Aurand’s hand inched under his vest toward his gun.
“No need for that, Marshal.” Cady nodded to Aurand’s gun hand. “I am quite harmless.”
“Harmless until we turn our backs.” Philo had gathered courage enough to talk, though his eyes never left Cady as he moved beside Aurand. “You’re looking at the bounty hunter who brings all his wanted men in over their saddles. He’s a damned back-shooter.”
“Mr. Brown,”—Cady picked his words carefully—“I have killed no one who did not wish to kill me. And every man I bring in has ‘dead or alive’ pasted across his poster. You are a testament to the fact I don’t kill everyone who harms me.” He turned to Aurand and smiled. “Mr. Brown sought to cheat me in a game of poker in Hays City some years ago. I caught him.” He looked at Philo. “But all I did was . . . educate Mr. Brown on the merits of playing honestly.”
“If by educate you mean that beating you gave me.”
“Mr. Brown,” Cady said, shaking his head, “that might have been the only education you ever got in your miserable life.”
Aurand edged closer to the door. If there was to be gun play in his office, he wanted space to maneuver. “Let me get this straight: you’re working on the bounty of Lorna Moore?”
“I am.”
“And are you going to shoot her in the back as well?”
Cady tilted his head back and laughed. His curly hair bounced on his thick shoulders. “Heavens, no. When I bring her back, she will be as safe as when she was tending store.”
“So you are proposing we combine our resources?” Aurand asked.
“That is just what I propose.”
“I don’t deal with back-shooters.”
Cady’s smile left him. “If my sources are correct, Marshal Forester, you are the back-shooter among us. But then, wasn’t everyone who raided with Bloody Bill Anderson during the war a back-shooter?”
“I think I have heard enough from you for one day.” Aurand pulled his vest back, exposing his hand that rested on a pistol riding high on his belt.
Cady held up his hands as if to surrender. “You’ve got the best of me, Marshal. But remember my words: wherever Tucker Ashley fled to is where Lorna Moore will be.”
As Cady headed for the door, he kept his eyes on Aurand and Philo. He stopped in front of a wall with “Wanted” posters tacked to it and snatched the top poster. He took out spectacles and held the poster at arm’s length. “White male wanted in a series of stage holdups,” he read aloud, “between Billings and Miles City last month.” He looked over the “Wanted” poster at Aurand. “Says here the man is early- to mid-thirties. Six foot two or three, and weighs between two-forty and two-fifty. Murdered a stage guard in one instance. A passenger in another.” He folded the poster and stuffed it down his buckskin shirt. “You won’t mind me taking this poster and making an honest living, Marshal?”
“If you call bounty hunting an honest living,” Aurand said. “Take it and find that man if you want. Or Lorna Moore. Anyone. But just stay out of my way.”
Cady smiled. “Why, Marshal, I always stay out of the way of the law.”
The door shut, and Philo slumped against the desk. He leaned on it to steady himself as he worked his way around to the chair. “You do know who you just talked to?”
Aurand shrugged. “Damned bounty hunter.”
“Damned murderer.”
“I got no time to worry about Simon Cady. Where’s Jess?”
Philo looked at the empty spot where the “Wanted” poster had hung a moment ago. “Somewhere between Billings and Miles City, as of last month. I wired his room in Pierre to meet us on the way.”