Tucker gradually became aware of a figure moving about. He kept his eyes closed, kept a stillness about him that might mean his life. A fire flickered close. Sparks of dry kindling crackled close to him. He lay on his side that covered an empty holster, and his wounded leg was propped up on a bedroll.
He cracked an eye. The campfire was mere feet from him, and a figure moved in the light’s periphery ten feet away. Tucker opened his eyes just as the man moved toward him. Tucker’s head snapped up. He struggled to stand, but gentle hands eased him back down.
“Easy, Tuck. You ain’t going nowheres.” Jack’s grin told Tucker that—at least for now—he was safe.
“I thought you were dead,” Tucker said. He rolled over. “Strung up in Cowtown. How’d you get here?”
“Whoa,” Jack said. “Let’s get something in your gullet before I answer any questions.”
Jack helped Tucker sit and propped a saddle behind his back. Jack took meat off the fire and sliced it before dropping it into a metal plate and handing it to Tucker. He eyed it suspiciously. “Coyote?”
“Bobcat,” Jack answered.
Tucker shrugged and closed his eyes as he savored the meat. It seemed so long since he’d eaten anything that the bobcat tasted as good as any buffalo steak he’d ever had. When he finished the meat, he grabbed some wild onions popping on a stick over the fire. “How’d you come on to me?”
“First, Cowtown.” Jack poured each a cup of chicory and sat on a rock in front of Tucker. “I got to worrying about you being there all by your lonesome. Figured you needed help. So I rode in anyways—”
“I thought we’d agreed you were in no shape to help.”
“That was you agreeing with yourself.” Jack nudged Tucker. “Couldn’t let my ol’ pard face those cowboys alone. Anyways, some of those cowboys didn’t run off with the others you suckered. Some held back. And when they seen me sitting there in that saloon . . . well, they placed it upon themselves that I was a little too calm. That I was, in fact, the one who killed that shopkeeper. So they held me until the rest of those rowdies came back. Had a vigilance trial they called it. The next day I was to be run up a telegraph pole when the ol’ gal who owns Sadie’s Saloon busted through the crowd. Seems like the shopkeeper’s widow told her the man who killed her husband was almost too big to fit through the door.” Jack smiled. “First time in my life I was grateful I’m a runt.”
“But how’d you know it was my tracks you was following? Ben was arrow-shot, and I had to take Jess Hammond’s horse.” He told Jack how Jess had sent Red Sun on a wild-goose chase just so he could beat Tucker to death, and how Simon Cady had decided at that time to harvest his wanted man. “You knew Ben’s track. His gait. On Jess’s horse you wouldn’t know it was me.”
“I didn’t right off.” Jack passed his canteen to Tucker. “I finally found where your mule had been killed, and I started working things out from there. I followed your tracks until I come onto Simon Cady. Damn fool singing like he didn’t care if he attracted every Indian in the territory. Jess’s body was tied across Cady’s donkey. We got to talking, and I got to tell you, that man made the hairs on my butt stand at attention, he was so creepy.”
“How so?”
“Asking who I was,” Jack answered. “Wanting to know if I’d ever had a price on my head. When I told him all I was doing is trying to find you, his hand came out of his coat with a sawed off Greener double I never spotted. He pointed with Anastasia—that’s what he called his shotgun—to the west and wished me luck. It didn’t take me long to get clear of Cady.”
“See anything of Aurand? He’s got Philo and Red with him.” Tucker licked onion juice off his fingers, and Jack handed him more.
“I haven’t yet, but I suspect they’re out trying to find us right now.”
Tucker felt Jess’s empty holster.
“I cleaned it some after I found you.” Jack reached over to his bedroll and grabbed Jess’s Remington. Just like the one Tucker carried.
Tucker checked the cartridges before he holstered the gun. He slung the belt over his shoulder and tried standing, but he fell back onto the ground. He rubbed the fresh bandage encircling his leg.
“That leg will take some time to mend up.” Jack propped Tucker up against the saddle once more.
“Don’t have time to wait till it heals. I got a feeling those Indians will be coming up any time, as sloppy as I’ve been leaving sign for them to follow.”
Jack took out a tobacco pouch and began rolling two smokes. “That’s the oddest thing.” Jack lit the cigarettes and handed Tucker one. “As obvious as you’ve been, Aurand should have caught up with you by now, too. Especially with Red with them. Nobody confuses a trail on Red.”
“Unless he wants them to.”
They finished their noonday meal, and Jack rubbed sand over the tin plates before stuffing them in his saddlebags. “How’s the leg feel now?”
Tucker flexed it and found being off it for a few hours had helped the pain and the stiffness. That and Jack’s doctoring. “See any infection while you were in there?”
“That’s another surprising thing. It looked clean.”
“I can thank Red and his Crow concoction for that.” Tucker had been wounded at Antietam. A ball had penetrated his shoulder, passing through and through. In that Confederate prison he’d spent the rest of the war in, Tucker had seen many other Yankees come in wounded less severely, yet they soon died from infection. “I ought to be good to travel in the morning.”
“You asking me or telling me?” Jack said.
“Does it matter where Lorna’s concerned?”
“I suppose not,” Jack said as he unrolled his bedroll. “If you think you can make it on your own.”
Tucker wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. “You leaving?”
“Got to,” Jack said. “I need to ride out. See if I can pick up any sign of Blue Boy. I don’t want to be a sitting duck when he comes onto us. Or when Aurand figures out Red’s been leading them in circles.”