Chapter 4

The Ranger awoke slowly to the beat of a bass drum pounding mercilessly inside his head. He ached all over from the fall he’d taken. His duster and shirt had been removed; he glanced sidelong at his right shoulder and saw a bandage covering the bullet graze. In his half-conscious state, he looked around and noted that he was indoors, lying on a wooden-framed bed against a plank wall. Yet above him he saw no ceiling, only the sky, blue and clear with a curl of smoke drifting on a light breeze. He looked across the room at a burning hearth. He smelled coffee boiling. But surrounding the hearth he saw trees, brush and rock reaching up a rugged hillside.

Looking down from the cot, he saw a rough pine-plank floor beneath him. The floor wavered unsteadily for a moment. Sam closed his eyes tight and wondered if he was still sleeping—sleeping to the insistent beat of the drum. Reopening his eyes, he tried to raise his hand to his head, but his effort stopped short as he felt the bite of handcuffs holding him locked to the bed frame.

What was this . . . where was he? He shook his cuffed wrist, testing the handcuffs. Then he turned his face quickly toward the sound of the voice and saw the figure in the long riding duster walking toward him, rifle in hand.

“I see you’re awake,” a husky but feminine voice said. The sound of bootheels clacked as the tall figure stepped onto the plank floor, moving closer.

A woman? Sam batted his eyes, trying to still the drumbeat and clear his addled brain.

“Yes, a woman,” the husky voice said, as if she were reading his thoughts through the questioning look on his face. “I’m glad you’re waking up. I was getting worried. I thought I’d killed you.”

“You shot me?” Sam asked.

“I’m afraid I did,” the tall woman admitted, stopping, standing over him, adjusting the rifle over into the cradle of her arm. “I didn’t see your badge until it was too late. I thought you were waiting for Dad Orwick and his men.”

“I was,” Sam replied, having to put more effort than usual into speaking clearly.

“I mean I thought you were one of them,” she corrected, “a guard he left behind or something—that is, until I saw your badge. Then it was too late.”

Sam let out a breath.

“I was waiting for his men,” he said, his mind beginning to clear some. “They robbed the bank in Goble.”

“For his men?” the woman said. “I was waiting for Orwick himself.”

“Then you were going to be disappointed,” Sam said. “Orwick already split off from the rest of them.”

“That snake,” she said. “He’s good at disappearing at the right time.”

Sam raised his free hand and rubbed his temple, trying to still the drumbeat and collect whatever sense he could make of the conversation. He held his cuffed hand up as far as he could and looked at it, recognizing the handcuffs to be his own, the ones he kept inside his saddlebags.

“Is there a reason why you’ve got me cuffed to this bed frame?” he asked drily.

“There was,” she said. “There’s not now. Sorry. I was afraid you’d wake up and realize I shot you before I had time to explain why.” As she spoke, she reached inside her duster pocket and took out the key to the handcuffs.

When she unlocked the cuffs, she handed them to him. Sam rubbed his wrist, feeling pain in his grazed shoulder. He looked to the far edge of the fallen shack and saw his copper dun and another horse reined to a lone standing timber.

“Obliged,” he said, sitting up stiffly on the side of the bed. “And thanks for bandaging my shoulder,” he added.

“Don’t mention it, Ranger,” she said. “It was the least I could do.” Sam noted a calm, almost icy detachment to her words, her demeanor. “I’m thankful I didn’t kill you,” she said, as if to keep from appearing to not really care much one way or the other if she did. “Especially now that I know you’re after the same prey as I am.”

Sam gave her a curious look.

“The same prey?” he said. “That sounds like you’re a bounty hunter.”

“Oh, does it?” she said. “Well, I’m not,” she added. “Maybe prey wasn’t the right word. I should have simply said we’re after the same man.” She offered a slight smile that revealed very little. “You no doubt want him dead or alive. I want him dead, nothing short of dead.”

Sam only stared at her. He watched her reach a hand up and shove the wide-brimmed plainsman hat back off her head. The hat hung below her shoulders on its rawhide string. With the hat off, Sam could more clearly see her face. She was finely featured, with faint streaks of silver in her pulled-back hair.

“You want him dead?” Sam asked. “What did he do to you that has you intent on killing him?”

“He married me,” the woman said flatly.

Sam tried not to sound too surprised. He wanted to hear more, but he could already tell that with this woman, he would have to listen, not pry.

“He married lots of women from what I’ve heard,” Sam said.

“Yes,” the woman said, “and as with me, most of those marriages were performed against the bride’s will.”

Sam continued to stare coolly, knowing she had more to say, and knowing she would get it said, in her own time.

“It’s a long story, Ranger,” she said with a slight sigh, cutting a glance toward the coffeepot hanging over the hearth fire. “Could you stand some coffee—get your head cleared the rest of the way?”

“I could stand some,” Sam said. He started to stand on shaky legs. His hand went carefully to the large, throbbing lump atop his head.

“No, sit still, Ranger,” she said. “I’ll get it for you. Take it easy and get yourself rested up. You took a hard fall.”

“My horse . . . ?” he said, looking out across the narrow clearing on the hillside.

“I took care of everything,” the woman said. “It was the least I could do.” She gave a thin but authentic smile. “I’m Matilda . . . Matilda Rourke,” she said. “Please call me Mattie.”

“Arizona Territory Ranger, Samuel Burrack, Miss Mattie,” Sam said.

“I meant Mattie without the Miss,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said.

He sank back down on the side of the bed, watching her turn and step over to the hearth. He noticed the long tail of hair hanging down her back to her waist, shiny dark hair laced with streaks of silver.

“I was afraid that’s who you were, Ranger Burrack,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ve heard of you. I know you ride these trails.”

“Didn’t you expect someone would be on their trail soon enough?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But I expected it to be a posse. And I didn’t except it to be so soon. That’s why I thought you were one of them—maybe even Dad himself.”

“You were married to the man and you wouldn’t be able to see I wasn’t him?” Sam asked curiously. He watched her pour coffee into a cup and walk to him with it, her rifle still cradled in her arm. She was older than him, eight, ten years, maybe more, he estimated. Yet he saw the stride of a younger woman—a confident, self-assured woman.

“I’m afraid I don’t see as well I used to,” she said. She pushed a strand of silver-streaked hair back from her cheek as she handed the coffee cup down to him. “I bought a pair of spectacles, but I’m not used to them yet. I’d left them in my saddlebags.” She lowered her voice and her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said in a near whisper. “Had I been wearing them I would have seen you weren’t Dad.”

Sam noted the bandaged graze on his shoulder.

“On the other hand,” he said, “if you’d thought I was one of his men, maybe I can count myself fortunate you weren’t wearing them.”

It took her a second to catch his irony.

“Oh yes, come to think of it,” she said as his meaning became clear to her. “I am quite a good shot with this.” She gave a nurturing lift of the rifle in the crook of her arm.

Sam sipped the steaming coffee. He wanted to know more about this woman. Were there things she could tell him about the man he was tracking? Of course there were. But it was more than that, he told himself. There was something about the woman herself. . . .

“Just being married to Dad Orwick was enough to make you want to kill him?” he asked. He eyed her inconspicuously. Behind her duster, she wore battered, snug buckskins. A tall skinning knife stood in a fringed sheath crosswise across her flat belly. Atop an open collar button a brown linsey-woolsey shirt revealed the upper edge of faded red long johns beneath it.

She reached a scuffed boot toe out and dragged a weathered wooden chair closer to the bed. She pulled Sam’s bullet-torn shirt from the chairback and pitched it over onto the bed beside him. Sam nodded his thanks and looked back at her.

“Killing him’s the least of what I first wanted to do,” she said, sitting down. “When I managed to break away from his family, I lay awake nights imagining some of the most awful, torturous things I could conjure up—” She stopped short and turned an ear toward the hillside.

Sam froze in the process of lifting the cup of coffee to his lips, and the two stared at each other.

“Did you hear that?” Mattie Rourke asked in a hushed voice, half rising catlike from the chair.

Sam only nodded, reaching down, setting the coffee cup on the plank floor. He picked up his boots standing at the edge of the bed.

“Riders,” he said, “coming from down trail—ten minutes, maybe sooner.”

She stood and held on to her rifle with both hands.

Sam stiffly pulled on his boots and looked all around for his gun belt, shaking the last of the cobwebs from inside his head, noting the drumbeat had slowed considerably.

“The posse from Goble?” she asked him, still whispering.

“Let’s hope so,” Sam said. He pushed himself up from the edge of the bed and pulled his shirt on over his bandaged shoulder. He gave Mattie a questioning look.

“Your gun belt and duster are on your horse,” she said, nodding to where the horses stood staring back at them.

Sam stumbled a little as he started to take a step. But Mattie caught him, steadied him, looped his arm across her shoulders and walked on.

“I’m all right,” Sam said, even though he didn’t resist her help. He shook his head as if to clear it entirely.

“I know you are, but just in case,” she said, walking him toward the horses.

“We’ll get atop the trail over them,” Sam said, feeling weak now that he was up and moving. He realized he wasn’t back to himself yet.

The woman looked at him as she stopped beside his copper-colored dun. She considered what he’d said, with the look of one who was not used to following another’s direction. She resented his assumed authority, but she calmed herself, took a patient breath and let it go.

“Yes, you’re right, Ranger,” she said quietly. “That’s what we should do.” She helped guide his boot into the stirrup as he raised it. Then she kept close, her hands up, spread, ready to help, even as he swung himself up into the saddle on his own and settled onto it.

—

The eight-man posse from Goble wound its way up the switchback hill trail. Ten yards ahead of the other riders, a buckskin-clad man named Dee Ragland scouted the trail for the hoofprints left behind by Dad Orwick’s gunmen. Riding slowly, Ragland bent low down the side of his horse, examining the dirt. Now and then he held up a gloved hand to bring the others to a halt.

“Good God Almighty, must we constantly be stopping like this!” said Kerwin Stone, the bank president from Goble, as once again he and the riders around him jerked their horses to a halt. “What does he think we’re going to do, ride up there and stomp these horses all around so he can’t see the prints?”

Beside him, the sheriff of Goble, Fred Hall, let out an exasperated breath. He looked at Stone, then at Sheriff Clayton DeShay, who had thrown in with the posse as it came through Whiskey Bend.

“I have to say I don’t understand Dee’s reasoning myself, but he’s known for his tracking skills—and he is part Indian.”

“Part Indian indeed,” Stone grumbled. “He’s an idiot. There is no rationale to us having to ride so far behind, and keep stopping every time it strikes his fancy. What possible purpose does it serve?”

“I agree this is taking too damn long. I’m going up to talk to him,” said Sheriff Hall. “But you and Sheriff DeShay hold everybody back until I hear what he has to say.”

“We don’t need to be held back like we’re a bunch of damned fools, Sheriff,” said a black teamster named Morgan Almond, one of the riders crowded up around the banker.

Almond spit and ran a hand across his dust-caked lips. “You need to knock Ragland in the head so’s we can ride on and catch these robbers. If we’re not going to catch them, I’d as soon go back to Whiskey Bend and load my wagon.”

“He’s got a point, Sheriff,” said a well-known hired gunman named Arlis Fletcher. “Speaking strictly for myself, I had no money in that bank. I’d like to either get on with this or go home.” The gunman wore a bearskin coat in spite of the warming day. A dusty black derby perched jauntily to one side of his head. A brace of holstered Colts rested on his hips. He gave a flat smile beneath a fine-trimmed mustache and patted the chest of his thick coat. “Fact is, I’m near out of rye.”

Sheriff Hall looked at the men, then at DeShay. The posse was getting edgy. It wouldn’t last much longer.

“Everybody settle down. I’ll be right back,” he said, turning his horse forward and riding away toward the trail scout. As he approached Ragland, the scout waved his hand back and forth furiously, trying to stop him. But Sheriff Hall rode on.

“Damn it, Sheriff, stay back!” said Ragland as Hall slid his horse to a halt a few feet away. “I can’t have these prints disturbed, not if I’m going to be able to figure anything out about them.”

“Aw, hell, Ragland,” the sheriff said in disgust, “why all this stopping and starting? What is it you’re finding out anyway that’s so damned helpful?”

Ragland held a hand up toward him with a scorching stare.

“We’ve got six riders, Sheriff,” he said. “And following those six, we’ve one rider alone—I’m supposing that to be Ranger Burrack.”

Looking down at the mass of hoofprints in the dirt, Sheriff Hall shook his head as if not believing the scout.

“How the hell can you read that one rider is following six others in a mess of prints such as this?” he asked.

“It’s not hard if I can keep you and those knotheads far enough back,” Ragland said.

“Watch your mouth, Ragland,” Hall warned.

Ragland ignored the sheriff’s caution, pointing down at the tangle of prints in the dirt.

“See how this one set of prints laps over the others?” he said.

“Damn it, Ragland, of course one set is always going to overlap. That doesn’t tell you nothing,” said Hall.

“Not from here,” Ragland said. “But look back between here and the posse. See how that one set of prints stays on top, forms its own trail if you stare at them close enough?”

Hall squinted and stared back along the trail toward the waiting riders. After a moment, he made out a line of ghostlike prints that stood out, faintly, unbroken above the jumble of prints beneath them.

“Jesus . . . ,” he said.

“I told you,” said Ragland. “Look long enough at the stride, you’ll see this lone rider is moving at a faster gallop than the ones he’s trailing.”

“Jesus . . . ,” Hall repeated, truly impressed. “I’m a lawman. How the hell do you know—?”

“Indian blood.” Ragland cut him off, patting himself on the chest.

“Horse dribble,” said Hall. But seeing the banker and the others encroach their horses a step closer, he shouted out at them, “Stay the hell back, Stone. You’re messing up this man’s tracking!”

Smiling to himself, Ragland turned his horse forward on the trail. But before he could go ten feet, he saw two figures rise into sight among the rocks above them.

“There we are, Sheriff,” he said, pointing up at the Ranger and the woman who stood looking down at them, the Ranger with a hand raised in a show of peace.

But Hall, looking up, taken by surprise, jerked his Colt from its holster. Sensing his panic, Hall’s horse reared with him. Startled, the sheriff let his cocked Colt fly from his hand, strike the ground and fire wildly near the already spooked horse’s hooves. Hall flew from his saddle, his foot twisted and stuck in the stirrup.

Ragland sat staring in disbelief as the sheriff’s horse spun and bolted back toward the rest of the posse, the hapless sheriff bouncing, screaming and spinning along in the dirt beside it.