FIFTEEN
The next morning Eve—with malicious delight in her eyes—volunteered to wake Jean up. Clint had to speak to her while she held her wrap closed, shading her eyes from the morning light and stifling yawns the whole time.
“No,” she said, “the guy would not come upstairs with me. He only wanted to know about the other man, the big one who hurt Eve.”
“And what did you know about him?”
“Nothing,” she said, yawning. “Only what Eve told me. That he was mean.”
“What about the other men with him?” Clint asked. “Did any of them go with you?”
“Yeah,” she said, leaning on her hand, “the Mexican.”
“And what did he have to say?”
“Sí and no, mostly,” she said.
“Nothing about where’d they’d been,” Clint asked, “where they were going?”
“Naw,” she said, “he was too smart, that one. Wouldn’t say a word except what he wanted me to do.”
“Okay,” Clint said. “Thanks. You can go back to bed.”
Jean didn’t have to be told twice. She got up and dragged her rather skinny ass back up to her room.
Eve walked Clint outside.
“If you’re ever back this way,” she said, “make sure you stop in.”
“I will,” he said. “You’d better go get some rest, too, like your friend.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.
“What’s that?”
“She’s no friend of mine,” Eve said. “I hate that bitch. It was a pleasure to drag her out of bed.”
She kissed his cheek and he said good-bye and walked to the livery.
“Look,” the liveryman said, pointing to the ground in one of the stalls. “I found this yesterday.”
Clint looked and saw a track in the dirt—a track with a triangle on the shoe.
“I just found one,” the man said, “but that’s what it looks like.”
“Okay,” Clint said, “now I know.”
“You ain’t gonna find any in town.”
“That’s okay,” Clint said, mounting Eclipse. “I should be able to find something outside of town.”
“Chow!” Santee called.
Once breakfast and coffee were done, Ed Grey and Billy Ludlow went off by themselves, leaving Dolan and Santee by the fire.
“Why do we not just lie in wait for him?” Santee asked.
“For McBeth? Naw.” Dolan shook his head.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to make it easy on the lad. If he wants me, he’s going to have to work for it.”
“So we allow him to follow us into Mexico?”
“Yes.”
“This man, he is very determined.”
“He is, indeed.”
“Is there a reason for that?” Santee asked.
“Yes,” Dolan said.
He said no more.
McBeth made himself some coffee and had a breakfast of beef jerky. He wasn’t keeping a cold camp exactly. It was just easier for him.
Afterward he kicked the fire to death and saddled his horse. The animal was a steeldust he had picked up after his last horse died. This was the fifth animal he had been through since getting off the boat in San Francisco. He generally rode them into the ground.
He hitched up his uncomfortable holster, mounted the horse, and headed south.
As soon as he cleared town, Clint started checking the ground for tracks. There was a trail in and out of town, but it was well-traveled and any tracks that might have been left there five days ago were gone.
But a gang trying to avoid being seen would not follow a well-traveled trail, so he left the trail and started studying the ground. It took a couple of hours but he finally found a track with a triangle on it. Then he found another. Then he found enough to give him a direction.
South.
“Damn it!”
The direction he had come from.