He looked carefully at the drag marks between the creek edge and here.It was among all the men’s boots and the marks left by the horses.
“A woman’s boot.What do you know!”
Pirate raised his head from the pool where he was drinking but kept his opinion to himself.
The woman wearing those boots was not all that big either.He looked around the area.
“Here,” he muttered to himself.“Here is where she dismounted, and she stood talking to someone right here.”
He measured the length of the boot print of the man she talked to and went back and compared it with the dead man’s boots.It was the same.
“The two of them stood in front of each other.”He followed her track toward the river.They led down a dry stream bed right into the river.After scouting along the bank, he saw where she came back out of the river, waited a bit, and then went back to the clearing.
He went back to the body and studied how neatly was arranged.
“Only a woman would do this.”
He thought of Sheila Burnett and all her complaining about the dead men at Caleb’s ranch.She would do something like this.
The notion struck him so hard that his chest tightened.Sheila, with her city manners and fierce little chin, arranging flowers on the body of a dead outlaw because some part of her still believed a man deserved to meet his Maker looking decent.
“No,” he said aloud.She was back in Elkhorn.As impulsive as she was, she wouldn’t come this far away from the town in the company of a total stranger.
Would she?
Another thought occurred to him.Whoever this woman was, she was riding with the first group.So was this dead fella.She was off by the river when these other riders showed up and did the killing.
On a hunch, Caleb crossed the shallow creek and studied the tracks on the far side.
There they were, clear as bear paws in fresh snow.Those boot prints led north after the other riders.
He whistled for his horse and mounted up.“Damn me, Pirate, if she ain’t following those killers on foot.”
And whether that woman was Sheila Burnett or some other poor soul with more courage than sense, Caleb meant to find her before night did.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
“Lucas has been shotin the arm,” Doc told his patient.
“Go out to him,” Mrs.Fields pleaded.
“I can’t right now.”
From the shadows, he peered through the doorway.The light was fading, and the darkness was deepening in the surrounding hills.Lucas was surrounded by the men Sheriff Horner had with him.The conversation was not friendly.
“At least he’s alive.”
“Thank God,” she murmured.“What about my other men?Can you see them?”
Doc looked at the outlaw lying dead by the trough.There was no sign of the fellow who’d been up watching for intruders, the one they called Jeb.He guessed he’d been the first to face Horner and the first to die.
He glanced at his patient.“I’d be surprised if any of them have survived.”
“They’re dead?”Her face clenched with a pain that had nothing to do with her own bullet wound.“All of them?”
“I wouldn’t hold out much hope for them.”He peered out, trying to make sense of what they were doing to Lucas.
“Perhaps Wendell and Dodger got away.”
