“She’s Mrs.Fields.”
Doc gave him the blankest look he could muster.“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“She’s the head of this outfit.”
Horner was always fond of running his mouth, and Doc decided to keep him going.He wanted to learn more about her, but he also wanted draw the man’s attention away from her face.
“That’s impossible.”
“And she’s sitting on her loot, Doc.A fortune in loot.”
“What are you talking about?”
Horner shot him a look of superiority.“I’m talking about what I know from a drifter up north.Said he rode with her gang.’Course, I don’t believe that.The fool also claimed that he rode with Quantrill, the James boys, and even Dirty Dave Rudabaugh.He was a lazy, lying sumbitch.Dead now.He threw down on me in a card game, and I gunned him down like the filthy dog he was.But I’d known about the Fields gang for a long time, and what he said fit.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of the Fields gang.”
“That’s cuz they got themselves going out in Montana.”He nodded at Mrs.Fields.“This one’s husband got into a beef with some Wells Fargo men in the gold fields out there.They done killed him and her son…her older son.”
He spat on the floor and looked at Lucas.
“That right, boy?”When the young outlaw said nothing, the sheriff strode over and kicked him in the arm.“This one’s her other boy.”
Lucas was writhing from the pain, and Doc instinctively took a step toward him.The young gun warned him off with a look.
“And this fortune you think she’s sitting on came from her husband?”
Horner walked back to the cot, looking at Doc like he was the village idiot.“Hell, no.With her husband and boy dead, she wants revenge.She starts her own gang hitting Wells Fargo stages.”
Doc shook his head.“I believe someone has sold you a bill of goods, Horner.There is no way this woman, at her age, could be a stagecoach robber.”
The sheriff glanced down at her once more and then strutted toward the door.“Don’t matter what you believe, sawbones.It’s the truth.Fifty robberies from California to Colorado.Maybe more.And that’s a lot of money stashed up here somewheres.”
Doc recalled her words earlier.I haven’t a dollar to my name.
“I figure she’s hiding her take close by,” Horner told him.
“And you think she’ll tell you where it is?”
“She will cuz I have her son.And she ain’t gonna sit still while he gets skinned alive in front of her eyes.”
“What kind of a brute…?”Doc reined in his temper.“I don’t believe you’d do such a thing.”
“Oh, I ain’t doing it, Doc.You are.”
He took a step backward.“I’ll be damned before I do.”
“Then damned you’ll be.”The sheriff grinned maliciously.“Cuz you’ll be breaking out your skinning knives as soon as Dodger comes back…with your daughter.”
“My daughter?”Doc’s stomach dropped.Anger roared in, replacing his shock.He could tear Horner’s throat out…but what if he was telling the truth?“But she’s?—”
“The lovely Miss Sheila Burnett come in on the Wednesday stagecoach from Denver.And she was in Elkhorn until this very morning.Dodger and the man you sent for your surgical things found her in your house and decided she was too pretty to leave behind.”
For a heartbeat, the room tilted around him.
Sheila.
Not safe in New York.Not protected by distance and polite society and brick walls and civilized streets.Out here.In these mountains.In the hands of animals.
