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Satisfied that he had learned as much as he would, Culley ran a last glance over the three of them standing in a loose bunch and reined his horse away. It never crossed his mind to tell them he was going. He just went.
“Come back any time, Mr. O’Rourke,” Hattie called after him, but received no response.
“How about some of that coffee, Mom?” Laredo asked, putting laughing emphasis on her new title.
“I’ll bring it right out. You’ll stay long enough to have a cup with us, won’t you, Jessy?” Hattie asked over her shoulder as she moved toward the cabin door.
“Of course she will,” Laredo answered for her as he glanced at the departing rider. His lips barely moved at all as he murmured to Jessy, “What do you think?”
“I think I’ve lied more in the last few days than I have in my whole life,” she replied in an equally low voice. “Sooner or later, I will get caught in one.”
“You can worry about that when and if it happens. Right now he’s the one that has me worried,” he said with a faint nod in Culley’s direction. “Will he leave or hang around?”
“It all depends on whether he believed anything we said. My guess is he will leave. But you probably should play it safe and get Chase back inside the cabin. Culley has been known to stake out a place and keep watch for hours at a time.”
Laredo thought about that a moment, then nodded in abrupt decision. “I’ll go find Chase. There’s a brush-choked draw south of here that he mentioned he was going to head for. Meanwhile, go mess around your truck and keep an eye on O’Rourke. If it looks like he’s going to circle around, honk the horn once—accidental-like.”
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The two split up, with Jessy crossing to her pickup and Laredo heading into the cabin. He made sure the screen door made a loud bang when it swung shut behind him.
“Forget the coffee, Hattie. I’m going after Chase,” Laredo said and climbed out the back window.
Using as much cover as he could, Laredo worked his way around the rough slope and descended into the twisting draw. Silence was difficult to achieve as stones rolled under his feet and his shoulders brushed against branches.
The minute he rounded a corner, he saw Chase on his knees right in the middle of an open stretch. He seemed to be looking at something on the ground, but Laredo couldn’t see anything there.
“Chase,” he called to him in a hushed voice, but there was no response at all. Laredo moved swiftly to the man’s side and laid a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing out here in plain sight? Don’t you—” He broke off the demand the instant he saw the ashen color of Chase’s skin and the sightless stare of his eyes. “Snap out of it, Chase.” He gave his shoulder a hard shake. When that failed to have the desired effect, Laredo crouched in front of him and caught hold of Chase’s jaw to force the man to focus on him. He was stunned by the clammy feel of his skin. “What the hell is wrong, Chase?”
At last Chase seemed to register his presence. Raw pain flickered in his expression. “So much blood.” He closed his eyes as if trying to shut out some image.
Laredo guessed at once that he had remembered something. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” He hooked an arm around Chase and pulled him to his feet.
For much of the way back to the cabin, Laredo had to help him. Chase offered no further hints about what he had remembered, but it was obvious it had shaken him. By the time they reached the cabin, the memory seemed to have lost its grip on him. He no longer had that dazed look and his color was back. Just the same, Laredo opted not to have him crawl back through the window.
“Wait here.” He left him by the side of the cabin and ducked around to the front, immediately locating Jessy. “Where’s O’Rourke?”
“He just left the fire road and turned east. Did you find Chase?”
“He’s right here,” Laredo answered and went back for him.
Laredo’s watchful attitude toward Chase when he walked alongside him to the cabin door alerted Jessy that something was wrong. She forgot all about Culley and hurried into the cabin after them.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“He remembered something.” Laredo’s glance stayed on Chase, watching as he sat down at the table.
“What?”
Laredo shook his head. “He mumbled something about so much blood, and that was all he said. I found him kneeling in the middle of the draw, right out in the open.”
“Ty,” Jessy murmured in realization and moved to the table, lowering herself into a chair facing Chase. “You saw Ty lying there, didn’t you?”
“I saw a man. There was blood all over the front of him, and on the ground, too. God, I can still smell it,” Chase muttered through clenched teeth, the image obviously still there on the edges of his mind.
“You were the one who found Ty’s body after he was killed,” Jessy explained in a pained voice. “It was in a coulee over in the Three Fingers area. He’d been stabbed.”
“And Ty was my son,” Chase recalled. “That must be why I felt such a sick, awful fear.” He dug his fingers into his palms, balling his hands into fists of unconscious anger.
