Chapter 15
Owen had the prisoners, only two now, on horseback and moving before first light. They didn’t string their horses one after the other this time, just in case they’d escaped before by working together somehow.
Sly seemed dazed still, but he’d been acting mostly dazed since the day they’d dragged him away from the Duncan Gang. So Owen was mighty skeptical.
Roz was back in the lead. She’d told Morgan she knew the way to town even though it’d been years since she’d ridden there. The woman was knowing in the ways of wild country, but was it possible she was following a route she didn’t remember right?
At one point they’d found a game trail left by a herd of elk, probably years old.
But Roz ignored it, and Owen decided to keep his mouth shut.
That trail would’ve been easier to follow than the trackless land they were walking along, but then why would an elk go into town?
An elk would follow a natural path that led to water and maybe more easily traversed land, but these elk weren’t going anywhere Owen wanted to go.
So he kept quiet and continued to follow Roz toward the town, assuming there was a town.
The land was as wild as it could be. Picking their way up and down mountains, crossing streams, rounding boulders as big as a house. And doing it all a dozen times an hour, it seemed.
The day stretched long. As the hours dragged on, Owen was starting to lose track of time. He caught himself daydreaming, following the tail of the horse ahead of him, and snapped to attention. Not paying attention was a good way for a man to get himself killed out here.
And the Duncans had already broken free once.
And what about Tex? Was it possible he was dead and swept down the river? Maybe he was nearing Mexico by now.
Owen wouldn’t believe it unless he was standing over his friend’s dead body.
Tex would take a lot of killing. Owen believed Tex was alive, and he wouldn’t let himself think anything else.
And he wouldn’t let himself worry. He’d had the wishful notion that they might find him out here.
If Tex could make his way back to them, he would.
But if was a mighty hollow word in this wilderness.
His attention shifted to Sly. The man was up to something, fidgeting in a way that didn’t strike Owen as normal. “Hold up,” he said to the group and raised his fist in the air. His Marshal friends stopped immediately.
Owen trotted up to Sly’s side and grabbed his arm, still tied to the saddle horn . . . and cut himself.
Sly glowered at him but didn’t say anything.
He twisted the man’s wrist around and found his shirtsleeve, which looked normal enough. Then, upon closer inspection, he saw a glint of iron along the seam in Sly’s sleeve.
And the rope around his wrists was frayed, sliced most of the way through.
Owen pulled his own knife and cut the sleeve off Sly’s shirt. He checked his other wrist and found the same thing. A hidden razor. Owen wondered if he had more of them in his clothes. He wondered if Clive was also hiding weapons.
Morgan rode up, and their eyes met. Owen dismounted, walked over, and dragged Sly off his horse. Morgan moved past him toward Clive to see if he had any blades hidden in his clothes.
Marley was limping mighty bad, but he came up to stand watch over the scene unfolding before them with Sly and Clive.
“You Duncans have an uncanny knack for slipping out of trouble,” said Owen. “Seems this is how you do it.”
“We ain’t never been in any real trouble.” Sly jerked his arm away from Owen, but Owen hung on. “We’re just ready to handle it in a pinch. We’ve told you, Riley, we’re honest men. You may have heard gossip, but we’ve never been charged with a crime until that man attacked Clive there.”
“Until Clive killed a soldier, you mean? What other tricks have you got up your sleeve?”
Sly didn’t reply.
“Never mind,” Owen said. “Morgan, Marley, search these men’s clothes for razors and whatnot.” Owen couldn’t help but wonder what other tricks these two polecats were up to. And he wondered how much luck Tex was having with catching up to Stella Duncan.
“This is the most delicious meal of my life, Stella, and I owe it all to you,” Tex said. The grouse meat was tasty, perfectly roasted over the fire. “If we wander around out here much longer, maybe you can teach me how to use that slingshot.”
He’d watched over Stella as she made the slingshot out of a forked stick, her belt, and a small stone.
He was wondering if he was about to play the part of Goliath to Stella’s David when he saw her lightning-quick reflexes spring into action as a grouse burst out of the bushes, and she brought the bird down with one skillful whip of the slingshot.
They’d built their fire close enough to a large oak so that the smoke rose up through its broad branches and dispersed.
It was good enough for daytime, but at night—Tex gave a mental shake of his head—the fire had to be put out.
“One slingshot is enough.” Stella licked her fingers, then tossed the drumstick bone into the flames. The scent of roasting meat was heavenly after such a long, hard day with no food.
Tex wasn’t really full, but splitting the grouse had at least taken the edge off his hunger. Stella had given him more than her share, and he’d put a stop to it. Neither one of them could risk losing their strength.
“And I hope we aren’t out here long enough for me to teach you how to work it.” She washed her fingers with water from the nearby spring. “Tomorrow maybe I can get a couple of grouse or a rabbit.”
Tex had been watching her lick her fingers and was glad she’d turned to washing instead.
Since they had no canteen for carrying water, they had to drink their fill from the spring and travel along with their eyes always open for water and food, as well as for the trail east. So far they’d just been meandering in that general direction.
“I was afraid we were going to have a hungry night,” he said. “We were pushing hard to get out of these mountains, but it feels as though we’ve hardly made any progress.”
“We’ll be days getting out of the Front Range,” Stella said, looking toward the east.
Tex’s eyes followed the direction she studied. The peaks seemed endless. “I’d hoped we could make it out in a single day. Tomorrow we can stop earlier. Take time to hunt or fish, maybe dig up some Indian potatoes or find ripe berries.”
“It gets cold at this elevation at night.” Stella looked at the fire, which crackled as it sent up smoke.
“The light from a campfire shows for miles up here.” Tex knew the flames would shine like a beacon, no doubt summoning trouble.
“We’ll have to put it out soon.” He shook his head.
No fire. No shelter. No blankets. “But I could rig some pine boughs and such so you don’t have to sleep on the hard ground. ”
Stella jerked one shoulder in a shrug. “No need. I’ve slept rough before.
Most of the last year, in fact. Our cabin, the one that burned, was at Robbers Roost. Pa rebuilt it, hoping Ma and my little sister would survive.
When they died, Pa wouldn’t even consider letting me stay behind when he wandered.
He made me go with him, and we’ve never gone back.
The men in my family are like a band of nomads.
We’re used to sleeping on the ground. We usually have blankets, but we’re fine without ’em. ”
Tex could see she meant it. The woman wasn’t afraid of sleeping on the ground in the cold. He had to admire anyone who didn’t whine about harsh conditions.
“Robbers Roost, did you say?” He’d heard tell of such a place in the Rockies.
He knew there was an outlaw trail that was traveled by no one honest. Finding Robbers Roost and arresting the men who lived there would clean out a good portion of the crime in this part of Colorado.
He was sure there were more remote canyons than just that one, and they might all have the name Robbers Roost. But finding even one would make the West a better place.
He couldn’t exactly go arrest a whole hideout full of outlaws if he didn’t know where he was.
“Have you traveled in this part of the country before?”
Stella shook her head. “Mostly my family did our hunting to the south of Colorado City. That’s close to where Ma and I lived, though we were deep into the mountains to the west. I’ve never been this far north.
” She finished the last piece of her grouse and tossed the bones into the fire.
“Do you think I’ll be able to hide from Pa in Cheyenne? ”
Nodding, Tex said, “Yep. And it’s unlikely you’ll go to prison or even be arrested. You’d be tagged as part of the gang but not arrested for that alone.”
“My family aren’t outlaws. We’re not a gang. We’re a family of wanderers. I’ve told you that time and time again.”
Tex raised his hands in surrender. “I remember, but your family’s got a reputation.
You can’t blame me for your family’s strange ways.
But you don’t get arrested for being nomadic.
” He gave her a narrow-eyed look but didn’t say what he was thinking.
Only a foolish woman would expect him to trust her on her word alone.
She knew this, so there was no need for him to repeat it.
Even so, he was starting to trust her. He didn’t mention that’d make him a fool. He’d run into that saw blade before.
He met Stella’s eyes. As they’d worked to get a meal prepared, he hadn’t paid much mind to where they ended up sitting.
They’d found a sheltered spot, where the gentle evening breeze wouldn’t blow the fire around and would reflect off the stone wall, with the oak branches overhead taking in a lot of the smoke.
They’d settled in between the fire and the stone and leaned back to watch the bird cook, then stayed there to eat it.