Chapter 18 #3
Dropping Dean’s feet, Boog went back up front and returned with a key hanging from an iron ring as big around as a saucer.
“Sid, that you?” Harv sat up, groggy but jumping to his feet the second his eyes focused.
With a rasp of metal, Boog unlocked the barred door.
Harv rushed out.
“Let’s go. Get clear of town fast.” Sid led the way.
The three of them scurried through the night to the horses. They kept to the woods as they swung a wide circle around the town.
“Harv, you and Boog go stay at the Griffin place.” Sid issued instructions.
“As soon as Boog is healed up, he can come back in. No one’s paying too close a mind to who’s there working because of Wade being back.
He don’t know how things were before. So no one’s gonna notice you gone for a while longer.
Harv, you might need to lay low until I get shed of Wade and that wild woman he brought home. ”
Staring out of the thick trees of the rugged mountainside, Sid studied the trail. It would split about two miles ahead—one trail well traveled, leading to the Sawyer place, and the other only a faint depression in the grass heading toward the abandoned Griffin house.
“The going gets hard in the woods from here on.” Sid nodded at the tumbled stretch of slippery shale ahead. “Let’s get on the trail. We won’t meet up with anyone out this late.”
“Hold it.” Boog’s quiet voice stopped Sid. “Look down the trail.”
In the gray of predawn, Sid heard more than saw someone approaching from the direction of the Sawyers’. “A bunch of riders.”
Harv spoke up. “I heard Red Dawson sent men out to the Sawyer place and every other ranch around. He told ’em to put out the word that he’d brung in rustled cattle and to come claim their stock. The Sawyers must be sending a party into Divide to fetch their cows.”
Either Sid’s eyes adjusted or the sky lightened or both because he could make out one blazing white head in the midst of five riders. An unmistakable head of hair.
“There’s that woman.” Harv had a hungry tone to his voice.
Sid didn’t like the sound. He’d gotten to thinking of that untamed woman as his. “Keep quiet until they pass.”
As the group rode closer, following the trail, they’d come within fifty feet of where Sid hid with Boog and Harv. He could take them now. With their three guns, they could end it in a blaze of bullets, then ride to the ranch, get rid of Mort, and settle into the Sawyer place right away.
“Don’t do it.” Boog must have read his mind. Sid looked sideways, and Boog nodded at the group of riders. “That’s the saltiest bunch on the Sawyer place, and look, the woman—she heard something.”
“Quiet!” Sid hissed.
The wild woman stopped. She sat on a barebacked pinto mare that few at the M Bar S ever rode because she was so feisty.
The horse paused without any visible direction from that wildflower on her back, almost as if the horse had read her mind.
The woman turned and stared into the woods straight into Sid’s eyes.
She couldn’t see him. The woods were too thick, and with the barely lightening sky, the forest was impenetrably dark.
Impossible.
But those eyes... Chills sprang up on Sid’s arms. Her gaze crawled over him, then swept left and right as if she not only saw him but made out Boog and Harv too.
All three of them sat their horses motionlessly. Even their mounts seemed frozen as if they knew danger lay in the slightest movement.
At last, as the Sawyer hands left her behind, the wildflower looked forward, and her horse, as if the two were one creature, started walking again.
Spooky, that woman. Seeing into the dark, maybe seeing into Sid’s mind.
After the Sawyer riders vanished from sight on the winding trail to Divide, their trio stayed still.
“It’s safe.” Boog urged his mount forward. “Let’s go.”
Deciding to trust Boog, because Sid was tempted to stay hidden for a good long time, the three moved on.
“I’ll be in by the weekend. My arm’s almost healed up, and I’m sick of sitting around.
Should have spent the last few days driving those cattle south into Idaho.
Now we’ve lost ’em.” They reached the fork in the road and Boog paused.
“Maybe we oughta cut out of here, Sid, and go collect that gold. It’s been long enough for those Indians to bury their dead and go home. ”
“Forget it.” Knowing he had to face a long day’s work without a minute of sleep, Boog’s wanting to quit fired Sid’s temper. “Come back from Griffin’s when you’re ready, but the plan doesn’t change.”
Sid spurred his horse toward the Sawyer place. He rode alone toward the spread he planned to make his own, while Boog and Harv were free as birds. They could sleep the day away. They could even head out and collect that gold and make tracks for California. He refused to look back.
This whole plan had taken too long. Mort was supposed to die outright. Arrogance had goaded Sid into letting the fall and the long, cold night kill the rancher. Now he needed to finish off the old man and the son and deal with that wild woman.
He’d give Boog and Harv a few more days to heal up, then it was time to make his move.