Jodi Thomas (32 page)

Carter moved into the pale light filtering from the window. He heard a piano playing and smelled dinner cooking. Just the slight aroma of homemade bread made him miss Bailee so bad his gut twisted. He’d looked for Zeb for two weeks and all he’d done was go in circles. The old buffalo hunter seemed to have fallen off the earth. Hell’s Lookout, wherever it was, would be his last hope.

The ranger pointed toward the window. “Real quiet at Fat Alice’s tonight. Every night, I guess, since two sheriffs decided to homestead in her parlor. She may have to go respectable if they don’t get well soon.”

He tossed his cigar in the dirt past the porch. “You hunting to kill Zeb Whitaker, or help me bring him in?”

“Seeing him behind bars is good enough. I just can’t let him frighten my wife any longer.”

The ranger nodded. “Fair enough. We leave at dawn, Carter McKoy.”

“How...”

Jacob grinned. “I haven’t stayed alive three years as a ranger without knowing who the good guys are.”

Carter moved back into the shadows. He walked silently across the tracks to where he’d made camp. Though he knew he’d be welcomed at Fat Alice’s place, he couldn’t bear to go inside. He needed the comfort of being alone with his thoughts of Bailee.

Tonight it had been one month since he’d married her. One month, Carter thought, the night they’d agreed that their marriage would truly start. He never would have believed one woman could come to mean so much to him in such a short time.

He should be home holding her in his arms, not dirty and cold and miles away. But he couldn’t go back, couldn’t rest until he knew that she was safe.

He’d seen Lacy the last few mornings. She was taking care of both sheriffs and happy to stay right where she was until Zeb was behind bars or dead. When Carter checked on her, she had a hundred questions about Bailee and he’d had to stand there and say he didn’t know any of the answers. Lacy’s father-in-law had wired her that even Samuel was asking about Bailee’s whereabouts. Lacy told him how Bailee stepped off the train that day, going back to help him, then vanished.

Carter decided he must have missed Bailee by moments. He’d crossed the alley to Mrs. Abernathy’s with the gunshot still ringing in his ears. According to Lacy, Bailee had jumped from the train and ran toward the jail at the same time.

Not bothering to build a fire, Carter rolled up in his blanket and tried to sleep. He didn’t notice the cold or the hardness of the ground. The only ache that registered in his tired mind was in his heart. He needed his wife by his side.

A little after dawn Jacob Dalton stepped from Fat Alice’s with two cups of coffee. He handed Carter one. “You have any idea where we’re headed?”

Carter liked the ranger’s honest stare and economy of words. “No,” Carter answered.

“Riley swears there’s a hideout about fifty miles from here, just below the caprock. Those that have seen it call it Hell’s Lookout. Years ago it was little more than a line shack for sheep farmers. Now there’s nothing but snakes nesting in the place. If Zeb Whitaker is still in Texas, he’s probably hiding there. It would take an army to go in and dig him out from the front, but two men might be able to cross behind and drop in off the caprock.”

Carter finished his coffee. He didn’t want to go, but he’d seen the way Zeb looked at him. The old buffalo hunter wanted the gold he thought was his, but there was more in his stare. Zeb Whitaker wanted Carter dead. Carter blocked his path to another he wanted to kill: Bailee.

Carter wished for the thousandth time that he knew she was safe. Maybe she knew someone he didn’t. Some place she could hide where Zeb would never think to look. But how could he ever find her?

Jacob set his coffee cup on the porch swing. “You ready to ride, farmer?”

“It’s Carter,” Carter corrected. He’d lived enough of his life being called names.

“Carter it is.” The ranger smiled and nodded once.

They were almost the same size and age, but until this moment Carter knew the ranger hadn’t considered him as an equal.

They rode west, kicking up dust in the frosty air. In the past two weeks Carter’s body had grown leaner, and his skills on horseback had sharpened. He was equal to Jacob’s pace.

Sheriff Riley stood at the window with Nellie Jean and watched them go. “I wouldn’t want to be Zeb Whitaker.”

Nellie Jean lifted her chin. “He’s a dead man for sure. He don’t have a chance up against my future husband and my good friend.”

Riley laughed. “You giving up the nightlife, Two Bits, and settling down?”

“I ain’t decided for sure. Time my chest comes in, Jacob may be a little long in the tooth. Men are like lace, I figure. Some last and others fray after a few washings. I’ll have to wait and see how he does.”

From almost out of sight, Carter swung the horse he’d named Traveler around and waved once to Riley.

“Take care of Bailee, if I don’t ...” he whispered, unable to finish. All his life he’d survived for no reason but to keep living. Now he had something to live for. Now was not the time to think of dying.

“Come on, Traveler,” he whispered as he guided the horse with his knees. Somehow, naming the animal that Mrs. Abernathy stole for him made Carter feel closer to Bailee. She’d managed to name everything on the place but the chickens. “When we get back home, I’ll buy you from Mosely.” He patted the animal’s neck. “Provided we get home.”

Traveler rattled his reins as if he understood the promise.

T
HE WIND TURNED COLD ON THE PLAINS AND howled with the coyotes long into the night. Bailee tried to act as if it didn’t bother her, but each day the sound wore at her nerves more and more.

Papa Farrow and his family finished the harvest. Samuel took most of the fruit to town, while Bailee spent days canning. The little storage cellar overflowed with food for the winter.

When the wind turned and blew from the north, the Gypsies became restless. It was time for them to move on. Though they wouldn’t allow Bailee to pay them, they did accept her oxen and wagon laden with food as a gift. On the third day of October they left, promising to come back and visit. But their promises were hollow, carried on winter’s breath.

Suddenly days that had been busy and full of conversation were silent. Except for the wind. Always the wind. Bailee told herself she was used to spending her days alone, but worry over Carter flowed through every thought.

Samuel refused to step foot inside Carter’s home for more than one meal a day. He spent the rest of his time in the bunkhouse making the chairs he’d later sell in Fort Worth. Even when he joined her, Bailee soon grew tired of trying to engage
him
in conversation. He was a man who wore his solitude proudly.

When she first returned to the ranch, Bailee made Samuel tell her all the ways Carter protected the land. A windmill that turned only when the back gate was opened. An apple that fell off a shelf in both the barn and by the cabin door when someone crossed the front road. Dirt plowed regularly to mark any footprints near the house. The way the trees circled, confusing anyone who tried to enter from the creek side of Carter’s land.

There were others, Samuel admitted, but he’d never asked about them.

Words that Carter whispered to her kept haunting Bailee’s sleep.
There’s a safe place at the ranch. It took me three winters to build. Even Samuel doesn’t know of the passage.

On the sixth of October Bailee locked the door against the night air and returned to sit by the fire. She’d had Samuel latch the vent space Carter crawled through before. She didn’t want to mistake him for an intruder again.

She’d been married a month, but there was no Carter to share her bed. He’d vanished, and with each day that passed she realized he might never come back. Maybe he killed Ludlow and figured he’d hang for the crime, so he lit out for California. Maybe he witnessed the murder, and knew if he came forward, he’d suffer the same fate.

Carter wasn’t a coward, Bailee reminded herself. And he wasn’t a fool. If he said there was somewhere on the ranch where she’d be safe, then she’d find it. And there she’d wait. She’d wait forever, if need be.

At first she had roamed around as if on an egg hunt looking for the prize. That didn’t work. Then she divided up the ranch and searched a different location each day. If Samuel thought her mad, he didn’t comment.

Finally she’d tried logic. Carter had called it a passage. He said he built it in winter, so that eliminated all areas outside. He also told her he did it without Samuel knowing. That crossed off the barn and bunkhouse.

Bailee rested her head against the back of her chair and studied the fire as she thought. The passage had to be big enough for him to pass through, and it had to start from somewhere in the house.

She’d scrubbed every inch of the floors and walls except in the cellar. Calmly she stood and walked to the cellar, lifting the lamp from the kitchen table as she passed.

When she reached the cellar, she sat the lamp down and carefully moved her hands along the walls. No shelf moved. Nothing was out of place.

She’d almost given up when she rested her hand on the wall and looked around for an idea.

The wall shifted slightly. A movement she might not have noticed if she hadn’t been searching. Her heart pounded in her throat as she tried again.

It didn’t give when she pushed, but slid easily sideways. Suddenly Bailee saw a shadowy passage tall enough for Carter to walk through without having to bend.

She’d found his private home. On this night she’d keep her promise to sleep in his bed, even if he wasn’t there with her.

Carter closed his eyes almost a hundred miles away and thought of himself walking the very passage that eluded Bailee. He could feel the wood against his fingertips as he tapped his way through his secret rooms. The cool, earthy smell filled his nostrils, telling him he was home. The feel of his books. The silence within his rooms.

But when he opened his eyes, he wasn’t home at all. He was lying in the mud a quarter of a mile from a group of shacks known as Hell’s Lookout. The buildings were so run-down and smelly it was impossible to tell which one was the outhouse. He and Jacob Dalton watched all day and counted twelve men coming and going from the place.

Dalton seemed to think those were good odds, twelve to two, which had Carter questioning the man’s reason.

They moved closer about sundown. The men inside the little settlement started drinking soon after noon when a woman pulling two mules arrived with supplies. She must have stayed willingly, for every now and then Carter heard her laughter clank through the night air.

“We give them time to get drunk,” Jacob whispered, “and then I go in from the back and have a look around. If these are the bank robbers, they won’t have bothered to clean up. I’ll probably find the baggage car’s safe right where they cracked it open.”

Carter wanted to say all he was looking for was Zeb Whitaker. Maybe they should go after help before advancing on all twelve men. But the ranger didn’t seem to think he needed any further assistance. Jacob had opened the corral gate when they’d moved closer at sundown, and most of the horses were probably halfway back to Childress by now.

“If there’s trouble or you hear gunfire, ride in shooting. That will distract them enough for me to get away.”

“You say you’ve lived three years as a ranger?” Carter had to ask. With this plan Jacob would be lucky to live the night.

When the ranger had suggested riding their horses down a cliff just before dawn, Carter thought he was kidding, until Jacob kicked his mount and began the slide. Carter followed and now figured if he lived through the bone-jarring descent, he could make it through the night.

“Trust me. We’ve got surprise on our side.” Jacob fought to keep his laugh low.

Since surprise didn’t carry a canon, Carter wasn’t overjoyed to have it on his side. But the ranger was set on his plan, what little there was of it. So they waited as the men inside drank and the rest of the horses in the corral wandered off.

About midnight Ranger Jacob Dalton slipped into the camp, with Carter waiting fifty feet away in the last cluster of trees near the buildings. For a while Carter listened for the slightest sound that Jacob had given himself away. But all he heard were shouts from the men and the woman’s laughter.

At one point Carter decided if he had to start firing, he’d shoot the woman first, for her laughter grated like sand in his veins. After living off the land for days, he was in no mood to be kind.

Carter thought he saw Zeb Whitaker step out on the porch of one of the shacks, but hair and hides seemed to be the dress in this place.

The man on the porch lit a cigar. The light only flickered across his features for a moment, but Carter knew he’d found his man.

All at once gunfire rattled from the back of one of the buildings. Shouts followed. Anger! Surprise! Pain!