“I don’t see no ropes,” Stevens said, looking around on the ground and pushing mounds of snow aside, “so maybe he couldn’t get them loose and his hands are still tied.”
“What’s going on here?” Sarah asked as she appeared out of the blowing snow.
“Looks like Jensen has somehow managed to escape from the camp,” Cletus said, trying to appear disgusted with the turn of events.
“Escaped?” Sarah asked, her voice astounded. “How in the world was he able to do that?”
“I don’t know, Miss MacDougal,” Biggs said, “but he can’t have gotten far in this storm, not on foot.”
“How do you know he didn’t take one of the horses?” she asked, causing everyone to make a mad dash off to the side where the horses were all tired to a tether rope.
After a quick count, Cletus assured everyone that Smoke hadn’t in fact taken any of the mounts.
The men went back to the camp and began to make a circle around the periphery, trying to locate any tracks Smoke might have left.
After an hour of searching, they all decided the storm had covered any traces he might have made.
They gathered around the fire to get warm again and to discuss what they ought to do. “You got any bright ideas, Clete?” Biggs asked. “’Cause I surely don’t relish going back to the ranch and having Mr. MacDougal chew my ears off for letting Jensen get away from us.”
Cletus thought for a moment as he finished off his mug of coffee. Finally, he looked around. “All right, here is what I think. Jensen could have gone in only two directions, north or south.”
“Why do you say that?” Stevens asked.
“’Cause if he headed either east or west, all he’s gonna find is a big prairie with almost no cover to speak of. Jensen’s too smart to put himself in that position, ‘cause in this weather, no cover means he’d freeze to death. Now, if he heads south back towards his home, we got three men behind us guarding the trail. If, on the other hand, he heads north towards the nearest mountain range, then he’s got a good chance of hiding out from us if he makes it.”
“So,” Sarah said, “you think he’s probably gone north toward the mountains?”
Cletus shrugged. “It’s what I’d do in his place.” He made a grimace of disgust. “’Course, we’re gonna have to cover all the directions, just in case he tried to fool us by going someplace we wouldn’t think he’d try.”
“That’s gonna split us up pretty good,” Stevens said.
“Not really,” Sarah said. “Remember, Jensen’s on foot and doesn’t have any weapons. We can send one man east and one man west. If he’s out there in the open, they should be able to run him down before nightfall and take him prisoner again.”
“What about south?” Cletus asked.
“I think one man should be able to get back down the trail and warn Bartlett and Gomez and Free to be on the lookout for him,” she said. “That should leave us plenty of men to undertake a campaign to catch him before he can get too far into the mountains if he headed north.”
Cletus shook his head in admiration. “Missy, I wish I’d had you running my outfit during the war. You plumb got a mind for tactics.”
“Well, I’d suggest we get a move on,” she said. “Clete, you pick the men to go east and west and south, and I’ll see to getting their canteens filled with hot coffee to keep them from freezing to death on the way.”
“We got time to eat first, Miss MacDougal?” Stevens asked, his face hopeful.
“Certainly. We can’t go out into this storm on a manhunt with our bellies empty, now can we, men?”
Cletus laughed. “Jimmy, get those beans to cookin’, boy, we got a man to catch.”
“Yes, sir,” Corbett answered, using a long stick to stir the coals under the trestle that contained the pot of beans and fatback.
As Sarah began to fill canteens with hot coffee, Cletus looked at her and shook his head. He’d never seen a better performance. No one would ever suspect that she’d let Jensen go herself, and he damn sure wasn’t going to enlighten anyone.
He stepped over to the edge of the fire and stood looking into the north wind, in the direction Jensen must have gone if he was to have any chance to avoid capture.
What would it take for a man to have the courage to take off on foot into a blizzard like this with no weapons and no warm clothes to speak of? he wondered.
He chuckled to himself, knowing full well the answer to that question. A man would have to be completely without hope of survival otherwise to take a chance like that, and Jensen certainly knew that for him to stay in camp would mean certain death.
As Sarah called to him that the beans and fatback were ready, he turned and shook his head. The man didn’t stand a chance in this weather, he thought, but at least freezing to death was probably less painful that a bullet.
TWENTY-ONE
Pearlie jerked his horse to a stop in front of Dr. Colton Spalding’s office, bounded out of the saddle, and raced through the front door without bothering to knock.
Spalding, who was called Cotton by all of his friends due to his ash-blond, almost white hair, looked up from his rolltop desk in the corner of his parlor. When he saw the agitation in Pearlie’s face, he got to his feet and began putting on his coat before the young man had a chance to speak.
“Doc, you gotta come!” Pearlie gasped, still out of breath from his breakneck ride into town.
Cotton picked up his black bag and a pair of gloves from the side table in the hallway. “Of course, Pearlie,” he said. “Is there trouble out at the Sugarloaf?”
“No, Doc, it’s Monte Carson,” Pearlie answered. “His hoss was shot out from under him and he took a terrible fall. He hit his head an’ he ain’t been exactly actin’ right since then.”
“Where is he?” Cotton asked as they exited his door, followed by his wife Mona, who’d heard the commotion and joined them in the parlor. He gave Mona a quick kiss good-bye and told her he’d be back as soon as possible. When she went back in the door, he didn’t bother to lock it in case someone needing his care wanted to come in and wait for his return, in which case his wife Mona, who was also his nurse, would take of that person.
“Out on the road north of town, ‘bout five or six miles by now,” he answered.
“By now?” Cotton asked, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me he is being moved.”
“Uh . . . yes, sir,” Pearlie said. “Louis is riding double with him to keep him on horseback.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Cotton said under his breath as he climbed up into his wagon that was hitched in front of his office.
“You’d better take me there as fast as you can, Pearlie, and let us hope we’re not too late and that moving him has not caused irreparable damage to his brain.”
When they met up with Louis and Sally and Cal on the road into town, Cotton pulled his wagon to the side of the road. “Pearlie, scrape that snow out of the back of the wagon and get those blankets out from under the tarp there under the seat. Make a bed for Monte as best you can.”
Monte was sitting unconscious in front of Louis, being held in place by Louis’s hands around him. The sheriff’s head lolled limply to and fro as the horse moved.
“Cal, get over here and help me take Monte down and get him in the back of my wagon, but be as gentle as you can,” the doctor ordered.
Moments later, Monte was lying on his back in the rear compartment of Cotton’s wagon and the doctor was leaning over him, checking his pupils and feeling of his pulse.
“Has he had any violent purging . . . uh, vomiting?” he asked Sally.
“Yes, once, right after he tried to get up after the fall,” she answered.
Cotton shook his head. “That’s not a good sign. It means he’s definitely had a concussion.”