Haley wasn’t a bit satisfied with the marshal’s promise, and he was still yelling and inciting the crowd when Quaid and their small posse arrived leading two saddled horses.
“Let’s get out of here,” Walker said to Longarm. “I sure hope that we can catch those sonsabitches. It’s going to be hard to come back empty-handed again with the town elections only two months away.”
Longarm took an instant dislike to the horse that Quaid had selected for him. It was a gangly, white-eyed, white-faced buckskin that snorted anxiously as Longarm lengthened the stirrups. It was clear that the animal was spooky and not to be trusted when it tried to take a hunk out of Longarm’s backside.
“Mess with me,” Longarm warned in a low, threatening voice, “and I’ll shoot your damned big ears off!”
The buckskin laid its ears back flat against its head, but it didn’t try to take a hunk out of him again.
“You about ready, for crissakes?” Quaid spat. “Marshal Long, by the time you get in the saddle, those train robbers are likely to be in Idaho!”
Longarm ignored the caustic remark and mounted the buckskin, which immediately began to crow-hop around, trying to get its head low enough to really buck. Longarm lashed it with the ends of his reins and yanked its head up high so that the damned horse could not get any power in its bucking. The contest was over almost before it had begun. The buckskin, ears still laid back flat, allowed itself to be reined up the street, and then Longarm booted it with his heels and the big horse broke into a gallop along with the other horses.
It took nearly an hour to reach the site where the gang had left the train and taken to their waiting horses. Longarm went right to work studying tracks, and he could easily identify the smaller footprints of the young women hostages. He led the buckskin over to the trees and yelled, “All right, Marshal, here’s where their trail begins! They’re heading north!”
“They always do,” Walker said, hurrying after him. “And in the past, they’ve left their women hostages within a mile or two of where they took ‘em.”
“Hope they didn’t all screw ‘em like that pretty girl they took off the last train they robbed,” Quaid said with a wolfish grin that mocked his words.
The tracks were easy to follow as they snaked along a narrow trail up through the thick ponderosa pines. Out of respect for local authority, Longarm kept his horse back in line, but he wished he was in the lead for he was an excellent tracker. Walker’s hastily formed posse was already struggling to keep up, and they were obviously a collection of local merchants. Longarm would rather have done without the inexperienced men because a mistake could get everyone ambushed and killed.
Two hours later, they entered a small mountain meadow and were startled to discover the two hostages. One of them was naked and in shock, sitting bent over in the grass and staring numbly at her bare legs. Her face had been battered and was already misshapen and discolored. The other young woman was half dressed, bloodied, and dazed.
“There they are!” Walker shouted, spurring his mount across the meadow.
When the posse came thundering into view, the half-dressed girl jumped up and started running.
“Hold up there!” Walker thundered. “I’m the marshal! We’ve come to help you!”
The girl was in her mid-twenties, short and a little chunky, with brown hair and wide, terror-stricken blue eyes. She stopped at Walker’s voice and turned, her dress torn and hanging in shreds. It was clear that she had been raped, but that she’d put up a hard fight. Her cheeks were cut, one eye was swollen shut, and her lips were bleeding.
“Miss,” Walker said, reining up his horse, “we’re friends. We’re going to help you.”
The woman’s hand fluttered to her mouth and then she screamed, “Where were you an hour ago when they were using us! When they beat and raped Sally almost to death!”
Her voice echoed off the mountains and Walker froze in his tracks. He bowed his head, removed his hat, and held it to his chest. “Miss, I’m real sorry but damned if we didn’t come just as soon as we could.”
“She is almost dead,” one of the posse members said after removing his coat and covering the other woman. “This one needs a doctor.”
“I wish I were dead!” the first woman cried.
Walker pulled off his heavy coat. “Why don’t you put this on and let’s get you both to a doctor.”
“All right,” the young woman agreed, her shoulders starting to heave as she succumbed to her grief.
Longarm rode a full circle around the meadow. He could see where the train robbers had angled to the east and that their trail was fresh. He trotted back to Walker. “I’m going after those men. Are you going with me?”
“You bet I am.”
“I’ll get the women back to Auburn and the doctor,” Quaid offered.
“No!” The marshal lowered his voice. “Deputy, I need you to help us find and catch ‘em.”
Quaid couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the two women. Watching him, Longarm thought he detected lust rather than compassion. Quaid, he decided, was a very dark and dangerous young man, one that the marshal didn’t trust alone with the helpless, recently brutalized young women.
“Joe, you take care of these young women,” Walker ordered an older man. “Double ‘em up on your horse and lead them back to town. Keep ‘em both covered. I don’t want no gawkers, and we need to remember that these are ladies. Do you understand?”
“Sure do, Marshal.”
“Good.” Walker left the two young women to Joe’s care and trod heavily back to his own horse. He appeared to Longarm to have aged considerably in just the last few minutes. “Let’s catch them murdering bastards!” Walker rasped. “And if we get them in our gun sights, I won’t mind if someone accidentally pulls the trigger before they can surrender!”
Longarm felt the same way, but their sworn duty as lawmen was to apprehend even the worst criminals and take them to a court of law, not play God and execute them.
Chapter 3
Longarm was pretty sure that the train robbers were heading over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and planning to hide in Nevada. Since they were a smart, well-organized group, he expected that they might have a ranch or at least a hideout where they would lie low for a few weeks. It was fairly likely that they would also plot their next train or bank robbery, then drift into Reno or even back into California.
“We’re going to lose ‘em for sure if we don’t overtake them by tomorrow,” Deputy Quaid complained.
“Why do you say that?” Longarm asked.
“Hell, you ought to be able to figure out at least that much,” Quaid growled. “Once they get on a main road, their tracks will be churned under by freight wagons and all manner of horse and mule traffic. I’ll just bet anything that’s going to happen. It’s always happened before.”
Longarm thought it was just about time to do a little educating. “Deputy Quaid, did you even bother to study the hoofprints in that meadow where we found those two young women?”
“Why … why sure!” Quaid blustered. “of course I did.”
“Then what can you tell me about them?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Longarm said, his voice hardening, “did you notice anything out of the ordinary about any of their horses’ hoofprints?”
Quaid squirmed in his saddle. “Well, one of them had thrown a shoe … I think.”
“No,” Longarm said, “but one of their horses did have a very distinctive bar across the back of its shoe. The kind a blacksmith puts on an animal when it needs corrective shoeing.”