Lester had run off in the night.
Lester had stolen Will’s raindrop gelding.
“Didn’t trust him from the minute I laid eyes on him,” Hadley said.
“What do you make of these tracks?”
“They ain’t heading west, that’s for Sure.”
“For all his knowing snakes,” Hadley said, and spat on the ground.
“How long you think he’s been gone?”
“No way of telling.”
“Anybody hear anything during the night?”
“Heard some thrashing out there in the woods,” Bobbo said, “but I figured it to be some critter.”
Bonnie Sue got to her feet and smoothed her petticoat. Her sister Annabel was watching her shrewdly, or seemed to be. Had she, too, heard thrashing in the woods, and had she gone to investigate? They’d been out there half the night, Lester holding her in his arms till he was ready again to claim what she’d already declared was his. Now he was gone. And they were calling him a horse thief. Quickly, she dressed.
“Ought to string him up,” Hadley said.
“Got to catch him first, Pa.”
“He knows we’re late, figures we can’t spare no time chasin him.”
“That’s a fine horse he stole.”
“We go after him, we won’t make Independence till Independence Day. I say we forget the bastard.”
“And forget my horse, too? Worth a hundred fifty dollars or more, that horse.”
“Those tracks are plain enough headin north,” Bobbo said.
“To Carthage, more’n likely,” Gideon said. “His mother’s there in Carthage, didn’t he say?”
“How far’s Carthage from where we’re at now?”
“A hundred miles or thereabouts,” Will said.
“It’s more’n that,” Hadley said. “A good hun’ twenty at the least.”
“I can travel that in four, five days,” Will said.
“That’s if’n he’s headed for Carthage, which ain’t likely. Man tells you his ma’s a certain place, he ain’t about to steal no horse and head straight for that place.”
“Nobody says a horse thief’s got to be smart, Pa.”
“Nor necessarily dumb, neither. Lester didn’t strike me as no fool.”
“Either way, I’d have a fair chance of over-takin you in Independence.”
“How do you figure, son?”
“I’d be travelin faster, just me on horseback.”
“Still be a hard pull.”
“I’d like to go after him, Pa.”
“What’ll you do if you catch him?”
“Take him to the law.”
“Where?”
“In Carthage, if that’s where I find him.”
“Suppose you find him in the woods someplace, cookin his supper or skinnin a cat?”
“I’ll ride him to the nearest place there is law.”
“I don’t like you goin out alone after no horse thief.”
“I’ll go with him,” Gideon said.
“Leave me alone with Bobbo and the mules, huh? I’ll tell you, boys, I don’t like the whole idea. If there’s wagons still in Independence, we’ll have to leave when they do. And if there ain’t, we’ll have to move out straightway and try catchin up with them’s already gone. Suppose you ain’t there yet?”
“Then you just go ahead without us,” Will said. “We’ll catch up wherever.”
“I don’t know,” Hadley said, and shook his head.
“Man stole my horse,” Will said.
“I know what he done, damn it!”
Bonnie Sue wished they’d ride out after Lester and bring him right back here, where she’d declare her love for him and save his life. At the same time, she wished they’d ride out after him and hang him on the spot instead, in punishment not for having stolen Will’s horse but only for having deserted her. Her cheeks still burned with the memory of their ardor, burned with anger, too, and with what she supposed was shame — was she only imagining Annabel’s intense scrutiny? Or was her fornication as evident as the mist on the meadow beyond, where the picketed mules and horses stood sniffing the morning air and pawing the ground?
“Pa?” Will said.
Hadley nodded.
“We can go?” Gideon said.
“I reckon,” Hadley said, but he looked troubled.
Minerva hugged her sons close.
“Be careful,” she said.
“He ain’t even armed, Ma,” Gideon said. “Lost all his hardware in that poker game.”
“So he said. But it’s my experience a horse thief’ll lie about anything, includin his own name. You don’t know for sure he ain’t got one of them little pistols tucked in his boot.”
“We’ll watch out for one of them little pistols,” Will said, and grinned.
“Don’t be so smart,” Minerva said.
“Ma, you needn’t worry. There’s two of us.”
“Just be careful,” she said, and kissed them both, and then climbed up onto the wagon seat Only thing that worried her was Lester. She knew her sons could take care of themselves anywhere, and Illinois was as civilized a place as anyone had a right to expect. It was Lester bothered her. Will’s raindrop gelding was branded and earmarked both; there was no way Lester could disprove their claim to the animal once they caught him. He was a man threatened with the noose, and that made him dangerous. She watched silently as her sons studied the tracks again, and mounted their horses. Will waved to her and turned the horse he was riding, Bobbo’s black mare. From astride his piebald, Gideon called, “See you in Independence!” and then the two rode off toward the north. She watched them through the dust raised by the horses’ hoofs, watched till she could no longer see anything but dust, and then not even that.
From inside the wagon, Bobbo said, “One of the rifles is gone, too, Pa.”
“He’s armed then,” Minerva said, almost to herself.
Sitting beside her on the wagon seat, Bonnie Sue burst into tears. Minerva looked at her in surprise, and then put her arm around her and hugged her close. In a little while, Hadley cracked his whip over the backs of the mules, and yelled “Ha-ya!” and the wagon lurched forward with a jolt toward St. Louis in the distance, and Independence far beyond.
Bonnie Sue was still crying.
IV
Bobbo
He had to find his father.
This damn Independence wasn’t so big that a man couldn’t locate another man when he needed to tell him something. Had to find him fast, too, before the opportunity drifted away like early morning mist back home. Pretty much like home, this town was. Bigger and more sprawling, no mountains, of course, but the same easy mix of houses and business establishments, same grid pattern of streets and cross streets. There were sturdy brick buildings everywhere Bobbo walked, chimneys smokeless now in June, steeples and steps, doorways arched in stonework — a right proper town except that just outside its doorstep was the wilderness. What all the charts called Indian Territory. Or unorganized Territory. Meaning there was nothing between here and the Pacific Ocean but a few trading posts and lots of—
“You’ve killed my snake, y’bloody bastard!”
The voice was his father’s, and it was coming from inside a saloon dark as a dungeon. Bobbo pushed open the doors to the place and saw first his father standing at the long bar, and then the bartender with a bloodstained meat cleaver in his fist. Hadley’s rattlesnake was wiggling on the bartop, its body in three separate pieces.