“Looks that way,” Shaye said.
“Pa,” Thomas said, “I was tellin’ James I think he should stay behind to help you.”
“First of all, did you even get a posse together?”
Both young men looked away, and Thomas said, “Well, no.”
“So it may just be you and James, Thomas,” Shaye said. “You’re gonna need each other, and you might even have to split up to follow separate trails.”
James gave his brother a meaningful look, and Thomas simply shrugged.
“Don’t worry,” Shaye said. “I can get you a couple of other men to ride with you.”
“Who?” Thomas asked.
“You’ll see,” Shaye said. “For now I want you both to do something. One of you go back to the livery, and the other go and talk to the man whose horse was stolen.”
“I talked to them already—”
“Do those horses have any identifying marks, or anything that would make make their gait identifiable? Any markings in their hooves? Any—”
“Okay, okay,” Thomas said. “I get it. I didn’t ask the right questions.”
“Well,” Shaye said, “go ask them!”
28
There was a time, Shaye knew, when posses were not so hard to put together. He knew this from personal experience, since in his youth he had been on the other end many times. As the gunman “Shay Daniels,” he had been chased through Missouri and Kansas by posses more times than he could count.
He’d been thinking about those days ever since the bank robbery. It was odd, but sometimes he thought things happened just so he would never forget those days long passed.
But he’d been up against it in Epitaph, and now, apparently, it was to be the same in Vengeance Creek. He couldn’t sit a horse, but he wasn’t about to send his sons out there alone. It may have been only Cardwell and Jacks now, but who knew how many men they’d surround themselves with by the time Thomas and James tracked them down?
He thought there were a couple of men in town he could draft into service, but he knew he would have to get out of the office and go find them. The doctor had sewed him up, wrapped him tight, and suggested—strongly—that he stay off his feet for at least a few days. But that wasn’t going to happen.
He stood up, strapped on his gun, and limped from the office.
Thomas and James decided to stick together rather than split their tasks, so they went to the livery first.
“Horses,” the liveryman, Ron Hill, said with a shrug. He gestured with the scarred hand of a man who had been around horses for more than twenty years. “Two horses. They weren’t mine, so I didn’t pay that much attention to them.”
“What do you mean, they weren’t yours?” Thomas asked. “Did they ride them in?”
“No,” Hill said.
“Did they leave them behind?”
“Not here.”
“Mr. Hill,” Thomas said, “you have to answer my questions a little more clearly that that.”
“They didn’t buy the horses from me. They bought them somewhere else, then brought them in here.”
“Do you know where they bought them?”
“No.”
“Which man brought them to you?”
“The same man who came and got them.”
That would be Davis, Thomas thought.
“So you can’t tell us if there was anything distinctive about them?” James asked.
“That’s right.”
“But you’re supposed to know horses.”
“I know my horses,” Hill said. “If they had taken any of the animals from my corral in the back, I could answer your questions.”
“Where are the horses the other men rode in on?” Thomas asked.
“In my corral.”
“Can you show us the stalls the horses were in before the man came and got them?”
“That I can do.”
“And then we’d like to see the horses that belonged to the dead men.”
“No problem,” Hill said. “Come this way.”
It took Shaye three times as long as it usually did to walk the distance from the sheriff’s office to the store that housed the gunsmith shop. People had come back onto the streets now that the shooting was over, but they avoided his eyes and stepped out of his way. At least they had the decency to be ashamed of the fact that they had been hiding during the robbery.
When he reached the shop, he stopped outside and peered in through the window. He knew from experience how some people liked to leave their past where it belonged—in the past. He fell into that category, and so did the man inside the gunsmith shop. As far as he knew, he was the only person in town who knew that the gunsmith, Ralph Cory, had once gone by a totally different name.
And he was ashamed of what he was about to do.
When the door to his shop opened, Ralph Cory looked up and saw the sheriff limping into his place of business. He knew that meant one of two things. Either the sheriff needed a gun repaired or he’d been recognized.
Not again, he thought. He actually liked this town, after having been in Vengeance Creek for six months, and people were actually beginning to pay him to do what he liked to do. But this had happened a couple times before. Someone would recognize him, tell the local law, and then he’d be asked to leave.
Well, not this time. Six months. This was the longest he’d spent in one place in quite some time, and his shop was beginning to shape up the way he liked it. He was a businessman, a gunsmith, and that’s all he was. If the local law accused him of being anything but—well, he was going to fight back this time.
If they wanted him out of Vengeance Creek, they were going to have to carry him out.
29
“Mr. Cory,” Shaye greeted the gunsmith.
“Sheriff. What can I do for you today?”
Shaye closed the door tightly behind him, then turned and limped to the counter. Cory knew that the man had sustained a injury to his hip. He could tell by the way he walked and held himself, but he did not comment on it.
“I suppose you heard the commotion earlier today,” Shaye said. “Heard that the bank was robbed?”
“I heard that you and your sons killed yourselves four bank robbers.”
“That’s right,” Shaye said, “and we’ve got one in jail—but three got away, including the two who murdered everyone inside the bank.”
“A terrible thing.”
“Yes,” Shaye said, “it was awful. One of the people killed was the mayor’s daughter.”
“I’m sorry for his loss.”
“Yeah, I am too.”
Cory could see the pain etched on the sheriff’s face, and despite himself, he grabbed a chair from behind his counter and carried it around to the front.
“You better sit,” he said. “I’ll put the closed sign in the window. I have a feeling you and I are in for a long talk.”
“Thanks for the chair,” Shaye said, and lowered himself painfully into it. “Not that long a talk, though,” he said over his shoulder.
Cory came back around to his side of the counter. From beneath it he took two shot glasses and a half-filled bottle of whiskey. He poured two drinks, then stoppered the bottle and put it back. He pushed one of the glasses over to Shaye.
“Thanks,” the lawman said.
They both tossed back their drinks, then looked at each other.
“My sons are about to ride out after the remaining bank robbers,” Shaye told Cory. “They tried to get up a posse, but everybody turned them down. I can’t let them go out there alone, without guidance.”
“They’re grown men,” Cory said.
“They’re not ready,” Shaye said, “and I can’t go with them. This injury keeps me from sittin’ a horse.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”