As men slowly gathered around the fire, holding out hands to get them warm and gratefully accepting mugs of steaming coffee, he told Jimmy Corbett to get started cooking some fatback and beans in the large skillets they’d brought along.
“Don’t worry with trying to make biscuits in this storm,” he said. “We’ve still got some left from last night’s dinner that ought’a do.”
“Gonna have to dip them sinkers in coffee to get ‘em soft enough to chew,” Jason Biggs said, grinning. “Otherwise you’re liable to break a tooth on ‘em.”
Cletus was about to reply when Wally Stevens hollered from over near the tree Smoke had been under, “Hey, ever’body, Jenson’s gone!”
Cletus forced a surprised look on his face and ran over to where Smoke was supposed to be lying. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he exclaimed, straightening up and looking around with his hands on his hips. “The bastard’s not here.”
“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
