from Charlie either.”
Cletus nodded. “All right, men, let’s double back a ways and see if we can find Charlie’s body.”
Sarah took a deep breath and felt a deep sorrow. She didn’t know Charlie Blake well, but if he was dead, then it was her fault for letting Smoke Jensen escape.
She shook her head as she pulled her horse’s head around. How was she going to live with herself if more men were killed because of her? she wondered.
TWENTY-THREE
As he rode hell-bent-for-leather through the deepening snow and into the teeth of the freezing north wind after capturing the man’s horse, Smoke leaned as close to his mount’s head as he could to avoid being scraped out of the saddle by a tree limb. He had to trust the horse’s instinct not to run headlong into a tree or off a cliff, and so all he could do for the first couple of hundred yards of their flight was to hang on for dear life and hope for the best.
At least it beat a bullet in the back.
After about ten minutes at a full gallop, Smoke raised his head and looked back over his shoulder. The snow was still blowing, and all he could see was a solid sheet of white behind him.
He slowed the horse and cocked his head to the side, listening to see if he could hear any pursuit over the howling of the wind.
Nothing. He turned back around, pulled his hat down tight, and rode on into the wind toward the mountain up ahead, moving slower now to give his horse a rest. He knew that if he could make the slopes up ahead before his captors caught up to him, he would have the advantage for the first time since this adventure began.
He smiled grimly. And then it would be time to pay them back.
Angus MacDougal was just sitting down to a solitary supper, served by his housekeeper/cook, when the door banged open and a breathless Daniel Macklin barged in.
Angus threw down his napkin and smiled, evidently thinking the group of men had arrived with Smoke Jensen as their prisoner.
“Where is that son of a bitch?” Angus growled, moving toward the hat rack in the corner with his belt and holstered pistol hanging on it.
Macklin didn’t understand at first what Angus was referring to. “Uh . . . where is who?” he asked, taking his hat off and holding it in front of him like a shield.
Angus sighed as he buckled on his gun belt. “Jensen, of course,” he answered. “You remember him, don’t you? The bastard who gunned my Johnny down? The man you went to Big Rock to get for me?”
“Uh . . . that’s what I come to tell you, Mr. MacDougal.” Few men in the world called Angus MacDougal by his first name, and certainly not an employee as low as Daniel Macklin.
Angus knew something was wrong. “Well, spit it out, man. What the hell’s going on?”
“We were ‘bout half a day’s ride from here when Jensen somehow managed to get loose and run away,” Macklin finally managed to say.
“What?” Angus yelled, advancing on Macklin as if he were about to kill him.
Macklin held up his hands. “Now wait a minute, Mr. MacDougal. He ain’t gotten away—leastways not all the way away.”
Angus slapped his thigh with his hand. “Now just what the hell does that mean?” he growled.
“He didn’t get no horse, an’ he’s on foot in a bad storm some miles from the nearest mountain. He’s runnin’ on foot through the woods with Cletus and the rest of the men on horseback after him.”
The redness began to fade a little bit from Angus’s face at this news. “Oh, well, then, it shouldn’t take Clete long to run him down then, should it?”
Macklin shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t think so.”
Suddenly Angus cocked an eyebrow at Macklin. “If that’s so, then why did Clete send you here?”
“Well, the fact of the matter is that Jensen used to be a mountain man, sir, and we . . . that is, Cletus thought that if he did manage to make the mountains, we might ought’a have a few more men out looking for him.”
Angus took a couple of long, slow breaths to try to calm himself. He found he did his best thinking when he was calm, not when he was in a fit of rage.
After a moment, he nodded. “I guess I can’t argue with that logic,” he said. “Let me see, you got about ten, eleven men up there now. Another ten or so ought’a be plenty. With twenty men I can run a search of the mountain that a squirrel couldn’t get through.”
He pulled out his pocket watch and opened the gold clasp. “Well, it’s too late now to round up any good men. We’ll get to bed early and be in Pueblo at dawn. We should be able to find ten men who want to make a little extra money without any problem.”
Or who want to make the richest rancher for a hundred miles happy, Macklin thought.
“You have anything to eat ‘fore you got on the way here?” he asked, suddenly in a better frame of mind now that he knew he’d have the personal pleasure of hunting Jensen down like the dog he was. Hell, it might even be fun running the bastard down like a deer or a bear.
“No, sir,” Macklin answered, his mouth watering at the smell of the pot roast and fresh vegetables he could smell on the table in the next room.
Angus nodded. “Well, then, head on over to the bunkhouse and I’ll have my cook send you over a plate.”
“Thank you, sir,” Macklin said, trying to hide his anger. Here he was busting his butt to help the old man out and he wasn’t good enough to break bread with him in his house. The ungrateful asshole!
