“Who done it?”
“Damn if I know,” the bearer of the news replied. Turning, he left the saloon and started running down the boardwalk, the sounds of his footfalls receding in the distance.
“Jailbreak!” he was shouting into the night. “Bobby Lee Cabot broke out of jail!”
Nabors looked across the table to Minnie.
“Did you know that he was going to blow up the jail?”
“I was confident that he was going to get Bobby Lee out of jail. I didn’t know exactly how he would do it.”
Nabors chuckled. “You have to say this about him. When he sets out to help someone, he doesn’t mess around, does he?”
“Who are you talking about?” Paul, the bartender, asked, coming over to join them then, not having heard the initial exchange between the two of them.
“The sheriff is goin’ to come around asking a lot questions,” Nabors said. “You are probably better off if you don’t have any answers.”
“Do you have answers?” Paul asked.
“I don’t have any answers,” Nabors said. “I have lots of ideas, but I don’t have any answers.”
Doc Baker came over to join them then.
“I thought you were playing chess,” Nabors said.
“I was, but Bryan cheats.” Doc Baker didn’t mean the charge seriously, and nobody took it so.
“I don’t need to cheat to beat you,” Bryan called back in good-natured banter.
“Did I hear that fella say a moment ago that the back wall of the jail had been blown out?”
“That’s right,” Nabors said.
“Do you think it might have been—”
“That’s right,” Nabors said again, interrupting him with a broad smiled. “There’s no doubt in my mind who it was.”
“Well, what do you know?”
Chapter Nineteen
Riding hard through the night, Smoke and Bobby Lee reached Lost Creek in the Sinkarata Valley at about four o’clock in the morning. They slept lightly through the rest of the night, then awakened just before dawn. Now, in the east, Smoke could see the long slab of the Shoshone Mountains outlined against the red-gold sky of sunrise. The De Satoya mountain range lay to the west.
They had made their camp under on a bench of rock overhanging the narrow stream, under a stand of great pines. Grasshoppers flitted about, and several yellow butterflies hovered over the water. A pair of eagles circled high overhead, while, somewhat lower, a much more active peregrine falcon snatched a fleeing grouse.
Smoke walked over to the edge of the creek, then lay on his stomach on a flat rock. Reaching down into the clear water and using his cupped hands, he scooped the water up, then splashed it on his face, finding the cold water invigorating.
“I want to thank you for answering my telegram,” Bobby Lee said.
“You asked for help, Bobby Lee. Did you think I was going to ignore you?”
“Well, with Nicole being dead and all, I wasn’t sure.”
“Whether Nicole is dead or alive, you’re still family. ”
Bobby Lee smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“What are you going to do now?” Smoke asked.
“I’m going to do what I started out to do,” Bobby Lee said. “I’m going to hunt down and bring in Frank Dodd. I figure that’s the only way I can clear my name.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Smoke said. “Do you have any idea where we start?”
“Where
“I broke you out of jail, Bobby Lee. Don’t you think that makes me involved?”
Bobby Lee smiled again, and nodded. “I guess you are right,” he said. “If you are sure you want to do this, I’ll be more than glad to have you along.”
“Tell me about Frank Dodd.”
“He is as mean as they come,” Bobby Lee said. “He led a group of raiders during the war, and he learned a lot about military operations. Now he runs his gang exactly like a military operation.”
“Which side was he on during the war?”
“Ha!” Bobby Lee said. “He was on his own side. If it helped him to ride under the Confederate flag, he did. If it helped him to ride under the Federal flag, he did that as well. Mostly, what he was after was the plunder, and he didn’t care which side he robbed from.”
