this.”
Tipton glared at John, but he said nothing.
“Is the son of a bitch still following?” Cyrus Hayes asked Emmet Cruise. The two men had stopped for a moment in order for Hayes to relieve himself, and Cruise crawled up onto a rock to look back along the trail.
“Yeah, he’s there,” Cruise said.
“What the hell? Are we leaving bread crumbs or something?” Hayes asked as he buttoned his trousers. “Who the hell is that, and how is staying on our trail?”
“I don’t know who he is, but he’s good,” Cruise said.
“Yeah, well, let’s go,” Hayes said. “The more distance we can put between us and him, the better I will feel.”
Earlier that morning, Hayes and Cruise had robbed the Rocky Mountain Bank and Trust in Pueblo, Colorado, and during the robbery, had shot down in cold blood a teller and two customers. The two customers, a man and his pregnant wife, had been friends of Matt Jensen. Because of that, even before the state got around to offering a reward for two bank robbers and murderers, Matt had gone after them.
Knowing they would be pursued, the two outlaws took great pains to cover their true trail, while leaving false trails for anyone who would follow. Then, reaching a stream, they started riding right down the middle of it, confident that they were erasing any sign that could possibly be followed.
For most trackers, that might work, but not for Matt. He had learned his tracking expertise from Smoke Jensen, who had learned his own skills from an old mountain man named Preacher. And Preacher was, arguably, the best tracker who had ever lived. Because that know-how had been passed down, Matt was almost equally as accomplished as Smoke or Preacher. He could even follow a trail through the water by paying attention to such things as rocks dislodged against the flow of water, or silt, which, when disturbed by horse’s hooves, would leave a little pattern in the water for several minutes afterward.
Matt was tracking down the streambed when a rifle boomed and a .44-40 bullet cracked through the air no more than an inch from his head.
Matt leaped down from his horse and ran though the stream, his feet churning up silver sheets of spray as he ran. The rifle barked again, then, right on top of that, he heard the flatter sound of a pistol shot. Almost simultaneously, two bullets plunged into the water close by.
Reaching the bank on the opposite side of the stream, Matt dived to the ground, then worked his way toward a nearby outcropping of rocks. There, he sat with his back against the biggest of the rocks while he took a few deep breaths.
“Who are you?” one of the men called out to him.
“My name is Jensen,” Matt called back.
“Jensen? Matt Jensen? Son of a bitch!” The outlaw had obviously recognized Matt’s name and there was fear in his voice.
“Which one are you?” Matt called back. “Are you Hayes or Cruise?”
“What? I’m Hayes. How did you know our names?”
“Half the town saw you two boys riding away from the bank, and half the ones who saw you knew who you were.”
“What are you after us for, Jensen?” Hayes called. “I’ve heard of you, but I ain’t never heard that you was someone who would chase a fella down for the reward. Is that why you are chasin’ us?”
“I’m not after the reward.”
“Then if you ain’t after the reward, what the hell are you comin’ after us for?”
“It seems the thing to do,” Matt said, without being specific as to his reasons.
“Well, mister, you made a big mistake,” Hayes shouted. “’Cause all you’re goin’ to do now is get yourself kilt!”
Hayes and Cruise fired again, and once more the bullets whistled by harmlessly overhead.
“You still there?” Hayes called.
“I’m still here.”
“I tell you what, mister. Me and my partner here just talked it over, and we got us an idee. We have got us near ’bout five thousand dollars that we’ve taken from the bank. A thousand of it is your’n iffen you’ll just go away,” Hayes called.
“No deal.”
There was a beat of silence, then Hayes called out again. “All right, how ’bout two thousand? We’ll give you two thousand and all you got to do is let us ride away.”
“You expect me to believe you two are willing to give me nearly half of what you took from the bank?”
“Why not? It’s no big deal, we can always rob another bank,” Hayes shouted back. “Two thousand dollars. You don’t come across money like that very often, do you?”
“Not very often,” Matt agreed.
“So, what do you think? You going to take us up on the offer?”
“Let me think about it,” Matt said.
“You do that.”
Matt had no intention of taking the two men up on their offer, but he responded in such a way as to enable him to stall for time until he figured out how best to handle this situation. He picked up a stick about two feet long, put
