to watch for a train before it gets to that settlement. If you see one comin’, you light a shuck back here to let us know, you hear?”
The outlaw called Hennessy nodded. He mounted and rode off into the looming darkness.
Jeffries walked up and asked, “What now, Garth? Any ideas?”
Garth had an idea, all right, and it involved putting his fist down Jeffries’s throat. “I thought I told you to keep an eye on the pilgrim and his woman.”
“That sodbuster’s not going anywhere,” Jeffries said. “Hell, he hasn’t even fully regained consciousness since he collapsed. If you ask me, his skull’s busted and he’s going to die before the night’s over.”
“Damn it, hush that up!” Garth said. “I don’t want the woman hearin’ it.”
“Why not?” Jeffries sneered. “Are you worried about upsetting her?”
An idea had begun to form in Garth’s brain. He said, “No, but if she thinks her husband’s fixin’ to die, she might not cooperate with us.”
“She doesn’t have any choice about that, does she?”
“If she’s gonna do what I want her to, we’ll have to trust her. We can’t trust her if we don’t have her husband’s life to hold over her, along with the kid’s.”
Jeffries frowned and asked, “What are you thinking about, Garth?”
“You’ll see,” Garth said. He didn’t feel like explaining himself to Jeffries or anybody else. Instead, he stalked over to where Winslow was now stretched out on the ground with his bloody head pillowed in his wife’s lap.
She had ripped some strips from her petticoat and tied them around his head as makeshift bandages. Somewhere along the way, she had lost her bonnet, and her blond hair had slipped out of its bun to hang loosely around her shoulders.
Garth felt a pang of regret as she looked up at him with a stricken expression. He remembered a time when women this wholesome and pretty hadn’t looked at him with fear in their eyes.
“He won’t wake up,” she said. “I can’t get him to wake up.”
“He’ll be fine,” Garth told her gruffly. “I’ve seen plenty o’ fellas who got knocked addlepated like he did, and they just need some time to sleep it off. Then they wake up and they’re all right again.”
“He needs a doctor,” Maggie Winslow pleaded.
Garth shook his head. “No doctor. But we’ll take good care o’ him. You got my word on that.”
“You…you won’t let him die?”
“Not if I can help it.” Garth paused, then added, “Not if you cooperate and do what I tell you.”
“Anything.” Her hands went to the top button of her dress and started to unfasten it even though her fingers trembled. “You can do anything you want.”
Garth shook his head and made a curt gesture. “Not that. What I want you to do is ride down to that settlement and find out when the next train headin’ west is due to come through.”
Her hands dropped away from the buttons. “You…you want me to spy for you? Like when you sent Ike into Arrowhead?”
“That’s right.” That part of his plan had worked, Garth thought. They had known what Thorpe’s plans were, even if they hadn’t been successful in stopping those plans…yet.
He went on. “That ain’t all. We’ll need to know exactly where Joshua’s bein’ held and how many deputies the marshal has.”
Gonzalez was close enough to have been listening to the conversation. He spoke up, saying, “I saw just one of the gringo deputies left, Garth, if you don’t count that Bodine and Two Wolves.”
“You’d damned well better count them,” Jeffries said. “From the looks of what they’ve done so far, they’re worth two or three good fighting men apiece.”
“I want to know about all of it,” Garth told Maggie. “Can you do that?”
“I…I don’t know.” She looked down at the man whose head rested in her lap. “I…I guess I can try, but I’m worried about Ike…”
Garth drew his bowie knife. In a low, dangerous voice, he said, “I can promise you one thing, lady. If you don’t help us, that husband o’ yours won’t live out the night.”
Of course, Winslow probably wouldn’t be alive come sunup anyway, but his wife didn’t have to know that.
“All right,” Maggie said. “I’ll do it. Are you going to give me a horse?”
“That’s right. And don’t even think about tryin’ to double-cross us, ma’am. We’ll have your husband and your baby, and you won’t never see either one of ’em alive again if you try anything funny.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Garth. I’ll find out what you need to know.” She stroked back a few strands of hair that had fallen over Winslow’s closed eyes. “And maybe by the time I get back, Ike will be awake again.”
“I reckon there’s a good chance of it,” Garth lied. The longer Winslow remained unconscious, the greater the chances that he would never wake up.
It was a good thing Garth didn’t give a damn whether the pilgrim lived or died.
Pancake Flats was considerably smaller than Arrowhead, with only one real street that stretched for a couple of blocks north and south. It had something the larger settlement didn’t, though—an adobe railroad station that fronted the tracks of the Southern Pacific.
Matt glanced eastward along those tracks and thought that if you kept following them far enough, you’d wind
