misshapen footprints, but there were enough of them so that most were still clearly visible. Longarm had seen them before, and the conclusion to which they led was obvious.
Helene Booth was gone, and the tracks of the Brazos Devil were all over the place.
Lord Beechmuir was almost insane with worry, not surprising considering what had happened. As the rest of the group made hurried preparations to break camp, Booth paced back and forth in a growing frenzy. The discovery of his wife’s disappearance had made him forget all about the aches and pains he had received in the fight with Longarm. Thorp had offered him sympathy, since the rancher knew what he was going through, but the Englishman had seemed to barely notice.
“Never should have left her here like that,” Booth muttered. “Should have gotten rid of that bloody Hindu a long time ago.”
Longarm overheard the comment and couldn’t disagree with it. He wondered how long Helene’s addiction had been encouraged by Ghote. Her ladyship’s dependence on him had no doubt given him quite a position of strength in the household. Longarm wondered too if the servant had been building up quite a stash of loot from what Helene paid him to supply her with her “medicine.”
All that was a matter for Lord and Lady Beechmuir to work out between themselves … assuming they could catch up to the Brazos Devil and rescue Helene from him safe and sound.
While Longarm was saddling the Appaloosa, Catamount Jack sidled over to him and said in a low voice, “You know, Marshal, somethin’ about them tracks we found strike me as mighty familiar.”
Longarm looked quickly at the old mountain man. “You’ve seen something like them before?”
“Mebbe. I ain’t sayin’ for sure, mind you, but now that I’ve got a good look at ‘em, I think maybe I have.” Catamount Jack shook his grizzled head. “I sure can’t recollect where or when, though.”
“Maybe it’ll come to you,” Longarm said. He wasn’t sure what good it would do them if Catamount Jack had run into a similar creature before, but the knowledge might come in handy. It was hard to know what they were going to find.
Longarm estimated they were less than half an hour behind the Brazos Devil when they rode out of the camp. This was perhaps their best chance yet to catch up to the creature. The varmint must have been watching them, he thought as the riders trotted toward the river, following the tracks. Man, beast, or something in between, the Devil was obviously cunning and observant enough to have known that Helene was alone in the tent while the attention of everyone else in the party was occupied elsewhere.
The tracks led to the bluff overlooking the river—straight to the edge, in fact. Booth reined in and said hollowly, “My God, did … did the beast jump off the brink with Helene?”
Carefully, Longarm walked the Appaloosa closer to the edge and peered down, wondering if he would see the broken bodies of Helene Booth and the Brazos Devil at the bottom, killed in some sort of bizarre suicide. There was nothing down there as far as he could see, however, except a narrow strip of riverbank clogged with brush.
“Look there,” Catamount Jack said, pointing. “You can see some sign where he climbed down.”
Longarm studied the scratch marks indicated by the mountain man. The bluff was basically just an out-thrust limestone ledge, and the face of it was quite rough. A man might be able to climb down it if he was careful.
But climbing down while carrying an unconscious Helene Booth was another story entirely, Longarm thought. That would take an incredible amount of strength and surefootedness … two qualities the Brazos Devil evidently possessed in abundance. The long scratches on the limestone looked like claw marks where the creature had searched for footholds.
“Is there a way down there?” asked Lord Beechmuir as he anxiously studied the markings. “We’ll have to ride north along this bluff for about a mile,” Thorp replied, “but then we’ll be able to get down to the river again and double back. That’s the closest way. Come on.”
The rancher put his horse into a ground-eating lope, and the others followed suit. Longarm found himself riding beside Lucy as the group strung out a little.
“I ain’t overly fond of Lady Beechmuir,” she said quietly to Longarm, “but I hope that critter don’t hurt her much before we catch up to ‘em.”
“Maybe we’ll be lucky this time,” Longarm said. “The Brazos Devil obviously doesn’t kill women right away when he comes across them, the way he does with men.”
“Like I said before, maybe he’s lookin’ for a mate. Maybe Mr. Thorp’s wife is still alive after all and the monster’ll take Lady Beechmuir back to where he’s got Mrs. Thorp hid out.”
Longarm had a vision of a group of concubines, like some Middle Eastern harem, only presided over by some hairy half-man, half-monster instead of an Arab sheik. That was pretty far-fetched … but who was to say what was possible and what was not. He had run across plenty of things in his life he would have considered highly unlikely.
“I reckon we’ll see, with any luck,” he said to Lucy. “We ought to be at the end of this bluff pretty soon.”
Sure enough, the ground soon sloped down toward the level of the river, and within a few minutes the searchers were able to slide their mounts down a short incline and then ride south again, this time following the narrow strip of riverbank.
The going was slow, however, because of the thick brush. It took more than half an hour to reach the spot where the Brazos Devil had climbed over the edge of the bluff with Helene. The only reason they knew they were at the right place was because Catamount Jack had tied a red bandanna on an up-thrust finger of rock at the edge before they started riding along the bluff. The bright red cloth was clearly visible above them.
“Look for any tracks or signs that the beast broke through this brush,” Thorp ordered. “We ought to be able to tell which way he went.”
Several minutes of searching did not turn up any of the huge footprints, however. Nor was there a path broken through the bushes.
“Damn!” Lord Beechmuir exclaimed in worry and frustration. “The bloody beast can’t have disappeared into thin air!”
Longarm frowned in thought for a second, then waved a hand at the rugged face of the bluff. “Maybe he worked
