relieved when neither of the other men asked about it.
Reluctantly, Wesley let Lester go.
“Is it still here?” Lester asked.
Both cousins looked at each other. Wesley spat onto the ground as Pat nodded.
“Yeah,” Pat told him. “Most of it is.”
“Let’s see it.”
“Why?”
“Because I came all this way,” Lester said. “I’m your kin and I would have helped you go after it if you would have given me the chance. The least you can do is let me get a look at what all this fuss is about.”
Pat looked over to Wesley, who eventually nodded.
“Go on and show him,” the oldest cousin said. “Don’t let Stephanie see what you’re up to or she’ll make you hand over another portion of your share.”
“Kiss my ass,” Pat muttered as he walked back to the barn.
Wesley grabbed hold of Lester once more, but not like the last time. Instead, he took hold of the back of Lester’s neck and pulled him in under his arm. “You all right, cousin?”
“Yeah. I could use something to eat.”
“The women will fix you up just fine. Is that true what you said before? About those men coming after you and all?”
“Yeah,” Lester said. “I’m afraid it is. Are you gonna kick me out of here?”
“Nah. I may want to, but you’re right. You’re kin. Besides, you’ve got a bigger price on your head than me and Pat combined. I checked. That Mexican must really have it in for you.”
“Texan.”
“Whatever.”
After another minute or two, Pat returned from the barn carrying a bundle in one arm as if it was his firstborn. Made up of battered leather tied up by a few lengths of twine, the bundle wasn’t any bigger than a small loaf of bread. Pat kept his eyes on the house at all times. When he made it back to where Wesley and Lester were standing, he turned his back to the house and held the bundle out in one hand.
Pat peeled back the top layer of leather, and Lester could see the treasure that everyone had talked about. It wasn’t as much as some had claimed, but seeing all those glittering diamonds, gold nuggets and bundles of cash was enough to take Lester’s breath away.
“That’s the Reaper’s Fee?” Lester gasped. “It was really in that grave?”
Wesley nodded, admiring the bundle in Pat’s hand. “Sure was. It was stuffed in Cobb’s pockets.”
“You…sifted through a dead man’s pockets?”
“Sure. How else was I gonna get it out of there?”
Closing up the bundle, Pat carefully wound the twine back around it and said, “We already dug up a grave. The rest didn’t seem like too much more to ask.”
For the first time since he’d started in on all of this, Lester got a real good impression of the rage seething behind Nick’s eyes when he’d been talking about someone disturbing his friend’s grave. In a frightened voice, Lester said, “We might want to pack up and get the hell away from here.”
Brimming with confidence over the fruits of his labor, Wesley said, “If those men want to come after my kin, they’ll have a fight on their hands. Besides, there’s three of us and only two of them, right?”
“But one of them’s a known killer,” Pat said. “I heard Graves killed his first man before he even fucked his first woman.”
“I’ve heard plenty of bad stories about Graves, too,” Wesley said. “That don’t make ’em all true. “Just the same, though, maybe we should put the odds more in our favor. You still got them shotguns from when Uncle Mike visited us last spring to do some hunting?”
“Yeah, but one of them’s broken and we don’t have any shells.”
“Go back into town and buy some shells. Buy a new gun while you’re at it. We make sure the wives are armed along with us and it’ll be five against two. That should work out better all around.”
“I just got back from town,” Pat told him. “Stores are closed. I’m not heading straight back there.”
“Then I’ll go in the morning. Jesus Christ, you’re a whining cuss.”
“I’ll go with you,” Lester offered.
“You see there? Little cousin knows how to lend a hand when all of our asses are on the line.” Wesley booted Pat in the backside as the younger cousin went back to put the bundle in its hiding spot. “We’ll take turns keeping watch, and Lester and I’ll head into town come first light. Odds are that them two won’t even find us out here.”
Lester nodded, doing his best to mirror Wesley’s confidence.
He was given a room and allowed to sleep while the other two cousins kept watch. The more he thought about Nick’s reputation with a gun and Kinman’s reputation for tracking, the harder it was for Lester to get any rest.
TWENTY-FOUR
By the time he and Kinman had broken camp and ridden out the next morning, Nick knew how the bounty hunter was tracking Lester. It wasn’t easy to spot at first, but Nick had managed to pick out the pattern that kept showing up among the tracks in the dirt. Kinman seemed to enjoy doing his job and was damn good at it, so Nick let him keep the lead. For the moment, their end goal was the same.
“You ever hear of Pat or Wesley Harbor?” Kinman asked after he’d gotten his bearings and was preparing his horse for the day’s ride.
Nick cinched up the last buckle on Kazys’s saddlebags and shrugged. “I’ve been to Boston Harbor.”
“They ain’t places. They’re people. Ever hear of ’em?”
After thinking about it once more, Nick came up with even less than before. “No. I guess I haven’t.”
“They’re Lester’s cousins. By the looks of it, he may be heading out to meet them.”
“If you know where to find them, we should be able to work out a shortcut. That should shave off some time.”
“If I knew where to find them, I would’ve found them already. They’re wanted men, mostly for working with your friend Barrett Cobb.”
Nick recognized the way Kinman was staring at him. It was the look that was in a man’s eye when he asked a question that he figured you already knew the answer to. It reminded Nick of the smug distrust that poured from a lawman’s eyes. “Barrett worked with plenty of men. He used them for a lot of jobs so none of them would know too much.”
“You worked with him, too.”
“Me and Barrett also worked with a lot of other fellas. If you want to know where they are, I can take you to their graves. Some of them are still somewhere in Montana, but I’m sure you’d be more than welcome to have a look around. Those vigilantes just love bounty hunters.”
“And they also love outlaws,” Kinman said without missing a beat. Making sure to stare at Nick’s mangled hand, he added, “I hear they take extra special time with the outlaws they like more’n anyone else.”
Nick nodded and climbed into his saddle. Once there, he made a particularly nasty gesture with the hand that was still in Kinman’s sights. “You want to lead the way or would you prefer to give Lester even more of a head start?”
“Don’t you worry about Lester. I’ve been tracking him long enough to know how his little pea brain works. His kin lives somewhere around a town named Hackett. He’ll run there just as surely as I’m sitting here.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Nick asked while waving grandly toward the trail. “Lead the way.”
Kinman stared at Nick for a few seconds. In that short amount of time, Nick felt as if he could hear exactly what was running through the bounty hunter’s mind. The smugness in Kinman’s eyes, combined with the way he
