He threw his coins up in the air and caught them with a wicked swipe of his hand. “If we want more, we’re going to have to take more.” Dalt turned his black eyes on Raddo. “We can slip in and slit a few throats, kill as many in their sleep as we can before we open fire. Think we can handle a big wagon train that way, boss?”
He said the word boss with a tone of mockery, and Raddo wasn’t about to push back. That was a good way of getting shot. Raddo had never killed a man with a knife, and it wasn’t something he looked forward to. A sleeping man at that. He wondered how he’d gotten so low and felt a pang of shame, then quickly stifled it.
“Dalt’s right. We couldn’t take a train of fifty, but we can sure as certain handle a bigger train than five. I can’t live on this scrap of money. We’ll take on a bigger train this time. Each of us can quietly handle a few wagons apiece. Even the odds. We’ll thin the herd of fighting men until someone sets up an alarm. Then we open fire, shooting with both hands.”
CHAPTER
15
The tracks were gone. Trace knew they would be, but he’d hoped to find something, some proof that a small herd had passed through.
Even though there hadn’t been a wagon train since the one with Deb on it, there had been much travel on this same route throughout the summer. So there were plenty of signs to read. Like a broken wagon wheel, or a discarded pot with a hole rusted through tossed to the side of the trail—these could easily be from some other train. In fact, they almost certainly were.
He watched the trail carefully but kept riding, stopping at small settlements, asking questions. Learning nothing. The one encouraging thing he heard was that no more wagon trains had passed by. He thought he’d’ve been able to see those tracks, unless there’d been more rain. But he was glad to have it confirmed.
No one had word that more were coming. But wagon trains didn’t always pass word forward along the trail. They rolled through when they rolled through, and you knew they were coming when they came.
Everyone Trace talked to agreed there ought to be at least another one or two before the trail closed for the season. There often were a hardy—some might say foolish—few who risked a late crossing. And if they stayed on the main trail they could make it, for it was a heavily traveled road these days thanks to the California gold strikes and the Comstock Lode. They still snowed shut, but until they did, they were wide and well-traveled trails and didn’t snow shut as early, what with the trees cleared back from the trail and with men willing to dig through any drifts.
So more wagon trains were expected, and it had to be soon or not at all.
Trace wanted to stay on the trail, riding around the lake where a train might even now be heading toward him on its way to the Sierra Nevada crossing, with Sacramento or San Francisco as their final destination.
The small group Deb traveled with had split off from the larger wagon train, heading south, the Scotts’ wagon aiming for the land Maddie Sue’s pa had claimed.
Trace found no one who’d seen a small herd of mixed animals, including a pair of Holstein oxen. A big black-and-white team like that ought to be mighty noticeable. And the big Belgian draft horse—gray with a black mane and tail—was an unusual animal. Neither the Holsteins nor the Belgian horse had been killed during the massacre. They were out here somewhere. And if anyone saw those animals, they’d remember.
Trace had studied the tracks enough he knew just which ones belonged to the Belgian and which ones the Holsteins. The other animals were less distinctive, but he’d recognize them too probably.
Yet no one admitted to seeing them. A few folks Trace questioned had a sharp look about them, enough to make Trace wonder if they’d spoken the truth. A man in the West who bought stolen stock would be quiet about it. And to a knowing western man, this group of critters would have the look of a stolen herd—right down to the altered brands, which many a man would note instantly.
He couldn’t help but be wary about his questions, thinking of what Deb had said about his sitting right next to a killer and letting the man know he was being pursued. It was madness, but he wished now she was with him. He’d have the courage to ask questions a bit more insistently if he could be sure none of the men nearby were the killers he hunted.
Trace stopped in five settlements along the way without gathering even a snippet of information. Of course, three of these so-called settlements were little more than a general store. One was a single house standing alongside the trail, offering weary travelers a place to sit a spell, eat a meal cooked by someone else, even sleep on a straw-tick mattress.
Calling these places “settlements” was a long stretch of the word, but Trace stopped in all of them regardless.
He put in a full day, pushing hard but, he hoped, not so hard he missed any useful information. Finally he rode for the ranch. A long day wasted. He itched to ride on, even reined in his horse and hesitated, not sure if he was making the right decision to go all the way back home. He’d be two or three days on the trail if he rode the rest of the way to the north shore of Tahoe, rounded it, rode through Carson City, and then back home. He needed to visit all those places, and soon. At last, though, he decided to ride for his High Sierra Ranch.
Was he doing the right thing? Should he
