Under other circumstances, that might not have been so bad, although Cara was young enough that would have made Scratch a little uncomfortable. But her youth combined with the fact that she was an outlaw and quite possibly a murderer gave him the fantods for sure.
Still, he didn’t see what else he could do except play along with whatever she wanted.
She had already crawled into the bedroll when he finished with the horses. She held back the blankets for him and said, “Here.”
Scratch took off his hat and boots, then unbuckled his gun belt and coiled it around the holstered Remingtons. He set the revolvers on the ground next to the blankets, within easy reach.
He slid into the bedroll with Cara. He had put his saddle down for a pillow, and as he rested his head on it, she snuggled against him and laid her head on his shoulder. Her curly blond hair tickled his cheek as she moved closer to him.
He cleared his throat and said, “You know this, uh, this saddle of mine is older than you are, don’t you?”
“Oh, hush,” she said sleepily. “I’m tired, and it’s damned cold. I’ve just about froze every night since we left Fort Smith because I wasn’t just about to curl up with those two varmints I was locked in the wagon with. I figure with you it’s different.”
“Different, eh?” Scratch wasn’t sure if he liked the sound of that or not.
“Well, you’re older. Maybe not
“Me, too,” Scratch said. “Good night.”
“Night ...” she murmured as she pressed closer against him, seeking warmth.
If this didn’t beat all, Scratch thought. Curled up in his blankets with a beautiful young gal who was probably plumb loco and a killer to boot, and the two of them on their way to retrieve a small fortune in stolen money and gold from an outlaws’ cave that might be full of rattlesnakes.
Well, he thought as he drifted off to sleep, she might cut his throat before morning, but at least he wasn’t likely to die of boredom.
CHAPTER 24
Scratch was cold when he woke up in the morning, which meant two things, one good and one maybe not so good.
The good thing was that he woke up at all, which meant he was still alive. Cara hadn’t killed him while he slept, after all.
The fact that he was cold meant that she was no longer huddled in the blankets next to him. He sat up quickly, thinking that she might have slipped away and taken both horses with her, leaving him stranded here. He hated to think that she could do such a thing without waking him, but maybe it was possible ...
“Good morning,” she said. He heard the crackle of a fire and suddenly smelled coffee brewing. When he turned his head she was there, hunkered on the other side of a small campfire. She had gotten the coffeepot from his gear and started the Arbuckles’ boiling.
“Where’d you get the water?” Scratch asked.
“There’s a little creek just the other side of these trees,” Cara said. “And I told you good morning. You ain’t very polite, old man.”
Scratch grunted, and then a grin spread across his leathery face.
“Good mornin’,” he said. “You sleep all right?”
“Better than I have in a while,” Cara replied. “You?”
“Just fine,” Scratch admitted. If he could just forget the errand they were on and the sort of woman she really was, this little adventure wouldn’t be so bad.
But he couldn’t forget. Not hardly.
“You want me to fry up some bacon?” Cara went on. “I’m not very good at it. I can make coffee, but that’s about all. So if you’re thinkin’ that just because I’m a woman I’m here to wait on you hand and foot—”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” Scratch said.
“Good. We’ll head toward Decatur today. I want to stay away from big towns like Fort Worth. Too many blasted people there. Somebody might recognize me.”
Scratch almost came out with
Instead he told Cara, “You lead the way, darlin’, and I’ll go along with you.”
He climbed out of the bedroll, his muscles creaking a little and his breath fogging in front of his face in the cold air, and got busy frying bacon and cooking some biscuits. They had slept until after dawn, and the sun was well up by the time they finished breakfast and were ready to ride.
They spent the day continuing to head southwest, avoiding farmhouses and little crossroads settlements and trying not to skyline themselves atop the rolling hills. Late in the afternoon they skirted east around the town of Decatur that Cara had mentioned that morning. They made camp alongside a slowly moving stream that Scratch guessed was one of the several forks of the Trinity River.
The day had warmed up considerably, enough so that Scratch had taken off his buckskin jacket while he was riding in the sun. Cara removed her coat, too, and paused from time to time to run her fingers through her thick, curly hair. Whenever she did that, Scratch thought, Lord, she was beautiful, but there were plenty of things in this world that looked pretty but could kill you in a hurry if you let your guard down, he reminded himself.
Once the sun was down it quickly started getting cold. After supper, Scratch and Cara once again curled up together in the bedroll. She went to sleep immediately. Scratch lingered on the edge of wakefulness long enough to wonder how Bo and Brubaker were doing and how things had gone with the sheriff in Gainesville. Scratch had every confidence in the world that when the time came, Bo would be there. In all the years they had traveled together, Bo had never let him down.
The next day they followed the river southward. Scratch grinned and said, “If we had a boat, we could float down to where we’re goin’.”
Cara snorted disdainfully. “Except when it’s floodin’, the Trinity’s not deep enough in these parts to float anything more than a little rowboat. Anyway, I’d rather be on horseback. I don’t like boats.” She sniffed. “I can’t swim.”
“You can’t?”
“Never learned. There was no place around where I grew up that was big enough to swim in. We had a little pond on our farm, but it was barely deep enough for the crawdads to paddle around.” She got a reminiscing look on her face. “One time up in the Nations, Hank wanted to go skinny-dippin’ in a creek. I told him I’d take my clothes off, but I wasn’t gonna swim.”
“You were quite a hellion, weren’t you?”
She grinned over at him.
“I still am. You got a problem with that, Scratch?”
He shook his head and said, “Nope, not me.”
They had gone only another mile or so when the horse Cara was riding suddenly broke its gait and started limping. She reined in and glared in annoyance.
“What’s wrong with this jughead?” she asked.
Scratch swung down from his saddle.
“Let me take a look,” he said.
He lifted the horse’s hoof that seemed to be causing the trouble and studied it. Taking a clasp knife from his pocket, he opened it and pried at the horseshoe with the blade.
“Shoe’s loose and it’s picked up a rock,” he announced after a moment. “We need to find a blacksmith.”
“Can’t you take care of it?” Cara asked.
“Maybe, if I had the right tools, which I don’t. Anyway, we’ll be better off lettin’ somebody who knows what he’s doin’ handle it. You don’t want to be left a-foot out here, and if we have to ride double we couldn’t get away
