The Dublin Detective (12 page)

“We'll make an educated guess,” Clint replied.

“I'll rest for the remainder of the afternoon, but I'll take my supper in the cantina, sitting at a table,” McBeth said.

“If that's what you want,” Clint said.

“That's what I want.”

“Okay, then,” Clint said. “We'll spend one more night here.”

“Mr. Weaver,” McBeth said, “the way you got them two women lookin' at you, you'd better mind how you decide how to spend the night.”

“Ain't never had two women wantin' me before,” Weaver said.

“I suspect Angel wants pay for another night,” Clint said.

“And Jacinta?” McBeth asked.

“No telling what she wants,” Clint said. “She doesn't have a very high opinion of men.”

“She said I was handsome,” Weaver said.

Clint looked at McBeth and said, “See what I mean?”

McBeth laughed.

 

McBeth rested until supper time, then came out into the cantina and joined Clint and Weaver at a table.

“First time I been in a chair since I got shot,” he said.

“How's it feel?” Clint asked.

“Kind of stiff.”

“Probably going to be even stiffer in the saddle,” Clint observed.

“No,” McBeth said, “it'll stretch out and feel better the more I ride.”

“Sounds like you been shot before,” Weaver said.

“Once or twice.”

“I ain't never been shot.”

“It isn't something to look forward to, Weaver,” Clint said.

Angel came out of the kitchen with a tray.

“I took the liberty of ordering steaks,” Clint said to McBeth.

“Sounds good,” the Irishman said. “I think I've had enough tacos and enchiladas to last me a lifetime.”

Angel laid out the plates, and three mugs of lukewarm beer to wash the food down with. She bumped Weaver's shoulder with an ample hip before heading back to the kitchen. There was a man and a woman at another table eating, and the bartender behind the bar. Other than that, nobody else was around.

“Eat up,” McBeth said to Weaver. “I've got a feelin' you're gonna need your strength tonight.”

Weaver picked up his knife and fork, looking uncomfortable.

In the morning Clint walked McBeth to the stable where the horses were. He saddled both McBeth's horse and Eclipse.

“Where's Weaver?” McBeth asked.

“He'll be along,” Clint said.

“Which woman did he end up with?”

“I don't know,” Clint said. “He said he didn't have the money to pay for Angel again.”

“You think he spent the night with Jacinta?” McBeth asked.

Clint shrugged.

“If he did, I envy him,” McBeth said. “That is a beautiful woman.”

“She hasn't got much use for men, though.”

“Still, even a woman who hates men would have one use for us . . . don't you think?”

“I don't know,” Clint said. “I try not to deal with women who hate me.”

“Did you decide which way we should go?” McBeth asked.

“We'll ride east, head for the river, find a likely place to cross.”

“Just like that?”

“Well, they won't go back to El Paso,” Clint said. “Wherever they went, they'll want the quickest way to the border. So they probably just headed for the river, and that's what we'll do.”

“Okay,” McBeth said. “I'll leave that part up to you. But how will we track them?”

“How did you track them?” Clint asked. “Word of mouth, right?”

“Well,” McBeth said. “I had no triangle on a horseshoe to follow.”

“So we'll do it the same way,” Clint said. “They'll be ready to hit a stage or a bank when they get back to the U.S. We'll hear about it.”

“Yes,” McBeth said, “we will.”

 

They were tying down their bedrolls when Weaver appeared, moving furtively.

“We gotta get out of town,” he said.

“Was last night that bad?” McBeth asked.

“Huh? Oh, I just stayed in my room and locked the door. I don't know who's madder, Angel 'cause I wouldn't let her in, or her husband because he didn't make any money last night.”

Weaver hurriedly saddled his horse and mounted up.

“Let's go! Let's go!”

“Go ahead,” Clint said. “We'll catch up.”

Weaver rode out.

“Does he know which way we're going?” McBeth asked.

“He has an idea.”

“What about supplies?” McBeth asked.

“We'll pick some up in the first town we come to,” Clint said. “Just enough to get us to the border. Once we're back in the U.S., we'll stock up.”

Clint watched McBeth lead his horse outside. There was no one around, no one to say good-bye. He hadn't really expected Jacinta, but he still looked for her.

“You want some help mounting up?” he asked.

McBeth touched his back. Clint had wrapped him the night before as tightly as he could.

“I'll do it,” he said. “Might as well find out now if these stitches and wrapping will hold.”

He reached up, pulled himself into the saddle, and settled down. He felt the stretch, but the stitches held. So far, so good.

“I'm okay,” he said.

“Good,” Clint said. He mounted Eclipse, rode up alongside of McBeth. “Let's see if we can catch up to Weaver before he gets too far ahead.”

They rode past the cantina, but nobody came out to watch them leave. They passed Jacinta's building, still no one.

“Maybe we should have talked to Santee's daughter,” McBeth said.

“It wouldn't have done any good,” Clint said. “She doesn't know he's her father. She doesn't know him.”

“That's what we were told,” McBeth said, “but maybe Santee made contact.”

“She's just a young girl, McBeth,” Clint said. “Just a girl.”

“When she washed me, she wasn't just a girl,” McBeth said. “I could've had her, I think, like the mother—for money.”

“But you didn't.”

“No,” he said. “Like you said. Too young. But maybe I should've asked her . . .”

“You knew it wouldn't do any good,” Clint said. “This is what will work, James. Being in the saddle again. Being on the hunt again.”

“I've been huntin' him so long,” McBeth said. “Maybe your help is what I need to finally get it done.”

“I hope so,” Clint said. “I really hope so.”

Jamie Dolan divvied up the proceeds of the bank job, tossed a bag of money at each of his three men. He got half, and the other three split the other half.

“I ain't sure I like this arrangement no more,” Ed Grey said.

“Me neither,” Billy Ludlow said. “We take the same amount of chances, so why do you always get half?”

They were all hunched around the campfire, so Dolan stood up and faced the other two men across the flames.

“You two want my half? Come and get it.”

Grey and Ludlow stood up, their hands hovering near their guns. They felt they could take Dolan. He was no gunman. That was clear in the way he wore his gun, so that he had to cross his body with his hand to draw it. He liked the way it looked, but in a gunfight he'd be a dead man.

But the joker in the deck was Santee, and right on cue they both heard the hammer of his gun cock back.

“No guns,
amigos
,” he said. “If you want to take his money, you have to do it with no guns.”

Dolan drew his gun and tossed it away.

“Come on then, lads,” he said. “Time to change the arrangements anyway.”

“That's all we're askin' for, a change in the arrangement,” Grey said.

“Just a little bigger cut, is all,” Ludlow said.

“I was thinkin' more of a two-way split,” Dolan said. “You boys are out.”

Both men stiffened as they realized what the big Irishman was saying.

“But still,” Dolan said, “I'm a fair man. If you can take my money from me, you can have it.”

The men considered their options.

“What if we just wanna ride?” Grey asked.

“Not one of your options, I'm afraid,” Dolan said.

“What are our options?” Ludlow asked.

“Take my money from me,” Dolan said, “or die.”

“Hand to hand?” Grey asked.

“Two against one?” Ludlow said.

“You drop your guns,” Dolan said, “and Santee will holster his.”

The two men exchanged a glance, then unbuckled their gunbelts and tossed them away.

“That's it,” Dolan said, flexing his big hands. “Now come on . . .”

Santee drew his gun again.

 

They found a portion of the river shallow enough to cross. “Shallow” enough meant it only came up to their horse's withers. Clint kept an eye on McBeth, who had never crossed a river this deep on horseback before. The Irishman turned out to be an accomplished horseman.

When they reached the bank on the U.S. side, their pants were wet from the thigh down.

“We lose anything?” Clint asked.

They each had a burlap sack looped around their saddle-horns, filled with supplies they'd picked up a couple of days ago when they'd reached a town with a general store.

“Naw, I got everythin',” Weaver said.

“So do I.”

“How you doing, McBeth?” Clint asked.

“A little winded,” McBeth said. “The current was pretty strong.”

“If you give your horse his head, he'll usually get you across,” Clint said. “Let's step down and take a rest here.”

They dismounted and Clint decided they needed some coffee, so he told Weaver to build a fire and make some. McBeth found a large, round rock and sat down on it. He'd been riding for three days now, and he'd been right about his wound. The stitches didn't pull as much today as they had the first day.

“Your bandage get wet?” Clint asked, moving over to join him.

“No, it's dry.”

Clint stepped behind McBeth and took a quick look. If the stitches had separated, he wasn't bleeding through his shirt.

“It's fine,” McBeth assured him. “You think they crossed here?”

“No way to tell,” Clint said. “There are a lot of tracks, so lots of people have crossed here. If they didn't, then I'm sure they did somewhere along the way. I'm willing to bet they pulled some kind of job at the first likely town they came to.”

“Likely?”

“Some kind of store or bank in a town without much in the way of law.”

“Maybe the next town?” Weaver asked, arriving on the scene with wood for the fire.

“If not, we'll sure hear about it in the next town,” Clint said.

“Why would they not have robbed a bank in Mexico?” McBeth asked.

“Several reasons,” Clint said. “First, it's Santee's home, and I bet he likes to go back whenever he can, without being wanted. Also, they wouldn't want to have to deal with Mexican soldiers, or a Mexican prison. And third . . . all they'd get for their trouble would be pesos. No, they'd hold off until they got back to this side of the border, and they'd be impatient to fill their pockets with American dollars.”

Weaver got the fire going, and a pot of coffee. Before long they all had a cup in their hands.

“Are we campin' here?” Weaver asked.

“No,” Clint said. “We've got a few hours of daylight. We ride that long and we'll get to the town of Silverton tomorrow. They're big enough to have a newspaper and a telegraph. If they haven't suffered some kind of robbery, we'll be able to find out who has.”

They finished the entire pot of coffee, then doused the fire, mounted up, and headed out to ride out those three hours before dark.

Silverton was abuzz with news when Clint, Weaver, and McBeth arrived. As Clint had predicted, there had been a robbery in the area. To Clint's surprise, however, it had only taken place three days before.

They got the news when they stopped in the nearest saloon. All they had to do was listen to the talk going on around them, and then Clint asked the bartender point-blank for some information. The man reached under the bar and produced a newspaper, The
Silverton Star
.

“See fer yerself,” he said.

“Thanks,” Clint said.

He scanned the story. Four men had held up a bank in the nearby town of Fort Hampton and had gotten away with about forty thousand dollars. They had also killed two people, a teller and a customer.

“That's a big haul,” Weaver said.

“Too big to have been planned,” Clint said. “They lucked into a bank carrying that much money.”

“What does that mean to you?” McBeth asked.

“Men like them,” Clint said, “that's enough money to fall out over. Is Dolan a greedy man?”

“That's hard to say,” McBeth said.

“You know more about this man than anyone,” Clint said. “You must, you've been hunting him for so long.”

“I've been hunting him as a killer,” McBeth said. “He did not rob banks in Ireland. If that's somethin' he likes now, he learned it here. So if he has become a greedy man, he learned that here, too.”

“Okay,” Clint said, “I understand.”

“How long a ride is it to Fort Hampton?” Ben Weaver asked.