Wilda's Outlaw (32 page)

She shifted and leaned against the soothing warmth of one of the animals. Her thighs and buttocks ached. Riding turned out to be more difficult than she had imagined. Calder made it look so easy, but all she could do was bounce around in the saddle.

She’d imagined riding wildly into Hays City, guns firing. They’d lock the frightened hostages in a cell while Calder mounted up and they all rode out of town shooting and shouting. Too bad that wasn’t quite the way Smith had it planned.

So here she was, taking care of the horses like he said.

The dappled mare he had given her, he called Jeb. She was a sweet little animal, a silvery gray with spots the color of rich earth along her shoulders and rump. When she put her nose against the back of Wilda’s neck and nibbled with soft lips, she instantly fell in love with her. Forgave her the ride from Victoria. If she ever had time, maybe Calder would teach her how to sit in the saddle without bouncing up and down like a ball.

“It’s awfully dark,” Tyra whispered, interrupting her reverie.

“Yes, but nothing will bother us out here. We must relax and be ready for them. I can hardly wait to get out of this country. Maybe we’ll go west to California.”

Tyra remained silent for a spell, then tentatively said, “If you do, where will I go?”

The fear in the child’s voice touched a chord. “Why, with us, of course. What did you think?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure about going so far from Fairhaven and Rowena.”

Another silence, then Tyra whispered, “You know, I’d rather stay here, if you don’t mind.”

“Why in the world would you want to do that?”

“Well, I have my own horse, Seth is teaching me to ride and to take care of the animals. He says I have the touch, that I could be an animal doctor, what they call a veterinarian.”

Wilda patted Jeb’s neck, leaned against the warm strength of her. “Well, that’s wonderful, but you’d still be under the control of Lord Prescott. He would never allow such a thing.”

“Only until I’m eighteen.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Seth says after I’m eighteen I can do as I wish in this country. Do you think that’s true?”

“Perhaps it is, but that doesn’t mean Prescott would allow you to leave Fairhaven.”

“Well, he couldn’t stop me. I’d like to go back.”

Shivering at the thought of leaving Tyra at the mercy of the crazed, drunken Lord Prescott, she only murmured a reply. “We’ll see, Tyra. We’ll see.”

****

A clattering noise, which at first he thought to be a dream, awoke Calder in the dark of night. Someone was outside. Pushing his cheek from the stinking mattress, he listened with a faint hope that it was real.

“Hsst, boy,” he heard. A small pebble landed on the floor of the tiny cell in which he lay alone.

Mouth so dry his tongue would hardly move, he glanced toward the desk where the deputy would be on guard. The soldiers built fires alongside the street after dark, and in the glow of the flickering light sat an empty chair. With their only prisoner securely padlocked in a cage, the sheriff obviously saw no need for a night guard. Who would dare pull an escape with Fort Hays and its soldiers barely a mile south?

“Dammit, boy, answer me.” A harsh whisper from outside.

Who the hell could that be? He rose and peered through the narrow hole cut in the thick logs of the jailhouse. “Who is it?”

“Me, Smith. Who’d you expect? One of them lazy louts you call your gang?”

There wasn’t time to ask the questions that ran roughshod through him. They’d keep till later. “You gotta get me out, they’re gonna hang me.”

“You got a guard?”

“Hell, if I did we’d be done for already, all this yapping.”

Smith grunted, said no more.

Calder waited for what would happen next, his heart beating like a thundering stampede. After a few minutes, the front door squeaked open and a shadow slipped through. Had to be Smith, that bumbling deputy would’ve swaggered in making all the noise in the world.

As it was, his rescuer tripped over something, or knocked something off the desk, and Calder held his breath through the racket. If someone ventured by on the boardwalk their goose’d be cooked.

“Where’s the blamed key?”

“Probably took it with him. You’re a blacksmith, open the lock.”

Smith approached, Calder heard more than saw him.

“Hmm.”

“What? Damn, I’d like to get gone from here.”

“Wagon rims.”

“What?”

“They’ve built the cell outta old iron wagon rims. No keyhole, it’s got a padlock. That makes it simpler, but it’ll make noise.”

“I don’t care. Get me out of here. Having visions of dangling from a rope ain’t my idea of fun.”

Smith grunted again, hit the padlock with something that made one hell of a clatter. Hit it again. “Okay, come on, fore someone hears us.”

Calder scrambled from the cell. “Have to be plumb deaf not to have already.”

“Come on, boy, or I’m a leaving you.” Smith was gone, darting quickly out the door.

Calder hesitated, spotted his holster and weapon hanging on a hook behind the sheriff’s desk, and grabbed it before following the older man through the door. He eased it shut and hugged the wall beside Smith. Together they moved around the building and out back into the shadows where the fires couldn’t betray them.

Smith put his lips to Calder’s ear. “Have any notion where your horse is at?”

“The livery yonder.” He gestured, fastened his belt and tied down the .44.

“Can we get in the back way?”

Calder paused to think about the layout. “I think so.”

Smith stood there a minute, listening. “Aw, hell, it ain’t worth the trouble. I’ve got four animals with me. That’ll have to do us.”

“I ain’t leaving Gabe. You go on.” Calder took a step, turned. “Four animals? What for?”

“Too long a story for now. But three of ’em is taken.”

“Damnation,” Calder whispered. What the hell? Had the boys left Smith to come into town while they hunkered like cowards away from harm?

“Will you get your butt to moving?”

“I’m gonna get Gabe. I can’t leave him.”

“I understand, boy. Well, let’s git to it.”

Calder led the way and together they slipped along the back of one building and then another until they came to the crude corral built out back of the livery stable. Three horses stood together in the far corner and one whickered in greeting, followed by another and another.

“Damn,” Smith muttered. “One of them yours?”

Calder slipped between the rails and approached the animals. They moved about nervously. He laid a hand on a tall rangy roan, slipped between the other two. None of them Gabe. Hunching low to make less shadow, he hurried to the gaping back door and darted inside. Smith must’ve waited outside.

It was too dark to see much. The front doors were closed so no light from the fires filtered in. After a moment, he could make out the stalls and moved from one to the next.

He’d reached the one closest to the front door with no luck finding Gabe when the sound of hoof beats and a man’s voice froze him in place.

“Hold up, there, son.” Silence, then boots thudded on the boardwalk and a fist hammered on the door.

Heart thudding, Calder rolled under the stall door and hunkered in one corner.

“Dammit, I rode all day and half the night. Can’t someone let me in here?”

Hell, the man would wake the dead. He had to do something. A louder pounding, and Calder rolled out, stood, dusted himself off and swung open the door.

“Sorry, I was out back,” he told the man. “Bring him on in here. It’s two bits a night, another for grain.”

“Well, goddamn, wouldn’t want to rob a fella, would you?”

Calder held his breath. “Leave him here or don’t. Up to you.” He made as if to close the door.

“Aw, hell. That’s okay.” He went to untie his horse and led him into the darkness of the stable. “Charges like that, looks like you could afford coal oil,” he grumbled, digging in his pocket to come up with four bits.

Calder took the reins and the coins.

“Put him in a stall, I don’t want him outside, he likes to jump fences.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Name’s Bill Gamble. I’ll be over to the hotel.”

Teeth gritted, Calder wished the guy would leave before someone came along. Someone who knew the livery man, or worse, the sheriff himself.

“Well, reckon I’ll be going.” Gamble stomped off.

Puffing out a sigh, Calder closed and barred the door, led the horse into a stall and slipped its saddle and bridle off.

“No sense you having to put up with this rig all night, is there, old boy?”

The horse nuzzled his neck with velvety lips.

“Sorry about the grain, but there’s hay. Gotta git going.”

Damn, what was up with him? Talking to a horse when he ought to be running for his life?

As he stepped from the stall, he heard a familiar whicker.

“Is that you, Gabe?”

The gelding snorted and Calder swung open the stall door on the far side. Too dark to hunt for his saddle, he’d just have to take the first one he laid hands on. Several were rowed up along a bar at the back of the stable, and he hurriedly strapped one onto Gabe’s back.

“Smith?” he whispered outside the back door.

“Here.”

He led Gabe and followed the man off into the darkness.

Smith gestured toward a grove of trees, a mere shadow against the night sky. “Blamed if it ain’t dark as the hubs of hell out here. Come on, let’s move. Make for them trees.”

Calder followed the older man’s lead, crouching low and darting this way and that into the night.

They might’ve made it to the clump of trees if it hadn’t been for the damn dogs. Several of the beasts came out of nowhere barking and growling like they’d treed themselves a panther.

Gabe screamed and pawed air, jerking the reins from Calder’s hand. His heart filled his throat, and, “Gawd almighty,” exploded out of him. No way he could help it.

Smith uttered a string of curses. One of the curs locked onto Calder’s leg, gnawing at his boot like it was his favorite bone. A vicious kick only made the brute more intent on the kill.

Out of sight, but not out of hearing, Smith continued to grunt and curse. There must’ve been five or six of the mutts, all doing their best to bring down both men.

Calder fumbled for his gun, dragged it out and started shooting. The pack yelped and took off, looking for easier prey.

“You hurt?” Smith hobbled over to him. “Hope none of them had hydraphoby. Damn, we gotta get out of here.”

“Too late,” Calder said.

Four armed men appeared out of the darkness. Still holding his .44, Calder figured he could bring down one or two of them before they got him, but why start killing now? They’d have him anyway. He holstered his weapon and stuck his hands up.

With much whooping and hollering, he and Smith were dragged back to the jail where both were tossed into the cell Calder had only recently left. Both were disarmed. Calder’s rig hung back on the hook, Smith’s shotgun propped in the corner beneath it.

“You won’t be needing these again,” one of the men remarked, and they all laughed.

Sheriff Calumet was sent for, and he arrived looking sleepy and more than a little pissed.

“What the thunder’s going on, you can’t let a man get a decent night’s sleep?”

The lank jawed deputy, whose excitement wouldn’t let him be still, said, “It was a jail break, sheriff. And they’d a got away too, it weren’t for that pack of dogs.”

Calumet squinted at his deputy. “The ones you was supposed to get rid of?”

The man nodded and grinned.

“Well, congratulations,” Calumet said. “Fer once your laziness has paid off.

****

Settled against the trunk of a cottonwood to wait for Smith to return with Calder, Wilda and Tyra were startled when they heard the faint barking of dogs followed by gunshots.

“I think they must’ve shot them,” Wilda said, clutching Tyra close.

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know. Let’s wait a little, see what happens.”

Hoof beats approached and a rider-less Gabe appeared out of the darkness. He danced nervously before settling down and allowing Wilda to take hold of his reins.

“Oh, Tyra. It’s Calder’s horse. He must be dead.” She tied him with the others, then leaned her forehead against his flank and burst into tears.

“Now, not necessarily. They might have just caught them both.”

“Do you think so?”

A long pause. “I don’t know, I wish I did.”

They clung to each other in the darkness under the trees, staring at Hays City, neither one talking for a long while. The town was once more quiet.

“I think I should go in and find out what happened,” Tyra finally said.

“No, they’ll catch you, maybe throw you in jail too.”

“Why would they do that? I don’t look like an outlaw, do I? I’m just a poor orphan wandering around the west looking for a home.”

Wilda thought about that for a while. “I don’t know. It’s too dangerous.”

“Well, what do you suggest? That we wait out here till the end of time?”

“We could go to Rachel’s, I guess.” Grief overtook Wilda once again and she began to cry.

“Oh, honey, don’t take on so.”

“I love him. We were going to go far away and start a new life. And now he’s dead. I can’t live without him.”

“Yes, you can. You and I both know we can live without someone we love when they die.”

The unspoken reference to their parents overcame them both. Tyra joined Wilda and they both cried for what seemed like ages.

At last cried out, Wilda dried her face on her shirttail. “Smith said he had enough money for Rachel to buy tickets home. Hope he left it in his saddlebag. We need to take it to her. At least that way, she’ll be happy.”

“I thought he said he was buying her tickets home. Didn’t he do that when he went after you some clothes?”

“Oh, no. What if they’re in his pocket?”

“Let’s look through his saddlebags first. And if they’re there, then we can take them to her. If not, then we’ll decide what to do.”

Wilda sobbed a couple of times, wiped her nose again. “Okay. One thing at a time. You check the bags on his horse, I’ll go through the stuff on his pack animal.”