A Man with a Past by Mary Connealy

THIRTY

Falcon’s hand came out, hard and fast. He snatched hold of Cheyenne’s reins and dragged both mounts to a halt.

“Get down.” He was on the ground before he breathed the order, and Cheyenne was a heartbeat behind him.

“The tracks here are fresh. We’re close.”

Cheyenne took off to the left side of the trail, the side she’d ridden on. Falcon went right. He studied the land past the edge of the woods, wishing for an easy way ahead but finding none.

He met Cheyenne coming out of the woods on her side. “We’ve gotta get shut of this trail. Leastwise when we’re headin’ around a corner like the one ahead. They could be in sight.”

Cheyenne gave a jerk of her chin, saying she agreed, and it warmed a man’s heart. She caught his arm and led him back to where she’d left her horse. She pointed to a rabbit trail and let him lead.

A good woman. A fine woman in all ways. And she’d said she’d marry up with him. He went forward with a smile on his face. The rabbit trail wasn’t much, and there were deadfalls across it, and scrub pines lacing their scratching arms to block anyone more than rabbit high. But until Falcon saw a better option, he’d go forward best he could.

They reached past the curve of the trail and saw nothing. Went back for their critters and led them around the trail only to tie them up again at the next twist. Onward they went like that through the afternoon. They camped with no fire and had a fresh start the next day at the same crawling speed. Their sandwiches were gone and so were the eggs and biscuits. They were eating jerky from their packs and drinking from their canteens. They still had a good supply of cookies and apples, as if Molly had sent them on a picnic.

Falcon enjoyed every bite.

They’d been at it for three whole days, stopping at every curve, hitching the horses, walking through the woods until they could see what lay beyond, then going back for the horses. They moved at such a deadly slow pace Falcon was almost turned to daydreaming. Then they found someone.

This time Cheyenne grabbed his arm. “That’s him.”

Crouching together, side by side, they studied the man tearing down a noon camp. A woman helped him. “Have you seen her before?” Falcon asked.

Shaking her head, Cheyenne stayed silent.

Neither of them was familiar to Falcon, but then he didn’t know a soul. He’d only just started knowing himself again.

Falcon urged Cheyenne to sit. They stayed there, silently watching the pair ahead of them—one who’d laid in wait to kill them, the other who most likely shot Wyatt—pack up to move.

Falcon turned to Cheyenne’s ear. “Now?”

Cheyenne hesitated, then shook her head no. Falcon tried to reason out why. He’d surely agree with her if she said it out loud. Knowing he held such trust for her was enough to keep him quiet.

A skillet clanged against metal as it got slipped into a saddlebag. The pair was good at handling a campsite. They didn’t talk, like they worked well as a team and didn’t need to. They didn’t take time to strip away any signs they’d been there, and they’d had a good-sized fire. Two folks who weren’t feeling hunted.

It was a pure pleasure to know these savvy folks were making such a big mistake.

Falcon thought of how long Ralston had spent building a herd in that canyon. He had to be good in the wilderness.

Cheyenne whispered in his ear, “No limp.”

That’s right, this polecat had lived for years pretending to be hurt to get sympathy from Hawkins.

Watching how the two were together, the way they touched each other as they worked, Falcon saw they were more than partners. The woman would smile, then frown, all her feelings good and bad showed on her face. Including, he saw once, suspicion when she looked at Ralston. Maybe she wasn’t as fully on his side as Ralston liked to think. If the woman would shoot Wyatt, she’d shoot someone else. Maybe she was tired of having a partner.

The pair rode out.

Falcon let them get on up the trail, well out of earshot, before he turned to Cheyenne. “Why’d we let them go?”

“It seems to me Ralston still has secrets. Whoever that woman is, I’ve never seen her. She has to be living somewhere around here. If they’re making their way to a hideout, I’d like to see it. Ralston has had time to steal a powerful lot of stuff in the years since he showed up in Wyoming. Maybe there’s more, maybe we can get some of it back.”

“The trail they’re taking don’t seem like how they’d leave the country, head for California or Oregon.”

Nodding, Cheyenne said, “Instead, they covered their tracks, and now they’re trekking down this meandering trail. Seems to me they plan to get to their hideout, or wherever they’re going, and stay around. Maybe Ralston has other crimes he’s busy committing, and he thinks he can set up in his own hideout and still carry out at least some of his plans. I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to hang back and see if we learn anything.”

“Let’s see around the trail’s next curve, then come back for the horses.”

They followed along at a good distance, careful every time there was a curve in the trail. Falcon settled in, figuring they might be following this pair for days.

During their same careful checking of what lay ahead of another twist in the trail, Cheyenne grabbed the front of Falcon’s shirt, dragging him low, hissing like a rattler.

Four men all on horseback. The woman was also mounted, but she was a few steps back from Ralston, as if she wasn’t in this circle of four, at least not as an equal.

One man Falcon recognized, a tall, skinny, stoop-shouldered RHR hand with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

The RHR hand wasn’t the foreman, not in charge at all that Falcon knew. If this group was connected to the men who’d attacked Win and Kevin, then the band had included Ross, the RHR ramrod. This man might’ve just gotten promoted in the gang.

Next to the RHR cowpoke was an older man, a bit of white in his overlong hair dangling beneath a tattered gray Stetson. The oldster had a scowl on his face that showed a missing tooth right up front.

Ralston sat straight across from the RHR hand with the woman near his horse’s flank.

Next was a man wearing a bright red bandanna. He had a long beard. He had his broad-brimmed hat in his hands, and his head was so bald it shone in the sunlight. None of ’em was a youngster, just as Tuttle and Ross had been older. And Falcon remembered the talk he’d heard in town about those two grousing about getting older and being tired of working for someone else.

“We heard at the North Bend Ranch that Wyatt Hunt is dying.” The bald man’s voice echoed with satisfaction in a way that made Falcon want to stand right up and start unloading his pistol. He kept quiet, instead, and seethed.

“Not what they’re saying in the house,” the RHR hand said. “Pulled the bullet out, sewed him up, laid up some but not even a fever. Be back at work in a couple’a days.”

“Did one of you get him?” Ralston asked.

That gave Falcon pause. If the woman had shot Wyatt, wouldn’t Ralston know?

To a man they all shook their heads or said no. Even the woman shook her head, though no one paid her any mind.

Cheyenne’s hand tightened on Falcon’s shirtfront until he started to worry about being strangled.

“Why are we meeting clear and away out here?” Missing Tooth sounded grumpy in a way that made Falcon think he always sounded that way. A complainer, and the others so used to it they paid it little mind. But the cold glint in the man’s eyes told Falcon when there was shooting trouble, this man would be one to watch.

“It’s far out for you, Norm,” Ralston said. “But I had to put space between me and the RHR and the Hawkins place. When the sheriff came to tell Hawkins about Tuttle, I knew I had to run, so I sent riders to you all with the message to meet here at the base of the hoot owl trail.”

Cheyenne’s hand clutched again, just when Falcon was breathing well again. Hoot owl trail must mean something to her.

“I know they’ll notice you’re gone from the HC, Norm, but we have to clear out the rest of the cattle, get ’em sold fast, and quit the country.”

Cheyenne leaned to Falcon’s ear. “Rest of the cattle?”

Their eyes met. They’d removed all the cattle from the valley they’d found. So what other cattle were there?

“We’ve tried to thin the herd at the Hunt place and missed every time. It’s time to take our money and leave,” Ralston insisted.

“Roger Hanson’s an old curly wolf from the high-up hills,” Norm snarled. “I haven’t had a clear chance at him, but if you gave me more time—”

“Nope, for me at the Hawkins place, the time’s up. It wasn’t a bad plan. These four ranches looked to be easy pickin’. No crowd of family to fight for the land. Hanson, a tough man but alone in the world. Hawkins, his daughter don’t care if he lives or dies and doesn’t seem interested in the ranch. Judd’s a mighty dangerous man. Always figured we couldn’t take the North Bend, but we got some cattle. And the Hunts, just the sister and brother, but otherwise no one until that fool Clovis turns up more sons. I thought we could come away with a lot of cattle and maybe two of the ranches. Now we’re done as far as the land grab, and half our cows are gone.”

Falcon saw the woman looking confused and distressed, but she didn’t speak up. Whoever she was to Ralston, she seemed to be no kind of partner in whatever was going on.

“We either need to make a break for it now or get back,” Baldy said. “We’ll be missed.”

“I can’t go back,” the RHR hand said. “Walsh, the foreman, is too sharp-eyed, especially with the boss being shot. When I slipped away today, it was for good.”

Ralston nodded. “Hope your bosses figure you for hittin’ the trail, and that’s that. We’ll get the cattle down the road to Laramie and be there before sunup. We’ll have them sold, divide the money, and hit the trail by first light.”

“This wasn’t the plan.” Norm slapped his hat on his leg hard enough to make his horse dance sideways. “We were supposed to come out of this owning a ranch apiece.”

The woman’s eyes had turned bleak, but she sat silently, lowering her head as if to cover her expression.

Falcon felt Cheyenne’s fingers digging into his wrist until his hand was strangled.

She dragged Falcon back slowly. One look in her eyes told Falcon she knew something and needed to tell him.

And they had a bigger job ahead of them than rounding up Percy Ralston.