Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) Read online

  Jeremiah’s credulity concerning Goode’s story held no more conviction than his wife’s had, but he figured he would give him the benefit of the doubt—at least until he figured out what was really going on with this man.

  “These are built to last,” Jeremiah observed. “Lot heavier steel than handcuffs. I see by the markings that they are U.S. Army issue.”

  “I reckon he musta stole ’em,” Goode said. “I seem to reckon the slaver told how he stole ’em from somebody over at Fort Ellis.”

  “I have no saw that will cut steel,” Jeremiah told the man. “Breaking the locks with a hammer could not be done without breaking your wrists . . . somethin’ it looks like you damned near done already.”

  As he spoke, Jeremiah’s eyes began flicking toward the ridge opposite the cabin. Instinctively, Rebecca looked in that direction, and Goode noticed this.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?” Goode demanded.

  “Nothin,’” Jeremiah told him. “Just the snowflakes in the air.”

  “You was looking and she was looking,” Goode said nervously, following their gazes. “You’d be lookin’ at something.”

  After a moment of silence, Goode gasped.

  “Christ almighty,” he hissed. “That consarned slaver done caught up to me!”

  As the three of them watched, a lone rider made his way down a hillside three-quarters of a mile away.

  Suddenly, Goode reached beneath his long coat and pulled out the Colt .45 that had once been carried by the man with the big hat. With his other hand, he grabbed Rebecca’s wrist and pulled her close to himself.

  “No way in hell I’m gonna let that man take me,” Goode said, shoving the muzzle of the pistol painfully into the small of Rebecca’s back and pulling her backward toward the cabin. “When he comes by here, tell him . . . I don’t know what to tell you to tell him . . . Just get rid of him or this lady gets a hole blowed in her . . . please.”

  Jeremiah saw fear on his face and tears in his eyes.

  Chapter 17

  BLADEN COLE HAD NOT LET ON TO GIDEON PORTER THAT he had lost the trail of Jimmy Goode in the fading light of yesterday. He had rousted the outlaw so as to be on the trail at dawn, hoping to see the smoke from Goode’s campfire somewhere ahead—but he hadn’t. Either Goode had known that a campfire would reveal his location, or he had not been able to get one started. Cole was hoping for the latter.

  Cole had allowed Porter to believe that he was still following a trail, when the only thing he was following was a hunch. He figured that a man who was in desperation to the verge of recklessness—which he believed to be the case—and who was increasingly tired, cold, and hungry—which was sure to be the case—would follow the path of least resistance. Therefore, they continued south, down the southern slope of the Little Belts.

  “How the hell can you see where he went?” Porter demanded.

  “Practice,” Cole lied.

  “Reckon it’s easy to trail somebody who ain’t good for nothing except givin’ the slip to a bounty hunter,” Porter said to taunt him.

  “Hmmm,” Cole replied, thoughtfully staring at the ground, at an imaginary track that, obviously, Porter could not see.

  About a half hour out, they came across a gently flowing stream, and Cole paused to water the horses. In a silent, thoughtful way designed to convey to Gideon Porter the illusion that he knew what he was doing, Cole figured that Jimmy Goode would probably have followed this stream.

  By now, it had started to snow. Cole held out hope that he would soon be seeing the footprints of a cold and desperate man who had spent a night nearby in this wilderness without a fire.

  After another hour or so on the trail, they could see a column of smoke rising into the windless skies in the distance.

  When this turned out to be coming from a homesteader’s cabin, Cole chained Gideon Porter to a ponderosa, tethered the horses, and circled around to approach the cabin from high ground so as to make himself visible—and coming from a direction away from the place where Porter was chained.

  A man was standing alone near the barn as Cole rode toward him through the scattering of randomly floating snowflakes.

  “Mornin,’” Cole said as he rode up.

  “Mornin,’” the man said, returning the greeting. “You’re a fair distance from anywhere.”

  “Yep,” Cole agreed.

  “Where ya headed?”

  “South . . . Gallatin City.”

  “You got some ridin’ to do.”

  “Yep,” Cole agreed. “By the way, I’m looking for a man who’d be passing through this country yesterday or today.”

  “Haven’t seen nobody,” the man replied quickly.

  “You sure? Skinny fellow with a long gray coat and no hat?”

  “Can’t say as I have. We don’t see too many people out here.”

  “We?” Cole asked.

  “Me and the missus.”

  “How long you been living out here?” Cole asked, making conversation and trying to get a read on the man. He wondered where the wife was. If they did not have many visitors, as the man said and as Cole believed to be the case, why had she not appeared at the cabin door, out of curiosity if nothing else?

  “Four years last summer,” the man replied. “Goin’ on five.”

  “That’s pretty good. Most homesteaders don’t make it that long. By the way, my name’s Bladen Cole.”

  “Jeremiah Eaton,” the man said, reaching up to shake Cole’s hand. The slight tremble in Jeremiah’s hand told Cole that Jimmy Goode and the stolen pistol were not far away.

  “Well . . . nice makin’ your acquaintance,” Cole said, reining his horse to ride away. “Reckon I’ll get going.”

  “So long,” Jeremiah said, watching him go. As the stranger rode away, he wondered whether he was a lawman or a slaver. He had showed no badge, but Jeremiah still doubted the latter. What other possibilities could there be? At the moment, it really did not matter.

  * * *

  “DON’T MAKE A GODDAMN SOUND,” JIMMY GOODE WHISPERED nervously as he trained the pistol on Rebecca Eaton with a shaking hand.

  “What would your mother say?” she asked in a low voice. “Cursing at a woman in that foul tone?”

  Jimmy was in deep. He was in over his head. He cursed the day that he had met Gideon Porter. Had that never happened, the road of Goode’s life would never have reached this place.

  Everything about the way that his mother had raised him, everything in his being, told him that he was wrong to drag a woman into her home at gunpoint—but circumstances had forced this as the only course of events he could imagine. He was doing, in short, what one of the Porter boys would have done.

  Tommy sat in the corner, trying not to be seen, and looking with great trepidation at the man’s pistol and the way he pointed it recklessly at his mother.

  Rebecca watched as Jeremiah waved halfheartedly, and the horseman rode away.

  “Your mother would have a fit if she knew what you was doin’.”

  “Leave my poor, widowed mother out of this.”

  “Sorry to hear your papa died, but I reckon he spared the strap one too many times when you were growing up.”

  “Never knew him. He was with mama but a short time.”

  “How’d he die?”

  “Nobody ever said.”

  “You ever ask?”

  “Nope.”

  They both turned their heads as Jeremiah entered the room.

  “Well, I done got rid of your slaver,” Jeremiah said. “Told him I never saw you.”

  “Did he believe you?” Goode asked, his voice quavering.

  “Didn’t seem to disbelieve me.”

  “Now it’s high time for you to be gettin’ along, mister,” Rebecca demanded angrily.
/>   “I don’t know . . .” Goode said, gritting his teeth. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Gettin’ along would be a darned good start,” Rebecca repeated.

  “Shut the hell up,” Goode shouted, raising his voice louder than either of them had heard him speak previously. “I’m tryin’ to think!”

  There was a long pause. Thinking was clearly something that came to him with considerable difficulty. His earlier tale of kidnapping and slavery had displayed ample imagination, though it had been short on believability.

  The silence was broken by the crash of breaking glass.

  Goode turned, pointing the muzzle of the Colt in the direction of the sound.

  Had it not been for the saucer-shaped eyes of a terrified six-year-old boy, he would have pulled the trigger.

  A faint trace of what Goode’s mother had taught him grabbed his wrist and whispered in his ear that it was a very big mistake to shoot a little child for breaking a jar of crabapple preserves.

  “Tommy,” Rebecca said, standing up and moving quickly toward her child.

  “I’m sorry,” Tommy said, apologizing for breaking the jar.

  “Oh . . . my baby,” his mother said, embracing him. “It’s all right, it’s just preserves.”

  Both mother and son were crying, and this made Goode both nervous and agitated.

  “All of you sit down where I can see you,” he demanded in an almost pleading tone. “And shut your mouths while I’m trying to think!”

  He could feel himself starting to sweat as he gritted his teeth and tried to decide what to do. Gideon Porter would know. He would have figured things out by now.

  Or would he?

  If Gideon Porter was so smart, why was he still a prisoner of the bounty hunter while Goode walked free? This thought gave him hope. He took a deep breath and tried to relax.

  “Like the missus said, it’s time for you to be movin’ on and leave us be,” Jeremiah said. “I done told the man that you were not here, and there’s no way that we could tell anybody else that you’d been here. It’s more than a day’s ride to any town. Why would we even want to? You were the victim of a man who wanted to enslave you.”

  “Let me think,” Goode said, trying to be stern.

  The man was right. He couldn’t stay here. He really did have to get moving—and sooner, rather than later.

  “I’ll even saddle a horse for you,” Jeremiah said. “It would be a neighborly thing to help a man who has been through what you been through . . . with the slaver and all. With a horse you could get down to a town where a blacksmith would have the tools to get the irons from your hands.”

  His wife gave him a glance that said “How dare you offer one of our horses to this evil man?”

  Goode gritted his teeth. This sounded pretty good. He was being handed a free horse. It seemed too good to be true. Was it?

  “That sounds mighty fine, mister, but how do I know you ain’t got a trick up your sleeve?”

  “We got no bone to pick with you,” Jeremiah said. “We didn’t even know you until an hour ago. All’s we want is to have you get on with your travels and leave us alone.”

  Goode anguished over the decision he had to make. He was not used to making decisions. What would Gideon Porter do?

  At last he seized upon the course he would follow. He would take a hostage.

  “As you say, it is mighty neighborly of you to offer a horse,” Goode said with renewed confidence. “But I want you to saddle up two horses . . . and gimme all your guns.”

  “Don’t got but that one,” Jeremiah said, nodding at an early model Winchester repeater that hung above the doorway.

  Jeremiah Eaton swallowed hard. The man obviously planned to take a hostage with him when he departed. He did not mind being a hostage to the crazy man if it meant leading him away from his home and family. The man had not yet pulled the trigger, and Jeremiah figured that he was not anxious to do so. Somewhere down the road, when the crazy man felt less boxed in, he would be able to trade both horses for his freedom and walk home.

  The expression on Rebecca’s face, however, was a mix of fear and anger.

  The Eatons had just four horses, two riding mares and the aging draft horses who had pulled their wagon from Ohio and who now pulled the plow and did general work around the place. Jeremiah offered to scatter them so that Goode would not fear a double cross, and he did so.

  With both horses saddled, Goode ordered a rope to be strung between them as he had seen Bladen Cole do with him and Porter.

  Goode then lurched aboard one of the horses as gracefully as he could with his hands still in irons.

  Jeremiah hugged his wife and started to mount the other mare.

  “Not you,” Goode said.

  “What?”

  “Not you,” Goode repeated. “Put the boy on the horse.”

  Jeremiah was dumbfounded, his wife apoplectic.

  “You are not taking my boy hostage,” she spat in a venomous rage. She impulsively grabbed Tommy by the hand and pushed him behind her.

  “I have the guns,” Goode asserted. “I have the guns and I’m in charge . . . you gotta do what I say!”

  “Not my boy,” Rebecca pleaded, tears running down her cheeks.

  “If I was to take his daddy, he might get tricky on me,” Goode said. “This boy’s gonna do what he’s told . . . aren’t ya, boy?”

  “You can’t do this!” Jeremiah insisted.

  “Boy’s a helluva lot better hostage than a man,” Goode said with a smirk. “No way a lawman is gonna question a man ridin’ with a boy.”

  “Lawman?” Rebecca screamed. “You said you was the victim of slavers and not an outlaw! Why are you worried about a lawman if you’re a poor victim?”

  “That’s what I meant to say,” Goode said, becoming jittery. “And you’re tryin’ to confuse me with your talk . . . Now, get that boy on the horse or I’m gonna start shootin’ and I’m gonna start with you.”

  * * *

  REBECCA EATON SAT SOBBING IN THE YARD OF THEIR HOME, oblivious to the growing number of snowflakes floating down around her and oblivious to the cold.

  The only thing of which she was aware was that her boy had been taken by a violent man with a gun.

  She had been oblivious to what her husband had said about the mistakes that the kidnapper had made—such as not tying them up or searching the house for more guns, and thereby not finding Jeremiah’s shotgun. She was oblivious to the fact that it might have taken hours for them to get themselves untied, meaning that the kidnapper might have had half a day’s head start—instead of half an hour’s—by the time that her husband had rounded up a draft horse and set out, riding bareback, in pursuit.

  The only thing of which she was aware was that her boy—her only living child—had been taken by a violent man with a gun.

  * * *

  JEREMIAH EATON HAD BEEN SEETHING WITH ANGER AND sick with guilt at not being able to protect his family, but unlike his wife, who sat powerless, unable to do anything, he had at least the small satisfaction that he was taking action.

  Jeremiah took some solace in the fact that the boy had value to the man only if he was alive, and distress in the fact that he was an erratic and impulsive man who could not be relied on to make entirely rational choices.

  The draft horse was slow, and the shotgun afforded but two shots between reloading, but at least he was doing something—though he had yet to decide exactly what he would do if he actually caught up with them.

  The lightly falling snow allowed Jeremiah to follow their tracks, and to guess the timing of their progress by how much snow had collected in the tracks. He could see that the two-year-old mares were moving faster than the old draft horse and extending their lead. He hoped that they would stop at some point and that it wou
ld not start snowing hard enough to smother the tracks.

  * * *

  YOUNG THOMAS EATON WAS AFRAID FOR HIMSELF AND afraid for his family. In all his life, he had never been alone with a stranger, or indeed with anyone other than his parents.

  He didn’t know what he was supposed to think, but he did know he did not like this. He had stopped crying, but he was still afraid that the man would hurt him and nobody would be there to see it.

  He was so preoccupied with his situation that he had forgotten for the longest time to worry about being cold. Except for the tips of his ears and his fingers, he wasn’t, but he expected that later, he would be. He was glad that his mother had earlier demanded that he put on his coat, and he wished that he had picked up his gloves.

  He had said nothing to the stranger, and the man had said nothing to him. He seemed to Thomas to be the kind of man who did not like to talk unless he had to.

  As the miles went past, the snowfall slowed, stopped for a while, and then started up again, heavier than before. Thomas looked at the flakes settling on the horse’s mane and remembered how his mother had told him that every snowflake had a design all to itself, and that no two snowflakes in all the world were exactly the same. He had enjoyed this special time with his mother—last winter, when he was five—and it made him cry to think of how much he was missing his parents.

  The woods were thicker and darker now, and Thomas grew more frightened. He choked back his fear, wanting to be the kind of man of whom his father could be proud. He knew that his father was liable to say something about a man not being afraid in a dark forest.

  He wondered whether his father would come for him, and whether he would see his mother again.

  This made him cry.

  The angry man growled when he saw the tears, and Thomas wiped his cheeks.

  Soon, Thomas had another worry.

  “Mister . . .” he said tentatively. “I gotta pee.”

  “Okay,” Jimmy Goode said, after a moment’s thought. “Make it quick.”

  The boy slid off the mare and began walking up a slight incline toward some trees.