Now he repacked the roll and tied it. He threw his rig on the dun and lashed the roll behind the saddle. “Now it's your turn,” he told the horse and he swung up to the saddle and reined into the middle of the stream.
Everything was working perfectly. Not even the most expert sign reader could find anything on that hard shale where the dun had been tethered. The posse, when it came, would follow the bay's tracks miles to the west. By the time they figured out what had happened, their man would be well out of Missouri.
CHAPTER TWO
BY SUNDOWN GRANT was well east of Joplin, heading south with the eye of his mind on Arkansas. From Arkansas he'd head into the Cherokee Nation where it should be a simple thing to get himself lost in the crowds and excitement. Oklahoma was preparing for statehood, Indian lands were being cut up for individual allotments, there had been talk of oil strikes near Bartlesville and Dewey. With all those things to keep people worked up, Grant thought, it's not likely they'll pay much attention to another saddle tramp riding through.
Several times he had held up in draws and gullies while farm wagons rattled along the muddy roads. At last he felt that he was comparatively safe and decided to wait till dark to make his run for Arkansas.
In a gully, a few miles north of Monett, he opened a can of beans and ate with fine appetite. He chuckled to himself, enjoying the feel of twenty-five hundred dollars next to his body. It was a lot of money. His money. He had worked hard for it.
Maybe, he dreamed, I'll buy in on a small cow outfit in Texas. Or lease some Indian land and run my own brand. One thing he was sure of, he wasn't going to try farming again. Cows he understood. But bankers and crop failures and droughts were not for him.
He hunched into his windbreaker, chuckling again as he remembered Ortway's expression of outrage. “I'll bet he's still hollering,” he said aloud. “His kind always holler.”
Not until it was full dark did he set his rig and head south, skirting wide to the west in order to miss Monett. It would be an easy ride to Arkansas, even at night....
Perhaps he had been out of the saddle too long. Perhaps his hands and his mind had been too long occupied at plowing and his horseman's instinct had become dulled. Or perhaps it simply was the way that luck would have it when the sturdy little dun stepped into a gopher hole that night and snapped a foreleg.
It happened suddenly and without warning, the way hard luck usually happens on a man. One minute he had been riding peaceably across the snow-patched prairie gazing up at the pale moon and stringy clouds, and the next moment he was on his back gasping for breath. The stocky little dun lay on its side, kicking weakly, and a hard knot of sickness grew in Grant's stomach when he saw the animal's left foreleg hanging awkward and useless.
This thing he had not foreseen. A downed horse had not been a part of his plan.
Grant shoved himself to his feet. He knelt beside the dun and stroked the animal's neck, trying not to look at the swimming hurt in those dark brown eyes. For the moment he was more concerned with the animal than with himself, and he spent several valuable minutes stroking and calming the dun, crooning to it in a voice that was surprisingly gentle. “It's going to be all right, boy. Everything's going to be fine...”
The nervous quivering along the horse's withers began to subside slowly. The dun lay quiet for a moment, almost as though it knew what the inevitable end must be. Grant drew his revolver reluctantly from his waistband and aimed carefully.
The explosion mushroomed over the prairie, and Grant heard his own voice saying quietly, “I'm sorry, boy.” He ejected the used cartridge methodically and reloaded from a carton that he kept in his windbreaker. He stood there for one long moment, vaguely bothered. “Arkansas's out,” he said aloud. “Without a horse, I sure won't be able to make the border before morning.”
Almost as though he were afraid of awakening the dead animal, Grant gently stripped the saddle from the dun's back. With a shrug of acceptance he slung the forty-odd pounds of wood and leather over his shoulder. He walked south.
It was about an hour past sunup when Grant sat down beside a deep-rutted wagon road to rest. He had only a vague idea where he was—somewhere inside a triangle formed by Joplin, Monett, and Neosho. His feet, encased in tight riding boots, ached all the way to his knees, and he cursed himself for leaving his heavy work shoes in the saddle roll beside the dun.
The late-December wind was cutting, and he hunched deeper into his windbreaker as he tried to decide on what to do. He wondered where the posse was. He even began to wonder how he had ever let himself in for a fool mess like this in the first place.
It'll be five years behind bars if they catch you! he warned himself. Maybe more.
He shoved himself to his feet wearily and was beginning to hoist the saddle when he saw the wagon headed toward him from the north. His heart pounded once, like a hammer striking an anvil, and then seemed to stop. “It's too late to run!” he told himself. “That farmer's already seen me by this time.”
It was a flat wagon loaded high with baled hay. Grant tried to reassure himself as the wagon drew nearer. It seemed better to hold his ground and trust to some kind of brazen lie than to arouse the farmer's suspicions by running.
The farmer, it turned out, was a young man in his early twenties. He hauled on the lines and called, “Give you a lift, mister?”
“That depends. Where're you headed?”
“Neosho,” the boy said, beating his mittened hands together. “Takin' this hay down to some feeders.” He glanced curiously at Grant's saddle.
“Lost my horse a piece back,” Grant said.
“Oh. That's hard luck. You must be one of the cowhands that was drivin' beef through here yesterday. I guess you're headed for Neosho, now that you're afoot.”
“Neosho?”
“Sure. That's where most cattlemen catch the train for the Cherokee country.”
The seed of an idea took root in Grant's mind.
“You're absolutely right! The sooner I can catch a train for the Nations the better I'll like it. I'll catch that ride with you, if you don't mind.”
The youth took the saddle and Grant climbed atop the stacked hay bales. “What time do you figure to raise Neosho?”
“With a little luck I'll get you there in time to catch the one o'clock to Vinita. Your outfit run cattle in the Nations?”
Grant nodded. “That's right.”
They rode along in comfortable silence for several minutes, and Grant smiled to himself, pleased with this unexpected turn of events. A cowhand with a saddle would attract no attention in Neosho; riders for the Indian-country outfits often drove beef to Missouri, sold their horses at a profit, and took the A & P back to home range. It was all so simple that Grant wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. While the posse scoured the vicinity of Joplin, he'd be boarding the Pacific at Neosho. At Vinita, in the Cherokee Nation, he could change to the Katy and ride clear to Mexico if he felt like it.
Joe Grant leaned back in the clean-smelling hay and admired the wide blue sky over Missouri. He felt fine.
Then the young farmer said, “Guess you didn't hear about the bank holdup over at Joplin, did you?”
A chill walked up Joe Grant's spine. “I guess I didn't.”
“Posse came around to my pa's place last night,” the boy said, chewing placidly on a straw. “Some farmer held up the banker and got off with five thousand dollars.”
Five thousand dollars! Grant felt himself go rigid with anger. Ortway, that lying, thieving...!
“Hard to know what gets into folks,” the boy went on. “Take this farmer; what good's all that money goin' to do him? The posse'll get him sure if he stays in Missouri. He hasn't got a chance of gettin' away!”