Somewhere, though, Lord Beechmuir found the strength to lift his right leg, bring it around in front of Longarm’s neck, and toss the lawman to the side with a well-executed scissors move. Longarm’s hands slapped the ground as he fell, catching himself before he could sprawl full-length. He scrambled around to face Booth again, pushing himself upright as he did so.
Booth was on his feet too, trying to lift his hands back into that formal boxer’s pose. Obviously, though, he lacked the strength to do so. He swayed from side to side and said thickly through his swollen, bloody lips, “Come … come on … old boy … unless you’re willing to … admit defeat …”
Longarm tasted the sourness of disgust in his mouth, disgust at Booth for provoking this fight and disgust at himself for going through with it. He spat, but that didn’t help much with the taste. “I’m done,” he said harshly. “I’m not giving up, but I’m not fighting anymore either. You take that any way you want.”
“And you … you’ll stay away … from my wife?” Booth insisted.
“You can damn sure count on that,” Longarm said.
“And … apologize to her?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“Smashing …”
With that, Booth fell onto his knees. He might have pitched forward on his face if Singh hadn’t been beside him instantly, grasping his arm to support him.
“Did you see, Singh?” asked Booth. “I … I thrashed the bounder … just as I said … I would…”
“I saw, your lordship,” Singh said gently. “You were magnificent, as always.”
Catamount Jack came over to Longarm, who was flexing his hands again. The fingers would be stiff and sore for a while. The mountain man handed Longarm his gunbelt and said, “Putty good little fracas whilst it lasted. Not very long, though.”
“Long enough for me,” Longarm said bitterly. “I never should have agreed to any damn duel-“
He stopped in mid-sentence as he glanced past Catamount Jack toward the camp. Something was wrong there, but it took him a minute to figure out what it was. Then the realization hit him.
The tent where Helene Booth had been resting in her drugged sleep had collapsed.
“What’s happened over there?” Longarm asked, raising his hand and pointing at the camp.
Everyone turned to look. A puzzled frown appeared on Thorp’s face. “Where’s Lady Beechmuir?” he asked.
Longarm was wondering the same thing. The way the tent was flattened, he couldn’t tell if there was anyone underneath the canvas or not. He saw some lumps there, but those could have been made by the cots.
“My God!” Booth exclaimed, realizing that something was wrong. “Singh, get over there right away!”
“Your lordship will be all right?” the Sikh asked.
“Yes, yes, just go!”
Singh broke into a run, pulling out his curved sword as he went. Randamar Ghote was right behind him, and the others followed closely. The only one who lagged behind was Lord Beechmuir, who was still unsteady on his feet. Longarm looked over his shoulder, saw the trouble the Englishman was having, and hung back. “Let me give you a hand,” he offered to Booth.
For a moment, Booth glared at him; then the nobleman nodded abruptly and accepted Longarm’s steadying hand under his arm. “I’m obliged, Long,” he said stiffly.
They hurried along as best they could, and by the time they reached the campsite, Singh had pulled the tent aside to reveal that Helene was not there. “Dear Lord, what happened to her?” Booth asked anxiously as he and Longarm came up to the flattened canvas. Both cots had collapsed.
“Somebody tore down the tent while the rest of us were watching you and Long, your lordship,” Thorp said. His voice rose excitedly. “Look!”
He pointed at some tracks on the ground. The marks made by Singh’s boots had obscured some of the huge, misshapen footprints, but there were enough of them so that most were still clearly visible. Longarm had seen them before, and the conclusion to which they led was obvious.
Helene Booth was gone, and the tracks of the Brazos Devil were all over the place.
Lord Beechmuir was almost insane with worry, not surprising considering what had happened. As the rest of the group made hurried preparations to break camp, Booth paced back and forth in a growing frenzy. The discovery of his wife’s disappearance had made him forget all about the aches and pains he had received in the fight with Longarm. Thorp had offered him sympathy, since the rancher knew what he was going through, but the Englishman had seemed to barely notice.
“Never should have left her here like that,” Booth muttered. “Should have gotten rid of that bloody Hindu a long time ago.”
Longarm overheard the comment and couldn’t disagree with it. He wondered how long Helene’s addiction had been encouraged by Ghote. Her ladyship’s dependence on him had no doubt given him quite a position of strength in the household. Longarm wondered too if the servant had been building up quite a stash of loot from what Helene paid him to supply her with her “medicine.”
All that was a matter for Lord and Lady Beechmuir to work out between themselves … assuming they could catch up to the Brazos Devil and rescue Helene from him safe and sound.
While Longarm was saddling the Appaloosa, Catamount Jack sidled over to him and said in a low voice, “You know, Marshal, somethin’ about them tracks we found strike me as mighty familiar.”
Longarm looked quickly at the old mountain man. “You’ve seen something like them before?”
“Mebbe. I ain’t sayin’ for sure, mind you, but now that I’ve got a good look at ‘em, I think maybe I have.” Catamount Jack shook his grizzled head. “I sure can’t recollect where or when, though.”
“Maybe it’ll come to you,” Longarm said. He wasn’t sure what good it would do them if Catamount Jack had run into a similar creature before, but the knowledge might come in handy. It was hard to know what they were going to find.
Longarm estimated they were less than half an hour behind the Brazos Devil when they rode out of the camp. This was perhaps their best chance yet to catch up to the creature. The varmint must have been watching them, he thought as the riders trotted toward the river, following the tracks. Man, beast, or something in between, the Devil was obviously cunning and observant enough to have known that Helene was alone in the tent while the attention of everyone else in the party was occupied elsewhere.
The tracks led to the bluff overlooking the river—straight to the edge, in fact. Booth reined in and said hollowly, “My God, did … did the beast jump off the brink with Helene?”
Carefully, Longarm walked the Appaloosa closer to the edge and peered down, wondering if he would see the broken bodies of Helene Booth and the Brazos Devil at the bottom, killed in some sort of bizarre suicide. There was nothing down there as far as he could see, however, except a narrow strip of riverbank clogged with brush.
“Look there,” Catamount Jack said, pointing. “You can see some sign where he climbed down.”
Longarm studied the scratch marks indicated by the mountain man. The bluff was basically just an out-thrust limestone ledge, and the face of it was quite rough. A man might be able to climb down it if he was careful.
But climbing down while carrying an unconscious Helene Booth was another story entirely, Longarm thought. That would take an incredible amount of strength and surefootedness … two qualities the Brazos Devil evidently possessed in abundance. The long scratches on the limestone looked like claw marks where the creature had searched for footholds.
“Is there a way down there?” asked Lord Beechmuir as he anxiously studied the markings. “We’ll have to ride north along this bluff for about a mile,” Thorp replied, “but then we’ll be able to get down to the river again and double back. That’s the closest way. Come on.”