The rancher put his horse into a ground-eating lope, and the others followed suit. Longarm found himself riding beside Lucy as the group strung out a little.
“I ain’t overly fond of Lady Beechmuir,” she said quietly to Longarm, “but I hope that critter don’t hurt her much before we catch up to ‘em.”
“Maybe we’ll be lucky this time,” Longarm said. “The Brazos Devil obviously doesn’t kill women right away when he comes across them, the way he does with men.”
“Like I said before, maybe he’s lookin’ for a mate. Maybe Mr. Thorp’s wife is still alive after all and the monster’ll take Lady Beechmuir back to where he’s got Mrs. Thorp hid out.”
Longarm had a vision of a group of concubines, like some Middle Eastern harem, only presided over by some hairy half-man, half-monster instead of an Arab sheik. That was pretty far-fetched … but who was to say what was possible and what was not. He had run across plenty of things in his life he would have considered highly unlikely.
“I reckon we’ll see, with any luck,” he said to Lucy. “We ought to be at the end of this bluff pretty soon.”
Sure enough, the ground soon sloped down toward the level of the river, and within a few minutes the searchers were able to slide their mounts down a short incline and then ride south again, this time following the narrow strip of riverbank.
The going was slow, however, because of the thick brush. It took more than half an hour to reach the spot where the Brazos Devil had climbed over the edge of the bluff with Helene. The only reason they knew they were at the right place was because Catamount Jack had tied a red bandanna on an up-thrust finger of rock at the edge before they started riding along the bluff. The bright red cloth was clearly visible above them.
“Look for any tracks or signs that the beast broke through this brush,” Thorp ordered. “We ought to be able to tell which way he went.”
Several minutes of searching did not turn up any of the huge footprints, however. Nor was there a path broken through the bushes.
“Damn!” Lord Beechmuir exclaimed in worry and frustration. “The bloody beast can’t have disappeared into thin air!”
Longarm frowned in thought for a second, then waved a hand at the rugged face of the bluff. “Maybe he worked his way along the ledge and came down off of it somewhere else.”
Catamount Jack nodded and said, “That’s the onliest explanation that makes much sense. If the critter come straight down here, we’d’ve been able to tell it.”
“So what do we do now?” snapped Booth.
“I don’t see any alternative but to split up again,” Thorp suggested. “All we can do is ride up and down this bluff in both directions and look for some sign of the creature.”
“Yes, but in the meantime, Helene is a prisoner of the beast!” Booth said hotly.
Thorp sighed. “Believe me, Lord Beechmuir, I know how you feel.”
Booth took a deep breath, then nodded curtly and said, “You’re right, of course. Sorry, old boy. I let my emotions carry me away. I won’t allow that again.” He lifted his reins. “Very well, shall we go? Singh, you come with me.”
“We’d better string out along the river pretty good,” Longarm said. “How long is this bluff, Thorp?”
“About two and a half miles, I reckon,” the rancher replied. “From where we are now, it runs a mile to the north and a mile and a half to the south.”
Longarm nodded. “I’ll ride down to the southern end and start working my way back. The rest of you scatter out between here and there and each take a section of the ledge. We didn’t see any tracks back to the north as we were coming along, so we’ll leave checking it again for last, just in case we don’t find anything south of here.”
For a second, Thorp looked as if he was going to object to Longarm giving the orders. Then he nodded and said, “Sounds all right to me.”
Longarm left the others to settle how they would split up the task of searching. He took the Appaloosa down the bank to the sandy streambed. He could make better time there than by sticking to the brushy bank, and he had the most ground to cover.
The river twisted and turned enough so that he was soon out of sight of the others, but he would be within hearing of a gunshot if any of them found anything. As usual, three evenly spaced shots would mean for everybody who could hear them to come a-runnin’.
Longarm wasn’t sure how far the Brazos Devil could have come, working his way along the face of the rocky bluff, especially burdened as he had been by Helene Booth. But they had to cover every possibility. Longarm’s own frustration was growing. What should have been a simple job had turned into a damned complicated mess.
But then life had a way of doing that, he reflected, and not just for deputy United States marshals.
As he rode along the river, he noticed another bluff rising on the western bank of the Brazos. It was almost a mirror image of the one to the east, he saw, only the limestone cliff to the west gradually became a bit taller. It was more rugged too, with shoulders and slabs of rock jutting out from its face.
Suddenly, Longarm reined in and frowned. It was not noon yet, but the sun was well up in the sky, its radiance washing over the bluff on the western side of the river. Longarm had spotted a patch of darkness on the face of that bluff, an irregular oval shadow that drew his attention for some reason. After a moment, he figured out what it was.
The dark patch was the mouth of a cave.
Longarm looked back in the direction he had come. The others were counting on him to search the riverbank on the east side of the Brazos, not to go gallivanting over to the west side. And yet, what better place to hide somebody or something around here than in a cave? Helene Booth wasn’t the only missing woman, Longarm told himself. Emmaline Thorp was still unaccounted for, and had been so a lot longer than Helene. Of course, even if the Brazos Devil had taken Emmaline to that cave, there was no guarantee she was still there. Or if she was, she might be nothing more than scattered bones by now.
Longarm grimaced and put that grisly thought out of his head. He would carry out his search of the eastern bank of the river first, he decided. He and the others could always return to that cave later and take a look in it. He started to swing the Appaloosa away.
That was when the late morning sun, shining so brilliantly on the opposite bluff, struck something shiny inside the cave and sent bright shards of light reflecting right at Longarm.
Chapter 17
He stiffened in the saddle as he stared at the reflection, then closed his eyes, shook his head, and looked again. Sure enough, the shiny brightness was still there. He hadn’t imagined it.
There could be all sorts of explanations for what he was seeing, Longarm knew. A pack rat could live in that cave and could have dragged in some bit of metal it found somewhere: an old belt buckle, an empty tin can, damn near anything like that. The fact that there was something shiny inside the cave didn’t have to mean a blessed thing.
But it would take him only a few minutes to find out whether or not the reflection was important, and Longarm had a very strong hunch he ought to do exactly that. One reason he had lived as long as he had, he was convinced, was because he knew when to listen to his instincts.
This was one of those times.
Longarm turned the Appaloosa toward the western bank of the Brazos and heeled the horse into a trot. He splashed through the shallow channel and across some more sandbars, then reached the shore. There was less brush here than on the other side, and barely enough room for the horse to stand after Longarm dismounted and wrapped the reins around the trunk of a little mesquite tree. The steep slope of the bluff started climbing toward the Texas sky almost immediately.